text:
The most popular children in school were the handsome ones.

Everyone liked the handsome ones. The handsome ones were usually funny, sporty, overflowing with confidence, well dressed and just generally awesome. They were going to grow up to be the kinds of people that drive sports cars and spend their time on yachts in the Mediterranean, keeping company with other ridiculously good looking people.

'Good Looking Lee Parkinson' was actually so handsome that girls would ovulate every time he smiled at them. Boys would be left confused about their sexuality if they so much as stood in the same room as him. Even teachers regarded him with dreamy, vacant expressions. He left a trail of dazed people in his wake - all wanting to run their fingers through his gorgeous, soft, blonde hair or just lick his exquisitely sculpted face – or maybe that was just me.

I don’t know what 'Good Looking Lee Parkinson' went on to do as an adult, he’s probably a male model, but I like to think he’s working as a rent boy to fund his heroin and crack habits, after losing his job as a toilet attendant for spying on old men on the loo.

There was also Natasha and Luke DiMarco – brother and sister, who both modelled children’s clothes for catalogues. They were from the new housing estate where the houses were actually made of brick. I have no idea how they ended up at my school.

What was extra special about Natasha and Luke was the fact that they were friendly and down to earth. Whereas 'Good Looking Lee Parkinson' would barely acknowledge me, just in case I contaminated him with a terminal social disease, Natasha and Luke would occasionally talk to me. This left me thinking there was a chance that Natasha could become my girlfriend, and for a long time I fixated upon her. I never mustered the courage to do more than say the occasional hello, and would turn weak with delight whenever she said hello back. I also wrote her endless letters that I was too embarrassed to give her. In short, it was the kind of unhinged, unrealistic desire that if you don’t grow out of, ends with a restraining order.

If there was Natasha, Luke, 'Good Looking Lee Parkinson' and Stephen Bridges at one end of the popularity scale, there was Martin Macintyre, Jim Clinton, Gary Winkett and Suzanne Parker at the other.

Martin Macintyre was basically some kind of animal stuck in the body of a human – prone to attack for no reason – barely articulate until it came to telling you what he was going to do to you after school. He loved to expose himself, running around the playground holding his penis by the foreskin and pulling it until it was twice the normal length.

He even urinated on me a couple of times in the toilets, and one of his favourite past-times was to wait until you were sat on the loo, then climb up on to the sink, stick his head over the top of the cubicle and spit on you until you had finished. Then of course he would give you a good thump in the face when you opened the door.

I remember sitting on that toilet many times, weighing up whether it was better to continue getting spat on, or go out and get smacked in the face. It's funny, but you've no idea how attractive being drenched in saliva becomes when you’re faced with a painful enough alternative.

When Martin wanted some real fun, he would sit at his desk and shit himself - unable to contain his enormous grin, waiting for people to notice the smell. Sometimes he would just lose his mind and run around the classroom punching pupils and teacher.

Nowadays he would be drugged senseless with Ritalin and placed on the sex offender’s register, but back then nothing ever seemed to happen to him - the teachers were too scared of him. He was just left to traumatise us.

At break times, I would often stand in the playground with my fellow social rejects; one of us perched on a bench for maximum visibility, like a Meerkat, hoping to spot one of the many playground threats before they got too close.

Like most bullies, Martin stayed away from people who fought back, and relied on people like me to provide his amusement.

I had been brought up not to retaliate.

Mum: 'Don't stoop to their level, Barry.'

Translation: 'Just stand there and let the deranged child beat seven colours of shit out of you.'

Mum: 'Use words to settle conflict.'

Translation: 'Whilst you're receiving repeated head butts in the face from the deranged child, stay positive, try to find common ground, and use calming language. Don’t forget to keep smiling in an unthreatening manner.'

Mum: 'It takes strength to walk away from a fight.'

Translation: 'Turn away from the deranged child, and once he climbs on your back and starts biting your hair off, stay strong and continue walking away. Eventually he'll grow bored of it and get off you.'

‘Martin’s coming this way!!’ the alarm sounded.

The resulting stampede was like a scene from the Serengeti as Wildebeest lose their minds trying to get away from a lion - scattering in all directions - happy to trample their own offspring if it means not getting eaten.

‘Quick, b-b-behind the Art Block,’ screamed Ian Mailer in a high pitched voice.

The Art Block was a stand-alone wooden building on the edge of the playground where we would go for art lessons. I don’t think many schools have custom built classrooms for art, but this was to protect the normal classrooms because most art lessons ended with desks, walls, children and teacher all painted in bold colours, with a variety of objects glued to them.

You’ve probably had situations in your life where you’ve had to run from something, but fear prevents your legs from working properly. At times like that, my brainpower seemed to get diverted away from the bit that controls my limbs to help support the bit that does my screaming.

As Martin charged, my legs flopped around uselessly.

I was the low-hanging fruit.

The runt, who in the wild, would be quickly and mercifully dispatched from the gene pool.

Unfortunately, there was no such escape in the playground – no quick death, and no daddy Wildebeest to come to your rescue and miraculously fight the lion off.

Even the dinner ladies would conveniently spot other things to attend to when Martin chose to tear his way through the easy prey.

In any sane world, Ian Mailer would be the one to be caught as he waddled away on his little potato-shaped legs, with the rest of us safely out of sight by the time he’s brought crashing to the ground, uselessly screaming for help.

But it was usually me left behind, captured, and subjected to ten minutes of cartoon violence.

Everyone on the playground watched in fascination as I stumbled along like Bambi, eyes wide with fear, looking around in the futile hope that someone would help me.

Once sure I had been captured, my fellow meerkats crept from behind the Art Block, knowing they were now safe and could kick back and enjoy the spectacle.

Martin started proceedings by dragging me around by my hair, occasionally winding me with a few rapid punches to the stomach. I suffered in silence, resigned to the fact that the only thing that would end this was when he, and he alone, felt as if he’d had his fill of ultra-violence.

After the dragging and winding, came the wedgie - not just a tug on my Y-fronts, but an attempt to stretch them up my back and over my head - to double them up as underwear and a hat at the same time.

Still, I didn't shout out, only vomited a little, showing admirable self-control in the face of mind-numbing pain. The saving grace was that my testicles had somehow avoided a good squeezing, and my bum crack had taken most of the strain.

Wedgie finished, he paused for a moment, his face clouded with thought. This wasn't going too well. Why wasn't Barry screaming for his Mum like he normally did?

My stoic demeanour, a feeble attempt to show him that he had no power over me, only served to enrage him further.

Now, I knew that if I was ever captured whilst on her Majesty's service, I could put up with a reasonable amount of torture before coughing up the detonation codes to the nuclear bomb that would destroy England. I had suffered enough pain in my life - so a bit more wouldn’t faze me.

‘You want to wire me up to the mains and shock my nipples until they start smoking? No problem – my Mum used my step-dad's football boot to literally beat me to death when I was five. So go ahead - do your worst.’

But I knew that once they went to work on my testicles, I would sing like a canary on speed.

Every boy knew their true Achilles-heel was hanging in a shrivelled sack between their legs.

Martin Macintyre, no doubt having had his own testicles banged a few times, knew this.

Problem: Barry Stephenson isn't screaming for his Mum to come and save him. This isn't as much fun as usual.

Solution: Hold him down on the ground and punch his testicles.

And sure enough, as the blows rained down on my balls I couldn't get the screams out fast enough. If you can picture a cat, a monkey and a goose being simultaneously kicked around a room by a very angry Chuck Norris, then you come somewhere near the noise that echoed around the school that day.

If you can imagine Chuck Norris kicking animals around his lounge, then well done - sort of. If you can't, start off with just the goose and pay particular attention to Chuck's face, screwed up with rage. That goose has clearly done something very bad to annoy Chuck that much. Once that's working for you - imagine someone throwing the monkey in from stage left. Now Chuck really ramps things up to eleven on the dial. Be in awe of his ferocity for just a couple of minutes or so before the wide-eyed cat finally gets added to the fray. Now Chuck is just an inhuman blur of righteous wrath.

Now you may have asked yourself, 'Why would Chuck Norris resort to kicking these poor creatures around his house? Surely there are other ways to deal with ill-disciplined animals?' Well I'm afraid I can't really give a satisfactory answer. What Chuck Norris gets up to in his own home, and why, is his business and we should probably just respect his need for privacy. Certainly, we shouldn't rush to judge him until we know the full story.

My beating seemed to go on for an age. I was obviously making just the right kind of noises to hold Martin's interest. I think his primitive brain went through life constantly making the following calculation, 'Is the reward from this action equal to, or greater, than the amount of effort I'm putting into it?'
In this particular case, the answer was clearly a resounding yes and his brain got stuck in a positive feedback loop, causing him to keep hammering away.

The rest of the school, as they looked on, gradually stopped laughing and I heard someone shout,

'Martin, I think he's had enough now. Come on.'

That's right. Your astonishing powers of deduction have brought you to the conclusion that I've only just had enough. Just now. It was fine before that, but once we got past the fifteenth thump in the trousers and the swelling was becoming noticeable to everyone, getting my testicles pummelled just didn't hold the same attraction for me any more.

I don't know if the pain became too much for the human brain to endure, or whether I just screamed myself unconscious, but I eventually blacked-out.

Life is full of pleasant little surprises. Small mercies. It's things like that – passing out into a blissful state of unawareness as someone declares war on your nut-sack that makes life so bearable.

Surprisingly, Martin was excluded from school for a whole two days. Two days he would have spent attacking pensioners, and breaking into the houses of people unfortunate enough to be gainfully employed.

My mum was called to come and take me home. The next day, being unable to walk, I was carted off to my G.P.

'Well Mrs. Stephenson, the swelling may take a week or two to completely disappear, and the black scrotum will eventually return to its normal healthy pink - but genitals are surprisingly resilient so I don't think we need to worry too much,' said the Doctor after prodding me between the legs for a while, unperturbed by my yelps of pain.

'Over the next week make sure he wears very loose underwear and trousers.’

Two day’s later; I was back at school, hobbling around the playground in my bright red knitted trousers, my legs spread wide as if I was riding a horse, making sure there was plenty of room for my scrotum which, by now, looked like a little black cauliflower.

The expected ridicule didn’t come though. I actually received some sympathetic glances. Most of the children who had witnessed the savageness of the beating were probably suffering from Post Traumatic Stress. This would, for most of them, have been the closest they would ever come to witnessing an actual real-life murder.

Thanks for reading. This is actually a chapter from my soon to be published novel based upon my childhood, called 'Recollections of a Half-Wit'.

title: Genitals Are Surprisingly Resilient

question: What does the story say about beauty?

answer: At Barry's school, everyone liked the handsome children. Good Looking Lee Parkinson was so handsome that he left boys, girls, and even teachers dazed in his wake. Natasha and Luke DiMarco were models for children's clothes.

question: What does the story say about the ways in which Martin bullied Barry?

answer: Martin urinated on Barry a couple of times in the toilets. He also had a habit of spitting on Barry over the top of the cubicle. One day Martin catches Barry and drags him around by the hair and punches him. He then gives him an atomic wedgie. After that he starts punching Barry in the testicles.

question: What does the story say about Barry's family?


split: test

text:
DeDowell lit a cigarette and put it up to his lips. He breathed in deeply, filling his lungs with tar and other black things. DeDowell heard somewhere  that smoking can kill you. That's when he picked up the habit.

This is what it is to have a friend.

DeDowell had one hand on his cigarette and one hand on his gun. The hand holding the gun was raised to his own head, working hard at an itch that he had behind his left ear.

This is what it is to have a dry scalp.

In front of DeDowell there are three men. Tom Brochart, a wealthy banker who has been cheating on his wife for the past three years, eight months, and seventeen days. Phil O'May, a slob by all means of the word, hadn't been in work for over two years. And Harold Kempner. Harold Kempner was a homo nympho. Personally, I have nothing against homos or nymphos, but that is what DeDowell labeled his sin as. Greed, sloth and lust. Three of the seven sins sitting in front of us, stripped down to their boxers, briefs, and pink frilled underwear, respectively. Three sets of warm legs that stunk of ammonia.

This is what it is to piss your pants.

DeDowell was still itching his head with an almost unnecessary level of aggression when Tom spoke.
"What is it you want, huh? Is it money? I have money. More than  you could spend! Let me go home to my family and  I swear, you will have all the mon-"

Tom Brochart went limp. His torso slumped to the front, twisted to the left, then fell flat with his hands still tied behind his back with the industrial strength rope that DeDowell gets from the outdoor supply shop. Harold Kempner starts to sob.

This is what it is to be shot in the head with a .44 revolver.

You would be surprised how fast someone dies when they are shot with a .44.

Harold Kempner keeps crying and Phil O'May looked wide eyed at the now corps of Tom Brochart. His eyes fixed on the exit hole, which due to the fragmentation of the hollow point bullet that was sent rocketing through it faster than the speed of sound, is much bigger than the entrance.

DeDowell takes another puff of his cigarette. "That's it" he says. "We only needed one. Just one shit stain cleaned from the comforter of humanity." He blows the smoke out of his nose. "You two get the fuck out of here." DeDowell tosses the cigarette on the floor and steps on it.

Harold Kempner and Phil O'May don't budge. Not a muscle. "Didn't you hear me? I said get the fuck out of here! Leave! Before I change my mind!" Neither of them move. "Fine" DeDowell says "fine"  he sits down on the floor. "I'll sit right here until one of you gets up and walks away."

After some time, it is Harold Kempner that gets up and starts running. A shame, really. I have nothing against homo nymphos. About nine yards later and Harold has a hole the size of a golf ball in his back and one about the size of a softball in his chest.

This is what it is to be lied to.

DeDowell tosses the gun  in front of Phil and we walk away. The gun is for Phil to do himself in if he wants. But not us. We spared him. Showed him mercy. As we walk, both of us secretly hope that he picks up the gun and shots us. Both of us, dead. That way we don't have to buy more cigarettes on the way home.

This is what it is  to be enlightened.

title: DeDowell

question: What does the story say about Tom Brochart?

answer: Tom Brochart is a greedy, wealthy banker who has been cheating on his wife. He is captured by DeDowell. When Tom asks DeDowell to let him go and offers him money, DeDowell kills him.

question: What does the story say about Harold Kempner?

answer: Harold Kempner is a homo nympho. He and two other men are captured by DeDowell. After DeDowell kills one of them, he tells the others to leave. Harold Kempner starts running but DeDowell kills him as well.

question: What does the story say about what Phil O'May did with the gun?


text:
This is the 2019–2020 WINTER TRANSFER WINDOW for Brazilian football season 2019–20. Additionally, players without a club may join at any time, clubs may sign players on loan at any time, and clubs may sign a goalkeeper on an emergency loan if they have no registered goalkeeper available. It includes football transfers related to clubs from the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A and Campeonato Brasileiro Série B.

Note that the summer transfer window in Brazil occurs during the new year, and the winter transfer window occurs during the mid-year. The summer transfer window is open from January 1 to March 31.[1]

Campeonato Brasileiro Série A

Athletico Paranaense

IN: [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] OUT: [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21]

Atlético Goianiense

IN: [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] OUT:

Atlético Mineiro

IN: [32] [33] OUT: [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41]

Bahia

IN: [42] [43] [44] OUT: [45]

Botafogo

IN: [46] [47] [48] [49] [50] [51] [52] OUT: [53] [54] [55] [56] [57] [58] [59] [60] [61] [62] [63] [64] [65]

Ceará

IN: [66] [67] [68] [69] [70] [71] [72] [73] [74] OUT: [75] [76] [77] [78]

Corinthians

IN: [79] [80] [81] [82] OUT: [83] [84] [85]

Coritiba

IN: [86] [87] [88] [89] [90] [91] OUT:

Flamengo

IN: [92] [93] [94] OUT: [95] [96]

Fluminense

IN: [97] [98] [99] OUT: [100] [101] [102] [103] [104] [105] [106] [107] [108] [109] [110] [111]

Fortaleza

IN: [112] OUT: [113] [114] [115] [116]

Goiás

IN: [117] [118] [119] OUT: [120] [121] [122]

Grêmio

IN: [123] [124] [125] [126] [127] [128] [129] OUT: [130] [131] [132] [133] [134] [135] [136] [137] [138] [139] [140] [141] [142] [143] [144] [145] [146]

Internacional

IN: [147] [148] [149] OUT: [150] [151] [152] [153] [154] [155] [156] [157] [158] [159] [160] [161] [162] [163] [164] [165] [166] [167]

Palmeiras

IN: OUT: [168] [169] [170] [171] [172] [173]

Red Bull Bragantino

IN: [174] [175] [176] [177] OUT: [178] [179] [180]

Santos

IN: [181] [182] OUT: [183] [184] [185] [186] [187] [188]

São Paulo

IN: [189] [190] [191] OUT: [192] [193] [194]

Sport Recife

IN: [195] [196] [197] [198] [199] OUT:

Vasco da Gama

IN: [200] [201] [202] OUT: [203] [204] [205] [206] [207] [208] [209] [210] [211] [212] [213] [214] [215] [216]

Campeonato Brasileiro Série B

América Mineiro

IN: OUT:

Avaí

IN: OUT:

Botafogo-SP

IN: OUT:

Brasil de Pelotas

IN: OUT:

Chapecoense

IN: OUT:

Confiança

IN: OUT:

CRB

IN: OUT:

Cruzeiro

IN: [217] OUT: [218] [219] [220] [221] [222] [223] [224] [225] [226] [227]

CSA

IN: OUT:

Cuiabá

IN: OUT:

Figueirense

IN: OUT:

Guarani

IN: OUT:

Juventude

IN: OUT:

Náutico

IN: OUT:

Oeste

IN: OUT:

Operário Ferroviário

IN: OUT:

Paraná

IN: OUT:

Ponte Preta

IN: OUT:

Sampaio Corrêa

IN: OUT:

Vitória

IN: OUT:

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title: List of Brazilian football transfers summer 2019–20

question: What is the Winter transfer window for?

answer: The transfer window is to transfer players from one team to another.

question: When is it held?

answer: It is held mid-year.

question: Is there a summer transfer?

answer: Yes, there is a summer transfer too.

question: How does the transfer happen?

answer: This information is not mentioned.

question: Write a ~1 sentence summary.

answer: A Wikipedia page on the list of Brazilian football transfers for 2019-20.


text:
Our economy is broken. Could a universal basic income, child allowances, and worker-owned cooperatives fix it?

September 30, 2015
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the third of three installments in a podcast series on American work produced in partnership with _Open Source with Christopher Lydon_, a weekly program on WBUR. Listen to the first podcast here and the second here. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or listen anytime at radioopensource.org.

To close out our series on work, produced in partnership with Open Source with Christopher Lydon and _The Nation_, we’re looking ahead to the big proposals and spiritual realignments that might spell a major change for working- and middle-class people who feel as though the recession never ended.

For proof of the problems we face, look no further than this chart, produced by one of our big thinkers this week, the Bulgarian-American economist PAVLINA TCHERNEVA.

[]

Today, even as the economy grows, the gains are topsy-turvy. In the latest economic expansion (from 2009 to 2012), the incomes of the top 10 percent rose more than 100 percent, while for the bottom 90 percent they actually sank. Despite this, we still see a steady-as-she-goes approach to economic policy from the White House, and in the primary campaigns for the most part too.

When FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT first conjured a “new deal” for American workers, he was still a candidate. It was June 1932; Roosevelt was accepting the nomination of the Democratic Party. The state of the union was dire. Just as these days we’re shifting to digital, gig-based, flexible work, Roosevelt was witnessing the collapse of the agricultural economy and its replacement by organized industrial work.

Roosevelt had a story to tell about the Depression. “Enormous corporate surpluses…the most stupendous in history” had failed to pay out to small actors in the American economy: not in higher wages, lower prices, or in dividends. Those profits didn’t go into innovation, either, but into speculation and idle investments. A massive financial bubble had built up—then burst.

The speech was long on specifics—massive public-works projects, the reduction of tariffs, debt relief—in service of “a more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth.” (Some of Roosevelt’s fellow travelers in the Democratic Party went so far as to propose a second Bill of Rights around economic freedoms, including the right to honest work and to a fair wage. That never took hold.)

At the end, Roosevelt comes to his “true goal,” the spiritual underpinnings of the New Deal. It’s worth quoting at length:

  What do the people of America want more than anything else? To my mind, they want two things: work, with all the moral and spiritual values that go with it; and with work, a reasonable measure of security—security for themselves and for their wives and children. Work and security—these are more than words. They are more than facts. They are the spiritual values, the true goal toward which our efforts of reconstruction should lead.

  Our Republican leaders tell us economic laws—sacred, inviolable, unchangeable—cause panics which no one could prevent. But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

With two shows on the triumph and troubles of working people behind us, we wanted to think FDR-big, and to name a solution (or three) that might represent a _new_ New Deal, a platform in search of a candidate for working people.

Gar Alperovitz: The workers’ cooperative

Our leadoff guest is the alternative economist, historian and activist GAR ALPEROVITZ. The story of the New Deal was the consummation of experiments tested at the state level, and Alperovitz says that’s happening again. The top-down changes happen last, he reminds us—for now we have ferment at the local level, often in the form of cooperatives.

Forget the Sixties-era variety: 130 million Americans take part in coops of one kind or another, like credit unions, CSAs, community gardens, and land trusts. There are worker-owned farms and solar plants in Cleveland, the public purchase of power stations in Boulder, a whole new-economy coalition in Open Source’s hometown of Boston. Our guest last week,ASTRA TAYLOR, asked why Uber shouldn’t work like a cooperative, too: drivers sharing a simple technological platform—and the billions of dollars that comes with it. She’s not alone.

Matt Bruenig: The child allowance

Look down a list of EU member nations’ public benefits, and you see—again and again—a recurring per-child benefit, varying in size from $30 in Britain to more than $230 in Germany. Canada, too, has what is called a “child benefit.” Our guest MATT BRUENIG, policy expert and pundit at the Demos think tank, has written repeatedly that an American version of the allowance—say, $300 per month, per child—could cut this country’s startlingly high rate of child poverty in half, and force a 15 percent reduction in adult poverty, too.

Bruenig is impatient with the knee-jerk criticism of the child allowance that it will incentivize having children. Anyway, we may need a few more kids!

  Children cost about a thousand dollars a month; the benefit’s only $300 a month. Doesn’t take a genius to know that’s a money-losing proposition. Beyond that we do have some studies from elsewhere in the world that tend to show that these benefits, maybe, increase fertility by 3 to 7 percent. That’s really not problematic, and if anything, given the age structure of our population and the declining fertility rates that we’ve had recently, a little bump in fertility could actually be a positive thing.

Dylan Matthews: The basic income

This next idea to fix our economy is substantially more ambitious: cash for every citizen just for breathing, known as a “basic income.” But that hasn’t stopped Switzerland from considering just this kind of annual, universal grant. (And Alaska has distributed an annual check to all Alaskans since the 1970s—and even Sarah Palin loves it.)

After the recession, basic income seems to be gaining traction on the left and on the right, after a long period of discredit. In 1969 “minimum income” was a pet policy of the Nixon administration, supported by Senator DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN in his poverty-fighting mode and by the conservative economist MILTON FRIEDMAN (see above). Back then the minimum income passed the House of Representatives, then died as senators quibbled over how much it would pay out and whether it’d stop workers from working.

DYLAN MATTHEWS, a policy wonk and senior editor at Vox, asks us to take a second look. He concedes it would cost “real money”—hundreds of billions, even a trillion dollars—but it could conquer poverty, strengthen low-wage workers by providing a fallback alternative to bad jobs, and finally provide something like real freedom to every citizen of a wealthy country.

Pavlina Tcherneva: The Job Guarantee

Finally, there’s the Job Guarantee, a fundamental change in the American attitude towards work. Right now, the jobless depend on the thin and patchy safety net of unemployment insurance.

Our guest, the economist PAVLINA TCHERNEVA, whose chart is at the top of this post, proposes turning unemployment offices into employment offices, so that when you fall out of the workforce, you fall into a socially useful job: rebuilding infrastructure, creating urban agriculture in a food desert, and caring for kids or the elderly. It’s a Works Progress Administration for the digital age, taking its cues from social entrepreneurs and community leaders about the projects they need most.

Tcherneva’s insight is that high unemployment and social neglect tend to combine in poor neighborhoods across this country. Meaning “we have a coordination problem”—it’s proof that our unemployment regime, as it is, isn’t working.

Alissa Quart: More Civic Poetry

ALISSA QUART wears two hats in these discussions: first, as a poverty reporter and the editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project (also home to Barbara Ehrenreich and Astra Taylor), and then as a poet.

Quart tells us that as a child of bohemian Greenwich Village, she has a heightened awareness of how the last four decades of high capitalism have changed life on the street. And she argues for more “civic poetry,” poetry about “the hard stuff of life: money, crime, gender, corporate excess, racial injustice.” Quart points to Claudia Rankine and Juliana Spahr, to Robin Clarke’s _Lines The Quarry_, a poem composed from workers’-comp data. An excerpt:

  917 assemblers & fabricators
  150 athletes & sports competitors
  1,104 car mechanics
  4 writers & authors
  160 bakers
  471 bartenders
  1209 bus & truck mechanics.

Here’s Quart’s argument, and a sample of her own poetry:

  Sinking It All Into

  They were afraid.

  Subtraction was

  their favorite term.

  If we were _arriviste_

  we’d have arrived all ready.

  Securities speak.

  They say, “Take comfort.”

  Money cancels criticism.

  If she were a he she’d be

  indignant by now.

  Her role, at this time:

  an internal continuous

  improvement consultant.

  With one additional purchase,

  you would have purchase.

  With ability to purchase

  you would be talking by now.

‘Their Daily Bread’

Finally we return to the resonance of work. As Pope Francis departs, he’s leaving a message of solidarity behind. As he spoke before a joint session of Congress, the pope addressed himself to our subjects in this series on work,

  the many thousands of men and women who strive each day to do an honest day’s work, to bring home their daily bread, to save money and—one step at a time—to build a better life for their families. These are men and women who are not concerned simply with paying their taxes, but in their own quiet way sustain the life of society.

The theologian HARVEY COX was in our studio to address the figure of Francis, in hopes that his next encyclical touches on the subject of human labor and human love: “Working is part of being human. The person should be at the center of the economy, he says that all the time. Working is central to who we think we are, our worth as human beings, our making a contribution to the society. It’s just heartbreaking to the pope, and to many of us, that there are millions and millions of people all around who are yearning to work—and they don’t have jobs. As one of your guests already mentioned, 30 percent in Spain, 40 percent in Italy, 25 percent of black people living in America. They want to work not just to earn a salary…but because that’s the way you are a part of the human enterprise.”

* * *

This concludes a three-part series on work in America today: from labor history to precarious work. Thanks for listening and reading along. If you like the series, please come and subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher, and send any questions, comments, or suggestions to our Open Source inbox.

* * *

_[OS-bulb-CL_img]This project is produced in partnership with Open Source with Christopher Lydon. Please subscribe to the podcast for coverage of capitalism, climate change, arts, and politics, with NAOMI KLEIN, MARILYNNE ROBINSON, MICHAEL LEWIS, CORNEL WEST, and RALPH NADER. Follow Open Source on Twitter and Facebook for more._

question: What is the reason for the economic growth in today's times?

answer: The economic growth in today's time is because of the growth in incomes of the top 10 percent population while the income of the bottom 90 percent sank.

question: What is the reason for child poverty in America?

answer: This information can't be found.

question: Explain how basic income can help the American economy.

answer: By providing a basic income, it can strengthen the low-wage workers by proving to be a fallback alternative to bad jobs.


text:
Two Houses.

Picture two houses across the street from one another. They looked perfectly normal and sturdy on the outside, but on the inside they were run down and falling apart. Inside of one lived a quiet and peaceful man, and in the other lived a beautiful and cheerful woman. Neither of them, however, liked being outside the confines of their own house.

One day, the peaceful man ventured across the street to the other house and was invited inside. The two strangers visited, shared laughs, told stories, and enjoyed the others company. At the end of the day, the man returned to his house.

The next day he visited again, but instead of talking, he started to slowly repair the inside of the run down house. When one of his repairs would break, he would immediately come over to fix the damage with a smile on his face. The two housekeepers became used to seeing one another each day, and eventually, the woman would come over to the man's house to visit. The woman noticed that his house looked much worse on the inside than hers, and started to sneak inside at night while he was asleep to make repairs. When the man would try to fix something himself, or repair damages to his own house, he would fail, and sometimes even make things worse. But the next morning,  he would notice that things would be fixed. This puzzled the man and he decided to ask the woman about it the next time she came over.

The next evening they spent together, he asked and she informed the man of what she had been doing, and the man asked why. She replied,
"Because people who show a caring and wholesome heart deserve to receive the same treatment they give to others." The man became confused.
          "But I am a shut in. Nobody gives to me, and I don't give to them. Why does somebody like me deserve somebody as wonderful as you?"

The woman put her hand on the man's shoulder and looked into his dark brown eyes. She noticed a hurt that had always seemed to hide beneath his smile, a sorrow that hadn't been revealed in a very long time. She said in a soft and gentle voice: "Somebody that prefers to be alone does not always prefer being lonely. There is always somebody who will care."

The two embraced, and the man sobbed and became limp in the woman's arms. Once he had calmed down, the woman kissed him on the cheek and returned to her house without saying a word.

The following morning, he noticed another man performing landscaping on her lawn, painting the outside of her house, and cleaning her patio. Each day the house would look more and more beautiful. He became sad that the woman had found somebody else to do her work, and started to loathe the landscaper that would beautify her house all the time.

The woman remained indoors all day, trying to make the interior of her house look as pleasant as the exterior. However, most of her attempts at repairs or renovation were disasters. The person she hired was no help, and was only after her money. She began to miss her neighbors company, along with his sturdy repairs and his gentle smile. As days went by, the man and woman thought about each other more and more, but never saw each other.

One afternoon, the woman heard her doorbell ring. Knowing it wasn't the landscaper she hired, she curiously approached the peephole of the door. Seeing that nobody was outside, she opened the door and looked for pranksters. Looking down, she saw a small, dirty looking tin with a bow neatly placed on top of it.

The interior of the unkempt tin was extravagantly decorated with soft velvet from top to bottom, and in the center laid a simple necklace with a key on it, resting on top of a small note. Putting the necklace on, she unfolded the small note and noticed little droplets of water on the page.

"You are the only one that can make it feel less empty. Please take care of it for me while I'm gone. I must go, but I will return one day."

After reading it the woman dropped to her knees, and tears started to form in her tightly shut eyes. For what seemed like years, she spent the next few months wishing the man would come back and going into his house to take care of it while he was gone. She noticed that every little thing she had done to the house remained unchanged, as if he never tried to correct the small mistakes she had made.

Eventually, the man returned. The woman was thrilled and filled with happiness, but also saddened by the fact that the man no longer came across the street to visit her. A few days after his return, she noticed he was packing his belongings into boxes. Fearing that he might move away, the woman mustered up the courage to go talk to the man.

"Why are you putting everything into boxes?" The woman asked.
    "Because," the man replied solemnly, "I am looking to create new memories and find a fresh start." The woman said nothing and returned to her house, slamming the door and fighting back tears.

The next morning, the man was loading his belongings into a moving truck when he saw a pile of boxes bigger than his own sitting in the woman's lawn. He walked across the street to the pile, and saw a note taped to one of the boxes.

"I will always love you, and I promise that I will always be next to you. No matter where we go."

The man's face turned into a broad smile, and he looked up to see the woman on her front patio, looking right back at him, the necklace glistening in the sunlight. She ran into his arms and they kissed for what felt like an eternity. The pair continued to load all of their belongings into the one moving truck, and left that very evening. Holding hands with his true love, the man looked into the rear view mirror to see the sun setting on the old, abandoned houses for the last time, and felt what was truly a pure happiness. An odd and relieving sensation washed over him like a tide, as he realized that he would never have to search for anything in his life, as long as he lived.

title: Some OC for you all to enjoy

question: What does the story say about buying a home?

question: What does the story say about the man?

answer: The man is a quiet and peaceful guy. He has dark brown eyes and seems to have hurt and sorrow hiding beneath his smile. He lives in one of the houses on the street that looked sturdy on the outside but was falling apart on the inside. He is a shut-in and doesn't like being outside the confines of his house. The man does repairs on the woman's house with a smile on his face. He can repair the woman's house, but when it comes to his own, he always fails and makes things worse.

question: What does the story say about the woman?

answer: The woman is beautiful and cheerful, but she doesn't like going outside. She lives in the house across the street from the man. Her house also looked sturdy on the outside but was falling apart inside. When she saw that the man's house looked worse than hers, she sneaked in at night when he was asleep to make repairs. The woman obviously cares for the man. She tried to fix her house, but her attempts and the help she hired were disasters. Since she hired someone, the man became sad and stopped coming over. She missed him, but they never saw each other. When the man was about to move, the woman told him that she will always love him and promised to always be next to him.


text:
In the years before his death at a Marin County rehab facility in 1995, Jerry Garcia often looked like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. In fact, the increasingly beleaguered co-founder of the Grateful Dead was bearing the burden of several worlds, all of which were financially dependent on him. These included the famously insular backstage culture of the Dead and its road crew, who were treated like family for decades; the vast ecosystem of the Deadhead subculture, which encompassed everyone from kids who sold T-shirts and burritos on tour to Bill Walton and Tipper Gore; and the complex machinery of the band’s unlikely MTV-anointed success in the 1980s — the promoters, tour managers and hangers-on who pitched their tents beside the band’s ever-growing income stream, putting them at the top tier of the industry alongside acts like Michael Jackson and the Rolling Stones.

Though Garcia always disavowed the notion of being the leader of the band, his musical partners foundered in the wake of the guitarist’s abrupt exit, uncertain of how best to honor the legacy of the adventurous music making they’d created together. After retiring the band’s storied (and highly bankable) name in a hastily issued press release, the Dead’s so-called “core four” (guitarist Bob Weir, bassist Phil Lesh, and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann) spent years touring smaller venues with their own groups, while arguing all too publicly about the minutiae of their business affairs and periodically burying the hatchet to come together in larger aggregations like Furthur and the Other Ones.

It is this troubled and turbulent “post-Jerry” period of the band’s career that is the subject of Joel Selvin’s new book, “Fare Thee Well: The Final Chapter of the Dead’s Long Strange Trip.” A former rock critic for The Chronicle, Selvin is one of the most prolific commentators on the counterculture of the 1960s and its aftermath. His best-seller “Altamont” was magisterial in its accumulation of little-known details of events that contributed to the darkest rock festival in history, and his lively account of the rise and fall of hippie optimism in the Summer of Love made engaging reading.

I wish I could say the same about “Fare Thee Well,” which comes across as a bilious and disheartening airing of dirty laundry of one of the most inventive and inspiring groups of musicians to ever set foot on an American stage. With grim diligence, Selvin and his co-author Pamela Turley chronicle a decade and a half of fractious band meetings, backstage bitch-fests, poisonous vendettas, failed reconciliations and ill-considered venting to the press, while grinding through a cast of supporting players who are initially eager to share the limelight with their heroes before being spat out by an organization tearing itself to pieces in grief.

Lesh’s ambitious wife, Jill, is presented in a particularly unflattering light, described over and over as a former waitress (she met Lesh while serving him breakfast in Fairfax) who seems determined to wrest control of every aspect of the band members’ post-Jerry existence, while treating mere mortals as her inferiors, as when she shrieks at a pair of backup singers, “You are nobodies!”

More Information

FARE THEE WELL

The Final Chapter of the Grateful Dead’s Long, Strange Trip

By Joel Selvin with Pamela Turley

(Da Capo; 280 pages; $27)

It’s hard to imagine anyone but the most gossip-hungry Deadheads being interested in these toxic exchanges, and it’s not apt to be a pleasant experience — akin to paging through Mommy and Daddy’s divorce depositions. By the time Selvin unleashes a withering litany of descriptions of the core four from Lesh’s perspective (Weir is described as “drunken, dysfunctional, dreamy, and fumbling,” while Hart is a “pseudo-intellectual” who can’t keep time), the reader begins to suspect that in the process of writing the book, the author came to resent his own subject.

Selvin prefaces his introduction by declaring, “I am not a Deadhead” and many of the concerts described in numbingly repetitious detail in the book were attended by Turley. While the Dead have never suffered a shortage of commentary by committed fans, the problem with Selvin’s outsider perspective is that he gets things wrong that nearly any rank-and-file Deadhead would know. He implies that after Garcia suffered a diabetic coma in 1986, everything was downhill for the Dead from that point on, yet the guitarist made a dramatic recovery, and the band’s tours in 1989 and 1990 were acclaimed as equal to the best music that the band played in its 30 years on the road.

There are also errors that can only be described as careless. In the opening paragraph of the book, Selvin insists that nobody in the band expected Garcia to die when he did, yet a hundred pages or so later, Lesh tells a “60 Minutes” reporter, “I felt like I had mourned him already when I got the call.” Selvin also refers to the lead guitar player of Phish, Trey Anastasio — drafted for the unenviable job of taking Garcia’s place at the band’s 50th anniversary celebrations at Santa Clara and Chicago — as the “uncontroversial” choice. In fact, warring Deadhead cliques nearly incinerated themselves in online flamefests in the months leading up to the show, though the consummately professional Anastasio ended up doing a fine job.

While Garcia’s sheer versatility and improvisational brio have indeed proved to be irreplaceable, the core four have bravely soldiered on in various constellations, from Dead & Company featuring John Mayer on guitar, currently on its summer tour, to Lesh’s ongoing “rambles” with guest musicians at his Terrapin Crossroads club in San Rafael. Surely, extraordinarily accomplished musicians making music together is something to be celebrated, even if their glory days are mostly behind them.

Ultimately, the best advice for a young music fan who might pick up this book looking for insight into the phenomenon of the Grateful Dead is to seek elsewhere. Like the song says, “If you get confused, listen to the music play.”

__
Steve Silberman is the author of “NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity.” Email: books@sfchronicle.com.

question: What does the text say about Jerry Garcia?

answer: Jerry Garcia died in 1995 at a Marin County rehab facility 1995. He was the co-founder of the Grateful Dead and has always treated the band like family.

question: What does the text say about Tipper Gore?

question: What does the text say about Jill?

answer: Jill is Lesh's wife who was presented in a particularly unflattering light by the band. She was determined to wrest control of every aspect of the band members' post-Jerry existence. She was caught yelling at backup singers, telling them they are nobodies.


text:
Jimmy Taber
Masters of Business Administration 2011
The Heller School for Social Policy and Management
MA in Jewish Professional Leadership 2011
Hornstein School for Jewish Professional Leadership
Brandeis University

“As I reflect on my coming of age in New Jersey, I realize that I had always been in some sense more of a ‘girl’ than a ‘boy.’…I didn’t think of myself so much as girlish but rather as Jewish…I start with what I think is a widespread sensibility that being Jewish in our culture renders a boy effeminate. Rather than producing in me a desire to ‘pass’ and to become a ‘man,’ this sensibility resulted in my desire to remain a Jew, where being a sissy was alright.”[1]

-Daniel Boyarin

_Unheroic Conduct_

 The recent recognition of a gender imbalance in American Jewish communal life has sparked a panic within the community. According to Sylvia Fishman and Daniel Parmer, the American Jewish community has become “feminized,” driving men from organized communal participation.[2] Widespread efforts to reincorporate men into communal life have ensued. While well intentioned, current attempts to specifically involve men in the Jewish community are misguided as they serve to reify dominant gender power structures that undermine Jewishness as a positive masculine identity. Instead of seeking to validate white masculinity, a fundamental shift in Jewish male self understanding is required in order for Jewishness to be realized as a viable challenge to the dominant society’s patriarchy.

THE FEMINIZATION OF JEWISHNESS

Prior to Jewish emancipation, Jewish masculinity was constructed within the context of the isolated Jewish community. As Melissa Raphael notes, “Jewish masculinity is not traditionally defined economically by a man’s being the main bread-winner or by macho physical prowess but by the prestige of his religious scholarship.”[3] While this understanding of masculinity stands in stark contrast to dominant masculine ideals, it did not conflict with Jewish males’ self conception because Jews were largely isolated from dominant European society. Jewish men could be both fully male and Jewish within the context of the Jewish community.

Following Jewish emancipation, the dominant European discourse’s application of feminine qualities to Jewish men began to become problematic as Jewish men were presented with the opportunity to assimilate and participate fully in greater European society. Judith Butler notes, “Becoming a man…requires a repudiation of femininity.”[4] For Jewish men this formula proved problematic as Jewish male identity had historically been constructed by the dominant gender discourse as feminine and thus incompatible and even antithetical to normative white masculinity. Otto Weininger’s study of male and female difference published just before his suicide in 1903 entitled _Sex and Character_ exemplifies the conflation of Jewish and female identity in dominant European discourse.[5] As Sander Gilman explains, “Central to Weininger’s study of the relationship between the masculine and the feminine is the dichotomy between the Jew and the Aryan… (he) simply extended the category of the feminine to the Jew.”[6] Identifying Jews with women served to reify the Jew’s position as subordinate within both European racial and gender hierarchies. Intertwining Jewish racial and gender identities made it impossible for Jewish men to become full males in the European context and remain Jewish.

In traditional pre-emancipation Jewish communities, men were primarily responsible for communal continuity through the transmission of religious tradition through textual learning. As Jewish men sought to become members of the dominant European society they were “forced” to disassociate themselves from their Jewishness. Thus, the responsibility for Jewish continuity shifted to Jewish women. Paula Hyman writes, “Western Jewish communities adopted the dominant middle-class view that women were responsible for inculcating moral and religious consciousness in their children and within the home more generally. According to this view, women were the primary factor in the formation of their children’s Jewish identity.”[7] This shift of responsibility from men to women freed Jewish men to shed their Jewishness in favor of full male identities within the dominant society. Outside of Orthodox communities, traditional models of Jewish masculinity were widely abandoned in favor of assimilation.

CONTEMPORARY UNDERSTANDINGS OF MEN’S ABSENCE FROM JEWISH LIFE AND EFFORTS TO REENGAGE MEN

The lack of male participation in contemporary Jewish communal life is well documented, especially among the liberal denominations. In 2007, it was noted that within the Reform movement only 22-43% of youth group participants were boys and 33% of rabbinic students at Hebrew Union College were men.[8] Fishman and Parmer write, “Nationally, girls and women outnumber men in weekly non-Orthodox worship services, in adult education classes, in volunteer leadership positions, and in Jewish cultural events.”[9] Concern about the absence of men in organized Jewish life has become an issue of widespread communal concern.

 Instead of pointing to the historical abandonment of Jewishness by Jewish men as outlined above, the lack of men in Jewish communal life is often understood to be the result of the increased role of women. Fishman and Parmer summarize this perspective as follows:

When it comes to gender equality or gender balance, contemporary American Jewish life is caught between a rock and a hard place: Traditional public Judaism was and is dominated by men, while contemporary liberal American Judaism, although supposedly egalitarian, is visibly and substantially feminized. Jewish activities from the broad grassroots to the elite echelons of liberal Jewish religious leadership have become devalued, a typical result of feminization.[10]

While Fishman and Parmer are correct that Jewish leadership and participation has “become devalued,” it is not a result of the increased participation of women, but the shift of responsibility for Jewish continuity to women and subsequent male abandonment of Jewishness in favor of dominant masculinity.

 Current efforts to attract Jewish men to the organized Jewish community have focused on appealing to men’s sense of dominant masculinity. There has been a proliferation of programs exemplified by the Lincoln Park Jewish Center’s Cigar, Scotch, and Torah Group that specifically target men with the implicit assumption that Jewishness itself is not enough of an attraction.[11] By infusing elements constructed as exclusively masculine, such as cigars and scotch, the Jewish community is attempting to create a synthesis of Jewishness and masculinity that will root men in Jewish communal life. The idea is that men will initially come for the masculine “fun” and then come back for the meaning that Jewishness offers. This approach is problematic as it fails to recognize the fundamental incongruence between Jewishness and dominant masculinity.

 Similarly, Moving Traditions’ Campaign for Jewish Boys represents a national effort to engage young boys in Jewish life. In the pilot stage, the program “seeks to reverse boys’ mass exit from and dissatisfaction with Jewish life.”[12] This program also utilizes dominant models of masculinity for engagement providing “content that…gives boys the opportunity to explore issues they care about, such as friendship, sex, power, money, and work.”[13] This approach is bound to reap limited success due to the flawed assumption that the flight from Jewishness can be stemmed by infusing dominant masculinity. As long as masculinity is constructed in opposition to the femininity of Jewishness, the two identities are mostly mutually exclusive.

 Fishman and Parmer‘s research findings exemplify the Jewish community’s problematic approach to attracting men. They write, “Synagogues and Jewish communal organizations need to find ways to balance the moral principles of egalitarianism with the psycho-social needs of boys and men to spend meaningful Jewish time in gendered peer groups.”[14] Egalitarianism is not the root of the problem. Men are not uncomfortable with Jewishness because of the prominence of women in communal life. Jewishness as an identity is incompatible with dominant forms of masculinity. Consequently, “gendered peer groups” do not serve to address the root causes of the problem.

A CRITIQUE OF CURRENT APPROACHES AND RECOMMENDATIONS

 Current communal efforts to attract men to the organized Jewish community do not provide effective ways for Jewish men to build Jewish male identities because of the failure to create an explicitly Jewish alternative to dominant masculinity. If ethnic or racial Jewish identity is understood as inherently feminine, it is fundamentally incompatible with dominant masculinity. Thus, attempts to synthesize dominant masculinity and Jewish identity are bound to attain only marginal success. If, as Judith Butler argues, “Masculine and feminine are not dispositions…but accomplishments,”[15] the Jewish male’s abandonment of Jewishness can be viewed within the context of an active attainment of dominant masculinity. The question remains: What is meaningful about Jewish identity? Masculinity offers men a privileged position within a gendered society. Power and control are inherent within this identity. In order for men to abandon the privileges of masculinity, Jewishness must offer something compelling in return.

Examples of the Jewish community seeking to construct alternative Jewish male identities do not exist on a widespread programmatic level, but glimpses of the power of embracing Jewishness as a challenge to masculinity exist within the Jewish community’s current efforts to attract men. While the Campaign for Jewish Boys’ curriculum focuses on utilizing dominant masculinity to engage Jewish boys, the organization has recognized, consciously or not, that boys who value their Jewishness are drawn to this identity through and alternative gender discourse.[16] Moving Traditions found in its 2007 focus groups found that for “’Jewishly-affirming’ teenage boys…Judaism provides some boys with resilience, an ‘alternative’ masculinity, and an opportunity to express a sense of self.”[17] Jewish boys recognize that this “alternative masculinity” provides meaning. Instead of attempting to reinscribe dominant constructions of masculinity, the Campaign for Jewish Boys specifically, and the Jewish community generally, should embrace Jewishness as an ethno-gender identity.

Ultimately, it is up to Jewish community as a whole and Jewish men as individuals to reevaluate the significance and value of dominant masculinity. Absent this self reflection, the current efforts of the Jewish community to attract men will only serve to reify the troubling gender power structures that have provided the impetus for Jewish men’s abandonment of Jewishness. As long as dominant masculine identity is privileged over Jewishness, Jewish men will largely remain wary of “coming out” Jewish. Jewish communal efforts should focus on illustrating the value and meaning of Jewishness as an identity in order to create a more complete community.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boyarin, Daniel. _Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the
_

_Jewish Man._ Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

Butler, Judith. “Melancholy Gender/Refused Identification.” In _Constructing Masculinity_,

edited by Maurice Berger, Brian Wallis, and Simon Watson. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Fishman, Sylvia Barack and Daniel Parmer. _Matrilineal Ascent/Patrilineal Descent: The Gender
_

_Imbalance in American Jewish Life._ Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2008.

Gilman, Sander L. “Otto Weininger and Sigmund Freud: Race and Gender in the Shaping of

Psychoanalysis.” In _Jews & Gender: Responses to Otto Weininger_, edited by Nancy

Anne Harrowitz. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995.

Hyman, Paula E. _Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and
_

_Representation of Women_. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995.

_Lincoln Park Jewish Center_.

http://www.lpjc.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=62&Itemid=53.

_Lincoln Park Jewish Center._ “Ode to Lincoln Park Jewish Center Cigar and Torah Night.”

http://www.lpjc.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=77:torah-

and-cigar-night-poem&catid=110:found-in-yonkers-by-brent-delman&Itemid=67.

_Moving Traditions_. “Campaign for Jewish Boys.”

http://www.movingtraditions.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=45&

Itemid=65.

Raphael, Melissa. “Standing at a Demythologized Sinai? Reading Jewish Feminist Theology

Through the Critical Lens of Radical Orthodoxy.” In _Interpreting the Postmodern:
_

_Responses to “Radical Orthodoxy,”_ edited by Rosemary Radford Ruether and Marion

Grau. New York: T & T Clark International, 1999.

Shapiro, Rona. “The ‘Boy Crisis’ that Cried Wolf.” _The Forward_. January 5, 2007.

Weininger, Otto. _Sex and Character_. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Daniel Boyarin, _Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 3.

[2] Sylvia Barack Fishman and Daniel Parmer, _Matrilineal Ascent/Patrilineal Descent: The Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life_ (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2008).

[3] Melissa Raphael, “Standing at a Demythologized Sinai? Reading Jewish Feminist Theology Through the Critical Lens of Radical Orthodoxy,” in _Interpreting the Postmodern: Responses to “Radical Orthodoxy,”_ ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether and Marion Grau (New York: T & T Clark International, 1999), 203.

[4] Judith Butler, “Melancholy Gender/Refused Identification,” in _Constructing Masculinity_, ed. Maurice Berger, Brian Wallis, and Simon Watson (New York: Routledge, 1995), 26.

[5] Otto Weininger, _Sex and Character_, (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907).

[6] Sander L. Gilman, “Otto Weininger and Sigmund Freud: Race and Gender in the Shaping of Psychoanalysis,” in _Jews & Gender: Responses to Otto Weininger_, ed. Nancy Anne Harrowitz (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 104.

[7] Paula E. Hyman, _Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and Representation of Women_ (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), 24.

[8] Rona Shapiro, “The ‘Boy Crisis’ that Cried Wolf,” _The Forward_, January 5, 2007.

[9] Fishman and Parmer, 1.

[10] Fishman and Parmer, 1-2.

[14] Fishman and Parmer, 77.

question: Describe the idea of Jewish masculinity prior to Jewish emancipation.

answer: Before Jewish emancipation, Jewish masculinity was constructed within the context of the isolated Jewish community. Whereas in traditional dominant masculinity emphasized the man's role as being the bread-winner, or by superior physical prowess, Jewish masculinity was measured by the prestige of one's religious scholarship.

question: Describe the current conundrum with regards to gender equality in contemporary American Jewish life.

answer: Traditional public Judaism was and still is dominated by men, while contemporary liberal American Judaism, has been visibly feminized. Jewish men are less likely to participate in communal Jewish life.

question: What are the author's critiques about the current approach of attracting men to Jewish communal life?

answer: Current efforts to attract men to the organized Jewish community do not provide effective ways for Jewish men to build Jewish male identities because there was been a failure to create an explicitly Jewish alternative to dominant masculinity. If the contemporary Jewish identity is understood as inherently feminine, then it is incompatible with dominant masculinity.


text:
Justice CHAUDHRY IJAZ AHMED () is a former justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and of Lahore High Court.

Early life

Mr. Justice Chaudhry Ijaz Ahmed was born on May 5, 1945 in Chak No. 15. SB, Tehsil Bhalwal District Sargodha. He belongs to an agriculturist family.[1]

Education and training

He graduated from Islamia College, Civil Lines Lahore and then did his LL.B. from the University of Punjab, Lahore.[2]

Professional career

Ijaz Ahmed entered legal profession by joining Mr. S.M.Zafar and later on established his own office under the name and style of Ijaz Law Associates. He entered as Advocate of subordinate Courts in 1973, advocate of the High Court in 1975 and advocate of Supreme Court of Pakistan in 1981.[3]

He was Deputy Attorney General for Pakistan from August 26, 1990 till November 3, 1995.[4]

He also have served as legal adviser to:[5]

-   Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education, Lahore from 1979 till elevation to Lahore High Court
-   Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education Gujranwala from 1995 till elevation to Lahore High Court
-   University of Punjab Lahore from 1995 to April 1997
-   Punjab Text Book Board Lahore and Settlement Department

Chaudhry Ijaz Ahmed was on the Panel of Advocates of:[6]

-   National Bank of Pakistan
-   Pakistan Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation (PICIC)
-   Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA).

He also acted as Honorary Legal Adviser to:[7]

-   University Grants Commission
-   Islamia College Old Boys Association
-   Anjuman-e-Kashtkaran
-   Residents Association of Lahore Cantonment Cooperative Housing Society.

He served as a part-time Lecturer in the University Law College Lahore and Civil Services Academy Lahore.[8]

He was elected as General Secretary Lahore High Court Bar Association in 1985 and was a member of Executive Committee Lahore High Court Bar Association in 1979 and 1987. He was member Publication Committee High Court Bar Association Lahore and a Joint Secretary Pakistan, Young Lawyers Forum in 1975. Ijaz Ahmed have also acted as Secretary (Legal) Anjuman-e-Tuhaffiz-e-Haqooq-e-Insani in 1978 and was Joint Secretary of Forum Civil Liberties in 1979.[9]

Ijaz Ahmed Secretary General and remained Vice President Human Rights Society of Pakistan.[10]

He is author of four books:[11]

1.  Separation and Independence of Judiciary
2.  Fikr-o Nazar
3.  Manual of Election Laws
4.  Supreme Court References

He represented Pakistan at the Second International Conference on training of judiciary held at Ottawa (Canada) and contributed a paper on the topic “Methods of Educating newly appointed Judges” (PLD 2005 Journal Page 1).[12]

Ijaz Ahmed was elevated as Judge of the Lahore High Court on May 28, 1997. He was elevated as Judge of the Supreme Court of Pakistan on 1 September 14, 2005 while he was acting Chief Justice of Lahore High Court, Lahore.[13]

He retired from the Supreme Court[14] on 4 May 2010.[15]

He is settled in DHA Lahore.

He is married and has one son and 3 daughters.

[1] Supreme Court Report Golden Jubilee Edition 2006

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title: Ijaz Ahmed Chaudhry (judge, born 1945)

question: Summarize Chaudhry Ijaz Ahmed's career as a Supreme Court justice.

answer: Chaudhry Ijaz Ahmed was a justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan from September 14, 2005, to May 4, 2010. He was elevated to the said position while acting as chief justice of Lahore High Court.

question: What does the text say about the theme of Chaudhry Ijaz Ahmed's books?

answer: Chaudhry Ijaz Ahmed wrote four books, which are all law-related.

question: What does the text say about Chaudhry Ijaz Ahmed's family?

answer: Chaudhry Ijaz Ahmed was born to agriculturist parents in Tehsil Bhalwal District Sargodha. He is married and has four children.


text:
A shock 2016 study argued that the U.S. accounted for nearly one-third of all mass shootings, sparking global headlines about the dangers of an American gun culture.

Now another researcher says the original study “botched” the data.

John R. Lott Jr., president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, crunched the numbers and said his count shows that the U.S. had less than 3 percent of the world’s mass public shootings over a 15-year period.

That is smaller than the 4.6 percent of the world’s population that the U.S. accounts for — and way less than the 31 percent of global mass shooters that Adam Lankford, a professor at the University of Alabama, claimed in his widely publicized studies.

“If you fix the data, you get the opposite result from him,” Mr. Lott said. “He has the United States way out there, all by itself in terms of mass public shootings. He’s simply wrong. The United States, when I go through this, ranks 58th in the world in the rate of mass public shootings and 62nd in the world in terms of murders from mass public shootings.”

Mr. Lott said he tried to get Mr. Lankford to disclose his data but the professor won’t share it with him or other researchers, making it impossible to double-check the original claims or to figure out why Mr. Lott‘s numbers are so different.

Mr. Lankford‘s research, first released in 2015 and presented to the American Sociological Association in 2016, garnered stories from The New York Times, Newsweek, CNN and The Washington Post, among dozens of others, that said it was proof, as CNN put it, that “the U.S. has the most mass shootings.”

Mr. Lankford studied the period from 1966 to 2012 using data from the New York City Police Department’s active shooter report, a 2014 FBI active shooter report and some foreign accounts.

He identified 292 incidents worldwide in which at least four people were killed — the FBI’s definition of a mass murder. Of those, 90 were in the U.S. — 31 percent of the total among 171 countries.

The professor also found that shooters in the U.S. were more likely to arm themselves with multiple weapons and more likely to attack at schools and business locations.

Mr. Lankford, who claimed to be the first to attempt a global survey, said his results suggested there was something to the American psyche that left people disaffected when they failed to achieve the American dream. He said they turn to violent outbursts with firearms.

“It may thus be the lofty aspirations and broken dreams of a tiny percentage of America’s students and workers — combined with their mental health problems, distorted perceptions of victimization, delusions of grandeur, and access to firearms — that makes them more likely to commit public mass shootings than people from other cultures,” he postulated in his 2015 paper.

Yet he has failed to post the data on all 292 shootings. Early academic critics said it’s easy to find data for U.S. shootings but trickier for tracking incidents in foreign countries.

Mr. Lott, meanwhile, turned to data from the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database and followed up with Nexis and web searches to try to catch cases that the database missed.

He said good data exist only for recent years, so he looked from 1998 to 2012 and found 1,491 mass public shootings worldwide. Of those, only 43 — or 2.88 percent — were in the U.S. Divide that by per capita rates, and the U.S. comes in 58th, behind Finland, Peru, Russia, Norway and Thailand — though still worse than France, Mexico, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Looked at from the number of victims in those shootings, the U.S. again ranks low, with just 2.1 percent of mass shooting deaths, Mr. Lott said.

He has released a 451-page appendix detailing each of the shootings and his thoughts on how he classified it, and he shared his data with other academics, including, he said, Mr. Lankford.

The professor, though, told The Washington Times that he wasn’t going to get drawn into a back-and-forth over the issue.

“I am not interested in giving any serious thought to John Lott or his claims,” he said in response to an email seeking comment.

Another professor, Carl Moody, an economist who studies crime at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, said Mr. Lott got it right.

“When I saw John Lott’s paper, I went to the Global Terrorism Database … and counted the number of mass shootings in the U.S. compared to everywhere else. Lott is right,” he said by email.

He added: “By the way, anybody can do this. The GTD database is free and available to all.”

Mr. Lott said his study still overstates the U.S. problem compared with the rest of the world.

He said it’s easy to get good data about shootings in the U.S., but tracking down attacks in far corners of the globe is tough. In some countries, he said, violence is so common that shootings of four people — the minimum for a mass public attack — merits little or no coverage.

Then there are places such as the Solomon Islands that suppress news reports “The police made it clear that since their nation gets most of its revenue from tourism, they saw little benefit to providing this information,” he said.

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Please read our comment policy before commenting.

question: What is the main topic of the article?

answer: John R. Lott Jr., president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, says that a previous 2016 study that stated the US accounted for nearly one-third of all mass shootings, was wrong.

question: Who publicized the 2016 study that Lott says is inaccurate?

answer: Adam Lankford, professor of the University of Alabama.

question: According to the article, what brings into question about Lankford's study?

answer: Lankford won't share his data with Lott or other researchers, and he has failed to post the data.

question: How does Lott's study differ from Lankford's?

answer: Lott used data from the University of Maryland's Global Terrorism Database and followed up with Nexis and web searches to try to catch cases that the database missed, and he shared his data with other academics.

question: Write a ~1 sentence summary.

answer: John R. Lott Jr., president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, says that a previous 2016 study that stated the US accounted for nearly one-third of all mass shootings, was wrong.


text:
People take pictures on a pedestrian bridge, illuminated with colors of New Zealand's national flag as a tribute to victims of the mosque shootings in Christchurch, in Jakarta, Indonesia, March 17, 2019. REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan

(Reuters) - Facebook Inc said it removed 1.5 million videos globally of the New Zealand mosque attack in the first 24 hours after the attack.

"In the first 24 hours we removed 1.5 million videos of the attack globally, of which over 1.2 million were blocked at upload...," Facebook said in a tweet bit.ly/2HDJtPM late Saturday.

The company said it is also removing all edited versions of the video that do not show graphic content out of respect for the people affected by the mosque shooting and the concerns of local authorities.

The death toll in the New Zealand mosque shootings rose to 50 on Sunday. The gunman who attacked two mosques on Friday live-streamed the attacks on Facebook for 17 minutes using an app designed for extreme sports enthusiasts, with copies still being shared on social media hours later.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said she wants to discuss live streaming with Facebook.

Reporting by Bhanu Pratap in Bengaluru; Editing by Richard Borsuk

for-phone-onlyfor-tablet-portrait-upfor-tablet-landscape-upfor-desktop-upfor-wide-desktop-up

question: How many people were killed in the New Zealand mosque shootings?

answer: At least 50 people were killed in the attack.

question: Why did Facebook take down the uploaded videos of the attack?

answer: Out of respect for the affected people and the concerns of the local authorities.

question: Write a ~3 sentence summary.

answer: In March 2019, there was a terrorist attack in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand and the gunman live-streamed the attacks on Facebook. Immediately, Facebook had to take down the uploaded videos of the attacks, including edited, non-graphic videos, out of respect for the affected people and concerns for the local authorities. Today, people take pictures on a pedestrian bridge in Jakarta, Indonesia, illuminated with colours of New Zealand's national flag as a tribute to victims of the mosque shootings.


text:
HARDEMAN COUNTY is a county located in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2010 census, the population was 27,253.[1] Its county seat is Bolivar.[2]

History

Hardeman County was created by the Tennessee General Assembly in 1823 from parts of Hardin County and “Indian lands.” It is named for Thomas J. Hardeman[3] (1788-1854), a veteran of the Creek War and War of 1812 and a prominent figure in the fight for Texas independence. He served as a congressman in the Republic of Texas.[4] The county is the location of two of Tennessee's four private prisons, the Whiteville Correctional Facility and the Hardeman County Correctional Center. Both are medium-security facilities for men, operated by the Corrections Corporation of America.[5][6]

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and (0.4%) is water.[7] It is the fifth-largest county in Tennessee by area.

Adjacent counties

-   Madison County (north)
-   Chester County (northeast)
-   McNairy County (east)
-   Alcorn County, Mississippi (southeast)
-   Tippah County, Mississippi (south)
-   Benton County, Mississippi (southwest)
-   Fayette County (west)
-   Haywood County (northwest)

National protected areas

-   Hatchie National Wildlife Refuge

State protected areas

-   Chickasaw State Park (part)

Demographics

As of the census[8] of 2010 the racial makeup of the county was 56.1% White (non-Hispanic) or European American, 41.01% Black or African American, 0.24% Native American, 0.29% Asian, 0.01% Pacific Islander, 0.2% from other races, and 0.79% from two or more races. 0.96% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

As of the census[9] of 2000, there were 28,105 people, 9,412 households, and 6,767 families residing in the county. The population density was 42 people per square mile (16/km²). There were 10,694 housing units at an average density of 16 per square mile (6/km²). The racial makeup of the county was 57.34% White (non-Hispanic) or European American, 40.97% Black or African American, 0.26% Native American, 0.31% Asian, 0.02% Pacific Islander, 0.30% from other races, and 0.79% from two or more races. 0.97% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

There were 9,412 households, out of which 32.60% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 50.00% were married couples living together, 17.60% had a female householder with no husband present, and 28.10% were non-families. 25.10% of all households were made up of individuals, and 11.40% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.56 and the average family size was 3.06.

In the county, the population was spread out, with 23.90% under the age of 18, 9.80% from 18 to 24, 31.30% from 25 to 44, 22.40% from 45 to 64, and 12.60% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 females there were 116.90 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 121.40 males.

The median income for a household in the county was $29,111, and the median income for a family was $34,746. Males had a median income of $27,828 versus $20,759 for females. The per capita income for the county was $13,349. About 16.90% of families and 19.70% of the population were below the poverty line, including 24.40% of those under age 18 and 20.80% of those age 65 or over.

Schools

-   Hardeman County Central High School
-   Bolivar Middle School
-   Bolivar Elementary School
-   Whiteville Elementary School
-   Middleton High School
-   Middleton Elementary School
-   Toone Elementary School
-   Grand Junction Elementary School
-   Hornsby Elementary School

Communities

Cities

-   Bolivar (county seat)

Towns

-   Grand Junction (partial)
-   Hickory Valley
-   Hornsby
-   Middleton
-   Saulsbury
-   Silerton (partial)
-   Toone
-   Whiteville

Unincorporated communities

-   Forty Five
-   Pocahontas
-   Van Buren

Politics

Apart from its powerful vote against Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and George McGovern in 1972, Hardeman County was a solidly Democratic county up until it flipped to Donald Trump in 2016.

  Year                               Republican                                  Democratic                                  Third Parties
  ---------------------------------- ------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------- ----------------------------
  style=“text-align:center;” |2016   style=“text-align:center;” |53.1% _4,919_   style=“text-align:center;” |45.1% _4,185_   1.8% _169_
  style=“text-align:center;” |2012   style=“text-align:center;” |46.6% _4,865_   style=“text-align:center;” |52.5% _5,482_   0.9% _92_
  style=“text-align:center;” |2008   style=“text-align:center;” |46.5% _5,225_   style=“text-align:center;” |52.7% _5,919_   0.8% _93_
  style=“text-align:center;” |2004   style=“text-align:center;” |45.0% _4,704_   style=“text-align:center;” |54.3% _5,685_   0.7% _77_
  style=“text-align:center;” |2000   style=“text-align:center;” |42.4% _3,729_   style=“text-align:center;” |56.3% _4,953_   1.4% _121_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1996   style=“text-align:center;” |36.0% _2,961_   style=“text-align:center;” |59.0% _4,859_   5.0% _411_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1992   style=“text-align:center;” |36.2% _3,122_   style=“text-align:center;” |56.0% _4,832_   7.8% _673_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1988   style=“text-align:center;” |49.7% _3,547_   style=“text-align:center;” |49.4% _3,526_   0.9% _65_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1984   style=“text-align:center;” |48.7% _3,712_   style=“text-align:center;” |49.8% _3,797_   1.5% _117_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1980   style=“text-align:center;” |40.7% _2,931_   style=“text-align:center;” |57.6% _4,153_   1.7% _121_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1976   style=“text-align:center;” |36.0% _2,254_   style=“text-align:center;” |62.7% _3,934_   1.3% _82_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1972   style=“text-align:center;” |66.0% _3,494_   style=“text-align:center;” |29.3% _1,550_   4.7% _250_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1968   style=“text-align:center;” |20.2% _1,171_   style=“text-align:center;” |29.5% _1,709_   50.4% _2,924_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1964   style=“text-align:center;” |47.8% _2,450_   style=“text-align:center;” |52.2% _2,675_   style="text-align:center;|
  style=“text-align:center;” |1960   style=“text-align:center;” |44.4% _1,601_   style=“text-align:center;” |47.5% _1,711_   8.1% _292_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1956   style=“text-align:center;” |24.4% _818_     style=“text-align:center;” |52.3% _1,754_   23.3% _781_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1952   style=“text-align:center;” |31.2% _1,256_   style=“text-align:center;” |68.2% _2,747_   0.7% _26_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1948   style=“text-align:center;” |9.6% _317_      style=“text-align:center;” |48.8% _1,609_   41.6% _1,374_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1944   style=“text-align:center;” |18.5% _444_     style=“text-align:center;” |81.2% _1,949_   0.3% _7_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1940   style=“text-align:center;” |11.1% _319_     style=“text-align:center;” |88.7% _2,549_   0.2% _7_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1936   style=“text-align:center;” |7.7% _157_      style=“text-align:center;” |92.1% _1,869_   0.2% _3_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1932   style=“text-align:center;” |10.5% _281_     style=“text-align:center;” |88.7% _2,377_   0.8% _22_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1928   style=“text-align:center;” |25.0% _491_     style=“text-align:center;” |74.1% _1,453_   0.9% _17_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1924   style=“text-align:center;” |13.4% _254_     style=“text-align:center;” |83.6% _1,586_   3.0% _57_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1920   style=“text-align:center;” |28.6% _895_     style=“text-align:center;” |70.7% _2,212_   0.7% _23_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1916   style=“text-align:center;” |21.9% _485_     style=“text-align:center;” |77.8% _1,724_   0.3% _7_
  style=“text-align:center;” |1912   style=“text-align:center;” |16.7% _320_     style=“text-align:center;” |69.1% _1,323_   14.2% _272_

  : PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS RESULTS[10]

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title: Hardeman County, Tennessee

question: What does the article say about the standard of living in Hardeman County, Tennessee?

answer: As of the census of 2010, the median income for a household in Hardeman County was $29,111, and the median income for a family was $34,746. The per capita income for the county was $13,349. About 16.90% of families and 19.70% of the population were below the poverty line.

question: What does the article say about Hardeman County's geography?

answer: Hardeman County is the fifth-largest county in Tennessee by area. 0.4% of the county is water. Hatchie National Wildlife Refuge is a national protected area, and part of Chickasaw State Park is State protected area.

question: What does the article say about the county's household structure?

answer: As of the census of 2000, there were 28,105 people, 9,412 households, and 6,767 families residing in the county. 32.60% of the households had children under the age of 18 living with them, 50.00% were married couples living together, 17.60% had a female householder with no husband present, and 28.10% were non-families. 25.10% of all households were made up of individuals, and 11.40% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.56 and the average family size was 3.06.

question: What does the article say about the county's population?

answer: As of the census of 2000, there were 28,105 people, and the population density was 42 people per square mile. In the county, the population was spread out, with 23.90% under the age of 18, 9.80% from 18 to 24, 31.30% from 25 to 44, 22.40% from 45 to 64, and 12.60% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. The racial makeup of the county was 57.34% White (non-Hispanic) or European American, 40.97% Black or African American, 0.26% Native American, 0.31% Asian, 0.02% Pacific Islander, 0.30% from other races, and 0.79% from two or more races. 0.97% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

question: What does the story say about Thomas J. Hardeman's personal life?


text:
	One afternoon, I was playing basketball with a few of my friends at the outdoor courts by our old Junior High. It was summer and it was hot, probably in the upper 90s. Not everyone’s ideal weather for some ball, but we loved to play and had nothing better to do.We are all moderately good at the game, some of us better than the others. I wouldn’t consider myself to be the best. Will, my best friend, is on the varsity team for his fourth year in a row, while I only played my first two years in high school for JV. Our other two friends, Jordan and Andres, weren’t necessarily as good as us two, but they knew the game and could play at a moderate level.
	We usually play two-on-two, but after we get bored of that we go to H-O-R-S-E or Baseketball, a hybrid of basketball and baseball that Jordan said he saw in a movie once. That day, after a few games of two-on-two, Cooper and Andres winning two games, while Jordan and I beat them once, we decided to play a game of H-O-R-S-E. Honestly, I hate the game and all the guys know it. For some reason, my shooting turns to complete crap and I can’t sink a single shot. Andres always tells me that I suck at shooting to begin with, but I know for a fact that I could beat him in a game of one-on-one any day. He knows it too.
	Anyway, we started our game of H-O-R-S-E by figuring out the order, which was according to the order of who could make a 3-pointer first. Will made the first three, so he went first. His first attempt was a successful baseline jumper. I followed, since I was second in the order, and got lucky. Swish. No “H” for me. Andres went after me and he also made the shot. Last but not least, Jordan went for it. Airball. He missed completely and received his first letter. H.
	About five rounds later, I found myself in last place. I had H-O-R-S, while Andres and Jordan both had H-O-R, and Will had merely an H. It was my turn. Will just made a simple free throw. Easy. I could make that shot in my sleep any day. But this was in a game of H-O-R-S-E. I took my time, bouncing the ball a couple of times, spinning it in my hands. Finally, I took a deep breath and released the shot. I felt good about it, the ball was headed for the center of the rim, and I knew I put the right amount of arc on it. Everything was smooth sailing right up until it hit the back of the rim. The ball bounced up, as we all stared directly at it, and then took another bounce on the front of the rim. The rim gave the ball a bad bounce and, after what felt like hours, it was obvious that I had missed. I was the first one knocked out. H-O-R-S-E. I let out a dramatic “NOOO!” letting everyone in a fifty mile radius of how upset I was. The other guys yelled obnoxiously also, as if I hadn’t known I missed my shot.
	I was pissed that I had to just sit there bored-to-death and wait for the guys to finish their game, so I decided to steal Jordan’s basketball and shoot at the next court over. I started with a free throw shot, which I made. Of course.
	I then began to work on my slam dunks. I’m 6’2, so I can touch the rim easy, but it’s always a struggle to actually dunk with the ball. I tried a couple of times without the ball, just like I said, too easy. So, finally, I gave it a shot with the ball in my hands. I went up for the dunk, and boing! The ball bounced right off the rim as I tried slamming it through. I tried again, but this time I gave myself a longer running start. One step. Dribble. Another. Dribble. Two steps, and then I jumped.
	Liftoff.
	I felt good about this one right from the start. I jumped higher. I had a good grip on the ball. Everything felt right. I knew it was going to go in this time. And right I was.
	It felt so cool to finally dunk the ball. I mean I had before, technically, but on a 9ft hoop. But this time, 10ft baby! The noise the ball made as I forced it down the basket’s throat, making that net swoosh, was like no other.
	“YAAAA! You guys see that?!”
	“See what?” Bill asked.
	“My dunk!”
	“No joke?” said Jordan.
	Andres added, “Yeah right, man. We know you ain’t got no skill!”
	“Whatever! I’ll do it again! Just watch this time.”
	With all eyes on me, I went through the same motions I  made previously. I took my steps and jumped. Everything felt about the same, except I wasn’t as focused. I was all jittery since I knew everyone was watching. Regardless, I did my best to follow through. I attempted to slam the ball into the hoop and grab onto the rim, but rather I slammed it directly against the rim, which made me lose my balance. Instead of being able to hold onto the rim and swing my body, my momentum caused my legs to fly forward as my upper body, including my head began to fly back. And then the world seemed to stop.
	Black.
	I woke up and saw all the guys standing around me. They were shouting at each other. I think Will yelled at Jordan to call 9-1-1. I asked them what happened, but they just told me to stay calm. I couldn’t remember much of anything at first, but it all rushed backed to me when Andres said something about how much “damn blood” there was, and I realized I was laying on the ground. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t feel my legs at all and could barely feel my arms.
	“Guys, I can’t feel anything!”
	“Evan, it’s gonna be okay! Just stay on the ground. An ambulance is on it’s way,” Will said, trying to relax me.
	“There’s so much damn blood, man!” Andres shouted.
	Will yelled to him, “Shut up, Andres! Gimme your shirt. Here Evan, lift up your head. I’m gonna put his shirt underneath your head as a pillow and to stop the bleeding.”
	I lifted my head for Will to put the shirt underneath. When I set it back down, I noticed the tingling sensation on the back of my head. I immediately forgot about it because of the burning I felt on my back. It was almost 100 degrees and I was laying on the blacktop, probably with numerous scrapes. The pain I felt made everything extremely uncomfortable but it also gave me some ease. I could feel my back. I knew this might mean my spine wasn’t completely messed up. Regardless, it still hurt. It hurt so bad I just wanted to fall asleep so I didn’t have to deal with it. I closed my eyes.
	Will shouted at me to wake up. He told me to stay awake. Jordan then asked for my mom’s cell phone number and I recited it to him quite well. I still couldn’t feel my legs though.
	I heard sirens growing closer.
	Jordan said my mom didn’t answer but he left her a voicemail telling her what happened. I started to worry. I felt like such an idiot. How could I have let this happen? I honestly thought there was a possibility of me dying that day.
	“There’s so much damn blood!”
	An ambulance and a firetruck arrived shortly thereafter and a bunch of the paramedics and firefighters started to surround us. The asked me a ton of questions, like who the president was, what year it was, who am I, where I live, etc. Obama. 2013. Evan Benowitz. 255 Alderglenn Drive.
	They turned me over to look at the wound on the back of head. I started to get the feeling back in my legs around then. Then they asked more questions about where I felt pain and how bad it was. I told them it was just my head, neck, shoulders, and back. I didn’t say anything about the feeling in my legs. They then loaded me up with a neck brace onto a stretcher and into the back of the ambulance, which was the most uncomfortable ride of my entire life. One of the paramedics road back there with me, talking to me, trying to keep me calm. He gave me my phone to make any calls, but my mom still didn’t answer her phone. Before I put my phone in my pocket, I sent a text to Will saying “Thank you guys.”
	The ambulance arrived at the hospital fifteen minutes later and they rolled me into the emergency room. A nurse cleaned me up and then took me into many a couple different rooms to get X-rays and a CAT scan. After all the various tests, which were very uncomfortable, the nurse took me back into the ER section and left me to find the doctor.
	I laid there, just looking up at the ceiling. I barely even noticed that I was in a room designed for kids. Dora and Boots were both painted on the walls probably to cheer up young patients. I wasn’t tired. I just thought to myself. I was upset and scared. An hour or so before that, I thought I might be paralyzed or even dead.
	“Hey, buddy.” It was the paramedic who was in the back of the ambulance. “I hope you get better soon. No more pretending to be like Mike, okay?”
	“Promise. Thank you for everything.”
	“No problem. It’s my job.”
	I could tell he truly cared, which made me feel somewhat better.
	Right after that, my mom walked into the room. At first she didn’t say anything, and neither did I. She kinda just looked at me with relieved yet sad look on her face. She had been through a lot. Ever since my dad died right before high school, she had been on her own.
	I was the first one to speak: “I’m sorry, mom.”
	With those words, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I started crying. She rushed to my side. Then she started crying.
	“I know the bills are gonna cost so much money. Money we don’t have with dad gone. Mom, I’m so sorry.”
	“Evan, forget the money. I’m just glad you’re okay. I never want to lose you.”

	“I love you, mom.”

	“I love you too, son.”

title: Paralysis

question: Summarize the story's conflict.

answer: When Evan is playing basketball with friends, he tries to show them that he can actually make a basketball dunk. They don't see his first attempt, so he redoes it. Unfortunately, Evan misses and falls on his back. He injures the back of his head badly and there is a lot of blood. His friends scramble to help him and call 911. Evan is fearful about his wellbeing, and wonders if he could be paralyzed or even die.

question: Summarize the context of "I was pissed that I had to just sit there".

answer: Evan is playing basketball with his friends. They're all playing H-O-R-S-E, and Evan is the first one knocked out of the game since he's not very good at shooting. He's mad that he has to just sit there while his friends finish their game and he's bored to death.

question: What does the text say about the narrator's interactions with his mom?

answer: When Evan is injured on the basketball court, Jordan calls Evan's mom. His mom eventually shows up to the hospital. They didn't say anything to each other initially when she first saw him, but her face was both relieved and sad. Evan feels guilty about his injury because his mom has been on her own since his dad died. He apologizes to her and they both start crying. He apologizes again about the money the hospital trip will cost. She tells him to forget the money, as she's just happy he's okay. She tells him she never wants to lose him and they both say "I love you".

question: What does the text say about the narrator's siblings?


text: Wake N Bacon was an alarm clock that would wake you by automatically cooking bacon. Unfortunately this product is nowhere to be found today. The idea was that you would put a frozen piece of bacon in the alarm clock when you go to bed, then 10 minutes before your set wake-up time the clock would automatically start cooking it. While this idea is heavenly for some, it is commonly called one of the worst pitches in Shark Tank history. There are no bacon cooking alarm clocks on the market at the time of this post, but you could try to make your own.

question: What is the Wake N Bacon alarm clock?

answer: It would wake you up by emitting a scent imitating the scent of cooking bacon.

question: How would this work?

answer: You'd put a frozen piece of bacon in the alarm clock when you go to bed and the clock would start making it 10 minutes before you set the alarm to wake you up.

question: Where was this idea pitched?

answer: Shark Tank

question: Are there any bacon alarm clocks like this on the market as of the time of this article?

answer: No.

question: Write a ~2 sentence summary.

answer: One Shark Tank idea did not take hold: an alarm clock that wakes you with the scent of bacon. The idea was that you put a piece of frozen bacon in an alarm clock and then 10 minutes before you've set alarm to wake you up, the clock begins to cook the bacon.