Selasa, 30 September 2008
Jumat, 26 September 2008
WaMu is largest U.S. bank failure
By Elinor Comlay and Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Re
uters) - Washington Mutual Inc was closed by the U.S. government in by far the largest failure of a U.S. bank, and its banking assets were sold to JPMorgan Chase & Co for $1.9 billion.
Thursday's seizure and sale is the latest historic step in U.S. government attempts to clean up a banking industry littered with toxic mortgage debt. Negotiations over a $700 billion bailout of the entire financial system stalled in Washington on Thursday.
Washington Mutual, the largest U.S. savings and loan, has been one of the lenders hardest hit by the nation's housing bust and credit crisis, and had already suffered from soaring mortgage losses.
Washington Mutual was shut by the federal Office of Thrift Supervision, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp was named receiver. This followed $16.7 billion of deposit outflows at the Seattle-based thrift since Sept 15, the OTS said.
"With insufficient liquidity to meet its obligations, WaMu was in an unsafe and unsound condition to transact business," the OTS said.
Customers should expect business as usual on Friday, and all depositors are fully protected, the FDIC said.
FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said the bailout happened on Thursday night because of media leaks, and to calm customers. Usually, the FDIC takes control of failed institutions on Friday nights, giving it the weekend to go through the books and enable them to reopen smoothly the following Monday.
Washington Mutual has about $307 billion of assets and $188 billion of deposits, regulators said. The largest previous U.S. banking failure was Continental Illinois National Bank & Trust, which had $40 billion of assets when it collapsed in 1984.
JPMorgan said the transaction means it will now have 5,410 branches in 23 U.S. states from coast to coast, as well as the largest U.S. credit card business.
It vaults JPMorgan past Bank of America Corp to become the nation's second-largest bank, with $2.04 trillion of assets, just behind Citigroup Inc. Bank of America will go to No. 1 once it completes its planned purchase of Merrill Lynch & Co.
The bailout also fulfills JPM
organ Chief Executive Jamie Dimon's long-held goal of becoming a retail bank force in the western United States. It comes four months after JPMorgan acquired the failing investment bank Bear Stearns Cos at a fire-sale price through a government-financed transaction.
On a conference call, Dimon said the "risk here obviously is the asset values."
He added: "That's what created this opportunity."
JPMorgan expects to incur $1.5 billion of pre-tax costs, but realize an equal amount of annual savings, mostly by the end of 2010. It expects the transaction to add to earnings immediately, and increase earnings 70 cents per share by 2011.
It also plans to sell $8 billion of stock, and take a $31 billion write-down for the loans it bought, representing estimated future credit losses.
The FDIC said the acquisition does not cover claims of Washington Mutual equity, senior debt and subordinated debt holders. It also said the transaction will not affect its roughly $45.2 billion deposit insurance fund.
"Jamie Dimon is clearly feeling that he has an opportunity to grab market share, and get it at fire-sale prices," said Matt McCormick, a portfolio manager at Bahl & Gaynor Investment Counsel in Cincinnati. "He's becoming an acquisition machine."
BAILOUT UNCERTAINTY
The transaction came as Wash
ington wrangles over the fate of a $700 billion bailout of the financial services industry, which has been battered by mortgage defaults and tight credit conditions, and evaporating investor confidence.
"It removes an uncertainty from the market," said Shane Oliver, head of investment strategy at AMP Capital in Sydney. "The problem is that markets are in a jittery stage. Washington Mutual provides another reminder how tenuous things are."
Washington Mutual's collapse is the latest of a series of takeovers and outright failures that have transformed the American financial landscape and wiped out hundreds of billions of dollars of shareholder wealth.
These include the disappearance of Bear, government takeovers of mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the insurer American International Group Inc, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, and Bank of America's purchase of Merrill.
JPMorgan, based in New York, ended June with $1.78 trillion of assets, $722.9 billion of deposits and 3,157 branches. Washington Mutual then had 2,239 branches and 43,198 employees. It is unclear how many people will lose their jobs.
Shares of Washington Mutual plunged $1.24 to 45 cents in after-hours trading after news of a JPMorgan transaction surfaced. JPMorgan shares rose $1.04 to $44.50 after hours, but before the stock offering was announced.
119-YEAR HISTORY
The transaction ends exactly 119 years of independence for Washington Mutual, whose predecessor was incorporated on September 25, 1889, "to offer its stockholders a safe and profitable vehicle for investing and lending," according to the thrift's website. This helped Seattle residents rebuild after a fire torched the city's downtown.
It also follows more than a week of sale talks in which Washington Mutual attracted interest from several suitors.
These included Banco Santander SA, Citigroup Inc, HSBC Holdings Plc, Toronto-Dominion Bank and Wells Fargo & Co, as well as private equity firms Blackstone Group LP and Carlyle Group, people familiar with the situation said.
Less than three weeks ago, Washington Mutual ousted Chief Executive Kerry Killinger, who drove the thrift's growth as well as its expansion in subprime and other risky mortgages. It replaced him with Alan Fishman, the former chief executive of Brooklyn, New York's Independence Community Bank Corp.
WaMu's board was surprised at the seizure, and had been working on alternatives, people familiar with the matter said.
More than half of Washington Mutual's roughly $227 billion book of real estate loans was in home equity loans, and in adjustable-rate mortgages and subprime mortgages that are now considered risky.
The transaction wipes out a $1.35 billion investment by David Bonderman's private equity firm TPG Inc, the lead investor in a $7 billion capital raising by the thrift in April.
A TPG spokesman said the firm is "dissatisfied with the loss," but that the investment "represented a very small portion of our assets."
DIMON POUNCES
The deal is the latest ambitious move by Dimon.
Once a golden child at Citigroup before his mentor Sanford "Sandy" Weill engineered his ouster in 1998, Dimon has carved for himself something of a role as a Wall Street savior.
Dimon joined JPMorgan in 2004 after selling his Bank One Corp to the bank for $56.9 billion, and became chief executive at the end of 2005.
Some historians see parallels between him and the legendary financier John Pierpont Morgan, who ran J.P. Morgan & Co and was credited with intervening to end a banking panic in 1907.
JPMorgan has suffered less than many rivals from the credit crisis, but has been hurt. It said on Thursday it has already taken $3 billion to $3.5 billion of write-downs this quarter on mortgages and leveraged loans.
Washington Mutual has a major presence in California and Florida, two of the states hardest hit by the housing crisis. It also has a big presence in the New York City area. The thrift lost $6.3 billion in the nine months ended June 30.
"It is surprising that it has hung on for as long as it has," said Nancy Bush, an analyst at NAB Research LLC.
(Additional reporting by Paritosh Bansal, Christian Plumb and Dan Wilchins; Jessica Hall in Philadelphia; John Poirier in Washington, D.C. and Kevin Lim in Singapore; Editing by Gary Hill and Carol Bishopric)
© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reservedKamis, 25 September 2008
THE GOOD LIFE
Source : canada.com
Young people are indulging more frequently in good food and fine wines, experiencing lifestyles just recently attained by their parentsShannon Proudfoot , Canwest News Service
Published: Thursday, September 18, 2008
Forget pitchers of cheap draft, chicken wings and backpacking through Europe with a guidebook full of hostel listings. Today's young adults are increasingly gravitating toward the fine dining, good wine, luxurious travel and occasional stogie that people their parents' age used to savour as they contemplated retirement.
Raised by their baby boomer parents to appreciate a greater range of cultural experiences and reaping the rewards of higher education, more people in their 20s and early 30s are indulging themselves in their downtime and proving themselves to be savvy high-end consumers in the process.
"It seems like a lot of the young kids have money to spend, it's not just their parents' money," says Ash Haque, a manager at One Restaurant, a fine-dining hot spot that opened in Toronto last year. "These are people that work hard 9 to 5 or actually 9 to 8 and they work hard, they play hard - as simple as that."
Brian Cashaback shows off a bottle of wine from his wine fridge. He and his partner Jenny Greig (both age 30) have recently renovated the kitchen of their Ottawa home host more weekly dinner parties.
John Major/Canwest News Service
Delayed marriage and child-rearing mean young adults have fatter wallets today, and many marketers are "zoning in" on this group, says Ann Mack, director of trendspotting for the New York office of JWT, an international advertising agency.
"They realize that because they don't have familial obligations and they are focusing more on their career, they're an upwardly mobile group that is very appealing," she says. "They have more of a disposable income to use at their will."
Nearly one-third of the leisure guests at Ottawa's upscale Brookstreet Hotel are under 35, says marketing manager Kim Meier. They're increasingly taking weekend or even one-night getaways to enjoy the hotel's pampering amenities, spa and high-end restaurant, she says. But it's also a "price-sensitive" demographic that appreciates a bargain.
"This group is making more me-time with busy lifestyles and then deciding, 'OK, we do need to get away, we need to take some time for ourselves,' and then looking for what fits into the budget, but making money available to have that experience," she says.
For Jenny Greig and her partner Brian Cashaback, both 30, indulging in good food and wine is a passion.
"It's a matter of recognizing what it is that you enjoy and making that a priority," says Greig, an Ottawa communications specialist. "We've got friends who like to travel very broadly and go long distances for a long time. Our priority is little trips here and there, but we don't mind spending a little bit more for a good bottle of wine or a really nice meal out."
The couple recently completed a six-month renovation that transformed their kitchen from a tiny nook to an open and eco-friendly space where they cook for friends and entertain weekly.
Young adults are outpacing their older counterparts - even the boomers who first made wine a mainstream taste in North America - in how much they drink and how much they fork out for a good bottle, according to research conducted last summer by the Wine Market Council in the U.S. Forty-seven per cent of those aged 31 and under are drinking more wine, the survey found, compared to 37 per cent of those aged 32 to 43 and 27 per cent of boomers aged 44 to 62.
And the youngest group is twice as likely to spend $20 or more on a standard-sized bottle than boomers, the council found, at 53 per cent compared to 27 per cent.
"They grew up going out to eat more than their parents did, and going out to eat sushi or Mexican or Chinese or Thai or whatever, so they developed their palettes at a much earlier age than their parents did," says Darryl Roberts, publisher of Wine X, an online lifestyle magazine directed at young oenophiles.
Those sophisticated tastebuds are also inspiring more young adults to savour cigars, says Nadia Dasrat, a cigar merchant at City Cigar in Vancouver.
"They're starting to really appreciate things that are about the palette - like wine, like scotch, like cigars - because it keeps you growing and learning, it's not just that you're doing it for the fix," she says.
When they head out to dinner, young adults tend to be big on knowledge and low on affectation, says Mehron Halitsky, wine director and manager at Bymark restaurant in Toronto.
Fine dining for the 20-something set used to mean family friendly chains, he says, but over the last five years more are choosing high-end places and arriving with genuine knowledge of what's on the menu and wine list.
"Now, people are really intelligent about their choices when they come into the restaurant, from talking about the texture of the foie gras to knowing the differences between east coast and west coast oysters," he says. "These are not pretentious people, these are people that are just completely into the dining experience and just love spending time with their significant others or friends."
Newer restaurants, in turn, are doing away with some of the pretentious trappings - including stuffy dress codes and sneering maitre d's - that used to act as "barriers to entry" for young diners, says Stephen Beckta, owner of Beckta dining & wine in Ottawa.
He estimates about one-quarter of his clientele is under 35, but says the restaurant has always drawn a young crowd because he and his chef and staff were all in their 20s when it opened five years ago.
What's changed is that other restaurants are catching on and making upscale dining accessible and attractive to younger clients, Beckta says.
"The rules are starting to go out the window," he says. "Fine dining is starting to be a lot more fun, it's starting to be a lot less intimidating. There are less boundaries and there's more playing."
@ Canwest News Service 2008Sabtu, 20 September 2008
Mother's Diet Can Affect Genes And Offspring's Risk Of Allergic Asthma, Rodent Studies Suggest
ScienceDaily (Sep. 19, 2008) — A pregnant mouse's diet can induce epigenetic changes that increase the risk her offspring will develop allergic asthma, according to researchers at National Jewish Health and Duke University Medical Center. Pregnant mice that consumed diets high in supplements containing methyl-donors, such as folic acid, had offspring with more severe allergicThe results of the study are being published Sept. 18, 2008, in the online version of the Journal of Clinical Investigation and will appear in the October print issue.
"Our findings suggest that a mother's diet that alters DNA methylation can affect the development of the fetus's immune system, predisposing it to allergic airway disease," said David Schwartz, MD, senior author on the paper and Professor of Medicine at National Jewish Health. "It also suggests the dramatic increase in asthma during the past two decades may be related in part to recent changes in dietary supplementation among women of childbearing age."
The prevalence of asthma has nearly doubled in the past 25 years. Asthma currently affects about 11 percent of the US population and accounts for $9.4 billion in direct healthcare costs. Although both genes and environment are believed to play a role in the development of asthma, scientists have been unable to definitively identify specific causes of the disease or explain the rise in prevalence.
Epigenetics is the study of gene regulation. Environmental exposures can lead to modification of methyl groups (CH3) binding to certain DNA molecules, which can result in modified expression of specific genes. A variety of environmental factors, including diet, tobacco smoke, and medications, can modify methyl groups binding to DNA, particularly during periods of vulnerability. Although no changes occur in the genetic code, epigenetic effects can be passed to offspring. Emerging research has indicated that epigenetic mechanisms can affect the development of the immune system, skewing it either toward or away from a predisposition to allergies.
The research team decided to examine the potential role of epigenetics in the development of allergic asthma. They fed pregnant mice diets either high or low in methyl donors. In addition to folic acid, the high methyl-donor diets additionally contained higher levels of L-methionine, choline, and genistein.
When the researchers evaluated offspring mice using a model of allergic asthma, they found that mice, whose mothers had the high methyl-donor diets, showed greater severity of asthma; more airway hyperreactivity, more allergic inflammation in their airways, and higher levels of the IgE in their blood. They also found that T cells were more likely to be the type associated with allergy.
The male offspring also transmitted a higher predisposition to allergic airway disease to their progeny. In contrast, mice exposed to high-methyl-donor diets during lactation or adulthood showed no increased propensity to allergic sensitization.
"There seems to be a crucial stage, during development in utero, when a young mouse is susceptible to epigenetic changes that can alter its immune system," said co-author John W. Hollingsworth, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Duke University School of Medicine. "These epigenetic changes may partially explain why it has been so difficult to definitively identify genes that contribute to asthma risk; the effect of genetic variations can be masked or further complicated by epigenetic changes."
When the researchers analyzed the genomes of the mice, they identified 82 genes that were significantly more methylated in high-methyl-diet (HMD) mice. The 10 most methylated genes were biologically plausible causes of asthma. These genes were transcription factors, which control the expression of many genes, and genes associated with cellular migration and allergic airway disease. The highly methylated genes were expressed at lower levels than less-methylated genes in mice receiving the low-methyl-donor diets.
The current research suggests too much folic acid (and other dietary supplements) during pregnancy may be related to an increased risk of allergies and asthma, and may even play a role in the dramatic increase in asthma prevalence during the past two decades. The U.S. Public Health service recommended in 1992 that all women of childbearing age consume 400 micrograms of folic acid daily to reduce their risk of birth defects of the spine and brain. In 1996 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration required that folic acid be added to specific flour, breads and other grains to prevent birth defects. Research has suggested that these measures have helped reduce birth defects.
Given the important role folic acid supplementation has played in prevention of birth defects, Drs. Schwartz and Hollingsworth do not advise any changes in folic acid supplementation, but do believe the issue is worth further investigation.
Journal references:
- Hollingsworth et al. In utero supplementation with methyl donors enhances allergic airway disease in mice. Journal of Clinical Investigation, 2008; DOI: 10.1172/JCI34378
- Rachel L. Miller. Prenatal maternal diet affects asthma risk in offspring. Journal of Clinical Investigation, 2008; DOI: 10.1172/JCI37171
Kamis, 18 September 2008
Yemen arrests 19 after U.S. embassy attack
REUTERSDUBAI (Reuters) - Yemeni authorities have arrested 19 people suspected of being connected to al Qaeda and having links to Wednesday's attack on the heavily fortified U.S. embassy in Sanaa, Al-Arabiya television said on Thursday.
Two suicide car bombs set off a series of explosions outside the U.S. embassy in Yemen, killing 16 people including six attackers. No U.S. citizens were hurt.
The U.S. State Department said the bombings bore "all the hallmarks" of an al Qaeda attack but the United States had not yet c
oncluded who was to blame.
A group calling itself Islamic Jihad in Yemen, which is unrelated to the Palestinian group with a similar name, claimed responsibility and threatened attacks on other embassies including those of Britain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
It threatened to launch a series of attacks unless Yemen freed several jailed members.
"We will carry out the rest of the series of attacks on the other embassies that were declared previously, until our demands are met by the Yemeni government," the group said in a statement on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Raissa Kasolowsky; Editing by 
Thomas Atkins)
Jumat, 29 Agustus 2008
arack Obama at Mile High -- "The American Promise"
On a cloudless August night in Denver, before a united party and thousands of grassroots supporters from all across America, Senator Obama accepted the Democratic Party presidential nomination.
Obama made the case for why America cannot afford four more years of the same failed policies and laid out his vision to bring about fundamental change at home and abroad. He reminded us of the extraordinary promise of America at its best and challenged us to continue to fight for that promise, to march ahead, to not turn back...
'Something is stirring' in America
Sheldon Alberts, Washington Correspondent , Canwest News Service
Published: Thursday, August 28, 2008
DENVER - On a ni
ght rich with political spectacle and historical symbolism, Barack Obama vowed to "restore America's promise" after eight years of Republican rule that he said has badly damaged the nation's image abroad and set it on a path to economic ruin at home.
"We meet at one of those defining moments - a moment when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil, and the American promise has been threatened once more," Obama said Thursday night, as he accepted the Democratic presidential nomination before an estimated crowd of 85,000 people at Denver's Invesco Field.
"This moment - this election - is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive."
Obama's speech put an exclamation mark on a four-day Democratic national convention designed to propel the Illinois senator into the fall election campaign on an emotional high after a summer stall in the polls.As the first African-America
n presidential nominee, the timing of Obama's address was particularly poignant, coming 45 years to the day after Martin Luther King delivered his I Have A Dream Speech in Washington, D.C.
But Obama made only passing reference to the racial barriers he'd broken by becoming the Democratic nominee. "I realize that I am not the likeliest candidate for this office. I don't fit the typical pedigree," he said.
Instead Obama, 47, invoked King's memory as he recalled the civil rights leader's appeal for "people of every creed and colour" to unite, saying America's "destiny is inextricably linked."
While Obama aspired to moments of high oratory, he also engaged in some hard politicking.
Obama took direct aim at his Republican rival, Senator John McCain, who he cast as a GOP candidate moulded in the image of outgoing President George W. Bush.
"The record's clear: John McCain has voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time," Obamasaid of the GOP candidate, who will accept the Republican nomination next week in St. Paul, Minn.
"Next week, in Minnesota, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third," Obama said. "And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look just like the last eight. On Nov. 4, we must stand up and say: 'Eight is enough.' "
America had lost its "sense of common purpose," under President Bush, he said.
"America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this."
The crowd at Invesco Field, home to the NFL Denver Broncos, was the largest for a U.S. political rally since John F. Kennedy's accepted the Democratic presidential nomination before 80,000 people at the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1960.
The stadium-sized event was designed to underscore Obama's biggest political skills - an ability to inspire huge crowds with finely-crafted speechmaking - while also addressing perceived weaknesses Republicans have sought to exploit in recent weeks.
"If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament, and judgment, to serve as the next commander-in-chief, that's a debate I'm ready to have," Obama said.
Answering Republican charges that his personal opposition to the war in Iraq was motivated by presidential ambition, and that Democrats are weak on national security, Obama invoked the memory of past Democratic presidents who have guided the nation through times of crisis.
"We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy. So don't tell me that Democrats won't defend this country. Don't tell me that Democrats won't keep us safe," Obama said.
"I've got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first."
Obama said he would "never hesitate to defend this nation" as America's commander-in-chief, but would only send U.S. troops into battle "with a clear mission."
And he contrasted McCain's support for the war in Iraq with his own opposition, saying it had diverted U.S. efforts to hunt down Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
"For while Senator McCain was turning his sights to Iraq just days after 9-11, I stood up and opposed this war, knowing that it would distract us from the real threats we face," he said. "John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell - but he won't even go to the cave where he lives."
McCain's campaign, responded to the speech in a statement by saying "Americans witnessed a misleading speech that was so fundamentally at odds with the meagre record of Barack Obama... The fact remains: Barack Obama is still not ready to be president."
Democrats were betting the scale of Obama's convention rally would bring into sharp relief the so-called 'enthusiasm gap' between energized Democrats and the Republicans.
McCain has had difficulty attracting large crowds and will deliver his own nomination speech before a much-smaller crowd of about 15,000 next week in St. Paul.
"I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring," he said. "What the naysayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me. It's been about you."
Obama spoke on a stage straddling the stadium's 50-yard line and in front a row of faux-Roman columns that have drawn comparisons to the Lincoln Memorial, where King delivered his 1963 appeal for racial equality.
The crowd erupted upon his arrival onstage following a biographical video, chanting "Yes, we can, Yes, we can."
The ovation grew louder - shaking the stadium - with a burst of fireworks and confetti at the conclusion of Obama's speech.
But Republicans said Obama's event smacked of political arrogance.
McCain's campaign dubbed the stage constructed for the evening the "Temple of Obama," and hoped the rally would strengthen their efforts to portray Obama as a political celebrity out of touch with ordinary voters.
"Looks like they're getting ready for the emperor to arrive, don't you think?" quipped Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a potential McCain's vice presidential running mate.
"I think with the Roman columns and the facade it's perfect, because the facade is for production purposes, but there's not much behind it."
At times, the convention's final night seemed more rock concert than political rally. Sheryl Crow, the singer and liberal activist, performed an acoustic set before turning over the stage to Stevie Wonder.
There was more: Grammy award-winning soul singer John Legend collaborated with will.i.am of the Black-Eyed Peas to reprise their adulatory 'Yes, We Can video about Obama that won an Emmy Award earlier this year. And the evening reunited Democrats with another star of liberal politics - former vice president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore, who served as Obama's warm-up act.
Even as Obama was striving to demonstrate his ability to inspire Americans en masse, he faced another daunting task - making the stadium-sized event seem intimate enough to address the struggles of American voters watching at home.
Offering specifics of what an Obama presidency would look like, Obama said he would end tax breaks for corporations, eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses and "cut taxes for 95 per cent of working families."
With gas prices at near-record highs, Obama said he would "set a clear goal" to end America's dependence on Middle East oil within 10 years.
"Washington has been talking about our oil addiction for the last thirty years, and John McCain has been there for twenty-six of them," Obama said.
© Canwest News Service 2008
Sabtu, 23 Agustus 2008
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# milw0rm [2008-08-12]
Senin, 11 Agustus 2008
Live from Abbey Road
Source :
Wikipedia
Live From Abbey Road
Live from Abbey Road is a 12 part one hour performance series/documentary filmed during 2006 at Abbey Road Studios in London. The series features a total of 38 musical artists -- usually 3 per show, performing up to 3 songs per session. The sessions are recorded without a live audience. Filmed in High-Definition with the use of 35 mm lenses, the producers have sought to record performances which “look like a movie and sound like a record”.[1]
Broadcast Licenses
The series began broadcasting on Channel 4 / More 4 in the UK in January 2007 under a licenseChannel 4. As of January 29, 2007, the series has been licensed for broadcast in 17 countries around the world, including Sundance Channel in the US, NHK in Japan, Arts CentralSingapore, MuchMoreMusic in Canada and Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Australia. The series is distributed for broadcast by Fremantle Media.Production
Live from Abbey Road Limited is an independent production company formed by the series’ producers, Michael Gleason and Peter Van Hooke. The series is produced under a multi year license from EMI, owner of Abbey Road Studios.
Musicians
The first series features famous musicians and groups from various genres, artists playing Rock music to Heavy Metal, music influenced by Electronic Music such as Dance and Industrial, PopJazz and Blues have all been featured. The artists spend the day at Abbey Roadmixing desk and sound techs on site. The idea is to capture the sound created during the production of a record, and to film the process without an audience, typical of the atmosphere in a recording studio. and even rehearsing and performing. Many have their own
Series 1
- John Mayer, Norah Jones and Richard Ashcroft
- Snow Patrol, Madeleine Peyroux and Red Hot Chili Peppers
- Ray Lamontagne, The Zutons, Shawn Colvin and Nerina Pallot
- Gipsy Kings, Natasha Bedingfield and Iron Maiden
- Amos Lee, David Gilmour and Randy Crawford
- Dr. John, LeAnn Rimes and Massive Attack
- Craig David, James Morrison and Dave Matthews
- Jamiroquai, Damien Rice and The Goo Goo Dolls
- The Kooks, Wynton Marsalis and Muse
- Kasabian, Josh Groban and The Good, the Bad & the Queen
- Paul Simon, Corinne Bailey Rae and Primal Scream
- The Feeling, Gnarls Barkley and The Killers
- Mary J. Blige, Dashboard Confessional and James Blunt
- Rascal Flatts, Kate Nash and Herbie Hancock
- Panic at the Disco, David Gray and Suzanne Vega
- Stereophonics, Colbie Caillat and Joan Armatrading
- Sheryl Crow, Hard-Fi and Diana Krall
- The Hoosiers, The Black Keys and Manu Chao
- Matchbox Twenty, The Script and Def Leppard
- Elbow, MGMT and Alanis Morissette
- The Kills, Sara Bareilles and The Fratellis
- The Subways, Gnarls Barkley and Herbie Hancock
- Justin Currie, Ben Harper and Bryan Adams
- Teddy Thompson, Martha Wainwright and Brian Wilson
Jack Kerouac-On The Road
Source : Jack Kerouac Facebook FansJack Kerouac (pronounced /ˈkÉ›rÉ™wæk/) (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) was an American novelist, writer, poet, and artist. Along with William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, he is amongst the best known of the writers (and friends) known as the Beat Generation. Kerouac's work was popular, but received little critical acclaim during his lifetime. Today, he is considered an important and influential writer who inspired others, including Tom Robbins, Lester Bangs, Richard Brautigan, and Ken Kesey, and writers of the New Journalism. Kerouac also influenced musicians such as The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Morrissey, Tom Waits, Simon & Garfunkel, Lebris, Ulf Lundell and Jim Morrison.[1] Kerouac's best-known books are On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Big Sur, and Visions of Cody.
Family and early years
Jack Kerouac was born Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac, in Lowell, Massachusetts to French-Canadian parents, Léo-Alcide Kerouac and Gabrielle-Ange Lévesque, natives of the province of Québec, Canada. Like many other Quebecers of their generation, the Lévesques and Kerouacs were part of the Quebec emigration to New England to find employment. Kerouac did not start to learn English until the age of six[2], and at home, he and his family spoke joual, a Quebec French dialect. When he was four he was profoundly affected by the death of his nine-year-old brother, Gérard, from rheumatic fever, an event later described in his novel Visions of Gerard. Some of Kerouac's poetry was written in French, and in letters written to friend Allen Ginsberg towards the end of his life he expressed his desire to speak his parents' native tongue again. Recently, it was discovered that Kerouac first started writing On the Road in French, a language in which he also wrote two unpublished novels.[3] The writings are in dialectal Quebec French, and predate the first novels of Michel Tremblay by a decade. Kerouac's athletic prowess led him to become a 100-meter hurdler on his local high school track team, and his skills as a running back in American football earned him scholarship offers from Boston College, Notre Dame and Columbia University. He entered Columbia University after spending a year at Horace Mann School, where he earned the requisite grades to matriculate to Columbia. Kerouac broke a leg playing football during his freshman season, and he argued constantly with coach Lou Little who kept him benched. While at Columbia, Kerouac wrote several sports articles for the student newspaper, the Columbia Daily Spectator. When his football scholarship did not pan out, Kerouac dropped out of Columbia, though he continued to live for a period on New York City's Upper West Side with his girlfriend, Edie Parker. It was during this time that he met the people with whom he was later to journey around the world, the subjects of many of his novels: the so-called Beat Generation, including Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, John Clellon Holmes, Herbert Huncke and William S. Burroughs. Kerouac joined the United States Merchant Marine in 1942 and in 1943 joined the United States Navy, but was honorably discharged during World War II on psychiatric grounds (he was of "indifferent disposition").[4] In 1944, Kerouac was arrested as an accessory in the murder of David Kammerer, who'd been stalking Kerouac's friend Lucien Carr since Carr was a teenager in St. Louis. (William Burroughs was himself a native of St. Louis, and it was through Carr that Kerouac came to know both Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg.) When Kammerer's obsession with Carr turned violent, Carr stabbed him to death and turned to Kerouac for help. Together, they disposed of evidence. Advised by Burroughs to turn themselves in, Kerouac's father at first refused to pay his bail. Kerouac then agreed to marry Edie Parker if she'd pay it. Their marriage was annulled a year later, and Kerouac and Burroughs briefly collaborated on a novel about the Kammerer killing entitled And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks. Though the book was never published, an excerpt eventually appeared in Word Virus: A William S. Burroughs Reader. Kerouac also later wrote about the killing in his novel Vanity of Duluoz. Later, he lived with his parents in the Ozone Park neighborhood of Queens, after they, too, moved to New York. He wrote his first novel, The Town and the City, and, according to at least John Clellon Holmes, began the quintessential On the Road around 1949 while living there. His friends jokingly called him "The Wizard of Ozone Park,"[5] a spoof of Thomas Edison's "Wizard of Menlo Park" nickname while simultaneously alluding to the title character of the film The Wizard of Oz and a shortened form of the word "ozone".
Career
Kerouac tended to write constantly, carrying a notebook with him everywhere. Letters to friends and family members tended to be long and rambling, including great detail about his daily life and thoughts. Prior to becoming a writer, he tried a varied list of careers. He was a sports reporter for The Lowell Sun; a temporary worker in construction and food service; a United States Merchant Marine and he joined the United States Navy twice. The Town and the City was published in 1950 under the name "John Kerouac," and, though it earned him a few respectable reviews, the book sold poorly. Heavily influenced by Kerouac's reading of Thomas Wolfe, it reflects on the generational epic formula and the contrasts of small town life versus the multi-dimensional, and larger, city. The book was heavily edited by Robert Giroux; some 400 pages were taken out. For the next six years, Kerouac wrote constantly but could not find a publisher. Building upon previous drafts tentatively titled "The Beat Generation" and "Gone on the Road," Kerouac wrote what is now known as On the Road in April, 1951 (ISBN 0-312-20677-1). The book was largely autobiographical, narrated from the point of view of the character Sal Paradise, describing Kerouac's roadtrip adventures across the United States and Mexico with Neal Cassady, the model for the character of Dean Moriarty. Part of the Kerouac myth is that, fueled by Benzedrine and coffee, he completed the first version of the novel during a three week extended session of spontaneous confessional prose. This session produced the now famous scroll of On the Road. In fact, according to his Columbia professor and mentor Mark Van Doren, he had outlined much of the work in his journals over several years. His technique was heavily influenced by Jazz, especially Bebop, and later, Buddhism, as well as the famous "Joan Anderson letter", authored by Neal Cassady. Publishers rejected it due to its experimental writing style and its sympathetic tone towards minorities and marginalized social groups of the United States in the 1950s. In 1957, Viking Press purchased the novel, demanding major revisions.[7] In 1954, Kerouac discovered Dwight Goddard's A Buddhist Bible at the San Jose Library, which marked the beginning of Kerouac's immersion into Buddhism. In 1955 Kerouac wrote a biography of Siddhartha Gautama, entitled Wake Up, which was unpublished during his lifetime but eventually serialised in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, 1993-95. He chronicled parts of his own experience with Buddhism, as well as some of his adventures with Gary Snyder and other San Francisco-area poets, in the book The Dharma Bums, set in California and published in 1958. The Dharma Bums, which some have called the sequel to On the Road, was written in Orlando, Florida during late 1957 through early 1958. Kerouac also wrote and narrated a "Beat" movie entitled Pull My Daisy in 1958. Beginning of the original typed roll where Kerouac wrote On the Road. The first sentence is: "I first met met Neal not long after my father died..." Later it would be replaced by the definitive one: "I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up". Beginning of the original typed roll where Kerouac wrote On the Road. The first sentence is: "I first met met Neal not long after my father died..." Later it would be replaced by the definitive one: "I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up". In July 1957, Kerouac moved to a small house on Clouser Ave. in the College Park section of Orlando, Florida to await the release of On the Road. A few weeks later, the review appeared in the New York Times proclaiming Kerouac the voice of a new generation. Kerouac was hailed as a major American writer. His friendship with Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Gregory Corso, among others, became a notorious representation of the Beat Generation. His fame would come as an unmanageable surge that would ultimately be his undoing. Kerouac's novel is often described as the defining work of the post-World War II Beat Generation and Kerouac came to be called "the king of the beat generation," a term that he never felt comfortable with. He once observed, "I'm not a beatnik, I'm a Catholic."[8] John Antonelli's 1985 documentary Kerouac, the Movie begins and ends with footage of Kerouac reading from On the Road and Visions of Cody on The Tonight Show with Steve Allen in 1957. Kerouac appears intelligent but shy. "Are you nervous?" asks Steve Allen. "Naw", says Kerouac, sweating and fiddling. Kerouac developed something of a friendship with the scholar Alan Watts (cryptically named Arthur Wayne in Kerouac's novel Big Sur, and Alex Aums in Desolation Angels). He also met and had discussions with the famous Japanese Zen Buddhist authority D.T. Suzuki. Kerouac moved to Northport, New York in March 1958, six months after releasing On the Road, to care for his aging mother Gabrielle and to hide from his newfound celebrity.
Death
Kerouac died on October 21, 1969 at St. Anthony's Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, one day after being rushed with severe abdominal pain from his St. Petersburg home by ambulance. His death, at the age of 47, resulted from an internal hemorrhage (bleeding esophageal varices) caused by cirrhosis of the liver, the result of a lifetime of heavy drinking. At the time of his death, he was living with his third wife Stella, and his mother Gabrielle. Kerouac is buried in his home town of Lowell and was honored posthumously with a Doctor of Letters degree from his hometown's University of Massachusetts - Lowell on June 2, 2007. In 2007, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of On the Road's publishing,[9] Viking issued two new editions: On the Road: The Original Scroll, and On the Road: 50th Anniversary Edition. By far the more significant is Scroll, a transcription of the original draft typed as one long paragraph on rolls of teletype paper which Kerouac taped together to form a 120-foot scroll. The text is more sexually explicit than Viking allowed to be published in 1957, and also uses the real names of Kerouac's friends rather than the fictional names he later substituted. (Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay paid $2.43 million for the original scroll and is allowing an exhibition tour that will conclude at the end of 2009.) The other new issue, 50th Anniversary Edition, is a reissue of the 40th anniversary issue under an updated title. Lowell, Massachusetts Gravesite, Lowell Massachusetts Lowell, Massachusetts Gravesite, Lowell Massachusetts In March 2008, Penguin Books announced that the Kerouac/Burroughs manuscript, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks will be published for the first time in November 2008. (Previously, a fragment of the manuscript had been published in the Burroughs compendium, Word Virus).[10]
Minggu, 03 Agustus 2008
Last Pilot conversation on ADAM AIR tragedy
Note :
This just information without any guarantee the record of the voice is real or fake. We hope that we can learn about this tragedy and we shall pray to GOD for all the ADAM air victims.
Selasa, 22 Juli 2008
Senin, 21 Juli 2008
Flying past the fear
SOURCE : CANADA
Yvonne Jeffery , Calgary Herald
Laureen Regan once dreaded flying. The executive producer with Calgary-based Regan Productions -- which films all over Western Canada and into the United States -- would lie awake at night ahead of a scheduled flight, feeling the impending fear.
And when she actually made it onto the plane, it was worse.
"It's so overwhelming and uncontrollable . . . but you can't help feeling the things that you're feeling," she says, adding that it's also isolating, because when you look around the plane, everyone else seems fineThat can be deceiving, says Herb Spear. The longtime WestJet employee learned to fly as a young man during the Second World War, and has seen just about every kind of plane and flight situation since.
Now, he works in the airline's occupational health and safety department.
"Every flight that takes off, there's one or two people that truly don't want to be there," he says. "People seem to think that they're the only one in the world that's afraid of flying -- and I have to assure them that they're not."
It was Spear who stepped in to help Regan in 2001, with a free, informal airport visit that educates fearful flyers about the process of flying. From explaining the noises heard in flight to the movements during landing and taking off, he aims to take the unknown -- and therefore the fear -- out of flight.
For Regan, it was the beginning of her journey past the fear, a process that now has her flying in all kinds of planes -- from wide-bodied passenger jets over the Atlantic to seven-seater hoppers across the Arctic tundra.
"I never wanted the fear to stop me from experiencing life," she says.
From education to hypnotherapy and psychotherapy, you do have options -- and Regan says it's worth investigating all of them.
"Find the solution that you're most comfortable with," she suggests, adding that you have to be willing to work at it.
For her, the education offered by Spear helped, but 9/11 didn't. After trying other techniques, she eventually discovered success with hypnosis.
"What I found was that the fear just gently goes away. You're at the airport one day and you realize that the anxiety isn't there -- you just feel calm," she says.
"(Dealing with the fear) can change your life -- it can make the experience of getting to your destination such a positive one as opposed to something you're really worried about days and even weeks in advance.
"Why would you live with that, given a choice?"
Taking away the mystery
At Westjet, Spear still talks to people every week about flying -- it's not an official program, and he's quick to point out that he's not trained as a psychologist. But he does know planes.
"In a lot of cases, it's the fear of the unknown," he explains. "People don't know what's happening, so they think it's not good."
For example, when an airplane at cruising altitude gets within about 160 kilometres of its destination, the crew moves the throttle back into what's known as "flight idle," and the engines go quiet.
"People think the engines have stopped," Spear says. "I tell them that it's the same thing as when you come to a stop sign -- you take your foot off the accelerator and coast to your destination. That's what's happening."
A lot of the solution, he says, involves simply listening to people to find out where the problem is.
"It's turbulence for some -- they think the airplane's going to fall apart. Some of them are claustrophobic. Some people don't mind take-offs or landings, other people don't like the sensation."
But a little education can go a long way. "It opens up a whole new world for them," he says.
Sometimes, though, simply learning about an airplane's normal bumps and wobbles isn't enough. Holly James is a registered psychologist who runs The Artemis Centre, an integrative wellness clinic here in Calgary.
"Technically the fear of flying is a phobia," she says. "It's actually more concerned with what might happen than what's actually happening, and there are often a number of other fears that are happening at the same time."
These include a fear of not being in control, of heights, turbulence, enclosed spaces or not being able to breathe.
James says that learning techniques to intercept the fear at the "worrying" stage is key -- you need to catch it before it reaches the subsequent physiological "flight or fight" stage, where you might feel your heart racing, your breathing become rapid and shallow, and your palms become sweaty.
"That's a difficult place to come back from," she notes, emphasizing that helpful techniques include deep breathing, imagining yourself letting the fears go, and distracting yourself from the worrying thoughts. Essentially, you're acknowledging that you can't control the situation, but reminding yourself that you have ways to get through it.
Deep breathing is especially important, because your parasympathetic nervous system (the one that calms you) can't kick in if your breathing is too shallow. Take a deep breath, however, and you can access it.
She adds that hypnosis, guided imagery (usually incorporating meditation) and EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing -- a therapy that aims to free up old sensations or fears) can often help.
She also recommends checking that there's nothing physiological that's contributing to the fear, such as an ear problem that causes pain or vertigo.
When it comes to actually flying, she suggests taking short flights at first (as baby steps) and letting the flight crew that you're dealing with a fear and asking if it's OK for you to walk around or stand in flight if that would help you.
What she doesn't recommend is self-medicating (with alcohol, for example). "It's probably more recommended to stay in tune with your body so that you can try some of these techniques," she says.
How can hypnosis help? Georgina Cannon, a Toronto-based certified master clinical hypnotherapist, says that all fears and phobias are stored in the subconscious mind -- which means that if we access our subconscious, we can reprogram those fears into positive, pro-active perceptions and feelings.
"(The fear) manifests very differently for people . . . so when we work with clients, we find out exactly what that fear is," she says.
That's important, because if the result is a fear of flying that limits your quality of life -- preventing you from taking a promotion to a job that requires travel, for example, or from seeing a family member overseas -- it's crossed into the irrational.
"When you are caught up in emotion to that extent, you're going to panic . . . and you can't employ your intellect and your emotion together at that level," she says.
This type of irrational fear is a pattern, Cannon explains, adding that hypnosis works because it allows you to access the space in your mind that holds that pattern, and change it.
"It works for 90 per cent of people, but you have to want to change," she says. "We can't take over someone's mind."
She notes that hypnotherapy is relaxing and natural, like daydreaming or the moments before you drift off to sleep.
You can contact Cannon's clinic to find hypnotherapists near you who are trained in her techniques (see Resources sidebar), or contact someone locally yourself -- she suggests looking for someone who trained at a very ethical school and who works at hypnotherapy full time.
"It doesn't take long -- at most, it's one or two or three sessions," she says.
yjeffery@theherald.canwest.com
Help is out there
Georgina Cannon (can refer you to hypnotherapists locally; also has CDs and MP3s available): www.ont-hypnosis-centre.com
DuPlour Research & Training Centre (offers fear of flying seminars in Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa and Toronto): www.deplour.com
Holly James: 403-245-5506 ext. 2
Herb Spear: 403-539-7056
Pat Sullivan (Calgary hypnotherapist recommended by Laureen Regan): www.pneumaconsulting.com
© The Calgary Herald 2008Picture note : Student Wendy Atkin, right, listens to Frontier Airlines Captain Tim Cavender as he demonstrates an Airbus A319 flight simulator as part of a Flight without Fear course in Denver.
Photograph by : RICK WILKING/Reuters
