University, vocational training debts to skyrocket costing budget billions, documents show

Updated

The Federal Government is preparing to write off billions of dollars of higher education loans as the number of bad debts soar.

Key points: Government forecasting losses of more than $13.5 billion on four years worth of loans

Education Minister this week recommitted to university funding cuts and fee deregulation

Universities Australia open to changes for loans, but only if HECS-HELP scheme remains fundamentally intact

An ABC Freedom of Information (FOI) investigation has revealed the Government is forecasting losses of more than $13.5 billion on just four years' worth of loans.

The figures come after the Government recommitted to university funding cuts and fee deregulation.

The Coalition is also considering changes to the scandal-plagued vocational education sector, which is helping fuel the bleak fiscal predictions.

"The costs to taxpayers of higher education have, over recent years, grown dramatically," Education Minister Simon Birmingham said.

The HELP loan system, including for university courses and vocational training, allows students to defer course payments and subsidises the interest rate on debt.

The amount never to be repaid on loans issued in 2018-19 is predicted to exceed $4.4 billion — a budget hit nearly four times higher than expected from loans issued last financial year.

"Funding of university students has essentially grown at twice the rate of the economy," Senator Birmingham said.

"I welcome all ideas from the sector, experts and students on how to make university funding sustainable as I continue to consult widely on higher education reform."

Rising student numbers drive 'doubtful debt'

Losses include people not reaching the $54,000 a year income threshold and the Government subsidising the interest on the debt.

The amount owed on student loans rises in line with inflation — not the rate of interest paid by the Government.

Predicted losses on debt issued each financial year: 2014-15: $1.29 billion

2015-16: $2.59 billion

2016-17: $2.99 billion

2017-18: $3.78 billion

2018-19: $4.44 billion

Total = $15.1 billion

A recent Government budget update showed more than 20 per cent of debt issued in 2018-19 was not expected to be repaid, with the average amount of debt tipped to be $22,500.

"This is principally driven by what we call doubtful debt, that is student debt we don't expect to get back," Grattan Institute higher education director Andrew Norton said.

"Driven by expanding student numbers in the higher education system and the extension of HELP loans to students doing vocational education diplomas, which has been very much in the news for lots of malpractice in that industry."

Higher education student numbers continue to rise, in part due to the removal of caps on university places in 2009 to create the current "demand-driven" system.

"But also there are trends in the labour market which mean that students are less likely to reach the $54,000, such as increased part-time work and simply because diploma graduates don't earn as much as bachelor degree graduates," Mr Norton said.

Student loan scheme a 'central feature' of higher education

Universities Australia chief executive Belinda Robinson is open to changes for university loans, but only if the HECS-HELP scheme remains fundamentally intact.

"To ensure that those with the ability to study at university are not impeded and not deterred from doing so," she said.

"It's really important to understand the value of the student loan scheme that we have in Australia.

"It has been an absolutely central feature of the success of higher education policy in Australia for many, many years."

The total cost to the Federal Government of higher education is tipped to be nearly $20 billion in two years time — nearly double the 2008 cost.

Students currently pay just over 40 per cent of university course fees — often through HECS-HELP loans — with the Government paying the rest.

The ABC obtained Senator Birmingham's incoming ministerial brief, with the probe also revealing:

Commonwealth-supported university places will have jumped by 50 per cent over the 10 years to 2018 to 712,200

The uncapping of university places under the former Labor government has cost the Commonwealth at least $3.8 billion since being introduced

The demand-driven system is expected to cost more than $10 billion over a decade, compared to the previous regime

Focus should be on cleaning up vocational training: Opposition

Senator Birmingham earlier this week confirmed the Government was sticking with its plan to cut university funding.

He also confirmed the Government would implement its deregulation plan from next year, after delaying the controversial 2014 budget measure.

The Senate previously rejected the bid, which Labor claimed would see degrees cost $100,000 or more.

The Opposition's higher education spokesman Kim Carr said the focus should be on cleaning up vocational training.

"Personal trainers, and people that are undertaking diplomas of digital interactive gaming, those types of courses are being used running up big debts with no capacity to graduate and no real prospect of repaying," Senator Carr said.

"We can't allow these phoney training colleges to be able to inflict this sort of suffering on so many students."

Topics: university-and-further-education, federal-government, money-and-monetary-policy, australia

First posted


April is Pet First Aid Awareness Month. How prepared are you for an emergency situation with your pet? What if you can’t get your little buddy to the vet quick enough? Do you know what to do in some of the most common emergencies? Pet first aid is important for any pet owner to know, it can help save your pets life if you are unable to seek professional care. This time of year is starting to get warmer outside. That means longer walks, traveling to the beach, mountain climbing and more. Heat exhaustion can be dangerous, even fatal, for dogs. It is important to be able to act quickly and be able to recognize symptoms of heatstroke/exhaustion. Dogs suffering from heat stroke will normally exhibit some or all of the following symptoms:

Restlessness

• Panting

• Increased respiratory rate

• Increased heart rate

• Excess salivation

• Vomiting

• Diarrhea

Heatstroke- Excessive panting and bright red gums or tongue are two major signs of overheating, as well as any temperature above 104 degrees. The normal body temperature for your pet should be between 99-102.5 degrees. As the symptoms progress and the dog’s temperature rises, signs become more serious.

Weakness

• Staggering

• Gasping

• Gum color may become brick red, then purple or blue (cyanosis)

• Seizures

• Coma

• Death

This can be devastating for uninformed or unsuspecting pet owners. Having the proper knowledge and skills to react to these situations will help alleviate much of the panic and stress pet owners often experience. Fortunately, there are some simple things that you can do to protect your dog from the dangers of heat exhaustion.

The very first thing you need to do, is remove your pet from the heat and place them in a cool area.

Check their temperature.

Use a hose to spray your pet with cool water, or place your pet in a cool bath. While doing this, re-check their temperature to see if it’s going down. You can also try placing water soaked towels on their head, neck, feet, and/or abdomen area. Provide cool drinking water for your pet. Keep this up until your pets temperate is back to normal and seek immediate veterinary care afterwards.

Warm weather is here and remember to never leave your pets in a parked car, and watch for signs of overexertion. Being well equipped for the heat when you have your pet with you is also important. The H-Duo travel cup made by Dexus makes that a breeze. This bottle is split in half, one side is for you, and one side is for your pet.

Attached is a removable, and collapsible companion cup to ensure your pet stays hydrated on those warm days.

Another item that is important to keep handy this summer is the Chillz Cooling Wrapz. This washable, durable cloth will stay cool for hours once it’s been wet with cool water. Make sure you’re prepared for the heat we’re sure to endure this summer. Be sure to stop by the store if you need any of these items. Or throw them in your shopping cart right now.

Look for next weeks blog. We will give you tips on wound care.


Palestinian activist Issa Amro

Issa Amro is committed to peaceful resistance to the Israeli occupation in his native West Bank city of Hebron, despite frequent arrests, attacks by settlers and other unrelenting efforts to sabotage his work.

“Nonviolence is the best tool because it strengthens civil society and it gives a role to each person: the kids, the women, the elders and the youth. With nonviolent activities you get more international support and you neutralize the violence of the oppressor,” he explained.

Issa Amro speaks at a press conference marking the beginning of the annual Open Shuhada Street campaign in Hebron.

In Hebron, several hundred hostile settlers, many of them armed, live within close quarters of Palestinians under the guard of the Israeli army. Soldiers severely restrict Palestinians’ movement and do little to prevent settler violence against Palestinians and their property.

Amro, 36, founded the direct action group Youth Against Settlements.

“We go to universities, we go to schools and we organize activities within our community to teach the youth how to resist the occupation using nonviolence,” he said.

Israeli soldiers fire rubber-coated steel bullets and stun grenades at Palestinian boys throwing stones.

Every year, Youth Against Settlements organizes a week of activities as part of the Open Shuhada Street campaign, calling for the reopening of one of Hebron’s former main commercial thoroughfares, which the Israeli army has shuttered and closed to Palestinians since 1994.

Access to the street for Palestinians was restricted after the massacre of 29 worshippers inside the Ibrahimi mosque by American Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein that same year.

Students paint a canvas outside the Shuhada Street checkpoint.

This year’s Open Shuhada Street campaign included an art event in front of an Israeli checkpoint involving students from the nearby Palestine Polytechnic University.

“Through art, we send a message to the occupiers and tell them that they cannot occupy our imagination and dreams of freedom and justice. Art can reach out to more people,” Amro said.

The event was violently dispersed by Israeli soldiers who fired stun grenades at the students after a few boys threw stones towards the checkpoint.

Issa Amro speaks with an Israeli soldier while Ofer Yohanna, a settler, records the exchange on his phone. Responding to an order from Yohanna, the soldier stopped Amro and a delegation from Breaking the Silence from passing through.

Amro gives regular tours of Hebron to delegations from around the world, showing the reality of life under military occupation. The tours are often targeted by settlers seeking to intimidate both Amro and the visitors.

Jewish settler Ofer Ohana frequently interrupts tours conducted by Amro. He is an ambulance driver in Hebron and has been known to delay or even deny the provision of medical attention to Palestinians.

“There is no law enforcement on the Israeli settlers or soldiers. As a Palestinian I am under Israeli military law and my Israeli settler neighbors are under Israeli civilian law. We are under different laws even though we are living in the same neighborhood,” Amro explained.

Palestinians in Hebron commemorate the anniversary of the Ibrahimi mosque massacre.

As part of this year’s Open Shuhada Street campaign, Youth Against Settlements members and volunteers were invited to join residents of Hebron in an evening of commemoration for the victims of the 1994 Ibrahimi mosque massacre.

Israeli soldiers detain four Palestinians, including a child, on their way home after a vigil commemorating the Ibrahimi mosque massacre.

As people started to make their way home after the evening’s commemorative activities, Israeli soldiers detained Amro together with three other Palestinians, including a 10-year-old girl.

Anat Cohen, a settler living in Hebron, drives her car into a group of Palestinians.

While Amro was detained, one of the settlers approached him. “He told me that each dog has his own day to be killed, meant to intimidate me and to describe me as a dog,” Amro recalled.

As people gathered, waiting for Amro and the other Palestinians to be released, the infamously violent settler Anat Cohen drove her car directly into the crowd.

A Palestinian man talks to an Israeli soldier who refused to intervene when a settler drove her car into a crowd.

Several military units were called to the scene but none made any attempt to restrain Cohen. Yet in recent months soldiers have shot dead numerous Palestinians who Israel said used their cars as weapons against Israelis.

“As Palestinians we are under the military law; we don’t have any rights and they don’t take our testimonies and our words into consideration. Soldiers are believed to always say the truth; they don’t need to show evidence. We, on the other hand, need to show evidence that we are not guilty,” Amro said.

A Palestinian man collapses after a settler attacked a crowd that had gathered to commemorate the Ibrahimi mosque massacre.

A Palestinian man collapsed during the incident. Many Israeli soldiers stood around, making no effort to provide assistance. An ambulance was called but its arrival was delayed.

Two days later, during a demonstration marking the end of the week’s Open Shuhada Street campaign, Israeli soldiers broke up the crowd and arrested a human rights lawyer and a journalist. Approximately 50 people were injured when soldiers fired tear gas, stun grenades and rubber-coated bullets at the crowd.

Issa Amro speaks to a group of young Israelis during a Breaking the Silence tour. At the end of his conversation with the group, Israeli soldiers appeared and arrested Amro.

Amro was arrested a few days later at the end of a meeting with a delegation from Breaking the Silence, a group which publishes anonymous testimonies by former Israeli soldiers to expose the army’s rights abuses.

He was charged with incitement, organizing an illegal demonstration and evading arrest – allegations which he rejects.

“It is a kind of intimidation to stop the nonviolent activities and to stop any person from speaking out against the occupation and human rights violations,” Amro, who was released one day later, said.

The constant harassment doesn’t deter Amro.

“I will continue fighting them until they leave Hebron and they end their human rights violations,” he added.

Claire Thomas is a freelance photographer from the UK whose work focuses on social, political and humanitarian issues in the Middle East, Europe and Africa. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook.


PARIS -- Pepe is set to become Paris Saint-Germain's first summer signing once his Real Madrid contract comes to an end, a source close to the French capital outfit told ESPN FC.

The Portugal international is still on Confederations Cup duty and will be until the third-placed playoff on Sunday, just two days before PSG coach Unai Emery and his non-international players report to Camp des Loges for preseason training, but the 34-year-old is close to signing a contract.

According to the source, Pepe has been in talks with Les Parisiens for some time over a potential move to Parc des Princes -- before and after compatriot Antero Henrique's arrival as sporting director.

However, it is mainly because of the former Porto man that this deal has been pushed to the brink of completion after the Portuguese transfer guru and Emery agreed the squad require greater experience and a stronger winning mentality.

The source said Pepe is set to sign a one-year contract with PSG, which includes an option for a second, and that the Ligue 1 giants' medical staff have already examined the Brazil-born Portugal star's troublesome knee.

Although he will go on holiday post-Confederations Cup, the former Maritimo and Porto man -- who has won the Champions League three times as well as the 2016 European Championship among other titles -- is almost certain to be Henrique's first signing since he joined PSG at the start of June.

Pepe is expected to sign with PSG after he's finished with Portugal this summer.

Another boost for the sporting director and the recently deposed former French champions is the news that Thiago Motta is set to extend his stay by one more campaign.

The source claimed that although there are still a few details left to be taken care of in terms of how the 34-year-old transitions into a staff role at the end of his proposed new deal -- and which position he will occupy -- the Brazil-born Italy international will prolong his playing career by one more term.

Motta's contract extension should be taken care of by the end of the week, and along with Pepe, he will be the main source of experience in the dressing room.

Once Pepe and Motta are sorted, PSG's next objective will be to lure Fabinho from French rivals and current champions Monaco to the capital.

The Brazil international is currently attracting interest from the likes of Manchester United but the source says the 23-year-old -- who was has been a revelation with Les Monegasques under Leonardo Jardim since switching from right back to defensive midfield -- has given his word to Henrique that he will hold out for a move to PSG.

Assuming Fabinho gets his wish, he will take over the deep-lying midfield role Motta has made vital to the team's now trademark possession-based 4-3-3 formation, enabling Marco Verratti and Adrien Rabiot to occupy the more advanced berths with Blaise Matuidi likely to be moved on this summer.

Jonathan Johnson covers PSG and the French national team for ESPN FC. Twitter: @Jon_LeGossip.


2009 film based on Alice Sebold's 2002 novel

The Lovely Bones is a 2009 supernatural drama film directed by Peter Jackson, and starring Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, Michael Imperioli, and Saoirse Ronan. The screenplay by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Jackson was based on Alice Sebold’s award-winning and bestselling 2002 novel of the same name. It follows a girl who is murdered and watches over her family from the in-between, and is torn between seeking vengeance on her killer and allowing her family to heal. An international co-production between the United States, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand,[2] the film was produced by Carolynne Cunningham, Walsh, Jackson, and Aimee Peyronnet, with Steven Spielberg, Tessa Ross, Ken Kamins, and James Wilson as executive producers. Principal photography began in October 2007 in New Zealand and Pennsylvania, United States. The film's score was composed by Brian Eno.

The Lovely Bones was first released on December 26, 2009, in New Zealand, and then internationally in January 2010. The film's North American release date was changed multiple times, with a limited release on December 11, 2009, and a wider release on January 15, 2010.[3] It was released to mainly mixed reviews from critics; the story and its message were generally criticized, with praise mainly aimed at the visual effects, Peter Jackson's direction, and the performances of Ronan and Tucci. In the film's opening weekend, in limited release, it grossed $116,616, despite only having been screened in three theaters, placing it at 30th place on the box office chart.[3] The Lovely Bones grossed over $44 million in North America.[4] The film also received numerous accolades, including Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, BAFTA, and Academy Award nominations.

Plot [ edit ]

In 1973, 14-year-old high school freshman Susie Salmon dreams about becoming a photographer. One day, Ray, a boy she has a crush on, approaches her at school and asks her out. As Susie walks home through a cornfield, she runs into her neighbor, George Harvey, who coaxes her into his underground den. Inside, Susie becomes uncomfortable and attempts to leave; when he grabs her, the scene fades until she is seen rushing past classmate Ruth Connors, apparently fleeing Harvey's den.

The Salmons become worried when Susie fails to return home from school. Her father, Jack, searches for her, while her mother, Abigail, waits for the police. In town, Susie sees Jack, but he does not respond to her when she calls. Susie runs home to find Harvey soaking in a bathtub. After seeing her bracelet hanging on the sink faucet near a bloody shaving razor, Susie realizes she never escaped the den and was murdered by Harvey. Screaming, she is pulled into the "In-Between", that is neither Heaven nor Earth. From there, Susie watches over her loved ones, unable to let go despite the urging of her new afterlife friend, Holly.

Investigating Susie's disappearance with Detective Fenerman, Jack thinks Susie was murdered by someone she knew. He researches neighbors and comes to think Harvey is the killer. Fenerman is unable to find any evidence pinpointing Harvey as a suspect, as Harvey cleaned up. Susie's sister, Lindsey, agrees with Jack's suspicions, but their casework takes a toll on Abigail, and Jack invites Abigail's alcoholic mother, Lynn, to move in with them. Feeling alienated from her husband, Abigail leaves for California. Susie, in her afterlife, learns that Harvey, who has now targeted Lindsey as his next victim, has murdered six other girls, including Holly, and that he stuffed Susie's body into a safe in his basement.

One night, Jack, carrying a bat, trails Harvey into the cornfield. However, Jack accidentally stumbles across Susie's friend, Clarissa. Her boyfriend, who mistakenly thinks his girlfriend is being assaulted, nearly bludgeons Jack to death as Harvey watches from a hiding spot. As Jack recuperates, Lindsey breaks into Harvey's house looking for evidence that he killed Susie. Upstairs, she finds a notebook containing a sketch of the den, a lock of Susie's hair, and news articles about Susie's disappearance. Harvey returns home and almost catches Lindsey in his house, but she escapes and rushes home to discover that her mother has returned. Not wishing to spoil her parents' reunion, she gives the book to her grandmother, who contacts the police. Harvey has already fled, having seen Lindsey running from his home – he takes the safe containing Susie's remains with him.

Susie's afterlife begins expanding into a larger heaven, and she is greeted by Harvey's other victims—now showing nine, including Susie. She resists Holly's urging to enter Heaven along with the others, claiming she has one final thing to do. Meanwhile, Susie's classmates Ruth and Ray are present when Harvey drives up to dispose of the safe at a sinkhole dump site. Susie returns to Earth and enters Ruth's body, causing Ruth to faint. Ray rushes to Ruth's aid only to realize she has become Susie. They kiss, completing Susie's last wish, and she returns to Heaven. Meanwhile Harvey dumps the safe in a sinkhole, leaving it to disappear in the muddy water as he drives away.

Sometime later, Harvey meets a young woman outside a diner and offers her a ride, but she rejects him and leaves. A large icicle falls from an overhead branch, hitting Harvey on the shoulder. He loses his balance on the ice and falls backward over a cliff to his death. Time passes, and Susie sees that her family is healing, which Susie refers to as "the lovely bones" that grew around her absence. As the film concludes, Susie finally enters Heaven, telling the audience: "My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name Susie. I was 14 years old when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. I was here for a moment and then I was gone. I wish you all a long and happy life."

Cast [ edit ]

Production [ edit ]

In May 2000, Film4 Productions acquired feature film rights to Alice Sebold's novel The Lovely Bones,[25] when it was a half-written manuscript. Producer Aimee Peyronnet had sought to attract studio interest to the manuscript, and an insider informed Film4's deputy head of production, Jim Wilson, of the project.[26] The company attached Luc Besson and Peyronnet's production company Seaside to the project, two years before the novel's release.[25] By February 2001, Lynne Ramsay was hired to direct and write the film adaptation of the novel.[27] In July 2002, Channel 4 shut down Film4, causing Hollywood studios and producers to pursue acquisition of feature film rights to The Lovely Bones, which had spent multiple weeks at the top of the New York Times Best Seller list. The film adaptation, which had been estimated at a budget of $15 million, remained with Channel 4 under its newly developed inhouse film unit, with Ramsay still contracted to write and direct. By October 2002, Ramsay was writing the script with fellow screenwriter Liana Dognini, with filming planned for summer 2003.[26] Author Sebold was invited by the producers to provide input on the project.[28]

Ramsay, who had read the novel in manuscript prior to publication, said in 2012 that her adaptation departed from it significantly. The scenes with Susie in heaven would have been depicted purely as her father's imagination. He would have become friends with Mr. Harvey, never suspecting him of having killed his daughter. "I really didn't like the My Little Pony, she's-in-heaven, everything's-O.K. aspect", she told The New York Times in 2012.[29]

In July 2003, the studio DreamWorks negotiated a first look deal with producer Peyronnet,[30] after DreamWorks co-founder Steven Spielberg expressed interest in the project.[31] DreamWorks did not acquire the rights to the novel, and Ramsay was eventually detached from the project as, she says, FilmFour wanted a version more faithful to the novel.[29] In April 2004, producers Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens entered negotiations to develop the project.[32] Jackson described the book as "a wonderfully emotional and powerful story. Like all the best fantasy, it has a solid grounding in the real world."[33] By January 2005, Jackson and Walsh planned to independently purchase film rights and to seek studio financing after a script had been developed. The producers sought to begin adapting a spec script for The Lovely Bones in January 2006, with the goal of script completion and budget estimation by the following May.[34]

Jackson explained he enjoyed the novel because he found it "curiously optimistic" and uplifting because of the narrator's sense of humor, adding there was a difference between its tone and subject matter. He felt very few films dealt with the loss of a loved one.[35] Jackson foresaw the most challenging element in the novel to adapt was the portrayal of Susie, the protagonist, in her heaven, and making it "ethereal and emotional but not hokey."[33] Saoirse Ronan explained Jackson chose to depict the afterlife as depending on Susie's emotions. "Whenever Susie feels happy, Heaven is sunny and there's birds and everything. Whenever it’s not so great, it's raining or she’s in the middle of an ocean."[36] Jackson described the book's description of "heaven" as being an "In-Between" rather than a true heaven and said he was not trying to paint a definitive picture of Heaven itself.[35] "[W]hen Jackson created Susie's heaven, in a 1973 world, he went through the Partridge Family television show archives as a reference."[37]

"[I] basically [added] more violence and suffering, [the audience] wanted far more violence [...] They just weren't satisfied [...] We got a lot of people telling us that they were disappointed with this death scene, as they wanted to see [the character] in agony and suffer a lot more, we had to create a whole suffering death scene just to give people the satisfaction they needed." —Jackson to Reuters on re-shooting Harvey's death scene, November 2009[38]

A 120-page draft of the script was written by September 2006.[39] In April 2007, the script was completed by Jackson, Walsh and Boyens; Jackson intended to direct. The three producers began seeking a studio partner to finance the film adaptation. Besides the major studios, smaller companies including United Artists were also contacted. New Line Cinema was excluded from negotiations because of Jackson's legal dispute with the studio over royalties from his The Lord of the Rings trilogy.[40] Jackson sought a beginning $65 million budget for The Lovely Bones, also requesting from studios what kind of promotional commitments and suggestions they would make for the film adaptation.[41]

By May, four studios remained interested in the project: DreamWorks, Warner Bros., Sony, and Universal.[42] The Lovely Bones was sold to DreamWorks for $70 million.[43] Paramount Pictures received the rights to distribute the film worldwide. Production began in October 2007 in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and New Zealand.[5][44] Shooting in parts of Delaware, Chester and Montgomery counties, including Hatfield,[45] Ridley Township, Phoenixville, Royersford, Malvern and East Fallowfield,[46] lasted a few weeks, and most of the studio shooting was done in New Zealand.[39]

In December 2008, Brian Eno signed on to compose the film's score. Fran Walsh, a big fan of his work, suggested him to Jackson.[47] Jackson had called Eno to request use of two of his early tracks to evoke atmosphere for the 1970s scenes in the film. When Eno asked if he could compose the whole score, Jackson was surprised, since he had heard Eno did not like working on films. For the film's ending, Eno uncovered a demo he had done in 1973 and reunited with the vocalist to create a proper version for the film, commenting: "That song from 1973 was finally finished in 2008!"[48]

In November 2009, Jackson stated that he re-shot new footage of Harvey's death scene after test audiences said it was not violent enough and wanted to "see more of Harvey in pain."[13][38] Jackson said it was important to him that the movie receive a PG-13 rating so that the film could appeal to the widest possible audience, despite the necessarily violent nature of some scenes.[13]

Release [ edit ]

Strategy [ edit ]

The Lovely Bones and screened a clip from it. Jackson at 2009 Comic-Con film festival . At the festival Jackson discussedand screened a clip from it.

The Lovely Bones was originally scheduled for release on March 13, 2009, but it was delayed to December 11, 2009, as the studio became interested in releasing the film for "awards season," which gave Jackson an opportunity to make some effects shots larger in scope.[49] The film then received a limited theater release on December 11, 2009, in the United States.[50] The film was originally set to have a wider United States theater release on December 25, 2009 (Christmas Day), as part of a campaign to build its momentum into January 2010.[52] In early December it was confirmed that the United States release date had been pushed back by three weeks to January 15, 2010.[53] Paramount and DreamWorks did not give a reason for the change of the release date. The film premiered in New Zealand on December 26, 2009, and was released in the United Kingdom on January 29 and in other countries in January 2010.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Paramount invested $70 million in production and an additional $85 million in worldwide marketing and distribution.[53] In December 2009, the Los Angeles Times described the marketing and promotion of The Lovely Bones as having been a "heavy advertising campaign."[52] In late July 2009, as part of the promotion, Jackson talked about the film and screened a 41⁄ 2 minute clip at the San Diego Comic-Con International film festival.[37]

As part of marketing for the film, in August 2009, people were allowed to enter a contest to win a trip to Wellington, for the film's New Zealand premiere on December 14, 2009.[54] The offer included, if the winner lived outside of Wellington, one night’s accommodation and a voucher for flight or petrol to Wellington.[54] A teaser trailer was released in August 2009, days before the film's official trailer.[55] The official trailer debuted on the television series Entertainment Tonight and was released online shortly afterwards.[37][56] In August 2009, Jackson offered a "behind-the-scenes look" at the film and discussed elements (mainly violence) in the film's plot line.[57]

The Los Angeles Times reported that Paramount had originally expected the film to appeal to a "sophisticated, adult audience," but after poor revenue and average reviews, the studio decided to redirect the film to an audience in another age group.[52] Surveys showed that the film was favored more by females aged 13–20 than by any other demographic. Paramount began to screen the movie "aggressively for high school- and college-age girls" during its three-screen limited release.[52]

Box office [ edit ]

On December 11, 2009, the film was released on three screens in Los Angeles and New York. As of January 4, 2010, the film had grossed over $389,000 in the US.[3] Claudia Eller and Ben Fritz of the Los Angeles Times felt that it did poorly at the box office in the first few weeks of its release because of average reviews and negative word-of-mouth.[52] During its opening-weekend release on three screens, it earned over $116,616, an average of estimated $38,872 per-theater revenue.[3] The film's revenue placed it at thirtieth place on the box office chart.[3] In the film's second and third weeks of release, the film saw a decrease; in the fourth week, it had a 54.3-percent increase.[58]

When put into wide release on January 15, 2010,[18] it grossed $17,005,133 that weekend, ranking number three at the domestic box office. By the end of its run, The Lovely Bones had made $44,114,232 domestically, and $49,507,108 overseas, for a worldwide total of $93,621,340.

Home media [ edit ]

The film was released in the US on DVD and two-disc Blu-ray April 20, 2010 and in the United Kingdom on June 11, 2010.[59]

Reception [ edit ]

Critical reception [ edit ]

Although Ronan and Tucci were praised for their performances, The Lovely Bones received mixed reviews from critics.[60] On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 32%, based on 238 reviews, with an average rating of 5/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "It's stuffed full of Peter Jackson's typically dazzling imagery, but The Lovely Bones suffers from abrupt shifts between horrific violence and cloying sentimentality."[61] Metacritic gave the film a score of 42 out of 100, based on 36 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[62] It is Peter Jackson's lowest rated film to date.[citation needed]

Ian Freer of Empire gave the film 4/5 stars.[63] Freer emphasized the "bold, daring original filmmaking, with arguably more emotional and intellectual meat to chew on than either the Rings trilogy or Kong."[63] Freer noted that, like The Lord of the Rings, the film "does a fantastic job with revered, complex source material" and that, since it is "as terrific on terra firma as it is audacious in its astral plane", it is "doubtful" that there would be a "more imaginative" and "courageous film" in 2010.[63]

Richard Corliss of Time wrote that "through [Peter] Jackson's art" and Ronan's "magic" the "obscenity of child murder has been invested with immense gravity and grace" and "like the story of Susie's life after death, that's a miracle."[64] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone felt that the film was "conveyed" in a "remarkable performance" by Ronan and described Tucci as being "magnificent as a man of uncontrollable impulses" to "help Jackson cut a path to a humanity that supersedes life and death."[65] Travers praised Jackson for building "jolting suspense." Despite praising the film, however, Travers noted that while the book "never flinched," the film does, and while the "business is being transacted" by Jackson with a "Lord of the Rings fantasy" the film "attunes himself to a family tragedy."[65]

Claudia Puig of USA Today gave the film 2/4 stars, remarking that while "[Peter] Jackson gets the thriller scenes right", the "conceit of Susie trapped in a DayGlo world between the one she left and her final resting place, imparting lessons on coping with death, feels preachy."[66] Puig also described the film as having "clashing tones" that veer from "lightheartedness to heavy-handedness."[66] Puig also criticized the film's computer-generated imagery, describing it as being "cheesy" and felt that it broke "no ground."[66] Kirt Honeycutt, of the Hollywood Reporter, described the film as telling "a fundamentally different story" which is "one that is not without its tension, humor and compelling details", but that "it's also a simpler, more button-pushing tale that misses the joy and heartbreak of the original."[67] Honeycutt also described Jackson as having transformed Sebold's "startling, unique novel about the aftermath of a terrible murder" into a story that's more "focused on crime and punishment."[67]

"[Alice] Sebold's book would've had a tough leap to the multiplex no matter who guided it. But [Peter] Jackson is too enamored with the idea of mixing heaven and the heebie-jeebies, so he's made the skeevy equivalent of a Mitch Albom book with some pulp fiction pressed between its covers." Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News[68]

Stephanie Zacharek, of Salon.com, viewed the film as being "an expensive-looking mess that fails to capture the mood, and the poetry, of its source material" because "good actors fighting a poorly conceived script, under the guidance of a director who can no longer make the distinction between imaginativeness and computer-generated effects."[69] Todd McCarthy, of Variety, felt that Jackson had undermined the "solid work from a good cast" with "show-offy celestial evocations" that "severely disrupt the emotional connections with the characters."[70] McCarthy stated that he felt that the film, overall, was a "significant artistic disappointment."[70] Joe Neumaier, of New York Daily News, described Jackson as having "siphoned out all the soulfulness" that made the author's "combination thriller/afterlife fantasy a best-seller" and that the film was "a gumball-colored potboiler that's more squalid than truly mournful."[68] Neumaier also wrote that the film and Jackson "wasted" a "good cast."[68] Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 1.5 stars out of 4, calling it "deplorable", and criticizing the apparent message that Susie's murder eventually made her happier. He was also critical of the film's portrayal of Heaven, which he compared to "a happy gathering of new Facebook friends". However, he praised the acting, stating that "this whole film is Jackson's fault".[71]

According to the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), the rating given to The Lovely Bones received 24 objections, more than any other movie in 2010. The BBFC report states, "Many found the film to be a shocking and upsetting experience. The scene in which young Susie is entrapped by the killer, and the subsequent sequence in which the killer soaks in a bath after the murder, were compared by some complainants to scenes in ‘18’ rated horror films." The BBFC rated the movie a 12A, and many complained that the movie was upsetting for a younger audience. Nevertheless, the BBFC defended its rating: "The Lovely Bones lacked any explicit detail of the murder and any sexual elements were downplayed. The audience’s sympathies remain entirely with the family and the film had many positive messages about life."[72][73][74][75][76]

Accolades [ edit ]

See also [ edit ]


There are still fences up all over the Splash Park and Issak Kendal Ker Plaza on Princes Island this weekend. These Fences make it impossible for me to do my job. On the busiest weekend of the year celebrating 150 years of Canadain History one tradition was forgotten and several Magicians, Jugglers, Acrobats and Clowns are unable to work.

Ever since the park was built there has been street performance in that plaza. In it’s height there were dozens of entertainers emigrating to Calgary so they could perform on that beautiful amphitheater. For generations there has always been some kind of performance there every weekend. People who saw a one-man band there as a child, bring their kids back to watch the new generation of magicians and jugglers. Especially on Canada Day.

Not this year. The fences wont allow the passing people to step off the path, out of traffic and enter the theatre to sit on the grass or the stones or the 3 tiers of steps for seating. When people walk past and see someone performing on the stage they don’t have the option to stop and watch.

On Canada Day we moved our shows to Stephen Ave because there were all kinds of events and fun things bringing people to the core. The next day we went back to the amphitheater, THE FENCES ARE STILL UP!?! Our permits are very clear about where we are allowed perform. Because we gather crowds and perform full shows we are restricted to ONLY work in side that amphitheater. As soon as we gather a crowd anywhere else Bylaw or the Police shut us down.

Is this just a negative result of bureaucracy? Or is Calgary Parks trying to get rid of us. Because right now they are acting like a partner who wants to break up me but would rather manipulate me into doing it for them.


Prabhat Kumar Jha

Rautahat, August 6

Police today arrested contractor Prahlad Sah of Durga Construction Service after four girls of a family drowned in a ditch that was dug by Sah’s men to expand the Ring Road in Garuda Municipality, Rautahat.

Ram Ekwal Sah’s daughters — Sangita Kumari, 12, and Sunita Kumari, 9, his brother Jogendra Sah’s daughter Sunaina Kumari, 9, and his other brother Prem Sah’s daughter Susmita Kumari, 9, of Ramjanaki Temple Tole of Garuda Municipality died in the tragic incident yesterday. Police arrested Prahlad after the victims’ family demonstrated against the incident.

The locals protested with the bodies at Methur Chowk for four hours after relatives of the minors received the bodies from district hospital after the post-mortem today. They demanded stern action against the staffers at Road Division Office, Chandrapur, and the contractor.

Police assured the victims’ kin that action would be taken against the guilty. SP Yagya Binod Pokhrel of Rautahat District Police Office said an immediate relief amount of

Rs 25,000 was offered to families of each girl for their final rites.

Rautahat Chief District Officer Uddab Bahadur Thapa has sought documents related to road construction from Road Division Office Chief Yogesh Suman.

Suman said he was unaware of ditches being dug on the road. “We called a tender for road construction, giving all responsibilities to the contractor,” he added. He said the contractor should be held responsible for the incident.

The road division office had called the tender for expanding the road. Sah signed the contract for Rs 1.4 million, which was one-third of the tender price. Locals accused the contractor of using soil dug out from sides of the road for construction of the road.

A local, Manoj Chaudhary, said ditches were dug on both sides of the road using dozer. He said minors fell into a ditch filled with rainwater as they were oblivious of the ditches.

Ram Ekwal has sought action against staffers of the road construction company who had left the ditches unattended.

A version of this article appears in print on August 07, 2017 of The Himalayan Times.

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The Association of American Universities released the results of its 27-school “climate survey” on campus sexual assault on Monday, and officials explained on a conference call with reporters why this one is the gold standard.

Unlike earlier surveys, the AAU survey included both a large number of campuses and a large sample size at each participating school, said Bonnie Fisher, a consultant for survey design firm Westat and professor at the University of Cincinnati.

Prior surveys were “plagued” by differences in definitions and methods, how they were administered and how they were designed, Fisher said. The AAU survey precisely measured how many students said they were sexually violated by clearly defined methods of contact (penetration and touching) and “tactics” (physical force, drugs and alcohol, coercion, absence of affirmative consent).

You would think with this careful design spread across more than two dozen large research universities, the AAU survey results would differ notably from previous surveys that suffered from vague definitions, small samples and “selection bias,” meaning an overrepresentation of people with strong views on the subject in the survey pool – all of which contributed to implausibly high levels of reported assault.

Nope. This survey found slightly more sexual violence than the well-known but questionable statistic that 1 in 5 women are sexually assaulted in college:

The incidence of sexual assault and sexual misconduct due to physical force, threats of physical force, or incapacitation among female undergraduate student respondents was 23.1 percent, including 10.8 percent who experienced penetration.

This result made no sense to me, so I flipped to the section of the report that defines “incapacitation” (page viii of the executive summary), a concept that is so poorly explained on the average campus that it’s practically meaningless:

“….unable to consent or stop what was happening because you were passed out, asleep or incapacitated due to drugs or alcohol”

You’ll notice that is not a definition of incapacitation – it’s a tautology (incapacitation means being incapacitated) – and it’s not meaningfully different from how other surveys have treated incapacitation, as something you just know when it’s happening (to yourself or your partner).

Indeed, students are now repeatedly warned at many campuses that they or their partners can’t consent if they are “incapacitated,” “intoxicated” or just “drunk” (we’re looking at you, Coastal Carolina), and judging whether an accuser was in a state of mind to be able to consent to sex (and whether the accused should have known) is one of the central tasks of campus adjudications.

RELATED: If you don’t have the best sex of your life at Coastal Carolina University, it’s rape

Since everyone agrees that alcohol (at the least) is involved in a significant number of campus sexual experiences, if not most of them, you’d think that telling students the precise conditions for incapacitation would be indispensable for getting accurate answers.

When I asked officials on the call why the definition was so loose, and how it could lead students to think they were incapacitated when they were drunk but still cognizant of their actions, they basically shrugged.

“That’s a fairly standard phrase that’s used on a number of other surveys” and it was taken from the White House’s task force on sexual violence, Westat Vice President David Cantor said. “We actually modified that statement a bit to make it more strict,” and “it’s not just talking about being drunk.”

End of story.

No one seemed to appreciate the irony that the AAU and Westat were bragging about designing a survey that avoided the pitfalls of all its predecessors, and yet it made the same giant honking mistake as every survey before it: treating incapacitation as something self-evident.

There’s every reason to suspect that students who were already uneasy about prior sexual encounters – perhaps because they were drinking at the time – would identify in retrospect as “incapacitated,” if prompted, unless they were told in detail that it’s more than just acting stupid when you’re drunk.

Brett Sokolow of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management, which advises schools how to design sexual-misconduct policies and proceedings, gave a thorough definition of incapacitation 10 years ago that could have been useful to AAU and Westat:

One becomes under the influence of alcohol as soon as one has anything to drink. Impairment begins as soon as alcohol enters the bloodstream, and increases with consumption. Intoxication and inebriation are synonyms, as is drunkenness, and corresponds to a .08 blood alcohol concentration. Incapacitation is a state beyond drunkenness or intoxication. What is confusing about incapacity is that it has nothing to do with an amount of alcohol or a specific blood alcohol concentration. In fact, some drunk people will be incapacitated, and some will not. Incapacity can be defined with respect to how the alcohol consumed impacts on someone’s decision-making capacity, awareness of consequences, and ability to make fully-informed judgments.

Though his discussion goes on to give colleges far too much leeway to judge that what appeared consensual, to both parties, at the time of sex, was actually not consensual in retrospect, at least those conditions put some intelligible limits on the concept of incapacitation.

I’ll have more thoughts on this report, and a review of other skeptical reactions, in a future post.

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Subtle changes are made all the time in college football, but it's the wholesale changes that really help separate the men from the boys. Sometimes you have to revolutionize your approach in order to improve your product.

See: recruiting, the expansion craze, offensive philosophies, offseason schedules, rejuvenation tactics away from the field and satellite camps.

You simply can't fight change. Doing so is foolish. That's one reason the SEC has been so successful during the past decade. Those eight national championships in 10 years didn't just materialize overnight. Careful planning and excellent business sense from league officials, universities and coaches have helped the SEC rise above the rest in college football.

Thanks to the skillful mind of former SEC commissioner Mike Slive, the SEC has stayed ahead of the curve for most of the 2000's. New commissioner Greg Sankey is in the infancy of his reign as league commissioner, but if he wants to give the SEC another leg up on the competition, he could take a radical step into future planning.

Petition the NCAA to get rid of divisions in college football ... even though the SEC created them in 1992.

Honestly, what's the point? They are outdated, and hurt the conference more than help it.

But, Edward, what about traditional division rivalries? Why do you hate the fact that Missouri is on the western side of the conference, but plays in the Eastern Division?

For starters, yes, it makes no sense to have Missouri in the East. Secondly, this is a great way to make sure that traditional rivalries are preserved and respected.

I love traditional division rivalries so much that I think the league is bleeding real conference rivalries dry with its silly format. Nine conference games aside, the 6-1-1 conference scheduling model (one permanent and one rotating opponent in the opposite division) does no one any favors. It's bad for the players, bad for the fans and really leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to league play.

Obviously, people above my pay grade would have to dissect this more thoroughly, but if the SEC pushes the NCAA to get rid of divisions, conferences can keep their rivalries and even invest in older ones. Example: Florida and Auburn began play in 1912 and played for 58 consecutive years (1945-2002). The additions of Missouri and Texas A&M in 2012 further extinguished this rivalry by eliminating another cross-divisional opponent. Florida and Auburn aren't slated to play until 2019 in Gainesville, and at Auburn in 2024.

Without divisions, Florida could keep Georgia, Tennessee and LSU (the current permanent West opponent) on its schedule, and add Auburn. The Tigers could keep Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee, and add Florida.

Protect all the key in-conference rivalries for schools and set four or five permanent opponents for each team. Rotate the others with a home-and-home series, mix and match, whatever. If you have four permanent opponents and four different rotators or five permanent opponents and three rotators, players would see each SEC team in three years. Doing home-and-homes would push that to five years in either format.

Of course, time between rotators decreases with nine conference games.

Players would see every school in four years and you're keeping the most important games each season. Two wins right there. And disproportionate permanent crossovers would be gone.

You're welcome, LSU.

Elimination of divisions would also ensure that the two best teams would play in Atlanta every year. The West has won seven straight conference titles, six by 14 points or more. Florida (2008) is the last East team to win the conference. Let's not act like there hasn't been an imbalance of power in the SEC, thanks to divisions. There is an obvious disparity, creating more worry for teams and their true playoff hopes.

The SEC title game has mostly gotten the pairings right by overall record, but there have been instances in the past where a ho-hum title game would have been replaced by a more deserving matchup, like Alabama and LSU in 2011 and Auburn-Arkansas in 2010.

Nothing wrong with getting the most competitive game possible in your most important game every year by guaranteeing No. 1 vs. No. 2, which -- wait for it -- increases playoff hopes even more!

On the outside, this looks simple. With the sport evolving more and more, you might as well make sure you can get the best product on the field more and more. This is a step in that direction, and it serves the league, its teams and its fans well.


In October, the US Intelligence Community, which includes 16 American intelligence agencies, announced that they were “confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.” Controversy broke out last week over the disputed conclusion that the Russians were attempting to push Donald Trump to victory, as opposed to attempting to undermine the electoral system generally – but there’s been little controversy about whether Russia was behind the WikiLeaks hacks.

Except on the right.

There, many commentators have insisted that there’s no evidence whatsoever that Vladimir Putin and the Russian government were behind the hacks. Sean Hannity, who used to believe that Julian Assange should go to jail, hosted Assange (whom, Hannity assured his audience, had “done us a favor” by hacking the Democratic National Committee) and kvelled as Assange said that the Russians had nothing to do with the hacks. Trump mouthpiece Bill Mitchell dutifully tweeted Putin’s challenge to the United States, and that tweet received nearly two thousand likes and well over a thousand retweets from sympathetic Trump fans.

Here’s the actual story, from CNN:

The United States must either stop accusing Russia of meddling in its elections or prove it, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was "indecent" of the United States to "groundlessly" accuse Russia of intervention in the US election campaign, Russian state news agency Tass reported. "They should either stop talking about that or produce some proof at last. Otherwise it all begins to look unseemly," Peskov reportedly said about the latest accusations that Russia was responsible for hacker attacks.

The celebratory glee from Trump advocates – see, Putin’s denying it, so it must all be a Democratic plot in coordination with the CIA! – is odd, considering that Putin has a long record of lying blatantly about his nefarious activities. In 2012, Russia denied that a spy ring allegedly working for Russia was working for Russia. In May 2015, for example, as Russian troops motored into Ukraine, the government denied that its troops were in Ukraine at all – even as the Russian government issued an order covering up all deaths of Russian troops in the country. In October 2015, the Russian government denied that it or pro-Russian separatists had anything to do with the shooting down of MH17 – and Trump naturally bought Putin’s explanation, stating, “Putin and Russia say they didn’t do it, the other side said they did, no one really knows who did it, probably Putin knows who did it, possibly it was Russia but they are totally denying it.” Last month, Russia denied reports of an air offensive in Aleppo – even though human rights groups reported the airstrikes.

Russia, in other words, lies all the time. It’s a dictatorship run by a former KGB operative.

Yet Republicans seem to parrot Putin’s line as the truth, so long as that truth benefits Donald Trump. Kellyanne Conway’s ridiculous line that questions about Russian hacking should end if President Obama loved “the country enough” are a shoddy way of shutting down a discussion about the hacking itself.

That’s pretty disgusting. But it makes sense from a utilitarian perspective, if not a moral one – many Trump supporters are happy to praise one of the planet’s worst human beings so long as he helps their agenda, and top members of the Trump administration think of Russia as part of the anti-jihadist team, and have some admiration for Putin’s nationalist ambitions (see Bannon, Steve).

It’s sad to watch the party of Reagan mimic the Putin party line. But partisanship now trumps decency and truth, obviously.


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Yesterday, Twitter took the lid off its recent acquisition Vine. It’s a social app that allows you to make six-second, looped, GIF-like videos. It has an interface very reminiscent of Instagram, primarily because for the time being it’s mobile-only (although its deal with Twitter means its content is embeddable in Twitter cards, so Vines are showing up there plenty).

Vine is fun, creative, simple, social, and as it turns out, something news outlets are busy experimenting with. It isn’t anything revolutionary, however. It’s not a threat to all that many apps or platforms out there – but Facebook shut it off anyway.

Yes, within a day of Vine’s launch, Facebook pulled the ability for Vine users to find Facebook friends who were also using the new app.

When asked for comment, a Facebook rep pointed me to this just-posted blog entry:

“For the vast majority of developers building social apps and games, keep doing what you’re doing. Our goal is to provide a platform that gives people an easy way to login to your apps, create personalized and social experiences, and easily share what they’re doing in your apps with people on Facebook. This is how our platform has been used by the most popular categories of apps, such as games, music, fitness, news and general lifestyle apps.

For a much smaller number of apps that are using Facebook to either replicate our functionality or bootstrap their growth in a way that creates little value for people on Facebook, such as not providing users an easy way to share back to Facebook, we’ve had policies against this that we are further clarifying today (see I.10).”

Vine isn’t the only app to feel Facebook’s cold shoulder: Mobile text and voice messaging app Voxer also lost Facebook access recently, because after its update to Messenger, Facebook now sees it as a competitor. Voxer says that while Facebook isn’t where it’s getting user growth from, it is a disappointing development. “We are sorry that a channel for engagement is being shut down by Facebook to the detriment of our community. But we aren’t alone, and it is both a lesson and a warning for other companies to be careful about counting on third party services that can be easily taken away.” Russian search giant Yandex’s Wonder app – essentially a mobile, voice-activated version of Graph Search – is yet another product that found itself on the outs with Facebook.

What is the deal?

What’s maybe most upsetting about this series of events is that it’s not even surprising anymore. For the last year, social-networking platforms have been cutting off varying levels of access to one another. A quick recap of all the most unfriendly moments in social networking that have been going on:

It didn’t use to be like this. I fully realize how “I remember when a gallon of gas used to cost a nickel” that sounds, but it’s true. In their infancy, social-networking platforms had a share-and-share-alike attitude, where you could cross-post and import contacts and find friends and use apps that were pulling mass amounts of useful data from outside APIs. It was a beautiful, brief moment in time.

Of course, these platforms weren’t what they are now. They were more basic, features were limited, content wasn’t embedded as richly, there was less to interact with. As they’ve grown, so too have their databases of social information, and thus their worth. Twitter has a tight grip on the interest graph, Facebook on the social graph, Google on the information graph. They want bits and pieces of what the others have. But instead of trading, and sharing, the walls have gone up and silos have been erected. Power grabs are being made. And we lose. Every time, we lose.

These moves are perfectly within the rights of the companies making them, but that doesn’t mean it’s right, or that we have to like it. These outlets can’t call themselves Open Platforms anymore; they can’t just reinterpret that phrase to mean that they invite developers to work with them, under their rules, on their terms – and that if you’re an app with a major competitor, it’s game over.

It’s also a bit confounding, because it’s not as if Vine is going to challenge Facebook for social network dominance, or Instagram is going to be the new Twitter.

The slippery slope here is bigger than just losing contact-finding abilities. Cross-posting could get killed off; developers will become warier about working with a platform, and the goal will be to get acquired, a la Instagram and Vine, to assure compatibility. There’s also fear that if you do happen upon something that really connects and inspires users, the dominant networks are simply going to clone it (although, that largely hasn’t worked out well).

With great power comes great responsibility, and a handful of social networks are finding themselves in this position right now. But instead of doing what Spider-Man would do and creating an open, thriving, connected social Web, they are building walls and cutting off ways for us to create and share various types of content. Social networking won’t work if platforms and apps exist as their own solitary islands of wonderful, unshareable, unfindable content.

There are hints of very monopolistic behavior. But what can we do? Right now, we’re just watching the big platforms get bigger. We’ll be left wondering what could have become of the small startups that never had a chance to grow.

The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not reflect the beliefs of Digital Trends.


As a professor of literature, rhetoric, and writing at the University of California at Irvine, I’ve discovered that one of the biggest lies about American culture (propagated even by college students) is that Americans don’t read.

The truth is that most of us read continuously in a perpetual stream of incestuous words, but instead of reading novels, book reviews, or newspapers like we used to in the ancien régime, we now read text messages, social media, and bite-sized entries about our protean cultural history on Wikipedia.

In the great epistemic galaxy of words, we have become both reading junkies and also professional text skimmers. Reading has become a clumsy science, which is why we keep fudging the lab results. But in diagnosing our own textual attention deficit disorder (ADD), who can blame us for skimming? We’re inundated by so much opinion posing as information, much of it the same material with permutating and exponential commentary. Skimming is practically a defense mechanism against the avalanche of info-opinion that has collectively hijacked narrative, reportage, and good analysis.

We now skim everything it seems to find evidence for our own belief system. We read to comment on reality (Read: to prove our own belief system). Reading has become a relentless exercise in self-validation, which is why we get impatient when writers don’t come out and simply tell us what they’re arguing. Which reminds me: What the hell am I arguing? With the advent of microblogging platforms, Twitter activism, self-publishing companies, professional trolling, everyone has a microphone now and yet no one actually listens to each other any more. And this is literally because we’re too busy reading. And when we leave comments on an online article, it’s usually an argument we already agree with or one we completely reject before we’ve read the first paragraph. In the age of hyper-information, it’s practically impossible not to be blinded by our own confirmation bias. It’s hard not to be infatuated with Twitter shitstorms either, especially when we’re not the target practice.

E-novels, once the theater of the mind for experimental writers, are now mainstream things that look like long-winded websites. Their chapters bleed into the same cultural space on our screen as grocery lists, weather forecasts, calendar reminders, and email messages. What’s the real difference between reading a blog post online by an eloquent blowhard and reading one chapter of a Jonathan Franzen novel? We can literally swipe from one text to another on our Kindle without realizing we changed platforms. What’s the real difference between skimming an informed political critique on a political junkie Tumblr account and reading a focused tirade on the Washington Post’s blog written by putative experts?

What’s the real difference between skimming an informed political critique on a political junkie Tumblr account and reading a focused tirade on the Washington Post’s blog written by putative experts?

That same blog post will get reposted on other news sites and the same news article will get reposted on other blogs interchangeably. Content—whether thought-provoking, regurgitated, or analytically superficial, impeccably researched, politically doctrinaire, or grammatically atrocious—now occupies the same cultural space, the same screen space, and the same mental space in the public imagination. After awhile, we just stop keeping track of what’s legitimately good because it takes too much energy to separate the crème from the foam.

As NPR digitizes itself in the 21st century, buries the “R” in its name, and translates its obsolete podcasts into online news features, every one of its articles now bleeds with its comment section, much of it written by posters who haven’t even read the article in question—essentially erasing the dividing lines between expert, echo chamber, and dilettante, journalist, hack, and self-promoter, reportage, character assassination, and mob frenzy.

One silver lining is that the technological democratization of social media has effectively deconstructed the one-sided power of the Big Bad Media in general and influential writing in particular, which in theory makes this era freer and more decentralized than ever. One downside to technological democratization is that it hasn’t lead to a thriving marketplace of ideas, but a greater retreat into the Platonic cave of self-identification with the shadow world. We have never needed a safer and quieter place to collect our thoughts from the collective din of couch quarterbacking than we do now, which is why it’s so easy to preemptively categorize the articles we read before we actually read them to save ourselves the heartache and the controversy.

The abundance of texts in this zeitgeist creates a tunnel effect of amnesia. We now have access to so much information that we actually forget the specific nuances of what we read, where we read them, and who wrote them. We forget what’s available all the time because we live in an age of hyperabundant textuality. Now, when we’re lost, we’re just one click away from the answer. Even the line separating what we know and what we don’t know is blurry.

We now have access to so much information that we actually forget the specific nuances of what we read, where we read them, and who wrote them.

It is precisely because we now consume writing from the moment we wake until the moment we crash—most of it mundane, redundant, speculative, badly researched, partisan, and emojian—that we no longer have the same appetite (or time) for literary fiction, serious think pieces, or top-shelf journalism anymore, even though they’re all readily available. If an article on the Daily Dot shows up on page 3 of a Google search, it might as well not exist at all. The New York Times article we half-read on our iPhone while standing up in the Los Angeles Metro ends up blurring with the 500 modified retweets about that same article on Twitter. Authors aren’t privileged anymore because everyone writes commentary somewhere and everyone’s commentary shows up some place. Only the platform and the means of production have changed.

Someday, the Centers for Disease Control will create a whole new branch of research dedicated to studying the infectious disease of cultural memes. Our continuous consumption of text is intricately linked to our continuous forgetting, our continuous reinfection, and our continuous thumbs up/thumbs down approach to reality, which is why we keep reading late into the night, looking for the next place to leave a comment someone has already made somewhere. Whether we like it or not, we’re all victims and perpetrators of this commentary fractal. There seems to be no way out except deeper inside the sinkhole or to go cold turkey from the sound of our own voices.

Jackson Bliss is a hapa fiction writer and a lecturer in the English department at the University of California, Irvine. He has a BA in comp lit from Oberlin College , a MFA in fiction from the University of Notre Dame, and a MA in English and a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from USC. His short stories and essays have appeared in many publications.

Photo via Raysonho/Wikimedia Commons


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First-year student Carson Huey-You wants to become a quantum physicist. He scored a 1770 on the SAT, and he was co-valedictorian of his senior class.

This semester he is taking 14 hours. His class load, which includes calculus and physics, has him moving between Beasley, Bass and Winton-Scott Halls.

His mother, Claretta Huey-You, is never far away.

That’s because Carson is 11 years old. He was admitted to TCU when he was 10.

Dean of Admission Ray Brown said he cannot recall ever having an applicant so young.

Carson couldn’t even apply online because the software is not set to accept someone born in 2002, Brown said.

During his admission interview, Carson’s many talents were impressive. Brown said Carson spoke Mandarin Chinese, and played piano in the Admissions Center.

Prior to Carson, Brown said the youngest student to enroll at the university during his tenure was Sam Hong, who graduated in 2011 at age 17.

Carson’s parents expect him to graduate in four to five years, when he is 15 or 16.

Brown said he is pleased to have Carson at the university.

“[Carson] is at a place that will genuinely care about him as a person,” Brown said.

“A strong ability to focus”

Carson’s mother said the first sign that Carson might be gifted came when he was three months old.

She said she brought him with her to an eye appointment and the doctor was impressed with Carson’s ability to focus.

In fact, Carson was reading chapter books at the age of two, before being potty-trained. He started a Kumon math and reading learning program before he was three.

His mother said he could add, subtract, multiply and divide by age three. He was working at an eighth grade level by the age of five.

It was at this time Carson’s mother and father began searching for a school for Carson.

His young age and advanced intellect made finding a school for Carson challenging, she said. He was rejected several times before enrolling at Accommodated Learning Academy in Grapevine, Texas.

ALA principal and teacher Melissa McGowan said the school caters to all students no matter what learning style they prefer. The school has 16 teachers and 55 students, and 30 to 40 percent of the students end up graduating early, McGowan said.

Carson graduated from ALA with a 4.0 GPA. He said his cumulative SAT score was 1770 (critical reading: 580, math: 620, writing: 570).

When asked about Carson in the classroom, McGowan said, “[Carson] was empathetic for others, and was the kind to help others in a humble way.”

McGowan said the high school students adored him.

A young Horned Frog

Carson and his parents were keen on selecting a college that was a perfect fit for him.

He visited the university last fall and met with Dr. Magnus Rittby, the senior dean for the College of Science and Engineering. The purpose of the meeting was to see if he was prepared for college.

By the time Carson left, Rittby said he considered him to be “extremely gifted” and ready for college.

Carson’s parents said they are supportive of his decision to attend the university.

When asked if they were concerned about their son attending the university at such a young age, there was little to be said.

Carson’s father, Andre Huey-You, a former pilot, said he is “not pushing [Carson], but trying to hold on to his son, so he doesn’t get too far beyond him.”

His mother Claretta is a stay-at-home mother but plans to return to school and enroll in a nursing program.

Carson is not the family’s only over-achiever, too.

His brother, Cannan, 7, is studying at the eighth grade level. His parents expect him to graduate from high school by age 13.

Carson’s mother and father describe their childrens’ intelligence as a blessing.

Carson doesn’t want to limit his experiences at the university to the classroom. He is interested in science clubs or foreign language clubs since he is close to mastering Mandarin Chinese.

He said he taught himself to play the piano using online videos, books and any resources he could find. Now, he has a teacher to help him develop his musical skills. The teacher made a deal with Carson, saying that she would teach him to play the piano if he would teach her son Mandarin Chinese. He is learning “Für Elise” by Beethoven.

Life outside the classroom

Like other children his age, Carson hangs out with friends, plays video games and enjoys being active.

He and Cannan enjoy playing MineCraft, an online video game. They are also Star Wars fans and have watched every movie. Carson said Star Wars Three, Five and Six are his favorite. His favorite Jedi is Master Windu, and his favorite Sith is Darth Maul.

He said his favorite television show is “Myth Busters.” He said he enjoys the physics aspect of the show and “when they blow stuff up.”

Carson, who is still learning to swim, enjoys throwing the football, playing basketball and roughhousing with his brother.

Rittby said Carson joked that he wanted to join the TCU basketball team.

Carson said he is “still trying to find his groove” as he settles into college.

He said when he arrives home from classes, he grabs a snack and then begins his homework. When he is finished, he helps his brother with his homework. In every class, Carson managed to find a seat in the front.

When asked how his first week went, Carson said, “It was overwhelming but exciting and fun.”

If he graduates in four years, he will have a diploma in his hands before he even has a driver’s license.


Kuno Wittmer will take part in the new Pirelli World Challenge SprintX Series, with the Canadian driver having been confirmed at Mills Racing.

He’ll join team owner/driver Michael Mills at the wheel of the team’s BMW Z4 GT3 in the three-round championship, which kicks off at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park next month.

“I am really looking forward to the inaugural SprintX race at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.” Wittmer said.

“Racing in my home country is always as nice thing, especially in front of family, friends, and representing the BMW brand.”

Wittmer, a BMW of North America factory driver, is a former IMSA GT Le Mans class champion, and will bring a wealth of experience to the upstart team, which made its debut at Circuit of The Americas last month.

The Texas-based team, with the support BMW of North America, has shifted its focus entirely to SprintX for the remainder of the year.

“I’m honored to have the opportunity to participate with Kuno for this new series,” Mills said.

“It’s a dream come true to be included in the BMW family, and we are excited to pursue a championship with Kuno and BMW behind us.”

BMW of North America Motorsports Manager Victor Leleu added: “Michael had a very successful weekend at COTA in the GTA class, showing great pace and quick adaptation to the BMW Z4 GT3.

“The car is fast and reliable, and Michael and Kuno will form a very strong and complementary pair.”

The inaugural SprintX weekend takes place at CTMP on May 20-22, with the championship also including stops at Utah Motorsports Campus and Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.


After sticking to their “never-say-die” attitude on and off the field, the San Francisco Giants have broken the mold for the archetypal play-off team on the club’s way to capturing the greatest victory a team can win for each other and its city, the World Series title.

And it’s not the first time in less than a decade we’ve seen this club take it all. Just two seasons ago, the 2010 incarnation of the team shocked the world and showed everyone without a doubt, that pitching beats good hitting.

But even with the two extraordinary post-season runs the club has now pulled off twice in the last three years, should the Giants be welcomed into the fold of team’s that many would consider a “dynasty” ?

Well, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in the Bay Area who wouldn’t say yes without hesitation, myself included. But when bringing the term dynasty to the plate, one must stop and consider what a dynasty actually is.

In baseball’s colorful, storied history, many teams have come together and pulled off amazing feats to capture championship after championship.

From the Oakland Athletics (who won the World Series from 1972-1974), to the St. Louis Cardinals and Stan Musial, who, in his twenty-two year career with the club, helped the team win three of St. Louis’ eleven titles in 1942, ’44, and ’46.

And then of course, there’s the New York Yankees, who sit at the top of the title class with a ridiculous twenty-seven championships. In fact, during Mickey Mantle’s seventeen seasons with New York, the team won seven titles. And if you count the year he was drafted (1949), they won nine titles while he was part of the team. They also hold the MLB record for most World Series championships won in a row, winning consecutively from 1949-1953 (they actually almost did it a first time when they were champions from 1936-1939). And it doesn’t hurt that besides the 1980’s, they are the only team in the MLB to win a title in every decade since the 1920’s, where New York won it all for the first time in 1923.

So what determines a dynasty?

A dynasty is commonly referred to when speaking of monarchs, handing down the torch of crown from heir to heir. Fathers and sons belonging to the same college fraternity, or even a political family that spans generations.

Well, it’s kind of the same thing in baseball, only the difference is that things are changing all the time. Players rarely stay with the same team for more than a few years, often making it impossible to classify many winning teams as dynasties due to the many moving pieces, and how different one championship team of the same franchise could look different from another even the next year.

This was half the case for the San Francisco Giants this time around.

In 2010, the team featured a lights-out pitching staff, bullpen included. The one through five rotation was as such:

Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Barry Zito, Jonathan Sanchez, and Madison Bumgarner.

Position players such as:

Aubrey Huff, Freddy Sanchez, Edgar Renteria, Juan Uribe, Cody Ross, Nate Schierholtz, and Andres Torres headed the team’s offense, which didn’t turn any heads. But as most are aware, the clutch and timely hitting of these players proved to be just enough to go all the way.

And then 2011 came along, a season full of high expectations for San Francisco. Unfortunately, despite keeping most of the team in tact (bye bye Juan Uribe and Edgar Renteria), the offense took a turn for the worse during most of the season. Players like Aubrey Huff, Miguel Tejada, Eli Whiteside, Cody Ross, and Andres Torres just weren’t getting it done.

So what did the team do? They brought up a couple of minor leaguers, Brandon Belt and Brandon Crawford, a first base-man and short-stop, respectively.

In addition, they also gave a former organizational pitcher, Ryan Vogelsong, a second chance to pitch with the club, something he hadn’t done since the 2001 season.

This helped the team stay afloat despite a lack of offense, and the Giants pitching was still as dominant as ever. But with Buster Posey out with season ending injuries, and the heroes of the previous year not stepping up, the teams playoff hopes quickly vanished and finished eight games behind the Arizona Diamondbacks in the National League West.

Fast forward to 2012. With Ryan Vogelsong joining the team for a second consecutive year and replacing Jonathan Sanchez, the revamped rotation looked poised to dominate yet again.

During the off-season, the team cleaned house, getting rid of the likes of Aaron Rowand, Cody Ross, Andres Torres, Carlos Beltran, Miguel Tejada, Jeff Keppinger, and Orlando Cabrera. This enabled the club to bring back rookies Belt and Crawford, as well as bring in the highly-anticipated switch-hitting outfielder Melky Cabrera, and speedy center-fielder Angel Pagan.

Also joining the squad was outfielder Gregor Blanco and infielder Joaquin Arias, with Hector Sanchez re-joining the club to back-up a healed Buster Posey behind the plate.

And it didn’t stop there. Brian Sabean surprised the critics and fans alike when at the July trade deadline, he traded Nate Schierholtz to the Philadelphia Phillies for fellow outfielder Hunter Pence, finally tossing his aging-vet recruitment philosophy to the side.

What did this teach us?

It shows that the team might be headed in a different, more promising direction, as bringing in talented, young, fast players with high ceilings is definitely a turn-around from what we’ve seen of this clubs players during the last decade or so.

Not everyone on the team is a youngster, and shouldn’t be, as having veteran leadership on a club is always important. And the club absolutely had it this year. One of the best, possibly THE best, pickups of the season, saw second base-man Marco Scutaro join the ranks of the Giants, a move most thought nothing more than a typical acquisition for Sabean. How wrong they were.

They also brought in veteran Ryan Theriot, who had just won the World Series with St. Louis the previous season.

In 2012, the Giants looked very different when comparing them to their 2010 incarnation. Most of the pitching looked exactly the same, with some tweaks here and there, but it was their offense that had changed drastically, and for the better. Instead of holding on to aging vets, the team opted to go for youth and speed.

This didn’t mean they got rid of everyone, of course. Returning at third base to prove himself once again, Pablo Sandoval manned the corner in-field position with stunning range, despite his size. Buster Posey put together one of the most impressive seasons a young player has ever had. And of course, you had pitchers Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, and Madison Bumgarner, all of whom (besides Sandoval in 2010) played key roles in the teams 2010 and 2012 post-season runs. These five players (but not limited too) are this teams cornerstones, and when you add in a budding super-star first-baseman (Brandon Belt) with the potential to be a perennial home-run king, along with the short-stop of the Giants future in Brandon Crawford, the word dynasty definitely starts sounding more and more realistic.

So maybe you don’t have to have the same players on the team year in and year out to be considered a dynasty. What the Giants are doing – I think, supports the idea of what a “dynasty” should be in baseball.

It’s not about buying the biggest, baddest, most expensive free agents, or having the biggest payroll in all the land.

It’s about developing young players. Playing as a team. Doing your research, and not always going along with what everyone else is doing. It helps when your city is also one with a rich history in the game, and featured many of the greats like Willie Mays, Orlando Cepeda, Willie McCovey, Barry Bonds, and Gaylord Perry.

San Francisco’s style is anything but traditional, and has proven they can get things done. Two World Series championships in a span of three years is pretty good, and both under manager of the year finalist Bruce Bochy, who has been a integral part to this teams recent success. But when you add in the fact that the franchise had not seen a title since 1954, it makes things a little clearer when realizing just what this team is doing.

Besides, they are tied for the fourth most World Series titles in major league history (7), and that sounds pretty good to me.


Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate and former secretary of state, will deliver a major speech on economic policy on Monday, laying out in more detail her diagnosis of went wrong with the economy and, in broad strokes, how she will approach fixing it, the campaign says.

She will make clear, according to a campaign official, that she doesn't believe wage stagnation and growing inequality are simply facts that we have to live with, caused by trends outside our control. Rather, she will say that the U.S. has the power to change these patterns if we make the right policy choices.

Here are seven ways to understand why Clinton is making the case.

(1) Clinton's top goal is raising median incomes

According to a campaign official, Clinton will make clear she believes that raising incomes for average Americans is the top priority. To understand why that's become a big issue for politicians of all stripes, one doesn't need to look farther than this chart of real median income over the past 40 years. Wages have been going through a prolonged period of stagnation and decline.

A related phenomenon to stagnating wages has been growing inequality. The two trends are not the same--in the 1990s, the gap between the rich and poor widened even as average workers saw pay rise.

(2) She believes policy can help raise worker pay and reduce inequality

The two biggest reasons usually cited for wage stagnation and growing inequality are technology, which makes lower-skill work (like working on a factory floor or clerical duties) less valuable, and globalization, which can boost corporate bottom lines but provide less opportunity for many American workers. No doubt, these are powerful factors.

But another way to look at wage stagnation and inequality is through the prism of the financial return to work itself -- as opposed to the return on investments like stocks and bonds. And it has been declining. So shareholders and top executives, compensated in stock, may be more likely to enjoy the fruits of economic activity than average workers. Left-leaning economists like to point out, however, that this phenomenon largely reflects not just global patterns but also national choices, such as wage and labor standards and tax policies -- a view Clinton will endorse.

(3) In particular, she is looking to boost women's pay

Clinton is going to talk about how we need to do better to help women and families in the economy. Many women take time away from the workplace to raise their children, or they stop working entirely. As a result, they lose opportunities to develop their skills and professional connections. That could be one reason that while younger men and women earn similar amounts, women in middle age and older earn substantially less.

(4) And Clinton is looking to make sure more women are in the workforce

Clinton will call for paid leave policies to help women work while raising families. That might help raising the number of women in the labor force, which has flatlined after years of growth. How much such a policy will to close pay disparities between men and women isn't as clear. Countries with more generous parental leave polices tend to have even larger pay gaps.

(5) Clinton believes the federal minimum wage should be lifted

Clinton will call for raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour. The chart below shows how the the minimum has changed over time, taking into account increases in prices. It's important to note that many states have already raised the minimum wage over the past few years, without federal action.

A White House report showed the declining value of the minimum wage after adjusting for inflation.

(6) And she believes tax policy changes that favor the wealthy are misguided

Clinton is expected to chide Republican presidential candidates for continuing to espouse a GOP philosophy of tax cuts that benefit the wealthy under the theory that that will trickle down to the middle class. Effective tax rates have fallen across all income groups since the 1990s, but especially for the wealthiest Americans. Tax hikes at the end of 2013 and as part of the Affordable Care Act pushed rates back up, though not nearly close to their historic highs.

(7) She also wants to make corporations, particularly on Wall Street, more focused on long-term returns

The former New York senator is expected to say that our economy is too often driven by hope of a quick profit rather than more enduring and sustainable growth at benefits more people -- and she'll say this is especially a problem on Wall Street. She'll also underscore the need for more investment in things like infrastructure and research and development.

As this chart from Robin Greenwood and David Scharfstein of Harvard Business School shows, Wall Street and other financial components of the economy have dramatically grown as a percentage of total economic output.

This partly reflects how the stock market has changed. It was once a place where companies regularly went when they wanted to take on some project in order to get new money from banks and investors. Now, it's become a place where firms distribute their earnings to their owners, instead of taking money in, as the economist J.W. Mason has shown.


For a video that was created to fail, “What does the Fox say?” has been incredibly successful, totaling more than 120 million views … but that wasn’t Ylvis’ intent. They swear.

Brothers Vegard and Bård Ylvisåker are hosts of Tonight with Ylvis, a late-night talk show in Norway. And when it came time to prepare a promo for their new season, they called on a favor they had with some guys over at Stargate, a Norwegian production company that has produced hits such as Rihanna’s “Diamonds.” After Ylvis helped one of the guys at Stargate prepare a birthday gift, the company had promised to produce something for the comedy duo in return, and now the guys were ready to cash in their I.O.U.

“As comedians, it wouldn’t be a good thing if we went to pursue a hit in the States because they could potentially make something that became big, so we thought it would be more fun from a comedian perspective to come home to the talk show and say, ‘Listen we had the chance, we could’ve made it big, but the only idea we got for the song was this old idea about what the fox says so we’re sorry. We screwed up.’ That was the plan,” Bård said. “That would’ve been funny to say on the talk show.”

“We had started writing the scripts for the show and we even had the introduction to this video, we wrote that as this ‘We’re sorry, we screwed up, this was all we could do,'” Vegard added. So what happened when the video took off and actually became the brothers’ biggest hit? “We had to rewrite the whole thing.”

So let’s back up: When the brothers were brainstorming ideas for possible promos, what made them think about the sounds a fox makes? “It all comes out of a genuine wonder about what kind of sounds it makes,” Vegard said. “For all other known or normal animal species, you have this defined word that they say that is their sound like woof or meow or squeak. The first verse is telling this to the world in a very pretentious way: ‘The mouse goes squeak and the cow goes moo.'”

“It started with us making sounds – we had other mammals as well – but we ended up thinking ‘it would be fun with a fox,'” Bård added.

So after two days in the vocal studio and a bit of a mishap with the costumes — the brothers joke about wearing a bear and a squirrel costume in the video — they had created the video that would eventually land them on U.S. talk shows and in The New York Times. If only the duo had gone with their original idea …

“First we had an idea about why every weekend there’s three billion guys in the entire world that dread the fact that they have to go to a club and they have to dance and no one can actually dance. There’s not one move. There used to be like cha cha cha and now it’s just chaos. That was their original idea and that felt [like it was] searching for a hit,” Bård said. “But [Stargate was] pitched this idea, so that’s why they gave us the songs. And I called one of the guys. I said, ‘The whole thing changed a bit and now we want to make a song about what sound the fox makes.’ I explained that it will be funny for us if we go over and misuse your talent – that will be funny for our show.” Luckily, Stargate was in.

It’s also worth mentioning that this wasn’t Ylvis’ first music video. In fact, musical comedy is something they consider to be very near to their hearts. The brothers, who grew up in Africa, found their love of music and comedy at a young age. “We grew up with the Life of Brian from Monty Python. We grew up in Africa and we didn’t bring enough videos, so we only had that. We had two. We had that and a Norwegian variety guy. So we developed humor that was a mix between those two,” Vegard said.

Although they have no vocal training between them, singing is something they’ve been doing for years. “Our parents were always really fond of music and they encouraged us to do whatever we wanted to do. We went to choir and stuff when we were kids,” Bård said.

“We sang continuously. We made small music things in our room. But it was always with a comic context. We always hide behind that. We’re too much of cowards to actually mean something,” Vegard said.

Other things you might not know about the comedians: Vegard is a commercial pilot, or he could be if anyone hired him, and Bard enjoys having no education whatsoever and gardening. They’re also big Tenacious D fans. But most importantly, the success of this video does not mean that fame is now their priority.

“We’re not chasing the next hit. We’re just making stuff that we think is funny. Some will get like 100,000 views and some obviously got 100 million, but it’s the same recipe,” Bård said. “It’s supposed to be three minutes for a Norwegian talk show and this one traveled. Maybe we’ll make another song with them maybe not. It’s just a month old, this song.”

“We’ll see when it reaches a billion,” Vegard joked.

Watch one of the guys’ improvised bits, “The Intelevator,” below:

And here’s another one of their music videos, about Stonehenge no less:

Will you continue to follow Ylvis’ comedy, PopWatchers?


Hannah Bonser, who stabbed a 13-year-old to death in Doncaster, is reportedly living as a man named Adam at HMP Low Newton

A female child killer is living as a man at a women's prison, where the murderer has been boasting about an upcoming sex-change operation on the NHS.

Hannah Bonser, who stabbed 13-year-old Casey Kearney to death, has changed her name to Adam while serving time at HMP Low Newton in County Durham.

Sources say the 31-year-old's gender switch has angered fellow inmates on the high-security F Wing.

Guards now address the wing's prisoners as 'ladies and gentleman' instead of just 'ladies', according to a former inmate who said: 'It's put an end to the call of, "Cells, ladies, please".

'Hannah now insists they use "ladies and gentleman".

'Hannah's not physically a man yet, but is on her way. She has asked to be called Adam and changed her name with officials. She says she is going the whole hog.'

The move has led to accusations of preferential treatment at the prison, where serial killer Rose West and Baby P's mother, Tracey Connelly, are also serving time.

Casey Kearney was stabbed to death when she was aged just 13 by Hannah Bonser, who is reportedly living as a man in prison

Bonser was locked up in 2012 after stabbing her teenage victim as she made her way to a sleepover on Valentine's Day.

She was jailed for life and will serve a minimum of 22 years after her victim died from a single stab wound after the attack in Elmfield Park, Doncaster. The teenager managed to call 999 before she died.

Bonser, who had a history of mental health problems, had repeatedly informed medics that she thought herself to be dangerous.

Bonser is serving a 22-year sentence after she murdered a 13-year-old child by stabbing her to death while she was walking to a sleepover

Just one month before she murdered Casey, Bonser told professionals that she was worried she would kill and said her fear caused her to stay away from people on the street.

Bonser first became known to social services when she was just nine years old after the death of her morbidly obese Mormon mother. She was then referred to 16 psychiatrists and 20 mental health workers.

The future killer was hearing voices and speaking to rocks by the time she was 17, developing an obsession with druids and a belief birds were people coming to get her.

A Prison Service spokesperson said: 'We do not comment on individuals.'