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*I have been fortunate to be able to have a career playing comedy and drama. And it's awfully hard - it's like apples and pears to compare the two.
-Jack Lemmon
*Everyone thinks they can write a play; you just write down what happened to you.
But the art of it is drawing from all the moments of your life.
-Neil Simon
*Every actor looks all his life for a part that will combine his talents with his
personality... 'The Odd Couple' was mine. That was the plutonium I needed.
It all started happening after that.
-Walter Matthau
Neil Simon interview on "Rewrites" (1996)
Manufacturing Intellect
Published on Jul 13, 2016
Neil Simon on his memoir, "Rewrites."
"Every April, God rewrites the Book of Genesis."
~Author Unknown
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Sunday in June: History Needs a Rewrite - 2 (of 32) - Panasonic Lumix GF2 with Yi 42.5mm 1:1.8 Prime (M43 Mount) & Polarizer - Photographer Russell McNeil PhD (Physics) lives on Vancouver Island, where he works as a writer.
Walter Isaacson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s new biography of Jennifer Doudna, Nobel Prize laureate, titled ‘The Code Breaker’, gets rave reviews.
Jennifer Doudna was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
An Amazon Best Book of March 2021: Isaacson is famous for writing Steve Jobs and Leonardo da Vinci, so a title like The Code Breaker might imply a lesser book about a lesser character. But 2020 Nobel winner Jennifer Doudna, who developed the gene-editing technology CRISPR, is a giant in her own right. CRISPR could open some of the greatest opportunities, and most troubling quandaries, of this century—and this book delivers. —Chris Schluep, Amazon Book Review
Review
“This year’s prize is about rewriting the code of life. These genetic scissors have taken the life sciences into a new epoch.” – Announcement of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
"Isaacson’s vivid account is a page-turning detective story and an indelible portrait of a revolutionary thinker who, as an adolescent in Hawai’i, was told that girls don’t do science. Nevertheless, she persisted." — Oprah Magazine.com
"The Code Breaker marks the confluence of perfect writer, perfect subject, and perfect timing. The result is almost certainly the most important book of the year.” – Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Isaacson captures the scientific process well, including the role of chance. The hard graft at the bench, the flashes of inspiration, the importance of conferences as cauldrons of creativity, the rivalry, sometimes friendly, sometimes less so, and the sense of common purpose are all conveyed in his narrative. The Code Breaker describes a dance to the music of time with these things as its steps, which began with Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel and shows no sign of ending.” – The Economist
“Isaacson lays everything out with his usual lucid prose; it’s brisk and compelling and even funny throughout. You’ll walk away with a deeper understanding of both the science itself and how science gets done — including plenty of mischief.” – The Washington Post
"This story was always guaranteed to be a page-turner in [Isaacson's] hands." – The Guardian
"The Code Breaker unfolds as an enthralling detective story, crackling with ambition and feuds, laboratories and conferences, Nobel laureates and self-taught mavericks. The book probes our common humanity without ever dumbing down the science, a testament to Isaacson’s own genius on the page." — O Magazine
“Deftly written, conveying the history of CRISPR and also probing larger themes: the nature of discovery, the development of biotech, and the fine balance between competition and collaboration that drives many scientists.”— New York Review of Books
“The Code Breaker is in some respects a journal of our 2020 plague year.”— The New York Times
"Walter Isaacson is our Renaissance biographer, a writer of unusual range and depth who has plumbed lives of genius to illuminate fundamental truths about human nature. From Leonardo to Steve Jobs, from Benjamin Franklin to Albert Einstein, Isaacson has given us an unparalleled canon of work that chronicles how we have come to live the way we do. Now, in a magnificent, compelling, and wholly original book, he turns his attention to the next frontier: that of gene editing and the role science may play in reshaping the nature of life itself. This is an urgent, sober, accessible, and altogether brilliant achievement." —Jon Meacham
"When a great biographer combines his own fascination with science and a superb narrative style, the result is magic. This important and powerful work, written in the tradition of The Double Helix, allows us not only to follow the story of a brilliant and inspired scientist as she engages in a fierce competitive race, but to experience for ourselves the wonders of nature and the joys of discovery." —Doris Kearns Goodwin
“He’s done it again. The Code Breaker is another Walter Isaacson must-read. This time he has a heroine who will be for the ages; a worldwide cast of remarkable, fiercely competitive scientists; and a string of discoveries that will change our lives far more than the iPhone did. The tale is gripping. The implications mind-blowing.” – Atul Gawande
"An extraordinary book that delves into one of the most path-breaking biological technologies of our times and the creators who helped birth it. This brilliant book is absolutely necessary reading for our era." — Siddhartha Mukherjee
“Now more than ever we should appreciate the beauty of nature and the importance of scientific research; This book and Jennifer Doudna’s career show how thrilling it can be to understand how life works.” —Sue Desmond-Hellmann
“An extraordinarily detailed and revealing account of scientific progress and competition that grants readers behind-the-scenes access to the scientific process, which the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us remains opaque to the wider public. It also provides lessons in science communication that go beyond the story itself.” – Science Magazine
“An indispensable guide to the brave… new world we have entered." – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"A vital book about the next big thing in science—and yet another top-notch biography from Isaacson." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"In Isaacson's splendid saga of how big science really operates, curiosity and creativity, discovery and innovation, obsession and strong personalities, competitiveness and collaboration, and the beauty of nature all stand out." — Booklist (starred review)
"Isaacson depicts science at its most exhilarating in this lively biography of Jennifer Doudna, the winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in medicine for her work on the CRISPR system of gene editing...The result is a gripping account of a great scientific advancement and of the dedicated scientists who realized it." — Publisher's Weekly (starred review)
"Isaacson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of best sellers Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs, offers a startling, insightful look at this lifesaving, hugely significant scientific advancement and the brilliant Doudna, who wrestles with the serious moral questions that accompany her creation. Should this technology be offered to parents to tailor-make their babies into athletes or Einsteins? Who gets altered and saved and why?” — AARP
"A brilliant and engaging book. There are many quotable gems but I have chosen one sentence from the epilogue that epitomizes not only Doudna but also Isaacson himself, whose book title ends with a hortatory claim that CRISPR affects the future of the human race: 'To guide us, we will need not only scientists, but humanists. And most important, we will need people who feel comfortable in both words, like Jennifer Doudna.'" — Policy Magazine
"Mr. Isaacson is a great storyteller and a national treasure — like Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, and of course his latest subject, Jennifer Doudna.” — The East Hampton Star
"The journalist who told the life stories of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs is back with a timely biography of Jennifer Doudna, PhD, winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry. It’s a fast-paced account of her life as a pathbreaking scientist on CRISPR — and how gene editing could alter all life as we know it." — Medium
"This challenging, fascinating story examines Doudna's background and excavates the moral quandaries she grapples with as her creation opens up more and more avenues for scientific advancement." — Elle
"It is a gripping tale, showing how our new ability to hack evolution will soon start throwing us curveballs." — New Scientist
“[A] fascinating story... [Isaacson’s] unique skill as a master storyteller of scientific development over the centuries has educated not only his fellow Baby Boomers, but also succeeding generations, helping people of all ages and backgrounds travel down the long and winding road toward understanding how life works.” – Washington Independent Review of Books
"[A] marvelous biography... With his dynamic and formidable style, Isaacson explains the long scientific journey that led to this tool’s discovery and the exciting developments that have followed....Isaacson is truly an immersive tour guide, combining the energy of a TED Talk with the intimacy of a series of fireside chats....For readers seeking to understand the many twists, turns and nuances of the biotechnology revolution, there’s no better place to turn than The Code Breaker."– BookPage
“ Isaacson expertly plumbs the moral ambiguity surrounding this new technology. ”–Scientific American
"A riveting expedition through biochemistry, structural biology, and academic politics that transcends the traditional scientific detective story and captures the raw, magical enthusiasm of living pioneers like Doudna and her colleagues. ” – New York Journal of Books
“Isaacson senses a more collaborative spirit between the rivals that will surely pay dividends come the next pandemic... The Code Breaker is a true celebration of science and scientists, for all their flaws and jealousies.” – Nature Reviews Chemistry
Brussels - Belgium, March 21, 2019 -- Rewriting The Rules of the European Economy - book launch and presentation by FEPS (Foundation for European Progressive Studies) at Bibliotheque Solvay, with i.a. Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate in Economics; Pierre Moscovici, European Commissioner of Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation & Customs, MEP Jeppe Kofod; moderated by Natalie Sarkic-Todd; opening remarks by Ernst Stetter, Secretary General of FEPS; closing remarks by MEP Maria Joao Rodrigues, President of FEPS -- Photo: © HorstWagner.eu
A Grade II-listed bronze statue of Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive, by John Tweed, stands in King Charles Street, Whitehall, London. The work was unveiled in 1912 outside Gwydyr House, also in Whitehall, and was moved to its current location in 1916.
Description
On the west face of the plinth are Clive's surname and the year of his birth and death (1725–1774). The remaining three sides have bronze reliefs depicting events in his life: the Siege of Arcot in 1751, the eve of the Battle of Plassey in 1757 and the Treaty of Allahabad in 1765.
History
On 8 February 1907, Sir William Forwood wrote to The Times noting that there were no monuments to Clive in London or India, and that even his grave, in the church at Moreton Say, Shropshire, was unmarked. Lord Curzon, a Conservative politician and the former Viceroy of India, wrote in support of Forwood's complaint, though he noted that in 1860 Clive had been "tardily commemorated by a statue at Shrewsbury". A Clive Memorial Fund committee was established, with Curzon publicising the fundraising efforts and progress with further letters to the editor of the Times. An 18th-century statue of Clive by Peter Scheemakers inside the India Office was then brought to Curzon's attention, but Curzon considered neither its portrayal of Clive nor its location to be adequate. The fund raised between £5,000 and £6,000 to erect memorials to Clive in London and India. Curzon's proposal did not meet the favour of his successor as viceroy, Lord Minto, who considered a commemoration of Clive "needlessly provocative" in India at a time of agitation and unrest in Bengal, where Clive had been the first British governor.
John Tweed was commissioned to start work on the London statue and exhibited a sketch model at the Royal Academy in 1910. The statue was unveiled in a temporary location in Gwydyr Street in 1912. It was moved to its permanent location in 1916.
The statue is placed on a high plinth, inlaid with bronze bas-relief on three sides, depicting three historic scenes associated with Clive's career in India. The scenes are: the siege of Arcot, the Battle of Plassey 1757 and the Grant of Diwani by the Mughal emperor to the British East India Company, represented by Clive, in 1765.
A smaller version of the finished statue, also cast in bronze, is now part of the collection of the Tate in London. Other works by Tweed portraying Clive include a memorial tablet in the south choir aisle of Westminster Abbey, erected by public subscription in 1919, and a marble statue at the Victoria Memorial in Kolkata, India.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the statue was singled out for criticism by Nick Robins in his history of the East India Company, The Corporation that Changed the World. In the book, he argued that "the fact that one of Britain's greatest corporate rogues continues to have pride of place at the heart of government suggests that the British elite has not yet confronted its corporate and imperial past." The book concluded by calling for the statue to be removed to a museum.
In June 2020, calls were made for the statue's removal after a wave of anti-racism protests in which a statue of the slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol was pulled down. The Labour politician Lord Adonis asked the Government to begin a public consultation on the statue. Clive's statue will be considered in a review of London's public monuments ordered by Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London. With Andrew Simms, Nick Robins repeated his call for the statue to be removed and replaced with a monument celebrating a new generation of diverse global heroes. The historian William Dalrymple compared the statue's 20th-century memorialisation of Clive to the Confederate monuments erected in the Southern United States well into the civil rights era. The writer Afua Hirsch similarly said that the statue was "not a piece of history but an attempt – when it was erected centuries after Clive's death – to rewrite it" and called Clive "a symbol of the most morally bankrupt excesses of Empire".
Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive, KB, FRS (29 September 1725 – 22 November 1774), also known as Clive of India, was the first British Governor of the Bengal Presidency. Clive has been widely credited for laying the foundation of the British East India Company (EIC) rule in Bengal. He began as a writer (the term used then in India for an office clerk) for the EIC in 1744 and established Company rule in Bengal by winning the Battle of Plassey in 1757. In return for supporting the Nawab Mir Jafar as ruler of Bengal, Clive was guaranteed a jagir of £30,000 (equivalent to £4,300,000 in 2021) per year which was the rent the EIC would otherwise pay to the Nawab for their tax-farming concession. When Clive left India in January 1767 he had a fortune of £180,000 (equivalent to £25,700,000 in 2021) which he remitted through the Dutch East India Company.
Blocking impending French mastery of India, Clive improvised a 1751 military expedition that ultimately enabled the EIC to adopt the French strategy of indirect rule via puppet government. Hired by the EIC to return (1755) to India, Clive conspired to secure the company's trade interests by overthrowing the ruler of Bengal, the richest state in India. Back in England from 1760 to 1765, he used the wealth accumulated from India to secure (1762) an Irish barony from the then Whig PM, Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, and a seat for himself in Parliament, via Henry Herbert, 1st Earl of Powis, representing the Whigs in Shrewsbury, Shropshire (1761–1774), as he had previously in Mitchell, Cornwall (1754–1755).
Clive's actions on behalf of the EIC have made him one of Britain's most controversial colonial figures. His achievements included checking French imperialist ambitions on the Coromandel Coast and establishing EIC control over Bengal, thereby furthering the establishment of the British Raj, though he worked only as an agent of the East India Company, not of the British government. Vilified by his political rivals in Britain, he went on trial (1772 and 1773) before Parliament, where he was absolved from every charge. Historians have criticised Clive's management of Bengal during his tenure with the EIC, in particular regarding responsibility in contributing to the Great Bengal Famine of 1770, which killed between one and ten million people.
Early life
Robert Clive was born at Styche, the Clive family estate, near Market Drayton in Shropshire, on 29 September 1725 to Richard Clive and Rebecca (née Gaskell) Clive. The family had held the small estate since the time of Henry VII and had a lengthy history of public service: members of the family included a Chancellor of the Exchequer of Ireland under Henry VIII, and a member of the Long Parliament. Robert's father, who supplemented the estate's modest income by practising as a lawyer, also served in Parliament for many years, representing Montgomeryshire. Robert was their eldest son of thirteen children; he had seven sisters and five brothers, six of whom died in infancy.
Clive's father was known to have a temper, which the boy apparently inherited. For reasons that are unknown, Clive was sent to live with his mother's sister in Manchester while still a toddler. The site is now Hope Hospital. Biographer Robert Harvey suggests that this move was made because Clive's father was busy in London trying to provide for the family. Daniel Bayley, the sister's husband, reported that the boy was "out of measure addicted to fighting". He was a regular troublemaker in the schools to which he was sent. When he was older he and a gang of teenagers established a protection racket that vandalised the shops of uncooperative merchants in Market Drayton. [Note : the original of these stories first occurs in John Malcolm's 1836 biography which say these were verbal anecdotes given to him, third hand, in 1827, 53 years after Robert Clive's death] the Clive also exhibited fearlessness at an early age. He is reputed to have climbed the tower of St Mary's Parish Church in Market Drayton and perched on a gargoyle, frightening those down below.
When Clive was nine his aunt died, and, after a brief stint in his father's cramped London quarters, he returned to Shropshire. There he attended the Market Drayton Grammar School, where his unruly behaviour (and an improvement in the family's fortunes) prompted his father to send him to Merchant Taylors' School in London. His bad behaviour continued, and he was then sent to a trade school in Hertfordshire to complete a basic education. Despite his early lack of scholarship, in his later years he devoted himself to improving his education. He eventually developed a distinctive writing style, and a speech in the House of Commons was described by William Pitt as the most eloquent he had ever heard.
First journey to India (1744–1753)
In 1744 Clive's father acquired for him a position as a "factor" or company agent in the service of the East India Company, and Clive set sail for India. After running aground on the coast of Brazil, his ship was detained for nine months while repairs were completed. This enabled him to learn some Portuguese, one of the several languages then in use in south India because of the Portuguese centre at Goa. At this time the East India Company had a small settlement at Fort St. George near the village of Madraspatnam, later Madras, now the major Indian metropolis of Chennai, in addition to others at Calcutta, Bombay, and Cuddalore. Clive arrived at Fort St. George in June 1744, and spent the next two years working as little more than a glorified assistant shopkeeper, tallying books and arguing with suppliers of the East India Company over the quality and quantity of their wares. He was given access to the governor's library, where he became a prolific reader.
Political situation in south India
The India Clive arrived in was divided into a number of successor states to the Mughal Empire. Over the forty years since the death of the Emperor Aurangzeb in 1707, the power of the emperor had gradually fallen into the hands of his provincial viceroys or Subahdars. The dominant rulers on the Coromandel Coast were the Nizam of Hyderabad, Asaf Jah I, and the Nawab of the Carnatic, Anwaruddin Muhammed Khan. The Nawab nominally owed fealty to the nizam, but in many respects acted independently. Fort St. George and the French trading post at Pondicherry were both located in the Nawab's territory.
The relationship between the Europeans in India was influenced by a series of wars and treaties in Europe, and by competing commercial rivalry for trade on the subcontinent. Through the 17th and early 18th centuries, the French, Dutch, Portuguese, and British had vied for control of various trading posts, and for trading rights and favour with local Indian rulers. The European merchant companies raised bodies of troops to protect their commercial interests and latterly to influence local politics to their advantage. Military power was rapidly becoming as important as commercial acumen in securing India's valuable trade, and increasingly it was used to appropriate territory and to collect land revenue.
First Carnatic War
In 1720 France effectively nationalised the French East India Company, and began using it to expand its imperial interests. This became a source of conflict with the British in India with the entry of Britain into the War of the Austrian Succession in 1744. The Indian theatre of the conflict is also known as the First Carnatic War, referring to the Carnatic region on the southeast coast of India. Hostilities in India began with a British naval attack on a French fleet in 1745, which led the French Governor-General Dupleix to request additional forces. On 4 September 1746, Madras was attacked by French forces led by La Bourdonnais. After several days of bombardment the British surrendered and the French entered the city. The British leadership was taken prisoner and sent to Pondicherry. It was originally agreed that the town would be restored to the British after negotiation but this was opposed by Dupleix, who sought to annex Madras to French holdings. The remaining British residents were asked to take an oath promising not to take up arms against the French; Clive and a handful of others refused, and were kept under weak guard as the French prepared to destroy the fort. Disguising themselves as natives, Clive and three others eluded their inattentive sentry, slipped out of the fort, and made their way to Fort St. David (the British post at Cuddalore), some 50 miles (80 km) to the south. Upon his arrival, Clive decided to enlist in the Company army rather than remain idle; in the hierarchy of the company, this was seen as a step down. Clive was, however, recognised for his contribution in the defence of Fort St. David, where the French assault on 11 March 1747 was repulsed with the assistance of the Nawab of the Carnatic, and was given a commission as ensign.
In the conflict, Clive's bravery came to the attention of Major Stringer Lawrence, who arrived in 1748 to take command of the British troops at Fort St. David. During the 1748 Siege of Pondicherry Clive distinguished himself in successfully defending a trench against a French sortie: one witness of the action wrote Clive's "platoon, animated by his exhortation, fired again with new courage and great vivacity upon the enemy." The siege was lifted in October 1748 with the arrival of the monsoons, but the war came to a conclusion with the arrival in December of news of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. Madras was returned to the British as part of the peace agreement in early 1749.
Tanjore expedition
The end of the war between France and Britain did not, however, end hostilities in India. Even before news of the peace arrived in India, the British had sent an expedition to Tanjore on behalf of a claimant to its throne. This expedition, on which Clive, now promoted to lieutenant, served as a volunteer, was a disastrous failure. Monsoons ravaged the land forces, and the local support claimed by their client was not in evidence. The ignominious retreat of the British force (which lost its baggage train to the pursuing Tanjorean army while crossing a swollen river) was a blow to the British reputation. Major Lawrence, seeking to recover British prestige, led the entire Madras garrison to Tanjore in response. At the fort of Devikottai on the Coleroon River the British force was confronted by the much larger Tanjorean army. Lawrence gave Clive command of 30 British soldiers and 700 sepoys, with orders to lead the assault on the fort. Clive led this force rapidly across the river and toward the fort, where the small British unit became separated from the sepoys and were enveloped by the Tanjorean cavalry. Clive was nearly cut down and the beachhead almost lost before reinforcements sent by Lawrence arrived to save the day. The daring move by Clive had an important consequence: the Tanjoreans abandoned the fort, which the British triumphantly occupied. The success prompted the Tanjorean rajah to open peace talks, which resulted in the British being awarded Devikottai and the costs of their expedition, and the British client was awarded a pension in exchange for renouncing his claim. Lawrence wrote of Clive's action that "he behaved in courage and in judgment much beyond what could be expected from his years."
On the expedition's return the process of restoring Madras was completed. Company officials, concerned about the cost of the military, slashed its size, denying Clive a promotion to captain in the process. Lawrence procured for Clive a position as the commissary at Fort St. George, a potentially lucrative posting (its pay included commissions on all supply contracts).
Second Carnatic War
The death of Asaf Jah I, the Nizam of Hyderabad, in 1748 sparked a struggle to succeed him that is known as the Second Carnatic War, which was also furthered by the expansionist interests of French Governor-General Dupleix. Dupleix had grasped from the first war that small numbers of disciplined European forces (and well-trained sepoys) could be used to tip balances of power between competing interests, and used this idea to greatly expand French influence in southern India. For many years he had been working to negotiate the release of Chanda Sahib, a longtime French ally who had at one time occupied the throne of Tanjore, and sought for himself the throne of the Carnatic. Chanda Sahib had been imprisoned by the Marathas in 1740; by 1748 he had been released from custody and was building an army at Satara.
Upon the death of Asaf Jah I, his son, Nasir Jung, seized the throne of Hyderabad, although Asaf Jah had designated as his successor his grandson, Muzaffar Jung. The grandson, who was ruler of Bijapur, fled west to join Chanda Sahib, whose army was also reinforced by French troops sent by Dupleix. These forces met those of Anwaruddin Mohammed Khan in the Battle of Ambur in August 1749; Anwaruddin was slain, and Chanda Sahib victorious entered the Carnatic capital, Arcot. Anwaruddin's son, Muhammed Ali Khan Wallajah, fled to Trichinopoly where he sought the protection and assistance of the British. In thanks for French assistance, the victors awarded them a number of villages, including territory nominally under British sway near Cuddalore and Madras. The British began sending additional arms to Muhammed Ali Khan Wallajah and sought to bring Nasir Jung into the fray to oppose Chanda Sahib. Nasir Jung came south to Gingee in 1750, where he requested and received a detachment of British troops. Chanda Sahib's forces advanced to meet them, but retreated after a brief long-range cannonade. Nasir Jung pursued, and was able to capture Arcot and his nephew, Muzaffar Jung. Following a series of fruitless negotiations and intrigues, Nasir Jung was assassinated by a rebellious soldier. This made Muzaffar Jung nizam and confirmed Chanda Sahib as Nawab of the Carnatic, both with French support. Dupleix was rewarded for French assistance with titled nobility and rule of the nizam's territories south of the Kistna River. His territories were "said to yield an annual revenue of over 350,000 rupees".
Robert Clive was not in southern India for many of these events. In 1750 Clive was afflicted with some sort of nervous disorder, and was sent north to Bengal to recuperate. It was there that he met and befriended Robert Orme, who became his principal chronicler and biographer. Clive returned to Madras in 1751.
Siege of Arcot
In the summer of 1751, Chanda Sahib left Arcot to besiege Muhammed Ali Khan Wallajah at Trichinopoly. This placed the British at Madras in a precarious position, since the latter was the last of their major allies in the area. The British company's military was also in some disarray, as Stringer Lawrence had returned to England in 1750 over a pay dispute, and much of the company was apathetic about the dangers the expanding French influence and declining British influence posed. The weakness of the British military command was exposed when a force was sent from Madras to support Muhammad Ali at Trichinopoly, but its commander, a Swiss mercenary, refused to attack an outpost at Valikondapuram. Clive, who accompanied the force as commissary, was outraged at the decision to abandon the siege. He rode to Cuddalore, and offered his services to lead an attack on Arcot if he was given a captain's commission, arguing this would force Chanda Sahib to either abandon the siege of Trichinopoly or significantly reduce the force there.
Madras and Fort St. David could supply him with only 200 Europeans, 300 sepoys, and three small cannons; furthermore, of the eight officers who led them, four were civilians like Clive, and six had never been in action. Clive, hoping to surprise the small garrison at Arcot, made a series of forced marches, including some under extremely rainy conditions. Although he did fail to achieve surprise, the garrison, hearing of the march being made under such arduous conditions, opted to abandon the fort and town; Clive occupied Arcot without firing a shot.
The fort was a rambling structure with a dilapidated wall a mile long (too long for his small force to effectively man), and it was surrounded by the densely packed housing of the town. Its moat was shallow or dry, and some of its towers were insufficiently strong to use as artillery mounts. Clive did the best he could to prepare for the onslaught he expected. He made a foray against the fort's former garrison, encamped a few miles away, which had no significant effect. When the former garrison was reinforced by 2,000 men Chanda Sahib sent from Trichinopoly it reoccupied the town on 15 September. That night Clive led most of his force out of the fort and launched a surprise attack on the besiegers. Because of the darkness, the besiegers had no idea how large Clive's force was, and they fled in panic.
The next day Clive learned that heavy guns he had requested from Madras were approaching, so he sent most of his garrison out to escort them into the fort. That night the besiegers, who had spotted the movement, launched an attack on the fort. With only 70 men in the fort, Clive once again was able to disguise his small numbers, and sowed sufficient confusion against his enemies that multiple assaults against the fort were successfully repulsed. That morning the guns arrived, and Chanda Sahib's men again retreated.
Over the next week Clive and his men worked feverishly to improve the defences, aware that another 4,000 men, led by Chanda Sahib's son Raza Sahib and accompanied by a small contingent of French troops, was on its way. (Most of these troops came from Pondicherry, not Trichinopoly, and thus did not have the effect Clive desired of raising that siege.) Clive was forced to reduce his garrison to about 300 men, sending the rest of his force to Madras in case the enemy army decided to go there instead. Raza Sahib arrived at Arcot, and on 23 September occupied the town. That night Clive launched a daring attack against the French artillery, seeking to capture their guns. The attack very nearly succeeded in its object, but was reversed when enemy sniper fire tore into the small British force. Clive himself was targeted on more than one occasion; one man pulled him down and was shot dead. The affair was a serious blow: 15 of Clive's men were killed, and another 15 wounded.
Over the next month the besiegers slowly tightened their grips on the fort. Clive's men were subjected to frequent sniper attacks and disease, lowering the garrison size to 200. He was heartened to learn that some 6,000 Maratha forces had been convinced to come to his relief, but that they were awaiting payment before proceeding. The approach of this force prompted Raza Sahib to demand Clive's surrender; Clive's response was an immediate rejection, and he further insulted Raza Sahib by suggesting that he should reconsider sending his rabble of troops against a British-held position. The siege finally reached critical when Raza Sahib launched an all-out assault against the fort on 14 November. Clive's small force maintained its composure, and established killing fields outside the walls of the fort where the attackers sought to gain entry. Several hundred attackers were killed and many more wounded, while Clive's small force suffered only four British and two sepoy casualties.
The historian Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote a century later of the siege:
... the commander who had to conduct the defence ... was a young man of five and twenty, who had been bred as a book-keeper ... Clive ... had made his arrangements, and, exhausted by fatigue, had thrown himself on his bed. He was awakened by the alarm, and was instantly at his post ... After three desperate onsets, the besiegers retired behind the ditch. The struggle lasted about an hour ... the garrison lost only five or six men.
His conduct during the siege made Clive famous in Europe. The Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder described Clive, who had received no formal military training whatsoever, as the "heaven-born general", endorsing the generous appreciation of his early commander, Major Lawrence. The Court of Directors of the East India Company voted him a sword worth £700, which he refused to receive unless Lawrence was similarly honoured.
Clive and Major Lawrence were able to bring the campaign to a successful conclusion. In 1754, the first of the provisional Carnatic treaties was signed between Thomas Saunders, the Company president at Madras, and Charles Godeheu, the French commander who displaced Dupleix. Mohammed Ali Khan Wallajah was recognised as Nawab, and both nations agreed to equalise their possessions. When war again broke out in 1756, during Clive's absence in Bengal, the French obtained successes in the northern districts, and it was Mohammed Ali Khan Wallajah's efforts which drove them from their settlements. The Treaty of Paris (1763) formally confirmed Mohammed Ali Khan Wallajah as Nawab of the Carnatic. It was a result of this action and the increased British influence that in 1765 a firman (decree) came from the Emperor of Delhi, recognising the British possessions in southern India.
Margaret Maskelyne had set out to find Clive who reportedly had fallen in love with her portrait. When she arrived Clive was a national hero. They were married at St. Mary's Church in (then) Madras on 18 February 1753. They then returned to England.
Clive also briefly sat as Member of Parliament for the Cornwall rotten borough of St Michael's, which then returned two Members, from 1754 to 1755. He and his colleague, John Stephenson were later unseated by petition of their defeated opponents, Richard Hussey and Simon Luttrell.
Second journey to India (1755–1760)
Further information: Great Britain in the Seven Years War
In July 1755, Clive returned to India to act as deputy governor of Fort St. David at Cuddalore. He arrived after having lost a considerable fortune en route, as the Doddington, the lead ship of his convoy, was wrecked near Port Elizabeth, losing a chest of gold coins belonging to Clive worth £33,000 (equivalent to £5,500,000 in 2021). Nearly 250 years later in 1998, illegally salvaged coins from Clive's treasure chest were offered for sale, and in 2002 a portion of the coins were given to the South African government after protracted legal wrangling.
Clive, now promoted to lieutenant-colonel in the British Army, took part in the capture of the fortress of Gheriah, a stronghold of the Maratha Admiral Tuloji Angre. The action was led by Admiral James Watson and the British had several ships available, some Royal troops and some Maratha allies. The overwhelming strength of the joint British and Maratha forces ensured that the battle was won with few losses. A fleet surgeon, Edward Ives, noted that Clive refused to take any part of the treasure divided among the victorious forces as was custom at the time.
Fall and recapture of Calcutta (1756–57)
Following this action Clive headed to his post at Fort St. David and it was there he received news of twin disasters for the British. Early in 1756, Siraj ud-Daulah had succeeded his grandfather Alivardi Khan as Nawab of Bengal. In June, Clive received news that the new Nawab had attacked the British at Kasimbazar and shortly afterwards on 20 June he had taken the fort at Calcutta. The losses to the Company because of the fall of Calcutta were estimated by investors at £2,000,000 (equivalent to £320,000,000 in 2021). Those British who were captured were placed in a punishment cell which became infamous as the Black Hole of Calcutta. In stifling summer heat, it was reported that 43 of the 64 prisoners died as a result of suffocation or heat stroke. While the Black Hole became infamous in Britain, it is debatable whether the Nawab was aware of the incident.
By Christmas 1756, as no response had been received to diplomatic letters to the Nawab, Admiral Charles Watson and Clive were dispatched to attack the Nawab's army and remove him from Calcutta by force. Their first target was the fortress of Baj-Baj which Clive approached by land while Admiral Watson bombarded it from the sea. The fortress was quickly taken with minimal British casualties. Shortly afterwards, on 2 January 1757, Calcutta itself was taken with similar ease.
Approximately a month later, on 3 February 1757, Clive encountered the army of the Nawab itself. For two days, the army marched past Clive's camp to take up a position east of Calcutta. Sir Eyre Coote, serving in the British forces, estimated the enemy's strength as 40,000 cavalry, 60,000 infantry and thirty cannon. Even allowing for overestimation this was considerably more than Clive's force of approximately 540 British infantry, 600 Royal Navy sailors, 800 local sepoys, fourteen field guns and no cavalry. The British forces attacked the Nawab's camp during the early morning hours of 5 February 1757. In this battle, unofficially called the 'Calcutta Gauntlet', Clive marched his small force through the entire Nawab's camp, despite being under heavy fire from all sides. By noon, Clive's force broke through the besieging camp and arrived safely at Fort William. During the assault, around one tenth of the British attackers became casualties. (Clive reported his losses at 57 killed and 137 wounded.) While technically not a victory in military terms, the sudden British assault intimidated the Nawab. He sought to make terms with Clive, and surrendered control of Calcutta on 9 February, promising to compensate the East India Company for damages suffered and to restore its privileges.
War with Siraj Ud Daulah
As Britain and France were once more at war, Clive sent the fleet up the river against the French colony of Chandannagar, while he besieged it by land. There was a strong incentive to capture the colony, as capture of a previous French settlement near Pondicherry had yielded the combined forces prizes valued at £130,000 (equivalent to £18,500,000 in 2021). After consenting to the siege, the Nawab unsuccessfully sought to assist the French. Some officials of the Nawab's court formed a confederacy to depose him. Jafar Ali Khan, also known as Mir Jafar, the Nawab's commander-in-chief, led the conspirators. With Admiral Watson, Governor Drake and Mr. Watts, Clive made a gentlemen's agreement in which it was agreed to give the office of viceroy of Bengal, Bihar and Odisha to Mir Jafar, who was to pay £1,000,000 (equivalent to £140,000,000 in 2021) to the company for its losses in Calcutta and the cost of its troops, £500,000 (equivalent to £70,000,000 in 2021) to the British inhabitants of Calcutta, £200,000 (equivalent to £28,500,000 in 2021) to the native inhabitants, and £70,000 (equivalent to £10,000,000 in 2021) to its Armenian merchants.
Clive employed Umichand, a rich Bengali trader, as an agent between Mir Jafar and the British officials. Umichand threatened to betray Clive unless he was guaranteed, in the agreement itself, £300,000 (equivalent to £47,500,000 in 2021). To dupe him a fictitious agreement was shown to him with a clause to this effect. Admiral Watson refused to sign it. Clive deposed later to the House of Commons that, "to the best of his remembrance, he gave the gentleman who carried it leave to sign his name upon it; his lordship never made any secret of it; he thinks it warrantable in such a case, and would do it again a hundred times; he had no interested motive in doing it, and did it with a design of disappointing the expectations of a rapacious man."
Plassey
The whole hot season of 1757 was spent in negotiations with the Nawab of Bengal. In the middle of June Clive began his march from Chandannagar, with the British in boats and the sepoys along the right bank of the Hooghly River. During the rainy season, the Hooghly is fed by the overflow of the Ganges to the north through three streams, which in the hot months are nearly dry. On the left bank of the Bhagirathi, the most westerly of these, 100 miles (160 km) above Chandernagore, stands Murshidabad, the capital of the Mughal viceroys of Bengal. Some miles farther down is the field of Plassey, then an extensive grove of mango trees.
On 21 June 1757, Clive arrived on the bank opposite Plassey, in the midst of the first outburst of monsoon rain. His whole army amounted to 1,100 Europeans and 2,100 sepoy troops, with nine field-pieces. The Nawab had drawn up 18,000 horse, 50,000-foot and 53 pieces of heavy ordnance, served by French artillerymen. For once in his career Clive hesitated, and called a council of sixteen officers to decide, as he put it, "whether in our present situation, without assistance, and on our own bottom, it would be prudent to attack the Nawab, or whether we should wait till joined by some country (Indian) power." Clive himself headed the nine who voted for delay; Major Eyre Coote led the seven who counselled immediate attack. But, either because his daring asserted itself, or because of a letter received from Mir Jafar, Clive was the first to change his mind and to communicate with Major Eyre Coote. One tradition, followed by Macaulay, represents him as spending an hour in thought under the shade of some trees, while he resolved the issues of what was to prove one of the decisive battles of the world. Another, turned into verse by Sir Alfred Lyall, pictures his resolution as the result of a dream. However that may be, he did well as a soldier to trust to the dash and even rashness that had gained Arcot and triumphed at Calcutta since retreat, or even delay, might have resulted in defeat.
After heavy rain, Clive's 3,200 men and the nine guns crossed the river and took possession of the grove and its tanks of water, while Clive established his headquarters in a hunting lodge. On 23 June, the engagement took place and lasted the whole day, during which remarkably little actual fighting took place. Gunpowder for the cannons of the Nawab was not well protected from rain. That impaired those cannons. Except for the 40 Frenchmen and the guns they worked, the Indian side could do little to reply to the British cannonade (after a spell of rain), which, with the 39th Regiment, scattered the host, inflicting on it a loss of 500 men. Clive had already made a secret agreement with aristocrats in Bengal, including Jagat Seth and Mir Jafar. Clive restrained Major Kilpatrick, for he trusted to Mir Jafar's abstinence, if not desertion to his ranks, and knew the importance of sparing his own small force.[16] He was fully justified in his confidence in Mir Jafar's treachery to his master, for he led a large portion of the Nawab's army away from the battlefield, ensuring his defeat.
Clive lost hardly any European troops; in all 22 sepoys were killed and 50 wounded. It is curious in many ways that Clive is now best-remembered for this battle, which was essentially won by suborning the opposition rather than through fighting or brilliant military tactics. Whilst it established British military supremacy in Bengal, it did not secure the East India Company's control over Upper India, as is sometimes claimed. That would come only seven years later in 1764 at the Battle of Buxar, where Sir Hector Munro defeated the combined forces of the Mughal Emperor and the Nawab of Awadh in a much more closely fought encounter.
Siraj Ud Daulah fled from the field on a camel, securing what wealth he could. He was soon captured by Mir Jafar's forces and later executed by the assassin Mohammadi Beg. Clive entered Murshidabad and established Mir Jafar as Nawab, the price which had been agreed beforehand for his treachery. Clive was taken through the treasury, amid £1,500,000 (equivalent to £210,000,000 in 2021) sterling's worth of rupees, gold and silver plate, jewels and rich goods, and besought to ask what he would. Clive took £160,000 (equivalent to £22,800,000 in 2021), a vast fortune for the day, while £500,000 (equivalent to £70,000,000 in 2021) was distributed among the army and navy of the East India Company, and provided gifts of £24,000 (equivalent to £3,400,000 in 2021) to each member of the company's committee, as well as the public compensation stipulated for in the treaty.
In this extraction of wealth Clive followed a usage fully recognised by the company, although this was the source of future corruption which Clive was later sent to India again to correct. The company itself acquired revenue of £100,000 (equivalent to £14,300,000 in 2021) a year, and a contribution towards its losses and military expenditure of £1,500,000 sterling (equivalent to £210,000,000 in 2021). Mir Jafar further discharged his debt to Clive by afterwards presenting him with the quit-rent of the company's lands in and around Calcutta, amounting to an annuity of £27,000 (equivalent to £3,900,000 in 2021) for life, and leaving him by will the sum of £70,000 (equivalent to £10,000,000 in 2021), which Clive devoted to the army.
Further campaigns
Battle of Condore
While busy with the civil administration, Clive continued to follow up his military success. He sent Major Coote in pursuit of the French almost as far as Benares. He dispatched Colonel Forde to Vizagapatam and the northern districts of Madras, where Forde won the Battle of Condore (1758), pronounced by Broome "one of the most brilliant actions on military record".
Mughals
Clive came into direct contact with the Mughal himself, for the first time, a meeting which would prove beneficial in his later career. Prince Ali Gauhar escaped from Delhi after his father, the Mughal Emperor Alamgir II, had been murdered by the usurping Vizier Imad-ul-Mulk and his Maratha associate Sadashivrao Bhau.
Prince Ali Gauhar was welcomed and protected by Shuja-ud-Daula, the Nawab of Awadh. In 1760, after gaining control over Bihar, Odisha and some parts of the Bengal, Ali Gauhar and his Mughal Army of 30,000 intended to overthrow Mir Jafar and the Company in order to reconquer the riches of the eastern Subahs for the Mughal Empire. Ali Gauhar was accompanied by Muhammad Quli Khan, Hidayat Ali, Mir Afzal, Kadim Husein and Ghulam Husain Tabatabai. Their forces were reinforced by the forces of Shuja-ud-Daula and Najib-ud-Daula. The Mughals were also joined by Jean Law and 200 Frenchmen, and waged a campaign against the British during the Seven Years' War.
Prince Ali Gauhar successfully advanced as far as Patna, which he later besieged with a combined army of over 40,000 in order to capture or kill Ramnarian, a sworn enemy of the Mughals. Mir Jafar was terrified at the near demise of his cohort and sent his own son Miran to relieve Ramnarian and retake Patna. Mir Jafar also implored the aid of Robert Clive, but it was Major John Caillaud, who defeated and dispersed Prince Ali Gauhar's army.
Dutch aggression
While Clive was preoccupied with fighting the French, the Dutch directors of the outpost at Chinsurah, not far from Chandernagore, seeing an opportunity to expand their influence, agreed to send additional troops to Chinsurah. Despite Britain and the Dutch Republic not formally being at war, a Dutch fleet of seven ships, containing more than fifteen hundred European and Malay troops, came from Batavia and arrived at the mouth of the Hooghly River in October 1759, while Mir Jafar, the Nawab of Bengal, was meeting with Clive in Calcutta. They met a mixed force of British and local troops at Chinsurah, just outside Calcutta. The British, under Colonel Francis Forde, defeated the Dutch in the Battle of Chinsurah, forcing them to withdraw. The British engaged and defeated the ships the Dutch used to deliver the troops in a separate naval battle on 24 November. Thus Clive avenged the massacre of Amboyna – the occasion when he wrote his famous letter; "Dear Forde, fight them immediately; I will send you the order of council to-morrow".
Meanwhile, Clive improved the organisation and drill of the sepoy army, after a European model, and enlisted into it many Muslims from upper regions of the Mughal Empire. He re-fortified Calcutta. In 1760, after four years of hard labour, his health gave way and he returned to England. "It appeared", wrote a contemporary on the spot, "as if the soul was departing from the Government of Bengal". He had been formally made Governor of Bengal by the Court of Directors at a time when his nominal superiors in Madras sought to recall him to their help there. But he had discerned the importance of the province even during his first visit to its rich delta, mighty rivers and teeming population. Clive selected some able subordinates, notably a young Warren Hastings, who, a year after Plassey, was made Resident at the Nawab's court.
The long-term outcome of Plassey was to place a very heavy revenue burden upon Bengal. The company sought to extract the maximum revenue possible from the peasantry to fund military campaigns, and corruption was widespread amongst its officials. Mir Jafar was compelled to engage in extortion on a vast scale in order to replenish his treasury, which had been emptied by the company's demand for an indemnity of 2.8 crores of rupees (£3 million).
Return to Great Britain
In 1760, the 35-year-old Clive returned to Great Britain with a fortune of at least £300,000 (equivalent to £48,300,000 in 2021) and the quit-rent of £27,000 (equivalent to £4,300,000 in 2021) a year. He financially supported his parents and sisters, while also providing Major Lawrence, the commanding officer who had early encouraged his military genius, with a stipend of £500 (equivalent to £100,000 in 2021) a year. In the five years of his conquests and administration in Bengal, the young man had crowded together a succession of exploits that led Lord Macaulay, in what that historian termed his "flashy" essay on the subject, to compare him to Napoleon Bonaparte, declaring that "[Clive] gave peace, security, prosperity and such liberty as the case allowed of to millions of Indians, who had for centuries been the prey of oppression, while Napoleon's career of conquest was inspired only by personal ambition, and the absolutism he established vanished with his fall." Macaulay's ringing endorsement of Clive seems more controversial today, as some would argue that Clive's ambition and desire for personal gain set the tone for the administration of Bengal until the Permanent Settlement 30 years later. The immediate consequence of Clive's victory at Plassey was an increase in the revenue demand on Bengal by at least 20%, which led to considerable hardship for the rural population, particularly during the famine of 1770.
During the three years that Clive remained in Great Britain, he sought a political position, chiefly that he might influence the course of events in India, which he had left full of promise. He had been well received at court, was elevated to the peerage as Baron Clive of Plassey, County Clare; had bought estates, and returned a few friends as well as himself to the House of Commons. Clive was MP for Shrewsbury from 1761 until his death. He was allowed to sit in the Commons because his peerage was Irish. He was also elected Mayor of Shrewsbury for 1762–63. The non-graduate Clive received an honorary degree as DCL from Oxford University in 1760, and in 1764 he was appointed Knight of the Order of the Bath.
Clive set himself to reform the home system of the East India Company, and began a bitter dispute with the chairman of the Court of Directors, Laurence Sulivan, whom he defeated in the end. In this he was aided by the news of reverses in Bengal. Mir Jafar had finally rebelled over payments to British officials, and Clive's successor had put Qasim Ali Khan, Mir Jafar's son-in-law upon the musnud (throne). After a brief tenure, Mir Qasim had fled, ordering Walter Reinhardt Sombre (known to the Muslims as Sumru), a Swiss mercenary of his, to butcher the garrison of 150 British at Patna, and had disappeared under the protection of his brother, the Viceroy of Awadh. The whole company's service, civil and military, had become mired in corruption, demoralised by gifts and by the monopoly of inland and export trade, to such an extent that the Indians were pauperised, and the company was plundered of the revenues Clive had acquired. For this Clive himself must bear much responsibility, as he had set a very poor example during his tenure as Governor. Nevertheless, the Court of Proprietors, forced the Directors to hurry Lord Clive to Bengal with the double powers of Governor and Commander-in-Chief.
Third journey to India
On 11 April 1765, Clive's ship docked at Madras. Upon learning of Mir Jafar's death and the aftermath of the Battle of Buxar, he sent a coded letter to a friend back in England, directing him to mortgage all his property and to buy as much stock in the Company as possible before the news broke, anticipating that its value would rise. On 3 May 1765 Clive landed at Calcutta to learn that Mir Jafar left him personally £70,000 (equivalent to £10,200,000 in 2021). Mir Jafar was succeeded by his son-in-law Kasim Ali, though not before the government had been further demoralised by taking £100,000 (equivalent to £14,500,000 in 2021) as a gift from the new Nawab; while Kasim Ali had induced not only the viceroy of Awadh, but the emperor of Delhi himself, to invade Bihar. At this point a mutiny in the Bengal army occurred, which was a grim precursor of the Indian rebellion of 1857, but on this occasion it was quickly suppressed by blowing the sepoy ringleader from a gun. Major Munro, "the Napier of those times", scattered the united armies on the hard-fought field of Buxar. The emperor, Shah Alam II, detached himself from the league, while the Awadh viceroy threw himself on the mercy of the British.
Clive had now an opportunity of repeating in Hindustan, or Upper India, what he had accomplished in Bengal. He might have secured what is now called Uttar Pradesh, and have rendered unnecessary the campaigns of Wellesley and Lake. But he believed he had other work in the exploitation of the revenues and resources of rich Bengal itself, making it a base from which British India would afterwards steadily grow. Hence he returned to the Awadh viceroy all his territory save the provinces of Allahabad and Kora, which he presented to the weak emperor.
Mughal Firman
In return for the Awadhian provinces Clive secured from the emperor one of the most important documents in British history in India, effectively granting title of Bengal to Clive. It appears in the records as "firman from the King Shah Aalum, granting the diwani rights of Bengal, Bihar and Odisha to the Company 1765." The date was 12 August 1765, the place Benares, the throne an English dining-table covered with embroidered cloth and surmounted by a chair in Clive's tent. It is all pictured by a Muslim contemporary, who indignantly exclaims that so great a "transaction was done and finished in less time than would have been taken up in the sale of a jackass". By this deed the company became the real sovereign rulers of thirty million people, yielding a revenue of £4,000,000 sterling (equivalent to £580,000,000 in 2021).
On the same date Clive obtained not only an imperial charter for the company's possessions in the Carnatic, completing the work he began at Arcot, but a third firman for the highest of all the lieutenancies of the empire, that of the Deccan itself. This fact is mentioned in a letter from the secret committee of the court of directors to the Madras government, dated 27 April 1768. The British presence in India was still tiny compared to the number and strength of the princes and people of India, but also compared to the forces of their ambitious French, Dutch and Danish rivals. Clive had this in mind when he penned his last advice to the directors, as he finally left India in 1767:
"We are sensible that, since the acquisition of the dewany, the power formerly belonging to the soubah of those provinces is totally, in fact, vested in the East India Company. Nothing remains to him but the name and shadow of authority. This name, however, this shadow, it is indispensably necessary we should seem to venerate."
Attempts at administrative reform
Having thus founded the Empire of British India, Clive sought to put in place a strong administration. The salaries of civil servants were increased, the acceptance of gifts from Indians was forbidden, and Clive exacted covenants under which participation in the inland trade was stopped. Unfortunately this had very little impact in reducing corruption, which remained widespread until the days of Warren Hastings. Clive's military reforms were more effective. He put down a mutiny of the British officers, who chose to resent the veto against receiving presents and the reduction of batta (extra pay) at a time when two Maratha armies were marching on Bengal. His reorganisation of the army, on the lines of that which he had begun after Plassey, neglected during his absence in Great Britain, subsequently attracted the admiration of Indian officers. He divided the whole army into three brigades, making each a complete force, in itself equal to any single Indian army that could be brought against it.
Clive was also instrumental in making the company virtual master of North India by introducing his policy of "Dual system of government". According to the new arrangement enforced by him, the company became liable only for revenue affairs of Bengal (Diwani) and Bihar while the administration and law and order was made a prerogative of the Nawab. An office of "Deputy Nawab" was created, who was at the helms of all the affairs vis a vis revenue of two of the richest provinces of India besides being the company's representative while the Nizamat (Law and order) remained in the hands of the Nawab who appointed his own representative to deal with the company. This system proved to be detrimental for the administration of Bengal and ultimately the "Dual system of government" was abolished by Clive.
Retirement and death
Clive left India for the last time in February 1767. In 1768, he lived at the Chateau de Larzac in Pézenas, Hérault, Languedoc-Roussillon in southern France. Local tradition is that he introduced local bakers to a sweet pastry, Petit pâté de Pézenas, and that he (more obviously, his chef) had brought the recipe from India as a refined version of the savoury keema naan. Pézenas is known for such delicacies.
Later in 1768, Clive was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and served as treasurer of the Royal Salop Infirmary in Shrewsbury.
In 1769, he acquired the house and gardens of Claremont near Esher in Surrey, and commissioned Capability Brown to remodel the garden and house.
In 1772 Parliament opened an inquiry into the company's practices in India. Clive's political opponents turned these hearings into attacks on Clive. Questioned about some of the large sums of money he had received while in India, Clive pointed out that they were not contrary to accepted company practice, and defended his behaviour by stating "I stand astonished at my own moderation" given opportunities for greater gain. The hearings highlighted the need for reform of the company; a vote to censure Clive for his actions failed. Later in 1772, Clive was invested Knight of the Bath (eight years after he had been made knight bachelor), and was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire.
A great famine between 1769 and 1773 reduced the population of Bengal by a third. It was argued that the activities and aggrandisement of company officials caused the famine, particularly abuse of trade monopoly and land tax used for the personal benefit of company officials. These revelations and subsequent debates in Parliament reduced Clive's political popularity.
Clive continued to be involved in Parliamentary discussions on company reforms. In 1773, General John Burgoyne, one of Clive's most vocal critics, pressed the case that some of Clive's gains were made at the expense of the company and of the government. Clive again made a spirited defence of his actions, and closed his testimony by stating "Take my fortune, but save my honour." The vote that followed exonerated Clive, who was commended for the "great and meritorious service" he rendered to the country. Immediately thereafter Parliament began debating the Regulating Act of 1773, which significantly reformed the East India Company's practices.
On 22 November 1774 Clive died, aged 49, at his Berkeley Square home. His death was caused by a cut to his throat from a penknife he held. The manner of his death has long been the subject of controversy. No inquest was carried out, the absence of which caused contemporary newspapers to report his death as due to an apoplectic fit or stroke. 20th-century biographer, John Watney, concluded: "He did not die from a self-inflicted wound ... He died as he severed his jugular with a blunt paper knife brought on by an overdose of drugs". While Clive left no suicide note, Samuel Johnson wrote that he "had acquired his fortune by such crimes that his consciousness of them impelled him to cut his own throat". Clive's demise has been linked to his history of depression and to opium addiction, but the likely immediate impetus was excruciating pain resulting from illness (he was known to suffer from gallstones) which he had been attempting to abate with opium[citation needed]. Shortly beforehand, he had been offered and declined command of British forces in North America. He was buried in St Margaret's Parish Church at Moreton Say, near his birthplace in Shropshire.
Clive was awarded an Irish peerage in 1762, created Baron Clive of Plassey, County Clare; he bought lands in County Limerick and County Clare, Ireland, naming part of his lands near Limerick City, Plassey. Following Irish independence, these lands became state property. In the 1970s a technical college, later the University of Limerick, was built at Plassey.
Family
Edward Clive, 1st Earl of Powis (b. 7 March 1754, d. 16 May 1839)
Rebecca Clive (b. 15 September 1760, bapt 10 October 1760 Moreton Say, d. December 1795, married in 1780 to Lt-Gen John Robinson of Denston Hall Suffolk, MP (d. 1798.)
Charlotte Clive (b. 19 January 1762, d. unm 20 October 1795)
Margaret Clive (bapt 18 September 1763 Condover, Shropshire, d. June 1814, married 11 April 1780 Lt-Col Lambert Theodore Walpole (d. in Wexford Rebellion 1798)
Elizabeth Clive (bapt 18 November 1764 Condover, d. young)
Richard Clive (d. young)
Robert Clive (d. young)
Robert Clive Jnr (b. 14 August 1769, d. unm 28 July 1833), Lt-Col.
Jane Clive (d. young)
Criticism
Clive's actions have been criticised by modern historians due to actions in India, particularly his involvement in the Bengal Famine of 1770 and his economic management of India. The famine killed between one and ten million people. The 21st-century British historian William Dalrymple has called Clive an "unstable sociopath". Changes caused by Clive to the Indian revenue system and agricultural practices, designed to maximize profits for the East India Company, increased poverty in Bengal. Clive commented on the poor conditions of Bengal under Company rule,
I shall only say that such a scene of anarchy, confusion, bribery, corruption, and extortion was never seen or heard of in any country but Bengal; nor did such and so many fortunes acquire in so unjust and rapacious a manner. The three provinces of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa producing a clear revenue of £3 million sterling, have been under the absolute management of the company's servants, ever since Mir Jafar's restoration to the subahship; and they have, both civil and military, exacted and levied contributions from every man of power and consequence, from the Nawab down to the lowest zamindar.
In January 2021, the private school that Clive attended, Merchant Taylors' School, renamed Clive House to "Raphael House" (after the sportsman John Edward Raphael). Petitions have called for removal of a statue of Clive from The Square in Shrewsbury. No more than 20,000 signatures supported such a move, and on 16 July 2020 Shropshire Council voted 28–17 to retain the statue. A similar petition for removal of Clive's statue from outside the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Whitehall, accrued some 80,000 signatures.
In light of criticism of Clive's legacy, in 2020 Haberdashers' Adams school in Newport, Shropshire announced that Clive House was to be renamed "Owen House" (after the Shropshire poet Wilfred Owen).
Legacy
Robert Clive's desk from his time at Market Drayton Grammar School is on display at Market Drayton museum complete with his carved initials. The town also has a Clive Road.
Robert Clive's pet Aldabra giant tortoise died on 23 March 2006 in the Kolkata zoo. The tortoise, whose name was "Adwaita" (meaning the "One and Only" in Bengali), appeared to be 150–250 years old. Adwaita had been in the zoo since the 1870s and the zoo's documentation showed that he came from Clive's estate in India.
A statue of Clive stands in the main square in the market town of Shrewsbury, as well as a later one in King Charles Street near St James's Park, London.
Clive is a Senior Girls house at the Duke of York's Royal Military School, where all houses are named after prominent military figures.
Clive was a house at Haberdashers' Adams school in Newport, Shropshire which in 2021 was renamed Owen house, after the poet and soldier Wilfred Owen who was born near Oswestry in Shropshire. This follows criticism of Robert Clive in light of the George Floyd protests.
Clive Road, in West Dulwich, London, commemorates Baron Clive despite being so named close to a century after his death. Following the completion of the relocation of The Crystal Palace from Hyde Park to what is now Upper Norwood in 1854, the West End of London and Crystal Palace Railway was opened on 10 June 1854 to cope with crowds visiting the Crystal Palace. This led to a huge increase in employment in the area and a subsequent increase in the building of residential properties. Many of the new roads were named after eminent figures in British imperial history, such as Robert Clive.
There is a settlement named after Clive in the Hawke's Bay province of New Zealand.
Clive's coat of arms can be seen (impaled with his wife's) in relief in the pediment at Claremont in Esher, Surrey, which Clive had rebuilt.
A bestselling children's novel, G. A. Henty's With Clive in India: Or, the Beginnings of an Empire (1884), celebrates Clive's life and career from a pro-British point of view.
R. J. Minney's stage play Clive of India (1933) portrays the life of Clive, particularly focusing on his victory at the Battle of Plassey. It was based on a biography of Clive that Minney had written two years earlier.
The 1935 film Clive of India, based on Minney's play, starred Ronald Colman, Loretta Young, and Clive's descendant Colin Clive.
"Clive" was a house at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood, where he was a student for seven years before his expulsion. Members were distinguished by their red striped ties. In January 2021 the house was renamed after former pupil and sportsman John Raphael.
Robert Clive established the first slaughterhouse in India, in Calcutta in 1760.
"Clive of India" is a brand of curry powder manufactured in Australia by McKenzie's Foods.
With the re-capture of Calcutta by Clive in 1756, the cultivation of poppies for the opium trade soon came to be the mainstay of the East India Trading Company's commerce with Imperial China.
Clive is responsible for opening the first organized brothel within the Army cantonment of Calcutta. He was not interested in eradication of prostitution but in regulation so that their own soldiers and sailors could be protected from venereal diseases. However, two properties in central Calcutta owned by women named Ishwari and Bhobi, whom the Company identified as prostitutes, were seized in 1753.
Robert Browning's 1880 poem Clive recounts a fictional episode in which Clive, as a young clerk, duels a card-sharping soldier. Clive shoots and misses; the cheat then admits his crime and spares Clive's life. The poem's narrator, and those watching the duel, initially believe that the episode shows Clive's courage in standing up honestly; but Clive rebukes them that the magnanimous cheat showed far more honour. The poem largely focuses on the relationship between courage and fear, and closes with an allusion to Clive's suicide ("Clive's worst deed – we'll hope condoned").
Launched in 2019 and rewriting the rules of Grand Turismo motoring with its elegance and performance. This is the first McLaren that applies focus on refinement, practically and luggage capacity : 150 l of storage up front and 420 at the rear.
3.994 cc
V8
620 hp
630 Nm
Vmax : 326 km/h
0-100 km/h : 3,2 sec
1.530 kg
Expo : Supercar Story
17/12/2021 - 27/02/2022
Autoworld
Brussels - Belgium
January 2022
Singapore Cable Car
..7.10pm tackle the blue hour jetty scenery discover by first time met up 壊れかけのRadio
Crash of the Titan- Nikon D300 vs Canon 500D
no need to comments as many had seen the similar angle display by Our baby weapon-Canon vs Nikon. Here, U can make a comparison of both top choice brand of camera in action, if u intend to buy a DSLR camera, had no idea which to chose. Compare them here n u may able to decide for urself
thanks Mr Andrew fiftymm constantly guiding ,sharing technics with me willingly. thanks for been a unselfish pointer in many way. Hope more would come forwards to guide me along the way here on flickr,
I'm rewriting BlockCam to make it more efficient and use a more modern paradigm (I love words that end in "gm"), eg, SwiftUI. Fortunately, I can make heavy reuse of a lot of code from BlockCam and BumpCam (such as changing the camera from normal to selfie, as I tested here).
Also on the image is a waveform of the ambient sound in the room. I'm not very noisy...
What : Nunnally in Wonderland Rewrite Shoot
Where : Pansol, Calamba, Laguna
When : August 26, 2013
Cosplayer : Faye Liper
Character : Nunnally vi Britania
Game/Series/Anime/Band : Code Geass : Nunnally in Wonderland
Photo by : LeNekoLightplay
About the Photo:
With me hibernating for 7 months+ in Cosplay Photography this year, preppin' for this year's Snapshot Project 4 is really tough. I usually spend more than a month organising a shoot and there I was, loaded with company projects and other stuff -- bonus disaster was the heavy rain and flood.
With less than 2 weeks to spare, I tried to plan something that will ignore the weather condition and there, I end up with an Underwater shoot (easy for me to say but hey its my first time doing it so I don't know yet what to expect). Luckily I was able to find a reliable friend to look for a decent pool to shoot on -- the black and white tile was just a bonus, its really unexpected to get a pool that fits on the theme "Alice in Wonderland".
During the shoot, most of my plans failed so I have to recompose my settings, composition, etc --- lots of things were unexpected. Still thanks to yefa's patience, we were able to get few decent output after 80+ tries YEP! YOU READ IT CORRECTLY! EIGHTY PLUS TRIES. We are in the pool from 1pm to 8pm non-stop >_<
So yeah, here's one of the output~
Code Geass is one of my favorite anime of all time so yeah, I tried to rewrite the scene here with the question WHAT IF..? From the OVA, the one that is imagining the whole wonderland thing was Lelouch.
WHAT IF we rewrite the story with Nunnally's view point? With her little memory of the WORLD..?
That's the thing I kept in my mind while doing the shoot... I wasn't able to push that STORY REWRITE thing that much because of the technical difficulty we encountered... but we tried.. :3
Anyway, here is the output and my wildcard entry for the competition entitled:
"Torn Between Reality; A Blind Girl's Interpretation of Illusion"
Because I really love these water details that seems like boundaries of the two worlds and the arrangement of tiles (which I've got by luck) which creates an illusion (which is unusual for a girl who is blind since illusion usually incorporates your eyesight).
PS : This one was able to made it to the Top 20 of this year's competition!
The rest of my entries for snapshot project 4 was shot in Fantasy Quest 3: Lives On!
By Avery Thompson
Nov 15, 2017
The universe is filled with gigantic, world-shattering explosions. Entire stars can explode in spectacular supernovas, black holes can output huge amounts of energy in the form of gamma ray bursts, and black holes and neutron stars can collide with enough force to shake the very fabric of spacetime millions of light-years away.
Given the sheer number of different explosions, it shouldn’t be surprising that there are still some we’re just discovering. Recently, a group of astronomers did just that, identifying a new type of explosion in a distant galaxy.
The explosion, called PS1-10adi, took place in a galaxy 2.4 billion light-years away and was picked up by telescopes in Hawaii and La Palma. This explosion was measured to be bigger than a supernova, which means there are two possible explanations: either it’s a supernova that outclasses all others, or it’s a star getting eaten by a supermassive black hole.
Both of these possibilities are similar to explosions we’ve already seen before, but the scale of this particular one leads scientists to believe something unique is happening. In either case, it’s likely that the extreme size of the explosion is the result of being located close to the center of its galaxy.
“If they are supernova explosions then their properties are more extreme than we have ever observed before, and are likely connected to the central environments of the host galaxies,” says lead study author Erkki Kankare. “If these explosions are tidal disruption events–where a star gets sufficiently close to a supermassive black hole's event horizon and is shredded by the strong gravitational forces – then its properties are such that it would be a brand new type of tidal disruption event.”
Studying this particular explosion could tell us more about similar explosions that astronomers have been picking up all over the universe. Until now, these explosions have been mysteries, but with this new discovery we’ve finally narrowed down what’s causing them. The one thing they all have in common is a location in the center of large galaxies, and understanding these explosions could tell us more about galaxy centers.
“[These explosions’] existence provides us with important information about the extreme environment in the central, hidden, part of galaxies,” says study author Cosimo Inserra. Maybe someday we'll figure them all the way out.
Astronomy: The star that would not die.
An event that initially resembled an ordinary supernova explosion continued to erupt brightly for more than 600 days. Standard theoretical models cannot explain the event's properties.
(Abstract) -
Every supernova so far observed has been considered to be the terminal explosion of a star. Moreover, all supernovae with absorption lines in their spectra show those lines decreasing in velocity over time, as the ejecta expand and thin, revealing slower-moving material that was previously hidden. In addition, every supernova that exhibits the absorption lines of hydrogen has one main light-curve peak, or a plateau in luminosity, lasting approximately 100 days before declining1. Here we report observations of iPTF14hls, an event that has spectra identical to a hydrogen-rich core-collapse supernova, but characteristics that differ extensively from those of known supernovae. The light curve has at least five peaks and remains bright for more than 600 days; the absorption lines show little to no decrease in velocity; and the radius of the line-forming region is more than an order of magnitude bigger than the radius of the photosphere derived from the continuum emission. These characteristics are consistent with a shell of several tens of solar masses ejected by the progenitor star at supernova-level energies a few hundred days before a terminal explosion. Another possible eruption was recorded at the same position in 1954. Multiple energetic pre-supernova eruptions are expected to occur in stars of 95 to 130 solar masses, which experience the pulsational pair instability. That model, however, does not account for the continued presence of hydrogen, or the energetics observed here. Another mechanism for the violent ejection of mass in massive stars may be required.
Editorial Summary
A very unusual supernova
Thousands of 'core-collapse' supernovae have been observed over the past 15 years, with common observational elements such as hydrogen absorption lines that slow over time and a single light-curve peak or luminosity that plateaus for around 100 days before declining. Iair Arcavi and colleagues report observations of the supernova iPTF14hls, which does not display the usual elements. Its light curve has multiple peaks and extends over 600 days. They conclude that the properties could be explained by ejection of several tens of solar masses of gas a few hundred days before the explosion, but there is no viable explanation for how this occurred. Although multiple pre-supernova eruptions are predicted by the pulsational pair instability, that model is inconsistent with the energetics involved here and the continued presence of hydrogen absorption lines with no decrease in velocity.
The 'zombie star' that cheated death many times
[ Daily News & Analysis (dna) ]
‘Star That Would Not Die’ Explodes for a Record 600 Days
[ Vice ]
The ‘ that cheated death many times
[ The Siasat Daily ]
"Zombie Star" Exploded, Survived and Exploded Again
[ Space Daily ]
Stellar Zombie: Scientists Discover a Star That Won't Die
[ LiveScience ]
The star that cheated death many times
[ New Kerala ]
Звезда-зомби, пять раз пережившая превращение в сверхновую
[ BBC News ]
Astronomers shocked by massive supernova that keeps exploding for more than 600 days
[ Sydney Morning Herald ]
Rewrite of Sigal's rose:
1. Make yourself a pretty skinner blend and fold it like a harmonica.
2. Reduce to 20 cm.
3. cut in half
4. Cut one half in 5 pieces of 2 cm each, lay aside.
Original here: www.flickr.com/photos/sigal_simovich/3591248189/in/photol...
Chassis n° VF9SA25C18M795208
Estimated : CHF 700.000 - 900.000
Sold for CHF 1.311.000 - € 1.196.495
The Bonmont Sale
Collectors' Motor Cars - Bonhams
Golf & Country Club de Bonmont
Chéserex
Switzerland - Suisse - Schweiz
September 2019
"The Bugatti Veyron has recalibrated that which can be achieved by the motor car." – Autocar.
To say that the Bugatti Veyron caused a sensation when it arrived in 2005 would be a gross understatement; for here was a car that didn't just rewrite the supercar rule book so much as tear it up and start afresh. All the more remarkable was the fact that the Veyron was the dream of one man: Ferdinand Piech, CEO of the Volkswagen Group, which had acquired the Bugatti brand in 1998. Piech's ambition was to create a car that had 1,000 horsepower at its disposal, could exceed 400km/h (250mph), and cost €1 million. Turning Piech's dream into a reality would prove to be an immensely difficult undertaking, even for a company with Volkswagen's technological resources, and the result would not see the light of day for another seven years.
Designed by ItalDesign boss Giorgetto Giugiaro, the first concept car – the EB118 – was displayed at the Paris Auto Show in 1998, featuring permanent four-wheel drive and a Volkswagen-designed W18 engine. A handful of variations on the theme were displayed at international motor shows over the course of the next few years before the concept finally crystallised in 2000 in the form of the Veyron EB 16.4. The latter was styled in house at VW by Hartmut Warkuß and featured an engine with 16 cylinders and four turbochargers – hence the '16.4' designation. It was named after Bugatti development engineer and racing driver, Pierre Veyron, who together with co-driver Jean-Pierre Wimille, had won the 1939 Le Mans 24-Hour race for the French manufacturer. But this was far from the end of the development process, and it would take another five years and an extensive shake-up of the project's management and engineering teams before production could begin, by which time an incredible 95% of components had been either changed or redesigned.
Effectively two narrow-angle 4.0-litre V8 engines sharing a common crankcase, the 8.0-litre W16 - just - met Piech's requirements, producing a maximum output of 1,001PS (987bhp) and 922ft/lb of torque, figures that would embarrass a current Formula 1 car. With a kerb weight of 1,888kg (4,162lb) the Veyron had a staggering power-to-eight ratio of 523bhp per ton. Tasked with transmitting this formidable force to the ground was a permanent four-wheel-drive, dual-clutch transmission system incorporating a seven-speed paddle-shift semi-automatic gearbox, the latter built by the British company, Ricardo, while to accommodate the Veyron's phenomenal top speed Michelin designed special run-flat PAX tyres. Piech had specified a maximum velocity of 250mph and the Veyron did not disappoint, with more than one tester – Top Gear's James May included - exceeding the target by a few miles per hour. At €1,225,000 (£1,065,000) the Veyron base price as also exceeded Piech's target comfortably.
To maintain stability at such high speeds, the Veyron has a few aerodynamic tricks up its sleeve, a hydraulic system lowering the car at around 140mph, at which speed the rear wing deploys, increasing downforce. But if the Veyron driver wishes to exceed 213mph (343km/h), he or she needs to select Top Speed Mode (from rest) before joining what is a very exclusive club indeed.
Jeremy Clarkson, reviewing the Veyron for The Times: "In a drag race you could let the McLaren (F1) get to 120mph before setting off in the Veyron. And you'd still get to 200mph first. The Bugatti is way, way faster than anything else the roads have seen." Yet despite its breathtaking performance, the Veyron contrived to be surprisingly docile at 'sensible' speeds. "Bugatti says the Veyron is as easy to drive as a Bentley, and they're not exaggerating," declared Autocar. "Immediately you notice how smoothly weighted the steering is, and how calm the ride is."
In a market sector many of whose protagonists can only be described a 'hard core', the Veyron contrived to be a remarkably civilised conveyance. "When you climb aboard the Bugatti Veyron there are no particular physical contortions required of you by the world's fastest car, as there are in so many so-called supercars," observed Autocar describing "the most exquisite car cabin on earth". The latter was found to be more than generously spacious for a two-seat mid-engined car, while in terms of interior equipment there was virtually no limit to what the, necessarily wealthy, Veyron customer could specify. Restricted rearward visibility is a frequent bugbear of mid-engined supercars, a problem the Veyron dealt with by means of a reversing camera.
In 2009, an open version of the Veyron – the Grand Sport – was announced, featuring a removable roof panel and 'emergency' soft-top. The following year Bugatti released the ultimate Veyron - the Super Sport - which came with 1,200bhp, 1,100ft/lb of torque, and revised aerodynamics. Only 30 were made, the very last of these truly fabulous cars being that offered here. An open version - the Grand Sport Vitesse - was introduced in 2012.
The SSC Ultimate Aero had taken the Veyron's title of 'World's Fastest Car' in 2007, but the Super Sport would soon put the upstart American manufacturer in its place. The redoubtable James May achieved a top speed of 259.49 mph (417.61 km/h) on 4th July 2010, and later that same day Bugatti test driver Pierre Henri Raphanel set a new mean best mark of 267.856 mph (431.072 km/h) at Volkswagen's test track near Wolfsburg in Germany. This had been achieved by deactivating the Super Sport's electronic limiter, which restricts top speed to 'only' 258mph (415km/h), causing some to question the figure's validity. Eventually, the Guinness Book of Records decided that the mark should stand. By the time Veyron production ceased in 2015, Bugati had built only 450 of these quite extraordinary cars.
Chassis number '208', the car offered here, was intended for sale in the USA. Finished in Atlantic Blue with beige interior, it has covered 3,142 miles and appears in good condition, with 'as new' bodywork and paint, excellent wheels and tyres, and a clean engine that starts instantly. The car is offered with Equatorial Guinea registration papers and technical inspection.
File: 2019001-0611
2019 Formula 1 British Grand Prix, Silverstone Circuit, near Silverstone, Northamptonshire, United Kingdom. Race Day, Sunday 14th July 2019.
About the subject.
This is Carlos Sainz Jr in the McLaren MCL34 followed by Daniel Ricciardo in the Renault R.S.19.
Sainz, whose full name is Carlos Sainz Vazquez de Castro, was born on 1st September 1994 in Madrid, Spain. He is the son of the World Rally Championship driver, Carlos Sainz Sr.
Between 2006 and 2009 he took up karting, before moving onto formula cars in 2010, starting with Formula BMW Europe. His first Formula One race was in 2015 with Scuderia Toro Rosso.
He joined McLaren in 2019 and partnered with the rookie driver Lando Norris.
The car he drove, seen in the photo, during the 2019 Formula One season was the McLaren MCL34 under the engineering director of Pat Fry.
Daniel Joseph Ricciardo was born on 1st July 1989 in Perth, Australia. His father was born in Italy and his mother born in Australia.
He started karting at the age of 9, and by around 2005, he started in formula car races, starting with Formula Ford. He made his Formula One debut in 2009 with Red Bull as a test driver. He joined Renault in 2019.
He drove in the Renault R.S.19 during the 2019 Formula One season, as seen here in the photograph. He drove with his personalise number of 3.
Race Summary.
The starting grid in the following order was: BOT, HAM, LEC, VER, GAS, VET, RIC, NOR, ALB, HUL, GIO, RAI, SAI, GRO, PER, MAG, KVY, STR, RUS, KUB.
The race started, and on the first lap, the two Haas drivers collided at the exit of turn 5.
One of my photos shows Magnussen in car number 20 with a rear wheel puncture, seen here: www.flickr.com/photos/132335712@N05/49955865996/
Both cars managed to pit, but Magnussen retired on Lap 6 and Grosjean retired on Lap 9, both because of the damages to their cars.
Bottas and Hamilton briefly fought for the lead, and later, Hamilton would lead during most of the race.
Leclerc and Verstappen pitted at same time on Lap 14. When coming into the pit lane, Leclerc was ahead, but the Red Bull pit stop crew were faster, and for a short moment, both cars were side by side while going through the pit lane, until Verstappen got ahead.
Around Lap 18, Antonio Giovinazzi, whom was running in 9th place, had a mechanical failure and ended up in the gravel at turn 16, forcing out a Safety Car.
My photo of the Safety Car is found here: www.flickr.com/photos/132335712@N05/49877436363/
When the race resumed on Lap 24, Perez and Hulkenberg made contact, Perez pitted for new wings, but would end up last in the race.
Verstappen overtook Vettel for the 3rd place, but when attempting to take back the position, Vettel locked up his brakes and collided into the back of the Red Bull. Both cars spun into the gravel, but managed to get back on the track and continued racing.
Vettel finished 15th but was handed a 10-second penalty for causing a collision, thus ended up 16th.
Lewis Hamilton won the race plus an extra point for fastest lap.
The results: 1: HAM (26pts), 2: BOT (18pts), 3: LEC (15pts), 4: GAS (12pts), 5: VER (10pts), 6: SAI (8pts), 7: RIC (6pts), 8: RAI (4pts), 9: KVY (2pts), 10: HUL (1pts), 11: NOR, 12: ALB, 13: STR, 14: RUS, 15:KUB, 16:VET, 17:PER, Ret: GIO, GRO, MAG.
You are welcome to comment on my photo, about the subject itself, or about your story. But the Comment Box is NOT an adverting billboard for links to the groups. Clickable links to groups IS all about the groups, and does not say much about my photographs, therefore will be deleted. If you want to promote the groups, do so IN YOUR own Photostream!
File: 2019001-0610
2019 Formula 1 British Grand Prix, Silverstone Circuit, near Silverstone, Northamptonshire, United Kingdom. Race Day, Sunday 14th July 2019.
About the subject.
This is Carlos Sainz Jr in the McLaren MCL34 followed by Daniel Ricciardo in the Renault R.S.19.
Sainz, whose full name is Carlos Sainz Vazquez de Castro, was born on 1st September 1994 in Madrid, Spain. He is the son of the World Rally Championship driver, Carlos Sainz Sr.
Between 2006 and 2009 he took up karting, before moving onto formula cars in 2010, starting with Formula BMW Europe. His first Formula One race was in 2015 with Scuderia Toro Rosso.
He joined McLaren in 2019 and partnered with the rookie driver Lando Norris.
The car he drove, seen in the photo, during the 2019 Formula One season was the McLaren MCL34 under the engineering director of Pat Fry.
Daniel Joseph Ricciardo was born on 1st July 1989 in Perth, Australia. His father was born in Italy and his mother born in Australia.
He started karting at the age of 9, and by around 2005, he started in formula car races, starting with Formula Ford. He made his Formula One debut in 2009 with Red Bull as a test driver. He joined Renault in 2019.
He drove in the Renault R.S.19 during the 2019 Formula One season, as seen here in the photograph. He drove with his personalise number of 3.
Race Summary.
The starting grid in the following order was: BOT, HAM, LEC, VER, GAS, VET, RIC, NOR, ALB, HUL, GIO, RAI, SAI, GRO, PER, MAG, KVY, STR, RUS, KUB.
The race started, and on the first lap, the two Haas drivers collided at the exit of turn 5.
One of my photos shows Magnussen in car number 20 with a rear wheel puncture, seen here: www.flickr.com/photos/132335712@N05/49955865996/
Both cars managed to pit, but Magnussen retired on Lap 6 and Grosjean retired on Lap 9, both because of the damages to their cars.
Bottas and Hamilton briefly fought for the lead, and later, Hamilton would lead during most of the race.
Leclerc and Verstappen pitted at same time on Lap 14. When coming into the pit lane, Leclerc was ahead, but the Red Bull pit stop crew were faster, and for a short moment, both cars were side by side while going through the pit lane, until Verstappen got ahead.
Around Lap 18, Antonio Giovinazzi, whom was running in 9th place, had a mechanical failure and ended up in the gravel at turn 16, forcing out a Safety Car.
My photo of the Safety Car is found here: www.flickr.com/photos/132335712@N05/49877436363/
When the race resumed on Lap 24, Perez and Hulkenberg made contact, Perez pitted for new wings, but would end up last in the race.
Verstappen overtook Vettel for the 3rd place, but when attempting to take back the position, Vettel locked up his brakes and collided into the back of the Red Bull. Both cars spun into the gravel, but managed to get back on the track and continued racing.
Vettel finished 15th but was handed a 10-second penalty for causing a collision, thus ended up 16th.
Lewis Hamilton won the race plus an extra point for fastest lap.
The results: 1: HAM (26pts), 2: BOT (18pts), 3: LEC (15pts), 4: GAS (12pts), 5: VER (10pts), 6: SAI (8pts), 7: RIC (6pts), 8: RAI (4pts), 9: KVY (2pts), 10: HUL (1pts), 11: NOR, 12: ALB, 13: STR, 14: RUS, 15:KUB, 16:VET, 17:PER, Ret: GIO, GRO, MAG.
You are welcome to comment on my photo, about the subject itself, or about your story. But the Comment Box is NOT an adverting billboard for links to the groups. Clickable links to groups IS all about the groups, and does not say much about my photographs, therefore will be deleted. If you want to promote the groups, do so IN YOUR own Photostream!
Spray e acrilico
Stencil su tela 30 x 30 cm
Un omaggio al leggendario illustratore moebius.
Il sistema se può tenerti sotto controllo, può anche darti da mangiare..meno ci si rende controllabili meno si riuscirà a mangiare/sopravvivere.
Esposto ad across rewriting 2012 presso il circolo Amantes, Torino.
Spray
Stencil on canvas 30 x 30 cm
An homage to a legendary illustrator, Moebius.
If the system can control you, can feed you too.
The less you let control you by the system, the less you receive to eat/survive.
Exhibited at Across Rewriting 2012
Circolo Amantes, Turin
[I'm rewriting this because the original was a little daunting. --jon 2005-05-08]
Custom Flickr slideshow running in a picture frame.
I managed to finagle an old IBM Thinkpad 570E into an off-the-shelf shadowbox picture frame I bought at the local craft store, thanks to some tips from Ivan on MSDN's Channel 9. It was pretty easy, actually, since the computer itself is quite small. I just removed the screen casing (which actually involved disassembling most of the laptop) and taped the LCD panel (and backlight) to the mat. The rest of the computer is just sitting in the back (precariously--need to figure out a way to mount it--but the computer is quite light, ~3 lbs since there's no battery).
I was unhappy with the screensaver options because a) they didn't work for me, and b) they all suffer from API limitations. So, I wrote a quick and dirty ASP script that scrapes the output of the double-image HTML Flickr badge to get IMG SRCs of my pictures.. See the script for details. Add a META REFRESH, run in IE's kiosk mode and there you have it! The only thing is that it doesn't resize pictures, so you only get a partial for the larger pictures (which does give you some interesting crops!). Oh well. More work to come, obviously. Perhaps I'll rewrite it in ASP.Net so I can do the resizing, but I we'll see. If it ain't broke, don't fix it--yet.
UPDATE - 2005-07-13: I rewrote it in ASP.Net with image resizing to the size of the output screen. Source here.
It runs WinXP with a PC Card WiFi adapter. I use VNC to remote control it so I don't have to keep flipping the thing over to type. Set to autologin, add IE in kiosk mode pointing to the page in the Startup group, and voila!
Total cost? $20 for the frame and about 7 hours of work, most of which were unnecessary because I dismantled two computers before discovering I didn't really have to dismantle that much. Now I could probably do it in an hour.
See the inside here.
Publication: Bethesda, MD : U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Health & Human Services, 2009
Language(s): English
Format: Still image
Subject(s): Fear -- physiology,
Emotions -- physiology,
Facial Expression
Genre(s): Pictorial Works,
Book Illustrations
Abstract: Image of facing pages (p. 300-301) from The expression of the emotions in man and animals / by Charles Darwin. London : John Murray, 1872. Page 300 is text. Page 301 has two illustrations of men with expressions of fear or horror.
Exhibition: Exhibited: "Rewriting the book of nature"
Related Title(s): Rewriting the book of nature and Is part of: Expression of the emotions in man and animals; See related catalog record: 1267767
Extent: 1 online resource (1 image)
NLM Unique ID: 101600110
NLM Image ID: A032899
Permanent Link: resource.nlm.nih.gov/101600110
This is a rewrite of Crystalline's rose cane tutorial
1. make a pretty skinner blend
2. press the lightest and darkest color towards each other.
3. Reduce and get yourself 2 small parts, 5 medium size parts and 3 big parts.
4. Start shaping one of the smallest ones into a petal shape.
Original found here: cristalline.blogspot.nl/2009/02/tutoriel-canne-rose.html
The new public library in Birmingham town center, thanks to Valentina for the nice idea to visit it :-)
Original shots taken with a Nikon Coolpix AW120 16Mp compact digital camera, various post processing.
Publication: Bethesda, MD : U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Health & Human Services, 2009
Language(s): English
Format: Still image
Subject(s): Emotions, Facial Expression
Genre(s): Pictorial Works,
Book Illustrations
Abstract: Image of p. 180 from Darwin's Expression of emotions in man and animals. Includes portraits depicting various human emotions shown by facial expressions.
Related Title(s): Rewriting the book of nature
Is part of: Expression of emotions in man and animals; See related catalog record: 8300684
Extent: 1 online resource (1 image)
NLM Unique ID: 101592349
NLM Image ID: A032849
Permanent Link:
behind the barn door there must have been a skylight in the ceiling!
If you've visited me earlier, I apologize for this rewrite . . . I was trying to add a link to the Australian Flag, and all my dialogue disappeared!
So, as I was saying, I'm always amazed when one of my abstract posts inspires comments from contacts around the world. When "snail mail" follows, I'm totally blown away!
Today I had lessons in history and astronomy, thanks to Jason in Australia.
My post below (entitled "playful activity behind the barn door")
of the abstracted barn hinge, touched a *star* in Jason's mind! He immediately identified with my quilt design with the Eureka Flag and the Southern Cross which is a star formation in the Australian night sky! What's NOT to love about serendipity!
If you have a moment and are interested, this is a fascinating link:
home.vicnet.net.au/~rasigsau/australian_flag.htm
You can also go to Wikipedia, but every time I tried to link there, my description vanished!
“The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds the most discoveries,
is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!)
but 'That's funny.'”
~ Isaac Asimov ~
“Eureka! - I have found it!”
“Eureka! I've got it.”
Archimedes quotes (Mathematician and inventor of ancient Greece, 280-211bc)
Shall I rewrite or revise
My October symphony?
Or as an indication
Change the dedication
From revolution to revelation?
My October symphony - Pet shop Boys
I wanted to find out if everybody in Hawaii got the same “ballistic missile threat” alert on their iPhone like I did or if the FBI was just able to send it to me alone. When we get similar alarms for a tsunami warning it comes with an air raid siren and since there was no air raid siren this morning I assumed this was just a false message to me. Either way I thought the best way to get back at the FBI was to post these alarms at Flickr.
I included the pictures of a naked girl on a motorcycle because that's what I was writing about in my diary when I got these alarms. Most of what follows is from my diary on 1-13-18, (that was mainly written for me and is not very considerate of who I was talking about but I'm too disabled to rewrite it).
This started from when I went out on 1-9-18 and saw a couple on a motorcycle and realized it was parallel to Abba on the back of my motorcycle. I know I’ve been married to all three of them as “the bride of Christ” for 23 years, (read and see PL9 at www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVDkjTNqYqh0oEXLQpQsubTdcm...), but it was hard to comprehend the creator of the universe on the back of my motorcycle, (=rq720am). I was trying to find out all the reasons why they would do that and the most obvious one that I've learned lately is how much they love ordinary magic, (like the ordinary magic apocalypse at 1 to 10 min in class 245 at www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1O03mQYM8A&index=126&lis...), and long shot close calls as another way to prove how much they are God. Another reason why they would stoop so low as to marry a guy on welfare, (read me as just a SPOC for the real bride of Christ at vimeo.com/245512210), is when I was watching the Holy Spirit as Brandy singing in Times Square in her music video “Baby” I was so shocked at how generous it was for God to be courting me that I said “how cool can you get?!”. =
= A siren at 7:58 AM on 1-13-18 when I finished^this is like in class 1A when I was so mad at the women who didn't come through as a Miss Right for me that I asked God “could you please show these stuck up broads how generous a real Christian would be”. Then I saw it was 7:21 PM and realized that was one reason why God would marry me, to show these stuck up broads how generous a real Christian would be with what she has. =
=rq809am after I just got a “ballistic missile threat” alert on my iPhone that made me want to watch class L123 at vimeo.com/60109388 at 6 to 22 minutes to slam dunk this lie saying we had not been delivered from a nuclear war. A confirmation is this is the 841st screenshot, (at the top of the alert), on my new iPhone SE as a sign of “don't worry about it”, (it's the same as the #1241 and also means John Adams). It's interesting, (or very suspicious), how they copied the same report from 12-7-41 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor with “this is not a drill”. =DDD at 8:18 AM= Thanks for saving me to be on time Abba.
This^reminds me of the signs I've got about the church denying that my rhythm nation drive in 1994 was a divine sign to the USA and the world that hell has frozen over, (see and read more about it at playlist 2 at www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVDkjTNqYqh2F7B0rf2SoXSMtm...). I've also got signs of the church deliberately contradicting a lot of other info in my classes and especially class L127j (at vimeo.com/122556850) because they were furious at the proof of my calling to represent Jesus’ return, (and have been viciously denying it). That's why this “ballistic missile threat” seems very suspicious of the FBI deliberately contradicting my class^L123. The church mocked my class^245 (at vimeo.com/248659040) so bad that I I had to rewrite the description, here it is:
When the magic was gone from this class 245 I changed the title to The Church as Salieri, (trying to kill me as Mozart in the movie Amadeus @ 1 min), and it worked to get the magic back. Read about when mockers in the church did the same thing to my class 99 at vimeo.com/36995187 and the worst contradicting of a class so far is this ballistic missile scare that is like the mockers I wrote about at class^L123 at vimeo.com/60109388. After I wrote^this I was kissing Abba at grace I said “you'd have to be married to God to get an OJ like^this on the church” and got a ding for my meal at 1145 as Her confirming we ARE married and this IS an OJ on the church.
Back to 1-13-18:
That got me to tell another story that I thought was too mean to tell but now it seems appropriate. There was “a church builder” from Germany married to a local Hawaiian lady that went to the Waikiki Beach chaplaincy and to the prayer breakfast once a week who obviously didn't like my version of Christianity, (=rw824am and the 8:25 AM iPhone reminder to read the Bible, see my shortcut to Bible reading at www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J8wIVpM7Ek&index=14&list...). After a prayer breakfast at the Royal Hawaiian Mall in December 1992 he saw me mailing all my Christmas cards to the Alaska pipeline, (as my goodbye to them), and sarcastically said “you got one in there for me Mike?”. I tried to keep my Christian cool and said “I would've but I ran out cards”. He was so against me that I think it was more than a coincidence that his daughter died in a car wreck the next month and he was more subdued in his criticism of me after that.
At 6:02 and 6:03 AM I was saying “squirm you sore loser worms” which means both the numbers of when when my coffee boiled at 5:27 and 5:28 AM, (as a sign of God boiling mad at “sore losers” and saying “squirm you worms”). It was when I realized there was a parallel of this guy to people in the church who don't like me except at 6:02 and 6:03 AM it was a sign of how much the military is against me, (as the USS New Jersey and Missouri as BB62 & 63). That alarm on my iPhone might've been the military cooperating with the FBI just like the evil trick the FBI pulled at the movie theater on Restaurant Row when I was watching the movie Seven on 10-7-95. From the commercials on MTV it was obvious they planned on getting me to get out of my seat and when all of their black magic tricks in that in that movie didn't get me to move they set off the fire alarm and I didn't dare move a muscle and neither did anybody else in the movie theater move. Then a voice came over the intercom saying that it was a false alarm and we didn't have to evacuate the theater. That also sounds like this false alarm about a nuclear threat to Hawaii which is exactly like in the movie Under Siege in class L123 at vimeo.com/60109388 at 6 to 22 minutes and a direct contradiction to what I was saying in that class.
This is also like the pictures I posted at Flickr from #23 www.flickr.com/photos/mikeoversonendtimesorg_or_com/15576... to #32 as signs confirming that we had been delivered from a nuclear war. Because I had to look up pictures of a nuclear submarine launching nuclear missiles and raining nuclear warheads on cities to go with the picture of a rainbow through the Christmas tree on the USS Missouri that was like the MIRV, (multiple independent reentry vehicle?), pointed at a kid by a Christmas tree at the Bowfin submarine museum. Except I had to put up with a whole lot of mocking in order to get those pictures on the Internet because they were obviously trying to get me away from there by mocking me very viciously as a civilian idiot who didn't know anything about the military. [=A ding at 1:26 PM for my chicken when I quoted that line was a sign of a “poetic justice” OJ on the military for being that mean to me.] I explained in the descriptions of those pictures all the divine signs that were confirming that we had been delivered from a nuclear war and the most by far are in that class L123 that the FBI blatantly contradicted with this “ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii” emergency alert on my iPhone. After I posted the pictures about us being delivered from a nuclear war I got a sign that I did not have to post another 40 pictures, (that I had all ready to go and are very important), because that was overruled by how viciously my last pictures were mocked which was mainly from the military. =
=I got a message on my iPhone at 845am that the “ballistic missile threat” alert was a false alarm which confirmed I called another bluff from the FBI after I already explained how and why they would be so evil as to do this and why the military would cooperate with them. If even half of that is true then they seem like that guy who had to endure his daughter dying and treated me with more cautious respect after that. = 911 AM on 1-13-18 seems like a wrath of God confirmation when I finally finished this again. I worked on this from rw621am to 758am and then had to start again after that false alarm about a nuclear threat at 8:07 AM. By 12:47 PM I finished rewriting this and posting the picture at Flickr.
After reading it a few times I realized the pictures of a naked girl on the back of a motorcycle was almost like Abba waving and saying don't worry about it this was a false alarm and the sign that there will be “no nuclear war on earth” is going to stick at 18 minutes in class L123 at vimeo.com/60109388. At 8 minutes is (President) Donald Trump being a “streetlight person” by giving ACCURATE directions to me as Kevin McAllister in Home Alone 2. Trump and Hillary and the apocalypse NOW are also at video #103 AFTER I explain about “streetlight people” at video #102 at 8 to 23 min at www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIT3Zf-Cxsc&index=102&lis.... Another reason for mentioning that is the main movie explaining why I had to warn that the USA was under the threat of nuclear war from 12-18-02 to the opening ceremony of the Olympics on 8-13-04, (@ 6 to 22 min in^L123), was the movie Falling Down. It was about us being too mean to each other in the USA and being in danger of earning a nuclear war. Being streetlight people is exactly the opposite where we are helping each other out.
Right after that scene of Donald Trump, (@ 8 min in^L123), is two ballistic missiles heading to Honolulu in the movie Under Siege. Just before the scene of Trump I thought was a bit mean about exposing rude drivers in New York City until I found out it was God capturing me running a red light at a pedestrian crosswalk in Waikiki. God was correcting me and showing that I was very much in the wrong.
One sign that what I've written here was of God is I’m way to disabled to work this long and write this clear and I was obviously carried to do it. =rq212pm is a number for Abba who I'm with today and who was on the back of my motorcycle was a sign from her confirming what I said was true.
Ancient script rewrites history:
'This is like the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls'
By Andrea Shen
FAS Communications
Bamboo strips discovered in a tomb dating back to the fourth centruy B.C.
Near a river in Guodian, China, not far from a farmhouse made of earth and thatched with straw, Chinese archaeologists in 1993 discovered a tomb dating back to the fourth century B.C.
The tomb was just slightly larger than the coffin and stone sarcophagus within. Scattered on the floor were bamboo strips, wide as a pencil, and up to twice as long. On closer scrutiny, scholars realized they had found something remarkable.
"This is like the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls," says Tu Weiming, director of the Harvard Yenching Institute (HYI), who has played a key role in the preservation of, accessibility to, and research on the Guodian materials since 1996.
The 800 bamboo strips bear roughly 10,000 Chinese characters; approximately one-tenth of those characters comprise part of the oldest extant version of the Tao Te Ching (also known as Daodejing), a foundational text by the Taoist philosopher Laozi, who lived in the sixth century B.C. and is generally considered the teacher of Confucius. The remaining nine-tenths of the writings appear to be written by Confucian disciples, including Confucius' grandson Zisi, in the first generation after Confucius' death. (Confucius lived from 551 to 479 B.C.) These texts amplify scholars' understanding of how the Confucian philosophical tradition evolved between Confucius' time and that of Mencius, a key Confucian thinker who lived in the third century B.C.
"With the discovery of these texts, I think you can say that the history of Confucianism itself will have to be rewritten," says Tu. "And by implication, the history of ancient Chinese philosophy in general will have to be reconfigured."
Shortly after their rediscovery, the 2,000-year-old strips were immersed in solvents to restore the faded writing. "They became so brilliant, as if the characters were written yesterday," said Tu. The length of the strips, their content, and special markings, like bands on a bird leg, helped scholars sequence the strips.
With scholars such as Sarah Allen, a sinologist at Dartmouth College; Harvard scholars Michael Puett, Susan Weld, and Feng Yu; and others at Wuhan University and Beijing University, HYI began working in 1994 to ensure the texts' accessibility to scholars and the widest possible international exchange of ideas. The Institute helped sponsor an international conference at Wuhan University in 1999, and has overseen three Chinese publications devoted to the Guodian manuscripts. It has also participated in the development of a Chinese language Web site, www.bamboosilk.org, devoted to the Guodian texts. Professors Wang Bo and Guo Yi, from Beijing University and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, specialize in the Guodian manuscripts and are visiting scholars at HYI this year.
Image of the human heart
What do the bamboo strips tell us?
These texts radically alter scholars' understanding of not just the principles of, and relationship between, Taoism and Confucianism, two major streams of Chinese thought; they affect our understanding of Chinese philology, and reopen debate on the historical identities of Confucius and Laozi.
Taoism was previously considered a critique of Confucianism, says Tu. With the discovery of the Guodian texts, the two schools can now be seen as more complementary than formerly imagined.
Professor Tu Weiming of the Yenching Institute (left) and visiting Chinese scholar Guo Yi discuss the Guodian manuscripts discovered in China in 1993, which bear texts that are the oldest known version of the Tao Te Ching. The discovery has been compared in significance to the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls. (Staff photo by Jon Chase)
"From the Confucian point of view, human beings are sociological animals," says Tu. "They are psychological, political, poetic - meaning aesthetic - but also metaphysical." Confucians advocate "engagement in the world, social service, critique of the political order, and the idea of personal self-cultivation as the basis for social transformation." Taoists, in contrast, "would like to reject the sociological, political aspects of the human, focusing on the 'natural way,' following nature, against any kind of human, artificial intervention in the natural process." Taoists refer to the "way of heaven" as a guide for human behavior.
The Guodian version of the Tao Te Ching reveals far more tolerant views toward Confucian ideology than previously seen. Moreover, the Confucian texts in the Guodian cache reveal a more complex worldview than traditionally understood.
For years scholars believed that Confucians were little concerned with human emotions. But in the Guodian texts, the element "xin," - a pictographic image of the human heart - appears over and over again as part of several Chinese characters. It's a startling display, both philologically, in terms of understanding the evolution of Chinese characters, and philosophically. "These texts conclusively show that emotions or feelings as we understand them today were major philosophical concerns," Tu says. The Guodian texts offer detailed descriptions of a range of human emotions. They also extensively explore the relation between heart, mind, and human nature; between the inner self and the outer world; and whether human nature is good or evil - a cumulative emphasis on the inner dimensions of man that most scholars formerly believed came much later in Chinese intellectual history.
A cosmic shift
Simultaneously, Confucian views on man's relation to the polity require reinterpretation in the wake of the Guodian discovery. These early writings reveal a "spirit of protest," in Tu's words, a definition of a loyal minister, for instance, as he who consistently criticizes his emperor. This priority on the people's agenda, with the ruler's views secondary to their concerns, has long been ascribed to the thinker Mencius; now scholars see much earlier roots, in Zisi, for this notion of government.
Indeed, a powerful school of thought in modern China, the "Doubting Antiquity" school, has been seriously discredited in the wake of these discoveries. "This is the most important school of interpreting Chinese classics," Tu says. Its advocates have not only attempted to date as much later, or even doubt the existence of, ideas we now know took root in earlier times; they have called into question the role of Confucius and his disciples in forming what we consider Confucian philosophy. The Guodian texts, by providing evidence of regional Confucian thinkers close to the time of the philosopher's presumed existence, help restore this intellectual lineage.
The genealogy of Chinese intellectual thought is now undergoing revision and Taoist and Confucian texts are being reinterpreted. And because Taoism and Confucianism are very much "living traditions" in China, these slender bamboo strips have the potential to transform daily living. "These are not simply philosophical ideas; they have broad implications for practical living, for the development of polity and society," says Tu.
Some of the Taoist Guodian texts offer a whole new cosmology - a view of the creation of the universe with elements not even mentioned in later versions of the Tao Te Ching: the creation of water, the existence of four seasons, the birth of heaven and earth after other events have taken place. The bamboo slips themselves are having a similar effect on the Chinese intellectual universe.
Brave new world.
Contact Andrea Shen at andrea_shen@harvard.edu
1. make an ikat skinner blend (just means don't blend completely but roll it through appr 5 times)
2. Divide in three sections.
3. Set on their sides
4. Flatten the rolls.
Original here: www.polymerclaycentral.com/kato_feather1.html
Sometimes we don’t realize just how much a doll has impacted our collection until several years into the future. That was certainly the case with my Moxie Girlz, which is one of the main reasons I felt it only fitting to rewrite this “My Story” passage on them. I never would have anticipated the way these Bratz look alikes would mold my dolly world when I first learned of their existence in 2011. But as I reflect on these past eight years as an adult doll collector, I can see how they were slowly leaving a mark on me, even in those early days. They started as the “Bratz imposters” who I dismissed….dolls I never intended to admire, buy, or pay any attention to. In the years I had stepped away from my dolly hobby, there had been a time when Bratz were almost erased. MGA designed Moxie Girlz as a substitute, but kept the line around even when Bratz had secured their place on the market again. Initially, I had a bad taste in my mouth for these “cheap” looking dolls, who lacked the sass and fierceness I so admired in Bratz. But in many ways, they mean almost as much to me, and without them, the course of my journey would have been altered. In short, I wouldn’t be the same collector if Moxie Girlz had not somehow weedled their way into my heart.
The first encounter I had with Moxie Girlz was most likely at the store. Back in 2011, I didn’t frequent doll aisles too often. In part, this was because of embarrassment. I felt deeply self conscious lurking around the toys, wondering if any passerby would notice that I was patently “too old” to be admiring the dolls. I mostly recall seeing Moxies at stores like Target and Toys ‘R’ Us. Colleen and I used to make jokes about their clone like vibe, and their babyish styling. But there were so many dolls to take in, ones that had not even been a thought when I was a kid. So compared to say Monster High, who notoriously enveloped toy aisles, it was rather effortless to overlook Moxie Girlz. My first true experience with Moxie Girlz outside the stores occurred at the flea market that fall. After several months of pursuing a box of Bratz dolls I had foolishly not purchased in the spring, I was finally reunited with the “Bratz Guy Bin.” In this lot of bedraggled, mutilated, and drawn on dollies, I found a pair of strange looking Bratz shoes. The peg holes were far too small for a full sized Bratz to wear. I assumed they must belong to Kidz, who had smaller legs, and therefore would likely have matching, tinier pegs. So I set aside these pink sneakers, expecting that one day I’d have at least a few Kidz dolls. A few weeks later, I ended up with my first Bratz Kidz in the “Craigslist #1” lot. Their arrival left me feeling even more perplexed about the sneakers, which apparently did not fit. It wasn’t until Colleen suggested it, that it occurred to me that these shoes were perhaps made for Moxie Girlz. This was confirmed rather quickly via eBay--I had “1st Edition” Lexa sneakers. These shoes sat around inside a random container of odd ball doll shoes for quite some time, as I was unsure what to do with them.
In June 2012, the very first Moxie Girlz doll joined my collection...or should I say Moxie Boyz! It was only a few short weeks after Dad passed away that May. On Father’s Day, his best friend, Jimmy, offered to take Colleen and me out to a massive outdoor flea market (which was a drive in movie theater by night). We spent hours upon hours walking through this enormous flea market, and as time wore on, we slowly acquired more and more treasures. There was a box of Bratz dolls that caught our attention. The seller offered to give us a bundle deal for the goods, so of course we pounced on it. However, there were two Moxie Girlz dolls who tagged along--Magic Snow Jaxson and Best Friends Avery. Jaxson admittedly stole the show. Even though I had never seriously considered Moxie Girlz dolls in the past, he won my heart before we were even home. That soft, fuzzy, flocked head, and his overall sweet demeanor were hard to ignore. Plus, little Jax still had his entire original ensemble on. It was so impeccably constructed, that it reminded me of the Bratz dolls I grew up with. He was very reminiscent of the Wintertime Wonderland line that I was so obsessed with as an eleven/twelve year old. Avery was not as enchanting--after identifying her, I concluded her hair had been substantially cut. It was also that coarse, gross fiber that I didn’t know how to take care of (which I later learned was nylon). Her outfit was also missing many components, which made poor Avery seem extra pitiful. Avery was tossed aside, and later given to a friend, along with those “1st Edition” Lexa shoes I mentioned previously. Jaxson however, well he was put on display WITH my Bratz! Not long after, Colleen encouraged me to purchase True Hope Jaxson, when were were at Toys ‘R’ Us getting his Cameron counterpart. He too had a spot reserved on my display, right alongside Cam.
For about two years, this is where the story remained stagnant. I was very much in love with my two Jaxson dolls, but that first experience with Avery had not been the best. Plus, I think in part I held off on giving the girls a chance, because I knew if I changed my mind later, I’d regret having given Avery away. I found myself for whatever reason looking up Moxie Girlz online around the start of the New Year in 2014. Specifically, I recall the day I found a collection video on Youtube. You may think that this video inspired me to collect Moxie Girlz because the dolls were so beautiful and highly spoken of. That would be a false assumption, in fact it was the opposite. The video, which I believe was deleted years ago, featured a girl going through her massive collection of Moxie Girlz. The dolls were in horrific shape...if SPOD (the “Society for the Protection of Dolls) was a real thing, the Moxie Girlz would have been removed from this home. I recall that they were in various states of undress, with wild hair. We aren’t just talking about unkempt tresses, no, we are talking about destroyed hair! Some dolls had oil put in their hair. Others had been colored all over on their beautiful face paint. As the girl went through each doll, she threw him/her brutally across the room, like they were garbage. My heart was broken...even though I was not too keen for Moxie Girlz, they surely deserved to be treated with more respect. I envisioned my beloved Jaxson dolls living in that home, and the horror was too much to bear. I showed Colleen the video, and she too felt it was our calling to finally buy Moxie Girlz. And so, we found ourselves at Toys ‘R’ Us that very afternoon, picking up the two True Hope dolls I “needed,” as well as Sportz Lexa and Fashion Surprise Sophina (who stole my heart).
What began as a collection as the result of pity and wanting to love these dolls, became so much more. I found myself lusting for more dolls after getting the initial four that day at TRU. There were faces from the video that had caught my attention, and I was dead set on acquiring my own. We went to countless stores in the area and rather far away, on the quest for Moxie Girlz. Online shopping was a large part of the creation of my collection too--I spent so much time scrolling every day for new deals on eBay for Moxie Girlz and extra clothes. My humble family grew at a fairly rapid rate. Not only was the number of dolls multiplying, but I also found myself having to do a considerable number of flat iron treatments regularly. That beastly nylon hair the dolls were most oftenly rooted with needed to be tamed. While I had been flat ironing for about two years at this point, I still had not honed my skill. Having to do so many dolls in consecutive sessions started to help me build this skill and perfect my technique. Dolls such as my “1st Edition” gals, Fashion Snaps Lexa, and my Best Friends pack were especially naughty clients who may have taken me an exceedingly long amount of time, but in the end were responsible for me learning the best way to flat iron hair. Speaking of my Best Friends pack, it should be noted that I did in fact later regret giving away my Avery. After losing a bid on eBay, I was fortunate enough to find a decently priced set on Amazon, along with the Fantasea Hair dolls. The more and more I delved into the world of Moxie GIrlz, the more passionate I became. I did not just fancy the “staple” dolls from earlier years, like the ones I had seen in that Youtube video. No, I was craving the dolls that were not even out yet, like the Camping Adventurez and the foreign exclusive Fantasea Hair dollies! There was not a Moxie Girlz doll I came across that didn’t worm her way into my heart. I still recall the day my heart leapt when I first saw the Baker dolls and Art Kellan at Toys ‘R’ Us. I made a point to stalk the trio until they went on sale. There were the oddball old dolls who turned up in clearance sections, like Pets Avery. I had a list of sets that I wanted to keep my eye out for, when they finally went on sale. When I would see that their prices had been slashed, I was quick to hop into the Jeep with Colleen and procure the dolls. This is what happened with the Cotton Candy Style girls and the Fashion Snaps/Fashion Surprise lines. Not only that, but the soft spot in my heart for Moxies often lead me to overpay for those that seemed doomed to an unlovable fate. For instance, the time we stumbled upon an $8 secondhand Magic Snow Kellan at an antique store. I knew her modern look would not appeal to other shoppers, and I just could not bear the thought of her rotting behind the glass case. For a girl who was so resistant to even so much as give Moxie Girlz a second glance a few years before, I had been transformed into a full blown addict!
I think with most of my collections, I go through a transitional time during the early days, when I make a point of tracking down dolls. Whether I shop on eBay, scope out local stores, or am just more willing to spend money on them at the flea market, it’s not all that uncommon for me to go on a binge of sorts. So what exactly makes my Moxie Girlz collection remarkable? I’ve learned something deeper through all the various doll types I collect. But I can honestly say that Moxie Girlz were one of the most transformative decisions I made, and I’m glad I procrastinated when it came to officially collecting them. 2014 was the year I started all over as a collector. 2011 was when I first reconnected with dolls, but everything felt so new and foreign, that I still was figuring out who I was as a collector. As I delved in the world of dolly social media in 2012 and 2013, I almost lost my identity entirely. I was influenced heavily by the words of others--I was sucked into a world of needless drama and constant complaining. I found myself second guessing every doll, finding flaws, and contemplating pruning my collection. The joy that my plastic friends once brought me in a time of need, was almost entirely erased. I could feel myself sinking further and further into this quicksand of negativity, and in an effort to save my hobby, I deleted my old Flickr in the fall of 2013. I decided to stay away from the internet, so the only voice I would hear would be my own. I wanted to form my own opinions, and discover dolls on my own terms. I was tired of feeling like nothing was good enough, tired of drowning in a sea of negativity. The whole reason I restarted my doll journey in 2011 was to find happiness and light in a world that was drenched in darkness. I wanted a distraction from my dad’s declining health, and from the weight of the uncertainty the future possessed. Taking a step back to focus on just myself was hands down the best decision I made throughout my doll collecting story. One of my first orders of business was to dabble with Moxie Girlz, a thought that deep down had resonated for quite some time, but I had kept hidden.
Moxie Girlz also inspired me to rekindle my creative side. I had experimented with handmade earrings, stands, and the occasional hair accessory in the past. But these “cheap” gals brought out so much potential, and made designing things for my dolls the most fun it had ever been. It all kicked off when I got three of my Bubble Bath Surprise dolls on sale one night at Toys ‘R’ Us and Wal-Mart. This set was not the kind I’d usually gravitate towards, what with the dolls low quality, molded glitter swimsuits. They also were packaged with pierced ears, but no jewelry. But believe it or not, the cheesy styling of the dolls inspired me more than any others had before. I found fabric flowers that matched their glitter swimsuits and made them the most bedazzled earrings I had to date. I realized that in a way, transforming these low quality friends was much like cleaning up a secondhand doll. A few homemade accessories truly revamped the three girls, and gave them a much more expensive image. This realization that all dolls had potential, even the “cheapest” seeming ones, revolutionized the way I approached purchasing dollies. Much like how my knowledge of treatments such as the flat iron, boil wash, and proper bathing gave me the ability to rescue dolls that I previously would have needed to leave behind, tapping into this inner creativity made every doll have possibilities. My handmade earring were no longer dainty and conservative. Instead, I unleashed myself and began to make whatever my heart desired, even if it was ever so gaudy and over sized. Not to mention that my Moxie Girlz motivated me to try new things. When I purchased my Baker and Art dolls in the spring/summer of 2014, I was struck with the idea to make them charms. I ended up purchasing some new polymer clay and tools, and even did a little research on techniques that would make the charms look more detailed. This opened the door for the invention of some of my favorite creations, like Hello My Name Is Raya’s cheeseburger earrings or Sleepover Party Sasha’s pizza charms! It felt like so many doors had just opened up for me, and I was reconnected to that twelve year old girl who used to spend hours making her American Girl dolls various accessories and decorating boxes for them.
The intention behind the existence of Moxie Girlz may have been to supplement Bratz when they were supposed to be removed from stores. While they do bear some resemblance and similarities to my bratty friends, the way Moxies have transformed my collection is entirely unique. Looking back, they’ve been around since almost the beginning of my adult doll journey, when I first found those shoes in “Bratz Guy Bin,” and when my two Jaxsons squirmed their way into my bedroom displays. But what I think of the most when it comes to these dolls, is how they redefined me as a collector. They were the first dolls that I decided to experiment with, having an open heart and no preconceived notions. I chose to not let other people’s complaints and shame towards this line change my decision to jump into the Moxie world. I embraced each and every Moxie Girlz doll I came across with wide open arms. By doing this, I allowed the creative energy to flow freely from my mind. My handmade earrings and hair accessories simply would not be the same today if it weren’t for my Moxies. I don’t know that my interest in accessorizing and sprucing up cheap, store bought dolls would be the same. Moxie Girlz made me wholeheartedly realize that it’s not about what doll you get, but about how you choose to treat him/her, and the love/effort you put forth. When I look at my displays, I see happy faces and feel the positivity and care I put into each and every one of my plastic friends. I also see a slight resemblance to Kid Kore Katie, one of the most notorious dolls from our childhood. I can even envision a world where Moxies were out when Colleen and I were growing up, and we would be fighting over who would get to play with them. In essence, Moxie Girlz are the reason I recaptured that magic within dolls--they restored the innocence that I had lost as an adult collector, who was far too critical and cynical towards these little creatures, and for that I am forever grateful.
china
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