[tt] NS 2944 Slaying dragon-kings could prevent financial crashes

[tt] NS 2944 Slaying dragon-kings could prevent financial crashes


Who will be in charge of the slaying? Will they operate a pure devotees of
the public interest, assuming they can find it?

NS 2944: Slaying dragon-kings could prevent financial crashes
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029443.000-slaying-dragonkings-could-prevent-financial-crashes.html
* 20 November 2013 by Lisa Grossman

[Editorial: "Taming the beasts of the global economy" added.]

HUGO CAVALCANTE saw the disaster coming. From his lab at the Federal
University of Paraíba in Brazil, he detected the warning signs of an
epic crash. At the last minute, he managed to nudge his system back
to safety. Crisis averted.

OK, so Cavalcante"s impending crisis was only a pair of
credit-card-sized circuits that were about to start oscillating out
of sync - hardly the stuff of the evening news. But the experiment
is the first to show that a class of extreme events, colourfully
called dragon-kings, can be predicted and suppressed in a real,
physical system. The feat suggests that some day we may also be able
to predict, or in some cases prevent, some of the catastrophes in
the real world that seem unstoppable, including financial crashes,
brain seizures and storms.

"People were hoping if you could forecast extreme events, maybe we
could find a way to control them," says Cavalcante"s colleague
Daniel Gauthier at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. "We
were able to completely suppress the dragon-king events."

Dragon-kings aren"t the first animal used to describe a class of
catastrophic events. In 2001, Nassim Taleb published a book called
The Black Swan, his name for catastrophes that always catch us
off-guard. But though difficult to predict, black swans actually
fall within an accepted mathematical distribution known as a power
law, which says there will be exponentially more small events than
large ones (see diagram).

Most events or objects found in a complex system - including
earthquakes, hurricanes, moon craters, even power imbalances in war
- also obey a power law, a ubiquity that some say hints at a deeper
organising principle at work in the universe. Others, like Taleb,
focus on the fact that a power law can"t predict when black swans
will occur.

Now there"s another beast to reckon with. In 2009, Didier Sornette
at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich reported that
some events lift their heads above the power law"s parapet, the way
a king"s power and wealth vastly outstrip that of the more plentiful
peasant. So big that they should be rare, these events have a
greater probability of occurring than a power law would mandate.

"There seem to be certain extremes that happen much more often than
they should if you just believe the power-law distribution predicted
by their smaller siblings," Sornette says.

He christened them dragon-kings. The dragon part of the name stems
from the fact that these events seem to obey different mathematical
laws, just as a dragon"s behaviour differs from that of the other
animals.

Sornette got his first whiff of dragon-kings when studying cracks
that develop in spacecraft. Since then, he has spotted them
everywhere, from a rainstorm that hit Venezuela in 1999 and the
financial crashes in 2000 and 2007, to some epileptic seizures.

But he wasn"t satisfied with merely recognising dragon-kings. The
fact that they don"t follow a power law suggests they are being
produced by a different mechanism, which raises the possibility
that, unlike events that follow the power law, dragon-kings may be
predictable.

He and his colleagues have had some success, predicting a slip in
the Shanghai Stock Exchange before it happened in August 2009 and
using a few electrical pulses to suppress seizures that might have
become dragon-kings in rats and rabbits. But the difficulty of
running controlled experiments in real financial systems or brains
prevented them from going any further.

Enter Cavalcante and Gauthier"s oscillating circuits. Gauthier spent
the early 1990s studying pairs of identical circuits that behaved
chaotically on their own, but would synchronise for long periods of
time when coupled in a certain way. "It"s a little bit politically
incorrect, but it"s sometimes called the "master-slave"
configuration," Gauthier says. He coupled the two circuits by
measuring the difference between the voltages running through them,
and injecting a current into the "slave" circuit to make it more
like the "master". Most of the time this worked and the two would
oscillate together like a pair of swinging pendulums, with only
slight deviations away from synchronisation.

But every so often, the slave would stop following the master and
march to its own beat for a short time, before getting back in step.
Gauthier realised at the time that there were recognisable signs
that this disconnect was about to happen. It wasn"t until he saw
Sornette"s work that he checked for dragon-kings.

He and his colleagues have now shown that the differences in the
circuits" voltages during these desynchronisations are indeed
dragon-kings. "They were as big as the system would physically
allow, like a major disaster," Gauthier says.

The pair went on to show that they could reliably forecast when a
big event was about to happen: whenever the differences between the
circuits" oscillations decreased to a certain value, a leap of
dragon-king proportions was almost always imminent. And once they
saw it coming, they found they could apply a small electrical nudge
to the slave circuit to make sure it didn"t tear away from its
master (Physical Review Letters, doi.org/p44).

"We basically kill the dragon-king in the egg," Sornette says. "The
counter-mechanism kills it when it is burgeoning."

It"s a long way to go from a pair of coupled circuits to the massive
complexity of the real world. But by using this simple system to
find out at what stage in the process a dragon-king can be
prevented, Sornette hopes to see whether financial regulation could
prevent a crash once a stock market bubble has already begun to
grow, a controversial topic among regulators.

"The fear of central banks is that their intervention might actually
worsen the situation and trigger the crashes, destabilising the
system even further," he says. "That"s the type of insight we could
test and check and probe with our system."

Some physicists think the gap between so-called low dimensional
systems like the pair of oscillators, which can be described by just
three variables each, and real-world complex systems like the stock
market, is too wide to bridge. "The conclusions of the paper appear
correct and interesting for people studying low dimensional chaos,"
says Alfred Hubler of the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. "But in the real world, low dimensional chaos is
very rare. Most real-world complex systems have many interacting
parts."

Others agree with Sornette that having a simple physical system to
manipulate will be useful. "Having a mechanical system where you can
explore it in the lab is crucially important," says Neil Johnson at
the University of Miami in Coral Gables. He studies dragon-kings in
simulations of stock markets and traffic jams and can"t wait to
start using a pair of oscillators to see how they relate.

Sornette thinks the circuits are just the beginning of a future in
which we can monitor, diagnose, forecast and ultimately control our
world. "I think we are on the verge of a revolution where we are
going to be able to steer our planet better, informed by this kind
of science." It"s quite a promise - not all storms, seizures and
crashes are dragon-kings, after all. But we now have a tool to
explore how to deal with those that are.
---
Editorial: Taming the beasts of the global economy
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029441.900-taming-the-beasts-of-the-global-economy.html
* 21 November 2013

ECONOMICS has always had a fondness for animal metaphors. John
Maynard Keynes called the mix of instincts, emotions and cognitive
biases that drive human behaviour and shape markets "animal
spirits". Bulls and bears prowl Wall Street; hawks and doves debate
interest rates and credit ratings. More recently, we have been
introduced to "black swans" - the term used by author Nassim Taleb
to describe rare, catastrophic events that we are generally bad at
anticipating.

Now the bestiary has another member: "dragon-kings", fearsome events
that are even worse than black swans. But while slaying dragons
sounds more formidable than fending off swans, there are signs that
these events can be predicted and averted (see "Slaying dragon-kings
could prevent financial crashes"). Some of the big beasts that stalk
the global economy may be tameable after all.

Things I saw on my walk this morning ...

Things I saw on my walk this morning ...


This morning I took a walk by myself. I usually go with Paxton, but he was sleeping this time and I decided to go solo. My neighborhood always has interesting things to see. Or at least I think so...maybe this post is just a new low for my blog: boring things I saw on my WALK this morning. Exciting! {I'm going to share my random workout songs from this morning's walk too--as chosen by Pandora--so brace yourself, this post is really riveting!}

Song playing while this photo was taken:
Stereo Love - Edward Maya
{Pandora was set to my techno/dance station at first. Hmm...}This home was recently remodeled and resold and it's new owners have apparently installed a Little Free Library. So I made a note to bring a book or two with me on my next walk, so I can swap it at the Little Free Library. {Should we install one of these when we buy a house? It's a kind of cool idea, isn't it?}

Then I passed this house. Our neighborhood was originally made up of smaller homes like ours. But the location + big lot size of our urban-ish neighborhood has meant that people are moving in like crazy, scraping the old historic homes, and building McMansions--only most of them are stucco, yuck--and many of them buying 2 or 3 old lots so they can have HUGE YARDS. This is one that is actually well done {most of them look like cold, sterile, modern homes, OR really warm and inviting dentist offices}. This one has a gas light on the porch and it reminds me of a Charles Wysocki painting and I sort of want to paint it. {Y'all know by now, I'm a fan of the good old days, the Americana portrayed in Wysocki paintings.}

Song playing while this picture was taken:
Peace of Mind - BostonWe have a handful of churches in our neighborhood. This means...sigh...church signs.Don't even get me started. I'm started! The Catholic church school up the street makes the Lutheran in me cringe every week when they post a new message on their sign {their recent one is something like, "Treat the unexpected like God"...whaaa??? What does that even MEAN?!}

Song playing while this picture was taken:
Livin' on a Prayer - Bon Jovi
{Your church sign is living on a prayer, I tell you what...}But I've been driving past this gem all week so I just have to share, after seeing it again on my walk this morning. Can you spot the error? I know two editors in my life who will probably notice the mistake right away.

Did you spot it?
DifferANCE??? :::slaps hand to forehead:::: Ugh. I'm no grammar queen. I make mistakes all the time and abuse ellipses like crazy {I'm also guilty of the lazy spelling, tonite}, but this misspelling is just bad. I also have higher standards for signs and published material. I'm maybe being picky, it's just that in our neighborhood, lame church signs are a constant thing. If it's not the theological wreck down the street every day, then it's this. Churches! Represent!And then I passed my muse, remember how this house inspired my first painting? I love this beauty.

Song playing while this picture was taken:
Go Your Own Way - Fleetwood Mac
{I can play the bass for this song on Rock Band without error. That makes me a musician, right? Ha!}When I was a little girl we lived in the Wash Park neighborhood for a few years. I remember my dad pointing out one of the old cottage-style homes one day, and he called it Snow White's house. I took him seriously, and I really believed that the same Snow White from the Disney movie lived up the street from us {or maybe she did a long time ago}. So I would beg him almost every time we were driving home from anywhere, "Can we drive past Snow White's house, daddy, please???" And he always would humor me. I'm such a sucker for fairy tales, even today.Anyhoo, this home is very similar; it looks straight out of a fairy tale, doesn't it? I passed it today on my walk, and it's cottage feel reminded me of Snow White's house. The roof! It's dreamy, isn't it?

Song playing when this photo was taken:
More Than a Feeling - BostonThat house is just a couple blocks from our home, and I fully expected the girls to greet me at the door as they usually do: half excited to see me and half angry that I didn't take them along. But when I got back home this morning, it was empty. {Except for, as you remember me complaining about the other day, all the baby gear. I toldyou it was everywhere!}


The family was hanging out in our bedroom as Daddy got ready for our outing to the bookstore for storytime. {I see this photo and think, "Eisley, where are your glasses?" I hate that these days I have to nag her to wear them. The first two years of her having glasses she wore them religiously and now we have to fight her to get them on and keep them on. And yes, we've doubled checked that herprescriptionis right. Ugh. This too shall pass...}

Hey lady! Go put those glasses on!!I would love to extend this post to my friends, go on a walk this week and share photos of what you see. No matter how "boring", I'd love to see what a walk looks like in your neck of the woods.{You just have to be willing to be that creepy lady who walks around taking photos of your neighbors houses and stuff.}Cheers,
Heather

SHOW REVIEW Fitz and the Tantrums and Capital Cities at The Fillmore Detroit November 17

SHOW REVIEW Fitz and the Tantrums and Capital Cities at The Fillmore Detroit November 17



One of the most smartly matched double bills to be dreamed up this
year came to The Fillmore Detroit this past Sunday night with Fitz and the
Tantrums and Capital Cities co-headliningalongwith openers, BeatClub. Fitz
and the Tantrums and Capital Cities are both known for their feel-good retro
pop music and both brought their high energy showmanship to the Fillmore stage.

Los Angeles-based outfit, Fitz and the Tantrums, are having a huge
year with the single “Out Of My League” hitting number one on multiple radio charts and their sophomore album More Than Just
a Dream poised to have long legs at radio. They kicked off the year with a
show at Saint Andrews Hall and an opening slot on Bruno Mars The Moonshine Jungle Tour.Their Sunday
night set brought the frantic energy and soulful delivery that Fitz and The Tantrums
fans have become accustomed to. Fitz, aka Michael Fitzpatrick, and Noelle
Scaggs share back and forth male-female vocal duties for most Fitz and the
Tantrums songs which gives the band a dynamic way to deliver stand out hooks and melodies. They kicked off their Detroit show with thepink heart found on their album coverilluminatedon stageand the words "more than just a dream" repeating as they took the stage and launched into the song "Get Away." Their live set contained songs from their both of their studio albums,
including the popular tracks “Dont Gotta Work It Out”,“Breaking the Chains Of Love”and
their smash-in-the-making “The Walker.” Fitz also included a cover of The Eurythmics
1983 single “Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of These)”, encouraging the audience to
partake in repeatedly singing the “keep your head up, moving on” line. More Than Just A Dream tracks“Break The Walls” and “6 AM” also made it into the electrifying Fillmore set. Fitz encored with their first single“MoneyGrabber”, during which pink and white confetti was explosively launched on to the thrilled concert goers.


Capital Cities are one of the music industrys biggest
success stories of 2013. Their debut set, “In a Title Wave of Mystery” was
finally released in June of this year after the lengthy release of “Kangaroo
Court” and the inescapable “Safe and Sound.” Their album features 1980s influenced pop
hooks with high energy dance beats. The Fillmore stop was their third time in
Detroit in 2013 following a stop at The Shelter in May and Sterling Height's Mo Pop Festival
in August.Their recognition and stage size may have
expanded, but their stage show still seems as intimate as it did at The
Shelter.The Los Angeles based group consists of former jingle writers, Ryan Merchant and Sebu Simonian, who incidentally met on Craigslist. Capital Cities performed the majority of the tracks on their debut album including the anthemic "Patience Gets Us Nowhere Fast", the jingle-esque "Love Away" and the Andre 3000assisted "Farrah Fawcett Hair."The Capital Cities stage show involves a lot of dancing, instructing the crowd in line-dancing to the The Capital Cities Shuffle during "Center Stage" and the band pantomiming during the funked out "Chartreuse."Capital Cities also threw in a cover of "Stayin' Alive" by The Bee Gee's, this time curiously mashed up with Weezer's "Come Undone (The Sweater Song)."When performing live, they add threeadditional stage musicians including charismatic trumpeter, Spencer Ludwig. Capital Cities finished their set with their smash hit "Safe and Sound" complete with the added high energy EDM remix by Cash Cash tacked on to the end.

Beat Club, another Los Angeles-based band, kicked off the night with a genre defying eclectic set of synth-pop, punk, and rock music.

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SURRENDER TO TEMPTATION, book 6 of the Fitzgerald Family series is now available wherever e-books are sold and in print on Amazon.

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A playboy in hiding A woman searching for answers Will he let her in
or send her packing? After a tragic accident, Chef Chase Fitzgerald
left his life in Los Angeles behind and moved to a ranch in Montana. He's
convinced that all he needs to be happy are his horses, a few ranch hands and
the Big Sky Country. Until one day, Nikki Savoy walks through his doors with her
city clothes, sexy mouth, and a body designed to drive a man insane.
Nikki wants to know the truth about the accident that left her sister in
a coma. Getting a job at Chases ranch is just the beginning. Throw in a crafty
housekeeper, a cantankerous old cowboy, a few adorable horses, and an attraction
that cant be denied, and you have a recipe for disaster or romance. Will Nikki
get her answers or will Chase offer her something better?

Law Society say consultation results on separate legal representation for buyers

Law Society say consultation results on separate legal representation for buyers


The Law Society of Scotland has announced that consultation results from the Survey on the issue of mandatory separate legal representation for buyers and their mortgage lender in property transactions show the jury is out on whether its members will vote for change at a special general meeting in September.There were 279 responses from solicitors, consumer interest organisations such as Which?, and other interested parties including banks and building societies and the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML), on a proposed rule change which would mean that borrowers and lenders would each need to have their own solicitor. Currently the same solicitor can act for both buyer and lender.The responses, which have been published today Monday, 19 August, showed 49% in favour and 51% against the proposed rule change as it was drafted in the consultation document.Alistair MorrisAlistair Morris, Vice President of the Law Society of Scotland, said: "Given the many changes that have happened in the property market, this has been an essential debate to have. For most of us buying a home is the biggest purchase we will ever make and it's important that people get the legal advice they need, that their interests are protected and that solicitors are not compromised in representing their clients."At a Law Society annual general meeting in March 2013, solicitors voted in principle to remove the current exception to its conflict of interest rules and bring in mandatory separate representation in property transactions. As a result the Society must now bring forward a proposed rule change for its members to vote on at a special general meeting (SGM) on 23 September.Morris said: "The high number of responses shows the level of interest in this issue and, while no clear consensus has emerged, the consultation has given us very useful feedback. This will allow solicitors to consider the issue further in advance of the SGM and take into account the views of their fellow practitioners and other stakeholders who have a key interest in this debate.Mr Morris said that appetite for a change to the existing rules has grown in recent years. He said: "There has been tremendous change within the property market since the financial downturn and as a result many lenders have introduced new requirements on solicitors representing the borrower, which has led to a significant move away from the 'execution only' approach of the past. Many solicitors now believe that the interests of the buyer client and their mortgage lender are no longer in alignment so, in order to represent their clients fairly and with true independence, there should be mandatory separate representation in both commercial and residential property transactions."It is the buyer who pays the fees and should be able to have absolute confidence and trust that their solicitor will put his or her interests first, rather than those of their mortgage lender who can have different requirements which need to be met."Morris added: "We have actively sought the views of key stakeholders outwith the legal profession and are keen to engage with the lenders and their representative body to ensure that if there is a vote for change, this would be managed effectively to ensure that there would be minimal impact on Scotland's homebuyers."We were very pleased to get responses from Which? and the Council of Mortgage Lenders. Which? has stated that it believes the consumer should be better informed to  make the decision on whether they should have a separate solicitor from their lender and that there should be further discussion around solicitors only being able to act for banks on an 'execution only' basis, ie not providing legal advice to the bank. CML is opposed to the move, although some of their members are already practising separate representation."We are well aware of the fears that have been raised around potential for delay or possible increased costs for the borrower   While these issues have to be considered, we have calculated that any potential cost increase would be a small percentage at around 0.1% of the overall price of buying a new home* - if indeed the lenders do decide to pass on costs to their customers.  It's worth noting that, in the Republic of Ireland, where separate representation is mandatory, banks are legally prohibited from passing on their legal fees to purchasers."In response to the feedback we have received, the rule as currently drafted  is likely to be modified. However, prior to going before members at the SGM next month, it will be considered by the Society's Regulatory Committee and Council, before a recommendation is made.  Given the strong views that have been put forward during the consultation and the importance of the issue, it is vital that our members are as informed as possible and we would urge them to vote at the SGM ."Solicitors voted at an AGM in March 2013 in favour of the principle of a change to the Law Society of Scotland's conflict of interest rules. Currently there is an exception to the conflict in interest rule, which prohibit a solicitor from acting for more than one client, to allow solicitors to represent lender and borrower clients in residential property transactions. If approved by the Law Society's regulatory Committee and Council, a draft rule removing this exception will be presented to solicitors at the Law Society's SGM on Monday, 23 September 2013. The data was analysed in a number of different ways. Assessment of individual responses show 47.5% are in favour while 52.5% against. Responses from organisations showed 59.1% are for a change to the rule, while 40.9% are against.* 0.1% is based on an average purchase price of ￡148,174 and the assumption that lenders' costs would be approximately ￡200, based on what some lenders already practising separate representation are charging.For more information about separate representation and the proposed rule change see the website: http://www.lawscot.org.uk/seprep

Half Measures Availed Us Nothing

Half Measures Availed Us Nothing




You think Heisenberg would put up with Common Core?
The phrase I had rattling around in my head all day the other day is one I've heard hundreds if not thousands of times over the years. I was going to just let it go. On the way to Pittsburgh though for Second Bird Day we put on an audiobook of Stephen King's new novel. And whaddya know but Old Stevie opens his book with the exact damned phrase I had in my head the whole day before Thanksgiving:

Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at a turning point.

When I say half measures availed us nothing I am thinking especially of the tepid, craven, Vichy-Quisling actions of our national representative bodies.

Vegans for The Outback t shirts All Sold Out Sorry Folks
We have Den Den's NEA minions clad in their spectacularly stupid Educators for Obama t's on the cover of the NEA cage liner and Randi running around around tipsy from the flask of Rocky Mountain Ed Reform up in Aspen and posing for candid shots at Green Dot Schools in NYC.


Union President Posing for Photo Ops in a Privatized Charter School
Closer to home we have Slippery Dick Ianuuzi who strode into my alma mater last year at University of Buffalo pooh poohing any bold talk of real action with his oft repeated mantra : "We don't do ourselves any good dying on the barricades." I know he'd stuck it to BTF lead man Phil Rumore earlier in the year pulling some power play on a local endorsement that according to protocol was Phil's to make yet Ianuzzi made it instead over Phil's objection. So Richard's not above playing bold and fast when it comes to sticking it to one of us or our elected officers but when it comes to telling Gates and Duncan and Lil John, Sheriff Andy and Scary Meryl to pound salt he just goes to jelly and gives away the farm.

Randi, Dick and Mulgarten Surrendering to Ed Reform's agenda
Half measures are when you agree to VAM, to Danielson metrics, to APPRs that include inaccurate, unreliable and invalid test scores, when you accept millions from people like Common Core funder Bill Gates and stand by while InBloom tries to steal all our kids's data. If something is developed by Murdoch, funded by Gates and stored by charter school loving Amazon at what point do you need a map to figure out it's rotten ? Half measures are when you refuse to stand up for your teachers as they try to sand up for themselves and their kids by speaking out against an untested curriculum written by people without any background in child development or pedagogy. They were available and arrogant enough to take Gates's money and say we don't give a shit what you think, here's what you need to know because we said so. Common Core is as Bill Ayers describes it a "faith based" educational curriculum. It has no data to support it. But we are expected to put our faith in the twerpy shithead David Coleman's educational chops and believe he knows better than so many veteran teachers who are looking at CCSS and scratching their heads in horror and disbelief. Strange coming from the data fetishists of the ed reform set that they have no data to bolster their specious claims of providing college and career readiness by jamming Mesopotamia down the throats of First graders who may miss recess to get through all of their curriculum. And through all of this our national union leaders have managed to screw their courage to the sticking point and say Ummm, uhhhh... hey, we don't wanna offend anyone but can we ummm maybe, have like an, uhhhh, moratorium on some of this stuff for like oh I dunno say three years, maybe?

Half measures availed us nothing. Forgive my beating the same drum here friends but does this wimpy, sniveling request remind anyone else of the telling words our dauntless Ed Commissioner uttered in Saratoga a few weeks back? Lil John King was stumped that parents were writing to him to tell him they didn't think much of the new standards or whatever the hell was being inflicted on their kids. John King did not get it. He admitted to the audience in a Rabelaisian display of his own spinelessness that when a waiter brings him a lousy bottle of wine he doesn't ask for a good one he just shuts up and drinks it. Likewise if his steak has whip marks from the second race at Batavia. He just hunkers down and orders more steak sauce for that slab of crowbait nag. He doesn't complain or send anything back. He is the polite, obeisant little consumer Common Core aspires to clone a million times over. Lil John King wouldn't say Shite if he had a gobful. He takes what he's given and does as he's told. It's clear to see that as he puddle jumps from Burgh to Burgh all across the Empire State sticking to the script his masters gave him, showing zero empathy for any of the thousands of lives being slam dunked by Common Core, straining to rein in his impatience and anger with so many stupid people who simply insist on sending back a medium rare horse flank and a bottle of Watkins Glen 2012. You can tell it pisses him off that parents and teachers are acting so damned uppity. Why can't we all just go along? -- to paraphrase another less than stellar citizen sharing his surname. Forgive my digression but that clown deserves every syllable you or I can throw at him. The connection I am seeing between our unions leadership and the guy whose face bears the stamp of public education's doom is the almighty half measure. Slowing down this mess doesn't turn it from a turd into a silk purse. It won't age well and mellow like some french cave cheese. It's going to stink the way it all ready does and it's not going to get any smarter or any more developmentally appropriate either. Slowing down a runaway shit train doesn't keep your town from being smeared by it. The only way to to keep public education from being smeared in this foul slop is to stop the train in its tracks and bring in the HAZMAT boys to take it away.

We now stand at a turning point. It's time to stop this thing in its tracks and do the same with the frauds who've put us up for sale to the very people who'd love to de-professionalize teaching in favor of selling software, tablets and tests. Randi has to go. Den Den has to go. Dick has to go. They can all half step their way to some cozy gig with their real friends in the eduprofiteering world. We need people who don't agree with Bill Gates, John King and Barack Obama. We need people who will ask Obama and King and Rahmbo Emanuel why, if they are so enamored of Common Core, don't any of them send their own kids to schools where they can be exposed to it? If I was onto a great new deal that would guarantee kids college and career readiness I'd sure as hell want my kids to get in on all the action. Strange none of them do, Stranger still not one union person of any prominence has the balls to say so.

Decisions, decisions ...

Decisions, decisions ...

I've been using ready stretched canvasses ever since I've started painting on canvas (because that's how my painting teacher did it), and I've never really thought about stretching my own canvasses. But recently, I've become a bit bored with the ready stretched things. There just doesn't seem to be that much variety, at least not in texture. So I've started thinking about doing my own stretching. I ordered two sample booklets from one of the big art shops here, and oh my, so many different textures and varieties!


But now there's the problem of deciding which one. Linen or cotton? (I'm not really considering the polyester options, that just sounds wrong somehow). Primed or unprimed? Well, I know which one I like most. Unfortunately, that also happens to be the most expensive. So the problem now is to find my favourite affordable fabric.


Umprimed fabrics are less expensive, so that might be an option. But I'm just a bit concerned about how the fabric will behave, if you first stretch, and then prime it. Will it warp? Would I have to gesso it first, and then stretch it? That might be a bit akward, though, especially with the larger sizes.


Well, before I make any definite decisions, and order a bit huge roll of fabric, I'll have to do some more investigating. I bought two more sample booklets from the other big art shop here. They have some great looking, and slightly less expensive, fabrics in their catalogue, and I'm looking forward to try them out. After all, it's quite a big investment, to get a big huge 2x10m roll (they don't seem to sell them by metre here), and I want to get the right one. Although it might probably take a while to find the perfect canvas. Not easy, but rather exciting.


Linking this up to the wonderful Paint Party Friday. I know, there ins't much of painting going on here, but I hope that some of you might have some tips or recommendations for me.
What do you use/prefer? Ready stretched, or stretching your own? Have you changed from ready stretched to making your own? Or vice versa? I'd love to hear what you think and about your own experiences.