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posted at 2:41 pm on May 1, 2017 by Jazz Shaw

I realize its important to fill up your dance card, but this is looking rather grim. Only yesterday Allahpundit was left scratching his head over the fact that President Trump had extended an invitation to Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte to come visit the White House. Given that the guy has openly admitted to committing murder and is looking forward to more of the same, its cast a bit of a pall over things. But for the record, Duterte hasnt actually accepted the invite yet, saying he might be busy on those dates with some other international travel.

Perhaps as a distraction from that social interaction, a few outlets this morning are confirming a story which was first floating around a week ago which indicated that Trump would also be hosting the tyrant of Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a couple of weeks.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan will meet his U.S. counterpart, Donald Trump, at the White House in an upcoming visit in mid-May, Turkish Presidential Spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on Monday.

The invitation came from Trump, Kalin said, adding the two would discuss Syria, Iraq and the potential extradition of the U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara accuses of orchestrating a failed coup last year.

To call this a questionable gambit is a stretch. Sure, you might think of Duterte as the worse authoritarian of the two, what with all of the Murdery McMurderface activity, but Erdogans recent track record is worse in some ways. Keep in mind that it was only a few days ago when he locked up thousands more police officers on top of the tens of thousands of law enforcement officials, journalists and doctors he had already tossed in the dungeons. If you want a long list of our stories about the destruction of democracy in Turkey just browse through the list.

I get the fact that you cant completely ignore other world leaders, even when their behavior crosses well over the line of being questionable in some cases. We have a long relationship with the Philippines and until not all that long ago they were home to one of our biggest naval bases in that part of the world. We still have a significant presence in the region, though the relationship has been evolving for a while now. But theres a difference between maintaining something which at least resembles stable relations and having their leader over for high tea in the Rose Garden.

Same thing goes for Erdogan. Hes been holding an American pastor captive there for going on half a year and one of his most recent air strikes threatened to take out some American advisors in the area who were working with the Kurds. Add to that the rest of the tyranny activity and it makes for a particularly unsavory visit. I certainly hope that the President knows what hes doing here. If hes got some plan to bring Turkey back in line with democratic values and tone down the violence in the Philippines and thinks these meetings are part of that process then I will prepare to be pleasantly surprised. But does anyone else really see that as a likely scenario? I certainly dont.

Now Im just waiting to see if the President of Venezuela gets a free night in the Lincoln bedroom. Politics makes for strange bedfellows, but some of these meetings just seem over the line.

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On the heels of Duterte, confirmation that Trump will host Erdogan at the White House - Hot Air

What makes a dancer, or any artist, great?

Talent just gets you in the door.

Desire only takes you so far.

Those 10,000 hours of practice that Malcolm Gladwell made famous?

Necessary but not sufficient.

The real key to success in the arts, and perhaps any demanding field, is a willingness to impose on oneself radically higher standards than the world around you might set.

Seo Hye Han, a principal dancer with Boston Ballet who will dance Aurora for the first time in Marius Petipas The Sleeping Beauty, running now through May 27 at the Boston Opera House, exemplifies living by those self-imposed standards.

Han dances with such exquisite grace that its unfair to say she makes it look easy. Instead, she makes it look perfect. And to achieve that level of perfection, she pays a huge price.

Han knew from the time she was eight years old that she wanted to be a professional dancer. She grew up in South Korea and her parents were deeply supportive of her desire.

By her late teens, Han had sacrificed enough to become one of the worlds top dance prospects, winning a competition in Switzerland, which afforded her a scholarship to study dance in Russia.

South Koreans are very family-oriented, Seo says. It was very hard to leave my family, but Russia offered such great training that I couldnt say no.

Han settled in Boston in 2013, where she became a member of the internationally-focused Boston Ballet. The life of a dancer is grueling, with performers typically notching 11-hour days including practice, rehearsals, classes, stretching, and working out.

Initially deeply homesick, Han recreated a sense of family with her fellow Boston Ballet dancers.

Everyone is from all over the world, she says. We are all away from our families. So we get together Ill cook Korean food one night, an Italian dancer will cook Italian food the next night. Its fun.

The life is also exhausting.

You have to remember to smile, even though you are absolutely physically exhausted, she says. Sometimes I see pictures of myself dancing, and I remember how exhausted I was when they took that photo, and I say to myself, I dont remember smiling, but I was.

Learning ballets isnt easy, either.

Its all muscle memory, Han says. Its not about using your brain. Its about teaching your body to remember each move. You cannot rely on your brain in a performance. Your body has to know everything.

So what does Han think about during performances?

Details, she says. Are my feet pointed the right way? Are my hands where they should be? Im always thinking about improving.

This season alone, Hans exacting standards have brought her leading roles in Ivan Likas Le Corsaire, Mikko Nissinens The Nutcracker, William Forsythes Artifact, and now Marius Petipas The Sleeping Beauty.

Its like Giselle, Han says of her Sleeping Beauty character. Aurora changes so much over the course of the ballet that it feels you are dancing multiple roles. In the first act she is young and its very technical. Lots of jumps. In the second act she is more mature, so there is more acting. The third act is more technical again. Its a lot of work to get it right.

Is there one role Han has not yet danced?

Juliet, she says, smiling. I want to know what it feels like to dance the role of Juliet. And she may get her chance as Boston Ballet will present Romeo and Juliet next season (March 15-April 8, 2018).

I know that ballet isnt forever. I dont want to be doing this while I am still 40. This is my time, and I understand the effort it takes. Im happy to do it. Im living my dream, despite the exhaustion and despite living so far from my family. We Facetime all the time. But if its what you want, you pay the price.

Boston Ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, Boston Opera House, now through May 27. For tickets and information, BostonBallet.org.

Ian Travis

Originally posted here:
Boston Ballet's Seo Hye Han Living Her Dream - Huffington Post

Forbes

How The Internet Marketing Industry Got A Bad Name Forbes When is the last time you had a great dental experience with your internet marketing provider? This may seem like an odd question at first and leave you thinking, huh? Yet what is even stranger is that your web marketing provider could be just as ...

Link:
How The Internet Marketing Industry Got A Bad Name - Forbes

The Donald J. Trump for President campaign accused CNN of engaging in censorship andepitomiz[ing] the meaning of fake news Tuesday by refusing to air a Trump campaignad on its network.

The ad, titledFirst 100 Days, began airing on networks across the country Monday.It touts President Donald Trumps bold actions taken in his first 100 days to restore prosperity, keep Americans safe and secure, and hold the government accountable. In particular, the ads narrator noted, you wouldnt know about the presidents accomplishments from watching the news.

The mainstream media mislead, misguide, deceive, and distract. CNN epitomizes the meaning of fake news and has proven it by rejecting our paid campaign ad.

The mainstream media lies. Dont let fake news dominate the truth, the adsays. President Trump promised to make America great again, and he is fulfilling his promise to you.

CNN declined to air the ad, citing objections to the depiction of thefake news media.

CNN requested the advertiser remove the false graphic that says mainstream media is fake news,' the networks communications department tweeted Tuesday. The mainstream media is not fake news, and therefore the ad is false. Per our policy, it will be accepted only if that graphic is deleted. Those are the facts.

Its no secret Trump does not hold CNN in particularly high esteem. During a campaign rally held Saturday in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the president singled out CNN, MSNBC and The New York Times as"fake news" thatcover him and his administration unfairly.

In response to CNNs rejection of the ad, the Trump campaign blasted the network with a press release Tuesday titled, "Fake News Station Refuses to Run Ad Highlighting the Presidents First 100 Days." The statement noted that the campaign "was stopped by the mainstream media from running a new television ad on CNN."

"It is absolutely shameful to see the media blocking the positive message that President Trump is trying to share with the country. It's clear that CNN is trying to silence our voice and censor our free speech because it doesn't fit their narrative," Michael Glassner, the campaigns executive director, said in the statement.

Later in the afternoon, the campaign issued a secondstatement in direct response to CNNs tweet, titled, "CNN Epitomizes the Meaning of Fake News, Censors Trump Campaign Ad."

"This is censorship pure and simple. By rejecting our ad, CNN has proven that it supports censorship is biased and fears an opposing point of view," Glassner said. "President Trumps loyal supporters know the truth: The mainstream media mislead, misguide, deceive, and distract. CNN epitomizes the meaning of fake news and has proven it by rejecting our paid campaign ad."

Link:
Trump Campaign Accuses CNN of 'Censorship' - LifeZette

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the annual Facebook F8 developers conference in San Jose, Calif.Stephen Lam REUTERS

Censoring the Internet is easier than ever. In the past, governments tried to rely on technology to stifle online dissent, but now they have another option: They can just use trolls and social media to rob protest movements of their power.

That's the view of Zeynep Tufekci, a sociologist and computer programmer, who joined law professor Tim Wu at Columbia University on Monday on a panel titled, "Free Speech in the Networked World." It was hosted by the recently-launched Knight First Amendment Institute and the Tow Center for Journalism.

"Its very rare theres not a way to circumvent censorship tools," said Tufekci. "We're now in a censorship environment where they're not going to block you, but will disempower you through ... too much information and distraction."

As an example, Tufekci pointed to Turkey where she says Internet access is not a problem for activists who are challenging the emerging regime of President Recep Erdogan. Instead, she says these activists complain of an onslaught of fake news and social media disinformation that makes it impossible to share reliable information or figure out what is authentic.

Tufekci points to a similar phenomenon in China and Russia, described in her new book , where the governments pay an army of Internet trolls to wear down dissenters and distract citizens with other stories.

All of this distraction, say Tufekci and Wu, amounts to an insidious 21st century censorship built on the back of Facebook and other platforms that manipulate emotions.

"The architecture of Facebook promotes things to make angry, or to distract us with cuddly cats," said Tufekci. "Facebook has cracked the human code, and used edgier content to drag us down a rabbit hole."

The social network also poses a special danger because of personalized advertising, she claimed. According to Tufekci, the Trump campaign and others have used personalized ads to secretly spread misinformationa tactic that has proved successful because, unlike a TV commercial, a Facebook ad is not public, so it's hard to challenge false claims.

So how did we get to this point in the first place? Wu, known for coining the phrase " net neutrality ," said the problem is less the technology of social media but the business model behind it. In particular, he and Tufekci argued that Internet publishersnot just Facebook but news sites toohave little incentive to care about accuracy since they make money based on clicks. In this environment, an incendiary or even false story will flourish (and make money), meaning few publishers will press very hard for quality control.

The race for clicks makes television look dignified by comparison," said Wu, who makes this case in his new book The Attention Merchants.

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Taken together, this online environment of distraction and propaganda combined with a toxic business model, risks sapping democracy. In Tufekci's view, it's also why recent protest movementssuch as the women's march on Washington or Hong Kong's umbrella revolutionfeel so ephemeral. Unlike the original 1963 March on Washington, the more recent demonstrations did not come together after years of organizing, but were spun up with hashtags and dissipated soon after. Tufekci claims this is why governments, even repressive ones, are less afraid of street demonstrations since they see them now as the product of fleeting Internet dross.

If all this sounds bleak, well, that's because it is. Wu and Tufekci, who are part of a fledgling intellectual vanguard confronting social media distraction, concede there are no legal solutions for Facebook's rabbit hole. And Tufekci argued one obvious answersuch as putting down your phone and reading a bookcan be salutary on an individual level, but will do little to fix a broken Internet culture.

All these warnings, though, might prove more persuasive if Wu and Tufekci also took time to acknowledge the many upsides of the Internet, flawed as it might be. For instance, it's thanks to Twitter , I and many others discovered Tufekci's ideas in the first place. Without social media, it's unlikely her influence would have spread far beyond her North Carolina classroom.

And while Wu is technology savvy, his views of BuzzFeedwhich he denounced repeatedly as nothing more than a gimmick for attentionhad a get-off-my-lawn tone, which will be off-putting to a generation for whom the website, which now invests heavily in serious reporting, is a favorite news source. Such a critique is not just grouchyit also fails to acknowledge how older media brands likewise pander with stories that can distract from "real" content. (Even the New York Times, for which Wu writes, publishes fluffy fare like its "Vow" section.)

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A Look at Government Censorship in the Age of Facebook - Fortune