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I was always a fan of Gundam Wing myself.

in the gundam realm

08th ms team > endless waltz > wing > seed> seed destiny > the rest



i am not even going to try to compare gundam and other mechs with evangelion. Eva is so far from the concept of a mech anime. i don't like comparing stuff that is in a different genre, it doesn't seem fair due to bias.
 
[edit] Media information
Gundam Wing had a run on Cartoon Network's Toonami, premiering on Monday, March 6, 2000 at 5:30 PM EST. It was broadcast in two formats; an edited version was show in the daytime and an uncut version aired at night. Examples of the edits included the removal of blood, obscene language, and the word kill being replaced by the word destroy. (This was extended to Duo's nickname, "The God of Death", with it being changed to "The Great Destroyer", forcing the alteration of two episode titles.) The uncut version, shown at midnight, was completely unedited - a first for Cartoon Network, which at the time had never shown an unedited anime.

Due to the popularity of the series, two OVAs, compiling various scenes from the series along with a few minutes of new footage, were released in 1996 as Gundam Wing: Operation: Meteor I and II. A three-volume OVA series, Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz, was produced in 1997 as a sequel to the TV series; plot-wise, it closes out the After Colony saga. A year later in 1998, a movie version of the OVA series was made, with new footage and a different ending (Last Impression).

Manga sidestories have also been produced. A prequel, detailing the events leading up to the launch of the Gundams to Earth, is Episode Zero. Several sequel manga, occurring between Gundam Wing and Endless Waltz have been written, titled, Gundam Wing: Blind Target, Gundam Wing: Ground Zero,and Battlefield of Pacifists. A coincident storyline is presented in Last Outpost (G-Unit). The Gundam Wing, Battlefield of Pacifists, and Endless Waltz manga series are published in English by TOKYOPOP, while Blind Target, Ground Zero, and Episode Zero are published by Viz Communications.

In 1996, a fighting game called Gundam Wing: Endless Duel was released for the Super Famicom in Japan. The game was never released in the United States or Europe, but has gained some popularity through the emulation of older video games.

Like most Gundam works, Wing has also appeared in the SD Gundam sub-franchise. It was the main focus for Musha Senki and the basis for Superior Defender Gundam Force's interpretation of Lacroa, established hub of the Knight Gundam series.
 
Blowing Up

April 22 & 29, 2002
DEPARTMENT OF FINANCE

How Nassim Taleb turned the inevitability of disaster into an investment strategy

1.

One day in 1996, a Wall Street trader named Nassim Nicholas Taleb went to see Victor Niederhoffer. Victor Niederhoffer was one of the most successful money managers in the country. He lived and worked out of a thirteen-acre compound in Fairfield County, Connecticut, and when Taleb drove up that day from his home in Larchmont he had to give his name at the gate, and then make his way down a long, curving driveway. Niederhoffer had a squash court and a tennis court and a swimming pool and a colossal, faux-alpine mansion in which virtually every square inch of space was covered with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American folk art. In those days, he played tennis regularly with the billionaire financier George Soros. He had just written a best-selling book, "The Education of a Speculator," dedicated to his father, Artie Niederhoffer, a police officer from Coney Island. He had a huge and eclectic library and a seemingly insatiable desire for knowledge. When Niederhoffer went to Harvard as an undergraduate, he showed up for the very first squash practice and announced that he would someday be the best in that sport; and, sure enough, he soon beat the legendary Shariff Khan to win the U.S. Open squash championship. That was the kind of man Niederhoffer was. He had heard of Taleb's growing reputation in the esoteric field of options trading, and summoned him to Connecticut. Taleb was in awe.

"He didn't talk much, so I observed him," Taleb recalls. "I spent seven hours watching him trade. Everyone else in his office was in his twenties, and he was in his fifties, and he had the most energy of them all. Then, after the markets closed, he went out to hit a thousand backhands on the tennis court." Taleb is Greek-Orthodox Lebanese and his first language was French, and in his pronunciation the name Niederhoffer comes out as the slightly more exotic Nieder hoffer. "Here was a guy living in a mansion with thousands of books, and that was my dream as a child," Taleb went on. "He was part chevalier, part scholar. My respect for him was intense." There was just one problem, however, and it is the key to understanding the strange path that Nassim Taleb has chosen, and the position he now holds as Wall Street's principal dissident. Despite his envy and admiration, he did not want to be Victor Niederhoffer -- not then, not now, and not even for a moment in between. For when he looked around him, at the books and the tennis court and the folk art on the walls -- when he contemplated the countless millions that Niederhoffer had made over the years -- he could not escape the thought that it might all have been the result of sheer, dumb luck.

Taleb knew how heretical that thought was. Wall Street was dedicated to the principle that when it came to playing the markets there was such a thing as expertise, that skill and insight mattered in investing just as skill and insight mattered in surgery and golf and flying fighter jets. Those who had the foresight to grasp the role that software would play in the modern world bought Microsoft in 1985, and made a fortune. Those who understood the psychology of investment bubbles sold their tech stocks at the end of 1999 and escaped the Nasdaq crash. Warren Buffett was known as the "sage of Omaha" because it seemed incontrovertible that if you started with nothing and ended up with billions then you had to be smarter than everyone else: Buffett was successful for a reason. Yet how could you know, Taleb wondered, whether that reason was responsible for someone's success, or simply a rationalization invented after the fact? George Soros seemed to be successful for a reason, too. He used to say that he followed something called "the theory of reflexivity." But then, later, Soros wrote that in most situations his theory "is so feeble that it can be safely ignored." An old trading partner of Taleb's, a man named Jean-Manuel Rozan, once spent an entire afternoon arguing about the stock market with Soros. Soros was vehemently bearish, and he had an elaborate theory to explain why, which turned out to be entirely wrong. The stock market boomed. Two years later, Rozan ran into Soros at a tennis tournament. "Do you remember our conversation?" Rozan asked. "I recall it very well," Soros replied. "I changed my mind, and made an absolute fortune." He changed his mind! The truest thing about Soros seemed to be what his son Robert had once said:

My father will sit down and give you theories to explain why he does this or that. But I remember seeing it as a kid and thinking, Jesus Christ, at least half of this is bullshit. I mean, you know the reason he changes his position on the market or whatever is because his back starts killing him. It has nothing to do with reason. He literally goes into a spasm, and it?s this early warning sign.

For Taleb, then, the question why someone was a success in the financial marketplace was vexing. Taleb could do the arithmetic in his head. Suppose that there were ten thousand investment managers out there, which is not an outlandish number, and that every year half of them, entirely by chance, made money and half of them, entirely by chance, lost money. And suppose that every year the losers were tossed out, and the game replayed with those who remained. At the end of five years, there would be three hundred and thirteen people who had made money in every one of those years, and after ten years there would be nine people who had made money every single year in a row, all out of pure luck. Niederhoffer, like Buffett and Soros, was a brilliant man. He had a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago. He had pioneered the idea that through close mathematical analysis of patterns in the market an investor could identify profitable anomalies. But who was to say that he wasn't one of those lucky nine? And who was to say that in the eleventh year Niederhoffer would be one of the unlucky ones, who suddenly lost it all, who suddenly, as they say on Wall Street, "blew up"?

Taleb remembered his childhood in Lebanon and watching his country turn, as he puts it, from "paradise to hell" in six months. His family once owned vast tracts of land in northern Lebanon. All of that was gone. He remembered his grandfather, the former Deputy Prime Minister of Lebanon and the son of a Deputy Prime Minister of Lebanon and a man of great personal dignity, living out his days in a dowdy apartment in Athens. That was the problem with a world in which there was so much uncertainty about why things ended up the way they did: you never knew whether one day your luck would turn and it would all be washed away.

So here is what Taleb took from Niederhoffer. He saw that Niederhoffer was a serious athlete, and he decided that he would be, too. He would bicycle to work and exercise in the gym. Niederhoffer was a staunch empiricist, who turned to Taleb that day in Connecticut and said to him sternly, "Everything that can be tested must be tested," and so when Taleb started his own hedge fund, a few years later, he called it Empirica. But that is where it stopped. Nassim Taleb decided that he could not pursue an investment strategy that had any chance of blowing up.
 
this pwns anime





Elfen Lied (エルフェンリート, Erufen Rīto?) is the title of a Japanese manga series originally created by Japanese author Lynn Okamoto as well as a TV anime series based on it. Elfen Lied focuses on a mysterious and deadly breed of horned humans called "diclonius", and the havoc they wreak upon humanity. The title Elfen Lied is German for "Elf Song" (see Lied), and pronounced approximately [ˈɛlfən liːd], although the correct German spelling would be "Elfenlied".

Elfen Lied first began as a manga series, serialized in the magazine Weekly Young Jump and published in Japan by Shueisha, ending at the completion of the twelfth volume. An anime adaptation began airing in Japan on July 25, 2004 while the unfinished manga was still in production. This caused the anime plot to differ in some ways from the manga plot. A bonus OVA episode was released on April 21, 2005 giving some more background information.

So far, only the anime series spanning 13 episodes and the OVA have been licensed in the United States, by ADV Films. ADV Films said the series was one of their bestselling[1] and "most notorious"[2] releases of 2005. Elfen Lied and the character Nana were the inspiration for the popular Clone Manga fan-webcomic "Nana's Everyday Life" which has been completed and fully translated from English into 6 other languages.[3]

The story begins with a naked young girl named Lucy escaping under odd circumstances from an insular research facility off the coast of Kamakura in the Kanagawa Prefecture of Japan. Lucy manages to nonchalantly dismember and slay a fair number of the staff and guards with a form of seemingly supernatural power and gets outside. A sniper is seen trying to shoot her, only managing to ricochet a bullet off her metal helmet. Lucy then falls off a cliff into the sea, bleeding from her head but ultimately surviving and evading the research staff.


A diclonius' "vectors" take the form of long arms that resonate at a speed that causes them to be undetectable by sight.Lucy is not a normal human but rather a diclonius: a mutant variant of humans with two small horns on their heads (hence the name diclonius) that resemble cat ears. The diclonius race possesses telekinetic powers through use of their "vectors", long arms that resonate at a speed that causes them to be undetectable by sight. The number and reach of the vectors depend directly on the diclonius.

The day after Lucy's escape, a boy named Kohta arrives at Kamakura to meet his cousin Yuka. Kohta has come to study at the local university and has been given lodging at an old, family-owned inn, the "Maple (楓, Kaede?) Inn", provided he acts as the caretaker. After meeting with Yuka, they go for a visit to the beach and find Lucy washed up on the shore, still naked and bleeding from her head. The head trauma Lucy experienced causes her to develop a split personality. In stark contrast to the cold and sadistic Lucy, this personality is completely docile, harmless and is incapable at first of saying anything other than "Nyū". Not knowing what to do with her, Kohta and Yuka take her back to the inn to look after her and name her "Nyū". Yuka quickly decides that it will be best that she also live at the inn.

Kohta, Nyū, and Yuka begin settling into their life at the inn and Nyū begins to dredge up painful repressed memories from Kohta's past. Meanwhile, the researchers from the laboratory where Lucy was held begin searching for her, dispatching both human and diclonius agents to hunt her down.
 
Blowing Up Continued...

2.

Nassim Taleb is a tall, muscular man in his early forties, with a salt-and-pepper beard and a balding head. His eyebrows are heavy and his nose is long. His skin has the olive hue of the Levant. He is a man of moods, and when his world turns dark the eyebrows come together and the eyes narrow and it is as if he were giving off an electrical charge. It is said, by some of his friends, that he looks like Salman Rushdie, although at his office his staff have pinned to the bulletin board a photograph of a mullah they swear is Taleb's long-lost twin, while Taleb himself maintains, wholly implausibly, that he resembles Sean Connery. He lives in a four-bedroom Tudor with twenty-six Russian Orthodox icons, nineteen Roman heads, and four thousand books, and he rises at dawn to spend an hour writing. He is the author of two books, the first a technical and highly regarded work on derivatives, and the second a treatise entitled "Fooled by Randomness," which was published last year and is to conventional Wall Street wisdom approximately what Martin Luther's ninety-five theses were to the Catholic Church. Some afternoons, he drives into the city and attends a philosophy lecture at City University. During the school year, in the evenings, he teaches a graduate course in finance at New York University, after which he can often be found at the bar at Odeon Café in Tribeca, holding forth, say, on the finer points of stochastic volatility or his veneration of the Greek poet C. P. Cavafy.

Taleb runs Empirica Capital out of an anonymous, concrete office park somewhere in the woods outside Greenwich, Connecticut. His offices consist, principally, of a trading floor about the size of a Manhattan studio apartment. Taleb sits in one corner, in front of a laptop, surrounded by the rest of his team -- Mark Spitznagel, the chief trader, another trader named Danny Tosto, a programmer named Winn Martin, and a graduate student named Pallop Angsupun. Mark Spitznagel is perhaps thirty. Win, Danny, and Pallop look as if they belonged in high school. The room has an overstuffed bookshelf in one corner, and a television muted and tuned to CNBC. There are two ancient Greek heads, one next to Taleb's computer and the other, somewhat bafflingly, on the floor, next to the door, as if it were being set out for the trash. There is almost nothing on the walls, except for a slightly battered poster for an exhibition of Greek artifacts, the snapshot of the mullah, and a small pen-and-ink drawing of the patron saint of Empirica Capital, the philosopher Karl Popper.

On a recent spring morning, the staff of Empirica were concerned with solving a thorny problem, having to do with the square root of n, where n is a given number of random set of observations, and what relation n might have to a speculator's confidence in his estimations. Taleb was up at a whiteboard by the door, his marker squeaking furiously as he scribbled possible solutions. Spitznagel and Pallop looked on intently. Spitznagel is blond and from the Midwest and does yoga: in contrast to Taleb, he exudes a certain laconic levelheadedness. In a bar, Taleb would pick a fight. Spitznagel would break it up. Pallop is of Thai extraction and is doing a Ph.D. in financial mathematics at Princeton. He has longish black hair, and a slightly quizzical air. "Pallop is very lazy," Taleb will remark, to no one in particular, several times over the course of the day, although this is said with such affection that it suggests that "laziness," in the Talebian nomenclature, is a synonym for genius. Pallop's computer was untouched and he often turned his chair around, so that he faced completely away from his desk. He was reading a book by the cognitive psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, whose arguments, he said a bit disappointedly, were "not really quantifiable." The three argued back and forth about the solution. It appeared that Taleb might be wrong, but before the matter could be resolved the markets opened. Taleb returned to his desk and began to bicker with Spitznagel about what exactly would be put on the company boom box. Spitznagel plays the piano and the French horn and has appointed himself the Empirica d.j. He wanted to play Mahler, and Taleb does not like Mahler. "Mahler is not good for volatility," Taleb complained. "Bach is good. St. Matthew's Passion!" Taleb gestured toward Spitznagel, who was wearing a gray woollen turtleneck. "Look at him. He wants to be like von Karajan, like someone who wants to live in a castle. Technically superior to the rest of us. No chitchatting. Top skier. That's Mark!" As Spitznagel rolled his eyes, a man whom Taleb refers to, somewhat mysteriously, as Dr. Wu wandered in. Dr. Wu works for another hedge fund, down the hall, and is said to be brilliant. He is thin and squints through black-rimmed glasses. He was asked his opinion on the square root of n but declined to answer. "Dr. Wu comes here for intellectual kicks and to borrow books and to talk music with Mark," Taleb explained after their visitor had drifted away. He added darkly, "Dr. Wu is a Mahlerian."

Empirica follows a very particular investment strategy. It trades options, which is to say that it deals not in stocks and bonds but with bets on stocks and bonds. Imagine, for example, that General Motors stock is trading at fifty dollars, and imagine that you are a major investor on Wall Street. An options trader comes up to you with a proposition. What if, within the next three months, he decides to sell you a share of G.M. at forty-five dollars? How much would you charge for agreeing to buy it at that price? You would look at the history of G.M. and see that in a three-month period it has rarely dropped ten per cent, and obviously the trader is only going to make you buy his G.M. at forty-five dollars if the stock drops below that point. So you say you'll make that promise, or sell that option, for a relatively small fee, say, a dime. You are betting on the high probability that G.M. stock will stay relatively calm over the next three months, and if you are right you'll pocket the dime as pure profit. The trader, on the other hand, is betting on the unlikely event that G.M. stock will drop a lot, and if that happens his profits are potentially huge. If the trader bought a million options from you at a dime each and G.M. drops to thirty-five dollars, he'll buy a million shares at thirty-five dollars and turn around and force you to buy them at forty-five dollars, making himself suddenly very rich and you substantially poorer.

That particular transaction is called, in the argot of Wall Street, an "out-of-the-money option." But an option can be configured in a vast number of ways. You could sell the trader a G.M. option at thirty dollars, or, if you wanted to bet against G.M. stock going up, you could sell a G.M. option at sixty dollars. You could sell or buy options on bonds, on the S. & P. index, on foreign currencies or on mortgages, or on the relationship among any number of financial instruments of your choice; you can bet on the market booming, or the market crashing, or the market staying the same. Options allow investors to gamble heavily and turn one dollar into ten. They also allow investors to hedge their risk. The reason your pension fund may not be wiped out in the next crash is that it has protected itself by buying options. What drives the options game is the notion that the risks represented by all of these bets can be quantified; that by looking at the past behavior of G.M. you can figure out the exact chance of G.M. hitting forty-five dollars in the next three months, and whether at a dollar that option is a good or a bad investment. The process is a lot like the way insurance companies analyze actuarial statistics in order to figure out how much to charge for a life-insurance premium, and to make those calculations every investment bank has, on staff, a team of Ph.D.s, physicists from Russia, applied mathematicians from China, computer scientists from India. On Wall Street, those Ph.D.s are called "quants."

Nassim Taleb and his team at Empirica are quants. But they reject the quant orthodoxy, because they don't believe that things like the stock market behave in the way that physical phenomena like mortality statistics do. Physical events, whether death rates or poker games, are the predictable function of a limited and stable set of factors, and tend to follow what statisticians call a "normal distribution," a bell curve. But do the ups and downs of the market follow a bell curve? The economist Eugene Fama once studied stock prices and pointed out that if they followed a normal distribution you'd expect a really big jump, what he specified as a movement five standard deviations from the mean, once every seven thousand years. In fact, jumps of that magnitude happen in the stock market every three or four years, because investors don't behave with any kind of statistical orderliness. They change their mind. They do stupid things. They copy each other. They panic. Fama concluded that if you charted the ups and downs of the stock market the graph would have a "fat tail,"meaning that at the upper and lower ends of the distribution there would be many more outlying events than statisticians used to modelling the physical world would have imagined.

In the summer of 1997, Taleb predicted that hedge funds like Long Term Capital Management were headed for trouble, because they did not understand this notion of fat tails. Just a year later, L.T.C.M. sold an extraordinary number of options, because its computer models told it that the markets ought to be calming down. And what happened? The Russian government defaulted on its bonds; the markets went crazy; and in a matter of weeks L.T.C.M. was finished. Spitznagel, Taleb's head trader, says that he recently heard one of the former top executives of L.T.C.M. give a lecture in which he defended the gamble that the fund had made. "What he said was, Look, when I drive home every night in the fall I see all these leaves scattered around the base of the trees,?" Spitznagel recounts. "There is a statistical distribution that governs the way they fall, and I can be pretty accurate in figuring out what that distribution is going to be. But one day I came home and the leaves were in little piles. Does that falsify my theory that there are statistical rules governing how leaves fall? No. It was a man-made event." In other words, the Russians, by defaulting on their bonds, did something that they were not supposed to do, a once-in-a-lifetime, rule-breaking event. But this, to Taleb, is just the point: in the markets, unlike in the physical universe, the rules of the game can be changed. Central banks can decide to default on government-backed securities.

One of Taleb's earliest Wall Street mentors was a short-tempered Frenchman named Jean-Patrice, who dressed like a peacock and had an almost neurotic obsession with risk. Jean-Patrice would call Taleb from Regine's at three in the morning, or take a meeting in a Paris nightclub, sipping champagne and surrounded by scantily clad women, and once Jean-Patrice asked Taleb what would happen to his positions if a plane crashed into his building. Taleb was young then and brushed him aside. It seemed absurd. But nothing, Taleb soon realized, is absurd. Taleb likes to quote David Hume: "No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion." Because L.T.C.M. had never seen a black swan in Russia, it thought no Russian black swans existed. Taleb, by contrast, has constructed a trading philosophy predicated entirely on the existence of black swans. on the possibility of some random, unexpected event sweeping the markets. He never sells options, then. He only buys them. He's never the one who can lose a great deal of money if G.M. stock suddenly plunges. Nor does he ever bet on the market moving in one direction or another. That would require Taleb to assume that he understands the market, and he doesn't. He hasn't Warren Buffett's confidence. So he buys options on both sides, on the possibility of the market moving both up and down. And he doesn't bet on minor fluctuations in the market. Why bother? If everyone else is vastly underestimating the possibility of rare events, then an option on G.M. at, say, forty dollars is going to be undervalued. So Taleb buys out-of-the-money options by the truckload. He buys them for hundreds of different stocks, and if they expire before he gets to use them he simply buys more. Taleb doesn't even invest in stocks, not for Empirica and not for his own personal account. Buying a stock, unlike buying an option, is a gamble that the future will represent an improved version of the past. And who knows whether that will be true? So all of Taleb's personal wealth, and the hundreds of millions that Empirica has in reserve, is in Treasury bills. Few on Wall Street have taken the practice of buying options to such extremes. But if anything completely out of the ordinary happens to the stock market, if some random event sends a jolt through all of Wall Street and pushes G.M. to, say, twenty dollars, Nassim Taleb will not end up in a dowdy apartment in Athens. He will be rich.

Not long ago, Taleb went to a dinner in a French restaurant just north of Wall Street. The people at the dinner were all quants: men with bulging pockets and open-collared shirts and the serene and slightly detached air of those who daydream in numbers. Taleb sat at the end of the table, drinking pastis and discussing French literature. There was a chess grand master at the table, with a shock of white hair, who had once been one of Anatoly Karpov's teachers, and another man who over the course of his career had worked, in order, at Stanford University, Exxon, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Morgan Stanley, and a boutique French investment bank. They talked about mathematics and chess and fretted about one of their party who had not yet arrived and who had the reputation, as one of the quants worriedly said, of "not being able to find the bathroom." When the check came, it was given to a man who worked in risk management at a big Wall Street bank, and he stared at it for a long time, with a slight mixture of perplexity and amusement, as if he could not remember what it was like to deal with a mathematical problem of such banality. The men at the table were in a business that was formally about mathematics but was really about epistemology, because to sell or to buy an option requires each party to confront the question of what it is he truly knows. Taleb buys options because he is certain that, at root, he knows nothing, or, more precisely, that other people believe they know more than they do. But there were plenty of people around that table who sold options, who thought that if you were smart enough to set the price of the option properly you could win so many of those one-dollar bets on General Motors that, even if the stock ever did dip below forty-five dollars, you'd still come out far ahead. They believe that the world is a place where, at the end of the day, leaves fall more or less in a predictable pattern.

The distinction between these two sides is the divide that emerged between Taleb and Niederhoffer all those years ago in Connecticut. Niederhoffer's hero is the nineteenth-century scientist Francis Galton. Niederhoffer called his eldest daughter Galt, and there is a full-length portrait of Galton in his library. Galton was a statistician and a social scientist (and a geneticist and a meteorologist), and if he was your hero you believed that by marshalling empirical evidence, by aggregating data points, you could learn whatever it was you needed to know. Taleb's hero, on the other hand, is Karl Popper, who said that you could not know with any certainty that a proposition was true; you could only know that it was not true. Taleb makes much of what he learned from Niederhoffer, but Niederhoffer insists that his example was wasted on Taleb. "In one of his cases, Rumpole of the Bailey talked about being tried by the bishop who doesn't believe in God," Niederhoffer says. "Nassim is the empiricist who doesn't believe in empiricism." What is it that you claim to learn from experience, if you believe that experience cannot be trusted? Today, Niederhoffer makes a lot of his money selling options, and more often than not the person who he sells those options to is Nassim Taleb. If one of them is up a dollar one day, in other words, that dollar is likely to have come from the other. The teacher and pupil have become predator and prey.
 
Blowing Up Continued...

3.

Years ago, Nassim Taleb worked at the investment bank First Boston, and one of the things that puzzled him was what he saw as the mindless industry of the trading floor. A trader was supposed to come in every morning and buy and sell things, and on the basis of how much money he made buying and selling he was given a bonus. If he went too many weeks without showing a profit, his peers would start to look at him funny, and if he went too many months without showing a profit he would be gone. The traders were often well educated, and wore Savile Row suits and Ferragamo ties. They dove into the markets with a frantic urgency. They read the Wall Street Journal closely and gathered around the television to catch breaking news. "The Fed did this, the Prime Minister of Spain did that," Taleb recalls. "The Italian Finance Minister says there will be no competitive devaluation, this number is higher than expected, Abby Cohen just said this." It was a scene that Taleb did not understand.

"He was always so conceptual about what he was doing," says Howard Savery, who was Taleb?s assistant at the French bank Indosuez in the nineteen-eighties. "He used to drive our floor trader (his name was Tim) crazy. Floor traders are used to precision: "Sell a hundred futures at eighty-seven." Nassim would pick up the phone and say, "Tim, sell some." And Tim would say, "How many?" And he would say, "Oh, a social amount." It was like saying, "I don't have a number in mind, I just know I want to sell." There would be these heated arguments in French, screaming arguments. Then everyone would go out to dinner and have fun. Nassim and his group had this attitude that we're not interested in knowing what the new trade number is. When everyone else was leaning over their desks, listening closely to the latest figures, Nassim would make a big scene of walking out of the room."

At Empirica, then, there are no Wall Street Journals to be found. There is very little active trading, because the options that the fund owns are selected by computer. Most of those options will be useful only if the market does something dramatic, and, of course, on most days the market doesn't. So the job of Taleb and his team is to wait and to think. They analyze the company's trading policies, back-test various strategies, and construct ever-more sophisticated computer models of options pricing. Danny, in the corner, occasionally types things into the computer. Pallop looks dreamily off into the distance. Spitznagel takes calls from traders, and toggles back and forth between screens on his computer. Taleb answers e-mails and calls one of the firm's brokers in Chicago, affecting, as he does, the kind of Brooklyn accent that people from Brooklyn would have if they were actually from northern Lebanon: "Howyoudoin?" It is closer to a classroom than to a trading floor.

"Pallop, did you introspect?" Taleb calls out as he wanders back in from lunch. Pallop is asked what his Ph.D. is about. "Pretty much this," he says, waving a languid hand around the room.

"It looks like we will have to write it for him," Taleb chimes in, "because Pollop is very lazy."

What Empirica has done is to invert the traditional psychology of investing. You and I, if we invest conventionally in the market, have a fairly large chance of making a small amount of money in a given day from dividends or interest or the general upward trend of the market. We have almost no chance of making a large amount of money in one day, and there is a very small, but real, possibility that if the market collapses we could blow up. We accept that distribution of risks because, for fundamental reasons, it feels right. In the book that Pallop was reading by Kahneman and Tversky, for example, there is a description of a simple experiment, where a group of people were told to imagine that they had three hundred dollars. They were then given a choice between (a) receiving another hundred dollars or (b) tossing a coin, where if they won they got two hundred dollars and if they lost they got nothing. Most of us, it turns out, prefer (a) to (b). But then Kahneman and Tversky did a second experiment. They told people to imagine that they had five hundred dollars, and then asked them if they would rather (c) give up a hundred dollars or (d) toss a coin and pay two hundred dollars if they lost and nothing at all if they won. Most of us now prefer (d) to (c). What is interesting about those four choices is that, from a probabilistic standpoint, they are identical. They all yield an expected outcome of four hundred dollars. Nonetheless, we have strong preferences among them. Why? Because we're more willing to gamble when it comes to losses, but are risk averse when it comes to our gains. That's why we like small daily winnings in the stock market, even if that requires that we risk losing everything in a crash.

At Empirica, by contrast, every day brings a small but real possibility that they'll make a huge amount of money in a day; no chance that they'll blow up; and a very large possibility that they'll lose a small amount of money. All those dollar, and fifty-cent, and nickel options that Empirica has accumulated, few of which will ever be used, soon begin to add up. By looking at a particular column on the computer screens showing Empirica's positions, anyone at the firm can tell you precisely how much money Empirica has lost or made so far that day. At 11:30 A.M., for instance, they had recovered just twenty-eight percent of the money they had spent that day on options. By 12:30, they had recovered forty per cent, meaning that the day was not yet half over and Empirica was already in the red to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars. The day before that, it had made back eighty-five per cent of its money; the day before that, forty-eight per cent; the day before that, sixty-five per cent; and the day before that also sixty-five per cent; and, in fact-with a few notable exceptions, like the few days when the market reopened after September 11th -- Empirica has done nothing but lose money since last April. "We cannot blow up, we can only bleed to death," Taleb says, and bleeding to death, absorbing the pain of steady losses, is precisely what human beings are hardwired to avoid. "Say you've got a guy who is long on Russian bonds," Savery says. "He's making money every day. One day, lightning strikes and he loses five times what he made. Still, on three hundred and sixty-four out of three hundred and sixty-five days he was very happily making money. It's much harder to be the other guy, the guy losing money three hundred and sixty-four days out of three hundred and sixty-five, because you start questioning yourself. Am I ever going to make it back? Am I really right? What if it takes ten years? Will I even be sane ten years from now?" What the normal trader gets from his daily winnings is feedback, the pleasing illusion of progress. At Empirica, there is no feedback. "It's like you're playing the piano for ten years and you still can't play chopsticks," Spitznagel say, "and the only thing you have to keep you going is the belief that one day you'll wake up and play like Rachmaninoff." Was it easy knowing that Niederhoffer -- who represented everything they thought was wrong -- was out there getting rich while they were bleeding away? Of course it wasn't . If you watched Taleb closely that day, you could see the little ways in which the steady drip of losses takes a toll. He glanced a bit too much at the Bloomberg. He leaned forward a bit too often to see the daily loss count. He succumbs to an array of superstitious tics. If the going is good, he parks in the same space every day; he turned against Mahler because he associates Mahler with the last year's long dry spell. "Nassim says all the time that he needs me there, and I believe him," Spitznagel says. He is there to remind Taleb that there is a point to waiting, to help Taleb resist the very human impulse to abandon everything and stanch the pain of losing. "Mark is my cop," Taleb says. So is Pallop: he is there to remind Taleb that Empirica has the intellectual edge.

"The key is not having the ideas but having the recipe to deal with your ideas," Taleb says. "We don't need moralizing. We need a set of tricks." His trick is a protocol that stipulates precisely what has to be done in every situation. "We built the protocol, and the reason we did was to tell the guys, Don't listen to me, listen to the protocol. Now, I have the right to change the protocol, but there is a protocol to changing the protocol. We have to be hard on ourselves to do what we do. The bias we see in Niederhoffer we see in ourselves." At the quant dinner, Taleb devoured his roll, and as the busboy came around with more rolls Taleb shouted out "No, no!" and blocked his plate. It was a never-ending struggle, this battle between head and heart. When the waiter came around with wine, he hastily covered the glass with his hand. When the time came to order, he asked for steak frites -- without the frites, please! -- and then immediately tried to hedge his choice by negotiating with the person next to him for a fraction of his frites.

The psychologist Walter Mischel has done a series of experiments where he puts a young child in a room and places two cookies in front of him, one small and one large. The child is told that if he wants the small cookie he need only ring a bell and the experimenter will come back into the room and give it to him. If he wants the better treat, though, he has to wait until the experimenter returns on his own, which might be anytime in the next twenty minutes. Mischel has videotapes of six-year-olds, sitting in the room by themselves, staring at the cookies, trying to persuade themselves to wait. One girl starts to sing to herself. She whispers what seems to be the instructions -- that she can have the big cookie if she can only wait. She closes her eyes. Then she turns her back on the cookies. Another little boy swings his legs violently back and forth, and then picks up the bell and examines it, trying to do anything but think about the cookie he could get by ringing it. The tapes document the beginnings of discipline and self-control -- the techniques we learn to keep our impulses in check -- and to watch all the children desperately distracting themselves is to experience the shock of recognition: that's Nassim Taleb!

There is something else as well that helps to explain Taleb's resolve -- more than the tics and the systems and the self-denying ordinances. It happened a year or so before he went to see Niederhoffer. Taleb had been working as a trader at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and developed a persistently hoarse throat. At first, he thought nothing of it: a hoarse throat was an occupational hazard of spending every day in the pit. Finally, when he moved back to New York, he went to see a doctor, in one of those Upper East Side prewar buildings with a glamorous façade. Taleb sat in the office, staring out at the plain brick of the courtyard, reading the medical diplomas on the wall over and over, waiting and waiting for the verdict. The doctor returned and spoke in a low, grave voice: "I got the pathology report. It's not as bad as it sounds ?" But, of course, it was: he had throat cancer. Taleb's mind shut down. He left the office. It was raining outside. He walked and walked and ended up at a medical library. There he read frantically about his disease, the rainwater forming a puddle under his feet. It made no sense. Throat cancer was the disease of someone who has spent a lifetime smoking heavily. But Taleb was young, and he barely smoked at all. His risk of getting throat cancer was something like one in a hundred thousand, almost unimaginably small. He was a black swan! The cancer is now beaten, but the memory of it is also Taleb's secret, because once you have been a black swan -- not just seen one, but lived and faced death as one -- it becomes easier to imagine another on the horizon.

As the day came to an end, Taleb and his team turned their attention once again to the problem of the square root of n. Taleb was back at the whiteboard. Spitznagel was looking on. Pallop was idly peeling a banana. Outside, the sun was beginning to settle behind the trees. "You do a conversion to p1 and p2," Taleb said. His marker was once again squeaking across the whiteboard. "We say we have a Gaussian distribution, and you have the market switching from a low-volume regime to a high-volume. P21. P22. You have your igon value." He frowned and stared at his handiwork. The markets were now closed. Empirica had lost money, which meant that somewhere off in the woods of Connecticut Niederhoffer had no doubt made money. That hurt, but if you steeled yourself, and thought about the problem at hand, and kept in mind that someday the market would do something utterly unexpected because in the world we live in something utterly unexpected always happens, then the hurt was not so bad. Taleb eyed his equations on the whiteboard, and arched an eyebrow. It was a very difficult problem. "Where is Dr. Wu? Should we call in Dr. Wu?"
 
Something's Got To Give

(New York Times - 24th March 1996)

- Darcy Frey


All the way down the bank of radar scopes, the air traffic controllers have that savage, bug-eyed look, like men on the verge of drowning, as they watch the computer blips proliferate and speak in frantic bursts of techno-chatter to the pilots: "Continental 1528, turn right heading 280 immediately! Traffic at your 12 o'clock!" A tightly wound Tom Zaccheo, one of the control-room veterans, sinks his teeth into his cuticles and turns, glowering, to the controller by his side: "Hey, watch your goddamned planes -- you're in my airspace!" Two scopes away, the normally unflappable Jim Hunter, his right leg pumping like a pneumatic drill, sucks down coffee and squints as blips representing 747's with 200 passengers on board simply vanish from his radar screen. "If the FAA doesn't fix this goddamned equipment," he fumes, retrieving the blips with his keypad, "it's only a matter of time before there's a catastrophe." And Joe Jorge, a new trainee, scrambling to keep his jets safely separated in the crowded sky, is actually panting down at the end as he orders pilots to turn, climb, descend, speed up, slow down and look out the cockpit window, captain!

From the passenger seat of a moving airplane, the sky over New York City seems empty, serene, a limitless ocean of blue. But on a controller's radar scope, it looks more like a six-lane highway at rush hour with everyone pushing 80. On the Sunday after Thanksgiving -- usually the busiest air-travel day of the year -- jets are barreling toward Newark just 1,000 feet above the propeller planes landing at Teterboro. Newark departures streak up the west side of the Hudson River just as La Guardia arrivals race down the east. And in the darkened operations room of the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control -- the vast air traffic facility in Westbury, L.I., that handles the airspace over New York City -- the controllers curse and twitch like a gathering of Tourette sufferers, as they try to keep themselves from going down the pipes.

That's what they call it -- "going down the pipes" -- and though it has never led to a midair collision, just the threat of it leaves a controller damp and trembling in his chair. As rush hour arrives, his radar scope fills with blips -- eight jets for Newark, say, five props for Teterboro, six La Guardia departures climbing over northern New Jersey and a traffic-watch helicopter over the George Washington Bridge. But that's O.K., the controller assures himself, he has what they call "the picture" -- a mental strategy to avoid conflicts -- and despite the quickening traffic, he's commanding the pilots with rhythmic ease: "Newark jets maintain 2,500 feet. . . . Teterboro props descend to 1,500. . . . La Guardia planes climb to 6,000. . . . "

Then, for an instant, his mind wanders -- don't forget to pick up milk on the way home -- and suddenly he looks back at the scope and it's gone: no picture, no pattern, just a mad spray of blips (and more blips now than there were five seconds ago) heading -- where? North or south? Climbing or descending? He can't remember, and though he tries to catch up, he's already behind, conflicts arising faster than he can react -- one here, one there -- jets streaking across the sky at 300 miles an hour, the controller's stomach in knots because he knows he's going down, nothing to do but leap from his chair, rip off his headset and yell to his supervisor, "Get me out of here -- I'm losing it!"

Sometimes it is the Federal Aviation Administration's ancient equipment that messes with a controller's head -- a radar scope from the 1960's going dark with a dozen planes in the sky, or a dilapidated radio blowing out. A few years ago, a controller guiding 10 jets in a great curving arc toward Newark suddenly lost his frequency just as he had to turn the pilots onto the final approach to the runway. Watching in helpless horror as his planes careered farther and farther off course, the controller rose from his chair with an animal scream, burst into a sweat and began tearing off his shirt. By the time radio contact was re-established -- and the errant planes were reined in -- the controller was quivering on the floor half naked, and was discharged on a medical leave until he could regain his wits.

Every day that the controllers come to work, they ask themselves if this will be the shift of their unmaking, and on the Sunday after Thanksgiving they are performing the full gamut of rituals to ward off doom. One controller stands and paces in tight circles while issuing commands; one drops to his knee, his nose touching the glass; one taps the scope with a finger; one holds himself together by singing out loud. Because the traffic is so heavy tonight, they all take chow at their scopes -- the 12 controllers who handle the airspace over Newark Airport shoveling takeout Chinese into their mouths while issuing their commands. "US Air 512, descend and maintain 4,000" -- Hey, who's got the plum sauce? -- "start down now, no delay!"

Just as the holiday traffic reaches its peak, Tom Zaccheo looks down the bank of radar scopes to see who's closest to flaming out and spots Joe Jorge, the breathless trainee, falling dangerously behind in his commands. "Hey rookie, what's wrong down at the end there, rookie!" Zaccheo jeers mercilessly. Jorge looks over and, emulating the veterans, gives a gruff, fearless chuckle. But he turns right back to his scope -- "Jetlink 3723 turn left heading 080 -- traffic off your 2 o'clock!" He doesn't have a second to spare.

ALMOST 15 YEARS HAVE PASSED since the infamous PATCO strike, which ended with President Reagan firing 11,400 of the nation's 17,000 controllers, but the FAA’s system for moving airplanes safely across the skies has never been closer to chaos. Many of the nation's airport control towers and radar rooms still have fewer fully trained controllers than before the strike, yet the number of flights they must guide through the teeming skies has soared in some facilities by 200 percent. Meanwhile the computer and radar equipment they must do it with has grown scandalously old and degraded. Last year, air traffic control centers -- some with 30-year-old, vacuum-tubed computers -- suffered more blank radar scopes, dead radios and failed power systems than in any previous year, according to Representative John J. Duncan Jr. of Tennessee, chairman of the House aviation subcommittee.

FAA officials say they are turning things around -- hiring more controllers and replacing old equipment. In 1994, the agency embarked on a modernization program that they say will deliver 1,000 new screens and work stations to the busiest controllers beginning in 1998. Meanwhile, because of built-in redundancies, the current system is "99.4 percent reliable," says Anthony Willett, an FAA spokesman. "It's a '65 Mustang that we're hellbent on keeping in great shape, polishing the hell out of the fenders." Adds Monte R. Belger, associate administrator for air traffic services, "the Mustang is going down the road at 55 miles an hour, so any improvements have to be done while it's up and running."

Equipment failures have not yet led to any crashes, but in the airspace over New York City, the number of operational errors -- also known as near midair collisions -- jumped threefold in 1994. And as the FAA lags further behind schedule and over cost in modernizing the equipment ($500 million and 15 years wasted on software that was never used), it falls to the controllers, handling half a billion passengers per year and working mind-numbing overtime, to keep the system from completely falling apart. "I won't tell you what the 'F' in FAA stands for," snarls one controller. "But the 'AA' is for again and again."

Mention air traffic control and most people think of those glass-enclosed airport towers, but the real frenzy takes place in the FAA’s 175 Terminal Radar Approach Controls, or TRACONs, some of them miles from the nearest runway. Once a plane takes off, an airport controller "hands it off" by computer to a controller at a TRACON, who uses radar and radio to guide the plane through the swarming metropolitan airspace. Once the plane has climbed to 17,000 feet, the TRACON controller hands it off again to a controller at 1 of 21 Air Route Traffic Control Centers, which guide flights across the high-altitude expanses between airports. All FAA facilities are challenging places to work, but the New York TRACON -- which handles up to 7,000 flights a day into and out of Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark, as well as 47 smaller airports, all within a 150-mile radius -- is considered the most hair-raising control room in the world.

Monitored by 24-hour-a-day guards, surrounded by barbed-wire fencing, the New York TRACON is a white, aluminum-sided, two-story compound with a jumble of radio antennas and satellite dishes on a nearby tower. Upstairs, in the vast, windowless operations room, it takes a moment for your eyes to adjust to the dark. But soon the outlines of some 40 controllers begin to emerge, sitting at banks of luminous radar scopes, while in the center of the room traffic managers scurry about on a lighted platform, monitoring the flow of airplanes into the New York region, coordinating runway configurations at the three major airports so that flight paths don't conflict and calculating how to work the maximum number of aircraft without bringing any one controller to his knees.

Although the La Guardia and Kennedy controllers work the more famous airports, it's the Newark controllers (47 of them, predominantly male and deployed in shifts of 12) who handle the most volume, work the most complex airspace, clock the most overtime and live under the greatest threat of going down the pipes -- a situation all controllers may soon face if the system doesn't improve. In the TRACON’s other sectors, the controllers look inert, hunched toward their scopes and muttering quietly into their headsets. Meanwhile, the Newark controllers -- perhaps in anticipatory dread -- are screaming at their pilots, yelling to their supervisors, denouncing the FAA, placing wagers in the sector's football pool, sumo-wrestling behind the scopes and, in the case of one controller, gliding around the operations room on Rollerblades. "Every hour around here," says one Newark controller, "is 59 minutes of boredom and 1 of sheer terror."

"HEY, BRO, WHAT'S UP?" TOM ZACCHEO SHOUTS, STRIDING INTO THE Newark sector for the start of the 3-to-11-P.M. shift on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, grabbing some of his buddies by the neck and planting a loud kiss on their cheeks, putting others in headlocks and honking out greetings to all in a hoarse, booming Brooklynese.

"Hey, could we have some quiet?" another controller yells from his scope. "I'm working live airplanes here!"

"I gotta talk loud," Zaccheo yells back. "I'm from Canarsie -- I got a reputation to uphold!" Then Zaccheo goes over -- fist raised -- and kisses that controller too.

Darkly handsome, powerfully built, with combed-back hair in the style of the Fonz, the 40-year-old Zaccheo is also known as One-a-Day Zack for his frequent showdowns with other controllers. One colleague remembers the first time he saw One-a-Day: Zack was standing at his scope and yelling at a controller through his headset, "I'm gonna come over there, and then I'm gonna rip your lungs out!" But Zack, who did four years in the Navy before joining the FAA in 1982, has accepted the challenge of self-improvement. "They made a rule you can't threaten another controller on the job," he says, bringing his fingers to his enormous chest. "Somebody like me, I had to change my operating way."

So far, the day has been sunny and mild around the New York region, but if anything the good weather has increased the traffic as the skies, already filled with back-to-back holiday flights, have become further clogged with "pleasure" pilots hoping to catch what may be the last good flying day of the year. Just after 3 P.M., Zack straps on his headset (or helmet, as the ex-military jocks call them), leans over the controller he will replace and listens as his colleague swiftly briefs him on the status of each plane on his scope. Because traffic is already heavy, the transfer occurs like a baton pass during a relay race, with Zack fairly jogging in place and then, still settling himself into his chair, emitting a tongue-twisting barrage of instructions to catch up for lost time: "Continental 301, eight miles from the outer marker, turn right heading 190, maintain 2,500 feet until established on the localizer, cleared I.L.S. runway 22 left approach."

Between issuing commands, Zack listens for each pilot to read back his instructions; asks a nearby controller if he can "borrow" some airspace for one of his planes; coordinates, over an outside telephone line, a tricky landing with the Newark tower, and writes down on individual "flight strips" every altitude and speed he gives to pilots. If Zack's radar goes down -- or he goes down the pipes -- those flight strips are the only way a supervisor, running to bail him out, can figure out which way his planes are headed.

Some controllers, ever fearful of going down the pipes, work only the minimum number of planes before asking their supervisor to hold new traffic. But Zack won't surrender. "I can take it! I can take it!" he yells as the planes stream onto his scope until the supervisor himself decides he's had enough. "Around here, I'm the Man," Zack says, punching his chest. "That's 'cause I'm not afraid of the airplanes. I always tell my supervisor, 'Put me where the action is.' 'Cause I want it. I want the traffic." Zack emits a percussive, high-pitched laugh. "We call the weak controllers the Papier-Maches. You know -- it used to be, guys were made of steel, but now they're made of papier-mâché. Ha, ha!"

Zack turns back to his scope, and once again it's filling with jets: five from the south, two from the west, three from the north -- all heading toward Newark International. Of the sector's six radar scopes -- one for Newark arrivals, one for departures, two for the satellite airports and two that feed planes to the other scopes -- the Newark final scope is the hardest, for the goal is to take those 10 jets, arriving from wildly divergent angles, and actually point them at each other so they will converge in a tight line leading to the runway. According to FAA rules, the TRACON’s controllers must keep jets separated by at least three miles laterally or 1,000 feet vertically. But because the skies are always filled to capacity, the FAA allows controllers to reduce the space between two planes if one pilot confirms he has the other plane in sight.

That's what distinguishes the Men of Steel from the Papier-Maches. A weak controller, spotting two jets six miles apart, won't agonize over the unused airspace. But Zack sees that gap as a chance to push more traffic, looks for a third jet to slide between the two and then -- by using visual separation -- packs the jets even closer in the sky. On the final descent toward Newark, planes travel one mile every 11 seconds; Zack can't hesitate or miss a turn, or the entire chain of jets will collapse. But he doesn't. Like a shrewd billiards player, Zack calculates the angles that will transform his 10 random jets into a 30-mile chain, then commands the pilots with unassailable authority. "Pilots are like dogs," he says under his breath. "They can smell fear in your voice. But if you sound confident, they'll do whatever you tell them to do." He pauses to appreciate his handiwork -- 10 blips, each three miles apart, heading like geese toward the Newark runway. "Now that's crisp vectoring! Make a plan, make it work, but don't think about the plan. Real educated people, somebody with real smarts, can't do this because they're always pondering. I don't have time for that." A criminal smile lights up his face. "With this job, you will get yourself cornered. The question is: How good are you at getting yourself out?

"The key is picturing the scope in three dimensions," he goes on. "Can you picture these blips as airplanes, all making the turn in the sky? If you can't picture it, you can't do the job." Zack points to one blip. "Look -- that's a 737. It's got two engines, two pilots, four attendants and probably 150 passengers reading the paper and drinking their Bloody Marys. You can actually feel the power of one of those airplanes, and you know what it'll look like if it crashes." Zack appraises the scope, filling once again with blips. "Jeez, airplanes everywhere -- two here, four there -- you gotta love it!"

After an hour of holiday traffic, Zack is finally relieved by another controller and hands off authority, albeit reluctantly. During their two daily breaks, most controllers go straight to the lounge, where they stare slack-jawed at the large-screen television. But Zack is still pumped up, biting his cuticles, flexing his back muscles and strutting around the operations room looking for something to do. "Come on, let's get the hell out of here," he says, grabbing his jacket and heading toward the parking lot for a quick trip to Dunkin' Donuts.

Outside the TRACON, everything along Westbury's commercial strip -- cars, pedestrians -- is overexposed in the bright sunlight and moves at half-speed, or so it appears after watching Zack at his scope for the last hour. At Dunkin' Donuts, Zack's booming voice and machine-gun laugh turn the heads of several patrons, as does his order for 12 coffees, each with different milk and sugar requirements. "If I don't come back with 12 coffees, the guys look down on me," Zack explains. As the young woman behind the counter fills the cups, Zack stands impatiently, shifting from one foot to the other and watching as she loses track of which coffees get which supplements. A panicked expression comes into the young clerk's eyes. "Look!" Zack whispers gleefully. "She's losing the picture! She's going down the pipes!"
 
ROUND 4:30 P.M., ZACK RE-ENTERS THE OPERATIONS ROOM with his usual restraint -- head-butting one controller, almost coming to blows with another for stepping on his toes. "C'mon, Zack," says one of his buddies. "Don't start now." Standing behind the Newark scopes with his trayful of coffees, Zack is surrounded by other controllers who pick the tray clean, then start guzzling their coffee at their scopes. Although most of America has been on vacation this weekend, the bleary-eyed Newark controllers have worked six days this week, as they have for the last year and a half. Ever since Reagan busted their union, in fact, controllers have gone through several cycles of mandatory six-day workweeks while the FAA tries desperately to rebuild its ranks.

The Government now employs 17,000 fully trained controllers around the country, about the same as before the strike. But in New York, the controllers are working twice as many flights as their PATCO predecessors. "We are at our required staffing levels on a national basis," explains James H. Washington, an FAA administrator, "but we may have to play catch-up at various facilities." Catch-up means the FAA, unable to hire and train enough fresh bodies, must call on its exhausted regulars to work more overtime. The New York TRACON leads all FAA facilities in overtime clocked. ("We call it the Hotel California," Zack explains. "You can check in, but you can't check out.") And the controller who leads all others at the TRACON -- the national overtime champ, with 328 hours so far in 1995, a pair of red, watery eyes and his own oversize plastic coffee mug always within reach -- is one Jim (Jughead) Hunter, sitting down now to work Newark departures.

Nicknamed thus because his initials remind everyone of the Archie comic-strip character (and also because he reported for work one day wearing a cardboard Burger King crown), Jughead -- fair-haired and baby-faced at 33 -- has a surprisingly sanguine manner for a guy who has had two days off in a row only seven times in the last year. "The first day back and the sixth are the hardest," Jughead says cheerfully. "It's like somebody hit you." During his workweek, Jughead is usually called on to perform a Quick Turn (a 3-to-11-P.M. shift, followed the next morning by a 7-A.M.-to-3-P.M. shift); or, if the TRACON is really short-staffed, the dreaded Iron Man (a Quick Turn plus an extra midnight shift). After finishing an Iron Man, Jughead reports: "I drive home and barely remember the trip. I'm on the couch. I look around: Wow, I'm home! How'd that happen?"

Wearing his customary Notre Dame sweatshirt and baseball cap, Jughead is a natural -- a smooth and effortless controller -- and he sits at his scope like a schoolboy devilishly gifted at some video game that confounds his elders. "You got to have two mentalities," he explains confidently. "One, these aren't lives here; these are just dots. And, two, even as bad as you can mess up, it's a big sky; the planes won't hit. Otherwise, the stress is too much, you'd have a heart attack, you'd be done." As he issues orders to pilots -- giving them meticulous directions on an imaginary clock face, always according to their perspective -- Jughead moves his head and hands in circular gestures, as if he's conducting an orchestra. And he greets new pilots onto his radio frequency with eternal good cheer. "Jetlink 1050, how ya doin'!" he says when that plane enters his airspace. Then, when handing off another plane: "Have a good trip to Richmond!"

Spotting one of his buddies returning from the television room, Jughead calls out for an update on the afternoon football scores (sports is his passion), then turns back to the scope. "An old controller once said to me: 'Let me tell you what makes a good controller: If a pilot messes up, he dies. If you mess up, the pilot still dies.' " Jughead shrugs. "It sounds cold, but you have to take that kind of outside perspective. Otherwise you'd be wacko in a year."

Jughead's eerie composure, it must be said, often alarms his supervisors. When the computer projects that two planes are about to fly closer than three miles, a Conflict Alert buzzer goes off and the two blips begin flashing on the scope. Whenever the Conflict Alert -- or as the lavatorial-minded controllers call it, the Caca -- flashes on Jughead's screen, his supervisor rushes over. "What's with the Caca?" he says urgently. "Those two guys see each other?"

Jughead smiles serenely. "The jetlinks? Oh, yeah. Everything's under control. Don't be scared."

The supervisor rolls his eyes. But if Jughead blew his cool over every Caca, he could never keep up such a punishing work schedule, week after week. Other Newark controllers, fed up with the overtime, have devised tricks for getting time off. They call in sick or they "fish for a tone," the deafening feedback that can come through a controller's headset, which promises two weeks of recuperation time if he fails a hearing test. ("How can you not fail?" says one controller. "You just tell the doctor, 'I don't hear that!' ") Or they listen for pilots in distress calling for help on the emergency radio frequency and quickly volunteer their services, knowing if there's a crash, they can get up to 45 days on mental-health leave. But Jughead shows up day after day, pushing the traffic and clocking his overtime with merry abandon.

"I'm sure there's long-term effects of working so much traffic," he says, perhaps unaware of one he already exhibits: despite his relaxed manner, Jughead's right leg twitches uncontrollably when he's on the scopes. "But right now I don't see it. I always say, 'There isn't enough traffic out there to put me down.' " He smiles sheepishly, leg still jiggling. "Actually, I get a buzz off it. It's true. Most guys, they come back from their breaks a couple minutes late to get an easy position. I come back five minutes early to get the busy scope, but Zack usually has it -- that jerk!" Jughead chuckles. "Or I'll tell my supes to combine two radar positions for me. At the end of a busy shift, I'll be, like: 'I did an hour and 20 on final! They shut off the overflow runway! I was crushed with traffic!' " He raises his hands in ecstasy. "'It was great!' "

BY 5:30 ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON, THE NEWARK CONTROLLERS are in full swing, coordinating the holiday traffic like short-order cooks on speed -- throwing flight strips around as they hand off aircraft to one another, requesting permission to "climb my guy to 6,000 in your airspace," trying to divert traffic around the controllers who are getting crushed and performing the so-called blow-by maneuver, in which a faster jet overtakes a slower one. Half the time they are on their feet, screaming over one another's heads and bounding around to point out stray planes, their headset wires wrapped around their ankles. Supervisors are pacing back and forth behind the scopes, barking at the controllers like drill sergeants.

"The trick is to not let it get away from you," explains Bob (The Wheel) Marsh, who is supervising today and earned his nickname because, though he's been off the scopes for years, he can't stop wheeling and dealing. "The guys in this building have been making it work for so long, unless they're on the edge of going down the pipes, they'll always take another handoff." That's when the supervisor must step in and slow down the traffic, even take over the scope if things get too wild. "Otherwise, controllers being controllers, they'll just keep going and going until there's nowhere to go." Surveying his troops, The Wheel smiles affectionately. "No wilding allowed."

Around the Newark sector, they like to say that working heavy traffic irrevocably changes a controller's personality. "If you're not Type A when you start out," goes the aphorism, "this place will make you Type A." Put a mild-mannered controller in front of a radar scope, pump him full of traffic, caffeine and adrenaline, and pretty soon he's acting like Zack and Jughead, practically begging for more planes. But the job can change a controller in other ways, as is painfully evident whenever Gary Graswald shows up for work.

Graswald -- alternately known as Graz, or The Grizzled One -- has been working Newark traffic for 10 years, which makes him the senior controller in the sector. Only 37 ("but an old 37," as Jughead puts it), Graz is thin, with old-fashioned bangs, a droopy mustache and a hang-dog look that carries the imprint of every plane he has ever controlled. "I've taken a pounding for years," Graz says one day, slouching in front of his radar scope as he recounts his tale of woe. "The new guys say it's a great job and not so much stress, but there is. Yeah, sure, Jughead can do it now. But let him be in the Newark sector for 10 years! After that he'll say, 'I've had enough.' "

Quiet and sweet-tempered, Graz seemed more like a high-school music teacher than an air traffic controller when he came to the TRACON 10 years ago. From the start, his plan was to learn radar controlling, then transfer to a less-stressful facility somewhere in New England. For years Graz applied for other jobs, but when he finally got accepted at another facility, the TRACON refused to release him. Desperate for a break, Graz has also applied for the TRACON’s management positions whenever they open up, and four times the job has gone to someone else. "I never asked why, but I'm pretty sure they just don't want to lose a Newark body, since the sector is already doing so much overtime," Graz says forlornly. "Back when I started I was told, 'Put in your five years and you can go anywhere.' But that was 10 years ago and I can't get out!"

The FAA's difficulty persuading new controllers to move to high-stress facilities like the New York TRACON is one reason they can't afford to lose Graz. ("Why kill yourself here when life is a lot easier at another facility," says Loretta Martin, the TRACON air traffic manager.) Another is his mastery of the Newark airspace, which has grown so convoluted over the last 15 years that only a few dozen controllers in the country know how to work it. Until the late 1970's, the Newark sector was actually the slowest in the TRACON, with only three scopes, eight controllers per shift and an airport nicknamed Sleepy Hollow. But with the passage of the Airline Deregulation Act in 1978, everything changed. Among other things, airlines were now able to operate from just a few hub airports, which meant that dozens of connecting flights, or jetlinks, would stream into an airport in one "arrival push," followed shortly by a stream of simultaneous departures. In 1981, People Express made Newark its hub. Newark -- and Graz -- have never been the same.

Newark in the early 1980's was aviation's Wild West. Faced with an endless stream of People's jets (even flights from Houston to Chicago passed through Newark), and pressured by the airport, the airlines and the FAA not to put planes in holds, controllers used all their legal tricks -- and occasionally some illegal ones -- to pump the surging traffic through a constricted airspace, often going home at day's end to vomit from all the stress. Some pilots complained about the flying conditions, but mostly they went along too, playing jet jockey, maneuvering their 737's as if they were Cessna’s, and taking a tight, overhead approach to the airport and "teardropping" onto runway 29, where they could land and taxi straight to the People Express terminal. "You got your head busted in back then," says one controller. "But everyone was making money -- People's, Newark -- and our job was to make it happen."

And that, more or less, is the way things remain, since the New York airspace has never been successfully redesigned to absorb Newark's tangled growth. What makes the Newark airspace so challenging is not just the volume of traffic -- 50 percent from Continental, which acquired most of People's routes -- but also its complexity. Bounded on the east by the Hudson River in order to stay clear of Kennedy and La Guardia traffic, the Newark airspace is fed by 27 different arrival routes from the south, west and north. And it is used by every imaginable aircraft -- commuter jetlinks rushing to make Continental connections at Newark; corporate jets flying in and out of Teterboro, a small airport 10 miles to the northeast; pleasure aircraft cruising the Hudson River, and dozens of eastbound jets passing overhead on their way to Kennedy and La Guardia.

Over the years, the Newark airspace has grown so Byzantine that it takes two years for new controllers to learn its many dangerous shoals and eddies. (On one route toward Newark, planes -- in order to avoid traffic at Morristown, Teterboro and Caldwell airports -- must circle an extra 15 to 20 miles to the northwest, a path Continental pilots have dubbed the "OPEC-1 arrival route" because it burns so much fuel.) And fully half the trainees flunk out during their training. The FAA thought it had found a quick fix for its staffing problems when President Clinton reversed Reagan's ban on rehiring PATCO controllers, allowing some of the fired controllers to reapply for their old jobs. Four old-timers came to the TRACON’s Newark sector, but all were stunned by the new chaos in the skies, and two have already washed out -- terrified by their first bursts of rush-hour traffic and never able to regain their stride. "They just spoke too slow," says Jughead, who tried to help them improve their reaction time. "I was, like: 'Spit it out! Let's go!' "

All of which means that Graz -- who after 10 years of sitting in darkness can't walk in bright sunlight without his eyes hurting -- is caught in an exquisitely cruel predicament: the crazier the Newark airspace gets, the more invaluable he becomes to the TRACON; but the longer Graz works Newark traffic, the crazier he himself gets. Of all the Newark controllers, Graz is the most visibly tense, craning his neck at acute angles when traffic gets heavy and snapping at pilots or other controllers if they don't follow protocol. Gone is the mild-mannered controller who arrived at the TRACON long ago, eager to learn radar controlling. "Ten years!" he moans, gripping the sides of his head. "Ten years! It's like I'm in a room, a box, and there's no opening. I want off the scopes!"
 
IT'S BREAK TIME AGAIN, SO ZACK AND THREE OF HIS COLLEAGUES -- Tom (Fitz) Fitzgerald, Bobby (Brains of Stone) Pryor and Bobby (Vic Zulu) Clarke -- climb into Fitz's Mitsubishi and start cruising around suburban Westbury, looking for fun. "We're known as the Boys," Zack explains one afternoon as they head down the town's commercial drag. "You're either in with the Boys or you're not."

The first stop is Dunkin' Donuts, of course, so that Zack can get more coffee and make fun of the clerk ("We handle 18 airplanes at a time -- this guy can't do four coffees! Ha, ha!"), and so that Fitz -- a barrel-chested, red-bearded former marine -- can squeal out of the parking lot, pretending to leave Zack behind. That's good for a few laughs. Then Zack and the Boys drive past the Westbury golf course, wait for someone to lift his club and blow the horn just as the poor sucker takes his swing. "I could drive around like this all day," Zack says, roaring with laughter. "That's one thing about being an air traffic controller -- you don't have to act your age."

Few do. Consider the controller who sent all his departures on alternate climb-out routes so their jet engines wouldn't drown out his sister's barbecue in Queens; or the controller who overheard an El Al pilot welcoming his passengers on board for their flight to Tel Aviv, then got all the other pilots on his frequency to order rum and Coke, please, and maybe a bag of those little pretzels, using Israeli accents; or the controller, a serious Rangers fan, who took the plane carrying the wives of the Vancouver Canucks and made them circle in the sky so they wouldn't land in time to see their husbands play for the Stanley Cup Championship.

For a job with few educational requirements, air traffic control offers power, freedom and enviable pay -- the average base salary at the TRACON is a sweet $72,000. But in other respects, controllers are -- and have always been -- treated like hired help. They are Government employees forbidden by law to strike (and on April 1, depending on the outcome of Congressional legislation, they may lose their right to form a union). They must drop everything to work overtime, no matter what they had planned with the wife and kids. And as soon as they sit down at the scopes, they are at the mercy of lousy equipment, absent-minded pilots, reckless colleagues, bad weather or maybe just the traffic getting heavier and heavier, like a hand constantly pushing at them from behind.

And every year as the traffic, the equipment and the hours get worse, so, too, does the threat of operational errors -- the ultimate emblem of a controller's lack of control -- which the FAA defines as a loss of the requisite separation between two planes, but is more terrifyingly known as a "near midair collision." In 1994, operational errors at the TRACON jumped threefold, from 16 to 50, most of them in the Newark sector. Operational errors occur for many reasons -- a pilot turning his plane too slowly or a radar screen going dark. All are stressful, but none more than the error judged to be a controller's fault. That, in the local argot, is called a "deal." Three deals within two and a half years means the controller is pulled off the scopes, sent back to the lab simulator for retraining and must get recertified, a process that can go on for months.

At the Newark sector, there's actually a deal a day -- sometimes a deal an hour -- but unless a pilot or supervisor files a complaint with the FAA within 15 days, the incident escapes inquiry; controllers, spotting a deal on their scopes, just look around to see if they were caught. "We don't get loud about it here," says one controller. Jughead's one deal -- a loss of separation that, he insists, occurred because a pilot turned his plane too slowly -- was caught only because the then-head of the New York TRACON happened to run into that same pilot. The pilot mentioned a close call he'd had, the TRACON manager promised to look into it and did so -- on the 14th day. "Everybody was howling," Jughead says, still peeved at his luck. "He looks into it on the 14th day, and I have to eat the deal! I don't think that has ever happened in the history of the FAA!"

Eating a deal is not a tasty experience. If it's caught immediately, the controller is pulled off the scopes and sent "downstairs," where TRACON managers examine the radar and radio data to determine whether the pilot or the controller is at fault. "It's always them against you -- they'll use any little mistake against you," complains Graz. "That's why I always tell my trainees, C.Y.A." He smiles apologetically. "Cover Your . . . Rear End."

Zack, for his part, has little patience with by-the-book controlling, considering it his right -- by dint of his talents and the strain the FAA puts on them -- to have some fun on the scopes. He regularly flirts with female pilots, picks fights with unresponsive captains with Southern accents -- "Hey, you're in New York buddy! I need you to descend in a New York minute, not a hillbilly minute!" But Zack is no stranger to the terrors of a bad deal himself. A few years ago, he assigned the wrong flight code to a small propeller plane, which meant that his radar scope was misrepresenting the prop's actual location in the sky. Zack didn't know that, however, so he vectored the pilot directly into a line of oncoming jets. Boom -- Zack had one near midair collision. Frantic, Zack descended the prop away from the jets and into the path of another propeller plane. Boom -- another near midair collision. Flailing helplessly, Zack had racked up two near midair collisions in less than 30 seconds. "I'm not one to give up," he sighs. "But after that, I told my supe, 'Man, you better get me off this thing right now.' "

Over time, the constant threat of deals preys upon a controller's sanity, and for a few years the TRACON even referred their shaken employees to a nearby psychiatrist, who possessed a relaxed couchside manner, listened thoughtfully and ended most sessions by pulling out his prescription pad. "Maybe a little something to help you sleep?" But what's short-term therapy going to do when the chaos in a controller's head is merely the normal human reflection of the chaos in the skies?

Recently, Zack was sitting next to a colleague -- let's call him Wayne -- who had been working too much traffic for too many years and was nearing the end of the line. When Zack saw that he and Wayne had planes heading toward each other at 4,000 feet, he called out, "Which way's your guy going?" Wayne said nothing.

"Tell me which way you're gonna turn him," Zack demanded, and still Wayne was silent.

"Hey, descend your guy to 3,000!" Zack yelled as Wayne started shaking at the scope. "Come on, Wayne, don't mess around!"

"I don't give a damn what happens to them!" said the trembling Wayne.

"Jesus! Descend your --."

"Don't care!"

And the planes roared past each other, missing by less than 500 feet. Wayne took a medical leave, went into counseling, but for months couldn't come near the TRACON. "He just went onto the dark side, that guy," Zack says.

Alas, Wayne is not alone. Several years ago, another controller was working Newark departures. The planes were shooting off the runway like a burst of startled pigeons, the controller scrambling to keep them separated as they climbed into the sky. At some point he reached saturation, couldn't take another plane entering his airspace. He froze at his scope, actually moved his cursor to each blip and deleted them from his radar screen. Then he turned to his supervisor and announced: "No more planes. Time to get off." He, too, was sent to counseling, and after a couple of months tried to return, but he could never bring himself to work traffic again. A new nickname entered the lexicon: Dr. Freeze.

So the question that haunts the Newark controllers is: Who will be the next Wayne, the next Dr. Freeze? Who is so burned out -- "toasted," "a crispy critter" -- that he's destined to go down the pipes?

Graz, his colleagues agree, could go at any time. He's been working Newark traffic the longest, never had the proper appetite for fear and recently was turned down for his fifth management bid at the TRACON. "Yeah, he's got the short fuse now," Fitz warns.

"We're trying to get him off the boards before it happens," Zack says gravely.

Jughead is a supremely gifted controller, but Zack, for one, argues that he's practically asking for it -- what with his 318 overtime hours and casual attitude, like a young athlete who hurls his body around, certain that the ravages of time will never take their toll. "Has he told you about the Big Sky Theory?" Zack says. "You know, 'Don't worry, they're not going to hit'? Man, that's a crazy saying. You got to worry."

As for Zack -- well, Zack believes that as long as he does worry, sitting in front of his radar scope and chewing his cuticles, like the glass itself is about to shatter in his face, he'll be all right: "The strong survive," he declares.

In the TRACON’s other sectors, when a controller goes down the pipes, his colleagues often back away and avert their eyes, as if at the scene of an ugly accident. But in the Newark sector, where the threat of spectacular flame-out is as inescapable as the overtime and the greasy Chinese food, the controllers not only prepare for it but participate in it -- eagerly -- as if they were performing some ritual sacrifice. For a while, the controllers even had a doll, shaped like a witch, that they stowed in the panel above the intimidating Newark final scope. When someone went down the pipes on final, the controllers would pull a switch and down came the witch on a string. All the controllers would circle around the victim, cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West, jeering, "You're going down!" and maybe pinching him from behind as he went down in flames.

Because the controllers' code of conduct permits no show of weakness or fear, sometimes this hazing ritual has a salutary effect. A few days ago, Fitz -- who by his own admission tends to struggle on the scopes -- was working a busy final sequence. The planes were streaming into his airspace one after another and, though he was trying to maintain three-mile separation, he was feeding the planes to the Newark tower for landing with too little room in between. If one plane follows another too closely, the one in front won't have time to land and taxi off the runway before the second is ready to touch down, and that second plane will have to "go around" -- abort its landing at the last possible moment and circle back for another attempt. The tower controller called Fitz over the intercom to complain.

"How about you try doing your job!" Fitz yelled back, knowing of course the man was right. Then Fitz shouted over to his supervisor: "I suggest you call the tower and tell that guy to go [expletive] himself." Then, when his supervisor told Fitz to just calm down: "I'm goddamned [expletive]!!"

Sensing a potential flame-out, several controllers gathered behind Fitz: "Yeah, Fitzie, way to keep those emotions in check!"

"You want us to send Zack over to the tower to take that guy out?"

One guy reached for the intercom, pretending to be the tower controller: "Hey, Newark, could you send us some more planes?"

That pushed Fitz over the edge. He started cursing, thrashing about in front of his scope and screaming at the pilots: "Reduce speed now to 180 knots!" "Expedite descent to 3,000!" "Turn right heading 090 degrees, and give me a good rate on that!" Silent now, the other controllers exchanged looks. Fitz was controlling those 747's like a lion tamer with his chair. He had a perfect three-mile final. For tonight at least, he was a certified Man of Steel.

BY 6:30 P.M., THE HOLIDAY traffic is reaching an absurd frenzy, the blips crawling around the controllers' radar scopes like swarms of angry ants -- Newark and Teterboro traffic crisscrossing the airspace west of the Hudson, and Newark and La Guardia jets whizzing past each other over the river. The scopes look so cluttered, in fact, that controllers are having trouble distinguishing one blip from another, and when the Caca goes off, it takes them a second just to figure out which planes are in conflict. It's one of those days when the equipment always seems to go haywire: real planes vanish off the scope; "ghost returns" of planes appear 50 miles from where they ought to be, or the entire scope goes blank, leaving controllers scurrying around the darkened operations room with their flight strips, trying to keep a mental picture of where their planes are headed.

Zack, watching with pent-up rage as the controller next to him keeps invading his airspace, rises halfway to his feet, as if he's going to put his fist down the man's throat. The Wheel rushes over to hold Zack back.

"This guy," Zack sputters. "He keeps --."

"Yeah, you're right," The Wheel reassures him, pressing down on Zack's shoulder. "You're absolutely right."

"I'm just saying --."

"Hey, I know. We been working together a long time, right?" And The Wheel reaches out to shake Zack's hand, which temporarily calms him down. But as soon as he has extinguished that fire, The Wheel sees another: Joe Jorge, the trainee locked in mortal combat with the mighty Newark final scope, is having some sort of problem communicating with his pilots. The Wheel runs over to investigate.

Jorge has seven jets flying east toward the Hudson River, which he must turn south for their final descent to the airport. But when he tries to reach the aircraft in front, he gets no response. Jorge repeats his command. Again, no response. Now Jorge is several beats behind, and as he tries to catch up, other pilots -- wondering why they haven't received their turn-and-descend orders -- start contacting the TRACON. Because the FAA's creaky radio technology can handle only one transmission at a time, the incoming calls are preventing Jorge from issuing the commands they need.

"Everybody stand by!" Jorge barks. "US Air 512 turn right heading 160."

No response.

"US Air 512 turn right heading 160."

No response. What the hell is going on?

As The Wheel yells up to the traffic-management podium, ordering a hold on all new planes heading toward Newark, Jorge looks frantically toward his instructor, Steve Marotta, who has been standing by his side. "O.K., everybody, listen up, please," Marotta announces, taking over the mike. Twice Marotta gives orders to the US Air pilot, and twice he gets no response. Then three more pilots -- starting to panic as they race toward the west bank of the Hudson and all the La Guardia traffic over the river -- try contacting the TRACON, blocking Marotta.

"Nobody check in on the frequency please," Marotta says, moisture forming on his brow. "Stand by everybody."

While Jorge sits mute and helpless, Marotta spits out a new set of commands. "You're very weak, New York," one pilot calls back.

That's when they realize what the problem is: their own radio isn't working properly; half of Marotta's commands aren't even leaving the building. They're losing their grip on the jets.

With his primary radio broken, Marotta punches a button that sends his voice onto a backup frequency. But when he tries to transmit over that one, a pilot calls back: "Was that heading 130? We can barely hear you, New York," and the controllers realize, to their horror, that their backup radio is failing, too.

Zack and the other controllers look down the row of radar scopes at Jorge, fairly shaking in his chair, and Marotta, leaning nervously toward the scope. Could two guys go down the pipes together?

Marotta and Jorge glance at each other. When they look back at the scope, they see a TWA jet, at 5,000 feet, heading east toward the Hudson. Meanwhile, an American Airlines jet, having departed from La Guardia, now at 4,000 feet, is climbing west straight into the path of the TWA. The two planes are three miles apart when the controllers spot them, but with each jet converging on the other at 300 miles an hour, Marotta calculates they'll be nose-to-nose over the river in 30 seconds.

"TWA 32, turn right heading 220," Marotta says, trying to betray no fear. "Good rate of turn, please."

"Unreadable," the pilot calls back.

"TWA 32, turn right heading 220," Marotta repeats swiftly.

"Unreadable."

"No response. Jesus!" Marotta thrusts his head toward the radar scope and realizes he no longer has time to turn the TWA jet to the right.

"TWA 32, turn left, turn left heading 360 now. Turn left to 360!"

Jorge and Marotta take in breath, their eyes grow wide and their stomachs give way to that horrible bottomless falling feeling of losing all control. Then, over the crackling backup frequency, comes a faint "Roger" and they watch as the TWA blip moves left and away.

Suddenly Zack's voice comes booming over the P.A. system: "No chance, rookie! You got no chance!" While Marotta switches to yet another frequency -- this one actually works -- and starts bringing the line of jets back under control, Zack explodes over the intercom: "It's all Jorge's fault! I could eat and work through a frequency outage like that! But this guy's jumpin' up and down! That's the difference in experience level! Ha! You should have given the pilots a cup with a string! Woulda worked better than this goddamned equipment!"

As soon as Marotta has the jets back on course -- miraculously, though half a dozen planes have strayed, only the TWA is forced to circle and land after the others -- The Wheel puts a new controller in to relieve Jorge and Marotta. The two shaken controllers remove their headsets, laughing hysterically and backing away from the Newark final scope as if they can hear it ticking.

"I'm a little moist," Jorge admits, trying to keep himself from trembling. "Not wet, but moist." Marotta, a veteran of countless equipment failures, pats the rookie's back. "Hopefully you got your plastic underwear on."

Quickly, Marotta and Jorge are joined by Zack and a gang of other controllers, furious as always with the FAA "You know why that failed?" says The Wheel. "This stuff is 20 years old!"

"And the whole system is predicated on flawless equipment," says Marotta. "One glitch, and in 30 seconds those planes are together!"

"I'm writing this goddamned thing up," one of them declares, referring to the Unsafe Conditions Reports the controllers file constantly to get the FAA's attention. "Goddamned bastards!"
 
Jorge, lifting a can of Coke to his mouth, still can't steady his hand, but otherwise an antic carnival spirit has swept through the sector. The Chinese food has just been delivered, and Marotta starts ransacking the bag. "O.K., where's my goddamned won ton soup!" he roars. "I got fried rice coming out my ears. Zack! Gimme 50 cents for the soda machine!" Zack, giddy from all the traffic and the chance to watch his buddies dance nimbly away from the abyss, grabs another controller, and the two start jitterbugging across the floor, their arms and legs flailing wildly. Jughead has just returned from the television room and announces the results of the day's football games. One controller is already cursing out some new pilots. Another is serenading himself at the scopes. And The Wheel is on another rampage as the traffic streams again toward Newark.

With the sector so harried, there's no time for much of a break, so the controllers head back to the scopes, Chinese food in hand. Zack, still laughing, straps on his helmet and sits down to work the Newark final. "You think people on an airplane have any idea what we do here?" he exults, digging fiendishly into some roast pork egg foo yong. "Eating Chinese? Or pinching a guy's butt while he goes down the pipes? But if we didn't act this way it would be a lot worse." Indeed, in the gladiator world of air traffic control -- where six-day workweeks are the rule, the FAA posts signs warning that LOSS OF HUMAN LIFE MAY RESULT FROM SERVICE INTERRUPTIONS and most of the equipment belongs behind glass in the Smithsonian -- what better way to cope with the stress than to own it, embrace it, turn the heart-stopping terror of it into some fraternity game?

Zack looks around at his colleagues, these controller-magicians who keep the skies safe by coming to work, day after day, and pulling rabbits out of their scopes. "This whole job is an endurance test, from the first day until you retire. And you know who holds the whole thing together? We do. We don't do it for the FAA, and we don't do it for the airlines. We do it for ourselves. We just keep pumping tin." He turns to his scope and watches as it fills once again with blips -- six jets from the south, four from the west, four from the north -- American 1438, turn right heading 260! Traffic off your 3 o'clock! -- planes and then more planes, no end in sight.
 
Blowing Up Continued...

4.

A year after Nassim Taleb came to visit him, Victor Niederhoffer blew up. He sold a very large number of options on the S. & P. index, taking millions of dollars from other traders in exchange for promising to buy a basket of stocks from them at current prices, if the market ever fell. It was an unhedged bet, or what was called on Wall Street a "naked put," meaning that he bet everyone on one outcome: he bet in favor of the large probability of making a small amount of money, and against the small probability of losing a large amount of money-and he lost. On October 27, 1997, the market plummeted eight per cent, and all of the many, many people who had bought those options from Niederhoffer came calling all at once, demanding that he buy back their stocks at pre-crash prices. He ran through a hundred and thirty million dollars -- his cash reserves, his savings, his other stocks -- and when his broker came and asked for still more he didn't have it. In a day, one of the most successful hedge funds in America was wiped out. Niederhoffer had to shut down his firm. He had to mortgage his house. He had to borrow money from his children. He had to call Sotheby's and sell his prized silver collection -- the massive nineteenth-century Brazilian "sculptural group of victory" made for the Visconde De Figueirdeo, the massive silver bowl designed in 1887 by Tiffany & Company for the James Gordon Bennet Cup yacht race, and on and on. He stayed away from the auction. He couldn't bear to watch.

"It was one of the worst things that has ever happened to me in my life, right up there with the death of those closest to me," Niederhoffer said recently. It was a Saturday in March, and he was in the library of his enormous house. Two weary-looking dogs wandered in and out. He is a tall man, an athlete, thick through the upper body and trunk, with a long, imposing face and baleful, hooded eyes. He was shoeless. One collar on his shirt was twisted inward, and he looked away as he talked. "I let down my friends. I lost my business. I was a major money manager. Now I pretty much have had to start from ground zero." He paused. "Five years have passed. The beaver builds a dam. The river washes it away, so he tries to build a better foundation, and I think I have. But I'm always mindful of the possibility of more failures." In the distance, there was a knock on the door. It was a man named Milton Bond, an artist who had come to present Niederhoffer with a painting he had done of Moby Dick ramming the Pequod. It was in the folk-art style that Niederhoffer likes so much, and he went to meet Bond in the foyer, kneeling down in front of the painting as Bond unwrapped it. Niederhoffer has other paintings of the Pequod in his house, and paintings of the Essex, the ship on which Melville's story was based. In his office, on a prominent wall, is a painting of the Titanic. They were, he said, his way of staying humble. "One of the reasons I've paid lots of attention to the Essex is that it turns out that the captain of the Essex, as soon as he got back to Nantucket, was given another job," Niederhoffer said. "They thought he did a good job in getting back after the ship was rammed. The captain was asked, `How could people give you another ship?' And he said, `I guess on the theory that lightning doesn't strike twice.' It was a fairly random thing. But then he was given the other ship, and that one foundered, too. Got stuck in the ice. At that time, he was a lost man. He wouldn't even let them save him. They had to forcibly remove him from the ship. He spent the rest of his life as a janitor in Nantucket. He became what on Wall Street they call a ghost." Niederhoffer was back in his study now, his lanky body stretched out, his feet up on the table, his eyes a little rheumy. "You see? I can't afford to fail a second time. Then I'll be a total washout. That's the significance of the Pequod."

A month or so before he blew up, Taleb had dinner with Niederhoffer at a restaurant in Westport, and Niederhoffer told him that he had been selling naked puts. You can imagine the two of them across the table from each other, Niederhoffer explaining that his bet was an acceptable risk, that the odds of the market going down so heavily that he would be wiped out were minuscule, and Taleb listening and shaking his head, and thinking about black swans. "I was depressed when I left him," Taleb said. "Here is a guy who goes out and hits a thousand backhands. He plays chess like his life depends on it. Here is a guy who, whatever he wants to do when he wakes up in the morning, he ends up better than anyone else. Whatever he wakes up in the morning and decides to do, he did better than anyone else. I was talking to my hero . . ." This was the reason Taleb didn't want to be Niederhoffer when Niederhoffer was at his height -- the reason he didn't want the silver and the house and the tennis matches with George Soros. He could see all too clearly where it all might end up. In his mind's eye, he could envision Niederhoffer borrowing money from his children, and selling off his silver, and talking in a hollow voice about letting down his friends, and Taleb did not know if he had the strength to live with that possibility. Unlike Niederhoffer, Taleb never thought he was invincible. You couldn't if you had watched your homeland blow up, and had been the one person in a hundred thousand who gets throat cancer, and so for Taleb there was never any alternative to the painful process of insuring himself against catastrophe.

This kind of caution does not seem heroic, of course. It seems like the joyless prudence of the accountant and the Sunday-school teacher. The truth is that we are drawn to the Niederhoffers of this world because we are all, at heart, like Niederhoffer: we associate the willingness to risk great failure -- and the ability to climb back from catastrophe--with courage. But in this we are wrong. That is the lesson of Taleb and Niederhoffer, and also the lesson of our volatile times. There is more courage and heroism in defying the human impulse, in taking the purposeful and painful steps to prepare for the unimaginable.

Last fall, Niederhoffer sold a large number of options, betting that the markets would be quiet, and they were, until out of nowhere two planes crashed into the World Trade Center. "I was exposed. It was nip and tuck." Niederhoffer shook his head, because there was no way to have anticipated September 11th. "That was a totally unexpected event."
 
The television series, directed by Mamoru Kanbe, animated by ARMS and produced by GENCO and VAP, ran for 13 episodes and adapted approximately the first 60 out of 107 chapters of the manga. Episodes 1 to 11 of the anime are in canon with the continuity of the storyline for volumes 1 to 6 of the manga, faithfully adapting most of the events happening in the latter. The last two TV episodes strayed from the manga's continuity and gave an original conclusion to the anime. The series' author, Lynn Okamoto, has a brief cameo appearance as a special guest in episode 12.

Elfen Lied first aired on TV Tokyo's AT-X satellite channel from July 25, 2004 to October 17, 2004 and was broadcast again in 2005. The anime was licensed by ADV Films in the United States in 2004 and was released on DVD in 2005. A single 24 minute OVA episode was also released. It takes place between episodes 10 and 11 of the original TV series, and for that reason, some refer to it as episode 10.5, OVA special, or even as episode 14. The special itself takes on a lighter tone and answers some questions of the early episodes rather than advancing the plot. During the Anime Boston 2006[8] (May 26—28) convention, ADV Films acquired the distribution rights of the OVA for release in the United States.

The series is currently airing in the United Kingdom on Propeller TV (Sky Digital) as part of Anime Network's launch in the UK. So far the series has aired uncut with the exception of one of Mayu's flashbacks in Episode 5.

In a posting on the official Adult Swim messageboard, Adult Swim programming director Kim Manning revealed that Adult Swim inquired into possibly airing the series, but the censorship board revealed that the series would have to be so heavily edited in order to air that it would have been "unintelligible", and it does not appear that it will air on the channel at any time in the future.


[edit] Plot deviations
Compared to its manga original, the approach and depth of information presented by the anime involving the diclonius race differs greatly. The diclonius virus is explained in less detail with scenes such as Professor Kakuzawa's explanation of the half-diclonius status and ancestry of his family to Lucy being omitted. The diclonius characters are depicted as all having the same hair color, whereas in the manga Lucy/Nyū had pink hair, Mariko was blond, and Nana had dark purple hair. The diclonius characters in general are shown to have distinct limits on their vectors' quantity and range, which is not true in the manga.

Characters were introduced in the manga that were otherwise completely omitted from the anime series. An example of this early on in the manga is an acquaintance of Yuka's, referred to as "Nozomi-chan." Similarly, the music box playing the "Lilium" melody that is featured in the anime does not appear in the manga.


The colorful and lavish backgrounds of the anime have been praised for their technical excellence.
[edit] Western reception
The anime series of Elfen Lied has been praised for its technical excellence in production quality, animation and color.[9][10][11][12] Criticism has been leveled at both the Japanese and English dub for having sub-par voice acting in the first three episodes.[10] Another criticism is that the series ends abruptly with some loose ends to the story that could leave viewers unsatisfied.[13] Despite these criticisms, Western reviewers also describe the series as "really a genuinely good watch",[14] "a horror series of exceptional merit",[13] "certainly memorable"[9] and "a very special show, good and bad parts taken into consideration".[15] In the 2004 AnimeReactor Community Awards, fans voted the Elfen Lied anime as the Best Opening/Ending Combination, Best Drama, Best Thriller (Mystery/Horror), Best Fanservice and also voted Lucy/Nyū as Best Female Character.[16] Also at the first annual American Anime Awards 2007 at New York Comic-Con, Elfen Lied was nominated for "Best Short Series".


[edit] Style and themes

Young Lucy lashes out violently at her tormentors. Strong graphical violence is prevalent throughout the series.Throughout the series, there is a great deal of graphic nudity, blood and gore, extreme graphic violence as well as psychological violence. One of the most prevalent motifs of the series is the humanity of the diclonius, especially contrasted against the inhumanity of ordinary people. One reviewer described the series as "devoted to quite a few of the darker, more callous factors of human nature".[15] Throughout the series there are various incidences of human sadism, casual beatings, cruel experimentation, pedophilic rape and outright killing. The series has drawn criticism as being "overly blatant"[14] or "sad and forced"[17] in this regard.

The series juxtaposes many different tones and genres and was described by a reviewer as "mixing insane amounts of violence with a heavy dose of ultracuteness."[18] The series also involves romantic sub-plots as well as many comic moments. Elfen Lied has been described as similar to, or borrowing elements from Chobits, 3x3 Eyes[9] and Gunslinger Girl.[18]


[edit] Theme songs
Opening theme
"Lilium" by Kumiko Noma
Ending theme
"Be your girl" by Chieko Kawabe

[edit] Cultural references

[edit] Art
The opening and ending sequences feature artistic drawings of the principal characters. These characters are drawn in a style based on Gustav Klimt's paintings, imitating poses, colors, and patterns.[9] In the following comparison images, the left side of each image shows Klimt's work, and on the right, Elfen Lied's counterpart:


Fulfilment The Kiss


[edit] Music and poetry
The German song Elfenlied ("Elf Song") appears in the manga[19] and is credited to the composer Hugo Wolf. A poem by Eduard Mörike is the basis for Wolf’s version. The song does not appear in the anime as it is taught to Nyū by the manga-only character Nozomi.
 
Berserk (ベルセルク, Beruseruku?) is a dark fantasy manga by mangaka Kentaro Miura.

With over 29 million volumes sold, it is one of the most successful adult manga ever. Berserk's setting is inspired by medieval Europe. It centers around the life of Guts, an orphaned mercenary warrior, and his relationship to Griffith, the leader of a mercenary band called the Band of the Hawk (鷹の団, Taka no Dan?). Both the manga and anime are noted for their heavy violence.


As of July 2007, 31 tankōbon of the manga have been published in Japan.

Contents [hide]
1 Berserk manga
2 Berserk anime
2.1 Release Information
3 Characters
4 Berserk video games
5 Licensed merchandise
6 Trivia and historical references
7 External links



[edit] Berserk manga
For more details on the structure of the series, see List of Berserk manga episodes.
Miura first premiered Berserk in 1988 with a 48-page prototype, which won a prize at the Comi Manga School where he was enrolled at the time. On 26 November 1990, the first volume of the manga was published by Hakusensha in its Jets Comics collection. Three more volumes appeared until Berserk was serialized by Young Animal (Hakusensha) in 1992, and new episodes are still being released in the semi-monthly (every second and fourth Friday of the month) magazine. Volumes are still published biannually in Japan by Hakusensha (Jets Comics collection), and contain 8-11 episodes depending on the release.

In America, the manga is translated and published by Dark Horse Comics, which has released eighteen volumes so far, the first in October 22, 2003. As with other Dark Horse manga releases like Hellsing or Trigun Maximum, the Japanese reading format from right to left is preserved in the English release and the sound effects are left untranslated in the earlier releases, but are translated in later books starting from volume 12.

In Europe, the manga was introduced back in 1996, first in France (Samourai Editions), then in Italy (Panini Comics, under its Marvel Manga - later Planet Manga - imprint) few months later. The manga has also been translated and released in Germany (Panini Comics/Planet Manga) since 2001. In France, after Samourai Editions' bankruptcy, the comic series is now published by both Dynamic Visions (since 2002) and Glénat (since 2004), the latter edition being a larger format. A two-books-in-one Max edition (+400 pages) is also published in Germany and Italy since 2006 (Panini Comics). As of yet the series is not being published in Poland.

In Asia, Berserk comic books have been published in Korea since 1999 by Dai Won.

In Latin America, Panini Comics has published the manga series in a demi-sized (120 pages) edition in Brazil (2004).


[edit] Berserk anime
See also: List of Berserk anime episodes
In 1997, production began on a 26-episode anime series (though only 25 were produced due to financial constraints[citation needed]) titled 剣風伝奇ベルセルク (Kenpû denki beruseruku, "The Strangeness of War," roughly, in English). The series was animated by OLM (Oriental Light and Magic).

It covered the first thirteen volumes of the manga including the first two arcs (Black Swordsman & Golden Age). It chronicles how Guts served Griffith in the Band of the Hawk (Golden Age Arc). The TV adaptation made many changes and although the story was taken largely intact, some characters, and the most violent or brutal scenes, were modified or removed. The anime covers volumes five through eight of the manga most accurately, other volumes were changed, and some material, such as volume 11, was removed completely due to the graphic depictions of content that would only build upon themes that were to be continued after the storyline in the anime had concluded. Another example of omitted content is the battle against the count in volumes 1-3 Where Guts and Femto are reunited for the first time since the eclipse. These changes were approved by the series creator Kentaro Miura. Due to the elimination of key characters in the manga, the anime focuses on developing and emphasizing themes of friendship and ambition more so than causality and the supernatural.

The American release of the anime version was labelled "Season One", which may have misled people into assuming that a "Season Two" was planned. Currently, virtually nothing supports this assumption.

In 2004, a CG anime version of key scenes appearing in the TV series, including Griffith's incarceration and the Eclipse episode, were created for the second video game based on the Chapter of the Record of the Holy Demon War (Millennium Falcon Arc).


[edit] Release Information
The series was broadcast on Nippon Television in a post-midnight slot from October 7, 1997 to April, 1998. The anime broadcast started in Japan between the publishing of the 14th and the 15th volume, tankobon #14 completing the Golden Age Arc and starting the Retribution Arc.

In America, the anime series has been dubbed/subtitled and published by Media Blasters in 2002. Both dubbed and subtitled versions were released in VHS. The English and Japanese soundtracks were included in the DVD release that was made available as six volumes and as a "TV series season one complete collection" standard (slim) boxset. By the time of the series' launch, a volume one "War Cry" was bundled with an empty "Box of War" 6-disc case as a special edition. In 2003, the "Box of War" containing all volumes was released as a collector boxset. While fans have suggested that Cartoon Network air the series, one of a series of Adult Swim "bumps" claimed that censorship requirements would butcher it.

In Europe, the series has been published as seven subtitled single DVD in France (Manga Distribution) and six single disc in Germany (Panini Video) both from 2003 to 2004. With its dubbed soundtrack added to the original Japanese one in its 6-DVD Berserk "Radical Edition", Spain (Jono Media, 2003) is the only European country to not release a subtitled edition. Italy is another exception with being the only country to have broadcasted the TV series (via Italia Uno public channel) under the same conditions as it was done in Japan, with uncensored episodes aired at night (2001). The 24th episode The Sacrifice (aka The Great Eclipse) was aired only at a later hour (as usual habit in the Italia 1 management policy for late night shows), so many Berserk fans missed it and assumed it wasn't aired due to its gore content. The entire series was released in 2002 as a dubbed 13-VHS and 5-DVD editions (Yamato Video).

In Asia, Vap Video has released thirteen VHS and twelve VCD including two episodes each (a single one in the last VHS and three in the last VCD) from 1998 to 1999 in Japan. The seven discs "DVD-BOX", using Audio-CD cases, was released in Japan in 2001 (Vap Video). In the same country, the seven volumes were later rereleased, this time in individual DVD regular cases, in 2003 (Vap Video). Abroad, the anime series has been subtitled and published as a 6-DVD boxset standard edition and a 7-DVD collector boxset in Korea (Mania Entertainment) in 2004. In Thailand, thirteen Thai dubbed VCD volumes including two episodes each, later re-released as three VCD boxsets ("Prosperity:I", "Declination:II" & "Disaster:III"), were published by Tiga in 2004. A Thai dubbed/subtitled complete series "War Box" 8-disc DVD boxset, including a collector beherit necklace, was released by the same company in 2005. A Traditional Chinese subtitled 5-DVD boxset was released in Taiwan in 2005 (Catalyst Logic).

In Oceania, the American dubbed/subtitled DVD version was converted to PAL standard and released in 2003 as six single volumes and, in 2004, as a 6-disc collector "Box of War" in both Australia and New Zealand (Madman Entertainment). The same year, the "Box of War" case, which is graphically different than the American version, was also sold separately in these countries.


[edit] Characters
For more details on this topic, see Characters of Berserk.
All subsequent names are from the English translation and Miura's statements about the official transliterations of the characters' names starting from Volume 27.

Guts (ガッツ, Gattsu?)
Guts is the protagonist of the story; a tall, muscular male with a huge sword called the Dragon Slayer along with a prosthetic left forearm that has a magnetic grip and also conceals a cannon. Guts is a Byronic Hero; he is born as one who may be able to struggle against Causality, but seemingly unable to affect it on a large scale. The Golden Age story arc of the series revolves around Guts's turbulent childhood and adolescence in a mercenary band after reluctantly being adopted by the band's leader Gambino at the behest of Gambino's lover, Shizu, and his subsequent joining with, and departure from, the Band of the Hawk. The dynamic relationship between Guts and Griffith, the leader of this group, forms the primary focus of the manga for the first thirteen volumes. After the events of the Eclipse, in which he loses his left forearm and right eye, Guts seeks revenge on Griffith. Upon doing so, he is subsequently reunited with Casca after two years separation. After the Incarnation Ceremony at Albion, Guts now travels with a new group of companions. He currently possesses the Berserker's Armor, an ancient, cursed suit of armor that allows the wearer to overcome his physical and mental boundaries in combat greatly increasing his fighting strength. Doing so damages his body and allows his inner beast, a feral dog-like demon, to take over and endanger everyone in the vicinity, friend or foe.



Griffith (グリフィス, Gurifisu?)
Griffith is the founder and leader of the mercenary army Band of the Hawk. Extraordinarily charismatic and handsome, his tactical skill gives him and his army the reputation of invincibility, making him the favoured choice of the Midland King, who was locked in a century long war with the Empire of Tudor. Griffith is willing to sacrifice everything for his dream of his own kingdom, believing that he is destined for things greater than the average man. After he won the war for Midland, he lost a duel to Guts in an attempt to keep Guts under his influence, which led to Guts' departure from The Hawks. Stunned and feeling betrayed, Griffith sought comfort in a one-night stand with the king's daughter, and only heir to the throne, Princess Charlotte. The affair was discovered, after which Griffith was imprisoned and tortured for a year. He was rescued by the primary members of The Hawks, but was already physically crippled and mentally broken. In his despair of losing his dream because of Guts' influence, he was driven to a state of madness that coincided with both the reappearance of his lost Behelit, and a solar eclipse. The God Hand appeared, and he sacrificed the Band of the Hawk to them to become the fifth and final God Hand: Femto. Only Casca, Guts and Rickert, who was outside the Occultation, survived, all having been rescued by the Skull Knight. Two years later, Griffith was reincarnated as a human again in the city of Albion; he now leads a newly formed Band of the Hawk, still in pursuit of his dream to obtain a kingdom, only now he has sanction from 'God'.



Casca (キャスカ, Kyasuka?)
Casca was the only female soldier in the original Band of the Hawk and is behind only Guts and Griffith in swordsmanship. Her ambivalent relationship to both of them makes her moody and capricious. Casca joins the Band of the Hawk after Griffith saves her from a sexual assault by a nobleman. After Griffith is imprisoned, she becomes the leader of the Band of the Hawk and, along with Guts, leads the mission to rescue Griffith. The trauma of the Eclipse, especially her rape at Femto's hands, has cost Casca her memory. In addition to being Guts' lover, she also gave birth to a child, which had become tainted by Femto's rape. During her travel with Guts, the strain of watching over her in her state and fighting against evil spirits for nights on end drove a possessed Guts to succumb to his inner beast and nearly rape her. Due to this, she now detests Guts and has found comfort in the only adult female traveling with them: Farnese. Casca travels with them completely oblivious to her surroundings, with Guts and company keeping close watch over her. Casca's well being is the driving force for Guts to keep himself from reverting back to a revenge-obsessed wanderer. It has been revealed outside the city of Vritanis that her mental state may be cured at their final destination, Elfhelm, by King Hanafubuku.
 
Naruto (NARUTO -ナルト-, Naruto?, romanized as NARUTO in Japan) is a manga series written and illustrated by mangaka Masashi Kishimoto with an anime adaptation. The main character, Naruto Uzumaki, is a loud, hyperactive, unpredictable adolescent ninja who constantly searches for approval and recognition, as well as to become Hokage, acknowledged as the leader and strongest of all ninja in the village.

The manga was first published by Shueisha in 1999 in the 43rd issue of Japan's Shonen Jump magazine. As of volume 36, the manga has sold over 71 million copies in Japan.[1] VIZ Media publishes a translated version in the American Shonen Jump magazine. Naruto has become VIZ's best-selling manga series.[2] To date, the first 15 volumes are available. In order to catch up to the translated anime, VIZ plans to release volumes 16 to 27 three at a time over the months of September to December 2007.[3]

The first of two anime series, produced by Studio Pierrot and Aniplex, premiered across Japan on the terrestrial TV Tokyo network and the anime satellite television network Animax on October 3, 2002, and is still being aired. Viz also licensed the anime for North American production. Naruto debuted in the United States on Cartoon Network's Toonami programming block on September 10, 2005, and in Canada on YTV's Bionix on September 16, 2005. Naruto began showing in the UK on Jetix on July 22, 2006. It began showing on Toasted TV on January 12, 2007 in Australia, although it could be watched on Cartoon Network in 2006. The first series lasted nine seasons, while Naruto: Shippūden began its first on February 15, 2007.

Contents [hide]
1 Plot overview
2 Characters
3 Anime details
4 English-language broadcast
5 Reception
6 Bibliography
7 References
8 External links



Plot overview
Further information: List of Naruto story arcs
Twelve years before the events at the focus of the series, the nine-tailed demon fox attacked Konohagakure. Powerful enough to raise tsunamis and flatten mountains with a swish of one of its tails, it raised chaos and slaughtered many people, until the leader of the Leaf Village – the Fourth Hokage – sacrificed his own life to seal the demon inside a newly-born child, Naruto Uzumaki. The Fourth Hokage, who was celebrated as a hero for sealing the demon fox away, wanted Naruto to be respected in a similar light by being the containment vessel for the demon fox.

The Leaf Village, however, shunned him, regarding Naruto as if he were the demon fox itself and mistreated him throughout most of his childhood. A decree made by the Third Hokage forbide anyone to discuss or mention the attack of the demon fox to anyone, even their own children. However, this did not stop them from treating him like an outcast and as a result he grew up an orphan without friends, family, or acknowledgment. He could not force people to befriend him, so he sought acknowledgment and attention the only way he knew – through pranks and mischief.

However, that soon changed after Naruto graduated from the Ninja Academy by using his Multiple Shadow Clone Technique to save his teacher, Iruka Umino, from the renegade ninja Mizuki. That encounter gave Naruto two insights: that he was the container of the demon fox, and that there was someone besides the Third Hokage who actually cared for and acknowledged him. His graduation from the academy opened a gateway to the events and people that would change and define his world, including his way of the ninja for the rest of his life.[4]

The main story follows Naruto and his friends' personal growth and development as ninja, and emphasizes their interactions with each other and the influence of their backgrounds on their personalities. Naruto finds two friends and comrades in Sasuke Uchiha and Sakura Haruno, two fellow young ninja who are assigned with him to form a three-person team under an experienced sensei named Kakashi Hatake. Naruto also confides in other characters that he meets throughout the series as well. They learn new abilities, get to know each other and other villagers better, and experience a coming-of-age journey as Naruto dreams of becoming the Hokage of the Leaf Village.

Throughout all of the Naruto plot, strong emphasis on character development changes the plot, with very few things happening because of chance. At first, emphasis is placed on Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura, who are the members of Team 7. However, other characters are developed, such as Kakashi, Tsunade, and Jiraiya, as well as Naruto's peers in the other teams and villages. Several major villains come into play as well, the first being Zabuza Momochi, a missing-nin from Kirigakure, and his partner, Haku. Later, in the Chunin Exams arc, Orochimaru is introduced as an S-Class missing-nin at the top of Konoha's most wanted list. Later still, a mysterious organization called Akatsuki begins to pursue Naruto for the nine-tailed demon fox inside him.


Characters
Main article: List of characters in Naruto

The main characters, Squad 7: Sasuke Uchiha, Sakura Haruno, Naruto Uzumaki and team leader, Kakashi HatakeNaruto has a large and colorful cast of characters, running a gamut of detailed histories and complex personalities, and allowing many of them their fair share in the spotlight; they are also seen to grow and mature with the series, as it spans several years. As fitting for a coming-of-age saga, Naruto's world constantly expands and thickens, and his social relations are no exception – during his introduction he has only his teacher and the village's leader for sympathetic figures, but as the story progresses, more and more people become a part of his story.

The students at the Ninja Academy, where the story begins, are split up into squads of three after their graduation and become Genin, junior ninja. Each squad is assigned an experienced sensei. These core squads form a basis for the characters' interactions later in the series, where characters are chosen for missions for their team's strength and complementary skills; Naruto's squad 7 becomes the social frame where Naruto is acquainted with Sasuke Uchiha and Sakura Haruno, and their sensei Kakashi Hatake, forming the core of his world-in-the-making. The other three-man teams of his former classmates form another such layer, as Naruto connects with them to various degrees, learning of their motives, vulnerabilities, and aspirations, often relating them to his own. The groups of three are not limited to the comrades Naruto's age – groups in the story in general come in threes and multiples of three with very few exceptions.

Sensei-student relationships play a significant role in the series; Naruto has a number of mentors with whom he trains and learns, most notably Iruka Umino, the first ninja to recognize Naruto's existence, Kakashi Hatake, his team leader, and Jiraiya, and there are often running threads of tradition and tutelage binding together several generations. These role models provide guidance for their students not only in the ninja arts but also in a number of Japanese aesthetics and philosophical ideals. Techniques, ideals, and mentalities noticeably run in families, Naruto often being exposed to the abilities and traditions of generation-old clans in his village when friends from his own age group demonstrate them, or even achieve improvements of their own; it is poignantly noted that Naruto's generation is particularly talented.

Many of the greater lingering mysteries of the series are questions of character motives and identity. The legacy of Naruto's parents, the goals that guide Kabuto Yakushi, the identity of the mysterious person who orders the Akatsuki leader – these are only a few of the fundamental unanswered questions of "who" and, by proxy, "why" currently at the core of the series. The story is remarkably character-driven; the theme of causality runs inherently throughout the series as characters reciprocate for their past actions and relationships. In this respect, characters' respective destinies are very much intertwined, and large emphasis is placed on comradeship and 'bonds' between the community or individual.

Character names often borrow from Japanese mythology, folklore and literature (such as the names borrowed from the folk-tale Jiraiya Goketsu Monogatari), or are otherwise elaborate puns; often there is a noticeable influence of the story behind the name shouldered by the character.[5]


Anime details
See also: List of Naruto episodes, List of Naruto: Shippūden episodes, and List of Naruto media
Even though it debuted some time after the manga, the anime quickly caught up, since one anime episode usually covers one or two manga chapters. To prevent overlapping, the anime's producers tend to organize content from the manga chapters into long, uneventful sections followed by short bursts of action, sometimes adding filler content in between. By the time the last canonical arc of the anime concluded, it was quickly gaining on the manga and consequently switched to anime-only filler episodes to allow the manga to broaden the gap once more. Most of the filler episodes are stand-alone stories, with a few being part of arcs that are several episodes long. The filler episodes lasted for 85 episodes, the duration of the first series. After the series moved back into manga-adapted episodes, it was renamed Naruto: Shippūden (疾風伝, Naruto: Shippūden? lit. Hurricane Chronicles). The new series premiered on February 15, 2007.

The anime generally remains true to the manga, usually changing only minor details (causes of death, loss of limbs, and other injuries have been lessened in the anime) or expanding on parts skipped by the manga. The filler arcs, though unreferenced in the manga (save for a few scant scenes), deal with the breaks between story arcs, most prominently the period between the mission to retrieve Sasuke and Naruto's departure from Leaf Village at the end of the original series. The filler arcs also often shine the spotlight on minor characters that have received little narrative attention otherwise.

New episodes, animated by Studio Pierrot, air weekly on TV Tokyo in Japan during the Golden Time slot (Japan's equivalent of prime time in the US). As of October 5, 2006, it shows on Thursday nights. The series has also spawned four movies, Naruto the Movie, Naruto the Movie 2, Naruto the Movie 3, and Naruto: Shippūden the Movie scheduled to premiere on August 4, 2007. The first three are available on DVD.


English-language broadcast
On September 10, 2005, Naruto had its hour-long premiere in the U.S. on Cartoon Network's Toonami. The first episode of Naruto premiered in Canada on YTV on September 16, 2005. In the United Kingdom, Naruto premiered on Jetix on July 22, 2006. In Australia and New Zealand it premiered on Cartoon Network on September 27, 2006. It also began showing on Toasted TV on January 12, 2007, in Australia.

In its English anime release, Naruto was aired with a TV-PG rating in the US and a PG rating in Canada. More explicit episodes, such as Jiraiya's debut and the battle with Zabuza, have been given a TV-PG-DS or a TV-PG-V rating.[6] References to alcohol, Japanese cultural differences, mild language, mild sexual situations, and even blood and death remain in the English version, though reduced in some instances.[7] Other networks make additional content edits apart from the edits done by Cartoon Network, such as Jetix's more strict censoring of blood, language, smoking and the like. So far, only one episode, the "lost OVA", has received a TV-Y7-FV rating, but this was likely due to Cartoon Network neglecting to update the rating for usually in the timeslot that this special ran in TV-Y7-FV programs ran. Repeated viewings (such as the on August 8, 2007) have listed the special as TV-PG-V.


Reception
The series' length and popularity is comparable to that of Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball, another popular action-oriented shōnen manga. Since its creation, Naruto has spawned a large number of fansites that contain detailed information, guides, and active forums. Some of the first and most popular sites targeted at English speaking audiences were established shortly after the first English manga volume was released in August 2003. Like many other manga and anime titles, Naruto has also spawned its own collectible card game.

Prior to the anime's North American debut in 2005, several scanlation and fansub groups translated the series and made it available for free download on the internet. Despite North American companies' perceived tendency to prosecute fansubbing groups more frequently than Japanese companies,[8] there are some that have continued to translate new Naruto episodes due to the extremely large gap between the English and Japanese versions.

Volume 7 of the manga has recently won a Quill Award for best graphic novel in North America.[9] In TV Asahi's latest top 100 Anime Ranking, Naruto ranked 17th on the list.[10]
 
Sigmund Freud was born on 6 May 1856 to Jewish parents in Příbor (German: Freiberg in Mähren), Moravia, Austrian Empire, now Czech Republic. His father Jacob was 41, a wool merchant, and had two children by a previous marriage. His mother Amalia was 21. Owing to his intellect, which was obvious from an early stage of his childhood, his parents favored him over his siblings, and even though they were poor they offered everything to give him a proper education. Due to the economical crisis of 1857, father Freud lost his business, and the family moved first to Leipzig, Germany before settling in Vienna, Austria. In 1865, Sigmund entered the Leopoldstädter Communal-Realgymnasium, a prominent university. Freud was an outstanding pupil and graduated the Matura in 1873 with honors.

After planning to study law, Freud joined the medical faculty at Vienna University to study under Darwinist Prof. Karl Claus. At that time, Eel life history was still unknown, and due to their mysterious origins and migrations, a racist association was often made between eels and Jews and Gypsies. In search for their male sex organs, Freud spends four weeks at the Austrian zoological research station in Triest, dissecting hundreds of eels without finding more than his predecessors such as Simon von Syrski. In 1876, he published his first paper about "the testicles of eels" in the “Mitteilungen der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften”, conceding that he could not solve the matter either. Frustrated by the lack of success which would have gained him fame, and disgusted by the blood and gore, Freud chose to change course, ignore his early research of eels in the future. Biographers like Siegfried Bernfeld wonder if and how this early episode was significant for his later work regarding hidden sexuality and frustrations. [2] [3] [4]

Also in 1876, Freud joined the Physiological Institute of Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke to study nerves, interrupted by his one year military service in 1879. In 1881, Freud received his Dr. med. (M.D.) with the thesis „Über das Rückenmark niederer Fischarten“ (on the spinal cord of lower fish species).

Part of a series of articles on
Psychoanalysis

Constructs
Psychosexual development
Psychosocial development
Conscious • Preconscious • Unconscious
Id, ego, and super-ego
Libido • Drive
Transference • Sublimation • Resistance

Important Figures
Sigmund Freud • Carl Jung
Alfred Adler • Otto Rank
Anna Freud
Karen Horney • Jacques Lacan
Ronald Fairbairn • Melanie Klein
Harry Stack Sullivan
Erik Erikson • Nancy Chodorow


Important works
The Interpretation of Dreams
Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis
"Beyond the Pleasure Principle"


Schools of Thought
Self psychology • Lacanian
Analytical psychology • Object relations
Interpersonal • Relational
Attachment • Ego psychology

Psychology Portal

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[edit] Medical school
In 1874, the concept of "psychodynamics" was seeded with the publication of Lectures on Physiology by German physiologist Ernst von Brücke who, in coordination with physicist Hermann von Helmholtz, one of the formulators of the first law of thermodynamics (conservation of energy), supposed that all living organisms are energy-systems also governed by this principle. During this year, at the University of Vienna, Brucke was also coincidentally the supervisor for first-year medical student Sigmund Freud who naturally adopted this new “dynamic” physiology. In his Lectures on Physiology, Brücke set forth the radical view that the living organism is a dynamic system to which the laws of chemistry and physics apply.[2] This was the starting point for Freud's dynamic psychology of the mind and its relation to the unconscious.[2][3] The origins of Freud’s basic model, based on the fundmentals of chemistry and physics, according to John Bowlby, stems from Brücke, Meynert, Breuer, Helmholtz, and Herbart.[4]


[edit] Later life

Group photo 1909 in front of Clark University. Front row: Sigmund Freud, Granville Stanley Hall, C.G.Jung; back row: Abraham A. Brill, Ernest Jones, Sandor Ferenczi.Freud married Martha Bernays in 1886, after opening his own medical practice, specializing in neurology. After experimenting with hypnosis on his neurotic patients, Freud abandoned this form of treatment, in favor of a treatment where the patient talked through his or her problems. This came to be known as the "talking cure". (The term was initially coined by the patient Anna O. who was treated by Freud's colleague Josef Breuer.) The "talking cure" is widely seen as the basis of psychoanalysis.[5]

Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychotherapist, told a colleague about his first visit with Sigmund Freud in the year 1907. Jung had much that he wanted to talk about with Freud, and he spoke with intense animation for three whole hours. Finally Freud interrupted him and, to Jung's astonishment, proceeded to group the contents of Jung's monologue into several precise categories that enabled them to spend their remaining hours together in a more profitable give-and-take. [6]

Freud held the opinion (based on personal experience and observation) that sexual activity was incompatible with the accomplishing of any great work.[citation needed] Since he felt that the great work of creating and establishing psychotherapy was his destiny, he told his wife that they could no longer engage in sexual relations.[citation needed] Indeed from about the age of forty until his death Freud was absolutely celibate “in order to sublimate the libido for creative purposes,” according to his biographer Ernest Jones.[citation needed]

Nonetheless, there has been persistent gossip, which has always been staunchly denied by Freud loyalists, about the possibility that around this time a romantic liaison had blossomed between Freud and his sister-in-law, Minna Bernays, who had moved into Freud's apartment at 19 Berggasse in 1896. This rumour of an illicit relationship has been most notably propelled forward by C. G. Jung, Freud's disciple and later his archrival, who had claimed that Miss Bernays had confessed the affair to him. (This claim was dismissed by Freudians as malice on Jung's part.) It has been suggested that the affair resulted in a pregnancy and subsequently an abortion for Miss Bernays. A hotel log dated August 13, 1898 seems to support the allegation of an affair.[7]

In his 40s, Freud "had numerous psychosomatic disorders as well as exaggerated fears of dying and other phobias" (Corey 2001, p. 67). During this time Freud was involved in the task of exploring his own dreams, memories, and the dynamics of his personality development. During this self-analysis, he came to realize the hostility he felt towards his father (Jacob Freud), and "he also recalled his childhood sexual feelings for his mother (Amalia Freud), who was attractive, warm, and protective" (Corey 2001, p. 67). Corey (2001) considers this time of emotional difficulty to be the most creative time in Freud's life.

After the publication of Freud's books in 1900 and 1901, interest in his theories began to grow, and a circle of supporters developed in the following period. Freud often chose to disregard the criticisms of those who were skeptical of his theories, however, and even gained a few direct opponents as a result,[citation needed] the most famous being Carl Jung, who was originally in support of Freud's ideas.

In 1930 Freud received the Goethe Prize in appreciation of his contribution to psychology and to German literary culture. Three years later the Nazis took control of Germany and Freud's books featured prominently amongst those burned by the Nazis. In March 1938, Nazi Germany annexed Austria in the Anschluss. This led to violent outbursts of anti-Semitism in Vienna, and Freud and his family received visits from the Gestapo. Freud decided to go into exile "to die in freedom". He and his family left Vienna in June 1938 and traveled to London.

A heavy cigar smoker, Freud endured more than 30 operations during his life due to mouth cancer. In September 1939 he prevailed on his doctor and friend Max Schur to assist him in suicide. After reading Balzac's La Peau de chagrin in a single sitting he said, "My dear Schur, you certainly remember our first talk. You promised me then not to forsake me when my time comes. Now it is nothing but torture and makes no sense any more." Schur administered three doses of morphine over many hours that resulted in Freud's death on September 23, 1939.[8] Three days after his death, Freud's body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium during a service attended by Austrian refugees, including the author Stefan Zweig. His ashes were later placed in the crematorium's columbarium. They rest in an ancient Greek urn which Freud had received as a present from Marie Bonaparte and which he had kept in his study in Vienna for many years. After Martha Freud's death in 1951, her ashes were also placed in that urn. Golders Green Crematorium has since also become the final resting place for Anna Freud and her lifelong friend Dorothy Burlingham, as well as for several other members of the Freud family.


[edit] Innovations
Freud has been influential in two related but distinct ways. He simultaneously developed a theory of how the human mind is organized and operates internally, and how human behavior both conditions and results from this particular theoretical understanding. This lead him to favor certain clinical techniques for attempting to help cure psychopathology.


[edit] Early work

Sigmund Freud memorial in Hampstead, North London. Sigmund and Anna Freud lived at 20 Maresfield Gardens, near to this statue. Their house is now a museum dedicated to Freud's life and work. [1] The building behind the statue is the Tavistock Clinic, a major psychiatric institution.Since neurology and psychiatry were not recognized as distinct medical fields at the time of Freud's training, the medical degree he obtained after studying for six years at the University of Vienna board certified him in both fields, although he is far more well-known for his work in the latter. As far as neurology went, Freud was an early researcher on the topic of neurophysiology, specifically cerebral palsy, which was then known as "cerebral paralysis." He published several medical papers on the topic, and showed that the disease existed far before other researchers in his day began to notice and study it. He also suggested that William Little, the man who first identified cerebral palsy, was wrong about lack of oxygen during the birth process being a cause. Instead, he suggested that complications in birth were only a symptom of the problem. It was not until the 1980s that Freud's speculations were confirmed by more modern research.[citation needed]


Freud was an early user and proponent of cocaine as a stimulant as well as analgesic. He wrote several articles on the antidepressant qualities of the drug and he was influenced by his friend and confidant Wilhelm Fliess, who recommended cocaine for the treatment of the "nasal reflex neurosis." Fliess operated on Freud and a number of Freud's patients whom he believed to be suffering from the disorder, including Emma Eckstein, whose surgery proved disastrous.

Freud felt that cocaine would work as a cure-all for many disorders and wrote a well-received paper, "On Coca," explaining its virtues. He prescribed it to his friend Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow to help him overcome a morphine addiction he had acquired while treating a disease of the nervous system. Freud also recommended it to many of his close family and friends. He narrowly missed out on obtaining scientific priority for discovering cocaine's anesthetic properties (of which Freud was aware but on which he had not written extensively), after Karl Koller, a colleague of Freud's in Vienna, presented a report to a medical society in 1884 outlining the ways in which cocaine could be used for delicate eye surgery. Freud was bruised by this, especially because this would turn out to be one of the few safe uses of cocaine, as reports of addiction and overdose began to filter in from many places in the world. Freud's medical reputation became somewhat tarnished because of this early ambition. Furthermore, Freud's friend Fleischl-Marxow developed an acute case of "cocaine psychosis" as a result of Freud's prescriptions and died a few years later. Freud felt great regret over these events, which later biographers have dubbed "The Cocaine Incident."

Freud hoped that his research would provide a solid scientific basis for his therapeutic technique. The goal of Freudian therapy, or psychoanalysis, was to bring to consciousness repressed thoughts and feelings. According to some of his successors, including his daughter Anna Freud, the goal of therapy is to allow the patient to develop a stronger ego; according to others, notably Jacques Lacan, the goal of therapy is to lead the analysand to a full acknowledgment of his or her inability to satisfy the most basic desires.

Classically, the bringing of unconscious thoughts and feelings to consciousness is brought about by encouraging the patient to talk in free association and to talk about dreams. Another important element of psychoanalysis is a relative lack of direct involvement on the part of the analyst, which is meant to encourage the patient to project thoughts and feelings onto the analyst. Through this process, transference, the patient can reenact and resolve repressed conflicts, especially childhood conflicts with (or about) parents.

The origin of Freud's early work with psychoanalysis can be linked to Joseph Breuer. Freud actually credits Breuer with the discovery of the psychoanalytical method. One case started this phenomenon that would shape the field of psychology for decades to come, the case of Anna O. In 1880 a young girl came to Breuer with symptoms of what was then called female hysteria. Anna O. was a highly intelligent 21-year-old woman. She presented with symptoms such as paralysis of the limbs, split personality and amnesia; today these symptoms are known as conversion disorder. After many doctors had given up and accused Anna O. of faking her symptoms, Breuer decided to treat her sympathetically, which he did with all of his patients. He started to hear her mumble words during what he called states of absence. Eventually Breuer started to recognize some of the words and wrote them down. He then hypnotized her and repeated the words to her; Breuer found out that the words were associated with her father's illness and death.

In the early 1890s Freud used a form of treatment based on the one that Breuer had described to him, modified by what he called his "pressure technique". The traditional story, based on Freud's later accounts of this period, is that as a result of his use of this procedure most of his patients in the mid-1890s reported early childhood sexual abuse. He believed these stories, but after having heard a patient tell the story about Freud's personal friend being the victimizer, Freud concluded that his patients were fantasizing the abuse scenes.

In 1896 Freud posited that the symptoms of 'hysteria' and obsessional neurosis derived from unconscious memories of sexual abuse in infancy, and claimed that he had uncovered such incidents for every single one of his current patients (one third of whom were men). However a close reading of his papers and letters from this period indicates that these patients did not report early childhood sexual abuse as he later claimed: rather, he arrived at his findings by analytically inferring the supposed incidents, using a procedure that was heavily dependent on the symbolic interpretation of somatic symptoms.


[edit] The unconscious
Perhaps the most significant contribution Freud made to Western thought was his argument for the existence of an unconscious mind. During the 19th century, the dominant trend in Western thought was positivism, which subscribed to the belief that people could ascertain real knowledge concerning themselves and their environment and judiciously exercise control over both. Freud, however, suggested that such declarations of free will are in fact delusions; that we are not entirely aware of what we think and often act for reasons that have little to do with our conscious thoughts.

The concept of the unconscious as proposed by Freud was considered by some to be groundbreaking in that he proposed that awareness existed in layers and that some thoughts occurred "below the surface." Nevertheless, as psychologist Jacques Van Rillaer, among others, pointed out, "contrary to what most people believe, the unconscious was not discovered by Freud. In 1890, when psychoanalysis was still unheard of, William James, in his monumental treatise on psychology, examined the way Schopenhauer, von Hartmann, Janet, Binet and others had used the term 'unconscious' and 'subconscious'".[9] Boris Sidis, a Jewish Russian who escaped to the USA in 1887, and studied under William James, wrote The Psychology of Suggestion: A Research into the Subconscious Nature of Man and Society in 1898, followed by ten or more works over the next twenty five years on similar topics to the works of Freud.

Moreover, the historian of psychology Mark Altschule wrote: "It is difficult - or perhaps impossible - to find a nineteenth-century psychologist or psychiatrist who did not recognize unconscious cerebration as not only real but of the highest importance."[10] Freud's advance was not, then, to uncover the unconscious but to devise a method for systematically studying it.

Dreams, which he called the "royal road to the unconscious," provided the best access to our unconscious life and the best illustration of its "logic," which was different from the logic of conscious thought. Freud developed his first topology of the psyche in The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) in which he proposed the argument that the unconscious exists and described a method for gaining access to it. The preconscious was described as a layer between conscious and unconscious thought—that which we could access with a little effort. Thus for Freud, the ideals of the Enlightenment, positivism and rationalism, could be achieved through understanding, transforming, and mastering the unconscious, rather than through denying or repressing it.
 
So do we even have a use for the marklar yet (other then bragging rights), or is everyone just post whoreing completely unnecessarily?

Also, Knyte is apparently bored at work today.
 
So do we even have a use for the marklar yet (other then bragging rights), or is everyone just post whoreing completely unnecessarily?

Also, Knyte is apparently bored at work today.


no fly mart yet, so basically its just a pointless status. and all of are marklar will probably be purged in the end so it is for nothing
 
so far I think this thread is worthless spamming because I'm far more interested in rereading my article because it's been many years :o
 
Is Blade Runner a Misogynist Text?

Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) has been probably one of the most talked about Science Fiction films for many years. The film portraying a cast of retched characters lost in an environment devoid of order and short on justice has been lauded for its approach to science fiction as a genre (mixed with Film Noir, and practically creating the cyberpunk genre, at least within cinema). It is discussed in great detail in terms of its post modernist aspects, and the debate as to whether the film is post-modern in its presentation, or if it is about post modernism itself. The recent release of the Director's Cut rejuvenated discussion of the film by bringing to a wider audience the ambiguity of Deckard's reality, i.e. the possibility that Deckard is a Replicant. However, an aspect which is most commonly overlooked when examining Blade Runner is that of the misogyny which is so apparent throughout the film. When a film is so rich in detail, so convoluted and ambiguous in plot, such things may often be overlooked. In this essay, however, it is this possible misogyny I wish to address, examine its roots, and whether the misogyny present makes the text as a whole misogynist, or whether the misogyny is there for some other purpose more in line with the films key paradigm.

Throughout the essay the version referred to is the Director's Cut. This means that some of the sources, such as Neale (1989), are slightly inaccurate as they pertain to the original release, where it is not so clear that Deckard is a Replicant. However, the way that they have been applied does not negate what the sources are arguing, it merely develops their line of reasoning.

In order to place the various arguments about the misogyny in context it is necessary at first to discuss the concerns of the film in detail. The plot concerns Rick Deckard, a 'Blade Runner' whose job it is to hunt and destroy (retire) Replicants, genetically engineered humans used as slave labour in the Off World Colonies. These Replicants are outlawed on Earth due to a group of the androids who rebelled, going on a psychotic rampage. The key test in determining whether or not someone is a Replicant is the Voight-Kompf test, which monitors blush response and pupil dilation. Emotional responses are created by means of questions, and then monitored. The androids lack of empathy is the one weakness that gives them away.

Thus, with this plot Scott sets out to examine the human condition from a variety of angles. Chiefly he asks 'What makes us human?' The answer is at first clear cut. According to the humans of Blade Runner it is our unique ability to feel for other things that makes us what we are. However this does not hold true. The Replicants grieve when their android friends are killed, they collect photographs of their 'family' be they the product of false memories, or the family of Replicants they themselves form. Also, the city-dwelling humans portrayed in the film seem to be cold, defensive and decidedly unempathic, a complete reversal of what is expected. In the conclusion of the film Batty finally empathises with Deckard and saves his life, realising its sacredness even though Roy will soon die. This is doubly significant because Batty is empathising for a human, and not just the other Replicants as before, something that Deckard cannot do.

Also, by having a race created by man, Scott can portray a confrontation between creator and created, or to place it in a more human context, a confrontation between God and Mankind. Roy is seeking longevity, and finds Tyrell, the designer who masterminded the Nexus 6 Replicants. Expecting answers, he gains nothing, the four year life span is unchangeable due to the way in which genetic engineering works. Roy confesses that he has done "questionable things", and Tyrell views him as the prodigal son.

In a similar way that Man rejects God for having made him sinful, so too does Batty reject Tyrell, when Tyrell cannot offer him salvation. However, Batty is in some way saved by the end when he saves Deckard's life, and the symbol of the dove released into the heavens, and the nail through Roy's palm, are quite clear in representing him as a Christ figure making his ascension.

Thus Scott is using this scene to portray the question from a different angle, and ask not only what it is to be human, but what it means to be human. How, then, do women fit into this narrative?

A simple way of starting an analysis of misogyny in any given text is to look at the way the women in that text are represented, the depth of their characters, what happens to the characters, and how the characters function within the narrative.

The portrayal of women in Blade Runner seems to be particularly limited. The female characters are placed in awkward and oppressive places by the men that surround them. Zhora is a trained assassin who, on reaching Earth, finds work at a strip club, performing lewd acts with an artificial snake. Pris is described by Bryant, Deckard's boss, as a "basic pleasure model", effectively a prostitute. Rachel performs an unspecified function within the Tyrell pyramid, although seemingly she is an assistant or secretary to Eldon Tyrell.

Also, none of the lead female roles in the film are "real". The only genuine human females in the film that have speaking status are an aged oriental and a one eyed, frumpish liquor vendor. It would appear that in order for a female to be attractive, or to have a sexual identity at least, in the LA of the future she must be artificial.

Blade Runner, however, is a Film Noir, and this should not be forgotten. The female characters within Blade Runner are all archetypal Film Noir characters. The events that transpire between Rachel and Deckard are described clearly in the passage Cowie quotes from Vernet, when discussing a common Film Noir plot concern.

"the young hero desires and conquers a rich woman who is quite often tied to an older man or some other representative of patriarchal authority... However, in most of these films the woman is made guilty..." (Qtd. in Crowie, 1993)

Pris is blatantly a femme fatale, who ensnares JF Sebastian in order to get what she wants. The scene where Pris and Roy are attempting to get JF to take them to see Tyrell goes so far as to show this visually, as Pris wraps herself around him, trapping him in her limbs. As Crowie states "The male hero often knowingly submits himself to the 'spider-woman'... for it is precisely her dangerous sexuality that he desires, so that it is ultimately his own perverse desire that is his downfall." (Crowie, 1993)

Pris' status as spider-woman seems to go beyond purely an abstract form. She paints herself black and white, virtually becoming the spider she so clearly resembles, and hides beneath a white veil, the spider waiting in her web. Spiders have a special meaning within Blade Runner as it is, something which will be discussed later.

Zhora also fulfils a Film Noir position, although her role is some what more complex. She is the duplicitous woman, of open and dangerous sexuality, that may drag the hero down. Deckard, when talking to her in her dressing room, is repeatedly, visually thrown by what he is doing. He seems to be trying hard to cope with Zhora's openness and frankness, and it is finally his desire to dry her after her shower that proves his immediate downfall, as she uses this as a cover to attack him.

When Zhora first appears she is covered in sequins, mirroring the scales of the snake that she uses in her act. This makes sense when considering that the act is based on the idea of taking pleasure from the serpent that "once corrupted man". To this end Zhora becomes that serpent, and corrupts Deckard. Again the male's desire proves his downfall.

Another important observation is the fact that out of the four Replicants Deckard is chasing, the only ones he retires himself are Pris and Zhora. Leon is shot by Rachel, and Batty dies of natural causes. This, too, would seem to suggest that Blade Runner is misogynist.

It has been argued that the portrayal of women in Film Noir was due largely to the change in women's roles during and directly after the war. For the first time in history women became a threat in the job market to men. Ironically this period also has some of the strongest female roles in cinematic history, although such strong women characters usually do not win through. However, it is arguable that the portrayal of the women in Blade Runner is genuinely limited. Due to the way in which Film Noir seems to be a key focus of the film, it is difficult to see whether the film's misogyny reflects attitudes towards women, or attitudes to Film Noir's portrayal of women. This conflict becomes increasingly relevant later on when discussing the film in terms of post modernism.

Various scenes within Blade Runner also seem to suggest that the film is misogynist, and it is necessary to examine some of these more closely. Perhaps the most frequently criticised sequence within the film is the scene where Zhora is chased and eventually shot in the back. Thus it is relevant to concentrate on this scene, and to what effect it is used.

Deckard appears at a strip-joint on finding out that a snake scale found in the bath of the Replicants' apartment was bought by the proprietor. He recognises Zhora on stage and decides to speak with her in her dressing room.

The Zhora character from the outset appears as a fetish object of the male gaze. Deckard, when searching the 3d pictures from Leon's apartment, finds, reflected in the mirror, the sleeping Zhora naked in bed. He also takes a hard copy, although apparently without purpose, as he already is aware of what the Replicants look like. It is Zhora who performs with the snake at the strip-joint, although off camera.

The fact that the act occurs off camera may have some significance. Evidently, the audience should be more concerned with Deckard's reaction to the act rather than the act itself. Deckard does not seem to know how to react to what he is seeing, and turns back to his drink. It is not until Deckard goes back stage that we catch a glimpse of Zhora at all. Furthermore, we cannot be absolutely positive that she is Zhora until she is dead, and the snake tattoo is revealed.

Deckard returns back stage posing as a representative from a performing arts union, and asks her whether she had been taken advantage of by the club. He proceeds to check the dressing room for the "dirty little holes" people may have drilled in the walls to watch Zhora undress. She seems to assume that he is one of the perverts that he is talking about and attacks him, before fleeing into the night, wearing a bizarre, cumbersome, almost fetishist, costume.

The chase that ensues results in Zhora being shot repeatedly in the back, and crashing through five panes of glass. The way this part of the sequence is portrayed has been described by some as pornographic, with a seductive soundtrack and the action occurring in slow motion. However the reading of this scene is arguable. It is uncomfortable a scene to watch, and the slow motion makes it even more unbearable. Also the Vangelis soundtrack is as much mournful as it is seductive. Added to this is Deckard's reaction. He seems sickened by the turn of events, and cannot bare to be at the scene longer than absolutely necessary.

Scott wants the viewer to be sympathetic with the Replicants. The scene with Batty on the roof top at the end clearly indicates this. Such a sympathy is also created when Zhora is shot. In order for the audience to be sympathetic with Replicant it is not enough for them to be quickly, cleanly and humanely dispatched. Audiences are extremely desensitised to screen violence. To illustrate this, compare Zhora's death with the death of Leon. Leon dies very suddenly and the viewer feels little for him, even though he was avenging Zhora's death. Audiences are used to seeing men being shot, even as graphically as Leon. However, audiences are not prepared to see the hero shoot a defenceless woman in the back. Thus the death is uncomfortable for the audience, and the empathy is created. In effect the scene can be viewed as a Voight Kompf test for the audience.

One of the other factors that leads critics to believe the text is misogynist is the way in which, if Pris and Zhora are viewed as strong, independent and non-subservient women, and Rachel is viewed as a vulnerable, almost childlike and subservient female, it seems rather negative that out of these three it is Rachel who survives, and escapes with Deckard as his "love-object". It would appear that Deckard is rejecting in the most extreme manner possible the strong female characters, and escapes in the elevator at the end with the weaker willed Rachel, not only as her lover but also as her protector.

Various options other than that of the characterisation and narrative are available when examining such a text for misogyny. Creed, in her book Monstrous-Feminine - Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis (1993) uses a psychoanalytical approach to evaluate the misogyny present in a variety of horror films. She highlights a number of recurring motifs, largely derived from Freudian analysis, within the horror film, and although Blade Runner is not a horror film in itself, such analysis still proves fruitful in uncovering any misogyny within the text. To begin with there is a definite, if subtle, presence of the archaic mother within Los Angeles of 2019.

Dadoun describes the archaic mother as "A mother-thing situated beyond good and evil, beyond all organised forms and all events. This is totalizing and oceanic mother, a 'shadowy and deep unity', evoking in the subject the anxiety of fusion and of dissolution: a mother who comes before the discovery of the essential beance, that of the phallus. This mother is nothing but a fantasy inasmuch as she is only ever established as an omnipresent and all-powerful totality, and absolute being, by the very intuition - she has no phallus - that deposes her" (Qtd. Creed, 1993)

Thus the archaic mother poses a threat due to her lacking a phallus, but what evidence is there of the presence (or, indeed, the non-presence) of an archaic mother figure within Blade Runner? Firstly, the Replicants themselves do not have mothers, merely a father figure in the form of Eldon Tyrell. When Dave Holden interviews Leon at the beginning of the film he is punished for asking about Leon's mother. "My mother? Let me tell you about my mother?" Rachel provides a photograph of her mother to prove her existence as a "real" human. The emphasis on the mother, however, seems not to deny the mother's existence, but instead changes it. Leon never states he has no mother, neither does Rachel. Instead the mother figure becomes a mysterious and absent force, and the Replicants almost become her tools, perhaps seeking revenge against Tyrell.

Neale pays specific attention to the two memories that Deckard discusses with Rachel, that of playing Doctor with her brother, and that of the spider. Both seem to be significant in the sense that the Replicants, on one level, can be viewed as the product of immaculate conception, something which makes sense when considering the Christian symbolism in reference to both Tyrell and Batty. The tale of the spider is perhaps the more useful, as it explains the nature of the archaic mother within Blade Runner:

"You remember the spider that lived in a bush outside your window? Orange body. Green legs. Watched her build a web all summer. Then one day there was a big egg in it. The egg hatched...

And a hundred baby spiders came out and ate her."

The imagery involved, the garishly coloured spider, the hundred crawling, devouring spiders, seems to be a clear reference to the city portrayed in the text, the Los Angeles of 2019. Whenever we see the city, it is crowded by people, and every image seems to be an idol to consumerism, be they adverts for the Off World Colonies, or Coca-Cola. On the few occasions the city is barren, it is also burnt out and spent. Thus the mother figure of the spider, evidently a reference to the archaic mother, shows that this figure is also represented by the city.

The archaic mother and her children are mutually uncaring, the city proving a hazardous place for anyone, and the citizens proving to be destructive to the city. But effective ruler of this city is Eldon Tyrell, who lives above LA in the Tyrell pyramid. He is father to the city as mother. To this end the Replicants can also be viewed as children of the city, especially when considering Pris' costume at JF's apartment.

Symbols of the archaic mother often go hand in hand with birth or primal scene imagery. Although never explicit, there is such symbolism here. The Replicants are banned from Earth, and should only exist in the Off World Colonies, although they are manufactured by Tyrell, on Earth. This can be viewed very clearly as a representation of the incest taboo, and the Oedipus complex. It is seemingly the mother the Replicants return to, to find the answers to their questions, the "facts of life" as Tyrell puts it. Eventually the Oedipal plot line is complete, as Batty kills Tyrell.

A further possible indication of incest occurs between Deckard and Rachel. If both are Replicants then the incest taboo becomes blurred as Deckard and Rachel share the same mother, in Los Angeles, and the same father, in Tyrell, and thus are effectively brother and sister. What occurs between them seems to reflect the first of Rachel's tales, where she recalls sneaking into a basement with her brother to play doctor, and chickening out when it came to her turn. When Deckard attempts to kiss Rachel she again tries to leave, but this time is blocked by Deckard.