At the National Press Club in Washington today, businessman and private space traveler Dennis Tito officially announced his plans to fund a private, nonprofit effort to launch the first human mission to the Red Planet, called Inspiration Mars. To take advantage of an alignment of Earth and Mars that happens once every 15 years and would allow the shortest possible travel time possible between the planets, the mission seeks to launch on January 5, 2018. The crew would return to Earth on May 21, 2019.
Tito's spacecraft will be as stripped-down as possible. There will be no landing, and no need for a landing craft. Instead, the spacecraft will fly to within 100 miles of Mars to give humans the first close-up view of the planet without actually touching down. The crew would also be kept to a bare minimum for safety: just two astronauts.
The proposed mission would blast off for Mars on a free-return trajectory. This path would slingshot the craft past Mars and back to Earth with only minimal course corrections and no additional boost. Tito says the mission's major purpose would be to inspire the people of Earth the way that the moon landings did back in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This particular mission is an analogue to Apollo 8, which sent humans to the moon on a free-return flyby in 1968, one year before Armstrong and Aldrin touched down.
Even without a landing, the proposed Mars mission is a daunting proposition both from a technical and a financial point of view. Tito acknowledged that even with his deep pockets, he's going to have to raise a lot of cash. He refused to say exactly how much money he plans to commit. Who knows?" Tito said in response to PM's question on the matter. He simply promised to fund the project for the next two years.
As for total cost, Tito, indicated that it would cost "a factor of 100" less than the Apollo missions. That would put it at about $1 billion. "This is really chump change," Tito said.
Joining Tito at the announcement was Taber MacCallum, head of spacecraft-life-support-system developer Paragon Space Development Corporation and chief technical officer for Inspiration Mars; Jonathan Clark, a former NASA flight surgeon; and Jayne Poynter, president of Paragon. MacCallum and Poynter served on the crew of Biosphere II, a two-year experiment that kept eight people confined for two years in an enclosed habitat from 1991 to 1993. Poynter stressed the importance of sending a husband-and-wife team on the mission to Mars. Not only would the couple's relationship help them through the hardship of the mission, she said, but the pair would also serve as inspiration to young people of both sexes back home.
The team brushed aside concerns about the technical challenges of getting a manned spacecraft to and from Mars, focusing instead on what they called the greater challenge of keeping two humans not only alive but reasonably happy and functioning well for the 501-day duration of the mission.
Tito said he hired a team of experts to study the feasibility of the mission. The effort, he said, took three months, and the conclusion was positive. The results of the study will be presented in a paper at an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) conference on Sunday.
The paper, which is also available online, assumes a SpaceX Falcon Heavy as the launch vehicle and a SpaceX Dragon space capsule as the crew vehicle, though the team said at the conference that those elements were not set, and that they would consider any set of vehicles that were available by launch day.
The mission will also use an inflatable space habitat that would launch attached to the nose of the space capsule and expand to full-size living quarters for the crew once in space. Again, the team members wouldn't commit to a supplier for that structure, but they did mention Canadian company Thin Red Line as a possibility. That company has served a subcontractor to Bigelow Aerospace, which is currently under contract to attach an inflatable structure to the International Space Station.
Futron Corporation space analyst Jeff Foust tells PM he thinks the Inspiration Mars mission is doable?if only just barely. "The first, natural reaction is, that's impossible, you can't do that," he says. But, he says, after reading the study commissioned by Tito, he's concluded that it could conceivably succeed if everything goes just right.
In the mission's favor, Foust says, is that "there's no single point of failure here. If SpaceX stumbles, then you've got Boeing or Sierra Nevada with their vehicles," he says. "One of the lucky breaks is that it's happening right when there is this capability that wasn't available two years ago"?capabilities that could be mature by launch time in 2018.
Wisdom, an albatross who is estimated to be 62 years old, tends to her newly hatched chick. She is the oldest known wild bird.
Credit: John Klavitter/U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
Here?s one new mom with lots of experience ? at least 62 years of it. On February 3, a Laysan albatross named Wisdom hatched a healthy chick on a Pacific island near Hawaii. It was the sixth year in a row this bird had hatched a chick.
Although women may live to be 100 years old or more, few are capable of giving birth after their early to mid-50s. What makes Wisdom so special is that her species normally lives only 12 to 40 years. So not only has she outlived most other Laysan albatrosses by at least two decades, but also she has remained fertile and able to hatch healthy chicks well into her 60s. Scientists are amazed by this feat.
Visit the new?Science News for Kids?website?and read the full story:?Oldest bird is new mom
Contact: Maria-Jose Vinas maria-jose.vinasgarcia@nasa.gov 301-614-5883 NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
The colorful images chronicle the seasonal stirrings of our salty world: Pulses of freshwater gush from the Amazon River's mouth; an invisible seam divides the salty Arabian Sea from the fresher waters of the Bay of Bengal; a large patch of freshwater appears in the eastern tropical Pacific in the winter. These and other changes in ocean salinity patterns are revealed by the first full year of surface salinity data captured by NASA's Aquarius instrument.
"With a bit more than a year of data, we are seeing some surprising patterns, especially in the tropics," said Aquarius Principal Investigator Gary Lagerloef, of Earth & Space Research in Seattle. "We see features evolve rapidly over time."
Launched June 10, 2011, aboard the Argentine spacecraft Aquarius/Satlite de Aplicaciones Cientficas (SAC)-D, Aquarius is NASA's first satellite instrument specifically built to study the salt content of ocean surface waters. Salinity variations, one of the main drivers of ocean circulation, are closely connected with the cycling of freshwater around the planet and provide scientists with valuable information on how the changing global climate is altering global rainfall patterns.
The salinity sensor detects the microwave emissivity of the top 1 to 2 centimeters (about an inch) of ocean water a physical property that varies depending on temperature and saltiness. The instrument collects data in 386 kilometer-wide (240-mile) swaths in an orbit designed to obtain a complete survey of global salinity of ice-free oceans every seven days.
The Changing Ocean
The animated version of Aquarius' first year of data unveils a world of varying salinity patterns. The Arabian Sea, nestled up against the dry Middle East, appears much saltier than the neighboring Bay of Bengal, which gets showered by intense monsoon rains and receives freshwater discharges from the Ganges and other large rivers. Another mighty river, the Amazon, releases a large freshwater plume that heads east toward Africa or bends up north to the Caribbean, depending on the prevailing seasonal currents. Pools of freshwater carried by ocean currents from the central Pacific Ocean's regions of heavy rainfall pile up next to Panama's coast, while the Mediterranean Sea sticks out in the Aquarius maps as a very salty sea.
One of the features that stand out most clearly is a large patch of highly saline water across the North Atlantic. This area, the saltiest anywhere in the open ocean, is analogous to deserts on land, where little rainfall and a lot of evaporation occur. A NASA-funded expedition, the Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study (SPURS), traveled to the North Atlantic's saltiest spot last fall to analyze the causes behind this high salt concentration and to validate Aquarius measurements.
"My conclusion after five weeks out at sea and analyzing five weekly maps of salinity from Aquarius while we were there was that indeed, the patterns of salinity variation seen from Aquarius and by the ship were similar," said Eric Lindstrom, NASA's physical oceanography program scientist, of NASA Headquarters, Washington, and a participant of the SPURS research cruise.
Future goals
"The Aquarius prime mission is scheduled to run for three years but there is no reason to think that the instrument could not be able to provide valuable data for much longer than that," said Gene Carl Feldman, Aquarius project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "The instrument has been performing flawlessly and our colleagues in Argentina are doing a fantastic job running the spacecraft, providing us a nice, stable ride."
In future years, one of the main goals of the Aquarius team is to figure out ways to fine-tune the readings and retrieve data closer to the coasts and the poles. Land and ice emit very bright microwave emissions that swamp the signal read by the satellite. At the poles, there's the added complication that cold polar waters require very large changes in their salt concentration to modify their microwave signal.
Still, the Aquarius team was surprised by how close to the coast the instrument is already able to collect salinity measurements.
"The fact that we're getting areas, particularly around islands in the Pacific, that are not obviously badly contaminated is pretty remarkable. It says that our ability to screen out land contamination seems to be working quite well," Feldman said.
Another factor that affects salinity readings is intense rainfall. Heavy rain can affect salinity readings by attenuating the microwave signal Aquarius reads off the ocean surface as it travels through the soaked atmosphere. Rainfall can also create roughness and shallow pools of fresh water on the ocean surface. In the future, the Aquarius team wants to use another instrument aboard Aquarius/SAC-D, the Argentine-built Microwave Radiometer, to gauge the presence of intense rain simultaneously to salinity readings, so that scientists can flag data collected during heavy rainfall.
An ultimate goal is combining the Aquarius measurements to those of its European counterpart, the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity satellite (SMOS) to produce more accurate and finer maps of ocean salinity. In addition, the Aquarius team, in collaboration with researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is about to release its first global soil moisture dataset, which will complement SMOS' soil moisture measurements.
"The first year of the Aquarius mission has mostly been about understanding how the instruments and algorithms are performing," Feldman said. "Now that we have overcome the major hurdles, we can really begin to focus on understanding what the data are telling us about how the ocean works, how it affects weather and climate, and what new insights we can gain by having these remarkable salinity measurements."
###
Aquarius was built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Goddard. JPL managed Aquarius through its commissioning phase and is archiving mission data. Goddard now manages Aquarius mission operations and processes science data. Argentina's space agency, Comisin Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE), provided the SAC-D spacecraft, optical camera, thermal camera with Canada, microwave radiometer, sensors from various Argentine institutions and the mission operations center. France and Italy also contributed instruments.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: Maria-Jose Vinas maria-jose.vinasgarcia@nasa.gov 301-614-5883 NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
The colorful images chronicle the seasonal stirrings of our salty world: Pulses of freshwater gush from the Amazon River's mouth; an invisible seam divides the salty Arabian Sea from the fresher waters of the Bay of Bengal; a large patch of freshwater appears in the eastern tropical Pacific in the winter. These and other changes in ocean salinity patterns are revealed by the first full year of surface salinity data captured by NASA's Aquarius instrument.
"With a bit more than a year of data, we are seeing some surprising patterns, especially in the tropics," said Aquarius Principal Investigator Gary Lagerloef, of Earth & Space Research in Seattle. "We see features evolve rapidly over time."
Launched June 10, 2011, aboard the Argentine spacecraft Aquarius/Satlite de Aplicaciones Cientficas (SAC)-D, Aquarius is NASA's first satellite instrument specifically built to study the salt content of ocean surface waters. Salinity variations, one of the main drivers of ocean circulation, are closely connected with the cycling of freshwater around the planet and provide scientists with valuable information on how the changing global climate is altering global rainfall patterns.
The salinity sensor detects the microwave emissivity of the top 1 to 2 centimeters (about an inch) of ocean water a physical property that varies depending on temperature and saltiness. The instrument collects data in 386 kilometer-wide (240-mile) swaths in an orbit designed to obtain a complete survey of global salinity of ice-free oceans every seven days.
The Changing Ocean
The animated version of Aquarius' first year of data unveils a world of varying salinity patterns. The Arabian Sea, nestled up against the dry Middle East, appears much saltier than the neighboring Bay of Bengal, which gets showered by intense monsoon rains and receives freshwater discharges from the Ganges and other large rivers. Another mighty river, the Amazon, releases a large freshwater plume that heads east toward Africa or bends up north to the Caribbean, depending on the prevailing seasonal currents. Pools of freshwater carried by ocean currents from the central Pacific Ocean's regions of heavy rainfall pile up next to Panama's coast, while the Mediterranean Sea sticks out in the Aquarius maps as a very salty sea.
One of the features that stand out most clearly is a large patch of highly saline water across the North Atlantic. This area, the saltiest anywhere in the open ocean, is analogous to deserts on land, where little rainfall and a lot of evaporation occur. A NASA-funded expedition, the Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study (SPURS), traveled to the North Atlantic's saltiest spot last fall to analyze the causes behind this high salt concentration and to validate Aquarius measurements.
"My conclusion after five weeks out at sea and analyzing five weekly maps of salinity from Aquarius while we were there was that indeed, the patterns of salinity variation seen from Aquarius and by the ship were similar," said Eric Lindstrom, NASA's physical oceanography program scientist, of NASA Headquarters, Washington, and a participant of the SPURS research cruise.
Future goals
"The Aquarius prime mission is scheduled to run for three years but there is no reason to think that the instrument could not be able to provide valuable data for much longer than that," said Gene Carl Feldman, Aquarius project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "The instrument has been performing flawlessly and our colleagues in Argentina are doing a fantastic job running the spacecraft, providing us a nice, stable ride."
In future years, one of the main goals of the Aquarius team is to figure out ways to fine-tune the readings and retrieve data closer to the coasts and the poles. Land and ice emit very bright microwave emissions that swamp the signal read by the satellite. At the poles, there's the added complication that cold polar waters require very large changes in their salt concentration to modify their microwave signal.
Still, the Aquarius team was surprised by how close to the coast the instrument is already able to collect salinity measurements.
"The fact that we're getting areas, particularly around islands in the Pacific, that are not obviously badly contaminated is pretty remarkable. It says that our ability to screen out land contamination seems to be working quite well," Feldman said.
Another factor that affects salinity readings is intense rainfall. Heavy rain can affect salinity readings by attenuating the microwave signal Aquarius reads off the ocean surface as it travels through the soaked atmosphere. Rainfall can also create roughness and shallow pools of fresh water on the ocean surface. In the future, the Aquarius team wants to use another instrument aboard Aquarius/SAC-D, the Argentine-built Microwave Radiometer, to gauge the presence of intense rain simultaneously to salinity readings, so that scientists can flag data collected during heavy rainfall.
An ultimate goal is combining the Aquarius measurements to those of its European counterpart, the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity satellite (SMOS) to produce more accurate and finer maps of ocean salinity. In addition, the Aquarius team, in collaboration with researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is about to release its first global soil moisture dataset, which will complement SMOS' soil moisture measurements.
"The first year of the Aquarius mission has mostly been about understanding how the instruments and algorithms are performing," Feldman said. "Now that we have overcome the major hurdles, we can really begin to focus on understanding what the data are telling us about how the ocean works, how it affects weather and climate, and what new insights we can gain by having these remarkable salinity measurements."
###
Aquarius was built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Goddard. JPL managed Aquarius through its commissioning phase and is archiving mission data. Goddard now manages Aquarius mission operations and processes science data. Argentina's space agency, Comisin Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE), provided the SAC-D spacecraft, optical camera, thermal camera with Canada, microwave radiometer, sensors from various Argentine institutions and the mission operations center. France and Italy also contributed instruments.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
KISUMU, Kenya (Reuters) - Some businesses in Kisumu, Kenya's third-largest city, have reduced stock or closed ahead of Monday's presidential elections for fear of a repeat of the tribal violence that killed more than 1,200 people at the last such vote five years ago.
On the outskirts of the Lake Victoria port city, abandoned ruins still bear witness to the weeks of looting and torching that brought East Africa's biggest economy to a standstill.
"Last time most of what was targeted was alcohol, foodstuffs and non-breakables," said Saga Shah, who works for a firm that runs a supermarket on the city's main street that rioters turned into an inferno after the close race of 2007.
"So a lot of people are reducing these items and stocking basics that are required on a day-to-day basis," he said.
The ethnic tensions that led to violence in 2007 still linger. And, as in the past, tribal loyalties will trump policies for many of Kenya's 14 million eligible voters.
In a worrying sign, leaflets have been scattered in Kisumu calling for the eviction of Kikuyu and Kalenjin tribes, which have formed an alliance against Prime Minister Raila Odinga, of the Luo tribe, who is seeking the presidency.
Odinga is running in a neck-and-neck battle with Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, a Kikuyu who backed President Mwai Kibaki in 2007. The two are well ahead of the other six hopefuls, according to opinion polls.
Kenya cannot afford a re-run of the violence as it struggles to lift the nation out of poverty, which will depend on enticing tourists and drawing in investment needed to improve creaking infrastructure and develop a nascent oil and gas industry.
After the last election crisis, Kenya's growth tumbled to 1.7 percent in 2008 from 7.1 percent in 2007.
WORD OF CAUTION
This time round, none of the main candidates offers a vision that would change the course of Kenya's broadly open economy, which analyst say means that growth now running at almost 5 percent is not threatened by the result itself.
"Kenya's growth prospects look very good and are unlikely to be affected by the election outcome one way or other," said Mwangi Kimenyi, senior fellow of global economy at The Brookings Institution in Washington.
"The critical issue is whether the elections are free, fair and peaceful," he added.
Investors have so far brushed off worries about violence, encouraged perhaps by candidates' pledges to respect the outcome. The main share index has climbed 8 percent so far this year, and the Kenyan shilling has held broadly steady to the dollar - with occasional help from the central bank.
But some are nervous. Tom Gichuhi, chief executive of the Association of Kenya Insurers, said demand for political risk cover by businesses had risen in the last six months.
"This has picked up purely because of the fears that members of the public have over the risk they face," Gichuhi said.
In Kisumu, which was virtually shut down by the violence, the burnt-out stone and concrete shells of once-thriving businesses are a constant reminder of those risks.
Abbysinia Iron and Steel, a plant that makes reinforcement rods for construction, closed up in late December. The owners told workers the factory would re-open after the vote, residents and employees said.
LOSING A LIVELIHOOD
"They were fearing the type of chaos that erupted after the 2007 election so that was the main reason they shut down," said George Onyango, a father of two working at the plant's furnace.
With a 2,000-strong workforce, the factory was one of the biggest employers in the area. Its temporary closure has had a ripple effect on the local economy, down to the 60 or so women who sell food at its gates.
Lucy Awino, a 23-year-old mother of one who sold chapatis, beans, fish and juice, lost her only source of income.
"My stock would sell out. I would get a decent profit," she said of business before the closure. "After the workers were told about the plant's closure, demand for our food went down."
Kenyan security forces have said they are prepared this time. Joseph ole Tito, head of police in the Kisumu region, has doubled his force to 6,000 for the vote and said he would have a helicopter on standby to look out for trouble spots.
That has not reassured some residents after skirmishes accompanied voting in January for party primaries to choose candidates for governor, senator and other posts to be elected alongside Monday's presidential vote. Youths armed with stones barricaded roads and looted shops.
However, some executives are more upbeat. They say a new constitution passed in 2010 could encourage Kenyans to turn to the judiciary, not the street, to resolve disputed results.
"Under the new constitution, the judicial arm is stronger and people should go to court if they are aggrieved," said Vimal Shah, vice chairman of the Kenya Private Sector Alliance, a national business lobby.
A reluctance to use courts perceived as inefficient and corrupt was blamed for exacerbating the 2007 crisis, analysts say. This time, Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, appointed in 2011, has been praised for reforms that included firing corrupt judges and setting up special teams of judges to handle vote disputes.
(Editing by James Macharia, Edmund Blair and Will Waterman)
Grounded Indian airline Kingfisher has had its international and domestic traffic rights withdrawn by the country?s civil aviation regulator.
Kingfisher, which suspended services in October 2012 as it battled mounting debts and staff unrest, was told today (February 25) by India?s Civil Aviation Ministry that it would be losing all of its international bilateral flying rights and domestic airport slots because it had not been using them.
It is another major blow to the airline, which last month lost its operating licence, as it tries to find new investment that would allow it to resume services.
Kingfisher had rights to fly to eight countries outside India including seven services per week to the UK from Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. The airline stopped flying from the UK in April 2012 as its financial problems intensified.
The ministry added in a statement: ?These international traffic rights have been withdrawn from Kingfisher Airlines on account of non-utilisation by the airline.
?The civil aviation minister has decided to make these international traffic rights available to other carriers for use. This would give additional availability of approximately 25,000 seats per week for use by other Indian carriers to these eight countries, some of which are much in demand by these carriers.
?Similarly it has also been decided to withdraw the domestic slots which were allocated to Kingfisher Airlines at different airports for domestic flights. Airports Authority of India has been directed to make these slots available to other domestic carriers as per their demand.?
Kingfisher has yet to make an official comment on the decision by the Civil Aviation Ministry.
Feb. 25, 2013 ? A new study from the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business suggests troubling perceptions exist when it comes to women involved in disputes at work.
"Our research shows that when it comes to workplace conflict, women get a bad rap," says PhD candidate Leah Sheppard, who conducted the study with Prof. Karl Aquino. "We show how the negative stereotyping around so-called 'catfights' carry over into work situations."
The researchers asked experiment participants to assess one of three workplace conflict scenarios, all identical except for the names of the individuals involved: Adam and Steven, Adam and Sarah, or Sarah and Anna.
The study, published in the current edition of the journal Academy of Management Perspectives, found that when the scenario depicted female-female conflict, participants perceived there to be more negative implications than the male-male or male-female conflicts.
Participants judged the likelihood of two managers repairing a frayed relationship roughly 15 per cent lower when both managers were female, versus male-male and male-female. Participants rated those involved in all-female conflicts as also being more likely to let the argument negatively influence job satisfaction than male-female or male-male quarrellers.
The study also found that female experiment participants were just as likely as males to see the all-female conflict as more negative.
"This study suggests there's still a long way to go when it comes to the perception of women in the workplace," Sheppard says. "Hopefully, our findings will help to increase managers' awareness of this bias, so they don't let stereotypes guide their decisions on how they staff teams and leverage the full talent of female employees."
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HP has formally announced their entry into the Android tablet space with this, the HP Slate 7. The 7-inch Slate 7 isn't intended to be a high end, bleeding edge tablet, but it is only $169. So, spec wise, what do we get for that low, low price.
Two state senators have called for an investigation into the state agency responsible for protecting people and the environment from hazardous chemicals after a consumer group released a report Thursday criticizing the agency for failing to do its job.
Santa Monica-based Consumer Watchdog has accused the Department of Toxic Substances Control, which is responsible for managing hazardous waste, of allowing polluters to operate on expired permits for years and of neglecting to revoke the permits of companies that repeatedly flouted environmental laws. The group also charges that the department levies toothless fines and consistently fails to refer egregious cases for prosecution.
In response, Sens. Kevin de Le?n (D-Los Angeles) and Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) have called for an investigation by the Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes.
"I am outraged to hear reports of kids and adults having difficulty breathing, experiencing nausea and burning sinuses from chemical exposure," De Le?n said in a statement. "We must investigate why the DTSC isn't enforcing our laws, which are aimed to protect the health and safety of our communities."
Agency officials countered that the report "contains inaccuracies." They disputed an allegation that the agency puts people into jobs for which they are unqualified. They also took issue with the suggestion that the agency had become "captive" to the businesses they were supposed to regulate.
"This is not accurate," a spokeswoman said of the allegations in an email.
But the agency also said the consumer advocates had raised "valid issues, issues that we have known about for some time."
"We take seriously our role in protecting the health of Californians and our environment," Director Debbie Raphael said in a statement. "We will not shy away from identifying areas for improvement and taking any necessary actions."
The report identified several specific examples in which it said regulators had failed to do their jobs, including the case of a chemical company in Santa Fe Springs that was allowed to operate on an expired permit for 16 years, even as the company was cited for such lapses as illegally storing hazardous waste.
So much of criticism, feminist critique included, hinges on highlighting what is wrong. In the case of film reviews, we so often ask what on-screen narratives convey about difference and the status quo. For an industry the prides itself on innovation, misogyny occupies the limelight so often that one might even call it formulaic. (Epic fail, Hollywood.) The same is true of representations of other kinds of difference, be they differences of race or religion, nationality or ability.
This is why it?s so startling, so exciting, when a film that garners critical acclaim does many things well. From the point of view of film watchers looking for a great story, there?s a lot to love about The Sessions. But even from a critical vantage point, The Sessions stands out as a film that gets so many things right.
1. Disability does not mitigate one?s multifaceted humanity.
Mark O?Brien was a poet, a Berkeley graduate student, a community organizer, a cultural critic, and a journalist. Mark O?Brien was hilarious and vulnerable and generous. He believed in treating all labor, especially that of his caretakers, as intrinsically valued. He knew that the ways we treat disability say something very ugly about our culture. Mark O?Brien was a risk taker?venturing into publishing and human connection and sex. He craved love and success. He knew that both depended on self-determination.
At its core, The Sessions is a portrait of a relationship between a surrogate partner and her client, but through The Sessions, we come to know Mark O?Brien (John Hawkes) as layered and contradictory. In sharp contrast to representations of disability in popular culture that tend to rely on a pity trope that emphasizes dependency or an overcoming trope that overstresses rugged individualism, The Sessions does not reduce Mark O?Brien to post-polio syndrome. To be sure, Mark O?Brien self-identifies as disabled, but here disability shapes a multifaceted human experience.
Consider that in their first meeting, Cheryl Cohen Greene (Helen Hunt) is clearly curious and perhaps surprised to see Mark?s body. One she describes in her memoir An Intimate Life as, ?slight, only four-foot-seven and around seventy pounds.? Critically though, Mark?s disabled body does not elicit pity from Cheryl. When Mark points to some money, Cheryl?s compensation for her work, and then asks, ?That was the wrong way to start off?? Cheryl replies, ?It really was.? As opposed to an equivocating or patronizing response, Cheryl engages with Mark as an adult, one who can be called out for denigrating (albeit unintentionally) her labor. Scenes show Mark shopping for his own clothes, hiring caregivers, writing. By depicting Mark?s life, this film version of a real-life man pulses.
Perhaps most significantly, it is Mark who tells the story first. We see Mark start his work on writing what presumably became his renowned 1990 essay ?On Seeing a Sex Surrogate.?
2. Disability and sexuality are not mutually exclusive dimensions of human experience.
The Sessions is a not a film about sexuality or disability. Rather, sexuality and disability are inextricably linked throughout. In addition to the social stigmas and structural barriers directed towards disability, those with disabilities are routinely perceived as non-sexual. By contrast, Mark?s sexual desires are articulated from the outset, and Mark?s sexuality is an active force in the narrative. While The Sessions may revolve around Mark?s pursuit to have his first sexual encounter, Mark is represented as a sexual being with desires and fantasies that pre-exist his encounters with Cheryl. Given the ways in which the equation of non-sexuality and disability operate to infantilize people, depicting Mark as always already a sexual being is groundbreaking.
3. Sex and intimacy that happen outside of marital bonds, long-term relationship, or enduring partnership can be transformative.
Most reviews of The Sessions devote an inordinate word count to unpacking the differences between sex surrogates and sex workers. Defending surrogacy against associations with ?prostitution? is tinged with all sorts of moralist righteousness. It also helps to situate surrogacy as a ?helping profession.? In portraying the complex and nuanced dimensions of Cheryl and Mark?s connection, The Sessions tells the story of an intimate relationship that leaves both parties changed. And yet, the film does not culminate in marriage or even love, at least not long-lasting love. Rather, first comes financial transaction, then comes sex, then comes greater self-knowledge. There are no wedding bells here or even romantic references to possible domesticity.
It?s important, too, that the film depicts Cheryl?s relationship with her husband. Perhaps because their marriage has reached that moment of routine predictability, the marital bond appears less intimate than the relationship between Cheryl and Mark. I?m not suggesting that there?s nothing there, but what I am suggesting is that in juxtaposing these two relationships, the film challenges the notion that sex that happens a few times, for pay, or between relative strangers never has meaning. In The Sessions, it?s precisely this kind of sex and intimacy that has radically transformative potential. It?s interesting to note that reviews that invest so much in qualifying surrogacy as not sex work ignore how?sex work fulfills emotional needs in ways not dissimilar to surrogacy.
4. Religion and spirituality are spaces where people work out sexuality in multifaceted ways.
Catholic imagery?stained glass windows, a Eucharistic consecration, the Confessional?figures prominently in the film, but interestingly Catholic caricature does not.? Since the sex abuse scandal, the relationship of the Catholic Church to sexuality is often grotesquely depicted as all shame, pathology, and brimstone. Without a doubt, the Catholic Church is responsible for constructing an infrastructure that suppresses adult sexuality and produces unconscionable sexual victimization. But my own admittedly lapsed Catholicism speaks to a Church with a more dynamic, imaginative relationship to sex. While Catholic doctrine may discourage masturbation and stigmatize queerness, the Catholics of my upbringing?specifically the teachers and nuns and priests who staffed my Catholic schools?had subtle ways of conveying that idea that rules, especially those related to sexuality, might be considered suggestive rather than compulsory.
?My penis speaks to me, Father Brendan,? Mark reveals to his Priest, played by William H. Macy. Mark attends Mass daily and regularly seeks out confession. Not surprisingly, his decision to see a surrogate is one he wrestles with spiritually. Ultimately, it is Father Brendan who tells Mark, ?Go for it.? This is not the Catholicism of popular caricature. Rather, the relationship between Father Brendan and Mark O?Brien, while grounded in a shared denomination, is forged as together they wrestle with moral questions complicated by lived experience.
5. Sex is about communication and intimacy?and it?s about sex.
What comes through in The Sessions is something Cheryl Cohen Greene emphasizes in her book?successful surrogacy results in the formation of skills that can be used in future relationships. Clients, as Mark does, learn how to ask questions and express needs; they learn how to talk and think about sex. But The Sessions does not purport, as so much pop-sexuality education does, that sex has very little to do with what happens between the sheets (or on the kitchen floor) and everything to do with what happens between the ears.
By contrast, sex in The Sessions is carnal and embodied. As a surrogate, Cheryl incites Mark to pay attention to his penis and to gauge what feels good. The Sessions features nudity, though it is hardly pornographic, and yet sex is not sanitized. ?Cumming? figures prominently, and what emerges is a representation of sexuality that hovers between ?making love? and ?fucking,? while appreciating what both acts have to offer.
Of his iron lung, Mark O?Brien writes, ?It?s huge and ugly and yellow but it works.? Sex is messy and scary and fun. It?s a human need and want and hope for folks who identify as disabled and those who are unconscious of their own temporary able-bodiedness. Likely nominee Helen Hunt will not win an Academy Award for her performance, but The Sessions wins as a widely consumed cultural artifact that disrupts in powerful ways how we think about both disability and sexuality.
Tags: Academy Awards, Cheryl Cohen Greene, Culture, disability, entertainment, Health, intimacy, Mark O'Brien, sex sork, sex surrogacy, Sexuality, U.S.
Why would Apple want to sale a $349 mini with the same resolution as it's big brother at $499? Haven't you looked at the stock prices lately? I see it between $400 to $500 dollars just because their hurting the 9.7" model at the $329 starting price.
2.PapaSmurfposted on4 hours ago10
I would def. buy an iPad Mini if it had a Retina display at the same price with a A6X chip. This would be the first thing I would buy from Apple since 2006 (iPod Classic 30GB).
7.Aeiresposted on3 hours ago31
Only if iOS7 was a total rebuild, and then it'd still be a maybe.
16.taz89posted on2 hours ago11
agree if ios7 is a huge improvement then i can see myself getting the new mini
6.tedkordposted on3 hours ago00
Where were the color choices?
8.gmracer1posted on3 hours ago51
Different colors to choose from!?!?!?!?!?!?! zOMG this is a total game-changer!!!!!!!!!!!!
20.hepresearchposted on1 hour ago00
Apple takes a page out of Nokia's play book? Creepy...
22.Lucas777posted on47 min ago00
anddd the glorification of apple
9.mas11posted on3 hours ago10
As long as people are willing to overspend Apple will continue to make up crazy prices. The iPad mini should be no more than $249 imho.
21.KingKurogiiiposted on54 min ago00
even $299 would be acceptable being that it's so well made but it would also have to be more than a recycled iPad 2 which it isn't.
10.InspectorGadget80posted on3 hours ago51
Why is color options such big news? they just spray paint it u can do that at home too
15.BackHandLegendposted on3 hours ago00
He's right... lol really dude?
13.BadAssAbeposted on3 hours ago10
Spray paint, bluff, clear coat, then wax. Way more complex LOL ;)
11.darkkjediiposted on3 hours ago06
Should b another great device. Solid and fluid.
17.taz89posted on2 hours ago11
agree hardware and fluidity wise it will be awesome, just hope ios 7 is a huge improvement and not imo a small update like ios 6...for me i want to be able to set my own default apps and just drag and drop files instead of having to sync everything...for me those 2 are the most important
19.darkkjediiposted on1 hour ago01
I'm with u on that. After the ribbing apples taken this past year, it should b a big update. I think it will b
14.nnaatthhaannx2posted on3 hours ago10
I have a feeling Apple would never have a blue logo like that. It just doesn't look right.
18.nikenturdposted on2 hours ago10
This will be a good compliment to my Note 2....hope its well within the $329 range
23.kozza3posted on36 min ago00
i personally loved the form factor of the mini but it's an ipad and therefor useless to me
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Public release date: 27-Feb-2013
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Mark O?Brien was a poet, a Berkeley graduate student, a community organizer, a cultural critic, and a journalist. Mark O?Brien was hilarious and vulnerable and generous. He believed in treating all labor, especially that of his caretakers, as intrinsically valued. He knew that the ways we treat disability say something very ugly about our culture. Mark O?Brien was a risk taker?venturing into publishing and human connection and sex. He craved love and success. He knew that both depended on self-determination.
?My penis speaks to me, Father Brendan,? Mark reveals to his Priest, played by William H. Macy. Mark attends Mass daily and regularly seeks out confession. Not surprisingly, his decision to see a surrogate is one he wrestles with spiritually. Ultimately, it is Father Brendan who tells Mark, ?Go for it.? This is not the Catholicism of popular caricature. Rather, the relationship between Father Brendan and Mark O?Brien, while grounded in a shared denomination, is forged as together they wrestle with moral questions complicated by lived experience.
