Category Archives: Hedonism

Seoul (CNN) In a hip neighborhood in Seoul, South Koreans are getting a taste of one of the world's most repressive regimes.

There are posters of smiling North Korean women. There are banners in the style of North Korean propaganda. And there are beers that look like they've come straight from a North Korean state-owned brewery.

Welcome to Pyongyang Pub, Seoul's North Korea-themed watering hole.

Forbidden fruit

With its authoritarian regime and tightly controlled tour groups, North Korea isn't the easiest place in the world to visit. North and South Korea are technically still at war, and for many South Koreans, Pyongyang Pub is as close as they are likely to get to going north of the border themselves.

Here, you can order what regular North Koreans eat, try on traditional hanbok (dresses) that North Koreans wear, and check out household items made in North Korea, including toothpaste, cosmetics and cigarettes.

Although there are other places in Seoul where you can try out North Korean fare, this is the city's first-known restaurant that has tried to turn itself into a little slice of the Hermit Kingdom.

Both the inside and outside the bar are painted mint green, a nod to apartments and buildings in North Korea which are often in pastel colors, according to the owner Kim, who asked not to give his full name as he was concerned about online criticism.

On the other side

But there are little signs that the bar which sits alongside fashionable boutiques and bustling restaurants in the trendy neighborhood of Hongdae isn't exactly like the pubs across the border. Hongdae, a university area next to the city's Han River, is also home to the headquarters of YG Entertainment, one of the biggest K-pop labels.

For a start, the propaganda slogans on Pyongyang Pub swap patriotism for hedonism -- think "more drinks for comrades," "let's bring about a great innovation in the manufacturing of bar snacks," and "let's make a new leap forward in the construction of a drinking powerhouse."

And here, the beer is German -- on closer inspection, the Taedonggang label is only a parody of North Korea's most famous beer. (Eagle-eyed diners will spot that the characters on the bottle are slightly different, swapping "dong" for "ddong," which means "poop").

About two years ago, Kim decided he wanted to bring authentic North Korean food to South Korea. And from the moment people walked in, he wanted it to feel like North Korea -- a place that carries a lot of mystique in South Korea.

He pored over images on social media from people who work in embassies in North Korea, and consulted with North Koreans who had defected to South Korea. He decorated the place with authentic North Korean items that were smuggled out via China.

Shifting rivalries

On the spot where Pyongyang Pub now stands, Kim ran a Japanese restaurant for about seven years. But this year's ongoing trade spat between South Korea and Japan saw sales slip by 50% compared with last year, so Kim closed the restaurant in July and opened his long-planned North Korean bar in its place.

The menu features common North Korean food, such as rice with marinated tofu, sweet rice sundaes and potato rice cakes.

Pyongyang Naengmyeon, a dish of cold noodles on the menu at Pyongyang Pub.

Charlie Miller/CNN

But even before the bar opened, Kim found himself at the center of another controversy.

The law itself is controversial. Used widely while South Korea was under military dictatorship from the 1960s to 1980s, the law was designed to protect South Korea against North Korean propaganda and to prosecute spies. The most serious punishment under the act is the death penalty.

Police from Mapo-gu -- the district where the bar is located -- said that police had decided that the pub wasn't in violation of the act, although that decision wasn't finalized and they were continuing to monitor the situation.

"For it to be a violation, it must have the element of intentionally praising (North Korea's regime or its leader)," a police official told CNN. "However, it was for marketing purposes."

Nevertheless, Kim took steps to make sure his bar didn't cross any lines. He took down the portraits of two former North Korean leaders that hang in every North Korean restaurant, and switched them for pictures of United States President Donald Trump and comedian Kim Gyeong-jin (no relation) pulling silly expressions.

"It is just to induce a laugh. It does not have a deep meaning," he said. "I didn't want the bar to have a serious atmosphere."

Ultimately, Kim said, he didn't open the restaurant to praise North Korea's leaders.

"I just made it so that people could have fun and enjoy," he said.

North Korea-style propaganda at Pyongyang Pub reads: "Welcome, this is Pyongyang Pub."

Charlie Miller/CNN

The talk of the town

Still, Pyongyang Pub's theme -- and its controversial local coverage -- has already attracted curious local customers and a smattering of foreign patrons.

"It has recently become the talk of the town, so I felt like coming at least once," said 27-year-old Byeon Yoon-suk, who works at a beverage company and visited the bar with his colleagues. "I think the interior is most unique ... It's kind of novel."

And many customers were unconcerned about worries the bar could run afoul of the law.

"[The bar] never glorifies North Korea," said Kim Jin-ah, a 45-year-old who hosts a home shopping show on television. "I think you can understand it as just a parody, (something) fun."

And while the place is clearly a novelty, some people said they'd like to come again.

Pyongyang Pub, 6 Wausan-ro 19-gil, Mapo-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea, +82 2-332-3066

Sophie Jeong reported from Seoul and Julia Hollingsworth reported from Hong Kong. CNN's Kim Na-yeong, Shin Jae-eun and Jake Kwon contributed reporting from Seoul.

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In a trendy Seoul neighborhood, a taste of repressive North Korea - CNN

HARRY STYLESS admission about biting the tip of his tongue off during a mushroom trip came as a surprise to Louis as he was always the one being told off for being One Directions tearaway stoner.

Recalling his days of hedonism, Louis proudly boasted he is actually the natural born rebel who has done his fair bit of sex, drugs and rocknroll.

I am not going to lie. I was pretty surprised to see the whole mushroom thing with Harry. I always used to get told off for smoking joints, he said.

But anyway there are some people who want to be known as that guy wild, crazy, whatever there are some people that just are.

Spilling on his own mischief, he added: There was a good year in the band, especially when I had my mates out. I think I did my bit for the pop rock world, shall we call it that. I did me bit.

Meanwhile, Louis had a giggle at his other 1D bandmate Niall Horan, who recently told Guilty Pleasures he was the vanilla one in the band. That is f***ing funny, Louis laughed. Its a very funny thing to admit.

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Louis Tomlinson: Harry Styles on magic mushrooms? I was the sex, drugs and rocknroll one - Metro Newspaper UK

Vermont-based producer WhistlePig has launched a limited edition 16-year-old rye whiskey finished in umeshu-seasoned barrels, called The Boss Hog: The Samurai Scientist.

The Samurai Scientist is finished in umeshu-seasoned barrels from Japanese brewery Kitaya

WhistlePig partnered with Japanese brewery Kitaya, which produces sak, shochu and umeshu, to create the limited edition offering. Kitaya is located near Yame City in the Fukuoka Prefecture of Kyushu Island.

It is the sixth edition in WhistlePigs Boss Hog range, which includes expressions aged in a variety of casks such as Scotch and Calvados apple brandy.

The rye whiskey was finished in barrels that contained Saikoo, a uniquely traditional umeshu aged for 11 years.

With umeshu being an intensely aromatic spirit, it does not take long to impart deeply complex flavours, said Pete Lynch, master blender of WhistlePig.

Each barrel of The Samurai Scientist is bottled at proof. Only 90 barrels exist and each bottle notes the barrel number and proof, ranging between 120-122.

The whiskey was distilled in Canada using koji fermentation and was bottled by hand on the WhistlePig Farm in Shoreham.

The new expression is said to be powerfully complex and distinctly unique from anything WhistlePig has introduced before.

The whiskey is named after Japanese chemist Jkichi Takamine, who introduced koji fermentation to the American whiskey industry in the 19th century.

It was an honour to work alongside the team at Kitaya to bring this collaboration to life in the form of the first American whiskey finished in Japanese umeshu barrels, added Jeff Kozak, CEO, WhistlePig.

With the introduction of The Samurai Scientist, WhistlePig continues to pave the way for innovation across the rye category.

Distinctly unique

In November 2018, the industry mourned the loss of WhistlePig master distiller Dave Pickerell, who died in San Francisco.

Dave Pickerell committed to five promises for The Boss Hog, including being distinctly unique from anything weve done before, Kozak continued.

He had a thirst for exploring and trialling techniques from around the world, and Takamine was likeminded in propelling whiskey innovation across continents. This vision continues to drive us to explore beyond the limits of American whiskey.

On the nose, the expression is intensely aromatic, with cinnamon, maple syrup and toasted marshmallow. The palate brings bold notes of tobacco, ginger baking spices and savoury umami. The addition of a few drops of water reveals rye spice, oak char and vanilla.

The bottle comes with a pewter stopper representing Takamines heritage and contributions to the chemistry industry.

Bottled at 60-61% ABV, The Samurai Scientist is available in premium alcohol stores, bars and restaurants in the US, with select international markets to follow in the coming weeks.

The whiskey will launch in the UK on 1 December and will be available from The Whisky Exchange, Master of Malt and Hedonism Wines with an RRP of 600 (US$772).

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WhistlePig finishes rye whiskey in umeshu barrels - The Spirits Business

Foals have just released the second part of their two-part album Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost, Yannis Philippakis talks imminent apocalypse, Brexit, and why his band are more old school rock `n' roll thanpeople might expect

It is the day of the latest Extinction Rebellion spectacles in London and while Foals singer Yannis Philippakis is too busy with press duties to superglue himself to a passing tube train, he is in fighting form.

Will you be out marching later, I ask. "If you your keep your questions short, I will be." he fires back.

As one mans eco warrior and another mans spoiled middle class crusty take to the streets below to protest against climate change, there is another rather pressing matter engaging the UK - the Brexit nightmare is still rumbling on.

Like an orangerag to a Trump detractor, I just have to mention the B word to 32-year-old Oxford drop-out Philippakis and hes off.

"I feel angry and I feel deeply let down," he says. "To see Britain descend into this morass of language and hatred and tribalism. Being haunted by its own empire and the lack of clear information and the willfulmanipulation of facts . . . When we first toured America I came across Fox News for the first time and I remembered thinking to myself, probably quite naively, thank god that isnt going on in Britain.

"There are standards and those standards have been shown to be figments of a prior age. I am angry and resigned that that is the reality. I wonder whether theres a way back from that, whether its in the UK or the States."

These are all themes addressed on Foals' new album, the second part of their ambitioustwo-part album Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost release. The first part came outlast March and went top 10 in Ireland and was nominated for a Mercury Prize and heralded the return to the idea of the album as a mysterious artefact for the adventurous Oxford band with the big, big sound.

Both albums are continent-cracking, tectonic plate-shifting, epochal forces of nature but if that first part sounded like Foals were auditioning to be the house band at the end of the world, then part two shimmers with at least some kind of optimism and a sense of cleansing, some kind of hope amid the wreckage.

"Maybe," says the intense and highly-intelligent Philippakis, unwilling to commit too much. "The end of part one is quite bleak and this one is about picking yourself up amongst the wreckage and then finding a sense of perseverance or purpose and finding something that keeps you going.

"We're ravaging the planetin the full knowledge of what we are doing because we have the tools and the power to treat it with disrespect. We are challenging our own potency and that is sad and perverse."

"So in that sense it is a more optimistic album but its all still in the landscape, in the wreckage so I guess it becomes more of a backdrop. Its less preoccupied with apocalyptic things."

Call if tropical prog or just good old loud rock `n roll but with their eco concerns and songs about human greed, hubris and idiocy, Foals could be sound tracking Extinction Rebellions well-meaning but flawed campaign methods.

But these are also deeply personal lyrics for Yannis. "The lyrics are these two records were definitely blotting paper for our minds," he says. "I wrote them in pubs in south London. More often Id write in Greece so these records are more plugged into London and the perils and confusions that are here at the moment.

"Ive been writing about environmental issues for years and I felt it was time to express the anxieties and anger I felt about those themes in these records. These lyrics are like blotting paper for what it feels like to be alive in 2019 as a young, frustrated person."

It is also somewhat of a crossroads for Foals. 2019 marks their first decade together and these twin albums are the first theyve recorded without founding member Walter Gervers, who amicably departed the band in 2017. It was a time of self-examination for Philippakis and his band mates Jimmy Smith, Edwin Congreave and Jack Bevan.

"Walters departure really shook us in some way and gave us a certain sense of wanting to overcome adversity on this record," says Philippakis. "We had to dig in a bit more but I dont really see that in the songs as such. It was more in the mentality behind the approach.

"A kind of `us versus them approach, which is why we self-produced the album. Did it in our neighbourhood and then wed walk home together via the pub and it definitely felt like a record that was made in a batten down the hatches way."

The singers Greek roots and his father, who sparked his interest in music by teaching him traditional Greek songs, have always been a huge influence on Philippakis and it is present and correct on new album track Ikara, named after the Greek Island where Icarus is said to have plummeted to earth after flying too close to the sun.

Yannis also sings about delusions of grandeur on new album track Black Bull and nobody has to labour the metaphor. "The tragedy and the black humour in our predicament is that were an incredible species thats able to do so much and yet we always overstep and thats whats so amazing about some of the myths in general, not just the ancient Greek myths.

"It makes me angry to see Britain descend this morass of language and hatred and tribalism. Being haunted by its own empire and the lack of clear information and the wilful manipulation of facts . . . "

"They teach this has been known for a long time and these qualities are ingrained in mankind and yet 3,000, 4,000 years down the line we still havent really learned the lessons. We could live beautifully and in harmony with nature on this incredible planet that has given us everything that we could possibly want and were ravaging it and were not ravaging it from a place of ignorance.

"Were ravaging it in the full knowledge of what we are doing because we have the tools and the power to treat it with disrespect. We are challenging our own potency and that is sad and perverse."

But back to music. Foals are about to release a new tour film entitled Rip Up The Road - Live From Alexandra Palace. Filmed over a 12-month period as the band embarked upon a world tour, the film will be shown on Amazon Prime Video andhones in on two shows at Londons Alexandra Palace.

Philippakis may sound rather like Atlas with the weight of the world on hisshoulders but Foals are more rock `n roll than they seem and thats double when it comes to touring. "Its definitely not about discipline on the road," he says. "Ive not seen the documentary and to be honest were all quite nervous about it.

"Ive seen the footage from Alexander Palace which was filmed properly and its filmed beautifully and Ive seen the trailer. The filmmakers had a lot of access to us and I think that most people who know the band know that we definitely prescribe to the hedonism of the road, I think were probably a little bit old school in that way. Im excited to see the film but also a little big terrified."

Alan Corr @CorrAlan2

Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost - Part 2 is out now. Rip Up The Road - Live From Alexandra Palace is onAmazon Prime Video on Friday November 15

More music news, reviews and interviews here

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Foals lash Brexit as the earth dies screaming Music - RTE.ie

You, by some minor miracle, have your full collection of Van Winkle whiskeys for this year. You also have your Van Winkle cigars to go with them. For the latter, perhaps you need another Van Winkle lifestyle product to keep them in until you are ready for your hedonistic Van Winkle evening? If so Pappy & Company, a whiskey lifestyle company started some years back by those bearing the Van Winkle name, has you covered with a new humidor made in part fromPappy Van Winkle bourbon barrel staves.

The new Custom Pappy & Company Handmade Humidor, according to those behind it, was the result of a collaboration between the Van Winkle family members and Heritage Handcrafted, an outfit known for their custom whiskey barrel items. The two first collaborated back in 2014 on a custom Van Winkle barrel wood box holding a decanter and whiskey glasses. This humidor is said to be the second custom piece done between them.

What you have here is a humidor with an outer shell made from Pappy Van Winkle bourbon barrel staves. The boxs top showsthe inside char of the bourbon barrels while the sides display the exterior staves. Inside this box, which is cedar lined, isa hygrometer and built in Boveda 2-Way humidifying system to store and age your cigars for extended shelf life and improved flavor.

The humidor, which includes a removable tray, is designed to hold 150 cigars and weighs a somewhat hefty 8 pounds. It prices around $595 and is said to take four weeks to make from the time you order it. It was not immediately clear if this would be an ongoing item or if it was limited in quantity.

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Embrace Your Van Winkle Hedonism With This Custom Barrel Stave Humidor - The Whiskey Wash

It starts with a faint tremor that I feel in the soles of my feet. Engines rumble and the horizon shifts subtly on its axis. I rush to the ship's railings and see ropes cast off and the gap to the quay widening. This is the most exhilarating moment in cruising, which I never want to miss. The inconveniences of travel have been navigated and stowed away with my suitcase. Everything is easy from now on, and adventure awaits over the watery horizon.

Sailing out of Athens is particularly thrilling. Over thousands of years others, from Odysseus to Herodotus, have enjoyed this same moment, though perhaps minus the cocktail. Athens rises from the Attic Plain in the orange haze of the late-afternoon sun. The Acropolis is a stubby outcrop crowned by temple columns that are the exclamation marks of a culture that has influenced the world.

Azamara Pursuit picks its elegant way between container ships into the inky-blue Aegean Sea. The ship is taking me on a 10-night Greece Intensive cruise that finishes in Venice and visits Kotor in Montenegro, but which concentrates on the Greek islands.

There are few better places to sail. The Aegean has been crosshatched by the wakes of ancient Greeks and Romans, Byzantines and Ottomans, crusaders and invading sun seekers. It has history and hedonism. It stirs the intellect, yet tempts with salty swims and chatter-filled cafes.

123RF

Tourists and tourist boats in the famous Navagio Bay on Greece's Zakynthos island.

READ MORE:* Patmos: The heavenly Greek island that mass tourism can't reach* Tinos: The sleepy Greek island time forgot* An alternative side to Santorini

Each island has its distinct character, but all are close enough that passengers are off the ship all day and transported by night. Next morning, our first port of call is Spetses, which is almost ignored by international tourists. Wealthy Athenians come here to escape to bougainvillea-draped villas on pine-scented hillsides. The pines have supplied ships' masts since ancient times. In the harbour boatyard, workers are still making wooden fishing boats with traditional tools. Wrinkled men sit in the sun playing backgammon. The port town is stately with neoclassical buildings. Cars are banned and horse carriages clip clop along the waterfront.

Spetses has no particular sights, but everything that makes Greece magical. A rugged landscape of rocks, hills and scented forest, a tumble of whitewashed houses, shadowy chapels hung with icons and scented with candle wax and polish. Blinding light and blue sky, the blue domes of churches, the silvery shiver of olive trees, the happy splatter of red and orange beach parasols. This is a delicious nothing-to-do cruise day. I meander along the waterfront, hike up to a ruin, devour the first of many baklavas accompanied by thimblefuls of thick Greek coffee.

Next day is quite another experience. The whole world has discovered Mykonos: sun-pink Germans, posturing Chinese photo models, raucous Englishmen, jet-setting party people. Parts of Mykonos town's narrow streets are log-jammed with tourists, their cubic whitewashed architecture hidden under a veneer of hanging T-shirts and postcard racks. Still, it's hard not to be seduced by the whitewashed charm, and a short wander up the hill takes me to silent streets and a dilapidated windmill from which to admire a calendar-worthy island view.

That afternoon I take an Azamara excursion to Delos. This little island on which the Cyclades archipelago centres was considered the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, and in ancient Greek times was the location of a prominent sacred and commercial town. Its ruins are scattered with mosaics, headless statues and toppled pillars. Marble lions have stood here since the second century BC, and are a brooding presence in a rocky, sun-beaten landscape.

123RF

It's hard not to be seduced by the whitewashed charm of Mykonos.

I squint towards Mykonos, modern-day temple to tourism, and wonder what will remain in another millennium. Greece does this to travellers. It makes you philosophise and contemplate the vagaries of history, even while it distracts you with all the shameless pleasures of 21st-century tourism: beach clubs and coffeehouses, Insta-views and sunsets, warm waters and inflatable flamingo floats.

As we sail onwards, I find Azamara Pursuit caters to the split personality, too. It offers thoughtful seminars and enrichment lectures, and a ship's library of Georgian-style elegance and considerable literary heft. It's an elegant ship of understated appeal almost as minimalist as the Aegean landscapes, yet is never short of indulgences. I like the pool-side hot tubs, the White Night evening barbecue on deck, the properly made coffee from Mosaic Caf and the foie gras with fig jam from Aqualina restaurant.

As we sail onwards, each island is unexpectedly different. At Rhodes, we sail in under crusader battlements to spend the day exploring one of Europe's best-preserved medieval fortified cities. In Crete, there are wild landscapes and village life, and the crumbling ruins of Ottoman castles. By day seven we've arrived in the Ionian Sea to anchor off Zakynthos, where limestone cliffs plunge into peacock seas and a shore excursion takes me into a rural world of folk tales and saintly miracles.

Azamara Pursuit is ideal for these petite ports. The ship carries 702 passengers and, though it has space and a full range of amenities, is compact enough to visit smaller destinations. It's an attractive ship but caters to those who like to be off it and exploring for most of the day, and sometimes into the evening, too. Azamara Club Cruises is destination-focused, lingering in ports and providing an impressive range of shore excursions. A choice of 10 in Rhodes, nine in Zakynthos and nine in Mykonos, ranging from mosaic-making to a monastery visit, a four-wheel-drive adventure to a culinary walk.

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Azamara Pursuit is an elegant ship of understated appeal.

I like the structure of the shore excursions, and the time they leave for exploration on my own. In Corfu, a morning visit to Achilleion Palace still leaves the entire afternoon free for Corfu old town, the jumbled alleys of which are edged with a fine, arcaded Esplanade and parks, all overlooked by a whopping Venetian-era fortress. This is a lovely place of statues, pastel-painted houses and bakeries hot with the smell of nut biscuits dipped in honey. Tourists surge, but in the Church of St Spyridon local widows in black queue beneath a flamboyantly painted ceiling to kiss the patron saint's silver coffin.

We sail away between the Corfiot and Albanian coastlines. The pie-crust roofs and fortifications of Corfu are left in our wake. Albanian towns are an enigma to starboard, glowing like the promised land in the last of the Mediterranean sun. That could be a place to visit one day, I think as I pace the decks. A good cruise leaves you wanting more, as the travel muse sings across the silvery sea.

FIVE SIGHTS BEYOND THE PORTSKNOSSOS PALACE

From Cretan port Agios Nikolaos, a shore excursion takes you to these 1250BC Minoan ruins, one of the world's most famous archaeological sites. The nearby Museum of Heraklion's artefacts highlight the sophistication of this ancient civilisation. Seeheraklion.gr

REMOTE ZAKYNTHOS

To prove there are still untouched spots in Greece, a 4WD tour winds into the rugged Vrachionas Mountains and onwards to remote inland villages Anafonitria and Volimes. There's also a stop above Shipwreck Beach, one of Greece's most stunningly blue coves. Seevisitgreece.gr

LINDOS

AnAzamara excursion across Rhodes island goes to the lace-making town of Lindos, whose cubic houses are scattered like white dice below an acropolis of ancient remains and Venetian fortifications. The combination of temple ruins and landscape is sublime. Seerodosisland.gr

ELIA BEACH

For your hedonistic moment, head to one of Mykonos' most magnificent beaches, lapped by emerald-tinted waters and embraced by craggy cliffs. Rent a sun lounge and thatched parasol and enjoy a day of sun-soaking and swimming among Europe's buffed and beautiful. Seemykonos.gr

ACHILLEION PALACE

This odd but attractive neoclassical mansion in Corfu was built in 1890 for melancholy Empress Elizabeth (Sissi) of Austria and later owned by Kaiser Wilhelm II. The curator takes you around the interior and statue-studded gardens with their sweeping terrace views over Corfu. Seeachillion-corfu.gr

TRIP NOTESMORE

visitgreece.gr

CRUISE

Azamara offers three Greece Intensive Voyage itineraries in 2020 that sail between Athens and Venice (or the reverse). They all differ slightly from each other and the one described here. Prices from US$2667 a person, twin share. azamara.com

Brian Johnston travelled as a guest of Azamara.

A return trip for one passenger in economy class flying from Auckland to Athenswould generate 3.2 tonnes CO2. To offset your carbon emissions head toairnewzealand.co.nz/sustainability-customer-carbon-offset.

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An Aegean cruise aboard Azamara Pursuit proves there are few better places to sail - Stuff.co.nz

LAS VEGAS They wandered through the slot-machine maze of McCarran International Airport, through the haze of stale cigar smoke and banners advertising residencies by Calvin Harris and Criss Angel, and into the quiet, cool morning of a city that hadnt yet shaken off sleep.

It was the earliest hours of the first day of October, and these teenagers from every nook of the country were descending on Las Vegas. But they werent going to the strip, or even to nap in their hotel. In a city that represents the pinnacle of uniquely American hedonism, a band of student organizers from March for Our Lives the gun-reform advocacy organization born out of the countrys deadliest high school shooting were headed directly to an empty, gray event venue a half-mile from the airport, to help pull off a presidential candidate forum dedicated solely to the issue of gun violence.

It was, coincidentally, the two-year anniversary of the Las Vegas mass shooting, in which a 64-year-old man dragged 10 rifles into his 32nd-floor Mandalay Bay hotel room and opened fire from the window on a crowd of 22,000, killing 58 and injuring close to 500. Across the strip, between ads for Cirque du Soleil and a farm-to-table restaurant, electronic billboards flashed signs of remembrance: BRAVER. CLOSER. PROUDER. STRONGER. #VEGASSTRONGER. Trump Tower glinted like a lighter in the distance.

The forum was about 24 hours away. The event space was mostly empty. The sound of clanging metal rang through the courtyard as a construction crew assembled white security tents outside. In a ballroom inside, clusters of March organizers, still not old enough to legally drink, slouched over round tables covered in white linens, tapping through their phones and chatting quietly, like reluctant college kids killing time at the library.

Lauren Hogg, the 16-year-old co-founder of March, picked at the straw in an empty Starbucks cup full of ice, hugging her white cable-knit sweater closer to her chest. She was 14 when, on Valentines Day in 2018, a 19-year-old man gunned down 17 students at her high school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, in the South Florida suburb of Parkland. Within days, a group of Hoggs friends launched the activist group Never Again MSD; a month after that, they organized a nationwide protest of gun violence that galvanized nearly 2 million people.

In the span of mere weeks, Hogg and a handful of her classmates became some of the countrys most well-known advocates for gun reform, making it a key electoral issue for Democrats running for office nationally. Now, here they were, watching the venue be converted into a made-for-MSNBC event.

I look back at photos right after the shooting, like from speeches I gave. And I don't recognize myself, Hogg said, brown eyes sharp like flint.

We're better now, today, than we were in the beginning. Because I think people forget that. We were not doing well."

Flanking her in the ballroom was 19-year-old Eve Levenson, whos from Los Angeles and helped organize a number of Marchs protests there last year. She joined March full-time as its federal affairs manager this summer, shortly before starting her sophomore year at George Washington University in Washington, D.C, where she piles evening classes onto a full day of meetings on Capitol Hill.

I called my parents last spring, and basically was like, 'Is it bad to register as a lobbyist?' Levenson said with a booming laugh inside the venues war room, where event organizers spent the morning working.

It's like, obviously, I've never planned a presidential forum before, Levenson said. She was nine years old during the last true open primary for Democrats, in 2007. This was a nice change, though, because the adults I was working with also had not planned a presidential forum. So for once, I was like, okay, it's not that I don't know what's supposed to happen next because I'm young. It's because none of us know.

Hogg sat beside her, spinning in an office chair. Her junior year was only two weeks old, but already shed missed four days, first for testifying in favor of an assault-weapons ban on Capitol Hill, and now for this.

It's almost as if I went from, like, childhood to kind of, adulthood, in regards to having to deal with things that some adults have to deal with, or working in some spaces that are majority adults, Hogg said. I've found myself trying to have to learn how to be a teenager, and especially in spaces where not everyone is traumatized.

She throws around the word trauma like it weighs nothing at all, and still finds it hard to relate to people who havent experienced it.

Trying to interact with teenagers in a non-business, non-political way, is something that is very difficult, she said. But recently, the biggest thing for me is, like, realizing that I need to learn how to be a teenager. And it's hard. It's difficult, you know? It's like, what do you talk about?

Two audio-visual techs walked in. They asked if they could use the room to check its equipment. We scooped up our bags and cleared out, shuffling through the maze of sterile white offices, looking for a place to sit that wasnt in the middle of being made over. We passed by what would, the next day, become the room where forum attendees could sit to decompress from the talk of gun violence and murder, and we passed by the the glamour room, with its silvery mirrors and flattering lighting, where candidates would wait before going onstage.

I find myself kind of disassociating a lot when I'm not with people who are in March for Our Lives or weren't in a shooting, Hogg said, once we found an unoccupied room. The faint untz-untz of electronic Muzak echoed through the venue. My brain kind of just doesn't know how to act in a lot of circumstances with kids, just like trying to have fun and being adolescents.

It's like, when you're like a fish it's like you're a fish in water, she continued. You don't realize that you're in water.

Levenson, sitting directly in front of Hogg and listening intently, interjected. I'm sure that analogy came from the personal experience of being a fish, she said. They looked at each other for a beat and broke into peals of laughter.

***

The next morning, the makeover was complete, a small village erected overnight. Hordes of people spilled into the venue, navigating around circular tables to grab fruit and coffee from a breakfast bar. Reporters in neon green PRESS badges darted in and out of their designated room, staking out spots along the entryway to the ballroom, where the students from March could hang out undisturbed.

A healthy chunk of D.C.s Democratic political machine had made the trip. Every top-polling candidate running for president and their handlers were there, with the exception of Sen. Bernie Sanders, whod suffered a heart attack the night before. So were several members of Congress, Nevadas governor, 100 or so members of the press, and hundreds of political activists.

And though it was the team from Giffords, the gun-reform group founded by former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, that conceived of the forum and did the bulk of the planning, the Parkland students were, by all appearances, the face of the event.

By 10 a.m., Giffords herself was onstage with David Hogg, Laurens older brother and the student who has absorbed the bulk of the flashbulbs, to introduce the forum. His lanky frame cut through the starkly lit, deep blue of the stage.

When the American culture starts to value children and the future of our country more than guns, politicians get afraid, and thats when things change, he said in a brief speech. Giffords and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) flanked him.

After a spoke, Hogg stood on stage for several long beats, struggling, and failing, to take a good selfie with Giffords and Murphy. Youd think David Hogg would be better at selfies than he is! crowed the moderator, MSNBC host Craig Melvin, to laughter from the crowd, as Hogg finally slunk offstage.

It was the selfie that launched a dozen selfies. Tucked into a corner of the venues lobby was a backdrop branded with logos from Giffords and March for Our Lives, and candidates passed through it, alongside students from March, like tourists posing with carnival cut-outs.

A steady stream of them populated the organizations Twitter feed throughout the day: Theres Kamala Harris playing air guitar. Theres Amy Klobuchar, hearing a very good secret. Theres Andrew Yang, sorority-squatting.

And it was clear, from the way the candidates spoke about them, who they were really there to appease.

You did such a good job, Joe Biden said, leaning into the crowd, pointing to the Parkland students sitting in the first rows.

When Emma Gonzalez, a Parkland graduate who joined some of her classmates on the cover of TIME last year, asked former Rep. Beto ORourke (D-Tex.) how he would implement certain elements of his gun reform agenda a plan that March for Our Lives itself wrote he turned the focus back to them.

Id call you, ORourke said, to thunderous applause.

The Parkland students have never had trouble receiving that kind of attention. As quickly as they spun their pain into political action, the country latched onto their tragedy and yanked them, swiftly, into celebrity: a national speaking tour, TV appearances, the cover of TIME.

Then, the backlash. Right-wing media personalities pushed a number of conspiracy theories about Parkland survivors, including David Hogg, fabricating allegations that he was never a Stoneman Douglas student, and that he was a crisis actor hired by Democrats to harm the NRA. SWAT teams had to protect his house.

Close to two years after the shooting, they are expert in the demands made of them, even as March has bloomed into an organization that has very little to do with the specific experience of the students from Stoneman Douglas.

But when politicians talk about gun reform, they tend to flatten it into their likeness.

How in the world could you say that to March for Our Lives? Beto ORourke asked, launching an attack against Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

Later, in a small press gaggle at the venues press room, ORourke tore into South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Buttigieg had just spoken forcefully against a mandatory buy-back program for assault weapons, which March has endorsed, calling it a shiny object that distracts Democrats from pursuing more widely popular gun control measures, like universal background checks and federal red flag laws.

How in the world could you say that to March for Our Lives? asked ORourke, who opposed mandatory buy-backs until recently. A pair of student organizers in their blue T-shirts looked on. I was really offended by those comments. Digging in his heels, ORourke then said Buttigieg represents a politics driven by poll testing and focus group driving, and listening to consultants before they arrive at a decision.

ORourke filed out of the room, and the three dozen reporters and March students followed. Nevada Assemblywoman Sandra Jauregui took ORourkes place in front of the few cameras remaining. A survivor herself of the Route 91 Harvest shooting, Jauregui subsequently wrote and passed a bill banning the sale of bump stocks in the state.

She began to talk about the night of the shooting teary-eyed, beseeching, voice unsteady while rows of reporters sat facing the opposite direction, plugging away at their computers, eating sandwiches. A member of Jaureguis team wove through their tables to let them know she was speaking just behind them.

***

Delaney Tarr was gesticulating to nobody, fingers glittering with rings, an iPhone and small notebook splayed out before her. Tarr cofounder of March for Our Lives, 19-year-old college student, astrology enthusiast was doing press, talking local radio hosts through the groups policy agenda for gun reform.

This was the Parkland students afternoon: darting in and out of the press room to watch and film candidates brief press gaggles, holding court with reporters, and occasionally stopping to greet an old friend.

In those interviews, they were candid and guileless. Marchs spokesperson waited by Tarrs side as she wrapped her radio spot. When it ended, he was quick to ask her how it went. Theyve had problems with antagonistic, conservative media outlets.

Verrry left, Tarr drawled. They asked me what Id say to Mitch McConnell. What I answered was, well, what Id say to any legislator is

It was my turn. Tarr and I wandered into the lobby to talk, but after a few minutes were interrupted by a March staffer. Cory Booker wanted a selfie.

I waited for her return, the blue photo backdrop sitting briefly empty across the room. Outside, through the glass walls of the lobby, I saw David Hogg patiently nodding in front of a camera as a journalist chatted him up.

And then, like magic, Tarr was back, jogging to our table with a shake of her head and frazzled smile.

We talked about veganism, she said. Totally unprompted.

An airpod fell from her hand and scuttled across the floor. She touched her bicep, where the outline of a nude woman, with a sheet of black hair, curled in the fetal position. From the crown of the womans head, above ground, sprouts a tuft of green leaves.

He looked at my tattoo and hes like, Whats that? she laughed, impersonating Booker. Oh, I thought that was a vegan thing.

Are you vegan? I asked her.

No! she yelped. (Booker famously wont shut up about how he is.)

The strangeness of this a sitting member of Congress lightly asking about her body art and eating habits, at a forum for presidential candidates she helped plan and promote seemed to barely register.

Tarr acknowledges that the original Never Again MSD group is aware of their relative privilege that they were afforded a spotlight to discuss their grief, while other victims of gun violence, particularly in low-income neighborhoods and among people of color, go undiscussed. Its a guilt that, she said, she is still learning to process. And it is damaging to the cause, she said, to act as if the Parkland students are operating in a vacuum.

That celebrity aspect is one that I think can be a bit damaging, because we are activists first and foremost, born out of a trauma and a tragedy, Tarr said. This is not about the fame. This is not about cameras. We don't live these glamorous, glitzy lives this is not what it seems to be perceived as.

Like the rest of the students, Tarr is still figuring out how to reconcile the otherworldliness of of her activism with her youth. But the activism itself comes naturally now. She calls it so comfortable that its like pulling on a cozy sweater.

I was like, I'm going to be a college student, and I'm going to have that experience. I'm going to do this and nobody can stop me.

Still, shes worked hard to build herself a new home at the University of Georgia, where shes a sophomore majoring in journalism and minoring in womens studies. Shes joined a dizzying number of clubs debate, literary magazine, film, and poetry among them where, she said, she has a captive audience for her writing. (Her roughly 180,000 Twitter followers dont hurt.)

But she finds other ways to be good to herself. She is learning how to say no. She is very serious about her bedtime routine. She goes to football games. She made friends who are very different from her, friends who, for example, skin deer.

I think part of this was reclaiming what I thought had been stolen from me, she said about enrolling at UGA. I was like, I'm going to be a college student, and I'm going to have that experience. I'm going to do this and nobody can stop me.

Former housing secretary Julian Castro was speaking a few yards away. Tarr went on.

I, even still now, more than a year out, I'm reconciling with the fact that after the shooting, I put my grief in a box and I pushed it aside, she said. We're better now, today, than we were in the beginning. Because I think people forget that. We were not doing well, emotionally, in the beginning. We had a lot going on.

She continued: I would only open up that can of worms of pain and grief and trauma when I was doing these interviews, because I think a lot of us did have to push our emotions and our pain aside because we felt that we needed to do it for the cause.

The original founders of Never Again MSD dont see each other as much as they used to. But they do have reunions periodically, in part to see each other and in part to meet the newer March organizers, who are sprawled across dozens of chapters around the country.

Coming together like thisit helps.

It's like that whole Hero's Journey, Tarr said, recalling the classic storytelling arc that sees its protagonist called to adventure by an unforeseen force before facing adversity, and, eventually, rebirth.

You've learned something new, so you come back with a different perspective and a different outlook. And feel the fire again, she said. It's always nice to feel that fire again. Because it's never the same unless you're at these events with these people. And then you get passionate, you want to roar, you want to shout, and scream, and I love it. I love it.

The afternoon wore on, and they passed each other like orbiting planets: all on fixed paths, rarely in alignment. They tagged each other in for different meetings, gave each other directions about what to do, and when. Where do you need me to be? is a mantra I heard early and often.

After the last speaker, California Sen. Kamala Harris, finished, I saw Tarr wandering alone through an emptying lobby. Around her, people spilled out of the auditorium, out of the bathrooms, back out of the venue through the now-abandoned security checkpoints.

She was headed to the only room off-limits to the press, but a reporter caught her. He asked what she made of the day. She thought it went well, she said, but didnt really get to watch the candidates speak. She was too busy doing interviews.

She and her former classmates would not have time for a prolonged goodbye. All of them would leave at different times that night flights back to D.C., to Florida, to Massachusetts. Hers was a red-eye back to Georgia, where she would land with just enough time to get a bus back to Athens and make her morning classes.

Top: March for Our Lives Co-Founder Emma Gonzalez (R) attends the 2020 Gun Safety Forum on October 2, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images) Above: Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang poses for photos with attendees after speaking during the forum. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

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'I Need to Learn How to Be a Teenager': 36 Hours with the Parkland Survivors in Vegas - VICE

Getty

While external factors of course have an impact on our motivation levels at work, the attitude we bring each day is self-determined. Attitude explains how someone fired from his own company might then become a business icon.

Based on my experience as both a professor and consultant, here are 10 behaviors and attitudes that help increase self-motivation and professional effectiveness:

1. Accept reality and others as they are. Self-motivation begins with having realistic and appropriate expectations of work and of those around you. Instead of demanding that circumstances conform to your wishes, accept them as they are and, from that point, find room for improvement.

2. Know yourself and accept that you have strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes we seem to think that making a mistake is intolerable in a good professional, that it leads to disaster. But if we do not come to terms with our own fallibility, we end up piling on frustration and missing out on opportunities for improvement. Being aware of your own strengths and weaknesses allows you to be more effective and may save you from a downward spiral of low self-esteem. Acknowledge your mistakes, but also appreciate your successes.

3. Don't complain. Imagine you own a fast-food franchise and a bad batch of meat is discovered in another location of the same chain. You have done nothing wrong, but your business will be affected. In this situation, a franchise owner could either complain about the stroke of bad luck or be proactive and establish concrete measures to minimize the negative impact of the news. Complaining solves nothing while focusing our attention on that which we cannot control.

4. Appreciate what you have and be grateful. "Psychological hedonism" is a mental mechanism by which we accustom ourselves with astonishing ease to the progress of our work and then no longer appreciate this progress. We must make a pointed effort to pay attention to the positive, to what is working well. When we emphasize what we lack rather than what we have, we can end up discouraged.

5. Bring a positive attitude to your task. A business study showed that positive, optimistic salespeople billed 90 percent more than those saddled with negativity. And that is because the attitude with which we handle a situation or task influences the final result. In other words, if you go to a party thinking it will be boring, you probably won't have much fun, as your initial attitude will make it more difficult. Now, do not confuse positivity with naivet or a lack of realism.

6. Set relevant goals and challenges. According to the goal-setting theory of Edwin Locke, we are motivated when we perceive that our goals can be achieved and will involve considerable effort. Also, we are more motivated by more relevant goals. Therefore, important goals goals that provide something of value to others are more inspiring than an intrinsic objective (e.g., professional development) or extrinsic one (e.g., a raise or promotion).

7. Imbue what you do with meaning. Given the same task, one worker may just carry stones while another helps build a building. Going to work each morning to get paid is not the same as going to serve the community and develop personally. It's about finding important motives for doing what we do and giving our best to the task. A full life is not dependent on our occupation, but our ability make our actions matter.

8. Be proactive. When we take decisive action at work, rather than sit back as spectators, we take on more ownership and feel more motivated.

9. Raise hopes and rely on responsibility. The key to motivation is not so much doing just what we like, but instead pouring the most enthusiasm into what we have to do. And when enthusiasm fades, take responsibility to carry on.

10. Be persistent and persevere. If we give up when faced with obstacles, we head into a negative feedback loop being discouraged, with sapped enthusiasm, making us less likely to achieve our goals. Trying to overcome obstacles is, in itself, a motivating force. Determination and perseverance in tough times are the way to rekindle motivation.

While we cannot control everything around us, we can control our own attitudes and behaviors to our own circumstances. As such, following the ten principals outlined above can help us improve our motivation in all aspects of our lives both professional and personal.

By Pablo Maella, Senior Lecturer of Managing People in Organizations, IESE Business School

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Ten Ways To Increase Your Motivation At Work - Forbes

In this months Well-being column, former BBC Studios exec and corporate wellness coach Tracy Forsyth tackles how to get through next weeks MIPCOM market in Cannes without losing the plot and yourself.

Ah, the annual global TV market MIPCOM. For those who dont work in TV, the picture it can summon is one of TV execs strolling on the Croisette in the gorgeous Cannes sunshine, laughing at star-studded cocktail parties and shaking hands on a multimillion dollar deal before a seafood and champagne lunch on the company yacht. However, for most delegates, MIPCOM is a feat of endurance that can deplete your mind, body and soul and leave you a husk of a human by the time its all over.

Breakfast meetings start at 8.30am and then pitching, buying and selling goes on in back-to-back 30-minute batches right through 6pm. Then its a drinks pitch, client dinner, the industry parties and networking until 2.30am. If you are Animal from The Muppets then this probably energises you. For everybody else, here is my simple survival guide.

Theres a concept in yoga called Brahmacharya that was traditionally translated as sexual restraint. The principle suggests you channel sexual energy into the practice of yoga, not hedonism. Now Im not going to get into the myth of MIP Husbands and Wives that is not my business (although if its true I wholeheartedly disapprove). These days Brahmacharya has lost its sexual connotation and is taken to mean using your energy in the right way.

At MIPCOM, there are a huge amount of distractions and energy sappers. You have to be on from the moment you turn up at the airport because there are 100 people in the industry also on the same plane that you could talk to. Its fun but draining. So, focus your energy on what needs doing, who needs seeing, landing what message you need to land and prioritise that.

Secondly, take at least two minutes every hour to breathe deeply and fully. When you are waiting for your next client, spend that time consciously breathing deeply. In and out. In and out. Or when you are walking from the Croisette to the Bunker, breathe in for four steps and out for four steps. Do it whenever you can. Breathing deeply refreshes us and brings more oxygen into our bloodstream, in turn energising us. It also helps calm down the nervous system and destresses us. All that fresh oxygen to the brain will even help you perform better.

Between spending three-plus hours a day on our smartphones and 12 hours at a desk doing deals and meetings, its no wonder we end up hunched over with a sore shoulders and neck, feeling like a crumpled-up tissue by the end of each day. Stand up and stretch as much as you possibly can. If its difficult to do this in a room full of serious meetings, then go to the restroom and stretch in there. Full-body stretch, raise arms over the head, lean side to side. Fold over from your hips, knees bent (though avoid head below heart if you have high blood pressure). Do some twists from side to side. In yoga, twists are said to massage your internal organs and bring new prana or energy to them. For a real luxury, book yourself in for a post-MIPCOM massage when you get back home and a restorative yoga class.

Finally, remember to hydrate. I love a rum cocktail. And a glass of prosecco. But when you add those to six coffees in the morning and four cups of tea in the afternoon, its no wonder you start to feel a bit jaded and wan.

There is pressure to drink at MIPCOM because many a time you are entertaining clients or out at a party. But sustained drinking and caffeine intake over three to four days will have you feeling rotten. So hydrate as much as humanly possible: drink herbal teas, water, hot water with lemon, water with cucumber. Just drink your H20.

Good luck!

Tracy is a creative mentor for the Channel 4 Indie Growth Fund, the producer of the WFTV mentoring scheme and a professional executive coach. Follow her at walterwootze.com

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TBI Well-being: How to survive MIPCOM - TBI Vision

Hi companies,

A quick note from a puzzled customer/bystander. Im trying to decipher the signals that youre sending out to the world; there seems to be a sizeable paradox on display.

All three of you madecoincidental headlinesin support of the global climate strikes, even halting business for a day to show that you mean business. It is awesome to see companies taking their environmental footprints seriously; that is the only way were going to make any progress if entities and people accept they are part of a massive web of emissions and consumption, and each does what it can to reduce.

It gets kind of weird though when you take your great initiatives and jump on board with the broader activist movement. For example, you also (at least Patagonia), linked up with 350.0rgs Bill McKibben, who had this to say on Patagonias website: Climate isnt an issue its a lens, a way to understand the economy, politics and foreign affairs. If growth was how we understood the 20thcentury, survival is how well bottom line the 21st.

Bill is quite clear where he stands; he is a fighter, an activist and happy jail-bird for the right cause. You three businesses are a bit of a conundrum though your very existence, and success, is kind of a bombastically huge exclamation mark on how we got into this global emissions mess, isnt it? In what way do any of you respect Bills survival metric?

The luxurious three of you Lush, Patagonia, B&Js thrive only in wealthy environments, ones where there is a lot of money to suck out of image-conscious jeans. A notable commonality of your brands is hedonism; you dont just slyly peddle luxury, you shout it.

The world is groaning under the burden of feeding, heating, and keeping healthy 7+ billion people. As you and Bill both claim, we need to lessen our footprint, to curb emissions, to live smaller. All well and good!

But lets be honest about what you flog. A container of sweet vanilla, pure marshmallow powder and a hint of lavender $7.45 per 190g or eight bucks tax incl for a single, decadent bath bomb. A cosmetic facial product consisting of rosewater and iris flower extract, glycerin and beeswax, all for only $29.95/100g, or a modest $300/kilogram.

Ben & Jerry, surely one of your most common ingredients is irony, with sprinkles of ineffable sanctimoniousness. One web page over from your description of the culturally imperative The Tonight Dough flavour (Caramel & Chocolate Ice Creams with Chocolate Cookie Swirls & Gobs of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough & Peanut Butter Cookie Dough) all humour evaporates as younotethat Climate change is about Justice The cruel irony of climate change is that people in the developing world those who can least afford to adapt will pay the steepest price for the 200 years of industrialization and pollution from the developed world.

I guess those who can most afford it are the ones that form your customer base, correct? You know what the steepest price is, B&J? How about $10 for a liter of ice cream?

How about $160 puffy jackets for children 6 months of age, with the lecturing manufacturer proudly proclaiming on their wall that 1% is for the planet. In other words, Patagonia will show its utter and total climatic devotion by sending $1.60 to help fund climate activism, and somehow find a home for the other $158.40 siphoned from the wallets of lifestylers. Probably 10 percent goes to the factory in China that makes these things, Im guessing? Ben & Jerry, those poor people in the developing world, all 3+ billion of them how does your extravagantly expensive lifestyle product fit into their fight for survival? Do you think they are impressed to see what you sell, while at the same time you demand that they stop using the fuels that barely keeps them alive? And Lush, what precisely is the profit margin on $300/kilogram of your sludge that is predominantly glycerin, beeswax, and some flower squeezings that pampered-silly pre-teens massage into their little faces?

Dont get me wrong, Ive enjoyed your products, including a Patagonia fleece for years, until it was so out of style friends wouldnt let me wear it. Because you know as well as I do that its about style as much as longevity. I enjoy Coffee Coffee Buzz Buzz Buzz ice cream when I can find it, but Canada is cruelly deprived of this flavour. And Lush, trust me, no one enjoys smearing pumpkin and banana and ground-up almonds all over their face as much as I do (though you could have warned about the dangers of doing this outside; a hundred frenzied birds are terrible for the complexion).

And being a businessperson, I have no problem with you making healthy profit margins thats how free markets are supposed to work.

But are you not architects, captains, optimizers, and gleeful champions of the over-consumptive lifestyle that is the very root cause of excessive emissions?

In an era where you are demanding immediate action with respect to greenhouse gas emissions/climate change, how do you even begin to justify your existence? The world does not need you. The world would suffer not the slightest if all three of your organizations vanished tomorrow. Your employees need not suffer, surely those deliriously large profit margins would be able to provide very handsome severances? Patagonia, you brag how youve sent $89 million to various environmental causes since 1985 in your 1% for the planet campaign; what happened to the other 99 percent/ $8.9 billion? And would those 6-month-old babies survive in, say, a $30 coat as opposed to the $160 beauty you peddle? Or is it built extra-capable for their arctic explorations?

Heres the problem, when you cross over from being captains of sustainable business practices to brothers-in-arms with the likes of McKibben. Heres a quote from him from your very ownemail/post, Patagonia: it has been a great pleasure to watch the climate movement, as it has grown, focus its attention ever less on the natural world and ever more on the injustice that is at the core of this strange moment in history.

It is bad enough when people knowingly make climate change a political issue, because you all know how politics goes right? If you want true progress, who in their right mind would seek to make the issue political? Need I ask you to view the carnage of the US political landscape to ask yourself if making climate change political is a good idea?

On top of that, there seems to be scant wisdom in vigorously attacking fuel industries that keep 7 billion people alive, all the while selling over-priced lifestyle products that are only affordable because of the wealth generated by that cheap energy. Every earthling relies on cheap reliable fossil fuels for energy and life as we know it. Cutting off heat supplies and eliminating the cooking fuel of billions of under-developed people simply isnt going to happen, and it wont in the comfortable west either.

Take, for example, Rhode Island in January of this year. Their governordeclared a state of emergencywhen overly-strong natural gas demand during a cold spell depressurized the system and 7,000 customers nearly froze to death. Im not kidding, the governor pleaded If you have heat, please, call your loved ones, your church members, anyone in the area, offer for them to stay over at your house. Make sure they have a warm place to stay tonight. This near catastrophe happened because people like McKibben have successfully blocked new pipeline construction. Do you honestly want a calamity like that on your head?

If, for some logical-yet-inconsistent reason you declare that you would rather stay in business and keep harming the planet with your existence, then we need to work together, the existing energy industry, the burgeoning renewable energy industry, the purveyors of luxury goods, and citizens as a whole. You need to stop attacking and start collaborating, and not with hate-filled shouters like McKibben. We need some grownups at the table.

And, as a start, if you decide that staying in business is preferable to shutting your doors, then please admit that you know better than anyone that lifestyle is not to be trifled with; people do not want to go without your Stuff That No One Needs.

There is no doubt that you are doing all you can to limit your footprint and go carbon neutral. Good for you. But the existential questions you raise when you support climate activists like McKibben is: why are you here at all?

If the stances of companies like these dont make sense, theres a reason. Pick up a copy of The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity available atAmazon.ca,Indigo.ca, orAmazon.com to find out why. It may well be the best decision you will ever make!

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Column: An open letter to Patagonia, Lush Cosmetics, and Ben & Jerrys your climate activism/lifestyle marketing/bipolar worldview begs the...