text stringlengths 181 608k | id stringlengths 47 47 | dump stringclasses 3
values | url stringlengths 13 2.97k | file_path stringlengths 125 140 | language stringclasses 1
value | language_score float64 0.65 1 | token_count int64 50 138k | score float64 1.5 5 | int_score int64 2 5 |
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Nov. 25, 1937
Ben Heppner and Jane Eaglen have been termed "the Tristan and Isolde for the new millennium," and you can hear them in those roles beginning Monday at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. But 60 years ago, Chicago swooned over another Isolde, Kirsten Flagstad of Norway. Her Tristan, Lauritz Melchior, went little remarked upon in '37, but upon his return here to sing with Flagstad three years later the pair were hailed as "the two persons who will probably go down in history as the standard Tristan and Isolde of this era." Edward Barry's review of Flagstad's debut:
When Kirsten Flagstad sang Isolde last night in a Chicago City Opera company mounting of "Tristan" the town's operagoers had their long delayed first opportunity to lay tribute at the feet of the reigning Wagnerian soprano of our day. This they proceeded to do by jamming the Civic Opera House from roof to cellar and by staging a series of demonstrations which have had few or no parallels in recent years.
In braided gold and flowing scarlet, looking like a queenly figure out of an ancient saga, the great Norwegian singer proved again and again in that first tumultuous act that she possesses the vocal equipment and the intelligence which Wagner dreamed of for the role.
The imperious sweep of her singing and the apparently limitless capacity of her voice are not more important to the total effect than the reserved, reginal dignity of her actions.
Mme. Flagstad's voice rides the long breathed phrases of this exciting, despairing, almost superhumanly taxing music without ever allowing a listener to suspect that the performance has become headlong or that she is anything less than complete mistress of her vocal destinies. This was demonstrated by the apt use of color at strategic moments -- in her narration of her early meeting with Tristan, for instance, when the voice that had shone with such a hard, vindictive luster took on a sad, misted quality which emphasized skilfully the content of the supercharged music.
And there was a weak, caressing humanness about the soprano's first ecstatic "Tristan," immediately after the potion had done its work.
Histrionically Mme. Flagstad's Isolde partakes of her own ample dignity. She has a genius for looking epic, analogous to her talent for making a phrase sound tremendously important. There is no posturing, but rather a series of noble tableaux in which the particular Isolde becomes hazy in the spectator's mind and merges with the Isoldes of all time. | <urn:uuid:e6631ca9-d0d8-47d1-bfca-8eb2f9535889> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2000-01-30/news/0001300296_1_isolde-tristan-civic-opera-house | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282935.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00244-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965742 | 550 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Blood-borne Pathogen Educational Exposure Protocol
If you come in contact with another person's blood or body fluid (e.g., through a needle stick injury or mucous membrane splash), take the following steps IMMEDIATELY.
1) Perform basic first aid:
- Clean the wound, skin or mucous membrane immediately with soap and running water.
- Allow blood to flow freely from the wound. Do not attempt to squeeze or milk blood from the wound.
- If exposure is to the eyes, flush eyes with water or normal saline solution for several minutes.
2) If you are located in Chandler Medical Center, locate a "red exposure packet" in your patient care area; this contains the Reportable Occurrence form and the Occupational Exposure form. Red packets are also available 24/7 in two central locations on the UK HealthCare Campus: the Central Staffing office at Chandler Hospital (room H144) and the Central Staffing office at Good Samaritan Hospital (room B102).
If you are located in UK Good Samaritan Hospital, page the nursing House Supervisor.
3) At any training site (UK or off-site) immediately contact University Health Services (UHS) at 859-323-2778 (APPT). UHS is responsible for your overall care. To the degree possible, know if your source patient has risk factors for HIV or Hepatitis.
- If prophylactic treatment is recommended, it should be instituted as soon as possible after the exposure.
- If UHS is not open, contact the on-call UHS physician immediately by calling 859-323-5321 and ask the operator to page the University Health Service on-call physician immediately. When the physician returns your call, inform them that you have had a blood borne pathogen exposure. Have source patient health information at hand including source patient name and medical record number if known.
- Source patient testing will be organized by UHS for source patients at Chandler Medical Center, by the nursing House Supervisor if at UK Good Samaritan, or by the course director for off-site students. Do not attempt to have your own blood drawn. Proper lab tests will be ordered for you by UHS personnel at the time of your visit OR you will be advised where to have your blood drawn by your course director.
4) Students on rotation within 50 miles of campus will receive all care at UHS. Students more than 50 miles from campus may, or may not, have care initiated at their rotation site. Contact your course director. All students will have all follow up care at UHS. Appointments can be made with University Health Service by calling 859-323-2778, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.
When reporting to UHS, the student must take a completed Reportable Occurrence form and a completed Occupational Exposure form. For students on rotation at UK, these forms are available at the nursing units. Off-site students may obtain these forms from the course director.
5) If the UHS physician prescribes prophylactic medication, they will advise you of the dispensing location. For on-site students and students in the immediate Lexington area, this will usually be through the UK Pharmacy. For students more than 50 miles from UK campus, pharmacies have been identified in coordination with the AHEC site coordinators. You will be informed of this pharmacy site at clerkship orientation.
6) At the time of exposure, the student must also report the exposure to the attending physician or resident. Off-site students must also notify the course director. | <urn:uuid:16583747-a4d8-4e26-af12-48b7486493dc> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.ukhealthcare.uky.edu/university-health-service/employee-health/exposure/educational | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570765.6/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808031623-20220808061623-00275.warc.gz | en | 0.938019 | 747 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Test::TempDir::Handle - A handle for managing a temporary directory root
use Test::TempDir::Handle; my $h = Test::TempDir::Handle->new( dir => dir("t/tmp") ); $h->empty; # ... $h->cleanup; # will delete on success by default
This class manages a temporary directory.
The Path::Class::Dir that is being managed.
An optional lock object (File::NFSLock). Just kept around for reference counting.
success means that
cleanup deletes only if
test_builder says the tests have passed.
The Test::Builder singleton.
Cleans out the directory but doesn't delete it.
Cleans out the directory and removes it.
delete if the
cleanup_policy dictates to do so.
This is normally called automatically at destruction.
יובל קוג'מן (Yuval Kogman) <email@example.com>
This software is copyright (c) 2006 by יובל קוג'מן (Yuval Kogman).
This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself. | <urn:uuid:1e93886d-8bf9-4a17-b0b6-923f57e757da> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://search.cpan.org/dist/Test-TempDir/lib/Test/TempDir/Handle.pm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281424.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00330-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.770291 | 270 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Daniel Powell 1:06 p.m., Jan. 22
Proposal that would ban nuclear power in California cleared to petition for 2014 ballot placement
Anti-nuclear activist Ben Davis Jr. is back with another proposed ballot initiative concerning the storage of nuclear waste that would effectively shutter the two remaining active nuclear power plants in California, or one if one doesn’t consider San Diego’s San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station “active,” as it’s now been shuttered for over a year.
Earlier this week, Davis was granted permission by California Secretary of State Debra Bowen to begin circulating petitions to place two initiatives regarding power generation in the state on the November 2014 ballot.
One ambitiously seeks to establish a statewide public utility to replace private companies such as San Onofre operator Southern California Edison and Sempra Energy’s San Diego Gas & Electric (to be covered at a later date). The other is similar to previous measures Davis has introduced, and seeks to extend a law requiring the California Energy Commission to “find federal government has approved technology for permanent disposal of high-level nuclear waste” from covering any proposed new nuclear plants to include existing plants at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon on the state’s central coast.
Such technology, however, does not exist, and plans for a nuclear waste repository are said to be at least 35 years away. Another exploratory proposal for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods may come sooner, but is still expected to take 20 years or more. Absent a plan for dealing with nuclear waste, which has been accumulating along the coast on the San Onofre site since 1968 (and at Diablo Canyon and the now-defunct Humboldt Bay and Rancho Seco plants), the current facilities would have to stop producing more waste, effectively ending operations.
Proponents of the initiative have until July 8 to gather 504,760 valid signatures to put the issue to a vote next year. A previous proposal failed to generate sufficient support after the Secretary of State included a comment predicting “billions of dollars” in costs to Californians on the petition, a statement Davis labeled “unsubstantiated, false, and misleading.”
More like this:
- Back to seeking ban — Dec. 12, 2012
- San Onofre: Are Repair Costs Worth It? — July 6, 2012
- Nuclear Waste Must be Considered in Plant Relicensing — June 19, 2012
- Nuclear Initiative Backers Look to Supreme Court to Place Measure on Ballot — June 18, 2012
- TV Ads Debut Targeting San Onofre — April 3, 2012 | <urn:uuid:fd9bb4fd-e324-4f08-b7ba-6a818625cd82> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/news-ticker/2013/feb/09/proposal-that-would-ban-nuclear-power-in-californi/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282202.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00557-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932157 | 548 | 1.976563 | 2 |
Perhaps Dr. Atkins had a point when he said no caffeine and no diet sodas. Recently in a study of coffee drinkers amongst people who have diabetes,
All these subjects normally drank two or more cups of coffee a day. They were given capsules of caffeine, the equivalent of four cups of coffee. The results were that blood sugar was raised and especially after meals, by about 25 % after dinner, for instance.
It was unclear why caffeine increases glucose levels. Dr. Lane suggested that adrenalin and other stress hormones released upon drinking coffee could perhaps stimulate glucose secretion in the liver.
Here is a link to explain what happens to folks with diabetes when consuming lots of caffeine - blood glucose levels are higher by 8% on those days: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/95380.php
My conclusions: If glucose levels are increased, then insulin levels would be increased and that would make one hungrier, as insulin is the hormone that stimulates hunger. Perhaps that is why paradoxically diet coke seems to make people fatter. Drinking diet coke or coffee raises blood sugar and that means more insulin and that in turn means more energy is stored in the body in the form of fat. Seems like Dr. Atkins knew what he was talking about prohibiting caffeine and diet sodas. | <urn:uuid:6ff2cbee-94aa-4fdf-a0b9-95457c3673dc> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://low-carb-news.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719027.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00302-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971074 | 265 | 2.703125 | 3 |
GMAX file extension - Autodesk Gmax file
What is gmax file? How to open gmax files?
File type specification:
The GMAX file extension is associated with the Gmax a 3D modeling tool for Microsoft Windows based on 3D Studio Max and aimed on video game developers. The .gmax file stores various data used for internal purposes of the Gmax.
The Gmax is obsolete product. | <urn:uuid:3db03795-cc7d-49b4-bee5-98a9e5600d19> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.file-extensions.org/gmax-file-extension | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280891.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00157-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.837008 | 88 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Kolkata, June 23 (IANS) Simple and unassuming, but gifted with tremendous inner strength born out of her deep spirituality, Sister Nirmala deftly carried on Mother Teresa’s legacy by extending the footprint of the Missionaries of Charity in new geographies while ensuring strict adherence to the Catholic congregation’s core motto of serving the poorest of the poor.
Sister Nirmala, who succeeded the Nobel Peace Prize winner as the second superior general of the Catholic religious order on March 13, 1997, months before the Albanian nun’s demise, passed away here early on Tuesday. She was 81.
During her 12-year stewardship of the Kolkata-headquartered Missionaries of Charity founded by the Mother in 1950, Sister Nirmala visited a large number of countries, opening new Houses and drawing more people to the religious order, which now has under its fold over 4.500 religious sisters and activities spread across 133 countries.
Born Nirmala Joshi at Ranchi in 1934 to a hindu Brahmin family that hailed from Nepal, Sister Nirmala was educated in a Catholic missionary school.
At the age of 17, while waiting at a bus stop, Sister Nirmala first felt “Jesus was alive in my heart”. Her inner turbulence continued for seven years, but the gory scenes of the Hindu-Muslim riots at the time of partition in 1947 proved the game changer in her life.
She came to Kolkata (then Calcutta), and met Mother Teresa, who had started her religious order takin care of the poor and the dying.
“It was inspiration at first sight,” Sister Nirmala, who held a post-graduate degree in political science and was a trained lawyer, later recalled in an interview.
The 24-year-old converted, becoming one of Mother Teresa’s earliest disciples, and immersed herself in the MoC’s services.
She was sent to supervise MoC’s centres in Europe and the United States, besides Panama, but came back in 1976 to start the MoC’s contemplative branch – that spent more time with the Eucharist as against the Active branch, which catered to the poor and the needy.
But with her advancing years, the mother turned frail and unwell, and Sister Nirmala was elected the MoC head on March 13, 1997. The Mother breathed her last on September 5 the same year.
It is believed the sisters who formed the electoral college opted for Sister Nirmala over nuns more experienced in administration for her holiness and deep spirituality.
“She carried on the Mother’s legacy very well indeed. New houses were opened in many countries. She was diminutive, simple and unassuming, but very strong inwardly. When she spoke, she spoke with conviction. There was real power in her words,” said the Archbishop of Kolkata, Thomas D’Souza.
Nirmala’s strong mental make-up came out beautifully during an interview she gave to Catholic World News over a decade back.
Asked about the problems the MoC was facing, Sister Nirmala laughed it away. “We cannot look at problems as ‘problems’. Problems are gifts of God. If you look at them as problems, they will be problems, but if you look at them as gifts of God, they are challenges, and we always welcome challenges. So they are challenges, not problems.”
She also said there was nothing called “obstacles”. “No, nothing is an obstacle. How you take it is what matters.”
Sister Nirmala was elected as MoC superior general for a second term in 2003.
She was re-elected for a third term on March 13, 2009, but wanted to be relieved of the responsibility owing to ill-health and also expressed a desire to return to the contemplative life she led before heading the order.
Days later, the MoC held a second election, and chose the German born sister Mary Prema as Sister Nirmala’s successor.
Sister Nirmala returned to the contemplative branch, spending her last days in meditation at the MoC’s Ahome near the bustling Sealdah station in central Kolkata.
“She earned everybody’s respect. Her advice everybody heeded,” said D’Souza.
In recognition to her services to the nation, sister Nirmala was bestowed the nation’s second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan, in 2009.
But what endeared Sister Nirmala to all was her uncluttered view of people and the world and ability to find joy in the smallest of things.
During Christmas and Easter, Sister Nirmala used to prepared small, handwritten messages and asked people to pick up one of them.
D’Souza recalled the messages used to be very poignant, very simple. “For example, she would write ‘You must be more kind’. And she would always ask people to read them out to her. And she was delighted to hear what one got.” | <urn:uuid:eee4a87b-2d3e-4163-a4f9-7a2a7534765a> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.mangalorean.com/sister-nirmala-an-able-bearer-of-mother-teresas-legacy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280128.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00392-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974995 | 1,095 | 2.328125 | 2 |
I came to work earlier this week to find a message from a wine club member:
Alder Yarrow posted a piece on Vinography today, and in it he noted that Arsenic is naturally occurring in soils, and that water contains Arsenic, and that bentonite, a clay sometimes used for fining, may likely contain Arsenic. Yarrow, also correctly pointed out that this story may be much ado about nothing, or unnecessary scaremongering, or a horribly self-serving manufactured ‘crisis.’ The folks doing the testing also filed a class action suit and may materially benefit from their findings. Yarrow also correctly stated that water consumption is (hopefully) much greater than wine consumption, and that even taking the test results at face value, the results mean very little, with negligible – or no – real health risk posed to consumers. Yarrow also shared that apple juice contains far higher level of Arsenic than wine or water, with no genuine concerns raised. A commenter to Yarrow’s post also suggested that the correlation between less expensive wine and higher tested levels of Arsenic may owe to second and third pressings of grape skins and seeds, in an effort to squeeze every last drop of juice, leading to the higher Arsenic concentrations; and pointed to a similar ‘get it all’ link between apple juice production and high levels of Arsenic in that juice.
Pam Strayer also weighed in with a post on Organic Wines Uncorked. Strayer provided a link to a list of the 78 wines with the highest concentrations of Arsenic. The list, from the original story’s souce, is located on a site called TaintedWine.com, whose very name suggests an axe to grind. That said, as Strayer correctly points out in her excellent post, NONE of the wines listed was grown certified organically or certified biodynamically. Strayer also provides a list of inexpensive wines grown organically in her piece today. Some things to consider: Arsenic is found in many inorganic fertilzers. Arsenic is also used as an pesticide. Organic herbicides may not contain Arsenic. It seems possible, to me, that it may be the use, or overuse, of these Arsenic laden chemical processes in conventional agriculture, and run off of those chemicals, that leads to measurable concentrations of Arsenic in stream, river, and lake water; as much or more than a leaching of heavy metals from the soil. As Mendocino County has the highest concentration of organic and biodynamic grape growers in America, I am pleased that none of the listed offenders was organic. That said, bentonite can be used in organically grown wines, and water polluted by conventional commercial agribusinesses is used by everyone, conventional and organic growers alike, in frost mitigation and irrigation. It is likely that ALL wine contains trace amounts of Arsenic, but is also likely that the levels are lower in wines made from organically and biodynamically grown grapes. Even so, there really seems to be very little cause for concern in the reports, it sounds horrible which plays great on television, but is of likely little real health consequence. If the spectre of danger from Arsenic in wine concerns you, I would suggest that organically or biodynmically grown wines might be the way to go for you. To be clear, I am neither a doctor nor scientist, and have never played one on TV; and every time I leave the realm of fact, I am involved in conjecture. Educated, informed conjecture; but conjecture, nonetheless. I’ll come back to add any info of significance, should it become available, but for now I think we can turn the page on this story.
EDITED TO ADD: Thanks to winemaker Mark Beaman for correcting my spelling of bentonite. I would love to blame autocorrect for the misspelling, but the mistake was surely all mine. Thanks to Di Davis, who shared the observations of her husband Will, who IS a scientist, and points out that Arsenic is everywhere and in everything, and the real focus should not be on concentrations but on dosage. What dose of Arsenic are you incurring from drinking inexpensive wine with a higher concentration of Arsenic than is allowed for California’s water? Likely a lot lower than merits your concern or fear.
In addition to any material gain that may come from the lawsuit filed, the testing company is holding itself out as a solution for the spurious problem they have promoted, offering their testing services to the very wine brands they are suing, it has been reported. At least one winery has tried to seek benefit from this story, posting on Facebook that their wine has “No Arsenic” which likely violates at least two laws, the first against false advertising and the second against the health claim prohibition all wineries are required to follow. | <urn:uuid:929b62b8-4c5c-47d5-b448-5d8a2e3edafb> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://johnonwine.com/tag/wine/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281069.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00264-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974756 | 1,026 | 2.171875 | 2 |
Victory Endurance introduces the new Energy Boost Gummies, its Energy Boost formula in solid form. An ideal fruit-based combination in form of gums; same composition of carbohydrate, amino acids, electrolytes and vitamins as our most technical gels, Boost Energy Gels. Provide energy during exercise, delay fatigue and improve performance.
Its proven composition contains:
- Mix of Carbohydrates: from fruit pulp (10%), sucrose and glucose syrup, combined in the right proportions to provide immediate but also durable energy.
- Branched amino acids (BCAAs): these essential amino acids are indispensable for muscle recovery. They are able to get into the energy cycles, providing energy and delaying fatigue. Also fight the feeling of tiredness or "central fatigue syndrome" in the brain.
- L-Arginine: this amino acid is a Nitric Oxide precursor, an important vasodilator that allows us to improve the transport of oxygen and nutrients to the cells. Important amino, which takes part in the process of removing toxins, released during exercise.
- L-Taurine: An amino acid that improves osmoregulation processes, important in endurance sports. Improves assimilation of other nutrients.
- Electrolytes: In endurance sports restoring electrolyte balance of the cell is essential for producing good muscle response. For this we add:
-Sodium: The most important mineral for its ability to rehydrate the cell, essential for the normal functioning of the muscles.
-Potassium is involved in acid-base balance, muscle contraction and neuromuscular activity. Facilitates water retention.
-Chlorine: Critical for maintaining water balance as it facilitates the absorption of fluids.
- Vitamins B6 and B1: Important in protein and energy metabolism. Combined ingest can improve motor skills. | <urn:uuid:27ac2839-4723-41d4-b12d-7024107dfae2> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.camposlorca.com/en/victory-endurance-energy-boost-gummies-with-caffeine-p-2577.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281574.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00026-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.887186 | 376 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Pianist and singer-songwriter Bruce Hornsby spent quite a few years playing in bars and writing songs — many of them with his brother, John Hornsby. The two moved to Los Angeles in 1980 and spent three years writing for 20th Century Fox. In 1985, Bruce Hornsby and his band The Range signed a recording contract with RCA. The resulting album, The Way It Is, produced three Top 20 hits and helped win the group a Grammy for Best New Artist in 1986.
Hornsby's compositions have traversed an eclectic mix of styles, from pop and jazz fusion to roots music and soul. On this episode of Piano Jazz, the influence of Keith Jarrett and Bud Powell peeks through as he performs "Solar" and "Parisian Thoroughfare."
Originally recorded June 19, 2003. | <urn:uuid:1a2bb77f-aa9c-4184-b9b3-5baa30bcffd6> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://wclk.com/post/bruce-hornsby-piano-jazz | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281746.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00288-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969788 | 169 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Personal Injury Cases
In a perfect word, people would be free to indulge themselves with different products and services in a worry-free environment. They could blissfully run around without thinking twice about a potential side effect from a drug or a product. Most of the products we use on a daily basis do not pose any harm to us. However, sometimes products fails or malfunction resulting in unintended consequences.
Thus, we have our legal system and within that, personal injury litigation. The personal injury space of law covers a wide variety of injuries that include injuries of the body, mind, or reputation. When a company creates a product and brings it to market, they routinely share the benefits of said product and highlight the positive impacts it will have on one’s life. If the product does not meet the advertised expectations, and at worse, causes harmful side effects to the buyer, that company should be held accountable.
There are many different types of personal injury cases. Our office practices and files mostly mass torts, class actions, and isolated civil case. Each type of case is treated differently. The main difference between mass torts and class action lawsuits is how the court treats the plaintiffs. Instead of treating them as a single entity, the court considers mass tort plaintiffs as individuals, and the compensation each plaintiff receives will reflect his or her specific damages.
A class-action is a type of civil lawsuit filed by a group of people or business entities who have suffered common injuries or damages because of the defendants’ conduct or negligence. In a class action, at least one individual or entity acts as a representative of the group of people or companies injured.
Burger King Lawsuit
A great example of a class action case is the recent Burger King lawsuit. In some of the court documents sited by Law360, Burger King’s Whopper was deemed “unfit for human consumption.” This isn’t such a profound concept. It continued saying, “because the burger’s packaging contains chemicals that can cause cancers, thyroid disorders and other illnesses, despite the fast food giant’s assurances that its product is safe.” The chemicals allegedly found in the packaging are known as “per- and polyfluoroalkyl substancesFAS”, or PFAS for short. According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), PFAS are used to make fluoropolymer coatings and products that resist heat, oil, stains, grease, and water. Items with this coating can be found in a variety of products including clothing, furniture, adhesives, food packaging, heat-resistant non-stick cooking surfaces, and in the insulation of electrical wires.
According to the lawsuit documents, the PFAS in the food packaging can migrate to the food it contains, which exposes consumers to the risk of illness. These risks can include cancer, liver damage, fertility issues and other diseases.
In this lawsuit the plaintiff is acting as a representative of the people who may have been harmed by Burger King’s products.
A mass tort is a type of civil case where multiple plaintiffs file claims against one or more parties. These types of claims typically involve similar grievances, with the different plaintiffs suffering physical or financial damages due to the negligence of a large company or companies. Individuals can file a mass tort at the state level and at the federal level.
Common types of mass tort lawsuits include claims involving:
- Dangerous drugs
- Defective medical devices
- Defective products
- Mass disasters or toxic conditions (like an oil spill)
Great examples of a mass torts are the CPAP machine lawsuits and the lawsuits involving Hernia Mesh victims.
You may have seen different ads mentioning a recall on CPAP machines. Philips Respironics issued a recall for Philips Bi-Level Positive Airway Pressure (Bi-Level PAP), Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP), and mechanical ventilator devices after potential health risks were identified. Most of these risks are associated with the sound abatement foam within the devices. This foam is a polyester-based polyurethane (PE-PUR) designed to reduce machine noise, making them quieter when in use. According to a notice send from Philip Respironics, this foam has been shown to degrade into tiny particles that may be ingested or inhaled by the user. These particles may also cause off-gassing from certain chemicals which could lead to a range of illnesses, including chemical poisoning, asthma, pulmonary fibrosis, and liver damage. People who have been using a CPAP machine and suffered worse health conditions after prolonged use, have filed civil claims against Philip Respironics.
Hernia Mesh Lawsuit
This is very similar to the victims of C.R. Bard’s hernia mesh products. C.R. Bard defectively designed its Composix Kugel hernia mesh with a memory coil ring that was prone to breaking and causing complications, according to a lawsuit filed by Vicky Sanders.
Bard’s Kugel mesh allegedly had manufacturing defects due to “substandard, adulterated, and/or non-medical grade polypropylene and raw materials used to make the Composix Kugel product which deviated from their material and supply specifications,” according to Sanders’ lawsuit documents.
Sanders also said that Bard failed to warn the public despite knowing that its product could cause health problems. Some patients are suing the hernia mesh manufacturer for compensation for damages, including lost wages, medical bills, loss of quality of life and pain and suffering. This came after their mesh implants failed, resulting in revision surgery to correct the damage done.
Experience is Needed for Both Class Actions and Mass Torts
So as you can see there similarities and differences between between class actions and mass torts, however, both required a skilled and experienced attorney to handle them. Our personal injury class action and mass tort lawyers have dedicated their careers to fighting for the rights of injured victims throughout the United States. If you were seriously injured through the negligence or wrongdoing of a company or another person, you may be able to file a lawsuit to secure the compensation you need for you and your family. Contact us today to speak with one of our specialists to review your case information. | <urn:uuid:2c3ae588-af8b-43e0-ab23-43f4128e38f7> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://fnj-law.com/the-difference-between-class-actions-and-mass-torts/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571536.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811224716-20220812014716-00275.warc.gz | en | 0.960743 | 1,298 | 1.9375 | 2 |
The Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph was represented last week at World Youth Day in Madrid, Spain. I wasn’t able to attend, but a number of our young people traveled in parish groups. For these young people, “back to school” started with a personal lesson with the Church’s #1 Teacher.
What is called World Youth Day is actually a multi-day event which is held usually every three years. Pope Benedict XVI has now participated, as Pope, in three such events. Large crowds – estimated this year at 1.5 million – of bright, enthusiastic (predominantly) young people from every continent once again greeted the Holy Father, who also met with separate groups of seminarians, university professors, and a select international group of young people for lunch and conversation. In addition to the climax of the Days, the celebration of Holy Mass on Sunday, the Pope heard confessions, and led a prayer vigil with Eucharistic adoration, shortened because of rain.
The theme of the 2011 World Youth Day was “Rooted and Built Up in Christ, and Firm in the Faith.” (cf. Col 2:7) Pope Benedict talked about our strong foundation in the personal encounter and friendship with Jesus Christ. He said that the terms “rooted, built up and firm” all point to solid foundations on which we can construct our lives.
In the welcome ceremony the Holy Father was greeted by King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia, other dignitaries, and Church officials. “I have come here to meet thousands of young people from all over the world, Catholics committed to Christ searching for the truth that will give real meaning to their existence. I come as the Successor of Peter, to confirm them all in the faith, with days of intense pastoral activity, proclaiming that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life; … to exhort young people to know Christ personally as a friend and so, rooted in his person, to become faithful followers and valiant witnesses.”
Again and again the Holy Father centered His message on this personal encounter and friendship with Christ. He said that, while we hear so many words in the course of our day, the words, “of Jesus … must reach our hearts, take root and bloom there all our lives. “
This message addressed to young people is, of course, for us all. If we are sixteen, or sixty, or ninety-six, Jesus’ Word may be received into our hearts. It is a saving Word that can change us – slowly, or sometimes overnight.
The reason it is so powerful is because, according to Pope Benedict, “the Master who speaks teaches, not something learned from others, but that which He himself is.” Christ alone, “truly knows the path of man towards God, because He is the one who opened it up for us.” He is the Way, and He set this path out for us, “so that we might have authentic lives, lives which are always worth living, in every circumstance, and which not even death can destroy.”
The Pope urged the young people, to “use these days to know Christ better.” Jesus alone can give us fullness of life. “Let that life grow with divine grace, generously … and “remain steadfast in your aim for holiness.”
You can find the texts of The Holy Father’s homilies and messages at the Vatican website and many other places. They are good meditation for prayer. The enthusiasm of these “Days,” is truly inspiring for all of us who look in hope for the tell tale signs of the Springtime of the New Evangelization.
For those of us who aren’t able to participate halfway around the globe, the good news is that Our Lord Jesus Christ is waiting for each of us, even now. May we let His love and His peace take deep root in our heart. May His Word change and renew us as we seek to live more and more for Him, and in accord with His example of self-giving love.
And let us ask Mary, Star of the New Evangelization, to keep our young people and all of us on a safe and true path to Him.
The next WYD is scheduled for Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2013 (a year early to avoid a conflict with the World Cup). | <urn:uuid:d7ac5706-caf9-4bd5-b10f-4c4cc8cb15a9> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://catholickey.org/2011/08/24/first-lesson-of-the-school-year-grow-in-friendship-with-christ/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560283301.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095123-00502-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966709 | 919 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Astronomers from Berkeley have discovered the closest supernova, or exploded star, in 40 years in the Pinwheel Galaxy, located just 21 million light-years from Earth.
On Tuesday night, the supernova exploded in the Pinwheel Galaxy, which was the closest star explosion of its type observed since 1972, according to astronomers.
The type Ia supernova, which researchers believe they caught within hours of its explosion, was dubbed as PTF11kly. The supernova is getting brighter and could be visible with a good pair of binoculars in the next 10 days.
PTF 11kly is getting brighter by the minute. It's already 20 times brighter than it was yesterday, Peter Nugent, of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement on Wednesday.
Observing PTF 11kly unfold should be a wild ride, said Nugent, who was the first person to spot the supernova. It is an instant cosmic classic.
Scientists from the University of Oxford made the discovery with their colleagues using the Palomar Transient Factory survey. The employed a robotic telescope in California in the United States.
The PTF 11kly was spotted blazing up in the Big Dipper, also known as the constellation Ursa Major. The new supernova is a Type Ia supernova. Type Ia supernovas are the result of a binary pair of mismatched stars, the smaller, denser one feeding on material drawn off its larger companion, until it can no longer take in any more material. Then it explodes in a catastrophic event that outshines the brightness of its entire galaxy, Universe Today reported.
Being the source of most of the chemical elements in the universe heavier than iron, supernovas also play an important role in the evolution of galaxies and planetary systems. They also seed the rest of space with elements such as carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, and can nudge gas clouds into collapsing to form new star systems.
Over the next couple of weeks, researchers will be having a close look at the supernova, catching its formation and evolution.
The most exciting thing is that this is what's known as a type 1a supernova, the kind we use to measure the expansion of the universe. Seeing one explode so close by allows us to study these events in unprecedented detail, said Oxford team leader Mark Sullivan.
The best time to see this exploding star will be just after evening twilight in the Northern Hemisphere in a week or so, Sullivan Said. You'll need dark skies and a good pair of binoculars, although a small telescope would be even better.
More than 1,000 supernovae have been discovered by the scientists in PTF, since it started operating in 2008, but they believe this could be their most significant discovery yet.
We are finding new clues to solving the mystery of the origin of these supernovae that has perplexed us for 70 years, said Andrew Howell of UC Santa Barbara. Despite looking at thousands of supernovae, I've never seen anything like this before.
The last time a supernova of this sort occurred so close was in 1972. They are calling the latest exploding star as supernova of a generation. | <urn:uuid:1eef45ef-cbd7-4471-bb43-c9bd013f7440> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.ibtimes.com/supernova-generation-brightest-exploding-star-40-years-spotted-305802 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280929.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00429-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951331 | 663 | 3.15625 | 3 |
Understanding why we remember22 October 2021
Our education portal, RSL Education, has plenty of free resources for teachers and parents to help teach young people the significance of Remembrance Day.
The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month – we’ve all heard the phrase but what does it really mean?
Why is it poppies for Remembrance Day and rosemary for ANZAC Day?
And what does ‘the Armistice’ have to do with any of it?
George Santayana once said that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. However, as the ranks of our older veterans thin, and most Australians’ links to the ANZACs fade into history, the reason behind many of these traditions can be lost.
If you’re teaching your students about Remembrance Day (or if you’ve ever wondered about the answers to any of those questions yourself), RSL Education has a range of curriculum-based, age-appropriate resources to help you out.
- Learn more about how we commemorate Remembrance Day, including the origins of The Ode of Remembrance that is read at commemorative ceremonies
- Find out about the symbolism in the activities connected to Remembrance Day
- Discover why poppies are associated with Remembrance Day (and create your own poppy or poppy wreath)
- Plan your own commemorative ceremony to gain a fuller understanding of its significance
- Explore the hardships the ANZACs experienced, and how that forged the ANZAC spirit and tradition
Older students can learn about what life was like for Australian soldiers during WWI, including the rules of war, the risk of gas attacks, and other dangers of trench warfare, or the lasting impact that WWI had on Australian society.
And even when Remembrance Day is past, there’s plenty more on the portal, such as educational resources on Health and Wellbeing – including a mini bootcamp and resources on empathy, resilience, and PTSD and anxiety. | <urn:uuid:e99f6b6b-6b27-4c49-9585-7feade020220> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://remembertoremember.com.au/understanding-why-we-remember | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572063.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814173832-20220814203832-00665.warc.gz | en | 0.948273 | 425 | 3.796875 | 4 |
A clear career path will help you gain the fulfilment and success that you want in life. A distinct aspect of having a career is being able to handle more tasks and earn more based on the experience that you have gathered over a period of time. Many people have certain jobs in a particular field while they strive towards the career of their choice in another field.
A career enables you to secure your future professional prospects. It allows you to broaden your skill base by identifying and developing the skills that you need to be more competitive in the job market. The more skills you have, the more marketable you will be as a candidate for various jobs.
Transitioning from one job to another is inevitable but you need to make rational decisions when changing jobs. A career lets you know the skills and expectations that are associated with the next job that you apply for.
Careers involve more responsibilities as you learn the skills that are essential for certain jobs, and you are required to fulfil more rigorous tasks along the way. Without a career, you will find it difficult to understand different responsibilities and the jobs that are ideal for your personality traits and aspirations. You need a career to be able to understand which types of jobs fit in with your objectives.
Career paths make it easier for people to make informed choices about their professional and personal lives. You gain the ability to analyse your situation accordingly and make decisions based on the options that are available.
When you are well acquainted with your career, you make plans regarding your finances and are aware of what the earning prospects are. It is always important to research on your career choices in terms of aspects such as what you can expect to earn and potential for growth.
A career path gives you direction and lets you determine where you want to be according to your lifestyle and objectives. A career fulfils you and becomes an integral aspect of who you are as an individual. It defines who you are during the process of developing more skills and networking with other professionals.
The fulfilment you gain from your career arises from being committed to the field that you work in. As you gain more experience, you enjoy the rewarding experience of being known for your expertise and achievements in the industry.
Recognition jewellery and awards are distinct as forms of recognition that can be worn. These wearable tokens of appreciation are among the most valued ways to acknowledge honorees. Unlike other awards such as plaques, recognition jewelleries like rn pins are worn and carried around by the recipients as a daily reminder of a particular milestone that has been achieved.
People who receive these types of symbolic awards are motivated and wearing them indicates to others that they have excelled within a particular area of service. You can recognize your dedicated staff or members by presenting them with valuable and wearable mementos.
For more information about rn pins visit the site. | <urn:uuid:c9421eb8-3ff3-41fb-9518-2f129c0f33e1> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://thecollegepeople.com/2015/12/why-you-need-a-career/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284352.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00196-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974723 | 578 | 2.4375 | 2 |
Every challenge has a backstory
The City of Martinsburg, West Virginia, USA, detected perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS), two types of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), in its Big Springs water source at concentrations exceeding USEPA’s 2016 Lifetime Health Advisory. As a result, the city closed its Big Springs water filtration plant until it was able to provide treatment of these compounds.
Focus on solutions
Working with the client from 2016 to 2022, Ramboll performed initial pilot testing and concept level designs for alternative approaches that would remove the PFOA and PFOS. Pilot studies included rapid small-scale column tests (RSSCTs) to confirm the effectiveness of granular activated carbon (GAC) for the Big Springs source water.
Following the pilot studies and concept designs, Ramboll was retained for final design, construction management and startup services for the upgrade project, all on an expedited schedule. This approach allowed the City to resume use of its Big Springs water treatment plant.
Results that matter
With a treatment capacity of over 5 mgd, the new system is one of the largest installed to date in the US for the treatment of PFAS.
Construction was completed on a fast-track schedule, with the system going into partial operation 10 months after starting design and treating PFOA and PFOS to below detection levels. The superstructure was then installed around the operating GAC contactors.
Ramboll has provided operational support to the city during the first three years of operation, including a sampling program to determine the rate of GAC exhaustion for the full suite of PFAS compounds, additional RSSCTs to compare alternative GAC media, and procurement of GAC change-outs. Ramboll also supported the city in successful negotiations with the federal government for recovery of all capital and operating costs. | <urn:uuid:476ac661-7f49-43fc-a8be-1d31232052c1> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://ramboll.com/projects/usa/pfoa-pfos-water-treatment-plant-upgrades-martinsburg-west-virginia | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572870.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817062258-20220817092258-00667.warc.gz | en | 0.941634 | 401 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Architecture is the art and science compound of designing buildings and other structures. This definition is also including designing whole built environment from macro level, building/structure with landscape to micro level as building materials and details. Detail is most important in every aspect of these creations. Architectural details are the parts of beautiful buildings but also very beautiful object in them self. Ones that specially mark off from building are sculptures.
So many wonderful signs of people’s visions describing their lives, pain, sorrow but also love, passion,
fun, gratefulness and even | <urn:uuid:91b407e2-81fd-4e8a-b70f-69a6eafb14b7> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://blog.dreamstime.com/2008/03/07/architectural-detail_art25604 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279410.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00171-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969694 | 114 | 2.375 | 2 |
The plant, proposed to be located on the Green River in Emery County, will lease up to 24,000 acre feet of water owned by the District for 60 years.
In exchange for the water, the conservancy district will receive $800,000 a year and, possibly more importantly, will be enabled to “prove up” on the water right.
In 1967, the San Juan Water Conservancy District was granted the right to develop 24,000 acre feet of water each year from the San Juan River for use in a proposed power generation plant.
Organizations generally have 50 years to develop a granted water right. If nothing is done within that timeframe, the water right could be revoked.
The proposed power plant never materialized on the San Juan River and it seemed unlikely that the water right could be developed before the 50 year window expires in 2017. However, the contract with Transition Power Development LLC will allow the district to secure the right.
Significant and continued growth in the lower Colorado River basin (Nevada, Arizona and California) is increasing the pressure for those holding water rights in other areas to “use it or lose it.”
It is estimated that the developmental phase for the power plant will last ten years. The Conservancy will be paid $80,000 a year for the leased water until the plant opens. At that time, the lease will pay $800,0000 a year for 60 years.
Officials explained that the diversion point for the water right will need to be changed from the San Juan River to the Green River. The contract provides $10,000 to help pay for the cost of changing the diversion point.
Transition Power Development LLC has also secured water rights from the Kane County Water Conservancy District. The Kane Water contract is for 30,000 acre feet of water rights. The district will receive $100,000 a year for five years, $500,000 a year until the plant becomes operational, and $1 million a year once the plant is operational.
San Juan County Commissioner Bruce Adams said that the contract will allow Kane County to pursue the development of a pipeline to carry water from Lake Powell to the fast growing areas in Kane and Washington counties.
Adams said that the Kane County plan is a great example of what the contract can do for the water conservancy district. “San Juan can prove up on a valuable water right and make a little money doing it,” said Adams. He added, “This will allow us to develop additional water rights.”
Commissioners hinted that the funds can be used for a number of purposes, including the proposed Clay Draw reservoir northwest of Monticello.
At the current time, the San Juan Water Conservancy District has approximately 45,000 acre feet of water rights that have been granted but not developed.
The contract with Transition Power Development is for 24,000 acre feet, while the Elk Meadows development north of Monticello has secured another 10,000 acre feet. The communities in Eastland and Bluff have secured small portions of the remaining granted water rights, leaving about 10,000 acre feet undesignated.
Commissioners report that the Conservancy has applied for a number of water rights that have not been granted. They said that the contract with Transition Power Development may result in the eventual granting of the outstanding applications.
The Conservancy District Board approved the contract at an emergency meeting of the board on November 29. Officials stated that quick action was needed on the contract to meet application deadlines of Transition Power Development.
San Juan County Clerk Norman Johnson, who also serves as chairman of the Water Conservancy Board, said that the group developing the nuclear power plant project were seeking to secure up to 60,000 acre feet of water from the conservency district.
When asked at the December 3 Commission meeting if the district gave away the ability of San Juan County to grow, Adams said, “It gives us money to develop additional water rights.... $50 million is not a giveaway.” | <urn:uuid:8a9013e3-9e7b-44bb-8e5e-8e21af9dee95> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://sjrnews.com/pages/full_story/push?article-San+Juan+water+may+be+used+in+proposed+nuclear+power+plant%20&id=6745303&instance=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279410.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00173-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953324 | 822 | 2.296875 | 2 |
You don't have to twist people's arm to eat ice cream, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't block out some time to celebrate this fantastic frozen treat. Sure, why not?! Every year in July, right in the dog days of summer, we take our time and set our sights on frozen treats that live in cones.
In 1984, President Ronald Reagan designated July as National Ice Cream Month and the third Sunday of the month as National Ice Cream Day. He recognized ice cream as a fun and nutritious (that's perhaps a bit of a stretch, but what the hey... it was the 80's) food that is enjoyed by over 90 percent of the nation's population. In the proclamation, President Reagan called for all people of the United States to observe these events with "appropriate ceremonies and activities."
The International Ice Cream Association (IICA) encourages retailers and consumers to celebrate July as National Ice Cream Month. In 2016, National Ice Cream Day will be Sunday, July 17. Yes, good people, July 17 - that's coming right up! Are you ready? Have you laid in stores of your favorite flavors? You may want to get your plans together.
People are serious about their ice cream. About 10.3 percent of all the milk produced by U.S. dairy farmers is used to produce ice cream, contributing significantly to the economic well-being of the nation's dairy industry.
The Greater Lansing area is full of awesome places to celebrate this Month and Day of ice cream, so make the tour and celebrate to the fullest! Here are a few to be sure and try out!
The MSU Dairy Store - Kids of all ages will have a difficult time choosing among 32 flavors of ice cream and soda fountain favorites. A variety of award-winning cheeses are also available. Be sure to visit the observation deck overlooking the processing facilities to see fresh ice cream being made! This is a Spartan classic - pure and simple. Try the flavors of the Big Ten!
Cold Stone Creamery - This is the ultimate ice cream experience. Made to order and too good to turn down.
Dairy Queen - Enjoy DQ Royal Treats, Blizzards, shakes or malts, soft serve ice cream, cakes and Blizzard Cakes for all occasions. Also, refreshing Orange Julius drinks, premium fruit smoothies and more. | <urn:uuid:178b5c0a-10b5-4a6e-b2be-bde2586b806d> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.lansing.org/blog/post/celebrate-ice-cream-in-july/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281226.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00381-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957786 | 475 | 2.015625 | 2 |
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About this product
- DescriptionFew philosophers have been the subject of as much or as intense debate, yet almost everyone agrees on one thing: Jean-Jacques Rousseau is among the most important and influential thinkers in the history of political philosophy. This book brings together fresh translations of three of Rousseau's works.
- Author BiographyJean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) was a leading Genevan philosopher and political theorist and one of the key figures of the Enlightenment. John T. Scott is professor of political science at the University of California, Davis. He has edited or translated several volumes on Rousseau and is coauthor of The Philosophers' Quarrel: Rousseau, Hume, and the Limits of Human Understanding.
- Author(s)Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- PublisherThe University of Chicago Press
- Date of Publication04/04/2014
- Place of PublicationChicago, IL
- Country of PublicationUnited States
- ImprintUniversity of Chicago Press
- Content Note4 halftones
- Weight458 g
- Width90 mm
- Height60 mm
- Spine19 mm
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Thanks, we'll look into this. | <urn:uuid:6f4a6bcf-864a-482a-b631-f54111130d61> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.ebay.co.uk/p/The-Major-Political-Writings-of-Jean-Jacques-Rousseau-The-Two-Discourses-and-the-Social-Contract-by/200991631 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281226.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00377-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.85588 | 366 | 2.421875 | 2 |
Audubon's Bird & Climate Change Report
Audubon’s Birds and Climate Change Report, published in September 2014, confirmed that climate change is the single greatest threat to North American birds, and warns that 314 North American bird species could lose more than half of their current ranges by 2080 due to rising temperatures. This report is based on extensive citizen science (like the annual Christmas Bird Count) and climate data. The Audubon Report at a Glance contains information on the report (and a link to the report itself), as well as how to use animated "climatic range" maps for the 314 bird species; these maps are guides to where particular bird species may find the climate conditions they need to survive in three future time periods (2020, 2050, and 2080). One can view all 314 species and these maps, or search by geographical location or by a specific bird.
Buena Vista Lagoon area birds at risk from climate change
Local Bird Species in the Buena Vista Lagoon Area at risk from climate change (this spreadsheet is from CA Audubon SoCal Regional Climate Summit, Winter, 2016).
Explanation Guide for " Local Bird Species in the Buena Vista Lagoon Area at risk from climate change" spreadsheet.
California Birds Predicted To Be Impacted By Climate Change
This spreadsheet (obtained from the from CA Audubon SoCal Regional Climate Summit, Winter, 2016) shows birds throughout California that are at risk from climate change. Click on the CA Bird List tab to see the list of these birds, and for instructions on reading the list, click on the Instructions on Reading List tab.
What is Buena Vista Audubon doing about climate change?
In early 2015, BVAS completed several projects to improve energy efficiency at the Nature Center, earning “green” certification from the City of Oceanside. In 2016, we purchased a piece of rare coastal habitat, now named the BVAS Wetlands Reserve, which will now be permanently protected for bird species at risk from climate change. More land acquisition is hopefully on the way in 2017, as BVAS seeks funding to acquire a parcel of land that would provide contiguous habitat between Camp Pendleton and the San Luis Rey River. Stay tuned!
WHAT YOU CAN DO
While these results are shocking, they provide a roadmap for action. By identifying which birds are most at risk, and the areas they may inhabit in the future, we can prioritize protections for critical habitat. We can also make personal choices that reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions, and we can support legislation and policies that support clean energy, Community Choice Aggregation, public transportation options such as light rail, and preserving open space.
This short article adapted from a NYT piece has helpful information on what people can do about climate change.
Donations that make a difference!
Your donation will help us further our mission of providing nature-based education to local children, offering birding classes and other programs, protecting and restoring North County wildlife habitats, and more!
Conservation Through Education, Advocacy, Land Management, and Monitoring
Buena Vista Audubon
PO Box 480
Oceanside, CA 92049
Tuesday 10 am-1 pm
Wednesday 10 am-1 pm
Thursday 10 am-1 pm
Friday 10 am-1 pm
Saturday 10 am-1 pm | <urn:uuid:fb3c321b-1ef6-481b-b51c-15abded781af> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://bvaudubon.org/audubon-and-climate-change/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570921.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809094531-20220809124531-00271.warc.gz | en | 0.907904 | 709 | 3.828125 | 4 |
Browsing Division of RNA biology of bacterial infections ([HIRI] RABI) by Subjects
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Atlas of the Immune Cell Repertoire in Mouse Atherosclerosis Defined by Single-Cell RNA-Sequencing and Mass Cytometry.Using single-cell RNA-sequencing of aortic leukocytes from chow diet- and Western diet-fed Apoe-/- and Ldlr-/- mice, we detected 11 principal leukocyte clusters with distinct phenotypic and spatial characteristics while the cellular repertoire in healthy aortas was less diverse. Gene set enrichment analysis on the single-cell level established that multiple pathways, such as for lipid metabolism, proliferation, and cytokine secretion, were confined to particular leukocyte clusters. Leukocyte populations were differentially regulated in atherosclerotic Apoe-/- and Ldlr-/- mice. We confirmed the phenotypic diversity of these clusters with a novel mass cytometry 35-marker panel with metal-labeled antibodies and conventional flow cytometry. Cell populations retrieved by these protein-based approaches were highly correlated to transcriptionally defined clusters. In an integrated screening strategy of single-cell RNA-sequencing, mass cytometry, and fluorescence-activated cell sorting, we detected 3 principal B-cell subsets with alterations in surface markers, functional pathways, and in vitro cytokine secretion. Leukocyte cluster gene signatures revealed leukocyte frequencies in 126 human plaques by a genetic deconvolution strategy. This approach revealed that human carotid plaques and microdissected mouse plaques were mostly populated by macrophages, T-cells, and monocytes. In addition, the frequency of genetically defined leukocyte populations in carotid plaques predicted cardiovascular events in patients. | <urn:uuid:a33edec6-1e3a-411a-985a-1bbb9cdf7ffa> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://repository.helmholtz-hzi.de/handle/10033/620968/browse?type=subject&value=single-cell+RNA-sequencing | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572089.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814234405-20220815024405-00068.warc.gz | en | 0.914132 | 376 | 1.5625 | 2 |
While a lot of internet threats are rather over-hyped, there are some serious things to be cautious of when going online. Probably the biggest risk to the average internet user is malicious software. Commonly knows as "malware," this term refers to any program that exists solely to do harm. This may include damaging your computer or accessing your data without you knowing. Viruses, trojans, and spyware are all forms of malware. Now, malware can seriously mess up your system, and the idea of somebody having access to your personal info is understandably scary. Here are a few common sense tips you should always follow to help keep your computer clean.
- Install anti-virus software. But not too much! A common mistake that people make is in thinking that having more than one anti-virus program will keep their computer twice as safe. On the contrary, this can cause both programs to stop performing correctly. Pick one solid program that you like. You'll also need to set up an automated scan. Folks who rely solely on manual scans run the risk of letting viruses slide by. The average computer user should schedule a scan for at least once a week. If your anti-virus software has real-time protection, that's even better.
- Don't click on any pop-up ads. Pop-ups are notorious for installing sneaky things. Some sites have gotten really clever, designing pop-up ads that look like normal computer error messages. Think before you click. Read the error message carefully. If there are spelling mistakes, or if the error message is framed within a browser window, close it immediately.
- Don't open email attachments from people you don't know. If you see a file name that ends in ".exe", delete it immediately. An .exe file is a program file. Even if you don't see a program file, look for clues that point towards the sender being less than trustworthy. If the text of an email seems overly generic and you don't recognize the sender, there could be trouble. When in doubt, reply and ask the sender to identify his-or-herself before downloading anything. Here's an example of an email that should raise warning flags:
- Be wary about downloading programs from sites you don't recognize. Now, that said, there's a lot of really great independent and user-made software out there. But before you click that "Download" link, do a little research. Internet users love to talk about their recent downloads, so if somebody else has had problems, a quick Google search should turn up their comments in no time. It's also a good idea to see if the program you want can be found through a reputable download source, such as CNET Download, Brothersoft, or Softpedia. | <urn:uuid:bc41c40f-1256-44c2-85f0-744e436efaee> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-to-stay-computer-virus-free_n_847334 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573118.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817213446-20220818003446-00671.warc.gz | en | 0.957815 | 566 | 3.203125 | 3 |
Community-centred and asset-based approaches
There is growing interest in community-centred and asset-based approaches that help to improve health and wellbeing, reduce health inequalities and support people with long-term conditions. During COVID-19, our local communities have been a vital part of the pandemic response and will continue to be important as we move towards recovery.
There is published guidance on what we mean by community-centred and asset-based approaches and the types of approach that work. Outcomes from these approaches include increased social connectedness, empowerment, participation, cohesion, resilience and social capital. These community level outcomes help protect our health and buffer against disease.
Community-centred and asset-based approaches are, by their nature, diverse and work differently in every locality. It is often difficult to assess, measure and compare the wider social impacts of these kinds of approaches, but there is evidence for a good social return on investment.
Practice examples are an important way of capturing the evidence on what is working, why and how, and what learning may be useful for other areas. This page is part of a growing collection of practice from across England, that has been captured as part of our programme of work to improve access to evidence on what works when it comes to community-centred and asset-based approaches.
The full collection of community-centred practice examples is available below, or you can choose the appropriate topic from the ‘family of approaches’. Many of the examples in our collection use more than one kind of approach.
|Community-centred and asset-based approaches: family of approaches|
|Strengthening communities||Volunteer and peer roles||Collaborations and partnerships||Access to community resources|
Some local areas have scaled up one or more of these approaches in a whole system way and examples of this can be found here.
We have also collaborated with the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) to collate some case studies that showcase the role of volunteering in whole system approaches, and these can be found here.
Finally, we have also collaborated with the Local Government Organisation (LGA) to pull together case studies of community champion programmes which have supported local responses to COVID-19, and these can be found here. For more information on community champions approaches more generally, please refer to our rapid scoping review on this topic.
Click on the title of the case study in the table below to view the full text. The search box will return relevant results from the whole collection.
|Title||Summary||Author Organisation||Organisation Type||Geographical Area - Region|
|Addressing social isolation and loneliness in North Yorkshire|
|Combining community and individual approaches at scale in North Yorkshire to reduce social isolation and loneliness in a large rural county. |
The Council invested in two new teams (Stronger Communities and Living Well) which work together on community development and person-centred approaches to empower individuals and communities in North Yorkshire to meet their needs and achieve key health and wellbeing outcomes. Together with existing teams in the Council they draw on approaches from all four categories from the family of community-centred approaches.
|North Yorkshire County Council||Local Authority||Yorkshire & the Humber|
|Auntie Pam’s peer volunteer scheme helps mums-to-be in Kirklees|
|Auntie Pam’s is a support service for mums-to-be in Kirklees. In setting up and running this service we have learnt how user led service design and development can result in a cost effective service with many additional benefits to the community.||Kirklees Council||Local Authority||Yorkshire & the Humber|
|Bright Beginnings: support for vulnerable migrant and refugee women during the perinatal period|
|The project offers support during the perinatal period for women from migrant and refugee communities through five bilingual maternity mentors.||Manor Gardens Centre||Voluntary & Community Sector||London|
|Building capabilities in young people: participatory action research|
|This study embedded the views, values and opinions of young people in the design of future services, for 5-19 year olds, in Doncaster.||Sheffield Hallam University/Doncaster Council||Academic/Local Authority||Yorkshire & the Humber|
|Building Inclusive Communities: Hangleton and Knoll Multi Cultural Women's Group|
|This community-led flourishing group has an active committee of 25 women in touch with over 180 mostly Arabic and Bengali women to meet their needs. The group is supported to provide an array of health and wellbeing activities for BME women including peer led health walks, weekly yoga, Zumba and swimming as well as training on assertiveness, food safety, first aid and English Classes.||Hangleton & Knoll Project||Voluntary & Community Sector||South East|
|Champions Show the Way|
|The service aims to improve physical and mental health through the provision of Volunteer Community Health Champion led activities within the community.||Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust||NHS||Yorkshire & the Humber|
|Communities Driving Change: a brave new world for commissioning|
|Communities Driving Change (CDC) uses a community development approach to understand the assets, needs and aspirations of the local community. Residents are supported to co-produce and lead on plans for change they want to see in their communities in order to improve health and wellbeing.||London Borough of Tower Hamlets||Local Authority||London|
|Community based approaches to addressing high blood pressure with black African and Caribbean men|
|Our intention was to develop a community-centred pilot programme to offer blood pressure testing in two areas, as well as to raise awareness of high blood pressure in black African and Caribbean males.||Race Equality Foundation||Voluntary & Community Sector||London|
|Community Health Champions - Redcar and Cleveland|
|Redcar and Cleveland Community Health Champions programme aims to improve health and address health inequalities in Redcar and Cleveland.||Redcar & Cleveland Council||Local Authority||North East|
|‘Community in the Making’ – creative, collaborative community research in Bromley by Bow|
|This practice example shares learning from collaborative and creative community research in Bromley by Bow. It was designed to both a) develop community-informed outcomes for the Bromley by Bow Centre and GP practices and b) build confidence, skills, relationships and ownership for change amongst the community taking part.||Bromley by Bow Centre||Voluntary & Community Sector||London|
|Community Kick-Start Programme: Bristol Ageing Better|
|The Bristol Ageing Better Community Kick-Start Fund Programme offers micro funds of up to £2,000 to support the development of new activities that enhance community contributions, and reduce isolation and loneliness in older age. The scheme is open to any charity, community group or group of older people, with a focus on small groups commonly bypassed in capacity building initiatives. A volunteer older people’s panel assesses applications and volunteer Community Researchers evaluate the programme with support from Age UK Bristol and the University of the West of England.||University of the West of England/Age UK Bristol||Academic/Voluntary & Community Sector||South West|
|Community Organising for Health and Wellbeing in East Wycombe|
|In 2015 Public Health at Buckinghamshire County Council as part of a programme of initiatives to improve the health of the most disadvantaged, reviewed potential models for community engagement, to address the broader social determinants of health. It agreed work should focus in an area of multiple deprivation in East Wycombe to harness the social capital within that community, including identifying interventions and initiatives to improve their health and wellbeing.||Buckinghamshire County Council||Local Authority||South East|
|Community Wellbeing Practices - Halton|
|Community Wellbeing Practices is a service providing community navigation, social prescribing and actions to address the social challenges which contribute to poor health outcomes. From this project we have learnt the value of aligning clinical and wellbeing services aimed at using community assets.||Wellbeing Enterprises CiC||Community Interest Company||North West|
|Connected people connected communities: Newcastle and Gateshead|
|Newcastle and Gateshead are finding out what can be done to make their communities where people make and maintain good quality relationships.||NHS Newcastle Gateshead CCG, Newcastle City Council, Gateshead Council||NHS/Local Authority||North East|
|Co-production as part of commissioning, with a focus on assets and building the capacity of communities to participate in service redesign|
|Commissioned ethnographic research with communities in Wirral to find out their views about health and wellbeing and how they want to work with the Council, by visiting community hubs and places that had previously not been visited. This included bingo halls, pubs and spaces not typically associated with a ‘service’. |
Wirral Council used this information to redesign their health improvement services, it gave clarity on where to spend the budget more effectively. For example, they decommissioned the health trainer service, and commissioned community connectors, door-knockers who supported getting people out of the house, into employment and volunteering; focusing on the individual wider determinants of health whilst also building community capacity.
|Wirral Council||Local Authority||North West|
|Developing Health and Independence ROADS Peer Support Service/Buddy System|
|Developing Health and Independence (DHI)’s peer support/buddy system looks to provide peer-led support for those accessing drug and alcohol services, by providing peer-led telephony and face to face support provision. Further information: Buddy System Review.||DHI Bath||Voluntary & Community Sector||South West|
|Embedding CABA approaches across the North East|
|The North East has developed a sector led improvement programme of work to build capacity and capability across the system to adopt community centred and asset-based practice, and to engage effectively with communities. This practice example outlines the key deliverables and successes in relation to this.||PHE North East Centre||Civil Service||North East|
|Engaging communities in local alcohol decision-making: examples from three areas|
|We identified multiple ways in which community members can contribute to local authority decision-making that shapes the local alcohol environment. These included statutory consultation processes (e.g. licensing), contributing to development of new alcohol policies, representation on committees and through more informal relationship-building. While barriers to engagement persist, there are clear examples of community contributions to the alcohol decision-making process.||Sheffield Hallam University/London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine/Public Health England ADT&J Division||Academic/Civil Service||National|
|Fit for Future – taking a more community-led approach to public health|
|We are in the process of shifting public health from being more focused on programmes and interventions to a more bottom-up approach working with communities on the issues that matter to them. Fit for Future was a flagship project as part of this process, which used a place-based, community-led, transformative approach to address childhood obesity and wellbeing.||Gateshead Council||Local Authority||North East|
|Friends, Families and Travellers Health Project|
|The Health Project at FFT has been running since 2003, funded by various bodies. The project paved the way for health trainers, by using peer education and support as its main focus.||Friends, Families & Travellers||Voluntary & Community Sector||South East|
|Get Oldham Growing|
|Get Oldham Growing (GOG) is a programme focused on connecting people using food and growing. This is done through ‘Growing Hubs’, which bring people together and build connections between residents, the local voluntary and community sector (VCS), social enterprises and the local authority. These hubs are platforms for community engagement, leading to improved levels of social connectedness in an area and bringing people together to improve health and wellbeing, promote enterprise, and build skills and confidence. Access to fresh, unprocessed fruit and vegetables also improves local peoples’ diets and encourages people to try new things, widening their knowledge of unfamiliar fruit and veg.||Oldham Council||Local Authority||North West|
|Get Yourself Active – local coordination in Cheshire and Leicester|
|Get Yourself Active is about developing local partnerships and new approaches to engaging disabled people in physical activity using a local coordination model.||Disability Rights UK||Voluntary & Community Sector||North West/East Midlands|
|Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service Safe and Well Visits|
|Safe and Well visits carried out by GMFRS. The visit expands on the scope of previous home safety checks by focusing on health and wellbeing and crime prevention, as well as fire.||Greater Manchester Fire & Rescue Service||Emergency Services||North West|
|Gypsy, Roma and Traveller health needs in County Durham|
|Community based commissioning aims to address health inequalities and improve health and social care for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller families in Durham.||Durham County Council||Local Authority||North East|
|Health and wellbeing community development and Health Improvement Programme in Aylesbury Town, Buckinghamshire|
|The programme uses a community development approach to health improvement providing a Healthy Living Centre (HLC) within the Walton Court / Southcourt community of Aylesbury Town in the Buckinghamshire County Council area, alongside engagement in other key areas of deprivation across Buckinghamshire. |
The overall programme includes a generic Skilled for Health Programme called English for Health and Wellbeing (SfHW), a Skilled for Health maternity programme with Black and Ethnic Minority (BaME) women of childbearing age, a range of health improvement activities e.g. simply walk, chair based exercise, youth hub and boxing club, dementia activities such as silver singers and senior lunch clubs, underpinned by a range of community development and engagement approaches, including volunteering.
These activities both build the capacity of individuals and the local community, and include recruiting target individuals into the relevant health improvement programmes to improve health and wellbeing. The Healthy Living Centre also has a community café which draws people in to the centre, a nursery and the management and hire of the attached community centre facilities on behalf of the local housing trust. See also: case study.
|Buckinghamshire County Council||Local Authority||South East|
|HenPower: henergising older people's lives|
|HenPower combines hen-keeping and creativity to combat loneliness and improve the wellbeing of older people and those living with dementia.||Equal Arts||Voluntary & Community Sector||North East|
|Highbridge Ladies Running Club|
|A free to participate, volunteer led, sustainable beginner’s ladies running group in Highbridge, Somerset. The group has been set up to encourage complete beginners to give jogging/running a go and those looking to re visit the activity to ‘get out there and give it a go’. Set up to promote health and wellbeing through physical activity whilst encouraging a strong social element tackling isolation and again promoting inclusion.||Knightstone Housing Association||Private Organisation||South West|
|Increasing Physical Activity Levels: Halcon|
|Zing Somerset’s work aimed to increase the physical activity levels and social wellbeing of the most inactive local residents in Halcon.||SASP||Voluntary & Community Sector||South West|
|Integrated Wellness (Live Life Well) Sunderland|
|An integrated wellness service has been developed in Sunderland to provide a holistic approach to improving health. From this work we have learned a lot about the benefits and challenges of public engagement and service integration. Communication with our service provider has proved to be critical to the project’s success.||Sunderland City Council||Local Authority||North East|
|Lunch Positive HIV support|
|Community lunch clubs, groups and initiatives for people with HIV. Frontline volunteer service delivery that supports people with complex need & multiple disadvantage. Addressing social determinants of health within a user-led service environment.||Lunch Positive||Voluntary & Community Sector||South East|
|Macmillan Social Prescribing (MSP) Pilot in East London|
|Social Prescribing is a linking service which connects people to community-based activities and supports which help improve their wellbeing. It is an assets-based approach which works with people’s individual circumstances and aspirations to help link them to meaningful activities and support. |
The Macmillan Social Prescribing (MSP) pilot works across four Boroughs in East London (Tower Hamlets, City & Hackney, Newham and Waltham Forest), with a remit to help people who have, or have had, a cancer diagnosis to find and access support which meets their non-clinical needs.
|Bromley by Bow Centre||Voluntary & Community Sector||London|
|Mapping assets for wellbeing in the Wakefield District||Building on previous asset-based work within the District, the aim of this project was to inform future strategic planning, commissioning and delivery around health and wellbeing, by:•||Wakefield Council||Local Authority||Yorkshire & the Humber|
|Mind Fit – Pat Benson Boxing Academy|
|Mind Fit is a unique programme using boxing and physical exercise to engage adults and young people suffering from mental health issues. The development of the programme was led by community members who were regularly attending our gym. In the process of getting to know us better, several members started talking about their mental health problems, and drug/alcohol dependencies and they told us how attending the boxing club really helped.||Pat Benson Boxing Academy||Voluntary & Community Sector||West Midlands|
|Minded to help: Darlington|
|Minded to Help employs a network of experienced peers to promote positive mental health in the workplace and improve employees’ wellbeing.||Darlington Borough Council||Local Authority||North East|
|Mytime Active – engaging inactive women and girls|
|Mytime Active engaged over 200 young women aged 14-25 to start moving more, with the aim of improving their physical activity levels and overall wellbeing. The project sought to improve the participants self-reported health and wellbeing. Further information: Us Girls Bromley - Youth Consultation & Insight.||Mytime Active||Voluntary & Community Sector||London|
|National Carer Passports Toolkit|
|Website, animations and templates that support the setting up of a Carer Passport scheme, intended to improve carer recognition and support. It reflects co-produced practice locally in many cases.||Carers UK||Voluntary & Community Sector||National|
|Our Neighbourhood Asset Based Community Development Project|
|Our Neighbourhood uses an asset based approach to improve the health and wellbeing of people living in Weston-super-Mare.||Alliance Homes||Private Organisation||South West|
|Our people, our place, our approach - Northumberland|
|Community engagement through listening exercises with residents helps local authority identify local strengths and assets to improve public health and wellbeing.||Northumberland County Council||Local Authority||North East|
|Pathway Project Group Programme|
|The Group Programme is a therapeutic approach to recovery from domestic abuse, using a range of approaches with an emphasis on peer support.||Pathway Project||Voluntary & Community Sector||West Midlands|
|Physical Activity – Asset-Based Community Development|
|Utilising a community asset-based approach with partners and residents in Nottingham North (Bulwell) to support people to be more active.||PHE East Midlands Centre||Civil Service||East Midlands|
|Rotherham Active for Health|
|A multi-agency approach to the delivery of condition specific exercise for people with cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) musculoskeletal (MSK) lower back pain, falls prevention, stroke, cardiac and heart failure. The programme linked healthcare to specialist community-based exercise rehabilitation.||Functional Fitness||Private Organisation||Yorkshire & the Humber|
|Sanjuro Training Systems: Bruce Grove Youth Club|
|Sanjuro delivers accessible, health improving physical activity, through the development of inclusive programmes, centred around each participant’s needs. This participant-centric approach helps to continually develop our offer and services so that a young person can start training with us in primary school and continue until they are in the world of work.|
Further information: Sanjuro Training Doorstep Sport Club and Sanjuro inclusion coach training for group exercise (AQA). Case study 1: Gary -Sanjuro student to instructor. Case study 2: Issachar - student to instructor.
|Sanjuro Training Systems||Private Organisation||London|
|Shoreditch Trust Bump Buddies: support in pregnancy and parenthood|
|Bump Buddies is part of Shoreditch Trust, an organisation working to reduce economic and social disadvantage in the London Borough of Hackney. It targets socially isolated women during pregnancy and early parenthood who may also be coping with a range of issues, such as poverty, homelessness, domestic violence, insecure immigration status, trauma, poor mental health and/or physical health and female genital mutilation (FGM).||Shoreditch Trust||Voluntary & Community Sector||London|
|Skelmersdale International (Welcoming and valuing new arrivals)|
|Residents of West Lancashire held a welcoming party for new arrivals seeking refuge in the UK, for both individuals and families. Local residents have been involved in ongoing activity to map the gifts, skills and capacities that the new arrivals bring to the community and support them to get involved in the local community. Activities are focussing on existing and new arrivals swopping skills for mutual support e.g. the improvement of language skills and cultural knowledge. This helps to connect individuals to a community that generally has a very small black and minority ethnic (BME) population.||West Lancs CVS||Voluntary & Community Sector||North West|
|Smoking and Tobacco: Using a Community Asset Approach to Improve Health in Hull|
|The vision for the practice is to create community driven solutions for smoking and tobacco control which contributes to improved wellbeing for residents in Hull - by understanding people’s perception of their own smoking issues to inform solutions. |
The project is the implementation of a community wide intensive approach to smoking and tobacco control to create a groundswell for change around smoking.
The wider aim of this practice is to improve health and wellbeing, with smoking as a measurable marker.
|Hull City Council||Local Authority||Yorkshire & the Humber|
|Social Prescribing: the Shropshire Model|
|Strategic level partners from across the NHS, voluntary and community sector (VCS) and local government, through the Health and Wellbeing Board, have developed a model of social prescribing for Shropshire, over the past two years. This has been led by the council’s public health team, working directly with local GP practices, the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), voluntary sector organisations and other local partners, as part of the wider Healthy Lives Population Health Programme. The model has followed a step by step methodology, which is further outlined in section 7. |
The model aligns to national guidance set out in the NHS Long Term Plan, and is proactively supporting the development of social prescribing, and supporting primary care networks (PCNs) in their new role by adopting a place-based approach.
|Shropshire Council, QUBE, Shropshire CCG||Local Authority/Voluntary & Community Sector/NHS||West Midlands|
|Solutions - social prescribing pilot|
|Solutions is a social prescribing project with quality assured advice at the centre of a network of specialist support services and community-based social activity groups.||Citizen's Advice North East Suffolk||Voluntary & Community Sector||East of England|
|Stockton Navigator Service for asylum seekers and refugees|
|Peer support, personalised assessments, information and support help new arrivals improve their wellbeing and access services.||Stockton Borough Council||Local Authority||North East|
|Taking a whole system approach to developing resilient communities in Dudley||This programme focuses on bringing together – and building on – a strong history of community-orientated approaches to improving health and wellbeing in Dudley. It has three elements: |
• Embedding community centred approaches into the refresh of the Health and Wellbeing Strategy
• Developing the Council’s contribution to resilient communities
• Investing in innovation in the local voluntary and community sector
These have now been brought together under our new Future Communities Transformation programme which has three aspirations:
• Safe and secure communities
• Connected Communities
• Empowered Communities
|Dudley Council||Local Authority||West Midlands|
|The Hop50+ Community Space and Café|
|The Hop50+ Community Space and Café offer a seven day week service to isolated and vulnerable older people across the city of Brighton and Hove, East Sussex.||Impact Initiatives||Voluntary & Community Sector||South East|
|The Hub @ Castlepoint|
|A mainly volunteer-led community hub supports wellbeing by developing social connections and friendships, so combating isolation and preventing problems becoming crises. It is based in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, one of the most deprived London boroughs.||Community Resources||Voluntary & Community Sector||London|
|The Wellbeing Burger|
|Physical activity and nutrition programme to improve the wellbeing of homeless young people in preparation for greater independence.||Salvation Army Housing Association||Voluntary & Community Sector||North West|
|Time Union at Coventy City Council’s award-winning Pod|
|The Pod creatively supports people on their mental health recovery journey. It uses social brokerage to help people re-engage with their communities, re-discover their interests and find new opportunities across the city. Time Union is one strand of many at the Pod that supports people to connect with each other, whether they live with mental illness or not. These approaches, based on citizenship, help tackle the stigma of mental illness. There is also an annual Mental Health Arts Festival, Food Union and café. |
Time Union is a city-wide time bank through which members exchange skills/talents by the hour, each time exchanging a Time Credit note rather than money. Its current membership includes plumbers, life coaches, yoga teachers, guitarists and sound engineers to name but a few. Members may have lived experience of mental illness or they may not. There is no need to say. Everyone has something to offer. Current examples are language lessons, reiki, DIY, admin, fitness coaching, cleaning, filmmaking lessons, filing etc. The possibilities are endless.
|Coventry City Council||Local Authority||West Midlands|
|'Us Girls' – Sheffield Wednesday FC Community Programme|
|This is a new initiative, delivered by Sheffield Wednesday FC Community Programme (SWFCCP) in partnership with the StreetGames ‘Us Girls’ project, to engage inactive girls and young women into football for the first time.||Sheffield Wednesday Football Club||Private Organisation||Yorkshire & the Humber|
|Ways to Wellness Newcastle for people with long term conditions|
|Social prescribing helps patients to manage their long term conditions through one-to-one support from a link worker||Ways to Wellness/NHS Newcastle Gateshead CCG||Voluntary & Community Sector/NHS||North East|
|Wellbeing Exeter: Social Prescribing Meets Asset-based Community Development|
|Wellbeing Exeter is a partnership pilot, working at scale to deliver a whole-system approach to social prescribing in combination with asset-based community development.||Devon Community Foundation||Voluntary & Community Sector||South West|
|Women Asylum Seekers Together (WAST), Manchester|
|A user-led peer-support group for women seeking asylum. Activities are run in response to members’ needs and requests.||Maternity Action, WAST||Voluntary & Community Sector||North West|
Are you interested in submitting a practice example? Visit the practice examples homepage for templates and checklists.
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Biography of Paul Davis
Paul Davis was born in Centrahoma, Oklahoma, and earned a B.F.A. at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where he studied on a full scholarship. His teachers included Philip Hays, Robert Weaver, Tom Allen, Robert Shore, Howard Simon, George Tscherny, and Burt Hasen. In 1959 he became an apprentice at Push Pin Studios, where he was employed until 1962, when he left to do freelance work. Davis has taught at the School of Visual Arts and the University of Colorado. A painter as well as a graphic and poster artist, he has created a wide range of products, from illustrations for national magazines to book jackets and album covers.
Davis has won acclaim for his Viva la Huelga poster supporting César Chávez's United Farm Workers union and for a series of posters for the New York Shakespeare Festival. In designing the theater posters, Davis first paints a relatively small canvas that functions as a model for the final work. The posters were printed in a three-sheet size (42 x 84 inches) for display in New York subways. The demand for Davis's theater postersnot as advertisements but as art and collectiblesis met by printing one-sheet versions (23 x 46 inches) that are distributed throughout the country.
Davis does not seem to have been negatively affected by the need to satisfy the clients for his posters. In a published collection of these works, he states, "It is impossible for me anyway to follow a layout or an idea I don't like. Each of these paintings represents a sympathetic working relationship with an art director, editor, or client."
Back to the top | <urn:uuid:d30991d1-5537-4d32-a57c-d27f99d8f7e5> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/online/posters/objects/AE-post24_.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280835.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00473-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972508 | 376 | 1.875 | 2 |
When mass shootings grab headlines every day, it’s easy to become suspicious and fearful. It’s easy to think that arming yourself is the only way to greet violence head-on. It’s easy to shed tears and say prayers and go on with our lives.
What’s not so easy is doing what all memorable leaders—Gandhi, Jesus, Buddha, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Pope Francis, Martin Luther King Jr. and many others—have preached: to live compassionately.
But what does that mean, and how do we do it? I’m not sure, but for me I think it means living from the heart and knowing we all share dreams, hopes, sorrows and pain. We are all the same, no matter our station in this life, our skin color, our religion, our age.
I think the place to start to live compassionately is in our own community, by helping others, by volunteering, by strengthening the bonds that foster kinship. Knowing who we really are and the contents of our own hearts makes it easier for us to feel compassion toward others, especially those who might be different from us, with different beliefs and cultural systems. Bettering oneself is the one struggle we should all seek.
And though this magazine’s contribution to that quest is tiny, and perhaps insignificant, we strive to bring you tools in every issue to make your life and our community better.
In this issue, for example, we highlight front-yard food gardens, plants for detoxing interior air, places to see amazing wildlife, and tips to create a spiritual garden.
A story that truly touches upon the compassion of our community is the Feature Home story. It’s about Ben Rickard and Shannon Rood, a Niwot couple who lost all their belongings, their truck and their home in the 2013 flood. Through the kindness and generosity of friends and strangers, and their own resilient spirits, Ben and Shannon gained back everything they’d lost—and more, as they watched the community and themselves pull together to build a new home for them, and their many pets, to live in.
We hope you enjoy reading about your neighbors and your community in the pages of this magazine. We always want to hear from you, so please drop us a line if you have a home or a garden we should feature, a story we should cover, or any thoughts you might have about the betterment of this magazine.
Go in peace and live compassionately this new year and beyond.
Enjoy the winter, and hope to see you again in spring.
Carol S. Brock, editor | <urn:uuid:8ac02f68-545a-42cb-8917-cc41d7918e71> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://boulderhg.com/12129-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572833.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817001643-20220817031643-00275.warc.gz | en | 0.94395 | 546 | 1.796875 | 2 |
I need support with this Engineering question so I can learn better.
1)The private and public sectors have seen rapid growth of biometric trends and improvements. Biometrics are playing an important role in user identification and security issues. According to Fennelly (2017), the commonly implemented or studied biometric modalities are:
- Palm Print
- Hand Scanner
- Facial Recognition
- Iris Scan
- Voice Recognition
- Deoxyribonucleic Acid
- Writer Recognition
- Palm Veins
- Behavioral Biometrics
Select and discuss 1 of the biometric modalities. Make sure to mention why you selected that particular biometric modality.
2)Assignment: Briefly discuss the common access control ID methods. In the last paragraph, select your favorite access control ID method and discuss why you selected that access control ID method.
ID cards or badges assist security personal with controlling the movement of personnel activity. The four most common access (Fennelly, 2017) control ID methods are:
- Personal Recognition System
- Single-Card/Badge System
- Card/Badge-Exchange System
- Multiple-Car/Badge System
Please use in-text citations to support your research.
Your research paper should be at least 3 pages (800 words), double-spaced, have at least 4 APA references, and typed in an easy-to-read font in MS Word (other word processors are fine to use but save it in MS Word format). Your cover page should contain the following: Title, Student’s name, University’s name, Course name, Course number, Professor’s name, and Date.
Submit your assignment on or before the due date | <urn:uuid:a1889c56-de1b-4f39-a6dd-d37ab869ea67> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://topgradetermpapers.com/need-12-in-different-docs-please-follow-apa-references-and-citations-ris/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572870.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817062258-20220817092258-00665.warc.gz | en | 0.864961 | 366 | 2.390625 | 2 |
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Signs, signs. Everywhere are signs. Whether they're advertising a yard sale on the outer edge of a public sidewalk or an in-home day care on a utility pole, signs in public rights-of-way are prohibited by Springfield City Code Section 98-7 to ensure visibility for drivers and to reduce litter. Public right-of-way is usually defined as the area from the street curb to the outer edge of a public sidewalk. Signs and advertisements on utility poles are also prohibited. For the fifth year, the City of Springfield will train volunteers on sign removal in public rightsof- way. The next session will take place at 5:30 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 16 in room L45 of the Busch Municipal Building, 840 Boonville Ave. Bob and Donna, a retired Springfield couple that prefer not to use their last name, are two of nearly 50 citizens the City has trained in illegal sign removal. The couple has picked up more than 2,000 signs since 2010. "From the time we moved here in 2005 until the City offered training in 2010, they just seemed to be at every intersection and on every utility pole," Bob says. "We always lamented that it looked like heck and we wished we were allowed to tear them down. When we saw an article in the paper that the City was asking for volunteers to tear them down, we went to the training." On average, Bob says he and Donna go on sign-removing expeditions about every 10 days, even through the winter. They drive all over town removing illegal signs that advertise fencing, lawn care, "I buy homes," "I buy junk," carpet cleaning, windows, fitness training, walk-in tubs and more. "We try to go early in the morning on a Saturday or a Sunday because there isn't a lot of traffic at that time," Bob says. "We actually enjoy it because we get offended that these knuckleheads think they can put their junk anywhere they want. It's just so unsightly and distracting, plus the utility poles get damaged from the nails and screws used to attach the signs." The couple dispose of the signs in their trash bins at home because they discovered the owners of the signs were retrieving them from the Dumpster at the Public Works Operations Center and putting them back up in public rights-of-way. "I would use a utility knife and cut these signs into several pieces before throwing them in the Dumpster. A few days later we'd be out and I'd see the exact same signs back up … it just galled me to no end," Donna says. Once trained, volunteers conduct sign removal on their own time. As they keep an eye on illegal signs and other beautification issues, volunteers may also report other concerns such as broken curbs, potholes, graffiti, dead animals, trash and tall weeds. Volunteers assisting the City must be at least 18 years of age and are required to sign a release form. Download right-of-way beautification training flier. # # # For more information, contact: Collin Quigley, Assistant City Manager, (417) 864-1116. | <urn:uuid:c16c66fc-f249-4c94-9300-8019c74e82f3> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://health.springfieldmo.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=3583 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573699.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819131019-20220819161019-00276.warc.gz | en | 0.971177 | 672 | 1.625 | 2 |
Scroll down to see a partial list of users!
These documents are all required in most states and this program makes it easy. Why spend thousands when you can do it for less than $700 yourself.
Organizes and stores every detail about your plant
With this program, you enter all of the information about the processing plant, including equipment, parts, descriptions of units, and equipment, functional diagrams and much more. You have a place for everything and the system will display this on line to other users. An electronic manual that is a true database.
Ready content for your wastewater and water plant
This program is filled with lots of pages of content that is specifically geared for wastewater and water plants. For example, health and safety chapters that include the chemicals used in these plants, over 200 pages of ready made content. The original program was designed for water and wastewater. So just input your own equipment and drawings, and edit our text.
Write SOP’s like a pro automatically. Generate SOPs fast
Not only is there a form to get all the data for an SOP and the diagrams, but there is an SOP Wizzard, that ensures that anyone can create a good step by step SOP without any training. Write them like a pro, jus follow the screens.
Creates a great paper manual in two formats with one click
Once you complete the manual, click print and the entire manual is compiled, including covers and dividers and SOPs for every area of your plant. Illustrate the manual with photos, drawings, video. Put it in a three ring binder and still you can view it in database format on line. No need to export to PDF, just view on line.
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- The on-line viewer shows on one screen
An entire set of safety programs is included.
These are all required by your plant and should be a part of your documentation.
|OSHA Plans Available||Written Plan||Databases||Training|
|Health and Safety Plan||X||X||X|
|Confined Space Entry (189.00 value)||X||Permits, Personnel, Signs, Locations||X|
|Hazard Communication||X||MSDS 200 chemicals and add your own||X|
|Blood Borne Pathogens||X|
|EPA TRI Database||Track emissions| | <urn:uuid:6d7bed01-b3a7-4860-8e01-0f6a71842a7d> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.municipalnets.com/preventive_maintenance/omwriter/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571210.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20220810191850-20220810221850-00478.warc.gz | en | 0.898118 | 535 | 1.992188 | 2 |
My cinema relationship with Esther Williams helped shape my film interests.
I didn’t full watch any of her films until 2003 when my film appetite craved musicals.
When I was 15 I read her autobiography, “The Million Dollar Mermaid.” It’s my favorite film autobiography that I’ve read so far.
When I was 17, I bought one of her Esther Williams bathing suits.
Williams inspired me to practice swimming strokes and try to learn how to swim (I failed swimming lessons when I was five years old. How embarrassing).
I remember in 2004 when she was highlighted during TCM’s August Summer under the Stars series. I wasn’t looking forward to going back to school in August but my excitement of Esther Williams’ day out-weighed my dread.
But it’s not just how she affected my every day actions, but my film knowledge that makes her important to me.
To date, I have seen all but two of Esther Williams’ films: “A Raw Wind in Eden” and “The Big Show.”
Esther Williams’s films are a textbook example of the mid-1940s to early 1950s MGM musicals: brightly colored, beautiful clothing and lavish musical numbers that may include Williams swimming, Xavier Cugat and his band shaking maracas or opera singer Lauritz Melchior belting a tune.
Her films also introduced me to my biggest film crush- Van Johnson.
Something I have always found appealing about Williams is that she is very attainable.
Her beauty is natural and girl-next-door like and her figure is athletic, rather than actress anorexic. In her 1996 Private Screenings Interview with Robert Osborne, she said becoming a star was all an accident. | <urn:uuid:58798008-b902-4408-8774-fa86c24ceae7> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://cometoverhollywood.com/tag/thrill-of-romance/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573699.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819131019-20220819161019-00266.warc.gz | en | 0.969827 | 375 | 1.507813 | 2 |
|Missouri Supplemental Route System|
A supplemental route is a state secondary road in the U.S. state of Missouri, designated with letters. Supplemental routes were various roads within the state which the Missouri Department of Transportation was given in 1952 to maintain in addition to the regular routes, though lettered routes had been in use from at least 1932. The four types of roads designated as Routes are:
Supplemental routes make up 19,064 miles (30,681 km) (59%) of the state highway system.
Prior to 1907, all road improvement activities in Missouri were undertaken by the individual counties, with little expertise or coordination between them. Amid growing automobile presence and insufficient road networks in Missouri in the ensuing years, the state legislature created a state highway department and the state highway commission as well as enacted various laws aimed at improving transportation in the state. In 1920, recognizing that economic prosperity and growth are highly related to good transportation, the legislature passed a $60 million bond issue for road work. This effort, along with the Centennial Road Law passed by the legislature in 1921, shifted highway building efforts in Missouri from the local level to the state level. As a result, the state highway commission undertook an aggressive road building campaign throughout the 1920s and 1930s aimed to get Missouri "out of the mud".
In 1952, the state highway department embarked on its Missouri 10-Year Highway Modernization and Expansion Program. Through this effort, the state assumed maintenance responsibility of over an additional 12,000 miles (19,000 km) of secondary and farm-to-market roads previously managed by the counties. The goal of the secondary highway system was to place state-maintained roads within 2 miles (3.2 km) of more than 95% of all rural farm houses, schools, churches, cemeteries and stores. Most of Missouri's lettered supplemental highways are the result of this program.
The more major supplemental routes of the system are assigned single-letter designations (such as "K"). Minor branch routes and farm-to-market roads, which often end at county roads or are former alignments of the other highways, are typically assigned two-letter designations consisting of two of the same letter (e.g. "KK"). Additionally, combinations of letters may be used, but always with A as the first letter (such as "AD"); the only exceptions to this are Route BA in western St. Louis County and Route RA in Lee's Summit, Missouri. Combinations beginning with the letter R are also used for routes that connect with state parks or other recreational facilities, which is the only use of R on the system; Route AR, a non-recreational route south of Bakersfield, is the only exception to this.
The vast majority of the highways in the system are designated with 19 letters of the alphabet. The letters "G", "I", "L", "Q", and "S" are not used because of the potential confusion with other letters and numbers. The only current use of X is on Route AX in Macon County.
Supplemental routes rarely run for more than a few miles, although they may cross county lines. A route's designation changes at a U.S. Route or Interstate highway; for example, in Greene County, southbound Route J crosses U.S. Route 60 and becomes Route NN, and Route M in Cole County becomes Route J after passing U.S. Route 50. However, when Route MM in Greene County crosses Route 360, it remains Route MM, only changing to Route B when crossing Interstate 44. Route J in Boone County is one of the few exceptions to this, as it continues past U.S. 40 for three miles before becoming Route O upon passing I-70. Designations are also reused, but not near one another. For example, Route D exists in the counties of Cole, Greene, Newton, St. Louis, and several others. Rarely is a designation reused in a county; exceptions include two highways designated Route Z in Randolph County and two highways designated Route K in Carter County.
In some cases, supplemental routes will share a concurrency with a state route or another supplemental route. For example, Route J in Howard County overlaps with Route 87 for about 0.25 miles (0.40 km) near Boonesboro, Route D in Greene County overlaps with Route 125 for a few miles, and Route CC in Moniteau County overlaps with Route C for a few miles.
Supplemental routes are signed by black letters on a white background with a black border. Rarely, the shields will be marked with banners such as EAST, WEST, or END. There are no business or bypass routes for the roads; however, seven examples exist of spur routes: Spur Route N in Cedar County, Spur Route C in Gentry County, Spur Route C (to Union Covered Bridge State Historic Site) in Monroe County, Spur Route K (into East Lynn) in Cass County, Spur Route AA (to the Sappington Cemetery State Historic Site) in Saline County, Spur Route J (to Sigsbee) in Shelby County, Spur Route V in Butler County, and Spur Route Y in Montgomery County. Then, one connector route: Connector Route M in Jefferson County
It is erroneously believed that due to these roads being designated by letters rather than numbers and their existing in more than one county that these roads are county roads, not state highways, with some businesses and residences located on these roads saying their address is "County Road A" for example. This may have also arisen from the signage used prior to the early 1960s, where the letter was painted black against a white background, with the words "STATE ROAD" above the letter and the county name (in all capital letters) below the letter, or from the use of letters representing county trunk routes in Wisconsin. | <urn:uuid:d852866f-47b7-4f01-a103-325de5ee3487> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://db0nus869y26v.cloudfront.net/en/Missouri_supplemental_route | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572833.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817001643-20220817031643-00278.warc.gz | en | 0.962788 | 1,250 | 2.9375 | 3 |
What does it mean when I dream about water?
Water generally represents an emotional state of mind, the website states, and often reflects what we might be feeling or repressing. For example, rivers, oceans, and lakes all hold different meanings. … If the river in your dream was flowing rapidly, change is ahead or you may feel out of control.
What does water mean in a dream spiritually?
When water appears in a dream it is typically a symbol for the unconscious. Specifically it often refers to unconscious emotional content.
What does it mean when you see clear water in your dream?
Clear water is a positive dream symbol. If you’re swimming or spending time near clear water in your dream, you probably are in touch with your emotions and clear with how you feel about life.
What does the water symbolize?
Water popularly represents life. It can be associated with birth, fertility, and refreshment. … Flowing water usually represents change and the passage of time.
Is it good to see water in dreams?
Water in a dream may symbolize emotions that run deep, or perhaps (if the water is muddy) feelings that are confused and unclear. Water may be cleansing and healing, or water could swallow you up and threaten to drown you much like an overwhelming emotion such as anger or pain (via Everyday Health).
What does a flood mean spiritually?
It represents our unconsciousness and our stream of thoughts that emerge as they become too strong as actions and emotions. Floods can also purify and are symbols of purification, and cleansing – either physically or in one’s mind.
What is the spiritual meaning of dreaming about fish?
In the Bible, dreams about fishes are considered common and symbolizes good luck and prosperity. It represents fertility, creation, abundance, and forgiveness. Fishes also symbolize faith and loyalty in the Christian community. A fish dream means sustenance.
What is the spiritual meaning of dreaming of snakes?
According to professional dream analyst and author Lauri Quinn Loewenberg, snakes — a common dream archetype — typically represent a person in the dreamer’s life who exhibits low, dirty, toxic, or poisonous behavior. However, they can also represent something related to health or healing.
What does water symbolize spiritually?
With remarkable regularity across human cultures, water has been used to communicate the sacred value of life; the spiritual dimension of purification, protection, and healing; and the profound meaning of suffering and redemption in human life.
What does it mean to see a flood in your dream?
Flood Dream Meaning – General Interpretations. Dream of flood symbolizes emotions that can either be good or bad. … Being a symbol of devastation, flood implies losses and situations going out of control. It also means worry, anxiety, apprehensions and feeling of being taken over by bad things in life.
Does dreaming about water mean your pregnant?
Water in dreams may take on a dramatic form as pregnancy progresses. Toward her due date, a pregnant woman is more likely to dream of water as a symbol of the “breaking waters” that announce imminent childbirth.
What does the rain mean spiritually?
Rain symbolism represents cleansing, calmness, growth and fertility, and even rebirth. It’s also a favorite symbol for moviemakers and literature writers who use rain as a symbol of foreshadowing.
What do water mean in the Bible?
Water has the power to purify, to provide deliverance, and it can also destroy evil and enemies as in the stories of the Flood (Genesis 6:17) and the flight of Israel from Egypt (Exodus 14:1-15:21). | <urn:uuid:379b869c-945f-4854-9cf7-8f885f8890a8> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://heraldry-society.com/logo/quick-answer-what-does-water-symbolize-in-dreams.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572163.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815085006-20220815115006-00676.warc.gz | en | 0.939912 | 761 | 1.671875 | 2 |
JIM LEHRER: Next tonight, how investors fled for safety to government securities this week. Jeffrey Brown has that story.
JEFFREY BROWN: As an article in today’s newspaper put it, “When was the last time you invested in something that you knew wouldn’t make money?”
In a world of financial pain and uncertainty, nervous investors are turning to what remains the safest thing going: U.S. government debt. And they’re doing it to the point of accepting essentially a zero percent rate of return — for a while yesterday — and historically low yields that continued today.
Vikas Bajaj co-wrote that article today for the New York Times. Also with us is Nick Perna, managing director of Perna Associates, an economic analysis consulting firm.
Well, Vikas, help us understand this. What happened yesterday? What kind of investments are we talking about?
VIKAS BAJAJ, New York Times: Sure. We’re talking about the U.S. Treasury bills, which are short-term debt issued by the U.S. government to fund its various operations, you know, money that could go to pretty much anything that the U.S. government does.
And, you know, a colleague of mine today said that, look, it’s not so much about whether you get a return on your money. When was the last time you bought something, an investment, where you got your full money back, where you had your money returned? Certainly in stocks, that’s not true. Certainly in a lot of corporate bonds, that’s not true, in a lot of mortgage-backed securities that is definitely not true.
So this is a question of, what can you put your money into that you know it’s going to be there when it matures?
JEFFREY BROWN: So, Nick Perna, does that sound right to you? Does that sound like what’s going on?
NICK PERNA, Perna Associates: Yes, it’s that, plus the fact that short-term money rates are dominated by what the Federal Reserve does. So the Fed, over the last year-and-a-half, has brought the Fed funds rates down from 5.25 percent to 1 percent.
So even if there were not a flight to quality, you’d still get very little on Treasury bill rates and the like because whenever the Fed works its magic to bring down the Fed funds rate, it affects all short-term rates.
Treasury options for everyone
JEFFREY BROWN: Nick, I just want to understand this a little bit more for our audience. Explain these Treasury options for the layman a little bit. What's offered? For what length of time are we talking about? And who are these investors we're talking about?
NICK PERNA: Yes, that's a good question. I mean, the Treasury offers securities ranging in maturity from as short as four weeks out up to 30 years. And what we're particularly talking about is what's happened to the four-week measures and to the 90-day Treasury bill rate, both of which have, as Vikas mentioned, approached zero percent.
And these are very, very important for the short-term money market funds, because there's been a flight to quality into these funds, and there's concern over their longevity, given what's happened to Treasury rates.
JEFFREY BROWN: And are the investors -- is it big investors? Is it millions of folks like me and you through these big investors? Who are we talking about?
NICK PERNA: I think it's almost everyone. I know I personally fled to the security of some Treasury money market funds, but I think you're finding increasing numbers of companies parking money there for exactly the reasons Vikas mentioned, which -- I think it was either Will Rogers or Jim Rogers, the investment guy, who said that at times in markets it's more important to get -- the return of the principal is more important than the return on the principal, and that's exactly what's happening right now.
Fundamentals of system 'locked up'
JEFFREY BROWN: So, Vikas, what does this tell us about the -- what kind of signals does it send about the economy? Or is the question, what does it tell us about what investors are seeing going forward?
VIKAS BAJAJ: Sure. Well, there's two things here. There's, one, the technical fact that people are moving into T-bills because of what's happened in the money markets.
You know, when a bunch of people after the Lehman bankruptcy decided that they didn't want to have any exposure to commercial paper, they went into the T-bill market. And there's just not enough T-bills to satisfy all of that demand. So that can be explained in part as sort of a technical shift in the market.
The other part is that people are really afraid that we're headed into a very long, sustained period of contraction. People are worried about deflation.
You know, just a few months ago, you know, earlier this year, we were talking about inflation. Now the primary concern in the bond market is that we're going to have deflation.
We haven't had the 10-year Treasure note, which is -- you know, does not suffer from these technical issues at such low levels as we have it now since the late 1940s.
JEFFREY BROWN: Now, Vikas, just staying with you, is it not a good thing -- I mean, at least considering the alternatives -- that the U.S. Treasury, U.S. government debt is still considered the safest place to be?
VIKAS BAJAJ: Sure. I mean, certainly, I said that in the article this morning the silver lining, such as it is, is that the U.S. government has to borrow a lot of money for the various bailouts and economic stimulus packages that have been introduced and that are sure to be introduced in January. And so, in that sense, this is good, because, you know, investors are still flocking to U.S. Treasuries.
It's bad in the sense that what this says about investors' willingness to allocate capital within the financial system, they're not buying corporate bonds, they're not buying high-yield bonds, they're not buying mortgage securities, they're not buying commercial mortgage securities.
The sort of very fundamental, sort of bedrocks of our financial system are sort of locked up in some ways. And the government is basically having to come in and appropriate that capital, so it's the government that's buying mortgage securities or the government that's making investments into the banks and insurance companies, all these things that were historically done by the private sector.
Zero interest rates rare
JEFFREY BROWN: Nick, how do you parse the pros and cons of all this?
NICK PERNA: I think what's frightening the markets about it is that the only time we've seen zero percent interest rates in the United States was back in the 1930s. And in modern times, Japan had zero percent interest rates during the early part of the 1990s, when they were caught in the grips of deflation.
But I think, you know, this too shall pass. I think that the consensus forecast from economists is that the economy should bottom out towards the middle of next year, that the recession should end around the middle of 2009.
And I'm quite sure that, if that forecast is correct, then what you're going to see is a big drop-off in the flight to quality, that people will be then -- even before then willing to take some chances, because, if this is true to form, typically the stock market starts to pick up before the economy does, and that will mean that people will want to un-park the money that they're getting no interest on or next-to-no interest on and try to participate in the recovery.
JEFFREY BROWN: Well, let me stay with you. I mean, it's an impossible question, I guess, but on that, how do you know or can you ever know whether investors are being excessively cautious, I mean, in essentially parking money that isn't doing anything right now?
NICK PERNA: Well, I'm not sure that it's as big a deal as we're making of it right now simply because the Fed funds rate as measured, not the one that the Fed targets, but the one that they actually achieve, has been like less than 0.5 percent in recent weeks.
I'm not so sure that that's as much of a flight to quality. So the flight to quality at the very short end of interest rates is really more the magnitude of a half a point or a quarter of point or something like that. It's not measured in large percentage points.
However, having said that, we do have very wide spreads between riskier corporate investments and Treasuries. Those, too, should be coming in as the economy shows at first some signs of less deterioration and then some signs of impending improvement.
Many are staying out of market
JEFFREY BROWN: Well, Vikas, what are the people you talk to -- what are they looking for or what do we all look for, especially in these Treasury options, to know what kind of direction we're going?
VIKAS BAJAJ: Yes, I'm not sure you'll find it in the Treasury options. I think where you might find it is some desire by investors to start picking away at corporate bond market. You know, if you have investors more willing to buy bonds issued by top-quality companies at, you know, modest returns, then you sort of -- you will start to see some sort of risk appetite coming back into the market.
I mean, so far we have seen very little of that, even the best of the best companies, in terms of credit worthiness, are having to pay really high interest rates to get deals done. And so far a lot of people are just sort of choosing not to come to the market because they can't get a good interest rate.
So I think those would be some of the first signs I would look for is that we start to see people being able to raise money in the private market at rates that are, you know, maybe not what they were during the boom, during the credit boom, but a little bit lower than where we are today.
JEFFREY BROWN: All right, we'll look for that with some hope, I guess. Vikas Bajaj and Nick Perna, thanks very much.
VIKAS BAJAJ: You're welcome.
NICK PERNA: You're welcome. | <urn:uuid:c67a0e9b-9488-46e3-b8e1-041cba37a9c1> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business-july-dec08-investors_12-10/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280410.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00456-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977867 | 2,279 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Weeks after the removal of Omar al-Bashir as the president of Sudan, the fight for civilian rule continues as the Transitional Military Council (TMC) refuses to give in to the protesters’ demand to hand over power.
The TMC, led by Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, says it will oversee a transitional period that will last a maximum of two years.
Amid continuing protests, security forces are doing everything possible to end a sit-in protest in the capital, Khartoum.
Here are six things to know about the unrest:
Why did the protests begin?
A wave of demonstrations began across much of Sudan on December 19 over soaring bread prices, a result of a deep economic crisis that started when the southern part of the country seceded after a referendum in 2011, taking oil wealth with it.
The protests started in Atbara, a city in northeastern Sudan known to be a stronghold for anti-government activities.
Several thousand people took to the streets after the government tried to end the bread shortages.
As a result of the measures, the price of some bread tripled and although there had been bread queues for months, people were angry about the price rise.
The authorities quickly changed the policy and scrambled to crush the protests, declaring a state of emergency in Atbara and imposing a curfew from 6:00pm to 6:00am.
But the protests had already spread to the Red Sea city of Port Sudan and to Gadarif in the southeast, before reaching the capital, Khartoum.
Protesters were also angered by cash shortages due to restrictions on withdrawals aimed at keeping money in the banks, which themselves are struggling to find cash.
But what started as a protest about living conditions turned into one about the government of al-Bashir.
How did the protests evolve?
The demonstrations quickly morphed into growing anti-government rallies demanding al-Bashir’s resignation.
The Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), an umbrella coalition for professional unions, led calls for marches towards the presidential palace, demanding that al-Bashir step down immediately.
Trade unions and professional associations also called for nationwide strikes that saw the participation of a large number of doctors, journalists, lawyers and pharmacists from across Sudan.
Political parties then joined in, and influential sections within the military refused to take part in the repression, forcing the government to eventually cede power.
Protesters adopted slogans used during the Arab Spring of 2011 and gathered outside the headquarters of the military in the capital and refused to move.
The protests reached a climax on the symbolic date of 6 April – the anniversary of a 1985 non-violent uprising that removed Jaafar Nimeiri.
Who are the protesters?
Sudanese from all walks of life have taken part in the demonstrations but the main organiser has been the SPA, which is a coalition of several professional unions that bring together doctors, lawyers and journalists.
There has been a high percentage of women among the protesters, with the image of Alaa Salah, a 22-year-old woman clad in white standing atop a car in April, becoming a symbol of demonstrations.
How did al-Bashir respond?
The Sudanese government responded by promising to carry out economic reforms to “ensure a decent living for citizens”.
However, al-Bashir, who was at the helm since 1989, refused to step down, while security forces continued to crack down on activists and protesters.
As protesters continued their demonstrations across Sudanese cities, al-Bashir announced a one-year state of emergency on February 22.
The presidential decree banned protests, public gatherings and political activities. It also gave the police and security forces more power to monitor individuals and to carry out inspections.
Under the emergency laws, security forces were allowed to detain suspected individuals and seize private property if they believed it was being used to plan political activities.
Meanwhile, the Sudanese forces have been blamed for a rising death toll amid the increasing number of protesters’ arrest.
In early April, the interior ministry said 39 people, including three security personnel, had died since protests began last year. A spokeswoman for SPA put the death toll at nearly 70.
Special emergency courts established to prosecute people arrested for participating in demonstrations saw hundreds of protesters placed on trial after al-Bashir imposed state of emergency.
What role has the military played?
Al-Bashir was removed by the military on April 11 after ruling the country for nearly three decades.
In the immediate aftermath of the announcement that al-Bashir had been replaced by a military council, demonstrators called on people to continue with the sit-ins.
The military council, led by Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, came to power a few days after al-Bashir was overthrown. Al-Burhan promised to oversee a transitional period that will last a maximum of two years.
Demonstrators, however, accused the coup leaders of being close to al-Bashir and implicated in the problems that people were demonstrating about.
They continued to demand that the country’s military ruler immediately hand over power to a civilian-led government.
What is Sudan’s revolutionary history?
Sudan has witnessed two previous revolutions since its independence in 1953.
The popular uprisings of 1964 and 1985 saw the participation of students, trade unions and professional organisations.
After political parties joined the protests and influential sections within the military refused to take part in the repression, the regime stepped down and a peaceful transition followed.
Unlike the current unrest, both revolutionary movements were led by mostly urban, professional elites. — Al Jazeera | <urn:uuid:bce66e20-2925-44fc-af0d-c853d5521552> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://mg.co.za/article/2019-06-03-whats-happening-in-sudan-six-things-to-know-about-the-unrest/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570913.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809064307-20220809094307-00077.warc.gz | en | 0.967556 | 1,184 | 2.390625 | 2 |
So what is the response of the British government? Hmmmn. Let's see...
Health Minister Dawn Primarolo said, "Contraception plays a vital role in preventing teenage pregnancy and earlier this year I announced a further investment of £26.8m to improve women's access to contraception and help reduce the number of abortions, repeat abortions and teenage pregnancies."
Actually, no. The wide availability of contraception, especially to under-age school children, encourages the idea that one can have sex without any consequences, because it's "safe" sex. The fact that, according to groups who work with women in crisis pregnancies (such as the Sisters of the Gospel of Life, SPUC and the Good Counsel Network), the majority of women and girls they see were using one or more forms of contraception when they became pregnant is somehow overlooked in the official statistics.
Government advisers called for high quality sex education at school and investment in contraception services for young people.
Gill Frances, chair of the Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group, said: "We know what works to reduce abortion amongst teenagers.
"We need high quality sex and relationships education at school and at home and effective contraception."
Actually, again, no. They obviously don't know what works, because abortions among teenagers is rising. Rising means "going up," and they have had Sex Education at school since I was at school... after more than 25 years of teaching teenagers about the mechanics of sex and how to prevent conception, you think that, if it was going to prove effective, it would have done so by now.
Julie Bentley, chief executive at the FPA (Family Planning Association) said sex and relationship education should be compulsory in every school.
"Younger women are making different choices about their lives and choosing abortion over motherhood, but education and contraceptive services will stop them becoming pregnant in the first place."
Actually, yet again, no. (Getting repetitive, this!) Sex Education is already taught in every Secondary School. It is not "compulsory" in that parents can withdraw their children from these lessons... but in actual fact, very few parents do so... and their children aren't generally the ones to get pregnant. Contraceptive services are pushed left, right and centre. You can't read a magazine or newspaper, or visit a public toilet without some form of contraception being brought to your attention. And if you miss the talks from the school nurse, you can bet your bottom dollar that the careers service (those wonderful people from Connexions) will make sure that you don't remain in ignorance (or innocence) for very long.
So, how many times does a government advisor have to put two and two together and get four before they can bring themselves to accept that four is actually the correct answer?
All quotes taken from BBC News. Twitch of the mantilla to the Hound of Heaven. And I hope his hair grows back faster than mine! | <urn:uuid:2b674d82-9a00-47b0-b6e3-076d9ec3500a> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://mulier-fortis.blogspot.com/2008/06/which-bit-of-contraception-doesnt-work.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281649.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00437-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97273 | 602 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Chlamydia, bacterial pathogenesis, gene regulation, gene expression, transcription, developmental regulation, systems biology, host-pathogen interactions, centrosome, cancer, cilia, infectious disease, sexually transmitted, infertility, trachoma
To apply for a postdoctoral position in my research group, please email me, describing your research interests and goals and attaching your CV.
Our research in the fields of bacterial pathogenesis and infectious diseases looks at how the intracellular bacterium Chlamydia causes disease. Chlamydial infections are the most commonly reported infectious disease in the country. Chlamydia trachomatis is the most common cause of bacterial sexually transmitted disease in the developed world, and a leading cause of preventable blindness in the developing world. In addition, genital strains of C. trachomatis have been associated with cervical cancer. A second species, Chlamydia pneumoniae is a common cause of community-acquired pneumonia.
All chlamydial species share an unusual developmental life cycle that takes place within a eukaryotic host cell. We are studying a number of aspects of this intracellular infection:
1. Gene regulation: A central question is how this pathogen replicates and converts between two developmental forms within an infected host cell. We are studying the temporal control of chlamydial genes by mechanisms that regulate DNA supercoiling, transcription (alternative forms of RNA polymerase and transcription factors, such as activators and repressors) and translation (small RNAs). The approaches used include molecular biology, biochemistry, genetic and whole genome approaches, and bioinformatics. We are also using 3D electron microscopy to study how chlamydiae use cell size to control developmental conversion.
2. Host-pathogen interactions: Chlamydia manipulates and subverts numerous host processes in order to support its intracellular infection. We are studying how Chlamydia causes centrosome dysregulation such as the production of multiple centrosomes. These studies may provide a potential mechanism to explain the epidemiologic association of C. trachomatis and cervical cancer. We are also studying how Chlamydia causes loss of primary cilia, which is a signaling organelle on the host cell, and disrupts motile cilia, which may lead to infertility in women. These Chlamydia cell biology studies are a collaboration with Dr. Christine Suetterlin of the Department of Developmental and Cell Biology. Together, we are using a variety of cell biology approaches including immunofluorescent and electron microscopy, and protein analysis.
Dean’s Junior Physician/Scientist Award, College of Medicine, UC Irvine
Excellence in Teaching Award, School of Medicine, UC Irvine: 2004-2016 (8 times)
Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching Award, School of Medicine, UC Irvine
A list of publications can be found here:
Tan, M. and Bavoil, P.M. (ed.). Intracellular Pathogens I: Chlamydiales (Tan, M., Lead Editor) (ASM Press, Washington, DC), 2012.
Tan, M., Hegemann, J.H. and Sütterlin, C. (ed.) Chlamydia Biology: From Genome to Disease (Caister Academic Press, Poole, U.K.), 2020.
Batteiger, B.E. and Tan, M. Chlamydia trachomatis (trachoma and urogenital infections). In: Mandell, Douglas, and Bennett’s Principles and Practice of Infectious Disease, 9th edition. J.E. Bennett, R. Dolin, M.J. Blaser, ed., (Elsevier, Philadelphia, PA). pp. 2301-2319. 2020.
Rosario, C.J., Soules, K., Hefty, P.S. and Tan, M. Chlamydia gene regulation. In: Chlamydia Biology: From Genome to Disease. M. Tan, J.H. Hegemann and C. Sütterlin, ed., (Caister Academic Press, Poole, U.K.), pp. 219-240. 2020.
Brothwell, J.A., Sütterlin, C., Rudel, T. and Tan, M. The chlamydial protease CPAF. In: Chlamydia Biology: From Genome to Disease. M. Tan, J.H. Hegemann and C. Sütterlin, ed., (Caister Academic Press, Poole, U.K.), pp. 177-194. 2020.
R01 AI044198, NIAID, NIH, 5/17-4/22, “Mechanisms of developmental regulation in Chlamydia” (PI: Tan)
R01 AI123998, NIAID, NIH, 8/17-7/21, “Late developmental regulation in Chlamydia” (PI: Tan)
R01 AI151212, NIAID, NIH, 2/20-1/25, “Mechanism of RB-to-EB conversion in Chlamydia” (Multi-PI grant, PIs: Suetterlin, Enciso, Boassa, Tan)
R01 AI153410, NIAID, NIH, 4/20-3/25, “Primary cilia loss and cell cycle re-entry in Chlamydia-infected cells” (Multi-PI grant, PIs: Suetterlin and Tan)
American Society for Microbiology: Division D (Bacteria of Medical Importance) Chair (2005-6), Division Advisor (2006-7)
Chlamydia Basic Research Society: Secretary-Treasurer (2007-11), President-Elect (2011-2013), President (2013-2015)
Infectious Diseases Society of America: Fellow
Cellular and Molecular Biosciences
Infectious Disease (IM) | <urn:uuid:2532736a-6c59-4c99-b3fb-daef51d2cd6c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=4507&name=Ming%20%20Tan | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570868.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808152744-20220808182744-00072.warc.gz | en | 0.81386 | 1,295 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Salinas woman in ag sales making tracks for others to follow
Abigail Tiscornia has gotten used to being in a field where few women have thus far ventured. When she graduated from the University of Arizona last fall, the young woman returned to Salinas to find a job. At the time she never imagined she'd soon be working for a nationwide John Deere equipment dealership.
Tiscornia explained that one of the reasons she elected to major in Ag Economics is because she believed there would be jobs available when she graduated. That turned out to be a correct assumption.
While in college Tiscornia had an internship as a food safety coordinator and she worked briefly in that position after she left school. Her present position was the result of attending an open house last September at the RDO Equipment Co.'s showroom just south of Salinas off Highway 101.
"I stopped by to see the company and they were doing job interviews that day," she explained. "I talked to a few people and was offered a job as sales trainee."
As far as she knows, Tiscornia was the first woman hired at this location to work in sales. She smiled and admitted that she had never driven a tractor before and accepting the position was a bit of a risk. But Tiscornia also stressed that she saw this as a great opportunity to work with a good company.
Her reservations were tempered by the fact the company would be providing training so she would be knowledgeable of the equipment they were selling. Needless to say, Tiscornia feels comfortable talking about the tractors and other equipment now, and she's been up in the operator's seat of various John Deere tractors as well.
Focusing on inside sales, Tiscornia handles walk-in customers, though she does now have some outside accounts. Although it didn't happen too often, Tiscornia admitted that a few times when she offered to assist a customer, the person asked to speak to a man instead.
Shrugging her shoulders she said, "That was perfectly fine and I called over someone else." Although she was handling lawn equipment and small tractors originally, Tiscornia has more recently worked with some local growers who were either renting or purchasing larger ag equipment.
Since joining RDO Tiscornia has also done some recruiting for the national company at the University of Arizona and recently she helped develop a training program for new employees and conducted a session for a new hire.
Another responsibility that has been given to the young woman is event planning and sponsorship coordination. In January, there was a trade show event in Sacramento that Tiscornia worked on.
"As a woman in this industry, I think it took me longer to prove myself than it would have if I were a male," Tiscornia said. She still feels she has to show she is a credible salesperson but that is just part of job now. Most males are respectful but it sometimes takes awhile to establish that credibility.
In March, Tiscornia attended a John Deere new equipment sales conference in Florida and she said that she was one of only four women there. She recalls being asked by some of the male attendees how they could recruit women for their dealerships' sales departments.
Tiscornia senses that the door is opening wider for women in this area of the agriculture sector but it may take awhile to attract women interested in equipment sales. Looking ahead, Tiscornia hopes more women test the waters and consider a career in this retail arena of the ag business.
RDO Equipment was launched in the late 1960s when Ron Offutt purchased a John Deere dealership in North Dakota. He grew that original dealership over the years to where it now encompasses 60 dealerships in nine states. Today RDO operates the largest John Deere network of dealerships in the United States.
Since 2001, Ron's daughter, Christi Offutt, has served as the company's COO and CEO while his son, Ryan, is the executive vice president in charge of international operations in Russia, Ukraine and Australia.
• AGE: 24
• OCCUPATION: Transactional sales/account manager Ordo Equipment Co., Salinas.
• WORK: 2013-present, RDO Equipment.
• EDUCATION: Graduated from Salinas High in 2008. Received degree in Ag Economics from the University of Arizona in 2013.
• PERSONAL: Tiscornia lives off River Road south of Salinas. | <urn:uuid:f1d33ea9-b489-42f9-8392-bf31ed7eb99c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.thecalifornian.com/story/news/local/2014/05/25/salinas-woman-ag-sales-making-tracks-others-follow/9573427/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572127.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815024523-20220815054523-00272.warc.gz | en | 0.984781 | 920 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Basic research answers fundamental questions about the science of medicine, but pharma companies prioritize efforts that yield commercial products. The latter can’t exist without the former, however, creating a so-called “valley of death” between the two worlds. The concept of translational research seeks to bridge the valley, but it too struggles for funding.
Frustrated that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funds basic science projects that often go uncommercialized, congress members are trying to turn it into an investment opportunity. H.R. 6421, The Faster Treatments and Cures for Eye Diseases Act, would create a new financial instrument called eye bonds to raise $1 billion for new translational R&D projects over four years. The money would fund research into remedies for degenerative and traumatic causes of vision impairment.
Representatives Pete Sessions (R-Texas), Fred Upton (R-Michigan), Gus Bilirakis (R-Florida) and Sanford Bishop (D-Georgia) presented the bill on July 18.
“We have had federally funded research sitting on the shelf, waiting for private investors to put it into practice, for far too long,” said Congressman Bishop in a press release from his office.
The National Eye Institute, part of the NIH, would evaluate programs eligible for funding, not to exceed $250 million in any year. It is expected that the Congressional Budget Office will “score the cost of the legislation at or near zero” because “taxpayers would be the first to be repaid when private investors recoup their investments.” said the Foundation Fighting Blindness (FFB) in a press release expressing its support of the initiative.
The federal government might even see a financial upside of its own from eye bonds. According to the legislation, the Secretary of Health and Human Services “may negotiate an equity position for the United States Government in the projects to be funded by such eye bond if the Secretary determines that such an equity position will further the interests of the Program and the United States.”
FFB is currently funding 75 research studies on the spectrum of emerging retinal disease therapies, including gene, cell and drug-based treatments. “On behalf of the entire blind and vision impaired community, we are grateful for the actions by these members of Congress and urge others to join as co-sponsors of this important legislation,” said Benjamin Yerza, PhD, chief executive officer of FFB in the organization’s press release. | <urn:uuid:59782cee-fdff-4766-b613-68cca0d6ed7f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://reviewofoptometry.com/article/eye-bond-bill-comes-to-capitol-hill | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570692.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20220807181008-20220807211008-00675.warc.gz | en | 0.954963 | 515 | 2.25 | 2 |
The 'gold standard' for oncogenic HPV detection is the demonstration of transcriptionally active high-risk HPV in tumor tissue. However, detection of E6/E7 mRNA by quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) requires RNA extraction which destroys the tumor tissue context critical for morphological correlation and has been difficult to be adopted in routine clinical practice. Our recently developed RNA in situ hybridization technology, RNAscope, permits direct visualization of RNA in formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue with single molecule sensitivity and single cell resolution, which enables highly sensitive and specific in situ analysis of any RNA biomarker in routine clinical specimens. The RNAscope HPV assay was designed to detect the E6/E7 mRNA of seven high-risk HPV genotypes (HPV16, 18, 31, 33, 35, 52, and 58) using a pool of genotype-specific probes. It has demonstrated excellent sensitivity and specificity against the current 'gold standard' method of detecting E6/E7 mRNA by qRT-PCR. HPV status determined by RNAscope is strongly prognostic of clinical outcome in oropharyngeal cancer patients.
18 Related JoVE Articles!
Protocols for Oral Infection of Lepidopteran Larvae with Baculovirus
Institutions: Iowa State University.
Baculoviruses are widely used both as protein expression vectors and as insect pest control agents. This video shows how lepidopteran larvae can be infected with polyhedra by droplet feeding and diet plug-based bioassays. This accompanying Springer Protocols section provides an overview of the baculovirus lifecycle and use of baculoviruses as insecticidal agents, including discussion of the pros and cons for use of baculoviruses as insecticides, and progress made in genetic enhancement of baculoviruses for improved insecticidal efficacy.
Plant Biology, Issue 19, Springer Protocols, Baculovirus insecticides, recombinant baculovirus, insect pest management
High-frequency Ultrasound Imaging of Mouse Cervical Lymph Nodes
Institutions: West Virginia University, West Virginia University, West Virginia University.
High-frequency ultrasound (HFUS) is widely employed as a non-invasive method for imaging internal anatomic structures in experimental small animal systems. HFUS has the ability to detect structures as small as 30 µm, a property that has been utilized for visualizing superficial lymph nodes in rodents in brightness (B)-mode. Combining power Doppler with B-mode imaging allows for measuring circulatory blood flow within lymph nodes and other organs. While HFUS has been utilized for lymph node imaging in a number of mouse model systems, a detailed protocol describing HFUS imaging and characterization of the cervical lymph nodes in mice has not been reported. Here, we show that HFUS can be adapted to detect and characterize cervical lymph nodes in mice. Combined B-mode and power Doppler imaging can be used to detect increases in blood flow in immunologically-enlarged cervical nodes. We also describe the use of B-mode imaging to conduct fine needle biopsies of cervical lymph nodes to retrieve lymph tissue for histological analysis. Finally, software-aided steps are described to calculate changes in lymph node volume and to visualize changes in lymph node morphology following image reconstruction. The ability to visually monitor changes in cervical lymph node biology over time provides a simple and powerful technique for the non-invasive monitoring of cervical lymph node alterations in preclinical mouse models of oral cavity disease.
Medicine, Issue 101, Ultrasound, cervical lymphnode, mouse, imaging, animal model, anatomy, mapping.
Production, Characterization and Potential Uses of a 3D Tissue-engineered Human Esophageal Mucosal Model
Institutions: University of Sheffield, University of Sheffield, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
The incidence of both esophageal adenocarcinoma and its precursor, Barrett’s Metaplasia, are rising rapidly in the western world. Furthermore esophageal adenocarcinoma generally has a poor prognosis, with little improvement in survival rates in recent years. These are difficult conditions to study and there has been a lack of suitable experimental platforms to investigate disorders of the esophageal mucosa.
A model of the human esophageal mucosa has been developed in the MacNeil laboratory which, unlike conventional 2D cell culture systems, recapitulates the cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions present in vivo
and produces a mature, stratified epithelium similar to that of the normal human esophagus. Briefly, the model utilizes non-transformed normal primary human esophageal fibroblasts and epithelial cells grown within a porcine-derived acellular esophageal scaffold. Immunohistochemical characterization of this model by CK4, CK14, Ki67 and involucrin staining demonstrates appropriate recapitulation of the histology of the normal human esophageal mucosa.
This model provides a robust, biologically relevant experimental model of the human esophageal mucosa. It can easily be manipulated to investigate a number of research questions including the effectiveness of pharmacological agents and the impact of exposure to environmental factors such as alcohol, toxins, high temperature or gastro-esophageal refluxate components. The model also facilitates extended culture periods not achievable with conventional 2D cell culture, enabling, inter alia
, the study of the impact of repeated exposure of a mature epithelium to the agent of interest for up to 20 days. Furthermore, a variety of cell lines, such as those derived from esophageal tumors or Barrett’s Metaplasia, can be incorporated into the model to investigate processes such as tumor invasion and drug responsiveness in a more biologically relevant environment.
Bioengineering, Issue 99, esophagus, epithelium, tissue engineering, 3D construct, esophageal cancer, Barrett’s Metaplasia
Mosaic Zebrafish Transgenesis for Functional Genomic Analysis of Candidate Cooperative Genes in Tumor Pathogenesis
Institutions: Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Center for Individualized Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine, Mayo Clinic.
Comprehensive genomic analysis has uncovered surprisingly large numbers of genetic alterations in various types of cancers. To robustly and efficiently identify oncogenic “drivers” among these tumors and define their complex relationships with concurrent genetic alterations during tumor pathogenesis remains a daunting task. Recently, zebrafish have emerged as an important animal model for studying human diseases, largely because of their ease of maintenance, high fecundity, obvious advantages for in vivo
imaging, high conservation of oncogenes and their molecular pathways, susceptibility to tumorigenesis and, most importantly, the availability of transgenic techniques suitable for use in the fish. Transgenic zebrafish models of cancer have been widely used to dissect oncogenic pathways in diverse tumor types. However, developing a stable transgenic fish model is both tedious and time-consuming, and it is even more difficult and more time-consuming to dissect the cooperation of multiple genes in disease pathogenesis using this approach, which requires the generation of multiple transgenic lines with overexpression of the individual genes of interest followed by complicated breeding of these stable transgenic lines. Hence, use of a mosaic transient transgenic approach in zebrafish offers unique advantages for functional genomic analysis in vivo
. Briefly, candidate transgenes can be coinjected into one-cell-stage wild-type or transgenic zebrafish embryos and allowed to integrate together into each somatic cell in a mosaic pattern that leads to mixed genotypes in the same primarily injected animal. This permits one to investigate in a faster and less expensive manner whether and how the candidate genes can collaborate with each other to drive tumorigenesis. By transient overexpression of activated ALK
in the transgenic fish overexpressing MYCN
, we demonstrate here the cooperation of these two oncogenes in the pathogenesis of a pediatric cancer, neuroblastoma that has resisted most forms of contemporary treatment.
Developmental Biology, Issue 97, zebrafish, animal model, mosaic transgenesis, coinjection, functional genomics, tumor initiation
Purifying the Impure: Sequencing Metagenomes and Metatranscriptomes from Complex Animal-associated Samples
Institutions: San Diego State University, DOE Joint Genome Institute, University of Colorado, University of Colorado.
The accessibility of high-throughput sequencing has revolutionized many fields of biology. In order to better understand host-associated viral and microbial communities, a comprehensive workflow for DNA and RNA extraction was developed. The workflow concurrently generates viral and microbial metagenomes, as well as metatranscriptomes, from a single sample for next-generation sequencing. The coupling of these approaches provides an overview of both the taxonomical characteristics and the community encoded functions. The presented methods use Cystic Fibrosis (CF) sputum, a problematic sample type, because it is exceptionally viscous and contains high amount of mucins, free neutrophil DNA, and other unknown contaminants. The protocols described here target these problems and successfully recover viral and microbial DNA with minimal human DNA contamination. To complement the metagenomics studies, a metatranscriptomics protocol was optimized to recover both microbial and host mRNA that contains relatively few ribosomal RNA (rRNA) sequences. An overview of the data characteristics is presented to serve as a reference for assessing the success of the methods. Additional CF sputum samples were also collected to (i) evaluate the consistency of the microbiome profiles across seven consecutive days within a single patient, and (ii) compare the consistency of metagenomic approach to a 16S ribosomal RNA gene-based sequencing. The results showed that daily fluctuation of microbial profiles without antibiotic perturbation was minimal and the taxonomy profiles of the common CF-associated bacteria were highly similar between the 16S rDNA libraries and metagenomes generated from the hypotonic lysis (HL)-derived DNA. However, the differences between 16S rDNA taxonomical profiles generated from total DNA and HL-derived DNA suggest that hypotonic lysis and the washing steps benefit in not only removing the human-derived DNA, but also microbial-derived extracellular DNA that may misrepresent the actual microbial profiles.
Molecular Biology, Issue 94, virome, microbiome, metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, cystic fibrosis, mucosal-surface
Strategies for Tracking Anastasis, A Cell Survival Phenomenon that Reverses Apoptosis
Institutions: Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Anastasis (Greek for “rising to life”) refers to the recovery of dying cells. Before these cells recover, they have passed through important checkpoints of apoptosis, including mitochondrial fragmentation, release of mitochondrial cytochrome c
into the cytosol, activation of caspases, chromatin condensation, DNA damage, nuclear fragmentation, plasma membrane blebbing, cell shrinkage, cell surface exposure of phosphatidylserine, and formation of apoptotic bodies. Anastasis can occur when apoptotic stimuli are removed prior to death, thereby allowing dying cells to reverse apoptosis and potentially other death mechanisms. Therefore, anastasis appears to involve physiological healing processes that could also sustain damaged cells inappropriately. The functions and mechanisms of anastasis are still unclear, hampered in part by the limited tools for detecting past events after the recovery of apparently healthy cells. Strategies to detect anastasis will enable studies of the physiological mechanisms, the hazards of undead cells in disease pathology, and potential therapeutics to modulate anastasis. Here, we describe effective strategies using live cell microscopy and a mammalian caspase biosensor for identifying and tracking anastasis in mammalian cells.
Cellular Biology, Issue 96, Anastasis, apoptosis, apoptotic bodies, caspase, cell death, cell shrinkage, cell suicide, cytochrome c, DNA damage, genetic alterations, mitochondrial outer membrane permeabilization (MOMP), programmed cell death, reversal of apoptosis
Modeling Astrocytoma Pathogenesis In Vitro and In Vivo Using Cortical Astrocytes or Neural Stem Cells from Conditional, Genetically Engineered Mice
Institutions: University of North Carolina School of Medicine, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine, University of North Carolina School of Medicine.
Current astrocytoma models are limited in their ability to define the roles of oncogenic mutations in specific brain cell types during disease pathogenesis and their utility for preclinical drug development. In order to design a better model system for these applications, phenotypically wild-type cortical astrocytes and neural stem cells (NSC) from conditional, genetically engineered mice (GEM) that harbor various combinations of floxed oncogenic alleles were harvested and grown in culture. Genetic recombination was induced in vitro
using adenoviral Cre-mediated recombination, resulting in expression of mutated oncogenes and deletion of tumor suppressor genes. The phenotypic consequences of these mutations were defined by measuring proliferation, transformation, and drug response in vitro
. Orthotopic allograft models, whereby transformed cells are stereotactically injected into the brains of immune-competent, syngeneic littermates, were developed to define the role of oncogenic mutations and cell type on tumorigenesis in vivo
. Unlike most established human glioblastoma cell line xenografts, injection of transformed GEM-derived cortical astrocytes into the brains of immune-competent littermates produced astrocytomas, including the most aggressive subtype, glioblastoma, that recapitulated the histopathological hallmarks of human astrocytomas, including diffuse invasion of normal brain parenchyma. Bioluminescence imaging of orthotopic allografts from transformed astrocytes engineered to express luciferase was utilized to monitor in vivo
tumor growth over time. Thus, astrocytoma models using astrocytes and NSC harvested from GEM with conditional oncogenic alleles provide an integrated system to study the genetics and cell biology of astrocytoma pathogenesis in vitro
and in vivo
and may be useful in preclinical drug development for these devastating diseases.
Neuroscience, Issue 90, astrocytoma, cortical astrocytes, genetically engineered mice, glioblastoma, neural stem cells, orthotopic allograft
Transgenic Rodent Assay for Quantifying Male Germ Cell Mutant Frequency
Institutions: Environmental Health Centre.
mutations arise mostly in the male germline and may contribute to adverse health outcomes in subsequent generations. Traditional methods for assessing the induction of germ cell mutations require the use of large numbers of animals, making them impractical. As such, germ cell mutagenicity is rarely assessed during chemical testing and risk assessment. Herein, we describe an in vivo
male germ cell mutation assay using a transgenic rodent model that is based on a recently approved Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) test guideline. This method uses an in vitro
positive selection assay to measure in vivo
mutations induced in a transgenic λgt10 vector bearing a reporter gene directly in the germ cells of exposed males. We further describe how the detection of mutations in the transgene recovered from germ cells can be used to characterize the stage-specific sensitivity of the various spermatogenic cell types to mutagen exposure by controlling three experimental parameters: the duration of exposure (administration time), the time between exposure and sample collection (sampling time), and the cell population collected for analysis. Because a large number of germ cells can be assayed from a single male, this method has superior sensitivity compared with traditional methods, requires fewer animals and therefore much less time and resources.
Genetics, Issue 90, sperm, spermatogonia, male germ cells, spermatogenesis, de novo mutation, OECD TG 488, transgenic rodent mutation assay, N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea, genetic toxicology
Detecting Somatic Genetic Alterations in Tumor Specimens by Exon Capture and Massively Parallel Sequencing
Institutions: Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Efforts to detect and investigate key oncogenic mutations have proven valuable to facilitate the appropriate treatment for cancer patients. The establishment of high-throughput, massively parallel "next-generation" sequencing has aided the discovery of many such mutations. To enhance the clinical and translational utility of this technology, platforms must be high-throughput, cost-effective, and compatible with formalin-fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) tissue samples that may yield small amounts of degraded or damaged DNA. Here, we describe the preparation of barcoded and multiplexed DNA libraries followed by hybridization-based capture of targeted exons for the detection of cancer-associated mutations in fresh frozen and FFPE tumors by massively parallel sequencing. This method enables the identification of sequence mutations, copy number alterations, and select structural rearrangements involving all targeted genes. Targeted exon sequencing offers the benefits of high throughput, low cost, and deep sequence coverage, thus conferring high sensitivity for detecting low frequency mutations.
Molecular Biology, Issue 80, Molecular Diagnostic Techniques, High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing, Genetics, Neoplasms, Diagnosis, Massively parallel sequencing, targeted exon sequencing, hybridization capture, cancer, FFPE, DNA mutations
Polymerase Chain Reaction: Basic Protocol Plus Troubleshooting and Optimization Strategies
Institutions: University of California, Los Angeles .
In the biological sciences there have been technological advances that catapult the discipline into golden ages of discovery. For example, the field of microbiology was transformed with the advent of Anton van Leeuwenhoek's microscope, which allowed scientists to visualize prokaryotes for the first time. The development of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is one of those innovations that changed the course of molecular science with its impact spanning countless subdisciplines in biology. The theoretical process was outlined by Keppe and coworkers in 1971; however, it was another 14 years until the complete PCR procedure was described and experimentally applied by Kary Mullis while at Cetus Corporation in 1985. Automation and refinement of this technique progressed with the introduction of a thermal stable DNA polymerase from the bacterium Thermus aquaticus
, consequently the name Taq
PCR is a powerful amplification technique that can generate an ample supply of a specific segment of DNA (i.e., an amplicon) from only a small amount of starting material (i.e., DNA template or target sequence). While straightforward and generally trouble-free, there are pitfalls that complicate the reaction producing spurious results. When PCR fails it can lead to many non-specific DNA products of varying sizes that appear as a ladder or smear of bands on agarose gels. Sometimes no products form at all. Another potential problem occurs when mutations are unintentionally introduced in the amplicons, resulting in a heterogeneous population of PCR products. PCR failures can become frustrating unless patience and careful troubleshooting are employed to sort out and solve the problem(s). This protocol outlines the basic principles of PCR, provides a methodology that will result in amplification of most target sequences, and presents strategies for optimizing a reaction. By following this PCR guide, students should be able to:
● Set up reactions and thermal cycling conditions for a conventional PCR experiment
● Understand the function of various reaction components and their overall effect on a PCR experiment
● Design and optimize a PCR experiment for any DNA template
● Troubleshoot failed PCR experiments
Basic Protocols, Issue 63, PCR, optimization, primer design, melting temperature, Tm, troubleshooting, additives, enhancers, template DNA quantification, thermal cycler, molecular biology, genetics
Visualization of Mitochondrial Respiratory Function using Cytochrome C Oxidase / Succinate Dehydrogenase (COX/SDH) Double-labeling Histochemistry
Institutions: Karolinska Institutet, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) defects are an important cause of disease and may underlie aging and aging-related alterations 1,2
. The mitochondrial theory of aging suggests a role for mtDNA mutations, which can alter bioenergetics homeostasis and cellular function, in the aging process 3
. A wealth of evidence has been compiled in support of this theory 1,4
, an example being the mtDNA mutator mouse 5
; however, the precise role of mtDNA damage in aging is not entirely understood 6,7
Observing the activity of respiratory enzymes is a straightforward approach for investigating mitochondrial dysfunction. Complex IV, or cytochrome c
oxidase (COX), is essential for mitochondrial function. The catalytic subunits of COX are encoded by mtDNA and are essential for assembly of the complex (Figure 1). Thus, proper synthesis and function are largely based on mtDNA integrity 2
. Although other respiratory complexes could be investigated, Complexes IV and II are the most amenable to histochemical examination 8,9
. Complex II, or succinate dehydrogenase (SDH), is entirely encoded by nuclear DNA (Figure 1), and its activity is typically not affected by impaired mtDNA, although an increase might indicate mitochondrial biogenesis 10-12
. The impaired mtDNA observed in mitochondrial diseases, aging, and age-related diseases often leads to the presence of cells with low or absent COX activity 2,12-14
. Although COX and SDH activities can be investigated individually, the sequential double-labeling method 15,16
has proved to be advantageous in locating cells with mitochondrial dysfunction 12,17-21
Many of the optimal constitutions of the assay have been determined, such as substrate concentration, electron acceptors/donors, intermediate electron carriers, influence of pH, and reaction time 9,22,23
. 3,3'-diaminobenzidine (DAB) is an effective and reliable electron donor 22
. In cells with functioning COX, the brown indamine polymer product will localize in mitochondrial cristae and saturate cells 22
. Those cells with dysfunctional COX will therefore not be saturated by the DAB product, allowing for the visualization of SDH activity by reduction of nitroblue tetrazolium (NBT), an electron acceptor, to a blue formazan end product 9,24
. Cytochrome c
and sodium succinate substrates are added to normalize endogenous levels between control and diseased/mutant tissues 9
. Catalase is added as a precaution to avoid possible contaminating reactions from peroxidase activity 9,22
. Phenazine methosulfate (PMS), an intermediate electron carrier, is used in conjunction with sodium azide, a respiratory chain inhibitor, to increase the formation of the final reaction products 9,25
. Despite this information, some critical details affecting the result of this seemly straightforward assay, in addition to specificity controls and advances in the technique, have not yet been presented.
Cellular Biology, Issue 57, aging, brain, COX/SDH, histochemistry, mitochondria, mitochondrial disease, mitochondrial dysfunction, mtDNA, mtDNA mutations, respiratory chain
Multi-photon Imaging of Tumor Cell Invasion in an Orthotopic Mouse Model of Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma
Institutions: Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center, West Virginia University, West Virginia University , West Virginia University .
Loco-regional invasion of head and neck cancer is linked to metastatic risk and presents a difficult challenge in designing and implementing patient management strategies. Orthotopic mouse models of oral cancer have been developed to facilitate the study of factors that impact invasion and serve as model system for evaluating anti-tumor therapeutics. In these systems, visualization of disseminated tumor cells within oral cavity tissues has typically been conducted by either conventional histology or with in vivo
bioluminescent methods. A primary drawback of these techniques is the inherent inability to accurately visualize and quantify early tumor cell invasion arising from the primary site in three dimensions. Here we describe a protocol that combines an established model for squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue (SCOT) with two-photon imaging to allow multi-vectorial visualization of lingual tumor spread. The OSC-19 head and neck tumor cell line was stably engineered to express the F-actin binding peptide LifeAct fused to the mCherry fluorescent protein (LifeAct-mCherry). Fox1nu/nu
mice injected with these cells reliably form tumors that allow the tongue to be visualized by ex-vivo
application of two-photon microscopy. This technique allows for the orthotopic visualization of the tumor mass and locally invading cells in excised tongues without disruption of the regional tumor microenvironment. In addition, this system allows for the quantification of tumor cell invasion by calculating distances that invaded cells move from the primary tumor site. Overall this procedure provides an enhanced model system for analyzing factors that contribute to SCOT invasion and therapeutic treatments tailored to prevent local invasion and distant metastatic spread. This method also has the potential to be ultimately combined with other imaging modalities in an in vivo setting.
Medicine, Issue 53, Invasion, mouse model, two-photon microscopy, tongue, orthotopic, head and neck cancer
Bioenergetic Profile Experiment using C2C12 Myoblast Cells
Institutions: Novato, CA, University of Alabama at Birmingham - UAB, North Billerica, MA.
The ability to measure cellular metabolism and understand mitochondrial dysfunction, has enabled scientists worldwide to advance their research in understanding the role of mitochondrial function in obesity, diabetes, aging, cancer, cardiovascular function and safety toxicity.
Cellular metabolism is the process of substrate uptake, such as oxygen, glucose, fatty acids, and glutamine, and subsequent energy conversion through a series of enzymatically controlled oxidation and reduction reactions. These intracellular biochemical reactions result in the production of ATP, the release of heat and chemical byproducts, such as lactate and CO2
into the extracellular environment.
Valuable insight into the physiological state of cells, and the alteration of the state of those cells, can be gained through measuring the rate of oxygen consumed by the cells, an indicator of mitochondrial respiration - the Oxygen Consumption Rate - or OCR. Cells also generate ATP through glycolysis, i.e.: the conversion of glucose to lactate, independent of oxygen. In cultured wells, lactate is the primary source of protons. Measuring the lactic acid produced indirectly via protons released into the extracellular medium surrounding the cells, which causes acidification of the medium provides the Extra-Cellular Acidification Rate - or ECAR.
In this experiment, C2C12 myoblast cells are seeded at a given density in Seahorse cell culture plates. The basal oxygen consumption (OCR) and extracellular acidification (ECAR) rates are measured to establish baseline rates. The cells are then metabolically perturbed by three additions of different compounds (in succession) that shift the bioenergetic profile of the cell.
This assay is derived from a classic experiment to assess mitochondria and serves as a framework with which to build more complex experiments aimed at understanding both physiologic and pathophysiologic function of mitochondria and to predict the ability of cells to respond to stress and/or insults.
Cellular Biology, Issue 46, Mitochondrial dysfunction, cellular, bioenergetics, metabolism, cancer, obesity, diabetes, aging, neurodegeneration
Visualization of Mitochondrial DNA Replication in Individual Cells by EdU Signal Amplification
Institutions: University of Michigan, University of Michigan, University of Michigan.
Mitochondria are key regulators of cellular energy and mitochondrial biogenesis is an essential component of regulating mitochondria numbers in healthy cells1-3
. One approach for monitoring mitochondrial biogenesis is to measure the rate of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) replication4
. We developed a sensitive technique to label newly synthesized mtDNA in individual cells in order to study mtDNA biogenesis. The technique combines the incorporation of 5-ethynyl-2'-deoxyuridine (EdU)5-7
with a tyramide signal amplification (TSA)8
protocol to visualize mtDNA replication within subcellular compartments of neurons. EdU is superior to other thymidine analogs, such as 5-bromo-2-deoxyuridine (BrdU), because the initial click reaction to label EdU5-7
does not require the harsh acid treatments or enzyme digests that are required for exposing the BrdU epitope. The milder labeling of EdU allows for direct comparison of its incorporation with other cellular markers9-10
. The ability to visualize and quantify mtDNA biogenesis provides an essential tool for investigating the mechanisms used to regulate mitochondrial biogenesis and would provide insight into the pathogenesis associated with drug toxicity, aging, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. Our technique is applicable to sensory neurons as well as other cell types. The use of this technique to measure mtDNA biogenesis has significant implications in furthering the understanding of both normal cellular physiology as well as impaired disease states.
Neuroscience, Issue 45, mitochondria, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), 5-ethynyl-2'-deoxyuridine (EdU), labeling, tyramide signal amplification, mtDNA biogenesis, dorsal root ganglion neurons
Right Hemihepatectomy by Suprahilar Intrahepatic Transection of the Right Hemipedicle using a Vascular Stapler
Institutions: Tübingen University Hospital.
Successful hepatic resection requires profound anatomical knowledge and delicate surgical technique. Hemihepatectomies are mostly performed after preparing the extrahepatic hilar structures within the hepatoduodenal ligament, even in benign tumours or liver metastasis.1-5
. Regional extrahepatic lymphadenectomy is an oncological standard in hilar cholangiocarcinoma, intrahepatic cholangio-cellular carcinoma and hepatocellular carcinoma, whereas lymph node metastases in the hepatic hilus in patients with liver metastasis are rarely occult. Major disadvantages of these procedures are the complex preparation of the hilus with the risk of injuring contralateral structures and the possibility of bleeding from portal vein side-branches or impaired perfusion of bile ducts. We developed a technique of right hemihepatectomy or resection of the left lateral segments with intrahepatic transection of the pedicle that leaves the hepatoduodenal ligament completely untouched. 6
However, if intraoperative visualization or palpation of the ligament is suspicious for tumor infiltration or lymph node metastasis, the hilus should be explored and a lymphadenectomy performed.
Medicine, Issue 35, Liver resection, liver tumour, intrahepatic hilus stapling, right hemipedicle
Primer Extension Capture: Targeted Sequence Retrieval from Heavily Degraded DNA Sources
Institutions: Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig.
We present a method of targeted DNA sequence retrieval from DNA sources which are heavily degraded and contaminated with microbial DNA, as is typical of ancient bones. The method greatly reduces sample destruction and sequencing demands relative to direct PCR or shotgun sequencing approaches. We used this method to reconstruct the complete mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genomes of five Neandertals from across their geographic range. The mtDNA genetic diversity of the late Neandertals was approximately three times lower than that of contemporary modern humans. Together with analyses of mtDNA protein evolution, these data suggest that the long-term effective population size of Neandertals was smaller than that of modern humans and extant great apes.
Cellular Biology, Issue 31, Neandertal, anthropology, evolution, ancient DNA, DNA sequencing, targeted sequencing, capture
Purification of Mitochondria from Yeast Cells
Institutions: Concordia University.
Mitochondria are the main site of ATP production during aerobic metabolism in eukaryotic non-photosynthetic cells1
. These complex organelles also play essential roles in apoptotic cell death2
, cell survival3
, mammalian development4
, neuronal development and function4
, intracellular signalling5
, and longevity regulation6
. Our understanding of these complex biological processes controlled by mitochondria relies on robust methods for assessing their morphology, their protein and lipid composition, the integrity of their DNA, and their numerous vital functions. The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae
, a genetically and biochemically manipulable unicellular eukaryote with annotated genome and well-defined proteome, is a valuable model for studying the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying essential biological functions of mitochondria. For these types of studies, it is crucial to have highly pure mitochondria. Here we present a detailed description of a rapid and effective method for purification of yeast mitochondria. This method enables the isolation of highly pure mitochondria that are essentially free of contamination by other organelles and retain their structural and functional integrity after their purification. Mitochondria purified by this method are suitable for cell-free reconstitution of essential mitochondrial processes and can be used for the analysis of mitochondrial structure and functions, mitochondrial proteome and lipidome, and mitochondrial DNA.
Cellular Biology, Issue 30, subcellular fractionation, organelles, organelle purification, mitochondria
In Situ Detection of Bacteria within Paraffin-embedded Tissues Using a Digoxin-labeled DNA Probe Targeting 16S rRNA
Institutions: School of Dentistry and Dental Research Institute, Seoul National University.
The presence of bacteria within the pocket epithelium and underlying connective tissue in gingival biopsies from patients with periodontitis has been reported using various methods, including electron microscopy, immunohistochemistry or immunofluorescence using bacteria-specific antibodies, and fluorescent in situ
hybridization (FISH) using a fluorescence-labeled oligonucleotide probe. Nevertheless, these methods are not widely used due to technical limitation or difficulties. Here a method to localize bacteria within paraffin-embedded tissues using DIG-labeled DNA probes has been introduced. The paraffin-embedded tissues are the most common form of biopsy tissues available from pathology banks. Bacteria can be detected either in a species-specific or universal manner. Bacterial signals are detected as either discrete forms (coccus, rod, fusiform, and hairy form) of bacteria or dispersed forms. The technique allows other histological information to be obtained: the epithelia, connective tissue, inflammatory infiltrates, and blood vessels are well distinguished. This method can be used to study the role of bacteria in various diseases, such as periodontitis, cancers, and inflammatory immune diseases.
Immunology, Issue 99, periodontology, oral microbiology, in situ hybridization, 16S rRNA, bacteria, paraffin-embedded tissue, species-specific, universal | <urn:uuid:99229f6c-a744-4ba5-92e9-8bb46190c8ae> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.jove.com/visualize/abstract/25906372/impact-somatic-mutations-d-loop-mitochondrial-dna-on-survival-oral | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988721174.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183841-00283-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.893744 | 7,479 | 2.34375 | 2 |
ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE PRE-WRITING SKILLS
1. Wheelbarrow walking-child's hands are on floor, pick up feet and "walk" child on his/her hands.
2. Pouring from small pitcher to specific level in clear glass. Increase size of pitcher as strength increases.
3. Rope turning/jump rope
4. Slinky--shift back and forth with palm up.
5. Volleyball-type activities where hands, paddles, or rackets are in palm-up position. (Balloon volleyball)
6. Floor activities--large mural painting, floor puzzles, coloring when lying on stomach on floor.
7. Working on a vertical surface, especially above eye level. Activities can be mounted on a clip board or taped to surface or chalkboard/easel. Examples: pegboards, Lite Brite, Etch-a-sketch( upside down), Magna doodle, outlining, coloring, painting, writing.
8. Clothespins/pinching. Put letters on clothespins and spell words by clipping on edge of shoe box. Use a clothespin to do finger “push-ups” by using the pads of the thumb and index finger to open a clothespin and count repetitions.
9. Bead stringing/lacing with tip of finger against thumb
10. Inch a pencil or chopstick positioned in tripod grasp toward and away from palm. The shaft should rest in open web space.
11. Squirrel objects into palm (pick up with index finger and thumb, move into palm without using the other hand)
12. Squirt bottles.
13. Use tongs/tweezers to pick up blocks/small objects
14. Pennies into piggy bank or slot cut in plastic lid. Coins can also be put into slots cut in foam.
15. Finger plays/string games such as Cat's Cradle
16. Screw/unscrew lids
17. Squeeze sponges to wash off table, clean windows, shower, etc.
18. Playdough/silly putty activities
19. Pop bubble wrap
20. Use a turkey baster or nasal aspirator to blow cork or ping pong balls back and forth. These can also be used to squirt water to move floating object/toys.
21. Tear pieces of construction paper into small pieces and paste the different colors of paper on a simple picture from a coloring book, or make your own design.
22. Moving objects with tweezers—can use the large ones from Bed Bugs game or kitchen tongs.
23. Dot-dots, color by number, mazes
The most optimal position for writing includes the ankle, knee and hip at right (90 degrees) angles with the forearms resting on the desk. The top of the desk should be approximately 2 inches above the elbows when the arms are at the student's side. | <urn:uuid:683f38e7-83ff-41b7-85fc-cf62b065da16> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www2.ccsd.ws/k4/ot/handwriting_activities.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560283008.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095123-00080-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.861529 | 622 | 3.59375 | 4 |
Books in the Animal Babies series take a simple look at different classes of animal babies. This book looks at reptile babies, and examines how reptile babies are born, how they are cared for, how they develop, and differences and similarities between baby reptiles and their parents. The book also includes a picture glossary of key and difficult terms, and a page showing the life cycle of a reptile.
Number Of Pages:
- ID: 9781406259346
- Saver Delivery: Yes
- 1st Class Delivery: Yes
- Courier Delivery: Yes
- Store Delivery: Yes
Prices are for internet purchases only. Prices and availability in WHSmith Stores may vary significantly
© Copyright 2013 - 2017 WHSmith and its suppliers.
WHSmith High Street Limited Greenbridge Road, Swindon, Wiltshire, United Kingdom, SN3 3LD, VAT GB238 5548 36 | <urn:uuid:c4503c04-c1f4-4f33-a487-1eeb74ebd827> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.whsmith.co.uk/products/reptile-babies-acorn-animal-babies/9781406259346 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279933.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00124-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.853772 | 186 | 2.21875 | 2 |
How to face 3D printing challenges?
Posted By Lucie Gaget on Jan 15, 2020 |
There are still some myths about 3D printing, and you might still have some misconceptions about additive manufacturing and its advantages for your business. Starting to use 3D printing seems like a big thing and a lot of changes for a company. Today we are going to see what are the main 3D printing challenges to widespread 3D printing adoption. What are the solutions and how could you go through these 3D printing challenges?
3D printing equipment is expensive
In our State of 3D Printing 2019, nearly 60% of the respondents to the study say a lack of budget is a barrier to expanding the use of 3D printing. Money is always a big concern, both for small and bigger companies. But how much does it really cost to 3D print? The use of additive manufacturing is more and more common. This use is now more democratized than ever, which also has a big impact on 3D printing prices. The technology has never been so affordable.
This technology used to be quite expensive, but it is evolving and improving, and now more and more used for its accuracy, efficiency, but also because it is a cost-effective method. There are actually several possibilities for you. If investing in an industrial 3D printer is really expensive, there are still other options! You could also choose to invest in a desktop 3D printer as these machines are cheaper. But it will depend on your use of 3D printing. What level of detail do you need? Do you want to produce batches? Do you want to use a resistant material?
Choosing a 3D printing service can be an interesting solution to face 3D printing challenges. You will access all the advantages of industrial 3D printers in a few clicks, and get the possibility to choose among a wide range of 3D printing materials and technologies.
If additive manufacturing can be expensive, we also noticed in our last study that a large majority of the respondents are using 3D printing for several years, and are still planning to invest more in this technology in the upcoming years. As you will see, 3D printing is currently helping them to develop and significantly improve their whole manufacturing process. Additive manufacturing speeds your prototyping process, your production and offers new opportunities to your business. This technology will help you shape a whole new business strategy and enable innovation.
3D printing knowledge
We can also notice a certain knowledge gap in 3D printing. If implementing additive manufacturing into your company comes with great advantages, 3D printers are complex machines. Operating a 3D printer can be a difficult process and it is quite difficult to find employees with a background to operate this kind of machine.
Indeed, making the choice of owning your 3D printers can really be expensive: professional machines are expensive, and you will also have to invest time and money in training people. 3D printing technicians and designers are still on-demand in this industry.
Still based on our State of 3D Printing study, 60% of the respondents actually working in the 3D printing industry didn’t specifically learn about this 3D technology during their formal education. This is actually a concern in this industry, as training and education are among the main problems for growing the industry.
To learn more about the job market in 3D printing, download our job market 2019 report. Once again, using an online 3D printing can be a reliable solution as 3D printing experts are taking care of the whole process for you.
What about the intellectual property while 3D printing?
The intellectual property seems to be a complex subject in additive manufacturing. Indeed, 3D designs found on the internet can be 3D printed by anyone. Respect for intellectual property rights is crucial for 3D printing growth.
This is why it is particularly important that all consumers must be forewarned to make them aware of the risks undertaken when printing an object of unknown origin. In fact, a third party may have originally created the reproduced object and would not have consented to their creation being freely printed (and therefore copied).
If you want more information about the intellectual property while 3D printing or get a better understanding of this big subject, don’t hesitate to download our free ebook about intellectual property in the 3D printing industry.
Let’s go through 3D printing challenges!
Additive manufacturing offers cost-effective customization, will help you optimize your supply-chain and speed your whole manufacturing process. What are you waiting for? At Sculpteo, we are convinced that all businesses can improve their strategy using additive manufacturing. Our sales team will help you find the best solutions for your business and will help you identify 3D printing opportunities. Don’t waste your chance to be part of the innovation!
Are you facing other 3D printing challenges? If you have any questions or if you are facing any kind of 3D printing challenges, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Don’t hesitate to give our online 3D printing service a try. You just have to upload your 3D file and we will handle the rest.
Feel free to subscribe to our newsletter to get all the 3D printing news right in your mailbox. | <urn:uuid:bd58f2da-1767-4bb7-95f6-1cab995c5b70> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.sculpteo.com/blog/2020/01/15/how-to-face-3d-printing-challenges/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571472.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811133823-20220811163823-00677.warc.gz | en | 0.953353 | 1,075 | 2.09375 | 2 |
Style Guides: Five Great Books for the Fashion Lover
Style guides are sort of the opposite of the September Issues. Where September Issues scream at us -- WHAT'S HOT WHAT'S NOW WHAT'S TRENDY -- style guides (the good ones, anyway) are all about creating a foundational wardrobe for "real life." A foundational wardrobe is more than the sum of its parts; it's more than jeans + white shirt + trench + boots + bangles = outfit. Learning how to shop for and build a foundational wardrobe is learning how to invest in pieces that are worth at least what you paid (and hopefully, sometimes, more). A great style guide will teach you to do that, and it will teach you how to sift through the mountains of up-to-the-minute trends and choose wisely.
The best guides will do all of this with a combination of humor, practicality and -- most importantly -- experience and good taste. We have compiled a list of five great style guides that would provide any fashion fiend hours of enjoyment.
Tim Gunn's Fashion Bible: The Fascinating History of Everything in Your Closet
Is there any more beloved (current) fashion icon than Tim Gunn? It's doubtful. His success is due, in large part, to the fact that he comes across as so authentic in every way. His mannerisms, vocabulary and personal style are so unique, you want to know what he thinks about everything.
Miranda Sings Live...You're Welcome
TicketsSun., Jan. 22, 8:00pm
The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night-Time (Touring)
TicketsTue., Jan. 24, 7:30pm
Super Comedy Bowl Explosion
TicketsWed., Feb. 1, 8:00pm
Love Jones, The Musical
TicketsThu., Feb. 2, 7:30pm
TicketsSat., Feb. 11, 7:00pm
The book: A history of fashion in a Bill Bryson-esque narrative. (Think At Home.) There are lots of pictures, and practical advice on how to shop and dress. A particularly good book for someone at the beginning of their fashion journey, and for Tim Gunn fans.
The Truth About Style by Stacy London
Stacy London is a fascinating character. She went to Vassar, double-majoring in philosophy and German lit, and then went into a career in fashion. In her new book London explores her history of eating disorders, which sheds some light on why she's so effective with clients of all sizes on her TLC show, What Not to Wear.
The book: London uses her own experiences to illustrate makeovers (called "startovers" in the book) for women. The women and their makeovers represent many ages, ethnicities, budgets and styles. A must for London fans.
How to Look Expensive by Andrea Pomerantz Lustig
If you watch any fashion design show, you know that "looking expensive" is paramount in having great style and appeal. Lustig -- a beauty editor with 20 years of experience -- has a lot of useful tips on how to get an expensive look for less. Beauty blogs are abuzz about this book.
The book: A phenomenal read for the budget-conscious fashionista. This is less about Lustig (a more behind-the-scenes figure, as beauty editor of Glamour) and more about the info she has "stolen" while on set for shoots.
Parisian Chic by Ines de la Fressange with Sophie Gachet
Francophiles will adore this little book! The book itself is as simple and understated as the style author Ines de la Fressange recommends -- less is more! There are plenty of great tips on how to create personal style -- whether you are planning a trip to France or not. The blank pages at the end of the book for your own notes are a nice touch.
The book: "Celebrity model" de la Fressange doesn't just tell you what to wear, she tells you where to get it and then where to wear it. Part-fashion guide, part-Parisian travel guide, it's a fun and fast read you will turn to time and again.
The One Hundred: A Guide to the Pieces Every Stylish Woman Must Own by Nina Garcia
Every fashion icon has a list of wardrobe staples, and Nina Garcia -- fashion editor (Elle, Marie Claire) and Project Runway judge -- gives us her top one hundred. While on PR Garcia comes across as somewhat enigmatic, she is more straightforward -- and funny! -- in print. You probably don't need all one hundred pieces, but from this list you can certainly begin building a solid foundational wardrobe.
The book: Funny, readable and will give you a new insight into Garcia. (Assuming you have an old one, of course.) It was a toss-up between this and her previous Little Black Book of Style, which is also worthy of consideration.
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Get a rundown of upcoming theater events and ticket deals in Houston. | <urn:uuid:1251931a-73fb-4391-b723-53666b20ff5f> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.houstonpress.com/arts/style-guides-five-great-books-for-the-fashion-lover-6382976 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279169.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00217-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935857 | 1,044 | 1.648438 | 2 |
I was reading about SSH key authentication and setting it up with my 3 computers at home.
I have one main computer, call it "A", and two others, call them "B" and "C".
Now based on the documentation I've read, I would run ssh-keygen on B and C and put the public keys on computer A assuming I will always SSH into computer A, if I'm on B or C.
But, I think the documentation examples I've read assumes only 1 home computer will be used with lets say some other outside computer. In my situation, does it make sense to just run ssh-keygen on one computer and copy the files over to the others? This way I only need to back up one set of keys? And when I log into an outside computer, I only have to set it up with 1 set of keys as well as opposed to setting it up with all three computers.
Does this make sense? Any flaws or cautionary notes to consider? | <urn:uuid:3899615c-b678-4199-843e-060a6beea607> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/208495/ssh-key-authentication-with-multiple-computers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572127.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815024523-20220815054523-00272.warc.gz | en | 0.967063 | 208 | 1.695313 | 2 |
ARTS218 : Advanced Drawing
A lecture/studio course that takes the student beyond the basic methods, materials, media and concepts found in ARTS200-Intermediate Drawing. Students will be encouraged to develop a personal style and vision through the use of traditional and contemporary modes of drawing. Includes subjective and objective drawing, anatomical and portraitive drawing, group drawing and the creation and development of a drawing notebook and/or journal.
Students are responsible for cost of instructional art materials and supplies beyond those directly covered by lab fees.
ARTS110 or ARTS200 or permission of instructor. | <urn:uuid:d4fc1ea4-44a8-4f26-8183-1405d308db43> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://catalog.atlantic.edu/art/arts218 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572215.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815235954-20220816025954-00675.warc.gz | en | 0.897308 | 124 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Connie Fogal says the SPP ["Security and Prosperity Partnership"] is
the "hostile takeover" of the apparatus of democratic government and
an end to the "rule of law". There has been a kind of coup d'état
over the government operations of Canada, U.S.A. and Mexico.
The first formal step towards the NAU was NAFTA. Ron Pastor of the Council on
Foreign Relations has affirmed that. The Canadian Action Party, a registered federal
sovereigntist political party in Canada, began as a party in 1997 precisely because
none of the mainstream parties were calling for the clear, outright, unequivocal
abrogation of NAFTA, or for control of our national monetary system.
Even now, our mainstream Canadian political parties and significant citizen groups
are still stuck on re-negotiation of NAFTA (they talk of fair trade) which completely
misses the point. As such, they remain blinded, and of no use to the citizens
who care about our nation and our sovereignty, our independence, our civil liberties,
our civil rights, our culture, our freedom .
The second formal step was the integration and subjugation of Canada's military
into the US military command under NORAD, NORTHCOM, and the Bi-National Planning
Agreement. That is why our Canadian military is in Afghanistan.
The third formal step in the creation of the NAU was the implementation of the
respective liberty-stripping anti-terrorist legislations, the Patriot Act in the
USA and the Anti-terrorist Act in Canada. This has been the mechanism to implement
the police state apparatus necessary to enforce Fortress America.
The fourth formal step is the SPP, Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreement.
That agreement is a "hostile takeover" of the Executive branch of government,
a coup d'état over the government operations of Canada, U.S.A. and Mexico.
(The three branches of democratic governance are: 1, the legislative arm, i.e.,
the policy makers, the people we elect; 2, the judicial arm, i.e., judges who
interpret and apply the laws created by the policy makers; and 3, the executive
arm, i.e., the civil service, the bureaucracy, who implement and run the policy
and operations of government.)
The SPP is a treasonous metamorphosis of our federal and provincial government
bureaucracies into formal instruments to implement the agenda of the shadow government
- the military/ industrial/ financial complex exemplified by the Canadian Council
of Chief Executives who in turn are dominated by the U.S Council on Foreign Relations,
and the US military apparatus. The S.P.P. has created the competitiveness council
(10 to 16 people from industry and academe unelected by citizens, unaccountable
to citizens, unrepresentative of citizens ) in each of Canada, U.S.A., and Mexico.
They meet with our Prime Minister and the two Presidents. They actively direct
the restructuring of the civil service apparatus and governance of Canada, U.S.,
and Mexico away from instruments serving the public interest and nationhood, and
into tools to serve the power and greed of the industrial, financial, military
complex. This Competitiveness Council will be at Montebello directing the three
leaders in August, 2007 finalizing the last steps of the NAU.
Since March, 2005, under the direction of three senior cabinet ministers of each
country, about 100 working groups of unelected officials from government and industry
have been meeting at taxpayer expense deciding on and directing the implementation
of the restructuring of the apparatus of governance and the form of rule over
the people. Their command goes out down the chain of bureaucracy expending vast
amounts of taxpayer dollars implementing the changes in our border crossings,
in our airports, on our airplanes, in our skies, on and to our roads and highways,
in our personal identification systems, in our health, in our vaccines, over our
food supplements, in our pesticide safety levels, in our schools and universities,
in the exploitation of our natural resources-our rivers,lakes, oil, gas, in our
environment, in the arms industry,in the manufacture and use of depleted uranium,
in the exploitation of and experimentation on our indigenous people and our military
personnel, in immigration, over our right of Habeus Corpus, in our right of due
process, our right to assemble and our freedom of speech, etc., etc.
Government of the people, by the people,for the people has been eliminated while
those people we have elected stand idly in the sidelines apparently blissfully
oblivious, or deliberately careless of the termination of their policy making
role except as a rubber stamp. Those we have elected have abused their responsibility
to protect our power, the people's power. They have permitted an undemocratic
elite to control them and the operation of government. It is by us, the general
citizenry, that Members of Parliament and Members of Legislative Assemblies and
city councillors,and Senators and congressmen are supposed to be ruled in all
matters, not by the military/ industrial/ complex that General Dwight D. Eisenhower
warned about on his final address to his nation. The Prime Minister and Presidents
along with their most senior Cabinet members and officials really now do apply
a "Divine Right of Kings" mentality to their role. They have metamorphosed
into a cancer rotting the life out of our democracies.
For this reason the Canadian Action Party calls for electoral reform not just
in how we elect candidates, but why and how the bureaucracy operates. In particular,
we call for a curb on the exercise of power in the executive branch of government,
and especially in the P.M.s office.This need is of paramount importance because
it is the key to why and how three nations (Canada, USA,Mexico) are being dismantled.
Remember, if you believe in democratic accountable representation, there must
be a universal franchise. Government of the people, by the people,for the people
still is right. It is not government by officials of any organization or interest
group whether public or private who are unelected by, unrepresentative, and unaccountable
to the general public. We need to reform our government structure so that we can
recall and replace any person we elect when they fail to keep their promise or
do their duty to us, the citizenry ; and we also need to turn our executive arm
of government back to being the servant of the citizens.
The Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreement (S.P.P) is deliberately not
a formal international treaty such as NAFTA which is set out in a system of rule
by international law .As a legal treaty the SPP would never have flown because
it would have been exposed to scrutiny. It remains a work in progress agreement
of incredible treacherous magnitude. It has already succeeded in implementing
profound changes to three nations integrating the geographical region of North
America. We do not even know the full extent of what has been completed or what
little is left to be accomplished..
We know that a powerful think tank chaired by former Sen. Sam Nunn and guided
by trustees including Richard Armitage, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Harold Brown, William
Cohen and Henry Kissinger, is in the final stages of preparing a report to the
White House and U.S. Congress on the benefits of integrating the U.S., Mexico
and Canada into one political, economic and security bloc.
We know that the final report, published in English, Spanish and French, is scheduled
for submission to all three governments by Sept. 30, according to the http://www.csis.org/
Center for Strategic & International Studies.
We know that the data collected for the report is based on seven secret roundtable
sessions involving between 21 and 45 people and conducted by CSIS. The participants
are politicians, business people, labour leaders and academics from all three
countries with equal representation.
We know all this because it is described in a CSIS report, <http://www.canadians.org/water/documents/NA_Future_2025.pdf
2025.pdf%3E%22North American Future 2025 Project."
It will be interesting to see who the think tank representatives will be that
appear before our Canadian Parliament and how it is presented since so many of
our Canadian MP's deny this integration is happening. They need to realize that
the vote still works in Canada and if they want to be re-elected, they must repel
the submissions for integration. In fact, their duty to us is to refuse to hear
such a delegation. SInce when has it become lawful to entertain discussion or
debate on any form of treason??
This kind of presentation by such influential players will likely be a formalization
of the integration as a done deal.
We, the citizens, must demonstrate to our governments that we demand an end to
the integration of North America . And, we must tell them we are not asking for
a front row seat at our hanging party. We do not want to be involved or to have
them involved in any negotiations or discussions or debate about how our nations
are to die. We already know we do not want a North American Union, period!!! They
must repel the formal instructions coming to them this fall from the shadow government.
In recognition of our sovereign democratic rights and powers as citizens promulgated
by the respective founding fathers of three nations, the Canadian Action Party
calls upon all Canadians to join with our neighbors in the USA and Mexico to stand
and defend our distinctive nations, NOT TO CALL FOR DEBATE AND DISCUSSION ON INTEGRATION.
We must DEMAND SOVEREIGNTY AND INDEPENDENCE We must make a sound and sight so
that uninformed citizens can be alerted. How can we do this?
Right now, focus on being at the 25 km perimeter around Montebello, Quebec on
August 20 and 21, 2007. | <urn:uuid:2172a485-bd85-4e90-9d7a-0f420ada01d5> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://lookingglassnews.org/viewstory.php?storyid=7179 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571869.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813021048-20220813051048-00074.warc.gz | en | 0.934173 | 2,151 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Since they saw earlier that all materials can be involved in static electric effects the group decides that both the metal and plastic electroscopes will behave the same way. Vicky was not in class that day and expresses the idea that metals and non-metals would behave differently. They decide that the tinsel will spread out on both electroscopes since both will be positively charged. April expresses an interesting idea in terms of breaking the scenario into two successive charge transfers.
Group 3 describes their thinking that based on previous observations they expect the metal and plastic electroscopes to behave in the same way. After another group agrees with them Group 1 expresses an idea that the two materials will behave differently because they have different abilities to 'absorb' charges from the acrylic sheet.
After deciding that charges cannot easily move through non-metals Group 3 discusses how to discharge a non-metal object; they decide that it must be touched all over. They then watch movie that gives evidence to support their thinking.
Group 3 describes how their current model accounts for the behavior of the soda-can electroscope when the base end is touched by a positively charged acrylic sheet. They are asked to clarify their explanation for why the tinsel spreads out.
Group 5 describes how their current model accounts for the behavior of the soda-can electroscope when the base end is touched by a negatively charged Styrofoam plate. Two students point out that they have moved some positive charges around which they learned in a homework assignment is not appropriate. Another group presents their representation that is based on what they saw in a simulator movie. | <urn:uuid:b8869e01-bf7a-4471-a8b5-e5a7be92e899> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://nextgenpetstudent.activatelearning.com/videos/movies_mse/movies_mse_use_a4.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571090.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20220809215803-20220810005803-00076.warc.gz | en | 0.961783 | 323 | 3.875 | 4 |
Item description for Secular Theology: American Radical Theological Thought by Clayton Crockett...
Secular Theology brings together writings by some of America's most influential theological and religious thinkers, providing alternative resources for philosophical theology. Secular theology is not a contradiction; rather it acknowledges that philosophy and religious reflection are deeply implicated in theology and contemporary culture, and cannot disavow or overcome them. The theologians whose work is gathered together here argue that secularity does not oppose religious practice and belief, but is in fact much concerned with possibilities for thinking about religion and the sacred, God and humanity.
Promise Angels is dedicated to bringing you great books at great prices. Whether you read for entertainment, to learn, or for literacy - you will find what you want at promiseangels.com!
Est. Packaging Dimensions: Length: 9.54" Width: 6.4" Height: 0.78" Weight: 1.17 lbs.
Release Date Jul 11, 2001
ISBN 041525051X ISBN13 9780415250511
Availability 0 units.
More About Clayton Crockett
Clayton Crockett is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion at the College of William and Mary. He is the author of A Theology of the Sublime (Routledge, 2001) and managing editor of the online Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (www.jcrt.org).
Clayton Crockett was born in 1969 and has an academic affiliation as follows - Department of Philosophy and Religion, University of Central Arkansas.
Clayton Crockett has published or released items in the following series... | <urn:uuid:fe959c04-7983-49ae-bc9c-2b52ca7a742e> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.promiseangels.com/c-crockett/secular-theology-american-radical-theological-thought/SKU/157603 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280587.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00565-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.899954 | 337 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Countries recognize vital role of small-scale fishers
10 Jun 2014
ountries today endorsed a set of wide-reaching guidelines that will boost the already vital role of small-scale fishers in contributing to global food security, nutrition and poverty eradication.
The Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication are designed to support the world’s millions of small-scale fishers, particularly in developing countries, by promoting their human rights and safeguarding the sustainable use of the fishery resources they depend upon for their livelihoods.
Read full article at FAO | <urn:uuid:9ae5d523-ac8c-4e9d-ba68-d5cf9ceb8e87> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.bahamastradeinfo.gov.bs/sector-news/countries-recognize-vital-role-of-small-scale-fishers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571993.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814022847-20220814052847-00665.warc.gz | en | 0.878982 | 130 | 2.125 | 2 |
Canadian real estate buyers got hit with another quiet hurdle last week. The Bank of Canada (BoC) raised interest rates, and with it, up went the posted 5 year mortgage rate. Here’s how that’s going to impact your borrowing patterns, and how much more it’s going to cost you.
Bank of Canada’s 5 Year Rate Rises To 5.14%
The increase of interest rates generally leads to a rise in the BoC’s posted mortgage rate, but the full increase isn’t always passed on. The overnight interest rate increased by 0.25 percentage points, but 5 year conventional was only hiked by 0.15 percentage points. This brings the 5 year conventional to 5.14%, which doesn’t seem that high. However, the hike does hit potential homebuyers in a couple of ways.
That Small Hike Reduces Borrowing Power By Over 1.6%
The small hike does translate to a significant reduction in borrowing power, sometimes called “affordability.” The hike from 4.99% to 5.14% reduces borrowing power by about 1.68%. For example, a household earning $100,000 at a rate of 4.99%, would have been able to borrow ~$534,594 for a mortgage. The new hike to 5.14% would mean that same household would only be able to borrow $525,577. The $9,017 decline is just one of the hurdles, that are going to get worse with higher rates.
How That Translates To Real Prices
The amount of interest paid is also increases significantly. The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) published a composite aggregate benchmark price of $600,300 in December. A composite aggregate benchmark is the price of a typical home across Canada, for those that don’t know. Let’s use that as an example of the extra expense incurred with the hike.
On a conventional mortgage, you would need to put 20% down. This brings the mortgage size on a typical home to $480,240. If you get a fixed rate mortgage just a couple of weeks ago at 4.99%, you will have paid $446,795 in interest over 30 years, on top of the purchase price. At 5.15%, the interest paid over 30 years would jump to $462,700. That’s $15,905 more expensive, for the same home. Now most of you would be paying lower than the BoC’s 5 year mortgage rate, but ideally it averages out around here, after rates are done climbing. Although it can get more or less expensive, depending on how rates change in the future.
Low interest rates are soon to be a thing of the past, which will have an interesting impact on the home buying market. Borrowers, who were already hit with a stress test this year, will have their borrowing power reduced. This could increase the number of people that would have been eliminated by the stress test. On the flip side, rising rates could inspire more home buyers to try and close a fixed rate as soon as possible. The market is currently anticipating two more rate hikes this year, which means an even larger reduction to mortgage borrowing room, and even more spent on interest rates. How do you think this will shake out? Leave your comments below.
Like this post? Like us on Facebook for the next one in your feed. | <urn:uuid:62b5ca2d-66ad-4552-88db-7496302e40b9> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://betterdwelling.com/small-rate-hike-big-impact-canadian-real-estate-buyers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572286.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20220816090541-20220816120541-00278.warc.gz | en | 0.973653 | 715 | 1.695313 | 2 |
The FBI’s preliminary report on crime statistics for 2008 show an overall decrease in violent crime, but an increase for cities of 10,000 or less.
In small cities, according to the report, murders increased by 5.5%, forcible rape by 1.4%, and robbery by 3.9%.
Violent crime decreased for the second year in a row, showing a 2.5% decrease from 2007. Property crimes were also down 1.6% from the previous year, the fifth in a row.
In the categories of violent and property crimes tracked by the FBI, only burglaries showed an increase across the nation.
Looking at crimes by region, the West and Midwest had between a 3% and 4% decrease in both violent and property crimes. The South and Northeast had less dramatic changes, with property crimes actually rising in the Northeast.
Arson, which the FBI tracks separately from the other two groups, was down in all for sections of the country.
Mother vehicle thefts had the most notable improvement, decreasing by 13.1% from 2007.
The statistics are based on data provided by more than 12,000 law enforcement agencies across the country. | <urn:uuid:0cd6cf43-88cc-4249-9a00-cc8ee18eacb0> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.totalcriminaldefense.com/blog/2009/06/02/fbi-violent-crime-down-nationwide-up-in-small-towns/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279650.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00435-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974078 | 241 | 2.234375 | 2 |
Get Diane Flynn Keith’s
360 Pages Packed with Over 350 Entertaining
Games & Activities to Turn Travel Time into Learning Time
Take the whine out of drive time with this collection
of innovative, fun, and educational car games!
In the new book Carschooling®, you’ll learn how to:
- Map your taste buds at your favorite drive-through fast food restaurant,
- Use 18-Wheeler Chemistry to understand the Periodic Table of Elements,
- Use license plate numbers to learn how to round up or down,
- Turn historical markers into roadside textbooks in the game, Drive-By History,
- Learn which art projects you really can take on the road,
- Pack your stopwatch for the next rippin’ and roarin’ Rest Stop Olympics,
- Scramble up an Animal Cookie Car Safari
- And much, much more!
You See? There IS an alternative to playing “Slug Bug,” singing “100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” and plugging the kids into mindless DVDs and video games. | <urn:uuid:351df47a-433e-4d1d-8de5-762ce7c72e9a> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.carschooling.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280221.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00228-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.849975 | 232 | 1.796875 | 2 |
On October 24 of last year, I posted a link for a recipe for Old Salem Pumpkin Muffins. I had found the recipe on the internet and I was pleased with the results. Not to long ago I was browsing through some of my cookbooks searching for a recipe and I saw another recipe for pumpkins muffins that was very close to the link I shared on this blog last year. This time of year, my desire for baking revs up and I wanted to bake the pumpkin muffins. I searched through my cookbooks and I could not find the recipe mentioned above but I was on a mission to make the muffins. I again googled the recipes on the internet and found several. The one I am sharing with you today is from Oxmoor Press that is the publishing company for Southern Living Magazine. I am very happy with the results from this recipe and it appealed to me because it was from a magazine that has been established in the South for a long time.
Here is a link with more information about Old Salem. It is located in Winston Salem NC and is a historical preservation of the town of Salem. http://www.oldsalem.org/visit.html
Here is the recipe and I made 12 muffins instead of the 18 as listed below. I used buttermilk for the milk in the recipe and I think that is the reason they turned out extremely moist.
Old Salem Pumpkin Muffins – Oxmoor House January 1983
Yield 12 to 18 muffins
1/3 cup raisins
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/3 cup butter or margarine softened
3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 cup canned pumpkin
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup molasses
2 eggs, beaten
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
Preparation: combine raisins and 1 tablespoon of flour; stir well, and set aside. Cream butter; gradually add sugar, beating well. Add pumpkin, milk, molasses and eggs, beating well.
Sift together flour, baking powder, salt and spices; add to creamed mixture, stirring just until dry ingredients are moistened. Stir in raisins.
Spoon batter into greased muffin pans, filling full. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes.
I am also sharing the recipe from the link I had on my blog last year. It is from Epicureaders.com
Old Salem Pumpkin Muffins
1 and 2/3 cups sifted flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1/8 tsp. ground cloves
1/3 cup golden raisins
1/3 cup butter
1 and 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup canned pumpkin
1/3 cup water
Sift togethr flour, baking powder, soda, salt and spices; add raisins and coat. Cream butter, add sugar gradually and continue to cream. Beat in eggs. Add dry ingredients alternately with pumpkin and water. Stir to blend only until flour disappears. Fill greased and floured muffin tins 1/2 to 2/3 full. Bake at 375 degrees for 15 to 16 minutes or until muffins are done.
Source: Cooks. com Prepared by: Margo for the February 2009 meeting.
Someday, I know I will be browsing through my recipe books and find the recipe that interested me so much and started me on this mission. I will probably give it a try too. This recipe makes your home smell so warm and inviting.
Happy Fall Y’all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! | <urn:uuid:d81e95ec-263a-4851-982b-fa08cb62bf89> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://sodoesthatmeaniamsouthern.com/2012/10/22/old-salem-pumpkin-muffins-again/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280065.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00541-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944229 | 792 | 1.523438 | 2 |
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At the core of Trismegistos is Trismegistos Texts, which provides information about all published and semi-published texts from Egypt and the Nile valley, between roughly BC 800 and 800 AD, not only in Greek, Latin, and Egyptian, but also in Meroitic, Aramaic, Arabic, Nabataean, Carian, and other languages. In addition to Trismegistos Texts, it comprises a number of other sections including, Collections, Archives, People and Places.
Help & guidance
- For help using this resource login as above and then click one of the two links under the main search box on the Trismegistos website. These contain information on how to use the database and how to cite it.
- Contact your Academic Liaison Librarian for additional advice on using this resource.
Exporting to EndNote is not supported. What is EndNote? | <urn:uuid:fd9c2ade-98d2-4fc8-b30e-0ac72e274aea> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.reading.ac.uk/library/e-resources/databases/trismegistos | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882570879.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20220808213349-20220809003349-00474.warc.gz | en | 0.881499 | 274 | 1.554688 | 2 |
G. BOSCATO, S. RUSSO and F. SCIARRETTA
IUAV University of Venice
The paper describes the scope and preliminary results of static and dynamic monitoring on the external medieval façades of Palazzo Ducale in Venice. Initial experimental deductions on structural behaviour are presented, and future developments, anticipated results and data utilization strategies are discussed. The monitoring activity was carried out as an integrated multi-disciplinary procedure, by the Research Unit ‘Assessment of Monumental Buildings’ (CdSM) at the IUAV University of Venice. The programme was set up in order to control the zones of possible concern with regards to visible cracks and arch voussoirs’ interfaces using extensometers, and to detect the dynamic response to ambient-induced excitations along a vertical section, by means of accelerometers. Finally, the empirical calculation of the damping coefficient of the South façade is shown, and a judgement on its reliability is given.
Palazzo Ducale Venice, masonry buildings monitoring, historic masonry, damping coefficient, ambient vibrations | <urn:uuid:21cf48dc-f678-4562-b215-022bf5a39232> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.masonry.org.uk/downloads/structural-monitoring-of-the-slender-double-layered-facade-of-palazzo-ducale-in-venice-preliminary-analysis-of-measurements/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571950.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813111851-20220813141851-00678.warc.gz | en | 0.89222 | 234 | 1.539063 | 2 |
The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday that it won’t hear a case filed by Texas and 13 other states that seeks to revive a Trump-era “public charge” immigration rule, stating they need an opinion from a lower court first.
The issue before the courts stems from the Trump administration’s decision to broaden definition of the term “public charge” in 2019 to include noncitizens who rely, or will likely rely on, Medicaid, food assistance such as food stamps, housing assistance, and prescription drug benefits through Medicare Part D.
Under current law, a public charge is any noncitizen who will likely become “primarily” reliant on certain government assistance programs — meaning that the programs provide more than half of their income. Immigrants deemed a public charge cannot receive a green card for citizenship.
In March, the Department of Homeland Security under President Joe Biden announced that it would no longer defend the Trump policy in court, dropping appeals originally filed by the Trump administration in several courts.
In 2019, New York led a coalition that filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration seeking to block the expanded public charge rule. After a judge ruled for the plaintiffs, the Trump administration appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which also ruled in favor of the coalition.
The Trump administration appealed that decision to the Supreme Court, which agreed to review the case before Biden’s DHS decided to drop the appeals.
A separate challenge to the Trump policy, led by Cook County, Illinois and an advocacy group, led to it being struck down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in 2020.
“The 2019 public charge rule was not in keeping with our nation’s values. It penalized those who access health benefits and other government services available to them,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said.
Texas and 13 other states filed a lawsuit last month in the Seventh Circuit, seeking to uphold Trump’s expanded public charge rule and arguing that the Biden administration rescinded it without following the Administrative Procedure Act.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also claimed that not having the Trump rule in place would “cost our Medicaid budget and other vital services will explode and be spread too thin, costing taxpayers millions more and reducing the quality of service we can provide.”
After their lawsuit was denied in that court, the 14-state coalition took the case before the nation’s highest court. The Supreme Court’s decision Monday means that it won't immediately take up the case led by Texas, at least until a lower court weighs in.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04/26/texas-trump-immigration-supreme-court/.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org. | <urn:uuid:54ed0884-e88a-4f62-8e8d-d1a9aec5627e> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.kxxv.com/hometown/texas/u-s-supreme-court-rejects-texas-led-lawsuit-seeking-to-protect-a-trump-immigration-policy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571234.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811042804-20220811072804-00066.warc.gz | en | 0.955469 | 618 | 1.507813 | 2 |
❧ 1. The Tyranny of the Pointless Details. Or, Some of My Best Friends are Pseudo-Scholars
❧ 2. Boredom as Pseudo-Scholarship
❧ 3. Pseudo-Scholarship as Cowardice
❧ 4. Cowardice Masked as Pomposity and Hostility
❧ 5. Cowardice Masked as Dedication and Loyalty
❧ 6. Cowardice Masked as Humility
❧ 7. Cowardice Masked as Responsibility
❧ 8. A Favorite Sport: Kicking Colleagues While They are Lying Down
❧ 9. The Natural History of Intellectual Courage
❧ 10. Intellectual Courage in Education and in Research
We have come down to business; so pull up your sleeves and settle down comfortably. We are in for some vaguely systematic study, so if you find here something open to criticism or otherwise thought-provoking, jot down a note about it in your note-book or on your writing-pad—it is always advisable to have pencil and paper ready during engagement in serious work (as all those who are mathematically trained know very well)—and push on: you should return to it later.
First, let us examine—as a possible cause of a serious intellectual malady—the widespread philosophical repudiation of sweeping generalizations as dangerous in their very appeal. It is the philosophy that advocates detailed dry scholarly serious attention to boring detail. This idea renders the most delightful activity, which is study, into a depressing, repulsive, nerve-wrecking chore. This is not in the least to declare all social malady, even all ills of Academe, to have the same cause, of course; but it is to contradict some very popular social doctrine that entail non-specific nosology or any other.
“Nosology” is the Greek for theory of disease. Its non-specific versions share one characteristic: each ascribes one cause to all ills. In almost all cultures, the dominant nosological view is non-specific; it is usually some doctrine of imbalance, of lack of harmony between different parts or functions of the body. In the West, the influence of Greek medicine made non-specific nosology the widely accepted fashion. Hippocrates and Galen and all that. The eighteenth century saw the last firework of non-specific nosology with a number of detailed theories of imbalance following each other in quick succession. In a sense even Louis Pasteur, “the” father of modern medicine, advocated a non-specific nosology: though he knew that different kinds of bugs cause different kinds of illness, and this way he deviated from non-specific nosology somewhat; yet his germ-theory of disease, his view that the cause of all illnesses is external (usually of parasites of one sort or another) is rather non-specific. (In his view, the body is usually in a sufficient balance to take care of itself, unless an outside factor interferes with that balance. This is how Claude Bernard understood Pasteur. He said, this theory is insufficient since it does not help differentiate between the case in which the body overcomes the invader and the case where there is a struggle between them. Pasteur had to acknowledge this as in response to Bernard he recognized the body’s poor constitution’s contribution to illness.) Pasteur’s germ theory was the last non-specific nosology in the Western medical tradition. Even though Robert Koch and John Hughlings Jackson refuted his doctrine at once, it won and maintained popularity because it was non-specific and because it engendered a powerful, fruitful scientific research program. (One of the last followers of the Pasteur research tradition was Saul Adler, FRS, who saved my life when I was an infant and struck by a tropical disease.)
It is hard to imagine a new non-specific nosology arising in this day and age, when so much is known of great varieties of parasites, of congenital (inborn) diseases, auto-immunization (immunization against one’s own organs, leading to a kind of civil-war) and allergies (over-immunization, a kind of a McCarthy-style hysteria in the body’s defense system), and other ills of over-defensiveness (like pneumonia, where the lungs are flooded with water in defense against infection risking the possibility of patients choking to death), and simple deterioration of organs from over-work (the liver, the kidney, and perhaps even the brain). Yet this may be merely the absence of a good theory of health, the lack of imagination and powers of synthesizing diverse elements into one idea. The history of thought should make us wary of arguments from our own lack of imagination and restore our faith in human resourcefulness or in our hope that it will keep growing.
This is of general importance: sheer dogmatism and intellectual cowardice stand behind the opposition to a bold and brilliant synthesis—not that dogmatism and cowardice are essentially different: they usually intertwine—and then, after the synthesis has gained currency, they may favor it for the very same reason. (Gertrude Stein went so far as to say, the establishment recognizes a new idea only in order to block recognition of a newer one. This is dazzling but not always true.) Two aspects to proper methodology defy popular attitudes to novelty. First, popular prejudice today opposes adherence to any doctrine that is vulnerable to criticism. Second, intellectual cowardice is seldom noted, and hardly ever as a defect. The exceptions are cases where, due to very special circumstances, intellectual cowardice leads to dogmatism and to other qualities that happen to be objectionable regardless of the question of intellectual courage altogether. Let me expand a little.
Popular prejudice tends to oppose any brilliant synthesis, especially those that commentators have already rejected and condemned off-hand. Even those who have originated an idea and advocated it prior to its having been found empirically wanting, tend to belittle it after it was refuted. This is a tenaciously unhistorical, condescending philosophy. Dismally, there is something admirable and bold in it: a theory that is objectionable today is objectively objectionable; it is objectionable regardless of knowledge or ignorance of the objections to it: proper objections are as timeless as truth and falsity are. Take the theory that all swans are white; the truth that some swans are black refutes it, independently of our knowledge or ignorance of the facts. Whether anyone had ever observed any black swan or not, the objectivity of the existence of black swans and of its conflict with the theory that all swans are white makes that hypothesis as false now as it ever was. Nevertheless, to censure those who declared all swans white on this ground is to censure them for not having travelled to Australia in search of black swans: it is unfair, condescending, and unhistorical. Hence, objection or criticism are not the same as hostility or censure: we may criticize objects of our admiration and still admire them. This became clear when Einstein’s deviations form Newton became standard (Popper). Einstein explained his (correct, for all we know) view that Newton is the greatest scientist of all times.
All this deserves much study and elaboration; it offers cures to endless academic agonies of a great variety. Leading sociologist Max Weber said, a researcher who poses a hypothesis should feel the risk of being struck by lightning in case it is false. How much nicer was the declaration of Heinrich Heine that he would always retain his right to admit error! Popular prejudice considers censurable the advocacy of an objectionable theory. Consequently, serious people who consider a given theory true may find very disturbing any objection to it. They may think that this amounts to censuring them. The critics may hold the popular prejudice and indeed censure openly the advocates of the theory that they criticize. Balanced people may then simply dislike the injustice of the censure; in that case, they may say that the critics grossly exaggerate their criticism because their censure is exaggerated and because they confusedly identify criticism with censure. They may claim that the censure is just but that it aims the wrong target. Imbalanced people may open a venomous counter-offensive out of the pain of feeling both the justice and the injustice of the critics’ comment, and of their inability to sort these out—perhaps in ambivalence.
Strangely enough, many who adhere to the popular prejudice in question are well aware of this kind of trouble. They even consider this kind of trouble inevitable and therefore condemn the origination of any brilliant synthesis as the cause of much trouble to avoid—even by suppression: they are ready to suppress controversial papers. Edward Jenner’s great work on inoculation was rejected by the Royal Society as too controversial (indeed it was argumentative in character)—for his own good, of course.
Consider the table of chemical elements of John Newland (1864), his laws of octaves, and the table of Dmitri Mendeleev (1869). Why do we ascribe the table to the latter rather than to the former? The staple answer is, the former is inaccurate. So is the latter, although it is more accurate than the former. There are earlier versions of the table of elements—of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the latest table is much more recent. Indeed, before the discovery of the neutron (1933) the table had no proper theoretical basis. (Since then, an element is characterize by both its atomic number that is the number of its protons in every atom of it, and its atomic weight that is the number of its protons plus neutrons in it.) Under the influence of Einstein’s methodology, a time-series of such tables shows how the criticism of an earlier version led to the later one. There is no room in this methodological view for takin criticism personally—as censure or as anything else personal but gratitude, for the contribution to the advancement of science.
Alas! The most eloquent fact about facts is that facts are silent, or, if you prefer, they tell different people different stories. Herbert Butterfield, the famous Cambridge historian, said, “History is a whore and a harlot”: historical records offer support and comfort to all sorts of viewpoint by their various details. Obviously, a fact may suggest often enough a theory in a manner rather objective in the sense that it is intersubjective (Kant) namely, that various observers will interpret the fact in a rather uniform manner. Now this objectivity or quasi-objectivity is not unique, and at time, however rarely, two quasi-objective readings are satisfactory. Strange! Some take this as a great defect and others as a great opportunity. Because of this absence of uniqueness we cannot speak of induction in any precise sense, yet we may still speak loosely of induction of sorts; the logic of it, however, is not that it settles controversy but, on the contrary, that it stimulates controversy. Inductivist thinkers like the great physicist Max Born replace the old adage, science allows for no controversy, with the adage, scientific controversies are short-lived. This may be misleading since scientific researchers may harbor metaphysical disagreements for centuries. (The metaphysical dispute between followers of Descartes and followers of Newton that began in the late seventeenth century was alive and very influential in research until the early twentieth century, when Einstein rendered both parties obsolete.)
The ability of a controversy to survive for centuries displeased inductivist thinkers like Born, since controversy blocks the ability of science to impose. It is valuable for the progress of science, though: controversy is the best way to raise curiosity. What distinguishes the broadminded from the rest—the narrow-minded, the uninterested, the unimaginative, the cocksure, the dogmatist, the coward, the parochial and all the rest of them—is obvious: in different frameworks, the same fact hints at very different theories. Facts may occasionally speak unequivocally against some brilliant synthesis; the curious may then feel the need for new ideas. This, briefly, is Popper’s philosophy of science, and a brilliant synthesis it is, thought provoking and useful, although in need of slight alterations. As facts cannot suggest a framework, they cannot suggest a theory: at a rare moment, a framework plus a fact may just do that. Therefore, when we invent a new brilliant synthesis we can start a new exploration of the facts. This is a paradigm-shift (Kuhn): facts alone will not do this for us.
Syntheses concerning social ills, then—you did not think I forgot the point from which I have digressed thus far only twice, did you? If you did, then you should learn to trust me just a little more; social ills may rest on brilliant ideas and some of these were progressive in their day. We have now in the offing a theory of socio-nosology that is less non-specific than any non-specific nosology proper. Yet popular prejudice supports, especially in the United States, some version or another of a very important and interesting social philosophy that entails a very important non-specific socio-nosology. This characteristic enables that doctrine to stand in the face of tons and tons of criticisms published annually against it. I am speaking of Marxism.
Oddly, lip-service is paid to Marxism in the East and to anti-Marxism in the West, but that in the East, where experiments in Marxism failed systematically and miserably, the people who can still think now think better, whereas in the West Marxism clouds many a judgment.
The other day a fleeting event shocked for a moment many honest thoughtful citizens all over the free world. Subsequently to rumors about peace-talks in Vietnam, the stock exchange rating plunge for a few hours. That was all. The event was transitory; in itself, it had no social, political, economic, or financial significance of any magnitude; nobody was worried about it. What honest and thoughtful citizens were seriously worried about at the time was the event not as a social factor but as a symptom of a very serious illness. Now diagnoses that most people accept are often extremely poor, but the symptom just reported underwent proper diagnosis, regardless as to how microscopic that diagnosis was. It should indeed have let all alarm-bells loose. The bare fact, that the price of stock fell in the New York Stock Exchange very slightly for a few hours, and was presumed to be the result of rumors that the Vietnam War was approaching its end. The slightness of the symptom is easily explicable by the weakness of the rumors. Let us admit this explanation. Now the diagnosis was that the Vietnam War and its perpetuation were contributors to economic boom that is thus waging war chiefly out of economic interest and neither out of political interest nor out of ideological considerations.
Possibly, the rumor is true. Rumors of peace may cause a momentary panic in any stock exchange independently of the manifest fact that peace offers better economic opportunity than war. Those who trade on the stock exchange ignore or oppose Marxism, yet they reflect their customers who may very well be susceptible to Marxist ideology; they may have thus panicked as unreasonably as gamblers with stocks often do. It is hard to impute consistent Marxism—to American brokers, or to their customers, or to American intellectuals, or to anybody else; the fact remains: a tinge of Marxism has caused a momentary panic in the stock exchange.
Marxist ideology claims that the root of all social causes is economic, so that all social ills are to blame on the malfunctioning of the economic system. It is an anti-intellectual philosophy, though it draws part of its strength from its being a brilliant synthesis that is an intellectual quality par excellence. It also draws its strength from its being a kind of objectivist theory in its seemingly total disregard of morality, especially of popular morality that is possibly (as Marx had stressed) mass-hypocrisy and a vulgar lip service of conformists. The allegation that popular morality is often popular hypocrisy is well known; the adolescent and the disgruntled much exaggerate it; they are subsequently more susceptible to Marxism than others are. This, again, is paradoxical: Marxism is recommendable for its a-moralism, which is a kind of anti-hypocrisy and thus a morality proper; just as it enjoys the praise of possessing the intellectual quality of objectivism, in spite of its being anti-intellectual (Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals, 1962).
Do not let paradox fool you: when it is merely a paradox because it clashes with popular or private prejudice or because of a clever verbal formulation, paradox may be an asset; otherwise it is to be ignored: as in the case of Marxism: endorse a proper paradox and you have rejected logic, rationality, the very ability to think for yourself.
Apart from paradox, the stress on cynicism and hypocrisy is very much of an adolescent exaggeration: cynicism and hypocrisy are qualities very hard to adhere to, unless one is either a genuine scoundrel or a very superficial person down to the deepest levels of one’s personality. Modern mythology often describes cynics who become ideologically fired with noble feelings when it comes down to the essence of their humanity and who then atone magnificently for all their past cynicism and hypocrisy (The Mouthpiece; Casablanca; Stalag 17; Ride The High Country). Such mythology is very romantic and seldom true (historical novels of André Malraux); the truth is there, all right, but it is seldom romantic.
In his largely autobiographical novel Of Human Bondage, William Somerset Maugham tells a moving and thought-provoking story. The hero is a young English art student lost in a middling art school in Paris. The only two great lights around are phony, though he does not even suspect this. The one is a drunkard who pretends to be an art-critic to make poor art-students pay for his wine while he drinks and chatters. The other is an allegedly high-class successful painter who, for a handsome salary, comes to the art school on a rare occasion to drop a comment or a piece of technical advice to a budding painter to give a touch of class to the school. The young English student has his difficulties; he has his self-doubts; but he hangs on stubbornly. Another student in a similar though much worse predicament loses faith and commits suicide. The English student is greatly shaken by this and decides that he must seriously examine his own situation and either make serious a commitment to art or quit immediately. For this, he needs an impartial assessment of his potential as a painter. He goes to his two great lights, and, to his surprise, he gets the very same reaction from both. First, the appointed adviser dishes run-of-the-mill homilies. The English student makes it clear that he is in earnest. The adviser consequently tries to get rid of him as a pest. He insists. The adviser drops his phony mask, presents himself as a failure, and recommends to the English student to get out while the going is good. The advice over, the adviser promptly returns to his normal poise as if the session that just terminated has never happened. The English student understands and leaves.
This way Maugham offers a profound insight into the run-of-the-mill hypocrite and cynic. They are weak, but sincerely and fearfully wish to remain harmless; they prefer to drop their mask for a very brief while and be useful, rather than do harm, but only reluctantly: in their weakness, they prefer to remain inconsequential.
There is the disregard for weakness and the bent to remain inconsequential. It is a tribute to the exuberance of youth. My own youthful infatuation with Marxism, truth to tell, rested less on my ability to examine it than in my inability to assess the weakness of my philosophy teachers with whom I wished to discuss matters of consequence. They did not find my youthful flirt with Marxism shocking; I suppose their appraisal of it as transitory was correct; otherwise, they would have made an effort to prevent my rash, adolescent manner.
Some of my best friends and colleagues are like this: nice, inconsequential scholars, but able to rise to an occasion and stand by the side of a colleague or a student when the system lashes to them more hardship than their fair share and more than they can take. (Hence, often enough the apparent indifference of you elders and betters to your agonies is a kind of a compliment: they deem you able to survive them.) Moreover, their very weakness rests not on cynicism or hypocrisy as on a theory of scholarship and research that is dogmatic and cowardly. Even the cynics among them are often less cynical in significant matters than they would care to admit. Most of them, however, hold a poor rationale for their pseudo-scholarship or they lack interest in research. Whatever their rationale is, it plays an enormous role in their lives. Attack it, and they feel as deeply hurt as they could possibly be in impersonal matters like this: it is very much like attacking violently the doctrines of Marxism in front of an honest dedicated Marxist of long standing.
Any significant study of scholarship and research should help distinguish between the genuine and the fake. Current studies fail on this as they declare all punctilious research real. This is often false. This dismissal may upset some, namely, those who wish to suppress the doubt that they harbor deep down in their hearts: we all meet with occasions to question the theory that genuine science and genuine scholarship rest on abundance of detail. It is our old acquaintance, inductivism. The possibility that science does not rest on facts sounds somewhat irrational and frightening.
Let me take the claim for the rationality of inductivism first, and discuss later the fear that it is false. The first item, rationality, is the standard topic of discussion in the philosophy of science; the second item, fear, philosophes prefer to overlook, perhaps due to the fear to recognize fear.
People somewhat familiar with philosophy who hear the claim that science does not rest on detailed facts may hear the claim that science rests (not on facts but) on intuition or a priori reasoning or inspiration or whatever else it is that one may find within oneself to rely on. The tradition of Western philosophy includes disturbing memories of bitter disappointments in every kind of reliance. Since intuition is disappointing but science is successful, the argument goes, of necessity science rests not on intuition. Hence, it rests on experience. The insistence that science does not rest on experience either, obviously clashes with the fact that intuition is often disappointing. The insistence on both intuition and evidence being at times disappoint, seems in conflict with the acknowledgement that science is a success. It looks impossible.
The fact that some serious thinkers took both intuition and information seriously, raises the question, what did they do when the two clashed? Worse, the possibility of such a clash prevents using either as foundation. People who face this option usually conclude from it that science is a failure. Yet no one denies the success of science-based technology. This is why this success of science-based technology is often considered dangerous for the spirit, irrelevant to anything spiritual, irrelevant to serious questions. This is obscurantism, yet the disappointment in science did bring to it some scientifically minded people. Even answers to simple questions such as, is matter atomic or continuous, they say, can no more be expected to come from science that has disappointed us repeatedly by repeatedly switching between alternatives.
You cannot dismiss all this. Among competent philosophers, the situation is more complex but it amounts to the same. First, basing science on intuition has no advocates these days. Second, although the majority opinion is that science rests on evidence, it is not unanimous. Most dissenters hold that scientific theories are only tools: they are mathematical formulas accepted by mere convention; they are sets of drawers in which empirical information is neatly classified. They are the conventionalists or the instrumentalists. Their theory is one that the hostile to science gladly endorse. This then is an odd, counter-intended alliance between science and irrationalism. It prevents any sense of proportion and invites utter freedom whether to take any deviant information sufficiently seriously as to replace the system by another or to add a new drawer for it ad hoc. Here is a famous ad hoc, verbal innovation that took place in the second half of the twentieth century (Kuhn): call the system a paradigm and a change of a system a paradigm-shift and you have a new philosophy. To this verbal innovation raises the question, since paradigm shifts are ad hoc, who declares it? Answer: the scientific leadership. Question: who are these? Answer: those who declare a paradigm shift. Question: how can they do so? Answer: they fire any professor who does not obey them. Farewell to academic freedom!
The common to inductivism (the theory that science rests on experience) and conventionalism (the theory that science rests on mathematics) is that both reject the Kuhn-style tyranny of the administration (tacitly but firmly); rather, they sanctify the tyranny of the pointless detail. They justify science by justifying a specific form of pseudo-scholarship. This move appeals to scholars in the arts: they too can pile up details galore. No wonder then that some of my best friends are pseudo-scholars.
Science needs no justification; it has no foundation whatsoever, rational or empirical; and yet science is an important intellectual achievement with its own traditions and conventions. Usually, when I present such a view to my students they require that I justify it. They do not demand this of other traditions. This makes some sense nonetheless, since they consider only the scientific tradition rational. This is why such great rationalist lights as economist Frank Knight and physicist Erwin Schrödinger have declared that science has an irrational component.
>People who consider the justification or the grounding of a scientific theory important—regardless of whether they deem the value of scientific activity intellectual or technological—such people are required, by their own lights, to provide a justification or a grounding for their very demand for it. That you cannot justify justificationism without begging the question was known in antiquity, and preserved in the works of Sextus Empiricus, one of the minor ancient skeptics. His well-known texts influenced David Hume, who shook Western philosophy. I do not know how many times it has to surprise us before it will stay firmly in public memory. For now, repeatedly, justificationism requires its own justification and we rediscover that it cannot fulfill this requirement without circularity. By contrast, evidently, non-justificationism does not suffer from this obligation, yet justificationists require of its adherents to justify their position: they repeatedly require that the non-justificationists should do what they are not obliged to do, while they themselves have to do it and are not able to: they cannot deliver the same goods that they require from non-justificationists. The irony of the situation is just too unusual, and it may suffer some further glance—preferably ironical (William Bartley). What one can and should require from the non-justificationist is to tell us how they distinguish the rational from the irrational (Popper). Moreover, the non-justificationists can call their view a new theory of justification (Russell). So let us take it seriously.
When I tell my students that science cannot justify, by an appeal to experience or otherwise, they look at me most incredulously. They can scarcely believe that I do more than try to stimulate them, and perhaps merely try to pull their philosophically unsure legs. Do you think, they say, that when I slam the breaks of my car I have no right to expect it to come to a sudden halt? They are serious.
How revealing. It is in a very poor psychological taste, and so very unimaginative. They might just as well ask, do you think that when I slam the breaks of my car I have just as much right to expect that I shall next find myself on the moon? Still better, they may ask, do not expect to be here until the bell rings rather than find yourself on the moon within one minute? They do not. They are not bothered by my presence in the classroom (since they do expect the bell to ring on time and free them of my company); the possibility that they may disappear from mother-earth any moment has not occurred to them, partly because most of my students are ignorant of even elementary physics (even Galileo and Newton knew enough to discuss this very possibility); but the fallibility of their breaks does bother them, and with ample justification: analyze their question and you will see at once that they believe that the laws of inertia and of friction and of impact and of pain due to impact are all unfailing, but their cars’ breaks are failing. Inasmuch as experience justified our expectations, and it surely does in more than one important sense, experience justified just what their question indicates, yet they put their question in the manner that imply that experience reassures them that they may trust the breaks of their cars! Is that serious? Surely not.
Experience says, we have far too many avoidable road accidents; it says, some of these are due to failure of breaks. It is less the assurance that breaks are reliable than the wish to have them more reliable that stands behind the incredulous criticism from the use of breaks of the view that science offers no guarantee. Advertisements of all sorts repeatedly assure us that science guarantees what they recommend. What is this guarantee? It is no good saying it is all sham. We know that in advanced countries there are laws requiring truth in advertising and that these laws are at times applied; not sufficiently, we grumble, thereby agreeing that there is (or should be) some substance to the claim for science-based guarantees. What then is this guarantee? This is the problem of induction as applied to advertising.
Except that it is misapplied. That science guarantees is not in question; what philosophers question is the guarantee for it, the guarantee for the guarantee. We know that insurance companies insure, and we know that at times we are insured and deserve compensation yet the insurer fails to insure; at times it may even go bankrupt. A feeling prevailed the West early in the twentieth century that science had gone bankrupt.
The requirement in the United States to have good dual breaks in all cars on the road was legislated much later than in Europe. The American motorcar industry required it in order to compete with the European industry. This is insufficient. The manufacturing of motorcars should be subject to stricter safety regulations; they should make cars as safe as elevators, planes, and other potentially dangerous instruments. The industry will gladly put on all cars dual and even triple and quadruple breaks—their cost is negligible—if this would boost sales; but experience shows them that the less the public thinks about such matters is the better for their business. Think! It may hurt for a short while, but you will be surprised how little is the pain and how great the relief from the fears and ambivalences and confusions. Confusion hurts at least as much, only the confused is too confused to notice the fact and reconsider his preference of confusion over clear thinking.
Can one admit all this commonsense discussion and still deny that science is a guarantee? I do not know, but please note that the safety of our instrument involves competition, that it is the market mechanism, no less, that has increased the life expectation of citizens of the modern world. Hence, for science to provide any guarantee, it needs a guarantee not only that what physical science has to tell us about breaks is real but also, and no less so, that current scientific-technological system is stable, which includes the need for relatively stable free markets. Impressive.
It seems experience shows that at times a confused system is better than a thinking system—even for scientifically led societies (Asimov, Foundation Trilogy, 1942-53). Fortunately, on this point experience is misleading. A. P. Usher, the Harvard historian of technology, has shown (1929) that certain bottlenecks develop in technology by short-term preference. For instance, mechanical looms of simple kinds have the woven material placed vertically or horizontally. There are short-term preferences for a vertical loom that obscures the long-term advantage of the horizontal loom. That the same is obvious in economics, even in market research, hardly needs evidence. Except that the motor-industry is doing too well to have exploratory drives; and all too often the incentives for competition are insufficient.
So we all drive cars that are still unnecessarily risky (Ralph Nader, Unsafe at Any Speed, 1965), and instead of asking technology and legislation and social and economic planning to improve matters we rely on science not in concrete terms but in general—we rely on science as a faith-surrogate, and the name for that faith-surrogate is induction.
Proof: laws regulate not only truth-in-advertising but also tests. Laws regarding tests ought to be specific. The specifications of tests often have serious loopholes. These allow for disasters and disasters are incentives for the improvement of laws. The choice we have is between justification and efforts at improvement. The rational preference is for improvement. Except that there is no guarantee for improvement. We can only try. For this legislation may create great incentives (Daubert standard).
A famous philosophical adage says, “ought implies can”. It means, do not demand the impossible. This seems obvious, since in discussion of it philosophers ignore the fact that traditional western education conflicts with it: educators require the impossible in the hope to obtain the maximum. This hope has an obvious empirical refutation: demanding the maximum is putting pressure that causes much agony and creates antagonism. The adage in question is liberal, and liberalism obtains more by mobilizing the good will of the citizen. In particular, educators kill the love of learning systematically by demanding the impossible.
The adage does not go far enough. To comply with it one has to alter all commands by replace in them “do” with “try to do”. Which change is sensible. It is still better to replace “do” with “try to do but do not overdo your effort; always remember that your assets are limited” (Moshé Feldenkrais). This does not ensure improvement but we do not know better. The obstacle to it is the preference of so many people for justification over improvement: it is their faith in science. Although better than voodoo, faith in science is still unscientific, and in the same way.
If science does anything regarding faith, it is in the negative direction. For thousands of years people had an unquestioning faith that the sun will rise tomorrow; whatever else may happen, this old faithful is sure to rise tomorrow on the clock. Indeed, it was, and still is, one of the most relied on clocks we have. And then came science that murdered Apollo or Sol or whatever else you can call the old faithful, and fears arose; and then came the very highest of all high priests of science, Pierre Simon Marquis de Laplace, and proved that we may rely on the sun to rise tomorrow, not so much because the sun is faithful as because experience is. The chance that the sun will rise tomorrow is not absolute certainty, but as close to it as matters. Experience informs us about 3000 years of sunrise (Laplace knew very well that it did so long before, but he was speaking of quasi-reports); for 365 x 3000 days or so it did, and so the chance that it will do so tomorrow is 3000 x 365 divided by 3000 x 365 + 1, which number is closer to 1 than a thousand dollars is to a thousand dollars and one penny. Dear Laplace; he tried hard but failed. His inductive reasoning was questionable and his conclusion meager. The ideas on which he based his conclusions were developed largely by one of his immediate predecessors, an English mathematician by the name of Thomas Bayes, who preferred to leave them unpublished as long as he could, perhaps because he hesitated about his ideas. Laplace misapplied Bayes’ rule, as do all the philosophers who follow it to these days: the rule is mathematically valid, but only under conditions that do not hold for the forecast about tomorrow’s sunrise. Moreover, it is little comfort to know that the sun will rise tomorrow: will it rise next week? Next year? Laplace tackled this question too, more successfully he thought, but we do not share his appraisal. He used Newtonian mechanics—that rests on experience, of course—to prove the stability of the solar system. He assumed quite arbitrarily that nowhere in the universe is there an object sufficiently large and directed sufficiently towards the solar system so that when it arrives here it will throw everything apart. Laplace made other simplifying assumptions that by now is also passé. Moreover, Laplace was sure that Newton’s mechanics is exactly in accord with the facts; we know that it is not. Also, meanwhile the devilish thought has occurred to some scientists that the source of the sun’s enormous energy is nuclear in origin; from this it follows that there is a definite chance, no matter how small, that the sun will explode tomorrow, and this chance has hardly changed in the last three millennia, or will change in the next three, although it will one day diminish since if the sun does not explode it will one day implode or cool off and darken.
Of all these possibilities, each looks remote, except the one of outside interference that we have no means of properly measuring or estimating. Famous astronomer Fred Hoyle has adumbrated this fear in his science fiction novel The Black Cloud. The Black Cloud is a foreign intruder. The cloud turns out, however, to be intelligent and possess other human qualities. At the end of the novel, the cloud saves humanity from the catastrophe that its presence as a foreign intruder might easily cause. This novel is most revealing of current scientific atmosphere, of the snobbery of the scientific society and its claim to be near ideal but for the unscientific politicians, in its faith in induction and its powers. Strangely, the Black Cloud’s own psychology is quite interesting, and for those still familiar with the Old Testament it will resemble an old acquaintance; perhaps he is quite intentionally Jehovah of old, the way he appeared before philosophy and scholasticism mellowed His character and magnified His strength into omnipotent. Scratch the inductivist and you will find the True Believer.
To return to the point, we do have expectations, concerning cars, voyages to the moon, and more. The existence of such expectation is a fact; we repeatedly act on them. Are they rational? The answer to this question depends on our theory of rationality. Can we prove them (rational = provable)? Certainly not: we all have disappointed expectations. Can we prove them likely (rational = probable)? Not even that; even our very survival does not prove that we are wiser than our childhood and adolescence friends who did not live to match their wits with us today. Can we prove them more reasonable than their precursors (rationality = improvement)? Perhaps; at least we have eschewed many errors of our predecessors. Are we sure that rational = provably improved? I think not.
What about justification of beliefs? Is one’s rationality a justification of one’s beliefs? That depends on our theory of justification. Why do we have to justify our convictions? Because, you may say, we act on them. Are we socially and legally justified in acting always on our convictions? Certainly not; for instance, we must not condemn people except in courts, whatever our personal conviction about them may be. Are we morally, at least, justified in acting on our convictions? Sometimes yes, of course; sometimes we are even bound to do so. But often not: we are morally bound to give people the benefit of doubt, even to give the opposite opinion the chance; we are morally bound to undergo experiences we know will not solve problems just so as to prove our sincerity and let others join us; this is the theme of many a popular movie—but philosophers do not go to the cinema, except in order to escape from philosophy. Questions and problems abound, and the theory of induction is of no avail: we must take each on its own merit and examine it as best we can. This is by far not enough. Yet, sadly, it is all we have.
I see that you disagree. You suggest that faith in scientific theory is better justified than faith in superstition. You are right: superstition is pointless and often silly. Philosophers do not why do we prefer Einstein to superstition; they ask, why do I choose to believe Einstein?
This is hilarious: most of those who ask this question hardly know what Einstein has said: one cannot know what he said without more command of mathematics than most philosophers possess. Obviously, if you cannot know what he said, you cannot believe that it is true. Admittedly, it is less belief and more the disposition to do so: you are rightly more disposed to believe a certified physician than a witch doctor. Why? Because certified physicians are less prone to err, and their errors are less likely to be due to gross ignorance and negligence. If you are going to be an academic in the medical branch of Academe, you should know this: the better the education of physicians, the better they function. No assurance of avoidance of all error is reasonable. Most of the physicians who treat us have acquired the defects of the medical schools that they have frequented: they suffer from the tyranny of details.
The theory of induction, the theory that demand submission to the tyranny of minor, pointless details, is the opposite of the theory of the critical attitude. The details of scholarship and the minute experiments reported in the vast and ever-growing literature may indeed be of great intellectual significance. Sometimes they are, though ever so much less than inductivists claim. Moreover, the details to which individuals may devote a great part of their lives may be insignificant yet highly satisfying, be these studies of birds, butterflies, mushrooms or postage stamps. In old university libraries, you can find copies of old books with most enchanting and highly scholarly detailed marginal notes, some of these got published later, some not. The authors of these notes may have had interest only in the details they were commenting on, or they wrote their notes for mere mnemonic reasons; this does not matter. In these days of publication pressure, a number of publication of such notes appear. Yet they are obviously compilations that are outcomes of sheer labor of love, and a very moving one at that. The love for the detail, then, is as pure and touching as any other preference. It is the tyranny of the detail that I am here warning you against. Details may signify and you may want them even if not. Otherwise, try to ignore them; forget them pronto.
Details complied voluntarily show some consistency of taste—defying any generalization, perhaps, but noticeable nonetheless—as in any painting by Uccello or Breughel or Bosch or even (if you are imaginative enough) by Malevich or Braque or Jackson Pollock. Details compiled under the tyranny of pretentious academic—scientific or scholarly—discipline is unpalatable; especially to students cramming for exams; they comprise the paradigm of pseudo-scholarship. (The cramming of details for university exams sickened young Albert Einstein to the extent that he left science for a year or two.)
The tyranny of the detail derives from the theory that science gains its authority from the submission to the detail. The techniques of the tyranny of the detail is the suppression of the bold ideas by the requirement that their authors document them profusely, by the requirement that one should not critically discuss bold ideas, with reference to facts, new or old, or with other means; rather, facts should have priority. Admittedly, most of the details present in most introductory texts are very significant; their significance is not obvious, however, because details come too early: prior to the debates that have led to them. What a shame! This omission makes exciting study terribly boring and oppressive.
Philosophers of science are familiar with the argument known as the paradox of the ravens or the Hempel paradox. He overlooked the scientific convention that considers only generalizations and ignores singular facts unless generalized; he could thus take for granted that “all ravens are black” gains its authority from the observation of instance of it—from the specific blackness of specific ravens—as if it contains no conventional element. He then argued that all observations other than ones of non-black ravens strengthen “all ravens are black” since it conveys the same information as “all non-blacks are non-ravens” that has many more instances—such as a white shoe. Rather than conclude that instances to a generalization do not strengthen it—whatever strengthening is—he admitted the odd conclusion of his argument. Everything, he concluded, is relevant to everything. This is indigestible; it invites discussion of the strengthening a statement.
Inductivism was once a great unifying synthesis—a few centuries ago, that is. It was the dream of a brave new scientific world, the dream of Sir Francis Bacon as he expressed it in his (unfinished?) posthumous New Atlantis (1627). It was partly a myth partly a theory of science proper and thus appealed to both the medieval and the modern in the middle period of great transition. The way to knowledge is simple and easy; it is not worth it to stick to dogma in the fact of facts. Worship Mother Nature by paying attention to Her smallest features rather than put her in the chains of your preconceived opinion, said Bacon, and She will voluntarily show you Her charms; you will achieve thus more than you could ever dream of achieving by enslaving Her.
The New Atlantis is the home of a research institute—Solomon’s House—which is a purely secular research institute (though its members pray to God to help them in their research); the daily routine there are collecting facts and deducing from them theories and applying them in all sorts of manners. It is not surprising, then, that in the New Atlantis the investigators have a high social status: while Bacon stays there on his visit, the president of Solomon’s House comes to town, and in a procession. The story indicates the nature of the procession: Bacon’s host has to book seats in advance for them to be able to watch the procession. Bacon even meets the president who tells him all about the college. Among other things, he tells him that the inventions of the members of the college fall into three categories: some are in the public domain; some are dangerous and the college divulges them only to the government that keeps them as state secrets; and some are too dangerous even for that.
The case of J. Robert Oppenheimer shows how daring Bacon’s vision of inductive science and its place in society is even for our own day and age of technocracy. (Oppenheimer suffered penalty because he refused to help the state search for the hydrogen bomb.) Amazingly, Bacon developed his daring vision soon after the Inquisition burnt Giordano Bruno at the stake for his idea of the infinity of the universe and shortly before it tried Galileo for his display of intellectual independence! These events symbolize the power of the Baconian synthesis. Here is on the one hand the last attempt to keep natural science under control and on the other hand the demand to start afresh and appeal only to solid facts of nature, however minute yet utterly reliable. We should not fail to appreciate inductivism as it has helped implement this change. At least, most western thinkers had faith in it for over two centuries.
The great modern synthesis was the great idea that researchers must bow to the smallest factual detail and prefer it to any bold synthesis for fear of dogmatism. It was bold and progressive at first but became cowardly and reactionary after science won its freedom and after inductivism underwent total destruction due to ample valid criticism. Another great synthesis appeared later: Marx’s determinist theory that denies that an idea may lie at the root of any social problem. Also false, it was also bold and progressive to become highly reactionary. It is nowadays a major obstacle to progress as its diagnosis of all the causes of academic maladies as material, whereas most of them are (not material but) intellectual, including the long persistence of the Baconian synthesis, justified by its past success but unjustified upon further critical scrutiny. Some of my best colleagues believe in both these syntheses, the Baconian and the Marxian. They are thus doubly rather cowardly and somewhat backward; that they can still be serious academics and even make positive contribution to the stock of human knowledge is the miracle of the irrepressible spirit of inquiry: scientists are opportunists, said Einstein.
I hope you liked the previous paragraph. I wish you had read it twice. I even recommend that you now go over the whole of this section again, and see it in its relation to the last paragraph. Then, allow me to further recommend, look around and try to see how much it helps make sense of what is going on in the commonwealth of learning around you. I hope it proves somewhat helpful. You may also find the present paragraph rather distasteful in that it does not suffer from excess humility. Perhaps; but never mind: the question is not how commendable or condemnable you may judge my character on the evidence provided in these pages; rather it is, how much you can improve your diagnostic abilities—with or without the aid of these pages. They do not contain the whole of my etiology, but a major ingredient in it; if this is not much helpful, perhaps you should look for help in some other direction. Conceited as I may be, I shall not take it personally and I shall not resent it: I only hope your switch, if you do decide to switch, stems from the independence of your spirit. This, after all, is what matters most—for you but also for your environment.
Everybody speaks approvingly of academic freedom. So we should. The question is, how much the support for academic freedom squares with social determinism and with the preaching for slavery to (experimental and scholarly) details in the name of science. There are other threats to academic freedom. Thus far, I have hardly mentioned the damage that nuclear armament has caused the cherished academic freedom.
I confess I am of two minds here. My dislike for hot air makes me wish to protest against all those who speak on academic freedom with confidence, pretending to know what it is. Yet this is not the worst about it. Suffice it that when we see one we know it: cases of infringement of academic freedom are scarce, as they should be, yet departments heads—who often generate or support such cases—are experts in hiding them: nothing is easier than to convince a victim of academic freedom to settle for a quiet compromise, and it is always possible to grant such a victim leave with pay for a semester or two before appointment is terminated. (I have myself settled for such a compromise. It is quite tolerable if you have an alternative job around the corner, but a bitter decision problem otherwise.)
Clearly, the problem is usually not very pressing. If anyone feels strongly about it, one can study it. Yet one case is significant and can hardly stand postponement: the freedom to act politically as an academic. I will not discuss it here.
The worst of this part is over. I intend to keep the remaining sections of this part as brief as I possibly can. I am itching to come to the prescriptive part of this book.
Intellectual excitement, the listening to the music of the spheres, to repeat, is a rare phenomenon. So are many other of the higher things in life, such as artistic pleasures, or friendship, not to mention true love. Cohabitation, come to think of it, as the attempt at genuine partnerships between two individuals, is almost unknown before the twentieth-century and outside the western or westernized culture. All culture is delicate; it needs cultivation. How, then, is it possible?
The answer must lie in the differentiation of kinds of education and training; one kind of training may be beneficial, another harmful. Moreover, the beneficial training may rest on false views and vice versa; just to complicate things hopelessly. Still worse, one kind of view may ensure ill success in the strange manner of overshooting its target; this is a prevalent error.
One of the characteristics of medieval romance is its emphasis on love—to the point that the word “romance” has changed its meaning to signify any love-story from a more specific kind of love, a short affair between two people not married to each other. And yet, as all students of medieval romance repeatedly emphasize, the achievement of one’s loftiest ideals was self-defeating; a woman who offers her charms to a man thereby demeans herself, and so the perfect love is unconsumed to the last—even impossible to consume, deliciously hopeless from its very start (Sir Lancelot’s to Queen Guinevere); the perfect object of love is quite usually an unattainable princess in the impenetrable castle; still better, she should be (and often is) an image seen from far away (as Beatrice appeared to Dante Alighieri, as she served the inspiration for his Vita Nuova, 1295) if not a fairy proper, a sheer mirage (King Arthur’s half-sister Morgan le Fay, the Lady of the Lake, who is but the morning mist on the lake, a mirage). An interesting expression of such ethereal love in modern literature is Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire of 1962, where a homosexual explains under what condition he may feel attraction for a woman: it is possible only in cases that cannot possibly involve its consummation. It is enlightening that this idea, that Freud explained as an expression of ambivalence, appeared this way in fiction—independently implicitly in Anthony Hope’s 1894 The Dolly Dialogues and his 1894 The Prisoner of Zenda, and explicitly in Edmond Rostand’s 1897 Cyrano de Bergerac.Freud was right on this: the escapist character of romance is in its being an attempt to ignore ambivalence. The pressure of ambivalence produces effort, and the increase of effort leads to further increase of effort. The sum-total of the exploit is lack of satisfaction resolving itself in sheer frustrated tiredness. Indeed, the medieval romance soon becomes a real bore. Even Heinrich Zimmer, who, in his beautiful The King and the Corpse (1956) succeeds to bring the Arthurian romance back to life, partly with the aid of drastic abbreviation and sensitive selection, partly with the aid of contemporary psychological (Jungian) interpretation of symbolism, partly by the use of his own considerable talent, even Zimmer admits that much: “To be driven everlastingly around the world on adventures that never end,” he says, “is finally a monotony as narrow and confining as the magic circle under the flowering thorn. Ulysses wearies at last of all the monsters he has conquered, the difficulties mastered, the Circes and Calypsos at whose side he has slept his soul away … and he longs for the less eventful … things of everyday … his house, his aging wife.” Not so: it is in escape from his house and his aging wife that the adventurer looks for romance in the first place. Perhaps Ulysses was forced into adventure; Peer Gynt was not; and he returns to his aging Solveig at the end of this pompous, symbolic, and typically nineteenth century drama of Ibsen, in a kind of resignation of the tired; he has learnt his moral, feeling forlorn nonetheless—like Gilgamesh.
Zimmer’s idea of what satisfies in legends of this kind seems convincing. Readers vacillate with the hero, wishing to avoid the adventurous pursuit of the charms of fairies and to escape from our boring, dull, and aging spouses. In a legend, says Zimmer, the hero somehow transforms an everyday character, everyday social functions, maturing an everyday person through some legendary adventure. As the reader identifies with the hero—they are both males, obviously—he gains symbolic gratification through a mock-transformation of his own self. (This may help him accept his present dull life, or perhaps even help him transform.)
Strange: legends do speak of character and of social role, but they stress love, yet Zimmer centers only on character and social function, not on any emotion. Sadly, the reason is rather obvious: the male hero and the male reader can do something to transform their own person, individual or social, in truth or in mere fantasy; but they do not know how to transform their aging wives, how to unite Penelope or Solveig with Calypso or with the Lady of the Lake. Why not? Why are all devoid of all transformation even when, like Queen Guinevere, they may partake in an adventure?
Here comes my startling point that may have some significance. At the bottom of the idealized view that is false in its over-ambition there is a false view that is the very opposite. Thus, the adventure is not merely an escape from ambivalence; it is also a poetic-symbolic expression of it and thus it is even an enhancement of it—of the ambivalence—in the pretense of resolving it. This is a universal truth; already Freud has adumbrated it: escape from ambivalence is at the same time an expression of it in its very being quite characteristically and inherently escapist. Colin Wilson, The Outsider of 1956 discusses this escapism in excruciatingly detail. Great art historian E. H. Gombrich observes in his learned Meditations on a Hobby Horse of 1963: plans germinate in dreams. Not all dreams crystallize into plans, however, and not all plans succeed. Moreover, some dreams come with inbuilt safety devices against their ever coming any close to becoming plans: these are the true escape dreams; and exaggeration is the very simplest of such safety devices (superheroes). The very simplest mode of exaggeration is polarization, the describing of things in black and in white terms, even the very same thing—the object of ambivalence—in polarity. Sex, as the prime object of ambivalence, has for its ambivalent symbol the dull, aging wife; also the scintillating fairy: in our society that discriminates women against its own ethos, women are objects of unbounded admiration and thereby of suppressed contempt. The asexuality of the coveted fairy is identical with the viewing of the wife as contemptible, at the same time, as it is impossible ever to plan to marry the fairy.
The philosophical counterpart to all this came historically out in a pathetic story of the life of a great and very compassionate philosopher, John Stuart Mill. He had a severe attack of depression in his early manhood. The attack precipitated as he faced the question, shall I be happy if I ever achieve my loftiest goals? For, his answer was, decidedly not. He emerged from the depression months later when he read a moving autobiography in which the hero narrates the death of his father and his own subsequent undertaking the role of the head of the family at a tender age. When Mill read this, he wept; there and then, he discovered his ability for compassion, and knew that he was on his way to recovery. Mill’s story is open to a psychoanalytic interpretation: his aims were imparted to him by an exacting father; father killing relates to both his illness and its cure. All this is true, yet to rest the matter there is to miss an opportunity for contemplation.
Mill showed admirable traits: boldness, ruthless honesty with himself, and monumental frankness with his reader. The hallmark of wisdom is to stop now and then and ask whether what is subject to pursuit is worth the effort of the pursuit. Yet, all the same, there is an error in Mill’s wording: if I achieve my loftiest goals, shall I be happy? This question all knight-errands should have asked themselves—with the result that they would have stopped their adventures and their quests and all. For most of us it is a very difficult question, since our loftiest goals, inasmuch as we are aware of them, are not pertinent to our happiness directly: most people enjoy the game at least as much as they would enjoy its happy ending that they can envisage only dimly. This, indeed, is Mill’s conclusion that kept his depression at bay: it is not so much the goal as its pursuit.
I protest: this adage is true if and only if the end is worth the pursuit. Mill was obsessed with ends: unless he found assurance that they merit pursuit, he could not enjoy them. He could not enjoy anything ephemeral. He enjoyed music; in his depression, he had to destroy his pleasure in it. He reasoned thus. Since the number of available tones is finite, and since the number of combinations of them in any melody is also finite, the number of possible melodies is finite and knowable; sooner or later they would wear off. This is highly questionable, but that does not matter overmuch: we can replace music with chess, since Mill’s reasoning is valid for it. Why does it matter that in principle the pleasure of playing chess is limited? Meanwhile you can enjoy the new melodies and the new chess strategies and gambits that come your way. Not so to poor John Stuart Mill in his depression; ends and means were worlds apart for him, and happiness he first related only to ends and then only to means! He was in error both times.
Happiness, Mill concluded, is not the end of any activity; it is a woeful by-product—like the pleasant hum of a properly functioning engine. Apply this for an exciting moment and you can see the fundamental error of the quest of the knight-errands: the mere achievement of getting together was for them an end, whether at home or in the far castle. It was for them not a mode of living, not incorporated in happy and robust daily life; it was for them something too lofty to be real.
We are now prepared to study the love of learning, to criticize the lofty standards imposed on students and scholars alike which spoil the fun of the activity; and if I am any near to being right, I should be able to point out to you the ambivalence concerning learning and the hatred for normal healthy learning implicit in the high standards that condemn normal healthy learning as qualitatively and quantitatively much too inferior, and that the vain promise of the resolution of the ambivalence towards it by replacing the pleasures of learning by quests, by endless boring excruciatingly dull ordeals and trials and exams which inherently lead nowhere near the goal—these are but neuroses: of bookworms and of minute experimenters.
Let me admit: quite possibly, at times dull boring studies with no redeeming value may be quite unavoidable: intellectual life too is no utopia. My advice to you still stands: avoid them when you can. Avoid any instance of them unless it comes as a clearly limited task, and as one that circumstances forcefully impose on you!
Bores appear in all sub-societies. Bores need not concern us, least of all academic bores whose company is much less of a burden on their company than the talkative bores one meets in the proverbial clubs and pubs and stadiums. Admittedly, from time to time one has to listen to lectures delivered by bores, especially as a student. Ordinary academic bores are usually shy and kindly individuals, who are always glad to relieve you of any burden related to their own company. No, I am not speaking of these ordinary academic bores, but of ideological academic bores. They are the crusaders of boredom; they allege repeatedly that boredom is an essential ingredient in learning. It is definitely not.
Consider boring entertainment. Boring literature and poetry and movies exist too, and in abundance. What is surprising is that the high romance itself resolves itself in sheer boredom. This boredom, you remember, unlike the boredom of a novel written by the untalented or by the unimaginative, avails itself of some more interesting explanation. Similarly, it is not the untalented or the unimaginative or the unproductive academic bore that is intriguing us here, but the ideological academic bore, who is a pest and a puzzle combined.
The neurotic symptoms of the ideological academic bore are substantially different from the reaction patterns, neurotic or otherwise, of the ordinary academic bore. The differential diagnosis is extremely simple: put in the hands of bores books or articles that are obviously exciting and that pertain in some measure to their own fields of study, and see how they react. The ordinary academic bores react in some ordinary fashion. They may say, just at the moment they are too busy to read the material you recommend. In such cases they may or may not express neurotic anxiety at this limitation; they may or may not put the reference in question on their reading-lists for a propitious moment, or even purchase the texts in question and put them on their special reading shelves—we all have such shelves, of which use and abuse I shall speak later. Ordinary academic bores may even read exciting books, or at least attempt to read them, and find them uninteresting or mildly interesting but not very exciting. If they find exciting texts, then obviously they are not unredeemable bores. Feed them regularly with such exciting literature and they may blossom.
Ideological academic bores react very differently. They will brush off a suggestion that a text is of value. They will do so impatiently and even unjustly. If they cannot do so, either because the texts come with recommendations of prominent persons or of many colleagues, then they will be rather obsessive about acquiring and reading them at the first opportunity. The first opportunity may come only years later, but not for any other reason than that our ideological academic bores are genuinely busy with innumerable commitments—all of them a trifle dull, of course. It is known that ideological academic bores who work overtime will still increase the load of their dull work because they want the pressure they undertake when the agree to read the exciting text in question. One way or another, ideological academic bores will find the time to read. Sometimes they will simply have to do it out of ideological commitment: for example, they will undertake to review some dozen books a year—a full-time job for an ordinary academic with some sense of fun—only to discover the books in question to be substantially relevant to one of the books they have undertaken to review. When ideological academic bores read exciting texts they explode with indignation. That is the hallmark of ideological academic bores: they fear and hate (intellectual) excitement.
The specific arguments of ideological academic bores against an exciting work are uninteresting: one can usually grant the validity of the claims that bores amass yet fail to see how they establish their alleged corollary, their condemnations of interesting texts; one may fail to see the reasons for the fury of ideological academic bores. Sometimes, bores offer obviously unfair criticism; sometimes, however rarely, an exciting work conforms to exceptionally high scholarly standards, and yet our angry bores will employ even much higher scholarly standards than they usually employ merely in order to be able to condemn the exciting text as unscholarly.
Ideological academic bores fear intellectual excitement; they often declare it unfair that intellectual excitement should be available to readers who have not put their necks to the yoke; it allures as a real prize, but they are ambivalent about it; they therefore set very high standards in the pursuit of the noblest and greatest intellectual excitement of them all. They develop the theory that true scholarship is very boring and yet worth undertaking since the results of genuine scholarship are most exciting and truly wonderful. An instance of such philosophy, and the most important one at least in the scientific fields, is one that I have referred to in the previous section, namely the philosophy of Sir Francis Bacon, in which both boredom of the means and excitement of the ends are separate and separately prominent. No methodologist has ever contrasted ends and means in the pursuit of knowledge so much as the leading, great pseudo-scholar, Sir Francis Bacon.
The theory of the inevitable boredom of learning is most obvious and most pernicious in those trends of modern education that develop techniques of alleviating boredom. The very idea behind these techniques is the salutary recognition of the existence of boredom in classrooms and of the psychological fact that boredom is painful; this combined with the defeatist opinion that boredom is unavoidable; we can only sugarcoat it. Dr. Maria Montessori could never imagine that learning is a game, and a most enjoyable one at that. What she noticed was that pupils would not avoid games in classroom, and play them under the table when forbidden, unless we put on them enormous, damaging pressure. She preferred to permit games openly and interlace study and games—never unify them. Even Russell failed in his educational experiment to attempt to do this, though he realized, at least, that sugarcoating a bitter peel is not good enough, since one has to learn that throughout life we have to swallow bitter pills with no one to sugarcoat them. Does education, especially the intellectual part of it, have to be a bitter pill? Is scholarship and beauty and other refinements of life, also not the very sugarcoating of life itself?
The teacher training institutions render it easier for teachers and educators to bore than to excite. This is open to improvement. Nevertheless, it remains impossible to meet the challenge of turning each and every meeting of a class into an intellectual experience. Yet failure to achieve utter success is very distant from utter failure. The view of modern educationists is that of education as necessarily almost utter failure (since kids are so unable to concentrate!), they say. This is so obviously false that I have to use the prevalence of Bacon’s methodology and similar ideas as well as some psychology to explain the facts: only few educationists recognize boredom as an obstacle while opposing the educational techniques of sugarcoating (as not good enough).
Without the ideology of boredom, without boredom as pseudo-scholarship, much can be studied in different lights; we may reduce the hours of instruction so as to make it more possible to make each instruction period successful; we may try to reduce all compulsory education and tuition (alas, not compulsory school-attendance) as much as possible and explain to our students why we cannot reduce them any further. (This alone may render the unexciting exciting—just as experiments in industrial psychology may succeed as workers may have their boredom temporarily alleviated and consequently their productivity increased.)
Boredom is most painful on the conveyor-belt (Metropolis; A Nous la Liberté; Modern Times). This led to the development of a new field of pure and applied research, towards the improvement of the quality of working life. Despite dark forecasts, it has done wonders in the hands of people who took it seriously. In Sweden it terminated the conveyor-belt altogether. It took time before some researchers in this new field noticed that what Thomas S. Kuhn has christened normal science is the boring standard textbook accepted on the authority of the scientific community and the boring research that it approves of. It becomes obvious then that contrary to Kuhn’s counsel, the authoritative view of science invites upgrading too: boring research is intellectually pointless (although it may be valuable educationally or technologically). In view of all this, it is amazing how little thinking has gone into the study of the quality of working life in the education system in general and in Academe in particular. Dullness abounds there, and not so long ago the favorable view of it was almost universal. Things have changed now: the movement for the improvement of the quality of working life has shown empirically and repeatedly that at least in the developed (capital-intensive) industries of most developed countries dullness reduces productivity and that the reduction of dullness by adding background-music and entertainment is insufficient. The movement demanded improvements such as the rendering of jobs less specialized and more challenging. Under the influence of that movement, work became more interesting across the board in a few countries. The total result is still rather disappointing, to be sure, and far too many skilled workers—to say nothing of the unskilled—are still needlessly bored. Yet, as automata took over successfully much dull work, you would expect workers to have more leisure. Not so. Bertrand Russell observed that this requires much shorter worktime and that this requires education for leisure. This may boost the do-it-yourself industry that workers may find interesting enough. By contrast, do-it-yourself intellectual work requires no support from industry. It is the very familiar, well-established amateur research—scholarly or scientific.
Non-mathematicians hate mathematics, non-historians hate history. This hatred cannot be natural: it must be the result of prolonged inculcation, obviously by the education system. High-school teachers often are disgruntled people who failed to enter Academe or to master their trades well enough to enter some non-academic brain market. Some teachers enjoy teaching to the extent of doing so in spite of the low salary and social status incurred; they are the exciting teachers. Naturally, exciting mathematics teachers tend to teach budding mathematicians and dislike other pupils as distraction. Exciting history teacher tends to teach budding historians and dislike other pupils as distraction. Such teachers teach non-specialists. Why do they have to teach mathematics to non-mathematicians? It is dull, it pains them, it may jeopardize their careers before it even started; they will forget it all anyway; they will never have an occasion to use it; they only learn to hate it, to be blocked against it. Why do we torture them so?
My protest is not against the torture. I have already agreed that some torture is necessary in industry and I must admit at least the possibility that now and then it is also necessary in education. My protest is at the inefficiency of it all, at the thoughtlessness of it all. Ask industrial managers and industrial psychologists about the boredom inflicted on employees and about ways and means to minimize it, and you will get tolerably reasonable replies, though seldom very good ones. Ask teachers and educationists of any kind the same question, and you will not fail to notice the abject poverty of their reply; they will even confess that they find the question hard to answer because the true answer seems to them obvious. It is admittedly hard to answer a question when received opinion takes for granted the answer that seldom undergoes any critical scrutiny whatsoever. My protest is against taking for granted a silly answer to a question that invites teachers and educationists of any kind to deliberate on it.
One vexing task that boring editors impose on writers is excessive documentation. Much of the documentation that regularly occupies lengthy erudite footnotes is entirely redundant; scholarly readers have no need for it and others will not even notice it. Advanced students will naturally prefer selective bibliographies. Regrettably, however, most bibliographies are neither comprehensive nor selective. They are thus useless. Vague references to well-known works are often more helpful than exact references, since a well-known work is published in many editions and it is a real burden for those who wish to use them to find the edition that the writer has used: if the writer refers to a page-number, critical readers can only use it if they have before them the same edition as the writer or else an electronic one, in which case there is need not to precise references but to key words.
The only reason for the excess of references is that their function is not clear. Their function is to serve the critical reader or the reader who wishes to pursue the matter further in any other way. They function, alternatively, as proof that the writer has done the duty and looked up enough dusty books and periodicals to justify a contribution to human knowledge. I have tried a few times to follow this idea but editors blocked me. Perhaps no one will read the contribution to human knowledge that they edit but …
Yes. Of course, you are right. Readers who can use the internet need much less references as there they can find them with ease and more usefully. When will the conventions of reference change to accommodate for the internet?
This requires a clarification of the need references. Junior and senior scholars need them for different reasons; they should follow different conventions. References to evidence for texts that readers may question are different again. So is reference to texts that authors praise and hope to draw the attention of readers. All this invites international authorities to examine and cater for it and render it more efficient. This demands the examination and reform of the publication pressure that imposes inefficiency on the commonwealth of learning.
Concerning intellectual excitement, the philosophy of science that Sir Karl Popper has developed and that I employ repeatedly in the present volume is the opposite of that of Sir Francis Bacon. For Bacon, ends and means are worlds apart and the excitement is the ends alone. Criticism is utterly a lowly work, like the cleaning grounds. Scientific routine work is the patient collection of innumerable seemingly pointless minute data but the end is the true theory of the nature of things, says Bacon.
Popper still presents the truth as the end of science, but as remote, vaguely envisaged, perhaps never attainable. Each step of scientific development, he added, is a step towards the end, a new exciting theory or a new exciting general fact (a refutation). If it is valuable, it is exciting.
Ideological academic bores suffer inner conflicts: they fear and desire intellectual excitement. To resolve it they pretend that it is either chimerical or attainable only at the very end of a long, arduous trail of trials, deeds, and travails. This is self-defeating. Innumerable educational institutions, from elementary schools to institutes governing the publication of research results, they all inculcate and reinforce ambivalence towards the pleasures of the music of the spheres by imposing boredom in the name of high standards. To beat the system, try to enjoy studies: study only the enjoyable. This will benefit you and help you contribute to the advancement of learning. Yes, I too can offer an ideology and a slogan, not only the academic bore. Let those who wish to be bored get bored to their hearts’ content. You and I, let us try to have fun and enjoy our studies; every measly bit of it—like real gluttons.
I do not know where you could find a less prejudiced person in eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe than Immanuel Kant, and look at his view of women. Appalling. Intellectual women he found repellent; his ideal of femininity was soft, emotional, homemaker. Consequently, his ideal masculinity knew almost no emotion: the sense of respect is what he found behind moral conviction, behind friendship, behind anything common to all; never compassion. Penelope and Solveig suffer enough, but their mates suffer as much: neither knew reasonable daily-life-without-boredom. Pity.
Strange as this may sound to you, in this section, as elsewhere, I intend to discuss neither the phony academic, nor the coward. This is not my style. Try the following. Say in public, on any public occasion, that universities should be raise the level of its vigilance against charlatans, impostors, frauds, humbugs, windbags, buffoons, phonies, pseudo-scholars or pseudo-scientists. You will win applause. For my part, as a rule I find the rather obvious phony on campus innocuous, usually civil—even friendly—and often entertaining. (They cause harm only when they are administratively ambitious; high administrative aspirations push their owners to needless adventures, especially the demand for the reform of Academe by tightening rules against phonies. These may cause more harm than they prevent.) Similarly, it is all too easy to urge all educators to stress the importance of courage, civil and intellectual alike, to boost it and to promote it. When we praise the brave, we declare their courage beyond the call of duty. When educators violate this declaration, their more vociferous colleagues, administrators, and politicians commend their zeal. The terrible thing about hypocrisy is not its low level of morality, but its total lack of intelligence (Bernard Shaw, The Devil’s Disciple, 1897).
I have no intention to condemn cowardice. In the days when public opinion criticizes as brutal even the official condemnation of exceptional cowardice on the battlefield, it is out of all proportion to condemn the cowardice behind the phony streak of some ordinary scholars. Nor does the cowardice of these scholars impedes their scholarship—on the contrary, it may spur them to burn more midnight oil—usually to no avail, but not always so. Nor are all pseudo-scholars cowards; some of them are surprisingly brave by any standard (The Great Impostor).
I hope this suffices as warning to you. Please, do not get exasperated with me. As I have said in the opening of this volume, it is very hard to write a medical text without giving the impression that the whole world is sick, a text on psychopathology without insinuating that the whole world is crazy. I do not wish to generalize except on the relatively widespread damage due to certain bugs in the system. What bugs students most is just that cowardice that not only makes esteemed professors try a bit harder but, alas, also one that makes them force their students to try ever harder.
My concern here is not with cowardice, much less with the yellow streak; it is with the cowardice that we inculcate through our educational system under the guise of something commendable. There is no prohibition against cowardice, and one who finds the price to pays for it is not too high, there is nothing amiss in that cowardice. If one feels that the price is too high—and reading these pages may easily show that it is—one might try to become less cowardly, and even seek advice on this matter. Anyway, it is not your business. Your business, and it is your welfare that I have at heart, is to recognize the symptoms of cowardice and the means by which even some of your best professors may transmit it to you: I wish to immunize you against the training to be a coward: there is no need for it. In other words, I am mainly concerned with academic mental hygiene. I wish to help you master your choice, not to perform it for you. Please do not forget that I recommend the avoidance of all heroism, particularly intellectual. At least as a default option, it is objectionable.
Preaching heroism has done incalculable damage. Not only has it blinded us to the heroism of the unromantic hero such as the fighters against poverty and illness whose battlefields were old libraries, laboratories in basements or in attics, and their likes, or slum areas, political arenas, and their likes. This, in any case, is a small sacrifice, since real heroes are quite ready to forego the recognition that is due to them. The real damage of the preaching of heroism is that it is irrational. I remember very well how impressed I was, when in a discussion with a brave German on this topic, he mentioned his close relative who had been a dedicated anti-Nazi, yet sufficiently poisoned by its philosophical ancestry (namely romanticism) to do what his enemies most dearly wished him to do: rather than care for his safety and do his best to sabotage the enemy who was too strong to attack openly, my friend’s relative organized a street-demonstration and this way he enabled the beasts to murder their critics there and then in cold blood, as my friend had forewarned him. Once the leadership of the anti-Nazis sacrificed itself so heroically, the rest of the nation followed sheepishly. For, as Karl Popper has pointed out, nothing helped the Nazis so much as the division of humanity into natural leaders and natural followers, a division made by Plato and Aristotle and repeated by all the reactionaries from Hegel to Rudyard Kipling; nowhere was this division as popular as in pre-Nazi Germany. This popularity is what secured the position of the Nazis from 1934 onward. If one in ten German soldiers would have dared sabotage the operations at hand without undergoing obvious risk, millions of lives might have been saved; the repeated occurrence of such acts of bad faith, in itself, might have spread sufficient suspicion and distrust to cause the collapse of the regime itself (The Devil’s General). The German philosopher Karl Jaspers has come out with a group-confession of guilt—after the war—saying that more Germans should have demonstrated in the streets against the Nazis, since if more of them were heroes, they might have prevented the holocaust. Funny, he did not even notice that if more Germans were willing to demonstrate, demonstrations would require much less heroism. Even brutes like the Nazis could not murder millions of Germans in the early thirties.
The passage from Karl Jaspers that I have just referred to has been brought to my attention by Sir Karl Popper in one of the many private discussions I had with him on the topic of civil courage. Though for much of my view on the topic I am indebted to him, both in general and in detail, my application of these to academic standards runs in rebellion against his views and practices. Of course, he had the full right to apply his incredibly high standard to his own work. This was his own choice and no one had the right to comment on it except at his invitation. Some colleagues have expressed their disappointment at the fact that he had advertised many years ago a book that became available to the public decades later; this, of course, may well be a consequence of his exceptionally high standards; but then this, too, was his own affair. It is when he pushed his own standards a bit too hard on his close associates, such as I used to be, that the result was the formation of a close circle of devotees, to which I used to belong, with all the ill effects of schools, which form closed societies.
It is because of the ill effects of such semi-public high standards that I wish to discuss them. Unfortunately, the system imposes standards on students and young colleagues—rather irrationally and high-handedly. This calls for criticism and for analysis, intellectual and psychological but mainly social. All too often, heroically maintained high standards are standards of caution or prudence. Here, in our context, “caution” or “prudence” are merely synonyms of “cowardice”: we say of an action that it was cautious when we endorse it and cowardly when we oppose it. As I do not oppose and sometimes even recommend cowardly actions, perhaps I should be using the word “caution.” Yet I do feel that methodical or systematic caution is not to encourage although yes to tolerate.
We all wish to be more appreciative of great thinkers and artists among our contemporaries than our predecessors were of theirs. This is often very hard because great minds often bring into question our very standards of judgment, our very criteria of significance of thoughts and of works of art. Many thinkers and artists and public figures offer ideas that challenge our standards; few of these ideas turn out to be significant. At times, some of the others are cranks and phonies. It is hard to expose a clever phony, as Bernard Shaw has wisely observed. Therefore, he said, we are justified in exercising great caution when approaching the unusual works. If ever caution was justified, it is in such cases. The only objection I have to those who exercise it is their failure to recognize that their caution all too often prevents them from recognizing contemporary geniuses as they wish to.
Michael Faraday was a bold thinker whose bold ideas rendered quite obsolete many traditional debates—such as those in the search for forces acting at a distance in efforts to explain Ørsted’s and Ampère’s electrodynamic discoveries, or as the search for an aether. These debates continued for decades after his death, and quite uselessly.
Faraday as a Discoverer is the leading book on Faraday—by John Tyndall, his closest friend and only pupil. He wrote it shortly after Faraday’s death, and in an attempt to establish its hero’s greatness as an experimenter and to excuse his quaint ideas about fields of force as sheer personal idiosyncrasy rooted in his ignorance of mathematics. In his preface to the German edition of that work, the great—if not the greatest—German electrician of the period, Hermann von Helmholtz, repeated Tyndall’s suggestion; but since meanwhile Faraday’s ideas had gained some currency (especially thanks to Maxwell; Tyndall refers to Maxwell’s papers and stresses that they satisfy a high standard of mathematical rigor), and since even Helmholtz himself had made some contribution in that direction, his attitude was more tempered than Tyndall’s: he did not entirely and finally reject Faraday’s speculations about fields of force, but was ready to wait and see where the cat would jump. About a decade and a half later, he was invited to London to deliver a lecture in memory of Faraday, and there he claimed—in a thinly veiled language, to be sure—that he had always been a follower of Faraday (as far as conservation of energy was concerned). Helmholtz was a very great thinker, but I, for one, would have found it hard to become a friend of his. Still, I should not exaggerate: his conduct seems faultless when compared with that of American historian of science L. Pearce Williams, whose Michael Faraday: A Biography, 1965, presents Faraday as the grand old man of physics of his day.
You may ask whether the caution of Faraday’s contemporaries and immediate heirs led to the formation of a Faraday school. It did not. Faraday’s ideas were suppressed and early in his life he felt the suppression was possibly just because he followed Bacon’s philosophy—in its traditional version that declares all speculations harmful. Later on, he modified it to suggest that only some measure of suppression of speculation is just. One of his boldest ideas was that electricity can interact with gravitation. This idea is so bold that Einstein came to it independently only in the twentieth century. He first used it in his general relativity (the bending of light-rays) and more centrally in his very last theory. Despite great success and tremendous recognition, he too was isolated. Of the leaders of physical science of his time, only Schrödinger took up his ideas at the time—and Schrödinger was isolated too. Who says rank-and-file scientists are not cowards? You can explain much of their attitudes, actions, inactions, one way or another, and even their having put a quarantine on people like Einstein and Schrödinger are explicable—with much truth—as rooted in certain ideological convictions; nonetheless cowardly this quarantine still was. (This is Kuhn’s view.)
Towards the end of his career, Faraday had his experiments on electro-gravity published despite their showing no result. From the experimental viewpoint, they were rather poor. He published them partly to adorn a highly speculative, most interesting idea, to render a speculation kosher. Until that time, it was the custom to clothe speculative publications with thin experimental garb. Faraday’s last paper on the topic, however, was rejected by Stokes—a famous young scientist then—on the ground that the experimental part of the paper did not meet received high standards. The editors of Stokes’ correspondence felt a bit uneasy about his daring to reject a paper by Faraday but they, too, insisted that Stokes judgment is right: Faraday had failed to meet accepted standards. This is untrue: the expectation was that speculative papers should include experimental material, but that material did not have to meet high standards. Caution leads sometimes to the evasion of issues by means of the application of exceptionally high standards. Stokes was rather somewhat of a dogmatist than somewhat of a coward. Personally, I prefer to view this suggestion as false: after all Stokes was quite an important man of science, and when issues were imposed on him and when he could not dismiss them as being rather unscholarly presented, he was quite able and willing to face them. He could show courage when it was expected of him. Hence, when Stokes displayed cowardice, it was ideological.
Before elaborating on all this, let me wind up the story of the non-existence of a Faraday school. To begin with, there is almost no reference to fields of force in the literature for about two or three decades after Faraday had introduced them (1840). For instance, Faraday’s close friend, August de la Rive, in his three-volume Treatise on Electricity that was translated into English soon after it had appeared in French, contains many references to Faraday, all highly laudatory, but almost always to his experiments. Of the two references or so to fields, the first is with the pretense that Faraday had introduced the idea of fields as a purely mnemonic device. (The so-called right-hand rule concerning the direction of flow of electric currents and the directions of the electric and magnetic forces it generates, is a standard example: both Ampère and Lenz had devised mnemonic rules for it.) When Maxwell published his early, celebrated papers on Faraday’s lines of force, he was still convinced that Faraday’s fields might be reconciled with older ideas through a model of the aether. Before that, Faraday had delivered for many years a series of Christmas Lectures for children in London that were very successful and so at the time of Maxwell a new generation of physicist existed in London who were used to the idea of fields as a matter of course—not knowing that they were so very revolutionary. Thus, the idea of fields became current in the English literature, and it slowly spread into the continent under the influence of Helmholtz, Hertz, Boltzmann, and Poincaré. Maxwell himself got used to the idea that fields of force are so very revolutionary only towards the end of his brief life, and the same is true of Hertz. It took the young Einstein to argue: fields of force impose a deviation from Newtonian mechanics (as Faraday had claimed). For years, Einstein was supposed to have developed his ideas with the crucial aid of the experiment of Michelson and Morley. Yet, as Gerald Holton has shown, he had not known of that experiment. (He did not escape its indirect influence.)
This rather sketchy summary will do for now, I hope. Before Einstein’s success in replacing Newton’s mechanics, most physicists did not take seriously fields of force. This is an example of how easy it is to defend cowardice by reference to high standards: after Einstein, it took less courage to consider fields of force seriously than before, because Einstein had met the highest standards, because he has executed a task that his predecessors deemed impossible. We see, thus, that high standards may be a mark of inability to undertake challenging and risky tasks—risky, since prior to Einstein the importance of fields of force was much more in question. The imposition of high standards on oneself, however, is less of a cowardice; it is rather the submission to the cowardly atmosphere around one than the endorsement of it. It may be a bit unfair to refer to the case of Galileo here, because at his time the Inquisition demanded civic courage for any display of intellectual courage. Yet, with due caution we may consider his case too in the light of, but not following, Arthur Koestler’s bold though not very scholarly The Sleepwalkers. Galileo was a Copernican long before he would speak up publicly in defense of his conviction, for fear of ridicule and of persecution. He says as much in a letter to Kepler of 1597; his stupendous astronomical discoveries came in 1610 and his own publications in favor of Copernicus came soon after. After having made these discoveries, he felt he had met sufficiently high standards to warrant serious publication. The Jesuit astronomers of the Roman College supported him. Roberto Cardinal Bellarmine, his great admirer-opponent, the most reactionary, most powerful Cardinal, the ideologist of Rome then, and the individual responsible for the execution of Giordano Bruno, took him very seriously to threaten him with the same fate. Later on, a new Pope who was a friend of Galileo invited him to express his opinions freely. He later betrayed him, in order to rescue the Church from ridicule: he felt he had no choice. As Galileo was a faithful Catholic, he had no choice either; he was ready to admit defeat—personal, not intellectual— but only after having a proper debate with the inquisitors. It appears in a published version of the letter in which they asked the Pope for permission to allow Galileo to argue with them. He then exhibited exemplary civic and intellectual courage. This is a different story.
The situation concerning courage or its absence and concerning high standards, is still more complex, and is very well worth noticing in somewhat further detail—if you can bear with me a little longer. What I have said thus far admittedly covers, even amply, diverse cases of pseudo-scholarship. The inability to take Popper’s critical philosophy of science seriously and the preference over it for going on writing papers on the justification of induction in the traditional inductivist and positivist modes is an example. As is Stokes’ application—or rather misapplication—of high standards for the rejection of Faraday’s very last paper (yes; it is still unpublished. Excerpts from it, however, are in Williams’ life of him and in his published diaries.) I have not yet sufficiently discussed the act of succumbing to exceptionally high standards under pressure from a cowardly environment and from fear of ridicule of one’s (cowardly) colleagues. So let me take up one psychological point a bit further. I have nothing significant to say about academics who impose on themselves high standards: it is the right of every individual to endorse any standard, even to the effect that it will consequently prevent the publication of one’s most brilliant ideas. Unfortunately, however, such individuals often happen to be poor educators. While not censuring them in any way whatsoever, and while expressly refraining from dissuading you from choosing to be their student, I feel I should give you some warning against possible ill effects of such a choice, to help you prevent the damage they may cause you.
There is a relatively new theory of a somewhat Freudian stock but not orthodox Freudian that is rapidly gaining currency these days. I do not quite know it history; though I suppose it is very interesting, I do not wish to investigate it right now. It is a theory of emotional growth through differentiation. It assumes that many emotional distinctions, as well as their associated verbal distinctions, develop during adolescence and early adult life in a highly complex process of experiences plus verbal instruction needed to describe them. According to that theory, certain emotional retardation—often but not always viewed as neurotic—may lead to a lack of verbal distinctions, to the use of two words as synonyms, and vice versa: the lack of articulation inhibits emotional growth. Emotional growth, thus, is an involved educational process.
For individuals with no growth of, say, civil courage, the word ‘civil courage’ has little or no emotional content; you cannot say of then that they do or that they do not possess civil courage; the term, as philosophers say, does not apply to them: you cannot say that they are a borderline case between the brave and the coward, which is psychologically quite a different animal. Possibly, then, people with zero degree of courage respond to a challenge with neither courage nor cowardice, whereas people with no concept of courage at all will either totally fail to see the challenge or, while meeting the challenge they develop an attitude towards it—thus becoming brave or cowardly or in-between. Most important for our discourse, this reaction will often much depend on both the significance and magnitude of the challenge— unlike the settled middle-of-the-roader. If the challenge is both important and of manageable dimension, it is more likely that people with no concept of courage will develop their own courage. In addition, they may become cowards. Developing cowardice, please note carefully, may be a most unfortunate mishap, since even a brave person may reasonably respond in a cowardly fashion if the challenge is not significant yet demanding.
Empirical observation suggests that publication pressure generates publication blocks. These torment surprisingly many academics. One explanation for this is that mental blocks pass easily from professor to student; they are contagious. Their transmission mechanism is simple: blocked professors prevent students from trying to publish or submit dissertations. Of course, they do so in the attempt to raise their standards and with the result of depriving them of the opportunity to develop intellectual courage and of instilling in them obscure fears of rejection slips, of hostile reactions to manuscripts, and of other similarly harmless results. The professors who so impede students’ progress take it for granted that they are in the right. They are often devoted to their students and show great interest in their works, presumably with no personal motive and merely for the greater glory of learning. This is questionable. All that you can say in favor of high-standard professors is that they are likely to have ill effects only on students who have no intellectual courage to begin with or not enough inner resources to break away. This argument is faulty. Good students survive bad schooling, true enough, and poor students may be unable to make use of good schooling; so why reform our education anyhow? In truth, most students are neither so good as to be invulnerable to bad schooling nor so bad as to be impervious to good schooling. If you decide to join a school where publication blocks are inbuilt and some high-standard professors sustain them, I do not wish to dissuade you, but I hope that this warning should help you to immunize yourself from the disease. Let me report this: many of my papers received negative results when in manuscript and praise when printed in prestigious periodicals. When you seek advice of peers, try to choose those who have enough imagination to read a manuscript as a printed paper, who have a sense of proportion.
Not all who suffer publication blocks catch them from their teachers; but since some teachers are contagious this way, I had to warn you. To show you how one can develop cowardice through high standards without catching it from one’s teachers, however, let me take a different case of cowardice; not publication blocks, but something much worse: professors’ inability to defend their students against injustice within Academe.
Even in the case of such failure, we should not rush to condemn. Even a very brave professor may notice a case of injustice towards a student and yet do nothing about it. For instance, if the student is not officially under your care; if the student is a poor scholar who would do better outside an academic framework and who will, in all likelihood, leave college one way or another; if the injustice done to the student is not so very clear-cut that one can easily demonstrate it, or if it an injustice backed by a faulty standard that a considerable section of the university endorses; and if, on top of all this, fighting the injustice in question may lead to an enormous upheaval, say, because it has been committed by a very powerful yet sensitive colleague;—under such circumstances, I say, it is most reasonable to overlook the injustice. After all, the world is full of injustice, and we cannot fight efficiently all ills around us. It is almost inevitable then that professors who decide to forego some battles will soon come to question their own courage. If they are old fighters, self-doubt will not harm them and it may even lead them to some deeper self-examination that cannot but be all to the good. However, if they are neither cowards nor fighters—say, new appointees, young and inexperienced and unable as yet to shake off vestiges of academic mystique—it might indeed develop the cowards in them. More specifically, they may develop the cowardly technique of always examining students’ credentials and looking for fault in them prior to engaging in battles against what they consider unjust. Moreover, searching for faults in students’ credentials may invariably lead to finding them: students with very good credentials are immune to injustice since the unjust is usually a coward. Finding always faults in students’ credentials thus becomes a habit and slowly develops through suppressed guilt-feelings into an obsession. Misfortune alone may make young and inexperienced academics cowards who will slowly develop into stern guardians of high academic standards, even into national figures in the field of science education. It is easy in Academe to become absent-mindedly a coward par excellence and a top-notch pest to boot.
Let us not condemn such people. Their sincerity, their concern and suffering, the correctness of their standards, we need not question all these for one moment. It is easy to dismiss the insincere as to dismiss those who have no scholarly standards whatsoever and who, being phonies, pretend to possess whatever standard you represent. Phonies—whether intellectual or emotional—are both rare and rather innocuous; and attacking a phony of any kind whatsoever is cheap and useless. Following the ancient Talmudic scholars, I argue that the most correct standards turn vicious when applied stiffly. The very high degree of sincere concern, by hiding self-doubts, turn pernicious; that the very disinterested attitude of a defender of the standards, by becoming zealous and self-righteous, turns into self-perpetuation of much of the ills of the system. I would be ashamed to write this paragraph, as after all, it contains only the intended moral of most of Henry James’s stories and novels; but I am applying it to a case he (understandably) left out: Academe. My view is this. A happy-go-lucky academic who is somewhat of a phony is better than a tormented zealot whose standards are the purest. We must tolerate zealots; we may also note that they may produce bright ideas and display fine scholarship. What I am advocating here, as a kind of ideal, however, is the flexible, empathic intellect of the scholar. Kant, one of the most famous academics ever, was dogged following of his principles. He showed great courage this way and raised the standards of thinking. He was so strict as to declare wrong all lying, even to a killer. The best response to this is Bertrand Russell’s report: he once lied to foxhunters to save a fox and felt no compunction.
My suggestion in favor of flippancy frightens me a bit, as I have seen flippancy leading to disquieting results. I shall describe what I have seen, since it shows both that my idea is not so very new, and that it offers no guarantee of success. In certain centers of higher learning reputed for exceptionally high standards, one might well expect to find not so many geniuses who can be on top of their profession without much effort and who, knowing this, do not work hard but rather have fun. Such creatures are rare, and they land in obscure places at least as often as in the most celebrated institutes. Rather, in such institutes, hard work is standard. People there may work hard from a neurotic insecure need of admiration by all their colleagues everywhere as great scholars. They may work hard conscientiously. They may work hard because their administrators bully them to make regular sacrifices for the sake of their own reputation as scholars and teachers, for their reputations as fellows of their institutes, the reputations of their institutes (the so-called star-system). With so much hard work around you may expect some of it to be visible. Not at all. It takes place in great secrecy. Fellows there are on exhibition in the Faculty Club, where they pretend to sit leisurely and stir lazily a conservation on topics that they know apparently from the way they kill time; they pretend to be interested in frivolities, to have read the latest bestseller because they read for fun any old novel almost any hour of almost any day. They fill their huge armchairs to show you how much they are relaxed and enjoying themselves, stiff in their pretended relaxed posture, investing supreme efforts not to glance at their watches or at the grandfather-clock in the corner, not to look around to see which V.I.P. is noticing how relaxed and care-free they are. Breaking up a light conversation after coffee in a faculty-club of a distinguished institute of high learning is as hard as it is for penguins to start fishing. The penguins crowd around a hole in the ice, but afraid of the hostile water they refrain from starting fishing. They slowly close in, more and more crowded, until one of them falls in. If no enemy is present and the fall guy emerges from the water alive, then fishing starts furiously. At least penguins enjoy the catch. Academics with exceptionally high standards always think of a bigger fish they might have caught.
Nothing shows how pathetic all this is as the general excitement and apprehension accompanying the occasion of a rare visit of a distinguished person into the faculty club. Excitement, since this adds luster; apprehension, since the guest may talk shop. As if the topic two people in a faculty club choose to discuss at the coffee table signifies.
No; this is not specific to faculty clubs. Knock on the door of the office of a learned colleague and see that the book or manuscript that was on the table is covered, and, if the colleague consider you a person of consequence, you will meet a leisurely individual who will invite you to have a light-hearted chat.
Acting like the academics I have just described may incur suffering, but also remuneration. Whether my own attitude is preferable, I do not know. Colleagues with high standards have kept admonishing me—this, I have told you, is one of the facts that have led me to write the present volume—for being dangerous and inconsistent, for advocating high standards and low standards alternatively. (Highly-strung Thomas Kuhn has said this of me in print.) I do not wish to pretend that I have a cure-all: you may run into trouble no matter what you do. Still, there is always hope; and sometimes progress. Since high-standard-pseudo-scholarship rests on outmoded ideas that are increasingly rejected in the various fields of psychology, education, sociology, and social and political and moral philosophy, not to mention methodology—in psychology largely due to Freud; in education largely due to Freud, Dewey and Russell; in social and political philosophy largely due to Weber, Keynes, Hayek, and Popper; and in methodology due to Einstein and Popper—there is in the plea for this Academic reform more ground for hope than in other fields of social reform. When the reform is somewhat widely instituted, the pressure against the practicing of the standards advocated here will decrease. Life is, in ever so many respects, easier and pleasanter than it used to be; there is no reason to assume a priori that the academic reform I here advocated must fail or, still worse, lead to a universal hypocritical semblance of reform akin to ones already accepted in some leading institution of higher learning.
On the contrary, it is somewhat surprising that of all the reforms due to the rejection of too high standards, the one here advocated still resists implementation. Considering the autonomy and intelligence present in Academe, the surprise is considerable. The reason for my wish to elaborate on it is that academics back their exceptionally high standards by the erroneous philosophy of science that they have inherited from the Age of Reason: they still view science as conforming to the highest standards possible; some of them consider it a substitute religion; sometimes even against our better judgment. The execution of the reform advocated here concerning the various fields of academic education and performance amounts to the replacement of the vestiges of Bacon-style standards with Popper-style ones. For, in methodology it was Popper who has argued that what the Baconian tradition demands from researchers is impossible: namely, full success. On the contrary, he said, science is an adventure; scientists must dare in the hope to achieve. Popper has viewed his theory as a reflection of the scientific research institutions of encouraging both bold ideas and criticism. Judged as history of science, his view is over-simplified and thus quite mistaken. Not that the institutions of science reflect the Baconian attitude; they decidedly try and fail to do this. Though they reflect Popper’s philosophy more adequately, their effort to appear as Baconian makes it differ from his description—thus far. He is quite right in finding somewhere in the scientific research world some sort of encouragement for boldness, at least in that it remunerates certain bold people (Einstein) even in their own lifetime for their ideas that Popper has rightly declared bold. Still, the philosophy of science prevalent in the academic world is pseudo-Baconian, and many institutions reflect this prevalence—to the point that many researches in it discourage boldness and even expressly assert that Einstein’s ideas were not bold in the least. Paper is tolerant. Popper’s plea for boldness and for tolerance thus need balancing: we encourage boldness and demand tolerance! Never demand boldness and always insist on tolerance!
Academic education is these days largely a mass phenomenon rather than a service for some sort of elite or another. This magnifies the damage due to the prevalence of Bacon’s influence, and in two ways. First, great crowds of students come from families with practically no intellectual tradition or scholarly background; from homes without books, sometimes. They are thus prone to swallow the Baconian tradition more literally and less critically. And even if practically everywhere in the advanced world Bacon’s ideas are (hopefully) on their way out, the new Baconians are still zealous. Second, the competitive character of the economy intrudes Academe, both because in expanding it swallowed competitive sectors and because, in order to maintain itself in expansion and expand further, a university must compete. And so the Baconian system of rewards has now more kudos than ever—so as to impress the international press, national organizations, Senate sub-committees, and even members of the alumni associations, former members of fraternities, parent-teachers groups of all sorts, and other bodies that threaten Academe with their naïve endorsement of academic mythologies.
Consider a cowardly academic who as a professor or head of a department exercises sheer tyranny over some students; suppose half of them drop out, some of them into mental homes and skid row (a few kinds of mentally disturbed students are attracted to departments with high-powered tyrannical teachers), but most of the rest will do tolerably well, some will succeed, and a handful will receive national awards, one or two perhaps even international ones. You know that the tyrant in question and the department in question will count as big successes. Not only do successful students testify to the competence of their teachers; even the high rate of dropouts from a course show that the standards it maintains are high. This is inevitable, perhaps, but you and I know that a good teacher is one who helps students improve rather than the one who can pick the most talented students and assist one of them become a top dog!
A minor point. The leading institutions of higher learning have statistics to support their claim to be the very best. Except that in principle, all statistics that displays success and ignores failures is fake. Public relations offices of universities and lobbyists for them are not likely to admit that they are not perfect utopias. So do ignore their statistics: all statistics that come from that corner. Entirely. They come in good faith but fake they are all the same. Yes, you are right: this includes the CV of your humble servant: you do not expect it to include records of my failures, do you? Let me tell you this story. In 1959, Popper finally got his 1935 Magnum opus published. He then worked on a blurb for its cover. It features passages from old reviews. Among these was a thoroughly negative review by leading philosopher of science Hans Reichenbach. The publisher vetoed it. Pity.
And so to the moral of this section. Cowardice is not to blame. It is often the outcome of the demand for courage. This demand is often a cover for the cowardly postponement of confrontation with the Day of Judgment. Such postponement makes the very first confrontation of untrained novices a huge battle that all too easily they are likely to lose, consequently to which defeat they would readily learn to preach courage and other high standards to mask their own emerging cowardice and tendency to postpone all further confrontations. Worst, it is an inducement to replace all intellectual adventure with chimerical standards of excellence—with middle-of-the-road accepted standards of routine competence. Modern Academe fosters this inducement. Fortunately, the middle-of-the-road accepted standards today are much superior to those of a few generations ago, not to mention the medieval university. (The demand for perfection forced them to repeat received dogma as the safest thing to do.) No institutional frame is perfect: you may escape the training imposed on you, as I have done. If you stick with me I shall try to help you acquire high competence by simple training and only incidentally to your labor of love; on the way you will have to fight some small battles, perhaps; these you will be likely to win; the victories I hope for will not make you a brave, but you will not have to be a coward looking for an ideological justification to escape any sense of shame. Intellectuals can be at peace with themselves. There is no law of nature against that—as long as you remember that there is no full insurance against failure, only commonsense safety-rules.
The cowardice I keep discussing with you is somewhat more abstract than, say, that of business people who would not take risks when they try to speculate in the stock market, much less that of a soldier in the battlefield. Individual cowardly entrepreneur seldom express sympathy with other individual cowardly entrepreneurs; they would hardly ever jump to defend cowardice with the aid of an ideology. The same goes, more emphatically with cowardice on the battlefield. The defense of cowardice is unique to Academe, and it is common there, as the following anecdote may illustrate.
In the early days of the twentieth century, Bertrand Russell did some interesting studies on the foundations of geometry. It led him to criticize the doctrine of Immanuel Kant as expressed in his celebrated Critique of Pure Reason and elsewhere. In a discussion ensuing a lecture in which Russell expressed his criticism, a member of the audience said that in defense of Kant, we must not forget that he was always exceptionally kind to his mother. Russell replied that he refused to believe that humanity is so wicked that kindness to one’s mother is a quality more scarce than the ability to develop new ideas about space and time.
Here the cowardly ideology shows itself in all of its folly: the person in the audience assumed that Russell’s criticism was an expression of contempt: he wished to keep a humane balance of contempt by mitigating it somehow. Both these assumptions are unwise; one has to explain their hold on academics. My aim here is to observe that it does have a tremendous hold in Academe, and that very few are utterly free of it. As Plato said repeatedly all his long life, as criticism helps getting free of some error, to be a target of criticism is fine. Go and tell this to the heathens. The widespread ambivalence towards criticism finds its clearest expression in the readiness to accept it from a celebrity but not from a cheeky upstart like you.
Johannes Kepler noted that even important people may use hostility or pomposity to cover for their intellectual weaknesses: “… many people get heated in their discussions …”, he says in his defense of Galileo; “… others try to impress people with too much grave solemnity but very often give a ridiculous impression quite unintentionally …” Here Kepler has the last word: humor, he said, is “by far the best seasoning for any debate…”; sincere interest and frank readiness both to acknowledge the superiority of others’ work over one’s own and vice versa are also important; but above all, the ability to gratefully acknowledge others’ valid criticism of one’s error is what counts. So says Kepler; and every reasonable person should concur.
Kepler’s is the last word on the subject of the present section: intellectual cowardice breeds hostility and pomposity while sincere curiosity breeds intellectual courage. Hence, it is obviously and comfortingly less important to fight cowardice and its manifestations than to develop honest curiosity. There is no more to add to this insight of Kepler’s, and so this section is over. What needs further explaining, perhaps, is why Kepler’s rather obvious point did not prevail. Or is it obvious? I wish I could pretend it were not. All too often, a point I wish to make seems to me so obvious I am ashamed I have to state it. What is more obvious, after all, than that we all err, scientists or no scientists, researchers or no researchers, academics or others, and that those who show us an error of ours open for us the door to improvement. Do I need to remind you that had King Lear listened to his critics, who were devoted friends, it would have averted disaster? Need I tell you that in the preface to his Apple Cart Bernard Shaw predicts the downfall of the dictators of both Germany and Russia—then at the heights of their careers—due to their burial of all their critics. (Unfortunately, his prediction was too optimistic; but I resist the temptation to digress here into political philosophy.) The point I am making has appeared already in all sorts of literature, in all possible fashions. Plato’s Gorgias says it already crisply and vividly. (I greatly recommend that slim book to you: it is most delightful reading.)
Yet, people fear criticism; people hate criticism; people build institutions and customs to prevent explicit criticism. (The claim that Popper’s methodology reflects existing institutions of scientific research is regrettably an oversimplification, you remember: science is unique in its encouragement of criticism, but it is not consistent on this.) People advocate and practice pomposity to the point, Kepler has observed, of becoming ludicrous in their desperate attempts to prevent or avert valid criticism.
Karl Popper was my teacher. He has offered the theory that what distinguishes scientific theories from other theories is that they are amenable to attempts at refutation. To use Faraday’s idiom, refutations comprise empirical criticism. Scientific confirmation or scientific positive evidence, Popper added, is failed criticism (and not the fruit of uncritical efforts to prove a theory correct). He has suggested that we learn from experience not by the search for evidence that supports a theory but by trying to criticize them and thus transcend them. This way he has earned an odd reputation: his friends and acquaintances in Vienna Circle declared him a fellow who cannot mean what he says since he advocated constant and endless quarrels among scientists. Moritz Schlick, the leader of the Vienna Circle, considerer Popper’s doctrine masochistic, since only a masochist would wish his views validly criticized. A few reviewers of Popper’s books have later hit upon the same brilliant idea. It probably never occurred to them that though we may wish to be infallible, since we know that this is not the case, we might deem second best any valid criticism of our errors. Since already Socrates of Plato’s Gorgias has made this point, and with all the clarity and vividness possible, one might expect the great light of the Vienna Circle to have been a bit more up-to-date.
Reviewers of Popper’s book refused to see his point. Unless they had strong reasons for this, they were fools. Popper himself said repeatedly—and erroneously—that one should try ceaselessly to present one’s critics as well as one could before one criticizes them and before answering their criticism. It seems to me amazing that Popper’s works in this direction are not devoid of all interest and are even occasionally amusing to some extent: it only shows how hard it was for him to be boring or unentertaining; yet I cannot recommend to the reader his work in this direction, since it is much too sophisticated and it overshoots its mark considerably. One may indeed study these haters of criticism—their ideas are not more primitive, after all, than other systems of thought that have become topics of quite intriguing studies, for example, the systems of thought adopted by the inhabitants of the Pacific Islands or of the Vatican; but to reason with primitive people and to study them are two very different matters. On second thought, I am not very fair in mentioning the Vatican in the present context, since it had for a Pope a person like John XXIII who would find it easy enough to converse with Kepler—more so I dare say, than any critic of Popper who found Popper’s advocacy of criticism masochistic or cantankerous. To whom should we compare those who find in the welcoming of criticism chiefly a form of perversity?
It is hard to say. So let us begin with the bottom of the ladder, with the traditional officer and gentleman, that is, who could challenge to a duel and kill in cold blood any of his critics regardless of the importance and of the correctness of the critic’s observations. Such an officer and gentleman appears now only through literature; his hallmark always was pomposity. At least literature has won and ousted dueling by means of leading to public ridicule. The equation of the inhumanity of the dueler with his pomposity and the contempt of them are the themes of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin of 1833 and of Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time of 1841, not to mention Joseph Conrad’s derisive “The Duel” of 1908. Perhaps the pomposity of the dueler is much too excessive to illustrate Kepler’s point, and you may think that the modern professor will not serve as a good illustration for Kepler’s point. See then Erik Erikson’s 1958 Young Man Luther:
Take the professor … A strange belligerence … leads him to challenge other experts as if to a duel. He constantly imputes to them not only the ignorance of high school boys, but also the motives of juveniles …
What is the difference between the dueler and that professor? Admittedly, the dueler is more harmful than the professor is; this is a matter of difference of the institutional means available to both to defend themselves against criticism. As a defense against criticism, however, their reactions do not differ from that of a geography teacher I had in elementary school. He read from his text, “Burma is the second largest rice producer”. Someone asked, “Teacher, which is the largest?” He snapped back, “Shut-up!” His response was short and effective; if provoked more, he might have reacted more violently. My teacher in university who had to impart to me the mysteries of quantum theory was not as ignorant—he was an authority—but he had to silence his students too; it took me years to see that he could not answer our questions. Presumably, he could not admit this openly.
Here at last we do come to a fundamental difference between the dueler and the professor; the dueler defends his honor, whereas the professor defends the cause of science or some other noble cause; in this respect my elementary school geography teacher—gentle and kind as he was—may be classed with the officer and the gentleman, yet the professor may be classed with the dogmatist and the fanatic.
You may easily challenge this distinction. The poor elementary school teacher who has to teach a subject in which he has no interest was acting in self-defense when caught not having done his homework. Is the very up-to-date professor not acting similarly? Since professors claim to have done all their homework, they can claim to know all that is worth knowing—which is a better line of defense; and this is the same as allying oneself with science. “I am science” is as pompous as “I am the state”, if not more so. Perhaps the geography teacher was defending his position and authority as a teacher—for the benefit of the school and its pupils; the officer was possibly defending his uniform; the gentleman may sustain the social order; the professor defends eh commonwealth of learning.
It is hard for me to argue the pros and cons of the last two paragraphs. The problem is too intricate and the returns seem to be diminishing fast. I can see that I am boring you, and I cannot blame you; I have myself agreed that Kepler was quite right: we need not elaborate the negative side here but may dwell on the positive.
To a positive instance then. The lifelong debate between Einstein and Niels Bohr is a classic. It fascinates outsiders not only because of its philosophical content, not only because it displays satisfactorily (to outsiders, not to physicists) that unanimity in science is an overblown myth, not only because it is about some of the most deeply felt transitions in the twentieth century, not only because it was conducted by two people who were famous in their own rights; the debate fascinates outsiders in the manner in which it was couched because of the display of a determined and persistent intellectual opposition on a large scale between two people of almost saintly dispositions, of unusually amiable nature, who belonged to the most exclusive mutual admiration society of their century whose membership consisted of these two alone: for Bohr, Einstein was science impersonated; for Einstein, Bohr was musical—even more than Kepler. (Yes, I am speaking of the music of the spheres again, of course; but the expression “musical” is Einstein’s: his application of it to Bohr appears in his scientific autobiography.) The outsider has the picture right; it is the ordinary physicist who shows a surprising lack of interest and appreciation and is more than willing to dismiss the whole debate with the feeling that, evidently, Bohr won the debate to the utmost satisfaction of everyone. In addition to being a narrow-minded view of the matter, incidentally, this is false: both parties seem to have lost—in the sense of having held opinions whose shortcomings have meanwhile become apparent, not in the sense of having lost a duel or a contest. Let me conclude this point with the observation that the proper spirit of the debate between Einstein and Bohr has done more for the advancement of learning than the content of the debate that, regrettably, towards the end of their lives turned stale.
It is hard to avoid pomposity and hostility. I do not think I can help you—or myself—to be above it as much as Spinoza or Einstein. All I do is suggest that Popper’s methodology may help us overcome some of the worst obstacles on the way to reducing pomposity—obstacles that have no business to be still around so many centuries after Kepler. It is not that without Popper’s methodology we cannot remove them, but that with its aid the task might be easier to perform successfully. For the root of the difficulty of overthrowing certain pomposities and hostilities is indeed methodological.
This section is boring. Let me briefly remind you that the over-confident in their own rightness express implicit contempt towards their opponents; I have discussed this corollary, which Bacon stressed, and you can easily see for yourself that this is equally true of matters civil or moral as of matters scientific or religious. In matters other than philosophical, it is so obvious, even Josephus Flavius, by no means a great light, has already noticed it: in the very opening of his Jewish Wars he says, some Romans tend to belittle the Jewish army, not noticing that thereby they also belittle the Roman army against which the Jewish army held forth so well and for so long. What is so obvious in that context should be equally obvious in scholarly context. Perhaps I can interest you a little bit more in this so obvious point, then, by a somewhat piquant observation of a pompous element in Popper’s philosophy itself. I cannot say that this philosophy is very popular, nor do I contend that the pompous element in it is in any way essential to it; what I would say, however, is that inasmuch as Popper’s philosophy has gained any popularity, it is that part of it that has become better known, which I consider pompous. It underwent vulgarization in an even more pompous fashion than its original version, but this is less interesting or piquant since deterioration through vulgarization is the norm.
Popper’s earliest philosophical studies consisted of work on two problems, of the demarcation and of the methods of science. I have told you already what his theory is. He says the method of science is, in general, the method of criticism, and in particular, of criticism in which new experiments serve as new arguments against the best theories extant. We learn from experience to correct our errors. As to the demarcation of science, the question, what theory rightly merits the title “scientific”, the answer to it I have quoted in the beginning of this section; it is almost present in my last sentence above: a theory is scientific, says Popper, if and to the extent that it is open to attempts at criticism of it—by recourse to experience. Whether the attempt be successful or not seems less relevant than whether it is at all possible. Thus, says Popper, you may try to criticize Einstein’s theory of gravity by designing certain sophisticated observations, such as Eddington’s observations. Thus far, experience refused to condemn Einstein’s theory; if it is true, this will never change; it is nevertheless conceivable that the theory is false, and, if so, quite possibly one of these experiments will one day come out with results significantly different from those that the theory leads to anticipate. Thus, Einstein’s theory is in principle open to empirical criticism and so it merits the title “scientific”. Not so Freud’s theory. Nobody ever deduced from Freud’s theory a prediction and then check that prediction. The ease with which Freud and his followers could fit facts into their schemes ensures success a priori; there is no hope for an opponent ever to pin down Freud, Popper said, and thus to force Freudians to change their minds in the light of experience. Hence, Popper concluded, Freud’s theory does not merit the title “scientific”.
>All this is just terrible. It is hardly possible for me to understand how Popper could stick to his view that his ideas on the topic as significant; it is hardly possible for me to understand how he could ever mind which theory merits the title “scientific” and which not. Such a pompous question! I confess, I did find this question very important. I can explain psychologically and socially how I came to be interested in this pompous question and how it ceased interesting me, and I think I may generalize. My explanation is that I got interested in such a pompous question since it is rooted in the role of pomposity in our society. Let me elaborate on this. The question how and why our society maintains pomposity I shall discuss afterwards. Let me begin with Popper’s response to my challenge.
Popper always said, words do not matter. The word “scientific” is no exception. He said, his study of the demarcation of science is important as it answers Kant’s question, what can we know? The answer to this question is Socratic: we cannot know where the truth resides, but only where it does not: we can refute some hypotheses but verify none. This answer is terrific; it presents what we know as science as a version of Socratic dialogue. I do not know how you find this; speaking for myself, it is very much to my liking. For myself, allow me to add, this is what in Popper’s theory of knowledge appeals to me most. (This is why I consider myself his disciple.) It is not the whole of his theory of knowledge. In particular, it is a rejection of his theory of pseudo-science, his condemnation of the ideas of Marx and of Freud. If you want to condemn these, you need better arguments.
The core of Popper’s theory is admirable. As long as you are an ignorant young rebel, all well-wishers, and all those who think you may be a good student (whether they wish you well or not), start quashing your rebellion by an appeal to the authority of science. The authority of science may or may not be bigger than the authority of religion, of society, or of parents and teachers; it matters not, since the bigger the authority, the bigger the menace to freedom it is; and inasmuch as science is authoritative, we should simply condemn its authority in the name of freedom. Thus, efforts to quash rebellion in the name of the authority of science simply seem to side with science, but they side with those who condemn it. Let me be quite clear on this point. It is my honest and considered opinion that no human venture and no human conduct is free of evil, and hence there is evil in science. Popper’s theory presents science in such a way as to define all the evils possibly associated with science—such as the dogmatic pomposity of my science professors—as one way or another not part-and-parcel of science, but mere accidental accretions to it. To come back to our young rebel (such as Popper was, for instance) who accepts the authority of science—in ignorance, inexperience, and fear of seeming too quixotic. Once the authorities have bullied you that far, it seems only reasonable to check their credentials; once you wish to make your checking of credentials effective, you ask yourself, what makes for kosher credentials. This is precisely the problem of demarcation of science.
>Do not sneer at the pompous guardians of the status quo too easily; many of them were young rebels suppressed by earlier pompous guardians. This is, again, the traditional-Chinese mother-in-law syndrome; you may profit more from studying its mechanism and ways of neutralizing its ability crushed you than from sneering at its victims. Remember: this is a report of an empirical observation: the more violently the daughter-in-law fights her mother-in-law, the more she is prone to become in her turn a dreadful mother-in-law herself. Such things did happen, and they still do, although how frequent they were is unclear since the exceptions were kept secret.
Popper himself rebelled against claims of Freud and of Adler for the authority of science. To criticize young rebels is unfair: there are so few of them, we have to encourage them first. Still, Popper was in error. When he spoke of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, he was as clear as possible: it has a canonical version. Admittedly, there are variants of the theory (with its lambda equals zero or not), but this does not affect its scientific status. When Popper spoke of Freud’s theory, however, he never specified what it is and it has no canonical version. Admittedly, this is a general defect. Adolf Grünbaum has devoted a whole volume to the criticism of Popper on psychoanalysis, yet he had no room in it for specifying the content of the doctrine (that he also rejected, though for the lack of empirical support). This is no small matter, since a major item in his theory was the place of catharsis in it. The neurotic patient fears the memory of the trauma that has generated the neurosis; the end of the psychoanalytic encounters is for neurotic patient to overcome this fear; when this occurs the patient experience a kind of excitement that Freud called catharsis and is thus ready for self-cure. Freud sent home such patients, only to discover that they were still neurotic. He then changed his mind. This renders scientific à la Popper the version of Freud’s theory just worded here. That version, however, is not canonical. What version is? I do not know. Popper was thus more than justified in studying the nature of claims for scientific status. His conclusion in this matter is a variant of the one that has been made a century earlier by the great William Whewell, who said that experiments that cannot possibly lead to the elimination of a theory, cannot possibly lead to its confirmation either. Whewell was not as clear as Popper was, and he was in error when—quite unlike Popper—he ascribed authority to scientific confirmation, in the belief that a properly confirmed theory can never be overthrown. Yet Popper, like Whewell, handled together the demarcation of a scientific theory with the demarcation of scientific confirmation.
It is hard to disagree with Whewell, Poincaré, and Popper: proper confirmability without refutability is too cheap. It is harder to disagree with Popper that loose confirmation is always available. We have now narrowed considerably the range of scientific confirmation and thus the range of the authority attached to it. Why then do we attach authority to confirmation? Most philosophers say, because we learn from it. Popper rejects this; like Socrates, he said, I hope you remember, that we learn from experience by empirical criticism, by refuting experiences. We learn from confirming experiences that we have failed to refute, that in efforts to refute we should look elsewhere. Yet for about thirty years Popper never said what is the good of confirming experiments and whether it is authoritative, and if so why. I admit that an unprejudiced reader may concur with impressions shared by most philosophers of science I have come across, namely that Popper did ascribe some authority to confirmation.
Now we all treat some confirmation as authoritative; perhaps those who viewed with disdain Faraday’s assault on so very well confirmed a theory as Newton’s spoke with the authority of science; perhaps those who resented Einstein’s upsetting of all physics (at least prior to the confirmation of his own views), or Planck’s, or Bohr’s, also spoke with the authority of science. If so, then that authority is plainly evil. Paul Feyerabend said, people committed much evil in the name of science.This won him much acclaim. The acclaim was due to the reading of his text as opposed to science, which he carefully allowed for. This is cheap.
Of course, Popper did not have in mind the authority that Feyerabend opposed; which authority, however, he did have in mind, he did not say. He was touchy on this point, and I could seldom talk to him about it; most of the time, I regret to admit, he was not on speaking terms with me—he insisted it is not because I disagreed with him, you could guess, but for quite different reasons. I am sure you take delight in gossip and I would not deprive you of the pleasure; but I do not quite know the details. Popper had assumed that I knew the details that made him angry with me, because he took it for granted that some mutual friends who were academic guardians of high standards had informed me: if you have a guardian of high standards for a friend, who needs enemies. The real cause for his hostility is that I published my criticism of his views rather than let him detract his error due to personal contact as befits teacher and student relations as he saw them.
Again: confirmation is authoritative; yet those who look for the authority of confirmation will not find it in science. It lies in politics, more specifically, in the law of the land. The law of the land should not appeal to the authority of science, as this does not exist. To be explicit, the law cannot appeal to personal convictions, as the democratic principle of freedom of conviction guards them; the law cannot appeal to researchers, as scientific research must stay free. The law can appeal to applied science, to the applications of science. The law (in modern democracies) demands that claims for the benefits of new applications of science must be confirmed, because this way we eliminate new applications of science that are harmful before they cause too much harm. We do not always succeed, as the case of thalidomide proves. Perhaps the Nazi philosopher Heidegger was right when he declared applied science detrimental for the future of humanity. We just do not know. We hope he was in error and we will do our best to refute his view. For this we should see that the authority that confirmation has is the authority that we bestow on it. This will facilitate criticism of our methods of confirmation and this their improvement.
To show you how possible it is that interest in confirmation may be due to public pressure based on the authority of experience, we may take the case of the person who did confirm his own unorthodox views and did feel proud of his ability in this direction, yet who never thought any confirmation is more than of a transient heuristic value (“heuristic”, akin to “Eureka!”, means pertaining to discovery; heuristic value is possible usefulness for research-purposes). I am speaking of Galileo. He thought Archimedes’ work was as geometrical as Euclid’s and thus equally doubtless; yet he did confirm it with a most impressive experiment when court intrigues in 1612 forced him to do so in order to save his job as a court scientist: he showed that a piece of wax with some copper dust stuck to it may float on water yet sink when one single additional speck of copper is stuck to it. He held in principle the same view of the Copernican hypothesis and hence considered his own telescopic observations as well as his own theory of the tides to be confirmations of it—and as such he viewed them as useful; for the interim period and for social reasons mainly—in order to convince the heathens. Inasmuch as they had intellectual value of greater durability, Galileo saw them as criticisms, as a shaking of accepted authority, rather than as lending authority to his own view. Even in his wildest dreams he desired to achieve only permission to believe in the Copernican doctrine and to have free debate; even in his wildest dreams he admitted that the Copernican doctrine had not yet been logically proved—as it should be, he said; with all his powerful sarcasm and raging bitterness he hardly ever expressed in writing a single statement with authoritarian overtones. Individual autonomy was what he preached.
To return to Popper. It is a biographical fact, beautifully narrated by Popper in his “Personal Report”, that he developed his view on scientific confirmation and on the demarcation of science to break away from the authority of Alfred Adler, under whose tutelage he worked educating deprived youths in Vienna as a volunteer when he was a young lad in his teens. Adler tried to impress Popper with his “thousand fold experience”. Yet the “Personal Report” is not sufficiently anti-authoritarian to my taste, since it merely shows that the credentials of the applications of the theory of Adler are not half as kosher as those of the theory of Einstein. He evidently deemed Einstein’s view authoritative. I do not.
As examples of theories that make claim for the title “scientific” quite without justification, as examples of pseudo-scientific theories, that is, Popper has chosen astrology, Marxism, Freudian psychoanalysis and Adlerian analytic psychology and, though by implication only, theology proper too. I say by implication only because Popper was vague here, as I have tried to show elsewhere: he has never clearly distinguished between pseudo-science and non-science, and yet it is a clear fact that nowadays, unlike in the Middle Ages, theology is non-scientific yet it is hardly pseudo-scientific: it makes no claim for the title “scientific”. In his early works, at least, Popper displays a tremendous ease with which he was willing to dismiss all pseudo-science, and in the same breath theology proper. Later on he showed more tolerance to theology and even respect for some metaphysics; he was adamant in his contempt for pseudo-science. Is all pseudo-science as contemptible as astrology? Is ancient astrology as contemptible as current astrology is? He did not think so. The affirmative answer to this question is too pompous for him, even if only by implication.
Admittedly, Freud and Adler had the mark of the phony in them; Popper has rendered a great service in pinpointing this, and in showing the imperviousness of their ideas to criticism. After all, Freud and Adler did not argue in exactly the same detached manner of Einstein and Bohr; Popper has made much of this fact. Yet to class psychoanalysis with astrology on the strength of this fact is excessive.
Example: in Psychopathology in Everyday Life (1901), Freud reports having rightly suspected that a woman had marital troubles as she mistakenly used her maiden name. This statement is pseudo-scientific: one cannot generalize it. Yet Freud’s observation was astute. In detective stories, this kind of observation serves as a clue, although it will rightly not hold in court. One may propose to view a clue as confirmation when it turns out to be right and to ignore it when not. This is wrong: it is better to say, at the time it looked to me important, yet it is not. The detective knows that this is possible, and this is the reason for the search for better evidence. Freud did not behave as honestly the way the upright detective of the classical detective novels did. That is strange, because Freud himself rightly, analyzed this way the treatment of premonitions that he dismissed as superstitious.
>We face two problems here. First, what is the problem of demarcation of science sans snobbery? The answer is obvious: why do we appreciate science? Second, what is the authority of science? The answer here is also obvious: the law recognizes general claims after they undergo scientific confirmation. Why? The answer here a little less obvious. To see this we should consider not success but failure. Consider inquests. In an inquest into a disaster, we expect them to answer the question: was the accident in question due to some negligence? This is why standards of confirmation have to improve. For example, only after the disaster that thalidomide had caused, the suggestion came up to test drugs for possible harm fetuses. Only then it became negligence to harm fetuses by medications; not before.
Adler’s theory has drawn much less attention than Freud’s, and for a few obvious reasons: it is less strikingly original than Freud’s, being (intentionally) a variant on it; also it is less provocative and more in accordance with common sense, since Freud crudely equates love with sex, whereas Adler equates it with acceptance or approval in a much wider social sense (sex included, of course). Freud’s theory is deeper, in the sense of being more Darwinian, in its basing conduct on two basic biological drives—for food and mating. Freud believed in the reduction of all science to causal theory and much appreciated the Darwinian causal theory of natural selection. However, he noticed that we still lack a causal theory of basic animal drives; taking upon trust that this theory will appear one day, he allowed himself to use it. Adler’s theory is more worldly and it leaves fundamental questions open quite deliberately. Moreover, Freud’s theory is much more piquant, and avails itself for a wide variety of applications outside of psychology, from parlor games to high literature and literary criticism. The worst thing about him is his view of women, as both Melanie Klein and Karen Horney have argued in detail.
Adler’s merit is there all the same. The hysterical Victorian aunt moved under his impact from high literature to melodrama to burlesque to oblivion; you are most unlikely to have an aunt who, feigning shock or feeling neglected says the famous punch-line, “Darling, I think I am going to faint.” Your grandparents still had such aunts; not you. Attempts to draw attention by fainting, temper-tantrums, and similar gags, were good enough for Napoleon Bonaparte and for Ludwig Wittgenstein; today they are considered too silly to be of any use, and those in dire need to draw attention have to use less obvious ones (such as hypochondria or mild paranoia). That is Adler’s prime achievement. It was quite considerable. For, the fainting aunt was much more miserable and much more of a nuisance than a first glance may suggest.
(The same considerations go for conversion hysteria, to wit, hysteria with symptoms of physical illness and paralysis. Since this was the object of Freud’s early studies, much interest and a vast literature exists concerning its disappearance. I do not wish to bother you excessively with psychiatry.) The drive for recognition is still there. According to Adler, it is a version of search for attention and for care. Adler was concerned with the pathological manifestations of this drive, the so-called Inferiority Complex that he considered a proper substitute for Freud’s Oedipus Complex as the primeval neurosis. Both complexes are observable; the disagreement here was metaphysical: which complex is basic? (Freud, On the History of the Psychoanalytic Movement, 1917.) Adler was limited in his effort to amend Freudianism rather than build an independent system or rather solve problems unsolved or unsatisfactorily solved by Freud. Following the line of Freud’s Psychopathology in Everyday Life, of Freud’s insistence that the distinction between the normal and the abnormal is a matter of degree, Adler found inferiority complexes everywhere. On this Popper has scored a clear point: the literature admits his critique, even though no always expressing the gratitude to him that we all owe. They overlook his perceptive remark that in all likelihood Freud was a Freudian type and Adler was an Adlerian type.
The Freudian claim (to be precise, Jean-Martin Charcot and others made it earlier) that mental abnormality is a matter of degree, is a profound insight and a challenging thought, but quite obviously a half-truth at best. It is an open secret that psychoanalysis of any kind has abysmally failed in matters of psychosis or mental illness proper (whatever that may be) and in other strange phenomena such as epilepsy. Although quite a number of writers have commented on the connection between Freud’s theory of degrees of abnormality and this failure, it still invites exploration. My point here is different: it is perhaps the comment of Buber and of Sartre on Freud’s theory: that theory is a half-truth, at best, in that it has no room for the study of the workings of the sense of responsibility. We all agree that a child is neither responsible nor irresponsible—that a child cannot be held responsible, to use the legal expression. In addition, traditionally, the law puts the mentally ill or the deranged in the same category as the child, together with the mentally retarded. What Freud has claimed is (though he was himself ambivalent on this point) that we all are child-like in spots, so that the difference between the child or the neurotic and the responsible adult is a matter of degree. Here he is at best only half right since there is a crucial difference between those who lapse into child-like inability to face responsibility in spots and those who are constantly child-like, either from not having grown up or from having relapsed all round.
When Dr. Thomas S. Szasz declares that mental illness is a myth he had a complicated message. When we pay indulgent attention to hysterical fainting, Alfred Adler had observed, we encourage the development of hysteria. Similarly, says Szasz, we encourage schizophrenics to act irresponsibly in order to make us place them in the category of those whom we do not consider responsible agents. Others, such as Sheldon Glueck, attempt to reconcile Freud’s theory of gradation of normalcy with the existence of responsibility (in adults but not in children and not in psychotics) by the introduction of degrees of responsibility.
Correct or not, this affords us a new criticism of Adler, and even of Freud. It is this. The claim that we are all children who constantly crave for care, attention, acceptance, approval, support of others, and what have you, harbors a serious confusion of the dependence on others that the immature display with the need of the mature to face society and to belong to a society—as a coordinating system, as a standard for what is reasonable and responsible, as a standard of sanity. Here, perhaps, we even touch on a serious error of Schopenhauer that Freud may have inherited from him. Schopenhauer saw an affinity between madness and genius. This is terrifying regardless of evidence for it and against it that constantly accumulates. We must admit that genius may find the strain of loneliness too great, both psychologically and intellectually. Nevertheless, the genius is mature in the sense of having a sense of responsibility, even though in loneliness the genius may need a greater maturity of judgment and thus have to undertake great efforts to achieve it. As geniuses seek the normal assurance from others’ responses, they find it harder than usual to attain it; and then they may but need not lose their sense of purpose. They may then find themselves in need to sacrifice ordinary companionship. The romantic philosophers whom Schopenhauer wished to combat declared this the test by ordeal that they viewed as imperative for geniuses to pass before they may deviate from received norms, since only then are they able to contribute their innovations. The romantic theory sounds radical but it is conservative in its permission to allow deviation only after passing tests by ordeal. Hence, Freud and Adler were romantic against their wills; they were all too ready to identify genius with mental aberration.
The wish to have recognition or acceptance fits the ideas of Freud and Adler; and so all of us fit them to some extent. This goes for all occupations, and manifests itself differently in different ones. Academics who lapse into the neurotic need for acceptance may distort or ignore an idea or an experiment, more simply, they may plagiarize or become pompous defenders of the Establishment, especially while developing neurotic self-mistrust like the professors whose honesty prevents them from defending poor students against obvious injustice. Common as the phenomenon that concerns with desire for recognition may be, it is nevertheless cheap to pretend that all its manifestations belong to one simple category. There is too little written on this subject to allow me to elaborate at any length, but I can barely refrain from briefly referring to the cases of David Hume and of Claude Debussy. Both felt the problem and frankly expressed bewilderment concerning it. Hume was exceptionally honest and unusually at peace with himself. In his brief autobiography he confessed the motive for his writing was his love of fame, yet he also reported there he was a happy and contented person although his philosophical work “fell stillborn from the press”. The case of Debussy is similar. He had a reasonably high opinion of his own output. He did not think much of public acceptance or rejection, especially since he was unusually familiar with the history of music and knew how much great music remained unperformed for lack of technical possibility to perform it all (this was before the invention of the phonograph). He was sufficiently open-minded to recommend publicly that the Paris Opera gave the best possible performances of Wagner’s operas although he sincerely loathed them; and he enjoyed music of both the highbrow and the lowbrow sorts, judging each piece by its composer’s intent. He viewed aggressive public rejection of a composition as a great honor bestowing severe obligation on its recipient; yet he admitted that he was quite ambivalent towards signs of recognition, feeling averse to the pomposity, boredom, and vexations it entails but being unable to “be insensible to that little ray of provisional glory”.
As self-critics, both Hume and Debussy were too ruthless. Hume’s claim that his motive was a love of fame comes from Bacon’s philosophy, and Debussy too, was subject to the influenced of the same stock of ideas, through second and third hand. Joseph Priestley, no less, dismissed Hume, saying, one should not expect much from the pen of a philosopher who shamelessly admits being motivated by the love of fame. Already Kant expressed his surprise at the cavalier manner in which Priestley dismissed Hume (he rightly admired both of them). As to Debussy’s critics, the less said of them, the better. To show that their excessive self-criticism was mistaken, we may use the case of Einstein. He received as much fame and glory as any scholar could ever get from peers. It embarrassed him deeply and he did not wish for more. Yet, he confessed, he was always lonely, and early in his life he suffered from this loneliness. Approval he received, but a society to give him standards of reasonableness he seldom had, and he benefited from the company of very few people who could match him, such as Planck and Gödel. What Schopenhauer saw, then, in the similarity between the genius and the lunatic is there all right—both constantly struggle, as they have no accepted standards to rest on; but the one is above accepted standards, the other below. Small difference. Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King (1959) observes:
when I say that he lost his head, what I mean is not that his judgment abandoned him but that his enthusiasm and visions swept him far out.
Here we have come, quite incidentally, to the kernel of truth and to the obscurantist aspect of the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the most popular philosophers of the twentieth century and of its greatest prima-donnas; his closest pupil and biographer Norman Malcolm, viewed him as casualty of both a touch of genius and a touch of madness. Philosophical doubts, said Wittgenstein, are spurious because they are peculiar: unlike other doubts, those that touch upon specific topics, whereas philosophy touches upon the very framework of our activities, intellectual and otherwise. All his life he spent enormous efforts to show the obvious, namely that philosophical doubts are indeed peculiar in their generality; he said almost nothing to support his claim that hence we should ignore philosophical doubt. What he did say, namely that we constantly do operate within socially accepted standards—even in our innermost thoughts—is admittedly usually true. Yet when we look at the greatest geniuses among us, at its Bacons and Descartes and Humes, at its Debussys and Einsteins too, we see people who try hard to break away from accepted frameworks in efforts to create ones more adequate for the problems that they struggle with. They may or may not suffer loneliness and pains; these pains may be necessary or unnecessary; they are, however, all too understandable. For them Wittgenstein’s cure—indifference to fundamental problems—will not do at all. Fortunately for us, the Einsteins among us totally ignore him.
We are almost ready to return to the opening question of this section. Let me remind you of a brief anecdote about Russell’s discussion in public of the theory of space and time of Immanuel Kant and the member of the audience who observed in response, that Kant loved his mother. Now this observation is hard to defend but it is easy to empathize with. Most of us feel criticism as censure and rejection. The reason may very well be that as children we tend to be stubborn and ignore criticism unless it comes with great pressure. As children, we suffer both from the lack of attention and from the lack of standards—we feel a loss and we feel at a loss. These are two very different pains; in our trauma, we tend to fuse them. Freud has never distinguished them. He was the last believer in the noble savage, and when he feared that the ideal of the noble savage did not suffice, he simply plunged deeper into his Schopenhauer-style pessimism. The part of the received standard that he endorsed, especially concerning everyday matters of fact, he deemed as belonging (not to society but) to the ego. In this, again, he was deeply and quite mistakenly under the influence of Bacon. The very idea of the noble savage, of people not infected by common superstitions and so intellectually superiors, is a Baconian myth.
For the purpose of emotional hygiene, there is admittedly not much need to distinguish between the child’s loss of attention and loss of guidance that come as penalties for stubbornness; but for the purpose of intellectual hygiene the distinction—between being lost and feeling lost—may be important. (This echoes Buber’s critique of Freud: he did not take notice, Buber observed, of the difference between guilt and guilt-feelings.)
As far as child-psychology is concerned, most experts recommend the avoidance of traumatic events in a child’s life. We might expect them to have some impact and cause some improvement here. Oh, no! We have our old acquaintance the ideological academic bore pompously guarding the institutions fostering damage and insisting on penalizing every stubborn rebel. If you criticize a public figure openly and frankly, then the bores will try to make you understand that in doing so you bar yourself from ever gaining public recognition; and if an accepted public figure criticizes you, then the bores will want you to feel that your career has ended. If you escape censure, then the Establishment penalizes you, ignores you, or crowns you as a new public figure. The latter option is not for you. At least not yet: you must learn to be patient and wait for your turn! If you have any merit, you can be sure that we will recognize you in good time, they promise. Do not hate them: they know not what they do.
It is easy to get rid of the pompous bore. All it takes is a social reform. Pompous bores are docile and they will follow the rules even when these are agreeable. Would it not be nice if every person whom a Fellow of the Royal Society attacks in the academic press will be automatically made a candidate for a fellowship in it? This would remove the ambivalence of the Fellow who launches the attack and thus remove the need to justify the attack by including in it the customary expressions of pomposity and of hostility to opponents. This will make it preferable to present criticism openly and render it desirable to be a target for an intellectually decent criticism. This will make Fellows more discerning in their choice of target for criticism and induce in them the disposition to choose opponents their own size. This will present criticism as a precious act to administer with some measure of discrimination rather than as mud to sling.
I may be seriously in error, of course. Still, in my view for what it is worth, the Royal Society was once a tremendous institution, bold and experimental in both its scientific ventures and in its playing its social role as creating incentives for the advancement of learning. You do not think the Royal Society is going to accept my proposal? You think it will meet with pomposity and hostility? Ah, well, you may be right. No matter; we can build our own mutual admiration society, you and I, where members pride themselves on the ability to parry well, riposte well, and willingly admit a hit like any regular fencer. (Fencers know that as long as you have the slightest disposition to conceal that you were hit you are still a novice; the same holds if you claim that you have hit your opponent rather than wait patiently for an admission of it. How Socratic!)
In the meantime, let us attend to the moral from this section. The pomposity and hostility of an academic often result from old pressure by pompous seniors. Fear of criticism leads to pompously authoritative modes of speech plus the expression of contempt towards opponents. This is why it is advisable to try to ignore thinkers’ pomposity and authority, even their occasional display of a phony streak. (The refusal to ignore pomposity is pompous.) Again, the question is not how authoritative is what one says but how interesting and important. If not, it should not be criticized—at least not in Academe; and if it is criticized only because it is interesting and important (though false or at least possibly false), then criticism is a compliment. The ambivalence of academics towards criticism (that various institutional devices enhance) we should laugh out of court the way our ancestors did with the popular custom of dueling. That mature thinkers view criticism as complimentary is manifest in various cases, especially from the dispute between Einstein and Bohr. Still, so many thinkers pompously declare that Pasteur’s verbal violence towards his opponents is impossible to compare with the violence of the officer and gentleman, and that we cannot possibly try to emulate such giants as Einstein and Bohr.
Let me be clear: in my view, controversy is the heart of science. This idea is not popular. Even my teacher, Karl Popper, who declared the disagreement between Thales and his followers the dawn of science and who always encouraged controversy, even he did not assert that controversy is the heart of science. He demarcated (not controversies but) theories as scientific and non-scientific. My interest is broader: what makes one controversy important and another dull? For example, compare Galileo and his adversaries to Newton and Leibniz. The latter controversy fascinated even some interesting sworn Newtonians. Einstein, who viewed himself a follower of Leibniz, had to explain why at the time Newton won the debate. By contradistinction, Galileo’s adversaries are remembered, if at all, because he argued against them magnificently. Nobody discusses the ideas of these famous adversaries: they are now gone ignored. What differentiates the two controversies? I do not know; it keeps fascinating me. The adversary of Newton, Leibniz, kept engaging thinkers for generations; not so Galileo’s adversaries.
Thus far, I have spoken against the pompous insistence on the maintenance of certain high academic standards and of the evils that this might incur. Of the standards themselves, I said little thus far, except for the alleged standard of objectivity that academics use to force peers to render their discourse boring. Standards are artifacts; as such, they may be unsuitable. The orthodox adherence to them, thus, may increase their fault and the damage that it subsequently incurs. To return to the historical example I have mentioned in passing, it was Robert Boyle who instituted the demand that speculative papers should include some experimental results.
Boyle did that while he was registering a plea for tolerance. In his Proëmial Essay to his Certain Physiological Essays of 1661, he complained of the existence of a certain dogmatic adherence to the new mechanical philosophy. (This is the theory of Descartes of the world as consisting of purely rigid bodies that can only collide with each other or else move in uniform velocities.) He referred, as an example, to some medical work published some years earlier and passed unnoticed by the learned public because—he suggested—its language was not that of the mechanical philosophy. Historians of science have declared an anonymous seventeenth century work on medicine Boyle’s earliest publication. If so, then he was familiar with the dogmatic dismissal of works and was probably referring to his own personal experience and in his said Proëmial Essay, he was arguing for the possibility that a work not following the mechanical philosophy may be of use even if the mechanical philosophy is true. For, if true, a statement of fact or a theory must be explicable somehow by the true mechanical philosophy. Our present ignorance of this explanation does not detract from its truth. For example, he noted, nobody was then able to explain mechanically the phenomenon of elasticity. Springs are elastic. If we explain the behavior of air on the assumption that the smaller parts of air are springs, we may learn something about air—for example, that (in constant temperature) its pressure is proportional to its compression. (This is the celebrated Boyle’s Law.) Our theory of the air will thus be a theory of elasticity and thus not yet mechanical. However, if the mechanical philosophy is true it must in principle explain elasticity. Hence, the disregard for a study because is cast in a language other than that of the mechanical philosophy is shortsightedness. Even if a theory is false, said Boyle, it may lead to interesting experiments that critics have designed in order to refute it. Boyle noted that in those days there were more people ready to speculate than to experiment. Therefore, he suggested, it is important to encourage experimentation and discourage speculations. So let us agree, he said, to accept for publication any paper that is not too long and that contain some new experimental information.
Boyle did not object to brief speculative works. He published such works, though surprisingly rarely. Soon The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and its French equivalent appeared. They made it a standard policy to publish as little speculative material as possible. To make things worse, natural philosopher (physicist, we would say today) Benedict Spinoza, a rather controversial thinker, submitted to the Royal Society practically at their invitation a paper on the relations between wholes and parts—highly speculative, need one say—and the Society almost published it but did not. Boyle was the least pompous and perhaps the kindest Fellow of the early Royal Society. His uprightness and moral and civil courage were never questioned by friend or foe. Yet he was not brave enough to publish Spinoza’s note. He also showed uncharacteristic pomposity and hostility towards opponents of the Royal Society. True, he welcomed criticism and had never any problems about it as far as he himself was concerned; he was very generous in acknowledging other people’s discoveries and he was extremely frank about his past errors. He was extremely sensitive however to his colleagues’ sensitivity to criticism. He repeatedly explains that criticizing a colleague openly might cause resentment and so lead to mere discouragement. Since Boyle’s philosophy of the social foundation of science was very clear on this matter, since he clearly thought that only amateurs could be the disinterested carriers of the burden of research, he found most important the need to entice people to invest efforts in research. Not only in matters of criticism but also in all other respects, his aim was to make people perform experiments and publish their results. One of his subtitles is “an attempt to make a chymical experiment” that now sounds funny, coming as it did from the best and the most respected chemist of his time. He proscribed criticizing an opponent openly; the ones who had held the criticized doctrine will know that the new experiment refutes their view; there is no need to publicize this. Twice Boyle deviated from this early in his career, in the days in which both his new law the new Royal Society were making a big splash and it was terribly important to see whether anything in these excitements had lasting impressions. Under such circumstances, and considering that Boyle was criticizing his own critics, there was no need to explain or justify his conduct. Yet he did. He said that he loathed launching an attack against his sometimes friend, the Cambridge philosopher Henry More, but that he had forewarned More clearly beforehand that if More persisted in calling Descartes an atheist he would criticize him. This led More to complain (in a private letter) that Boyle had thus turned criticism from something required by the logic of the disagreement to a form of social sanction. Superficially, the situation was obvious: Boyle never openly criticized any Fellow of the Royal Society, but he criticized one member of a Catholic order and two philosophers who were of the most reputed non-Fellows of the Royal Society. When Boyle wrote against non-Fellow Thomas Hobbes, he stooped so low as to say that he could also criticize Hobbes’ political doctrines as pernicious but he prefers not to do so. One can explain this in terms of loyalty, both to King and Country and to the Commonwealth of Learning (this title, incidentally, is the invention of Boyle). It is unpleasant all the same.
Boyle’s requirement to report experiments without naming the theories that they refute became standard under the tyrannical reign of his follower and admirer Sir Isaac Newton. Newton’s influence was overwhelming—partly because (for two centuries) almost no one doubted that his great success was rooted in his empiricist philosophy and partly because he himself was a dominant character, touchy and unable to face public criticism.
The more stringent the requirement for experimental information was, the less the standard of novelty of that information became. Soon it came to pass that those who wanted to survey a field or to explain known phenomena had merely to report having repeated some old experiments—in variation; tradition then dropped that demand too. There was a great advantage to that requirement, in a world without scientific laboratories, and when universities were alien to experiment. Thus, at least three people who surveyed experimental fields learned to be top experts in them due to the requirement to report experiments. The one is Benjamin Franklin who had neither any training nor any connection with science but who somehow found in his hands scientific instruments and started repeating known experiments, as was the custom. The second is his friend Joseph Priestley who started his scientific career as a teacher and an educator: he felt the need for something like a textbook of science and found none. The third and perhaps last in history was Michael Faraday, a chemist in his early eighteen-thirties, who was asked to survey the literature on a very new experimental subject, electromagnetism. (He wrote the survey for the Journal of the Royal Institute, the institute that was his home and his workplace.) Beneficial as the requirement for experiments or at least their repetition was, it had its bad effects too. The Establishment disregarded speculative writings indiscriminately, including those of Ørsted prior to his discovery of electromagnetism. The earlier ones, of Boscovich, had to wait for the rise of field theory. Ørsted failed to secure a job in the University of Copenhagen because of his disrepute as a speculator; this led to a public scandal that ended by his receiving a stipend from the king of Denmark to build and maintain a laboratory. He later became an associate professor. Those were the days.
I do not know why I am telling you all these stories and in such a fashion. My aim is to make you lose the common disposition to take current arrangements for granted as God-given. My description is too brief to be accurate and too descriptive to bring a moral to you. To correct my story I should say that tradition allowed writing a paper not containing any experiments if it contained interesting mathematics. This raises the question, how new the mathematics had to be. Consider the story of John Herapath, an early Nineteenth-Century thinker who unfortunately was a Cartesian after Descartes went completely out of fashion and whose papers, even his mathematical ones, were repeatedly rejected. Although Maxwell recognized him as the father of modern statistical mechanics, historians of science scarcely mention him. He is gains mention chiefly as the founder of The Railway Magazine, a most important landmark in the history of journalism. I saw his books in the British Museum library; their pages were still uncut; I nearly cut them (the British Museum library thoughtfully provided its readers with paper knives), but finally decided not to destroy such a historical document.
I do not consider the books of Herapath valuable, but that is not the cause of their neglect. His crime was that he partook in too many controversies. This was the general rule. Thus, even Edward Jenner, whose work on smallpox vaccination was obviously important, had some of his works rejected by the Royal Society as controversial. It is so embarrassing that almost all historians of medicine simply attribute to him the discovery of vaccination—he was vaccinated as a child, by the way—and pay him homage to dispense with the need to examine his contribution and its controversial character.
We have advanced a long way since the days of Jenner, you will say. Did you know that young Helmholtz’ 1847 classical paper on the conservation of force was rejected, that a little later Newland’s table of chemical elements, his law of the octave, the predecessor to the Mendeleev table of elements, was also rejected as controversial? We have greatly progressed in the last century or so, you will say. Therefore, to refute you I would have to cite the case of Winifred Ashby whose work belongs to the period immediately following World War I. She used the recently discovered characteristics of blood grouping to determine the life span of blood corpuscles and the effects of blood transfusion: she simply injected blood of the type O in patients with blood of other types and kept blood counts. She refuted both the accepted views on the effect of transfusion and the then accepted view of the average life span of the blood-corpuscles. The latter was of an immense practical value since if blood cells live only twenty days it was futile to institute blood banks, but not so if they live sixty to one hundred days. (They live one hundred and ten days and more.) She was under repeated attacks from the top brass of the medical profession, especially the top Harvard expert. They asked her to resign her job but she managed to stay. Her tracing method that I have just mentioned is known as the Ashby method, but many writers and historians of blood still ignore her, perhaps because she was controversial, perhaps because she was often in error (though she came nearer to the truth than her opponents), perhaps because she was an intruder into the medical profession—which, to this day is still deemed unforgivable—and surely also because she was a woman.
I bet you know little or nothing of Winifred Ashby; you are not likely to be ready to check my story and you are not willing to be impressed with an isolated case that is not too new either. But if I were to cite more contemporary cases—and you can see I am quite a collector of grievances, perhaps because I have none of my own, perhaps because my view of Academe on the whole is so favorable I fear I may become too smug (even to my own taste)—then I shall have to cite a number of cases that are going on, and I shall contradict arguments that a lot of editors, departmental chairs and their likes offer generously. In brief, history will not do, as we must think of the present. Current standards, which are improvements on yesterday’s standards, have proved their mettle to a surprising extent. You may insist on them.
This discussion sounds reasonable, but only because it rests on a narrow base, thus assuming what sounds as its conclusion. There were other societies, and they were very different. Their intellectuals held other and very different standards, and the upholders of those standards viewed them as very satisfactory too. Incomparable to any other technological achievements as those of our own civilization are, they had satisfactorily functioning achievements too, and yet they did not last. Do you know how well the late Roman Empire functioned? For me, the symbol for its efficiency is the Roman method of erecting marble pillars; on the principle of the cheap cigar: dirt in the middle, surrounded by a layer or two of bricks, and plated with thin marble slabs, often ornamented. That was good enough. The contributions of Herapath too were good enough: they challenged Maxwell to develop his versions of statistical mechanics and of thermodynamics and more.
Sheer commonsense may suffice to require drastic reforms of certain traditions. The Swedish Academy has unwittingly caused enough damage to the intellectual community already. It may be a matter of sophisticated philosophical discussion to consider the Swedish Academy’s refrain from awarding Einstein the Nobel Prize for his theory of relativity; one may view the Academy’s remark, when it awarded him the much coveted prize, to the effect that the prize had no relation at all to his theory of relativity, not so much intellectual cowardice as a legitimate and laudable expression of scientific caution. At times Bacon’s claim holds: when one gets excited over sweeping generalizations one may thereby have lost one’s head and thereby disqualified oneself as a detached scientific investigator. The demand for detachment is anyhow overrated. Can one use sheer commonsense, without delving into detailed, sophisticated philosophical deliberation on science and on its methods, in order to show that the attitude of the Swedish Academy to Einstein, just as the attitude of your professor in his classroom, is rooted in cowardice rather than in commendable scientific caution? I do think so.
Ah, you look most incredulous; and I do admire you for that. It is not possible, you say, to turn the tables on so many and so clever—much less with the aid of sheer commonsense. You are quite right to be incredulous. More often than not, people who come forth with claims such as mine—or with any intellectual claim, for that matter—prove disappointing, and often sooner rather than later. Yet, sometimes even the most incredible claims proved themselves quite viable. Galileo proved by sheer commonsense that the most commonsensical thinker of all times, “the master of those who know”, Aristotle himself, deviated from commonsense in his theory of gravity. What is more commonsense than to assume that ordinarily, freely falling bodies fall faster if they are heavier? Yet Galileo showed that this is inconsistent with commonsense. Take a ten-pound brick and a one-pound brick and tie them; the slower will impede the faster and the faster will drag the slower so that their combined speed will be some sort of average between their different independent speeds. Now glue them together and you have an eleven-pound body. Who can believe that tying or gluing the two bodies makes them fall at different speeds?
Ah, you will say, modern science begins with Galileo; no one among the people who run Academe today is an Aristotle. This is not to my taste: it is easy to say it long after the event. It took Galileo many years to give up his Aristotelianism and many more to discover the proof I have just mentioned. Moreover, the idea that heavier bodies fall faster does look convincing and its opposite does look puzzling. Envisage the following experiment of Boyle and ask yourself how commonsensical or intuitive it looks. He put a feather and a marble in a glass tube, emptied the tube of air and turned it upside down; the feather and the marble fell practically together. This result follows from Galileo’s argument. Even Boyle could not explain well enough this experimental result, or the validity of Galileo’s argument. Newton did it. He said, the heavier body is both more attracted and yet it is more resistant to the attraction of gravity than the lighter body does; so that the outcome, the acceleration of the fall of the heavier, is the same as that of the lighter. This is barely an explanation: why does resistance to gravity exactly balance gravitational pull? To put it in jargon, why does the inertial mass (resistance to force) equal the gravitational mass (the force of gravity or weight)? The first answer to this question appeared centuries later, in Einstein’s theory of general relativity. We are unjust to Galileo when we say that he merely refuted a muddled thinker: he raised a puzzle solved centuries later.
The reason Newton rejected the wave theory of light is that waves diffract—go around obstacles, as sound waves do when they enter the door of a room and fill it—whereas light always travels in straight lines. That light-waves diffract is obvious nowadays: hold a thread near your eye and you will not see it since light-waves circumvent it; indeed this is how a veil functions, looking transparent to the one who wears it but opaque to the one who observes it. Try to direct a beam of light into a black box through a hole and you will see a light diffraction-pattern. Moreover, if light is not wave-like, then it cannot disperse: look at dust particles dancing in the beam of sunlight and see them shine no matter from what angle you look at them. Yet Newton held the view that dust reflects sunlight rather than disperses it, so that it should not shine equally in all directions. It is thus easy to show that common experience contradicts Newton’s optics—only because much of the research done after him, and partly because of his challenge, this has become obvious. It was not half as obvious centuries ago. Commonsense progresses too. Remember: his magnificent Opticks of 1704 was for more than a century the leading text in experimental physics.
Or, do you think the mercantilist economists were foolish when they advocated government intervention in the economy in the form of tariffs and their likes? U. S. Senate minority leader Everett Dirksen advocate the same view in a similar fashion well after World War II, while expressing allegiance to the free market theory; yet Adam Smith argued for the free market by sheer commonsense that tariffs impede the working of the free market and thus impoverish the nation. If you are not an economist, try to show by commonsense that Smith was mistaken too. Do not most people think that if a country has more gold it is richer? Hume has shown by sheer commonsense that if everyone will have tomorrow twice as much gold (or government-printed money, for that matter) nothing will change except prices which will double. (This way we ignore goldsmiths, of course; their part in the economy is negligible.) Hume’s argument is strikingly commonsense; it is merely the application of the law of supply and demand. So is its criticism, which took a very long time to appear in the economic literature. If you are familiar with the literature even superficially, you may still come up with it—easily. If not, you may still be able to, but only if you are brilliant.
Or take Mendelian genetics. It appeared in the nineteenth century and replaced the ancient theory that Plato had endorsed and that horse-breeders still employ, namely that characteristics of offspring are mixtures of their parents’ characteristics. So how come two dark-eyed parents may have, though seldom, a child with light-colored eyes? Prejudiced they all were, say most historians of science. Mendel’s own ideas escaped notice until Thomas Hunt Morgan revived them. How incredible! Mendel’s own ideas were refuted by the existence of recessive characteristics detrimental to their bearers (like hemophilia); Morgan explained their persistence by modifying Mendelism—the so-called mutation theory. Even then, Mendelism scarcely is sufficiently innovative to be successfully applicable to cases of breeding racehorses or cows with high yield of milk. But once we look at the world in a Mendelian fashion, Mendelism becomes obvious and its difficulties obscure and all too easily we allow ourselves to call prejudiced the best biologists who lived before Mendel and who agreed with Plato!
Moreover, when an argument wins, many of the obstacles on its way may disappear, and then one is even more justly, yet still in error, surprised that the idea was not always obvious. When you take a fresh case, you can see it clearly. When bodies recede from each other, the light they receive from each other appears redder than it is; this, the red shift, understood as a Doppler effect, enables calculations of the speed with which heavenly bodies recede from us. The application of this technique to distant stars previously identified as radio-stars or quasars, made them look almost miraculous; the result was so quaint, it hit the popular press; its discoverer, Maarten Schmidt, had a write-up in an American national weekly. One would not believe this was such an excitement unless one knew why the scientific world took it for granted that such enormous red shifts were impossible (I cannot go into details here); once one knew these ideas, one could well appreciate why for once practically everybody took it for granted that it was worthless to explain the strange light as normal light with enormous red shifts. Once the explanation was worked out, once innumerable details easily seen (after much hard labor was invested) to follow from the explanation, it becomes harder and harder to dismiss it as crazy even though it poses serious problems and difficulties to be handled later on as best we know how.
The invention of a wild idea is incredibly hard: we are so blinkered; it is surprising we can think at all. It is even much harder to carry a wild idea through to amass all the parts of our background knowledge that conflict with it and offer a fresh look on them or to press hard against one small part of our background knowledge until it gives way and we may then hope to see the rest tumble down effortlessly. When a great thinker has done this Herculean job, we can come and see in retrospect how easily commonsensical it looks.
This point I have already made in the first section of this part. Usually, facts do not suggest explanations. When they do, we may just as well call the process inductive as by any other name. The suggestion is confusing though, as the process takes place within an intellectual framework, and so it is of progress within a narrowly blinkered field of vision; inductivism forbids this. It is when a fact defies any such explanation that the task of explaining it becomes Herculean. We then view with admiration those who have performed it—by starting new frameworks. Except that novelty “comes in degrees” all innovations are revolutionaries but there total revolutions, like the one that Descartes has attempted, are impossible.
My own Hercules, I keep telling you, is the philosopher Karl Popper, whose ideas are so wild that philosophers still refuse to take his statements as literal expressions of his views; they suggest that he talks in paradoxes in order to impress, to sound more original than he is. Popper’s idea is that the routine in science is the presentation of bold conjectures to explain given phenomena and the attempts at empirical refutation of these conjectures. This does not account for all the facts in the history of science; all too often scientists find experience impressive in the authoritarian way. Einstein’s theory of gravity, his general relativity, was not half as much appreciated before as after it was allegedly found to be correct; his special relativity was allegedly absolutely correct to everybody’s satisfaction, but before that happened the Swedish Academy took pain to stress its suspension of judgment concerning its value while acknowledging the value of his theory of the photoelectric effect by granting him a Nobel Prize on the ground that its enormous importance had been proven experimentally when the theory was proven to be correct. There is, I say, much more to Schlick’s criticism of Popper than meets the eye: he alluded to the contrast between Popper’s view of science as criticism and the view received in Vienna of his youth as a matter of course that science is success. Suppose someone who draws an obviously abstract painting says, I am drawing a portrait. This is barely imaginable. Yet it happened from the very inception of abstract painting. Popper said of researchers something wilder: they say they try to prove when they try to disprove! Artists who paint abstract work and call them portraits are aware of the oddity of their act. The Swedish academy is not.
To wind up my reply to your first objection that I think is a good objection. Utterly unobjectionable ideas are scarcely new. (This is not to deny them importance: when we need them, we praise them as eminently commonsense.) An objectionable idea, if dismissed on the strength of existing objections to it without further ado, will not make headway. Therefore, for a new idea to be capable of occasionally overcoming old ideas, we must examine afresh the objections to it and reassess them; if they withstand further examination, the new idea has to go. Data that corroborate Newton refute Einstein; to consider this as a final verdict is to endorse stagnation; to allow for progress we ignore all older corroborations and devise a crucial observation between the two; if Newton wins, we allow Einstein to try again, and if Einstein wins, the case is closed (unless someone reopens it, of course). It seems that here is a bias in favor of the new idea; it is not: most new ideas are stillborn (Hume). But if we apply statistics and say, since ninety-nine percent of newborns are stillborn let us neglect all newborns on our hands, then one hundred percent of newborns will be dead and progress will be utterly blocked. The bias then is in consideration of the fact that all progress is delicate and easy to kill. This is why it took so long for progress to be established, and this is why, when it is encouraged, it may grow fast. This is problematic: it dies when not expected and it dies when expected with assuredness. (This is why Popper argued against inductive logic all his life: philosophers who advocate it in support of progress achieve the opposite!)
This is but another way of saying that those who cling to old ideas reject their new replacements; they are no fools, yet no great lights either: they have good reasons for clinging, and they reasonably hold their reasons for it, yet the new ideas challenge the old ideas, and so it becomes less and less reasonable to hold the old ideas without re-examining and re-evaluating them in the light of the new ones. Pay attention: the new challenges the old.
We tell our young how terrible it was of our ancestors to oppose novelties like those of Schubert, Semmelweis, or Cezanne. They forget that unlike Schubert and unlike Cezanne, Semmelweis no less than declared that his colleagues the obstetricians were the carriers of childbirth fever—quite a fatal disease—who transferred and thus spread the infection. They forget that these physicians were the best and cleverest in the profession, they forget that practically all those who blame all their colleagues are almost invariably hopeless cranks. We have to admit that this is true and yet insist that they were rogues who put their own egos ahead of the interests of their patients. For, all that they had to do to render their intolerable conduct towards him reasonable was to try his proposal and wash their hands with soap as they moved from the mortuary to the maternity ward and check whether this reduces the death-rate in the maternity ward or not. They did not care: the ward in question was not for ordinary Viennese women but for ones too poor to pay their hospital bills.
It is amazing how much the ego of a leader may serve as an obstacle for progress. Physicist Freeman Dyson reports on his war experience, on his failure to reduce the ill effects of fire in the cockpit of warplanes:
All our advice to the commander in chief [went] through the chief of our section, who was a career civil servant. His guiding principle was to tell the commander in chief things that the commander in chief liked to hear… To push the idea of ripping out gun turrets, against the official mythology of the gallant gunner defending his crew mates …was not the kind of suggestion the commander in chief liked to hear.
We all want to absorb the latest progress in the arts and in the sciences as soon as they appear. We are we not able to do so, but we may try. We may try also to avoid messing things up by over-eagerness: we may pretend to appreciate every new canvas of pop art; we may listen to every cacophonic concert; we may listen to every crank (as Paul Feyerabend has declared we should). This will only muddle us. No, to absorb new ideas is to change one’s field of vision under their impact: there is a ceiling to the rate of growth of the arts and of the sciences.
I see that I exasperate you. Let me lend you my pen. Dear author, you say, I think honestly that you are crazy. No insult meant, of course, nothing personal; but you really do go much too far. You are writing a section on conservative cowardice and what I find you talking about is progressive cowardice. I thought you were going to tell me about resistance to novelties, that is something rather understandable and not entirely unknown (to say the least); instead of talking of the fears leading to resistance to novelties; moreover, you talk of fear of resisting novelties, and of the resultant cluttering of the mind with all sorts of novelties, good or bad, the muddle ensuing. Do not interrupt me. You are going to tell me that no insult is taken, and that you are doing it for the sake of contrast. I have never met you, but having read you thus far, I suppose I know you well enough to expect you to take kindly to this outburst of mine and condescendingly start a new digression on contrasts. So just shut-up for one minute more—yes, Mr. Author, no insult meant, only I wish to show you how crazy and impossible you really are. Who do you think you are, anyway. You are telling some of your own colleagues they are too slow; you are telling others they are too fast; you are comparing your allegedly humble self with one Semmelweis who also ordered his colleagues about, only, it has turned out, he was right. Very clever of you. That is too much, quite regardless of my regrettable ignorance of the rights and wrongs of the case of Semmelweis, although his explanation of childbirth-fever epidemics in hospital wards was essentially correct, as is well known. One moment more, Mr. Author; after all, I cannot possibly be as verbose as you are. Do you remember that you have promised to stick to common sense? What common sense is it to say that some thinkers are slow to catch up because they fear jumping on the wrong bandwagons, others too fast because they fear missing them? Is it not more reasonable and commonsensical to assume simply that fast thinking is fortunate?
Now, Mr. Reader, I hope you permit me to parry: after all, it is my book, and if you do not like it, do write one of your own. Do! It will make you feel good! Now, I am grateful for your outburst because I started feeling myself that I am becoming condescending, and there is nothing better than a brisk exercise to stress the equality of us all. I draw encouragement from the posthumous success of the great and brave Ignaz Semmelweis; since his battle was hard to win, both because he affronted doctors and because it is hard to rid hospitals of staphylococci and streptococci even in these days of high sanitation. All I hope for is that some people will be half as interested in the possibility that my proposals are beneficial as others were regarding those of Semmelweis, even though the outcome of my proposals will not be nearly as stupendous as his, of course. I do not risk my life by my proposal as he did. Under such conditions, I am willing to put up a fight.
Senseless cowardice and its ill effects are the topics of my present section; never mind how many people exactly suffer from them; you may immunize yourself against it and I hope I can help you in this task; cowardice, senseless or sensible, may be conservative and it may be progressive. Professors of medicine transmit to their students the most up-to-date material knowing that such material may become outdated when these students reach maturity; this is why journals for the specialist practitioners exist. They rest on the assumption that doctors differ from medical students only in their familiarity with the terminology. The fear of remaining behind, thus, fills the professors’ schedules with detailed results that leave no room for intellectual education that condemn doctors to lag behind or remaining apprentices forever. Lecturers in medicine know that they can teach a bit less up-to-date material to be able to teach a bit more theory and research-techniques. As a result, doctors will be able to read about later developments not in instruction sheets but in progress reports. Few try this out, since most of the literature (on research technique—mostly philosophical) is so regrettably too poor.
It is indeed here that I think I can help you with the use of the pure milk of commonsense (following Popper, of course): nothing is easier for a Western student to understand than that given theories come to solve problems but are found not sufficiently effective. This finding is criticism. It can be logical, empirical, or any other. Granting criticism central stage may hurt some egos—ignore these—and it renders learning much easier than stuffing student’s minds with significant data unexplained. Students who absorb the system in the critical mood can start reading progress reports and have much less dependence on instruction sheets. I hope you will become a scholar of this ilk. If you find my willingness to help you in this respect condescending, for which I am truly sorry, just ignore me. Even so, you need not blow your top—I am not forcing you to read all my diatribes. Of course, you do; otherwise, you could not possibly get angry with me. Tell me truthfully, do you get angry with every stupid, verbose, or eccentric author? Is anger in intellectual debates not a maladjustment to modes of argument?
It is not that my knowledge and dexterity are perfect, let me admit; it is that I had some training in both playing the game and training others to play it, and I hope that I can be of service to you in this very respect even though we have never had an occasion to meet and are not likely to. Nevertheless, you have little reason to listen to me in the first place, especially since I am prone to offering repeatedly some remarks that will sound to you somewhat outlandish. Here, you see, I, too, need some social approval to gain access to you! Lacking the means for approaching you, what I count on instead is your desperation or your being bewildered and in painful need of some help—as I have indicated in the preface to this work. This, I think, explains your anger; you wish to listen to me and profitably so—otherwise you would have stopped reading these pages long ago—but you feel that I make outrageous demands; you fear that I will lead you astray; you fear that your loyalty and dedication are under fire. You are right—at least on the last point. On one point you need not have any fear, however: your reaction is normal: there is nothing unusual in it. I make allowance for it. Do not worry about this matter: you have already too much to worry about.
Academic fear is nothing new—I have heard colleagues all over the world allude to it as a phenomenon that is as inevitable as the sense of insecurity generally is. People who hold prominent positions that shield them from the vulnerability to attacks from less-prominent colleagues may still feel haunted by fears of such attacks—from a baseless yet strong sense of insecurity. The literature is full of stories of people in high military, administrative, or business positions being devoured by insecurity and taking it out most unjustly on younger and weaker colleagues. When the fear of that kind manifests itself this way in Academe, it may (but need not) have one specific manifestation that is of some interest for our present discussion of your future. For, one of the manifestations of such insecurity is the hatred that academics show regularly toward critics. It is indeed the fear of criticism that I discuss. Ignore it! Colleagues who take it for granted that some established people may feel threatened by younger colleagues who mildly criticize them are right in considering such a reaction-pattern unjust but rooted in a sense of insecurity that can hardly be eradicated; they are mistaken, however, in considering all criticism threatening. What they usually view as the mark of unreasonable conduct is that the established person fears mild criticisms—criticisms offered by friend, or by not so powerful critics, such as younger colleagues. Most academics I know concur in viewing criticism as damaging; fighting the unreasonableness of this view may bring much improvement. For, once we agree that criticism is damaging and merely condemn the boss who insecurely fears mild criticism from young upstarts, that boss will speak of far-reaching consequences and demand loyalty the institution in question, to the university, to the profession, to the uniform. Fear of criticism is not necessarily the outcome of specific traumatic experience, during childhood or later; it usually is but a part of a social and educational pattern. It is the Chinese-mother-in-law syndrome again; in traditional Chinese society, a woman suffers all possible indignities from her mother-in-law, only to take revenge later on in her life on her daughter-in-law. Of course, if the sole cause of the persistence of this inhumane practice were psychological, i.e. the desire for revenge, as nineteenth century anthropologists explained this phenomenon, and then some kind-hearted mothers-in-law could stop the practice. Even some other factors that may be somewhat accidental could do that. The current accepted explanation of the phenomenon and of its persistence is in terms of loyalty: mother-in-law has to defend the clan’s interest against the whims of the new intruder; it was her task to be harsh to her. If the two women become friends, as is often the case, they would wisely conceal the fact.
When a child, an adolescent, even a young adult, offers some clever criticism of someone seniors, often such conduct elicits signs of delight from the surrounding company, the target of its criticism included. Of course, the criticism is answerable, even easily, but was it not brilliant, at least charming? Criticism may be unexpectedly brilliant, yet still not threatening to the criticized. Under such conditions, the criticized will make song and dance about the achievement of the critic. Even that has no assurance. Morris Raphael Cohen, one of the best philosophers of the early twentieth-century, had a brilliant student, Sidney Hook, later a well-known philosopher too. In his autobiography, Hook narrates that once his admired teacher gave him a book to review. The review he wrote was most laudatory, but with one minor criticism. He was apprehensive, he narrates, and so he consulted his teacher’s colleague and good friend. The colleague gave the needed reassurance and the review went to the printer. It infuriated Cohen. In the uneasy confrontation that followed, Hook referred to that good friend. He said, even so-and-so has approved of my review. I always knew he is a traitor, was the swift reply. I wish I could dismiss this anecdote as untypical.
The academic profession is in many respects much preferable to other professions in the community at large; it is less inhumane, less illiberal, less bigoted, less ignorant. It is just now administratively in poor shape, as I have tried to indicate before; but this is a transitory defect: until recently it could manage itself surprisingly well without much administrative training or concern, and so it was caught momentarily unaware in the dazzling expansion of its institutions imposed on it by the community at large.
Consider again the officer and gentleman who would have challenged to a duel any critic who came upon his way. Did he think he was the peak of perfection? No; even an officer and a gentleman is seldom that stupid. It is stupid enough to pretend perfection, because such appearances fool no one and because the cost of keeping up appearances is very high: the damage incurred is all too real. The answer to this is, usually, noblesse oblige: the gentleman is loyal and dedicated to his uniform, class, mistress. Move from the officer and gentleman to your physician. Ask yourself, does your physician admit criticism? Does your physician admit to you not having all the best available answers to your questions? The claim that physicians play God is still not easy to deny; they do not fool themselves; their schools of medicine it is that trains them to play God. Oh, there is an excuse for that: physicians are under the constant threat of a suit for malpractice. To repeat: every criticism is answerable, but the answers are often too poor to take seriously. At times they are taken dead seriously anyhow.
Envisage an officer and gentleman planning moves in headquarters on the eve of a crucial battle; imagine, further, that one of his tentatively planned moves is rather silly; imagine, furthermore, that one young and inexperienced but rather bright member of his staff spontaneously puts him on his guard. Most insulting. Under any normal circumstances, he would not easily forgive the intrusion: he solemnly addresses the young offender and says: if, God willing, we both survive tomorrow’s battle, I shall have to ask you to choose your seconds, young man! Not under the circumstances under consideration. Under these circumstances, our officer and gentleman is much too concerned with the truth of the matter to behave like a pompous ass. Granted, he is hardly moved by the love of truth for its own sake; even concern for the lives of his men need not be a strong point with him; his desire to win the morrow’s battle may be rooted in no more than a human desire to win a medal, even in stupid motives, such as what he calls his honor. At that moment his desire makes him pay attention to the truth, and this suffices for him to be reasonable despite the traditional demand to act foolishly: he knows that the criticism helps him win the battle and he is grateful (Bernard Shaw, Too True To Be Good, 1932). This you may remember, is Kepler’s point: the desire to find the truth already fosters intellectual courage. The loyalty that prevents it, then, is intellectual cowardice. The desirability of criticism (and hence the divided loyalty) is dimly recognized in many popular attitudes which, at the same time, illustrate the folly of the general hostility to criticism. Folk-sayings (Proverbs 27:10), folk-tales and higher forms of literature (King Lear) illustrate the obvious: it is sometimes the duty of an honest friend to offer severe criticism; one should take it seriously. Other common sayings recommend the suppression of criticism of a friend in the name of loyalty, as well as the suppression of criticism of young artists and scientists in the name of encouragement and good will.
What makes a person a coward may be an extremely low degree of ability to control or overcome fear, an extremely high ability to experience a strong sense of fear, a sense of insecurity, or sensing fear with no special justification for it, such as when an adult person fears the dark. The fear of the dark is here incidental to the fear itself. This is the discovery of Freud: he discovered Angst: fear. Because it is widely assumed that fears must have objects, psychologists call fear without objects by its German synonym: angst. Because those who suffer from angst hold that fear must have an object, they project (this is another technical term of Freud) it to almost any object around. Hence, says Freud, it is useless to convince those who suffer angst that what they fear is harmless, since admitting this they will not be rid of their angst but merely project it into some other object. If we are to believe Kafka (Amerika, 1927) or Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 1958), even without knowledge of Freud, some people know that they have fears with no specific object or with some mysterious object (still more in tune with Freud, who held that every angst is the residue of the same traumatic but reasonable fear) and thus be free of the need to project it. Is angst the same as the sense of insecurity, that is to say the ability to be frightened? Do all who fear the dark simply project angst? I think, as usual, Freud saw something very interesting and failed to notice that the phenomenon is not half as universal.
I hope so. For, I am discussing here certain shadows that most academics fear unreasonably, with the hope that this might be useful to those in whom they inculcate this fear. I suppose that the fear develops not by traumatic experiences but by a simple mechanism that I wish to expose in the hope to bring it soon to full disuse. I also hope that my discussion will explain why ideological academic bores fear intellectual excitement. After all, my chief purpose is to argue that intellectual success is the ability to excite audiences intellectually, rather than to be right or scientific or politically correct.
Here we differentiate the institutional from the psychological. Fear of criticism is fear of rejection; it is unreasonable, but often it is a Freudian projection. As it is psychological, it need not be clever and it need not be commonsense. A major instrument of its maintenance is the alleged standard cure for it: the effort to replace insecurity with self-assuredness. All one needs for self-assuredness is poor imagination. It is all too easy to imagine all sorts of obstacles to any plans anyone has. Yet the idea that fear and doubt stultify is so common that even the assertion of the Bible to the contrary, Proverbs, 28:14, does not help. The King James translation of that text rightly says, “Happy is the man that feareth always.” The standard translation of the text however is inaccurate: “Blessed is the one who fears the Lord always”, or, “Blessed are those who fear to do wrong”. We should always fear for what we value, of course, especially the well-being of our nearest and dearest. The important is to prevent the fear from stultifying. Otherwise, we will end up in total paralysis. Just look at Academe.
Having no wish to speak against either cowardice or humility, my aim is to immunize you against them: they comprise sheer ballast, and you don’t need no ballast.
The best way to make you permit the Establishment to dump ballast on you is the story of their success and of their dependence on them. Now I do not know them and I cannot comment on the marvelous things that they do in the cause of the advancement of learning. Much less can I comment on their claim that unless you are a humble coward you stand in their way. Still, some information is available about their predecessors, about the scientific tradition since the Copernican or the scientific revolution (the middle of the sixteenth century or the seventeenth). Their predecessors always defended scientific unanimity, and thereby they always impeded the growth of science. It is rebels like you—this is my fervent hope—that might, just might, save the day. Were members of the Establishment today better than their predecessors they wound be encouraging you. So there.
Medieval scholarship centered on reconciliation. The paradigm was the great Al-Farabi (died 950). His influential book was, Harmonization of Plato and Aristotle. In this vain in the thirteenth century St. Thomas Aquinas harmonized Archimedes with Aristotle. Copernicus altered this. In the preface to his great book he said, since the ancients disagreed, they are no authorities. What he and his disciples found in the stars was the autonomy of the individual.
Francesco Buonamici was professor in Pisa of the next generation. Astronomically he was no Copernican: he was a firm advocate of Aristotle’s views. Methodologically he was: he expressed disagreements openly, even with St. Thomas. The historically most important idea of his was his disagreement with St. Thomas about Archimedes and Aristotle: he said they were in disagreement. Galileo expressed gratitude to him for this very point. It made Galileo a Copernican. He considered it sufficiently important to write to Kepler about it as a new argument in favor of Copernican astronomy.
Galileo did not dare publish his new arguments in support of the Copernican hypothesis: although he was not too brave, one cannot call him a coward, since the opponent he feared was sufficiently vicious to burn his peer Giordano Bruno at the stake. Moreover, when Galileo had enough evidence and he did advocate the Copernican hypothesis, his evidence was of no avail and he had to gather courage to face the music. This he did. He had the best trump cards, but the society to which he belonged and with which he identified (he was an earnest and sincere Roman Catholic) did not have institutions to safeguard fair play. The Church had to humble him because he won so stupendously that it looked as if he had mocked at the Pope. The Pope had no choice: he had to insist that Galileo should suffer public humiliation. This was tragic since the two were friends; tradition regrettably ignores this and instead it presents the Galileo affair as an expression of an inevitable conflict between science and faith declaring him a martyr of science. He was not; Bruno was.
In modern scientific society, the fairytale goes, the play is always fair, provided you wait patiently for your turn, and—like magic—your turn always comes at the right time. You cannot lose, only win. Hence, if you lose you must have played foul. It is very similar to having had malaria in the British armed forces stationed in the tropics: until late, the malaria of an enlisted man was sufficient evidence that he had failed to take his quinine ration; the court martial found him guilty on the strength of that evidence. When he protested that he had taken his quinine faithfully, his commanders dismissed his protestations as contrary to scientific evidence. The medical profession, not the military, bowed humbly to the facts, admitted error, and conceded that quinine is not a fully satisfactory preventive of malaria.
Thus, all you need is to wait for sufficient evidence. That this holds in a modern scientific society is hardly credible. Its defenders explain cogently: it may take decades before you get your desert; you may be dead by then, and this is regrettable, but. And so, you may be right but wait; you receive the best training and it is good enough, and if you work hard, you will succeed. I may be dead by then; you may be dead by then; but the innumerable minute contributions of which it consists—including mine, and hopefully yours; and posterity will know and appreciate!
You can read this in many a preface. Consider authors who wait with good ideas for three decades or so until they had enough evidence in their favor. You have to admire the strength of character of such authors and realize that instead of rushing to the print in order to make names for themselves and gain a promotion and establish priority and all that jazz they were humbly working by the book—they were piously following the rules of scientific method—of induction. Accounts of minute and dreary facts, the results of simple, insignificant experiments and observations, uncluttered with their reporters’ personal opinions, are admired for self-discipline and humility—even by such imaginative people as the great poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. I do not know if it was his tremendous urge to be a scientist that made him follow the myth that many researchers spouted but hardly any followed; in any case, his book on colors is embarrassing.
Hans Christian Ørsted, I have told you, published his speculations on electromagnetism and even got into some small trouble. All this changed overnight when he made his discovery in 1820: he sprang into the greatest fame. A decade later, in 1831, in the Brighton meeting of the newly founded British Association for the Advancement of Science, he was present as a guest of honor. Sir John Herschel, the famous astronomer and author of the Preliminary Discourse to the Study of Natural Philosophy, 1830, delivered a eulogy: look at Ørsted, he said, he made the great discovery because he did not jump to conclusions and humbly and patiently sought for the facts rather than speculate. Now in my mind’s eye I see Ørsted blushing and wishing to bury his head in the ground for shame for the great astronomer who was demeaning himself.
Herschel did not have to know the facts. He had a clear idea as to how facts must have happened. He learned it from Sir Francis Bacon. (Let them read Sir Francis Bacon, he advised young students; they will find him tough meat, but he will sharpen their teeth!) So let us take one further step back and look at the ideas of Sir Francis Bacon; I should have humbly started right in the beginning—with the Greeks and Romans if not with the Babylonians and the Egyptians, but.
Francis Bacon envisaged the new learning and dreamt of industrial revolutions and of technocracies, of secular universities and of meritocracies; unlike his contemporary Shakespeare, he had one vision in his life, which hit him in his adolescence when he was preparing a piece for a party in his London Law School, a vision that nagged him and grew on him all his life till it reached an unbearable magnitude. Bacon was an eighteenth century idol: as Paul Hazard says (European Thought in the 18th Century, 1946), public opinion then considered him the only thinker comparable to Newton; he was “reason incarnate”. In the early nineteenth century, he became a possible target for criticism, and soon it became a favorite nineteenth century sport to kick him. Since the title of my next section but one is “a favorite sport: kicking an opponent while he is lying down” I shall postpone this point. In the nineteenth-century, Bacon had two important defenders: Robert Leslie Ellis and his collaborator James Spedding. Ellis was a Cambridge don, an editor of a mathematical journal and a pioneer in studies of bees. In his spare time, he decided to study the reason for Bacon’s fame since he was, in addition, a student of medieval and Renaissance literature of enormous erudition, as well as a Greek and Latin scholar.
>The longer Ellis studied Bacon’s works, the more profoundly it puzzled him: what made Bacon so very famous? First Ellis discovered the great extent of Bacon’s plagiarisms: almost all of Bacon’s scientific writings he dismissed as plagiarized. He plagiarized some botanical details from Livy not knowing that these may be peculiar to Italy but disagree with the more northern climate of his own country. Bacon’s scholasticism is very much contrary to what Ellis expected to find. He found embarrassing Bacon’s pedantic style and his bombast bother with classifications and distinctions that cut no ice. Ellis accepted as a matter of course Bacon’s doctrine of prejudice—his theory that speculations and hypotheses make people who hold them blind to contrary facts—but he intensely disliked Bacon’s preoccupation with the classification of prejudices to four or to five categories. This, too, is unimportant, though the style of Bacon’s Essays has contributed a lot—for better and for worse—to the development of English prose: his Essays appeared in innumerable editions and were compulsory reading in many classrooms and even in some colleges. This is partly because Bacon was the first English essayist, and with Montaigne one of the first European essayists. His essays are even crisp and modern, and they represent, together with his The New Atlantis and a poem or two, the best of Bacon’s style. He himself wrote to a friend that posterity would remember him for his essays. Justus von Liebig, one of his chief and most powerful nineteenth-century debunkers, concurs with this judgment. Yet Liebig was mistaken. Even Bacon’s fame as an essayist is largely derivative to his fame as a methodologist, as “reason incarnated”.
Ellis’s greatest puzzle—it is serious indeed—concerns methodology proper. It is a strange fact, that Ellis was the first to notice: Bacon says practically nothing about the proper method of science, to wit the inductive method. In his The New Atlantis, the president of Solomon’s House is at the point of telling Bacon what that method is, when the book ends abruptly. Obviously, adds Ellis rather bitterly, because Bacon could not say much on that. Similarly for Bacon’s unfinished Valerius Terminus. The case of his monumental Novum Organum is even more bewildering. Book I of that work is propaganda and preparatory. In Book II Bacon pulls up his sleeves and starts working in earnest, but instead of giving us the general idea he elaborates an example. When, in that example, he finally comes to the point of developing a theory out of the accumulated facts (such as that moonlight has a cooling effect and other medieval superstitions among them) he chickens out and makes a hypothesis instead—thereby, notes Ellis, betraying one of his own central and most forcefully stressed rules, namely that one should never speculate or hypothesize, lest one become prejudiced and blinded to the truth by one’s own ideas.
Ellis took for granted that scientific method is the method of generalizing from the facts—such as Kepler’s generalization from observed positions of Mars to all positions of Mars, namely to the orbit of Mars, and from the orbit of Mars to the orbits of all planets (namely that they are all elliptic)—and he knew enough of Bacon’s work to be unable to ignore the fact that Bacon had condemned this very method off hand—as childish and dangerous (since it does not leads to certitude).
Bacon’s seemingly pedantic and meticulous scholarship particularly appalled Ellis when he contrasted it with Bacon’s casualness and lack of all self-criticism. Ellis was at a loss to resolve these inconsistencies. What troubled him most was his failure to make sense of Bacon’s view on the effort that the method of induction requires: it was impossible for him to decide whether Bacon’s claim that the inductive method is extremely easy or Bacon’s claim that it is extremely difficult, is more truthfully representative of Bacon’s system.
Ellis left this point unresolved; which he had to do often in view of the frequency with which Bacon exhibited so thoroughly uncritical an attitude. Possibly Bacon had borrowed from Petrus Ramus even his initial claim that as Aristotle is unreliable, a new methodology is necessary. This was very much in the spirit of the age. As Harry Wolfson has later illustrated, it was a favorable sport, shared even by Kepler, to assert views that Aristotle had criticized on no better ground that he had criticized them. Characteristically, Bacon seldom refers to Petrus Ramus, and then always critically and incomprehensibly.
A special insight into Bacon’s casualness is afforded by the fact that he published one book—The Advancement of Learning—twice, in English and then in Latin. Ellis compared the two texts carefully. In the English text, for example, Bacon argues for his doctrine that discoveries are accidental rather than the confirmation of clever hypotheses. For example, you would expect Prometheus to have struck two pieces of flint by accident, rather than by design. For, the relative abundance of flint in Greece explains why the Greek Prometheus struck flints, whereas the West Indian Prometheus rubbed sticks together. In the Latin edition the West Indian Prometheus is silently dropped—evidently since he is hardly to be expected to have rubbed two sticks so specifically and for so long by accident rather than by design (i.e., according to a clever hypothesis). Moreover, we know that the Greek Prometheus too has rubbed sticks and not pieces of flint: throughout Antiquity, Greek sacred fires were lit the hard way—by rubbing sticks, not by striking flint.
Ellis tried hard to say a good word for Bacon. He was attracted to Bacon by forces he could not describe. He said, he could not explain to his satisfaction why Bacon had claimed utter originality so persistently, but he held to the last that there was some kernel of truth in this claim. All this is not too significant; no matter how common or uncommon the claim for originality was in the Renaissance or how insistently Bacon did or did not make it, it was his hold on Ellis that made the latter look for an original contribution in the former’s works. He found it in Bacon’s myth of the birth of Cupid, the description of the intuitionist theory of the birth of an idea that compares enlightenment with the break of dawn (the birth of Cupid) into the darkest part of the night. In 1933 C. W. Lemmi has shown in his Classical Deities in Bacon that Bacon had lifted that chapter from Natale Comes, an obscure alchemist-Kabbalist.
Bacon violated the canons of Baconian methodology. He was a visionary of science who saw in vision the greatest danger to science! I am most fit for science, said Bacon, because I am of a patient disposition and a nimble mind; and I am particularly good at humility. Were he not busy with affairs of state, he said, he could discover all of Nature’s secret in a few years, perhaps with the aid of a few research assistants, since the labors of research require so much patient collection of endless minute observations of plain facts.
James Spedding was the collaborator of Ellis and the editor of his posthumous work. (Ellis died age 42; on his deathbed he granted Spedding a free hand.) He considered Bacon’s writings serious and sincere. So were all of Bacon’s predecessors and contemporaries who all shared the belief in the philosophers’ stone. Were they all charlatans?
If medieval and Renaissance hermetic thinkers were not charlatans, how did they fool themselves? If they had the secret of redemption, why did they fail to use it? What did they tell themselves? Once you have the answer to this question, I think you will be surprised to see how medieval we all still are. The self-deception of the obsessive gambler (Madame Pique), money-grabber (You Cannot Take It with You), power-thirsty (All the King’s Men), academic-titles collector (Wild Strawberries), they are all akin, and they were all exposed systematically and repeatedly with no progress. The model that fits them all is that of the frustrated prospector: if I would only achieve a little, it would offer me fame and fortune and more chances and thus real happiness. The failure of the frustrated prospector imposes the choice between two hypotheses about what the achievement of success requires. One is the hypothesis that what is necessary is still more of the same, and the hypothesis that it is something different. Invariably, the prospector prefers the former option. They knew that the chances of success were very small, but they went for the jackpot. Obsessive gambler Fyodor Dostoevsky made it a philosophy of life: he said that those who aim at the possible achieve it and more, but they scarcely count. The insatiable reach for the stars from the very start (The Idiot, 1869). Thus, they know that their greed is but a step in a never-ending chain. Dostoevsky forgot altogether the ambitious adventurer who tries the impossible and gets it or perishes or both; with all his psychological insight he could never envisage a Martin Eden or a Great Gatsby; not even a Captain Ahab—not to mention real-life Spinoza. The reason is that he viewed all ambition as ambivalence: no ambitious person could stand the sight of his ambition fulfilled, Dostoevsky (and Freud) insisted, in disregard for a few familiar facts.
Ambivalence is neurotic, Freud has observed: it rests on defense mechanisms, his daughter added. He postulated one cardinal, if not one and only one, defense mechanism: it hurts to think about your neurosis so you drown your doubts in work, in trying ever so hard to achieve this or that, the unattainable object of your ambivalence—and so the circle closes. Anna Freud postulated more defense mechanisms, and indeed invented the very term. Psychologists still overlook the purely intellectual defense mechanism that culture imposes; Popper called it reinforced dogmatism. Dogmatism may reinforce itself by showing that the very doubt concerning it proves it right. For example, doubts about religion are the works of the devil: they thus call for repentance. This example suffices in principle, but it is rather crude. Better examples are the Marxist explanation of disagreement with them as due to class-prejudice and Freud’s explanation of resistance to his views as due to repression. Here is one more.
The mystic redeemer who possesses the formula for the salvation of the world has to qualify by personal purification. Ritual baths and an impeccable way of life comprise only the first step in that direction. Concentration on aim in hand is equally important: one has to feel personally all the agony of the surrounding world to stay fast on the sacred task. But then, seeing the greatness of the task brings about a different risk: the risk of falling a victim to pride, to hubris. Thus, the nearer at hand success is the more remote it also becomes. The idea that pride is the greatest obstacle Bacon found in the work of Natale Comes and copied when writing his book on ancient wisdom. For Bacon, speculations were the signs of pride, of lust for power—for intellectual authority: it was the original sin and the cause of the Fall, the Fall that was the forgetting if ancient knowledge. So says the final passage of Bacon’s magnum opus, his celebrated, epoch-making Novum Organum (1620). The publication of a false theory proves that its author had not humbly collected sufficiently many facts of nature. The moral of the story is that all you need in order to avoid error is patience and humility and hard work; whenever troubled, drown your trouble in the laboratory; you will then have your trump card.
The mythological nature of Baconian methodology need not be disconcerting. It is very much in the spirit of the Renaissance, when they lit candles in front of statues of Socrates. The ideal of the Renaissance was the same as the ideal of the medieval mystic—the return to the Golden Age. Renaissance thinkers learned to do something about it, ever since Brunelleschi succeeded in using an ancient method to complete the erection of the dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral in Florence (1436). Renaissance architecture admired and tried to apply the Pythagorean doctrine of proportions (Wittkower). Renaissance painters admired and tried to apply Vitruvian Man and the Kabbalistic doctrine of man the microcosm (Sir Kenneth Clarke). Copernicus viewed the sun as the seat of the divinity and Kepler viewed it as God the Father (E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science: A Historical and Critical Essay, 1924). Number mysticism and word roulettes led to Leibniz’ theory of the universal language which so influenced Frege and Russell, the fathers of modern logic, no less.
The proper attitude is, indeed, to be sufficiently concerned with one’s work to make quite marginal the point of personal profit—through making a name for oneself or otherwise. Now this is not necessarily humility: one can easily ignore one’s own personal interest, especially if the job is pleasant and society affluent; or, one may have to employ a proper appraisal of one’s abilities rather than somewhat piously and not so candidly declare oneself feeble. By the accepted doctrines of humility, Einstein could not possibly be humble except through much self-deception about the value of his contributions to science. As it happens, he was very candid yet also very humble. The humility becoming to a human as a human is sufficient, he explained. Those who preach an extra dose of humility, Christian or Baconian, thereby exhibit a lack of appreciation of human fallibility. Thereby they show a tinge of hubris. The truth in Bacon’s doctrine of humility then is such that it would have surprised him. Yet it was not hubris: it was his expectation from science. When Newton compared himself to a child picking a pebble on the seashore, he expressed a view of science very different from the one he projected in his Principia. When Einstein said the best scientific theory is but a way station, it was a remark better integrated into his worldview. Nevertheless, some of Newton’s awe-struck attitude to science is very appealing and may have been lost in Einstein’s attitude that is saner.
Bernard Shaw said, the tragedy of hypochondriacs is that they are invariably right, since no perfect health is possible. Hence, the hypochondriacs confuse health with perfect health. Thus, all you have to do to become a neurotic is to apply to yourself some unreasonably high standard; in the case of the hypochondriac, the standard concerns health; in Bacon’s case, it was the open-mindedness or non-commitment. In Newton’s case, it is the immense, incredible success of his theory and its being the very last word. Quite generally, radicalism promises the sky on one small condition that turns out to be not too small, impossible even.
Now, suppose you do conform to any unreasonably high standard. The result is that you are an unusual person—a genius of sorts. Hence, the kernel of truth in the thesis of Schopenhauer concerning the resemblance between the insane and the ingenious. It sounds exciting, but unfolded it turns out to be trite.
Faraday complied with Bacon’s standards in an exemplary fashion. From 1831 to 1839, he published a series of papers in the perfect inductive style, hinting at his ideas by reporting experiments that illustrated them and piling evidence refuting the views of his opponents without using overtly argumentative or critical locutions. In 1839, he published a sketch of a small idea of his—concerning electric currents as cases of collapse of electrostatic fields. He was totally misunderstood. He had a nervous breakdown; he had severe attacks of amnesia and withdrawal symptoms and they worsened in time. In 1841 he recovered and published two more papers in a very austere Baconian style—one of them on electric fields. Peers ignored them. He then came forth with some of his most daring speculative papers, declaring matter to be not billiard-ball atoms as was widely accepted at the time but mere aspects or characteristics of electromagnetic fields of force (quasi-singular points in fields). His ideas still found no interest. His amnesia worsened. In the fifties, he writes an enthusiastic letter to Tyndall, saying two young authors have referred to his ideas and this has revived his memory and rekindled his desire to publish. Alas, it was too late. To the end of his career, his experiments won increasing praise and his ideas still met with no comment. He saw his career as nearly finished and worked on his collected papers. An anonymous review in the Philosophical Magazine was rather favorable—I suppose its author was David Brewster whose life of Newton was the first anti-Baconian text of any weight. Faraday’s anonymous reviewer not only praised his experimental work but also pointed out that his speculations were a real help to him. Experts agreed then that perhaps a Faraday may employ wild speculations, but. My views, Faraday insisted, are at the very least better than the alternative. If I were a member of the majority school, he added, at least I would have replaced the billiard-ball atom by a solar-system atom. Nobody listened. His solar-system atom was lost. (Bohr reinvented it independently, half-a-century later, with powerful details that made peers gasp.) Perhaps I suffer from hubris, Faraday mused; in his pain, he once wrote in his diary IT IS ALL BUT A DREAM, and then again insisted he must be right. I have discussed elsewhere in this volume the difference between a normal healthy need for recognition and a regressive neurotic one. Faraday knew nothing of all this. Was he a speculator who had lost his judgment in amour-propre or was he so vastly superior to his contemporaries even though he knew no mathematics? He tried to go back to work. He published one further paper. Another paper a brilliant young mathematical physicist rejected as too speculative. He returned to more experimental work, trying to discover the effect that Pieter Zeeman discovered independently almost half a century later, and trying to discover the asymmetry in diode tubes that was discovered by his followers a generation or two later. His memory was failing and finally his perseverance failed. He died senile in 1867 at the age of seventy-six. His biographers describe him as a Cinderella; in my book on him (Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, 1971), I present him as an ugly duckling who could not take so much of the contrast between the two views of his character—that he was he a crank or that he was a genius. As I have told you, his friend and sole pupil John Tyndall saw his speculations as cranky, but he insisted that the cranky streak was forgivable. In the eighteen-seventies, Hermann Helmholtz concurred; in the eighteen-eighties, he played a different tune: by then the duckling became a swan.
One of Faraday’s followers of the late nineteenth-century was George Francis Fitzgerald of the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction that adumbrated special relativity. In one book-review in the Philosophical Magazine Fitzgerald condemns some German physics book as cluttered with facts, and he blames the German national character as inductivist. Hegel and Marx had previously derided the English national character this way. This kind of nationalism is crazier and worse than inductivism.
I should not conceal from you that critics have railed my book on Faraday on three grounds. It is inaccurate; it distorts facts in order to present Faraday as a precursor to my heroes Einstein, Schrödinger and Popper; and it says nothing new. I also received laudatory comments on it, from admired teachers (philosopher Karl Popper and mathematician Max Schiffer) and from peers (mostly in personal communications). Still, I did envy authors who managed to receive lavish reviews. Their status as established and popular saves them the time and effort that lesser mortals must invest in order to find publishers, to have their books reviewed, except that their investment in becoming established is bigger.
The common history of science narrative as calm and free of upheavals is sham. Let me admit, however, that humility is the natural place for sham: it is hard for serious intellectuals to play down their achievements. This an American one-liner sums up nicely: when it comes to humility we are tops. The great Maimonides said, one can never be sufficiently humble. Now, as his Codex is a great achievement, how could he be humble? This question must have troubled him, as he offered an answer to it—in a private letter. He said, he had written it for himself, since he had a bad memory. Not true. Hence, even the great and sincere thinker that he was spoke of humility inaptly. Not all great thinkers were humble. Einstein was. Facing the same question as Maimonides did, he said, the humility that becomes humans as such should suffice. How nice!
You already know the contents of the present section; so it is but an exercise in pyrotechnics. Take any conceivable form of academic cowardice, find any old reason from the stock of vulgar prejudice—yes, it will turn out almost invariably to be Baconian or at least quasi-Baconian, you do not have to worry about that—to show that the a display of cowardice is nothing but a case of academic responsibility and then look for a case history of a cogent historical example. By now I trust you well enough to be able to perform this exercise—perhaps you will need to consult the literature, but I think you have the general drift. To make it easy on you, let me outline some examples and leave the rest to you.
To start with our last point, notice how irresponsible it is to publish an unproven speculation and a half-baked idea, not to say information not thoroughly checked. To continue with our example, take nationalism and show how very unscientific and unfortunate it is, at least in certain manifestations—the harmful ones, of course. You will find that certain great scientists were nationalists—even Max Planck—and that even famous physicists like Nobel laureates Johannes Stark and Philipp Lenard were authentic, card-carrying members of the Nazi party who denounced the theory of relativity a Jewish, and that Heisenberg worked for the Nazi regime in research aimed at the arming of the Nazi forces with nuclear weapons. Do not let this discourage you: it proves no more than that even a scientist may lapse to unscientific irresponsibility. If you need examples to show how unscientific this irresponsibility is, consult Sir Gavin de Beer’s The Sciences were Never at War of 1960: do not let your inability to read much of such stuff discourage you; you need not study the book systematically, only skim through and pick a morsel here and there. Do not feel too guilty about it: they all do it, and the nobility of their cause (which is the greater glory of the Commonwealth of Learning) absolves them from the sense of guilt.
If you think all this too cheap, take different cases. Speculations about homeopathy, for example—the idea that a drug that causes healthy people to simulate symptoms of a given illness is the proper cure for that illness. This idea led to lots of useless and even harmful medication, research, and their paraphernalia. It will take a long time to get rid of it.
You may think it safe to endorse criticism of premature ideas rather than discuss these ideas. Not so: this may be dangerous too. True, it is the publication of ideas too early that leads to unhealthy criticism, but such criticism is also condemnable. Thus, Thomas Young’s wave theory of light was essentially on the right track, of course, but he published it too soon, his own fans admitted, and thus allowed for powerful opposition to build up; when he corrected his error (light-waves are transversal, not longitudinal) opposition did not die out instantaneously—he should have waited a little longer and done his homework a little better before his first publication.
The previous paragraph is so nasty; perhaps I should omit it even though it is obviously a mere echo of the worst in the traditional inductivist arsenal.
As to false factual information, the erroneous statistics concerning the relatively low incidence of the cancer of the uterus among Jewish women first led to all sorts of food-fads allegedly emulating and improving upon Jewish food taboos, and then led to the defense of Jewish sex-taboos—a heap of still extant pseudo-science that rest on a lapse of a research worker in cancer long ago.
The worst is the pseudo-scientific evidence for the racial inferiority of some people that rests on obviously foul statistics and therefore known by the technical name—of the bell-shape—of a common statistical curve. The evidence serves those who wish to reduce the public-investment in the educationally discriminated against by the claim that spending money on them is waste. Karl Popper has suggested that one should not argue against this silly evidence but use it in the opposite direction: the less-gifted who have to work hard to achieve what the more-gifted acquire with ease deserve more help and so the argument should serve to raise the investment in the education of the educationally discriminated against. Were this line of argument generally endorsed, those who prove the educational inferiority of the educationally discriminated against would prove empirically the opposite.
Here are a few taboos still widespread in the commonwealth of Learning. Do not publish controversial material! Do not embark on large-scale projects! Do not try to dazzle your students; just provide them with the facts, techniques, and established theories that later in life they will learn to appreciate! Do not spend too much time guiding research students—doctoral or post-doctoral—as you will thereby lead them to prejudice! Just see to it that they should work hard! If they work on your project, do not elaborate either, but issue brief and operational instructions! If these will not do, leave them to their devices but keep yourself informed of their activities!
I have little to say about the previous paragraph by the way of detailed examples of academic careers that grow in parasitic fashions. Examples might be piquant, but not sufficiently important: if you reread the last paragraph carefully, you will see why rumor abounds about plagiarism from underlings, as rumor about empire-building does, and why it is so hard to pin down such rumors and find how much of their contents is true. You will soon learn to ignore these rumors, be they true or false. Only examinations of very exceptional cases can possibly be profitable, and only after much time lapses. Leave it to historians of science.
It is too early to sum-up any historical experience on the matter. The idea of securing priority originated with Bacon and instituted by Boyle. Hence, talk about priorities prior to that period is silly, just as talk about plagiarism, whether of Bacon or of Descartes. Due to the idea of Bacon and Boyle about amateur science, scientific collaboration developed only in the twentieth century. Some contact was always inevitable, and already Hooke had priority quarrels with both Newton and Oldenburg. This, and Newton’s touchiness, entrenched the tradition of the loner. The famous mathematician Jacques Hadamard said, he regularly dropped working on a research-project once he heard that someone else was working on it. The first case of something like a serious collaboration in scientific research was between Thomas Young and Augustin-Jean Fresnel early in the nineteenth century and they had a tiff concerning their relative share in the revival of the wave theory of light. The first research worker who had an apprentice proper was Davy. His apprentice Faraday had long ceased to be an apprentice—he was in his thirties—when he liquefied chlorine. Davy was jealous and insisted he had helped Faraday in the design. To get out of that indelicacy, Faraday searched for an earlier discovery of the same fact—and found something like it.
Attitudes towards the administration of the university do not easily lend themselves to Baconian interpretation, but it is easy to defend any of them in the name of responsibility to one’s community, just as it is easy to do the opposite. Indeed, it is very easy to advocate submission to the administration and opposition to it, participation in administrative work and abstention from it. This is a reasonable measure of the lack of seriousness of current discussions of these matters. This holds for other cases too. In the name of responsibility you may both refrain from controversy and viciously attack as phonies some of your more irritating opponents; devote more time or less time to teaching. In one college, I heard many professors say that universities are primarily research institutes when teaching was agenda, and that teaching is a supreme responsibility when research was agenda. This section bores me too. So let us move on.
No, no. Not to the next section but to an entirely fresh digression; concerning responsible and irresponsible modes of arguing about responsibility. I said it is easy to defend in the name of responsibility opposite attitudes towards the university administration. You can also defend the publication of half-baked ideas in the name of responsibility: you do not want to conceal from anyone, especially those who may benefit from your speculations. Do not be alarmed. Sir John Herschel’s already mentioned Preliminary Discourse to the Study of Natural Philosophy (1831) shows how one can do this with ease. The book is chiefly a fanatic attack on speculations. Its tenor is the idea that failure is the result of speculations that are thus irresponsible. For example, the poor adventurer who tried to build a submarine boat and went down never to be heard from again. (Do you remember the ill-fated US submarine Thresher? Do you know that the first systematic glider, Otto Lilienthal, died in a crash-landing?) Herschel had other examples of laudable success and of damnable failure; what have these to do with hypotheses, however? Throughout the book, he opposes them, except for one place where he hotly defends them—against whom, I wonder—showing how important some hypotheses were; it is irresponsible to condemn every hypothesis, he concluded. Goethe had said, and Herschel quotes him (without reference, though), that those who confuse hypotheses with science mistakes the pile for the building. It is thus irresponsible to suppress all hypotheses and it is irresponsible to confuse hypotheses with proven theory. (Followers of Newtonian optics did that and as Herschel was the leading advocate of the new wave theory of light, he accused them as a way to exonerate Newton.) This comes in a book that repeatedly condemns all hypotheses.
I have digressed on my digression. So let me start afresh. It is not very responsible to argue from responsibility for some action when it is equally easy to argue from responsibility to the contrary. Can one argue on responsibility responsibly? Does it not follow that we should not argue from responsibility for an action only if it is impossible to argue from responsibility to the contrary? If so, further, does this not imply that the contrary action is irresponsible? Is this not, hence, to say that when arguing from responsibility our argument should be clinching? If you have caught me here in each non-sequitur, then your immunity to inductivism, to any too-high standard technique, is high. Congratulations!
Let me recap, in reverse order. If it turns out that an action is irresponsible, this is no proof that the contrary action is responsible: a very different action may be called for. For instance, on new ideas, the contrast between publishing and non-publishing it is such: the best policy is to write up your ideas and show them to increasing numbers of friends and colleagues, take account of their criticisms, and then publish to elicit critical notice of wider circles. Similarly, concerning cooperation or non-cooperation with the administration: it is best to cooperate with them on your own turf, on your own terms, and by advising them on minor academic policies.
Next, the contrary action may be neither responsible nor irresponsible but either a matter of taste or a matter of expediency—e.g., publication for the sake of promotion. A friend of mine who as a rule does not publish is a good university teacher. He knows he is unoriginal. They had to promote him to the level of associate-professor—he did not aspire to a promotion but by regulations they had to promote him or fire him—so they forced him to publish two or three papers; and this he did and very unpretentiously so, jotting marginal comments on marginal comments on a rather marginal item that personally interested him to some degree.
Another friend of mine was on point of being forced out of Academe for want of publications. Friends helped him turn some notes of his into something publishable that got the problem of his promotion solved by minimal cooperative work.
An action contrary to an irresponsible one may be defended as responsible, but not obviously so. Traditionally, moralists found greed selfish and irresponsible. Bernard Mandeville and David Hume and Adam Smith defended it with quite ingenious arguments and they had sufficient following to make a difference. Smith viewed his opponents’ ideas as prejudices, but that was his (understandable) Baconian bias. His Baconian bias must strike a modern reader as incredible. When he sent Hume’s autobiography to his publisher, he added to it a short obituary. In it he said, of Hume’s philosophy I shall say nothing, since those who endorse it admire it, and those who do not despise it. Most philosophers today admire Hume’s philosophy without endorsing it. Yet to blame Smith for his having been an orthodox Baconian is a bit too rash, just as to tolerate a similar bent today is a bit too indulgent.
Back to the question of the responsibility of any defense of an action as responsible. The responsible defender has weighed existing contrary arguments and found them wanting. Upon hearing of a new argument not previously heard, the defender shows interest, out of responsibility if not out of intellectual delight, and then shows readiness to reassess previous attitudes and actions. Even if the reassessment comes to the same conclusion, however, it is a new assessment that needs presentation as new.
Here, again, we fall on accepted standards. Civilized law considered responsibility as essential by condemning its opposite: negligence. It distinguishes between reasonable error that is permissible and one due to negligence that is culpable. If the error in question is common, even if experts know better, negligence is not the default option; whereas, if public opinion rejects the error as a superstition, then even sincere belief in it does not exempt its holder from responsibility. This holds for almost all civil matters. When you try to apply it to scholarly or academic affairs you reach Popper’s philosophy—but Bacon’s philosophy is an obstacle against such a move. Fortunately, no death directly results from this stumbling block—only endless agony and sometimes even slow death. Life in Academe is nonetheless much happier than elsewhere—chiefly because Academe rewards its members both in cold cash and in refinements of all sorts: it is the only institution that allows eccentricities as a default option and so it does not punish excellence (except at the insistence of the excellent).
Just a minute. I said that not only for the insane but also for the ingenious accepted standards would not always suffice. Indeed, I do not think Semmelweis, for example, could benefit from my present volume to avoid the agonies and pains and frictions of his researches (which cost him his life). He even changed standards of medical responsibility. Well, I never said my book is a panacea. There are enough agonies in the world, and we need not fear that we shall eradicate them all.
Let me conclude with mention of a literature that criticizes Academe that I assiduously ignore here. Its major thrust is that the academic system no longer fulfills its social task so that it does not hesitate to cast its framework in unpopular socialist terms. Its criticism is excessively severe and it makes no proposal. By contrast, my view of Academe is favorable, I offer some simple proposals, such as replacing on-campus lecture-courses with some up-to-date recorded lecture-courses that students may download, and my concern is primarily your individual troubles; the ills of society at large come next, as they take time to fix and you should not suffer needlessly waiting for this to happen.
I do not want to write this section either: just contemplating it makes me uneasy. When you see life in the raw, you notice that heartlessness is regrettably too common. Even though sadism is not common and malice is rare, their effects spread rapidly. When you lead a sheltered life in the ivory tower among refined and cultured people who are surprisingly well off by any reasonable standard, you shudder to see so much of the same. I admit: it is heartbreaking.
I once tried to solicit the good will of a friend of mine to help another. They were both painters, A and B. A was both popular and a leading academic, successful and rising; B was jobless and a total failure. A did not want to listen to me. He had considered B good enough as a commercial artist, he told me, and accordingly he had tried to help him get a job. B turned out to be too proud, too purist, or too ambitious to become a commercial artist—even temporarily; he preferred to starve. I said to A, who was a friendly person, that his lack of liberalism or lack of familiarity with the seriousness of the situation was surprising, since B was on the brink of committing suicide. Let him, said A somewhat rigidly, signifying that the conversation was over. And B did—shortly after.
B’s suicide shocked me. This shows that I had not taken my own prognosis as seriously as I would if I were cleverer and better informed; so, obviously, A too had not taken the possibility too seriously. Yet the fact remains: we both neglected to help a friend when he was in need—of which need we both knew, though not fully. Somehow, however, I consider A’s neglect significantly different from mine. Truth to tell, nobody can assess the nature of A’s success, and as rumor has it he is himself not so very different from many a commercial artist; quite possibly the coolness with which he had dismissed B’s case betrays a certain degree of awareness that B, in his silly pride and puritanism and ambition, had shown a strength of character that A would have gladly bought for some high price were it on sale.
I told you I hate to write this section. I am so very angry at B that he put an end to his life for such silly things, and I am similarly exasperated at those colleagues of mine who care so much about their work that they cannot enjoy it and I am so exasperated at the other colleagues of mine who cannot be bothered with it all either. I suppose I am crazy. You, at least, are not very surprised.
Some academics need to be heartless—from fear of excess self-revelation. Emotional Problems of the Student (1959), is a series of essays on psychiatric experiences in Harvard University, compiled by G. B. Blaine and C. C. McArthur. I find it so revealing in that respect that I can hardly do it justice here; if you do not believe me just get a copy of the book—it is available also in paperback and in digitalized versions—and check it for yourself. The only human part in it is the introductory contribution by the then leading American psychiatrist Erik Erikson. It tells of William James’s severe depression in his early adult life, of its philosophical aspect, and of James’s recovery through serious philosophical investigations (chiefly his overthrow of determinism to his own satisfaction). In itself, Erikson’s essay may be unhelpful, though his general tenor is nice. Alas, his view does not leave its stamp in any of the subsequent essays. These are largely technical; I was particularly impressed with the story of how the authorities managed to keep an eye on a student with aggressive tendencies and put a hand on him just at the point when he was going to harm someone. Another essay, allegedly on psychiatric problems of medical students, explains the difficulty of rejecting candidates with obsessive tendencies. The technicality and impersonality of the discussions are remarkable. Only at one point the book’s tone is different. In the essay on the role of professors it is narrated (pages 20-21) that a student obsessively afraid of failure was much relieved by his professor’s confession that he had seen failure too—in his student days. The funny thing is that the author, Willard Dalrymple, takes it for granted that the student could not imagine that his professor had ever failed. He does not even consider the hypothesis that possibly it was not the content of the professor’s confession but the fact that he was friendly enough to confess anything whatsoever, his becoming a little human for a slight moment that comprised an encouragement to the terrified, depressed, bewildered student. The writer may be right, of course, but one may wonder why professors are so heartless that he finds exemplary such a minor event as some personal contact between professor and student. The indication here is staggering, and one must assume that Harvard professors not merely feel indifferent to students but rather positively fear any personal contact with them. Their reticence is thus more revealing than hours of confessions.
Students are supposed to be adult and independent when they come to college, and so professors consider themselves quite justifiable in feeling no educational responsibility toward them. If this were all to it, there would be some occasional and casual and spontaneous and unintended human contact here or there and this way or that way between professor and student who meet, after all, quite regularly and who are meant to meet in office-hours and in departmental parties and in official advising sessions and on occasional encounters in the street-corners or bus-stops or parking lots. Not necessarily educational contact, but perhaps some other contacts, since students do need education, especially in these days of the enormous swelling of Academe, any personal contact can be educational. The swelling offers professors even more justification: fellows who do not feel at home here are better helped by facilitating their leaving college at once rather than by letting them suffer a semester more—kick them out as soon as it is reasonable! We have too many undergrads!
The same goes for graduate students. Nowadays higher-degrees-granting institutions offer masters degrees solely as a compensation for rejecting students from doctoral programs: M.A., more so M.Sc., has become the poor citizen’s Ph.D.—the poor in spirit, that is: non-academic high-school teacher, industrial consultant, education ministry employee. What makes a student fail to get into the Ph.D. program we do not know—most surprisingly, the case is almost entirely unstudied. I cannot generalize my personal experience since the sample is much too biased and much too small to be likely to be representative. I have met a few desperate or almost desperate cases of graduate students who needed help badly, and some of whom I have helped, if you allow me a little boast. Others did not help them, partly, at least, from being too anxious to get rid of them; partly, at least, because it would be too painful and too self-exposing to help them, even to show concern with them. I am speaking of bewildered rebels, you must know by now. They may represent a small minority, but their potential quality seems to me to be more valuable than plain statistics can indicate.
We should move then, from graduate students to teaching fellows and young instructors. The Atlantic publishes repeatedly (last time in October 2012) complaints that all too often students (and their parents as well as their neighbors, be they semi-academic or quasi-academic or pseudo-academic) are attracted to an institution in which a great light resides, only to be taught by minor figures like teaching assistants. The complaint is general. A Patient thus may pay an arm and a leg to be under the scalpel of a leading surgeon, only to find an assistant performing the operation instead. But let us stay with schooling. The complaint is silly not merely because a young student today seldom has any idea of what to expect from college—from its great lights or from its small lights. The complaint is silly: if it is hard to get seats for a performance of a pop singer, why should it be easier to get seats for lecture of a pop professor? An artist, at least, is usually a good performer who can conjure an air of close intimacy with almost every member of an audience consisting of thousands. A professor, even the greatest expert of the time, is not likely to be a good lecturer, much less to be good at creating a semblance of intimacy. A professor can be of use to only a handful of close research students. Public relations offices and recruitment offices will not say so in public lest the profession’s mystique suffers. An M.I.T. president once said, the currently practiced arrangement of relegating most teaching to budding academics is good both for the student and for the teaching assistant, as it is quite a challenge; it may result, that president added, in some wonderful experiences. Admittedly, anything can happen.
Still, what that president said is right. It may be an exciting challenge to be thrown into the water, or to the lions. The questions are different, nonetheless: how much of the arrangement ends up satisfactorily and what happens to the rest? Are the people involved ready for the challenge? How much the experience of the less successful helps improve the system? Nothing. Not a murmur. If the challenge leads to a failure, then the obvious scapegoat is the very same teaching-assistant, and the remedy the system offers for its own defects is, as usual, mercy killing. Admittedly, very good teaching-assistants who happen to be also good scholars and positioned in very fortunate departments may be lucky and find jobs there or elsewhere. This is not to say that ambitious teachers with a flair for education have better chances to become tenured academics. Their teaching success will seldom be noted, and never appreciated in any detail. If successful, they will seldom be available for copying, chiefly from indifference and ignorance. Failures, however, may lead to severe penalties even though successes hardly ever count for much. Contrary to the said M.I.T. president, leading universities care little for the quality of their teaching. If they care at all, they wish their advanced courses to be up-to-date. This shows how much they trust their students: well-trained students can update their training, whereas all the up-to-date training, we hope, soon becomes outdated.
We now come to colleagues proper. (Is not it dreadful to be so systematic?) Their quality as teachers concerns no one; their qualities in the department too depends on their ability to proceed with no scandal. Their scholarly work, however, is something of some interest for this section too. The first popular and pernicious rule here is, specialize and declare total ignorance of the work of your colleagues, whether in your own department or elsewhere, except for the very few who share your specialism with precision. The way to do this is to brand everyone as a specialist in some subject within the department’s authority or better a sub-sub-subject. When you will start making headway, you will be branded a specialist too, I predict. Anyway, the specialists in your field are all worthy, hardworking, and serious; and they are all friends of yours (you send them your reprints). All, that is, except one; the scapegoat. Colleagues have already made sure the chosen fall guy cannot kick back. Attack the one person everyone attacks. So do not be clever and choose a new, dead scapegoat: there is often more life in a carcass than in a moving target, since some carcasses are loaded enough to feed hosts of parasites. One person will turn up, whose lifetime task is to defend the honor of the dead colleague you are attacking and you have hysterical fanatic foes avidly jumping at you. (Watch it: they need a scapegoat too, and you may be it. Avoid this predicament!)
The standard recommendation is to specialize in order to avoid attacks. It is hard to apply this to research branches that attract general interest such as education or psychology. There are better branches. I remember once a philosopher newly appointed dean of arts who had to deliver an inaugural lecture on education. He spoke of education as reflected in the Kalevala, the Finnish national saga. Smart. If you too are an incurable coward, then he is your model.
Suppose you are a budding economist. If you try to attack Léon Walras as an a priorist, you will attract fire; if you attack Ludwig von Mises as an a priorist instead, you will meet with approval: everybody will know that your heart is in the right place. Why and what for? Simple: if you merely advocate more empirical research in economics, you may be preaching to the convert; but if you attack von Mises you thereby prove that there are still some heathens about: everybody does this. Admittedly, Walras was a kind of a priorist too (Preface to his Elements of Pure Economics, 1874). Too many people still admire him, and rightly so; but somehow von Mises failed to gain the same wide recognition for his significant work, partly at least from the extremism of his view of economics as a branch of politics. So let us have a go at him! Or, if your field is not the methodology of economics, but economic theory, you can attack Karl Marx—western economists consider him as dead as a dodo, and his outspoken defenders, followers of respected Piero Sraffa, cannot do you much harm. Or attack the a priorism of Descartes if you are a methodologist or a historian of science—this practice goes on successfully for two centuries. Even the famous physicist and historian of physics E. T. Whittaker who has published a book on Descartes’ problem and proved himself somewhat biased in favor of Descartes, even he attacks him rather violently—out of the sheer force of inertia, perhaps. You can ridicule Bacon, especially if you are a Baconian yourself—this is a two centuries old practice, but still fresh. It is safe.
I have told you that my friend who would not help the other except to get a job as a commercial artist was himself somewhat of a commercial artist in disguise. I also told you I did not want to write this section. I had stubbornly decided to write a plan of a book first and follow it up without change. I had intended to sum up here the points of all previous sections and show that cowardice leads to the various techniques outlined above culminating in hitting a poor opponent too weak to respond in kind. It was rather silly of me to lead myself through such a maze—you, I hope, at least received some entertainment—only to discuss the obvious, namely, that the coward prefers a weak opponent, that often heartlessness is a mark of inner conflict (Dostoevsky) and of cowardice (Mark Twain). This is general knowledge.
Never mind the rest of the world. You and I know what has misled me: I tried to discuss the ideology of the academic coward. It is news to me that we have to bother about any ideology that cowards do not take seriously. True, if you happen to be beating a Jew, it may warm your heart to support your conduct by the knowledge that that fellow has killed the Son of God. As you beat a Gypsy too, you do not really need that support; so to tell you that Christ was crucified millennia ago is useless. Hence, I was in error in pursuing cowardly ideology: it does not signify.
I should not have spoken of the coward at all, but of the possibility that the same ideology that once flared courage in simple people’s breasts may later make brave people act cowardly. It is better to discuss courage and cowardice. Schrödinger won praise for courage when he resigned his job in the celebrated Kaiser Wilhelm Institut in protest against the dismissal of Einstein from that institution. That reaction deeply puzzled him. His action always looked to him a natural, normal response; all his life he wondered why the other members of the same institution did not act the same way. The one who most obviously should have done that was the boss of that institution, who, after all, should have been the one to decide upon hiring and firing. The boss, Max Planck, was no coward and no fool, and yet; Einstein was his friend and testified to his rationality even concerning his political view that was German nationalism. Yet Planck did act like a coward, and it was his faith in the German nation and its historical destiny that was his pitfall. It made him see in the Nazis nothing more than a monstrous exaggeration that had to be a mere passing phase, and he was willing to make small compromises in the meantime. His error cost him more than Einstein’s friendship—the Nazis killed his son. This, however, is hardly instructive: with such people as Einstein or Planck around, the boundaries between private and public are less clear than with people of lesser susceptibilities lie you and me.
It is the same, I fear, with the cowardice of some academics in their chosen intellectual works. They may be cowards first, and find an ideology to suit their temper second. They may be in the ivory tower by sheer accident—what with the enormous swelling of Academe. Or they may have escaped into the ivory tower from fear of the challenges of life in the raw. They may find in Academe an ideal life devoted to insignificant work that interests no one with the rewards for the work as if it were significant and with no one to challenge them or their output or their positions in this world. No one, that is, except the few pests whom we should swiftly and ruthlessly destroy in order to make Utopian perfection materialized. This, said Popper (The Open Society and Its Enemies, 1945), is how these people use dreams of heaven on earth as reasons for making hell on earth. All the same, Academe has to allow for these people and for their ideology. Regrettably, this academic freedom has its casualties: that ideology is traditional and it turns potential braves into actual cowards.
For, truth to tell, I have forgotten in my haste to tell you what is objectionable about having a scapegoat. Most scapegoats, you may notice, are dead; others may find any publicity flattering; and others do not mind one way or another about such things as public opinion. So what is the fuss I am making, if justice does not prevail anyway, and if all I am discussing is a handful of scapegoats, some of whom do not even mind being scapegoats?
I should have explained this earlier. First, my major concern is to prevent you from serving in this function. (Some of my students have, and I could do nothing to help them; I am ashamed to admit). Anyhow, we may notice the role of the official scapegoat: the Establishment shows prospective dissidents the official scapegoats to dissuade them. If this fails, they identify all dissidents with the official scapegoat (Orwell). Academe has them too, although there their role is marginal: in physics it is the determinist rear-guard (this, incidentally, no small honor as these are Einstein, Planck, and Schrödinger); in biology, it is Lamarck or Lysenko. You may wonder how much truth there is in Butler’s critique of Darwin and your colleagues may wonder whether you are not a heretic. If your filed is different, you can test your sense of orientation by looking up the question, who is the scapegoat of your current academic environment.
Let me say what all this is to you. In brief, the Establishment may declare any new material you produce (prior to thirty years of hard work) original, which is unproblematic, and it may declare it essentially the same as the scapegoat’s junk, which you should try to avoid. This may discourage you and render you a coward. It is my task (self-appointed, I admit, but do not complain—you can always dismiss me, you remember) to see to it that you are not so easy to discourage. But, you may say, you are not producing yet; so what is the hurry?
How right you are! You have to produce something; fairly soon if not immediately. Even if you are still a student you are better off with some measure of independent judgment concerning your next step—which means at the very least that you might as well start producing some independent and operative judgment. I have high regard for you, but allow me to question the wisdom of your next idea or guideline or whatever it is. However, if you are lucky enough to have your output meet with some criticism, that criticism may be a corrective on your road to better judgment but it may also be a means to discourage you and make you toe the party line. The way to discourage you is—you will not believe it is that cheap, but I fear it is very likely to be—the identification of all deviation with the standard deviation, with the duty scapegoat.
Well, then, let me try and see how the various techniques I have outlined in previous sections culminate in the technique of kicking a colleague while he is lying down. It is rather obvious—or rather, it should be obvious to you by now. The general theme is this. Academe does reward the daring, brave intellectual, even though it advocates cowardice. The defenders of the cowardly standards are in an exceptionally weak position and they have to attack enemies at their weakest. The academic ideological bore will show you how a scintillating non-bore has ended up in a very bad shape; the one who took up an exciting project and for thirty years or so was stuck in a blind alley. This, incidentally, I met regularly when I was studying physics and when students complained about the routine character of the work our professor dished out for us. This now seems to me too obvious for words: behind all this stood the cowardice of those who fear adventure. Do you wish to fail like our scapegoat? It is equally clear that it is pompous and pious and hostile to the intellectual adventurers on whose products we the more mediocre colleagues live on. The adventurer may, indeed, fail—and then become scapegoat. Expressions of dedication and loyalty to science as well as to our seniors are often prompted during the process of imposing boredom on students. The trouble with renowned scapegoats is, they never did simple homework. Of humility, I need not say a word: who do you think you are, anyway? Darwin? Einstein? Cantor? So a small project is too small for you already? It bores you not to be an Einstein? If you were an Einstein, then that would be all right, but chances are you are as much of an Einstein as our cherished scapegoats are; they too had dreams. How irresponsible of you: do not you know that someone has to do the dirty work? Should we all be Einsteins? Look at all those who tried to be original—they almost all break their necks and end up producing nothing better than our notorious scapegoat.
Scapegoats seldom receive mention in classrooms and in lecture-halls. Although every mention of them there is pregnant with significance. The real place where they work overtime is in consultation, in consultations with bright-eyed, opinionated youngsters whose spirits have to be broken for their own good as well as for the greater glory of the commonwealth of learning. Keep up your spirits and do not be drawn into the practice of discussing scapegoats except, perhaps, when you are enough of a scholar to exonerate those scapegoats who deserve better recognition—for our own sakes, not only for theirs.
There are a few things I am rather proud of, small as they are. One of them is that I have succeeded to contribute to the drive to exonerate Dr. Joseph Priestley, the notorious last advocate of the defunct theory of the phlogiston. What contemporaries and historians have said of him! Though he had discovered oxygen and I do not know how many other gases, though he was a Fellow of the Royal Society who won the Copley Medal and whatnot, they often crudely and systematically maligned him. Inductivist historians like J. P. Hartog and J. H. White have attempted to clear his name. Not successfully, need I say. Then came others, including J. B. Conant and Stephen Toulmin and Robert Schofield. Even they did not fully explain the situation: it took Popper’s methodology, plus Popper-style observation of the limitations that a Baconian in Priestley’s position had to labor under, to see how much ingenuity there was in his output and how valuable was his persistence and this criticism of Lavoisier—that enabled Davy soon afterwards to overthrow Lavoisier’s doctrine.
I tried to do the same for Dr. Benjamin Rush. Even his biographers and defenders had no defense for his theory that bloodletting is a panacea. For millennia, almost all western physicians practiced bloodletting and no protest led to any seriously critical study of that practice. When Rush practiced bloodletting extensively, protests were heard for the first time with some effect. When George Washington fell ill Rush was not invited to his bedside. Washington died soon after—seemingly of excessive bloodletting. From then on attitudes changed. The eighteenth century had seen the last flare of cases of non-specific nosology, most of them were refutable and refuted. In the early nineteenth century the first important non-specific school rose, and one of its chief targets was Rush’s doctrine. New statistical techniques had to be devised in order to refute it; and it was refuted, and bloodletting stopped (Adolphe Quetelet).
We all err, but the consistent and somewhat better reasoned error is more easily eliminable. Even Bacon knew that. When he deviated from his inductive philosophy and rushed to make a hypothesis, he said thus: “truth emerges quicker from error than from confusion”. Hence, the very conspicuousness of scapegoats that is the reason they were chosen for this unenviable role makes it more likely that they were great intellectual adventurers than the slobs, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. I am speaking of the great scapegoats, of course, not of the small fry denounced by other small fry. What is common to the great scapegoats and the small, is Bacon’s attitude towards them. You cannot admire and criticize a person at the same time said he. You can: I have little admiration, I admit, for Bacon’s present-day admirers who cannot criticize him; for Bacon himself I have both much criticism and much admiration—and for one and the same reason.
An old professor appears in some of C. P. Snow’s novels, an expert in a recondite topic—Nordic saga—full of it, enjoying it, knowing its narrowness and in general suffering no nonsense though quite willing to play the buffoon. I do think Snow has described a true case here. Many scholars and researchers had placid characters and fully succeeded to build for themselves a peaceful philosophy of life. My heroes in this line are John Dalton and Thomas Thomson—both English chemists of the early nineteenth century, and close friends they were. I resist the temptation to digress into biography again. Most of the peaceful inductivists, after all, were small contributors to the stock of human knowledge, who aspired to nothing more and who were amply rewarded. Dostoevsky has observed with a measure of bitterness, Nature loves those who want the attainable and offers them what they want, twice and thrice over. Perhaps. In any case, peaceful inductivists leave others alone, and the others reciprocate. Even if this volume, in being an attack on inductivism, were (quite unjustly, of course) deemed an attack on them, they will barely be perturbed by it—if they were, they would not be as imperturbable as they usually are, as Dalton and Thomson were.
Lord Rutherford was one of the greatest as well as one of the most renowned physicists of the early twentieth century. I cannot imagine any contemporary philosopher, least of all one of the few who at that period studied scientific method, would be brave enough to tell him how to conduct his research; and if there were any, he would have not noticed them. And yet he said of methodologists, we researchers will get along in our scientific work well enough if only the students of scientific method will leave us alone and not tell us what to do or how to do it. Methodologists, obviously, were his scapegoats; collectively, since presumably he had never met one in the flesh—unless perhaps by accident and then only to terminate the encounter at once with a well-aimed insult, I imagine. Or perhaps collectively because there was simply hardly any individual methodologist around at that time (Cambridge had one, W. E. Johnston; he spent his time hiding and most of his methodological ideas that were ever published appeared in the work of his pupil J. M. Keynes somewhat later). The only specific individual methodologist Rutherford could have in mind when showing so much hostility to methodologists in general is Rutherford himself. For he was a methodologist of sorts—he even began his early scientific career, says an oral tradition, by worrying himself sick about the (quite insoluble) difficulty inductivism has concerning sense illusion (a difficulty that already Bacon had promised to clear, and that already Bishop Berkeley has shown that it imposes idealism on any consistent inductivist)—a dreadful methodologist was Rutherford, yet the only one brave enough, foolhardy enough, to dare pester such a brilliant physicist as Rutherford.
Do not get upset just because I have said a harsh word about Rutherford. Do not ask me for references just to defy me and expose me and show how irresponsible I am. Would you be half as indignant if I spoke thus of your aunt? If I praised her even more than you do, and her kind heart and her devotion to the family, but dismissed her idea about pop art as somewhat parochial? Why can I not talk about Rutherford just the way I talk about your aunt? Figure this out for yourself if you can.
Next time when you take a stroll around campus, if your path chances to cross the library and you happen to be in no particular hurry, do drop in and look up Aku-Aku by Thor Heyerdahl (1957); or, if you browse idly at the campus paper-back book store—yes, we all know how sadly unequipped they usually are—and you chance upon it, I do recommend that you glance at a copy of it. Or you can find it on the internet. Heyerdahl’s case—I am sure you will indulge me one more digression, especially when it is intended to be brief—is quite enlightening; though Heyerdahl is an anthropologist of sorts, and though, unlike his popular books, his papers for the learned press are written in as dull a style as he could bring himself to use for the sake of true scholarship. In the end of that volume he reports a dialogue between himself and his aku (that is the Easter Islands’ version of the fairy godmother), who gently chastises him and mildly rebukes him for his inability to curb his propensity to speculate and think up wild hypotheses. Heyerdahl sincerely admits the charges and agrees that he is somewhat in the wrong. But the beauty and peace and serenity of the wide south seas and its deep blue skies and its enchanting emerald islands and their intriguing and fascinating inhabitants—all help to expiate his fault, and his aku helps him to conjure the magic necessary to render some of his wild dreams into science proper and kosher and acceptable (so he thought; his peers remained suspicious).
In the previous pages, I have diagnosed many of the small ills of Academe as rooted in ambivalence. I am glad I can check myself. I cannot say why the ambivalence of Rutherford tormented him, as it seems it did, whereas Heyerdahl’s did not. Being at peace with oneself renders one less likely to harbor and transmit academic ills. I suppose they all tormented their kin—but at least not with the malice borne out of self-righteousness borne out of conflict and of suppressed self-doubt. There is nothing like peace of mind to mitigate bogus troubles—like most academic troubles. Let me end with an acknowledgement: I heard this from a once-famous sociologist, Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He told me his observations made it clear to him that for the sake of his neighbors he had to be at peace with himself and that this insight had helped him achieve that peace.
We have arrived at one of the most beautiful and admirable things in life, a pleasure to observe, to ponder, to daydream about: intellectual freedom in action.
Dreaming of an impossible utopia—or near-utopia—may torment. Now unlike utopia (etymologically no-where) the near-utopia is there, all the time, yet often people fail to perceive it. Intellectual life is admittedly an escape for many people from all sorts of miseries: they cannot evade all the miseries all the time, but, on the whole, the result is better than expected—especially in present-day luxurious universities. Why, then, are so many academics dissatisfied? Perhaps they envisage the wrong method of escape.
If you want to see what the ideal self-image of Academe is, try to observe it when it is projected and how it sees itself then. Not in public ceremonies, not in hyper-self-conscious exhibitions of True Academe to the whole wide world, to students, to posterity. Observe academics in their intimate, yet not entirely private gatherings, when their spirits are high with genuine academic excitement, when they feel that they get their money’s worth and are all too happy to exhibit their excitement and pleasure to their peers and equals and heighten it with true participation and generous sharing. Go to the humble parties thrown to the very distinguished visitor before or after an interesting guest-lecture, to the lecture itself and to the ensuing discussion—but take care to disguise yourself as a worthy peer or your very presence will destroy the very unselfconsciousness essential to the activities. (This belongs to arch-anthropologist Malinowski: do not take the natives’ descriptions and exhibitions of their own conduct at their face values; rather mix with them, behave like one of them, and observe critically. Do not listen to their words, echoed Einstein with his peculiar sharp-but-good-humored irony; fix your attention on their deeds.) Look at how academics laugh, at how they applaud, see what tickles them most, to what they applaud most on such occasions. You need not go to Timbuktu or Zanzibar or the Trobriand Islands for a proper anthropological exercise.
Do not think that I mean this assertion in jest—the exercise I have in mind is anthropological indeed, and I describe conventional modes of conduct, though of the somewhat esoteric kind. The anthropology of laughter is legitimate sociology: with whom a person is in joking-relations so-called within a given tribe, and what expression of such relations is legitimate. These are not matters of temperament but of conventions—given to wide temperamental variations, of course. Do professors joke with research associates? With graduate assistants? Even at tea before a distinguished guest-lecture? Do they laugh there? Do students? How do they laugh? Loudly? Softly? Or what? Among young Hassidim, laughter must occasionally be wild; not so among their elders. Some tribes have a standard way for laughing of all sorts. Professors who study the history of the laughter at intricate and highly erudite jokes laugh softly—with a dint of permissible self-indulgence and a touch of condescension. The laughter of physicists is different, especially since they are prone to laugh most at the joke made at the expense of some poor scapegoat, whether an erring physicist, or a plain outsider or—and this invariably brings the roof down—at the expense of that member of the audience whose mode of participation in the discussion after the lecture is too critical or cantankerous, or who otherwise blunders. Physicists laugh at such jokes heartily, confidently, loudly—not, Heaven forbid, discharging hidden anxiety, but freely and so even somewhat merrily. At least their merriment is heart-warming; sociologists try hard to imitate them but dare not express merriment—they do not possess self-assurance sufficient for that. Anthropologists laugh most eagerly—even at unintended semblances of jokes—I think in order to stress their appreciation of the speaker; but they will not permit the slightest smile when the speaker describes a genuinely ridiculous primitive practices. It is the same with psychoanalysts when they talk about sex—what else? Things can be much worse. For my part, I dislike a lecture beginning with a barrage of light-hearted and well-worn poor jokes—as if the lecture were an after-dinner speech or a stand-up show—after which opening the lecturer engages in a most ceremonious throat clearing to signify that the jokes are over and that work begins in earnest. This is a practice common in the less scholarly liberal arts and of the various branches of Academe devoted to the study and dissemination of education. I much prefer the practice of physicians: in public they prefer not to laugh. Period.
I once spoke to a group of American anthropologists about British anthropology. They laughed loudly, and it seemed to me demonstrative: it seemed to me their message was, you can criticize British anthropology to your heart’s content: as Americans, we are immune to it. So I spoke about the anthropology of laughter. That stopped the laughter dead.
How do philosophers laugh, you ask. I do not know. I suppose the atmosphere in philosophy lectures disturbs me so much I can barely retain the power to observe them with the necessary scientific detachment. Some philosophers, I did notice, however dimly, are eclectic in this matter, depending on their philosophical bent: positivists tend to imitate physicists (not successfully, though), existentialist tend to imitate historians or others in liberal arts—except when they are embarrassingly solemn, need I say, when their intended jokes are mere cheap expressions of derision. For my part, when I lecture I find the atmosphere so very oppressive that I ramble terribly at first until I throw in a wild joke for a good measure that catches my audience so off-guard they laugh their heads off. After that, my chief concern is less to keep the flow of my discourse and more to prevent the audience from returning to solemnity—for which end I use all sorts of erratic techniques, from wild associations to sheer verbal pyrotechnics including small jokes or even occasional big ones. Jokes are no joking matter.
If you are interested in more details, you can read those of my lectures that are printed. Well, I am clearing my throat now. I hope you liked the bagatelle, but I had my reasons for inserting it in this section rather than elsewhere in this volume: it is getting too solemn to my taste. Jokes aside, how academics laugh varies, but it is largely a matter of convention. Similarly with other practices, to which I shall not address myself—having cleared my throat already. The practices are varied, but obviously, in most cases they are manifestations of the same general idea of togetherness, harmony, full mutual accord and sympathy; no strife, no censure, nor criticism: just peace and admiration of all scholars and scholarship. This is tribalism. The confusion of criticism with censure clinches it. The same goes for the fear of all censure as if it were the plague. So let me tell you of my projected image of academic near-utopia.
No togetherness (except in my own family), merely mutual respect; no harmony (except in great intimacy), but friendly feelings; and a little generosity will do no harm. And while the game is on, simply total disregard for personality, rank, anything except the game itself:—as in a high-powered good game of any kind, personal asides are permitted and even encouraged provided their content does not interfere with the game and the effect they psychologically produce is conducive to it. Players hit hard and enjoy and appreciate it equally well. They allow for switching positions with ease, and they always do this explicitly and clearly. Even a lecture must report a dialogue. (In Plato’s Symposium, the rules of the game force Socrates to make a speech; he does. In it he reports a dialogue, thus having it both ways.) Defeat, difficulty, possible vagueness, ignorance of what your interlocutor assumes that you know well—everything is fully declared and conceded without effort and without rancor. It is not who wins but how you play the game: if parties play it well enough it fascinates and excites. Debates should follow the rules of debate; for instance, interrupting speakers is permissible only if it heightens the excitement all round. Strangely, perhaps, I have witnessed two classes of intellectuals among who play the game better than in any other class of players in Academe—lawyers and electronic engineers. Do not ask me why. Talmudists can do it best, but they usually do it while studying the Talmud, which study imposes restrictions on their debates that I do not recommend: the Talmud allowed any premise to be open to challenge, provided the challenge does not appear as an assault on a basic religious tenet.
I have at last come to my point concerning the natural history of intellectual courage: it is not who wins but how you play the game; let the best party win, by all means; and if the best party is not my party, we shall do something about this in due course, not just now. I shall discuss techniques proper in the next part, and explain why, and how, one of the worst violations of the rules of the game is to anticipate the critics’ next move and to answer it without first having it clearly voiced. (Who expresses it, the defender or critic, matters little.) Here I can say that anticipating outcomes of debates always amounts to cowardice, and thus to stupefaction.
Admirable Benjamin Franklin was an excellent debater though in his Autobiography he declared that a gentleman does not argue and that in science disagreements resolve faster without debates (since these only increase the stubbornness of losers, making them less prone to give up errors). In the same Autobiography he brags in good humor about his dialectical abilities. He tells us he had defeated a roommate of his so often that the poor fellow learned to refuse to answer even the simplest questions put to him, lest they were traps and some consequences to his answer of which he was not yet aware might be later on used against him.
Poor fellow. His reluctance made him unable to learn more consequences from his views. He preferred not to lose debates even at the expense of curbing his intellectual development. Often one feels unable to lose a given debate. If one were eager enough to know what one’s opponent might say, the debate would proceed. Moreover, one may stop a debate for a while and debate the grounds for one’s fear to lose it. One is equally afraid to lose those grounds, or ashamed to confess fear, so that one does not even prefer discovering to what extent one’s fears are reliable. One does want to learn, but …
Which brings us back to the old point of Johannes Kepler: curiosity leads to intellectual courage more than anything else does. So let us observe Kepler’s point a bit more closely and critically.
To begin with, take a simple fact. Many dull lecturers are capable of delivering truly exciting and amusing lectures. They would do so on very rare occasions, among close friends, perhaps to audiences of one or two. I was fortunate to belong to such audiences, and I cannot tell you how great the experience was.
Have you ever watched a good performance of Lear or Hamlet without attention to your high-school-Shakespeare? It is not easy; Alfred North Whitehead confessed high school had spoilt Lear for him for life. It took me hard work to learn to enjoy the Bible—by an around-and-about way, reading The Epic of Gilgamesh and then Ecclesiastes that schools neglect. Have you ever read those for diversion? The experiences are elating. Perhaps you should listen to them recited (there is a BBC version of Gilgamesh on the Web). The experience of listening to an excellent recital or lecture is very interesting. You sit and in no time you lose all sense of time; you cannot tell whether time passes extremely fast or stands still—it looks as if it is both; a few minutes later, somehow the spell breaks and you look at the clock and observe with a real shock that only a few minutes had passed by; you can barely stop to contemplate because the speaker has captured you again and enchanted you; at the back of your mind some observer still keeps awake and notices that the whole visual world has altered—colors, distances, sounds, all seem both more intense and strangely more remote: in a sense you are transported into a Platonic Heaven where somehow the speaker and you share ideas and observe together the development of the narrative of the discourse—logical steps from one proposition to another: things fall together so beautifully that associations and imageries turn pale, the speaker’s shape and voice recede to a remote background and what you hear are not sounds or even words, but ideas.
A beginner reader reads letters of the alphabet, an advanced reader reads words, phrases, and even sentences. Reading normally advances to the point that one is unaware of letters, but one is seldom unaware of words and sentences—this happens only when one is so utterly absorbed in reading or listening and when reading or listening is so effortless, that one absorbs chains of ideas or propositions. It is the same, say, with driving: a beginner uses the accelerator, the breaks, the steering wheel; an experienced driver, driving effortlessly, merely decides what to do and accordingly wills the car to act this or that way; the whole complex of body plus car—one phantom-body so-called—somehow obeys. When an experienced driver has to keep a wide car on a narrow road, has to develop the feel for it in order to drive in a relaxed mode. Similarly, upon hearing a high-powered lecture one has to learn to relax; this leads to the same experience, much more intense.
It may puzzle you why so many people go to listen to boring lectures, just as it puzzled me in my childhood why adults go to synagogue or church. Some go from a sense of duty, some to escape an even more oppressing boredom at home and with the hope of meeting an acquaintance before or after the ritual. Some remember an occasion of an exciting event and they keep going a hundred times for fear of missing the rare occasion on which the event is so rewarding. It is like the purchase of a newspaper daily so as not to miss the rare occasion of an interesting news item or comics.
Why are interesting lectures so rare? Why do good speakers prefer to give dry academic lectures? They are chicken, that’s why. Once I heard a lecture delivered on the recent history of a local geological survey that outlined achievements over the last few decades. After the lecture was over, in a small circle, someone who knew the history first-hand and who was a friend of the speaker said, “Once, on a glass of beer, I may tell you how things really happened”. What a pity.
Whatever the causes, and I have tried to analyze some of them in previous sections, one thing the above anecdote makes clear: intellectual cowardice is not so much a matter of feelings, as conformity to certain conventions, to accepted rules of good form. Which is to say that Kepler’s view of the matter needs some supplementation.
What makes the sociological approach so much superior to the psychological approach, Popper repeatedly observed in his lecture courses, and he was a superb lecturer, is a simple fact, and an obvious one. Psychology all too often centers on motivation, whereas sociology plays down personal motives as far as possible under the circumstances. It cannot eliminate all motives, but it can introduce some uniformity, some leveling, by playing them down. For example, consider all those who work for one given railway company on all the complex motives and mentalities that they possess. I shudder to think of the complexity involved in a simple railway timetable, said Bertrand Russell. Yet somehow, railway timetables operate fairly well. There was, indeed, in the British humor magazine Punch a cartoon depicting a shelf in a public library under the title “Fiction” with a railway timetable on it. Yet this is something of an exaggeration because, Popper noted, timetable planners as well as sociologists can ignore the deep motives of railway workers and assume that their sole motive in working for the company is earning their wages and making a decent living.
Making a decent living is similarly the motive of many an academic: if they were of independent means they might or might not remain scholars, but most of them would have left the universities. They conform to the rules of the game because they wish to stay in; and one of the rules, they fancy, is to provide dull lectures. Now, some of the rules concern very external matters, such as matters of good form; others are more elusive, and refer to intellectual honesty so-called.
What exactly intellectual honesty is may be under dispute—it is under dispute less than one might expect because the literature on it is scant. Here then are some obvious received ideas about it. Clearly, however, on one point Bacon was dead right: when scholars face refutations of their views, he observed, rather than give them up they make fine distinctions. You hear this constantly: “this is so because”. The right answer to this locution is, “never mind why this is so; you admission that this is so is an admission that your initial hypothesis is refuted; you should say this openly.”
In view of the possibility of violation of rules of the game without dishonesty—either from bad training or from no training—discussion of these violations has to be social. Most people, academics included, honest as well as dishonest, cheat in the game of intellectual discourse in the crudest manners possible, chiefly from ignorance, one that persists from the sheer cowardly demand to have consider it a moral duty to defend one’s intellectual positions to the last, no matter how poor it happens to be: one should not concede defeat unless one is sure that one is hopelessly defeated—which is seldom the case. The permission to reap victory but not to concede defeat before the very end of a debate is obviously dishonest, yet students take it for granted, imbibing it from their elders and betters. They would change the subject and introduce red herrings to get out of a tough spot. They would surreptitiously shift positions and declare they were misunderstood. They would most incredibly reinterpret what they had said in the light of what they have just heard from their interlocutors instead of thank them for the new information. If they were playing bridge or chess or tennis they would blush at their cheating, but being engaged in debate they feel only self-righteous—or rather, their cowardice takes this shape.
Or a person may be very dishonest but play the game with meticulous care in order to gain some personal profit—whether the recognition of peers or the approval of audiences: this is how a sufficiently clever speaker would act whose peers or audiences know the rules of the game well enough. This is why politicians in the countries with educated populations dare not deviate from the truth as much and as obviously as politicians in countries whose populations are poorly educated. This is precisely why we find incredible the exception, the regular, blatant deviations from obvious truths of President Donald Trump: he appeals to his electorate whom he evidently holds in contempt.
A person well versed in the game may induce an opponent to play fairly. Playing by the book may be an ideal, but I am foolhardy enough to think it does happen on occasion. Intellectually honest people may discuss morality with able people and be converted from cynicism or a-moralism to moral life. When this happens, the music of the spheres fills the air.
Still, with all the social trimmings, the present point is simple: intellectual dishonesty is unwise. If you are mistaken you are better off knowing it. If you hope to conceal defeat from your interlocutor but confess it to yourself, you are too-clever-by-half: you have to concede it in company so as to continue the discussion and see what your error amounts to; your interlocutor will either know of your change of view or not be available any more. If you value instruction enough, the mock-shame resulting from the concession of defeat evaporates.
Psychologically speaking, intellectual honesty is not mental but intellectual; the contrary feeling is strictly a displacement, to use Freud’s term. Psychologically speaking, intellectual courage, too, is not courage in the sense of either civil or physical courage since no risk is involved in the admission of error—not even in public and not even in politics; in Freud’s terms, the contrary feeling is strictly a projection: losing it is no loss.
Nevertheless, the denial of all support that moral and intellectual courage lend each other is excessive. If your opponent offers you some new information, you should acknowledge it and express gratitude. If your interlocutor presents you with a new stimulating question, you should likewise acknowledge gratefully that you have never considered it and have to do so now. The moral side be damned—if you do not pay attention to it, you are merely a knave. One who ignores the intellectual side of it, however, is a fool. Moreover, as William Hazlitt has wisely observed, behind a fool stand a knave who exploits him. All things being equal, considering study, folly is more of an obstacle than immorality. In any case, I take it for granted that you are neither a fool nor a knave.
What then is the intellectual aspect and what is the social aspect of intellectual courage? How much courage is due to one’s purity of heart and how much due to one’s acceptance of the norms of one’s society? I can barely find out where to begin—simply because the display of intellectual courage depends on the way one plays the game. Which means that no intellect is an island and we cannot learn except in a society that tolerates learning so that novices may exercise the game in cooperation with individuals who know something about its rules.
Medieval philosophers faced a very difficult paradox: What is higher, goodness by nature or goodness by effort? From the extrovert viewpoint, surely, goodness by nature is preferable as less prone to temptation; from the introvert viewpoint, goodness by effort is the triumph of goodness, and the effort surely deserves greater recognition and reward.
This paradox is insoluble. To the theologian it may present a real headache; not for our purposes, however. Intellectual courage leads to intellectual honesty and vice versa; and they both may rest on moral nature or on conviction, as well as from burning curiosity that may come from any direction and by any contingency; or, they may both come from the willingness to conform or to gain recognition. It all matters not. What matters is not who wins—not even why one plays—but how one plays the game. Yet I face a paradox too: I have said, the rules that Academe follows differ from the right rules of the game; I have criticized Popper for his suggestion that researchers abide by the right rules of the game. Yet now I am speaking of the rules as conventional after all. Where are we? Where do we stand?
Researchers obey the rules of the game; academics often violate them; hence, often academics are not researchers. Many of them are pseudo-researchers or pseudo-scientists, especially the ones engaged in psychology, education, sociology, and politology. It may be more reasonable to view most academics as ones who do not know the rules of the game and so as one who play the game improperly, while the cream of Academe do. The fact is there: those whom peers judge as able to bring the bread-and-butter are popular anyway (with some exceptions, of course: we cannot possibly weed out all the fakes, but it is hard to like them). Now all this is not good enough, since some of the best psychologists—Freud and Adler, for instance—broke the rules like bulls in china shops yet we (rightly) value their contributions from the viewpoint of the game: they have enriched it. The academic tradition gratefully receives all contributions, no matter from what direction they come. The ghosts of so many once-venerated-and-now-forgotten scholars and researchers demand a serious discussion of the question, what are the rules that impose unanimity in selecting people to rest in our scientific Pantheon? Historians of science try to answer this question and I have written a whole pamphlet (that brought me my successful career) ridiculing the modes of thought that most of them employ. Yet my pamphlet is unjust—as all my reviewers have noted, though arguing rather poorly for this—since most of its (just) strictures are funny at the expense of sincere, unfortunate historians of science.
My injustice was in not stating explicitly that I do endorse the list of heroes that these historians laud, although I reject their detailed hagiography as inept. How then do we all decide what researcher deserves a place in our scientific Pantheon? By deciding that the moves that they had initiated are great moves in the game of science that has begun in antiquity and that is still going strong. What is this game? The parts of my pamphlet that I am proud of are my repeated explanations of the importance of the contributions we all agree are important as refutations of great ideas. The best part of that pamphlet is my discussion of Ørsted’s discovery. It was unanimously praised at the time; it still is; no explanation why. He sought it for decades. When he found it, he went into shock and was dazed for three months. (He said he could not account for his activities during these months.) Why? Because he discovered forces that are not Newtonian, thus refuting Newton’s axiom that all forces are central.
This only strengthens my query: why do we all play the game by Popper’s Socratic rules yet claim to do something else?
Answer: we all admit the Socratic rules; the disagreement with Popper is this: he said, there are no other (inductive) rules. Most academics hold the deep conviction that we need more rules. To examine this disagreement empirically or historically we need first to sift the grain from the shaft. This might be question begging. Miraculously it is not so: Popper’s idea suffices: we all agree that yesteryear’s scientific heroes who are now forgotten with some justice. This miracle does not hold for academic heroes: we admire those who occupy the academic hall of fame and we have not yet examined the situation.
Somehow or other, if justice does not prevail in Academe, nor does injustice: if you are intellectually brave, everybody will discourage you—your professor in the name of scholarship, and your Aunt in the name of commonsense. For your own good, the wish is to prevent too much trouble for you in college. Yet if you refuse to obey, you have some chance to receive a reward. Thus, it is higher here than in any other culture or sub-culture on earth—past or present. As I keep telling you, although Utopia exists nowhere, Academe has come nearest to it that we know of. I recommend you take advantage of this obvious fact right now.
Anything to keep my book out of any kind of semblance of uniformity: I now embark on a book-review proper; if this sounds too academic for you, do skip it by all means; but if you enjoy seeing a big shot cut down to size, stay with me in this section a bit longer before you thumb through to the next. I have a friend who greatly enjoys reading my book-reviews: his wife tells him he is a venomous reviewer, and he therefore enjoys noticing, like Gustav in Emil and the Detectives of Erik Kästner, that he is not at the bottom of the class but second from the bottom. I shall try to stay true to my reputation as the very worst.
The book I have chosen to review is perhaps the most celebrated of its kind: it was a bestseller. It is Jerome S. Bruner’s slim The Process of Education of 1960. It is the outcome of a 1959 conference of thirty-five scientists, scholars, and educationists, under the distinguished auspices of the U. S. National Academy of Science. Bruner headed the conference and reported on it in this volume. Some of the participants in that conference have added to Bruner’s deliberations.
Bruner’s volume is the result of a survey of existing large-scale projects of educational reforms in high schools in the United States of America. He worded it in as a manifesto, though its tone is somewhat more explanatory than declarative. The merit of the volume is in the great clarity of its exposition and its brevity, as well as its manifesto-like character. Even leading educational iconoclast Paul Goodman has called it “lovely”. I hope my laboring the obvious in this instance is excusable. I will save you the trouble of discussing with you Bruner’s august career or his title as the father of the cognitive revolution in education, or the nature of that revolution. Here then is the review of his 1960 report.
In his Introduction Bruner presents problems: what to teach, where, and how? What purpose, what emphasis, what effective techniques, should we provide education? These questions arose because of the increased expansion of Academe after World War II and the subsequent desire of university teachers to control high school education. Bruner took it for granted that this desire is positive, and for two simple reasons that he deemed indisputable: academics are intellectually superior to high school teachers and this gives them the right and duty to control all education.
It is to Bruner’s credit that though he was a psychologist, he was critical of learning psychology as too academic or too abstract to apply to the facts of learning in schools. Traditionally, he reported, educators separated transmitting general understanding from transmitting special techniques. Under the impact of late nineteenth-century psychology, the scale tipped in favor of techniques—only to be soon altered. One may wonder how valid were Bruner’s observations at the time, and, more so, how valid they are now. However, this is a separate issue, and at the very least we should acknowledge Bruner’s readiness to be critical of the system, especially since, it turns out, his final verdict on it was in its favor.
Chapter One presents Bruner’s structural approach. It is hardly more than the praise for structures—where structures are general theories. General theories are applicable to specific cases. They may be useful to students, but alas only to the very clever and advanced ones. This fits well the tendency of most teachers to neglect the top quarter of high school students on the excuse that they do well. Most surveys show that this applies to all teachers except for the few most ambitious ones. Can the structural approach—the transmission of general theories, chiefly—offer specific help to those who need it without handicapping the rest? These are the questions the Bruner raises and plans to discuss in later chapters. He does not.
Chapter Two advocates the structural approach. Neither facts nor techniques are educationally as important as some familiarity with the most general theories available. They are important for those who will not be specialists, who will thus need only a general outline of the subject; they are important for ones who will later on become experts: their high school studies should facilitate their future specialized studies. The trouble is, most teachers cannot convey general theories. Various committees, manned by the very best top dogs, have now grown like mushrooms to aid them with proper textbooks. Bruner approves of them with no comment. The poor teachers who desperately depend on their textbooks because, Bruner admits, their dependence is excessive, will hopefully benefit from these. Now, as this process is over, we may seek empirical information as to their degree of success. In the Preface to his 1996 The Culture of Education, Bruner discusses the test-frame for budding ideas and dismisses his 1960 presentation as exhibiting too narrow an attitude toward education. So no test for it.
This matters little: the textbooks on which teachers depend, Bruner points out already in 1960, are insufficient at best: they need supplementation. They include no adequate treatment of either learning or research, and the poor kids need both the latest and most general theories, in addition to some research techniques. Are the kids to whom he refers the top quarter or the rest or all of them? Are they the prospective specialists or others or all? He does not tell. Perhaps this point matters little, since experience in the method of discovery, in Bruner’s view, shows that kids learn faster when they are allowed to discover the material for themselves. This raises a basic question: why not follow the advice of Jean-Jacque Rousseau (Émile, 1762) to leave kids to their own devices in Nature’s bosom? Like all those who discuss the discovery method—now forgotten but still popular in 1960, when this book was written—he seem to have assured success. This is a gross error: even the best researchers have no assurance of success. (Einstein and Planck worked for many years with little or no success, even after they won the status of very great discoverers.) Perhaps all the fuss I am making is about the pretentious title by which writers (including Bruner) refer to this method: “method of discovery” or “discovery method”. In the book under review Bruner takes cognizance only once (and in passing) of the fact that teachers are familiar with the solutions they help students discover.
Let me hasten to add that my discontent is with the ambiguity of Bruner’s text about the discovery method, that it is admittedly widespread. I have no intention to belittle all the texts that belong to the discovery-method literature, particularly not Modern Arithmetic through Discovery. I simply view them in very different light than most writers do, Bruner included.
We are still in Bruner’s Chapter Two. He eulogizes there. Students who understand a general theory understand more clearly the cases it applies to; they remember them better; they can even transfer their development and increase their capacity in other fields. Moreover, learning general theories spreads over various years and affords students opportunities in later classes to re-examine and deepen their understanding of the material learned in early classes. As things are, what kids learn in early classes is outdated or misleading; as the new method has it, the material in the earliest class is already up-to-date only less profound and detailed. Moreover, in such a process students also learn how to apply scientific methods and thus acquire experience in the method of discovery. All these fringe benefits apply to science as well as to mathematics and even to literature (where the laboratory has to give way to efforts to imitate the style of Henry James). These are very general claims; they are very weighty; Bruner makes them rather casually.
Readers who suspect that the above paragraph is a caricature are very nice; sadly, it is not. I invite them to read the Chapter Two and judge for themselves. Other readers may see nothing obviously amiss in what I report. Now Bruner’s wish is that teachers avoid assiduously all teaching of outdated material—even in early high school classes. For those who find nothing wrong with this attitude of Bruner, let me elaborate a bit on it, and explain why to me it seems impossible if not monstrous.
Bruner considers mechanics to offer the best example for his method. By the old method, a student would start with Galileo and proceed to Newton later—perhaps a year later. Bruner should dismiss this as erroneous or misleading. Galileo says that all freely falling bodies accelerate equally. Taken literally, this is erroneous or misleading unless the word “roughly” is explicitly inserted into the wording of the law. For, as Newton tells us, the acceleration of a freely falling body is smaller the higher it is above the surface of the earth. Galileo’s law draws vertical lines from the various positions of a projectile, assuming that they are parallel; the projectile’s path is then a parabola. These vertical lines are sufficiently nearly parallel for practical purposes; theoretically, they are not, since they all meet at the center of the earth. (The parabola is an ellipse with its distant focus in infinity. This is of tremendous importance for Newton’s marvelous unification of Galileo’s and Kepler’s laws.)
As Newton’s theory is more up-to-date than Galileo’s, let us take it instead. It is and less up-to-date than Einstein’s. Newton says that forces act at a distance; Einstein says that they nearly act at a distance, traveling as they do with the speed of light. Should ten-years-old kids be taught Einstein? By teachers who can only do so if they use textbooks prepared by the best brains in the field? Should they approach the study of the conduction of heat from the viewpoint of quantum theory and be told that metals conduct easily because they contain electrons that behave like a gas being rather free and behaving according to the Fermi-Dirac statistics? Or is this theory already out of date? I cannot say, since my knowledge of physics is painfully not fully up-to-date.
All that Bruner asserts in favor of the structural method should apply beneficially to any person who can study in accordance with it. Such a person usually belongs to graduate courses as taught in the better universities; but some kids are precocious enough for this method, and to them, possibly, all that he says in his eulogy may be profitably applicable.
The most advanced theory may become out-of-date, hopefully due to some progress in the field. In which case Professor Bruner will say that it is erroneous or misleading. Hence, today’s discovery somehow accompanies the recognition that yesterday’s views were somewhat erroneous or somewhat misleading. Students who realize that Newton’s theory corrects Galileo’s, and that Einstein’s theory corrects Newton’s, may suspect that Einstein’s too need not be the last word. Yet, if they begin with Einstein, the may become precocious dogmatists. This ends my discussion of Bruner’s Chapter Two. My assertion that to the extent that Bruner’s suggestion is applicable it is a recommendation for the education for dogmatism may want some elaboration, though.
Bruner’s Chapter Three opens with a bold hypothesis. Every subject can be taught to every schoolchild in any stage of development, though admittedly it has to be taught superficially at first.
What is the content of the hypothesis? In one sense of “subject”, this allegedly bold hypothesis is trivially true; and in another sense, it is trivially false. Bruner says it has won ample empirical confirmation; the version of the hypothesis that is empirically testable is neither: it lies somewhere in between. Where exactly? Let us modify “subject” to make it mean a set of problems: physics asks questions concerning weights and temperatures, economics concerning budgets and trade. Already as schoolchildren, we knew many questions from both physics and economics and some answers—mistaken and vague—even before we entered elementary school. We knew how much bubble-gum costs, and its opportunity-cost in terms of ice-cream; we knew that daddy could not afford a Cadillac convertible; we knew that toy-cars fall faster than feathers and even that cold weather can turn water into ice. We even had a few ideas about genetics and hematology, come to think of it; and we were fully-fledged criminologists and experts in space science from having watched cartoons on super-heroes. All this wants no support from Bruner and no confirmation.
Take the second sense of “subject”, then. Up-to-date theories. Bruner uses the words “subject” and “structure” interchangeably. Can we explain the Fermi-Dirac statistics to an average eleven-year-old? No. We can explain to kids some of Mendel’s genetics, but not up-to-date genetics, Pasteur’s ideas, but not the vaguest notion on the latest views concerning the etiology of cancer.
Evidently, Bruner meant the golden mean: for physics, he had in mind neither Aristotle nor Einstein but a smattering of Newton; for geometry neither primitive nor differential geometry but a smattering of Euclid. The smattering that he mentions as what kids can learn is trite. That would not matter, except for the fact that theories such as Euclid’s, not up-to-date in the least, fall under Bruner’s category of false or misleading ones. Chapter Two makes this obvious.
Chapter Three offers examples. They should confirm Bruner’s bold hypothesis. Being false, misleading, and unacceptable as science, they do not; they only show that the knowledge of science that Bruner displays is far from up-to-date. This is no fault, yet it disproves his bold hypothesis.
In the same chapter, Bruner also advocates the spiral curriculum, so called; it is the method of teaching the same subject a few times on different levels of detail, precision. This, again, is correct. It is old hat. To be consistent, however, he should object to levels of precision as imprecision, sine it comprises mistaken or misleading claims. Nothing remains then of Chapter Three—except for Bruner’s admission—to his credit—that any curriculum may be open to revision, pending further research.
Chapter Four advocates intuitive thinking. First, he contrasts the intuitive with the formal. Then he contrast the intuitive with the analytic. Further on, he describes analytic thinking as explicit, be it inductive or deductive. He then describes intuitive thinking as skipping steps with little or no awareness of how this occurs. Intuitive understanding of a given material in class he then contrasts with the more traditional forms of deduction and demonstration. He mentioned explicitly three methods of learning: the analytic, the inductive, and the intuitive.
On a rainy day, having nothing better to do, you may list the ambiguities, incongruities, inconsistencies, and cross-purposes, implicit in the above paragraph. To Bruner’s credit, however, I should stress one point. Chapter Four mentions the existence of problems: it mentions the intuitive as a mode of their solutions.
Bruner adds a warning: intuition has its pitfalls. He stresses that the outcome of any intuition may be false; only if it is true it is analytically provable. He does not suppose that any scientific theory may sooner or later turn out to be false or misleading: this is contrary to his Chapter Two. To his credit, however, when talking about intuition he recognizes that there is no finality in science—for a short while, admittedly, as the outcome of intuition awaits proof to supplement or overthrow it—but nonetheless, and fortunately, he does admit there that science lacks finality.
How does one train for intuition? Encourage students to guess? Their guesses are too often likely to be false. Bruner recommends guided guessing. (This brings him closer to the so-called method of discovery in teaching.) He also notes that intuition grows as a by-product: the more you know the better you guess. Proof: a physician’s tentative diagnosis improves. This proof, let me hazard a guess, is not empirically confirmed; it was never tested. The chapter continues for a few more pages, and, to Bruner’s credit, its two closing paragraphs refer to practical difficulties.
Chapter Five concerns incentives. At the end of his Introduction Bruner says this. Ideally, the best incentive is the student’s own interest, but it is neither possible nor wise to abolish grades and other external incentives. Chapter Three returns to this and admits that students’ inherent interest in the material at hand is a good incentive and grades are a poor substitute for it. Why, then, does he deem unwise to avoid the poor substitutes? Now, exams are relatively new; for millennia, schools had no use for them. Before compulsory education, the end of exams was to qualify professionals, usually clerics; artisans had to produce masterpieces to qualify as masters. The discussion about them raises thus the question, is education for the life of the intellect or preparation for the life of action? The practically minded planners of the curriculum, Bruner observes, want it to serve short-term purposes; the others demand the opposite. Bruner and the whole conference that he has chaired go for a middle-of-the-road proposal. Do these support exams? How do the usual middle-of-the-road exams look like? Do they differ from the traditional ones?
Most of the material in this chapter covers broad topics: American traditions, the crisis in the feeling of national security, meritocracy, and the two cultures. Does all this lead to a reform of the curriculum? If yes, what kind of reform is advisable? With present-day techniques, Bruner admits, arousing kids’ interest sufficiently is impossible: most of what we teach is intrinsically dull. Nevertheless, it is useful: national security and jobs in industry. This may be a recommendation to render all schools vocational. This may leave no time for studying the arts, and no jobs for teachers in the arts. Hence, we must do something against these risks, Bruner notes: we should enlist federal aid for education in the arts, and seek new ways for coping with these risks. This is puzzling. For four chapters Bruner assures us that his new method is applicable to the arts as is his recommendation that kids should be encouraged to try to imitate the style of Henry James. Now he admits that he needs money for research before he can help raise the level of the arts and of literature in school. Odd.
Chapter Six, the finale, discusses teaching aids. These are very good at times, but they do not replace the teacher who must serve as a living example to budding intellectuals—as an intellectual father figure. A teacher is “a model of competence”, “a personal symbol of the educational process”, an “identification figure”. Bruner also admits: unfortunately, some teachers are just terrible. No proposal for improvement.
This, then, is a summary of the content of the volume on how to improve teaching: the most up-to-date and the most general theories should be processed into the standard textbooks of all ages and taught by a semblance of the discovery method while prompting kids to develop their intuitions—by motivating them; by arousing their interest; by promising them high grades. The aid of teaching machines and movies may be useful, but the primary factor is this: we need teachers who can serve as intellectual father figures; they should be morally noble and intellectually armed with the most up-to-date textbooks written by the cleverest people around. Each of these points merits much more research—urgently. Federal Funds please take notice!
>This book is dilettante and confused yet it is distinguished and important. This provides what leading composer and musicologist Roger Sessions has called the inner dynamics of the piece. Scathing reviews are rather hard to write: if the book under review has merit, a scathing review of it is out of place; otherwise, a review of it is redundant. (Unmasking is intellectually cheap.) A reviewer has to consider an intellectually poor volume under review of great significance by some criterion other than intellectual, say, practical. This volume is of a great practical value: it should ring an alarm bell. The longer the alarm bell is silent the more urgent it is to activate it.
An author of a scathing review may show any kind of courage by publishing it but hardly intellectual courage. I surely do not have any intellectual pretense in doing so. The only thing I am adamant about is my hostility to avoidable compulsion. Further, I advocate, beginning at least in high school if not a little earlier, the application of the dialectical method in teaching—raising problems, airing solutions to them, offering criticisms to the solutions. This process begins where the student happens to be and ends when the course ends. The unavoidable end is either the last solution or the last criticism—depending on the present state of knowledge. Beyond this, the process is not instruction but research.
All this raises questions about academic conduct—including academic rituals and academic taboos—and about academic honesty and about whether and how the two can go together. A poor intellectual may get away with it by playing the academic game properly—by following the rituals and saying the silly things that most people believe in already. The system may, reluctantly, denounced the independent and brand them cranks. On rare occasions, this may lead to expulsion or to isolation. The former procedure takes place in the world of free professions and is a very tedious and costly procedure. The latter takes place in the intellectual world. As it is less costly, it applies more frequently and freely. Expulsion is official; its victim is legally barred from practice. Isolation is unofficial, and sometimes operates like an invisible web in a Kafkaesque world: the isolated practice freely but in isolation—and on rare occasions, they interest audiences and become fashionable. They may become fashionable because they are the last of a generation and magnificent grand old masters. As they cease to be dangerous, it becomes the ritual to admire them. Even otherwise, they stand a chance. Intellectually honest young people may find their ideas interesting; they may study and discuss them and examine their worth. Let me end by one more reference to Faraday: he was isolated intellectually but admired as a public performer. He used his lectures to advocate his ideas. Two of his famous Christmas lecture series aimed at children have appeared; if you are interested, you can glance at them and see how they succeeded in carrying out his subversive plan: the revolution in physics that he effected was barely noticed. (Einstein’s praise of Faraday and his expression of debt to him have passed unnoticed.) The Establishment dismissed my book on it, even though it appeared over a century later: fields of force are no longer at issue, but the very idea of them as revolutionary is still too subversive.
I had planned to talk in this section about intellectual courage, but I got tired of the topic after the last section and before the next part. In the next part, I am going to help you learn to act bravely, and I hoped to show you first that you need not fear too much trying out my proposals. I have illustrated this to you, I hope, without much pep talk: if Bruner and his colleagues could get away with what I have described, anyone can get away with almost anything. No kidding: Academe is tolerant. Never underrate this terrific quality.
Faraday discovered that electrolysis can take place even in the absence of water. He claimed that this refutes the view of his late teacher Sir Humphry Day. Dr. John Davy, Sir Humphry’s brother, expressed indignation: Sir Humphry had not said that electrolysis in the absence of water is impossible; he merely observed that he could not find such a phenomenon. Faraday was breaking a very strong rule of the game, and the attack on him was no small matter. Ever since the seventeenth century, the system discouraged researchers from publishing their guesses explicitly—since guesses may be false. When you criticize a researcher who worked by the book you should also work by the book: criticize implicitly. Faraday hated controversy, especially in his early days (he started as a Baconian).
Nevertheless, under heavy fire he published a detailed reply. Had I claimed that water is the only solvent for electrolysis, Dr. Davy would have claimed this idea for his late brother, said Faraday; now that I have proved the contrary, he argues in accord with my finding. It is hard to say where the story ended since it submerged in much bigger issues—Faraday’s heresies caused him isolation as a thinker. He won by a fluke: his cousin was a temporary lecturer replacing a sick professor; one of his students was William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) who later advised Maxwell to study Faraday. The rest is history.
The commonwealth of learning has a network of fluke-hunters—the intellectually honest—the elite whose influence is out of all proportion to its size. Perhaps you are mistaken in your decision to join Academe; but if you do, why not join the very elite: it is at no extra cost. Most academics I know suffer academic agonies—both from a sense of duty and from fear of ostracism. At half the effort and a little more planning, they could join the elite. How, I do not know, but it engages the next part of this volume.
This very popular expression is confusing. On the face of it, this is the recommendation to report observations and avoid all conjecture. This is how commentators praised empirical researchers. This includes the avoidance of the claim that what one observes is a general fact. Thus, Robert Hooke wrote. “On Saturday morning, April 21, 1667, I first saw a Comet.” This is charming but unusual. When Boyle described the pressure cooker (that he had invented) he went into many irrelevant details that the reader got lost in the details. The reason was that only general facts are scientific, and their assertions are conjectures. These are less likely to err the more qualified they are. Yet we do not know what qualifications are relevant to what observation. When a generalized observation is refuted, then we know ow to restate them in qualification, as Newton said we should do. Thus, the advice to avoid sweeping generalizations may be the advice to report observations naively, and it may mean the advice to state a generalization but avoid explaining them. Boyle said, if you must, you may do so briefly at the end of a paper. The end of the paper of James Watson and Francis Crick on their discovery of DNA says accordingly, “It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material”—the understatement of the century.
Yehuda Fried and JA, Psychiatry as Medicine, 1983, Ch. 1.
Some commentators on Einstein’s view of method says, he relied on information since he did not rely on intuition; others says, he relied on intuition since he did not rely on information.
Famous Benedictine, Distinguished University Professor Stanley L. Jaki, criticized me for my having offered no grounds for my rejection of all grounds.
To please the inductivists my Science and Its History, 2008, documents this claim with heaps of details from the history of the natural sciences.
See my “The Mystery of the Ravens”, Philosophy of Science, 33, 1966, 395-402, republished in my The Gentle Art of Philosophical Polemics: Selected Reviews and Comments, 1988.
The sexual metaphor is Kabbalist, popular at the time and alludes to the mediaeval tales of courtly love: stoop to conquer. See my The Very Idea of Modern Science, 2013.
Mermaids are different: they are born out of the yearning of all-male crews, not of out of ambivalence.
Ruth Borchard, John Stuart Mill the Man, 1957.
For another, very detailed and rather boring portrait of an ideological academic bore see my Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: An Attempt at a Critical Rationalist Appraisal, 2018.
The results of experiments that took place at Western Electric’s factory at Hawthorne, Chicago, in the late 1920s and early 1930s comprise the famous Hawthorne effect, still under dispute.
L. E. Davis and A. B. Cherns, editors, The Quality of Working Life, 1975.
Judith Buber Agassi, Evaluation of Approaches in Recent Swedish Work Reforms, 1985.
John Locke, the most prominent Baconian, compares criticism to the work of clearing the ground prior to building on it―the under-worker’s task. He took this metaphor from Robert Boyle, incidentally, whose research assistant he used to be while he was a student.
Ben-Ami Scharfstein, The Philosophers: Their Lives and the Nature of Their Thought, 1989.
See my “Academic Democracy Threatened: The Case of Boston University”, Interchange, 21, 1990, 26-34 and my review of John Silber, Straight Shooting, Interchange, 21, 1990, 80-1, both republished in my The Hazard Called Education Essays, Reviews and Dialogues on Education from Forty-Five Years, Ronald Swartz and Sheldon Richmond, editors, with a Foreword by Ian Winchester, 2014.
Shaw’s analysis of hypocrisy is penetrating. It conflicts with a vast anti-Marxist literature: wrongdoers are frank when they see no harm in frankness; hypocrisy masks blunder and folly, not ill will. (In my adolescence I became a Marxist because I looked for fiendish schemes behind the hypocrisy of the British administration in Palestine, and Marxism claimed to have exposed such schemes.)
See Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man in Immoral Society, 1932.
See my Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, 1971, Ch. 3.
See my “Williams Dodges Agassi’s Criticism”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 29, 1978, 248-52. Reprinted in my The Gentle Art of Philosophical Polemics: Selected Reviews and Comments, 1988.
See my “Field Theory in De La Rive’s Treatise”, Organon, 11, 1975, 285-301, reprinted in my Science and Its History, 2008.
Gerald Holton, “Einstein, Michelson, and the ‘Crucial’ Experiment”, Isis, 1969, 60.2: 133-197.
See my “On Explaining the Trial of Galileo”, review of Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, Organon, 8, 1971, 138-66. Reprinted in my Science and Society: Studies in the Sociology of Science, 1981.
This sounds like an exaggeration. So let me note that the Israeli Noble laureate Dan Shechtman had to suffer ridicule before he won the coveted price. Afterwards he described his peers as a pack of wolves.
Carola Baumgardt, Johannes Kepler: Life and Letters, 1951.
Erik Erikson, Young Man Luther, 1958, Chapter II, section 2.
This assertion conflicts with the claim of Adolf Grünbaum that Freud had tested his own theory and that it is successfully refuted. See Jon Mills, (2007), “A response to Grünbaum’s refutation of psychoanalysis”. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 24: 539-544. Popper has claimed that clinging to a false theory―be it Freud’s or Newton’s or any other―renders it unscientific.
See my review of Paul Feyerabend’s Against Method in Philosophia, 6, 1976, 165-177. Reprinted in my The Gentle Art of Philosophical Polemics: Selected Reviews and Comments, 1988.
See my “In Search of Rationality”, in P. Levinson, ed., In Pursuit of Truth: Essays in Honor of Karl Popper’s 80th Birthday, 1982, 237-248.
See my Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations An Attempt at a Critical Rationalist Appraisal, 2019, 26, 32, 42.
See Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents (1930) and his correspondence with Einstein (1931-2).
See Einstein’s Foreword to Max Jammer’s Concepts of Space, 1954.
Only Arthur Koestler has criticized Galileo’s polemics, and unjustly. See my “On Explaining the Trial of Galileo”, review of Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, Organon, 8, 1971, 138-66; reprinted in my Science and Society: Studies in the Sociology of Science, 1981.
This assertion of mine requires a qualification. In these days of expanded Academe and publication pressure, you may find in the learned press discussions of the most undeserving items.
Not so. In the eighteenth century, the great Jesuit philosopher Roger Joseph Boscovich argued that elasticity refutes Descartes’ mechanical theory. His criticism is unanswerable.
Boyle could easily suppress the information that he had adhered to Brahe’s system; he did not.
See my “Who Discovered Boyle’s law?” reprinted in my Science and Its History: A Reassessment of the Historiography of Science, 2008, and my The Very Idea of Modern Science: Francis Bacon and Robert Boyle, 2013.
L. Pearce Williams, Michael Faraday: A biography ascribes to faraday the endorsement of Boscovich’s idea. See my “Williams Dodges Agassi’s Criticism”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 29, 1978, 248-52, republished in my The Gentle Art of Philosophical Polemics, 1988.
For a conspicuous example see Rudolf Carnap, “Scientific Autobiography” and “Reply to Critics”, in Paul A. Schilpp, editor, The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, 1963.
Carl Becker, The Heavenly City of the 18th Century Philosophers, 1932.
Kant’s deviation from Bacon’s teaching is earlier, but it is implicit. The learned public ignored this. I can see what the poor fellow was driving at, said of him polymath Thomas Young, but I cannot forgive him his obscure style. The English translations of the Critique of Pure Reason improve its language.
The traditional canons put your assertions in the wrong unless you prove them. Consequently, new untested ideas are often publicized not in scientific press but in conferences―especially in biology, more so in medicine―including the important idea that nucleic acids function as the genetic code.
Bacon’s plagiarism from an unpublished work of William Gilbert is nasty, especially in view of his sneers at Gilbert.
For example, Preface to Wealth of Nations, 1776.
Negligence is the default option when assessing some actions of an expert but not of the rank-and-file.
The theory of rational degree of belief is the most popular in the current philosophy of science with no discussion of any of the ideas that lead to it and with the mere concentration on the (mis)use of the calculus of probability in it. See my “The Philosophy of Science Today”, in S. Shanker, ed., Routledge History of Philosophy, IX, Philosophy of Science, Logic and Mathematics in the 20th Century, 1996, 235-65.
His incessant criticism of doctors led to his incarceration in a mental home, where he was beaten to death.
See the report https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/ten-steps-to-phd-failure in Times Higher Education, August 27, 2015.
See my “Max Planck’s Remorse” (review of Brandon R. Brown, Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War), Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 47, 351–8.
Preface to Bacon’s projected collected works.
See my “The Role of the Philosopher Among the Scientists: Nuisance or Necessary?”, Social Epistemology, 4, 1989, 297-30 and 319.
Heyerdahl’s diffusionist anthropology still meets with general hostility.
Einstein, his 1933 Herbert Spencer lecture, Oxford.
This happens in Galileo’s 1632 Dialogue, Fourth Day: its scientific and artistic value are still ignored.
Towards an Historiography of Science, 1963, republished in my Science and Its History, 2008.
To the extent that extant diagnosis is improved, the improvement is almost totally due to improved techniques: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK338593/. The limits of progress in diagnosis is due to the limitations of the space for improvements. See Nathaniel Laor and JA, Diagnosis: Philosophical and Medical Perspectives, 1990, Ch. 5.
Categories: Books and Book Reviews | <urn:uuid:b57ff2d1-c96f-4453-8270-102d359d129c> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://social-epistemology.com/2020/10/19/part-ii-etiology-academic-agonies-and-how-to-avoid-them-joseph-agassi/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573163.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20220818033705-20220818063705-00073.warc.gz | en | 0.97032 | 76,108 | 2.234375 | 2 |
Truth or lie - trust your instinct, says research
- 29 March 2014
- From the section Health
When it comes to detecting lies, you should trust your instinct, research suggests.
We are better at identifying liars when we rely on initial responses rather than thinking about it, say psychologists.
Generally we are poor at spotting liars - managing only slightly better than flipping a coin.
But our success rate rises when we harness the unconscious mind, according to a report in Psychological Science.
"What interested us about the unconscious mind is that it just might really be the seat of where accurate lie detection lives," said Dr Leanne ten Brinke of the University of California, Berkeley.
"So if our ability to detect lies is not conscious - we simply can't do this when we're thinking hard about it - then maybe it lives somewhere else, and so we thought one possible explanation was the unconscious mind."
When trying to find out if someone is lying, most people rely on cues like someone averting their gaze or appearing nervous.
However, research suggests this is not accurate - people perform at only about 50% accuracy in traditional lie detection tasks.
Psychologists at the University of California were puzzled by this, as some primates, such as chimps, are able to detect deceit - and evolutionary theory supposes that it maximises survival and reproductive success.
Dr Ten Brinke and colleagues devised experiments to test the ability of the unconscious mind to spot a liar, to see if they could do better than the conscious mind.
They gave 72 students videos to watch of "suspects" in a mock crime. Some of the suspects in the videos had stolen a $100 bill from a bookshelf, whereas others had not, but all were told to pretend they had not stolen the money.
When the participants were asked to say who they thought was lying and who was telling the truth, they were able to detect liars only 43% of the time, and truth-tellers only 48% of the time.
Then the researchers used a word association task to test unconscious perception.
The volunteers were asked to look at a picture of the suspect's face and choose which words came to mind from two lists - words such as untruthful and dishonest, or words such as honest and valid.
They performed better, providing evidence that we may have some intuitive sense, outside of conscious awareness, that detects when someone is lying.
This may mean intuitive decisions - such as who to be friends with and who to date - are guided by our unconscious mind telling us someone may be lying, said Dr Ten Brinke.
She added: "It's possible that we make decisions on a daily basis as to who we are going to continue to interact with, so we decide to become friends with some people and not others, to continue dating some people and not others, or to work closely with some and not others.
"Perhaps some of this decision is driven by our intuitive sense that some of these people we choose not to interact with are lying to us." | <urn:uuid:e59fc09b-a31a-411e-9c29-3be13983f6be> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.bbc.com/news/health-26764866 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282935.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00239-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973766 | 630 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Aims Exposure to diesel soot (black carbon, BC) is linked to adverse health in children. A cross-sectional study reported that BC in airway macrophages (AM BC), a marker of inhaled dose of diesel soot, is associated with decreased lung function in healthy children . These data are compatible with the reduction in growth of lung function associated with long-term exposure to elemental carbon reported in an 8 year epidemiological study of schoolchildren .To date, the determinants of AM BC are unknown. This is an important evidence gap since it is unclear whether policy-makers should target background BC, or peaks of freshly generated BC from roads. Using a newly developed portable monitor for BC, we sought to determine whether peaks in BC exposure are associated with airway macrophage black carbon (AM BC) in healthy schoolchildren.
Methods Sputum inductions were carried out at schools as previously described . Following processing, mean AM BC (µm2) for 50 randomly selected AM was calculated using Image J software.
Personal exposure to BC was measured by a portable aethalometer (MicroAeth AE51, Magee Scientific). This monitor continuously samples BC in the air and data is downloaded after 24 h using the microAethCOM PC-based software (Fig 1). The number of peaks of BC above 10000 ng/300 sec was determined for each child by inspection of the 24 h plot.
Results Twenty three children underwent sputum inductions. In the 15 children (65%) who produced sufficient AM for analysis, the median AM BC was 0.26278 µm2 (interquartile range (IQR) of 0.16164 to 0.42842 µm2). Personal 24 hour BC data was obtained in 13/15 children. The median BC exposure was 783758 ng (IQR: 336583.5 to 1321364.5 ng). Exposure peaks were caused by the school journey and cooking.
No significant correlation was found between the number of peaks of carbon exposure above 10000 ng/300 sec and average AM BC (µm2) (Fig 2). However the positive association (r = 0.40, Pearson coefficient) suggests that this pilot study may be underpowered.
Conclusion Linking external and inhaled dose of BC is feasible in schoolchildren, and may provide important insights into the determinants of inhaled dose of BC.
Kulkarni N, Pierse N, Rushton L, Grigg J. “Carbon in airway macrophages and lung function in children.” The New England Journal of Medicine 6, 355 (2006): 21–30.
Gauderman, WJ, E Avol, F Gilliland, H Vora, D Thomas, K Berhane, R McConnell, N Kuenzli, F Lurmann, E Rappaport, H Margolis, D Bates and J Peters. “The effect of air pollution on lung development from 10 to 18 years of age.” The New England Journal of Medicine 351, 11 (2004): 1057–1067.
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El módulo llevará a Mercurio Planetary Orbiter de Europa(Europe’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter) y de Japón Mercurio Magnetosférica Orbiter(Japan’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter ) junto al planeta más interior del Sol( the Sun’s innermost planet.).
- Title Mercury Transfer Module with integrated ion thrusters
- Released 06/09/2016 2:19 pm
- Copyright ESA–U. Reininghaus
- Description The base of ESA’s Mercury Transfer Module with its four T6 ion thrusters fully fitted for its 6.5 year journey to Mercury, along with the rest of the BepiColombo spacecraft.
The module will carry Europe’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and Japan’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter together to the Sun’s innermost planet.
“Completing the integration of the solar electric propulsion thruster floor is a major achievement for the BepiColombo project,” says project manager Ulrich Reininghaus.
The four ion thrusters are positioned at the bottom of the spacecraft, known as the ‘engine bay’, which provides the thrust during the mission’s journey, including long firing periods lasting several months at a time.
By ionising their propellant plume using electrical energy from the solar panels, the T6 thrusters can accelerate BepiColombo with an efficiency 15 times greater than a conventional chemical thruster.
The work took place at ESA’s centre in the Netherlands, the largest spacecraft testing facility in Europe.
The 22 cm-diameter T6 was designed for ESA by QinetiQ in the UK, whose expertise in electric propulsion stretches back to the 1960s.
It is a scaled-up version of the 10 cm T5 gridded ion thruster, which played a crucial role in ESA’s GOCE gravity-mapper by continuously compensating for vestigial atmospheric drag along its extremely low orbit.
Currently the Test Centre team is preparing the Large Space Simulator for a Sun simulation test planned for the end of this year.
“This will be a very challenging test,” says Georg Deutsch, ETS test programme manager. “Not only will the facility simulate a sun beam at 11000W/m2 but the facility’s vacuum pumps will have to cope with the release of Xenon gas caused by verifying the electrical propulsion system in vacuum”.
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- Set Technology image of the week
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
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Benedict XVI's Second Visit to a Mosque
Dialogue with Islam characterized the Jordanian stage of the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, along the road opened up in Regensburg. Published here for the first tine: the complete text of the discourse addressed to the pope by Muslim prince Ghazi Bin Muhammad Bin Talal
by Sandro Magister
ROME, May 11, 2009 – On his trip to the Holy Land, Benedict XVI has dedicated the first three days to Jordan. On previous papal voyages, the stay in this Muslim kingdom was more fleeting, as were the references to Islam. The new development has taken place with pope Joseph Raztinger. Relations with Islam have been at the center of the first part of his trip. And they will be given further visibility in Jerusalem, with the visit to the Dome of the Rock, recognized by Muslims as the spot from which Muhammad ascended to heaven.
Naturally, from the start Benedict XVI has stamped his trip with the imprint of a Christian pilgrimage, with careful attention to Christianity's roots in Judaism.
In Jordan, he began by going up on Mount Nebo, and from there, like Moses, looking at the Promised Land. There, he recalled "the inseparable bond that unites the Church to the Jewish people." And he finished by going to Bethany "beyond the Jordan," to the place where the last of the prophets, John the Baptist, baptized Jesus.
At each stage, he met with and encouraged the Christians living in that land, small communities very much in the minority, for whom life is not easy.
He celebrated the first public Mass of the trip with them in Amman, on Sunday, May 10. In the homily, he immediately stressed for them what had just been read: that apart for Jesus "there is no name under heaven given to men by which we are to be saved" (Acts 4:12).
He urged them to recognize the full dignity of women, and to "sacrifice" their own lives in service to others, the opposite of "ways of thinking that justify 'cutting short' innocent lives."
But it was in relation to Islam that Benedict XVI's remarks in Jordan were most fully elaborated, on two occasions in particular: when he blessed the first stone of a new Catholic university in Madaba, for students who will be mostly Muslim, and when he visited the Al-Hussein Bin Talal mosque in Amman.
In Madaba, on Saturday, May 9, the pope said:
"Belief in God does not suppress the search for truth; on the contrary it encourages it. Saint Paul exhorted the early Christians to open their minds to 'all that is true, all that is noble, all that is good and pure, all that we love and honor, all that is considered excellent or worthy of praise' (Phil 4:8). Religion, of course, like science and technology, philosophy and all expressions of our search for truth, can be corrupted. Religion is disfigured when pressed into the service of ignorance or prejudice, contempt, violence and abuse. In this case we see not only a perversion of religion but also a corruption of human freedom, a narrowing and blindness of the mind. Clearly, such an outcome is not inevitable. Indeed, when we promote education, we proclaim our confidence in the gift of freedom. The human heart can be hardened by the limits of its environment, by interests and passions. But every person is also called to wisdom and integrity, to the basic and all-important choice of good over evil, truth over dishonesty, and can be assisted in this task.
"The call to moral integrity is perceived by the genuinely religious person, since the God of truth and love and beauty cannot be served in any other way. Mature belief in God serves greatly to guide the acquisition and proper application of knowledge. Science and technology offer extraordinary benefits to society and have greatly improved the quality of life of many human beings. Undoubtedly this is one of the hopes of those who are promoting this University, whose motto is 'Sapientia et Scientia'. At the same time the sciences have their limitations. They cannot answer all the questions about man and his existence. Indeed the human person, his place and purpose in the universe cannot be contained within the confines of science. 'Humanity’s intellectual nature finds its perfection ultimately in wisdom, which gently draws the human mind to seek and to love what is true and good' (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 15). The use of scientific knowledge needs the guiding light of ethical wisdom. Such is the wisdom that inspired the Hippocratic Oath, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Convention and other laudable international codes of conduct. Hence religious and ethical wisdom, by answering questions of meaning and value, play a central role in professional formation. And consequently, those universities where the quest for truth goes hand in hand with the search for what is good and noble, offer an indispensable service to society."
But it was in Amman, visiting the Al-Hussein Bin Talal mosque, that Benedict XVI entered most directly into the heart of the matter.
The place and the audience were rich in significance. The pope was hosted by Prince Ghazi Bin Muhammad Bin Talal, 42, cousin of the current king of Jordan, Abdullah II, the son of the deceased King Hussein after whom the mosque is named.
Prince Ghazi is the most authoritative proponent of the open letter "A common word between us and you," addressed to the pope and to the heads of the other Christian confessions in October of 2007 by 138 Muslim figures from many different countries.
The letter was the most important follow-up, from the Muslim camp, to the dialogue that Benedict XVI opened with his memorable lecture at the University of Regensburg on September 11, 2006.
The letter of the 138 gave rise to a permanent forum of Catholic-Muslim dialogue, the first session of which was held in Rome from November 4-6, 2008, which concluded with a meeting with the pope.
In Amman, on Saturday, May 9, Prince Ghazi first accompanied Benedict XVI on his visit to the mosque – where both had a "moment of recollection" – and then, outside of the building, addressed an extensive welcome speech to him, followed by the remarks of the pope.
The complete texts of the two speeches are presented below. Prince Ghazi's, delivered in English and unpublished until now, was carefully transcribed by "L'Osservatore Romano," which published only a brief summary of this.
The pope's speech revisits themes and arguments that he has already developed in previous discourses, while Prince Ghazi's seems more unusual, especially in a Muslim world that until now has been almost entirely in the dark about the progress underway in dialogue with the Catholic Church.
In fact, Benedict XVI's visit to Jordan has marked a new development in this regard as well. Thanks to the worldwide public impact of the trip and to the exchange of speeches between the pope and Prince Ghazi, a "common word" of dialogue between the Catholic Church and Islam has for the first time reached a portion of Muslim public opinion, to an unprecedented extent.
"Together, Christians and Muslims are impelled to seek all that is just and right"
by Benedict XVI
Your Royal Highness,
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a source of great joy for me to meet with you this morning in this magnificent setting. I wish to thank Prince Ghazi Bin Muhammed Bin Talal for his kind words of welcome. Your Royal Highness’s numerous initiatives to promote inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue and exchanges are appreciated by the people of the Hashemite Kingdom and they are widely respected by the international community. I know that these efforts receive the active support of other members of the Royal Family as well as the nation’s government, and find ample resonance in the many initiatives of collaboration among Jordanians. For all this, I wish to express my own heartfelt admiration.
Places of worship, like this splendid Al-Hussein Bin Talal mosque named after the revered late King, stand out like jewels across the earth’s surface. From the ancient to the modern, the magnificent to the humble, they all point to the divine, to the Transcendent One, to the Almighty. And through the centuries these sanctuaries have drawn men and women into their sacred space to pause, to pray, to acknowledge the presence of the Almighty, and to recognize that we are all his creatures.
For this reason we cannot fail to be concerned that today, with increasing insistency, some maintain that religion fails in its claim to be, by nature, a builder of unity and harmony, an expression of communion between persons and with God. Indeed some assert that religion is necessarily a cause of division in our world; and so they argue that the less attention given to religion in the public sphere the better. Certainly, the contradiction of tensions and divisions between the followers of different religious traditions, sadly, cannot be denied. However, is it not also the case that often it is the ideological manipulation of religion, sometimes for political ends, that is the real catalyst for tension and division, and at times even violence in society? In the face of this situation, where the opponents of religion seek not simply to silence its voice but to replace it with their own, the need for believers to be true to their principles and beliefs is felt all the more keenly. Muslims and Christians, precisely because of the burden of our common history so often marked by misunderstanding, must today strive to be known and recognized as worshippers of God faithful to prayer, eager to uphold and live by the Almighty’s decrees, merciful and compassionate, consistent in bearing witness to all that is true and good, and ever mindful of the common origin and dignity of all human persons, who remain at the apex of God’s creative design for the world and for history.
The resolve of Jordanian educators and religious and civic leaders to ensure that the public face of religion reflects its true nature is praiseworthy. The example of individuals and communities, together with the provision of courses and programs, manifest the constructive contribution of religion to the educational, cultural, social and other charitable sectors of your civic society. Some of this spirit I have been able to sample at first hand. Yesterday, I experienced the renowned educational and rehabilitation work of the Our Lady of Peace Centre where Christians and Muslims are transforming the lives of entire families, by assisting them to ensure that their disabled children take up their rightful place in society. Earlier this morning, I blessed the foundation stone of Madaba University where young Muslim and Christian adults will side by side receive the benefits of a tertiary education, enabling them to contribute justly to the social and economic development of their nation. Of great merit too are the numerous initiatives of inter-religious dialogue supported by the Royal Family and the diplomatic community and sometimes undertaken in conjunction with the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue. These include the ongoing work of the Royal Institutes for Inter-faith studies and for Islamic Thought, the Amman Message of 2004, the Amman Interfaith Message of 2005, and the more recent Common Word letter which echoed a theme consonant with my first encyclical: the unbreakable bond between love of God and love of neighbor, and the fundamental contradiction of resorting to violence or exclusion in the name of God (cf. Deus Caritas Est, 16).
Such initiatives clearly lead to greater reciprocal knowledge, and they foster a growing respect both for what we hold in common and for what we understand differently. Thus, they should prompt Christians and Muslims to probe even more deeply the essential relationship between God and his world so that together we may strive to ensure that society resonates in harmony with the divine order. In this regard, the co-operation found here in Jordan sets an encouraging and persuasive example for the region, and indeed the world, of the positive, creative contribution which religion can and must make to civic society.
Distinguished friends, today I wish to refer to a task which I have addressed on a number of occasions and which I firmly believe Christians and Muslims can embrace, particularly through our respective contributions to learning and scholarship, and public service. That task is the challenge to cultivate for the good, in the context of faith and truth, the vast potential of human reason. Christians in fact describe God, among other ways, as creative Reason, which orders and guides the world. And God endows us with the capacity to participate in his reason and thus to act in accordance with what is good. Muslims worship God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, who has spoken to humanity. And as believers in the one God we know that human reason is itself God’s gift and that it soars to its highest plane when suffused with the light of God’s truth. In fact, when human reason humbly allows itself to be purified by faith, it is far from weakened; rather, it is strengthened to resist presumption and to reach beyond its own limitations. In this way, human reason is emboldened to pursue its noble purpose of serving mankind, giving expression to our deepest common aspirations and extending, rather than manipulating or confining, public debate. Thus, genuine adherence to religion – far from narrowing our minds – widens the horizon of human understanding. It protects civil society from the excesses of the unbridled ego which tend to absolutize the finite and eclipse the infinite; it ensures that freedom is exercised hand in hand with truth, and it adorns culture with insights concerning all that is true, good and beautiful.
This understanding of reason, which continually draws the human mind beyond itself in the quest for the Absolute, poses a challenge; it contains a sense of both hope and caution. Together, Christians and Muslims are impelled to seek all that is just and right. We are bound to step beyond our particular interests and to encourage others, civil servants and leaders in particular, to do likewise in order to embrace the profound satisfaction of serving the common good, even at personal cost. And we are reminded that because it is our common human dignity which gives rise to universal human rights, they hold equally for every man and woman, irrespective of his or her religious, social or ethnic group. In this regard, we must note that the right of religious freedom extends beyond the question of worship and includes the right – especially of minorities – to fair access to the employment market and other spheres of civic life.
Before I leave you this morning I would like to acknowledge in a special way the presence among us of His Beatitude Emmanuel III Delly, Patriarch of Baghdad, whom I greet most warmly. His presence brings to mind the people of neighboring Iraq many of whom have found welcome refuge here in Jordan. The international community’s efforts to promote peace and reconciliation, together with those of the local leaders, must continue in order to bear fruit in the lives of Iraqis. I wish to express my appreciation for all those who are assisting in the endeavors to deepen trust and to rebuild the institutions and infrastructure essential to the well-being of that society. And once again, I urge diplomats and the international community they represent together with local political and religious leaders to do everything possible to ensure the ancient Christian community of that noble land its fundamental right to peaceful coexistence with their fellow citizens.
Distinguished friends, I trust that the sentiments I have expressed today will leave us with renewed hope for the future. Our love and duty before the Almighty is expressed not only in our worship but also in our love and concern for children and young people – your families – and for all Jordanians. It is for them that you labor and it is they who motivate you to place the good of every human person at the heart of institutions, laws and the workings of society. May reason, ennobled and humbled by the grandeur of God’s truth, continue to shape the life and institutions of this nation, in order that families may flourish and that all may live in peace, contributing to and drawing upon the culture that unifies this great Kingdom!
__________"A pope who has the moral courage to do and speak his conscience"by Ghazi Bin Muhammad Bin Talal
"Pax vobis." On the occasion of this historic visit to the Al-Hussein Bin Talal mosque here in Amman, I bid Your Holiness Pope Benedict XVI welcome in four ways.
First, as a Muslim. I bid Your Holiness welcome today as we understand this visit to be a deliberate gesture of good will and mutual respect from the supreme spiritual leader and pontiff of the largest denomination of the world's largest religion to the world's second-largest religion. Indeed, Christians and Muslims make up over 55% of the world's population and so it is especially significant that this is only the third time in history a reigning pope has visited a mosque, the first being by Your Holiness's much-beloved predecessor, Pope John Paul II, to the historical Umayyad mosque in Damascus, which contains the remains of John the Baptist in 2001, and the second being by Your Holiness to the magnificent Blue Mosque in Istanbul in 2006.
The beautiful King Hussein mosque in Amman, Jordan is Jordan's state mosque, and it was built and personally supervised by His Majesty King Abdullah II in loving honor of his late father, Jordan's great King Hussein, may God have mercy on his soul. Thus, this is the first time in history that a pope has ever visited a new mosque; hence, we see in this visit a clear message of the necessity of interfaith harmony and mutual respect in the contemporary world, as well as concrete proof of the willingness of Your Holiness to personally take a leading role in this.
This gesture is all the more remarkable, given the fact that this visit to Jordan by Your Holiness is primarily a spiritual pilgrimage to the Christian Holy Land, and in particular to the site of the baptism of Jesus Christ by John the Baptist at Bethany beyond the Jordan, John 1:28 and John 3:26.
And yet Your Holiness has made time, in your intense and tiring schedule, tiring for a man of any age, for this visit to the King Hussein mosque, in order to honor Muslims.
I must also thank Your Holiness, for the regret you expressed after the Regentsburg lecture of September 13, 2006, for the hurt caused by this lecture to Muslims. Of course Muslims know that nothing that can be said or done in this world can harm the Prophet, who is, as his last words attested, with the highest companion, God himself, in paradise.
But Muslims were, nevertheless, hurt because of their love for the Prophet, who is, as God says in the Holy Qu'uran, closer to the believers than their own selves. Hence, Muslims also especially appreciated the clarification by the Vatican that what was said in the Regensburg lecture did not reflect Your Holiness's own opinion, but was rather simply a citation in an academic lecture.
It hardly needs to be said, moreover, that the prophet Muhammad, whom Muslims love, emulate, and know as a living reality and spiritual presence, is completely and entirely different from the historical depictions of him in the West, ever since St John of Damascus. These distorted depictions by those who either do not know Arabic or the Holy Qur'an or who do not understand the historical and cultural contexts of the prophet's life, and thus misunderstand and misconstrue the spiritual motives and intentions behind many of the prophet's actions and words, are unfortunately responsible for much historical and cultural tension between Christians and Muslims.
It is thus incumbent upon Muslims to explain the prophet's example, above all, with deeds of virtue, charity, and piety and good will, recalling that the Prophet himself was of an exalted nature. For God says in the Holy Qu'uran, “Verily ye have in the messenger of God a beautiful pattern of conduct for whosoever hopes in God and the last day, and remembereth God much.”
Finally, I must thank Your Holiness for many other friendly gestures and kindly actions towards Muslims since your ascension in 2005, including graciously receiving both His Majesty King Abdullah II Bin Al-Hussein of Jordan in 2005, and His Majesty King Abdullah Bin Ad-Al-Haziz of Saudi Arabia, the custodian of the two holy places, in 2008. And also especially for your warm reception of the historical or common word between us and you, the open letter of October 13, 2007, by 138 leading international Muslim scholars, whose numbers continue increasing to this day.
It was as a result of this initiative, which, based on the Holy Qur'an and the Bible, recognized the primacy of the love of God and the love of neighbor in both Christianity and Islam, that the Vatican, under Your Holiness's personal guidance, held the first seminar of the international Muslim-Catholic forum, from November 4-6, 2008.
We will shortly be following up, with the very able Cardinal Tauran, the work initiated by this meeting, but for now I would like to cite and echo your words from the speech Your Holiness gave on the occasion of the end of the first seminar, and I quote, "The theme which you have chosen for your meeting – love of God, love of the neighbor, the dignity of the human person, and mutual respect – is particularly significant. It was taken from the open letter, which presents love of God and love of the neighbor as the heart of Islam and Christianity alike. This theme highlights even more clearly the theological and spiritual foundations of a central teaching of our respective religions. [...] I am well aware that Muslims and Christians have different approaches in matters regarding God, yet we can and must be worshippers of the one God, who created us and is concerned about each person in every corner of the world. [...] There is a great and vast field in which we can act together, in defending and promoting the moral values which are part of our common heritage."
Now I cannot but help remember God's words in the Holy Qu'uran: “Yet they are not all alike.” Some of the people of the Scripture are an upright community, who recite God's verses in the watches of the night, prostrating themselves. They believe in God and in the last day, enjoining decency and forbidding indecency, vying with one another in good works. Those are of the righteous, and whatever good they do, they shall not be denied it, and God knows the God-fearing. And also God's words: "And you will find, and you will truly find, the nearest of them to those who believe, to be those who say, verily we are Christians. That is because some of them are priests, and monks."
Second, as a Hashemite, and a descendant of the prophet Muhammad. I also bid Your Holiness welcome to this mosque in Jordan remembering that the prophet Muhammad welcomed his Christian neighbors from Najran to Medina, and invited them to pray in his own mosque, which they did in harmony, without either side compromising their own spiritual beliefs. This too is an invaluable lesson which the world desperately needs to remember.
Third, as an Arab, and a direct descendant of Ishmael Ali-Salaam, of whom the Bible says God would make a great nation, Genesis 21:18, and that God was with him, Genesis 21:20, I bid Your Holiness welcome.
One of the cardinal virtues of the Arabs, who traditionally have survived in some of the hottest and most inhospitable climates in the world, is hospitality. Hospitality is born of generosity, and it recognizes the needs of the neighbor and considers those who are far, or who come from far, as neighbors, and indeed this virtue is confirmed by God in the Holy Qur'an with the words: “And worship God, and associate man with him, be kind to parents, and near kindred, and to orphans, and to the needy, and to the neighbor who is far and to the neighbor who is near, and to the neighbor who is a stranger, and to the friend at your side. And to the wayfarer, and to what your right hands possess, surely God loves not the conceited and the boastful.
Arab hospitality means not only loving to give and help, but also being generous of spirit, and thus appreciative. In 2000, during the late Pope John Paul II's visit to Jordan, I was working with the Jordanian tribes, and some of the tribesmen were saying that they really liked the late pope. Someone asked them: “Why do you like him?”, since he was a Christian and they were Muslims. They smiled and said: “Because he visited us." And of course, the late Pope John Paul II, like yourself, Holiness, could have easily gone to Israel and Palestine, but instead chose to start his pilgrimage with a visit to us here in Jordan, which we appreciate.
Fourth and finally, as a Jordanian, I bid Your Holiness welcome. In Jordan, everyone is equal before the law, regardless of religion, race, origin or gender, and those who work in the government are responsible to do their utmost to care for everyone in the country with compassion and with justice. This was the personal example and message of the late King Hussein, who over his long reign of 47 years, felt for everyone in the country as he did for his own children. It is also the message of his son, His Majesty King Abdullah II, who accordingly has made it the singular goal of his life and reign, to make the life of every Jordanian and indeed every person in the world that he can reach, as decent, dignified, and happy as he possibly can, with Jordan's meager resources.
Today, Christians in Jordan enjoy, by law, eight percent of the seats in Parliament and similar quotas at every level of government and society, even though their numbers are less than that in actual fact. In addition to their own personal status laws and church courts, their holy sites, and their legal educational institutions and other needs are safeguarded by the state. And Your Holiness has just seen this in person, at the new Catholic university of Madaba, and will, God willing, soon see the new Catholic cathedral and the new Melkite church at the baptism site.
And so Christians prosper today in Jordan, as they have for the last two thousand years, in peace and harmony, and with good will and genuine brotherly relations between them and their Muslim neighbors. This is, in part of course, because Christians used to be more numerous in Jordan percentagewise than they are today, but declining Christian birthrates and, conversely, high levels of education and prosperity which have led to their being in demand as immigrants to the West, have reduced their numbers. It is also, however, due to the fact that Jordan appreciates that Christians were in Jordan six hundred years before Muslims. Indeed, Jordanian Christians are perhaps the oldest Christian community in the world, and the majority have always been Orthodox, adherents of the Orthodox patriarchate of Jerusalem in the Holy Land, which, as Your Holiness knows better than I, is the church of St James, and was founded during Jesus own lifetime.
Many of them are descended from the ancient Arab tribes, and they have, throughout history, shared the fate and struggles of their fellow Muslim tribesman. Indeed, in 630, during the Prophet's own lifetime, they joined the Prophet's own army, led by his adopted son, and his cousin, and fought against the Byzantine army of their fellow Orthodox, at the battle of Mechtar. It is because of this battle, that they earned their tribal name, which means “the reinforcements”, and Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal himself comes from these tribes.
Then, in 1099, they were slaughtered by Catholic crusaders at the fall of Jerusalem, alongside their Muslim comrades. Later, from 1916 to 1918, during the Great Arab Revolt, they fought against Muslim Turks, alongside Arab-Muslim comrades. They thereafter languished for a few decades, along with their Muslim fellows, under a Protestant colonial mandate, and in the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948, 1967, and 1972, they fought with their Muslim-Arab comrades against Jewish opponents.
Christian Jordanians have always not only defended Jordan but have also tirelessly and patriotically helped to build Jordan, playing leading roles in the fields of education, health, commerce, tourism, agriculture, science, culture, and many other fields. All this is to say, then, that whilst Your Holiness may believe them to be your fellow Christians, we know them to be our fellow Jordanians. And they are as much a part of this country as the land itself. We hope that this unique Jordanian spirit of interfaith harmony, benevolence and mutual respect, will serve as an example to the whole world, and Your Holiness will carry it to places like Mindanao and certain parts of sub-Saharan Africa, where Muslim minorities are hard-pressed by Christian majorities, as well as to other places, where the opposite is the case.
Now, just as we welcome Your Holiness today in four ways, we receive Your Holiness today in four ways.
First, we receive Your Holiness as the spiritual leader, Supreme Pontiff, and Successor of St Peter, for 1.1 billion Catholics, who are neighbors of Muslims everywhere, and whom we greet through receiving you.
Second, we receive Your Holiness as Pope Benedict XVI, in particular whose reign has been marked by the moral courage to do and speak his conscience, no matter what the vogue of the day, who is personally also a master Christian theologian, responsible for historic encyclical letters on the beautiful cardinal virtues of charity and hope, who has refacilitated the traditional Latin Mass for those who choose it, and who has simultaneously made intrafaith and interfaith dialogue a top priority of his reign, in order to spread good will and understanding throughout all peoples of the world.
Third, we receive Your Holiness as a head of state, who is also a world and global leader on the vital issues of morality, ethics, the environment, peace, human dignity, the alleviation of poverty and suffering, and even the global financial crisis.
Fourth and finally, we receive Your Holiness as a simple pilgrim of peace who comes in humility and gentleness to pray where Jesus Christ the Messiah, may peace be upon him, was baptized and began his mission two thousand years ago.
So, welcome to Jordan, Your Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI. God says in the Holy Qur'an to the prophet Muhammad: “Glory be to your Lord, the Lord of might... And peace be to the messengers, and praise be to God, the Lord of the worlds.”
The schedule, speeches, and homilies of the voyage of Benedict XVI:> Pilgrimage to the Holy Land, May 8-15, 2009
All of the articles from www.chiesa on the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Muslim world:> Focus on ISLAM | <urn:uuid:fcbc5949-f379-4edb-b677-776f1b38cedd> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1338349?eng=y | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280292.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00347-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964701 | 6,426 | 1.960938 | 2 |
A large crowd filled a Mars Area School District meeting Tuesday evening, insisting that the board reject a proposal by Rex Energy to drill, or "frack" as it's known, on school district property.
At times the meeting was exuberant. It was standing room only. Parents such as Colleen Tully brought signs, including one with the face of her first grade daughter, Alexandra.
"I want the board to look into her eyes and see when they vote it's a yes or no to her," Tully said.
The school board said Rex Energy offered the district about $1 million upfront, plus royalties over five years.
Many at the meeting said fracking comes with the potential for health dangers, and many parents said the money isn't worth the risk.
"It's a growing community. They don't need the money that was being offered," said Tony Lapini, a parent.
People said they were relieved by the decision.
After three months of research, the school board explained its decision to reject the proposal.
"I think the board had to think about themselves tonight as good stewards representing the public trust and they reached the conclusion that this was not an appropriate thing to do here in Mars," said Mars Area School District Solicitor Tom King.
Rex Energy officials gave a statement saying they are disappointed with the decision, but do respect the school board's decision.
"We will maintain open communication with the district, and other community stakeholders, as Rex Energy moves forward with safe, tightly regulated development plans for this project, spokesperson Mike Endler said. | <urn:uuid:67ec26fd-0451-4cb7-b76a-588f4ec8dfae> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.wtae.com/news/mars-area-school-district-rejects-proposal-to-drill-on-school-property/24931124 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988718285.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183838-00106-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985934 | 323 | 1.554688 | 2 |
|Posted by Elwin Green on June 1, 2012 at 2:05 PM|
A local preservationists' group has named Race Street as one of Pittsburgh's most preservation-worthy sites.
The Young Preservationists Assocation of Pittsburgh, based in Homestead, placed the five-block street on its list of "Top Ten Best Preservation Opportunities in the PIttsburgh Area."
The organization used five criteria to determine whether to place a site on the list: it had to be at least 50 years old; posses historical or architectural significance; be facing signficant threats; have community members working to restore it; and have feasible solutions being planned.
In its Facebook posting naming Race Street to the list, YPA called Race Street "a prime example of middle-class black Pittsburgh, with well-kept homes, modest yards, and a friendly neighborhood vibe."
The post also cited the Save Race Street Committee for its work in cleaning the street, collaborating with outside agencies on projects, and planning for Race Street's future.
The most recent example of collaboration was the planting of some 20 street trees on April 28. Next up: building a raised flower bed tomorrow morning with the help of staffers from GTECH Strategies Inc., and a group of volunteers.
The Young Preservationists Association will give the awards for their Top Ten during their 10th Anniversary celebration at 6 pm tomorrow evening at the Union Project, at Negley and Stanton Avenues. To register, visit http://www.youngpreservationists.org/ypas-tenth-anniversary-celebration-june-2
CORRECTION: The address of the Union Project was originally given as "Highland and Stanton Avenues." | <urn:uuid:0c392661-9042-4a45-9322-f52ad0ef94e8> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.homewoodnation.com/apps/blog/show/15652070-race-street-preservationists-put-street-in-the-limelight | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280761.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00089-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950242 | 351 | 1.703125 | 2 |
I’m a PC gamer.
There, I’ve said it. These days, saying that seems to have an nostalgic, almost anachronistic sound. I predict that calling myself a PC gamer will be like someone today bragging about their 8-track collection.
That’s not to say that PC gaming is doomed. But the days of PC gaming as I knew it is probably coming to an end, and something very different will be replacing it. One reason is the ongoing battle between game publishers and pirates.
Piracy is rampant in PC games. Piracy also exists in console gaming, but it’s far more risky. Console game pirates have to burn physical media or even mod the consoles, which can result in legal games being unplayable and the modder being booted from online services, like Microsoft’s Xbox Live.
PC gaming piracy, on the other hand, is easier. Crack the game, feed it to the world using Bittorent or other file sharing schemes, and the game is available to the world. In the past, the game publishers and developers have used a myriad of schemes to combat piracy. In the old days, you had games that literally booted from the floppy disk. Other games forced you to enter text directly from the manual to continue playing. Then there were the infamous code wheels, such as those shipped with some LucasArts flight sims.
Once optical drives became prevalent, various schemes were created to check for the presence of the CD. In addition, CD keys—essentially password checks to legally install a game—have become common. As pirates became smarter and more aggressive, copy protection became more elaborate. Schemes such as Starforce and the more recent versions of SecuROM created headaches for legitimate users, introducing compatibility and performance problems. Sometimes it’s just too much of a headache to get a game running.
How rampant is copy protection? It’s certainly very common in AAA games. Take this tidbid, snatched from Robert Bowling’s blog. Robert is the community manager for Infinity Ward, creator’s of the highly popular Call of Duty 4. In his post, “They Wonder Why People Don’t Make PC Games Any More”, Robert notes:
On another PC related note, we pulled some disturbing numbers this past week about the amount of PC players currently playing Multiplayer (which was fantastic). What wasn’t fantastic was the percentage of those numbers who were playing on stolen copies of the game on stolen / cracked CD keys of pirated copies (and that was only people playing online).
Not sure if I can share the exact numbers or percentage of PC players with you, but I’ll check and see; if I can I’ll update with them. As the amount of people who pirate PC games is astounding. It blows me away at the amount of people willing to steal games (or anything) simply because it’s not physical or it’s on the safety of the internet to do.
On a related note, Iron Lore Entertainment shut down. The reasons are complex, but part of the problem may be lost sales of Titan Quest due to piracy. Michael Fitch, who worked closely with Iron Lore, offered up his thoughts:
So, ILE (shut down. This is tangentially related to that, not why they shut down, but part of why it was such a difficult freaking slog trying not to. It’s a rough, rough world out there for independent studios who want to make big games, even worse if you’re single-team and don’t have a successful franchise to ride or a wealthy benefactor. Trying to make it on PC product is even tougher, and here’s why.
Piracy. Yeah, that’s right, I said it. No, I don’t want to re-hash the endless “piracy spreads awareness”, “I only pirate because there’s no demo”, “people who pirate wouldn’t buy the game anyway” round-robin. Been there, done that. I do want to point to a couple of things, though.
One, there are other costs to piracy than just lost sales. For example, with TQ, the game was pirated and released on the nets before it hit stores. It was a fairly quick-and-dirty crack job, and in fact, it missed a lot of the copy-protection that was in the game. One of the copy-protection routines was keyed off the quest system, for example. You could start the game just fine, but when the quest triggered, it would do a security check, and dump you out if you had a pirated copy. There was another one in the streaming routine. So, it’s a couple of days before release, and I start seeing people on the forums complaining about how buggy the game is, how it crashes all the time. A lot of people are talking about how it crashes right when you come out of the first cave. Yeah, that’s right. There was a security check there.
Two, the numbers on piracy are really astonishing. The research I’ve seen pegs the piracy rate at between 70-85% on PC in the US, 90%+ in Europe, off the charts in Asia. I didn’t believe it at first. It seemed way too high. Then I saw that Bioshock was selling 5 to 1 on console vs. PC. And Call of Duty 4 was selling 10 to 1. These are hardcore games, shooters, classic PC audience stuff. Given the difference in install base, I can’t believe that there’s that big of a difference in who played these games, but I guess there can be in who actually paid for them.
Let’s dig a little deeper there. So, if 90% of your audience is stealing your game, even if you got a little bit more, say 10% of that audience to change their ways and pony up, what’s the difference in income? Just about double. That’s right, double. That’s easily the difference between commercial failure and success. That’s definitely the difference between doing okay and founding a lasting franchise. Even if you cut that down to 1% – 1 out of every hundred people who are pirating the game – who would actually buy the game, that’s still a 10% increase in revenue. Again, that’s big enough to make the difference between breaking even and making a profit. Continued…
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- Next » | <urn:uuid:68e65bdd-6e13-4a5d-8623-30f3915a0d0d> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.extremetech.com/computing/80316-piracy-copy-protection-and-the-evolution-of-pc-gaming | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280242.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00082-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966874 | 1,385 | 1.875 | 2 |
The number and types of companies that have embraced stand-up barrier pouches grow week by week. Considering that this type of packaging can be customized in several ways to add convenience features and safety designs, they’re the optimal solution to package and protect a wide range of products.
If you’re thinking about using high barrier pouches to package your product, here are some of the most common uses and customization options available.
Uses for Stand-up Barrier Pouches
There are three main uses for stand-up barrier pouches, and from thereon they can be used in a variety of applications.
Liquids or Foods with Moisture Content
This is where it all began; stand-up high barrier pouches were initially used to hold kids’ juice. They could be hermetically sealed and sterilized, they were lightweight compared to the bottles used to package juice, they took up less space than juice bottles when they were filled and cartoned and the materials used to construct the pouched were tested and deemed to be safe for holding consumables. Over time, the list of products in this category that could be safely packaged has continually expanded with current examples including sauces, fish and other seafood products and even ice cream. Current packaging technology and the wide range of films available results in performance tailored, multi-layer constructions that ensure the packaged product will retain the moisture content the brand owner wants the consumer to enjoy.
Snacks and Other Dry Foods
Not long after the initial application for fruit juice, food companies began to realize the benefits of stand-up pouches for a broader range of food applications, e.g., snack foods, dehydrated fruits, nuts and candy among others. Consumers were happy with the expanded applications because of the convenience factors and brand owners were happy with the cost-effective solution a stand-up pouch represented while being able to stand out among its competitors on the shelf.
Because of their versatile design, protective properties and cost-effectiveness, brand owners well outside of the consumable arena are packaging more and more products in stand-up pouches. The list is long and varied, ranging from lawn and garden chemicals, motor oil, alcoholic beverages and laundry supplies.
Applications of Stand-up High Barrier Pouches
The nature of the product and the highly competitive battle on the shelf are reasons that food and snack manufacturers are choosing to package their products in stand-up pouches. The protection flexible packaging delivers in conjunction with the convenience features and ability to present eye-catching graphics have long been recognized by brand owners. Some of the more common applications of stand-up pouches you’ll see at your local supermarket include the following.
Tea and Coffee
Indie tea and coffee brands understand that stand-up, high barrier pouches are a cost-effective way to package their products while protecting the product while on the shelf. This is achieved by selecting films to produce a high moisture barrier and heat sealing the perimeter to create a hermetic seal, preserving freshness and aroma.
Dry pet food and treats, especially the premium brands, are almost without exception packaged in recloseable high barrier bags or stand-up pouches. It is critical to protect the dry food or treats from moisture migrating through the packaging material and brand owners realize that there is not a better solution than high barrier flexible packaging to both protect and promote their brand. In addition, the nature of the product means that the pet owner will be repeatedly accessing the contents and the ability of packaging manufacturers to add a variation of closures significantly raises the convenience factor.
Although the classic Heinz bottle of ketchup may be how you think of a condiment, don’t forget the role high barrier flexible packaging plays in the fast food world. The little squeeze packages of ketchup that are ubiquitous in burger joints are a high-tech solution to the challenge of “having it your way”. The ability of each customer to be able to put just the “right” amount of ketchup on their burger 100% compliments the fast food chains desire to make every customer happy with their meal every time. From a beginning of just ketchup in squeeze packs, now it is common to find an array of condiment options, including mustard, relish, mayo and hot sauce among others.
Customizing a Stand-up Barrier Pouch
Consumers and brand owners alike appreciate the protective properties and associated benefits that a well-made stand-up pouch can deliver, or for that matter, any bag or pouch made from high barrier flexible packaging. The basic structure also allows for a list of value-added design options that continue to grow in popularity with consumers. These include:
The “custom” in custom stand-up high barrier pouches doesn’t mean just graphics. The specific materials laminated together by the manufacturer are designed to deliver specific benefits and properties such as a very long shelf life, a matte finish, a lighter weight, a crystal-clear window in the design, etc., Depending upon a brand owner’s requirements, a custom manufacturer has a broad range of different types of films available to produce the finished material to preserve, protect and showcase each customers’ products.
Tear Notch & Hang Hole
A tear notch, used to make opening a bag easy, can be added to the design of any bag. It is comprised of two punch outs on opposite sides of the bag at the top that indicate to the consumer where to initially open the bag by tearing across the top. A hang hole can be cut out of the material across the top of a bag in the area called the header. The hole is centered on the top and is created at the request of the brand owner when the bag is going to be displayed hanging on a hook or a rack. The hang hole is not usually used in conjunction with a stand-up pouch design; it is much more common on flat bags.
Arguably the most popular convenience feature on a stand-up pouch is a zipper or other closure system that give the consumer the ability to open and then reseal the pouch multiple times. The standard type of zipper used is known as a press-to-close style, comprised of two matching tracks applied to opposite sides within the pouch. To close the package, the zipper tracks need to be aligned and then pressed together. A recently developed alternative is a system using mini hooks and loops, kind of like Velcro. Two strips are applied to opposite sides inside the top of the pouch and then simple pressure is used to secure them together and close the package. A benefit is that there are no tracks and therefore no are for crumbs or powdered product to collect and cause difficulty closing.
These are some of the uses, applications and customization options for stand-up barrier pouches, one of most versatile packaging options available to brand owners today. | <urn:uuid:4bf5f373-1d76-4fdc-a364-fccba6ff3d23> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.lpsind.com/stand-up-barrier-pouches/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573908.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20220820043108-20220820073108-00274.warc.gz | en | 0.944892 | 1,432 | 1.53125 | 2 |
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the use of Plan B One-Step without a prescription for all women.
The FDA announced on Thursday that it would allow all women with child-bearing potential to purchase the emergency contraceptive over-the-counter without any age or point-of-sale barriers.
Plan B-One Step (levonorgestrel) is a form of the "morning-after pill," a type of emergency contraception that drastically reduces the chance of pregnancy after a woman has engaged in unprotected sex. There are currently three types of morning-after pills for sale in the U.S.: Plan B One-Step, Plan B, and ella. Plan B is currently available for women 17 and older over the counter, and requires a prescription for those under the age limit. Ella requires a prescription regardless of age.
Plan B One-Step works best when it is taken within three days after sexual intercourse. It will not stop a pregnancy if a woman is already pregnant, and no evidence shows that it will harm a fetus that already exists.
"Over-the-counter access to emergency contraceptive products has the potential to further decrease the rate of unintended pregnancies in the United States," said Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a press release.
The new approval was years in the making.
In 2011, the FDA was preparing to allow over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill without age restrictions, citing research of the pill's safety and effectiveness. After, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius rejected the move. Her decision went against her scientific advisory panel. President Barack Obama said at the time that he supported the decision.
"As the father of two daughters, I think it is important for us to make sure that we apply some common sense to various rules when it comes to over-the-counter medicine,"
On April 5, 2013 U.S. District Judge Edward Korman ruled that, calling the FDA's age restrictions "arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable." He gave the FDA 30 days to comply.
However, Plan B One-Step had withdrawn its all ages, over-the-counter approval request, and resubmitted an application asking for the product to be approved for those 15 and older. In late April, the. The agency said the products would be in stores with onsite pharmacies, although they could be sold after the pharmacy closed. In addition to theft-deterrent tags, age verification checks were required at the counter before purchase.
that the age barrier still remained, and pointed out that requiring identification would make it more difficult for some women to access the product.
"Lowering the age restriction to 15 for over-the-counter access to Plan B One-Step may reduce delays for some young women -- but it does nothing to address the significant barriers that far too many women of all ages will still find if they arrive at the drugstore without identification or after the pharmacy gates have been closed for the night or weekend," Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a press release. "These are daunting and sometimes insurmountable hoops women are forced to jump through in time-sensitive circumstances, and we will continue our battle in court to remove these arbitrary restrictions on emergency contraception for all women."
The Obama administration said itallowing women of all ages to have access to the morning-after pill.
Korman said on May 10 that.
On June 10, the federal government saidand withdraw the appeal. A federal judge l to remove the age restrictions on June 13, paving the way for the FDA to fast-track today's approval. | <urn:uuid:8b0a778a-333b-411b-8de2-de25d51870b2> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fda-approves-over-the-counter-sales-of-plan-b-one-step-for-all-ages/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988721027.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183841-00550-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950365 | 766 | 1.78125 | 2 |
(len a lid' oh mide)
Risk of severe life-threatening birth defects caused by lenalidomide:
For all patients:
Lenalidomide must not be taken by patients who are pregnant or who may become pregnant. There is a high risk that lenalidomide will cause severe birth defects (problems that are present at birth) or death of the unborn baby.
A program called REVLIMID REMSTM (formerly known as RevAssist®) has been set up to make sure that pregnant women do not take lenalidomide and that women do not become pregnant while taking lenalidomide. All patients, including women who cannot become pregnant and men, can get lenalidomide only if they are registered with REVLIMID REMS, have a prescription from a doctor who is registered with REVLIMID REMS, and fill the prescription at a pharmacy that is registered with REVLIMID REMS.
You will receive information about the risks of taking lenalidomide and must sign an informed consent sheet stating that you understand this information before you can receive the medication. If you are younger than 18 years of age, a parent or guardian must sign the consent sheet and agree to make sure you meet these requirements. You will need to see your doctor during your treatment to talk about your condition and the side effects you are experiencing or to have pregnancy tests as recommended by the program. You may need to complete a confidential survey at the beginning of your treatment and at certain times during your treatment to be sure that you have received and understand this information and that you can follow the instructions to prevent serious risks to unborn babies.
Tell your doctor if you do not understand everything you were told about lenalidomide and the REVLIMID REMS program and how to use the birth control methods discussed with your doctor, or if you do not think you will be able to keep appointments.
Do not donate blood while you are taking lenalidomide, during any breaks in your treatment, and for 4 weeks after your treatment.
Do not share lenalidomide with anyone else, even someone who has the same symptoms that you have.
Your doctor or pharmacist will give you the manufacturer's patient information sheet (Medication Guide) when you begin treatment with lenalidomide and each time you refill your prescription. Read the information carefully and ask your doctor or pharmacist if you have any questions. You can also visit the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) website (http://www.fda.gov/Drugs), the manufacturer's website, or the REVLIMID REMS program website (http://www.revlimidrems.com) to obtain the Medication Guide.
Talk to your doctor about the risks of taking lenalidomide.
For female patients:
If you can become pregnant, you will need to meet certain requirements during your treatment with lenalidomide. You must use two acceptable forms of birth control for 4 weeks before you begin taking lenalidomide, during your treatment, including at times when your doctor tells you to temporarily stop taking lenalidomide, and for 4 weeks after your treatment. Your doctor will tell you which forms of birth control are acceptable and will give you written information about birth control. You must use these two forms of birth control at all times unless you can guarantee that you will not have any sexual contact with a male for 4 weeks before your treatment, during your treatment, during any interruptions in your treatment, and for 4 weeks after your treatment.
If you choose to take lenalidomide, it is your responsibility to avoid pregnancy for 4 weeks before, during, and for 4 weeks after your treatment. You must understand that any form of birth control can fail. Therefore, it is very important to decrease the risk of accidental pregnancy by using two forms of birth control. Tell your doctor if you do not understand everything you were told about birth control or you do not think that you will be able to use two forms of birth control at all times.
You must have two negative pregnancy tests before you can begin to take lenalidomide. You will also need to be tested for pregnancy in a laboratory at certain times during your treatment. Your doctor will tell you when and where to have these tests.
Stop taking lenalidomide and call your doctor right away if you think you are pregnant, you miss a menstrual period, you have unusual menstrual bleeding, or you have sex without using two forms of birth control. If you become pregnant during your treatment or within 30 days after your treatment, your doctor will contact the REVLIMID REMS program, the manufacturer of lenalidomide, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). You will also talk with a doctor who specializes in problems during pregnancy who can help you make choices that are best for you and your baby. Information about your health and your baby's health will be used to help doctors learn more about the effects of lenalidomide on unborn babies.
For male patients:
Lenalidomide is present in your semen when you take this medication. You must use a latex condom, even if you have had a vasectomy (surgery that prevents a man from causing a pregnancy), every time you have sexual contact with a female who is pregnant or able to become pregnant while you are taking lenalidomide, during any breaks in your treatment, and for 28 days after your treatment. Tell your doctor if you have sexual contact with a female without using a condom or if your partner thinks she may be pregnant during your treatment with lenalidomide.
Do not donate sperm while you are taking lenalidomide, during any breaks in your treatment, and for 4 weeks after your treatment.
Other risks of taking lenalidomide:
Lenalidomide may cause a decrease in the number of certain types of blood cells in your body. Your doctor will order laboratory tests regularly during your treatment to see how much the number of blood cells has decreased. Your doctor may decrease your dose, interrupt your treatment, or treat you with other medications or treatments if the decrease in your blood cells is severe. If you experience any of the following symptoms, tell your doctor immediately: sore throat, fever, chills, and other signs of infection; easy bruising or bleeding; bleeding gums; or nosebleeds.
If you are taking lenalidomide with dexamethasone to treat multiple myeloma, there is an increased risk that you will develop a blood clot in your leg that may move through the bloodstream to your lungs, or have a heart attack or a stroke. Your doctor may prescribe other medication to be taken along with lenalidomide to decrease this risk. Tell your doctor if you smoke, if you have ever had a serious blood clot, and if you have or have ever had high blood pressure or a high level of fat in your blood. Also tell your doctor about all the medications you are taking because certain medications may increase the risk that you will develop a blood clot while taking lenalidomide with dexamethasone including darbepoetin (Aranesp), epoetin alfa (Epogen, Procrit), and medications containing estrogen such as hormone replacement therapy or hormonal contraceptives (birth control pills, patches, rings, implants, or injections). If you experience any of the following symptoms, tell your doctor immediately: shortness of breath; chest pain that may spread to the arms, neck, back, jaw, or stomach; cough; redness or swelling in an arm or leg; sweating; nausea; vomiting; sudden weakness or numbness, especially on one side of the body; headache; confusion; or difficulty with vision, speech, or balance.
WHY is this medicine prescribed?
Lenalidomide is used to treat a certain type of myelodysplastic syndrome (a group of conditions in which the bone marrow produces blood cells that are misshapen and does not produce enough healthy blood cells). Lenalidomide is also used along with dexamethasone to treat people with multiple myeloma (a type of cancer of the bone marrow). Lenalidomide is also used to treat people with mantle cell lymphoma (a fast-growing cancer that begins in the cells of the immune system) who have been treated with bortezomib (Velcade) and at least one other medication. Lenalidomide should not be used to treat people with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (a type of cancer of the white blood cells that gets worse slowly over time) unless they are participating in a clinical trial (research study to see whether a medication may be used safely and effectively to treat a certain condition). Lenalidomide is in a class of medications called immunomodulatory agents. It works by helping the bone marrow to produce normal blood cells and by killing abnormal cells in the bone marrow.
HOW should this medicine be used?
Lenalidomide comes as a capsule to take by mouth. When lenalidomide is used to treat myelodysplastic syndrome, it is usually taken with or without food once daily. When lenalidomide is used to treat multiple myeloma or mantle cell lymphoma, it is usually taken with or without food once daily for 21 days and then is not taken for 7 days. This 28-day cycle may be repeated as recommended by your doctor. Take lenalidomide at around the same time of day every day that you take it. Follow the directions on your prescription label carefully, and ask your doctor or pharmacist to explain any part you do not understand. Take lenalidomide exactly as directed. Do not take more or less of it or take it more often than prescribed by your doctor.
Swallow the capsules whole with plenty of water; do not break, chew, or open them. Handle the capsules as little as possible. If you touch a broken lenalidomide capsule or the medicine in the capsule, wash that area of your body with soap and water. If the medicine in the capsule gets into your mouth, nose, or eyes, wash it away with plenty of water.
Your doctor may need to interrupt your treatment or reduce your dose if you experience certain side effects. Be sure to tell your doctor how you are feeling during your treatment with lenalidomide.
Are there OTHER USES for this medicine?
This medication may be prescribed for other uses; ask your doctor or pharmacist for more information.
What SPECIAL PRECAUTIONS should I follow?
Before taking lenalidomide,
- tell your doctor and pharmacist if you are allergic to lenalidomide, any other medications, or any of the ingredients in lenalidomide capsules. Ask your pharmacist or check the Medication Guide for a list of the ingredients.
- tell your doctor and pharmacist what other prescription and nonprescription medications, vitamins, nutritional supplements, and herbal products you are taking or plan to take. Be sure to mention the medications listed in the IMPORTANT WARNING section and digoxin (Lanoxin). Your doctor may need to change the doses of your medications or monitor you carefully for side effects.
- tell your doctor if you are lactose intolerant and if you have or have ever had kidney or liver disease. Also tell your doctor if you have ever taken thalidomide (Thalomid) and developed a rash during your treatment.
- tell your doctor if you are breastfeeding.
What SPECIAL DIETARY instructions should I follow?
Unless your doctor tells you otherwise, continue your normal diet.
What should I do IF I FORGET to take a dose?
If it has been less than 12 hours since you were scheduled to take the dose, take the missed dose as soon as you remember it. If it has been more than 12 hours, skip the missed dose and continue your regular dosing schedule. Do not take a double dose to make up for a missed one.
What SIDE EFFECTS can this medicine cause?
Lenalidomide may cause side effects. Tell your doctor if any of these symptoms are severe or do not go away:
- stomach pain
- loss of appetite
- weight loss
- change in ability to taste
- pain or burning of the tongue, mouth, or throat
- decreased sense of touch
- burning or tingling in the hands or feet
- difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep
- joint, muscle, bone, or back pain
- painful, frequent, or urgent urination
- dry skin
- abnormal hair growth in women
- uncontrollable shaking of a part of the body
- decrease in sexual desire or ability
Some side effects can be serious. If you experience any of these symptoms or those listed in the IMPORTANT WARNING section, call your doctor immediately or get emergency medical treatment:
- swelling of the face, throat, tongue, lips, eyes, arms, hands, feet, ankles, or lower legs
- difficulty breathing or swallowing
- fast, slow, pounding, or irregular heartbeat
- skin pain
- blistering, peeling, or shedding skin
- swollen glands in the neck
- muscle cramps
- pain in the upper right part of the stomach
- yellowing of the skin or eyes
- dark colored urine
If you are taking lenalidomide to treat multiple myeloma and you also receive melphalan (Alkeran) and a blood stem cell transplant, you may have a higher risk of developing new cancers. Talk to your doctor about the risks of taking lenalidomide. Your doctor will check you for new cancers during your treatment with lenalidomide.
Lenalidomide may cause other side effects. Call your doctor if you have any unusual problems while you are taking this medication.
What should I know about STORAGE and DISPOSAL of this medication?
Keep this medication in the container it came in, tightly closed, and out of reach of children. Store it at room temperature and away from excess heat and moisture (not in the bathroom). Return any medication that is outdated or no longer needed to your doctor, the pharmacy that gave you the medication, or the manufacturer.
What should I do in case of OVERDOSE?
In case of overdose, call your local poison control center at 1-800-222-1222. If the victim has collapsed or is not breathing, call local emergency services at 911.
What OTHER INFORMATION should I know?
Keep all appointments with your doctor.
Do not let anyone else take your medication. Ask your pharmacist any questions you have about refilling your prescription.
It is important for you to keep a written list of all of the prescription and nonprescription (over-the-counter) medicines you are taking, as well as any products such as vitamins, minerals, or other dietary supplements. You should bring this list with you each time you visit a doctor or if you are admitted to a hospital. It is also important information to carry with you in case of emergencies. | <urn:uuid:f452e646-14ef-4ff7-9ceb-6b6fb366c3d1> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://pslmc.com/hl/?/medication/2011501696/Lenalidomide | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279915.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00276-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934176 | 3,107 | 1.90625 | 2 |
September 1st starts National Preparedness Month and the American Red Cross Southeastern Pennsylvania (SEPA) is encouraging all households to create a family disaster plan to make sure they are ready for the next emergency or disaster.
Plans should include designating a meeting place right outside the home in case of a sudden emergency like a fire, an out-of-area emergency contact person and a location where everyone should meet if they can't go home. All members of the household should work together on the emergency plan and each person should know how to reach each other.
“Disasters can strike at any time and being prepared is a family’s best defense,” said Red Cross SEPA CEO Renée Cardwell Hughes. “Making a plan is an important step in making sure all household members know what to do in an emergency.”
All month long, American Red Cross SEPA will be hosting events and trainings to help families develop their Disaster Plan, receive preparedness tips and learn more about preparedness in the community. These events will be done in conjunction with many of SEPA’s civic, business, and government partners including Target and the Philadelphia Office of Emergency Management.
In addition to trainings and events, American Red Cross SEPA will provide a preparedness Tip of the Day on Twitter and Facebook, along with short videos on You Tube. SEPA has placed ads in five regional publications, in five languages (English, French, Spanish, Chinese, and Russian) to ensure all communities get vital, potentially lifesaving preparedness information. Red Cross also provides for iPhone and Android, a first aid and hurricane app with helpful preparedness information.
“Everyone must be prepared to take care of themselves and their neighbors in an emergency,” Hughes said. “No one can predict where or when disasters will strike, but preparedness steps taken today can save lives tomorrow.”
Other Ways to Get Ready
The Red Cross has several programs to help people, businesses, schools and communities be better prepared.
• Be Red Cross Ready is an online tutorial that teaches people to be ready for emergencies.
• Red Cross Ready Rating™ is a free, web-based membership program that measures how ready businesses, organizations and schools are to deal with emergencies and helps them improve their readiness level.
• The Ready When the Time Comes program trains employees from businesses so they can be used as a community-based volunteer force when disaster strikes.
• Red Cross First Aid and CPR/AED training courses provide participants with the knowledge and skills to respond to emergencies in case advanced medical help is delayed.
• People can visit redcrossphilly.org for information on what to do before, during and after emergencies and disasters.
About the American Red Cross of Southeastern Pennsylvania:
The American Red Cross Southeastern Pennsylvania Chapter prevents and alleviates human suffering in the face of emergencies by mobilizing the power of volunteers and the generosity of donors. The Red Cross is not a government agency. All Red Cross assistance is free of charge. Financial contributions are always welcomed and needed and can be made by going to RedCrossPhilly.org. | <urn:uuid:7830852b-219f-42a4-819e-4911d6479623> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.redcross.org/news/press-release/Local-Red-Cross-Urges-Everyone-to-Plan-for-Emergencies | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281331.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00221-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944814 | 645 | 2.171875 | 2 |
HRM has developed a set of tools and resources to make the important process of developing accurate job descriptions simpler, quicker and more consistent across campus. We reviewed hundreds of jobs at the University to learn more about the typical functions and responsibilities, and used that information to create an extensive job function library. Managers and key contacts can use the library to search within major responsibility areas for statements that describe typical activities. The purpose of this new job function library is to provide you with the starting point; the typical activity statements (major responsibility area – MRA) can be expanded upon to provide more complete, accurate descriptions of the level of responsibility held in any specific job. The initial focus is on broad operational functions; HRM will continue to add to this library to provide activity statements in other functional areas.
Writing effective Job Descriptions – Why is this important?
We have developed a Job Description Quick Guide which will help you:
The Job Function Library – Includes Activity Statements in the following broad operational functions
|Office Support||Admininstrative Professional|
|Job Function Library||Job Function Library|
|- Budget||- HR-Related Job Function|
|- Office Administration||*Policy/Procecure Consulting|
|- Scheduling/Calendar||*Employment Admin/Operations|
|- Event Planning||- Program or Project Management|
|- Customer Service||- Leadership/Management|
|- Supervising||- Grant Management|
|- Database/Technical||- Budget Job Function|
|*Customer Service & Problem Solving|
Using the library is simple. The graphic below shows how the library is organized.
#1 - Assume that you are writing a job description for an Office Support position and you would like to describe the Database/Technical activities for the job.
#2 - Assume that you are writing a job description for an Administrative Professional position and you would like to describe the Program/Project Management activities for the job. | <urn:uuid:ff97be75-109d-46c9-8ed1-e49ae5f931c4> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.northeastern.edu/hrm/resources/for-managers/job-function-library.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279915.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00276-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.883243 | 405 | 2 | 2 |
PIQUA — The Upper Valley Career Center’s “Camp Excel” is not your ordinary summer camp; instead of children swimming in a pool, you will see a robotic boat immersed in a pool.
Funded solely by UVCC, students who have completed grades 4-7 learn all of the technology and programs offered at the school from June 8-11 as well as enjoy outdoor activities and board games.
“They (students) get to look at it (UVCC) now from fourth through seventh grade and then I will talk to them again when they are sophomores and they can decide if they want to come back as a junior or senior,” Andrew Snyder, camp director, said. “It’s a good way for them (students) to get familiar with our program and to learn something and have fun.”
The classes that the camp offers are aquatic robotics, basic building/carpentry, junior chef, crime scene investigation, creative computer programming, cosmetology, planes and rockets, and greenhouse. Some of the projects include water-pressured rockets, building tool boxes, and baking pizzas from scratch.
Each day starts off with announcements and motivation, followed by breaking off into one of three chosen sessions. The first two sessions are held in the morning, then students break for lunch and recreation, and complete their day attending the third session in the afternoon.
Snyder discussed what makes Camp Excel different from other summer camps.
“The level of technology that they (students) get to use (…) they get to work in a high-end kitchen or work with the best computers that they won’t get to do at a regular camp,” he said. “It’s just like the difference between us (UVCC) and a regular high school; the funding and technology that we have here is far superior.”
For the sixth year of Camp Excel, there were 89 students in attendance representing schools from Piqua, Troy, Tipp City, Covington, Bradford, Sidney, Jackson Center, Russia, Anna, Houston, Minster, Greenville, Graham, Fort Loramie, and Muscatine, Iowa.
Karena Jensen is the student that represented Muscatine City Schools in Muscatine, Iowa. Jensen said her family was visiting other family members in the Piqua area and joined the camp to “be with her cousin and to have fun.”
Jensen described her favorite class during the camp.
“The gardening class, just because we got to make bird baths. You would put rocks in it, and the butterflies would sit on it and drink the water,” she said.
Jensen said if she lived in the area, she would go to the UVCC to study culinary arts.
“The best thing about our camp is kids keep coming back every year, so that means they must be having a good time and learning something,” Snyder said. | <urn:uuid:aff761b9-f02a-465d-859d-9d1f09a46658> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://dailycall.com/uncategorized/282/282 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988721008.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183841-00117-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969958 | 626 | 1.96875 | 2 |
It is one of the many ironies in the strange career of racial equality that in order to defend racial preferences liberals today rely on purposefully ambiguous language resulting from the desire of the framers of the 14th Amendment to preserve segregation and states rights, while the critics of racial preferences, who are usually viewed as conservatives, echo the radicals who wanted to proscribe all racial distinctions. Today … these “conservatives” are much more likely than liberals to honor Justice John Marshall Harlan’s eloquent assertion in his Plessy v. Ferguson dissent that “our Constitution is colorblind.”
the legal theory underlying the Plessy decision is that equal protection does not require colorblindness and hence that racial discrimination can in many circumstances be reasonable and hence constitutional. The preferentialist argument today is an unwitting echo of Plessy.
Now comes Cass Sunstein, distinguished professor of law at the University of Chicago, to provide yet another example. He criticizes Justice Thomas (unfairly, I think) for not “seriously consulting history” in his opposition to affirmative action.
Harlan cannot contend that the text of the document “as it’s drafted” mandates his conclusion. From Harlan’s opinion, we learn essentially nothing about We the People’s original understanding of the relevant constitutional provisions. Worse, the modern consensus, among legal historians, is that as a matter of history, Harlan had it wrong!
Sunstein himself, however, can’t believe history is very important, since he agrees that “[o]f course segregation is unconstitutional, but the reason is complicated rather than simple, and it is not that justices can simply stare at the Constitution and declare it so.”
Arguing that Thomas and those who agree with him reach their conclusion about the unconstitutionality of racial discrimination “simply star[ing] at the Constitution and declar[ing] it so” is about as fair and accurate as saying that supporters of racial preferences don’t even look at the Constitution at all. | <urn:uuid:09d263f5-35e1-42c6-af8d-90580a906839> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.discriminations.us/2008/03/preferentialists-prefer-plessy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988722459.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183842-00345-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953556 | 431 | 2.484375 | 2 |
Anigrand Craftworks 1/72 Martin XB-51
|REVIEWER:||Scott Van Aken|
|NOTES:||Resin short run kit with vac canopy|
The XB-51 was developed in response for a replacement for the A-26 medium bomber that was currently in service with the USAAF. With the advent of turbo-jets, it was felt that the replacement should be jet powered. The proposal that won the initial competition was originally designated XA-45, in fitting with the attack category. It would be inevitable that the USAAF would modify the requirements and with those revisions, two prototypes of what was now the XB-51 were made. Initial flight testing started in September of 1949, three years after the original proposal was made. At the time of its flight, it was the fastest aircraft of its type in the world.
The outbreak of war in Korea during 1950 saw a need to develop a night intruder and so the XB-51 was pitted against the British Canberra bomber. Here, speed wasn't paramount and the three-engine XB-51 was at a disadvantage to the twin-turbojet Canberra. After a fly-off in 1951, the Canberra was chosen, much to the dismay of Martin, even though Martin eventually produced the Canberra for the USAF. With the loss of the fly-off, the XB-51 project was cancelled in 1952, though the aircraft itself continued to fly test missions at Edwards AFB and starred as the 'Gilbert XF-120' in a William Holden movie on test pilots called 'Beyond the Unknown', probably one of the top ten aviation movies ever made (lots of lovely prototypes and X craft!).
Pleasecheck the preview for a look at what comes in the box.
As is the norm with kits like this, step one is to clean up the parts. This particular kit suffered from some rather large air holes in the cockpit area and in the wheel wells. I decided to do nothing about them and left them as they were. If you are a contest modeler, you'll need to fill these and the best thing to use on them is some sort of epoxy putty as you can form it while it dries and it will not shrink.
There wasn't too much trouble with broken parts though I did have a poorly molded pitot tube break on me and a few of the various gear doors had hinges broken off. This is the norm for these kits and nothing really to worry about as one does become rather adept at repair after a while. There were also the usual air bubbles and as many of them were filled as possible. I find that super glue works fairly well on those on the edges while very thin filler/thick paint, such as Mr. Surfacer, works for the rest. I didn't get them all, but did get most.
Because of the limitations of the molds, the very long fuselage is molded in four parts. The first thing I did was to mate the forward and aft portion of each half. I did have to do some sanding and open up the mating holes for a good fit, but working on a hard, flat surface, I was able to get each half assembled without too much trauma at all. I then moved to the cockpit and cemented in the seats. The instrument panel mounting slot is too shallow and you'll never get the interior in the fuselage half as it is. Taking a motor tool, I enlarged the mounting slot back towards the seat. After several test fits, it was glued in place along with the control wheel. There is a minimal detail on the instrument panel and none on the side consoles. After painting the interior with Testors Interior Green enamel and the seats a grey that I had sitting around, the instrument panel, side console tops and control wheel were painted black and the interior glued in place once the inside walls were painted. There is a rectangle above the bombardier that needs to have the clear piece trimmed to fit and it is best to make sure that fits before the fuselage halves are glued together.
After MANY test fits, I noted that the fuselage wasn't totally straight. Not a problem if one is careful. First, I glued in the bombardier's window, making sure it was a good fit. Then, starting at the front, I glued the fuselage in sections using super glue. This was quickly followed by accelerator to be sure things were aligned. This allowed the fuselage to be 'bent' a bit while I glued and so the minor warp was removed. The gaps were filled with super glue, hit with accelerator, washed with water and sanded smooth. I did not install the exhaust at this time as I'd found I could slide these pieces in later.
Moving to the engines, these were cemented together. I did not install the compressor faces, though I could have with little problem. These needed to be sanded down a bit around the edges to fit. There are large circular keys on one engine half and equally large holes on the other to accept these keys. They are on the pylon and since the keys were not fully molded, required much filler. In fact, even after multiple applications, I could still see where they were. Next time I'll use epoxy filler for this and not rely on super glue or standard filler. The engine intakes took a bit of work to get to where they didn't look quite so chunky.
Meanwhile, I decided to glue on the fin and fill the gap between that and the central intake. Then the stabilizer was glued to the top of the fin. I thought I'd gotten everything aligned, but as normal, it is off a bit.
Now for the big decision. What is more important, filling the seams on the engine pod attachment or the underside of the wings? Because of the close proximity of these items, you can't really do both. I chose the engine pods. There is a nice slot and tab arrangement for these to help alignment. Both engine pods are the same so it makes no difference which goes on which side. One thing I did notice is that on one side, the fuselage mating surface was a bit longer than the engine pylon and on the other it was a bit shorter! You'll find, as did I, that getting the seam near the gear bays is difficult, but not impossible.
Now for the wings. These have pegs that fit into holes in the fuselage. The fuselage holes need to be enlarged a bit and a motor tool is perfect for this. What I did was to put a lot of superglue onto the wing and then press the wing in place. This allowed the super glue to ooze out the bottom of the wing and I blew it along the join to even things out. After it dried, it left a seam at the top of the wing that was easy to take care of. The underside of each wing has three flap hinges. The location is marked on the wing. It was a simple matter to clean these up and glue them in place. I now had a complete airframe and it was time to think about painting.
|COLORS & MARKINGS|
Before painting I cut the canopy to shape, masked it as best I could, and glued it in place with super glue on the very front and rear. The rest of the gaps were filled with white glue, brushed on and then given a swipe with a wet finger to smooth things out.
In the past I've had trouble getting Alclad II to stick to resin, despite sanding and cleaning the surface. This time, I tried two things. One was an undercoat of Floquil Reefer White, followed by a gloss enamel. The other was just straight gloss enamel. Both stuck quite well and didn't pull up when tape was applied. However, I found out later that the straight enamel tended to scratch easier so the Floquil undercoat before the enamel seems to be the best way to go.
I used Testors Light Gull Grey enamel as the upper coat. This was used because it is a tad thick and will do two things. One is fill in the rather rough surface of the flat Reefer White. The other is that it will hide many of the scratches on the resin caused by the rather frequent sanding! Even with this, when I sprayed on the Alclad II Polished Aluminum, scratches and other surface imperfections leapt out at me. It is the price one pays!
Giving the first coat a bit of time to dry (like an hour), I put on a second. Next, it was time to add more metallics. I used four other Alclad II shades: Jet exhaust for the exhaust, White Aluminum, Dark Aluminum and regular Aluminum. These were done on various bits to provide tones in the metallic surface. I also used Light Aircraft Grey enamel by Humbrol for the wing center section.
This was all taken back to the bench so that I could attach the landing gear. The gear was painted in Aluminum as were the wheels and outriggers. The tires were painted with Floquil Weathered Black lacquer. I wrapped the oleos with Bare Metal Foil Chrome. I had to trim the axles quite a bit in order to get the wheels to fit properly. They are supposed to be quite close to the strut. The wheels were glued in place and then the struts. These fit well as Anigrand had done their homework on these. The front gear has a support strut that fit into a hole in the roof of the wheel well. I actually got these on pretty straight.
Moving to the outside of the wings, I put the model on a hard, flat surface to make sure the outriggers would fit well. I saw no fit problems so glued these into their slots.
Now that things were on their wheels, I put on the decals. These consist of four insignia, a fin serial number and a name for the side of the nose. The decals are well printed, a tad thick and worked well with Solvaset setting solution. What was missing from the sheet were the very prominent wing and fuselage walk areas. These can be made from black decal stripes. I had a few left from an ancient Scalemaster stripes sheet. These had turned yellow and I knew they'd shatter once they got wet. Taking a pretty new bottle of Microscale Decal Film, I used a cotton swab a liberally coated the two remaining stripes that I had. Once dry, they were cut to shape and despite wanting to stick to the backing, I got them onto the wings. I didn't have enough for the fuselage or top of the stabilizer. I should mention that the upper wing insignia wasn't put on until after the wing stripes. The decals are nice and opaque so no bleed through. I should also mention that despite the fact that the decals had been wrinkled in packaging, they did not come apart when they were soaked prior to application.
With the decals on and dry, I gave the entire airframe a coat of gloss clear using Testors Metallizer Clear Coat. This material works quite well on glossy surfaces and doesn't have the tendency to bead up that one finds at times with Future. I painted the nose anti-glare panel with flat black after masking it off. I should mention that I'd forgotten to mask the bombardier's window so that got painted over.
I then attached the gear doors. The main gear doors are all wrong on the inside. I watched the movie "Toward the Unknown" to get color information for the gear wells and doors (yellow zinc chromate) and noted that the main gear doors are very thick. Not at all like the thin doors with framework that Anigrand provides. I also noted that the outrigger doors, have the aft small door hinged wrong. It is hinged as if it opens to the outside like the forward door, but it actually opens to the back. That hinge will need removed before gluing in place.
For the last steps, I pushed the compressor faces into the engine pods. Then, I shoved the exhaust into the back of the aft engine and one pod. Tight fit, but no problem and no glue. However, on the left pod, when I pushed it in, it split the seam on the pod! ARRGH! I left it alone and just shook my head. These things always happen at the end. Final steps were to remove the masking from the canopy and glue on the lower nose pitot. Having broken one of the side pitots, I left those off. A bit of touch-up painting and I was done.
Once again, a fine prototype model for my shelves. Not an easy build, but really, not one that was very difficult either. It is an excellent basis for the super detailer, and as long as you pay attention to what you are doing, it will make into a very nice model.
#1365 in a series
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Back to the Review Index Page 2020 | <urn:uuid:e2fb385a-b8a4-4f7f-9e48-944432c72cb3> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | http://modelingmadness.com/scott/korean/xb51.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573744.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819161440-20220819191440-00469.warc.gz | en | 0.981423 | 2,793 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Lasty I’ve been thinking about writing a post about resources to learn online. Online learning has become a must if you want to keep you updated. I think that the way we learn, specially in an IT environment, has dramatically changed in the last years. A lot of web courses have bloomed since 2010 or so. There are lots of website where someone can learn from them. Some of the courses are for free and some others are not. Even some universities have agreements with some online website to publish their own courses.
In this post I’m going to enumerate some of the online learning websites I normally use to learn new stuff. If you know any others, please feel free to give some feedback. It’s really welcomed. | <urn:uuid:2fda81dd-4db5-4337-86b7-687d6c5f2238> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | https://hop2croft.wordpress.com/category/web/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719027.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00302-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96956 | 154 | 1.53125 | 2 |
We live in a time where technology is changing often on a daily basis. Sometimes these changes and updates are moving faster than some businesses can keep up with. Many businesses are starting to examine some of the technologies they have been using in their traditional Toronto office space – and realizing that they are either out of date or rarely used due to newer ways of things being done. These constant changes in technology are making serviced office space Toronto more popular.
Many companies with office space Toronto still have fax machines, but are stumped when asked when they last used them. More and more documents are now sent over e-mail as word processing documents or as PDF’s, and it is only legal documents that require signatures (like contracts) that are send via fax. Then it is only the signed copies that need to be transmitted by facsimile, as the original documents are sent via email and are printed for signing, then faxed. Having a shared fax machine at an office business centre, makes more sense.
Photocopiers and printers are also seeing less use in many office spaces. They are now mainly used when a physical copy of a document is needed. Most people are reading documents on their PC, laptop, tablet computer or even their smartphones. Companies are starting to wonder if the cost of buying, leasing or renting photocopiers and network printers is worth the added costs of maintenance contracts and supplies – especially when they can pay a low price per page at a Toronto office space that they can rent and not be tied into a long-term lease.
While computer servers are getting smaller, they still take up space and require regular upkeep. One of the technologies that is making serviced office space Toronto more popular is cloud computing. Businesses can store their files and documents on cloud servers that can be accessed from anywhere as long as they can access an Internet connection. This means not having to have a work area dedicated to the server and not having to employ staff to physically maintain the server. What is even more interesting is that the use of cloud computing is even slowing down the sales and use of USB thumb drives (yes, those great portable storage devices that replace the need for floppy disks).
So just how is technology making serviced office space Toronto more popular? When businesses move away from traditional Toronto office space, they realize that they do not need to purchase, lease or rent expensive office equipment. They can have a-la-carte access to photocopiers, printers, phone systems and fax machines. Having a serviced office space Toronto means they only pay for the office services that they use and not the overhead costs associated with these technologies. Having their files and documents on a cloud server means they need less office space and the office space they rent is only to provide working areas for workers – and not bulky computer servers.
Read our other blog entry about how technology cannot replace a Toronto virtual office. | <urn:uuid:ab2e006f-e1ff-4484-9ebd-c7490d4de3b2> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.telsec.net/blog/technology-is-making-serviced-office-space-toronto-more-popular/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280900.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00003-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957971 | 587 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Indiana Supreme Court Reduces 138 Year Sentence, Citing Adolescent Brain Science
Recent Cases in Law and Neuroscience, Curated by the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior and the Shen Neurolaw Lab with support from the Dana Foundation
On November 17, 2020, the Supreme Court of Indiana reduced Matthew Stidham’s sentence from 138 years to 88 years for crimes he committed at the age of seventeen, deeming the maximum term-of-years sentence imposed as inappropriate. The decision referenced adolescent brain science in its analysis.
In 1991, Matthew Stidham and two others were convicted of murdering Daniel Barker and related crimes from the incident, including robbery, criminal confinement, battery, and auto theft. Stidham, 17 at the time of the murder, was sentenced to the maximum aggregate term of 141 years. In 1994, Stidham appealed his sentence on the grounds that certain evidence had been improperly admitted at trial and was ultimately resentenced to 138 years for his crimes.
Between 1994 to 2020, Stidham filed numerous further appeals in an attempt to reduce his sentence, but the courts continuously declined to revise his sentence, stating that Stidham’s sentencing issues had already been sufficiently resolved during his 1994 appeal.
In Stidham’s most recent appeal to the Supreme Court of Indiana, he argued that because he was a juvenile at the time of his crimes, his de facto life-without-parole sentence was in violation of both the 8th Amendment of the United States Constitution as well as the Indiana Constitutions.
In reviewing Stidham’s case, the court noted extraordinary circumstances in which “two major shifts in the law — one easing the standard by which we exercise our power to review and revise sentences and another limiting the applicability of the most severe sentences to children — render suspect Stidham’s maximum sentence for crimes he committed as a juvenile.”
Ultimately, the court found Stidham’s maximum sentence to be inappropriate due to his age at the time he committed his crimes and reduced his sentence from 138 years to 88 years. To support their decision, the court provided numerous citations of adolescent psychological and neuroscientific evidence from the U.S. Supreme Court decisions Miller, Brown, and Graham:
“Both the U.S. Supreme Court and this Court have recognized that, ‘[b]ecause juveniles have diminished culpability and greater prospects for reform,’ they ‘are less deserving of the most severe punishments.’ This conclusion flows from the recognition of three important differences between children and adults. First, juveniles’ ‘lack of maturity and . . . underdeveloped sense of responsibility’ leads to ‘recklessness, impulsivity, and heedless risk-taking.’ Second, their susceptibility ‘to negative influences and outside pressures,’ along with their limited ability to control their environment, can leave them lacking ‘the ability to extricate themselves from horrific, crime-producing settings.’ Third, ‘a child’s character is not as well formed as an adult’s; his traits are less fixed and his actions less likely to be evidence of irretrievable depravity.’ These salient characteristics mean that ‘[i]t is difficult even for expert psychologists to differentiate between the juvenile offender whose crime reflects unfortunate yet transient immaturity, and the rare juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption.’”
Further, the court relied on evidence regarding Stidham’s potential for rehabilitation, noting the obtainment of his G.E.D., associate’s degree, and bachelor’s degree, completion of a prison culinary arts program, and work as a firefighter in the prison department for approximately fifteen years despite “staring down a 138-year sentence that all but guaranteed he would die behind bars.”
Finally, they stated that “while Stidham’s crimes were horrific, his character makes this case less suitable for a maximum term-of-years sentence. Stidham’s status as a juvenile, his difficult childhood, and his initial steps toward rehabilitation between his first trial and his retrial demonstrate that he was not one of the worst offenders subject to the harshest punishment.”
Key words: Miller v. Alabama, adolescent brain, juvenile offender, sentencing, Indiana
Citation: State v. Stidham, 157 N.E.3d 1185 (Ind. 2020) (Ind., 2020), reh’g denied (Jan. 12, 2021)
This post is the 27th post as part of an ongoing Center for Law, Brain & Behavior (CLBB) series tracking the latest developments in law and neuroscience cases. To see previous posts about recent cases, see the full case archive on the CLBB website. To see updates on legal scholarship, see the Neurolaw News, hosted by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience. This project is made possible through support of the Dana Foundation. | <urn:uuid:e83ecce3-49f5-4413-81f0-34ce753d76a2> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://clbb.medium.com/indiana-supreme-court-reduces-138-year-sentence-citing-adolescent-brain-science-7f0003298733?source=post_internal_links---------2---------------------------- | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572192.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20220815145459-20220815175459-00070.warc.gz | en | 0.970396 | 1,039 | 2.046875 | 2 |
|Domenico Rosso, Italian late 19th century - "The White Slave Market"|
The Hazara are an ethnic group of Muslims belielved to have a partial strain of Mongolian ancestry.
|Hazara combatants, Kabul 1879|
The poet not only invokes this history in the title of her poem, but includes the place name of
|Branding female slaves|
|Hoffman, Vienna late 19th cent|
|Norman, "White Slave"|
French late 19th c.
|Inspecting her teeth. |
Jean Leon Gerome, French c. 1866
|Puelma, "The Slaver's |
Pearl" Chili, c.1880
|F. Schopin, French late 19th c|
Hope avoids the moralizing trap by exploring the topic of female sex slavery through the words of a male narrator grieving over the capture of his Beloved. The narrator is a fighting man who is no angel himself presumably, but never expected to lose his own delightful girlfriend to the slavers operating all around him and profiting off the wars fought by men like himself. Perhaps in the past he took "Delight" somewhat for granted, and her sudden loss has finally made him aware of the real consequences of the life of violence, death, and cultural domination that he participates in.
The nameless narrator is tormented by the idea that another man is loving his girl, and one gets the idea he'd actually rather see her dead. He can barely speak or think about the degradations she may be facing, but instead praises her lips "like a living laughing rose" and thinks of times past. He has been mad, not even sure what countries he has recently passed through on some kind of killing mission, but now in this Khorassan village night falls on him, his bloody sword and fevered brain. With so many "captured, sold or slain" he knows he'll never love Lost Delight again. He'll kill himself here under the falling white blossoms, before the green shoots of spring appear to remind him of happier days passed in this spot with his beloved.
|Fabio Fabbi, Italian late 19th cent., "The Slave Market"|
IT IS DOUBTFUL THAT SLAVE MARKETS WERE REALLY THIS MUCH FUN
For all her finely tuned poetic and lyrical sensitivity, Hope really does not hesitate to fold an unusually stiff measure of violence into some of her works. She may well be the only "daughter of the Raj" to do so in her art and writing, bringing early 20th century audiences this alternative perspective on the commonly accepted atrocities of war, murder, captivity, traditional honor codes, and sexual slavery that many, many "civilized" people accepted without much question. It is a message that is unfortunately as relevant today as it was in her lifetime.
NOTE: "Lost Delight" is recorded in the fifth section of India's Love Lyrics and may be listened to here. This is a sneak preview, and will not be available on Librivox until the entire book has been recorded. | <urn:uuid:9386b9bc-501d-4f1a-b463-fd30cf9dc781> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://laurencehopenotes.blogspot.com/2018/03/lost-delight-flip-side-of-male-gaze-at.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573540.20/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819005802-20220819035802-00475.warc.gz | en | 0.970405 | 664 | 2.484375 | 2 |
From the tribals to the Hadas, the little town of Bundi is home to a magnificent fort, some famous temples and stepwells
Pushing my camera into the bag, I slowly walk down the rocky narrow path to the single shop that the magnificent Taragarh Fort houses. It’s a tricky walk as the rain has made the old rocks slippery and I worry about my gadgets. The rest of the group is stuck near the Chitrashala or art gallery where a garden brightens up the dull ambience of this crumbling structure.
Our guide, Keshav Bhati, is a resident of Bundi. For many decades, he has been taking people on tours and popularising the area. The Fort does not see many visitors for the fee is high. And it could do with some restoration. Its only inhabitants are bats and a caretaker family who also happens to run the single shop selling semi-precious stones.
I walk barefoot on the terrace. The pitter patter of the rain, the dark clouds and the silence making it perhaps the most spiritual walk of the day. The weather gods have been kind, the shopkeeper and his friends tell me. The gemstones are glistening and I am offered a hot cup of tea. I am taken by surprise by this green side of Rajasthan.
Way back till the early 12th century, the area was inhabited by tribals and it was named after the local Meena tribal king, Bunda Meena. It was also called ‘Bunda-Ka-Nal’; nal means narrow paths. In 1342, Rai Deva Hada took over Bundi from Jaita Meena and area came to be known as Hadoti or the land of Hada Rajputs. Bundi went under the Mughals in 1568.
Built on a steep hill, the Taragarh fort was where the Hada rulers lived. Constructed in the shape of a star in 1354, the Fort has been called a jewel by Lieutenant Colonel James Tod (1782-1835), a British political agent and author of Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan. He wrote, “the coup d’oeil of the castellated palace of Bundi, from whichever side you approach it, is the most striking in India.”
Taragarh fort is said to be the first hill fort in Rajasthan. There is a network of tunnels running through the hillside. Built long before the Mughals came to India, the fort’s architecture is unlike the other forts in Rajasthan.
Passage of time
The climb to the entrance is quite steep. The then kings and queens went up on palkis but we use our feet. And then we find ourselves in front of a massive stone entrance, aptly called Hathia Pol. Two elephants are carved at the tall gateway. Inside, the roof is painted with the sun and the stars and the angels. The universe welcomes us to this ancient palace. Even as the rocks stand tall, there are parts which have seen better days. The neglect is seen in the undeterred creepers, the broken pieces and many closed rooms where bats are the kings now. Up a narrow stairway and we reach the area where the king held court. An impressive marble seat tells us this is Deewan-e-Aam. Some frescoes are still visible on an entrance. A lot has faded and a lot is fading. There is a stone with Devanagiri script.
A signboard at the Fort’s entrance gives the major attractions—Hathia Pol, Chattar Mahal, Rani Mahal, Badal Mahal and Phool Mahal. There is also famous cannon here on Bhim Burj, but we don’t see that. Many parts of the fort are closed. There are water reservoirs too.
The Garh Palace has curved roofs, temple columns and ornamental brackets. Here we see Rajputana motifs of elephants and lotus flowers. The locally quarried stone has been used for construction, and that does not support very fine carvings, unlike the red sandstone of the other forts in the state.
We walk through more passages and reach the courtyard where elephants are carved on the pillars. And there is a room with beautiful frescoes, but it’s only open for the current royal family. With its raw appeal, the fort is not the place to explore alone. I wonder how the queens lived. In every corner, you find something painted, something which has stood the test of time.
The Chattar Mahal was built in 1660. Through more passages and up more steps, we come to a green garden. The meticulous lawn is a reminder that this was frequented by those who loved to create. The walls of this gallery called Chitrashala take my breath away.
This gallery came into existence between 1748 and 1770 during the reigns of Unmed Singh and Bisen Singh. Radha and Krishna adorn a major part of this gallery. Then there are court and hunting scenes, some frescoes even show Rama’s return from the forest. It’s an artist’s paradise and has inspired many, as I am told. While blue is the most predominant colour, green, reds and yellows add to the grandeur. This is the inspiration behind the annual art residency programme organised by jüSTa Lake Nahargarh Palace. These murals are said to be the precursors of other artworks in the state. The clouds rumble as we leave.
The other side
Out of the fort and into a small market, it’s the weekly off and the street is practically empty. But there are brightly painted walls and interesting signboards on shops. Gopal Soni, an artist, is selling hand-painted postcards as souvenirs in his small shop. He even participated in one of the chitrashalas organised by jüSTa. I enjoy watching the neighbourhood which has vibrant cafes, guest houses, even a tattoo salon. Soon, it’s time to head back to the hotel. But we stop for a few minutes near the mining areas and the shimmering emerald water bodies, but it’s difficult to capture this starkly beautiful landscape in one frame.
More to see
Raniji-ki-Baori, Bundi Palace, Bijasan Mata temple, Jait Sagar Lake
How to reach:
BY AIR: Nearest airport is Sanganer, Jaipur.
BY RAIL: Nearest railhead is Kota Junction, on the Delhi-Mumbai rail route.
BY BUS: It takes about an hour from Kota and around 7-8 hours from Jaipur. | <urn:uuid:c2737a91-7cf2-4943-b3a8-2072502c35f4> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://thepatriot.in/lifestyle/where-time-stands-still-4970 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573163.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20220818033705-20220818063705-00077.warc.gz | en | 0.958541 | 1,438 | 2.546875 | 3 |
The difficulties of diabetes mellitus are dramatically extra normal and also genuine in individuals with over the top blood sugar degrees. Diabetic individuals will certainly develop significant nerve injury due to expanded blood glucose levels. The damaged nerves will certainly affect the area to numb, which will certainly desert you not mindful of an unexpected wounds. Similarly a tiny cut might create severe problems in light of the reduced blood stream to the feet. This could cause incredibly contagious rankles, injuries, as well as cuts. Close-by contaminations will prompt diabetic person gangrene because of injuries of digital courses. Anguishing nerve harm that influences the sensory system is a trouble of diabetic concerns. These difficulties influence diabetic individual to foot care fundamental for every single solitary diabetic person consumer. To escape critical foot concerns, take after these guidelines.
Taking a look at the foot on a daily basis for cuts, bruises, soreness, or swelling is crucial. Bear in mind to take a look at all-time lows of the feet. On the off possibility that you have diabetic private retinopathy, get the help from an added individual. Search for professional propositions on the off opportunity that you see any kind of impressive discoveries. Tidy your feet on a daily basis in warm water. Use a fragile wipe to cleanse your feet. Maintain your feet moistened to prevent the skin from getting dry. Make use of some skin spray under your onycosolve apotheke and also back rub treatment to boost the blood flow. Be that as it may, make use of Onycosolve in the middle of the toes.
Cut the nails specifically crosswise over as well as offer the sides. Try not to endeavor to stop the nails likewise considering that this may prompt in-developed nails. Constantly use footwear to limit the open doors for any type of sort of cuts and injuries. Put on water-evidence boots in the stormy duration as well as warm boots in the cold weather. Attempt not to allow your feet stay wet for a long time. Keeping up your feet completely dry has superb value in diabetic person private foot care. Attempt not to use a warm pillow or warm water container to keep up your feet cozy. Damp foot will certainly bring about transmittable contaminations, which will certainly deteriorate the problem. A hostile to parasitic foot spray might assist reduce signs like tingling as well as eating. Maintaining your blood sugar in control is the outright best thing that you can enhance the scenario Foot Care spray Carry out general checks for your blood sugar and also enjoy them intently. Foot Care spray will definitely be simple if the glucose goes on being in a traditional array. Make a little alteration in the technique for living, and also experience gratifying ideal credentials throughout your life. | <urn:uuid:699d3a6f-d503-4e50-aac5-8aef5bb9839a> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.perigee-restaurant.com/2018/importance-of-using-foot-care-spray.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571911.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813081639-20220813111639-00467.warc.gz | en | 0.942597 | 556 | 2.0625 | 2 |
When it comes to the top U.S. priority for 2015, more Americans believe defending the country against terrorism should be a greater focus for the federal government than the economy, jobs, education and social security, a recent study by the Pew Research Center found.
It was the number one concern. According to the poll, which surveyed 1,054 Americans, countering terrorism received a 76 percent rating as a top priority heading into the new year. This is the first time that defending against terrorism has received more support than rebuilding the economy since 2010, when it held the top position at 80 percent.
In the study, which was conducted Jan. 7-11, the economy was ranked second overall as a top priority with a 75 percent rating. Jobs and education were tied for third at 67 percent.
Pew noted that while “there has been little change over the past two years in the number saying that defending against terrorism should be a top priority; in fact, this has consistently been among the public’s leading policy goals since 2002,” battling terrorism “has moved to the top of the priorities list as the economy and jobs have fallen.”
The research study also found that strengthening the U.S. military has gained significant favor among Americans, with 52 percent saying strengthening the military should be a top priority for the federal government in 2015. That figure is up from 43 percent in January of last year. Keep reading
—Courtesy of CNS News | <urn:uuid:b457570b-47b4-4b39-9337-634a7adca41f> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://freedomdaily.com/americans-rank-countering-terrorism-no-1-priority-for-2015/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279169.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00218-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979906 | 298 | 1.914063 | 2 |
Bill Gates is looking for an “energy miracle” – but he’s not counting on divine intervention.
Instead, the pioneer of the computer age is leading an effort to have government and the private sector work together to find the energy breakthrough needed to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change, and then deploy that technology throughout the global economy before it is too late.
The co-founder of Microsoft Corp. has great faith in technology. By dramatically increasing funding for research into myriad approaches, he believes the solution to climate change can be found in the next 15 years, although it will then take decades to have it widely adopted.
“I can’t guarantee it, but I’m excited and am willing to put lots of resources behind these efforts,” he said on Monday from New York, where he was promoting his “annual letter” from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The missive is aimed at high-school students and lays out his vision for how the world can take on the twin challenges of tackling climate change and addressing energy poverty – 1.3 billion people live without electricity. “In short,” he said, “we need an energy miracle.”
Listed by Forbes magazine as the world’s richest man, Mr. Gates launched his latest campaign at the Paris climate summit. He persuaded 20 countries – including Canada and the United States – to double their energy research and development over five years and collaborate in an effort called Mission Innovation. He also unveiled the Breakthrough Energy Coalition with the backing of more than two dozen of the world’s most influential business people, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla.
For its part, Canada has committed to investing an additional $300-million in energy R&D, with $100-million going to clean-tech producers and $200-million earmarked to support innovation and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the resource sector.
The former Microsoft chief rejected the skeptics’ view of climate change, insisting it is an urgent issue that requires an unprecedented effort by the public and private sectors to steer changes in energy economy with unprecedented speed. But he also worries that many in the environmental movement underestimate the challenge of doing so.
For example, renewable energy enthusiasts claim wind and solar – especially solar – are now cost competitive with coal-fired power.
“It is true that when the sun is shining, the capital costs for solar are the same as coal,” he said. “So if we only need energy when the sun was shining and we all lived in deserts, then, yes, we’d have our solution.” But solar panels don’t provide electricity at night and are less efficient on cloudy days, and so it needs to be backed up with coal, or diesel or natural gas.
He said the cost of solar-powered electricity – which has fallen dramatically – still needs to drop by half, while batteries and other electricity storage systems need to be substantially improved if solar and wind are to provide consistent power on which people can rely.
Mr. Gates is backing several battery companies, but said progress has been slower than proponents had hoped. The big breakthrough would come if researchers can find a cost-effective way to use solar energy to create liquid fuels, thereby eliminating the storage conundrum, he added.
He has invested heavily in TerraPower, which is developing a form of nuclear power that aims to be safer, with less waste and lower capital costs. But Mr. Gates said it will be nearly 10 years before a prototype will be built and at least 2030 before such reactors are available for commercial deployment.
Governments and investors are going to have to be patient, however. Venture capitalists won’t see the kind of quick returns generated by the information-technology or health-care sectors, while government will face criticism for backing projects that never get off the ground.
“Eventually, there will be the equivalent of a Google- or Apple- or Microsoft-type success story that comes out of a dramatic innovation,” he said. “Or, ideally, like in the IT space, two or three companies like that. … But it will require the R&D effort to be supported not just over a few years, but for many.”Report Typo/Error | <urn:uuid:4d9ef041-8a0b-4e11-86d9-df5e1fe436d6> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/bill-gates-pushes-government-private-sector-to-find-energy-breakthrough/article28844661/?cmpid=rss1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280718.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00403-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957075 | 896 | 2.5 | 2 |
A Guide for Adults and Children by the Founder of the Award-Winning Lesson One Program
This indispensable book gives adults a proven plan to help children develop the life skills and internal discipline necessary to learn and thrive in today's society.
Following the logical progression of a child's development, the book uses upbeat activities and games that adults and children can share to ground themselves in Lesson One skills for use in everyday life. Offering much-needed answers to major problems gripping our culture, here is the book that anyone living and working with children has been waiting for -- a lesson plan that works for life.
About Jon Oliver
See more books from this Author
Published January 13, 2004
Education & Reference, Parenting & Relationships, Health, Fitness & Dieting. | <urn:uuid:96b120c0-7c68-4134-b1ef-a2f8cb9c70ce> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://idreambooks.com/Lesson-One-The-ABCs-of-Life-The-Skills--by-Jon-Oliver/reviews/179874 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560279224.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095119-00486-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909088 | 158 | 2.1875 | 2 |
The message we’ve received about COVID-19 in people over 60 has been consistent: they’re the most at risk for having severe complications from the disease. If you have family members who are an advanced age or who have health conditions that put them at high risk, this presents a very specific COVID-19 security concern: how do you keep a safe distance while ensuring that they’re safe and have everything they need while in their homes? Remote monitoring and smart security technology can help you keep watch and take care of those closest to you – especially when you have to do so from afar.
Since the pandemic hit, we’ve all been checking in with family members a lot more via telephone calls and video chats. This is especially important for the elderly, as their emotional health and well-being can suffer greatly if they begin to feel isolated from friends and family.
While calls are a great way to connect, home video surveillance with remote monitoring allows you to check on older or ailing loved ones in between conversations. It offers huge peace of mind when falls or medical emergencies are a concern – allowing you to ensure that all is well if you can’t get in touch with a family member.
To make sure rescuers will be summoned immediately should something go wrong, it’s a good idea to pair video surveillance with a medical alert system. These devices can be worn around the house, in the shower, and even out in the yard – and they can sound an alert after detecting a fall or have help on the way with the push of a button. This type of system offers around-the-clock protection even during times that you’re not checking in via camera.
In addition to ensuring the safety of elderly loved ones in their own homes, remote monitoring can also be used to check in on older family members (and children) who live with you and may spend time alone during the day. A quick log into the security cameras from your phone or work computer will give you immediate peace of mind that all is well while you’re away.
Smart Locks for Contact-Free Drop-Offs
Smart locks have become a common part of smart home security systems, as they’re convenient and allow homeowners to lock and unlock their doors from anywhere. This technology has come in particularly handy for those who need to drop food, medication, gifts, and other items off to at-risk family members without coming into close contact with them.
By using remote monitoring and control to access Mom or Grandma’s lock from afar, you can open the front or kitchen door without disturbing her. Unload the items, leave a nice note, and securely lock the door again after you leave – all without keeping track of a physical key. Remote locks are also useful if you have a grandchild or another younger family member who will be dropping off the delivery; simply unlock the door for them and lock it once they’re on their way.
Remote Monitoring From Business to the Home
Remote monitoring first became common in commercial settings, where business owners began using it as a way to keep tabs on their employees and assets. In addition to surveillance, video cameras and remote control over items like thermostats, lighting, and door locks also allowed them to shut down and open up quickly and conveniently. During the COVID-19 era, employers are using thermal cameras for remote monitoring of factors such as visitor temperature to keep their workers, clients, and visitors more safe and healthy while on site.
It’s this kind of advanced security technology that is now being utilized to keep people safe while at home. Integrating remote monitoring into an existing home security system – yours or that of an older family member – will allow you to keep an eye on those you care about as we move through these challenging times.
At ProTech Security, we have a strong history of experience, innovation, and customer service. The ProTech Security Advantage is more than 35 years of service in Northeast Ohio and a strong commitment to providing quality, cost-effective protection for homes, businesses, educational institutions, and government facilities. To see what ProTech Security can do for you, contact us today. | <urn:uuid:4ebc4299-63b1-47e2-a785-c01499b2f6fc> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://protechsecurity.com/remote-monitoring-for-the-elderly-children-or-anyone-else-in-your-home/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572908.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817122626-20220817152626-00068.warc.gz | en | 0.962585 | 865 | 1.75 | 2 |
Richard Feynman was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965. Though he died in 1988, his popularity over the years has continued to grow. Walk into any bookstore and look in the science section, you'll find Feynman's lectures on physics in both print and audio. Listen to his lectures on tape or CD, and you hear what Larsson calls Feynman's "playful curiosity." Here are lectures available online.
Larsson tells how while watching students toss cafeterian plates in the air that Feynman saw something in that playful act that led to his research into the physics of motion.
He writes: "As the plate spun, it wobbled. Feynman was prompted to formualte these motions as a problem in equations, whihc he could then analyze. Soon he found himself working with other physics problems by using similar techniques and everyday observations. He had rediscovered happiness and inspiration in his work."
What can we learn from Richard Feynman? Apart from quantum physics, we can learn to principles of creativity that can benefit leaders.
1. Playful curiosity - this implies that we approach our work as leaders as an exercise in fun and play, that we are explorers, looking for new insights that can help us. What does business have to do with fun and play? If the work you do is not enjoyable, fun, even life affirming, then why do you do it? Or, if it started that way, and became drudgery, then why do you accept that as a given now?
Go to the Feynman website and read the anecdotes about the man. It is clear that he both had a love for play and laughter that complemented his curiosity, his drive to figure out very difficult problems in theoretical physics. It is possible that without a playful approach, we never see the whole picture.
2. Everyday observation - If we make our practice that of looking at everyday situations as Feynman did, with fresh eyes and an inquisitiveness we can find the unrealized potential that resides in most organizations. We have to look.
It reminds me of interviewing the marketing manager of a company with whom I was conducting some planning work. My one half hour with him was spent with him telling me about some piece of property that he had and wanted to sell. It was not surprise to me why 18 months later the business was out of business.
To practice everyday observation requires us to focus on the actual work we have to do. Then we will more clearly see what we must do and what is non-essential.
Richard Feynman went from watching wobbling plates to the Nobel Prize all because he had a passion for playful problem solving. It is this kind of leadership that inspires people to greatness. Feynman's impact will long live on because of his approach to the work he did. There is much we can learn from him. | <urn:uuid:63894f5a-e875-4940-a676-f948bc100dbe> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://edbrenegar.typepad.com/leading_questions/2005/02/richard_feynman.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560284405.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095124-00036-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980971 | 594 | 2.890625 | 3 |
3 edition of DOD"s industrial preparedness program needs national policy to effectively meet emergency needs found in the catalog.
DOD"s industrial preparedness program needs national policy to effectively meet emergency needs
United States. General Accounting Office
|Statement||by the Comptroller General.|
|The Physical Object|
In addition, it provides other resources to use for emergency planning. The terminology fits virtually all businesses, even though the term "plant" is used throughout. It has become the basis for the rewrite of the emergency managemement plan at my hospital. Of the many books I've reviewed, this stands at the top on emergency by: 9. For example, if you need help moving or require special arrangements to receive emergency messages, make a plan with friends. Make sure they know where you keep emergency supplies. Give a key to a neighbor or friend who may be able to assist you in a disaster.
In an emergency, the organization’s primary goal is everyone’s safety. To this end, an evolving aspect of the emergency action plan (EAP) is focused on the needs of people with disabilities who may be at our worksite when a disruption occurs. Periodically review. The mission of the NIOSH Emergency Preparedness and Response (EPR) Program Portfolio is to advance research and collaborations to protect the health and safety of emergency response providers and recovery workers by preventing diseases, injuries, and fatalities in anticipation of and during responses to natural and man-made disasters and novel emergent events.
Disaster Preparedness for People with Disabilities (June Isaacson Kailes, Disability Policy Consultant) Disability Preparedness Resource Center (Interagency Coordinating Council) Disaster Mitigation for Persons with Disabilities; Effective Emergency Preparedness Planning: Addressing the Needs of Employees with Disabilities (DOL). Emergency Preparedness and Response Access and Functional Needs Infants and Young Children Special Populations: Emergency and Disaster Preparedness - National Library of Medicine. Emergency and disaster preparedness materials and resources for a variety of audiences including, but not limited to, disabled, older adults, hearing impaired.
Science Voyages Red Level California Teacher Wraparound Edition (Exploring the Life, Earth, and Physical Sciences)
golden age of the American racing car.
Crowded nights - and days
U.S. operating experience with thermally treated Alloy 600 steam generator tubes
First Texas Navy
Job description guidebook for financial institutions
Introduction to modern Polish literature.
Twenty-two sermons on the most interesting and important subjects
Travels with Doctor Death
Surrey community care plan summary 2001/2002.
My name is--
Notes of a pug-nosed Mephistopheles
Windmills & watermills
Landmarks, etc., to aid in preserving memories and knowledge of localities of struggles in the Revolutionary War.
Trademarks of the Chinese (I) (Bi-lingual edition.)
Eight Inuit Myths
The Industrial Preparedness Planning Program of the Department of Defense (DOD) was developed to ensure that sufficient industrial capacity exists to meet potential wartime needs for defense systems, equipment, and component organizations, including GAO, have found the program to be ineffective.
DOD has reevaluated the program, but no significant improvement has resulted to date. Get this from a library. DOD's industrial preparedness program needs national policy to effectively meet emergency needs: a report to the Congress of the United. Get this from a library.
DOD's industrial preparedness program needs national policy to effectively meet emergency needs: a report to the Congress of the United States: summary. [United States. General Accounting Office.]. BY THE COMPTROLLER GENERAL Report To The Congress OF THE UNITED STATES DOD’s Industrial Preparedness Program Needs National Policy To Effectively Meet Emergency Needs The Department of Defense’s Industrial Pre- paredness Planning Program is to make sure U.S.
industry can respond to wartime needs for military items. SOUTH CHARLESTON, W. -- Disaster preparedness requires more than a "one size fits all" emergency plan.
Disaster officials from the West Virginia Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recommend that individuals with disabilities and other special needs develop a disaster plan to fit their unique.
For the millions of Americans who have physical, medical, sensory or cognitive disabilities, emergencies such as fires, floods and acts of terrorism present a real challenge. The same challenge also applies to the elderly and other special needs populations. This booklet will help people with disabilities prepare and emergency plan to protect.
Emergency Preparedness 1 Emergency Preparedness for Families of Children with Special Needs CONTENTS Revised March Emergency Preparedness: Hurricanes, acts of make sure they can adapt their plan to meet their family's needs no matter what the cause of the emergency.
By calling one number,motorists everywhere in. Disabilities in Emergency Preparedness. This Executive Or-der, a copy of which is provided as Appendix 1, sets forth the role of the Federal Government in effectively tackling these issues in a coordinated fashion. To ensure this, the President created the Interagency Coordinating Council on Emergency Preparedness and Individuals with Disabilities.
EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS FOR ACCESS & FUNTIONAL NEEDS POPULATIONS PLAN 8 Section 3: Organization and Assignment of Responsibilities Purdue University Emergency Preparedness and Planning Office A) Responsible for carrying out the emergency management program for the Purdue West Lafayette Size: KB.
Preparing the Workplace for Everyone, Accounting for the Needs of People with Disabilities, published by the Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness in the Workplace of the Interagency Coordinating Author: Elizabeth Agnvall. Possible Disability or other Access and Functional Needs Additional Steps to take in an Emergency; Visually impaired: You or the individual may be extremely reluctant to leave familiar surroundings when the request for evacuation comes from a stranger, or a guide dog could become confused or disoriented in.
Preparedness is vital to minimizing the damage and disruption emergencies can cause your operations. Grainger’s experience and dedicated resources have helped businesses prepare for, and recover from, emergencies for years.
We offer solutions, expertise and support to equip everyone. Whether you’re a first responder with advanced. USAID’s five-year Disaster Preparedness for Effective Response (PREPARE) program follows the Disaster Mitigation, Relief, and Reconstruction Program (DMRRP), in which the International Organization for Migration (IOM) established an operational and logistics presence in five locations in the two countries.
This entailed pre-positioning humanitarian relief supplies and. Emergency Preparedness Individuals with disabilities should feel as safe and secure in their communities and work environments as individuals without disabilities.
Too often, however, the needs of people with disabilities are not considered in emergency planning, despite the fact that the need for such planning has received an increased focus.
Human Resources Policy on Emergency Disaster Preparedness The HR Risk Manager has been identified to coordinate the HR related components of the emergency preparedness plan and to develop a comprehensive risk management program.
VII. HUMAN RESOURCES OPERATIONS A. Data Files and System Accessibility Size: 33KB. Here are some Emergency Preparedness Topics accessible to people who are deaf, blind, or have limited sight.
Visit our Children with Special Needs web page for parents and caretakers of children with special needs. Visit the American Red Cross's web site for people with disabilities for tips on how to survive a disaster. Also visit the web site on information and videos for helping.
Preparing for an emergency is difficult for any parent, and as a parent caring for a child with special needs, you have extra things to think about. Try to reflect on your child's needs if there was: *No water, electricity, telephone, heat, air conditioning, or refrigeration.
ASSIGNMENT OF NATIONAL SECURITY AND EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS COMMUNICATIONS FUNCTIONS. By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1.
Policy. The Federal Government must have the ability to communicate at all times and under all circumstances. The Emergency Preparedness Initiative has two main objectives. The first is to make sure that the special needs of people with disabilities are adequately addressed prior to an emergency in order to minimize the adverse impact on people with disabilities and their communities.
This enables emergency responders to make informed deci-sions for File Size: KB. Preparing the Workplace for Everyone is meant to serve as a launching point for federal agencies as they re-evaluate and strengthen their Occupant Emergency Plans (OEPs).
This framework of guidelines reflects the effective practices of nearly 20 federal agencies gathered from direct input, existing reports and articles, and actual emergency plans. Departmental Guidelines on Emergency Preparedness and Individuals with Disabilities.
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is committed to providing emergency preparedness as an essential activity in meeting the needs of all people at its facilities, including people with disabilities and other medical conditions.Disaster Preparedness and Recovery Resources for Health Centers Program Grantees; B Flexibilities During Disasters make it easier for covered entities to provided needed care during emergencies and disasters.; Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program provides benefits to individuals (or their survivors) harmed by the use of a countermeasure specified in Federal declarations to prevent or.Priority needs to given more on public preparedness programs directed at local communities in the disaster prone areas through a team based hands-on training.
3. Training Needs Analysis There are many factors for the success or failure of by: | <urn:uuid:24fce85b-ef0a-431d-a327-27c977a8e34f> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://lavegejigevycymi.scrapbookingnadiastpierre.com/dods-industrial-preparedness-program-needs-national-policy-to-effectively-meet-emergency-needs-book-31924bv.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572021.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20220814083156-20220814113156-00068.warc.gz | en | 0.918707 | 2,057 | 1.75 | 2 |
Making sure that our homes are watertight and insulated is essential in the run up to winter, but you also need to make sure that your home is able to breathe. As we seal up our homes against the elements, we often overlook the need for air to circulate between indoors and outside. So many avoidable damp problems are caused by the failure to consider good ventilation, with mildew, fungus, ruined curtains and carpets often being the result.
When thinking about where you may need ventilation you need to consider any causes of condensation or dampness that may exist in your home and the rooms that these are in. Think about where you hang clothes to dry, cooking, bathing and if you have a tumble dryer.
Image source: Pinterest
The water from these processes, which manifests as steam or condensation has to go somewhere and will settle in the room if it has no simple way to escape. You will also have to take fuel-burning appliances into account, as you must have ventilation in a room where you have a boiler, hob, oven or fire.
When you have a tumble dryer installed you should have it set to vent to the outside via a length of ducting, as otherwise the water from the drying clothes will simply go back into your kitchen or utility room.
Image source: House to Home
The most simple form of ventilation for your home is what is known as static ventilation and this takes the form of a simple hole in the wall, into which a vent is installed. You will probably already have some of these visible around the floor level at the front of your house, with plastic or metal grates covering the ventilation holes. Most of these will be permanently open to allow ventilation, although those that open into a room (rather than a void or a cellar) will often have a sliding cover over them. It is best to leave these open as much as you can, even in winter. Don’t put furniture too near these or allow them to become blocked or covered.
This form of ventilation can also be assisted by ‘trickle vents’ in modern glazing units, which are like mini grates that allow window in at the top or base of the window frame. The draughty windows of the past would have served a similar purpose, proving that inefficient home insulation was good for something at least.
Image source: Pinterest
For your bathroom, you will want to make sure that you have an efficient extractor fan installed, with the same in your kitchen. These should vent to the outside to be efficient at ridding the room of moisture. Opening a window now and then will not do the job and can actually make things worse, due to the difference in air temperatures and moisture. If you find that you have a problem with damp in your bathroom then do not leave clothes to dry in there and remove damp towels after bathing or showering.
Good, simple ventilation should keep most homes free from moisture where it is not wanted. De-cluttering and tidying can help too, allowing air to flow more freely. In some cases it may be best to consult a specialist about a whole house ventilation system, although these can prove expensive to both install and run. | <urn:uuid:b517a4d3-1c80-49b6-95ee-948c3130f0c6> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.ratedpeople.com/blog/ventilation-home | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882572833.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20220817001643-20220817031643-00268.warc.gz | en | 0.965691 | 653 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Recent legislation in the U.K., particularly the NHS and Community Care Act 1990, has encouraged the direct participation of service users in the planning and management of care services.
This paper explores evidence of how the interests of service users experiencing mental distress are represented within community care services in the U.K. and the extent to which this leads to a devolution of power to those service users.
The evidence is drawn from a survey of principal officers in social services departments responsible for mental health services and interviews with 135 service users.
This reveals considerable confusion about the meaning and purpose of user involvement and about how service users can best be represented ; little evidence, despite users'interest in it, of power-sharing ; and limited commitment of resources to make further participation possible.
The conclusion considers how, in the light of this evidence, Central and Local Government might further develop user involvement.
Mots-clés Pascal : Législation, Santé mentale, Royaume Uni, Europe, Utilisation, Service santé, Traitement communautaire, Psychiatrie communautaire, Participation, Planification, Organisation santé, Homme
Mots-clés Pascal anglais : Legislation, Mental health, United Kingdom, Europe, Use, Health service, Community treatment, Community psychiatry, Participation, Planning, Public health organization, Human
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
|Native to||Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Oman, Turkmenistan|
|Ethnicity||predominantly Baloch, some Brahui|
|7.6 million (2007)|
Official language in
|Balochistan; Balochistan Province of Iran (provincial)|
|Regulated by||Balochi Academy (Balochistan)|
bgp – Eastern Balochi
bgn – Western Balochi
bcc – Southern Balochi
ktl – Koroshi
Geographic distribution of Balochi and other Iranian languages
The Balochi vowel system has at least eight vowels: five long vowels and three short vowels. The long vowels are /aː/, /eː/, /iː/, /oː/, and /uː/. The short vowels are /a/, /i/ and /u/. The short vowels have more centralized phonetic qualities than the long vowels.
Southern Balochi (at least as spoken in Karachi) also has nasalized vowels, most importantly /ẽː/ and /ãː/.
The following consonants are common to both Western Balochi and Southern Balochi. The place of articulation of the consonants /s/, /z/, /n/, /ɾ/ and /l/ is claimed to be alveolar in Western Balochi, while at least the /ɾ/ is claimed to be dental in Southern Balochi. The stops /t/ and /d/ are claimed to be dental in both dialects.
|Stop||p b||t d||ʈ ɖ||k ɡ||ʔ|
|Fricative||s z||ʃ ʒ[cn 1]||h[cn 2]|
- Words with /ʒ/ are uncommon.
- Word-initial /h/ is dropped in Balochi as spoken in Karachi.
- The retroflex tap has a very limited distribution.
In addition, /f/ is listed for Southern Balochi, but is found in few words. /x/ (voiceless velar fricative) in some loanwords in Southern Balochi corresponding to /χ/ (voiceless uvular fricative) in Western Balochi; and /ɣ/ (voiced velar fricative) in some loanwords in Southern Balochi corresponding to /ʁ/ (voiced uvular fricative) in Western Balochi.
The normal word order is subject–object–verb. Like many other Indo-Iranian languages, Balochi has split ergativity. In the present tense or future tense, the subject is marked as nominative, and the object is marked as accusative. In the past tense, however, the subject of a transitive verb is marked as oblique, and the verb agrees with the object.
There are two main dialects among the Balochi language, one with the Mandwani or northern tribes and the other with the Mazaris or southern tribes. The differences among the Mazaris dialect from that among the Maris, the Bugtis, the Shambanis, the Kacchi Plains people and those of the Bolan Pass are slight and as such are said to all be the same. The grammatical terminations by the northern tribes are less full and distinct than those in the southern tribes.
Before the 19th century, Balochi was an unwritten language. The official written language was Persian, although Balochi was still spoken at the Baloch courts. British linguists and political historians wrote from with the Latin script, but following the independence of Pakistan, Baloch scholars adopted Urdu Arabic script. The first collection of poetry in Balochi, Gulbang by Mir Gul Khan Nasir was published in 1951 and incorporated the Urdu Arabic Script. But it was much later that Sayad Zahurshah Hashemi wrote a comprehensive guidance on the usage of Urdu Arabic script and standardized it as the Balochi Orthography in Pakistan. This earned Sayad Hashemi the title of 'the Father of Balochi'. Sayad's guidances are widely used in Eastern and Western Balochistan. In Afghanistan, however, Balochi is written in a modified Arabic script based on what is used for Farsi.
ا آ ب بھ ݒ پ پھ ت تھ ٹ ٹھ ث ج جھ ݘ چ چھ ح خ د دھ ڈ ڈھ ڋ ذ ڌ ڌھ ر ڑ ڑھ ز ژ س ش ص ض ط طھ ظ ع غ ف ق قھ ک کھ گ گھ ڱ ڳ ل لھ م مھ ن نھ ں ڹ و وھ ہ ھ ء ی ے ﻳﮭ ~٠
This orthography of Balochi script has been introduced by Mir Qasim Qaisrani Baloch in his Balochi pamphlet "Balochi Nama Qasim" published in 1987. The same alphabets have been published in his article "Balochki Mundh Likh" in monthly Balochi Nama, Dera Ghazi Khan, August–September 1991, Vol. 1, issue 1, Pp. 24. https://www.facebook.com/Balochi.Research.Centre/.
The Sayad Zahurshah Hashemi 'Urdu Arabic orthography'
ا آ ب پ ت ٹ ج چ د ڈ ر ڑ ز ژ س ش ک گ ل م ن و ھ ء ی ے
Balochi Latin alphabet
The following Latin-based alphabet was adopted by the International Workshop on "Balochi Roman Orthography" (University of Uppsala, Sweden, May 28–30, 2000).
a á b c d ď e f g ĝ h i í j k l m n o p q r ř s š t ť u ú v w x y z ž ay aw (33 letters and 2 digraphs)
|A/a||amb (mango), angúr (grape), bagg (camel-caravan), sardar (Head man-nobleman), namb (mist)|
|Á/á||dár (wood), abba (father), árth (flour), bahá (price), pádh (foot), ághah (coming), áhán (them)|
|B/b||(be) bawar (snow, ice), bám (dawn), bágpán (gardener), baktáwar (lucky)|
|C/c||(che) cattr (umbrella), bacc (son), kánc (knife), Karácí, Kulánc, Cákar, Bálác|
|D/d||(de) dard (pain), drad (rainshower), dárman (medicine), wádh (salt)|
|Ď/ď||is the same as Ř/ř (ře) so this latter is preferably used to simplify the orthography.|
|E/e||eš (this), cer (below), eraht (end of date harvest), pešraw (leader, forerunner), kamer (ploughshare)|
|F/f||(fe) To be used only in loan words where its use is inevitable, like Fráns (France), fármaysí (pharmacy).|
|G/g||(ge) gapp (talk), ganokh (mad), bágh (garden), bagg (herd of camels), pádagh (foot), Bagdád (Baghdad)|
|Ĝ/ĝ||(like ĝhaen in Perso-Arabic script) Only in loan words and in eastern dialects: Ghair (Others), Ghali (Carpet), Ghaza (Noise)|
|H/h||(he) hár (flood), máh (moon), koh (mountain), mahár (rein), hon (blood)|
|I/i||(i) istál (star), ingo (here), gir (take), kirr (near)|
|Í/í||(í) ímmán (faith), šír (milk), pakír (beggar), samín (breeze), gálí (carpet)|
|J/j||(je) jang (war), janagh (to beat), jing (lark), ganj (treasure), sajjí (roasted meat)|
|K/k||(ke) Kirmán (Kirman), kárc (knife), nákho (uncle), gwask (calf), kasán (small)|
|L/l||(le) láp (stomach), gal (joy), ghall (party, organization), gull (cheek), gul (rose)|
|M/m||(me) mát/más (mother), bám (dawn), camm (eye), mastir (leader, bigger)|
|N/n||(ne) nán/nagan/naghan (bread), nokk (new, new moon), dann (outside), kwahn (old), nákho (uncle)|
|O/o||(o) oštagh (to stop), ožnág (swim), roc (sun), dor (pain), socagh (to burn)|
|P/p||(pe) Pádh (foot), šap (night), šapád (bare-footed), gapp (talk), haptád (70)|
|Q/q||(qú) used in loan words, like Qábús.|
|R/r||(re) Rustum (a name), rekh (sand), baragh (to take away), giragh (to get), garragh (to bray), gurrag (to roar), šarr (good), sarag (head), sarrag (a kind of donkey's braying)|
|Ř/ř||(ře) řák (post), řukkál (famine), gařř (urial), guřř (last), guřřag (to chop)|
|S/s||(se) sarag (head), khass (someone), kasán (little), bass (enough), ás (fire)|
|Š/š||(še) šap (night), šád (happy), meš (sheep), šuwánag (shepherd), wašš (happy, tasty)|
|T/t||(te) taghard (mat), tahná (alone) thás (bowl), kilítt (kay), masítt (mosque), battí (lantern)|
|Ť/ť||(ťe) ťung (hole), ťíllo (bell), baťť (cooked rice), baťťág (eggplant)|
|U/u||uštir (camel), šumá (you), ustád (teacher), gužn (hunger), buz (goat)|
|Ú/ú||(ú, sounds like the "oo" in English word "root") úrt (thin), zúrag (to take), bizú (take), dúr (distant)|
|V/v||(ve) Used in loanwords only, like in the English word service, very.|
|W/w||(we) warag (food, to eat), wardin (provision), dawár (abode), wádh (salt), kawwás (learned), hawa (wind)|
|X/x||(khe) Xudá (God)|
|Y/y||(ye) yád (remembrance), yár (friend), yárah (eleven), biryání (meat in rice), raydyo (radio), yakk (one)|
|Z/z||(ze) zarr (monay), zí (yesterday), muzz (wages), moz (banana), nazzíkk (nearby), bazgar (tenant), Zor (power)|
|Ž/ž||(že) žand (tired), zindaghi (life), žáng (bells), pažm (wool), gažžag (to swell), gužnag (hungry), Mauz (waves)|
|Ay/ay||(h)ayrán (surprise), ayrát (distribution), say (3), may (our), kay (who), šumay (your)|
|Aw/aw||kawr (river), hawr (rain), kissaw (story), dawl (sort), dawr (jump), awlád (off-spring), kawl (promise), gawk (neck)|
- Hamid Ali Baloch. "SOCIOLINGUISTIC CONTACT AND THE PROVIDENCE OF THE BALOCHI LANGUAGE IN MODERN TIMES". academia.edu. Retrieved 6 March 2016.
- Mikael Parkvall, "Världens 100 största språk 2007" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007), in Nationalencyklopedin
- Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Balochic". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- "Eastern Iranian languages". Encyclopedia Iranica. "Baluchi, a North-Western Iranian language, is spoken chiefly in Pakistan, in the south-eastern corner of the Iranophone area."
- See Farrell (1990) for Southern Balochi (as spoken in Karachi, Pakistan, and Axenov (2006) for Western Balochi as spoken in Turkmenistan.
- Farrell (1990).
- See Axenov (2006) and Farrell (1990), respectively.
- "Balochi" at National Virtual Translation Center."Archived copy". Archived from the original on November 18, 2007. Retrieved June 20, 2015.
- Dames, Mansel Longworth (1922). A text book of the Balochi language. Lahore: Government Print of Punjab. p. 1.
- Dames, Mansel Longworth (1922). A text book of the Balochi language. Lahore: Government Print of Punjab. p. 3.
- Mir Qasim Qaisrani Baloch (August/September 1991) Balochki Mundh Likh, Dera Ghazi Khan, Pakistan, Monthly Balochi Nama, Vol. 1, Issue: 1, Pp. 24-25
- "Baluchi Roman ORTHOGRAPHY -". www.phrasebase.com. Retrieved 2015-10-23.
- Elfenbein, Josef (1997). "Balochi Phonology". In Kaye, Alan S. Phonologies of Asia and Africa. 1. pp. 761–776. ISBN 1-57506-017-5.
- Axenov, Serge. 2006. The Balochi language of Turkmenistan: A corpus-based grammatical description. Uppsala, Sweden: Acta Uppsala Universitet.
- Barker, Muhammad A. & Aaqil Khan Mengal. 1969. A course in Baluchi. Montreal: McGill University.
- Collett, Nigel A. 1983. A grammar, phrase book, and vocabulary of Baluchi. Abingdon: Burgess & Son.
- Farrell, Tim. 1989. A study of ergativity in Balochi.' M.A. thesis: School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London.
- Farrell, Tim. 1990. Basic Balochi: An introductory course. Naples: Instituto Universitario Orientale, Dipartimento di Studi Asiatici.
- Farrell, Tim. 1995. Fading ergativity? A study of ergativity in Balochi. In David C. Bennett, Theodora Bynon & B. George Hewitt (eds.), Subject, voice, and ergativity: Selected essays, 218–243. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
- Gilbertson, George W. 1923. The Balochi language. A grammar and manual. Hertford: Stephen Austin & Sons.
- Gilbertson, George W. 1925. English-Balochi colloquial dictionary. Hertford: Stephen Austin & Sons.
- Jahani, Carina. 1990. Standardization and orthography in the Balochi language. Studia Iranica Upsaliensia. Uppsala, Sweden: Almqvist & Wiksell Internat.
- Jahani, Carina. 2000. Language in society: Eight sociolinguistic essays on Balochi. Uppsala, Sweden: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.
- Korn, Agnes. 2009. Marking of arguments in Balochi ergative and mixed constructions. In Simin Karimi, VIda Samiian & Donald Stilo (eds.) Aspects of Iranian Linguistics, 249–276. Newcastle upon Tyne (UK): Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
|Western Balochi test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator|
|Southern Balochi test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator|
|Eastern Balochi test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator|
|Wikivoyage has phrasebook for Balochi.|
- Collett, N. A. A grammar, phrase book and vocabulary of Baluchi: (as spoken in the Sultanate of Oman). 2nd ed. [Camberley]: [N.A. Collett], 1986.
- Dames, Mansel Longworth. A sketch of the northern Balochi language, containing a grammar, vocabulary and specimens of the language. Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1881.
- Mumtaz Ahmad. Baluchi glossary: a Baluchi-English glossary: elementary level. Kensington, Md.: Dunwoody Press, 1985.
- EuroBalúči online translation tool – translate Balochi words to or from English, Persian, Spanish, Finnish and Swedish
- iJunoon English to Balochi Dictionary
- UCLA Language Materials Project: Baluchi – a general overview of Balochi with societal context and history of the language
- Balochi language – a website about the language
- EuroBalúči – Baluchi alphabet, grammar and music
- "Baluchi". Encyclopedia Americana. 1920.
- VTG official website you can contact this joints group. | <urn:uuid:ed43423d-177b-4efa-9a83-fb61a4fda13b> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://wpedia.goo.ne.jp/enwiki/Balochi_language | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281574.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00019-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.689595 | 4,284 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Being relaxed and loose in the water is the key to speed, and getting to that point starts before you put on your racing swimsuit. When you are stressed or nervous, your muscles may start to tighten, and you'll have a disappointing performance.
The following are a few tips to keep you calm before your next big race:
- Break down the race process - It can be easy to over think a race. When this happens, before you know it, getting to one side of the pool and back seems like a daunting task. You can clear your brain of these fears by visualizing each point of your race. How will you dive? How many dolphin kicks will you execute? When will you take your first breath? You should imagine the swim in such detail that the process will be automatic once you mount the block.
- Engage in activities that keep you focused – While some swimmers need to be alone listening to music, others prefer to joke around with friends to stay relaxed. After racing regularly, you will begin to figure out what works best for you.
- Ignore competitors - If you are like most swimmers, you've probably gazed across the pool a few times and gotten mesmerized by the warm-up routine of one of your competitors. While looking at them, you begin to doubt your own skills. During moments like these, you should direct your focus inward and think about the hard work that got you to this point.
- Review previous successful races – Think about your best races and think about which pre-swim rituals they had in common and apply them to future races. | <urn:uuid:ccde5fb2-d461-4a4e-9b71-e6ff9e6082f5> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://blog.swimmerschoice.com/blog/tips-for-the-competitive-swimmer/tips-for-staying-calm-before-a-big-meet/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280872.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00314-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972544 | 325 | 1.828125 | 2 |
For 50 years, revenues from offshore oil and gas well royalties have helped fund improvements at some of Californian’s favorite national park lands — Yosemite, Sequoia, Muir Woods, the Lake Tahoe, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Unless Congress acts to reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund however, that revenue stream will end in September 2015. A coalition of business, community, environmental and recreational interests is advocating for renewal of the trust fund for another 50 years.
California park lands, urban park, recreation areas and conservation efforts have enjoyed some $2 billion in funding over the years — more than any other state. Some $900 million from the gas and oil royalties is dedicated to the Land and Conservation Trust fund for environmental, recreational and conservation efforts. Congress however, rarely dedicates the full amount, usually redirecting funds to other federal concerns. This year, park lands stewards hope to see $300 million allocated. This leaves local projects in new community parks, regional recreation areas and environmentally damaged areas waiting, and waiting, and waiting for funds.
The fund’s state assistance program has delivered $287 million in matching grants for California projects, including $68 million for 320 projects in the Bay Area alone.
The California congressional delegation should recognize the importance of local parks, open space and native species in Californians’ lives, it should prioritize funding to restore lands damaged by wildfire and water diversions. Our delegates should join others in the U.S. House and Senate who are calling for re-authorization.
The fund has served our lands well for 50 years. Conservation remains an important American value — regardless of political leanings. Congress should reauthorize these funds to land and water conservation efforts for 50 years more. | <urn:uuid:05521681-5c7f-436c-8b78-af9451d79c72> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://blog.sfgate.com/opinionshop/2014/09/02/50-years-of-conservation-funding-how-about-50-more/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280065.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00541-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942562 | 356 | 2.015625 | 2 |
A new conjunction method (wavelet-neuro-fuzzy) for precipitation forecast is proposed in this study. The conjunction method combines two methods, discrete wavelet transform and neuro-fuzzy. The observed daily precipitations are decomposed some subseries by using discrete wavelet transform and then appropriate sub-series are used as inputs to the neuro-fuzzy models for forecasting of daily precipitations. The daily precipitation data of three stations in Turkey are used as case studies. The wavelet-neuro-fuzzy model is provided a good fit with the observed data, especially for time series which have zero precipitation in the summer months and for the peaks in the testing period. The conjunction models are compared with classical neuro-fuzzy model. The benchmark results showed that the conjunction model produced significantly better results than the tatter. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:93bfa9b2-6a8f-4b7c-b88b-0fa039aac21d> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://avesis.itu.edu.tr/yayin/f06ac045-acc7-490a-b381-f154c2162d1c/wavelet-and-neuro-fuzzy-conjunction-model-for-precipitation-forecasting | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571284.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20220811103305-20220811133305-00465.warc.gz | en | 0.918878 | 186 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Taking notes from the articles we read is not something we researchers talk about a lot, which means you have probably developed your own ad-hoc, idiosyncratic methods. And they probably work … but could they be better?
I find the very best way to learn this kind of everyday practice is in casual conversations; the sort that usually take place in the tearooms and hallways of academia. When @riotk asked me to do a post on note taking I figured Twitter was the ideal vehicle to start gathering ideas. Twitter enables me to host a ‘watercooler’ conversation – globally.
I know lots of people either don’t like Twitter, or think it’s a waste of time. I hope to convince you otherwise. Last night I facilitated a live Australian #phdchat on the topic on note taking tips and techniques, where lots of good ideas were shared. In fact, the discussion threw up a surprising diversity of practices and of thoughts on what appears, from a distance, to be a rather mundane subject.
I hope you enjoy my notes on this conversation on note taking. If you have any more ideas on note taking to share I’d love you to leave them in the comments – either here or on the Storify site. | <urn:uuid:64fc4b1f-1042-43da-a708-4f1b35c642d2> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://thesiswhisperer.com/2012/06/07/what-is-the-best-way-of-taking-notes-for-your-phd/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281450.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00171-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953532 | 262 | 1.5625 | 2 |
This book is a part of a series of books aimed at promoting good health and well-being for primary school children.
This title focuses on the following areas:
- Being healthy, safe and active
- Communication and interacting for health and wellbeing
The book is divided into the following sections:
- Section 1 : Puberty
- Section 2: Assessing Health Information
- Section 3 : Drug Awareness
This book can be used by teachers and parents who would like to support their child’s learning at school.
No of Pages: 60
Available to download immediately after checkout. | <urn:uuid:8f5322d5-361b-4a6b-bfd1-43ab4d13e165> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.educatorsden.com/health-for-years-5-6-part-1-instant-download-copy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571989.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813232744-20220814022744-00468.warc.gz | en | 0.950262 | 124 | 3.40625 | 3 |
Lybrate.com has an excellent community of Dietitian/Nutritionists in India. You will find Dietitian/Nutritionists with more than 40 years of experience on Lybrate.com. You can find Dietitian/Nutritionists online in Delhi and from across India. View the profile of medical specialists and their reviews from other patients to make an informed decision.
Book Clinic Appointment
Weight Management Treatment
Customised Diet Chart
Diet Therapy Treatment
Nutrition Assessment Service
Weight Loss Treatment
Child Nutrition Management
Diabetic Diet Counseling
Food Plan Preparation
Healthy Heart Diet
Ketogenic Diet Treatment
Therapeutic Diets Treatment
Treatment Of Restenosis
Asthma Treatment & Management
Weight Loss Diet Counseling
The study, which was conducted at the University of Haifa in Israel, found that nursing may lower the risk of pediatric leukemia by 14 to 19 percent. The scientists reached this conclusion by performing a meta-analysis of 18 studies that had been previously published. The subjects of each of the 18 investigations were mothers of children who had been diagnosed with leukemia and mothers of children who were healthy. They were asked questions that included whether or not they breastfed their children and their responses were compiled and compared.
The research was not designed to prove cause and effect, and these findings in no way show that failure to nurse a baby causes pediatric leukemia. However, that difference of 14 to 19 percent is significant enough to establish an association between breastfeeding and lowering a child’s risk of this disease. The scientists found that it was a minimum of six months of breastfeeding that appears to confer some type of protection.
The major weakness of this type of study is that the findings are based on recall. You might think that you would certainly remember the length of time that you nursed a child, but if you are asked about it several years later and have more than one kid, some of the details might be a little fuzzy. However, even if that is an issue, it stands to reason that most mothers can provide a fairly accurate account of whether or not they breastfed and the approximate duration.
At any rate, even if the 14 to 19 percent determined by the scientists is slightly off, the evidence still provides a link to reducing the chance of your child developing leukemia. And any potential reduction of a risk like that is something most mothers would jump at. Leukemias, which affect the bone marrow and blood, are responsible for approximately 30 percent of all pediatric cancers according to the American Cancer Society. It is the most common form of childhood cancer, and treatment typically involves chemotherapy and sometimes radiation or surgery as well.
While the research did not address exactly how breastfeeding might help prevent pediatric leukemia, the answer might lie in a 2014 study at the University of Kentucky in Lexington that showed breast milk is an effective route of transmitting antibodies from mother to baby. These antibodies serve a valuable function by quickly bringing the infant’s immune system up to speed and helping the child fight off infections. And as Jon Barron has pointed out,cancer is intimately tied to the strength of your immune system. Other research has found that breastfed babies are hospitalized less frequently than their bottle-fed counterparts, have a lower risk of sudden infant death syndrome, and have diminished rates of ear infections, diarrhea, allergies, anddiabetes.
Ultimately, to breastfeed a child or not is a matter of choice. But with so many proven health benefits to both infant and mother (breastfeeding has been shown to reduce your risk of breast and ovarian cancer as well as rheumatoid arthritis), it is hard to imagine many reasons why a woman would choose formula over nursing. Of course sometimes there are extenuating circumstances due to an adoption, inability to produce sufficient quantities of breast milk, and other issues that might preclude nursing. But any time spent breastfeeding is worthwhile for the health of both you and your little one.
I am 21 year old man, I was 104 in weight when I started running to loose weight, I lost weight after a month or more of continuous running and now stand at 91, but even after working out the same way and maintaining a same diet more or less, I am stuck at this weight for nearly 3 weeks now, why this is happening and what should I do. Also my right feet pains a lot now, is this so because I am running on roads? What should I do.
I want to gain my weight but I am unable to do it because I don't have proper diet chart and also I am fully vegetarian so what should I do to gain weight and make perfect body.
Hiii sir I am 23 years old and I am only 40 kg. My height is 5.7 please give me some nutrition food list for my health. thank-you.
My 13 year old son is overweight-67kg. Though he has cut down on junk and follows a strict diet his weight has not reduced. It has been so for the past 3 years. In fact, he was an underweight child till he was 3 years and later on till 10 years had no issues with body weight. Is there some problem I have to take care of?
The patient is of Age of 73 years, male, suffering from old age diabetics. In recent blood test, fasting sugar is 230 and PL is 435. The patient is vegetarian, not smoking, not chewing tobacco, no drinks. Any Ayurvedic Tablets / churns you will suggest him to consume?
Sir .meri height 5.6 hai or weight 59 . But sir mera face bhaut patla hai .sublog ka face phoola rha hai .lekin mera .patla hai. .bhaut khrab lgta hai .plzz help me sir.
I am 33 years old. I feel tiredness mostly and have blackspot around my eyes too. Digestive system also not so good. Pls advice me.
Diabetes or madhumeha, is a serious disease that affects many people worldwide today. Diabetes, which is referred to as maha-roga is the excess of glucose in blood. As a result, you cannot consume sweetened food, get excess urges to drink water or urinate. However, Ayurveda has the most effective solutions to control diabetes naturally.
Read on to know what best natural medications are there to cure diabetes.
- Gymnema Sylvestre or Gurmar: It is one of the most effective remedies to diabetes. It is a hypoglycemic component, which makes it ideal for treating diabetes. It helps in reducing dependency on insulin by regeneration of residual beta cells of the pancreas.
- Coccinia indica: It is another herb, which regulates diabetes very well. This plant contains components, which after consumption of carbohydrates, prevent the sudden increase in blood glucose level. It can also prevent any adverse effect on other organs of the body due to diabetes. It is found to reduce oxidative stress amongst diabetes patients by surging the vitamin C levels in the plasma, and also prevents the fluctuations in fatty acid levels amongst diabetes patients.
- Azadirachta Indica or neem: It is one of the most common household antiseptics and a wonderful cure for diabetes. It enables high glucose tolerance, and also prevents diabetic neuropathy, which may cause severe fatalities.
- Morus Indica or Mulberry: It is a food that is experimentally proven to reduce diabetes. Daily consumption of mulberry leaves for 15 days at a stretch are beneficial in limiting approximately 38% of diabetes cases among its consumers. It also protects you against oxidative stress by building the antioxidant defense system of the body and is also known to correct any lipid profile abnormality. It also delays the possibility of the appearance of cataract as a result of diabetes.
- Momordica Charantia or bitter gourd: It is another common remedy found in most Indian households. Even though it is extremely bitter in taste, its medicinal properties are exemplary, and are extensively used in Ayurvedic medicines. It also targets the beta cells of the pancreas to help boost up insulin secretion by increasing their number. Bitter gourd also helps to release more insulin by way of regeneration of the pancreas.
- Eugenia Jambolana or Indian Jamun: This Ayurvedic cure reduces blood sugar level and increases the release of insulin. The extract of "jamun" seeds help in healing of wounds quicker, usually impaired by diabetes.
- Trigonella Foenum or methi: It is another household ingredient that serves medicinal purposes in case of diabetes patients. Even 1gm of fenugreek seeds could reduce diabetes sharply in a short span of 2 months. This benefit is because of the presence of diosgenin, a compound with hypoglycemic properties.
However, all these medicinal plants should be consumed under proper guidance from professional practitioners only.
Related Tip: "5 Tips To Control Diabetes Through Diet"
I am fed up of my increased weight. I have tried everything but nothing works. Can you suggest me some diet or exercise which can help me solve my problem?
You have heard about metabolism, chances are it is in relation to weight loss. Metabolism is bigger than weight loss. It is about a healthier, better you. If you want to fire up your metabolism and do not have any idea how to do it, you have come to the right place. If you have tried to speed up your metabolism before but do not see visible results, all that you need to do to speed up your metabolism.
Fire up your metabolism
Fast metabolism fuel #1: exercise smart
Fast metabolism fuel #2: eat right
Fast metabolism fuel #3: de-stress | <urn:uuid:58fff43a-c8e0-4bdb-b927-1de761d62bf1> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | https://www.lybrate.com/delhi/doctor/dt-cheenu-prashar-vig-dietitian-nutritionist | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281746.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00286-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956423 | 2,013 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Over the last 20 years, Lagos has had to make large-scale investments in transport infrastructure to keep up with its growing population. Most notably, in 2008, Lagos opened the first ever Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system on the African continent. Today, the system boasts two different lines which cover over 35.5km of track and transport over 350,000 commuters on a daily basis. Through the BRT and wider reforms, Lagos has been able to achieve reductions in travel times of up to one-third since 2008, relieving an estimated USD$240m in economic loss each year.
This case study provides a detailed account of the Lagos experience, highlighting key factors behind its successful reforms as well as important lessons for other cities looking to improve their public transport systems. | <urn:uuid:d591f3d9-5375-45b7-beb0-169e5ae44c46> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/publications/brt-and-danfo-case-study-lagos-transport-reforms-1999-2019 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571911.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20220813081639-20220813111639-00471.warc.gz | en | 0.964468 | 160 | 2.484375 | 2 |
An Issue Brief released yesterday by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation (RWJF) concludes that small firms would largely benefit from the reform efforts that have been put forth in both the Senate bill (HR 3590) and the House bill (HR 3200). While the benefits from these bills to small businesses already are uncertain – and likely even deleterious – the latest version of the senate bill is even less likely to result in actual benefits for small employers.
Previous Heritage analysis has shown that small businesses would be affected by employer mandate structure under the House bill (HR 3200) and the cost-impact of this “pay or play” mandate is not trivial as the aforementioned RWJF Issue Brief purports. These mandates would effectively reach small firms with less than 25 workers—all small firms with, on average, between 21 and 25 workers— which are the small businesses that are supposed to reap the benefits of reform.
Alternatively, the latest version of the Senate Health bill (HR 3590) largely leaves small businesses out of any employer “pay or play” mandate provisions. The bill also includes tax credits for small employers to alleviate the cost-pressure of offering insurance to its workers. After exclusions, however, essentially the only eligible firms are those firms with 10 or fewer workers as well as those with low-income workers—the least likely to offer coverage even with a significant price reduction.
In addition to the coverage mandate costs and tax credits, it is not certain that there will be any benefits particularly in the latest Senate Health bill relating to insurance cost reduction for small employers—as a result of the established state health exchanges. Even before the latest concerns relating to the negotiation process to get any type of health reform bill, it was still uncertain whether the premiums even in the state health insurance exchanges would result in lower premiums. The plans purchased in these exchanges would have to meet a regulated level of coverage requirements, which could very likely contribute to even higher costs. If small employers continue to find health insurance costs unpredictable as well as less of a direct cost-burden then they are likely to remain outside of even these exchanges. This has largely been the situation in Maine, where only 2.5 percent of total small employers actually purchased health insurance coverage through the established public option plan—DirigoChoice.
It is also uncertain whether small firms will determine it worthwhile to participate in the established health exchanges. This could occur for any number of reasons. Although the burden of administration costs is currently high for small employers in the individual and small group markets, it is not certain that these costs will be lower when having to comply with bureaucratic regulations. Small businesses, particularly the smallest companies, largely do not have the capacity to take on the administrative complexities of managing health insurance. This is a legitimate and reasonable concern that small employers will still face, all else equal, especially for those firms that would have to hire an additional worker to handle the additional administrative functions of handling the health insurance plans and compliance regulations.
Overall, it is highly uncertain whether the House bill (HR 3200) or any version of the Senate bill (3590) would “substantially improve the ability of small employers to obtain affordable coverage”, particularly considering the continued uncertainty of premium costs small employers will face even in the (to be established) state health insurance exchanges. | <urn:uuid:c33fe737-2dc7-445e-b608-7ac3dee59a92> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://dailysignal.com/2009/12/17/small-business-is-not-better-off-under-obamacare/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282202.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00547-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96865 | 676 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Travel In The Yukon has many ways to assist in capturing new Internet business.
The Yukon. Just saying the name conjures up images of the far north, expeditions, gold rushes and wide open spaces. With British Columbia to the south, Alaska to the west, the Beauport Sea to the north and the Northwest Territories to the east, you can expect the Yukon to have diverse regions.
Travel In The Yukon has accommodations listings that help you find the best Yukon hotel, resort, cabin, bed and breakfast or RV/campgrounds. Whitehorse is the capital and has a full service airport.
Travel In The Yukon has an articles section that has practical information for your Yukon expedition. Make sure to add your own Yukon travel essay!
Famous for its Gold Rush history, Whitehorse will let you experience the wildlife and ice age history of the north.
Dawson City evokes the romance of the North: Jack London and Robert Service. Learn all about the 1896 Gold Rush.
The Southern Lakes region includes Carcross, Marsh Lake, Mount Lorne, Taglish, and Teslin.
The Silver Trail connects the towns of Elsa, Keno City, Mayo, and Stewart Crossing and is named after the Yukon's "other mineral rush" | <urn:uuid:1156704e-274a-41e4-bfb9-24244c30fb23> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.travelintheyukon.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280221.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00238-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.899678 | 264 | 1.84375 | 2 |
FoodCloud Hubs works with food businesses nationwide who have volumes of surplus food, such as farms, manufacturers and distributors to manage ad-hoc and regular supplies of surplus as efficiently as possible.
In some instances, businesses deliver directly to our Hubs in Cork, Galway and Dublin. In other circumstances, we collect from food businesses daily or weekly with our national fleet of refrigerated vans.
Once the food reaches the closest FoodCloud Hub, it is counted, uploaded onto our IT warehousing system, and then segregated into storage. We implement a robust, industry standard food safety system to ensure that food is collected and delivered in a safe condition.
Each day our Hub team call our designated charity partners,go through all the products that we have in the Hub and take an order for delivery or collection the next day. Charity partners pay a nominal contribution towards the storage and transport of the food
It’s a win-win! Charities have access to a supply of fresh food and business can contribute to their community in a meaningful and practical way by ensuring that no good food goes to waste. | <urn:uuid:99c582be-31eb-4514-816b-14d93409e2da> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://food.cloud/our-work/hubs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882571692.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20220812105810-20220812135810-00065.warc.gz | en | 0.956188 | 224 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Wondering what else you can do to make difference and become part of the ResilientCity planning and design network? Here are some suggestions:
1. Become familiar with the issues. We recommend the following books as great backgrounders to understanding the key issues:
- The Upside of Down, by Thomas Homer Dixon
- Arrival City, by Doug Sauders
- Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller, by Jeff Rubin
- The New Green History of the World, by Clive Ponting
- The Triumph of The City, by Edward Glaeser
And then watch Gregory Green's Video: The End of Suburbia, (directed by Gregory Greene, one of ResilientCity's Ideas Competition Jury Members) that very effectively treats all of the key issues of peak oil and its potential impact on urban planning and city design.
2. Participate in our next ResilientCity.org Ideas Design Competition to explore and then exhibit your ideas about how we could more effectively design our cities and buildings to achieve greater resilience.
3. Inform your professional organization's continuing education program about the importance of resilience and future proofing cities and suggest that they develop courses or conferences around the concept of resiience.
4. If you are a member of a Green Building Council (like USGBC or CaGBC) then make your voice heard and tell your local chapter and your national representatives to make energy conservation a higher priority and requirement in their LEED building credit system. Although all of the LEED credits are important, reducing energy consumption in buildings is the most important single action to reduce green house gas emissions, and our reliance on fossil fuels.
5. Become familiar with any initiatives to re-localize food production in your city, and lend your support to those initiatives. For example, in Toronto, find out more about the Stop Community Food Centre. Located in Toronto's Davenport West neighbourhood, The Stop Community Food Centre (The Stop) works to increase people's access to healthy food in a manner that maintains dignity, builds community and challenges inequality.
6. Send us your comments, suggestions and ideas on how you think we can plan and design more resilient cities, as well as how we can improve the ResilientCity.org website. We are a new website, so we wlll very much appreciate hearing from you on how we can make it more useful for you, at Contact Us.
Resources for Resilient Cities
The links pages listed at the right may be helpful as you explore the ideas and concepts of resilient city planning and design.
The term Resilience the way we are using it has its origins in the science of ecology. In ecology, the term resilience refers to an ecosystem’s ability to successfully cope with external shocks and stresses. On this page we provide two useful definitions of resilience that have helped us in shaping the development of our resilient planning and design ideas and principles for resilient cities.
Links to websites of key climate change, peak oil resources as well as websites dealing with transition and depowering. We have also included some key links related to climate science, and the monitoring of the environment.
Links to a few essential books for understanding the breadth and depth of both climate change and peak oil issues, that provide a good foundation for understanding their future potential impact on the way we plan and design cities.
Please contact us to suggest additional links. | <urn:uuid:409df95a-1818-4c73-bad7-21eea23bd311> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.resilientcity.org/index.cfm?pagepath=Get_Involved_&id=10045 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560282202.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095122-00554-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941291 | 701 | 2 | 2 |
Copper Repiping Folsom, CA
Repiping is a common plumbing procedure amongst the many Folsom, CA homeowners for nearly 15 years. Almost 50% of the houses across Folsom had been built from 8 to 25 years ago and may contain dated, obsolete galvanized pipes which could be highly vulnerable to rust and corrosion.
Over time, the galvanized pipes that are in existence inside the home will wear away. There are lots of reasons for the oxidation. Lately, there are many reports in the news which talk about a local Water Treatment location as a cause of a distressing trend of pinhole water leaks in addition to slab leaks as being a definite consequence of various chemicals that were used in order to treat water. Gradually these types of artificial additives have been analyzed to have led to the type of material breakdown of a variety of various types of galvanized pipes. Having said that there are several beliefs of what causes this kind of oxidation and failure, the fact of the matter is sooner or later a galvanized plumbing system must be remade by the process of a copper or PEX repiping.
Is water pipe corrosion a wide concern within Folsom?
Pipe corrosion develops for a number of different reasons. If this occurs, it effects more than merely the internal surfaces in the pipe. It is going to gradually decrease your water pressure, which lowers your capacity to run modern appliances such as the dishwasher and washing machine at the same time. It increases your risk of being scalded in your shower when someone else in your house uses the faucet. In addition to the pressure water decrease, the deposits and rust from the old galvanized pipes will make its way into the water you use causing discoloring and harm on internal fixtures. Water screens become clogged more frequently. It may even induce medical concerns if the water is used for cooking and bathing. Smaller sized children are often especially prone to the impact of unhealthy water quality in developing years. With all these combined contributing elements, Folsom residents have valid reason to be concerned in the matter of managing older galvanized water pipes. Repipe Specialists is the top firm of choice for dealing with this issue once and for all.
What’s the price to do a repipe on a residential home in Folsom?
The fees will vary depending on the specific plumbing layout of the home. One may decide to use further updates including a tankless water heater or superior water fixtures in the sink or shower. Progressively the rust and corrosion in the pipes will have an effect on not merely the water lines, but also your fixtures. Years and years of corrosion and decomposition had been pressured through the pipes, blocking screens and possibly producing problems to the inner components. Repipe Specialists can do it all at the same time, working on your water system issues simultaneously. This ought to free you of worry for a long time to come. The expenses of a repiping tend to be half of of what the nearby plumbing contractor in Folsom can charge. Our customers also have ease and comfort knowing that their repipe installation is guaranteed by a lifetime extended warranty.
Is Folsom in your area of service?
Absolutely yes! You’ll find we have serviced several different satisfied customers with a copper repipe throughout Folsom. Chances are good that we’ve performed our repiping services in your local community in the past month!
Are there other kinds of Repiping available on the market?
Absolutely! In addition to the fine quality materials we use in our copper repipe installations, we additionally make available PEX repiping solutions to home owners in Folsom. PEX is a relatively new advancement in water pipe technology. PEX piping is recommended for usage throughout California and is a superb solution with all sorts of new and exciting functions. To provide an example, PEX works for under-floor heating, fire safety and outdoor area use. The options are amazing. PEX is fantastically strong and quick to install. Pex piping is pinhole leak resistant, does not split or kink and can undergo below freezing conditions without damages to the water line material.
What length of time will a repipe take?
Copper and PEX repipe jobs are completed in just a short time by working with Repipe Specialists. For more than 20 years we have been specializing in just Repipe professional services. It’s what we do better than everybody else in the us. Because of this extensive expertise, we are as helpful as possible when executing the repiping procedure. The typical family home inside of Folsom might take approximately 2 to 3 days to finish the process from beginning to conclusion. This includes all water pipe setups and wall repair service making use of a master patcher. Your master patcher is an experienced professional who is skilled in patching the exposed wall surfaces with craftmaship and fine detail. Over the course of the process, we cover all of of your flooring surfaces and home furniture to be assured that there is no dirt or debris on your belongings. We take satisfaction in departing from the work site cleaner than before the process began, guaranteeing your full satisfaction of Repipe Specialists.
Are there any customer reviews or testimonies to read?
We have hundreds of testimonials from our our clients. Multiple Folsom property owners are among the many satisfied customer recommendations that we have received over time. As soon as Repipe Specialists was started well over two decades earlier, it was with the vision that customer service is the foremost priority. Put together with our quality services and high quality material used, it is no surprise that Repipe Specialists is definitely the most talked about service of its kind within the state of Caliornia and nationwide. | <urn:uuid:8e5db9db-f6bd-4186-9d29-97111fef379a> | CC-MAIN-2022-33 | https://repipeoregon.com/locations/copper-repiping-folsom-ca/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-33/segments/1659882573667.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20220819100644-20220819130644-00069.warc.gz | en | 0.960321 | 1,178 | 1.90625 | 2 |
It seems that cloud seeding in Colorado might be working. The snowpack in the state's high country is higher in the areas where clouds are being seeded. Though water officials still aren't ready to credit the seeding with the snowpack levels just yet.
Cloud seeding involves injecting the clouds with silver iodide to produce moisture.
The snowpack is currently near average in the high country, but more snow is still a necessity. Snowpack in the river basins, which is where Colorado Springs gets most of its water, is about 92% of normal. But, the snowpack up on Pikes peak is still well below normal at about 25%.
Officials hope the next three months will bring above normal precipitation. But, even if the rest of the season is snowy, that still won't reverse the drought. Experts say that will take three wet years to accomplish. For Coloradans, that will probably mean at least one more summer of conserving.
Here's a reminder for residents hoping to water while the weather's warm: businesses with even numbered addresses can water tomorrow; those with odd numbered addresses can water on Thursday. Residential customers with odd numbered addresses can water on Saturday; Even addresses can water on Sunday. | <urn:uuid:0aba7cda-310d-4619-a460-f33fcafa19ad> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://www.kktv.com/home/headlines/174016.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560280835.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095120-00470-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967281 | 249 | 2.421875 | 2 |
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