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One Touch
Her warm kisses scorched across his skin…her soft flesh pressed so close he could feel every inch of her…her golden hair was damp and draped around her beautiful face…she smelled like lavender…her hair was everywhere…tangled around both of them…her lips…
"Trudy." Adrian Monk cried out, lurching straight up in his bed. He let out several deep gasps, looking around the room in confusion. His heart was still beating wildly and his body felt slightly damp with perspiration.
Adrian slowly sank back into his pillow, realizing his whereabouts and that he had just awakened from a particularly intense dream. He moved his arm out to pull his wife towards him; to take her gentle, sleeping form and bring her close. He certainly wouldn't bother her while she was sleeping, of course, but just having the warmth of her body near him would be enough to subside the intense need for physical closeness that the dream had awakened.
His arm swept across Trudy's side of the bed, but only an empty coldness was there to meet his grasp. There was no warm body lying next to him. No beautiful woman sleeping beside him, ready to be drawn in close to him. There was no Trudy anymore.
As the warm shroud of dreaming lifted, and reality finally settled in, Adrian let out a deep and frustrated moan. It came from somewhere deep within him; from the darkness and hopelessness that he tried so hard to keep repressed inside.
She was gone. She was gone. Why couldn't he remember that? And why did he have to have dreams, dreams that made him both miss her intensely and feel unbearably frustrated inside. He could never kiss her again, never touch her again, and never even draw her close to him during a cold and lonely night.
Adrian gave a bitter sigh as he wrapped one hand across his eyes. No one would imagine he would be suffering in such a way; almost praying for human contact, when he usually spent so much of his time either trying very hard to avoid it or to wash its presence off of him, as when he would be so unlucky as for someone to shake his hand.
But that was because no one could quite understand. No one realized that he did need human contact; that the safety Trudy had provided him had led to that physical outlet, the only time in his life he was able to have such an outlet.
Adrian turned angrily on his side. There would be no getting back to sleep now. The dream had awakened a deep and powerful hunger, something he had usually kept repressed and ignored, since there was no one remotely safe (or clean) enough he could share such physical things with…or absolutely anything physical with.
He wished so desperately he could talk to someone, just to hear another person's voice, to know thatthere was someone else in this world right now that would bring him some comfort. He could call Natalie…maybe tell Natalie that he needed her to stop by.
Adrian sank as far into his pillow as he could, now gazing intently at the ceiling. He didn't feel right, he thought, as everything was hot and damp. He realized, with sudden horror, that he had been sweating…the sheets were all damp, all damp with perspiration. He needed to put them in the wash right away…and his nightclothes too…they were all damp and dirty…he needed to shower, needed to clean himself…needed to…
Adrian let out another frustrated sob, wishing to God he could just stop thinking, just stop thinking and go back to sleep. Couldn't he just stop, he wanted to sleep so badly…
Call Natalie. A part of him urged himself, knowing she would be able to soothe him, to stop him from obsessing over the need to begin scrubbing. He reached for the phone near his bedside, tears now threatening to cloud his vision.
His hand trembled on the phone; waiting eagerly for her familiar voice to answer. He hopelessly felt like the only person alive in the world right now.
"Hello?" A groggy voice answered on the other end.
Adrian felt his heart leap up into his throat. He gave a hard swallow, trying to clear his head. "I—I need to shower…I'm dirty…sweat…sweat everywhere…"
"Mr. Monk?" The voice sounded more alert now, and he detected a note of worry in it. "Mr. Monk, do not turn on that shower. Do not go near that shower, okay?"
"I'm so dirty. I can't stop…"
"Can't stop what? Why are you dirty? What happened?"
"I—I had a dream—and…and then…"
"You had a dream? Like, what, a nightmare?"
Adrian shook his head, his voice growing shakier; the want to move towards the shower only growing stronger within him. "No—no, n—not a nightmare."
There was a moment of silence on the other end. "Did you dream about Trudy?"
Adrian swallowed. "Y—yes."
"What did you dream about Trudy?"
Adrian searched the room frantically, looking for some kind of answer to that question. "Can you stop by? Please."
"What? Mr. Monk…" She gave a heavy sigh. "Mr. Monk, it's one in the morning."
Adrian nodded, his head jerking towards his shoulder. "Please." He gasped, his voice coming out shakily. "I need you to stop by."
"Mr. Monk…I can't leave Julie. I can't."
"Natalie…" He moaned, pressing his head up against the back of his hand as he leaned forward in agony. "Please."
There was another heavy sigh. "Alright. Alright. You just lay back down, okay? Lay back down and stay there, I'll be over in a minute. And I don't want to find you in the shower, do you understand?"
He blinked, heavy tears sliding down his cheeks. "Yes."
"Okay. You lay down, okay? Lay down and I'll be over in about ten minutes."
Adrian placed the phone down, taking in a raspy breath. He knew Natalie had given him implicit orders to lie down, but he couldn't just now. He was still shaken inside and lying in the silence and…emptiness…of his bed would have been just too torturous.
Natalie will be here soon. You won't be alone. He told himself, over and over as he paced the floor. You won't be alone soon.
The knock on the door startled him from his thoughts; brought him back to his cold surroundings. He nervously shuffled towards the door; eager to see Natalie's face and to hear her reassuring voice.
He opened it and found, much to his dismay, that Natalie did not seem as eager to see him. Her hair was very messy; it was pulled back but golden strands were still falling in every direction. She had hurriedly dressed herself, wearing a pair of jeans and a simple T-shirt.
"Are you okay?" She asked, and it seemed that once she found he was not physically harmed she became very cross again. "Can you tell me why you called me over here at one in the morning? I had to wake Julie up and drop her off at my neighbor's house, which woke her up. So now we're all awake at one in morning, just like you."
"I—I had a dream." Adrian mumbled, closing the door behind her as she moved into the house. "A dream."
"You had a dream." Natalie sighed, putting one hand up to her forehead to rub it. "Okay, what was the dream about?"
Adrian felt his gaze fall to his feet. He couldn't talk about that dream, not even to Natalie. He grasped at something that he would feel comfortable with her hearing, "It made me—it made me miss Trudy."
Natalie nodded, her hand still held to her forehead. "You don't think it would make you feel any better to talk about it?"
Adrian shook his head quickly. "No….no."
"So why were you dirty?" She continued, her blue gaze watching him intently. He suddenly felt a little foolish, answering these questions with mundane simplicity.
"I was sweating…a lot…"
Natalie gave a small, understanding smile. She moved a little closer towards him and placed a hand on his shoulder. "I think I understand the dream now."
An uncomfortable feeling bubbled up within him. He felt his body twitch nervously, his hands fidgeting at the sides of his nightshirt. "No…no, you don't. No…no, no you don't."
"Mr. Monk, it's okay. You were married for seven years. You miss her."
Adrian shook his head profusely, although he agreed with her statement, there was even more to this feeling than the usual ache of missing Trudy. "I—I miss…"
"You're feeling very lonely." Natalie rubbed his back, gently. "Is that it?"
Adrian gave a short nod; the tears once again rushing to his dark brown eyes. He gave another heavy swallow and let out a shaky breath. "It's so cold…and lonely…in here…"
"Mr. Monk, it's okay. You know you're not alone." She gave his back another comforting pat, and he appreciated the gesture. It did more than bring him some comfort; it brought him some of that physical contact he had so desperately longed for. The intense neediness was subsiding now…just her gentle touch on his back was helping with that…
"Natalie…can you stay?" Adrian asked, his eyes blinking towards the ceiling again. How come he had never noticed that crack before…?
Natalie sighed, and withdrew her hand slightly. "I need to be getting back home, as soon as I'm sure you're okay. You're okay now, right?"
Adrian shook his head, his eyes now trained to the crack at the ceiling. "No, no…I still don't feel right. I mean…I—I never feel right but…"
"Look at me. Hey, look at me." Natalie placed her hand on his shoulder, and Adrian felt his gaze drawn back towards her face. She gave him an encouraging smile. "You just need some sleep, okay? I'll be over first thing in the morning. We're going to see Stottlemeyer and Randy too, for the case, remember? So you won't be alone. You just need sleep tonight."
No, no…she didn't understand. She needed to stay; to keep her hands placed on him, so that he didn't feel so cold…didn't feel so alone in the world. As soon as she left he'd be alone again, completely isolated, with only memories of Trudy keeping him company.
"I—I can't sleep." He pointed to his head, as if it were the source of his agony. "Dreams…"
"It bothers you? I mean…those dreams?"
Adrian shook his head, quickly. "Not the dreams…no…it's the waking up. It's the waking up…" He felt the lump grow heavy in his throat and he snorted through the sudden rush of tears. "…it's the waking up that I can't stand."
Natalie blinked quickly, and Adrian could see she was feeling sorry for him. He sighed, he hated it when she felt sorry for him, it made him feel so weak, like he was less of a man.
"I hate waking up." He finished, his eyes now glued accusingly to that unsightly crack on his ceiling. He would deal with that soon enough…
"Well, in that case, I think sleep is the best thing right now." Natalie gave his shoulder another quick pat. "I'll be here first thing in the morning, Mr. Monk. An hour earlier than usual. I promise, okay?"
He didn't want her to leave. As soon as she left she'd take her voice…and her warmth…and her lavender scent with her. She couldn't leave. Not tonight.
If he was strong enough, he would have told her these things. He would have asked her to stay and tell her that he needed her right now. He would tell her that she couldn't leave; she couldn't take her touch away and leave him alone…and cold…again.
But he wasn't strong enough and the words couldn't seem to work their way through the lump in his throat. So he just murmured, "An hour earlier?"
"I promise." She smiled, rubbing his shoulder gently.
Adrian watched her intently, his eyes turned ever so slightly to the warming hand on his shoulder. He glanced back up towards her face; her hair was everywhere…draping across her face in smooth, golden strands…her icy blue gaze watching him from beneath that blonde curtain.
I need you here. But he wasn't sure if the words were spoken or thought, so tangled was everything in his mind. All he knew was that one hand had risen from his side and had drifted ever so dangerously towards Natalie's messy golden hair. He noted, with some surprise, that her breathing had grown shallower and quieter in response to this motion. He moved that hand slowly, shakily, towards her blonde strands to move them…to tuck them gently behind her ear…to feel that touch he had so longed for all night.
He knew…he knew what would happen if he was brave enough to touch her hair. Fingers trembling and shaking, he touched her hair, and with the utmost sincerity he moved to tuck it gently behind her ear, his fingers brushing slowly against the side of her face. With only a moments lingering, he then moved to pull his hand away, but found that before he could, hers had reached up to grab his wrist.
He gave a startled tremor, his eyes staring deep into her blue gaze, wondering what this meant. Daring to wonder…to wonder what this touch meant…
Keeping a firm grasp on his wrist, Natalie moved forward and paused, her face now only inches from Adrian's. Her warm breath was intoxicating as he felt it move across his face. It filled him with a strange anticipation, one that was not entirely unfamiliar to him, but that he had not experienced in a very long time.
Adrian took in a deep, shaky breath. Her breath tickled his lips; she was so close to him. Slowly closing his eyes, Adrian pressed his own lips deep into Natalie's. She let out a sharp gasp, but the hand on his wrist only tightened. Her other hand, which had once been at her side, now sprang up to grasp a fistful of his nightshirt in order to pull him even closer.
Their bodies pressed together and the warmth that followed was overwhelming. Adrian felt his breathing grow rougher as he pressed his lips even more deeply into hers. His hands reached out to grab onto her hips, pulling at her so that she was now tightly entwined around him. One of her hands was still holding his nightshirt in her first, the other now moving up the side of his face to rest behind the back of his neck.
Adrian felt his back press up against the wall, suddenly; his soft moan broke the heated silence. Natalie was still in his arms; her hips were still firmly grasped in his hands. He felt his body shudder; she had opened her mouth to take his own in more fully, and he found that he had quickly followed her lead by opening his own. This was safe…this was safe…Natalie was always safe…
Her small form was now pressed tightly to his, her mouth still ravaging his own, and somehow his strong arms were moving…moving to pick her up…to lift her off the ground. Her legs were now locked on either side of his hips with her forehead pressing down against his. Her scorching lips still ravaged his mouth; as if she were just as lonely…just as hungry…just as deeply crying out for human touch and physical expression as he was…
"Why are you staring at me like that?" Natalie asked, as she moved her head back; her golden hair flying just out of his reach.
Adrian dropped his hand quickly; his heart thudding guiltily in his chest. His mind…it had wandered completely without his consent…those thoughts…those thoughts…he shook his head, quickly, as if trying to scrub them from his mind.
"Mr. Monk, are you okay?" She demanded, and Adrian could see that she now appeared a little unnerved. She had also backed away slightly…the gap between them was small, but to Adrian, nothing could be more painfully noticeable.
He shook his head, unsure if he was breathing as loud as he felt he was. "I—I'm fine." He finally spoke, uncertain of what else to say. He felt deeply embarrassed; he was unsure how long he had been standing there watching her, and found that this was something he could not even begin to contemplate any further.
It's just because you're feeling lonely. That's all it is. Loneliness…
Adrian's hand subconsciously moved to his wedding band and he rubbed it gingerly. He jerked his gaze angrily back at the crack on the wall, surprised he had never noticed how grim and disrupting it was before now.
"Look, try not to dwell on the dream, okay?" Natalie murmured, her voice returning to its gentle quality. "Think about others things."
"L—like what?" Adrian asked in a rather hoarse whisper, his eyes drifting over towards Natalie's messy blonde hair again.
"Like the case. You can think about the case." She suggested, nodding at him. "How you're going to solve the case and make things right again."
Adrian nodded slowly before turning towards his assistant. He gave her a small smile. It may have started out as a grimace, but he felt he had adequately forced it into a smile by the time it finished working across his face. "Yeah—yeah, I can think…think about the case."
"You can." She agreed, giving him a bright smile. "Now go lay down. I'll walk you to your room, okay?"
He nodded, dropping into step behind her. "Okay…okay."
He walked into the room and felt his heart drop into his stomach. There was the bed…the cold and lonely bed. He was the only other person in that bed; scrunched up on one side, desperately leaving the other side open; as if wishing to somehow recapture the warmer nights in which he had slept in that bed.
"Lay down." She whispered, pushing on his shoulders gently so that he was now lying across the bed. She gave him a quick nod and a smile. "I'll be here an hour earlier tomorrow. I promise, okay? Now you have to promise me that you'll sleep."
"I promise…to stay in bed." Adrian replied, his eyes watching her figure as it retreated towards his doorway.
"Okay. Goodnight, Mr. Monk." She murmured, softly. She shut the lights off as she left; leaving the bright glow of the nightlight the only thing keeping him from being swallowed up by the darkness. He heard his front door creak open before gently closing a moment later.
He shut his eyes tightly. She was gone again and the coldness was beginning to seep back into the room. It was so cold, so cold.
He shook his head, and tried desperately to grasp for some sort of comfort, anything that would get him through the night.
There…there was still the fact that she had stopped by for a while, that she had left some of her warmth behind for him to remember, that she had cared enough to guide him back to bed, and that she had reminded him that he could take his mind off of things with the case.
And…and the thought of what could have happened if he had been brave enough to reach out and touch just one strand of her beautiful blonde hair. | <urn:uuid:f092c786-9c36-4d67-8381-6fd02ef0fcc0> | https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8768579/1/One-Touch | en | 0.994641 | 0.489934 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Sudan: Protests Continue in Sudan
Khartoum — Street demonstrations in Sudan have now stretched into their fourth consecutive week. Seemingly inspired by past revolts against dictatorship in 1964 and 1985, Sudanese protestors are now demonstrating against what they see as their government's tyranny and economic incompetence.
Since South Sudan seceded a year ago, Sudan's economy has suffered. Food prices have soared, the currency has weakened, and the government has enforced spending cuts. This has been exacerbated by the loss of approximately three-quarters of the country's oil output to South Sudan.
On June 16, students from the University of Khartoum led anti-austerity protests. Protests against spending cuts, however, soon extended out beyond Khartoum and evolved into broader demonstrations against President Omar al-Bashir's 23-year-old regime. Demonstrations became a daily occurrence at both public and private universities, and despite the police's heavy-handed response of beatings, teargas and arrests, dissent has grown.
Growing protests
The largest protests often begin from mosques after Friday prayers, with each week's demonstration accorded a different theme. Past Fridays have been labelled 'Sandstorm Friday', 'Elbow Licking Friday' (in reference to a remark by one of Al-Bashir's advisors that those who want to overthrow regime have a better chance of licking their elbows) and 'Outcasts Friday' (referring to Al-Bashir's recent speech in which he called protesters 'outcasts'). Today's, planned as 'Kandaka Friday', is dedicated to the revolutionary women of Sudan.
A 22-year-old protester who wished not to be named recounted the events of July 6's 'Outcasts Friday' at the Wad Nubawi mosque in Omdurman to Think Africa Press. "Right after the prayers we started chanting inside the mosque" he explained, "then we made our way into the big yard in front of the mosque.
Government response
Since the start of the demonstrations four weeks ago, security forces have arrested and detained thousands of protesters and activists to date. And reports suggest that behind the doors of the National Intelligence and Security Service's notorious "ghost houses", beatings, interrogations, and food and sleep deprivation are not unusual.
Maha El-Sanosi is a freelance writer and blogger based in Sudan. Follow her on twitter @MimzicalMimz
| <urn:uuid:8e8c186b-2b09-421d-8b80-f63a14b95f21> | http://allafrica.com/stories/201207131268.html | en | 0.969928 | 0.018183 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with paint Questions tagged with 'paint' at Ask MetaFilter. Fri, 28 Feb 2014 20:36:30 -0800 Fri, 28 Feb 2014 20:36:30 -0800 en-us 60 Best kind of paint/primer for a co-sleeper for a baby I've built a co-sleeper for our new-born infant (kind of like <a href="">this</a>). For reasons, I only had access to plywood and so that's what I made it out of. I'm now about ready to paint it, and have two questions in mind: since this is for a baby, I'd like 1) the paint to be non-toxic and 2) seal in whatever fumes the plywood might still be off-gassing. Does such a paint exist? Would I need to use a primer? Would milk paint achieve this goal? Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated.,2014:site.257959 Fri, 28 Feb 2014 20:36:30 -0800 low_VOCs non-toxic paint AwkwardPause Painting the inside of glass that will have liquid in it Is there any way to paint or otherwise color the inside of a glass spray bottle that will have liquid (perfume) in it?,2014:site.257611 Sun, 23 Feb 2014 06:40:46 -0800 bottles diy glass paint ferdinandcc Auto Body Paint Recommendations in Toronto I'm gearing up to sell my car in Toronto and I'd like to get a fresh paint job. Or, at least, touch up the spots that are showing wear due to rust near the rear wheels and some white paint (on a red car) from bumping into the pillar in my parking space a couple of times. Note: I don't actually want to do body repair, just paint (I'm not trying to conceal the dings in the body, just to freshen up the look). Have any GTA Mefites had work like this done at a place they would recommend? I live downtown, but don't mind traveling to the 905 for good, affordable work. Thanks in advance for any recommendations.,2014:site.256202 Wed, 29 Jan 2014 17:53:05 -0800 auto paint repair toronto dry white toast Help me paint my bathroom I have a bathroom that has had some serious moisture issues over the years. I recently installed an exhaust fan and that's mitigated the problem somewhat. My big issue is this: the wall paint (semi-gloss latex) is peeling off where the wall and tile meet. It started bubbling up here and there and I made the mistake of pulling on a little piece today and the paint came off like peeling an orange. I need to repaint several of the walls in the bathroom while trying to prevent the paint from peeling off again. How do I seal the walls or at least where the wall and the tiles come together to keep the moisture out? Several years ago I removed some awful wall paper in the bathroom and used joint compound mixed with water to fill holes and apply a texture to the walls that matched the old horse hair plaster walls in the rest of the house. Was the joint compound a bad idea?,2014:site.256007 Sun, 26 Jan 2014 16:19:18 -0800 bathroom home improvement moisture paint tile wall photoslob Paint over fresh stain? We have double-glazed wooden oak windows on our house. Due to a combination of language barrier and over-helpfulness, the nice man painting bits in my house has just taken it upon himself to re-stain the exteriors. I actually want them painted white. He says he'll just paint them tomorrow but surely you can't just.... paint white over fresh stain? Won't it bleed through or discolour?,2014:site.255463 Fri, 17 Jan 2014 05:53:55 -0800 fuck paint resolved DarlingBri Stuck on you What is the best way to clean and remove the remnants of vines that have been stuck to my garage wall for years in preperation for a paint job? The little nubs that remain after the vines have been pulled away.,2013:site.254343 Fri, 27 Dec 2013 08:46:22 -0800 garage garden paint vines silsurf How to make light floors and dark furnishings work? It's time to paint the living room. Problem: we have light wood floors with dark furnishings and my SO wants to keep the room "light and airy" whereas I would do anything to avoid white or eggshell walls and keep pushing for colors he says are "too dark and claustrophobic". What color scheme can we both agree on to really tie the room together? Photos of the unpainted living room<a href=""> here</a>. Were also not adverse to wallpaper as we plan on staying here (and with these furnishings) for a Long Time.,2013:site.254042 Fri, 20 Dec 2013 10:22:41 -0800 color design home housing interiordecor paint room scheme wall The Whelk Best paint to use for a portrait on a toaster oven? A coworker of mine often complains that we do not have a toaster in the office. I have an unused one, and would like to paint her portrait on it as a humorous secret-santa gift for our office xmas party. I like to work with acrylics and india ink, but am afraid that they will peel off when they get hot. What paint/technique do you think will work best?,2013:site.252698 Wed, 27 Nov 2013 08:52:54 -0800 acryllic art craft oven paint spraypaint toaster DaveZ Car-appy paint job We have a 97 Jeep Cherokee, which has two flaws (according to my wife, who is the primary driver). One is the paint job, which is typical for a car of this age- many little scratches and dings from rocks and such, and the other is the headliner (the ceiling fabric), which is descending. We can't afford (nor is the car worth imho), a new paint job, and the headliner issue just makes me shake my...head. Anyway, I was hoping to DIY one or both of these things while I have access to the car between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Any suggestions? The paint color is a dark blue, which has kind of a purple hue at some angles. It's not red, thank the gods, so it doesn't look 'chalky', more just old, and with the aforementioned scratches and dings. The headliner is light gray, and has pretty well given up the ghost in the past 6 months, so it is attached at the edges, but kind of balloons down. <br> I've read some older AskMe posts on the headliner thing, but wondered if there was any newer information that might help. Thanks in advance Mefi Mechanics!,2013:site.252528 Sun, 24 Nov 2013 13:02:23 -0800 car headliner paint resolved PlantGoddess Scraping/Painting an Old House With Layers of Lead Paint The exterior of my 100 year old house (dutch colonial) is a mess: layers of paint atop paint. Nobody's ever scraped because there's obviously lead in there. So at this point, it's a gunky, peeling mess. And I don't want to resort to siding. I got one estimate to scrape (in full-out hazmat suits and containment set-ups, etc) and paint for $25K. Yeow! I don't want to make anyone sick - not the painters, nor the kids in the nabe - I really don't. Are there less expensive options?,2013:site.252472 Sat, 23 Nov 2013 09:20:19 -0800 lead paint scrape Quisp Lover I can't paint, but I want to make some paintings. I want to make some paintings that basically look like <a href="">this</a>--basically some flat fields of hopefully compatible colors on canvas. I don't care if what I make is real art, I mainly just want to add some color to the room. I went to the craft store and was kind of confused by all the different options for paint. Let's just assume I pick a set of colors I like -- what do I need to buy to make the painting, other than a canvas? What kind of paints, which colors, what kind of brush, what else do I need? How do I mix the colors? I'm not under any illusions that I'm going to make anything good, I just want to get some colors down on canvas in a hopefully appealing way. If I picked a palate from a site like colourlovers, is there a way to order the paints premixed in those colors or what that be a bad idea?,2013:site.251381 Mon, 04 Nov 2013 20:58:48 -0800 art crafts decoration homedeco paint painting empath What's the best paint color on my wall? I'm horrible at color matching and I envy the HGTV shows that color board everything so you can see what it looks like ahead of time. I've just finished decorating my living room with a couch and I think the walls are too bare. Should I do an accent wall or some wall pattern? <a href="">Here are some photos of the room</a>.<br> <br> The last of the 3 photos is how it looks right now with the new rug. Any suggestions on wall color?,2013:site.250296 Tue, 15 Oct 2013 18:02:50 -0800 color paint wall pikaboy202 What Color Should I Paint This Room? I need some suggestions for a paint color for our sunroom. There is lots of light, a wood floor with medium tones and the furniture we have out there is brown and an orangish rust color. The rest of the house is mostly neutral, but we can go with a bold color if it would work well.,2013:site.248022 Fri, 06 Sep 2013 13:35:47 -0800 color homedecor paint resolved Nickel Pickle What's the toughest nail polish? Looking to cover a logo on a suitcase My suitcase has logos on it. They're small, but I'd like to obscure them to lower my likelihood of being victimized. Examples <a href="">are here</a>. It looks like there's a small dollop of clear, rubbery, plastic that covers them - to protect logo. I was thinking of buying some black nail polish, and painting over them. Nail polish is supposed to be durable right? However, I've never had to buy nail polish before. Questions: 1. Is nail polish the right product for this? 2. Which brand / type should I get? Are there ones that are more durable than others?,2013:site.247711 Sun, 01 Sep 2013 17:42:45 -0800 luggage nailpolish paint StrictlyVague Chalkboard-painting a stainless steel refrigerator: possible? Can I paint my stainless steel fridge with chalkboard paint? I've found lots of tutorials on how to do it with a regular white fridge (whatever those are made of) but nothing on stainless. Should I try to sand it? Do I need primer? Please advise. I've been thinking of replacing it anyway, because my adorable 1922 house is not a "stainless steel appliances" kind of house. But the fridge works just fine and it seems silly to get rid of it just because I don't like how it looks. So...chalkboard paint! Fun?,2013:site.247697 Sun, 01 Sep 2013 12:48:07 -0800 appliances chalkboard chalkboardpaint diy interiordesign paint painting redecorating refrigerator resolved exceptinsects How to paint all sides of small wooden things I've got some small wooden pieces (from a board game) that I'd like to paint a different color. I'm unsure of how to accomplish this. There are too many to realistically hand-paint. The pieces don't weigh much and if I spray paint them, they're going to tumble around and end up with some paint on the bottom. (That means that they'll probably stick to whatever surface I try to dry them on). Same goes for dipping them in paint - I'm not sure how would I dry them afterwards. I feel like there has to be some ingenious solution that I'm just not thinking of. Any suggestions would be much appreciated!,2013:site.246824 Sat, 17 Aug 2013 08:10:16 -0800 diy paint smallparts spraypaint chrisamiller It isn't easy painting green. How do you paint a stainless steel ring? I bought <a href="">this</a> shamrock ring with the intent of painting the shamrocks green. Now that I have the ring, it isn't working. Every attempt, thus far, has ended with green blobs instead of shamrocks.<br> <br> I am not looking to buy another ring.<br> I am not willing to spend more than $20 on this.<br> <br> What's the easiest way to color the shamrocks green?<br> What's the best way to color the shamrocks green?,2013:site.246382 Sat, 10 Aug 2013 07:32:52 -0800 jewelry paint painting ring stainlesssteel zinon Exterior paint removal question: MILD EMERGENCY Exterior paint removal question: MILD EMERGENCY Hi all-<br> <br> So, I've been scraping the old paint off the house for about two weeks. I expected this to not take so long. I have three walls where basically the whole thing needs to be stripped - they are covered in peeling paint. I need a machine's help before I scrape the whole thing with a 5 in 1 painters tool.<br> <br> Here's what has kinda worked:<br> <br> -orbital sander with 120 grit paper (80 grit and the type that feels like a scrubby pad did nothing) - but there must be something stronger<br> -a hitachi disc angle grinder (it takes the paint off but leaves valleys in the wood)<br> <br> Is there some tool in between these two which I can use? There is so much paint to take off and I'm running out of time to get the old paint off and finish up (about a week and a half left).<br> <br> Thanks in advance!,2013:site.246234 Wed, 07 Aug 2013 16:52:14 -0800 house paint painting power removal tools ashtabula to opelika Did I just kill this bag? I just got paint all over a Filson field bag. Do I have any chance whatsoever of cleaning it? They're painting the hallways at my job. There was an accident. The bag is canvas and according to the painter, the paint is water-based. Most of it did seem to come off in the sink, but there's still a good amount on there. Am I screwed?,2013:site.245389 Thu, 25 Jul 2013 12:03:03 -0800 canvas cleaning paint Venadium How to fix this flooded kitchen floor? Bought this house about three years ago and then learned that the water pipes, under the concrete-terrazzo slab, had burst and flooded the place (no, incompetent inspector did not notice this). The previous owner had then laid down an inexpensive woodlike floor. That was carelessly done but looked okay overall, except that residual water had stained and darkened a few areas. I had the house re-piped and the floor seemed to have dried and healed leaving just those few dark spots. But recently, the HVAC drain clogged, and did a bit more flooding and although that too is now fixed, the kitchen's woodlike floor has buckled some and the stains have spread. It looks pretty crappy. I'll have it all inspected again and be sure it's finally repaired, but now the question is what to do about the ugly floor? <br><br> I intend to sell the house soon so want it to look good, and want to be able to fully disclose this history, but want to minimize further investment within reason and ethical boundaries. I could tear out the woodlike floor in the kitchen only, and then tile that room. But that's work. And pricey. I'm thinking of painting it. Some kind of epoxy? <br><br> What would you suggest? Something waterproof against normal kitchen spillage, something rather glossy but not slick to walk on. The kitchen is black tile, white walls and cabinets, stainless steel appliances. Was thinking black floor, but this is Florida and fear it will be too dark--although the gloss would help bounce light. <br><br> Suggestions for colors, materials, methods, cautions or other, alternative ideas? <br><br> Thanks so much.,2013:site.245127 Sun, 21 Jul 2013 13:19:36 -0800 home kitchen paint renovation repair tile fivesavagepalms Old house - trying to fix up dirty moldy medicine cabinet Just moved into a rental house. House built circa 1920. Medicine cabinet interior was completely lined with nasty old contact paper. I pulled off most of the paper. Now I'm worried about three things: 1. The paint underneath the paper is flaking. Is there danger of lead poisoning? 2. Black mold in the corner crevices under the paper. What's the best chemical for removal? Bleach solution? 3. What's the easiest cheapest way to get new shelves that will fit? <a href="">PHOTOS.</a> Any advice or encouragement is appreciated. How do I make this cabinet clean and functional? <whine>I don't like fixing old houses. Unfortunately there is much to do in this old house. The kitchen is a contact paper festival. The rental market is tight here, so landlords don't have to care.</whine>,2013:site.245101 Sat, 20 Jul 2013 19:46:18 -0800 diy home house lead mold paint repair resolved valannc Painted tile floor - something to paint on for a durable finish? My wife and I are redoing a powder room that had some hideous tiles on the floor. We have neither the time nor the money to redo the tiles, so we've decided to paint over them in a semi-gloss white. It looks fantastic, but we realize now that it could be easily dirtied or scuffed and we're wondering if there's some kind of finish or lacquer that we can put on it to make sure that it's more durable - easily cleaned, more scratch resistant.<br> <br> Help?,2013:site.245064 Sat, 20 Jul 2013 09:51:10 -0800 floor paint fso "Old Reliable" by Sherwin Williams Can someone recommend a specific pleasant white-ish or neutral shade of paint that I can use on my walls repeatedly for like, forever? I'm looking for a basic white/neutral shade that I can paint various rooms and hallways that are not otherwise an actual color. We have only painted a few rooms selected colors, and for the rest, I think I'd like to go with "white". <br> <br> I'm hoping I can find something like 'Sherman Williams - Linen' (I made that up; also it doesn't actually have to be Sherman Williams) that will be around for years to come so that five years from now, I can decide to paint a room the exact same white (it doesn't have to be 100% the same -- 90% the same is good enough.) <br> <br> I'd like a white that's a little on the warmer side, maybe a bit more cream-colored. Parts of the house are extremely bright and if it's too white-white it'll be like having a near-death experience in an Apple store.,2013:site.240515 Tue, 07 May 2013 08:10:47 -0800 color decorating neutrals paint walls white A Terrible Llama The company located next to my house won't stop spraying paint fumes. The company located next my house sprays noxious paint fumes into the air and my yard. Despite years of trying to get them to stop, they haven't. What are the next steps to take? My significant other and I have been renting a house for several years that we love. It's wonderful. The rent is cheap, the place is beautiful, and we don't want to move. However, there is one big thing that sucks, and that is our neighbor. Our house is next to an industrial-zoned area, and one of our closest neighbors (a couple lots away) is a company that creates industrial metal products (don't want to get too specific in case we pursue legal action.) Every day, including on the weekends, they spray paint outdoors. You can hear the paint sprayers, but the issue is the constant presence of paint fumes. We can't use our yard because it stinks like paint. We can't open the windows in our home on the side that faces their building. We are afraid to plant food in our garden. We're worried about our health. <br> <br> We looked up our city's zoning code, and it clearly states in several places that a company in an industrial zone like theirs cannot create fumes or any sort of health hazard that affects nearby residents. A few years ago, we had the city investigate, and they found that the company was violating city code in many ways. However, since then, every time I ask the city for an update, there is always some song and dance about how they are "working on it" and I don't get much more than that. In the meantime, the paint spraying continues. <br> <br> We tried to be neighborly and approached the company, but we didn't get much more than a shrug and a "sorry, it's our business" type of response. I also called the county last year and had them come out to do an air inspection. They inspected and their response was that the company was technically under the legal level of air toxins/emissions/whatever, but the inspector also leveled with me and was like yeah, it's probably not good to be breathing that in. I also approached our landlord (who lives out of town), and while he was kind of like "yeah, that's bad", he's pretty hands-off and I'm not sure I can get him to get gung-ho on this issue.<br> <br> I'm so frustrated. We're not in a situation right now where we want to move - it would be a huge pain in the butt and an unneeded financial hit. As I said, everything else about the house is amazing. What would you do in my situation? Should we hire a lawyer? Or should we just suck it up and get an air filter and never open our windows again?,2013:site.240103 Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:02:45 -0800 air citycode neighbors paint pollution zoning Anonymous Are there alternatives to Coolwall Paint? How much are we talking (in L? I had someone through Costco come out to our house to give a quote on painting the house with Coolwall paint. It wasn't a quote just for the paint, but for all the prep work, repairs in our stucco, and the trim. We don't live in a large house--it's less than 1,400 square feet. He extolled the benefits of this paint. It's highly reflective and thus reduces damage to the paint, and also keeps the house cooler in the summer. The way the guy went on about it, it's a miracle product. He quoted $18,600 to prep and paint our house with this stuff. Again, it's through Costco and has a lifetime warranty. And they don't strip off the existing paint or stucco--they repair it, bond it, and paint right over it. Are there similar alternatives that would cost much less? Costco stuff is good, and I trust it. But $18,600? I want what he's smoking. But one of the things that made it attractive versus regular house-painting was that they wouldn't remove the old paint--which he claims costs about $1,000 for lead abatement.<br> <br> So I ask you--are there reflective, high quality alternatives? Can we get the house painted without removing the old stuff (ie. bonding and painting over it)?<br> <br> How much for a really nice professionally-applied paint job?,2013:site.239148 Sun, 14 Apr 2013 16:12:58 -0800 contractor costco house housepaint paint rybreadmed | <urn:uuid:db5aef12-8d9d-4f4f-b30c-f17df8228f55> | http://ask.metafilter.com/tags/paint/rss | en | 0.961419 | 0.041048 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
The Shitty Steve Jobs Movie Unveils Its Bad GuyS
The Craigslist casting, Ashton Kutcher glorifying, budget lacking Steve Jobs biopic just added some fresh blood: the guy from Full Metal Jacket will join the funny fat man from Book of Mormon. Uh, alright!
jOBS—yes, that's really the title of a movie that will be made—will star Matthew "Private Joker" Modine (far left) and Mormon's Josh Gad (far right) as Pepsi CEO Villain John Sculley and The Woz, respectively. This is good news, as both gents are fine actors, but there is the slight problem of neither of them looking much of anything like their characters. This is fine in the case of Sculley, since nobody knows what he looks like anyway, but Wozniak is a human icon. It's hard to imagine anyone but a spitting image portraying Woz, but it's also hard to imagine anyone going to see this movie, so let's just wait for Aaron Sorkin's version to be good and rack up some Oscar nominations, and let Kutcher's locks blow in the wind as he forgets his lines.
At the very least, Modine seems interested in making the film at least slightly interesting, as he talked to CBS News:
"It's my feeling — and I think there's a lot of people who feel — that had John Sculley not fired Steve Jobs from Apple Computers and Steve go on the journey that he did when he was away from Apple Computers that we wouldn't be speaking about Steve Jobs today."
The more the movie leans on people like Modine and his non-titular character, the better. A Sculley contra Jobs flick, treating the two with equal focus, might actually be worth paying $10 for. [CBS News via The Verge]
Photos: Getty | <urn:uuid:e6364c33-fb29-49b9-ae25-93590a93b921> | http://gizmodo.com/5916584/the-shitty-steve-jobs-movie-just-became-stranger?tag=steve-jobs | en | 0.969122 | 0.034073 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Why Renting Makes More Sense than BuyingSmartMoney contributor Jack Hough explains why he believes renting makes more financial sense than buying a home. The short version of his argument: "Businesses are great investments while houses are poor ones, so I'd rather rent the latter and own the former." The article supports that thesis with numbers, comparing the difference in value after inflation of houses versus stocks. As we work through the housing crisis and stare down the barrel of a significant economic slump, making smart money moves is that much more important, and while you may still prefer to aim for ownership despite the author's claims, it's worth knowing and understanding your options. While you're weighing those options, be sure to check out the previously mentioned Rent or Buy Calculator to help determine which is better for you. Photo by Editor B. | <urn:uuid:c122513f-2e9a-461b-bd8b-0342d1456c2f> | http://lifehacker.com/5056421/why-renting-makes-more-sense-than-buying?tag=rent | en | 0.963072 | 0.698809 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
CHOW points out that the process of baking the beans a few times causes a chemical reaction called pyrolysis, where the sugars and amino acids in the beans start to give off a rather unpleasant smell. They're still edible, they just wouldn't be fun to eat. Instead, line the bottom of the pie crust with parchment paper and pour in some rice. Bake your pie crust, and it'll still hold its shape, but some of the butter from the crust will seep through the paper and get into the rice.
You can then cook the toasted rice into a delicious, buttery rice pilaf, as opposed to pouring mildly smelly beans into a plastic bag for the next time you want to make a pie. Do you use beans for pie crusts, or just buy pre-made? Share your baking tips in the comments below. Photo by Kimberly Vardeman.
Can I Eat the Beans I Use for Pie Weights? | CHOW via The Kitchn
| <urn:uuid:60b2f562-014c-4b3d-9290-6b641b0dd883> | http://lifehacker.com/5845991/use-rice-instead-of-beans-to-pre-bake-pie-crusts-for-a-reusable-filling?tag=rice | en | 0.948592 | 0.056126 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
Right now, I'm using LDA topic modelling tool from the MALLET package to do some topic detection on my documents. Everything's fine initially, I got 20 topics from it. However, when I try to infer new document using the model, the result is kinda baffling.
For instance I deliberately run my model over a document that I manually created which contains nothing but keywords from one of the topics "FLU", but the topic distributions I got was <0.1 for every topic. I then try the same thing on one of the already sampled document which has a high score of 0.7 for one of the topics. Again the same thing happened.
Can someone give some clue on the reason?
Tried asking on MALLET mailing list but apparently no one has replied.
share|improve this question
When you say that you run your model over the document you created, what exactly are you doing? Are you attempting to re-run the inference portion of the LDA algorithm on the new document? If so, your result would be expected behavior. It sounds like you are trying to train a new model based solely upon the new document. Could you reply with your actual command? The LDA algorithm does not accept new documents into the topic distributions without needing to infer over all the original documents as well as it is an algorithm over a collection of documents. – user1698895 Jul 6 '11 at 0:12
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3 Answers
I also know very little about MALLET, but the docs mention this...
Topic Inference
Maybe you forgot to do this? It does sound to me like the data you are training on is not in the same format as the data you are testing on.
share|improve this answer
hey @stompchicken, have tried with the --use-pipe-from command. – goh Dec 7 '10 at 10:14
Oh well. In that case I don't have a clue. If you can, try inspecting the training and test data to make sure the documents are being represented in the same way. – StompChicken Dec 7 '10 at 10:23
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I had the same difficulty of Mallet. Later I found the problem is that the documents must be read in through the Pipe that was once used to read in the training documents.
Here is the sample to read in training documents:
ImportExample importerTrain = new ImportExample();//this is an example class in MALLET to import docs.
InstanceList training= importer.readDirectory(new File(trainingDir));
training.save(new File(outputFile));
While reading in docs in topic inference:
InstanceList training = InstanceList.load(new File(outputFile));
Pipe pipe = training.getPipe();
ImportExample importer = new ImportExample();
importer.pipe = pipe; //use the same pipe
InstanceList testing = importer.readDirectory(new File(testDir));
I got my clue from one question posted in their archive:http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.ai.mallet.devel/829
share|improve this answer
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Disclosure: I'm familiar with the techniques and the math generally used for topic inference, but I have minimal exposure to MALLET.
I hope these semi-educated guesses lead you to a solution. No warranty ;-)
I'm assuming you are using the mallet command hlda for training the model.
A few things that may have gone wrong:
• Ensure you used the --keep-sequence option during the import phase of the process. By default mallet saves the inputs as plain Bags of Words, loosing the order in which the words are originally found. This may be ok for basic classification tasks but not for topic modeling.
• Remember that the Gibbs sampling used by mallet is a stochastic process; expect variations in particular with small samples. During tests you may want to specify the same random seed for each iteration to ensu
• What is the size of your training data? 20 topics seems a lot for initial tests which are typically based on small, manually crafted and/or quickly assembled training and testing sets.
• remember that topic inference is based on sequences of words, not isolated keywords (your description of the manually crafted test document mentions "keywords" rather than say "expressions" or "phrases")
share|improve this answer
Hi @mjv, i used the command "train-topics" actually (i assume its using parallelTopicModel). 1. yes, I used the --keep-sequence option. 2. My training data consists of 8000+ documents. I believe that is an adequate dataset? – goh Dec 7 '10 at 9:42
3. Isn't LDA based on bag-of-words? But even if my "manually crafted test document" does not produce the results, shouldn't the "already sampled document" produce a somewhat similar results during inference to that of it's original topic distribution? – goh Dec 7 '10 at 9:45
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Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:bb16e723-df91-4c68-b1ce-dce88aa7175d> | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4374296/about-lda-inference | en | 0.912389 | 0.031447 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Armando Iannucci: My comedy secrets
Armando Iannucci
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Over the last 22 years, Armando Iannucci has become one of the most innovative and reliable comedy directors in the UK.
The man behind such hits as The Thick of It and its Oscar-nominated spin-off In the Loop, the 50-year-old saw hapless radio DJ Alan Partridge, his co-creation with Steve Coogan, also transfer to the big screen earlier this year.
Iannucci spoke to the BBC about the success of Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa and the many guises its hero has adopted over the last two decades.
You've managed to turn a successful TV show into a successful movie twice now. How did you break the curse?
Ha ha! I think by being very aware of it.
Woody Allen isn't someone who goes for huge car chases and special effects, it's just a bunch of people talking in a room. It's important that you go into a film knowing that.
A common thread in your projects is the creative use of language. What lies behind that?
I suppose it's to do with mimicry. When I started off, I always used to do parodies and impressions, mimicking people... and then institutions. You become aware that some institutions have their own language. You almost define yourself by how you speak.
Alan is a case in point: he has a very specific language and the best way we can write Alan is by being him. So we all end up voicing Alan - obviously Steve's the best at it - and it feels like Alan's in the room and you're writing the show with him.
Steve Coogan in Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa Alpha Papa saw Alan Partridge become involved in a siege
How real is Alan Partridge to you?
It's strange because he's always been in our thoughts. Although we haven't done that much with him - over 20 years the number of episodes are actually quite small - we kind of know what he's been up to.
When Steve and I meet up, we always speculate what Alan's been up to and, if something comes up that makes us laugh, we always make a point of writing it down. I have a Word file that's 200 pages long that's just stray bits of Alan.
He's not a "stock character" like, say, Homer Simpson, who remains the same in every episode.
I like that he's aged in real time over the years. Because we haven't done five series in five years, it's meant that every time we've come back, we've been able to renew him in a way.
Once he was on a chat show, next thing he's in a hotel, then he's in a caravan, next thing you know he's on the radio - because time has gone by.
Steve Coogan in Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa Alan started out in 1991 as a sports reporter on Radio 4's On the Hour
You made a web-only Alan Partridge series called Mid-Morning Matters at one point. Was there more freedom in working like that?
I always feel that if someone says "do what the hell you like", it's actually more tricky. So we always create our own artificial boundaries. For Mid-Morning Matters we knew it had to be 10 minutes, and it couldn't just be Alan talking - it had to have a narrative.
With Knowing Me, Knowing You we had to write it in real time because it was a real TV show; and for I'm Alan Partridge, the thing we told ourselves was Alan had to be in every scene. You couldn't cut away to something Alan didn't know about. So it was all from Alan's point of view.
You shouldn't be aware that those were the constraints that we'd given ourselves. Because the whole point is to arrive at something that covers all that up.
In I'm Alan Partridge, there's a scene where Alan pitches a show called Monkey Tennis to a BBC executive. Is it true you were subsequently asked to make that show?
I wasn't asked, but I have been told by people that Monkey Tennis has come up at ideas meetings on at least three different occasions. And, credit where credit's due, it hasn't been commissioned. Because, when you think about it, it is just monkeys playing tennis.
Peter Capaldi, Armando Iannucci New Doctor Who Peter Capaldi starred as spin doctor Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It
You made The Thick Of It for the BBC and Veep for HBO. Do you notice a difference in attitude between the two broadcasters? HBO always seems a bit more "full throttle".
That's also the difference between Britain and America. Americans are always unabashed about declaring their successes, whereas we think it's a little bit rude.
I keep saying it to our writers on Veep. They're all British and, whenever we're on the set in America and we've built an enormous life-size replica of the West Wing, they'll say: "This is exciting, isn't it? Oh gosh, they've given us lots of people in the background. Aren't we lucky?"
I have to say: "No, we're not lucky to be here. We're here because we deserve it, because we're writing good stuff."
Does your demeanour change when you cross the Atlantic?
I hope not, but I've always felt confident. When I'm making something, I've always felt in charge and therefore able to call the shots. But what you've got to do is stop that turning into arrogance or despotism!
I always like people to be treated nicely - and I only hire nice people. If I ever see an actor and think, "oh, he's very good - but what an asshole", then he won't be on the show. I just can't be dealing with that on the set on a daily basis.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Veep Julia Louis-Dreyfus has won two Emmy awards for playing Selina Meyer in Veep
You were vocally opposed to the closure of the UK Film Council in 2009. How do you think the landscape has changed for British films?
Since doing In the Loop, I've been so busy on Veep that I haven't quite caught up on how things are progressing. But what's heartening is I get the sense that funding hasn't decreased.
Every four or five years there's this debate on whether funding should go on experimental or commercial fare - and there's always a danger that what we do is put a lot of money into trying to pretend to be Hollywood and replicating big action movies and big spy movies. And in fact the British films that do best are the ones that have their own style and are confident about their own story.
Steve Coogan seems to have done exactly that with Philomena. There's even talk he'll get an Oscar nomination...
That is a prime example. It's just a road movie, really, with him and Judi Dench - but it says so much and covers so much. And that's precisely the sort of film we should be investing in.
Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa is out now on DVD and Blu-Ray.
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| <urn:uuid:ec2708cd-765d-4e93-a848-ae815bb2621d> | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-25187623 | en | 0.977356 | 0.296622 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Review by Flyersfreak85
"How did they go from THAT THIS game?"
Introduction: In 1994, Acclaim decided to release “Spiderman and Venom: Maximum Carnage” on to the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis. It was unique for a couple of reasons, one being that the game pitted two hated foes against each other to take out a much more despised and deadly foe. Another reason was that, for all that was right with the game, Acclaim decided to take the “Final Fight hits the SNES” way out and make it only one player (but I guess Capcom was guiltier, considering the arcade version did have three characters and two players). But over them two reasons was the fact that Acclaim took the high road and made the game an original release, like LJN did with a couple of the Spiderman and X-Men games on the old NES, but I say that because there was an arcade version of Spiderman released in Japan by Sega.
Then, in 1995, Acclaim came back with a sequel for the red colored cartridge game entitled “Spiderman and Venom: Separation Anxiety”. Now, let it be known that Acclaim made SOME improvements from that game to this one, but for the most part, seemingly everything else not mentioned as I forge ahead rolled downhill.
Gameplay: Okay so, in keeping with what Acclaim DID get right from the first game to this one was the most obvious, and that was the addition of a two player function (although to a point, one player HAD to be Spiderman and the other Venom, you could only switch the controllers after you flipped a coin over the issue) but it was a start. Also, Acclaim was nice enough to include passwords, which came after so many levels (you didn't get them after every level, but at the toughest stages you would find them) and were there long enough for you to copy them.
But THAT is where the improvements end, and everything else falls apart from here on. I don't even know how to describe it (but I will try my damn hardest) but if you looked at this game and the prequel, you wouldn't even know they were supposed to be related unless you knew that from the adverts or the game manual.
Basically, the story is that a mysterious group known as the “Life Foundation” has somehow managed to capture Venom and they extracted symbolites from his costume, creating five “children” to the black suited anti-hero. Now, if this was the Venom of “S&V: MC” fame, he probably could have wiped the floor with the ENTIRE group: however, starting the game and seeing how both Venom and Spiderman fight, it's no wonder Big Tough Eddie got captured: it's honestly more surprising how the suddenly tough guy-turned-pansy got away. I'm not sure who thought it was a good idea to make them fight like slow moving twerps, but I sure hope that person was promptly hazed and fired.
And if it isn't bad enough that Spiderman and Venom seem to have about one half of the fighting ability that they did in the previous game, the AI now is suddenly a LOT smarter and a LOT cheaper. Yes, Acclaim said they wanted to make this game “original” and “not Maximum Carnage-lite” but can someone explain to me why they kept the SAME DAMN STANDARD ENEMIES FROM THE PREVIOUS GAME? I mean, the ONLY difference is how they are drawn, much like your characters: the thugs, the trench coat guys, and the overgrown girl scouts are all back, albeit only for the opening level. Because after that, you face the “Life Foundation soldiers” who are cheaper than a bubblegum machine ring: they shoot you, they drop little “fart bombs” and they kick you down low, but look like they are break dancing. Oh, and the game brings back the “Floating orbs that look like soccer balls and omit strange lights” while also including a little robot which looks like a cross between a scrap pile of garbage and a mouser from TMNT fame.
But it gets worse, because one of the problems I mentioned with “S&V: MC” returns here with repeating boss fights, and these guys make Shriek and her gang look like pop icons. Amongst them are two variations of a toy soldier, one in blue in white and the other green and white that flies around on a hover board, a guy who attacks EXACTLY like Shriek does, and a guy who is an EXACT copy of War Machine from Iron Man fame. In fact, the last one is a total JOKE considering that Marvel CREATED said character, and then allows Acclaim to turn around and rip it off: nice going kids. Oh, and let's not forget the “Five unwanted Children of Venom”, which range from one who looks JUST like him, to a little brown Venom with Carnage claws, a green little Venom with weeds sticking out of his back, and two girls, one red and orange and the other purple who loves to break dance.
What is a LITTLE bit interesting about the game is that some stages contain maze sections, having you go in the right door or “Ventilation duct” to continue. While some of them are good, (like in the jungle you can find dead ends but they give up valuable items) others are just a PITA (like the aforementioned Duct stage, which has the player as confused as the blonde girl in the corner in the circular room joke).
As with the previous game, Superhero help is available, but while the characters are more well-known, they limit you to only FOUR of them, those being Hawkeye, Daredevil, Ghost Rider, and the returning Captain America: talk about originality.
---Gameplay Grade: 4/10
Controls: The Controls are the EXACT same that they were from the previous affair except, knowing that Acclaim screwed up SO much of the game before it, they had to make some of the control functions impossible. It used to be that if you tapped the D-Button twice right or left your character would charge ahead, but now it randomly happens when you hit it once. Oh, and the hit detection turned into garbage: you would think the closer you were to an enemy that you would connect on hits right? Wrong: this game believes the farther you are away from any given enemy you can hit them, so basically you are now Gumby-come-Stretch Armstrong when attacking foes.
---Controls Grade: 4/10
Graphics: Oh my Dear, Dear God…for ALL that Acclaim screwed up, they MIGHT have committed their worst offense here. They went for a more unique and trendy vibe with this game to separate it from the hard-edged look of the previous, and they failed MISERABLY might I add. If you could imagine the graphics being HALF the size of the previous games' and while the backgrounds are TWICE the size, you get the idea: I swear I put my thumb up against the screen against ANY given enemy and I had no idea they were even there. This goes two-fold for the game's final boss, I don't have to tell you who that is, but they seemed to have shrunk him from a donut to one of them munchkins they make at D&D and he's a total joke. The backgrounds and colors look like a Kindergarten student attacked the campus with water colors, and Spiderman and Venom look BEYOND stupid.
---Graphics Grade: 2/10
Sound: Gone is Green Jelly, and in their place is a mix of trance and techno music that while not offensive, will not be remembered either (The Boss fight songs, MAYBE). The upside is that, it's all original, except for one which they remixed from the previous game, one of the stage songs. But what is the kick in the butt is that Acclaim wanted to make this game original, and like with the first stage “civilian enemies” they ripped ALL of the sound effects from the first game. That means that, when a LF Solider parishes, he sounds JUST like any of the guys screams from the previous, and when the two girl Venom children die, they sound JUST like Shriek, or the overgrown girl scouts.
---Sound Grade: 4/10
Challenge: I think the complaints that were warranted for the prequel can be placed HERE instead: yes, you do have the usage of passwords to continue SHOULD you die (or you and your comrade) but guess what…if you DON'T make it to one of them stages that has one, you go RIGHT back to the beginning. Because unlike in the previous game, there are NO continues to be found. And as another user mentioned who reviewed this game, you can see the LF Soldiers and the bosses being tough on you, but seemingly the CIVILIANS are capable of putting an end to you as well. On the upside, the game is MORE than generous with extra lives and hearts to help your health meter, and the “Superheroes” are pretty helpful as well. But what good does that do when you can't even get out of the jungle of endless cycles and get to a stage that HAS a password?
---Challenge Grade: 7/10
Final Thoughts: Aside from the addition of passwords and a two-player function, everything that “S&V: SA” tried to go for to separate its self from the previous installment failed miserably: it made about as much sense as going in for knee surgery only to have the doctor chop your ears off. The graphics suck, the premise of the game sucks, the entire thought that TOUGH Venom was captured and probed by some stupid group sucks, and the fact that the “War Machine” rip-off captured you when he wanted to and took you to a “trap room” SUCKS too. Thank GOD they did not make a sequel directly related to this game, as I would fear for the general game playing public's safety if it had happened.
---Overall Grade: 3/10
Reviewer's Score: 3/10 | Originally Posted: 01/06/12
Game Release: Spider-Man & Venom: Separation Anxiety (US, 11/30/95)
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| <urn:uuid:ffb63d85-2724-439b-bee5-ce6668b1e400> | http://www.gamefaqs.com/snes/588684-spider-man-and-venom-separation-anxiety/reviews/review-149229 | en | 0.975109 | 0.280435 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
"Sometimes pet owners don't know what's best"
Clara Abson, from the RSPCA, says some animal neglect can be put down to ignorance on the part of their owners.
"I think it is a lot to do with people just not knowing where they can go for help - for instance in looking after their animals, or advice if their animals do get sick" she says.
Animal cruelty convictions rise
The RSPCA says its latest figures highlight 'a rising tide of animal cruelty in Wales.' | <urn:uuid:929fa391-d8b9-4422-b7f4-dcce68c20fea> | http://www.itv.com/news/wales/update/2012-04-24/sometimes-pet-owners-dont-know-what-they-should-be-doing/ | en | 0.956287 | 0.128115 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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Find Text in Command Window or History
Find Text in the Command Window
You can search text currently in the Command Window. This includes text that is currently visible on the screen, as well as text that is in the scroll buffer.
Search Using Find Dialog
To search for specified text in the Command Window, on the Command Window title bar, click , and then select Find. The Find dialog box opens. The search begins at the current cursor position. MATLAB® finds the text you specified and highlights it.
MATLAB beeps when a search for Find Next reaches the end of the Command Window, or when a search for Find Previous reaches the top of the Command Window. If you have Wrap around selected, MATLAB continues searching after beeping.
To search for the specified text in other MATLAB desktop tools, change the selection in the Look in field.
You can increase the amount of information available in the Command Window so that more text is available for searching. Be aware that doing so requires more memory. On the Home tab, in the Environment section, click Preferences. Select MATLAB > Command Window, and then increase the setting for Number of lines in the command window scroll buffer.
Clearing the command window (for example, with the clc function), empties the scroll buffer. The cleared text is no longer available for searching. To clear your display in the Command Window without clearing the buffer, use the home function.
Incremental Search Using Keyboard Shortcuts
This topic shows how to perform an incremental search in the Command Window.
With the incremental search feature, you do not have to leave the Command Window while you perform your search.
1. Begin an incremental search using one of the following keyboard shortcuts, depending on your operating system's active settings file.
ActionWindows® Default Active SettingsMacintosh or Emacs Default Active Settings
Initiate a forward incremental search.
Initiate a backward incremental search.
An incremental search field appears at the bottom of the Command Window. For a forward search, the text F incSearch appears. The F indicates a forward search.
2. Begin typing your search term.
When you enter lowercase letters in the Inc Search field, incremental search looks for both lowercase and uppercase instances of the letters. For example, if you enter b, incremental search looks for b and B. However, if you enter uppercase letters, incremental search only looks for instances that match the case you entered.
3. Perform incremental search actions using the following keyboard shortcuts.
ActionKeyboard Shortcut
Complete a partially highlighted string of characters.
Find the next occurrence of a string of characters.
Remove characters from the Inc Search field, back to the last successful search
If you search for a string that does not appear in the Command Window text, Failing appears in the incremental search field.
4. End incremental searching by pressing Esc (escape), Enter, or any other key that is not a character or number.
The Inc Search field disappears. The cursor remains at the position where the text was last found, with the search text highlighted.
Find Text in the Command History Window
You can find text in the Command History Window that matches the case. You also can search for text at the beginning of or anywhere within a command.
1. In the Command History window, type in the Search field. To display the Search field if is not visible, click , and then select Find.
The Command History window searches backwards and selects the previous entry that contains the sequence of letters you typed.
2. Find the previous or next occurrence of the entry with the up and down arrow keys, respectively.
3. Press Esc to clear the search.
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Question Browser Javascript Compatibility
Hello everyone,
I am relatively new to using javascript. I had a question about javascript's compatibility with various browsers. For example, I notice some websites that have slideshows and other javascript elements that my browser doesn't block, while other websites have js elements that my browser will block.
Why does my browser block some and not others. Is it how you code it? Perhaps different js libraries are acceptable while others are not?
I know that it is a security measure. Is there anyway around it. I am trying to design a slide show on my home page that starts onLoad and shuffles through pictures. It is a common technique used and I was wondering how people get these slide shows to play without my browser blocking them.
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What seems strange to me is that your web browser is blocking some of these web elements and not others.
Can you please help us to understand, perhaps with examples, the problem that you're having?
Programming Group Advisor
Reference: JavaScript, Quirksmode Validate: HTML Validation, JSLint
Car is to Carpet as Java is to JavaScript
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Do you perhaps have an internet security suite installed that is blocking certain scripts? Or any browser addons like AdBlock that might be doing something like that?
(Which browser are you using by the way?)
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. . psa: ""
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Wichita, KS (Sports Network) - Casey Wittenberg fired a 5-under 66 on Sunday to come from behind and win the Wichita Open.
Wittenberg finished the tournament at 18-under-par 266 to earn his second title of the season. He won the Louisiana Open by a massive 8-stroke margin in March.
The 27-year-old had a slightly smaller cushion Sunday, when he finished 2 shots ahead of Justin Hicks and Jim Herman.
Herman had carried a two-stroke advantage into the final round, but managed just a 1-under 70 to end at minus-16. He was joined in second place by Hicks, who shot a 67.
Scott Gardiner (65), Joseph Bramlett (68), Hudson Swafford (68) and Brice Garnett (69) shared fourth place at 13-under. | <urn:uuid:d883ea6a-afbd-4693-ba45-696ff63fed18> | http://www.thv11.com/story/local/2012/06/24/1712460/ | en | 0.963803 | 0.019149 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
= Defining kinds without an associated datatype = This ticket to track this request is #6024. When using `-XDataKinds` GHC automatically promotes every datatype to a kind, and its constructors to types. This forces us to declare a datatype for every kind. However, sometimes we are not interested in the datatype at all, only on the kind. Consider the following data kind that defines a small universe for generic programming: {{{ data Universe star = Sum Universe Universe | Prod Universe Universe | K star }}} This universe comes with an associated interpretation: {{{ data Interpretation :: Universe * -> * where L :: Interpretation a -> Interpretation (Sum a b) R :: Interpretation b -> Interpretation (Sum a b) Prod :: Interpretation a -> Interpretation b -> Interpretation (Prod a b) K :: a -> Interpretation (K a) }}} In this case, having to declare a datatype for `Universe` has two disadvantages: 1. We cannot use kinds (such as `*`) while defining a datatype, so we are forced to make `Universe` a parametrised datatype, and later always instantiate this parameter to `*` (like in the kind of `Interpretation`). 2. We lose constructor name space, because the datatype constructor names will be taken, even though we will never use them. So `Prod` and `K` cannot be used as constructors of `Interpretation` as above, because those are also constructors of `Universe`. '''Solution''': let users define things like {{{ data kind Universe = Sum Universe Universe | Prod Universe Universe | K * }}} By using `data kind`, we tell GHC that we are only interested in the `Universe` kind, and not the datatype. Consequently, `Sum`, `Prod`, and `K` will be types only, and not constructors. Also, {{{ data type D = C }}} defines a datatype `D` which is not promoted to a kind, and its constructor `C` is not promoted to a type. == Caveats == === Star in Star === If, in the future, we make `* :: *`, we will no longer have separation of types and kinds, so we won't be able to make such fine distinctions. === Recursive Groups === === Kind and Type Namespaces === As kinds and types currently share a namespace, `data kind` and `data type` declarations ```in the same module``` can still conflict. However, if they are in separate modules, this can be controlled by use of the module system. == Alternative Solutions == Add {{{ data Star }}} in `GHC.Exts` such that the promotion of datatype `Star` is the kind `*`. As a datatype, `Star` is just an empty datatype. ''Advantages'': very easy, backwards compatible ''Disadvantages'': somewhat verbose, doesn't fix (2) == Alternative Notations == * Use `data only` instead of `data type`. * Use `'data` instead of `data kind`, suggested by Gabor Greif. In both cases, we felt that using `type` and `kind` as the modifiers to the `data` declaration better reflect what's being defined. | <urn:uuid:6ed5fbaa-9117-4442-83fa-3034b061e61b> | https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/GhcKinds/KindsWithoutData?format=txt | en | 0.827083 | 0.549062 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
x richmond
x north carolina
Set Clip Length:
don't understand where that law came from, i thought a majority is anything that's above 50%, and i don't know where this 60% came from. maybe you could enlighten us on exactly the origin of that filibuster law. host: well, andy, that would take way too long for me to explain, but perhaps we'll do that as a segment on the "washington journal" and take our viewers and listeners through the intricacies of the rules of the house and senate. but thanks for your call. we're going to move on to ron on our line for democrats, calling from florida. good morning, ron. caller: good morning. host: ron, divided party -- one party or divided government? caller: well, that question is -- the underlying point is you're saying a -- in essence, what you're saying is a one-party state, and that just doesn't work. it was proved in the soviet union and the place where i immigrated from, which was cuba. the problem is, as someone said, this is not your father's republican party. when you have a new crop signing a pledge before they even take office that allows them no room to negotiate, on top of that,
Excerpts 0 to 3 of about 4 results.
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Take the 2-minute tour ×
I'm having to set up an email server for a class and have installed exim (using Maildir mailbox format) and sent myself an email. I can't read the email though: I have set the MAIL variable to ~/Maildir but when I try to open mail I get
pad-20@PAD-20:~$ mail
mail: /home/pad-20/Maildir/: Is a directory
I also changed the settings in /etc/pam.d/{login,su,sshd} according to this guide, but all that's done is give me a new email summary when I log in.
The strange thing is that frm works:
pad-20@PAD-20:~$ frm
Test 2 from telnet
(That's the subject of the test email I sent).
There is another question on askubuntu that is similar, except that their problem was fixed after setting the MAIL variable correctly.
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1 Answer
up vote 6 down vote accepted
The traditional unix /usr/bin/mail only supports mailbox format. It's older than maildir, after all.
Under Ubuntu, /usr/bin/mail has two alternatives: heirloom-mailx Install heirloom-mailx and bsd-mailx Install bsd-mailx. Each of the two have extensions to the historical utility, but the Heirloom version more so. In particular, Only the Heirloom version has maildir support (and IMAP, and decent charset handling, and MIME).
Make sure you have the Heirloom version installed. If you have both, the alternative defaults to heirloom-mailx; check that you haven't changed the default setting by running sudo update-alternatives --config mailx.
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Thanks, installing heirloom-mailx solved the issue. I'd vote you up too but don't have enough rep. – bob esponja Jun 9 '11 at 10:02
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| <urn:uuid:fa2bffc4-6b63-45f1-ad29-08fff24a2955> | http://askubuntu.com/questions/47688/mail1-isnt-able-to-open-maildir-mailbox?answertab=votes | en | 0.876102 | 0.029733 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Eyes on the Prize One Interviews
Washington University Digital Gateway Texts
Interview with Mike Wallace
View Item
Interviewer: NAME_OF_INTERVIEWER_X_process
Production Team: A
Interview Date: October 12, 1988
Camera Rolls: 1001-1002
Sound Rolls: 101
Editorial Notes:
Interview with , conducted by Blackside, Inc. on October 12, 1988, for . Washington University Libraries, Film and Media Archive, Henry Hampton Collection. These transcripts contain material that did not appear in the final program. Only text appearing in bold italics was used in the final version of
INTERVIEWER: OK, tell me first of all how that 1959 documentary came about.
MIKE WALLACE: Lou Lomax, a reporter I'd never heard of, came to my office, told me about something called the Black Muslims. I'd never heard of them. Ah, we went next door to Sardi's restaurant to have lunch, and he told me at great length about an organization called the Black Muslims. He didn't tell me how many people they were or how strong they were. What he suggested to me was that they were not a particularly well-known organization. They had never been written about in the White press. That there was very little can[SIC] of them in the White community. Would we be interested in doing a broadcast, a documentary about them? Ah, I suggested that, "Yeah, we might. Let's learn more about them." One of the conditions of our doing the broadcast, he said, was that they will not talk to a White reporter[1] Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads 1965 - 1985; Episode 201-05, therefore who was going to be the reporter. It was obvious that Lomax wanted the job. Lomax had, ah, good contacts with the Muslims. With Malcolm X, with Elijah Muhammad, and people around them. So Ted Yates, who was the producer with whom I worked, and I, finally made a deal for Lomax to go to work on that documentary for us. The reporter on that documentary was Louis Lomax. The producer was Ted Yates. I was the narrator. But I never met Elijah Muhammad at that time. As a matter of fact have never, never did meet Elijah Muhammad. And did not meet Malcolm X at that time. All that I did was voice over, anchor the work done by Lomax and camera crew. And after that, and we called it "The Hate That Hate Produced." And after that went on the air we put it on five minutes a night on local news, and it attracted some attention, we decided to make an hour of it. And following that there were various people from the Black community who participated in a forum about it.
INTERVIEWER: I'd like to ask you how the title came about.
MIKE WALLACE: I don't remember.
INTERVIEWER: I was just wondering what it meant? If there was a particular meaning to it.
MIKE WALLACE: Ah, the, the meaning of "The Hate That Hate Produced," was there is hate, hatred, suspicion, whatever, on both sides. If indeed the Muslims hated the Whites, and they acknowledged that they did, Malcolm was very eloquent about that. Elijah Muhammad was very eloquent about it. They were racists. They were separatists. They wanted, they wanted to separate, separate the Blacks from the Whites in this country. Ah, if they felt that hatred it was in reaction to the hatred that they felt had been directed against them. Therefore, "the hate that hate produced."
INTERVIEWER: In your opening remarks you referred to the Muslims as being preachers of hate while silver-minded Negroes stood idly by. I was wondering who some of those silver-minded Negroes were back then?
MIKE WALLACE: The entire Black leadership. Take a look at the, the Black leadership back then, Roy Wilkins for instance. A man, a friend of mine, a man for whom I had great respect. Word of the Black Muslims simply had not filtered out to the, to the White community, to the White journalistic community, to the White community in general. When I first heard about the Muslims I, I, I didn't know what Lou Lomax was telling me about. And when I say, "stood idly by," we never heard a word from any of the Black leadership at that time that there was this group called Black Muslims.
INTERVIEWER: What about Malcolm X? You've been talking about the Muslims, tell me a little bit about your first impression of Malcolm X in that program?
MIKE WALLACE: Ah, my impression of Malcolm X, my impression of Malcolm X on that first program was that he was a demagogue, racist--what some people think of Louis Farakkhan today is what I felt about Malcolm X when I first saw on film, not in person, what he had said about Whites. That's what I felt about him. And only later did I meet him and begin to talk to him. And become a friend of Malcolm's, as he began to understand I think Whites better. As he began to... I think that Malcolm... what the heck am I trying to say here? Maybe I should wait--
INTERVIEWER: Let's stop down here for a moment.
INTERVIEWER: Louis Lomax of course was Black, you were White. When you were putting the program together did that lead to any differences of opinion in your...?
MIKE WALLACE: None. None. Lomax knew the subject. We didn't. We were being introduced to the subject. Ted Yates who is now dead, killed on the first day of the Six Day War, was a fine producer. I was editor, reporter, and we, we had talked to Lomax enough, and he had talked enough to the principals, Elijah, Malcolm and others, for us to believe what he delivered to us.
INTERVIEWER: That's an interesting point of view though. You were actually doing the show for a White audience, and to actually educate them as to what this group was about.
MIKE WALLACE: Not necessarily to a White audience. We were doing it for the New York audience, which is hardly a White audience. It's, ah, "The Hate That Hate Produced", for a young outfit, an outfit with not much money, we had $3,000 budget for this documentary, one hour. For this young outfit, that was a kind of a maverick outfit, Newsmaker Productions working on Channel 13, which was then a no--a commercial outfit, it hadn't turned educational yet. For us to get this kind of a story was really quite extraordinary. I doubt maybe that some of the so-called establishment television stations at the time would have done the story.
INTERVIEWER: What sort of response did the show get?
MIKE WALLACE: John Crosby was the, the nation's television critic at the time. He was astonished, wrote about it, wrote about it glowingly, and suggested that other people should pay attention to it. As a result of which, because up to that time there hadn't been a word about the Black Muslims in any, uh, uh, White publication. Following that, _US News_, _The New York Times_, _Time_, _Newsweek_, others, followed up, _The Free Press_ out in Detroit, actually it was the first time that the Black Muslims came to the attention of White America.
INTERVIEWER: So was there any angry response?
MIKE WALLACE: There was, there was angry response following the hour that we put on, on Channel 13 that night of "The Hate That Hate Produced," we had a group of Jackie Robinson, Roy Wilkins, Gardner Taylor, Arnold Forester from the Anti-Defamation League, and a woman, a Black woman, Anna Hedgeman. A couple of them, especially Roy Wilkins, Jackie Robinson to some degree, suggested that we had overstated about the Black Muslims, that, that they weren't as important as we had made them by devoting this hour to the subject. It took, of White journalism, only a couple of three months to do much more than we had done very shortly thereafter. And some of the people on the panel wrote eventually to the _The New York Times_, which had in effect downgraded The, uh, "The Hate That Hate Produced" some of the people who took part in that panel, wrote to _The Times_ chiding them for having not paid enough attention and taken the broadcast seriously enough.
INTERVIEWER: During that time there was a lot of attention paid to the Civil Rights Movement in the South, a lot of attention paid to Martin Luther King. Was there kind of a media position with respect to Malcolm and the Nation of Islam, because it doesn't seem like they got quite as much--
MIKE WALLACE: White journalism at that time didn't know, who Malcolm was, who Elijah Muhammad was, had no can of the Black Muslims. So there was no attention being paid at that time. It took some time, following that, for major publications, White publications if you will: _The New York Times_, _The US News_, _Detroit Free Press_. To come forth and begin to pay attention, to put reporters on it and find out that the Black Muslims were indeed a substantial group and a group that had to be dealt with it.
INTERVIEWER: Tell me about when Malcolm came in and talked to you.
MIKE WALLACE: Was the date on that 1965?
INTERVIEWER: I think it was '64.
MIKE WALLACE: '64. After Malcolm went to Mecca, and I heard from him a couple times, postcards, was all. But he had some confidence in me, felt that I was a friend. And as he began to, learn, and he felt that certain White reporters were trustworthy, and he used to write to me, occasionally. After Malcolm came back from Mecca, uhm, I wanted to talk to him. I was at CBS by then. And he came into my office and said to me, in effect--as a matter of fact, I'm trying to think, I don't want to say--make up what I don't remember. Malcolm came to my office at CBS and suggested that he was in danger. I said, "What are you talking about?" "They are out to get me." "Who?" "The Black Muslims." "Why?" "And I'll tell you why," he said. And then he began to tell me a tale about Elijah Muhammad as a lecher. And I said, "What do you mean a lecher?" He fathered children by young women whom he had taken as secretaries from out of town. Not one, not two, but several women. And I found that very difficult to believe. He said, "Mike, I will prove it to you. I will get on the phone with some of the people who are now living in Los Angeles. And I'll let you listen." And indeed that's what happened, he called a couple of women on the West Coast, we have a transcript of that conversation. Because also listening was my secretary, a young southern woman who was scared to death by what she heard. But it was quite apparent from that phone conversation, that indeed, the allegations by Malcolm were correct, that Elijah Mohammed had fathered children by a group of people, a group of young women, who had been working as his secretaries. He felt that because of that, and I suggested to him. "Malcolm, you start talking about this publicly, and you are going to get killed." And he said, in effect, he knew there was this danger, but he was going to go ahead with it. He was killed--what was the date of his death?
INTERVIEWER: February 21st, '65.
MIKE WALLACE: It was only a very short time later that he was gunned down, here in New York City.
INTERVIEWER: Cite some of these incidents. You seemed to have some sort of a personal relationship with him. Tell me your impression of Malcolm X as a man.
MIKE WALLACE: Malcolm was on a voyage of discovery. Discovery of himself, discovery of the White man. He was not, he was not tied to an understanding of the White man, not tied by the Black Muslims, willing to understand that he was wrong about some Whites. I liked Malcolm, I liked his strength, I liked his humor, I liked his openness. And I admired, I must say, uh, his determination, his ambition to be a Black leader. He was, he was in search of a group. Ah, he wanted to be a leader. He knew that there was Roy Wilkins and the NAACP, he knew there was Martin Luther King. He knew there were various other Black leaders, and he was trying to find his place in that constellation. And his O.A.U. was his effort, as I understood it, to try to do that.
INTERVIEWER: You mentioned you liked his humor, can you give me an example?
INTERVIEWER: Uh um, Okay--
INTERVIEWER: When you met him after he returned from Mecca, did he seemed like a changed man to you in any way?
MIKE WALLACE: Yeah, when he returned from Mecca he did indeed seem like a changed man. It's as those he had made an extraordinary discovery of himself, and of White people in general. It's as though that, that, that voyage, not just to Mecca but to the Middle East. And rubbing up against White reporters, and rubbing up against a variety of people had simply broadened his view of life. He was, he was such an intelligent man anyway, such a capable man, such a charismatic man. And I felt, I had felt that he was beginning... to get an education even as I was getting educated about the Black community then, he was beginning to be educated about the White community.
INTERVIEWER: Very interesting, we're pretty much out of the questions that I had prepared--
INTERVIEWER: I'm just sorta of curious if there's any other thing that you'd like to tell me about Malcolm? You've had a number of contacts with him, is there any particular moment that stands out, that, um--
MIKE WALLACE: No, there isn't. No there really, really isn't. As I say we weren't--the moment that stands out, was when he came to my office and told me, "Look I'm going to tell this tale about Elijah Muhammad." A man for whom I had--he had this admiration, he, he was the leader. And he was going to tell the tale, that he said had been told him by Elijah Muhammad's son Wallace. That Elijah was a lecher who had impregnated several of his secretaries. He knew he was going to put himself in danger when he told that tale. He told it publicly, he told that to me in my office. And it was only two, three months before he was gunned down.
INTERVIEWER: Lets' stop down one more time, we may be at the end of it, Carol are there any--
INTERVIEWER: Okay if you would just give your response when Louie Lomax came back with some of this film.
MIKE WALLACE: When Lou Lomax came back with a film of the rally, the Black Muslims rally, I was simply stunned. I mean here was this auditorium overflowing, thousands of people. About an organization, I knew nothing about, I found it difficult to credit when I, when I saw it[2] Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads 1965 - 1985; Episode 201-06. And of course when we put it on the air, New Yorkers, 'cause that's all who saw it, were stunned. That this, there was this organization the Black Muslims, about which White New Yorkers simply knew nothing.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, all right. | <urn:uuid:df2b16d7-ace2-473d-90b0-82f15f262017> | http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eii/eiiweb/wal5427.0729.168mikewallace.html | en | 0.990072 | 0.019938 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
The chimney is a wide column in the middle of the living room. The finish on this chimney sort of evokes brick, but I don't think it is. It reminds me of stucco, but it isn't that either. The house was built in 1975.
I'm trying to determine what it is so I can answer the following questions:
1. Can I remove the bumpy finish, make the indoor surfaces of the chimney smooth, and paint it?
2. What's usually behind this kind of finish on a chimney? Brick? Drywall?
3. If I wanted to screw a pull-down flatscreen mount above the fireplace, how would I anchor it?
Close-up of the material:
Picture of the room for context:
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I would call it - very hard to duplicate. – DMoore Aug 5 '13 at 15:19
This is an image on google images for stucco -google.com/…. Yours is obviously more regular and deeper but looks to be basically the same. – bib Aug 5 '13 at 15:52
is the texture hard, or soft. if it is soft, i would think it is plaster, but if it is hard, depending on how hard, i would guess cement(highly unlikely though) or something similar. – Ashitakalax Aug 15 '13 at 18:37
you can find a small unnoticeable place on the wall(where a stud would probably be, and drill a tiny hole(careful on bit selection) in it to find out what is behind the top layer. if wood starts coming out it is probably some weird material on the surface, if you only see a concrete like powder, you know it is brick. – Ashitakalax Aug 15 '13 at 18:47
That's a great-looking room. – ArgentoSapiens Aug 17 '13 at 0:58
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1 Answer
1) Yes. It would probably be easier and more cost efficient to simply cover it (drywall, paneling) or fill it in with more stucco (requires more skill).
2) Brick or block.
3) Purchase a TV mounting kit suitable for your make/model TV and use masonry anchors (http://www.doityourself.com/stry/h2anchorconcrete) to mount it.
Good luck!
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| <urn:uuid:f6a7e02b-0d78-415f-bea1-0b1aead38609> | http://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/30356/what-is-this-stucco-like-finish-called | en | 0.91148 | 0.669804 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Health Buzz: Genes Linked to Childhood Obesity
Dr. Phil’s family ties to the 17 day diet; how does the 17 day diet work?
Two Childhood Obesity Genes Discovered
Researchers say they've discovered two gene variants that play a role in childhood obesity. The findings are part of a large analysis of genetic studies involving thousands of children from the United States, Europe, and Australia. Though little is known about the two gene markers, they're likely tied to intestinal function, according to a study published Sunday in Nature Genetics. The genes appear to increase the risk of obesity in the first few years of life, even in children as young as 2. "We're going to continue to look for more genes, and the more information we get, the more accurately we will eventually make lifestyle decisions for children based on their genetic makeup," study author Struan Grant, associate director of the Center for Applied Genomics at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, told USA Today. "This is giving us new insights to the biology of obesity, which could potentially one day lead to both more efficient medications and more specific diet and exercise advice for kids who are genetically predisposed to obesity."
The 17 Day Diet: Dr. Phil's Family Ties
Have you heard of the 17 Day Diet, now a national best-selling diet book? Probably, if you're a Dr. Phil fan. The TV psychologist has been heavily supporting and promoting the diet on his show, even describing it as the "hottest new diet out there." What he failed to mention: His son, Jay McGraw, has a financial stake in the success of that book—he is the publisher, according to a new Newsweek cover story. (Full disclosure: The article's author, Pat Wingert, is married to U.S. News' top editor Brian Kelly.) Jay McGraw also helped publish The P.I.N.K. Method, another diet book heavily promoted by the Dr. Phil show and its sister program, The Doctors, which is run by Jay McGraw. In January of this year, Dr. Phil acknowledged his son's relationship with the P.I.N.K. Method. According to the Newsweek story, Dr. Phil never told his audience about his son's link to the 17 Day Diet program, questioning his transparency and whether he's a trust-worthy source of diet information.
How does the 17 Day Diet work?
Based on Michael Rafael Moreno's 2011 book, The 17 Day Diet: A Doctor's Plan Designed for Rapid Results, the regimen is purportedly built to help you shed pounds quickly and permanently. The diet is divided into three 17-day cycles to prevent boredom and your body from plateauing, says Moreno, a California-based family medicine physician. In the first cycle, "Accelerate," you'll cut back to about 1,200 calories per day, reduce your sugar intake, and focus on improving your digestion. This is when you'll lose the most—10 to 15 pounds—though most of it will be water weight, he says. After 17 days you'll reach the second cycle, "Activate." During this period you'll alternate between Accelerate's limited-calorie diet and Activate's slightly higher-calorie meal plan. This back-and-forth supposedly resets your metabolism and stimulates fat burning to yield an additional loss of 5 to 6 pounds. In the third cycle, "Achieve," you'll focus on developing good eating habits to drop another 2 to 3 pounds. The final cycle, "Arrive," is ongoing. You'll maintain your goal weight by eating healthfully on weekdays and enjoying your favorite foods (in moderation) on the weekends. [Read more: The 17 Day Diet—What You Need to Know.]
| <urn:uuid:1559ca8f-1220-4448-b318-bd5878bf94c9> | http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2012/04/09/health-buzz-genes-linked-to-childhood-obesity?s_cid=rss%253Ahealth-buzz-genes-linked-to-childhood-obesity | en | 0.966724 | 0.020817 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
How can I solve the following equation:
$$2^{log_3 x}+x^{log_3 2}=4$$
I don't want the final answer, I want to know how I can solve these kind of equations.
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At least the notation $log(x,3)$ is not standard in maths. Do you mean $\log_x 3$ or $\log_3 x$? – Jaakko Seppälä Sep 9 '12 at 10:35
You should probably write what you mean by $\log (x,3)$. Or better yet, use standard convention by writing either $\log_x(3)$ or $\log_3(x)$. – tomasz Sep 9 '12 at 10:35
There isn't a way to solve all equations, but often you should start by writing everything you can as an exponent of the same base. In this case, notice what happens if you changed $2$ to $3^{\log_3 2}$ and $x$ to $3^{\log_3 x}$. – Karolis Juodelė Sep 9 '12 at 10:57
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1 Answer
up vote 4 down vote accepted
Put $x=3^y$
Simplify $2^{log_3 x}$ and $x^{log_3 2}$ as follows:
$log_3 x=log_3 3^y=ylog_3 3=y$
$x^{log_3 2}=(3^y)^{log_3 2}=(3^{log_32})^y=2^y$
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| <urn:uuid:40fa184e-e7db-40ed-a725-e18eae8d478b> | http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/193109/the-way-to-solve-an-equation-involving-logarithms | en | 0.818223 | 0.97778 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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Harry Potter books
Last Updated: Tuesday July 12 2005 07:53 GMT
Book 1 - The Philosopher's Stone
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
First line:
Number of chapters: 17
Plot: Orphan Harry Potter lives with his horrible aunt and uncle, the Dursleys. As he turns 11 he discovers his dad James was a wizard and his mum Lily was a witch.
Harry also finds out that his parents were killed by the most evil wizard of all, Lord Voldemort, and that he survived the attack, taking away Voldemort's powers.
Harry gets to a school for magical kids called Hogwarts. Once there he makes friends with Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger but is enemies with student Draco Malfoy and potions teacher Severus Snape.
During the course of the school year Harry finds out about something called the Philosopher's Stone and a mysterious plot by evil forces to steal it from Hogwarts.
But it's not all good for Harry, as he has to return to the Dursley's home at the end of the school year.
Best bit: Harry discovers he is a rather nifty flier on a broomstick, and is really, really good at the wizard sport of Quidditch.
DADA teacher (and their fate): Professor Quirrell. His body has been inhabited by Voldemort, whose face covers the back of Quirrell's head. In a climactic fight with Harry, he dies and Voldemort disappears.
Big baddie: Voldemort, well his face and spirit anyway, combined with Professor Quirrell's body.
Best Neville bit: When he is awarded the crucial 10 points that wins the House Cup for Gryffindor.
Last line: I'm going to have a lot of fun with Dudley this summer... | <urn:uuid:a7e65a85-d594-4ef0-a9ed-271fa1279744> | http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_4650000/newsid_4651900/4651941.stm | en | 0.974354 | 0.135203 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Article Photos: Oklahoma football: Why the Sooners' 35-20 victory at Iowa State was a feat of Clay 1/47
Oklahoma's Sterling Shepard (3) reacts near Lacoltan Bester (81) and Justin Brown (19) after scoring a touchdown in the second quarter during a college football game between the University of Oklahoma (OU) and Iowa State University (ISU) at Jack Trice Stadium in Ames, Iowa, Saturday, Nov. 3, 2012. Photo by Nate Billings, The Oklahoman | <urn:uuid:6b47d0bc-a18b-4bce-b8c5-869bb36cbbb4> | http://newsok.com/gallery/articleid/3725427/1/pictures/ | en | 0.926503 | 0.028946 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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So I went through an initial interview on school campus, and an on-site interview(one day, mostly technical interviews) with this company, and then a week later, I am told that there will be an additional phone interview with one of their hiring managers, called "Professional Fit Interview", which I have no idea what it is. Before I thought the on-site interview was gonna be the last round, at least that's the impression I got from them.
So what this "professional fit interview" might be? How should I prepare for it?
Thanks a lot!
A follow-up: Thank everyone for the replies. As everybody has mentioned, it's a HR type interview. The interviewer did some introduction of the team, then asked if I have some questions, and asked me a couple of questions like "where do you see yourself in 2 years". Anyway, a rejection email came about one week later.
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Sounds like HR drivel that you probably can't really prepare for. – John Straka Dec 2 '10 at 20:02
For interviews like this, it's a legally clever way to exclude people based on things like age, ethnicity, gender and so forth (which are illegal in the US) as well as things that are legal to exclude people for such as personal appearance and grooming, weight and so forth. – jfrankcarr Dec 20 '11 at 15:15
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5 Answers
up vote 16 down vote accepted
Typically, a cultural fit assessment is something to gauge your personality (and how it'll mesh with the existing employees there). Given that your day of interviews was mostly technical, it's possible that this is what they were referring to.
Just try not to be too much of a richard and you'll be fine. It's typically HR equidae-feces and tea-leaves; you really can't study for it short of reading up on Myer-Briggs and playing the meta-answer game.
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Perhaps could be phrased more diplomatically but +1 anyway – HLGEM Dec 2 '10 at 20:06
Good answer...but I like Tim's response better. The last time I went through a HR interview like that I was told that I 'would not fit into their corporate culture' and 'would not be a good employee'. I'm very glad I was passed over, since the opinion of the just-out-of-college HR drone overruled three developers, two managers, and the VP of IT! – Steven A. Lowe Dec 2 '10 at 21:03
@Steven that the HR rep may have been naive is also shown by the fact that he even told you those things! I'm usually fine with candidness but only if you are 100% sure it will be constructive. – NickC Dec 2 '10 at 21:12
Tend to agree. Cultural fit is a big hiring criteria for any role, but I deal with it as a part of other interviews because it has to be more than one person's opinion. And doing over the phone is a red flag. – Rhys Gibson Dec 2 '10 at 23:26
I learned a new word today, I even got to learn what it means by checking the edit history. – TokenMacGuy Dec 13 '10 at 5:34
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I love the buzz words that this site generates. I am tasked frequently with interviewing programmers. It is common to have several levels of interviews:
• Education / Employment / Experience
This is where we ask your previous employers if they would hire you again. If the job said "[insert degree here] or related experience", we've phoned your university to verify things, or had someone capable of ingesting 'related experience' report on it'. Nothing much to see here.
Additionally, if the job you seek requires additional clearance, we'll investigate the possibility of obtaining that.
Finally, we need to know if you might be a good fit, and move you on to the next step.
• Technical interview
You will be interviewed by a peer. You will be asked to solve problems, give insights into emerging things, and then asked to pick out mistakes in presumptions that you interviewer just presumed. We want to not only gauge your experience, we want to see what happens when someone in authority is obviously wrong.
• Background
Sometimes, we do have to conduct a background check.
By this time, a fellow hacker has interviewed and endorsed you. If you are unfortunate enough to talk to a company psychologist to determine your 'suitability' beyond that .. run, and run like hell.
Seriously, run. If the hiring manager must defer to a HR bot to determine how you might fit in, you don't want to work there. Run like you are in prison and just dropped the soap .. if for no other reason than avoiding needless complexity that will likely introduce needless complexity in whatever they ask you to produce.
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I'd agree with you, but wouldn't you say that if the "Professional Fit Interview" were with members of the team the candidate would be fitting in with (as opposed to an unassociated HR rep), it might actually be a productive thing? – NickC Dec 2 '10 at 21:14
@Renesis, I think the leader of a team should be in charge of who joins it, and I think enough information could be gathered in the technical interview to ensure a good fit. Otherwise, you are staffing a pool .. and .. well.. that sucks for the person being hired. "Six of one hundred, implement logging" .. bah. – Tim Post Dec 2 '10 at 21:19
Agreed. I guess I'm just assuming that this may be a company where there are many more players than those who participated in the tech interview. – NickC Dec 2 '10 at 21:22
@Renesis, I'm arguing that there should not be more than a few moving parts in the hiring process. – Tim Post Dec 2 '10 at 21:24
I strongly disagree with you. I don't think the team leader should be in charge of hiring at all. Neither management. The latter should authorize the process and leader manage it, but IMHO, the team should decide who to hire. Being hired by the team allows immediate integration. It also helps finding the candidate that matches. It also prevent from rejection from the team. – user2567 Dec 3 '10 at 8:46
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A 'Professional Fit interview' is usually a non-technical interview by one or more people from the department you'd be hired into. It could be the senior manager who ultimately pays your salary, but it could also be a couple of engineers who are comfortable talking around various subjects to see if you'd fit in with a team like theirs.
There are some 'positive indicators' that they may be looking for (understands team work, can communicate, familiar with SDLC) that may not have been on your CV/resume nor come up in the technical interviews, but they're looking for them. Try to spot these and answer in a positive fashion. E.g.:
Question: What coding style do you use?
Good Answer: I'll take cues from the style of surrounding lines of code to ensure consistency, or ask colleagues about the team style.
Bad Answer: I like to re-format all code I work on to fit my personal tab/brace/naming style. It's so much better than anything else (yes, I've heard this)
There are some items that would count as 'negative indicators'. It may be illegal/bad form to ask certain questions in an interview (e.g. in UK can't ask about family, marital status, gender or religion), so they may want to talk around the subject until you accidentally let slip something they feel may be a problem for them.
Yes, this is immoral, but it happens in real life. I have seen people rejected because they were gender-unsure even though they were brilliant programmers. I have also seen excellent engineers hired by HR departments but then get ostracised by the team as they just didn't get along with anyone in the team.
Don't volunteer anything you don't need to. For example, no need to mention that you're thinking of starting a family next year - it's none of their business, but some interviewers would immediately think "has outside commitments to distract him from the job". If you can get to the office by ~9am and do a full days' work, no need to make them think that you can't.
My top tips for getting through this:
1. Dress smart. You need to look 'professional', even if the dress code is metal T-shirt and ripped jeans.
2. Professional, objective responses. Don't run your mouth off over anything - you may be lulled into doing so (a common technique), but try to stay on-topic.
3. Do some homework before the interview. Try to have a better understanding of their company, their projects/goals, the market they operate in, etc. As this is interview is further through the process, you should be demonstrably more interested in the job.
4. Be straight with them. Tell the truth. If you don't know, just say - don't waste anyone's time. If you're caught bending the truth, you'd likely fail your probationary period or (worse) be sued.
5. Be alert - although the person interviewing you may seem detached from the job you've applied for, they may try to throw in the occasional technical question to make their own assessment of you or to see you how react. I once had a CTO-level guy in a finance company ask me to compare and contrast two embedded O/S's approach to device drivers. Yep, really.
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How you dress is important, and if you're talking to fellow geeks you do not normally want to wear a suit. Dress on the classy side of your future colleagues, but not beyond that. If it's with HR, you may want the suit. – David Thornley Dec 3 '10 at 2:26
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Have you considered asking them what it is? I have not heard of it. Although, it sounds a little like something we used to do in my company. What we did was have two managers interview a candidate and a developer. The developer afterward would be asked how they felt the candidate would fit in at the company.
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Original answer was perhaps a bit too blunt and was definitely rightly taken in a direction I did not mean for it to go.
To make a clearer point -- it could be alot of things. My team it would be a cocktail hour. Someone else's might be guitar hero. If you are going to be working hard with a small crew, you need to mesh personality-wise and be able to put up with each other. You are probably going to spend more time with this person than with your significant other.
[Original answer for posterity]
15 rounds of cocktails at the local strip club.
[At least for my team]
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How does that work out with female staff? Chippendales? And LGBT staff? You do a survey first to ensure you won't have weird looks in the morning? – haylem Dec 2 '10 at 20:57
How about for people who, for whatever reason, don't drink alcohol? You want to eliminate them right off? Or relatively small people who might find fifteen cocktails a lethal dose? – David Thornley Dec 2 '10 at 21:52
@David: It's a professional fit interview. If you don't drink, you won't fit in with Wyatt's team, by the sounds of it. – Carson63000 Dec 2 '10 at 22:12
@Carson63000: Presumably, but I thought I'd ask. It would be nice to know before interviewing there. I don't drink anything alcoholic, and would prefer not to go on an interview if I'd have to get drunk to get the job. (BTW, if this is in the US he might be in trouble with the Americans with Disabilities Act - alcoholism is probably considered a disability, and refusing to hire based on unwillingness to consume alcohol might be illegal here.) – David Thornley Dec 2 '10 at 22:29
I feel that this is an unprofessional and unhelpful answer. – JBRWilkinson Dec 3 '10 at 0:07
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| <urn:uuid:ecb9e869-a7db-470d-87d8-a53acef04d16> | http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/23215/whats-a-professional-fit-interview | en | 0.968291 | 0.204332 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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+ - 'World Shaker' Crossbreeds Processor With Memory C->
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Eric Smalley
Eric Smalley writes "Processors include a small amount of cache memory, which reduces the number of times the processor has to fetch data from main memory, but Venray goes further. It puts the processor and main memory on the same chip. It’s called processor-in-memory, or PIM, and it’s not exactly a new idea. Fish and others have been pursuing the idea for decades. But its time may finally have come.
In today's world, biomedical research and other Big Data applications that juggle enormous amounts of information are butting up against that memory wall, and if we’re to achieve personalized medicine --" where we tailor drugs and other treatments to an analysis of an individual’s genetic makeup --" we need chips that can push through that wall."
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'World Shaker' Crossbreeds Processor With Memory C
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Take the 2-minute tour ×
I am dealing with an application which is using a lot of graphics (the library Raphael and graphdracula). Basically, the application is drawing different graphs. Let's say that we have 3 pages which are drawing graphs:
1. graph1
2. graph2
3. graph3
Let's say we have the following URL:
Now, this URL is going to load the page and the drawing algorithm for graph1. The way my application works now is: if I want to change the layout (say, to graph2), I will have to reload a whole page:
What I want to do is: to make this as a Single Page Application (SPA). When we load the application, I want all the graphs to be loaded, but only one to be visible (I guess this is the way to do it). When I click a button, just to load the stuff I need, not the whole page. Something like, when we open the application's page about graphs, to be:
www.someurl.com/graph#1 -> for the first graph
www.someurl.com/graph#2 -> for the second graph
www.someurl.com/graph#3 -> for the third graph
I want to this asynchronous. I tried to find something for Flask, but without sucess. Can someone please point me into the right direction how should I do this?
Thanks in advance!
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1 Answer
If that's not critical for you to support IE<10 - instead of old-style #hash-navigation, you can use jquery-pjax plugin to load page part by AJAX: https://github.com/defunkt/jquery-pjax
On Flask side - you will have to differ AJAX-requests by their headers or by some additional param like &ajax=1.
See also this question with comparison to history.js : jQuery-pjax vs history.js to load specific content when clicked
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I would like to avoid adding new JavaScript libraries to the project (besides jQuery). Any way around that? – Belphegor Mar 21 '13 at 14:56
You could write your own code for #hash-navigation. I had the same problem , IE7-9 doesnt' support jquery-pjax or history.js, and needs old-style #hash-navigation - and i haven't found some opensource javascript/jquery solution for AJAX-navigation supporting IE<10. So we decided to develop our own simple JS #hash-navigation solution for the project. If you find opensource jquery/JS solution supporting IE7-9 - please let me now as well, thanks. – moonsly Mar 21 '13 at 17:03
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| <urn:uuid:ce1c0826-6e5f-4b32-a8d6-8f07152128bf> | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15548869/example-of-asynchronous-page-processing-in-flask/15548986 | en | 0.897554 | 0.205539 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I just installed Casandra on my windows machine. When I run cassandra.bat everything seems to be ok - no errors, just some debug statement.
I then launch the client - cassandra-cli.bat, and no matter whet I type in at the command prompt (other that ?) I get back a ... with a tab and a bilking cursor.
The articles I have read say to type in: connect localhost/9160, but this yields the same result - just a ...
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1 Answer
up vote 2 down vote accepted
You are reading obsolete articles. Commands end with a semicolon now. Look at the readme for a correct example.
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| <urn:uuid:6678f7de-ef1e-4a7a-aac6-7c61e4c56336> | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5413509/cassandra-on-windows-trouble-running-commads | en | 0.852102 | 0.104645 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
Does anyone know how can I do a 301 redirect traffic from one domain to the other - including all the same url elements after domain name - and apply the same rule to all possible links without writing it for each url separately - example would be something like this:
to redirect to:
At the moment I have something like this:
RewriteRule ^/?$ "http\:\/\/www\.newdomain\.com" [R=301,L]
but this won't work for the following situation for instance:
it simply won't redirect to the new domain and keep the /login.html after.
Any clues?
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3 Answers
Ok - after a lot of googling I've found the solution - which comes to a simple two lines:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.newdomain\.com$ [NC]
Thanks everyone for participating.
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Youre RewriteRule is incorrect. You're only redirecting http://www.olddomain.com/ but not /login.html
Try modifying the rewrite rule to include all paths on the old domain:
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com$1 [R=301,L]
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yes - but this one is not going to redirect me to 'newdomain.com/login.html'; - it will redirect me directly to 'newdomain.com'; if I type 'olddomain.com/login.html'; - so not really what I'm looking for – user398341 Jul 9 '11 at 18:29
@user398341 You missed the $1 at the end. (.*) captures the path at the old domain and I refer to that using $1 in the redirect. So it should redirect olddomain.com/login.html to newdomain.com/login.html – nxt Jul 9 '11 at 19:27
Doesn't seem to make any difference I'm afraid. – user398341 Jul 10 '11 at 8:42
It appears we were missing forward slash after '.com' – user398341 Jul 10 '11 at 9:39
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Have you tried simply:
Redirect 301 / http://newdomain.com/
In the root folder of olddomain.com
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Take the 2-minute tour ×
I am with trouble related to Haskell Random generator. At university, i have to deal with Java all my way around, so now I'm, corrupted with it. I am developing a game in Haskell, and now I face something like 'chance to do something', and that chance needs to be like Int -> Bool. In Java, I would have done
new Random().nextInt(100)
and there, problem solved! In Haskell I have to choose something in a monad IO or something with a seed. None of these does what I want. I don't really want to use IO monad in my pure model, and the seed is awkward to use because I need to remember my new seed every time...
Is there something simple like Java's Random?
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Using the IO Monad does not mean that you have to corrupt with IO your whole model... Just get your seed right at the beginning, and give it to your pure computations... Your program will be of type IO () remember ? So you're already in the IO Monad... (if your game is 100% pure, then it must not be really fun to play!) – Ptival Sep 7 '11 at 6:17
You'll 'corrupt' your self soon or later, a game need I/O from player :D – Zhen Sep 7 '11 at 7:25
The top-rated answer on this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2110535/sampling-sequences-of-random-numbers-in-haskell gives an excellent write-up of how to thread a stateful random number generator through code. – stusmith Sep 7 '11 at 10:57
"I don't really want to use IO monad in my pure model". In Java, new Random() is far from pure. And every time you use nextInt, your Random object mutates. So your goals of 1) a pure model, and 2) something like Java's Random, are in conflict since Java's Random is not pure. – Dan Burton Sep 7 '11 at 14:54
java is soo far from pure model as i see it :P, i meant that. but indeed, I was focused the wrong head, my head is already corrupt! thanks for andswers and comments everybody! – Illiax Sep 7 '11 at 16:20
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4 Answers
It is somewhat unintuitive that something that neither does input nor output needs to be handled as if it had. Let's say you defined it as follows:
random100 = unsafePerformIO $ randomRIO (1, 100) -- This will not work!
That would indeed give you a random number - in a way. What you truly need is a way to encode that you want a new pseudo-random number every time. This means information needs to go from one random number generation to the next. Most languages just ignore this "minor detail", but Haskell forces you to pay attention. You might thank Haskell when you find yourself in the spot to properly reproduce your pseudo-random result in a multi-threaded context.
There's a number of ways you can make these connections, most of which have been mentioned already. If you are reluctant to use a monad: Note that it might generally be a good thing to have your code in a monadic form (but not using IO!). Down the road, you might well come into situations where you want more monad features, such as a reader for configuration - then all ground work would be done already.
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There should be a way to mark code as non-solutions. Because it's too easy to just see the grey box and think that's the answer. – augustss Sep 7 '11 at 12:51
@augustss, huh? I'm not sure how to take your comment. The question was "Is there something simple like this?". A small illustration just seemed like a good idea. – Peter Wortmann Sep 7 '11 at 13:35
Yeah, but this simple illustration, while it "works", will be considered wrong by a good 99% of the community. I think @augustss would like to draw attention to that fact. – luqui Sep 7 '11 at 19:01
@Peter I was just making a general remark about stackoverflow. Sometimes you want to make code fragments that illustrate how not to do something. I can see from your answer that you are not suggesting that this is the right way. I'm just worried that people might not read the text and just copy the code. – augustss Sep 8 '11 at 10:53
Okay, fair point. I added a code comment to reflect that. – Peter Wortmann Sep 8 '11 at 11:15
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I think, "you will have to live with that", is neither useful nor correct. It really depends on the abstractions you are using. If your application is naturally bound to a monad, then it makes sense to use a monadic random number generator, which is just as convenient as Java's random number generator.
In the case of a game using modern abstractions your application is naturally bound to functional reactive programming (FRP), where generating random numbers is no problem at all and doesn't require you to pass around generators explicitly. Example using the netwire library:
movingPoint :: MonadIO m => (Double, Double) -> Wire m a (Double, Double)
movingPoint x0 =
proc _ -> do
-- Randomly fades in and out of existence.
visible <- wackelkontakt -< ()
require -< (visible, ())
-- 'rnd' is a random value between -1 and 1.
rnd <- noise1 -< ()
-- dx is the velocity.
let dx = (sin &&& cos) (rnd * pi)
-- Integration of dx over time gives us the point's position.
-- x0 is the starting point.
integral x0 -< dx
Is there any way to express this easier and more concisely? I guess not. FRP also proves Zhen's comment wrong. It can handle user input purely.
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Believe it or not, you'll have to use different approaches in Haskell than you did in Java. There are a couple packages that can help you, but you will have to get a different attitude in your head to use them successfully. Here are some pointers:
Searching for the word "random" on Hackage's package list will turn up many, many more specific packages for more specific needs.
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You don't "have to". You can use IO everywhere as you did in Java. – Rotsor Sep 7 '11 at 9:06
@Rotsor: Although unless you also put everything into ST (monad transformers are fun), you still need to cope with immutability. And even then it's rather ugly and pointless, so much that I'd expect any sane programmer to abandon it. – delnan Sep 7 '11 at 9:41
@delnan, I agree that it's ugly and pointless (the same way programming in Java is), but don't see how ST is necessary. IO can do everything ST can and more. – Rotsor Sep 7 '11 at 10:01
@Rotsor Except that IO can't encapsulate the effects, which is the whole point of ST. – augustss Sep 7 '11 at 12:50
@augustss: Ah, but encapsulating effects isn't a matter of what IO can't do! Rather, it's about what IO can't not do. Not doing things in very precise ways is more difficult, yet often more effective, than simply doing whatever one pleases all the time. – C. A. McCann Sep 8 '11 at 22:10
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Sorry, but you will have to live with that. How can there be a function in a pure functional language that gives you different values on each call? Answer is: it cannot - only in the IO-Monad or something similiar like the state-monad where you can pass your seed around (and don't have the same input every time) can such a things exist.
You may alsow have a look as this question "How can a time function exist in functional programming?" as it's in the same direction as yours.
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I down voted you because you didn't really give a solution. The obvious solution is to use MonadRandom – Axman6 Sep 7 '11 at 8:10
well thank you ... but the question was if there is something simple and he don't like IO Monad ... do you think MonadRandom is so much better then? – Carsten König Sep 7 '11 at 8:14
@Carsten, of course it is much better because it does not allow arbitrary IO. – Rotsor Sep 7 '11 at 9:08
nevermind ... I had the understanding that the OP don't wanted to enter "monad"-zone or "do"-notation or whatever at all – Carsten König Sep 7 '11 at 9:36
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Job 24 (Revised Standard Version w/ Apocrypha)
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1 "Why are not times of judgment kept by the Almighty, and why do those who know him never see his days? 2 Men remove landmarks; they seize flocks and pasture them. 3 They drive away the ass of the fatherless; they take the widow's ox for a pledge. 4 They thrust the poor off the road; the poor of the earth all hide themselves. 5 Behold, like wild asses in the desert they go forth to their toil, seeking prey in the wilderness as food for their children. 6 They gather their fodder in the field and they glean the vineyard of the wicked man. 7 They lie all night naked, without clothing, and have no covering in the cold. 8 They are wet with the rain of the mountains, and cling to the rock for want of shelter. 9 (There are those who snatch the fatherless child from the breast, and take in pledge the infant of the poor.) 10 They go about naked, without clothing; hungry, they carry the sheaves; 11 among the olive rows of the wicked they make oil; they tread the wine presses, but suffer thirst. 12 From out of the city the dying groan, and the soul of the wounded cries for help; yet God pays no attention to their prayer. 13 "There are those who rebel against the light, who are not acquainted with its ways, and do not stay in its paths. 14 The murderer rises in the dark, that he may kill the poor and needy; and in the night he is as a thief. 15 The eye of the adulterer also waits for the twilight, saying, 'No eye will see me'; and he disguises his face. 16 In the dark they dig through houses; by day they shut themselves up; they do not know the light. 17 For deep darkness is morning to all of them; for they are friends with the terrors of deep darkness. 18 "You say, "They are swiftly carried away upon the face of the waters; their portion is cursed in the land; no treader turns toward their vineyards. 19 Drought and heat snatch away the snow waters; so does Sheol those who have sinned. 20 The squares of the town forget them; their name is no longer remembered; so wickedness is broken like a tree.' 21 "They feed on the barren childless woman, and do no good to the widow. 22 Yet God prolongs the life of the mighty by his power; they rise up when they despair of life. 23 He gives them security, and they are supported; and his eyes are upon their ways. 24 They are exalted a little while, and then are gone; they wither and fade like the mallow; they are cut off like the heads of grain. 25 If it is not so, who will prove me a liar, and show that there is nothing in what I say?"
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Research Article
A Peak-Clustering Method for MEG Group Analysis to Minimise Artefacts Due to Smoothness
• Jessica R. Gilbert mail, (JRG); (LRS)
Affiliation: School of Life and Health Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom
• Laura R. Shapiro mail, (JRG); (LRS)
• Gareth R. Barnes
Affiliation: The Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, London, United Kingdom
• Published: September 14, 2012
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0045084
Magnetoencephalography (MEG), a non-invasive technique for characterizing brain electrical activity, is gaining popularity as a tool for assessing group-level differences between experimental conditions. One method for assessing task-condition effects involves beamforming, where a weighted sum of field measurements is used to tune activity on a voxel-by-voxel basis. However, this method has been shown to produce inhomogeneous smoothness differences as a function of signal-to-noise across a volumetric image, which can then produce false positives at the group level. Here we describe a novel method for group-level analysis with MEG beamformer images that utilizes the peak locations within each participant’s volumetric image to assess group-level effects. We compared our peak-clustering algorithm with SnPM using simulated data. We found that our method was immune to artefactual group effects that can arise as a result of inhomogeneous smoothness differences across a volumetric image. We also used our peak-clustering algorithm on experimental data and found that regions were identified that corresponded with task-related regions identified in the literature. These findings suggest that our technique is a robust method for group-level analysis with MEG beamformer images.
The use of magnetoencephalography (MEG) as a research tool for brain-imaging in both normal and clinical populations is burgeoning. With advances in signal processing, beamforming has gained traction as a meaningful approach to source-localization in MEG. In beamforming, a weighted sum of field measurements is used as a spatial filter to tune an estimate of neural activity (i.e.,power) in a pre-specified time and frequency band window on a voxel-by-voxel basis. This produces a whole-brain volumetric image of signal power change which can be used for group-level analyses.
One problem in conventional MEG group analysis is that individual beamformer images are not homogeneously smooth; the images are information rich around strong sources, yet very smooth elsewhere [1], [2]. These smoothness differences have been found to range over two orders of magnitude within an image [3]. This inverse relationship between source strength and smoothness can lead to unpredictable effects at a group-imaging level. For example, at moderate signal strengths, artefactual group effects can occur. These arise because the true peaks within each source reconstruction have broad maxima (and sidelobes) whose shapes differ across participants. Through the overlap of these smooth maxima (or their sidelobes), secondary, apparently disconnected peaks can arise at a group level. A related problem of non-isotropic or inhomogeneous smoothness has been studied in the context of fMRI to correct for cluster size statistics in cases where, for example, the underlying isotropic image has been inhomogeneously resampled onto a cortical surface [4], [5]; indeed, similar solutions have been proposed for MEG [2], [6]. These solutions based on random field theory assume that voxel-to-voxel covariance can be summarized by local smoothness measures. However, the relationship between two image voxels in MEG is not just a function of their proximity (as in fMRI/PET), but also of the orientation of the dipole at that location, and therefore covariant voxels are not necessarily part of the same contiguous cluster. This is an inevitable problem in MEG source reconstruction where a large number of voxel estimates are made from a small number of channels.
In this paper, we try to step around this reconstruction problem by compressing the volumetric image to a point list of local maxima, which in turn simplifies the statistics. This is advantageous as one often ultimately wishes to interrogate individual participant beamformer estimates of electrical activity, which have been shown to be only truly reliable at the image peaks [3] (note that a similar approach has been used previously for a dipole fit analysis [7]; see discussion section for a full comparison). In brief, we assume that, under the null hypothesis, rank-ordered (e.g., by power) image peaks across participants will be no more closely grouped than any random selection of peaks.
The paper is divided into three sections. In the first section, we describe the peak-clustering algorithm and define a method for correcting for multiple comparisons when testing over a range of peaks for group-level effects. In the second section, we compare our peak-clustering algorithm against SnPM using simulated data. In the third section, we utilize our algorithm to test for group-level effects in experimental data.
Methods and Results
Peak Clustering Algorithm
To compare the distribution of the M top-ranked image peaks (per person) over a group of participants against any random selection of peaks, we used the following algorithm. (The matlab code is available from the corresponding author on request.):
1. 1. Rank order the image peaks for each participant and store their corresponding locations. Since the test is based on rank order, the user must specify an interest in positive or negative peaks. The data presented in this manuscript used normalized t-tests between conditions to create images.
2. 2. Take the coordinates of the top M peaks from each of N participants. Construct the smallest possible ellipsoid that contains a single peak from each participant. The issue here is that the top peak in participant 1 may be at the same location as the 3rd peak in participant 3, etc. By selecting from M peaks, one trades off the precise peak order against spatial resolution (see later).
3. 3. Establish if this ellipsoid is smaller (in terms of the major radius) than one would expect by chance. The computation of this radius under the null hypothesis is done by randomly assigning ranks to peak locations and repeating step 2 a large number of times (e.g., 500 in this paper). This produces a distribution of radii which one would expect due to chance (if peak rank were not important).
To give a simple example, how likely is it that the image maxima for ten participants (N = 10, one peak so M = 1) are within 1 cm of one another? To answer this, one can compute how close the image maxima will be by chance by simply taking a random image peak from each participant and repeating this process to get a null distribution of ellipsoid radii. Now one computes the same size metric using ranked peaks from each participant, then reads off the number of randomly drawn ellipsoids that are smaller than this (e.g., p<0.01).
Ellipsoid computation.
For a given number of participants (N) and peaks (M), a k-means clustering procedure was iteratively used to derive M separate ellipsoids (ideally each of N points) from N*M points. Clusters were trimmed such that each set contained at maximum one point per participant (selecting the point closest to the centroid). At the end of the iterative procedure (typically 30 iterations), one is left with a set of the smallest (based on standard deviation of the point list) clusters for varying numbers of participants (from a user specified minimum up to a maximum of N). For these point lists, ellipsoid axes were computed from the eigenvectors and the standard deviation in each direction (and hence the 95 percentiles) computed from the corresponding eigenvalues.
Correcting for Arbitrary Number of Peaks
The peak clustering algorithm requires some a-priori selection of the parameter M, or the number of top-ranked peaks to consider in the analysis. Typically, therefore, it is necessary to test a range of values of M, and hence there is a corresponding multiple comparisons penalty. In this section, we examine the dependence of our results on this parameter and propose an approximate heuristic for dealing with it in the future.
Figure 1 shows the dependence of the 95th percentile of the confidence radius (R) (maximum radius (in mm) of the ellipsoid defining the confidence volume) on M for positive peaks in our experimental data analysis (see below for more information on the experimental study). Statistics are automatically produced for all subgroups from N = 5–10 participants but only N = 5, 7, and 10 are shown here for clarity. Intuitively, the smaller the number of subjects (N), the smaller an ellipsoid will be by chance (e.g., in the case of just 2 subjects, one could imagine that some peaks will be almost adjacent by chance).
Figure 1. Dependence of the confidence radius on parameter M.
The relationship between the number of peaks used (M) and the 95% significant (maximum) radius of the confidence ellipsoid (in mm) for subgroups of N = 5 (blue), 7 (green) and 10 (red). Intuitively, the larger the N, the larger the size of the cluster one would expect to occur by chance. In contrast, the larger the number of peaks per subject (M) considered, the easier it will be to reach a given cluster size, hence the 95% threshold decreases as more peaks are included in the analysis.
The parameter M determines the trade-off between the importance assigned to rank order and the importance assigned to tight clustering of peaks across participants. If there is high importance assigned to rank order (smaller M), then relatively larger clusters of peaks across participants will be acceptable (although these may have little anatomical consistency). However, if the effect in question does not reach the top M peaks in most participants, it will be completely missed by the analysis. By contrast, if M is set to be too large, then the inclusion of many superfluous (i.e., low rank) peaks will mean that a very tight spatial distribution is required to distinguish a functionally meaningful cluster from one occurring by chance. This is an analogous problem to the choice of image smoothing parameters in fMRI, and analogously the choice depends on the question asked. As a starting point, we propose a simple heuristic to choose a value of M which balances dependence on peak rank against cluster size. If we take the knee of the curve in Figure 1 to represent some optimal balance between dependence on peak magnitude (small M) and anatomical consistency across participants (small R), we can compute a parameter J which quantifies the distance of the curves from the knee,
where M and R are the number of peaks and the confidence radius respectively. Now plotting J against M gives a curve with a clear minimum (see Figure 2). For each sub-group (N), crosses on the curve indicate that at least one significant (p<0.05) cluster was found for this choice of M when analyzing positive peaks. Importantly, and giving some validiation of our choice of heuristic, these significant excursions predominate around the minimum of the function.
Figure 2. Peak amplitude and anatomical consistency trade-off.
A plot of the heuristic to optimize the balance between peak magnitude and anatomical consistency across subjects. J increases for large numbers of peaks (where there is a very tight distance threshold (R) on how close the peaks must be) and also increases when M is small due to the corresponding decrease in anatomical specificity (due to increase in threshold R shown in Figure 1). Alternatively, one can choose to test a range of M (2–30 in this case), produce significant clusters (for each M; shown by crosses), and then correct for multiple comparisons. After multiple comparison correction (for M), two significant clusters were found which are denoted by the circles and squares around these points. These are the same two clusters identified in our experimental data.
The next problem is how to set an appropriate significance level. There is a single univariate null hypothesis–that the peaks are clustered by chance. However, as we change (increase) M, we are re-testing the same hypothesis with different subsets of data. Hence, a multiple comparisons penalty is necessary. One simple solution would be to only examine the function minima at each value of N. One problem here is that the minima are relatively flat and the smoothness depends on the number of random permutation steps performed, which is processing intensive. Also, one can see from Figure 2 that each subgroup curve N has a different optimal M value (the larger the number of participants in the group, the larger the optimal number of peaks).
Another possibility is to consider the range of M which defines this minimum. This approach does not rely on the identification of minima (so it is more robust) and can be computed for all N at once. However, there is a multiple comparisons penalty. It is important to note, however, that a completely new (i.e., independent) set of data is only introduced each time the number of peaks is doubled.
Making a Bonferroni correction, the significance level should be decreased by a factor each time the number of peaks is doubled. This means that the test wise error rate to give a family wise error rate of 0.05 is based on the following Bonferroni correction:
where log2 is log to the base 2, pcorr is the corrected significance level and Mstart and Mend define the range of M we pre-specify an interest in. The circles and squares around the crosses in Figure 2 show the two significant ellipsoids found after multiple comparisons correction for the range of peaks tested (for Mstart = 2 and Mend = 30).
Measuring Algorithm Performance: Simulated Data
In order to test algorithm performance against some ground truth we simulated a single dipolar source across a group of participants. The same single sphere head model and sensor locations were used for each simulated participant. System white noise was simulated at 10 fT/sqrt (Hz) over a bandwidth of 80 Hz. Data for 10 participants were simulated, differing only in the simulated source location and white noise realization. In each simulated participant, a random seed location was generated, drawn from a Gaussian distribution of standard deviation 5 mm, centered on MNI location x = 52, y = −29, z = 13. The nearest canonical mesh location [8] to this seedpoint and the corresponding surface normal were used to set the location and orientation of the single simulated dipole in each participant. Our simulated sources were normal to the cortical mesh, but as location was jittered, both source location and orientation changed over participants. The dipolar source was driven with a 40 Hz sinusoid over a period of 200 ms (sample rate = 200 Hz). The source was active for 30 of 60 epochs and a linearly constrained minimum variance (LCMV) beamformer was used to produce a volumetric beamformer image of the change in power in the 0–300 ms, 0–80 Hz band in terms of a normalized difference (or pseudo-t) image [9] on a 10 mm grid. The beamformer has been described extensively [2], [3], [9], [10], and an abbreviated version is presented here.
The beamformer is simply a spatially filtered expression of the MEG sensor data.
where W is a vector of weighting coefficients and m(t) is the measurement vector at time t. To obtain the weighting coefficients, power is minimized over the covariance window subject to the constraint of unit gain at a specified coordinate θ:
where H is the forward solution for an equivalent current dipole (ECD) at coordinates and orientations specified by the vector θ. The solution to the equation is:
where C is the covariance matrix of the measurements calculated over the specified covariance window (Tcov). The 2 (i.e., single-sphere) or 3 (i.e., multiple spheres) orthogonally oriented components of W at each location can be estimated independently to produce a vector beamformer. In this case, we used a scalar beamformer in which optimal source orientation at each voxel was estimated through the method of Sekihara et al. [11]. A normalized source power estimate can be obtained over any test period (within the covariance window) through the estimation of the sensor level covariance matrix Ctest over this period, and an estimate of the sensor noise εtest (in this case, we used identity) matrix over this period:
We should note that in the experimental data analysis stage, we used the proprietary software (SAM) to analyze the data [9]. This computes separate covariances (and hence weights) for both active and passive periods. In the simulation stage, however, we computed a single covariance matrix (based on both active and passive periods), but as there was only white noise in the passive period, this should have marginal effect on the power difference calculation (see discussion).
Different participant groups were constructed by drawing 8 of these 10 images randomly twenty times. For each participant group, we used SnPM (multiple participant, one sample t-test, variance smoothing 25 mm) to identify significant (family wise error = 0.05) positive effects across the normalized power difference images. Using the peak clustering algorithm, we used the same data to look for clusters within the top 5 image peaks that were smaller than one would expect by chance (i.e., M = 5 peaks, N = 8 participants). For each simulated group, we compiled a list of the significant local maxima (p<0.05 corrected) in the SnPM images and a list of the centers of the peak-clusters deemed significant. We classed a hit as a peak/ellipse center closer than 20 mm to the initial MNI seed location and a miss to be any significant peak or ellipsoid center outside this range. The peaks were defined by local image maxima identified using the SPM function spm_max based on 18 neighbors. This means that two local maxima can be as close as a single (non-maximal) voxel apart.
Measuring Algorithm Performance: Experimental Data
We assessed the performance of our peak-clustering algorithm on experimental data. In our experiment, ten right-handed volunteers (Mean Age = 29.4 years, range = 20–36 years; 2 males) gave written informed consent following Aston University ethical guidelines and participated in the MEG study. The protocol was approved by the Aston University Institutional Review Board and complied with all guidelines expressed in the Declaration of Helsinki. Briefly, participants (N = 10) performed a superordinate-level categorization task on pictures of objects drawn from 3 living and 3 nonliving categories (see Figure 3). A total of 78 pictures were selected, half of which depicted a living object and half a nonliving object. Each picture was shown twice, half with a congruent label and half with an incongruent label. Therefore, a total of 156 trials were shown during the scan. The order of trial presentation was randomized across participants. We recorded neuromagnetic data at a 600 Hz sampling rate with a bandwidth of 0–150 Hz using a CTF 275 MEG system (VSM MedTech Ltd., Canada) composed of a whole-head array of 275 radial 1st order gradiometer channels housed in a magnetically shielded room (Vacuumschmelze, Germany). Synthetic 3rd gradient balancing was used to remove background noise on-line. Fiducial coils were placed on the nasion, left preauricular, and right preauricular sites of each participant. These coils were energized before each run to localize the participant’s head with respect to the MEG sensors. Total head displacement was measured after each run and could not exceed 5 mm for inclusion in the source analyses. Prior to scanning, participants’ head shapes and the location of fiducial coils were digitized using a Polhemus Isotrak 3D digitizer (Kaiser Aerospace Inc.). These were then coregistered to high-resolution T1-weighted anatomical images for each participant acquired with a 3-Tesla whole-body scanner (3T Trio, Siemens Medical Systems) using in-house coregistration software.
Figure 3. Example experimental data trial.
During study 1, participants were shown a 1000 ms red fixation cross, followed by a 300 ms category probe. After a variable (1000, 1050, or 1100 ms) delay interval, participants were shown a target object for 800 ms.
Data for each participant were edited and filtered to remove environmental and physiological artefacts. A LCMV beamformer was then used to produce 3-dimensional images of cortical power changes [9]. We utilized a wide frequency band (1–80 Hz) to compute source power from 120–220 ms after stimulus onset (i.e., a 100 ms window surrounding the M170), directly contrasting living (‘active’) to nonliving (‘control’) target objects. Spectral power changes between the ‘active’ and ‘control’ periods were calculated as a pseudo t-statistic [9]. Each participant’s data were then normalized and converted to Talairach space using statistical parametric mapping (SPM99, Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, London, UK, for group-level comparisons.
We used SnPM (multiple participant, one sample t-test, variance smoothing 6, 12, and 24 mm) to identify significant (family wise error = 0.05) positive effects across the normalized power difference images. We also used our peak-clustering algorithm to test over a range of M values from M = 2 through 40 (we utilized only positive peaks in the analysis), which means that in order to maintain a family wise error rate of 0.05, our test wise error rate was adjusted to p = 0.0094. After multiple comparisons correction, we were left with a number of significant clusters of peaks (see Table 1). The remaining volumes decreased in size spatially as M increased so if the same region was identified as showing a significant difference across a range of M values, we selected the region for reporting purposes that yielded the largest N. In some cases, several M values yielded the same N. We then chose the volume for reporting purposes that had the smallest spatial extent (in terms of the major radius).
Table 1. Experimental Results.
Simulation Results
Figure 4 (top) shows the number of hits and misses summed over the 20 participant groups for the two methods. At moderate SNR, the number of misses for SnPM is much higher than for the peak-clustering approach. This is due to extra peaks appearing in the SnPM images due to artefacts of smoothness. Figure 4 (bottom) shows binarized (thresholded at p<0.05 corrected) SnPM significance images summed over the 20 groups (and then normalized to the maximum count). That is, the maps show the spatial distribution of significant regions and the grey scale shows their relative frequency (over groups). For moderate source strengths (i.e., 10–20 nAm), one can see the appearance of extra significant clusters, which give rise to the inflated miss rate. Note that these misses are not false positives in the statistical sense, but simply image features that persist over participants due to the source reconstruction method. The peak-clustering approach is immune to these extra features as there are no consistent local maxima in these vicinities across participants. In this particular example, the peak-clustering approach is also more sensitive (i.e., a maximum of 20 hits reached before SnPM). Note, however, that in this case we have prior knowledge of how many of the top peaks to consider.
Figure 4. Data simulation findings.
Top panel shows the total number of significant local maxima over 20 simulated subject groups (with a single simulated source) identified using SnPM (dotted) and the peak clustering method (solid) as source magnitude is increased. Local maxima within 2 cm of the simulated source are defined as hits and those greater than 2 cm misses. Note that both methods consistently identify the correct source location at high SNR (20 hits, 0 misses) but that SnPM tends to produce a large number of artefactual significant regions at moderate SNR. This error rate is due to the smoothness of the beamformer images that gives rise to statistically significant overlapping side-lobes. These effects are shown in the lower panel, where maps of the percentage of significant voxels (from the 20 groups) are shown in the glass-brain.
Experimental Results
The SnPM analysis did not identify any regions showing significant positive power differences when using 6 or 12 mm variance smoothing. However, a single region centered in right anterior middle to superior temporal gyrus (Talairach coordinates of center = 48, 3, −18) was identified when we set variance smoothing to 24 mm (see Figure 5). The peak-clustering analysis of positive peaks identified two separate regions showing greater power for living objects (see Figure 5). The region with the largest N was centered in left inferior occipital gyrus, and using the top 8 positive peaks in each image, 7 of our 10 participants were found to have a peak falling within the region (major radius = 22.3 mm, mean value = 1.84). In addition to this region, when using the top 15 positive peaks in each image (i.e., a less stringent magnitude criterion), 6 of our 10 participants were found to have a peak falling within a region in right anterior superior temporal gyrus (major radius = 12.4 mm, mean value = 1.7). This region overlapped with the region identified in the SnPM analysis.
Figure 5. Experimental data findings.
A) The region in right anterior middle to superior temporal gyrus identified by the SnPM analysis as showing significantly greater power for living compared with nonliving objects. B) The two regions identified by the peak-clustering algorithm as showing significantly greater power for living compared with nonliving objects. Red = Inferior Occipital Gyrus; Blue = Superior Temporal Gyrus. The sagittal images show the approximate slice locations (z coordinates are given below each slice) shown on the corresponding axial image (at right, blue lines, arranged inferior to superior) on a template brain.
We have presented a peak-clustering algorithm for group-level analysis with MEG beamformer images. Our algorithm determines whether a range of image peaks (M) is closer than expected by chance. We compared the peak-clustering algorithm performance to a more traditional group imaging method (SnPM) and found the algorithm to be robust to artefacts of smoothness that can give rise to erroneous MEG beamformer group effects. There is an important distinction here between false positives due to type 1 error and the effects we are trying to correct for. Both SnPM and the peak-clustering algorithm have, by definition, the correct type 1 error rate (as it is set in both cases by permutation). Neither is there a problem with SnPM. The issue we are trying to correct for here is one of source reconstruction, where a small number of data channels are projected into a large number of voxels, resulting in images which are very smooth in certain regions. It is therefore a way of pruning away redundant information from beamformer images to reduce the likelihood that these smooth and information sparse regions of source space contribute to the group effect.
Our approach is similar to a dipole fit analysis approach used previously [7]. In the Litvak paper, the focus was on identifying the differences between experimental conditions through the permutation of condition labels to create sensor-time and dipole fit clusters. By comparing this null (e.g., in terms of distances between dipole clusters) to the true distribution, the authors were able to put a significance level on how likely the conditions were to be the same. The main differences between the Litvak technique and our own are that we shuffle peak rank rather than data labels, and we do not have a theoretical source model (e.g., 1 or 2 dipoles) but are looking for consistency over images which may contain large numbers of sources. That said, the same approach of shuffling data labels (rather than peak rank) to generate the null could also be used here to make inferences on whether the ellipsoids due to separate stimulus conditions were any larger than that due to their mixture.
As mentioned previously, in the algorithm we are effectively trying to compensate for the few (i.e., channel) to many (i.e., voxel) mapping in M/EEG volumetric source reconstruction. This problem is exacerbated in beamformer analyses because of the dependence of spatial resolution not only on system sensitivity, but also on source power [1], [2]. An additional problem not addressed here is that in the SAM implementation used for the experimental data (i.e., CTF version), different covariance matrices are used to construct different beamformer weights for different task labels (in contrast to a single set of weights for all tasks, cf. [2]). That is, the statistical image is a test between two non-stationary images. For the purposes of this study, the distinction is not important because either way the images are inhomogeneous. We are not proposing a new or improved inversion algorithm, simply a method by which some of the smoothness inhomogeneities (due to any volumetric reconstruction) can be discarded. Also, for our beamformer analysis, we used no regularization. This gives maximum spatial resolution at the expense of noisy images and time-series estimates. It would also give rise to the maximum number of peaks per image. A higher regularization constant would reduce the number of peaks, removing some that were potentially just due to sensor noise, but potentially risk discarding signal peaks. At some ideal level, one would expect the highest ratio of signal to noise peaks [12]. We do know that there can be a maximum N channels minus 1 nulls in the beamformer image [10]; so, for a simple (i.e., unregularized) power image one would expect approximately the same number of local maxima.
The algorithm requires a parameter that defines the number of top-ranked peaks to consider (M) for each participant. This parameter has important implications for cluster size. Since the algorithm first computes chance volume sizes using a random selection of peaks, using a small number of peaks can produce a large cluster size for the null distribution. Rather than arbitrarily determining the number of peaks for the algorithm to consider, we developed a heuristic that balances peak rank against cluster size that requires the user to test over a range of M values and use a Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons. For example, to maintain a family wise error rate of 0.05 when testing over 38 P-values (i.e., 2–40), the test wise error rate becomes 0.0094. It is important to note that the choice of M can be made based on simulations or on the data themselves, as long as an appropriate multiple comparisons correction is made. For this reason we had expected the algorithm to be more conservative than volumetric approaches (like SnPM), but by only dealing with the image in its compressed point-list form, rather than all voxels, we have also considerably reduced the multiple comparison correction necessary. This may explain why, counter to our expectation, the algorithm picked out significant features in the experimental dataset that were not apparent in (the volume corrected) SnPM tests.
In our experimental study, participants were required to perform a superordinate-level categorization task on pictures of living and nonliving objects. The SnPM analysis yielded mixed results based on the variance smoothing used. When using both 6 and 12 mm, no regions survived statistical significance. However, when using 24 mm, a single region in right anterior middle to superior temporal gyrus showed significantly greater power for living than nonliving objects. Using the peak-clustering algorithm, we also found a significant cluster of activity in right anterior superior temporal gyrus, overlapping with the region identified by the SnPM analysis. In addition, we identified a region in left inferior temporal gyrus showing greater power for living than nonliving objects, which we did not find in our SnPM analysis. In order to determine whether the SnPM analysis yielded a peak in left inferior temporal gyrus that simply did not survive whole-brain correction, we looked at the t map produced in our SnPM analysis. We found a cluster of activity centered in left inferior temporal gyrus (peak value = 2.95), which suggests that left inferior temporal gyrus would be significant if we performed a region-of-interest analysis (rather than a whole-brain analysis) using roughly 7 independent voxels (or ROIs). This would be in accord with our explanation that the peak clustering analysis has a less stringent multiple comparisons penalty, as it considers only a limited number of image peaks per subject (indeed for these analyses there were 8 peaks per participant). Both of these regions we would expect to be active based on previous neuroimaging studies which have suggested that the inferior temporal/occipital gyri are important for form recognition, and that reliance on visual form is more important for living than nonliving objects [13], [14]. In addition, studies have also suggested that the anterior superior temporal gyri are important for object recognition, including making fine-grained distinctions amongst objects [15]. Several studies have also suggested that identifying living objects requires greater fine-grained discrimination than nonliving objects, perhaps due to greater structural (and semantic) similarity among living than nonliving things [16], [17].
As with many non-parametric techniques, the peak clustering method sacrifices some sensitivity for an increase in robustness, and requires that some feature of interest (here, each peak) is identifiable in the majority of individuals. This would not be the case in standard random or fixed effects models in which sub-threshold effects in the individual can be picked up in the group. Allowing the algorithm to identify smaller subgroups is a matter for debate. In some cases, the objective identification of subgroups might be a useful feature of the algorithm. Forcing the algorithm to be selective to only those regions in every participant that have a local maximum makes it extremely conservative. Once could also argue that a group effect is meaningless if one does not include the whole group. Yet, in classical volumetric approaches, random effects analysis allows some heterogeneity in the effects over the population. As long as the values of N (e.g., N = 9 for a group of 10) are reported then the reader can make his/her own inference on the strength of the finding (e.g., an effect in 90% of the participants). Also, the technique will not be sensitive to truly spatially extended regions of electrical activity that are not artefacts of smoothness, as only the peaks within each image are considered in the analysis.
In sum, we have found that our peak-clustering technique offers a number of advantages over current group-level analysis approaches with MEG. The method is immune to inhomogeneous smoothness introduced by imperfect volumetric M/EEG source reconstruction and exacerbated in beamformer implementations, and indeed it makes no assumptions about the underlying image properties. In addition, the null distributions of source locations are constructed from the data itself and the randomization testing takes into account the multiple comparisons problem (for a given M). As the test is based on rank, it should be relatively robust to physiological artefacts and as a default we would leave the artefact identification until the post-hoc analyses. For example, eyeball artefacts should result in significant clusters in the eyes. Subgroup statistics are also available, so, for example, bounds for any 5 of N participants having significantly clustered peaks can automatically be tested. Finally, by providing confidence intervals on peak location, the technique would be well suited to situations in which one would like to make some spatial inference concerning peak location. For example, whether peaks from a particular subject group derive from a specific cortical location.
Author Contributions
Conceived and designed the experiments: JRG LRS GRB. Performed the experiments: JRG GRB. Analyzed the data: JRG GRB. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: LRS GRB. Wrote the paper: JRG LRS GRB.
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16. 16. Tyler LK, Stamatakis EA, Bright P, Acres K, Abdallah S, et al. (2004) Processing objects at different levels of specificity. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 16: 351–362. doi: 10.1162/089892904322926692
17. 17. Moss HE, Rodd JM, Stamatakis EA, Bright P, Tyler LK (2005) Anteromedial temporal cortex supports fine-grained differentiation among objects. Cerebral Cortex 15: 616–627. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhh163 | <urn:uuid:8b33a8ed-ed87-47c2-92ab-12d4f523a197> | http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0045084?gilbert | en | 0.903478 | 0.072812 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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STANFORD LINGUIST 62n - Winter 2012
Homework 4
Due: noon on Tuesday Jan 31
1. Find some taste terms on a package of chocolate, or tea, or really anything, and write up a linguistic analysis. You could come up with semantic features like Adrienne did (for example talking about whether the words are evaluative, and what properties of the food they describe), and you could talk about where the words' metaphors come from. The reading for this week points out that you can also talk about texture as well as taste, so analyzing words about texture are good too. Give lots of examples and remember to do the semantic analysis, not just talking about the food. | <urn:uuid:55ab72c9-b331-409c-a8b9-de0b1815fbf6> | http://www.stanford.edu/class/linguist62n/blog4.html | en | 0.951908 | 0.164785 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
I am an American and if I would like to move to the US Virgin Islands and live there for a few years and run for Governor I ought to be able to do just that. That is my constitutional right and I am out raged that the Constitutional Convention has voted to violate my rights to run for the Governor's seat if I so need to run. I will be following this story to see how Congress vote on this and at the same time I'll make sure that my Senator votes against it when it goes to congress. | <urn:uuid:004ee4c3-6dc2-448b-a035-e6c99395efa7> | http://www.topix.com/forum/world/virgin-islands/TOACSGIUDTII9JF6L | en | 0.979987 | 0.05454 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Subscribe English
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D&D Next Goals, Part Two
Legends & Lore
Mike Mearls
L ast week, I outlined the two big goals for D&D Next. This week, I'd like to delve a bit deeper into the details behind them. The two main goals—bringing out the core elements of D&D and making a game that scales from simple to complex—are fairly intertwined.
To start with, we're approaching the game in terms of three levels of rules. This week, I'll tackle the basic rules.
The Basic Rules
The basic rules represent the starting point for the game. The basic rules cover the absolute core of the game. They capture the strengths of basic D&D. These rules form a complete game, but they don't give much detail beyond the rules needed to run dungeon exploration. Characters are created by rolling ability scores (though we have discussed the possibility that your class gives you an array that your race then modifies), picking a race, and picking a class. Skills aren't part of the game, but we've discussed integrating skill dice into the classes (fighters get their skill dice on all Strength checks, wizards on all Intelligence ones, and so forth) to support improvisation and the use of checks. Each class has a default specialty, and its benefits are presented as class features. The specialties are simple but effective, such as bonus hit points or spells.
You can think of the basic rules as supporting an AD&D approach to characters—race and class as choices, though without multiclassing—combined with basic D&D's approach to the core game rules.
The current choices that are present in the game—deity for a cleric, tradition for wizard, and so on—won't appear here. The options built into characters will reflect the iconic D&D expression of the classes. Clerics will turn undead, wield maces, wear heavy armor, and heal characters. Wizards will throw fireball and magic missile. Fighters will wear heavy armor and wield the best weapons. Rogues will be sneaky, good with traps, capable of climbing walls, good at backstabbing or sneak attacks, and otherwise talented with the classic rogue abilities. This is where it is critical that new and returning players see the races and classes in their most iconic form.
The key strengths of the basic rules are that they make the game easy to pick up and play, with fast character creation and classes that default to simple but effective options. Like basic D&D, the rules are more freeform, with DMs encouraged to use the core mechanics to adjudicate corner cases as they come up.
The basic rules will succeed if they support the key concepts of an RPG, namely that you can try anything and that there are no bounds to what is possible. Like basic D&D, the focus rests on the core concept of an RPG, rather than exhaustive rules or character options.
Even better, people who don't care for complex rules, or the new player you're introducing to your campaign regardless of the rules you're using, can create a character using these rules with a minimum of fuss.
Here's a bullet-point list of the goal of the basic, core rules:
• Easy to learn, especially for new players and DMs. In an ideal world, a group of new players can pick up the game in about the same time it takes to learn a board game such as Settlers of Catan. The basic rules are at the forefront of recruiting new players, whether they're 10-year-olds trying their first RPGs or DMs coming back to the game after 10 years away. Adult D&D fans should feel that this is the best way to bring their kids into the games.
• Focuses on what makes RPGs unique (imaginative play, lack of limits, unbounded possibilities, and the fun and random stories about the game that groups share).
• Quick to start play, whether creating characters, reading an adventure, or rolling up a dungeon.
• Teaches DMs how to make rulings and use the core mechanic to resolve anything that comes up in play.
• Quick to play, with complete adventures playable in an hour. A group should be able to complete a simple dungeon with five or six rooms in that time span. Obviously, you can build bigger dungeons for longer sessions, but it's important to reduce complexity and therefore reduce the minimum time needed to play an adventure. A quick start time and fast play are key to recruiting new D&D fans and making the game accessible for people with ever busier, hectic lives.
• In terms of a product, you could imagine something along the lines of a set that covers levels 1 to 10 and includes an adventure of the size and scope of Temple of Elemental Evil. Keep in mind, though, that our specific product plans aren't close to being done, but the example gets at the scope of what we'd like to do.
Current Design Goals
If you look at the current state of the rules, we still have some work to do to hit our goals. These goals have met varying levels of agreement among the designers, and the playtest feedback from the next survey will determine which ones we tackle.
• Simplify the current expertise mechanic to make it run more smoothly at the table. Frankly, we think that martial damage dice and martial damage bonus are too fiddly. The current thinking is to ditch the static bonus, use your weapon's die as the die you gain for bonus damage to make two-handed weapons competitive, and elegantly bind two-weapon fighting and multiple attacks into one system. The hidden benefit of this change is that by dropping damage for martial characters across the board, we can deflate hit points a bit and make higher level monsters relatively tougher.
• Keep the classes balanced. All of the classes should feel competent when compared to each other at all levels, though we're OK with classes being better at specific things. Rogues are good at checks and handling traps. Fighters have the best AC and hit points. Clerics are the best healers and support casters. Wizards are the best at area attacks and control effects. I have to admit that I'm really happy with how the concentration rule is reining in spell stacking and buffs. My high-level playtests have limited any balance problems to specific spells, rather than the entire concept of dropping five buffs to create a death machine character or using glitterdust/grease/stinking cloud/wall of fire at once to turn an encounter into a joke. We're looking at breaking the concentration rule into two separate rules: one rule that covers concentration and the chance that damage ends a spell, and a separate rule (tentatively called focus) that limits you to one focus spell at a time. That will give us a bit more fine control over how spells interact.
• Simplify opportunity attacks. I'd like to focus them exclusively as a penalty for breaking away from melee without disengaging. Personally, I'd like to change their name to cut down on confusion between their intended rules and the rules for them in prior editions. I like how basic and AD&D handled them by focusing them entirely on situations where you try to move out of a melee. That's the intent behind the rule.
• Emphasize the abilities more. The current text doesn't really drive home the importance of the abilities and their central role in the game. I'd like to see us give examples for checks and contests that any character can try for each of them.
• Simplify combat by removing extraneous options. We have 14 options in the rules now. The basic game needs only attack, cast a spell, disengage, hide, hustle, search, and use an item. I'd like the core rules boiled down to about 16 pages, not counting class-specific material.
• Build the core options for the classes, from spells to specialties and specific class choices. The emphasis here will be on making choices that are unquestionably good, requiring little system mastery to use to ensure that new players or people who want a simple character are effective even when playing with veterans.
Part Three: Transitioning
Next week, I'll talk about the standard game and the challenge of ensuring a smooth transition from a game that's similar to basic D&D to one that supports a lot more character options.
Mike Mearls | <urn:uuid:10374e57-39a8-41cf-9b80-2ef843cc0ca7> | http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Print.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20130114 | en | 0.95577 | 0.036247 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Graduation candidates celebrated on May 12 at the Centenary College commencement in Hackettstown, N.J. Associated Press
Americans owed $904 billion in student loans at the end of March, nearly 8% more than a year ago, the New York Fed said Thursday in a quarterly report on consumer credit. That compares with the $679 billion they owed on credit cards at the end of the first quarter.
Between the fourth quarter of 2008, when credit-card debt peaked, and the first quarter of 2012, this borrowing fell by $187 billion, or 21.6%, the Fed said. Over the same period, student-loan debt rose by 41.4%, or $264 billion.
Americans are reducing their overall debt burden, a process known as deleveraging that began with the financial crisis. Total household debt—including mortgage, student, credit-card and auto loans—has fallen by roughly 10% since borrowing peaked in mid-2008. It stood at $11.44 trillion as of March 31, the New York Fed said.
Mortgage borrowing is down significantly, the consequence of foreclosures, falling home values, tighter lending standards and weak home sales.
But student debt is quickly rising, in part due to higher tuitions, but also because alternative ways of paying for college—such as home-equity loans—have dried up. The Obama administration has expanded federal loan programs, which offer student loans at below-market rates. And, as usually happens in recession, college enrollments have surged as job openings have been scarce.
Educated workers, on average, earn more than workers with less education and college grads are much more likely to have jobs than those without college degrees.
"Borrowing a reasonable amount for programs that lead to degrees and certificates that are likely to improve an individual's long-term outcomes are good for the economy," said Sarah Turner, a University of Virginia economist.
Jason Delisle of the Washington-based New America Foundation argues most students graduate with manageable debt loads. Three-quarters of four-year graduates owe less than $33,857 upon earning a degree, he said, citing Education Department statistics.
But that doesn't mean borrowing to go to school always makes economic sense; borrowing and not finishing a degree, for instance, usually is much less likely to pay off than graduating.
Some economists see signs of trouble. A rising number of student borrowers are behind on their payments; 9% of the total dollar amount of student loans is 90 days or more behind on a payment. Many new graduates are having trouble finding well-paying jobs even as payments come due, and a growing number of students are dropping out of school, meaning they are left with debts but no degree, recent research shows.
"The high delinquency rate [among student borrowers] could be a source of concern," said Wilbert van der Klaauw, a New York Fed economist. "You have to worry about repayment and how it is going to affect not just consumption but possibly lifetime decisions like marriage, fertility and buying houses."
The New York Fed estimates of student debt are slightly lower than the above-$1 trillion figure cited this year by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The New York Fed's estimate is based on a sampling of consumer-credit-firm accounts; the CFPB estimate is based on government data and a survey of private lenders.
The prospect of higher debt is the main reason why Juan Urias, 19, left St. Joseph's College in New York City last year and transferred to LaGuardia Community College, where tuition is lower. The move saved him from borrowing $5,000 more for the coming school year. Financial aid, including federal grants, now covers all his tuition.
"I know how bad it is going to be in the future," he said. Staying at St. Joseph's would have meant leaving school with about $20,000 in student debt. "I can't do it."
Write to Josh Mitchell at | <urn:uuid:60dc0c33-853a-455f-80c7-cc98cfe5c13e> | http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303640104577438252890217584?mod=WSJ_WSJ_Careers_PublicSearch&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303640104577438252890217584.html%3Fmod%3DWSJ_WSJ_Careers_PublicSearch | en | 0.969552 | 0.064632 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
Java EE app container provide "failover" support for EJBs, in their docs never cite any reasons why you would need to failover an EJB in the first place!
When do these "failover" conditions take place and what causes them? Is this just a situation where an exception is thrown? Or is it possible for an app container to actually "lose" or "break" an EJB?
Usually, when I've spoken of failover in the past, its been a networking component like a server that goes down for some reason. I'm just having a mental block here trying to envision what would cause a piece of deployed software to die and "fail over".
Bonus points for concrete examples instead of just fuzzy, vague, abstract descriptions (!).
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up vote 0 down vote accepted
Java EE in general does not provide such kind of failover that you talk about. If it's supported at all, then it's a proprietary feature of a specific implementation.
Typically such failover would be for remote EJBs which run on some server, which itself can crash or become unavailable because of network problems. In such a case, the client application server can have several failover URLs specified so that if one server becomes unresponsive another will automatically be used instead in a way that's transparent to the code that wants to talk to said bean.
The same mechanism can also be used for a basic load-balancing. If the server on which the remote EJB that your code wants to contact lives is under high load, the client AS can automatically choose a server that runs the same remote bean, but is under less load.
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| <urn:uuid:449d7332-6ae4-4c77-9981-8bb3c298c8f3> | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11333941/failover-for-ejbs?answertab=oldest | en | 0.932922 | 0.960726 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
Say I have a simple class Person with name and last name as properties. Also suppose I have a simple rest service with get endpoints that return a list of people.
public class Person {
// name and last name properties plus getters and setters
// Service
public class SimpleRestService {
//Suppose people is initialized and contains actual people
private ArrayList<Person> people;
public Iterable<Person> getPeople(){
//This one works
return people;
public Collection<Person> getPeople(){
//This one fails. HTTP 500. Nothing on server.log ...
return people;
The fisrt endpoin test/people/iterable will work fine while test/people/collection will fail with HTTP 500. Does any one have a clue on this?
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Jersey has a registry relating the MIME type in the @Produces with the Java type the method is declared to return and the handler that processes the object to produce the payload of the response. It has a handler that converts Iterable and List to a JSON Array. It also has a handler that converts Map to a JSON Object. The problem with the Java interface Collection is that there is no indication as to whether it should be represented as a sequential collection (JSON Array) or an unordered collection of named items (JSON Object). Thus there is no handler registered by default for converting Collection to application/json. This is what the message in the exception logged on your application server indicates.
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I'm not quite sure about this. It has to do more with generics and TypeEreasure. I did tests, creating a Person class and the services above, but I was able to return both Iterable or Collection indifferently. Then I added some generics and it stopped working for both, Iterable and Collection. I tried to reproduce the exact same scenario when I was able to return an Iterable and not a Collection, but unfortunately I couldn't do so. Then... I don't know whether this is still a valid question or not since I cannot replicate it – Jonathan Morales Vélez Mar 3 at 22:36
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| <urn:uuid:aae99b34-ce79-4af7-aa70-035f4608fd3e> | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21414009/why-a-jax-rs-service-with-return-type-iterablemyclass-works-while-collectionm | en | 0.892213 | 0.023878 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I'm using qplot to plot a function and I want to position the legend within the plot. I've used
opts( legend.position = c(0.7,0.7) )
to move the legend where I want it to be.
However there is a white border around the legend and that shows up on the gray background.
For example:
x = c(1:20)
y = c(1:20)
p <- qplot(x,y, color = "blue")
p <- p + scale_colour_identity("Example", breaks=c("blue"), labels=c("dots"))
p <- p + opts(legend.position = c(0.6, 0.4))
I would like to know how to remove this border from the legend. Thank you.
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You only need to use c() around multiple values so 1:20, "blue" and "dots" dont need the use of c() combine function. Thought I'd mention in case that saves some typing or helps otherwise. – Jay Feb 12 '10 at 4:15
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up vote 5 down vote accepted
This will get rid of your border:
p + opts(legend.background = theme_rect(col = 0))
other options in addition to col (which applies to the border) are fill (background) and size (which is the border size).
Hope that helps!
All the best,
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Thanks Jay - that worked perfectly. When you mentioned fill(background) is that used similarly? e.g. opts(legend.fill = "white")? I tried combinations of this without success. – celenius Feb 12 '10 at 14:03
p + opts(legend.background = theme_rect(col = "red", size = 2, fill = "blue")) – Jay Feb 12 '10 at 14:09
This will give you a slightly thicker red border and a blue backgound. Does that help? Let me know if that works – Jay Feb 12 '10 at 14:11
Yes that does help, thank you. Now I understand how to use it. – celenius Feb 12 '10 at 14:30
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| <urn:uuid:5fa61265-7d72-4cf7-80b0-3230dfea8658> | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2249457/is-there-a-way-to-remove-the-border-of-the-legend-in-ggplot2?answertab=votes | en | 0.825176 | 0.521202 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Search the whole artnet database
Record price for a painting:
at Sotheby's
Nov. 1989
Record for a work on paper:
March, without You (hearts)
at Christie's
May '89
Car Crash
at Sotheby's
May 18, 1999
Untitled (Hearts)
at Christie's
Nov. 16, 2000
Two forks
at Sotheby's
Nov. 15, 2000
Hand painting of the mandala
estimate: $9,000-$11,000
at Christie's
Nov. 12, 1998
Art Market Guide 2001
by Richard Polsky
One hates to give a "sell" rating to an artist who actually knows how to draw and paint -- no small accomplishment in this day and age. Unfortunately, such is the case when it comes to analyzing the market potential of Jim Dine.
During the late 1950s, Dine got his start as a performance artist (back then, performances were called "Happenings"). Often, an artist goes into performance because he lacks any real talent. Jim Dine, however, was different. He possessed serious art skills and soon discovered his direction during the birth of Pop Art.
Dine found representation with the Sidney Janis Gallery and began his series of hearts, bathrobes, house tools and trees. The work won immediate acceptance as collectors found the imagery easy to live with. Had Dine kept moving forward and allowed the work to evolve, he may have had an even more impressive career. Instead, he took the easy way out.
It's been said that once an artist finds acceptance painting a specific subject, it's extremely difficult to move beyond it. An artist can work away for ten, 20, or more years when suddenly a body of work clicks with the public. Your dealer is happy, the positive reviews pour in, and your sales keep increasing.
The truly great artists don't rest on their laurels. They take risks and continue to explore new possibilities. Imagine what would have happened if the great artist Philip Guston had played it safe by sticking with his Abstract Expressionist style. Instead, he chanced everything by painting his now-famous quirky representational subject matter.
For whatever reason, Dine has never felt compelled to endure the painful soul-searching that Guston must have faced. Almost 40 years after painting his first heart and robe, he continues to crank out variations of the same images. This is not to be confused with the example of Gorgio Morandi and his wonderful still lifes. In Morandi's case, his humble bottles and objects were painted over and over, with an ever greater sense of meaning and spirituality. Dine's paintings lack that sort of depth. They are what they are -- attractive depictions of a limited personal vocabulary.
It says something about Dine's market that only one of his pictures has appeared in an evening auction over the last two years. In that one instance, at Sotheby's last May, the picture was of day-sale quality. One sensed they placed it in the sale out of desperation for material. The painting, Car Crash, an immature work from 1959-60, sold for $68,500. Other than that fluke, nothing else has recently come up in the prestigious "Part I" sales, and it's not because the work is scarce -- it's because collectors and dealers are scared to take a chance.
In general, the day sales have been kinder to Dine. Often, when a quality early watercolor or pastel comes up, it sells within, or slightly above, estimate. Two recent examples come to mind. At Christie's (Nov. 2000), a flashy watercolor from 1972 of two hearts, Untitled (Hearts), sold for $39,950, against an estimate of $25,000-$35,000. Over at Sotheby's (Nov. 2000), a convincing drawing from 1975 of a pair of farmer's pitchforks, Two Forks, sold for $24,900, just below its low estimate of $25,000-$35,000.
The message to Dine collectors seems clear. Unless you can find a first-rate painting of a heart or robe, better to spend less money and buy a work on paper. A large heart or robe canvas would probably bring $150,000 to $300,000 at auction. A good representative drawing can be had for $25,000-$45,000. By acquiring a work on paper, at least you end up with something that shows off the artist's real strength -- drawing.
From his gallery's standpoint, Dine is a cash cow. He is rumored to be PaceWildenstein's biggest selling artist. Obviously, unless you're Pace's accountant, you'll never know for sure. But it's a highly plausible theory, given the massive number of prints the artist produces and sells. Once again, when it came to his prints, it appeared that Dine took the easy path.
Occasionally, artists produce black and white etchings that they hand-color with pastel or watercolor. Wayne Thiebaud is one artist who comes to mind who enjoys doing this. However, most artists do this as the exception -- Dine has made it the rule. It's incredible how often he releases a print and then hand-colors the entire edition. By doing so, the dealer can mark up the price and get away with selling the print as unique. These prints often sell in the $5,000-$20,000 price range. If you insist on supporting the artist, better to stick with a regular editioned print.
It's often uncomfortable writing negative things about a legitimate artist. In a way, I have always felt that unless I could do any better, perhaps it was wiser not to say anything at all. It reminds me of the time that I once witnessed the great baseball player, Barry Bonds, come under relentless heckling from a lone fan. Bonds scanned the audience, located his tormentor, and then made a gesture with his bat -- as if he were handing it to the fan. When he made eye contact, Bonds then brought his finger to his mouth, making the universal gesture for silence.
The message, to the now stunned fan, was crystal clear -- unless he thought he could hit a major league fastball, he had better keep his mouth shut. The difference is that the fan was only paying $25 or so to watch the game. Jim Dine's fans pay tens of thousands of dollars. For that kind of money, he had better improve his batting average.
Recommended reading: Jim Dine by David Shapiro.
RICHARD POLSKY is a private dealer specializing in post-1960 works of art. Questions or comments can be directed to him in San Francisco at at 415-885-1809 or
| <urn:uuid:86d31683-e278-49b3-a93a-f1f693dc5105> | http://www.artnet.com/magazine/features/polsky/polsky2-14-01.asp | en | 0.968012 | 0.019368 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
PocketBlog Vol. 3 (4/5)
Relay for Life
Yeah, I did that this year for my university. For those that do not know, the American Cancer Society puts this event on around the world to raise money and awareness for the prevention and treatment of cancer. I must say it was a pretty profound event. One of the women who helped run the event was a cancer survivor, along with a handful of others. At the very beginning, they were able to do a "Survivor Lap", where they got to walk the track by themselves. A handful of the younger ones were crying through this. Following that, people from every different organization would be on the track in shifts. Eventually, we did the premiere event of the Relay: Luminaria. The Luminaria was a segment where a series of illuminated paper bags were placed around the track. Every bag was for someone connected to a Relay participant who either survived or passed away from cancer. Again, lots of tears being shed here. The rest of the night after the Luminaria, however, was mostly just fun. Each team had some kind of activity or food they were selling, so on their break different team members could go around and browse everyone else and hang out with their friends. Someone started a massive line dance to one of the awful songs the student radio DJ was blaring. Of course, some versions of Relay are infamous for continuing through the night and into the morning. This Relay was one of these. I started setting up at 4am, and finally cleaned up and left with my group when the Relay ended at 7am the next day. I was so damn tired, but it felt great that we did it. As a school, we raised over $44,000 toward cancer. To put that into perspective, last year the university only raised $20,000. Imagine how much money will be going into cancer research if we have an increase like that every year.
Imagine my frustration, then, when I went to bed at 7am and woke up five hours later because my coworker had a migraine and I had to cover her closing shift. I was extremely angry, especially considering this is a common excuse for getting out of work. I also needed the money though, so I decided to do it. Ended up being a huge mistake because something was totally fucked in the audits. And I had to open the next day. But I prevailed, made a lot of money, and got some serious brownie points with the main store manager.
Crunch Week
It really feels like the first of several hellish weeks of homework and studying. This week, I have two editorials to write, and two papers. The editorials are due today, and are very close to being done. I just have to put the finishing touches on them. The other papers need a lot more work, but I expect to get one done today and the other done tomorrow and Thursday. Hopefully I can do it; once again, this blog is a brief break from the writing and then I'm getting back to hitting those hard. I've also got extra hours at work because we lost one of our front counter managers and I'm picking up the slack until I train the new one. Finally, I'm also working on the presentation I will be doing at the Rocky Mountain Psychological Association conference in Salt Lake City in two weeks. That has me pretty nervous.
What I'm Playing
Not much. I've been alarmingly busy these past couple of weeks. It kind of sucks because customers at work have come to depend on me to tell them if a movie was any good, and I have not been able to watch anything recently, let alone play anything. I did, however, set aside some time to play some Homefront and Crysis 2. I essentially agree with what Alex Navarro said: there's a weird disconnect between the action and the drama, which makes for an uneven and unimpressive campaign, but the multiplayer is great. It's like old-school Battlefield combined with what Medal of Honor was going for in its multiplayer. Crysis 2 is pretty fun though. I didn't really care for the multiplayer. Something about the feel of it just didn't sit well with me. Single player is a lot of fun, though. It's exciting, visceral, and really gives the player a sense of power. I do find it amusing that the only awesome, memorable music in the game is the theme, which was composed by Hans Zimmer. The rest was some other dude that no one cares about.
Today is Tron Day
It is. Tron: Legacy comes out on DVD today, and as some of you might know, I have a raging Clu when it comes to Tron. Once I take my next break from homework, I will be going out to get this. I also special ordered from work the album Tron: Legacy R3CONF1GUR3D, the remixed album. Basically, it's Oakenfold, Moby, Crystal Method, M83, and other artists doing the tracks from the album. In other news, Chrome's spell check apparently only has a problem with the "GUR" segment of that title. Weird.
Whatever Is In My Room
Like clockwork, at 2:30 last night the scratching noises started, louder than usual, in a completely different part of my room. This is really starting to freak the shit out of me. What the hell is in my room?
Hopefully not this
PocketBlog Vol. 2 (3/28)
It's finally starting to warm up in Greeley, which means I can start wearing Hawaiian shirts and khaki shorts again. Awesome.
Also, I should definitely design a banner. This blog isn't very colorful :(
The hot item this week is Nintendo's new 3DS system. I decided to pick one up on Sunday and I'm very glad I did. Right out of the box, the handheld is beautiful. It is roughly the size of a DS Lite and appears to be made of fairly high-quality materials. It's slightly heavier than the older DS systems but not by a significant amount. I really like the feel of the buttons and the joystick pad. The buttons don't have quite the tactile feedback of the ones on older DS models but they feel solid and the system does not suffer for it. A couple of times the joystick didn't do quite what I wanted during Ridge Racer DS but I think that is more a matter of the hyperactive drifting in that game, since it didn't give me any trouble during Pilotwings Resort. I really like the touch screen. The older DS models had occasionally finicky touch screens that sometimes require some more aggressive input, but the new touch screen is much more sensitive, similar to smart phones such as the iPhone. It isn't overly sensitive, mind you; however, it is impressively responsive and I don't feel like I need to press hard at all. The cameras make for some fun diversions (as the front two can take 3D pictures) but they have fairly low resolution and won't cause you to give up your digital or even phone camera anytime soon.
How about that 3D? In a word, beautiful. The stereoscopic 3D effect is a sight to be hold, and turning on the system for the first time and seeing it is quite an experience. The sense of depth in the games is extremely impressive. As far as graphical fidelity, it's definitely better than the DS. Judging by screens of upcoming games I feel like this handheld may be able to handle Wii-caliber graphics. I wasn't blown away by any of the launch titles, though the 3D was impressive on most of the titles regardless of the actual detail in the graphics themselves.
Overall, I'm really glad I got the 3DS. It's a fine system and the 3D effect is well worth it.
New Music
My close friend and I have been on a major alternative music kick. Just the other day I purchased from Hastings the Fight Club Soundtrack, Bloc Party's Silent Alarm, Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion, and OK Go's Of the Blue Color of the Sky. Speaking of OK Go, these guys have some seriously impressive music videos. All of their music videos are done in one shot and usually integrate some clever artistic element. Take, for example, the original version of "This Too Shall Pass"
There's also this one, which is impressive mainly because of the amount of time it must have taken and the physical disomfort. The things these guys do for art....
It's really great stuff. More than many bands, their videos are most than just the band singing along to some obscure story; the unique hook of each video make them a joy to watch. Adrian also got me into Wolf Gang; while their lead singer looks like a love child between a young Hannibal Lecter and a Jewish Lord Voldemort who sounds like Billy Corgan, their style is unmistakably and delightfully European.
Sucker Punch
I guess I'm one of the few people who enjoyed Sucker Punch. I'm not going to deny that the movie was very flawed and Snyder's reach very much extended his grasp; however, I found the movie's massive ambition to be admirable, and the experimental usage of song and dance was interesting to watch. As with all of Snyder's films, the visuals are the selling point, and the beautifully shot Sucker Punch is no exception. It was also shockingly dark; I didn't expect some sections of the film to be so aggressively grim. I felt, however, that it benefited as a result. I'll have a review up on Screened later, but I'm not going fanboy crazy over this film; I really liked it, but again, it definitely failed on several levels. I look forward to seeing what Snyder can do with a bit more practice at writing his own scripts.
My Room Has Demons
Seriously, I think it does. Or perhaps I am going crazy. At 2:30 in the morning, every day, I hear a scratching sound near my door, next to my desk. I've taken this area apart and not found any mice or anything, and it's not near any vents. I'm not sure what it is but it does not happen at all anytime else during the day. At other times, I will hear a light breathing sound in my room, almost inaudible. Best of all, there have been a couple of nights where I head footsteps outside of my room and on the stairs. Flinging open my door, I see nothing. I'm not even a wizard and I can definitely say that is fucked up.
Short Film I Helped Make
Hey guys, here is a short (12ish minutes) film I helped make late last year. I did not act but I pushed the camera around, designed and organized the lighting, and helped the director with other small things with the production. It released a few weeks ago and will be screening in Denver, CO later this year, so this definitely is not a random student film where we grabbed the camcorder and filmed some shit. Please let me know what you think.
I apologize, since it is IMDB video I cannot imbed because GB doesn't know the
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PocketBlog Vol. 1
Apart from my very young Gutenfilm blog that I keep up outside of Giant Bomb, I decided I would also like to start one here for funsies.
"Let Us Not Fall Into the Hands of the Enemy..."
I come here today on a brief break from a term paper I am writing for my Psychology of Religion class. The paper is on Jim Jones, the People's Temple "cult" that he started, and the infamous mass suicide/Kool-Aid drinking incident. It is definitely some profoundly disturbing stuff, but also incredibly interesting. The documentary I am using to base my paper on can be found here, and I highly recommend it if you have the stomach for some material that is most definitely NSFW.
It got me to thinking that this whole event, beginning with the early years of Jones's life and continuing through the mass suicide, would make for a profoundly interesting dramatic film, especially as a way of illustrating the dangers of a figure with absolute power over a group. I especially found it interesting how Jones began by aggressively stating that he didn't want to control lives or become something like a Nazi youth program, and ended with him rejecting religion and leading over 900 people to their deaths. I've been digging around for more material on Jones and have already begin scripting something. Nothing will come of this but by exploring this man's psyche I can reach deeper into my thesis.
"Good News, Everyone!"
When I'm not working on the paper, I've been relaxing over Spring Break by finally delving into some Futurama, a show I have up until now not really had any interest in, but checked out a week and a half ago just for the hell of it. I had just finished Venture Bros, had nothing else to watch at the time, and was craving some animation for adults. Considering that the entire series is on Netflix streaming, I gave it a shot and it quickly became a favorite. There's something therapeutic about the characters of Futurama. In particular, I cannot get enough of Farnsworth.
Dragon Age: ORIGINS
I did things a little weird in relation to Dragon Age. I played through about a third of Origins on the console but could not really digest the nonintuitive control scheme. Armed with a swank new computer, I bought the signature edition of Dragon Age 2, but before playing beyond the demo, bought Dragon Age Origins Ultimate Edition on the PC so I would be able to carry over my save file, and so I could see what all the fuss was about concerning the PC version. Turns out it's really damn good. I'm hooked to this game, and I usually invest 1-3 hours a night in the game. Unhealthy, but I can't resist. I'm using a mage with the Blood Mage specialization and primarily elemental powers. Casting Walking Bomb first thing in a fight and then throwing out a couple of AOE spells proves to be devastating to the Darkspawn armies. My party as of now is Oghren, Shale, and the highly doable and adorably bitchy Morrigan. Every once in a while I'll stop in camp to give Alistair some shit. I hate that guy. The high point of my game so far was finding the Alistair doll and giving it to Morrigan so she could do horrible things to it, which immediately sent her approval rating of me up by 50, effectively countering the negative approval I garnered from her for helping the citizens of Redcliffe (which I only did for the Blood Mage specialization). Can't wait to finish and play DA2, as the demo was a lot of fun. Haters gonna hate.
Illegal Windows
Someone sold me an illegal Windows key, and now I can't update Windows or have the totally badass apocalyptic wallpapers I was rocking before. This guy has 3 more days to refund my money before he gets reported to Microsoft. Even so, a legitimate copy of Windows will still set me back $200 :(
Life At Hastings
In the days since we got robbed at gunpoint at Hastings, I have been on the road to recovery, getting a little better every day but still trying to find a good psychiatrist so I can be properly diagnosed with PTSD if that is indeed the case. I'm normally against drugs but I might make an exception. I've been a manager at Hastings for about a month and a half, and as a result of my low tolerance for other people's bullshit, have already issued more written warnings that any other manager at the store have done in their run as a manager. This has led to labels such as "sheriff Sheridan" and "The Iron Fist of Hastings". If it helps weed out some of the fucktards that work there, then fine. They're only dragging the store down.
Time to return to my paper and get some food, but hopefully you all enjoyed the PocketBlog. I plan on refining it further in later editions.
Happy Saturday 8/21
This week was interesting.
Sunday, I finally got my voice back from my tonsillectomy. The road to recovery was significantly longer for me, considering my age and the extreme inflammation of my tonsils. No matter, I had my voice back, barely, and though it sounded weird I felt a lot better. I also inherited a very old turntable from my parents, so I can start on my record collections. The only nuisance with this turntable is that the speakers that come with it emit a very loud and alarming burst of static when they first turn on, or when the volume is adjusted. I bought two records to begin my collection: Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet and A Perfect Circle's Thirteenth Step. Good albums.
I was looking forward to not having work the next day and relaxing. Unfortunately, it turns out that there was a problem with the schedule and a very serious miscommunication, so actually I was supposed to go into work on Monday. I ended up being two hours late, but I didn't get fired. The manager and the assistant manager forgave me and everything is cool again.
I needed to get my textbooks this week for my upcoming classes. One of them was supposed to be $180, but I found it on Amazon for $40. Score! I found another one I needed on Amazon for a good price as well, but for the others I needed to go to my campus bookstore. One of them was a painless $36, but the other was $145 used. USED. The price for the new book was $160. I was about to bite the bullet and then I decided to hit the other campus bookstore (the "more" official one), and luckily they had a rental book. The rental price is about half the price of a new copy, so it cost me roughly $70. Not quite so bad. When I got to the desk, the computer froze during my transaction, and then the other two froze, so I was waiting for a good 25 minutes to get out of there. Didn't bother me too much, however. I felt sorry for the nice girl behind the counter.
I suddenly had a massive craving for some Asian cinema, so I quickly moved the Vengeance Trilogy and a film called The Chaser up to the front of my Netflix instant queue. I also rented a movie called The Good, the Bad, the Weird from my place of employment. Let me say, that was one of the most supremely entertaining movies to come out of Asia in years. The next movie I rented was Ip Man, a semi-biographical movie about the man who would eventually mentor Bruce Lee, and it was fucking badass for the first half hour, then the disc stopped reading. So I need to go grab another copy to see the rest.
I have an internship this semester with the Public Defender's Office, and this will involve me having to make court appearances as part of the job. The woman who took me on requested that I get a suit for these court appearances. Luckily, I had an old suit in my closet that was too big for me a few years ago, but now it pretty much works, so that saved me about a hundred dollars. I did need to get some new shoes, though. And a tie. I didn't realize until today how ridiculously expensive ties are. Either way, the tie is pretty powerful (red and black diamonds that sort of "shift" if you change perspective") so I don't feel like I really wasted my money. Either way this week's necessities set me back pretty bad so no more spending until the next paycheck on Thursday.
School starts on Monday. I'm a little nervous about being swamped, but excited because I'm tired of being bored.
Watched: Ip Man
Listened: "In the House, in a Hearbeat"--John Murphy
Played: Bioshock 2
Random Musings From A Deranged Mind
So I decided two days ago that I want to start collecting records. My first step is to find a good turntable. I found a good one at work that will only cost $50 when the discount is applied. My mom offered to give me her old one, since she recently got a better one. I might take her up on that, but on the other hand this turntable is bulky and I'm pretty sure it requires those huge-ass speakers that those old-fashioned turntables have. I also have to decide what my "first" record is going to be. It's an important decision, much like choosing a car.
I fucking hate the Daredevil movie. But I watched the Director's Cut and rather liked it. Massive improvement over the PG-13 theatrical cut. The darker tone, extra half hour, added subplot, and more brutal violence work wonders and it's actually a pretty good movie now. One that I wouldn't mind seeing again. I don't think I've ever turned around this much before.
A customer at work told me that our rental system is stupid and he's going to start using redbox. I said "ok" and thought how funny it would be if I Spartan kicked his young son right in the face, and then broke the man's DVD in half and stabbed him in the neck with it. Not because he's going to Red Box, but because he gave me a dirty look. He kept staring at me so I stared right back. Intense stare-down, but I ended up winning.
This is creepy....there are footsteps on the stairs but no one is home. Maybe this house is haunted, after all it's 100 fucking years old. I poked my head out of the door to make sure, and there was no on there. This wasn't just creaking, either...legit footsteps pounding up the stairs.
It's weird when I open my profile and I have a million old women screaming at me.
I helped film a movie last week. I was just the key grip, but I had a lot of fun doing my thing and helping out. The movie set experience is a grand experience indeed.
I went to a party on Saturday. Biggest party I've ever been to. I just stood in the corner with my beer and my cigar, quietly watching the rest of the party-goers playing beer pong and whatever the hell else they were doing. I started attracting weird glances so I reluctantly began to mingle. Met some interesting people, but I didn't get shit-faced or laid. I think I might have been spiked though, because I went home after the party and when I woke up the next morning my 360 was on, my clothes were in the wrong place, and my lights and clothes were still on. I had also fallen asleep on top of the covers. I only had like two drinks so I wasn't drunk. My butthole felt fine though so I guess nothing terribly bad or traumatic happened to me. Nothing out of the ordinary or mundane, anyway.
I really want to get back into composing and writing. I was supposed to compose a piece for a friend of mine who's a director, but it's been done for a week and he isn't returning my fucking calls. I guess this gives me time to polish it up, but still. I haven't written any fiction in a while, and that makes me sad. I have a lot of ideas that I want to put on paper but I always find something to do. Maybe tonight I will work on something, or maybe I will just fall asleep.
Is it wrong that I LOVED the movie "44 Inch Chest", in which a man's wife cheats on him so him and his mates kidnap the other man, bind him up, and flip a coin to decide if they should kill him? I loved it because the same thing happened to me with my ex and this was like a vicarious fantasy fulfillment for me, playing out like I would have wanted. You should have seen my grin when the coin landed on tails for "skin him alive", it was fucking scary.
Cheers. :)
A Crazy Idea That Just Might Work
Given the insane popularity of Deadly Premonition, and the incredibly catchiness of the theme song, I have decided to attempt my own version, this time using my personal favorite arrangement: a 24-piece orchestra. It's going to take a few months, but I am sure as hell going to attempt to get this done.
Happy Fun Time Update
First of all duders, thanks for the words! They helped.
So I went to the place, and here's the weird thing. The doctor came in and started messing with my lymph nodes and noticed that my left tonsil (on the same side as the lymph node) was very swollen, which was what was causing my problems swallowing. He then sat down and said, "You look perfectly healthy to me. Looks like your allergies are just acting up really bad right now. I'm the guy who can spot the cancers and diagnose them, and I don't think you have any. If I could notice anything wrong, we wouldn't be here, we would be in the Operating Room right now. We can do a CAT scan and take some blood if you want, but if you were my son I would say hold off for now." He was actually quite surprised at how "healthy" I looked, and told me I really don't need any tests. He did have me go on a vaporizer at night, use nose spray, use saline rinse, and take antibiotics, but he said my problem is allergies, stress, and lack of sleep.
Honestly, he is the best doctor I've ever seen. He had a great personality, and I think he detected my nervousness because acted extremely warmly toward me and kept squeezing my arm in a fatherly fashion. He gave me his email address in case I have questions or something comes up or changes with my condition. He said to come back in six weeks to see how I'm shaping up, and at that point he said we could schedule to get my tonsils removed, which would be a huge relief because I'm tired of having so much trouble swallowing and breathing all the time. The tonsils (mine have been abnormally large from birth BTW), he said, are also what is causing my sleep apnea. Getting them out would make me much more comfortable.
So, bottom line is that there is nothing seriously wrong with me. Thanks for the care guys!
Happy Fun Time With Cancer Screens
So, I have a swollen lymph node, and my doctor said I need to get a biopsy to make sure it's "nothing bad", like cancer or something. So that's what I'm doing today. Getting a needle jabbed into my neck so they can suck out part of the lymph node tissue and look at it under a microscope and make sure it's not cancerous. Enjoy your breakfast, kids.
Kinda hoping I don't have anything wrong. I probably don't, but I'm not sure I would be able to rock the bald look very well. In all seriousness, I joke but I am a chronic hypochondriac and I can't help but worry. Wish me luck.
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Mothering › Mothering Forums › Childhood and Beyond › Education › Learning at Home and Beyond › Unschooling › Siblings and Homeschooling
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Siblings and Homeschooling
post #1 of 5
Thread Starter
I'm curious about sibling relationships in other unschooling families. Our girls are best friends, and while we have a playmate or two, they are sisters and best friends and some days DD1 seems to do nothing else but make DD2 cry, and other days DD2 ignores all playtime requests from DD1, and other days they really are in a groove.
And how do you balance different needs, learning styles, and habits? We are 6 and 4 1/2 and have been "unschooling" since forever, but since DD1 is kindergarten age, I've really become more focused on homeschooling issues, and want to know about your experiences and what you've done to help things be harmonious.
post #2 of 5
Sounds like our house. I have three, 8, 5 and 3, and they are all pretty close, and they fight like crazy too. The middle one kind of has it best, with a big brother and little sister to choose from. The eldest and youngest compete for middle dd's attention depending on who wants to play with her at a given time, although oldest ds spends alot of time doing solitary computer stuff as well, which gives middle a chance to play with little.
Things are not often easy, but some days they will play endlessly and peacefully with one another. I try to give each one of the older ones one on one playdates with friends occasionally as well, to fill outside of family friendship needs.
I just find that when they are scrapping, it means I need to get more involved, more interested in what is going on with them, and less focused on house stuff or my own stuff. It usually means they need me to read to them or take them someplace interesting to break the pattern of bickering.
post #3 of 5
Sounds similar to our house as well. Our oldest, 12 and almost 11, are best friends and usually get along wonderfully ... but when they bug each other they BUG each other! :lol: Our "middle child" is almost 9 and having older brothers and a 5 year old younger brother, I think she feels left out a lot because the older boys see her as too young and she's too much older than the younger kids. However, she gets along with kids of all ages and likes to hang out with adults as well as spend time alone in her room reading. Our youngest two are 5 (boy) and 3 (girl) and they get along great. Our 3 year old's best 3 year old friend is at our house 4 days a week (I provide childcare for her) and we also have a 1 year old "borrowed" little girl 3-5 days a week.
We're basically an unschooling family. We have "homeschool hangout" on Wednesdays where I teach the olders things based (somewhat loosely and very creatively) on the Picturing America posters and my friend teaches the littles (story/craft) and in the Fall, Winter and Spring we are members of a homeschool co-op that meets from 9:30am-3pm (5 1-hour classes) and the kids love the variety of classes they can take there (and I teach a class for 3-5 year olds). Things tend to work well in our family. The kids work on things they're interested in, and because they're excited about what they're learning, they share what they learn with the others, so we all end up learning a lot without much effort. ;) A couple of my kids prefer to read about things, a couple like to learn by doing. It's actually a really good balance for doing projects with partners or in groups.
As far as keeping the household harmonious ... it isn't always, but that's part of life. There are enough spaces in our small house to send people, projects for them to do, books for them to read, that I can encourage them to take a break from each other as needed. We also have a quiet hour almost every day, when we all need to find something quiet to do for about an hour so we can all recharge our batteries (and so I can get the littles down for a nap!).
post #4 of 5
My two oldest are boys, almost 11 and 9.5 (18 months apart). They are polar opposites, a very right brained Cancer and a very left brained Capricorn. They are best friends and always have been...BUT... they require different intellectual stimulus. A few times a week I need to separate them and set one up with a chapter book and the other up with a subject for an acrylic painting, or legos and a deck of cards, or collecting & counting the guava and washing and slicing the guava, for example.
Lately a good harmony producer seems to be cooking. They can both work together using measurements and creativity to make a meal. The meals have been on the stove lately but when they were 6 & 4ish they used to have nice break time/together time making peanut butter filled celery and all the fun snacks.
Like the PP said, when I hear the bickering it's time to either create a structured activity, feed, or separate for alone time.
post #5 of 5
We have a much larger gap (6 3/4 years), so it's a bit different. I'm finding that my older one does not really want to engage with his ds unless I push the screen issue -- he spends most of his time watching TV or playing computer games, but when I tell him it's time to stop, if she's awake he will play with her. I need to find things they would both enjoy.
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help want to give up/cut down, DH not supportive
(21 Posts)
curryeater Tue 07-May-13 10:39:46
Firstly, your DH doesn't get to decide what you do with your body.
If your dd is taking to food and water well, you can consolidate (not necessarily reduce) feeds soon. Both my dcs went to bfing twice a day only at around 9 months. They fed a long time though at those feeds.
MavisG Tue 07-May-13 10:24:31
I wouldn't reduce bfs without replacing with f, except on an occasional basis.
wellieboots Tue 07-May-13 10:06:46
Thanks, I thought that even on 3 solid meals I shouldn't be reducing bfs until about 9 months?
littleducks Tue 07-May-13 09:38:11
I never expressed I didn't like it at all.
I wonder if it might be easier to continue to wean her, cutting down bfeeds and increasing her solids? You could up to three meals a day with water in a sippy cup.
wellieboots Tue 07-May-13 09:30:30
Thanks all smile I think part of the problem is that I'm not sure what I want! I do find bfing easy when I need to be out and about, and I love the cuddles, I don't think I want to stop entirely, I'm just finding it so all consuming, my boobs get squeezed and scratched and I haven't let DH near them since she was born! I have good days and bad days and it would just be nice to have a break sometimes!
Startail Mon 06-May-13 20:14:23
I've said it before, sippy cup diluted juice and yoghurt make a perfectly good substitute for Breastmilk for bottle refusing, formula refusing DCs of mum's who can't express.
Leave DH with the above and go out and recharge your batteries.
Of course you may find that your DD isn't as bloody minded as DD2 and happily drinks the odd bottle of formula if you can get DH to see that, if you are going to continue BFing, you need a break sometimes.
BrianButterfield Mon 06-May-13 20:08:58
Of course, she might refuse formula - my ds wouldn't entertain it until 10 months when nursery cracked it with him. But at 6 months you can, in a pinch, give yogurt etc which will help to make up for bfing.
rootypig Mon 06-May-13 20:05:10
Oh sorry have just reread your post more carefully blush
Ignore me.
We are mix feeding and it's fine, the odd bottle is easy peasy, just put a stash of those little cartons in cupboard and use as and when grin. If it helps, we don't sterilise DD's bottles, she is the same age as your DC, we wash them very thoroughly and she has always been fine.
rootypig Mon 06-May-13 20:02:50
I agree with other posters - it's your body and I am slightly shock at your DH's attitude. 'Strong opinions' are fine but not supporting your decision, whatever it may be, betrays a lack of respect for your body and personhood, imo.
That aside, have you considered expressing? DD had a bottle of EBM nightly from 3 months, so that I could leave her with DH to go for a swim / have some time to myself, and it worked well. I had a medela swing and found it relatively straightforward. They cost about £100 new I think and if you are planning to BF DD until she self weans, sounds like it would be a good investment!
HappyAsASandboy Mon 06-May-13 11:32:35
To be honest, I wouldn't try and convince him. I would just start giving formula in a sippy cup or bottle sometimes instead of Breastfeeding. It is your body that has to do the feeding/expressing, and if you don't want to do it, don't. You have done it for 6 months, and it really is not worth making yourself miserable and resentful about it.
If you want to present it to your husband another way, you could talk about formula as just another food. Your baby is no longer ebf as s/he is also eating solids, so formula, cows milk etc are just other foods now. Cows milk is not good enough as a main drink for another 6 months, but formula and breastmilk are.
I say all of that as a a great believer in breastfeeding. I am a Breastfeeding peer supporter, and I am still feeding my twins at two and a half years. But I am doing it because I want to, not because someone has told me I should. Breastfeeding is a choice, and you are allowed to make a different choice whenever you wish.
MavisG Mon 06-May-13 10:20:06
Yeah, give formula when you need a night off & then carry on as normal. Your body, your choice: your dh's role is to support you in that choice, whatever it is.
PS bf #2 is easier than ff IMO - less faff, more time for pfb. And your second may feed more efficiently than your first. But again, your choice.
noblegiraffe Mon 06-May-13 10:11:04
Your DH can express his opinion but it is entirely your decision. It's not his body that is being scratched or his freedom that is being restricted.
You say you can't get the hang of expressing like it's your fault and something you need to work at and get better at. The truth is that some women simply can't express milk, either at all, or in enough quantities to be useful. Some women who can express early on find that they lose the ability later on as their supply settles down. I bfed for 17 months and never managed to express. So tell that to your DH who is determined that you express - that route is simply closed and not happening.
If you want a night off, give formula. It doesn't have to be a regular thing, but if you do want it to be a regular thing, go ahead and do it. It's your body and your choice.
wellieboots Mon 06-May-13 08:51:59
ps I have already planted the seeds for DC2s arrival (not likely to be for a couple of years) that I may not want to bf beyond a few weeks, just because it takes so much time and must be really hard when you have more than one to entertain! I thought if I get him used to the idea now, he might deal with it better next time!grin
wellieboots Mon 06-May-13 08:40:05
Thanks bakingaddict no, he's not controlling, just has very strong ideas on certain things. I knew he was keen on bfing DD, well, on me doing it, before she was born. that's why I talked to him beforehand about people like my DM who aren't always able to bf, as I didn't intend to kill myself over it. He was on side, but now that bf has worked for us (which I am glad about and do enjoy) he won't discuss cutting down or stopping until DD self weans, whenever that may bewine
wellieboots Mon 06-May-13 08:32:29
thanks lookingforward, hope you are better now. I have pnd too, and I do want to keep feeding because it's one of the only things I'm confident aboutshock I just would like a bit of a break sometimeswink
wellieboots Mon 06-May-13 08:27:17
Only because she's never been offered a bottle, we were sure she would need a feed during the exam and she already takes the sippy cup for a little bit of water with her solids so we thought that was easier than trying to introduce two new things at the same time. No, noone else can help, am a long way from DM and PILs who live 10 mins away don't want to know us.
bakingaddict Mon 06-May-13 08:24:05
I think you need to sit your DH down and explain why this situation isn't working for you and say you are switching to FF or whatever. Tell him calmly what you are doing but make it known that this is non-negoitable Is he so controlling of you in other areas of your life
While it is fine he has an interest and voices his opinion on the baby's feeding, it is not on to impose his will and dictate to you how your DC is fed. Ultimately it's your body and the decision to stop BF is down to you alone
LookingForwardToMarch Mon 06-May-13 08:21:43
Oh bless you.
I'll pass on my gp's advice.
' Yes we do advocate breast feeding but formula is not poison.
Better a ff baby with a happy mother than a bf baby with a miserable one'
This was said to me as I was sobbing about bf (pnd)
Your dh should be supportive In the end I bought the formula and everything but then chose to ebf.
But I just felt so much better knowing it was MY choice and dh would support me either way.
TheDoctrineOfSnatch Mon 06-May-13 08:12:41
Ah, I see you've not tried a bottle - but you have some, yes? Would your mum or a friend give her the feed whilst you leave the room?
If you ebf when you don't really want to, you'll end up resenting it instead of loving it sad
TheDoctrineOfSnatch Mon 06-May-13 08:10:05
You have done amazingly well to bf for six months, especially without expressing.
It's your body and it's up to you, you don't need to "persuade" him. Pick a feed to substitute for formula (mid morning, maybe?) and start from there.
Why a sippy cup not a bottle, by the way?
wellieboots Mon 06-May-13 08:03:48
DD is 6 months on Thursday and ebf apart from being on solids twice a day. I've never really managed to express so I don't even know if she would take a bottle if offered. I was keen to bf but had warned DH that it isn't always possible (my DM bf my brother but not me) and he was fine with that. I am glad that I have been able to bf but I am now feeling trapped by it. I have toyed with switching to mix feeding on and off for months but DH has always talked me out of it.
The thing is, noone looks after DD other than me and DH, so it's not as though I would get much of a break even if she was ff. So is it worth the hassle of trying to talk him into it?
I just feel so trapped, DH can't give me a night off, he is so bloody determined I must get the hang of expressing, I had an exam a couple of weeks ago and DD went almost 5 hours without a feed although he had formula to put in her sippy cup if needed.
So, any tips on where to start, either in practical terms or in terms of dealing with DH and talking him round. Today I am sitting here with the flu, DD is feeding constantly and I am exhausted. My boobs are scratched and sore from her scratching and grabbing and im sick of it,!
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Wrestler John Cena brings smackdown to Crescent City
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on March 29, 2008 at 5:00 AM, updated December 18, 2009 at 9:03 AM
By Mike Scott
Movie writer
Wrestler John Cena started shooting "12 Rounds" in New Orleans in late February and filming continues through early May.
But Cena had been asked three times to sprint the same two-block stretch, past the Algiers Courthouse and toward that not-as-slight-as-it-looks incline leading to the Algiers ferry, for a sequence in which his character -- a New Orleans cop, hot on the trail of a baddie -- commandeers a silver '73 Camaro.
He was also, it just so happens, only 12 hours removed from an in-the-ring performance in Lafayette in which he and another grappler took on nearly every other wrestler in the building.
So, yes, Cena was sweating. Yes, he was drawing a little more wind than usual. And, yes, he was feeling the burn in his legs.
But he wasn't complaining.
The World Wrestling Entertainment headliner knows how lucky he is to be doing what he's doing, so he's willing to put up with a little sweat ringing the neck of his white T-shirt.
"You just don't get a lot of time to yourself," Cena said of his schedule, his voice every bit as deep as you'd expect an insanely muscular 6-foot, 1-inch frame to project. "But I'm doing two things I enjoy. It's not like I'm doing taxes or anything like that. I like it."
The World Wrestling Entertainment John Cena is in town filming the action flick "12 Rounds" in Algiers Point.
It's a good thing, too. First, because you probably don't want to be around a guy like Cena when he's surly. Second, because Cena will be bouncing back and forth between those two worlds -- acting and wrestling -- the next few weeks.
For example, over the course of the "12 Rounds" shoot in New Orleans -- which started in late February and continues through early May -- everybody on set knows Cena has Mondays off. Those are his wrestling days, where he jets off to perform live in the ring.
For the rest of the week, he does the film thing, shooting high-octane scenes in and around New Orleans, such as the recent segment in Algiers Point that saw him tear off in his borrowed Camaro and drive over the Crescent City Connection.
Then, on Sunday, it's off to Orlando, Fla., for WrestleMania XXIV -- the wrestling world's pay-per-view Super Bowl -- where he'll bring his patented "FU" finishing maneuver into the ring for a three-man match for the WWE championship, a title Cena already has won three times.
Win or lose, it's back in New Orleans next week for "12 Rounds" and a multiple-day "Speed"-like sequence involving a streetcar, a pickup truck and the closure of a portion of Canal Street in front of Harrah's New Orleans Casino.
Later comes a scene involving Cena, a speeding firetruck and the French Quarter. You can imagine how that turns out.
"That's what's great about the city of New Orleans: They've been so open to let us shoot," Cena said. "The last shoot I did (for 2006's 'The Marine'), we were in Australia. We didn't even touch the city -- it all had to be on set locations and, 'You can only do this block, and this block.' New Orleans has been open arms, man. Everybody here has been so giving and wanting a good movie to be made here so more business comes back. You can see it. It's fantastic."
One reason Cena's got so much schedule flexibility is that WWE, in addition to staging his wrestling matches, is the financial muscle behind "12 Rounds."
Feature film production is something of a new business for the company, headed by the colorful Vince McMahon Jr., and its track record proves it.
Its previous three theatrical efforts -- Cena's "The Marine," 2006's "See No Evil" and last year's "The Condemned," the latter two of which also starred pro grapplers (Kane and "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, respectively) -- weren't well-received by critics. (Richard Roeper memorably called "The Condemned" a "fast-paced, well-made piece of garbage.") Likewise, box-office business was less than stellar.
There's at least one reason to believe that "12 Rounds" might fare better: Action-film veteran Renny Harlin -- who directed Samuel L. Jackson in 2007's "The Cleaner," Sylvester Stallone in 1993's "Cliffhanger" and Bruce Willis in 1990's "Die Hard 2" -- was brought on to direct.
To hear Harlin talk, "12 Rounds" might be the film that catapults Cena into a more mainstream brand of fame.
"I really think this is a movie that's going to make John a movie star, an action star," Harlin said last week during a break between shots on the set of "12 Rounds."
"We're concentrating on making it very realistic: nothing bigger than life, no superhero stunts, nothing that a normal guy who has the energy and stamina couldn't do. So I think it's going to really work on many levels and bring him down to kind of an Everyman -- a guy men can relate to, women can like, kids find appealing."
It's that last segment -- the kids, the 13-year-olds, the built-in audience that already idolizes John Cena the wrestler -- who might be most important to the success of "12 Rounds." So unlike the WWE's previous theatrical releases, two of which carried an "R" rating, Harlin's shooting the film with an eye toward a "PG-13" rating.
Penned by first-time screenwriter Daniel Kunka, "12 Rounds" -- which, despite the title and the leading man, has nothing at all to do with wrestling or boxing -- tells the story of a New Orleans police officer who, almost by accident, makes the biggest bust of his life. But before the criminal (Aidan Gillen of "The Wire") goes upriver, he vows revenge.
"A year later, after I've been promoted to detective, I kiss my wife-to-be goodbye and she leaves the house. I walk out of the house, I get a phone call from this criminal, and my house blows up," Cena said. "And that's where we start with, 'OK, I'm out of prison, I'm coming to get you, your girl is collateral, but I'm going to put you through these 12 rounds for what you did to me a year ago.' "
Gillen's character proceeds to send Cena's character, Danny Baxter, on a series of Sisyphean tasks around the city. That's where the streetcar comes in. And the firetruck. And any number of other conveyances that get crashed, crunched and otherwise torn asunder.
And for Cena, that's where a big part of the fun is. An admitted car nut, he does much of his own stunt driving in "12 Rounds" and wouldn't have it any other way.
"That's my choice, and I've been in enough wrecks to know if I can't handle it," Cena said. "So I try to get these guys to let me do most of it, because I'm much more comfortable behind the wheel than saying lines to the camera. That's what I enjoy doing, and I guess it looks good when you can see it's your guy behind the wheel."
So, in "12 Rounds," when you see the tires spin on that silver Camaro as it tears away from the Algiers ferry, you know it's Cena driving. And when you see it hauling across the bridge, you know it's him driving.
And when you see the 34-foot firetruck barreling through the French Quarter -- well, the smile on Cena's face when he talks about it says it all.
"On the testing grounds, I've had that thing sideways," he said. "I've locked up the brakes and had it skidding sideways."
That level of enthusiasm is part of what Harlin says makes Cena so much fun to work with, and part of why he things Cena will be a star.
"What I love about working with actors who are inexperienced is that their enthusiasm and energy is just so fantastic," Harlin said. "They're just game for everything. They're always there; they're ready to go. It's all just a new experience for them.
"I would imagine John is always going to stay like that because he's been in the wrestling game for many years and hasn't lost any of that boyish, young enthusiasm. And he realizes what most of us should realize: We are damn lucky to be doing what we are doing."
Ready for your close-up? Or at least your wide shot? The action film "12 Rounds" has put out a call for extras for upcoming scenes. Various types are being sought. Visit for details or to download an application. | <urn:uuid:796307df-e715-4e31-9b5a-8d36d60dc2c5> | http://www.nola.com/movies/index.ssf/2008/03/wrestler_john_cena_brings_smac_1.html | en | 0.976552 | 0.023557 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Morning Briefing for July 13, 2011
RedState Morning Briefing
For July 13, 2011
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the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.
1. The President Declares He Will Shoot His Hostages
2. Mitch McConnell Just Proposed the “Pontius Pilate Pass the Buck Act of 2011?
Consider the Associated Press’s headline right now: “GOP Leader McConnell proposes giving Obama new power for automatic debt limit increase”Mitch McConnell is right now talking about making a historic capitulation. So fearful of being blamed for a default, McConnell is proposing a compromise that lets Barack Obama raise the debt ceiling without making any spending cuts at all.Consider sending McConnell a weasel as testament to his treachery. His address is 601 W. Broadway, Room 630, Louisville, KY 40202 and the phone number is (502) 582-6304.McConnell’s idea is to make the debt ceiling automatic unless Congress, by a 2/3 vote blocks the increase. Oh yes, he put a salve on it by dressing it up in tough talk that, to quote the Wall Street Journal, “[a] ‘eal solution’ to U.S. fiscal problems isn’t possible as long as President Barack Obama remains in office.” So since no “real solution” is possible, McConnell proposes to go Pontius Pilate and wash his hands of spending, blaming Obama while doing nothing himself.Here is how the plan would work.Please click here for the rest of the post.
3. Mr. President, What Are Your Priorities?
President Barack Obama has announced that he may not be able to mail Social Security checks out on 3 August if he has not been given an increased debt ceiling to borrow more money for the government. The blackmail attempts have officially begun. Give us more money now, or watch the entitlement recipients in YOUR Congressional District start to get it.According to James Pethokoukis, the US Treasury is not precluded from specifically making the next Social Security payment by actual liquidity. “Social Security payments Treasury needs to make on Aug 3. $22 billion. Treasury cash balance on Aug. 3: $74 billion.”This implies these payments would be stopped as a result of fiscal priorities greater than making Social Security payments that totaled an amount greater than the $52Bn that the Treasury would have on its books as of 3 August 2011. As concerned American citizens, we are owed a dutiful and factual accountings of what those specific priorities happen to be. This is, after all, the most honest and open administration in the history of terrestrial democracy. Isn’t it?Please click here for the rest of the post.
4. Random Acts of Vandalism Cause Teamsters To Postpone Funeral Directors’ Strike
As late as Monday, the Teamster-represented funeral directors, embalmers and livery drivers from four Chicago-area nursing home were prepared to walk out on strike on Tuesday over an impasse in negotiations with Service Corporation International.However, when vandals struck three out of four of the funeral homes that were to have been targeted by the strike, the Teamsters hastily postponed walking out on the dead.Please click here for the rest of the post.
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Dangerous Injections
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Summary: Response to "The Accidental Were" Challenge. Dawn takes the Lycanthropy Vaccine and becomes infected, now she is on the run and hiding out in St Louis.
Categories Author Rating Chapters Words Recs Reviews Hits Published Updated Complete
Anita Blake > Dawn-CenteredStephanieClareFR1511,417091,5292 Jul 112 Jul 11No
Inspired by “The Accidental Were” Challenge, although I don't think I will meet all of the requirements set out in it.
This is an Anita Blake crossover, I have no rights to Anita Blake or to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Laurell K Hamilton and Joss Whedon are responsible for the creation of the characters and plot lines used and referenced in this fic.
The bus was cliché, stealing away in the middle of the night. The fact was though that it was cheap and that Cleveland's bus stops weren't well lit and with any luck the few cameras wouldn't pick up anything too specific about her appearance, or what bus she boarded. Dawn sighed, the roads blurring past her. At best efforts Dawn estimated she had a month before Willow found her, and she needed to have answers before then, needed to have a case to plead. Things between her and Buffy weren't just strained right now, they were now 6 hours and a midnight bus ride past breaking point. It was hard to tell someone that had died to protect you that they were being unreasonable, that they couldn't protect you from the world by controlling your access to it or that it wasn't your fault that Angel and Giles had lied.
The supernatural world was out of the closet and their glittering PR representatives and civilized manners greeting her sister every day from the TV or the newspaper had only served to drive the betrayal home. She wasn't one girl in all the world now, and the lines of black and white were now so very very blurred and gray. Somethings had stayed the same, Buffy patrolled, whether she was needed or not and Dawn was strictly forbidden from attending any similar activities. Dawn was again required to abide by a “live as I wish I had not as I do” philosophy that grated against her very being. Buffy never mentioned Dawns betrayal of her in Sunnydale but it hung over their heads like a fat swinging elephant and with no Xander shaped buffers or end of the world level apocalypses to distract them things had only grown more and more tense.
The first signs that things were not going to change had been when the arguments about college had started. The first Dawn had realized that Buffy hadn't been listening when she had talked about her plans for her Gap Year where when acceptance letters for colleges started arriving at the apartment colleges she had never applied to and had no intention of ever applying to writing to accept her. Willow and Xander were so far away now, both busy with their lives, Giles caught up in the bustle of creating a new council (and on Buffy's no talk list), but they would tell her she was over-reacting that she was blowing things out of proportion, and maybe she should consider that her sister was doing what was best for her. At 18 she was still the baby and there was no chance any of them would be seeing her differently any time soon.
It was Buffy who had insisted that Dawn take the Vaccine, and at the time it had been one of the smaller battles, she had conceded when her sister had looked her in the eye and said she wouldn't allow her to become a monster. It had made her wonder about Oz and the other monsters that had been their friends and when if ever Buffy had stopped considering them as anything but Monsters and if she even remembered that Dawn had been a glowing ball of energy before she became someone who needed protecting. Dawn wondered if Buffy had been aware of the risks, if she would have forced her to if she had know what would happen. The injection had been two weeks ago and it was almost another thirteen days to the next full moon, but Dawn knew, her body had changed, she was running hot, her temper at the surface and deep inside her something paced, it's fur brushing the inside of her skin. Running away probably wasn't her brightest idea, but all Dawn could hear in her mind was the word monster and the look her sister had in her eyes when she had said it.
Her plans weren't very well thought out much further than the actual getting away portion of the evening, she had some cash and a set of the chains they had used for Oz in her bag, but the finer points were still a bit hazy. She had changed buses twice, died her hair in a bus stop bathroom and swapped clothes with a brunette girl headed for Canada. Maybe the whole thing was overkill but she needed time to work things out on her own, to learn the control Oz had found in Tibet, to try not to be a monster. Part of her wanted to keep moving, knowing that she would be found if she stayed in one place for too long. Exhaustion had other ideas, her control weakened she dozed lightly on the bus and in her dreams she ran free, not the hunted, but the hunter running through a forest she had never seen her prey just out of reach. She wasn't alone, in the distance a howl went up, echoed by the calls of the pack as they raced together. Branches whipped by, leaves caught in her fur as her paws pounded the earth with only one goal in mind. The world was different like this, everything sharper and more intense, she could smell her prey's fear. Her own howl joined that of the pack, they were close, she ran harder the prey now in their sights, its sides slick with sweat the doe ran faster. Dawn awoke as her teeth had pierced flesh, her mouth watering with the taste of blood. The other passengers had looked at her briefly and she changed buses again at the next opportunity. If she kept running her beast would have more control and things like this would keep happening. If she lost control they would find her and she couldn't let that happen yet. She needed more time and she needed to stop running and she had to find somewhere safe and she had to do all this on a budget and out of sight.
The sun was setting as she crossed the University Campus heading to the library, after all there was no better place for a random teenager researching preternatural biology to blend in, she was well fed and still out of a place to sleep, but the research had been the easier of the two problems to solve. Jogging up the last few steps, she smiled at two students heading in the opposite direction, doing her best to remember what Spike had told her once about hiding in plain site. Here she was, a runaway newly infected werewolf in St Louis with no place to go, no one to ask for help and just two weeks to try and come up with some answers before she changed for the first time. This was certainly not the way she had pictured things going, but she smirked to herself as she realized that Buffy had at last got her way, here she was studying at university, being enrolled was just a minor detail to be overlooked. Hitting 'Enter' she waited for the search engine to start returning results on her query “Preternatural Community St Louis” she should probably get to know who and what she might come across, the best way to protect yourself was with knowledge and with this in mind she clicked on the first link “Anita Blake Vampire Executioner wines and dines with Vampire Master of city” Dawn rolled her eyes, what is it with Slayers and Vampires.
Apologies to anyone who is waiting on an update to Shepherding Faith, I have really been trying but I just can't seem to take the story in any sort of direction. I am still trying to work on it and I will continue to try to complete that story.
This fic is a bit of a work in progress, I'm still trying to iron out the time line for AB, but be assured that I am already working on the next update I just wanted to get this out so I could get some feedback and ideas going from anyone who reads it. Enjoy!
The End?
You have reached the end of "Dangerous Injections" – so far. This story is incomplete and the last chapter was posted on 2 Jul 11.
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Kurt Schiegl
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Kurt Schiegl.jpg
Name: Kurt Schiegl
Born: 1925-01-24
Birthplace: Vienna, Austria
Died: 1984-07-22 (Age:59)
Nationality: Austrian
Hometown: Vienna, Austria
Height: 6′ 3″ / 190cm
Boxing Record: click
Kurt Schiegl was conscripted into the German Wehrmacht Army in 1943, during World War II, but deserted to the Belgian underground.
Schiegl emigrated to Toronto,Canada where he died in 1984 of a heart attack.
He became an actor in American and European films in the early 1960s. With his large flat nose, he often played monsters and wrestlers in low grade movies. In 1981, he was played one of the Neanderthals in the movie "Quest for Fire."
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Journal: Exotic Hardware 4
Journal by Elpacoloco
Today I read slashdot's story about Debian, and how they're considering dropping some of their archetectures. (Story Here)
Debian supports something like 11 archetectures, the vast majority of which I have never seen in operation. Every computer store I have seen stocks only x86, and if you're lucky, you might find some AMD64. PowerPC comes from Mac computers. That's three.
Where on earth are these other 8 archetectures?
GNU is Not Unix
Journal: GnuBonzi
Journal by Elpacoloco
Considering the popularity I hear about Bonzi Buddy, I think someone should take the time and effort to make a spyware-free, open source version.
I lack the skill to make such a thing, but I would be willing to help draw the avatar.
Journal: How I shot myself in the foot with Mozilla
Journal by Elpacoloco
I recently removed my old mozilla installation to replace it with firefox. And foolishly, I removed it with a number of rm's.
I just barely reinstalled psm, but still I have no ssl and no ability to use https. I nearly drove myself insane trying to do the psm stuff, since putting the libraries in place was not enough, I also needed to get chrome to recognize them.
What other libraries do I need to get ssl and https support?
I use debian, so possibly the right apt-get might solve this. Maybe.
I hope I can solve this soon, since both my bank and stockbroker use https, and I'm rather inconvinienced until i fix it.
Linux Business
Journal: Ars Economicas 2
Journal by Elpacoloco
Okay, this is going to be tricky.
Apparently the slump is over, and it's possible to get jobs now. I need one: I did not have any paid employment during 2003, and supported myself collecting aluminum cans.
Now once I'm done laughing at the amature video game made about this unusual livelihood, I have realized that I need paying work.
I'm a computer geek with a half-finished degree in computer science. I use a lot of linux, and family members tell me I would make a great teacher. I could get an accountant's certificate in 3 months, or a nursing certificate in 3 months. It will take 2 years to finish my degree (at least. The college keeps changing the requirements.)
I am applying to the following companies: McDonalds, Borders Books, Wal Mart, and the Hobby Lobby.
I live near Houston, Texas. Places for me to work will have to be within 100 miles of there.
What company would be most interested in hiring someone of my specifications? And why have most companies been ignoring my resume?
Help fight continental drift. | <urn:uuid:d2c5d126-9111-4737-b34c-528ed3ed27e9> | http://slashdot.org/~Elpacoloco/journal/ | en | 0.952975 | 0.065122 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I am desperately looking for a solution that enables me to read keyboard events in a non blocking way. These Keyboard events are generated by a VIRTUAL KEYBOARD that comes with the WinCE device. I have a console application running in C++, where the user is asked to navigate via 'ESC', 'U' and other characters through the menu. I first tried to use fread and stdin and realised that it is blocking call and waits for a carriage return. Then I tried to hook up to the windows message WM_KEYUP, but I never recieve this windows message. Furthermore I tried to use QtGUI together with the event QKeyEvent, but I never recieve any event. I wonder if it is in general possible to recieve non-blocking keyboard events on a WinCE device. I would be glad if you have any suggestions!
Cheers, Jan
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GetAynchKeyState will read the state of the entire (virtual) keyboard. Alternatively, you can pass a handle to the console to WaitForSingleObject, with timeout of 0 milliseconds. This will always return immediately, but the return value will tell you whether the keyboard has input waiting -- if it returns with the timeout expired, there's not. If it returns WAIT_OBJECT_0, there is input waiting to be read. As yet another alternative, there's also GetNumberOfConsoleInputEvents, which tells you how much input is waiting to be read.
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| <urn:uuid:ac41bc78-b465-47c3-aeed-5941770986af> | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1624897/non-blocking-keyboard-on-wince-accessing-the-virtual-keyboard | en | 0.895355 | 0.032268 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I am running performance profile for a C# application on a virtual machine. The results shows a huge load of "JIT Compiler". When I dig further, it shows something called "Class Loader" as the only method getting called by JIT compiler.
What should I do to bring "JIT compiler" load down?
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up vote 1 down vote accepted
JIT is the 'Just In Time' compiler, this essentially compiles your C# into executable code that can work on the current processor.
.Net comes with a utility called NGEN, this creates a native image of your C# code, that doesn't need to be JIT'ted. There are downsides to this however, have a read of this:
And finally here's a link to the MS info about NGEN:
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So this means JIT load most likely comes at the startup only?? or the first time a function gets executed? – bsobaid Jul 16 '10 at 17:55
The JIT Load will come at startup, or dynamically loaded Assemblies. You'll also trigger it, in ASP.Net when using Control.LoadControl(). – Russ C Jul 19 '10 at 8:01
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You could try using NGEN to pre-JIT your assemblies to native images. This will lessen Jitting overhead on application load:
You should run this tool on the machine where your assemblies are i.e. your virtual machine.
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| <urn:uuid:b7d80a19-8d4f-431b-8fc8-28469b10ce03> | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3266238/performance-profile-shows-huge-jit-compiler-load/3266314 | en | 0.864383 | 0.059373 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
For my Eclipse plugin I have created a new perspective. This perspective consists of two views that I have created and a third view that is the default editor (as I assume). Now I want to open a source code file in the default editor. For this source code file I have only the source code in a String. So I may have first to create a temporary file. But more important: How can I access the default editor from my view? Couldn't find any documentation.
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up vote 3 down vote accepted
You have lots of options, but one of them is to call IDE.openEditor(). There are lots of variants of this, but they generally use a resource. BTW, and editor (EditorPart) and view (ViewPart) are different things in Eclipse, they are both implementations of a IWorkbenchPart.
You can also create a "hidden" resource if you like so that the file that you want to open is not visible in the workspace. If you just want a text editor the default editor can be fine, but you can also construct an IEditorInput to have more control over which sort of editor you want.
Specifically to create a resource:
IProject project = ResourcesPlugin.getWorkspace().getRoot().findProject("projectName");
IFile file = project.getFile("filename");
file.create(inputStream, true, null);
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I am not exactly sure, but I think IDE.openEditor(...) is what you are looking for. See here for more details.
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Thanks, this seems to be useful, but I don't know how to get a IFile from a String with source code. – RoflcoptrException Dec 17 '11 at 16:23
I edited my answer to add this. – Francis Upton Dec 17 '11 at 16:51
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| <urn:uuid:e8498c9b-af43-48af-ada2-0fefb4dcdf74> | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8546013/eclipse-plugin-development-how-to-access-the-default-editor | en | 0.897621 | 0.157576 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I am working on completely redeveloped website and sales system and have come up against this Max_connections issue surprisingly quickly.
I posted this question: Closing/Pooling MySQL ODBC connections Recently, but have since tried a few other things, still drawing a blank, but have more detail to offer...
I have a built a pretty complex sales process, and in creating an invoice I seem to be leaving 7 "processes" running each time. I have counted the number of times the data connection is used during the process of creating an invoice, and it is 7-9 depending on a few conditional values, so effectively the data connections are not closing at all.
To try to speed up coding, I have made a couple of functions which handle my database connectivity, so I will post these below.
Firstly, my connection string is:
"DRIVER={MySQL ODBC 3.51 Driver}; SERVER=mysql.dc-servers.com; DATABASE=jamieha_admin; UID=USERID; PASSWORD=pWD; OPTION=3;pooled=true;Max Pool Size=100"
The functions which I am using to open and close and do stuff with the database are as follows:
Function connectionString(sql As String, closeConnection As String) As OdbcConnection
Dim DBConnection As String = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings("dbConnNew").ConnectionString
'this is getting the connection string from web.config file.
Dim oConnection As OdbcConnection = New OdbcConnection(DBConnection) 'call data connection
connectionString = New OdbcConnection(DBConnection)
If closeConnection <> "close" Then _
connectionString.Open() ' open data connection
End Function
This function gives me a OdbcConnection Connection String Object, which I can then use with:
Function openDatabase(sql As String) As OdbcCommand
openDatabase = New OdbcCommand(sql, connectionString(sql, ""))
End Function
This function creates a useable data object when called doing something like:
Dim stockLevel As OdbcCommand = openDatabase("SQL STATEMENT HERE")
Dim objDataReader As OdbcDataReader = stockLevel.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior.CloseConnection)
'=== DO STUFF WITH objDataReader ==='
Having read up trying to ensure data connections were closing properly and so on I read that adding (CommandBehavior.CloseConnection) should ensure that the connection is closed when no longer used, but this doesn't seem to be happening, so I have created a separate "closeCOnnection" function, which looks like:
Function closeConn()
If connectionString("", "", "close") IsNot Nothing AndAlso connectionString("", "close").State = ConnectionState.Open Then
connectionString("", "close").Close()
connectionString("", "close").Dispose()
End If
End Function
This is called after every use of the openDatabase function and also within the functions I have created for insert/update and delete, which look like this:
Function insertData(InsertSql As String)
Dim dataInsert = openDatabase(InsertSql, "new")
End Function
I am not sure whether making all these functions is making my life easier or harder, but I was trying to reduce the code in each file where data acceess is required, but I'm not convinced it has.
However, it has made it clear where and when I am opening and closing the database (or at least trying to)
The processes are not being closed though. If I run my sale process through 3 or 4 times in quick succession, with these 7 processes still being live and added to, I get the max_connections issue.
Not completely understanding how database connections work, I am afraid I am at a loss with this and hence having to ask you... again!!
Can anyone tell me:
a) Is my connection string correct, is there a better connection available for MySQL?
b) Using this method, creating a ODBCConnection Object, is it possible to close it within a function like this?
c) Why is (CommandBehavior.CloseConnection) not closing the connection (this problem arose before I tried closing the connection manually)
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Added the VB.NET tag – Bueller Jan 9 '12 at 17:31
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1 Answer
up vote 3 down vote accepted
Unfortunately the issues you are having come from your design and a mishandling of references to connections.
But don't worry. It's not difficult to fix. :-)
In VB.Net you always need to access data in the following pattern:
1. Create a connection.
2. Create a command which uses the connection (including adding any parameter values).
3. Open the connection.
4. Execute the command.
5. Close the connection.
There are variations of this, such as looping over rows before closing the connection, but generally this is how it works. In order to ensure that the connection is closed, VB.Net provides Try/Finally blocks and Using statements. You need to use one of these to make sure the connections are closed.
I'll show you what I mean by rewriting your methods in the proper manner.
Firstly, wrap your connection-creation code into a function.
Function GetConnection() As OdbcConnection
GetConnection = New OdbcConnection(DBConnection)
End Function
Secondly, write a function to create your command. (openDatabase is the wrong name, so I have changed it to CreateCommand).
Function CreateCommand(sql As String, connection As OdbcConnection) As OdbcCommand
CreateCommand = New OdbcCommand(sql, connection)
End Function
Now when you wish to execute a query or a statement in the database, you can follow this pattern:
Dim connection As OdbcConnection = GetConnection()
Dim stockLevel As OdbcCommand = CreateCommand("SQL STATEMENT HERE", connection)
Dim objDataReader As OdbcDataReader = stockLevel.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior.CloseConnection)
End Try
Using the Try/Finally block means that the connection will always be closed correctly, even when an Exception causes the code to return before you expect it to.
An alternative shorthand is the Using statement (which effectively does exactly the same thing as the Dispose in a Finally block):
Dim connection As OdbcConnection = GetConnection()
Using connection
Dim objDataReader As OdbcDataReader = stockLevel.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior.CloseConnection)
End Using
And if you want to wrap your InsertData function in a command, you can do it like this:
Dim connection As OdbcConnection = GetConnection()
Dim stockLevel As OdbcCommand = CreateCommand(InsertSql, connection)
Using connection
Dim result As Integer = stockLevel.ExecuteNonQuery()
End Using
I suspect that the first time you tried this, you were leaving your connections open without ever closing them. I also assume (from what you wrote) that you added the closeConn method to sort that out. Unfortunately, every time you call connectionString you are actually creating and opening a new connection, which you then call Close or Dispose on. The initial connection is never closed.
Hope that helps.
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Whoops! Forgot to add the opening of the connection in my first edit. Updated now. – Richard Jan 9 '12 at 21:38
Not by my computer now, on my phone, but that looks exactly what I was trying to achieve!! Thanks, I'll try it out later and report back! :) – Jamie Hartnoll Jan 9 '12 at 22:27
OK, so far so good. Couple of questions: Firstly; When you need to connect to the database several times during the course of a script, would you open the connection at the top using connection and then close right at the end end using or would you open and close specifically each time it's required? Second, does end using ALWAYS close the connection? – Jamie Hartnoll Jan 10 '12 at 10:19
I only usually answer for votes (hint ;-)), but as you asked so nicely... When you use a connection pool you are actually doing the work of creating connections up-front, and grabbing a connection from the pool is very lightweight. So the best thing to do is to open and close again as soon as you can. The Using statement always calls the Dispose method on the resources passed to it, even when an exception occurs. Calling Dispose on a connection automatically closes it. – Richard Jan 10 '12 at 11:29
Brilliant. Voted up and accepted! Thanks so much, that was exactly the answer I was looking for! It's all working now and only one process can be seen at any time! :D – Jamie Hartnoll Jan 10 '12 at 12:00
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| <urn:uuid:8704a305-a6c9-4ed3-af89-4540fe4effa6> | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8792472/mysql-dataconnections-not-closing-pooling?answertab=votes | en | 0.895185 | 0.70897 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
(1 x 22 minutes)
The night sky fascinated the ancient Greeks, and they recognized patters in the stars, and created myths to explain them. Here are three of the most popular:
- Orion, in which a mortal, but ever-boastful hunter named Orion catches the eye of the great hunter- goddess Artemis. But when Atermis' twin brother Apollo finds out, things don't go too well for poor Orion.
- Callisto, in which a once-beautiful women is turned into a bear and then almost killed by her own son, until Zeus steps in to set things right.
- Andromeda, in which a vain queen's boasting almost ruins her daughter's life, until the hero Perseus shows up on his winged horse to save her from the jaws of a terrible sea monster.
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Loading videos… | <urn:uuid:86e571b2-d9ca-4ab4-bd6c-5a90fb645546> | http://vimeo.com/24585339 | en | 0.952112 | 0.075305 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Obsessive loner, 21, jailed for sophisticated hacking scam that netted him Porsche and gold bullion
By Daily Mail Reporter
Alistair Peckover
Jailed: Alistair Peckover carried out a lucrative online fraud operation to feed his gambling habit
An 'obsessive loner' who carried out a sophisticated and lucrative online fraud operation to feed his gambling habit was jailed today.
Using sophisticated computer programmes, some of which he wrote himself, 'Peckover remotely viewed files of other computer users without their knowledge or consent.
He misused systems by such internationally known names as Google and BT and breached security barriers to target online betting sites and individual email accounts.
Police said Peckover then placed 'filters' on all the email accounts. Any email that contained key words including 'sort code', 'exp' or 'amazon' would be deleted from the user's inbox without them knowing.
Using a computer 'fake mail' programme, Peckover would take the identity of the original sender and continue correspondence with the victim.
Money recovered from Alistair Peckover
GainsL Police recovered this money following the computer hacker's arrest
Passports in three names he used were also found.
Porsche 911 Turbo
Flash lifestyle: The 21-year-old computer whizz spent the proceeds of his fraud on a Porsche and gold bullion (file pictures)
Profits he obtained from his method of deception were often moved into one of his many personal bank accounts, and some of it would be spent on expensive items.
Detective Constable Des Hamilton, of Sussex Police's major fraud unit, said: 'This is a classic example of a self-taught, obsessive loner with real computer skills but no concern for his impact on other people.
'He was caught time and again but seemed completely uncaring about others.
Further inquiries are being conducted by Sussex Police into Peckover's finances.
The property and cash seized has already been frozen and there will be a court confiscation hearing under the Proceeds of Crime Act to seek to strip Peckover of everything found.
Both Google and BT were made aware of the security breaches and have made arrangements to prevent them happening again, a police spokesman said. | <urn:uuid:df82d2fd-d0f4-4e0a-b3b4-eec948b7c210> | http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1287407/Alistair-Peckover-Obsessive-loner-jailed-sophisticated-hacking-scam-netted-Porsche-gold-bullion.html | en | 0.970411 | 0.041596 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Decisions Decisions...
#1Tavy89Posted 5/17/2013 3:53:44 AM
I just bought my 3DS two days ago (and loving it) and today, now that I have been paid, I'm going to get another game. The problem is I can't decide between Tales of the Abyss and Ocarina of Time. I've never really played a Zelda game (I bypassed the N64 and didn't bother on other consoles) but everyone raves about Ocarina. Thing is there is a lot of people talking about Tales of as well and I have played other games in that series and enjoyed them.
Decision is mine to make of course but any recommendations?
(Hopefully unbiased ones cos this is the actual 3DS board and not one of the games boards...)
(PS3 Versus 360) Versus WII U Versus PC.
#2DampeThePoeHuntPosted 5/17/2013 4:06:18 AM
I haven't played Tales of Abyss but I can tell you don't want to pass up on Ocarina of Time. It's a really great experience on the 3DS.
3DS FC: 5413-1158-6036 Name: John. PM me to exchange, don't be a Shyguy.
#3Aarosmashguy27Posted 5/17/2013 4:16:25 AM
I like OoT more on the N64. Link doesn't roll as awkwardly and there are a plethora of glitches to exploit. The 3ds version is still pretty good though.
#4crispyoPosted 5/17/2013 4:42:50 AM
I am (or was) like you, never been a zelda fan and had only briefly played 1 or 2 of them, but OoT was a great surprise for me. Fantastic game and port to the 3ds. It was my first 3ds game too.
3DS FC: 4253-3731-6211
#5noobody1Posted 5/17/2013 6:24:44 AM
There is no decision. There is only Ocarina of Time
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#6BeanBeanKingdomPosted 5/17/2013 6:28:34 AM
Abyss is definitely worth playing, especially if you liked other games in the franchise, but go with Ocarina since you've never played Zelda.
#7stargazer64Posted 5/17/2013 6:29:57 AM
I got tired of Tales after around 4 hours. There's nothing really wrong with it, but it didn't capture my interest. And I don't even have the standard complaint of disliking the main character, as I thought his antics were funny.
The kind of love that makes us functional members of society, the kind of love that makes you consider others' power levels...
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#8x_stevey_xPosted 5/17/2013 6:42:18 AM(edited)
i hear the zelda "port" is really good and enhanced .. where as the tales port is very lackluster and identical at best
that being said i played both on their original systems and they are both very good.. though OOT is god tier and tales is a notch or two below.. no contest pick OOT!
#9BeanBeanKingdomPosted 5/17/2013 6:46:04 AM
The Tales port is alright, it's just the same exact game as the PS2 version with 3D and much shorter load times. Not worth buying again if you have the PS2 version, while I can easily recommend OOT3D to someone who's already played the original.
#10badboyPosted 5/17/2013 6:48:52 AM
Both are games not to be missed. | <urn:uuid:51618ce6-e93e-4b8f-b629-77c79f81d4b1> | http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/997614-nintendo-3ds/66215805 | en | 0.965156 | 0.025456 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Jewish Journal
Why I Became a NFTY Freak
by Lauren Peikoff
March 2, 2006 | 7:00 pm
Debbie Friedman, celebrated Jewish songwriter and singer, wrote the words, "The youth shall see visions." For decades, this song has had a profound impact on Jewish youth of America, instilling value and hope among a generation in search of themselves.
In October of my junior year, I "saw my vision" and embarked on a journey that will shape me for the rest of my life.
It was a cool California Friday, and I had packed up my duffel bag to head off to NFTY Southern California's Leadership Training Institute. NFTY, the Reform movement's North American Federation of Temple Youth, has become a huge influence on my life as a teenager, and as a Jew.
NFTY has been around for more than half a century and consists of 19 regions around North America, hosting monthly weekend retreats for Jewish high school students. Each weekend encompasses social action, prayer and socializing. NFTY's primary job is to confirm Jewish identity in teenagers while providing them with tools for their future as Jews -- knowledge of prayer and customs, traditional songs, and lifelong friends on the same journey.
I had always had a strong Jewish identity. I am an assistant teacher at religious school at Temple Adat Elohim in Thousand Oaks and have spent 10 summers at Camp Alonim. I know all the prayers like the back of my hand and feel a religious connection to my faith. But when I got to NFTY, I finally felt like I could fully realize my Jewish identity.
NFTY SoCal was an instantly inviting environment. The second I stepped out of the car for that weekend Leadership Institute, I entered the most seminal chapter of my life. Instantaneously I was greeted with big smiles and warm hugs, and I knew that I was going to belong. From the first Shabbat service, I knew my life was about to be enriched with something it had never seen before. After the event concluded on Sunday, I became a devout NFTY freak, counting down the days until the next NFTY event and constantly talking with my new friends.
NFTY inspires youth to change the world. No, NFTY shows the youth that it is up to them to change it. Social action programming, leadership training and intensive lessons in Judaism have provided youth with the framework to lead. NFTY is constantly inspiring all and assuring them that they do mean something to this world, not something miniscule, but something with a massive impact and great importance.
One of Judaism's highest held values is tikkun olam, repairing the world. In NFTY, we learn about the hardships and challenges that face our earth, and we use our knowledge to educate others on these issues -- such as the genocide in Sudan, the kidnapped children in Uganda and modern-day slavery in America and the rest of the world. We have also participated in donating money to relief organizations and contributed endless hours of making bracelets and blankets for recently freed slaves in Los Angeles.
If it were not for NFTY, I would not even know that there was a genocide and that there are still slaves today.
Many people ask me: "Why are you so Jewish? Why are you so religious?" At times I hesitate to answer because my response may shock others, yet most of the time I reply: "I stand up for the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust just because they were Jewish. I have a Jewish identity because I am fortunate enough to be able to have one and not be afraid."
NFTY has taught me to appreciate life so much more, and to be proud to be Jewish because so many millions of Jews could not be proud of whom they were without fatal consequences. A poem written by Chad Rochkind, a NFTY alumnus, reads, "To be a NFTYite is to know that the words, 'And the youth shall see visions' are more than just a song."
I now know that these words are truly more than lyrics, they are a way of life that NFTY inspires, and they have shaped my path as a Jew, as a leader, and as a human being.
For information on NFTY, visit www.nfty.org.
Lauren Peikoff is a senior at Agoura High School, where she is in Jewish Club and on the Class of 2006 Steering Committee. She is programming vice president of the youth group at Temple Adat Elohim in Thousand Oaks.
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Witold Lutoslawski: Livre Pour Orchestra
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Media: Sheet Music
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Commissioned by the town of Hagen and first performed there in 1968 by the Stadtisches Orchester, conducted by Berthold Lehmann. Duration, c.20 mins.
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Substituting liquid aminos for soy sauce and sugar-free syrup for orange juice reduces the sugar and increases the healthfulness of this classic Asian-inspired dish.
4 tablespoons low-carb bake mix (such as Atkins Nutritionals brand)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
4(4-ounce) fresh tuna steaks or 1 pound fresh tuna, cut into 4 (4-ounce) steaks
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon sesame oil
3 tablespoons Bragg liquid aminos
3 tablespoons orange flavored 0-carb syrup (such as Davinci Gourmet brand)
1/3 cup water
1 tablespoon fresh or bottled unsweetened lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon cumin powder
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
3/4 teaspoon low-carb thickener such as Expert Foods NotStarch or Gram's Gourmet Quick Thick'ner) Directions:
1. Combine the bake mix, salt, pepper and sesame seeds in a large plastic bag. One at a time, add the tuna steaks, seal the bag, and shake well to coat each piece.
2. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet. Add the tuna steaks and cook through, turning once (should take about five minutes per side to reach "medium-well", per half-inch of thickness). Remove tuna to a serving platter; keep warm.
3. Add the liquid glaze ingredients to the hot pan, followed by the spices, and cook and stir until it comes to boil. Add thickener VERY slowly, stirring constantly. Continue to cook and stir until desired consistency is reached. Drizzle lightly over tuna on platter; pass remaining sauce at the table.
Makes 4 (4-ounce) servings.
Per serving:4.50g carbohydrates; 1.21g fiber; 32.90g protein; 15.07g fat; 43.09mg cholesterol; 883.25mg sodium; 280.70 calories
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You are here: HomeU.S. NewsPoliticsMisrepresenting Mexican Gun Origins
Tuesday, 07 April 2009 07:45
Misrepresenting Mexican Gun Origins
Written by
Fox News has completely blown apart the mantra being chanted by politicians and the news media that 90 percent of the guns used in crimes in Mexico come from the United States. Fact is, says Fox News, only about 17 percent are trickling in from north of the border, and some of those legally.
Why such a disparity in the numbers?
It seems that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Assistant Director William Hoover testified before Congress planting the first misinterpretation firmly in the minds of the listeners by saying, “There is more than enough evidence to indicate that over 90 percent of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or interdicted in transport to Mexico, originated from various sources within the United States.” This chant was subsequently repeated by CBS newsman Bob Schieffer, Madame Secretary Hillary Clinton, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).
But then the statistics were “clarified” by an ATF spokeswoman, who told Fox News that “over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S.” (Emphasis added.)
ATF Special Agent William Newell reports Mexico submited 11,000 guns to the United States for tracing in 2007-2008. However, the Mexican government recovered 29,000 guns, according to the Mexican attorney general’s office. That means that most of the guns recovered were never submitted for tracing. In fact, the 5,114 guns reportedly traced to the United States represents only about 17 percent of the total — which means that 83 percent of guns found at Mexican crime scenes were not traceable to the United States.
The guns surfacing in Mexico have more often been found to come from places like South America, Central America, and Asia. FARC, the Colombian terrorist group, smuggles arms to the Tijuana drug cartel; many AK-47s are from China, as China is a major supplier for Africa and Latin America; the M-16s made in Belgium and issued to Mexican soldiers abound because of rampant military desertions; rocket fire launchers are manufactured by Soviet bloc nations, and also come in from Spain and Israel; Russian crime organizations routinely ship arms into Mexico; grenades from China and North Korea are aplenty; and neighbor Guatemala is a major trafficking center that easily moves the arms into Mexico.
Some U.S. manufactured guns do enter Mexico legally, under contract. The U.S. government approved Colt as a supplier for the Mexican military. These weapons are fully automatic and unavailable for purchase from U.S. gun dealers.
It’s ludicrous, then, that the American politicians and news media would fall back on a supposition that individuals in the U.S. enter local gun shops, and purchase single-shot rifles one at a time going through the whole process of background checks, and then somehow sell and/or smuggle them into Mexico for a price. There’s no need; the governments of other nations and crime syndicates already have a well-oiled black market system that continuously flood the country with massive arms shipments that include fully automatic weapons, grenades, and rocket launchers.
The “responsibility” for the disastrous drug wars in Mexico that Madame Secretary Clinton so happily laid at the feet of the American people would seem to be more than just a misrepresentation of reality. It may be a pretext for fueling the attack on guns.
Liberal anti-gun groups have joined the anti-gun politicians in touting the latest lie. One is the Violence Policy Center (VPC), which says it is a research, investigation, analysis, and advocacy center for a “Safer America.” Their website is full of nonsensical calls for the United States to stop importing “assault weapons” that can then be “illegally trafficked into Mexico.” Disregarding the truth, Tom Diaz, senior policy analyst at (VPC), called the "90 percent" issue a red herring and said that it should not detract from the effort to stop gun trafficking into Mexico from the United States.
This newest mythical problem will almost certainly be countered by a solution that does nothing to solve the weapons smuggling going on in Mexico, but will more likely involve more regulation of guns, with a weakening or outright trampling of Second Amendment rights.
Image: William La Jeunesse from Fox News
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Take the 2-minute tour ×
My house next year will have the option of two separate phone lines, with two different numbers. I could theoretically set up two networks, with two modems and two routers.
Is there a way to configure a single modem/router to use both?
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You could use two modems with a Dual-WAN router, although load-balancing would be rather pointless in a home, in my opinion. Why pay for two broadband contracts?
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There are plenty of great Dual WAN routers, including the SonicWall TZ-200 and TZ-210 (my personal favorites.) Your max speed on a single connection will still only be the max speed of one of your lines, but if you are doing something that connects to multiple sources (such as torrenting or other p2p activity), it will max out both connections. – James Watt Aug 11 '10 at 12:46
"Why pay for two broadband contracts?" Because WOW is SOOO better with two cable connections than with one. /sarcasm. Hopefully Gyppo has a good use of the bandwidth in mind. – J. Polfer Aug 11 '10 at 12:49
It's for a house with 11 students in it, who all use the internet a lot. So theoretically there will be multiple sources, so a Dual-WAN router should work great, thanks. – Gyppo Aug 17 '10 at 23:32
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Check eBay for old Netopia analog routers. I had one of those back in the day. It had 2 built-in modems and a serial port for a third external modem.
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Businessweek Archives
Commentary: Breast Implant Cases: Let The Science Testify
News: Analysis & Commentary: COMMENTARY
It's a legal nightmare. Years after the implant controversy began, U.S. courts are still clogged with tens of thousands of lawsuits from women alleging that the devices made them sick. Yet no one has conclusively proved that the silicone sacs cause disease. So isn't it tempting to put the science on trial? Let a jury decide whether the claims have medical merit--or are the result of a legal system run amok.
That's essentially what the major implant maker, Dow Corning Corp., proposed on Dec. 2 as part of its bankruptcy-settlement plan. The idea: Have impartial, court-appointed experts lay out the scientific evidence in front of a jury of regular citizens picked by the court.
HARD LOOK. The proposal is an excellent idea, though putting it in place will be a tough sell. The hundreds of thousands of women (and their lawyers) claiming injury are already fighting the Dow gambit. But Dow's proposal is part of an encouraging trend: bringing more impartial science into the courtroom.
That surely would be bad news for the plaintiffs. In recent years, epidemiologists from institutions such as the Mayo Clinic & Foundation and Harvard University--who studied thousands of women with implants--failed to find a link between the devices and maladies such as scleroderma, joint pain, chronic fatigue, and arthritis. That's strong enough evidence for most juries to render a "not guilty" verdict. "This question has been answered to a degree that would satisfy almost any objective observer," argues Dr. John S. Sergent, chief medical officer at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, who has testified as an expert before a congressional panel. While some doctors say implants have caused disease in their patients, scientists don't consider anecdotal reports to be scientific evidence. They say the big studies have settled the question.
That means that Dow assumes it will win the "science trial" it is proposing. That would save the company a lot of money. Under the proposed settlement, Dow will spend $600 million compensating women for problems such as ruptured implants or injury to the breast. An additional $1.4 billion set aside for a host of diseases claimed to be caused by silicone wouldn't be disbursed if the claims are dismissed as invalid.
That's why plaintiff lawyers, who depend on wrenching tales of a victim's suffering to sway juries, can't accept Dow's plan. The proposed trial wouldn't give individual doctors an opportunity to testify. That means the jury would be unlikely to hear about a patient who got significantly better after her implants were removed. Such true-life stories are enough to cause even the most objective jury to wonder whether the evidence is as clear-cut as scientists say. While epidemiological studies can show that the risk posed by implants is small, they can never prove that no one was hurt.
CRACKDOWN. As some legal experts say it will simply take more time for the science to catch up to the litigation, some judges are taking matters into their own hands. In Birmingham, Ala., U.S. District Judge Sam C. Pointer Jr. took the unusual step of asking an impartial scientific panel to review all the evidence in an upcoming case. His tactic could embolden other judges to crack down on anecdotal, unscientific evidence. Already, an Oregon judge has barred plaintiffs' experts who can't produce strong scientific evidence from testifying. "I'm very happy to see judges acknowledging that the adversarial process has not worked well," says Dr. Marcia Angell, executive editor of New England Journal of Medicine.
The plaintiffs' bar won't take these developments lying down. Trial lawyers learned the hard way back in 1985, when things went terribly wrong from their perspective. Drugmaker Marion Merrell Dow Inc. used a "science trial" similar to that proposed by Dow to end hundreds of lawsuits alleging that the antinausea drug Bendectin caused birth defects. The lesson of the case, where emotional tales of individual woe were not presented, is that "lawyers have great difficulty winning if you delete the sympathy factor," admits New York trial lawyer Paul D. Rheingold.
Having courts try to pick impartial experts isn't without pitfalls, of course. Few scientists are truly impartial, and very little science is totally certain. But developments such as Judge Pointer's panel and Dow's proposal are on the right track.By John Carey
The Epic Hack
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`Good pie and a full life'
By David Holmstrom / January 14, 1987
HE was a farmer, a broad-shouldered, meaty old guy with a strip of white across his forehead from wearing a hat outside all the days of his life. From the forehead down his face was the color of Oklahoma clay, although he was in Illinois and about to give me the title for a book. I had just walked into a little caf'e in a small town clustered among big trees several miles off the main highway. It was a Friday morning in July with the day's red sun just now giving color to the puddles of last night's rain and making long shadows behind the trees. The town was surrounded by cornstalks.
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In the restaurant music played from a radio on a shelf above the pie rack. Two waitresses in different-colored dresses made trails back and forth among a dozen tables, and a third waitress, a teen-age girl with freckles and shy eyes, kept busy at the counter. A cook slammed and bumped things around in the kitchen.
A dozen people were eating, talking, or waiting for breakfast. When I walked in, they all looked up because I shouldn't have been there. Cross-country travelers like me were supposed to be six miles over, aiming big cars down the turnpike and staying at Howard Johnson's or a Motel 6. I had spent the night at a motel down the road. It had been built in the 1940s and was filled with the aroma of time and clean sheets instead of plastic and air conditioning.
All my life I have been in love with small towns. Now, in this town on this morning, I was a man in the midst of what he loved. I sat down three seats from the farmer, wanting to sit at the elbow of each person there and ask about their lives and how had they managed up to now and what were they doing that mattered to them.
As I pretended to look at the menu, I listened to the voices: The farmer was joking with the teen-age girl, the married couple behind me were discussing a troublesome relative, the taller of the two waitresses called everybody ``hon'' and chattered about a man named Bub who was late, and to my left the false teeth of two men clicked now and then as they grumbled about the high price of auto repairs.
The teen-age girl placed a glass of water in front of me and asked me what I wanted without looking at me.
``Two eggs over easy, orange juice, bacon, and toast,'' I said. ``Large or small orange juice?'' she said. ``Large,'' I said. She scribbled on a pad. ``Wheat or white toast?'' she said. ``Wheat,'' I said. She scribbled. ``Coffee?'' she asked. ``No, thanks,'' I said.
The farmer leaned over toward me, his gray overalls making a crinkling sound, his plaid, short-sleeved shirt straining against his enormous brown arms. ``She likes to dance,'' he said with a deep, rough voice, his blue eyes shining with gentle humor out of a face that could turn away black clouds. ``Look at the size of her feet.'' He shook with slow, low laughter when she tried hard not to smile.
``Just like yours,'' she said, which pleased him and he laughed again.
He was her grandfather and over the next half-hour at least a dozen people, men and women, drifted into the caf'e to say good morning to him. Clearly he was a man regarded with love and affection, shaking hands, slapping shoulders, everyone laughing together and at each other as they shared themselves on a small town morning away from the turnpike.
He had a manner that drew people to him, easy, ebullient, a man with a direct, open caring that jostled and fortified each person equally when he or she stopped to say good morning, some with a morning newspaper under an arm. Clearly he was a town institution, a parade, library, historian, and humorist all in one pair of overalls.
As each person came and went, he kept on eating, scrambled and fried eggs, hash browns, sausage, ham, toast, orange juice, tomato juice, a side order of French toast, a bowl of cereal, then another. Between bites he bantered, questioned, set people up, made them laugh, spun easy words around them, elongated their friendships, and ate and ate.
Finally, when I thought he had eaten the kitchen out of food, and when there was no one standing next to him, he pointed to a piece of cherry pie in the pie rack. It was the homemade kind, red cherries spilling out the sides and made with a crust that could float in the air.
I thought, pie for breakfast? Is he really eating pie for breakfast? He dug into it with his fork, telling his granddaughter to tell Brenda that she was second to none in the art of assembling 106 cherries in a pie tin and making them sing.
Then, when he finished, he pushed back the pie plate, exhaled with satisfaction, placed one hand on his stomach (which was not disproportionate to the rest of him), turned to me, and said slowly and with the deep peace of someone seated on a front porch at dusk, ``Good pie and a full life.''
He stood up, a fabulous giant at least 6 foot 7 or 8, reached in his pocket and peeled off a $20 bill and laid it on the counter. He nodded to me. The girl said, ``'Bye, Grandpa.'' He threw her a kiss and went outside to his pickup truck and drove off.
So, that's it. ``Good Pie and a Full Life.'' A short book, narrated by a farmer aware of his blessings, a big guy with unstoppable goodness, a book written as if you stopped by a small town caf'e some morning for a cherry pie breakfast and saw the world with a little more hope than usual. | <urn:uuid:e0d1d977-a29a-47b3-9797-20b4d79cc07c> | http://www.csmonitor.com/1987/0114/upie-f.html | en | 0.98566 | 0.037431 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Hangover Helper
A hopeless (and hapless) romantic on screens big and small, Ed Helms tells Andrew Goldman about one unforgettable love affair…with a box of cereal
Jason O'Dell/Contour by Getty Images
Here's what you'd sound like if you called your best friend to set her up with funny nice guy Ed Helms (right after she poses the inevitable pre–blind date question: How do I know he's not an ax murderer?): "Well, his daddy's a southern lawyer," you'd say, "just like Atticus Finch.... Not good enough for you? Okay, well, he plays banjo.... Yes, but the maniacs in Deliverance didn't play the banjo. Plus, in his freshman year at Oberlin, he sang in the Obertones, an all-male a cappella group.... No, I'm not kidding. I know, right? Serial killers don't go to Oberlin!" Of course, these days, you could just have your friend turn on The Office to catch the 37-year-old playing doggedly dweeby Andy "The Nard Dog" Bernard, or see him reprise his big-screen role as toothless Stu Price in The Hangover Part II. Helms is obviously no killer. Unfortunately for your friend, he does have a girlfriend—and he remains, unsurprisingly, a one-woman kinda guy.
ELLE: Did you ever get any worthless advice about women?
ED HELMS: I did get an awful lot of terrible advice from the older kids on my street. This isn't dating advice, but it will give you an idea of the kind of miseducation I had: I remember the older kids were talking about being hungover, and I said, "What's a hangover?" This kid Josh turns to me and goes, "It's when you wake up in the morning and you hang your dick over the back of a chair."
ELLE: Any other strange childhood misconceptions about human sexuality?
EH: I did for a time think that if you touched a woman's boob, she became pregnant. That was terrifying.
ELLE: Would it have to be skin on skin, or could pregnancy occur after brushing against a breast in an elevator?
EH: It had to be intentional—if you reached up and grabbed someone's boob, she would become pregnant. I think maybe it was just some really demented math equation in my head about the fact that boobs have something to do with sex and babies come from sex.
ELLE: You grew up in Atlanta. What parts of the old South still exist in the city's mating rituals?
EH: The debutante phenomenon still exists. The summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college, I was an escort for one of my friends, and I presented her at the ball. That's pretty old-school. Even though you're wearing a tuxedo and the girls are literally wearing corsets and hoop dresses, these things just turn into DJ parties by the end of the night.
ELLE: I had a friend who was a debutante in Texas, and she told me that in order to be transported to the events in those gowns, the girls had to be strapped, standing, into huge moving vans.
EH: Yeah, like a box truck. I'm not surprised. I never saw that, but I believe it.
ELLE: You had open-heart surgery for a heart murmur when you were 14. If you'd died on the operating table, and I was entrusted to write your posthumous sexual biography, what would have to be included?
EH: That I died with a heartbreaking crush on one of my nurses. And that I'd had lots of sex by that point, but just by myself.
ELLE: You've described yourself as a high school nerd. Provide me with one detail that proves this.
EH: There are many. My friend and I sang an a cappella rendition of Extreme's "More Than Words" at one of our football pep rallies in a desperate attempt to look cool. For a while, I wore pink Converse All Stars because I thought it made me seem daring and irreverent.
ELLE: You had me at "More Than Words." Before joining The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, you did a lot of sketch work and improv in New York. Did being onstage come with a period of great sexual bounty?
EH: I don't know what comedy clubs you're going to. No. You have to understand that, sort of philosophically, I've always had this hurdle with promiscuity. Maybe it's been out of fear and insecurity, but unless a woman pulls me into a closet and rips my clothes off, I'm never confident that I can make something happen. I had a lot of fun in my early twenties, but I don't know that there was ever a period that I would describe as "sexual bounty."
ELLE: Have things changed significantly since you became famous?
EH: It's funny—I have, like, skills in that department, but it's not really what I want anymore. When I didn't have the skills, it's all I wanted. As I've become more confident and secure in terms of what I want, I've been much more relationship-oriented, for the last six, seven, eight years.
ELLE: What's the angriest you ever saw your mother?
EH: My mom was a health nut, and we never had sugar cereals in the house. Raisin Bran was the sweetest thing we got. I went to my best friend Nick's house and he had Honey Nut Cheerios in the cupboard. I couldn't believe he had unfettered access to it. I kid you not, I ate about 10 bowls in a row in the middle of the afternoon. Nick's mom called my mom and was like, "What the hell is going on? Your son just ate an entire box of my family's cereal." I got in a lot of trouble.
ELLE: The poignant part of that story is that you gorged on a cereal that in many families would be the healthy alternative to Trix.
EH: You're right. But my mother said if sugar is one of the first three ingredients, then it's a sugar cereal. Honey Nut Cheerios was on the blacklist.
ELLE: Tell me about your most awkward interaction with a famous woman.
EH: A couple years ago I was introduced to Julia Louis-Dreyfus at a party, and I've been such a big fan of hers for so long that I gave her this big hug that was, like, too familiar—one of those hugs that you'd give a dear friend.
ELLE: Did you feel a tenseness when you were holding on to her?
EH: She was perfectly gracious and warm, but there was a certain lack of reciprocation. In that moment, I could feel that the intensity of my hug was not being reciprocated. A light went off, like, Oh my God. This is a little much.
This Is A Developing Story
Don't Miss | <urn:uuid:6b3ab09f-d12a-4218-8bc0-96900b6e1599> | http://www.elle.com/pop-culture/celebrities/ed-helmes-hangover-2-intervew | en | 0.983084 | 0.420234 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Protestors in Hartford last week. (Staff photo / February 27, 2013)
Josemaria Islas has been targeted by federal immigration authorities as "a priority for removal" under a deportation program that is supposed to focus on stone-cold criminals like drug dealers, rapists and murderers.
Islas, an undocumented immigrant living in New Haven with his sister, nephews and brother, isn't any of those things.
His most serious "crime" in the eyes of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents is that he keeps on sneaking into the United States to find work.
Last week, despite loud protests from Connecticut activists and his family and a civil disobedience action that led to four arrests, a federal judge in Hartford ordered Islas be deported back to Mexico. Reform activists in this state say his case has become a symbol of what's wrong with America's dysfunctional immigration policies, a system that's now under fire from both Democrats and Republicans.
According to ICE, Islas tried four times in August and September 2005 to find a way into the U.S.A. On each occasion, he was caught and sent back across the border.
But on his fifth attempt, Islas made it and found his way to Connecticut and got a job at a Hamden factory. He was on his lunch break last June when he was picked up by local cops looking for suspects in an attempted robbery. Immigration activists say the only description police had was of "a short, brown man," which Islas happens to be.
He was jailed for four months. His advocates insist he had nothing to do with the alleged crime, and ended up taking a plea bargain that scaled the charges back to disorderly conduct simply to get out from behind bars.
"The judge was going to let him go," explains David Amdur, a volunteer with Unidad Latina en Accion, a New Haven-based group working to help Islas in his fight with immigration authorities.
As part of his plea bargain, Islas was also granted accelerated rehabilitation, commonly known as "AR." That's a program in Connecticut that allows all charges to be wiped off a defendant's record if he or she completes required probation, and AR is never used in the case of people charged with serious crimes. Now that he's finished probation, Islas doesn't technically have any criminal record.
Despite those facts, Connecticut judicial marshals called immigration officials because Islas was on a computerized list put out under the federal Secure Communities (or S-Comm) program.
President Obama's administration says the program is only supposed to be used to deport hardened and dangerous criminals. Critics insist that hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who've committed no major crimes have been sent out of the U.S. under S-Comm.
S-Comm has become so controversial that Connecticut officials ordered special reviews of any ICE requests for undocumented immigrants being held in state prisons. Those reviews were supposed to make certain that only people with serious felony records would be turned over for deportation.
Islas apparently fell right through a loophole in that state policy. He was being held by judicial marshals and wasn't in the state corrections system.
ICE spokesman Ross Feinstein insists his agency "has adopted common-sense policies nationwide that ensure our immigration laws are enforced in a way that best enhances public safety, border security and the integrity of the immigration system."
As for Islas not being convicted of any felony, Feinstein noted that he "was originally charged with a serious criminal offense of conspiracy to commit robbery." In a statement issued last week, Feinstein acknowledges that Islas was granted accelerated rehabilitation, but fails to mention that his completion of that probation means he's got no criminal record in this state.
Of course, ICE also targets anyone who "repeatedly violated immigration laws."
Amdur admits Islas broke U.S. immigration laws by repeatedly trying to get across the border. "But that is not a criminal violation," Amdur points out. "That's a civil violation of the immigration laws."
And so his case has become a rallying cry for immigration reform advocates in Connecticut. Four people were arrested last week for trying to block the doorway to the federal building where a judge was ordering Islas to be deported.
Gregory Williams, a Yale Divinity School student who was one of those arrested, says he and the others charged with federal disorderly conduct aren't planning to pay the $175 fines they now face.
"We're going to refuse to pay the fine," says Williams. He says a court trial will offer another opportunity to continue the protest against Islas' deportation. "We want to put as much public pressure as we can on ICE and the courts to reconsider [Islas'] deportation order," Williams says.
Islas, 34, now has 30 days to appeal his deportation ruling and no date for sending him back to Mexico has been set. ICE lawyers could decide to use "prosecutorial discretion" and not push for deportation in this case, says Megan Fountain, of Unidad Latino en Accion.
Follow @GregoryBHladky on Twitter | <urn:uuid:8418445f-50d5-4f14-9fbc-86a1c2d63020> | http://www.mcall.com/topic/nm-ht09ncimmigration-20130226,0,6780064.story | en | 0.980398 | 0.035075 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Carter "non continued" my position last summer. I've given a huge box of papers over to state auditors clearly showing abuse of authority, waste of funds, incompetent management, and deliberate violation of security and privacy rules and guidelines and it has not even been looked at. Carter runs his office by intimidation and double-speak. He has gotten rid of two security officers, just as they got wind of what was up. Dr. Norton is an excellent President and I congradulate her for holding out and getting an appropriate severence. Carter has wasted MUCH more money than that - someone should do a real investigation. | <urn:uuid:9062dd30-8bb4-479f-a02e-5cf631b141ee> | http://www.topix.com/forum/colleges/southern-connecticut-state-university/TPEBIA7DS5V2KSIGM | en | 0.979524 | 0.100645 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Manna and Quail from Heaven
1Then the whole community of Israel set out from Elim and journeyed into the wilderness of Sin,# The geographical name Sin is related to Sinai and should not be confused with the English word sin. between Elim and Mount Sinai. They arrived there on the fifteenth day of the second month, one month after leaving the land of Egypt.# The Exodus had occurred on the fifteenth day of the first month (see Num 33:3). 2There, too, the whole community of Israel complained about Moses and Aaron.
6So Moses and Aaron said to all the people of Israel, “By evening you will realize it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt. 7In the morning you will see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your complaints, which are against him, not against us. What have we done that you should complain about us?” 8Then Moses added, “The Lord will give you meat to eat in the evening and bread to satisfy you in the morning, for he has heard all your complaints against him. What have we done? Yes, your complaints are against the Lord, not against us.”
9Then Moses said to Aaron, “Announce this to the entire community of Israel: ‘Present yourselves before the Lord, for he has heard your complaining.’” 10And as Aaron spoke to the whole community of Israel, they looked out toward the wilderness. There they could see the awesome glory of the Lord in the cloud.
13That evening vast numbers of quail flew in and covered the camp. And the next morning the area around the camp was wet with dew. 14When the dew evaporated, a flaky substance as fine as frost blanketed the ground. 15The Israelites were puzzled when they saw it. “What is it?” they asked each other. They had no idea what it was.
And Moses told them, “It is the food the Lord has given you to eat. 16These are the Lord’s instructions: Each household should gather as much as it needs. Pick up two quarts# Hebrew 1 omer [2 liters]; also in 16:32, 33. for each person in your tent.”
17So the people of Israel did as they were told. Some gathered a lot, some only a little. 18But when they measured it out,# Hebrew measured it with an omer. everyone had just enough. Those who gathered a lot had nothing left over, and those who gathered only a little had enough. Each family had just what it needed.
19Then Moses told them, “Do not keep any of it until morning.” 20But some of them didn’t listen and kept some of it until morning. But by then it was full of maggots and had a terrible smell. Moses was very angry with them.
21After this the people gathered the food morning by morning, each family according to its need. And as the sun became hot, the flakes they had not picked up melted and disappeared. 22On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much as usual—four quarts# Hebrew 2 omers [4 liters]. for each person instead of two. Then all the leaders of the community came and asked Moses for an explanation. 23He told them, “This is what the Lord commanded: Tomorrow will be a day of complete rest, a holy Sabbath day set apart for the Lord. So bake or boil as much as you want today, and set aside what is left for tomorrow.”
24So they put some aside until morning, just as Moses had commanded. And in the morning the leftover food was wholesome and good, without maggots or odor. 25Moses said, “Eat this food today, for today is a Sabbath day dedicated to the Lord. There will be no food on the ground today. 26You may gather the food for six days, but the seventh day is the Sabbath. There will be no food on the ground that day.”
27Some of the people went out anyway on the seventh day, but they found no food. 28The Lord asked Moses, “How long will these people refuse to obey my commands and instructions? 29They must realize that the Sabbath is the Lord’s gift to you. That is why he gives you a two-day supply on the sixth day, so there will be enough for two days. On the Sabbath day you must each stay in your place. Do not go out to pick up food on the seventh day.” 30So the people did not gather any food on the seventh day.
31The Israelites called the food manna.# Manna means “What is it?” See 16:15. It was white like coriander seed, and it tasted like honey wafers.
32Then Moses said, “This is what the Lord has commanded: Fill a two-quart container with manna to preserve it for your descendants. Then later generations will be able to see the food I gave you in the wilderness when I set you free from Egypt.”
33Moses said to Aaron, “Get a jar and fill it with two quarts of manna. Then put it in a sacred place before the Lord to preserve it for all future generations.” 34Aaron did just as the Lord had commanded Moses. He eventually placed it in the Ark of the Covenant—in front of the stone tablets inscribed with the terms of the covenant.# Hebrew He placed it in front of the Testimony; see note on 25:16. 35So the people of Israel ate manna for forty years until they arrived at the land where they would settle. They ate manna until they came to the border of the land of Canaan.
36The container used to measure the manna was an omer, which was one-tenth of an ephah; it held about two quarts.# Hebrew An omer is one-tenth of an ephah.
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| <urn:uuid:fe5074f9-1ced-49d4-9127-f4f65a918e3a> | https://www.bible.com/en-GB/bible/116/exo.16.4.nlt | en | 0.976049 | 0.025468 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Ginny was even happier this year to be going back to Hogwarts for her fourth year. She would be sitting with her best friend in Ravenclaw, Luna Lovegood. Ginny was laying in her bed, daydreaming about the last night she and Luna had spent together.
"It's so beautiful out tonight," Luna murmured, absently stroking Ginny's hair, as the other girl was laying with her head in the blond's lap. *Not nearly as beautiful as you,* Ginny thought but said, "Yeah, I think it's always beautiful here at Hogwarts." "I agree," Luna smiled down at her.
Ginny felt a blush heat her cheeks as she smiled back. Luna returned her gaze to the stars as did Ginny after a few more moments of gazing at the pale beauty.
Ginny was shaken from her reveire by a scratching at the window. It was an owl. She got up and opened the window. The owl landed on her bed, holding out it's foot so she could take the attached letter.
Dear Ginny,
I can't wait to see you at Hogwarts. I've missed our long talks while we looked upon the stars. And of course I missed how we would sneak off to the Room of I'll see you tomorrow, which I don't think is soon enough.
Ginny read the letter twice, her heartbeat quickening as she read how her friend had signed it 'Love'. *How can I ever tell you how I feel?* Ginny thought, and with a sigh she out the letter in her trunk, hearing her mum call her down for dinner.
When she got down there she took her normal seat. With her mum still in the kitchen Ron said, "Why Ginny, you look alittle bit lovesick." Harry and he shared a laugh while Hermione glared at them. "You're full of rubbish," she retorted, feeling her face grow hot with anger and embarrassment, if even he could notice how could she hide it from Luna?
As Hermione and Ginny sat in Ginny's room Hermione asked, "So is there something wrong?" "No, it's nothing," Ginny smiled. "Oh... Okay...," Hermione said.
Ginny didn't like lying to her best friend but it had to be done, Hermione wouldn't want to be friends with her if she knew.
(On the train)
Ginny took her and Luna's normal compartment in the back. Ginny sat with her feet on the seat, her back against the window. Luna came in and sat opposite of her, her nose in the Quibbler. When they were about halfway there Ginny got up and sat beside Luna. With a glance at her she laid her head in Luna's lap, and they stayed like that till they had to go change into their robes.
(Two nights later)
Ginny quickly walked through the corridors and out the door to the grounds. She walked quickly to the edge of the lake. She sat on the grass, waiting for Luna.
Not long later Luna sat beside her. They sat, just gazing at the stars.
"Luna?" Ginny asked softly. "Yes?" Luna asked. "I love you," Ginny murmered. Luna was silent for a few minuetes. Ginny sneaked a glance at her. She was gazing at the stars. "I love you too, I'm just surprised it took you so long," Luna said smiling. "Wh...what?" Ginny exclaimed. "I've known you had feelings other than friendship, I was just waiting for you to say something," Luna replied, smiling at her. Ginny blushed bright red. "Oh you're so cute," Luna said softly before leaning over and softly pressing her lips to the redheads'. Ginny kissed back, smiling into the kiss. When they finally came apart, both were smiling. They kissed a few more times before standing up. Holding hands they walked back up to the doors. Finally they parted as Ginny went to her common room and Luna continued to her's.
As she fell asleep that night, Ginny smiled, she finally got the girl of the stars and her dreams. | <urn:uuid:7a3325e7-c856-45eb-814a-d3b54241c71e> | https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6213332/1/Dreaming | en | 0.991213 | 0.1051 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Commitment Ceremonies 101
September 22, 2011 9:23 AM Subscribe
My partner and I have been together for just over five years, with the relationship being open (I'm queer and occasionally see other women; he's working on seeing other women too) for the last two. It's been working great so far and we're in it for the long haul.
Recently we've been talking about having some sort of party or ceremony to recognise the journey we've been on, the deep love and companionship we hold for each other, and to celebrate that with the people we care for the most. (Personally I feel that people make an effort to show up to weddings rather than other social events!) However, the idea of marriage/a wedding gives us the heebee-jeebees. His parents are divorced, which has tainted the idea of marriage for him; I find issues with the assumption of exclusive commitment.
We thought about possibly having a commitment ceremony - essentially like a wedding, but without the legal marriage paperwork. While we both like the idea, we're stuck on how to explain it to our families (really, mine, since they're from a more traditional Asian culture; his is pretty liberal). I tried to ask my aunt about it as a test and she replied "How do you have a wedding without the registration? That's not a wedding!"
We live in an area that has de facto laws, so technically we don't even really need to legally marry to get most benefits since we're de facto already. Trying to explain that to said aunt was a little confusing though; she was wondering about how I wouldn't be so sure that he wouldn't cheat on me or run away with the house and all that. (I'm very sure he wouldn't!) And to be honest we're still a little confused ourselves, especially as it relates to visas (I'm applying for Permanent Residency and we were wondering whether a visa based on marriage makes it easier since my app's been in limbo for yonks).
People love him, my family adore him and keep asking when we'll get married, if we did get married we'd probably get "ABOUT TIME" as a response. Yet I don't really want to have to stand in front of my family and go "the reason we're not exclusive is because I am a lesbian whose love of my life happens to be a man, and we've both found that you can be dedicated and committed to each other without needing to limit the sex to each other. Oops, TMI!" I want the celebration, I want my loved ones to be there with us, I want the recognition and validation - I just don't want the hassle.
Have you made it work? How did you get around traditional/conservative ideas of relationships? How do you deal with possibly disappointing your father because he's not going to "give you away", or with confusing everyone because there's no paper to sign? Is there a way to keep everyone happy?
(I feel quite a few people would say "just do what you want to do, screw family"; however, for me, commitment ceremonies of any kind have always had family as a major factor - a blending of families and cultures, in our case. I would like to respect them while also keeping true to ourselves.)
posted by divabat to Human Relations (29 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
(just idly - do you need to tell your family that you sometimes see other people? When I've been in a see-other-people situation, only my friends know. What about just saying that you want a commitment ceremony rather than a wedding because it's right for you? You'll probably get all kinds of pushback; I often blame my actions on my friends and social circle - "that's just what we crazy kids do now!")
posted by Frowner at 9:26 AM on September 22, 2011 [2 favorites]
Aren't Wiccan handfasting ceremonies based on the concept of committing for "a year and a day" -- at which time you reevaluate and repledge? (Apologies if I'm mixing it all up; I'm not very familiar with it.) It may not be a tradition you follow yourself, but it's a concept that sounds somewhat applicable to your situation.
posted by Madamina at 9:26 AM on September 22, 2011
Frowner: I probably don't need to be that explicit, but I do need an answer for "why not register a marriage?". I get enough annoying questions as it is! If I could figure out a good way to explain what "de facto" meant without confusing everyone that could help. ("we're legal already! now the party!")
posted by divabat at 9:39 AM on September 22, 2011
We did the legal part of our marriage at the courthouse with no family, and the spiritual/family/community/celebration part with guests and witnesses, a la traditional wedding. Both of us felt that the part that makes our union "real" is our commitment to each other, and sharing that commitment and asking for the support of our loved ones. We did the legal part as well because we wanted the legal benefits of marriage, but in my mind those things are not what makes our marriage real. I think in an ideal world, every couple who wants to could have a civil union, with all its benefits, and the parts of marriage that are about family, community, and/or spirituality would take place separate from anything governmental. (end tangent)
We put a note in the printed event program to explain our reasons for keeping the two separate, but practically no one even noticed that nothing legal happened at our ceremony. Why not just have your commitment ceremony, let people call it a wedding if they want to (call it a wedding if YOU want to!) and keep calling each other "partner"?
Seconding that your sex lives are none of anyone else's business.
posted by TrixieRamble at 9:45 AM on September 22, 2011
"We live in a state that just assumes you're married after X years and gives you all the nifty benefits that go along with being legal. And guess what? The Mister and I have been together for X years! Woo! So we're already legal! Let's party!"
posted by functionequalsform at 9:46 AM on September 22, 2011
Call it a five year anniversary party? And if you do a short ceremony with personalized vows without a legal officiant, it'd be renewing the your commitment with your family there to celebrate, maybe that'd be easier for those with more traditional views to accept.
posted by lemniskate at 9:47 AM on September 22, 2011
There is no actual way to answer "why not register a marriage" because the government does not really care whether you're monogamous (at least not here in the US).
The government cares whether you want to be married in a legal sense. If so, they will give you a certificate. They do not police your bedroom or your heart.
If you are ethically opposed to lying to the government, that is fine, but you are probably not even lying to the government because they're probably not asking.
If you feel like you are lying to your family, well, I am a big fan of lying to family about things that they don't want to know about and that generally don't concern them. If you plan to be closeted to your family anyway, what's the difference? You wouldn't be telling them at a commitment ceremony, you wouldn't be telling them at a wedding.
If this commitment ceremony is not a wedding because one or both of you doesn't believe in weddings, you can't expect people to treat it exactly like a wedding. You don't believe in weddings, then you don't believe in the perks, either. (This does not apply to people who are unable to be married due to bigotry.)
posted by the young rope-rider at 9:52 AM on September 22, 2011 [4 favorites]
I'm not sure there is a way to get everyone to understand. Either you're having a wedding, which they understand, or you're not, which they will have questions about. You can't have something in between without confusing your family. Married is a binary state -- you are or you aren't. Marriage is whatever you and your partner define it to be.
My husband and I had a tiny private wedding. In and out in less than six minutes. Only parents and siblings present. (Yes, there was arguing with my mother-in-law about who was invited and why it wasn't in a church.) We had a reception a week later that everyone was invited to. That was our solution for all the inane wedding stuff that neither of us wanted to be anywhere near. And we were very happy with how everything turned out.
posted by katieinshoes at 10:05 AM on September 22, 2011 [1 favorite]
Your profile says you're in Australia, so the laws are bound to be different than in the U.S., but - there is nothing that says you have to get married to have a wedding. My long-term partner and I got a civil union (in the U.S.) even though we are a hetero couple, and are "getting married" next year. Plan a wedding, explain to your officiant that you're actually just going to have a commitment ceremony but that it's hard to explain that to your families, and write a ceremony together that suits you both. You don't have to go into details with your families. No one sees the legal paperwork except you and the judge, anyway.
You might find some support at offbeatbride.com, they have a decently large Oceanian contingent who could offer you some good advice on how to pull this off, how to find an officiant, etc.
We explained to our parents that we chose this alternate route because it matched what was in our hearts - that marriage felt less meaningful to us because some of our (gay and lesbian) loved ones could not get married. We let them know that they didn't have to tell their respective families and friends that what we were doing wasn't technically a marriage, which was a huge relief to them. In the end, our parents just want us to be happy. Yours probably do too, you know? Get on with the wedding planning. One missing sheet of legal paper isn't going to change things one way or the other. Congratulations!
posted by juniperesque at 10:08 AM on September 22, 2011
I've never been to a wedding where the paperwork was signed in front of the wedding attendees (well, except the one I was in in Canada, but that's a longer story). I was just at a lesbian wedding (actual legal marriage thing) in Massachusetts and there was no public paper-signing. It looked exactly like a commitment ceremony.
Regarding your visa issue - I'd really talk to a lawyer before you decide whether to Officially Marry or Officially Commit. If getting Actually Married were to help in clearing up your status and hurry things along (I'm assuming he's a citizen), then would you both still have heebie-jeebies about it? Consider that the nature of marriage is essentially bureaucratic.
Anyway, what others have said: if you have a wedding, there's a lot of stuff you won't have to explain to any family members because everyone knows what "wedding" means. If you go another route, you will have some explaining to do.
And just because it's a commitment ceremony doesn't mean your dad can't walk you down the aisle, or you can't register for gifts, etc. You can be as traditional as you like with a commitment ceremony; likewise, you can have a official wedding with paperwork and all and not do any of the traditional stuff.
posted by rtha at 10:12 AM on September 22, 2011
"We're having a ceremony that celebrates us being together. We'd be so glad if you could come."
"Well, why just just marry each other?"
"This is something we talked about a lot and this is what we chose. We'd be so glad if you could be there to celebrate our love."
That's it.
posted by inturnaround at 10:14 AM on September 22, 2011
Juniperesque and inturnaround have good advice.
I suspect, but do not know, that being married would indeed make it easier to get your visa. Talk to an immigration lawyer. You might also want to make sure you're aware of the differences between common law and government registered marriage where you're from, so you know what you'll be foregoing.
You may want to examine the framework you're using to view this - that marriage represents only a specific set of values, and cannot be re-imagined any other way.
Marriage as a concept says nothing about requiring monogamy, and I urge you strongly not to mix your own personal sex lives into the list of reasons you present to family who ask "why not a wedding?"
Your own commitment vows are what you make of them and can include or not include whatever you feel comfortable with. That being said, I think what happens in your bedroom is your own business - unless you want to suddenly be dealing with a lot more drama about your life choices.
Likewise, sadly, being married or not will not protect your relationship from heartbreak.
Marry or don't marry, but make sure you're making the decision on the basis of the facts of the matter, and not just a surprisingly traditionalist view of what marriage is supposed to be.
posted by canine epigram at 10:22 AM on September 22, 2011
This is exactly what I wanted to say, combined with inturnaround's answer.
I hope I didn't sound like too much of a downer, but the reality is that most of what you're saying doesn't come across as particularly logical, especially from my point of view (a non-monogamous, legally married person).
Expect your relatives to be old-fashioned and to worry about you, because they are older and they want you to be safe and happy. For them, that means marriage, but showing them that you are secure, confident, and happy with your decision will go a long way towards reassuring them that you're not making excuses for your partner, and that you really will be happy and okay.
posted by the young rope-rider at 10:27 AM on September 22, 2011
Pros of marriage: your relatives will understand it (they don't want to know about/won't understand queer non-monogamy and what they don't know won't hurt them), legal benefits, potentially speeds up your visa
Cons of marriage: it gives you and your partner the heebie-jeebies.
Not to be all "it's a piece of paper", but it really is. It doesn't need to change how you and your partner think of each other or live your lives together.
posted by crankylex at 10:43 AM on September 22, 2011 [1 favorite]
I'm sure you have your reasons to oppose marriage qua marriage, but I don't know if I understand them.
You want a commitment ceremony, you have most of the legal perks but not, say, the VISA, you have the perfect life partner, why not get married? Marriage doesn't mean monogamy, it doesn't mean heterosexuality, it doesn't mean tradition, it doesn't mean a white dress, a registry, a wedding party, or any of those trivialities. It's a commitment ceremony that the state recognizes as such.
All the commitment you promise your partner, you can promise in a marriage ceremony. All the crap you don't want to consider, you can ignore in a marriage ceremony. You're not lying by omission, you can write your own vows to say exactly what you want them to say.
I only say this because I'm also queer, also planning a wedding to a man, though we're not in an open relationship. But, again, who knows, we're not swearing to never have an open relationship, we're affirming that we love each other and plan to do so for a very, very long time.
posted by lydhre at 11:15 AM on September 22, 2011 [2 favorites]
I agree with the other responses pointing out that you don't have to be monogamous to be married, so it doesn't make that much sense for that to be the reason you don't want to get married. You don't want to get married because you don't want to get married - that's fine, and that's the reason you can tell people. You could tell people you're not getting legally married because you're opposed to government intrusion in people's private relationships, or that marriage has such a sexist history that you refuse to participate in it, or that it's wrong to get married when many queer couples can't marry, or that you're a free spirit who can't be tied down by the man.
posted by medusa at 11:15 AM on September 22, 2011
My best friend and her partner had a commitment ceremony a few years ago and explicitly decided not to get legally married. (They both changed their last names in practice as well, though I don't think either of them paid to do it legally yet.) Their event was a long weekend away for everyone who wanted to come out and stay at their venue - a farm in Northern CA - with a day-long celebration for anyone who just wanted to come in for the ceremony.
Their concept was based on Quaker wedding ceremonies, similar but not exactly as described here. There was no minister. The two of them just sat in the center of a circle of all of their loved ones, and Quaker-meeting style, everyone sat in silence unless they were moved to speak and address the crowd to give them their blessing or share a memory. Everyone spoke, everyone cried. When my friends each spoke, it was both an exchange of vows and a public declaration.
Neither of their families are Quaker or knew what to expect. Because there was so much logistical planning to get the weekend together, I think everyone showed up knowing not to expect a wedding. However, during a fantastic meal before the ceremony, we placed a single typed page at every seat explaining what it would look like and why they chose to commit themselves this way.
It was totally beautiful.
That said: considering the stress, planning, clothes, catering, registering, and chaos leading up to this event, I am personally hard-pressed to say it wasn't a wedding. It sure felt like one. I mean that in a mostly good way: this was a big event and I don't think they would change a thing. But, for instance, my friends didn't want to register and almost every single one of their guests protested until they did. This was a big reminder that these kinds of social engagements come along with obligations that you don't always foresee and are maybe even trying to avoid.
If you'd like to see the note they wrote their guests to explain the ceremony, I can memail it to you.
posted by juliplease at 11:59 AM on September 22, 2011 [1 favorite]
I'm with juniperesque. There's no reason you have to explain about the paperwork because no one is going to know the difference. You will only get the confused reactions from family and friends if you try to explain it to them, no one is going to spontaneously ask you "are you registering your marriage?" right?
Just have your party and let people understand it as a wedding, because regardless of what you call it, people are going to assume that you're pledging an exclusive commitment to each other, and there's very little you can do to change that other than give them TMI about your sexual preferences and intimate details of your relationship.
Maybe those of us in the United States are confused by the question because of cultural differences, but in the United States, you sign the papers in private either before or after the ceremony and no one ever knows the difference. Do other people need to know about the papers/registration in Aus?
I haven't dealt with this situation personally, but our American Miss Manners sometimes suggests turning awkward questions around on other people in a polite way so that they are put on the spot instead of you, i.e.
"Why aren't you calling this a marriage?"
"How would it make a difference to our relationship or to you if we did?"
(to pull this off you should try to ask the question with a calm, genuinely curious demeanor)
"Why aren't you doing X traditional thing as a part of this ceremony?"
"If we don't do X, does that diminish the value of our commitment to each other?"
it's hard to imagine people being able to give any answers to these questions aside from "um, I dunno, because that's how we usually do it." At which point you're in a strong position to blow them off with a comment like "Oh, well, that's OK, we aren't really the types to do things exactly the way everyone else does anyhow."
posted by treehorn+bunny at 1:40 PM on September 22, 2011
Marriage is whatever it means to you. No two are alike. Feel free to make up your own definition.
posted by Green Eyed Monster at 3:49 PM on September 22, 2011
Actually, I disagree with treehorn+bunny that 'nobody will ask about the paperwork'. Given your visa troubles, I expect that pretty much everyone you know will say 'omg that's great! So is that going to make it easier for you to get a job/PR/etc?'. In particular, I would expect your parents and family to ask about this aspect. And if you tell them "no it won't, because we don't want to get that kind of married" then you should be prepared for a lot of bewilderment, and probably reduced sympathy for any future immigration hassles (such as "well if you'd gotten properly married you wouldn't be having this problem!").
A legal marriage may well be an emotionally irrelevant piece of paper, but so is a permanent residency. It seems almost wilfully masochistic to try and figure out a way to avoid the first one when you are trying so hard to get the second one, and marriage would probably make it easier to get. It's possible it wouldn't, in which case none of this applies because you can just tell people that getting married doesn't affect your status because 'x', and not bother explaining that you aren't legally married anyway.
posted by jacalata at 5:38 PM on September 22, 2011 [2 favorites]
I'm in Canada where marriage can be legal or common-law (de facto in your parlance) between any two people (and anti-polygamy laws are expected to be challenged for the next few years. After my second date with my boyfriend I signed the papers to make him my common-law husband for health care reasons. So although I understand the argument "we are JUST like legally married" (because the legal protections are the same) I do think it is fair for older people to still think marriage is more "proper". And although I have no problems with my friends that either chose to quietly move into a common-law marriage or get legally married in any form from a city hall ceremony to High Church, the people that chose the middle ground, having a non-legally binding commitment ceremony, that never lasted. I don't know if it was because they had hoped for public validation that never came, the fact that ALL of them overshared how THEIR love was bigger than a normal legal marriage could possibly hold, or what, but all those "committed" relationships have ended in in all of them at least one part of the couple later legally married someone else.
Yes, that is just anecdote, but maybe it will help you understand how your family may look at this as "playing house" because you aren't mature enough for a "real" marriage. Marriage means a commitment, not necessarily monogamy (you seriously have no idea how many married people have been flexible about monogamy and orientations) and trying to convince anyone with a bit of life experience that no, YOUR love is DIFFERENT from all the other plebes that bought into the patriarchy and got married.
Sorry if I Sound harsh, I really don't mean to be, but I think this is one where you have to shit or get of the pot. Either get legally married or live together without the public validation from your family.
posted by saucysault at 7:09 PM on September 22, 2011 [1 favorite]
We did something like that too. Second dates are wicked!
(In Canada).
posted by ovvl at 7:21 PM on September 22, 2011 [1 favorite]
"We believe in the freedom of declaring our relationship without the state/government/'The Man' involved with what should be shared with our friends/relatives/family/loved ones. I'm so happy you are here to share our special day!"
If it's going to make your residency paperwork easier, or if it would disrupt the process of getting it, it would make quite a lot of sense that you aren't getting married. If your relatives are concerned about financial risks to you, maybe you could talk about risks you'd be avoiding by not getting married -- maybe it's advantageous in some way, in the US if someone sues your spouse it can end up with you having a judgement against you. Or you could tell them that he'll have to stay on his best behavior since HE won't have that bit of paper.
If people are expecting to see a paper get signed at the ceremony, are you against declaring your commitment to each other on paper for some reason? Just print up something on some nice looking paper. I've never seen the papers get signed as part of a wedding ceremony, but families have their own customs.
If you don't want to go telling your family the reasons you aren't exclusive, just leave that bit out. It sounds like this is a commitment ceremony for two people, it's not as though you will have more people up there you need to explain. If you meet someone you want to introduce to your family, or have another commitment ceremony with, you can figure it out then. It'll be much easier to introduce them to a particular person instead of an abstract idea. Or, if you have no plans to introduce any of your lovers to your family, why are you even worried about this?
You can't really persuade people you are having a wedding instead of a commitment ceremony. It is what it is. If you call it a wedding, of course they will think you will file the paperwork and do all the other things they associate with weddings. And it's NOT the same as a wedding -- clearly, if they were equivalent, you wouldn't be eagerly planning one of them while having the heebee-jeebees about the other -- and that's why your family may never see this as a wedding equivalent, you had the choice open to you to marry and picked "heebee-jeebees, not that!"
Telling them you already have most benefits is just confusing people with extraneous information -- people don't go to weddings and congratulate the couple on being able to file their taxes jointly and have immunity from being forced to testify against each other in court.
Is there a way to keep everyone happy?
Hahahaha! No!
And it's the same answer for people having weddings.
posted by yohko at 7:23 PM on September 22, 2011
I would send invitations that outline what your party is about...
using your words from your AskMefi...
Lover A and Lover B
cordially invite you to join us
as we celebrate our deep love and companionship
with the people we care about the most
And if/when you get asked "why not marriage"
your response is simply--
"oh, that's just not us!"
posted by calgirl at 9:18 PM on September 22, 2011
So I see two things from your description:
1) Your partner and you already have a rough idea of what kind of ceremony you want,
2) You're essentially asking how you'd like to market this to your (extended) family
3) To your full credit, you also are clear to yourself why a traditional Asian-isque marriage isn't for you.
4) However, for cultural reasons, you still seem to be angling for at least some tradition anyway
The question I'd ask myself if I was in your situation is as follows: leaving the (Australian) legal aspects aside for the moment, what aspects of a traditional (Asian) marriage make you (not your partner, you) feel uncomfortable with? Based on the answer, you may want to include or drop aspects from a regular traditional marriage into yours. If anyone asks details, just blame it on your partner's family (I'm presuming there's a bit of cultural differences as well)
Also, there's this good ol' "Log kya kahenge?" ("manush ki bolbe" in Bangla, "What will people say?") question. My suggestion here is to come as clean as you can with elders you feel comfortable with, and get their help in thinking of how to market this to the rest of the tribe. Generational gaps in our part of the world are too huge to overcome without some additional firepower from "go-betweens"; the trick is to not tackle it full-on, but to gently tackle it from the side, as it were.
posted by the cydonian at 11:12 PM on September 22, 2011
the cydonian: OMG "manush ki bolbe" YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of exclusive commitment together forever the end amen. I've seen some relationships within my family that may have been better off ended, but they feel like they have to be stuck to each other. Also there's this assumption of total dependence - after my sister got married my dad cried & when I asked him why he said "well now who's going to take care of YOU?!". And he's telling this to someone who's fought tooth and nail to be independent. My partner and I have a healthy interdependence, we support each other how we can, but I'd rather not get subsumed into wifey material. We're equals, always have been. As for elders - hm. The one person I thought could be my go-between was my sister, who's usually pretty open and has gone through a lot of the marriage crap already (foreign partner, not wanting to do the religious ceremonies, MKB, etc) but she's since come up with some strange assumptions about my relationship and I'm not quite as confident. But we'll see.
jacalata: Unlike a marriage, there is no such thing as a "de facto permanent residency" that would give me nearly as much rights as a PR. If it wasn't for just putting the app in (I already have an application in under their General Skilled Migration program and it's been delayed so much that DIAC is recommending looking at other options in case) I wouldn't be able to be in Australia at all; as it is I'm having trouble finding jobs or next steps or anything. If there was such a way I wouldn't have bothered with the PR at all! (And no, it's not emotionally insignificant; if it was I wouldn't have lost so many tears over it.)
I'm talking to my partner right now about this (he's read this AskMefi). I'm more comfortable with the idea of marriage than he is, but he's being a lot less freaked out about it now that he's reading other perspectives of marriage being what you make of it. I personally still have qualms about how marriage is an assumption that you're sorted, that you've found The One and that's it, no more searching - when we've both still got a long way to go yet in life! (We're both in our 20s) What I want to do is honour the life we had and will have, have our families and friends take our partnership seriously enough to include us in each other's lives, reflect that while the future could change things drastically we've got something really amazing and we'd like to celebrate that with the people we care about.
posted by divabat at 5:42 AM on September 23, 2011
oh God no. if anything I feel like taking on marriage is a bigger responsibility than I (at least, can't speak for the dude) can handle! I respect those that made the leap!
posted by divabat at 5:53 AM on September 23, 2011
Not to be argumentative, but you sound like you think of a commitment ceremony as less than marriage then, less of a commitment. So expecting other people to view it as an equivalent to marriage and validate your relationship seems a bit ...off. It is kinda like celebrating your third month of dating, significant to the two people involved and a milestone worthy of congratulations but not really something people outside the relationship would really take note of, except in passing.
If you guys are committed to each other, love each other and want public support for that, then legal marriage is the only way to go - especially because of your immigration issues. Sometimes you can compromise on things in relationships but just like you can't be a little bit pregnant when it comes to marriage either you are, or you aren't. Marriage is a commitment, ideally for life (but life can throw you curveballs!) and if you can't commit to that now then maybe you should wait. The best advice I got was that you only get married after you honestly truly feel you ARE already married - the vows are just a poor echo of the reality. That was certainly true in my case.
If your boyfriend doesn't want to get married now, or forever, that is fine and it is good that he knows what he wants. But you have to either accept that or move on if you want your family's validation of your relationship.
posted by saucysault at 6:13 AM on September 23, 2011
*Waves to divabat's partner!*
As you folks figure out all this committment jujitsu, here's something to contemplate: a Marriage ceremony distinct from "marriage". Indeed, in my previous response, I was trying to limit myself to an actual ceremony, not the institution of marriage itself.
So my point was this: take a much appreciated ceremony in your family as a basis -your sister's ceremony as an example but not necessarily so- what aspects would you like for yourself? And what aspects would your folks like? What aspects would make you or your partner uncomfortable? Mentally walkthrough a sample ceremony in your family, but with you both as the players. You'll readily know how to approach your sister (or anyone else), or even clarify to yourself whether you want to approach her in the first place.
Also note that sub-continental marriage ceremonies can become massive marathons, depending on families. You may potentially need lots of stamina for this.
As for whether marriage per se is for you, thats an entirely different question altogether; tried not commenting about it much aince you werent asking about it. :) But since the topic has been breached: obviously, that's something you have to answer for yourself obviously.
My only suggestion is to not delude yourself into accepting something that isnt; then again, both of you seem to be quite aware of this. However, you can be sure that the family pressure won't stop with a commitment ceremony, no matter how lightly you design it; I've had my own MKB-non-desi marriage for six months, and already both sets of families have been putting pressure on getting a house, kids and so on.
The question, then, isn't what you will answer if people ask about your Aussie visa; it'll be about what you will say when, say, your aunt starts dropping passive-aggressive hints on kids and 'settling down' about three months after your ceremony. How ready are you for that kind of interest in your relationship? How would you answer that?
Essentially, don't kid yourself by presuming any of this will stop with any ceremony. If any, it'll increase. :) Thats how it works in Asia; globalization or not, the entire tribe will try and raise your kid, so to speak.
posted by the cydonian at 8:05 AM on September 24, 2011
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I am a novice programmer and am just finishing up an RSA encryption program that I am writing for practice. Currently I have the program generate a relatively small random value for the public key e. When adding the finishing touches, I realized that there was no point for e to be random. Is this thinking correct?
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Yes, this thinking is correct; there is no requirement that the public exponent $e$ to be random. After all, it doesn't matter whether $e$ can be guessed by an attacker; we'll be including that value in the public key anyways.
Common practice is currently to use the fixed value $65537 =2^{16} +1$ for $e$. Any odd value of $e > 1$ will work; however, smaller values of $e$ will tend to make the system brittle against errors in performing the RSA padding.
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some combinations of $e$ and $n$ don't work. $e$ and φ(n) must be coprime. – CodesInChaos Dec 4 '12 at 22:23
You could also add that the reason we use values of the form $2^n + 1$ for $e$ is that they have low Hamming weight, which makes modular exponentiation (and thus, encryption) very efficient. – Thomas Dec 5 '12 at 2:52
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Did a Sonar Image Finally Find Amelia Earhart's Plane?
It's been 76 years since Amelia Earhart disappeared and we're still trying to find her. Last year, a search team re-evaluated their findings and thought they might have discovered her wreckage. The same group has discovered more evidence on where her plane landed, citing the sonar image above. Have we found her at… » 5/29/13 11:30pm 5/29/13 11:30pm | <urn:uuid:d676c006-03c6-4bc6-81b5-76053bbb7a5e> | http://gizmodo.com/tag/amelia-earheart | en | 0.967651 | 0.084916 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Although Diane Sawyer's 20/20 special on prostitution didn't impart much new information about the oldest profession, here's something that did throw us for a loop: A 13-year-old girl has been arrested in Dallas for pimping other underage, middle schoolers for everything from stripteases and "exotic dancing" to actual sex acts. The 13-year old was luring friends into prostitution by offers of large sums of cash. Says a Dallas police officer involved in the case, "One of the remarkable things we learned through all of this is there's a tremendous amount of money in all this, so a huge demand for young girls in prostitution world." [WFAA] | <urn:uuid:6d051568-4566-485e-aefc-6a8c1c04e8b5> | http://jezebel.com/372079/ | en | 0.966042 | 0.1267 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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IVsHierarchyRefactorNotify Interface
Notifies the hierarchy of refactoring operations.
Namespace: Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Interop
Assembly: Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Interop.8.0 (in Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Interop.8.0.dll)
public interface IVsHierarchyRefactorNotify
The IVsHierarchyRefactorNotify type exposes the following members.
Public methodOnAddParamsCalled after a method had parameters added.
Public methodOnBeforeAddParamsCalled when a method is about to have parameters added.
Public methodOnBeforeGlobalSymbolRenamedCalled when a symbol is about to be renamed.
Public methodOnBeforeRemoveParamsCalled when a method is about to have parameters removed.
Public methodOnBeforeReorderParamsCalled when a method is about to have parameters reordered.
Public methodOnGlobalSymbolRenamedCalled after a symbol is renamed.
Public methodOnRemoveParamsCalled after a method had parameters removed.
Public methodOnReorderParamsCalled after a method had parameters reordered.
To support refactoring operations, your project system must implement the IVsHierarchy, which represents a hierarchy, IVsProject, and IVsHierarchyRefactorNotify interfaces. You also must implement a language service to provide support for the features associated with editing of the source code including the refactoring operations. For more information about the language service, see Language Service Interfaces.
By implementing IVsHierarchyRefactorNotify, you provide your language service with the capability to notify the IVsHierarchy interface about refactoring operations, such as symbolic renaming or parameter reordering. If the hierarchy uses build providers, single file generators or some other services to generate code, it must obtain a reference to the object that implements the IVsRefactorNotify interface.
Each project system and a language service define a specific way of obtaining a reference to the IVsRefactorNotify object. For example, the Visual Basic and Visual C# desktop project systems obtain a reference to the object that implements IVsRefactorNotify by calling IUnknown::QueryInterface on the object that implements IVsSingleFileGenerator. The Visual Basic and Visual C# Web project systems call QueryService by using a Guid registered under the HKLM\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\Projects\{project-system-guid}\FileExtensions\{file extension}\RefactorNotify registry key. The hierarchy passes the notification to the IVsRefactorNotify object to incorporate the refactoring operation into the designer file or to stop the operation and return an error message via IErrorInfo. The designer file can be any of the input files provided by Visual Studio, such as .resx, .xsd, .settings, .map and .myapp files or any other file extension associated with a code generator or build provider.
To successfully complete the full refactoring operation, the hierarchy must check out the files passed to the IVsHierarchyRefactorNotify and the files returned from corresponding IVsRefactorNotify method calls.
The hierarchy must display an error message in the message box when the refactoring operation fails.
Flow of Operation
1. The user invokes symbolic renaming or any other refactoring operation.
2. The Visual Studio language service determines which code files the operation affects.
3. The language service calls IVsHierarchyRefactorNotify.OnBefore methods to notify the hierarchy which files are affected by this operation.
4. The hierarchy determines if any affected files are generated from the designer files.
5. If files are generated, the hierarchy obtains a reference to the object that implements IVsRefactorNotify and sends the IVsRefactorNotify.OnBefore notifications to the IVsRefactorNotify implementer for each generated file.
6. The IVsRefactorNotify implementer can stop the operation by returning a failure and setting an error by calling the M:Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Interop.IVsUIShell.SetErrorInfo(System.Int32,System.String,System.UInt32,System.String,System.String) method. If the IVsRefactorNotify implementer does not want to stop the operation, it determines which designer files the operation affects and returns the set of files to IVsHierarchyRefactorNotify in the out array, VSITEMID.
The IVsRefactorNotify implementer must not update the designer files at this point. The files must be updated during the second call to the IVsRefactorNotify.On methods, for example, during the OnGlobalSymbolRenamed method call. The IVsRefactorNotify.OnBefore method calls enable the hierarchy to check out the generated files as a unit. The hierarchy has the option to stop the entire operation before any changes are made, if one of the code generators cannot consume the refactor operation.
7. If the IVsRefactorNotify implementer returns a failure, the hierarchy must alert the user about the error. The hierarchy can continue the operation or cancel and stoop the refactor operation. If the operation is stopped, the HRESULT contains the following values:
8. If the IVsRefactorNotify implementer returns successfully or the caller requests to continue on failure, the hierarchy must check out the files passed to IVsHierarchyRefactorNotify and files returned from corresponding IVsRefactorNotify methods calls.
Some refactor operations do not cause changes in the designer file and, therefore, the designer file is not automatically checked out. The IVsRefactorNotify implementer must request a check out of the designer file, if the content is changed by the identified refactoring operation. This is accomplished by returning the VSITEMID that identifies the designer file in the out array. An example of a scenario where a designer file does not need to be checked out is when a namespace, which is stored outside the designer file, changes. The designer file does not need to be checked out even though the generated code file has changed.
9. After checkout, the hierarchy returns from the IVsHierarchyRefactorNotify.OnBefore call to the language service.
10. The language service carries out the refactoring operation.
11. The language service notifies the hierarchy about the completion of the refactoring operation by calling the IVsHierarchyRefactorNotify.On methods, such as OnGlobalSymbolRenamed, and the hierarchy notifies all IVsRefactorNotify implementers by calling the IVsRefactorNotify.On methods, such as OnGlobalSymbolRenamed. The equivalent refactoring change is made in the designer files. This assures that the refactoring operation remains preserved.
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Businessweek Archives
Broadcom's Brain Trust
Engineers and Co-Chairs Samueli and Nicholas each own 23% of one of the year's hottest IPOs
Henry T. Nicholas III and Henry Samueli, co-founders of Broadcom Corp., the fast-growing maker of communications chips, have much more than just their first names in common. When Broadcom went public on Apr. 17, the two Henrys shared in the riches of one of the most successful initial public offerings this year: The stock's 123% jump the first day was second only to the all-time record 249% gain racked up by in late July. So far, their combined stake--each holds 23%--has soared in value to $1.5 billion.
Their newfound wealth is based on another fortunate similarity: co-chairmen Nicholas, 38, who is also CEO, and Samueli, 43, have long shared a common view of the future direction of communications technology. When they founded Broadcom in 1991, they were convinced that quicker communications would drive the convergence of computers, television, and telephones. So they set out to develop the microchips that would tie together these disparate technologies and allow the speedy transfer of massive amounts of data. It was a prescient move. Now trading at around 70, Broadcom's share price has been pushed skyward by the proposed merger of AT&T and cable giant Tele-Communications Inc., which promises to accelerate the use of cable TV for phone and Internet service in the home.EARLY TO MARKET. Even if that deal never happens, business is booming for Broadcom. Early on the scene with its chips, it already dominates fledgling markets for the electronic brains that control digital set-top boxes and cable modems. Altogether, analysts expect Broadcom to earn $28 million this year on a 300% jump in sales, to $150 million.
Samueli and Nicholas first met at TRW Inc. in 1981. Samueli designed communications systems; Nicholas designed chips. Both were working on a huge Defense Dept. program to advance the state of the art for integrated circuits for communications applications. In 1985, as Nicholas was earning his part-time masters degree at the University of California at Los Angeles, Samueli left TRW to become a full-time professor there. With his research centered on furthering the automated design of communications chips, it was only natural that Nicholas became Samueli's first PhD candidate.
By 1988, when Samueli and three other scientists co-founded PairGain Technologies Inc. to speed data transmission over telephone lines, Nicholas went along to design the chips. But Samueli and Nicholas also had a broader vision. They wanted to figure out how to compress data so more of it could be sent over not only telephone lines but also over TV cables, corporate data networks, and even over the air and via satellite broadcasts. There was a problem, though. Doing so would mean competing with PairGain's customers. Still, they were so certain of their idea that three years later, Samueli and Nicholas quit PairGain--and walked away from millions of dollars in stock options--to start Broadcom.
For Samueli, founding Broadcom was the culmination of a boyhood dream. "I knew I was going to be an electrical engineer in seventh grade," he says. In an electric shop class at Hollywood's Bancroft Junior High School, he decided to build a shortwave radio with five tubes. "The rest of us were just learning to do splices, and here he was building this complicated radio," says Gregory B. Gershuni, a lifelong friend. "Building that radio put me on the path that got me where I am today," says Samueli. "I did not deviate, not one iota."
Nicholas also showed a scientific bent early on, though his career path was more circuitous. Growing up in Malibu, Calif., he dreamed of becoming a test pilot. "He had a mad-scientist lab in his garage to experiment with rocket fuel," says Andrew R. Coulson, a childhood friend who later roomed with Nicholas for six years during and after college. "We used to stay up all night mixing chemicals." Nicholas, Coulson, and another friend even taught themselves aerodynamics and calculus during junior high so they could design rockets that would shoot higher than off-the-shelf models. Although Nicholas made it into the U.S. Air Force Academy, his boyhood dream ended when he grew taller than its 6 ft., 4 in. limit for pilots."YIN AND YANG." These days, Nicholas and Samueli's success in piloting Broadcom is very much thanks to their particular chemistry. Employees describe Samueli as the inspirational leader, the thoughtful, humble, benevolent professor who lets you find the solution so you'll grow. Nicholas is the tough coach who yells at his players to hit new heights and is quick to assign blame when they don't reach them. Colleagues say the two function together so seamlessly, they routinely finish each other's sentences. "They're sort of the yin and yang of Broadcom," says Steve K. Tsubota, who heads the company's cable-TV unit. "If you took either one out of the development of Broadcom, we wouldn't be a tenth as successful as we are."
Nicholas, who goes by "Nick," is clearly in charge of running the company, reversing the old professor-student mentoring relationship. "He's the CEO, and he likes being in charge," Samueli says. "We need Nick's style for working in the business world." It's Nicholas who insists on everyone wearing a suit and tie at all times. He talks a mile a minute, peppering his speech with wisecracks. And he's always pushing the limits, at work and at play. On skis, Nicholas will tackle any hill, and he has broken a collarbone to prove it. A bit of a boaster, he claims that when his wife, Stacey, had their third child, "I delivered it myself." Says Stacey, a former chip designer who worked for him at TRW: "Well, it was really the nurses and Nick."
Samueli, who took a leave of absence from UCLA to serve as Broadcom's chief technical officer, is quiet and understated. A better skier than Nicholas, Samueli will never brag after effortlessly gliding down a double-diamond slope. He prefers to let someone else initiate conversations. "Some people can't handle the fact that he never talks," says his wife, Susan, an IBM programmer he met at a synagogue dance.NO VENTURE CAPITAL. Samueli's reputation among fellow scientists has helped attract a formidable technical team. "He's very focused and he very quickly makes the right decisions all day, every day," says William J. Kaiser, chair of UCLA's electrical-engineering department. "I don't know anyone else like that in the business or academic communities." It also helped that the founders accepted no venture capital, so they could offer unusually large stock options as a lure. "They compensated people with life-changing amounts of stock," says Tsubota. The proof is in the IPO. More than 70% of the company's then 300 employees became millionaires.
Often the enticements didn't end there. To lure world-class scientist Klaas Bult, then with Philips Electronics, Samueli arranged for Bult to talk with UCLA; the school offered him a tenured professorship, with Broadcom funding his research and an outside consulting contract. "Then, it was only a matter of time," Nicholas says. Two years later, Bult decamped for a full-time job at Broadcom. "That type of person is not looking for a job," Nicholas says. All told, 80% of the company's 239 engineers have advanced degrees, 44 with PhDs, and five of them are tenured professors. Quips Samueli: "If our markets head south, we'll open a university."
That isn't likely to happen anytime soon. True, several years ago, the big push for convergence got off to a false start amid much hype and confusion. But the AT&T-TCI deal makes it look as if it will really happen this time. To keep the Broadcom rocket on its trajectory, Nicholas and Samueli expect to solidify links to such fast-growing network customers as 3Com, Cisco Systems, and Bay Networks even as they secure their leadership in the nascent market for cable gear. So far, at least, the two Henrys seem to have all the right stuff.By Larry Armstrong in Irvine, Calif.Return to top
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CACHE Level 3 Diploma for Children’s Care, Learning and Development (Wales and Northern Ireland) (QCF)
What does the qualification cover?
This qualification is designed to build the knowledge and skills needed when working with children and young people from birth to 19 years of age. It covers a diverse range of job roles and occupational areas working in children’s settings including early years.
Who is it suitable for?
Anyone who works or wants to work at a supervisory level in the children and young people’s workforce.
What are the entry requirements?
You should be at least 16 years old. CACHE does not set any other entry requirements but colleges or training providers may have their own guidelines.
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The Diploma requires 65 credits.
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A Degree or the Level 5 Diploma in Children's Care Learning and Development (Wales).
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CurlTalk (
- General Discussion about Curly Hair (
- - ZOMG How Happy Am I About My Hair Right Now???!!! (
Jessiebanana 03-29-2013 03:26 PM
That's's over (until a product gets discontinued at least)*. I have my HG's and my hair has never looked so good with so little effort.
I got the Curl Junkie Curl Assurance Smoothing Lotion and it's everything I've ever wanted. I have so many feelings right now. It's holding in the moisture, like a good leave in, but it's smoothing my hair and creating/keeping the definition. My hair is pretty defined once it's soaking wet, so it's not making curls happen, but I can squeeze water out or play around with the style of my hair and it brings the curls back...perks them up. My hair feels like hair, not like something with crunchy or sticky or oily product in it. It's not weighed down or poofy.
When I first opened the packaged I smell it, fondled it, rubbed a bit on my dry hair and I had high hopes when it refreshed a curl. I wouldn't use it on dry hair cause I think you would use a lot...and I don't use anything on dry hair. That's just not how I roll.
Being dry and having low porosity kind of sucks. Cause you can't drench hair in heavy things without it sitting there and making your hair gunky, but you still need the moisture. The DB Pumpkin Seed Conditioner has been a blessing for this and the CJ finishes the deal. It's not heavy so I can use as much as I desire to style, but it's not so light I have to use half the bottle to see any results.
It smells really good, but the scent is very light, so if you don't like it it's not a huge deal or if you're wearing another scent it won't over power or compete with it. It doesn't smell like vanilla-cotton candy (that isn't something I'd want on my head all day) I'm not sure why the website says that. It's a sweet, non food or candy, slightly floral smell. I've heard it compared on YT to a certain perfume, I've never smelt that perfume, but it does remind me of a few very nice perfumes or like a tea.
Like my DB, it's on the pricier side and I have to order it, but I can order them all from one place and if I play my cards right I can wait to order during 20% off. Also I only use three products for everything, so I think I'm saving the dollar bills there. When I want to clarify I add a drop of Suave Daily Clarifying to my cleansing conditioner. That bottle will probably last me a couple decades...seriously.
I'm so happy I don't even feel sorry for writing this essay. I needed to share :blob4:!
*Even if a product gets discontinued, at least I can look for formulations like my HG's. I feel like the guess work part is over, if YKWIM.
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Edition: U.S. / Global
The Big City; Turning Tykes Into Zealots For Recycling
Published: April 20, 2001
IN honor of Earth Day, our text is ''RRR You Ready?'' the new waste-reduction manual, weighing five pounds and prepared at a cost of $2 million, that has been distributed to public schools by the New York City Department of Sanitation. For safety purposes, let's begin with Chapter 4, ''How I can be a TrashMaster!''
This chapter instructs students who have learned the modern three R's -- reduce, reuse, recycle -- to ''share'' their knowledge with their families. That means getting their families to follow dozens of rules, including this one: ''Return wire hangers and plastic bags to the dry cleaners.''
Before your family sets up a new bin for dry cleaners' bags, you might consider advice from another source, the American Academy of Pediatrics. ''Never leave plastic bags lying around the house,'' the academy's child-care manual warns. ''Bags from the dry cleaner are particularly dangerous. Knot them before you throw them away so that it's impossible for your child to crawl into them or pull them over her head.''
Perhaps a truly dedicated RRRer could carefully knot each bag, store it out of the reach of children and then unknot it for the dry cleaner. But why take any risk to save a few pennies' worth of plastic? Why waste so much time and effort to save a bag that may well be useless by the time it gets back to the dry cleaner?
You could raise similar cost-benefit objections to just about every other ''waste reducing'' tip in the manual, and you could end up agreeing with the wayward student who appears in an accompanying video. ''Recycling is just another evil plan by grown-ups to keep kids from having fun,'' he complains. ''What's wrong with a little garbage?''
But you, like that unenlightened student, would be missing the point of the curriculum. It's not intended to teach children about economic tradeoffs. Its purpose is to inculcate a system of beliefs and values.
To Catholics who grew up on questions in the Baltimore Catechism like ''Who is God?'' or ''Did Adam and Eve obey the commandment of God?'' the questions in the RRR manual have a familiar feel. ''What is waste?'' ''Why do we need to think about our waste?'' ''Why do we waste so much?''
These are not questions meant to be debated. Our wastefulness is a given, just like Adam and Eve's original sin. ''In previous generations, people lived by the adage of 'waste not, want not.' They were careful to buy only what they needed, and reused whatever they could,'' the manual explains. But now we have eaten from the apple, and it's wrapped in plastic. ''Every time we throw something away,'' the manual laments, ''we are throwing out a lot.''
The manual does mention in passing that recycling is expensive, but it doesn't bother noting that it's more expensive than burying trash. And it certainly doesn't point out how much money (more than $500 million) New Yorkers could have saved over the last decade if there had been no recycling program.
No, the manual instead preaches reverence for handling waste. Students who can't pass reading or mathematics tests are urged to spend classroom time building a museum of garbage, then go home and determine the weight of their family's trash, all the while hectoring their parents to avoid ''overpackaged'' takeout food in plastic containers.
Saving plastic is a new spiritual quest, but past societies have just as passionately revered natural resources and reviled human pollution. The Druids worshiped trees and sacrificed people. Saving dry cleaners' bags seems tame by comparison.
BUT not everyone today shares these values or wants to see $2 million in public money spent on a manual to promote those values in public schools. I don't want my child to be a TrashMaster who weighs garbage and feels guilty for polluting the planet when he writes on only one side of a piece of paper.
I respect the neo-Druids' beliefs, but why should these beliefs be taught in public schools? Robert Lange, the director of the Department of Sanitation's recycling program, answered by pointing to the widespread support for recycling. ''It is a value judgment,'' he said, ''but it's advocated by a large part of the population, including the City Council.''
True enough, but a majority of the population also believes in Christian dogma, and that doesn't justify preaching it in public schools. New York intellectuals like to mock Kansans who insist on teaching creationism, but at least creationism is presented as an alternative to Darwinism. In our schools, recycling is the one true faith. | <urn:uuid:1b0aa76b-66dc-4dc8-b5c0-b19771b405a2> | http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/20/nyregion/the-big-city-turning-tykes-into-zealots-for-recycling.html?src=pm | en | 0.956378 | 0.233983 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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Re: Explaining Autovivication
by throop (Chaplain)
on Jun 12, 2008 at 04:20 UTC ( #691586=note: print w/ replies, xml ) Need Help??
in reply to Explaining Autovivication
Autovivification saves a lot of annoying effort. So if $quick is originally empty
$quick->{brown}->{fox} ->{$jumped} = 1 / $Lazy_dog;
creates the intermediate hashes so $quick can point to a hash-of-hashes-of-hashes.
But autovivification can bite you / surprise you, too. If you are testing a value (rather than setting it) autovivification can still add entries to your hash. That is, new keys. E.g., if you start with
$stateCityPopulation = {Illinois => {Springfield => 116482}, Massachusets => {Springfield => 154082}, Missouri => {Springfield => 150797}}};
and then you
foreach my $state (qw(Illinois Massachusets Ohio Missouri)){ my $pop = $stateCityPopulation->{$state}->{Springfield} || next; $springfielders += $pop}
Now when you look at keys %$stateCityPopulation, 'Ohio' is in there. It's holding an empty array. It was created when you were trying to access the value for $stateCityPopulation->{Ohio}->{Springfield} . Even though you got undef back as a value, the itermediate array got created 'by side effect.'
If you're debugging code, and you find an array has a bunch of unexpected keys, which hold empty hashes, then autovivification is to blame. If you'd changed the code in the above to
$pop = ($stateCityPopulation->{$state} && $stateCityPopulation->{$state}->{Springfield}) || next;
You'd have skipped the autovivification (at the expense of messier code.)
BTW, if you're debugging a rogue autovivification, the 'w' switch in the debugger is very handy.
Comment on Re: Explaining Autovivication
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It's all downhill for Twitter, politics from here | ZDNet
It's all downhill for Twitter, politics from here
Summary: This week, "tax protesters" gathered across America to dump bagged tea into symbolic bodies of non-potable water and Ashton Kutcher challenged CNN to a Twitter follower showdown. I admire anyone who takes to the streets for their ideas and recognize the power of media, even when it is lowered to the level of counting masses of followers.
This week, "tax protesters" gathered across America to dump bagged tea into symbolic bodies of non-potable water and Ashton Kutcher challenged CNN to a Twitter follower showdown. I admire anyone who takes to the streets for their ideas and recognize the power of media, even when it is lowered to the level of counting masses of followers. Oprah followed me today. I have no idea why she did, other than to get followers, and that demonstrates a profound lack of understanding about social media.
First, the "teabaggers." These folks are protesting taxes in the nation with the lowest taxes in the developed world. They are mimicking the actions of their forebears, who were protesting taxation without representation—less than six months after the most participated-in election in at least a generation. They are not idealists, nor do they have any idea what they are talking about, but talk away they should so that someone might engage them in discourse and collectively we learn something.
Ultimately, it costs more money to reinvest in a developed economy than in a growing first-generation industrial economy. That's why we have taxes. The problem with our taxes is that, for the past 30 years they have been invested in the wealthy, which is why the United States and Great Britain, the forebears of Reagan-Thatcher top-down economic planning now suffer the largest wealth differentials between the average citizen and the richest one-percent of the population of any developed countries in the world. Instead of protesting taxes, these people should be protesting the indifference toward the middle class of the past 30 years and demanding even greater investment in schools, basic science and other seedings of future prosperity than the Obama Administration has imagined. That doesn't mean lots more taxes—we could do the same by simply cutting wasteful stupid spending returning half-way to the old top-income taxes of the past—it only means the priority becomes investment in the people, not a class that will save the people.
As for Mr. Kutcher, he seems like a nice enough guy. As a celebrity, he strikes me as the perfect attention zombie, stumbling through our screens to eat our brains. But the fact a television news network even bothered to compete with a B-grade actor over their popularity is a sign of how low we will stoop to conquer anything that can be defined as "high ground." Now, with Oprah glomming on to Twitter, we are seeing spamming by celebrities desperate to retain their mass-media reputations. Oprah touts more than 100,000 followers in less than a day because so many people auto-follow, whether using a program to do so or simply because they are flattered by Oprah's follow—that's a spammer strategy.
In both cases, teabaggers and Twitter follower races, we're seeing the aping of past behaviors, the Boston Tea Party and the popularity contests of high school and Entertainment Tonight!, turned into events that supposedly enact meaning, but are merely empty gestures. Tea baggers aren't patriots, they are people convinced they are paying too much in taxes (just about the only obligation this country asks of its citizens), when the debate should be about how taxes are spent, what to cut and, if more money is needed to make the world a better place for our children, who among the current beneficiaries of that system should pay higher taxes.
Oprah, Ashton and Ev (Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter), I will not be following anyone who for all intents and purposes is a celebrity bot seeking to claw some of my attention away for themselves. I am sure that today marks Twitter's high-water mark. Oprah's endorsement is like being on the cover of Fortune, which, surely, Twitter and Mr. Williams will soon be.
The utility of a social ecosystem is destroyed by false followers and other aggressive species that suck the air away from the genuine exchanges of ideas and information by individual members.
Topics: Banking, Government, Government US, Social Enterprise
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• Close-mindedness of a Child
I'm amazed you can sum of the Tea Party protesters in such a quick summary that none of them know what they are talking about. Since I will glance over your name and smirk instead of clicking your rants from now on I find this a fitting end to reading your mind farts. I always take my political leanings from technology consultants, I know they know just as much as movie celebrities. This article would have been so better served to explain the phenomenon of Twitter protest rallies (good or bad) then trying to subject your absolute truth opinion on people. Awesome fail.
• Fine, goodbye.
As the story makes clear: Popularity does not signify clear or correct
thinking. I'm happy to alienate you if I am being truthful about my
opinions. That's patriotism, too, to suffer the consequences of using
my rights to disagree. It would be patriotic to tolerate the difference
of opinion, but you resort to ad hominem insults. I said explicitly that
the the protesters should feel free to speak out, even though they are
wrong. Your message suggests I stop expressing myself. Feel free to
continue saying I am an idiot, but be ready with more than "awesome
fail" and "mind farts" as a counter-argument.
With regard to the correctness of my opinions about the "Tea Party"
protesters, I explained, albeit briefly, why I think they are a wrong-
headed bunch. They did not in any way reiterate the Boston Tea
Party's message, but came across more like a beer hall putsch. I will
add that, after hearing all about liberal treason for all these years
liberals toiled to win an election, the immediate and widespread call
for "revolution," secession and other nonsense spouting from the far
right now is the most disgusting hypocrisy yet.
I think the two events, Ashton v. CNN and TeaBaggers, so close in
time, speaks amply to the mindlessness of the times. Here we are in a
real crisis of capitalism, which we must save to maintain freedom, and
you stoop to name-calling in response to substantive criticism.
"Awesome fail" is the language of a child, because it speaks to no grey
areas at all amidst immensely complex times.
Twitter protest rallies are interesting but not related to this posting,
which has a lot more to do with the uselessness of CNN as a source of
meaningful news than you recognized.
As for your daft comment about my work and the viability of my
opinions, apparently you think that no one with any profession other
than politician should comment on public policy. Everyone, regardless
of their smirks, is a citizen. This blog has long covered the media and
technology, which are deeply intermingled with the political, social
and cultural. I'd rather stand alone than go along with the crowd.
Good riddance.....
Mitch Ratcliffe
• You Are Right to Be Worried, Wrong to Expect More
One of the most aware and intelligent postings I have seen in a long time. Still, you are wrong to expect more from your reading public (if indeed you do) since we all know what's happened with education in the past two decades.
In discerning a behaviour pattern linking CNN, Ashton Kucher, Oprah and the Tea-baggers you expose a trend that few want to acknowledge - that America has itself come round to gagging on the cheap, uninformed, unintelligent crap its been serving the world for decades. Might I suggest that you should perhaps have structured your arguments around the 3 themes that can be discerned: 1) the power of ALL media to shape opinion and create/impact moments, 2) the inherent danger of a fractured and fragmented mediascape in a liberal democracy (you can substitute mediascape with "auto industry", "finance industry", etc.), and 3) the herd mentality that ensues when action is not preceded by deep reflection (a 21st Century American condition).
I would like to see you write about the Role of New Media (such as Twitter) in Managing the Turbulence in American Culture!
• I Disagree
Twitter is nothing more that the flavour of the moment(I won't waste my time even debating it). The "Teabaggers" are using a pinnicle moment in US history and comparing it to their objections to the recent issues. The two do not event compare. While I understand and agree with their objections, it is not about democratic freedom. It is actually quite the opposite. They are concerned with the uncontrolled abilities of the financial insitutions and how they are attracting the criminal element. It has moved beyond freedom. It is about something more basic: truthfulness and responsibility. it used to be that a captain of industry would at very least have the honour to want their companies to succeed. "C" level (i.e. CEO) workers no longer have this. They are all about the money for themselves. Rules did not need to exist for these people previously because they respected their employees and were about progress. Now however, they are out for only themselves. These are not the same people that ran industry previously. These are the snake oil salesmen that have discovered a new way.
Now if you want to ignore articles, Dana Blankenhorn's postings are a waste of time....
• RE: It's all downhill for Twitter, politics from here
that you dont know what you are talking about
• I just cannot see the correlation
THe tea baggers did not organize via Twitter as did Moldavia, for instance.
The tea baggers were failed astroturf from Fox despite the denial on every Fox report filed noting that only Fox was covering tea bagging.
The ridicule from some gay activists should have been expected. I guess they weren't looking towards left field.
• Here's the correlation
Empty-headed protest and mindless celebrity following on Twitter both
help make people pawns for other people's ambition. When a news
network joins in, that's a recipe for cultural and political domination by
the owners of media.
Mitch Ratcliffe
• My take.....
Do you people know who started the Tea parties? It was a CNBC reporter Rick Santelli that called for the tea parties at the Chicago Mercentile Exchange back in Jan '09. I don't think people really get the gist of why this is happening. Most people are upset, including myself with the one party big government system we have today. Republicans and Democrats each think that money will solve the nations problems and its the farthest thing from the truth. We believe that government should be run with more efficiency and targeted results, which as we all know is no where to be seen.
We spend so much money on the wrong things it makes people sick, espcially those that have to work hard every day to make a living while taking care of their families and paying taxes. Sure people need help, and I support giving them help in a form that does not encourage abuse of the system and truely helps those get back on their feet. Throwing money at people will not help them succeed, it only gives them a quick buck to repeat the same old. I say the government be in the business of training and rehab that truley gives people the tools to succeed and not just a piece of paper with a president on it. I am living proof that money doesn't help you succeed, but that the tools acquired by education and working hard are the real keys to self sustained success.
I do not support bank, auto, media or any other kind of bailout. I think our nation has lost its principals and has coward to everyone and everything. This should not be how our government is run and our nation's founders stated on many occassions the dangers of such actions. We should invest heavily in education first, Science, and protection of the people(and not financial protection, more like people gonna bomb you protection). All these federal programs of financial assistance and whatever else should be done at state levels and controlled on a local level. All we have now is this big huge tanker of a Fed, just breathing down everything and everyone. I believe in the system that was created by our founders and call me whatever, but I think that is why people are outraged and to be honest Obama just made people do a double take with his budgets and stimulus that people actually are stepping up. Its not about racism or who is in control at any given time, but for me its been a long time coming for the end to the big giant in Washington DC.
• RE: It's all downhill for Twitter, politics from here
For being a veteran journalist, he either has his head
in the clouds....or the sand. He is clearly not attuned to facts and interprets the truth in the way
he wants it understood!
• Twitterers and Teabaggers
My friend and I were talking about the ability of the new social media networks to allow people's voices to be heard. But the ease of access just allows too many voices to be heard, and in the end, we often just go back to the same names and brands that are familiar to us in "traditional" circumstances. walmart.com isn't the best e-commerce site in the world, but it still manages to attract beaucoup traffic because of the brand it carries.
So it is with Ashton Kutcher and Oprah, Britney Spears and Shaq. Do they have more interesting posts than the masses that follow them? Probably not. But it allows a new degree of celebrity voyeurism, the same kind that mades Entertainment Tonight or Star magazine a hit, but this time without the middleman.
As far as the teabaggers, I don't understand the protests myself, and I'm not even sure all the protesters are protesting the same things. But I think a lot of the vitriol that was on display at GOP rallies this summer has carried over into a lot of sour grapes with the left controlling the White House and Capitol Hill. Hopefully it doesn't detract from a lot of the rational dialogue that needs to take place.
• Look in the mirror
...to see the real problem here. When you read about the stunning increases in the national debt, did the magnitude of the increase take your breath away? No? Then I suggest talking about things you may know something about.
Not everyone thinks it's cool to pay $20 for a loaf of bread a few years down the road. A revolution is brewing, and you're laughing at what idiots these teabaggers are...
• There may be a revolution
but the teabaggers aren't its center, it's intellectual driving force or it's
moral center. Empty-headed protest and mindless celebrity following
on Twitter both help make people pawns for other people's ambition.
When a news network joins in, that's a recipe for cultural and political
domination by the owners of media.
The debt soared under the previous administration and we're still
feeling that administration's impact fiscally, because TARP came from
the Bush Treasury. Yet, the protests were aimed at Obama, who is
lowering taxes for 95% of Americans and a plan to, at least, reverse
course on the deficits over the course of his administration.
Everything about the protests shows that unfocused anger is out
there, but taxes without representation aren't the problem.
The price of bread may go up because of hyperinflation and shortages
globally, but investments in fundamental sciences could change that.
That's why a "mixed" capital economy with progressive taxation and
strong but reasonable regulation are useful and less likely to lead to
the collapse of unrestricted self-interest. That ways lies Bernie
Maddoff, billion-dollar bonuses at investment banks and greater
inequality of opportunity, the place we are today.
I am not laughing at the teabaggers. They are wrong. I disagree with
their argument and said they should continue to protest to drive
dialogue that could teach us all something. But you're telling me to
shut up, that I don't know anything without providing any counter-
arguments to what I wrote. Unless you have something to add other
that I am the problem, let's not waste one another's time. Because I do
know what I mean to say and will happily debate anyone who wants to
proceed without simply dismissing all dissent from their own point of
Mitch Ratcliffe | <urn:uuid:9c1eb0f7-6c62-4e13-9227-58d7f3c065cf> | http://www.zdnet.com/blog/ratcliffe/its-all-downhill-for-twitter-politics-from-here/399 | en | 0.965739 | 0.062212 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
The major parts of #1781372: Add an API for listing (configuration) entities that met resistance was providing a base menu item for each List controller, and providing a hookMenu() method for the addition of even more.
• Less duplication: Currently if you change the path for that listing, you have to change it in at least two places, plus once more for each operation
• Ease of adding a list controller: Adding the controller itself and it's definition in hook_entity_info() is it, no need to touch hook_menu()
• The controller knows where it exists: Often times an operation might need to redirect or reload, and it shouldn't have to hardcode the destination
• Discoverability of menu items: With the exception of field_ui_menu(), menu items are all in your own .module, in hook_menu() or hook_menu_alter()
• It currently parses the hook_menu() definitions directly
Proposed resolution
• Allow entities, or their controllers, to specify their path.
• Allow controllers to provide menu items
Remaining tasks
User interface changes
API changes
Related issues
Assigned:tim.plunkett» Unassigned
Status:Postponed» Active
Actually, because this is about more than just list controllers, unpostponing and unassigning. Discuss!
Component:base system» entity system
Issue tags:-Configuration system+Field system
I'm tempted to rewrite/revamp the issue summary, because the actual problem is different from my perspective:
For me, it's primarily about derived router paths of entities.
1. Every List controller needs at minimum
• the URI of each entity
• the edit + delete (+ ...) operation URIs for each entity (usually derived from the entity's URI)
• the URI for adding a new entity of the listed type (typically used for #empty tables)
2. Every Form controller needs at minimum
• the URI of the entity
• the URI on which the entity is listed (to $form_state['redirect'] after submission)
• the delete (+ ...) operation URIs for each entity (usually derived from the entity's URI)
3. Every View/Render controller needs at minimum
• the URI of the entity
To clarify what I mean with derived :
public function getOperations(EntityInterface $entity) {
$uri = $entity->uri();
$operations['edit'] = array(
'title' => t('edit'),
---> 'href' => $uri['path'] . '/edit',
'options' => $uri['options'],
'weight' => 10,
$operations['delete'] = array(
'title' => t('delete'),
---> 'href' => $uri['path'] . '/delete',
'weight' => 100,
return $operations;
Given what @EclipseGc did with Contextual Administration, I'm pretty sure he'll say that this information needs to be injected into each controller, so as to be able to view/edit/list entities on completely different URIs and not having them hard-coded within the controllers.
I definitely agree that the path should be injected.
It was mentioned in some other issue, and I wanted to mention that here, because it wasn't clear to me at first:
We already have a precedent for this in core with Field UI. More specifically from the API doc on hook_entity_info:
• admin: An array of information that allows Field UI pages to attach themselves to the existing administration pages for the bundle. Elements:
• path: the path of the bundle's main administration page, as defined in hook_menu(). If the path includes a placeholder for the bundle, the 'bundle argument' and 'real path' keys below are required.
• bundle argument: The position of the bundle placeholder in 'path', if any.
• real path: The actual path (no placeholder) of the bundle's main administration page. This will be used to generate links.
• access callback: As in hook_menu(). 'user_access' will be assumed if no value is provided.
• access arguments: As in hook_menu().
That's obviously not the nicest way to do this, but...
For a while I was thinking about trying to reduce the amount of data we store in the router. So just store information that has to be queried, plus a string pointing to a class name, and then move the title callback, description callback and similar in there. The idea would be to make building the router itself a lot cheaper since we'd not need to instantiate any of those classes until they were used, and you'd also be able to have router items that inherit from each other etc. I've forgotten how much of that is done by the new router patch (and deliberately not checking that now), but if we do that, then how much stays in hook_router_info() or hook_menu_item_info()? If we do this we also need to be careful about hook_menu_alter() - it'll be as easy to completely replace a router item but much harder to change just one thing (or for two modules to change two different things).
If I understand #4 correctly, we could have a 'base path' property in hook_entity_info, so for example in for nodes that would be just 'node/'.
That would be an enormous help to contrib modules, as currently there's no way to do something like add a tab to every entity.
Issue summary:View changes
Updated issue summary.
Issue summary:View changes
Added related issue
@joachim, I suggested something kind of similar in #1803818: Make it possible to dynamically provide additional routes for entities. We will need have that kind of information in order to provide serialization routes for arbitrary entities.
A couple of things:
1) We really need to rename entity controllers. "Controller" is "callable that the Kernel calls", basically formerly "page callback". Like "bundle" that's an inherited term from Symfony so we cannot really change it. For the remainder of this comment I will refer to Entity Storage Drivers (ESD) (what are currently called NodeController, UserController, etc.), to avoid confusion.
2) This is one of the reasons I've been calling for a Generator (#1705488: Implement a generator for Drupal paths) for a long time. Once we are able to refer to routes by name to generate URLs, a lot of the "injection problem" that EclipseGc is concerned about is taken care of. (Not all, but a lot.)
3) It sounds like what we're talking about, then, is each ESD exposing standardly-named routes that point to some standard Controller. $entity_type/{$id}/{?operation} seems like a reasonable default for that. And then we would need to piggyback on to that for each supported mime type. Then what an ESD would be specifying is: 1) Whether or not to generate routes. 2) A pattern (if not the default above). 3) A class to use for the controllers for those routes (if not the default above), possibly split by mime?
4) I haven't kept up on List "controllers", so I don't know what to offer there. Are there docs I can see first?
4) The discussion in #1801570: DX: Replace hook_route_info() with YAML files and RouteBuildEvent is highly relevant, as at the moment the leading contender is to use YAML, not a hook, to define routes. That would definitely impact dynamically generated routes of this sort.
#1810350: Remove menu_* entity keys and replace them with entity links is postponed on this issue. (updated issue summary)
Issue summary:View changes
Added the exact comment
Title:Allow controllers to provide menu itemsAllow entities to provide menu items
Retitling for clarity.
Title:Allow entities to provide menu itemsAllow entity types to provide menu items
Issue tags:+Release blocker
#1188388: Entity translation UI in core just landed, which introduced multiple entity plugin properties to define various paths of an entity.
That shouldn't have been introduced there, so this issue becomes even more major than it was.
Also, we have some very closely related issues:
#1332058: Need a way to distinguish "public/final" URIs for entities from admin and redirected ones
#1803586: Change notice: Give all entities their own URI
#1823574-9: [Meta] Improve the Views Bulk Operations (VBOs) that are in core
I fear we need a meta issue to consolidate all of those discussions and change proposals. :-/
I created a patch implementing a small part of this to demo the usage: What do you think of it?
There's a contrib project with a some UI that uses entity_uri()
Sorry, this issue focuses too much on an aspect that I only consider an artifact of a larger problem space, and various other issues are running into that identical problem space again and again, so I created a dedicated issue for the actual, larger task that we need to address for D8:
#1839516: Introduce entity operation providers
Suppose first we need to make a widget for menu_link edit. Currently each module introduces own form for links.
Related issues:
#916388: Convert menu links into entities
#1882552: Get rid of menu_list_system_menus()
#1882218: Remove static menu link creation for menus in menu_enable() and elsewhere
I had no idea that #1188388: Entity translation UI in core snuck in part of this.
EntityManager documents the following keys:
• menu_base_path
• menu_view_path
• menu_edit_path
• menu_path_wildcard
Which is used by CustomBlock, Term, and various test entity types.
Um, what!?
Yep, it was the only way to make that stuff work at the time. We need to get rid of those/refactor them in a sane way, as part of #1839516: Introduce entity operation providers I guess.
I agree with @tim.plunkett in #20.
Either this, or #1839516: Introduce entity operation providers, or perhaps even both issues need to be bumped to critical.
There is no way we can release with these E.T. router path declarations in entity plugin definitions. They break encapsulation and separation of concerns on multiple fronts.
P.S.: It's about time to send translation.module to /dev/null, and ET to take over its namespace. Until then, all overly ambiguous "E.T." pun is intended :P
It's actually translation_entity.module, who knew?
See #1968970: Standardize module-provided entity info documentation and clean-up the @EntityType annotation for cleaning that mess up.
Priority:Major» Critical
Issue tags:-Release blocker
Re #14:
If this is a release blocker, then it's critical per definition.
If not, then it might be just major plus "Revisit before release".
Priority:Critical» Major
Issue tags:+revisit before beta
Issue summary:View changes
Updated issue summary. adding that #1810350: Remove menu_* entity keys and replace them with entity links is postponed on this issue.
Status:Active» Closed (duplicate)
Issue tags:-revisit before beta | <urn:uuid:7b8b84f0-af31-4c39-b65a-f652039316f7> | https://drupal.org/comment/7284504 | en | 0.892168 | 0.094368 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
TRIGGER HAPPY by Steven Poole
Video Games and the Future of Entertainment
Despite its title, this is not a diatribe against video games, but rather a history that finds unappreciated nuances and aesthetic importance in them.
An unapologetic fan, British journal Poole champions video games as an emergent art form, asserting that “the player’s response to a well-designed videogame is . . . the same sort of response he or she has to a film, or to a painting: it is an aesthetic one.” Lamenting that semioticians and art historians have failed to take their presence seriously, the author rushes heroically into the breach. He traces the evolution of the games from their primordial ancestors (Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, and Pac-Man), creating a typology, a critical vocabulary, and a canon to distinguish truly great games from mediocre ones. He notes the formation of distinct genres in the early 1980s, including “exploration games” (posing spatial puzzles), the “beat-’em-up” (in which players fight one another using martial arts, magical powers, or fantastic weapons), “God games” (simulating the construction of cities or nations), wargames, simulated sports, and role-playing games (in which many players participate, adopting magical personae in science-fiction or fantasy settings). Poole’s explanations for the psychological satisfactions of games are skimpy and oddly flat: “videogames give you their full attention,” fulfill players’ fantasies, and “set challenges that involve full, rich interactions of signs.” Such abstractions are a poor argument for the games’ supposed emotional depths, although less unsettling than bland praise for a game in which enemies are blown “into pleasingly gory, fleshy chunks.” Poole argues more authoritatively that the games display visual artistry, adding motion to the techniques of aerial perspective and relative size developed by Renaissance painters, and manipulating chiaroscuro, texture, and symbolic elements to evoke atmosphere. Innovations in graphics, producing increasingly convincing illusions of impossible situations, not only add excitement to the games, but will doubtless influence the films and literature of the coming decades.
A perky exploration of the semiotics of video games—if that’s what readers have been waiting for.
Pub Date: Nov. 1st, 2000
ISBN: 1-55790-539-6
Page count: 256pp
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online:
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15th, 2000
NonfictionTHE AGE OF THE IMAGE by Stephen Apkon
by Stephen Apkon
NonfictionWAR PLAY by Corey Mead
by Corey Mead | <urn:uuid:361091cc-5697-4c19-ac03-688b01b61625> | https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/steven-poole/trigger-happy/ | en | 0.898321 | 0.025386 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Separate SDN hype from real life!
Cisco AXP Developer Contest
Do you have a great idea what a router should be able to do, but you cannot make it work because you can't tweak router's embedded management tools (including Tcl)? Here is an opportunity you shouldn't miss: enroll in the Cisco AXP Developer Contest. Even if you're absolutely positive that having an extra Linux server sitting next to the router is better than a router blade (and some Linux pundits had lots to say on the topic), sending your ideas to Cisco won't cost you more than a few moments of your time and an e-mail ;)
And, BTW, mundane (but nonetheless highly useful) ideas like »visual policy map editor« or truly integrated DNS/DHCP server probably won't get you very far (that's why I'm not applying :).
Full disclosure: I was kindly asked if I could help spreading the word about the contest, but all the enthusiasm is exclusively mine.
1. I emailed them my idea after reading you post. I hope there is not a situation at Cisco where someone self destructs after reading my Vogan poetry.
2. What did you propose? Building Infinite Improbability routing offload with the Net::Tachyon library?
3. Everyone knows you can not do infinite improbability routing offload on an AXP. That can only be done on a seperate LINUX box!
I have decided on something easier and have implemented Harry Potter's magical objects on the AXP
| <urn:uuid:fbea4d73-7031-4cf6-aa48-fdaf786fe6a0> | http://blog.ipspace.net/2008/12/cisco-axp-developer-contest.html | en | 0.947667 | 0.17414 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
what is Islamic fashion?
what is Islamic fashion?
There are three (3) problems are often confused which actually are problems different.First, the issue limit for female genitalia.Second, Muslim clothing in a particular life (al hayah al khashshash), ie places where women living with other women or mahram, such as private homes, or boarding place.Third, Muslim dress in public life (al hayah 'amma), ie places where women interact with other members of the general public, such as roads, schools, markets, colleges, and so on. Muslim women's fashion in general life is made up of hijab and khimar.
a. Limitation Aurat Women
Female genitalia are all the body except the face and the palms of her hands. His neck was a nakedness, the nakedness of her hair also for people who are not mahram, even just a sheet. The whole body except the face and the two hands are mandatory private parts covered. It is based on the words of Allah:"And let them not reveal her jewelry, except for a (regular) appear thereof." (Surat an-Nuur [24]: 31).
The definition of "wa laa yubdiina ziinatahunna" (they do not show her jewelry), is "wa laa yubdiina Mahalla ziinatahinna" (they do not reveal the places (of the body) that there be jewelry) (See Abu Bakr Al-Jashshash, Ahkamul Qur 'an, juz III, p. 316).Furthermore, "illa maa zahara minha" (except for the (ordinary) appear thereof).
So there's limb may be revealed. Members of the body, is the face and two hands. Such is the opinion of some Companions, such as' Aisha, Ibn Abbas, and Ibn Umar (Al-Albani, 2001: 66). Ibn Jarir Tabari (d. 310 H) said in his Tafseer book Jami 'al-Bayan fi Tafsir al-Qur'an, juz XVIII, p. 84, on what is meant by "unless the (usual) appear thereof" (illaa maa zahara minha):
Opinion is the closest to the truth to say, 'What is meant is the face and two hands.' "The same opinion was also expressed Imam Al-Qurtubi in his tafsir book Al-Jami 'li Ahkam al-Qur'an, juz XII, p. 229 (Al-Albani, 2001: 50 & 57).
So, what is meant by what is visible of her face and two hands. The second caveat is that ordinary members of the body visible in the presence of the Muslim Prophet while he squelched. The second limb is also apparent in rituals such as pilgrimage and prayer. The second limb is commonly seen in the Messenger of Allah, which is the decline in the verses of the Qur'an (An-Nabhani, 1990: 45).
In addition, there are other reasons which show that the entire female body is aurat except face and two hands because the words of the Prophet to Asma 'bint Abu Bakr:"O Asma 'real woman if it had been baligh (haidl) then it should not reveal her body except this and this, as he shows his face and his hands." [HR. Abu Dawud].
These are the arguments which shows clearly that the whole body of the woman is nakedness, except the face and the palms of her hands. Then it is obligatory upon the woman to cover her nakedness, which covers the entire body except the face and palms.
b. Clothing Muslimah In Life Special
As to what a Muslim woman to cover the private parts, then here Personality 'does not determine the shape / model specific clothing to cover nakedness, but let absolutely without enough to specify and include lafadz in His word (Surat an-Nuur [24] : 31) "wa laa yubdiina" (And do not they appeared) or the sayings of the Prophet "lam yashluh an yura minha" (not to be for him to show his body) [HR. Abu Dawud].
Thus, clothes that cover the private parts except the face and the hands are considered already covered, no matter how its shape. Dressed in a long robe or cloth can also cover, as well as trousers, skirts, and shirts can also be covered. Because the shape and type of clothing is not determined by Personality '.Based on this, each form and type of clothing that can cover the nakedness, which is not considered a nakedness appeared to cover the nakedness of Sharai, without looking again shapes, types, and kinds.
Nevertheless Personality 'has entailed in clothes that can be worn clothing that covers the skin. So the clothes must be able to cover the skin so that the skin color is unknown. If not, then it is considered not to cover nakedness. Therefore if veil was thin / transparent so that the color of his skin and seems to know whether his skin is red or brown, the fabric cover like this should not be used as cover nakedness.
Regarding the argument that Personality 'has required that covers the skin so it does not know the color, is the hadeeth narrated from' A'ishah that Asma 'bint Abubakar has entered the dressing room of the Prophet with a thin / transparent, then turned his Holy Prophet said:"O Asma` true that if a woman has baligh (haidl) should not be for her to show her body except this and this. "[HR. Abu Dawud].
So the Prophet considers the thin fabric it does not cover the nakedness, even considered revealing genitalia. Hence the Prophet turned his back told him to cover her nakedness, which dressed in clothes that can cover.
Other argument is also contained in the hadith narrated by Usamah bin Zaid, that he was asked by the Prophet about Qibtiyah (thin shirt) that has been given to the Prophet Osama. Then answered by Osama that he had given it to his wife's clothes, then the Prophet said to him:"Let your wives dressed in a cloth behind Qibtiyah it, because actually I was afraid that her body looks." [HR. Ahmad and al-Bayhaqi, with a hasan isnaad. Issued by the Adh-Dhiya 'in the book of al-ahadith al-Mukhtarah, juz I, p. 441] (Al-Albani, 2001: 135).
Qibtiyah is a thin fabric. Hence when the Prophet knew that Osama gave it to his wife, he ordered that the fabric used on the inside of his skin color so as not to be visible through the thin fabric, so he said: "Let your wives dressed in cloth Qibtiyah behind it."
Thus both these hadith is very clear instructions that Personality 'has what it requires to be closed, the fabric that covers the skin. On this basis it is obligatory for women to cover her nakedness with clothes that do not thin so that is not reflected what was behind it.
c. Clothing Muslimah In Public LifeB above discussion points were the topics of female genitalia closing in special life. This topic can not be confused with women's clothing in public life, and can not also be confused with tabarruj problems in some women's clothes.
So, if a woman has wearing clothes that cover genitalia, does not mean necessarily that he be allowed to wear clothes in public life, such as on public streets, or in school, markets, colleges, offices, and so on. Why? Because for public life there are certain clothes that have been set by the Personality '. So in general life is not enough just to cover the genitalia, such as long pants, or a shirt piece, which actually should not be imposed on public roads though wearing it is able to cover nakedness.
A woman wearing trousers or shirt pieces can indeed cover nakedness. But then the clothes does not mean it should be used in the presence of men who are not mahram, because the clothes that he has revealed the beauty of his body (tabarruj). Tabarruj is, menempakkan jewelry and the beauty of the body to foreign men / non-mahram (Izh-haruz ziinah Mahasin wal lil ajaanib) (An-Nabhani, 1990: 104). Therefore, although he had to clothe her, but she has bertabarruj, while tabarruj prohibited by Personality '.
Women's clothing in public life there are 2 (two), which is under the clothes (libas asfal) called the hijab, and clothes on (a'la libas) the khimar (headscarf). With these two clothing a woman may be in public life, such as on campus, supermarkets, public streets, the zoo, or in the markets.
Is understanding the hijab? In the book of Al-Mu `jam Al Wasith work of Dr. Anis Ibrahim (Cairo: Dar ul Maarif) page 128, the veil is defined as "Ats tsaubul musytamil 'alal kullihi bodily" (garment covering the whole body), or "Ma yulbasu fauqa ats tsiyab milhafah cal" (outer garment worn over house clothing , as milhafah (overalls), or "Al Mula` ah al mar'ah tasytamilu Biha "(outer garment used to cover the entire body of a woman).
So it is clear, that the woman is required to wear overalls fabrics (from head to bottom) (Arabic: milhafah / early `ah) which is worn as outerwear (still there underneath the clothing, like nightgowns, underwear indirect) and then extended down to cover her legs.For the clothes, khimar is prescribed, ie the veil or anything similar to it that serves to cover the entire head, neck, and chest hole in dress. This type of clothing should be worn if you want to go out to the markets or walk through public streets (An-Nabhani, 1990: 48).
If he had been wearing the two types of clothing (hijab and khimar) allowed him out of his house to the market or to walk through the public streets, that is, toward public life. But if he does not wear this type of clothing a second then he is not allowed to leave under any circumstances, because both types of orders concerning these garments come in a generic form, and remains in its generalization in the whole state, because there is no argument that devoting it.
Argument about the necessity of wearing the two types of clothing, because of the word of Allah SWT on the upper part of clothes (khimar / veil):"Let them cover with cloth hood to his chest, and not to show off her jewelry, except for a (regular) appear thereof." (Surat an-Nuur [24]: 31).And because of the word of Allah SWT on the bottom of the garment (jilbab):"O Prophet say to your wives, your daughters and wives of the believers: 'Let them stretch out her headscarf." (Surat al-Ahzab [33]: 59).As for the argument that the hijab is a garment in public life, is the hadeeth narrated from Umm 'Athiah ra, that he said:"Messenger of Allah ordered the women to leave the house to the Eid prayer, then Umm 'Athiyah said,' One of us does not have a veil? 'So the Prophet replied:' Let sister lent her veil to her! '" [Agreed upon] ( Al-Albani, 2001: 82).Related to the hadeeth of Umm 'Athiyah this, Shaykh Anwar Al-Kasymiri, in his book Faidhul Bari, juz I, p. 388, says: "It can be understood from this hadith, that veil was sued when a woman out of the house, and he was not allowed to leave (home) if not wearing a headscarf." (Al-Albani, 2001: 93).
The arguments of the above explains the existence of a clue about women's clothing in public life. Allah Almighty has mentioned the nature of the suit in two paragraphs above which is required to be imposed on women in public life with a complete and thorough detail. This obligation is further emphasized in the hadith of Umm 'Athiah ra above, ie, if a woman has no veil-out on the field for Eid prayers (public life) - then he had to borrow his brother (fellow Muslims). If it is not obligatory, surely the Prophet would not have ordered women to borrow the veil.
To hijab, pieces should not be required, but should be extended all the way down to cover both legs, because Allah Almighty says: "yudniina 'alaihinna min jalabibihinna" (Let them extend their scarf-hijab).
In these verses have the word "yudniina" which means it is yurkhiina ila asfal (reaching up to the bottom / both legs). This interpretation-namely idnaa 'means irkhaa' ila asfal-reinforced by the hadeeth of Ibn 'Umar that he said, the Holy Prophet has said:"Anyone who harbors / heaved her as arrogant, then God will not see it on the Day of Resurrection. 'Then Umm Salamah said,' So what should be done with the woman ends of their clothes (bi dzuyulihinna)." The Prophet replied, 'Let them handed (yurkhiina) inch (syibran)' (ie from half calf). Umm Salamah said, 'Well then, their legs will be exposed.' Then the Prophet said, 'Let them handed cubit (fa yurkhiina dzira `an) and they do not add more than that." [HR. At-Tirmidhi, juz III, p. 47; authentic hadiths] (Al-Albani, 2001: 89).
The above hadith clearly indicates that at the time of the Prophet, women's outerwear worn over the clothes-that-has been extended until the veil down over her legs.Means the hijab was a continuation, not a piece. Because if cut, could not stretch to the bottom. Or in other words, with a piece of clothes a Muslim woman is considered not execute the command "[/ i] yudniina 'alaihinna min jalaabibihina [/ i]" (Let them stretched hijab-veil). In addition, the word min in the verse is not lit tab'idh min (which shows the most) but a lil min parrot (show explanation type). So the meaning is not "Let them extend their most hijab-veil" (so the pieces may be), but rather Let them extend their scarf-hijab (headscarf so should the canal) (An-Nabhani, 1990: 45-51).
From the above it is clear that women in public life to wear loose overalls that stretches down to the bottom of the shirt worn over their homes. That's called the hijab in the Qur'an.If a Muslim woman out of the house without wearing a veil like that, he has sinned, even though she had closed her nakedness. Because wearing loose clothing that stretch to the bottom is fardlu law. And any violation of that individual duty in itself is a deviation from Islamic law in which the perpetrator is considered sinful in the sight of Allah. [M. Siddiq al-Jawi]
reference source of this article.
1. Al-Albani, Muhammad Nasir. (Hijab al-Mar `ah Al-Muslimah fi Al-Kitab wa As-Sunnah)2. Ar-Radd al-Mufhim Law Veils (Ar-Radd al-Mufhim 'Man Khalafa Ala Al-' Ulama Tasyaddada wa wa wa Ta'ashshaba Alzama al-Mar `ah Satri Wajhiha bi wa wa Kaffayha Awjaba).3. Anis Ibrahim et.al. , 1972. Al-Mu'jamul Wasith. Cet. 2. (Cairo: Dar ul Maarif)4. An-Nabhani, Taqi al-Din. , 1990. An-Nizam al-ijtimai fi Al-Islam. (Beirut: Darul Ummah).5. Bin Baz, Shaykh Abdul Aziz et.al. (Al-Fatawa al-khalwa nazhar wa wa Al-ikhtilath).6. Taymiyyah, Ibn. In 2000. (Hijab al-Mar `ah wa al-Salah fi Libasuha).
Friday, May 31, 2013
Rabbani busana muslim
Rabbani busana muslim .ilbab agar tetap tampil trendy namun sesuai dengan kriteria jilbab muslim. Jilbab tidak menghalangi Anda untuk tampil menarik dan modis, sebaliknya pemakaian jilbab yang tepat justru akan meningkatkan kualitas penampilan Anda. Orang-orang akan memandang Anda sebagai sosok yang anggun dengan kecantikan berbalut kesopanan. Rabbani busana muslim .Lelaki yang baik tentunya mengidamkan seorang wanita cantik dengan tampilan busana sesuai dengan syariah agama yang dianutnya.
Berikut ini beberapa tips untuk wanita yang mungkin baru pertama kali akan memakai jilbab, atau mereka yang masih ragu apakah akan memakai jilbab atau tidak. Dengan memperhatikan tips berikut ini, Anda akan bisa mensiasati bagaimana tampil cantik dengan jilbab modis sesuai syariah:Rabbani busana muslim
1. Sebelum memilih jenis jilbab yang akan Anda pilih, sebaiknya Anda mengetahui bagaimana kriteria jilbab sesuai syariah. Jilbab sesuai syariah adalah jilbab yang menutupi dada. Jadi apapun jenis jilbab yang Anda pakai, intinya adalah bagaimana bagian dada kaum wanita yang merupakan perhiasan baginya bisa tertutup. Saat ini ada banyak jenis model jilbab modis sesuai syariah, mulai dari jenis pasmina, jilbab sarung modis maupun aneka modefikasi jilbab gaul yang tetap diupayakan menutupi bagian dada kaum wanita.Rabbani busana muslim
2. Pilih warna-warna cerah yang senada dengan busana yang Anda gunakan. Pilihan model jilbab bisa disesuaikan selera, ada jenis model jilbab sarung, jilbab segi empat, perpaduan antara jilbab sarung dan segi empat, jilbab selendang yang dimodifikasi dan sebagainya. Jangan lupa sesuaikan dengan busana yang Anda kenakan, baik warna, bahan maupun model.
3. Aneka model jilbab modis bisa Anda dapatkan di majalah, internet maupun kreasi Anda pribadi. Jangan lupa lengkapi dengan bros jilbab atau pita yang akan semakin menambah kecantikan si pemakai jilbab tersebut.
4. Lengkapi dengan aksesoris yang sesuai mulai dari tas, jam tangan jika Anda menginginkannya, sepatu atau sendal dan sebagainya.Rabbani busana muslim
Tips untuk wanita di atas bisa Anda perhatikan. Ada banyak jenis jilbab branded saat ini. Memakai jilbab tak lagi sebagai bentuk ketinggalan zaman, sebaliknya malah akan meningkatkan kualitas penampilan Anda.Rabbani busana muslim | <urn:uuid:849ac5e1-6540-46fe-a5e5-e1fc7ee511ab> | http://busanamuslimterbaru-2012cartolo.blogspot.com/ | en | 0.861122 | 0.120303 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Will Micronesia Be the First Nationwide Park?
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Specialist Stock / Corbis
Staghorn coral off the coast of Chuuk island in the Federated States of Micronesia
Imagine a protected park half the size of the continental U.S., covering a sea-life-loaded swath of the Pacific Ocean and the 607 tropical islands therein. The park's inhabitants live mostly in traditional villages and still remember how to do things much of the world has forgotten, such as make clothes from scratch and live off the land. This park would, in fact, encompass an entire country — the Federated States of Micronesia (F.S.M.) — and if the archipelago nation pulls it off, it will be the first of its kind in the world. "It's a visionary, radical concept," says Howard Rice, an instructor at the College of Micronesia who came up with the idea. "There's never been a world park. It doesn't exist in the dictionary. It doesn't exist anywhere."
If successful, Micronesia will be the first nation to become a wholly protected area, adhering to development and conservation standards designed to safeguard the country's unique culture and rich marine biodiversity and kick-start its placid economy. According to Rice, who once operated an eco-tourism company in the Caribbean, developing high-end eco-tourism is the answer to F.S.M.'s perennial job shortage. Michigan State University (MSU) has already agreed to provide technical expertise for the park, and the National Geographic Society has also issued the project its stamp of approval. This spring, Pohnpei, one of F.S.M.'s four states, will host an economic summit to address the park's planning.
There are hurdles. Although the state of Pohnpei is spearheading the effort to move the project forward, its development-hungry governor has proposed building a casino and resort complex "of not less than 1,000 rooms" — not exactly a conservation-minded move. In fact, even though the world-park concept was first floated in 2004, no guidelines for development in the park have been drawn yet, bringing into question how valuable the project will really be in conservation terms. The national government, too, remains skeptical. "It might be a workable idea," says Joseph Urusemal, a senator who was President when the world-park concept was introduced. "We just couldn't get a good grip on what it was going to be, how much it would cost and what would be the benefit."
The local conservation community also sees the world park as a straight-up tourism initiative backed by foreign researchers out of touch with local values. Though there are state governments, Micronesia's limited land — all 607 small islands comprise only 271 square miles in total — is mostly controlled by family clans, and setting even small patches of it aside has proved problematic in the past. In the early 1990s, the U.S.-based Nature Conservancy tried to survey land in Pohnpei for a proposed watershed-management plan. "We almost got macheted to death," says Bill Raynor, who moved to Pohnpei from California 30 years ago and helped establish the Conservancy's presence in Micronesia. "None of us wants to walk out to the communities with a finished plan produced by university experts. That's not the way to go here in Micronesia."
The park's advocates argue that the project is a work in progress. Nothing will be finalized without consulting the communities, says Richard Paulsen, a recreation- and resource-studies expert at MSU. "Our complete intention is that this be a Micronesian concept," he says. "This is something that the person on the street must understand, accept and be able to live with."
The larger question — whether an entire country can declare itself a park without the support of an international conservation body — has, in a way, been answered. "If the government wants to do it, they can do it," says Peter Shadie of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. But that doesn't mean the park would fit his organization's definition of a protected area, which emphasizes the long-term conservation of nature and its associated ecosystem services and cultural values. "The definition [of protected area] has a lot of latitude," says Shadie. "At the end of the day, it is a class of land use purposely set aside for conservation, rather than a class of land use designed for people to live in."
By definition, though, the world park would envelop both people and their property, a factor that is a concern to many Micronesians. They worry that the initiative might cast their country as some sort of zoo: a place for travelers to gawk at a culture locked in the past. And just how landowners will react to having rules imposed on them by the central government remains to be seen. "Ownership here is very, very tight," says John Haglelgam, who served as President of F.S.M. from 1987 to 1991 and is now a history professor at the College of Micronesia. "The world park goes to the core of the land-ownership system."
The park could be an answer to the question that has plagued Micronesia's leaders for decades: how to achieve economic development while maintaining F.S.M.'s culture. Politicians worry the country will suffer the same fate as its island neighbor Guam, home to high-rise hotels and a traditional culture in shards. But Guam also offers opportunity, and some 2,000 F.S.M. residents migrate out of the country each year both to Guam and the U.S. seeking education and employment.
Is pinning the nation's future on a flock of eco-tourists realistic? Many say no. "F.S.M. is in economic desperation," says Haglelgam. "But I don't think this is the magic bullet." | <urn:uuid:7f726f9e-8523-4ea7-9e32-f029e6df3457> | http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1959020,00.html | en | 0.963092 | 0.027947 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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Programming Technology
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• by Gondola (189182) on Wednesday April 09, 2014 @09:21AM (#46703867)
Back in the day, I knew people that could provide me with magic phone numbers that would allow me to dial anywhere in the world, for free. Imagine that, right? I was only like 13. Statute of limitations and all that. This was in the 80s I guess.
Anyway, I remember we used to somehow dial into a Darthmouth mainframe and from there we could do a couple things. They had some kind of multiuser Zork (or Zork-ish) text adventure that you could play. I tried it a couple times but I couldn't get into it at the time, even though I loved Infocom games.
The biggest appeal was getting into the chat system. There, we could chat with what I assume were Darthmouth college students. "JOIN XYZ" I think was the command from the main menu.
There was this cool VT display of who was in the chat, so you could tell how many people were there. I used to chat with these people all the time. It was great for a precocious 13 year old who couldn't talk with his peers because his vocabulary and worldview was greatly expanded from theirs. How unfortunate that my social skills were so backward at the same time.
The details are a bit foggy, but I'm sure with some conversation with some of the same folks who used to chat there, I could dredge up those memories. Anyone remember chatting on that system?
• by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 09, 2014 @09:30AM (#46703931)
I think it would be more accurate to say that C# is Visual Basic with a C-like syntax so programmers no longer have to feel ashamed of using Basic.
Let's face it: no matter whether you're using Java, C#, Python or C++ with a modern toolkit, we're all programming in Visual Basic now.
• by gstoddart (321705) on Wednesday April 09, 2014 @09:39AM (#46704033) Homepage
Maybe you just don't have a very good grasp on who "most people here" are.
If "most people here" care neither about the 50th anniversary of BASIC nor of time-sharing on computers ... one might argue that "most people here" aren't actually the target audience for Slashdot.
That's like saying on an aviation forum nobody cares about the Wright Brothers's place in history.
• ewww (Score:4, Insightful)
by DriveDog (822962) on Wednesday April 09, 2014 @09:42AM (#46704071)
Familiarity, in this case, bred contempt. I've written far more code in all sorts of dialects of BASIC than anything else, and I avoid it now if at all possible. For 1964 or the limited hardware in the 70s (6502s, Z80s, etc.) I suppose it was OK. But this isn't 1964 or 1978. VB isn't Dartmouth BASIC, but it looks and feels like V'GER—all sorts of stuff agglomerated onto a simple-minded core to add capabilities. So I'll celebrate not having to use it. MS made gigabucks in spite of BASIC, not because of it. Too bad K&R didn't get to work a few years sooner so we would never have heard of it. Some older cities still have lead pipes. Doesn't mean it was ever a good idea, and they'd be better off had they never used lead in the first place.
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Carriers of Extinction
By Carl Zimmer|Saturday, July 01, 1995
When Ross MacPhee walks in the woods around his house in New Jersey, he is sometimes beset by ghosts. He sees deer and groundhogs, and as a paleontologist, he can’t help thinking about what lived in North America 12,000 years ago. Sloths the size of dump trucks, teratorn birds with 25-foot wingspans, shaggy mastodons, herds of horses pursued by cheetahs, lions, or saber-toothed tigers--all in all, a bestiary that would have put the Serengeti Plain of East Africa to shame. Yet in just a few centuries, between 11,000 and 10,500 years ago, all this life disappeared. No one is sure why.
North America is not alone: between 40,000 and 1,000 years ago, Earth was visited by the biggest wave of large-animal extinctions since mammals took over from the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. North and South America lost 135 species, including almost all their animals over 100 pounds, but extinctions happened elsewhere as well--in Australia and New Zealand, for instance. Two explanations for the global extinction have been advanced. One theory says the climate changed too radically for many species. The other says we humans wiped out the large animals--either by wiping out their habitats with fires, logging, and farming, or simply by hunting them down.
MacPhee, chairman of the mammalogy department at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, thinks it’s time to explore a third scenario. He believes human beings were responsible for the mass extinction, but unwittingly: as we spread to new parts of the globe, MacPhee suggests, we exterminated dozens of animal species by infecting them with a deadly pathogen.
MacPhee has never liked the other two hypotheses much. The climate-change hypothesis is the easier to dispose of. While it’s true that the New World extinctions occurred at about the end of the last ice age, European megafauna suffered through much the same climate warming with many fewer extinctions, and the American animals themselves had survived many previous climate swings. Furthermore, Australia lost its giant kangaroos and rhino-size marsupials between 30,000 and 15,000 years ago, before the end of the Ice Age, while large islands like New Zealand and Madagascar lost most of their megafauna long after the Ice Age ended--as recently as the Middle Ages in the case of Madagascar.
What the timing of all the extinctions shows pretty clearly is a connection with the spread of humans. Some of the extinctions, researchers have suggested, happened because humans changed the landscapes of their new homes. MacPhee is skeptical of that idea too. Madagascar was the case everybody pointed to, the one place where our environmental impact had definitely made the difference, he says. Humans who arrived in Madagascar 2,500 years ago, the story went, gradually burned down much of the island’s species-rich forests, which were then replaced by grasslands. The story made sense--until MacPhee and his co-workers found ancient pollen that proved that the grasslands were at least 40,000 years old.
In the 1960s Paul Martin at the University of Arizona suggested a more compelling scenario: that humans had hunted the large animals to extinction. As our earliest ancestors evolved in Africa, invented tools, and spread slowly into Europe and Asia, Martin argued, large animals on those continents had enough time to evolve a fear of the bipedal ape. That’s why the diversity of Old World megafauna has declined only slowly and gradually; indeed, many species survive today--witness the teeming Serengeti. But when humans made the jump to new continents and islands beginning 40,000 years ago, they encountered naive animals. With such plentiful and easily bagged game, the hunters did not trouble to avoid waste. In a kind of blitzkrieg, they drove species after species extinct.
There is no doubt that modern hunters can wipe out an animal species. And in at least one case there’s strong evidence that an extinction was caused by premodern hunters: huge troves of butchered bones testify that New Zealand’s giant flightless birds, the moas, were exterminated in just a few centuries by Maori settlers who arrived around A.D. 1000. But for several reasons, MacPhee doesn’t think Martin’s blitzkrieg idea makes sense as an explanation of the global megafauna extinctions, and in particular of the New World ones.
Studies of surviving hunter-gatherer societies, says MacPhee, suggest that as a rule they don’t practice the kind of intense overkill required to wipe out a species. It’s extremely hard to imagine small groups of Paleo-Indians acting any differently, says MacPhee. Why would they spend all their time killing, say, ground sloths? The fossil evidence of overkill hunts is also flawed, he says. Martin interpreted piles of mammoth bones in North America as herds that humans killed en masse. Yet subsequent studies suggest that the animals simply died of natural causes, and the humans then harvested their meat.
The overkill hypothesis also has a peculiar ending: not all the large animals went extinct, it says, because humans, for reasons unknown, lost interest in that style of hunting. In North America tens of millions of bison still roamed the plains when Europeans arrived; moose and elk and caribou survive in large numbers today. If the Indians were so interested in that scale of hunting, why did everything change 10,000 years ago, and why in the ensuing ten millennia did they not force a single other megafaunal extinction? asks MacPhee.
On the other hand, MacPhee realized, if the extinctions were caused by a newly introduced virus or other pathogen, you would expect a few species to evolve disease resistance and survive. Disease had been suggested in the past, but never very seriously, MacPhee recalls. Europeans were known to have introduced smallpox and other diseases to Indians, with catastrophic results. But the notion that Indians might have transmitted a disease to ground sloths or saber-toothed tigers was another thing completely. And the idea that the disease could cause extinctions, says MacPhee, was too bizarre.
But AIDS, Ebola, and other newly emerging viruses have made the bizarre reasonable. Some of the new viruses can jump over the species barrier, and some are shockingly lethal. Researchers have begun to rethink their old notion that pathogens tend to become benign in order not to kill off their hosts; the opposite evolutionary strategy--hypervirulence-- might also work. A hypervirulent bug would knock its hosts down like duckpins, but because it was extremely contagious and able to infect new species, it could stay one step ahead of its own destruction. MacPhee began to think about a hypervirulent plague as a serious candidate for the cause of the megafaunal extinctions.
In his scenario early humans and Old World animals were exposed to the same stew of viruses, bacteria, and parasites, so they had similar immunities. But animals on other continents and islands had no exposure to the bugs and no resistance. When humans arrived, either they or their domestic animals--dogs, in the case of the North American Indians-- transmitted the pathogens to the immunologically naive native animals. One or more of the bugs then became hypervirulent. It swept ahead of the advancing humans, invading every refuge and routing out every last member of many species. Big animals were most susceptible since they had few offspring and needed a long time to reach reproductive age. They are innately more likely to disappear, says MacPhee. It’s the price you pay for being big.
MacPhee’s colleagues are skeptical of his hypothesis--not surprisingly, he acknowledges, because at the moment he has no positive evidence to back it up. No one has ever seen a hypervirulent plague that can wipe out entire species; no one has ever found a fossil pathogen. And no one is likely to believe MacPhee until he can find a fossil pathogen that can at least be associated with megafaunal extinctions.
As luck would have it, MacPhee met a man last year who could help him. Preston Marx is a virologist at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York; in the late 1980s he helped show that HIV was so close to simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) that the former probably descended from the latter. When Marx approached MacPhee about getting access to some old monkey specimens at the museum--he hoped to isolate SIV DNA from them-- MacPhee asked him what he thought of the hypervirulent plague idea. At first I thought of the enormity of the question, the long-shot nature of trying to prove the idea, says Marx. I said, ‘Wow, Ross, it’s going to be smoke and mirrors.’
But he and MacPhee agreed to team up with Andrew Lackner, a veterinary pathologist at Harvard, to try to find the putative pathogen in megafaunal fossils. To prove to themselves that the whole thing is feasible, they’ll start with target practice and a relatively big target: a type of benign virus, known as an endogenous retrovirus, that permanently inserts its DNA into that of cats. It’s present in every cell of the body of a cat, up to 20 copies per cell, says Marx.
If they can find it in a fossil cat like the saber-toothed tiger, they’ll move on to DNA fragments of potential plagues--free-floating viruses and bacteria. And if we have any luck, MacPhee says, I expect my colleagues who are in this racket will want to do the same with their critters. He’ll need their help because he can prove his idea only by showing that many different fossils dating from after the arrival of humans--fossils of animal species that soon went extinct--contain DNA from the same pathogen, whereas fossils from before the arrival of humans do not.
Such proof would make MacPhee’s idea very relevant to today’s world. No one thinks about diseases as a threat to biodiversity these days, says MacPhee. But if it happened once, it should be able to happen again.
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Quality of Torrid Shoes
mokaralvr wrote in fatshionista
I know some of you have commented on the quality of Torrid clothing and shoes. I wanted to ask about experiences with them and returning or getting refunded for the items that are a problem.
I purchased these last week.
I wore them ONCE for about four hours and indoors at that. The gold on them is coming off. It's sort of like a foil over plastic material. The threads are coming out and they just look NOT good after ONE four hour wear. I have had other sandals from them and this has not been the case. I emailed Torrid about the issue saying I wanted to return the shoes. They sent me a fed ex return label and said that they will inspect the shoes to see if it is a quality issue or if it is a wear and tear issue. I had to giggle. But I don't want to send the shoes back and wait however long for them to say it was a wear and tear issue (if you look at the bottoms you can't even tell they have been worn). So have you all ever returned something of bad quality? What about just taking it to the local Torrid, might that be better? Would they accept it there?
I also wanted to add, while I know that they are cheap shoes, I think they should last longer than one wear. I've bought similar things from Payless for the same price and wore them for about a year (not everyday of course but you get my drift :D).
Any advice would be appreciated.
I brought a pair of jeans in that I had worn twice and the zipper broke. I didn't have the receipt, but they still gave me store credit.
I'm guessing you don't have a store near you and that's why you have to return them via mail? If so, I don't know what to do in that case :/
I got some gladiators from delias last year and literally six houses down the street the first day I wore them I noticed the "foil" starting to come off. I think it's just the way cheap foil-looking sandals are. If you can return them, go for it... Don't exchange them for the same thing!
Maybe call your local torrid and see what they say... ? That sounds the most convenient.
I've had those shoes for a couple of months and mine have held up fine. You really may have just ended up with a crap pair. That happened to me a few years back with some slingback flats. The strap just ripped off on my third wear and they put me through all sort of hoops to get back like $14. I honestly can't remember if I even sent it back to them because it was all so ridiculous. I don't think it would hurt to take it back to the store if you're near one. The worst they could say is that they can't help you and you need to send them back to the warehouse or whatever.
i got the exact same shoes.. bought them earlier this year i think (whenever they were first released) and i haven't had any problems *shrugs*
i've worn them out, danced in them (and i dance hard) and the paint isn't peeling. maybe u gotta faulty pair
i would take it to a local torrid if i were you
Does the website or your receipt indicate that it can be returned in store? It shouldn't be a problem if you just bought them to get a refund. I brought a necklace back that had broken to target once without a receipt and they let me exchange it. If you wore them indoors only, there should be no wear and tear, so it's likely you will get your money back. Good luck!
yeah, i took them back! i just called and asked them and they said it was no problem. so if these don't work out, i will have to mail them back for a refund. i knew other stores would def do that but didn't know if torrid would. i know some other girls have complained about the quality and had no success from trying to return or emailing and complaining. :D
and thanks for the responses everyone! you all are awesome!
I ordered the houndstooth jacket from them that they offered this winter. It was about the worst thing ever, it snagged on everything and a month after I had it, it looked like it was a million years old. I sent them an e-mail and they let me send it back and I got a full refund.
If you are near a Torrid store you should be able to try to take them back there. If you do that then you'll know right away if they will do it or not (and your mileage may vary depending on what store you take them too, so if you are near several stores, you could try another one if the first one doesn't work)
I have three pairs of boots from torrid and the last pair I bought,
i have pretty much wore out the bottoms already and I havent worn them
that much. Unfortunetly I live in canada so I cant really return them.
I would really think twice before I ever bought another pair of shoes from them agian.
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Why did apple switch iPods to USB instead of FireWire?
Discussion in 'iPod' started by imacintel, Nov 12, 2006.
1. macrumors 68000
Mar 12, 2006
Is it simply because USB is cheaper and mor popular? Or is it for an other reason? aI really would love it if my iPOd was FW.
2. macrumors Core
Jun 16, 2004
Maybe because of PeeCee users not having Firewire as standard.
3. macrumors 603
Aug 15, 2006
Carlisle, Up Norf!
I love the firewire, but it'll be a cost cutting thing, PeeCees and Macs can use USB2, so why put Firewire AND USB2 in the box? Saying that, my Mac doesn't like me using USB2 for my iPod Mini, gawd knows why, but it just wont play ball.
4. thread starter macrumors 68000
Mar 12, 2006
I am sorry, but every dell, hp and pretty much every modern (2 years old at least) has FireWire. my bor's laptop has it, my dads laptop has it, my iMac has it, my HP desktop has it, my PB has it.
5. macrumors Core
Jun 16, 2004
Didn't Apple supply FW cards if you ordered a "PC" iPod?
Or is my old memory failing again...
6. macrumors 6502
Apr 25, 2003
New York, NY
The simple reason is that the Firewire architecture requires more physical space than a USB architecture (having something to do with the fact that USB devices are either master or slave but FireWire is always able to be both). In order for the new iPods to be so thin, they couldn't have a fully-functioning FireWire port. This is also why you can charge the 5G iPods over FireWire, but can't sync--they have the ability to get power over the cable, but not anything more sophisticated.
It's likely also cheaper, but not significantly so.
7. macrumors 68040
Dec 27, 2003
Portland, OR
Yep, that's exactly why. Frustrating for Mac users, but it's nice having such a thin iPod.
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Thursday, March 18, 2010
"mpeachObama21" ...What's in a name? Is free speech not part of the game?
Without knowing all the details this appears outwardly as a free speech issue... I'm not even sure they made a good enough excuse for the Bush comment as it is an after the fact what-if scenario. If Microsoft is allowed to get away with this just how soon will it be that Google shuts down many of the bloogers that use's a lot of bloggers out there that would like to see Obama impeached...worst yet, they're are many that would like him thrown in jail. So apparently Microsoft doesn't mind a dictatorial guy in the White House destroying the very country that made Bill Gates one of the richest people in the world. This could mean only one thing and that is Bill Gates is one of them... Them New World Order guys; the elites who will run the world according to their rules. Of course Bill O'Reilly wouldn't agree with this concept for its only a theory. ~ Norman E. Hooben
The following from World Net Daily
Microsoft Xbox: 'Impeach Obama' off limits
'If you were the president, what would you feel if you saw this?'
Posted: March 17, 2010
9:06 pm Eastern
By Chelsea Schilling
© 2010 WorldNetDaily
That's the question Microsoft Xbox LIVE asked WND after it banned a teenager from using "mpeach obama21" as his gamertag, or online username.
"This name is actually, it's not likeable," a Microsoft Xbox LIVE spokesman identifying himself as Jordan said. "If you were Obama, what would you feel if you saw this?"
Father Chad Willis told WND his 15-year-old son tried to log into his Xbox game console to play online, but the screen alerted him to the following message: "In accordance with Xbox LIVE policy, the gamertag mpeach obama21 is no longer allowed. Please change your gamertag before playing on Xbox LIVE."
Xbox LIVE bans 'mpeach obama21' gamertag
Willis said creating a new gamertag costs Xbox LIVE points and, therefore, money.
Jordan referenced the following Xbox LIVE policy as reason for the ban:
"(mpeach obama21) could fall under sensitive current or historical events," Jordan explained. "Obama being president of the U.S. is a historical event for most of the people there. Microsoft doesn't tolerate such things. Microsoft Xbox wants to be a fun place for everyone."
The newest work from the best-selling author of "The Marketing of Evil," is now available! It's called "How Evil Works" and "turns a blowtorch of good upon the putrid cobwebs of evil."
Asked whether Xbox policy prohibits political speech, he replied, "Well, it doesn't actually say anything about politics, but it could pertain to historical events."
Jordan insisted the policy would apply to "mpeach Bush" gamertags as well.
While political speech may not be allowed, the Xbox LIVE Code of Conduct was recently updated to specifically permit gamertags that include sexual orientation. Users may identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bi, transgender or straight.
Stephen Tolouse, director or policy and enforcement on Xbox LIVE, explained the policy change to one blogger: "As our service has grown – spectacularly, I might add – and become much more social, it's not just about games anymore: It's about movies, it's about sharing experiences with your friends. We certainly see now through feedback from our customer base and community that people want to be able to express that stuff."
Willis' son said he has seen numerous inappropriate gamertags "that have the F-word, drugs and other stupid stuff."
His father said, "This just confirms my resolve in making sure that my family and friends are aware of the collusion, albeit veiled, between Microsoft and the current occupant of the White House."
The teenager said he wants his "mpeach obama21" gamertag back "because it's the principle of the thing."
However, Microsoft Xbox LIVE told WND it will not reinstate the name, and he must create a new one.
Note: Concerned individuals may contact Xbox LIVE.
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Storm'n Norm'n said...
mpeach obama21 what's wrong with that! | <urn:uuid:5e6a6fd6-a3fb-4986-a0a4-503fb3b120ba> | http://normanhooben.blogspot.com/2010/03/mpeachobama21-whats-in-name-is-free.html | en | 0.955683 | 0.044385 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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Wednesday, 20 October 2010
Page: 932
Honourable members interjecting—
The SPEAKER —Order! The member for Dickson!
Ms GILLARD (Prime Minister) —I thank the member for what I understand to be his first question, and I congratulate him on his election to this place. He follows in distinguished shoes, after Petro Georgiou’s contribution to this House, about which we were talking just yesterday.
Mr Pyne —I rise on a point of order. The Prime Minister was asked what action she would take to send a message. I ask you to bring her to that part of the question.
The SPEAKER —As has often been the case, what I am about to say will set me aside from the rest of the House. I simply say to the Manager of Opposition Business that, having learnt my lesson in the last parliament, I did not rule the question out of order because it would appear that in the last parliament there was a very broad interpretation of what interests the Prime Minister had in party political matters. Having said that, I think that what I have heard of the response is directly relevant to the question. Again, I refer to my remarks about the difference between a direct answer and direct relevance.
Ms GILLARD —I was making the simple point that the Labor Party is a large organisation and one would expect that there would be individuals in a large organisation who have views that I view as wrong, and I view this view as wrong. However, on the matter of what the member is asking for, I would ask him to contemplate the standard he is setting here. If it is the intention of the Leader of the Opposition to expel every individual from the Liberal Party who makes a stupid statement I will start sending him a weekly list, and presumably Mal Washer is right on the top of it now. | <urn:uuid:b6ab246e-5c78-4dea-a903-45a4c4ce656c> | http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;db=CHAMBER;id=chamber%2Fhansardr%2F2010-10-20%2F0106;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansardr%2F2010-10-20%2F0072%22 | en | 0.980741 | 0.027633 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Spurs lose big, not a worry to Jackson
AT&T Center — The San Antonio Spurs fell to the Portland Trailblazers.
That's not surprising as playoff-bound teams are going to lose to teams not in contention and Portland has been a thorn in the side of the Spurs. What has gotten many of the fan base riled up is by how much they lost.
The Spurs allowed 136 points in that loss, something unseen during the Gregg Popovich era in regulation and also a new high (or low) for the AT&T Center.
While some fans may have wanted to punch the TV or even question the legitimacy of the team's championship hopes, Stephen Jackson offers his own opinion on the matter.
"It happens. I've been in this game a long time… it happens. It's nothing to panic over, it's nothing to try and evaluate too much," said Jackson after the Spurs loss.
Jackson's always been an optimistic player and that's the type of mentality from a leader that helped his eighth seeded Golden State Warriors defeat the first seed Dallas Mavericks in the 2007 playoffs.
"They hit their shots, they played better than us and won the game," said Jackson. "Our defense was horrible. That's not the way we play defense. They beat us."
"Captain Jack" has been there before and so have the Spurs. In what may have been a moment to forget to the majority of San Antonio faithful, Tracy McGrady also gave the Spurs a moment that the silver and black legion hanging their heads in shame. On December 9, 2004, the Spurs faced McGrady's Houston Rockets and had the game in hand or so they thought. McGrady went on fire in the last 33 seconds and scored 13 points to propel the Rockets over the Spurs.
I don't want to open old wounds, but look at what happened that season.
The Spurs won the NBA championship and that memory now seems to have no influence on the fan base. If the team can put this incident behind them and there's no reason to believe they can't or won't, this will be a loss that'll be thrown in with that McGrady magic act. You have to also believe the Spurs may have been looking forward to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Monday and may have looked past the Trailblazers. Whatever the case is, it's not the end of the world or season.
The team is still playing without it's MVP candidate and playing well overall as a team. When Monday comes along and the Spurs come out with a win against the Thunder, this loss won't mean much. If the Spurs come out as the last team standing in June, this loss will be forgotten or lose any meaning. It's just like Jackson said, "it happens." | <urn:uuid:94543a2f-2104-4557-b055-5f88510d3852> | http://projectspurs.com/2013-articles/spurs-lose-big-not-a-worry-to-jackson.html | en | 0.978367 | 0.025232 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
A Collection of Random Thoughts
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
SBS Migration hell
I recently helped a friend with a swing migration from one (really old) SBS 2003 server to another (new) SBS 2003 server. As there is currently NO process provided by Microsoft to migrate SBS servers (at least none that I am aware of), my friend had purchased the SBS Swing It Kit, provided by Jeff Middleton (SBS MVP) to assist us in this project.
SBS (Small Business Server), if you haven't worked with it before, is designed for small businesses and is also designed to run on 1 server. As such, your 1 SBS server is set up to host many roles on the same box - we're talking Active Directory, Exchange, SQL, Sharepoint, and optionally, ISA and some others. There are license limits in place that only allow you to have a certain number of clients (I want to say 75?), which is why it should only be used for small businesses.
On to our experience. The SBS box in question was just running SBS Standard, which probably made it a "little" bit easier, but not much. A brief overview of the swing migration process is that you have to bring up a temporary DC, transfer everything to that, remove all references to the existing DC, then add your new server (which has the same name as the old server) back in. This by no means details all of the steps involved (which are quite numerous), so I'd encourage you to check out the Swing It kit previously mentioned if you have to go through this process. Anyways - adding the new server didn't pose any problems. AD and DNS replicated with no issues and we were able to do the things we needed. The problems began when we tried to add the new server (with the same name as the old one). We couldn't get AD to replicate. After a few hours of mucking around, we found the issue. Ready? It was the Windows Firewall service! Why on earth the Windows Firewall would decide to prevent Active Directory replication is beyond me, but it did. Once the service was disabled, replication took place within a few minutes and we could then proceed.
Probably the most difficult part about a migration like this is getting the Exchange data transferred. Luckily, as long as the server name (along with a few other things) is the same, you should be able to mount the database from the old server with no issues. I've done this several times for regular Exchange servers, and it's the method that you used to have to follow with Exchange 2000 (build recovery Exchange server in a new forest that has same name, same admin group, same database name, etc.). However, another catch was that there hadn't been a successful full backup in a few weeks, so there were LOTS of log files. To be on the safe side, we brought those over as well, even though the stores were in a clean shutdown state. The biggest nightmare for us was actually getting the stores to mount, though. Let me state for the record here that at 4am in the morning, patience is not my strong suit.
I had applied Exchange 2003 SP2 while I was still copying the databases and log files from the old server to the new one (hooked up old drive via USB 2.0 enclosure), and even though the stores were dismounted when I ran the SP, after it was done, it tried to mount the stores, and replay all the log files. This *obviously* wasn't going to work, as the databases didn't even exist yet! Anyways, to make a long story short, I killed the store.exe process so the SP install would finish. Once that was done, and the stores and logs were transferred, I tried to mount the stores, only to have it fail with some comical error about files not being in the right state, or some such nonsense. I re-transferred the databases and logs again, and verified the databases were still in a clean shutdown state (eseutil /mh), but no dice. Running out of time, I thought I'd try to re-run SP2 and see if something had gotten mucked up the last time. This time, like the last, it replayed all the log files, then it purged them (I don't think I've ever seen an SP purge log files - hehe). With that done, all I had to do was mark the databases as being able to be overwritten, then I was able to mount them successfully.
The other problem we encountered was with the migration of the shares. Because there was a lot of data in the user shares, we decided we didn't have enough time to move the data, so we hooked up the old hard drive into the new server, and re-created the shares. Though I could have sworn that we checked, apparently the new share for the User Shared Files (where My Documents gets redirected to) was set to share perms of Read only. Remember that Windows uses the most restrictive set of permissions when you are accessing a share, so even if you have full control at the NTFS level, if your share permissions are read-only, you aren't going to be writing anything to that share, bucko. That was easy enough to clear up.
Sooo - 12 hours, and a severe case of sleep-deprivation later, migration is done. A few minor problems cropped up later on, but my friend was able to take care of those.
My observations:
1. Why in the world does an SBS migration have to be this difficult?
2. Has anyone at Microsoft tried to migrate SBS servers? If so, do they expect small businesses to ever do this without hiring an sbs expert?
3. I don't like SBS. I really don't. Some people love it. I'm not one of them. It felt like a very dummified [1] version of Windows Server 2003, with wizards galore, and progress bars that leave no indication of what exactly it is doing.
I've promised myself to never touch another SBS server, and above all to never do another SBS migration. I'll leave those to the SBS experts, something which I don't claim to be.
[1] I think I just made up a word.
It's really a shame that you ran into so many problems... but you kept referring to "running out of time". Which is something you don't have to worry about with a SwingMigration, since the network is never really down and it can be done over a number of days if you like.
Also, it's no wonder the Windows Firewall Service caused problems... it's not supposed to be used on an SBS.
Lastly... the fact is that the wizards aren't a dummified (nice word) version of Windows Server, but rather a "smartified" one. Consider that you would never put all of those components into a single box if you were running a standard setup... those wizards (which are really just scripts) ensure that everything that's in the box is fine tuned and configured properly to not cause one thing to step on another's toes.
Give one a try in a non-production environment, and I think you'll find that you will start wanting the wizards on the other servers you work with.
I'll agree that our approach wasn't the traditional approach to a Swing migration, but unfortunately we did have a limited time window, which probably contributed to my frustration and bad experience.
As to the Windows FW service - I agree there as well, but the install was done using the SBS media, and the Windows FW service was there and enabled, so I dunno.
I also agree that no one in their right mind would install all these things on a regular server, but I still disagree on the wizards. If I'm running a wizard, I want it to at least *show* me what it is doing. These don't. I take that back - some of them do. It's a good thing that they do fine-tune the box, but I don't like the way they work.
As far as wanting the wizards on other servers, I'll also respectfully disagree. I have not yet found a need for any of the wizards (such as those in SBS). These same sentiments have been expressed by virtually every other person I know who administers "regular" Exchange servers. I expect that those who work with SBS every day have come to love the wizards, but I don't work with SBS every day, and my experience thus far is that I detest them.
Microsoft did publish an SBS 2000 to SBS 2003 migration document that advocates the use of the "Active Directory Migration Tool" and it's completely useless. (SBS_MigratingSBS2k.doc) Actually it's rather dangerous. This official method instructs the installer to basically destroy the existing network and leave a lot of nasty issues for the users behind. (Microsoft actually outlines two days of downtime to fix client computer issues, etc!) I think my boss would have seriously questioned my abilities if I had gone that route with our migration.
I thought doing a "Swing" migration was fairly easy. I didn't buy the "kit," but Jeff Middleton wrote a chapter about it in a book I bought (Advanced SBS 2003 Best Practices) and he explained the steps in sufficient detail there. This method seemed like a much more logical approach instead of starting with a new server name, domain name, IP address, and etc as Microsoft recommended. I'm sorry to hear that you had such a hard time with it... I only had about 4 hours of downtime with the migration. A great deal of that was the cost of copying 20-30gb of data over 100mbps ethernet. (Robocopy works great to preserve security and other attributes.)
I'm mixed about the wizards. I dislike the internet connection wizard or whatever it's called because I've found it can leave very annoying (hidden) side effects. The backup wizard is pretty nice, though NTBackup is already rather painless to use. What they really should add is a "Migration Wizard" that will do all of the tedious ASDIEdit and NTDSUtil work involved in a swing migration, plus resolve any simple to moderate issues in mounting the old Exchange store.
It makes no sense to me as to why they have all of these "wizards" in the OS but make migration such a manual process. Given the size and resources of Microsoft, it's just amazing to think that they've left their SBS customers (repeat customers at that) blowing in the wind on these migration issues. Spending money on an SBS license plus CALs and then basically needing to fork out another $xxx for a 3rd party migration guide and support is just nuts.
The extremely detailed microsoft guide is here:
I've had to do it 4 or 5 times now, and it hasn't failed me yet.
I'm not really that bothered about doing the swing thing/downtime, as it gives me the opportunity to charge double time for weekend work :)
Seems a bit rich for an MVP to post here slating MS for your cock ups, when you didn't even bother to follow their official procedure!
I've heard good things about another tool for server migration - secure copy. Take a look at this review in WindowsItPro. Sounds really promising for me. We are thinking of migrating server data to new hardware and I've heard that Secure Copy can make things much easier.
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China and US in spat over Tiananmen
• 5 June 2014
• From the section China
China has made a formal complaint to the US after the White House urged it to account for the protesters who were killed during the Tiananmen massacre.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said he was "deeply dissatisfied" and had lodged "solemn representations".
Tens of thousands of people gathered in Hong Kong to mark the 25th anniversary of the massacre, but all mention of the event was forbidden in mainland China.
Hundreds died when the army suppressed a huge pro-democracy protest in 1989.
The crackdown was ordered after hardliners won a power struggle within the ruling Communist Party.
There has never been another protest of its magnitude in mainland China.
The authorities in Beijing were keen to make sure no-one tried to commemorate the events, and detained dozens of people in the run-up to the anniversary.
Tiananmen protests
Timeline: Tiananmen protests
Why the protests still matter
Chinese media quiet on anniversary
In pictures: Tiananmen protests
Struggling against Tiananmen censors
But numerous governments called on Beijing to use the anniversary to rethink its attitude to human rights.
"We call on Chinese authorities to account for those killed, detained, or missing in connection with the events surrounding June 4, 1989," the White House said in a statement.
During a regular news conference, Mr Hong did not refer directly to the Tiananmen protests.
But he said: "The US statement on that incident shows a total disregard of fact."
Image caption Despite the tight security, Chinese tourists poured into Tiananmen Square as usual
Image caption In Hong Kong, tens of thousands gathered to commemorate the protests
Later, state-run news agency Xinhua published a story quoting Mr Hong as saying China was "strongly dissatisfied with and firmly opposed" to the US statement.
"We have lodged solemn representations to the US side."
It was unclear what kind of protest Mr Hong had lodged. The US embassy was unavailable for comment.
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A Taste of the Past…A Hint at the Future
I love a good juicy piece of history, and I found an article this morning to whet my appetite. We’ve all heard how the world is supposed to end at the end of this very year, 2012, due to the predictions of an ancient Mayan calendar. However, the discovery of a new (very old, actually) Mayan calendar brings that prediction to a halt.
Deep in the Guatemalan rainforest rests the remains of an ancient city, quiet and peaceful and unbeknownst to the outside world. This ancient city, Xultun, was first discovered in 1915. Only two years ago, archaeologists from Boston University were mapping Xultun when traces of ancient paint were found in a trench dug by looters. This led to the discovery of a 6-foot-by-6-foot room with elaborate murals painted on the north and west walls.
On one wall is the painting of a king (name unknown) sitting on his throne and wearing a crown. Another figure, looking somewhat suspicious, is peeking behind him.
Next to the king is a painting of a brilliant orange figure kneeling before the king. He holds a type of writing utensil, identifying him as a sort of scribe. (Perhaps this room was his own…) This painting is given the mysterious title “Younger Brother Obsidian” or “Junior Obsidian.”
Across from these two murals is a painting of three figures in loin cloths and headdresses. One is captioned “Older Brother Obsidian” or “Senior Obsidian”…another mysterious title.
Even more interesting, however, is what was discovered on the east wall. Here is painted a series of complex hieroglyphics that have been identified as a calendar. This calendar, dating somewhere around A.D. 800, is the oldest known Mayan calendar.
This calendar seems to have been used as a reference for scribes and mathematicians. The hieroglyphics compute numbers relating to the sun, moon, and possibly Venus and Mars. The calendar stretches years into the future, perhaps even as far as 7,000 years, disproving the previous prediction of the world’s end in December of 2012. Though the date is mentioned, researchers have said that rather than predicting an ending, the date represents the beginning of a new cycle.
In our day of computers and other amazing technologies, the technological efficiency of ancient paint and rock walls is mind-blowing. Despite the modernity of our time, there is still so much of the past that we have yet to uncover. Just imagine—only 0.1 percent of Xultun has been discovered! With so much left to be discovered, there is no telling what else we can learn of the past…or the future!
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You Know You're Paul Rudd When...
…you're an Oord-trained actor who tells boner jokes for a living, the secret of your success is your everlasting obsession with Steve Martin, and you raised a son who thinks he's Elvis Costello. Chris Heath looks for the grownup side of Hollywood's most likable leading bro and comes up laughing
Confront the actor Paul Rudd with the observation that, in almost all circumstances, he seems to convey an immense likability and he replies, "Well, that's nice, thanks." He says this not in an obviously sarcastic way, but more in the manner of a man who has just been handed a slice of cake and is politely grateful for the gift, though not yet sure how hungry he is. But ask him whether this likability has ever seemed to be a hindrance professionally and he will concede that it has. "You know, there were times, probably in my twenties, when I would find it a little annoying. I would always get described as, you know, 'allAmerican,' 'has no edge,' nothing dangerous about me at all." A laugh, genial. "And I knew that was the case. I wasn't dangerous or brooding. Or in emotional turmoil. Any of that, really. And so I think at times I felt frustrated." When it comes to audiences, too, who have their own unfair and perverse instincts, this kind of likability can be a blessing that cloaks a curse within it. There is a kind of actor everyone will be glad to discover is in a movie they are seeing, but few will cross the street to see in a movie, and for a long while it seemed as though Paul Rudd might be one of these.
No longer. "Careerwise," as he observes, "things are very good for me in a way that they have never been before." His recent series of notable supporting parts now seem as though they were designed to build up to his satisfying prominence in last year's Role Models and the current I Love You, Man. Maybe it's just chance, or the fortune of being in the right place to ride the latest comedy wave. Maybe it's that audiences see something new behind his eyes, something that wasn't there before. ("As I've lived longer now, experienced more things, some of the optimism and wideeyed stuff, it just gets beaten out of you," he reflects. "It just does.") Or maybe it's that the likable will inherit the earth eventually, but they need to be very patient.
We meet in his chosen Manhattan diner, not far from where he lives with his wife, son, and a view of the Hudson. He was born a few miles from here, across the George Washington Bridge in Passaic, New Jersey, and his early childhood memories are of New York and New Jersey. "My grandparents lived in every Sopranos location," he says. But it is Kansas he usually refers to when asked where he is from. His parents moved there when he was 10. (His father was a sales manager for TWA, and the airline's hub was Kansas City.) "It's strange," he says, "because none of us really fit the stereotypical Kansan, midwestern persona—kind of the Bible Belt, happy, Christian, really whitebread…"
His parents were nonreligious European Jewish liberals. "It seemed a weird match," he says, "but there is something I really, really loved about growing up there, and something I love about going back. I think the people do seem genuinely happier. They seem nicer."
Why do you think that is
"I think there's something kind of good about growing up in a place you know is not the cool place to be. I think it's good for your head."
Both his parents were born in England—they'd known each other all their lives—and Rudd feels a vestigial connection to that country. "Even from my earliest memories," he says, "of the candy, really. And tea. And that counts for something when you're a kid." As a student, he went to England for a semester to study Jacobean drama at Oord. "I loved that. I associate a lot of happiness with spending time over there and working on scenes or plays that were very English."
He talks a little more about Jacobean drama and then starts laughing. I ask why it's funny. "I don't know," he says. "I think it's because I like that, and then, on the other hand, I'm making a living telling boner jokes."
There's an obvious mistake to make here—to take this as a sign of deep torment in Paul Rudd's soul: a man forced to sully a pure spirit and a higher calling in pursuit of the cheap laughs and large paychecks that come to those who can find a witty, contemporary way to speak of erectile tissue and its associated predicaments and adventures. Probably closer to the truth is to suggest that, as a man with wide tastes and other strings to his bow, Paul Rudd tells all the boner jokes he tells not because he needs to but because he wants to. And also that maybe Jacobean drama—the play Rudd conveniently chooses to mention is 'Tis Pity She's a Whore—isn't so different, anyway. If the grandest, noblest themes endure through human history and drama, then so, too, do the other ones. "Maybe in their own way," he suggests, "a lot of the Jacobean playwrights were making boner jokes and fart jokes."
They were the Judd Apatows of their day
"Absolutely," he says. He seems satisfied by the idea and sound of this, at the very least. "They absolutely were."
Many of the stories Paul Rudd tells of his youth relate to the pop music of earlier days and often reflect choices and tastes that are both peculiar and particular. One of his first memories is of standing on his bed wearing these shorts he thought were cool, with sideway zippers and hammer loops, no shirt, watching himself in the mirror, rocking out with his invisible guitar to his favorites at the time: "Monster Mash," Glen Campbell's "Southern Nights," the Bay City Rollers' "Saturday Night," and two by Neil Sedaka, "Calendar Girl" and "Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen."
Later he fell under the spell of the English pop star Adam Ant. "I really tried for a while to go with the Adam Ant look." He tried to put an Antinspired braid in his hair and asked his mother to shave back his scalp in imitation of Adam Ant's receding hairline, which to the young Paul Rudd was purely a matter of fashion and not a desperate attempt to disguise biological reality as New Romantic flourish. (She refused.) He also asked her to bleach the top of his hair blond in emulation of briefly celebrated synthpop wizard Howard Jones. (She refused.) And to aid in his creation of a Jonesesque rat tail in his hair. (She refused.)
"She wouldn't let me do anything," he says. "Smart."
Even Mother couldn't save him from every clothing calamity. "I had pants that had pleats in the ass," he recalls. "Pleated in front and then pleated in the back. They were already pegged at the bottom, but then I would try and have them taken in more. Until really it looked like I was wearing a huge pair of jodhpurs."
As he got older, his body started to work against him: "Puberty hit me pretty hard. All of a sudden I woke up and I had really curly hair." He tried to blowdry it straight, to no avail. "I wanted that Colt 45 featheredonthesides look. But I looked like Bruno from Fame. It was just a lost cause." He also had bad acne. "I didn't have, you know, a severe chronic case of pustules and things, but for years I had a pretty spotty face, and those are tough years, anyway. I was just kind of: Why Why did this have to happen And I also was not one to pop them, because I had been told that if you do that, another one will come back and another one, and it will scar your face. So I think I unnecessarily walked around with the odd pustule. I remember being at a football game and I had this swimming pool on my chin of pus, this goo, this massive zit—the bubble was ready to burst. I was horrified, just so embarrassed. But I also wanted to be out with everyone, so—this is probably a window into my personality—I made a huge deal of it. I was joking about it. Not trying to appear that it was bothering me so much. And there was a girl there that I really, really liked, and [another] girl said something like, 'You're just keeping that zit because you like Kelly and you just want all this attention.' And I remember going home and [mimes squeezing]. It was the first one I ever popped."
And how did it go with Kelly
"She was the first girl I ever kissed," he tells me. "So pretty damn good."
Though Rudd was also obsessed from an early age with comedy LPs, particularly Steve Martin's and Mel Brooks's, his first thought of a career was that he might be an artist. If not a painter, then maybe a graphic artist. After he went to speech class, and chanced upon one of those inspiring teachers who help you discover the possibilities within yourself, his priorities changed. He would act. As an adult, it amuses him when he listens to contestant after contestant on American Idol meander though the same insincere litany: I was born to sing.… I just want to share this with the world.… I love the craft.…
"It is simple," he says. "We're all looking for attention—that's what it is. Get real."
His youthful enthusiasms may have been the catalyst for his recent successes in a more direct, if obtuse, way. At a dinner party a few years back, Rudd was expressing his love of Steve Martin's character names—in particular, Gern Blanston. Someone at the dinner exclaimed that this explained Judd Apatow's strange email address; this was the name Apatow used. So Rudd—who had never met Apatow—sent him an email, and they started corresponding.
Rudd mentioned this story in the press a while back, and not long afterward he received a copy of Steve Martin's memoir, Born Standing Up. Inside, Martin had signed his own name and then added, in parentheses, "Gern."
"It's one of the greatest things I've ever gotten in my life," says Rudd. "That was definitely one of those life moments."
When I ask Rudd why he believes his career has taken this good turn, he answers, "Just because I, in the last years, got into some comedies that made money, in particular Judd's movies, and I think it's been a great thing to be part of and I really lucked out."
It started with Anchorman, in which Rudd played one of Ron Burgundy's TVstation cronies. "Anchorman was never supposed to be a popular, like, hit movie," he says. "That movie was a cheap movie—it felt like we were working on a weird independent comedy in a way. 40YearOld Virgin was kind of the same. There was probably more expectation with Knocked Up. But I was just happy, honestly, to be working, and still am, on things that I like, that were fun to work on, with people I liked. And as for where I fit in on that kind of food chain, I never concerned myself with it, or cared. I want to enjoy the experiences, and that's become more and more important to me. I don't want to make Apocalypse Now. I think working on something that is miserable for eight months for the sake of art sounds just…miserable." He considers the reality of this assertion. "I don't know. I would probably do it, but I wouldn't enjoy it. And I also think some of the reasons people want to see comedies maybe is just because the world is going through a real tough time."
When I wonder aloud about what may be distinctive about this new generation of comedies, Rudd mentions the amount of onset improvisation and a distinctive use of popcultural references. And also that "a lot of the guys are not typically moviestar guys, you know." This is true, but it is also where Rudd is the odd one out in the gang. If the rest look like the kind of men who might not, in a world run according to the usual cruel and unreal laws of Hollywood, get the girl, then Rudd looks like a guy who probably would.
Another marker of these modern comedies (the Apatow kind, into which movies like Role Models and I Love You, Man seem to naturally fit, even though Judd Apatow has nothing to do with them) is the fresh way in which they seem to meld gross insensitivity and gross sensitivity. In I Love You, Man, a typically effective example of this new hybrid, what is remarkable is not just the ability to embrace both compelling softhearted emotion and longdistance projectile vomiting but its utter comfort in not feeling the need to indicate the difference.
It turns out that what makes Rudd most squeamish is unearned sentimentality. He points out that in Role Models, which he cowrote, after the first few scenes any halfawake viewer should have a pretty good idea of what will happen from then on, at least in a general sense, and of which heartstrings will be pulled along the way. "Nobody wants to make something very treacly. I think we're all very nervous of that. If the jokes are leftofcenter enough, if there's something subversive enough about it, then it makes it a little more tolerable. I know if I'm writing something, or if I'm acting in something, and it seems as though I'm going to deal with anything that might be kind of serious or emotional or vulnerable, it's not uncommon to pepper it with a few jokes. I really do think that that makes it more moving. Because that's how I would deal with my own insecurities and my own vulnerabilities. If something tragic happened in your life, you make the most offcolor joke about it. I do that kind of stuff. Absolutely." He laughs comfortably. "It's horrible stuff."
An example is requested. Rudd thinks for a short while, silent, and I can almost see experiences flit behind his forehead, one by one, each briefly considered then discarded as unshareable. Eventually, an example is offered: "Well, my dad died recently. And I was in a car with a couple of buddies, driving upstate. And I had this song on my iPod by this guy named David Geddes who did the song in the '70s called "The Last Game of the Season." It is one of these great storytelling songs from the '70s, where it's half talking, half singing. It would be the example of the one that is: We are going to set out to make you cry. But they haven't earned any of it, and it's ridiculous. And I love it."
He explains the story told in the song: "It's about this kid on a high school football team that doesn't ever play. And there's always a blind man in the bleachers that cheers on the team. Finally, it's the last game of the season. Nobody has even noticed that the blind man is not there. And it's halftime and nobody even notices that the kid's gone over to make a phone call. The team is getting killed, the hits are so hard, players are going down injured left and right. And the coach is, where is that kid And he comes running out, and the coach screams, 'Where the hell have you been' And he insists, 'You've got to put me in, Coach.' He goes in and just kicks ass. And they win. And the coach says, 'Where did you learn to play like that' And the kid says, 'Well, my father, he's blind, you see, and I just found out at halftime he passed away. And it's the first time that my father saw me play.' "
That's the song he's playing in the car with his friends. And Rudd's just loving it, but one of his buddies isn't so happy. Because his father actually is blind.
"And I said," Rudd recounts with pride, " 'Well, my dad's dead, so I win.' And I started teasing him that his father was only blind."
At this, I openly gawp.
"That's the kind of stuff that always makes me laugh," he says. "That's the way, of course, I deal with any of that tragic stuff."
When you say something like that, what do you feel like it's doing
"Well, I imagine my father cracking up at that."
He would have found that funny
"Oh yeah. He would have loved that shit. The further you go… And so I suppose it makes me feel close to him. But it also genuinely makes me laugh. And that's a minor example. I'm sure I could come up with things that are ten times worse."
Somewhere within these last sentences, Paul Rudd begins to cry. He leans hard to his right—almost as though, at a lower altitude, his tears will seem less evident. "I'm feeling very Barbara Walters right now," he says. I ask whether he wants to continue. "No, it's fine. It's fine. Absolutely." He sits up, wipes. "He was just really funny."
This morning, Paul Rudd woke at around a quarter to seven, and he and his son, Jack, did one of their favorite things to do together. They watched footage from Live Aid, the charity concert that froze in time 1985 pop music's present and past. Today they watched short sets by the Style Council, the Boomtown Rats, and Ultravox. "He loves Live Aid," says Rudd. Jack likes to play the guitar or drum along. Sometimes they'll build blocks. (Jack is 4.)
Pop music also guides his wardrobe.
"He only wears coats and ties," says Rudd. "He likes to wear suits, my son. And I think it was because of Elvis Costello."
He puts on a tie every day
"Yeah. And bow ties, lately. Loves them. And also dress shoes, not tennis shoes. And glasses. He looks like George F. Will."
When Rudd was 24 and just about to make Clueless, the movie that would be his first big break, a friend named Justin was driving in Los Angeles when a truck coming the other way crossed over and hit him headon. They had been doing a play together at the time, about Byron and Shelley. Justin was 22. The death affected Rudd badly.
"And it was weird," he says, "because he wasn't that great a friend of mine, but it hit me." Maybe the play itself didn't help. "You know, Shelley and Byron were haunted by ghosts," he says. "It all seemed to kind of coalesce, this moment in my life, where it really made me question everything and really start trying to figure out things that…I suppose…are unfigureoutable." He started reading a lot of spiritual books: The Prophet; Siddhartha; Many Lives, Many Masters, "a lot of that kind of stuff," he says. "Some of it makes me chuckle now." It felt useful then. "Certain things were comforting. I think it did help me at the time." He began to wonder whether he and Justin were friends in a previous life.
At home in L.A., he started doing these drawings filled with obscenities on a huge sheet of cardboard on his wall. "That was one of the harder moments I had experienced up until that point. And so, you know, when you're a young actor and you experience this kind of stuff…," he says, chuckling, "you have to put it into a big cardboard thing on your wall. It probably seemed the artistic thing to do." He was also upset at the time by the dreadful television show he was on, Wild Oats. "So I was kind of like, 'Fuck this town,' 'Fuck this.…' It was stupid. It wasn't a cry for help. It wasn't anything other than maybe somebody might come over and think, 'That's really interesting.' I'm sure that's what it was. Not to negate the feelings I had while I was making it. And that being said, when my parents came to visit and my mother saw that, I think she was very concerned and wanted me to come back home for a little while."
Around then, Los Angeles seemed to turn on him. One evening during the Clueless shoot, he was mugged. He had gone for dinner with a friend at Jerry's Deli in the Valley. Back out at his car, a guy grabbed him and told him to give him his money.
"This is a real gun," he told Rudd. "Watch out, because I'll fucking kill you."
Rudd assured him that he believed him and that it was fine.
"You don't think it's a real gun" the guy said, and fired it. The bullet went through Rudd's hair.
Rudd told him he had no cash but that he could take whatever he wanted. He offered his backpack and the gunman ran off.
"I just remember the sound of it," he says, recalling the bullet. "I remember people in the parking lot being really freaked out. But I just got very calm. Then I had to go to work the next day. It was a scene at a club. I was dancing. And I had just been shot at the night before."
He also got into a series of car accidents. His car was messed up in a hitandrun while it was parked. He borrowed a friend's car, and the next week, when he braked coming down a hill, it hydroplaned and hit another car. So he rented a car and was awakened one morning by a crash—someone had hit the rental car. He began to wonder whether it was time to get out of town. He had been thinking of moving to New York for some time, but he was waiting for the right moment. Then he went to a theater audition, and one of the monologues he had prepared was from Amadeus, and while walking down the street trying to memorize the lines, he bumped into someone. Improbably, it was Tom Hulce, who in the movie had played the very part he was rehearsing and was one of the actors Rudd most admired. He didn't know Hulce, but he told him what he was doing, and for some reason Hulce asked, "You live in New York" Rudd told him that he was living in California but thinking about moving.
"You should," he told him. "You'd like it."
That decided it. "I didn't need any more signs," Rudd says. After the audition, he called his landlord and said he was moving.
"And I did, and I've been here since."
Paul Rudd wasn't always America's most likable actor. In Kansas he worked for a while glazing hams at the Holiday Ham Company. In Los Angeles he worked at a Bennigan's and as a bar mitzvah and birthday DJ for a company called You Should Be Dancing: "Kind of like The Wedding Singer, but way down. I had long hair and people had to wear tudos, but I was still trying to develop my own look, and I had shorts and Doc Martens and kind of wanted to go for the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Mother's Milk kind of phase."
After Rudd's father left TWA, he ran historical tours, leading parties to sites across Europe. He had two areas of particular interest. One was the Second World War. (Whenever Rudd or his school friends had a school paper on Churchill, they would seek out his father.) The other was the Titanic. Way before the wreck was discovered—way, way before Leonardo DiCaprio spread his arms—Rudd's father was a member of the Titanic Historical Society, and the basement was full of Titanic stuff: When Rudd auditioned for the DiCaprio role—"That was the one part I really, really wanted, for my dad"—he thinks he started talking about the shipbuilders, Harland & Wolff. ("Nobody was impressed.")
Rudd says that, in later years, his father took some of his greatest pleasure from expressing his disapproval. "We lived in a town called Lenexa, Kansas, and my friends, we gave him the name the Angry Lenexan. He was a big letter writer. He would write to papers and just give his opinion. They were always brilliant letters. Pointing out the hypocrisy and how pathetic it is. Animal rights…and stemcell research… When he was diagnosed with cancer, he wrote a thing about how dare these people get in the way of so many people getting help because of their misunderstood religious fervor. He would send me copies, and he always signed them 'The Angry Lenexan.' "
The scene in Role Models in which Rudd's character borrows Rudd's own indignation at preposterous coffeechain beverage naming is very much his father's legacy. There is another scene—cut, but on the DVD extras—where Rudd's character is sitting around with a group of kids in a circle, supposedly so they can express things they love, and he says: "I love it when hunters shoot each other."
"That's me, and it's definitely my father," he says. "When people like Dick Cheney have gay children—that's just all funny."
Rudd recently hosted Saturday Night Live for the first time. It was not long after his father's death. His father had known this was coming up and had been excited about it, but he hadn't made it. At the very end of the show, as the credits roll, Rudd, who is standing between Beyoncé and Justin Timberlake, breaks from the crowd of mutual congratulation, grabs with both hands the front of the shirt he is wearing—his father's shirt from the navy—and then looks upward and blows a kiss.
Rudd's conversation is littered with popmusic references. To be specific, while sitting in the diner today, he will introduce into the conversation the following artists, in order: the Style Council, the Boomtown Rats, Ultravox, Adam Ant, Nik Kershaw, Depeche Mode, Blancmange, Yaz, Alphaville, Aswad, the Adventures, Howard Jones, Limahl, Elvis Costello, Tom Petty, Seals & Croft, John Mellencamp, Squeeze, Boston, David Geddes, Neil Sedaka, Glen Campbell, the Bay City Rollers, Spandau Ballet, Visage, Fad Gadget, Feargal Sharkey, Erasure, Frank Zappa, Fiat Lux, Duran Duran, Ron Sexsmith, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Wang Chung, Huang Chung, Go West, R.E.M., the Pogues, Hipsway, Curiosity Killed the Cat, Level 42, Haircut 100, Nick Heyward, Split Enz, Hunters & Collectors, Midnight Oil, the Hoodoo Gurus, the Proclaimers, Roman Holliday, the JoBors, Will Oldham, the Decemberists, Fleet Fos, the Divine Comedy, the Magnetic Fields, Neutral Milk Hotel, Lambchop, Animal Collective, Television, James Taylor, Elton John, XTC, Sade, Status Quo, Marillion, Camper Van Beethoven, U2, Black, and the Housemartins.
GQ correspondent Chris Heath wrote about Russell Brand in the February 2009 issue. | <urn:uuid:2b99cfdc-6c6e-4e61-8d6e-d7f3ca5b98e6> | http://www.gq.com/story/paul-rudd-oxford-elvis-costello?currentPage=6 | en | 0.989855 | 0.038183 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Bodies found in mass graves
Sarajevo (Reuter)- Investigators said yesterday that they had exhumed 105 bodies from two mass graves in north-west Bosnia. They are believed to be Muslims killed by Bosnian Serbs at the beginning of the war, state radio reported.
Bosnian investigators found 77 bodies at one site, which they believe to be those of men from the village of Velagici, near the town of Kljuc, killed on 1 June 1992, the radio said. Investigators are still working on a second site, a cave where 28 bodies were unearthed. They believe the cave contains the bodies of up to 150 civilians from Biljani, also near Kljuc.
In a separate development, United Nations investigators have found 200 bodies in a mass grave near Vukovar, Croatia. The victims are believed to be hospital patients executed after Serbs seized the region in 1991.
A spokesman for the UN transitional authority in Eastern Slavonia, a Serb-held enclave due to revert to Croatian government rule next year, said the bodies had been sent to Zagreb for forensic examination. Circumstantial evidence suggests they were killed by machine gun. | <urn:uuid:03446651-5af3-4f80-813d-99c7a2abecdf> | http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/bodies-found-in-mass-graves-1357354.html | en | 0.975263 | 0.077227 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Is Paris really "wife
Paris Hilton has been called a lot of things, but "wife material" is probably a first. Her beau of at least two months, Benji Madden, very publicly stated his vision for the future with Paris. "I always knew that she was, like, wife material, or serious girlfriend material," Benji told Michael Yo from Yo on E! So does that mean an engagement is in the works this year? "I'm not gonna bet against you on that," he admitted. "I'm very, very happy now. We were in love before anyone even knew we were together." | <urn:uuid:2ff6146f-356f-4e3c-aa7a-6c819ccd140e> | http://www.intouchweekly.com/posts/is-paris-really-wife-material-23565 | en | 0.993177 | 0.076104 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
JWR Articles: Film/DVD - Before the Music Dies (Director: Andrew Shapter) - May 22, 2008
Before the Music Dies
4.5 4.5
124 min.
Music without the suits
There are two kinds of music: good and bad. In times past, the artists and their audience would decide what was liked and what was not. Sure, it could take months, weeks or occasionally years before the value of a style or song was realized, but somehow—like Felix Mendelssohn putting J.S. Bach back on the hit parade—excellence and genius would always find their place in the hallowed halls of human artistic greatness.
With the advent of recorded music, the ability to capture a particular performance and share it with anyone who had the playback equipment radically changed how music was both heard and appreciated. Once 45s and LPs found mass appeal, the music business was established in earnest. In the early days, record executives (notably the Artists and Repertoire positions) became the all important go-betweens for singers and songwriters. It was not unusual for the management team to have dabbled as players themselves.
But with the twin events of the arrival of the Internet and passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act by Congress (giving rise to mega broadcasters such as Clear Channel with hundreds of stations but one format), those running the show wanted quarterly profits rather than great product or the long-term development and care of their artists.
Director/co-writer—along with Joel Rasmussen—Andrew Shapter wisely lets the artists and former managers (interviews with the leaders of the money-machine corporations are noticeably absent) do the talking in this first-rate essay on the current state of pop music in the United States. With the likes of Erykah Badu (“Hip hop rules the world now.”), Les Paul (who wonders aloud if there is much heart in the factory tracks that populate commercial radio these days), The Roots’ Questlove (“We are the last black band with a major record company”) and Brantford Marsalis (“The middle man is one of the most useless jobs in the universe”; “My students [only wanting praise and unwilling to perfect their craft] are completely full of shit.”) speaking their minds, there’s little need to ply narrator Forest Whitaker with pithy comments or wry observations.
We learn early on how the over-commercialization of our most universal art—largely due to music videos, MTV et al—has made the visual frequently more valuable than the musical (imagine the career of Britney Spears if she was only heard on radio). Many video “artists” gain fame before ever appearing in a public concert; implants, long locks and stilettos are the new normal for fresh-face divas (advised to “do some horseshit” or “get naked early” to generate “interest” and feed both the tabloids and the charts). Can’t sing?—no worries: cosmetic tonal surgery is but a few clicks away in the digital operating theatre of sound.
Is there life after either a major label loses interest (literally, if the sales aren’t high enough) or because of the explosion of theft-by-download (gigabytes per day: the ultimate consumers’ revenge)? Don’t get mad, become your own management. Using ATO Records as a prime example, founder Dave Matthews explains the process and the coup of signing David Gray; former big-time VP of A&R, Bruce Flohr chronicles the fall and rise of Doyle Bramhall II; the notion that real fans will download the tracks AND buy the $38 twin-DVD with all of the otherwise unavailable extras is put forward; everyone agrees that success will only happen when it’s the personal love of the craft rather than fame and fortune that drives the process.
Interesting as the discourse is, it’s the concert clips, archive stills and Eric Clapton’s solo with Doyle that wordlessly make the case for the survival of music that deserves to be heard. Still, given the clout of the mainstream media, the “suits” who earn their outrageous salaries on the backs of the bewildered (on both the sides of the lens/microphone), corporate, musical America need only retool and wait for China to really Westernize to stay in the black.
For everyone else, the art will always survive—it just won’t be found in the usual places. JWR
Your comments are always welcome at JWR.
for related work:
Where will you travel today? | <urn:uuid:ac2bcf57-90f6-4b0e-9b3a-62f59f6730f5> | http://www.jamesweggreview.org/Articles.aspx?ID=729 | en | 0.940689 | 0.020734 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Genome Property Definition Page
NameO121(Ec) antigen biosynthesis
DescriptionThe E. coli O121 antigen monomer is a linear tetrasaccharide with the structure [->3)bDQui4NGlyAc(1->4)aDGalNAcAN(1->4)aDGalNAcA(1->3)aDGlcNAc(1->]. The 4-aminoquinovose sugar is also known as viosamine and the NGlyAc is an acetylglycylamido group; GalNAcA is N-acetylgalturonic acid, and GalNAcAN is N-acetylgalacturonamide. Additionally, the DGalNAcAN is reported to be 60% O-acetylated at the 3-position. Three glycosyltransferases are present in the sequenced O121(Ec) cluster, WbqEHI. WbqI shares 47% identity with the WfaH enzyme from the O138(Ec) antigen cluster, and O138 shares the [DGlcNAc-a-1,3-DGalNAcA] reaction. WbqE shares 37% identity with WfbE from the O123(Ec) antigen cluster, and O123 also includes a 4-substituted quinovose sugar in the first position of the monomer, although the incorporated amino acid is alanine instead of glycine. By process of elimination, the WbqH enzyme is assigned to the middle linkage. The N-acetylgalacturonamide is likely derived from N-acetylgalturonic acid by the action of the asparagine synthase homolog WbqG. The O-acetylation is likely carried out by WbqF.
JCVI RoleBiosynthesis and degradation of surface polysaccharides and lipopolysaccharides
Step NameStep NumRequiredEvidence (Method)Evidence Go Terms
source of 4-acetylglycylamido-D-quinovoseQ4NGAcYESGenProp1039 (GENPROP): dTDP-4-N-acetylglycylamido-D-quinovose (dTDP-Qui4NAcGly) biosynthesis from dTDP-D-viosamine
D-GalNAcAN-b-1,4-D-Qui4NAcGly transferaseWbqEYES2904 (RULE_BASE)
D-GalNAcAN 3-O-acetyltransferaseWbqFYES2905 (RULE_BASE)
D-GalNAcA amido-ligaseWbqGYES2907 (RULE_BASE)
D-GalNAcA-a-1,4-D-GalNAcAN transferaseWbqHYES2908 (RULE_BASE)
D-GlcNAc a-1,3-DGalNAcA transferaseWbqIYES2909 (RULE_BASE)
O121(Ec)-specific O-antigen transporter (flippase) wzxwzx121YES2903 (RULE_BASE)
O121(Ec)-specific O-antigen polymerase wzywzy121YES2906 (RULE_BASE) | <urn:uuid:53270dc5-3bdd-43ae-8eca-8e54b5caf78a> | http://www.jcvi.org/cgi-bin/genome-properties/GenomePropDefinition.cgi?prop_acc=GenProp1038 | en | 0.733319 | 0.157304 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Holiday Shepherd’s Pie (Turkey Chili with Sweet Potato Shepherd’s Pie)
December 22nd, 2011 by kelley
Holiday Shepherd's Pie
I learned my lesson: 18 pounds of turkey is too much for 10 people even for Thanksgiving. Even after pawning leftovers (not that it was difficult), I was still drowning in turkey. What’s a girl to do? The obvious solution is turkey pot pie, but, ahem, somebody around here thinks that is just gross.
Alas, no turkey pot pie for me, but I did at least get some kind of pie–a turkey twist on shepherd’s pie. It was different, and delicious, and I’m sharing with you in time for you to make plans with your leftover Christmas turkey.
Holiday Shepherd's Pie
Sweet Potatoes
1 1/2 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped
3 ounces Greek yogurt
nutmeg to taste
salt to taste
pepper to taste
Turkey Chili
2 tablespoons olive oil
3/4 pounds roasted turkey, diced
1/2 medium onion, diced
1 hot pepper, any variety, diced
1/2 red bell pepper, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 teaspoon paprika
1 tablespoon cumin
4 ounces tomato sauce
1/2 can niblet corn, drained
1/2 can black beans, drained
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
salt to taste
black pepper to taste
Make the sweet potatoes:
1. Add the potatoes to large pot and cover with water. Bring to boil over medium heat and cook until potatoes are tender, about 30-35 minutes.
2. Drain potatoes and add Greek yogurt, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.
3. Mash potatoes with masher or cream with mixer.
Make the turkey chili (while potatoes are boiling):
1. Heat olive oil in large pot over medium heat. Add onions and cook for 2-3 minutes.
2. Add hot pepper, bell pepper, garlic and turkey to onions. Stir in the spices.
3. Once peppers begin to get soft, add black beans, corn, and tomato sauce. Simmer for 2-3 minutes.
4. Add broth and simmer until it cooks down and thickens, about 10 minutes.
Make the shepherd’s pie:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Transfer chili to casserole dish.
3. Spread sweet potatoes over chili.
4. Sprinkle with nutmeg and paprika.
5. Bake shepherd’s pie about 10 minutes to allow sweet potato topping to firm.
Pink Lady Cake
October 31st, 2011 by kelley
As soon as I saw this cake many months ago, I knew exactly who was going to have one. It had my niece’s name written all over it. If there is anything she loves as much as pink, it is either cake or strawberries. Combine all three, and she’s in heaven.
Unfortunately, strawberry season had come and gone, and I still hadn’t fabricated an excuse to bake this cake for the little princess who steals everyone’s heart. Somehow, the stars aligned and I came across not only edible, but delicious fresh strawberries the week of her family birthday dinner. (You can use frozen strawberries, in fact, the original recipe calls for them since they are reliable year-round, but I was thrilled to use fresh, and have some for decorating, too.)
The cake was a hit. She loved it. Pink. Strawberries. Cake. Make it for a special lady in your life. Oh, and perfect for a little girl baby shower.
Pink Lady Cake Recipe
adapted from Smitten Kitchen’s adaptation of the Sky High recipe
4 1/2 cups cake flour
3 cups sugar
5 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 sticks (12 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups pureed strawberries
8 egg whites
2/3 cup milk
3 drops red food dye
Cream Cheese Frosting
2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
1 1/2teaspoons vanilla extract
Make the cake
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter three 9-inch round or 8-inch square cake pans. Line with parchment or waxed paper and butter the paper.
3. In another large bowl, whisk together the egg whites, milk and red food dye to blend. Add the whites to the batter in two or three additions, scraping down the sides of the bowl well and mixing only to incorporate after each addition.
4. Divide the batter among the three prepared pans.
Make the cream cheese frosting
3. Store in the refrigerator after use.
Frost and assemble the cake
2. Spread frosting over the layer, spreading it to the edge.
3. Repeat with the second layer.
4. Add the top layer and frost the top and sides of cake with remaining frosting, reserving a small amount if you wish to tint it and pipe a decoration on the cake. Remove the waxed strips to reveal a neat, clean cake board.
Fresh Tomato Cream Pasta Sauce
September 5th, 2011 by kelley
Fresh Tomato Pasta Cream Sauce
Tis the season of fresh tomatoes, vine-ripened in the garden. Summer isn’t complete until we’ve had pasta with fresh tomato sauce, and also until the heat and humidity give us a break. But more importantly, homemade pasta, with fresh from the garden tomatoes.
To make this sauce, I went to my trusted America’s Test Kitchen and read up on their idea of the best recipe. Unlike the old rule of letting the sauce simmer for hours on end, they claimed that fresh tomato sauce really should only cook for 10 minutes, to keep that fresh garden flavor. What? A great dinner in 10 minutes (except the time prepping the tomatoes)–they were right about that, though I added some more herbs and garlic. This really does taste garden fresh, so heed the 10 minute recipe.
Fresh Tomato Cream Pasta Sauce Recipe Makes 3 servings
Adapted from The Best Italian Classics
2 tablespoons butter
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 medium onion, diced
2 pounds ripe tomatoes, cored, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1 inch pieces
2 teaspoons dried basil
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons dried thyme
pinch salt
cracked black pepper
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1. Melt butter in large nonstick skillet on medium-low heat.
2. Add onions and garlic and sauté until onions become translucent, about 5 minutes.
3. Stir in the tomatoes, basil, oregano, thyme, salt, and pepper. Increase the heat to medium-high and cook until any liquid given off by the tomatoes evaporates and the tomato pieces lose their shape to form a chunky sauce, about 10 minutes.
4. Add heavy whipping cream to sauce and simmer until cream thickens, about 2-3 minutes.
5. Serve over pasta and sprinkle with parmigiano reggiano.
Blueberry Muffins
June 26th, 2011 by kelley
Blueberry Muffins
Blueberry Muffin
Blueberry Muffins Recipe Makes 12 large muffins.
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup oil
1 egg
1 1/2 cups blueberries
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
5. Gently fold in blueberries.
6. Spoon batter into muffin cups or muffin pan.
Candied Ginger and Ginger Syrup
May 31st, 2011 by kelley
Candied Ginger
I think that homemade candied ginger is so great that everyone should have some. My family calls me the ginger pusher because I give the ginger and the syrup to everyone as gifts. My family laughs, but I’ve noticed that they keep asking for more. Aside from just noshing on this ginger, my favorite thing to do is make these scones, which make it to every brunch I serve.
Ginger Syrup
I like to slice the ginger as thinly as possible, so I use my mandoline. It makes the work a lot faster and easier, but I have certainly made this ginger many times without one. Using a thermometer is also helpful, but if you don’t have one, you can just eyeball it. Once the liquid is the consistency of thin honey, the ginger is ready. Be sure to save the syrup–it is absolutely delicious on pancakes and waffles. You can also mix a bit with seltzer water for a homemade ginger ale, or make some homemade granola.
Candied Ginger
Candied Ginger and Ginger Syrup Recipe
1 pound ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
4 cups sugar, plus additional for coating ginger
4 cups water
1. Put ginger in a large pot, and cover with water. Bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer. Allow ginger to simmer for 20 minutes. Add more water if necessary to prevent ginger from boiling dry.
2. Drain ginger.
3. Combine ginger, sugar, and water in the pot and put over medium high heat. Cook until temperature of the liquid reaches 225 degrees.
4. Remove ginger from heat and drain, but keep the syrup.
5. Toss ginger in sugar to coat, if desired. Spread into a thin layer and allow to dry overnight.
Spiced Almonds
April 30th, 2011 by kelley
Spiced Almonds
Here is an easy appetizer/dessert/snack. Toasted almonds, sweetened with a bit of spice. Sure, it is easy to just open a can of nuts to serve at your next party, but that is ordinary. Entertain in style in 8 short minutes and 6 ingredients. These are a tasty, fun treat that fill the kitchen with a wonderful aroma.
Spiced Almonds
Spiced Almonds Recipe
Adapted from The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook
1 tablespoon butter
2 cups skin-on raw almonds
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon cloves
1/8 teaspoon allspice
1. Heat 1 tablespoon butter in large nonstick skillet o medium-low heat.
2. Add almonds, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice.
3. Stir often while toasting until fragrant and the color deepens slightly, about 8 minutes.
Edamame Dip
March 31st, 2011 by kelley
Edamame Dip
Edamame is delicious and healthy, but did you know that it is also a dip? At least it can be. Throw a few ingredients in the food processor (or blender) and you’re set. This dip is a great party food, appetizer, snack, or lunch. It is also a fun, bright green that looks great in a pretty bowl with some chips or crackers on the side. And did I say healthy? Seriously, how many dips can say that?
Edamame Dip Recipe
Adapted from Alton Brown
12 ounces shelled, cooked, and cooled edamame
1/4 cup diced onion
1/2 cup parsley, tightly packed
1 large garlic clove, sliced
1/4 lime juice
1 tablespoon brown miso
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon hot chili sauce
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1. Place the edamame, onion, parsley, garlic, lime juice, miso, salt, hot chili sauce and black pepper into bowl of food processor and process for 15 seconds.
3. With the processor running, slowly drizzle in the extra virgin olive oil.
4. Once all of the oil has been added, stop, scrape down the bowl, and then process another 5 to 10 seconds.
5. Taste and adjust seasoning
6. Serve with pita chips.
Cheese Potato Casserole
February 27th, 2011 by kelley
Cheese Potato Casserole
This is one of my all time favorite recipes. I have served this to many people, both kids and adults. It is a standby for an easy side, a last minute dish to take to work parties, a barbecue, or a potluck. There is never a bite left. People rave over it. One avid cook/eater even declared this “the best hash-browns I have ever eaten.”
Cheese Potato Casserole
It is hard to go wrong with cheese and potatoes, especially when the recipe is basically throw a few ingredients in a dish and bake. The beauty of this dish is that it is customizable. I have made many variations including adding ham or bacon, but my favorite is to add mushrooms. Just sauté a few with the onions and this can be a one-dish meal. AND, this can be served as any meal or part of a meal. Breakfast? Yes. Lunch? It is great to take to work and just re-heat in the microwave. Dinner? As is, this makes a great side, especially with barbecue, but if you throw in some mushrooms, ham, or bacon there is no reason this can be the entrée.
Cheese Potato Casserole
Cheese Potato Casserole Recipe Makes 5-6 servings
adapted from my mom’s family cookbook Secret Ingredients
1 lb frozen hash-brown shredded potatoes
1 C sour cream
3 T butter
8 oz shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 small onion, diced
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Sauté onion in butter over medium heat. Then combine onions with hash-browns in a large bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, combine cheddar cheese and sour cream. Fold mixture into hash-browns. Add salt and pepper to taste.
4. Garnish with paprika.
5. Bake for 30 minutes.
Lemon Scones with Lemon Glaze
January 30th, 2011 by kelley
Lemon Scones with Lemon Glaze
We had a baby! More accurately, my brother and sister-in-law had a baby, but why get caught up in the details. Madelyn was born January 17th, a whopping 8 lbs 3.9 ounces, but she looks so tiny compared to the pictures of her sister as a newborn, who was over 10 lbs at birth.
We knew Madelyn was coming that Monday, and I couldn’t wait to meet her. How was I to pass the time in the morning before I could visit her in the hospital in the afternoon? I knew I had to cook something. I had a hankering for scones, I had some fresh lemons, so lemon scones it was.
Lemon Scones with Lemon Glaze
Just as we sat at the table to eat them, it occurred to me that this was only the second time I had made lemon scones, the first being for the baby shower last month. Coincidence, or does little Maddie just scream lemons somehow?
Lemon Scones with Lemon Glaze
Lemon Scones with Lemon Glaze Recipe Makes 8 scones
2 cups (10 ounces) all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 1/4 inch cubes
zest and juice of 2 lemons
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
4. Stir in all the lemon zest and the juice of 1 1/2 lemons.
5. Stir in heavy cream.
9. Cool for 10 minutes before eating.
10. Combine powdered sugar and juice from 1/2 lemon to make glaze.
11. Drizzle scones with lemon glaze.
Zucchini Bread
December 31st, 2010 by kelley
Zucchini Bread
Zucchini Bread
Zucchini Bread Recipe Makes 1 loaf, or 7 miniature loaves
3 eggs
1 cup canola oil
2 cups sugar
2 cups grated zucchini
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
4. Mix oil and sugar into the eggs.
5. Mix zucchini and vanilla extract into the egg mixture.
6. Mix dry ingredients into egg mixture. | <urn:uuid:c9488571-e234-4399-9cb0-788379d9af30> | http://www.lifeofspiceblog.com/ | en | 0.916005 | 0.02831 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |