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Field Test: Studio Projects B Series Mics
During the past few years, there has been an explosion of almost unbelievably low-priced Chinese condenser mics that look like prized German beauties. 3/01/2004 7:00 AM Eastern
During the past few years, there has been an explosion of almostunbelievably low-priced Chinese condenser mics that look like prizedGerman beauties. But while they look similar, not all of these mics arecreated equal. Some are shoulder-shruggingly okay, and some are prettygood. However, Studio Projects' B Series, a new line of mics that looklike little U47s, range from only $100 to $350 list and sound betterthan pretty good.
The B Series comprises three large-diaphragm (1-inch) models: thecardioid-only B1; the multipattern, dual-capsule B3; and thecardioid-only TB1, which uses a tube and comes with a separatedual-voltage (115-volt or 230V) power supply. Although the B1 and TB1do not have controls, the B3's 3-position switch lets you choose eithera highpass filter or a -10dB pad.
While the build quality of these mics is adequate, they do vibrate alittle when you tap their bodies, as the manufacturer readily admits,but they certainly don't rattle or feel rickety. Studio Projectsrecommends using a shock-mount to combat the vibration, and thecustom-fitted one provided holds the mics snugly in position. Thisshock-mount is an improvement over those generic ones with the rubberband in the middle or the nylon cord that quickly loses itselasticity.
The B1 and B3 come in plastic zipper bags, and the TB1 comes in afoam-lined briefcase that holds the mic, power supply and cables, butnot the shock-mount. All three models come with a foam windscreen.
I ran these mics through a Millennia Media STT-1 channel strip usingits solid-state setting with the transformer switched out. This makesthe preamp about as neutral as you can get; impedance considerationsaside, what you hear is the mic and not the preamp.
You do hear a noticeable quality improvement as you go up the BSeries line. However, even the B1 sounds quite a bit better than theShanghai U87-alike I compared these mics to, and it sells for the sameprice.
The exception is that the Shanghai mic sounded better than any ofthe Bs on male voice-over, but that's almost certainly due to off-axisreflections picked up by the Bs' wider pickup patterns. (This includesthe B3 in cardioid mode.) The wide cardioid does make them moresensitive to what's going on off-axis, so be mindful of things likenearby walls when you're positioning them. A strategically placedAuralex Max Wall, which is a couple of sideways 2×4-foot foamsheets impaled on a mic stand, can really help.
The B's performance with what's in front of the mic is surprisinglygood. Some side-by-side male vocal recordings through the TB1 and a$2,000 RØDE Classic II — an undeniably great mic —were a real eye-opener. The RØDE definitely sounded bigger (and infact, it is bigger!) and is more midrange-forward, but I couldn't saythat the TB1 sounded worse in this application — justdifferent.
Normally, you can identify inexpensive mics right away by theirsteely high end, but the TB1's high end is smooth and open, toe-to-toewith the RØDE — very impressive. While the solid-state mics(B1 and B3) aren't quite as nice overall, they do share the same soundquality.
The TB1 has a noticeable amount of the typical “tube”sound, a buttery effect that you hear on the transients and not verydifferent from tape compression. That isn't always what tubes do, butin this case, it's reasonably descriptive. The effect is quite obviouson shaker, a broadband instrument that behaves almost like pink noisewith transients, and can really point out what a mic does to thesound.
Studio Projects bills all three models as general-purpose recordingmics, which is fair, as they have some character and a slightlyrecessed midrange, but the sound isn't colored enough to relegate theBs to specialty mic status. The Bs work on a lot of instruments thatmany users wouldn't think of recording with a large-diaphragm mic. Forexample, I wouldn't normally mike a solo cello with a large-diaphragmmic, but the B1 didn't bring out the resonances to excess. That's notto say that it would be my first choice, but it does work. The TB1'srecessed midrange sounded good on alto recorder. It also sound okay onacoustic guitar, although it's certainly not rare to use alarge-diaphragm condenser in that application.
The B Series mics also did well on instruments that are normallycaptured with a large-diaphragm mic., such as close up on an uprightpiano. The proximity helped bring out some of the low end on a smallpiano that's pretty weak at the bottom.
Two B3s or a B1 and a B3 would make a very nice budget M-S mikingsetup. The B3s' 14dBA noise rating (12dBA for the B1) proves thatthey're quiet enough to use some distance from the source, which wouldalso make them good choices as room mics.
Even though the TB1 is noisier than the other two (18 dBA), its tubecircuitry gives it a rounder sound that makes it very appealing. The B1and B3 specs list a 132dB SPL handling ability (128 dB for the TB1), soyou're not likely to blow these mics out in front of a guitar amp.Their output is hot enough to allow the preamps they're feeding tooperate at a comfortable, quiet range.
It's pretty scary that mics this inexpensive can sound this good. Byall rights, the $100 B1 shouldn't even be usable, and the $200 B3shouldn't be a dual-capsule model with switchable patterns. But if youhave to choose one of the three to get excited about, it's the TB1, a$350 tube mic that stands up to world-class mics that cost more thanfive times as much.
Studio Projects, dist. by PMI Audio Group, 877/563-6335, www.pmiaudio.com.
Nick Batzdorf is a composer, audio and music toy boffin, andwriter.
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'Muppets Most Wanted' movie review: Kermit the Frog, a comic caper -- and a case of deja vu
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on March 21, 2014 at 6:20 AM, updated March 21, 2014 at 3:04 PM
Tracking the trajectory of the Muppets' big-screen career reveals a pretty-hard-to-miss arc. It's roughly the same arc you'd get if you viewed Gonzo the Great in profile.
This is a franchise that was at its height in 1979 with the lovely, lively and laugh-filled original "Muppet Movie." The eagerly awaited sequel would end up being a somewhat less lovely and less lively caper film ("The Great Muppet Caper"), followed by a string of decreasingly clever movies that would eventually to a Gonzo-shaped nose-dive into shrug-worthy material worthy of little more than the direct-to-DVD bin.
Fast-forward to the post-Disney-acquisition of Jim Henson's beloved creations and the subsequent rebooting of the franchise, and it's hard not to feel a bit of déjà vu.
The Muppets' second big-screen life launched with 2011's lovely, lively and laugh-filled "The Muppets," which wisely followed the blueprint set by the 1980 original, incorporating a raft of fun celebrity cameos as well as playfully quirky production numbers. Now, with the arrival of the follow-up "Muppets Most Wanted," it would appear the Muppet masters might be following the blueprint a bit too closely.
This just-amusing-enough second outing is also a somewhat less lovely and less lively caper film. Can the direct-to-DVD bin be far behind?
That's not to say "Muppets Most Wanted" is all stuffing and nonsense. The franchise hasn't declined that much just yet. There are entertaining moments to be had here, for sure.
For starters, songwriter Bret McKenzie -- who won an Oscar for his tune "Man or Muppet" from the 2011 reboot -- is back for more, penning a number of dead-on genre satires that double as concise bits of toe-tapping character development. A personal favorite: the MGM-style musical number "We're Doing a Sequel," in which Kermit and pals acknowledge that follow-ups are rarely as good as the original.
That, it turns out, is downright prophetic.
McKenzie's songs are smart and silly and fun -- and they are what many non-kindergartners will likely wish the rest of "Muppets Most Wanted" was. Unfortunately, though, "Muppets Most Wanted" is decidedly less clever on the whole. In fact, it comes dangerously close to being "just another" Muppet movie.
Even the story feels like one the Muppets have told before: While they are out on a world tour, their fearless froggy leader -- that would be Kermit the Frog -- is kidnapped by a criminal genius named Constantine, who harbors secret plans for an elaborate jewelry heist.
As it turns out, Kermit is key to that plan, since Constantine is a nearly flipper-for-flipper twin of him, and since the Muppet world tour would take Constantine to venues that are within striking distance of the targets for his brand of amphibious nefariousness. And so just like that, Kermit finds himself locked up in a Russian gulag while Constantine fools all of the other Muppets into thinking he is the real deal.
Naturally, none of the sweet but simple Muppets notice that Kermit has been replaced by an imposter. Neither do they seem to notice that the new "Kermit" speaks with a thinly disguised Russian accent. That is the downside, I suppose, of having a head made of felt, fur and/or feathers.
Director James Bobin, who directed 2011's "The Muppets," also returns for this one, and he's got a strong human cast to assist him. In addition to those aforementioned cameos (Lady Gaga, Zack Galifianakis, Stanley Tucci, Salma Hayek, Chloe Grace Moretz, Christoph Waltz ...), we get supporting performances from Ricky Gervais as Constantine's No. 2; Tina Fey as the iron-fisted commander of a Russian gulag; and Ty Burrell as a very Clouseau-informed detective.
Mike Scott picks 'Grand Budapest Hotel' for 'The One' movie | The Times-Picayune's movie critic Mike Scott picks one movie each week as the movie to see.
Those are three funny people, and they make the most of what they have to work with here. But there are still too many lulls in the film's nearly two-hour running time, and too many opportunities for ordinariness to creep into the mix.
Oh, your pre-schooler will probably enjoy the novelty of seeing a singing, dancing frog alongside a joke-telling, hat-wearing bear and a lovestruck pig. But the Muppets have always been at their best when they remember to include the parents in the fun along with the tadpoles.
Unfortunately, that's one area where "Muppets Most Wanted" is left wanting.
2 stars, out of 5
Snapshot: A family-friendly adventure in which Kermit the Frog -- unbeknownst to his Muppet brethren -- is kidnapped and imprisoned by a nearly identical criminal genius who then assumes his life as head Muppet.
What works: Songwriter Bret McKenzie, who won an Oscar for his work on the 2011 "The Muppets," once more contributes several dead-on genre satires that are turned into clever and toe-tapping production numbers.
What doesn't: The fun is more sporadic than in its 2011 predecessor, with a film that feels dangerously close to being "just another" Muppet movie.
Cast: Ricky Gervais, Tina Fey, Ty Burrell, Jemaine Clement, with the voices of Eric Jacobson, Steve Whitmire, Dave Goelz, Matt Vogel and Bill Barretta. Director: James Bobin. Rating: PG, for some mild action. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. Where: Find New Orleans and Baton Rouge showtimes. | <urn:uuid:a5fa726e-e5ee-4274-8de7-8d43597cdb47> | http://www.nola.com/movies/index.ssf/2014/03/muppets_most_wanted_movie_revi.html | en | 0.954095 | 0.022003 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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Are You Infected?
Stats About 3 million new cases are diagnosed each year, making it the most common sexually transmitted bacterial infection.
Symptoms Though 75 percent of affected women don't have symptoms, there may be painful or frequent urination, vaginal discharge, pelvic or abdominal pain during sex, sore throat, fever, or nausea.
Testing A culture of cervical cells, a urine sample, or a test that can detect the DNA of the chlamydia organism.
Risks Up to 40 percent of women with untreated chlamydia will develop pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) -- an infection of the uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries -- which can lead to infertility. The bacteria can cause miscarriage, preterm birth, and, if passed to the baby during delivery, infant pneumonia or eye infections.
Treatment Antibiotics.
Stats The CDC estimates that there are more than 700,000 cases of gonorrhea each year.
Symptoms Signs are the same as chlamydia, though half of infections don't cause symptoms.
Testing A culture of the cervix. (Get tested for both chlamydia and gonorrhea -- they often appear together.)
Risks Untreated, gonorrhea can cause joint pain, arthritis, affect the heart and brain, and lead to PID in 10 to 20 percent of affected women. It can also cause miscarriage and, if it infects a newborn's eyes, lead to blindness.
Treatment Antibiotics. Many states treat all newborns' eyes with silver nitrate drops to prevent infection.
Herpes (HSV)
Stats There are 1 million new infections each year, with 45 million Americans already infected. It's estimated that one in four pregnant women has herpes.
Symptoms As many as 90 percent of those infected don't have symptoms, but those who do can experience sores (internal or external) that last two to three weeks, itching or burning, vaginal discharge, fever, or headache.
Testing Blood tests can determine which strain you've been exposed to -- Herpes Simplex Virus 1 (HSV-1), which usually causes oral herpes (cold sores), or Herpes Simplex Virus 2 (HSV-2), which causes genital herpes. If you have symptoms, a culture can confirm or rule out herpes.
Risks A woman with long-standing herpes may find that outbreaks are more severe during pregnancy. Medication to suppress outbreaks is usually given late in pregnancy, but if a woman has sores at delivery, a c-section may be done. If a woman acquires herpes before or early in her pregnancy, the chances of the infection harming her child are small, since there's time to build up and pass protective antibodies to her baby. If a mom-to-be is first infected with herpes in her last trimester, her baby has a 30 to 50 percent chance of contracting neonatal herpes, which, though rare, can cause eye and throat infections, central nervous system damage, developmental delays, and death. Signs of infant infection include sores around the eyes, irritability, lethargy, poor feeding, and seizures.
Treatment Outbreaks can be controlled with antiviral medications such as acyclovir. A 15-year registry for acyclovir found no elevated risk of birth defects.
Stats About 7,000 women with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, give birth each year.
Symptoms Those infected usually don't have symptoms (though some may have a brief flu-like illness) because it takes time for the virus to wear down the immune system. Untreated, HIV depletes immunity, increasing vulnerability to infection and disease.
Testing Blood or saliva test. If you prefer private testing, the Home Access Test is FDA approved. (Available in pharmacies, at
Risks Babies can acquire HIV from their mothers in utero, during labor and delivery, or through breast milk. About 20 percent of infected infants develop AIDS in the first year of life and die before the age of 4.
Treatment The drug zidovudine (AZT, ZDV, Retrovir) has reduced the mother-to-baby transmission rate to less than 5 percent. Antiretroviral drugs can strengthen a woman's immunity and further reduce transmission risk.
Human papilloma virus (HPV)
Stats An estimated 75 percent of the U.S. reproductive-age population is infected. symptoms In some people, certain strains of HPV can cause genital warts; others can cause cervical cancer.
Testing A Pap smear, which detects changes in cervical cells, can indicate an infection or the early stages of cancer. A follow-up DNA test can confirm the presence of HPV. Testing in pregnancy if warts aren't present isn't usually necessary because the virus is so prevalent and the risk of transmission is so low.
Risks A woman with HPV may get genital warts for the first time during pregnancy or find that her current warts grow larger. The risk of transmission during delivery is less than 1 percent. In these infants, there is a slight chance that they will later develop the virus in their larynx (voice box). If a woman has large genital warts close to her due date, a c-section may be considered.
Treatment While it's considered safe during pregnancy to freeze or laser the warts or put acid on them, many healthy women appear to get rid of HPV over time.
Stats The condition affects an estimated 5 million women each year.
Symptoms Often called "trich," it can cause a foul-smelling or green vaginal discharge, vaginal itching, or redness within six months of infection. Other symptoms can include painful sexual intercourse, lower abdominal discomfort, and the urge to urinate. Testing A doctor can diagnose trichomoniasis by examining vaginal discharge.
Risks Untreated it can cause preterm labor. Mother-to-baby transmission of the parasite is rare.
Treatment Antibiotics after the first trimester.
Stats Over 32,000 Americans get syphilis each year; infection rates are higher in some southern states and in African-Americans.
Symptoms While most pregnant women don't have any symptoms, the primary stage of syphilis is characterized by a small, firm, painless sore (called a chancre) that appears from 10 to 90 days after infection; the sore lasts one to five weeks. This can be followed by a rash and rough, "copper penny" spots on the palms of the hands and the bottoms of the feet.
Testing In many states, a syphilis screen -- a blood test -- is the only routine prenatal STD test.
Risks Untreated, syphilis can attack the internal organs, causing blindness, lack of muscle coordination, and dementia. A pregnant woman with untreated syphilis has a 50 percent chance of miscarriage and a 40 percent chance of delivering a syphilitic baby. Signs of an infant infection (which can appear up to eight weeks after birth) include sores, runny nose, jaundice, a small head, slimy patches in the mouth, anemia, and a swollen liver.
Treatment Penicillin. | <urn:uuid:494f993f-161a-4dbb-864e-37e04a2b0891> | http://www.parenting.com/article/are-you-infected?page=0,1 | en | 0.949904 | 0.099361 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
7.62x39mm accuracy/bullet size
January 29, 2003, 11:12 PM
Some 7.62x39mm ammo has a .308 bullet diameter, some a .311 bullet diameter.
My barrel is .311 internal diameter, wondering how firing the smaller bullet might affect accuracy. [rattling around]
Or vice versa, firing the .311 bullet through a .308 bore. [squeeze]
I thought the external dimensions of commercial ammo were standardized... it seems like a different bullet diameter would be a different "caliber".
Anybody know why this discrepancy exists?
But that's just me. I wonder if this is one of those cases where "that's the great thing about standards, there are so many of them !!"
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Smokey Joe
January 30, 2003, 02:33 AM
I've just done the math, and 7.62mm does not equal .308". Nor does it equal .311". These designations are done arbitrarily, for a variety of reasons, and make a fascinating historical study, if you have the time and the inclination. But your question was, why have 2 different calibers designated 7.62x39mm.
Russian military designers thoughtÑfor whatever reasonÑthat .311" was a nice diameter for their 7.62 rifle barrels when they designed the so-called 7.62x39mm round. (They whould have used a metric measurement for this however.) That round went through the various SKS models, and the various AK models, the latest of which are still in use. The same standard was used by the Chinese, and the other nations to which the USSR/Russia exported weapons-building technology, from the 1950's through the 1990's. So there are lots and lots of old military weapons designated 7.62x39mm, with this bbl diameter.
When Ruger subsequently decided to chamber their Mini 30 in this round, in their infinite wisdom, they chose to make the bbl. diameter .308", for whatever reason. Perhaps because other cartridges popular in this country, which are called 7.62mm elsewhere, are .308" diameter. Notably the .308 win, aka the 7.62 NATO. I'm not representing this as good logic, you understand, but it's what Ruger did.
So from two different sources, you have the same round with 2 different diameters. :mad: A potentially dangerous situation.
If you had a .308" diam. 7.62x39mm bbl, and fired the .311" diam ammo in it, the best you could hope for would be a ferocious kick and lousy accuracy, as the large bullet is violently forced to conform to the smaller bbl. Internal pressures would be I think, dangerously high. Gun damage and damage to shooter or bystanders are worse case scenarios. So you would be well advised to stick with domestic American sporting rounds, which are .308" diam.
If, OTOH, as you say you have, a .311 diam bbl, you should be seeking and using .311" diam bullets. The .308 diam bullets will probably upset (flatten their back ends) in the barrel and seal the bore, but they will probably NOT do so pointing straight down the bore, which means they will be headed God-knows-where when they exit the muzzle. Not a dangerous situation, but highly inaccurate, and not predictably so. If the bullets always went left of point of aim for example, you could adjust your point of aim, but when they upset in the bore they may be pointing left, right, up, down, or straight ahead. If the bullets don't upset, they'll just rattle down the bbl, with pretty much the same result as above, except with less velocity due to blow-by of some of the powder gases.
Bullets of both diameters can be had easily by reloaders, so there is no excuse in either case not to have high quality ammo for your weapon. Accurate Arms 1680 powder was designed specifically for this round, and usually works well. It seems to be the logical place to start in load development for a particular weapon.
IMHO, you have hit the proverbial nail on the head. But that's just me. I wonder if this is one of those cases where "that's the great thing about standards, there are so many of them !!" Nice way of putting it.
BTW, since you have a .311 "7.62x39mm", I hope you enjoy shooting your milsurp. :)
January 31, 2003, 12:55 PM
I had never heard that...
so 2 boxes of ammo marked 7.62X39 may have different size bullets???
I have an SAR-1 (Rom AK-47) and am shooting wolf through it. I'm pretty sure they match in size, but which size would that be??
Duke of Lawnchair
January 31, 2003, 02:51 PM
Smokey is pretty much on par.
I'd also like to say that circa 1994, Ruger mfg'd their Mini30s to allow them to be more combloc 7.62x39 "friendly". There are some lots of 7.62x39 that are .310 OR .311. If I'm not mistaken, the .310 slugs are Czech in origin. Not that you couldn't shoot the combloc ammo through older mini30s.
From Brownells:
Ruger Mini Thirty Bore Specifications
This information pertains to:
This rifle is chambered for the 7.62 x 39mm cartridge. This cartridge, traditionally, uses a projectile with a nominal diameter of .311 to .312 inch.
At the time the Mini Thirty was introduced very few bullet makers where producing .311/.312 inch bullets for reloading in the light 125-130 grain weight required. Ruger initiated the use of barrels with a groove dimension of .308 inch and a long tapered throat. The throat allowed the use of ammunition with .311/.312 projectiles by gradually “squeezing” them to the .308 diameter. In addition, ammunition loaded with more commonly available .308 diameter bullets could also be used.
Commencing in 1992 Ruger initiated a change to using .311/.312 nominal groove diameter, 1-10 inch right hand twist barrels in all Mini Thirties. It was likely well into 1993 before all rifles coming of the production line incorporated the .311/.312 barrels.
I have confirmed this with Ruger as well in regards to my very own Mini30, which unfortunately was mfg'd in '91. Bummer...
Smokey Joe
February 1, 2003, 10:35 PM
YzguyÑYour Romanian AK is a combloc gun (design of Russian origin). Wolf (Russian) is "modern" combloc ammo. Ergo, they match and can be used safely together. Enjoy.
FWIW, I don't think much of steel-cased ammo with Berdan primers. Inaccurate in my experience, hard on some guns (although combloc guns generally have no problem digesting it) and of course utterly non-reloadable. Cheap, sure. But if you do anything involved with shooting to save money, IMHO, you are in the wrong hobby area. We don't shoot to save money, we shoot to put the bullet in the target.
You can get a set of brass 7.62x39mm cases, primers, AA 1680 powder, 125 gr. .311 bullets (Hornadys work for me), and FL resize loading dies at the next gun show you go to. You can manufacture better ammo than Wolf on your first try. Get
The ABC's of Reloading and read it if you don't reloadÑReloading is part of the fun! Most any reloader, of your acquaintance or online, will be willing to help with problems or questions as they arise. Read and obey all the cautions. We are, after all, dealing with rather powerful chemicals and large forces, here. Not dangerous unless you do something stupid. You can beat the price of store ammo, over the life of your equipment, but you don't reload to save money, you do it to make better ammo for YOUR GUN than that of which any factory is capable.
BTW, there's one other 7.62x39mm complication: Remington brass for that case uses small rifle primers; the other manufacturers all use large rifle primers. So match the primers to the cases you buy. I don't know why SAAMI didn't get on Remington's a** about this; I thought that was what SAAMI was for, but there you are. Either use all Rem. cases for this cartridge, or no Rem. cases, and no further problem. Before I started loading for this caliber I never heard of such a thing. I hope I never do again. That comment above, about standards, comes to mind once again.
Sir Galahad
February 1, 2003, 10:50 PM
Who the hell wants (or needs) to reload for an AK-47? My SAR-1 ejects so far, I'd hate to be policing up brass and worrying about strays getting lost. Wolf ammo is cheap and runs great out of AKs. Wolf and Barnaul ammo is the way to go for AK owners.
Smokey Joe
February 1, 2003, 10:57 PM
I the hell want to. For the reasons stated above. If you don't want to, it's all right with me. But I promise I won't knock your decision in public.
Sir Galahad
February 1, 2003, 11:05 PM
I'm not knocking your decision. But I think most AK owners will agree that an AK shoots just fine with Russian ammo. Mine does. You can save money shooting. It doesn't have to be expensive. That's why Russian 7.62x39 Saiga rifles and Wolf ammo sells like so fast they never collect speck one of dust in many gun shops.
But when I really want to save money, I shoot my Martin recurve bow. I can reuse that ammo again and again. :D
February 2, 2003, 12:45 PM
Galahad has it about right in this case, I think.
I can't buy the bullets for the cost of the Wolf stuff, purchased in case lots.
Plus, I use a MAK 90, with new wood, for close in defence, so MOA accuracy isn't an issue.
Reliability isn't a problem, so I guess I got a good ($200) rifle, for the purpose that I intended, of course.
In any case, I can't buy the bullets for reloading for the cost of the Russian loaded rounds...
I like to think of it as a bigger .22 RF!
Besides, sometimes it's fun to shoot without worrying where the "brass" is flying.
February 2, 2003, 09:45 PM
You guys are getting exercised about nothing.
Practically since firearms have been made, the caliber designation has been the hole size drilled in the barrel.
I'll skip all of the OLD bore sizes and get to one we all recognize:
.30-06, a.300 hole drilled in the barrel in 1906, {7.62mm is exactly .300in.}
Enter the .30-54{or whatever year the .308 Winchester aka 7.62x51Nato was developed}which happens to have a hole drilled in the barrel of exactly .300in.
The reason it was called the .308 was that Winchester wanted to have a propietary name so they added the depth of the rifling which was .004 on each side or a total of .008in. so we have a hole .300in+grooves of .008={voila} .308.
Today, I slugged the barrel of one of my Chinese SKS's with soft lead{i'll measure it tommorrow when I get to the shop}, however, I did notice one strange thing that I had never seen before, the grooves are twice as wide as the lands.
All rifles I have slugged in the past, the lands and grooves are equal.
This means that with a hole of 7.62mm or .300in, if the grooves are twice as big as "normal" rifling, it will take more bullet{more diameter} to fill the grooves.
With out even taking this into consideration, I doubt that any of these military rifles have a barrel whose rifling is within .002in. or .003in. for it's entire length.
I suggest that you get a ruler that is measured off in 100ths of an inch and then imagine that the distance between each of those marks is divided into 10 to give you1/1000 of an inch.
I will assure you that a difference of .003in will make no measurable difference in accuracy or pressure.
February 4, 2003, 01:51 PM
In fact, save for about one magazine's worth of that green-lacquered Wolf stuff, the gun has never digested anything other than my handloads, and it's got about 5K rounds through it.
Funny thing is, I've gotten some witnessed groups out of the Bulgarian SLR-95 with my handloads that go inside 2" at 100 yards. Try that with Wolf ammo. Granted, the AK isn't intended to be a benchrest gun. But I can live with a 2 MOA AK, no problem!
Why is that a bummer? You've essentially got a 2-bore rifle there. You can shoot both the cheap milsurp ammo, and earlier domestic (Winchester, Federal, Remington) 7.62x39 fodder. If you were to handload for that throated Mini-30, say, using a .308" spitzer bullet, you could very well dispute the notion that all Mini-30's are inaccurate. That Ruger's tapered throat may surprise you. Weatherby did the same thing, but they call it free-boring, and use it to keep pressures down from those big belted magnum rounds.
Does that .003" difference in bullet diameter make a difference? Shoot a .308" bullet from a .303 British Lee-Enfield, or Arisaka, or AK. See what your groups do. Or should I say, see how your patterns do. Having thought the same thing as meanoldfart above, I ran some experiments. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
I even swage down .323" 8mm Mauser bullets to .321" for my .32 Remington Model 8 rifle, using a Corbin swage die. Maybe the safety and accuracy freak in me is showing, but if the barrel mikes out at a certain diameter, I go with bullets matching it, especially if it's not a throated barrel.
Several 7.62x39 Contenders, SSK Handcannons, and MOA Maximum pistols were built for the handgun silhouette game, where steel silhouettes out to 200 meters were toppled with surprising regularity using the cartridge. Neat thing was, domestic brass was used, but the barrels were true .308" bores. If you haven't noticed, there is a buttload more selection in the .308" bullet diameter than in the .311" flavor. When practicing for a local IHMSA match one afternoon, a friend turned a 100 meter silhouette sideways with his revolver, so the edge was facing him. He rather unceremoniously grabbed his scoped .308x39 SSK/Contender, and proceeded to hit the edgewise silhouette squarely.
Were I to build a 7.62x39 bolt gun, I'd probably use a .308" barrel, just so I could run decent bullets. ;)
Smokey Joe
February 6, 2003, 02:55 PM
GewehrÑOn the website, www.sixgunner.com Paco Kelley wrote of a 7.62x39 bolt gun, and was quite enthusiastic about it as a heavy varmint/light hunting/short range accurate cartridge. By short range he meant under 200 yd I believe. Paco called the round in this rifle "a .30-30 on steroids." I've never seen nor heard otherwise of a bolt gun in this cartridge. It certainly seems like a very interesting proposition.
Such a rifle could be quite accurate w/o being nearly as heavy as usual in an accurate hunting rifle.
February 10, 2003, 08:59 PM
Gewehr98-Am starting to reload for a Bulgarian, can you share your accuracy receipe? Am starting with Lapua brass, Speer softpoints (.311) and HDY's new plastic tips (.310). Any suggestions or tips would be appreciated.
February 11, 2003, 09:05 AM
Accurate Arms 1680 is the best powder, bar none, for decent 7.62x39 handloads. Best velocity, lowest pressure signs, and clean burning. Problem is, I'm having trouble finding even a single pound of the stuff here in Spacecoast Florida. :(
If you can't find AA1680, Hodgdon's H335 will work until you can find AA1680.
I've used the Hornady 123gr FMJ bullets, as well as the Winchester bulk FMJ bullets. More recently, places like Wideners, Natchez, and MidwayUSA offer South African or Russian .311" 123gr FMJ bullets. Regardless of who made them, I do a cursory diameter check on the batch, as well as weight sort the surplus military bullets.
I have used the Speer softpoints, they shoot just fine. I didn't know there was a .311" plastic-tip bullet, that's another one I will have to try.
I use a pretty good crimp on my 7.62x39 handloads, just to keep a bullet from being pushed back into the case during the rifle's cycling. It's not really a problem, the bullets I use have the cannelure for that, and it's done with a Lee Factory Crimp die.
February 11, 2003, 04:10 PM
Gewehr, if you shoot enough of it, www.gibrass.com has the czech powder that AA imports as 1680, available in 8lb kegs for fairly cheap.
February 11, 2003, 05:05 PM
I'd almost given up trying to find it, without resorting to buying a case of the stuff. The local reloading shop doesn't have much call for AA1680, and won't stock it if there's only one odd bird who needs it. (me) ;)
My current supply was bought in Wisconsin when I went home for Thanksgiving. Wife thought I was nuts to have a pickup box full of reloading supplies going from Wisconsin to Florida. :D
February 11, 2003, 07:47 PM
Gewehr98-Thanks much, it is appreciated. Graph and Sons lists AA 1680 in 1 and 8 lb jugs. They are also the only source (am aware of) for HDY's 123 gn V-Max bullets (advertised and measured .310 in dia.). They have significant savings for bulk orders.
Had to pass up a CZ carbine in 7.62x39, that had an absolutely beautiful stock and less than 1 in factory group (including a flyer). Was there when dealer unwrapped it, didn't have cash on hand before it was put away in the dealer's private collection.:banghead:
February 18, 2003, 12:34 AM
thanks to all for the info !
February 18, 2003, 01:21 AM
I get 7.62 x 39 ammo sometimes wolf sometimes other surplus for about $100 for a 1,000 round case .10 per bullet and think they shoot fine I'm sure there is better stuff out there but my question is ..is reloading AK ammo worth it?
I don't reload but would like to get into it someday when I have time, money, and space.
How much money would you save and how long would it take to reload a case of ammo?
Oh and while on the subject how many times can brass be reloaded?
I've been on this forum about a month and learned more than a semester worth of College classes.
February 19, 2003, 02:52 PM
You won't save money by reloading 7.62x39. I just bought a couple of cases of Wolf ammo from Centerfire Systems for $80 each including delivery. That is 8 cents a round. If you reload for 7.62x39 the powder will cost you that much.
The only reason to reload 7.62x39 is to get a higher quality and more accurate round. You would save money compared to a high quality factory round which might cost you 50 cents each.
February 19, 2003, 04:19 PM
The original question was regarding the loading of .308 bullets in the 7.62x39.
My answer is that there is no problem with it and accuracy is not a concern. I've loaded 125gr Nosler BT's (.308's and other .308" dia. bullets) and gotten outstanding accuracy, best of ANY bullet of either .308, .310, .311, or .312. Admittedly, the .312's of jacketed construction had the poorest accuracy, but no pressure signs were encountered. Ed Harris had a column in the American Rifleman several years back and stated he had the same results. Curtis Shipley of Ga Arms/Master Cart. let me in on his load for the 7.62x39 and it worked for me too:
Commercial US brass (I prefer the R-P w/ Small rifle primer)
Federal 205 primer
Nosler 125gr Ballistic Tip
AA-1680 (I use 26.5gr)
Seat to fit Magazine (fairly deep)
My three Norinco SKS have given approximately 2"groups at 100yds. A friends early Mini-30 (with conical throat) would give 1.5" groups, and would give 1" (3-shot) groups with H-322 (lost data card with weight).
So, try the .308 bullets in your rifle.
For what its worth, my favorite load is a 153gr Cast Ptd GC Lee over 17.5gr H4227 for approx 2050fps. sized to .311". It too gives 1.5" groups @ 100yds (3-shots). This bullet gives 1.0" 5-shot groups out of my two .30/06 bolt actions @ 2100fps over 25.0gr of H4227 or Alliant 2400.
So much for bullet/barrel diameters !!!
What works....works. 1-2 thousanths dosen't make a world of difference.
Just don't try shooting .323 bullets through a .318 bore, or .308's through a .284" bore. And .25/06's aren't real accurate through a .30/06, watched a fella try to sight in his Rem 700 one day doing that. WOW what a pattern !!! 2ft at 25yds, all sideways !
February 19, 2003, 07:23 PM
I use to reload for the 7.62x39 before I was any good with a rifle. I used RX7 with Winchester 123gr bullets. I think consitant powder drops improved groups by 90%. I think thats the biggest problem with most 7.62x39 manufacturers. Most of them drink too much Vodka.
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Sudden death from stress linked to wonky signals in the brain
Publication date: Feb 23, 2006 3:13:38 PM
Sudden cardiac death from emotional stress may be triggered by uneven signals from the brain to the heart, according to a study by University College London (UCL) scientists published in the January issue of Brain.
UCL researchers have discovered that a system which normally coordinates signalling from the brain to different parts of the heart may be disrupted in some people, making them vulnerable to potentially fatal abnormal heart rhythms during mentally taxing tasks or emotional events such as family gatherings.
This is particularly true of people who already have heart disease, but it is the brain that may be most responsible. The new study suggests that uneven brain activity, in a region where nerves link directly to the heart, seems to result in an uneven distribution of signals across the heart, which stops the heart from contracting normally.
Around a third of the 300,000 sudden cardiac deaths which occur each year in the US arise from a blood clot in a major artery, which leads to a fatal heart attack. Mental stress is thought to be responsible for a further 20 per cent of these deaths, but scientists have been baffled by the exact mechanisms by which stress can bring on a fatal short-circuiting of the heart.
In the UCL study, volunteers with a history of heart disease were given stressful mental tasks while their brain activity was monitored using PET imaging. Electrical waves travelling across their heart were monitored using electrocardiogram analysis. The study showed that stress-induced changes in electrical currents in the heart were accompanied by uneven activity within the lower brain, in an area known as the brainstem.
The brainstem is connected on the left and right side to the heart by nerve pathways, known as autonomic nerves. These autonomic nerves control heart rate during physical or mental activity.
To maintain a regular heartbeat, the electrical currents that travel across the heart and initiate the heartbeat should be smooth and even. If these electrical waves travel slower or faster in parts of the heart, this can result in a short circuit which leads to arrhythmia - an irregular heartbeat.
Normally, the output from the brainstem to the heart via left and right autonomic nerves is symmetrical and does not disrupt heart rhythm, even during stress. However, UCL scientists think that, in some cases, the autonomic nerves fire unevenly during stress, which disturbs the smooth electrical pattern across the heart and could ultimately induce an irregular, and eventually fatal, heartbeat.
Dr Peter Taggart from UCL`s Centre for Cardiology says: "Some people are at risk of sudden death from stress, mainly people who already have heart disease. In these cases the combination of heart and brain irregularities means that heart failure could occur during a stressful or emotional event like a family gathering or even a boisterous New Year party."
"Efforts to prevent the development of potentially dangerous heart rhythms in response to stress have focused on drugs which act directly on the heart, but results have so far been rather disappointing. Our research focuses on what is happening upstream, in the brain, when stress causes these heart rhythm problems. The results so far are very encouraging.
"It may soon be possible to identify which people are particularly at risk and even to treat a heart problem with a drug that works on the brain."
Dr Hugo Critchley from UCL's Institute of Neurology says: "The next stage of our research is to explore how signalling from the brain becomes uneven. It seems that emotions and stress may particularly activate the right hemisphere in the upper brain, but this is usually balanced out into a symmetrical signal produced lower down in the brainstem, possibly though a mechanism that works as a protective balancing relay.
"Some patients with epilepsy produce strong one-sided brain activity during fits and may also show asymmetric changes in the heart, suggesting that the relay system is by-passed. In apparently healthy people, it is possible that massive amounts of stress may also overload the system so that the brain's normal conversion to a balanced symmetric heart response is overcome, leading to arrhythmia.
"Ultimately we would like to establish whether there might be a therapeutic target in the brain for people at risk of stress-induced heart problems. Some medicines already reduce emotional stress responses and help reduce the risk of sudden heart problems, but we hope to develop more selective treatments that eliminate the need to dampen emotional responses in order to reduce the risk of arrhythmia and sudden death."
Notes for Editors
For more information or to set up an interview, please contact Jenny Gimpel at the UCL Media Relations Office on +44 (0)20 7679 9739, mobile: + 44 (0)7990 675 947 or e-mail . (Out of Hours mobile number 07917 271 364)
This study was funded by the Wellcome Trust (
Mental stress and sudden cardiac death: asymmetric midbrain activity as a linking mechanism, by Hugo D. Critchley, Peter Taggart, Peter M. Sutton, Diana R. Holdright, Velislav Batchvarov, Katerina Hnatkova, Marek Malik, and Raymond J. Dolan, is published in the January edition of Brain ( | <urn:uuid:0eabb37b-8e1b-40c8-9859-6a5861b400a6> | http://www.ucl.ac.uk/media/library/mentalstress/ | en | 0.939473 | 0.106472 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Friends declare Facebook user 'dead' in social media prank
Posted By KATE STANTON, UPI.com | Jan. 7, 2013 at 10:05 AM
Maine's Rusty Foster, 36, found out the hard way that it's pretty easy to fake a person's death on Facebook. As a prank, Foster's friends falsely reported him dead last week via Facebook's "Memorialization Request" page, which only requires the "deceased" person's name, email and a link to an obituary for the social media site to declare someone dead and block access to their account. Foster's friends used the real obituary of a different person with a similar name to trick Facebook into thinking he had died.
When Buzzfeed's Katie Notopoulos got word of the incident, she used the same tactic to kill off one of her coworkers, the very much alive Buzzfeed FWD editor John Herrman, with the obituary of "John Arthur Herrmann," a 74-year-old Nebraskan who died in June.
Facebook deactivated Herrman's account until about an hour after he filled out a special form. When Buzzfeed asked why it was so easy to fake someone's death, the social media site said, "We try to take all necessary precautions when processing user requests and provide an appeals process for any possible mistake we may make."
According to ABC News, Facebook reactivated Foster's account 27 hours after he reminded them he was alive, just enough time for his friends to play around with his "dead" status.
"The only thing that happened was some of my friends posted little mock-eulogies for me, because word got around that I was locked out, due to a temporary case of death," Foster said.
Jezebel pointed out the story of a Buzzfeed commenter, who said that Facebook's simple "Memorialization Request" form caused confusion in the actual death of a friend.
This happened to one of my good friends who was tragically killed in a car accident a day after getting engaged to her bf of 8 years. Someone (not family) got the page memorialized which removed all of her quotes and her description of herself and her life that she had put on there herself. Her brother, bf, and parents wanted to keep her page alive as a place where friends and family could continue to post memories and messages to her and pictures and see her happy life in her own words. I'm sure it was done by someone with the best intentions, but it still robbed a lot of people of that chance to keep that part of her alive. Her page is gone now (she's been gone for 4 years now) and they ended up making a fb group so pictures and messages can still be put up, but it's not quite the same. They need to take another look at their process, not only because of the pranking, but because it robs real people of the chance to keep some memories alive.
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A New York Operator's Trail of Blood, Bankruptcy, and Brazilian Diamonds
The entrance to the 110-year-old brownstone at 2 East 12th Street, two blocks south of Union Square, isn't particularly dramatic or imposing. You have to step down to reach the front door. There's no doorman to wait on you.
Looking at it, you wouldn't imagine that the basement apartment there was at the center of a bitter court fight that ranged from the West 47th Street Diamond District deep into the Amazon jungle, and involved smuggling, bribery, corruption, a $20 billion corporation, Stone Age Indians, and a massacre.
Longtime New York diamond merchant Marco Kalisch and his wife, Mayra, owned the apartment, having lovingly restored it after combining it with the two adjacent units. They had a nice life—at least until Kalisch and his Brazilian partners tried to corner the market on rough diamonds being illegally mined on an Indian reservation in the Amazon.
"The story told by Marco [Kalisch] could be the basis of a screenplay," a U.S. bankruptcy judge noted in his surprisingly novelistic description of the case that was almost completely ignored by the media. "The background [swirls] with references to shady dealings and long journeys into remote areas of the Amazon jungle, describes an apparently illegal conspiracy to obtain rough diamonds from . . . Indians in Brazil and import those diamonds into the United States for ultimate sale in the diamond market of Antwerp."
That wild scheme, actually successful for a short time, ultimately blew up. And in the end, what the Americans involved in it were left to fight over was the basement apartment on East 12th Street—so far away from where the story starts, thousands of miles south, deep in inaccessible jungle.
The 1,300-member Cinta Larga tribe, whose name means "Wide Belt," lives on a 6.7-million-acre Brazilian reservation of dense jungle, limited roads, and almost impassable rivers. The land, about 2,100 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro, is reachable only via 100 miles of poorly maintained dirt roads. Inside the reserve, travel is limited largely to narrow foot trails and the river.
The first extensively recorded encounter with white Westerners came during Theodore Roosevelt's historic expedition down the so-called River of Doubt, named for its extreme and dangerous conditions.
When Roosevelt and the Brazilian explorer Cândido Rondon, for whom the state is named, encountered them in 1914, the Cinta Larga had never seen a white man before. They were still living in the Stone Age, isolated by the river, and hadn't even thought to build boats.
War for the Cinta Larga was a cultural obsession. The tribe decapitated and eviscerated their enemy's dead and grilled the meat over an open fire before bringing it home for their wives to slice, cook with water, and consume.
Over the years, the tribe began to encounter outsiders more frequently—often, men who entered the forest to gather latex from rubber trees. In 1928, a gang of rubber-tappers slaughtered a Cinta Larga village. Battles between Indians, tappers, and mineral miners continued for decades after that. The violence and periodic epidemics the tribe blamed on outsiders took a toll.
In 1969, the tribe was about 2,500 strong. But by 1981, their numbers had dwindled to 500. From that low, the tribe's numbers increased to about 1,300 in 2003. And while some Cinta Larga still insist on traditional garb, many of their members have learned Portuguese, dress in modern clothing, and drive pickup trucks.
While diamonds had been found on the reserve from time to time over the decades, the major rush for the mother lode began in 1999, when a miner came out of the jungle with a gem the size of a baby's fist.
Brazilian rough diamonds are alluvial, which means they are close to the surface—most often found in riverbeds. All you need to find them is a good spot and a pan that sifts the river bottom.
After the 1999 discovery, thousands of subsistence-level prospectors—known as garimpeiros—descended like locusts onto the reservation.
By 2002, there were some 3,000 garimpeiros mining in the reserve. The government expelled them, but they kept returning, which created extreme tension with the Cinta Larga and led to at least 70 deaths on both sides.
Finally, the government set up roadblocks to prevent miners from getting to the reserve, but even that didn't work.
Brazilian authorities have estimated that the Cinta Larga lands contain the largest diamond reserves in South America. Some $2 billion in diamonds have been mined on the reserve since 1999. Another estimate says the country loses up to $800 million a year from diamond smuggling.
In 2003, as Marco Kalisch hatched a scheme to harvest diamonds from the reservation, the Cinta Larga were still dealing with the protracted struggle to control the steady theft of its vast diamond deposits.
Kalisch, then in his late fifties, had been running a diamond-importing business since 1983 out of a stall in the West 47th Street Diamond District.
There, on a block that thrums with activity, you'll find dozens of cramped stalls in one storefront after another, with dealers haggling, prodding, and beseeching each other in a dozen languages, cell phones surgically connected to their ears.
Kalisch was well-educated. He had earned an undergraduate degree from Lehigh University, had studied in the Hague in the Netherlands, and had technical training at the Gemological Institute of America. He was a longtime member of the New York Diamond Dealers Club.
He typically went to Brazil between two and 12 times a year on business, buying his gems from a handful of trusted brokers.
Kalisch was successful enough that he was able to buy a studio apartment with a small backyard on the ground floor of the co-op on East 12th Street, and then, gradually, purchase the other two apartments on the floor and combine them into a nice pad for himself, his wife, and their daughter, who attended a private elementary school.
And so it went for many years. A man who lived by his wits, and his ability to buy and sell, made a steady income for himself.
"Marco would go down to Brazil, pick up stones, work on 47th Street a lot, trade on 47th Street, and then come home, and we would have a normal evening," Mayra later testified. "And that was our life."
But Kalisch yearned for something more ambitious, something involving the Cinta Larga reservation. He just needed to figure out how to get around the Brazilian law that banned mining of any kind there.
Kalisch formed a corporation in Brazil with two other partners: Marco Suarez, a Brazilian police official, and Marcos Glikas. They called the company "M-3 Imports," because of the similarity in their first names.
A few years earlier, Glikas had been indicted and convicted of money laundering in New Jersey. He'd been delivering illegal drug proceeds to the former president of a Brazilian company with a U.S. subsidiary, and $8 million in cash was seized when the authorities moved in. He served almost three years in federal prison in Coleman, Florida, then was released in 2002 and returned to Brazil.
Glikas would be responsible for converting U.S. funds into Brazilian money. Suarez was in charge of moving the merchandise and paying the bribes necessary to get past roadblocks and checkpoints. In a place like Brazil, where official corruption is so widespread, things would never get off the ground without someone like Suarez handing out bribes liberally.
While Kalisch was excited about the new venture, his wife, Mayra, was nervous. Despite working on the margins, Kalisch had long been a diamond merchant, and now he was wading into the messy world of Brazilian diamond mining. And the couple had a daughter to consider. "He started to speak to this gentleman, Marcos Glikas, from the house, which was unusual," she testified. "So I'm not happy with this. . . . He is changing. I said to him, don't get involved, don't do this. What good can come from you doing business with Marcos Glikas and doing this thing that you're telling me is not clear with the Brazilian government?"
The marriage became strained, and the couple started joint therapy. "I would really let loose in couples' therapy," Mayra testified. "I would tell him, you're going to lose your business. There's no way that this could end in anything good."
In a business plan later produced for his investors, Kalisch claimed he started working with Cinta Larga leaders, along with "state and local authorities," in March 2003.
Kalisch could say that because Glikas had met with the governor of the state of Rondônia, Ivo Cassol, and a top lieutenant who was in charge of the state's mining company. Glikas later told investigators that Cassol, in essence, was well aware of the smuggling scheme.
And Kalisch may have imagined that he was actually helping the Cinta Larga take control of their diamond reserves. At one point, he told his investors that he was "helping local indigenous people."
With government officials taken care of, Kalisch and his partners needed financing. Kalisch borrowed $400,000 from a credit line with Merrill Lynch and wired it to Brazil, where it was used mainly to purchase mining equipment and machinery for Cinta Larga use.
In the middle of 2003, the scheme began to pay off. Kalisch started buying and importing rough diamonds from the Cinta Larga lands.
Kalisch knew that he was on to a major new market, and he needed real money behind the venture. For financing ideas, he turned to his close friend, Victor Janovich, a man in the coffee trade in Nicaragua and Louisiana who had a summer home in Greenport, New York. Kalisch and his wife would often spend weekends with Janovich and his wife.
Kalisch and Janovich spoke at length about the scheme, and Kalisch would later testify that Janovich understood that paying bribes for unauthorized mining was involved.
During one of those summer weekends, Janovich suggested that Kalisch seek financing from the Maple Trade Finance Corp., an investment firm with a $100 million portfolio. Janovich had another old friend there named James Culver, who happened to be the president of Maple Trade. Those discussions began around June 2003.
Maple Trade was already "familiar" with the Brazilian marketplace, having done large business deals in Brazil, including a $40 million venture with a Brazilian sugar manufacturer.
Culver had an interesting background himself. He was an investment fund manager, and had worked as chief economist for the House Agriculture Committee and as a visiting professor of economics at Baruch College in Manhattan. (Culver, Kalisch, and their lawyers did not respond to repeated calls for this story.)
"When I originally sought money from Maple Trade as a backer, the arrangement was not merely professional, but friendly," Kalisch said in a 2005 affidavit. "The financing was certainly entered into by everyone in good faith. . . . Jim and I—we all believed that this business opportunity had the potential for enormous success."
That collegial environment would eventually fade into recrimination, bitterness, and litigation. Lots of litigation.
Despite its dull name, Maple Trade was no minor player. The New Jersey firm was a subsidiary of the Maple Finance Group, Inc., a $20 billion Toronto-based company that was the second largest residential mortgage lender in Canada.
That meant that the National Bank of Canada, the Ontario Teachers' Pension Fund, and a large Hong Kong investment company were about to, indirectly, get into the business of smuggling diamonds out of an Indian reservation in Brazil. Whether they knew it was illegal or not was a matter of great contention much later.
"Marco's attitude was kind of like he was hanging with the big boys," Mayralater testified.
Kalisch prepared a business plan that would entice Maple Trade to loan him money so he could buy the diamonds. "Since March 2003, M-3 has been working with state and local authorities and elected leaders of the Indian bands to devise mutually beneficial ways to exploit these resources," the business plan said. "After much work and roughly $400,000, M-3 is in a position to buy from the Indians their monthly production of rough diamonds."
Kalisch wrote that between August 27 and October 2, 2003, he and his partnershad purchased 3,600 carats of diamonds from the Cinta Larga for a total of $650,000.
He claimed that he could accelerate the process, buying up to 3,000 carats a month for up to $400,000, and earn a net profit of 15 to 20 percent. That meant that Kalisch imagined he could earn $4.3 million a year from Cinta Larga diamonds in gross revenue.
In the business plan, Kalisch didn't indicate that the venture was technically illegal under Brazilian law, but he did note that he had a "silent partner who was a Brazilian government official." Whether that hint should have made Culver aware of the venture's black-market nature became a major issue when the whole thing soured.
A simple Internet search, however, should have made it clear that exporting diamonds from the Cinta Larga was a subject soaked in controversy that had received much attention in the international media.
But, at least according to Kalisch, Culver didn't ask many questions: "I explained to Culver what the function of M-3 was, and he accepted that explanation, apparently, because he didn't ask me any further questions," he testified.
Kalisch explained that he would hand-carry the diamonds to the U.S. because they couldn't use a commercial carrier, like the security company Brink's, until the process was "officialized." Once he was through U.S. customs, the diamonds would be shipped on to Antwerp, where they would be sold on the open market.
Lastly, the plan noted: "The prospect of the Bonus Stone (large gemstones, fancy colored diamonds, etc.) is a prime motivator in this process. These stones represent potential windfalls."
While Culver and other Maple Trade officials liked the project, the company's Patriot Act compliance officer expressed some concern.
In September 2003, Maple Trade committed to loan up to $3 million to the Kalisch venture.
On November 7, 2003, Kalisch met with Culver. Kalisch, in his 2005 affidavit, claims Culver told him, "I expect to make good money on this."
"It was somewhat cloudy to me whether to consider Maple an investor or a lender," Kalisch would say later in an affidavit. "The money was critically important to me," he added. "It was needed to use for operations in Brazil, and because of the nature of the enterprise we were attempting to get started, timing was enormously important."
Maple Trade, though, needed time to make a decision. On December 17, 2003, the firm cut its loan offer of $3 million back to $1.5 million.
Culver wrote an e-mail to Janovich, which said, in part, "We were making it up as we went along."
"I got the impression that the business would grow dramatically," Culver later testified. "Because this was a new source . . . there was probably lots of opportunity."
Two months passed, but Kalisch was not idle. He continued to travel to Brazil and buy diamonds.
Already owning 20 percent of possible profits and the option of becoming a direct partner in the scheme, Culver and Maple Trade insisted then that Kalisch add additional guarantees that he could pay them back.
The main remaining asset Kalisch owned was the sprawling apartment at 2 East 12th Street. He and his wife had slowly purchased and combined three ground-floor apartments into one, giving it a value of well over $500,000. He added the apartment as loan collateral, but he hid this fact from his wife.
"The financial pressure of starting this business required me to lease out the apartment so I could take a cheaper place and live off the income," he said in his affidavit. "Despite the pressure I was under, I certainly did not intend to defraud anyone. If I intended to keep secrets from anyone, it was an intent to keep a secret from my wife that I had signed papers concerning our apartment."
With his apartment on the line, and a major North American company on the hook, Kalisch headed south to move diamonds with his own hands.
Then, on January 12, 2004, Kalisch suffered a setback. He had just flown back from Brazil with another shipment mined on the Cinta Larga lands. He had been in Brazil for six days.
In his suitcase, he carried 1,170 carats of rough or uncut diamonds inside a plastic bag sealed with tape. At John F. Kennedy Airport, he declared the diamonds during a customs inspection, and claimed they had a value of $165,000. He also turned over a piece of paper that claimed to "guarantee" that the diamonds had been purchased from "legitimate sources not involved in funding conflict."
Inspectors, though, seized the diamonds because Kalisch was not carrying a so-called Kimberley Process Certificate, which formally vouches that the gems are not "conflict diamonds"—a phrase for black-market gems used to finance civil war, largely in Africa.
The Kimberley certification process was created in 2002 to prevent export and import of rough diamonds that have not been vetted by a national authority. Congress adopted the measure as part of the Clean Diamond Trade Act in 2003.
Brazil began officially complying with the Kimberley Process Certificate in 2003, records show. But the system has been plagued with problems. "It is a system fraught with systematic leaks and failures in oversight, a system that encourages smuggling and contraband," writes Ian Smillie, a researcher with Partnership Africa Canada (PAC), a nonprofit that has written several reports on the illegal diamond trade. "Despite the government's good intentions, it actually hides the source of Brazil's diamonds."
Initially, Kalisch tried to persuade customs inspectors to allow him to take the diamonds back to Brazil, or on to Antwerp without formally entering the United States. The inspectors refused.
Subsequently, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn filed a lawsuit to force Kalisch to forfeit the diamonds. In a case that took more than three years to resolve, Kalisch fought to reclaim the diamonds.
Kalisch argued in court papers that he had declared the gems in good faith, and the diamonds were from Brazil—not Africa—and, as a result, did not need a Kimberley Certificate. He also claimed he had done his best to determine whether a certificate was needed, and concluded that it was not.
He also argued successfully that his deposition in the forfeiture case should be sealed, because it would expose him to criminal prosecution. Federal prosecutor Laura Mantell argued against that motion, because Kalisch had already voluntarily disclosed damaging information in bankruptcy court.
In 2008, a federal judge ruled for the government. The diamonds were donated to the Smithsonian Institution for research. But Kalisch was never charged in criminal court.
As the forfeiture case began winding its way through the courts, Kalisch returned to Brazil to obtain another shipment of diamonds from the Cinta Larga lands.
But Kalisch did not tell Maple Trade about the seizure of the diamonds at Kennedy. And he became increasingly desperate to get the seed money from the company. He was deeply in debt and unable to pay for more diamonds. The couple had already moved out of their beloved apartment, and were sub-letting it to make enough money to pay their bills. He wrote Janovich to say he was "drowning in quicksand."
On February 3, 2004, responding to unease from another Maple Trade employee, a company official named Pablo Marino wrote, "No offense, but we're all pretty grown up here. . . . I thought that we all understood what the key of the transaction is, and I absolutely think we are trying to do everything to mitigate the risk."
Two weeks later, Maple Trade entered into a loan agreement for up to $1.5 million with Kalisch, and provided $950,000 for the venture.
On February 24, Kalisch sent a $600,000 invoice to Maple Trade for the sale of 2,400 carats of diamonds to a São Paulo–based seller named Lapidacao Estrela Do Sul. Kalisch admitted later in court that that venture never existed.
Instead, Kalisch gave the money to Glikas and Suarez, presumably to buy more diamonds from the Cinta Larga. That money later disappeared.
In March 2004, Maple Trade advanced Kalisch $400,000 to pay off his Merrill Lynch loan used to buy the mining equipment for the Indians. The company loaned him another $500,000 to buy rough diamonds.
Kalisch wired the money to Brazil and then flew to São Paulo to pick up the diamonds. Almost as soon as he arrived in the country, however, his partner, Glikas, and 15 other people were arrested in connection with the diamond smuggling ring. In addition to Glikas, a Cinta Larga leader, three police officers, and several officials from the Bureau of Indian Affairs were arrested on illegal mining and money-laundering charges.
News coverage referred to the group as "one of Brazil's top diamond smuggling rings." The investigation took a year and involved 100 police officers. Federal police uncovered one transaction in which Glikas sold $1.85 million worth of diamonds to a Belgian buyer.
"We've got the leaders of the gang, those that had the funds to finance the crime," Brazilian Federal Police Agent Marcos Pereira in Rondônia told reporters at the time. Cassol, the governor of Rondônia—the state that includes the reservation—also fell under investigation for his ties to illegal mining on the reserve.
Kalisch himself somehow escaped arrest. He called Mayra and initially told her he couldn't return because of business delays, but finally admitted there had been arrests, she testified.
"He hadn't been arrested, but he was nervous to leave the country," she testified. "I was kind of sick, you know, and nervous."
He went into hiding in Brazil for several weeks, fearing both arrest and for his life, court records show. He finally slipped out of the country and returned to New York. The diamond shipment that he had flown to Brazil to collect had disappeared. It was another huge setback, but, initially, he hid word of the arrests from Maple Trade.
Then the venture finally fell apart. On April 7, 2004, a Cinta Larga band attacked a large group of prospectors with firearms, clubs, spears, and arrows. At least 29 garimpeiros were massacred, many of whom appeared to have been tortured or mutilated and buried in shallow graves. Some of the victims had their stomachs sliced open.
Authorities charged 28 Indians in connection with the attack, but the case has dragged on for years over the question of whether the semiautonomous indigenous people should be bound to Brazilian law.
Shawn Gerald Blore, a journalist who has written extensively about diamond smuggling and the Cinta Larga, reported in 2004 that right before the attack, a miner was overheard threatening to shoot Indians. Three days after the attack, miners dragged a Cinta Larga teacher, tied him to a post, and threatened to kill him. Not long after that, miners fatally shot a 14-year-old Indian youth.
Blore alleges in the article that Cassol, the governor of Rondônia, was involved in illegal diamond mining, along with the mayor of Espigão d'Oeste, the hard-edged boomtown nearest to the Cinta Larga lands.
Blore says Cassol promised to improve the roads, schools, and clinics in exchange for moving 20 diamond-extracting machines onto the reservation. When the Indians refused, he pulled the roadblocks and allowed the miners back on the land, sparking the conflict, Blore says.
A Cinta Larga chief told the Associated Press days after the killings that some members of the tribe were furious that the miners had ignored their demands that they leave the reservation.
"We told them we didn't want them here, and they kept coming back," the chief said. He went on to deny any link to the incident, but said, "We are warriors."
After the massacre, Kalisch finally told Janovich about the arrests that had happened earlier. Janovich warned him not to mention it to Culver. But after the killings, and the ensuing international media coverage, Kalisch felt he could no longer hide the truth. Some—including a bankruptcy court judge who looked into the matter later—believed that Kalisch's mining operation helped trigger the mass killings, which was reported internationally.
"There's no way to keep a lid on this any longer," Kalisch told Janovich.
Even so, Maple Trade subsequently advanced Kalisch another $500,000, including $150,000 to pay off Janovich's bridge loan.
It was not long after that the company declared Kalisch in default of the loans, and moved to seize the couple's East 12th Street apartment. The diamond mining, the bribes, and the horrible massacre of the garimpeiros had finally come home to roost in the lovely million-dollar East Village domicile.
The Kalisches declared bankruptcy. Their filing listed $2 million in debts. And so began the years of litigation that wound its way through five New York courthouses.
In 2005, Mayra Kalisch sued in state court, arguing that Maple Trade shouldn't receive the fruits of an illegal venture, and sought a court injunction against the seizing of the apartment. But a state judge dismissed the lawsuit, and a higher state court dismissed their appeal. The conflict over diamonds moved to the federal bankruptcy court.
In July 2008, the bankruptcy trial took place in the august Custom House building in the Financial District. Once again, the issue was whether Maple Trade was aware of the illegal nature of the Kalisch venture.
Kalisch was in a tricky situation: He knew that the only way to hold on to his apartment was to argue that what he had leveraged it for was a highly unlawful enterprise—and one Maple Trade should have known was illegal when it lent him the money to engage in it.
In essence, instead of arguing that he should not be punished because his intentions were good, Kalisch needed to argue that he should not be punished because his intentions were completely dishonest.
An astonished Judge James M. Peck was clearly struck by the irregularities of the case: "It is hard to imagine that any rational witness under these circumstances would make up something so personally incriminating if it were not mostly the truth," he would write later.
When Culver took the stand, he admitted he had been aware that the venture was acquiring diamonds from "indigenous people." But he denied he knew that trading with the Indians without government approval was illegal. He also testified that he did not personally make an effort to check whether the scheme was legal.
"We were not financing an illegal diamond venture," Culver testified. "Our interest was to finance a diamond importer and hopefully make a substantial yield out of it."
Kalisch's lawyer, Max Folkenflik, argued that Kalisch's business plan was peppered with "red flags," including the fact that Kalisch had a silent partner who was a government employee.
Curiously, neither side called on the two people who would presumably know quite a bit about how much Maple Trade knew of the diamond scheme: Pablo Marino, a Maple Trade employee, and Victor Janovich, the man who brought Culver and Kalisch together. One more intriguing note: A significant number of Maple Trade files disappeared or were mistakenly thrown away.
Judge Peck, in the end, found in favor of Maple Trade, noting that the "ethically challenged" Kalisch's testimony about the diamond venture was credible, but his claims that Maple Trade knew the scheme was illegal were not credible. Maple Trade was focused on the collateral—the apartment—and "had no duty to inquire any further than it did."
"The only sound conclusion is that Marco finessed the subject, made incomplete, vague, and evasive disclosures and kept the truth to himself," Judge Peck wrote.
If anything, Kalisch was too good at smuggling—even his own business partners didn't know what he was up to. That, at least, was the conclusion of the court.
Meanwhile, the Kalisches tried a second strategy to hold on to the apartment: While Marco Kalisch may be liable for the debt, his wife, Mayra, was not. And she still had an ownership interest in the apartment. So, in a contorted legal maneuver, Mayra sued not only Maple Trade, but her husband as well. That tactic also failed.
The Maple Trade lawyers saw the litigation in part as a delaying tactic. The Kalisches were still banking $9,000 a month in rent from the 2 East 12th Street apartment, and they would continue to earn it as long as the court case went on.
In the years since the massacre, the clashes between the prospectors and the Indians have not abated. Nor has the government been able to come up with a system to mine the diamonds without controversy.
In 2006, Brazilian authorities suspended diamond exports for six months because of rampant smuggling and corruption, says Smillie, the PAC researcher who has written several reports on the issue. "They revamped their system, fired a lot of people, and arrested some, but just how good the controls are is unknown," he says. "One of their solutions was to have the prospectors register online, but a lot of them are illiterate and don't have computers."
Venezuela, PAC reported, declined in 2007 to comply with the Kimberley certification process. The PAC reported that Venezuelan diamonds were being openly mined and smuggled into Guyana and Brazil, even though the government claimed not to have exported any diamonds.
In December 2007, Cinta Larga Indians took a United Nations human rights official and three other people hostage to once again demand better government services and that the government expel miners from their lands. The hostages were held for four days and released.
Blore, the journalist, says federal police are stationed on roads leading to the reserve: Mining continues, but on a smaller level. "Miners bring in supplies after dark, and have trails through the bush to bring out the diamonds," he says.
A bill currently winding its way through Brazilian Congress would sell licenses to mining companies to exploit the diamond reserves. In exchange, the tribe would receive a small payment. The Indians oppose this bill, Blore says. "More militant tribes have given notice that the bill is a formula for violence and conflict, but Brazil is still very much an elitist government-knows-best kind of place," he says. "Actual discussions with actual stakeholders are not something the government knows how to do."
As for Kalisch's former partners, arrested in the 2004 raids—well, the Brazilian justice system seems to move extremely slowly.
An article in the magazine Carta Capital reported in mid-2008 that Glikas was assisting the federal police in its investigation. Cassol, the governor of Rondônia, was being probed for vote buying and illegal diamond trafficking. Blore says an indictment is unlikely because the supreme court has never convicted a sitting politician of corruption.
Last year, Mayra Kalisch took one last shot at preventing Maple Trade from selling the apartment at auction. Having lost in federal bankruptcy court, she appealed to civil court and U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel.
Her lawyer, David Wander, argued that Maple Trade knew about the illegal nature of the business, and shouldn't profit from those acts. Doing so, he wrote, would "contradict established precedents by the Supreme Court and over 100 years of jurisprudence of the New York State courts."
Maple Trade's lawyers, Mark Frankel and Tom Berry, argued that Maple Trade was simply unaware of the illegality of the venture. The Kalisches, they claimed, just didn't want to part with the apartment: "This is the latest chapter of the Kalisches' four-year effort to avoid the consequences of Mr. Kalisch's loss of the money he borrowed from Maple."
But Wander retorted that Maple Trade's claim that they weren't aware of the illegality of the venture was "not based in reality": "What legitimate business would secretly hire a government official to transport $400,000 worth of diamonds from an Indian reservation to an airport?" he wondered.
In the end, Judge Castel refused toprevent the sale of the apartment, anddismissed the appeal.
So ended the case of the diamond merchant who would be king. And what is Kalisch doing now? Well, he's out of the diamond business, according to a friend of his who still works at the old Diamond Exchange on West 47th Street. He's working with special-needs children, the friend said.
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Last Ottoman royal dies in Istanbul at 91
The last Ottoman royal born during before the 600-year dynasty’s collapse in the early 1920s died earlier this week.
Fatma Neslişah Osmanoğlu was 91 when she fell victim to heart attack Monday in Istanbul.
Once known as Imperial Princess of the Ottoman Empire and Princess of Egypt, Sultan was the granddaughter of the last Ottoman sultan, Mehmed VI, according to Agence France-Presse.
The Ottoman Empire had ruled Turkey, parts of the Middle East and eastern Europe, beginning in 1299.
Neslişah was born just two years before Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded modern Turkey, which brought a formal end to the Ottoman dynasty.
However, while the Ottoman Empire’s doom was effectively sealed when it sided with the Central Powers during World War I, it had been in decline for more than a century.
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My application uses Visual Studio 2010 to develop an application in SharePoint 2010. I created a visual webpart and added a <SharePoint:SPCalendarView ID="EventsCalendar1" width="100%" runat="server"></SharePoint:SPCalendarView> I also found that there are many other controls which appears in intellisense. How can I add these controls to the toolbox? Is there any documentation available on how to use these controls?
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1 Answer 1
1. In Visual Studio on the Tools menu, click Choose Toolbox Items.
2. Click Browse.
3. The Open dialog box appears.
4. In the My Places Bar, select My Computer to browse for items installed on your computer drives. —or— In Look in, select My Network Places to browse for items located on a network share.
5. Click OK.
enter image description here
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I was specifically asking for SharePoint controls like SPCalendarView, SPGridView etc – Suja Shyam Dec 10 '12 at 12:11
Inside the .NET Freamework Componets are SharePoint controls as well. The procedure to add is the same too. Are you getting reference issues while opening the control? – Benny Skogberg Dec 10 '12 at 12:28
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Abdominal radiography: To cut or not to cut (Proceedings)
Abdominal radiography: To cut or not to cut (Proceedings)
Nov 01, 2010
Abdominal radiographs are a rapid, readily available method to give an overview of the abdomen. Though most people believe ultrasound is the new modality of choice for abdominal evaluation, the limitations of ultrasound not being able to penetrate gas as well as the technical ability and time to acquire images still make abdominal radiographs a great first modality in the patient with acute abdominal pain.
Ultimately, the question for the clinician with an abdominal patient is whether surgery is indicated or if medical management is the best course of action. With radiographs providing an overview of the entire abdomen, and the use of the gas within the bowel to provide contrast, abdominal radiographs can be useful as a triage tool that can be augmented and finding further characterized using abdominal ultrasound.
When evaluating the stomach, generally most abdominal radiographs include a right lateral and ventrodorsal projection. The question always arises on why this is performed. These two views have become the standard since a right lateral projection places gas in the fundus of the stomach and fluid in the pyloric antrum. To evaluate the pylorus, a ventrodorsal projection is used to put fluid in the fundus and gas in the pyloric antrum. At Michigan State University, we take 3 view radiographs of all abdomens to include a right lateral to seen the fundus, a left lateral to evaluate the pylorus and look for pyloric outflow obstructions and a ventrodorsal to provide more information about the pylorus and to better evaluate the colon.
With the availability of ultrasound, the use of contrast medium for upper gastrointestinal contrast medium procedures is not routinely performed. However, in clinics without the benefits of ultrasound, barium or iodinated contrast medium procedures still provide some use to evaluate if a luminal obstruction exists, if the bowel wall is think or infiltrated, look at overall motility or assess for a rupture. The main drawback to this procedure is that if any of those differential diagnoses are suspected, an exploratory laparotomy is indicated rather than a contrast procedure that could delay surgery by 3-6 hours.
Barium contrast medium is the most universally used for gastrointestinal imaging. It is safe, the dose is 6-10 milliters per pound and generally is administered through a gastric tube. If aspirated, barium causes physical obstruction of the airways with no inflammatory component, but may cause granulomas if it leaks into the peritoneal or pleural cavity. For this reason, barium is contra-indicated if a ruptured bowel or ruptured esophagus is suspected. Iodinated contrast medium is generally used intravenously but can be administered orally. The main limitation is that it has a bad taste, is hypertonic so it will draw fluid into the bowel and since it is hypertonic, will cause an inflammatory reaction if aspirated into the lungs.
Positional radiography can also be used to evaluate for free gas in the abdomen. Since an air/fluid interface is needed to help to see gas within the peritoneal space, a horizontal beam projection with the dog on its left side and obtaining a ventrodorsal projection will put the gas in the right lateral abdomen near the pyloric antrum. Since the pylorus is small, the gas accumulation will be identified caudal to the diaphragm.
For gastric dilation with volvulus, the main feature is to obtain a right lateral radiograph. No other projection is needed. If the pylorus is seen in the craniodorsal abdomen, a GDV is confirmed. Numerous times people have been fooled by the normal appearance of the ventrodorsal projection and decided the case was just gastric dilation. Nothing else can put the pylorus in the craniodorsal abdomen except for a GDV.
Small intestinal wall thickness is also something frequently evaluated on survey radiographs. This cannot be done. Since soft tissue and fluid are the same opacity, it is impossible to know if the structure observed is a thick wall or just a combination of fluid summating with the small intestinal wall.
The abdomen is divided into two spaces, peritoneal and retroperitoneal. The retroperitoneal space contains the adrenal glands, kidneys and sublumbar lymph nodes and the peritoneal space contains the remaining organs. This determination is important since it will aid in the differential diagnoses of a mass that is present or the cause for gas within the abdomen. The retroperitoneal space is dorsal to the colon. Therefore if a soft tissue mass displaces the colon ventrally, then the mass is likely retroperitoneal indicating it is either arising from the kidney or adrenal glands. If gas is present in the retroperitoneum, this is likely secondary to a pneumomediastinum rather than a rupture of the gastrointestinal tract.
Radiographs are useful to determine if a surgical obstruction or mass is present or at least provides a general overview of the abdomen. Though barium contrast medium can be used, this has largely been replaced with ultrasound or exploratory surgery. By the end of this lecture, the audience will seen numerous examples of radiographs for surgical and non-surgical lesions and how a better understanding of the limitations and benefits of abdominal radiography.
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Bard Challenge #24
Small (250 words)
Word Prompt: Elf
An original story
Santa's Little Helpers
by Wildcat Winnie
On her eleventh birthday Lily wept with joy and trepidation. This winter, she and all other eleven-year-olds everywhere would be taken from their homes to work in Santa's factory. It was, she had been told, a privilege; but some who had returned, although sworn to secrecy, had told different. It was hard work, long hours and Santa's overseers were very strict. If you made a mistake (the wrong label on the wrong present!) punishment was harsh. At night, many exhausted children cried themselves to sleep.
It had not always been this way. A long time ago, when the world was less knowing and there were far fewer 'things' to be had, children's requests had been (mostly) easy to meet and Santa's Elves had been able to cope. Now there were too many things; too many children had become too greedy; "I would like" was becoming "I must have." The Elves were overworked and threatening to strike.
The idea came to Santa in a house in Vienna, where a particularly impatient and obnoxious boy had waited for him. The boy eagerly ripped off the wrapping paper; his face fell and he hurled the presents away. They were the wrong things. Was Santa stupid? The boy absolutely had to have the new 3D console and the latest killing game. That was too expensive, Santa said, and anyway the boy was too young for such things. "Bin nicht" am not the boy shouted, I'm eleven "Ich bin elf".
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End of an Era
Sunday, May 1, 2011, was a historical day in American history. I don't usually watch the news; it's predominantly depressing, and I have enough things to worry about in my life. But when I saw on Twitter that President Obama was going to make an annoucement declaring that the United States had killed Osama bin Laden, I flipped on the TV. Even though I was getting ready to go to sleep. Even though I was sick and needed my rest. This was huge. I ran downstairs to tell DH. Then I changed the channel for him to a news network, and he said, "Hey!...more
Bloggers React to Osama bin Laden's Death
Late last night (EST), United States President Barack Obama announced on television that American military forces located, fought with and killed Al Qaeda leader and 9/11 mastermind, Osama bin Laden. Bloggers and politicians all over the world are reacting today....more
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Be A Better Blogger: What's Going On In the "Mosque at Ground Zero" Controversy
In case you have been on vacation from cable television and twitter for the last month or so, the summer's domestic political headlines have been dominated by a dispute over a proposed Islamic community center near the site of the World Trade Center attacks that has come to be known, variously, as Park 51, Cordoba House and, most popularly, the "Ground Zero Mosque." A Muslim organization has proposed building a 13-15 story community center on the site of a building that was damaged by debris fro...more
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Imagine a Different Experiment: Ted Kaczynski and the Murray Experiment at Harvard
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How protected from terrorism are we?
The security/intelligence system is "so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work," The Washington Post says after a two-year investigation of the national security buildup following 9/11. What does that mean for us citizens?...more
Keep Calm and Carry On
Five years ago I was living in a lovely shared house in South East London with Husband and 3 other friends. Husband and I had been living together for over a year and we were engaged to be married that September. I was finishing up my internship as part of my masters course in central London. On that particular day, I was headed into my part time job in Chelsea. I was running late (as usual) and had to get a later train than husband did. As the train pulled up to Waterloo Station, people began to stir. Something was wrong in central London, but no one knew what yet....more
Aliou Niasse, a Muslim Immigrant, Alerted Police to Times Square Bomb
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I heard Salmon Rushdie mention it and that was literally all I heard about it.
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The New York Times and other sources report that the investigation of the Times Square failed car bombing has spread beyond the U.S. Not only has Faisal Shahzad, a 30-year-old U.S. citizen from Pakistan been arrested and charged, but the Pakistani government has captured additional suspects. However, U.S. officials have not confirmed the arrests reported by Pakistani intelligence. ...more | <urn:uuid:36d5b1b5-8e03-40f2-9bb1-46add86179e4> | http://www.blogher.com/free-tagging/terrorism?page=2 | en | 0.974005 | 0.018126 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
I am trying to write an explication of the poem "A Blessing" by James Wright. I want to write about imagery, but I don't know how. Can anyone help?
A Blessing
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coachingcorner's profile pic
Posted on (Answer #1)
This beautiful poem "A Blessing" by James Wright uses the image of a horse to represent the refreshing balm of nature on the tired dusty souls of people stressed out by modern living and commuting. One minute the travellers are on the interminable boring highway separated from the natural world by windscreen glass, smoke, fog, fumes and road dust. Perhaps they have the radio or cd player on too, barking out the monotonous news or weather or tinny-sounding music. They are in their own little modern micro-environment in their car, like all the other commuters. It doesnt really matter if it is cars or trains or whatever - it is the separateness from nature that counts. Then they are in the sweet pur fresh air, the silence and the soft nuzzle of two wild things.
bmadnick's profile pic
Posted on (Answer #2)
The most important images in the poem are the ponies coming to welcome the speaker, the speaker touching the horse so lovingly that he imagines it is a girl, and the speaker feeling he would blossom if he stepped out of his body. The speaker takes us from the lonely human world into the beautiful natural world, breaking down the barriers between the two. Then the speaker compares the two worlds, noting that the horses would be considered lonely in the human world, but in the natural world, they are quite content. He then realizes, after caressing the horse who nudges him, that if he could leave his body, he would "break/Into blossom." Of course, the speaker cannot do this physically, but his realization is that humans can accomplish this spiritually by communing with and appreciating the beauty in nature. The speaker feels he is blessed to have had this experience and to come to this realization.
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tinyliny 03-06-2011 01:30 AM
How much does a thought weigh?
I got to spend two days in a row out at the barn; one in the round pen and today on the trails with Mac.
I had the most wonderful ride and all, I just felt this great connection to him. I am really starting to be aware of where his thought is, and being sure that I keep him "with " me in thought.
I start to see how the horse's thought is there for the reading, if you stay alert and look for it.
It is my job to watch his thought and to see when I need to bring it back to me. In order to do that, I have to know that it's going away.
So, how hard do I have to work to get his thought with me? Well, that depends on how much a thought weighs. If the horse gets that thought really strong and heavy onto something, like, "I wanna go home" or, "my friend is calling me back" or, "I think that dark red thing over there is going to eat me", THEN I will have to be strong to bring that heavy thought back.
But if I can catch my horse's thought while it's still feather light, then I can move it where I want it to be with a mear breath of my air.
Amazing lightness and connection can be felt. It's exquistiely beautiful.
AlexS 03-06-2011 01:41 AM
Those are the moments that we all aim for. I believe this is why we keep going despite the money woes or the other commitments we have. It is hard to explain to a none horse person, those moments of connection.
I am yet to feel it with my current horse, I have owned him for a year now, and I feel it on the ground, but not under saddle, but I am determined.
My previous horse it came in flickers and then came in floods and was wonderful, it will forever be my goal to chase that.
Congrats to you for feeling it with your horse, it is a huge deal and a huge training moment.
tinyliny 03-06-2011 01:46 AM
I have been riding Mac almost 3 years. He had and still does, the habit of spinning and can do it with lightening speed and NO obvious warning sign. For that reason, I began really watching him with my third eye , all the time and trying to feel when his thought was too far away. I ride a fine line of balance, though, because i was for awhile micromanaging him, so worried that he was going to spin. So, I watch to see when I feel that he can mentally handle something that troubles him (not sure) and when he goes into a mental fear void and I need to step in and create a "draw" to bring him out of the void.
Sound familiar?
AlexS 03-06-2011 01:51 AM
Yes, although when I experienced it, I was not as astute as you are, nor did I stick with my problem horse for as long. She would have made a great rodeo horse and was dangerous. I tried for a year and got nowhere so cut my loses.
It is a huge thing to relax enough to trust your gut, and to listen to your feelings. And those feelings are often better than the thoughts in our head.
tinyliny 03-06-2011 02:09 AM
Oh, I was really close to dropping Mac, he put me on the ground 5 times in less than three years.
But as I go along I am beginning to realize how very much the horse's brain is the most important thing to ride. I spent so much time listenging to this and that instruction of this and that aid to apply and how to sit and all, and throughout that time, I never ONCE stopped and listened and watched to see where my horse's thought was. And the thing is, once you start looking for it, you see it all over the place. It's like a silent world starts to get busy with "chatter". Well,, not chatter, but you start to see that like any moderately intelligent animal , horse's are very aware and their thought is always somewhere. They don't turn off, like a machine. And they are so honest about it, too. Watch their ears, eyes, shift of weight. You can tell so much. It's amazing. And when you have their thought ON you, you can move them with breathe, like I said.
The really good horse people have their horses thought really strongly attached to them. Me, I get a brush of it sometimes.
I think riding Western has helped me in this growth because I ride so much on really loose reins, and the horse can be spooky, I have to really be aware of where his mind is, and if he stays light to the bit, then I can regather his mind by just lifting one rein. I don't ride the bit, I ride his mind.
AlexS 03-06-2011 02:16 AM
I think it is more than just paying attention to them, I do that all the time but Lucas is dumber than a small rock, most of the time he is thinking 'la la la'.
It takes a connection, an understanding to get to that point, and while that is my goal, I am not there yet with this guy.
Hunterjumper7654 03-06-2011 02:45 AM
When you feel/hear this with your horse it's the most amazing feeling.
AlexS 03-06-2011 02:47 AM
Yes it is, it is what we all seek every ride, and when we get it, it is wonderful.
brackabrack 03-06-2011 06:30 AM
I have only had Bracken (4yo gelding) for 4 almost 5 weeks now, and our first hack out together was an experience I wont be forgetting in a hurry!! We only managed to get say 150 yards away from the yard after crossing a bus way, dozens of teenagers and pre teens, even a bus crossed his path.. not a blink!!! I tried to turn him down a quiet lane when a lorry was coming slowly towards us, i moved bracken back onto the corner so he wouldn't be rubbing his whiskers on the vehicle, then out of nowhere, chaos hit both of our worlds.. He was panicking from the lorry, the cars behind him (cars going uphill to stop at traffic lights at the school run time. but it was quiet never the less) but i could hear everything in his mind! Everything was elevated like i had super sensitive hearing!! It was all too much for both of us so i took him home and schooled a little... even when we both calmed down i was still inside his thoughts... A flock of blackbirds flew above us, but it sounded like they was flying around our heads it was so loud! ... Since having this connection with him we have had this respect and connection for each other.. but as youngsters go, hes taking advantage haha !!
tinyliny 03-06-2011 01:23 PM
That is wonderful that you are hearing him. For me, the purpose of trying to stay atuned is so that I may bend my horse's thinking to what I need it to be focussed on. And if I can feel when the horse's thought is leaving me and catch it early, then that thought isn't very heavy and bringing it back to me can be done softly. Once it becomes heavy, I might not be able to bring it back or if I do, it becomes "dramatic".
As for your experience, you Brits amaze me to how you ride on those narrow roads with trucks and cars and noisy people, dogs etc. I commend your bravery. I would be scared stiff to do that.
The only thing I can think of would be to take him out, and try turning back BEFORE he gets to the point of "I have to go back". But that is hard to do 'cause one cannot predict how and when traffic will appear.
So, the more he is trusting of you and the more he is willing to follow your lead in safe places the better he'll be when panic is present.
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Kate Greenstreet, Author
Kate Greenstreet, Author . Ahsahta $16 (130p) ISBN 978-0-916272-89-0
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Greenstreet's quirky, sometimes vague debut feels less like one book than like a collection of five chapbooks, each with its own set of obsessions and themes, held together by an aesthetic consciousness that prizes immediacy, sincerity and open space. Part one, "Great Women of Science," considers the appeal of independence and the contrary draw of nostalgia, for a woman setting out on her own. "[SALT]" treats its titular mineral's properties (e.g., "[on icy streets makes winter travel safe]") as jumping-off points for questions about human nature: "Can you shut the eye with something in it and continue?" The passionate "Book of Love" and its sometime sequel "Where's the Body?" read like scrambled excerpts from smart diaries mixed with bits of murder mystery: "Why are we ashamed when someone hurts us?"; "The trouble comes from keeping a secret." Each of these four named segments reaches toward, and does not quite select, its own governing metaphor for the fluidity of the poet's inner life. The fifth segment, "Diplomacy," becomes both a fragmentary whodunit and a meditation on the poet's house, as if to ask where the self really resides. If this debut hints too much and reveals too little, it also marks Greenstreet as a poet to watch. (Sept.)
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The 25-year-old convention center is in need of new revenues to pay for repairs to the aging facility.
The 25-year-old convention center is in need of new revenues to pay for repairs to the aging facility. — K.C. Alfred
The San Diego Convention Center, facing more than $40 million in deferred maintenance and operational expenses, is looking into a naming rights deal to raise revenues.
The Cleveland, Ohio-based Superlative Group has been hired by the Convention Center Corp. to explore not only corporate naming rights but also sponsorships and the naming of different parts of the center.
The company, which has experience selling such rights to ballparks, stadiums and arenas and other municipally-owned assets, will spend the next 90 days exploring what potential value the center has for sponsorship and naming partnerships.
Possible opportunities beyond naming the entire center are partnerships with automotive, banking and insurance companies, for example, who could advertise their businesses on signage within the center, explained Kyle Canter, Superlative's chief operating officer.
"The goal is to maximize and leverage these highly valued opportunities while being tasteful," he said. "In our business, we say that you don't want to 'NASCAR' it up (like a NASCAR vehicle) with a bunch of stickers. There's a fine line between leveraging highly valued opportunities and going overboard because then you devalue everything."
The move to pursue a naming rights deal is fueled by the center's growing tab for repairs, most notably the need to replace the fabric structure of the upper level Sails Pavilion.
"The Sails Pavilion is 25 years old, and its useful life is 20 years, so it's rotting and likely to fail anytime soon," said center spokesman Steve Johnson.
In addition, the center no longer has the funds to maintain an operating reserve, a concern raised repeatedly by the city's independent budget analyst. The center is largely self-supporting through the revenues it gets from leasing the bayfront facility, although it does receive an annual city subsidy of $3.4 million, $1.9 million of which goes to the Tourism Authority staffing for booking large conventions.
Meanwhile, the city's plans to substantially expand the center remain in limbo in light of a Friday ruling by an appellate court panel that the financing mechanism for the $520 million project is unconstitutional. The city is seeking to use a special hotel room tax to pay for the bulk of the expansion. No decision has been made yet on how to proceed.
Once Superlative completes its research phase, the next step will be for the Convention Center Corp. to decide on how it wants to proceed and then pursue actual sponsorship and naming rights deals. Under the corporation's contract with Superlative, the firm would receive a commission of 12.5 percent of annual naming rights and sponsorship revenues, up to $1 million, and 10 percent over $1 million, Johnson said.
The entire process could take from 18 months to two years, he said.
Although there are few major cities with centers that have been branded with corporate names, the demand for such naming rights revenue is growing, said Canter. Among those who currently have partnered with corporations are centers in Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Bakersfield and Madison, Wisconsin. | <urn:uuid:ecd26207-dbf2-4275-8f0b-72a924104f0a> | http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2014/aug/04/convention-center-naming-rights-maintenance/ | en | 0.963434 | 0.022677 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Baby boom
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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For other uses, see Baby boom (disambiguation).
A baby boom is any period marked by a greatly increased birth rate. This demographic phenomenon is usually ascribed within certain geographical bounds. People born during such a period are often called baby boomers; however, some experts distinguish between those born during such demographic baby booms and those who identify with the overlapping cultural generations. Conventional wisdom states that baby booms signify good times and periods of general economic growth and stability;[citation needed] however in circumstances where baby booms lead to very large number of children per family unit, such as in the case in lower income regions of the world, the outcome may be different. One common baby boom was right after WWII during the Cold War.
France experienced a baby boom after 1945; it reversed a long-term record of low birth rates.[2] The sense that the population was too small, especially in regard to more powerful Germany, was a common theme in the early twentieth century . Put in a list policies were proposed in the 1930s, and implemented in the 1940s.[3][4]
• Decreţei: (1967-1989), A baby boom in Romania caused by a ban on abortion and contraception.
United States[edit]
The term "baby boom" most often refers to the post–World War II baby boom (1946–1964) when the number of annual births exceeded 2 per 100 women (or approximately 1% of the total population size).[citation needed] There are an estimated 78.3 million Americans who were born during this demographic boom in births.[7] The term is a general demographic and is also applicable to other similar population expansions.
United States birth rate (births per 1000 population per year).[8] The United States Census Bureau defines the demographic birth boom as between 1946 and 1964[9] (red).
Recent baby boom periods include the following:
See also[edit]
1. ^ Rosenthal, Elisabeth (14 April 2012). "In Nigeria, a Preview of an Overcrowded Planet". The New York Times.
5. ^ Colin Jones, Paris: Biography of a City (2004) p 438
9. ^ U.S. Census Bureau — Oldest Boomers Turn 60 (2006)
Further reading[edit]
External links[edit] | <urn:uuid:f5d03acb-41df-47e4-8e90-c309b2592c06> | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boom | en | 0.915178 | 0.318082 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Assorted Links
Thanks to Allan Jackson and Peter Couvares.
10 Responses to “Assorted Links”
1. TMS71 Says:
So what does control the rate of innovation?
2. Tim Beneke Says:
Isn’t one reason we are stagnating because in order to generate wealth, to innovate, somebody — wealthy corporations, entrepreneurs borrowing from banks, the state — has to take risks, has to invest, has to believe in a possible future with a payoff; this requires a certain psychological orientation, of groups of people who believe. Americans lost maybe 20% of their wealth in recent years; no one really understands the world economy, or the intricacies of capital flow and investment; and corporations are sitting on huge amounts of money and are still playing it safe. So there are reasons for such caution. Everyone knows we don’t know as much about economic processes as we thought we did.
There is some principle of herd pluralistic ignorance/knowledge at work. The tide may be changing as people get over the freak-out of the last few years and corporations start to invest…. I sure hope so…
3. Seth Roberts Says:
So what does control the rate of innovation?
I don’t know. But I can guess: 1. The heavier the regulatory burden, the less innovation. For example, certain FDA regulations require that businesses have a ROOM for the FDA inspector. 2. Lower crime, more innovation. 3. The easier it is to leave your employer and set up your own business, the more innovation. So, for example, universal health insurance –> more innovation. 4. The easier it is for a small business to advertise, the more innovation. 5. Cultural values. The more value placed on innovation, the more innovation. 6. The larger the percentage of people that live in cities, the more innovation. 7. The greater the education level, the more innovation. 8. The greater access to a wide range of information, the more innovation. (I think #7 and #8 were behind the Industrial Revolution. Printed books changed everything.)
4. Becky Hargrove Says:
Okay, you’re in my area of interest now but where to start? I started working on my own inner economic dialogue about seven years ago but am only beginning to learn the many languages of economics, especially the macro I’ve been so fascinated with. Consequently my ideas sound pretty loony. I don’t believe that money is capable of doing all the things that people try to make it to do, not even close. But what it can’t do, people still need and for me that’s the place to begin – human capital. Just the same, ownership needs to be far more flexible and markets need to be completely opened up so as to offer what people actually need to work and live, as well as a ‘floor’ of survivability one can actually progress from.
5. andrew Says:
Are you reading the book Launching the Innovation Renaissance by Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolution fame?
6. Seth Roberts Says:
yes, I am reading that book. It’s very good.
7. Nancy Lebovitz Says:
Possibly of interest: 7 Secrets of the Prolific by Hillary Rettig. It’s specifically about writing, though there’s also advice which would apply to anything, like getting yourself good tools.
In any case, there’s a description of making writing into a pleasure, and at least some of it overlaps with your self-experimentation. The idea is to make writing into a bunch of small experiments, so that the cost of failure is made lower.
8. Charlie Says:
I am not sure why you think understanding the rate of innovation is central to understanding the movement of the business cycle since 2007. The 1930s was an extremely innovative time period*, but alas we still had the great depression. It doesn’t seem like changes in the level in innovation are a good explanation for large changes in the unemployment rate. Why do you think this should be in his talk?
9. Seth Roberts Says:
If you read between the lines of Collapse by Jared Diamond, you will see that every case of collapse that he describes happened because the society stagnated badly — failed to innovate, kept doing the same thing over and over and over. In each case, just before the society collapsed, the level of unemployment became very high.
10. Charlie Says:
Those are very strange examples, because it’s very hard to show that the societies he chooses ever innovated at all. The Norse, Easter Island, Polynesians, the Mayan, it’s very hard to show that these societies ever innovated. Like most of human history, these societies had next to no innovation, as it was very rare in pre-industrial societies to innovate (see Greg Clark’s Farewell to Alms for the data). Collapse argues for environmental causes to societal breakdown, and while I agree that these societies didn’t adapt to these conditions by innovating, since they weren’t innovating before that seems completely beside the point. It almost appears that you might believe that if a society stops innovating that unemployment will follow, but most of human history is a counter example to that. There is no reason new technology or ideas are necessary to create new jobs.
It’s funny that Australia is one of the only modern western examples in Diamond’s book as a cautionary tale of problems to come, and yet, Australia has been one of the best faring countries. Is there any evidence that Australia has markedly kicked up their innovation or is much more innovative than the U.S.? Taking a longer view, it’s extremely difficult to pin today’s unemployment on a lack of innovation in the U.S.(http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/economists-explain-2011-in-charts/2011/12/21/gIQAT3lg9O_gallery.html#photo=16), much less trying to pin cross country differences by innovation.
The lesson of Diamond’s book is that as societies are collapsing there ability to generate output (food, clothing, shelter, goods, services…) collapses with it, as well as there ability to utilize their resources (like labor). In some sense, saying a society that is collapsing will “fail to innovate” is much more accurate than saying a society that fails to innovate will collapse. | <urn:uuid:5a1395fa-6c75-4f06-a4d4-c5d745f2da4e> | http://blog.sethroberts.net/2011/12/10/assorted-links-144/ | en | 0.95229 | 0.122151 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
prices for African agriculture.
noting that “African agriculture still faces many constraints, being
undercapitalized, inefficient and uncompetitive,” Diouf expressed his
conviction that “with political will and good governance, Africa can change its
agriculture and succeed in feeding its population.” He further explained that
the main factors inhibiting agricultural development in Africa include lack of
access to improved seeds and fertilizers and lack of adequate irrigation. He
concluded by outlining an FAO initiative in response to soaring food prices to
support the low-income food-deficit countries by facilitating poor farmers'
access to inputs. [FAO press release] [FAO Initiative
on Soaring Food Prices] | <urn:uuid:ef3f5256-ef4c-4bcf-a292-8f5851c1cfcd> | http://climate-l.iisd.org/news/fao-director-general-addresses-challenges-of-african-agriculture-from-climate-change-and-soaring-food-prices/ | en | 0.901862 | 0.161125 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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I am a junior developer in my first work experience after university. I joined the company as PHP developer but I ended up developing using C# and ASP.NET. Right from the start I did not receive any training in C# and I was assigned with ASP projects with quite tight deadlines scoped by Senior developers. The few project hand overs I had from other developers were brief and it looked like I had to discover the system myself, in really short time.
This is my first job as web developer and I wonder whether it is normal not to have a kind of mentor to show me how to do things, especially because I am completely new to the technology.
Also, do you have idea how to tackle this? As you can imagine, it gets really frustrating.
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Ask one of them to mentor you. Maybe they can come up with a better SO user name. – JeffO Jun 30 '12 at 13:17
8 Answers 8
I don't know about culture work in your country, but in my country before I get the job, I explain to employer about my skill. If your leader give you a project and you don't have any knowledge, give him explanation about it, if he force you to take a part in project. You should request time for learning this language or someone in your team know about this language. You should talk to him for course / advice.
I have experience like you before but this book and some of my team mates give me advice and difference about C# and PHP, so I can understand about it quickly. Also this book:
Sitepoint.Build.Your.Own.ASP.NET.3.5.Web.Site.Using.C.Sharp.and.VB.3rd.Edition.Dec.2008 ( really easy to understand - compare how we write code in and C# )
Hope this help you and work with positive energy.
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I was in the exact same situation :) I knew C#, but I had to ship applications coded with Delphi. It was horror at the beginning, but I kept struggling and fighting and coding all kind of stuff. What a war that was! But in the end, after a few months of coding day and night, looking through many tutorials, examples, practices and asking advice from the Senior Developers, I managed to learn the language and build the damn thing. You will do the same and you will succeed :)
Save a bookmark of this question - you'll look into it after a few years and you will acknowledge what a huge amount of stuff you have learned meanwhile. Good luck!
share|improve this answer
Just do it. Real programmers learn new languages as needed. You are lucky to be getting paid to add a popular technology to your resume. If you don't know how to do something, then ask, but only after doing your own research. It's reasonable to ask questions about the application architecture. It's less reasonable to ask questions about the basics of C# and .NET. You should be able to find those answers on your own.
In my experience, mentors are pretty rare. If you find one in your early career you will be very lucky.
share|improve this answer
Welcome to the world of work! Unlike school and university, a lot of companies don't have "orientation" or "newbie week" and you will be expected to figure things out by yourself and hit the ground running.
Its unreasonable of them to expect you to develop in .NET if you applied for a PHP position. If that's a deal breaker for you then you should leave now while you are still likely on some sort of probation period. If you are ok with working with this technology then stick with it.
It can be frustrating, but on the flipside people probably don't expect much from you which is something you will miss once you do learn the ropes and the company starts to rely on you more. The benefit of the environment you're in is that you will build your work ethic and self-reliance which are two great skills to have for your career.
If you would prefer a role where you always have someone watching you telling you what to do then you would probably be more comfortable working at a larger company.
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Typically, when you join a company you're employed as an engineer to work with whatever technologies and systems they use regardless of whether you have any previous experience with it or not. Companies know when they take on juniors, that those people are most likely going to need to spend considerable time learning and making mistakes. I expect your manager has employed you with the hope that you're a fast learner; I doubt they took you on to be a specialist in one particular technology which you already knew beforehand.
However, unless the developers around you had also been part of your interview/selection process I expect those people have no idea exactly what your skills/experience are, they're probably just treating you as another junior member of the team and sharing out the workload, assuming that you've got at least a little knowledge to get started with, then learning the rest as you go .
All senior developers were juniors once, and most likely wouldn't deliberately give you anything which they thought you'd not be able to cope with (As seniors, they'll be aware that the blame will fall upon them if they've not been keeping you in check). Best thing is to be open about it as early as possible to them and to your direct manager/supervisor. The project managers will be interested in the work getting done on time, and someone will do something about it if they realise that you're unable to meet those deadlines on your own (However if you leave it so long that the deadlines get missed, then you'll be taking the brunt of the blame - and you definitely don't want to get into that situation!).
You need to be honest about it to everyone you work with/for, and then treat it as a fast-paced learning experience. Someone in the company will have the job of managing the engineers, and it will be in their best interests to find a way to help you cope (even if that ends up being a steep learning curve for you, you'll hopefully benefit from it in the long run).
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The situation is probably not that unusual, but letting you write production work with little or no supervision and guidance is stupid. The senior devs / your team should help you as much as possible to get up to speed on the technology. If not they are bound to regret it later - experience is needed to not make a mess.
I would advice your team to use pair programming to show you the ropes as quickly as possible. You should also make sure to reserve time outside of normal office hours to read up on the technology yourself - and practice (so don't work overtime on the actual job if this is not mandated).
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Well it happens, but you have to be sincere and tell your senior dev about whole situation. Maybe he doesn't know about this. Maybe he was given someone new and somebody told him that you have knowledge about Asp.Net. Hopefully he is a mature person and he will make this less painfull for you and your team.
Also i think that you have to ask questions about your role in the team. Beacuse maybe your company wants to train you in this technology and they are not expecting 'real' results soon ;)
share|improve this answer
I spoke to the Head of my division and clearly said I had never worked with ASP, so she is aware of it. When I get assigned a new project I ask many questions to Senior devs but most of the time they have their own work to do and not much time to spare helping me out. I get things done in the end, but it takes twice the time and the code is not always clear. Pair programming would be great and I told the Div Head about this. Unfortunately she had never heard of it (:/) and hopefully will consider it! – lady_killer Apr 8 '12 at 20:45
So don't worry :) They are clearly accepting that you will make something twice the time and the code won't be soo clear. Hopefully you will have somekind of a codereview. Just do your job and learn as much as you can. This is a great opportunity for you to learn. – Michal Franc Apr 8 '12 at 20:47
It might be helpful to request a code review, since it may require less time than introducing pair programming to a team that's never done it before. Code reviews may be more wide-spread of a practice, as well. – Velociraptors Apr 8 '12 at 23:58
On one hand you are (lucky?) to get the job, but on the other hand, you are kind of, in the wrong position. It is not common to have zero experience and be let to wonder in the same time they ask you to deliver on a dead line. ASP.NET and C# are not trivial technologies.
I was in your situation once, I joined for 1 job but was assigned to another. I had no experience in UNIX then, but I found that I need to write shell scripts and use about 5 other tools I never heard of them.
To answer your question, in my experience, this is not the norm. Also, to have a mentor is too much to ask in today's fast world (it depends on what you mean by a mentor any way). I don't know your capabilities, but it takes a long time and very hard work to teach yourself all what you need to do on the job. At least time will not be enough.
My advice is that you need to be clear with your so called senior programmer and explain the situation. Decide on a training plan that covers the tools and methods you are currently using (don't go for VS2011 features and MVVM if you are not using such technologies). Be realistic in your plan and see what the company is willing to offer. If you are keen to continue, be willing to spend a bit from your pocket on some good training.
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| <urn:uuid:ba8630a8-2ff5-454d-ad13-2f7862676c9b> | http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/143512/junior-developer-support?answertab=active | en | 0.976948 | 0.106967 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
2009.10.07 Is it too late to start lying about my age?
Written by David Green.
It’s no surprise to me that I’m single and, lie as I might, not as young as I used to be. Like Kinky Friedman says, I’m too young for Medicare and too old for women to care. But does the media have to keep reminding me (and potential mates) of the disadvantages of aging? I got a double dose of bad news in that area over the weekend.
In an article titled “Yes, men also have biological clocks” in USA Weekend, a prominent urologist probably made sure that few women will ever marry a man past the age of 29. The article started by stating that a man’s fertility level starts dropping after the age of 30.
Even worse, after the age of 40, a man’s offspring supposedly run a higher risk of autism, lower IQ and birth defects. Since my father was 43 when I was born, that would explain my IQ. Everything else I guess I can attribute to undiagnosed birth defects. Joking aside, the article adds that women pregnant by men over 40 also run a higher rate of miscarriage.
That information goes a long way toward making sure I’ll never marry someone thinking about having her own child someday, at least not anyone reading that article. Now if one of those online matchmaker services ran a website specifically for people not planning to have children, maybe I’d have a better opportunity.
Even though I may have a biological clock, I’ve never heard it ticking. Besides, adoption is always an option. But even if I stay single (which is starting to seem more and more likely), that alone could present its own set of problems as I slide further into the abyss of geezerdom. I’ll get back to that in a minute, but first, another rant about AARP....
I’ve complained before about the never-ending stream of letters soliciting my membership in that organization. Chronologically, I may meet the minimum age to join the group, but I just don’t feel nearly that old and refuse to do anything to acknowledge that fact. That’s why I recently passed on attending a high school reunion. Who wants to hang out with those old-looking people who claim I’m their age? What would I do when they start pulling out pictures of their grandchildren?
Just when I’ve learned to accept and quickly dispose of the AARP letters, they apparently bought the mailing list from the mail-order firm that spells my name wrong and refuses to correct it. Now, I get AARP mail in two different names. Maybe I should save them and send them back with a change of address, giving them the mail-order company’s address. Think that would work?
Then there’s the other article I read. This one shares the happy news that single people are at a big disadvantage when it comes to retirement planning. At least I’m in a bigger group here than I would have guessed.
The article said that single people now make up 43 percent of the adult population, compared to just 28 percent 40 years ago. Look out, married people, we’re gaining on you! Nearly half of the total of singles are over 40 years old and 13 million of those have never married. Now there’s a group I’d join—“Too young for AARP, not ready to marry.” That is, if I could afford it.
According to the article, the cost of living for older singles is 40 percent higher than for couples. Those lucky married people get to share expenses, particularly housing costs. And, if something happens to the single person’s income, there isn’t a second one to fall back on.
Plus, long-term care insurance is more important for single people because there may not be anyone else available to take care of them. Luckily, in the case of my demise, I’ve already made arrangements for a friend to adopt my lifelong friend Teddy and all the rest of my stuffed bears, including the laundry basket full of Snuggles. That will be much cheaper than having to provide for children. Just give the bears a hug once in a while and they’re happy.
The article did say that single people can save money by skipping life insurance if they have no children. There’s no need to worry about burial expenses, either. Just put me in the trunk of the Buick and sell it to some unsuspecting out-of-state dealer. I couldn’t do that if I had a wife and kids. And please, no matter what, don’t give the address of my final destination to AARP.
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Sin and Confession in Colonial Peru
[ Latin American Studies ]
Sin and Confession in Colonial Peru
Spanish-Quechua Penitential Texts, 1560-1650
By Regina Harrison
Drawing from Spanish ecclesiastic literature written in Quechua, the language of the Incas, Sin and Confession in Colonial Peru is the first detailed study of how the European sacrament of confession was implemented in the early modern context of the Andes.
June 2014
33% website discount price
6 x 9 | 324 pp.
ISBN: 978-1-4773-0758-8
1. Confession and Restitution in the Andes: Las Casas' Avisos y reglas
2. Converts to Confession: From Ychu- (With Straws) to Confessacu- (As a Christian)
3. Dictionary Definitions: Sin (Hucha) and Flesh (Aycha)
4. Codifying Sexuality: Huchallicu- (to Sin, Fornicate), Huaça- (to Have "Improper" Sex)
5. Confessing Commerce in the Plaza: Ranti-, Catu-, Manu-
6. Confessing Work and Laborers: Llamca-, Mit'a-, Mink'a-
Conclusion. Wills as Quasi-Confession: Testamentocta Quellca
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
Hundreds of years ago the recounting of sins was a scene of terror and shame as well as of consolation. Compelled to accomplish a scrupulous remembrance of each transgression, the sinner cowered because, with omissions, there was the threat of hellfire in the end. The shame of admitting these sins, either facing the community as a whole or face-to-face with the priest, was unbearable for many penitents. Fulfilling the imposed "tariff" of the prescribed penance often was humiliating or was accomplished at great cost. Queries as to the most intimate of thoughts, or the naming of parts of the body, demanded a response about pleasure with one's self or with another. The priest, as both "judge" and "doctor," was endowed with the power to punish and also to cure as he joined in the dialog.
We say confession is good for the soul; thus we acknowledge that the need to confess is human, is innate, and signifies an incipient budding of individual consciousness. In episodes of Law and Order, in the police station, or in courts of law, confession is extolled as the "queen of proof" as long as it is extracted with proper procedures outlined in "Miranda" rights. The criminal is unburdened of guilt.
However, for other commentators, the autobiographical assessment brought forth by confession is rendered up as a concession to power, where the confessant is coerced into an utterance about self. Confessing secrets of the self, when multiplied by all the whispered secrets of all the sinners in a community, creates an opportunity for disciplinary action. Sinners must "pay for their sins"—either before stepping out from the confession box or before entering the locked-down cells of a penal institution to "erase their debt to society."
For Michel Foucault, it is within confession that the penitent is brought closest to defining self—or the truth of the self—prompted by the confession manuals. In the queries, in the tariffs of penance, the penitent plunges into his or her very core of being to reveal in words the darkest secrets about him-or herself, from the innermost thoughts to the most pleasurable acts:
Since the Middle Ages, at least, Western societies have established the confession as one of the main rituals we rely on for the production of truth: the codification of the sacrament of penance by the Lateran Council in 1215, with the resulting development of confessional techniques, the declining importance of accusatory procedures in criminal justice, the abandonment of tests of guilt (sworn statements, duels, judgments of God) and the development of methods of interrogation and inquest, the increased participation of the royal administration in the prosecution of infractions, at the expense of the proceedings leading to private settlements, the setting up of tribunals of Inquisition: all this helped to give the confession a central role in the order of civil and religious powers.
Sin and Confession in Colonial Peru traces the implementation of the sacrament of Roman Catholic confession in the heart of the Andes, in the century after Spanish conquest. Indigenous populations were taught the codified rules for self-examination and the means to express their Christian conversion in their own language, Quechua. The practice of confession and its social functions in the Andes are examined with an interdisciplinary focus, combining the methodologies of history, linguistics, literature, and anthropology. The particularities of the Andean context are drawn from the ecclesiastic literature, mainly from the confession manuals, and compared to the practices and models developed within European circumstances.
Transcriptions and Translations
Quechua words cited from sixteenth-and seventeenth-century documents are written with the orthographic variations common to these texts. The endnotes and the index provide the variant spellings, as well as definitions of the Quechua conceptual categories. In the colonial texts of Spanish and Quechua, missing text is indicated by square brackets within a quotation.
All translations from non-English texts are by the author unless otherwise noted. I also use square brackets to indicate more idiomatic versions of the literal translations of the quoted texts. Quechua has a variant spelling—Quichua—in original texts of the colonial period. In the contemporary period, Quichua also refers to the Ecuadorian varieties of the native language. Quechua designates the dialects spoken in Peru.
Occasionally, I have adapted the excellent translations for Quechua texts transcribed by Alan Durston, César Itier, Frank Salomon, and George Urioste (see endnote citations). Rosaleen Howard came to my aid and perfected several Quechua passages; I am grateful for her expertise and I acknowledge all further errors as my own.
The index provides definitions for Spanish and Quechua concepts that are highlighted in this volume. In addition, variants in spelling are given to include the apparent inconsistencies of the colonial period.
Of Sin and Penitence: Beginnings
With its origins in monastic practice, private confession entails the presence of two entities: the confessant and the confessor. The Irish monks, for whom we have the most detailed record, turned to a spiritual advisor to best profess their love for God, and thus confession was made a practice. A confessional technique of exagoreusis was developed in the monasteries, and Foucault, in his studies of confession, highlights the state of "permanent verbalization" that confession enacted because one’s thoughts were constantly revealed to a spiritual director, who demanded obedience: “'everything that one [a monk] does not do on order of one's director, or everything that one does without his permission, constitutes a theft.'" As Foucault discerned, in these origins it was not actions that were controlled but thoughts during contemplation, as these thoughts were directed to God. Thus Heloise, with her mention of her erotic desire for Abelard, commits no sex act yet deviates from the prescribed pure thoughts of religious contemplation.
Irish missionary monks are credited with expanding the practice of contemplative confession outside of the monastery walls and included laity in the private act of revelation. Evidence of ecclesiastic efforts early on to practice private confession exists in the penitentials of the sixth century. One of the earliest is the Penitential of Vinnian, along with the Penitential of Columbanus; both were carried to the European continent. In these books are instructions to the confessor on how to confess "well," combined with a listing of various sins with their corresponding penances. These personal reference books for confessors are a guide to conducting a confession that reflects liturgical contexts, encourages a complete confession, overcomes penitents’ shame, and allows for absolution.
Sinfulness and reconciliation operated in an early system of canonical penance where the sinner publicly declared sins and was reconciled to the faithful by the performance of "arduous" penitential exercises. At first, this process was permitted only once in a lifetime. Even with the performance of penance, the sinner forever bore the marks of transgression and was forbidden to serve in the military, to contract marriage, to join the clergy, or if married, the penitent was denied conjugal rights. Thus, centuries ago, confession determined whether a person would be integrated into the social bonds of community or be cast out of fraternal interaction for a lifetime. Many sinners avoided the once-in-a-lifetime public confession with its exacting penance. Some Christians opted for a deathbed confession and avoided public proclamation of their sins and a lifetime of restrictions.
Overwhelmingly, the penitentials of the early period dedicate considerable space to sexual behavior. Many early manuals for confessors reveal that sex was proscribed and codified. Thomas N. Tentler, using the Confessio generalis brevis et utilis, cites the gradations of the sin of lust as illustrative, where the sixteen categories are ranked beginning with the "unchaste kiss," to simple adultery and voluntary sacrilege, to the gravest of sins, sodomy and bestiality. The books are filled with canons, "brief, succinct statements that specify an offender, an offense, and an appropriate penance, for example, 'He who sins with a beast shall do penance for a year; if by himself, for three forty-day periods; if he has [clerical] rank a year; a boy of fifteen years, forty days.” In the early manuals, "tariffs" were strictly imposed; however, in the late medieval period, penance became more arbitrary. Economic sins, especially usury, were cause for deliberation, particularly because reparation was necessary for the sin to be absolved.
Ecclesiastic reform definitely shaped the fashioning of confessional practices and confessional literature in twelfth-and thirteenth-century Europe, notably by means of the ecumenical Lateran councils. Lateran II emphasized the imposition of penance by bishops and priests; Lateran III was concerned with educating clerics, and four works for confessors were written that encompassed current learning and law.
However, it was Lateran IV in 1215 that marked a profound change in confessional practice as canon twenty-one required “Christians of both sexes once they had reached the age of reason to confess their sins at least once a year.” And this canon effectively decided in favor of the oral confession that required a parish priest to be present. Confession was now a Christian obligation, and failure to obey meant excommunication. It is this pivotal date that brought forth Foucault’s exclamation: “Imagine how exorbitant must have seemed the order given to all Christians at the beginning of the thirteenth century, to kneel at least once a year and confess to all their transgressions, without omitting a single one."
These new obligations for the laity legislated by Lateran IV were accompanied by pastoral texts for training the confessors, often categorized as summa penientiae. There were two types: the summae confessorum were created for the intellectual preparation of the priests, and the summa confessionis contained practical descriptions of confessional procedures. Often, the penitentials contained elements of both categories; furthermore, the legalistic and juridical character was apparent, as framed by canon lawyers. The didactic nature of these texts was seen in the alphabetical labeling of topics and the indexes provided for consultation. Diocesan synods also weighed in on conceptions of confession and penance through the publication of statutes wherein bishops informed and controlled the clergy.
The decrees of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, held in the Lateran Palace in Rome, institutionalized the sacrament of private confession. Canon twenty-one includes this important provision: "priests [were] to make available to all adult Christians of both sexes the opportunity to confess personally all of their sins at least once a year, without fear of this confession being revealed by the priest, to perform the penance enjoined on them, and to receive the Eucharist at least once a year, at Easter." Thus, Pope Innocent III and the council fathers provided for the salvation of souls through careful instruction of the parish priests.
Although this sacrament was intended to be a private confession to a priest, in reality, people pressed around to complete the obligation during the designated days. W. David Myers, calculating the press of the crowds, estimates the conditions for a priest in Freising. Using visitation records, Myers calculates that in the Lenten season, if a priest worked twelve hours a day, he could give only two and a half minutes per penitent, a veritable assembly line in the sixteenth century. Penitents were expected to offer up a complete accounting of their sins, make satisfaction (often with spiritual exercises), and show contrition (a heartfelt sorrow concerning their sinful ways), however brief their time confessing. Only then could the confessor pronounce the words, “I absolve you.”
Yet how were the penitents to remember all their sins, especially if there had been a year between the last confession? Occasionally, a general confession (Confiteor) was recited by the entire congregation, with a priest presiding. The particular sin was prefaced by the formula, “I have sinned in . . .” In this way the entire congregation was taught to identify sins, and absolution was dispensed in a general pronouncement. In an effort to jog the memory, Saint Augustine listed the seven or eight capital vices and a memory device for remembering them. The word "SALIGIA" is an acronym fashioned from the first letter of each sin: superbia (arrogance), avaritia (avarice), luxuria (lust), ira (anger), gula (gluttony), invidia (envy), and acedia (slothfulness). To further nudge parishioners into recounting all of their sins and to avoid these transgressions being blurted out in disorder, lists of interrogatories were drawn up based on the capital sins listed by Augustine. According to John Bossy, this was the most common pattern for two centuries after the Fourth Lateran Council; however, Stephen Haliczer privileges the Ten Commandments as the organizing principle in most manuals.
In fact, numerous systems existed to help the sinners remember their sins. Thomas Tentler offers an amalgam of the "usual ways of sinning" according to various written sources:
Ten Commandments
Seven Deadly Sins
Twelve Articles of Faith
Five Senses
Eight Beatitudes
Six or Seven Corporal Works of Mercy
Six or Seven Spiritual Works of Mercy
Four or Five Sins Crying to Heaven for Vengeance
Six Sins Against the Holy Spirit
Nine Sins Against One’s Neighbor
Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit
Four Cardinal Virtues
Three Theological Virtues
Twelve Fruits of the Holy Spirit.
Confession was often tailored to the status and profession of the penitent, from the pope to the farmer, often with lengthy treatment in texts with a canonical bias. Great detail, similarly, was written regarding the determination of circumstances, as the penance was meted out according to degrees of gravity. An early conceptualization of the schema is seen in William de Montibus’ Peniteas cito:
Order, place, knowledge, time aggravate sins, And age, condition, number, duration, abundance, reason, Manner of the fault, high status, slight affliction.
This lengthy mnemonic gave way to a more condensed frame of who, what, where, when, why, how, and by what means in the twelfth century. Perplexing circumstances of sin contributed to the need for confession manuals, both for the clergy and for laymen.
Mortal and venial sins posed a problem for the sinner and the confessor. Although these two classes of sins were discussed frequently in scripture (Saint John, Saint Paul, and Saint Thomas), much ambiguity surrounded the concepts. As Thomas Tentler notes: "clerical authorities themselves admit that it is not always easy to tell which sins are serious [mortal]." However, in matters of conscience, the distinction is important; only mortal sins need to be confessed in order to avoid eternal damnation. Thus, this clarification is necessary in the sessions of the Council of Trent, where mortal and venial sins are codified. Canons eleven and thirteen of session six admit the predominance of venial sins: "the most just and holy occasionally during this life fall into some slight and daily sins, known as venial." Venial sins need no absolution, as they can be "remitted by prayer, contrition, fervent communion and other pious works." Mortal sins are those that contain in themselves "some grave disorder in regard to God, our neighbor, ourselves, or society." Confessors are warned to be cautious, as there existed a wide range of opinions, despite the prescriptive attempts written in the confession manuals.
Martin Luther towers over other religious dissenters who expressed opinions regarding confession. Certainly, his throwing the Angelica (a summa for confessors) into the fire magnifies his objection to Catholic confession, as does his text On Confession: Whether the Pope Has the Power to Command It (1521). Yet even Luther did not object to the concept of confession, a reckoning with the self. He frequently confessed with his spiritual advisor, Johan von Staupitz, vicar-general of the Augustinian order. "Luther made ample use of von Staupitz's services, seeking him out for confession at least weekly, often daily, and on one occasion for as long as six hours." However, he was tormented by the task of scrupulously remembering every sin of thought and deed. Luther spoke out angrily against the Catholic demand for annual confession and enunciation of detailed tallies of sins: "This I reckon as the greatest plague on earth, through which you have bewildered the consciences of all the world, brought so many souls to despair, and degraded and oppressed all mankind's faith in Christ, for you have said nothing to us of the consolation of absolution, but have made a work out of it, extorted from unwilling hearts with commandments and force."
At issue was the relationship of humans to God, well outlined by Erasmus, who championed the right of an individual to confess directly to Christ “in a state of contrition." Luther likewise denied the confessors’ authority to absolve the sinner in auricular confession. Forgiveness of sins occurred within the sacrament of baptism, he argued, and thus, because of his belief in God’s forgiveness, the sacrament of penance was unnecessary.
With the Council of Trent, opened in December of 1545, the church began to address the sorely needed reforms and to reformulate dogma. The sacrament of penance was seen as integral to the concepts of Catholic devotion, especially with Luther’s focus on the rite. The clergy, who administered the sacrament, were admonished to reform their behavior: absenteeism from the parish was curtailed to two months; secular garb must be replaced by clerical dress; no one was to be admitted to clerical orders without proof of a benefice to curb priestly vagrancy; and concubinage was prohibited. The council, attempting to raise the educational level of the parish clergy, created diocesan seminars where they could study.
The church became the focal point of the community as the parish priest assumed responsibility for catechizing the local populace. Vernacular catechisms were written early in Spain in an attempt to convert the Jews and the Moors; in the sixteenth century, Juan de Ávila, Jerónimo de Ripalda, and Gaspar Estete wrote popular versions for use in Spain. Generally, the church attempted to implement uniform rituals to replace those of local origin.
The reform of the Roman Catholic Church was well envisioned by the close of the Council of Trent in 1563. Luther’s objections were addressed with a concerted effort to emphasize the importance of the sacramental system, especially the individual private confession. Penitents were to give a scrupulous accounting of their sins, and then they were to be disciplined by the priest depending on their recounting of the circumstance. Consolation was the effective outcome of confession; people were encouraged to confess frequently, even daily, and then take Communion in an attempt to build up "grace" and shorten time in purgatory. Intent on increasing the privacy of the act, and to provide a comfortable space for the confessor, Charles Borromeo advocated the use of a confessional booth (1565). Made of fine wood and open on one side, the booth served to separate the penitent from curious church attendees who might overhear the sins, and, of course, a division in the middle served to separate the priest from women confessants. The specification regarding the middle grill made the purpose of the booth explicit: "a thin wooden grate full of tiny holes the size of a pea, . . . with nails driven in all places so that nothing can pass through."
However, even though sin increasingly was clarified and codified, not all sinners went to confession. There was some resistance to complying with the church's precepts regarding confession, as Haliczer notes for the early sixteenth century. More important, the Spanish Inquisition, in its attention to heresy, also found out tangentially that the general populace was "largely ignorant of the basic tenets of the Catholic Church." Furthermore, general distrust of the clergy was evident in the trials of the sixteenth century, as priests, friars, and nuns did not honor their vows of celibacy. Secular and regular clerical excess was duly criticized. The ignorance of the confessors as to the enactment of the sacrament, the scarcity of clerics to carry out confessional rites, and the lack of benefices to sustain the clergy were problems that later were addressed in the Reformation of the church. Myers' study of the Counter-Reformation similarly shows reluctance to enter confession booths on the part of the believers in France and notes that military force was employed to bring the penitents in to confess in German lands.
Of course, there was an incentive to confess. Parish priests were ordered to keep records and to send names to the episcopal vicar for noncompliance. The Roman Catechism of 1566 specifically emphasizes the role of confession in disciplining lay subjects and preserving the social order: "Another advantage of confession, which should not be overlooked, is that it contributes powerfully to the preservation of social order. Abolish sacramental confession, and that moment you deluge society with all sorts of secret and heinous crimes—crimes, too, and others of still greater enormity, which men, once they have been depraved by vicious habits, will not dread to commit in open day. The salutary shame that attends confession restrains licentiousness, bridles desire and checks wickedness."
According to John Bossy, penitents often told priests about the sins of their neighbors; confession manuals, in fact, give evidence of this practice. More recent studies, however, cast doubt on the efficacy of the church to exact much social control: "For the most part, the sacrament was well administered for the cure of the souls, but it was not well administered as a means of social control." However, in scrutinizing society, the church also embarked on the use of confession to control business transactions as part of the control of wealth. As Michael Haren observes: "The suspicion neatly expressed in the canonical warning that 'in buying and selling it is difficult not to incur sin,' coupled with a prohibition of usury, brought a whole range of commercial transactions within the purview of ecclesiastical authorities. . . . Such dealings could be subjected to minute examination by the confessor."
Formulated with respect to humane treatment of one another, Aristotelian ideals of buying and selling shaped ideology that appears repeatedly in the numerous versions of Spanish-inspired religious doctrine in the sixteenth century. Acceptable Christian business practices were codified, and two of the thorniest questions of commerce ("price" and "profit") were defined. According to Aristotle, and also determined in Roman law, commercial trade was governed by the following factors: exchange should be voluntary; price was determined by the common estimate of what a good was worth; price could be determined by administrative means in circumstances of famine, for instance. In practice, then, buyers were not to obtain a good at a lower price than competitive bidding would produce; on the other hand, buyers could offer more than the good was actually worth if the seller needed money to survive.
Non-Christian cultures also had standards of ethics that traditionally governed trade. Emphasis was on fair trade and honesty. Jews appreciated the everyday necessities of the market but were aware of the exploitation that could occur in these transactions. The question of just price was a prominent piece of Talmudic law, concerned with the rights of sellers and the underpayment by buyers and with the need to curtail inequality of information regarding transactions. For example, in the Talmud, procedures were instituted to revoke fraudulent dealings: “The buyer or seller could be allowed a period of hours to ascertain that a just price was paid for a good after which the deal was binding." Similarly, for Muslims, the Koran praised trading as a worthy occupation and emphasized the benefits of trade. Yet the Koran also cautioned against fraud in the marketplace: "Give full measure when ye measure, and weigh with a balance which is straight: that is the most fitting and the most advantageous in the final determination."
Mention of an increase in value, of course, brings up issues of usury. Like theft, usury is a mortal sin. As James Aho explains: "The standard Thomistic argument goes like this: People may rightfully profit on qualities ‘intrinsic’ to the goods being sold. Because the values of commodities such as animals, wheat, and slaves vary due to changes in the demand for them, or because of differences in their sizes, strengths, or yields, then prices for these may also rightfully vary. Money, however, is intrinsically a medium of exchange and nothing more. To charge varying prices for it therefore violates its essential nature."
However, there were some exceptional loopholes under which money could be lent for investment and fees could be charged. The church allowed fines to be levied on late payment, interest could compensate for potential financial losses, and charitable loans to the poor could charge a small amount of interest. Commercial partnerships of investor and agent where business risk was involved in transportation and time for delivery of merchandise were also allowed to collect some fees for interest, based on Roman law. The question of intention was important in determining sinfulness: "Catholic moral theology locates sin in the intention, it is the hope of gaining financially through lending."
As merchandise marts expanded and merchants multiplied in number, Christian theologians often were called on to evaluate circumstances of economic morality. Theological treatises established moral obligations within monetary systems and commerce; the newly encountered world of the Americas prompted the printing of many instructions for both merchants and creditors. In Seville (1542), Cristóbal de Villalón published his Provechoso tratado de cambios y contrataciones de mercaderes y reprobación de usura. In 1544 Luis Saravia de la Calle published Instrucción de mercaderes muy provechosa in Medina de Campo. The Tractado de los préstamos que pasan entre mercaderes y tractantes por consiguiente los logros, cambios, compras, adelantados, y ventas al fiado, etc. was published by Luis de Alcalá in Toledo (1546), and in 1569 Tomás de Mercado, a Dominican, printed his Suma de tratados y contratos in Salamanca. The Augustinian Martín de Azpilcueta's confession manual of 1552 (printed in Spain in 1556) combines his knowledge of civic as well as canon law. Widely read, Azpilcueta's manual went through many editions in Latin and Italian and provided answers to vexing questions of commerce. The publication of these manuals in the sixteenth century underlines the importance of the emergence of the marketplace and the greater acceptance of the role of merchants, yet these same manuals clearly outline answers to lingering questions that caused substantial unease about sinful conduct in the marketplace.
As seen in the places of publication, the authors of the economically oriented confessional manuals often lived in cities with extensive economic transactions and observed the intricacies of the dealings in the streets and fairs. Scholastic theory may have curtailed their abilities to advise well, as Joel Kaye asserts: "Given the strict requirements for truth, universality, and necessity, in the highly formal discourse of scholastic natural philosophy, medieval thinkers never explicitly acknowledge the influence of any model drawn from the tainted sphere of the marketplace on their philosophical speculation." However, scholastics, in the wake of the monetized economy around them, had to reckon with the patterns they saw in the marketplace. They observed that exchange values were relative, that money was made up of estimated value. In addition, they had to concede that exchange equality, formerly based on rational agreement, was now a matter of probability and approximation, often detrimental to the community.
Confession in the Andes
The practice of confession in the Andes was much influenced by European deliberations in the previous centuries regarding sin and penitence. Most notably, the reaffirmation and the reorganization of Catholic belief and ritual were carried over to the new lands. As Luis Resines emphasizes, the European influence was "conceptual, theological, and ideological"; the catechisms the priests carried in their baggage represented the enactment of a "common project" to carry the word of God to the heathen. This is not the same project in the Americas as it was in Europe, however; there, Jews and Muslims could be expelled from the territory if they did not convert. The mission in faraway lands differed; the churchmen were faced with troublesome and deeply ingrained pagan beliefs and barbarous practices that had to be understood before they could be ferreted out.
The reforms enacted by the work of the Council of Trent (1545–1563) were implemented in the three provincial councils held in Lima. All three Andean councils carefully studied the religiosity of the Spaniards, emphasizing reform as well as creating a program for the conversion of the native Andeans. The first two councils did significant work, and the third council incorporated this previous legislation in 119 acts or decrees. Many of these decrees highlighted the importance of indoctrinating and preaching to the Native Andeans in their native languages and stipulated an examination to verify priests' skills before sending them out to the provinces. As a result of this emphasis, these churchmen produced a significant corpus of doctrinal texts: catechisms; a confessional; and exemplary sermons in three languages (Spanish and two Andean languages, Quechua and Aymara). The confession manual differed greatly from those medieval models in Europe; a more lively style eliminated the ponderous biblical citations and better addressed the spiritual needs of the Andean populations.
The dedicated efforts of so many of the religious in the writing of these texts were spurred on by the alarming instances of idolatry, particularly the most celebrated uprising, that of 1565, called Taki Oncoy. According to colonial sources, this was a movement of "organized apostasy" in which indigenous leaders preached against the wholesale adoption of the Christian religion. Instead, the indigenous Andeans were admonished to return to their native religions and disregard the cultural trappings of Castile: to eat only native foods; to dress only in Andean attire; to avoid entering churches; to refuse baptism; and to revert to their Andean (not Christian) names. The true believers were distinguished by their singing, trembling, and dancing; they were possessed by the huacas, those sacred beings that were credited with the sustenance of Andean existence. Often equated with Western conceptions of "idols," these beings did have visible existence, as is seen in the lengthy definition by the Quechua speaker Inca Garcilaso:
Quiere decir cosa sagrada, como eran todas aquellas en que el demonio les hablaba: esto es, los ídolos, las peñas, piedras grandes o árboles en que el enemigo entraba para hacerles creer que era Dios. . . . También dan el mismo nombre a todas aquellas cosas que en hermosura o excelencia se aventajan de las otras de su especia, como una rosa, manzana, o camuesa o cualquier fruta que sea mayor y más hermosa que todas las de su árbol. . . . Por el contrario, llaman huaca a las cosas muy feas y monstruosas, que causan horror y asombro. . . . También llaman huaca a las cosas que salen de su curso natural, como a la mujer que pare dos de un vientre; . . . asimismo dan este nombre a las fuentes muy caudalosas que salen hechas ríos. . . . Llaman huaca a la gran cordillera de la Sierra Nevada que corre por todo el Perú. . . . Dan el mismo nombre a los cerros muy altos, que se aventajan de los otros cerros, . . . y a las cuestas grandes que se hallan por los caminos. . . . A todas estas cosas y otras semejantes llamaron huaca, no por tenerlas por dioses ni adorarlas, sino por la particular ventaja que hacían a los comunes; por esta causa las miraban y trataban con veneración y respeto.
It means a sacred thing, such as all those things in which the devil spoke to them: that is, all the idols, the cliffs, the large rocks or trees the devil entered in order to make them believe that he was God. . . . They also give the same name to all things that in beauty or in excellence stand out from others of the same species, such as a rose, an apple, a dessert apple, or any other fruit that is larger and more beautiful than all others from the tree. . . . On the other hand, they say a huaca is all things ugly and monstrous that cause horror and surprise. . . . They also say a huaca is a thing that differs from its natural properties, such as a woman that gives birth to two from one womb. . . . And so they give this name to forceful sources of water that emerge formed as rivers. . . . They name as huaca the great mountain chain of the Sierra Nevada that runs through all of Peru. . . . They give the same name to the very high hills, those that loom over the others, . . . and the steep, long inclines that are found on the roads. . . . All these things and some similar ones they call huaca, not because they believe them to be gods or adore them, but instead because of the good things they did out of the ordinary; for this reason they looked at them and treated them with veneration and respect.
This elaborate, informative, and lengthy description is reduced and confined by the Spanish translators, as revealed in a dictionary definition of the same time period: "Huacca. Ydolos, figurillas de hombres y animales que trayan consigo" (Huacca. Idols, little figurines of humans and animals that they bring with them). The succinct description, written by a priest, diminishes the stature of the huacas, renders them powerless, and contradicts the Inca Garcilaso's all-inclusive exposition on the concept in Quechua.
Yet, in other texts, chroniclers attest to the importance of the multiple sacred sites and revered objects for the Andean natives. Contradicting González Holguín's "little figurines," huacas instead were recognized as pervasive throughout Incan territory, and their presence in mountain sites, caves, ravines, and stone objects was essential to the classification of sociopolitical units. Huaca shrines were cared for by designated ancestral units that offered ritual sacrifices; in Cuzco alone, 328 sites were known and cited by churchmen anxious to stamp out this diabolical idol worship.
Although more recent studies cast doubt on the extent of Taki Oncoy as a widespread movement and now take into account its presence in the chronicles as a means to further an ecclesiastical career or to fuel rivalries among the orders, the persistence of idol worship among the Andean populations was cause for concern. Accordingly, the confession manuals often began with the first commandment, an interrogation about worship of hills, rivers, huacas, and the sun, indicative of the Spanish understanding of the plethora of sacred beings that populated the Andes. The Instrucion (instruction) of Juan Polo de Ondegardo was even more precise, more extensive, and must have overwhelmed the evangelists in their task. He cites huacas, idols, ravines, cliffs, large rocks, hills, mountaintops, waterfalls, springs, anything out of the ordinary, the sun, the moon, stars, lightning, the rainbow, rain, hail, heaps of stone markers, felines, snakes as sacred entities. Whereas in Europe the office of the Holy Inquisition could be counted on to root out idolatry, in the New World the Spanish king prohibited interference in native Andean cases. Did this mean that indigenous idolaters went unpunished? No. Baptized native Andeans who had been taught the nature of the infractions against Christianity were subject to disciplinary actions of the bishops.
To stamp out apostasy, the churchmen left the cities and ventured out to the countryside to see what could be observed among the communities. As early as 1545, priests were exhorted to seek out the idols and to plant crosses in their stead, yet the intensity of the forays out and about, combined with the confiscation of material goods, waxed and waned over the years. Most notable are the campaigns of Archbishop Bartolomé Lobo Guerrero (1609–1622), Gonzalo de Campo (1625–1626), and Archbishop Pedro de Villagómez (1636–1671). In these official church "visits" (visitas), priests were asked to maintain meticulous records of the goods confiscated, the regional idols destroyed, and the testimonial confessions of the accused. These texts, along with the doctrinal material, document the Spanish understanding of the complex world of the huacas. Precisely in the preservation of these printed pages and in these handwritten notes, we are able to trace the extent of the lexical refashioning of both Christian and Andean native concepts. How were Quechua words crafted as instruments of conversion? Was the pagan referentiality obliterated when the native Andean converts uttered these words and phrases? Or, alternately, were non.Christian concepts transmitted consciously or unconsciously in the speech act of confession?
The struggles of the churchmen to accomplish a thorough indoctrination of the Andean heathen is seen in the choice of lexical items crucial to the program of prosyletization. The Spanish at first enthusiastically incorporated Quechua nomenclature into Christian discourse. Ychu-(to confess by means of straws), supai (an Andean energy force for good or evil), ranti-(to exchange commodities, to substitute), and hucha (failure to perform a ceremonial obligation) were all recodified and restricted to conform to Christian theology. Later, Quechua was discarded completely to refer to the sacrament of confession; only a loan word from Spanish would do for those circumstances. Quechua was maintained and reshaped in regard to other concepts: supai eventually referred to one being, the devil; ranti-turned into the verb for the economic transactions of buying and selling; and hucha was transformed to represent a new category of Christian transgression, sins.
These changes in semantic categories were accompanied by significant parallel changes in the "universe of reference"-.Andean land plots, political structures, housing sites, and shrines. Similar to the "reduction" of forced resettlement imposed by Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, language, too, took on new referential attributes that narrowed meaning to conform to Spanish codification. This linguistic assault on Andean semantics which began in the colonial period was successful, for supai has lost its significance as "essence"; now this entity has horns and a long, skinny tail and is painted in Andean church murals as Satan. Now in open-air markets the Quechua.speaking sellers call out to their clients: "Rantihuay, rantihuay" (Buy from me, buy from me); indigenous vendors now expect coin in exchange for their surplus produce, whereas originally barter was the expected norm for ranti-.
Yet the semantic victory is not complete or one-sided. Despite these outward manifestations of change, what residual semantic trace might linger in the rich repository of Andean texts? A conversation between a priest and an indigenous Andean in the mid-seventeenth century is useful to illustrate the persistence of an Andean conceptually framed universe. Although by this time countless sacred Andean objects had been burned, smashed, and unearthed in the official visits by the priests, in the ashes, in woven cloth scraps, and in the landscape the remnants of indigenous ontology survived. Having his "little idols" taken away from him, a male elder in Guamanga angrily stated: "Padre, que te cansas en quitarnos los Idolos? llebaste este cerro si puedes, que esse es el Dios que adoro (Father, do you not tire of taking our idols from us? Carry away this mountain if you can because that one is the God that I worship." In this commentary the existence of multiple huacas is acknowledged; they (phrased as "the idols") loom large over the landscape, privileged in an Andean cosmology where gods animate, protect, prophesize, and make themselves manifest. The defiant words "carry away this mountain if you can" are followed by an even bolder assertion, "that one is the God that I worship." This statement, relayed to us in Spanish in a letter written by the Jesuit Francisco Patiño, sharply delineates the "us" from the "you." The phrasing would be even more stridently divisive in Quechua. "Our idols" certainly would be uttered with the exclusive conjugation in Quechua, highlighting "ours" and not "yours," and thus marking a wholly separate religious domain (Andean native) from the deity belonging to the Spanish Christians.
Clearly, there was resistance to Spanish indoctrination as native Andeans considered themselves untouched and without succor from a Christian God. Juan Polo de Ondegardo transmits the voice of the native Andeans in observations of 1585:
1. Dizen algunas vezes de Dios que no es buen Dios, y que no tiene cuydado de los pobres, y que de valde le sirven los indios. 2. Que no es piadoso ni tan misericordioso Dios como dizen los Christianos. Que no ay perdon de peccados para los que han peccado grauissimamente: o para otros peccados enormes. 3. Que Dios los crio para viuir en peccado, y especialmente para cosas deshonestas de luxuria y de embriaguez, y que ellos no puede(n) ser buenos. 4. Que las cosas se hazen o por la voluntad del Sol, y de la Luna, y de las Huacas, o por algun hado. Y que Dios no tiene prouidencia de las cosas de aca abaxo
1. They say sometimes that God is not a good God, and that he does not care for the poor, and the Indians serve him in vain. 2. That God does not pity them nor is he merciful like the Christians say he is. There is no pardon of sins for those who have gravely sinned, or for other large sins. 3. God created them to live in sin, and especially [to commit] dishonest things like lust and drunkenness, and [they say] that they cannot be good. 4. That things come about by means of the wishes of the sun, the moon, and by the huacas, or by some kind of fate. And that God does not provide for the things here below.
While these passages seemingly set forth a rigid dichotomy with a preference for Andean deities and Andean word choice to worship them, in other circumstances the expression is more nuanced and mixed. As Kenneth Mills so aptly writes, many people of the Andes were "neither in a state of resistance or opposition, nor were they consciously accommodating. The Andean natives were more eclectic, even experimental, tending to mix religious elements gradually rather than to substitute or replace." The colonial writer Polo de Ondegardo observes the "hybrid" nature of the religious belief system; it well could serve native peoples plagued with harsh work conditions, resettlement, and the ravages of disease: "[Dizen que] bie(n) puede adorar a Jesu Christo nuestro Señor y al demonio juntamente porque se han concertado ya entrambos y estan hermanados" (They [the natives] say that they can adore Jesus Christ our Lord and the devil together because they have come to an agreement between themselves and they are brothers).
This eclecticism also surfaces in a more explicit passage disseminated in 1585. The recourse to Christian wording and terminology is a conscious effort to expand the power base of the native hechicero (shaman-priest). Thus, in this ritual both the huacas and the Christian God are beseeched to provide possibilities for better health and a longer life. The shamans pronounce the “saintly words” of Jesus and God in their traditional curing ceremonies, also using coca leaves and guinea pig sacrifices:
Otros [hechizeros] ay q[ue] allende q[ue] visitan los lugares de los pueblos de Españoles e indios, vsan su officio de hechizeria co[n] especie de christia[n]dad. Y qua[n]do illega[n] al enfermo ech[an] sus bendiciones sobre el enfermo, sanctigua[n]se, dize[n] ay Dios, Jesus, o otras palabras buenas, hazen q[ue] haze[n] oracio[n] a Dios, y pone[n] las manos, y parados, o de rodillas, o sentados, menea[n] los labios, alçan los ojos al cielo, dize[n] palabras sanctas, y aconseja[n]le q[ue] se confiesse, y q[ue] haga otras obras de christiano, lloran y dizen mil caricias, haze[n] la cruz y dizen q[ue] tienen poder para esso de Dios, o de los Padres, o de los Apoés y abueltas desto secretamente sacrifican, y hazen otras ceremonias con cuyes, coca, sebo, y otras cosas, soban el vie[n]tre, y las piernas, o otras partes del cuerpo, y chupa[n] aq[ue]lla parte q[ue] duele del enfermo, y dizen q[ue] sacan sangre, o gusanos, o pedrezuelas y muestran las . . . y dizen q[ue] ya ha salido el mal, y q[ue] sanara el enfermo: y haze[n] otros mil embustes para esto.
There are other [shaman-priests], furthermore, that visit the towns of the Spanish and the Indians, who use their position of shaman in combination with a kind of Christianity. And when they are with the sick person, they let fall blessings on the sick person; making the sign of the cross, they say, “Oh God, Jesus,” or other good words; they make them pray to God, and they move their lips, glance up at the heavens, say blessed words, and they urge him or her to confess and to do other Christian acts; they cry and they say a thousand sweet things; they make the sign of the cross and [say] that they are given the forceful power for this from God, from the priests, and from the Quechua apus, and besides this they sacrifice and conduct rituals, with guinea pigs, coca leaves, and animal fat; they rub the stomach, legs, and other parts of the body, and they suck on that aching part of the sick person, . . . and they say that the evil forces have gone out and that the sick one is cured.
Reading the previous passage might lead to a preference for "stable" syncretic models and all-encompassing explanations. However, the discourses of confession, of extirpation trials, and of ritual are varied, nuanced, and not easily categorized. Indigenous response to Christianity is not monolithic; communities responded differently to the barrage of information that was disseminated by the Catholic priests, picking and choosing what elements they would incorporate and which they would discard. This study of confessional practices plumbs the lived experience of the Quechua language in its colonial context and in its contemporary usage. While dictionary glosses can orient our understanding of word change—adoptions and substitutions—it is in the lived experience that the semantic dimensions of a word stabilize or instead exhibit multiple aspects of meaning.
Wording the World
The implementation of Catholic doctrine was aided by the consolidation of belief that resulted in tools of dissemination: there were catechisms (abbreviated and others more lengthy) for preparing the converts for baptism, confessional texts to aid in vocalizing all sins, and sermons to rephrase biblical admonitions of the commandments into comprehensible concepts. Explicit in the writing of the early Spanish-Quechua texts is a desire to communicate Christian concepts to the Andean "heathen"; also present in these texts is abundant documentation of cultural conversion as well as cultural survival. The catechisms, sermons, manuals for the confessor, and grammars written by secular and regular clergy serve as a rich repository of semantic change as Quechua was pressed into service by the Spanish translators. However, these semantic "refashionings" often retained traces of ancient Andean modes of thought despite the repetitious didactic lessons in Quechua preached from the pulpits and in the plazas.
In this book, I have chosen several of the Ten Commandments, the foundation of confession, for more lengthy analysis. Commandment one, on idolatry, commandment six, on sexuality, and commandment seven, on theft were selected because of the semantic importance of the Quechua lexemes chosen by the priests to talk about these newly imposed Christian life patterns.
Some priests were content with the use of only the first commandment for confession. Thus, the introductory material to the 1585 confessional states: "Basta[n] las preguntas que en general se ponen en el primer mandamie[n]to" (The questions written in the first commandment are sufficient). As we have seen, this first question asked in confession could be time consuming for the priest if he were to list all possible manifestations of huacas in the Andean belief system. Yet, here at the first instance of confession, in the crosscurrents of translation, the Quechua-speaking convert might be confused as to what exactly was expressed in the translations of the native language by the churchmen. The straightforward Spanish declaration of commandment one—"Amaras a Dios sobre todas las cosas" (Love God above all other things)—is not mirrored in the Quechua construction: "Diosman sonco canqui, tucuy yma haycacta yallispa" (literally, Your heart is toward God, [God] more worthy than whatever thing). Ostensibly here, the center is God, yet the "other things" exist in a prominent positioning; they continue to exist, not banished, albeit subordinate to the superior Christian God. The directive here, then, in its Quechua wording allows for the Christian God to be loved the most, gathered in the company of other deities. This commandment, as written in Quechua, reinforces an old pattern of religious tolerance practiced by the Incas, which encourages the inclusion of regional gods within a panoply of Incan deities. The rejection of this Christian first commandment often could be seen in the cloth offerings and ground-up mullu shells scattered about the shrine. Even if the Quechua speaker never appeared for confession, the churchmen could see physical evidence of idolatry. An account of 1619, among many others, reveals the widespread divergence from Christian teaching in "found" items: 1,769 principal shrines were detected; 7,288 family shrines were known, along with 1,365 mummies.
The penitential questions regarding sexuality (commandment six) were oriented more to private sexual practices, although priests often also acknowledged the public rituals of drunken orgies. Indeed, this commandment was an effort to reshape behavior, to focus "attention on the individual's desire as the substance that needed to be relentlessly disciplined to create the moral self." The natives were taught to "war against themselves," as J. Jorge Klor de Alva persuasively argues, to control their bodily desires in order to obtain a Christian "soul." Thus, the confessionals were oriented toward individual practice, to best penetrate the excesses of desire in all possible circumstances. Some inquiry betrays European origins, such as, Have you given your word, sworn to marry a certain woman? indicative of the primacy of questions of honor in European codes. Other queries pertain to customs in the Andes, such as the use of huacanqui (Andean love potion) to obtain sexual possession of a woman or man. With each and every question, the penitent is coerced into shaping a conception of self, a self that "incorporated Christian categories of the person that were assumed to be universal."
The answers to these confessionary questions necessarily implied a rejection of the preconquest self. Like the extirpation of idols, this indoctrination program stamped out participation in the ancient Andean acts of ritual reciprocity and acts of celebratory sexuality. The posing of these questions on sexuality, prying into the innermost reaches of motivation, was linked to the process of self-examination, inducing a developing sense of consciousness, provoking guilt, and ultimately exacting a deeply felt contrition that was expressed in words as well as gestures. To assist this discourse, hucha was pressed into service by the church to express "sin" (see chapter 3) and, once chosen, the new semantic field was reinforced by crafting a new verb for sexual sin, huchallicu-, appending a lli and a cu (a "self-transformational" addition to hucha indicating that the sinner was in a state of sin by his or her own volition). Thus, in word choice and verbal creativity the churchmen fashioned a world of sinfulness that, despite the importance of the other commandments, concentrated their efforts on erasing illicit sexual behavior.
Idolatries and sexualities were targeted for examination in the sacrament of confession, and their usefulness for ferreting out sin is evident in the many pages of transcripts preserved in the Andean archives. Yet, in introducing the seventh commandment to the Andean populations, the catechists and missionaries were pressed to convey more than the blanket prohibition, "Thou shall not steal." Native people of the Andes well understood the moral implications of theft, the topic of this commandment. Often quoted is the (supposed) creed of the Incas: "Ama llulla, Ama killa, Ama suwa" (Do not lie, do not be lazy, do not steal). The admonition "don't steal" as written in the confessionals includes canonical deliberations consisting of a number of European concepts. The Andean Quechua confessionals reflect concerns common to Europe: "just" price in the market; rules about loans and usury; payment of the daily wage.
In this series of questions, theology as well as economics required ample explanation for the converts. Prior to the conquest of the Andes, an Inca reciprocal system, well studied by numerous scholars, existed at the level of state, province, and intrafamilial circumstances that governed the exchange of goods. Under this all-encompassing ideology, goods would be distributed by the state in cases of want or for ritual celebrations. In return, the most humble of households as well as the most high ranking administrators would be expected to contribute labor and produce goods. The chronicles are filled with many "laws" regarding Inca behavior, but rarely mentioned is "theft" because of the "rarity of private property, which was reserved for the most elite." Yet, with the coming of the Spanish a new order was introduced—a commercial system—that was, indeed, not based on reciprocity.
The kurakas, as regional leaders, provided access to commodities that fed the newly imposed model of markets and fairs. The confessionals reflect the European economic system, yet the vocabulary chosen for this discussion was drawn from the previous Andean world of barter and reciprocity. Ranti-(to exchange) was pressed into service to delineate "buyer," "seller," and "net gains." Likewise, presented with this Andean precapitalist system of trade, the churchmen also had to look for words to translate "loan," "to restitute," and "debtor" (see chapters 5 and 6). The confessionals are witness to the inventories of economic terminology in Quechua; they also are vivid repositories of the numerous occupations held by the indigenous laboring classes. Most spectacular are the intricacies of commerce written up as fodder for confession by the priest Juan Pérez Bocanegra; however, all confession manuals reserved space for interrogation about economic activity under the rubric of the seventh commandment.
Many excellent books and articles have been written about the efficacy of the evangelization of the Americas in the colonial period. The question of efficacy was central to the priests and friars who first gloried in the throngs of souls saved and then, confronted with the daily reality, had to reevaluate their claims of success. The number of souls who knelt and professed their Christianity is not tallied up in Sin and Confession in Colonial Peru. Nor do counts of cults and covens appear in these pages to assess the multiple variations of accommodation or resistance to an imposed economic and religious system. Instead, through the sacrament of confession, semantic configurations are traced both forward and back in an attempt to perceive the known world before the Hispanic invasion as well as to contemplate linguistic accommodation in the aftermath of conquest. Are there equivalencies between languages? Is cross-cultural translation possible? How does the "Dios" of Spanish become the "Apodios" of Quechua and vice versa?
In the case of "Dios" (God), the translation was impeded; only the Spanish word would do for representing the concept of the deity within the Christian tradition. No heathen word could represent it well, as Vicente Rafael states, because "native vernaculars . . . constrained the universalizing assumptions and totalizing impulses of a colonial-Christian order." In other circumstances, the totalizing impulses of the dominant language system were incorporated into the Quechua language. Thus, Manichaean categorization circumscribed the more neutral Quechua supai (meaning only spirit essence), and then this word became limited to a singular usage, a reference to the European devil.
Sometimes polysemic references coexist, denoting ancient practices in Quechua-speaking cultures as well as a New Worldly order imposed by Christianity. For instance, maña-, a verb formerly denoting the "borrowing of a nonconsumable item to be returned in kind and based on a relationship of trust," is turned into the verb "to pray" or "to intercede" in Christian hymns and sermons. Or, just as determinedly, maña persists as a word denoting land worked by the community and carries a connotative referentiality to an annual redistribution of land plots mentioned in colonial sources.
The process was not unidirectional. In tracing translinguistic semantic fields, we move beyond the discourse of the ecclesiastics who tell us what to conclude. Instead, when reading the ancient Quechua words written down with a firm clerical hand or printed with Gothic inflected type, we linger, detecting the essence of the original denotation in Quechua as, simultaneously, we confront the new usage. Thus, we allow ourselves to abandon our categories and our assumptions of universals and not focus so earnestly on the problem of equivalence in translation. Instead, in paging through dictionaries, confessionals, and sermons, we confront another way of being, the expression of another social reality, as conveyed in the lexicon of the Quechua language.
Regina Harrison is Professor of Spanish, School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures; Professor of Comparative Literature, Department of English; and Affiliate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the author of the award-winning Signs, Songs, and Memory in the Andes: Translating Quechua Language and Culture and Entre el tronar épico y el llanto elegíaco: simbología indígena en la poesía ecuatoriana siglos XIX y XX.
". . . an informed and highly informative accounting and analysis of concepts of sin . . . and of the long-term ‘encounter’ between these traditions as Europeans first conquered the Inka Empire and then struggled to gain control over Andean people’s bodies, minds, and souls during early to mid-colonial times in the Andes. It is a book with a large and ambitious scope that demonstrates extraordinarily deep learning and close engagement with a range of highly esoteric texts from the period."
―Gary Urton, Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Pre-Columbian Studies in the Archaeology Program in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University and author of Signs of the Inka Khipu: Binary Coding in the Andean Knotted-String Records, The Social Life of Numbers: A Quechua Ontology of Numbers and Philosophy of Arithmetic, The History of a Myth: Pacariqtambo and the Origin of the Inkas, and At the Crossroads of the Earth and the Sky: An Andean Cosmology | <urn:uuid:d53eef7f-2930-4f53-b0c1-97ee9ce80b61> | http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/harsin | en | 0.93979 | 0.026044 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Please read here first regarding the site update.
My Khaini Merchanting guide, with prices.
General MapleStory General MS questions and answers
Hello Basilmarket.
This is my merching guide which is based in Khaini prices since my world is Khini, I will be happy to bind my guide with other world guides and give the mercher guide to other people in other worlds.
Please be aware that this is my personal guide to merching, and my personal guide only, if you have a different or in your sense a better way of merching, then create your own merching thread.
[header]Merching in general-[/header]
This section will be on the general merching, just idea and some attitudes towards it all.
[header]Moral code-[/header]
Some people think Merchers are heartless people who just want to scam you to make money, correct? Well I as one, make sure I do NOT merch off of guildies, Alliance or friends, unless they agree to being ripped off (if that's what they call it), make sure you double check that is what they want, because this will earn you some brownie points in the future, if you want to rip off known people, I suggest making a different account.
This can be an optional code, as you might want to keep your status of being a mercher/rich on the down low, create an account that is the same class as your main, for example, I am an adventurer, you will want to be an adventurer to transfer your store across as the CS inventory does not combine with other classes/types.
Or you can keep your main, if you are a higher level, you are bound to get a bit more trust thrown your way, as some newer people trust higher leveled people than lower leveled.
If you are not ready to stand in the FM and spam continuously, then I suggest merching is not for you, but I also have a way to keep your hate for the FM away, because hating the FM can result in a big boredom factor which will affect your merching ways, I also suggest getting a bot for spamming, it isn't against the ToS therefore you cannot be banned because it is undetectable.
biThat is the start-up part, if you have just skipped this part, which I am guessing most have, I would probably just skim through it, because some can be of importance.[/b][/i]
iMost people will say 'Buy low, sell high', yes, this is the basic point of merching, but how the hell do you know what to buy and sell? You don't...
Most people say buy and sell GFA, and 10 ATT WG, which is obviously one of the main ones I have seen floating around the marketplace and filling up newer players with hope they will become very rich merching these, which is actually wrong.[/i]
[header]Greed & the look-[/header]
Don't be greedy otherwise you will most likely lose money during the period, and thus not merching efficiently, I suggest only spamming 3 ITEMS, you don't want people to think you are a mercher otherwise you will lost respect and people will not trade you to sell you the items, also having a rich look can also attract peoples eyes and maybe even try and look bright and colorful, and change your appearance from time to time to attract the same player.
[header]Funds- [/header]
If you have a bigger fund, obviously you have more money to spend which will result in higher merch value, and meaning you make more money, , I suggest for a welfare amount, which will give you a reasonable profit, around, 100m (100,000,000 mesos), which will get you started good, if you do not have 100m (100,000,000 mesos) then do not stress, I will put many types of merching ways down the bottom which don't require much.
[header]Know your prices of what you are merching-[/header]
First of all, make sure you know the general basis of Merching, and make sure you scim through the FM iEVERYDAY[/i] to make sure you know the prices, this takes time, I personally know prices from experience, which you will learn eventually, but I will put most prices of the things I merch below this paragraph.
Most people will consider 10m as a deal point in which, say your buying an item for 150m, if you are merching it, you should not negotiate, people who say 10m more than the asking price is not acceptable, hold your ground on buying for a certain price, otherwise this will trick your mind into raising the buying price higher and higher, which is NOT a good law of merching, I cannot stress this enough.
[header]10 ATT WG Merching-[/header]
bWARNING: These prices for 10 ATT's and the continuing are iKHAINI[/i] prices, do check around your world for others.[/b]
Obviously 10 ATT Work Gloves (WG) is a common merch, which MOST people which at least 150m merch, which to be honest you really shouldn't be doing, in my mind, I say;
Buy 10 ATT WG for 140m.
Sell for 160-170m.
That is a 20-30m profit, correct?
In most cases in Khaini FM and probably most others, is that people know that you can get more than 140m for 10 ATT's at the moment, so it is very UNLIKELY for people to sell you them for 140m, so I suggest avoiding 10 ATT WG due to the factor that EVERYONE does it.
[header]GFA 60% (Glove for ATT 60%) Merching-[/header]
Another common way to merching that EVERYONE does, which you again, really SHOULD NOT, be doing, for the same reason as gloves for ATT.
Buy the scroll for 7m in most cases.
Sell the scroll for 10-13m in store, 13m being an almost unsellable price.
That is only a 3-6m profit.
STOP doing that, 6m profit, for 3 scrolls a day is rediculous, you need to aim higher, be more optimistic, and stop being so newbie and start merching items that will make you more profit, yet if you only have a solid 10m spending money for merching, I do suggest that you merch GFA scrolls, or some other things I will suggest.
[header]Chair and Mount merching[/header]
Chair and mount merching is a brilliant way to start off knowing price and beginning your quest of wealthiness, because many people are unaware of inflating and deflating prices in chairs, since they do vary extremely fast, I will do my best to cater to the chairs and to the mounts prices at the moment, although due to the increase in mounts, some may be a bit more expensive than others.
b(The prices I list will be selling prices, not buying prices.)[/b]
b15-Day mounts-[/b]
Usually are a great start, if you buy ALL 15-Day mounts for 10m, the look of the mount will cost more than the other looks, for example, there are 3 main structure mounts, which are;
Red Truck - 20m
Gargoyle - 20m
Lion - 30m
b30-day mounts-[/b]
These mounts will probably not be sold much considering I have only seen a few, but they do sell for a little bit, usually by for 30m and sell for 50m, although the prices may vary.
b1-year mounts-[/b]
These are great, but don't be tempted to use it like I did with my Lion mount , you can buy these for a stable price, and sell them for an unstable price, considering people have NO IDEA on the price of these mounts, usually some are better than others, these are the prices;
Red Truck- 150m (buy for 90-130m)
Gargoyle- 150m (buy for 90-130m)
Lion- 150-300m (buy for about 150m and less, don't really spend too much considering people will know the price, Lion mount is HIGHLY desired in the market, as I know of about 5 people who are buying, selling for an extremely high price would be extremely profitable)
[header] Chairs-- [/header]
b(The price I list will be selling prices, not buying prices)[/b]
Chairs are a difficult thing to remember, a lot of chairs may vary, I will not list EVERY chair in the world, although I will suggest that buy/sell chairs that have unstable prices, such as 'Zakum Chair', 'Easel Chair' and others, make sure you never buy witch chairs for more than 1m as they are an extremely hard sell for 10m, so I suggest keeping the budget for chairs too about 60-150m for different chairs, the chairs I suggest to merch are;
Zakum Chair
Buy: 60-70m
Sell: 100m (NO LESS)
Easel Chair
Buy: 70-90m
Sell: 110-120m (NO LESS)
Dragon Chairs (Abyss and Inferno)
Buy: 100-200m
Sell: 250-300m
Bloody Rose
Buy: 100-180m
Sell: 200-300m
World End
Buy: 100-200m
Sell: 250-300m
Von Leon Chair (AT THE MOMENT)
Buy: 200m (NO MORE)
Sell: 250-300m (Might be a little more.)
Gold Seal Cushion
Buy: 100-150m
Sell: 180-250m
(There are other chairs that are a lot more expensive, and I will list them if they are requested through PM's, and also there are a lot of other chairs below the price of these, I don't suggest buying them, such as Balrog chair, because they barely sell.)
[header] Rings (Lv 17 II and Lv 17-10 rings I)[/header]
bWARNING: Please be aware that the prices of Lv17 Rings II are UNSTABLE and vary quick, buy and sell at own risk, the same as the other rings.[/b]
Okay, first of all, usually these rings are a great thing to merch, this is my main merching type at the moment, that I am working on, so far I have made about 300m with the Lv17 Ring II.
Lv17 Ring II
Buy: 100-110m (NO MORE NO MORE!)
Sell: 150-200m (I suggest 150.)
Okay, now first of all the first event rings are stabilizing, due to the fact that the focusing on Lv17 Ring II, so these are prices of 17-10 leveled rings.
Lv17 Ring I (I don't suggest merching due to the high prices and unstable fortunes)
Buy: 300-400m(Stable)
Sell: 450-500m (Unstable)
Lv16 Ring I
Buy: 100-150m(Unstable)
Sell: 200-300m(Unstable)
Lv15 Ring I (Good to merch with)
Buy: 60-80m (NO MORE)(Unstable)
Sell: 100-110m (NO LESS)(Unstable)
Lv11-14 Ring I
Buy: 10-20m (Unstable) (Do not focus on these types of rings, because they are extremely unstable)
Sell: 40-60m
I personally would warn you to stay away from them, as they are extremely unstable, and always will be, prices will vary, and no accuracte price can be available, this is ALWAYS from experience, no one can estimate a price of a weapon unless they see it really, I suggest contacting a friend or me if I am available in Khaini.
End of.
This is a section about selling with a store, and selling without a store.
[header]Attempting profit with a store-[/header]
Obviously this is the most favored way of merchanting, it is eaier with a mushie, so if you are alright with spending the money on a mushie, I suggest buying, and then selling in the mushie while you are buying, so your are merching simultaneously, this is the most recommended way of merching, permits, also work well as well, what I do is buy in the day, and sell at night, I suggest getting more than one if you can, since they last 90 days, it is of good value.
There are many places to set the store, here are some good spots which I usually sell the most;
FM 1-3 (These are obviously the best)
FM 7 (Try and avoid it though, Ludi doesn't sell much)
FM 13 (Do not go to 14 or any other perion place)
FM 18 (Again do not go to 19)
I know this is a bit of a high mark, but if all of those aren't available, set up in FM 12, I have sold A LOT there, just because people randomly go there for some reason.
[header]Attempting profit with-out a store[/header]
Okay, this is really not recommended, I highly suggest you do not do this, because you can make next to no profit, but it is do-able, these tips should help;
Find a great guild/Alliance, they can buy your items if they need it for average price, follow the code and don't rip guildies off.
Spam in FM for more over-priced items and hope someone buys it, which to be honest, some people actually do.
Find a friend to put your item in their store, and pay them a fee of some sort, this is the most recommended way of merching if you don't want to spend NX.
Be a supplier; this may sound ridiculous, but people like me, who buy rings for 110m, you could buy them for 100m, and go and sell to me for 115m if you have a lot of them, it's a good easy way, the same with chairs.
b That is all I am merching at the moment, and is raking me in some good money.[/b]
[header]Thankyou for viewing my guide, PM me for questions and help, if I get enough requests in the comment section below I will continuously update it.[/header]
KingKong06PoopGreener - Level 119
Posted: April
Page TopHome 1 2 3 4 5
thanks for the guide
gotnone0ExcitedType - Level 202
Apr 06 2011
Lol... what? The reasons for it being ok are because it's not against the ToS and it's undetectable? Why should detection matter if it's not against ToS? (Btw it's totally against ToS).[/quote]
Look, it helps a lot, and I'm trying to make people happier about it, I know it is wrong because it's enhancing the game, but what can you do...
KingKong06PoopGreener - Level 119
Apr 06 2011
Could you make this for Windian prices plz?
Xbl1tz3rXXbl1tz3rX - Level 138
Apr 06 2011
It's fine that you're trying to help people, but don't lie to them.
ChuckNasteeNastrofizick - Level 120
Apr 06 2011
Wow leave it up to a Corsair to make an awesome guide like this. Corsairs ftw.
Apr 06 2011
You should throw a MTS Merching guide in there
Apr 06 2011
Wow nice guide ^_^
Now I just need Zenith prices -_-[/quote]
This. Selling scrolls atm there and I'm still at ~60m
Apr 06 2011
lol youre right about the outfit thing espeically the bear suit. I have suits for diffrent kind of merchs I have :
Bear, Pro (What im wearing now but with 8k wings) Super hero (New one in CS) casual (black casual with black pants) and captian (my favcorite but my sprite wont update)
btw if your looking for a good bear one get the one that goes on your head those gin eyes from bleach teddy bear etc etc
btw my sprite wont upadate but my level will can someone tell me how to fix that?
Apr 06 2011
This part is so true, whenever I see a char with a gold-scary-mask with some weird equips, I 've never sell/buy something from that person.
Apr 06 2011
Yeah, this is a decent guide
I think it looks really time consuming... due to the really low buying prices of most items.
Apr 06 2011
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Bumper sticker logic retards the debate
Seen on a car window in Leavenworth this week:
Yes government and only government can do certain things,but that list is quite short. For example, historically the private sector hassuccessfully run effective schools. Private research labs have done most of themedical research, and private hospitals still do provide most of the medicalcare in this country. Many critics of government would argue that these privatesector organizations have been much more efficient and effective in these tasksthan their government run counterparts.
But the author of the above BS (bumper speech) doesn’tbelieve you should question the government. For him it is enough that the jobis getting done. Well if that’s the case then let’s just cancel elections andsave us all the time and expense of voting. After all the people who run thegovernment have our best interests at heart. And who really needs all thatstress just trying to understand these debates? Life would be so much simplerand less stressful if we just bowed to the king and paid our taxes.
The problem is that left unchecked government will continueto grab more power. Many critics of our government today believe it has becomemuch too large and as a result, unresponsive to the electorate. Many believethat the last Congress has looked at the voters not as people they were electedto represent, but as subjects to be ruled. In that environment they no longerneed to listen to the voters they begin to decide what they think is best forus.
The “BS” also assumes that government is an efficientadministrator of our resources. But it is government spending that is out ofcontrol. Tax revenues have been increasing but spending is increasing fasterthan the revenue. Continuing to increase taxes in that environment encouragespoor spending discipline by our elected representatives and public sectoremployees.
The issue here is just what are the essential functions ofgovernment and exactly which level of government is responsible for thosefunctions? For example, let’s just consider education. There is nothing in theU.S. Constitution that gives the Federal government any responsibility foreducation. Our country led the world for decades before President Carter decidedlocal governments needed help. Today the Federal Department of Education’sbudget is $62 billion and it is asking for a 30% increase to $82 billion nextyear. The primary effect of that Federal spending has been to allow states toreduce their spending on education. Last year the State of Washington wassuccessfully sued by the Bellevue School District for failing to meet theirconstitutional obligation to fund basic education. The governor’s answer tothat suit was to further reduce state spending by using new Federal money tobalance the state education budget. Washington State is not unusual. Anincreasing number of government critics believe shutting down the FederalDepartment of Education would actually improve education while eliminatinganother layer of unproductive bureaucracy and saving the taxpayers money.
It is time we all began to remember that the government issupposed to work for us. Instead of yelling at each other about our need to payour share we need to be yelling at our representatives that their firstpriority is to make sure government is efficient. We need less “BS” and moreinformed, adult discussions about the things government should do and whatgovernment should leave to the private sector.
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McCain, Obama Team Agree: No Realistic Military Option on Ukraine
A woman rests by a memorial in Kiev. A woman rests by a memorial in Kiev. Emilio Morenatti/AP
Military options are off the table for the United States as it looks to counter Russia's military occupation of Crimea, Sen. John McCain, said on Monday.
"There is not a military option that can be exercised now," the Arizona Republican said, but he stressed that the United States should still have a wide variety of options including economic sanctions and targeting individuals responsible for the invasion.
His comments, which came at the annual AIPAC policy conference, echoed those from a trio of administration officials on Sunday.
"Right now, I think we are focused on political and economic and diplomatic options.... So we have not—and, frankly, our goal is to uphold the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine, not to have a military escalation," a senior administration official said, when asked if the United States is currently considering military options as part of its response.
Another senior administration official added that getting the military involved wouldn't help de-escalate the situation.
The United States, in coordination with NATO and European Union allies, are considering a range of other options, the officials said. Those could include "isolation, potential sanctions, and relationships between Russia and international institutions."
But while McCain doesn't believe President Obama has military options, he does think the White House shoulders some blame for Russia's bold moves in Crimea.
"This is the ultimate result of a feckless foreign policy where nobody believes in America's strength anymore," McCain said.
Obama spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the weekend, and Vice President Joe Biden spoke with Russian Prime Minister Dmitriy Medvedev on Monday.
What direct impact those talks are having is murky. U.S. officials have repeatedly called on Russia to draw back its forces, but Ukraine said on Monday that Russia is calling on the crews of two Ukranian warships to surrender or face attack. Russian officials have denied making that threat.
State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said Monday that if the reports are true, it would constitute a "dangerous escalation of the situation, for which we would hold Russia directly responsible."
The U.N. Security Council is scheduled to hold an emergency meeting Monday afternoon on Ukraine.
And McCain on Monday stressed that the situation in Ukraine is also tied to current negotiations in the Middle East, including those over Iran's nuclear program and the Syrian chemical weapons deal. U.S. and Russian officials have worked together on both fronts.
McCain added: "The president of the United States believes that the Cold War is over, and that's fine if it is over, but Putin doesn't believe its over. He doesn't believe that this is a zero-sum game."
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Verbal Aspect
05 May 96 11:22:02 EDT
portions of Luke's gospel and wondering if anyone can help me.
I have followed Porter's arguments through to the JSNTSS 80 _Biblical Greek
Language & Linguistics - Open Questions in Current Research_ which summarises
the 1990-1991 SBL discussions. I have read his _Idioms_ and Fanning's
dissertation as well. However I cannot track down any further discussions since
this time. Does anyone know if the debate has fizzled out or is their something
more recent lurking out there?
I am particularly looking at his views on the interrelation of tense forms
within units and stories i.e. his views on markedness. It seems to me that it is
a very interesting exercise to look at how one tense may be used throughout a
unit for one issue. e.g. Answering Ken Litwak's earlier question on the
Magnificat I noticed that the aorist tense is used for God's actions and the
present for human responses. Is this coincidental or meaningful? I am not sure
It seems to me that aspect and markedness are not always compatible - why should
states always be more marked, why should for instance things written in the
prophets 'gegraptai' always be marked? And what does Porter *really* mean by
'marked' in a pragmatic way? Certainly emphasis has something to do with it, but
it is clearly more sophisticated than this. At times he seems to mean one thing
and then another e.g. the marked item can be a head term, but it can also be the
elements under the head term.
If anyone has any suggestions please e-mail me.
Thank you
Elizabeth Harper
Kiwi in Trinity
Trinity College, Bristol, U.K. | <urn:uuid:ddfc0246-5dd8-462a-aa6c-bfc1e343237f> | http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/archives/96-03/0156.html | en | 0.949944 | 0.019388 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
1_Angelbaby: why do guys lie just a bunch of liers !!!!!!!!!!!!
Non-Smoker with Thin body type
???????, New Mexico
Hispanic, Gemini
1_Angelbaby isn't seeking a relationship or any kind of commitment.
Some college
Yes I have a job
User has private images
I am Seeking a Man For Friends
Needs Test Not Completed Chemistry View her chemistry results
Marital Status Single Do you do drugs? No
Hair Color Brown Eye Color Hazel
Longest Relationship Over 10 years How ambitious are you? Ambitious
Pets Dog Second Language Spanish
About Me
First of why is it guys lie tell you sweet things but then they change really is it so hard to be nice genuine.First proud Mom baseball basketball dance and other things that they do. Need someone that understands that I need adult time but also time for my kids. Luv different types of music my kids are my life
First Date
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Monday, June 30, 2014
PNC Park
PNC Park
115 Federal Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15212
June 7, 2014
After spending the day at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and a pair of breweries, we took the quick subway ride from our hotel to the ballpark. Since taking the guided tour of the stadium the day before, we were completely smitten with the ballpark and super excited about watching a game (for more photos and behind the scenes action of PNC Park, check out our blog post from our guided tour of the park). When we arrived at the stadium for the game, it was already super crowded, so we quickly snapped a selfie outside before heading in.
At the recommendation of our awesome tour guide, we purchased crab fries to share for $10 at the xx stand in section xx before going up to our seats. Our guide gave us a lot of suggestions, so we wanted to make sure we hit as many of those as possible while being cost effective. Hence, sharing meals.
Unfortunately, we ended up in the wrong section by mistake and since the game was starting and we didn't want to be "those" people that stand and block the entire game, we quickly slid into the nearest empty seats for the time being. We figured we'd finish the crab fries, get ourselves sorted out, and find our correct seats. In the meantime, Serena pulled out our trusty notebook to start taking notes about our stadium experience. As you can see in the picture, for the price, you get quite a lot of food. The fries had a delicious spicy kick to them and so far, our lovely tour guide was batting 1.000 in the recommendation department.
It was brutally hot. The kind of hot that when you're sitting in a seat, you can't sit with your legs closed or your arms at your side because your limbs and body touching one another traps entirely too much heat. Despite the fact that we truly enjoyed the crab fries, the weather made it difficult to eat them. Sitting in front of us were three young chicks with a whole lot of hair. Listen, it's not a problem to have a shit ton of hair on top of your head. We're two chicks that have a shit ton of hair on our heads and there are a lot of individuals on this planet that would pay good money for that hair. Since we are among those with a lot of hair, we know just how sweaty and suffocating our hair can be on a humid, hot day like this one. Ladies and gentlemen with long, thick hair: suffer in vain no longer. We'd like to introduce you to the wonders of the ponytail and its many relatives: the bun, side bun, braid (single, French, pigtail, etc.), the updo. All of these hairstyles function to sweep the hair off of your neck, allowing what little breeze that's available to cool your skin.
Behold one of the girls in front of us:
As you can see, that's a lot of hair. During heat waves such as this, let go of ego. You must accept that fact that being pretty is not an option any longer. Only comfort. Your face is going to look moist and melty just like everyone else's and the only thing this look serves to do is trap sweat against your neck, shoulders, and back...and our legs. Our legs, which are situated behind you and actively dying each time your long locks rest on top of them. When you don't embrace the ponytail on days like this in crowded spaces, your hair suffocates our lower half and makes us dry heave.
Aside from the mass of hair sitting in front of us, the girls kept to themselves and didn't bother us, which is all we could ask for. While slowly munching on our crab fries, we dutifully took notes on the game's action as it unfolded before us so that we could reference later (for this very blog post). Serena entered a few details into her Ballpark Passport Trapperkeeper (after all this, Lisa forgot hers at home like a real a-hole).
PS - note the mass of hair sitting just in front of Serena.
Basically, all we were doing was minding our business when shit hit the fan. A girl that can only be described as a "chickenhead" arrived. Apparently she was a friend of the three wookies sitting in front of us. Without saying anything directly to us, she merely shouted, "SOMEONE is sitting on our seats. We have those four seats and these four seats." One of her wookies replied, "Okay, no big deal. No one is here yet. We can take care of it when everyone arrives." There was no placating the chickenhead. All she did was repeat herself loudly in her empty, bimbo voice over and over and over again. Truthfully, all she had to do was look at us and politely ask us to move. We were in the wrong and we had had no intention of remaining in those seats to begin with. We would've gladly moved without any confrontation at all. However, she didn't have the balls to confront us directly. Only passive aggressively, which is one of the most pathetic, useless traits a human being could possess. It's slightly worse than stupidity only because stupid people don't know any better. Passive aggressive people are just feeble a$$ f*cks and since we have the temperment of Vlad The Impaler, our reaction to her may not have been the most rational. Serena merely stared at the girl without wavering with the expression that Brother has referred to as, "The Look." If Serena had the same magical powers as Maleficent, she could probably commit murder simply by flashing The Look. Unfortunately, since Serena has yet to determine how to summon the forces of alternate universes for this purpose, she must settle for making people extremely uncomfortable with her stare. Lisa, on the other hand, was less subtle. Loudly, she declared, "what a dumb bitch." The wookies were suddenly very uncomfortable. They continued to try to calm down their chickenhead to no avail. Therefore, Serena continued to give The Look and Lisa continued to call the chickenhead a dumb bitch. Again, we can't stress enough that this is hardly considered rational behavior. We are adults with 401(k) plans and Serena is a 200-hour trained yoga instructor. Clearly, we know better, but that didn't stop us from being angry New Yorkers.
In order to not disturb the rest of the section, we waited until the close of the inning to pick up our stuff and relocate to our real seats. From several rows up, we could still hear her bubblehead voice bellyaching, so we snapped a photo of her taking her 4,000th selfie:
Here's the view from our legit seats:
Our real seats turned out to be infinitely more pleasant than our borrowed ones. Thanks to the stadium's overhang, we had the comfort of sitting in the shade. Under no circumstances should you infer from that statement that we were "cool." It was still as hot and sweaty as a man's pair of underpants at the gym, BUT we were at least protected from the piercing death ray that was the sun.
During the 5th inning, we spotted the Pirates' mascot in the lower level in right center field, mingling with fans. Since the tour guide advised us to sample a sandwich from the Primanti Brothers stand (a supposed local traditional fare) and it was around the time we typically eat our third lunch of the day, we figured that we'd meet the mascot and grab a sandwich while we were at it. The concourses, for some reason, were so packed with slow moving drunk people that by the time we bumped into the mascot, he'd already reached left field. We politely asked (we promise you that we asked politely. We swear that there wasn't a single ounce of rudeness in our request) one of his handlers if we could take a picture. The handler totally blew us off! We even repeated our question just in case he didn't hear us. He pushed by us and ignored us! We couldn't believe it! Everyone assumes that New Yorkers are the meanest, coldest, rudest people on the planet, yet we'd never been treated like that by a staff person at a Mets or Yankees game.
Abandoning the idea of getting a photo with the mascot (he no longer seemed worth it), we walked the lower level back toward the first base side to see if we could find the Primanti stand. The concourse was complete and total chaos. We hadn't seen that many intoxicated, badly behaved people since the last Islanders/Rangers playoff game we attended at the Nassau Coliseum. To put things into perspective, hockey fans are insane. The Islanders/Rangers games (let alone a high stakes game like the playoffs) play host to insane hockey fans "on steroids." That's how sloppy these Pirates fans were. They put Islanders/Rangers fans to shame. It was terrifying. The mass of drunken idiots moved at a glacial pace. We reached the area behind home plate just as the pierogies lined up to race around the field's warning track. Since the crowd was hardly moving, we stepped aside to watch the race. video clip.
We could see the pierogies step into the stands via a gate in the wall near left field, so we tried hurrying through the crowd to meet them. Unfortunately, the drunky mcdrunkersons of the stadium were not on the same wavelength as we were. It took us 20 minutes to go 20 feet.
The "free giveaway" for that afternoon's game was a post-game Goo Goo Dolls concert, which sounded pretty awesome. We tried to focus on what a great time that experience would be as opposed to the shit show that we'd been experiencing all day. From the restaurant, we headed back up to our seats to enjoy the concert. If you follow us on Instagram (@travelingbbabes), you can catch a little video snippet of the show.
All in all, we wouldn't say that this was a worst stadium experience than our Philadelphia one, but we'd rank it pretty close to being that awful. Great ballpark. Terrible day.
Jason Grilli grilled cheese sandwich - $15
Primonti (sp?) sandwiches
crowded concourses
belmont stakes
rude pierogie mascot
after game concert - spilled soda
drunk people
1. four slices of sourdough, nine different cheeses, candied bacon, and a leek and granny smith apple compote....I'd punch someone in the face if they gave me one of those.
well better luck in Tampa TBBs
2. It was a huge over priced failure pile!
3. Aww, sorry your Pirate adventure was such a bust. You girls definitely deserve better treatment than that. Aren't these people professionals? Don't they know your celebrity status? And these 'fans' should be parting like the red sea, and throwing ticket stubs at your feet as you grace them on the concourse for Pete's sake. I do give Serena a lot of credit for her restraint, and giving a d!ck punch to the d-bag that jumped into that pic with you (and her hair is bad-ass, too).
Do I remember right you girls will be attending a game in Brooklyn? If so, I think you'll be surprised how great the minor league experience is.
Keep the faith.
1. If only the rest of the world would be just like you and understand how epic we really are! Yes we are going in Aug to a Cyclones game :) | <urn:uuid:6eb9caf4-e62f-44c2-a326-5ea95876592c> | http://www.travelingbaseballbabes.blogspot.com/2014/06/pnc-park.html | en | 0.977032 | 0.028486 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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Ralls cites failed terror rulings in Obama challenge
UNITED STATES: Supreme Court rulings against the federal government over alleged terror organisations are being used by Chinese-owned Ralls Corporation as it seeks to save its lawsuit against President Barack Obama.
The projects would have used Sany's 2MW turbine
The projects would have used Sany's 2MW turbine
Ralls Corp, owned by China's Sany Electric, is suing Obama and the US government for its blocking of Ralls' ownership of four 10MW windfarms in Oregon on the grounds of national security. The projects are located near a US naval base.
Ralls appealed against the judgement, complaining that the government had failed to explain its actions and give Ralls due process (i.e. respect its legal rights).
The Obama administration has sought to dismiss this appeal, which prompted Ralls to file a further response in the courts yesterday. In this latest document, Ralls provides further evidence that, it says, illustrates the government's failure to give due process.
In particular, the document cites a number of cases where individuals or organisations have been arrested or shut down by the State Department on the grounds that they are terrorists. These rulings have been subsequently quashed by the Supreme Court due to the government's refusal to explain its actions and share any evidence with the court and with the suspects.
"The Supreme Court has affirmed that the essence of due process is the requirement that individuals be given notice and an opportunity to be heard, at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner, before the government deprives them of property or liberty," says the Ralls document filed yesterday.
"National security concerns may affect what process is due, but they neither eliminate the core requirement nor grant the government a blank check. That is why even designated terrorists have the right to notice and an opportunity to be heard. For instance, in National Council of Resistance of Iran v. Department of State, the court invalidated the Secretary of State's decision to designate a group as a foreign terrorist organisation (FTO). The court invoked "the fundamental norm of due process jurisprudence" that a party must receive "notice and hearing" before the government deprives it of property, and held that due process was violated where the group was not told that the designation was impending, was not able to see the evidence against it, and had no opportunity to rebut the government's concerns".
Ralls insists that in its own case, it has been denied the due process it deserves as a property owner in the US.
Tim Tingkang Xia, counsel for Ralls Corporation, said: "The federal government took Ralls' wind-farm project without due process of law. It denied Ralls' right to develop a state-approved project without even explaining why. This is a clear and complete violation of the constitutional right to due process."
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New York, NY Gas Explosion, Sept 1889
Front of a New York Mansion Blown Into the Direct---One Man Killed.
New York, Setp[sic]. 28.---A terrible gas explosion followed by a succession of minor explosions wrecked the three-story brown stone dwelling of F. W. Frischen, a wealthy tobacconist, at 121 East Fifty-Sixth Street, today. The entire from of the house was blown down and a portion of the rear wall demolished.
Charles Schalk, a decorator, is supposed to have been killed and his body buried beneath a mass of bricks and broken timbers. The force of the explosion was so great that several houses in the vicinity were badly damaged.
Mr. Frischen and his family are on the ocean on their way home from Europe and their house was in the hands of decorators and painters.
The New Haven Evening Register, New Haven, CT 28 Sept 1889
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Melian Dialogue
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The Melian Dialogue is a dramatic set-piece debate inserted by the ancient Greek historian Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War concerning the invasion of the island of Melos by Athens in 416 BCE. It dramatizes the negotiations between the emissaries of the Athenian invaders and the rulers of Melos. The Athenians demanded that Melos submit and pay tribute or be destroyed. The Athenians appealed to the Melians' sense of pragmatism, citing the overwhelming odds, whereas the Melians appealed to the Athenians' sense of decency and fear of the gods. Neither side was able to sway the other and the negotiations failed. The Athenians subsequently conquered Melos and mercilessly slaughtered or enslaved its inhabitants.
The Melian Dialogue is frequently cited by political scientists and diplomats as a classic case study in political realism.
Historical context[edit]
Melos (indigo), the Delian League (orange), the Peloponnesian League (green), and neutral areas (pale yellow)
The people of Melos were Dorians and kin to the Spartans, but were independent of any of the mainland empires. For years, the Athenians had desired to incorporate Melos into their empire for its wealth and strategic location in the Aegean Sea. In 431 BCE, Athens and Sparta and their respective allies went to war. In 427 BCE, some Melians may have made donations to the Spartan war effort, but otherwise the island remained neutral in the war. In 426 BCE, the Athenians sent a small force to ravage the Melian countryside. In 425 BCE, the Athenians formally demanded a tribute of fifteen talents (equivalent of 6,000 drachmae), but Melos refused to pay.[1]
In the summer of 416 BCE, during a truce with Sparta, Athens sent a fleet of 38 ships carrying an army of 3,000 men, led by the generals Cleomedes and Tisias, to conquer the island. After setting up camp on the island, the Athenians sent emissaries who met in private with the rulers of Melos. The emissaries demanded that Melos join the Athenian-dominated Delian League and pay tribute to Athens or face destruction. The Melians rejected the ultimatum. The Athenians laid siege to the city and withdrew most of their troops from the island to fight elsewhere. For months the Melians withstood the siege, but with reinforcements from Athens and the help of traitors within Melos, the Athenians took the city that winter. The Athenians executed all the adult men they caught and sold the women and children into slavery. They then settled 500 of their own colonists on the island.[2]
In 405 BCE, with Athens losing the war, the Spartan general Lysander expelled the Athenian settlers from Melos and restored the survivors of the original Dorian colony to the island.[1]
The Athenians offer the Melians an ultimatum: surrender and pay tribute to Athens, or be destroyed. The Athenians do not wish to argue over the morality of the situation, because in practice might makes right (or, in their own words, "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must"[3]).
The Melians argue that they are a neutral city and not an enemy, so Athens has no need to conquer them. The Athenians counter that if they accept Melos' neutrality and independence, they would look weak: people would think they spared Melos because they were not strong enough to conquer it.
The Melians argue that an invasion will alarm the other neutral Greek states, who will become hostile to Athens for fear of being invaded themselves. The Athenians counter that the Greek states on the mainland are unlikely to act this way. It is the independent island states and the disgruntled subjects that Athens has already conquered that are more likely to take up arms against Athens.
The Melians argue that it would be shameful and cowardly of them to submit without a fight. The Athenians counter that the debate is not about honor but about self-preservation.
The Melians argue that though the Athenians are far stronger, there is still a chance they could win. The Athenians counter that hope is an irrational emotion when one faces poor chances of victory and utter ruin in defeat.
The Melians believe that they will have the assistance of the gods because their position is morally just. The Athenians counter that the gods will not intervene because it is the natural order of things for the strong to dominate the weak.
The Melians argue that their Spartan kin will come to their defense. The Athenians counter that the Spartans are a practical people who never put themselves at risk when their interests are not at stake, and rescuing Melos would be particularly risky since Athens has the stronger navy.
The Athenians express their shock at the Melians' lack of realism. They say that there is no shame in submitting to a stronger enemy, especially one who is offering reasonable terms. The Melians do not change their minds and politely dismiss the envoys.
See also[edit]
1. ^ a b Sparkes (1982). In Renfrew & Wagstaff, p 49
2. ^ Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War, 5.84-116
3. ^ This is Crawley's translation. Warner translates this line as: "the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept." Jowett translates this line as: "the powerful exact what they can, and the weak grant what they must."
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Despite everything...
spn - my home is the road [my music the
*swiffers off the LJ dust*
spn - epic love story
Being snowed in seems like as good an oppurtunity as any to get off of Facebook and back on the writing track. To start somewhere small and find that groove, because I'm afraid I've really rather lost the touch but then again maybe not. It's like the proverbial bike, right?
Only partially feeling it and not exactly...inspired. But I'll do it anyway. Should I pick up the threads of one original thing or the other right away, or should I fall back into the comforting non-pressure of fandom-y wonders? Decisions, decisions.
...because I could happily (shamefully?)jump on the Vampire Diaries train if I let myself. Augh.
This post brought to you by the Get-Your-Shit-Together-Maria program
spn - my home is the road [my music the
Dean Winchester vs. Eric Northman
Prettiest. Fight. EVER.
....I mean, no one would win and they'd end the night with a pat on the back and a wink, because I say so....but think of how PRETTY it would be.
Also, if I had the ability to shape-shift, I'd like to be able to change into a wise old Asian man.
Just because.
spn - my home is the road [my music the
Have not been posting. Too busy obsessing over True Blood. A love me my vampire shows.
Except for, you know, most of the vampire shows on tv now. But I make an exception for shows that include tall blond Viking vampires. Ah, Eric. Mrawr.
What else...oh. Went to Vegas for the first time and promptly fell in love with the place. 100 degree weather? Yes, please, may I have another? A city with no real concept of time seems ideal for me.
Have been enjoying all the sun and heat waves. Nevermind that I was born and raised in Boston. I have very little tolerance for the cold and I'm milking the summer for all it's worth until I can move somewhere where it is always hot and bright.
Walking through Whole Foods yesterday when a hipster strolled on past. There are lots of hipsters around, but this one was special. This one was carrying a gold elephant statue through the grocery store with care and a nonchalent attitude. No idea why or where he got it from. It was possibly one of the best things ever.
Aaaand...while ninja-ing my way into an apartment building the other day [something I seem to do with alarming frequency], a nice service man offered to just let me in.
Service Man: Aw, I'll let you in. You just can't tell anyone.
Me: I won't! Thank you!
Service Man: I mean, you look nice. You're not a murderer or anything, right?
Me: Not yet!
Luckily he laughed instead of calling security. The sad thing is, it didn't even occur to me to just say 'No, of course not'. That would be silly.
Oh, Failbender
spn - my home is the road [my music the
So I was going to seeThe Last Airbender for the lulz, but apperantly the movie is too depressingly bad to even laugh at. This makes me sad. I wasn't expecting a good movie at all, but I thought something would salvage it at least a little. I mean, I like to mock things but if the reviews are any indication, the movie crosses beyond the mocklands and into the black abyss.
BUT then I found this review and it makes so much sense.
My favorite bit: Airbender doesn't just poke fun at its entire genre, with its hyperactive mix of randomness and blandness - it actually MST3Ks its audience...Aang and Sokka become Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot, staring out of the screen and bemusedly riffing on our feeble attempts to invest in this saga.
Hahaha.....ugh. I knew it was going to be downhill once I saw Zuko. He has all his hair right from the beginning! How are we supposed to track his redemption if his hair is not growing along with him?!
Anyhoodle. I probably won't see the movie now. I just rewatched the first season and remember how friggin EPIC and beautiful and emotional the finale is. That will only highlight the fail. At least I managed to get my brother addicted to the series now =D
On the other hand, I loved the Doctor Who finale! Hearts on Amy! Hearts on Eleven! They remind me of Ten and Rose <3 back in series two, before the angst kicked into over-drive. So very Peter and Wendy =3
...I still prefer my Doctor pinstriped though.
Bleeding Hearts grow best in a graveyard
spn - my home is the road [my music the
Or, at the very least, they enjoy growing in graveyards in Winchester. So many of them are blooming around my grandmother's headstone, even though we didn't plant them.
another possible SPN ending
spn - my home is the road [my music the
Hey. I'm not great, but I'm able. Which is something.
And this time I'm not drunk!writing.
Possibly because I have work tomorrow and my Jack Daniels has disappeared. I'm inclined to blame my brother for this catastrophe.
Anyways. Fic...thing. Sort of. Written about twenty minutes ago because the Season finale is tomorrow.
SPN: The sad thing is...Collapse )
steady on
spn - my home is the road [my music the
Lunch break in Boston = wind tunnels, clear skies, and pretty angles.
Yesterday I thought to myself "You know, I really really REALLY miss Jack Sparrow". Because I do. Then I turn on the tv tonight and 'Dead Man's Chest' is on. I turn it on in time to laugh at the threesome fight and sniffle when the Kraken/Sarlaac destorys Jack and his Pearl. Having not watched this in quite awhile, it had an affect.
So I look up the next Pirates movie. I had heard about it being confirmed and the basic premise...but apperantly the title has been released. PotC: On Stranger Tides. It sounds like a sitcom, starring Captains Sparrow and Barbossa. Oh, the wacky misadventures they shall have. Like the Odd Couple. Or Two and a Half Men. On a boat. Oi. It can't be worse than the 2nd and 3rd movies though. Right? I mean, Jack will actually be important in this one. And have his ship back in one piece. Right? Right.
I could happily go back to when 'Curse of the Black Pearl' was first released and live there forever. I distinctly remember it being a wonderful and happy time all around.
Things I see on the side of the road...
spn - my home is the road [my music the
Today I observed things on the side of the road. In particular, I took note of objects while stopped at red lights. Today that list includes:
- an empty Coke cup
- an empty and crushed french fry container
- a pile of cigarettes [literally a pile. I can only assume that either someone smoked an entire pack while waiting for the light to turn green, or everyone just hopped on the bandwagon in this particular hot spot]
- What appeared to be part of a broken television set [there was nothing on, apperantly]
And, finally
- a cucumber with a condom carefully rolled on [always practice safe vegetation?]
I don't even know.
Oh man, you guys, remember the Gin Blossoms?
spn - my home is the road [my music the
You should. Because they were awesome and from the 90s. Which makes it doubley awesome. I had one of those 'Holy cow, I used to love this song!' moment the other day and have since been looping it.
Srsly. 70s may have had some of the best rock, but the 90s were amazing. There were few bad 90s songs. Just great, good, and hilarious. Like Nirvana. And all those Savage Garden songs. And the Cardigans's 'Lovefool'! AND CREEP OMG!
And 'The Thong Song'.
....Okay, so I spent two days working with kids who were born between 2005 and 2007. It made me feel old and nostalgiac. I miss my gelly sandals and wrist-slap bracelets. And side-poytails. Sigh.
[Sidenote: This icon is perhaps one of the most appropriate icons for me ever. Bahaha.]
Crazy delicious
spn - my home is the road [my music the
I was given a bag of Jazz apples today. I had never had a Jazz apple before. I guess it's the new 'It' apple. I know this because there are billboards advertising it.
Oh man.
It's like someone got a bunch of Fuji apples drunk on champagne then handed them over to me for safe-keeping.
Which is clearly a very bad idea.
Also I was sick again. With the Devil's virus apperantly because omgawd doom
Also, the people on tv just said that the only people who should get tattoos are people who are gorgeous and have model-esque rockin bodies. And most people have tattoos that are ugly, unless they choose the kind that every other person in L.A. and Miami have.
I really think those are the last people who should get any ink done. But that's just me.
spn - my home is the road [my music the
He's such a puppy.
An amazing gravity-defying puppy.
I may or may not have woken up half of my hotel by screaming when he won gold. Yay!
Also, am now obsessed with White Collar. I watched the whole season [so far] while on the treadmill last week and holy cow. So good. Neal Caffrey is made of awesome. And the slash practically writes its self. How charming!
spn - my home is the road [my music the
Reasons why the opening ceremony for the Vancouver Olympics was better than Beijing's:
1) Winter games are just better (imo...but seriously, they are).
2) Saun White is the most adorable thing ever. He's like a giddy Irish Setter on a snowboard. With floppy hair.
3) Apolo Anton Ohno being...there...somewhere. He might not have even been at the actual ceremony. But his SPIRIT was present and probably wearing spandex.
4) Both 2 and 3 kind of contribute to 1. Which is like a super combo attack.
5) Fiddles. Fiddles, people. Being played by awesome punkish dancers. With sparkler shoes. Did I mention the fiddles?
That tops a zillion raver-drummers-platform-walkers-ect any day.
....really, though, Saun White = Irish Setter puppy. I WANT TO KEEP HIM IN MY POCKET FOR ALWAYS.
I think I should go to bed before I start in on a 'Why Supernatural is The Best Thing Ever, Furreals' because that will just be repeating about a hundred other posts. but omg I love Mary and Dean and Cas so damn much ahhhhhhhhhh some other time....going now.
If I were a Demon....
spn - my home is the road [my music the
So, I was thinking about Supernatural. And the demons in Supernatural. And how when a person is possessed they are not likely to get past any pesky salt lines. That's gonna stop you in your tracks, right? And then NOTHING will get done.
I decided that if I were a demon, I would so totally carry a leaf-blower around with me. It would solve a lot of problems and save a lot of time. Salt line barring your way into a motel room? Just pull out the leaf-blower and WHOOSH. Gone. You now have a straight shot at any hottie Hunter; such as a Winchester.
Not saying I root for the bad guys in this case, but really....doesn't it make sense? Plus it would be hilarious.
Dean: *wakes up* Mmrf. Dude...what the hell is that sound?
Sam: *blearily* Is that a leaf-blower?
Demon: *busts in door* I'm evil, armed, and SO glad my meatsuit was a landscaper.
.....I should write for Supernatural. It would be 5 times more retarded.
So. It's snowing.
spn - my home is the road [my music the
"Someone shook us and we're a snowglobe!" says my Mother.
Not in a snowglobe, mind, but apperantly we are one.
Yeah. I'm not sure if she just missed a word in there or was having some kind of strange existential revelation.
spn - my home is the road [my music the
Wednesday Darling
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Take the 2-minute tour ×
I've a shapefile of roads data. It contains information about terrain of road segments, i.e., hilly, flat, undulating, etc. I want to determine gradient of every road segment. I know this might require corresponding raster data and a lot of image processing. I also understand that I can use GRASS for this kind of analysis. But I've never attempted a task like this before.
For those who have, is GRASS my best bet? And, must I get the corresponding raster data? Is there a way I can do this without having to get my hands dirty with image processing algorithms. In case I must get the corresponding raster data, is there a source I can get reliable raster data that is not more than 4 years old?
Your contribution will be highly appreciated.
UPDATE: There will be a need to split a road segment that has both ascending and descending gradients. Overlaying the roads vector onto a raster layer is one of the options I think can work. But I don't have the raster data. Any idea where I can get raster data with sufficient accuracy and resolution will be appreciated. Can GRASS accomplish the splitting, and the analysis. I'd prefer open source tools for now as I'm still experimenting.
UPDATE: The purpose of the analysis is to come up with an algorithm that calculates economic well being of a point on a map, taking into account its accessibility (distance from the road, terrain, among other factors). Also, the algorithm is to also aid in decision making in relief food distribution.
UPDATE: I've got some material here on terrain analysis. Any advice is still welcome.
share|improve this question
What happens when a road segment spans both an uphill and downhill stretch? What would you want do in that scenario, average or split the road segment? The latter would be quite complicated. You also didn't specify where your study area is. – nagytech Aug 31 '12 at 7:47
@Geoist, I've just got the problem definition. I'm trying to come up with an algorithm that would help determine economic state of a geographical area given its accessibility, among other factors. I also want to construct an algorithm that gives an efficient route to a point. The algorithm should not only consider distance, but also terrain (if the terrain is a hill, I would like to know its gradient). Other factors like whether the road is murram or tarmacked are also to be taken into account. – okello Aug 31 '12 at 10:08
3 Answers 3
Heres what i would do:
1. Overlay the roads layer with a dtm layer, this way, all the vertices of the segments would get a Z coordinate
2. Calculate the gradient based on the segment length and height difference between the start and end point of the segment
3. Classify the segments based on the gradient value as required
Tools i would use: FME
PS: When you say road segments, you probably think of them as segments in network topology, ie, one segment may be a polyline, not a simple line. Its up to you to decide wheter you want the gradient calculated for such a segment or perhaps for a single line
share|improve this answer
Thanks a lot, @U2ros. I was thinking of the same thing; I've to overlay the road layer onto a raster layer. There will be a need to split a segment that has both ascending and descending gradients. As for the tool, I was thinking of GRASS, but I can give FME a try. Lemme check it out. – okello Aug 31 '12 at 10:12
Okay, about the splitting part. You probably want the polyline split at local maximums and minimums. You could first split it with a very dense interval, like 5m, then you could identify which of these new vertices represent actual extremes by comparing previous/next vertex z values. Im not familiar with GRASS myself, so im not sure. What i described would still be doable in FME. I also think theres an actuall spatial analysis you can perform in arcGIS, cant remember which one it is, that could find such extremes along a path for you – U2ros Aug 31 '12 at 11:20
Okay, read your updates. What you are doing is COST analysis :) For that you could rasterize the roads onto the DTM itself, giving it a very low cost value - just an idea – U2ros Aug 31 '12 at 11:23
Thanks for the suggestion, @U2ros. – okello Aug 31 '12 at 11:45
I have FME in similiar use. LAS/contours/raster data & line vectors -> SurfaceDraper = Line which follows surface, easy, fast and costs.
My QGIS 1.8 sextante toolbox gives me GRASS command "v.drape", wich needs raster data for elevation, So it should be "easy" to do in QGIS or GRASS
share|improve this answer
Thanks @simplexio. Now, I need to get raster data for Kenya for this exercise. I'll search around for that but if you know where I can look, I'll appreciate an advice. – okello Aug 31 '12 at 11:47
In GRASS GIS, first use v.split to add sufficiently vertices, then v.to.db to upload the slopes for each segment (parameter "slope": slope steepness of vector line or boundary).
For elevation datasets, see http://grass.osgeo.org/wiki/Global_datasets
share|improve this answer
Thanks @markusN. I'll try these suggestions this weekend, and let you guys in on my findings. – okello Aug 31 '12 at 19:04
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Shailene Woodley Glows But Maggie Q Steals the Spotlight by Going Commando at Divergent Premiere
Maggie Q, Shailene Woodley, Divergent Matt Sayles/Invision/AP
Shailene Woodley, your sequin one-shoulder gown is beautiful and you look stunning, but please hold. Maggie Q isn't wearing any underwear!
In a very successful attempt at stealing all of the red carpet's attention, actress Maggie Q showed up to the Divergent movie premiere in Los Angeles wearing a ultra-sexy black dress that revealed her bare bod (and lack of undergarments) down her side.
The risky look was a win for the 34-year-old Nikita star, who made it work by keeping everything else very minimal so that all eyes were on her cut-outs. Mission accomplished.
PHOTOS: Check out more pictures from movie premieres!
Shailene Woodley, Divergent Matt Sayles/Invision/AP
Meanwhile, Woodley went a different route when it came to her red carpet fashion.
Shailene dazzled—literally—in a jeweled taupe one-shoulder gown that showed off some leg and accentuated her curves. Co-star Kate Winslet wowed in a form-fitting red gown that once again left fans stunned at just how great the actress looks after just giving birth to her son Bear in December.
After Winslet was cast as Jeanine Matthews in Divergent, she shared some important lessons with her co-star Shailene Woodley, whose profile has been on the rise since she was cast as Tris Prior in 2012.
"We've had a lot of conversations and we continue to have them," Winslet tells E! News' Jason Kennedy. "She's a gorgeous girl and I feel really very excited for her, partly because she's going to be able to handle all of this. She's a very gentle grounded person and she's going to be absolutely fine. We just chat about the experiences that I have had and the things that I have learned, and how to stay true herself and what to say what not to say, but more importantly, to enjoy it, too."
Divergent hits theaters this Friday.
Kate Winslet, Divergent Matt Sayles/Invision/AP
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How do I fight Sarcophagus again?
#1ChaoskerzxPosted 10/23/2013 12:27:42 AM
Just finished the 2nd Arc and I am Taming bosses and hit a wall, How do I fight Leon's Guardian form again? I cannot access the place before.
Playing: Rune Factory 4 and Pokemon X/Y
3DS FC: 1848 - 1758 - 9305 Safari Fairy Type (Jigglypuff, Snubull, Floette)
#2chaos_aureliusPosted 10/23/2013 12:37:05 AM
afaik, you need to go finish that arc first
later, Leon Karnak will open again, with lv100+ monsters inside and lv150+ 1+2 mid bosses, and that Sarcophagus you're looking for will be at the very back... yes, after those two stone guardians
I've seen the strong friendships you all share. But it seems that every single bit of it is nothing more than an illusion
Hotaru ~ KonoSora
#3Zarren364Posted 10/23/2013 1:35:06 AM
Yeah, I think you need to initiate the third arc in order to have access to that room again. Right now I can get to the top of the tower, but as I'm still in the transition between the two, I cannot access that room yet. | <urn:uuid:b37857c8-adc9-47ec-89f1-3e72e19577bc> | http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/635388-rune-factory-4/67591248 | en | 0.88892 | 0.053275 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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Day Care Disrespect: Why What We Call Child Care Matters
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In March, a study was published in Science magazine that contained remarkable statistics about the effects of good child care on later life. Briefly, it was found that not only did people who received stimulating, appropriate care in their earliest days have stronger cognitive abilities, compared to a control group who did not, they were also notably healthier physically once they reached adulthood. This study makes plain what logic has always dictated but what we in the United States don't always act on at the institutional level. Good child care from the earliest days -- both at home and when the parents are at work -- is absolutely crucial to the development of healthy, productive adults.
The authors of the study use the term "high quality early childhood program" to describe the kind of care that the children who grew up to be healthier received. But when the story was reported in the New York Times, the paper used the term "full-time day care" to describe the program. For those of us in the field of early childhood development, the term day care, so common that even an august institution like the New York Times would use it, day care is a maddening phrase. Here's why: the term day care diminishes how complex and nuanced offering good quality child care is.
Despite the millions of people who must use child care outside the home, for many of us, day care, unlike the term preschool, conjures up visions of children warehoused all day in an uninviting, unstimulating environment. This stereotype has been fostered by the unevenness in quality of the early childhood care that is available. Unfortunately, there are terrible child care programs like this -- but the best of them provide care that serves the child and the family far beyond the "day" and well into the rest of the family's life.
The term "day care" emphasizes the fact that the child is away from home all day as opposed to the fact that what's happening (if it's going as it should) is that the child is being molded for life -- and if he or she spends 40 hours a week in a child care program, it can be as important or arguably more important than time at home. Further, in a good child care program, the parents learn as well, as is further demonstrated in the Science study. Work like educating children in many ways -- from teaching math concepts and letter recognition, to helping them learn how to label and understand their emotions, and how to get along with others -- and the list goes on, and on, and on. To genuinely care for the child as a whole human being with thoughts, feelings, needs, and the ability to learn, no matter their age. Child care professionals care for children, so we should call the work that they do "child care" or even better "early childhood education."
The term day care prioritizes the "day" over the "care" -- and days don't need any care. They just roll along on their own. We know children do not roll along successfully on their own. We know the good outcomes that can occur when they receive good care -- this recent study proves it yet again. And that's why it's so crucial that these programs and the skilled people who serve them need to be named properly. High quality early childhood education comes in many forms -- and its benefits last far more than a day. | <urn:uuid:026c8c2c-9cb4-422b-80de-cacdca91219d> | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/katherine-rose/day-care-disrespect-why-w_b_5353816.html?ir=Parents | en | 0.97504 | 0.032492 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Dr. Drago's Madcap Chase
MobyRank MobyScore
Windows 3.x
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Dr. Drago's Madcap Chase (a.k.a. Die total verrückte Rallye) is a strategy game for up to eight players with similarities to board games like Monopoly.
The players join a rally through Europe and North Africa which consists of several stages. At the beginning of each stage a TV moderator names the capital of a country. The one who gets there first will win a lot of money. At first there are only Western European countries available but eventually the Berlin Wall falls and you can enter the former Eastern bloc.
You play on a map of Europe consisting of many fields merged with each other through lines. Before every turn a player dices and then he can move his figure over the fields. You can freely decide the route to your target but you have to notice on which field you would end your turn. There are:
• Red fields: When you end your turn on a red field, you'll lose money.
• Blue fields: Money will be credited to your account.
• Yellow fields: You get a playing card. You can use these cards before every turn to your own advantage (i.e. use five dices instead of one) or to your opponent's disadvantage (i.e. having him transferred to a corner of the map).
• Purple fields: On a purple field you can buy or sell cards.
• Gray fields: Gray fields are cities. In a city you can buy buildings and earn rent every turn. When you own every building in a city, you have a monopoly and earn more rent. Contrary to Monopoly you don't have to pay anything when you come to a city where one of the other players have buildings.
• Black and white fields: These fields represent the capital of a country. Buying buildings there is much more expensive but you will earn more rent.
Another aspect of the game is Dr. Drago. Drago is played by the computer and appears after stage one and will follow the player who had the highest distance to the target of the previous stage. After every turn Drago will waste parts of your money, sell or buy buildings to terrible prices or destroy your cards. To get rid of him you can use a Drago playing card (if you own one and Drago has not ripped it to pieces yet) or overtake one of the players. When you pass them, Drago will leave you and chase your opponent.
The winner of the game is the one who has the most money on his account after all stages. You could even win without winning a single stage but it's more difficult because you won't make that much profit with trying to end your turns on blue fields. And of course, Drago will haunt you the whole time when you are cruising in Northern Africa while all the stages end somewhere else.
Dr. Drago's Madcap Chase Windows 3.x Player won a card (German Version).
Dr. Drago's Madcap Chase Windows 3.x Trading cards board (German Version).
Dr. Drago's Madcap Chase Windows 3.x "Come on bored people, let´s go on a race through Europe." Dr. Drago looks through the window and wants to participate in the race.
Dr. Drago's Madcap Chase Windows 3.x Being the first in Vienna (Wien) (German Version).
Alternate Titles
• "D.T.V.R" -- Common German abbreviation
• "Die total verrückte Rallye" -- German Title
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The Press Says
Power Play Windows May, 1995 79 out of 100 79
PC Games (Germany) Windows 3.x May, 1995 74 out of 100 74
High Score Windows 3.x Oct, 1995 3 out of 5 60
PC Player (Germany) Windows 3.x Jun, 1995 50 out of 100 50
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Contributed to by Wizo (29328) | <urn:uuid:cfba25e2-d4eb-42eb-a1ed-1cfdc26009c9> | http://www.mobygames.com/game/dr-dragos-madcap-chase | en | 0.943719 | 0.034198 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Faces of War is a sequel to the award wining title from last year. Faces of War combines real-time strategy with advanced tactics and the ability to control a single unit in battle. Faces of War immerses players right in the heat of WWII action. The game includes all the highlights of the original and provides even better physics and unit models, complex team AI and new tactical opportunities. New unit commands such as move to cover and charge position help team survival while new personal moves like climbing over fences and aimed-shots keep individual soldiers fighting. Four new campaigns give players an opportunity to command American, English, Soviet and German troops during world-renowned battles that include D-Day and the storming of Berlin. On top of all that players will also have a chance to fight through new winter missions that give them a whole new experience. (taken from 3dgamers.com)
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'Gangster Squad''s Mickey Cohen: 9 Bizarre Facts About the Real-Life Gangster
Jan 11, 2013
Sean Penn's portrayal of real-life mobster Mickey Cohen in Gangster Squad is screamingly over-the-top. But so, too, was the man himself. Here are nine strange facts about Cohen that didn't make it into the movie—and their absence makes Penn's acting job look downright understated.
Back when Mickey Cohen was still a 20-year-old featherweight boxer, he went down to Tijuana to fight a guy named Carpenter in front of a bunch of mob bosses Cohen was determined to impress. He was the better fighter, but Carpenter was a workhorse who wouldn't stay down even when Cohen socked him good. After the sixth time Carpenter picked himself up off the mat, Mickey attacked. As he described it later, “I finally got so upset by his not staying down that I jump in and start biting his ear off. So help me, I got it nearly bitten off before the referee can pry us apart. My opponent runs around hollerin' with a glove over his bloody ear. The referee hangs on to me, 'You got him dead! What do you want to do—eat him?'”
Sean Penn could make a sweat sock look brilliant and charismatic, but the real-life Cohen wasn't nearly as compelling on first glance. Unlike handsome Bugsy Siegel or Arnold “The Brain” Rothstein, the fixer behind the 1919 White Sox scandal who reportedly had an IQ of 150, Mickey Cohen wasn't much to look at or talk to. Barely 5'4” and overweight, Cohen had five missing teeth, a scar under each eye, and an addiction to platform shoes. Most people described him as “simian.” LAPD Police Chief Parker went further: “He is essentially stupid. He is heavyset and heavy-browed and quite ignorant.”
Though Cohen was a hustler from an early age—he started on the streets when he was three—he didn't have a firm grasp on reading or math until his 30s. In fact, he was so bad at numbers, when he had to divide a score between his fellow crooks, he'd arrange the cash by dollar amount and pass out the bills one at a time in a circle. Years later, Cohen hired a tutor to improve his vocabulary and boasted to the media that he was reading War and Peace. When his friend's wife asked to borrow his copy, he told her he never intended to open the book but wasn't going to let her have it for long. “I got a war and peace of my own to worry about. Why should I worry about Tolstoy's troubles?” he said. “I want it back 'cause it leaves a hole on the shelf when it's gone. It matches the color of them other books.”
Even as a teenager, Cohen immediately reinvested his little swindles in improving his image. If he stole $100 in the morning, that afternoon he'd buy two $50 hats. Eventually, he bought himself a $20,000 wardrobe complete with 1,500 pairs of socks and 50 pairs of $50 silk pajamas. He had his underwear embroidered with his initials and stitched “Mickey” in blue thread on his shirt pockets. He needed variety—he'd change clothes up to five times a day.
Cohen's grooming ritual was elaborate. First, a hot shower of no less than one hour, during which he'd use a whole bar of Cashmere Pink Bouquet soap. He didn't want to scratch his skin with fabric, so he'd blanket the bathroom floor in a fresh carpet of towels and airdry his body by running back and forth and dusting himself with baby powder. Slicking back his hair took another hour, and by the time he finally got his shoes on, he'd have to rewash his hands several times to make up for touching something unclean. Naturally, he was late for everything. Not only was Cohen four hours late for his first date with future wife LaVonne, a high-class redhead who inspired Emma Stone's character in Gangster Squad, he was even late for his own wedding. As a sidenote, his best man was William “Stumpy” Zevon, father of quirky '70s musician Warren Zevon.
Cohen's mania for washing his hands was actually full on obsessive-compulsive, though that lingo wasn't around at the time. He traced his fixation on feeling clean back to his days of being a paperboy when his hands were constantly stained with ink. Every morning, he'd make his assistants trade out the used money in his cash wad for fresh bills, and while in prison, he had the guards smuggle him in six rolls of toilet paper a day. Worse, as a teenager, he contracted gonorrhea before there was an antibiotic cure, so his physical repulsion to germs extended even to women. Though he dated burlesque tarts like Candy Barr and Beverly Hills, they'd rarely kiss, and at brothels, he'd never sit down in a chair.
For most people, such extreme OCD would have wrecked their lives. But for Cohen, it saved his. During his bloody gang wars with rival Jack Dragna, his acquaintance Jimmy Frattiano set him up for a hit at the clothing store Cohen used for a front. Frattiano and his family strolled in, said their hellos to Cohen, then walked out and gave the signal to assassins who shot up the joint through the window. Cohen's top lieutenant Hinky Rothman was killed, but Mickey was fine—after Frattiano shook his hand good-bye and left, Cohen had immediately run to the bathroom to wash away the germs.
Sure, Cohen trafficked in booze, but he didn't partake. As an eight-year-old aspiring bootlegger who hung around poolhalls, he tried cigarettes and alcohol early and hated them both. Even as an adult, he shunned smoking or drinking because he didn't enjoy the taste.
But what he did love was sweets. His second arrest at age nine was for stealing a whole crate of Abba Zabbas. As an adult, when ice cream stores were closed, he'd pound on the door and offer to buy a whole tub of chocolate or rum raisin. He lived on French pastries, and when he got rich enough to build his dream home in Brentwood, he installed a soda fountain and a special freezer just for ice cream. While in prison, he bribed the officers to let him import cakes and cookies from his personal chef, which caused a minor scandal that forced the warden to insist that Cohen wasn't the only prisoner with access to ice cream. And when he was released, he concocted the perfect front for his illegal operations: He launched the Carousel Ice Cream Parlor in Brentwood.
Mickey was a publicity hound who got in good with newspaper men early. By eight, he'd convinced the city editor of the Los Angeles Examiner to let him sleep in the bathroom so he could be the first on the block with copies of the early edition. He was well connected at the studios, especially with Columbia boss Harry Cohn, who put up with him and Bugsy controlling all the extras in Hollywood and setting up “insurance businesses” as shakedowns to keep sets under control. And the execs would ask favors in return, like when they had Cohen smooth over a union fight between the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Conference of Studio Unions, who were throwing bricks at each other outside MGM and Warner Bros.
Later, Cohn sent Mickey out to Vegas to convince Sammy Davis Jr. to dump Kim Novak before he ruined her career. Cohen rankled at the racism, but did the favor to save Sammy's life before he got whacked, which was a legitimate threat. It wasn't the first or last time he waded into the love lives of the stars. Cohen had a string of male studs he used to seduce starlets for his own blackmail use and for stag videos he'd sell coast to coast. Rumor is his goons Sam LoCigno and Georgie Piscitelle filmed themselves with Marilyn Monroe, which Cohen then threatened her with unless she reported back on JFK's opinions on supporting the Israeli state. He's also alleged to have set Lana Turner up with abusive meathead Johnny Stompanato, and sold copies of their sex tape for $50 a pop. Though he even gave Stompanato $900 to buy her daughter Cheryl a pony, when Cheryl later stabbed Stompanato to death, Cohen lamented her acquittal in the newspapers—though he tastefully referred to the dead man as merely his “bodyguard.”
Johnny Stompanato wasn't Mickey's weirdest buddy. In 1950, then-House Representative Richard Nixon ran a nasty, anti-Semitic campaign against standing Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas, funded in part by Mickey Cohen and his pals. Cohen lent Nixon an office on 8th and Olive in downtown L.A., covered all his printing materials, and even threw him a lavish fundraiser at the Knickerbocker Hotel. When his dinner recouped only $55,000—$20,000 short of his goal—Mickey locked all the doors and said, “Nobody's going home until this quota's met.” It soon was. Why would a Jewish mobster with no interest in politics align himself with a largely unknown candidate? In the two years after Nixon's successful bid, his campaign manager was the legal defender for 221 mob cases, most of which ended in light fines or suspended sentences. After Nixon ascended to the presidency, a then-incarcerated Cohen felt abandoned, grumbling, “I never had no idea this Nixon guy could go anywhere.”
Even weirder was Cohen's mutually beneficial relationship with preacher Billy Graham. After Cohen's first stint in jail, he befriended the then-young evangelist to rehabilitate his image. For Graham, it was great publicity. “I explained to Mickey, as simply and forthrightly as I could, the gospel from A to Z,” he told the press, going on to offer Cohen $15,000 just for showing up at one of his religious rallies at Madison Square Garden. Cohen went, but Graham stiffed him $5,000. Later, Cohen loudly assured everyone who would listen that the Jewish former boxer who'd fought with a Star of David on his shorts had never seriously considered becoming a Christian, even going so far as to speak out about it during a live interview with Mike Wallace in 1957.
Naturally, Mickey Cohen was also friends with William Randolph Hearst. The newspaper magnate had known of L.A.'s most famous hustler for years, but Cohen finally got on his good side in 1949 after he waged a protracted battle to save a widow from foreclosure. Touched, Hearst asked his papers to watch language when talking about Cohen, saying, “A man who does a thing like this isn't a hoodlum. You can call him a gambler, but I wish you'd see that he gets a fair break.”
Twenty-five years later son Randolph Hearst reached out to Cohen to see if he could use his underworld connections to try to find his kidnapped daughter Patty, who had by this point been brainwashed by the Symbionese Liberation Army. Cohen tracked her down to Cleveland—or at least, he said he did—but upon hearing that Patty would likely be arrested and sentenced to decades in jail, he backed out of the deal, telling Hearst, “I don't bring nobody in to go to prison.”
In reality, Mickey Cohen lived a long and mostly happy life. He survived 12 assassination attempts and two stints in prison (he and Al Capone are the only two tax invaders ever sent to Alcatraz), and still managed to die peacefully in his sleep in a posh Los Angeles apartment in 1976 at the age of 62. He's interred in a mausoleum at the Hillside Cemetery in Culver City between Moe Howard and Jack Benny.
Works Cited Above:
Hollywood's Celebrity Gangster: The Incredible Life and Times of Mickey Cohen, by Brad Lewis (2007)
Follow along on Twitter @TheAmyNicholson and @Moviesdotcom.
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The Burning Question
In the movie Unbroken, what is the name of the character played by Jack O'Connell
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Lou Zamperini | <urn:uuid:ca3b447a-6bbb-45d1-9276-19a4b8755b50> | http://www.movies.com/movie-news/mickey-cohen-facts/10906?wssac=164&wssaffid=news | en | 0.983522 | 0.05886 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Robert Skidelsky en <![CDATA[Robert Skidelsky: The welfare state did not cause the crash. So why is Osborne cutting it?]]> <div class="field field-name-field-subheadline field-type-text-long field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <p> If a government has to cut its spending, it is much better to tax the rich than starve the poor.</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-node-image field-type-image field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-fullnode-image" src="" width="510" height="348" alt="The view from the European Central Bank. Photo: Getty" title="The view from the European Central Bank. Photo: Getty" /></figure></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-nodeimage-title field-type-text field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">The view from the European Central Bank. Photo: Getty</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p> The Institute for Fiscal Studies <span style="font-size: 11pt;">(IFS) has warned that there will need to be “colossal” cuts in </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">public spending to balance the books by 2018-19 – at least £55bn extra. On 4 December, the day after the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement, the director of the IFS, Paul Johnson, said that it wasn’t for lack of effort that the deficit hasn’t fallen. Rather, it was “because the economy performed so poorly in the first half of the parliament, hitting revenues </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">very hard”.</span></p> <p> Very true – but what Johnson omitted to say was that the main reason the economy performed so poorly in the first half of the parliament was because George Osborne was busy cutting the deficit. He should have been expanding it!</p> <p> This is something that expert commentators lack the guts to say because that would brand them as Keynesians. They may admit that fiscal consolidation has made economic recovery “more challenging”. But they don’t tell us why. This theoretical gap leaves them without a reputable story of why the economy behaved so poorly. They are in familiar “blown-off-course” territory.</p> <p> Every possible event that might affect growth, however fleetingly, has been summoned in aid of explaining the failure of the economy to grow: the Greek crisis, the rising price of oil, the extra bank holiday on the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the closure of shops during the London Olympics, snow and floods – everything except the real reason, which is that a deficiency of private demand was not being offset by public-sector investment.</p> <p> The latest explanation of why the Chancellor has failed to meet his deficit targets concentrates on the nature of the labour market recovery. The government has congratulated itself on the fall in unemployment. We would expect falling unemployment to increase tax revenues and reduce public spending. However, this will not happen if government policy has created lots of new, mostly low-wage jobs whose holders pay no direct taxes and that must be propped up with benefits.</p> <p> The catastrophic fall in productivity that we are now seeing was planted in the two and a half years of stagnation that followed the creation of the coalition in 2010. In October 2012, the Office for Budget Responsibility found that the economy had grown by only 0.9 per cent between Q1 of 2010 and Q2 of 2012, while its June 2010 forecast was 5.7 per cent growth over the same period. Subsequent upward revision has made these figures less dire but there is no doubt that Osborne and his advisers seriously underestimated the adverse effects of austerity on investment.</p> <p> As is now increasingly recognised, this extended period of stagnation reduced the long-term growth rate of the economy through the destruction of both human skills and physical capital.</p> <p> Despite his warning about the size of the cuts to come, Paul Johnson said that they could be achieved. He added, however, that they would require a “reimagining” (or, put another way, shrinking) of the state. Two questions arise. First, what effect will shrinking the state have on the economy? Second, what effect will it have on the polity?</p> <p> On the first, Johnson seems to assume that the economy will go on growing at about 2.5 per cent a year, even as the deficit is being cut to zero. This is highly optimistic because the cutting is simultaneously reducing private incomes. It may be possible, by sufficiently heroic austerity, for a government to keep revenues for a time running ahead of cuts but at what <em>level</em> of GDP will the budget eventually be balanced? Certainly lower than it would have been without the cuts.</p> <p> The cuts not only change the level of GDP but also its composition and, therefore, the relations between the state and its citizens. This point is recognised by Labour, which promises “fairer” cuts. If a government has to cut its spending, it is much better to tax the rich than starve the poor. However, this is alien to the spirit of cutting. The barely subliminal message of all austerity programmes is that the deficit has been caused by spiralling welfare payments to the poor, with the object of austerity being to “get them on their bikes” – like in the 1930s, when unemployment was consistently around or above 10 per cent.</p> <p> We urgently need to have a proper debate about the role and size of the state. Prosperity does not demand that the state should spend 40 per cent-plus of national income as it does now, though justice may.</p> <p> In the old days, people used to talk of a “trade-off” between efficiency and justice and some of those arguments may still be valid, though I am less and less persuaded that the private sector scores heavily over the public sector in efficiency. A financial system that allocates capital to itself and whose crash in 2008 left the population 15 per cent poorer than it would have been is hardly an advertisement for private-sector efficiency.</p> <p> What is really indefensible is to cut the state for reasons of financial dogmatism, as though the size of the state – and especially the welfare state – were the cause of the slump. We need a cool discussion on the role of the state as owner and regulator in a market economy and in the light of the civic purposes that people set for themselves. It needs to be pointed out that these huge cuts imply serious losses to the quality of government services and the strength of the defence and police services.</p> <p> I’m not sure which is worse: to bleed the economy with small cuts stretching many years ahead or to cut deeply now and hope for the best. What does seem clear is that politics will not allow the second and only a Labour government can avert the first.</p> </div></div></div> Wed, 10 Dec 2014 14:55:06 +0000 Robert Skidelsky 218446 at <![CDATA[Putin is not Russia: the Kremlin’s view on events in Ukraine]]> <div class="field field-name-field-subheadline field-type-text-long field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <p> War in Ukraine, economic woes and the decline of an autocrat, by Robert Skidelsky.</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-node-image field-type-image field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-fullnode-image" src="" width="510" height="348" alt="Pride, honour, poverty, patriotism: pro-Putin protesters parade through Moscow as he becomes president for the second time, May 2012. Photo: Reuters/Sergei Karpukhin" title="Pride, honour, poverty, patriotism: pro-Putin protesters parade through Moscow as he becomes president for the second time, May 2012. Photo: Reuters/Sergei Karpukhin" /></figure></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-nodeimage-title field-type-text field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Pride, honour, poverty, patriotism: pro-Putin protesters parade through Moscow as he becomes president for the second time, May 2012. Photo: Reuters/Sergei Karpukhin</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p class="111Justifiedtextnoindent"> In 2004, the Valdai Discussion Club was set up “to promote dialogue between [the] Russian and international intellectual elite”. Each year, two or three days of discussions involving foreign and Russian scholars and journalists would climax at Sochi on the Black Sea in a dinner with President Vladimir Putin himself. One qualification, at least for a foreigner invited to join the club, was not to be viscerally hostile to Russia’s foreign policy. This led some superannuated cold war warriors to call its foreign members “Putin’s useful idiots”. This idiot was asked to join four years ago, and this year’s event was my second exposure.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> We met from 22 to 24 October at a ski resort, surrounded by magnificent snow-clad mountains, built for the 2014 Winter Olympics. The conference, on “The World Order: New Rules or No Rules?”, was held in the shadow of western sanctions against Russia for annexing Crimea, in Ukraine – an awkward moment, to be sure, which thinned the foreign contingent considerably. This time, the Big Boss chose to address the assembled idiots from the podium rather than wining and dining them. He delivered a one-hour attack on the United States for wanting a world based on power (its own) rather than rules; more a polemic than a diatribe. Leading Putin officials such as Vyacheslav Volodin, Sergey Lavrov, Sergei Ivanov and Igor Shuvalov turned up to display their loyalty. For Volodin, “Putin is Russia”.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> The tone of the leadership was more regretful than truculent. It followed a well-established narrative line. Putin had offered America a sincere partnership in the fight against Islamic terrorism. Instead, America and its allies, claiming the spoils of victory in the cold war, had been pushing the EU and Nato eastward into Russia’s historic space. In the three-hour question-and-answer session that followed his speech, Putin was occasionally spirited, but mostly listless and rambling. His lack of facial animation may have been due to the famed skills of Russia’s embalmers. He seemed exhausted; he sounded like a jilted lover.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> Of course, Ukraine was the hot topic of the hour, and one advantage of being at Sochi was to hear in detail Russia’s defence of its actions, which is hardly ever heard in the western media. As the Russians tell it, an illegal coup against the democratically elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych brought extreme nationalists and “fascists” to power in Kyiv on 22 February. Their menacing anti-Russian stance forced the Russian communities in Crimea and south-eastern Ukraine (jointly known as Donbas) to organise in self-defence against persecution and even massacre. Russian “volunteers” from across the border came to the aid of their beleaguered brothers. To the west, this story is a pack of lies: Putin saw in the popular uprising against the corrupt, despotic and increasingly violent government of Yanukovych an excuse to seize Crimea and destabilise the Ukrainian state. His strategic aim was to prevent Ukraine freely choosing to pivot its economy and security system on the west.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> There was much legal chatter about sovereignties, frontiers, guarantees. One expert claimed that Russia’s annexation of Crimea was not illegal under international law because Crimea was not part of Ukraine when Ukraine became a member of the UN in 1945. Such legal subtleties attract lawyers, but are really beside the point. Legal rules cannot create conditions of justice and stability. They are the achievement of history, and Ukraine’s history as an independent state has yet to be written.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> This is a conclusion that the west finds difficult to accept. The contemporary liberal credo is that any state, however diverse, can be made or kept whole by a constitution that guarantees democracy, the rule of law and minority rights. Ukraine’s failure to achieve such a constitution must be due to Russia’s manipulation of its neighbour’s politics in<br /> its own interests. Russia takes exactly the opposite view: it is America and its allies that have been manipulating Ukrainian politics so as to detach Ukraine from its historic space in the Russian family of nations.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> The truth is much more complicated than either story allows. As the former Czech president Václav Klaus pointed out in an incisive essay last April: “The state of Ukraine today is a sad outcome of Stalin’s attempts to mix up nations and boundaries, disrupt historical ties and create a new Soviet man by turning original nations into mere ethnic, residual and historical leftovers.” The Ukrainian state set up in 1991 was illegitimate to sizeable fractions of its own population. No common Ukrainian identity has emerged. There was no political transformation: democracy has been a sham, with disputed elections and messy power transfers. In the economy, wealth is divided and redivided between alternating Russian and non-Russian oligarchic clans, to the accompaniment of stagnation, industrial decay and high unemployment. Ukraine was ripe for the manipulation of its politics by outsiders. The question is: which side had more justified reason to meddle?</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> This brings us back to the big unsettled question of Sochi: Russia’s place in a world dominated by the US. It is obvious that Russians have felt deeply humiliated by the US “victory” in the cold war and the destruction of the Soviet Union as a geopolitical balancer. They have countered this adverse shift in their position with the doctrine of “multipolarity”. On 28 June 2000, Putin stated that “Russia shall seek to achieve a multipolar system of international relations that really reflects the diversity of the modern world”. He repeated the message in Munich in 2007. “The unipolar world,” he said, “did not take place . . . There is no reason to doubt that the economic potential of the new centres of global economic growth will inevitably be converted into political influence and will strengthen multipolarity.”</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> At first, multipolarity did not imply hostility to America. Putin began his presidency looking for a “strategic partnership” with the US against the common threat of Islamic extremism. Following the 9/11 attacks, he overruled his military to give unconditional support to US intervention in Afghanistan, and military access to central Asian countries bound to Russia by security treaties, while closing down Russian bases in Cuba and Vietnam. He acceded to the Americans’ request to lower the oil price.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> It was only because the payoff from such gestures was so meagre that multipolarity evolved into resistance to US superpower pretensions. Russia was offered neither a fast track into the World Trade Organisation nor a meaningful security role in Nato or the Middle East. America unilaterally abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, restarting an arms race it knew it could win. Russia retaliated by joining Germany and France to oppose the Iraq war; wherever possible, it has tried to create its own “coalitions of the willing”. In 2001, Dmitri Trenin, of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, looked forward to a “quasi-alliance” with the US. By 2006 he was lamenting the “decoupling” of Russia from the west. The “reset” of Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev – Russia’s president from 2008 to 2012 – got nowhere.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> It was plain from Sochi that the Russian leadership cannot grasp that Russia is too weak to negotiate the terms of a strategic partnership with the US. They fail to appreciate that the US can choose what partners it wants and that, in America’s eyes, Russia’s authoritarian and corrupt political system, and its disregard of human rights, have disqualified it as a partner for most purposes. As a description of reality, multipolarity is thus a geopolitical fiction. The world may not be exactly multipolar, but for most global purposes the US remains the indispensable power. Russia has too few assets, hard or soft, to be a rival pole of attraction. From this perspective, the biggest failure of the Putin years has been the failure to modernise and diversify the Russian economy. The post-Soviet leadership dismantled the old industrial system without replacing it with a new one. Russia remains dangerously dependent on the price of a single commodity – oil – and its economic dynamics are dominated by the struggle for oil rents. At Sochi I asked Putin: “How do you propose to make Russia attractive for business? What are you going to do to persuade Russians to invest in Russia rather than export their capital, which drives up house prices in London to insane levels?” In his answer, Putin reeled off statistics of agricultural production.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> Although it is a descriptive fiction, multipolarity as a normative proposition has much to be said for it. No single power is wise or disinterested enough to claim a universal sovereignty. The US-led attempt to export democracy by force if necessary has created a shambles in the Middle East, with worse to come. A better appreciation of the “diversity of the modern world” would have saved western policy from much error and humanity from much misery.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> In my own remarks at Sochi, I suggested that, with the faltering of Russia’s attempt to “join the world”, it had in fallen back on an implicit Monroe doctrine. Like the US president James Monroe in 1823, it is telling the meddling foreigners to keep off its patch. Significantly, it defines the frontiers of the old Soviet Union as the strategic frontiers of the Russian Federation. A world of Monroe doctrines, spheres of influence and regional blocs is contrary to the contemporary western norms of international relations. It may have more appeal for great powers that find themselves at odds with the “universal empire” championed by the world’s superpower. The Ukraine crisis has divided the world into the western countries that imposed sanctions and the non-western world that was either indifferent to Russia’s behaviour or thought it justified.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> However, the assertion of hegemony in the former Soviet space may now be beyond the capacity of Russia. There is talk in Moscow of a “Eurasian Union”, but few of its possible members would be willing to cut themselves off from the EU’s own “neighbourhood policy”. Asked at Sochi about Ukraine’s future, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, hoped that it would be a “negotiated restructuring of the Ukraine state”. The former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin, who appeared on the panel alongside Putin, made the sensible suggestion to set up a “contact group” of the US, Russia, Germany, France and the UK to work to convert the Ukrainian ceasefire, originally signed in Minsk on 5 September, into a settlement. They may be able to negotiate a middle ground of autonomy for the separatists within the Ukrainian state.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> But this is starting to look ever less likely. The latest round of parliamentary elections in Ukraine has consolidated the division of the country into two states, divided by the ceasefire line. The 26 October parliamentary elections gave President Petro Poroshenko a two-thirds “super-majority” to sign an association agreement with the EU and reunite the nation. In a “rogue” election on 2 November organised by the separatists of Donbas, a much smaller electorate – reportedly about 5 per cent of those eligible to vote nationally – gave separatist leaders a mandate to break away.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> What follows? Their reinforced mandates weaken the incentives for the two sides to negotiate. The Ukrainian army might try to recapture the lost territory by force. But the west will not supply Kyiv with the necessary offensive capacity and Russia will continue to supply the separatists with the necessary defensive capacity. So, in all likelihood, the conflict will be “frozen” along the ceasefire line for the foreseeable future. If this happens, Russia will have suffered a major defeat. It will have exchanged an implicit regional hegemony, secured by its ability to manipulate Ukrainian politics, for a tiny fraction of Ukrainian real estate, freeing the much larger remainder of Ukraine to pursue the pro-western alignment that it has been the chief object of Russia’s Ukrainian policy to prevent. And for this meagre achievement it will have incurred huge costs in terms of sanctions and subsidies. At what point will the owners of wealth decide that Putin is not Russia?</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> Sochi left me with the overwhelming impression of people putting the best face possible on a bad story. The Russians “hope” for the future; others dictate it. Probably Russia will stagger on in a mediocre way, neither very successful nor quite failing, neither devil nor pure in heart, proud of its own values, semi-permanently estranged from the US and western Europe, resentful but not overly aggressive, until such time as it feels more at home in a world that it will have played little part in shaping. </p> <p class="111Raggeditalictext"> <em>Robert Skidelsky is a cross-bench peer and a leading biographer of J M Keynes. His most recent book is “Britain Since 1900: a Success Story?” (Vintage, £10.99)</em></p> </div></div></div> Thu, 20 Nov 2014 10:00:11 +0000 Robert Skidelsky 216016 at <![CDATA[The Osborne audit: what have we learned?]]> <div class="field field-name-field-subheadline field-type-text-long field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Ahead of this week’s budget, the economic historian Robert Skidelsky examines how four years of austerity have affected Britain.</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p class="111Justifiedtextnoindent"> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/images/2014%2B10osborne%20oops2.jpg" style="width: 510px; height: 680px;" /></p> <p class="111Justifiedtextnoindent rteright"> <em>George Osborne by Ralph Steadman</em></p> <p class="111Justifiedtextnoindent"> On Wednesday, for the first time in four Budgets, George Osborne will be able to claim plausibly that Britain has come out of the Great Recession. Growth was 1.8 per cent in 2013 and is expected to be between 2.4 and 2.8 per cent in 2014. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the economy is still 1.4 per cent smaller than it was in 2008 and 14 per cent smaller than it would have been had the recession not struck.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> That lost output, amounting to £210bn, is gone for ever. Every household is almost £2,000 poorer on average than it would have been; the government’s revenue is £70bn less – that is (say) 70 hospitals, 1,000 schools and 250,000 housing units not built. Or, to take another number: 650,000 people now unemployed would have been in employment.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> This is not all. Every year of the recession has reduced our growth potential. Economists use the word “hysteresis” to describe the rusting away of economic resources through misuse or underuse. Hysteresis has to do not just with the output lost during the slump but with the potential output lost in the subsequent period of near-zero growth. Headline unemployment is an incomplete measure of such rusting, because it also occurs when people work less than they want to, or are in jobs below their skill level, or just leave the workforce. A physics graduate may be able to find employment as a taxi driver or waiter. But how much physics “potential” will he retain after years of doing such jobs?</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> These are heavy costs. Just as George Osborne did not cause the recession, he has not caused the recovery. Intertwined economies usually fall and rise together, and Britain has been lifted off the rocks by the global upturn. Yet policy does make a difference – to the speed of recovery, its strength and its durability. On all three counts, the Chancellor’s policy is open to severe criticism.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> Fiscal austerity slowed and weakened the recovery; monetary looseness ensured that it would be highly unbalanced and therefore fragile. Significantly, the official independent watchdog, the Office for Budgetary Responsibility (OBR), in its December 2013 <i>Economic and Fiscal Outlook</i>, judged the “surprising” growth surge of the past year to be “cyclical . . . rather than indicating stronger underlying growth potential”. That the bank rate needs to be kept near zero shows that the economy is still on life support. </p> <p class="111Justifiedtextnoindent"> <strong><span class="Textsansboldred">Missed budget targets</span></strong></p> <p class="111Justifiedtextnoindent"> Let’s start with the targets Osborne set himself in his first Budget of June 2010. He inherited a prospective deficit for 2010-2011 of £149bn, equivalent to 10.1 per cent of GDP. He promised to get this down to £20bn, or 1.1 per cent of GDP, in 2015-2016, mainly through spending cuts. By 2013-2014 the deficit should have been £60bn. In fact, it is projected to be £111bn, or 6.8 per cent of GDP this year. Now the Chancellor must cut spending by another £62bn over the next four years to meet his original target, two years later than promised.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> There were no growth targets – those were abandoned years ago – but there were growth forecasts. Fulfilment of Osborne’s budgetary targets depended on the economy growing at 2.3 per cent in 2011, 2.8 per cent in 2012 and 2.9 per cent in 2013. In fact, the growth rates achieved were 0.9 per cent in 2011, 0.1 per cent in 2012 and 1.8 per cent in 2013. In other words, Osborne’s failure to meet his deficit targets was caused by the failure of the economy to grow to expectation.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> The official explanation for this failure is “bad luck”. In familiar language, policy was “blown off course” by unexpected events. Chief of these was said to be the eurozone sovereign debt crisis, which started with fears of a Greek default in March 2010 and then spread, by contagion, to Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Italy. For the next three years the eurozone slumped almost as badly as Britain. The eurozone slump, it is argued, stymied the British recovery.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> There are two things wrong with this. First, with its own currency and control of its exchange rate, Britain should have done better, not worse, than the members of the eurozone. Second, although the eurozone financial crisis undermined confidence, and hit British exports, the European slump arose in part because European finance ministers were pursuing exactly the same policy as was George Osborne. So it makes more sense to say that the coincident slumps of the eurozone and Britain between 2010 and 2013 were the effects of a single cause: the policy of cutting public spending. The “unexpected” element in the situation was the failure of so-called fiscal consolidation to deliver growth.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> Why should anyone expect a policy of cutting public spending in a recession to produce growth? It is counterintuitive. A recession is caused by businesses and households spending less. If the government also spends less, one would expect this to worsen, not reverse, the recession. This, I think, is exactly what happened.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/images/2014%2B10briefcase.jpg" style="width: 510px; height: 383px;" /></p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent rteright"> <em>Making the case: George Osborne on his first Budget Day, 2010</em></p> <p class="111Justifiedtextnoindent"> <strong><span class="Textsansboldred">Primitive economics</span></strong></p> <p class="111Justifiedtextnoindent"> Over the past four years, I kept asking myself: what did Osborne have to believe to convince himself that cutting government spending was necessary to “get the economy moving again”? His core belief, I concluded, is ideological. This is that state spending is heavily wasteful. From this, it follows that the smaller the share of GDP spent by the state, the larger GDP will be, because the private sector allocates resources more efficiently. It’s as simple as that.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> This ideological fundament generates three seemingly common-sense, short-run propositions, which I call “primitive economics”. The first, known by the cognoscenti as “real crowding-out”, states that if the government commandeers an extra quantum of “real” resources such as workers and factories this will deprive the private sector of their use.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> Second, there is the idea of “financial crowding-out”. If the government borrows additional financial resources (money) to fund its spending, this will force up interest rates and oblige businesses to pay more for their money.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> Finally, there is “Ricardian equivalence”. This says that government borrowing is just deferred taxation. Expecting to pay more taxes tomorrow, people increase their savings today. So increased government consumption “crowds out” an equivalent volume of private consumption.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> Eighty years ago, John Maynard Keynes pointed out that this trade-off view of the relationship between public and private spending may be valid at full employment, but is quite wrong in a severe recession.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> In such a situation, extra government spending does not necessarily “crowd out” real resources. Where there is slack in the economy – the labour supply exceeding labour demand as today – extra government spending can bring into use the idle resources by creating more employment. There is no displacement; the public spending is not done at the expense of private spending. Rather, the public spending compensates for a lack of private spending.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> Second, it is not true that whatever the government borrows is a subtraction from a fixed pool of savings that would otherwise be invested by the private sector. Many savings are just lying idle in bank accounts, because the private sector lacks the confidence to invest them. By offering investors a risk-free rate of return, the government can put these savings to active use. And by generating employment, this “crowds in” additional savings.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> Finally, “Ricardian equivalence” ignores how government spending can pay for itself, not just by increasing national income (and therefore government revenue) but by investing in projects that create value for the economy, such as schools, houses, transport infrastructure, green energy, and so on.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> Probably few policymakers today believe these “crowding-out” stories literally. I doubt whether even George Osborne does. But they believe that governments need to behave as though they believe these ideas in order to retain the “confidence” of the markets.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> So, the question is: why do the markets believe them? Why do they scream “Default” whenever government borrowing goes up? Why did Osborne feel that unless he got the deficit under firm control, he would be spooked by the markets?</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> The reason is that, for the past 30 years, all economically literate or market-savvy persons (who do not generally include politicians) have been slaves to “models” of the economy which ruled out severe recessions by assumption. Even social democrats, who wanted to use the tax system to redistribute the wealth created by the private sector, bought in to the dominant view that, on average, markets do not make mistakes. This was the tragedy of Gordon Brown; it is also why Labour under Ed Miliband has been unable to deploy a convincing case against Osbornite economics.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> Consequently, it is not surprising that governments and central banks failed to take precautions against a slump happening; more surprising that they did not thoroughly revise their beliefs when it did happen. To some extent, they did. When the world economy crashed in the winter of 2008 all the main governments came in with bank bailouts and stimulus packages. But as soon as the danger of another Great Depression was removed, the old orthodoxies reasserted themselves. In particular, as it was bound to do, the slump left a legacy of rising deficits and taxpayer liabilities. In this kind of climate, fears about the solvency of governments seemed reasonable.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> And mainstream economics offered no help at all. What was going on, the economists said, was just a readjustment of economic life from one optimum equilibrium to another. Thus there was no “output gap” that needed to be filled by extra government spending. Rather, what needed to be done was to cut down state spending in order to make the existing output more productive. The Chancellor is no economist: but this presentation played to his ideological preconceptions. In a world-view of this type, there is no distinction between the short run and the long run. We always live in the long run, and if we leave the long run to the markets, all will be for the best. </p> <p class="111Justifiedtextnoindent"> <strong><span class="Textsansboldred">Delusions</span></strong><span class="Textsansboldred"><p></p></span></p> <p class="111Justifiedtextnoindent"> A world in which beliefs and facts have come so far apart will be particularly prone to delusionary thinking. The delusion was that policies that made the recession worse would produce recovery. This delusion was abetted by reputable economists. Three years ago, the doctrine of “expansionary fiscal contraction” was all the rage and a huge research effort went into trying to prove its core proposition: that the less the government spends, the faster the economy will grow. The econometricians produced some striking correlations. One claim was that “an increase in government size by 10 percentage points is associated with a 0.5 to 1 per cent lower annual growth”. In April 2010, Alberto Alesina of Harvard University assured European finance ministers that “many even sharp reductions of budget deficits have been accompanied and immediately followed by sustained growth rather than recessions even in the very short run”.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> An International Monetary Fund paper in 2012 brought Alesina’s hour of glory to an end. Going through the same data as he had examined, the IMF authors pointed out: “While it is plausible to conjecture that confidence effects have been at play in our sample of consolidations, during downturns they do not seem to have ever been strong enough to make the consolidations expansionary at least in the short run.” Fiscal contraction is contractionary, full stop.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> George Osborne has said publicly that he was influenced by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. These two Harvard economists claimed that their data showed that countries’ growth slows sharply if their debt-to-GDP ratio exceeds 90 per cent. It turned out that their findings were skewed by the vast overweighting of one country in their sample. But a much more important error was their confusion between correlation and causation, also seen in the work of Alesina. High debt levels may cause lack of growth but a lack of growth may cause high debt levels; or both may be due to some other factor(s). How, one asks, can good statisticians make these kinds of mistakes? Only, I think, because their theory or model already tells them that this is the way the causation has to run, so that their only task is to establish a correlation.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextnoindent"> <strong><span class="Textsansboldred">Quantitative easing to the rescue?</span></strong></p> <p class="111Justifiedtextnoindent"> With the failure of fiscal “consolidation” to revive the economy, the Chancellor increasingly turned to monetary policy. This fitted his ideology. Orthodox monetary policy works by the central bank targeting short-term market interest rates, providing banks with the reserves needed to keep the rates on target and, by varying the rates (or expectations of future rates), influencing the volume of private-sector lending and borrowing. It bypasses fiscal policy, which is why it is attractive to those who dislike state intervention. Since 2008, monetary policy has been ultra-loose or “unorthodox”. Not only has the bank rate been kept at 0.5 per cent for a record length of time, but the Bank of England has injected £375bn of “new money” into the economy, £225bn of it before Osborne became Chancellor. This is known as “quantitative easing” (QE).</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> How big a part has QE played in producing a recovery? The quick answer is that no one knows for sure. Unlike government spending, which has a direct effect on the economy, monetary policy works indirectly by inducing private households and businesses to change their behaviour – to save more or spend more. QE is supposed to work through two “transmission channels”: the bank lending channel and the portfolio rebalancing channel.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> The central bank activates both channels by buying government bonds (gilts), mainly from non-banks. The sellers of the bonds receive cash; they deposit their extra cash with the commercial banks. In the first transmission channel, this is supposed to increase bank lending. The banks have more cash to lend out, causing them to lower their interest rates. As a result, more money is borrowed by businesses and households; the spending of the loans raises total spending, and therefore output, in the economy.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> Early experience of QE showed that this was not happening: the banks were hoarding their cash, not lending it out. The architects of QE had underestimated the damage that banks had suffered as a result of the collapse of their assets in the crash, and therefore their desire to rebuild their reserves. What Osborne then did was to start subsidising bank lending. The Funding for Lending scheme, introduced in July 2012, was supposed to stimulate bank loans to businesses. It failed to do this – business lending is still well down from its pre-crash levels.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> Desperate to get something in the economy going up, the Chancellor switched to Help to Buy in April and October 2013, which insured banks for a 15 per cent loss on 95 per cent mortgages. This has certainly contributed to the recent surge in house-buying and the rise in house prices.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> It should be noticed, however, that both attempts to boost bank lending are fiscal policy by the back door, as the contingent subsidies are liabilities for the taxpayer.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> Because of the disappointing results of bank lending, the Bank of England came to rely more on the second transmission channel, portfolio rebalancing, to stimulate the economy. Bond purchases by the Bank swell the cash deposits of the sellers, encouraging them to spend. Simultaneously, they reduce the supply of gilts in the market, which causes the price of gilts to rise and their yields to fall. The “search for yield” then induces investors to switch from gilts to stock-market securities and other assets, making it easier for businesses to raise capital. The increase in the price of these assets also expands the net wealth of the asset-holders, causing them to spend more. These various effects will result in growing GDP. Certainly the rise in stock-market and house prices has contributed to a “feel-good” factor, which is bolstering the current optimism about future prospects.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> Set against these benefits are two costs. By encouraging excessive risk-taking, QE may reignite the pre-crash asset bubble, against which the new governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has warned. The second is the increase in inequality. Of this, John Kay wrote in the <i>Financial Times</i>: “In the modern financial economy, the main effect of QE is to boost asset prices . . . the one certain outcome of QE is that those with assets benefit relative to those without . . . these policies may not benefit the non-financial economy much, but they are helpful to the financial services sector and those who work in it.”</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> The trouble with unorthodox monetary policy was that it is not unorthodox enough. Rather than try to increase private-sector cash balances, the Bank should have lent the money directly to the government to spend on public investment. We can be sure the government would not have hoarded the cash! But this operation would have blurred the line between monetary and fiscal policy, and thus the sacred ideological divide between the private and public sectors.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> To put the matter crudely: a recovery based on stuffing the mouths of bankers with gold will be weaker and less durable than a recovery based on an upsurge of mass spending power. </p> <p class="111Justifiedtextnoindent"> <strong><span class="Textsansboldred">Conclusions</span></strong></p> <p class="111Justifiedtextnoindent"> Wealth and income have been growing more unequal in Britain since the 1980s. George Osborne has not created the inequality; but he has exacerbated it by dragging out the slump and using lopsided means to bring about the recovery. Britain may well emerge from the recession with a problem of structural underconsumption. Investment is driven by consumption, so when consumption falls off, so does investment. A tendency to domestic underconsumption – unless offset by a buoyant demand for exports – will result in what economists such as Larry Summers have started to call “secular stagnation”. The chief symptom of this will be rising structural underemployment: a slackening of demand for labour which does not reverse itself with recovery.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> This brings us back to the ideological fundament. It is the Chancellor’s firm belief that the government’s share of total spending should be reduced as much as possible. Spending financed by deficits is twice cursed, not just because government spending is wasteful, but because it enables governments to pass on the cost of waste to future generations. Hence Osborne’s pledge to eliminate the Budget deficit entirely. This is tantamount to saying that the government expects to pay out of taxes for all the schools, hospitals, housing and transport systems that it builds. Because all Conservative governments want to reduce taxes as well, this amounts to a vast programme to privatise virtually all public services.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> At this point, the ideology destroys sane economics. A sensible view of public spending would distinguish between capital spending and current spending. It would enable one to say that deficits resulting from excessive current spending are bad because they do not generate any revenue and add to the national debt, but deficits that are incurred on capital spending can raise productivity, improving the country’s long-run potential. A sensible Osborne policy would have been to confine cuts to the current account and offset these fully by expanding public investment in green projects, transport infrastructure and social housing, as well as export-oriented small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs). The Business Secretary, Vince Cable, has been arguing this case inside the government; lip-service is paid to the principle, but public investment is still 35 per cent down from the pre-crash levels.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> What George Osborne has done is to bring an ideological fervour to a defective theory of macroeconomic policy: the theory that additional government spending can, under no circumstances, move the economy to a better-equilibrium growth path. What may be rational to believe when the economy is fully employed is palpably wrong when resources stand idle.</p> <p class="111Justifiedtextindent"> Moreover, it is not Osborne and his friends and bankers and Top People who suffer. It is the ordinary people of this country, whose lives and prospects are wrecked or diminished. Four years of George Osborne have been four years too many.</p> <p class="111Raggeditalictext"> <em>Robert Skidelsky is a cross-bench peer and a leading biographer of J M Keynes. His most recent book is “Five Years of Economic Crisis” (Centre for Global Studies, £5)</em></p> </div></div></div> Mon, 17 Mar 2014 12:10:43 +0000 Robert Skidelsky 200895 at <![CDATA[The economics of love: Following the heart, not the head]]> <div class="field field-name-field-subheadline field-type-text-long field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Humans move beyond the strictures of “homo economicus” – we are more than economic entities.</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-node-image field-type-image field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-fullnode-image" src="" width="510" height="348" alt="" /></figure></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-nodeimage-title field-type-text field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">There's nothing transactional about love. Photo: Alec Soth/Magnum. </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>Let’s start with an addled view of what it is to be human. According to economists, it is the ability to calculate. Their picture of the human is that of <em>Homo economicus</em>, “economic man”, a calculating machine who is always weighing up the costs and benefits of every course of action.</p> <p>Economics is about “economising” –eliminating waste (including waste of time) so that all behaviour becomes efficiently purposive. The task of economics, according to the economist Dennis Robertson, is to “economise on love, that scarce resource”. We need to economise on love because we live in a world of scarcity and cannot afford to spend too much time on wasteful activities such as love. Economics offers us a way of getting what we want without love. Excluded is the idea that we might “want” to love and be loved, that we might want beauty, leisure and many other things that make life worth living.</p> <p>In order to make the construction <em>Homo economicus</em> plausible, economists assume that human behaviour is self-interested and that wants (“preferences”) can be measured in money. It is money that makes possible the calculation of costs and benefits from different courses of action. Every activity has a cost and a benefit measurable in money. Love has a cost. If I spend time on love, I forgo the opportunity to make extra money to buy the iPad I crave, because “time is money”. The best form of love for <em>Homo economicus</em> is quick sex, because that wastes very little time.</p> <p>Most people believe that marriage is about love, but the economist Gary Becker has shown that individuals, in making their choice of partner, calculate the costs and benefits of different types of relationships.</p> <p>Similarly there are costs and benefits in telling the truth, not cheating at cards, buying one’s partner flowers, listening to music, reading a poem. Indeed, there is almost no form of activity one can think of that does not have attached to it at least the pretence of costs and benefits calculable in terms of money. And if one habitually makes this calculation before deciding to act, one will slowly but inexorably cease to be human.</p> <p>The alarming thought is that, exposed to training in economics, human beings <em>do</em> start acting in the way economists say they should. In a marvellous book, <em>I Spend, Therefore I Am</em>, Philip Roscoe reports on research that shows that students studying economics are markedly more calculating than students of other subjects. Economics contaminates all our motives, forcing, in Amartya Sen’s words, “smallness on us”.</p> <p>The dilemma in defining what is human is this: calculation is an integral part of the human outfit; animals don’t calculate. Without calculation, there could be no economising behaviour. And without economising behaviour there would be no growth of wealth. But if calculation is all we do, then we cease to be human. For the alternative forms of existence are not human and animal, but human, animal and robotic. Robots can be programmed to act exactly as economists think human beings should: efficiently, purposefully. There is no waste in a robotic civilisation.</p> <p>So, as I would see it, the essence of distinctively human activity is action without thought of the consequences, without counting the cost of the activity and weighing it against the prospective benefits to be obtained.</p> <p>And I would also claim that for many, if not most activities, this is the only rational form of action. For, contrary to Dennis Robertson, the truly scarce resource is not love, but knowledge. The great advantage of acting from motives of love is that it economises on the need for knowledge.</p> <p>Usually we have only the foggiest idea of what the consequences of our actions will be, especially further in the future. And the net of delusion is being cast ever wider, as we are bombarded with more and more information masquerading as knowledge, more and more material for the calculus, which far outruns our ability to sift it into truth and falsehood.</p> <p>Therefore to follow our hearts rather than our heads, our intuitions rather than our calculations, is the distinctively human way of being. And if economics tells us the contrary, down with economics.</p> <p><em>Robert Skidelsky is emeritus professor of political economy at the University of Warwick</em></p> <p><em>The What Makes Us Human series is published in association<br /> with BBC Radio 2</em></p> </div></div></div> Wed, 15 Jan 2014 09:48:06 +0000 Robert Skidelsky 199873 at <![CDATA[Osborne may gloat about recovery, but his “hard slog” will leave Britain worse off]]> <div class="field field-name-field-subheadline field-type-text-long field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>The recovery of the British economy, which started under Labour, was aborted in 2010.</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-node-image field-type-image field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-fullnode-image" src="" width="510" height="348" alt="" /></figure></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-nodeimage-title field-type-text field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">George Osborne. Photo: Getty</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>George Osborne is bound to crow at the Conservative party conference about the superior performance of the British economy under his stewardship. After three years of “hard slog”, there is at last some good news to report. In the second quarter of this year, the economy grew by 0.7 per cent after “flatlining” for the previous three years. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research has revised its annual growth forecast upwards twice in its latest forecasts. The British economy is now expected to grow by 1.2 per cent in 2013, 0.5 percentage points more than was forecast as late as in February, and in 2014 this will surge to 1.8 per cent. The tables, the media will gush, have been turned on Labour. George has pulled it off. And Osborne will claim a number of things that are either false or implausible.</p> <p>First, he will say that his critics (people such as me) have “lost the battle”, because they can’t explain why the economy is improving. I haven’t yet met a critic of Osborne’s policy who claimed that the economy would not recover from the collapse of 2008-2009. Economies always recover from their low points, whatever the policies pursued, sooner or later. Things happen, in the country or in the world, to revive business’s “animal spirits”. The question is whether they happen sooner or later and how long the recoveries last. Here, policy does matter.</p> <p>The critics’ charge against Osborne is not that he caused the slump but that his policy of fiscal austerity delayed the recovery, possibly by as much as three years. His failure was a failure to offset the decline in aggregate demand, or total spending, which followed the crash, by a policy of fiscal expansion. Instead, his policy, which aimed at cutting the Budget deficit and reducing the national debt, added to the depressive forces created by the financial collapse.</p> <p>That is why the UK economy is still about 3 to 4 per cent smaller than it was in 2008, whereas in the US, where fiscal stimulus was sustained, the economy is now larger than before. The recovery of the British economy, which started under Labour, was aborted in 2010. A recent US study by the economists Alan Taylor and Òscar Jordà suggests that each year of Osborne knocked 1 per cent off the growth of the British economy; that is, £92bn all told, enough to restore Labour’s schoolbuilding plans and still have enough change to plug the funding gap in the NHS. For the average household, this amounts to a loss of £3,500 over three years – and, as Taylor and Jordà point out, this is a conservative estimate.</p> <p>Osborne’s second claim will be that the “hard slog” was necessary to ensure sustainable recovery – one that didn’t lead to “boom and bust”, as allegedly Gordon Brown’s pre- 2008 boom did. A critical policy aim has been to shrink the size of the bloated state sector, which was supposedly sucking vitality out of the “wealth-producing” private sector. A more plausible view of the cause of the crisis is that the British economy had become dangerously dependent on an oversized banking sector pumping money into private housing.</p> <p>In this view, a “sustainable” economy is a “balanced” economy, like the balanced portfolio prudent investors are advised to hold. Instead, government-backed schemes such as Funding for Lending and Help to Buy are quite likely to create a housing bubble.</p> <p>Crucial to both the strength and durability of recovery is the level and distribution of expected demand. Unfortunately, the main effect of quantitative easing (QE) – the only kind of stimulus the government accepts – is to boost asset prices; that is, to make the rich richer. It does nothing for most wage and salary earners, the main source of effective demand. Moreover, this boost to the wealth of the rich comes on top of decades of rising income inequality.</p> <p>And it is worse than this. In so far as it increases inflation, QE depresses the purchasing power of exactly those people on whom a strong recovery depends. With earnings lagging behind prices, the TUC estimates that average real pay has fallen by 7.5 per cent since 2008. Higher-paid public-sector jobs have been replaced by lower-paid privatesector jobs. In lauding the “flexibility” of the British labour market, the Chancellor has ignored the consequences of this flexibility for the level of demand. That’s leaving aside its effects on our long-term future as a highvalue- adding economy.</p> <p>“Demand” is the one word that has never passed George Osborne’s lips. He doesn’t believe in it. He is a prisoner of Say’s law: that supply creates its own demand. Look after supply – especially the supply of credit – and demand will look after itself. Keynes taught the exact opposite – look after demand and supply will look after itself. This is not always true but it is valid in a slump.</p> <p>Yet Osborne is the chancellor who, a few weeks after the collapse of the world’s financial system, declared that Keynesian measures aimed at maintaining the level of aggregate demand would be like a “cruise missile aimed at the heart of a recovery”. So we always knew where George was coming from.</p> <p>Keynes believed that without a jolt, or stimulus, a depressed economy could remain in a state of “underemployment equilibrium” for decades. By this, he did not mean that nothing would change. There would still be booms and busts. What he meant was that the average level of activity over the cycle would be lower than it would be if the economy were fully employed. The average level of unemployment would be higher, the rate of economic growth lower; people would be employed in less rewarding jobs and below their skill level; discouraged workers would leave the labour force.</p> <p>There would be less work to do, not because people needed less, but because most were too poor to buy what they needed. For all his talk of recovery, this is the future that Osborne offers.</p> <div> <em>Lord Skidelsky is a cross-bench peer and the pre-eminent biographer of Keynes</em></div> </div></div></div> Mon, 30 Sep 2013 07:42:22 +0000 Robert Skidelsky 198114 at <![CDATA[Creative destruction: our economic crisis was wholly predictable]]> <div class="field field-name-field-subheadline field-type-text-long field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Keynes, Hobson, Marx - and the crisis of capitalism.</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p><img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/images/newstatesman_complete2.jpg" style="width: 510px; height: 692px;" /></p> <p><em>Artwork by Julie Cockburn</em></p> <p>Is it to the wrong ideas of economists or to the interests of the power-holders that we should turn to explain the “Great Contraction” of 2008-2009? John Maynard Keynes believed that the Great Depression of 1929-32 was caused by the wrong theory of how the economy worked in the minds of policymakers – the remedy for which was to equip them with the right theory. But this ignored one thing: that the reigning ideas are, more often than not, the product of the dominant power structures.</p> <p>Economics, therefore, needs to be supplemented by political economy – the study of how power affects the choice of ideas and policies and the distribution of income; in short, Keynes plus J A Hobson and Karl Marx.</p> <p>Keynes explained that it was uncertainty that causes economies to crash. Hobson explained how unequal income distribution makes crises more likely and recoveries more difficult. Marx explained that this inequality is inherent in the power structure of the capitalist system. All have their part to play in explaining the crisis and collapse of 2008.</p> <p>Let’s consider first of all the case of the “closed” economy – what happens in an economy without foreign trade.</p> <h2> The closed economy</h2> <p>The strong message of Keynes’s <em>General Theo</em>ry is that investment is the unruly element in a decentralised market economy, because of the existence of irreducible uncertainty. For one reason or another, businessmen lose confidence in the future and stop investing at the same rate as before. This is how recessions or depressions start.</p> <p>In Keynes’s theory there is no automatic recovery mechanism, so that, in the absence of an external stimulus, a collapsed economy might get stuck in a situation of “underemployment equilibrium”.</p> <p>The present crisis exhibits the truth of both parts of this analysis: there was a collapse of “animal spirits” in 2007-2008 and the developed world has since been in semi-slump.</p> <p>Hobson, Keynes’s near-contemporary, argued that because of the unequal distribution of wealth and income too much of the national income is saved and too little consumed. This leads to more investment producing more goods than the remaining income of the community can buy at prices profitable to the producers. Periodic crises of “realisation” are the result. Today China is a classic case of an oversaving, underconsuming economy.</p> <p>This has some affinity with Marx’s theory of capitalist crisis, but the mechanism is different. For Marx, crises were the result of a fall in the profit rate. In the Marxist scheme, the surplus value extracted from labour – paying workers less value than they produced – was the source of profit. With the substitution of machinery for labour, surplus value became increasingly difficult to obtain. So, like Hobson’s economy, Marx’s suffers from periodic crises. In Hobson’s economy these are crises of surplus production. In Marx’s economy these are crises of profitability or surplus value.</p> <p>Keynes, Hobson and Marx all suggest permanent remedies for the tendencies towards crisis. Keynes called on the state to maintain enough effective demand in the economy to offset the ravages of uncertainty. Hobson wanted the state to redistribute income in order to reduce the share of saving in national income. Marx’s more radical cure, as we know, was to abolish surplus value – the profit-seeking system we call capitalism – altogether.</p> <p>Keynes never engaged properly with Marx, but he saw some similarity between his views and Hobson’s because Hobson, as Keynes did, challenged the core classical belief that saving is always good.</p> <p>Where Hobson went wrong, Keynes suggested, was in identifying overproduction as the worst consequence of excess saving. For Keynes this was only a “secondary evil”; the primary evil was a propensity to save, which was not realised in investment and production.</p> <p>According to Keynes, Hobson’s theory was incomplete because he had no “independent theory of the rate of interest”. In Keynes’s theory, the rate of interest (the rate that banks charge for loans) is determined not by the volume of saving, as Hobson, following the classical economists, believed, but by “liquidity preference” – the desire, in situations of great uncertainty, to hold savings in liquid form, chiefly cash. Thus the interest rate cannot be the price that keeps the desire to save in equilibrium with the desire to invest: far from falling when people decided to save more, the rate of interest might easily go up, as people decided to hoard cash. Situations could thus arise when the expected rate of profit fell below the minimum rate at which banks were willing to lend. “Oversaving” thus went with “underinvestment”, not with “overinvestment”. This speaks to the present situation where, despite huge injections of liquidity by central banks, commercial banks refuse to lend to customers, preferring to sit on piles of cash.</p> <p>What, then, eliminates the excess saving and brings the economy back into balance? Keynes suggested it was the fall in income. As economies get poorer, the amount of saving falls to the level of the reduced investment. Thus economies regain “equilibrium”, but it is an inferior equilibrium to the previous one. This is a good approximation to the current state of Britain, with no clear tendency for a shrunken economy either to grow or to contract.</p> <p>Keynes was aware that a grossly unequal income distribution made it harder to maintain full employment. The rich save more than the poor, so the more unequal the distribution of income, the larger the gap to be filled by investment if the economy is to reach full employment. At the same time, the richer that societies are as a whole, the fewer new investment opportunities there will be. Hence the problem of unemployment would get worse over time from both ends. Underinvestment becomes a structural problem as wealth increases, because bona fide investment opportunities decline while the ratio of saving to income rises.</p> <p>So, what should governments do to maintain full employment? Keynes suggested that in the short and medium term a government should provide sufficient public investment from loans, but in the longer run it should redistribute wealth and income in favour of those with a higher propensity to consume. This latter was in line with Hobson’s remedy for slumps, reached by a different theoretical route.</p> <p>Keynes’s ultimate policy aim was to absorb some of the unwanted surplus of saving in increased leisure. This would mark entry to the “golden age” of capital abundance – the theme of his futuristic essay “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren”, published in 1930. A hundred years hence, Keynes thought, both capital accumulation and consumption would approach saturation.</p> <p>Marx, too, looked forward to this kind of utopia but he denied that it could ever be achieved by capitalism. The capitalist class (and the political apparatus it controlled) would never allow the scale of public investment Keynes wanted – which it would deem inefficient and wasteful; nor the measures of redistribution advocated by both Hobson and Keynes – which it would condemn as weakening the incentive to save and work. As machines increased the productivity of labour, and thus the possibility of shorter hours of work, capitalists would force down real wages by raising unemployment, and more generally by pauperising the mass of the population. Sooner or later this would cause a revolution. It was socialism, not capitalism, that would inherit the era of abundance.</p> <p>The ideas of the three thinkers all play out differently when we introduce a foreign sector. Let us call this “globalisation”.</p> <h2> The open economy</h2> <p>In a closed economy – one without a foreign sector – it is excess saving, according to Hobson, that causes periodic slumps. But an open economy provides an alternative: the domestic saver can lend his savings abroad to develop new markets. Hobson called the need to find a foreign vent for saving the “economic taproot of imperialism”. This was taken up by Lenin to explain why capitalism hadn’t collapsed on schedule. Faced with a falling rate of profit, capitalists could restore their profits by opening up sources of exploitation abroad.</p> <p>Unfortunately, this remedy – which both Hobson and Lenin called imperialism – only postponed the evil day. The competitive drive to capture new markets and open up new sources of exploitation would lead to wars between the leading powers for the “division and redivision of the world”. Hobson thought the Boer war was a precursor of a new type of capitalist war. Lenin interpreted the First World War in the same terms. Keynes drew a similar conclusion to Hobson and Marx. “If nations can learn to provide themselves with full employment by their domestic policy,” he wrote in 1936, “there would be no longer a pressing motive why one country need force its wares on another or repulse the offering of its neighbour.”</p> <p>The contemporary value of the analysis of all three thinkers is that it forces us to look more critically at the phenomenon of globalisation. Is globalisation the consequence of a benign and normal search for higher returns? Or is it an attempt to solve problems of underconsumption and declining profitability in the capital-exporting countries which would otherwise bring their economies crashing down?</p> <p>All three analyses are relevant to this problem. Keynes was the least interventionist of the three. He thought moderate globalisation was potentially beneficial but it needed to be underpinned by monetary “rules of the game” which would prevent surplus countries from “hoarding” their surpluses and thus impose austerity on the debtor countries. In his International Clearing Union, which he proposed in 1941, the reserves of persistent creditor countries would be taxed and the proceeds redistributed to the debtor countries. But no such mechanism was established by the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944, and the problem of adjustment of trade balances between creditor and debtor countries plagues not just the eurozone but US-China relations, threatening a descent into currency wars and protectionism.</p> <p>The intuitions of Hobson and Lenin also speak to our present situation. Hobson’s notion of a structural imbalance between production and consumption, leading to “excess saving” that requires a foreign vent, surely applies to China. Lenin’s idea that the export of capital is required to overcome periodic crises of profitability in the advanced capitalist nations helps explain the “offshoring” of manufacturing (and service) jobs to China and east Asia.</p> <h2> Today’s “crisis of capitalism”</h2> <p>We have gone in the opposite direction to Keynes’s, Hobson’s and Marx’s hopes, pushing into a distant future the golden age of capital abundance. We are still fixated on economic growth and have abandoned any attempt to control the level or kind of investment. In order to make growth happen, we encourage more and more consumption through advertising, while actively promoting inequality.</p> <p>And instead of the state embarking on wasteful and unnecessary investment programmes to keep people in jobs, we leave it to the financial sector to do this, wasting the money of investors in order to enrich a tiny minority, while most people fall ever deeper into debt.</p> <p>A structural analysis of how we got to where we are should start with an account of how Keynesian ideas, which saw off the Marxist challenge after the Second World War, were in turn dethroned by neoliberalism in the 1970s, opening the way for the dominance of finance capitalism.</p> <p>The political economies of the capitalist world between 1950 and the 1970s brought about a balance of forces between capital, labour and government. Economic policy was designed to achieve full employment, wages grew with productivity, incomes were equalised through progressive taxation, and international exchange was restricted. This configuration created a virtuous circle of growth.</p> <p>This was the Keynesian age. Keynes believed that the power of ideas – his ideas – would be enough to kill off Marx permanently, but he never considered the possibility that his own ideas might be at the mercy of changes in the power structures of western societies. After 1980, the state proved unable to protect the Keynesian revolution from the consequences of the continuing full employment it guaranteed. Over time, full employment strengthened trade union power; unions used their position to push wages ahead of productivity; wages started to encroach on profits; inflation took hold as governments tried to stay ahead of trade union demands. To end what had become a vicious spiral of “stagflation”, the business class demanded lower taxes, freedom to export capital, free trade and an end to the full employment commitment. Two of the countervailing powers, the unions and the state, were humbled, leaving capital in control. This brought back the power system of the 19th century, brilliantly aaalysed by Marx.</p> <p>The economics profession justified the shift back to an older form of capitalism. The technical ammunition for the monetarist counter-revolution was provided by Milton Friedman’s restatement of the quantity theory of money, coupled with his assertion that in each economy there existed a “natural” rate of unemployment, which could not be lowered, except temporarily, by printing money.</p> <p>Friedrich Hayek’s slow-burning <em>Road to Serfdom</em>, published in 1944, offered a powerful political economy argument against state intervention in economic life. There was also a revival of the Schumpeterian idea that the dynamism of capitalism depended on bouts of creative destruction. “Free-market” think tanks and journalists, funded by business, provided the simplifications and slogans needed for politicians to understand and mouth the new verities.</p> <p>In this way, after 1980, a new economic paradigm established itself, based on widening income inequality, repression of real wage growth, an accelerated transfer of manufacturing jobs to east Asia and a resulting high level of structural unemployment and underemployment. A rickety economy was rescued from collapse in the 1990s by the dotcom boom, and in the 2000s by asset-price inflation, financed by exploding private debt-to-income ratios. A banking collapse was inevitable.</p> <p>Globalisation was business’s “open” economy answer to the problem of domestic underconsumption identified by Hobson and the declining rate of profit predicted by Marx. Hobson’s oversaving analysis best explains China’s reliance on export-led growth, but it also sheds light on western countries’ reliance on access to cheap credit to maintain the stagnating purchasing power of what is now called “the squeezed middle class”. Analysis in terms of the declining rate of profit is good at explaining the accelerated transfer of productive capacity to east Asia. And by completing the destruction of the Keynesian state, globalisation has handed our future to finance, which Keynes identified as the most uncertain, least stable element in the economic structure.</p> <p>According to the Harvard economist Dani Rodrik, we face a “political trilemma”: press on with globalisation and restrict democracy to improve economic efficiency, limit globalisation in the name of democracy, or globalise democracy.</p> <p>The first option will be politically intolerable for large democracies of the west and the third is pie in the sky, which leaves the second. It is time to call a halt to the rush towards globalisation and take stock.</p> <p>At the minimum, there needs to be a global bargain between the US and China and a regional bargain between Germany and its partners in the eurozone on their respective “rules of the road”, which should aim to prevent the continuing current account imbalances. This is the problem that Keynes’s clearing union was designed to overcome but which the Bretton Woods system failed to solve.</p> <p>Yet Rodrik’s “trilemma” does not dig deep enough. It assumes that globalisation would be best if it could be made to work equitably. But global economic integration, in the absence of domestic policies to maintain full employment, create a broad base for consumption in all countries and reduce hours of work in the rich countries, is bound to be destructive for the reasons Keynes gave in 1936: it forces countries into export-led solutions to domestic problems which deny democratic control and are bound to bring them into conflict. Closed economy problems identified by Keynes, Hobson and Marx must be overcome if the open economy is to work harmoniously.</p> <p>What hope is there of this? Given that the Marxist physic of abolishing capitalism is worse than the disease, the question is whether it is any longer in business’s interest to go along with a system that crashes every few years, with increasingly harmful economic and social consequences. Keynes repeatedly said he had come not to destroy capitalism, but to make the world safe for capitalism – and make capitalism safe for the world. It may be that business interests are now sufficiently aligned with the needed domestic reforms to enable further global economic integration to proceed peacefully, if less hectically. If a change in the configuration of “vested interests” allows better “ideas” to succeed, the recent crisis will not have been in vain.</p> <p><em>Robert Skidelsky’s most recent book, co-written with Edward Skidelsky, is “How Much Is Enough? The Love of Money and the Case for the Good Life” (Allen Lane, £20)</em></p> </div></div></div> Fri, 17 May 2013 11:53:19 +0000 Robert Skidelsky 194181 at <![CDATA[Meeting our makers: Britain’s long industrial decline]]> <div class="field field-name-field-subheadline field-type-text-long field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>The Slow Death of British Industry: a 60-Year Suicide, 1952-2012 - review.</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-node-image field-type-image field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><a href="/culture/culture/2013/01/meeting-our-makers-britain%E2%80%99s-long-industrial-decline"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-fullnode-image" src="" width="510" height="348" alt="Railway volunteers at work on railway track during the General Strike of 1926" title="Railway volunteers at work on railway track during the General Strike of 1926" /></a></figure></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-nodeimage-title field-type-text field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Railway volunteers at work on railway track during the General Strike of 1926. Photograph: Getty Images</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p align="center"><strong>The Slow Death of British Industry: a 60-Year Suicide, 1952-2012</strong><br /> Nicholas Comfort<br /><em>Biteback Publishing, 344pp, £8.99</em></p> <p>In the early 1950s, Britain was an industrial giant. Today, it is an industrial pygmy. Manufacturing was industry’s bedrock. In 1952, it produced a third of the national output, employed 40 per cent of the workforce and made up a quarter of world manufacturing exports. Today, manufacturing in this country accounts for just 11 per cent of GDP, employs only 8 per cent of the workforce and sells 2 per cent of the world’s manufacturing exports. The iconic names of industrial Britain are history; in their place are the service economy and supermarkets selling mainly imported goods. What happened? Was it inevitable? Does it matter?</p> <p>Nicholas Comfort’s book is exactly what its title promises: a roll-call of the dead and the dying. The broad outline of the story is well known. Britain emerged from the Second World War with a technological edge in aircraft, aerospace, computers and electronics that it failed to exploit. In the 1950s and early 1960s, British manufacturers dominated the home market and had about 20 per cent of world exports, with some world-beaters such as the Comet airliner, the Mini and Triumph motorbikes. Then, a decline set in with increasing import penetration and declining export sales, until the trade surplus in manufactured goods finally disappeared in 1983.</p> <p>In the 1970s, many firms with household names went under. Governments, starting with Edward Heath’s, desperately tried to keep“lame ducks” such as Rolls-Royce afloat by nationalising them. Margaret Thatcher returned the lame ducks to “the chill forces of the market”, many of them drowning. Manufacturing went on shrinking under New Labour; the sector’s workforce halved from 4.5 million to 2.5 million between 1997 and 2010. “Financial and business services,” writes Comfort, “were seen [by the New Labour government] as the way forward for Britain, with manufacturing recognised as globally competitive only in aerospace and pharmaceuticals.” As immigrant workers flooded into Britain’s services and food-processing sector, manufacturing jobs flooded out, mainly to the Far East. Flagship businesses were sold to foreign firms, notably Cadbury’s, which was taken over by Kraft in 2010. No story, writes Comfort, is more poignant than the “fall of two of the giants of the 20th-century British economy – GEC and ICI.”</p> <p>Every advanced economy has been affected by the shift from manufacturing to services but the sheer scale of the industrial decline in Britain demands a special effort at explanation. After all, Germany has kept a much larger manufacturing capacity and its workers work fewer hours. France, too, has maintained world-class manufacturing companies such as Dassault and Peugeot. Why did Britain fail to emulate them?</p> <p>Unfortunately, we don’t get an explanation here. Like almost every writer on industry, Comfort cannot see the wood for the trees. The reader is wearied by page after page of blunders, business miscalculations and missed opportunities; failed grandiose projects such as Concorde; firms going bust, changing their owners, changing their names and either disappearing or reappearing in shrunken form with new acronyms.</p> <p>Comfort spreads a thin coat of “factors” to cover every possible influence: not just “fuddy-duddy management, failure to invest, outdated working practices and headin- the-sand trade unions” but also “shorttermism in the City and the Treasury; the sterile and destructive cycle of nationalisation and privatisation; poor decision-making by government; inadequate market size at home; an obsession with size; the transfer of jobs to the developing world; takeovers driven by boardroom egos; boardroom disdain for manufacturing as such; the lure of Wall Street; sheer bad luck – and good oldfashioned incompetence”. Some old saws – comprehensive education and health and safety legislation – are duly wheeled out to complete the list. As Churchill once said of a dessert placed before him: “This pudding lacks a theme.”</p> <p>A historian of British industry should be able to do better. There cannot be a single explanation of the British economic experience but we can suggest two important ones. The first was the imperial overhang. Until well into the 1960s, most British companies expected to go on earning their living from the empire – that financial, industrial and military complex making up the imperial system. Premonitions of industrial decline – “Made in Germany”, the “yellow peril” – date from late-Victorian and Edwardian times. Joseph Chamberlain’s 1903 campaign for tariff reform was deliberately designed to reduce competitive pressure from Germany and Japan. It is easy to forget that for twothirds of the last century competition was repelled not by superior British efficiency but by military force: it took some time after defeat in the Second World War for German and Japanese competition to start up again.</p> <p>Imperial policy was not wholly consistent. Maintaining the sterling area – not finally wound up until the late 1970s – required high interest rates and an overvalued exchange rate that hit manufacturing. But it was part of a system of sterling loans tied to orders for British exports, a British government procurement system for imperial defence and a resource-extraction system from imperial primary producers.</p> <p>The British aircraft, shipbuilding, railway and motor vehicle industries were under no pressure to modernise their plants, upskill their managers and workers or reform their archaic labour practices when they could rely on captive domestic and imperial markets. Complacency ruled; entrepreneurship was at a discount. Globalisation put a stop to all that.</p> <p>After the breakdown of the imperial system, the big problem facing British industry was erratic government policy. In the 1950s, Conservative governments pursued benign neglect. Governments of the 1960s and 1970s, mainly Labour, decided that the future lay in “industrial policy”: making industries more efficient by reorganising them. Governments would “pick winners” as, allegedly, the French and Japanese did. Industrial policy started up with the National Economic Development Council and its regional counterparts, the “little Neddies”; it gathered strength with the merger boom and nationalisations of the 1960s and 1970s; it was discredited with Tony Benn’s attempt to turn collapsed industries into workers’ co-operatives; it was abandoned by Thatcher in 1979.</p> <p>Running through this history is a lack of continuity: government policy towards taxation and incentives continually changed, long-term aims were repeatedly sacrificed to short-term financial exigencies, projects were taken up and abandoned when they became too costly, fashions in thinking shifted, waste was colossal. The result was neverending unsettlement and uncertainty. The theoretical debate that went on at this time between “governments” and “markets” was largely off-beam. Both business and government miscalculations were equally gross.</p> <p>As the former civil servant Chris Benjamin has written (<em>in Strutting on Thin Air</em>), “The underlying essential for industrial success is ‘continuity’ . . . Continuity fosters consistent focus, expertise evolved over decades and pursuit of research, innovation and knowledge application to secure the feedback for ‘increasing returns’.”</p> <p>In the end, does industrial decline matter if we can earn our living in other ways? Comfort is of the school that laments that “Britain has forgotten how to make things” but it is not easy to separate out the economics from the nostalgia in this statement. Economic policy should not be determined by misty-eyed reminiscences about the brand names of decades past or by a nationalism derived from the tangibility of “things”.</p> <p>Comfort certainly seems to feel more at home complaining about where Terry’s Chocolate Oranges are now made (Poland) than explaining why an economy less reliant on services might be a healthier one. He deplores how, while the Queen’s coronation souvenirs were made in Britain, knickknacks for the Diamond Jubilee were mostly made in China – as if cheap souvenirs were the secret recipe for Britain’s economic future.</p> <p>Yet there is more to be said. Almost the last gasp of the view that manufacturing mattered was the House of Lords select committee report on overseas trade in 1985. It asked: what would happen to our balance of trade when surpluses from North Sea oil ran out? The then chancellor, Nigel Lawson, replied succinctly: services would take up the slack. Yet this is a superficial response for a number of reasons. First, in so far as the big gainer from loss of manufacturing has been the financial services, it has greatly increased the tendency to short-termism. Michael Heseltine, as president of the Board of Trade in 1993, said in parliament:</p> <p class="rteindent1">I do not doubt for one moment that deep-seated short-term attitudes are prevalent in our affairs; or that this is one important strand in understanding why we as a nation have performed less well than many of our competitors. Such attitudes have led us to invest less than we might in technology and advanced means of production. They have encouraged growth in companies by acquisition and financial engineering rather than through organic development and building on products and markets. They have led us to place far too great an emphasis on comparisons of near-term financial results in judging our companies, instead of considering the strength of management and its underlying strategy. Those attitudes are of a piece.</p> <p>Second, Britain’s reliance on financial services has increased the volatility of government revenue. The financial sector, as the experience of 2008 showed, is particularly prone to boom and bust. Financial volatility affects all incomes, including the income of the government. Because of its disproportionate reliance on the inflated taxes from the financial sector, the British government’s revenues collapsed disproportionately when the financial sector failed.</p> <p>This helps explain why our government’s “structural deficit” was greater than those of countries with more balanced economies. It had become over-reliant on a particularly volatile income stream. Like individuals, governments should hold balanced portfolios. No government should remain indifferent to the distribution and performance of a nation’s assets, human or physical, because on that depends its ability to fulfil its social functions. Governments therefore need to promote a balanced economy.</p> <p>Finally, services of all kinds are worse than manufacturing at securing high employment and progressive increases in median incomes. In the long run, automation is bound to reduce manufacturing employment but as long as manufactures are such a large part of international trade, they are important for maintaining employment in a trading economy, because most services cannot be exported. A country that loses its industrial base will thus experience rising structural unemployment apart from automation.</p> <p>Manufacturing is also a safeguard against income deterioration because it is more productive than most services. The more people are employed in labour intensive activities – especially retail services – the lower the typical income will be. The loss of two million manufacturing jobs between 1997 and 2010 probably explains why Gordon Brown, despite his best efforts, was unable to increase average productivity growth in the period.</p> <p>For these reasons, Lawson’s dismissal of the case for manufacturing as “special pleading dressed up as analysis” is not the last word on the subject. It is a shame that Comfort has missed the chance to put that case in a more persuasive form.</p> <p><em>Robert Skidelsky is the author, with Edward Skidelsky, of “How Much Is Enough? The Love of Money and the Case for the Good Life” (Allen Lane, £20)</em></p> </div></div></div> Thu, 24 Jan 2013 08:26:58 +0000 Robert Skidelsky 192059 at <![CDATA[An economy in crisis, a coalition in denial]]> <div class="field field-name-field-subheadline field-type-text-long field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>As long as Cameron and Osborne are battling Vince Cable’s Lib Dems for control over the direction of Britain’s economy, the slump will persist.</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-node-image field-type-image field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><a href="/politics/politics/2012/09/economy-crisis-coalition-denial"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-fullnode-image" src="" width="510" height="348" alt="David Cameron" title="David Cameron" /></a></figure></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-nodeimage-title field-type-text field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">David Cameron. Photograph: Getty Images</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>Refreshed by his summer holiday, David Cameron vowed to “get Britain moving again”. A slew of kick-starting initiatives has followed, most of them the brainchild of his government’s one-man think tank, Vince Cable.</p> <p> The figures are dire. After a tepid recovery from the collapse of 2008, the British economy has started shrinking again. Most forecasters expect a negative growth outcome for this year. The same is true of the eurozone.</p> <p> What has gone wrong? In the spring of 2009 all the major economies, including Britain’s, were given a large fiscal and monetary stimulus. Then in June 2010 George Osborne, the Chancellor, entered the Treasury with a large dose of austerity. It is true that a correlation isn’t a cause, but could it be that the earlier recovery had something to do with the stimulus, and the subsequent decline with the austerity? At any rate these are striking coincidences. By contrast, the United States, which escaped Dr Osborne’s cure, has continued to grow, albeit feebly.</p> <p> It would be foolish to say that Osborne’s budgets have caused the slump. The charge is that his budgets, far from offsetting, have aggravated the collapse of demand that followed the banking crash of 2008. Austerity has not caused the economy to shrink, but has kept it from recovering. Meanwhile, it is wonderful to see how we clutch at straws. For example, the fall in retail sales in July compared to July last year has been attributed to people preferring to watch the London Olympics rather than go shopping. Could it just be that they had less disposable income than last year? Then there was the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. This was blamed for the poor second-quarter showing. In a healthy economy, however, parties don’t typically lead to such severe hangovers.</p> <p> The government clutches at straws of its own. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor assert ad nauseam that Britain’s recovery was derailed by the eurozone crisis. Unfortunately, the dates are wrong. The British recovery petered out before the eurozone crisis started. It actually petered out as soon as the coalition got started.</p> <p> Yet surely it was only the government’s austerity policy that prevented Britain from going the way of those big European spenders? Here is David Cameron in the <em>Mail on Sunday</em> (2 September): “When I became Prime Minister our market interest rates were the same as Spain’s. Ours are now less than 2 per cent; theirs more than 6 per cent. Why? Because we threw a lifeline around the British economy and pulled it back from the cliff edge.”</p> <p> But wait a minute: Spain had a budget surplus and a low public debt in the run-up to the crisis. Since then Spain has followed much the same austerity policy as the UK. So how can the difference in the yields of the two governments’ debt be due to the differences in their fiscal policies? There must be “other factors”.</p> <p> Now we come to some good news. “Yes, growth has been disappointing,” Cameron admits, “but in the past two years we’ve also seen more than 900,000 jobs created in the private sector.” This may be true, but the number we are most interested in is net, not gross, employment. In fact, unemployment has risen in the two years of coalition rule, from 2.48 million to 2.59 million. More importantly, almost half of the new jobs created under Cameron are parttime. Agreed, better some employment than no employment, but hardly the resounding success story it’s made out to be.</p> <p> There is still a puzzle. The government takes comfort from unemployment having fallen recently, even though the economy has continued to shrink. The headline figure of 2.59 million unemployed is actually slightly lower than it was six months ago. The reason for this is almost certainly that employers are hanging on to skilled labour for fear of losing it altogether, with the consequence that there has been a fall in recorded productivity. As the <em>Guardian</em> put it, “. . . it now requires many more of us to labour away to churn out the reduced volume of stuff” (15 August).</p> <p> The figures have to be spun to disguise Osborne’s failure. The present situation is the predictable and, by some of us, predicted outcome of policies of fiscal austerity pursued in the face of the worst economic crisis since the Second World War. That prediction rests on a straightforward Keynesian analysis.</p> <p> Keynes explained how conditions of semislump can get established. Let’s start from a situation of full employment and high private indebtedness. This latter does not matter so long as the economy is growing. But suddenly the next step up the ladder is no longer there and a lot of people find themselves “living beyond their means”.</p> <p> The only thing they can do is to reduce their spending: that is, save more. But what happens if all households and firms try to increase their saving at the same time? Well, then the total spending in the economy will fall because everyone’s spending is someone else’s income. There will be less demand for goods and services and therefore for labour. Our collective attempts to get back into balance – get rid of our credit card debt, as the Prime Minister likes to put it – will have made us all poorer, and, indeed, reduced the amount of saving as well, given that we will have smaller incomes out of which to save. So the economy will go on shrinking until the excess saving is eliminated by the growing poverty of the community.</p> <p><img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/images/skidlesky.JPG" style="width: 510px; height: 507px;" /></p> <p> The essence of this insight is captured in the phrase the “fallacy of composition”. The fallacy consists in the claim that what is true of the parts must also be true for the whole. The bestknown application of this fallacy is the “paradox of thrift”. New acts of saving, though virtuous for the individual, make us all poorer when the demand for new capital has declined. That is why Keynes rejected more saving as the remedy for a slump. The correct response was more spending. And if private agents lack the resources or incentive to increase their spending then the government needs to increase its own spending. This, in a nutshell, is the theory of the stimulus.</p> <p> We all worry about debt, yet the important figure is not what I owe but the ratio of what I owe to my income. I can try to reduce this ratio either by saving my income to pay off the debt or trying to make my income larger. Reducing the national debt is more complicated. It can only be done by taxing more or spending less, and this drives down people’s incomes and creates unemployment. Furthermore, by reducing incomes, it also reduces people’s ability to pay taxes, and this can be self-defeating. Something like this has happened in Europe, where falling incomes due to austerity have driven debt ratios up, not down (see chart).</p> <p> Offloading private debt on to the public sector may help stabilise the economy, but does not, of itself, produce recovery; and may, in addition, frighten the bond markets into raising their default premium on government paper.</p> <p> So we seem to be between a rock and a hard place. International organisations such as the OECD and the IMF are more or less agreed that the present austerity policies are preventing growth; but they offer no alternatives. Here is Ángel Gurría of the OECD: “Deleveraging necessarily means higher savings, and that means lower consumption and therefore lower demand. And the lower demand means even lower employment and even lower incomes for households and lower revenues from governments.<br /> And both of these mean slower deleveraging. It is a vicious circle.”</p> <p> And here is the latest IMF study: “The recovery has stalled and unemployment is still too high . . . Additional macroeconomic easing is needed to close the output gap faster. Scaling back fiscal tightening plans should be the main policy lever if growth does not build momentum by early 2013 even after further monetary stimulus and strong credit easing measures.”</p> <p> To a Keynesian, these belated insights are hardly news. Gurría, for instance, is merely repeating Keynes’s argument that to withdraw demand from an already demand-deficient economy will lead not to recovery, but to a shrinking economy, a growing debt (private and public) and the need for more austerity.</p> <p> Today there is a silent U-turn going on in the UK as well as in eurozone countries, hence Cameron’s call to “cut through the dither”. But there is still great disagreement about what the recovery policy should be.</p> <p> The debate is broadly between the supplysiders and the demand-siders. The supply-siders argue that there is too little money in the economy, the demand-siders that there is too little spending power. It might seem that the two come to the same thing, but as Keynes pointed out, the holder of money has a choice: whether to “hoard” it or spend it. Those who argue that any increase in the money supply is bound to be spent on buying goods and services ignore the existence of “liquidity preference” – the desire to hold on to cash because of uncertainty about the future.</p> <p> The favourite tool of supply-side expansionism is quantitative easing (QE), or “printing money”. Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve and Mervyn King of the Bank of England, together the most powerful central bank governors today, believe that the reason the Great Depression of the 1930s was so deep and lasted so long was that the monetary authorities allowed the money supply to collapse. They are determined not to make the same mistake this time. The technique of printing money is for the central bank to buy government (and pos - sibly corporate) securities from non-financial companies and give them cash in return. The recipients deposit this additional cash in their bank accounts. They then spend it buying assets. Alternatively, the banks’ increased cash reserves enable them to reduce the rates they charge for loans. Either way, there is a stimulus to spending.</p> <p> Despite attempts by the Bank of England to devise “more economically relevant” measures of money, the evidence is that only a small fraction of the “new money” has got out into the economy, enough to stop a slide all the way down into another Great Depression, but not enough to produce a recovery. The main benefit of QE has been to keep down the cost of government borrowing: one of the inestimable advantages of having your own central bank able to print money. This gives the government more room for fiscal manoeuvre.</p> <p> So, contrary to Cameron’s claim, it is not fiscal austerity that has kept the cost of government borrowing low, but QE – plus the lack of business confidence in alternative investment prospects.</p> <p> The government has dangled a succession of carrots before the banks to induce them to “lend more” of the extra money they are getting. In March, there was a National Loan Guarantee Scheme. This was replaced less than six months later by the Funding for Lending Scheme. However, attempts to increase the volume of lending by lowering banks’ funding costs have largely failed. Since July, when the new scheme was launched, bank funding costs have fallen by 0.5 per cent, but the rate for new mortgages has fallen by only 0.1 per cent; that is to say, the spread between the two has in fact widened, to the great advantage of banks’ balance sheets, but not borrowers. Now the government has promised a £40bn guarantee for private infrastructure investment. These schemes all help, yet the basic problem is not too little credit, but too little demand for credit. Would people borrow more, even at lower interest rates, when the economy is shrinking? As economists used to say, “You can’t push on a string.”</p> <p> The alternative expansionary tool is an increase in the government deficit. Instead of the Bank of England buying bonds, the government sells bonds – that is, incurs debt – to finance its spending. There would be no point in doing this if the private sector was already investing its money productively. If, in this situation, the government started selling more of its debt, it would merely “crowd out” existing private investment. Yet this is not the case when there is a deficiency of aggregate spending. Government borrowing then absorbs “idle” savings and puts them to use.</p> <p> There are many ways it can do this. The least promising is the policy of tax cuts for the rich advocated by the political right. The reason is that the rich save more of their money than the poor, so the stimulating effect may be quite small; and the non-saved part of the tax windfall is quite likely to go into the kind of financial and real-estate speculation that precipitated the last crash. Tax reductions for the poor, though, in the form of temporary relief from National Insurance contributions, would be helpful.</p> <p> In the present situation there are two quick ways for the government to boost total spending. It could supply all households with timelimited spending vouchers – a Christmas present of, say, £100 for each family in the land. Some of the extra spending power would be used to buy imported goods or repay debt, but there would still be some net increase in domestic spending.</p> <p> On the investment side, the easiest thing that the government could do would be to reinstate capital spending programmes cancelled in the drive for deficit reduction, with social housing and school-building given priority. Easing planning regulations (a favourite supply-side measure) to stimulate construction will help, but the private sector will not construct buildings if there is no effective demand for them.</p> <p> The government should also set up a national investment bank with its own portfolio of investment projects focused on infrastructure and cutting-edge technology. A firm, long-term commitment by the investment bank would not only give the country new roads and energy sources but spread jobs to small and mediumsized suppliers.</p> <p> The crucial difference between the National Investment Bank and the government’s plan to guarantee £40bn of private infrastructure projects is that the investment bank would be an active investor with its own funds, whereas the government’s plan leaves the initiative to the private sector. Even Vince Cable’s so-called small business bank is not expected to do more than “shake up the market in business finance”. This is based on the fallacious doctrine that the private sector will always be better at “picking winners” than any public authority, however shielded an authority may be from political interference.</p> <p>This largely reflects the failed experiments of the 1960s, such as British Leyland. The experience of many European and Asian countries gives the lie to the notion that state-led investment is bound to fail. And the recent catastrophic performance of the financial services industry should guard us from the belief that the private sector always knows best.</p> <p> The important requirement, as our success in the Olympics showed, is the identification of potential winners and sticking with them long enough to show results. The bane of British “industrial policy” has been not the inability of public authorities to pick winners, but the chopping and changing of policy in response to temporary financial exigencies. The cancellation of public capital projects after 2008 is a good example of this unsteadiness of aim.</p> <p> This is where the economic debate rests. It is high time to move it from academic discussion to the political arena. This will be necessary in any case if, as I believe, the prospect under present policy is for semi-permanent continuation of conditions of semi-slump.</p> <p> <em>Robert Skidelsky’s most recent book – written with Edward Skidelsky – is “How Much Is Enough? The Love of Money and the Case for the Good Life” (Allen Lane, £20).</em></p> </div></div></div> Thu, 20 Sep 2012 07:53:28 +0000 Robert Skidelsky 189184 at <![CDATA[Plan B: Start a national investment bank]]> <div class="field field-name-field-node-image field-type-image field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><a href="/economy/2011/10/investment-bank-capital"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-fullnode-image" src="" width="510" height="348" title="width" /></a></figure></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <!-- Generated by XStandard version on 2011-10-18T12:34:18 --><p>Dear Chancellor,</p> <p>In 2008, you said that a Keynesian stimulus would be a "cruise missile aimed at the heart of recovery". Three years on, may I suggest that austerity is a "cruise missile aimed at the heart of recovery"? If everyone is being austere at the same time - householders paying off their credit-card debt as the Prime Minister wants, businesses deleveraging, the government cutting its spending - the economy is bound to shrink. It is one thing to be austere when the need is to reduce overheating. It's quite a different thing when the economy is freezing and the need is to restart growth. The question is: where is growth going to come from?</p> <p>I accept that, for reasons of politics and confidence, you cannot now abandon your commitment to your deficit-reduction programme. What we need, though, is to revive the conceptual distinction between current and capital spending. You should aim to achieve a balance of revenues and expenditure on current account, but augment capital expenditure. Banks cannot be forced to lend, or households and business forced to borrow. Therefore, the government has to provide the stimulus for new capital investment on a scale sufficient to overcome the cumulative forces of austerity. But, for the sake of the public accounts, and also to give confidence, it would be far better that the programme of public investment be entrusted to a separate, independent institution.</p> <p>You already have an instrument to hand: the Green Bank. But it is to be given only £3bn and prevented from borrowing. A bank that can't borrow is no bank at all. We need a proper national investment bank, with more capital and the ability to raise private money.</p> <p>My proposal is very simple. You should use part of the proceeds of the sale of government shares in bailed-out banks to increase the capitalisation of the national investment bank. A limited fiscal commitment - say, £10bn in subscribed capital, with contributions drawn down over the next four years - would allow the new bank to finance enough spending to more than offset the £87bn of reductions in public investment planned before 2015. In this way, it could bolster confidence and increase demand without adding to the deficit. To those who say there are no "shovel-ready" schemes, I would reply that the commitment to a large programme of capital investment, of itself, would give confidence ahead of the start of the investment.</p> <p>The difference between the total and the government contribution would be funded from the bond markets. This is the magic of leverage, of course: the magic that got such a black name as a cause of the crisis. But a national investment bank is an opportunity to turn that magic to a constructive end.</p> <p>In fact, an investment bank would kill three birds with one stone. First, through its funding programme, it would create a new class of bonds - long-term, but with a yield pick-up over gilts, reflecting the modest credit risk of the bank - which could include features that fit the needs of the UK pensions industry, the need for renewing infrastructure and the demands for energy efficiency. Second, by lending for the long term, it would help long-term growth. And finally, by ramping up its operations now - when the corporate recovery is being hamstrung by shrinking bank lending and fiscal austerity - it can offer a boost to aggregate demand when it is needed most.</p> <p><em>Robert Skidelsky is emeritus professor of political economy at the University of Warwick. He is a crossbench peer and a biographer of John Maynard Keynes</em></p> <p><em><a href="">Previous: Print money for the public, says Sushil Wadhwani</a></em></p> <p><em><a href="">Next: Lift the cap on immigration, says Jonathan Portes</a></em></p> <p><em><a href="">Back to list</a></em></p> </div></div></div> Tue, 18 Oct 2011 10:42:32 +0000 Robert Skidelsky 41351 at <![CDATA[The boom was the illusion]]> <div class="field field-name-field-subheadline field-type-text-long field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>The world economy is on the edge of a precipice. The best we can hope for now is a managed retreat f</p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-node-image field-type-image field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><a href="/economy/2011/10/world-growth-china-investment"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-fullnode-image" src="" width="510" height="348" title="width" /></a></figure></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <!-- Generated by XStandard version on 2011-10-25T16:42:41 --><p>Since its collapse in the autumn of 2008, the world economy has gone through three phases: a year or more of rapid decline; a bounce back in 2009-2010, which nevertheless did not amount to a full recovery; and a second, though so far much shallower, downturn this year.</p> <p>The resulting damage over the past four years has been huge. The world economy contracted by 6 per cent between 2007 and 2009, and recovered 4 per cent. It is 10 per cent poorer than it would have been, had growth continued at the rate of 2007, and the pain is not yet over. Today, we are in the first stages of a second banking crisis. It may already be too late to avoid a "double dip", but it may still be possible to avoid a triple dip. For this we need a robust intellectual analysis of what is required to ensure durable recovery, and the collective political will to implement it.</p> <h2>Backdrop to the crisis</h2> <p>Economics is in a mess. With the shattering of the dominant Chicago School paradigm, whose rational expectations hypothesis ruled out, by assumption, the kind of collapse we have just experienced, two old masters, Friedrich von Hayek and John Maynard Keynes, have risen from the dead to renew the battles of the 1930s, equipped this time with explanations for what has gone wrong. We can label these "money glut" and "saving glut".</p> <p>The Hayekian argument for the slump is that lax monetary policy made it possible for the commercial banks to lend more money to businesses than the public wanted to save out of its current income. Hence, a whole tranche of investments - "malinvestments", Hayek called them - was being financed by credit creation, not genuine saving. This led to a bubble in the real estate and financial sectors which powered a consumption boom. When (belatedly) the money tap was turned off, the bubble burst and the American economy slumped. The slump is simply the liquidation of the unsound investments - "capital consumption".</p> <p>By contrast, the problem for Keynesians was not insufficient saving, but insufficient investment. Investment is governed by uncertainty, while saving is a stable fraction of income. Keynes's economy tips over into recession when, for some reason, profit expectations decline relative to the volume of saving being done. Businesses start to prefer liquidity to investment. This pushes up the rate of interest, or cost of borrowing, just when you want it to come down. Saving and investment are then brought back into balance, not by a fall in interest rates, but by a fall in incomes. The recession of 2008-2009 was caused by a collapse in investment, not by overindebtedness; overindebtedness was a consequence, not a cause.</p> <p>Both explanations have an international dimension. The Hayekian story starts with the overissuing of dollars by the US Federal Reserve, made possible by the dollar's role as the world's leading reserve currency. This enabled Americans to live beyond their means and to spend more than they produced.</p> <p>The Keynesian story starts with Chinese oversaving. The Chinese save a much higher proportion of their incomes than their economy, as organised, can absorb. It was the voluntary recycling of excess Chinese savings into the US economy by means of the Chinese central bank's purchase of US Treasury bills which allowed the United States to become the world's "consumer of last resort". The "money glut" in the US was a consequence, not a cause, of the more fundamental "saving glut" in China.</p> <p>The two stories are derived from contrasting theories about how a market economy works. The first sees it as a self-regulating mechanism, in which the "invisible hand" smoothly channels the self-interested actions of individuals towards a social optimum in the absence of monetary disturbances. The Keynesians accept the social value of the market system, but deny that, in the presence of irreducible uncertainty, it is optimally self-regulating. The "invisible" hand guides economies not to a social optimum but to "underemployment" equilibrium. As such, government intervention is needed to ensure full use of potential resources.</p> <p>On a cool view, there are elements of truth in both explanations of the recession. We do not have to choose between American profligacy and Chinese frugality. Our policies for recovery have to deal with both contributions to the unravelling of prosperity.</p> <h2>Austerity v stimulus</h2> <p>The differences just described over the origin of the crisis underpin the present debate between austerity and stimulus. According to Meghnad Desai, writing in the <em>Financial Times</em> of 15 September, "The long recession is a Hayekian phenomenon and not a Keynesian one . . . The need is to deleverage, not to spend." The private and public sectors alike need to increase their saving, even though this will reduce aggregate demand in the short run. Letting assets find their proper value will bring genuine demand at realistic prices and punish those who have taken wrong decisions.</p> <p>There will be more pain in the short term, but the Keynesian alternative of stimulus delays the adjustment, unfairly forcing taxpayers to pay the price of rescuing those who took too much risk. The boom was the illusion; the slump is the opportunity to liquidate the malinvestments.</p> <p>To this, Keynesians pose two objections. First, they deny that there was "too much" spending in the US economy before the collapse. There were no signs of general overheating: inflation was low, and there was no shortage of labour. What they would concede to the Hayekians is that cheap money made possible a great deal of misdirected, or speculative investment, which fuelled a wealth-driven consumption boom. But this is not the same as saying that there was overinvestment in the strict sense that further investment would have yielded a zero rate of return, or that there was too much consumption in general. It is absurd to believe that the demand for goods and services of those 46 million Americans living below the poverty line had reached the point of saturation. The houses and construction facilities built in the bubble economy are still there: they require an increase, not a reduction, in the incomes of the low-paid in order to become "affordable".</p> <p>But more fundamentally, Keynesians argue that, even if the Hayekian diagnosis is right, the remedy of austerity is wrong. It derives, they say, from the medieval medical practice of bleeding a sick person to purge the rottenness from his blood - a species of cure that frequently led to the death of the patient. Lionel Robbins, retracting his opposition to Keynesian stimulus policies in the 1930s, wrote:</p> <blockquote><p>Assuming that the original diagnosis of excessive financial ease and mistaken real investment was correct - which is certainly not a settled matter - to treat what developed subsequently [by austerity policies] was as unsuitable as denying blankets and stimulants to a drunk who has fallen into an icy pond on the ground that his original trouble was overheating.</p> </blockquote> <p>(Compare this with the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble: "You can't cure an alcoholic by giving him alcohol.") The point is this: if both the government and the private sector are trying to increase their saving at the same time, you don't just liquidate the bad investments, you kill the economy as well, by reducing national income until everyone is too poor to save.</p> <p>That is why I have been arguing in the UK that when private enterprise is asleep, for lack of effective demand, the state must step in to stimulate the moribund investment machine back into lively activity.</p> <p>The truth is that the policy of all-round "cutting down" increases the problem of indebtedness. The bond markets have diagnosed accurately that, in the absence of growth policies, one lot of debts after another will become "unsustainable". Both the national debt and the debts of private institutions will shrink automatically as a fraction of national income if national income grows, and conversely will grow if it shrinks. Growth, not debt reduction, should be the chief aim of economic policy today. Where there are too many debt collectors, they end up ruining themselves. The eurozone today is awful witness to this truth.</p> <p>With austerity in the ascendant, the world recovery is petering out. Europe is on the edge of a precipice, in a feedback loop from bank insolvency to an explosion of sovereign debt to a second round of bank insolvency. The United States is in little better shape, with its fiscal policy paralysed and the markets expecting a Japanese-style stagnation.</p> <p>Latin America, the Middle East and Russia are benefiting from a commodity boom. Of their main markets, however, the US and Europe are hardly growing, and China is slowing down as Beijing tries to rein in an inflationary bubble in real estate, and because its export-led growth depends on the continuing increase in American and European demand. If China's voracious appetite for commodities slows, growth in Latin America, the Middle East and Russia will grind to a halt, which in turn will limit demand from them for Chinese goods. So the circle of pain widens, as each misfortune feeds back on itself.</p> <p>The plain fact is that there is too little aggregate demand in the world, and the net effect of all the policies being pursued is to reduce it further. So, what will the future bring?</p> <p>We know what happened in the 1930s: the world economy broke up. The conventional wisdom is that this is impossible today under any circumstances. The cliché has it that economic integration is irreversible; that the revolution in information and communications is ineluctably turning the world into a "global village". However, this benign prospect ignores the possibility of great crises and collapses. People were saying exactly the same thing in 1914. Historically, globalisation has come in waves, which recede under the impact of crisis and catastrophe as economic life retreats to the relatively safe haven of national jurisdictions.</p> <p>We have reached the end of that phase of globalisation in which we dealt with the problem of permanently mispriced currencies by means of recycling mechanisms that pumped up speculative bubbles. But what follows it? There are two alternative hypotheses, which may be described as a choice between Disintegration and Co-ordination.</p> <p>The first hypothesis is that, as we fail to solve our problems globally, the global economy will start to fragment. At present, domestic demand is being suppressed both by countries that depend heavily on export-led growth and by countries that are trying to reduce their current account deficits. What this signals is that the global authorities are engaged in a simultaneous effort, for different reasons, to reduce aggregate demand.</p> <p>This is completely the wrong policy. Christine Lagarde, the new managing director of the International Monetary Fund, is right to argue that fiscal retrenchment in the teeth of a recession is suicide. The break will come when the deficit countries, unable to endure any further "bleeding", start to resort to currency depreciation and protectionism. If the eurozone fails to organise growth policies, Greece and possibly other eurozone countries will resume their monetary and trade independence. Currency and trade wars will erupt across the globe: indeed, these wars have already begun.</p> <p>The second hypothesis, Co-ordination, is what Gordon Brown calls a "G20 growth compact". Essentially, he is calling for a revival of the spirit of international co-operation which produced the stimulus of 2009 and halted the slide into another Great Depression.</p> <p>Elements of such a compact would include a reform of the global monetary system, aiming to end the era of current account imbalances; a reform of the financial system, aiming to avoid the excesses of bank lending that triggered the crisis; and macroeconomic policies that aim to boost world demand in the short run.</p> <p>Progress has come on the second item. Basel III has accepted the need for the banks to hold more capital against their liabilities. Individual countries have also began to beef up their regulatory systems. In the UK, the Vickers report has proposed splitting the retail from the investment functions of banks. Hayek would have approved.</p> <p>The more fundamental problem is the political power of the big banks. Not only does finance have to be reformed, it must be tamed. Winston Churchill put it well in 1925, as chancellor of the exchequer: "I would rather see finance less proud and industry more content." So far no government has had the guts to stand up to the banks. This suggests that financial re-regulation will be emasculated.</p> <p>On the other two items, there is no progress to report at all. Reform of the world monetary system needs be based on a grand bargain, mainly between China and the US, on reserves and exchange rates, but there is no sign yet of any serious attempt to achieve this. As for the third item, the only macroeconomic co-ordination is in the direction of cutting down, not building up, the world economy. There is no investment in growth.</p> <p>Yet the world economy cannot cut its way out of recession: it has to grow its way out. If the bond markets force deficit reduction programmes on highly indebted governments, states must look to alternative instruments - such as national or regional investment or infrastructure banks - to mobilise private savings going to waste for want of profitable investment opportunities.</p> <h2>Disintegration scenario</h2> <p>Sovereign wealth funds and pension funds would invest in growth if there was any growth going on. As it is, they invest in government debt, which carries low yields but is at least relatively safe. The former US deputy Treasury secretary Roger Altman has made the point that historically low yields on long-term government debt in the US, the UK and Germany can be explained only by anticipation of "negligible demand for capital".<br />Of the two scenarios, Disintegration is the more likely. This is not just because political leadership is not up to the job of forging a global compact, but because the adjustments required of our current national economic models are too great to be undertaken voluntarily. Americans will need to consume less and export more; China and Germany will have to consume more and export less. Such change requires a fundamental rethinking of ways of living into which all three countries are locked.</p> <p>In the US case, adjustment will require a break with a credit-fuelled economy, which is the only way American capitalism has of dealing with the vast inequalities of wealth and income that it has created by outsourcing most of its manufacturing to low-wage countries. There is little sign, however, of the US being willing to rethink its version of capitalism.</p> <p>In the case of the Chinese, their country's low consumption ratio, as Michael Pettis, on his blog China Financial Markets, points out, is "fundamental to the [Chinese] growth model, and the suppression of consumption is a consequence of the very policies - low wage growth relative to productivity growth, an undervalued currency and, above all, artificially low interest rates - that have generated the furious GDP growth".</p> <p>Germany, too, is locked in to export-led growth, and does not seem fully to understand that if it beggars its European neighbours by running a permanent export surplus, it will end up by beggaring itself.</p> <p>If China and Germany insist on being 21st-century mercantilists - exporting more than they import - the rest of the world will start to protect itself against them. Germany's policy will lead to the breakdown of the eurozone, China's to the breakdown of the world trading and payments system.</p> <p>The two scenarios - Co-ordination and Disintegration - have in common that they presuppose more reliance by countries or groups of countries on domestic sources of growth, and less on foreign trade. That is what we mean when we talk of a more balanced world economy. The sole question is whether the retreat from the wilder shores of globalisation will be orderly or disorderly: whether we drift into the bloc economics of the 1930s, or whether we have the wisdom to build a managed and modified form of globalisation, free from the illusion that everything can be left safely to the markets.</p> <p>And here's the point - a disorderly, acrimonious retreat from globalisation is bound to overshoot the mark, reviving the economics and the politics of the 1930s; but leading, in an era of nuclear proliferation, to consequences that are even more terrifying. So we must resolutely work for the best, without illusion, and with only modest hope.</p> <p><em>Robert Skidelsky is a crossbench peer. His book "Keynes: the Return of the Master" is published in paperback by Penguin (£9.99)</em></p> </div></div></div> Thu, 13 Oct 2011 09:54:03 +0000 Robert Skidelsky 41188 at | <urn:uuid:76aff05c-f884-4e64-84f3-4ce94d8ab8d4> | http://www.newstatesman.com/feeds/writer/1757 | en | 0.941604 | 0.023131 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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COC´LEA or COCH´LEA (κοχλίας), which properly means a snail, was also used to signify other things of a spiral form. [p. 1.464]
1. A screw. The woodcut annexed represents a clothes-press, from a painting on the wall of
Clothes-press worked by two upright screws. (
Mus. Borbon.
the fullonica at Pompeii, which is worked by two upright screws (cocleae), precisely in the same manner as our own linen presses.
A screw of the same description was also used in oil and wine presses. (Vitr. 6.9, 3; Palladius, 4.10.10, 2.19.1.) The thread of the screw, for which the Latin language has no appropriate term, is called περικόχλιον in Greek. (Schneid. Ecl. Phys. 1.469.)
2. A spiral pump for raising water, invented by Archimedes (Diod. 1.34, 5.37; Strab. xvii. pp. 807, 819; Athen. 5.208 f), from whom it has ever since been called the Archimedean screw. It is described at length by Vitruvius (10.11). It consists of a pipe coiled like a screw round a long cylinder, which is placed obliquely with one end in water, and made to revolve on its axis. The water then gradually rises through the spirals of the pipe. It was much used in Egypt for irrigation, as it will only raise water to a moderate height.
Coclea, or turnstile. (Medal, British Museum.)
3. Varro refers in the following terms to a coclea used in the circus :--In giving directions for the construction of an aviary, he says (R. R. 3.5, 3), “ostium habere humile et angustum et potissimum eius generis quod cocleam appellant, ut solet esse in cavea, in qua tauri pugnare solent.” Various conjectures have been given as to the meaning of this passage, but the contorniate medal figured here from the collection in the British Museum presents the most probable explanation. It shows a bestiarius pursued by a bear and taking refuge behind a sort of turnstile, consisting of four partitions revolving round an upright post as an axis. (Cf. Gori, Thes. diptych. i. pll. vii. and xii., with Cassiod. Var. 5.42, where he speaks of the marvellous way in which the bestiarii escaped, “in patenti area cancellosis se postibus occulentes.” ) Thus what Varro recommends is probably a turnstile fitted into a low doorway.
4. Κοχλίας, a spiral staircase (Strab. xvii. p.795). [COCHLIS]
[A.R] [J.H.F]
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• Cross-references from this page (4):
• Vitruvius, On Architecture, 6.3
• Vitruvius, On Architecture, 10.11
• Diodorus, Historical Library, 1.34
• Diodorus, Historical Library, 5.37
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FP (programming language)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Paradigm(s) function-level
Designed by John Backus
Appeared in 1977
Influenced by APL[1]
Influenced FL, FPr, J
FP (short for Function Programming) is a programming language created by John Backus to support the function-level programming[2] paradigm. This allows eliminating named variables.
The values that FP programs map into one another comprise a set which is closed under sequence formation:
if x1,...,xn are values, then the sequencex1,...,xn〉 is also a value
These values can be built from any set of atoms: booleans, integers, reals, characters, etc.:
boolean : {T, F}
integer : {0,1,2,...,∞}
character : {'a','b','c',...}
symbol : {x,y,...}
is the undefined value, or bottom. Sequences are bottom-preserving:
x1,...,,...,xn〉 =
FP programs are functions f that each map a single value x into another:
f:x represents the value that results from applying the function f
to the value x
Functions are either primitive (i.e., provided with the FP environment) or are built from the primitives by program-forming operations (also called functionals).
An example of primitive function is constant, which transforms a value x into the constant-valued function . Functions are strict:
f: =
Another example of a primitive function is the selector function family, denoted by 1,2,... where:
i:〈x1,...,xn〉 = xi if 1 ≤ i ≤ n
= ⊥ otherwise
In contrast to primitive functions, functionals operate on other functions. For example, some functions have a unit value, such as 0 for addition and 1 for multiplication. The functional unit produces such a value when applied to a function f that has one:
unit + = 0
unit × = 1
unit foo = ⊥
These are the core functionals of FP:
composition f°g where f°g:x = f:(g:x)
construction [f1,...fn] where [f1,...fn]:x = 〈f1:x,...,fn:x
condition (hf;g) where (hf;g):x = f:x if h:x = T
= g:x if h:x = F
= otherwise
apply-to-all αf where αf:〈x1,...,xn〉 = 〈f:x1,...,f:xn
insert-right /f where /f:〈x〉 = x
and /f:〈x1,x2,...,xn〉 = f:〈x1,/f:〈x2,...,xn〉〉
and /f:〈 〉 = unit f
insert-left \f where \f:〈x〉 = x
and \f:〈x1,x2,...,xn〉 = f:〈\f:〈x1,...,xn-1〉,xn〉
and \f:〈 〉 = unit f
Equational functions[edit]
In addition to being constructed from primitives by functionals, a function may be defined recursively by an equation, the simplest kind being:
where E'f is an expression built from primitives, other defined functions, and the function symbol f itself, using functionals.
See also[edit] | <urn:uuid:a0577840-83d8-42da-9a2c-6f40a45575a0> | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP_(programming_language) | en | 0.81484 | 0.358676 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Light and electron microscopic studies of the adrenal medulla of golden hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus) indicates that the chromaffin cells are arranged in hitherto undescribed irregular follicles surrounded by thin-walled blood vessels. Each follicle is generally one cell thick with a lumen of variable size and shape, which contains finely granulated materials, nerve endings and chromaffin cell processes. Chromaffin cells are polarized; basal regions, containing the nuclei, about on the follicular cavity, and the apical areas are in close proximity to blood vessels. In the central portion of the organ, follicles contain only adrenaline cells while at the periphery “mixed follicles” occur which have both adrenaline and noradrenaline cell types. Occasional follicles with only noradrenaline cells are found in this area also. These findings have been compared with previous observations. The possible function of the follicular cavities has been discussed briefly. | <urn:uuid:0d0c040a-4860-4356-9092-d96bf31ed109> | http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ar.1091680203/abstract?globalMessage=0 | en | 0.886888 | 0.086551 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
1 vote
My End the FED speech last semester
I am an electrical engineering student at VCU in Richmond Va. I had to take a public speaking course and we were assigned to give and informative, persuasive, and commemorative speech. Im 28 and as such a good couple years older than most of the other students in my class. I took advantage of this to try and spread some ideas and philosophies that I was most assuredly not thinking about when I was their age but wish I had been and hoped those younger than me would start thinking about, especially for the times we are living in. For my informative speech I, of course, informed on Ron Paul. People liked it.
For the persuasive speech, I asked the class if I should do the 9/11 was an inside job speech or an end the fed speech. They seemed to like the 9/11 idea however it was only to be seven minutes long max and to get the necessary points across I needed to show video and more time than seven minutes. So I did the the end the FED speech. Told them how their money was fiat and lost over 95% of its value since 1913 and how the federal reserve promotes economic slavery... I think that one got them. It was interesting though because a girl in the class had heard I was going to do the 9/11 speech and right before my speech, she gave her 9/11 was an inside job speech, than it was my speech, and the next was a speech about how the war on drugs is bullshit. Pretty good day. Here's my speech, I've already given it but tell me what you think.
I'm pretty sure my speech as well as my interjections on other topics in the class woke people up. Here it is.
I’m pretty sure most of us in the world and especially those of us living around VCU recently can spot a robbery when we see one, but robbery isn’t always as blatantly forceful as those that we might be able to relate to. The robbery I’m talking about is done everyday in the name of the powers of the Federal Reserve. We all understand the concept of money, and why some would rob and injure for it. But how many of us really think about where it comes from, and how it’s made, other than the outta paper. Today after a brief conceptualization of what money is I intend to persuade you to take action towards ending the Federal Reserve system, which I believe will be easy once you have heard my points on the FED being privately owned, how the FED system is a prime reason America stays in perpetual debt, and how it affects you.
While it is true today’s money is made out of paper, when we think back on the things we’ve learned about life through ages of history, what was it that was primarily used as money or at least something to back up the claim of a promissory note? That’s right gold. Why? Because people, through the ages, considered it of value or money, and I’m sure many of us here today to some extent still do. Well the man who does the primary speaking for the Federal Reserve, the chairman, doesn’t believe that gold is money (Campaign for Liberty). So in effect the Federal Reserve doesn’t believe gold is money? This is a problem. This is a problem because gold is money. Money that cannot be made out of thin air and so is guarded against manipulation. However paper bills can create money out of thin air. It takes about 1800 Federal Reserve bills to buy an ounce of gold. So the real crime here is that the Federal Reserve has figured out how to make worthless paper bills as good as gold. Why? Because through legal tender laws they have control of the creation of the only legal tender in America, The Federal Reserve note, or dollar. Which was backed by gold as recently as 1971. Today its not backed by gold or anything really to speak of and as Thomas Jefferson once said “Paper is poverty... it is only the ghost of money and not money itself“(Murdock). But its okay this is a governmental body right? Our elected officials in government have got to be constantly watching out for the American Dollar the thing many of us base our future ideas on, right? Wrong the Federal Reserve the entity that prints American currency is a private for profit business and not a governmental non-profit body looking out for the good of American people.
That’s right the Federal Reserve is no more federal than Federal Express. The Federal Reserve is a privately held bank. That operates as all private businesses do, to make profits for its shareholders. That alone is the objective of business as I’ve learned in the couple of business classes I have taken for my business minor. What’s very unique about the Federal Reserve is we, the American people, have no idea who the shareholders (those that provided the upstart money) are. No one really does. We are not allowed to know. And up until recently there was no audit of the Federal Reserve and no one was looking in to its secret dealings. The first partial audit of the FED found that over $16 trillion was allocated to corporations and banks internationally, for “financial assistance” during and after the 2008 fiscal crisis. These bailouts and dealings with foreign companies was a secret until the push for an audit and as JFK has stated in a famous speech “The very word secret is repugnant in a free society”. So these individuals hold the key to the printing of American dollars and we are unaware of whose interests it truly serves, as it is held a secret, and there is the real possibility, and plausibility that some of these investors may not have any allegiance to America or American ideals of freedom and liberty. Economics and the Federal Reserve is a big subject with lots of technical terms to make it sound boring and difficult to understand. This is to throw us off. I can explain it to you in very simple terms hopefully within the next thirty seconds.
The Federal Reserve prints your nation’s currency and lends it to your government and other banks with interest. The important thing is the interest. So in actuality every dollar is a notice of debt that has interest attached to it. So just what would it take to pay the debt owed to the Federal Reserve? Well it would take every dollar out of your pocket and your pocket and my pocket, everybody’s respective pocket. America would have to collect every Federal Reserve note in existence and give it back to the Fed. Yay were debt free right? No that was only the principle. The Federal Reserve would say good job America you paid the principle, now where’s my interest. But America doesn’t have any more Federal Reserve notes to give up, and remember it’s the only legal tender we operate under and they are the only ones allowed to print it. So we would have to ask the almighty Federal Reserve if we could take out another loan to pay off the interest of the previous loan. This would be a cyclical thing keeping us in never ending debt. Can you see how this is a pyramid scheme to make those that bought in rich and keep the rest of us in economic shackles. Yes the Federal Reserve promotes economical slavery. There is no way to get America out of debt under this system. I hope that you really let that sink in.
So how does it affect you personally? Let’s remember one basic tenant of economics I think we can all agree upon. The more of something that’s on the market, the less it’s worth, right? This holds true even with paper money. Right now the Federal Reserve is instituting another round of Quantitative Easing this time it’s QE3. Like I said they have funny was of making things sound technical. All Quantitative Easing means is the FED is going to print more money, based on nothing, and loan it to your government and your banks with interest and hopefully somehow through the channels of commerce it will make the people’s lives better. QE3 specifically states that they are going to buy up mortgage-based securities at the tune of 80 billion a month thru January and then at a pace of 40 billion a month till the economy is fixed. So the banks that are holding these mortgages, some of which are sub-prime, will receive money made out of thin air. Nothing backs the dollar. So as more money is injected into the economy through these superficial means the less and less the dollar will be worth. It’s not the price of gas going up… it’s the value of your dollar fluctuating and over the long run going down. Because they are debasing the currency backing it up with nothing. So every dollar that is printed is worth less than the previous one and in effect is making the dollars we hold worth less and by it’s very nature stealing money out of your pocket. In fact since the FED took over the handling of our currency in 1913 the dollar has lost over 95% of its value. That’s 95% of your purchasing power.
So how do we end this system? We could end the monopoly on our money and change legal tender laws to allow other entities to create money and allow for competition and through competition diminish the power of the Federal Reserve. This was attempted by the man I consider the last great president of the United States. That man was JFK he signed into law executive order 11110 in 1963. Which allowed the treasury to print bills that were backed by silver and compete with the Federal Reserve. However he was assassinated about six months later, by a magic bullet, and his successor Lyndon B Johnson voided this E.O. shortly after taking office. So the cards are stacked against those of us who would like to stop the insanity that is the Federal Reserve. But always remember it is the people who have the power. All it would take is an act of congress forced upon those in office by their constituents, that’s us, to allow the treasury to once again have the power to print sovereign U.S. money. And don’t doubt that a small group of dedicating like-minded individuals can change the world… because it is in fact the only thing that ever has. We must stand against the credit lords against the 1% and for the 99%.
I’d like to finish by urging all you to research my claims of the Federal Reserve being a pyramid scheme and virtually stealing money out of our pockets to benefit private investors. Don’t take my word for it. Do your own research I fully believe you will stand on the side of ending the FED once you learn for yourself the tremendous insanity of this monetary policy in a supposedly free country.
Because if we don’t end it a terribly thing that Thomas Jefferson predicted may come true. And in fact somewhat already has as we experienced the popping of the housing bubble over the past few years. I’ll leave you with this quote by good ole Tommy J” If the American people ever allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation, and then deflation, the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of all property, until their children grow up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
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Great Speech!
Though I must say, I truly hope that Jefferson quote at the end wasn't in it, as it's a fake. It'd only serve to discredit the rest of your fine research.
-Frederic Bastiat | <urn:uuid:9a483526-4280-4cf8-8312-c8e091ba08a8> | http://www.dailypaul.com/283317/my-end-the-fed-speech-last-semester?page=1 | en | 0.974642 | 0.064989 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
THE presidents of America and Iran talked for the first time since 1979 when Barack Obama called Hassan Rohani on September 27th as he headed to the airport in New York after attending the UN general assembly. The two countries have no diplomatic relations and generally regard each other with distrust. In the past, misunderstandings have undermined one or other side's attempts at rapprochement. Neither America nor Iran published a transcript of the conversation but both hinted that it had been good-natured and constructive, touching on proposed negotiations over Iran's nuclear programme. This newspaper is able to fill in the record from our own most secret sources.
Operator: I'm connecting you to the Oval Office...
Obama: Salam aleikum.
Rohani: Hi, it's me. I guess you know it's me since you are calling me. Long time, no speak.
Obama: Keef sahtak?
Rohani: Yeah, yeah, my health is good. But you are using Arabic on me, not Farsi.
Obama: My sincere apologies.
Rohani: Anyway, glad you called. I need your help, really. I'm gonna miss my flight. New York roads are hell, can you clear the traffic?
Obama: Well, we have pretty strict rules in this country.
Rohani: Don't be like that. A wrathful almighty hovers over you. Tremors will strike you down.
Obama: Sir, please. Let's talk politely.
Rohani: Just kidding, Barack. My aides told me that we have to test whether you are prepared to make concessions. I'll let you off this time. The traffic is moving again.
Obama: I'm having a busy day myself, your excellency. I have problems with the Republican Guard Corps in our Congress. They want to shut off the money for the government unless I give them what they want.
Rohani: You mean they will put sanctions on you too, brother? I feel your pain.
Obama: I think I'll be able to cheat a little, if you know what I mean. We can hide the Obamacare programme of mass destruction away from the budget inspectors, inshallah.
Rohani: You are a brother! I knew it. My aides were trying to tell me about your Muslim faith.
Obama: Careful. My father was a Sunni. I hear you Shias are touchy when it comes to this stuff.
Rohani: Don't believe everything you read in our state media. I certainly don't.
Obama: My secretary just passed me a note... It says I should ask you about the nuclear programme.
Rohani: You mean John Kerry is in the room with you? Nice man. He travels a lot. Too much. I wouldn't want to have his job. Did I mention we are once again stuck in traffic?
Obama: Sorry, no. The note is from my actual secretary, not the secretary of state.
Rohani: Never mind. I like American television. I wish I had more time in my hotel to see all the channels.
Obama: Oh yes, which shows do you like?
Rohani: When I'm back in Tehran I will force my whole cabinet to watch The A-Team. I like it when Mr T says...
Obama: Hello, hello. Mr President, can you hear me? Can you hear me...
Rohani: I pity the fool.
(Picture credit: AFP) | <urn:uuid:40e2a679-b019-4179-aaed-2621908437fd> | http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/09/iran-and-america-0 | en | 0.962416 | 0.019374 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
AN INCREASE in merger activity on the back of a sharp rally in share prices is of little surprise—more deals are struck in boom times than during slumps. But it could also be evidence that share prices are again becoming overvalued. Many mergers seem to happen when bosses, who are better informed than outside investors, decide that the stockmarket is wrongly valuing one, or both, of the firms involved. Merging can then seem a good way of profiting from such misvaluations—despite the lamentable record of value creation by mergers in recent years.
This theory is tested in a new study* of merger activity, involving 2,922 completed and 810 unsuccessful bids between 1978 and 2000, in which both firms involved were listed on one of America's three main stockmarkets and the value of the transaction exceeded $10m. The valuation of shares is a matter of much controversy, but the authors used two popular, if not iron-clad, proxies for misvaluation. One is the “price to book” ratio of a firm's share price to the book value of its assets. The other is the ratio of share price to a “residual-income value”, reflecting both book value and analysts' forecasts of profits. The higher the ratio, the more likely it is that shares are overvalued.
The study finds that at times when the stockmarket as a whole seemed overvalued, aggregate merger activity was indeed higher. The fact that at such times bidders were more likely to offer to pay in shares than in cash reinforces the view that misvaluation was driving activity, as buyers tried to exchange their overvalued currency—their equity—for hard assets while they could. Bidders were also typically more overvalued than their targets, especially when stock was the currency.
Intriguingly, the frequency with which bids were hostile, and with which offers were rejected, was lower when the stockmarket as a whole was overvalued. Executives of overvalued targets may be more willing to accept an offer than when their shares are undervalued, because a sale usually allows them to cash in their stock options at a favourable price. Consistent with this, in hostile bids, bidders were typically overvalued, as usual; but targets were relatively undervalued. When the market as a whole was undervalued, targets tended to get a higher premium for selling out—knowing that they were probably undervalued may have led them to strike a harder bargain.
* “Does investor misvaluation drive the takeover market?”, by Ming Dong, David Hirshleifer, Scott Richardson and Siew Hong Teoh, February 2003, Ohio State University working paper. | <urn:uuid:fc62e9d9-d24e-4998-860c-f47f4f243dc2> | http://www.economist.com/node/1958103/print | en | 0.982292 | 0.086703 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Tested and Perfected by Food and Wine
Thai Catfish Salad (Laap Pla Duk)
© Con Poulos
Thai Catfish Salad (Laap Pla Duk)
This vibrant catfish salad with mint, dill, cilantro and a spicy lime dressing is served with a bowl of raw vegetables to balance the searing heat. “You want a really deep char on the catfish skin,” says Johnny Monis, who recommends wild salmon as an alternative. “It’s one of my favorite dishes year-round, but it’s best once the weather lets you get the charcoal grill going.”
1. Three 1-pound whole catfish—cleaned, heads discarded (see Note)
2. 3 tablespoons Asian fish sauce, plus more for brushing
3. 3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
4. 3/4 teaspoon palm sugar or light brown sugar
5. 1 1/4 teaspoons Thai chile powder or other hot chile powder, like cayenne
6. 2 medium shallots, thinly sliced
7. 1/2 cup thinly sliced scallions
8. 1/4 cup chopped cilantro
9. 1/4 cup chopped mint
10. 2 tablespoons chopped dill
11. Roasted rice powder (see Note)
12. Radishes, cabbage wedges, cucumber slices, cilantro, mint and dill sprigs, and lime wedges, for serving
1. Light a grill and oil the grates. Using a sharp knife, cut 3 shallow slits on each side of the fish and brush with fish sauce; grill over moderate heat, turning once, until white throughout and the skin is crisp, 17 to 20 minutes. Transfer the fish to a baking sheet and let cool.
2. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, whisk the lime juice with the palm sugar, chile powder and the 3 tablespoons of fish sauce.
3. Remove the skin and meat from the catfish; discard the bones. Pinch the meat into small pieces and transfer to a bowl. Chop the skin into small pieces and add to the bowl with the shallots, scallions and chopped cilantro, mint and dill. Add the lime dressing and toss well. Transfer the salad to a platter and sprinkle with roasted rice powder. Serve with vegetables, herbs and lime wedges and pass any remaining roasted rice powder at the table.
You can substitute 1 pound skin-on catfish or wild salmon fillets for the whole fish; adjust the grilling time.
Roasted rice powder is available at Asian markets, but it can be made at home: In a skillet, toast 1/4 cup raw sticky rice over moderate heat, stirring until golden, 12 minutes; transfer to a spice grinder and let cool, then grind to a powder. Store in an airtight container for up to 2 months.
Suggested Pairing
Juicy, citrusy off-dry German Riesling. | <urn:uuid:98f845ed-f114-4bf5-be4e-075791704e76> | http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/thai-catfish-salad-laap-pla-duk/print | en | 0.837738 | 0.020205 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Murder trial to begin for 51-year-old man charged as juvenile
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on December 02, 2012 at 8:00 AM, updated December 04, 2012 at 8:46 AM
franklin-triano.jpgCarlton Franklin, left, now 51 years old, is suspected of being linked to the unsolved murder of Lena Triano, right. Both are pictured in their high school yearbooks -- Franklin from 1979 and Triano from 1937.
WESTFIELD — In more than three decades practicing law Edward Busichio has never seen a case quite like this. His 51-year-old client, Carlton R. Franklin, is on trial in a juvenile court for a murder prosecutors say the man committed 36 years ago.
Tuesday a judge accustomed to presiding over more minor crimes typically committed by teenagers, will hear one of the oldest cold cases in the history of the courthouse.
"It’s the oldest case I’ve ever worked on," Busichio said. "It’s unique in that as a matter of fact he’s 51 but in the eyes of the law he’s 15."
Prosecutors say Franklin raped and killed 57-year-old Lena Triano, a secretary who lived alone on Ripley Place in a home which abutted Franklin’s childhood home.
Triano was found hogtied and savagely murdered. Her back door, which investigators say was customarily left unlocked, was locked and the key missing.
For years the case lay dormant until detectives with the Union County Homicide Task Force unearthed forensic evidence on Triano’s clothing which they say points to Franklin, an oil truck driver who spent nearly two decades in prison for kidnapping and robbery.
Prosecutors can not try Franklin in adult court because in 1976 the law prohibited waiving up defendants under the age of 16. Today a juvenile 14 or older can be waived up. They also cannot charge Franklin with the rape because New Jersey’s law eliminating a statute of limitations for aggravated sexual assault did not pass until 1996.
In pretrial motions, Busichio unsuccessfully argued that the passage of time was so extensive it infringed on his client’s due process rights. "Legally they can bring the charge because there is no statute of limitations on murder but in 36 years all of his alibi witnesses are long dead," Busichio said. "It’s detrimental to his defense."
For instance, when Franklin was 15 he typically visited his grandmother in Savannah, Georgia, Busichio said. "His grandma is dead and he doesn’t remember if he was there at the time of the offense."
Busichio has also argued that because Franklin is a juvenile in the eyes of the law lodging him in the Union County Jail violates New Jersey State Code which says "no juvenile will be locked up in a prison, jail or police station". The judge also denied that request.
The trial, which begins Tuesday morning before Judge Robert Kirsch will likely consist almost exclusively of forensic evidence. Triano lived alone and there are no known witnesses to the crime. Many neighbors have died or moved away.
According to courthouse records, Franklin is the oldest juvenile to stand trial for murder in Union County’s recent history.
On average, approximately five juveniles are charged with homicide on a yearly basis, according to court officials, and the average age of the juveniles is approximately 17 years old.
The name of a juvenile defendant and juvenile proceedings are kept private for the protection of the child but Franklin’s trial will be open to a reporter. Judge Kirsch issued an order granting the Star-Ledger’s request to attend the proceeding but denied photography or video recording.
Kirsch also granted the state’s motion to release Franklin’s name to the public. In both instances he ruled the public’s right to access would not substantially harm Franklin given his current age.
If convicted, Franklin would face 1976 sentencing guidelines which said a juvenile convicted of murder would serve an "indeterminate amount of time," meaning they could be reevaluated and released at any time. Busichio said based on case law, he thinks his client would face a maximum of 20 years if convicted.
Related coverage
Cold case arrest: N.J. man accused of involvement in 1976 rape, murder of Westfield woman
Union County task force works to bring closure to cold cases | <urn:uuid:ca4e3877-0506-4c9a-9bdc-19239cb8e53e> | http://www.nj.com/union/index.ssf/2012/12/murder_trial_to_begin_for_51-y.html | en | 0.963715 | 0.033555 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Kilduff: That sounds like a very valid outsider's critique, but how ... do you get this done inside a very elaborate system?
De Geus: You cannot. My point is, if Gavin is going to be the CEO of the state, he has to appoint a CEO of education that is empowered (by) a fundamental redesign of the architecture.
Ken McNeely, California president, AT&T: I absolutely agree. As a large employer in the state, we're simply not able to get the qualified applicants that we need. I think we've lost a generation. I think we're ready for a complete overhaul, and I think something has to happen, or businesses are going to go where they can find the talent that they need; and, unfortunately, that may not be in the state of California. It may not be in the United States.
Ellen Moir, executive director, UC Santa Cruz New Teacher Center: Someone has to "own" public education in this state and be aggressive about it. Our school system, with a school board ... are often lovely, smart people, but dysfunctional. They don't have the impetus and the drive and the focus and the control and the power to transform what's going on in (school) districts.
And finally, I think, we need to do a much better job of recruiting the best teachers.
Kilduff: What practical steps do you think need to be taken to have these changes come about?
Moir: I'm not sure how to tackle the school board situation. I think it definitely needs to be thought of. We have to look at how you measure teacher effectiveness. It has to be beyond just test scores.
Kilduff: UC, CSU, community colleges - they seem to be getting whacked every year. What would ... you do to re-supply whatever these higher-ed institutions need, to get them back on their feet?
Newsom: You simply don't make those cuts in higher education. It's a question of what you value, and the next governor needs to value higher education more substantively, not just rhetorically.
Kilduff: How do you pay for a system that seems to need a lot more dough to operate ... even at a modest level?
De Geus: I think you can't. There is not enough money right now. Therefore, efficiency is what's going to be the driver. I think it's a good place to start with higher education, because it's the shortest pipeline between doing something and having a workforce that actually impacts things.
Moir: I want to comment on the tragedy that we see in this state right now. You have young people preparing for college, and they are getting there with fewer courses, fewer professors, and, you know, faculty that are discouraged because of furlough days and whatnot. We have to prioritize education in this state.
Kilduff: How do you deal with union resistance to change - reform preventing tenure, the seniority systems, mobility, offering higher pay to science and math teachers?
Moir: I do not see the unions as the obstacle. I think that the ... biggest obstacle is that we haven't imagined together how to transform our systems. We have to all be at the table to build out the kind of new structures that we want. I personally think that education needs to dramatically overhaul its performance-management plan. We need to build solid methods for evaluating teachers and principals and superintendents simultaneously. We need to look carefully at what it means to get tenure.
Kilduff: What qualities do you want to see in a graduating student who's coming to your office?
McNeely: What we've not really talked about is, we ... still train our kids like we're in the 1950s, the 1960s, and we live in ... an era now of Facebook and (Twitter) and texting and the kids are being bombarded with information technology from all sides. Yet we haven't evolved - the educational system hasn't evolved - to really challenge those kids, and harness that energy, and that is exactly the kind of energy and the kind of creativity that I think, as large businesses, we're going to need for the future. The jobs that our students today will be applying for don't even exist. So being able to create a student that's going to be able to excel in that environment really means imbuing a sense of creativity, of energy, and a perspective that doesn't exist, I think, in today's classroom. | <urn:uuid:9790da2d-32b3-4135-a257-faba14ec5a7d> | http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/Schools-need-overhaul-to-get-students-job-ready-3215224.php | en | 0.976231 | 0.030036 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Anthony Martin, a Wisc. escape artist, freed himself from shackles while skydiving in a coffin Tuesday, a stunt he performed for the first time 25 years ago.
SERENA, Illinois (AP) — A Wisconsin daredevil parachuted gently into field Tuesday after managing to free himself from shackles and a locked coffin while plummeting through the air.
Anthony Martin waved to the cameras and the crowd that turned out to watch his stunt after he landed in Serena, Illinois, about 70 miles (112 kilometers) southwest of Chicago.
After being dragged from a plane at about 14,500 feet (4,400 meters) up, the coffin whipped wildly from side-to-side with Martin inside. One of the two skydivers who were steadying the box was hit in the face, but everyone landed safely.
Martin, who is from Wisconsin, began studying the art of escape at age 6 after his father shattered his early fascination with magic by explaining the trickery behind a floating pen illusion.
The box was dragged from the plane and two skydivers helped stabilize it by holding handles on its side while a drogue similar to the parachutes used to slow drag-racing cars and fighter jets further steadied it.
Read or Share this story: | <urn:uuid:37458c4a-d01f-4f32-adb5-42f524351e8a> | http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/06/escape-artist-coffin/2625141/ | en | 0.983612 | 0.043088 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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Commission Document Attachment
Grain Management, LLC’s Request for Clarification or Waiver of Section 1.2110(b)(3)(iv)(A)
of the Commission’s Rules; Implementation of the Commercial Spectrum Enhancement Act
and Modernization of the Commission’s Competitive Bidding Rules and Procedures, WT
Docket No. 05-211; Expanding the Economic and Innovation Opportunities of Spectrum
Through Incentive Auctions, GN Docket No. 12-268; Amendment of the Commission’s Rules
2180 MHz Bands, GN Docket No. 13-185.
I must respectfully dissent from this waiver order that exempts Grain Management, LLC (and
other similarly situated parties) from the bright-line trigger of the attributable material relationship
(AMR) rule. I do so because I am not persuaded that the standard for a waiver under section 1.925 of the
Commission’s rules has been met.1 I am also concerned that today’s action sets in motion an effort to
undermine the designated entity rules.
Starting in the 1990s, the Commission established rules enabling independent small businesses to
receive bidding credits—government subsidies provided by the American people—for use in spectrum
auctions. Over the years, the rules for these “designated entities” were refined to prevent instances of
abuse and to promote facilities-based communications service. Specifically, the AMR rule aims to limit a
subsidy recipient’s ability to merely lease spectrum to other wireless providers instead of building out its
own network. The stated concern being that these lease agreements could unduly influence a designated
entity’s decisions, increasing the potential to operate as a shell company.
Section 1.925 allows a rule to be waived if the petitioner can demonstrate that the rule’s
underlying purpose would not be served, or would be unduly burdensome or contrary to the public
interest.2 In this case, Grain obtained spectrum licenses on the secondary market. It then immediately
leased all of this spectrum to AT&T and Verizon, thus making their revenues attributable and rendering
Grain ineligible for designated entity status.3 Despite full knowledge of the AMR rule when it entered
into these business arrangements, Grain now wants a waiver so that it can pursue bidding credits in the
upcoming AWS-3 spectrum auction. Unfortunately, this item provides little to no analysis as to how
waiving this rule will promote facilities-based service. There is also no attempt to adequately explain
how this category of leasing arrangements could not result in undue influence and how this waiver is,
therefore, consistent with the underlying purpose of the AMR rule. Moreover, this rule is not overly
burdensome because there is nothing that prevents Grain from participating in future spectrum auctions or
transactions; they just wouldn’t get a special subsidy in the process.
Going forward, I will monitor the implementation of this item closely and I will be skeptical of
any attempts to water down our designated entity rules. Let’s be clear: bidding credits should be awarded
sparingly to bona fide small businesses after going through a stringent and comprehensive review process.
Otherwise, we deprive the American people of the opportunity to rightfully maximize revenues for the
use of their public resource.
In closing, as I have said previously, the full Commission should have the opportunity to vote on
all issues of significance. I, therefore, thank Chairman Wheeler for circulating this item for a vote.
1 47 C.F.R. § 1.925.
2 Id. § 1.925(b)(3).
3 If a designated entity has a lease agreement for “more than 25 percent of the spectrum capacity of any one of the
applicant’s or licensee’s licenses,” the revenues of the lessee are attributed to the applicant.
47 C.F.R. §
1.2110(b)(3)(iv) (emphasis added).
You are leaving the FCC website
| <urn:uuid:6396e749-638a-4a2b-8435-3674321f29f8> | http://www.fcc.gov/article/fcc-14-103a3?fontsize= | en | 0.91204 | 0.049429 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
It's just past dusk and the crowds are getting bigger at Huashan 1914 Creative Park, a distillery-turned-arts-hub in the heart of Taiwan's capital.
Couples drift out of an exhibition of Pulitzer Prize-winning photography, while families gather at Alleycat's Pizza. In Café Lumière, named after a 2003 film by Hou Hsiao-hsien, students order cappuccinos before heading over to the adjoining art-house cinema.
The compound's spacious lawn is filled with city dwellers enjoying the warm evening with their four-legged friends. "A lot of the times, there are more dogs than people," Lee Chang-Fang, the director of Huashan 1914, told me with a smile.
In most major Asian cities, this scene wouldn't be taking place. A well-connected developer would have snapped up the 7-hectare parcel of land that makes up Huashan, valued at $1 billion, and erected a mall or condominium block.
Welcome to the new Taipei. Other Asian cities might compete on building the flashiest skyscrapers or glitziest shopping center. But the Taiwanese capital, once a typical '80s Asian Tiger boomtown, is forging a different path.
Since the late 1990s, the municipal government has focused on improving the quality of life in this city of 2.6 million. "Taipei is a city known for its friendliness and rapid development of technology," Mayor Hau Lung-pin said in 2010 during the launch of a beautification campaign. "We want to turn it into a beautiful city."
"Everyone knows that Taipei is a city with a good lifestyle, but that's not enough," Lin Chong-jie, the director of Taipei's Urban Redevelopment Office, said. "We want to make Taipei's place in Asia clearer, and one of the ways of doing so is becoming a creative city."
These days, in place of the go-getting attitudes of Beijing, Seoul and Hong Kong is an embrace of a relatively modest lifestyle, where nature, a decent croissant and rare vinyl increasingly trumps having the latest Rolex. Drop by the 24-hour flagship store of Eslite, Taiwan's largest bookstore, and you'll see guidebooks to the city's slower side: tucked-away teahouses and shops selling hand-stitched books.
THE SIMPLE LIFE: A couple takes a breather at 44 South Village, a former housing estate remade into a public space. Sean Marc Lee for The Wall Street Journal
"Simple" and "slow" are the new marketing buzzwords. At 44 South Village, a former housing estate for military families in the Xinyi District that's been rehabilitated into a public space, a farmer's market called Simple Market is held every Sunday. Last December, lines snaked around Huashan when tickets for Urban Simple Life, the park's biannual music-design-food festival, went on sale.
Huashan embodies this new ethos. Its transformation, however, took nearly two decades, and in some ways, reflects Taiwan's maturation as a democracy. Built by Japanese colonialists in 1914, the distillery, one of the island's largest, produced sake and plum wine until its closure in 1987. For a decade, it lay fallow as officials tussled over its fate.
In the late 1990s, an avant-garde theater troupe began staging underground performances at the site. Attempts to evict them by officials were met with resistance by artists and their supporters, leading to a public battle over Huashan's fate. "In Taiwan, things are open to debate—what the government says isn't what necessarily goes," Mr. Lee said. Eventually, the distillery was designated as a cultural district in 1999.
Handed over to the privately run Taiwan Cultural-Creative Development Co., Huashan reopened in 2007 and has been gathering steam since. Further burnishing its credentials, this past November saw the opening of Spot, a NT$90 million cinema run by the government-backed Taiwan Film and Culture Association, where Mr. Hou serves as an honorary chairman.
This isn't the city I grew up with. As a child of Chinese parents living in the U.S., I found visits to Taipei only made America's clean, green streets more appealing. But that has changed. Since moving to Asia nearly 14 years ago, obligatory family visits to a gritty city have turned into voluntary trips to a place where I can count on a relaxing weekend spent browsing bookstores and eating good food.
I'm not the only one who has fallen for Taipei's newfound appeal: Last year, British consulting firm ECA International ranked it sixth among Asia's most livable cities, ahead of Seoul and Kuala Lumpur.
The drive to improve public transportation, clean up the air and increase green space has played an essential role. Rising incomes are also a factor; the city's middle class is deeply entrenched. But they alone don't explain the proliferation of cafes serving single-origin coffee or the indie-minded designers selling their wares at stores such as Good Cho's in 44 South Village and Huashan's 1914 Connections. How did Taipei become Asia's answer to Portland, Oregon?
I posed this question to Kung Shu-Chang, who heads the graduate school of architecture at National Chiao-Tung University. An affable man with salt-and-pepper hair and an idealistic streak, he cited everything from the rearranging of priorities amid a slowing economy to the evolution of a Taiwanese identity.
Opening his laptop, he pulled up an illustration by Monocle magazine of the perfect city block and pointed out how similar it was to a typical Taipei one, with storefronts facing the street and residences and parks tucked inside. The city's concrete jumble is far less pretty than the utopia on his screen, but it has the same village-like feel. "The government wanted to have a beautification campaign, but it's too late for that," said Mr. Kung. "That's not what this city is about."
He and other like-minded architects and urban planners prefer another approach. Under the auspices of the government-sponsored Urban Regeneration Station project, derelict warehouses and factories are being converted into creative hubs for up-and-coming artists and designers. Mr. Kung and I talked in the airy, all-white Museum of Tomorrow cafe of URS 21 Chung Shan Creative Hub, a former tobacco warehouse that now houses a gallery and affordable studios for young fashion designers.
Of course, artists and other creative types aren't the only ones behind Taipei's makeover. Occupying a former factory in Huashan is VVG Thinking, the latest venture by Grace Wang, an interior designer behind a mini-empire of shabby-chic cafes and boutiques. The day I met her, a fashion shoot was taking place downstairs in the restaurant.
"I think there's a desire to create a deeper culture here," Ms. Wang said. After our chat, she led me on a tour of the shop, pointing out the work of young designers as well as veteran artisans. It's a mix of odds and ends—a high-end flea market with books piled on antique-looking tables, retro windup toys and hand-carved wooden kitchen utensils from Japan.
But throughout my trip, I can't help but wonder whether there's a whiff of resignation in this new artsy-craftsy, laid-back Taipei. It's no secret that if you're young, talented and driven, you're better off launching your career in Shanghai or Beijing. A generation selling homemade jams, handcrafted cards and tongue-in-cheek furniture isn't likely to come up with a company to compete with Samsung.
"Taiwan is becoming like a retirement home," said Mr. Kung, repeating a line I had heard others say—sometimes in boast of the island's quality of life, sometimes in derision. Ms. Wang, however, sees things differently. "Taipei is becoming more and more interesting," she said. "We're still hardworking and we have hope, and as long as there's hope, then we have a future to look forward to." | <urn:uuid:19ac50d3-e153-4f54-9f87-41092453c9e2> | http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323826704578353333520475530?mod=wsj_article_exploremore_row3_1&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Ftopics.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424127887323826704578353333520475530.html%3Fmod%3Dwsj_article_exploremore_row3_1 | en | 0.966272 | 0.070908 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
One Federal Agency Wants To Make Driving Into A Nanny State
The National Transportation Safety Board wants you to think that it is constantly looking out for you. Part of that crusade is an attempt to mandate technology to make driving safer.
But in the process they are transforming driving from a democracy into a dictatorship.
Today, the NTSB released its "Most Wanted List," which is actually a list of problems in transportation that it wants to eliminate. Now, we're not against less crashes, but we are against the government being in every part of our lives.
Two of the items on the "Most Wanted" list really stick out to us.
First, they want to totally eliminate distracted driving through government regulation as well as technology that will disable cell phones and other devices while they are in cars.
Secondly, they want driver aids like lane departure warnings, adaptive cruise control, collision warnings, automatic braking, and stability control to be standard, mandatory features on all new cars.
It seems that the NTSB wants to be able to control nearly every aspect of how we drive. If it starts with mandating warning systems and banning the use of any portable device in a car, it could lead to speed limiters, black boxes, and GPS tracking, since that would be safer. But it would also be an affront to the freedom of driving and would give the government even more power in our day to day lives.
Pretty soon, it could come to a point where you can try and drive like an idiot and the car just won't let you. We've already seen this.
Mandating systems that cost the automakers money is also a short sighted move. This tech isn't free, and those costs won't just be absorbed by the companies. They'll be passed on to the consumers.
The beauty of driving is the freedom that it provides. By regulating nearly everything, cars are on the way to becoming glorified public transport. That's not cool.
Thankfully, the NTSB can only make recommendations on legislation, but it cannot actually make them into laws. That's up to other branches of government.
Photo Credit: Getty Images | <urn:uuid:c27b1d04-a7e9-4433-b67e-b6e980b46997> | http://jalopnik.com/5960489/one-federal-agency-wants-to-make-driving-into-a-nanny-state | en | 0.974957 | 0.371717 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
When trying to solve the Schrödinger equation for hydrogen, one usually splits up the wave function into two parts:
$\psi(r,\phi,\theta)= R(r)Y_{l,m}(\phi,\theta)$
I understand that the radial part usually has a singularity for the 1s state at $r=0$ and this is why you remove it by writing:
$R(r) = \frac{U(r)}{r}$
But what is the physical meaning of $R(r=0) = \infty$. Wouldn't this mean that the electron cloud is only at the centre of the atomic nucleolus?
Thanks in advance!
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5 Answers 5
The infinitesimal probability for the electron to be in the volume $dV$ around a point $(r,\theta,\phi)\leftrightarrow (x,y,z)$ is given by $$ dP = dV\cdot |\psi(x,y,z)|^2 = dV\cdot |R(r)|^2\cdot |Y_{lm}(\theta,\phi)|^2 =\dots$$ as you can see if you substitute your Ansatz for the wave function. However, the infinitesimal volume $dV=dx\cdot dy\cdot dz$ may be rewritten in terms of differentials of the spherical coordinates as $$ dV = dr\cdot r^2 \cdot d\Omega = dr\cdot r^2 \cdot \sin\theta\cdot d\theta\cdot d\phi $$ where the small solid angle $d\Omega$ was rewritten in terms of the spherical coordinates. You see that for dimensional reasons (or because the surface of a sphere scales like $r^2$), there is an extra factor of $r^2$ in $dV$ and therefore also in $dP$ which suppresses the probability. There is simply not enough volume for small values of $r$.
So $|R(r)|^2$ may still go like $1/r^2$ for small $r$ and in that case, $dV$ will be proportional to $dr$ times a function that is finite for $r\to 0$. Such $dP$ may be integrated and there's no divergence at all near $r=0$.
That's why one should allow the wave function to go like $1/r$ near $r=0$ which is the true counterpart of one-dimensional wave function's being finite near a point. However, Nature doesn't use this particular loophole because the wave function $\psi$ for small $r$ actually scales like $r^l$ where $l$ is the orbital quantum number and the wave function actually never diverges even though it could.
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The physical observable is not the wavefunction, but its integral over a finite area. In spherical coordinates, this is:
$P({\vec x})=\int dr\, d\theta\, d\phi r^{2}\sin\theta \psi^{*}\psi$
This integrand is manifestly finite at $r=0$, even if $R(r)$ has a $\frac{1}{r}$ divergance.
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Dear @Jerry, you were a minute faster but shorter ;-). I think that $\sin^2\theta$ should be just $\sin\theta$. – Luboš Motl Apr 26 '12 at 16:32
Indeed! I'm so used to writing the metric that I forgot the square root. – Jerry Schirmer Apr 26 '12 at 17:16
Good way to phrase the priorities. ;-) – Luboš Motl Apr 26 '12 at 18:09
For a hydrogen-like atom in 3 spatial dimensions, the rewriting of the radial part
is not performed to keep the $u(r)$ part regular, as OP suggests, but usually because the 3D radial equation in terms of the $u$ function has the same form as a 1D Schrödinger equation.
Imagine that the radial wave function goes as a power
$$R(r) ~\sim ~ r^{p} \qquad {\rm for} \qquad r~\to~ 0, \qquad p~\in~\mathbb{R}.$$
On general grounds, one can impose the following list of consistency conditions, listed with the weakest condition first and the strongest condition last.
1. Normalizability of the wave function $$\infty~>~\langle\psi|\psi\rangle~=~\int d^3r~|\psi(\vec{r})|^2 ~\propto~ \int_0^{\infty} r^{2}dr~|R(r)|^2 .$$ Integrability at $r=0$ yields that the power $p>-\frac{3}{2}$. In other words, this normalizability condition does not by itself imply that $R(r)$ or $u(r)$ should be regular at $r=0$, which is also the conclusion of many of the other answers.
2. The expectation value of the potential energy $V$ should be bounded from below, $$-\infty~<~\langle\psi| V|\psi\rangle~=~\int d^3r~V(r)|\psi(\vec{r})|^2~\propto~-\int_0^{\infty} rdr~|R(r)|^2. $$ Integrability at $r=0$ yields that the power $p>-1$. In other words, $u(r)$ should be regular for $r\to 0$.
3. The kinetic energy operator (or equivalently, the Laplacian $\Delta$) should behave self-adjointly for two wave functions $\psi_1(\vec{r})$ and $\psi_2(\vec{r})$, $$\langle\psi_1| \Delta\psi_2\rangle~=~-\langle\vec{\nabla}\psi_1| \cdot\vec{\nabla}\psi_2\rangle,$$ without picking up pathological contributions at $r=0$. A detailed analysis shows that the powers of the radial parts of $\psi_1(\vec{r})$ and $\psi_2(\vec{r})$ should satisfy $p>-\frac{1}{2}$.
In comparison, the actual bound state solutions have non-negative $p=\ell\in \mathbb{N}_0$, and therefore satisfy these three conditions.
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In addition to the simply geometric constraints that Jerry and Lubos talk about, the derivation used to illustrate the problem almost always assumes that the proton is a point particle which is a pretty good approximation but not strictly true. Working the problem again with a realistic proton charge density function (roughly constant inside a radius of about 1 fm) would be another way to remove the singularity.
Mind you, you this argument does not hold true for the positronium so you still need the geometric constraint.
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Re:positronium: wouldn't sub-Compton-wavelength renormalization of the Coulomb law soften the singularity? – Slaviks Apr 26 '12 at 19:28
@Slaviks: I'm a little on thin ice here, but I think that renormalization does solve the problem, but that's in the context of QFT, while this question seem to be phrased in the language of introductory QM. – dmckee Apr 26 '12 at 19:53
Sure, I was just entertaining the concept :) There is no singularity in the w.f., worrying in about the radial part is just staring at a singularity if the coordinate system, imho. – Slaviks Apr 26 '12 at 19:56
For Hydrogen, $R(r)$ does not diverge, as $U(r)$ vanishes as fast as (or faster than) $r$ as $r\rightarrow 0$. In fact, it's only for the $s$ orbitals that the wavefunction is non zero at $r=0$. But as pointed out before, a non-zero radial wavefunction does not mean a non-zero probability of finding the electron at the center.
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5 Reasons This Governor Is King Joffrey From Game Of Thrones
The universally-hated King Joffrey wasn’t the only one insulting just about everyone he ruled over. Gov. Brownback may never claim the Iron Throne, but he sure is reigning like a true Game of Thrones tyrant in Kansas.
1. Wastes money on his personal agenda.
Gov. Brownback has given just about $1 million of taxpayers’ money to lawyers who are fighting to defend unconstitutional anti-choice laws in the courts.
2. Doesn’t help the poor.
At the same time, the poverty rate in Kansas has climbed every year he’s ruled. And like a true King he has increased taxes on the poor while cutting them for the rich.
3. Doesn’t know how to respect women.
From an unconstitutional 20-week abortion ban to blocks on Planned Parenthood funding, Gov. Brownback continues to sign anti-choice legislation that insults Kansan women and strips them of their reproductive rights.
4. Ignores children.
Gov. Brownback isn’t investing in children’s education. Far from it: a court in Kansas has ruled that funding for schools in Kansas is unconstitutionally low. Kansas’ schools are in a free fall.
5. The people he rules do not like him.
Brownback’s popularity is in a tail spin. His approval rating has dropped each year since he took office. It appears the people of Kansas are fed up with their king.
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Audit Report: IG-0752
January 3, 2007
Certification and Accreditation of Unclassified Information Systems
Information systems are essential to accomplishing the Department of Energy's environmental, energy, and national security-related missions. Actions to protect these systems from increasingly sophisticated attacks have become critically important to the Department and each of its subordinate organizations. The certification and accreditation (C&A) process, required by Federal law and Departmental guidance, is designed to ensure that the agency's inforniation systems are secure prior to beginning operation and that they remain so throughout their lifecycle. The process involves determining whether system controls are in place and operating as intended, identifying weaknesses, mitigating them to the maximum extent possible, and officially recognizing and accepting residual risks. C&A's must be performed on all systems, and they remain in force for a three-year period unless significant changes are made to the system or operating environment. | <urn:uuid:829233d9-7385-45e2-9076-6630a810be91> | http://www.energy.gov/ig/downloads/audit-report-ig-0752 | en | 0.954153 | 0.031116 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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Edward Snowden patriot or traitor? How about 'Hero?'
June 5 was the one year anniversary of Edward Snowden's public outing of the NSA spying into every minute particle of our personal lives.
The only people Edward Snowden betrayed are the Professional Liars we call our National Leaders.
Rubin Report/YouTube
Yet a year later people are still debating whether Snowden should be regarded as a patriot or a traitor.
So let's make the issue as starkly clear as possible.
If a friend tells you that your lying, backstabbing, hypocritical, deceitful spouse is cheating on you do you call your friend a traitor and then go crawling back to your unfaithful spouse?
If a fellow citizen tells you that your lying, backstabbing, hypocritical, deceitful Statist political leaders are cheating on you do you call your fellow citizen a traitor and then go crawling back to your psychopathic leaders?
Government, as a matter of fact and not of opinion, is the ultimate criminal enterprise. It, like every gang from the Crips to the drug cartels to the Mafia, impose monopoly rule over a geographical area and claim a right to use everything and everyone in it for the ruler's personal benefit.
Big lickspittle statist media like the Washington Post try mightily to bury us all under the old familiar snowjob of "It's complicated."
"Did his information help shed needed sunshine into the workings of U.S. intelligence- and data-gathering?" they opined, "Or did it irreparably jeopardize current operations and put personnel at risk?"
Really? Is your spouse screwing someone else actually "complicated?"
If this country and its government really belong to "us" and not just to the ruling class then yes, the light needs to be shed. If "current operations" were "irreparably jeopardized" then maybe they damn well needed to be – are we a free society or a lying, backstabbing, hypocritical, deceitful, cheating, covert society?
If any "personnel" were put at risk it falls squarely on the head of The State for putting them at risk, not on the head of the truth-teller. That would be like blaming your truth-telling friend for your spouse's infidelity.
In short, Snowden, along with other truth-tellers like Daniel Ellsberg, Bradley Manning, and Julian Assange, has become the ultimate litmus test between big-government worshipping Statists and freedom-loving individuals.
If everything is "complicated" and there are no absolutes then Snowden and the others are neither patriots nor traitors, your spouse is neither loyal nor a cheater and your Statist political leaders are neither principled nor mendacious.
Feel free to crawl back to both your cheating spouse and your cheating government. Libertarians, meanwhile, will honor and celebrate the Snowdens of the world. | <urn:uuid:08d54532-34fe-4bec-b70f-8ae820e2b4f9> | http://www.examiner.com/article/edward-snowden-patriot-or-traitor-how-about-hero?cid=rss | en | 0.943071 | 0.060012 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
System Administration Guide: IP Services
MAC Address and Client ID
DHCPv4 uses the MAC address and an optional Client ID to identify the client for purposes of assigning an address. Each time the same client arrives on the network, it gets the same address, if possible.
DHCPv6 uses basically the same scheme, but makes the Client ID mandatory and imposes structure on it. The Client ID in DHCPv6 consists of two parts: a DHCP Unique Identifier (DUID) and an Identity Association Identifier (IAID). The DUID identifies the client system (rather than just an interface, as in DHCPv4), and the IAID identifies the interface on that system.
As described in RFC 3315, an identity association is the means used for a server and a client to identify, group, and manage a set of related IPv6 addresses. A client must associate at least one distinct IA with each of its network interfaces, and then uses the assigned IAs to obtain configuration information from a server for that interface. For additional information about IAs, see the next section, “Protocol Details.”
DUID+IAID can also be used with DHCPv4. These can be concatenated together unambiguously so that they can serve as the Client ID. For compatibility reasons, this is not done for regular IPv4 interfaces. However, for logical interfaces ("hme0:1"), DUID+IAID is used if no Client ID is configured.
Unlike IPv4 DHCP, DHCPv6 does not provide a “client name” option, so there is no way to name your systems based on DHCPv6 alone. Instead, if you need to know the DNS name that goes with an address provided by DHCPv6, use DNS reverse-resolution (address-to-name query via the getaddrinfo(3SOCKET) function) to find the corresponding name information. One implication of this is that if you are using only DHCPv6 and want a node to have a specific name, you must set /etc/nodename on your system. | <urn:uuid:3ea25aa3-f83c-42a9-8528-673f40a049cc> | http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/816-4554/clientid/index.html | en | 0.888594 | 0.075251 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
ONTD Political
richard madden
wikilobbying 26th-Dec-2012 05:22 am (UTC)
some of this really bothers me, like how they talk about mental illness. the mental health system needs plenty of overhauling, but so does our perception of people with mental illnesses.
there are so many problems going on here. what, lammers carries a butcher knife into a walmart and tells police he was going to kill a clerk there, and then that same walmart allows him to purchase assault weapons? i mean, hello you might want to have a problem like that on a record somewhere so it can raise a little red flag before the receipt gets printed out. just a suggestion.
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Take the 2-minute tour ×
I'm writing a bash script to back up my databases. Most are postgresql, and in postgres there's a way to avoid having to authenticate by creating a ~/.pgpass file which contains the postgres password. I put this in root's home directory and made it chmod 0600, so that root could dump the postgres databases without having to authenticate. Now I want to do something similar for mysql, although I only have one mysql database. How can I do this? I don't want to specify the password on the command line for mysqldump because this is part of a script that might be somewhat visible to other users. Is there a better way (i.e. built in to mysql) to do this than make a file that only root can read and then read that to get the mysql password, and then use that in the bash script as a variable?
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Hmm, strangely, I found something promising through google rather than serverfault's own search: stackoverflow.com/questions/601995/… – Ibrahim Mar 8 '10 at 0:30
See serverfault.com/questions/110738/… – Zoredache Mar 8 '10 at 0:31
And serverfault.com/questions/56341/… – Zoredache Mar 8 '10 at 0:33
Yeah bleh, apparently my search-fu is lacking. – Ibrahim Mar 8 '10 at 0:51
1 Answer 1
up vote 3 down vote accepted
Create a ~/.my.cnf file for the user running mysql. It should contain the following:
user = root
password = yourpassword
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One thing I guess to add is that if running the script using sudo, you need to use -H to make sure that it uses root's home directory. But I think that problem shouldn't be an issue in a root cron job, correct? – Ibrahim Mar 8 '10 at 0:53
But how is that handled for multiple accounts? That'll work for localhost, but what if I want to store my login for a remote server? – Cerin Apr 30 at 22:27
Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:34e4920b-f250-4ba9-a633-6fc054303681> | http://serverfault.com/questions/120170/mysql-equivalent-to-pgpass-or-automatic-authentication-in-a-cron-job-for-mysql | en | 0.879875 | 0.362994 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
Hi all I am not sure as what should I be looking on Google hence asking here.I have a Ubuntu server with Public IP on which I have a few websites and SSH accounts.I want to know if there is any application/daemon which I can install so that when ever some one does an SSH connection to my server I get a pop up on my laptop that is like gtalk messages which just gives me some one pop up with a message that user so and so loged in to server.Or some other application which can also tell me when ever http requests are made to my server so that I can be aware or if some one tries a DOS (in this case requests might be difficult to detect) but I get a pop up which says that so and so services is trying to access your server from outside.Other than checking log files is there any way for these things which I asked?
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1 Answer 1
up vote 1 down vote accepted
zenity? xmessage? These are scriptable dialog generators (zenity uses GTK, xmessage should work anywhere) - have a look at fail2ban for log parsing code.
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Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:c4374971-e855-48d8-b976-49249f51f118> | http://serverfault.com/questions/229216/application-which-can-pop-up-like-gtalk-when-some-one-accesses-my-server | en | 0.942546 | 0.045587 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I am trying to set and get the application exit code .
I am trying to do something following :
protected override void OnStartup(StartupEventArgs e)
if ( e.Args.Length != 0)
new MainWindow().ShowDialog();
Environment.ExitCode = 110;
And then I am trying in cmd to get it by echo %ERRORLEVEL%
But I get always result 0 , any idea what is the issue ?
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try out ERRORLEVEL without percent sign – sll Oct 14 '11 at 18:36
@sll , this way i get result ERRORLEVEL – Night Walker Oct 14 '11 at 18:38
6 Answers 6
up vote 8 down vote accepted
For WPF, try
Note that the application needs to be running as a console app. This answer is the easiest way I know of; the accepted answer looks more difficult.
An easy test to tell if you're running in console mode: call your app from the command line (make sure your code doesn't shut down right away). The main window should be showing. If you can type another command in the console, your app is not running in its context. The command prompt should be locked, waiting for you to close the window.
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Be careful when testing this from within Visual Studio as the exit code will be 0 since it comes from the debugging host process. I didn't have to change to console app at all, my WPF win app is returning correct exit codes directly. – Marc Nov 16 '11 at 12:19
It works for me with either method (Environment.ExitCode=110 or Environment.Exit(110)). I hope you are calling the program from the console and not from Visual Studio to then check the ExitCode...
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override the OnExit method, and in the ExitEventArgs you can set that value.
protected override void OnExit(ExitEventArgs e)
e.ApplicationExitCode = your_value;
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You can do it in Main method. Just change its return-value-type to int instead of void and return your exit-code
static int Main(string[] args) {
// something to do
return 110;
To create a custom Main in WPF application, you should follow these steps:
• First: unload the project by right-click on it in Solution Explorer and click on Unload Project
• Modify the .csproj file by change the <ApplicationDefinition Include="App.xaml"> to this one: <Page Include="App.xaml">
• Now you can create your own Main method in your project:
Sample Main method and App class:
public partial class App : Application {
public static int Main() {
App app = new App();
var i = app.Run();
return i;
public App() : base() { }
protected override void OnExit(ExitEventArgs e) {
e.ApplicationExitCode = 110;
share|improve this answer
it's WPF so i don't have main – Night Walker Oct 14 '11 at 18:42
OK, I update my answer to WPF – Javad_Amiry Oct 14 '11 at 20:42
@Mark I tried this and got **110**! It's might you do something wrong, and so I can't understand why did you vote the answer down?! – Javad_Amiry Nov 16 '11 at 12:06
@Javad_Amiry: Sorry it was my error. I was testing it from within Visual Studio and thus the debugger host process was interfering with my tests... I've removed the wrong comment but can apparently only remove the down vote if you edit the question, sorry. Thanks a lot for your suggested solution. – Marc Nov 16 '11 at 12:16
Do it like this:
This will terminate the current application with exit code 110.
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I think he needs to set the exit code and then call ShutDown. If he does what you say, ShutDown won't be called. – Icarus Oct 14 '11 at 18:39
Same problem I am getting 0 – Night Walker Oct 14 '11 at 18:40
-1 that is not the issue. Both methods yield the same result. – Icarus Oct 14 '11 at 18:46
You can do this in the following ways...
Shoutdown() returns a code. and Exit() also returns an exit code, but Close() only closes the application.
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Foregone - Mirror of Deception
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17.07.2009 16:08
Very helpful
Quality old-school DOOM
"Then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago"
- Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851
Released in 2001, 'Foregone' is the second full-length by little known German doom band 'Mirror of Deception' who play in a the melancholy and rather bombastic 'true-doom' style of Candlemass and Reverend Bizarre. Foregone is by and large a slow and lethargic album, its epic songs consisting of achingly sad, ancient-sounding doom riffs, melodic guitar leads and uncomplicated but accomplished mid-paced drums, accompanied by understated and frequently soaring clean vocals that remind of US peers 'While Heaven Wept'.
The songs are both well-constructed and varied, with a warm, organic feel, and numerous folky touches throughout. There are bridges of despondent doom riffs that remind of My Dying Bride and Mourning Beloveth, and elsewhere there are downhearted Paradise-Lost style gothic rock riffs, and even choruses that hint at 'Tonights Decision'-era Katatonia, but these are all built around a backbone of old-school doom that remains melancholy but uplifting rather than downright miserable, full of rays of hope amidst the gloom.
Whilst generally slow-to-mid-paced the album lapses into faster sections on occasion, and works epic, mid-paced melodic solos and galloping, bluesy passages around its generally unhurried style. The soaring, clean vocals work well, conveying both sadness and hope in a sorrowful yet warm manner that suits the overall feel of the album. The despondent lyrics are eloquently phrased, and fit the musical style well, as does the album artwork, which consists of pictures of rolling waves crashing upon rocks and engulfing the nets of fishermen. There's a subtle nautical theme thoughout the album, both through the lyrics and songtitles as well as through ambient interludes of wailing wind and crashing waves, and also within the accompanying booklet, which includes sea-related historical quotes by Herman Melville and Sir Walter Scott.
'Foregone' is nothing groundbreaking, but its a very enjoyable piece of romantic old-school doom that will no doubt appeal to fans of true doom bands like Candlemass, Reverend Bizarre, St Vitus and While Heaven Wept as well as gothic doom bands like My Dying Bride, Draconian and Mourning Beloveth.
1. Foregone Way 05:11
2. Inscrutable 04:55
3. Bleak 04:28
4. The Ship Of Fools 05:47
5. Deception Island 06:35
6. Mirthless 04:39
7. Metamorphosis 05:49
8. Descended 07:13
9. Where The Juniper Grows 03:03
Total playing time 47:40
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Thursday 25 December 2014
Cashing in on the 'Biggest Loser'
Fleur Fitzpatrick
Published 25/03/2012 | 06:00
Jillian Michaels
Jillian Michaels. Photo: Getty Images
2010 winner Michael Ventrella was the biggest contestant ever on ‘The Biggest Loser’, starting at 526lbs. He lost 264lbs
TV fitness expert Jillian Michaels is setting her sights on Hollywood's waistlines. Fleur Fitzpatrick gets a sneak preview of her new method.
She's earned a reputation as America's toughest trainer on 'The Biggest Loser', and now Jillian Michaels is targeting celebrity weight problems too.
Having spent almost two decades of studying what makes us gain weight, as well as how to shed those pounds at the gym, there are few more qualified than Jillian to help the stars get red-carpet ready -- and she's clearly not afraid of a few crunches herself, judging by her abs.
But what about the rest of us who can't stretch to a Tinseltown-style trainer?
As someone who admits to finding it hard sometimes to haul herself to the gym, Jillian has an un-starry attitude to exercise.
What's more, her eating philosophy acknowledges that weight loss is a mental and physical process, with a focus on teaching people to let go of unreasonable goals and embrace realistic ones.
Jillian's online programme -- which talks about self, science and sweat -- allows for the fact that we are all unique, so you can personalise your exercise routine to something you can perform at home.
There is also online support and recipes, and her brand of no- nonsense motivation.
Here's the science bit. Much of Jillian's work, as espoused in 'Master Your Metabolism', is based on detailed science and endocrinology.
"Welcome to the future -- this is the era of genome mapping, stem-cell research and nutrigenomics (the study of how food communicates with our genes).
"Yes, calorie counting and exercise are very important but they are not the whole story," she writes.
"Underneath the dieting and workout programmes are the little messengers that carry information from your body to your brain and vice versa. These 'little messengers' are your hormones."
According to Jillian, hormones tell your body everything it needs to know about food: if you're hungry or full; whether to store the food you've eaten or burn it as fuel; how to move and consume energy stores.
"Your body can't work the way it's supposed to if any of your hormones are out of tune," she says.
"But instead of trying to isolate one hormone at a time -- which is totally impossible -- this book is about how you can naturally optimise all of your hormones. And how you can do it without taking dangerous or expensive drugs."
What can I eat?
All that may sound complicated but it's simple: ditch the junk.
Jillian avoids confusing formulas which involve low-fat, low-carb, high-protein science.
Instead, there's a simple equation -- the amount of calories you take in should be less than the calories you put out.
Her plan is personalised according to your body type, your metabolism and your goals. The diet then calculates how many calories you need each day to lose weight, and offers ideas on meals to suit your metabolism.
Remove, restore and rebalance -- that's the mantra. Remove the anti-nutrients by clearing out all the processed foods and synthetic chemicals in the kitchen which screw up your metabolism.
Restore the hormone power foods, and rebalance your timing and portions.
Says Jillian: "The first part of the plan is to remove all of the chemicals in your environment -- your cleaning supplies, your beauty supplies and your food supply.
"The second part is to restore power nutrients to your diet. The third part is to make some easy changes to rebalance your life, everything from getting enough sleep to working out correctly, to what time of the day you should work out, to how much you should be eating."
Jillian is big on eating clean, fresh foods free from preservatives, trans-fats, artificial flavours, colours and sweeteners.
Her top tip? "Go organic. That would be the one thing -- it's not even exercise. Our food is corn derivatives, food derivatives and chemicals. It is making us fat and sick."
Nothing is off the menu (though it's best to avoid those trans-fats), but Jillian wants you to establish healthy eating habits, and recognise the emotional triggers which can cause you to overeat.
On the menu
Here's an example of Jillian's meal delivery package, a service she is offering to her LA clients:
Breakfast -- mixed grains and berries; lunch -- prawn and mango salad; dinner -- wild halibut with ratatouille; dessert -- wholewheat fruit tartlet.
And because she has a sweet tooth, Jillian doesn't let her dieters suffer.
"I try to get my dark chocolate in somewhere throughout the day," she admits.
"I have to have it. I work it into my calorie allowance and I will always have 200 calories of chocolate... always!"
While Jillian may be popular with the stars, not everyone can have an A-list body, and she is honest about that.
The diet acknowledges that not everyone has the build to become an action hero or a supermodel; you have to work with what you've got.
Accordingly, there is an emphasis on having realistic goals which involve recognising your true body shape, then setting up healthy eating and exercise habits, and steering clear of those emotional triggers which can set you off on the wrong path.
"When you're skinny, you're not necessarily a healthy person," Jillian says. "And when you're obese, you're not disease-free; you're struggling with fatty liver disease, diabetes, stroke, cancer, sleep apnea, acid reflux, and the list goes on."
What about exercise?
There's no easy way to say this. Exercise is the major component of Jillian's strategy for weight loss. It is the best way to burn fat, and it's the way to get calories 'out' to keep the programme's equation balanced.
The lady herself is honest about how tough she can find a workout: "If I don't work with a trainer, I'm like, 'Okay, I ran my 30 minutes, I'm going home'.
"People often ask me, 'Why do you work with a trainer?' And I say, 'Because he's a monster. He pushes me in ways I wouldn't push myself'."
Seriously? "If I didn't work out and watch what I ate, I'd easily be 200lbs," she admits. "I'm not the girl who loves to go to the gym. And I'm not the girl who loves broccoli, either.
"But I am the girl who feels potent, capable and confident when she feels strong, and I don't want to give that up. To me, it's about building a better body."
Jillian's programme offers a comprehensive weekly exercise plan, suited to your level of fitness. This fitness planner explains the muscles involved and how to properly warm up and perform each exercise.
It also provides exercise tips, variations and progressions, complemented by a fitness diary that
helps you work through issues and keep track of your achievements.
Why should I try this?
Jillian's no-nonsense approach has earned her an army of fans. Her other books include 'Making the Cut: The 30-day Diet and Fitness Plan for the Strongest, Sexiest You', intended to help anyone gearing up for a big event, and her first book, called 'Winning By Losing', focused on the psychological and behavioural aspects of losing weight.
And there's a reason why she's a mentor to those who've reached a huge low point -- and high weight -- on 'The Biggest Loser'.
"I use fitness to empower people. It makes people feel strong and confident and potent, and that strength transcends into other parts of life," Jillian says.
"And now I understand it's the same with your diet and other aspects of your lifestyle. Once you make the decision to take control of what goes into your body, you're able to harness that power."
Be warned though: Jillian certainly doesn't pack any punches, even with her trainer.
"'Making the Cut' is not some namby-pamby 'lifestyle' book that's going to waffle on about moderation for 'better health' and leave you with the warm fuzzies," she says. "It's about seeing how far you can go, getting a little crazy, and maybe, along the way, making that ex of yours want you back."
Sounds like quite a promise, doesn't it?
"You will feel strong. You will be strong. It's about getting in the best shape of your life -- so channel that inner badass, and let's get ripped!"
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Medtronic's insulin pump recall gets FDA's highest-risk label
Mon, 07/15/2013 - 9:59am
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U.S. healthcare regulators put their highest-risk Class I label on Medtronic's Paradigm insulin infusion pump recall.
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Medtronic informed patients, healthcare providers and pharmacies in Canada of the potential problem, to explain how to avoid it, according to the Brampton Guardian.
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Take the 2-minute tour ×
John 20:17a:
Why did Jesus tell Mary not to "hold on to" Him? Presumably it was not a problem with touching, since Jesus told Thomas to touch Him. Was it a gender issue?
I know Jesus said, "for I have not yet returned to the Father" but I don't understand why that should prohibit physical contact.
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2 Answers 2
up vote 2 down vote accepted
Not a Gender Issue
He allowed a sinful woman to wash his feet before with her tears and hair, which was rather inappropriate for her to do particularly at a dinner she wasn't invited to.
Moreover, in general all of the details the Bible gives are important. If this was a gender issue, it would be of little to no theological significance.
The Theological Reason
After Jesus' resurrection, his relation to his disciples changed. They don't recognize him right away in several cases, and in the book of Revelation John has a very different experience of him than leaning on his chest as at the last supper.
When I saw him, I fell at his feet as if I were dead. —Revelation 1:17
Jesus had already told them that when he went to be with the father, he would send another comforter, the Holy Spirit. Thus, even though they had a short period where they sometimes got to see him in his physical body, they were right on the edge of the inauguration of the Holy Spirit's administration of Christ to them. They were about to begin participating in Christ in a deeper, more spiritual way. Thus, the physical affection that they had showed him was no longer appropriate.
Thomas of course touched him in a different way for a different reason—and not in a way or for a reason that he would have done before the crucifixion; it was part of specific purpose of his appearances to them during that time (bearing witness to the resurrection).
Also, the idea of clinging here more than likely does not have a purely physical sense. In John 14 (and the following chapters), Jesus had already had a prolonged discussion with the disciples about him returning to the Father, during which time they expressed great sadness in spite of his insisting that it was better for them. This verse is best viewed in light of that passage; they ought not to cling to him yet, but to cling to him spiritually after he returns to the Father.
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I don't agree that, "the physical affection that they had showed him was no longer appropriate". However, I do think you've hit on something with not clinging to Him, because He had to go to be with His Father. So I'll accept this but also have a nagging feeling this issue could be explored further. – Wikis May 21 '12 at 10:11
I don't believe it had anything to do with gender. Jesus had nothing against Mary; there was definitely a different issue involved. I've heard an interesting reasoning for this, but I'm not a scholar and I haven't done enough study on it. Some say that it has to do with Jesus' physical nature after the resurrection, that He was physically something other than what our bodies are now.
Is it possible that this is emotional? That the first person that Jesus wanted to embrace or touch him, was in fact, the Heavenly Father? The Father turned his back on him on the cross, which would make sense that now that the sins of the world were paid for, he would want to reunite with his Father, fully embracing him and taking his rightful place on the throne. Just a thought; I definitely could be wrong.
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Thanks for this. I don't think it has to do with His resurrection body because Thomas had permission to touch Him. – Wikis May 3 '12 at 20:16
Your Answer
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What is going on, Pentax?
Started Nov 10, 2009 | Discussions thread
Ari Aikomus
Veteran MemberPosts: 6,012
Do not be hysterical !
In reply to Joe Barnhart, Nov 15, 2009
I do accept different like opinions and debate, but I don't accept such a attack on the person, as your comment almost is.
This is an open forum for diverse opinions, and above all a gear forum where you can talk about the camera equipments and their problems etc.
I understand that some people love their camera equipments more than life and and has a strong relationship with their "brands"... However camera equipments are only merchandise after all, and Pentax is commercial enterprise which try to make money with them - and we pay for it.
I'm also Pentax customer. I have three Pentax film SLR, three modern Pentax AF lenses and four older Pentax lenses - and one Pentax flash. I have had also Pentax K10D and K200D DSLR bodies and now K20D - and maybe K7 in future.
So I can claim something from my camera company. Do you understand that ? I came very happy when Pentax released a new SDM technology couple of years ago...but now I am no longer so happy because of these "problems".
Do you hear me? I'm NOT A PROBLEM - I'm pentax customer !! And I want working modern AF lenses, but I don't want buy products which can cause problems to me.
I don't mean that Pentax is a problem, but yes - most obviously Pentax has a problems with that technology...and that does not harm me most, but why Pentax does not say and do nothing about it? Why this damn silence?
Joe Barnhart wrote:
Some people have experienced problems with focusing their SDM lenses. A few were caused by dirty contacts, some by physical defects. But the response on this forum is straight from the textbooks under "mass hysteria."
What else do you call it when masses of people who are COMPLETELY UNAFFECTED by any such problem introduce vitriolic posts such as this one? What SDM failure have YOU experienced? What AA battery problem have YOU encountered?
LOL!! Are you serious? I'm Pentax customer - and although I would not - I can comment things here.
It is YOUR post -- and others like it -- which have contributed to the mass hysteria about SDM and AA battery problems. By saying over and over (and over and over and over) "Pentax has QC problems and they are a terrible company and I will never buy from them again" it is YOU who are the source of the "bad reputation".
Just because you heard something and you read a post by someone who said something about Pentax being a "bad company" it doesn't make it TRUE . And you shouldn't go around repeating rumors yourself when you have no first-hand knowledge of the facts.
Just EVERYBODY please stop posting this CR@P IF YOU DON'T HAVE ANY PROBLEMS YOURSELF. Cuz frankly, you don't know what you're talking about.
Thank you and Happy shootings,
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Actionslacks: The Scene’s Out of Sight
By Dave Heaton
PopMatters Associate Music Editor
As unfair as it is to characterize a year in music, especially when it’s only March, the year so far for me has been one filled with fantastic song-oriented bands who should be on the radio. These are musicians who write absolute gems of pop and/or rock, whose songs would no doubt work their right way into America’s brains if they were given a chance by the corporate radio powers that be. Bands like Creeper Lagoon, California Oranges, Guided By Voices…and Actionslacks, whose third album The Scene’s Out of Sight is filled with delightful pop songs of the slightly punkish variety.
This California-based band has been slowly working their way up the ladder of “indie” recognition over the last five years or so; their latest album, produced by J. Robbins (Jawbox, Burning Airlines) deserves to push its way into the CD players of middle America and take the band up yet another level, as its filled with high-quality melodies and guitar work, plus lyrics that manage to be both funny and sad, innocuous and moving.
From the opening title track on, the musical tone of the album is upbeat and snappy. For the most part the songs are energetic rockers, yet there’s some pretty ballads and one relaxed, jazzy jaunt to keep things diverse. Actionslacks will win you over with every killer hook and can’t forget-it melody, yet they wouldn’t have as big an impact if their lyrics were empty or sophomoric. Lead singer/guitarist Tim Scanlin’s lyrics generally deal with love, but strike a continual balance between a dreamer’s optimism and lonely-boy sense of regret.
The tone of the album is hopeful and up, even when Scanlin is singing about heartbreak, loneliness and longing, as he is on every track except for a few, like a story-song about the celebrity built around the boxer John L. Sullivan. Though the promotional materials don’t indicate that it’s been chosen as such, the should-be-a-hit single here is “The Sun in St. Tropez”, where a high-school outcast imagines a future where the jocks and bullies are working lowly service jobs while the un-cool are relaxing on the beach and “rolling in piles of cash”. It’s what summer anthems should be like, a power-pop pick-me-up for the underdog.
At this point in their career, Actionslacks themselves might still fit into that all-too-crowded category of “unfairly overlooked”, but they shouldn’t be for much longer, especially after people start hearing The Scene’s Out of Sight and spreading the word.
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Trusted aides now running Vatican
Vatican City
April 1, 2005 - 8:53AM
With Pope John Paul again in hospital, four Roman Catholic cardinals and a trusted archbishop are effectively running the day-to-day business of the Vatican, the headquarters of the world's largest church.
The four cardinals are all considered possible future popes.
John Paul must approve all major decisions - even if only by nodding his head or scribbling his name on a document.
The five aides are:
- Cardinal Angelo Sodano (Italian, 77): Secretary of State (prime minister) and second to the Pope in the hierarchy. A former Church diplomat, he caused a stir in February by publicly mentioning that a Pontiff could resign.
- Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (German, 77): the Vatican's top doctrinal watchdog as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Conservatives have cheered and liberals fumed at his strict orthodoxy and iron hand against dissent.
- Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re (Italian, 71): as Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, he draws up the lists of new bishops for the Pope to approve. The ultimate insider, he ranks as an ace administrator but has little pastoral experience.
- Cardinal Camillo Ruini (Italian, 74): the Pope's vicar as Bishop of Rome and head of the Italian Bishops' Conference. His two posts make him the most powerful cardinal in Italy and a key figure exerting Church influence in Italian politics.
- Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz (Polish, 65): as the Pope's private secretary, he controls all access to the Pontiff and has grown in influence as John Paul's condition has deteriorated. Loyal and discreet, he is not considered a possible successor.
- Reuters
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Take the 2-minute tour ×
Quite often I see derision about ideas by people who label them as 'too academic'. Often this appears to result from laziness or an unwillingness to stretch their thinking.
What's the logical fallacy where people dismiss what you say as irrelevant to the real-world?
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Don't know if there is a logical fallacy that can be accounted for such behaviour, but in general, when someone refuses to accept a differing opinion it is termed "impermissible viewpoint discrimination". – moonstar2001 Aug 4 '13 at 4:22
There's not enough context for me here. By "logical fallacy", do you mean people make the mistake of thinking you are "really" wrong, when actually you're right, but for practical reasons your right answer is no use. Would it make any difference if they acknowledged that your position was correct in theory, but just had no practical relevance? – FumbleFingers Aug 4 '13 at 4:32
Are you actually looking for fallacy of the undistributed middle? – Autoresponder Aug 4 '13 at 4:42
It might be in the List of fallacies on Wikipedia. – Cerberus Aug 4 '13 at 4:48
It's a logical fallacy because the person making the statement that is supposedly irrelevant to the real world is a person living in the real world with an opinion about the real world based on his/her experience of the real world. If you are part of the real world, how can your statement be irrelevant to the real world? If so, what is the meaning of the "real world?" – Godfrey Aug 15 '13 at 3:32
4 Answers 4
up vote 3 down vote accepted
At its most general this is a fallacy of relevance. Precisely which one would depend on how it’s presented. If your interlocutor were to say “You’re one of them academic types, so you must be spouting nonsense” it would be ad hominem. If they said something more like “Sounds like that academic-talk, we all know how trustworthy that is.” it would be more properly categorized as an appeal to emotion, which emotion exactly would depend on the tone.
However, in order to have committed a logical fallacy they must first have been attempting to make a logical argument, i.e. they must have intended their utterance to convince someone that your argument should be discarded. They may just be arguing in bad faith.
Alternatively they are attempting to undermine the epistemic grounding of your claim by calling into question the absolute validity (or at least applicability) of (Western) philosophical logic / scientific & academic reasoning, which wouldn’t be a fallacy at all but a potentially valid tactic.
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Your last point presumably depends on what you call valid; it is obviously not any sort of argument. – TimLymington Aug 4 '13 at 8:41
@TimLymington Yes, it does depend on what one calls valid. I agree that it is not an argument (let alone a valid one) within (Western) philosophical logic; that was precisely my point. But now we’re veering into philosophy.stackexchange.com territory! – redjives Aug 4 '13 at 16:40
Following Cerberus's suggestion above, I checked the Wikipedia List of fallacies, and found a couple that bear on the case at hand. One is the "Appeal to Poverty" or argumentum ad Lazarum:
supporting a conclusion because the arguer is poor (or refuting [it] because the arguer is wealthy).
Though this red-herring fallacy focuses narrowly on the financial status of the arguer, it could be applied metaphorically to intellectual wealth, too. Understood in terms of scholarship, the Appeal to Poverty says "I am not clever and learned like my opponent, so I can be trusted to speak plainly and honestly, free of the encrustations of pretension, sophistry, and ivory-tower bias that inevitably accompany academic learning."
A second possibly relevant fallacy is "Inflation of Conflict":
The experts of a field of knowledge disagree on a certain point, so the scholars must know nothing, and therefore the legitimacy of their entire field is put to question.
This fallacy, I've noticed, is especially popular in anti-evolution rhetoric, where disagreements about specific narrow evolutionary details serve as a basis for claiming the existence of bitter division among evolutionists over the general principles of the science.
In effect, the (broadly interpreted) Appeal to Poverty says "You can't trust an educated person," and the "Inflation of Conflict" says "Those academic types don't really know anything anyway."
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argumentum ad lapidem (appealing to the stone)
discarding the argument as absurd without giving logical reasons
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The fallacy in question is about labeling an argument academic or impractical, not absurd. – Bradd Szonye Aug 15 '13 at 10:36
jumping to conclusions would also encompass such a fallacy.
Fig. to judge or decide something without having all the facts; to reach unwarranted conclusions.
argument by laziness is self-explanatory and listed as an informal fallacy. It is alternatively referred to as argument by uninformed opinion
Fig. the arguer is not informed on the topic but has an opinion nevertheless.
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Kids Health
Senses Experiment: No Flavor Without Saliva
Senses Experiment: No Flavor Without Saliva
(Experimento: No hay sabor sin saliva)
• A friend or two
• Paper towels
• Foods to taste (cookies, crackers, pretzels, or other dry food)
• Drinking water for everyone
1. Use a clean paper towel to dry off your tongue.
2. Taste each food, one by one. How does it taste?
3. Have a drink of water.
4. Taste each food again, letting your saliva do its magic!
Your Tongue
What Are Taste Buds?
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10:57AM | 08/11/02
Member Since: 08/10/02
3 lifetime posts
I am looking at a few options in buying a house. I have been looking at a new house so should have options.
I have looked into Geothermal and trying to compare it to Standard Gas Heat, Electric AC and Gas or Electric Hot water.
One Builder has an upgrade option to Geothermal for about $7000 - stating you should be able to save $50-$100 on monthly fuel bills.
Would this be true?
How well does Geothermal work in HEAT mode and COOL modes?
Can anyone explain how this actually works (I understand pipes are put into the ground and fluid is pumped through it - but that's all I know about this technology).
Any assistance would be appreciated.
03:53PM | 08/11/02
Member Since: 06/03/01
324 lifetime posts
GeoThermal units use very efficent heat/cool pumps. Normal units use compressed 'gas' and regular heat pumps depend on the outside air temperature. GeoThermal uses a liquid medium run thru tubes under ground so the medium is pretty much a constant 55 degrees. That temperature is much easier to draw heat or cool from. The efficiency you can expect should be in the 14 to 16 SEER range and that relates to a lot of savings over a 10 or 12 SEER unit. Simplified but maybe enough?
07:57AM | 08/12/02
Member Since: 08/10/02
3 lifetime posts
Are you stating that this isn't a heating/cooling option you would recommend?
05:44AM | 08/26/03
Member Since: 02/13/03
90 lifetime posts
I am building a house now, I asked everybody I knew about geothermal heating. Some guys at work have it in their house. The electric company typically gives you a discount during the winter months. But the cost was so much more that nobody ever said they have gotten a good return on the initial high cost of investment.
I went with LP Gas. No natural gas in the country side.
03:23AM | 08/27/03
Member Since: 02/13/03
90 lifetime posts
For the other comment, most systems today are heating/cooling units. The process just reverses in the summer to take cooler medium from the ground and it cools your house. You won't need LP/Nat gas or heating oil, unless you want it for other appliances. In theory it sounds good, but my friend's experience hasn't proved to be all that efficient, not worse than standard furnace but not much better either.
With these units you typically set the thermostat and leave it alone, they struggle if you constantly turn up and down the thermostat. They aren't like a standard furnace that can kick on and raise your house temperture 5 degrees in 20 minutes.
There are options, but you need to be in an area with a large yard otherwise you have to put the "tubes" in a vertical manner, like a well, more expensive. The length of the tubes is variable to the size of the unit and the type of soil you have.
Just do a search on altavista for Geothermal. Each state probably has an association of dealers.
07:47AM | 09/05/03
Member Since: 07/21/02
48 lifetime posts
We had a Water Furnace geothermal system for about 11 years in our previous house. Excellent system, cheap to operate and the only problem was a pump breakdown the first year that was replaced for free. During really cold weather it struggled to keep the house up to temperature but that may be too small system problem. Some sort of gas or oil back up would have been nice but realistically probably would not have been worth the money as it would be used very little. In A/C mode is was dirt cheap to operate. Wish I had it in this house instead of oil fired hot water system.
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Istanbul Gezi ParkBulent Kilic/AFP
Hundreds of people were on Sunday occupying Istanbul's Taksim Square, the epicentre of the biggest demonstrations in a decade against Turkey's Islamist-rooted government which have seen almost 1,000 people detained and scores wounded nationwide.
Some protesters camped around the square's monument to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern secular Turkey, occasionally chanting "Government, Resign!" and victory cheers after the police withdrew on Saturday.
Taksim has been at the heart of a wave of more than 90 demonstrations in 48 cities nationwide, the biggest public outcry against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government since it assumed power in 2002.
But after two days of violent protests and appeals by Turkey's Western allies for restraint, the situation appeared to have calmed on Sunday after police pulled out of Taksim and officials took on a more conciliatory tone.
Officials said 53 civilians and 26 police officers were hurt during the violence, while Amnesty International put the number of wounded in the hundreds and said there had been two deaths.
Istanbul Gezi ParkAFP
Amnesty said some protesters had been left blinded by the massive quantities of tear gas and pepper spray used by police while at least two people were hit in the head with gas canisters.
Interior Minister Muammer Guler said police had detained 939 people as of Saturday evening, but many have been released.
Turkey's Western allies Britain, France and the United States have called for the Erdogan government to exercise restraint, while Turkish officials acknowledged mistakes.
"We have learnt our lesson," Istanbul mayor Kadir Topbas told NTV on Saturday.
He said he regretted "not informing the people enough" on the details of the construction project in Taksim, the spark that led to the protests.
What began as an outcry against a local development project in Turkey's largest city snowballed into a broader protest against what critics say is the government's increasingly conservative and authoritarian agenda.
Speaking at a rally on Saturday, Erdogan acknowledged: "It is true that there have been some mistakes, extremism in the police response."
But he added: "I call on the protesters to stop their demonstrations immediately."
He also vowed to push forward with controversial plans to redevelop the square, but said the project may not include a shopping mall, as feared by protesters.
The interior ministry promised legal action against police officers who had acted "disproportionately".
President Abdullah Gul had called on Saturday for restraint on both sides.
Mass circulation newspaper Milliyet plastered "Freedom Park" on the front page, with a picture showing the thousands who had flocked to the square on Saturday.
"Put that AVM (shopping mall) down and start running away fast," was the headline of liberal Birgun newspaper on Sunday.
Officials said a dozen people were being treated in hospitals, and one of them was in intensive care after brain surgery.
Amnesty said in a statement that it had opened its Istanbul offices near Taksim Square to give sanctuary to protesters and that doctors were treating the injured there.
Amnesty's Europe director John Dalhuisen said police excesses in Turkey had become routine.
"But the excessively heavy-handed response to the entirely peaceful protests in Taksim has been truly disgraceful," he added.
Human Rights Watch also suggested the number of injured was higher than official figures and said one protester had lost an eye after police shot him with a plastic bullet.
The US State Department called on NATO-member Turkey to uphold "fundamental freedoms of expression, assembly and association, which is what it seems these individuals were doing".
"We urge authorities in Turkey to exercise restraint and not to use tear gas indiscriminately," the British Foreign Office tweeted on Saturday.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told local media that Paris was calling for "moving towards a peaceful solution."
But he rejected comparisons with Arab Spring uprisings, saying "we are dealing (in Turkey) with a government that was democratically elected."
Some 1,800 people rallied in Vienna on Saturday to denounce the Erdogan government and show their support for protesters in Istanbul, Tur.
Some shouted "Stop police violence" and "Murderer Erdogan."
The protests also follow a recent law introduced by Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) that will restrict the sale and advertising of alcohol.
Erdogan's populist government is often accused of trying to make the predominantly Muslim but staunchly secular country more conservative and has also been criticised for its crackdown on opponents including Kurds, journalists and the military.
| <urn:uuid:423228cd-a690-4d4f-9873-f3ed3b425534> | http://www.businessinsider.com/almost-1000-people-detained-as-istanbul-protests-continue-2013-6 | en | 0.97855 | 0.071224 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Sucking on purpose is generally frowned upon, but there's a point where you come to terms with your team being full of scrubs and are forced to look toward a cloudy, hopefully less mediocre future. So then you tank as if you're the Sixers, Bucks, or Lakers. You're unlucky to be with a poor team to begin with, but hey, why not give the Draft Lottery and the fine young men from the NCAA a shot.
You do that only if you're not a gangsta. Rich is Gangsta. Winning is Gangsta. Joakim Noah is Gangsta (a.k.a not soft). As long as Noah is around, don't expect the Bulls to tank for the lottery or playoff seeding.
OK, so Noah is no gangsta, but he's far from soft. Anyone who takes charge after his leader falls has some cred.
RELATED: The 25 Best Players in the NBA Right Now
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It's the event that's made London's pulse quicken since yesterday: on Brompton Road, the department store Harrods welcomes the house of Dior, giving over its windows and devoting an exhibition to it. DiorMag takes a peek.
In the middle of the room, between two draped dresses worn by muse Charlize Theron, it reigns supreme and majestic, a golden thread caressing its mythic curves. It is the bottle of the perfume J’adore, and the inspiration for the artist Jean-Michel Othoniel to create an airy and voluptuous sculpture, an incarnation in the image of the scent itself. Famous for his work in glass, for this occasion the French sculptor created a flacon of XXL proportions, the sun-colored amphora in glass beads a strong expression of the essence of J’adore : its precious story, its luminous aura, and its feminine curves.
Christian Dior himself was friends with some of the biggest artists of his time. Today, the love story between Dior and the art world continues apace, and the house has given carte blanche to various artists to rework, reinterpret and play with its history. The artist Oyoram - who creates the videos shown in the Dior stores - has produced an exclusive video inspired by the Miss Dior dress designed by Christian Dior in 1949. Projected on the walls of a room inhabited by Raf Simons' own reinterpretation of the Miss Dior dress, this spellbinding and poetic film tells the story of the house, its connection to gardens, and its passion for flowers.
The artist Sinan Sigic d’Atelier Hapax, in turn, has taken the signature white boxes labeled "Dior" and built a bright wall with them, punctuated with house symbols cut into the cardboard (the Bar silhouette, the star, the Lady Dior, Miss Dior, and so on).
Stopping off at Harrods, the Lady Dior as seen by traveling exhibition is showcasing five new interpretations of the Lady Dior : realized in colored copper wires by Alice Anderson and in ceramic by Bevis & Youle, in the hands of Jack Lavender and Neil Ayling, the bag becomes a veritable work of art in itself.
Dior at Harrods
87-135 Brompton Road
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Her blood stained the soft bones gripping her hair, feeding their thirst as the finest of her screams glided against the lingering shadows of my ears. “See you, *****!” The bones clenched their might against the blackness of her curls and dug into her falling flesh, shuddering as the salivating corner of the brick wall wrapped itself around her neck, pulling her from the craving bones as they yanked her back, each one begging for the final slice of her earthly salt and the spoils of the finish granted to the solace of the victor, each one fighting for its place in the joy of sluicing her life from the sighing flesh, the drawing of the grating voice from the echoes of the bones that drank the milk of tears from the shredded lives. The darkness that fed her, as she laughed in the mockery of the hands that darkened the soil she treaded.
The craving bones breathed in the blood that entwined with the darkness, and the warmth of flesh covered my naked bones as I wrenched her from the embrace, snapping her back and then as the fleshless smile snaked around my wrist, I threw her, watching as her bones met the gleaming corner of the wall, smothering its salivating lust with the skin that held the flesh guarding the shattered bones as her the thoughts that gathered in the dusty recesses of a mind used to mock, spilled to embrace the cracks that dug through, courting the quivering piece of brain that yearned the freedom as the bone melted into my unseeing flesh, searing the colors that dripped from her into my own. She was the woman who condemned me to her life as her blood pooled in the veins that refused her breath of life as her condemnation slowly coursed through, plucking from my flesh the vessels they needed as the specks of dust from the silence of my secrets spun into the whispers of her condemnation, mocking them into the form they beseeched, as it locked into me, and the bones sprung into position, guarding the pulsing form that cursed her name from every wall. “Mother,” the form hissed, mingling the word with its loathing and I was born.
deleted deleted 26-30 Dec 22, 2012
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Edition: U.S. / Global
Politics In The Burbs; Soccer Mom 2000
By James Bennet
Published: April 9, 2000
For months now, Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster who studies Americans with the discipline and delight of Darwin in the Gal1/3pagos, has been conducting a focus group of just one. Every once in a while he calls up Ruth Cullison, a homemaker and former art teacher in the suburbs of Baltimore whom he has come to think of as the quintessential swing voter. Like a lot of Americans, Cullison is following the presidential campaign at a distance, with a keen sense of anticipatory disappointment.
''This is going to be like a retro election,'' she says. ''Do I want an old Bush, or do I want an old Clinton?'' Of George W. Bush, the potential retread of his father, she says, ''If you're going to cast him for president in some movie, he might have the look, but I'm not sure he has anything else.'' Of Al Gore, the potential Bill Clinton retread, she says, ''It looks like he gets lessons on being sincere -- and it doesn't work.''
So-called soccer moms were all the rage in political circles in 1996. They symbolized the female suburban swing voters who supposedly held the key to victory in that year's presidential race. They didn't, but that's not the odd part; there is probably no profession more prone to snake oil and fads than politics. What's really strange is that this year, when the cliche has substance, soccer moms seem to have wandered off the political field.
Four years ago soccer moms were the same suburban women with demanding spawn, but they were not teetering between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. The term ''was just a good metaphor for middle-aged women who were going to support Clinton over Dole in any case,'' says Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. In the end, suburban women, and suburban mothers, favored Clinton by 53 to 39 -- even as suburban men voted for Dole.
But this year these independent-minded women are up for grabs. Bush, younger than Dole, warmer personally and far better positioned politically, may be able to peel suburban women away from Gore. Without a strong majority of them, Gore will almost surely lose.
Of course, no one voter is an archetype (Cullison's soccer-playing daughter is in college now), just as no one group swings like Tarzan from candidate to candidate. Yet some groups, including senior citizens and Catholics, have more ambivalent voters than others. Among the potential sources of swing voters, none are shaping up to be more powerful than suburban women, and that is significant for a couple of reasons. It points to the limits both of Gore's appeal and of Clinton's success at repositioning the Democrats as the mainstream party, the one most committed to helping children -- especially children whose parents happen to live in the suburbs.
These days, with Democrats dominating the cities and Republicans controlling the countryside, suburbanites pick presidents. ''Everything that a strategist does -- everything that I do as a strategist -- is focused on suburban voters,'' says Doug Schoen, a Democratic pollster. ''That's the story of American elections.''
Suburban men are pretty reliable Republican voters, but suburban women -- whether wealthy or blue collar -- are fickle. Pollsters like to say they are ''cross-pressured,'' torn between a desire for lower taxes and a yearning for government -- for anyone -- to help in caring for their aging parents and protecting their children from guns and dirty air. Cullison would love a whopping income-tax cut, but she suspects that the government would just turn around and raise some other taxes to pay for needed programs.
Bush entered the primary season with a commanding lead over Gore among suburban women, who have accounted for about a fifth of the vote in the last four presidential contests. In early November, when he was still Cullison's favorite, Bush was crushing Gore, 54 percent to 37 percent, among women in the suburbs, according to a New York Times/CBS news poll. But after the New Hampshire primary, once Gore had righted his campaign and Bush had begun rallying the faithful at Bob Jones University and other South Carolina hot spots, soccer moms started moving back to the Democrats. By mid-February, Gore and Bush were tied among suburban women, and remained so in late March.
Cullison, who grew to like John McCain, was turned off by the nasty tone of the Republican contest. Bush seemed to have shed the good-guy image she had found so appealing. So she started to give Gore a serious look. ''But if he had just one ounce of charisma -- just one -- it would be nice,'' she says. ''Just try to picture him being in the same mess Clinton was in and not being drummed out of the United States.''
The visit to Bob Jones University, and the way Bush initially handled it, still stick in Cullison's craw. But while Bush's drive to the right in the primaries may have set him back, his campaign is still well positioned to bring in women. ''The next 60 seconds are just for you, ladies,'' Bush's father declared in a commercial in 1966, as a candidate for Congress from Texas. George W. Bush's appeal is more sophisticated. His central campaign theme -- compassionate conservatism'' -- is mostly for you, ladies.
Like previous Republican candidates, Bush envisions a limited role for the federal government. But unlike them, he emphasizes what it can do, rather than harping on what it can't. That message attracts suburban mothers. ''Compassionate conservatism is geared straight to them,'' says Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster. ''They want a role for government.''
Bush has used his imagery to support a message of tolerance, underscoring compassion ahead of conservatism. His schoolboy Spanish and appearances with blacks may not help him much with minority voters, but they go a long way toward reassuring suburban women that he is not another nasty Newt Gingrich Republican. For the same reason, women love to see him photographed with children. Among Republicans, Lake says, ''they think of George W. Bush as their first modern candidate.''
Cullison has the political essence of compassionate conservatism pretty much nailed. ''I think he's trying to do like a spinoff -- and I can't imagine why -- on Clinton's I-feel-your-pain kind of stuff,'' she says. The slogan, she insists, doesn't work for her. Yet over and over, she cites Bush's ''warmth'' as his most appealing quality; she hopes he takes after his personable mother, Barbara, whom she prefers to his father.
Most suburban women, like Cullison, favor abortion rights. Even during the primaries, Bush did not overtly promise to appoint a running mate or judges who, like him, oppose such rights, using code to reassure conservatives. Cullison did not know Bush's position until I told her. But her reaction suggested that he could still win her support if he can soft-peddle the issue, since she hates blanket statements either way about abortion. ''I guess it's like a mark against,'' she says, ''but these are not big black marks, and I'm not chiseling them in stone at the moment.''
As soon as he secured the nomination, Bush began edging to the center on gun control. He even defended Clinton against attacks by the National Rifle Association, shrewdly linking himself to the president on an issue on which the Democrats hold the high political ground.
Here again, Cullison has enough ambivalence to give Bush an opening. ''You have Moses telling us that guns are great, and everyone else screaming up and down on the other side,'' she says, referring to Charlton Heston, the president of the N.R.A. ''It's a ridiculous situation.'' She believes that there must be some compromise that does not bend the Second Amendment, and she is waiting for a candidate to propose it.
On policy grounds, Bush's chief appeal to suburban mothers, like Gore's, has been his emphasis on education, the issue that Cullison and her suburban sisters rank No. 1. His strategy is to turn the Democrats' traditional dominance on education against them. In addition to proposing his own literacy initiative, he is asserting that Democratic policy has hurt the people it was designed to help. ''They own it,'' says Alex Castellanos, a Republican strategist. ''They own failure.'' Sound familiar? It worked for the Republicans during Gingrich's most visible social policy success, welfare reform.
For his part, Gore is trying to reveal compassionate conservatism as political sleight of hand concealing the same old Republican policy, a ''risky tax scheme'' that will prevent the government from addressing the schools' needs.
Cullison has yet to tangle with the details of either candidate's positions. She knows, however, that she doesn't like Bush's voucher proposal, because she thinks it abandons most poor students. But she is also skeptical of some of Gore's ideas for spreading high technology: ''I don't think the answer is putting a computer in every classroom.'' By the time the computers are hooked up they are obsolete, she adds, and teachers don't know how to use them, anyway.
One topic that Cullison never mentions is suburban sprawl, which Gore tried early on to turn into a signature issue. As it turns out, pollsters have found that it bugs voters to think that their president might be spending his time unknotting the local traffic snarl.
Suburban women consistently rank ''values'' as their second-greatest concern after education, and here Bush starts with the advantage. ''These suburban moms really think their kids derive role models from the presidency,'' Lake says. Clinton, who might have been Gore's strongest ally with these voters, has, not surprisingly, become a liability, a weakness that Bush has thoroughly exploited. ''I think it's really important for moms and dads to be able to point to the White House and say, 'That person has brought honor and dignity to the office,''' he said in a commercial first broadcast in the fall.
Gore's response has been to present himself as Clinton without the wandering eye. But when it comes to values, Gore's problem is more complex than that. Earlier this winter, when Peter Hart asked his quintessential swing voter what one question she would put to Gore, Cullison replied: ''Are you going to be the same person tomorrow, the same person all four years?' He seems like the ultimate politician, and Clinton jaded my view of politicians.''
Months later that sense of slipperiness still gnaws. ''I wish he looked a little more comfortable with himself,'' she says. ''He seems too willing to reinvent himself and be whoever everyone wants him to be, and I don't get a sense of who he is -- unless that is who he is, and I don't want that in a leader.'' Bush's victory in the primaries came at a cost, but so did Gore's efforts to remold himself into a rowdy fighter in earth tones. By insinuating that Gore is a phony, the Bush camp is calling his honesty, not his fidelity, into question -- and slyly exploiting his greatest weakness among suburban women.
Apart from policy issues and their character, the candidates will also be looking to sway the soccer moms with their choice of running mate. Even people like Cullison, who do not take the vice presidency too seriously, will read deeply into the picks for signs of each candidate's judgment. ''At least they're making a decision,'' she explains. ''Then I can look at that person too.''
The vice-presidential question also injects an element of drama into a race that badly needs it, at least in Cullison's view. Her interest was piqued when Colin Powell was floated as a possible running mate for Bush -- though she doesn't think Powell would take the job. And her ire was raised when her own lieutenant governor, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, was mentioned as a possible running mate for Gore. Standing quietly behind Maryland's governor, Parris N. Glendening, seemingly anticipating her own turn, Townsend reminds Cullison too much of Gore himself.
And so begins the general election campaign -- or, really, the specific election campaign for the suburbs, where the independent-minded have always wondered, Is this really all there is? In mid-March when Hart asked Cullison what she would do if she had to vote that day, she said: ''I'm going to run screaming from the room. My situation is, that's when you start to consider going abroad.'' In the end, she says, if the economy stays strong she will probably vote for Gore, though she figures the only interesting thing about his State of the Union speeches will be to see who snores.
There's just no pleasing some people. Suburban women have two presidential candidates practically begging for their votes, and their response is to roll their eyes. Politicians had better get used to this high-handed reception. With party loyalty in steady decline, and with the suburbs looking demographically more like the rest of America, and vice versa, every person over 18 is becoming a potential swing voter.
That is all to the good. The more swing voters there are, the freer candidates are to move away from their bases toward the center -- in fact, the more compelled they are to move. Voters will probably complain even more that they see little difference between the candidates. But a debate over how to fix the public schools, rather than over whether to eliminate the Department of Education, could actually result in useful public policy. If it does, you will have Mom to thank.
Photo: Suburbanites like Ruth Cullison hold the outcome of elections in their hands. (Jake Chessum) | <urn:uuid:2ae6391f-9df7-44ef-a308-1820aee1f4ac> | http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/09/magazine/politics-in-the-burbs-soccer-mom-2000.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all | en | 0.975471 | 0.02902 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Osho Audiobook - Individual Talk: Yoga: The Supreme Science, # 9, (mp3) - nothingness, desire, patanjali
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Track #9 of the Series, Yoga: The Supreme Science
"The first sutra:Visesa-darsina atma-bhava-bhavanavinivrttih.
When one has seen this distinction, there is a cessation of desire for dwelling in the atma, the self.
"Buddha has called the ultimate state of consciousness anatta – no self, non-being. It is very difficult to comprehend it. Buddha has said that the last desire to drop is the desire to be. There are millions of desires. The whole world is nothing but desire objects, but the basic desire is to be. The basic desire is to continue, to persist, to remain. Death is the greatest fear; the last desire to be dropped is the desire to be.
"Patanjali in this sutra says: when your awareness has become perfect, when vivek, discrimination has been achieved, when you have become a witness, a pure witness of whatsoever happens, outside you, inside you You are no longer a doer, you are simply watching; the birds are singing outsideyou watch; the blood is circulating insideyou watch; the thoughts are moving insideyou watch – you never get identified anywhere."
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Osho continues:
"You don't say, 'I am the body'; you don't say, 'I am the mind'; you don't say anything. You simply go on watching without being identified with any object. You remain a pure subject; you simply remember one thing: that you are the watcher, the witness – when this witnessing is established, then the desire to be disappears.
"And the moment the desire to be disappears, death also disappears. Death exists because you want to persist. Death exists because you don't want to die. Death exists because you are struggling against the whole. The moment you are ready to die, death is meaningless; it cannot be possible now. When you are ready to die, how can you die? In the very readiness of dying, disappearing, all possibility of death is overcome. This is the paradox of religion.
"Jesus says, 'If you are going to cling to yourself, you will lose yourself. If you want to attain yourself, don't cling.' Those who try to be are destroyed. Not that somebody is there destroying you; your very effort to be is destructive because the moment the idea arises, 'I should persist,' you are moving against the whole. It is as if a wave is trying to be against the ocean. Now the very effort is going to create worry and misery, and one moment will come when the wave will have to disappear. But now, because the wave was fighting against the ocean, the disappearance will look like death. If the wave was ready, and the wave was aware that: 'I'm nothing but the ocean, so what is the point in persisting? I have been always and I will be always, because the ocean has always been there and will be always there. I may not exist as a wave – wave is just the form I have taken for the moment. The form will disappear, but not my content. I may not exist like this wave; I may exist like another wave, or I may not exist as a wave as such. I may become the very depth of the ocean where no waves arise '
"But the innermost reality is going to remain because the whole has penetrated you."
In this title, Osho talks on the following topics:
nothingness… desire… renounced… buddhism… moments… liberation… enlightenment… patanjali… bayazid… krishnamurti
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note jaldhar <p>Thanks to all that replied. This was very enlightening for me and I hope it was for others too. Here is the script again with suggestions and corrections various monks made and some comments.</p> <code> #!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; </code> <p>[theDamian] calls this indirect object syntax. what's the direct syntax then?</p> <code> my $life = new life : 20; </code> <p>[theDamian] points out this is a more idiomatic way of doing an infinite loop.</p> <code> loop { $life.display() } </code> <p>In perl 6, a class isn't just a <i>package</i> but a new type of block scope indicated by the keyword <i>class</i>. It can have methods indicated by <i>method</i> and attributes indicated by <i>has</i>. </p> <code> class life { </code> <p>Perl 6 will still have the regular data types but you will have more say over what range of values they can hold or how they should be represented at the machine level. For instance my grid only holds 0 and 1 values. I originally had Int but several monks point out a Bit is potentially more space-efficient.</p> <code> has Int $.count; has Int $.dimension; has Array of Bit @.grid; </code> <p>There's no need to create a constructor now it is automatically done for you. Instead you should do initialization in a special method. I was led by the Linux Magazine article to believe it should be called <i>CREATE</i> bu [theDamian] says it ought to be called <i>BUILD</i>.</p> <p>You will note functions can have proper prototypes now.</p> <code> method BUILD(Int $dimension) { $.count = 0; $.max = $dimension - 1; </code> <p>Here we are creating an array of bits. We are saying that it is two-d, size $dimension x $dimension, and the default value of each element is 0.</p> <code> my Array of Bit @.grid is dim($dimension,$dimension) is default(0); </code> <p>For those who are not up on their game of life theory, what's happening here is an initial grouping of on cells is being created in the center of the grid. The shape is called an R-pentomino and it becomes static after 100 turns.</p> <code> @grid[$dimension / 2 - 1][$dimension / 2] = 1; @grid[$dimension / 2 - 1][$dimension / 2 + 1] = 1; @grid[$dimension / 2][$dimension / 2] = 1; @grid[$dimension / 2][$dimension / 2 - 1] = 1; @grid[$dimension / 2 + 1][$dimension / 2] = 1; </code> <p>Because the grid is a multidimensional array it cannot be directly declared as an attribute. That's why we made a local variable called <i>@grid</i>. Now that we know its' size we can assign it to the attibute.</p> <code> @.grid = @grid; } </code> <p>[theDamian] suggested adding this routine as a utility. Why is it declared as sub and not method? I'll take a guess and say so it can be inherited by subclasses but not used outside the clase sort of like c++ protected functions. Or it's a typo :-) </p> <code> sub iterate (&block) { </code> <p>This is what <i>foreach</i> loops will look like. No need to put a <i>my</i> on the <i>$x</i> and <i>$y</i>, it's implied.</p> <p>Also note parentheses are optional on <i>for</i>s, <i>if</i>s etc.</p> <code> for 0..$.max -> $x { for 0..$.max -> $y { block($x,$y); } } } </code> <p>We can declare methods private to our class. In perl5 you could always get to the internals of an object.</p> <code> method calculate() is private { my @newgrid; iterate { </code> <p><i>$^x</i> and <i>$^y</i> are placeholders. They are an implicit way of saying my($x, $y) = @_; You should use them as you need them and they are assigned alphabetically (in UTF-8) to the parameters of your function.</p> <code> my $live = sum(@.grid[$^x-1..$^x+1][$^y-1..$^y+1]); @newgrid[$^x][$^y] = $live==2 && @.grid[$^x][$^y] || $live==3; } @.grid = @newgrid; } method display { iterate { print $.grid[$^x][$^y] ?? '+' :: '.'; print "\n" if $^x == $.max; } print "\n"; </code> <p>We can interpolate any arbitrary code or variable into a string with $( ... )</p> <code> print "Turn $(++$.count), press enter to continue or ctl-c to quit; </code> <p>File handles are now scalars and STDIN is called IN.</p> <code> <$*IN>; </code> <p>[jkahn] wondered why I have calculate here and not in the main loop. That's how I had it originally and how I would do it in a real program but I confess I broke one of my own rules for this exercise and made calculate a private method just to show off that feature.</p> <code> .calculate(); } } </code> <p>-- <br>જલધર</p> 253366 253366 | <urn:uuid:dc10c592-3ef8-4293-a898-e5693d69a7fc> | http://www.perlmonks.org/?displaytype=xml;node_id=254569 | en | 0.839399 | 0.891431 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
The bitter sweet life
They were the glory days of Italian cinema, immortalised by a man with a camera who roamed the sets, gaining unrivalled access to the stars. John Hooper pays tribute to Pierluigi Praturlon
Anita Ekberg on the set of 1960's La Dolce Vita, photographed by Pierluigi Praturlon
Anita Ekberg on the set of 1960's La Dolce Vita, photographed by Pierluigi Praturlon. Photograph: © Photology, Milan
It was a moment that marked a turning point in postwar Europe: Anita Ekberg wading through the Fontana di Trevi in Federico Fellini's film La Dolce Vita, as improbably voluptuous as the fountain itself. La Dolce Vita was shot in 1960, and while Ekberg's low-cut, dark evening dress may look back to the formal 50s, her insouciant transgression points unmistakably ahead, into the subversive 60s.
What few cinema-goers realised was that the scene in the film was a reconstruction of a real event. Two years earlier, Ekberg had spent the evening with a set photographer, Pierluigi Praturlon, at the Rancho Grande nightclub in Rome. To ease her aching feet on the way home, she climbed into the fountain. Praturlon, who never went anywhere without his Leica, lit up the scene with the headlights of his car and caught the moment in a photograph that Fellini later saw in a magazine, Tempo Illustrato.
Starting in 1949, Praturlon established himself as Italy's top film set photographer. He worked on many of the great movies that emerged from Cinecittà in its glory days, and photographed most of the actors who starred in them. The first major exhibition of his work has opened in Milan this summer.
Though he was often described as a paparazzo, "Pierluigi" (as he was known to all) was nothing of the sort for most of his career. The paparazzi were the bane of celebrities. Praturlon, a cultured man who spoke five languages, was their collaborator and, in some cases, confidant. Sophia Loren made him her personal photographer. Frank Sinatra consulted him about which tapestries to hang in his personal jet. Claudia Cardinale describes him as a "gentleman".
Having worked earlier in his career as a photo-reporter, Praturlon was able to bring to the film set a journalist's sense of reportage - indeed, he is credited with transforming the craft of the on-set photographer. Before his arrival, in Italy at least, stars merely posed for stills during breaks in the filming. Praturlon roamed the sets, capturing them as they went about their work.
During the filming of La Dolce Vita, he shot an unprecedented 13,000 frames and, as he got to know the stars, had unrivalled access. One of his images is of a half-naked Ursula Andress changing for a scene in the 1972 western Red Sun - it does not appear in the exhibition, but it does in the accompanying book.
Praturlon was born in Rome in 1924. He was called up a week before Italy pulled out of the second world war, so after the armistice he became a wanted man for the German occupiers. Indeed, he was captured, but managed to escape from the train on which he was being deported.
Back in Rome after the war, Praturlon drifted into photography and, in 1947, he got his first "scoop" when he spotted and photographed the reclusive Greta Garbo on a visit to the Italian capital. A couple of years later, the producer Carlo Ponti brought him on-set. Within a few years, Praturlon's studio had become one of the pivots around which the dolce vita revolved, and he himself was among its leading protagonists.
Marcello Mastroianni, Vittorio Gassman, Elsa Martinelli and later non-Italian stars such as Yul Brynner and Marlon Brando all had themselves immortalised by the man nicknamed "Lux" (because he was like the soap which, according to an advertising slogan then, was "the choice of nine stars out of 10").
With hindsight, it can be seen that 1960, the year of La Dolce Vita, was the high point of Praturlon's career. It was also the year Praturlon took another of the most famous stills in Italian cinema history, showing a weeping, crumpled Sophia Loren as the rape victim in Vittorio De Sica's Two Women.
The last major film on which he worked was Fellini's Ginger e Fred, which was released in 1986. Praturlon's final years were sad - a downward spiral of drink and depression that ended with his death in 1999. By that time, few people had much idea of the role he had played in capturing the heyday of Italian cinema.
One who did was Claudia Cardinale. "Looking at Pierluigi Praturlon's photos and reflecting upon them," she writes of him, "is to relive a glorious, but irretrievably lost, era on which I cannot but look back with a touch of pride and regret."
· Pierluigi. On Cinema is at the Galleria Photology, Milan, until September 8. The exhibition catalogue is available from at €65.
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Today in pictures | <urn:uuid:9c864d38-17ce-4deb-bb62-8169d88d2811> | http://www.theguardian.com/film/2006/jun/24/photography/print | en | 0.985271 | 0.020987 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Bondi beach bans booze to take the heat out of Christmas
Australia's traditional celebration of sun, sand and surf will be alcohol-free this Christmas, thanks to a booze ban on Bondi beach.
The council controlling the Sydney beach has announced that alcohol will be banned from the sand during Christmas and new year to prevent a repeat of rioting which has marred previous years.
As many as 40,000 people turn up on Bondi's half-mile of sand each Christmas, and last year up to 200 people needed to be rescued from the surf. Rip currents in parts of the beach are notorious, particularly one at the south end, nicknamed the backpackers' express. Beach rangers will be able to confiscate alcohol and impose A$220 (£90) fines.
"On Christmas Day they're going to be turning people away if they bring alcohol to the beach," the mayor of Waverley council, Peter Moscat, told Sydney's Daily Telegraph. "You only need one person to get out of control and you've got a powderkeg."
Festive rioting at Bondi dates back to when it was a seaside village miles from the city. In 1884 a row at a beachside pub resulted in revellers beating each other with eucalyptus branches and women tearing each other's hair.
The arrival of backpackers has transformed what is now a suburb into a haven for European travellers, who have become synonymous with bad behaviour. There was a riot on Christmas Day 1995, and two stabbings that New Year's Eve. Festivities in 1996 were also marred by disorder.
Smoking has been banned on the beach and several other stretches of sand under the control of Waverley council, leading to accusations that traditional Australian culture is being destroyed by "wowsers" - spoilsports.
"You don't want people falling all over the shop, but you can't stop people having a drink at Christmas," said one Bondi surfer, Brett Long.
A measure passed last year empowered police to take alcohol from anyone drinking to excess, but this year will be the first time an alcohol ban is strictly enforced.
A British backpacker, Cathy Delaney, said the move would make her think twice about spending Christmas on the beach. "You come all this way around the world, and spending Christmas at Bondi is part of what everyone says you have to do here. It's not the same if you can't have just one drink." | <urn:uuid:dd0aa53a-9342-4a20-b884-477b6783ee5d> | http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/19/australia.davidfickling | en | 0.970337 | 0.070308 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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inquestion:this Evernote
1. Limit to one application per answer.
2. Add a short description of the application.
locked by patrix Nov 24 '13 at 9:28
239 Answers 239
With ScreenFlow you can record the contents of your entire monitor while also capturing your video camera, microphone and your computer audio. The easy-to-use editing interface lets you creatively edit your video, and add additional images, text, music and transitions for a truly professional-looking video. The finished result is a QuickTime or Windows Media movie, ready for publishing to your Web site or blog or directly to YouTube or Vimeo.
WebStorm & Co.
These are the best IDEs for Web development I found so far. The features go way beyond what simple editors offer. Intellisense, refactorings, debugging, source control integration are my favorite.
XtraFinder add Tabs and features to Mac Finder.
• Tabs.
• Dual Panel & Dual Window.
• Cut & Paste.
• Colorful icons in Sidebar.
This tool provides a ton of enhancements to the contextual menu. It allows you to select move,copy,alias a selected item (icon) to pretty much any folder via pop-up hierarchical folder lists. Built-in preview stuff, and more.
Prism by Mozilla Labs
Prism allows you to turn any webpage into an application. I've used this numerous times.
Just hold the a bit longer to get a list of all active short cuts of the current application. It's as simple as that.
This is an open source replacement for VisualHub. It's free and lets you do all kinds of mass video conversions as well as auto-tagging your video with tv show / movie metadata.
Set names and separate background pictures for different spaces. Really helps me focus on one specific project at a time and helps me avoid tangents.
On many X-based desktops (such as KDE and Gnome) you can resize windows from any side, move windows by clicking anywhere on the window, and switch windows simply by pointing your mouse. Zooom/2 brings the same functionality to Mac, and I can no longer live without it. For example, in my configuration I hold Shift-⌘ and click anywhere in a window to move it. No more hunting for the menu bar or the resize corner!
It also supports using fn as a modifier and snapping windows to screen edges and other elements. – ؘؘؘؘ Jun 7 '11 at 16:15
This is a really good clipboard manager.
Quick and easy to use timer. It's programmable, so you can do (10+2)*5 or the Pomodoro technique on repeating intervals.
The App is localized into English, but the linked webpage is French. The MacUpdate page is in English.
Pow is a zero-config Rack server for Mac OS X. Have it serving your apps locally in under a minute.
Simple to use and indispensable if you are doing any kind of Rails/Sinatra/Rack development
Final Cut Express, a discontinued video-editing software made by Apple. Final Cut Express is one step above iMovie, with up to 99 video tracks, 99 audio tracks, and 12 compositing modes. My favorite features of FCE are Chroma Key, Color Correction, and Livetype, which comes with Final Cut Express.
is a utility that provides an alternative to the Dock. It is tremendously flexible and customizable in letting you design your own way to organize application launchers.
Let me be frank; I've been using a Mac every day since 1987. I cannot live without DragThing because I could never get used to using the Dock, which appeared with the first Mac OS X circa 2000 (and I was using developer builds of Mac OS X before the first version went public). While you can configure DragThing to perform many functions, what I use it for is to provide an application menu and an application launcher that behave the same way they did in Apple Macintosh System 7 through Mac OS 9. That's the way I want it.
Alarms app is the reminder system you never knew your Mac was missing. Just drag the items you want to be reminded of to the Alarms menu and place them on the time line.
From the website:
Warp is a preference pane that allows you to use the mouse to switch between Spaces rather than using the keyboard.
Warp offers the ability to display a live preview of a space when you move the mouse to the edge of the screen, allowing you to see what you have on another space before actually switching to it. Clicking the preview will then warp you to that space.
Keyboard Maestro
An indispensable macro tool. Trigger a macro based on a hotkey (overriding the frontmost app if appropriate), typed strings (a la TextExpander, the status of an app, the system waking or your logging in, at certain times or dates, etc.
A macro can do pretty much anything you can do manually -- manage apps, choose menu items, click on windows or dialog boxes or whatever, display text or Growl or other notifications, etc. -- including running scripts. Macros can also include flow control (if, while, etc.) for less straightforward tasks (e.g. in Photoshop CmdDelete deletes the current layer if a layer is selected or the current group of layers if a group is selected).
One great use is unifying commands across apps, e.g. have Cmd- zoom out and Cmd= zoom in for every app that supports the concept rather than having to remember how, say, OmniGraffle does it vs Photoshop vs Numbers.
Keyboard Maestro enables you to create or record custom macro shortcuts that you can activate at any time. For example, your macros could help you navigate runnings applications or work with an unlimited number of clipboards. Best of all, every macro you create is available using simple keystrokes you choose.
Final Cut Express
I am so amazed no one has mentioned this!
The best video editor for the price. Unfortunately Apple has abandoned FCE to go on to FCPX. I couldn't live without FCE!
Growl Extras - Hardware Growler, Growl Mail,...
Find out when a hardware status changes on the Mac.
Growl Mail
Notifications for incoming mail.
enter image description here
MarcoPolo brings context-aware computing to your Mac! It allows your computer to determine its context through gathering evidence from your environment (evidence sources), using flexible rule-based fuzzy matching to make an educated guess (rules), and then performing arbitrary actions upon changing context (actions).
I use MarcoPolo to run scripts (actions) when I arrive at work, as determined by WiFi hotspots detected or IP addresses assigned (context).
Seems like ControlPlane (see apple.stackexchange.com/a/41826/19225) is the "new" MarcoPolo: ControlPlane creating using code from version 2.5.1 of the MarcoPolo project still available at symonds.id.au/marcopolo. Development of MarcoPolo seems to have come to a halt and ControlPlane attempts to pick up where MarcoPolo left off. As of version 1.0.0, ControlPlane is 64bit and fixes the WiFi Evidence Source. – the_karel Feb 26 '12 at 15:46
Simple Comic
Simple Comic is the most intuitive comic reader on the Mac. Its clean interface gives you full control of your viewing experience without getting in the way. Reading comics on a computer has never been easier.
A great program for looking any any set of archived images.
Simple Comic viewer window
• I scan all my documents to PDF and use Yep to track & find them.
• No filing! Everything goes to a single target folder, Yep takes care of it.
• Tag documents
• Automatically finds all PDF, iWorks, Office, et.al. documents anywhere on your hard drive.
• Does not use a database like some similar apps. So I can access documents via finder; move, copy, delete, etc. easily.
• In conjunction with a Fujitsu Scan Snap scanner Yep is a dream to use.
Okay, did a search of all eight pages posted to date, and didn't see "teleport" listed.
This little free System Preference gets installed on two computers, and then you can move your cursor off the screen of one, onto the screen of the other.
I run a dedicated Mac Mini server, but my main computer is a Mac Pro. I have the server screen above the pro screen, and I can simply move my cursor up to the server, like you'd do with multiple monitors on the same computer. BRILLIANT!
This is so much simpler and easier than using Screen Sharing or other such tools.
It also copies the clipboard of one computer to the other. This can cause a significant delay if you have something huge on the clipboard.
From website:
Great application! I use it with Cheatsheet.
SparkleShare allows you to create your own DropBox. In this way you don't have to pay for more space, if you have your own server, and you don't have to share data with no one else (service provided) except the people you decide.
How does it work?
SparkleShare creates a special folder on your computer in which projects are kept. All projects are automatically synced to their respective hosts (you can have multiple projects connected to different hosts) and to your team's SparkleShare folders when someone adds, removes or edits a file.
Why SparkleShare?
The idea of SparkleShare sprouted at the GNOME Usability Hackfest in London, where a couple of designers came to the conclusion that they didn't have a good (Open Source) collaboration tool to share their work (for more background, read “The one where the designers ask for a pony”). They didn't like how the good collaboration tools were proprietary, and that using them meant having to give up privacy, control and other rights. What they needed was something that they could run and control themselves, without having to depend on other companies.
Viennna is a free open source RSS/Atom reader. Very flexible and version 3 will have Google Reader support.
Vienna main window
Tweetbot for Mac
Though relatively new. Tweetbot for Mac is bringing the same innovation to the Mac platform that it's had established on iOS for a while now.
I never really enjoyed using Skitch, even before Evernote bought them. Not too long ago I heard about Glui and have fallen in love ever since.
It's quick, provides some useful annotating tools, uploads to Dropbox and the automatically copies the share url to your clipboard.
Really has improved my workflow as a programmer. Makes it super easy to share screens when working with others.
Monosnap is a free screenshot program for Mac OS X and Windows. The program allows users to create screenshots, annotate them and upload them to the cloud.
SecondBar adds a second menu bar to your secondary monitor. Although there are a few bugs, it's a great little application.
| <urn:uuid:88b9ad06-d7cc-4433-a42b-575d7859de79> | http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/82/which-os-x-applications-do-you-find-indispensable/46865 | en | 0.90203 | 0.022187 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Why Not Dive Over The Fiscal Cliff?
4:45 PM, Dec 12, 2012 | comments
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WASHINGTON (WUSA) -- Every time you turn around, you hear lots of talk about averting the fiscal cliff, but what about just diving right over it?
Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington state is being referred to as one of the biggest proponents of cliff-diving. Her press person explained the Democrat would prefer to reach a balanced deal - that calls on"the wealthy to pay their fair share" rather than agree to a deal that "throws middle class families under the bus" before midnight on New Year's Eve, but if not, she'd hold out.
Add to Murray, Representative Peter DeFazio of Oregon Representative Peter Welch of Vermont, also Democrats. But other people say this will only do one thing.
"You're talking about a $500 billion overnight tax increase-- that's enough to create a recession," said Dr. Peter Morici, an economist and professor at the University of Maryland.
Here's what he thinks will happen: "I think that there will be some marginal compromise with some tax increases on the wealthy and some spending cuts kick the can to the next president....Mr. Obama is ducking his responsibility as a second term president by bequeathing to the next president an unworkable budget situation if he gets his way."
Whether we dive over the cliff or not, a new proposal sits on the table, waiting to be negotiated. Just 20 days left, until the ball in NYC's Times Square isn't the only thing that could make its way downward.
Most Watched Videos | <urn:uuid:4661e044-372c-4532-ac33-e819549a1127> | http://archive.wusa9.com/politics/article/233380/82/Why-Not-Dive-Over-The-Fiscal-Cliff | en | 0.950518 | 0.020516 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Why is this mother setting us off like no other?
Don't hate me because I'm a better mother.
We first heard about Tiger Mother with the release of her book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” last week. But this thing has really taken on a life of its own with just about everyone weighing in on her hard line child rearing techniques and criticisms of Western parents. Mostly negatively.
It’s been all over the blogs, including this one.
Today, we had this editorial by David Brooks in the Times Union.
It just doesn’t seem to be dying down the way the school girls dancing to Beyonce did. I hate to see mothers criticize the choices other mothers have made. We should parent the way we believe is right and support each other, even if we don’t agree. Perhaps that is what seems to be getting everyone upset.
Maybe it is the rampant stereotyping of Eastern and Western ways.
Why do we care so much what Amy Chua says?
Tracy Ormsbee
8 Responses
1. maggie says:
Because she went to the court of public opinion to get justification for her choices. She chose a parenting style outside the norm of the geographic area where she lives and now she wants us all to say that her ends justify her means, and we all resent being used like that.
2. momto1 says:
Why do I care what Amy Chua says? I care because two children are being raised by her.
I don’t have to support other parents even if I disagree with their parenting practices. Why would I support parents’ choices if I believe them to be harmful? Smoking in the presence of kids, hitting kids, berating a kid for making an error on the field, feeding kids excess junk food, withholding affection as a form of punishment- these are all parenting choices I would not support. I can go on and on, but my point is that other parents do not get my unconditional support.
3. momto1 says:
I hope we get comments from other Chinese parents. I have never seen a Chinese mother parent the way Amy Chua does.
4. ChristineV says:
You beat me to it. I read Brooks’ column this morning and found his perspective to be really interesting!
5. Sunshine says:
I wholeheartedly disagree with Ms. Chua’s principles, but I think that what has gotten everyone’s back up so much was the self-righteous way in which she expressed it. I’ve not read her book, but I did read thoroughly the WSJ excerpt. She basically presented her views while simultaneously putting down and insulting “Western” parenting.
I think her air of superiority left us all feeling insulted and angry.
6. Colleen says:
I agree with Sunshine #5 — it is her air of superiority that irks me.
But this is also about the money: I read that she got a 6 figure advance
from her publisher. So all this controversy is only helping sales.
7. dgc says:
I couldn’t care less about her. I do however feel sorry for her kids.
8. JBHmom says:
While her parenting style isn’t anything close to mine, and quite honestly I see it as extreme, I have to wonder if she is really doing anything wrong? In our own backyards, we have mothers who expose their children to drug use, a rotating door of men, and language I find disgusting. I think that is also extreme, and far more damaging to the children in that lifestyle. Then there are the kids who go to the same schools as our children, but they have a mother who hits them, drinks every day, swears at them, and feeds them only pre-made meals or something from McDonalds. I would also consider this extreme.
It’s all perspective, eh? Or: have we become so accustomed to the “parenting” styles in our own backyards (that are extremely different from our own) that we are numb to what is considered “extreme?” | <urn:uuid:b00546db-92be-4cea-a172-eb9856a47a36> | http://blog.timesunion.com/parenting/11426/why-is-this-mother-setting-us-off-like-no-other/ | en | 0.975621 | 0.033706 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
HOME > Chowhound > Greater Boston Area >
Pazzo for dinner
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I went to Pazzo on Newbury St. last night for dinner. I'd never been before. It was around 8pm Thursday and the place was relatively dead. My friends and I ordered a bottle of cabernet & shared an antipasto platter. It was very tasty. For the main course I got the braciola. I thought it was ok, but nothing to write home about. I did get a side of pasta as well and wasn't that impressed by the sauce or the pasta. It was decent, but again, nothing to write home about. We shared the tiramisu for dessert and that was quite good. I would not dismiss this place at all, but it isn't really at the top of my list of places to go in the future. I'd be interested to hear about other diners' experiences and favorite dishes if any they serve. Thanks!
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1. Sigh. My husband and I checked out Pazzo late last year with high hopes. But we were similarly underwhelmed. It's a shame, because we loved that chef's work back at Rustic Kitchen years ago. I'll stop in for a glass of wine and an appetizer if I'm in the neighborhood, but for dinner, high end Italian, we'd much rather go to Via Matta, Gran Gusto, or Scampo.
Gran Gusto
90 Sherman St, Cambridge, MA 02140
215 Charles Street, Boston, MA 02114
Via Matta
79 Park Plaza, Boston, MA 02116
5 Replies
1. re: ginafly
Right...I feel similarly...fine for a glass of wine or appetizer but I'll go elsewhere for a meal.
1. re: BackBayGirl
It's strange because I think Pazzo gets a lot of rave reviews but I'm with you, I thought everything was just alright but not great. I'd rather go elsewhere for a nice Italian meal.
1. re: CreativeFoodie42
Where has it gotten raves? Maybe I read some good review that led to my high hopes but Rest Week there was one of the more disappointing meals I've had in the last few years. I didn't want to heap onto the "meh" pile but that's what it was at best. That space hasn't really succeeded since Davio's left.
75 Arlington Street, Boston, MA 02116
1. re: Joanie
I think I've read a lot of good blog reviews and people are always suggesting it as a place to go on Newbury. Not quite the "meh" pile for me but definitely not a hit either.
1. re: CreativeFoodie42
We had an EXCELLENT meal there a couple of months after it first opened. Everything (especially the pastas) was so delicious and I was so excited to finally have a decent spot on Newbury Street...and the patio was a bonus. However, months later I started hearing mixed reviews --here, from friends, other spots....checked out the menu a few times as well and it wasn't nearly as extensive (or inspiring) as it had been when I was first there. Needless to say, I haven't been that motivated to head back.
If it's true that Bradley has indeed left, that would make perfect sense. It was good when he was there, not-so-good now that he's left.
2. I've had some solid if not transporting experiences at Pazzo: Bradley knows his way around a bowl of pasta. The big, narrow, upstairs/downstairs space is problematic, though: even with a decent crowd it can feel empty. I wouldn't mind giving it another try on that patio some night, and it's still one of the best of a lame bunch of options on Newbury.
1 Reply
1. re: MC Slim JB
Is Bradley still running the kitchen? I heard he left. Can anyone confirm?
2. I've tried Pazzo twice now, and while it wasn't terrible, I don't think I'll bother to return.
First visit was dinner at the bar with 1 DC, to use the groupon (or whichever). Service was good and the food was good but not amazing. We tried the beef carpaccio, crab cakes, and the gnocchi which I asked to have topped with the boar and pancetta ragu. The carpaccio was fine, my DCs first time trying it but I wasn't impressed. Crab cakes were surprisingly delicious. Gnocchi (very large and somehow loose) did NOT work with the ragu (which I seem to recall was bland), guess I should have trusted the menu.
Second time was for drinks and apps on the patio with 3 DCs. The first bottle of wine we ordered was out, but they suggested a decent (same priced) alternative. We split the arancini, grilled artichoke, tuna tartar and maybe one other thing. Artichoke was great - I could have eaten several. Pet peeve of mine, but maybe I'm being too demanding - there were 4 of us, only 1 of 2 tables on the patio at 4pm on a Saturday, so obviously not a busy time. We were given 3 arancini - I KNOW that's the portion size, but I am very pleased when a waiter takes initiative to have the kitchen provide 4 pieces for 4 people. Anyways, they were only okay, after all that.
Overall, I guess an okay place for a drink and an app, but I'd only return for the $5 app "happy hour" at the bar. | <urn:uuid:6d20bffb-4a9d-467f-85fa-8699812e6f00> | http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/701806 | en | 0.984696 | 0.031427 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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Baseball (ball)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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"Baseballs" redirects here. For the German rock'n'roll cover band, see The Baseballs.
A baseball
A baseball is a ball used in the sport of the same name, baseball. The ball features a rubber or cork center, wrapped in yarn and covered, in the words of the Official Baseball Rules "with two strips of white horsehide or cowhide, tightly stitched together." It is 9 to 9 14 inches (229–235 mm) in circumference (2 78–3 in or 73–76 mm in diameter) and weighs from 5 to 5 14 ounces (142 to 149 g). The yarn or string used to wrap the baseball can be up to one mile (1.6 km) in length. Some are wrapped in a plastic like covering.
A significant characteristic of the baseball is the stitching that holds together the covering of the ball. After a ball has been pitched, these raised stitches act like wings on a plane, catching the wind and causing the ball to swerve slightly on its way to the catcher. Whether the ball swerves to the right, to the left, or downward, or a combination thereof, and whether it swerves sharply or gradually, depends on which direction, and how fast, the stitches have been made to spin by the pitcher. See, for example, curveball, slider, two-seamed fastball, four-seamed fastball, sinker, cutter.[1]
Halves of two baseballs, illustrating the composition of the balls. On the left, a traditional cork-centered ball, and on the right, a rubber-centered ball used during World War II. The rubber centers, borrowed from golf balls, were used due to wartime material shortages.
Cushioned wood cores were patented in the late 19th century by sports equipment manufacturer Spalding, the company founded by former baseball star A.G. Spalding. During World War II, rubber centers from golf balls were used, due to wartime restrictions on the domestic use of materials. In recent years, various synthetic materials have been used to create baseballs; however, they are generally considered lower quality, and are not used in the major leagues. Using different types of materials affects the performance of the baseball. Generally a tighter-wound baseball will leave the bat faster, and fly farther. Since the baseballs used today are wound tighter than in previous years, notably the dead-ball era that prevailed through 1920, people often say that the ball is "juiced". The height of the seams also affect how well a pitcher can pitch. Generally, in Little League through college leagues, the seams are markedly higher than balls used in professional leagues.
In the early years of the sport, only one ball was typically used in each game, unless it was too damaged to be usable; balls hit into the stands were retrieved by team employees in order to be put back in play, as is still done today in most other sports. Over the course of a game, a typical ball would become discolored due to dirt, and often tobacco juice and other materials applied by players; damage would also occur, causing slight rips and seam bursts. However, after the 1920 death of batter Ray Chapman after being hit in the head by a pitch, perhaps due to his difficulty in seeing the ball during twilight, an effort was made to replace dirty or worn baseballs.
In 1909, sports magnate and former player Alfred J. Reach patented the ivory centered "ivory nut" in Panama and suggested it might be even better in a baseball than cork. However, Philadelphia Athletics president Benjamin F. Shibe, who had invented and patented [2] the cork centred ball, commented, "I look for the leagues to adopt an 'ivory nut' baseball just as soon as they adopt a ferro-concrete bat and a base studded with steel spikes." Both leagues adopted Shibe's cork-centered ball in 1910.
The official major league ball is made by Rawlings, which produces the stitched balls in Costa Rica. Rawlings became the official supplier to the majors players in 1977, succeeding Spalding, which had supplied the official ball for a century. The cover of the ball was traditionally horsehide through 1973, but due to dwindling supplies cowhide was introduced in 1974. Attempts to automate the manufacturing process were never entirely successful, leading to the continued use of hand-made balls. The raw materials are imported from the United States, assembled into baseballs and shipped back.
Throughout the 20th Century, Major League Baseball used two technically identical but differently marked balls. The American League had "Official American League" and the American League's president's signature in blue ink, while National League baseballs had "Official National League" and the National League president's signature in black ink. According to Bob Feller, in the 1930s, when he was a rookie the National League, baseball laces were black, intertwined with red; the American League's were blue and red.[3] In 2000, Major League Baseball reorganized its structure to eliminate the position of league presidents, and switched to one ball specification for both leagues. Under the current rules, a major league baseball weighs between 5 and 5 14 ounces (142 and 149 g), and is 9 to 9 14 inches (229–235 mm) in circumference (2 78–3 in or 73–76 mm in diameter).[4] There are 108 double stitches on a baseball (which some people call 216 stitches).
Today, several dozen baseballs are used in a typical professional game, due to scratches, discoloration, and undesirable texture that can occur during the game. Balls hit out of the park for momentous occasions (record setting, or for personal reasons) are often requested to be returned by the fan who catches it, or donated freely by the fan. Usually, the player will give the fan an autographed bat and/or other autographed items in exchange for the special ball.
Every team in Major League Baseball uses Baseball Rubbing Mud in which to rub their balls before their pitchers use them in games.[5]
Famous baseballs[edit]
There are several historic instances of people catching or attempting to catch baseballs:
• The ball that Mark McGwire hit for his 70th home run of the 1998 baseball season, then setting a new record, was sold by a fan to Todd McFarlane for US$3.2 million at auction.
• Larry Ellison, not to be confused with the software entrepreneur of the same name, famously retrieved both Barry Bonds's 660th and 661st home runs.
• Steve Bartman interfered with a play while attempting to catch a foul ball, causing the Chicago Cubs not to get an out in "The Inning" during the 2003 NLCS. The loose ball was snatched up by a Chicago lawyer and sold at an auction in December 2003. Grant DePorter purchased it for $113,824.16 on behalf of Harry Caray's Restaurant Group. On February 26, 2004, it was publicly exploded in a procedure designed by Cubs fan and Academy Award winning special effects expert Michael Lantieri. In 2005, the remains of the ball were used by the restaurant in a pasta sauce. While no part of the ball itself was in the sauce, the ball was boiled in water, beer, vodka, and herbs and the steam captured, condensed, and added to the final concoction.[6]
• Barry Bonds' 73rd home run of the 2001 season. It was the last home run of his historic, record breaking season where he broke Mark McGwire's single season home run record. Ownership of the ball generated controversy and litigation resulted between the two people that claimed to have caught it. The story was made into a documentary, Up for Grabs.
• Barry Bonds' record-breaking 756th home run, beating Hank Aaron's record, caught by a New York Mets fan in 2007.
• Derek Jeter' 3,000 hit, a home run, was caught by a New York Yankees fan who gave the ball back to the Yankees and was rewarded with about $70,000 worth of gifts and memorabilia.[7]
• Roger Maris' 61st single-season home run was caught barehanded by a truck driver. The ball was sold at the price of $5,000.[8]
See also[edit]
Notes and references[edit]
1. ^ Baseball Explained, by Phillip Mahony. McFarland Books, 2014. See
2. ^ US Patent 932911, Shibe, Benjamin F., "Base-Ball", issued 1909-08-31
3. ^ Deford, Frank (8 August 2005). "Rapid Robert Can Still Bring It". Sports Illustrated. pp. 3 (of 11). Retrieved 15 July 2013.
4. ^ Major League Baseball: "Official Rules : Objectives of the Game", Major League Baseball
5. ^ Schneider, Jason (2006-07-04). "All-American mud needed to take shine off baseballs". The Florida Times-Union. Retrieved 2009-10-06.
6. ^ 2005 article in The Daily Northwestern
7. ^ Matuszewski, Erik. "Jeter Fan Who Returned Baseball Leaves $180,000 on Table to Do Right Thing". Bloomberg. Retrieved 10 February 2012.
8. ^ Daily, The. "Derek Jeter's 3,000th Hit, Mark McGwire's 70th Home Run, and More Most Valuable Baseballs". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 2013-07-16.
External links[edit] | <urn:uuid:22d90d31-cf3e-4c70-bc32-6d84612a746e> | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseballs | en | 0.962692 | 0.041399 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I connected my PS3 to my TV through HDMI. I have a headphone and an external speaker, both with a TRS connector (3.5MM analog audio jack) that I would like to use with the PS3.
My TV, however, doesn't have an output port for the TRS connector/audio jack, so I am forced to use the TV's speakers. Is there a cable or adapter I can buy that could allow me to use my headphones or the external speakers with the PS3?
My TV's audio/video ports (scanned from the TV manual):
share|improve this question
What does your TV propose as sound output ? Look at the rear panel, sides of TV or manual. Or give us the TV model. – LudoMC Jan 9 '11 at 15:32
@LudoMC I added a scanned image from the TV's manual of its audio/video ports. – galacticninja Jan 9 '11 at 18:34
Are you sure these are all of the ports on your TV, not just those on the back? A headphone jack is likely to be placed seperately from other ports, e.g. on the side or front of the TV - by not having it on the back of the TV, that makes it more accessible, which is usually desirable in this case - you rarely want to have headphones connected all the time, so it should be accessible, but you generally don't unplug the antenna signal very often, so that can go on the back. – Michael Madsen Jan 9 '11 at 20:29
@Michael Madsen Yes. I've checked the front and sides of the TV. I even contacted the customer service of the TV manufacturer, which confirmed that there is no TRS connector output. – galacticninja Jan 9 '11 at 21:40
2x HDMI in and no cinch-audio out? That is really weird. What make and model is that TV? – DrFish Jan 11 '11 at 14:09
2 Answers 2
up vote 2 down vote accepted
I see two possible (although awkward) options:
1) connect the PS3 AV Multi Out -> Y-Adapter -> female2female TRS -> your headphones. See details here: http://www.portfolioofpb.com/blog/connect-ps3-xbox-to-ps-computer-speakers-with-surround-sound
2) connect the TV Coaxial audio out -> Coaxial2Analog Converter -> Y-Adapter -> ... (I found a converter here: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.44345 )
If you are looking for a better (and more expensive) arrangement, you can buy an AV receiver.
Have fun!
share|improve this answer
Can't find any female-female TRS connectors on any local shops, but luckily, I bought a speaker ( amazon.com/Altec-Lansing-BXR1121-Gaming-Speaker/dp/B000PVH5HU ) that has a TRS Aux in and a TRS out port. With the PS3 AV Multi Out and Y-Adapter, I can now use both the speakers and headphones with the PS3. Sweet! – galacticninja Jan 21 '11 at 12:47
You need a DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) to convert the coax output from the TV to an analog line output. You can then use a headphone amplifier to drive your headphones. Here is an expensive (but good) approach:
I have bought other products from Headroom (headphone.com), and have always been happy.
A quick search found a product with those features integrated:
This product is what you are asking for: A headphone amplifier with an integrated DAC and a coax input.
There are certainly other products that do that, the fubar link was just the first result on a search. You can search around to find one that matches your price/performance requirements.
share|improve this answer
Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:bc8545bf-4cbf-4c62-a9ad-6053b7376e04> | http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/14215/how-do-i-use-a-headphone-or-a-speaker-with-a-3-5mm-analog-audio-jack-trs-connec | en | 0.915795 | 0.031733 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Woman Who Fell into Picasso Painting Not Magically Transported to World of Cubism
Since Gawker now covers art: A woman at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Friday got way too excited about Picasso's "The Actor". She fell into it, ripping a six-inch hole in the rare Rose Period painting. Update:
A tipster sends in additional details about the circumstances surrounding the great Picasso Tearing of 2010, which they claim to have heard from a Met security guard:
There was a group of students touring the 20th century area and a special needs kid was sitting on the floor or leaning on the wall, went to get up, tripped and tore a six inch long hole in Picasso's 'actors'. | <urn:uuid:29c821e4-7d49-4214-80f6-6f357b81e3cc> | http://gawker.com/5455944/woman-who-fell-into-picasso-painting-not-magically-transported-to-world-of-cubism?tag=pablo-picasso | en | 0.944882 | 0.032378 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Correct: None.
Troy, a new restaurant on Staten Island, had its grand opening last week. To commemorate the occasion, it served an opulent buffet of shrimp, stuffed crab, and a pig with little swords shoved through its back. Also on the menu, according to the masterpiece of a commercial above: raw meat, live fish, and screamin' birds. Remember: fridge was not invented yet. *Laser beam sound*
A call to Troy confirmed that the commercial is indeed real, but the restaurant's thickly accented owner didn't tell me much more than that (he seemed busy; it was the middle of lunch hour). When I asked about the restaurant itself, he said: "It's European style, what can I tell you."
I emailed Edward Izro, who directed the commercial, to ask whether the humor was intentional. His cryptic answer:
Troy is completely my idea as a restaurant and the commercial alone
my script my directing and actors casting
I deliberately took an actor with an accent and it made the audience interested in a restaurant
OK, so maybe that uncanny Tim and Eric feeling was a little intentional, which feels like a bit of a letdown. Still: Welcome to the Empire of Taste! Great commercial. Possibly the finest.
[h/t Eater] | <urn:uuid:400fbb14-915c-40d4-a654-411b6fa11216> | http://gawker.com/how-many-excuse-do-you-need-to-watch-great-restaurant-c-1625103279 | en | 0.977061 | 0.034148 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I'm writing a script which tries to access a web-page through HTTP. (The real page is not public, so I'll use an example page to explain my question.) For example, I'm trying to GET the page example.com/mypage. The server returns 301, and when I check the Location header I see it's value is... http://example.com/mypage - that is the EXACT same location I was trying to GET from the first place! How is my script supposed to get the page? Before seeing this I thought I should check the Location header and try to fetch it - but as it's the same location that would get me in an infinite loop!
Of course, when I try to browse the page with a browser I get the contents without a problem.
So my questions are:
1) What does it mean that the Location header matches the location I asked for perfectly with a 301 status?
2) How come the browser can display the page?
3) Is there any way to debug what goes on through the browser (e.g. to ask the browser for the response headers or something; asking for the page source is not enough, obviously).
share|improve this question
You can trace what goes in your browser by using your built-in browser debug tools (all browsers have such tools now, except maybe IE). – Greg Hewgill Aug 5 '12 at 1:12
@Greg: thanks for your comment. I am using Firefox at the moment, and I've got FireBug installed. What can I do in order to monitor the responses and response headers the browser gets when I make a request? – Tom Aug 5 '12 at 1:18
Chrome has a "Network" tab in the debug tools that shows every request and response with full headers. I am more familiar with Chrome than Firebug for that purpose, but I imagine Firebug has something similar. Looks like getfirebug.com/network might be what you need. – Greg Hewgill Aug 5 '12 at 1:24
@Greg (and anyone): I've found the web console on Firefox which gives some information. It seems the browser gets a 200 in the first place, whereas my script gets a 301. Any ideas what might be causing this? (The page does not try to trick the client in any way. It's a standard WordPress page. A second page in a category listing.) – Tom Aug 5 '12 at 2:15
Are you sure there isn't some different in the URL of the request and the Location: header of the response? Maybe a trailing slash? Also, did you actually send GET example.com/mypage? The hostname does not belong in the first line of the request. It only belongs in the Host: header. – dsh Aug 5 '12 at 2:36
Your Answer
Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question. | <urn:uuid:84cafba1-1144-40cf-8f64-fd23182ea13c> | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11813209/how-come-a-request-to-the-server-is-answered-with-the-301-status-code-and-with-t | en | 0.904902 | 0.21244 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I have 14,000 picture sorted into files by year and month but taken with multiple cameras. I want the file name to reflect the date the photo was taken.
For example, all pictures taken on October 16, 1998 are in a folder called 1998\10 October\19981016.
I want the all the pictures to be named 19981016_0001 19981016_0002 etc.
I can get to the point where it list the folder I want to change but I'm unable to actually change it. All of my pictures are .jpg.
I created a temp file of copies in case I messed it up. I started by typing:
cd "C:\Documents and Settings\Brooke LastName\Desktop\Temp"
then after successfully getting my file to load I used a formula I found on this forum.
ls *jpg | Foreach {$i=1} {Rename-Item _ -NewName ("$($.19981016){0:00000000#} .jpg" -f $i++) -whatif}
The error I got said
Unexpected token ' .19981016' in expression or statement.
At line:1 char:12 + $.19981016 <<<<
The error repeated several times
I found several formulas on the web but most created files that would number with parenthesis for example vacation (1).jpg I want a four digit counter after an underscore at the end of my date. ie 19981016_0001
share|improve this question
1 Answer 1
I think you modified formula, and made at least two mistakes:
• Rename-Item $_ -> otherwise PowerShell will attempt to rename file named "_"
• "$($_.Directory.Name)_{0:D9}.jpg" -f $i++ - you need to grab directory name of current object, and for formatting - it's easier to use D# format, easier to count how many digits you get in the end...
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Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:66e4181a-c643-4de1-8520-2e1f86444d7a> | http://superuser.com/questions/633467/how-do-i-renaming-files-in-a-batch-with-a-counter | en | 0.881852 | 0.283443 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Tolkien Gateway
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[[Category:Characters in The Hobbit]]
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[[fi:Bard Jousimies]]
Revision as of 01:23, 20 August 2008
Bard I
Biographical Information
DeathT.A. 2977
Physical Description
Bard I (died c. Third Age 2977) of Lake-town was one of the most skilled archers among Men and was the heir of Girion, the last king of old Dale. Bard was able to slay the Dragon Smaug with a single arrow after a tip from the old thrush (who had overheard Bilbo Baggins' description of Smaug) revealed an unarmoured spot on the Dragon's underside. Because of his miraculous shot he was given the epithet Bard the Bowman.
Bard claimed a twelfth of the treasure amassed by the dragon, which he subsequently shared with the Master of Lake-town to rebuild the town. However, the Master stole the money and ran off into the wild where he died. Four years later, after the rebuilding of the city, Bard became the first King of restored Dale. His success was chronicled in The Hobbit.
Robert Ireland and Ruth S. Noel provide Celtic origins, bárd ("guardian") and bard ("poet"). However, the language of Dale tends to be translated into Old Norse, not Celtic. In other names (such as Isembard), bard refers to beard. This could be either the facial hair, or more likely "Battle-Axe" (beard is also a term for a part of an axe).
Bard II
Preceded by:
Girion, 174 years earlier
King of Dale
T.A. 29442977
Followed by: | <urn:uuid:e45ca47f-5bf4-4096-b8c6-b3cc12654f4d> | http://tolkiengateway.net/w/index.php?title=Bard&diff=69283&oldid=69251 | en | 0.910344 | 0.043638 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Bitch of Rome Entertainment is a celebration of fandom through music video remixes with a strong focus on action and chicks kicking ass! So crank up the volume and experience your favourite fandoms like never before!
Clips from: "Xena: Warrior Princess," "Angel of Death," "The Last Unicorn," "Punky Brewster," "Profiler." "Lost Girl," "Resident Evil: Retribution," "Kim Possible," "Alias," "Transformers," "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," "Angel," "Domino," "Frozen," "Hellboy 2: The Golden Army," "Dr Quinn: Medicine Woman," "Dexter" "ER," "Gargoyles," "The Lion King," "Wolverine and the X-Men," "The Heat," "Beauty and the Beast," "Rizzoli & Isles," "Dark Angel," "Star Trek: Voyager," "The Princess Bride," "X-Men Evolution," "Salt," "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," "Justice League," "Charmed," "Brave," "Space: Above and Beyond," "Wonderfalls," "Underworld," "Sucker Punch," "Crossing Jordan," "Veronica Mars," "The Dark Crystal," "X-Men," "Star Treak: Deep Space Nine," "Farscape," "Kick-Ass," "Spartacus," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," "V for Vendetta," "Murder By Numbers," and "Bitch Slap."
Music: "Guardians of Freedom" by GRV Music
Loading more stuff…
Loading videos… | <urn:uuid:a7ba1f34-5ccb-4906-8a41-8fc0d7f83269> | http://vimeo.com/83445807 | en | 0.883487 | 0.569568 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
whisper ceo michael heywardTechCrunchWhisper CEO Michael Heyward.
In an extremely contentious interview with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, Michael Heyward, the CEO of anonymous social network Whisper, nearly melted down on stage today at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference.
Arrington peppered Heyward with questions about the purpose of the Whisper app. Arrington seemed to think Whisper is designed to make it easy for people to bully others, which is antithetical to Whisper's mission of making the world more "caring, empathetic, and tolerable."
Specifically, Arrington pointed out a Whisper post from earlier this year that alleged Gwyneth Paltrow was cheating on her husband. Arrington didn't think it was proper for Whisper to allow that post on the service. Heyward said part of Whisper's mission is to expose news and secrets about public figures like Paltrow.
Then things got really dicey. By the end, it was clear Heyward was a little frazzled by Arrington's questions and was having difficulty completing his thoughts.
Here's a quick breakdown of what happened:
Heyward said: "Whisper is all about creating a place of authenticity and openess."
whisper ceo michael heywardTechCrunch
Arrington did admit there were some beautiful things on Whisper. But he was more concerned with the post about Paltrow. "How does outing Gwyneth Paltrow cheating on her husband make this a more caring world?" he asked.
whisper paltrow postTechCrunch
Heyward responded: "When you're in the public domain, you're in the business of promoting yourself." Based on that, Whisper thinks it's okay to post gossip about celebrities, politicians, etc. Whisper is "in the business of truth," Heyward said.
heyward whisper ceo meltdownTechCrunch
But Arrington kept pressing Heyward. Arrington said, "being in the business of truth" wasn't the original mission of being "caring and empathetic," like Heyward mentioned earlier. That's when Heyward started to lose his composure. He said "being in the business of truth" was the same as being "caring and empathetic." Arrington didn't buy it.
whisper ceo heywardTechCrunch
They went back and forth like that a lot. Heyward became visibly flustered and frustrated.
michael heyward ceo whisperTechCrunch
Heyward then tried to counter Arrington's argument with some touching posts from Whisper like this one:
whisper ceo heyward tc disruptTechCrunch
You can forward to about the 15-minute mark to watch the good stuff: | <urn:uuid:4a03e411-e04f-431e-9cb6-077475850c69> | http://www.businessinsider.com/whisper-ceo-techcrunch-disrupt-interview-2014-5?op=1 | en | 0.971832 | 0.102139 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
View Full Version : Sedivore: WIP
04-16-2013, 02:24 PM
I am working on a World for a series of short stories and an RPG setting. I have been using this world for a while now, but have used maps from other settings as a quick way to jump into the game. I've always been interested in creating the world from scratch, but have had trouble making it feel realistic. The world would be about the size of earth, maybe a little bigger. It has a ring, which revolves around it as well as a single moon and a single sun.
I am not sure of the realistic implications that would result from having a ring that moves around the planet as the planet rotates within, but the ring rises and sets during the day just as the moon and sun would, maybe weeks during the year when the ring is not as visible and other times when it is a bright and brilliant light source in the night sky; occasionally it would even eclipse the sun. I do have a monthly calendar where the names of the Months reflect the Ring's position, but since i am not familiar with how this would actually present itself on a world, i could be completely wrong. I know i could always just contribute it to magic, and Magic would be a nice way to explain away a few things; i would rather not liter my science with too much unrealistic fantasy.
I would like to hear from anyone on this subject and perhaps enlist some to aid me while i create my world. I will be using Fractal Terrains 3 and CC3 to generate the landscape and will be posting WIP maps occasionally.
04-18-2013, 11:50 PM
Well, first thing i'd say is who cares? I think it sounds like a cool idea, and this comes from a low-fantasy nut :)
Though, in reallife i'm not sure myself since i don't have a physics degree. However, it's not impossible at all for an Earth sized planet to have a ring. But it would have to "static" in that sense that it circles around the planet, with the planets center of mass and rotation pulling it around and inwards. So it would be in short, knit to the equator of the planet. If you would be able to see it in some seasons, the planet would be having a mindblowing change of pace and rotation. But, that's just some thoughts. In short, a ring around the planet would be doable but with the physics, it wouldn't happen. I'm pretty sure of, but it sounds like a interesting idea nontheless.
But the realistic impacts, would be the planet suddenly changing axis as it spins. Basicly what the earth would do without its moon :)
Mind, i don't have a degree in physics or anything, just watch alot of documentaries about the matter.
04-19-2013, 01:00 AM
A bit of invention should help you solve this problem, without needing a physics degree. For example, what if the ring is actually made of billions of bacteria, like the algae blooms that appear in the world's oceans. That way, they might 'migrate' during the year for some reason (eg solar flares, solar/lunar gravitational cycles etc.). Or, a more cliched option, the ring is ancient technology, and it is programmed to move at certain times of the year.
If neither of those take your fancy, you could get a bit more technical: perhaps your planet has an outer atmosphere that has a different chemical composition to Earth's. There might be a layer of gases that is more dense than other gases, but (peculiarly) is also very bouyant. The ring actually its on top of those gases, and so is within the atmosphere, but many kilometres up. For various reasons, the layer of gases moves around in cycles (eg. the same way that hot and cold pressure cells operate in Earth's weather system). It might be like the jet-stream, for example. Correspondingly, the ring, floating on top of the gases, is also carried around the planet when the gases move.
Of course, a chemist or physicist could look at this suggestion and see all the problems wrong with it, but how many of your readers are likely to be chemists or physicists? It just needs to be plausible, not scientifically perfect. It is definitely doable.
Feel free to use any of those ideas, if you want to, or invent some of your own. Good luck with your world.
04-23-2013, 11:03 AM
thank you both for your responses, and i appreciate the feedback. In truth i agree with Kahli's statement "Who Cares", and during the course of the stroy (both in the pages i will write, and in the RPG setting) it may never come up. And due to Sedivore Being a low metal world, meaning that metal is rarely found close to the surface, then the second Atmosphere may make sense. the extra pressure it would cause may make up for the lack of gravity.
At first then ring was going to be just a bunch of small to large rocks and minerals, mostly crystalline debris (which would account for the lights and different color's the sun's light would cause it to radiate at different times of the year and throughout the day). This light weight debris could float on top of that layer in a sort of continuous storm that carries it around the planet. The tidal effects between the Moon and the Sun would actually maintain the storms constant rotation. and the ring being less dense than it appears to be would allow for the fact that the world isn't being crushed under a humongous weight of gravity.
I do like the idea of migrating bacteria, but it is already cannon for my world, that the ring collapse (at some time in the future) and rains down upon the world, scarring it and causing an Apocalyptic event, which i use this new world as the basis for my post-Apocalypse games. Also during the time the collapse is happening, and the time leading up to it, the inhabitants of Sedivore find a way to flee their doomed world and begin to "invade" Earth. (When i use to run Shadowrun, i used this story arch as the reason for Meta humans instead of the mutated genome. )
I also read somewhere that the earth's core is the reason the planet rotates, so maybe the fact that the Ring is orbiting the planet could be the reason that Sedivore rotates. I have always thought the center of Sedivore was a Hollow shell, where the UnderKind dwelt. albeit extremely far below the crust. and beneath a layer of super dense and heavy crystalline mineral deposits.
Again, i'd like to thank you both, and anyone else who wishes to add any thoughts to this, for your suggestions, feedback, opinions, and any other input. I'm working on a series of maps using Fractal Terrain 3 and if anyone is willing to touch up these maps let me know. I won't be able to offer much other than credit and Kudos... maybe some money,. but not much.. i'd rather share royalties if my books ever sell cause times are tough and budget is tight, but if cash is required we can work something out. I do believe that talent and time are worth something.
Here is my first attempt at a World Atlas, i want to add a huge desert to the area on the upper left continent (where it looks like a bowl/dip between the mountain ranges) This desert is known as Drax, also known as the Sea of Black Sands (the sand is actually Black. it has white and grey specks in it, but is mostly black in color.)
04-23-2013, 03:12 PM
For the imaginitively-challenged, like myself, there's an interesting video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNCBh2MLvdw) on YouTube that shows what a ring around Earth's equator might look like from different points on the surface. Quite nice!
Regarding your story, does the ring have to collapse? If it does, I'd say make sure it happens near the beginning, not in the middle. I'm not keen when you're reading a story and you invest in the world and the characters, then suddenly everything changes so completely that it becomes a different world and a different story. Anyone who saw 'Knowing' at the cinema will understand what I'm talking about!
04-24-2013, 04:12 AM
Doesn't Saturn have three rings, two really faint ones? Some planets do at least. That would mean two are not directly above the equator, and would move across the sky as the planet rotates. Anyone who actually knows anything about this, feel free to correct me ;)
Also, I don't think it'd be a problem if the ring collapses mid-story; some of the short stories would take place before the collapse, some during, and some after, or that's how I interpreted it anyway :)
04-24-2013, 08:52 AM
Saturn has over a dozen rings, but they are all side by side. They have gaps between them and are various colors, so they consider them different rings.
As Lingon mentioned, the ring would not collapse during the course of a series of short stories. Well, as of right now, i haven't planned on it happening like that. The collapse is just a means for me to use my setting in various genres of RPG storylines.
The youtube video jturner linked was nice, thanks for the post.
I still want the ring to orbit the planet, and the planet rotate within. I know rings form around what would be the equator, due to the planet's spin pulling the objects around, so I may go with the idea that the ring rides on a cushion of a secondary atmosphere, unless i get another suggestion that is possible.
Again i thank you all for your ideas and comments.
04-24-2013, 01:36 PM
Ah, I see. For some reason I always thought the rings were at an angle to each other. Thanks for informing me :)
06-14-2014, 06:14 PM
I haven't posted in a while, but i have redone the landscape of Sedivore. this is just an Altitude map. I made this with Fractal Terrains 3 and exported it as a Jpeg. i am complete rubbish when it comes to editing this, and i would like to have the names of the kingdoms, continents, oceans, etc.. on here. any help or suggestions would be appreciated. it should be mentioned that the circumference of Sedivore is 46563.4 miles (Earth is only 24,901 miles). so anyone wanting to aid me in this project may need to know that bit of information. the planet is much less dense than earth, but has the same mass so gravity isn't an issue.
i know people don't have a lot of time to devote to this, so i am willing to learn and help with as much as i can.
06-14-2014, 06:49 PM
I keep forgetting about window's screen capture/cropping tool. here is a clearer image of the map, though it is a PNG.
also, i have checked out Roba's Gimp tutorial, but since i already have a map made, i'm not sure that would help me with making coasts. maybe it can help with making forests and mountains.. any suggestions on defining the coasts though?
I have the following programs:
GIMP v2.6.10
Adobe Flash Profressional CS5.5
Fractal Terrains 3 v 3.0.4
Campaign Cartographer 3 v 3.42 | <urn:uuid:5842b8c4-9edb-4ed3-bddc-5e0cbada2a78> | http://www.cartographersguild.com/archive/index.php/t-23044.html?s=3184712e06e153b7040355c89d323c68 | en | 0.96248 | 0.323852 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |