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The Books, a short story
The Books
And now, retracing his steps, he evaded all mischance,
and Eurydice, regained, approached the upper air,
when he stopped, and forgetful, alas, on the edge of light,
his will conquered, he looked back, now, at his Eurydice.
In that instant, all his effort was wasted. ‘Orpheus,’ she cried,
‘what madness has destroyed my wretched self, and you?
See, the cruel Fates recall me, Farewell, now: I am taken,
wrapped round by vast night, stretching out to you, alas, hands no longer yours.
The departure lounge at the Tucson Airport had changed very little over the last thirty years that Gwen had arrived at and departed from it. All departure gates plotted a u-shape at the end of one concourse, after the gift shop, the Mexican restaurant, and the shoe shine alcove.
“Is this seat taken?” Gwen asked eyeing a single seat between a dispirited, worried-looking woman, her feet guarded by three bags pretending to be carry on size, and the column marking the end of that row of plastic seats. A barely audible “no” was the answer.
“We will start boarding flight 742 shortly, beginning with first class,” declared a distant microphoned female voice.
Gwen pulled the boarding pass half-way from her sweater pocket to confirm that she was part of “group two” of coach and still had a few minutes to delve into the book that she had been hauling along in her carry-on bag. Although it was the size of a dictionary, she had selected it to bring on the airplane from among the many books that she had sorted through to keep for her mother, leave for the estate sale, or appropriate for herself. She had spent much of the last three days triaging books as part of moving her parents into their downsized apartment after fifty years in the family home: the scene of the lives of an English professor, with the inability to discard any relic of the past, including books; her two children, who had not only been avid readers but gone through the university and left their course books; and a school principal, who had read and shelved away his fair share of books, particularly those on American history.
When Gwen had walked through the kitchen doorway on her mission, a thick nostalgia filled her senses like a miasma from a swamp. From the kitchen to the hallway, she quickly glanced to her right at the living room, a space of lonely beach at lowest tide, a few items of detritus left clinging after the movers had receded. Down the still hallway, memory lurked like the intruder that she used to fear might be waiting in the shadows when she came home at night alone years before. To her right was the study, where a worn and sad carpet bereft of furniture could not hide its discolorations. Entering it was attending a euthanized pet at its last moments, when the world is only memories and relics. With all the strangeness of a nightmare, the room held no expectation except of quiet and loss. Gwen felt herself the raider of a sepulcher, and gave herself brief minutes, as if the heavy stone would roll back to cover the opening. The raid also had to be carried out surgically, since many books would have to stay behind, not because there would not be space as much as bringing them was futile, a postponement until a later and certain purge.
Gwen surveyed, flipped through, and reached a decision on books in all possible currents of life: books used for teaching, for learning, for pleasure; books purchased because the author was an acquaintance, colleague in the department or the field; books of poetry, fiction, women’s studies, gay studies, history; literary criticism; books in French and even a few in Arabic, including a decorative Koran from Cairo. There were the beautiful Romantics; the Victorians–early, late, and middle–with their lyrical verses, sprawling novels, and essays in elegant long-sentences; the Edwardians, and a few that snuck in from 20th Century, particularly if they were written by women; anthologies and editions; books bound in hardcover with decorative cardboard cases for display and old paper backs with yellowed pages that smelled like the stacks of the library; books studied, perused, underlined, hardly used, or beloved. Art books that Gwen remembered seeing as a little child spread on the kitchen table late at night as the backbone of a developing Humanities lecture and she had wondered out loud: “Why are the private parts so small? Why does the statue have such large hands? Why are the women so fat?” Clustered under the Victorians were books showing in color plates the art of the Pre-Raphaelites, dreamy-eyed figures with short upper lips and abundant wavy hair–images that were scarcely contained by the edges of the canvass. And then there reigned on the shelf her mother’s household god, the pole star of her mother’s career, the great Walter Pater. Gwen had snatched a set of his works to remain enshrined in her mother’s new bedroom bookcase, albeit destined to remain unopened for the years ahead.
The books were helplessly waiting on the shelf, subject to her draconian decimation. She knew them well; not all were old friends but there was not a new spine in the lines. The most recent she noted was the biography of John Keats that she had given to her mother about three years before; she had become disconcerted then saddened that her mother had not finished it, had simply forgotten about it.
She took a volume of the poetry of John Keats from the shelf and had to decide if this older version was worth saving, given that she owned a newer one. She saw her brother’s marginalia from an English class. In faint pencil, in a seeming attempt to not permanently deface the pages, he had noted the date of the Eve of St. Agnes; he had jotted next to the third part of Ode to a Nightingale, “The only way to be happy is to be unthinking.” She paused, despite her haste to escape, at this kindred statement connecting a moment in an English class from the 1970s to this moment, when she could proclaim such a thought as near gospel. Well, she thought, the wrong kind of thinking, yes, must be avoided, any thoughts dwelling on the past or anticipating the future. He had been the English major not her; he had been the one to write a poem or clever story, a screenplay or a memoir before and in between the bouts of alcoholic madness. Her eye fell on the book’s neighbor, the Poetry of Swinburne. Swinburne was known to her by name and she had, even without personal knowledge of him, conceived a measure of respect for him, as for a relative she had heard talk of but had never met. She flipped through to evaluate and found that her mother’s pencil had visited many pages in uniform and tidy cursive writing. Gwen indulged a few moments of perusing the pages and stopped at one notation. In the margin her mother had written “These 3 lines” next to a few lines in the middle of a long poem: “There is no help for these things; none to mend / And none to mar; not all our songs, O friend, / Will make death clear or make life durable.” Gwen memorized them. As a teenager, at the time of the Iranian hostage crisis, she had begun memorizing poetry, thinking that if she was ever taken hostage it would be good to be able to recite poetry to herself. She had never been taken hostage or even been trapped in an elevator or a car in a snowstorm, but it turned out such extraordinary circumstances were not a necessary prerequisite to needing poetry in her head. She put Swinburne in the pile to keep for herself.
Then from the shelf to the drawers, there were the fledging books: eager manuscripts resting in slender boxes typed on onion skin paper, the product of meticulous editing and skilled striking of the keys of the Underwood typewriter marking the minutes into the deepest night when class preparation gave way to scholarship. How could they, of value to no one, be cast into oblivion?
“Any passengers who are platinum or gold or in the military, in uniform, please board at this time.”
This hefty tome of literary criticism that now filled her hands was not the only book she had selected to take for herself—many would be shipped or were set aside for her return trips that promised to be every other month. She had decided this book was worth taking on the airplane despite its size because she had read another work by the same author, a sweeping survey of great literature that had brought to mind several authors scarcely known or forgotten whom she rediscovered with a passion. She was hoping to find a reference to a writer who addressed her important questions or offered a kindred spirit. However, after a glance at the opening chapter, the table of contents and a few random pages, she found that this book was a prequel to the great work she had already read. Of course she thought; the magnum opus is the product of a lifetime of writing on the same subjects. The grand finale would be nothing new as much as a compilation of various previous forays into scholarship, such as this hefty fellow. Now what to do with it? Glancing around she saw a trash can over her left shoulder, but the opening was a circle too small to accommodate the book. Putting it in the trash seemed inappropriate anyway, not to mention a gross infraction of recycling. After a moment’s reflection, she casually and surreptitiously let it slide down from her chair and rest on the ground between the chair and the column separating her row of seats from another. She nearly looked up to see if she had been caught in the act. Then she realized that anyone would assume that she had dropped it unintentionally and might point that out to her. After seconds, she was certain no one had noticed.
That left her with one book to read. She extracted a small paperback from her bag– her lesson book, her guide to living. Just perusing certain lines refreshed her precepts: value the living moment because death can happen to anyone at any time; appreciate that adversity makes us who we are; know that things can always get worse and that there is scarcely a situation on which the dispassionate mind can gaze without some consolation if reason is brought to bear; there is no point in thinking pointlessly and reflecting on the past the past and anticipating the future, neither of which we can control, constitutes pointless thinking. She reflected on the natural and common suffering of all humankind.
“We are now ready to board passengers in group one.”
Still time to find a few choice passages of Seneca and take in his direct, simple and profound observations. Like a book mark, resting between pages 50 and 51 of Essays and Letters of Seneca was another boarding pass from another trip to Tucson. She was not surprised that she had made sure to bring Seneca on that trip. December 6—the date of the trip made from Tucson with her parents. Why could she not visualize their all three being at this very point, ready to board the airplane, probably through the same gate, at the same time? Although that flight was a void, the three days preceding the departure was a montage of scenes as clear as those of a movie watched for the fourth time the night before. The scenes had all the horrible wrongness of a nightmare and they ran one into another in a frenzy. Relatives and acquaintances to contact, the coroner to call, funeral arrangements, choosing a casket, packing her mother for the tip to Oklahoma, going out to dinner and trying for a few minutes to cheat pain. She wondered if any other event could rival funeral arrangements for the degree of logistical planning. A wedding didn’t compare—for that, there were long stretches of time to prepare and no jumping up to busy one’s brain. With death, activity was necessity– get things done, get worn out, and don’t stop to reflect or the surreal sadness will catch you.
She glanced up from Seneca and made a note to herself to remember how it felt to know something had happened but to have no clear memory of it at all as a window to understanding in some small degree what it must be like for her mother. She had gone well beyond her impatience from the earlier days of her mother’s dementia in describing in surprised or frustrated tones to her some event that it would seem impossible to forget or some conversation that had just taken place. She took it for granted now that most of what transpired would be forgotten. The culminating point of that trip was as vivid as the prequel: Dallas airport where they met up with her husband and fifteen-year old son. What a relief she had felt to see them and to let her husband take over some responsibility and drive them all in the rented van to the rural wilds of Oklahoma for her brother’s funeral. Their rendezvous was easy and precise. It would turn out that all of the events of the next two days would luckily be that way. People would gather on time, from near and far, without the drama of a delay or impediment, under a vast western sky of grey, warming clouds and slivers of sun. Four months ago…not long, but long enough to dull the shock of sudden death and break down some of the old links—still recent enough to reflect on the sad beauties of a gathering of people so disposed to remember only the best and pour out a love for his sake that would have been denied him while he was living.
Time to board, but with her trusty Seneca placed on the top of the unzipped bag.
“The captain has turned on the fasten seat belt sign. Please make sure that all of your carry-on baggage is securely stowed in the overhead compartment or the seat in front of you.” After a pause, the young male flight attendant continued: “We have found a book in the departure lounge. If anyone has lost The Literary Canon please ring your attendant call button.”
Gwen felt a sharp surprise and a sudden twinge of guilt as if she had been caught in a wrongdoing, such that she almost, without thinking, reached for the button prepared to pretend to she had lost the discarded item.
The voice resumed in a jocular tone after a space of silence, “Okay, if not, it will stay in Tucson.”
Reason quelled her feelings, and the book with many other things stayed in Tucson.
2 thoughts on “The Books, a short story
1. Lovely & enjoyable story– you managed to touch on many of my literary favorites! Referring to Pater as a household god make me chuckle. I liked your bit on E. Bronte quite– Jane Eyre must be my favorite novel ever, and Emily’s poetry is so exquisite (I managed to lose my copy of her poems somewhere along the way– gotta get that book again). Anyway, you have a very novel & intelligent blog, which I happened upon kinda by chance (you commented on a photo I posted sometime back). If you’re interested, my “main” blog is And btw, if you love Keats (and who doesn’t?), you might quite like William Drummond of Hawthornden’s poems– for the melody, as well as his take on a stoic approach to living; his book called “A Cypress Grove” is a more sustained meditation on such themes, but in prose.
• Thanks very much for the recommendation;I look forward to reading William Drummond. I very much appreciate your letting me know that you enjoyed the story and the blog. Here’s to much more reading and writing, your blog and mine. Best, Laura
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At the peak of the last financial downturn, in 2009-2010, high street banks were under pressure to reduce their exposure to bad debt and Allsop’s Receivership team was kept busy as a result.
Fast forward a decade and times have changed. Increased government regulation surrounding lending and high street banks becoming more risk averse means the Receivers are still busy but not so much with the traditional lenders and more with the new players in the market: challenger banks, peer-to-peer lenders, property companies, private-wealth banks, mezzanine and bridging lenders.
Today’s lending landscape is far more diverse than it ever has been and, as Receivers, we are in constant dialogue and exposed to many more lenders than ever before. The varying size and number means it is easier for Receivers to spot trends and identify the areas in the market and assets most likely to struggle in the short and medium term.
This is exemplified by the now well-publicised reduction in values for prime central London residential property. Allsop’s Receivers noticed this trend more than three years ago when, having advised on several properties in prestigious London locations and spoken to agents active in the market, it became apparent that the market had thinned. Moreover, vendors were not achieving the asking prices they anticipated or, more importantly, required. The weakening of this market remained concealed with properties sitting unsold, or being withdrawn due to lack of interest. As Receivers transacting in the market, and with careful analysis and opinions from active agents, we could see this market was suffering and values had declined by a substantial amount. Moreover, the decline was not only in the number of transactions but also in the values achieved.
Although the Receivers had identified the trend, the lack of actual evidence meant that the market fall was not widely acknowledged, taking time to filter through. Local agents were reluctant when we challenged their pricing and it became evident that no agent wanted to be the first to corroborate such a drop. For example, a well-known estate agent (who will remain nameless!) once refused to put a prime asset on the market at a certain price for fear of reducing the average price for similar properties in that locale. In essence, the agents were dictating the market by maintaining artificial levels that were not being achieved. This also made it difficult for valuers, who typically rely on comparable transactions in order to provide valuations. In a stagnant or falling market, characterised by fewer transactions, comparative evidence is hard to find, and a valuer can only rely on historic evidence that may no longer be relevant, as well as market sentiment and agents’ opinions.
This happened three years ago, since then, a decline in values close to 25% has been evidenced in some parts of London. This is only one example of the trends that we have seen and that we are continuing to see. Other red flags in the market include part built development schemes, shopping centres and strategic land; all asset types that appear to be facing significant challenges.
As Receivers, we use market intelligence and experience to advise our clients. Our advice is simple: know your borrower and the asset. It is a difficult and uncertain market, lacking in liquidity. As a lender you cannot sit back and rely on comfortable loan-to value ratios (LTVs) or historic valuation reports. If the borrower is not returning your calls, be proactive, otherwise your money may not be quite as safe as you thought!
Notes to editor
Annika Kisby is a partner and chartered surveyor working in the Receivership team.
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All Cities Are Not Created Unequal
That challenge is front and center in America’s big cities today. Obama’s speech followed a series of municipal elections in November 2013 in which inequality figured prominently as a campaign issue. Foremost among these was in New York City, where Bill de Blasio won a landslide election after campaigning to address what he called a “Tale of Two Cities.” Similar themes were sounded in the successful campaigns and first days in office of Marty Walsh in Boston, Ed Murray in Seattle, and Betsy Hodges in Minneapolis. The “Google Bus” in San Francisco’s Mission District has shone a spotlight on growing economic divisions within that city. And income inequality will no doubt be a central issue in mayoral elections during the next couple of years in cities like Chicago and Washington, D.C.
Inequality may be the result of global economic forces, but it matters in a local sense. A city where the rich are very rich, and the poor very poor, is likely to face many difficulties. It may struggle to maintain mixed-income school environments that produce better outcomes for low-income kids. It may have too narrow a tax base from which to sustainably raise the revenues necessary for essential city services. And it may fail to produce housing and neighborhoods accessible to middle-class workers and families, so that those who move up or down the income ladder ultimately have no choice but to move out.
There are many ways of looking at inequality statistically; one useful way to measure it across places is by using the “95/20 ratio.” This figure represents the income at which a household earns more than 95 percent of all other households, divided by the income at which a household earns more than only 20 percent of all other households. In other words, it represents the distance between a household that just cracks the top 5 percent by income, and one that just falls into the bottom 20 percent. Over the past 35 years, members of the former group have generally experienced rising incomes, while those in the latter group have seen their incomes stagnate.
CityInequality Graph
Nor are all unequal cities created equally. For example, compare San Francisco and Miami, which have similar 95/20 ratios. San Francisco’s ratio is high because its wealthy households have very high incomes, considerably higher than in any other major city ($353,000 at the 95th percentile). Miami’s ratio is high primarily because its poor households have very low incomes, third-lowest among the 50 largest cities ($10,000 at the 20th percentile). Miami has a lot of very poor residents and neighborhoods, but manages to retain several very wealthy enclaves. In San Francisco, skyrocketing housing costs may increasingly preclude low-income residents from living in the city altogether.
Compared to cities with high levels of inequality, cities with relatively low levels of income inequality are much more similar to one another. Most are Southern and Western cities with expansive borders, and either include many “suburban” neighborhoods alongside a traditional urban core, or are themselves overgrown suburbs like Mesa, Arizona and Arlington, Texas (what UNLV’s Rob Lang calls “boomburbs”). Upper-end incomes in these cities range from $150,000 to $200,000, while lower-end incomes mostly register between $19,000 and $24,000.
Growing debate about urban inequality suggests that the problem has gotten worse in recent years. But while inequality in cities is somewhat worse today than before the Great Recession, the trend is neither profound nor uniform. Overall, the 95/20 ratio across the 50 largest cities rose from 10.0 in 2007 to 10.8 in 2012. Not surprisingly, San Francisco experienced the largest increase in its ratio from 2007 to 2012. Income for its typical 20th-percentile household dropped $4,000 during that period, while income for its typical 95th-percentile household soared by $28,000. No other city saw nearly as large an increase in its rich households’ incomes.
Only 18 other cities among the top 50 registered statistically significant increases in their inequality ratios over those five years. Interestingly, most were not places where the rich made astronomical gains, but where low-income households suffered most from the recession and weak recovery. Many are Southern and Western cities—including Sacramento, Charlotte, Tucson, Fresno, and Albuquerque—where house-price collapses reduced work opportunities for poor households. Inequality was also up in places like Cleveland, Indianapolis, and Milwaukee, where poverty deepened as local manufacturing industries declined during the recession. In those cities, however, inequality has not become a leading political issue.
Inequality increased across cities despite the fact that rich households were less rich in 2012 than in 2007. In most cities (39 of 50), 95th-percentile incomes declined over the five-year period. But 20th-percentile incomes were also down, in most cities by larger proportions than incomes at the top. For instance, rich households in Jacksonville in 2012 earned nearly $19,000 (11 percent) less than five years prior. At the same time, incomes among the city’s poor households dropped nearly $8,000 (31 percent). In Jacksonville and many other cities, inequality rose not because the rich got richer while the poor got poorer—but because the rich became somewhat poorer while the poor got much poorer.
Seattle, where the inequality debate has fueled calls for a $15/hour minimum wage, turns out to have a relatively low inequality ratio (31st out of 50 cities). This fact is largely attributable to the relatively high incomes earned by its 20th-percentile households—$26,000, third-highest among the 50 cities. Like San Francisco, Seattle may have less poverty not only because people there earn more, but also because the region’s poor increasingly live in suburbia. For its part, the Emerald City experienced no measurable increase in inequality from 2007 to 2012, indicating that either its low-income households held their own during the recession, or that there were just fewer places for them to live in the city by 2012. If the latter is true, it seems as though residents of south King County may need a minimum wage boost at least as much as their central-city neighbors.
Large populations, diverse housing types, and generally progressive politics mean that most cities will always have higher shares of the rich and poor than smaller places. But the contemporary causes and consequences of inequality in cities vary greatly across the national map. Mayors who want to promote both economic diversity and economic mobility in their cities should take note.
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After making bee blocks at the beginning of the week I was on a log cabin rush and spontaneously decided to make some quilt as you go blocks.
I usually spend a bit of time picking fabrics and thinking about how they go together but I did something I've never done before... when I'm working on a project I put my scraps to the side and then sort them later (or when I can be bothered), well I just grabbed those scraps and turned them into this quilt as you go basket!
I've been needing a thread catcher next to my machine after the beautiful pottery bowl I was using fell off and smashed. Sad. This one can't get hurt though and I used this tutorial for the overall measurements to make it and it's the perfect size!
I used a scrap of binding I had left over from a quilt and it makes me smile seeing those pretty little flowers.
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or by representative, it congeals into the
sole form o£ value, the only adequate form of existence of
exchange-value, in opposition to use-value, represented by all
other eommodifies.
a,. Hoacding.
The continual movement in circuits of the two antithetical
metamorphoses of commodities, or the never ceasing alternation
of sale and purchase, is reflected in the restless currency of
money, or in the function that money performs of a perpetuum
mobile of circulation. Bat so soon as the series of metamor-
phoses is interrupted, so soon as sales are not supplemented by
subsequent purchases, money ceases to be mobilised ; it is trans-
formed, as Boisguillebert says, from "meuble" into "im-
meuble," from movable into immovable, from coin into
With the very earliest development of the circulation of
commodities, there is also developed the necessity, and the
passionate desire, to hold fast the product of the first metamor-
phosis. This product is the transformed shape of the com-
modity, or its gold-chrysalis. 1 Commodities are thus sold not
means of effeeting the circulation of commodities, this change
eommodity is thus prevented from functioning as its uneondi-
I "Une richesse en argent n'est que . . . richesse en product|ons, converties
en argent." (Mercier de la Rividre, L c.) "Une valeur en productions n'a
fair que changer de forme." (Id., p. 486.)
Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 147
tionally alienable form_ or as its merely transient money-form.
The money becomes petrified into a hoard, and the seller
becomes a hoarder of money.
In the early stages of the circulation o/commodities, it is
the surplus use-values alone that am converted into money.
Gold and silver thus become of themselves social expressions
for superfluity or wealth. This naive form of hoarding be-
comes perpetuated in those communities in which the tra-
ditional mode of production is carried on for the supply of a
fixed and limited circle of home wants. It is thus with the
people of Asia, and particularly of the East Indies. Vander- "
lint, who fancies that the prices of commodities in a country
are determined by the quantity of gold and silver to be found
in it, asks himself why Indian commodities are so cheap. An-
swer: Because the Hindoos bury their money. From 1602 to
1734, he remarks_ they buried 150 millions of pounds sterling
of silver, which originally came from America to Europe?
In the 10 years from 1856 to 1866, England exported to India
and China £120,000,000 in silver, which had been received in
exchange for Australian gold. Most of the silver exported to
China makes its way to India.
As the production of commodities further develops, every
producer of commodities is compelled to make sure of the
nexus return of the social pledge. _ His wants are constantly
making themselves felt, and necessitate the continual purchase
of other people's commodities, while the production and sale o_
his own goods require time, and depend upon circumstances.
In ord.er then to be able to buy without selling, he must have
sold previously without buying. This operation, conducted
on a general scale, appears to imply a contradiction. But the
precious metals at the sources of their production are directly
exchanged for other commodities. And here we have sales
(by the owners of commodities) without purchases (by the
owners of gold or silver.) a And subsequent sales, by other
t ,, 'Tis by this practice they keep all their goods and manufactures at such low
rates." (Vanderlint, L c., p. 96.)
\u2022 Money . . . Is a pledge." (John Bellcrs: "Essays about the Poor, Manufac.
turers, Trade, Plantations, and Immorality," Lond., 1699, p. 15.)
\u2022 A purchase, in a "categorical " sense, implies that gold and iilver are alr_y
the converted form of commodities, or the product of a tale.
148 Capitalist Production.
producers, unfollowed by purchases, merely bring about the
distribution of the newly produced precious metals among all
the owners of commodities. In this way, all along the line of
exchange, hoards of gold and silver of varied extent are a_
cumulated. With the possibility of holding and storing up
exchange value in the shape of a particular commodity, arises
also the greed for gold. Along with the extension of circula-
tion, increases the power of money, that absolutely social form
of wealth ever ready for use. "(]old is a wonderful thing l
Whoever possesses it is lord of all he want& By means o_
\u2022 gold one can even get souls into :Paradise." (Columbus in his
letter from Jamaica, 1503.) Since gold does not disclose what
has been transformed into it, everything, commodity or not,
is convertible into gold. :Everything becomes saleable and
buyable. The circulation becomes the great social retort into
crystal. :Not even are the bones of saints, and still less are
more delicate res sacrosanctm extra commercium hominum
able to withstand this alchemy? Just as every qualitative
difference between commodities is extinguished in money, so
money, on its side, llke the radical leveller that it is, does
away with all distinctions. _ But money itself is a commodity,
a Henry III., most Christian king of France, robbed cloisters of their relics, and
turned them into money. It is well known what part the deapoiling of the
Delphic Temple, by the Phocians, played in the history of Greece. Temples with
the ancients served as the dwellings of the gods of commodities. They were
" sacred hanks." With the Phoenicians, a trading people par excellence, money was
virgins, who, at the feast of the Goddess of Love, gave themselves up to strangers,
should offer to the goddess the piece of money they received.
t "Gold, yellow, glittering, precious goldl
Wrong right; base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant.
. . . What this, you gods? Why, this
Will lug your priests and servants from your sidtm;
Pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads;
This yellow slave
Will knit and break rellgionl; bless the accurs'd;
Make the hoar leprosy ador'd; place thieves,
Aud give them title, knee and approbation,
With senators on the bench; this is it,
That makes the wappen'd widow wed again:
..... Come damned earth,
Thou common whore of manklnd. °'
(Shakespeare: Timon of Athen|.)
_Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. 149
an external object, capable of becoming the private property
of any individual. Thus social power becomes the private
power of private persons. The ancients therefore denounced
money as subversive of the economical and moral order of
things? Modem society, which soon after its birth, pulled
Plutus by the hair of his head from the bowels of the earth, 2
greets gold as its Holy Grail, as the glittering incarnation of
the very principle of its own life.
A commodity, in its capacity of a use-value, satisfies a
particular want, and is a particular element of material wealth.
:But the value of a commodity measures the degree of its
attraction for all other elements of material wealth, and there-
fore measures the social wealth of its owner. To a barbarian
owner of commodities_ and even to a West-European peasant,
value is the same as value-form, and therefore, to him the
increase in his hoard of gold and silver is an increase in value.
It is true that the value of money varies, at one time in con-
sequence of a variation in its own value, at another, in
consequence of a change in the value of commodities. But
this, on the one hand, does not prevent 200 ounces of gold from
still containing more value than 100 ounces, nor, on | <urn:uuid:b64459a8-98b4-4d10-be1b-5a74e04bec7b> | https://www.passeidireto.com/arquivo/20222968/03-a-marx-capital-vol-i/43 | en | 0.920606 | 0.019343 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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PPP Design
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PPP Design
Little Things Matter
Please, Thank You, and You’re Welcome, are all phrases that seem reminiscent of a more formal, albeit friendlier past. Often in today’s business world, it seems these things aren't often said, or when said, seem forced or ordered. This is a long time pet peeve of mine and I find myself saying things such as Your Welcome, dripping with sarcasm when an obvious Thank You has been overlooked.
Some Fast Food Restaurants seem to be a haven for people who have decided that a lack of manners is not only acceptable but appropriate. Two cheeseburgers and two medium fries? Here, ya go. And I wait......You're Welcome, drips sarcastically from my tongue as I drive away thinking that this couldn't have been part of the training. I imagine someone explaining to a new trainee, these people are just buying fast food, whatever you do don't say thank you, they will expect it every time. Although it seems I am picking on the fast food industry, this trend is becoming more and more prevalent.
It seems many businesses have forgotten or neglected to teach or train employees to use proper manners when dealing with customers. It is not unusual to make a purchase, and as the product is being handed to us the person behind the counter doesn’t smile or even make eye contact. They simply push the bag toward you. No, Thank You. No, Have a nice day. Nothing. Were they trained at all?
Manners used to mean something if we didn't use them we were scolded for our lack of them and even punished if we forgot them altogether. What's the magic word was the friendly reminder that we were forgetting something as children, and we weren't going to get what we wanted unless we remembered. Even interrupting an adult brought about a stern reminder to "Mind Your Manners".
I was reminded of this during a recent trip to a local fast food restaurant. The young Lady that helped us was very polite and I thought there may be hope for us all. And to the parents (or perhaps the boss) of this young woman, I applaud you, because little things do matter.
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Meet Our Team
Mrs. Delorane had died of decline: people would say to one another, in confidence, they hoped Ellin might escape it. The largest and 微信两个手机 in the neighbourhood of Timberdale, larger than even that of the Ashtons, was called the Dower Farm.
Out-of-doors he was the keen, active, thorough farmer; indoors he lived as a gentleman. He had four children: three boys and one girl. Nothing must prevent her journey upon the desert!
Ray Singer, Manager at "Studio Francesca"
From her window she looked out toward it, so wonderful, so superb, so exquisite, weird and beautiful. Exactly, she told herself, like a big, black smudge.
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Are you the owner or representative of Los Jaliscos Taqueria? If so please call 1-877-292-7467 now and claim your listing. Simply quote ID number 11094157 when you phone to ensure speedy service.
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As part of my interest in walking the hills of Northern England and Scotland i have visited a large number of mining sites and quarries. The mines and quarries all have a variety of buildings. Each site will have buildings that are common to most mines of the same type, for example mine shops and bousteads for lead mines and dressing sheds for slate quarries.
The lead mines of the north Pennines usually had a series of buildings and structures associated with them.
This was a means of exposing mineral veins by using a flow of water down a hillside to remove the overlying soil etc. Then as work progressed to remove the ore from the vein the flow of water was used to remove the waasterock from the working area. The water was usually collected at the top of the hush in a earth dam to form a small reservoir. The dam would be breached to allow a flow of water or in larger concerns a sluice gate was constructed to control the water flow.
Most of the driven adits had a building near the etnrance. These were either 0ne or two storey. The ground floor was usually a smithy for the sharpening of drills for use in the mine and also possibly a shelter for a person to act as a counter of tubs drawn out. In two storey buiuldings the upper floor was usually uswed for miners who lived to far from the mine to travel each day to sleep in during the week.
These are usually stone walled bays, single or multiple, into which ore produced in the mine was tipped. Each tream of miners would possibly have their own bay.
Most of the lead mines in both the north Pennine and Lake District were not close to the major coal fields and the cost of transporting coal to the sites before the development of the railways was to expensive and so steam engines do not usually appear associated with lead mines inb these areas. However as anbyone who frequents the area there is a tendency for a lot of rain. this water was collected and used to turn waterwheels which provided power for pumping and haulage usually up shafts. These wheels were originally mounted on wooden frames. The later ones were mounted in stone built pits.
Originally miners kept their black powder at home but after a number of disasters the government introduced a law requiring explosives to be stored in specifically designed buildings.
The minerals in vein can be accessed by either a level driven into the hill side or by shafts sunk down from the surface to vein. These shafts can be used for access, hauling ore up ore, pumping water and ventilation. In some areas the shaft was used to produce a head of water to produce compressed air to use for ventilation and later for compressed to power air drills.
The ore as it was extracted from the mine was still mixed with other minerals and also the native rock. These impurities had to be removed before the ore was sent to the smelt mill. This invloved breaking the lumps of rock up to seperate the ore from the impurities. Once crushed to a suitable size then large pieces of ore and rock xcould be seperated by eye and hand. the smnaller pieces can be seperated using the differences in specific gravity between lead ore (galena) and the usual contaminates. The galena has a much higher specific gravity (denser) and so is less easily moved by water than similar sized piece of waste. Therefore flowing water can be used to seperate the ore. This was usually done in a houching tub or in buddles.
Originally a lot of these processes were originally done by hand but they were eventually mechanised and power was usually supplied by waterwheels, which in later times were mounted in stone built wheel pits.
The lead ore (Galena) needs to be heated to break down the ore and release the lead. This was carried out in the smelt mill. These were either built near to the mine i.e. Nenthead or on the edgeof the mining area for example Langley.
The site was usually water powered and so there is usually a waterwheel pit associated. The smelting was carried out in a hearth with a flue above which was connected to a flue and chimney.
The site would have a bingstead to store the ore in after it arrives from the mine and before smelting.
As the process was improved and mills get bigger then flues were improved, and secondary buildings were added. | <urn:uuid:bf0d8f9e-c9fd-4ea6-8059-2fe46f5d1d0d> | http://www.solwaypast.co.uk/index.php/mioe-buildings-and-other-structures | en | 0.979591 | 0.366107 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Posted on
IPOs are a racket. But try finding something better
MARGARET THATCHER, a grocer’s daughter from Grantham, knew a thing or two about selling. The privatisation of British Gas (BG) in 1986, on the back of an advertising slogan, “If you see Sid, tell him”, raised £9bn ($13bn), which at the time was the biggest-ever initial public offering (IPO). It wasn’t just Sid who lit it up. The Thatcher government hired Goldman Sachs to hawk BG to American investors. As privatisations spread, investment banks such as Goldman used a new technique called book-building to ramp up enthusiasm. Rather than only tapping retail investors, they allocated blocks of shares to money managers such as Fidelity Investments, increasing the pool of capital available. Since then, the American IPO model has conquered the world.
It has done so despite a sometimes tawdry reputation. The nadir in America was the dotcom boom in 1999-2000, when deliberately underpriced IPOs rocketed on their first day of trading, bankers doled out “hot” IPOs to executives in exchange for underwriting business, and new shares were “spun” and “flipped” for profit. This year the IPO process is under fire again. WeWork, an office-rental firm, cancelled a listing that bankers once valued as high as $104bn. Now SoftBank, its main backer, will throw it a $9.5bn lifeline that values the firm’s equity at a puny $8bn. Shares of Uber and Lyft, two ride-hailing companies, have slumped since their IPOs, a sure sign of overpricing. Meanwhile Beyond Meat, a trendy vegan foodmaker, soared by 163% on day one, suggesting the reverse.
In Silicon Valley venture capitalists are livid—even though they are as much to blame for mispricing the unicorns as Wall Street. But investment banks like Goldman and Morgan Stanley are contrite and asking themselves whether the traditional IPO, however lucrative for them, remains the best means to bring tech firms to market. This is healthy. Scrutiny of IPOs is long overdue. To critics, they are a classic case of cronyism. Even fans, such as Ann Sherman of DePaul University in Chicago, call them “legalised bribery”. The challenge, though, is to find anything better.
Most of today’s IPOs start with a roadshow in which executives of the firm going public and underwriters hit the road—or take private jets—in order to catch the attention of investors and elicit orders from them. The process is part of building the book. For the underwriter, the trick is to find an IPO price that satisfies the company but also stimulates buying—providing a “pop” on the first day of trading. The trouble with the “pop”, though, is that it represents money left on the table that should by rights belong to the company’s sellers, not its buyers.
Jay Ritter of the University of Florida says that during the past decade the underpricing of IPOs in America left a whopping $39bn on that table, or about 14% of the total sum raised. In theory, bankers have an incentive to minimise that amount because they earn fees amounting to as much as 7% of the value of the IPO. In practice, though, they often underprice the listing to favour big investor clients. Money managers pay higher trading commissions, or “soft dollars”, he says, in exchange for access to the hottest listings.
That makes IPOs look like a racket. But the rub is that until now companies have mostly turned a blind eye. One reason, acknowledges Mr Ritter, is psychological. The sellers usually pocket such a windfall from an IPO that they do not fret about how much more they could have made if it were priced optimally. But there is a bigger reason. Except for the best-known firms, the alternatives are seen as too much of a gamble.
Other than book-building IPOs, firms have two more ways of going public. Auctioning shares to the highest bidders, as Google did in 2004, or selling shares directly without underwriters and without raising capital, a route taken recently by Spotify, a music-streaming service, and Slack, an office-communications firm.
Notwithstanding Google’s success, auctions are unpopular. Ms Sherman and two fellow academics, Ravi Jagannathan and Andrei Jirnyi, have studied IPO auctions in at least 25 countries, including Singapore, Taiwan, Turkey and France, and found that they were abandoned in virtually all of them. In Japan they were mandatory in 1989-97. They vanished soon after issuers became free to choose.
Direct listings are now creating a buzz in Silicon Valley. Some big firms favour them because they already have lots of cash on their balance-sheets and have no need to raise more through an IPO. Furthermore, direct listings do not require an underwriter, so are cheaper, and allow the sale of piles of shares quickly. Investors are attracted by higher levels of liquidity than in an IPO. Banks are less keen. The fee pool is lower. Only Goldman and Morgan Stanley have shown much interest. Shares of Spotify and Slack have performed poorly since listing, which has been discouraging. Airbnb, a lettings agency, is considering a direct listing next year. The approach has yet to prove its worth.
The chief merit of book-building is that, as Ms Sherman puts it, it allows issuers in effect to buy attention from the market, hence the “legalised bribery”. Money managers know that if they appear at the roadshow and give reliable feedback, they will win for themselves a share of the IPO.
Tell Cicero, too
But it has never been easy to value companies. According to “Devil Take the Hindmost” by Edward Chancellor, as far back as Cicero’s time, buying new shares, or partes, in ventures fulfilling government contracts was seen as a gamble that risk-averse ancient Romans avoided. Richard Sylla of New York University’s Stern School of Business notes that America’s first public offering in 1781, of the Bank of North America, flopped. A decade later, that of the Bank of the United States surged like a “hot” stock. The values of both were determined by the backdrop of the time: the revolutionary war and its buoyant aftermath. However much anyone re-engineers the process, valuing companies will always be a shot in the dark.
Source: Business | <urn:uuid:57999cec-2b92-415d-8271-e720494e70ca> | https://1businessworld.com/2019/10/business/ipos-are-a-racket-but-try-finding-something-better/ | en | 0.966937 | 0.048735 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
I am an independent math researcher and I think I have discovered an interesting result in a particular field (in math). I would like to present my result in front of a committee of PhD admission.
My question: Is there a possibility that i can prove my research skills and the result in such a way that some committee will decide to integrate me into its doctoral (or graduate ) program ?
N.B. Do I need to publish the result (Do you think that all maths journals and referees can be absolutely trusted?) in order that it will appear credible, or at least to capture the attention of the members or any one who can recommend me to a PhD or graduate school?
• 7
Putting your work first at arXiv may be another way. – Megadeth Sep 27 '15 at 0:03
• 4
Unless you have done a bachelors degree(or similar) in mathematics, it's likely the interesting result is not interesting. That being said, having an interesting result is definitely not all it takes to join a PHD program. They want a wide range of skills in your skill set, and often you have to take examinations. – Display Name Sep 27 '15 at 22:48
• 1
Since arXiv has been mentioned both in the comments and in both answers, just a note: You will need to get endorsed to put the paper on arXiv. To do this, find someone who is an endorser on arXiv (each paper has a "which authors are endorsers" link that you can use (make sure to find an author of a relevant paper), and ask this person for an endorsement (they will obviously need to see the paper). – Tobias Kildetoft Sep 28 '15 at 9:10
There are some problematical implicit assumptions in the question. First, PhD admission committees do not conduct interviews of the sort you imagine. They might look at a manuscript accompanying an application, but there's much more substance to an application for graduate-program admission than showing one item. (For that matter, professional mathematicians' perception of your work may be different than your own, so it might be unwise to put so much stock in the anticipated saving grace of your research work.)
You'll want letters of recommendation attesting to your future potential, based on your current and past performance, whether in literal math classes or in informal situations. If you've done a nice piece of work, this would contribute a bit, but it's by no means enough on its own.
Although it's of dubious serious value, the GRE Math Subject Test is something you'd want to sign up for and take it the Autumn before applying to grad schools (which needs to be done by early December for entrance the following Fall).
Publication is nice, but is an enterprise in itself, and not strictly necessary. For one thing, conventional peer-reviewed publication takes about a year or more in the best of times, so it wouldn't help you in the immediate future.
As in @PerAlexandersson's answer, you'd definitely want to type up your work in LaTeX or TeX, and make it conform to the general style of papers you can see, for example, on http://arxiv.org/archive/math There is nothing truly sacred about the formatting and such, but for someone trying to enter, it is often best to be generally conforming in superficial regards, to avoid too loudly announcing that you're an outsider.
Not all "publishers" are serious or honest, no. One way to form a list of plausible submission venues is to look at papers on arXiv, submitted by people with .edu emails, and see what journals their bibliographic entries have appeared in. Some of these will be very-high-status, so possibly inappropriate, but if you sift through you will have a good inclusive list of the most legitimate journals. Still, no compulsion to try to publish in this sense before applying to grad school. If anything, it'd be more important to simply have your result typed up in LaTeX and to create a fairly conformist appearance (for example, matching the arXiv papers). You can even get TeX templates from those papers, to see how the effects are achieved, since the TeX source is available at arXiv.
The traditional journals' editors and referees can generally be trusted, because they have much to lose by bad behavior. Still, there are no guarantees, so pre-publication [sic] on arXiv would establish your priority.
But, in any case, there are more parts to grad school application than just one or two or... pieces of work. Most math depts' graduate programs have web pages that elaborate on what documentation is required.
| improve this answer | |
Do you have experience in writing down math, for example, have you typeset your results in LaTeX?
It is probably quite hard to get a position by just "showing up", but independent research is definitely in your favour when applying for a phd position.
You can and should trust mathematics journals, if they are good ones (it takes some experience to learn which ones are good). If they ask for payment to be published - run away!
You should also put your preprint on arxiv, so that people can get access to your results early, and this also looks good when contacting a professor. Make sure it fulfils the guidelines.
A word of advise: A lot of independent researchers have a tendency to just focus on their own research, and not read other mathematicians papers. You really need to get familiar with the field you are studying, and make sure to reference all relevant articles. A paper with no references gives a bad impression, and it looks like you have not done your homework.
| improve this answer | |
Your Answer
| <urn:uuid:f384c675-7255-4478-8eb3-ae723656af4b> | https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/55040/i-think-i-have-discovered-an-interesting-result-as-an-independent-researcher-in | en | 0.957886 | 0.112864 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Bidirectional Ecosystem–Atmosphere Fluxes of Volatile Organic Compounds Across the Mass Spectrum: How Many Matter?
Published on 2018-06-14T00:00:00Z (GMT) by
Terrestrial ecosystems are simultaneously the largest source and a major sink of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) to the global atmosphere, and these two-way fluxes are an important source of uncertainty in current models. Here, we apply high-resolution mass spectrometry (proton transfer reaction-quadrupole interface time-of-flight; PTR-QiTOF) to measure ecosystem–atmosphere VOC fluxes across the entire detected mass range (<i>m</i>/<i>z</i> 0–335) over a mixed temperate forest and use the results to test how well a state-of-science chemical transport model (GEOS-Chem CTM) is able to represent the observed reactive carbon exchange. We show that ambient humidity fluctuations can give rise to spurious VOC fluxes with PTR-based techniques and present a method to screen for such effects. After doing so, 377 of the 636 detected ions exhibited detectable gross fluxes during the study, implying a large number of species with active ecosystem–atmosphere exchange. We introduce the reactivity flux as a measure of how Earth–atmosphere fluxes influence ambient OH reactivity and show that the upward total VOC (∑VOC) carbon and reactivity fluxes are carried by a far smaller number of species than the downward fluxes. The model underpredicts the ∑VOC carbon and reactivity fluxes by 40–60% on average. However, the observed net fluxes are dominated (90% on a carbon basis, 95% on a reactivity basis) by known VOCs explicitly included in the CTM. As a result, the largest CTM uncertainties in simulating VOC carbon and reactivity exchange for this environment are associated with known rather than unrepresented species. This conclusion pertains to the set of species detectable by PTR-TOF techniques, which likely represents the majority in terms of carbon mass and OH reactivity, but not necessarily in terms of aerosol formation potential. In the case of oxygenated VOCs, the model severely underpredicts the gross fluxes and the net exchange. Here, unrepresented VOCs play a larger role, accounting for ∼30% of the carbon flux and ∼50% of the reactivity flux. The resulting CTM biases, however, are still smaller than those that arise from uncertainties for known and represented compounds.
Cite this collection
Millet, Dylan B.; Alwe, Hariprasad D.; Chen, Xin; Deventer, Malte Julian; Griffis, Timothy J.; Holzinger, Rupert; et al. (2018): Bidirectional Ecosystem–Atmosphere Fluxes of
Volatile Organic Compounds Across the Mass Spectrum: How Many Matter?. ACS Publications. Collection. | <urn:uuid:8ea62909-4877-4ba0-963b-80c33c844b6f> | https://acs.figshare.com/collections/Bidirectional_Ecosystem_Atmosphere_Fluxes_of_Volatile_Organic_Compounds_Across_the_Mass_Spectrum_How_Many_Matter_/4152299 | en | 0.888768 | 0.216088 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
What is the main benefit of completing a higher degree by research?
Besides allowing you to push the frontiers of your field through new and exciting research, HDR degrees like the PhD are globally recognised qualifications that can open many doors for you in fields other than academia.
The research training and skills you obtain through a PhD are highly valued in Australia and internationally by employers in the private sector, government, not-for-profit and academic fields.
Was this answer helpful?
Answer ID: 3351 | <urn:uuid:fb2732e4-8e04-4c94-a990-2d85d1533f14> | https://ask.secure.griffith.edu.au/app/answers/detail/a_id/3351/~/what-is-the-main-benefit-of-completing-a-higher-degree-by-research%3F | en | 0.951586 | 0.812469 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
How to manage a project’s base image
Divio provides a number of Docker base images for projects. These base images provide an underlying Linux operating system layer, and other layers in the stack, upon which you can build your custom application.
For example, our Python base images will include a particular version of Python, and any system-level components required to run it.
New base images will be released with updates (for example, for newer Python releases) and other improvements or changes. Generally, it’s recommended to use the newest version of the base image in a particular Release Channel.
A project’s Release Channel is indicated in its Dashboard, in Settings > Base Project. Note however that because the base image can also be specified in the repository via the Dockerfile, the manual setting will override what’s indicated in the Dashboard.
This document is concerned with using the Dockerfile to manage the base image.
Choose a base image
You don’t need to use a Divio-provided base image. However, it’s recommended.
Our base images are listed on Docker Hub.
Your base image should include the runtime environment(s) you need for your application, such as an appropriate version of Python.
Specify the base image in the Dockerfile
For example, to use our 0.4-py3.7-slim-stretch base image:
FROM divio/base:0.4-py3.7-slim-stretch
See our Dockerfile reference guide for more information on the # <DOCKER_FROM> section.
Test the build locally with docker-compose build before pushing the change to the cloud.
Different base images may provide different packages and libraries. Our newer images tend to be slimmer, in order to make builds faster and to use fewer resources, but may lack some software that your application previously relied on.
For example, you may encounter a build error after adopting one of these images, such as:
ENOGIT git is not installed or not in the PATH
In other words, Git was available in the old image but not the new one, and is required to build the project. In such a case, the missing libraries should be installed into the image manually. | <urn:uuid:e0548a19-d965-4994-8340-a646f0159891> | https://docs.divio.com/en/latest/how-to/manage-base-image/ | en | 0.873816 | 0.021554 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
How do we know about the world we live in
8.60 · 1,496 ratings · 867 reviews
how do we know about the world we live in
This World We Live In (Last Survivors, #3) by Susan Beth Pfeffer
File Name: how do we know about the world we live
Size: 72260 Kb
Published 09.12.2018
Dark Art - This World We Live In
Welcome To The World We Live In Today
With a blink of an eye, our world is constantly changing, for the good, but also for the worst. Kids are being raised without morals and are not being taught the importance of good manners. How are kids supposed to make morally correct decisions while they witness the horrific events that are occurring within our society and world today? Kids are now growing up believing that it is okay to not have good manners simply because they are not being taught them nor witnessing them. Instead of loving one another for who we all are, we are now hating on one another. Why can we not all express ourselves without being criticized for it? It has become out of the norm to complement each other.
To demonstrate the kinds of themes it is looking at, the firm provided the following 15 crazy facts:. Via FT Alphaville. Get the latest Bank of America stock price here. World globe An icon of the world globe, indicating different international options. Search icon A magnifying glass.
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The song is the fifth single from their second album, Alcazarized. It was released in the summer of and became a hit, peaking at number three in Sweden, number one in Hungary, and reaching the top 20 in Flemish Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Norway and the United Kingdom. The song contains an interpolation of Diana Ross 's Motown classic " Upside Down ", and the chorus is adapted from the Genesis song " Land of Confusion ". It contains mixes from Soundfactory and Almighty. Australian CD single [1]. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved 20 May
When we look in the mirror, we realize how time is inexorably running out, and our lives are being consumed. If we were to look at our city from a 10 th floor building, we would see thousands of lives like ours, moving to and from, like ants or robots, mixing and shaping what we call a society. Throughout time, generations of people like us have been born and have died. It is unavoidable to question a few times in our fleeting life if what mankind has done is worthy of being called an evolution or an accomplishment. Our race has evolved from a primitive organization, through the discovery of what mother nature has given us on this little planet, to a more organized form of living and interacting together, which we can call a society.
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Abigail Bellweather is one of the main characters in Motherland: Fort Salem. She is portrayed by Ashley Nicole Williams.
Brash, unquestionably alpha, driven, courageous, deeply attractive and a bit of a man-eater Abigail is a witch and the daughter of the formidable, decorated General Petra Bellweather. Abigail shares a comfortable and loving bond with her mother, and is excited to be joining the ranks of the witches' army, like many generations of Bellweathers before her, though she's not unaffected by the pressure to live up to her name. Abigail takes her training very seriously and butts heads with the far less-motivated Raelle.
History Edit
Abigail is from New York and summered every year in Annapolis, Maryland. Her family has a long history in the United States army leading back to her ancestor, a former slave, that fought under General Alder.
The Bellweather name is very well known in the army, as all of Abigail's aunts, grandmothers, and mother have served before her. It was her fate and duty to eventually serve in the U.S. military. She was well-known in the High Atlantic witch circle and knew many of the cadets who are also from elite families with whom she is training at Fort Salem prior to enlisting, such as Libba Swythe and Gerit Buttonwood.
Throughout the Series Edit
Season 1Edit
Abigail watches a parade from a building with her boyfriend - Paul. Paul insists on continuing their relationship, but she compels him to move on. Later, her mother - Petra tells Abigail that she owes it to her slave ancestor to succeed. Abigail excitedly takes the oath to join the military, with her mother's support. She becomes a Private, First Class cadet at Fort Salem and was placed in a unit with Raelle Collar and Tally Craven. Abigail is confident, driven, and wants to be number one at the academy. At first, she is reluctant to be in a unit with Raelle because Raelle doesn't seem motivated enough and her poor performance affects the unit's performance and generally reflects poorly on her. When she attempted to be reassigned to another unit, General Alder refuses and instead tells her to buck up and to work with her unit sisters until they are all on the same page. They do well in a harmonics exercise and the two agree to do well, but not be friends.
Abigail and Raelle continue to butt heads. Abigail meets her rival - Libba Swythe during training and they exchange insults. Anacostia Quartermaine forces Abigail to perform the discord seed as punishment for Raelle's tiredness. At lunch, Raelle tries to heal her, but Abgail rejects it. The unit argue about Tally's mother while performing unified windstrikes. They use their frustration to blast through solid metal. Anacostia congratulates them and tells them their going to Salem Town. During the pageant, Abigail leaves to get food and Raelle follows her. They agree to stay away from each other's problems. The duo get along for a while until Scylla Ramshorn shows up and Raelle leaves. A panic about a Spree balloon ensues. Abigail, Tally, and Glory try to calm the people down, but Tally windstrikes a man who blames all witches for the Spree attacks. When Anacostia hears about it, Abigail covers for her. Later, in the unit's room, the girls have alcohol and Abigail gets along with Raelle and Libba.
Abigail is confident as ever when the male witches come to Fort Salem for Beltane. A young cadet named Clive introduces himself at the picnic and they start to flirt. She asks to meet his friend, Augustin Alcala, as well. Later on, Clive and Abigail make out and possibly have sex while Augustin watches.
Petra is intent on Abigail having a successful career and getting into War College. She demands that she do better and that she invite her unit to her cousin's wedding, which she reluctantly agrees to do. During training with their scourge whips, Libba distracts Abigail and she gets hit by a moving dummy. Libba asks if Abigail is even trying ti get in War College. During Beltane, Abigail has sex with both Clive and Augustin. When Clive and Augustin go back to their academy, Abigail doesn't even go to say goodbye because she got what she needed from them and training is her only mission.
At the wedding, Abigail tries to connect with the generals and the Dean of War College, until, just as her cousin Charvel warned her, she ultimately realized that her skills and credentials mean nothing because of her last name; regardless of how she performs in basic, she will get into War College as a result of her family's pristine war reputation. This realization hurt Abigail, as she wants to succeed on her own merits and get out of her mother's shadow by making a name for herself through her own achievements.
At the wedding, Abigail discovers her beloved cousin slain by The Spree. She gets ambushed by two Spree assassins and immediately tries to fend them off when she is unable to vocalize. Her mother comes to save her, but Abigail still walks away with a minor stab wound.
Abigail is traumatized after the wedding, feeling a mix of shock, remorse, and guilt about her cousin's death. As this was Abigail's first true experience with war, she realizes that it is much more complicated and traumatic than she expected and she eventually starts to lose her enthusiastic "grind her country's enemies into dust" mindset, though she keeps up her facade around others so as to not appear weak to her peers and superiors. She pushes everyone away, including her unit sisters, and claims to be fine. Her mother assigns her a bodyguard, Bridey, because it appears that the Bellweather matriline has been specifically targeted and she wants Abigail to stay protected. Abigail refuses the help at first but then starts to relate to and learn from Bridey, a decorated veteran in her own right.
After some days, Abigail bonds with Adil, a mysterious boy from the Tarim who just arrived in Fort Salem along with his sick sister, Khalida. Though the two keep having different opinions about the actions of the Army in the world, their friendship seems to turn into something more and the two share a kiss. When Adil asks for help with his sister, whose sickness was too severe for even Fort Salem's best Fixers to treat, Abigail goes to Raelle and begs for her help, admitting that she was a powerful witch who could do things that none of the rest of the cadets could do. Raelle agreed and used her powers to heal the child, but when Raelle became confused, since she didn't take on any aspect of Khalida's sickness as she normally does when she heals someone, Abigail assumes that it just means that she was just getting stronger and more powerful and compliments her on her work before reminding her of all they could accomplish if they applied themselves to their training.
The next morning, the cadets undergo the final exercise of their training, the Citydrop, where they are warned that this was their final assignment before graduation, and failure would result in the cadets losing their chance to go to War College and instead being deployed early. Unfortunately, as soon as they arrived at their location, Raelle learned that Tally had told Anacostia that Scylla was in the Spree, which Abigail then found out as well. This makes the entire unit preoccupied, with Abigail upset that Tally knew Scylla was involved with her cousin Charvel's murder and furious that Raelle would bring her to the wedding, but Raelle is insistent that Scylla is innocent. but just after its beginning, first Raelle and then Abigail find out that Tally knew that Scylla is Spree.
Divided and preoccupied, the squad, who were meant to be identifying and disarming mines on their assigned street, accidentally triggered a bomb in a car that causes them all to suffer a minor case of the plague. When one of the officers suggests they go home for treatment, Abigail immediately refused, unwilling to fail basic and become "war meat" in early deployment.
During the night, still in denial, Raelle leaves by her own to find Anacostia and get answers about what happened to Scylla. Abigail and Tally, concerned, leave to go search for her and are attacked by two officers masquerading as Spree terrorists; though both women manage to defeat their opponents, Abigail, who was triggered by the attack and reminded of her first fight with the Spree, savagely beats her opponent even after she was incapacitated, forcing Tally to restrain her. Though the Bellweather Unit was commended for passing the test, Abigail was given a warning about stopping the fight when the enemy was defeated instead of getting out of control. This leaves Abigail even more intent to prove herself, not willing to lose her chance to go to War College.
The next day, Abigail is still coping with her pain and anger, but manages to put them aside for training and, during the exercise, is even able to reach some kind of respect with her rival, Libba Swythe. Before the end of Citydrop, the cadets are called for a true combat situation due to the fact that none of the other military teams were close enough to stop the Spree, who were transporting their entire arsenal of weapons by truck and headed toward Boston. Abigail and the other cadets successfully defeat the Spree by first using a unified windstrike to stop and disable the first truck, and then using a unified windshear to absolutely destroy the second truck, which contained armed mines. However, many of the cadets were injured during the second strike against them, including Abigail, who sustained a head injury, and Libba, who was ultimately killed when a piece of shrapnel ripped her heart. Devastated, Abigail begged Libba to wake up, forcing Anacostia to pull her back and comfort her as she dissolved into tears.
Still dealing with the pain of losing her fellow cadet in their first real mission, Abigail suffers another blow when Tally reveals her that in the trucks they destroyed under Alder's orders had civilians who were kept by the Spree as hostages, something that Alder had been informed of before giving the order. At first, she refuses to believe that Alder would knowingly allow the loss of civilian life, but then Tally, with Raelle's support, is able to convince her, leaving her even more sad and disappointed. Although she's somewhat comforted by Adil, who held her in her bed as she cried, Abigail's and all other cadets' trust in Alder is further tested when they gathered in the mess hall to watch General Alder's address to the nation regarding the attack. The entire group, still shell-shocked from the mission, were stunned to see their leader lie about certain aspects of the attack, including claiming that it was the Spree who killed the civilians, neglecting to mention that the soldiers who fought in the mission were only cadets who had yet to finish basic training, and distorting the circumstances of Libba's death, all to make the army look better.
Abigail, Raelle, and Tally complete basic training and attend their graduation. They are elated and go to wait for their assignments. Expecting War College, they are all shocked and disappointed to see that they were assigned into combat to be deployed immediately. General Alder personally blocked their War College acceptance because she wanted them to accompany her on a rescue mission for the Tarim.
Petra pulls some strings to get Abigail, but only Abigail and not the rest of her unit, into War College. She tells her she's free from deployment and that this is how things have to be done. Abigail hesitates, considering the offer, but against her mother's wishes she joins her unit in deployment.
The unit flies off to go save the Tarim, along with the help of Adil. They find the remaining Tarim hidden in a cave. A little boy is suffering from the same disease that Khalida suffered from. His body is covered in winding black veins. Raelle is able to heal him.
The group leaves the cave only to realize that they are surrounded by the Camarilla. The Camarilla burn the pilots alive and conjure a dust storm around the witches. The group engage the Camarilla in battle. Abigail briefly fights a member and slits his throat. The group runs to the helicopter to escape but the little boy runs out, afraid of the helicopter. Raelle goes to comfort him and to help him back into the helicopter. One of the Camarilla comes up behind her and stabs her. Abigail runs out to try to save Raelle and links herself to her, but unfortunately this is both of their demise as they are stuck on the ground slowly dying. Alder has to make the decision to leave them to save the others, so Raelle and Abigail are left for dead.
After the helicopter leaves, in what seems like a miracle, Abigail and Raelle get up and are able to walk, seemingly okay. They walk surrounded by light and floating black beads. They both appear confused and walk hand in hand.
Relationships Edit
• Paul - former fling in New York. She breaks up with him when she goes to Fort Salem.
• Clive - conquest at Fort Salem when the male witches come for Beltane.
• Agustin - conquest at Fort Salem when the male witches come for Beltane.
• Adil - they kissed in Mother Mycelium and cuddled in Citydrop.
Physical Appearance Edit
Abigail is tall and athletic with light brown skin, dark brown, shoulder-length hair, and big brown eyes. She is very beautiful and carries herself with a lot of confidence. Her hair is often seen pulled away from her face with two French-braided half-pigtails, and she is typically seen in her training clothes, formal military uniform, or combat uniform. She is the tallest of the girls in the Bellweather Unit and has a curvier body type. Her witch's mark is on her rib cage, and because she is not a virgin, it has a metallic sheen to it.
Powers and Abilities Edit
Powers Edit
Witch Physiology: As a witch, Abigail is capable of creating change in the physical world by generating different seed sounds with her voice. As a Bellweather, she has strong powers gifted by her bloodline. Along with Raelle and Tally, she is one of the most powerful cadets in Fort Salem.
• Detection: Abigail was shown using certain seed sounds to identify any hidden mines during Citydrop.
• Persuasion: She can manipulate people’s action through her words. Before leaving for Fort Salem, she ended her relationship with Paul by telling him to move on.
• Storm Generation: In a fit of uncontrollable emotion along with Raelle, they were able to unintentionally brew a small lightning storm that shook the whole training room. She has shown potential to become a Blaster and is intent on being able to eventually learn to be able to create tornadoes and storms.
• Maelstrom Generation: By performing the seed of reversal with Raelle and Tally, the trio were able to conjure a massive maelstrom in a vocal session.
• Windshear: First "song" taught to the girls of Fort Salem; an impact-absorbing shield. Abigail and the rest of the witches in basic training used this power during their mission against the Spree in Boston, destroying their truck full of munitions and, unfortunately, civilian hostages as well.
• Windstrike: Second "song" taught to the girls of Fort Salem; a propulsive burst of air. Together with Raelle and Tally, the group was able to exert over 1600 lbs of pressure per square foot, shown when they blast a hole through solid metal. She and her mother used this ability to send the burning Camarilla out of the mansion. Abigail and the rest of the witches in basic training used this ability during their mission against the Spree in Boston, creating so much pressure that the first truck driving by a member of the Spree's leadership collided with it and crashed severely, causing it to flip over and roll into the nearby field. After Raelle is stabbed by a Camarilla member, Abigail windstruck him and sent him flying a considerable distance.
• Lock Manipulation: While trying to enter Charvel's bathroom, Abigail used a sigil to try to unlock the door but the Camarilla's disabling breastplate blocked it's use.
• Levitation: By using Salva, Abigail can levitate several feet off the ground, and, with practice, could perform combat drops. During Citydrop and their first real mission, she was shown to be a very competent user of Salva, landing in the grass during both jumps without causing herself injury.
• Linking: After Raelle is mortally wounded, Abigail linked with her in an attempt to save her life. However, this failed and Abigail ended up dying as well.
• Mycelium Connection: As Raelle and Abigail, laid dying, the mycelium resurrected Raelle and Abigail and created a "witchbomb" that killed the approaching Camarilla and gave them heightened powers.
Abilities Edit
• Expert Combatant: During her training from Fort Salem, Abigail became skilled in armed and unarmed combat. She was capable of briefly holding her own against two Camarilla assassins, but was eventually defeated. After her mother came to even the odds, she successfully defeated one of the assassins. During Citydrop, she was able to fight against two officers and eventually defeat them. During a battle with the Camarilla, she was able to fight against one and kill him by slitting his throat with his scythe.
• Skilled Knife Wielder: During her fight with a member of the Camarilla, Abigail was able to efficiently use a knife to fight against her.
• Skilled Scourge Wielder: During a battle with the Camarilla, Abigail was able to fight against them with her scourge.
Equipment Edit
• Scourge: During her time at Fort Salem, Abigail has started using her scourge when in battle.
• Salva: During her time at Fort Salem, Abigail has started to use Salva to levitate in battle.
• Scry: During her time at Fort Salem, Abigail has been shown how to use a scry in training to find things.
Quotes Edit
Obviously you're familiar with the Bellweather name...
Trivia Edit
• Abigail has many family members in the United States army. Her family tree is so extensive that many are hidden in the civilian population, descendants of defectors and conscientious objectors from generations pasts.
• Her female ancestor, the first member of Bellweather family to serve in U.S. Army, was a slave.
• Her female ancestor, Gem Bellweather, led the infantry charge during Battle of Juarez and sacrificed herself to provide cover for Madeline Swythe's and her blasters' song.
• Both of her grandmothers died in their 50's, one in the air when her salva ran out, and the other rotting in a tent crawling with plague rats.
Gallery Edit
Promotional ImagesEdit
Episode ImagesEdit
Behind the ScenesEdit
Motherland Fort Salem Cadet Abigail Bellweather Freeform-0
Motherland Fort Salem Cadet Abigail Bellweather Freeform-0
References Edit
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Who Is New Sotheby’s Owner Patrick Drahi? Here’s Everything You Need to Know About the Mysterious Magnate Known as the ‘Cost Killer’
Here's everything we know about Sotheby's new owner Patrick Drahi, from his business strategies to his impulsive proposal to his wife.
Patrick Drahi, Sotheby's new owner, in 2016. (Photo by Christophe Morin/IP3/Getty Images)
Prior to Monday morning’s blockbuster news that Sotheby’s is being bought in a deal valued at $3.7 billion and going private after 31 years on the New York Stock Exchange, many in the art world had never heard the name Patrick Drahi before. The billionaire media mogul behind the purchase of the 275-year-old auction house will soon become a very familiar figure in the art world. But veteran auction house executive-turned-private dealer Brett Gorvy seemed to speak for many when he told the New York Times on Monday: “Most people don’t seem to know who he is.”
So just who is Drahi? And what are his plans for the venerable auction house? Here is a breakdown of what we know so far—and what still remains a mystery.
How old is he? 55
Where was he born? Casablanca, Morocco
What is his family background? Drahi is the son of two math teachers. He is married and has four children. According to reports, he proposed to his wife within an hour of meeting her, at a college party in the late 1980s. In 2014, Haaretz reported the hard-to-believe fact that, despite the children being located in Lausanne, Tel Aviv, and Bristol, Drahi gathered them in Geneva each Friday for family dinner.
Where is he primarily based? Zermatt, Switzerland
Citizenship? French, Portuguese, and Israeli. (Yes, all three.)
How rich is he? Drahi ranks 190th on the 2019 Forbes list of billionaires, with an estimated net worth of $9.4 billion.
Patrick Drahi, president of French telecom group Altice, is Sotheby's new owner. (Photo by Christophe Morin/IP3/Getty Images)
Patrick Drahi, president of French telecom group Altice, is Sotheby’s new owner. (Photo by Christophe Morin/IP3/Getty Images)
Where was he educated? At age 15, Drahi moved with his parents to the south of France. He graduated from the École Polytechnique, a highly selective university focused on science and engineering, before moving on to the École Nationale Supérieure de Télécommunications, where he earned a postgraduate degree in optics and electronics.
Has he always been a member of high society? Remember the part about his parents being math teachers? Drahi appears to be a self-made man who largely earned his current status among the world’s elite through talent, intelligence, and grit.
What is he best known for? Founding telecommunications firm Altice in 2001 in Europe, and over the course of nearly 20 years, aggressively acquiring competitors to build an empire spanning much of the the world. Altice is now a multinational broadband, telecommunications, media, digital, and advertising company. Drahi holds 60 percent of the stock.
Aside from Sotheby’s, what are his biggest acquisitions? He “stormed” the US in 2015 by buying a 70 percent stake in cable operator Suddenlink for $9 billion and Cablevision for $17.7 billion. Those US entities were spun off into Altice USA, which attracted $1.9 billion in investment when it went public in June 2017. Today, he still owns about 38 percent of Altice USA.
Is Sotheby’s his only acquisition this year? Negative. In April 2019, he struck a $200 million deal to acquire Cheddar, an online-only financial news network targeted at millennials.
How is Drahi connected to the art world? He’s said to be a collector of Impressionist and Modern artworks, typically priced under $5 million. French online art sales database Artprice reportedly lists him as the 252nd biggest art collector worldwide. And Artprice CEO Thierry Ehrmann supplied this contradictory tidbit to AFP: “He’s a very secretive, elitist art collector… he is particularly fond of contemporary art” but also has some “fairly spectacular” works by the 20th-century Belarussian-French artist Marc Chagall.
Sotheby's auction in Hong Kong, 2019. Courtesy of Sotheby's.
Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong, 2019. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.
More details on his rise, please? OK! Drahi began his professional career with the Philips Group in 1988 where he was in charge of international marketing in the cable and satellite division. In 1991, he joined the US/Scandinavian group Kinnevik-Millisat, where he was in charge of the development of private cable networks in Spain and France and was involved in the launch of commercial TV stations in eastern Europe. In 1993, Drahi founded CMA, a consulting firm specializing in telecommunications and media, which was awarded a mandate from BCTV for the implementation of Beijing’s full-service cable network.
Not long after, he founded two cable companies in France, Sud Câble Services (1994) and Médiaréseaux (1995). When Médiaréseaux was taken over by UPC (which then became Liberty Global) at the end of 1999, Drahi led its activities for southern Europe before deciding to create Altice in 2001.
What business strategies is he known for? Using major leverage to buy undervalued assets, then aggressively cutting costs. According to Leaders League, which bills itself as a “media and ratings agency for top executives at an international level,” Drahi leaves “no stone unturned” when it comes to reducing expenditures at his companies. Soon after he acquired French telecom firm SFR, its employees supposedly began decrying shortages of paper in the photocopiers and toilet paper in the restrooms. The site also claims that Drahi created Altice’s original logo himself to save the cost of hiring a graphic designer. French unions, meanwhile, reportedly refer to Drahi simply as “the cost killer.”
Oh, brother. Does he slice and dice jobs, too? Drahi has a mixed record on this front. After Altice swallowed SFR in 2014, a representative publicly proclaimed that SFR would suffer no major layoffs for three years. Drahi abided by that statement of purpose, but severed 5,000 jobs, or about one-third of SFR’s workforce, shortly after the self-imposed deadline ended.
The Dolan family, the American telecom moguls from whom Drahi acquired Cablevision and a consortium of local TV stations collectively known as News 12, also sued Altice USA in September 2018 for allegedly violating a clause in the sale agreement protecting hundreds of News 12 staffers through 2020. Although a judge implored the parties to settle out of court in April 2019, the suit remained active as of publication time.
Any personal scandals we should know about? Either Drahi’s team has buried them all deeper than nuclear waste, or he’s something approaching a model citizen. The closest thing to a personal controversy arose when he tried to acquire SFR from Vivendi in 2014. Haaretz reports that Drahi’s telecom rivals and their political allies tried to block the sale in part by smearing their opponent, accusing Drahi of evading French taxes via his Amsterdam-based conglomerate and his homes in Geneva and Tel Aviv, as well as for constructing a bid for SFR that was so debt-ridden it would be “bad for France.” Drahi won anyway.
Does he have a record as a philanthropist? Established in Switzerland in 2014, the Patrick and Lina Drahi Foundation has donated tens of millions of euros to social programs and science, math, and arts education across Europe. Drahi has been especially generous to his own former schools. In 2014, he donated €10 million to L’Institut Mines Telecom, an educational cooperative made by combining the École Nationale Supérieure de Télécommunications with two other leading French telecom universities. He also gifted €7 million to the École Polytechnique in 2015 to found an innovation and entrepreneurship center, as well as develop massive open online courses (known as MOOCs). Leaders League references sizable donations to “a Franco-Israeli high school and a brain research institute in Jerusalem,” too.
Telecom and Media group Altice founder Patrick Drahi attends the inauguration of the Altice Campus in Paris on October 9, 2018. (ERIC PIERMONT/AFP/Getty Images)
What has Drahi said about buying Sotheby’s? “I am very honored that the Board of Sotheby’s has decided to recommend my offer. With my family, we are very enthusiastic to build together with its current management and their teams the future of Sotheby’s, a fascinating and multi-secular company with such a celebrated history of uniting people all over the world through culture and arts. For my entire life, I have been passionate about this industry and I believe the opportunities and growth potential are significant for Sotheby’s.”
Why did he buy Sotheby’s? So far, the leading theory is the “trophy buyer” thesis, says Consumer Edge Research analyst Raymond Stochel—the notion that Drahi purchased the company as a symbol of status, power, and access, rather than as a strictly money-making venture.
What do people say about Drahi? “Drahi is one of the most well-regarded entrepreneurs in the world,” Sotheby’s CEO Tad Smith said in a statement. “Known for his commitment to innovation and ingenuity, Patrick founded and leads some of the most successful telecommunications, media, and digital companies in the world. He has a long-term view and shares our brand vision for great client service and employing innovation to enhance the value of the company for clients and employees. This acquisition will provide Sotheby’s with the opportunity to accelerate the successful program of growth initiatives of the past several years in a more flexible private environment. It positions us very well for our future and I strongly believe that the company will be in excellent hands for decades to come with Patrick as our owner.”
A person who worked with him for years commended Drahi on his successful bid for SFR in Haaretz: “This is somebody who is not from the French establishment, who had to have an enormous amount of determination to get where he is now.” French press, meanwhile, has accused Drahi of having “acquisition bulimia.”
What remains a mystery? How Drahi might apply his (in)famous cost-cutting practices to Sotheby’s, particularly when it comes to its current executives. He has publicly expressed confidence in Sotheby’s leadership, a good sign for Smith (to whom Drahi is linked through Cablevision, where Smith once played a prominent role). Others have speculated that Drahi might be especially interested in Sotheby’s moves toward data analysis (see: its acquisition of the Mei Moses index and artificial intelligence startup ThreadGenius) and content production.
For now, though, we have little more choice than to wait and see what happens next.
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Last Updated 18 Jun 2020
Emirates Airline: Penetrating the North American Market
Category Emirates Airline
Essay type Process
Words 1052 (4 pages)
Views 350
Emirates Airline is known for going against conventional thinking when running its business. Thus far, this strategy has been profitable for the company.
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. However a postponement in the delivery of the Airbus A380-800 aircraft that would service the new route has caused a delay. This will be Emirates’ attempt at penetrating the North American market. In the current politically charged climate there is debate as to whether or not it will be profitable to expand service to this new route from Dubai to New York.
Tensions between Washington and the Arab world create restraints as to when Emirates will be able to expand service. However, the main question currently facing Emirates is whether it should expand to New York at this point in time. Unlike many other airlines, Emirates sees no threat surrounding the tensions in the Middle East. The climate has been this politically charged for the past ten years. In fact, during the first Gulf War in 1991, Emirates Airlines was the only airline that did not cancel any of its flights. They continued flying to Kuwait when a majority of its competitors stopped.
Emirates continued business as usual and picked up additional business from those airlines that downsized and stopped flights in the region. This strategy exemplifies how Emirates has gone against conventional thinking and come out ahead. Country Risk Analysis Middle East Region Overview The Middle Eastern region is characterized by economies that are over-dependent on oil; however, they differ on size, wealth, and political agendas. A few of the key players in this region include: Iran, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. Of these countries, the United Arab Emirates is quite comparable in many aspects to its neighbors.
The UAE and Qatar are not expected to suffer from as much government instability in the threat of war as the other countries. Iran and Iraq, however, have had their share of political unrest, which has drastically affected their oil exports and prices. To counterattack these effects, Iraq has put pressure on the other OPEC countries to increase oil prices and decrease oil exports to the US and Great Britain. As a result, the GDP of all Middle Eastern countries will decrease due to the heavy reliance of oil revenues in exports and as a percentage of GDP.
While oil is what makes these countries wealthy, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar enjoy higher GDP per capita over Iraq because of their political situations. Dictatorial governments in Iraq allocate funds to programs that will not necessarily aid the country in the long-run. Literacy rates of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, and the UAE have increased steadily over the past decade. This is mostly owed to government beliefs that educated citizens will 3 augment the status of the country in all aspects. All five countries export to and import from similar countries including; Japan, Italy, China and the US.
The main export for these countries is oil and the main imports are machinery and equipment, chemicals and food. United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is located in the Middle East between Oman and Saudi Arabia, bordering the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf. The country is slightly smaller than the state of Maine, which makes it a very small country within the Middle East region. The population of the UAE is approximately 3,480,000 people. The literacy rate for the UAE is 79. 2% for the total population above 15 years.
When categorized by sex, men and women have comparable literacy rates, a rarity in the Middle East region. The population is predominantly Muslim (96%), with the remaining 4% of the population consists of Christians, Hindus and others. Although Arabic is the official language of the country, Persian, English, Hindi and Urdu are also spoken. The UAE is a federation state formed on December 2, 1971 and is composed of seven emirates. The emirates included in the UAE are Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ajman, Fujairah, Sharjah, Ras AlKhaimah, and Umm Al-Qaiwain.
Prior to the formation of the federation state, the UAE existed as the Trucial States that belonged to the British for the previous 150 years. The Rulers and the British signed a Perpetual Treaty of Maritime Truce in the 1850s that guarantees peace and protection from external threats. In exchange, the British had direct involvement in its foreign affairs and external defenses. When the British intended to withdraw from the Gulf in 1968, the rulers of the seven emirates came together and formed the federation state with hopes to increase their role in global politics.
Economic Environment United Arab Emirates’ economy is heavily dependent on oil production. Abu Dhabi is the largest producer, followed by Dubai, and to a much lesser extent, the remaining emirates. Although oil’s contribution to GDP has been declining in the past few years, government revenue and the non-oil economy continue to be heavily reliant. GDP for the year ending 2001 was 67. 6(US$bn) and 21,000(US$bn) per capita, and 70% of government revenue resulted from oil production. Fluctuations in oil prices impact the growth and volatility of the UAE’s economy.
The UAE is a member of the WTO, but has been slow to comply with its requirements for liberalizing trade and competition. The banking sector is closed to foreign investment and other ventures must be 51% owned by a local partner. The exceptions to these rules are in free zones, where 100% foreign ownership is permitted. The limitations on foreign direct investment deter the process of economic diversification. Abu Dhabi is the most resistant to opening its economy, but it has pursued private sector involvement to improve infrastructure regarding water and power.
Dubai has chosen to focus its efforts on expanding its services sector by creating Dubai Internet City (DIC) and Dubai Media City (DMC), which are free zones where investors can retain 100% ownership. Dubai also allows foreign investors to own property and purchase shares in UAE listed companies. The UAE typically runs a budget deficit, and the 2002 budget projects one of Dh2. 17bn. Federal spending is expected to increase by 2. 2%, and revenue is expected to grow by 3%
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Chapter 58: Spirit Hall Tower
The great doors made of pitch black wood swung open as Headmaster Swan approached the Spirit Hall Tower, revealing a long corridor that disappeared into the darkness within the tower.
With a calm pace, the headmaster passed through the open doors, his white robes and hair standing out in stark contrast against the black marble walls of the building. For every step he took, a small globe of light lit up above him, slowly lighting up a path to the staircase which was now visible in the far end of the corridor.
By the time Raven reached the tower’s entrance, the headmaster had already started ascending the first set of stairs, closely followed by the other elders – however, some stayed behind, most likely to guide the students who were supposed to stay at the first floor.
The moment Raven passed through the black doors and entered the tower, she felt an abrupt change in the air around her. Just like before, Raven could not rely on her spirit connections to sense anything of the world around her, but the reason was the absolute opposite of what it had been before. Instead of a total lack of spirit essence in the air, there was simply too much of it here. For Raven, the narrow corridor that had seemed black and lifeless from the outside, turned into a sea of color as abundant spirit essence spiraled uncontrollably in every possible direction.
Raven couldn’t help but stop and gasp in astonishment; the transformation was just too big; like finding an oasis after days of dehydration in a desert, only to slip and fall into the water – drowning.
“Night?” asked Javelin, confused.
“Nothing,” said Raven with a shrug and started moving again. “Just surprised by the density of the spirit essence in here.”
Hesitating a bit, Javelin nodded. He too could feel that there was a lot of spirit essence present in the tower, but without the contrast provided by Raven’s superior senses he didn’t find it that breathtaking. Yet, he could think of no reason justifying his doubts.
Together with the other advanced students, they followed after the elders, climbing up the staircases. More students joined in behind them, but their numbers dwindled with every floor as the others reached their designated floor. Eventually even the elders started dropping off to enter rooms of their own.
But the advanced students continued climbing. The further they ascended, the denser the spirit essence around them grew and by the time they had reached the 21st floor – which marked the beginning of the five octagonal floors dedicated for them – even the others were being overwhelmed by the copious amounts of spirit essence present.
“Okay then,” said an elder who had been waiting for them at 21st floor. “All of you know your allocated Spirit Halls. Go to them and meditate until midnight.” The students bowed and walked off towards their rooms, most of which were on next couple of floors. Javelin however glanced at Raven and was about to say something when the elder cut him off with a stern voice. “Junior Student Hake, head to your room. Junior Student Night, follow me.”
The two of them looked at each other and Javelin mouthed the words “good luck” before he walked over to a door nearby and disappeared inside.
Raven instead followed the elder up the stairs to the next level. There, her eyes happened to meet with Dunlin’s, who was just about to enter his own Spirit Hall room. When the latter noticed that Raven was being led up even the next flight of stairs, his eyes first widened in shock and then narrowed in anger. Dunlin looked like he wanted nothing more than to attack Raven, right then and there. However, he restrained himself and Raven continued up the stairs and moved out of his line of sight.
The Elder kept leading Raven upwards – something that surprised more people than just Dunlin – until they reached the the 25th floor, the top floor of the octagonal section. All that remained above them were the final five, nine-sided floors, which were reserved for the headmaster and four other core members of the academy. Raven’s guide stopped and pointed at a black door situated just to the left of the next staircase. “Headmaster Swan wishes that you use that room. If you have any problems, you are not to hesitate but head directly for the headmaster’s floor for assistance. He is at the very top.” With that, the elder turned and left, heading back down the stairs.
‘They really nurture their young talents at this academy,’ Raven thought as she looked around. The further up you went in the tower, the stronger would the benefits of the Day of Light ceremony be for the spiritualist’s cultivation. Many schools might reserve those benefits for its elders.
Delaying no further, Raven opened the door to her Spirit Hall room and entered. Inside, the spirit essence density was more normal, letting Raven draw a breath of relief. The room itself was practically shaped like a triangle, and large decorative windows filled the wall opposite the entrance.
On the floor , in the very center of the room, was the familiar Spirit Star, the symbol for all spiritualists. Just as it had been in the Nightingale’s Spirit Hall, the symbol consisted of three overlapped and interlocked triangles, made with nine different precious stones – the black one barely discernible against the marble floor.
Hoatzin nudged his way up from under the scarf around Raven’s neck. He let out an impressed whistle when he saw his surroundings.
“It is very similar to our old Spirit Hall,” he said mentally and Raven nodded in agreement.
“There are not many minutes left until midnight,” she noted as she walked over to check if the windows could be opened – they could not. “Brother, you should take your place by the Spirit Star. I’ll wait in the corridor.”
“Is that safe? Would it not be better if you stayed in here – what if someone comes?” Hoatzin sounded a bit nervous, but Raven shook her head.
“Fenris said you needed to be alone in here. Besides, who would be moving around outside the Spirit Halls at this time?”
Finding no real reason to object, Hoatzin left Raven’s shoulder and landed on the black marble floor. Raven looked at her brother’s tiny white form and suddenly felt a bit nauseous. She had been trying to not think too much about what would happen tonight if things didn’t go well, but now, as she was about to leave her brother alone in the Spirit Hall, reality caught up with her and she knew this was a make-or-brake moment; either it worked, or Hoatzin would perhaps never regain his human form.
Raven kneeled down in front of her brother, causing him to raise up his little bird head towards her. “I’ll be right outside,” she said. “If there are any problems, call out and I will be in here before you know it.” She tried to keep her voice calm and steady but there was a slight quiver to it – it was so small that no one else would have noticed it, but Hoatzin did. His little bird body straitened and his eyes got a warm glow to them.
“Don not worry, little sister,” he said, without any trace of nervousness left. “I will be fine.”
Raven blinked in surprise a few times before she used a finger to ruffle up the feathers on the top of Hoatzin’s white head. With a large, genuine smile on her face, she got up and quietly left the triangular Spirit Hall.
Once back in the corridor Raven couldn’t help but chuckle. ‘Did I seem that worried? That was the first time since our parents died that he called me his little sister. . . . I must be slipping.’
Sighing, Raven sank down outside her brother’s door and closed her eyes. The unruly spirit essence that overwhelmed her senses had now grown almost frantic, storming back and forth in the narrow corridor as if desperately searching for something. Raven made some attempts at using breathing techniques to absorb that spirit essence, for her own cultivation, but the essence resisted her and she soon gave up the notion.
The minutes ticked by. Suddenly Raven’s eyes popped open. Without hesitating, or making a sound, she scurried up from her place on the floor and ducked in behind the staircase leading up towards the next floor. Just as her body melded with the darkness under the stairs, a familiar head emerged above the other entrance.
‘Dunlin?’ Raven frowned. ‘Why would he abandon his room now?’
Dunlin hurried up the last couple of stairs and was soon joined by Jack. The two of them moved quickly towards Raven, clearly heading for the levels above them.
“Are you sure it’s okay for me to join you?” asked Jack, his hushed voice filled with anticipation.
“Stop fretting,” grumbled Dunlin, “he told me to bring you. If you don’t want to come, go back to your room and let me take all of it!”
“No, I just . . .” the sentence continued but the pair had already moved up to the next floor and the surging spirit essence drowned out the words.
Raven sat frozen in the darkness. Her eyes glided over towards Hoatzin’s door before she swore and left her hiding place. Slowly she followed the two boys up the stairs. ‘I’ll see where they’re headed and then come back,’ she thought to herself. ‘There are still a few minutes till midnight. . . .’
Even before Raven reached the top of the stairs, she could tell that there was a fundamental difference in the layout of the next, nine-sided, floor of the Spirit Hall Tower. For one, the staircase didn’t seem to end at the next floor. Instead it turned into a spiral-staircase, which quickly disappeared into the darkness of the higher levels. A thin membrane blocked the entrance to the 26th floor. Tentatively stretching out her hand Raven was relieved to find that it passed through the membrane unobstructed.
Carefully, Raven climbed the last couple of stairs and let her head pass through the membrane so she could peek in on the 26th floor. Instantly, the incomparably high pressure from disorderly spirit essence slammed into her, almost causing her to gasp in pain. There was significantly more of it here and even though the spirit essence wasn’t actually trying to hurt her, Raven’s high sensitivity to it made its mere presence painful. Forcing herself to ignore the ache in her mind, Raven tried to focus on what she could actually see using her eyes.
Contrary to the other floors, there was no narrow corridor here. Rather, the entire floor was empty except for a barely transparent glass structure that stood at the center of the room. Raven’s gaze fell on this structure just in time to see Dunlin’s and Jack’s figures slip through a well hidden glass door that was facing her.
Raven frowned and strained her eyes; the glass walls were thick, and even though there was a dim light glowing inside, it wasn’t enough for her to get a clear view of who was inside. All she could tell was that apart from the two youths, there seemed to be a third, possibly white-robed, person inside.
‘Should I move closer?’ Raven hesitated. There was nowhere for her to hide up there, and she couldn’t be sure that the glass wasn’t more transparent from the other side. ‘It’s dangerous, but for them to skip out on the Day of Light ceremony . . . it must be important.’
As Raven was considering what to do, a sudden tremor ran through the building. Instantly the abundant spirit essence in the air stopped its hectic movements, as if time itself had been ground to a halt.
‘It’s midnight!’ thought Raven and was just about to turn back down the stairs when the dim light within the central structure intensified. Raven paused. With the added light, the three figures had become a bit clearer – only a bit more and she would likely be able to see what was going on inside. ‘Brother. . . .’ She bit her lip and glanced down the stairs, but ultimately chose to stay.
A second, slightly stronger, tremor shook the tower. The light increased again and Raven could now tell that the third person was definitely wearing white robes. A third tremor came and this time the spirit essence in the air vibrated too. ‘Who is that?’ Raven squinted her eyes to no avail. However, when the forth tremor – or rather quake – hit, her jaw dropped. ‘Is that . . . Gadwall?’
Raven’s mind reeled. This didn’t make any sense! Why would the vice headmaster of the academy bring those two to his own Spirit Hall? Surely it would be more beneficial for everyone if Dunlin and Jack stayed in their own rooms. . . . ‘Could he be the Talon’s partner at the academy? But then what about Elder W?’ Raven had spoken to Gadwall several times, about many different things, and he had shown no signs of deception whatsoever. Every sing pointed towards him being a caring elder, born and raised in Sky Empire.
While Raven was trying to make sense of what she was seeing, increasingly powerful quakes shook the Spirit Hall Tower and by the time the sixth one hit, the light within the glass structure was almost blinding. Now clearly visible, vice headmaster Gadwall could be seen, sitting cross-legged on the floor inside the structure. Opposite him, with their backs to Raven, sat the two boys.
Between the three men, rose a vibrantly colorful stream of spirit essence, whose full splendor was visible even to the naked eye. At the seventh quake that stream split up in two equal strands and, after hesitating for a heartbeat, they shot towards Dunlin and Jack.
‘What the . . ?’ Raven’s confusion grew; ‘why didn’t Gadwall receive any?’
Usually, the spirit essence arriving in a Spirit Hall during a Day of Light ceremony would split up in accordance with the spiritualist’s soul levels. This was an indisputable fact, and the main reason Hoatzin needed to be alone tonight; for the two boys to get all of it was simply unthinkable.
However, before Raven had a chance to reflect too much over this, an eighth quake reverberated though both her and the tower. To Raven’s bewilderment, two new strands of spirit essence now started pouring out of the boys – heading towards the vice headmaster instead – only, while the initial strands had been vibrant and full of life, the new ones were pitch black and reeked heavily of death.
Raven shuddered; she had been around a lot of death in her lives, but there was something sinister and otherworldly about those two black strands. Her instincts told her to run away – they screamed at her that this was not an opponent she could handle. Subconsciously, Raven started backing down the stairs, out of danger’s way, but then the ninth quake hit.
In that moment, the previously frozen spirit essence in the air sprang to life again. Like a hungry beast, the stored essence rushed towards the central structure, ready to swallow it whole. Just before it could reach its target, however, the enormous mass of essence abruptly came to a halt.
For a moment Raven thought she actually saw the shape of a vicious beast, submerged deep in that spirit essence. The beast slowly turned around, it’s eyes locking with Raven’s, and before she had a chance to react, the beast pounced towards her dragging all the spirit essence with it.
In the next instant, searing pain filled Raven’s mind as endless spirit essence slammed into her, forcing it’s way to her Soul Prism. Within fractions of a second, the sea green prism was filled to the point of braking, and more was coming. Desperately, Raven tried to control the new spirit essence within her soul, forcing it out and down towards her spirit core, but no matter how hard she tried, Raven just couldn’t keep up with the rushed inflow. If this continued, her Soul Prism would shatter under the pressure.
Partially collapsing, Raven had no choice but to let her body fall down the stairs she stood on – she just couldn’t focus on anything but controlling the practically rogue spirit essence within her. As her head dropped bellow the protective membrane between the 25th and 26th floor, Raven felt the immense influx of spirit essence being cut off; apparently the spirit essence above couldn’t follow her through that membrane.
Unfortunately, her relief would be short lived.
Raven’s body slammed uncontrollably against the marble landing – she was still too preoccupied by her overfilled Soul Prism to care about anything else. Without moving from where she had fallen, Raven started to get the situation in her soul under control. Thinking that the worst was over, Raven felt shaken but relieved, but at that point, the free spirit essence on the 25th floor repeated that same pause in its movements, stopping it’s original path towards the surrounding Spirit Halls.
The tenth quake came, and with it the spirit essence that charged at her.
Now Raven grew truly concerned. There was a lot less spirit essence on the 25th floor, but her own strength was leaving her, and fast. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep her soul prism from shattering. Raven looked up at the door leading to where her brother was; she didn’t fear death, she hadn’t for a long time, but leaving her brother behind . . . no way.
‘I must make it!’
Raven gritted her teeth and forced herself to stand up – unfortunately, yet another quake caused her to stumble so she had to catch herself against Hoatzin’s door not to topple over again. Feeling the last of her powers leaving her, Raven rested her head against the door.
“Be well, brother,” she whispered, before she used a final burst of strength to throw herself in behind the staircase she had previously hidden under – she never registered her head hitting the marble floor.
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16 thoughts on “Chapter 58: Spirit Hall Tower
1. kotawa
Did you kidnap a proof reader from somewhere D:
Coz the only problem I found is with “his line of site” where “site” should be “sight” , but that’s like your trade mark so …
Thanks for the chapter and the cliff from which I can jump down from. Maybe I’ll find some mistakes to eat in the underworld.
Liked by 1 person
1. Also just realized I wasn’t receiving notifications on wordpress for last three chapters. WordPress does that randomly sometimes; just stops giving notifications for a site then just starts again.
Thanks for the chapters! This is a very addicting novel, keep up the amazing work!
2. Leafyeyes417
I didn’t get any for the last two chapters. I came to read this chapter and was like “Wait…what?” and then went back two chapters before I found out I hadn’t gotten notifications for them…
2. Dragrath
Attacked by spirit essence I’m betting that monster formed of essence and death is what “powered” up that nasty boy… ah a suspicious cliff…
3. Maniac3020
Such an exciting chapter, but with such potential for disaster I can’t help but feel stressed out by how much I was working. My mind was racing with potential scenarios, of what could go wrong.
4. kaminokitsune
Oh! This dark energy is very interesting! I wonder what makes it different!
Don —> Do
sing —> thing
Thank you for the chapter!
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Sir Seretse Khama Biography: Birth, Family, Education, Marriage, Presidency, Legacy
Sir Seretse Khama: "the clay that binds"
By | May 20, 2020, 01:28 PM | Seretse Khama | Top of The
Sir Seretse Khama was the first President of Botswana and founded the Botswana Democratic Party in 1962. He then became Prime Minister in 1965. After Botswana gained independence in 1966, Seretse Khama was elected the first President of the country following which, a rapid economic and social progression ensued.
He was born into one of the most powerful African royal families and he received his education from the neighbouring countries of South Africa and the United Kingdom.
Controversy arose when Seretse married a white British woman in 1948, however it gradually subsided and she became popular among his people. Khama then lead his country’s independence movement.
Let’s look in closer detail at the incredible life of Sir Seretse Khama:
Seretse Khama Birth and Family
Seretse Khama was born in Serowe, Bechuanaland on 1 July 1921. His parents were Queen Tebogo and Sekgoma Khama the second. His name means “the clay that binds”. It was given to him in celebration of his father and grandfathers reconciliation. In 1925 his father passed away and at the age of 4, Seretse became king under the guidance of his uncle Tshekedi Khama.
Seretse Khama
He was married to Ruth Williams from 1948 to 1980 and they had 4 children together, Jacqueline Khama, Ian Khama, Tshekedi Khama the second and Anthony Khama.
Seretse Khama Education
Seretse Khama spent most of his young life in Tiger Kloof Educational Institution in South Africa. He attended Fort Hare University College in the same region and graduated with a B.A in 1944. He also studied for a year at Balliol College, Oxford and finally studied to become a Barrister at the Inner Temple in London in 1946.
Seretse Khama Marriage
Seretse Khama and Ruth Williams met in June of 1947. She was an English clerk at Lloyd’s of London. After courting for a year, they were married. Their union sparked an uproar due to it being an interracial marriage. The South African Union, having already established the apartheid regime, became greatly alarmed by this action as did the tribal elders of the Bamangwato, who were angered that he did not choose one of their women. Seretse Khama was demanded to return to Bechuanaland by his uncle, Tshekedi Khama. He insisted on an annulment of the young couples marriage.
Seretse Khama and wife Ruth Williams
Seretse returned to Serowe, however, it was with his new wife in tow and after a series of public meetings he was affirmed by the elders in his role as the kgosi (king) in 1949.
Ruth Williams, his wife proved to be equally as popular and admitting defeat, Tshekedi Khama left the reserve for voluntary exile while Khama returned to London to complete his studies.
Seretse and Ruth
The marriage of Seretse Khama and Ruth Williams however, had also incurred international ramifications that could not be as easily resolved. The South African government, having banned interracial marriage in 1949 through the apartheid system, were in ardent opposition of an interracial couple ruling just outside their border.
The couple were banned by the South African government from entering the country including Mafeking, which then operated as the administrative capital of Bechuanaland.
Ruth and Seretse
The UK was immediately pressured by the South African government to remove Khama from his chieftainship.
Conducted by the British government, a judicial enquiry was made into Khama’s fitness for chieftainship. In 1951, the couple were exiled from Bechuanaland.
Seretse Khama Presidency
In 1966 at the time of Botswana’s independence, it was the third-poorest country in the world, with more poverty than most other African countries. It had poor infrastructure, under-developed roads and little formal education among most of its people.
Seretse Khama
Aided by the discovery of Orapa’s diamond deposits in 1967, Seretse Khama set out to transform the nation economically. His vigorous economic programme was an initiative based around the nation becoming an export-based economy, built around beef, copper and diamonds.
With the foresight for improvement Seretse Khama instituted strong anti-corruption measures, a scourge that so many other newly independent African countries faced. He fostered economic development through market friendly policies. His promise to mining companies, was that of low and stable taxes, liberalised trade, and increased personal freedoms as well as maintaining low marginal income tax rates to deter corruption and tax evasion.
In 1960 Botswana’s economy began a rapid climb and between 1960 and 1980 it had become one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.
Botswana Pula
This growth spurt was accredited primarily to the mining industry in the country, also gaining and securing a significant share of its revenue for the Botswana government.
The custom union between Botswana and South Africa was renegotiated in 1969 and again in 1975, revisiting the diamond mining agreement, guaranteeing itself 50% of the revenues.
Botswana had a budget surplus by the mid-1970’s.
Khama continued to build on infrastructure, health care and education and investing further in other areas of economic growth like setting up the Botswana Meat Commission and the Botswana Development Corporation in 1970 to attract foreign investment, tourism and secondary industries. The Botswana Pula was then introduced in 1976, replacing the South African rand as its national currency.
Khama spent little on defence due to his dedication to development of the country.
However on persistent incursions by South African and Rhodesian forces, in 1977 the Botswana Defence Force, a small professional military was formed.
Khama was politically careful however to not allow the operation of militant groups to operate in Botswana.
According to Richard Dale:
“…Khama announced before the National Assembly his government’s policy to insure that Botswana would not become a base of operations for attacking any neighbour.”
Seretse Khama Legacy
Several years before he died, Seretse Khama suffered with various ailments. He passed away on the 13th July 1980 from pancreatic cancer at the age of 59.
He was succeeded by Vice President Quett Masire
During a time where the country was embroiled in racial enmity, corruption and civil war, Khama upheld liberal democracy and non-racism. Seretse Khama embraced the letter of the law, spearheading Botswana forward economically and democratically.
Read next: Rebecca Malope Biography: Age, Family, Career, Controversy, Networth
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When we are including an AS1 file in an Fla which has to be published as AS2, we need to be careful in naming the include file. There shouldn’t be any object initialized in _global which has the same name as the include file.
Say for example,
I had a include file called Security.As and inside that had _global.Security=new Object(). When I published I got the following error
**Error** C:Documents and SettingsarealDesktopSecurity.As: Line 1: ActionScript 2.0 class scripts may only define class or interface constructs.
Security=new Object();
Total ActionScript Errors: 1 Reported Errors: 1
To resolve this issue we need to rename the Security.as file to something else, for example SecuritySystem.as and change the include statement accordingly | <urn:uuid:85274d2c-71eb-4ebe-920d-c88cedd410ef> | https://www.luracast.com/including-actionscript-1-files-in-actionscript-2-project/ | en | 0.912526 | 0.254017 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Archive for Witch
A more powerful love spell using orgone radionics
The traditional love spell is something that requires training and a lot of specific information, not to mention a knowledge of moon phases and other esoteric information. For most people that are interested in love spells their choices are normally limited to hiring a magician or witch or perhaps a practitioner of black magick. Let’s face it that scares off most people. But there is an easier way and it is called radionics.
Radionics is powered by orgone energy and the most potent source of orgon is orgonite. This is due to its incredible properties of collecting live force energy or “chi energy”. In fact it is a key ingredient of the Welz Chi Generator created by Karl Hans Welz.
A love spell is as simple as connecting a trend (to fall in love) with a target (the person targeted) and providing the life force energy to make the operation manifest.
There are 2 ways of going about this.
1. Use radionics software
2. Use a radionics device such as the RAD-5 or RAD 1000 combined with radionic filter packs.
Both of these methods really simplifies the process of the love spell and avoids any involvement with black magick.
You can also hire someone like Love Spells Saulat magic spells cast powerful love spells that work immediately in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, UK, Canada and Australia. | <urn:uuid:a62455a4-0df4-41b2-b33b-fa4f36fb9b31> | https://www.radionicsbox.com/tag/witch/ | en | 0.907717 | 0.373603 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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Neodymium-doped Gain Media
Definition: laser gain media containing laser-active neodymium ions
More general term: solid-state gain media
German: Neodym-dodierte Verstärkermedien
Categories: optical materials, lasers
How to cite the article; suggest additional literature
Neodymium (chemical symbol: Nd) is a chemical element belonging to the group of rare earth metals. In laser technology, it is widely used in the form of the trivalent ion Nd3+ as the laser-active dopant of gain media based on various host materials, including both crystals and glasses.
The usual pump wavelength is 808 nm (for Nd:YAG; wavelengths for other host materials can somewhat differ), but a higher slope efficiency can be achieved by directly pumping into the upper laser level 4F3/2 with 869-nm light. The strongest laser transition is that from 4F3/2 to 4I11/2 for 1064 nm, but other transitions are available with longer or shorter wavelengths (see Figure 1). In order to achieve lasing on those, lasing at the 1064-nm line needs to be suppressed by inserting an appropriate wavelength filter (usually consisting of one or more dichroic mirrors) into the cavity. Via multi-phonon emission, the populations in levels 4I11/2 to 4I15/2 are quickly transferred to the ground-state manifold 4I9/2. (The lower-state lifetime is much smaller than the upper-state lifetime.) Hence, there is normally negligible population in all these levels, so that neodymium-doped gain media exhibit pure four-level behavior. The exception is the case where the lower level is the ground-state manifold 4I9/2: 946-nm Nd:YAG lasers (and other Nd-based lasers emitting between 900 and 1000 nm) are quasi-three-level lasers, exhibiting a fairly high threshold pump power.
energy level structure of the trivalent neodymium ion in Nd^{3+}:YAG
Figure 1: Energy level structure of the trivalent neodymium ion (with wavelength numbers for Nd:YAG).
For high excitation densities, as can occur particularly in Q-switched lasers, but also in lasers operating on the weaker laser transitions, there can be significant energy losses due to energy transfer (→ upconversion) to higher-lying levels with small lifetimes.
The most common neodymium-doped gain media are:
Less common neodymium-doped gain media are:
In all these media (except for some glasses), the neodymium dopant ions replace other ions (often yttrium) of the host medium, which have about the same size.
Neodymium-doped gain media face competition from ytterbium-doped media in the 1-μm spectral region. The latter have a smaller quantum defect, usually a higher emission bandwidth and a higher upper-state lifetime, also a simpler energy level structure which avoids various quenching processes. However, they exhibit quasi-three-level behavior, which tends to lead to a higher threshold, so that the power efficiency is not necessarily better than for neodymium-doped media.
The RP Photonics Buyer's Guide contains 44 suppliers for neodymium-doped gain media. Among them:
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[1]J. R. O'Connor, “Unusual crystal-field energy levels and efficient laser properties of YVO4:Nd”, Appl. Phys. Lett. 9, 407 (1966), doi:10.1063/1.1754631
[2]M. Ross, “YAG laser operation by semiconductor laser pumping”, Proc. IEEE 56, 196 (1968), doi:10.1109/PROC.1968.6220
[3]G. A. Massey, “Measurements of device parameters for Nd:YAlO3 lasers”, IEEE J. Quantum Electron. 8 (7), 669 (1972), doi:10.1109/JQE.1972.1077254
[4]R. W. Waynant and P. H. Klein, “Vacuum ultraviolet laser emission from Nd3+:LaF3”, Appl. Phys. Lett. 46, 14 (1985), doi:10.1063/1.95833
[5]T. Y. Fan et al., “Nd:MgO:LiNbO3 spectroscopy and laser devices”, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 3 (1), 140 (1986), doi:10.1364/JOSAB.3.000140
[6]A. I. Zagumennyi et al., “The Nd3+:GdVO4 crystal: a new material for diode-pumped lasers”, Sov. J. Quantum Electron. 22, 1071 (1992), doi:10.1070/QE1992v022n12ABEH003672
[9]J. L. Blows et al., “Heat generation in Nd:YVO4 with and without laser action”, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett. 10 (12), 1727 (1998), doi:10.1109/68.730483
[10]N. Hodgson et al., “High power TEM00 mode operation of diode-pumped solid-state lasers”, Proc. SPIE 3611, 119 (1999), doi:10.1117/12.349265
[11]L. Fornasiero et al., “Excited state absorption and stimulated emission of Nd3+ in crystals III: LaSc3(BO3)4, CaWO4, and YLiF4”, Appl. Phys. B 68, 67 (1999), doi:10.1007/s003400050587
[12]Y. Sato and T. Taira, “The studies of thermal conductivity in GdVO4, YVO4, and Y3Al5O12 measured by quasi-onedimensional flash method”, Opt. Express 14 (22), 10528 (2006), doi:10.1364/OE.14.010528
[13]D. Krennrich et al., “A comprehensive study of Nd:YAG, Nd:YAlO3, Nd:YVO4 and Nd:YGdVO4 lasers operating at wavelengths of 0.9 and 1.3 μm. Part 1: cw-operation”, Appl. Phys. B 92, 165 (2008), doi:10.1007/s00340-008-3069-4
[14]D. Krennrich et al., “A comprehensive study of Nd:YAG, Nd:YAlO3, Nd:YVO4 and Nd:YGdVO4 lasers operating at wavelengths of 0.9 and 1.3 μm. Part 2: passively mode-locked operation”, Appl. Phys. B 92, 175 (2008), doi:10.1007/s00340-008-3070-y
(Suggest additional literature!)
See also: gain media, rare-earth-doped gain media, rare-earth-doped fibers, laser crystals, ytterbium-doped gain media, YAG lasers, YLF lasers, vanadate lasers, tungstate lasers
and other articles in the categories optical materials, lasers
Dr. R. Paschotta
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Knitted Anatomy Kits Offer Cruelty-Free Dissections
Stoneking's creations turn anatomy lab into a soft and cuddly affair. (Photo: Emily Stoneking/
Any student who's ever been through an anatomy lab can remember the sights, sounds and smells of animal dissection. The flash of innards, crunch of bone, and the eye-watering stench of formaldehyde combine to make for one unpleasant experience.
But knitting artist Emily Stoneking of Burlington, Vermont, has flipped that dreadful scene on its head by creating knitted dissections that make learning about anatomy feel less like a murder scene and more like putting on a favorite, cuddly sweater.
Knitted anatomy frog
No frogs were harmed in this dissection. (Photo: Emily Stoneking/
Knitted anatomy frog - closeup
This froggy's little innards were needle-felted by hand out of 100 percent wool. (Photo: Emily Stoneking/
Through her business aKNITomy, Stoneking creates knitted scenes as well as DIY kits that include instructions to create the anatomical dissections of rats, bats, frogs, earthworms and even people.
When I asked her what prompted her to combine knitting with dissection, Stoneking said, "I decided to incorporate my love of vintage anatomical illustrations and make the animals look like dissection models. I am beginning to move more toward two-dimensional, human based artwork that is very strongly influenced by 19th-century anatomical illustrations. I am fascinated by the history of medicine, and I just have always loved the artwork associated with that."
Knitted anatomy rat
This rat comes pinned in an actual dissection tray, but he is not glued down so you can still take him out for a cuddle if you wish. (Photo: Emily Stoneking/
Knitted anatomy earthworm
Who knew earthworms had so much going on inside?. (Photo: Emily Stoneking/
Stoneking — who claims "I'm not a scientist, but I play one on the Internet" — admits that the creations may not be 100-percent accurate. But they are undoubtedly more pleasant to see than the real deal.
"I take a lot of artistic liberties," Emily Stoneking told Bored Panda. "I do spend a lot of time researching real anatomical structures, and my guts have evolved over time (they used to be pretty blobby and random). But now, they really look very human, which I have found people tend to gravitate to."
Knitted anatomy bat
There's nothing spooky about this handcrafted knitted bat dissection. (Photo: Emily Stoneking/
Knitted anatomy human head
This is as close as I ever want to get to seeing the inside of a human head. (Photo: Emily Stoneking/
Knitted anatomy alien
Who's to say that this isn't what the innards of an alien look like?. (Photo: Emily Stoneking/
Check out more of Stoneking's knitted animals dissections at her aKNITomy Etsy shop. | <urn:uuid:b7786432-fe4b-4f98-9d8c-8c283ecbdec9> | https://www.treehugger.com/knitted-anatomy-kits-offer-cruelty-free-dissections-4867788 | en | 0.938608 | 0.042985 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Handling of the physical remains
After the War, many physical remains, particularly from the Atlantic Wall and British Defence Systems still remained.
In the immediate aftermath of the War, as material and equipment became rare and costly, civilians would take concrete and armoured doors so as to reuse these around their homes.
In the long-term, they were reserved different fates depending on the condition and location.
Primarily, they were abandoned, without any conservation or promotion policy. A lot were covered in graffiti, or used as rubbish dumps. Often, decisions would be taken on a local scale so as to cordon these off, out of a concern for safety. They were damaged by weather, and nature took hold, sand dunes moved, flowers grew and made it difficult to access, and local wildlife, such as bats, for instance, used them as a refuge. Many conservation and wildlife protection associations took an interest and have organised programmes and projects around the bunkers.
Others were to be destroyed completely, once more out of a concern for safety, or due to local land planning policies. As many of the remains were scattered along the coastline, the importance of protecting the beauty of beaches and tourist residences (buildings and campsites) sped up the destruction process.
More rarely, they have been re-used by civilians and the military. People with Bunkers in their garden would use them as a garage or shed, and some farmers with larger constructions in their fields would use them as stables or storage premises.
Since the 1980s, public interest in these physical remnants of the War has increased, and many tourism and cultural projects are springing up to ensure their conservation and promotion. Some of the larger constructions have been turned into museums or are used for guided tours. The WWII Heritage project is a part of this and aims at listing all such structures so as to increase knowledge and access to such monuments.
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Dead Boys
Live at CBGB's 1977 (Music Video Distributors)
By: Vinnie Apicella
Who might've imagined it twenty-seven years ago? A little known punk group from Cleveland barely into their early 20s who failed to survive the '70s could create much of an impact on the scene up till now? Not that there's that much to point to as far as a legacy left behind. That's what makes digging up this live DVD so phenomenal. Time indeed ran out on the band a long time ago. CBGB's, the acclaimed NYC birthplace for the burgeoning underground scene, certainly fared much better than the Dead Boys, who sorrowfully became a casualty of substance abuse and self-destruction only three years and two albums after they started. So save for those few old enough to remember or lucky enough to have been there, all we have were those couple of records, subsequent stories, and an ongoing legacy that lives in the many Punk Rock power chords that followed. But now this--
In 1977 the Dead Boys were making waves for their loud music and brash behavior. They were every bit the stateside equal for angry verbiage, onstage and in-the-news histrionics as English upstarts like The Damned, Clash, and Sex Pistols. The Dead Boys emerged at a time when American Punk, the New York scene in particular, was still getting its wings and branching out from the blueprint formed from Iggy and The Stooges and New York Dolls, and soon after, The Ramones where concurrently CBGB's and NY's Lower East Side came alive with what would emerge as a musical and cultural phenomenon.
That this DVD could have resurfaced all these years later and in reasonably good enough condition so as to be restored in all its beer-soaked, brazen glory is miraculous. We can thank Rod Swenson, the original director back then, and amongst those nostalgic contributors to this package placing a new perspective overall. Not only will Live at CBGB's 1977 appeal to longtime Punk fans, this will unearth a whole new generation of followers that want to know "what the real deal was about."
Upon "entering" the club, we're led from behind the stage toward the front row of the dark, smoky cellar-like environment as "the incredible, phenomenal Dead Boys!" from Cleveland, Ohio are announced and the grinding guitar riffs from "Sonic Reducer" begin reducing the place to audible rubble. From the onset the band was loud, noisy and in the face of the front row of spectators who were standing, shouting, snapping pics-- and it was the 'Boys electrifying lead singer, Stiv Bators, that was the center of attention centering a tuna can-sized stage, animated and with an Iggy-like shuffle and strut, on the floor, or in the crowd fighting for every inch. The band was touring for their now classic "Young Loud and Snotty" release; a record that showed so much promise and deservedly becoming an American Punk staple, if several years later.
Much is made of Swenson's three-camera color shoot of this show, which lasted for ten songs and some forty minutes, and only upon viewing is this really appreciated for what it was and what it means today. The show is generally shot from three o' clock facing the stage with plenty of frame-ins to the frantic lead singer, a few band member close-ups, and cut-aways. We see clearly the onlookers at the front, surprisingly well behaved and probably in awe at what they'd been privileged enough to witness.
Bators, clad in a sportcoat, suit pants and sneakers, lost the coat by the end of song one, and soon after revealed slices of lunchmeat stuck to his chest which he proceeded to detach, stuff with snot, fold over and down to the apparent delight of the crowd -- effectively shedding new light about "getting caught with the meat in your mouth."
"Sonic Reducer," since covered by bands like Overkill and Pearl Jam, led to "All This and More," then "Not Anymore" and "Revenge," though there's no rationale as to why he couldn't wait till "I Need Lunch" to satisfy his appetite, but the band played on and on, stopping momentarily only to announce "Ain't Nothin' to Do" and then back at it non-stop. Bators was recklessly ranting, screaming, and pogo-ing front and back and across the stage like some hyperactive kid fit to be tied and driven to the laugh factory than fronting a Punk group in a dirty club and coaxing a beer swilling crowd to jump and shout in kind.
"High Tension Wire" and a cover of The Stooges' "Search and Destroy," all age-old classic which oddly enough was only four years old at that time, were show highlights before Bators and the band did a half-hearted Who impression of destroying their instruments.
This DVD reeks of authenticity and places the viewer right there in the center of it all. The recording quality held up surprisingly well and the audio is wrapped in the latest 5.1 surround for that "being there" feel. Besides this, the DVD extras add to its magnificence. Quotable interviews with CBGB's founding father Hilly Kristal, Swenson and Dead Boys' guitarist Cheetah Chrome, reveal welcome insights into the band and how Joey Ramone first discovered them.
Other bonus features include the post-show interview with the band itself, the original Dead Boys' promotional clip, and some freakish lounge act called Steel Tips where a black-bearded biker-like singer blows off firecrackers in his shirt, make this a must-have package worth the price of admission ten times over. Not only is this a classic concert, it captures an incredible moment in time that many thought never did or could exist. Live at CBGB's 1977 places in perspective the short life of the young and loud upstart snots that gave their all, didn't give a shit, and revisits an unforeseen moment in time when they could have indeed be considered one of the greatest Rock bands the world had never known.
| <urn:uuid:105eee91-635e-4596-a2d3-e5c5b2665471> | http://inmusicwetrust.com/articles/69d01.html | en | 0.968713 | 0.033692 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Support and resistance
by Feb 15, 2019Crypto, Forex, Reits, Stocks/ETFs0 comments
What are support and resistance (S/R)? In technical analysis (i.e., the study of the charts), they are very important levels where the price is more likely to “bounce”.
A support is a zone that the price may hit from above and then bounce up. A resistance is a zone that the price may hit from below and then bounce down. There are three main types of support and resistance:
1. Horizontal: S/R are horizontal zones
2. Trendline: S/R are zones with a slope
3. Indicators (e.g., Bollinger bands, moving averages): S/R are determined by some indicators.
You can find below some examples.
Horizontal S/R
Trendline S/R
Moving average S/R
There are many ways to use S/R, not only to decide when to enter with a long or short position but also where to take profit for an open position. If you would like to know more about S/R, and how to identify them automatically, have a look at the following videos. | <urn:uuid:e761a981-64a2-4275-a0a2-9df0197115c4> | http://redart.naumai.me/2019/02/15/support-resistance/ | en | 0.918411 | 0.02607 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Alcoholism is a danger to society. It is a heavy cost personally and to society as a whole. The annual cost in the United States because of alcohol abuse is hundreds of billions of dollars overall. That is an insane amount of money.
For someone who abuses alcohol, this can lead to a lot of problems. Problems such as health issues like liver problems or cancer. There can be mental or behavioral issues where there weren’t before.
There are injuries one can cause. Some families can be ruined. Alcohol abuse can lead to issues with finances or jobs or even the law. All of this can take a toll on your life and your wallet.
It even leads to a higher cost of healthcare.
Prevention is important because alcohol abuse can be long term. It can affect everyone around them in a negative way.
Here are some ways to help prevent alcohol abuse.
What Are High-Risk Drinking Problems?
Recognizing patterns of high-risk drinking is essential. This is because it can be nipped in the bud before it gets too severe if people realize.
There are alcohol guidelines now written by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse And Alcoholism. (NIAAA)
These guidelines stay one shouldn’t drink more than 14 standard drinks a week for men. This also says no more than four drinks a day for men and no more than 3 per day for women. By week women should have no more than 7 drinks.
If someone drinks past these guidelines, they are at risk for alcohol addiction.
It is hoped that these guidelines can help people realize if they are heading toward a problem.
Youth Prevention Programs
Alcohol is the primary choice for young people in the United States. It is their drug of choice. To try and lessen underage drinking means there need to be changed to their community.
There needs to be prevention so that people don’t start their bad habits early on. This means there should be more enforcement of drinking age laws. Advertisements have also been shown to help.
Increasing Taxes
Increasing taxes on alcohol has actually reduced drinking because it made alcohol more expensive.
It works for heavy drinkers and the regular populations. It is especially effective for young adults. This is because it makes alcohol more expensive. People are less likely to want to pay more for it. | <urn:uuid:7b51c358-f0f0-4a62-bd63-1e96d67ec8df> | http://www.seventh-dimension.org/prevention/ | en | 0.961279 | 0.493337 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Sep 7, 2012
Paperdoll Block
REBECCA goes to stay
at GRAMMY'S house
for two weeks....she
learns how to do
YO-YO's...and to
stitch a hexagon
We lived in Arkansas, and my mother wanted Rebecca to fly to Montreal to visit her for a couple of weeks. I was just too nervous to let Rebecca fly by herself when she was only 9 years old. Consequently, she never went by herself but still had lots of good visits with her grandmother.
Rebecca has her grandmother's drawing and painting talent :)
Isn't the little hexagon adorable? It's a l/2" size. The little yoyo's are the "extra small" size. The skeins of embroidery floss is really floss, embroidered to look like real skeins! The little embroidery of the dog was very difficult, because it was so teeny.....Don't you love the red tomato pincushion? The pins with the different colored heads are so real looking, they are french knots. I love the red mary jane shoes, too. Don't they bring back memories?
post signature
1. Wow! I can't get over the details! I have often thought of doing some miniature quilts, but this is taking it to a whole other level! Just adorable...will Rebecca be the lucky recipient of this quilt when it's finished?
2. That block is simply amazing!! Who made it, your mom? What was it made into? Simply beaautifu!! | <urn:uuid:555cde37-5f7d-41d7-8763-a1ca67bfaffd> | https://dreamquiltcreate.blogspot.com/2012/09/paperdoll-block.html | en | 0.958197 | 0.03374 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
1 Introduction
Second sun for people is education, Plato.
The access to education for the developed world is an unrestricted right for all young generations. The provision on educating a person is usually undertaken from institutions, public or private. The school, as an official body of education, provides a young person with the formal qualifications, not only for his/her personal development and education but also for his/her social integration into the society. In addition to knowledge, skills and competences, the educational process provides young people with values, such as freedom and social justice, which ensure the well-being of a person.
In the history of humanity, the right to education was not always a protected asset and it is not even provided equally to all countries of the world. According to the UNICEF Worldwide Organization, in the 21st century, 264 million children and adolescents do not have the opportunity to enter or finish school or have some form of education. The protection of the right to education was introduced globally in 1948 by the United Nations. This organization was created in order to protect international peace and the institutionalization of appropriate behavior and justice for all people. Through agreements, declarations, accords and organizations, the world community is trying to preserve the right for all people to have access to education.
The concepts of education, human rights and the UN will be analyzed in the next sub-section. Then, in the second section, we will witness a brief historical review of human rights as a whole. The second section is divided into two parts: the first refers to human rights in the history of humanity, and the second covers the latest history and analyzes the recognition of human rights worldwide. In the third section, we will focus on the right to education within the United Nations, while in the sub-section, there will be a parallel comparison between the ‘right to education’ and the ‘education of the right’. In the last section we will summarize the mechanisms for preserving the right to education.
1.1. Conceptual references
One of the undisputed human rights is that of education. The concept of education is broad, conceptually related to learning and ‘paidia’, but it is interdependent in terms of content. Education, as an institution-based learning, is defined as a systemic process of passing on knowledge and experience, as well as, the cultivation and development of a person’s skills and abilities in schools, in order to become competent in professional and other subsequent obligations. The concept of education, however, also includes the socialization of young people and the formation of values.
It is defined in the “Dictionary of Sociology of Education”:
Education is a form of specialized socialization usually practiced by non-family actors and has as its content the transmission of knowledge, skills and forms of energy or behavior.
Additionally, D.J. O’Connor emphasizes that one of the purposes of education should be:
ethical elevation of the person, development of moral conscience and morality.
Education is one of the human rights. Human rights are ethical principles that set specific standards of human behavior and are usually protected as legitimate rights under national and international laws. We also perceive them as: commonly perceived inalienable fundamental rights that every individual is entitled from the time of his/her birth, simply because he/she is a human being. Human rights are fundamental, inviolable and absolute, and therefore no man can be deprived of them. They are universal, so they are possessed by all people, and are indivisibly and interrelated, meaning that all rights are connected and equal to each other. Since 1945, immediately after the end of the Second World War, it has been formally and internationally established that all people have the same and equal rights. International human rights protection has been established by the Charter of the United Nations, based on the fact that human rights are one of the main aims of the new, post-war, international society.
The United Nations is the international organization for cooperation in International Law, Security, Economic Development and Political Equality. Founded in 1945 and since 2011, it has 193 members; almost all countries of the world are official members. The ideals of the organization were formulated in the preamble of his proposed charter:
We, the peoples of the United Nations, are determined to save future generations from the scourge of war, which twice in the course of our lives has brought untold sorrow to the human race“.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights drafted and entered into force in 1948, is the international and pledged agreement of all countries on human rights and additionally it is included in the constitutional laws of the democratic countries.
2. Historical review of human rights
Human rights were recognized as an issue of international interest after the Second World War, but they are a crucial asset in everyday life for all people worldwide. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights also called the International Magna Card, states in its preamble that: recognition of the dignity that is inherent in all members of the human family and their equal and inalienable rights is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. This declaration was the epitome of two world wars and an appeal to people around the world for freedom and justice.
Multiple and specialized international treaties and covenants were drafted and signed after 1945 to cover and interpret human rights. The principles of these declarations have been incorporated into most of the constitutions of the countries that are members of the UN. More contracts are under study and drafting, as the purpose of international organizations is to ensure that every person is protected, in every region of the world. Besides, all societies, either in their written or oral tradition, promoted human rights, organizing systems of justice and establishing rules on appropriate behavior.
2.1 Foreword on Human Rights
There are traces of laws on human rights, from the beginning of mankind, in written texts or oral deliverables. Although many societies were governed by rules of conduct and justice, groups of people were usually excluded because of their origin, gender, economic or political classification. According to several modern researchers the concept of right is very recent; McIntyre argues that: there is no word that attributes the notion of “right” to any language before 1400. Nevertheless, concepts such as justice, political legitimacy and human well-being are covered by the definition that modern scholars give to human rights.
Human rights were often defined in religious books, of all religions. Concepts and codes of conduct for human duties were given at Hindus, at the Buddha teachings, from Tao Te Ching, at the Confessions of the Confucius, as well as, at the later sacred texts such as the Bible and the Quran. However, codes of conduct are also met even in earlier public texts. Our most ancient written and legal codes were discovered in Mesopotamia, with the earliest of the Uhr-Nammos Modern Code (about 2050 BC), and the Hammurabis Code (about 1780 BC) which regulates a range of issues such as the rights of women, children and slaves. Also noteworthy is the finding of the Cyrus cylinder (539 BC) in which religious freedom and racial equality was established in ancient Babylonia.
The most recent texts, conditions and declarations specialize clearly in human rights. Some of the most remarkable ones, on which many of the modern texts were based, are: The Magna Card (1215) and the Law of Reference (1628) in England, the Declaration of Human and Citizen Rights (1789) in France and the Declaration of Human Rights (1791) in the United States. Although in these texts human rights issues were enforced, minority groups such as women, groups of different color, religion, political and economic identity, were excluded. At the end of the 19th and the 20th century, we observe the first attempts to achieve equal and common rule-making.
2.2 Recognizing human rights at a global level
The two world wars in the 20th century left a mark to humanity and led to the creation of international human rights agreements. The League of Nations, founded in 1919, was the initial attempt to reunite the international community after the First World War. Immediately after the end of the Second World War, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Paris by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 proclaimed, that all human beings have been born free and equal in dignity and rights, which is the fundamental basis for the safeguarding of human rights.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was part of the Charter of the United Nations, which came into force on 24 October 1945. The United Nations Charter is considered to be the focal point in the development of the enforcement mechanisms for the protection of human rights. The rights enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and were finalized in the International Declaration of Human Rights, which consists of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (ICDPR) in 1947, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in 1966 and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Since then, various contracts have been signed and are known as human rights declarations. One of these is the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which is also the first ever, internationally and legally binding regulation on child rights.
3. The right to education
The first reference for the right to education was made by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 in Article 26. In subsequent conventions, education and protection have a key role to play. In the International Convention on Economic, Social and Political Rights (1966), we find Article 13; the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), Article 29; the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination (1965), Article 7 and finally the Declaration of the Vienna Convention on Human Rights Education. In addition, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) aim to promote a culture of peace and human and sustainable development and focus its attention on the provision of education to all.
3.1 Definition and description of the right to education
One of the fundamental principles of human rights is that of education. Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights consists of three paragraphs describing and analyzing this right to education. Additionally, it gives instructions for exercising and preserving its values. The first paragraph states that the right to education in service, and in access, is an inalienable right of all people. The second section, analyzes the aims of education and, above all, the respect on human rights, equality for all people and preservation of world peace. The last paragraph refers to the right of parents to choose the appropriate education for their children. It has been established that education is fundamental, decisive and catalytic, for the course of humanity, as it promotes thinking and searching, develops solidarity and cooperation. These factors lead each society to progress, growth, prosperity and peace.
3.2 Right to education and education of the human rights
The first carrier of human rights is children. Therefore, their education is considered an inalienable right, but also necessary for the understanding, solidarity and dissemination of all rights deriving from international conventions. The rights to education and the education to the human rights are two different concepts, which are interdependent. The direct relationship of the two concepts, according to the UN, is clarified, apart from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to all the conformity-related conventions on education. Article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, emphasizes on the need for education:
The States Parties recognize the right to education of all persons and, on the other hand, agree that education must … enhance respect for human rights.
The right to education enables all people to acquire it, but through education they acquire the conscience to preserve their right to it, as well as, to respect human rights as a whole.
4. Mechanisms to safeguard the right to education
Most UN conventions also provide methods for oversight mechanisms. The main bodies today, which safeguard the right to education, are the Human Rights Council and the Human Rights Committee. In addition, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has undertaken to protect the world peace through education, natural and social sciences and culture. Human rights observers are also International Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) on human rights such as Amnesty International, the Human Rights Watch, the International Human Rights Office and the International Federation of Human Rights. These organizations monitor issues and problematic situations around the world and promote their opinion.
However, the main representative of the preservation of the right to education is United Nations International Emergency Fund for Children, UNICEF, created by the United Nations General Assembly in 1946. The purpose of the organization is to protect children’s rights by acting directly in problematic areas and by organizing development programs. The centerpiece of this organization is education. According to its goals, UNICEF is working around the world to support quality learning for every girl and boy, especially for those most at risk of falling behind.
1. Unicef n.d. https://www.unicef.org/stories/learning-experience-1980-1988 (accessed April 15, 2019).
2. United Nations. n.d. https://www.un.org/en/ (accessed April 20, 2019).
3. Wikdictionaries n.d. https://el.wiktionary.org/ (accessed May 2, 2019).
4. Wikipedia n.d. https://el.wikipedia.org/ (accessed April 20, 2019).
5. United Nations Information Center. n.d. https://www.unric.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=18 (accessed April 20, 2019).
6. House of History. n.d. https://historia-europa.ep.eu/sites/default/files/Discover/EducatorsTeachers/ActivitiesForYourClassroom/hr-resource-2-el_0.pdf (accessed April 15, 2019).
7. Tsaousis, D.G., General Dictionary of Sociology. (Gutenberg, Athens, 1989).
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Micronutrients Research
A randomised double blind placebo controlled trial investigating the behavioural effects of vitamin mineral and n 3 fatty acid supplementation
A randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial investigating the behavioral effects of vitamin, mineral and n-3 fatty acid supplementation in typically developing adolescent schoolchildren.
Nutrient deficiencies have been implicated in anti-social behaviour in schoolchildren; hence, correcting them may improve sociability. We therefore tested the effects of vitamin, mineral and n-3 supplementation on behaviour in a 12-week double-blind randomised placebo-controlled trial in typically developing UK adolescents aged 13-16 years (n 196). Changes in erythrocyte n-3 and 6 fatty acids and some mineral and vitamin levels were measured and compared with behavioural changes, using Conners’ teacher ratings and school disciplinary records. At baseline, the children’s PUFA (n-3 and n-6), vitamin and mineral levels were low, but they improved significantly in the group treated with n-3, vitamins and minerals (P=0·0005). On the Conners disruptive behaviour scale, the group given the active supplements improved, whereas the placebo group worsened (F=5·555, d=0·35; P=0·02). The general level of disciplinary infringements was low, thus making it difficult to obtain improvements. However, throughout the school term school disciplinary infringements increased significantly (by 25 %; Bayes factor=115) in both the treated and untreated groups. However, when the subjects were split into high and low baseline infringements, the low subset increased their offences, whereas the high-misbehaviour subset appeared to improve after treatment. But it was not possible to determine whether this was merely a statistical artifact. Thus, when assessed using the validated and standardised Conners teacher tests (but less clearly when using school discipline records in a school where misbehaviour was infrequent), supplementary nutrition might have a protective effect against worsening behaviour.
Tammam JD, Steinsaltz D, Bester DW, Semb-Andenaes T, Stein JF:
Br J Nutr 115(2) ;361-373, 2016 26573368
| <urn:uuid:5ea8cb63-6d46-4aab-a512-31c1b37ffb75> | https://micronutrientsresearch.com/2019/06/12/a-randomized-double-blind-placebo-controlled-trial-investigating-the-behavioral-effects-of-vitamin-mineral-and-n-3-fatty-acid-supplementation-in-typically-developing-adolescent-schoolchildren/ | en | 0.922872 | 0.098356 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Follows the the Cambridge International Course in Geography for Year 11 - 13 students (IGCSE & A-Level). Geography has five themes that help humans comprehend different aspects of the field and how they relate to human life. Movement in geography refers to how people, goods, and ideas are dynamic and constantly changing. Territoire en Mouvement est une revue de géographie et aménagement-urbanisme éditée depuis 2006 par l’Université de Lille. The ways things move are different in every country, especially people. For Teachers.
These themes provide an educational resource for teachers to categorize and summarize geography. _ Movement is the way you transport something from one place to another place. There are several reasons for why people may want to migrate. 5 Themes of Geography. The five themes of geography are location, place, human-environment interaction, movement, and region. Migration is the movement of people from one area to another within a country (internal migration) or from one country to another country (international migration). A glacier (US: / ˈ ɡ l eɪ ʃ ər / or UK: / ˈ ɡ l æ s i ər, ˈ ɡ l eɪ s i ər /) is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight. See Also: Overviews & Huge Sites. Accueil. Sympathy with or conformity to modern ideas, practices, or standards. n. 1. a. Humans constantly migrating from one place to another.
Free Geography Presentations in PowerPoint format.
Modern thought, character, or practice. 5 Themes of Geography (video) Interactive Concept Map - 5 themes.
The 5 themes of geography are location, place, human, movement, and regions. These were defined in 1984 by the National Council for Geographic Education and the Association of American Geographers to facilitate and organize the teaching of geography in the K-12 classroom. Humans interacting on the Earth. Chercher. In terms of geography, the term "movement" pertains to the interconnections among various places on Earth. The five themes were initially approved and included in curriculums in 1984 by the Association of American Geographers.
Lesson Plans & Classroom Activities: 5 themes of geography. Saturday, August 31, 2013. Modern movement synonyms, Modern movement pronunciation, Modern movement translation, English dictionary definition of Modern movement. The concepts of location, human-environment interaction, place, region, and movement make up this list. Territory in movement Journal of geography and planning.
Langue du site. These can be classified into push and pull factors. Présentation. What Is Movement in Geography? Ideas can be moved by cellphones, pagers, e-mail, letters, etc. Ask Mr Donn - Q&A Quiz about geography, 5 themes . Push Factors Lots of Geography Interactive Games.
For students by students and free to all.
A complete blog of all things geography for year 11-13. Some ways people move are planes, cars, and boats, but there are obviously many more.
Movement is one of the components of the five themes of geography, developed by the Association of American Geographers and the National Council for Geographic Education in 1984. Goods are most times move by cargo ship and airplanes. b. You can move ideas, people, and goods. 2. | <urn:uuid:c1407573-9669-45c4-a7f8-7deab6c12409> | https://novopas.pl/archive.php?id=Movement-Definition-geography-2b0d38 | en | 0.902758 | 0.070228 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
We've moved!
Project information
Lifelines for Life
Spinal Cord Injured people want support from someone who knows exactly what it's like and how they get on with their life.
Lifelines for Life will extend the work of our Peer Support Officers, all of them spinal cord
injured themselves, so they can give people that emotional support and advice.
1 -2 years
Charity information: Spinal Injuries Association
Spinal Injuries Association logo
• Need
Many newly injured people are discharged from hospitals to homes which haven't been adapted to their new needs. This leads to isolation and some people being confined to their homes. Our Peer Support team will visit people in their homes and provide them with the practical support that they need.
Lifelines for Life will extend the work of our Peer Support Officers, all of them spinal cord injured themselves. By extending the reach of the team we will be able to cover a network that covers the whole country and visit people in their homes.
• Aims
Aim 1
To provide a network of Peer Support that covers the whole country.
» Expand the number of hours they can work to increase their reach.
What success will look like
The Peer Support team provide monthly reports on the number of individuals they meet and the hours of support they provide.
• Impact
The Peer Support team will increase their coverage of the country meaning that more newly injured people are supported in not only the early days of injury but in the years afterwards as well.
We can measure this by having regular contact with individuals and looking at their achievements and progress from being newly injured onwards.
There may be a risk that despite the increase in reach there are some places that one Peer Support officer may not be able to access. We have dealt with this and the reach will be shared amongst other members of the team if there was the need.
We will be able to provide regular updates on the number of people supported by the Peer Support Officers around the country and the number of hours spent supporting spinal cord injured people.
• Budget
Budget - Project Cost: £38,158
Loading graph....
Amount Heading Description
£30,172 Salaries Salaries of team and volunteer costs
£7,986 Travel and equipment Travel costs of team members and equipment
Current Funding / Pledges
Source Amount
Spring Appeal 2015 £14,000 Guaranteed
Corporate Sponorship £82,000 Guaranteed
Charitable Trusts and Statutory Funding £117,119 Guaranteed
• Background
The project will take place all over England, Wales and Northern Ireland where the Peer Support team have existing coverage.
Newly injured spinal cord injured people, family and friends will benefit from this project. This will then continue to support these people throughout their lives.
• Why Us?
Why Us?
SIA is the leading spinal cord injuries charity providing support to spinal cord injured people. All of our Peer Support team are spinal cord injured themselves and so are in the best position to provide that much needed advice and support when it is most needed.
Read more about the Charity running this project.
Peer Support Team
The team provides support and advice to spinal cord injured people and their friends and family in hospital and/or at home. | <urn:uuid:8d9674c3-2476-426c-814f-46c1f235bfb4> | https://secure.thebiggive.org.uk/projects/view/23498/aims | en | 0.962854 | 0.019617 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
BCS 315: Advanced UNIX
This course further develops the knowledge of computer operating systems using UNIX. It will augment the knowledge gained in BCS 215. Topics to be covered include an in-depth examination of the design of the UNIX system, using advanced text processing utilities, advanced Shell programming and an introduction to the setup and administration of UNIX networks. Credits: 3.00
BCS 215 with a grade of C or better.
• Nemeth, Snyder, Hein, Whaley, Morreale, McClain, Jachim, Schweikert, & Oetiker - UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook, Fourth Edition Prentice Hall -ISBN - 10013148005-7, 139780131480056 | <urn:uuid:e2b168c4-e2f5-482e-9863-882db706e933> | https://www.farmingdale.edu/courses/outlines/bcs315.shtml | en | 0.684026 | 0.019038 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Bodyboarding is fun for all ages and skill levels, making it a great summertime water activity! Bodyboarding is similar to surfing as you have a board in the water that you ride on, but there are some subtle differences which make this a more accessible water sport for those who are not confident enough to surf, or for people who want a different experience in the water. Bodyboarding can take you through the water in an entirely different way, and you have less chance of falling off the board as you are laying down and gripping the board instead of standing up and balancing.
The best bodyboards are made from high-quality materials that allow you to propel through the waters with ease. A good board will get you into the water quickly without a lot of training and allow you to maneuver through the waves without running into a lot of trouble. Bodyboarding is a relatively simple activity, but as with any water sport, there are a lot of things to think about when it comes time to purchase your equipment. We have scoured the outer reaches of the oceans to bring you everything you need to know about bodyboards and bodyboarding.
Check out our best bodyboard reviews below to find our list of the best boogie boards on the market in 2018.
How To Choose The Best Bodyboard – Buying Guide
Just like best surfboards and skimboards, bodyboards are a combination of features.
Bodyboards have a specific shape that makes them able to ride waves. If the board is too small, you will be too low in the water, and your arms and legs will be dangling. When the board is too big, control can be an issue. The more waves you ride, the more you will have an understanding of the best bodyboard size for you. You want the board to fit comfortably under your arm so that you can carry around on the beach with you. It should be comfortable enough for you to run out into the water with. You should be able to get your hand under the lower rail of the board. A good indicator that you have the correct size of the board is when your arm is almost hanging straight at your side when you are carrying it.
For easy sizing, you can measure from the ground to your belly button. This is the length of the board you should be looking for. This is for general sizing, but that does not mean that you are going to get the perfect size of bodyboard by measuring in this way. Look for the weight capacity of the bodyboard and base your measurements on that too.
Wave size
For smaller waves, a larger bodyboard is best. A bigger boogie board will give you more stability in the water, and the length will mean that you can ride over these small waves without losing control of the bodyboard as you will not be thrown around. Larger waves will require you to get a smaller bodyboard. Instead of stability, you will need control and turning ability. A large bodyboard will be thrown around too much by a big wave, so you need the control and agility of a small bodyboard.
If you are a beginner, then we would recommend starting on small waves with a large board to get used to maneuvering a board through the water. Once you have mastered the basics, then you can move onto a smaller board which requires more of your control and core strength.
Prone Vs. Dropknee
Once you have your bodyboard sized, you should think about how you are going to ride your board. There are two main ways in which you can ride your bodyboard: prone and drop-knee. When you ride prone, you ride on your stomach. With a drop-knee position, you ride with one knee on the bodyboard, the foot connected to the knee on the tail of the board, and your other foot flat on the nose of the bodyboard.
If you are only just starting out with bodyboarding, then we recommend that you start out riding prone and find a board which is suited to prone riding. It is easier to ride prone, and you will find it easier to navigate the waves. Once you feel more confident in the water, you can continue to rode prone or you can switch to drop-knee.
Dropknee is not a common position, but there are a few bodyboarders who ride in this position. It gives a compromise between surfing and bodyboarding. This position makes it harder to control the bodyboard, but when you do master it, you can maneuver through the water better than you are able to in a prone position. There are boards which are suited to this style of bodyboarding, but we would recommend not starting with this position.
The materials used to make these boards will determine, not only how long they will last, but also how they will handle in the water. The most common material used in modern bodyboard design is polypropylene foam. It is stronger and lighter than polyethylene foam, which has been used for many years. Polypropylene will cost more as it is the newest tech, but it is worth it in the long run. Some companies are using a combination of these two to make a less expensive, but still responsive board.
We would recommend buying a board made completely from polypropylene foam as it will be stronger and lighter. If you are serious about bodyboarding, then the investment is worth it for the length of time the board will last you.
This is a piece of material that creates added flex and stiffness to the best bodyboard. It flows along the entire length of the bodyboard and makes it more durable. It is usually found on larger boards to keep the integrity and strength high. Look for stringers which come as one single piece. Stringers should also be crafted from durable materials which can hold up to impacts and abrasion as this part of your board is going to take the brunt of the damage.
The shape of the tail can influence how the bodyboard moves through the water. A crescent is the most common shape and will give you a more comfortable and controlled ride. It hugs your body and adds stability in rough water.
If the tail is wider, then it will be more stable. The traditional crescent shape has been around for so long because it is tried and tested. Looking for more speed? A smaller tail will propel you through the water faster.
The rocker of your bodyboard refers to his curved it is on the bottom. The more rocker your board has, the more of a curve it has from the nose to the tail. More rocker means more maneuverability but less speed. Less rocker gives you the opposite. The choice will depend on whether you value speed over maneuverability or whether you want to meet somewhere in the middle.
Q: What Is A Bodyboard?
A bodyboard is a board which is used for the sport of bodyboarding. Bodyboarding is a water sport in which you surf water and waves with the help of a board. The aim is to paddle out into the waves and then ride a wave back to the shore. When bodyboarding differs from surfing is in the design of the board and the position of the rider. When you surf, you are in a standing position, and you use your balance to stay on the board as you ride it. With bodyboarding, the most common position is prone. This means that you will be laying on the board. In this position, you grip the bodyboard with your hands and use your bodyweight to navigate through the water.
A bodyboard has a lot in common with a surfboard, but there are a lot of key differences. Bodyboards are very short when you compare them to other water sports boards. They are typically less than 4 ft in length. Most modern boards have a foam core which is light an buoyant. There is usually a plastic bottom which is durable and will hold up to abrasions an impacts. The top of the bodyboard is commonly made out of a harder foam that the core. This gives you a solid platform to stand on, which is also comfortable. Most of the best bodyboards do not need any traction pads as you will be laying on it. Many boards will also have stringers on the side to offer more protection and rigidity, and we would recommend looking for a board with good stringers on the side.
Q: How Should I Clean My Bodyboard?
Your board should be cleaned after every visit to the water. If you do not wash your board, then the salt can begin to eat away at it, and it will only be a matter of time before you have to replace it. You should not need to wash any dirt off of your board, but if you do, you can do so with some warm soapy water and a sponge.
The main thing you will need to do after being in the water is to rinse your board with warm fresh water. There are two main reasons for this. You want to wash any sand away which may have gotten caught up in the seams of the board, and you want to wash away any salt which may have collected. Salt and sand can eat away at your board and cause damage. By getting rid of both, you are prolonging the life of your board.
The other thing which you should do when you are cleaning your bodyboard is to check the board for damage. Your bodyboard will get scratched up and dented over time, but that is nothing to worry about. What you will need to fix are any scratches or dents which go into the core of your board. The quicker you can fix your best bodyboard, the smaller the fix will be.
Q: Where Should I Store My Bodyboard?
Your body board should be stored out of direct sunlight, and in a cool and dry location. A garage is a perfect place to store your body board as there will no sunlight to break it down and not moisture to get into the board. Your bodyboard should be stored on a rack if possible. This will ensure that your board does not warp or bend. You should never rest your board on the tail or nose, or it can put undue pressure on the end of your board.
Q: What Is The Difference Between Bodyboard and Surfboard?
The main difference is the size of the board. Surfboards range from 5 ft and up while bodyboards are generally under 4 ft. If you were to see the best bodyboard and a surfboard side by side, the bodyboard would look like a short surfboard.
Q: How To Bodyboard?
The first thing to do is to wax your board. This will give your body grip when you are in the water and will stop you from coming off the bodyboard when you hit any waves. If your bodyboard has fins, then you should attach them. You should also attach the leash to the board and yourself. You are now ready to go into the water.
As you enter the water, it is easier to move through the water if you are facing the beach and walking backward. When you get waist deep, turn and place the bodyboard in the water in front of you. Holding the nose of the bodyboard, lie on the board with your chest on the top half of the bodyboard. Kick your feet to move through the water.
When a wave gets to you, push the nose of the board down to dive under the wave and not be pushed back by it. The more you do this, the deeper you will realize you can go. When you are ready to board back to the beach, look out for a good wave to catch. Turn your board to face the beach and begin kicking your feet to match the speed of the wave. As the wave catches you, allow it to carry you back towards the shore.
As you get more confident pidgin waves, you can move yourself side to side on the wave by changing the position of your hands on the board and your body position on the board. The more you practice, the better you will get.
Globo Surf Overview
Bodyboarding is a growing sport. If you go down to your local beach, you can probably find at least one person out in the water with a boogie board. The only thing missing from that picture is you. It is time for you to grab the best bodyboard and get out there with them.
The great thing about bodyboarding is that the sport really is open to anyone. Surfing is amazing, but it can take a lot of hard work and dedication to get really good at it. With bodyboarding, you can get out in the water almost as soon as you have a board and get boarding at a decent level without having to put in a lot of time.
We love that kids can get out into the water with a bodyboard. Not only that, but it is a fun and exciting way for adults to enjoy the water and get some exercise. When you break it down, bodyboarding is a simple water sport. You should now have all the information you need to make an informed choice about the best bodyboard you need.
All that is left to do it to get out there in the water and start your adventure.
More Surf Reviews:
New to Bodyboard or have a Bodyboard on our list? Let us know how you like it in the comment section below.
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Monday, March 4, 2013
Water Heater and Solid State Relays Part 2
Part 1 of this is here <link>
I wandered out into the garage to admire my new SSR controlled water heater and noticed that the indicator led was on. It was during the period when the water heater should have been turned off and that can't be allowed to happen. I drug out the ladder, voltmeter, and screwdriver and dug into it. There was no power getting to the SSR control circuit, so it shouldn't have been on, but the indicator led showed there was voltage on the output. Sure enough, there was a little over 100V on the output. Could this brand new SSR have failed already? Fortunately, everything was fine. I just didn't read enough about the devices. They have transient suppression on them that is built right into the module. This transient suppression will allow a little voltage to be seen on an open circuit. So, the water heater had shut off by opening the switch that operates the heating element. The SSR was off, but the suppression circuitry was allowing a little voltage through. Nothing to worry about, but how to test it to be sure?
See, strange readings and unexpected results often happen when you're dealing with 240VAC circuits that use power at 15 - 25 amps. Leakage of a few milliamps is expected and allowed for in this kind of circuitry for various suppression techniques. The relay that used to do this job was a real mechanical open circuit, not a semiconductor.
Testing turned out to be simple; just drain enough hot water out of the tank to kick the mechanical heater switch, and then measure the voltage while the SSR was off. Sure enough, when the element switch closed, the voltage on the output dropped to virtually nothing. Everything was actually fine. The little led indicator just doesn't draw enough current to suck it down to zero and will continue to glow. I also noticed that the led was dim when the SSR was off and bright when the SSR allowed current through. It's hard to tell the difference between the two levels, and I may look into the indicator at some point and see about correcting this. It may just need a resistor in line or something.
No, I didn't waste the hot water. I needed a bath anyway.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Water Heater and Solid State Relays
A few times I mentioned the solar water heater I have. It works great and keep me in free hot water most of the time. Yes, it's the desert and during the summer the coldest the water gets is lukewarm, but I get 140F water out of the heater for zero continuing expense except for the few days where it is overcast.
Those overcast days present a problem. A couple of times I turned the power on to the water heater and used the helper coil to heat the water because the sun just didn't come out. Once, it pushed my power bill up because an X10 controller didn't react to the turn off command. This prompted me to hook the water heater power to the garage controller I have. This worked fine. I'm able to send an XBee signal and turn on the water heater. I also have code in the garage controller that shuts the heater down during peak periods. It's working really great except...
The contactor I have started to buzz. It works fine, but there is a constant 60Hz buzz coming from it any time it's on. The first time I heard it, I had to hunt for a while to figure out what it was. Then, as the days went by, it got more and more annoying. For those of you that have no idea what a contactor is, here's a picture of the one I have.
They're really nothing much more than a really big relay. They have specially built contacts to survive high current switching and lots of places to hook wires. They are probably all over your house and you don't know it. Appliances have them, some fireplaces, environmental heating, etc. Most of them run on a 24V coil and last a really long time. In my particular case, I used a 110V coil because I was originally switching it with an X10 appliance module. Unfortunately, the 110V units tend to make noise as they age. They're not wearing out, they just start to rattle at 60Hz and drive you nuts. There is a solution, use a solid state relay instead.
So, I got online and started looking for an SSR that could handle 25A at 240VAC. There's a lot of them out there, but I need two of them, one for each leg of the power. That made converting expensive, but I kept looking and found a SSR for 240 VAC three phase. This gives me three of them in a package and I only have to use two of them. I don't know if I'll ever need the spare, but it's there if I need it. Here's the device I bought:
Notice that is has inputs for three circuits and one control for all of them. This is exactly what I wanted. So, when it came in, I took the entire control assembly off the wall and rebuilt it essentially from scratch. Here's what it looks like on the wall:
Simple isn't it? Just one device with the control signal coming in the top and hooking up on the left side. It only takes a little over 4VDC to turn it on and it doesn't make any noise at all. Since there are no contacts, it should last forever just sitting there working it's little heart out.
I probably should have used one of these to begin with, but I didn't have a clue XBees even existed when I started out on these projects. I was convinced by the advertising and various articles on the web that X10 would do the job.
It's sad that I was that naive.
The followup to this posting is here <link>. | <urn:uuid:a376f7fa-5026-4d19-9cb2-52931eb53bfe> | http://www.desert-home.com/2013/03/ | en | 0.972011 | 0.264638 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
topleft > Services > Governance Technology >
Legal Resources | Education Code | EC 56476
Interagency agreement
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The Governor or designee of the Governor, in accordance with Section 1412(a)(12) of Title 20 of the United States Code and Section 300.154 of Title 34 of the Code of Federal Regulations, shall ensure that each agency under the Governor's jurisdiction enters into an interagency agreement with the Superintendent to ensure that all services that are needed to ensure a free appropriate public education are provided.
(Amended by Stats. 2008, Ch. 179, Sec. 67.) | <urn:uuid:1f6c154b-ee2a-4482-8ce5-4705d434a1f9> | http://www.gamutonline.net/district/atascadero/displayPolicy/286691/0 | en | 0.839228 | 0.461711 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Ghost River GIR :: GIR An Excessive Storyboard :: 2015-2018
Ghost River GIR, forthcoming, is a video work of speculative fiction centered around a city and its virtual double. It reimagines the urban as porous, interspecies and terraformed- both ancient and impossible. It is a search for visual and aural forms that can relate the strange, yet common, sense of touching the future in so many surfaces, and of deep changes occurring in front of our eyes.
Intended to culminate in a 30 minute film, GIR is being built and released in pieces, iterations and investigations in multiple media. These include collage, video and animation, sound, actions and writing. The work engages though an amplified tension between the experiential and the speculative, pointing out their material co-existence.
As excessive storyboard, digital and photographic collage, video still, watercolour, sheen and experimental material, manifest potential scenarios towards the video. These iterations explore interspecies becoming, camouflage, new materials, climate change and the Anthropocene, terraforming and the phenomenon of the megatropolis, all themes nuanced in GIR. | <urn:uuid:1b9568c2-69c1-43b9-bdc1-1b761cde2dd5> | http://www.orphandriftarchive.com/neo-future/ghost-river-gir/ | en | 0.91165 | 0.082832 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
F.A.Q. - Frequently Asked Questions
1. General
2. Creating An Account
3. Getting Approved To Bid
4. Bidding
5. Bidding Screen
6. Payment/Shipping/Pickup
7. Technical Problems
Getting Approved To Bid
Q. I already have an account with Grand Slam Club/Ovis. Why do I have to Get Approved To Bid in every auction?^
A. Bidders have to get approved to bid for each auction they are interested due to differing requirements for each auction. Also this ensures that bidder information is up to date and valid for the auction in question.
Many auctions only require your address and phone number, but some may ask you for a credit card, driver’s license number, etc in order for you to be approved for bidding. The auctioneer has full discretion on whether to approve or deny you for bidding in their auctions.
Usually you will be automatically approved on the spot, but sometimes the auctioneer will need to review your information manually before approving you. You will be notified by email once you have been approved.
Q. Why did I not get approved to bid?^
A. The auctioneer will approve/deny bidders at their own discretion. If you have been denied access to bidding you may contact the auctioneer via telephone or e-mail to inquire about it.
Q. I can't Get Approved To Bid in any auctions, what's wrong?^
A. If you are having difficulty getting approved to bid, please contact technical support and we will walk you through the process. | <urn:uuid:c259fc41-fc97-4638-a9ce-d3f983620686> | https://auctions.slamquest.org/help.aspx?p=faq&s=gettingapproved | en | 0.940781 | 0.137617 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
#Lockdownwiththejohars: Karan Johar's kids turn their almirah into a bunk bed
Ever since the lockdown began, filmmaker Karan Johar has been entertaining his fans with the most adorable and fun videos of his two little munchkins Yash and Roohi. The two siblings are always upto some mischief and are winning over the internet! In a recent video shared by the filmmaker, the two turn their toy space into bunk beds while Karan can be heard pulling their leg and asking why they're sleeping there when they've been provided with a nice sleeping space. While the amused father continues to talk, his adorable kids think their father is talking nonsense as they agree when asked if their 'dadda' is talking nonsense!28 May 2020, 11:46PM IST| 4255 views| Source :
POLLShould hostels be converted into Covid Care Centres?
Pick your favorite and click vote
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Five ways that gay couples lose big on taxes
1. Shuffling down the tax rate. In many relationships, one spouse earns more than the other. Sometimes, the higher income could -for an individual--mean a much higher tax rate. But a married heterosexual married couple -by filing jointly-- can, in essence, shuffle off the higher tax rate on the larger income, says Eshghi, "because the Married Filing Jointly category allows for income splitting so the higher income doesn't get bumped up to the higher tax rate." Because gay married couples can't filed as Married Filing Jointly, she says, "they lose the benefit of being able to pay less taxes and, in fact, pay more than similarly situated opposite sex couples would pay."
2. Spousal IRA deduction. For married couples filing jointly, the tax code allows one spouse to contribute up to $5,000 to an Individual Retirement Account for the other spouse. There are limits, but it provides straight couples with yet another valuable deduction that gay married couples can't have.
3. Tax-free gifting. Anytime you gift something -cash or otherwise-- worth more than $12,000 to someone, you have to pay the IRS a tax on that. Unless you're married to that person and -because of DOMA--that person is of the opposite sex. In other words, one spouse can put the other spouse on the title of a house and there's no tax to be paid owed. But if a gay person tries to do the same for his or her same-sex spouse, then he or she must pay the "Gift Tax" on the value of half the house minus $12,000. (In tax year 2009, the exclusion goes up to $13,000.)
4. Tax-free health coverage. Employers often pay all or part of an employee's health insurance coverage, including family plans that cover a spouse and children. For tax purposes, the cost of this coverage is not considered to be part of the employee's income. But, if the federal government -as under DOMA--does not consider your spouse to be a spouse under federal law, then it looks at the health coverage for your same-sex spouse as if it is additional income provided by your employer. You pay taxes on that, where your straight colleague does not. One plaintiff couple in GLAD's lawsuit challenging DOMA estimates they pay about $1,200 per year more because of this disparity.
5. Tax-free estate transfer. When one spouse dies in a straight married couple, the surviving spouse often receives the full value of their estate and assets. And the surviving spouse pays no tax on that gain, which is often in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, or millions, if a house is involved. But if a spouse in a same-sex marriage dies and leaves all his or her estate and assets to his or her spouse, that surviving spouse has to pay taxes on the value above $1 million.
PrideSource: Five ways that gay couples lose big on taxes
Originally printed 3/19/09 (Issue 1712 - Between The Lines News)
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April 2009 | <urn:uuid:c269dc69-fbf8-4b70-8cbd-4616288e7c34> | https://d8.eqfl.org/index.php/five-ways-gay-couples-lose-big-taxes | en | 0.972608 | 0.048276 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Tag Archives: Daniel Dennett
The Muslim’s-Guide to converse with Atheists/Anti-Theists:
Author’s note:
Unfortunately, usually, when it comes to the subject of having any form of intelligent, civil discourse, with any Atheist/Anti-Theist, concerning Theism vs. Atheism/Anti-Theism, it ends up being a conversation that always goes on tangents, which are the faults of both Theists & Atheists/Anti-Theists, who engage in these types of conversations, debates, arguments, etc. However, ironically, for Theists, Muslims especially, they never realize (until it’s too late, and when they’ve said all of the wrong things, either inaccurately or completely out-of-context) that it’s never about “winning” an argument with any Atheist/Anti-Theist. The objective is to simply not lose an argument with an Atheist/Anti-Theist. We, as Muslims, have to be very intelligent, tactful, and wise, whenever conversing with people of an Atheist/Anti-Theist disposition. However, one of the major things which Muslims, Theists, generally, get caught-up with, when conversing with Atheists/Anti-Theists, is the whole “Scientific-Fallacy”…I’ll explain what I mean by “Scientific-Fallacy”.
This is what I mean by the “Scientific-Fallacy”:
Whenever Atheists/Anti-Theists converse with those who are Theists, they always, in order to dominate the conversation, drag the issue into the realm of Science, and then challenge people like us to formulate a Divinity-Theory/Law, in which we’re then pigeon-holed into trying to prove the existence of Allah via the “Scientific-Method”. And, ironically, sadly, we fall for this entrapment, every time/all of the time.
Now, the best way to counter this “Scientific-Fallacy” is simply the following:
Make the point that by using the “Scientific-Method”, to attempt to “prove” the existence of a “Divine-Creator”, is self-admission that Allah: the Creator/Lord of the Universe thus exists within the confines of the Physical-Universe. Now, we as Muslims, we know, based upon what Allah teaches us, in the Qur’an, that the Universe has 2-Dimensions: Physical & Non-Physical. Now, with Allah being who He is, we know that there is no way that He can possibly exist within either Dimension of the Universe, because He is Eternal/Non-Created: existing with neither a Beginning nor an Ending. Also, you can only use the “Scientific-Method” to detect the Existence of Things which exists within the confines of the Physical-Universe, and since this is the case, you cannot use the “Scientific-Method” to prove the Existence of Allah, and Atheists/Anti-Theists know this fully well. But, they also know that it’s so easy to trap-up Theists, who are not on to their entrapment. So, because one cannot use the “Scientific-Method”, to prove the Existence of Allah, that’s what Revelation is for. However, the Problem is that Atheists/Anti-Theists don’t recognize, respect, or accept Revelation. Basically, it gets to the point of the Atheist/Anti-Theist point of view having nothing to do with anything Scientific.
One of the other things that they challenge us to do is to disprove all of the “Scientific-Proofs” of things like “Evolution”. Even though, ironically, there still isn’t any definitive proofs for almost all of the elements of “Evolution”, “Darwinian-Evolution”, particularly, which clearly explains why generally, largely, “Evolution” is still, til this very day, classified as merely a “Scientific-Theory” as opposed to a “Scientific-Law”, especially in terms of determining the Origin of Man. And, if a Theist, a Muslim, especially, says that they even accept all that they interpret Science to be, which would include “Evolution”, but, that Allah is the one who is Responsible for all of what “Evolution” states takes place within the Universe, you will be plainly called “Wrong” by any Atheist/Anti-Theist, just because you testify that a Divine-Creator is Responsible for all that exists. And, this also proves that Atheism/Anti-Theism is an `Aqidah/Theology, because they believe in the non-existence of a Divine-Creator-even though they claim that Theists cannot provide proof for the existence of a Divine-Creator, they themselves do the exact opposite; but, ironically, they have no Proof: Empirical/Scientific Evidence for what they claim is the non-existence of a Divine-Creator. Also, one of the key things which Muslims must be careful of are the classic “Spin-Off Arguments” which Atheists/Anti-Theists love to use to make Muslims, and Theists generally, look really Stupid.
Typically, almost always, a Muslim/Theist in general, would say that nothing comes from nothing, that all which exists has an Origin. But, then, an Atheist/Anti-Theist would attempt to trip you up, and spin that Argument right back around towards you & then challenge you, as to why is it that Allah has no Origin, yet everything else does. And, the only way to dispute those varied “Spin-Off Arguments” is to simply use Revelation, which, unfortunately, they will deny. Honestly, that’s really the only edge that we, as Muslims, have over Atheists/Anti-Theists, Revelation: Islāmic-Texts (The Qur’ān & Sunnah/Prophetic-Tradition. Simply from a Human-Level, we’re only 50/50 when conversing with Atheists/Anti-Theists, without referring to Revelation.
I say that for the following reasons:
Without the mercy & gift of Revelation, it is not at all possible to prove the Existence of Allah definitively. And, when it comes to the Belief in a Divine-Creator, when compared to the Disbelief of a Divine-Creator, with Revelation aside, we’re only at 50/50 with Atheists/Anti-Theists. Meaning, they can only disbelieve in a Divine-Creator, but, they have absolutely no Empirical/Scientific Evidence that a Divine-Creator doesn’t exist, it’s just that they’ve now replaced a Divine-Creator with their Intellect, Egos/Desires as their own Gods. While for us, without Revelation to substantiate our Belief, that’s all that it is, a Belief. And, this is why knowledge of Islam is so important for us to learn, know & live.
My conclusion:
This is not the only way to combat, ward-off Atheism/Anti-Theism. However, if one had no Idea how to, previous to reading this Article, then, I’m pretty confident that, with Allah’s Help/Guidance, this will empower Muslims with the Necessary-Tools to keep Atheists/Anti-Theists at bay, so as to not allow their Beliefs (rejecting the Existence of a Divine-Creator) to cause Doubts in the purity, authenticity of our Islamic-Beliefs.
Gareth Bryant/2013
There is a god, and His name is Allah (My personal gift to Atheists & Anti-Theists):
Oftentimes, almost always, both Atheists (who deny the validity of believing in any Divine-Creator) & Anti-Theists (who are blatantly against even believing in the existence of any Divine-Creator) respectively, place their claims that the existence of any Divine-Creator is non-sense, or silly at best, because they claim that no religion can empirically prove the existence of any Divine-Creator.
Well, I have such proof of the existence of a Divine-Creator, directly from the speech of the Divine-Creator, it’s in the Qur’an itself. Allah clearly states in the Qur’an, concerning the metal Iron: “We have descended Iron, within it contains great durability, as well as benefits for Humans.” (Chpt. 57, V. 25). Now, for those who are scientifically inclined and/or educated in the field of Science, you would know that there have been numerous studies which have proven the fact that tons of amounts of Iron deposits, in the forms of meteors, meteorites, meteoroids, asteroids, etc. have descended to the Earth, during various points in the history of the Earth itself. The most popular scientific opinion concerning the origin of Iron coming to the Earth is via meteorite showers that pummeled the Earth’s surface, before it became solidified, and thus became part of the Earth’s core, as well as part of the Earth’s crust.
Now, for those who deny the legitimacy of the existence of Allah, the Creator of the Universe and/or the Qur’an as a factual book of revelation, I ask you the following question: How is it possible for someone like the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him), who was well-known in his society for not receiving a formal education, and for being completely illiterate (who is also mentioned directly in the Qur’an as being illiterate [Chpt. 7, Vs. 157 & 158]), going to have such sophisticated knowledge about Iron & how it came to the Earth originally?
The answer is right in front of your faces, he was directly inspired by Allah, through the revelation of the Qur’an, and was given knowledge about this particular event of Iron descending to the Earth, 14 centuries before any other Human being ever discovered the origins of Iron via scientific analysis & research. Even though Allah does not go into detail as to exactly how this event took place, the fact that Allah does in fact mention it at all is very significant, especially when it comes to debunking the erroneous belief that no Divine-Creator exists. Now, I’m not trying to convince anyone who is an Atheist or Anti-Theist to just give up their respective beliefs (by the way believing that there is no Divine-Creator is a belief in and of itself) just on my account, that would be a decision which you as an individual would have to make consciously on your own.
However, I am most definitely here to tell you, as a Muslim, as an intelligent Human being, that not only is denial of the existence of the one who created you a personal offense to Him, but it’s just down-right dumb!!! How do you think you got here, just by an accident?!!! Do you really think that everything in the Universe, with all of its wonderful intricacies & complex orderly systems just got here, with no one to bring it into being and to ensure its maintenance?!!!
I’m simply imploring you (those who may be reading this who may in fact be Atheists or Anti-Theists) to use the intellect that Allah, the Creator of the Universe has given you!!! If you are still willing to be an Atheist and/or Anti-Theist, after this simple proof has been presented, in this modest blog post, well then I guess Rick James was absolutely right when he said, “Cocaine is a hell of a drug!!!”.
Gareth Bryant/2012 | <urn:uuid:4ea5fc0e-7be9-443d-a604-84ac94cab250> | https://garethbryant.wordpress.com/tag/daniel-dennett/ | en | 0.945182 | 0.067203 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Pronation refers to the process that occurs when our feet hit the ground when we walk or run. Normally, our feet hit the ground in a specific way. First, the heel touches the ground. Our body weight then shifts towards the middle of the foot and the arch of the foot flattens a bit. Pronation is the medical name given to the flattening process. If the arch does not flatten or flattens too much, pronation problems occur. This can cause pain and other issues in the feet and ankles, including in some cases a bending of the ankle bone towards the center line.
Pronation and Ankle Problems
A condition called over-pronation occurs when the arch of the foot flattens inwards too much as you walk. This over-pronation may be caused by genetics, injury, improper gait when walking or running, over-exertion or wearing improper shoes. This over-pronation can cause the ankles to bend slightly inwards as you walk. This can lead to ankle pain. Although it effects and creates symptoms in the ankle, the problem with the foot is the underlying cause.
Flat Feet and Ankle Problems
A condition called "flat foot" is often a cause of these ankle problems. Flat feet are a normal condition in children who are just beginning to walk; however, if the arch does not sufficiently develop as children grow, a condition called flat foot develops. The foot does not pronate properly, and ankle problems become persistent or exacerbated. Adult flat foot, if left untreated, can give rise to a condition called tibialis posterior tendinitis, which results in persistent pain in the foot, the heel and sometimes the ankle.
Pronation problems are diagnosed by a doctor who observes your feet as you walk. A doctor may also examine your shoes for signs of abnormal wear and tear that suggest a pronation problem. Examining the ankle may or may not be necessary, depending on whether the flat foot is actually affected the ankle bones or whether the pronation problems are simply causing pain in the ankle as a symptom of the issues with the foot.
The most common treatment for ankle over-pronation is the use of orthotics to correct the improper arch of the foot. Physical therapy may also be recommended, and NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medicines, including some common pain killers) may be prescribed to deal with ankle pain that results from pronation problems. Taping or a brace of the foot or ankle may also be recommended. In rare cases, a surgical operation may be performed to adjust the shape of the midfoot bones to correct flat foot or to correct torn or damaged tendons in the foot caused by the flat foot or over-pronation.
Unfortunately, most ankle over-pronation can't be prevented because the underlying cause of the condition--the improper gait--can't be prevented. However, wearing orthotics in your shoes to correct the pronation problem can resolve the ankle pain and prevent the ankle bones from becoming injured.
About the Author
| <urn:uuid:581b2622-9c3c-46f0-817f-76db2fd4e474> | https://healthyliving.azcentral.com/treatments-for-ankle-over-pronation-12196655.html | en | 0.931666 | 0.046036 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Tag Archives: Yahoo
Why Marissa Mayer is a bad example for men
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is pregnant again, this time with identical twin girls, and just as she did with her first child, the mogul announced she will be taking limited time off after the twins are born and working throughout her pregnancy.
Mayer, who assumed her role at Yahoo while she was pregnant with her son, has been criticized for her attitudes about work/life balance and for setting what some believe is a bad example for women. If a CEO can give birth and not miss a beat, what excuse do the rest of us have?
Continue reading | <urn:uuid:2827be62-f3f1-4aba-afee-36f611d1d0e3> | https://maybeillshowertoday.com/tag/yahoo/ | en | 0.976994 | 0.33211 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
A la mia cara Mia: Mommy is a slacker
I started doing these little monthly updates for the same reason that a certain well-known blogger does monthly letters about her daughter: changes, both physical and mental, happen so fast with babies, and I didn’t want to forget anything and end up posting something in December like, “You’ve grown a lot. You’re a year old. You’re a big girl now.” Unfortunately, I’m pretty much at that point at present. I believe my last monthly update was in June, and if I remember correctly, it was actually addressing things that happened in May. Lots of things have happened since then. In truth, you have grown a lot, and you are a big girl now. I know, I know…it’s only downhill from this point. But instead of looking at my lack of monthly updates as a failure, I’m going to approach the task from now on in the same way I might approach, say, a baseball game. I call myself a fan, but I don’t really have the staying power to sit through a game, so I have the TV on in the background, but mainly I just want the highlights.
Incidentally (she scrambles to clarify with horror), I am not comparing my parenting style to this method of viewing baseball. I am in merely criticizing my own blogging habits. I am a bad blogger. I do not think I am a bad mommy. You may claim otherwise in the future, but it will most likely be because you are 12 and pissed that I took away your stash of Absolut. For now, though, if motherhood were a baseball game I would be right there on the front row, or on the field, or in the dugout, or, as my life goes lately, in all those places at once. But lately I am more of a listen-to-baseball-from-the-kitchen-while-I-fold-laundry-and-do-dishes sort of blogger. Just to clarify.
That being said, the following is not a play-by-play of the past few months, but rather a rundown of the highlights. These highlights are not really in order, and my definition of highlights may not necessarily reflect the kinds of things baby books have stickers for, and some of the highlights are more like lowdowns, and since that probably makes no sense I will start there.
• You are not even nine months old, and already you have been to three funerals. Two of them were for your great-grandmothers. It pains me–physically, deep in my heart–that they aren’t around to see you, to enjoy the little person you continue to become. They both got to meet you, though, and Mama was probably the first person besides Dr. T. to witness your birth, because every time I looked up in the delivery room her face was peeking over his shoulder. Lately I get the feeling she’s peeking over mine, so maybe she’s watching you evolve after all.
• Your personal transportation skills are wonderous to behold. Last week you used all fours to crawl, but for the past 6 weeks or so you have not so much crawled as sped across the floor in a rendition of The Worm. The only thing missing is 80s music, a headband, and a pair of leg warmers. Your latest feat is standing; you pull up on everything, and now you are starting to move sideways while holding onto things, and next you will be walking. When that day comes I will either have to sell all our belongings and become a stark minimalist, or I will have a ceiling installed on the top of your play yard (because you are also starting to understand the mechanics of climbing, and I am starting to be afraid, very afraid).
• You seem to have a texture infatuation. Whenever your hand makes contact with any surface, up to and including my flesh, you make a little scratching motion with your fingers. Sometimes this action results in sound (like when you scratch the wall next to the changing table) and you do it over and over and over until I have to find something soundless to shove under your hand lest my eyeballs explode. You also like to run your fingers through things–carpet, my hair, the cat if he’ll allow it–and you like gripping soft things like blankets, clothes, and your Wee Hairy Beastie. And also, when I am leaning over you changing your diaper, my boob, which you also use as a handle when pulling up to a standing position.
• You are freakishly like me in many ways. For example, I am a texture freak as well. Also, you hold your pinkie finger out for no obvious reason; I do this, also for no reason in particular. Most recently, your preference for having your face covered while sleeping has become quite pronounced, a preference I have as well. It baffles me that at 8 months old you do things I have done my whole life. How did you learn these things? Is there a gene for “sleeping with face covered”?
• Blowing raspberries is one of your life’s passions.
• You have experienced lots of firsts lately. You rode a boat and a golf cart for the first time. You went to your first baseball game over the summer, and last week you attended your first high school football game. We were sitting right under a loudspeaker, so I was sure the announcing would scare you, but you seemed not to notice it. What scared the daylights out of you, I am sorry to say, was another baby. This particular baby is a month younger than you, but you are the same size, and every time she “talks” to you, you have a complete meltdown. I don’t understand it. Is she saying something mean? And finally, you saw your first live cow a few days ago. You love “fake” cows–stuffed, sculpted, painted–and you love other animals, so I thought the cow would be a hit. I think I can safely say you didn’t actually SEE the cow, so fascinated were you by a giant paper Taco Bell cup on the ground outside the pasture fence.
• You have two teeth now, both on the bottom. I had been waiting and looking for the first one for so long that I didn’t even notice when it finally popped. The second one was a different story. I actually considered helping it along with a pair of pliers at one point, but it is finally visible and the whining, GOOD LORD, the whining, is starting to diminish.
• You are a constant source of joy. This, above all, is how I would define my time with you so far: joyful. You laugh so easily, and you are interested in everything around you, and when I come home in the afternoons and you see me and your squeal with delight, I feel a gratitude to the universe so big and powerful it takes my breath away. I know every mom probably feels this way about her kid, but I believe you are special. There’s nobody on earth like you, and now that I have you in my life, I understand all the things that came before, all the trouble and sorrow and work, all the growing and learning and living: it was leading me to you. And just so you know, I’d do it all again.
Ti amo,
2 thoughts on “A la mia cara Mia: Mommy is a slacker
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Doug Reviews: Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)
Hey kids, remember Independence Day? It was the original turn-off-your-brain mass destruction flick. Well, it’s been twenty years and we’re getting a sequel in Independence Day: Resurgence. My only question: Why?
I’m not going to delve into the “plot” of this garbage. Aliens invaded twenty years ago. Humans won and used the left behind technology to enhance their military—and little else, it seems. Aliens return to finish the job. Bland cardboard-cutout characters talk. The End.
I’m going to put this out there right away—I’m not the biggest fan of the original Independence Day. It’s fun schlock, but it loses me once that dog outruns an explosion. From there, it devolves into dreck, but well-meaning dreck. Resurgence doesn’t even have that going for it. It starts out as dreck and stays that way throughout its two-hour running time. Answer me this, how can there be FIVE credited screenwriters on this thing, but not one real character amongst twelve major roles? Every single one is a placeholder for the terrible dialogue to spill out of their mouths. I get it, disaster films are supposed to be schlock, but at least the original film had some charm. This piece of crap is soulless and unnecessary.
The sad part of it all is, if you take what Director Roland Emmerich is giving us, you might be able to cobble together a decent sci-fi movie from it, but the five screenwriters hit every wrong note on the way there. The plot is a worse version of TNT’s Falling Skies, which wasn’t all that great itself. There are some good effects, but they all go to waste in service of a movie that has no memorable characters or anything we haven’t seen before in other movies, including the original Independence Day. The first film was full of iconic shots, especially of the alien ship destroying the White House, but there are no such scenes in Resurgence. We’ve already seen the alien invasion of this movie universe and Resurgence gives us nothing new. None of the mystery that made up the first forty minutes of the first film exists in this one—neither does the character development. I’m never going to say that Independence Day had great characters—it didn’t, they were all pretty stock—but at least that film took some time to try and develop them. Nothing like that happens in the sequel. The filmmakers don’t put in any time to build up these terrible characters, nor the world in which they inhabit. And don’t get me started on all the implausibilities and plot holes in this thing—it’s a minefield.
Like most sci-fi films since 1977, Independence Day wants to be Star Wars in the worst way—by the way, stop bastardizing the Star Wars film score at every opportunity, ID4! Unfortunately, what Emmerich doesn’t understand is that what makes Star Wars so great is its characters. All the “characters” in Resurgence are basically distilled down to one trait and then that becomes their character. Liam Hemsworth is impulsive! (And Hollywood, please stop trying to make Liam Hemsworth a star—it ain’t happening). Jessie T. Usher is dead Will Smith’s son! Maika Monroe is Bill Pullman’s daughter! Brent Spiner—who should have been dead after the last film—is crazy! Jeff Goldblum likes exposition! It’s ridiculous. Also, why did the filmmakers feel the need to shrink this movie universe so much? Yes, this is something that Star Wars is also guilty of, but at least Star Wars tries to tell a coherent story. Why, after twenty years, in an event that involves the entire world, are we still focusing on relatively the same small group of people? Did we really need someone to play Will Smith’s kid? Did we need the old President’s daughter in here? It’s like the film is trying to build up the legacy of the first film where there really is none. People like Independence Day because it was a decent disaster film and had good effects at the time. No one loves those characters. So, it’s kind of ridiculous to build the sequel around legacy characters from a movie where the characters were the least memorable thing. Again, I’ll draw the Star Wars comparison. The Force Awakens made almost a billion dollars domestically because people love to see Harrison Ford as Han Solo. No one was clamoring for Jeff Goldblum’s Independence Day character’s return. Ian Malcom in Jurassic World 2, maybe, but not Independence Day. It also doesn’t help that all the actors basically sleepwalk through their parts here, except Brent Spiner, who goes too far in the other direction. The only person who does a decent job here is Bill Pullman, but the script does him no favors at all.
Clearly, Independence Day: Resurgence is a terrible movie. I wasn’t a diehard fan of the first one either, but at least I’ll admit it was dumb fun and watchable. This one is just full of unintentional hilarity and eye-rolls galore as you watch one implausibility after another. Unless you’ve got a crackerjack plot with a lot of twists, you need characters people care about and Resurgence has a whopping total of zero. If you don’t care about the characters, you won’t care about the film. The most frustrating part is that the opportunity was ripe to make a creepy, action-packed sequel that had a modicum of character depth, but like Michael Bay before him, Roland Emmerich doesn’t know the meaning of the word “subtlety.” He just wanted to get to the boom-boom explosions as fast as possible without taking the time to make the audience care about what the fuck was happening. Oh, and one more thing, I think the world owes Will Smith an apology for getting on his case after he turned this turd down. Clearly, it was one of the best career moves he’s ever made. Now, screw this Independence Day crap, where the hell is my Mars Attacks sequel???
Rating: D-
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Alien Nation Review: The New Yorker, April 1995
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A conservative call to arms on a coming issue.
BEFORE Ellis Island became a port of entry for immigrants, it was used for the storage of ammunition. It's a nice bit of symbolism, for immigration is proving to be one of the most explosive issues of American politics in the nineties. The recent passage of California's Proposition 187-a package of measures aimed at illegal aliens-may be the first blast in a national campaign to demolish an immigration policy that has been in place since the Kennedy-Johnson reforms of the nineteen-sixties. A momentous new battle over who will be permitted to immigrate to America, and why, has begun.
Until recently, of course, immigrants from Mexico and other poor countries were welcomed by the American political right—Pat Buchanan and a small circle of like-minded dissidents aside. During the nineteen-eighties, California's Governor Pete Wilson-who last year supported Proposition 187campalgned, at the behest of agribusiness, to allow undocumented farm-workers to remain in the United States. Indeed, the pro-immigration consensus of the Reagan right was symbolized by a constitutional amendment proposed by the Wall Street Journal: There shall be open borders." The mainstream conservative consensus cracked, though, when one English immigrant, John O'Sullivan, who is the editor of National Review, published a cover story in the summer of 1992 by another English immigrant, Peter Brimelow, who is a senior editor at both National Review and Forbes. In that piece Brimelow set out a range of arguments against immigration. He has now elaborated those arguments in "Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster" (Random House; $24).
As the title of the book suggests, Brimelow's main concern is with the effect of today's immigration on the nature of the American "nation" itself. He rejects what might be called the democratic-universalist vision of American identity—the familiar notion that America is a "nation of immigrants" united only by an idea.
Democratic universalism has proponents all across the political spectrum, but it prompts an interesting question. If to be American is to believe in certain values, then who is to define those values? One volunteer is Richard John Neuhaus, a former leftwing Lutheran pastor who has become a far-right Catholic priest. In his rightwing version of democratic universalism, morally upright immigrants are preferable to decadent native-born Americans. In a debate over immigration in National Review, Neuhaus recently wrote, 'We do have a very real problem with aliens. These are native-born Americans who are profoundly alienated from the American experience." In an article that appeared a few years ago in the magazine Neuhaus edits, First Things, he gave a more detailed description of the enemy within: "journalists, writers, academics, and a significant portion of the religious leadership" of the United States, and also "homosexuals" (who "are the very definition of social marginality"), "the urban and mainly black underclass," and a "civil rights overclass." There's something chilling in his designation of native-born or naturalized American citizens as un-American or anti-American "aliens" simply because they happen to be poor and black or to work for the media or for universities. By comparison, the old-fashioned conservative language of black-baiting, gay-baiting, and anti-intellectualism is at least straightforward.
In the end, the claim that to be American is to believe in democratic values and virtues-whether these are defined by Neuhaus or by someone else-makes rousing Fourth of July rhetoric but has no basis in United States law. Congress has yet to pass an ideological equivalent of Israel's Law of Return and order the Immigration and Naturalization Service to grant automatic United States citizenship to any of the hundreds of millions of foreigners who profess sincere belief in the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address. Nor is the United States, strictly speaking, a nation of immigrants, for the simple reason that from the Colonial period to the present the majority of Americans, white and black, have been born on American soil and reared as members of a common American culture. The assimilated children and grandchildren of immigrants-white or black or brown, Jewish or Catholic or Protestant-aren't themselves "immigrants"; they're Americans.
The obvious alternative to the kind of purely political or ideological conception of American identity represented by democratic universalism is what could be called liberal nationalism: a conception of the American people as a transracial cultural nation whose members share a common language—American English—and a common vernacular tradition, which includes black-derived music and Mexican-influenced Western dress and cuisine as well as the political institutions and ideals derived from the Anglo-American settlers. The old melting-pot nationalism endorsed only the fusion of white immigrant groups; the patron saints of a new, transracial melting-pot ideal would be found in radical white abolitionists like Wendell Phillips and black visionaries like Frederick Douglass and Jean Toomer, who saw the greatest hope for America's future in the greatest nightmare of traditional white conservatives: race-blending inter marriage.
THOUGH Brimelow acknowledges that "individuals of any ethnicity or race might be able to acculturate to a national community," he rejects both contentless universalism and transracial cultural nationalism. Instead, he sets forth what looks very much like a defense of old-fashioned white racial nationalism. "It is simply common sense that Americans have a legitimate interest in their country's racial balance," Brimelow writes. "Indeed, it seems to me that they have a right to insist that it be shifted back." He wistfully imagines what the United States would be like to-day if the white-only immigration policy of the nineteen-twenties had not been dismantled by the 1965 Immigration Act: "The American population would still be where It was in 1960—almost 89 percent white," instead of less than eighty per cent.
Brimelow defends the nineteen-twenties immigration laws, which sought to limit the number of Jews and Southern and Eastern Europeans immigrating to the United States, by noting "As the Great Restriction's national origins quotas were being legislated, President Calvin Coolidge put it unflinchingly: 'America must be kept American.'" Brimelow adds approvingly, "Everyone knew what he meant." Everyone knew, indeed. What Coolidge, then Vice-President, actually wrote-in an article that appeared in Good Housekeeping in 1921-was "America must be kept American. Biological laws show ... that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races."
Lamenting the projected steep decline of America's white "ethnic core as a proportion of the United States population, Brimelow compares the United States with multiethnic empires in Cyprus and in the Caucasus, where a single ethnic group, the "umpire" Brimelow's term-maintained social peace. The United States "faces the direct equivalent of being abandoned by an imperial umpire: the breaking of …'the racial hegemony of white Americans- " The result, he warns, will be the breakdown of American society, as voters polarize into racial voting blocs. "The uneven distribution of immigration will tend to force the country's regions even further apart," Brimelow predicts. 'The experience of an Anglo-Cuban society like Greater Miami is going to have little in common with an Anglo-black society like Atlanta or even with an Anglo-Mexican society like San Antonio. These will be communities as different from one another as any in the civilized world. They will verge on being separate nations." And so the outlook is grim indeed: "The contradictions of a society as deeply divided as the United States must now inexorably become, as a result of the post-1965 influx, will lead to conflict, repression, and, perhaps, ultimately to a threat thought extinct in American politics for more than a hundred years: secession." Note the confident verbs of a jeremiad: "must now inexorably"; "will." Elsewhere, Brimelow repeatedly invokes a Delphic formula: "Race and ethnicity are destiny in American politics," and "Once again: ethnicity, and demography, is destiny in American politics."
In the book's most ludicrous section, Brimelow compares today's immigrants from Latin America and Asia to ancient Germanic barbarians: "In some ways, the nearest thing to a precedent for today's world in motion appears to be the famous Volkwanderung—he means Völkerwanderung —"the great 'movement of peoples' in the Fifth century that saw Germanic tribes overrun the Western Roman Empire." This sort of rhetoric is far from new: in an 1885 polemic entitled "Our Country" the Protestant clergyman Josiah Strong similarly described Italian, Slavic, and Jewish immigrants as an "army more than twice as vast as the estimated number of Goths and Vandals that swept over Southern Europe and overwhelmed Rome." Brimelow hastens to declare that the "German war bands" were less of a threat to Roman cultural unity than Mexican-American and Korean-American immigrants are to the integrity of American society, because, after all, "the Germans were Western Europeans." It seems that Theodoric the Ostrogoth had more in common with Boethius than Henry Cisneros has with Bill Clinton.
It's hard to know quite what to make Of all this. Mexican-American brick-layers and Korean shopkeepers as Ostrogoths and Visigoths? Brimelow complains about being called a racist, but he uses the rhetoric of an after-dinner speaker at a Klavern banquet. The Democratic Party, he informs us, is the enemy of white people: "The brutal truth is this: the Clinton Administration is a black-Hispanic-Jewish-minority whit (Southerners used to call them 'scalawags') coalition." What does Brimelow mean by "scalawag" if not traitor to the white race—a race that, curiously, appears not to include Jews?
To be sure, Brimelow does not join Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray in worrying about nonwhite immigration because of its supposed "dysgenic" effect on the American gene pool people like Colin Powell and Richard Rodriguez are not inferior to Amen cans of Western European descent, it seems, but merely "incompatible" with them. Still, Brimelow's Spenglerian argument about the decline and fall of white America bears no small resemblance to the argument found in "The Bell Curve." He even one-ups the bell-curve graph with a diagram of his own, the "pincer chart"—a projection of demographic trends in the United States which shows the white population shrinking between the "pincers" of the black and Asian population, on one side, and the Hispanic population, on the other. Like the bell curve, the pincer chart provides crude prejudice with a striking, and reassuringly "scientific," symbol. In "Alien Nation," the anxiety of white-middle-class America at the fin de siècle may have found its second definitive expression
THE questions that Brimelow raises about the effect of immigration on national culture are not in themselves illegitimate. His answers, though, are based on implausible extrapolations and a profound misunderstanding of American society. Consider that pincer chart which lumps black Americans with Asian-Americans. If black American: are considered to be members of the American cultural nation, then a chart showing the effects of immigration should show the immigrant population growing at the expense of the American cultural nation—white and black. Ever that would be misleading if it treated the descendants of Latin-American and Asian immigrants as members of perpetually distinct groups. Unlike European immigrants, Brimelow suggests, the new immigrants cannot be expected to amalgamate with the majority, because "virtually all immigrants are racially distinct 'visible minorities,"' from "completely different, and arguably incompatible, cultural traditions." Is it really the Spanish Catholic tradition that sets Latin-American immigrants apart, in Brimelow's mind, from culturally similar Italian immigrants—or is it their race? Even then, there's the effect of intermarriage to consider. Brimelow himself reports that, for example, more than half of Japanese-Americans marry non-Japanese, and that the intermarriage rate for Mexican-Americans in California appears to be between a third and a half. It seems that, with the possible exception of black Americans, intermarriage is gradually turning both pincers and pincees into a single mixed-race majority.
Then why is Brimelow so pessimistic about the prospects for integration and amalgamation? For one thing, he seems to have bought into the myth of the multiculturalists that there are as many "cultures" in America as there are races." Even more important, perhaps, is the fact that the peripatetic Brimelow emigrated from Britain to Canada before crossing the border into the United States. In the troubles of the binational Canadian federation, he sees a portent of the American future:
Foreign experience suggests that the breaking point could come well before whites slip below half of the overall U.S. population. In Canada, although the French-speaking minority has never been much above a quarter of the population, it has been able to dominate national politics for most of this century by voting as a bloc. English-speaking Canadians have been typically so split that federal governments based solely on their support have been elected very rarely, although they have comprised around three quarters of Canada's population.
The analogy is alarming; it's also unfounded. Where is the American Quebec? Black Americans aren't a separate nationality, and, besides, they tend to be concentrated in many of the same cities and states as the new nonwhite immigrants. Asian-Americans-who share neither common ancestries nor common languages—do not form a cohesive political or geographic bloc. The only potential "Quebec" in the United States would be a Mexican-American concentration in the Southwest. And yet Mexican, Americans are politically far from homogeneous: Mexican-Americans Texas are much more likely to be Republican than Mexican-Americans in California. More important, most of them want to join the American main stream, retaining, like other groups, a few elements of symbolic ethnicity. According to one estimate, a majority of third-generation Hispanics speak only one language: English. In the long rum Mexican and Chinese immigrants are more likely to resemble the Irish and German immigrants of yesteryear than the French Canadians.
"ALIEN NATION" is filled with apocalyptic passages that sound like excerpts from such notorious nativist tracts as Madison Grant's "The Passing of the Great Race" (1916) and Lothrop Stoddard's "The Rising Tide of Color (1920). It's inevitable, therefore, that some liberals will seize upon these passages to dismiss all critics of today's immigration policy as racists or nativist: That would be a mistake. For one thing the Republican political elite, whatever its ultimate consensus on immigration is unlikely to accept Brimelow's equation of the American nation with white America. Senator Phil Gramm is married to a Korean-American; Jeb Bush has a Mexican-American wife; the favorite jurist of the right, Clarence Thomas has a white wife; and the ideal Republican Presidential candidate is Colin Powell. One of the leaders of the new anti-affirmative- action movement in California is a black businessman, Ward Connerly. The religious right is more worried about the sexual habits of Americans than about their complexions, and country-club Republicans generally welcome anyone with the right income (as the Latin-American saying has it, "money whitens"). Conservative concern about the underclass is primarily class issue; Charles Murray is no less worried about the troublesome fecundity, as he sees it, of poor whites than about that of poor blacks.
What's more, some of the familiar arguments that Brimelow makes against high levels of immigration— arguments based on concern about the economy and environmental consequences—deserve to be taken seriously even by people who utterly reject his reasoning on the subject of race. For example, there's the claim that immigrants contribute to crowding and thus to environmental degradation in areas like Southern California; that immigrants of some nationalities play a disproportionate role in organized crime; and that immigrants are more likely than native-born Americans to be on welfare. All these claims have been disputed, and none amount to anything like a knockdown argument-, yet such concerns do deserve to be taken more seriously than they have been.
With less than five per cent of the world's population, the United States now accepts nearly half of the world's legal immigrants to the developed countries. The American approach to immigration looks increasingly out of synch with the policies of other industrialized democracies. German Social Democrats and British Tories alike now promote restrictive immigration policies. One after another, Britain, France, Germany, Austria, and other European democracies have tightened their laws governing immigration from outside Europe, and Canada has now adopted a more restrictive policy as well. (Japan never permitted significant immigration in the first place.) All these democracies are erecting "golden curtains" in response to three major trends: the population explosion in the Third World (as a result of which the populations of Europe and North America have shrunk in this century from perhaps a third of the world's total to at most a sixth); the post-1973 slowdown in Western economic growth, which has boosted the numbers of the unemployed in Europe and the underpaid in the United States; and the potential for mass economic migration from the impoverished countries of the former Soviet bloc.
Of these factors, Third World population growth is by far the most important. The economist Lester Thurow recently postulated "an iron law of economic development": "No country can become rich without a century of good economic performance and a century of very slow population growth." In much of Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, birth rates are so high that not even rapid East Asian-style economic development would suffice to raise per-capita incomes near First World levels and thereby eliminate incentives to emigrate. Certainly it was always a delusion that the North American Free Trade Agreement, by raising Mexican incomes closer to American levels, would significantly reduce the motivation of poor Mexicans to emigrate; the gap in wages—widened since December's devaluation of the peso—is just too immense.
Perhaps the most persuasive economic argument against large-scale immigration centers on the displacement of black American workers by immigrants in the crowded market for unskilled labor. Brimelow writes that "the plight of poor American blacks must be considered before that of landless laborers in Latin America." He argues, further, that those who say "immigrants are revitalizing American cities" are "in effect expressing coded horror at the other effects of the great black migration from the rural South to the industrial urban North. Perhaps it is immigration enthusiasts, not immigration critics, who should be examining their motives." The notion of a conservative like Brimelow championing the cause of black workers may bring to mind the crocodile tears that his colleagues on the right have shed for decades over the minimum wage (they are concerned about its supposed effect of eliminating jobs for the black poor, of course). The message, however, should not be dismissed because of the messenger. In the nineteenth century, black leaders like Frederick Douglass complained that European immigrants were taking entry-level jobs away from black American workers. No one who lives in a city where taxi service and many other trades are almost monopolized by new immigrants can doubt that the same phenomenon is occurring again.
Still, the problems associated with today's high levels of immigration can be addressed without ending all immigration or attempting to shift the "racial balance" back in favor of whites by means of immigration reform (an option Brimelow speculates about). The goal of the Kennedy-Johnson reforms—which abolished the white-supremacist "national origins" system, imposed after the First World War to favor Western European immigrants—was the admission, on a color-blind basis, of a small number of skilled immigrants each year. Congress, by expanding the slots given to family reunification, turned immigration into an entitlement. It may be time to trim this entitlement, along with others; as Brimelow points out, "had immigration been restricted just to the nuclear-family members of American citizens-parents, spouses, and dependent children-only about 250,000 immigrants would have entered in 1992," instead of almost a million. By means of such prudent reforms, the United States could ameliorate many of the adverse consequences of large-scale immigration without surrendering to panic and shutting the gates on any particular group Latin Americans, Asians, Middle Easterners, Africans. Or, for that matter, Englishmen.
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42 thoughts on “Anyone heard of this one? It sounds like the unofficial Veronica Mars rpg.
1. Having just binged all three seasons I’d be totally stoked.
But 1) ashcan, 2) PbtA, and 3) invent the mystery as you go.
For $5 it’s probably worth checking out the PDF, but unless it’s jaw droppingly brilliant, #3 is probably a deal breaker for me.
The thing I loved most about the season long mysteries in VM is they felt legit. Like they had the crime and clues and maybe a couple of backup variants just in case, but they knew the arc from the first. Lost style mysteries: “we don’t really know, we’ll just keep throwing out stuff and hope it clicks somehow” doesn’t really do it for me.
2. I saw it when it was first being hyped, probably in the GenCon lead-up, but passed because ashcan. I’ve got so many finished games that I can’t even manage to read them all, let alone get them all to the table, so I just can’t make time for unfinished ones.
3. I’m a massive fan of VM and Riverdale and even iZombie sometimes. Bubblegumshoe hits the right notes, but it’s still gumshoe. It has some really cool social management bits.
But We Used to be Friends does it better, IMO. You create your town and neighborhood collaboratively, which is wonderful, but where it really shines IMO is the handling of Clues.
There are moves for gaining clues and spending them, but one of the core rules is you can’t make two moves back to back. The play style seems to encourage different players angling for different suspects to be the ultimate wrongdoer, and you can place your clues on suspects until one of them gets .
If you don’t like collaborative “make up the mystery as you solve it” games, ala Noirlandia, you won’t like this. | <urn:uuid:2c5e3238-fee6-4d56-908d-156a56b77f1d> | https://www.buzzmo.com/2018/09/18/anyone-heard-of-this-one-it-sounds-like-the-unofficial-veronica-mars-rpg/ | en | 0.949199 | 0.034209 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Research Paper
Pages: 18 (5925 words) · Bibliography Sources: 8 · File: .docx · Level: Doctorate · Topic: Transportation - Environmental Issues
The concept of feudalism, for instance, segmented the workers (serfs) from the managers (lords) and kept a fairly stable balance in rural areas during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. However, the industrial revolution of the 17th to 19th centuries changed the conception of sustainability by tapping into fossile fuels, increasing urbanization and segementation of labor, causing an unbalanced agricultural system in which food was not always available for the burgeoning city populations. Similarly, coal was used to power ever evoling engines and later to generate electricity. Society was protected from endemic disease through more technological advances in sanitation. The combination of conditions caused an unprecedented human population explosion and even greater urbanization. This also led to huge industrial, technological and scientific changes that continues to the present. For instance, from 1750 to 1850 the global population doubled from a relatively sustainable 500 million to over 1 billion people (Goudie, 2005) Concerns about the environmental and social impacts of industry were expressed by some Enlightenment political economists and through the Romantic movement of the 1800s. Overpopulation is not a new theory and a famous essay by Thomas Malthus correctly predicted that eventually humans would populate to such an extent that food, living space, and living standards would decline to the point where much of the population would expire. Ironically, Malthus is often quoted today (Daly and Farley, 2004).Buy full Download Microsoft Word File paper
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Research Paper on Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Assignment
By the late 19th and early 20th century, the industrial revolution had led to an exponential increase in the human conception of resources. The increase in the health and wealth of whole societies was seen as progress, although a number of economists began developing models that called sustainability into question. Ecology had now gained a more academic level and was seen as a viable science. These included: the interconnectedness of all living systems in a single living planetary system, the biosphere; the importance of natural cycles (of water, nutrients and other chemicals, materials, waste); and the passage of energy through trophic levels of living systems (Worster, 1994).
The next several decades brought us into yet another period of escalating growth, what some call "a great acceleration ... A surge in the human enterprise that has emphatically stamped humanity as a global geophysical force" (Robin, 2008). Alarms began ringing -- The Limits to Growth, The Club of Rome, and the realization that environmental problems were now global in scale. For example, one of the first major "paradigm shifts" occurred in 1973 and 1979 with the global energy crisis based on an overdependence on oil. A political and cultural schism developed; the richer, developed countries now wanted to regulate growth and environmental issues while the developing world, largely due to population dissatisfaction, needed to rapidly modernize, at whatever environmental cost (Turner, 2008).
What followed is another exponential growth pattern of human consumption, unchecked birth rates in most of the developing world, a scarcity of water and food in many areas of the world. While there is an increasing push towards recycling, protecting the environment, and going free within the modern business, situations like the Copenhagen Conference illustrate just how contentious the issue of sustainability has become. For much of the world, though, ecological economics now seeks to close the gap between ecology and more traditional economics. This, however, requires societies in all parts of the world to commit to recycling, lessening of their carbon footprints and, at the very least, more attention and investment in green energy and building processes (Kay, 2002).
Literature Review - Looking at the macro (global) first, we know that Sustainable development is considered to be a paradigm that allows human needs to be met for the present and future while still preserving the environment. The key is that all aspects of human culture remember that the responsibility of the present generation is to provide a world in which there are resources for the future. Sustainable development also implies the capacity for stewardship of natural systems, and more of equilibrium to growth. Essentially, this is broken into three parts: environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, and socio-political sustainability. For instance, using up all the water resources in a given area neither plans for the future nor helps the present. Instead, a sustainable template would develop resources appropriately and teach the populations to conserve or utilize the available resource base for adjusted needs.
Modern societies, therefore, need to manage economic, social and natural capital in order to survive, thus:
Consumption of Renewable Resources
State of the Environment
More than Nature's ability to replenish
Environmental Degradation
Not Sustainable
Equal to Nature's ability to replenish
Environmental Equilibrium
Steady State Economy
Less than Nature's ability to replenish
Environmental Renewal
Environmentally Sustainable
(Hart, 2007)
One of the practical aspects of modern sustainability, Green Building is also known as green construction or sustainable building. To build ecologically sound, however, we need to have a change of ideological and practical view. Technologically, a modern building is so complex that the old idea of improving efficiencies at the bottom line is not even a viable way to succeed. Instead, continued reinvention of both the company's product line and industry capabilities is not only necessary, but will help decide which companies succeed and which fail. Too, because the half-life of technology is so short, radical and category breaking innovation is needed not just to compete, but to provide the global environment with positive growth. To do this, though, managers and corporate executives alike need to allow dissent, innovation, and a push from the ground up, the sides, and yes, even the top, to realize such a needed change. With the worries about job loss, anger, attacks, problems, etc., why bother with dissent and innovation. It is simple -- the most important way an organization can ensure that it will grow and prosper, and be around for its employees and stakeholders, is to encourage dissent and innovation through its managers. However, the organization, if committed, can create a cultural renaissance that will absolutely transform the company -- and allow it several years of new, innovative, product life. Keep in mind that organizations, but their very nature, really do want to embrace and support innovative projects -- that is the entire basis for entrepeneurialship. However, ingrained processes often take organizations into different directions -- all of which involve a fear of risk -- a fear of losing what ground is already covered. However challenging this might be, most of the great people who have made the difficult and controversial decisions have had to face adversity to do so. One example was Winston Churchill, who was under intense pressure to surrender to Hitler and end the suffering of England. Instead, he said absolutely not -- and the rest is history. This is also the difference between a leader and a manger -- a leader is able to take the strategic or long-term view of a situation and work through the adverse conditions in. There is real power in being able to look outside the black and white into the world of the grey -- but it changes one's perspective of everything. Once one goes down that road, there is no turning back (Horibe, 2001).
It is challenging, for certain, to change the culture of a company; but it is also challenging to enhance sustainability and to create an environmentally responsible company. We find that companies are wanting to "go green," based on a number of factors: Ethical (environmental goals and pressures); Pressure from Stakeholders; Increase in Governmental Regulations, their own internal organizational crisis, and the economic opportunities (or deincentives to not go green). Culture changes, and with it the most innovative companies change, too. Part of the cultural change over the past two decades has been the consistent and regular attitude towards ecology, carbon footprint, and sustainability. Many companies see that they have, or do, produce materials that are negative to either the people, the environment, or both. They see that changing this paradigm will not only be a good ethical and moral decision, but will likely encourage like-minded consumers to be loyal to them. The negative ecological effects of business and industry are well documented; this is no longer a theory, but a reality. Organizations that pay attention to the environment are the types of organizations that will grow and prosper in the 21st century. Of course, there are those in the developing world who are also concerned about the environment, but the rapid growth of globalism sometimes acts at cross purposes. The idea of a green business is not simply changing a few power sources or suppliers -- it is a complete paradigm that asks for an all-encompassing plan and commitment in every aspect of the business, and from every employee, vendor, supplier, and likely even customer. This, of course, is an ideal, and it may take years or even decades to reach that ideal. This author's point, though, is to move towards this in incremental steps but with a broad, overall vision that includes sustainability as its final goal (Townsend,… [END OF PREVIEW] . . . READ MORE
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"Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental." November 19, 2011. Accessed July 9, 2020. | <urn:uuid:d4fe42fe-f84a-439c-a969-49480fcde3d4> | https://www.essaytown.com/subjects/paper/corporate-social-responsibility-environmental/2220733 | en | 0.948498 | 0.039819 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Nooks and Crannies: Tanning Elbows, Knees and Hands
Joint areas like elbows, knees and hands are some of the hardest to tan. There is more skin in these areas which can cause them to come out darker and the amount of friction they experience can also make it tricky to keep the tan even. Below are a few options you can try out and see what works best for you and your skin type!
Barrier Lotion
Using a tiny amount of body lotion on your knees and elbows prior to applying self tanning mousse will create a barrier that will prevent the area from over-absorbing the tanner.
Dry Mitt Method
This is my personal favorite and super easy. Apply tanner limb-by-limb but skip the joint area. Once you have finished the limb, go back with a "dry" mitt (no added product) to take care of the joint. There will be just enough residue to tan the area without overdoing it.
Kabuki Brush
This is a great tool for blending! Applying tanner directly onto the brush and do so sparingly- a little will go a long way here. Start in the center of the areas and rub in circular motions feathering outwards. Don't be afraid of overlapping with your previous tanner, this will create a seamless look. | <urn:uuid:03cd8293-bb53-4714-b01a-f266a8c47dd2> | https://www.glowprotans.com/blogs/news/nooks-and-crannies-tanning-elbows-knees-and-hands | en | 0.920422 | 0.031013 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
A look inside my head: I doodle a lot. I doodle when I am bored. I doodle when I want to relax. I doodle to express my stories and discover new ideas. Most of the time it's late at night. Below you will find some of these drawings. Some are from my stories. Some might be in future stories. Some are just a product of when my idle imagination gets a hold of a pen and paper. Whatever they are, I hope these sketches allow you a glimpse inside my head and a way to connect further with my work. Enjoy!
@2016 by Jeffrey Hall using | <urn:uuid:6a3782d3-ef84-4de7-a786-85525060069d> | https://www.hallwaytoelsewhere.com/sketches | en | 0.833993 | 0.105982 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
MAC Address Filtering: What It Is and How It Works
Should you enable MAC address filtering on a router?
Most broadband routers and other wireless access points include an optional feature called MAC address filtering, or hardware address filtering. It improves security by limiting the devices that can join a network. However, since MAC addresses can be spoofed or faked, is filtering these hardware addresses actually useful, or is it a waste of time?
Should MAC Authentication be Enabled?
On a typical wireless network, any device that has the proper credentials (knows the SSID and password) can authenticate with the router and join the network, obtaining a local IP address and therefore access to the internet and any shared resources.
MAC address filtering adds an extra layer to this process. Before letting any device join the network, the router checks the device's MAC address against a list of approved addresses. If the client's address matches one on the router's list, access is granted as usual; otherwise, it's blocked from joining.
Router with cables plugged in.
Lorenzo Carafo / Pixabay
How to Configure MAC Address Filtering
To set up MAC filtering on a router, the administrator must configure a list of devices that are allowed to join. The physical address of each approved device must be found and then those addresses need to be entered into the router, and the MAC address filtering option turned on.
Most routers display the MAC address of connected devices from the admin console. If not, use the operating system to do it. Once you have the list of MAC address, go into the router settings and put them in their proper places.
For example, to enable the MAC filter on a Linksys Wireless-N router, go to the Wireless > Wireless MAC Filter page. The same can be done on NETGEAR routers through Advanced > Security > Access Control, and some D-Link routers in Advanced > Network Filter.
Does MAC Address Filtering Improve Network Security?
In theory, having a router perform this connection check before accepting devices increases the chance of preventing malicious network activity. The MAC addresses of wireless clients can't truly be changed because they're encoded in the hardware.
However, critics have pointed out that MAC addresses can be faked, and determined attackers know how to exploit this fact. An attacker still needs to know one of the valid addresses for that network to break in, but this too is not difficult for anyone experienced in using network sniffer tools.
However, similar to how locking your house doors will deter most burglars but not stop determined ones, setting up MAC filtering prevents average hackers from gaining network access. Most people don't know how to spoof MAC address or find a router's list of approved addresses.
MAC filters are not the same as content or domain filters, which are ways for network admins to stop certain traffic (such as adult and social networking sites) from flowing through the network. | <urn:uuid:cf3fccd6-7b28-4911-a688-e41aec764085> | https://www.lifewire.com/enabling-mac-address-filtering-wireless-router-816571 | en | 0.918817 | 0.320992 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Photograph by Roy Toft, Nat Geo Image Collection
Read Caption
A yellow-billed oxpecker perches on the head of a giraffe in Botswana's Okavango Delta.
Photograph by Roy Toft, Nat Geo Image Collection
Birds Sleep in Giraffe Armpits, New Photos Reveal
Nighttime camera trap images from Serengeti National Park in Tanzania reveal giraffes acting as "bed and breakfasts," scientists say.
The best way to guarantee breakfast in bed for some small African birds is falling asleep on your dinner plate—even if it's a giraffe's armpit.
Scientists have long known that yellow-billed oxpeckers hang out on massive African mammals like giraffe, water buffalo, and eland during the day—an often beneficial relationship that provides hosts with cleaner, healthier skin. These small brown birds can often be seen perched on top or hanging off the animals, picking through their hair in search of tasty parasites like ticks.
But a series of rare photos from a large multi-year camera trap study in Tanzania's Serengeti National Park have revealed that the birds actually roost on some of their hosts overnight. The National Geographic Society provided funding for the project, called Snapshot Serengeti, which is led by lion expert Craig Packer. (See how hidden cameras reveal the secret lives of the Serengeti.)
"You look at them on the giraffe and they're just right up in there," says Meredith Palmer, a Ph.D. candidate in behavioral ecology at the University of Minnesota. "It's a very safe, comfortable place for the birds."
Palmer, who led a new study on these giraffe "bed and breakfasts" in the African Journal of Ecology, believes the roosting may also be a territorial maneuver to deter competitors.
View Images
Yellow-billed oxpeckers sleep on a giraffe in this nighttime camera trap picture.
Their close cousin the red-billed oxpecker is smaller with a more versatile beak, allowing it to feast on the parasites plaguing a bigger repertoire of hosts, such as zebra, impala, and wildebeest.
Because the yellow-billed oxpecker has a more limited menu, it makes sense that it would keep a closer grip on its daily bread—even if it means sleeping on it.
"Once you find [a host], it's worth just sticking around so it doesn't wander off," she says.
Strange Bedfellows
Yellow-billed oxpeckers nest in trees or other vegetation when it's time to lay their eggs. But the rest of the time they're perfectly happy dangling from a giraffe—sometimes, seven birds are seen clustered in a single armpit.
"I imagine it's got to be pretty scratchy with seven birds hanging off you," quips Palmer.
Tiffany Plantan, who has studied oxpeckers but was not involved in Palmer's study, praised the paper, saying "this is, as far as I know, the first study examining these birds' behavior at night."
Animal Selfies From the Serengeti How do you get the best animal selfies? To get one-of-a-kind images, a team led by National Geographic grantee and photographer Craig Packer installs camera traps all around the Serengeti that automatically take photos when animals wander close enough to trigger them.
"It's opening the door for a whole slew of questions that can be asked, particularly between the differences between the two species of oxpeckers and their nocturnal behavior," says Plantan, an ecologist at the University of Miami. (Read why birds matter in National Geographic magazine.)
She has seen red-billed oxpeckers take naps on buffalo and other animals during the day, but she had never seen the behavior at night. Likewise, the Serengeti camera traps have also not caught red-billed oxpeckers roosting on their hosts.
View Images
Yellow-billed oxpeckers sit on the head of a water buffalo.
Another difference is that red-billed oxpeckers have smaller, more scissor-like beaks than yellow bills, which enables each species to eat different tick species.
Side Dish of Snot
The birds' palates don't consist only of blood-sucking parasites, however. Oxpeckers feast on a whole range of their hosts' bodily fluids, including mucus, blood, and even snot.
"They’ll go in the goop that's in eyes, they'll go in the secretions from the nose and the mouth. They're opportunists," Plantan says. (Read: "How 2 Million Pounds of Rotting Flesh Helps the Serengeti.")
But the relationship may not be entirely mutual. Red-billed oxpeckers have some vampire-like characteristics, often digging into their hosts' open wounds. Plantan says she has even seen red bills puncturing donkey hides with their beaks, woodpecker-style, to get at their blood.
Surprisingly, the host animals are often apathetic to this treatment. "A lot of the times they would just ignore the birds, even when they were wound-feeding," Plantan says.
| <urn:uuid:b1bc928c-d8eb-4d63-b3ba-6f96b463a572> | https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/02/animals-serengeti-tanzania-birds/ | en | 0.956835 | 0.239138 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Mahatma Gandhi (Young India, 18 June 1925, p211)
Tuesday, July 25, 2017
How would 'extraterrestrial anthropologists' characterize Earth's dominant socio-economic system?
It's not difficult to imagine their dismaying report:
"Earth's economy glorifies waste.
from 79% to 584%.
If this strikes you as "healthy growth" because "debt doesn't matter" - welcome to the Wonderland of Magical Thinking...
by Charles Hugh Smith
July 16, 2017
from CharlesHughSmith Website
Consciousness and Sociopolitics
Monday, July 24, 2017
The road to Rome leads through Mecca and Jerusalem
24 July 2017
Then we have Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif being quoted in English language media as saying that 94% of world terrorism can be traced to Saudi Arabia.
Once again, if you look behind Saudi Arabia and its pseudo-Muslim Satan worshipping ruling family, you will find the P2 and their black sun.
Now, the US military has allowed the Iranians and Russians to deploy along the border between Syria and Israel as well as along the Saudi Arabian border, causing the Israelis to freak out.
The US military is now concentrating its military in the Middle East on annihilating Daesh, which is an Israeli and Saudi Arabian front. So the US military is de facto in an alliance with Iran and Russia against Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Now Turkey has made public the locations of US bases in Syria even as its buys Russian s-400 missile defenses. Pentagon sources say this leak was deliberately made to show a US, Russian military alliance in the Middle East. This is happening as Germany withdraws its troops from Turkish airbases and stops selling arms to Turkey. Remember, Turkey has the largest army in the NATO alliance after the US. Turkey’s strongman Recep Erdogan has been flipping and flopping back and forth between Russia and NATO depending on who seems stronger. Remember it was not that long ago that Erdogan asked for NATO help after his armed forces shot down a Russian fighter jet. Now he seems to be working with Russia and the US military against NATO.
We also see the Serbians asking for Russian missile defense systems to “defend against NATO aggression.”
Remember also how US President Donald Trump was calling Germany “very bad” and became the first US president in NATO’s history to not mention the article 5 mutual defense clause in the NATO treaty. Pentagon sources have long told this writer about how much they enjoy sinking submarines sold to Israel by the Germans. Now they say the Germans are being blocked from a plan to sell 3 more submarines to Israel. Also, the Germans lost out to the French company DCNS on a contract to sell 12 submarines to the Australians, Pentagon sources say.
So now we see Germany, Israel and Saudi Arabia all in the crosshairs together. What do these countries have in common? They are controlled by Khazarian mafia bloodline families, including the old Roman families who control the P2 Freemason lodge.
Remember also how at the last G20 meeting Pope Francis was, together with German Prime Minister Angela Merkel, leading the chorus for the Paris accords, while Trump opposed it. The Paris Accords are really an attempt by the bloodline families to appear as gentle sheeple herders in order to stay in power and create a world government controlled by them. So, opposition to the Paris accords by Trump is really gnostic illuminati opposition to continued bloodline rule. The gnostic illuminati claim they have fought against bloodline rule for thousands of years and take credit for the French, US and Russian revolutions. Their leaders say they are now pushing for a world revolution against bloodline rule.
Thus, what we are seeing reflected in recent news is a continuation of a civil war in the West with countries still controlled by Khazarian bloodline families (Saudi Arabia, Germany, Israel) being attacked by those no longer under their control (the US, Russia, Iran etc.). France is also being pulled out of its alliance with Germany which is why the Daesh supporting top French general Pierre de Villiers was fired, Pentagon sources say. Clearly the tide is turning against the bloodline controlled countries.
Inside the US, the neocon Khazarian servants had a huge loss as Trump was forced to renew a deal with Iran despite his previous posturing against that country. The purge of bloodline servants also continues with warmongering Senator and Daesh (ISIS) founder John McCain getting malignant brain cancer. He joins George Soros, David Rockefeller, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Clintons and many others in the garbage can of history.
The bloodlines are fighting back against this ongoing purge with their “Russia did it” campaign. Thus, last week Susan Rice, former President Barack Obama’s security adviser, was giving secret testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee on “Russian interference” in the US election. “Russian interference,” is a Khazarian bloodline family code name for the gnostic Illuminati. Now their pet politicians in Congress (who are supported by less than 10% of the US population) are trying to place a new set of sanctions against Russia that are tantamount to a declaration of war. Of course the US military will ignore these bribed actors but what they really should be doing is rounding them up and putting them in jail. And jail is what they deserve.
If you want to know just how corrupt the Western power structure is, I highly recommend you listen to this 37 minute interview with Tony Gambino, former top boss of the Gambino crime family.
The bloodline families think they are doing God’s work by forcing Islam and Christianity to mix and merge so that they can unify monotheism, according to various P2 officials I have interviewed. They also want to create Eurabia, ruled from Jerusalem, as a step on their road to creating a fascist world government.
Their plan is now unravelling in Asia as well as in Europe. In Japan, the Tokyo Electric Power Company has sent yet another robot into the Fukushima reactors only to have them once again find nothing. That is because the official story of a reactor melt-down is a lie. The reactors were blown up by atomic bombs placed there by the Israeli company Magna BSP. This is going to be public knowledge soon because the CIA and the Pentagon have decided to expose Fukushima for the P2 directed mass murder attack that it was, according to CIA sources in Asia.
Asian secret society bosses say they agree with the Pentagon on this and will go to war if necessary early next year to remove the Khazarian influence from Japan and the Korean peninsula. The Japanese underworld are also planning a revolution against the slave regime of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe this autumn, several right wing sources say.
Weekly geo-political news and analysis
Link to recent Benjamin Fulford interview
Galactic Codex
Section I: The Law of Divine Grace
Section II: The Law of Dividing the Conflicting Parties
Section III: The Law of Balance
Section IV: The Law of Intervention
The Galactic Codex has been recently introduced to SSP factions in our Solar System and to many Earth subterranean factions as well. Galactic Codex is known and accepted quite universally among most of the positive races throughout the Galaxy. SSP factions are being educated right now but there is much resistance.
Wednesday, July 19, 2017
The Vedas and UFO Shapeshifter
The now diseased Dr. Richard Leslie Thompson relates modern UFO phenomena with the ancient Vedic textbooks, which describes life and civilizations on every planet in the Universe, which according to the Vedas are 350 billion years, and half of that period has already expired. Its a very interesting description worth listening to in the video below.
Richard Leslie Thompson, also known as Sadaputa Dasa (February 4, 1947 – September 18, 2008), was an American mathematician, author and Gaudiya Vaishnava religious figure, known principally for his promotion of Vedic creationism and as the co-author (with Michael Cremo) of Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race (1993), which has been widely criticized by the scientific community. Thompson also published several books and articles on religion and science, Hindu cosmology and astronomy.
Forbidden Archeology
Main article: Forbidden Archeology
Coauthor Michael Cremo writes in the Preface to the first edition, that the work's central claim is that anomalous paleontological evidence dating in the many hundreds of thousands of years, and with some, such as the Laetoli footprints, stretching toward the low millions, suggest that modern man "perhaps ... coexisted with more apelike creatures," and that the scientific establishment has suppressed the fossil evidence of extreme human antiquity. This argument has been critiqued by mainstream scholars from a variety of disciplines.
Selected Bibliography
-Thompson, Richard L. (1974). Equilibrium States of Thin Energy Shells. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society.
-Thompson, Richard L. (1981). Mechanistic and Nonmechanistic Science: An Investigation Into the Nature of Consciousness and Form. Lynbrook, NY: Bala Books.
-Goel, Narendra S.; Thompson, Richard L. (1988). Computer Simulations of Self-Organizations in Biological Systems. London: Croom Helm.
-Thompson, Richard L. (1989). Vedic Cosmography and Astronomy. Los Angeles: Bhaktivedanta Book Trust.
-Cremo, Michael A.; Thompson, Richard L. (1993). Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race. San Diego: Bhaktivedanta Institute.
-Thompson, Richard L. (1995). Alien Identities: Ancient Insights into Modern UFO Phenomena, 2nd Edition. Alachua, FL: Govardhan Hill Publishing.
-Thompson, Richard L. (2003). Maya: The World as Virtual Reality. Alachua, FL: Govardhan Hill Publishing.
-Thompson, Richard L. (2006). The Cosmology of the Bhagavata Purana: Mysteries of the Sacred Universe. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
-Thompson, Richard L. (2007). God and Science: Divine Causation and the Laws of Nature. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Papers and other professional works
-Thompson, Richard (1980). "A Measure of Shared Information in Classes of Patterns". Pattern Recognition. 12: 369–379.
-Thompson, Richard (1984). "A Stochastic Model of Sedimentation". Journal of Mathematical Geology. 16: 753–778.
-Thompson, Richard L.; Narendra S. Goel (1985). "A Simulation of T4 Bacteriophage Assembly and Operation". Biosystems. 18: 23–45.
-Thompson, Richard L.; Narendra S. Goel (1988). "Movable Finite Automata (MFA) Models for Biological Systems I: Bacteriophage Assembly and Operation". Journal of Theoretical Biology. 131: 351–385.
-Goel, Narendra S.; Richard Thompson (1989). "Movable Finite Automata (MFA): A New Tool for Computer Modeling of Living Systems". Artificial Life: the proceedings of an Interdisciplinary Workshop on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems, held September, 1987, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, edited by Christopher G. Langton: 317–340.
-Thompson, Richard; Narendra S. Goel (1990). "Biological Automata Models and Evolution II: The evolution of macromolecular machinery". Organizational Constraints on the Dynamics of Evolution, edited by John Maynard Smith and G. Vida: 33–48.
-Thompson, Richard L.; Narendra S. Goel (1998). "Two Models for Rapidly Calculation Bi-direction
Reflectance of Complex Vegetation Scenes: Photon Spread (PS) Model and Statistical Photon Spread (SPS) Model". Remote Sensing Review. 16: 157–207.
See also
Alternative 3 and Global Consciousness
Michael Salla, Ph.D. [7/13/17]
Written by Michael E. Salla, PhD
December 22, 2004
Monday, July 17, 2017
Russians Chinese and Americans plan massive campaign to flush secret Khazarian government into the open
July 17, 2017
High level meetings between Chinese, Russian and US military types have reached the conclusion that a short sharp war may be necessary in order to flush out the Nazis and their secret world network, Asian secret society and Pentagon sources say. The plan to flush out the secret government will take the form of a joint US, Russian and Chinese military attack on North Korea, the sources say.
“This will force North Korea’s ET backers out into the open,” the Asian secret society sources say.
Years of forensic research by this writer have revealed a secret network connecting gold mines in the South Pacific, off the grid Antarctic bases, hidden submarine bases, the world narcotics trade, North Korea and Israel among other things. This network, created by fascist allies who did not surrender at the end of World War II, is believed to be supplying North Korea with its nuclear weapons and missiles.
For that reason, the Asian secret society sources say a campaign portraying North Korea as a villain will be intensified over the coming months in preparation for a short but intense war early next year. This war will not involve countries as they exist now but rather would be between hidden forces behind countries, the sources say. So the Russians, the Chinese and the Americans would attack North Korea who would be backed by secret Russian, Chinese and American factions, making it a war between secret societies rather than a traditional one between countries, the sources agree. The aim will be to force out secret groups operating behind the scenes into the open, the Asian secret society sources say.
Pentagon sources say that North Korea and Israel are intimately linked entities. To put pressure on them, Russian troops entered Southern Syria opposite the Golan Heights last week, they say. At the same time Russia fired an Iskander missile from a Jewish Autonomous Oblast near Korea “to send a blunt message that Israel must return the Golan Heights,” the Pentagon sources say.
The Jews are also waking up to the fact that their Khazarian mafia overlords are the same people who engineered the holocaust. Maj. Gen. Yair Golan, the Israeli army’s deputy chief of staff, last week compared Israel’s current government to the Nazis and has refused to back down, a sign the Khazarians are likely to lose control of Israel as well as North Korea.
Japan’s government recently passed a conspiracy bill that allows it to arrest people planning to commit a crime because they want to have a legal excuse to detain all the professional war makers who are expected to flee from North Korea to Japan once the fighting breaks out, the Asian sources say.
Of course, the ideal solution will be to bring these secret groups out of the closet without actually having to resort to a war, White Dragon Society sources in Asia say.
Weekly geo-political news and analysis
Message from Benjamin Fulford
Identifying and Understanding an Indigo
Indigos receive their designation when their surrounding aura is predominately indigo in color. I will use the term Indigo here, however, many of the traits are very similar to those found in "old souls."
The concept of an Indigo person was developed in the 1970s when it was discovered that many children who were born in the 60s or 70s had strong indigo auras.
It is believed that Indigo children are born to a parent who has had some form of spiritual awakening during their lifetime.
This awakening results in our DNA altering slightly so that when we pro-create, the children that are produced have also been awakened spiritually.
Indigos are able to tap into the collective consciousness, which thousands of years ago was a perfectly normal thing to do. However, as our DNA began to learn how to store memories, many of us now rely too heavily on the data held in our memories to make our decisions for us, rather than using our conscious state.
DNA records and stores our cell’s memories in the same way as a tape recorder does. [1] As we go through life we search for data in our DNA (tape recorder) rather than tapping into our higher selves.
This has caused us to lose our ability to tap into this higher consciousness and instead means we allow our pasts to make sense of the situations we are in and also make sub-conscious decisions about the information that we are constantly receiving.
When people tap into their higher consciousness, a part of their DNA alters and strengthens.
This then means that the DNA we pass onto our offspring will also store this data and this will form part of our children’s blueprint, allowing them to also be able to access this consciousness, and this will become stronger and easier as generations pass on these genes.
The children that are born to those who have accessed this ability are Indigo children.
Indigo is a very rich, deep midnight blue color mixed with violet which gives it a very regal shade.
Indigos relate strongly to,
-spiritual knowledge
-telepathic communication
The brow/sixth chakra also known as the third eye, which is located at the centre of the forehead, relates to the color purple.
An Old Soul or Indigo personality will be able to see things from their higher self, rather than for the purpose of the ego or for financial or material reward.
Often the easiest way to be able to tell if someone is an Indigo is by asking if they resonate with the color indigo.
Even if indigo is not the favored color choice, it will very likely strike a powerful resonation and no explanation is needed as to why this is - it is an intuitive connection based on the vibrations of energy in our surrounding auras.
Indigos have an inner knowing that is far more powerful than psychic abilities.
Rather than thinking, Indigos use feeling to make sense of the world. They observe the electromagnetic vibrations that everyone sends out and then have the ability to translate the energy to understand it.
Indigos take responsibility for their own lives and also use their intuition to follow their intended path. They are desperate to find the meaning of their life and the missing answers that are found within the hidden and subliminal messages that everyday life delivers.
Indigos will literally feel as though they have been born on the wrong planet. They will feel alien-like while in the company of others who do not resonate with their experience.
Indigos may feel as though they are the black sheep of the family or that they are the lone wolves of society. This is because they do not gel with others well, unless they are vibrating on the same wavelength.
Indigos will often recreate their own families by forming a bond of friendships with those who are similar. They often refer to those they resonate deeply with as their soul families or warrior tribes or something similar.
Authority will be an area that Indigos struggle with and this will likely start within the education system. Rules and regulations will not make sense and Indigos will easily manage to weave their way through systems paying little regard to social norms and unwritten rules.
An Indigo often does not need to gain formal educational qualifications to prove their intellect or abilities, and instead will find their own path to their own kind of success. Success to an Indigo will begin and end with their soul being nourished and providing service to others.
Everything else that comes from their success is seen as a by-product and will hold very little value compared with the rewards that are soul-deep.
One of the main traits of Indigos is a strong intuition and psychic ability and many are clairvoyants, even if they are not fully aware of this part of themselves.
Indigos wish to create harmony. They want to feel at one with the earth and long for all humans, animals and all living organisms to unite in peace. An Indigo’s soul finds it difficult to rest and fully relax whilst there is suffering here on earth.
Many additives that are added to foods and drinks will be intolerable for an Indigo. Sensitivities to chemicals will be very likely and the only substances that settle well in an Indigo’s system will be natural ones.
This is also the same for cosmetics, or cleaning products, causing the skin to flare or react badly when it comes into close contact with these things. All of these intolerances are ways of seeing what the world needs to change to create a better world for future generations.
An Indigo will have an innate desire to serve humanity and to jump to the defense of anyone or anything that is in need. They fight for equality and will go to any length to support those who may need help or assistance in any way.
Indigos thrive on honesty and integrity and anything else will feel like a stain on their soul that they will work to remove.
They make mistakes, tell lies and trip up many times, however, they have a very strong sense of what is right and what is wrong and when they do fail to make the right decisions they will do whatever they can to reroute their journeys so that they do not fall over the same obstacles time and again.
Indigos are on a mission to clear the cobwebs away from illusions and even though it is often painfully blinding to view reality they will adjust their perception continuously until they see things with the greatest clarity possible.
Indigos are,
-the rebels of the world
-the game changers
-the curious ones
-the philosophers
-the truth seekers
-the daydreamers
-the creators
-the unconventional ones
-the peacekeepers
-the mystical and magical ones
-the quirky ones
-the warriors
-the free spirits
-the feisty ones with tender hearts and tough unbreakable spirits
They’re the charismatic old souls whose wise eyes give them away as they fearlessly look straight through you and deep down into the dark vortex within.
1. -
by Alex Myles
July 10, 2017
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Thursday, March 12, 2020
5 Tips to Finding Your Me-Time to Relax and De-Stress
God in His wisdom determined that one day in a week be a rest day with the Lord. It is indeed refreshing to spend time worshipping God together with the family and brethren at church.
But then, what about the other days of the week. How tiring and weary can your days be? For a mom who has a lot of never-ending (repetitive) chores, every day can be quite tiring. Moms take care of the home (and sometimes go to work also), but who takes care of her? As I always say, it's difficult if the mom gets sick because of her big role in the family. So, it is very important for a mom, no matter how busy she is, to learn to value self-care and schedule personal time.
Have a personal time to refuel your tank, mom. This allows you to give to your family and to yourself in equal measure. Don’t hesitate to sit down for a while doing nothing. It's ok to relax in a hammock under a tree to get away from the stress of the day. Read a book for 30 minutes if you like reading or watch a TV program.
Here are a few more tips you might like to try to fit in much needed “mom” time in your day:
1. Get at least 30 minutes of solitude
Usually, my day starts at 5:00 am. That's when the kids have to prepare to go to school. I cook/pack their lunch. After they go, that's when I spend some me-time. Things that I would do include exercising for 20 to 30 minutes, reading the Word, meditating, praying and drinking coffee.
2. Ask your family members for help
Kids can help do some house chores for you while you go shopping, take a relaxing bath or go to the spa. It's your personal time, so you can do whatever you like. By the way, assigning chores to your kids also helps them be more helpful and responsible.
3. Always be prepared like a Boy Scout
Prepare things in advance by doing them when you're least busy. Then, you can be in a more relaxed mode. The fewer things you need to do all through the day, the calmer your day will be and you will not experience burnout.
For example, fix your kids' lunches the night before. Some moms spend time on a Sunday to prepare meals for the whole week. Freezing foods can help preserve them and the foods can be reheated prior to consumption. Another example is to iron clothes for the whole week. This also saves you more money on electricity by ironing clothes just one time. .
4. Don't let the day pass without laughing
Experts say that laughing releases stress. Stress is associated with the hormones epinephrine and cortisol. The levels of these hormones go down when you laugh, at the same time, the hormone oxytoxin or the "happy hormone" increases. So laugh to lift your spirits significantly. Laughing also helps your body get more oxygen which makes you feel better. Another benefit of laughing is it helps keep your abs tight.
5. Learn to relax in shorter periods of time
There are a few things you can do to relax quickly and it doesn't take a lot of time. One is to take a few deep breaths. Deep breaths can easily reverse the effects of stress. Here's how you do it:
• Take a deep, long breath in through your nose.
• When you can’t take in any more air, open your mouth and let the air out.
• Making an “hhhhaaaa” sound while releasing the air helps.
• Do this several times and you’re sure to feel less stressed.
Another thing you can do is to take short exercise breaks. You can do jumping jacks during a television commercial, jog to the bus stop to pick up the kids or take a short walk to get some fresh air. You can also play some music and dance or just relax to soothing music. Music is known to have health and stress-reducing benefits.
Moms should take care of themselves. If you're not around because of sickness, who will take care of your family? You owe it to yourself to take a break from the daily chores.
Do you have tips to share that can help busy moms to relax and unwind to reduce stress? Please share in the comments below.
1 comment:
Shruti Bhattacharya said...
These are some great tips to unwind. Unwinding is necessary...We need to be okay to be able to take care of our family, | <urn:uuid:ef3e496d-6962-4e5f-a5a7-35e7156e4e50> | https://www.stayathomeblessings.com/2020/03/5-tips-to-finding-your-me-time-to-relax.html | en | 0.957925 | 0.068682 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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Health benefits of Raspberry Ketones and how to use it?
Want to lose weight? You are not alone. The problem is that conventional weight loss methods are very difficult to maintain and 85% of people fail to lose weight in the long run. However, there are many products that can help make things easier. After green tea, green coffee, konjac and many others, Raspberry Ketone is touted as a promising slimming supplement. Very popular in the UK, "Raspberry Ketone" is already among the ingredients of several dietary supplements marketed in the country.
What are Raspberry Ketones?
image of raspberry fruit with leaves to show it contains ketones
Raspberry Ketone is the natural substance that gives red raspberries their powerful aroma, colour, flavour and not to forget, their many health benefits. You can also find them in small proportions in blackberries, cranberries, and kiwis.
Red raspberries are native to Europe, Northern Africa and Central Asia and have essential nutrients including beta-carotene and vitamins A, E and C. These ketones have a long history of use in cosmetics and also have been added to soft drinks, ice cream and other processed foods as a flavouring agent.
In the past few years, Raspberry supplements have gained popularity due to their potential metabolism boosting and fat burning qualities. When combined with a healthy diet and regular exercise, they can help to promote weight loss results. The properties of Raspberry Ketones are believed to have a powerful and positive effect on your overall health. Since the actual fruit contains only traces of ketone, the superfood is produced in labs.
How Does Raspberry Ketone Work?
Weight loss is the primary usage of raspberry ketones. This simple fruit extract can offer a vast amount of help in achieving your weight loss target. Raspberry Ketones increase the secretion of the brain chemical norepinephrine which breaks down the fat present in your fat cells. Secondly, these Ketones increase the secretion of Adiponectin which again helps to break down fats and also regulates sugar levels and metabolism. Adiponectin is a hormone that is found at high levels in thin people whereas low levels in the obese. Increasing the amount of this hormone in your diet can both decrease fat and increase metabolic rate resulting in further weight loss.
What are the benefits of raspberry ketones?
loose jeans to show that raspberry ketones promotes weight loss
Promotes weight loss - Some studies suggest that they can help in speeding up the body’s fat burning action. The compound helps produce a hormone which helps break down fat cells faster, especially in the liver which can help with weight loss. These same benefits can be realised by eating the whole fruit but you would have to consume about 90 pounds to get the same effect, which is why pills are usually preferred. Research shows that when paired with a balanced diet and regular exercise, raspberry ketones can help you lose weight.
icon of a meter reader that reads how much cholestrol you have
Helps lower cholesterol - The adiponectin compound found in such supplements helps to regulate the amount of glucose in the body and hence your blood sugar levels via its ability to increase the body’s sensitivity to certain hormones. This increased sensitivity means that blood sugar levels can be decreased and sustained over a longer period of time.
heart to show that raspberry ketones work by altering the metabolism of fat
Can boost the metabolism - Raspberry ketones work by altering the metabolism of fat, to aid weight loss. Studies suggest that this compound helps the body enhance its adiponectin production, which in turn breaks down fat and regulates metabolism as well. Therefore, the benefits of raspberry ketone supplement can promote an active metabolism. Animal studies also show that raspberry ketones can help reduce the stubborn abdominal fat stored in the liver. So the more adiponectin, the better your body will be able to clear out fat cells to use them as energy. The entire process is known as lipolysis.
man trying to stop foreign pathogens from entering
Helps boosts the immune system - The high antioxidant content in raspberry ketones has been linked to everything from protecting the body against disease to preventing cell damage, giving you multiple, ongoing health benefits as well as weight loss. Antioxidants are also commonly known to help protect the body against free radicals which are one of the main causes for the signs of premature ageing.
Other Uses of Raspberry Ketone
Packed full of antioxidants, raspberries have long been known to protect your body against diseases and cell damage. It releases the hormone protein called adiponectin in the body that is known to help prevent type-2 diabetes.
Ingredients Often Mixed With Raspberry Ketones
Even though it is suggested to buy a pure form, some supplements also add other superfoods to their formulation to gain an extra edge in your weight loss program. The most common superfoods combined with Raspberries include African mango, Green tea, Acai berry and many more.
infographic showing the most common superfoods combined with Raspberries
After comparing the benefits the other supplements with Raspberry ketone, one thing invariably remains is that you need to look for all natural ingredients. These ingredients won’t overpower the effects of the ketones but supplement its power and also help in naturally detoxifying the body. Finally, when you choose 100% natural pure form, you do not have to worry about any major side effects. However, do not use it without discussing with your doctor if you are a pregnant woman, breastfeeding mother or have any pre-existing conditions.
Why is it better to take raspberry ketone supplements?
Dosage instructions: The amount of berries you would need to eat daily to get the daily dosage of raspberry ketones is really high. You may need to have 90 lbs a day in order to get the same fat-burning effect as a single 100 mg dose, that’s huge and impossible for anyone to ingest that many berries. This is why there are supplements made from pure Raspberry Ketone Extracts. These are highly concentrated and are designed to give you the required dosage of the ketones to give you results you desire.
infographic on why it is better to take raspberry ketone supplements
How much raspberry ketone should your supplement hold?
Bowl of raspberries and blueberries with a tape measure around it
Understanding proper dosage is essential in ensuring that you get the most out of this wonderful supplement. You need to understand the maximum dosage of raspberry ketones or the minimum dosage needed in order to get results. This is obviously dependant on the supplement and brand you try but in general it is recommended that you take your raspberry ketone supplement each day around 30 minutes to an hour before food. Do always read the label of any supplement you take to ensure you are taking the recommended dosage for that particular product.
Things to consider while choosing Raspberry Ketone Supplements
One more important factor to consider is cost. Due to its highly concentrated nature and you know how many berries are needed to be crushed to get the required ketones; Raspberry ketones are one of the most expensive compounds. This has led to many low-quality raspberry ketone supplements being sold in the market so try to avoid these and go for high strengths. Also make sure to avoid raspberry ketone pills and supplements that have any unwanted chemicals, fillers or binders as these can have a negative impact on your health. When choosing we recommend always going for natural and organic supplements that are made to a high quality.
The main contraindications to taking Raspberry Ketone:
Raspberry Ketone is a supplement composed only of plant extracts and is therefore 100% natural. However, like any active ingredient, raspberry ketone may have some contraindications that are important to know and here is the detail:
• Minors under 18 years of age should not take Raspberry Ketone or any other active ingredient, even natural, acting on weight loss without the prior opinion of a doctor and without strict medical monitoring.
• Pregnant or lactating women should not consume Raspberry Ketone because of their specific energy needs during this period.
• Interactions are possible between Raspberry Ketone and other medical treatments. It is, therefore, essential to seek the advice of your doctor before taking raspberry ketone if you are taking medication.
In conclusion..
Raspberry ketones can speed up the metabolic process to help with fat burning, but it is important to incorporate regular exercise and a calorie controlled diet. Some people find this supplement helps them to overcome a plateau of weight loss. Any type of weight loss accomplished will need a healthy maintenance strategy too.
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Most Famous Person With Last Name Fletcher
Regional/niche fame
John Fletcher (playwright)
John Fletcher (playwright)
Given name: John
Friday, November 30, 1579
John Fletcher (playwright) is the most famous person named Fletcher. Their Zodiac sign is ♐Sagittarius. Their most notable profession was Writer. They are considered the most important person in history born with the last name of Fletcher.
Their birthplace was Rye, East Sussex
Next most famous people with last name Fletcher
Ernie Fletcher
#2 Ernie Fletcher
Given name: Ernie
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Murder of Yvonne Fletcher
#4 Murder of Yvonne Fletcher
Given name: Yvonne
Sunday, June 15, 1958
Harvey Fletcher
#5 Harvey Fletcher
Given name: Harvey
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Ken Fletcher
#6 Ken Fletcher
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Dexter Fletcher
#7 Dexter Fletcher
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Darren Fletcher
#8 Darren Fletcher
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#9 Steven Fletcher (footballer)
Given name: Steven
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Alan Fletcher (actor)
#10 Alan Fletcher (actor)
Given name: Alan
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Duncan Fletcher
#11 Duncan Fletcher
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Jessica Fletcher
#12 Jessica Fletcher
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Tom Fletcher
#13 Tom Fletcher
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Horace Fletcher
#14 Horace Fletcher
Given name: Horace
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Andy Fletcher (musician)
#15 Andy Fletcher (musician)
Given name: Andrew John Leonard Fletcher
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Guy Fletcher
#16 Guy Fletcher
Given name: Guy
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Brendan Fletcher
#17 Brendan Fletcher
Given name: Brendan
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Dustin Fletcher
#18 Dustin Fletcher
Given name: Dustin
Wednesday, May 7, 1975
Sally Fletcher
#19 Sally Fletcher
Given name: Sally
Buddy Fletcher
#20 Buddy Fletcher
Given name: Buddy
Friday, January 1, 1965
Keith Fletcher
#21 Keith Fletcher
Given name: Keith
Saturday, May 20, 1944
Giles Fletcher, the Elder
#22 Giles Fletcher, the Elder
Given name: Giles
Sunday, November 30, 1547
Cliff Fletcher
#23 Cliff Fletcher
Given name: Cliff
Friday, August 16, 1935
Kelvin Fletcher
#24 Kelvin Fletcher
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#25 Carl Fletcher (Welsh footballer)
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Grasping Evil - Chapter 249 (1)
Hey guys, the 1 out of 7 of the week!
Happy reading!
61 vortexes were formed within the pool filled with green blood.
At the bottom of the pool, Ning Fan was as quiet as a corpse. Anyone would have mistaken him as dead if he did not occasionally move his fingers to perform hand seals.
After the Life Blood Incense Flame entered into the demon statue of the Demon Ancestor, the heat of the blood in the pool became even more severe than that of magma.
“Is it Lu Zongyun who helped me once again? This person actually has the means to heat up this pool of blood to this extent…”
Ning Fan’s fingers began to perform hand seals again in order to condense more blood vortexes.
61 vortexes, 62 vortexes…69 vortexes.
Three days later, there were already 70 green blood vortexes surrounding him. However, the condensation speed of the demon blood started to gradually decline.
71 vortexes, 72 vortexes… 79 vortexes.
Another ten days had passed by. Ning Fan had congealed 80 green vortexes. This time, the condensation of the power of the blood pool became even slower.
81 vortexes, 82 vortexes…89 vortexes.
One month later, Ning Fan condensed the ninetieth blood vortex!
Two months later, another 9 blood vortexes were formed!
Once he congeals the one hundredth blood vortex, he could then start to try awakening the Incomplete Immemorial Demon Blood!
The golden sense of the Demon Ancestor within his demon blood became more active than before, as if it was trying to lead him into the path of the Immemorial Golden Crow.
However, Ning Fan hesitated!
There were only two options placed before him. Firstly, take a leap of faith and randomly awaken an Incomplete Immemorial Demon Blood after condensing a hundred demon bloodlines. However, there were strong and weak Incomplete Immemorial Demon Bloodlines. In other words, the bloodline that Ning Fan awakens might probably be far weaker than the bloodline of the Immemorial Golden Crow.
Secondly, rely on the Immemorial Golden Crow’s qi concealed within the Demon Ancestor’s golden sense to awaken the Incomplete Immemorial Demon Bloodline of the Immemorial Golden Crow.
If he chooses the second option, there was virtually 0% chance for him to fail. However, even if he successfully condenses the Immemorial Golden Crow’s bloodline, there would still be a high possibility that he could only become an ordinary golden crow in the future.
After all, he was not a member of the golden crow race. For anyone like him, it would only be wishful thinking to hope to join the royal clan of the golden crows.
“The bloodline of the royal clans…”
Ning Fan remained silent.
Even among the true members of the golden crow race, those who were able to awaken the royal clan bloodline were extremely rare. There might not be a single demon among ten thousand of them.
In order to awaken a royal clan bloodline, one must at the very least completely awaken the Immemorial Demon Bloodline in the Second Bloodline Awakening. Only then would the complete demon bloodline have a chance to evolve once more in the Third Bloodline Awakening.
In other words, only if those conditions are met would the holder of the Immemorial Demon Bloodline have the chance to become one of the True Spirits of the royal clan!
Take the little pill devil, Bright Sparrow for example. She possessed the royal clan bloodline of the Immemorial Dark Sparrow.
Her bloodline alone was enough to cause thousands of demons to submit to her!
“Is it possible for me to awaken the royal clan bloodline?”
Ning Fan asked himself. But after pondering for a moment, he came up with a conclusion. Before this, he had already devoured more than a thousand drops of Wild Beasts blood. Despite that, there was not even a single percent chance of success to awaken the royal clan bloodline with his current number of demon bloodlines.
Among the two choices he had now, none of them would lead him to become a True Spirit of the royal clan.
He chuckled to himself, thinking that he was being too greedy in the first place.
Even Demon General Li Ban was in euphoria the moment he succeeded in condensing a trace of Immemorial Demon Bloodline of the Immemorial Thunder Dragon. Besides, the reputation of the Immemorial Golden Crow was much higher than the Immemorial Thunder Dragon. Even if he does not possess the royal clan bloodline, his demon bloodline would surely be stronger than Li Ban’s after he completes the Third Bloodline Awakening in the future.
“Fine. I’ll just awaken the Incomplete Immemorial Demon Bloodline of the Immemorial Golden Crow…”
Ning Fan made up his mind. He opened his palm and performed hand seals with his fingers to congeal the one hundredth blood vortex!
When it emerged in the pool, Ning Fan opened his mouth and sucked all of the green blood vortexes into his abdomen!
At that moment, Lu Zongyun stopped kowtowing towards the demon statue, feeling overjoyed.
“Good! Good! Finally, this kid decided to begin awakening his bloodline. With a hundred demon bloodlines, he will definitely have a high chance of awakening an Incomplete Immemorial Demon Blood! If that’s the case, my efforts all throughout the months will not be put to waste. It took me thousands of kowtows to the demon statue! Hehe. I finally can report to the Demon General on the fulfillment of my duty!”
In the first palace, a satisfied smile appeared on Lu Sheng’s face. Now, Ning Fan’s ranking had climbed up to the 47th place. The strength of his bloodline was slightly stronger than Lu Sheng’s.
“Very well! This Lu Zongyun did not play any tricks. As for Lu Bei, he did not disappoint me! Haha!”
At the side of the pool, Lu Wan’er had been waiting for Ning Fan for months. When she saw the green blood pool began to shine with golden light, her eyes were filled with absolute surprise.
“It can’t be wrong! This golden ray represents the presence of an Incomplete Immemorial Demon Blood! Moreover, judging by the intensity of the light, this bloodline belongs to one of the top races among the True Spirits races!”
Lu Wan’er was filled with hope, looking forward to the moment when Ning Fan succeeds in awakening the bloodline.
In the meantime, Ning Fan who was situated at the bottom of the pool began to grow a massive pair of golden wings on his back!
He looked just like a man made of gold. Even the color of the green demon star in his left eye slowly turned faint gold.
Bloodline Awakening… Once Ning Fan withdraws his blood and qi and stabilizes them, the process would then end successfully.
But just a moment before he succeeded in awakening his demon bloodline, an immense uneasiness surfaced in his mind.
The more he condensed the demon blood, the stronger he felt that something was being drained away from his body…
“Don’t tell me this is…”
His eyes became solemn. It was not an illusion which was why he felt so anxious!
He immediately slapped his storage pouch and took out an ivory-white, round-shaped stone.
The stone was given by Old Ancestor Dong Xu back in the auction when it finished. It was called the Stratagem Stone.
It was meticulously designed with refined Gimmick Techniques, making it be able to partially detect one’s luck!
Luck was not something that could be read easily. Luck was just like life, something akin to an emotion. It might make one overpowered and invincible, but it was impossible to detect, not to mention touch.
However, Dong Xu relied on his proficiency towards the Dao of Luck and created an exquisite tiny stone using his heaven-defying Gimmick Techniques.
As soon as Ning Fan held that stone in his hand, it instantly reflected his luck, glowing in green color.
But the longer he condensed the golden crow’s bloodline, his green-colored luck was gradually seeping away and turning into yellow.
His eyes flashed with shock. The thing that was being drained away was his luck!
“Why would it become like this?! Dong Xu said that my magic power can only go through the Devil Transformation, or else my luck will be drained away. But why can’t my demon power condense the golden crow’s bloodline?”
Ning Fan had no idea where his luck was flowing to.
However, he vaguely understood something.
Someone had been plotting against him all this time. Besides, it looked like condensing the bloodline of the Immemorial Golden Crow was one of the crucial events that the person had been expecting.
Perhaps this was the reason why his future would not be bright if he succeeds in awakening the golden crow’s bloodline. After his luck is drained away, his fate would never revert again!
“The Incomplete Immemorial Golden Crow’s Bloodline!”
The more Ning Fan thought about it, the more he felt terrified.
It was because of the Demon Ancestor’s golden sense that he was able to awaken the Incomplete Immemorial Golden Crow’s Bloodline.
It was because of the Eastern Ocean Bell that he was able to obtain the Demon Ancestor’s golden sense.
The Eastern Ocean Bell was found in the Demon Sinister Forest.
The Demon Sinister Forest was the place where the mysterious True Immortal was raising demons!
No matter what I have done, each and every decision that I made seem to be within the predictions of that person. Everything had been calculated and planned just for today – the awakening of the Immemorial Golden Crow’s Bloodline!
Perhaps that person had already been scheming against me since the entrance examination of the Sinister Sparrow Sect!
The Eastern Ocean Bell was intentionally placed at the third floor in the Demon Sinister Forest, waiting for me to obtain it…
Could that person be the mysterious True Immortal who secretly raised Bright Sparrow?!
Rage filled Ning Fan’s eyes. He never liked to be manipulated by someone else. To be more accurate, no one would like to be within the calculations of others for every single step they moved.
Looking at his luck which was slowly diminishing in his hands, Ning Fan’s eyes shone in cold light.
The day when my luck runs out will be the day I die…
“So, mysterious stranger, you seem to be really enjoying predicting my moves… If that’s the case, I will break free from your calculations!”
Ning Fan had two choices.
Firstly, awaken the Incomplete Immemorial Golden Crow’s Bloodline.
Secondly, randomly awaken an Incomplete Immemorial Demon Bloodline.
That mysterious True Immortal is indeed excellent in predicting my moves. I suppose he has even predicted that I will see through his calculations today. However, that True Immortal isn’t afraid of me discovering his plans.
In fact, Ning Fan had a feeling that no matter what he decided today, be it awakening an ordinary Incomplete Immemorial Demon Bloodline or literally giving up the Bloodline Awakening, everything he did would be within that True Immortal’s calculations. That was how a Yang Plot [lit: overt plot] worked. One might be able to see through the plot but they could not escape from it. It was inevitable…
“No… It’s wrong. I still have the fourth choice! I guess even that mysterious True Immortal would not be able to see this coming!”
“I want to awaken a complete Immemorial Demon Blood, not an Incomplete Immemorial Demon Blood! As such, in the Third Bloodline Awakening, I will be able to step into the list of royal clan bloodlines and become a True Spirit of the royal clan!”
“The probability of this happening is not even one in ten thousand. However, it is because of that extremely low chance of success that the True Immortal will not be able to expect such possibility.”
“Regardless of anything, I want to bet on it! Even if the odds are one out of ten thousand, I will never yield!”
The golden light on his body dispersed. The massive wings on his back disintegrated.
His bloodline remained at a hundred traces in the end.
The Bloodline Awakening was a failure…
Lu Sheng inconceivably stared at the Wall of Demon Shadow. He could not understand what had happened.
Just now, it clearly stated that Ning Fan’s bloodline had evolved into the Immemorial Golden Crow’s Bloodline. But why would it regress to winged demon bloodline in the end?!
Lu Zongyun was completely stunned.
After everything I have done and every treasure I have used to help him in awakening his bloodline, he still failed?
Translated by Tommy, edited by Roel
Some terms are subject to change when better suggestions are selected.
All the internal monologues will be in italic form. | <urn:uuid:9413ca82-5ad0-43f4-ba25-5192fc06c477> | http://liberspark.com/read/grasping-evil/chapter-249-1 | en | 0.969164 | 0.044761 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Medicine for Melancholy
[3 stars]
How do (or did) you navigate the morning after a one night stand? And what happened next? In this first feature by Barry Jenkins (If Beale Street Could Talk), we get to follow Wyatt Cenac and Tracey Heggins for the day that follows their hook-up. We slowly get to know them as they learn about each other. The performances are nicely understated and unsure as they slowly reveal who they are and what they’re looking for.
Within the often forced dialog and awkward moments, you can see the roots of Jenkins’ films to follow. It is most evident in his focus on character and the sometimes painful discussions of inner beliefs we all experience with those we expose ourselves to. You can also see him reaching to find his voice, even as he plays with imitating influences like Spike Lee. If it weren’t for Jenkins’ subsequent films, this would simply be a notable, but not particularly great, indie. But as part of his opus, it is a curio worth checking out if you want to see his roots as a filmmaker or some of the early work of the story’s stars.
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Donald Trump's World is Censored
How Donald Trump Becoming President Changed My World
The Blue Marble
World Teeters on the Brink Of…
Welcome to mid-2016. Science and technology have progressed immensely. Are we on the brink of a new golden age, or is it all just clever brain-washing? Are we on the brink of war, or is it just the same old game of measuring who has the bigger gun? Are we going to vote in the next Hitler and give up our privacy, praying for protection from Big Brother? Or are we going to sit down at the same table with our worst enemies and enact sweeping social and political changes? | <urn:uuid:78ae17e9-122c-4899-ba76-93240f90a34f> | http://mentatul.com/tag/world/ | en | 0.951108 | 0.797603 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Category Archives: Marijuana Definition
How come CBD on everybody’s lips?
CBD is among the biggest buzzwords in drink and food. It’s been hailed the second thing that is big with increasingly more chefs and producers utilizing CBD within their meals. What exactly can it be? And exactly why can it be therefore stylish?
When you look at the Food Programme, Charlotte Smith speaks to your owner and chef during the UK’s very first cannabis-infused restaurant, meets other specialists in the industry – and also samples CBD herself – in an attempt to discover what all of the fuss is all about.
The meals Programme: how come CBD on every person’s lips?
What exactly is CBD?
Cannabidiol, more often called CBD, is really a chemical obtained through the cannabis plant. Unlike its sibling tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), it is non-psychoactive and won’t get you high.
Why would it is taken by you and so what does it do in order to you?
CBD is thought to give a sense of leisure and calm, with numerous arguing it helps to alleviate discomfort and swelling and minimize anxiety. Thus far the research aren’t clear as to whether consuming lower amounts has any impact or perhaps not but, not surprisingly, it is now a favorite substitute for those searching for a fix for anxiety or discomfort who don’t desire to have a drug that is mind-altering. Continue reading | <urn:uuid:2901c7cc-8230-4c65-b924-3e7e72f39a16> | http://traderush-reviews.com/category/marijuana-definition-2 | en | 0.959622 | 0.065114 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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Doom Eternal review - the same orgiastic thrills with a creeping weight of story
An even faster and bloodier but slightly wayward follow-up to a thunderous shooter reboot.
"Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie," the original Doom's programmer John Carmack once wrote. "It's expected to be there, but it's not that important." A connoisseur of sleaze might object that story often makes for sexier porn - after all, story tends to involve chemistry, atmosphere, suspense and all the other emotions that distinguish intimacy from the act of banging together genitals to spark a human being. Still, if we're going to liken games to pornography, and assuming it's the more kinetic kind of pornography you're after, I heartily recommend Doom Eternal: a looping video compilation of oversized guns and fists plunging into squelchy orifices, spurting along at 60 frames a second.
2016's accomplished reboot was already quite the debauch, its firefights punctuated by leering close-ups of skewered hellspawn, its heavy metal soundtrack always building to a crescendo. Eternal turns up the heat even further, allowing you to dash and flip your way around arenas that are newly fixated on the vertical axis. Dripping organs are wrenched out of, then stuffed back into, demon torsos; chargeable alt-fires scream for release; health orbs spatter the ramps and chokepoints like - well, you get the picture. The environments often look like the work of an adolescent H.R. Giger who's just got into AC/DC. Aside from silvery Protoss-ish fortresses and some seriously down-at-heel office blocks, you'll wander labyrinths of squirming flesh, using runes to unclench toothy sphincters and shearing pop-up tentacles in half with your shotgun.
Some, of course, will soberly insist that all of this is just good, honest, videogame violence - clean, upstanding fun with absolutely no over- or undertones whatsoever. And to these people I say: when I am walking down the shaft of an enormous spear, straight into the pierced belly of a reeling, gaping titan, it is difficult to argue that there isn't some kind of metaphor in play. "Rip and tear"? More like rip and splooge.
Carmack's porn quote (which he has since qualified a little) epitomises the view that narrative in games is always an imposition, a foreign body carried over from film and literature. It's a view that has been roundly debunked. The thing is, though, Eternal does have a story, somewhere in amongst the parade of demon O-faces, and while that story is lightweight by Zenimax game standards, it feels hopelessly grafted on. Having thwarted Hell's invasion of Mars, the legendary Doom Slayer must purge Earth itself of diabolical interlopers, setting out from a gothic orbital station turned customisation hub to a series of ravaged cities, factories and temples that feel on loan from Gears of War. In the process, he must also tunnel back into a startlingly eventful past, sitting through flashbacks and wrangling with old allies.
The 2016 game was a thrilling reimagining of the speed and ferocity of 90s Doom combat, but it also magnified Doom's narrative trappings, adding in cutscenes, audio diaries, codex entries and mid-mission dialogue - a curious reversal of one of id's key decisions with the original game, which was once planned to include a sizeable narrative component written by co-founder Tom Hall. Eternal adds yet more to the load, expanding the cast and redoubling the emphasis on lore.
The cutscenes are now a mix of first and third-person, which means the Slayer is a fully tangible human being - one you can, moreover, trick out with unlockable outfits and weapon skins - rather than a pair of enormous fists twitching beneath your aiming reticle. He feels enclosed by the fiction, rather than, as Christian Donlan put it back in the day, like a man who is also playing Doom and who shares your resentment for anything that gets in the way. There's some effort to explain the character's superhuman prowess, with one scientist suggesting that you represent humanity's rage to survive, as opposed to humanity's love of making Cacodemons pop in slow motion. The Slayer even has a voice these days, though I think he strings together maybe five words in total.
True, our man in green never looks happy with all the attention, stomping impatiently through cinematics while other parties monologue at his retreating head (if they're lucky, that is - the fate of most speaking roles in Eternal is to be ground up like tuna). Nor are you required to listen to the audio diaries, or dip into the codex. But these elements drag on you nonetheless, like the lakes of purple goop that stop you running or jumping in certain levels. They're a deflating reminder that you are no longer here just to indulge your baser instincts. Conversely, the developer's guilty awareness that people don't play Doom for the narrative means that when you do dig into the world-building, you'll find it to be scanty and by-the-numbers: a set of tired references to ancient races, legendary battles and fallen cities.
Still, if visceral gratification is the goal, Eternal amply delivers. The combat is once again about ceaseless pivoting between attack and retreat, care of a raucous battlefield ecology which sees you ripping ammo, health and armour refills from your prey rather than just searching for medikits or finding somewhere to cool off. Stun a foe and you can execute them for a smidgeon of health. These executions double as windows of rest, with other demons easing off till you're done rearranging your victim's anatomy. They can also be triggered from metres away, warping you to the target without even the courtesy of a transitional animation, which means you can use them to escape or get behind a mob. Bisect demons with your trusty chainsaw, meanwhile, and you'll be rewarded with a geyser of ammo, restocking all your weapons in one dollop. You'll need plenty of chainsaw fuel to carve up the bigger demons, but you'll always have enough to carve up the smaller "fodder" demons, who spawn endlessly throughout each battle till the larger demons are slain.
This hyper-aggressive resourcing style forces you to close the gap with foes who are, in any case, very good at running you down. Some, like the minion-summoning Archville, are closer to terrain hazards, but the underworld's legions are light on snipers or artillery; pretty much everybody, from the podgy Mancubus to the serpentine Whiplash, is hell-bent on getting in your face. It sounds like chaos, and often is, but there's a lot of science to Eternal's combat, and solid artistry to how the key variables are conveyed from second to second. Ammo, health and armour drops are colour-coded; staggered enemies flash blue, then orange when they're about to recover. The game's audio is similarly readable, once you acclimatise to the roaring heavy metal soundtrack. You'll learn to follow the progress of the battle by ear - be it the tink of a cooldown gauge, the belch of a Cacodemon that has just swallowed something explosive, teeing it up for an execution, or the nasal howl of a charging Pinky.
New variables include an ice grenade, mapped to the trigger, which lets you flash-freeze whole groups to interrupt otherwise lethal offensives. You can also light foes up with your shoulder flamethrower attachment, causing them to spit out armour parts and further motivating you to fight at close quarters when you're hurting. The most important change-up, however, is your newfound agility. Besides availing himself of launchpads, the Slayer can now perform aerial dashes, scuttle up laddered surfaces, swing from monkey bars and use a Super Shotgun-mounted grapple line to yank himself towards or past enemies.
This encourages showboating reminiscent of anti-gravity duels in the sadly-forgotten Lawbreakers. You might grapple somebody, fling yourself past them while firing your shotgun pointblank, then double-jump to a monkey bar, hurling yourself at a stunned Pain Elemental, then drop neatly onto a launchpad while switching to your Heavy Assault Rifle so that you can carpet the arena in micro-missiles. The weapons are by and large entertaining rejigs of DOOM 2016's offerings, with two upgradeable alternate-fires per gun that lend themselves to different tactics and different opponents. Your shotgun, for instance, can serve as either a sticky grenade launcher - useful when trying to shoot the turret off a Cyberdemon - or a buckshot-firing Gatling gun for crowd control.
Inevitably, the charm of Eternal diminishes the further you travel from these firefights. Its grander story component aside, the game is slightly over-burdened with customisation systems. Besides tracking down weapon mods in levels themselves, you'll equip runes for perks such as slow-mo when you aim in mid-air, together with Praetor Suit upgrades such as the ability to suck in health drops from further away. There's a knack to combining Rune perks, especially when tackling "Master" versions of levels that have more punishing enemy spawn patterns, but the role-playing systems aren't novel, and the associated menu-diving bogs down a shooter that's at its best in the thick of the bloodshed.
What really saps Eternal, however, is the predictable way the campaign once again breaks down into combat bowls and platforming stretches that feel like they've been stripped at random from Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. There are collectibles to unearth, some tucked in high alcoves or behind smashable walls, together with optional hidden battle chambers, but the alternation of shoot-out then jumpy bit then shoot-out is the same throughout. Boss battles are the biggest change of tune - the final clash is a doozie, a gruelling two-phase affair in which your nemesis looms over the layout like the world's angriest D&D player. But some of them are just annoying, a question of repeating a tactic to whittle down a health-bar. It's revealing that the game offers you a layer of all-but-indestructible Sentinel armour after a certain number of deaths, though Eternal's accessibility is otherwise refreshing: dropping the difficulty doesn't cost you anything in terms of progress, and you revert to the previous difficulty once the bossfight is over.
It's worth remembering that old school Doom wasn't just a series of one-man massacres. It could be ominous and anxiety-inducing. It had monsters you could hear through walls, shambling about in the guts of the level, and concealed partitions that slid open without warning. It had a narrative, just about, but it didn't try to root the weirdness of its concept or spaces in lore, and its secrets were as much about enjoying the possibilities of virtual architecture as securing a power-up. It was a world of alarming corners and optical tricks that deformed and shifted simply because it could. For all its abundance of things to find, you don't get quite the same feeling in DOOM Eternal. At times, it feels like the levels have been designed backwards from the completion screen, with its grocery lists of optional treasures and encounters. You might argue that 3D worlds are simply less surprising on the whole in 2020 than in 1993, but that's to ignore the work of countless DOOM modders whose creations, made using id's original engine and tools, continue to startle and intrigue today.
The missing link in this review is multiplayer, which is offline for the moment, but which already looks like a step up from Doom 2016's ramshackle online. It's a strictly asymmetrical affair, with one player starring as the Slayer while the others control one of five demon breeds from the campaign. As a demon, you can summon AI-controlled hellspawn with the D-pad, so victory is presumably as much about mob strategy as dealing damage yourself. Which sounds like a pleasant way to cool off once you've tired of the sweaty embrace of a campaign that, for all its breaking of Carmack's ancient maxim, has a shot at being one of the best you'll play this year. Still, Doom Eternal leaves me undecided. The game is fundamentally the 2016 reboot again with new props, and its dogged commitment to Doom's narrative universe is as baffling as the firefights are exhilarating. Is this really all Doom can be, nowadays - a cascade of collectables, unwanted cutscenes and the spectacle of a gurning demon face, forever?
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What Does Hemp Infused Coffee Do?
What does hemp infused coffee do
The past year has seen hemp become a massive trend in health and lifestyle, and one of the most popular ways to dabble with this trend is hemp-infused coffee. Many experts have noted hemp, and its counterpart CBD’s ability to aid sleep, relieve pain and reduce anxiety, but what does hemp-infused coffee actually do?
What is hemp?
Hemp is a product of the Cannabis Sativa plant, and hemp oil comes from the seeds of food grain strains of hemp. Hemp oil is a little different from CBD oil, as CBD comes from the stalks, leaves and flowers of a hemp plant. Hemp and CBD are non-psychoactive plants unlike their outlawed sister THC.
A more pleasant coffee experience
One of the key reasons that hemp-infused coffee has become so popular is that many of the properties associated with hemp and CBD are known to balance out the negative effects of caffeine. Coffee has been known to overstimulate the brain and body, especially strong roasts – leading to coffee-induced jitters. However, hemp and especially CBD’s relaxing properties help to even out the stimulation to provide a more comfortable experience. Coffee is also a great way to make sure you incorporate Hemp/CBD into your daily routine.
Increased relaxation
Many studies have been done on CBD and its potential to ease anxiety, so far proving that it promotes feelings of relaxation and calm. This is great for those who experience anxiety after drinking coffee. A CBD infused coffee can provide an efficient burst of energy without jitters, helping your productivity throughout the day.
Improve cognitive function
Many choose to drink coffee throughout the day for a boost in concentration and focus. However, studies have shown CBD to also have a positive effect on focus. Furthermore, many scientists are researching the effects of hemp on brain health. The studies that have been done so far show that CBD has the potential to prevent future memory loss and cognitive decline. Not only could CBD coffee improve focus immediately, but it could help your brain stay healthy over time too.
Interested in trying cannabidiol coffee yourself? Cheerful Buddha's CBD Coffee is finely ground, making it equally ideal for cafetières, filter coffees and espresso. It will leave you feeling alert, calm and focused.
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The Urbanist Musings of Pete Saunders
Chicago Population Loss Was – And Is – Inevitable
View of Fullerton Avenue in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, by John Noltner. Source:
Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood is not what it used to be. In fact, it will never be what it used to be. Many Chicago neighborhoods will never be what they used to be. And that’s the way it will be, until dramatic changes happen.
Daniel Hertz wrote a pretty compelling argument a couple weeks ago for a relaxing of zoning policy that would allow an increase of housing units in the most in-demand neighborhoods in the city. He uses Lincoln Park and other in-demand north lakefront neighborhoods as examples:
“Indeed, just a couple miles from the heart of the Loop lies a neighborhood that, despite a rich history, beautiful architecture, and quick access to the second-largest business district in America, has lost 40% of its population since the middle of the last century. An area that once held 102,000 people is now home to barely 64,000.
That area is called Lincoln Park.
For a long time, most accounts of Chicago’s lagging population have focused on parts of the South and West Sides where many residents, largely African-American, have decided to decamp for the suburbs or the South in search of better schools, less crime, and more jobs.
But the under-appreciated flip side of population loss in those parts of the city is that places that ought to be growing like gangbusters are stagnant, often sitting 25% to 50% below their peak populations. Lakeview, for example, was once home to 124,000 people; its population is now 94,000. North Center is down from nearly 49,000 to under 32,000. West Town, which includes Wicker Park and Bucktown, has fallen from 187,000 to 81,000.”
Unfortunately, I think Daniel relies too much on old data as acceptable benchmarks, and underestimates the impact of the demographic changes of the last 60-plus years.
I, too, used to wonder why cities, especially Rust Belt cities, could not show positive population gains or approach the population figures of decades past. I’d wonder why other cities across the nation could show growth, and why obviously in-demand neighborhoods were having exactly no impact on population growth. Then, I came across a couple articles last fall that make the case that it’s just not in the cards.
St. Louis blogger Alex Ihnen made the point that, no matter what, demographic shifts in our nation meant St. Louis was destined for substantial population loss:
“American families have changed dramatically over the past half century. The average household size in St. Louis in 1950 was 3.1 and in 2010, 2.2. With every other factor held constant, the decrease in city population would have been 248K or 29%. This means that with the same number of homes, the same number of apartments, and the same number of families as resided in the city in 1950, the decrease in average household size could account for 46% of the city’s population loss.
American homes have changed dramatically over the past half century. The average size of a new single-family home in 1950 was 983sf, and in 2010, 2,438. While this number overstates changes in a long urbanized area, there has certainly been a large increase in the average size of the single-family home in the city. This could be new construction, but is also the common two-family to one-family and four-family to two-family renovations.
If nothing else had changed, and families had simply become smaller, and lived in bigger homes, the city would have lost hundreds of thousands of residents. What this really points to is that even if the city, or select neighborhoods reach zero vacancy – zero vacant lots, zero vacant homes – at today’s density, the residential population will not return to 1950, or even 1970 levels.”
Akron blogger Jason Segedy detailed the demographic changes and how they impacted Rust Belt cities:
Rising divorce ratesRising age of first marriageRising life expectancyDeclining birth rates
Marriage (divorce and delayed marriage, resulting in more singles)Health care (increased longevity, resulting in more widows and widowers)Reproduction (the development of “The Pill” in 1960, and legalized abortion in 1973, resulting in less children).
Emphasis added.
Population loss in Chicago, and other Rust Belt cities, was inevitable — and continues to be so despite more favorable trends.
Let me explain. Let’s take data from Lincoln Park and see what it would take for it to reach its population peak in 1950. This table shows how much of an uphill battle this would be:
True enough, Lincoln Park’s population is down 37 percent from its 1950 peak to the 2012 figure in the American Community Survey. However, the number of units is down only eight percent. Household size is down by 31 percent, and contributes more to the area’s population loss than any other factor. In fact, if the 32,194 housing units in Lincoln Park had the same household size today as in 1950, there would be a robust 94,000 people there.
To reach the 102,000 residents that Lincoln Park had in 1950, at current average household size levels, here’s what would have to happen:
So Lincoln Park would need 51,000 housing units, or nearly 19,000 more than currently exist in the neighborhood today. That’s a 37 percent increase — and this assumes a 100 percent occupancy rate, an unapproachable figure. Getting to 102,000 again might mean the neighborhood approaches a population density it once had (nearly 26,000 people per square mile) but it would mean a units per acre density that Lincoln Park has never seen — more than 20 units per acre, up substantially from its previous peak of 13.8, and even moreso from its current level of 12.7.
I agree Lincoln Park could use more units. The demand is there. But getting it back to historical peaks seems highly unlikely to me. Could Lincoln Park honestly absorb another 19,000 units? To put that into a different context, that would be an additional 7.4 units per acre in Lincoln Park. There is demand for more housing in Lincoln Park, but I’d wager it’s more along the lines of one-tenth of the 19,000 it would take to get to its population peak. Also, while Lincoln Park residents are tolerant of density, it has never seen New York-style density (on a units per acre basis) for its entire existence. Bringing the community that many new households would strain the community’s infrastructure. Demographic trends are far too strong, and they’ve made their impact on the neighborhood, and the city, already.
Population growth is a poor indicator of a city’s economic health. Lincoln Park and the rest of the North Side are quite healthy at greatly reduced population levels. They are not the problem nor the solution for Chicago’s population loss.
If we’re really going to talk about population increase in Chicago, we don’t start with allowing more units, we start with addressing housing vacancies. And in this case, Chicago reveals itself as having far more in common with other Rust Belt cities than the coastal cities it tries to run with.
I pulled 2013 American Community Survey data for the 25 largest U.S. cities to see how Chicago compared with them in terms of population density and housing vacancy. Here’s the data:
I think most observers would know Chicago to be one of the more dense cities in the nation; its per square mile figure would put it fourth of the 25 cities on the above list, behind New York, San Francisco, and Boston. But Chicago has a high housing vacancy figure as well — at 13.8%, Chicago’s vacancy level is 20th of the 25 cities, ahead of only Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Memphis and Detroit.
That puts Chicago in a unique position. Chicago is one of only three high-density, high-vacancy cities among the top 25 (with Philadelphia and Washington, DC). DC and Philly have both shown population increases in recent years, but without looking at the data, I would surmise that both did so first with a decrease in housing vacancies before an absolute increase in housing units. Meanwhile, the high-density, low-vacancy cities are the ones whose high housing costs have been driving the gentrification narrative nationally and are indeed in need of more housing units — New York, San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles and Seattle.
Chicago is not one of those cities.
Further evidence that reducing vacancies — or put another way, increasing demand for housing in Chicago — is the way to population growth. Currently Chicago has about 1.2 million households, with 14 percent vacant. If Chicago had the same vacancy rate as New York (9.2 percent), at its current citywide household size (2.60), Chicago would have about 108,000 more residents citywide, putting it over 2.8 million. If Chicago had Seatttle’s vacancy rate of 6.7 percent, it would have 202,000 more residents citywide, putting over 2.9 million.
Chicago needs to continue to focus on its housing demand challenges before addressing issues of supply.
2 Responses to “Chicago Population Loss Was – And Is – Inevitable”
1. Anon
As a Midwesterner, I always wondered why you never, EVER hear about Philadelphia in the news, despite being a \”Top 5\” city by population. NYC/DC, of course, Boston, sure, but not Philly. The median income is shockingly low… and apparently immigrants are moving there because it's low cost.
2. Eric Rojas
Great site and article. I discovered it due to the Crain's Lincoln Park article as well. I'll add it to my recommended reads, thanks!
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Please stop comparing 5G services T-Mobile (aka John Legere)
(featured image: ASSOCIATED PRESS – via Engadget)
So it looks like T-Mobile is up to it’s old (VERY) antics again and making fun of the competition’s 5G services and claiming superiority over the 5G that Verizon is providing. This needs to stop immediately and John Legere needs to live out his days and weeks peacefully. I know in reality, this will never happen, as John’s eccentric attitude is somewhat how T-Mobile got to where it is today, but here’s hoping he reads this, or someone on his team does and passes the word along.
Let me state this up front. I am a T-Mobile fan and a current customer of 5+ years since I left At&t years ago. What I do not like, is the constant “poking” at some other carrier/s, when your stuff isn’t exactly stellar, yourself. T-Mobile marketing team, John and the incoming Mike Sievert, are you listening? Good, let’s get started.
A little history lesson. I will go back to 2012, when 4G was first starting to get out. We (as in the United States) were reaching 3G market saturation (though, some would argue) and 4G was the next-gen fledgling technology that was on the horizon. At&t just one day started labeling their 3G services (HSPA+) as 4G (aka FauxG). HSPA+ is TECHNICALLY just 3.5G, as a slightly faster 3G service. Depending on where you search, you can see evidence of this here, here (“In a lot of markets, except in the USA, an HSPA+ network is unofficially considered and marketed as a 3.5G network”) and here. T-Mobile even followed suit by marketing with Carly Foulkes in a black & pink leather motorcycle outfit and giving her “blazing” blur lines behind her motorcycle to show how fast she was going. I actually covered this marketing debacle back then when it happened.
I digress, but you get my overall point. 4G was still basically new to the market and companies had to market it, so they could sell new handsets, get consumers to buy in and how they were “improving” their networks with faster speeds. Remember, for T-Mobile, this is all pre-John Legere and post the failed 39 billion dollar buy-out attempt from At&t, from the year prior. As I noted in my above article link, I believe that T-Mobile had no “future plans”, since it was expected that T-Mobile would just fold in under At&t. (I even had a tech news show at the time and covered it and even blogged about it as well) This is completely different 8 years later and now we are expecting to see the T-Mobile buyout of the dying Sprint service, hopefully by April 1st, 2020[1] [2]. (T-Mobile may be laying people off, when they boasted that they would be creating jobs during the merger process over the last few years.) My, how the tables have turned for the former underdog, T-Mobile, since John Legere has shown up.
Moving a bit forward in time, I want to temporarily turn my sites over to Samsung (who some may call me a FanBoy) and give you a quick rundown of their similar antics of trolling iPhone, by advertising and continually selling people on the fact that they kept the 3.5mm headphone jack, well after the iPhone 7, into the Galaxy S10, being the last flagship phone to have it. For a few years, Samsung would PROUDLY stand up on stage and boast how they were able to keep the headphone jack in their flagship phones. Soon, after it was found that the Note 10 from 2019 would be dropping it, Samsung quietly deleted all of their trolling marketing materials. Let’s not forget the oddly marketed Galaxy S4 as well, with all those dancers. So my personal advice T-Mobile, let’s just stop trolling now, before you, inevitably have to delete it all anyway.
Now moving forward to a more recent time in history, last year in 2019, At&t started lying to it’s customers again and began labeling their 4.5G LTE Advanced as “5Ge”. Even though, Verizon had already been marketing it as it was intended, LTE-A for years. I assume since At&t was behind this curve on this technology and so close the “launch” of 5G technologies, they figured it wouldn’t hurt to FIB again, as they did in 2012. I even had friends telling me adamantly about how their Samsung device had “5G” already and was getting better service than I was. I had to sadly explain to them that they had been lied to by their service provider and that just because the 5Ge logo showed up, didn’t mean it was real 5G.
I have finally reached the most current marketing scheme, being led by the eccentric John Legere and his team. He started last year with the “verHIDEzon” stuff.
Before I get too deep into the details, let me give you a quick, 10,000 foot view of 5G technology. There are 3 major versions of it currently. There is the high band, high speed 5G mmWave tech that goes SUPER CRAZY fast, sometimes getting in the Gigabit speeds when testing. The problem is, these are very hard to get, and typically need line of sight and cannot be blocked by anything (even tree leaves).
Then there is the complete opposite side, the low band, slightly higher speeds (typically about 20% faster than current 4G LTE) of the sub 600Mhz spectrum. You can also see more tests about this and how it is much easier to stay connected indoors and out. This is the technology that T-Mobile decided to start with, so they could market it as being the “first nationwide 5G” rollout. While this isn’t the same tech that At&t mistakenly chose to start their “5G” marketing campaign with, the sub 600Mhz isn’t as fast as the mmWave tech that a few cities around the US are currently experiencing. Which is why John decided to start his trolling with the aforementioned “verHIDEzon” ads.
I didn’t forget the 3rd portion, known as mid-band, but this most likely won’t be seen until the completion of the merger with T-Mobile and Sprint and T-Mobile starts transforming the current 2.5Ghz towers into their coverage. There are quite a few good explanations of this out there, but I think T-Mobile has a great quick little video with Bill Nye the science guy that explains the best for all peoples.
Now back to the HIDEzon stuff. As Verizon began rolling out their mmWave 5G in select cities, sidewalks and crosswalks around America, they weren’t being real forthcoming with their 5G coverage maps, because they knew that it was spotty at best and you could literally block the tech with tree leaves, the wind or even glass. It wouldn’t be a good idea to tell people on a mass public scale of their 5G coverage if it suffered from small blockages and then have to explain themselves. As far as I am concerned, this was a very good idea, not to speak at all and just let it be tested by the tech bloggers and journalists, so they could see it for themselves and explain it to the masses. Free marketing. Win. Win.
Unfortunetly, John Legere took this as a way to troll Verizon and started his whole campaign on how they are “hiding” their maps from the public and T-Mobile was working in the background on their upcoming nationwide coverage, so he felt it was “cool” to kick this off. It was funny to some, but overall in my opinion was a flop in a marketing attempt as it didn’t reach the levels I think he wanted, as the twitter account was deleted soon after.
As of this last week, he has now created a second attempt and changing the Verizon name into “verWHYzon” ads. He has already started paying for more ads again. Yes, as in before, he has created a soon to fail, twitter account, again. This time, it seems to be headed up by Neville Ray, their President of Technology, but I am sure it is being orchestrated by Legere himself, as a coup de grâce on his way out as CEO. As I noted in a discussion thread on Reddit, I just want it to stop immediately.
If you are going to be the “best”, I ask that you shut up, be quiet and just BE THE BEST. I think Rene Ritchie said it best, when he noted that Apple doesn’t even use other companies in their advertising or comparisons at all. They just show you their products, as if there are no other competitors at all in the market. They can create the “reality” that Steve Jobs was known for, that they are the “best” and there is no need to look for companies. I am in no way an Apple fan, but Rene has a point.
So, T-Mobile, until you fix your CURRENT 4G LTE coverage, you can’t tout about how your BUDGET level sub 600 5G is nationwide and you are “better” than Verizon. It’s like touting you are the fastest turtle on the beach.
One of your biggest fans, but slowly getting frustrated, with you sending me a microCell to FIX your LTE connection issues at my house,
-Rusty G | <urn:uuid:37d1affe-2dd1-4609-8475-2706f2a1b885> | https://iknowrusty.com/tag/5g/ | en | 0.982757 | 0.101361 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
"I should have insisted that someone call the police."
I was seventeen, my sister was fourteen. We lived in a safe neighborhood on the north side of Lancaster, so we walked a lot of places because I could drive but didn't yet have a car. One day, we were walking, and a car full of men in their mid-thirties pulled up beside us. They began yelling and whistling. Sadly, this didn't immediately bother me because it had happened so often before. We ignored them, and they swerved into an empty lot beside us and began getting out of the car (there were at least five of them, and they were sturdy looking guys). They began walking towards us. I looked at my sister and told her to run, as there was a convenience store somewhat close. She wasn't running very fast, and I was so scared they were going to catch up with us because they began running and we only had a small distance on them. We reached the store and I pulled her to the back corner where we crouched, trying to hide. The men ran in and were out of breath but were trying to play it cool like they were just browsing, but were obviously searching for us. One finally found us, gave us a long look like he was deciding what to do, and then the manager of the store walked over. The men left. The manager asked us if we were ok and we said yes and then called my dad to pick us up, but in hindsight I should have insisted that someone call the police.
Happened on May 28, 2014
Incident reported by target
Bystander Action? No
Harassment Types: Sexual | <urn:uuid:383f400e-f7cd-449e-90ac-ffe42080516b> | https://incidents.peoplesjusticeleague.com/incidents/40-i-should-have-insisted-that-someone-call-the-police | en | 0.997546 | 0.339696 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
In 1981, Israel's Deadly Air Force Took out Saddam Hussein's Only Nuclear Reactor
But it didn't kill Iraq's dream to get the bomb.
What if Israel had not struck Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981? Or what if the attack, which was technically quite difficult, had failed? The attack, which was deeply controversial at the time, shifted the course of Iraq’s nuclear-weapons program. It also set a lasting precedent for how Israel, and potentially other nuclear states, have managed would-be proliferators. Could Iraq have developed a nuclear weapon if the Israelis had not attacked?
The Debate
The Osirak reactor was a joint French-Iraqi project, agreed to in 1975. Construction of the reactor began in 1979, but by most accounts Iraq had not committed to the development of nuclear weapons in 1981. French engineers were present at the reactor, and it was subject to inspections from the IAEA. While Osirak was capable of contributing to a nuclear program, it was not, by most accounts, capable of producing a substantial amount of weapons-grade material on its own.
Recommended: North Korea’s Most Lethal Weapon Isn’t Nukes.
Still, Israeli policymakers worried that Iraq, among the most industrially sophisticated Arab countries, could effectively use the reactor as part of a plan to develop nuclear weapons. This would offset the advantage that Israel had achieved with its own nuclear program. Moreover, Saddam’s Iraq had already demonstrated a troubling tendency to invade its neighbors. The Iranians, for what it’s worth, had also concluded that the Osirak reactor posed a major threat. They had launched their own attack against the reactor in 1980, and rumors continue to abound of shadowy collaboration between Israel and Iran regarding intelligence sharing.
Even granting the looming threat, however, Israeli policymakers worried that the attack would be seen as unprovoked aggression, and that it would incur unwanted attention on Israel’s own nuclear program. The attack, undertaken at extreme range, was also operationally risky. The gap between Iraqi and Israeli capabilities was not as great in 1981 as it would later become, and an interception by Iraqi air defenses or fighters could prove disastrous.
The Strike
Eight F-16s carried out the strike, escorted by six F-15s. The Iraqi air force was focused on the fight with Iran, and in fact Iran had recently launched a major airstrike that had disabled a large number of Iraqi aircraft. The Israelis, heavily laden with fuel, flew over both Jordan and Saudi Arabia without incident. They were not engaged by Iraqi air defenses until after the attack. Each F-16 dropped a pair of two-thousand-pound bombs, eight of which struck the Iraqi facility, causing severe damage. The Israelis suffered no losses; ten Iraqi soldiers and one French engineer died.
The Response
The international response was by no means positive. The UN Security Council denounced the attack, as did the General Assembly. France, the United Kingdom and the United States all reacted negatively. However, Israel suffered no real costs for undertaking the strike; Iraq remained preoccupied with Iran, and none of the other major Arab states (including, critically, Egypt) saw fit to respond aggressively.
For their part, the attack helped convince the Iraqis to commit to the development of nuclear weapons. Rather than working openly, the Iraqis took their nuclear projects underground, heightening security, dispersing facilities and rejecting international oversight. It is unclear whether the survival of Osirak would have enabled Iraq to deploy a nuclear weapon by 1991, but most analysts believe it is unlikely. Iraq’s concerted efforts proved insufficient to developing a nuclear weapon in time to deter the United States; it’s impossible to know whether the survival of the Osirak reactor would have enabled greater progress. The war with Iran consumed an enormous percentage of Iraq’s military, industrial and financial resources, making it impossible for Saddam to concentrate on the nuclear project. Even after the war, crushing debt and ongoing disputes with other Arab countries made it impossible for Iraq to engage in the kind of single-minded pursuit of nuclear weapons that North Korea perfected.
The Precedent
The strike effectively set the Begin Doctrine, the idea that Israel would undertake military action to prevent the development of nuclear weapons by its Middle Eastern adversaries. The Osirak attack and the other manifestation of the Begin Doctrine—the 2007 attack against the Box on the Euphrates—have repeatedly been cited as examples of the right of anticipatory self-defense, which enables countries to strike potential foes while not under immediate threat. This precedent plays a large role in the legal justification for potential U.S. strikes against Iran and North Korea. Over time, and particularly in light of Iraqi aggression against Kuwait in 1990, the international community has viewed the strike in a more positive light.
The destruction of Osirak did not end the Iraqi government’s interest in developing a nuclear weapon. Iraq responded to the attack not by abandoning its efforts, but rather by redoubling them. The 1991 Gulf War effectively ended Iraq’s nuclear program, and the 2003 war ended Saddam Hussein’s regime. Nevertheless, the Osirak attack has taken on an almost mythical relevance in discussions of Israeli military prowess and risk tolerance. This may have had an impact on Iranian decisionmaking regarding the viability of a nuclear program.
The biggest lesson from the Osirak attack may have been that international condemnation doesn’t have much of a long-term impact. After the attack, Israel shrugged off widespread criticism, while Iraq largely ignored international nonproliferation obligations. Indeed, over time the Osirak strike became “respectable,” and generally viewed as an appropriate response to the threat posed by Saddam’s regime. Today, the legitimacy of the strike is not often questioned, which has probably made it easier for the United States and others to think about military action in preventive terms.
Image: Wikimedia Commons | <urn:uuid:6334edbf-4e2f-430f-902d-4e08b05acfe2> | https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/1981-israels-deadly-air-force-took-out-saddam-husseins-only-25058 | en | 0.962385 | 0.282936 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Exhibition at Tripoli's International Fair explores time and collapse
The opening of the exhibition “Cycles of Collapsing Progress” at the Rachid Karami International Fair reignited interest in one of the most ambitious works by the influential Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer.
al-monitor The Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer designed this pavilion, part of the Rachid Karami International Fair, Tripoli, Lebanon, Oct. 11, 2018. Photo by Sam Brennan/Al-Monitor.
Topics covered
Oct 17, 2018
The Rachid Karami International Fair opened to the public last month, as part of a monthlong exhibition of contemporary art in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli. The fair’s tragic history — which includes the interruption of its building by civil war — and the architectural venue's artistic importance were central to the exhibition's themes of collapse and historical cycles.
Cycles of Collapsing Progress,” an exhibition organized by the Beirut Museum of Art and STUDIOCUR/ART, a Paris-based nonprofit, runs at the fair from Sept. 22 through Oct. 23. The show features some 20 works, ranging from sculpture to video art, addressing the cyclical nature of time and destruction. The Tripoli Citadel serves as a satellite space, also exhibiting works and hosting various activities.
The abandoned fair itself exemplifies the themes of collapse and time, curator and founder of STUDIOCUR/ART, Katrina el-Helou, explained to al-Monitor. “The art and the space, we [needed] to create a synergy between these two things. The exhibition is about a general reflection on historical cycles. … The fair symbolizes the history of Lebanon, an unfinished dream, [one that is currently] collapsing as well.”
The Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer designed the fair in 1962. Niemeyer was a forerunner of modern architecture and the creative mind behind such iconic buildings as the United Nations Headquarters in New York and those of Brasilia, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its modernist architecture. The fair was Niemeyer’s largest project outside Brazil.
The Lebanese government, under President Fouad Chehab, commissioned the fair during a spate of nation-building infrastructure projects. According to the original concept, the fair was to serve as a center of trade, culture and leisure, incorporating some 15 daring and experimental architectural structures.
Upon arriving in Lebanon, Niemeyer explained to the daily L’Orient–Le Jour that the fair would be a “museum of the modern object” and include a number of technological feats, such as a floating stage in the theater controlled by a hydraulics system, and novel venues, such as a combination helicopter pad and space museum.
Niemeyer’s ambitious goals never came to fruition, however, as the onset of the Lebanese civil war in 1975 left the International Fair incomplete and abandoned. The fair, named after Lebanon's 10-time prime minister, was scheduled to be finished in 1976. By the time time the war intervened, Niemeyer had managed to finish most of the project, including a theater, an exhibition hall, a space museum and a pavilion.
At various times during the war, the fair, in strategically important Tripoli, 53 miles from Beirut, was occupied and fought over by Syrian, Palestinian and Lebanese Sunni forces. The site, with its dilapidated modern architecture and tragic history, emits a melancholy aura, both because of its unfinished structures and remains of the war.
Roy Samaha, a Lebanese artist exhibiting at the event, told Al-Monitor, “The location itself, it represents a symbol of failure, this utopic dream that never happened … a poetic failure … a Greek tragedy.”
Samaha produced a short film for the exhibition that explores the connection between solar cycles and political movements. He describes it as a “reading of history from a more universal perspective.” This perspective reflects the exhibition's theme of cyclical collapse as the sun goes through a “calm period and an agitated period.”
Some artists have taken the opportunity to make use of Niemeyer’s work. Zad Moultaka, a French-Lebanese musician and artist, set up a sound installation inside the chipped, concrete dome of the fair’s experimental theater. Blurring the line between the natural and the man-made, Moultaka hung ropes, vine-like in appearance, from jagged steel bars descending from the roof. He also played an unnerving musical composition consisting of mixed synthetic and organic sounds.
“The [theater] seemed like a womb, in a natural state, so my first idea was to record my own heart. [In the theater] you hear my heart and techno-beat crackles, which I recorded from my hair,” Moultaka explained to Al-Monitor, highlighting the installation's mix of nature and modernity.
Adapting Niemeyer’s work comes with incredible responsibility and pressure. Moultaka overcame the daunting legacy of adding to Niemeyer's work by ignoring the architect's cultural impact and focusing only on the art itself. He explained, “You have to forget the social aspect of his work [and] only be in his energy and the incredible imagination of this architect.”
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Hanan Hamdan | Economy and trade | Jun 9, 2020 | <urn:uuid:c268125c-3841-46b1-a30c-1be709041013> | https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/10/oscar-niemeyer-legacy-in-tripoli-fair.html | en | 0.905539 | 0.06318 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
google shopping feed - repost
[url removed, login to view] 制作shopping feed，可以具体联系邮箱，大概有20个产品，报酬另算。google shopping to usa,so the language of feed should be in english
技能： 广告, 网络营销, 市场, 销售
查看更多： google shopping usa, google shopping, google shopping feed, shopping feed, shopping google feed wordpress site, google language english spanish, google translate language english spanish, feed shopping com, shopping usa, usa shopping, google translation english italian, ancient language english translation, google translate english norwegian, install joomla language english, google translations english italy, ancient language english translator
( 0个评论 ) China
项目ID： #5109431
2 威客就此工作平均出价 $30
Hi, I am expert in Google shopping feed and I can send you the data feed file for US in one day. I see your website and it has only 25 products. Please confirm products count and award the job. Thanks, Harsh
$34USD 在1天里
we can contact by my email talk some detail about your shopping feed I am a student study in US for three years. so i think i know and acquaintance [login to view URL] get your reply
$25 USD 在3天内 | <urn:uuid:c11d17c7-453f-4cee-92b4-298e26850dad> | https://www.freelancer.hk/projects/internet-marketing-marketing/google-shopping-feed-repost/ | en | 0.766002 | 0.402348 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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Resonessence Concero HP
Absolutely immaculate condition - minimal use.
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How To Heat And Cool Buildings With Wastewater
HUBER Heat Exchanger RoWin, developed especially to be used with wastewater and sludge
Most companies and agencies today operate with the concept of business sustainability. This is a holistic way of managing a business that includes environmental, social, and financial responsibilities. To meet this triple bottom line, companies must find ways to be cost-efficient, socially responsible, and eco-friendly at the same time.
Heating and cooling facilities uses large amounts of energy, and accounts for much of a company’s operating costs. With new technologies, companies can reduce reliance on fossil fuels while saving money.
HUBER Technology is an innovator in the field of water and wastewater process engineering. For over 175 years, HUBER has focused on the development of new solutions to conserve one of our most valuable resources: water.
Water Online spoke with Steven E. Macomber, Regional Sales Director for HUBER, to learn about recovering thermal energy from wastewater.
There’s been an increasing push for both sustainability and cost savings when it comes to heating and cooling large buildings and facilities. How can wastewater from the sewer system be used for these purposes?
A: Underground sewer networks are a hidden source of energy. Domestic wastewater maintains a temperature between 50 and 68 °F (10 and 20 °C), even in the winter. This stable temperature range makes wastewater an excellent energy source for operating a heat pump. With its low temperature during the summer, wastewater is also a heat sink, and can be used for cooling buildings.
How does such a system basically work?
A: An intake structure is connected to a sewer main, and a portion of the flow is pumped to an above-ground heat exchanger. A heat exchanger extracts heat energy from the wastewater. In the heat exchanger, heat energy is transferred to water or another clean carrier medium. The carrier medium transports the energy to a heat pump, which is used for maintaining proper temperature in the building. The cooled or heated wastewater then flows back to the sewer.
First "net-zero" office building in Washington, D.C.: AGU headquarters (rendering) with a HUBER ThermWin system as as the heart of its heating and cooling plant
Q: What are the advantages of using a wastewater heat exchanger versus conventional heating and cooling?
A: Recycling heat energy from wastewater saves costs. Energy costs for heating and cooling can be reduced by up to 80 percent when compared with conventional methods.
Sewer heat exchangers improve sustainability and are eco-friendly. Using a wastewater heat exchanger reduces the use of fossil fuels. This improves the environment by reducing emissions and lowering a building’s carbon footprint. These systems also save water that would otherwise evaporate in cooling towers, and no cooling tower cleaning chemicals are polluting the environment.
Sewer heat exchangers can be space-saving, giving customers more latitude with their building design. Installation is quick and and easy.
The supply of wastewater is virtually unlimited. Wastewater is a free, local, and decentralized heat source. There is little interference to the existing sewer system, and minimal construction required to access the wastewater.
Q: Do grit, rags, and debris in the wastewater affect the operation of the system?
The wastewater is prescreened prior to being pumped to the heat exchanger. This prevents debris from affecting system operation. Screenings are returned to the wastewater stream.
Q: Does the raw sewage come into contact with the cooling water?
A: The cooling water does not contact the raw wastewater. The heat exchanger is constructed of welded stainless steel. Horizontal carrier medium pipe modules are arranged in parallel. The pipe modules are made of stainless steel to achieve maximum heat transfer efficiency. The pre-screened wastewater flows through the heat exchanger and, via the compactly arranged pipes, gives off its thermal energy to the cooling water.
Q: Are there negative effects from the wastewater as it flows through the heat exchanger, such as a buildup of sediment or biofilm on the pipes?
A: Due to the chemical and biological properties of wastewater, a biofilm builds up on the heat transfer surfaces. This can impair heat transfer. To prevent negative effects, an automatic solids removal mechanism provides preventive cleaning of the heat exchanger surfaces. Solids settle on the tank floor, are removed by a screw conveyor, and are returned to the sewer along with the wastewater.
Q: Is there a minimum sewage supply and temperature needed for this type of system?
A: A continuous wastewater flow of at least 1.3 gallons per second (5 liters per second) is required to ensure efficient heat recovery. The wastewater temperature should not fall below 50 °F (10 °C).
Q: What is the minimum system size (in kW) that such a system would be used for?
A: For economic heat recovery, the minimum output of useful heat is about 20 kW.
Q: How close must the facility be to the wastewater pipeline to remain economical?
A: The distance from the facility will be unique to the project. However, the distance from the sewer system to the heat station and building should be as short as possible to minimize capital and operating costs.
Q:Can other waste liquids be used for heating and cooling, such as industrial wastewater or wastewater treatment plant effluents?
A: Commercial and industrial facilities may have warm water discharges. On-site wastewater treatment can often be combined with heat recycling technology for cost savings and environmental sustainability. These solutions would be site-specific.
Treated wastewater effluent heat recovery provides several advantages: Considerable heat potentials are available due to the huge water volumes. Effluent cooling has no negative effects on the receiving water.
HUBER Technology has a compact, self-cleaning RoWin Heat Exchanger that can be installed directly in the effluent channel.
Sewage treatment plants often have a high demand for heat. In addition to heating and cooling buildings, recovered heat can be used to enhance sludge drying in HUBER’s Solar Dryer.
Filtrate from wastewater dewatering is also ideal for producing heat energy that can be used for heating digesters, for drying sludge, or heating and cooling buildings.
Q: What type of projects are in place that use this technology?
A: Due to the many advantages discussed, the use of wastewater as a heating and cooling source is catching on. HUBER has a variety of installations, including a system for the Museum of Bavarian History, a new ministry building in Stuttgart, Germany, and a 28-story high-rise in Switzerland.
HUBER is also proud to have its ThermWin® system supply heating and cooling for the first “net-zero” building in Washington, D.C. A net-zero building generates all the energy it needs for itself. The American Geophysical Union (AGU), a non-profit organization of over 58,000 geophysicists, is building their new headquarters with net-zero technology. The 5-story building will include LED lights, vertically planted green walls, a greywater reuse system, and coolable ceiling structures. HUBER’s ThermWin system will use wastewater from the sewer system to provide 500 kW cooling capacity and 220 kW heat output for the building.
The AGU project team visiting HUBER. Left to right: Saul Kinter (DC Water), Greta Perry (MGAC), Samantha Patke (Interface Engineering), Matthew Boyd (AGU), Virgil Brown (AGU), Panda Aumpansub (HAVTECH), Steve Macomber (HUBER US), Darrick Sallers (Skanska), Norman Long (HAVTECH)
Tour of the pathbreaking heat recovery plant at Wintower in Winterthur, Switzerland
Products in use and related solutionsclose | <urn:uuid:655e553f-4efa-479a-b406-fd3d7203f4b1> | https://www.huber-technology.com/huber-report/ablage-berichte/energy-from-wastewater/how-to-heat-and-cool-buildings-with-wastewater.html | en | 0.925708 | 0.335507 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Kenya is paying a heavy human and financial cost for unsafe abortions
One of the critical targets for countries that are trying to meet the sustainable development goals is reducing the number of mothers who die from complications during or immediately after their pregnancies.
The target for 2030 is that each country will have less than 70 mothers dying for each of the 100 000 live births that happen each year.
This would eliminate almost all preventable maternal deaths.In Kenya, this is still a challenge. Every year for every 100 000 births 495 women die. One of the major contributors to this figure are the complications that women sustain during unsafe abortions.Unsafe abortions happen when a pregnancy is terminated by someone who lacks the necessary skills and in places that aren’t medically certified.In Kenya, abortion is only legal when there is a need for emergency treatment or the life or health of the mother is in danger.
Permission for an abortion must be made by a trained health professional. The latest data for Kenya (from 2012) shows that there were close to half a million unsafe abortions in the country that year. At least 100 000 of those women needed to be treated in hospital. And roughly a quarter died due to complications.
Estelle Monique Sidze is Associate Research Scientist, African Population and Health Research Center
© 2020 Masimanyane Women's Rights International
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Tanya Jonker-Bryce
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Does a Bad Outcome Mean That My Child Was Harmed by a Medical Professional's Negligence?
When a bad medical outcome occurs, it does not necessarily mean that malpractice has occurred. Often, a bad medical outcome is caused by an unintended complication. Generally, complications are not considered medical malpractice.
Most medical procedures do not have a 100% success rate and the medical field accepts a certain margin of error. In fact, most complications, such as infection and bleeding, are contained in the consent form.
However, according to statistics most medical malpractice cases are not recognized and reported. In children malpractice cases, the likely explanation is that most malpractice is not readily apparent to a child's family. Additionally, most state laws do not require that victims be informed of medical negligence. Actually, many state laws expressly prevent victims or their families from finding out that a medical professional has been disciplined for actions which are considered to be medical malpractice. A medical mistake becomes malpractice when it exceeds the accepted margin of error.
When you suspect malpractice, quietly request the medical records and have them reviewed by an expert. If the child is in the ongoing care of a physician, you may want to request the transfer to another health care provider or hospital. It's important to be able to prove events as they unfolded. Most important, because establishing medical malpractice can be very difficult, consult an experienced Miami medical malpractice lawyer.
If you can establish that the medical professionals did not conform to the accepted standard of practice for that specialty, you have high chances of proving that medical malpractice occurred. This means establishing that no reasonable physician in that area of medicine would have acted in that way.
Unlike in personal injury cases, the filing of most medical malpractice claims does not result in a settlement offer. Pediatric malpractice cases require testimony from a medical expert, which can be very expensive. Additionally, even a straightforward case of pediatric malpractice is not worth pursuing if the provable damages are less than $100K. Thus, in the absence of evidence of malpractice and significant damages, your case may not be worth pursuing.
For questions and free legal advice to help individuals please call us
| <urn:uuid:7738ded1-ee08-48c5-a651-7b19eaec235f> | https://www.seanclearypa.com/faqs/child-harmed-medical-professionals-negligence/ | en | 0.946416 | 0.705464 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Are you in your 30s? Avoid making these money mistakes
The 30s are an essential period in people's lives during which they should make sure that they are on the right financial path. These 5 money mistakes should be avoided to prevent a downhill financial spiral.
Are you in your 30s? Avoid making these money mistakes
The thirties are a very critical period in a person’s life. This is the time when people get married, have kids, buy a house and take on the responsibility of their retired parents. It is also the time when they have gained good work experience and start making some impressive career leaps. It goes without saying that prudent financial planning is crucial at this stage.
However, humans make mistakes, and these mistakes can have grave implications. Let’s look at some money-related mistakes that people make in their 30s.
1. Misusing credit cards
Credit card is a great financial tool. It gives you the freedom to buy what you want and lead the lifestyle that you desire. But misusing its power can be very risky and can lead to disastrous results. Credit card companies make money by charging very high fees and interest rates. While it is okay to use the card to tide over the last few days of the month until your next paycheck comes in, it is not a good idea to finance an extravagant lifestyle that you cannot afford. Buying things you cannot pay for or paying the minimum amount due or not reading the fine print are common mistakes. This is how people end up overpaying for many of the products they buy.
2. Not creating an emergency fund
Young people feel that the probability of anything going wrong is next to nil. Consequently, they do not feel the need to save for an emergency fund. The emergency could be anything – loss in business, getting fired from a job, a family emergency or a natural calamity. Not creating an emergency fund is a major slip-up. It is imperative to put aside 10% of the income every month as the ‘just in case’ money. Fortunately, if you do not use it, part of it can be used to fulfil other dreams and aspirations that you might have. These could include travelling, buying something you had your eye on or investing it into your retirement fund.
Related: Why ignoring to plan for retirement can be financially damaging
3. Procrastinating saving for retirement
The general thought process for people in their 30s is that if retirement is at least another 25 years away, why worry about it now, especially with a steady income coming in? This outlook can be detrimental in the long run because if you start early you start, you can be stress-free later in life. Starting early also means that you can reap the benefits of the power of compounding. The trend and mentality of Indian kids having to take care of their aged parents are being done away with. This means that being financially independent during your sunset years is extremely critical. Creating a retirement fund is the right way to do it. Use a retirement calculator to understand your needs and how much you need to save to maintain your lifestyle in your golden years.
4. Not getting insurance
Not buying insurance is another major mistake people make. They think getting insurance is a waste of money. For example, health insurance needs to be renewed every year, irrespective of whether it is used or not. But one trip to the hospital for a moderately critical disease can set them behind by lakhs. Some work under the impression that they can buy it later in life when the chances of acquiring diseases are higher. Whether it is term insurance, life insurance or health insurance, it is prudent to get these to create a safety net in case something unfortunate occurs suddenly. It gives you peace of mind and helps you enjoy life a little more, knowing that there is a plan to fall-back on. Also, it is a lot cheaper and easier to get insurance cover in the 30s as compared to the 50s. Tinker with this life insurance calculator to understand what is the safety net your family will need in case of an eventuality.
Related: 8 Reasons to buy insurance online
5. Leading an extravagant lifestyle
Buying a house or taking a vacation you cannot afford are some of the common mistakes that people make in their 30s. No more than 30% and 40% of your monthly income should go towards housing EMIs or repaying your total debt, respectively. Living within your means is the mantra to financial stability and success. Supporting a lifestyle, you can comfortably afford is important. This gives way for making smart financial investments for your child’s education along with other life goals such as marriage, retirement fund etc.
In closing
Making any one of these mistakes can set you back and prevent you from achieving your life goals. Learn from these common mistakes people make and navigate around them the best you can. Take your finances seriously in your 30s by taking a look at the 7 Pillars of financial planning so you can live stress-free for the rest of your life. | <urn:uuid:2828e3ac-050e-4215-bdc8-4720cda9dcbf> | https://www.tomorrowmakers.com/financial-planning/are-you-your-30s-avoid-making-these-money-mistakes-listicle | en | 0.969244 | 0.257754 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
bims-resufa Biomed News
on Respiratory supercomplex factors
Issue of 2020‒06‒14
two papers selected by
Vera Strogolova
Strong Microbials, Inc
1. EMBO J. 2020 Jun 08. e103912
Lobo-Jarne T, Pérez-Pérez R, Fontanesi F, Timón-Gómez A, Wittig I, Peñas A, Serrano-Lorenzo P, García-Consuegra I, Arenas J, Martín MA, Barrientos A, Ugalde C.
Mitochondrial respiratory chain complexes I, III, and IV can associate into larger structures termed supercomplexes or respirasomes, thereby generating structural interdependences among the individual complexes yet to be understood. In patients, nonsense mutations in complex IV subunit genes cause severe encephalomyopathies randomly associated with pleiotropic complex I defects. Using complexome profiling and biochemical analyses, we have explored the structural rearrangements of the respiratory chain in human cell lines depleted of the catalytic complex IV subunit COX1 or COX2. In the absence of a functional complex IV holoenzyme, several supercomplex I+III2 species coexist, which differ in their content of COX subunits and COX7A2L/HIGD2A assembly factors. The incorporation of an atypical COX1-HIGD2A submodule attenuates supercomplex I+III2 turnover rate, indicating an unexpected molecular adaptation for supercomplexes stabilization that relies on the presence of COX1 independently of holo-complex IV formation. Our data set the basis for complex I structural dependence on complex IV, revealing the co-existence of alternative pathways for the biogenesis of "supercomplex-associated" versus individual complex IV, which could determine physiological adaptations under different stress and disease scenarios.
Keywords: mitochondrial biogenesis; mitochondrial complex IV assembly; mitochondrial respiratory chain; respirasomes; respiratory supercomplex stabilization
2. Biochim Biophys Acta Bioenerg. 2020 Jun 09. pii: S0005-2728(20)30089-X. [Epub ahead of print] 148239
Cai X, Son CY, Mao J, Kaur D, Zhang Y, Khaniya U, Cui Q, Gunner MR.
Keywords: Cytochrome c oxidase; MCCE; Monte Carlo sampling; Proton affinity | <urn:uuid:61ce9ac7-efd3-4df8-b7b5-ae45ee54af3a> | http://biomed.news/bims-resufa/2020-06-14 | en | 0.799493 | 0.308391 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Focus on Lenz’s Law
photo copy 2by: Ted Beyer
Read the rest of this entry »
Bring Some Magic Into Your Classroom!
Ted Beyerby: Ted Beyer
Eddy Current Tubes with Video
Ron Perkinsby: Ron Perkins
Science Experiments With Japanese Yen Coins
Ron Perkinsby: Ron Perkins
Who knew that a single coin could be used for so many classroom science activities! You can demonstrate concepts such as surface tension, buoyancy, and even eddy currents with Japanese yen coins!
Surface Tension: Even though aluminum has a density of 2.7 gm/cm3, and the density of water is 1 g/cm3, aluminum yen coins can float on the surface of the water!
Surface tension is a physical property of water. It is caused by cohesion, which is the attraction of like molecules. Water molecules are made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. The “stickiness” of water is caused by hydrogen bonding. This hydrogen bonding pulls the water molecules towards one another and forms a sort of “skin” on the surface of the water.
Japanese Yen Coins Experiment 1:
Floating Japanese Yen CoinsUsing a bent paper clip or a plastic fork, gently lower the flat side of the coin onto the surface of a pan or cup of water and remove the clip or fork. The coin should rest on the surface of the water. Read the rest of this entry » | <urn:uuid:ac99dee9-b39e-4680-af61-553b15c93150> | http://blog.teachersource.com/tag/eddy-currents/ | en | 0.948769 | 0.031852 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Thanksgiving, Chicago, 1858
Courtesy of the Chicago Magazine blog, this Thanksgiving article was published in the Chicago Tribune on November 25, 1858.
It's quite the historical document, not only does it provide a window into what was on the minds of Chicagoans at the time, but it is also a manifesto of the values the newspaper; Protestant, anti-immigrant (especially Irish Catholic), pro-temperance, and staunchly Republican, the latter of which it remains to this day.
Also of note is the image included on the post which depicts the raising of a block of buildings and the sidewalk of Lake Street between Clark and LaSalle in 1860. George Pullman (later of sleeping car fame), was one of the chief engineers responsible for devising the system of raising the buildings of Chicago, made necessary by the terrible drainage of the natural city. In the case of this particular block, it took six hundred men synchronously turning six thousand jackscrews to do the job. It took five days to raise the entire block four feet eight inches. Business was not disrupted in any way as the work progressed.
Imagine a major public works project today which could boast that.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Maggie Daley
I had a sinking feeling in my heart last year, the moment Richard M. Daley announced he would not seek re-election for an unprecedented seventh term as mayor of Chicago. Some speculated that he lost interest in the job after the failed Olympic bid. Others thought at 68, he had enough of the pressure of the job, which intensified logarithmically during his last term. Still others believed he just wanted to serve long enough to break his father's record of days served in office, which he did on December 26th of last year.
I didn't buy any of that. Rich Daley loved being mayor and I think he would have gladly gone to his grave, dying with his boots on while still in office, just as his father did, if he could have. No my sinking feeling was that Mayor Daley was leaving office because he knew his wife was dying. Sadly last night, Thanksgiving night, Maggie Daley passed away at 68, after a long battle with cancer.
Here is the Tribune's obituary of Mrs. Daley, poignantly written by Rick Kogan.
Here are some comments and remembrances from Chicago Magazine.
Maggie and Rich Daley, Columbus Day Parade, c. 1990
She left behind her husband, three surviving children, and the City of Chicago, which she helped make a better place. Every one of us in this city owes Mrs. Daley a tremendous debt of gratitude. May she rest in peace.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
In Dallas, Texas...
That's how the most famous television news bulletin of all time began 48 years ago yesterday.
Great cities inspire impressions, mental images of themselves, the greater the city, the more diverse the impressions. For Dallas that image could be the neon sign of Pegasus, the symbol of Mobil Oil on top the Magnolia Petroleum Building. Or it might be the neighborhood of Deep Ellum, a cross between Harlem, Algiers and Bourbon Street. It could be the conspicuous consumption that was personified by the TV series named after the city, or Neiman Marcus whose flagship department store is on Elm Street in Downtown Dallas. It might be the quintessential American image of the cowboy, or the football team named for them, or more likely still, their cheerleaders. Or it could be the braggadocio that defines Dallas, a city whose aggressive pride of place makes Chicago look downright timid.
For me, Dallas will always be personified by the three words at the top of this post, and a place in the city that will forever be etched in the memory of anyone who was alive at the time, Dealey Plaza.
A few years ago, I read an article from a Look magazine my father saved that commemorated President Kennedy’s assassination. In the article, the author wondered how that event would affect the children around the country who witnessed it first hand on TV.
I am one of those children.
I was in kindergarten, not quite five years old that late November day in 1963. We had a TV in our classroom and it happened to be on at the time the reports started coming in from Dallas. There are indelible images from that morning, I remember my teacher frantically changing the channel to get more information, and the news becoming grimmer with each successive bulletin.
I don't remember the bulletin that finally announced the president was dead, maybe I've seen that clip of Walter Cronkite breaking down on camera so many times that I can't distinguish what I saw and when.
My grandmother met me at the school bus later that afternoon. I asked her who would be the next president. Like the rest of the country, our TV set was on non-stop for the rest of the weekend. I was transfixed. One particular image struck me, a man removing, as if ritually, the presidential seal from a podium. I learned many years later that this was the dais the president was headed to in Dallas to deliver the speech he would never give.
I visited Dallas my first and only time about fifteen years ago. It was during the midst of a cross country drive, bringing my parents home to Chicago from Phoenix. Since it was the middle of winter, it was certain that we would take the southern route, but I lobbied for an even more southern route, one that would take us within spitting distance of Mexico. Even though it would add several hundred miles to our trip, it would take us through some pretty interesting places. Mostly, I wanted to go to Dallas.
It was an amazing drive through southern New Mexico and Texas. We passed through the rough and tumble border city of El Paso, alongside rugged Big Bend National Park, then through some desolate landscape as we approached the oil fields near Odessa. Unlike many of my friends who are turned off by its conservative politics and religion, I've always been drawn to Texas and its people. Perhaps it was the folks in Beaumont who welcomed me so warmly into their homes when I photographed them as part of a documentary project. Or driving through the Panhandle with its wide open, wind swept landscape that seems to go on forever. Or maybe it was the girl who charmed my socks off thirty years ago in Houston. In any case, that drive which was completely tedious for my parents, was exhilarating for me.
Eventually we got to Dallas. I had no guidebook but it didn't matter, I recognized the place from the freeway. It looked just as I had remembered from the photographs, only much more intimate. It was raining and my parents humored me as I got out of the car to check it out. There it all was, the Book Depository, the pergola where Zapruder shot his famous film, the grassy knoll, the stockade fence, and the triple underpass.
I was alone, at least thought I was until I saw a solitary figure near the stockade fence. I turned my head away, then turned back and the figure was gone. To this day I have no better explanation other than I saw Lee Harvey Oswald's ghost. Well that's my story anyway and I'm sticking to it.
We all went up to the sixth floor of the Depository which is now a museum devoted to Kennedy and the assassination. You can look out the window from where the shots were fired. There are two x's on Elm street that mark the spots where Kennedy was hit. They are clearly visible from that window. I'm not a marksman but in my uneducated opinion, it didn't look like a terribly difficult shot, especially for a former Marine.
Afterwards my parents and I had lunch at a nearby steakhouse then went to check out Neiman Marcus for my mother. After that we went on our way. We had accomplished what we set out to do in Dallas.
To some it might seem creepy to seek out the site of a person's murder. Perhaps it is. I don't know why I was drawn to Dealey Plaza any more than why I'm drawn to John Kennedy and his assassination. All I know is the event that took place so long ago was a major milestone in my life, my transformation from babyhood to childhood.
On the morning of November 22nd, 1963, I knew what a president was, and who the president was, but in life, President Kennedy meant nothing to me. All would change that afternoon. It was not the first time I experienced death, but it was my first experience with sudden, violent death. John Fitzgerald Kennedy would from that day on become a revered figure in our household and of course for a while, all over America.
On that fateful day, the whole terrifying world opened up to me. Even though I didn't understand it at the time, the things that happened outside the boundaries of my own little world, all of a sudden mattered. Looking at my daughter who is the same age I was when JFK died, I realize how awfully young that is to bear the weight of the world on your shoulders.
No one knows what this country, or the world for that matter would be like had Kennedy lived. But I suspect that all of us died a little with him that day.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Funny money
My contrarian nature makes me suspicious of movements, grass roots and otherwise. The current Occupy Wall Street movement is no exception, my feeling is this; throughout history, the few that are rich have always controlled most of the wealth, our time is no different. As the wise Mr. Bernstein said in Citizen Kane: "It's not a trick to make a lot of money if all you want, is to make a lot of money." Since I haven't devoted my life to the pursuit of personal fortune, I don't have a problem with other people having more money than I do.
On the other hand, there's always been a part of me that believes that people who have more money than they know what to do with, ("stupid money" as a friend calls it), could do a little better sharing it with those who have little or none. I also make a distinction between people who earn a lot of money, justly being compensated for building, creating and doing things that benefit society, (including those who invest responsibly), from those who make a great deal of money in any way they see fit, regardless of the consequences. It's an age old battle, but the following is just one case where the hard work and struggle of generations of Americans, rich and otherwise is being undermined by a few who may be about to bring down a couple of national institutions, along with thousands of livelihoods.
An article in the October issue of Esquire explores the sorry state of retail giants Sears and Kmart. The sub title of the piece; The End, Old Friendby investment writer Ken Kurson spells it out:
The only value left at Sears and Kmart is the bet against them.
Sears played an integral role in Chicago's history. Richard Sears moved his watch business to Chicago where he met his future partner Alvah C. Roebuck who would help diversify the operation. Together they created the mail order business that would bring a whole new world to Americans, especially rural Americans, via the catalog. Sears was a man with vision but little practical sense. It was his penchant for example, to advertise impossibly attractive deals in his catalog regardless of whether or not he was able to deliver them. He had to rely on his suppliers several times to save his skin. The stress of the business made Roebuck resign in 1895.
Sears needed an infusion of capital to keep the business going and he got it from one of those suppliers who came to his rescue. Julius Rosenwald from the discount clothing trade, as was his nature, seized upon a good opportunity and bought into the company in 1895. As vice president, Rosenwald organized and further diversified the business, turning a successful operation into a national icon. Rosenwald was instrumental in taking Sears Roebuck public in 1906, which resulted in a windfall for both him and the company. He assumed the presidency of the company in 1908 upon Richard Sears' retirement.
Julius Rosenwald was a remarkable man who today is more remembered for his philanthropic work than his formidable business acumen. Feeling personally uncomfortable with the inequity of his immense wealth compared to those who were in his employ, Mr. Rosenwald sought and received ethical direction from the teachings of Judaism. He was deeply moved by these words of a rabbi from a Yom Kippur address:
As long as the weakest in humanity has not his own, civilization is only a sham and a pretender, and as long as civilization is a pretender, Judaism must stand alone as a historic protest against injustice.
Rosenwald took those words to heart and put his business skill, progressive ideals, much of his personal treasure, and most important of all, his time, to support initiatives that helped disadvantaged people learn the skills that would enable them to help themselves. He became associated with Booker T. Washington and his Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, as well as many efforts to establish schools for African American children in the South. He became a staunch supporter of racial justice and was equally swayed by Washington's ideological adversary, W.E.B. DuBois, who eulogized Rosenwald this way:
He was a great man. But he was no mere philanthropist. He was, rather, the subtle stinging critic of our racial democracy.
Rosenwald disliked perpetual foundations, seeing them as an attempt for their benefactors to achieve a kind of immortality. Instead he believed in giving his money away while he was alive. The foundation that bore his name was established in 1917 and lasted until its funds were purposely exhausted in 1948. In the words of Mr. Rosenwald:
I am opposed to the principle of storing up large sums of money for philanthropic uses centuries hence…. The generation which has contributed to the making of a millionaire should also be the one to profit by his generosity.
Not only is his foundation a memory, but you won't find Rosenwald's name on the company he helped build, or many of the institutions he founded such as the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, simply because he wanted it that way.
Kmart is another American institution whose company's origins date back almost as far as Sears'. Sebastian S. Kresge developed his business philosophy of hard work, thrift, and a disdain for credit, early in his career. As a clerk in a hardware store in Scranton, PA. he noticed that the store was falling behind on its bills because the customers were falling behind on their credit payments. He was diligent in keeping the place tidy, choosing to clean and polish up the store during his idle moments rather than just stand around. This attitude did not go unnoticed and his employer promoted him to the position of traveling salesman, where he remained for several years. One of his customers was Frank Woolworth of dime store fame. With $8,000 that he saved up while in that position, Kresge with a partner opened up his own five and ten cent store, first in Memphis, then another, later in Detroit. All transactions were cash only. In 1899 Kresge bought out his partner and by 1912, Kresge owned 85 dime stores under his name across the U.S. He took a close personal interest in his stores that extended to knowing all his managers by name, and hanging a picture of his mother in each store.
Kresge was notoriously stingy in providing for himself and his family. Despite being a millionaire many times over, he wore threadbare suits and refused to play golf because he lost too many balls. The penny-pinching did not however extend to his employees who were some of the first in his industry to receive paid sick leave and holidays, profit-sharing bonuses, and pensions. Nor did his parsimoniousness extend to charity. In 1924, Kresge with an initial gift of 1.6 million, established the Kresge Foundation; “to help human progress through benefactions of whatever name or nature.” Unlike Julius Rosenwald's foundation, the Kresge Foundation is alive and well today. It ranks as the 28th richest charitable organization in the world with an endowment of 3.3 billion dollars. Kresge lived to see much of the work of his charity as he died in 1966 at the ripe old age of 99.
The Kresge Foundation casts a wide net to provide grant money to a wide variety of causes, but one specific area that is near and dear to the heart of the Foundation is the city of Detroit which was the home of the Kresge Corporation and continues to be the home of the Foundation. From its mission statement:
We aspire to change the city of Detroit’s trajectory to one of long-term economic opportunity that advances social equity, promotes cultural expression, and re-establishes our hometown as the center of a vibrant region.
The corporation no longer resides in the Motor City but Kresge's name continues to be prominently displayed in Downtown Detroit at the top of the building that was at one time its corporate headquarters. Built in 1914 the Kales Building was designed by Detroit's preeminent architect Albert Kahn. Like Cass Gilbert's Woolworth Building in New York City, the Kales Building continues to be one of the most prominent buildings in its city's distinguished skyline. To think, both magnificent buildings were built out of nickels and dimes, lots and lots of them.
Times changed and nickels and dimes didn't go as far as they once did. Dime stores eventually became known as "variety stores" and they would hang around urban commercial districts for most of the twentieth century. It was not uncommon for Woolworth and Kresge stores to coexist next to one another in downtowns throughout much of America. By mid-century the Kresge company began to change direction recognizing that the future of retail meant following the customers and their automobiles, to the suburbs. The old fashioned urban Kresge variety stores became suburban Kmart discount centers. Kmart may not have been the first "big box" store but it was the quintessential one that set the tone for what was to follow. It was the paradigm for competitors such as Shopper's World, Community, Zayre, Venture, Walmart and Target. It survived all but the last two.
Here is a blog devoted entirely to Kmart.
Unlike K(resge)mart, Sears transformed itself many times over in the twentieth century. In 1906, the year the company went public, Richard Sears wrote: "We do comparatively very little business in cities, and we assume the cities are not at all our field - maybe they are not - but I think it is our duty to prove they are not ." Shortly after that, retail stores began to open up in small towns all over the country, cutting into the mail order business and the company knew it had to adapt. In 1925, Sears opened up its first retail store located on the campus of its enormous headquarters on the west side of Chicago. Their "brick and mortar" stores quickly became successful, during one period in the twenties, a new Sears store opened somewhere in America on an average of one every other day. New stores kept opening despite the Depression and only the outbreak of World War II could stop the growth, temporarily. Sears pioneered the concept of one stop shopping, you could drive to Sears, get your car serviced, have your eyes checked, purchase insurance, get some investment advice, and put your house on the market, while your family browsed through the store which sold pretty much anything they needed. Sears also was the first company to feature in house brands such as Kenmore appliances, Die Hard car batteries, and Craftsman tools, all of whom were renowned for their quality and reliability.
Sears came the closest of any retailer in the United States to being all things to all people. In small towns they had catalog stores, limited retail establishments where you could order what they couldn't stock. In the suburbs, Sears stores were the anchors of shopping malls, and in urban centers, they coexisted comfortably along with their competitors, the other great department stores. For half of my life, the Sears department store on State Street between Congress and Van Buren was the largest and most comprehensive of all the great stores on that street.
Then there was the catalog which itself was an institution. Quoting myself; at one time all across America the arrival of the Sears catalog was anticipated with as much gusto as birthdays and Christmas. For many years the company's slogan was; "Where America shops." That was not hyperbole, Sears was so strong and powerful in the early seventies, it built as its corporate headquarters what would be at the time, and for many years to come, the world's tallest building. If any other retailer could legitimately claim to be the icon of Middle America, I certainly can't think if it.
Things began to change in the late seventies and that old bugaboo reared its ugly head, Sears and especially Kmart, didn't go along with the times. Kmart during the last part of the last century was pleagued with extremely incompetent management. The company found itself caught in between its two chief rivals. On one side was Walmart with its efficient technologically driven distribution system, and its aggressively low overhead, high discount strategy. On the other side was Target which emphasized design while maintaining low prices. Kmart did not stray from its original template and as a result, could not compete with Walmart's prices, or Target's sense of style. Consequently it became irrelevant.
Sears also was beginning to show its age as well, its image as the store your parents and grandparents shopped at probably didn't help. The company let its stores become tired looking and run down. Here is a picture of the great Sears store at the Six Corners shopping district of Chicago as it looks today:
Sears department store at Cicero and Irving Park Avenues, Chicago, 2011
The building was built during the Great Depression at a cost of one million dollars. 100,000 people attended its opening in 1938. From the photo above you can just barely detect hints of the building's beautiful Art Deco facade. Compare it the photograph below of the same building from around the time of its opening. Amazingly, they covered up the building's most distinctive feature, its great display window, the largest in Chicago. Long ago they removed the stunning neon sign, replacing it with pedestrian illuminated plastic signs featuring the corporate logo du jour.
Same Sears store, c. 1938
Of course the last forty years have been challenging for all retailers, many of whom have closed up shop entirely. In a way it's a small miracle that Sears and Kmart exist at all today. In 2002, Kmart filed for bankruptcy protection.
Enter hedge fund manager Edward Lampert. Lampert's strategy is to buy up old school, struggling retailers, shake up the management, then use their cash flow to buy up other retailers. In 2003, Lampert bought Kmart along with all its debt. Struggling as it was, Kmart was still taking in $30 billion per year in sales. In addition, Kmart also had plenty of real estate. Lampert closed several stores and sold off the property, further improving his cash flow.
In what seemed to the general public a case of the blind leading the blind, the Kmart Corporation under Lampert, bought Sears Roebuck. From an investors' standpoint, it was a brilliant move as Sears was even more real estate rich than Kmart, and as long as they could keep selling off property, the price of the stock kept going up. Lampert's group promised to revitalize both Sears and Kmart and did make a few token moves attempting to improve sales at Sears and Kmart, but little of the money earned from the sale of assets was reinvested into either store. Sales remained flat while stock in the combined companies gained in value. Given this it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that the corporation that controls Sears and Kmart today is known as "Sears Holdings."
All was well with this arrangement, at least as far as stock value went, until the collapse of the real estate market six years ago. According to Ken Kurson's Esquire piece, since then the income of the company has decreased 84 percent. Sears for the first time has dropped to the tenth largest retailer and unlike every other retailer in its class, its profits have dropped consistently in that time. Kmart has dropped to a very distant fourth place among its big box competitors, Walmart, Target and Costco. Yet for the past six years, the price of the stock of Sears Holdings has remained fairly constant, quite an accomplishment for the current climate.
That is until now.
Kurson closes his Esquire piece with this: "The smart money didn't care if the retailers recovered. They liked the real estate."
This is not in any way illegal, it's business as usual in corporate America. But I think a good argument could be made about the lack of ethics in Lampert's actions. He acquired two companies, pledging in good faith to the employees, the general public and the shareholders to do everything in his power to return them to profitability. It's clear I think to everyone like me who has visited a Sears or Kmart lately to find two businesses that appear to only be going through the motions.
Then there's the issue of morality. Lampert's chief responsibility in his mind is to his clients, the stockholders, whose interest is the bottom line. As for Sears and Kmart, and the people who work there, well they're expendable in the eyes of the "smart money." Lampert's clients, who probably don't shop at Sears Holdings stores and definitely don't work in them, will just move on to other investment opportunities. Moving on will not be so easy for the folks whose livelihood depends on the stores.
One of the options to investors, as Kurson suggests, would be to short sell Sears Holdings stock, thereby profiting off the company's collapse.
Eddie Lampert may not be a bad guy. In the end he may like his mentor Warren Buffet, decide to donate all of his billions to charity upon his death. He's still a relatively young man so it's not at all fair to compare his legacy in terms of charity and good works to that of Kresge's or Rosenwald's.
But he does have a substantial track record in business, so I do think it's fair to compare Lampert's business legacy up to this point, with the men who created Kmart and Sears. Richard Sears, Alvah Roebuck, Sebastian Kresge and Julius Rosenwald, at great financial risk to themselves, built companies out of nothing but their own hard work and inspiration. Their companies which have been around for well over 100 years, have provided gainful employment to countless people over that time and both Kresge and Rosenwald at least, expressed deep concern for the well being of their workers. The companies in their own right served as engines that helped drive the U.S. economy for many years, as well as provided a very good return to their investors.
By buying and selling off the assets of Kmart and Sears, Lampert may very well have sealed the fate of the companies built by Sears, Roebuck, Kresge and Rosenwald. If that happens, he will be responsible for tens of thousands of workers losing their jobs, the loss of two American institutions, and the vacuum in the economy that their loss would entail. On the upside, he made himself and his clients richer.
As far as legacy goes, you can judge for yourself but in my book, it's not much of a contest.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
George Eastman
In my post about Steve Jobs and all the innovators, inventors and creative geniuses he is in company with, I forgot about poor old George Eastman.
Here is an article by Bob Greene that draws some interesting comparisons between Google and the company Eastman founded, Kodak.
Like Jobs, it was Eastman who brought his product, in his case cameras and photography, to everyday people. In the process he not only changed photography, which already had been around for a half century, but the world.
Today, photography like so many other fields of endeavor, is being transformed by the digital age. Greene makes an interesting point using traditional silver (film) based photography versus its digital based counterpart as a metaphor for our current society. In the old film era, (boy I'm really starting to feel old), you would have to wait to shoot an entire role of film, take it to the lab, then wait a few days more for the film to be processed. There was a sense of glorious anticipation in that time, wondering how the pictures would turn out. Opening that envelope with the prints, or a box with slides, would be akin to opening up a birthday present as, hoping for the best, you'd never know exactly what you'd get. All that's been lost with digital photography and its instant feedback, and gratification.
Unfortunately Kodak has not been very good at the instant gratification business. As everyone in the photography world, and the city of Rochester knows, the company has been floundering for quite some time, and may not survive. That would be a terrible shame.
Ironically, Google, the company that all but invented instant gratification, is no longer instant enough. Competition from Twitter, Facebook and others have forced Google to improve its search algorithm to make it even faster. *
Another lesson to all of us in changing times, either go with the flow or get off the boat.
* Which reminds me of an old Groucho Marx bit. While in a passionate embrace with a woman, she asks him to come closer to which he replies: "If I were any closer I'd be behind you."
Saturday, November 12, 2011
In those days , they had time for everything...
...could be a comment heard today about life before the age of e-mail, the internet, and multitasking, back when people weren't teathered to their electronic devices and required to be accessible 24/7.
Isn't it ironic that the more time saving devices we have at our fingertips, the less time we seem to have at our disposal?
That sentiment is actually from a novel and later a classic movie, set at the turn of the last century. Its inspiration was not related to the computer obviously but the electric streetcar which replaced the horse drawn streetcar. Life it seems was a trifle slower in the pre-trolley days when the car pulled up to a house:
A lady could whistle to it from an upstairs window, and the car would halt at once, and wait for her while she shut the window, put on her hat and coat, went downstairs, found an umbrella, told the "girl" what to have for dinner and came forth from the house. The previous passengers made little objection to such gallantry on the part of the car: they were wont to expect as much for themselves on like occasion.
People have been grumbling about the "good old days" probably since the invention of the wheel, if not before.
The "good old days." Chicago Loop c.1900
The words are taken from the novel The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington. It was written in 1918 and chroicles the life of once the most prominent family of an unnamed Midwestern town.* It was the story that Orson Wells chose to be the setting for his second feature film. Like Wells' first film Citizen Kane, the chief protagonist of The Magnificent Ambersons, George Amberson Minafer is a flawed individual, arrogant with a supreme sense of entitlement, who is perfectly unwilling to change along with the world around him. His stubborn attitude that, for a person of his status it was more worthwhile - to be rather than to do, made him ill suited for life in a time when his prestigious family name had lost its relevance.
George's nemesis, Eugene Morgan, was the father of George's on again off again girlfriend Lucy, but also an admirer of his widowed mother Isabel. George eventually learns what we already know, not only was the admiration mutual, but it was in fact older than George himself, and were it not for a youthful indiscretion, Eugene may very well have ended up George's father, and Lucy... well you can figure out the rest. The stuff for great melodrama to be sure but the story takes place during the period of the most radical change in the history of this country, and that turbulent era serves as the story behind the story.
Although the film and novel center around George and the self centered existence that leads to his eventual "come-upance", the most compelling character is Eugene. He is a member of the new breed of do'ers rather than be'ers, an inventor and early advocate of the automobile. While he is a lifelong friend of the Ambersons, his world and theirs collide as the progress he is in part responsible for, crushes the old way of life that sustained the family and their significance. Yet George is the only Amberson who is threatened by Eugene; by his ambition, his newfangled horseless carriage, his self-made success, and mostly by his intrusion into George's family. One evening at dinner at the Ambersons', George's grandfather and uncle engage Eugene in conversation about the growth due to all the new roads and how it has been negatively effecting property values in their part of town. Eugene assures them that it will only get worse, that roads will soon be built all the way to the edge of town and the roads already in town will be widened to accommodate the automobile. At that point, George blurts out:
Automobiles are a useless nuisance. They'll never amount to anything but a nuisance. They had no business to be invented.
George's grandfather in the book, his uncle in the movie , admonishes him for his impertinence. Seemingly unfazed, Eugene in a remarkably insightful monologue says this:
I'm not sure he's wrong about automobiles. With all their speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization - that is, in spiritual civilization. It may be that they will not add to the beauty of the world, nor to the life of men's souls. I am not sure, But automobiles have come, and they bring a greater change in our life than most of us suspect. They are here, and almost all outward things are going to be different because of what they bring. They are going to alter war, and they are going to alter peace. I think men's minds are going to be changed in subtle ways because of the automobiles; just how, though, I could hardly guess. But you can't have the immense outward changes that they will cause without some inward ones, and it may be that George is right, and that spiritual alteration will be bad for us. Perhaps, ten or twenty years from now, if we can see the inward change in men by that time, I shouldn't be able to defend the gasoline engine, but would have to agree with him that automobiles had no business to be invented.
Pretty glum words indeed, especially coming from one of the inventors of that infernal contraption.
Later in the story, George leaves for an extended trip to Europe. Upon his return five years later, he found that the familiar world he left behind, was gone forever. This is how Booth Tarkington describes George's town that had become a city upon his return:
He walked homeward slowly through what appeared to be the strange streets of a strange city... the streets were thunderous; a vast energy heaved under the universal coating of dinginess...All the people were soiled by the smoke-mist through which they hurried, under the heavy sky that hung close upon the new skyscrapers; and nearly all seemed harried by something impending.
That dinginess and harried nature of life in this new world that Tarkington describes, is associated by the new people in town, with well being and prosperity. As long as the factories and mills were belching out smoke, people were making money and all was well.
Perhaps this is the "spiritual alteration" that Eugene so prophetically alluded to in his words.
It's funny, if we were to take Eugene's cautionary statement and substitute the word computer for automobile, and digital age for gasoline engine, his comments would ring true in our day.
Being in the middle of the digital revolution, we still may not begin to understand the inward change it causes in our souls. One thing is certain, computers are here to stay and they have inexorably changed our lives.
For better and for worse.
After all, as Eugene said in the movie:
* It is said that Booth Tarkington based the unnamed Midwestern town that is the setting for The Magnificent Ambersons on his home town, Woodruff Place, Indiana, which today is a neighborhood of Indianapolis. For his part, Wells may have been influenced by the town of his birth, Kenosha, Wisconsin. In reality though, the town could be Anywhere, USA.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Armistice Day
Armistice Day celebration on South Michigan
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
A man of his time
The camera slowly climbs a wire fence upon which is mounted a "No Trespassing" sign. It is nighttime. We hear dark, foreboding music as a series of establishing shots show us a mansion and its grounds, deserted save for a few monkeys perched on the front gate. The enormous Gothic house looks sinister, it could belong to Doctor Frankenstein. As the camera approaches, we see light coming from one of the windows. The music builds in a crescendo, then suddenly stops and with it, the light is switched off. Cut to inside the room where we see the form of a person lying in bed. Dissolve to a snowstorm, then cut to a small house covered in snow. Camera pulls back to reveal this is the inside of a child's snow globe. Next we see the lips of a man as he says his dying word: "Rosebud." His hand drops the snow globe, it falls to the floor and shatters. In the reflection of the broken glass, we see a nurse enter the room. She checks for a pulse, then pulls the blanket over the lifeless body
Cut to newsreel: "NEWS ON THE MARCH". "Obituary: Xanadu's Landlord" opens the film within a film that chronicles the life and death of the great man, publisher of the syndicated Inquirer newspapers, Charles Foster Kane.
When the film short ends, the projector in the screening room is abruptly shut off and we realize this newsreel is still a work in progress. The producer wants more. "It tells us Charles Foster Kane is dead..." he tells the reporter, "I know he's dead, I read the Inquirer!" He says: "It isn't enough to tell us what a man did. You've got to tell us who he was." The producer and reporter settle on attempting to discover the meaning of his enigmatic last word, as perhaps that would be the key to unlock the secret of his life.
The rest of Citizen Kane features the reporter, Mr. Thompson, conducting interviews with friends, enemies and acquaintances of the deceased, deconstructing Charlie Kane's life in a series of flashbacks, all in the futile (for them) attempt to determine the true identity of Rosebud, and with that perhaps Kane himself.
This is pretty much how the last several weeks have played out as the media have been examining the life of the recently deceased Steve Jobs. Every day it seems, a new angle or twist on the life of the co-founder and CEO of Apple INC is revealed from a friend, enemy, former employee, or all three rolled into one, putting the pieces together of the life of a remarkable, complicated man.
Stevejobs Macworld2005
Honestly I was not prepared for the tremendous outpouring of sympathy and grief following Jobs' passing, the likes of which I haven't seen since the death of Princess Diana. My own take on the guy was that he invented a lot of really cool stuff. Now my cappuccino machine is also really cool, yet I don't know who invented it, nor do I particularly care. Media pundits who expressed similar faint praise of Jobs, have been raked over the coals by those who hold him in high esteem as the man who changed the world.
Jobs' esteem has only meteorically risen in the last month. Since his death Jobs has been placed well within the hallowed halls of the Pantheon of the greatest innovators, creators and inventors this world has ever known.
Here is a New York Times piece that favorably compares Jobs with Thomas Edison. Jobs indeed made his presence felt in a number of industries. In addition to personal computers, he played a significant role in the motion picture industry with his involvement in the animation company Pixar, in the music industry with the development of Apple's iTunes, and in the communications industry with the iPhone. The folks who compare Jobs with Edison use these points to make the comparison, but consider this:
• Jobs' role in the motion picture industry was to financially back a film company. Thomas Edison was one of the inventors of the motion picture camera.
• Jobs' contribution to the music industry involved changing the way music is distributed. Thomas Edison invented the phonograph.
• Thomas Edison did not, contrary to popular lore, invent the incandescent light bulb, he was just the first to make it work. In order to make his light bulbs work, he first had to come up with a system to generate, then supply electricity to homes and businesses. He did that too.
In other words, if you were to pull the plug on Thomas Edison's most important contributions to society, every one of Steve Jobs' contributions would become very slick looking paperweights.
Here's a Forbes piece that claims Jobs is Henry Ford and Walt Disney rolled into one.
Unlike Disney, Steve Jobs' involvement in Pixar, was for the most part financial, not creative. Nevertheless, like Disney he demonstrated vision, in advancing a relatively new art form, and commitment to putting out a quality product. Pixar proved once and for all that it's not simply enough to wow the audience with technical mastery, but that good storytelling and humanity are really the most important aspects of the art of film making. The technical side should always be the servant to creativity, and the work that Pixar has produced to date, without fail, has demonstrated this.
I think there is even a more plausible connection between Steve Jobs and Henry Ford. Neither man invented the product(s) that made them famous. But each in his own way brought those products to the general public. Henry Ford was instrumental in developing the system of mass production that made automobiles affordable for the middle class. Steve Jobs, at the forefront of the development of the personal computer, gave us with a little help from his friends, the Apple II, a powerful (for its time) machine that people of average means could afford, and the Macintosh with its Graphic User Interface (GUI), a machine that the average person actually wanted to use. The Mac and the software that runs it never became the top selling personal computer system on the market, but the user friendly GUI, (Mac's version was often imitated, never duplicated), became the industry standard for the vast majority of personal computers, and enabled anyone who desired, to become computer literate.
It is impossible to downplay the effect of the automobile and the computer on society, Here I'm quoting myself from an earlier post:
The industrial revolution that Ransom E. Olds, Henry Ford and others started in Detroit is largely responsible for creating the middle class as we know it in this country. It was one of the first times in history where factory workers would build something that they actually could afford to buy. The automobile brought a kind of freedom, previously enjoyed by only the upper strata of society, to just about everybody.
The computer also brought a new independence to the general public, but like the automobile, not without a cost.
In recent months, the Occupy Wall Street movement has brought the issue of income disparity to our attention. Here is a graph that documents the percent of wealth controlled by the richest ten percent in the nation between 1917 and 2008. As you can see, the percentage of wealth controlled by the elite began to shrink at the outset of the Great Depression, but really took a nose dive at the end of World War II in 1945. This post-war period could be called the golden age of the Middle Class in this country, when American Industry was the most powerful in the world, when unemployment was relatively low, and blue collar workers, especially in big industry, made a very decent living. Things began to change in the mid eighties when big industry, including the auto industry, began to shut down or move their operations overseas. During the economic boom of the nineties, blue collar jobs continued to evaporate at an alarming rate, while the rich just kept getting richer. This is reflected clearly in the graph.
There are many reasons for the decline of industrial jobs in this country, but certainly one enormous factor is the loss of jobs to the computer. The upswing in elite control of the wealth of this nation in the seventies and eighties corresponds directly to the start of the high tech revolution. With the explosion of the internet in the 1990s, came the longest and steadiest upward trend in income disparity in ninety years, peaking at the Dot com bust in 2000. A few years later, around the time Steve Jobs started turning Apple around with his iStuff innovations, the line trends up again.
It may not be a stretch to say that while the automobile had a strong role in creating the American Middle Class, the computer played an equally strong role in its downfall.
At this point, Steve Jobs advocates, at least those in the OWS movement, might want to get off the bus and leave their man as a mere bit player in the computer revolution, and give all the credit, or blame, to Bill Gates.
With all the revelations coming out about Jobs, it may not be far fetched to add another comparison, the fictional Charles Foster Kane.* True the two characters could not have been more different, Jobs' background was solidly middle class while Kane's family found itself literally on top of a gold mine. Kane's primary business interest, the Inquirer, was inherited while Jobs founded Apple Computer, along with his partner Steve Wozniak, in his parents' garage.
Yet there are parallels that are worth noting. Both men were separated from their birth parents. Neither earned a college degree. Jobs dropped out of a community college, and as for Kane; "Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Switzerland... he was thrown out of a lot of colleges. "
Kane and Jobs both owed their success to the inspiration of their adopted fathers, but in diametrically opposite ways. Steve Jobs credited his father for teaching him how things work. Jobs said of his adoptive father:
I was very lucky. My father, Paul, was a pretty remarkable man."
Paul Jobs, a machinist at as laser manufacturing company gave a piece of his workbench over to his young son. Again here are Steve Jobs words:
...he gave me some of his smaller tools and showed me how to use a hammer and saw and how to build things. It really was very good for me. He spent a lot of time with me... teaching me how to build things, how to take things apart, put things back together. He showed me the rudiments of electronics and I got very interested in that.
In a moment of self reflection late in life, here is Charlie Kane in a conversation with his long time associate Mr. Bernstein and his adopted father/guardian/caretaker, the Wall Street mogul Walter P. Thatcher:
Don't you think you are?
Kane: I think I did pretty well under the circumstances.
What would you like to have been?
Kane: Everything you hate.
Neither Kane nor Jobs were primarily driven by money.
Kane of course didn't need the money; here he is, again to Thatcher:
Jobs was clearly driven to make his mark on the world by creating products of the highest standards of design as well as technology. That was certainly the key to his success, but his monetary compensation was chicken feed compared to that of other moguls in his industry. Of course you could feed a lot of chickens with his 8.3 billion net worth. Anyway, as CEO of Apple INC, Jobs received a salary of one dollar per year. Obviously in the end, he didn't need the money either.
I think it would be fair to say that Apple's success is largely a victory of style over substance. True, Apple products are well made, high quality items. Most of all, they look great, whether its an iMac sitting on your desk, the super sleek MacBook Air on your lap, or the iPhone pressed against your ear. What's more, they're fun to use. Small wonder that most Apple users are fiercely devoted to Apple products.
There are other products out there that do the same or even better job, usually for less money. PCs for example are more flexible than Macs. When you buy an Apple product, you buy into Steve Jobs, Apple and all that entails. You are forced to play by Apple's rules, their limited, dedicated software, the lack of backwards compatibility, and a whole range of limitations that most Apple diehards don't care about or simply overlook.
Charles Foster Kane when questioned by his first wife what "people will think..." about his incessant attacks on the President of the United States, barked back: "What I tell them to think."
Steve Jobs essentially had the same relationship with his customers, and they listened to him with relish.
Both Kane and Jobs enjoyed being in the spotlight. Jobs was almost as good as marketing himself as he was his company. His trademark black mock turtleneck and blue jeans created a look that fit in well with Apple's casual, hip, up to date image. The problem with being hip and up to date is that what's hip and up to date today is stale and out of date tomorrow. This is not only true about fashion, but also products. Look at this picture of Steve Jobs taken in the eighties with early models of the Mac. What at the time was a man and a product who were both at the cutting edge of technology, today looks like a forlorn piece of useless junk being sold by a (sharp dressed) Maxwell Street huckster. Since they are practically obsolete from the moment you take them out of the box, computers don't age well. Unlike automobiles, there is not much of a market for vintage computers, unless as a prop for a period piece movie or play. My vintage 2002 iMac G4, the one that that I'm typing on now, in its day blew people away with its sleek, elegant design, but today looks tired and dated in not an entirely charming way.
Steve Jobs must have thought long and hard about his own legacy, he hand picked the man who wrote his authorized biography, Walter Isaacson. Isaacson, who like Jobs has CEO credentials in his resume, had previously written three biographies, one on Benjamin Franklin, another on Albert Einstein, and still another on Henry Kissenger. Jobs clearly saw his place in history residing next to at least two of those subjects.
As for me, well I'm not so sure. We're currently in the midst of the computer revolution and can't possibly gain correct perspective on it. Things sort themselves out over time, in one hundred years, those few who might be interested the end of the 20th Century, might remember Steve Jobs' name in connection with Apple's development of the Graphic User Interface. But I think there's little doubt that Bill Gates will be forever known as the father of the personal computer revolution.
Probably the biggest difference between Steve Jobs and the fictional Charles Foster Kane is that Kane died long after his relevance to society did. At the time of his death, he was already a relic of the past. Steve Jobs left this world while still on top. He was so important to his company that on the day he announced he would be stepping down from his post at Apple a few months ago, stocks in the company tanked. With the vacuum he has left, it's difficult to say what direction the company will take in the future as far as product development goes. Apple products today are highly valued and serve as upscale status symbols. In their day, so were Packards and Studebakers. People however still drive Fords. Walt Disney's name is still on his studio as Edison's is in the industry he helped found. Edison, Ford, Disney, and more than likely Bill Gates, are names for the ages. Steve Jobs was very much a man of his own time. He shook up the industry and the world with his terrificly cool and innovative products. But products come and go and when all the iPhones and iPads and iWhatevers end up in the recycling bin, something even cooler will come along to take their place. Without Jobs, it's quite possible that they will come from somewhere other than Apple.
None of this is intended to in any way disparage Steve Jobs, his life or all he accomplished. His was a charmed, brilliant, and creative life, one that will be missed. The reaction following his death says more about us than it does about him.
Some people say that everybody thinks their own generation invented sex. In other words, we're so wrapped up in our own little worlds, we forget that the folks who came before us experienced much the same things we do, including radical changes in their own world. I don't know if historical amnesia is unique to our own time, but it sure is rampant. Our world is indeed changing before our eyes. Yet I look at my grandmother's life and realize that the changes that have taken place in my own lifetime pale next to hers.
My grandmother could remember a time when there was no electricity in her home. When she was a child, the streetcar was the primary means of transportation about town if you didn't want to walk, or if you weren't rich and could afford a horse and buggy. If you wanted to get someplace far away you would need to hop aboard a train powered by a steam locomotive. She lived through Prohibition and the Great Depression. She lived thorough two world wars and several other wars, including a cold one. She lived through the assassination of two presidents. My grandmother experienced a time when there was a distinct possibility that the world might come suddenly and violently to an end. My grandmother could remember a time before there was radio in the home, and the time when the airplane had yet to be invented. Yet approaching the twilight of her life she saw a man walk on the moon, live on TV.
Did Steve Jobs change the world? Of course he did, just as millions of people did before and millions will after him. I think it's fair to say that he had a little bit of Edison in him, some Ford, Disney, Ben Franklin, with maybe even a little Einstein thrown in. I'd add a little Charlie Kane and a whole lot of P.T. Barnum to boot.
In the end he was the guy who made people fall in love with computers, including me. No small accomplishment. In my book I'd say that, all by itself, is pretty cool.
*The character of Charles Foster Kane in Orson Wells' Citizen Kane was based loosely on the life of the famed newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. Even though the film took pains to differentiate the two as Hearst's name appears more than once in the movie, the similarities were not lost on WRH, who unlike Kane, was very much alive throughout 1940. Hearst did everything in his power to prevent the movie from being released, unsuccessfully of course. | <urn:uuid:79081980-02d6-4e8c-8609-edac001c2ff9> | http://jamesiska.blogspot.com/2011/11/ | en | 0.98145 | 0.050417 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
The maze book for programmers!
DRM-Free Ebook
The Buckblog
assorted ramblings by Jamis Buck
Side Effects of Deferred Instantiation
22 April 2004 — 4-minute read
I spent yesterday evening tracking down a bug.
As I’ve mentioned in another article, my “Chump Change” financial manager will be web based, and it will take advantage of the Copland IoC framework that I created. Last night I came across an unforeseen side effect of one of Copland’s features.
First, let me temporarily digress and describe something of Chump Change’s architecture—it’s necessary in order to understand exactly what happened here.
Chump Change
First of all, Chump Change (I’ll just write it “CC”, subsequently) is built on top of the WEBrick web architecture. It is very much like the Java servlet framework, but for Ruby. Thus, the controller for the CC application (think MVC, here) is a WEBrick servlet.
This servlet “listens” for various exceptions and tries to display meaningful error messages to the client. For example, it is aware of time-out errors (and prompts the user to log in again), HTTP status errors (used to redirect the client to another page), and so forth. In the general case, it simply displays a special page that renders the stack trace and session contents to the client.
Because CC takes advantage of Copland, many of CC’s internals are implemented as services that are accessed via the Copland service registry. One of these services is a “page manager”, which keeps track of all of the different pages in the application. The CC servlet uses the page manager to determine which page to display based on the HTTP request path.
When the page manager is initialized, it reads through its configuration and loads every page class that it knows about. It will require any necessary files and then dynamically find a reference the class for each page.
Now, time for another digeression—you need to understand something about Copland.
Each Copland service implements one of several service models. These determine when and how a particular service gets instantiated. They range from simple (every request for the service returns a new instance), to singleton (every request returns the same instance), to threaded (every thread gets its own instance of a service). The default service model used in Copland is singleton deferred, which means that only one instance is ever created, but the instantiation is deferred until the first time a method is invoked on the service.
To accomplish this trick, Copland uses a proxy object, which will instantiate the service the first time a method of the service is invoked. The proxy then delegates all method calls to the service.
The Bug
Here’s what I was seeing. I’m not a perfect programmer (big surprise), so I make mistakes sometimes, often in the form of syntax errors. When these syntax errors occurred in a page class, the page manager would fail to load that class (since it would be unable to load that file). However, instead of seeing the “syntax error” message that I would expect to see (and did indeed see if the error was in any other source file), I saw a Copland error indicating that the specified page class could not be located. A related, but non-identical, error. So why wasn’t I seeing the more helpful syntax error?
After about 3 hours of tracking, it turned out to be this:
1. The PageManager service was using the singleton deferred model, since that was the default.
2. The servlet would get a reference to the PageManager. However, this was actually a reference to the deferring proxy, since the instantiation of the PageManager itself was deferred.
3. The servlet would invoke the get_page method on the PageManager, to get the page that was requested by the user. This would result in the proxy attempting to instantiate the PageManager.
4. The instantiation of the PageManager would fail, due to the syntax error inside of the file that was being required. This would raise an exception, which the servlet would catch.
5. Remember, the servlet was trying to handle all errors gracefully. So, it would see that an error was raised, and it would try to get a reference to the “error” page from the PageManager. However, the PageManager was never actually instantiated by the first call, so the proxy object would try to instantiate it, again.
6. This second instantiation would also be doomed to fail. However, the require would succeed this time (since Ruby always remembers when a file has been previously required, and will not try to require it again). Thus, processing would continue to the point where it tried to get a reference to the page class, and it would fail there, since the class was not defined.
7. A new exception would be raised, containing the “page class not found” error.
The Solution
Obviously, I needed a way to determine whether or not a proxy had instantiated its service yet. So I added one, and then in the rescue clause in the servlet I first check to see if the page manager proxy had instantiated the page manager yet. If it hadn’t, then there was some more critical error and I just dumped it to the log. (This class of errors won’t be pretty printed to the user.) Otherwise, I grabbed the error page from the page manager and rendered it.
It all works beautifully, now. However, it was a painful lesson: deferred instantiation of classes can have unexpected consequences! | <urn:uuid:4acfaa4e-5513-4780-aea7-ed897fecc4bf> | http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2004/4/22/side-effects-of-deferred-instantiation.html | en | 0.944012 | 0.150802 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
18 January 2009
Innovation and delivery
I've been reading a book of car reviews by Jeremy Clarkson of the BBC's Top Gear. In his review of the Mercedes Benz CL65AMG he kicks the article off with a run down of some of the technological advances that occurred during WW2. And then reminds us that The War ran for only 6 years - the duration of a typical 'challenged enterprise transformation" effort.
What is it that makes change so hard in our world? Why do stakeholders introduce so many complications? Why do products get built with so many extraneous features? What, as an industry, are we doing wrong?
Anyway, Clarkson quite liked the car.
1. Craig,
great question and one I've asked many times in planning meetings. How come it only took 6 years to fight WWII? Or for Americans, "It only took 4 years to go from no army to defeating the Germans, and you're saying this is going to take how long?"
Now, depending upon whom I talking to, the answer varies. "They didn't have computers." or "They didn't have project management." or "They didn't have you working for them." (I only used that last one once and my services were discontinued at that company very soon thereafter...)
Mostly I think it was that there was a very compelling goal. If the goal is compelling enough a lot of the project management, alignment and the problems of competing interests will take care of themselves.
Remember that the population of the United States was over 50% German at the time of WWII. Where I grew up in Wisconsin, German was still an officially recognized language. A little known fact is that as late as 1967 Mariner Bank always had a German speaker on duty in case a customer came in who only spoke German.
If the goal isn't clear and compelling enough, no amount of project management or technology will get the project done. If the goal is clear and compelling enough, PM and technology don't matter that much.
I love that your writing makes me think. Think about alcohol at 7 AM...
Auf Wiedersehen
2. Well Andrew, your 7am is my 11pm, so I see no problem with that :) | <urn:uuid:7bcdb061-78ef-4b95-a372-884681acbd7d> | http://www.betterprojects.net/2009/01/innovation-and-delivery.html | en | 0.984223 | 0.942676 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
adventures in hygiene
by - 9:49 AM
Among the many things that are strange about living in France, most involve the bathroom (le WC). The biggest adjustment so far has been learning to live with a toilet in a separate room from my shower and sink, which is quite common in France. My own apartment here lacks a toilet: I share with two neighbors. The toilet is right next door to me which has been convenient for me, and has not yet become a noise problem.
The toilet paper in Paris is pink, which I absolutely adore. I'm even considering using it to decorate my sparse apartment for the time being. Today I got found the center of the roll was strange as well: instead of being a plan brown tube, I found mine was printed with words and pictures in bright blue ink that encouraged me to "me jeter dans les toilettes." My apartment isn't the newest one on the block, so I decided not to flush the tube, figuring that any possible maintenance problems would definitely be traced back to the new American girl. Instead, I decided to turn to trusty to make sure this whole thing was legitimate.
Basically, Aqua Tube seems is an environmentally friendly way to dispose of your toilet tubes that everyone in Europe seems to a-d-o-r-e. They've got a website where you can learn more, and if you like, you can download an Aqua-Tube themed iPhone game. Oh, Europe.
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1. hahaha that's great! When I was in Europe I really liked how the toilet was separate from the shower. Seems convenient when you really got to pee but someone is taking an hour long shower!
2. You really made my day with this post. It is so nicely written :)I am from Europe and I now live in Canada - it's truly weird to adjust to a different culture. I can totally relate.
3. Haha. In a weird way it's cute. Gotta love those Europeans!
| <urn:uuid:3bb06a84-13dd-4e92-979a-08550546765c> | http://www.ohcourant.com/2012/01/adventures-in-hygiene.html | en | 0.960805 | 0.047521 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
StackOverflow Gamification
By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .
Faaking stackoverflow spaming my email with their stuff. Either they began to do it frequently in last few monhts, or turned on something, or something. Gonna try to stop it in prefs.
StackOverflow xah 2019-11-28 kkdx7
my StackOverflow profile 2019-11-28
found it:
stackoverflow email setting 2019-11-28 y3nc5
stackoverflow email setting 2019-11-28
stackoverflow, the grand daddy of using psychology to get people hooked, and they have a euphemism for it: gamification.
they, like all other social networks, bombards you with trivial crap that makes you think is important need to know, so your life in modern society is wasted by their nothingness.
stackoverflow, they rose up around 2008 originally due to, they solved a major problem in programer community. That is, before SOF, when one asks a question in forum, all the programer nerds inject their say wantonly, like, you should use monad, macros, or whatnot, while often not really answering the question. The monad etc often quickly escalates to lang design drivels by ignoramuses or emacs vs vi etc or Why Don't You Go Use Notepad. This happens especially in elite langs like perl lisp haskell etc, but never in plebian langs like php and JavaScript. (in these, questions often get answered. high horse is rare) Thus, rose Stackoverflow, with their painstaking and ostentatious rule about how one must answer THE question, and what is or what is not a Question, etc.
And also, as with wikipedia, sites like stackoverflow grows a bunch of guards. Typically, college students, who hog the site day and night. They, 'tis they, became the admins and dictate what others should do. It's not cuz their opinion are great or they have great learning, it's cuz, they got nothing to do and just hog the site, immediately touch any new post within a second.
Web Spam, Scam, SEO | <urn:uuid:3d41b1c0-6293-4dec-ade5-fb9ee9b22e32> | http://xahlee.info/w/history_of_stackoverflow.html | en | 0.939607 | 0.896919 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Ask Your Question
DNS Checksum
asked 2018-10-20 17:48:35 +0000
Hi I'm still learning how to use wireshark properly. Can you help me explain how to calculate the DNS checksum? Is it the same way we calculate UDP checksum?
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What field are you referring to exactly? What display filter matches this field (you can find it in the lower left corner of the Wireshark window)?
Jaap gravatar imageJaap ( 2018-10-21 08:58:48 +0000 )edit
I use dns filter. In the UDP line, there is a checksum. I want to verify the checksum but I can't figure it out how
Yudistryan Izhar gravatar imageYudistryan Izhar ( 2018-10-21 09:01:47 +0000 )edit
In the UDP line, there is a checksum
That's the UDP checksum, not the DNS checksum. DNS is transported over UDP (and sometimes over TCP); the UDP checksum in a DNS-over-UDP packet is part of UDP, not DNS.
Guy Harris gravatar imageGuy Harris ( 2018-10-21 21:14:48 +0000 )edit
1 Answer
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answered 2018-10-21 18:09:29 +0000
Jaap gravatar image
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Cambridge Protein Arrays
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Protein Small Molecule Interactions
Explore interaction profiles and identify off-target binding.
Most drugs in common use are small organic molecules which interact functionally with proteins, either acting as ligands for receptors, inhibiting enzymes or blocking protein interactions, etc. Their activities have generally been established by specific cellular and molecular assays to determine mode of action. While frequently well tolerated, side-effects are nevertheless commonplace and can be the result of unexpected interference with unintended pathways in poorly understood ways. The consequences of off-target interactions may be clinically serious.
Such reactions can be investigated by a comprehensive screen against the >20,000 proteins on HuProt arrays, both to illuminate the mechanism of known side effects of established drugs or indicate target binding for drugs under development and which may warrant further investigation. Even where the array does not reflect the expected mechanism of the drug (e.g. against a GPCR for which folding may depend on membrane-bound expression) the discovery of unintended reactions is nevertheless an important clue to other actions so far unsuspected.
Assay Format
The process of screening small molecules on Huprot arrays essentially follows the assay layout for protein-protein or nucleic acid-protein interactions, but with the added issue of labelling small molecules in such a way as not to interfere with their reactivity or lead to misleading interactions caused by the modification. For peptides there is the possibility of labelling with biotin or fluorophore, but small molecules which as ligands become buried in a protein pocket or cleft, may be less amenable to chemical moiety labelling and alternative means of demonstrating the reaction may be required.
Please contact us to discuss the options and develop a strategy for your project.
See here for HuProt references in small molecule profiling.
Contact us to discuss how your screening project can benefit from using HuProt v4 arrays or the set-up options for your protein.
+44 (0)1223 496557 | <urn:uuid:b2ff75e4-6771-4152-9ae5-0be251e3158c> | https://cambridgeproteinarrays.com/protein-small-molecule-interactions.php | en | 0.871292 | 0.024033 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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The TouchEnded event fires when a user released their finger from the screen of a TouchEnabled device, ending touch input with the device.
This event can be used to determine when a user stops touching the screen of their device. It can be paired with UserInputService/TouchStarted to determine when a user starts and stops touching the screen.
For example, the code below prints the screen position where the user stops touching the screen.
local UserInputService = game:GetService("UserInputService")
function TouchEnded(touch, gameProcessedEvent)
print("Touch ended at "..tostring(touch.Position))
The touch input object is the same input object throughout the lifetime of the touch. So comparing InputObject|InputObjects when they are touch objects is valid to determine if it is the same finger.
See also
• UserInputService/TouchTap
• UserInputService/TouchTapInWorld
• UserInputService/TouchLongPress
• UserInputService/TouchMoved
• UserInputService/TouchPan
• UserInputService/TouchPinch
• UserInputService/TouchRotate
• UserInputService/TouchSwipe
• UserInputService/TouchStarted
Name Type Default Description
An InputObject instance, which contains information about the user’s input
Code Samples
The Difference Between TouchTap and TouchLongPress
| <urn:uuid:4caa01b5-dd28-4a87-afa9-4815c02ab591> | https://developer.roblox.com/en-us/api-reference/event/UserInputService/TouchEnded | en | 0.823541 | 0.031644 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
EMF Radiation from Heating Pads – Should You Be Concerned?
Approx Reading Time: 11 minutes
EMF Radiation from Heating Pads
Sometimes, there can be nothing better for back pain than a heating pad (Wikipedia). However, if like me you’re concerned about EMF radiation, then heating pads can be a worrying thing. I decided to look into the issue of EMF radiation from heating pads in more detail.
So, do heating pads emit EMF radiation? Like all electrical devices that heat, heating pads produce large amounts of EMF radiation. This is because it takes a lot of power to produce heat. Also, heating pads are considered more dangerous because of how close they are to your body.
If you often feel like a heating pad is your only option for pain relief, but you’re concerned about EMF radiation, then it’s definitely worth looking for an alternative. In this article I look at the reasons why heating pads can be so problematic, along with the best alternatives.
Heating pads and EMF radiation
Heating pads can be a great way of managing localized pain, and many people claim they’re very soothing. However, the issue of EMF radiation from heating pads is rarely discussed, and it’s definitely something that requires attention.
Using electricity to produce heat requires quite a large amount of power. In essence, heat is a waste product of an electrical current being passed through a resistant wire. This means that it makes quite high demands on your mains electricity, and can often produce large amounts of dirty electricity (RELATED ARTICLE).
Alongside this, a heating pad will produce EMF radiation in the form of an electrical field, which is another potentially harmful element. However, this is true of any power-intensive heating device, but is a particular issue with heating blankets.
EMF radiation is usually thought of in 2 ways: length of exposure time and proximity to the body. Some areas of the body, such as arms and legs, are considered less at risk than the torso and head. It’s believed that being exposed to EMF radiation for longer periods of time is more dangerous than short, even strong, bursts.
As you can see, this is a particular problem with heating pads. The whole point of them is that they’re meant to be in direct contact with your skin, often for long periods of time. While some people use them overnight, manufacturers often advise against this because it can lead to burns or other problems.
EMF radiation is considered cumulative, meaning the longer you’re exposed to it, the more dangerous it becomes. This is true for both strong and weak sources of EMF exposure, but obviously powerful sources are more of a concern.
Considering heating pads are such a potential worry when it comes to EMF radiation exposure, and all the health issues this can cause, it seems like a bad idea to keep them around in your home. While some people feel they’re helpful for managing pain, it can be worth looking at other options.
Health effects of EMF exposure from heating pads
Heating pads generally produce heat through infrared radiation, which penetrates between 2 and 3mm into your skin. This is why it’s considered so beneficial for back pain: it’s more than just a surface treatment. However, this carries a range of potential risks.
Again, it’s worth returning to the fact that heating pads will often be in direct contact with your skin for extended periods of time. This is where the real issue lies, along with heating pads being a reasonably strong source of EMF radiation.
The following are the main health concerns when it comes to EMF radiation:
• Increased risk of various types of cancer
• Disruption to sleep cycle, including trouble falling asleep and waking up
• Increased risk of mental health problems, including anxiety and depression
• Nausea and loss of appetite
• Headaches, migraines and head fog
• Changes in blood pressure
• Heart problems
• Abnormal cell growth
• DNA damage
There are other health concerns related to EMF exposure, but these are the main ones. Considering your risk increases the longer you’re exposed to EMF radiation, you can probably start to see why heating pads concern me so much.
Some people are very sensitive to EMF radiation, and have trouble being around sources of EMF radiation, even relatively weak ones. However, many people might not even know they’re vulnerable to this problem because the symptoms can often be confused for other conditions.
If you’re using a heating pad, it’s fair to assume you’re managing a pain problem. Many of the secondary symptoms of this pain could be made worse by you using a heating pad, even if it seems like it’s treating the main problem. However, it can be difficult to find the right balance between the two problems.
If you haven’t yet read my article on EMF from electric blankets, I suggest you do as it is related to radiation caused by heating.
Alternatives to using a heating pad
As more and more people wake up to the potential health issues associated with EMF radiation, more alternatives are appearing. What’s more, with people becoming conscious of their energy use, there are also non-electric alternatives to heating pads appearing.
Of course, how useful these are will depend largely on how serious your pain is, and what other methods you’ve tried to manage it. You may have found that a heating pad is one of the few things that actually makes a difference, in which case your options will be slightly more limited.
Below are my alternative solutions to using a heating pad. I’ve chosen these because they’re either low EMF, or completely EMF free when in use. Try a few and see which works best for you. Hopefully there will be at least one that makes a difference.
1. Try a low EMF heating pad
The more I looked into this topic, the more low EMF heating pads I realized there were. The market is actually pretty crowded, meaning you’ve got plenty of options to choose from. However, this can also make it pretty difficult to choose the right one for you.
MediCrystal Far Infrared Amethyst Mini Mat
MediCrystal Far Infrared Amethyst Mini Mat is a Low EMF Heating Pad
Low EMF heating pads often use semi-precious stones, such as amethyst (Amazon link), as their heating element. This helps to massively cut down on the amount of EMF radiation the device emits. However, bear in mind that all electric devices will still emit some level of EMF radiation, so beware companies saying theirs is zero emission.
Also, some of the types of stone used in these low emission mats are said to have their own beneficial qualities when it comes to protecting the body from EMF radiation. I’d not feel comfortable agreeing with this claim, but you can always test it for yourself using an EMF radiation meter.
With all online purchases, take a look at customer reviews. These will be the most helpful thing to look at when deciding which low EMF heating pad is right for your needs, as there’s likely someone else out there with a similar concerns.
However, bear in mind you’ll probably need to spend a bit more money for a low emission mat, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Cheap heating pads will come with a range of problems, particularly relating to radiation emissions, while a higher quality one will be more efficient.
It’s also worth considering the fact that most low EMF radiation heating mats only refer to the mats themselves, rather than the rest of the circuit. This could be a problem if you’re particularly sensitive to EMF radiation, as you could still be affected by the remote.
I’d recommend considering a low EMF radiation heating pad if you think that a heating pad is definitely the best option for your pain. Limit yourself to around 30 minutes of use a day if possible, as this will at least reduce your exposure time. Hopefully this will be a good compromise for your situation.
3. Make a homemade heating pad
If your pain problem isn’t too severe, but deep heat is a good way of managing it, then it could be worth trying to make your own heating pad at home. These are a great way of getting the benefits of a heating pad without having an electrical device strapped to your body.
You’ve got a couple of options here:
Use a wet dishcloth
Take a wet dishcloth and put it in a microwave safe plastic bag, such as a freezer storage bag. Heat in the microwave in 30-second bursts until warm, but not hot. Wrap this whole package in a dry towel and place on the affected area. This should stay warm for a good 30 minutes or so.
Use an old sock
A great homemade heating pad can be made from an old sock. Fill it with uncooked rice, and possibly add a few drops of lavender essence for scent. Microwave this for between 1 and 2 minutes until warm.
It’s worth leaving it a little bit before applying it to the area, as dry rice can continue heating itself after being removed from the microwave. This should stay warm for a few hours. Also, you could use dry oats or barley instead.
3. Heat a towel in the oven
This is a good choice if you need a heating pad for a larger area. Simply take a damp towel and put it in the oven at 300 degrees F for 5-10 minutes. Around this time, begin checking it, because you want it warm but not dry.
Wrap this towel in another, dry towel and then apply it to the affected area for up to 20 minutes. This is probably the most labor intensive option, but it’s still not that hard.
Obviously, all of these methods still involve using some kind of electrical device, namely a microwave. As those of you who are familiar with EMF radiation will know, this is a big source of radiation in the home.
However, you’re not going to be using it for very long, and have the advantage of being able to stand a safe distance away from the microwave while it’s in use. This almost completely removes the harmful element of EMF radiation from using a heating pad.
4. Buy a reusable heating pad
I imagine most of you have seen the heating pads that can be snapped to activate. They’re often sold as hand warmers, and are either disposable or reusable. They work using a chemical reaction, so are essentially electricity free during the whole use process.
Well, these are also available in larger versions to use as heating pads. This is a great alternative to electric heating pads because they can just be snapped and used. Some take as little as 3 seconds to warm up, and stay warm for up to an hour.
It’s obviously worth getting a reusable one, as it’d be pretty wasteful to use a new disposable one every time. The reusable heating pads can just be boiled in water to return them to their liquid state.
Most brands claim to last for years, and some are capable of getting pretty warm. You might find yourself paying a bit more for a good one, but this is true of anything.
4. Use a hot water bottle
hot water bottle
One age old, sure fire way of applying heat to your body is by using a hot water bottle. These have been around in some form or another for a very long time, and there’s a reason for that.
With a hot water bottle, you don’t have to worry about any EMF radiation, as you can just fill it with water from the tap and then apply it to the affected area. What’s more, they stay hot for a very long time, meaning you can take them to bed with you and still treat your pain.
Some final thoughts
Finding the balance between using a heating pad and managing your pain can be difficult. While heating pads do emit radiation, they can often be one of the few things that actually work for some people.
However, as you can see, there are plenty of EMF radiation-free alternatives to a normal heating mat. The most important thing you can do regardless is limit your exposure time to these sources of EMF radiation.
| <urn:uuid:b6a7c8e1-1625-43dd-a218-b61d5b83ea75> | https://emfadvice.com/emf-radiation-heating-pads/ | en | 0.954167 | 0.035644 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
No, Joy Behar, Jesus Would Not Have Baked the Homosexual Wedding Cake
Joy Behar, like Whoopi Goldberg before her, is a Bible scholar. Jack Phillips went on The View to explain the case that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear. Jack Phillips is a baker and the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado. A homosexual couple wanted him to bake a cake for their same-sex wedding. He refused to bake the cake.
As you can imagine, it did not go over well with some of The View crew:
“‘Did you ever ask yourself what would Jesus do in this particular situation?’ Paula Faris asked Phillips. ‘Instead of denying them, do you think maybe Jesus would have said I don’t accept this but I’m going to love you anyways?’
“When the baker responded that he did not think Jesus would have made the cake because it contradicted his teaching, Behar cut in: ‘You don’t? Oh, come on. Jesus would have made the cake.’” (Newsbusters)
How does Behar know this? Certainly not from reading these (and more) passages from the Bible.
Jesus loved the Samaritan woman who had multiple sex partners, but He did not approve of her sexual promiscuity (John 4) and would not have celebrated her next sexual encounter with the man with whom she was sexually engaged (4:18). Jesus loved the woman caught in the act of adultery, but He told her, “from now on sin no more” (John 8:11), hardly a statement that would lead Him to bake her a cake for a post-adultery party. Jesus made it clear that God created them male and female and marriage is between a man and a woman (Matt. 19:1-6) giving no evidence that he would bake a cake for people who violated this creation ordinance. According to the Bible, adultery and same-sex sexuality are sins. In what possible world would Jesus have baked a celebratory cake for sexual relationships the Bible condemns?
Keep in mind that Phillips did not refuse to sell the two men a cake. He refused to bake a cake for a particular event with a particular message that celebrated something he disagreed with in terms of his religious convictions. “I serve everybody all the time,” he stated on The View. “But I don’t make every cake for every event.” It’s not just same-sex weddings:
“I’ll sell anyone any cake I’ve got,” Phillips wrote in a letter to the Denver Post in 2016. “But I won’t design a cake that promotes something that conflicts with the Bible’s teachings. And that rule applies to far more than cakes celebrating same-sex marriages. I also won’t use my talents to celebrate Halloween, anti-American or anti-family themes, atheism, racism, or indecency.”
I suspect you will find that this is true of all businesses like the one Phillips owns and operates. Does anyone think that a black-owned bakery would or should be forced to make a cake for a KKK-themed wedding or a Jewish baker would or should be forced to make a cake for a Nazi-themed wedding? A Muslim-owned bakery was asked to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding. The owner refused. Why wasn’t any legal action taken? Should a printing company owned by homosexuals be forced to make t-shirts for an anti-gay marriage event? These lesbians said no.
These anti-discrimination laws are not just about religion. Everyone should be protected from forced compliance to the shifting sands of government defined rights. The Supreme Court has declared that it’s legal for a mother to kill her unborn baby, but there shouldn’t be a law that compels a business to bake a cake with an image of a bloody aborted baby on it in celebration of the murder.
The two homosexuals sued Phillips, appealing to Colorado’s Civil Rights Division that is itself discriminatory:
“‘The government in Colorado is picking and choosing which messages they’ll support and which artistic messages they’ll protect,’ said Kristen Waggoner of the Alliance Defending Freedom, which took the baker’s case.”
If the Supreme Court does not rule in favor of Phillips and others who have been persecuted by compromised governments and courts, then no one will be free. There’s always someone out there who will make a cake, print a t-shirt, or provide flowers for silly, idiotic, and immoral practices. A baker should be free to refuse to bake a cake for any reason, and the person being refused should be free to go elsewhere. It’s that simple and right.
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Carousel Of Cereals Mixes And Matches Custom Breakfast Blends
There are those who reckon the humble bowl of breakfast cereal to be the height of culinary achievement. Look askance if you must, but cereal junkies are a thing, and they have a point. The magic comes not from just filling a bowl and adding a splash of milk, but by knowing which cereals to mix together.
Who needs all that fussy mixing, though, when you can automate and customize your cereal dispensing chores? That’s the approach [Kevin Obermann] and [Adrian Bernhart] took with their Cereal Dispensing Machine, even if they went a little further than necessary. Laser-cut plywood forms a four-station carousel for off-the-shelf dry-good dispensers, each of which got a stepper motor to replace the wrist-twisting. The original motors were a bit too wimpy to handle the more rugged morning selections and were eventually upgraded to gear motors. The platform that supports the dispensers also holds all the electronics, including an ESP32 to run everything and host the web app needed to choose your poison. Plus RGB LEDs, because breakfast should look like a rave. Sadly, the team ran out of GPIO pins and were unable to run the peristaltic pump needed to add the milk. There will always be version 2.0, though.
If cereal isn’t your automated breakfast of choice, we understand. Perhaps a more [Wallace] and [Gromit] style breakfast machine would do, or a robotic peanut butter sandwich any time of day is a treat.
Continue reading “Carousel Of Cereals Mixes And Matches Custom Breakfast Blends”
Cat Vs. Human Escalates With Armor-Plated Feeder
Wars generally increase innovation as the opposing sides try to kill each other in ever more efficient ways. Even the soft war waged daily between felines and their human servants results in innovation, to wit we offer this armor-plated automated cat feeder.
The conflict between [Sprocket H.G. Shopcat] and her human [Quinn Dunki] began with a thoughtfully provided automatic food dispenser. Like human vending machine customers who witness a just-purchased bag of Cheesy Poofs dangling on the end of the dispense auger, [Sprocket] learned that the feeder would dispense a few fishy nuggets when nudged. [Quinn] embarked on an iterative design process to control [Sprocket]’s off-schedule snacking. Fastening the feeder firmly to the floor, and adding obstructions to prevent her from pawing up the dispense chute — nothing seemed to stop the clever feline’s raids. [Quinn] then pulled out all the stops and whipped up a [Sprocket]-safe enclosure for the feeder from 1/8″ plate steel and copper. This seems to have put the cat back on the straight and narrow, and it doesn’t look half bad either.
All kidding aside, [Quinn]’s approach to this problem is pretty instructive. Careful observations informed several cycles of reasonable modifications until it became clear that only the most extreme solution would work. There’ve been tons of cat feeders here before, from the simple to the complex, but we think all would fall prey to the clever [Sprocket] without a little up-armoring.
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Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
Innovative Strategies to Protect Concrete Bridge Decks and Cross-Laminated Timber Structures through the Use of Impermeable Overlays Public Deposited
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• Bridges are a vital component of transportation infrastructure in the United States, and the continual maintenance and preservation of bridges is critical to maintaining their structural capacity and maximizing service life. One of the most significant issues faced by concrete bridges is the infiltration of moisture from the roadway surface into the concrete bridge deck. When moisture penetrates into the deck, the expansion and contraction of the moisture during freeze-thaw cycles can increase the rate of deck deterioration. Additionally, penetrated moisture can carry with it chloride ions from deicing salts and roadway pollutants. These chloride ions can react with the steel reinforcement within the deck and cause corrosion, which in turn will lead to areas of localized expansion. When the corrosion around steel forms, it creates an internal volume change (expansion) and results in cracks in the surrounding rigid concrete which may propagate to the surface of the bridge deck, weakening the structural integrity of the bridge. One of the most common methods of preventing moisture infiltration into a concrete bridge deck is through the use of waterproofing membranes which are constructed on top of the concrete deck. There are two main types of membranes- liquid membranes and pre-formed membranes. Liquid membranes are typically either sprayed or poured directly onto the concrete deck and create a very strong bond between the membrane and the concrete. These types of membranes, however, are often costly and time-consuming to install. Pre-formed membranes come in premade sheets which are typically rolled out onto the concrete bridge deck. The placement of preformed membranes is extremely easy and inexpensive, however these membranes create a much weaker bond with the underlying concrete deck. For all membranes, an asphalt wearing course is paved over the top to prevent damage to the membrane from vehicular loads. Some states have been looking into alternative strategies to protect and seal concrete bridge decks. One alternative strategy is the use of a high-density impermeable asphalt layer constructed directly on a deck in place of a waterproofing membrane. This method is advantageous because it can be constructed using traditional paving methods and unlike waterproofing membranes, it does not require a specialty subcontractor to install. The use of membranes and overlays to protect an underlying structure is not a practice exclusive to bridges. The Glenwood Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) Parking Garage is one structure which seeks to push the boundaries regarding what is possible using CLT as the primary building material, is set to be constructed in Springfield, Oregon, and would be the first CLT parking garage in the United States. To avoid damaging the CLT floor panels in the garage, a surfacing overlay will need to be constructed to accommodate the vehicular traffic, provide skid resistance and waterproofing, and minimize stresses to the CLT members. This thesis is presented in a manuscript format. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on the evaluation of several existing waterproofing membrane strategies as well as the development of an impermeable asphalt mixture for protecting concrete bridge decks. Laboratory test results showed that pre-formed rolled waterproofing membranes perform worse than liquid membranes with regards to both bond strength and permeability tests. A high-density impermeable asphalt mixture was designed in the laboratory which was both impermeable and was found to have strong cracking and rutting resistance. Chapter 4 seeks to identify the most effective surfacing overlay for the Glenwood CLT Parking Garage. Finite Element modeling and laboratory testing of CLT surfacing strategies determined that the presence of an asphalt overlay greatly reduces the strains from vehicle loadings being transmitted to the CLT floor panels.
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I can't believe you clicked on this!! ZOMG!!!
Well, okay... the whole "choice of reading material" thread reminded me of a funny moment that happened years ago, and since ya'll were the reason behind why I was even there, I guess I'll tell ya. It's just funny on a "hahaha" level. Not as funny as CJ getting pinged as he drives around. (sorry.... I am still cracking up over that...!!)
So about 11 years ago, I signed up for a college course about networking basics. I wanted to learn how to make network cables. (The syllabus listed that activity in it's outline.)
Originally, I'm in that class, only to "prove" to someone in the old forums, that I can make cables.
It was a last minute decision; I signed up just two days before the start of class. My plan is to attend until we get to the "make cables" lecture, then drop the class after that.
However, several factors were in play.
1. Unbeknownst to me, I had entered the first class of the Cisco Networking Academy. There are four classes to take, in succession, but the twist is, each class is double hours. So instead of attending class one night per week for four hours, you attend two nights per week, for four hours each. Additionally, there are approximately 20 hours a week required for lab work.
Labs are done in teams, and I get two lab partners.... Harry "no cookies", and Geo.
Harry has other stuff going on, so we never see him, but Geo is an older guy, working in NYC doing database stuff, and wants to get in to networking. He's a little taller than me, plump, pleasant, friendly, easy-going. He thinks I know what I'm doing. (OMG!!)
2. My ex is having an affair. This is "beknownst" to me, albeit the fact that it is beknownst to me is unbeknownst to him. One evening, my server alerted me that the backup failed. Still at work, I dug around to find why there was so much data getting backed up.... I found a lot of pictures.
3. HOLEEEEE CRAP. A whole new world had opened up to me, and I was in L.O.V.E. [love]
After I purchased the text book, I flipped thru the pages real quick, but stopped short by what I saw. I looked closer at the words on the page. My heart began to race... "Hey! This is all that stuff you see in network settings!!! Holy crap!!! You mean there are people on this planet that actually know what that stuff is?!? I thought it was all just 192.168.1.whatever I pick and!!!"
I can't wait to learn this stuff!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Once the class starts, I become enamored with networking, and can't get enough of it. (Which is goog, because damn, there's a lot to get...I've got my CCNA and I've only made a teeny tiny dent in all the stuff to learn....)
So it seems that Geo and I are the only ones who actually come in during the eves we don't have class, to work on labs.
The lab is in a separate, very private room. To get to it, you have first go into the classroom, then enter a storage room at the back, then finally enter the lab. Geo and I even use the lab when other classes are going in the classroom, and no one ever even knows we're there.
A bunch of disused IT equipment gathers dust along the walls, but in the center of the room sits an island where our lab equipment is. The island is rectangular... about 20' long and maybe 3' wide. The monitors are CRTs and they have about 10 to 12 set up on the island. Each monitor faces the opposite of the two it sits between, so there's room for notebooks, textbooks, papers, etc.
One evening, Geo and I are in the lab alone, clicking away. We're doing the steps together, but at workstations opposite each other.
I'm kinda quiet that evening, and at one point, I say "Every time I look at the screen, all I see are boobs."
I look back down at my lab notes, trying to find where I was at.
When I look up, Geo is standing behind my shoulder, looking intently at the monitor.
I turn towards him and smile, with that look of "what?!?!?" on my face, and he says "clearly you have a much better monitor over here..."
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Schlock, Brock, and Glock ….a tale of hypocrisy
Head of Media Matters is protected by Glock.
Why do we carry guns? Because we can’t afford a small Glock carrying army to walk down the street with us.
You have to laugh when you read this quote from a Media Matters employe “He had more security than a Third World dictator,” – how interesting, as most Third world dictators are usually for gun control as well. Notice a trend here…??? | <urn:uuid:8b825925-6256-4be8-92c4-8bcac25d62b1> | https://nugun.wordpress.com/tag/media-matters/ | en | 0.941931 | 0.738945 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Child Friendly Timer
Designers: Sean Breit, Stephanie Liu, and Srinivasan Yegnasubramanian
Client Coordinators: Lenora Champion
Supervising Professor: Dr. Larry N. Bohs
An electronic timer was constructed for use in pediatric therapy sessions. Presently, for timed sessions, a therapist sets an electronic kitchen timer that beeps when time is finished. However, most young children do not have a clear concept of time and cannot understand how much longer their practice sessions should continue. The Child-Friendly Activity Timer (CFAT) was created to provide these children with a visual and qualitative measure of time during their therapy sessions. The CFAT features a small rabbit moving across a hill toward its burrow, and a digital display that shows the time remaining for the therapist. When time expires, a beeper sounds and the rabbit returns to its starting location.
How this project helped
The client is a two-year-old with a feeding disorder. Part of the client’s prescribed therapy includes timed feeding sessions, where he is required to practice activities such as holding his spoon and drinking from a cup for specific periods of time. The CFAT helps the client understand how much time remains in his therapy session, and when the session is over. Other children at Duke Hospital also benefit from this device in timed therapy sessions.
The CFAT is a microprocessor-controlled device that contains both a numerical and physical display of the progression of time. The user programs the CFAT using six pushbuttons. Three buttons set the time in increments of 30 seconds, one minute, and ten minutes. The other three buttons start, stop, and clear the timing process. The microprocessor reads from these six pushbuttons and controls the time displayed on a 4 ½ digit LCD 7 segment display as well as the movement of a toy rabbit, attached to an arm on the shaft of a servomotor.
The CFAT consists of three sections: 1) input acquisition; 2) time and display processing; and 3) numerical and physical display (see Figure 2). The input acquisition section contains the pushbutton hardware and the software required to process user input. The pushbuttons connect to the data lines on a Z-180 microprocessor (Z2 Prototyping board, Zworld, Inc, Davis, California) through a tri-state latch (74HCT373). The six-bit binary number representing the state of the pushbuttons is translated into an instruction by the microprocessor. The program contains de-bouncing routines that prevent the microprocessor from reading unintentional input. Additionally, the input software prevents the user from making logistical errors, such as accidentally clearing the time remaining during operation without first stopping the timer.
The time and display section controls a countdown timer and the servomotor. The countdown timer uses the real-time clock on the Z2 board to calculate the time remaining. The servomotor is controlled using an 8-bit binary number that increases at a constant rate determined by the input time. This binary number is converted into an analog current using a digital to analog converter (DAC0832), and then converted to a voltage using a single-sided operational amplifier circuit (LM358). This varying voltage is translated into a square wave with linearly varying pulse width using a voltage controlled oscillator (CD4046). The square wave is connected to the control line of the servomotor. The servomotor moves through 30 steps over an angle of 120o.
The output section comprises a numeric display, a physical display and an audible buzzer. The time is displayed on a Varitronix 4 ½ digit LCD display. This display is controlled using 32 serial bits from a MM5452 controller chip. The serial clock and count data are generated by the microprocessor. The physical display is a toy rabbit attached to the shaft of the servomotor. To conserve power, a transistor switching circuit turns off the servomotor whenever it is not being moved. This feature dramatically reduces power consumption since the servo motor only operates for 30 seconds, regardless of the input time. Finally, a small buzzer sounds when the time is finished.
The CFAT uses four C batteries in series to provide a 6V DC supply, which powers the servomotor and the buzzer directly. The 6V DC is regulated to 5.2 volts to power the microprocessor and the other IC’s.
The final cost of the Child Friendly Activity Timer was approximately $380.
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Spanish English Dictionary
español - English
poner in English:
1. put put
Put it down.
Corporations are downsizing and reducing the amount of profits they put back into R&D.
Don't you want to put in another disc? We've been listening to this one for two hours.
He struck a match, but quickly put it out.
The ages of the two children put together was equivalent to that of their father.
All you have to do is to cultivate the ability to put yourself in the other fellow's place.
Put this medicine where children can't get it.
English word "poner"(put) occurs in sets:
500 most important Spanish verbs 26 - 50
Fichas del libro - "Robert Kimberly" (Frank H. Spe...
Fichas del libro - "Living Up to Billy" (Elizabeth...
Fichas del libro - ""Old Put" The Patriot" (Freder...
Fichas del libro - "The Uncalled A Novel" (Paul La... | <urn:uuid:de36df0b-b447-46a7-b74e-5ba6cd848d5f> | https://vocapp.com/dictionary/es/en/poner | en | 0.950478 | 0.024508 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
UNCOVERING... Packaging
Updated: Jan 23, 2019
Image from https://www.behance.net/gallery/68617375/EMVY-Cosmetics
1. What is the problem?
From paper carton boxes enveloping your jar of cream to extra layer of plastic labelling on your sunscreen. Is all that extra packaging in your beauty products really necessary?
According to the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources, packaging makes up about one-third of all household waste in Singapore, and more than half consists of packaging for food and beverages. Most packaging for consumer goods, such as food, beverages, and electronics, is used only once before being thrown away.
We generate more than 1,000 truckloads of waste every day. Out of this amount of waste generated, plastics constitutes the lowest recycled material. 94% of 815,200 tonnes of plastic waste generated in Singapore in 2017 was not recycled. Plastics are also used for the majority of packaging in beauty and personal care products, ranging from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles and jars, to polypropylene (PP) bottle covers and low-density polyethylene (LDPE) tubes!
Zero Waste Week, an international environmental awareness campaign held annually, reported that more than 120 billion units of packaging are produced every year by the global cosmetics industry. The cardboard that envelops perfumes, serums and moisturisers contribute to the loss of 18 million acres of forest each year. (The Stylist, 2018).
What happens to the waste I dispose of?
While non-recyclables are sent for incineration and the ashes transported to landfills, recyclables are collected by a dedicated recycling truck and sent to a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF). The recyclables are sorted into different waste streams, baled and sent to local and overseas recycling plants.
However, if these recyclables are contaminated, it will mean that they cannot be recycled. As Mr Wong from the local recycling firm Impetus Conceptus states, “Once plastic is contaminated, the cost of recycling will shoot up because you have to do cleaning and sorting,”
2. Why should I be concerned?
At the rate that Singapore is producing and burning waste, Semakau Landfill will run out of space by 2035, according to the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources (CNA, 2018). Unnecessary packaging is not only a drain on resources, but it also adds to waste. Given the lack of space for another landfill in Singapore, we need to reduce the amount of waste we produce to prolong the lifespan of our landfill.
Many of the beauty products that we purchase over the counter use a huge amount of packaging, from the exterior cardboard boxes to the plastic containers that are used to contain the product. Apart from aiming to reduce wastage by reducing consumption, it is also important for us to understand if these materials can be recycled and how we can do so.
What are the types of materials in my beauty products that can be recycled?
Aside from paper used for boxes, here are some common plastics that are used to package your common beauty products.
Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) Common forms for cosmetic packaging: bottles, pump dispensers PET is cheap and lightweight and is often intended for single-use products such as plastic bottles. Since repeated use increases the risk of bacterial contamination, it is recommended to avoid reusing such packaging and recycle them instead.
High-density Polyethylene (HDPE) Common forms for cosmetic packaging: jars, tubs, pump dispensers HDPE is a more rigid, cost-effective and safer form of plastic. It is better at preserving the product as compared to PET. Thus, cosmetic products such as essential oils, retinol products and Vitamin C serums tend to be packaged with HDPE as it helps prevent oxidation. Many shampoo and body wash bottles also tend to be made using HDPE, so you can recycle them as well!
Low-density Polyethylene (LDPE) Common forms for cosmetic packaging: tubes, squeezable bottles LDPE is another flexible plastic used for making tubes in cosmetic products. They are a common packaging for many products including cosmetics, though they are not ideal for packaging products that are filled at high temperatures. LDPE is relatively safer than other plastics and can be reused.
Polypropylene (PP) Common forms for cosmetic packaging: covers for tubs, jars, airless pump bottles/containers PP is tough and lightweight and is slightly more rigid than PET when made into bottles. It is also often used in packaging for materials that are hot, such as wax or balms, due to its heat resistance. PP is also safe for reuse, though only a small proportion is currently being recycled.
3. How to play a part
Here are some easy steps for you to follow to start becoming an ethical consumer!
1. Buy what you need Most of the time we buy many things that we want but don’t need, thanks to the constant barrage of ads and cues to shop. But being a more environmentally aware consumer means getting what we need, and not more than that.
2. Check and look Look out for symbols on the packaging that tell you if the packaging is recyclable or made from recycled materials. We've identified some of them for you: https://www.instagram.com/p/BrSHLT1H8O9/
3. Support brands that love the earth Purchase from brands that encourage eco-conscious efforts. Here are just a few brands that often have packaging made from recycled materials or provide eco-friendly refills that help in reducing packaging waste. Some of them include: Kiehl's, LUSH, L'occitane, Neal’s Yard Remedies, Muji, Innisfree and more!
4. Clean Contamination is one of the key reasons why most recyclables cannot be recycled. Local recycling company, Impetus Conceptus told CNA that “Once it’s contaminated, we’re not able to do anything else because it deteriorates the quality of the pellets.” The best way to recycle would be to ensure that recyclables are clean and packed properly before disposing them into the recycling bin.
5. Reuse and recycle! Some ways of repurposing your beauty empties include:
• Using it as small pots to grow your plants
• Using it as an accessories case
• Using it to store other beauty products
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Vocal Fold (Cord) Lesions
What are Vocal Fold Lesions?
The term vocal cord lesion or vocal fold lesion refers to a group of noncancerous (benign), abnormal growths (lesions) within or along the covering of the vocal cord. Vocal fold lesions are one of the most common causes of voice problems. Types of vocal fold lesions include polyps, cysts, and nodules.
A change in voice quality and persistent hoarseness are often the first warning signs of a vocal cord lesion. Other symptoms include voice breaks while speaking, vocal fatigue, hoarseness, frequent throat clearing, and airy or breathy voice. When a vocal cord lesion is present, symptoms may increase or decrease in degree, but will persist and will not go away on their own.
How are Vocal Fold Lesions Treated?
The most common treatments for vocal cord lesions are voice therapy, vocal rest, and phonomicrosurgery. Phonomicrosurgery is a type of surgery involving the use of microsurgical techniques and instruments to treat abnormalities on the vocal cord.
Bassem Said, MD
Ear Nose & Throat
Otolaryngology -
Head and Neck Surgery
1240 Central Blvd., Ste A2
Brentwood, CA 94513
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Eli Schwartz
When compared to any marketing channel, organic SEO is going to be one of the most profitable channels because there is a relatively low initial investment and the costs can be amortized over a multiple year period.
The basic ROI formula for customer acquisition channels is whatever the value of the customer is to the business minus the CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost). A standard value might be something like LTV (Lifetime Value) or AOV (Average Order Value).
The calculation is a follows:
LTV – CAC = Profit
Profit / CAC = ROI
To understand this better let’s look at the standard ROI calculations for each marketing channel. The profit calculation will always be the same, but the CAC formula will differ.
Paid Marketing
CAC is calculated by looking at how much advertising needs to occur before a single customer is acquired. Looking at PPC (Pay per Click) campaign as an example:
If the average CPC (Cost per Click) is $0.20 and it takes 100 clicks to convert a single customer (1% conversion rate) then the CAC would be $0.20 * 100 which is $20. The profitability formula would never change for previously acquired customers, but it might look better for future customers if additional spend efficiencies were to be added and the CPC goes down or the conversion rate goes up.
This calculation is far simpler when thinking only of paid marketing as search engine marketing, but there are only slight tweaks for other paid channels.
Display campaigns are just like PPC campaigns, but the additional measurement criteria of “view through” (people that saw but didn’t click) means the time decay of the returns needs to be a little bit longer.
Paid social is also just like search engine marketing where the CAC is based on the cost mechanism – click or conversion – but the networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) want you to believe that there are additional “organic” conversions that will happen because of the paid campaign. In reality, these aren’t really organic as they would not have happened without the paid campaign. These conversions should just be included as campaign conversions even if they didn’t directly result from a paid click.
This is a very hard channel to calculate the actual conversions that are generated from brand efforts, but in a vacuum this might be the “Direct” channel in an attribution report.
The CAC for Brand will constantly changing as every additional conversion from a brand campaign will bring down the average cost for each conversion. This can continue happening long after the brand campaign ends too.
To illustrate, a company spends $x to buy a billboard on the side of a highway for one month. The CAC will be the total of all acquisition generated by the billboard divided by the $x. Unlike paid marketing, $x remains a constant while the conversions can continue to grow.
Provided that this was a successful campaign, the ROI will continue to improve long past the month that the billboard was visible, although it will not continue to perpetuity.
A referral campaign can have two meanings in an attribution report. It can either be a link placed on another website or it can refer to efforts to get one customer to refer another. For the sake of argument, we are going to assume that there is no cost to links placed on other websites (for paid link campaigns the brand ROI calculation is a better fit) and just discuss a customer to customer referral campaign.
In a successful referral campaign, the CAC of each new customer is really the CAC of the first customer divided by each referred customer plus the referral fee paid. So, if customer A was acquired for $100 in a paid campaign, but then referred 4 customers the CAC for all five customers would now be $20. If there’s a referral fee paid for each customer of $20 we would need to add that back into the CAC calculation. We could either add the 4 referral fees of $20 to the original $100 giving us a blended total of $180 to divide by 5 or we can do this a cleaner way.
The CAC for the first customer would be $100 while the subsequent customers would have a CAC of $20. In this case, the ROI for the referral campaign would be fixed as the costs for each new customer will be the exact same.
CAC for an SEO campaign will continue to decline as long as content produced for organic purposes continues to generate conversions. From my experience, this can go well past the five year mark, so ROI will improve on a near constant basis.
Leaving aside technical overhead and salaries for SEO efforts since this overhead would have to exist even if there were no SEO efforts at all, the actual cost for the campaign is likely just the direct content costs which can be fairly low. As before the CAC will equal the number of conversions divided by the cost. In this case just like a brand campaign, the cost is fixed but the conversions are not.
To put numbers behind this, if the content costs $500 to reproduce and in month 1 it generated 1 conversion, the CAC will be $500. In month 2 and 3 it might produce another 9 conversions, so now the CAC is only $50. If you carry this forward for 5 years with continued growth in the amount of traffic and conversions, you an see how the CAC will be on a constant descent with ROI on a constant ascent.
Based on this breakout, if I was asked where the best place to spend marketing dollars might be, I will always recommend pouring it into organic efforts. Organic is a long slow build, but it’s building a foundation that will generate returns long into the future. Paid channels are always quick and easy, but as soon as the spigot of spend is turned off the acquisition efforts will stop. The best analogy I ever heard was that paid marketing is like renting a house while SEO is like paying for a mortgage. When you rent for years, you will have nothing to show for it; however, mortgage payments eventually lead to substantial equity in a home. | <urn:uuid:ac617b66-8851-4106-b1b6-2739dddcd172> | https://www.elischwartz.co/seo-profit-calculation-and-why-it-beats-every-other-channel/ | en | 0.958984 | 0.325001 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Want to keep learning?
Skip to 0 minutes and 12 secondsEnergy market liberalisation and energy transition are processes taking place worldwide. This lecture will take Europe as an illustrative example. Energy market liberalisation entails that energy producers, suppliers, and consumers will have a freedom of choice. Energy consumers are no longer bound to one supplier. Energy transition means to change from using fossil fuels to using renewable energy sources. The increased use of renewable energy sources can be of importance for reasons of supply security, but it's also an important instrument for combating climate change, as it reduces CO2 emissions. Despite the beneficial effects of the energy transition, the process does not necessarily fit well with the process of energy liberalisation.
Skip to 1 minute and 6 secondsThe process of energy liberalisation has a particularly significant effect on the network-bound electricity and gas sector, which consists of production/generation, transmission, distribution, and delivery to end consumers. Prior to liberalisation, the electricity and gas supply chains were vertically integrated. This means that one company was responsible for all or most parts of the supply chain. Such vertical integration could be based on a legal monopoly, when it is based on law, or a de facto monopoly, when it is based on a contractual or policy requirement. In Europe, these legal or factual monopolies were established after World War II.
Skip to 1 minute and 51 secondsHowever, the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community, now EU Treaty, aimed at abolishing such monopolies, as they are contrary to the main goal of the Treaty, which is the free movement of goods, services, capital, and persons without hindrance of competition. Still, these monopolies were tolerated for several decades. The reason being that the Treaty also provided that undertakings entrusted with the operation of services of general economic interests, such as electricity and gas supply, could be exempted from these rules if their application would obstruct them to perform the particular task assigned to them, indeed electricity and gas supply. The approach changed with the introduction of the Internal Energy Market Programme in 1988.
Skip to 2 minutes and 45 secondsExemptions to these general rules are only allowed in special situations. Companies involved in electricity and gas supply need to meet the basic requirements of the Treaty. The European Commission therefore decided not only to apply more stringently the Treaty provisions, but also to enact specific legislation forcing member states to act. This legislation can either take the form of a directive, which needs to be transposed into national law, or of a regulation, which applies directly. To this end, the EU has adopted several legislative acts. The directives liberalising the electricity and gas markets distinguish between market activities and network activities. The free market applies to all producers, suppliers, and consumers.
Skip to 3 minutes and 39 secondsAny consumer can negotiate a supply contract with any supplier or producer, and vice versa. However, networks are natural monopolies, and therefore need to be regulated. The directives require the companies operating the networks, to be independent, at least in its legal form, from the companies operating in the market. These independent network companies are required by law to provide non-discriminatory access to all market parties. The conditions and tariffs for access are regulated by a national regulatory authority, usually part of the government. Energy producers also act on the liberalised market. Electricity production is no longer based on exclusive rights, but these producers have to operate in competition. They can attract customers by offering lower prices, or maybe a greener image.
Skip to 4 minutes and 41 secondsHowever, the primary fuel used is an important part of the energy price paid by the end consumers. Many producers have thus decided to use primary fuels with the least costs, such as coal. The trend to use coal contradicts the need for an energy transition. The European legislator has therefore issued a separate directive promoting the use of renewable energy sources, and requires EU member states, on average, to achieve 20% renewables in 2020. This is a binding target. In order to assist member states to achieve their goals, the directive provides for several possibilities to support renewable energy sources.
Skip to 5 minutes and 25 secondsMember states are thus allowed to provide financial support to cover the additional costs of renewables, and to introduce a regime of guaranteed or priority access to the grid. Last, but not least, it arranges for cross-border developments and joint initiatives, as some member states have easier access to renewables than others. Many European member states are struggling with the process of energy transition, as the liberalisation process has not yet been finalised and the renewable targets are difficult to achieve. Before discussing the role of law in relation to the promotion of renewable energy sources, we will discuss in the next lecture the role of the European Emissions Trading regime as a means for energy transition.
Energy market liberalisation and energy transition
In this video the focus is on energy market liberalisation. Martha discusses (a) the rights and duties of market parties and network operators and (b) how the goal of energy market liberalisation may contradict the process of energy transition.
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This video is from the free online course:
Solving the Energy Puzzle: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Energy Transition
University of Groningen | <urn:uuid:564aec98-8480-44dc-b8c8-fb5d2fad601d> | https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/energy-transition/0/steps/10205 | en | 0.954915 | 0.036157 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |