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Author: Ron Graham
Ignorance and Innocence
—Is there a difference?
If I am ignorant in my heart, am I therefore innocent in my heart?
1 Still Guilty Before the Lord
Leviticus 5:17-19
¶“17Suppose someone sins by doing something forbidden by the LORD’s commandments, yet that person does not know that he has sinned. When he realizes his guilt, he shall bear his iniquity. 18He shall bring to the priest a ram without blemish out of the flock, or a similar offering. It is a guilt offering. The priest shall make atonement for him for the mistake that he made though he did not mean to. And he shall be forgiven. 19It is a guilt offering; he has surely incurred guilt before the LORD.” (Leviticus 5:17-19).
In former times, when someone sinned unintentionally and did not know it, they were still held accountable before the Lord. As soon as their sin was brought to their attention, they had to make a guilt offering to be forgiven, for they were "certainly guilty before the Lord".
2 Distinction Between Sins of Ignorance and Defiance
Numbers 15:27-31
¶“27Suppose a person sins but doesn't mean to sin. He shall offer a female goat a year old for a sin offering. 28The priest shall make atonement before the LORD for one who makes a mistake. When he sins unintentionally, and the priest makes atonement for him, he shall be forgiven” (Numbers 15:27-28).
¶“29You shall have one law for anyone who does any sin unintentionally —one law whether he is a native among the people of Israel or a stranger who sojourns among the people” (Numbers 15:29).
¶“30But suppose a person does any wrong arrogantly with a high hand. Whether he is native or a sojourner, he reviles the LORD. That person shall be cut off from among his people. 31Because he has despised the word of the LORD and has broken his commandment, that person shall be utterly cut off. On him shall be his iniquity” (Numbers 15:30-31).
God certainly made a distinction between sins of defiance and sins of ignorance. He saw a difference in the guilt of one who was defiant and contemptuous, and the guilt of another who was misled and mistaken. But let us be clear that this was a distinction between two modes of guilt, not between guilt and innocence.
3 God's Way of Dealing With Ignorance
Hebrews 5:1-3
¶“1For every high priest chosen from among the people is appointed to act on behalf of the people. He offers to God gifts and sacrifices for sins. 2He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness. 3For this reason, he is obliged to offer sacrifice for his own sins, just as he does for those of the people.” (Hebrews 5:1-3).
The ministers of God's word dealt "gently with the ignorant and misguided" but did not leave them in their ignorance.
1Timothy 1:12-16
¶“12I thank him who has given me strength —Christ Jesus our Lord. I thank him because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service. 13Jesus did this although I used to be a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief” (1Timothy 1:12-13).
¶“14And the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. 15The saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance —that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief” (1Timothy 1:14-15).
¶“16But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the chief of sinners, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience. He made me an example to those who would believe in him for eternal life.” (1Timothy 1:16).
Look how God dealt with Paul. God did not treat his ignorance as an excuse or a desirable state, but as needing correction by the enlightenment of truth.
Acts 3:17-19
¶“17Now brothers I know that you acted in ignorance, and so did your rulers. 18Nevertheless what you did fulfilled God’s prior announcement, speaking through all his prophets, that Christ should suffer. 19So change your hearts and turn again, to have your sins blotted out, and then times of refreshing will come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:17-19).
Acts 17:29-31
¶“29Since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone formed into some image by human art and design. 30Therefore whilst God overlooked the times of ignorance, he now commands that all people everywhere should repent. 31The reason is that he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained. He has given assurance of this to everyone, by raising that man from the dead.” (Acts 17:29-31).
1Peter 1:13-15
As you can see in those verses, God calls on those who have sinned in ignorance to repent.
4 In Some Cases God Blames People For Their Ignorance
2Peter 2:12
¶“12These people act like irrational beasts —beasts born as creatures of instinct to be caught and destroyed. These people blaspheme in ignorance and it will destroy them.” (2Peter 2:12).
Ephesians 4:17-20
These are strong condemnations of ignorance. In some cases people are wilfully ignorant, and their ignorance is their own fault (cf .
5 God's Son Sojourned On Earth To Dispel Ignorance
Matthew 4:16
The people walked in darkness,
But have seen a brilliant light.
They sat in lands death-shadowed,
Then light dawned [and banished night].
(Matthew 4:16, Isaiah 9:2).
Jesus came into the world to "shine upon those who sit in darkness" and thus he was called by Zacharias "the Sunrise from on high" (cf Luke 1:78-79).
6 We Have a Ministry To Dispel Ignorance
2Corinthians 4:6
¶“6God said, 'Let light shine out of darkness'. God has shone in our hearts to radiate the light of knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2Corinthians 4:6).
We too must shine. To our minds, the ignorance of some might seem not far from innocence, but we cannot think of that ignorance as good. Ignorance is the want of knowledge.
Wherever we find that want, we are obligated to "give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ". Otherwise we can never look Jesus in the face.
Another Lesson to Enjoy...
ico Is God’s Law Instinctive?
—Are humans born with basic laws written on their hearts which the conscience knows instinctively? Touch the button title to go to that lesson. | <urn:uuid:eeac241f-a400-45aa-8934-a98bc3b07a7d> | http://simplybible.com.au/f011.htm | en | 0.967251 | 0.023124 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Gerber Madness!
Look at this Marvel Spotlight #22 stuff from Steve Gerber circa June 1975. If Steve Gerber wants to write a comic book then there should be a rule that comic publishers have to give him one. Even in the unlikely event of the title being a loss-leader it is still better than 90% of the output of his contemporaries working today.
Marvel Spotlight #22 - Son Of Satan
1. I've only ever owned one comic with Hellstorm in it. And all I remember about it is the title "Demon, Demon, Who's got the demon?"
Oh and it was about possession and people got hit with axes...
2. Steve worked Son of Satan into Howard the Duck too. It was when Howard himself was possessed by the Darksoul. Good times.
3. Man, those Son of Satan comics used to FREAK ME OUT back in the day.
Still do.
4. "A pig is uniformed but armed." That is hella subversive for 1975. Also, having a Catholic priest coming out of the closet, that's pretty dangerous territory even today. Gerber was sublime.
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The Nine Levels of Consciousness
Available Formats:
Session Date: 11-05-11
Location: San Francisco, CA
Q&A Includes:
• Can you talk about the collective agreement in the world I live in and judgments about appearance?
• Do you have any format or outline that you think would be helpful for mastermind groups?
• I have a physical trainer, and I’m supposed to do what she says. But then there are moments where I don’t want to do it. What is that?
• What is your definition of abundance?
• What are your thoughts on writers’ block?
• Is the natural self is who I am?
• I saw a copper coil sticking out of the ground, and I pulled it, and I got shocked. A couple of days later, I start having visions. Were those Tesla’s drawings, or am I just hallucinating?
• About quantum vibrational touch and psychic surgery, can you explain the two levels of reality?
• Can you tell me about one of those non‑physical realities you were describing that my spirit could’ve chosen, or is doing somewhere else?
• I had a negative experience with Chi Gong. Can you help me with that?
• I see these entities in my dreams, and they may be the Grays. Who or what are they?
• Can we use crystals to communicate with extraterrestrials? Are there supplements to accelerate this?
• Can you discuss your perspective on death?
• Is it true that on occasion dolphins actually rape humans in the water?
• Can you help me to further understand parallel realities, and how it is that we can change our pasts, and therefore our future, without being in denial? What about other people in our lives who haven’t changed with us?
• I have an equation that was channeled by a friend of mine 30 years ago. What is it, and what does it mean?
• I’m from Hiroshima, can you talk about the recent Fukushima nuclear crisis?
• Do you know about SETI? But why hasn’t SETI found your civilization yet?
• My brother has always had a very negative presence. As a child he described himself as a dark spirit. What can I do to help him?
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Marthas Bio
The lady behind the cause
Ask any of her friends and they will tell you... Martha did everything right. She was trim and fit, exercised religiously, and had an excellent diet; she was the picture of health. Yet she, like millions of other American women, was diagnosed with breast cancer. The diagnosis came as a complete shock to Martha, who has no history of breast cancer in her family. Fortunately, Martha’s family does have a history of persistence and ingenuity instilled by her inventor father and industrious mother. These qualities led Martha to found Friends You Can Count On, the nation’s first research funding organization devoted solely to earlier detection, based in Greensboro, North Carolina. “I had a cancerous tumor,” explains Martha, “that went undiscovered in a mammogram.” Three months later, thanks to a scratch from Sherlock, the family’s frisky Chocolate Lab, Martha noticed a lump in her breast. During surgery to remove this benign lump, Martha’s cautious doctor “did a little exploring” and discovered the cancerous tumor on the chest wall. Now Martha is a 24-hour-a-day advocate for earlier detection breast cancer research- new research that will find the earliest possible method to detect breast cancer, before a tumor has ever formed...
Meet our friend Shirley
"Shirley" is a wire dress form, created to demonstrate the magnitude of the impact that breast cancer imposes. She has been present at most events since the inception of the organization.
Shirley is a symbol of womanhood and the unity that is shared through the disease of breast cancer. Men, women & children from across the globe select a section of ribbon and write a name or names of those in their lives who they want to honor or remember for their fight with breast cancer. Some are writing their own names. Others share messages of hope and encouragement.
"Shirley" represents the courage that each one of these people has personally demonstrated in their own fight. As a whole, "Shirley" is a stunning visual reminder the of the tremendous impact of this disease and that we, collectively, must do a better job of changing the picture of breast cancer.
Shirley Wire Frame | <urn:uuid:138113f7-c621-4405-a50b-f342ae611290> | http://www.earlier.org/legacy | en | 0.967881 | 0.025445 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
GIT – How do configure to release and obtain VIP (virtual IP) when is dead, down or system is rebooted for the kernel upgrades?
Edit /usr/local/etc//keepalived.conf and add the following section to check whether nginx is alive or dead:
# vi /usr/local/etc/keepalived/keepalived.conf
Updated file on both lb0 and lb1:
vrrp_script chk_http_port {
script "/usr/bin/killall -0 nginx"
interval 2
weight 2
vrrp_instance VI_1 {
interface eth0
state MASTER
virtual_router_id 51
priority 101
authentication {
auth_type PASS
auth_pass Add-Your-Password-Here
track_script {
virtual_ipaddress {
dev eth1
Save and close the file. Reload keealived:
# /etc/init.d/keepalived restart
If nginx died due to any issues keepalived will release master VIP and backup server will become active. When master nginx LB0 comes backs online, the backup LB1 will go down in backup state.
Table of Contents:
1. CentOS / Redhat Linux: Install Keepalived To Provide IP Failover For Web Cluster
2. CentOS / Redhat: Install nginx As Reverse Proxy Load Balancer
3. Handling nginx Failover With KeepAlived
4. nginx: Setup SSL Reverse Proxy (Load Balanced SSL Proxy)
5. mod_extforward: Lighttpd Log Clients Real IP Behind Reverse Proxy / Load Balancer
6. HowTo: Merge Apache / Lighttpd / Nginx Server Log Files
7. Linux nginx: Chroot (Jail) Setup
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Rape victims will be given government jobs: Mulayam
Hitting out at the Mayawati government for rising incidents of rape and murder in Uttar Pradesh, Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav declared Sunday that he would ensure government jobs to every rape victim if his party won the Feb 8-Mar 3 assembly polls.
Addressing an election rally in this Uttar Pradesh district, Mulayam Singh said: "Once the Samajwadi Party government is in place in Uttar Pradesh, not only will we ensure that rapists and murderers do not go scot-free, but we will also ensure due respect to rape victims."
"While the government will give some monetary assistance to all such victims, the educated ones would be also offered jobs in the government."
Among other promises made for women in the SP manifesto, Mulayam Singh has also assured two sarees and a blanket to all poor women.
However, the assurance witnessed a sharp reaction from the Congress, whose spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi termed it "lamentable". "It appears that Mulayam Singh Yadav wants to admit that come what may rapes will continue under his regime too in UP," Singhvi told media persons in Lucknow.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) also criticised the statement. BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad said: "Mulayam Singh Yadav's remark speaks volumes of his insensitive attitude. Is monetary compensation any answer to a rape?"
You May Like
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News menu
Why frills put female dinosaurs in the mood for love
Thursday 14 January 2016
CREDIT: Rebecca Gelernter
CREDIT: Rebecca Gelernter
Part of dinosaurs' popularity has to be their fascinating, bizarre appearance. There’s the Stegosaurus with the famous row of plates down its back, the Triceratops with its giant frilled skull, and the “duck-billed” hadrosaurs with their peculiar and diverse array of crests.
Palaeontologists have been trying to decipher the function of these extravagant traits for many years. The Stegosaurus plates have been described as a way to regulate body temperature and it’s even been suggested that the hadrosaur crest might have been a kind of snorkel.
More recently, it has become increasingly popular to see these kind of features in the same way as the enlarged fins of male Siamese fighting fish or the plumes of birds of paradise. These are best explained as traits that evolved not because they improve survival but because they improve the mating success of the bearer. My colleagues and I at Queen Mary University of London have now found what we believe to be some of the best evidence of unusual dinosaur features that were primarily used in this way.
Sexual selection
Sexual selection” explains how animals can evolve features that may even reduce the bearer’s survival. For example, some male birds such as widowbirds or pheasants have extraordinarily long tail feathers that require a lot of protein to grow and reduce the male bird’s ability to fly. Because the females of these species choose the males with the longest tails to father their chicks, those males have the highest evolutionary fitness despite being effectively handicapped by their ornaments.
We now know that sexual selection is the driving force behind the great majority of the extravagant, ornamental and showy traits that we find in the animal kingdom. This has led more and more palaeontologists to ask whether sexual selection might also be behind the apparently ornamental traits that we find in many extinct species.
The problem is that it’s extremely difficult to tell if a particular feature of an extinct, prehistoric animal gave it an advantage in the mating game. What’s more, there are examples of apparently pointless features of animals that have turned out to have had “normal” functional roles, such as the protruding snouts of paddlefish used as sensory organs. If we just decide that anything that seems a bit strange and inexplicable on a dinosaur fossil must have arisen by sexual selection, we run the risk of misinterpreting odd-looking but functional traits in these ancient animals, and palaeontologists have avoided using sexual selection as an explanation for the evolution of extravagant traits for this reason.
One thing we can do to try to work out if a feature has evolved through sexual selection is study its size compared to the rest of the animal’s body. When something gets proportionally bigger as an animal gets bigger we say that it has positive allometry. Although it’s by no means a universal rule, there seems to be a strong tendency for sexually selected traits, especially those that function as signals for attracting females or intimidating rivals, to be positively allometric. Positive allometry is also quite rare among traits that are not sexually selected.
Measuring the allometry of these extravagant traits in dinosaurs isn’t possible for many species because most extinct animals are only known from one or a few fossils. Complete specimens of dinosaurs are the exception and it’s difficult to even tell males from females. One of the few species we have decent numbers of specimens of is the dinosaur Protoceratops andrewsi. This smaller relative of the famous Triceratops had a skull that elongated into a large frill.
My colleagues and I were able to put together a set of 37 Protoceratops fossils ranging in size from tiny juveniles up to the largest adults. By measuring the specimens' skulls, we found that bigger Protoceratops had proportionally longer and wider frills – positive allometry. What’s more, larger animals seemed to have frills that spread more widely around the head whereas those of smaller animals were almost flat against the neck.
Colourful animals
This information strongly supports the idea that the frills of these animals, and by extension those of other related dinosaurs, were primarily a signal for other members of their species. Most likely they were associated with mating, although we can’t rule out other functions such as establishing social hierarchies (the bigger the frill, the more important the dinosaur in the group).
Dinosaurs are often reconstructed as plodding, grey giants. If we start to think about them as active animals with complex social lives then perhaps we should move away from this picture. If these frills were primarily used as signals, maybe they were as colourful as similar traits found on modern birds.
Protoceratops had several other unusual traits that might also have been involved in signalling and either attracting mates or establishing social position. They had some surprisingly long teeth and their tail vertebrae have long processes on the top, meaning that they were high and probably conspicuous. Considering these features, we can start to imagine these dinosaurs as social, active and brightly coloured rather than the dull plodders that we are used to thinking about.
The Conversation
Rob Knell, Senior Lecturer, Queen Mary University of London
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9 February 2016
For media information, contact:
Neha Okhandiar
Public Relations Manager
Queen Mary University of London
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Weather Tips for Herping
There is more to field herping than merely encountering reptiles and amphibians. Not only are there a multitude of other fauna, flora and geologic features to be seen, dynamic climatic conditions can play a significant role in our overall enjoyment — both in aesthetic terms and in altering our herping success. In this article, I will discuss general weather trends, resources available to aid in planning an outing, basic weather prediction techniques, and equipment and methods for data collection in the field.
weather tips for herping
Photo by Chris McMartin
Some herpers chase storm systems, but in different directions (toward or away), depending on their target species’ moisture preferences. This summer storm is developing the classic “anvil” typical of large storm cells and has the potential to produce heavy rainfall and even hail.
Weather Trends to Look For
General trends in weather patterns typically have astronomic origins. Everyone knows summers are warmer than winters, with lengthening days and gradually increasing temperatures in the spring followed by a reversal of this pattern in the fall. This is due primarily to the tilt of the earth’s axis relative to the sun. On a shorter time scale, while not necessarily weather-related, the moon phase is also often correlated with variations in outdoor herp activity.
Photo by Chris McMartin
Cumulus clouds developing into thunderstorms via orographic lifting over the Davis Mountains in West Texas.
The atmosphere broadly behaves along the same trend as the seasons. But even in the summer, cold fronts can still sweep across a continent, though “cold front” is more descriptive of the origins and characteristics of the front than potential drops in temperature.
Cold fronts are useful to the herper for two reasons: pressure variation and thunderstorm potential. As a cold front approaches, barometric pressure decreases, reaching its lowest measurement at frontal passage. This is helpful to remember when pursuing species sensitive to pressure changes. Additionally, the higher-pressure air mass behind the cold front lifts the warmer, less-dense air mass ahead of the front higher into the atmosphere. If this air mass is sufficiently moist, showers and thunderstorms will develop along the frontal boundary. Generally speaking, cold fronts in the United States move from northwest to southeast. Furthermore, wind ahead of these fronts blows from the southwest, which is why storms associated with cold fronts typically track from southwest to northeast. The wind behind a cold front blows from the northwest (perpendicular to the frontal boundary and in the same direction the front is moving).
Following a cold front, air pressure is typically high. This usually signifies what most people call “good weather”— sunny, clear skies. These conditions are beneficial if your target species include diurnal reptiles, but not as helpful if you’re after rainfall-loving amphibians. Low pressure is associated with less atmospheric stability, bringing with it showers and storms, and ideally, the herps which enjoy such conditions.
Areas of low pressure are often responsible for helping to bring moisture from the Gulf of Mexico into the central United States. This is due to the circulation patterns associated with low-pressure systems. In the Northern Hemisphere, high-pressure systems experience a clockwise flow, whereas low-pressure systems result in counterclockwise flow (note: in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s the opposite). In other words, if you see an “H” on a weather map, wind will generally blow clockwise around it and counterclockwise around an “L.”
Some herpers swear that the direction and speed of the wind plays a significant role in predicting target species activity. For general wind-trend information not associated with high- or low-pressure systems, examine the isobars on a weather map. Isobars are lines connecting areas of equal atmospheric pressure. Thanks to the Coriolis effect, wind blows roughly parallel to the isobars. Where the isobars are close together, it will be windier than where they are widely spaced, much like closely spaced contour lines on a topographic map indicate steeper areas.
Nuevo Leon Kingsnake
Gina Cioli/I-5 Studio
The Nuevo Leon kingsnake is a montane species that can be found in Sierra Madre. When herping in such an area, it is important to prepare in advance. The temperature is usually hot, but changes can be extreme and you don’t want to be caught unprepared.
The above-mentioned descriptions of weather phenomena are generic in nature. Research seasonal patterns for planning your specific herping location. Time of year plays the largest role in general weather trends, but local topography, ocean currents and other factors influence regional patterns. Examples of local/regional weather patterns include the Chinook winds in southern California, the monsoons in Arizona, and of course hurricane season in the Gulf and Atlantic states.
Local topography can affect weather through orographic lifting. In layman’s terms, wind blows a warm, moist air mass up the side of a mountain. As the air mass rises, it cools; the moisture in the air condenses to form clouds. With sufficient moisture, rain showers and thunderstorms can develop. Depending on the height of the land features, the terrain can merely serve as a “jump start” for thunderstorms, which continue to develop as they move past the mountains, or the mountains can “trap” the precipitation on the upwind side, resulting in regions of cloud forest, and a “rain-shadow” effect downwind (as seen in the Great Plains region of the U.S. — the Rocky Mountains trap significant moisture, and the effect can be seen in the west-to-east progression of vegetation in short-, medium- and tall-grass prairie).
This information is beneficial to the herper because it can narrow down areas in which to go herping. Study range maps and cross-reference rainfall maps. Gaps in distribution data for a species may be filled in by studying where rainfall conditions permit suitable vegetation to grow, and where annual rainfall is similar to areas where the species has been found previously.
Your area may receive rainfall in the spring, but your destination may not; it may not be hot and dry in the Big Bend of Texas in June (that is often when the region experiences its heaviest rainfall!). Research your target location and talk to people who live there to gain insight on regional weather patterns.
Weather information comes in two categories: real-time observations and historical data. Both can be useful to the field herper. In addition to current temperature, humidity, wind direction and speed, and pressure, many enthusiasts find radar coverage helpful.
weather pattern
Photo by Chris McMartin
A “cross-section” of an advancing cold front. The colder, drier, denser air mass behind the front pushes warmer, moister air higher into the atmosphere, where it cools and tends to form lines of thunderstorms. The lower half of the diagram shows the corresponding change in barometric pressure as the front passes.
Radar picks up “echoes” reflecting off objects. For weather radar, this is usually some form of precipitation. Radar does not generally show cloud cover, only actual precipitation, even if it’s not reaching the ground. Many weather websites can display “radar loops” from the preceding 30 to 60 minutes to help predict storm direction and speed. While radar information may display differently from one website to the next, all the raw data comes from the same radar stations owned and operated by the National Weather Service.
Current rainfall information is helpful in the search for some species (e.g., amphibians stimulated by precipitation), but for other herps (many reptiles) it is more important to know amounts of recent rainfall. Two useful sites are the National Weather Service’s Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service (water.weather.gov/precip) and the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (cocorahs.org).
The NWS site is interactive, enabling a variety of views based on region and time frame of interest. Users can also overlay county lines, highways and rivers to better pinpoint exact rainfall locations and amounts. You can also display the difference between current/recent precipitation and historical amounts. This helps determine whether an area is experiencing unusually dry conditions despite recent rainfall, for example.
weather conditions for herpers
Photo by Chris McMartin
A young gopher snake encountered on a rainy night of road cruising in west Texas in October 2006. Generally speaking, rainy nights in this region produce more amphibians than reptiles, but recording climatic conditions with each find may reveal surprising natural history information.
The CoCoRaHS site is less intuitive, but it can be more useful. CoCoRaHS is updated every 10 minutes, but it relies on a network of volunteers to submit data. Some parts of the United States have a higher density of participants than others, resulting in more accuracy than the NWS site, which uses mathematical modeling to fill gaps in coverage.
Many weather-related websites provide moon phase and sun/moon rise and set information for the current date. For longer periods of time, various websites will even calculate local sun/moon rise and set tables for an entire month. This comes in handy when planning to take time off work around the new moon for herping travel!
For those already on the road, applications for mobile devices are an exciting new development. Instead of monitoring the Weather Channel on TV in a motel room before heading out for a night of road cruising, you can view radar storm loops and other pertinent weather information from anywhere your mobile device can maintain Internet connectivity.
Weather observations can increase our understanding of exactly what conditions a given species may prefer, so carry equipment for measuring these conditions. The most basic is a thermometer for measuring air temperature. A “temp gun” is also helpful to determine surface temperatures, such as rock/soil, road surface or in a burrow. The truly meticulous can purchase a combination device with a built-in hygrometer, anemometer and barometer. All of these devices are relatively small, lightweight and easily carried in a pocket or day pack.
weather for herping
Photo by Chris McMartin
Collecting weather data in the field, in this case, at "Snake Road" in Illinois. The instrument shown here can display temperautre, humidity, wind direction and speed, and barometric pressure. Children often enjoy being included in the data collection process, and it may spur further interest in more advanced research later in life.
It is also useful to know how to read atmospheric conditions while afield in order to forecast general trends in the local weather. One method is to turn so the wind is at your back. Low pressure will generally be to your left (recall the previous pressure systems discussion). In the Southern Hemisphere, the low pressure will be to your right. Knowing where low pressure exists may help determine where precipitation is likely to develop.
Clouds may provide similar clues. Cumuliform clouds (the “cotton ball,” puffy clouds) are sometimes called fair-weather clouds; however, they indicate atmospheric instability. They can develop into their big, mean brother, the cumulonimbus — more commonly known as thunderstorms. Stratiform clouds, the smooth, layered types, mean greater atmospheric stability and less likelihood of violent precipitation such as thunderstorms and hail. However, they can still bring steady drizzle or light showers, and block out sunlight, which can hamper observations of sun-loving, diurnal reptile species.
Old sayings such as, “Red sky in morning, sailor take warning; red sky at night, sailor’s delight” have a kernel of truth to them. Red skies largely result from airborne particulates (e.g., dust, pollen) that cause the sunlight to scatter differently than it would in clearer conditions. A high concentration of particulates can provide nuclei around which precipitation can form. Thus, particulates observed in the morning, combined with atmospheric heating over the course of the day and its contribution to instability of the air mass, may increase chances for rainfall in the afternoon and evening.
Data Collection
It is important to record climatic observations in the field, even if no herps are found. Provided you are in suitable habitat, recording conditions in which herps are not found may provide valuable information to increase our understanding of activity patterns for various species. Record as much information as your equipment and time will allow. It is easier to pare down extensive field notes later than to wish you had recorded more information. A general guideline can be found by looking at species’ records pages on the North American Field Herping Association database (naherp.com). The weather-related data fields consist of air temperature, surface temperature, sky conditions (cloud cover and precipitation), moon phase, humidity and barometric pressure. Many records do not fully utilize these data fields — help fill in these knowledge gaps! I also recommend recording wind direction and speed when possible; as previously discussed, this is a highly debated factor in herping success and merits further study.
While afield, I utilize one of two methods of data collection, or a combination of both. The first technique is to take spot-data recordings at every herp encounter. However, when conducting an in-depth study of one given locale over several hours (or cruising one stretch of road repeatedly during the night), it can be more practical to take readings at fixed intervals over the period in question.
Even if you don’t have weather data-collection equipment in the field, it is still possible to determine such information post-trip. Many weather websites used in trip planning also have historical information, in some cases hour-by-hour almanac data. Even if you cannot (or forget to) record relevant data at the time and location of that gray-banded kingsnake find, you can access the almanac information when you return home. Keep in mind that historical information is for a given weather station, which may record substantially different conditions than were found at your herping location, depending on the distance and/or change in elevation between the two.
With the information in this article, and data collection equipment in hand, you are ready to head afield to observe your favorite herps with (hopefully) a greater chance for success. You also have the means to gather additional information to increase our understanding of the habits of these interesting creatures. In addition, I hope the information presented here gives you another aspect of being outdoors to observe and appreciate. Good luck!
CHRIS MCMARTIN is a navigator in the U.S. Air Force, a SkyWarn-certified storm spotter and an avid herper. His main interests are lizards of the American Southwest. Among other herps, he still has the box turtle that was given to him 29 years ago, and he also breeds banded geckos.
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Surveys for Cash?
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Surveys for Cash?
I am currently looking for new avenues to earn some extra money. My husband had a business that failed and we are paying down debt. I've heard and visited many sites on taking consumer surveys online. The companies, however, want registration fees. Is there anyone who has truly found success at this? If so, with what company? I have signed up for some "free" sites, but most offer entry into a drawing or pay a mere $2 (and the survey took me a good 15-20 minutes). I know I won't become rich, but earning a little extra would be helpful.
Thank you,
Sandy C.
Find Other Ways to Earn Extra Cash
There are many things to consider when doing a survey. How much time do you want to spend? Why are you doing the surveys? I spent three years doing these online surveys, but I quit when I realized how little I was getting in return.
Sure, there is the lure of doing surveys for big prizes of $200, $500, or $1000. There are also smaller payments, typically up to $5 if you were to qualify for the survey itself. Some give you points for surveys and you qualify for a pool of prizes based on your accumulated points.
While the lure of the money might sound good, consider this. In my three years of doing these surveys, I earned about $600. This included two big checks that I won from the drawings for the surveys. They were for $100 and $300. The rest of my earnings were smaller prizes or the small cash added up for the surveys for which I qualified.
Wow! A $300 check! But wait. At what cost? Let's add it up. During the three-year period in which I did surveys, I put in three hours a night about three to four times a week.
3 hours X 3.5 times a week = 10.5 hours per week
10.5 hours X 50 weeks a year not including vacation time) = 525 hours
525 hours X 3 years = 1575 hours
$500 in 1575 hours = $.317 per hour
In my case, that's less than 32 cents per hour for three years. A minimum wage job at $5.15 suddenly sounds more attractive.
Is it really worth your time, hard work, and efforts to labor over questionnaire after questionnaire for roughly 36 cents an hour? You'll probably eat up that 36 cents in energy costs and think of the time that you're wasting.
Surveys can be fun, but after my three years, it felt like I was being used. There are much better ways to earn money than to do the surveys.
Hank Y
Don't Waste Your Time with Surveys for Cash
No, there are no surveys that pay a substantial amount of money. I am on disability retirement and have been searching for them. I even paid $29.95 to a company that guaranteed that I could earn real money. A local station had a reporter take various surveys from that list. She worked 40 hours a week for a month and received a check for $15. Talk about slave labor!
Joyce in Parma Hts., Ohio
You Won't Find Big Money with Surveys for Cash
I've been doing surveys for about three months now. I signed up with literally hundreds of survey sites. So far, I've probably made about $20 per month. The most profitable thing I've seen so far are some focus groups I signed up for that pay between $50 to $125 for a few hours. This is certainly not a way to make a lot of extra money in my opinion and experience.
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The jokes practically writes themselves. The San Diego Chargers, constant AFC bridesmaids despite some deeply talented teams the past 10 years, even come in second in their offseason beer league for softball.
Stu Woo of the Wall Street Journal profiled the Chargers' beer league team, which despite being easily the most athletic assemblage of players in its Wednesday night league, could not take home the title.
"Fielding was the problem," Philip Rivers, the team's shortstop and captain, told Woo.
Many of the Chargers hadn't played baseball or softball since high school, and while they still had the advantage over most teams, they could not defeat Randy Jones Invitational, the top squad in the league. Named for a local golf tournament that sponsored their jerseys, Randy Jones Invitational beat the Chargers twice in the regular season and earned the top spot in the league standings.
"The Chargers are by far the most athletic guys on the field on Wednesday nights," Henry Schweichler, catcher for Randy Jones Invitational, told Woo, "but we are the more skillful team."
Rivers organized his team as an offseason bonding activity, and the Chargers certainly had fun on the diamond. According to Woo they had "country names" like "Jim-Bob" and "Cletis" on the backs of their jerseys, and some of the players donned disguises during the games.
Rivers, who went by "Ricky," wore a hat that was accompanied by a mullet wig.
With many of their regulars on vacation before training camp starts, the Chargers were upset in the first round of the playoffs.
Despite a solid AFC West that includes defending conference champion Denver, Chargers fans can only hope their football team advances farther in the playoffs than their softball team did this year. | <urn:uuid:6944be66-7fdb-4c38-aaf4-2ed49497ee4c> | http://www2.thepostgame.com/blog/dish/201407/san-diego-chargers-finished-second-their-offseason-softball-league | en | 0.983538 | 0.024266 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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4. CrowdID will auto-fill the information where possible. Update the profile details then click the 'Save' button.
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Cultural history of the buttocks
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Buttocks eroticism)
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An example of erotic photography that emphasizes the buttocks
Sexualization of the buttocks has occurred throughout history, especially of the female gender.[1]
Evolutionary significance[edit]
Sexologist Alfred Kind suggested that the buttocks is the primary sexual presentation site in primates. Some anthropologists and sociobiologists believe that breast fetishism derives from the breasts' similarity to buttocks, but instead provide sexual attraction from the front of the body.[2]
In humans, females generally have more round and voluptuous buttocks, caused by estrogen that encourages the body to store fat in the buttocks, hips, and thighs. Testosterone discourages fat storage in these areas. The buttocks in human females thus contain more adipose tissue than in males, especially after puberty. Evolutionary psychologists suggest that rounded buttocks may have evolved as a desirable trait because they provide a visual indication of the woman's youth and fertility. They signal the presence of estrogen and the presence of sufficient fat stores for pregnancy and lactation. Additionally, the buttocks give an indication of the shape and size of the pelvis, which impacts reproductive capability. Since development and pronunciation of the buttocks begins at menarche and declines with age, full buttocks are also a symbol of youth.[1]
Biological anthropologist Helen B. Fisher said that "perhaps, the fleshy, rounded buttocks attracted males during rear-entry intercourse".[3] Bobbi S. Low et al. said that the female buttocks "evolved in the context of females competing for the attention and parental commitment of powerful resource-controlling males" as an "honest display of fat reserves" that could not be confused with another type of tissue, although T. M. Caro rejected that as being a necessary conclusion, stating that female fatty deposits on the hips improve individual fitness of the female, regardless of sexual selection.[4]
Victorian-era spanking erotica
Venus Kallipygos, a Roman sculpture (thought to be based on a Greek original) that emphasizes the buttocks
The female buttocks have been a symbol of fertility and beauty since early human history. Statues created as early as 24,000 BC, such as the Venus of Willendorf, have exaggerated buttocks, hips, and thighs.[1]
The erotic beauty of the female buttocks was important to the ancient Greeks, thought to have built such statues as Venus Kallipygos (although only a possible Roman copy survives), that emphasize the buttocks.[5] Bare buttocks were also considered erotic in Ming China, where they were often compared to the bright full moon.[6] Many artists pose models to emphasize the buttocks.[5] 19th Century Europeans sought profit from this unique feature of African women through objectification & exploitation by placing Saartjie Baartman on display in a Human zoo.
The buttocks have been considered an erogenous zone in Western thought for centuries, and the eroticization of the female buttocks was heteronormative and due to their association and closeness to the female reproductive organs. The buttocks are often taboo due to their proximity to the anus and association with the excretory system. The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud theorized that psychosexual development occurred in three stages—oral, anal, and genital—and that fixation in the anal stage caused anal retentiveness and a lasting focus on eroticization of the anus.[1]
Erotic spanking was popular in Victorian Britain, perhaps due to the buttocks' fetishization and eroticization. Spanking was prominent in pornography during this time, with erotica such as Lady Bumtickler's Revels and Exhibition of Female Flagellants being consumed.
In Studies in the Psychology of Sex, published in 1927 and written by British physician and sexual psychologist Havelock Ellis, he describes cultural sexual characteristics of the buttocks.[1] He says:
Thus we find, among most of the peoples of Europe, Asia, and Africa, the chief continents of the world, that the large hips and buttocks of women are commonly regarded as an important feature of beauty. This secondary sexual character represents the most decided structural deviation of the feminine type from the masculine, a deviation demanded by the reproductive function of women, and in the admiration it arouses sexual selection is thus working in a line with natural selection.
He adds that
The European artist frequently seeks to attenuate rather than accentuate the protuberant lines of the feminine hips, and it is noteworthy that the Japanese also regard small hips as beautiful. Nearly everywhere else large hips and buttocks are regarded as a mark of beauty, and the average man is of this opinion even in the most æsthetic countries.
Ellis also claims that corsets and bustles are meant to emphasize the buttocks.[7]
Emphasis on the female buttocks as a sexual characteristic has increased in recent times according to Ray B. Browne, who attributes the change to the popularization of denim jeans:
[E]mphasis on the upper female torso has recently given way to the lower area of the body, specifically the buttocks. Such a change happened quite recently when denim jeans became fashionable. In order to emphasize fit, jeans manufacturers accentuated hips. And after brand name jeans became so popular with the designer's name on the hip pocket, even more accentuation was given to the posterior. The more jeans sales increased, the more ads were used which emphasized the derrier, to such an extent, in fact, that this particular area may eventually surpass breasts as the number one sexual image of the female body.[8]
One of Wilhelm von Gloeden's male nudes emphasizing the buttocks.
While female buttocks are often eroticized in heterosexual erotica, men's buttocks are considered erogenous by many women, and are also eroticized in gay male circles. Much of gay male sexuality centres on anal intercourse and penetration, so the buttocks are eroticized in that sector due to their proximity to the anus and the genitals.[9][10]
Popular culture[edit]
Numerous songs have also been about the desirability of buttocks:
Since the early 2000s, songs about the female buttocks have proliferated, especially in the hip-hop, reggae/dancehall, and R&B genres.[1]
Buttocks are often emphasized in pornography. Patricia Hill Collins, an African-American post-modern feminist writer, theorizes that this is derived from a stereotype that black women are promiscuous, and their buttocks are objectified by pornography as a result.[14]
A buttocks fetish or buttocks partialism refers to a condition wherein the buttocks becomes a primary focus of sexual attention.[15] It may be associated with coprophilia, panty fetishism, eproctophilia, and sadomasochistic corporal punishment involving the buttocks.[16] Pygophilia refers to sexual arousal caused by the buttocks.[17]
See also[edit]
1. ^ a b c d e f Singleton, Alena J. (2008). "Cultural History of the Buttocks". In Pitts-Taylor, Victoria. Cultural Encyclopedia of the Body. ABC-CLIO/Greenwood. ISBN 978-0-313-34145-8.
2. ^ Slade, Joseph W. (2001). Pornography and sexual representation: a reference guide. Greenwood Press. pp. 404–405.
3. ^ Fisher, Helen E. (1982). The Sex Contract: The Evolution of Human Behavior. New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc.
4. ^ Caro, T.M.; Sellen, D. W. (1990). "The Reproductive Advantages of Fat in Women". Ethology and Sociobiology. 11 (5): 1–66. doi:10.1016/0162-3095(90)90005-q.
5. ^ a b Morris, Desmond (1985). Bodywatching: A Field Guide to the Human Species. p. 198.
6. ^ van Gulik, Robert Hans (2004). Erotic colour prints of the Ming period: with an essay on Chinese sex life from the Han to the Chʼing Dynasty, B.C. 206-A.D. 1644. p. 223.
7. ^ Ellis, Havelock (1927). Wikisource link to Studies in the Psychology of Sex. Wikisource.
8. ^ Browne, Ray B. (1982). Objects of Special Devotion: Fetishes and Fetishism in Popular Culture. p. 111.
9. ^ Cultural Encyclopedia of the Body, page 61.
10. ^ Anal Pleasure & Health: A Guide for Men, Women and Couples, Jack Morin, Jack Morin Ph. D. Down There Press, 2010.
11. ^ "KC & The Sunshine Band Shake Your Booty Lyrics". Genius. Retrieved 31 August 2015.
12. ^ Riordan, Teresa (26 September 2007). "Oh, That Darling Derrière". Slate. Retrieved 7 August 2011.
13. ^ "Bubble Butt - 2 Chainz,Black M,Ensi,Major Lazer,Bruno Mars,Tyga - Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards - AllMusic". AllMusic. Retrieved 20 November 2014.
14. ^ Dines, Gail (2010). Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality. p. 128.
15. ^ Browne, Ray B. (1982). Objects of Special Devotion: Fetishes and Fetishism in Popular Culture. pp. 35–36.
16. ^ Steele, Valerie (1997). Fetish: Fashion, Sex and Power. Oxford University Press. p. 124.
17. ^ Hickey, Eric W. (2006). Sex crimes and paraphilia. Pearson Education. p. 84.
External links[edit] | <urn:uuid:2ace84a0-5028-4dc9-b7f6-a6262ba97454> | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttocks_eroticism | en | 0.903503 | 0.042096 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Something's weird here. I got up, checked the e-mail, lurked for a couple of minutes at the usual suspects: /., E1, E2. Did a wee bit of stuff away from the computer. Then I come back; I did some meta moderation, followed a link from one of the comments, read I, Cringely... I check here again, and find that I'm logged in. So I make this node. I don't remember logging in. Yes, I flitted about. Yes, the coffee hasn't kicked in yet. Yes, I can be absent-minded (worst example: once left water boiling after leaving the apartment - 1982). But I don't think I logged in. Yes, my drug consumption has been near-zero for the past 12 years. No, it isn't Alzheimer's time yet.
In other words, might there be a cookie problem?
An aside: Flightless Bird as a permanent cookie
Ingredients: whole wheat and soy flours, nickel (from ground guitar strings), tofu, plaintain, saccharine, castor oil (no tropical oils were used in the making of this product), incense, Donald Barthelme Soylent Green Flakes®, no preservatives...
Expiration date on the bag: December 1977. Mmmm, tasty!
19-11-1999 (or 11-19-1999 depending where you are from). November 11, 1999 will be the last odd date until 1-1-3111 (Jan 1, 3111). The next even date will be 2-2-2000.
Damn the power company! Today was the third power disruption this week. A few days ago there were two blackouts, and today there was a brownout that murdered my personal server. I need a UPS.
I picked up the replacement power brick for my laptop after school. School was uneventful, although in electronics I did hear about a contest that the teacher was advising people to enter. Unfortunately, entries can't use living things, can't interfere with other nearby devices, have to use Duracell brand batteries (and use them correctly; they can't be abused), can't use explosives or compressed air, and can't draw more than 12 volts per function. Most of my good electronic weapon ideas are ruled out by that, although I might still be able to build my taser and enter it.
Log in or registerto write something here or to contact authors. | <urn:uuid:6df67f82-bb96-4cea-bbe1-946ad7f519c1> | https://everything2.com/title/November+19%252C+1999 | en | 0.966963 | 0.04693 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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Rose Seidler House
Architect: Harry Seidler (1950)
Location: Wahroonga, New South Wales, Australia
Harry Seidler was born in Austria but left after the Nazis took over, emigrating to England, where he studied architecture until he was interned by the British at the start of WWII and sent to a camp in Quebec. He was released and allowed to study architecture in Canada. He then went to Harvard to study under Gropius and Breuer, with an internship under Alvar Aalto during the summer. He also attended Black Mountain College to study under Albers. He later returned to Boston to work for Breuer. Seidler also worked in Rio de Janeiro with Niemeyer, who heavily influenced some of his early residential works, including this one for his mother, Rose Siedler.
He initially came to Australia temporarily, at the request of his parents, to build them a home in Sydney, where they had immigrated after the war. Modernism was unheard of in Australia in the late 40s, but this home was widely accepted and very popular. It led to many other commissions, which convinced Seidler to remain in Australia, where he established a practice and stayed throughout his career. He is largely credited as the father of modernist architecture in Australia.
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Taken on December 31, 2011 | <urn:uuid:6fbad257-560c-4ca2-88d6-12185b97b172> | https://www.flickr.com/photos/88017382@N00/6700006203 | en | 0.985246 | 0.067544 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
GAO Hides Total Numbers of H-1Bs; I Say There are About 650,000
By David North, January 28, 2011
Suppose you have a suburban front yard of about 3,000 sq. feet (60 feet x 50 feet), and you have 30 dandelions in it, or one for every 100 sq. feet. Not to worry, enjoy the bright yellow flowers in the springtime. On the other hand, you could have 30,000 of them, or ten per square foot; they would shortly obliterate any grass you had left. You probably should make a policy decision about the dandelions, based on the numbers, because numbers matter.
They matter in the labor market, too, which is one of the reasons that the recently released, exhaustive, expensive-to-produce report of the Government Accountability Office on the H-1B program is such a disappointment. Despite massive research resources available to GAO, there is no effort made in the report, "H-1B Visa Program: Reforms Are Needed to Minimize the Risks and Costs of Current Program", to estimate the total size of the H-1B population in the U.S.
How can you calculate the program's impact on resident workers, and on the computer industry, and on the economy generally, if you hide the size of the population? And those analyses, supposedly, were the objectives of the GAO report.
It is well known that the H-1B program is a delight to powerful, penny-pinching employers, and has pushed countless American workers, particularly older ones (i.e., over 35) out of their jobs in the high-tech industries. For more on the adverse effects of the program see the writings of Prof. Ron Hira of the Rochester Institute of Technology, those of my CIS colleague John Miano, of Prof. Norm Matloff of UC-Davis, and of the Department of Professional Employees of the AFL-CIO.
Unfortunately, the one number generally associated with this program is a relatively modest 65,000; this is the congressionally established annual ceiling on the number of new H-1B visas that can be created for industry for aliens with bachelor's degrees in sciences and math; there is an additional 20,000 ceiling, too, for aliens with U.S. graduate degrees.
The real number that policy makers should be look at, however, apparently is about 10 times the 65,000.
The real number, like the elephant in the room, is ignored by GAO, and that is the total number of aliens in the country at one time who are working legally as a result of getting H-1B visas. My estimate, based mostly on official numbers untabulated by GAO, is something like 650,000, and is spelled out elsewhere.
My estimate may be off by as much as 10 or 15 percent, one way or the other, but it gives a ballpark figure that is needed for the immigration debate.
Industry, from Microsoft on down, would much, much rather talk about 65,000 as being too low for their narrow interests, rather than defending a total which is closer to one million. GAO either unknowingly, or more likely deliberately, did not take the relatively short amount of time needed to estimate the total number of workers who have arrived with H-1B visas – which, for all practical purposes – are good for life. Nor does GAO chastise the government for not providing this information routinely.
The GAO had, according to its own document, a staff of 31 full- and part-time people working on this report, and total access to every conceivable governmental reporting system, manual and electronic. Yet it chose not to even try to estimate the total size of the H-1B population, which goes through numerous governmental counting systems throughout its stay in the U.S. (There is no single, existing government statistical system, I must admit, that provides a hard figure; an estimate is needed.)
In sharp contrast, a much smaller, but the somewhat bolder staff of the DHS Office of Immigration Statistics, dealing with a population for which no records are kept, provides an estimate of the total illegal alien population every year.
Why couldn't GAO do something comparable with the H-1Bs?
There will be more comments on this GAO report in a subsequent blog. | <urn:uuid:63a2481f-c662-4954-9b69-4051509eab60> | http://cis.org/north/GAO-hides-totals | en | 0.960227 | 0.028409 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Fix Ahead Breakfast
My back-to-school issues are upon me, so I have been doing a lot of prep today. I know old-fashioned oats are grain. I know grain isn't paleo. I also know that these oats don't spike your insulin levels like other grains and I LIKE them now and then. I buy McCann's Irish Oats - Instant, from They are already cooked slow, then dried, so they are faster. They are nutty and I love them MUCH more than Quaker Old-Fashioned Oats, and I don't think these Irish oats have GMO worries.......
I prepped several containers with (clockwise, from the oats, in the photo) McCann's oats, toasted pecan pieces, dried cherries, (, with no added sugar - hard to find, but so good for your joints) vanilla protein powder, dried goji berries (also and cinnamon.
Why get everything out every morning that you might eat this? I just do several while I have everything out. And, the mornings will go smoother. Just add hot water and stir.
If there's a really a time-constrained morning, I'll just take the container with me!
What do you do to prepare ahead for your mornings? | <urn:uuid:ce3919c1-babe-4518-b9de-4c232e66e0bd> | http://feedinggersasser.blogspot.com/2013/08/fix-ahead-breakfast.html | en | 0.96821 | 0.244829 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
Diet? NO! You're great the way you are.
Remember one thing this new year. You are great! You are powerful! You are loved! You are human! You are WONDERFUL-EXCELLENT!
I see all of these poor people starting diets after the new year and I think "why?" They are all WHO THEY ARE. They know "WHAT THEY ARE DOING!" They are loved. Who cares if you have a little extra chub? It looks great to me. What do you care what those judgemental people think? Remember: Obesity is a state of mind.
The image “http://www.nephite.com/images/2003/obese_men.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
No comments: | <urn:uuid:043972ca-4141-4bba-bdae-ea78503269b1> | http://interestingly-interesting.blogspot.com/2007/01/diet-no-youre-great-way-you-are.html | en | 0.928467 | 0.999382 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
You are here
So you Want to Teach English in Japan?
Chris and Shawn
"english in Japan" by the "Swede", not "swede"!
Forgot to post my name above, in my amazement/shock/bewilderment.
Anonymous and EC Eikaiwa G Communication Director it seems that you feel that only native speakers can be english teachers. If that's how you feel then just say so. The Swede was just asking if he had any opportunities to work in japan only. I just mentioned Gaba which may be a ripoff place so buyer beware. Oh did you forget that because of your amazement/shock/bewilderment.
As you notice even a native speaker like myself make many mistakes typing in english. Wow, good on you. You guys must be great english teachers based on this. Why is it that many ekaiwa people get really nitpicky when writing on a blog is beyond me.
(Great) English Teachers vs. english teachers. You have a point, english teacher!
Could you enlighted me about GABA?
Gaba uses it. They advertise ¥20,000 for private lessons per month.
The catch is, if you pay them ¥1,860,000 up front.
Sounds familiar? Sort of like NOVA? Or worse?
Are you (enlighted?)
No I didn't know that about GABA or anything else really for that matter. I appreciate information like that. So could let me know if you have anything against non native speakers teaching English and why. I just heard that GABA does hire non native English teachers and that's the reason why I passed the website on. Do they not inform potential students of that fact? I just figured that if they were to hire a non native speaker then their level of English must be really good and they they must have majored in it or something like that. But I don't really know.
What the fuck! No they don't! I do sales and i know the price list! 1.8 mil is only if they buy a huge amount of lessons (300), and its up to the customer/client if they pay in part or full. Plus we advertise cashback if they are unhappy.
Yes they do. At least in the smaller schools. At my branch (i do sales too) they actively mention the ethnicity of all the teachers, and tell them about their first languages if english isn't their first language.
Oh and all non native english speakers must be able to speak english at a native level although they don't discourage japanese in lessons if the student wants it.
Speaking japaneses in class? Could that be a possible expectation of students? Would students be told if their instructor can speak japanese or not? Or is it a hit or miss for the students?
Yes, I think it's better to have a native English speaker, with no degree or any teaching qualifications whatsoever, teach English rather than a qualified non-native English speaker.
Thanks for the follow up comment, Thaistory!
Would you "pay to learn" Korean from an Indian?
Spanish from a Swede?
German from an Italian?
Swahili from a Norwegian?
Why English from a/an ??????????????????
Common sense, isn't it?
Something's amiss, don't you think?
Unless there is no choice or you don't know any better!
I can see what you're saying but in Jr high and high school as well as university, all Japanese language teachers should be Japanese, all Spanish teachers should be Spanish and so on and so forth?
No strong opinion here just as long as a student knows what kind of teacher they would get then they should decide for themself if they are happy or not.
Diamond or CZ? Which would you "knowingly" buy for her, *at the same price spent?
"I can see what you're saying but in Jr high and high school as well as university, all Japanese language teachers should be Japanese, all Spanish teachers should be Spanish and so on and so forth?" Do you know of any better ones, that aren't?
There are even some bad Japanese, Japanese teachers! Terrible maths teachers in all colors, galore! Met many in my life.
But out of the blue, Ingrid/Bjorn/Mario/Rosita thinking they can make a quick buck abroad, because they think they know English, I cannot accept. They can fool a few Japanese/people, but not for long. They should try to teach English in their own country, first! Then, ... maybe! ... I would definitely have more respect for them.
Students having no choice, or not knowing any better, I can accept. Some learn it, the hard way. (*Too bad you can't buy time, precious time back, but you can surely, waste it.)
Everything I have excelled at, came from confident, "Real Teachers", giving their best and real, teaching from their heart.
Don't get me wrong, if it's real, then nationality is of no importance. What gives you confidence in doing something/anything? Confidence creates confidence. Do you want to learn how to base jump from, "I think I can" or "I can"? Who do you want as your child's English teacher, *within the same time spent? Money can be wasted and made up for. Time can be wasted and lost forever.
Fraud is about deception. I agree that people shouldn't be deceived and that you would want to use a language with a native speaker. As you mentioned there are terrible native teachers who teach their own language badly. Also their are highly qualified non native speakers who have mastered a foreign language. Why would they do eikawa and not something else is a different story perhaps.
As some people have mentioned about the eikawa market is that there should be more regulation, training and higher quality of expectation expected from instructors. People usually have this opinion because of the lack of ability that native speakers have in teaching their own language and some people consider it fraud if we are not English majors or have some sort of certificate.
For myself I am learning Spanish from someone from Brazil. I am aware that my teacher isn't a native speaker of the language but for my purpose(pure interest only), convenience and cost it's OK with me.
I do agree and see what you are saying that native speakers is the preference so I do figure that if anyone would think that they would be interested in teaching a language professionally, even on a eikawa level that they would be highly qualified. If they aren't and still think they can do it then I think they are crazy.
Hi, I'm a 22 year old university student in Canada and would LOVE to teach english in Japan... & I don't have a degree ! Pls contact me with info. on how to get a wonderful teaching job there!!!
Thanks so much in advance. =)
Hi! I'm excited! A couple of days ago, I was offered a job with Berlitz and will be teaching freshman and sophomore business students at Tokyo Metro University. I have an MBA, am well traveled, have a positive attitude, and I suppose I am somewhat lovable and charming! I got hired over the phone from doing 2 phone interviews. It was fantastic, since I'm very far away in Portland, OR.
I'm very excited to come to Tokyo! I will be there at the end of March. I'm interested in making connections before I come over. I will be the only American girl working in my unit. I'm excited about this and a little intimidated! I need to look for housing in the Chufo City area, since the main language centers I will be teaching from the other 6 months out of the year.
My questions are, have you ever heard anything about Tokyo Metro University? or know of anyone working for Berlitz? Would anyone on here be willing to make friends with the new girl in town?
Unlike some of the schools I have heard about, I will be on my own to look for housing and to find my way around, and this is somewhat intimidating. I can do it, however it would be awesome if someone wanted to give me some pointers of good books, Japanese software recommendations (eg. Rosetta Stone?) or mandatory things I should know. I got hired just before Christmas, so I haven't started the visa process yet, and I am wondering what types of problems might I run into? I know they do extensive investigations on job history, and verifying education, I don't have a criminal record or anything... however, I was wondering if anyone has been denied a visa for something like poor credit?
I'm looking forward to any insight you can give me....
Thank you.
Congrats on your job offer at Berlitz and your placement in Tokyo...its gonna be pretty expensive and time consuming to find your own place in the Tokyo area by yourself. Im sure you're probably looking for roommate arrangments.
No, Japanese immigration does not care about your credit history or unpaid debts back home...but, they will verify your education by actually holding your college diploma and conducting a criminal background check. My Biggest advice to you is to bring tons of're really gonna need it here, as well deordorent and flouride toothpaste, and many other quality items you wont find here. Best of Luck to You!
I really appreciate the feedback! I am looking at things like Sakura house, they do a special deal for Berlitz instructors.... even though they are more expensive, just to start out with everything hooked up and ready to go, and not all the deposits, etc. until I am ready and have found a better place. I am going to try to come with at least 3-5k. I think I will definitely try to bring enough deoderant, toothpaste, and things like my favorite shampoo, conditioner, hair dye, and makeup. Cause I am assuming it might be harder to find my favorite stuff, if at all for the price I can buy it for here. Any books or software I should by for getting myself around and helping me learn the language? Have you heard anything about Rosetta Stone?
Hi, Sassy Lashes! I dont have any suggestions on any books or software for helping You get around and learn Japanese. The best way to learn like alot of us foreigners, that is just being book or software will prepare you or keep your attention while Your here in Japan. Your roommates will provide You with the low down on where to go, where to shop, hang-out....your roommates will be the best information you could ever get. So, really my advice is to save your money and not buy Rosetta Stone....You're gonna be sooo busy with work, hanging-out, partying, meeting new people, discovering new places...You wont have time to stay in your room and learn Japanese from a CD or a computer. A good Japanese/English phrase book would be best for now. You'll have opportunities to learn Japanese while you're here....for me and alot of foreigners we go down to the international center and get free Japanese language lessons there.
Im sure You have read alot about the negative aspects of Japan...and most of them are very true. Despite the bad the things that go on here, I wont write anything about it, because its all posted on other threads and blogs, so just make the very best of it and You'll have a blast here...I Promise. The amount of money You're bringing will be enough to party on for a while and get You to your first paycheck.
Best of Luck!
Yes, I was very happy to have (not to sound like a suck up or anything!) haha, simply because I found out the importance of reading up on social/business etiquette/customs! I started reading up 2 years ago, and knew right away that Nova was not going to be a good place to work. (So potentially saved me from being stuck in Japan right now!)
I have read the stories about Japanese men acting inappropriately towards western women...example: flashing, stalking, attacking, killing! I know the killing, is of the most extreme circumstances however, it is a good idea to try to keep myself out of harms way by not inviting this behavior with my behavior. (Even though I assume I will be bound to experience some of it, because I'm a very cute red haired girl with huge boobs...sorry if that was TMI!)
I also have read all the information about the tortures of working for huge for profit schools. And fortunately, I think I have found one of the best ones to work for. They have been around for 130 years, and I will be working in one of Tokyo's best public universities. I don't think I mentioned this before, but I am a very successful graphic designer, business consultant, and t-shirt designer here in the states. Have you heard of any gaijin working as freelance designers on the side in Japan? I am going to be doing a lot of design on the side, since I'll only be instructing 27 hours a week, and many of my clients want me to design remotely!
Also if anyone has any suggestions for good gaijin bars to go to near the keio line... I'd greatly appreciate it! Also how is Shinjuku? a fun area?
Guillaume Batard wrote
at 4:56pm yesterday
Dear GU Nova members,
Please pass this information far and wide to ex-Nova employees.
The union sent in demands to G-Com and G-Ed on December 25th, demanding negotiations at their Osaka HQ on January 4th - with a deadline of Dec 28 (tomorrow) to reply to us. Our demands were basically to stick to their original promise to hire all those who wanted to do so and to renew those who come / have come to the end of their old Nova contracts.
Today some members told us that they have heard that some of the people who received the notice of "non hiring" were told they received letters by mistake. However the situation remains unclear. The union is also very angry as it was only a week before the "non-hiring" letter that G-Com and G-Ed management told union reps at a meeting in Nagoya, also attended by the Receiver (previously the Trustee) that they intended to open more schools and in fact were surprised at so many people requesting option B that they may not have enough teachers. The
Tired of getting messed with and not hitting back? Group forming to explore possible - not certain - legal causes of action for a group lawsuit against Nova's clone, the company that hired most of Nova's old managers. If you are a "B" teacher and have just heard from that company, and are interested in joining in a group effort to explore legal options, contact:
We will keep your information confidential unless we get your prior written consent from you to use it.
We will contact you about a possible meeting with a Japanese lawyer. No promises yet, except the promise to try to seek action as a group. DEADLINE!: January 15!
Our first post was a few days ago. We said that a group was forming to investigate the possibilities of legal action on behalf of "B" teachers, and possibly others out in the cold, at G.Ed/G.Com. Since that time many inquiries have come in, so please be patient for us to get back to you as soon as we possibly can.
We will consult with lawyers by the end of this month, probably earlier. We will not be able to go over legal strategies in a public forum like this. However, if you send your name and indication of interest, once we verify you and you decide to join us, we will inform you generally what the lawyers say. If it is negative, then it will end there. If it is positive, we will then have a first meeting of the entire group, then a second, probably at the lawyers' offices.
You can contact us at:
I was wondering, as I have many questions, if i could start here with my idea and some of you, who seem to be 'in the know' could help me out. Currently, I am planning on moving to Japan within the next year or so. My goal once there, is to open a restaurant.
Obviously this will not happen the first day, but I was curious...are there schools where cooks teach western styles of cooking, and maybe our language as a bonus?
Something like this could really help me out if it exists, as well as find some good talent to hire when I can open my shop.
A non native English language insturctor/teacher is wayyyyyyyyyyy better than the typically lazy native speaker. A non native knows about all what it takes to acquire a new language. A native....doesn't.
How many natives have TESOL/CELTA/DELTA (etc) certificates under their belts? How many "natives" know (and appreciate) the importance of tradition/culture of thier host sociites?..etc.
Very very few.
Most are ignorant and have the same screwed up attitude of the US armed forces' personnel......scum of the earth.
I guess I'm screwed up like you suggested. I mean, after 13 years of leadership experience in the US Marine Corps, I could never teach english in Japan. I suppose I should take your advice and go back to the US.
Wrong-O! I own and teach at my own school. I have around 90 happy students who receive quality lessons each week. Do you know were I learned about dedication to my job... no matter what it is? The Marines.
I have taught myself Japanese and I know what it's like to be in a foreign country and not speak the local language. Do you think a military 'scum' like me might have a better insight into 'cultural exchange' than you, sir? I like to think so. I understand where the students are coming from even if they're mothers are pushing them to learn english. I am also a father of two boys and have been involved with youth sports, PTA, and much more.
You, sir, can keep comments like yours to yourself and stick them where the rising sun doesn't shine.
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 10/15/2007 - 13:12.
what's wrong with that?
Wanna teach English in Japan?
Just don't be Black.
Japanese abhor Blacks. I want all Blacks here to goto my site:
What a stupid, self-pitying statement.
It's probably just you, they abhor, you spineless creep.
"I want all Blacks here to goto my site: "
Thanks for that!
Yours sincerely,
Jim Black
For all or you "wanna come to Japan to teach English" types... think twice. The ship is sinking, bubble burst, sun is setting... take your pick.
FACT- Stagnant salaries for language teachers in all sectors (or worse yet, dropping in many cases).
FACT- Cost of living going up (gas, food, even your beer).
FACT- Oversupply of foreigners who speak English (the REAL minimum standard you need to work here). Those with better education have slightly better jobs in universities, but THOSE jobs are beginning to be farmed out as well and conditions worsening. Many of the lucky ones who went out on their own and made their own schools are even feeling a pinch these days.
FACT- Visa regulations tightening up, fingerprinting foreigners made a come back, police extremely xenophobic (DO NOT GET INTO THE SLIGHTEST TROUBLE - even night time bicycle ride or an unpaid parking ticket could net you 90+ days in the slammer - see for horror stories)
FACT- Online learning, English soon to be in public elementary curriculum will also eat away at the need for the "foreign" English teacher. Some may say that there will be more ALT jobs, maybe, but...
FACT- ALT jobs are becoming worse than NOVA!!! I came to Japan after earning an Bachelor of Ed. and was an ALT in the early 90's making 360,000/month, benefits, good holidays, directly through the B.O.E. - FLASH FORWARD TO TODAY - That same B.O.E. outsources to three companies (The macDonalds franchises known as: Interact, Altia, and Shane) and teachers (with very little training or experience I might add) get paid average 250,000 with no benefits. If you say "wait a minute, I work at XXXX and it's better than that!" - don't kid yourself.
FACT- they make two-three-four times what they pay ALTs - for all their talk, they really only care about money. I know because I worked for management of an ALT provider for some time. I know the contracts intimately, they say they are all for supporting teachers but if they really were they would be trying to change the system (not in their best money grubbing interest). BI mean...what the heck is a private company doing supplying teachers to the public education system anyway??? Don't you think this is odd?? Shouldn't the B.o.E. have certain standards and hire directly?? I shudder to think of what my children will learn when they enter public school!
FACT- The ALT contract is immoral and probably illegal (see - I can't see the situation getting any better. In fact a source at this same B.O.E. I worked at has said that they are considering "11 month contracts" for ALTs so as to avoid trouble with the unions should it come. Already Osaka B.O.E. has hired it's NET for a 4 month contract only ( , this is certainly an attempt to side step any laws and regulations regarding the hiring of staff.
No, don't come to Japan to find work as an English teacher. Come for the culture or experience if you are interested. There is plenty of work in other sectors (provided you speak Japanese). Many artisans from abroad are finding a home here as well. But there is certainly better places in the world to be teaching English.
"But there is certainly better places in the world to be teaching English."
I have visited Japan several times, (for visa runs) and even looked into teaching in Japan. However, after reviewing the contracts, general living costs, and benefits, I decided that it is really not worth while. From what I could gather while I was there, most English teachers in Japan fall into one of two categories.
First, would be those at the very top of the market with PhD in applied linguistics or related fields, various types of certifications (CELTA, JLPT2+, public school teacher cert. in their home country, etc.) and many years of experience who teach in Universities. Japan does still offer the best pay and working conditions in Asia for these individuals.
Second are the people fresh out of university who just are not quite ready for the party to stop. They just want to come to Japan to drink, dance, be merry and meet women. Many of them seem to have an interest in Japanese cartoons or comic books. These people just want to make enough money to get by while they party or do whatever it is they want to do. There is nothing wrong with this in and of itself, but when they tire of it (and they always do, no one can do this forever) most of them find they have to leave Japan to find better opportunities.
If you happen to fall into one of the two groups described above, by all means, go to Japan.
If you are looking for work as an ESL teacher abroad and fall somewhere between these two personality types, try South Korea. Pay is decent, and cost of living is far less than Japan. I taught there for five years while working on my MA. If you have your MA or a teaching cert. (in your home country) or both, go to the Middle East.
Maybe the Middle East is OK if you want no social life, ability to pick up chicks or get hammered on the weekend, and just want to save a bundle. As for Sth Korea...I'd avoid it as Ive heard the locals tend to be even more racist towards whites than Japanese! Ive also known teachers to have their contracts cancelled for no reason, thus cancelling their visa on the spot (unlike Japanese practice).
No, I say keep riding the Nihon Gravy Train until it runs out of puff, kids.
I'm with Stan - I've never heard good stuff about EFL career in Korea. And I always found them less than welcoming
I love the way the word “career” is used so loosely in the Eikaiwa world, and usually by morons who are none too smart:
“Shit, I haven’t frittered away 5 or more years of my life reading from a slap dash textbook to a bunch of pasty faced, burnt out chipmunks, but, quite to the contrary actually, I am an eikaiwa minded professional, enjoying the journey my EFL career takes me on"
What a load of fucking crap! Eikaiwa is NOT a career. Of the thousands that get employed, you can count on one hand the number who are even recognized as full-time workers, and the real EFL world thinks Eikaiwa is a standardless haven for retarded morons. Yep, that’s right!
So, the next person who uses the word “career” relative to EIKAIWA, for crying out loud, smack them in the face, there and then, for even trying to get such blatant bullshit swallowed.
What are you talking about? Eikaiwa is a GLORIOUS career, in which you will develop many skills, on your own, with little to no help from anyone. After a year or two, you'll be able to:
- Smile perfectly, even on a really bad day
- Make people laugh by just saying anything
- Stare into thin air for 40-odd minutes, and get paid for it
- Develop a real charismatic personality, if you didn't have one already
- Turn up to work hungover/still drunk from the night before, get paid for it and, as long as you smile, get no negative feedback from the manager
- Go into a lesson completely unprepared, with no idea of what you're going to do, and again, get no negative feedback from the manager
- Talk complete shit 8 hours a day
- Pretend that you're a real teacher, and/or a real authority on absolutely anything
- Be a real hot sex-magnet to desperate, lonely Japanese girls who can't get any action off their own kind
- Repeat the company textbook backwards, word-for-word perfect, while standing on your head
That and many more useful, in-demand skills are on offer NOW, for 250,000 yen a month, at an eikaiwa near you. What are you waiting for?????!!!!!
The Ripper
Excellent article full of facts. It is now clearer than ever:
"E + G = L"
End Of
What a wanker this thorn is! Keeps bloody posting the same things over and over again on this site just on different threads. He should look in the mirror for the definition of loser.
O.k. I am a noob here as far as teaching in Japan comes. I will move there in three months and hope to teach English. So I make no claims to fame yet... I am just stating what I know from experienced people I have met in and out of Japan. I have friends who have done it. two had a degree and three did not. Let’s face it ...... from what I have researched through bloggs, eyewitness accounts and dramatic real life stories, its not very hard. One school of thought insists that you must have a degree or you should not even try. I disagree there. The other school says "any native speaking moron can teach in Japan. I reluctantly agree with that. I am very lucky myself as for I have over ten years of experience running my own business in America, a TEFL certification, electricians license, great mechanical and electrical skills, certification/diploma in computer electronics and telecommunications, a Japanese wife (free easy visa) and an immense love/respect for Japan and its culture, food and people. I have also been to Japan with my wife about 15 times for one to two week at a time. I have NO "DEGREE"
Back to the degree people:
Yes it is true...... it is easier to get a job with a degree. You start at a higher rate around 40 to 60 million yen a year (40 to 60 thousand in America) and you get to work for better employers. It is a total CROCK that you must have a degree to work at all. As for the visa that’s the hard part and I have it easy there. But there are ways and programs to utilize in Japan to be able work. There is not just one way!
No degree no problem If you are really serious about this:
If you are not packing a degree from squeaky Harvard University or the like you CAN make it in Japan!!! Let’s say you can get the visa.... o.k. you will most likely start at 25 to 35 million yen. But after a year or so you will get some private students and start moving up the ladder. Some schools forbid private students. Screw them .......keep it secret and if you bust your little but hard enough you can make an extra 1000.00 dollars a month CASH!!!
I have met total pathetic hacks in Japan making 50.00 dollars an hour teaching a weak English class to private suckers. This is not what I want but just making a point here. It also helps to be young but with English teaching you can dodge the Japanese age discrimination which is rampant! They need good teachers. Check out the hundreds of english school job sites and english teacher resources online for JAPAN .... you can use a search engine right?
My suggestions if you do not have a degree:
1. Collect any and all certifications or licenses or achievements for your portfolio. Anything that will show you have skills!!!! Make a portfolio but it’s not a must if you are just starting out and you are young.
2. Visit Japan ....make sure you understand Japanese culture, food, people. You do not need to speak Japanese to teach!
3. Getting a TEFL certification will help. It will teach you how to to become a better teacher. You must find a good TEFL school. Some are hacks but I went to BLI in Boston and they are very good. I know english Masters who take the TEFL course. Some were my classmates!
4. Research alot! There are always many foreign run and Japanese run schools in Japan with many different benefits and requirements. Smaller schools and McDonaldized type english schools may be easier to get into.
5. Talk to people!! to teachers who have done this and are still doing it. When you are in Japan to have some english teacher friends is a must. You will get work from each other....Network!
6. Avoid those who say you can't do it. You can and there is always a way around things to get where you want to be. You gotta want this and you will have to put some effort into it. It will be worth it!!!! I hope to never leave Japan once I am there.............
Thanks for reading my blurb......
Please let me know if you think I am insane or perhaps right on?
Are you trying to give people advice?? OR are you trying to fool yourself by pumping up your low self-esteem and low self-confidence?? Im placing my bet...that you're pumping yourself up....keep up the good're really gonna need it!
Dear, "I will teach english in Japan without a degree".....Good Luck!! You sound old...and you sound like a total loser...your post sounds like it dates from 1994. That American way of thinking of yours will NOT get you shit here in Japan...using sheer determination will NOT get you a takes looks, fashion, and a DEGREE to get anything worthwhile. Oh, sure...drag the bottom of the barrel and teach english without a degree...take any old english job at any old school, do privates...yeah..that will get you that, and I will gaurantee you that a english school owner will screw you for every opportunity they wont make a'll be slave. that will be enough to make a living in Japan....these folks pay as they go...if they are busy, dont have enough money, dont like your teaching dont get paid...try paying rent on that.
Old man without a yourself a favor and others too...dont give out arm chair advice...You have NEVER lived in Japan...and You have NEVER taught english in dont go around talking like You know something about life here....just because you visited Japan 15 times for a week at time, does not make you an expert about working here or living here. What You're writing about happened 15 years ago!!! Those days are looong gone.
Oh, one more thing..if you're over're gonna have one helluva hard time finding a job here. Since times are tough here in the english school company has gotten rid of the old wood...they're are not hiring anybody over 30...thats a fact. Students want to have lessons with stylish, good looking, and college educated instructors...not riff-raff, bald men, dirty old men, dirt bags, and losers....that ship has sailed years ago...times have changed. Go to China...age and appearance is NOT a requirment for english teachers...but I hope like $600 a month paychecks.
I think the reason people always say you need a degree is the fact that it's a requirement for the VISA. If you're married to a Japanese national or are half Japanese yourself then you probably have a chance without a degree.
Please help me! I am in an internet-research nightmare trying to decide what to do!! I want to teach english in Japan and i have a 2:1 degree in English Language, so thought i would go for it. But looking around on the internet is so confusing - one minute i read loads of positive things about eikaiwa, next thing they're a bunch of con artists...then i'm supposed to *definately* do the JET programme, next thing i know that is rubbish too. I dont know what or who to believe anymore, i need some serious newbie help!
I know it is unreasonable, but who cares - if you dont ask, you dont get right?! I wanted somewhere that will arrange private accommodation (not shared) and no more than 40hr weeks. Is that possible or am i looking at a fruitless search?
I'd really appreciate any help. If i've posted this in the wrong place, please signpost me and i'll just move along quietly...
Just visit the forums, read and ask.
Lamb, yes you are very confused, but the most important thing to know is dont make any rash decisions that may destroy your life. DONT WORK FOR ANY EIKAIWA in Japan, under ANY circumstances. If you do, you will waste your life away, see no career progression, receive very little money, be bullied by "bosses" who are geeks and ugly pimple-faced losers back home, and probably become unemployable in ANY other foreign country.
Basically, if you lower yourself to working for an Eikaiwa (English Language "school") you will have to stay in either Japan or Korea for the rest of your working life, because no company back home will hire you if you work for Eikaiwa.
The only real option is to work for the Jet Corporation, believe me, the money is good (300-350k per month min.) and extremely easy work, only 1-3 hours per day. You will become native-level in Japanese within 1 year, and win the respect of Japanese teachers and community.
Lamb, it comes down to this: EIKAIWA IS FOR LOSERS. PERIOD. END OF.
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If You can’t Stop Doing these 10 Things, You’re Not Ready to Get Married
If You Can’t Stop Doing These 10 Things, You’re Not Ready To Get Married
– LikeLoveQuotes.com
Your parents are pestering you to get married, most of your friends have got married. You wonder whether you are ready to tie the nuptial knot. Will you be able to handle more responsibilities? Is it too early? Too late?
Here are the list of those 10 things:
1. You are not sure about sharing a life with your partner
The person whom you are about to get married to could be someone your parents have chosen for you or it could be someone you fell in love with. Marriage is a big decision and it involves spending and sharing your entire life with one person. You may feel that you are not sufficiently compatible with your partner or some other reason that makes you believe you are that person is not the right one for you. [ Check out: 25 Things Guys Do That Girls Actually Love and Hate ]
1. You don’t trust your partner
Your life partner should be someone whom you trust implicitly. You should not have any reservations or doubt about your partner. If you have trust issues, then you should resolve them first and get married. Talk to your partner about your concerns and the things that bother you. If your partner manages to put all your doubts at rest, then you can be sure of getting married to that person. If that doesn’t happen, wait for the right person to come along.
1. You don’t get along well your future in-laws
After getting married to a person, you become a part of his/her family. His/ her family becomes your family and vice-versa. If you have some differences with your in-laws, try to work on those and settle all your differences before you get married. There might be a conflict of interest or clash of ideologies. Whatever the case may be, wait for things to get sorted before you take the plunge. Remember, things will get only worse after marriage. [ Also read: 7 Best Ways To Easily Impress Girls ]
1. You don’t like sharing
You are very possessive about your belongings and do not like sharing anything that you own. When you shudder at the thought of somebody laying his hands on your stuff, how will you share a life with a person? Sharing a life also means making compromises and calls for certain sacrifices. After getting married, you might have to let go of some things dear to you and make way for a few things that your partner brings along.
1. You are commitment phobic
You are scared to commitments. You don’t make promises as you fear you won’t be able to fulfill them. A marriage cannot last without commitment. You have to make certain commitments and honor them. If you feel you won’t be able to live up to any commitment, then steer clear of marriage. [ Read: Commitment Maniac: Signs To Tell For Sure]
1. You are a loner
You are someone who does not share any aspect of his life even with his closest friends. You remain detached from your surroundings and are happy being alone. After marriage, your spouse will expect you to spend some time with him/ her and give him/her the required attention. If you fail to do that and remain aloof, the marriage won’t last long.
1. You are a narcissist
How will a person, who loves himself more than anything or anyone in the world, keep his/her spouse happy? If you are a narcissist, you would your marriage, which requires commitment, sacrifice and love, will stand the test of time? Unless you bring out some changes in yourself and stop being selfish, stay away from marriage. [ Read: 12 Signs You’re Being Selfish in the Relationship]
1. You want to remain a free bird
You do things at your own will and are not hate to be bound by any responsibilities, obligations and liabilities. With marriage come responsibilities and responsibilities are bound to limit you in certain ways and curb your freedom. If you can’t let anyone dictate certain choices and actions in your life, then you are not ready for a long term alliance.
1. You lie
You are not honest with your partner and feel the need to lie about certain things. Whether your lies have some consequences or not, there is nothing that justifies your action. If you can’t live up to the faith that your partner has entrusted you with, why do you want to get married and hurt her? You might lie because you are not comfortable talking to your partner about certain things. Whatever the reason, being dishonest with your partner is a strong indication that you should not get in to it right now. [ Read here: Read Why We Should Not Force Love And Give It Time ]
1. You want to remain single
Nobody, except you, should have a say in whether you should get married or not. It’s your prerogative and nobody has a right to question your decision. If you think you are not ready for marriage and want some more time, then it’s perfectly fine. Equally fine would be your decision to stay unmarried all your life. Marriage is serious business and if you don’t want o get married for some reason it’s completely alright.
A lot of people get into marriages because of pressures and end up getting divorced. Get married only if you are sure about it and not because somebody asks or forces you to. It’s your life and nobody else has a say in it. | <urn:uuid:b513a859-16fb-41d9-a90a-f31fda69374c> | http://likelovequotes.com/you-are-not-ready-to-get-married/ | en | 0.95437 | 0.144464 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Kip Winger would like to remix the first two Winger albums and make them more like ‘Pull’
Winger frontman Kip Winger was recently interviewed by and spoke about the third Winger record Pull and remixing the first two Winger albums.
kip-winger-photoKip Winger stated as follows about Pull: …That was a great album. In many ways that was the birth of the band because the first two records were the outcome of the relationship I had with Beau Hill; the producer. That was a 10-year relationship. There were things that happened on the first couple of records that were absolutely fantastic. But there were also some things in there that didn’t quite represent who we were as a band. When the third album came and I was able to work with a couple of different people, I was able to refocus the sound of the band back to what I originally hoped for in the beginning. Add to that the fact that we were better as songwriters, better as lyricists…it was kinda like the perfect storm for us. Also, we had some really bad press at the time and the pressure was really on so we had a lot to prove. So all those things kinda found a way into the album and made it what it is.”
With respect to the first two albums, Kip Winger stated: “If I remixed the first two albums…more guitar-heavy and in the same way as we did the third album, they’d be a lot more similar.” When asked if he had something in mind in that regard, Kip Winger replied: “I’d love to remix the first two albums. But I don’t have much time…I will do it when I am dead and gone so…(laughs).”
Kip Winger also commented on the impact that Mike Shipley had on the Pull album: “The relationship between us and Beau Hill compared to the one that we had with Mike Shipley was totally different. My role in making those records was very much the same. I had been working with Beau Hill since I was 16 years old so I knew all the stuff that was needed to prepare that first album. 90% it was finished by the time we went into the studio on the first and on the second album. ..and the third album. Cause I make these very detailed demos that you can actually here on the “Demo Anthology”. The first two albums were the end of a relationship and the third album was the beginning of another relationship. Mike Shipley’s role was huge…primarily in the way we recorded the album because he was…God rest his soul…he was very detailed in how we recorded and his ear was very attuned to down to the millisecond. If you were going too fast or too slow he could immediately point it down…very small time changes. When we went into the studio I couldn’t hear it! He used to tell me: “listen to that! Can’t you hear that?”. And all of a sudden, it was like….boom! So he was very instrumental in taking my ability of hearing to another level. And his mixing was…there’s never been a better mixer/engineer than Mike Shipley! I worked with him on two albums: “Pull” and my first solo album (“This Conversation Seems Like A Dream”). In my mind he was Vincent Van Gogh of mixing! There was nobody better.”
You can read the rest of the interview at
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Wednesday, February 22, 2012
The Coming Middle-Class Anarchy
1. I have also said Fuckit. I don't pay credit cards and have defaulted on all cards. They take me to court to find out they sold my debt. I start asking where is my paperwork. They have no paper trail. I win the law suit with prejudice once I show how the interest scam is rigged and prove they violated loansharking-Rico act.
2. I would assume going in the couple found the mortgage an acceptable trade for the lifestyle they wanted. Now that the paper value of the home has dropped they want a bailout. Why, were they planning on flipping the place for a huge profit down the road? I thought they wanted a golf course home, which they have.
Sounds like they are all about Private Gain at Public Risk. Shall we start demanding refunds for losing lotto tickets? Do explain how that would be any differnt?
3. We had the same mess. We were fortunate enough to do a "buy and fly". Bought a lesser expensive house, moved in and told the bank they could have the old house and the mortgage that went with it. Credit scores went down a little and we did not have to worry about it anyway. Going to stop payment on credit cards next and am prepared to do cash transactions for a few years. Screw the banks.
Everyone is encouraged to participate with civilized comments. | <urn:uuid:74ba252c-07f6-48ff-be63-93892ade32a5> | http://thecomingdepression.blogspot.com/2012/02/coming-middle-class-anarchy.html | en | 0.982395 | 0.155039 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Yankee Candle in Rotterdam Square, New York
Yankee Candle is located in Rotterdam Square, New York, city Schenectady. Yankee Candle info: address, gps, map, location, direction planner, opening hours, phone number.
Mall name:
Rotterdam Square
New York
Phone number to Rotterdam Square mall
518 374 3713
Hours (mall)
Driving directions
GPS: 42.810011, -73.988264
Looking for another location of Yankee Candle Co. store?
Interested in other stores in Rotterdam Square?
Go to Rotterdam Square mall
Search other Yankee Candle Co. location:
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InFocus 7210 DLP Projector HT Labs Measures
HT Labs Measures: InFocus 7210 DLP Projector
Full-On/Full-Off Contrast Ratio-1423:1; ANSI Contrast Ratio-419:1
Measured Resolution with the Leader LT-446:
480: 470 (per picture height)
720p/1080i: out to the limits of the 1280 by 720 chip
Measured Color Points:
Red Color Point: x = 0.655, y = 0.328
Green Color Point: x = 0.335, y = 0.572
Blue Color Point: x = 0.149, y = 0.072
The left chart shows the 7120's gray scale relative to its color temperature at various levels of intensity, or brightness (20 IRE is dark gray; 100 IRE is bright white). The gray scale as set by the factory, in the 6500 color-temperature mode, measures slightly warm across the gray-scale range. After making adjustments using the Photo Research PR-650, the gray scale measures within 99 Kelvin of D6500, the accurate color temperature, across the entire range, though the darkest images are slightly warmer.
The right chart shows the gray scale (or color temperature) relative to the color points of the display's red, green, and blue color-filter-wheel segments. Blue is accurate, red is oversaturated. Green is very under saturated and yellowish green.
Using a full-field 100-IRE white (25.62 foot-lamberts) and a full-field 0-IRE black (0.018 ft-L), the contrast ratio was 1423:1. Using a 16-box checkerboard pattern (ANSI contrast), the contrast ratio was 419:1. The best contrast ratio was achieved with the high power setting off. The brightest image was achieved with the high power setting on and produced 28.91 ft-L with a 100-IRE window (on an 87-inch-wide, 1.0-gain Da-Lite Da-Mat screen). In this mode the contrast ratio was still 1,378:1—GM
(800) 294-6400 | <urn:uuid:717ee123-b10b-4e28-8c3e-79384dbbef51> | http://www.soundandvision.com/content/infocus-7210-dlp-projector-ht-labs-measures | en | 0.880044 | 0.019391 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Superhero Sprint 5K Costume Ideas
Costumes are not required, but we hear they make you run faster! Here are some SUPER costume ideas: Make your own cape using an old bath towel, plastic or cloth tablecloth Design your own superhero logo and decorate your outfit using duct tape, fabric markers, or iron-on letters Create your own facemask out of foam, [...] | <urn:uuid:a8d61613-55ef-425d-9a1d-24a58af1712b> | https://www.familyservice.us/author/fservice/ | en | 0.796445 | 0.029206 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Saturday, November 5, 2011
It'sTime For The National Guard To Bust Some Skulls
The First Amendment does not guarantee the right to commit rape.
The First Amendment does not guarantee the right to deal dope.
The First Amendment does not guarantee the right to steal.
The First Amendment does not guarantee the right to trash a Whole Foods store.
The First Amendment does not guarantee the right to "occupy" a public place.
I'm going to say something that some may find controversial. I'm going to say something that should have been said weeks ago. I'm going to say what needs to be said about the "Occupy Wall Street" barbarians, consequences be damned, criticism be damned.
It's time for the National Guard to come in and bust some skulls.
Let me repeat that so there is no misunderstanding:
I know, I know. I'm a reactionary. I'm an old fart. Blah, blah, blah, 2+2=5, yadda, yadda, yadda, I'm a Zionist tool of the Federal Reserve, yeah, yeah, I got it.
See folks, the truth of the matter is this: the "Occupy" movement is NOT a political protest in any way, shape, or form. It's a civil disturbance. It may be the slowest populist riot in world history, but it's a riot nonetheless. The "Occupy Wall Street" protests must be shut down. Obviously, peacefully shutting down the protests is preferable, but if that's not possible, force should be used. (Whether liberals like Chairman Obama and Ron Paul like it or not.)
I know there will be some who will say I'm playing partisan games. After all, I'm a Constitutional Conservative Patriot and the bottom feeders in the "Occupy" movement are leftist piles of human debris. That's not the case at all. I'm not saying the "Occupy" movement should be stopped because of their beliefs. (Most of them are too stoned to know why they're there in the first place.) Communists, anarchists, and Nazis have held rallies in the US for decades and have never gained any traction since the US is a center-right Conservative country. I have no fear of these morons spreading propaganda or influencing the 2012 election. America has been down this road many times. There was the Socialist and anarchist movements in the late 1800's and early 1900's. There was the Communist Movement in the 1930's. There were the Nazi Bundists in the 1940's. The Weather Underground, led by Chairman Obama's ghost writer Bill Ayers, created all kinds of Marxist-Leninist havoc in the 1960's and early 1970's. None of these movements gained steam back then, just like the "Occupy" twits won't gain any now. Their beliefs don't bother me.
Their actions do.
From the "official" Occupy Wall Street website:
"Sign up for the eviction defense text blast!
Send a text to the number 23559, with the the message @occupyalert
This will be used for emergency alerts and announcements.
Three weeks ago NYPD delivered what was effectively a notice of eviction, telling residents of Liberty Square that Brookfield, with the help of the city, was going to clean the park. Instead, #OWS mobilized, organizing a mass clean up, mobilizing thousands of supporters, and flooding the mayors office with phone calls. An amazing pre-dawn defense packed the square with thousands of people. Brookfield stood down and the eviction was averted.
Today rumors are rampant that the city is again considering action to end the occupation. Labor leaders, local elected officials, and news outlets are hearing the rumblings of eviction. We know that when the next eviction attempt comes, we will not get advanced warning. NYPD could move in as early as tonight, or it could be next week. We know that our adversaries are trying to build political cover for eviction by demonizing us in the press.
We need to be ready to defend the occupation. Be prepared!"
Do the "Occupy" rodents own Zuccotti Park ? No. Are these animals paying rent to the Brookfield company for the use of its land ? No. Is the "Occupy" bowel movement paying its "fair share" of taxes to the New York Collective ? (There are reports that it has received over $500,000 in donations.) No. Is the "Occupy" mob paying taxes to the Federal Leviathan ? No. What gives them the right to police their own, like they supposedly did after the sexual assaults and thefts in Cleveland and Wall Street ? Nothing. What gives them the right to deal dope and do it right on the street ? No law I'm aware of. What gives these waste-oids the right to riot the way they did in Oakland ? Nada. What gives the "Occupy" movement the right to create its own society within society ?
The "Occupy" movement doesn't have the right to do any of these things, just like I don't have the right to do any of them. They're crimes. The First Amendment doesn't guarantee the right to do any of these things, either. Either we're a society of law and order or we're not. Individuals can't just grant themselves rights and then act accordingly. Our rights are granted by our Creator (regardless of what the criminals at the ACLU think) not by man. The moment we start thinking otherwise, our society will decay even more than it already has.
The solution to this is very simple. The governors of the states with "Occupy" movements should make a statement that states the wastes of skin have 24 hours to pack up and go home. If this reasonable demand is not met, the governors should use the National Guard to remove them, using force if necessary. The imaginary rights the "Occupy" gang have given themselves don't matter. What matters are the actual rights of the citizens who live the cities where the "Occupy" protests sprang up. The actual rights are the ones being violated by the Occupy fascists and the governments of these states must respond.
"If some 'pacifist' society renounced the use of retaliatory use of force, it would be left helplessly at the mercy of the first thug who decided to be immoral. Such a society would achieve the opposite of its intention: instead of abolishing evil, it would encourage and reward it."
Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness
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Elite Daily
Texting Is Pointless, Let's Get Over It
It's no secret that Generation-Y has an addiction to technology, especially texting. Everywhere you go, you will see someone on their cell phone, most likely absorbed in a conversation they are having through text messaging.
The problem with this is that this addiction to the written word seems to be dwarfing kids' abilities to have face-to-face interaction with people. Today's youth is growing up with texting, unlike older generations that grew up with just house phones or having to actually ride a bicycle or drive to their friends' houses in order to see or talk to them.
Our parents had to have face-to-face or phone conversations if they wanted to know anything that was happening with their friends. Now we have the comfort of checking our smart phones to stay in the loop without seeing anyone.
The first time I noticed this problem was before I left home for my freshman year of college. My university organized a send-off party for the students and their parents from my area to meet and get to know each other before we left for school. I have always been talkative and outgoing, and I have been blessed with the same trait as my mother in that I can usually strike up a conversation with a stranger.
At the party, I started talking to a guy, John, and it started off with the usual pleasantries and exchange of information like name, hometown, major, and what dorm we were assigned. But even the simple exchange of that information felt like I was pulling teeth and eventually I resorted to speaking with his mother in order to get to know him. How ridiculous is that? No college student should have his or her parents speak for him or her.
I figured that John was just shy and that if I talked to other students it would be better. I was wrong. For every good conversation I had where the other person was able to hold his or her own against my ability to talk someone's ear off, there were two others where I actually started talking about the weather in order to avoid complete silence.
No matter where you are, you will see people texting, and many of them rely on texting as a means of communication and would not know how to have a conversation in person. The glory of texting for a lot of people is that they can take their time with answering the other person and really think through what they are going to say.
You can't wait ten minutes to answer a person's question when you are face-to-face without looking stupid. With texting however, you can make the excuse that you were in the middle of an activity that could not be interrupted by texting.
Being able to talk to someone face-to-face is an important life skill. How are you supposed to charm a boss in an interview if you're not used to conversing in real situations? No employer will hire someone that can't hold a conversation because they know that you'll have a hard time interacting with clients and other employees.
What about presentations and public speaking? If you have trouble speaking to someone one-on-one, how do you expect yourself to give a presentation to a class or conference room of coworkers? Being a good public speaker is an impressive quality that if attained will make you highly sought after, but first you have to get over the hurdle of maintaining a personal conversation with one person.
If working is no concern for you or you know that your job will never require you to give a presentation, what about making friends? People tend to not trust someone that doesn't talk much in a conversation because it seems as if they are not talking in order to hide something. If you don't offer anything to the conversation, then you can be perceived as lacking a personality, and let's be honest, who really wants a friend with no personality?
Texting also takes up time. The time that you use in order to text a friend could be used to do something much more productive, like actual work. Sure, its possible to multitask, but you're just taking important focus from details that could be overlooked if you try to text while working.
Personally, if I need to talk to someone I would rather pick up the phone and call them and get the conversation over with. A texting conversation could last all day, it's worse than playing phone tag. For those of you that don't know what phone tag is because you only text, ask your parents.
Obviously, there are plenty of people that can still be on their phones 24/7 and hold a perfectly pleasant conversation. Those people used to be the majority of the population, but as time goes on they are going to become the minority. Let's just nip it in the bud now and fuck texting, please.
Samantha | Elite.
Photo Credit; Getty Images
Ally Batista
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Statistically speaking, the lottery is an exciting way of separating you from your money. Except today in the United Kingdom. For the first time ever, playing the lottery is the mathematically sensible choice.
Lottery tickets in the UK are £2 per play. Usually the expected payoff on a ticket is 95p. In the long term, not only will you not win the jackpot, but you’ll lose money.
But today is different. Thanks to Lotto rule changes in October, today has the largest jackpot in the country’s history and it must pay off tonight. Even if no one wins the jackpot—which is still statistically unlikely at 1 in 45 million—the pot will be distributed amongst those who got closest. That means the expected payoff is jumping to around £4.50, double the cost to play. Josh White, an economist at KPMG, explains:
“In mathematical terms, it’s a rare occurrence when the expected value from playing the lottery is higher than the cost of a ticket - statistically there has never been a better time to play!”
The unusual situation is due to changes in the Lotto rules last October. Lotto players now need to pick six numbers between 1 and 59, instead of the previous range of 1 in 49. With longer odds against winning the jackpot, it slowly grew as the unclaimed prize rolled over.
This is where the second rule change comes in. Once the prize is over £50 million, it must be distributed. At £58 million, today’s prize is being distributed one way or another. If no one wins the jackpot with all six balls, it will be distributed amongst people who got most of the numbers. Anyone with five balls plus the bonus has 1 in 7.5 million odds of winning tonight. If that’s also unclaimed, the prize is distributed amongst the 1 in 144,000 people who have five matching balls. The odds are so good that even my old roommate, and economist in the UK, is buying a lottery ticket for the third time in his entire life.
This isn’t unexpected: Lottery operators reworked the game last year with a simple objective: which rules would increase the number of new millionaires each week? Doing that was simple—make a raffle where a million-pound prize is awarded each lottery draw. But a guarantee of two million-pound prizes each week meant that the odds on everything else needed to change.
The important part is that the prize payout ratio hasn’t changed. The odds on winning the jackpot are longer, and the rollovers mean the jackpots are growing bigger. But at the same time, more smaller prizes are being handed out more often. The backend behind the details required intense game theory to understand the different possible outcomes. Although unlikely, this situation was anticipated under the new rules.
The exact expected payoff will depend on how many people play. If it’s the average number of lotto players, the expected payoff will be £4.50. If it’s more players, like the numbers that turned out for Wednesday’s draw, that drops to £3.20. But Adam Rivers, also with KPMG, explains it’d take Lotto fever to drop that payoff below the ticket price:
“You’d need close to all 50 million eligible people in the UK to purchase at least one ticket in order for the expected value to go below the £2 purchase price – pretty unlikely, and a big queue at the newsagents!”
All this does hold a little white lie: the expected payoff only happens in the long run. Yet this is a one-time-only special circumstance. Next week, the Lotto return to normal as the jackpot resets, and gamblers can expect to get back just 92p for every ticket they buy.
The draw is at 9:55pm local time, so time is running out to buy a ticket.
Update: After a surge in ticket sales (up to 400 per second in the final hours), the jackpot grew to £66 million. Two winners matched all six balls and will split the prize.
[The Guardian]
Image credit: Nando Machado / Shuttershock
Correction: An earlier version of this article stated fewer people were playing the lottery under the new rules, leading to fewer jackpot wins. Instead, the same numbers played but odds against winning the jackpot increased. Our apologies for mixing causes to the same end result!
Contact the author at or follow her at @MikaMcKinnon. | <urn:uuid:4cd18f3e-3cf0-4e73-a9d8-302f223afb05> | http://gizmodo.com/math-says-play-the-uk-lottery-today-1752008134?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gizmodo%2Ffull+%28Gizmodo%29 | en | 0.955088 | 0.021948 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Monday, December 23, 2013
Where have all the Modern Orthodox teachers gone?
I am often asked why MO schools have charedim as rabbeim and not MO rabbis. To put it another way, as Rabbi Riskin and Rabbi Lamm asked, why aren't there more MO mechanchim.
I'll answer with the story of my closest friend. Ari is a doctor. He is a ben-Torah in the best sense of the term. He's honest, modest and caring. He's serious about learning. So much so that he took off time from med school to learn. He's a talmid chacham, and a better thinker in Torah than I am. Like myself, Ari was an advisor in NCSY. He was well liked by the kids, and liked them. He's funny and personable. In short, he would have been an amazing mechanech.
So why did he not take that path? I can't say for sure, but I can offer some possibilities. Despite coming from a frum MO family, I doubt his parents ever encouraged him to take that route. Knowing the challenges that such a choice would entail, they might even have discouraged him had he asked.
Though Ari did not grow up rich, he was comfortable enough. Someone who grows up that way does not easily embrace a lifestyle that involves financial hardship.
Unlike his charedi peers, Ari's secular education left him with many choices professionally.
He grew up in a world where frum bal habos, is not only not an oxymoron, but a respected l'chatchila choice.
Or maybe he just wanted to be a doctor.
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The Process
Process- Forming and Bisquing
All Zyra-ware starts as measured powders and water mixed together from a formula and turned into smooth white clay in a large vat. The clay is then put through a pugmill, which suctions out all the air and compresses it into a log, ready for me to weigh out and then “throw” or “turn” on the potters wheel.
Once the pots are formed they are allowed to dry to what’s called “leather-hard”; that is, stiff, but still malleable. At this stage, the pots are turned over and re-centered on the wheel so the foot can be trimmed. It’s also at this stage that I would do any carving or add handles.
When complete, the work is allowed to dry fully (“bone dry”) before it’s loaded into my kiln and fired for the first time to a “low” temperature (about 1800 degrees) also known as the “bisque” firing. This is necessary so the pots won’t break or lose their shape during the glazing process.
Process- Glazing
Glazes are essentially a mixture of glass formers, clay fillers, colorants and water. When fired, they provide a finish for the pot, giving it color and texture and making it usable as a vessel.
I mix my own glazes, which allows me to experiment and come up with just the colors I want to complement each other and create a cohesive line.
The glaze process for Zyra-ware takes a couple of days. Glaze in liquid form is poured into the bisqued pot and dumped out again, leaving a thin coating on the inside. The pot then needs to dry overnight before I can continue.
The outside of the pot is dipped into three different glazes, starting with the bottom or “main” color, then the ochre yellow and finally the top section which essentially acts like an overflow from the inside.
After clean up, I load them into the kiln for the final firing, this time to about 2000 degrees. When the layers melt together in the kiln the overlap gives the pieces their interesting, landscaped effect.
Once cooled, my mugs, bowls and plates are ready for your table.
Home| About Zyra Clay Studio | Bowls | Mugs | Plates | The Process | Shipping | Where to Find Zyra Clay Pottery | Contact Zyra Studio | <urn:uuid:5b2cc78f-f58f-4573-9932-4d5c534a7f87> | http://www.zyraclay.com/process.htm | en | 0.940733 | 0.108218 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Reader comments
On Simons' Saturday Column: Obama’s decision on war important and complex
Keith 3 years, 6 months ago
' "Some highly partisan Americans will" suggest the president is so consumed with raw politics that a good deal of his thinking is colored by what is best for him and his administration in the eyes of voters.'
You can just say "I", it makes the sentence shorter and clearer.
Keith 3 years, 6 months ago
"Reagan served in the Air Force and Bush “43” was in the Texas Air National Guard"
Comedy served up in an editorial, how droll.
elliottaw 3 years, 6 months ago
The United States has formally declared war against foreign nations five separate times, each upon prior request by the President of the United States. .........On at least 125 occasions, the President has acted without prior express military authorization from Congress.[16] These include instances in which the United States fought in the Philippine-American War from 1898–1903, in Nicaragua in 1927, as well as the NATO bombing campaign of Yugoslavia in 1999.
voevoda 3 years, 6 months ago
fmrl, Your reference to "the CIA/Mossad" suggests that you are propounding the untrue theory that there is a secret Jewish conspiracy to destroy the world. I certainly hope that you would not endorse such anti-Semitic nonsense.
yourworstnightmare 3 years, 6 months ago
Aside from the partisan nonsense in this piece (e.g. "community organizer"), Mr. Simons generally sums up the situation well.
Congress should most definitely be involved in this decision, and I would argue should vote on any resolution that the President puts forth. Unfortunately, the last 30 years have seen a consolidation of presidential power especially with regard to military actions, most evident in the Cheney/Rumsfeld years.
Congress should issue a bipartisan request to vote on any resolution about military action, because we are not immediately threatened by Syria. However, the President has precedence to act alone in this matter. I hope he seeks Congressional advice and approval, but I fear he won't.
In the past 30 years, the job of Commander in Chief has been consolidated away from Congress, and thus presidents are free to (or are forced to) act without Congress.
The president and the administration should argue their case, but at the end of the day, Congress should vote as to whether the President executes his plan.
rtwngr 3 years, 6 months ago
Community organizer is a major part of a very small resume that is Barack Hussein Obama. Other than that he taught at a college and was a senator at the state and national level. He had no experience in international affairs. He has never run a business or made a payroll. He was never the executive over any other government entity until being elected president. The left could not have elected a man less qualified.
parrothead8 3 years, 6 months ago
And yet the country is in better shape now than when we elected him. Amazing.
Trumbull 3 years, 6 months ago
I don't like the gridlock we have been getting from congress lately. But I'll take it in this instance. A retaliation strike is no good and will make matters worse. It will complicate matters. Getting involved in a civil war is not good and the US has failed at intervention repeatedly.
All we should do is aggressively strive for a diplomatic solution and work this one through the UN.
kernal 3 years, 6 months ago
Putin has continually vetoed any intervention in Syria. Unless he agrees with sending UN troops into Syria, and it's doubtful he will since he is an ally of Assad's, the likelihood of UN troops is slim to none.
jack22 3 years, 6 months ago
No, Bush 43 was at a cocktail party in Texas during the Vietnam War, don't confuse him with a true Veteran who served his country during a time of war. His experience did not stop him rushing into war.
rtwngr 3 years, 6 months ago
Really? Was it the same party that ran the whole war? Did it float around officer housing or something?
Anyone that serves in the military, in any capacity, is part of a larger whole regardless of their respective role. To denigrate any person who has served in uniform is insulting to all who served in uniform for our country. I suggest you try it, it might give you a different perspective on what this country really means.
Gary Anderson 3 years, 6 months ago
"To denigrate any person who has served in uniform is insulting to all who served in uniform for our country"...Timothy McVeigh served...and so did I.
jack22 3 years, 6 months ago
It was the same party that ran away from the war. He was floating around in a raft in a swimming pool drinking a beer.
tomatogrower 3 years, 6 months ago
So rtwngr, you condemn those "swift boat" people who denigrated Kerry?
Carol Bowen 3 years, 6 months ago
If the U.S. does anything to Syria, we risk opening another can of worms. The whole area is unstable. Did we learn nothing when we took out Sadam Hussein? Iraq did not recover. Hostile groups are stronger. There's no telling what would happen with Syria, its allies, and its enemies. The only possible consideration would be our own bases in that region. Which is better? Attack Syria to protect our defenses or not attack Syria to protect our defenses?
James Minor 3 years, 6 months ago
The Syrian conflict is a difficult choice for America and we need to think carefully about getting into another conflict. We may think this is a bomb a few times and our job is done, but in past conflicts America had to spend money to rebuild that country. Since a majority of the UN chooses not to intervene America should do the same. What sense does it make to get involved in a civil conflict and a few years later the country does not want to be our friend? America has many problems at home and money spent in this conflict could be spent helping Americans at home. Unless there is serious risk to Homeland Security - America should sit this one out!
Armstrong 3 years, 6 months ago
There is no clear cut answer in this scenario. The facts are however our enemies are killing our enemies therefore the Middle East is killing itself off. Let them sort it out.
Stop_the_Madness 3 years, 6 months ago
I agree. It is non of our business and we have enough problems in the USA.
Paul R Getto 3 years, 6 months ago
Give peace a chance. Syria is a mess not of our own making.
James Minor 3 years, 6 months ago
This is a good time to force the UN to require countries to join together and engage in this conflict. If the UN won't do that then the US must stay out of the conflict. I am opposed to the use of gas on innocent people and agree with the President that this type of activity must be stopped. I am also opposed to America going at it alone. We must have other countries support, financially and physically, in order to show the world's dislike for this behavior. America can't save the world and in this case it may be best to let the conflict continue to show its ugly hand until the world says this is enough.
jayhawklawrence 3 years, 6 months ago
Mr. Simon offers nothing in this column. It is the same with the the current Republican Party.
The Middle East is a mess.
Charles L. Bloss, Jr. 3 years, 6 months ago
I dispute your statement that they are all honorable men. Obama is a liar, and his actions while in office have been far from honorable. So have those of his subordinates. Now we hear talk of arming the rebels, something that should have been done long, long ago. America cannot, and should not, be the world's policeman. In situations such as Syria, we should give the rebels, who are fighting the evil dictator, arms. That should be the extent of our involvement. It is not easy to watch people killed in a most hideous way by an evil dictator. We should not let it draw us into their conflict, beyond arming the rebels fighting the dictator.
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The Hooks service is responsible for creating pre-defined tasks in response to external events.
At the moment, it only supports creating tasks at particular times, but it will soon be expanded to support triggering tasks from arbitrary web hooks and/or pulse messages.
Using Hooks
Hooks are named with a hookGroupId and a hookId. The group IDs follow a pattern given in the namespaces document. The hookId is arbitrary, although it is a good idea to think carefully about the names and use long, hierarchical names.
The scopes available to a hook are given by a role. This allows separation of hook management from scope management, and the full generality of scope expansion. The role for a hook is named hook-id:<hookGroupId>/<hookId>. The role must include all of the scopes required to create the task, including queue:create-task:<provisionerId>/<workerType>.
The scopes actually used by the hook's task are, of course, defined in task.scopes, which must be satisfied by the hook's role. These need not include queue:create-task:<provisionerId>/<workerType> unless the task will be creating more tasks (for example, a decision task).
Hooks are not easy to manage directly, and exist far from the rest of the infrastructure for your project. Try to avoid embedding too much detail into the hook definition.
For simple work (for example, a periodic cache refresh), create a shell script in your code repository, and write a hook that will check out the latest source and run that script. Then any modifications to the cache-refresh process can be handled using your usual development processes, instead of an update in the hooks API.
For more complex purposes, invoke a decision task thad runs within a source checkout and draws the details of what to achieve out of that source checkout. | <urn:uuid:d074a7b3-c702-4a58-b4b2-d78ed911cddd> | https://docs.taskcluster.net/manual/integrations/hooks | en | 0.870812 | 0.062395 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Ethics for IT Professionals/What Is Ethics
< Ethics for IT Professionals
What is Ethics, Morals and LawsEdit
According to Dickson (2014, Rundu Campus), ethics are a set of moral principles that govern a persons' or groups' behavior. Someone is considered to be behaving ethically if they conform to generally accepted practices of the society or group making that consideration. Most ethically acceptable practices are almost universal across human cultures, and are increasingly so due to globalization and cultural hegemony. For example, using animals in research, abortion, or using cookies to track software, where organizations are able to gather users information to track their search behavior and their buying patterns on the Internet are all found with similar ethical and moral debates in various states. Furthermore, while these topics remain open to debate in their nuances, they are intrinsically seen as amoral and ultimately unnecessary and avoidable. Each society retains a set of rules that sets the boundaries for accepted behavior, these rules often expressed in statements about how one ought to behave. These statements come together to form a moral code by which a member of a society lives by. Morals are those ideas defining what is right, and wrong, and these ideas can sometimes come into conflict.
Dickson (October 19, 2013) also states that one's behavior (morals) follows a set of shared values (manners) within a society, and contributes to the stability of that society. Everyone operates by their own individual moral code, acting with integrity towards that code. Laws, on the other hand, are a system of rules that a society strictly imposes, and enforces. Laws aim to be more well defined than morals, so as to be limited to interpretation, and defendable in practice. States enforce their laws through institutions such as law enforcement, whereas morals are enforced typically by passive interactions by an individual, or group. For example, the moral code of a club may be enforced by excluding from participation those who do not abide the code. While a society's moral code often forms the base for its legal systems, a given law may or may not abide by an individual's moral code, or by the ethical considerations of a society. It is a process that is dependent not only on the legislation itself, but also the legislator and the participation/representation of the citizen's moral values.
Ethics is also most commonly defined as the norms of conduct that distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable behavior [1]. Most individuals learn ethics through social activities and institutions, such as at home, school and church. As children, we are taught by our parents/guardians what is 'right', and 'wrong'. We gain a more finely tuned understanding as we age, as moral development further occurs as we mature. Although morality is not to be confused with commonsense, ethical norms are often so ubiquitous that one is tempted to assume they unanimous across cultures.
Ethical theoryEdit
While ethics defines the practice, Ethical Theory aims to not only generalize and sublimate ethical considerations but to think ahead, to be a continual process of reflection that provides different procedures and categories to determine what is ethically relevant to specific situations, and to project into the future considerations and precautions regarding ethics.
Ethical RelativismEdit
Ethical Relativism is the theory that an ethical viewpoint can be specific to a given society. In particular, this acknowledges that what may be considered the norm in one culture, is out of the ordinary in another. Morality is therefore relative to the norm of one's culture. As anthropologist Ruth Benedict illustrates in Patterns of Culture, diversity is evident even on those matters of morality where we would expect to agree: "We might suppose that in the matter of taking life all peoples would agree on condemnation. On the contrary, in the matter of homicide, it may be held that one kills by custom his two children, or that a husband has a right of life and death over his wife or that it is the duty of the child to kill his parents before they are old. It may be the case that those are killed who steal fowl, or who cut their upper teeth first, or who are born on Wednesday. Among some peoples, a person suffers torment at having caused an accidental death, among others, it is a matter of no consequence." [2]
According to ethical relativism, there are no universal moral standards--standards that can be applied to all people at all times. The only moral standards that can judge a society's practices are its own. If ethical relativism is correct, there can be no universal framework for resolving moral disputes, or agreement on ethical matters between members of different societies.
Most ethicists reject ethical relativism: some claim while moral practices of societies may differ, the fundamentals of the moral principals underlying these practices do not. For instance, in some societies, killing one's parents after they reach a certain age was common practice, stemming from the belief that they were better off in the afterlife if they entered it still vigorous and able. While in modern societies this practice is condemned, we would agree with this practice on the underlying moral principle--the duty to care for parents. Therefore, while societies may not agree on their application of moral principles, they may agree on the principles themselves. It is also argued that some moral beliefs are culturally relative while others are not. Certain practices may be dependent on the local customs, such as the definitions of decency and proper attire. Others may be governed by more universal standards, such as slavery and the defense of the innocent.
Ethics is an inquiry between right and wrong through a critical examination of the reasons underlying practices and beliefs. As a theory for justifying moral practices and beliefs, ethical relativism fails to recognize some societies have better reasons for holding their views than others. But, even if the theory is rejected, we must acknowledge that the concept raised important issues, and encouraged us to take a look at the other societies beliefs and cultures.[3]
Subjectivism is an extension of relativism, as applied to individuals rather than societies. The moral interpretation of a practice or event is based on the personal perspective of the individual analyzing it. In other words, the judgment of an event is dependent on the individual doing the judging.
Something is objective when it is independent of any individual's personal beliefs. It is, in other words, a fact of the universe, separate from human beliefs -- such as the weight of an object. This forms the basis for moral realism: The idea that ethics and morals are not invented, but rather discovered over time. Ethicists typically try to maintain objectivity in their analysis, stressing that it does not matter who the person is, or what they choose to do; rather, they try to determine what the person should do, or what their decision ought to be.
Ethics Within BusinessEdit
Enron Complex
The corporate world has begun promoting ethics in the work place after major corporate scandals like Worldcom,[4], Tyco [5] and Enron. [6] To regain credibility amongst the public, many companies have created positions such as Corporate Ethics Officer and Corporate Compliance Officer, who ensure ethical procedures are created and adhered to by everyone within the organization. This decision may help the company gain goodwill and favorable publicity, and protect the organization from legal action, and foster ethical practices within the organization, or it may simply be a public relations scheme to elude the public and avoid legislative interference forcing the company to comply to specific regulations.
Reading International Business Park - - 182264
Ethics has become increasingly more important in the business world as each day, the risk of inappropriate behavior by employees and board members increases. Many companies today are expanding internationally, into different cultures and societal environments, making business operations increasingly complex [7]. Many companies have begun to explore why employees would behave unethically.
There are many reasons to have good business ethics, like gaining the goodwill of the community, creating a consistent company image, protecting the company and its employees from legal actions, etc. All companies want their businesses to grow, and to do that, they have to build trust throughout the organization. Organizations have their own values, culture, and approach to be stable in the business world. In order to become and remain successful in business, companies’ ethical policies play a great part in keeping everyone aligned on the same path.
There are a lot of employees at larger companies that have been involved in unethical behavior. For example, in 2005, HP chairperson Patricia Dunn had to hire detectives to investigate HP board members for leaking long-term company strategies to the media. [8] Investigators used phone records and Social Security numbers to get access to all of the phone records of the board members. When this happens in a company, the board members will lose trust in one another, customers will have trouble trusting the company, and even the employees will have problems trusting their employer [7].
Corporate PoliciesEdit
In order to combat the recent corporate scandals and protect the companies reputation, companies have begun to form more comprehensive corporate policies concerning ethics. These policies generally offer guidance to employees as well as serving as a reminder of a company's expectations. In order to be employed, companies may require employees to sign a contract stating they will follow the procedures stated within the handbook.
As it has been shown that establishing a code of ethics is not necessarily sufficient to promoting ethics in the workplace, more long-term actions must be taken at the corporate level. Continuous communication of a company's ethics policy is crucial to ensure that it is embedded throughout the company's culture. Organizing awareness campaigns is a way of communicating these policies to a company's employees while simultaneously engaging those employees. However, although this method is practiced by some companies, a more commonly used method is training. This method, while also interactive with its employees, ensures the exploration and discussion of ethical issues within a company, thereby reinforcing the company's ethical policies.
Once the ethics of a company has been established and continuously reinforced, implementation becomes crucial. Creating an atmosphere and culture of open communication ensures the application of the ethical values within a company. Likewise, this type of corporate environment also ensures the report of misconduct, especially with the use of effective speak-up arrangements that any individual in contact with a company can have access to. When a multitude of methods and measures have been taken and used, taking serious action against the violation of these policies then becomes a fully justified measure, as all actions have been taken to create awareness surrounding these policies.
IT EthicsEdit
In order to promote ethical behavior we must also lay the ground work by promoting technological literacy. This book will discuss the issues that are related to ownership, access, privacy, community and security, the areas that are open to ethical dilemmas in the world of information technology and are increasingly becoming prevalent on society.
Computer EthicsEdit
Computer ethics can be considered the ethical considerations regarding the social impact of computer technology. It involves the formulation as well as the justification of the ethical policies for the use of the computer technology. It is not one sided - it takes both the personal impact and the social impact into account for the policies.
This brings about the idea that things should be conceptualized before creating a policy for ethics. In this way, the specific details can be worked out so that there will be no confusion. Computer Ethics takes into account the relationships between conceptualizations, facts, values, and different policies that deal with constantly changing technology.
Because of the ever changing computing technologies, computer ethics can not be a static set of rules. It requires constant reflection about new policies and their implications and to be able to shift with our values. Computer ethics should encompass both conceptualizations that help people understand things, and also policies for using the computer technology ethically.
1. Resnick; D.B.. "What is Ethics in Research & Why is it Important?". National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Retrieved April 25, 2016.
2. Ruth Benedict (1934). Patterns of Culture. Mariner Books.
3. Velasquez, etc. (1992). "Ethical Relativism". Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Retrieved April 25, 2016.
4. Simon Romero, Riva D. Atlas (July 22, 2002). "WORLDCOM'S COLLAPSE - THE OVERVIEW - WORLDCOM FILES FOR BANKRUPTCY - LARGEST U.S. CASE". Retrieved April 26, 2016.
5. "Timeline of the Tyco International scandal". 2005-6-17. Retrieved April 26, 2016.
6. "Enron scandal at-a-glance". August 22, 2002. Retrieved April 26, 2016.
7. a b Reynolds, George (2014). Ethics in information technology. Australia: Cengage Learning. ISBN 1-285-19715-1.
8. The comprehensive story of HP spying scandal along with critical discussion on involving corporate governance and ethical issues is available at Davani, Faraz (August 14, 2011). "HP Pretexting Scandal by Faraz Davani". Scribd. Retrieved 2011-08-15.
• An Overview of Ethics. (n.d.).
• Resnick, D. B. (n.d). What is Ethics in Research & Why is it Important? Retrieved April 25, 2016, from
• Valesquez, M. (n.d.). Ethical Relativism. Retrieved April 25, 2016, from
• Graham, G. (2004). Eight theories of ethics. London: Routledge/Taylor and Francis Group.
• OBJECTIVITY, SUBJECTIVITY AND MORAL VIEWS. (n.d.). Retrieved April 19, 2016
• ETHICS FOR I.T. PROFESSIONALS WITH ASPECTS IN COMPUTING by Charlemagne G. Lavina, Melchor G. Erise, Corazon B. Rebong, Susan S. Caluya (MINDSHAPERS CO.,INC. 61 Muralla St., Intramuros, Manila, Philippines)
• Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 1933
• Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), 1984 & 1994
• Computer Security Act, 1987
• Privacy Act, 1974
• Electronic Communications Privacy Act
• Communications Decency Act, 1995
• Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act, (HIPAA) 1996
• Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002
• Homeland Security Act of 2002 with the Cyber Security Enhancement Act
• Moor, James H. "WHAT IS COMPUTER ETHICS?*."
• Barman, T., & White, S. (2014, June 13). Implementing an effective corporate ethics policy. Retrieved April 26, 2016, from
• Reynolds, George Walter. Ethics in Information Technology. Boston, MA: Course Technology, 2003. Print. | <urn:uuid:8360d310-61d8-4e26-892d-74d97aaf8f07> | https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ethics_for_IT_Professionals/What_Is_Ethics | en | 0.939601 | 0.043727 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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Find more Leiblum relatives and grow your tree by exploring billions of historical records. Taken every decade since 1790, the U.S. Federal Census can tell you a lot about your family. For example, from 1930 to 1940 there were 1 less person named Leiblum in the United States — and some of them are likely related to you.
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What if you had a window into the history of your family? With historical records, you do. From home life to career, records help bring your relatives' experiences into focus. There were 8 people named Leiblum in the 1930 U.S. Census. In 1940, there were 12% less people named Leiblum in the United States. What was life like for them?
Picture the past for your ancestors.
In 1940, 7 people named Leiblum were living in the United States. In a snapshot:
• 3 were children
• The average annual income was $955
• 43% were children
Learn where they came from and where they went.
As Leiblum families continued to grow, they left more tracks on the map:
• They most commonly lived in New York
• 62% were born in foreign countries
• Most immigrants originated from Poland
• 3 were first-generation Americans | <urn:uuid:593f87a4-1039-4c70-b80f-357cb8a2bf19> | https://www.ancestry.com/family-trees/leiblum | en | 0.988536 | 0.674516 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
I'm attempting to layout 2.2.x components using 3.x containers. This article implies that this should be possible by wrapping the 2.2.x components with a GXT 3 WidgetComponent:
While this works for simple cases, if a child widget is wrapped in a WidgetComponent more than once, an exception is thrown by Widget.removeFromParent() because WidgetComponent doesn't implement HasWidgets. The same thing would happen if you instantiated more than one GWT or GXT Composite type using the same widget instance.
This isn't a problem with GXT 2.2.x's WidgetComponent, since it invokes ComponentHelper.removeFromParent(), which explicitly checks if the parent type is a WidgetComponent.
Is there a way to work around this issue, or is it an oversight that needs to be fixed? | <urn:uuid:b3dc27ed-432e-4254-8c55-2cb1cf2abcfd> | https://www.sencha.com/forum/showthread.php?236802-Sizing-2.2.x-components-in-a-3.x-container-with-WidgetComponent&mode=hybrid | en | 0.847496 | 0.880943 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
How to Turn the President Into a Comedian in 5 Easy Steps
(Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images)
Presidents give hundreds of speeches every year on topics from the mundane to the consequential, but there are only a handful of times when they have to be funny - on purpose.
Saturday's White House Correspondents' Association dinner will be one of them when President Obama takes the podium at the annual event for the sixth time in his presidency.
His task: stepping out of his role as commander-in-chief, and adopting a new one: comedian in chief.
ABC News spoke to former White House Deputy Chief Speechwriter Jeff Shesol, who offered an inside look at what it was like to build a comedy routine for President Bill Clinton in the years when his relationship with the press was at its most contentious.
Clinton had returned to the United States and was set to deliver remarks at the correspondents' dinner in 1998, following an almost-suspiciously lengthy time overseas at the height of the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal.
"The press was starting to say he's just avoiding the United States," Shesol said. "So we did this riff that opened it where Clinton stands up and he acts like thinks he's in a foreign country."
"As you know I've been traveling to other lands quite a lot lately. And I just want to say what a pleasure it is for Hillary and me to be here in your country," Clinton said. "I've even tasted some of your… hamburgers. Quite tasty, sort of a meat sandwich."
Shesol had drawn up a speech with fellow writer Mark Katz that - at least for a few minutes in a room jam-packed with a bloodthirsty press - swapped contention with laughter.
"It was a way of acknowledging what was going on without getting yourself into deeper trouble," Shesol said. "Finding that line was always the challenge."
Step 1: The First Draft
For Shesol, the process of building a correspondents' dinner speech usually started inside of a Starbucks about 10 days before the event.
"Whereas for a big speech of any other time you might go in there and have a thorough conversation with the president beforehand," Shesol said. "This was a speech where he wasn't going to see it until you had a draft that was ready to go."
Recently released documents from the Clinton Administration have given an inside look at the process behind constructing the 1999 WHCD speech.
Formerly withheld Clinton Documents
In one section, the writers had Clinton take a jab at former dean of the White House press corps Helen Thomas when rumors were circulating that the press briefing room was set to be moved.
"She's still miffed about the last time the White House briefing room was moved - when the capital relocated to Washington from Philadelphia," Clinton joked.
On one of the drafts, a scribble from Shesol says "That's funny. That'll piss her off."
Step 2: Finding The Right Jokes
"The challenge was not simply writing a funny joke," Shesol told ABC News. "The challenge was finding jokes that were of the moment that were edgy enough to get a laugh, but not dangerous enough to get you into trouble."
According to Shesol, there was one cardinal rule that never really needed explanation.
"We were very clear that we were never going to make a joke that involved her [Lewinsky] at all," Shesol said. "But you also can't go and do one of these speeches and just pretend that none of this is happening."
The angle Shesol and Katz wound up choosing was a play on Clinton's impeachment by the U.S. House earlier that year. The Newseum had designated the story as #53 on its Top 100 news stories of the century.
"What's a guy have to do to make the top 50?" Clinton cracked. "I came in six places after the invention of plastic, for crying out loud. I don't recall 12 months of around-the-clock coverage of 'the miracle of plastic.'"
After the draft had been written up, Katz and Shesol would confer with several other aides and outside talent including Philip Rosenthal, the creator of Everybody Loves Raymond.
Step 3: Presidential Approval
Then it was on to the Oval Office.
"You would go sit with him, he would go through it and say some of them out loud, which ones he thought were working, which ones he didn't get," Shesol said. "Sometimes he would have an idea for a joke."
Shesol said one of the toughest parts of building the speech would be when people who outranked the speechwriters wanted to include jokes that - well, just weren't funny.
"We had a strategy we used to describe it as, you wouldn't kill the joke, you would sort of ease it out into the middle of the highway and slowly back away," Shesol said. "You could drop a joke in a speech and not try desperately to fix it."
More often than not, Shesol said, Clinton would be able to root out the good from the bad and utilize the pen to make the necessary corrections.
But most of Clinton's real preparation came just before he was set to go onstage.
Step 4: Practice Makes Perfect
"Having finalized it, we would go back and when we were literally dressed for the dinner we would go down to the bathroom and he would stand at a podium and run through it once or twice to hone his delivery," Shesol said. "He had a great sense of comic timing so there wasn't much that we'd need to tweak past that."
One of the most important elements for speechwriters, Shesol said, is the ending of the speech, which the president commonly utilizes to remind people of the office.
"I know at least it goes back as far as Franklin Roosevelt where he would do the routine of jokes and then at the end have some kind of grace note," Shesol said. "It was kind of returning everything to its normal place. You were no longer just delivering a series of gags, you were a president and we all had our prescribed roles that we were going to settle back in."
Step 5: Make It Through Dinner
But according to Shesol, the toughest part for Clinton wasn't the speech itself.
"I'll be honest, he hated going to these things," Shesol said. "These were the people who spent their professional lives kicking him around and being, in his view, extremely unfair. He did not relish going to these dinners and he had to sit through these comedians making jokes at his expense."
While the President is likely to get roasted on everything from the Affordable Care Act to his interactions with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the 100th annual dinner this Saturday, Obama's team might do well to look back at history as it puts the final touches on his routine.
"The question is what kind of jokes could the president conceivably make that wouldn't add fuel to the fire," Shesol said. "It's a huge challenge as a joke writer finding ways to address the elephant in the room, without calling it an elephant."
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Volunteers and Interns
Volunteers and interns play a vital role in the department's operations. During Fiscal Year 2007, the department was fortunate to have two people volunteer their time to work as clerical assistants. The two volunteers provided 70 hours of work.
The work of the volunteers helped facilitate improved community supervision officer-defendant interaction, an increase in time devoted to probationer services, and exposure to diverse backgrounds and ideas for officers and probationers. In turn, the volunteers and interns gained an increased knowledge of the criminal justice system.
Volunteers are allowed (within reason) to set their own schedules and are placed in positions most beneficial to them and the department, and in positions that provide a best fit with their education and experience. Volunteers are interviewed, and references and local police records are checked for volunteer applicants. On-the-job training is provided utilizing the curriculum for new officers, or less structured on-the-job training, depending on the volunteer position.
Volunteers are needed for clerical tasks such as word processing, assisting the receptionists, maintaining the departmental bulletin boards, purging extra copies of paperwork from closed files and putting those files in order for microfilming, assisting the Victim Services Coordinator with sending letters to and answering questions for victims and maintaining that database, and assisting community supervision officers with filing, writing reports, or as aides in supervising offenders.
To Volunteer
Call (979) 361-4410 and tell the receptionist you are interested in volunteering. You will be connected with the volunteer coordinator (or a voice mail box) and your call will be returned as soon as possible. You can also send a letter or resume to BCCSCD, P.O. Box 2015, Bryan, Texas 77806-2015, or fax to (979) 822-5341, Attn: Volunteer Coordinator. Thank you for your interest in our department. | <urn:uuid:f18da280-c5b2-4193-9e94-424334ed4ce4> | http://brazoscountytx.gov/index.aspx?NID=388 | en | 0.940048 | 0.053743 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Researchers Reuben Reyes and Jadwiga Ziolkowska of the University of Oklahoma are using Cesium for geospatial and subsurface visualization. The initial work started using KML and KMZ files in Google Earth and NASA World Wind. Once KML file support became available in Cesium, a port was completed and put on the web using CesiumJS. This made a live demo available to anyone with a web browser.
Texas Geothermal Subsurface Visualization represents heat indexes below the Earth’s surface. This data was derived from approximately 30,000 wells across Texas. Each color is based on a temperature curve. The benefit of using Cesium is that it allows for smooth subsurface viewing and interacting with geospatial scientific data sets.
A key part of the visualization is the subsurface representation below ground to negative 20,000 feet. To create a clearer display of the subsurface representation, vector outlines of Texas counties at different depths act as a wire frame underground. Each wire frame representation was depth shaded to give visual clues at different depths. This research and visualization resulted in a paper: Ziolkowska, J.R.; Reyes, R. (2016): Geological and Hydrological Visualization Models for Digital Earth Representation. Computers & Geosciences 94: 31–39. | <urn:uuid:d6dd8922-2899-49b2-bd49-297cb89000f3> | http://cesiumjs.org/demos/TXGeothermal.html | en | 0.877041 | 0.019059 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Political. Nerdy. Blasphemous. What could go wrong?
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The End is Near! ... in 1975
The End is Near! ... in 1975
Trustworthy. Reliable. Dependable.
What if that person was a Church?
The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society is the corporate name of Jehovah's Witnesses, and JWs have a long history of making predictions about when Armageddon is going to happen... and their track record is not good. For example, 20 years ago...
... when I was graduating from high school in 1994 and I received my acceptance letter from USC, I was very excited! When I went to the Kingdom Hall that night (JW name for Church), I went around to many members of my congregation to tell them the good news and I was repeatedly scoffed at for "wasting my time with school when Armageddon is so close!" They told me I should be "out in service" (going door to door to evangelize) because what would be the point in spending all that time learning "worldly" things in college when "this system" was coming to an end so soon?
How have JWs survived though if they keep getting it wrong? The answer is they shift the blame. When the JWs predict Armageddon and it doesn't happen (which is every time), then the standard operating procedure is to claim innocence and shift the blame to the "brothers and sisters" (i.e. the members of the church). I'll tackle a few other examples in my next post, but for now let's talk about one big example, the year 1975.
1975 was first mentioned as an important time for JWs in a book published in 1966 called Life Everlasting - in freedom of the Sons of God.
Some background: JWs are Young Earth Creationists (yes, I was one of them as a young man, please forgive me), however they aren't as "Young" as some others. They believe each "Creative Day" in Genesis was 7,000 years long. They believe the 7th Day, during which God rested, is now. So, after 6,000 years of supposed human existence, there would be 1,000 years left for God to rest.
They also believe Jesus is supposed to show up at Armageddon, kick a bunch of ass, and lock Satan up in a prison. Jesus will then rule over the Earth for 1,000 years at which point Satan will be released from his prison for one last chance to lead humans astray. (Revelation 20) That 1,000 years would account for the time remaining during the 7th Creative Day. Then after a short period of time, Satan and all those who follow him, will be ultimately destroyed and Jesus will hand the keys to the kingdom over to Jehovah.
The Life Everlasting book presented what they like to call "math" to prove that 1975 was the end of the 6,000 years of man's existence, which meant Armageddon was coming and Jesus would begin his 1,000 year reign to finish off the 7th Creative Day.
"It would be according to the loving purpose of Jehovah God for the reign of Jesus Christ to run parallel with the 7th millenium of man's existence."
The Oct 8th, 1966 issue of Awake! magazine also reiterated this point. In a section titled "6,000 Years Completed in 1975" it says:
Awake Magazine cover Oct 8 1968"This seventh day, God's rest day, has progressed nearly 6,000 years, and there is still the 1,000-year reign of Christ to go before its end."
"So we can expect the immediate future to be filled with thrilling events for those who rest their faith in God and his promises. It means that within relatively few years we will witness the fulfillment of the remaining prophecies that have to do with the "time of the end."
In the next section titled "End Near" it says:
"But when a brief period of years at the most separates us from the great windup of this old system, the vital thing is to stay spiritually awake."
2 years later, in 1968, The Watchtower, May 1st, 1968 said, in regards to 1975,
"The immediate future is certain to be filled with climactic events, for this old system is nearing its complete end. Within a few years at most the final parts of Bible prophecy relative to these 'Last Days' will undergo fulfillment."
Some members of the congregation didn't get married, didn't have kids, some sold their houses and quit their jobs so they could spend the remaining months in service. Remember that after 1975, the JWs blamed the brothers and sisters for misunderstanding! But...
The May 1974 issue of the Kingdom Ministry said,
"Reports are heard of brothers selling their homes and property and planning to finish out the rest of their days in this old system in the Pioneer service. Certainly this is a fine way to spend the short time remaining before the wicked world's end." (Pioneer service is full-time door to door evangelizing.)
Kingdom Ministry May 1974 Excerpt
Right up to the end of the line, JWs were definitively telling its members that The End was happening in 1975, but after their prophecy failed, they just blamed the brothers and sisters for misunderstanding. Don't the published statements above make it pretty damn clear that Armageddon was coming in 1975?
My brother remembers the young members in our congregation, back in the 70s, were hesitant about getting married and having children. Many JWs thought Armageddon was supposed to arrive in 1975 and when it didn't, there were a lot of REALLY angry people in the church. He also remembers hearing members of our congregation, in the 80s, saying that Jehovah used 1975 to separate the sheep from the goats, those who were just "serving the date" from those who were "sheep-like ones."
Even after these clear modern day predictions failed to come true, JWs continued to claim the End was Near. I was still in Junior High at the time, but my brother ran into this obstacle when he and his wife were contemplating having children. "Is this really a good time for this, considering the fact that we are so close to the time of the end?" He hoped at the time there would still be enough years left in "this system" for his kids to grow and not be "a burden" during the "time of the end."
The word "burden" seemed to be everywhere when discussing kids during Armageddon and it wasn't a coincidence... it was a talking point. A very old one.
I'm about to take you all the way back to 1938, in my next post, to share some stuff from the Jehovah's Witnesses past they would prefer you never knew... stay tuned!
(Originally posted April 9th, 2014)
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Reactions to DTaP/ IPV/ Hib, BCG vaccines
Most of the parents we interviewed said that their baby had no reaction after the DTaP/IPV/Hib, Men C immunisations. If any reaction did occur, it was just that they were a little sleepy or irritable for a day or two, but other than that they had been fine. Before their baby's first immunisation, some parents had been advised by their health visitor or GP to give their baby paracetamol to help reduce any symptoms their child may experience. These interviews were conducted before pneumococcal and Men B vaccinations were started. Giving paracetamol after immunisations is now not recommended for most injections, but the Men B vaccination (at 2 months, 4 months and 12 months) can cause high fevers so parents are now advised to:
“Administer 2.5ml liquid paracetamol at the time or shortly after the vaccine and repeat for 2 further doses 4–6h later.” - GP Update Handbook Spring 2014.
During the first year of life, it is recommended that babies have the following immunisations; DTaP/IPV/Hib (Diphtheria, Tetanus, Whooping Cough, Polio, Haemophilus influenzae Type b), Men C (Meningococcal C), Men B and pneumococcal vaccine. For guidance on when babies should receive these immunisations, see 'What is immunisation'.
The overwhelming majority of parents believe in immunisation for their children. We have however included here the views of a few parents who do not believe immunisation is right for their own child based on their personal beliefs. Their views represent a small proportion of the population.
A vaccine, like any medicine, is occasionally capable of causing mild to severe reactions. Mild reactions, such as mild fever, irritability, tiredness or poor appetite, vomiting or a small lump where the injection was given which disappears after a few weeks can occur. Redness, swelling, and tenderness where the injection was given can occur in up to 1 child in 10 with the DTaP/IPV/Hib vaccine. Mild reactions generally occur 1-3 days after the vaccine.
Sometimes children can react after one set of immunisations but not others. Being a first time mum and seeing their baby not acting himself can be frightening, but most parents said that any reaction disappeared after a few days and their baby returned to how he was before the immunisation.
Some parents said that their child had a small swelling where the injection had been given that disappeared within 48 hours but in a couple of cases the swelling lasted for up to two weeks. If symptoms persist and parents are concerned, they should contact their GP.
Intermediate reactions, such as a fit (convulsion or seizure), non-stop crying for 3 hours or more, being floppy or very pale or a high fever are uncommon and occur in less than 1 child in 1,000. These kinds of reactions, if they do occur, are likely to happen within a few minutes to a few hours after the injection. A couple of parents whose child had had an intermediate reaction sought advice from a hospital consultant or paediatric immunologist before deciding to go ahead with the remaining immunisations, which were carried out in hospital. Their children had no further reactions. These parents reported that their children continued to develop normally.
Severe reactions, such as serious allergic reactions, to these first immunisations are very rare (less than 1 out of a million doses). We didn't interview any parents whose child had experienced a severe reaction.
Last reviewed October 2015.
Last updated October 2015
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2425 S. Yukon Ave.
Tulsa, OK 74107
Circle 70
AAON provided 60 RQ Series (available from 2 to 6 tons) and six RN Series (available from 6 to 70 tons) geothermal-heat-pump rooftop units to Eagle Mountain Elementary School. Operating as single-zone variable-air-volume (VAV) rooftop units with a high-efficiency variable-capacity compressor and variable-speed fan, the geothermal heat pumps provide significant energy savings.
Single-zone VAV systems provide significant energy savings and are quieter and provide better humidity control than traditional constant-volume units. The Eagle Mountain Elementary School units include air-side economizers so cool outside air can be used when practical. This provides even greater energy savings. All of the units include a factory-installed 115-V convenience outlet for easy maintenance.
When teachers and students returned to school after summer vacation, they noticed a quieter and more comfortable classroom environment. The variable-speed fan provides a reduction in classroom noise, while the single-zone VAV units precisely control the temperature of the classrooms. Eagle Mountain-Saginaw Independent School District was able to significantly reduce the school's total energy usage. The geothermal heat pump provides significant energy savings year-round, while the single-zone VAV system provides significant energy at part-load conditions. The operation of the geothermal heat pump in the single-zone VAV configuration with an air-side economizer allows Eagle Mountain-Saginaw to significantly reduce the school's environmental impact and operational costs. | <urn:uuid:1adca7d6-064e-4792-a286-75ee74a702d1> | http://hpac.com/print/mag/rooftop_units_reducing | en | 0.883139 | 0.083019 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
ElyseResch's blog
Inaugural Intuitive Eating Blog
Every day, one or both of us, receives an e-mail or a phone call about how Intuitive Eating has profoundly changed that person’s life. Reconnecting with your internal wisdom about eating—wisdom that’s been with you from birth, will lead you to a life of freedom from negative thoughts about your food and your body. It will give you the sense of security that can only come from knowing that you, and only you, have all the information you need to eat with satisfaction, tucked deeply inside. You can take this with you whereve | <urn:uuid:3cc3fccc-9a10-448d-8248-491013f5e010> | http://intuitiveeating.com/blog/247 | en | 0.949946 | 0.025097 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
I'm Jan Cantor — a digital designer based in New York City with focus on crafting delightful user interface and experience for the web.
I'm currently helping the product team at NewsCred build a platform that would transform how stories are told online. Aside from that, I enjoy riding my bike in the city, play a couple of ping-pong challenges with friends, and just lounge like a lazy cat. | <urn:uuid:8eea48ba-6379-470d-aa62-98ff493532a6> | http://jancantor.com/ | en | 0.958318 | 0.021582 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Zbigniew Brzezinski wants Obama to hire a Republican to punish Israel
Zbigniew Brzezinski: One move he can make immediately that will strengthen his position: appoint a secretary of state with deep bipartisan support. In today's polarized political climate, Obama would gain important leverage if he were to consider a Republican with a moderate foreign-policy outlook (READS AS ASS FUCK THE JEWS HERE). Of course, it follows that if he chooses a Democrat, it should be someone who commands significant congressional respect on both sides of the aisle.
(I suspect he's thinking someone with the world view of Petraeus, Ron Paul or Pat Buchanan... you get the idea. It isn't coded at all. It could not be more blunt)
Zbigniew Brzezinski: ...the so-called Israeli-Palestinian "peace process" -- Obama's success will depend on the degree to which he is seen as truly committed and dead serious. Commitment and credibility go hand in hand.
(Vision doesn't matter to Zbigniew Brzezinski, the important thing to Brzezinski is that the secretary of state has complete hatred of Israel.)
Zbigniew Brzezinski: For example, on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, the unfortunate fact is that under the last three presidents, U.S. policy has been either sincere but gutless, or simply cynical. The recent Palestinian statehood vote in the United Nations, in which the United States -- despite its intense efforts -- obtained the support of only eight other states out of a total 188 voting, marks the nadir of the dramatically declined global respect for U.S. capability to cope with an issue that is morally troubling today and, in the long run, explosive. It dramatizes the consequences for the United States of declined bipartisanship in foreign affairs and of the increased influence of lobbies, thus underlining the need for assertive presidential leadership in foreign policy and national security.
...he could of just said fuck the Jew. it'd be more honest
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2004 Pacifica will not start!!! on 2004 Chrysler Pacifica
my wife drove our car the other day, and the next, it wouldnt start. all it did was click a couple of times and...nothing. i disconnected the battery to let it reset, and when i checked it again, the same thing happened. i tried to jump it with my car, but nothing. i checked the battery, and it seemed fine, i was looking for the starter switch, but cant find it, i was looking for the fuel filter, cant find it. i dont have a manual for this car so i dont know where anything is. what the heck is wrong with this car? can someone please help???
to all pacifica owner's , I was having similar problem's
started with the obvius battery, alternator starter etc.
After everything checked-out fine my mechanic was giving
up and getting ready to refer me to an auto electric specialist. Thank god for the computer age someone had offered their advise on this sight stating that after people with similar problems and thousands of dollars later that itwas a faulty ground from engine to the transmission. all my mechanic did was replace a 16.00 dollar ground wire from battery to exaughst manifold.
My wifes car has been fine ever since!!!!!!!!
wre is this wiere located
thanks so very much:), we got stranded on I40 heading to Raleigh, towed to Benson of course its Sunday..Monday comes and we have been working on our Pacifica non-stop, found your site/info got a new ground wire and it is running like a charm!!! You were a life-saver..need to be at work in MD Wed!!
I have been having the same problem and so i changed the battery and the alternator and it still won't start the ground wire is fine but it still won't start could it be the alarm system?? I don't have the manuel so i can't even figure out how to reset it does anyone know how to?
I am currently having a similar problem with my '04 Pacifica. Mechanics gave up and dint know what to do. Thanks to this site and the info within maybe I can get my car fixed. Thanks
I have an 04 . The grounds corrode and snap, there's a few of them just hunt for them by motor mounts and such, I bought battery cables for my ground replacement, just remember you can never have to much ground
8 more answers , 3 more comments
Who ever comes across this problem again. Get some jumper cables and connect the negative of one end to the negative on the battery, then connect the other negative end of the jumper cable directly to the the engine somewhere metal (there is a ground wire braid between engine and radiator fan. Your car will probably start now. If it does start there is a broken ground wire on the back of the transmission behind the left front tire, there is a big bolt that should have a terminal lug on it. This usually breaks if your upper motor mount is broken allowing the engine to rock back and forth. Sorry if this has been discussed already, just wanted to help someone with something I found.
You hit right on the nose they sold him a starter still don't start told them is was a major elect short would not even give a amount to fix took car to me I did what you said took jumper cables from ground bat to eng block started right up went down by trans found ground cable with no end on it and hanging on but two strans put end on cable and all is good thanks for good advice bin working on cars for a long time and this place saved me a lot of time many times
I came across this forum in a google search and this was what fixed our car! It wasnt starting at all. Husband replaced the starter, alternator, battery, motor mounts and still nothing. So i read this post to him and $6.00 later and less than an hour of wrenching and it STARTED. yaaas! THANK YOU SO MUCH for this!!!
I am having this issue. 2005 Chrysler pacifica. Replaced battery, lights come on in the ceiling and on the door but won't start. No lights in the dash, no click, no nothing. Have the vaguest idea what is wrong. Had no problems before til now. What's wrong?
Did your wife open the doors with the car key or the remote. My 04 died on me and i could not( WOULD NOT )start. Called Triple A and was having the car towed when the tow truck driver asked me to unlock the wheel and i turn the car over by misstake and it started right up.long story short my little girl went to the car and bypass the alarm by using the key the the auto theft kick in.The car would not start tell i reset the alarm by locking it and opening it us the key alarm try that
First thing is to make sure the battery is charged, A battery with one bad cell will turn on the lights but won't start the car, Same thing happened to my 67 gto I jumped it once then it died, So I went to Napa Auto parts and bought a new battery and now it starts every time, Start with a fresh battery then if it still dosn't crank its probably the starter.
Parts mechanics are funny. They always think that throwing batteries and starters and alternators will solve their laziness problem. You should have learned everything you needed to know to diagnose an automobile in high school physics. Don't just check the voltage of the battery just sitting there, check it with the key turned over (this is called "load") and always... always check your connections, the battery might say 650 amps but it won't push that through an inch of corrosion! A little bit of brain will save you a lot of dough!
for that my lights on the dachboard are on wen I turn of my carr
Is this also related to the ground issue? My 2008 pacifica also did the same thing when I would take the key out. It would "ding"even though my lights were off and the key was out of the ignition. Now I think I'm at the same annoyance level as most others with my car just not starting. I will have my husband try the trick w/the jumper cables tomorrow to try and rule out another costly expense.
Thank you, thank you, thank you very much. My wives grocery hauler Pacifica broke a mount then stalled. All the indicator lights showed it had power. I was stumped till I came here. You gave me the answer to solve the problem. Put the ground wire in and it fired right up. I was thinking key fob, computer and everything else. I guess it would be safe to say with the Pacifica that if you break a motor mount then you break the ground and it won't start.
I. Have. Change. My. Fuel. Pump. Crank. Shaft. And. Sensor. In. My. 2005. Pacific. And it. Turn. But. Want. Start. The. Gas. Not. Get. Through. What. Else. Can. Be. The. Problem | <urn:uuid:562a97f4-78e6-4966-b29a-4fcc92b1d6ec> | http://repairpal.com/2004-pacifica-will-not-start-515 | en | 0.975895 | 0.034574 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
Ramona Epic #18: The Old Cemetery
"His silence was more than silent; it was taciturn. Yet she always felt herself
answered. A monosyllable of Alessandro's, nay, a look, told what
other men took long sentences to say, and said less eloquently.
After long thinking over this, she exclaimed, 'You speak as the
trees speak, and like the rock yonder, and the flowers, without
saying anything!'
This delighted Alessandro's very heart. 'And you, Majella,' he
exclaimed; "when you say that, you speak in the language of our
people; you are as we are.'"
In chapter 17 of the story Alessandro takes Ramona with him to Temecula so he can sell his violin in order for them to have some money so they can be married. There is some concern that they could be caught by those sent from the rancho to find them. So, Ramona agrees to stay at the cemetery while Alessandro attempts to find out what is going on in Temecula and sell his violin. There she meets Carmena who is grieving over the loss of her husband. Carmena does not speak, but she is glad Ramona is there and they hold hands.
Visiting this particular cemetery is somewhat disappointing. I knew this would be the case even before going to it. There is really nothing there these days. In fact, unless someone told you, you would probably have no clue it was a cemetery.
The modern world has been completely built around it. A shopping center with many modern chain stores has taken over. What separates it from the modern world is a big wall around it.Looking over the wall is a big square flat dirt field. How many times have I seen something like this elsewhere and not thought anything about it? However, in this case, it was a historical cemetery.The real historical basis for this cemetery took place during the Mexican War. While a few battles were taking place in California, the Battle of San Pasqual near Escondito was won by the Californios (the Mexican side) around December 6, 1846. After the battle 11 Californios went to an adobe in Pauma Valley. There a bunch of Luiseno killed them in what is known as the Pauma Massacre. It was said that they were tortured and killed in a way to brutal to describe.
No one knows really why this group of Indians did this. There is some thought that the recent Battle of San Pasqual had something to do with this and thinking of the Americans as their friends. Or, some of their horses has been stolen by the Californios. In any case, they were avenging something.
Jose Del Carmen Lugo was ordered to avenge the massacre. In December, 1846 (and January, 1847) he took the men he could get and got the help of Juan Antonio, leader of the Cahuilla Indians, with his men. With a combined force of Californios and Cahuilla Indians, Lugo led them to the mouth of a Canyon near Vail Lake. As an aside, when I was younger I often fished at Vail Lake.
There they hid, setting up the ambush, and sent some of their men into the canyon. A few of he men went into the canyon to trick the Luisenos they were after to chase after them. The trick worked, and as they came out the Temecula Massacre was on.
No one knows how many Luisenos were killed. Estimates are between 40-120. The dead were gathered and buried at this spot in Temecula. This is the origin of the cemetery.
A couple of my own thoughts on this:
One thing that is hard to describe in a quick historical summary like this is overgeneralizing a group of people. Sometimes we talk about the Californios, the Americans, the Indians, etc. as if they were unified group of people. When reading Horace Parker's small book (listed below) I kept trying to figure out why some of the Californios were not really following orders of the Mexican side, why groups of Indians were attacking each other, etc. In the case of the Californios they were on the Mexican side of the war, but did not think of themselves as Mexicans. So, their immediate concerns came first over whatever General was ordering them to do. In the case of the Cahuilla Indians going against the Temecula/Luiseno Indians, that appears to be retaliation for a battle lost by the Cahuilla Indians years earlier that had nothing to do with any sides of the Mexican War.
So, the historical reality of the cemetery has nothing to do with Helen Hunt Jackson's version of why it was there in the fictional Ramona book. In fact, had she actually mentioned the historical reality behind the cemetery it would have undermined the premise behind her book. War and politics are usually really messy when comes to this.
The Old Cemetery (Youtube Version)
The Old Cemetery (Vimeo Version)
The following links are old pictures off the USC Digital Library of the cemetery:
An old picture of the cemetery
Another old picture of a grave in the cemetery
For my quick summary of the events involved, I used the following book which I found at a local library:
Parker, Horace. The Historic Valley of Temecula: The Temecula Massacre. Balboa Island: Paisano Press, 1971.
The following links should be helpful:
Temecula Massacre (Old Town Temecula article)
Temecula Massacre (Wikimapia): this shows you where it is at
Temecula Massacre (Wikipedia article)
Whizzing Past the Graveyard (North County Times)
A Look Back: The Temecula Massacre (Press-Enterprise) | <urn:uuid:67948acb-d578-48f3-a736-12b61a8d3ae6> | http://the-great-silence.blogspot.com/2011/08/ramona-epic-18-old-cemetery.html | en | 0.984197 | 0.348215 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
(Tucson, AZ) -- A 9-1-1 operator in Arizona is under fire for laughing during an emergency call. A man whose girlfriend was seriously burned when his car caught fire in a remote area north of Tucson was upset when he called for help and heard laughter on the other end of the line. It happened right after the operator asks if his girlfriend is still on fire. The operator says the laughter was unrelated to the call. The Pima County Sheriff's Department is investigating the call. | <urn:uuid:65872ab7-0cb6-40eb-a92b-7c62be697517> | http://thebusfm.iheart.com/articles/wtf-news-471312/listen-emergency-dispatcher-investigated-for-laughing-11703494/ | en | 0.976994 | 0.019335 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
henryblodget large
Well, it happened.
A few months ago, when Twitter announced that it was going to kill a boatload of startups that had sprung up around its ecosystem, I wondered whether that meant I would eventually be forced to abandon the app I spend about 18 hours a day using (on desktop, mobile, and laptop) -- TweetDeck.
And based on what happened yesterday, it seems the answer to that question is "yes."
What happened yesterday?
TweetDeck just stopped pulling in Tweets. All three TweetDeck columns--my tweets, my mentions, and my direct messages--stopped loading. And when I fired up the app on my iPhone, I got scrolling "TwitterAuthFailure" messages and then a bunch of ancient Tweets.
I thought maybe TweetDeck had just had a heart-attack, so I shut it down and reopened it. Nope.
I thought maybe TweetDeck could explain to me what was wrong, so I clicked a "help" link. But then TweetDeck demanded that I "create an account" or some such, and I said screw that. (Why would I want a "TweetDeck" account? If there's a good reason, this wasn't made clear to me.)
I thought maybe it was just a temporary thing, so I went cold-turkey last night and somehow lasted until morning without Twitter. But it was the same story then, too.
So this morning I broke down and did something about it. I remembered reading somewhere that Twitter had bought its own TweetDeck to more effectively kill TweetDeck, so on my iPhone I searched for the name of the app that I remembered Twitter buying -- "Tweetie." There was no longer any such app. But there was an app called "Twitter," which I downloaded.
So now, on my mobile, I use "Twitter" instead of TweetDeck. It has a white background instead of black, but otherwise it works pretty much the same way.
I planned to make the same switcheroo at the office, but when I got there I discovered that, lo and behold, my office TweetDeck was working again, so I guess I'll hang on to that.
In any event, this experience, combined with our chart showing the extreme fragmentation of the Twitter client market, has disabused me of the notion that TweetDeck might become one of the most important companies in my world. Until this morning, I literally spent HOURS A DAY interacting with it--way more time than I spend watching TV. But now, on my iPhone, at least, those hours will drop to zero.
Whatever Twitter is doing to kill TweetDeck, et al, it appears to be working.
UPDATE: Many well-wishers have already written to suggest that I "update" TweetDeck and that it will then work fine. Many others have written lambasting me for being dumb as a rock because I didn't know that some OAUTH thing was the problem (guilty). To the former, I will admit I haven't the time or interest in figuring out how to "update" TweetDeck. I just want it to work. To the latter, I'll just concede that I couldn't care less about OAUTH.
See Also: CHART: Surprise! The Most Popular Twitter Client Is UberTwitter | <urn:uuid:1d0f48e5-502f-40e7-a145-147c80c6ac06> | http://www.businessinsider.com/goodbye-tweetdeck-2010-9 | en | 0.9708 | 0.032603 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
In this article we are look at the flow of water through an orifice and we will define the orifice as an opening (with closed perimeter) in an element of a flow system. For us this orifice will be a fire sprinkler head or water mist nozzle in a fire protection system, we can use the k-factor formula for almost any rounded orifice.
In 1644 an Italian physicist Torricelli (a pupil of Galileo and also invented the barometer) discovered that the flow though an orifice varied to the root of the pressure and later determined the following basic relationship:
Q = AV
Q = flow from the orifice
A = cross sectional area of the orifice
V = velocity
This has lead to the accepted theorem for flow though a round orifice:
Q = A√(2gh)
The formula above is theoretical and once we take in to account the affects of friction, turbulence and the the contraction of the water stream the formula can be simplified to what we know as the k-factor formula for fire protection system by reducing its complexity to a single constant "k".
The K factor formula for fire protection
When we start any hydraulic calculation for a water based fire protection systems such as a fire sprinklers, water mist systems the k-factor formula is the first which we will need to use and as it is so fundamental all fire protection engineers must have a good understand of how it works. In its most common form the formula allows us to calculate the discharge flow from a of nozzle (fire sprinkler, water mist or a deluge nozzle) if we are given the head pressure and k-factor, we can also calculate the k-factor or the pressure required with this formula.
The discharge from a sprinkler head or water mist nozzle can be calculated from the formula bellow:
q = kp0.5
q = flow
k = nozzle discharge coefficient or k-factor for head
p = pressure
We can rewrite the formula to give us the k-factor as bellow:
k = q / p0.5
or the pressure as bellow:
p = ( q / k )2
The units which we use are important and much not be mixed. you much also be very cautious with the k factor and insure that you get the correct value for a metric or imperial calculation, the units for both are given bellow:
for metric calculations:
p = pressure in Bar
q = flow in litre per minute
k = discharge constant lpm/Bar0.5
and for imperial calculation:
p = pressure in psi
q = flow in gpm
k = discharge constant gpm/psi0.5
We can also use K-factors for many other applications in fire hydraulics such as flow from a fire hydrant, wet riser outlet, hose reel or foam monitor. In fact the list is almost endless and this is why it is important to be familiar with the above formulas.Often K-factors are given as an imperial value in gpm/psi½ this value cannot be entered into FHC without first converting to its metric equivalent Lpm/bar½. To convert gpm/psi½ to Lpm/bar½ we need to multiply by 14.4 (Approximate) Example: A sprinkler head has a discharge coefficient of 4.2 gpm/psi½ what is its metric equivalent valve. 4.2 x 14.4 = 60.48 Lpm/bar½.We only need to use K-factors to one decimal place so 60.48 becomes 60.5 Lpm/bar½
Typical k factor values for sprinkler and water mist heads
For many standard type of sprinkler the design standards such as EN 12845 & NFPA 13 specify the standard k-factors and minimum pressure which should be used for different Hazard classifications and design densities. For all other types of sprinkler heads the manufactures data sheet should be referred to for the k-factor and minimum head pressure.
Hazard Class Design Density (mm/min) K-factor Minimum Pressure (Bar)
1 Light Hazard 2.25 57 0.70
2 Ordinary Hazard 5.00 80 0.50
As a designer you must check the k-factor value for the nozzle or head manufacturer and insure its application is correct. You should also seek guidance from the design standard which is applicable.
Relationship between the k-factor, pressure and flow
The graph below shows the relationship between the k-factor, pressure and flow. You can clearly see from this that for same pressure with a high k-factor nozzle the flow from the head or nozzle increases. We can sometime use this to our advantage be selecting the correct sprinkler head k-factor to provide the design density required with the minimum energy requirement (water pressure).
relationship between kfactor pressure flow
As an example if we have pressure of 1.50 Bar and a k-factor of 50 the flow rate would be 61.20 L/min for a k-factor of 100 it would be 122.50 L/min and with a k-factor of 150 the flow rate would be 183.70 L/min. You can see that the flow has insecure by about 61 L/min each time we changed the k-factor by 50, this is because the pressure has remained the same at 1.50 Bar and if you look at the k-factor formula above the pressure is squared which will give us 1.225, this is then multiple by the head k-factor in this case 50, 100 and 150 in are example. As the k-factor has increased by 50 each time the increase in flow has also increased be the same amount each time. | <urn:uuid:eb26879d-4bf9-4cc2-9fe5-3f3993ea8af9> | http://www.canutesoft.com/Basic-hydraulic-calculation-for-fire-protection-engineers/k-factor-formula.html | en | 0.921663 | 0.13336 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Chilled out playlist for chilly fall days
Getty Image by: Getty Author: Elle Canada
Chilled out playlist for chilly fall days
Here are five tracks to listen to when you're curled up on the couch in a post-turkey dream state:
1. Aces "What Do You Think They'll Say About Me?"
A slow burn, 80's inflected track with strong Genesis / Sinead O'Connor vibes from a Brooklyn-based duo.
2. Enya "Echoes in the Rain"
There's a reason they play this woman on loop in spas, and it's probably because she has a magical ability to make elf music that is both soothing and uplifting like this track off her new album, out November.
3. Autograf feat. Janelle Kroll "Metaphysical"
This dancey but relaxed track is courtesy of a Chicago-based trio who are all about incorporating visual art into their music. Be sure to check out the Twiggy inspired album cover for this single.
4. Youth Lagoon "The Knower"
Eerie trumpets, languid vocals and a super-cool animated video clip...what more do you want?
5. Brian McKnight "Uh Oh Feeling"
A new, super smooth single from the "Back At One" legend? You're welcome.
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Chilled out playlist for chilly fall days | <urn:uuid:e425dfee-fc5c-4a8d-a987-d103dd954391> | http://www.ellecanada.com/culture/music/article/chilled-out-playlist-for-chilly-fall-days | en | 0.905145 | 0.053792 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Why Engines are Commonly Measured in Horsepower
By TodayIFoundOut.com on at
>We owe this unit of engine power measurement to Scottish engineer James Watt.
In the early 1780s, after making a vastly superior steam engine to the then classic Newcomen steam engine, Watt was looking for a way to market his invention, advertising the fact that his engine used about 75% less fuel than a similarly powered Newcomen, among many other improvements.
At first, he tried selling his engine on a royalty scheme, where the customers would owe him one third of the money they saved by using his engine over other steam engines. Of course, many at the time used horses, not steam engines, so it was difficult to compare without them actually buying the engine to see how it would perform for their particular usage. Thus, he scrapped the royalty scheme and decided to try a different tact to convince people to buy his engine.
Ever the inventor, his solution was to come up with a new unit of measurement that those in need of his engine understood -- horsepower, referring to powerful draft horses.
Thus, he set about determining how much power a typical draft horse could generate. It isn't known exactly how he came up with the numbers he did, as there are conflicting accounts of the experiments he ran. But after doing those experiments, he figured out a typical draft horse could do about 32,400 foot-pounds of work in 60 seconds and maintain that power rate for a good long workday. He then rounded up, going with 33,000 foot-pounds per minute for one horsepower.
So, in other words, by his estimation a good draft horse could lift 33,000 pounds of material one foot in one minute or 3,300 pounds of material 10 feet in one minute, etc .
In truth, that's a very generous estimate as very few horses could maintain that kind of power for a full workday, but getting a perfect figure wasn't that important to what Watt was trying to do. Further, by overestimating what a horse could do, whether intentionally or not, he made sure that his product would always over deliver what he said when trying to get people to buy it, which is a great word-of-mouth marketing trick.
In the end, Watt's engine was revolutionary and played a huge role in the Industrial Revolution. Thanks to this fact, his unit of measure of an engine's power, horsepower, also became popular. Funny enough, today the SI unit of power, the Watt, which was named in homage to James Watt, has widely come to replace "horsepower" in most applications.
If you liked this article, you might also enjoy:
The Difference Between a Pony and a Horse
The Horse that Could Do Math: The Unintentional Clever Hans Hoax
Why Lead Used to Be Added To Gasoline
The Slinky was Originally Intended to be Used as a Tension Spring in a Battleship Engine Horsepower Meter
In 1899 Ninety Percent of New York City's Taxi Cabs Were Electric Vehicles
Bonus Fact:
While Watt came up with the exact measurement of what would become "horsepower," he was not the first to propose the idea of equating a steam engine's power to a horse's. The first documented instance of this was suggested by British inventor Thomas Savery who wrote the following in a letter in 1702:
So that an engine which will raise as much water as two horses, working together at one time in such a work, can do, and for which there must be constantly kept ten or twelve horses for doing the same. Then I say, such an engine may be made large enough to do the work required in employing eight, ten, fifteen, or twenty horses to be constantly maintained and kept for doing such a work…
Image: Shutterstock/Gregory Johnston
Daven writes for the wildly popular interesting fact website TodayIFoundOut.com. To subscribe to Today I Found Out's "Daily Knowledge" newsletter, click here or like them on Facebook here. You can also check 'em out on YouTube here.
This post has been republished with permission from TodayIFoundOut.com. | <urn:uuid:41ef2adc-08ef-4cdc-9b51-ba65d076b3f8> | http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2014/03/why-engines-are-commonly-measured-in-horsepower/ | en | 0.981618 | 0.056168 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Comfort-eating releases chemicals that fight stress
Click to follow
The Independent Online
At last, some welcome news for overworked chocaholics and doughnut junkies. Scientists have discovered that comfort eating can relieve chronic stress.
Researchers have found a biological mechanism which shows that the body craves sugary and high-fat foods because comfort foods actually help block the effects of high levels of stress.
In other words, said Norman Pecoraro, a physiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, many stressed or anxious people instinctively turn to junk food because it works. "Our studies suggest that comfort food applies the brakes on a key element of chronic stress," he said.
They discovered that rats under continuous levels of stress released a flood of a hormone similar to one found in humans. In response, the rats instinctively turned to sugar and lard, which made their stomach areas fatter. They found this fat directly blocked the stress hormone's damaging effects on the brain and the body.
But regular comfort eating will increase long-term health risks, such as heart disease, obesity and strokes, Dr Pecoraro warned. "In the short term, if you're chronically stressed it might be worth eating and sleeping a little more to calm down, perhaps at the expense of a few pounds," he said.
"But seeking a long-term solution in comfort foods - rather than fixing the source of the stress - is going to be bad for you." | <urn:uuid:533602ca-5146-47b3-9046-ef1803b498af> | http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/comfort-eating-releases-chemicals-that-fight-stress-86849.html | en | 0.960593 | 0.020745 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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Massage Today
August, 2006, Vol. 06, Issue 08
Taking the "Magic" Out of Energy Work
By Julianna Holden, LMP
If you've surfed the Web or looked at advertisements for bodyworkers, you'll find a host of modalities and mysterious-sounding "magical" work out there. Doctors might call this work simply "hooey." We're written about on Quackwatch, and some of the arguments are valid.
Others in the field familiar with energy work might think it's grand and even magical, while still others think it's natural and commonplace, so why make it sound mysterious?
Many of us want to add credibility to massage as a valuable health care profession. Some have resorted to calling it "medical massage" to separate it from the magical, or less professional (or even sensual) sounding stuff. In the same way, I want to give credibility to energy work as part of massage and bodywork. Many try to add credibility by renaming energy work or identifying it in such a way that takes away the mysterious nature of the words.
Some clinics have set up a way to keep out the "airhead" or even hedonistic images of massage and demonstrate it as a credible healing profession. But I really don't think it's necessary to separate modalities, so long as we're careful to get rid of the magical images so often ascribed to energy work. If we're more careful in describing the type of bodywork in scientific terms, it's less likely to be seen as radical or "airy-fairy."
Personally, it seems some terms are overused in the industry. As long as we pay tuition fees and pass a class, anyone is willing to call graduates a master. Add several thousand dollars into the mix and you can call yourself a "light worker" or quantum this or that therapist. Some of these terms are derived from scientific explanations; however, they often are improperly used and out of connotation. What is it truly to be a master of energy? Is that really possible? And who gave them their original titles, anyway?
I'd like to take away the mystique of energy work and put it in the realm of science. Every living thing can be measured electrically. There are devices that measure electrical brainwave activity, or stimulate the brain during brain surgery, causing a recall of memories.
I'm no scientist and I can't describe things in scientific terms, but it occurs to me that if something is electrically charged, that if another circuit makes contact, the two have the power to interact with one another. Energetic flow just happens naturally. When a mother touches her child, the child feels the love and calms down through the contact. Does that make her an energy worker? Is that considered magical? If not, then why do energy workers or massage therapists relate energy work as magical?
When a therapist begins bodywork, they may notice themselves slipping into a type of slow thought process and mental relaxation. Administering bodywork often is very relaxing, even though physically taxing, simply because we enter this alpha state of brainwave activity. When electrical impulses are slowed down, the calming touch has the same effect on the recipient. I like to think of it as duo-homeostasis. Just as when a child is crying, the touch of the caretaker can calm them both. We don't call a mother's caring touch "hooey." Therapeutic touch - from an energetic level - should be no different.
The Importance of Intent
At some point, intent enters into the picture. Some might try to declare they have some magical power to heal - that they are divinely gifted. Well, everyone has power, whether they're a body worker or not. Let me state it more clearly: You are powerful. We all are. Get over it. However, the moment someone declares they have power, they actually might diminish themselves because the intent to impress others is revealed.
This same power can be used toward creative, economic, positive, healthy and various other (even destructive) types of purposes. At some point, we can benefit clients by using this power with our own ethical intent. Energy work can't be delivered without intent. The best of intentions can also harm. Even ethics can be a subjective term.
So what exactly is intent? We can't get through life without it. If I want to pick up a glass of water to drink, it's not going to get to my lips if I don't have the intent to get it there. Something of my own initiative makes my arm move to pick up the glass and lift it to my lips. The somatic nervous system is involved in this process.
A therapist's somatic nervous system seems to affect the client's autonomic nervous system. A therapist places their hands on the problem area, feels these areas by simple palpation, and then sends a type of message (again somatic) to the muscle to release. This message can be by various methods: by touch alone, a combination of touch and thoughts of release, or simply thoughts of release (or allowing well-being) while in the "energetic field" of the body. Without realizing how the muscle releases, the client's autonomic nervous system seems to receive an impulse or electrical charge and often releases the muscle. In essence, the therapist seems to become an extended neural system to the client, directing the release of musculature. It's as if a therapist's electrical charge jump-starts a synaptic response in the client's musculature to begin firing the muscle normally again.
I see the human energy field as part of the body and consider it a physical manifestation. But this chakra thing kind of bugs me. What are people trying to accomplish by opening chakras anyway? What is our real intent? We need to ask ourselves, are we trying to treat symptoms or find the cause? Why would energetic fields be unbalanced in the first place?
In massage or any kind of bodywork, a therapist notices (by palpation) when a muscle won't release by any means attempted. Some therapists may become more aggressive at that point by instituting deeper massage (deep tissue) or painful trigger point pressure, which are forceful (and sometimes useful) techniques. I see chakra opening similarly, as a more forceful technique. If the real cause is discovered, they will balance on their own. In essence, it doesn't matter if I believe in chakras or not, if they can be scientifically proven or not. I personally don't think it's my job to adjust them directly.
I've noticed that if a muscle won't release, there might be any number of reasons. One reason is trust in the therapist's intent. Clients can sometimes sense (usually unconsciously) if a therapist has a goal in mind or if they become frustrated for being ineffectual. At this point, mistrust can begin. Another reason could be we haven't addressed the core issue. If we address the core issue, the others might release more easily. If the core issue involves a past traumatic experience, the client might be too afraid of change and release. They might view this holding pattern as a means of survival. At that point, it's not a good idea to intrude by taking away something they aren't ready to release or give up. But often, I find the client begins telling me events involving that muscle, and through the re-experience, there is release. They realize they're safe now and the experience is in the past.
In my experience, intent is not something talked about in much depth in massage programs, but it should be. It seems to be an issue we dance around because of the diverse backgrounds of students. Some think there's nothing to it, as long as you know how to physically manipulate a muscle. And perhaps that's all clients would be comfortable with. Energy work of any type might seem too "magical" to those with a mindset that massage is for a physical and/or psychological outcome. When bringing spirituality, divine energy, or energy work into practice, it can go beyond boundaries of clients, other therapists and especially doctors.
But what about those that feel the power of intent is just as important, or more important, as the physical manipulation? Because we believe in intent or have seen amazing results doesn't automatically make us responsible and capable to work with it. Nor does it make us automatic "masters" even if we've passed a course that says we are. If a student pursues a doctorate in medicine, that doesn't mean they can perform any kind of medicine, such as brain surgery, which requires specialized training. It's no different with massage. Keeping our minds clear of personal motives and learning how to work with such a powerful tool as intent helps.
I'm not out to impress. If I need to relate what I'm doing when a client asks, I try to use scientific explanations or something that takes the mystery out of the work. Firm scientific results would be helpful for explanations, but few of this nature exist, if any at all. To me, there is no real mystery to energy work. It's my belief that when someone tries to make something sound mysterious, they're looking for a following or profit.
All Bodywork as Energy Work
It's my belief that scientific inquiry and testing should take place to validate the transmission of energetic response. By no means do I consider the field of energy work proven. But then again, that a child feels loved by its mother's touch, affecting the health and well-being of the child, doesn't seem to need proof. Scientific evidence isn't the only thing that validates, but when attempting to validate the science of massage or energy work, it can give massage the credibility it deserves.
Energy work is a natural part of performing bodywork. Our bodies have electrical charge and chemical impulses from the somatic nervous system. Thoughts are the power behind the somatic nervous system. Whether we believe in energy work or not, and no matter what you want to call it, we send intent to clients. The way intent comes out varies greatly. All different ways can be helpful, no matter what modality we want to call something.
I view all bodywork practitioners as energy workers. We might call it by different modalities, but the desire to help others brought us to this branch of health care. What we do about our own intent is key. Do we want to impress or to serve clients? If our intent is to serve, we will do everyone, including ourselves, a service by taking the mystery out of energy work.
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Council Tax, Local Income Tax and The Myth of the Fireman and the Nurse
A Scottish Action Against Council Tax Report
Download printable pdf version.
Over the past two years or so, there has been much talk, by those political parties opposed to the concept of local authority funding by local taxation under the principle of ability to pay, of Local Income Tax (LIT) being unfair to many households.
If memory serves, these scare tactics first received prominence when Charles Kennedy, the then leader of the Liberal Democrats and advocate of LIT, was confronted by the fact that the Council Tax/LIT "break-even-point" for a two adult household, in a band D property was that they each earned around £20,000 per annum. This imaginary couple were subsequently dubbed the Fireman and Nurse; the intended strong implication being that these household circumstances constitute some kind of average or norm, and consequently, normal households with a bit more income would be unfairly treated by LIT.
Things have moved on little in the past two years, and since we have more reliable published data for household income for 2005, our analysis is more exact for that period. Also, none of the basic principles has changed since then. Therefore, unless specifically stated otherwise, all calculations refer to 2004/05 data.
Let's now look at Scottish household income from two aspects:
1. How does the imaginary couple's income compare with that of other Scottish household incomes and can their income be regarded as some kind of norm? Or, if their income can't be regarded as typical of Scottish household incomes, what income level would be fairer to use as a benchmark figure?
2. How does this typical or benchmark household income stack up with a comparison of the relative impact of Council Tax and LIT?
Source of the Data on Scottish Household Net Incomes.
The statistical data used in this short study are taken from "Scotland's people", Results from the 2005 Scottish Household Survey (which is a Scottish Executive National Statistics Publication) - Tables 6.42/6.43 of which are to be found on Page 130 of:
From the glossary of terms contained in Appendix 1 of the above, it would appear that the income bands quoted in the above referenced tables represent net annual household income. This, in terms of the survey data means the income, which might normally be called the combined "take home pay" of the main householder and partner (if any), but which excludes the income of any other household adults, except in so far as they may contribute "dig money" to the main householder. The first 2 columns of Table 1. have been extracted from the above referenced data.
Imaginary Couple's Net Annual Household Income.
In order to compare the imaginary couple's income with the statistical data, we have reduced gross incomes by amounts which we consider to be credible employee standard deductions. The applied deductions are income tax, employee national insurance contributions and a 5% gross pay, tax free pension contribution. In this way, the couple's £40,000 combined gross pay converted to net household annual income is calculated as £28,856. - see Table 2.
Table 1. Percentage of Households in Each Net Income Band
From 2005 Scottish Household Survey.
Net Income Band £ Percentage of All Households Cumulative % of All Households
0 - 6,000 7 7
6,001 - 10,000 18 25
10,001 - 15,000 21 46
15,001 - 20,000 15 61
20,001 - 25,000 11 72
25,001 - 30,000 10 82
30,001 - 40,000 11 93
Over 40,000 7 100
Total 100
Chart 1. - From Table 1. Data
The chart has been drawn to illustrate the upper and lower values of each net income band and also a median line The upper and median net incomes are indeterminate for the over £40,000 band.
Observations from Statistical Data.
Reading from the median line on Chart 1, an income of £28,857 represents approximately 84%, indicating that about 16% of households have a higher net income.
Again, from the median line, 50% of all households appear to have a net annual income of approximately £13,500.
Clearly, we must recognise that the £40,000 gross annual household income of our imaginary couple in no way typifies Scottish household income, since they are in the top 16% of all households.
If we are to postulate that a net annual household income of £13,500 is typical, we would have difficulty in determining the tax liabilities without making assumptions as to the type of household and whether there are one or two wage earners. Since the widely quoted fireman and nurse scenario assumes a two adult household with no dependants and no savings, then we will do the same here. We will consider (see Table 2.) that the £13,500 may be made up of one wage earner with a gross income of £18,530 or two wage earners, each with a gross income of £7,833, both households contributing 5% of gross income towards a retirement pension. It is noted that £7,833 in 2004/2005 was fairly close to the minimum wage for full time employment.
Table 2. Household Income and Deductions - £
The table assumes income tax personal allowance, thresholds and tax rates for tax year 2004/2005.
Gross Annual Household Income Tax Free Pension Payment Taxable Pay Starting Rate Tax Standard Rate Tax National Insurance Net Annual Household Income
2 x 20,000 2,000 28,510.00 404.00 5,383.40 3,356.10 28,856.50
18,530.00 926.50 12,858.50 202.00 2,384.47 1,516.35 13,500.68
2 x 7,833 783.30 5,392.70 404.00 297.60 799.36 13,501.74
Table 3. Local Taxation Rates - LIT Applied to Basic and Higher Rate - £
Gross Annual Household Income Taxable Pay LIT at 3% LIT at 4% LIT at 4.5% LIT at 5.35% LIT at 6.5%
2 x 20,000 28,510.00 734 979 1101 1309 1590
18,530.00 12,858.50 325 434 488 580 705
2 x 7,833 5,392.70 41 54 61 72 88
Table 4. Council Tax for Glasgow 2004/2005. - £
790 922 1,053 1,185 1,448 1,712 1,975 2,370
Burt (Ref. 1 - Section 10, para's. 46 & 47) uses, as an example when discussing LIT, modelling work carried out by Stirling University. This work estimates the amount of LIT required, under various scenarios, to remit the total council tax receipts in Scotland, including the Council Tax Benefits granted by Westminster. Of these, the most commonly quoted scenario by Scottish Labour is "6.5% applied to earned income subject to income tax at basic and higher rates", payable in 2006/07.
Burt goes on to estimate, again presumably using 2006/07 tax data, the LIT payment for our notional couple (2 x £20,000 gross income) as £1,670 under 6.5% LIT. This figure is arrived at apparently without taking account of tax allowances beyond personal allowance. Is this notional, relatively well-off couple really contributing nothing towards their retirement pensions?
Table 3
The same incomes as in Table 2 are used in Table 3 to calculate LIT liabilities applied to earned income subject to income tax at basic and higher rates.
Of particular interest is the 5.35% rate as it represents approximately the same total remittance as the 6.5% rate, but assumes that Westminster would continue to contribute a grant roughly equal to the Council Tax Rebate grant which it pays at present.
Scottish Labour politicians, including the Finance Minister, are adamant that this would not be the case and that Westminster would cease to pay the 3% of total council funding that the Council Tax Rebate represents. If this punitive measure were indeed taken, it could be seen as vindictive in the extreme. An analogy exists here with recent statements regarding the Welsh Assembly which apparently is to be given additional legislative powers. Westminster would be required to approve any new or changed legislation. The Welsh Secretary, Peter Hain, when asked about a Westminster possible veto, said it would be very unlikely to be used as "we (Westminster) would be likely to reap a bitter harvest".
Comparison of LIT and Council Tax. Glasgow has been chosen for this comparison as it has one of the highest Council Tax rates, and it also contains some of the most deprived areas, in Scotland.
At the 5.35% LIT rate, the imaginary couple with the relatively high net household income of £28,856 would pay about £1,309 as opposed to Council Tax of £1,185 if in band D or £1,448 if in band E.
The much more representative couples with a net household income of £13,500 would pay, under all LIT scenarios in Table 3, less than Council Tax - even in band A.
Council Tax Rebate.
Neither couple with a net household income of £13,500 would qualify for Council Tax Rebate if occupying a property below band G.
1. The legendary fireman and nurse, having a net household income in the top 16% are in no way representative or typical of Scottish households. Any attempt to portray them as such, either implicitly, as has been widely done, or explicitly is a distortion of the truth. Even so, their income would correspond approximately to the break even point between 5.35% (6.5%) LIT and the Glasgow set Council Tax between band D and band E properties.
2. Approximately 50% of all Scottish households have a net household income of around £13,500. At this income, all Glasgow households would pay less under all rates of LIT considered in Table 3 than with Council Tax of any property value band.
3. Table 3 illustrates that LIT, being progressive, would much more closely reflect ability to pay than does Council Tax, which is regressive and as such discriminates against those on low incomes by subsidising the higher income households.
4. LIT automatically compensates for changes in income. For example, if the fireman or nurse were to stop earning for any reason, their reduced earnings would automatically be reflected by a proportionate reduction in LIT, whereas they would be required to pay exactly the same as before under Council Tax.
Ref. 1 - Sir Peter Burt and others."A Fairer Way" 2006 Report by the Scottish Local Government Finance Review Committee.
What Would I Pay in Local Income Tax?
Download printable pdf version.
Council Tax is unfair. It is based on purely notional property values. But the value of your house does not pay your Council Tax. You cannot sell off a few more bricks from your house every month to pay your Council Tax. In practice most of us have to pay our Council Tax from our incomes. And our incomes may bear no relation whatsoever to the value of our homes.
Take the following examples (figures refer to 2011-2012 tax and pension rates):
Jean Black is a 74-year old widow. Her only income is her state pension and pension credit of £137.35 per week (£7,142 per year). She has modest savings that make her ineligible for Council Tax Benefit. (The interest on her savings struggles to keep pace with inflation, so it is not real income.) She lives in her married home, a Band D house in Glasgow. Even with the single person's discount of 25%, she pays £910 in Council Tax, excluding water charges -12.74% of her income. If, like many pensioners - see below - Jean does not claim the Pension Credit to which she is entitled, her Council Tax will represent 17.13% of her basic state pension of £102.15 per week (£5,312 per year).
John and Jessie Green also live in a Band D house. John is the only wage earner. Jessie stays at home to look after their two young children. Their total income, including benefits, is £25,000. Their Council Tax, £1213, represents 4.9% of their gross income.
Paul and Moll Brown also live in a Band D house with their two grown-up sons, Henry and Joseph. All have jobs, and the total gross family income is £90,000. They pay exactly the same Council Tax as John and Jessie Green - but this is only 1.3% of their total gross family income.
Jeremy and Margot Gray live in a two million pound mansion (Band H). Both are company directors, and their joint incomes are £200,000. Their Council Tax, £2,426, represents 1.2% of their gross income.
It is true that people on very low incomes, and with little or no savings, are eligible for Council Tax Benefit, Income Support, Pension Credit and other benefits. But there is overwhelming evidence that means-tested benefits do not work fairly, and cannot be made to work fairly. Many people do not claim the Pension Credit, Council Tax Benefit and other benefits to which they are entitled. For example, in a report published on 25th June 2009, the Department for Work and Pensions estimated that, UK-wide, the number of people who did not claim Council Tax Benefit in 2007-2008, although they were entitled to claim it, was between 2.33 million and 3.06 million. And even modest savings make people ineligible for Council Tax Benefit. Needless to say, an income-based tax would do away with the need for a separate Council Tax Benefit.
What if Council Tax were replaced by a flat-rate income-based tax ring-fenced for local government expenditure (Local Income Tax, or LIT)? There are two points to remember:
1. Income-based taxes are calculated on TAXABLE income, not GROSS income. Nearly everyone (the exceptions being those with incomes above £115,000) has a tax-free personal allowance. For 2011-12, the personal allowance - subject to certain limitations of income - is £7,475 for those aged under 65, £9,940 for those aged 65-74, and £10,090 for those aged 75 and over. There are also other tax-free allowances including most contributions to (non-state) pensions, donations to charities through Gift Aid or Payroll Giving, and trading losses. Your taxable income is your gross income less your personal allowance and any other tax-free allowances.
2. Under a flat-rate income-based tax, everyone pays exactly the same percentage of their taxable income.
So how would Local Income Tax affect the people in our example? Assuming that their personal allowance is their only tax-free allowance, their TAXABLE incomes in 2011-2012 would be as follows. (If, of course, they had other tax-free allowances, their taxable incomes would be even lower.)
Jean Black: No taxable income. Her pension is less than her tax-free allowance of £9,940
John and Jessie Green: £17, 525 (25,000 less £7,475)
Paul and Moll Brown's family: £60,100 (£90,000 less £29,900 [£7,475 x 4])
Jeremy and Margot Gray: £185,050 (£200,000 less £14,950 [£7,475 x 2])
Depending on the proportion of Council expenditure met from central government grants, most political parties have estimated that the amount of Local Income Tax would be between 3% and 5%.
If LIT were set at 3%:
Jean Black would pay nothing (compared with £910 Council Tax), as her income is below the tax-free allowance.
John and Jessie Green would pay £526 (3% of £17,525) compared with £1213 Council Tax.
Paul and Moll Brown's family would pay £1803 (3% of £60,100) compared with £1213 Council Tax.
Jeremy and Margot Gray would pay £5,552 (3% of £185,050) compared with £2,426 Council Tax.
If LIT were set at 5%:
John and Jessie Green would pay £876 (5% of £17,525) compared with £1213 Council Tax.
Paul and Moll Brown's family would pay £3,005 (5% of £60,100) compared with £1213 Council Tax.
Jeremy and Margot Gray would pay £9,252 (5% of £185,050) compared with £2,426 Council Tax.
So clearly those on lower incomes would benefit compared with those able to pay their fair share.
Most of us can easily work out what we would pay under a Local Income Tax, whatever the tax rate.
1. Take your GROSS ANNUAL INCOME. [You will find your gross annual income on your P60 Form. Or you will find it on your pay slips, pension advice, etc: multiply by 12 if paid monthly or by 52 if paid weekly].
2. Take your total TAX FREE ALLOWANCES. [The simplest way to find your tax-free allowances is to look at your tax code. You will find your tax code on the annual tax coding notice issued annually by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC), or you will find it on your P60 Form, pay slips, pension advice, etc. Your tax code consists of a number and a letter. If the letter is replaced by a '9', then this represents the tax-free allowance allocated by HMRC. For example, if your tax code is 747L, this would mean you had a tax free allowance of £7479 . Most of us can easily work out our tax free allowances for ourselves by adding together our personal allowance, non-state pension contributions, etc.]
3. Subtract your total TAX FREE ALLOWANCES from your GROSS ANNUAL INCOME to give your TAXABLE INCOME.
4. Then multiply your TAXABLE INCOME by 3%, 5% or whatever LIT rate is proposed. This will show the amount of Local Income Tax that you would pay. Then compare this with what you pay in Council Tax!
Gross Annual Income = £24,000
Total Tax Free Allowances = £7,475
Therefore Taxable Income = £16,525 (£24,000 minus £7,475)
Therefore Local Income Tax at 3% = £496; Local Income Tax at 5% = £826
Gross Annual Income = £40,000
Total Tax Free Allowances = £7,475
Therefore Taxable Income = £32,525 (£40,000 minus £7475)
Therefore Local Income Tax at 3% = £976; Local Income Tax at 5% = £1,626
SAACT's Response to Critics of Local Income Tax
This feature counters the criticisms of local income tax made by various individuals and organisations. SAACT's responses are shown in bold italics.
(1) "Local income tax (LIT) will make Scotland the highest-taxed part of the UK and this might encourage businesses to leave."
Council expenditure budgets, including the local taxation derived element, are independent of the method of collection of the local taxation except insofar as the cost of collection is concerned. It follows that, contrary to mischievous propaganda, the total amount of required taxation would not be affected by the method by which the local taxation is levied, except that more efficient collection would reduce the overall requirement. It is true, however, that under a properly administered and progressive LIT system, those with very high incomes would be required to pay more of their fair share and thus would cease to be subsidised by those of lesser means. It is also true that those with more modest incomes would consequently be required to pay substantially less than at present or even nothing at all.
(2) "There will be serious service cuts at council level unless local income tax is set at 4.5p or higher."
Even at 4.5p, the average wage earner (on c.£26,000 pa) would still only pay £720 pa - as compared to an average band 'D' council tax of £1,149. (Also, note that the band 'D' figure would now have been very much higher had there not been a council tax freeze for the past seven years.)
(3) "Replacing an unfair tax with an unworkable tax will cause more misery than we can know."
LIT works perfectly well in several other countries within Scandinavia and parts of the USA. To the best of our knowledge, variable Scottish income tax has not been deemed "unworkable" by HMRC.
(4) "Hard-pressed students, who are currently exempt from the council tax, would have to pay."
Most unlikely to affect students as they wouldn't pay any LIT unless their annual earnings exceeded £10,000 or £192 per week (i.e. about 30 hours at the National Minimum Wage hourly rate of £6.50)
(5) "The PAYE system does not easily deal with taxpayers who receive income from different sources, including pensioners receiving pensions from different employers or those who have various part-time jobs - this will particularly affect those on low incomes who will be exposed to incorrect PAYE codes, and these practical issues
HMRC copes very well with, for example, pensioners receiving several pensions from different sources, at present. 6 "Regardless of the rate of tax chosen, there will be uncertainty as to the yield that can be obtained, as revenues derived from income taxes can be more volatile." Surely volatility of yield is also experience d with the existing national income tax and other existing taxes, including Council Tax. Certainly, unemployment and low wages would mean a lower yield. These circumstances, however, under LIT, would result in a n automatic adjustment through the income tax system in "ability to pay" and therefore cost much less than the present cumbersome bureaucracy of the council tax benefit system.
(7) "LIT would be technically complex and challenging to implement because of the complexities of tax law, and trying to sort out what would happen to the 400 million council tax benefit."
Clearly, the complexity and challenges were not found to be insurmountable by several other countries. Also, the Council Tax Benefit problem has fairly recently been resolved by the UK government. should not be underestimated."
(8) "Investors and businesses who are thinking of coming to Scotland will be scared away because of the extra income tax."
No more than being scared away because of high council tax.
(9) "Wealthy people who have unearned income from sources like share dividends can avoid LIT whilst poorer people would have to pay."
As a matter of principle, LIT should be applied to all sources of income - including savings and investment income. LIT could be levied in exactly the same way as HMRC deals with income tax applying to dividends and other unearned income.
(10) "The UK tax system does not give across-the-board allowances for disability and, in the absence of such allowances, the burden of LIT will be higher on disabled people than on the general body of taxpayers."
Bear in mind that disability/incapacity/housing benefit is non-taxable and that LIT would be payable on taxable income in excess of personal allowance.
(11) "LIT will be more intrusive into people's lives because it would require far greater knowledge of their personal circumstances than a property tax would."
LIT would be no more intrusive than at present, with national income tax.
(12) "The 281 million of savings that need to be made to create a 3p local income tax could be used instead to reduce the burden of the council tax."
There is already a commitment for HMRC to to set up a separate tax system for Scotland. However, setting the LIT rate at nearer 5p would obviate this problem and would be welcomed by the vast majority of local t axpayers.
(13) "LIT would bring unwelcome extra bureaucracy and cost to businesses because of all the extra paperwork created in sorting out employees' income tax. Lib Dem proposals for different rates for different areas would make it even worse."
Some politicians who claim this to be a difficulty should recognise the analogy regarding cross-border differential income tax proposals from Calman or those in the new Scotland bill. In this context, well esta blished relational data base technology renders tasks like this entirely practical using attributes such as NI numbers, postcodes, tax codes, etc.
(14) "Families will be worse off, or there will be cuts in public services, because the 3p rate will not be enough to fund current service levels."
Even a 4.5p rate of LIT would be most acceptable for the reason given at item 2, above. Namely, that an average wage earner on £26,000 pa would still only pay £720 pa in LIT - as compared to an average band 'D' council tax of £1,149.
(15) "Water and sewerage charges are collected by local authorities on behalf of Scottish Water - the consultation did not present any proposals on how such charges will be set and collected under LIT."
Hopefully, water charges would also be based on ability to pay.
(16) "The SNP's centralising LIT proposal reduces the control that councils have over local finances."
Initially, it would be much easier and cheaper to implement a nationally-set tax. Later, after the system had bedded down, it could then be changed to a locally-set tax if this is seen as a real problem.
Other Features
The following other features appear in SAACT Newsletters (see "Newsletter Archives" Page):
Some Basic Tax Facts (Issue 2, October 2006)
Council Tax or Income Tax? (Issue 2, October 2006)
Local Taxes - Ease and Cost of Collection (Issue 4, March 2007)
Local Accountability (Issue 5, April 2007)
Comparison of Local Taxation Using Various Fairness Criteria (Issue 6, June 2007)
Copyright © 2011 Scottish Action Against Council Tax
Although the SAACT Website is copyright, readers may freely quote from it without requesting permission, provided that due acknowledgement is made to SAACT. | <urn:uuid:44f781ff-48a1-4669-9157-e442de70ffae> | http://www.saact.org.uk/features.html | en | 0.963668 | 0.02052 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Create a new file system in HP Unix
Create a new filesystem:
(A new filesystem will require a new logical volume)
1. Create the Logical Volume (Procedure Below)
2. Create the File System
• Using newfs:
1. newfs -F <filesystem_type> <path_to_lvol_devicefile>
2. newfs -F vxfs /dev/vg02/lvol1
• Using mkfs:
1. mkfs -F <FILESYSTEM TYPE> -o bsize=<OPTIONS>,<OPTIONS> <PATH TO LV>
1. -F is filesystem type, such as vxfs for the Veritas File System or JFS
2. -o are options, such as bsize (Block Size) and largefiles.
3. Path to LV is of the form /dev/VGNAME/LVNAME
1. For example: "mkfs -F vxfs -o bsize=8192,largefiles /dev/bgbill/lvbill"
3. Create the Mount Point
1. mkdir -p <full path to mountpoint>
2. -p will make any subdirectories in the path that do not already exist
4. Set the proper ownership and permissions on the mount point
1. chown owner:group /<mount point>
2. chmod XXX /<mount point>
5. Mount the File System
1. Edit /etc/fstab using vi and add the proper entry
2. For example: "/dev/vgbill/lvbill /maindir/subdir/share vxfs rw,suid,largefiles,delaylog,datainlog 0 2"
2. "mount /<mountpoint>" to mount the file system
6. Test
1. Do a "bdf <mount point>". This command will show if the file system is mounted, and it's size.
2. Do an "ls -ld <mount point>" to verify that the proper permissions are there.
3. Have the user test the filesystem, and report back with any problems
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"Fahrenheit 451" Eulogy for Clarisse McClellan.
Essay by yoyomonkeyHigh School, 10th gradeA+, March 2007
download word file, 1 pages 3.0
Downloaded 1939 times
I lived in a boring, ignorant world. My life was always the same. I never really saw the world until I met Clarisse McClellan. She was not like the others. She didn't follow their mindless routine.
She didn't just exist like everyone else; she lived. She didn't just look; she observed. She thought. She felt.
Clarisse gave me something to live for. She showed me how to live and not just exist.
Ever since Clarisse disappeared, life has felt empty. She was my life because I had no life before her. But even though she is gone, the idea still lives. The idea that you can live a life; a happy life. That you don't need to follow the absent-minded routine of all the others.
Clarisse McClellan believed people should embrace life and live it to the fullest extent. The society she lived in didn't believe this' they told her she was weird and anti-social just because she was different.
Clarisse ended up being killed because of this. She was killed because she believed in living, thinking, observing, feeling, pondering, questioning. Inn my mind, Clarisse McClellan is a martyr; she refused to adapt to the norm even though she would be killed if she didn't.
Clarisse gave me hope. She gave me hope that maybe there is something more out there. Maybe there is actually some depth to our world. Maybe I can live. Now I can live. Clarisse McClellan gave me life and her own was taken from her. I will never forget her. I will never forget how my life began. My life began with a girl named Clarisse.
Berger, Melvin. Censorship. New York: Franklin Watts, 1982.
"Censorship Is Essential to an Open Society". Censorship. Bradley Steffens, Ed. Opposing Viewpoints Digestsî Series. Greenhaven Press, 2001.
"Censorship Is Unconstitutional". Censorship. Bradley Steffens, Ed. Opposing Viewpoints Digestsî Series. Greenhaven Press, 2001.
Taylor, Charles. "Censorship Is Not an Effective Way to Protect Children". Andrea C. Nakaya, Ed. Opposing Viewpointsî Series. Greenhaven Press, 2005. | <urn:uuid:580754a3-0d88-450b-93bc-1ee939827fa7> | http://www.writework.com/essay/fahrenheit-451-eulogy-clarisse-mcclellan | en | 0.969545 | 0.05716 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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Music Media
DVD-Jon Breaks iTunes Encryption For Linux Users 584
McGruff writes "The Register has a story regarding DVD-Jon's new hobby, iTunes DRM. According to the story DRMed iTunes AAC files can now be played under Linux via VidioLAN Client thanks to some handywork by Jon. '"When you run the VideoLAN Client under Windows it will write the user key to a file. The user key is system independent and can thus be used by the GNU/Linux version of VLC," he explains.' Personally, this just means I will buy even more iTunes." (We mentioned in November Johansen's efforts to negate the iTunes restrictions on Windows.)
DVD-Jon Breaks iTunes Encryption For Linux Users
Comments Filter:
• Key exchange ? (Score:5, Interesting)
by Jesrad ( 716567 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @09:54PM (#7886969) Journal
How long before people start exchanging their keys ? Now that the key can be had and used under virtually any platform, in an easily copied or transmitted file format, the copy-protection is effectively cracked.
• Re:Key exchange ? (Score:2, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward
fuck exchanging keys. just exchange the damn mp3s using kazaa or emule.
• Re:Key exchange ? (Score:3, Insightful)
by Jesrad ( 716567 )
You are not thinking on the same scale as me. This reverse-engineering of the iTMS' AAC copy-protection means more people will share the music they buy with relatives / people they know, at a small scale. I don't think this marks the "end of the music industry" in any way, it will probably have no impact on the market, apart from letting Linux users listen to music they'd buy from the iTunes Music Store, which means more potential customers.
• What's your point? It's not like much of what iTunes has is exclusive. It's all distributed on P2P anyway, it's just a pain to get that way. I don't see this as having any real consequence besides allowing users to play the files how they want without re-encoding it in another lossy format.
• Re:Key exchange ? (Score:3, Interesting)
by lynxuser ( 737950 )
While exchanging keys sounds good, in theory, I believe the keys are limited to 3 PCs through the DRM. As well, they would need to be sent with the AAC DRM files that you want others to use, this sounds like a security risk to me. Finally, I suspect that Apple enabled some sort of hash, linked perhaps to your MAC address (or some other hardware) that would keep the key different for every single PC.
• Re:Key exchange ? (Score:5, Insightful)
by salimma ( 115327 ) * on Monday January 05, 2004 @10:03PM (#7887044) Homepage Journal
RTFA - You need to exchange the key *and* the file itself, as the key is tailored to each computer. iTMS reps could then easily block computers with said Windows Product IDs.
This hack is, OTOH, useful for 'fair use' - for people who dual-boot Windows and Linux. As well as dedicated music pirates who would re-share the unlocked files as plain AAC.
• by Luke the Obscure ( 651951 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @10:19PM (#7887164) Homepage
I can't wait until all Slashdot comments are nothing but long strings of esoteric acronyms.
• Re:Key exchange ? (Score:3, Interesting)
That doesn't make any sense.
If he's using the key to decrypt the file, presumably the raw AAC stream can be extracted.
I.e. you could do lossless conversion of m4p -> m4a. You'll have the same exact data minus the DRM, free to use with any AAC-compatible device or software you want.
• How long... (Score:5, Interesting)
by 3Suns ( 250606 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @09:55PM (#7886973) Homepage
Awesome, I was waiting for this. Definitely a reason to consider iTunes now.
How long until someone writes a command-line AAC2mp3 converter?
• Or maybe... (Score:3, Informative)
by raygundan ( 16760 )
Just AAC2AAC? Only without the copy protection. That way we keep our compression loss to one generation.
• Re:How long... (Score:3, Informative)
by Doppler00 ( 534739 )
Why would you want to re-encode an AAC to an MP3? AAC already has superior quality. Just removing the encryption (for personal use) would be nice.
• Re:How long... (Score:5, Informative)
by moosesocks ( 264553 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @10:06PM (#7887071) Homepage
It could be done with AppleScript under OS X. Simply tell itunes to play a given song, tell any old sound recording app to dump the computer's sound output to a WAV, convert to MP3 using LAME, and then grab the song's info via. AppleScript and put it into an ID3
The downside here is that you're losing quality encoding to MP3 (remember that AAC is also lossy). Unfortunately, there is no way to preserve full-quality without retaining the original file format.
Either way, I frown upon this sort of piracy. $.99 is pretty darn cheap (Note here that I have no objection to using this to play your OWN files under linux if it is the operating system of your choice. Just keep it to yourself)
• Re:How long... (Score:5, Interesting)
by Nasarius ( 593729 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @10:18PM (#7887152)
Exactly. That's why if you want me to buy music online, you had better be distributing it in a lossless format (FLAC, SHN, APE, whatever...I don't care as long as I can get the original WAV).
by iammaxus ( 683241 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @11:58PM (#7887868)
Why do people insist on things like this... I would really like to find the person who could honestly tell me that they enjoy a 192+ kbps encoded (mp3pro, aac, wma) any less than the cd. Can anyone really hear any loss during regular use? People just like to _know_ that they are listening to a completely, totally, 100% original even though they would probably never know. And like the others who responded to this comment, what's the point when these files are generally being encoded directly from masters which yields _better_ results than what you want (a 100% copy of the cd)
by nemesisj ( 305482 )
I can consistently determine the difference between a CD and 192kbps in a double blind test environment. If it's a genre of music that I really like, and a band I know well, I can even do pretty well between a 256kbps MP3 and a CD.
This is on medium to low quality speakers.
If we're talking about headphones, I can tell every time between the CD and any lossy encoding method.
You obviously don't listen to music for detail, which is ok, that's fine, but stop sounding stupid saying that noticing fine detail i
• Piracy? (Score:3, Insightful)
by phorm ( 591458 )
I frown upon this sort of piracy
It's not piracy until you sell/give the re-encoded file away to somebody else. Until then it's fair-use (hint: think of devices that play Mp3 but not AAC).
• by lynxuser ( 737950 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @09:55PM (#7886975)
I am quite excited about this. VLC has always been my media player of choice, now the ability to play AAC DRM files in it just ups its ante.
While booting to Windows is a slight disappointment, I am sure DVD-Jon will remove that step ASAP.
• Windows Only??? (Score:3, Insightful)
by Blair16 ( 683764 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @09:56PM (#7886977)
Does anybody else see something wrong with Apple having a program that only works on Windows and Macs? You would think they would be a little bit more understanding of those of us running "alternative" OSes.
• Re:Windows Only??? (Score:5, Insightful)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 05, 2004 @09:58PM (#7887009)
Yeah, it's not like Apple has a vested interest in one operating system over another!
Oh wait...
Guys, Apple is no more altruistic than Microsoft. Apple is only cool because they are the underdog. Don't be expecting Apple to be something they aren't. That's where Linux and Open Source comes in.
• by mental_telepathy ( 564156 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @10:05PM (#7887060)
That would be the way for apple to go if they were in it to make everyone feel good. But actually, they are in it to make money. And as you may have noticed, a lot of linux users don't like to pay for stuff. This is smart for Linux users, not so good for people trying to make money off of Linux users.
And of course, it could never be enough. port itunes to linux? Where is the Ogg Vorbis support? Got Ogg? Why doesn't it work with *insert random peice of sourceforge developed software here*
I know, nobody wants to hear that they are the prima donnas of the IT world. But I've got Karma to burn.
SIGH. I think that you will find that Linux users are more than happy to pay for good products. Consider the loki games; I do not know of anybody who stole one of them. I, like many others, bought a number of them. In fact, had Loki managed their money better or simply started about a year later, they
• Hey, I own an IBook and I would be buying ITunes right now if it was possible to play on Linux. Instead Apple has lost a sale, but I certainly use the Ibook to rip my CD's, since the resulting files do play on Linux.
Linux users are not cheap, it's just that nothing is sold for them. Your karma deserves to burn for that nasty insult.
I am employed writing $5000/copy software that is used on Linux, btw. Why are we able to sell that, when Linux users are "cheap"?
• by macjohn ( 185795 ) <> on Tuesday January 06, 2004 @12:29AM (#7888080) Homepage
You forget where the money is: it's in iPods, not in the music. They don't make any money on the music. But every platform they can hook to an iPod is a win. So doing a Linux port certainly doesn't hurt them and may help.
• Re:Windows Only??? (Score:3, Interesting)
by JazFresh ( 146585 )
Check out the Google Zeitgeist. [] Only 1% of all hits were from Linux machines. Given that, do you really think it's worth Apple's time to cater for 1% of the Internet population?
Not all those hits could have been from personal Linux machines, as opposed to those at universities or workplaces, so the real figure of personal Linux machines is probably less.
Or maybe you were talking about Amiga support, which I'm sure made up most of the "Other" category. :)
• From the article... (Score:3, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 05, 2004 @09:56PM (#7886979)
Norwegian programmer Jon Lech Johansen, who broke the DVD encryption scheme...
It was my understanding that DVD-Jon (as we're calling him now) did *not* actually break the DVD encryption scheme, but collaborated with some anonymous hackers who did. I think his involvement was more on the order of making it more accessible to the tyro. Could someone clear this up once and for all?
• Macworld Keynote (Score:2, Interesting)
by gss ( 86275 )
I wonder if Jobs will say anything about this in tomorrows Macworld Keynote. I kind of doubt it.
• by cacheMan ( 150533 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @09:57PM (#7886990)
What do any of these people do with free time to break encryption schemes, contribute to oss, and build robotic girlfriends? I'm serious, how do you earn a living and still have time to do things like this?
• iTunes on Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
by ZWarrior ( 194861 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @09:58PM (#7886994) Homepage
Somehow I think that this is an example of the way software restrictions will continue.
Programmers will code the security so that the app only works one way, and some user will break it s it works elsewhere as well.
We need to have more thought put into coding so that apps will work more platforms, and also be aware that it is envitable (sp?) that somebody will crack it.
I broke a lot of digital clocks as a kid because I wanted to know what made them tick! I still got new ones, and broke them as well.
• I broke a lot of
I'm sorry it never dawned on you that the ticking must've been coming from something else.
• The Code (Score:2, Informative)
by sr180 ( 700526 )
Link from the article to directly download the code: /vlc/modules/demux/mp4/?cvsroot=VideoLAN
• I have an ipod, and use it together with the nifty GTKPod, Grip and beep to get my music onto the Pod and play tunes off it.
But I'm in Australia, and we don't have iTunes music store yet.
It it possible to use iTunes music store under Linux? Is it just a web site, with files you need iTunes to play, in which case I can use VideoLAN instead? Or otherwise?
In a worse case scenario, does iTunes work under Winex or Codeweavers Wine?
• But (Score:5, Insightful)
by ITR81 ( 727140 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @09:59PM (#7887013)
But I think all Apple needs to do is update QT and update it's DRM.
Seems like this crack can be patched.
I doubt Apple will call DVDJohn but I bet the RIAA will.
• Re:But (Score:5, Insightful)
by exhilaration ( 587191 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @10:09PM (#7887088)
It's Jon, and he'll tell them that their American threats don't mean jack in Norway.
By the way, I sure hope that he has no plans to visit the U.S. [].
• Re:But (Score:5, Interesting)
by jared_hanson ( 514797 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @10:36PM (#7887268) Homepage Journal
According to my understanding, his first "crack" would be possible to patch as it exploited the functionality of QuickTime that made an unencrypted AAC stream (or PCM stream?) out of the protected one. It then dumped this to a file absent of DRM.
His new crack actually writes the decryption key out to a file. This key is written out using Windows and is apparently derived from hardware serial numbers, such as that on the hard drive. This key can then apparently be used to decrypt the protected files on any OS. I haven't given this a shot yet, but it should be interesting to find out.
Personally, I don't care all that much, as I use iTunes on OS X and an iPod to listen to most of my music. However, I would like to serve up my protected AAC to my squeezebox, and this just might allow for on the fly transcoding to a PCM stream from SlimServer.
It would be pretty tough for Apple to go and make another DRM scheme that avoided this without breaking backwards compatibility.
• Relevant Information (Score:5, Informative)
by Otto ( 17870 ) on Tuesday January 06, 2004 @02:54AM (#7888915) Homepage Journal
After examining the code, here's basically how the iTunes encryption works:
Every user account for iTunes gets a "user key". This gets sent to the computer at the the time of "Authorization" and gets written to a file on the hard drive. But it's not written out plainly, oh no. Instead, it creates a "system key" using several bits of data from Windows and the hardware and such. This system key is what's stored in the file.
To playback a song, the system key is derived from the machine and used to decrypt the file on the drive. This gives the list of user keys that machine is authorized to play, and these will decrypt songs using the same account (yes, each song is encrypted at the time of download, with the user key for that account).
This crack essentially works out how the system key is derived. Using that, it gets the user key, writes it off to a file, and can then decrypt any of that users songs.
Note that when you transfer a song from iTunes to the iPod, it does the same basic thing. Decrypts the file using the system key and reencrypts it using iPod specific information, then sticks it on the iPod. The iPod then does the same process as iTunes to play the file, more or less, it's just using a different system key.
This crack could be patched by changing the method to derive the system key from the machine, but not once the user key has been derived and written to a file somewhere. Once you have the user key, that can be used to decrypt the songs, and you're essentially done. Since you have the song files, and the key to decrypt them, no patch in the world could possibly fix it. They could fix it for newly purchased songs, but to do that they'd have to change every users key and reauthorize them. And that potentially breaks the authorization for songs that have already been purchased. They could start a new key without removing the old ones, in order to maintain backward compatibility and not piss off everyone who has used iTMS up until now, and then release new songs using only the new encryption, but it's essentially a dead end. The whole concept behind iTunes encryption is that once a machine is authorized, it can play songs without any outside intervention. Meaning that it has everything it needs to decrypt the songs right there on that machine. Meaning that as long as this is true, it can be cracked again.
I knew it was only a matter of time. I give it another 2 weeks before someone takes the code out of the drms.c, drms.h, and drmtables.h files and produces an M4P->M4A converter. Everything really needed to do it is in there. You read in the file, call this code to get the system key, call the code to get the user key, call the code to decrypt the DRMS section, then rewrite the file with a normal AAC data section instead. Not too difficult, although interpreting Jon's code is a PITA to say the least. The guy writes C code that reads more like ASM. Frankly, looking at the code, I think he simply found the relevant part of iTunes/Quicktime with a debugger and converted the relevant machine language straight into C with no major adjustments.
Ah. This explains two aspects of ipods that I've found odd up til now: the fact that only itunes can be used to move files to them, and the fact that files can't easily be moved from
• by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 05, 2004 @10:00PM (#7887020)
When will the this commie bastard be stopped from stealing money from corporations?????
• by Anonymous Coward
Get in trouble. Long, laborious litigation. What was solved? Nothing. Consumers don't have more rights. It's still a pain in the ass to decode DVDs, and now he's on a bunch of corporate sharks' bad sides.
Then, he decides to go and pull this shit AND be vocal about it. Kid, seriously, grow up. Yes, it's very nice that you're demonstrating your "freedom". How about learning some common sense with that, Jones? You just got out of major litigation, now you want to swim back into it? Even a guy who ja
• unless you really think you are innocent
• by GoofyBoy ( 44399 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @10:30PM (#7887236) Journal
>Kid, seriously, grow up.
What is wrong with him doing this and staying like this forever?
I mean, he should stop doing something just because "other people who know better" say that he should stop?
Should he stop becuase he could get into civil legal problems? That doesn't stop lots of "adults".
Should he stop because its "wrong"? Maybe some one could tell me where this is ethically wrong becuase I don't see it.
I say that he should keep doing what he likes to do and accept the consequences until he feels he shoudn't anymore and not what other people say.
Because in the end its his life.
• by Macka ( 9388 )
It's wrong if it negatively impacts those of us who are waiting for iTMS to become available in countries where we can't get it yet. That's my worry. Apple has to make new licensing agreements for each country they want to offer the service in. How will this impact future negotiations? We don't know yet. But it sure as hell isn't going to have a positive effect. If because of this ki
• by crush ( 19364 )
Rights only exist because they are fought for and then defended -- it's like trademarks and patents, you've got to be aggressive about defining the legal boundaries. Jon Johanssen has helped to make it clear that it is not a crime to have ported DeCSS to GNU/Linux.
• by JoeShmoe ( 90109 ) <> on Monday January 05, 2004 @10:42PM (#7887302)
Troll or clueless, I can't tell because as AC there's no post history.
Consumers, at least in Norway, do have more rights. They have the right to use DeCSS to decrypt DVD video to video on the player of their choice. They also, presumably, have the right to publish and obtain the DeCSS program.
Now, back in the land of the free, we have no such rights...why? Because we pussed out. We decided not to pursue our DeCSS case and let stand a lower court ruling that banned it. Oh yeah, this was much better than what Jon did, namely stand up for himself in court.
I'm not so naive to believe that Jon was selfless in his act (he was part of or closely associated with warez groups who were keen on cracking DVD encryption to allow for perfect all-digital rips rather than having to use analog loopback to capture card). But even if DeCSS has a seedy or sordid history no one wants to talk about, the point stands that DeCSS does have legitamate uses and that is where Jon's defense was founded.
When you have precedent set, you don't hide it in your desk and call it a day. You use that precedent to try and set new precedent that is even broader in scope. Jon has stood up to the might of Norway's MPAA/Attorney General equivalents, who now have major egg on their face. How likely do you think they will be to pursue another half-baked case against Jon? Jon is probably bulletproof against anything but real criminal behavior. As soon as the words "fair use" are uttered, I can't imagine there would be a government attorney crazy enough to get struck by lightning twice.
Releasing it anonymously would have only started a witchhunt that could have harmed a lot of other people, people who shouldn't have to be lightning rods for this same kind of treatment. But putting his name on it, yes, he is risked another trial but as I said, it is rather unlikely.
In this world full of people who puss out and settle for lesser charges (cough)Mitnick(cough) I think it's incredible that someone has the guts to put himself at risk to stand up for something. I only wish someone were that brave here in US courts.
• by zulux ( 112259 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @10:42PM (#7887304) Homepage Journal
Is this guy an idiot?
Jon is a noble-hearted man who is standing up to tremedous odds and tremendous risk to fight for somthing that is good.
'round here, we call people like that heros
• by GlassHeart ( 579618 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @10:44PM (#7887310) Journal
Millions of people jaywalk, and millions more drive their cars faster than the speed limit. What has that done to silly (in some places) jaywalking laws or absurd (in some places) speed limits? On most US roads, it's a well known rule of thumb that police would generally not bother drivers who speed by under 10 miles per hour over the limit.
On the other hand, a frail man deliberately picked up a handful of salt, which was at the time a monopoly product of the British Empire. He was arrested for it, but this and other actions that fly in the face of "common sense" eventually freed India from British colonization.
How about that woman who was arrested for sitting in the front of the bus, when everybody knows that black people need to sit in the back?
I'm not saying DVD-Jon is anybody resembling Gandhi or Parks, or that his cause is nearly as important. What I'm saying is that many changes come from a small number of people noisily breaking unjust laws, rather than a thousand people quietly breaking it.
• by stuartkahler ( 569400 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @10:48PM (#7887344)
I'd bet he started working on the iTMS project a long while ago. He's just been acquitted twice for doing the same thing with DVD encryption. Now that he has rock solid precedent, he can practically walk into court without a lawyer if the recording industry sues him. He's got a great big whoop-ass stick, and it's time to use it.
In Norway, that is... Americans are still screwed.
• Actually, he's really smart. He's publicly claiming responsibility for doing something right after practically the same thing was found not to be illegal in his country. So Apple (or the RIAA) goes to Norway, and tells them to stop him, and Okokrim tells them that not only do they not want to prosecute, but they have legal precedent that what he's doing isn't a crime.
Sure, the litigation may have not accomplished much, but it did resolve that under current Norwegian law, it's perfectly fine for him to do w
• What's The Point? (Score:2, Interesting)
by Pave Low ( 566880 )
iTunes isn't available for Linux, and it probably never will ever be.
So where would a Linux user get purchased music from iTunes from? From his Windows or Mac computer. This is a what passes for win for Linux users??
It seems to be a cute exercise, but not a very useful thing, unless you hate Apple's horrific, evil DRM oh so much.
• Leave it alone (Score:2, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward
Christ, he just barely got away with the DeCSS thing. He should keep a low profile. They know where he lives. He's advertising to be arrested again.
• Re:Leave it alone (Score:5, Insightful)
by exhilaration ( 587191 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @10:18PM (#7887153)
He's trying to play media that he legally purchased on Linux. This is exactly the argument that he used in his DeCSS defense. Until Norway passes a law making that illegal, he's perfectly safe.
• Re:Leave it alone (Score:5, Insightful)
by thparker ( 717240 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @11:14PM (#7887511) Homepage
He's trying to play media that he legally purchased on Linux.
Maybe I'm behind the times. I thought iTunes was still a U.S.-only service?
So how is Jon trying to play media on Linux that he's legally purchased when it can't be purchased in Norway? I'm just wondering.
• Re:Leave it alone (Score:3, Insightful)
by 49152 ( 690909 )
Depends on how he actually did it.
If all he did was point his browser at and buy the song using his own credit card, then the norwegian courts would not give a rat's ass about Apple really not wanting to sell it to him.
Same thing goes if he bought it while actually beeing in USA (vacation or something).
• Re:Leave it alone (Score:4, Insightful)
by GlassHeart ( 579618 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @11:27PM (#7887613) Journal
He's trying to play media that he legally purchased on Linux.
He is? The iTunes Music Store is available only in the United States, and I believe he's in Norway.
(Apple uses the credit card mailing address to ensure you are in the US, but don't confuse your ability to get a US credit card with Apple having a legal right to sell you that song if you really aren't a US resident.)
• What's the point? (Score:3, Interesting)
by mr100percent ( 57156 ) * on Monday January 05, 2004 @10:03PM (#7887053) Homepage Journal
What is the point here?
Ok, so you can play iTunes AAC files on *Nix PCs, provided you have the key. Wouldn't it just be easier to download it off of Kazaa? You can find cover art with google, and you can use SoulSeek to find high quality rips. That gets rid of two arguements right there.
iTunes DRM is WEAK, man. Burn it to CDRW and rip the sucker again, it's as easy as jumping over a subway turnstile. Why are we wasting time with a pointless thing like this, why not crack WMP or something harder with a better payoff?
• by Jon Abbott ( 723 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @10:03PM (#7887054) Homepage
You know, ever since Apple has released OS X and their new sexy metallic machines (what's next? Gallium?), their legal department has been surreptitiously quiet. This development might make the "evil" side of Apple show itself again... It will be interesting to see if this development will affect their stance any on Quicktime for Linux...
• by GerbilSocks ( 713781 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @10:05PM (#7887066)
At least Apple's version of DRM would go virtually unnoticed by casual listeners of music. iTunes DRM was designed to deter heavy pirates, but in all fairness, their DRM scheme is the best of the bunch. There are several ways to circumvent iTunes DRM, but at least DVD Jon's implementation just means it's less of a hassle for the said casual user.
• WMP (Score:3, Interesting)
by SJ ( 13711 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @10:07PM (#7887076)
So if this guy is so great, has he broken Windows Media yet?
• Wait (Score:5, Funny)
by pHatidic ( 163975 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @10:08PM (#7887082)
So can we change his name to iTunes-Jon. Or better yet how about iDVD-Jon. Kinda catchy, actually.
• Itunes. (Score:2, Informative)
by DAldredge ( 2353 )
Due to a series of drive crashes I lost what music I bought from iTunes but, due to the way itunes works, I am unable to download the music again.
Why? It isn't like I bought a digital object, I just bought a string of bits.
• Re:Itunes. (Score:3, Interesting)
by Have Blue ( 616 )
You *did* buy a digital object. That was the original difference between Apple's store and the other DRM implementations: You have complete freedom to do anything you want with the file with the Finder. You just need authorization to use (play, burn) it in iTunes. You are free to, and Apple recommends that you, copy the file for backup purposes.
• ...I'll be opening an iTunes account very soon, where previously I would not have considered it. The two primary computers where I listen to music are Linux PCs at work and at home. I'm unwilling to burn AACs to a CD and then re-encode them (with additional loss) into MP3s or Oggs.
I just hope Apple gets the message and removes all DRM from their music. At that point, I'd encourage others who do not have technical knowledge to buy music using the service as well.
I take it that it is the RIAA that mandat
• by Bakafish ( 114674 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @10:15PM (#7887127) Homepage
Not that I would advocate such use. But this requires the key to be distributed with each file. Keep in mind that said key is *known* by apple, and directly tied to your account, it isn't something I would recommend sending out into the wild. On the other hand, using it on your own equipment to get around that creepy three machine registration limit seems like a good thing. If anything ever happened to Apple and your registered machine bit the dust, being able to back up a valid copy of your key seems like a good thing.
The thing is that AFAIK VLC isn't set up to manage multiple key+file pairs. So it is useful for *your* library, but not various files downloaded off the net. For that reason, I doubt they will go after him.
My question is, how does the iPod decrypt the file without a key? Or is it simply using the parent boxes key? It seems to me that if that's the case it should be trivial to recover the key from an iPod directly, no PC required (Just a Mac :-)
• by grioghar ( 228683 ) <.thegrio. .at.> on Monday January 05, 2004 @10:16PM (#7887138) Homepage
On one side of the coin, this is definately great news for everyone not running Windows or OS X who still want to listen to their DRM'd AAC files. Now, there is some portability to these files, and the ability to cue them up in VLC.
On the flipside, when some music industry execs look at this and wonder why they can't control their content, there are a number fingers going to be point at the OSS community because of it.
Where do we draw the line at control? The **AA industries wants to control their content, and we (I use "we" very loosely) want to have control over that which we've purchased. But who truly owns the bits? A series of 1s and 0s? Who's allowed to make the rules?
I know who I WANT to make the rules, me, of course. But I also know who legally gets to make the rules at this point. Them. I don't want the music industry to get pissed off and take my iTunes away. I've found a legal, beneficial means to aquire my music. I want MORE options, not less because of wary industry execs who don't want to have their content cracked.
And let's not even bring the DMCA into the picture here...
• balls (Score:3, Funny)
by MrSpiff ( 515611 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @11:10PM (#7887493) Homepage
"this guy got balls the size of dorian fruit" - some guy in Freedom Downtime
• mp3 players (Score:3, Interesting)
by krokodil ( 110356 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @11:14PM (#7887508) Homepage
I bought portable mp3 player (not iPod) just to discover that I could not send to it melodies I've purchased via iTunes.
So apple wants me do buy iPod. But it is too expensive for my daughter (I got her now $140 player with 256Mb RAM).
So I hope, some day there will be program to unlock
my purchased AAC files to be able to listed then on my mp3 player. I think this is fair use and should be permitted!
• by SnapperHead ( 178050 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @11:14PM (#7887510) Homepage Journal
I can't understand why Apple doesn't port iTunes to Linux. If that where the case, I would use it more then I do now. Its a pain in the ass having to reboot just to do it.
• by digitalgimpus ( 468277 ) on Monday January 05, 2004 @11:24PM (#7887578) Homepage
The claim is because Apple doesn't make money off of iTuness it won't hurt... but it will.
Steve Jobs clearly stated on more than one occasion that iTunes has done wonders for moving iPods (a big business, and growing).
iTunes got the Music industries backing because it was secure... if that trust is lost, after the contracts end, iTunes has no more content.
That means no more iTunes, and that lowers the sale of iPods.
All that can be good, can be used for evil.
Radiation can kill, and it can save lives. Without water we die. With to much, we drown.
iTunes is the same way.
You know you can choke to death on an Apple? If that NT computer that controls the Machines in the hospital goes down... you could die too.
It's all subject to success, and failure. Perhaps that's life.
My only beef is that DVDJohn is intentionally ruining the first digital success of legal Music, what could have been quite an industry. Apple already went to Windows... I would have bet, Linux was in the works. Apple needs the Open Source community, and knows that.
You know, I think Jobs said in some recent interview that Apple told the execs it was going to get cracked. He said that Apples best and brightest had researched the problem and that any DRM would get cracked eventually. He told them the solution was to offer a compelling product. Which they've done.
The fact is that Apple is competing with free P2P directly and st
• Apple has told the labels from the start that iTunes is not unbreakable, in fact they are convinced you cannot make anything unbreakable.
Quote [] from Phil Schiller, VP worldwide product marketing Apple
A second part of this is we fundamentally think that an attempt to create an unbreakable system is foolish.
There's also an article somewhere where Steve Jobs says more or less the same (and says he told the labels so), but I can't find it currently.
• He is clearly interested in Fair Use. The folks doing the ruining are the MPAA.
They want to destroy Fair Use. Apple struck a deal to get things moving. If Apple suffers over this, it won't be because of Jon, it will be because of the MPAA.
Personally, I applaud the guy. He is doing the right thing at the right time. This whole action is going to get a lot of people thinking. I believe in Fair Use, as do a lot of people --even if they do not know what it is legally. Morally they do and that is what
| <urn:uuid:5122b9a9-6657-4f7c-bf1a-8caa0696fd8b> | https://news.slashdot.org/story/04/01/05/2358206/dvd-jon-breaks-itunes-encryption-for-linux-users | en | 0.966767 | 0.146157 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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RoadBike Review's Forum Archives
RoadBikeReview.com's Forum Archives - General
Winter riding effects on the body(4 posts)
Winter riding effects on the bodyhrdcorebikerboy
Dec 13, 2003 6:39 AM
I've been off the bike for three weeks due to the lovely winter weather we've had in the NE and a tough work travel schedule. I've been working out almost everyday, including spinning. I got on the bike today, it was 25 degrees with a wind chill of about 18 (9 mph wind). I got on all the weather gear, hopped on the bike and took my usual route up hill out of the neighborhood on to my usual 15 mile training loop (all hills). By the first climb that usually serves as a great warm up, I felt like I had just ridden 50 miles. My legs were burning, the cold took my breath away and I felt light headed. I dialed it down a notch figuring it was just tougher to warm up in the cold weather. While things did improve, I felt as if I was pulling an extra 50 pounds around...I was slower on the loop by at least 3-5 mph and the lactic acid thesholds just dropped -- I was hurting way sooner than normal.
Is this a typical winter experience? Can three weeks off the bike put you this far off the mark? A combination of both? What does the cold weather do to the body and how it functions aerobically?
re: Winter riding effects on the bodyThe Walrus
Dec 13, 2003 12:13 PM
Even with winter riding gear, the body's going to attempt to maintain its core temperature by restricting blood flow to the torso, to support the vital organs; the limbs just have to make do with what's left over. Your muscles aren't getting the blood (and oxygen) they need, so they can't perform at peak efficiency. When I ride in cold weather, I tend to feel like I'm riding in about 3 feet of water, just because my muscles seem to be working so much harder. It helps me if I make a conscious effort to keep well-hydrated, which helps to keep the blood flowing.
re: Winter riding effects on the bodyTNRyder
Dec 14, 2003 7:36 PM
I always experience a drop in performance with the cold weather. As you warm up, the performance improves, but the cold air is hard on your lungs and when working really hard.
I just try to relax and have fun on cold weather rides. Save the hard training stuff for indoors on the trainer. Cold weather riding is an act of passion.
re: Winter riding effects on the bodyhrdcorebikerboy
Dec 15, 2003 6:48 AM
Maybe it's time to break out the skis. I just picked up a Cycleops fulid2 trainer and will unwantingly drudge off to the basement to spin away the days until warmer weather returns...in months... | <urn:uuid:4b41bed6-af6d-4e43-a503-a77838fd2356> | http://archive.roadbikereview.com/04/0EFE06DA.php | en | 0.955922 | 0.024502 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Behind the Miracle
This documentary reveals the human side of the 2010 Chilean mine disaster where 33 miners were trapped underground for 69 days. The film closely follows 4 of the men, documenting their new lives as global media stars. Viewers meet the heroes, both famous and anonymous, who helped ensure the mine collapse story had a happy ending. The feature also takes stock of Chile’s mining situation while providing a critical look at Chilean society today and why its local politics have veered so far to the right.
PRODUCTION COMPANY: Productions Pimiento
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Awards & Nominations
Gemini Awards | <urn:uuid:f5ff56ae-eeca-46fd-971e-984be3c6e431> | http://eyeoncanada.ca/television/details/derriere-le-miracle | en | 0.911913 | 0.047533 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
13 July 2016
Landing No168: The Perfect Vacation Dress
Only a month left before going ot Greece and it's literally the only thing I can think about.. This dress is from Rosegal and it's one of the things that will go straight into my suitcase.. It's so Greece-perfect! You can find the link of the dress down below..
I love the fabric of it.. It's so soft! And for someone that loves mini dresses it is fab! The lace details on the sleeves are perfect.. They remind me of "semedakia", some decorations that greek grandmas go crazy for and they put them literally everywhere (just check these photos and you'll understand what I'm talking about)..
dress: Rosegal Sandals: Simatis Real Leather Bag: Gucci Sunnies: Ray-ban
1 comment:
1. que original el vestido!!me gusta!!
besitos :)
Coco et Mode
Thank you for your comments!!! | <urn:uuid:ec5bb353-54dc-4bd7-a739-4979163b627b> | http://landing-in-fashion.blogspot.com/2016/07/landing-no168-perfect-vacation-dress.html | en | 0.843349 | 0.112644 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
House 21
In 1873, a foreign financial consortium mostly of British capital bought the Riotinto Mines and created the famous venture Rio Tinto Company Limited. The long British presence in the Mining Bowl of Riotinto started in that moment and lasted until 1954. Since the beginning, the technical management of the mine was carried out by foreign engineers, most of them of British Nationality. During the first years of the Company, the British staff stayed at the old Riotinto Town, but on the one hand the expansion of the works at the open cast mine in the South Lode that was going to affect the stability of the town, and on the other hand the closeness of the miners during a time of strong turmoil and disruption due to the miners claims, the company was obliged to build a district which was later on named Bellavista. The district was commissioned by the second general manager in power Charles Prebble. The company chose a mound formed by old Roman Smelting slag overlooking the hills of Aracena; this was the reason why the district was called Bellavista. The first houses built by the company were the General Manager House called the Council House and a row of another ten houses more. In 1895 another ten houses were constructed including the number 21. This semidetached house of 540 m2 presents the following disposition: – GROUND FLOOR: Daily live area (dinning room, living room, hall, front and back garden). Service area (kitchen, pantry, woodshed and servants bathroom) – FIRST FLOOR: (bedrooms, office and bathroom) -SECOND FLOOR: (servants’ room, lumber room and play room) Apart from the main rooms, two display spaces have been installed. The first one has been set up in the office and was designed to show why and how the district was built, how many construction stages were needed to complete it and how many buildings compose the neighbourhood: dwellings, Presbyterian Chapel and the English Club). The second display room is situated in the old play room and shows through pictures the daily life of the British inhabitants during eighty one years of presence in the town. The House was inaugurated in 2005 and it gives you the opportunity to do a flash-back journey to the Victorian times and taste a flavour similar to the one that you can see in legendary films like Out of Africa and a Passage to India. | <urn:uuid:e611983d-8a4f-46ff-bad2-793efffedb0a> | http://parquemineroderiotinto.es/?page_id=1468&lang=en | en | 0.973822 | 0.058963 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Pretty picture: Osteospermum 'Bronze Charmer'
Yesterday at work, Younger Co-Worker attempted to guess my two favorite annuals based on what we had more varieties of this year compared to last year. She guessed coleus (Solenostemon scutellarioides) and Osteospermum cvv. She got it half right: coleus is high on the list.
This year in coleus we will have: 'Quarterback,' 'Fishnet Stockings,' 'Merlot,' 'Merlin's Magic,' 'Pink Chaos,' 'Gays Delight,' 'Saturn,' 'Kingswood Torch,' 'Dappled Apple,' 'Tilt a Whirl,' 'Electric Lime,' and 'Splish Splash.' The last four of those are new compared to last year, though 'Tilt a Whirl,' at least, had been around previously. 'Dappled Apple' was a substitution: we were supposed to have gotten more 'Gays Delight' -- which, contrary to the name, ain't all that -- but I guess they were out or something and sent us 'Dappled Apple' instead. Which 'Dappled Apple' is more similar to 'Electric Lime' than 'Gays Delight,' so I'm not sure that was the best of all possible substitutions, but whatever.
Everybody has their favorites: WCW likes 'Tilt a Whirl,' Perennial Expert has had nice things to say about 'Gays Delight,' Younger Co-Worker is terrifyingly insistent that 'Merlin's Magic' is the best one, and I . . . well, it's probably 'Kingswood Torch,' though if 'Splish Splash' ages well, I could see it winning out in the end.
So far the customers seem to be siding with WCW, and 'Tilt a Whirl' is selling the best, but it's also early.
Younger Co-Worker got wrong, though, the guess about Osteospermum. I like them, but Portulaca are better. I mean, if I were forced to choose. Which I'm not.
Osteospermum 'Bronze Charmer.' Picture is really much better opened in a new window.
We do have a couple new ones this year, though unlike with the coleus, I can't name them all off the top of my head. The picture is of 'Bronze Charmer,' which changes colors as it ages, and is variously lavender, peach, yellowish, pink, and orange. It seems very nice. We got more varieties of Osteospermum this year less because I like them a lot (though I do) than because we sold out of them pretty early last year.
Portulaca, we're just getting the same stuff as last year, no more no less. Although I really like them, I don't fool myself into thinking that everybody else in the world shares my enthusiasm. I save those kinds of delusions for Anthurium andraeanum.
UNRELATED LIZARD UPDATE: Visited a pet store yesterday to find food. No mealworms. (?)(!) Freeze-dried flies of some kind instead. Also I balked at spending $24 for a heating pad. (Baby steps!)
We have a ten-gallon aquarium for Nina (somehow the husband had obtained one before Nina entered our lives -- I'm not sure how that happened, but obviously it was kind of prescient), though for the moment she's still in her glass cookie jar. The aquarium will be planted at some point today?, I guess?, and then Nina will be packing her stuff and moving. Hopefully anoles are pretty tough: she's had to go through a lot lately. I take some comfort in the fact that she's been a very good honey-eater, when I've remembered to give it to her. (I'm kind of a bad lizard dad. Baby steps!)
I'm thinking this might be the time to buy that Fittonia I've occasionally thought about getting. It's handy that I was already thinking about plant toxicity, at least: I have some sense of what I can and cannot put in the aquarium with her. Should I try to overwater? I'm sure fungus gnats are yummy. . . .
our friend Ben said...
Eeewww, no fungus gnats, please, Mr. S.! Nina will probably ignore them, as they cheerfully head out to your 500 other houseplants, and the poor little lizard could get a good case of fungus herself from the damp substrate! Quick, order mealworms online. It's easy to keep a colony going indefinitely. Meanwhile, maybe your local pet stores at least have crickets! Btw, I didn't have a heat mat/rock/etc. and the Borgias did fine.
mr_subjunctive said...
Oh -- I did get her something (dried lab-raised flies with vitamin powder on them). They just didn't have mealworms, as far as I could tell.
I'm glad to know that the heat mat may be optional; I thought it was a little weird that they'd have to have one: the apartment is usually fairly warm (72-78F / 22-26C, depending on location, time of day, etc.) anyway because the plants need it to be, so if the anole doesn't have to be warmer still, that would be helpful.
Zeï said...
Unrelated Lizard Comment;
22C is what you should aim for the night, while 26 is good for the day, but I highly suggest you add a light, for normal basking-feeding behavior, and increased heat at the spot to 28-30C for correct digestion (especially if you are feeding her mealworms). Since anoles need UVB to produce vitamin D3, you would need at least an UVB bulb, and since you're using a ten gallons, the little amount of heat produced by a compact UVB fluorescent like Repti-Glo 0.5 from Hagen should be fine for the basking effect. That bulb then needs to be replaced every year.
You did right not to buy the heating pad; it would have been too much heat, and wouldn't provide the visual basking area, nor the UVB rays. Also, UVB are significantly blocked by glass and small mesh screen, so the best to do is put the lamp right on the aquarium cover, which should be small metal screen mesh or metal mesh of some sort, small enough for her not to get out, and as large as possible for the UVB.
Mealworms are ok for food, if you breed them (they mostly do it alone, very easy) and feed them various vegetables (every part you don't eat). The best thing would be variety, but then you can just randomly capture spiders and flies and insects that find their way in your home and give them to her, she'll love it. But don't do that if you or your neighbor are using pesticides.
Detailed info on reptiles and UVB
How-to breed/care mealworms:
The anapsid link someone else gave is a good source of info on keeping anoles.
mr_subjunctive said...
I assume a lamp is probably better, or else you wouldn't have recommended it, but can one get by (for a time) with dietary D3 supplements? The flies I wound up buying do have added D3 and calcium, though 1) she has not shown a terrible amount of interest in them so far and 2) they're expensive, so I'm not inclined to use them indefinitely. But is that good enough for a few weeks, or is it an emergency and I really need to get a lamp, like, yesterday?
Julie said...
I LOVE portulaca!!!!! Of course, it is a succulent that needs less water...but if I had two favorite water loving palnts they would be Fittonia and Coleus!!! WOW! Amazing!!! I have killed all of my water loving plants....I have a "near never" watering plan here in A Succulent Life!!!
Snazzy_Sara said...
Concerning the heat lamp, it is necessary pretty much immediately, esp. if Nina continues to reject the flies coated in the vitamin powder. The cost to purchase the lamp and bulb shouldn't run you more than 20.00 max. You can use one of those clamp work lights you'd find at a hardware store (about 5 bucks or a little more) and then get a screw-in uvb bulb from the pet store (maybe 10.00 or thereabouts). I would def. not let Nina go for more than 2 weeks without a heat lamp, IMHO. I actually have a uva/uvb screw in bulb and clamp-lamp I used for my turtles before I turned the little guys over to a nature preserve (WITH permission and caution). If you want it, I can mail it to you for free, what else am I gonna do with it? lol
mr_subjunctive said...
Well, if you're offering, I'd be willing to take them off your hands and reimburse you in exchange for postage: e-mail me about it and we'll talk.
Zeï said...
Snazzy_Sara answered well, sorry for the late reply.
Indeed, dietary supplements of D3 could do for a while, maybe a month, but heat/basking is really what you are needing asap for her to engage in normal feeding behavior. However, it is still normal for an anole to refuse food during the first week or two when moved in a terrarium, simply by stress, and especially when parameters are not optimal. Moreover, anoles will not consider eating when they feel like the temperature will not allow them to digest well.
Indeed, fruit flies are expensive and not the best sample prey to feed them for various reasons, but for now it's better than nothing.
Fruit flies are quite small, even for anoles, so try to release them on a clear and bright surface in order to increase contrast for the anole to see them more easily, like putting a white plastic lid upside down on the terrarium substrate, with a fruit piece in the middle, and releasing the fruit flies on it. They should stay around the fruit and be easier to see for the anole. | <urn:uuid:e8f089e9-50af-4e2e-b0d5-98730a1e4f0f> | http://plantsarethestrangestpeople.blogspot.com/2009/04/pretty-picture-osteospermum-bronze.html | en | 0.968323 | 0.053049 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Undying-V.K. Forrest
V.K. Forrest
Kensington, Dec 2008, $15.00
ISBN: 075821717X
They worshipped the pagan gods and when St. Patrick came to their shore to convert them, they fought him. As a punishment, God turned the Kahill Sept into vampires; most of them were destroyed by slayers. The survivors fled to the New World and worshipped the One God, praying for redemption. They seek out and execute evil predators; those the police cannot catch.
Teddy, a vicious killer who murders entire families by burying them together alive, is stalking Macy. He has even contacted her via I.M. Macy meets Arlen Cahill and they have sex. She is drawn to Clare Point, Delaware where the Kahill Sept lives. Macy has given information on the killer stalking her to FBI Agent Fia, who is part of the Sept. What she sees at the Cahill compound seems surreal, but erased from her memory by a blood bite. However even with Arlan watching over her Teddy finds her. Knowing she is in danger, Arlan with the help of a teenage psychic tries to save Macy.
This paranormal mystery is an enthralling work. The Kahills/Cahills are good people seeking to redeem themselves from their one blasphemous error centuries ago. They are the key that makes this thriller spellbinding as the UNDYING vampires seem genuine. Although psychopathic serial killers are an overdone predator, the stalking of Macy also appears real as her fears and desires come across as plausible. V.K. Forrest provides a fascinating spin to the vampiric mythos.
Harriet Klausner
No comments: | <urn:uuid:6dec0698-29a7-44e2-8be8-72451b3d82f7> | http://themysterygazette.blogspot.com/2008/10/undying-vk-forrest.html | en | 0.958876 | 0.026776 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Thursday, January 31, 2008
No Going Back
I don't think I can go back to teaching. At a ski retreat (I don't ski, but I had fun staying in the warm cabin), I was doing work on my laptop and enjoying myself. As I was about to leave, I realized I had forgotten my computer. I went back in, saying, "Almost forgot my computer," and a friend said, "If you forget it, you'll have to go back to teaching!"
That was enough to strike fear into my heart. Everyone else thought it was funny, but I didn't so much.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Another Possible Strike?
The Tribune reporter has a blog about what is going on in the district - another strike possible. You can read my comment under the name "Former Oakland Teacher."
Also, someone postulated that the reason that teachers in this district quit at the beginning of the year is so they can have no gap in their health insurance (comment #3). I was a little irritated. Sure, a few of them do stupid things like that, but first of all your health care goes through late August anyway, so quitting in late August gives you exactly the same amount of health care as you would have if you had quit in June. People should learn what they're talking about.
Second, (I'm comment #4 and 12 on the list) there are AMPLE reasons to quit at the beginning of the year. The district greatly misrepresents things. I'm not at all for quitting any time before the end of the school year, but then (as evidenced by the fact that I spent 8 years in this district) I might be more of a masochist than others when I'm thinking of the kids.
We really shouldn't ask why so many teachers quit. We should ask why all of them don't!
Friday, January 18, 2008
Changing Times: Cell Phones
When I was in college, I took a physiology class (1995 maybe? it's so long ago that I gt confused!) Actually, it wasn't that long ago - definitely not earlier than 1995 - but no one I knew had cell phones. The first person I knew who got a cell phone was my friend who moved away from the immediate area when he graduated and got this horrible analog phone... but it was better than what anyone else had, which was nothing.
Anyway, I was in this physiology class, and someone's cell phone ring. It was the first time I had ever heard a cell phone ring during class and the professor just pointed toward the door and said, "OUT!" It was a 500+ person class and everyone watched as the disgraced student left.
Not even 15 years ago.
Last week, as I was subbing in kindergarten, two out of the 15 kids had cell phones. Two kids might not seem like many, but remember, these kids are 5 years old. They don't all know how to write their names yet. They don't know all the numbers to 10 or all the letters of the alphabet. But two of them have cell phones. Incidentally, the way I found out is that the cell phones kept falling out of their pockets. It turns out that kindergarten pockets are too small to fit cell phones.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Jesus and Politics
In college, someone asked me - with much sincerity - how I could be a Christian and vote against Proposition 187. For those of you who may not have been in California or paying attention at the time, Prop 187 was an initiative that was meant to deny social services, health care, and public education to illegal immigrants. Health care workers and teachers were also supposed to report suspected illegal immigrants, I believe. The proposition passed, but was later overturned by a federal court.
Aside from the disturbing consequences that might come from having the illegal portion of our population denied vaccinations and education (anyone really think that's going to help us out as a state? Whether or not you agree with undocumented workers being here, I would think we'd all want to make sure their children didn't get polio, even if it's only for the selfish reason that we don't want another polio epidemic!), I was confused about the assumption that Jesus would obviously want me to vote for Prop 187. Really? Because, if you actually read the Bible, you'll start to notice that Jesus spends an awful lot of time with people that others thought of as not being worthwhile or not being in the right place. The oppressed and downtrodden, even. I have a funny feeling that he might have been on the side of the illegal immigrants.
Now, I'm also not saying that you have to be a Democrat to be a Christian. In fact, I think that reducing God to the level of politics is shameful. God transcends politics. Jesus would not be a Republican, a Democrat, or even a member of the Peace & Freedom Party (although they have a great name!) I think that when we try to sum up Christianity in terms of political platforms that we are limiting God and trying to make him small enough for our minds.
I've been a Christian for a long time, and I'm pretty sure that in order to be a Christian, you have to "Confess with your mouth 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead" and you will be saved. (Romans 10:9). Not vote against illegal immigrants. Not be a registered member of the Republican party or the Christian Coalition. Not stand for "family values" (and who decides which things are values, anyway? Jesus seemed to think that standing up for the oppressed, feeding the poor, and visiting prisoners were more important than many of the so-called family values. Look at Matthew 25: 34-45.
The ridiculousness continues. Apparently Republican voters in some of the primaries are asked in exit polls about their religious convictions. Democratic voters are asked about their union ties. Because obviously, an evangelical Christian couldn't be a Democrat. And Jesus cares more about banning gay marriage than social justice. Right. Not likely.
Now there's talk about Mike Huckabee wanting to amend the Constitution to "God's Standards." First of all, what exactly does that mean? Is it going to be constitutionally mandated that we all sell our possessions and give the proceeds to the poor? Or that we love our enemies... including Islamofascists?
How do Christian morals and values affect foreign policy? It's not as clear cut as many Christians in politics make it out to be. For example, would Jesus perform pre-emptive bombings on countries that might be developing dangerous nuclear weapons? Probably not. He seems to let people make their own choices, even if those choices result in people dying. I'm not sure what I would want my national leader to do, but if you're looking to what Jesus would do... it's not always in line with what Christians would want!
Second, being a Christian is about the state of your heart. Theocracies turn out to be... well, not that good for everyone! I believe that mandating Christianity - or even Christian values - is not what God wants. If it was, he would have created us without free will. What makes Christianity truly remarkable is that we have the choice to follow God or spit in his face. He loves us either way and rejoices when we come back to him, but he never takes that choice away.
Many Christians lament the lack of prayer in school. I happen to take a different view, and I don't think that makes me a "worse" Christian. If I, as a Christian, can lead prayers in school, -then we also have to let Muslim teachers, Jewish teachers, Pagan teachers, and Scientologist teachers lead prayers in school. (Something that Christians leading the prayer in school charge tend to forget). Otherwise we very much risk becoming more like Iran than I am comfortable with.
Also, kids can pray in school. After the September 11 attacks, one of my third graders asked me if we could pray. I said that I couldn't pray for them but that I could give them a few minutes of silence and that they could pray inside their heads or just be quiet if they wanted. Turns out that, as usual, the kids are wiser than the adults. One of them informed us that "Duh, you can pray any time you want because God hears what is inside your head. Even in the shower." A Vietnamese girl, who was raised Buddhist, asked her Christian friend if Jesus loved her (the Buddhist girl) too and the friend said yes, he loves her very much and would she like to come to church with her. Both much more powerful than if I had been the one to answer... and totally legal because it was kids sharing their opinions, and not even during instructional time!
Another one said that he was going to pray for the terrorists. He said that the terrorists hated people and that means we needed to pray for them.
And to think I would have missed all this if I had led the prayer.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Lou Dobbs
I have a lot of other things to write about soon, when I get over this cold and feel better, but right now I want to point out something I think is kind of funny.
If you have read my blog, you probably know my feelings about Lou Dobbs. Lou Dobbs is a CNN anchor and also has his own show. The thing that he may be best known for is his stance on immigration - anti-amnesty, pro-border fences and the Minuteman Project, outspoken about any flag being flown in the US other than the American flag, even at cultural events and demonstration (all of a sudden, I really want to go get me a Mexican flag and fly it!), and thinks that immigrants should assimilate, describing illegal immigration as an "invasion." (I personally think that he puts the "ass" in "assimilate.")
Anyway, guess whose billboards are all over East Oakland right now - especially in the Latino parts (where there are many many illegal immigrants - and I'm not saying that because they speak Spanish and I'm assuming they're illegal, but because I happen to know for a fact that many of the families around there are illegal)? That's right, Lou Dobbs Tonight billboards all over the place, where normally there are Spanish billboards for clinics or telenovelas. Now it's Lou Dobbs. Man, did some marketer get the wrong demographic, or what?
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Notes From Subbing in Kindergarten
Kindergarteners are very small. Very, very, very small.
More later - the small ones wore me out.
Monday, January 07, 2008
A Moral Dilemma
A friend of mine was waiting for an appointment in the office of our church, with a lot of other people. She didn't know any of them - it's a big church - but a father caught her attention because he was berating his child. I wasn't there, but it sounded like his little son dropped or knocked over a piece of paper that was directing people and my friend went to help him pick it up. The dad starting in telling the kid that people were counting on him, he had ruined this, look how stupid he is, etc. Then the mom came in from the other room and the dad started telling her how stupid their son is, look what he did, he ruined this, he's so stupid. For dropping a piece of paper.
So, my question is: what does an observer do? I don't know what I would do in that situation but I'm not sure I'd keep my mouth shut. I don't know if it would help to say anything, but - especially if it was a member of my own church community - I would feel some kind of responsibility. But then, what is appropriate - or helpful - to do in that situation?
I'd love to hear from anyone with ideas. I've been in similar situations and have never known what to do. If the dad was beating his child with a belt in public, many of us would step in. I happen to think that yelling at a kid and telling him he's stupid, worthless, etc. has effects that are just as lasting. What would you do?
Friday, January 04, 2008
Horace Mann (Mystery Solved!)
OK, probably nobody else cares who Horace Mann is, but I finally found out! Read the article, he's halfway down it, but it's really not that exciting.
The exciting thing is that I've wondered for the last 8 years who Horace Mann is. This is because there is a school in my district called Horace Mann School. It's interesting that you can tell which schools are old and which ones are the "new small schools" because the old schools have names of people that are dead. Some are obvious: Martin Luther King, Jr. School, Lincoln School, etc. Others, like Horace Mann and John Swett, not so obvious. I student taught, in a different city, at Fern Bacon School and I always felt bad for anyone named Fern Bacon.
The new schools are all called very inspiring names like Think College Now and Futures (sounds like an item on the stock market - its sister school could be Commodities). Or else they have really long names with acronyms.
Anyway, the reason I remember Horace Mann School is because the kids always called it "Horseman." "She's leaving our school and going to Horseman School." I think they all thought that was the real name.
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
The Nutcracker! (or: Men in Tights)
Happy New Year! If you can't read his headgear, the dog is also wishing you a happy New Year.
I chaperoned a field trip right before Christmas - we took the kids to the Nutcracker. I was thrilled to not be the person actually in charge, so it was a fun day for me! Trips are much more fun when I'm not the one in charge of figuring out how we're going to get there, pay for it, not kill each other, and get home with everyone still in the group.
The principal started off by being his charming self. Mrs. Dwyer set up the field trip and got people to donate the tickets as well as their time - she actually got enough drivers to take the whole class downtown. The teacher was very organized about getting everyone into the correct cars and keeping track of everyone. Mine was the second to last car to leave. As we were getting into my car, I saw the principal come over and talk to the teacher. Apparently he told her that he hadn't approved the field trip. Good timing, dude. Three fourths of the class is GONE and now he says he hasn't approved the field trip?
Except he was lying. The teacher had filled out the field trip request and the permission slip and clearly written that the kids would be transported by private cars. The principal had signed it - his signature was on each and every permission slip. He might want to start reading what he signs because apparently his problem was the traveling by car part, which he had approved.
The principal said that the kids couldn't go by car (it seemed to have escaped his notice that most of them were already gone). Not only could they not go by car, but in the history of the whole school, there has never been a field trip to which kids traveled by car.
This leads me to a few observations:
1. The school is over 100 years old. Probably there has been a field trip that used car at some point. He does not, in fact, know about every field trip that has happened over the last 102 years.
2. The only reason that most of the field trips are not by car is because the parents don't have cars - they're poor. It sounds horribly stereotypical, but many, perhaps most, of the families don't own cars and some that do are not licensed because they are not legally in the country. In the schools located in the nice parts of the city (the "hill schools"), almost all the field trips are by car. It is legal, sanctioned by the district, and encouraged. The only reason to not let our kids travel by car when we have found drivers is to continue to hold them back from the opportunities that the richer kids have. Not something the leader of the school should be doing.
3. Who in their right mind tries to stop a field trip after most of the kids have already left? That's just dumb.
I think that he is aware that he is not dong a great job as principal and somehow trying to deal with that by seizing every bit of power that he can get his hands on. Just my theory.
Anyway, the ballet.
I must admit that I was a little worried about taking a bunch of inner-city kids to the ballet. I know these kids and I was afraid that it would take a lot more action and possibly violence to keep them interested. However, I was pleasantly surprised. Although there was some snickering when the first men in tights appeared on the stage (and honestly, who can blame them? The guys don't have pants on. Just tights. We're not even used to girls just wearing tights with nothing else.) , it turned to oohs and ahhs when the Christmas tree began growing, when the snow started falling, and when the scenery changed. The kids loved the costumes (minus the men's tights) and were very impressed with quick costume changes and scenery changes. The boy next to me kept saying, "How do they change the wallpaper so fast?" every time there was a scenery change.
I think it was just a little long for them but they seemed to really like it and did really really well with their normally very short attention spans. It was really awesome to see that it was magical for them - and the boys were impressed with how strong the men are! ("Did you see them lift those ladies?!" It almost made up for the tights.) Also, all the kids with us behaved well in the theater. Some other kids were talking and kicking chairs and our kids complained about them.
The one thing I definitely learned on this field trip (this isn't very profound; don't get excited) is that when there is a matinee on a school day of a show that is geared toward kids... everyone in the entire audience has to go to the bathroom during intermission. Seriously. It was amazing. I have never seen so many children in one bathroom. I think the intermission lasted extra long to accommodate all the small bladders.
The other really fun part was that the show was at the Paramount Theatre, an Art Deco theater from the early 1930s. So, if kids got bored, all you had to do was say, "Hey, look up! Look at the ceiling!" They had never been in a building that was anything like the Paramount.
A good field trip! | <urn:uuid:1dd3535f-1dd6-4d42-827f-abcd76945f5a> | http://tigerthegecko.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html | en | 0.989155 | 0.142368 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
March 5, 2015
How Much Does It Cost To Fly In Private Jets?
I've never really seen the need for huge personal wealth, but I am envious of flying in private jets. Not that I spend my days and nights crying over it but it does seem like it would be pretty enjoyable to fly in a private jet. Its one of the things I'd think about doing if I were to win the lottery or otherwise fall into vast wealth.
But how much does it really cost?
From what I gather it costs in the ballpark of $5000 or more per hour to fly in a small private jet.
Thats basically the entry level prices for private jets. So that means a short 1 hour flight from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in a small jet will cost in the ballpark of $5k. And when I say a small jet I mean small. Those small jets only seat a few people and the headroom means adults have to stoop when they are not seated. They might only carry a few bags worth of luggage. Medium size and larger gets will cost more.
A couple sites have search engines / calculators that will give estimated prices for flights :
How Much Does It Cost to Charter a Private Aircraft? at the SherapReport
How much does a private flight cost from PrivateFly
I tested both on a short 1 hr flight round trip (2 hr total) and got quotes of about $10k for the trip in a small jet. Those rates are for charter flights.
You can also buy hours in bulk from operators like NetJet and others.
Private Jets for Everyone? from Travel and Leisure pointed to a few different companies that sell basically pre-paid private jet accounts with typically 20 or 25 for ~$110-130k or roughly $5k per hour.
Clearly spending $5000 for a 1 hour flight is not frugal. But its not as awful if you consider that you can fit 4 or more people in that plane. Lets say you've got a family of 4 and you're flying round trip for that 1 hour distance. That comes to $2500 per person. Flying first class for such a journey would probably run you $500 a seat. Of course you can fly economy for $200 or so. Probably the most frugal option to fly in style is to get the economy tickets then upgrade to first class using miles.
I'm a far cry from being able to afford to fly via private jets. So please share this story with 50 million of your friends so this blog can become super successful then I can sell out for multi millions.
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Definition of Action
1. Noun. Something done (usually as opposed to something said). "There were stories of murders and other unnatural actions"
2. Verb. Institute legal proceedings against; file a suit against. "They action to move "; "She actioned the company for discrimination"
Exact synonyms: Litigate, Process, Sue
Generic synonyms: Challenge
Specialized synonyms: Expedite
Related verbs: Litigate
Derivative terms: Actionable, Litigation, Process, Suer, Suit
3. Noun. The state of being active. "He is out of action"
4. Verb. Put in effect. "He actioned the operation"
5. Noun. A military engagement. "He saw action in Korea"
Exact synonyms: Activity, Natural Action, Natural Process
Generic synonyms: Physical Process, Process
Derivative terms: Active, Active
7. Noun. The series of events that form a plot. "His novels always have a lot of action"
Generic synonyms: Plot
8. Noun. The trait of being active and energetic and forceful. "A man of action"
Generic synonyms: Drive
9. Noun. The operating part that transmits power to a mechanism. "The piano had a very stiff action"
Exact synonyms: Action Mechanism
Group relationships: Gun, Keyboard
Specialized synonyms: Firing Mechanism, Gunlock, Movement, Piano Action, Pump Action, Slide Action
Terms within: Key
Generic synonyms: Mechanism
11. Noun. An act by a government body or supranational organization. "The Union action of emancipating Southern slaves"
Generic synonyms: Group Action
12. Noun. The most important or interesting work or activity in a specific area or field. "Gawkers always try to get as close to the action as possible"
Generic synonyms: Work
Definition of Action
Definition of Action
1. Noun. Something done so as to accomplish a purpose. ¹
2. Noun. A way of motion or functioning. ¹
3. Noun. A fast-paced activity. ¹
4. Noun. A mechanism; a moving part or assembly. ¹
5. Noun. (music) : The mechanism, that is the set of moving mechanical parts, of a keyboard instrument, like a piano, which transfers the motion of the key to the sound-making device.Marshall Cavendish Corporation [ ''Growing Up with Science''] p.1079 ¹
6. Noun. (slang) sexual intercourse. ¹
7. Noun. The distance separating the strings and the fretboard on the guitar. ¹
8. Noun. (military) Combat. ¹
9. Noun. (legal) A charge or other process in a law court (also called lawsuit and ''actio''). ¹
10. Noun. (mathematics) A homomorphism from a group to a group of automorphisms. ¹
11. Interjection. Demanding or signifying the start of something, usually an act or scene of a theatric performance. ¹
12. Verb. (transitive management) To act on a request etc, in order to put it into effect. ¹
13. Verb. (transitive chiefly archaic) To initiate a legal action against someone. ¹
¹ Source:
Definition of Action
1. the process of acting [n -S]
Medical Definition of Action
1. 1. A process or condition of acting or moving, as opposed to rest; the doing of something; exertion of power or force, as when one body acts on another; the effect of power exerted on one body by another; agency; activity; operation; as, the action of heat; a man of action. "One wise in council, one in action brave." (Pope) 2. An act; a thing done; a deed; an enterprise. (pl): Habitual deeds; hence, conduct; behavior; demeanor. "The Lord is a Good of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed." (1 Sam. Ii. 3) 3. The event or connected series of events, either real or imaginary, forming the subject of a play, poem, or other composition; the unfolding of the drama of events. 4. Movement; as, the horse has a spirited action. 5. Effective motion; also, mechanism; as, the breech action of a gun. 6. Any one of the active processes going on in an organism; the performance of a function; as, the action of the heart, the muscles, or the gastric juice. 7. Gesticulation; the external deportment of the speaker, or the suiting of his attitude, voice, gestures, and countenance, to the subject, or to the feelings. 8. The attitude or position of the several parts of the body as expressive of the sentiment or passion depicted. 9. A suit or process, by which a demand is made of a right in a court of justice; in a broad sense, a judicial proceeding for the enforcement or protection of a right, the redress or prevention of a wrong, or the punishment of a public offense. A right of action; as, the law gives an action for every claim. 10. A share in the capital stock of a joint-stock company, or in the public funds; hence, in the plural, equivalent to stocks. "The Euripus of funds and actions." (Burke) 11. An engagement between troops in war, whether on land or water; a battle; a fight; as, a general action, a partial action. 12. The mechanical contrivance by means of which the impulse of the player's finger is transmitted to the strings of a pianoforte or to the valve of an organ pipe. Chose in action the product of the mass of a body by the space it runs through, and its velocity. Synonym: Action, act. In many cases action and act are synonymous; but some distinction is observable. Action involves the mode or process of acting, and is usually viewed as occupying some time in doing. Act has more reference to the effect, or the operation as complete. "To poke the fire is an act, to reconcile friends who have quarreled is a praiseworthy action." (C. J. Smith) Origin: OF. Action, L. Actio, fr. Agere to do. See Act. Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998)
Action Pictures
Lexicographical Neighbors of Action
actio popularis
action adventure
action adventures
action at law
action current
action doll
action dolls
action figure
action figures
action film
action group
action hero
action item
Literary usage of Action
"V. SCENE OF action The First Folio contains no stage directions to guide in determining the scene of action of Twelfth Night, and the locality-setting in ..."
2. The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle by Aristotle, Robert Williams (1869)
"ALL MORAL action, that is to say all purpose, no less than all art and all science, would seem to aim at some good result, from which has come a not inapt ..."
"The name arouses action because it is imperative in its command over one's ... In such a case the action is abruptly changed in its direction of operation. ..."
4. A Treatise on the Law of Executors and Administrators by Edward Vaughan Williams, Roland Lomax Vaughan Williams, Joseph Fitz Randolph, William Talcott (1895)
"OF THE QUANTITY OF THE ESTATE IN action OF AN EXECUTOR OE ADMINISTRATOR. Hitherto the subject as to the quantity of the estate of an executor or ..."
Other Resources Relating to: Action
Search for Action on!Search for Action on!Search for Action on Google!Search for Action on Wikipedia! | <urn:uuid:36ce10fa-74c9-4d00-b2d6-8fe19f814d03> | http://www.lexic.us/definition-of/action | en | 0.882506 | 0.023116 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Methamphetamine Addiction Helpline (800) 468-6933 - Sponsored by Narconon Arrowhead
Methamphetamine Addiction Recovery
Methamphetamine is a highly addictive stimulant that influencesand affects the central nervous system in the body.Methamphetamine can be made in high tech labs or can be produced in homes using over the counter ingredients.
This combined with its very addictive nature is what has created widespread abuse across the United States. The other aspect of this drug that makes it so widespread is that it can be found as a prescription drug given to people diagnosed with ADHD, under the brand name Desoxyn, or as a street drug such as crystal meth.
Effects of usage
Methamphetamine comes in many different forms and can be used in a variety of ways. They can be smoked, injected, snorted or orally ingested.
Methamphetamine is generally used in a binge and crash sort of mechanism. This is because the euphoric feelings that a methamphetamine produces will disappear even before the drug content in the blood lowers significantly, therefore users will try to maintain a high by taking more of the drug. Many times a user will go for days binging with the drug, not sleeping or eating, just to maintain a high.
Smoking crystal meth has become more and more prevalent in the recent years, due to the fact that the drug has a very fast uptake when it is taken in this wise.
However these drugs are taken, they generally have similar effects on the user. Immediately after injecting or smoking crystal meth, the user will experience an intense rush that lasts for only a few minutes. This rush is generally described as being very pleasurable and euphoric. After this initial rush, the person will experience a high that can last up to 16 hours, at which point the person will use again in order to achieve a similar high.
The physical effects that crystal meth can have on the body are striking, with many users permanently damaged after using for a significant period of time. The reasons for this lie in the destructive chemicals that this drug is made out of. Crystal meth for instance, is a combination of various amphetamines and chemicals such as battery acid, antifreeze, lantern fluid and drain cleaner.
This drug when taken over time creates various physical defects in the body including constriction of blood vessels, tissue damage that can be seen externally, sores take longer to heal, skin appears lackluster, tooth decay, skin picking brought on by hallucinations of having bugs crawling under the skin, etc.
All of these side effects create very obvious signs of someone abusing crystal meth and add years onto someone’s appearance.
Treating methamphetamine addiction
The nature of the drug makes it one of the most addictive drugs that exist. Many users will experience intense highs that require the use of more drugs in order to get back to that high. As with most drugs, after awhile the person develops a tolerance for the drugs and needs them just to be happy in life. It is at this point that the cycle of addiction has kicked in and the person is using more drugs in order to satisfy their cravings.
Kick MethUnfortunately the problems don’t end there, with the drugs being continually used to solve the problems of not being happy, the person becomes more and more dependent to the point where this becomes their only focus in life.
The only way out of this dwindling spiral of existence is through an effective drug rehabilitation program. However, most users of a drug like meth will not be able to see this for themselves and will need the help of those around them to get into a proper rehab.
The right rehab for someone in this condition is a long-term, residential program that will address all aspects of addiction, both physical and mental aspects. This way when they go back to their previous life, the physical and mental triggers that are present don’t affect them and they are able to get on with a productive and happy life without the use of meth.
The Narconon program covers each aspect of addiction and works to get to the root of the problem that started the person on the path to drug abuse in the first place.
Getting Meth Addiction Help
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• testimonial-juliet
She first got into drugs when I was about 13 years old. She started with marijuana, and moved on to “doing more of everything —like psychedelics, and pain pills every day.” She also began doing more coke, and more ecstasy. Eventually she started using meth. Her life changed after completing treatment at Narconon Arrowhead. She is now sober and doing better than ever. A Young Woman’s Meth Recovery
• testimonial-jack
Before doing the Narconon program, this young man was involved in manufacturing and distributing meth “to anyone who would buy it.” Through the Narconon Arrowhead program, he was not only able to overcome his addiction to meth and the consequences of dealing it to others; he found a purpose to help prevent drug abuse through drug prevention education and saving lives. Meth Recovery Story No. 2
• testimonial-hugo
Erika was only thirteen years old when ran away from home in order to pursue her drug use. Five years later, she was shooting-up methamphetamine. In time, she was charged with three counts of delivering meth. Five years in prison was the punishment. After completing the Narconon Arrowhead program, Erika knew her life had changed. She discovered a focus and energy in her life. Meth Recovery Story No. 3 | <urn:uuid:66139eed-ffe0-446b-8457-76f0cc3be002> | http://www.methamphetamineaddiction.com/ | en | 0.959765 | 0.042679 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Ask Question, Ask an Expert
Ask History Expert
1. Give a detailed account of the changes which took place in society and economy as a result of the beginning of agriculture by the humans.
2. Discuss significant features of urbanisation in Bronze Age societies.
3. Give a comparative account of Slavery in ancient Greek and Roman societies.
4. Discuss the process of rise of Islam. How did it affect Arab Society?
5. prepare short notes on the following:
i) Development of stone tools
ii) Maya Civilization
iii) Nomadism
iv) Christianity in Late Roman world
6. What do you understand by the term Feudalism? What main changes were brought in economy during second phase of Feudalism?
7. Discuss process of transformation of medieval society in to modern world in various spheres.
8. Give detailed account of the medieval overseas trade with special reference to India.
9. How did technological changes affect warfare in medieval period?
10. prepare short Notes on the following:
(i) Protestantism
(ii) Markets and fairs as centres of trading activity
(iii) Structure of family in medieval Europe
(iv) Major scientific advances in medieval Europe.
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• Category:- History
• Reference No.:- M92113
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Senate Agrees Climate Change Is Happening, Just Not On Why
The Senate voted to confirm climate change is real, but some still weren't on board with the idea that humans are causing it.
Senate Agrees Climate Change Is Happening, Just Not On Why
Sen. Cory Gardner said"On this vote the yeas are 98. The nays are one. Under the previous order requiring 60 votes for the adoption of this amendment, the amendment is agreed to."
That was Wednesday afternoon, when the Senate overwhelmingly voted in favor of an amendment affirming that climate change is real and is happening now.
Even Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, one of the Senate's most outspoken climate change skeptics, and, coincidentally, chairman of the Senate subcommittee on Climate and Public Works, voted for the amendment. (Video via Office of Sen. Jim Inhofe)
That's the same Sen. Inhofe who called climate change "the greatest hoax" in his book "The Greatest Hoax: How Global Warming Threatens Our Future."
Stephen Colbert said"Sen. James Inhofe is not your run-of-the-mill climate change denier. You could say he wrote the book on it ... because he wrote the book on it."
But support for this new amendment aside, Inhofe and other Republicans stopped short of supporting another amendment, from Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, that stipulated human activities significantly contributed to climate change. That vote failed 50-49.
The votes came the day after President Obama reaffirmed his support for action against climate change in his State of the Union address and called on legislators to do the same. (Video via The White House)
The sticking point on climate change action in Congress continues to be whether humans are contributing to the problem through greenhouse gas emissions.
The president pointed to the prominent scientific bodies that say we are contributing to climate change. Opponents have called that into question despite multiple studies that have found a significant scientific consensus on the issue.
Now even the Pope is expected to lend his support to the fight against global warming through an encyclical, calling on the world's Catholics to act to prevent further climate change. (Video via Rappler)
But many skeptical politicians argue scientists and other politicians have played up the dangers of climate change and that action on the issue isn't worth the economic risks it would pose to fossil fuel producers. (Video via PBS)
But while many members of Congress who are skeptical of human-driven climate change are Republican, the party isn't exactly united on the issue.
North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven also proposed an amendment Wednesday that included a provision affirming humans are contributing to climate change, just not significantly. That amendment failed as well. (Video via Senate Republican Conference)
Despite the lack of agreement, a number of senators said Wednesday's vote was still a positive sign moving forward.
This video includes music from Chris Zabriskie / CC BY 4.0.
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DOJ Takes Aim At Sanctuary Cities Through Federal Funding Cuts | <urn:uuid:35584355-388b-4e63-a940-9124c9f13ce9> | http://www.newsy.com/videos/senate-agrees-climate-change-is-happening-just-not-on-why/ | en | 0.931855 | 0.187313 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
How To Improve Short Term Memory
fish oil for memory
Long term memory has become more and more topical over the last decade, with dementia cases set to rise threefold over the next 50 years¹. Much has been said about improving long term brain function and keeping these ever more prevalent diseases as bay. But there is very little really being talked about when it comes to short term memory. This guide to how to improve short term memory will allow people to retain things longer and have easier recall.
What is Short Term Memory?
The active memory is the place where you keep small bits of information that can be readily accessed for a short length of time. For example, it is when you first set your keys down, that you remember right away where they are. But wait a few seconds and if it hasn’t been transferred over to long term, you may forget where you put them.
This is different than your working memory which is actually the processes, structures and methods of storing the information. Researchers have discovered that the capacity for short term memory is rather small, as little as seven seconds². There are a variety of factors that go into how long we can recall something from our short-term memory, but if our short term memory starts to fail, we will not have the information long enough to transfer over to our long term memory, and that can cause a lot of issues.
Brain Training Exercises
Now that you understand what short term memory is, it is time to look at some ways we can improve it. One way is through brain training. Just like training for anything, it exercises the brain, which has been shown to improve memory, both short and long term. It takes time, but doing some exercises everyday for even 10-15 minutes has been proven to help. Some braining training exercises include:
• image of brain functionVisual Memorisation: With this exercise, you can use regular playing cards, picture cards or anything that you can lay out and cover. Start with a low amount of even cards that are paired, such as 3 or 4 pairs for a total of 6 or 8 cards. Look at each card then place it face down on a table. Then try to make pairs with few mistakes. As you improve your memory, increase the number of cards until it becomes very difficult.
• Pattern Recognition: This exercise helps you to recognise patterns quickly and improves memory by increasing how many patterns you can recognise. You can use any thing that has a pattern. Cards work well in this exercise also. This time, have start with one card of each suit. Look at it before you turn it over. Then try to call the name of the suit before you turn it over. Continue adding cards until you miss more than you get right.
• Chunking: This sounds bad, but it is the process of breaking down the information into chunks so that it is easier to remember. For instance, with your cell phone number (many people don’t remember this), break down the number like this: area code (three numbers), then prefix (three numbers) then tail (four numbers). So you would memorise it like this 555 (area code), 555 (prefix), then 1234 (tail). By chunking the numbers, you make it easier for the brain to capture instead of trying to memorise the whole thing at once.
Diet can play a crucial role in memory and brain function. Like any other part of the body, maintaining the right diet will help increase the health of the brain. There are certain foods, vitamins and minerals that have been linked to improved brain function along with improved memory. Some of these foods include:
• Blackberries. Recent research has linked eating black berries to increase memory function. One or two servings a week (during season, or frozen) will help you to improve your memory. We recommend a serving size of 50g.
• Blueberries. This is a super food that offers a wide variety of nutrients for our body, including our brains. A recent study showed that over 60% of people over 70 who added blueberries to their diets showed marked improvement in brain function, memory and a decrease in likelihood of Alzheimer’s disease.
• Oily Fish. This is your salmon, tuna, trout, mackerel and sardines. The omega-3 fatty acids have several health benefits including improving memory function³.
• Ginko Balboa, the dietary supplement, has also shown remarkable evidence of improving concentration, memory and helps the brain run better. This supplement can be found anywhere that vitamins are sold.
Our memory is affected by several things: age, diet, heredity and lifestyle. Many people are affected with short term memory loss. We hope by implementing some of the techniques and dietary changes to your lifestyle will help you remember where you left your wallet, keys and phone.
¹ Dementia statistics. 2013.
² Working memory, short-term memory, and general fluid intelligence: A latent-variable approach. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol 128(3), Sep 1999, 309-331
³ Fish Oil Supplementation of Control and (n-3) Fatty Acid-Deficient Male Rats Enhances Reference and Working Memory Performance and Increases Brain Regional Docosahexaenoic Acid Levels. J. Nutr. June 2008 vol. 138 no. 6 1165-1171
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THE mother and uncle of a Gwent prisoner received suspended prison sentences after they admitted helping him to abscond from the open prison where he was being held.
Leighton Williams 25, of Lewis Drive, Caerphilly, was remanded back in custody after he admitted going on the run for 40 hours from December 2, last year.
Newport Crown Court heard Williams, was given an indeterminate sentence, with a minimum tariff of 30 months, for wounding with intent in June 2008.
Recently he had been serving his sentence at HMP Prescoed open prison in Usk and had previously enjoyed 22 home day visits and was working five days a week at a Cardiff call centre.
On December 2 he was collected by his mother Mandy Williams, 49, and uncle Glyn Griffiths, 51, and they spent the day together before returning him at around 5pm.
Williams was made to undertake an alcohol breath test, which revealed he had consumed alcohol that day – a breach of his licence conditions.
Prison guards told him his parole application, due to be considered in April would nowlikely be declined and minutes later he phoned his mum and uncle asking them to pick him up.
They returned and tried to reason with him, but he got in the car and refused to get out.
They trio drove to Caerphilly where Williams was dropped off on a roundabout on the outskirts of the town.
A prison roll call at 7.20pm revealed he was missing and his mum and uncle were arrested four hours later after guards listened to the recorded phone call he made to his mother.
Williams handed himself in at Ystrad Mynach police station on December 4 after hearing of his relatives’ arrest.
The court heard Williams, who has now been returned to secure custody at Cardiff Crown Court, was sorry for his actions.
He said Mandy Williams, also of Lewis Drive, Caerphilly, had been “foolish” and said she did try to make her son see sense, but eventually succumbed to his pleas because he was so upset.
Ieuan Bennett, for Griffiths, of Nantgarw Road, Caerphilly, said his client was easily led and was taken advantage of that day.
Leighton Williams was given a six-month prison sentence for the breach and told his opportunity for parole would be delayed for at least 18 months.
Mandy Williams and Griffiths were given 20-week sentences suspended for 12 months and were each ordered to do 180 hours’ unpaid work. All three must pay a £80 victim surcharge. | <urn:uuid:cb5170d0-20e4-4dd5-a8a9-529c8d0514e8> | http://www.southwalesargus.co.uk/news/10144697.Usk_prison_absconder___s_mother_and_uncle_sentenced/ | en | 0.994805 | 0.080712 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Cursor Tracking Lag Caused by system_profiler
while [ 1 ]; do system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType; done
Parsing Mac OS X System Profiler
The tool is called sysinfocachegen and you use it like this:
Just use your favorite language’s plist parser to read the plist.
Troubleshooting Firewire Drives
If your firewire hard drive is failing intermittently or after transferring some data, it could be a heat issue. Symptoms might include i/o errors and spontaneous disconnects.
Simply removing the case (housing) from my Western Digital MyBook drive allowed it to work reliably enough to get all of the data off. I might continue to use it that way since it hasn’t failed since removing the housing.
I’ve seen this issue with LaCie cases as well. They get extremely hot and are prone to failure, especially if the case does not have a fan and the drive is used continuously for long periods of time, such for backups.
If you need to use a firewire drive for backup, I would invest in a good case with a fan if possible. | <urn:uuid:5d752181-e67a-451f-94b6-a213712a14bb> | https://patternbuffer.wordpress.com/category/hardware/ | en | 0.902992 | 0.052565 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Ares Games Interview - Roberto Di Meglio
פורסם ב08 פברואר 2016
נכתב על ידי איתמר פארן
ares gamesAres Games is famous for its excellent board games, my favorite of which is War of the Ring. After a meeting at Gencon between Roberto and the Pundak, we had the opportunity to interview Roberto De Meglio about his games and Ares Games in general. The interview was performed by Itamar Parann.
חברת Ares Games ידועה במשחקי הלוח המצויינים שלהם, כולל מלחמת הטבעת. ראיון זה נערך לאחר מפגש בין רוברטו, האחראי על פיתוח משחקים בחברה, לבין הפונדק בכנס ג'נקון. הראיון עוסק בתהליכי פיתוח משחקים, ותוכניות עתידיות של החברה. הראיון נערך באנגלית ומפורסם ככזה.
Hello Roberto,
First I would like to Thank Roberto for doing this interview for the Pundak [the word means 'inn' in Hebrew].
IP: How did you get into game designing?
RDM: Just like most game designers, I started very early, when I was a kid, to develop "rules" for our games together with my older brother - rules to play with toy soldiers, toy cars... No big surprise here! When I started roleplaying, I almost immediately started to design scenarios and rules material... It was a natural thing to do for me! But this were just a boy's pastimes..
My professional life in the gaming industry actually started in a different direction, while I was still in my university years - I started first to edit magazines, then to publish magazines and games - and designing always took a backseat. I designed small games and rules included in some of the magazines I published. Most of them had to do with war gaming - I always had a preference for thematic games, conflict-based, and nice figures to play with! These early designs never got translated into other languages, though, and most of them were never sold outside the magazines, except "Sand splatters," a SF-skirmish miniature game, the setting a sort of a crossbreed between "Starship Troopers" and "Tremors"...
IP: What were the major mile stones in your career to date?
RDM: If I look at my professional career in the gaming industry in its entirety, I'd say the very first milestone is founding KAOS magazine, in 1991. Until it closed more than 10 years and 75 issues later, KAOS was the most important gaming magazine in Italy, and helped to "create" a whole generation of gamers. It was also the founding stone of Nexus, the gaming company I created in 1993, together with 3 friends and in partnership with a publisher which was one of the most important comic publishers in Italy at the time.
After that, I would fast-forward to 1998, when, thanks to re-discovering the original molds of the Atlantic toy soldiers, I first stepped forward to an international market, and we started to develop games with the international audience in mind - "X-Bugs", then a little airplane combat game called "Wings of War", you may have heard about it...
The big step forward in my career, both as a publisher and a designer, was of course "War of the Ring" in 2004. As a company, it was our first real international success, and for me personally a life-dream coming true.
War Ring 1Another milestone for me as a designer is "Rattlesnake", in 2007 - a little children game, but it was the first foray for me in a new territory as a designer, after designing mostly complex, thematic games, and after many games co-designed (especially with Francesco and Marco), my first international success designed entirely by myself.
Then, what I'd consider the next milestone is co-founding Ares Games in 2011, the company which is now the publisher of all my games, and of many other games by renowned authors like Andrea Angiolino, Leo Colovini, Maggi & Nepitello, with a very strong focus on the international market - even if we're based in Italy, we publish and distribute our games in English language, for worldwide distribution.
IP: What are your personal favorite game themes?
RDM: As a player, I really like games with a strong theme - history, fantasy and science-fiction are all good, as long as the game is faithful to the theme. It must not be necessarily a very complex simulation, but I want to "feel" the theme. As historical themes, I especially like WW2, ancient and medieval history.
IP: What are your personal favorite game mechanics/engines?
RDM: Generally speaking, I like games that engage the players in a tense conflict, more than purely co-operative games, or games with only indirect interaction between the players.
I like card-driven games, as you can see from my own designs - one of my favorite games in the genre is "Hannibal", for example. I like the limited control and thematic depth that card-driven games may provide.
I also like bidding/auctioning mechanics (that may come from many games as a children with my family playing "Mercante in Fiera", a traditional Italian game), betting and bluffing (possibly, also coming from traditional card games). I also like a lot games with hidden roles, for the bluffing element and the tension they provide.
IP: What are your favorite non-Ares Games games, and why?
RDM: Let's see - three games I'd never say "no" to playing include an ‘old favorite’, "Space Hulk" - in spite of the simple mechanics, incredibly thematic and fun; "Citadels", a great game where the role selection mechanics merges well with a finely crafted development engine; and "Ticket to Ride", a game you can play with almost everyone, simple and deep - and always fun even if it does not match any of what "normally" my preferences are. Which says a lot!
You can see I did not "fall in love" with any game recently, not because there are not very good games available - maybe the opposite, because there are too many! One of my latest favorites is "Mysterium", which I like for the dream-like atmosphere it creates.
Now let’s focus a bit on Ares Games...
IP: Ares Games has been around for about 5 years now, and I understand that in a sense it rose from the ashes of a previous company, Nexus, the publisher of the War of the Ring 1st edition and Collector Edition. Can you tell us a bit about what happened there, and what assets were brought into Ares Games from Nexus?
RDM: It's a complex story - in short, Nexus was split into two branches during 2006-2007, one distribution branch and one publishing branch, in an attempt to reorganize the company and make it more focused and profitable in each of its activities. From the distribution branch, through subsequent merges and changes of shareholders, was born Giochi Uniti, an important Italian publisher and distributor. The activities of the publishing branch were sold to Italeri, and a new company was formed, NG International.
For several reasons, NG was not successful - we had several customers with big financial problems in the early days of the company, damaging our cash-flow; and moreover the company was not strong enough commercially, at an international level. It relied completely on international partnerships, like the one with Fantasy Flight Games for the English-language market. So NG had big development costs, but not enough profit on its products, due to commercial weakness. When we realized the issue, and we addressed with the majority shareholders the necessity of changing the business model, the owners already had lost confidence. There were a few attempts to sell the company, but no agreement was found with potentially interested buyers, and NG ceased its activity.
Fortunately, we were able to find new investors who had confidence in the new business model and in the industry experience of the Nexus' team, and Ares was launched. As NG had lost its contracts with authors and licensors when it ceased, so Ares was able to establish new agreements with some key authors and licensors, and get the "old" games back on the market, while starting to develop new ones.
IP: As you mentioned already, Ares Games is based in Italy but markets successfully world-wide. What are the main challenges involved in that - language, different laws, maybe something else entirely?
RDM: I'd say that the challenge is not as big as we thought it could be. Our major market, the USA, still has a very strong layer of independent distributors; instant communication through the Internet; crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter... I don't think if we were in an out-of-the-way place in the US things would be so different. I think language is still a problem, we have English-speaking editors and proofreaders, of course, but a lot of small daily things also require a good grasp of the English language, and we're not "born" into that!
IP: Your game lines are quite different from each other - Wings of Glory is completely different from WotR, and the upcoming Sword & Sorcery and Odyssey games are again something else completely. What sort of work is involved in the invention of these games' engines and in deciding what would work and what would not?
RDM: I think that the strong point of our games is that the development of their game engine is always tightly connected to their theme. Mechanics and theme are developed together, and this applies both to our most complex games and to the simpler ones.
Sometimes, we realize that a game engine can be adapted to other themes - Wings and Sails, WotR and Conan - but as you can see by comparing these games, we don't just "cut and paste" mechanics and apply a new theme - we use some elements of the engine, but we develop a lot of new elements to properly represent the theme or achieve some other design goal.
ares games wings of glory
IP: So I gather you would describe Ares’ area of expertise as deeply thematic, story-heavy games. Care to set me straight on this issue?
RDM: Correct. In different ways, I think that both Wings and WotR are good examples of our core philosophy - to create beautiful thematic games. In terms of complexity, they may represent opposite end of a spectrum, and also as product ranges - Wings is a broad range of products, continually extended, while WotR is extended very slowly and gradually with a few releases. But they both represent well what most people associate with our brand.
While this type of games is our core business, we also decided to extend our reach to family and lighter games - represented in our catalog by games such as Dino Race, Inkognito or, recently Odyssey. We realize that the gamers interested in our "core business" are only a small fraction of the gaming public, and we try to reach a broader audience with our other games. We still keep our essential values - creating beautiful games, providing a fun and immersive experience to the players.
Lets talk a little about your different gaming lines...
IP: I don't have personal experience with Wings of Glory, nor with Sails of Glory. Can you tell us about these games and what is their target audience? In what way are the two game similar to each other, and where are the main differences? What makes them unique in the gaming melee?
RDM: Wings of Glory and Sails of Glory have a great strength - their mechanics are simple, but they provide a game experience and a simulation which is deep enough to satisfy veteran war gamers, who are our "alpha" players. These players also appreciate the level of historical accuracy and the careful research visible in our pre-painted miniatures. At the same time, the simplicity of the gameplay, and the beautiful miniatures, make it easy to involve younger players, and players not so deep into wargames. The game are very suitable to getting several generations of gamers at the same table, they can be played well with two people, but also with a massive number of players. They scale well from smaller engagements to day-long battles--- These are all great virtues, and together with our beautiful range of airplanes and ships, make these games quite unique in the market.
ares games sails of glory
In terms of game mechanics, the main similarity between Wings and Sails is the maneuver deck system: the capabilities of a plane or ship, its speed, maneuverability, and so on, are all defined by the deck of cards used to move them- This makes the system realistic, and easy to play at the same time.
There are many differences, to simulate the different type of battles, of course. For example, ships in Sails are quite more complicated than an airplane in Wings, with variable stats as they take damage; their maneuvering relies on the wind, etc.
IP: As for Age of Conan - when originally published by FFG, this game was a very mild success; why did you decide to purchase the game from FFG, and publish an expansion? And in what way do you expect the expansion to change the gaming experience of people who play the game? What can you tell us about how the game was developed and received initially, and of your decision to revisit it?
RDM: I think that Age of Conan is a great strategy game, and it was somehow under-rated when it came out, for some reasons which are difficult to fathom. It definitely had things which could have been done better, but I think that people were mostly just expecting a different kind of game - people were expecting an adventure game, rather than a strategy game, and this fundamental misunderstanding made many buyers unhappy.
Our goal in designing Conan was to re-create the struggle of the Hyborian Kingdoms during the lifetime of Conan, not to portray the adventures of Conan himself. We wanted Age of Conan to be a multi-player experience (War of the Ring, which is its mechanical predecessor, being mostly 2-players, or 2-teams), and to be faster and more streamlined than War of the Ring. I think that these goals were achieved well, and the game, while not a big commercial success, definitely earned a good number of fans.
There were a few areas of the game which could be improved, I don't deny that, and small issues we realized could be fixed by an expansion (for example, not enough player interaction during certain phases of the game).
Some elements of the game were streamlined to keep the complexity of the game under control. In retrospect, the game mechanics for Conan were probably too streamlined - he was important in the game, but lacking flavor. Adventures in Hyboria was supposed to round-up the game, with an acceptable increase in complexity - but the crisis of NG prevented this expansion to be published.
When Ares was up and running, I realized that there was a way to understand if people wanted the game to come back or not - using Kickstarter to assess the interest in the game expansion. We loved the game, but there was enough people out there who loved it as much as we did? The result was a resounding "yes", as Adventures in Hyboria, at the time, became our Kickstarter with more backers!
IP: What can you tell us about soon-to-be-released Odyssey? It is featured as a Euro game - and those are usually somewhat weak on theme and very strong on elegant and luck-less gaming systems. Is that true regarding this upcoming game?
RDM: Odyssey is a game we immediately fell in love with after the first play! It's not as thematic as most games in our range, but its theme is indeed a perfect match to the game mechanics.
ares games odyssey
Four of the players are navigators, trying to bring their ship to the sacred island, while Poseidon tries to get them off-course, throwing one storm every round. The storm moves one or more ships from their current position, but the navigators don't know exactly where. They must try to guess their actual position, using information they get from Poseidon after they move ("you are in deep water and see two islands close to you...") to figure out where they are on the game board. The game is played on two identical boards - the navigators’ board shows where they think they are, while Poseidon's board shows the actual position of the ships.
It's a pure deduction game - Colovini is a true master of the genre. Rules are simple and there is no luck element, and the deduction in the game can be kept to a reasonably simple level, or you can make it very hard. The thing I really like about Odyssey is that it's much more social than most deduction games, as all navigators play together against Poseidon. Another thing we love in Odyssey is that scales well from 2 to 5 players, but it's also very fun for the onlookers... Poseidon does not see the navigators' board, so he does not know if they are guessing right or wrong; and the navigators of course cannot see Poseidon's board, either.... so onlookers can have fun because they're the ones who get the full picture of what's going on.
IP: Sword & Sorcery - this seems like a dive into the same realm as Descent and other miniature-quest/adventure games. While the minis you are manufacturing for the game are beautiful in and of themselves, what are the true gaming strong points of S&S, and what makes it unique?
RDM: Most dungeon crawlers are either very simple games - like the D&D series - or they require a game master-type player. Sword & Sorcery is maybe a little more complex than most dungeon crawlers, but the designers wanted to provide a game experience much more immersive and challenging than other games in the category.
ares games sword sorcery
Sword & Sorcery is very ambitious because it uses a very sophisticated A.I. system, and a very strongly narrative approach to scenarios, to create a game experience which is deep strategically, very engaging from a narrative point, but requires no GM and can be played in a purely cooperative way. I don't think that such a combination is out there in the market, and together with the production quality of the game - really at the top level in term of sculpting and everything else - I think that the game can gather a good following even in a crowded market, as our Kickstarter proved.Before talking about the WotR line of games, I do have two other general question -
IP: Why choose Kickstarter? Ares is an established company, and the idea of Kickstarter is usually thought of as 'breaking out' business-model?
RDM: People may think we are big looking at our games, but we are not that big, really! Games like the ones we do are very expensive to manufacture and they require very big investments in artwork, sculpting, and tooling upfront. The way we developed in 5 years, without the support of Kickstarter, probably would have required 10 years or more, as we could start developing a new game only after the previous one released, and only if it proved to be very profitable. For example, in 2013 we were able to develop Sails of Glory, Galaxy Defenders, and Battle of Five Armies, releasing all these games in 2014. This would not be possible for a company our size without Kickstarter.
Kickstarter is also a way to generate attention and interest in our games, which also helps us to develop as a company and to make our games successful.
IP: Delays! Ares does not seem to be all that great in regard to time estimates: I think it would be fair to say that more than half the time you wind up fixing your launch estimates by several weeks to several months. What is up with that?
RDM: Ouch! This question hurts ;-) I will try to give you an honest answer anyway. We create games which are very complex to make - games with pre-painted miniatures, licensed-based games.... There are a lot of big and small things which can go wrong in the design, pre-production and production process. Even a small thing, like getting a tray done the way we want it done, can add weeks or even months to the production time!
Trying to correctly assess the development time, months in advance, is always tricky. We also have a painful attention to quality, we cannot really accept compromises on that front.
But I think we are improving, even if not as fast as I would like, and estimates on our latest projects are getting better... In the meantime, I can just hope our backers, in the end, think that what they get is well worth the wait (and fortunately, until now, they do...)
And for a few War of the Ring questions...
[For those who live under a rock - WotR is the War of the Ring line of games; the first edition was published by Nexus, a company that no longer exists; the same company published the Collector's Edition (CE) - the same basic game but with more than a few additions, a huge board, painted miniatures, larger cards and everything wrapped up in a beautiful, huge book-like wooden case; Nexus went under, and later on, Ares got the rights to WotR, and published a somewhat revised 2nd edition that got wild and wide acclamation].
IP: WotR is an amazing game. Can you tell us more about the development process of the game?
RDM: War of the Ring was a labor of love. When I, Francesco and Marco started its design, was because we were afraid that nobody was ever going to try to produce a game which recreated the "real" experience of the War of the Ring. At the time, Lord of the Rings was a mass-market IP, and most games were very simple, family-oriented. We wanted something which could give us, as players, a full immersion in the LotR Trilogy, with all the details.
Soon after we started to work on the design, we realized we had to try to get the game published - and we found out, in fact, that three other companies were trying to create the same type of game!
In the end, the license was given to us because the owner of the LotR boardgame license – the British company Sophisticated Games - appreciated the game for two reasons: even as a prototype, WotR was great to play; and we shared the same vision about the type of game to create - a beautiful game, full of miniatures, blessed by the visuals created by an artist like John Howe.
Nexus was the smallest company between the four competitors, but apparently the licensor made the right choice, looking at the success of the game!
We invested a lot of time and effort to make the design of the game what it is - we were our "target audience", so we had a very clear idea of what we wanted to achieve! The main design was over in about 4 months, but after that, we went through about 1 year of intense playtesting and development.
Talking about the design... Since the start, we decided to create a feeling similar to card-driven games through a dual system composed of action dice and event cards.
Another key feature of the game - the original system used to move the Fellowship - started as a "crazy idea" in one of the earliest brainstorming sessions, which was immediately embraced by all the three designers. We had a very tough challenge to achieve to provide a "realistic" experience. In the books, Sauron has no clue about the fact that the Free Peoples want to destroy the Ring - in the game, the Sauron player knows this perfectly well! How to deal with such a contradiction, and at the same time create a good simulation of the books?
This was achieved through the combination of the Hunt system, the Fellowship movement system, and the action dice system in general. Sauron cannot "attack" the Fellowship - he can just "hunt for the Ring" and decide how much attention is given to that, and how much attention to the war - allocating Hunt dice. But he is obsessed by the Ring - so he does not have perfect control of this choice. And the hidden movement system (somebody says it's the Schrödinger’s Fellowship - you never know where it is, until you find it) makes the Fellowship somewhat "out of sight" for both players.
Overall, the game was very innovative, and faithful to the literary origin, and I think that most players recognize this. The price to pay, it's not a very simple game to learn. But once you learn it, it's much easier than most people think it is!
IP: I expect all the people involved in the development process were avid fans of Tolkien's work, but even so - I think every event card title refers to some quote from the books - how did you manage it?
RDM: You read the books a lot... then you read and re-read them, looking for quotes :-)
IP: Playing WotR feels as if you are re-imagining Tolkien's work with each game - which is great, of course; how do you compare the experience of WotR in respect to the many other Tolkien-based games out there?
RDM: Honestly, I think it's really unique. There are LotR games I like and played a lot - The Confrontation, or the old CCG by Decipher. They are good games with LotR flavor. But playing WotR is re-enacting the events (or possible events) of the trilogy in a way no other board game based on the books, until now, could achieve - it was designed to do that, and we did not accept any compromise.... For example, if a little rule was to be added to make it possible for something that happened in the book to happen in the game... we added the rule, if we could not find another way to meld into the existing design. The rule for additional damage when going through a Shadow stronghold is an example - it was added because we wanted the Free People player to "feel" the danger of places like Moria.
IP: You used a variant of the WotR system in your more recent game, Battle of the Five Armies. To my mind the most amazing thing is that the same basic system [the games even use the same action dice symbols] manages to produce an entirely different feel - WotR is a thematic/strategic game, while BotFA is a fast-paced tactical game. Were these changes something new, or did you have the idea for the tactical game in the works all along while WotR was developing?
RDM: In the beginning, it was not our idea to design a "generic" engine- the development of the rules for WotR was done specifically for that game. The idea to use the WotR system for tactical games came to us when developing the first expansion to WotR 1st edition, Battles of the Third Age - we realized that, adding some elements and removing other ones, we could model "operational"-level (using war gaming terminology) games, and we designed the Rohan and Gondor games included in that expansion. In BotFA we made the system even more tactical, adding a greater role to characters and additional details to the units, even if the core system remain very close to the one we used for Rohan and Gondor.
IP: I'm guessing that the Hobbit films had a lot to do with the decision to release BotFA - is that so?
RDM: Yes and no... We wanted to do a game based on the Hobbit since the day after we completed War of the Ring! But the licensor was not so convinced about the idea, until a few years later - when WotR 2nd Edition proved to be successful, and the Hobbit movies appeared on the horizon. Then, the project got a green-light, and we were very happy to have a chance to do it!
IP: And do you think the game will hold its own in a couple of years when the films slink away from public memory?
RDM: We definitely hope so! The Hobbit is a literary masterpiece, 80 years old, and BotFA is a very fun game, faithful to the literary work. Possibly, the movies (and bad licensed items coming with them) did hurt us a little bit!
IP: Are you thinking of expansions for BotFA - maybe other battles?
RDM: We would like to do them... But we have many things in the pipeline, so don't hold your breath on them!
IP: You decided on a 10th anniversary WotR edition, with painted miniatures and a special board - which does tend to remind people of the CE, even though there are many differences. And I was wondering - how do you plan to handle the WotR expansion in regards to special editions? Lords of Middle Earth already has a collector's version [painted minis and such]. Will you do the same with every expansion?
RDM: Warriors of Middle-earth is going to have a painted edition. And we are planning a third - and final - expansion after that, and we want it to have a painted version, too. After that, I like the idea of getting everything together in one box - but maybe such a "monster edition" will be impossible to create and sell, so that's far from a sure thing.
ares games war ring anniversary
IP: What exciting information are you willing to share about the upcoming Warriors of Middle Earth expansion [due to hit this spring]?
RDM: We are going to publish a few preview articles on, so I won't spill the beans too early :-) The core idea of the expansion is to give a greater role in the game to several of the contenders who are not fully featured in the core game. We focused on three "factions" for the Free Peoples - Ents, Eagles, and Dead Men of Dunharrow - and three for the Shadow - Corsairs, Dunlendings and Giant Spiders, and took them in the spotlight, representing them with figures and specific rules.
Some of these factions were already present in the first edition expansion, but they have been completely re-designed here, with more consistent mechanics between them, and developing a specific game engine, composed of a faction die and a faction deck for each player to make sure they get an appropriate role in the war.
IP: Roberto, thanks for doing this the interview with us! :-)
RDM: Thank you for the very interesting questions, and thanks to everybody who got to the end without falling asleep!
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About the Urban Forest: Environmental Benefits of Street Trees
Next to its people, trees are arguably the most important resource in Santa Monica. The City’s forest is actually a green element of its infrastructure and requires regular care just like streets, sidewalks, utilities and public buildings. Our trees work for us day and night year round, continually improving our environment and quality of life. Santa Monica’s forest provides environmental benefits in the form of improved air quality, reduced energy costs, reduced storm water runoff into the ocean, sequestered carbon in their woody mass, shaded streets to extend the life of the asphalt surfaces, and reduced irrigation usage for front yard landscapes. And, as if that isn’t enough, trees increase in value, providing more environmental benefits the older and bigger they get.
Improving Air Quality & Squestering Carbon
The Greenhouse Effect is created when heat from the Earth is trapped in the atmosphere as a result of increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases that prohibit it from releasing heat into space. Trees remove, or sequester, CO2 from the atmosphere during their photosynthetic process to form carbohydrates stored in trunks, branches, leaves and roots. The byproduct of this process is oxygen that is released back into the atmosphere. Even though Santa Monica is a coastal city benefitting from cool ocean breezes, the shade that trees provide for homes and offices reduces the need for air conditioning during the summer or when the Santa Ana winds blow into town. This reduces the demand for electricity during periods of hot weather. The combination of the cooling effect that reduces energy consumption, the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere and carbon storage in wood, makes trees a very efficient tool in fighting the greenhouse effect.
Additional Facts:
• Trees are an essential tool for removing carbon from the air. It is in their trunks, branches, leaves and roots while releasing oxygen.
• Trees remove gaseous pollutants and particulate matter from the air by absorbing them with normal air components through their leaf surface. One only has to take a handful of foliage from a street tree and rub their fingers over the leaf surface to see how this actually works.
• Mature street trees can reduce as much as 60% the particulate matter that is in the air around them.
• It has been estimated that a total of 300 trees can counterbalance the amount of pollution one person produces in a lifetime.
Protecting Water Quality
Trees are natural pollution filters that help improve water quality in Santa Monica Bay. They slow down stormwater runoff and ensure that our groundwater supplies are continually replensihed. Tree canopies interrupt rainfall, while tree roots, trunks and surrounding soil remove particulate matter such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium from runoff before it reaches the ocean. The USFS estimates that for every 5% of tree cover added to a community, stormwater runoff is reduced by approximately 2%.
Saving Energy
Trees act as natural air conditioners that lower air temperatures and reduce heat islands created by paved areas and tall buildings. They provide buildings with shade in the summer and block winds in the winter, which reduces energy use and costs associated with indoor cooling and heating.
Additional Facts:
• The USFS estimates the annual effect of well-positioned trees on energy use in conventional houses at savings between 20-25% when compared to a house in a wide-open area with no trees.
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Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm on Batteries
How vital is the electrification of vehicles to a state like Michigan? What steps are being taken to ensure Michigan seizes the American automobile battery marketplace? Will lithium ion be the battery of choice for electric vehicles? These are questions Jennifer Granholm's administration is currently grappling with to do it's part to lead Michigan back from the brink of disaster to the forefront of automotive excellence. In a Newsweek article, Michigan Governor Granholm lays out her vision for how electric technologies will be harnessed to create opportunities in Michigan.
One question followers of EEStor Inc., may be curious about is what will happen to all of the private and government investment in lithium ion based technologies, once EEStor achieves it's immediate goal of completing it's EESU production capacity??? If you're Ian Clifford at Zenn Motor Company, how does conversation with the Governor go? Stay tuned...you may find out...
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Sunday, January 20, 2013
A Book? By Me?
Seems possible and verging on likely....
for a series of presentations I'll be doing in Kuala Lumpur and Seoul, I've been developing a kind of "Idiot's Guide to Korean Literature." This is partly to cement my own understanding about all this shite I'm supposed to be an 'expert' on - since as they say, you never learn something so well as when you teach it. It's also because it would be a killer handout at the presentation.
It's also forcing me to delve into things I'm quite ignorant about, already including classical Korean literature and soon to include its poetry....
In a lunch with the division, this popped up and professor Cho (who is kind of our big powerful dude in the institution) asked me about my plans and when I mentioned this and that I was going to take it to LTI and other places after I had the rough draft done, he nearly choked up his kimchi jiggae. He said, no, let's do this as a bilingual book and publish it through Dongguk's academic press.
To which, after exploring what that would mean for my copyright rights, I agreed. So it seems like the thing is on.
I present in Kuala Lumpur on Feb 7th, and hope to have a complete rough-rough draft by that time. Then, I present again in Seoul on March 31, at which time I should have a 'real' rough draft. I set that down for a month while I re-read all my source materials, then have a go at a final draft.
Should be fun.^^
Tuesday, January 01, 2013
The trip down to Andong began trippily, as they all do. After concluding another three hours of awsomely culture-packed wisdom in my discussion and presentation class, I caught a quick taxi back home. While quickness would be the general feature of a weekend in Andong, we'd only be 50/50 반 반 by the time we concluded our next ride.
Anyway, Yvonne was at home waiting, and we stuffed our stuff (how often does English make a noun/verb combination like that, where the verb can be done to the noun?) into packs and headed out to catch a taxi to Cheongnyangri Station, with our tickets purchased well ahead, as on a Friday night this is a super busy line. The taxi got caught in every traffic jam in Korea, two in Bangkok, and one in a factory in England, which coincidentally produced jam-related products. Not the ones you're thinking of, but ones related to toes. Still, there was a moment at which we thought we wouldn't make the train.
We got to the train station with about 20 minutes to spare, and the super efficiency of the employeees at KORAIL got us on the train with at least 5 minutes to spare.
The train was a Mugunghwa, which those of you who know me know I love immoderately.
It's a train with an entire care dedicated to PARTAY, including semi-decent internet access on about 4 computers. It's a club car, norae-bang car, and massage-chair car, yet so much more.
However, as we were late, that car was utterly full.
At first I thought the computers were being used, but when I actually went into the car, I discovered it was just some dickish Ajosshi using the seats. Korean trains allow "standing" tickets, and the standees are amoral bastards, with only one idea in mind, finding and keeping some kind of seat. So, similar to politicians and pederasts in the United States.
I purchased a beer and returned to my seat with Yvonne, filled with hatred of Korea, and feelings of personal rejection.
But within an hour the train stopped at handful of stations, two of which seemed to be transfer stations to some other important places, and the "standing" customers in our car eventually all found seats...
Which sent me back to the PARTAY car, and in fewer than 10 minutes I was at a computer surfing gay goat porn, which is how I always prefer to travel.
We hit Andong at about 11, and a very short walk in front of the station led us to an awesome array of motels, from which we chose the 문화 (or, "Culture," which I only later realized might refer to something unsanitary), which checked us in for about $35 for the night. Computer with internet access (but shitty IE 6) and television included. Relatively quiet, ondol, and an electric blanket which I fear Yvonne now loves far more than me.
We liked the place enough that the next morning, before we headed out on our local rounds, we employed the establishment for one more evening's enjoyment. Despite the fact it didn't have a porno channel.
In the morning, icy and cold, we headed out to Hahoe (하회) village, which, in the horrible interstitial regions between Korean language, Korean Romanization, and pronuciation, is actually pronounced, Ha-hway. Go figure, particularly if you are a mathematician (spills to my dead homie Stevie B.). The bus picked us up pretty close to the hotel, and in the scrum for entry (we had all lined up at the bus-stop and then the bus inexplicably stopped 20 yards before that, and well over the lake of icy water between the sidewalk and the street) I got on about third and ran to the back of the bus for key tourist seats.
Then it occurred to me that Yvonne had no money to pay the fare, so I fought my way back to the front of the bus and grabbed the unpopular (absolutely no foot space) seats right behind the driver.
When Yvonne got on, I was able to slide her the money she needed to pay, and we were away.
Just before leaving, the only other foreign couple got on the bus, a rather heavy-set dude (and you know that means something if I'm saying it) and a rather less heavy-set woman. They had to stand.
Which a lot of people had to do, because the bus was utterly jammed by stop one. This makes me wonder about what happens in the tourist season, since Andong runs no more buses at that time, and it must be a hellish experience when there are scores of people trying to get on board. It's weird, and it must be horrible.
Anyway, we finally got to the place, and then disembarked to buy tickets. Apparently I was the only person on the bus who noticed that while we had been disembarked to buy tickets, the bus continued into the village proper. This little bit of notice-if-ication would be a good thing later.. Once we had tickets, we had access to a shuttle bus into the village...
First, though...
Outside the village was the mask museum, which was awesome. A ton of Korean masks and a brilliant collection of masks from around the world. As a citizen of the United States I have to admint feeling a bit let down by our side, as other than a few masks from Native tribes, we were weakly represented.
Then the shuttle bus into the village. Hahoe is pretty cool, having an impressive history and being situated in a lovely spot. Because of the cold and iciness we did not take the ferry across the river, which would have allowed us to climb a 650 meter cliff to see the village from above/across the river. It was icy enough on the flat and when I plummet to my death it will not be by accident, and it will be onto a bunch of Yankees fans and not into a river.
We wandered about from place to place, with many places being closed for the season.
Once there, Yvonne was preturnaturally keen to leave, so after about an hour we headed back towards the front.
Which is where a funny but good thing happened.
Having noticed that the bus dropped us all off but still headed into Hahoe, I was curious if there was a bus stop in the village. Sure enough, take a look at that map and there is an ambiguously named 'bus stop.' I guessed this was where the empty bus had to be, so we headed there and, lo and beholden to everything there was the bus, with no line to enter.
LOL... then the bus took off and headed to the busstop just past the ticket window.
There, waited the hordes.
The bus immediately transmogrified from the bus with two cute couples (I count Yvonne and I among them) and one weirdo, to the bus with 8-million people standing including, no suprise, the foreign couple we had seen earlier...
I enjoyed watching the swine stand uncomfortably as we swayed and lurched towards Andong.
Once back in town, Yvonne and I made several unsuccessful forays at local, like within 4 blocks, tourist sites, but it was after 5 and they were closed.
So, we decided to head to the city market and its last section, which features a cluster of Jimmdalk (spicy chicken stew) restaurants.
We wandered until we found a restaurant that wasn't crowded - Yvonne seems to go for that, though I prefer the crowded ones as I expect, probably wrongly (Koreans will line up for anything that has received a good review in Korean press, and in our neighborhood this means the line up for bad burgers and coffee that is only decent at the only coffee shop in Noksapyeong that requires you to drink outdoors!) that crowded means good.
So, not a very popular joint, as we had walked past all of those....
As we finished (or really didn't, since the Jjimdalk is really a meal for three people), who should walk in but the other foreigners...
Yeah, we were being stalked!
They turned out to be a couple, with the woman currently teaching in Korea, and the man visiting.
We chatted for a while, but eventually Yvonne and I had to leave, for a quick trip to the Weolyoung bridge.
On the way we quickly stopped at our hotel (The foreigner/tourist section of Andong is quite compact) and then headed a block away to catch a cab. The cabbie swept us out to the bridge. From across the river the bridge, a pavilion in it's midsection, and an extremely well-lit structure on the hill behind it are an awesome sight. I had caught this view on the train down to Andong (though from a slightly higher perspective of the train tracks, which made it even more awesome) and wanted to come back. We walked across the thing, but couldn't find an easy access to the well-lit building, so after a bit of tracking about in the snow, we high-tailed it back across the bridge, just in time to see a taxi that had been waiting there, red light on, lose patience and drive away.
The cruel snow bit at our exposed flesh, the wolves howled, and on the frozen banks of the river, the ice-weasels engaged in the ritual combat that keeps their ragged fangs sharp for their carnivorous tasks!
So we began to head across the street to a coffee shop to have a cup and get a call-taxi. When, praise allah, another taxi appeared at the site to drop some tourist off, and we nipped into it a bit sharpish, and got a ride back to downtown. Our transportation luck on this trip was so awesome that to make up for it we will likely be struck a bus rammed into us by an out of control subway train.
Once back in town, we headed to the "mall" section of town hoping that something was going on, but it was the lull week between xmas and new years (the xmas tree had already been turned off) and we were there dead early. So, two drinks at the WA bar and we headed back to the motel to watch various shite movies, in English at least, until sleep came.
Which was fitful, since Yvonne was in full-snore mode and the wind was whacking away at something loose in our hotel room window.....
We woke up on Sunday just after 9, still a bit tired and with Yvonne ill (she'd had a cold most of the trip). Still, we struggled out to the bus-stop to catch a bus to Bongcheong-sa, a temple, but when the bus pulled up the driver told us it have been closed by snow - that is the snow of the previous night, which must have towered over one centimeter in height.
Still, there is no discounting Korean incompetence in the face of snow, and as we turned away to walk back towards the train station, who should we run into but our Canadian stalkers on their way to the bus. Looking back at the bus we noticed that two rather determined looking Koreans in full Everest-gear had hopped on the bus despite the news the bus would not go to the temple. This made me go back and ask the bus driver how long, once the bus turned back, the walk through the snow would be if we wanted to achieve the temple. He said it would be an hour, and that would mean an hour hiking back. As it was utterly frigid and howling wind, we did the French thing and retreated.
So, back to the coffee-shop we'd had coffee in the previous morning and a resetting of goals.
We hit the two places we'd missed the previous day, with the Museum of Modern Culture being, for lack of a better phrase, insanely awesome. Every exhibit was interactive and most were in Korea, Chinese and English. The place itself looks unprepossessing from the outside, but the bulk of it is underground and.. well.. insanely awesome, including (perhaps the least technological of all the wonders), a place to take pictures of your friends in masks, with a pretty perfect blue-screen background.
The only slightly weird thing was that they had a wall of Andong and mask-related things for sale, but you couldn't get them at the museum. Each object had an address and phone number to contact for sale, and many of them were different. While Andong in general is good for tourists, its bus schedules are idionsyncratic, it deals with snow even worse than Seoul, and it's marketing is a bit incompletely thought through.
Still, awesome.
We finished all that excitement and still had over 5 hours in town. I overruled Yvonne's desire to go the Andong Folk Village, and instead had us hop a cab to the Soju and Traditional Foods Museum
OK, so I was wrong.^^
A totally boring exhibit in a warehouse in a boring part of town.
Luckily, we were able to grab a cab in which the cabbie got my bad directions to the Folk Museum. I knew it was out by the dam, so in Korean I asked him to go near the dam. Once he had that destination I tried to explain what we really wanted, which came out as the pathetic 안동 폴크 (As close as I could phonetically get to "folk") 문학관. To which, after some consideration, he replied 민속 박불관 and of course he was coming correct.
Which we got out to, turns out it is just past the bridge, and enjoyed tremendously, even though the second floor managed to be colder than the outside.
Then, a short walk back to and across the bridge, and just as we were discussing getting a cup of coffee and a call taxi I looked down the road and saw the city bus pulled over by the side of the road just about 100 meters behind the bus stop. Which, we hustled and bustled to, and less then 10 minutes later we were on a bus that trundled us back to city center.
We ate some Andong Galbi and I had a chance to taste some of the famous Andong Soju. It's famous for two reasons. First, it is supposed to be made the "old-fashioned" way, with original style ingredients and no artificial anythings. Second, its alcohol content is at least 2 times higher than that of normal soju. Unfortunately, it tastes absolutely horrible. I had tasted soju *from* Andong (NOTE: Because of Korea's bizarre chaebols and local authority rules, every region has its own soju that cannot be sold outside of that regions) and it tasted better than the Seoul version. But the "Andong Soju" (which implies the higher alcohol rate) tastes like medicine, and Yvonne was utterly delighted to watch me struggle and grimace my what through a bottle (for science... FOR SCIENCE! I wanted to see how much drunker I would get.^^). As we walked towards a coffee shop, I occasionally burped up a bit of it, and it reminded me of eating liquid-capsule vitamins as a child; it tasted pretty bad going down, but even worse when belched up from a full stomach.
Then it was off to a PC Bang for me, remaining at the coffee shop for Yvonne, and a romantic re-meeting around a heater at the train station....
And the train, the mighty Mugungwha, and the road home.. | <urn:uuid:1cc10dee-2c57-452a-bf34-4d9e98d5f771> | http://ccmontgom.blogspot.com/2013_01_01_archive.html | en | 0.981874 | 0.057797 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Run of the Mill
Summer is a really fun time around here. But seriously, busy. Our typical days go something like this:
Dad up: 5 Am - workout
Mom up: 6:30 am - drink coffee
Macie up: between 7 and 8. I'm hoping more for the 8, sleeping in would be fabulous!
Penelope up: between 6:30 and 8. Usually she wakes up around 6, but if I let her talk for just a few minutes, she'll fall back asleep. A number of times I've gone in there at 8 and I've had to actually wake her back up.
Dad goes to work around 7. Momma tries to get a few chores done before the girls get up. Sometimes more successfully then others.
Macie breakfast, Penelope breakfast. 8 am is the only feeding that I don't have to supplement, I have enough milk. That is nice. The other feedings I have to supplement with around 3-4 ounces of formula.
After breakfast for everyone I have decisions to make. Do we venture out? Do we do chores? Do we excersize? This changes day by day, and I've found that I've actually saved quite a bit of money this summer, because I don't leave the house the way I used to. And I'm grateful I don't have too much cabin fever. Now, trips to Tar.get are more of a big deal, so we make that our actual outing. So my Dave Ramsey envelopes are more full than they used to be! Ha.
Then it's feed Penny at 11, snack for Macie around 10 or 10:30 (or not if all if she is busy playing and doesn't ask for one). Once Penny is done eating I start thinking of lunch for Macie and I. Usually PB&J or something like that. Then it's play and read for Macie, Penelope plays on her 'mat' quite a bit. And she enjoys the swing...these are all places you'll find her. Macie goes down for a nap around 1 (depending on how much energy she's burned off in the morning, but always a nap) and gets up between 3 and 4. No, she doesn't actually sleep the whole time, but she plays quietly in her bed, so I sometimes feel like the luckiest.mom.in.the.world. Because after Penelope eats at 2, I can sometimes get her to take a nap, and I get 30 glorious minutes to myself in the afternoon. And how do I spend it? Trying to decide what to do of course. Yesterday I did 20 minutes of the dan.cing with the stars DVD workout I bought years ago. It was good, but my feet are sore today.
Then Macie's up, Penny eats at 5, time to make dinner. Somewhere in there Dad gets home, we eat dinner, play a little and then bathtime, read time and Macie's in bed at 8 and Penny is eating 2nd dinner at 8. The only bummer is that I am still mourning the time I used to have once Macie was asleep. Put her to bed at 8, boom, rest of the night is ours. But Penelope is a fantastic child, so I hate to complain, but that girl can take up to an HOUR to eat her milk. And I hate to skimp on it, because she doesn't eat in the middle of the night, so I don't want her to be starving when she wakes up. So she doesn't always go to bed until about 9:30.
Here are some pictures for this incredibly boring post:
My little cutie!
Reading at Bedtime
And of course, some staged fourth of july pictures. Macie had an adorable cowgirl hat, but it was SO hard to keep in on her for pictures. Anyone else have that problem?
So I just took pictures of her throwing the hat. Probably not the smartest mom moment, but make lemons, right?
That's our run of the mill day. Penelope will be 4 months on Monday (how did THAT happen!?) and Macie is 26 months. I love these girls with all my heart, and I can't believe I get to be their momma. What a huge blessing it is. | <urn:uuid:1f2881c0-8e66-4b97-bdd6-95c9127d61c5> | http://courtney78.blogspot.com/2012_07_01_archive.html | en | 0.956514 | 0.06311 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Digital Photo Prints > PPI and Print Size
PPI and Print Size
How the pixels per inch in your digital photo affect the print size
By now you should be aware that the number of megapixels captured by your digital camera affects the size of the prints that you can make. If this is still unclear, read more about megapixels, then come back here once you're done.
While a simple chart can let you know how many megapixels you need when you want to purchase a camera, you need to understand more about dots per inch and print quality once you're ready to print some photographs.
Megapixels and Resolution
We won't go into great detail about megapixels again, but will take a moment to refresh. A digital photograph is made up of millions of tiny dots called pixels.
An image with a lot of pixels is also called high resolution. An image with a low number of pixels is called low resolution. This is why the terms megapixels and resolution are sometime used to mean the same thing.
Pixels Per Inch (PPI)
Now that you know about the relationship between megapixels and the number of horizontal and vertical pixels in the image, we can relate these numbers to the display and print size of the photo.
Let's go back to our 3.9 megapixel camera that produces file sizes that are 2272 pixels wide and 1704 pixels tall. We have some measurements for the size of the image, but what do they really mean? Is there anyone you know of who measures size in pixels? How do you convert this to a more common measurement?
You can tell how big your image is going to be by using pixels per inch or PPI. Divide the number of pixels in the photo by the PPI to determine the size of the printed photo in inches.
There are some common PPI numbers that you can choose from.
Monitor PPI
Your computer monitor displays images at 72 pixels per inch. This means that our 3.8 megapixel image is going to measure about 32 inches by 24 inches when viewed on a monitor. That is pretty big!
You can determine the display size of the image by dividing the horizontal and vertical pixels by 72. In this case, 2272 / 72 = 31.6 and 1704 / 72 = 23.7.
Use the 72ppi standard when you want to post an image to the Internet (since most people will view the photo on a monitor).
Print at Home PPI
When you print at home, you can actually tell your printer to use any number of pixels per inch. For example, you can print your image at 100ppi if you want to. You can also print at 250ppi. What's the difference?
The difference is that a printer needs to use more pixels per inch to produce a high-quality image than your monitor does. If you print a photo at 100ppi, it is not going to look like a professional print. You will be able to see grain and fuzziness, the actual pixels that make up the digital photograph.
If you print at 250ppi, the photo is going to look more like a print made by a professional service. More pixels per inch = higher quality printed photograph. But have you figured out the problem when printing with lots of pixels per inch?
When you increase the pixels per inch, you reduce the size of the printed photo. Let's say you print your 3.9 megapixel photo at 100ppi. This isn't high-quality, but you can print a photo that measures 22.7 by 17 inches (2272 / 100 = 22.7 and 1704 / 100 = 17).
Now you print the same photo at 250ppi. You get a great looking photo, but the print size is 9.1 by 6.8 inches (2272 / 250 = 9.1 and 1704 / 250 = 6.8). Big difference.
Professional Printing PPI
The professional print standard is 300ppi. This is used by professional photographers and any time a photo is printed in a magazine or other print publication.
Megapixels and Print Size
Now we can finally clarify the relationship between the number of megapixels and print size, and why capturing more megapixels lets you create larger prints.
Let's say that you really want high-quality prints of your digital photographs, but you just want to print them at home. In this case, 200ppi should be enough to get the quality you are looking for.
This table shows the relationship between camera megapixels, horizontal and vertical pixels in the image, and the size of a print at 200 pixels per inch.
MegapixelsImage Size (pixels)Printed Size (inches) *
2.01224 x 16326.1 x 8.2
3.01536 x 20487.7 x 10.2
4.01704 x 22728.5 x 11.4
5.01944 x 25929.7 x 13.0
6.02048 x 307210.2 x 15.4
8.02236 x 350411.2 x 17.5
* The printed size is determined by dividing the horizontal and vertical pixels by the pixels per inch.
When your camera has more megapixels, you get large size prints even if you print with lots of pixels per inch. You can always print using less pixels per inch to increase the size of your photographs, but image quality will suffer.
So What the Heck is DPI?
DPI means dots per inch, and has to do with just how much ink your printer lays down when it prints a photograph. Printers with higher DPI settings can produce more detailed photographic prints.
DPI and PPI are used interchangeably a lot of the time, but are not the same thing. For example, you can print an image on your 300dpi printer at 72ppi, 100ppi, or 300ppi. Changing the ppi affects the size of the printed photograph. You can't change the DPI, since this is set for whatever printer you are using.
For a great description of DPI, check out the definition at Wikipedia. | <urn:uuid:1a8deda7-12a1-4958-bcd6-7bf6c3af1441> | http://digicamguides.com/print/ppi-print-size.html | en | 0.926192 | 0.154711 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Member of The Crypto Crew:
Please Also Visit our Sister Blog, Frontiers of Anthropology:
And Kyle Germann's Blog
And Jay's Blog, Bizarre Zoology
Friday, 3 January 2014
Top 10 Cryptids That Turned Out to be Real
[I needed to repost it, it is one of the articles I posted that failed before-DD]
Top 10 Cryptids That Turned Out to be Real
Cryptozoology, the study of “hidden animals”, concerns itself with animals whose existence has not yet been recognized by mainstream science. These animals, known as “cryptids”, are often the stuff of legends, written off as myths or elaborate hoaxes. Some famous cryptids are Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and El Chupacabra, all of which remain shrouded in mystery. However, many animals widely recognized today were once among these cryptids. The following ten creatures were once dismissed by science as products of folklore, imagination, or deception, but are now formally recognized as their own species.
For the sake of consistency, animals falsely thought to be extinct have not been included (coelacanth, Chacoan Peccary, ivory-billed woodpecker).
Devil Bird
The Devil Bird, or Ulama, is a frightening horned bird of Sri Lankan folklore. This elusive creature is rarely seen, but is often heard in the form of its infamous, blood-curdling screams. Its cries are said to resemble a wailing woman and are perceived by locals as an omen of death. For centuries, the nocturnal cries of the Devil Bird were the only evidence of its existence; Western science wrote if off as mere superstition.
Then, in 2001, the Devil Bird was identified as a new species of owl, the spot-bellied eagle owl (bubo nipalensis). The largest of all Sri Lankan owls, the bubo nipalensis matches the description of the Ulama perfectly, down to its characteristic screech and tufted “horns”. Although some debate still remains as to the true identity of the Devil-Bird, the spot-bellied eagle owl stands as the most compelling source of inspiration for this mysterious creature.
In Medieval folklore, the Ziphius, or “Water-Owl”, was a monstrous nautical creature said to attack ships in the northern seas. It possessed the body of a fish and the head of an owl, complete with massive eyes and a wedge-shaped beak. “Ziphius”, meaning “sword-like” in Latin, may refer to the beast’s fin, which was said to pierce the hulls of ships like a sword.
Today, the inspiration for the Ziphius is known as Cuvier’s Beaked Whale, a widespread species of beaked whale. Also known as the Goose-beaked whale, this creature is found as far north as the Shetland Islands and as south as Tierra Del Fuego at the tip of South America. It is the only member of the genus Ziphius, which bears the name of its legendary identity. Some additionally attribute the inspiration of the Ziphius to the orca or the great white shark, based on some depictions of the beast as a predator to seals.
The Bondegezou (“man of the forests”) is a legendary, ancestral spirit of the Moni people in Western Indonesia. Described as a tree-dwelling creature, the Bondegezou resembles a small man covered in black and white fur. It is said to be a tree climber, but often stands on the ground in a bipedal stance.
In the 1980s, a photograph of the Bondegezou was sent to Australian research scientist Tim Flannery, who initially identified the creature as a young tree kangaroo. But in May, 1994, Flannery conducted a wildlife survey of the area and discovered that the animal in the picture was new to science. The Dingiso (Dendrolagus mbaiso), as the creature is also known, is a forest-dwelling marsupial with bold coloration that spends most of its time on the ground. The Dingiso remains a rare sight – the first real evidence of the creature was only skins, and to this day, no Dingiso exists in captivity.
Early explorers to Australia described bizarre creatures never before seen by Europeans. They wrote of creatures with heads like deer that stood upright like men and hopped like frogs. The creatures sometimes sported two heads – one on their shoulders, and one on the stomach. Such accounts were understandably disregarded and ridiculed by fellow colleagues.
That changed in the 1770s, when a dead specimen of this odd beast was exhibited in England as a public curiosity. Today, this creature is known as the kangaroo, a widespread marsupial endemic to Australia. Well-known for their leaping abilities and the female pouch for carrying young (marsupium), kangaroos are a nationally recognized icon of Australia. Four species of kangaroo exist: the Red Kangaroo (Macropus rufus), the Western Grey Kangaroo (Macropus giganteus), the Western Grey Kangaroo (Macropus fuliginosus), and the Antilopine Kangaroo (Macropus antilopinus).
Platypus Zoom
When European naturalists first encountered this bizarre creature, they were understandably baffled. Accounts described it as a venomous, egg-laying mammal with a duck bill and beaver tail. Many prominent British scientists deemed it a hoax when presented with a sketch and pelt, in 1798. Even when offered a corpse, scholars suspected that it was an elaborate, sewn-together fraud.
Today, this bizarre but fascinating creature is known as the platypus, one of only five extant monotremes (egg-laying mammals). While formerly recognized by science, it is no less unique today: this semi-aquatic creature, native to eastern Australia, swims with webbed feet, uses electrolocation to hunt, and possesses an ankle spur that, in males, can deliver a powerful injection of venom. While non-lethal to humans, this venom is excruciatingly painful and is not responsive to most pain-killers.
Sea Serpent
For centuries, the Sea Serpent persisted as the most captivating cryptozoological mystery in the world. Sightings of these mysterious, and often frightening, creatures have occurred plentifully throughout history, even up until the early twentieth century. From northern European waters to the Eastern North American coast, tales of serpentine, aquatic beasts of colossal proportions dot the globe. Their descriptions vary, ranging from horse-headed creatures to massive snakes.
Cryptozoologists speculate that various misidentified animals can account for Sea Serpent sightings. However, one elusive species is a particularly likely source for many of these accounts. The oarfish (or ribbonfish) is a massive, elongated fish found worldwide. It is the longest of all bony fish, the largest recorded being 17 meters (56 ft) in length. Oarfish typically dwell in the deep ocean, but are occasionally washed ashore in storms, and linger at the surface near death. A live oarfish was filmed for the first time in 2001, demonstrating its rarity and reclusive nature.
Komodo Dragon
Komodo Dragon 04Tfk
By the early twentieth century, Western science had determined that giant lizards were nothing more than a relic of the prehistoric past. Thus, when pearl fishermen returned from the Lesser Sunda Islands, in Indonesia, with tales of monstrous “land crocodiles”, their accounts were met with overwhelming skepticism. An expedition from the Buitenzorg Zoological Museum, in Java, produced a report of the creatures, but the legendary dragons of Komodo faded into obscurity as World War I took precedence.
Then, in 1926, an expedition from the American Museum of Natural History confirmed that the tales of giant lizards were true. W. Douglas Burden, the leader of the expedition, returned with twelve preserved specimens and two live ones. The world was introduced to the Komodo Dragon, a massive monitor lizard that grows up to ten feet, making it the largest lizard in the world. Komodo Dragons possess massive claws and fangs with which they can kill almost any creature on the island, including humans and water buffaloes. One particularly bizarre attribute of these creatures is their venomous bite, which has been attributed to bacteria-laden saliva or venom glands in the mouth.
The 1926 expedition to Komodo served as the inspiration for King Kong, in which a similar expedition to a foreign island reveals prehistoric megafauna.
Mountain Gorilla
For centuries, tales of large “ape-men” in East Africa have captivated explorers and natives alike. Numerous tribes have legends of massive, hairy creatures that would kidnap and eat humans, overpowering them with their ferocity and strength. The creatures go by many names, among them ngila, ngagi, and enge-ena. In the sixteenth century, English explorer Andrew Battel spoke of man-like apes that would visit his campfire at night, and in 1860, explorer Du Chaillu wrote of violent, bloodthirsty forest monsters. Up until the twentieth century, many of these tales were ignored or discounted.
In 1902, German officer Captain Robert von Beringe shot one of these “man-apes” in the Virunga region of Rwanda. Bringing it back to Europe with him, he introduced the world to a new species of ape: the mountain gorilla (Gorilla Gorilla Beringe, in Beringe’s honor). Today, mountain gorillas are known to be communal, largely docile herbivores that live in the Virunga Mountains in Central Africa, and in Bwindi National Park in Uganda. Mountain gorillas are threatened by poaching and civil unrest, elusive and often unseen in their activities. No more than 400 remain in the wild today.
One of the earliest written accounts of gorillas may come from Hanno the Navigator, a Carthaginian explorer who documented his travels along the African coast in 500 B.C. Hanno describes a tribe of “gorillae”, roughly meaning “hairy people”. It is unknown whether Hanno referred to gorillas, another species of ape, or humans. Nevertheless, his description served as the inspiration for the modern name “gorilla”.
Central African tribes and ancient Egyptians described and depicted a bizarre creature for centuries, colloquially dubbed the “African unicorn” by Europeans. It is known locally by such names as the Atti, or the O’api, resembling a cross between a zebra, a donkey and a giraffe. Despite descriptions from explorers and even skins, Western science rejected the existence of such a creature, viewing it as nothing more than a fantastical chimera of real animals. Determined expeditions uncovered nothing, and it would seem the “African unicorn” was just as mythical as its namesake.
This changed in 1901 when Sir Harry Johnston, the British governor of Uganda, obtained pieces of striped skin and even a skull of the legendary beast. Through this evidence and the eventual capture of a live specimen, the animal now known as the okapi (okapia johnstoni) was recognized by mainstream science. The okapi is no less unusual today: it is the only living relative of the giraffe, sharing a similar body structure and its characteristic long blue tongue. However, the markings on its back legs resemble that of a zebra’s stripes. Okapis are solitary creatures that remain captivating to scientists; although not endangered, there is still much to learn about their habits and lifestyle.
The okapi was the symbol of the now defunct International Society of Cryptozoology, and remains a persisting icon of Cryptozoology to this day.
Giant Squid
Tales of enormous squids have circulated throughout the world since ancient times. Aristotle and Pliny the Elder both described such monsters; legends such as the Lusca (Caribbean), Scylla (Ancient Greece), and the sea monk (Medieval Europe) all describe a bizarre, often dangerous nautical creature. Perhaps the most famous legendary squid is the Norse Kraken, a monstrous, tentacled beast as large as an island that devoured ships whole. Prior to the 1870s, scientific opinion held such creatures as nothing more than ridiculous myths, on par with mermaids or sea serpents.
Despite this, investigations into the existence of the legendary Kraken took place as early as the 1840s. Danish zoologist Johan Japetus Streensup methodically researched and catalogued giant squid sightings and strandings, eventually examining a beached corpse and designating the beast’s scientific name: Architeuthis. Even so, fellow scientists remained skeptical and continued to dismiss accounts.
In the 1870s, the skepticism stopped as several carcasses were beached in Labrador and Newfoundland. Tentacles and complete corpses revealed to the scientific world that the giant squid was indeed real. Today, this creature remains just as mysterious and rare. Typically living at great depths, giant squid sightings are uncommon and often undocumented. For a century, scientists dutifully attempted to observe it in its natural habitat, but failed. Only in 2004 were a group of Japanese scientists able to capture a live giant squid on camera, taking 500 automatic photographs before the creature swam back into the blackness.
Many questions remain concerning the giant squid. Very little is known about its habits and lifestyle, and it is still unknown how large a giant squid can grow. The largest specimens are between 30 and 40 feet long, weighing over 100 pounds. However, its close relative, the Colossal Squid, may grow to much greater sizes, as evidenced by the size of sucker marks on sperm whales. To this day, the giant squid remains a legendary example of how fantastic animals on earth can be.
Giant Panda
Giant Panda
The existence of the giant panda has never been disputed by the scientific community; therefore, it has never been a true cryptid. However, its story offers a valuable lesson to believers and skeptics alike on the merits of cryptozoological research. The giant panda became known to Western science in 1869, when a dead specimen was presented to French naturalist Perè Armand David. In the following years, museums eagerly sent off expeditions to obtain pandas for their exhibits.
However, as anthropologist George Agogino writes, “From 1869 until 1929, a period of sixty years, a dozen well-staffed and well-equipped professional zoological collecting teams unsuccessfully sought an animal the size of a small bear in a restricted area . . . The giant panda lives in the same general area and at the same general elevation as the Yeti, yet this animal has remained hidden for over sixty years.” In 1929, Theodore and Kermit Roosevelt finally killed a giant panda after six decades of elusion and fruitless searching. This historical episode of zoology should send a strong message that nature still has many mysteries to yield, and that our efforts to uncover them can be a daunting, but worthwhile, task.
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Apparently you can't wear a red cocktail dress without getting labeled a man-poaching Jezebel. Apologies to all the autumns out there.
Pacific Standard reports on a study out of the University of Rochester. First, researchers showed half their participants a woman in white, while the others saw same woman in red. Sure enough, the lady in red was considered more "sexually receptive."
For their next trick, researchers gathered up women at a Slovakian university and showed them photos of a woman in either a red or green shirt. Apparently they snapped into Loretta Lynn get-your-hands-off-my-man mode as soon as they saw the red. Because if a lady likes to bone (a big leap from a red dress to begin with), clearly she's after some homewreckin':
Afterwards, they were asked to rate not only her interest in sex, but were asked "How likely would you be to introduce this person to your boyfriend?"
Those who viewed her in the red shirt rated the woman as "more sexually receptive," and "reported stronger intentions to guard their mate from the target," the researchers report.
"It helps us make sense of other people's behavior when women are out in red and they are getting the cold shoulder from other women," the study's author helpfully explicated to ABC News. "Maybe they are giving off the perception of a romantic competitor."
Or you could take it as a testament to the enduring power of stereotypes. It's not particularly surprising that decades (hell, centuries) of cultural bombardment has had some effect. What color does Scarlett wear after she's caught canoodling with Ashley? It's not like men have any agency or responsibility, here. Sometimes women wear bright, bold colors!!! Clearly they have an AGENDA. Lock up your husbands!!!
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Wednesday, 1 August 2012
Progress?//WIP Wednesday
V xo
1. I've done a couple of blankets made up from squares - one I sewed the squares together with whip stitch and the other I single crocheted together. You might want to do it with crochet so you can add one neutral colour that ties the whole thing together.
Good luck with the Ravellenic Games. I've already given up on getting points or even a prize- I'm just hoping to finish before the end of the closing ceremonies :)
2. The squares are really starting to add up. Maybe crochet them together? That's how I put together blankets made like that.
3. I love those pixie hoods, and yours is goign to be so elegant in the colour you're using, like a hat for a twilight fairy. :)
4. Great job on so many squares! I say a crochet border, then sew them up! The border will help make them more even (I have a bunch I have to do that with as well) and then you can sew them together easier. Also, I'd do a border around the whole thing (in crochet) to give it that finished look.
Good luck on the games! I'm working on a sweater (actually 3, but that's a whole different story) for the Luvinthemommyhood Summer Sweater Knitalong.
5. Woah, that blanket is really coming along, great work! Also, that hat is going to look fantastic on you!
6. I'm cheering you on from the sidelines! Rah rah! | <urn:uuid:a5d5fbb2-6570-4142-b560-0d692b435bd3> | http://knittingv.blogspot.com/2012/08/progresswip-wednesday.html | en | 0.967067 | 0.030254 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
The illusory omnipotence of AD&D
Would you dare to explore a tenth-level subterranean dungeon armed only with a dagger and with no armor?
Probably not.A sudden thought came to me yesterday, despite the fact that i wouldn't write. I imagined someone equipped with a vast and thorough knowledge of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and i seriously wondered what he can do with that. I truly imagined someone deeply conversant with AD&D, i could even say that maybe i was thinking about Gygax himself.
What he is really capable to do with all this knowledge? Does it suffice, for the purposes of not being confounded by anything similar to this fantasy game? Cannot he be thrown into perplexity by anything, now that he is so acquainted with AD&D, the big father of all fantasy rpg's?
AD&D is a parochial viewpoint, because with all the good will one could have, it is simply not always possible to master and even comprehend other fantasy rpg's (more complex than AD&D), although you have the deepest possible knowledge of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
The Voynich manuscript cannot be translated by anyone, by any linguist or grammarian, no matter how many languages he is proficient in. Something similar, albeit to a lesser extent, happens with the examples above related to AD&D knowledge.
The fact is that AD&D Dungeon masters are often baffled and puzzled by the complexities (sometimes deemed insurmountable) of other fantasy rpg's that were published in the history of the hobby.But we don't need to go back in time to have proof of this, even the recent and vituperated "Realm of Atlantasia" is a proof of this.
Well, why this is a problem, someone may ask? After all, i may be purposedly avoiding complex games.
Well, think about a scholar in philosophy who has the deepest possible knowledge of Plato and Aristotle and at the same time worships them, but he never heard about Kant nor he intends to ever study it. Does he have a degree in philosophy? Is he entitled to a degree in this field of study? Nay, does he really know something about philosophy in general if he willingly shuns Kant's works?
To me, this means - put simply- that AD&D is not enough, and this is a pity, it disappoints if you think about it.
It is a pity because i would expect that the old big father of all fantasy rpg's could provide me with a long sword instead of a dagger, a long sword and a plate mail armor, with which i could boldly adventure in the most perilous recesses of the dungeon of experience, without fear of the denizens encountered therein.
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Post-Modern Possibilities
A Primer on Kingdom Opportunities in a Post-Modern Culture
"We wake, if ever we wake at all, to mystery." Annie Dillard
I was sitting with an evangelical pastor listening to his story. His associate, ten years younger than he, felt that their church needed to experiment with new styles and new music. He wanted to see greater participation, more use of media, and a less structured order of service. The older man feared that in changing the forms the functions might be lost; he also feared that connecting with postmodern culture meant abandoning truth. The younger man feared that the forms limited function; he also feared that not connecting with postmodern culture would mean a dying church, disconnected from the real world. The two men parted company, both perceiving a cultural gap.
One man could not envision life in the future. The other would not live in the past.
"Postmodernism is a huge threat. Advocating the impossibility of knowing truth, it throws off all limits and casts us adrift in a sea of doubt."
"Postmodernism is a tremendous opportunity. It offers the potential for the rediscovery of spiritual reality and the integration of faith in everyday life."
Two positions. Two opinions. Is one position true, or both?
As I began researching the postmodern movement, I came across a host of opinions and observations, many contradictory. Furthermore, even postmodern advocates disagree as to definition. What is postmodernism anyway? Is it a cultural shift, or a worldview? What are its main tenets? And does postmodernism represent a crisis for the church, or an opportunity?
A Critique of the Modern World
If we can't have definition, we can move toward understanding. Leonard Sweet comments on Thomas Kuhn's "paradigm shift" that,
When Thomas Kuhn introduced the language of "paradigm change" in The Structures of Scientific Revolutions, I wish he had used another phrase for "paradigm:" metaphor change.
They mean the same thing. Paradigm is another word for "root metaphors." When the root metaphors change, so does everything else. The imaginative architecture of the modern world has collapsed, is in ruins, and a new imaginative architecture is emerging. (Interview at GINKWORLD.NET)
On one tenet most interpreters agree: postmodern culture represents a profound critique of modernism. Since the western church is a modern institution, the postmodern critique of culture also represents a powerful critique of the church. That critique, for a variety of reasons, is threatening to many of the old generation of leaders.
Postmodernism is a threat to some because they fear what they fail to understand. Imagine a Christian from the first century walking into a contemporary church service. Separated by 2000 years of history and culture, our modern church would be unintelligible to Peter or Paul. Similarly, moderns are a world-view distant from postmoderns.
Postmodernism is a threat to others because they have no first hand experience of it. They rely on modern interpreters who are reacting in fear. As a result, many modern leaders hear only a caricature of postmodern positions. They see only the negative, and not the possibilities. Some concerns are legitimate. In postmodern culture there is no possibility of objective truth, and no absolutes. It is critical to distinguish between postmodernity as an intellectual movement deconstructing modernity's assumptions and postmodern culture with its particular set of values, like tolerance and moral relativity.
In Retrofuture Gerard Kelly indicts the established church for working overtime attempting to create a rational prepositional faith in order to become acceptable to modern culture. Post-modern Christians do not reject the historic faith or the reality of revelation. Instead, they reject modern assumptions and embrace paradox and the postmodern critique of culture. Often this is done with the hope of stripping away modern distortions and recovering the ancient faith once delivered. They understand that in order to move forward, we must reach back.
"Modern society was a culture that consumed its own past. In contrast, post-modern pilgrims honor the bones of the dead and make those bones live." Leonard Sweet, Post-Modern Pilgrims
When church leaders reject the postmodern movement, they risk becoming isolated from the culture they live in. This in turn guarantees that the church communities they build will gradually stagnate and die, becoming museum communities rather than missional communities. Instead, modern leaders must listen to the tolling of the bell that indicates the death of the modern world, and not ask for whom the bell tolls.
What are some of the facets of postmodern culture that offer a unique opportunity for the Gospel? Let's list them:
• recognition of the essentially spiritual nature of life
• openness and desire for community
• rejection of authority in position and acceptance of authority in relationship
• emphasis on participation over spectator mentality
• leadership by wisdom and example not knowledge or position
• emphasis on practical answers, "walk" over "talk"
• emphasis on journey and process over goal
• desire for experience over knowledge, the "subjective" and mystical dimension
• spontaneous order over rational structure, webs of connection and meaning
• recognition of truth in paradox, images and story
Let's consider these items one by one.
The Spiritual Nature of Life
The gospel pleads a message of grace, and still Christians live as if they are 'G' people offended by an 'R' world. John Fischer
The New Age has been almost as big of a bogey-man as Gen X for the past 20 years. People have invested a lot of time "proving" that New Age mysticism is leading thousands into a Christ-less eternity. The reality is that they were going to a Christ-less eternity anyway, with or without the New Age.
Shows like "X-Files", "Millennium", and "Highlander" (to name a few) have shown a new acceptance of spiritual reality beyond our finite existence. Witness the sense of the sacred in Highlander, when ancient cathedrals are considered "Holy Ground."
The good news of the New Age and rise of mysticism is that people are open to the reality of the spiritual realm, including Jesus called the Christ. Most people aren't against God or Jesus, they have a problem with Christians, or more precisely, their stereotype of what Christians are like.
Far too many people outside the walls of the church only experience Christianity via popular media, or the example of a well meaning Christian whose life failed to match the faith they professed. Fewer still have seen an example of real Christian community, where believers care for one another as if they are family.
We are also witnessing the death of the paradigm of attending church on Sunday without giving "religion" another thought the rest of the week. Postmodern society assumes a more holistic, integrated approach to spirituality and the everyday. For years, there has been a false dichotomy of "what I do at church" and "how I live the rest of the time" -- a thought process encouraged by a compartmentalized approach to life. But finally the sacred/secular myth is coming to a well deserved end.
For postmoderns, it's not an "either/or" decision regarding their everyday "mundane" life and their spirituality, it's a "both/and" concept. If spirituality (whether Christian or otherwise) doesn't have an effect on the whole of life, then what's the point? This presents an exciting opportunity to develop a "24-7" construct of seeing ALL of life as spiritual.
Over the years we have seen many Christian teens, on fire for God, "lose their faith" at an institution of higher learning. We assumed that this was due to the evils of secular humanism.
What if that was the wrong diagnosis? What if they "lost their faith" simply because (in the midst of being heavily involved in all the youth programs of the church) they never developed or matured in their faith? What if we, as their leaders, were responsible for promoting a model of ministry that kept them busy at church activities but failed to truly disciple them? Furthermore, what if they learned from us that Sunday was sacred but the rest of the week wasn't that important? Postmoderns won't accept that false dichotomy.
A New Desire for Community
Community is the place where the healing of our own lives will become the foundation for the healing of the nations. Jim Wallis, The Call to Commitment
This "fatherless" generation, however much expressing itself in violence at times, is more open and desirous of relationship with others than before. In what seems like a paradox, the emerging generations want to be individualistic, but to do so in a community. Look at the popularity of "Friends" and "Party of Five", where young adults are trying to make life work, not as rugged individuals, but as a community. Even older shows like "Cheers" touched a nerve with the question "wouldn't you like to go somewhere where everybody knows your name?"
The good news is that this is a great opportunity for those who are willing to invest in relationships with cross-generational intent to actually become spiritual "fathers and mothers" and help create a "community of faith." Furthermore, it helps us to discover the meaning of the Gospel call to community, almost lost in our individualistic and ego-centered western world.
After twelve years as a typical church community trying to become relevant to the community outside the walls, Robert Girard's community gave their building back to the denomination and started meeting in homes. "We no longer have the structures of meetings, programs and vision to hold us together as a church. The only structure holding us together is relationships; if we fail at love, there will be nothing left." (Robert Girard, "Brethren: Hang Together")
In the late 70's Mennonite author Norman Kraus argued ("The Community of the Spirit") that the defining experience of Pentecost was not tongues of fire and new languages, but the creation of a new community: the laos of God. While the new community was not completely disconnected from the old -- God had had a people before Pentecost -- the new community was filled with the Spirit. The Spirit empowered them both inward, in community and outward, into mission. The empowerment to be a community was immediately demonstrated in the desire to share the world's goods with those who lacked "that there might be equality" (1 Cor.8).
It is evident that this new people share much more than a Sunday gathering. In fact, they share a life that is characterized by a quality of relationships that was unknown in the ancient world. Jim Petersen comments,
We hold strong convictions on the importance of the gathering of the church. "Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together" is our refrain. We are good at congregating. Where we have trouble is with some of the other equally essential functions of the church. God's people are not, in essence, a congregation. They are community. "Congregation" is frequently used in the Old Testament to describe the gathering of the people of Israel. "Community" implies life together, a life of caring for one another that touches the full spectrum of our affairs. Church Without Walls
A friend of mine once described his church experience as one of "rotating serial alliances" rather than friendships. The real measure of the success of a church may well be the quality of relationships that continue when the instruments are packed away and the lights are turned out.
It's tough to escape the rugged individualism of our culture. We have even individualized salvation, following the arguments of Descartes and the explorations of Newton's physical world. Where rationalism led us to dissect the world into its smallest parts in an effort to increase our physical control, the world of quantum physics emphasizes the whole over the parts, since the parts actually represent only "probabilities."
This seems to fit well with Scriptural teaching on the nature of the church. The images are communal.. we are a living Temple, a body, and a people. In the quantum world of Neils Bohr and David Bohm "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.." and the community is more real than the individual. Perhaps then the body is more real than the Christian. In fact.. maybe the isolated Christian doesn't really exist.
We may not entirely like the implications, particularly those of us who were raised in the "modern" church and who had our trust abused. It's easy to reject the concept of covenant because it was used as one more means of control rather than as a means of release. As we rediscover the call to be a "people" of God, and as we rediscover authentic relationships, covenant community may once more become part of our experience. Apart from committed relationships we won't experience the transforming power of the Gospel.
"The ability of people to move to a new place tomorrow depends on the love and acceptance they feel today . . The only thing greater than our awareness of each other's sins is the awareness of God's love for us and God's desire to see us healed and made whole. The principal lesson of community is that God breaks in at the weak places." Jim Wallis, The Call to Commitment
Rejection of Authority in Position
Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant. Phil.2:5-7
The empowerment of the early Christians by the Spirit of God sounded the death knell of the old priesthood. Suddenly all God's people were directly connected and had direct access to God.
Postmoderns reject authority in position in favor of authority in relationship. They do not buy into hierarchies, and they tend to assign authority only when it is earned. They don't respect leaders who are "over" but not "among." This aligns with the NT teaching on the priesthood of believers and Jesus teaching that "the greatest among you must be the servant of all."
Where the modern church echoed Reformation doctrine on "the priesthood of believers" most priestly functions remained in the province of a specially trained professional class. The priesthood remained in force, limiting participation to the few rather than delegating authority to the many. As a consequence, the church as a whole has asked men and women to open their wallets and shut their mouths. Since the medium is the message, it's no wonder that believers do not feel empowered to reach their world!
Postmoderns recognize that hierarchy appears to be structural efficiency, but that model is from the technological world. In the biological world (postmoderns prefer the organic metaphors), life loves redundancy. Why not have fifty pastors in a community of two hundred adults? New models of leadership are rising among postmoderns. Peter Senge writes,
"In the knowledge era, we will finally have to surrender the myth of leaders as isolated heroes commanding their organizations from on high. Top-down directives, even when they are implemented, reinforce an environment of fear, distrust, and internal competitiveness that reduces collaboration and cooperation. They foster compliance instead of commitment, yet only genuine commitment can bring about the courage, imagination, patience, and perseverance necessary in a knowledge-creating organization. For those reasons, leadership in the future will be distributed among diverse individuals and teams who share responsibility for creating the organization's future." Senge, The Fifth Discipline
Some are building on the concept of team leadership to look for more open models. Some postmodern leaders adhere to the metaphor of air traffic controller (ATC). An ATC doesn't fly the airplane, he only directs them. The primary function of an ATC is to clear aircraft for takeoff and landing, and ensure they stay on the safe path once airborne. The ATC is almost an invisible part of the process, but his or her role is essential in enabling the flight.
Some prefer the metaphor of symphony conductor.
"A good conductor does not merely tell everyone what to do; rather he helps everyone to hear what is so. For this he is not primarily a telling but a listening individual: even while the orchestra is performing loudly he is listening inwardly to silent music. He is not so much commanding as he is obedient."
"The conductor conducts by being conducted. He first hears, feels, loses himself in the silent music; then when he knows what it is he finds a way to help others hear it too. He knows that music is not made by people playing instruments, but rather by music playing people." Isaac Stern in China
Still others like a metaphor borrowed from the philosophical underpinnings of postmodern thought: the narrator. John O'Keefe of GINKWORLD.NETtalks about the story:
No matter the story, no matter the ending, truth is in the narrative. All story is valid, all story - both individual and group - can add to the collective of the community. When we see life as simply a collection of story, we start to understand both our humanity and God's divinity. The narrative allows for creative, adaptable, nonlinear thinking with group input and an interactivity based on transparency and a living worldview. The narrative is, if you will, a new operating system for the church in the new millennium. It is both virtual and non-virtual, and it leads us to the future revitalizing the church. Some may view this style of vision development as "vision by chaos," and they would be right. But out of chaos, God creates order.
In this context listen to John's thoughts on the role of leadership:
Postmodern people are not looking for a CEO, CFO, COO CIO, or any other 3-letter combinations you can think of that starting with the big "C." Today, we are looking for the poet, the prophet, and the storyteller - the narrator. We don't "lead" people as much as listen to the needs of people and guide them along the path of faith. (The community direction is not based on the desires of one person, but grows from the leader's understanding of the collective vision.)
John's cores in the narrative include the following:
Postmodern leadership to me is like looking at a lava lamp, it keeps changing as it gets hotter and hotter (closer and closer), and while it is simply a stupid lava lamp, you just can't keep your eyes off it. To lead a postmodern people one must keep that fluid nature in mind.
I think primarily, you don't lead, you example. Notice I did not say, "you lead by example" - because that is somewhat impossible, and all the time doubtful. To "example" you simply are you.
One of the first things we need to do as a postmodern narrator is to let people function, and not just "give" them a function. This means you need to help people find their calling and gifts and let them develop that call and gift to best serve God, themselves and the community. It requires that you spend time with the people of the community, and not just a select few.
I believe that for a postmodern narrator to truly understand the community of faith they serve, they must believe in them. Modern leaders usually require that you believe in them as leaders, postmodern leadership requires that we, as leaders, believe in the community we serve.
Furthermore, why use titles and labels that separate people in our community from one another? Why "pastor Bob" instead of just Bob? Labeling one person by their function damages the wholeness of the relationship, and limits the recognition that many others may be functioning as pastors in their workplace, or in other circles of connection.
At a deeper level we assume that leaders have more to give than others, and that those who "follow" need us more than we need them. In reality, the strong offer one gift, and the weak another. Until we die to the idea that we are somehow "ahead of" or "above" the community of faith around us, we will continue to be frustrated in our attempts to have an authentic community that combines real relationships with real discipleship. Jean Vanier writes,
"We do not want two communities-the helpers and the helped; we want one. That is the theory, but in practice there is a tendency for the assistants to make their own community and be satisfied with that. Truly to make community with the poorest and identify with them is harder and demands a death to self. " Community and Growth, p. 30
Many leaders suffer from the tyranny of the felt pressure to "grow workers", so that they cannot form genuine relationships with those around them. They fear that the weaker ones don't represent a good "investment" of time because of the lack of "return" for the organization. This pressure leads to isolation, and many experience burnout or the failure of their most intimate relationships. In turn many around them feel rejected and unwanted because leaders prefer the company of the more "useful" followers.
Jesus' choice of disciples is stunning from this point of view. When leadership is less about power and authority and more about connection and character, then we all become pilgrims on the same journey.
Leadership by Wisdom and Example
The only way to propagate a message is to live it. Jim Wallis
Postmoderns respect love and wisdom, but are quick to reject the connection between knowledge and authority. Since knowledge is always limited and conditional, wisdom has more value. Wisdom always has practical application. As St. Francis put it, "Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words."
Modernism (and much of what was called "discipleship") stressed "getting the right answer" (as if knowing something automatically transfers to lifestyle); post-modernism stresses "does it work?" It is important to give people space and time, within the context of a community of faith, to journey with us. Thus, a teacher of great worth in post-modern society isn't the one with the right answers, but the one who can ask the right questions, and then walk the road of discovery with others.
The good news is that proclamation and demonstration of the reality of Jesus Christ has always been an integral part of New Testament teaching. Paul did not come proclaiming "persuasive words of wisdom, but with demonstration of the spirit and power" (1 Cor2:4) If we choose to adapt to postmodern possibilities, we will find ourselves in a unique position to have great effect in the cause of Jesus Christ.
Where modern leaders were often valued for their knowledge and their delivery (read "sermons and tapes") postmodern leaders tend to be valued for their example. It's tough to argue with this as a more biblical position, since the NT values character over gifting (1 Cor.13).
Where moderns trust the expert, postmoderns tend to respond or react to a person's energy or person more than to what he or she actually says or does. If postmoderns trust the WHO of someone, the WHAT is negotiable and open to maturation. Postmoderns will go along for the ride and enjoy the process even when the goals are not clear so long as the WHO is trustworthy.
The open-ended question of how we follow Jesus in a post-modern society can best be dealt with in the Hebraic learning tradition, which views the teacher (leader, pastor, narrator or whatever) as a co-traveler with the learner on a shared journey towards truth. For the post-modern person, there is as much value in the question as there is in the answer.
An old exercise in the dynamics of leadership goes like this: a group is asked to (quickly!) write down the titles of the three sermons that most powerfully impacted their lives. Then the same group is asked to note the names of the three people who most powerfully impacted their daily walk. Guess which list was quick, easy and encouraging, and which list prompted blank looks, head-scratching, and a certain level of anxiety?
An axiom of the educational and consultant circles is that we learn the least from the "lecture" method of teaching. Involvement and participation in the learning process has always been far more effective than simply listening. Maybe that's why Jesus took the twelve with him wherever he went.
"Tell me and I may forget,
Show me and I may remember,
Involve me and I will understand."
The modern leader was the CEO, the manager of people and systems. Larry Crabb, in "The Safest Place on Earth," comments that we have a choice: we can be either managers or mystics. Most of us feel somewhat out of place in community: we don't always feel safe and community itself is a mystery. We prefer structures we can understand and control. The problem is, God is less interested in predictability and control than we are! Or, from another perspective, He wants to be the one in control, and He doesn't always tell us in advance what He is up to! Or yet again, He may be more interested in the process than the goal; as leaders, we get fixated on goals.
But how then do we establish order and avoid chaos?
First, what appears to be chaos may hide an incipient new order. We may not see the new order as it is emerging.
Second, quantum physics is teaching us that we don't need to understand and control the variables before order emerges, and leadership often arises spontaneously where it isn't expected.
Leadership theory is now benefiting from new metaphors arising in the world of quantum physics. "Strange attractors," in the world of physics cause order to emerge from apparent chaos. Research is showing that leadership may have more to do with finding meaning than in managing systems and programs.
"Strange attractors" are guiding principles or values, and research is showing that these have more impact on individual behavior than good management. Postmodern leaders resist taking control because they know that focus is more important than individual behaviors. Furthermore, postmodern leaders don't mind fluid structures and are comfortable with chaos because they are more interested in finding meaning than in building structures or establishing order. Wheatley comments that "We instinctively reach out to leaders who work with us in creating meaning." (p.135, Leadership and the New Science).
When we focus on what we can quantify and what we can control, we are like the captain of an ocean liner who carefully steers around an iceberg.. forgetting that what we don't know and can't control makes up the greater part of the unseen reality. Working with the unseen elements of growth requires intimate connection and comfort with process and paradox.
Go to Part II
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• © 1999-2002 Len Hjalmarson.• Last Updated on July 17, 2002 | <urn:uuid:dacbe9c9-b9e0-4b9a-b5f5-bae66bc0a122> | http://nextreformation.com/wp-admin/articles/postmod1g.htm | en | 0.956945 | 0.026743 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
By: Suzanne Collins
Don’t get me wrong, do not even try to hate, but since I am so in sync with the 30 Days of Honesty thing, I will be very honest. Open-mouthed smile
The Hunger Games will give you an introduction of how miserable it is to live in Panem. Catching Fire will excites you more. The new characters and how the plot progress is really amazing. I am really trying my best to describe Mockingjay and the only thing that is entering in my head right now is how depressing it is.
Maybe I was expecting a better ending, or something that is way too far from how violent the first two books were, but it is really disappointing that though Katniss was able to find her happy ever after, she still suffered a lot. And her life was still used for someone else’s gain.
As the story continue, Katniss found herself as the face of the rebellion, she was helping the rebels by boosting their morale and making sure that they will not falter no matter what the Capitol do to them. She was called the Mockingjay because of the pin that she wore throughout her stay in the arena.
If the first two books were violent, multiply it by 10 and you will have this book. haha! Children being explode, Finnick being eaten by Mutts, Prim dying, girls with shaved head, meat grinders, fumes that will kill you in seconds, drugs being used to sedate someone, and believe me, the list goes on. Though it was described in a very subtle way, just thinking about how miserable Katniss felt all throughout really makes me feel uncomfortable.
When I was reading the book, all I can ever think of was, Will Katniss Everdeen’s life be happy?
However, the series is really good. I think what makes it good was though it deals with a very sensitive and controversial topic, every thing was dealt in a heartfelt way. You know violence exist because it was part of the story. Hence, you will not concentrate on it, you will focus on the story more.
Now, I can’t wait for the movie adaptation. I wonder who will play the role of Finnick.
Thanks Brian for being so generous and providing me the copies of the books. Apir!
1. Di ko p nababasa yung "The Hunger Games" series via PDF hehehe. Pag sinipag ako, baka book ang bilhin ko. Sobra ako nag-enjoy sa movie eh :)
1. Hi Elmer! Actually, pag binasa mo siya, hindi ka tatamarin. :D | <urn:uuid:553b796f-184d-4626-97e7-0f214e12d656> | http://orangewit.blogspot.com/2012/04/mockingjay.html | en | 0.972081 | 0.022049 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Dream Jobs 2012: Bridging Brazil’s Digital Divide
Brazilian engineer José Edimilson Canaes teaches people to turn the power of computers onto social problems
dream jobs link box
José Edimilson Canaes
AGE 53
Uses computer education to empower people
Center for Digital Inclusion
where he does It
Brazil and 12 other countries
Travels to isolated and exotic locales establishing computer centers; gets to meet educators and students who are changing their communities
Driving along the dirt roads of the Maré Complex, one of Rio de Janeiro’s largest shantytowns, José Edimilson Canaes takes a wrong turn. He finds himself suddenly surrounded by heavily armed members of a local drug-trafficking gang, not quite thrilled to see a man in a suit showing up uninvited.
"I almost became a statistic," he says of the encounter back in October 2009. Two things saved him. First, word reached the gunmen that Canaes—known to everyone as Ed—was there to help set up a computer center in partnership with people from the community. The second is that Canaes, goateed and bespectacled, has the nonthreatening air of an affable professor. The men let him go.
The episode didn’t faze Canaes, a tireless optimist who has an unshaken belief in his work at the Center for Digital Inclusion, known as CDI, a nonprofit organization headquartered in Rio de Janeiro that establishes computer education programs in underprivileged and isolated parts of Brazil and 12 other countries. Its goal is to teach people not only basic computer skills but also how to use technology to solve problems in their own communities and make their lives better. It trained over 68000 people in 2010 alone.
As director of operations, Canaes makes sure that the CDI machine—a rapidly expanding global network of 821 affiliate organizations—runs smoothly. His frenetic 12-hour workdays are filled with meetings, calls, trips, and the occasional adventure, like the visit to the Maré Complex. And he still finds time to squeeze in work toward a Ph.D.—he’s studying electricity usage in undeveloped areas—which he’ll complete this year. It’s a lifestyle that would tax a twentysomething, but Canaes, who is 53, isn’t complaining.
"Is it stressful? Yes," he says. "Do I like it? A lot."
Canaes first learned of the Center for Digital Inclusion in Veja , a popular news magazine. An article described how in 1995 a college dropout named Rodrigo Baggio started the nonprofit to use computers to empower people. "I wished I’d had that idea," Canaes recalls telling some friends. His friends agreed, and they all became volunteers at a local CDI branch in Campinas, a city of 1.1 million in southeastern Brazil.
It was the late 1990s, and Canaes, who has a degree in electrical engineering, was running his own thriving business in industrial automation. Being an inventor and entrepreneur had always been his dream, but he also had a passion for education. He’d grown up in a middle-class household, and as a child he immersed himself in science and history books. "We didn’t have enough money to travel, so I traveled with my eyes."
Volunteering at CDI showed Canaes that with the right educational tools, even people living in impoverished conditions could better their lives. The possibility of really changing society captivated him—and soon the CDI work took over his life.
Canaes rose to become the coordinator of the Campinas branch, running it from 2002 to 2009. Later that year, CDI invited him to become a fulltime employee and manage the Rio de Janeiro branch, CDI’s largest. Last year, he took charge of overseeing all of CDI’s activities in Brazil and abroad.
When I contact him to say I want to learn about his work, he suggests we go see the most important part of the CDI operation: the classroom.
On a sunny September day, I meet Canaes in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city and one of the world’s most unequal, with dire poverty abutting excessive wealth everywhere you turn. We’re visiting a CDI affiliate in a dilapidated neighborhood called Brasilândia, on the outskirts of the city.
Our host is Veronica Machado, an energetic entrepreneur who founded the affiliate in 1998. She tells us that because of drugs and violence, 6 out of every 10 kids in this region between the ages of 16 and 19 won’t reach 25.
"I lost my brother there when I was little," she says, pointing to the street outside. "He was playing soccer when another boy shot him."
Canaes, who can talk for hours on topics as varied as analog circuit design, regulation of toxic chemicals, and the economic impact of energy efficiency, says that although Brazil is growing at a fast clip and many people’s lives are improving, the poorest still have no opportunities. These are the individuals that CDI wants to help. "If I can change that a bit, I’m a happy man," he says.
We enter a small room crammed with a dozen computers and as many kids. Canaes explains that CDI’s goal is not just to teach how to use Microsoft Word or how to surf the Web. The idea is also to show students how they can become better citizens by learning about problems in their neighborhoods and working to fix them. It’s a time-tested educational approach based on the ideas of renowned Brazilian educator Paulo Freire.
Canaes walks around the room, chatting with the group. "Let me see some photos," he says to a 12-year-old with curly hair and brown eyes. The girl, thoughtful and articulate, shows him a series of PowerPoint slides, explaining that this morning’s class focused on problems the students found in their community: open sewage ditches, littered streets, graffiti-covered walls, broken traffic lights.
The students had previously gone out to take photos and talk with people. Today they’re creating PowerPoint presentations summarizing the problems. Later they will prepare pamphlets and letters addressed to local representatives demanding that the problems be addressed.
Over the next weeks, the class will advance to more complex computer skills, including editing videos, writing blog posts, and using social media. Again, the computer is just a tool that allows the students to investigate a problem, propose a solution, and take action.
"When people go through these steps, they suddenly have a huge realization," Canaes says. "They realize that they can make a difference."
His goal is to expand the CDI network by, among other things, setting up satellite offices in remote locales and partnering with big corporations interested in providing CDI courses in areas where they operate. Seeing classes like today’s, he says, is what keeps him going.
He mentions the 12 year-old-girl. "You can see the sparkle in her eyes," he says. "She’s avid to learn, to grow. She’s a dreamer and she has the future laid out in front of her." His voice catches. "All she needs is a little push, and then she’ll soar."
This article originally appeared in print as "Social Engineer." | <urn:uuid:640b64d5-96f6-4f53-84c4-7ad5d7075331> | http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/profiles/dream-job-bridging-brazils-digital-divide | en | 0.971436 | 0.021371 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Visita Sevilla | [IT] Mudéjar Seville
[IT] Mudéjar Seville
A dialogue among cultures
Al - Andalus, a different Europe
If we search for an element of cultural differentiation between Spain and other European countries, we will probably find the imprint left in our territory by the Islamic civilization for eight centuries as the most important factor. It was the nineteenth-century romantic travelers who first appreciated this trait that made Spain, and Andalusia in particular, as a modern writer has aptly called, "a close and comfortable East". Many testimonies have remained as relics of that phenomenon. Some of them are very obvious but many others remain discreetly housed in our intangible culture. We will focus mainly on the first ones, which are the most attractive ones for the curious and interested visitor to our city.
"Mudéjar" a name with history
The Castilian Spanish word "Mudéjar" comes from the Islamic "Muddayan", an adjective applied during our medieval period to any Muslim who was allowed to stay in the Christian territories and keep their religion and customs. In the nineteenth century, however, the term was adopted to describe all those artistic and cultural Christian expressions that manifested an Islamic origin. Mudéjar style starts in Seville in 1248 when the city was conquered from the Almohads by the Christian armies of Ferdinand III and extends in time to the present day in many ways. Traces of Mudéjar art are not concentrated only in a particular area of the city today but they subsume all Seville; however, we should admit that its northwest area, which was more populated by the Mudéjar but also less renewed due to historical reasons, is the one that preserves the largest amount of traces from that period.
Defeated or victors
During the Christian conquest, which was a long process that lasted as the Islamic rule itself, there were victors: the Spanish Christians, and defeated: the Spanish Muslims, but there was also a curious phenomenon which led to a paradoxical inversion of such roles. In matters relating to art and crafts, the supposed defeated ones finally made their culture prevail. Modern Spanish terms such as builder, roof, tile, adobe, irrigation ditch, pond and several other thousand words have an Islamic origin. The survival of Islamic buildings after the cities were conquered, the lack of craftsmen among the Christian settlers and the undeniable aesthetic appeal of its buildings and its brilliant ornamentation, made the victors assume the esthetics of the defeated as of their own, once the dramatic moment of the military occupation was over. Mudéjar communities became small from 1264 when they revolted against the Christians, but many of them started working in the arts of construction.
Christians in a muslim city
Military nobles who lived in Islamic palaces, nuns and monks who shut themselves away to pray in old Muslim palaces, bells pealing atop minarets, Christian believers and priests who prayed and celebrated the liturgy in the great main mosque for a century and a half, kings who wore silks made by Muslim hands, Christians who were baptized in baptismal fonts made by Moorish artists, were apparently contradictory historical facts that created a serene familiarity with the language of the ostensible defeated and a justified admiration for its undeniable appeal. Brick work, plaster coatings, wood ceilings, baseboards, glazed ceramic flooring and inlay furniture were just some of the artistic expressions of this mixed-race city which was the Medieval Seville.
Mudejar and christian art
The Mudéjar style was gradually mixing with Christian artistic styles coming from the north. In Toledo, conquered in 1085 by Alfonso VI, taifa art will mix with Romanesque style, but when Seville was reconquered by Ferdinand III in 1248 the French Gothic style prevailed and got mixed up with the local Almohad style. Later, in the fifteenth century, the Cathedral was built in German Gothic style which is the one that got mixed with the Nasrid art that set in Seville in the fourteenth century from the Kingdom of Granada, whose monarchs kept excellent diplomatic relationships with King Peter I. The palace commissioned by this Castilian king in Seville is the best example of this phenomenon.
A christian city defended by muslmims walls
A gigantic Almohad wall built in the twelfth century with Islamic gates limited and protected Seville throughout the Christian medieval period. Not only its long battlements, its square-floored towers, its gates in Islamic style till they were renovated in the sixteenth century, but even its construction technique, based on the "mud wall", a mixture of lime, earth and boulders, show us their Almohad origin. Only in the nineteenth century this wall, which had protected the largest fortified city in Europe at that time for centuries, began to be destroyed. Sevilla was then the capital of the Almohad kingdom on this side of the Strait of Gibraltar. The fragment kept between the gate of the Macarena and the one of Cordoba is its sole remain.
Temples for prayin: The first christian parishes
The Christian occupied in 1248 an empty and deserted Sevilla from where the Islamic population had fled. The first settlers, without neither financial resources nor labor to undertake new constructions, simply began to occupy those useless Islamic buildings. The mosques were turned into Christian churches by simply placing an image of a crucified Christ or the Virgin Mary. Only in the late thirteenth century, especially after the earthquake of 1356, with financial support from King Pedro I, the construction of the new parish churches began. From those original churches, several still remain in the north of the city: San Gil, Santa Marina, San Marcos, San Julian, Santa Lucia, Omniun Sanctorum, Santa Catalina, etc. The main mosque would be replaced by the cathedral only in the fifteenth century. | <urn:uuid:90cd0e42-f922-41ce-b201-890eca657b7d> | http://visitasevilla.es/it/que-hacer/it-mudejar-seville | en | 0.967564 | 0.138182 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
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New combined therapy for Knee Joint pain
Knee pain is the most common problem among women. However statistics show that among people affected than others. However statistics show that among people affected with knee joint pain, obese people are in the majority. We have to consider many factors before we can be definite about the reasons for the knee pain. //Majority of the people are affected by Osteoarthritis. It is explained below briefly.
The basic sturcture of knee joint is composed of 3 bones tibia, Femur (thigh bone and patella). Thigh bone (femur) articulate with leg bone (tibia) to form tibio femoral joint. In front of these bones the patella which slides up and down to form patellofemoral joint. In th ejoint between this femur and tibia certain space should be maintained. This gap is maintained by two groups of muscles which cross the knee joint. Quadriceps is one group of muscle which crosses the front side of the knee which extends (Straightening) the knee. Hamstring is the other group of muscle which crosses the back side of the knee which flexes (bend) the knee. These two group of muscles give support to the knee to maintain the joint space.
Causes of knee joint pain
While standing or walking all the body weight will fall on the knee joint. If the body weight is more it will increase the strain and it will reduce the joint space, because of this knee losses its fluid (synovial) for lubrication. If the muscle tone is sufficient to bear the body weight, the support will be proper to maintain the joint space.
Due to lack of exercises, decreased level of hormones, the muscle losses its tone, the knee joint loses its support and the joint space become reduced. Another reason is over weight (obesity). If the joint space is reduced our body tends to deposit ostophytes (bone forming cells) in and around the joint and it compresses the nacked nerve ending (pain receptors) to form inflammation and cause pain. If the osteophytes deposit between the leg bone and thigh bone of the knee joint, it will restrict the joint movement. So at this stage patient cannot bend their legs completely.
New Combined Therapy
New combined therapy comprises homoeopathic medicines, physiotherapy instruments and special manipulations for the knee. In physiotherapy, electro magnetic waves from short wave diathermy and vibrations from the ultrasound machine remove the osteophytes from the joint. By doing isotonic, and isometric exercises we can increase the muscle tone. By the special manipulations we can increase the joint space and enable the patient to bend the knee more. Homoeopathic drugs like RhusTox, Bryonia, Medorrhinuine, Bell, Reduce the inflammation, pain and give permanent cure. Generally it is advised for knee joint pain walking and jogging is not advisable. During these above activities all body weight will fall in the knee joint and increase the pain. So one should strengthen their knee before starting to walk. Swimming is best, as the body weight will not fall on the knee.
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Breaking Medicine News(10 mins):
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disposal of waste in Australia
Dealing with solid waste disposal in your industrial business
We can divide this elimination into four easily distinct categories:
• household waste
• industrial waste
• commercial waste
• agricultural waste
Last agricultural waste is usually the easiest delete as cow manure and the remains of pruning.
industrial waste is a concern
Methods of elimination
Controlled discharge
Development of fertilisers
Waste recycling in factoryFrom solid waste results in degradation of an organic substance using aerobic microorganisms. Later and after a period of about three weeks compost is ready to be packaged and sold.
Recovery of energy resources
They are processes of combustion and pyrolysis processes. Many incinerators take advantage of this heat to generate power, boilers and pipes that recirculate water and transform it into steam that drives turbines.
Metal recycling
Hazardous waste
Some toxic chemical wastes are dangerous to human health and the environment. This type of waste is not removed, but it is stored into large containers in appropriate places for storage. It is almost always away from any human presence and possible tributaries, rivers or submarine waters, to prevent infiltration.
To know more about the waste disposal options available in your area, make sure you contact your local council !
the AUstralian mining boom
BBC documentary on the mining industry in Australia
The country has been enjoying a golden era of prosperity over the past 2 decades.
It is all about Australia’s mineral resources and the insatiable desire of the Asian economies for these minerals ! This Boom has been on for a while now and this documentary tries to explain why we think it is not going to last long with the economic downturn in China.
“Over the next 2 decades more than 6 billion tones of iron ore will be stripped from the earth and shipped to China. ”
Find more by watching the following documentary:
Drilling in Australia and Contractors
Drilling services are required in almost every sort of construction projects. Whether you are building your house, constructing your office or even garage space for your car park, you might need drilling services, but the main use of drilling rigs is with oil fields.
Drilling the surface of the earth is not an easy task and can’t be done using simple apparatus. Drilling contractors perth wa needs heavy machinery with specialised machinery tailor-made for this purpose.
Services of a drilling company of contractor are necessary to complete the process.
massive-trucks-used-to-carry-the-equipmentA drilling contract includes many services. It includes complete drilling of surfaces and walls, construction of some surfaces, etc. Besides construction, the drilling is the most important element of a petroleum industry. Oil fields are drilled using heavy machinery and specially made apparatus.
Drilling companies are increasing all across the world in last few years due to increased ventures of the multinational organisations and increased projects at the global level. The field of drilling and construction services is one of the most challenging and competitive fields, and the drilling contractors need to work hard to compete in the international industry now.
At present, there are approximately 859 drilling rigs working offshore at a global level. More contractors are establishing their setups, and the number is expected to reach 900 soon.
Drilling contractors find the oil by drilling the earth, called making a hole. A drilling rig is required for this process. A rig comes in all shapes and sizes and work on both land and offshore.
Most land rigs are limited to a certain size to make it easier to move them via road. Except for the size, almost all rigs look same. Their functions, however, can be different.
Offshore rigs, on the other hand, are totally different matter.
They come in many different shapes and sizes depending on their use. Each type of rig is tailor made for a specific environment it was created to work in, from the shallow few feet deep waters of inland marshes to even the most hostile of the oceans of the world in with a depth of thousands of feet.
A drilling contractor is hired to work in different terrains. The contractors are responsible for moving the rigs to the place of the project, the installment of rigs and necessary work. The payment and contract charges depend on the type of project and location.
Currently, 859 companies are working in the field of drilling. One these companies install every rig. Due to the complexity of the nature of work and the huge competition, many construction and services companies haven’t adopted drilling as a business. However, due to the increased need of it in the modern world, companies are slowly shifting towards what can be stated as the most difficult and technical business field.
The pay and cost depend on what type of rig you are working with. A rig crew on any inland working on a swamp somewhere in the world is not going to make as much as the crew working on a dynamically positioned submersible drilling rig 9,000 feet deep in water.
The team in the swamp might be working as hard as the crew operating in deep water, maybe even more challenging, but the pays of the crew working in deep water might be more than those of working in a swamp. It is a common practice that the rig with a more sophisticated environment and installment are more highly paid.
6 interesting facts about the American mining industry you didn’t know
The American mining industry places an important role in our lives as it impacts our daily lives from cell phones to utensils and the cars we drive. We rely on valuable metals, minerals, and resources that are recovered from mining the earth.
Today, there are hundreds, if not thousands of mines that are being excavated all over the world. Here are six interesting facts about the American mining industry you didn’t know.
1. With the total amount of gold that was mined, nearly 65% is used in jewelry, 20% as coins and 15% in electronics. A standard television requires over 30 different minerals while cellphones need 40 minerals.
2. The United States has the largest reserve of coal and the second biggest producer of gold and copper. The U.S. Export of Minerals accounts for nearly $6 billion a year.
3. The average citizen uses 37 million pounds of metals, minerals, and fuel during a lifetime. This also includes 1.8 ounces of gold, 6 tons of aluminum, 1,000 pounds of lead and zinc. A newborn baby requires a lifetime of 1.3 million pounds of sand, stone, gravel and cement along with 33,000 pounds of iron, 1,500 pounds of copper, and 28,200 pounds of salt.
4. Gold is the most easily material to mold of all metals as it is used to being drawn out without breakage. Just a single ounce can be stretched to nearly five miles long. The greatest gold rush in America started when gold was discovered in California in 1848.
5. The investment in training, technology, and equipment has made America the safest mining industry in the world.
6. The U.S. is today’s largest product of silica, salt, sulfur, phosphate, magnesium, and lithium.
Have any of your own? Comment us below!
Image by: SNL
Image by: SNL
3 reasons why forklifts are so essential in industrial facilities
Forklifts are essential in industrial facilities due to its safety for workers and everyone around the area. Works can move materials safely without straining their backs that are caused by loading heavy objects.
Here are three reasons why forklifts are so essential in industrial facilities.
Forklifts Create a Safer Work Environment for Employees
Inspectors are always looking to see if employers are following the necessary precautions to protect their workers who work with forklifts and other heavy lifting devices. This also establishes a safe policy for pedestrian traffic as regularly comprehensive assessment is necessary for working environments that may be potentially dangerous for everyone in the area.
Employers are strongly required to consider the security of unattended vehicles, restriction in high-traffic routes, visibility of pedestrian and drivers, speed limits, and awareness training for workers.
Forklifts Boost Productivity
Forklifts may be small in size but are compacted to work in tight fitting spaces. They are capable of lifting heavy loads of over 5000 kg. Forklifts are highly maneuverable with its simple operation and maintenance. Proper training will increase the longevity of the forklift as understanding the proper methods of using a forklift will result in less equipment damage.
Forklifts Come in Various Types
Three types of forklifts are commonly used. Each serves a purpose as the electric forklift is used for indoor needs. They are operated on batteries and less costly to produce. Internal combustion forklifts are used outdoors as they are generated by gas and fuel. This type of forklift emits exhaust gas making it dangerous for indoor use. Manual type forklifts contain no motors and not nearly as versatile as the first two.
The use of forklifts allows companies the ability to maneuver and reduce the amount of time off work. Forklifts allow companies to transfer to high locations that are made effortlessly instead of hand.
The 5 step guide to stone paving installation
The success of any landscaping project is the choice of materials that will provide the desired look and usability. Here is the 5-step guide to stone paving installation.
Step 1: Prepare
Experiment with the project area by using graph paper. Determine the size and shape of the area and switch patterns to determine the style of your project. Once you have determined the shape and size of the project, you will then decide on some pavers you will need. You will need to estimate the footage space as well as add 5% or 10% if you have a border.
Step 2: Excavate
Decide on the finishing height of the pavement. Use any permanent structure as a reference for the project. Be sure to assess if the board is level as you continue regularly. Lay an adequate amount of crushed stone base along with sand and pavers. Once the site is excavated, add soil with a plate compactor to prepare the base surface.
Step 3: Lay Down the Base
Consider the type of soil and climate to determine the thickness of the base layer. Cold climates require solid bases while warm climates require a well-drained soil. Be sure to lay the base past the outline of the pavement so that it will extend past the restraints. Use a circular motion over the areas.
Step 4: Restrain and Set the Pavers
The restrictions have formed the base and pavers in place. Without it, the pavers will shift and cause the base to erode and dislocate. Restraints can pre-casted plastic or concrete, aluminum, or steel.
The sand is the last layer of the base that is used to interlock pavement use coarse sand rather than dust or limestone. Remove the pipes and fill in the groove with sand. Lay the pavers before you follow with screeding.
Step 5: Place the Pavers
Once the screeding is complete, layer the pavers in place. Use a guide for the pattern. Gently lay the pavers together in the desired pattern. Be sure to use whole pavers first before you use the cut pavers. After the pavers are set, use the plate compactor to vibrate as this will allow the pavers to set. Lastly, sweep the sand into the joints until all are full.
Follow these five easy steps to help you achieve an aesthetically pleasing stone paver. Be sure also to wear safety gear when in construction. | <urn:uuid:5d1ad917-b37a-4da4-9e48-c7d35566a2a1> | http://www.estrellagold.com/category/blog/ | en | 0.94015 | 0.024779 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Not an American user?
PC-Bakterien! is set in the microcosm. A vicious attack of mean bacteria and viruses endangers the organism. You take the role of Mikky, the worm-like chief defense microbe, and have to defend the organism against the microscopic meanies. Mikky won't be able to do this task alone, but he gets the help of allied cells, namely the hurrying helper cells and the hungry but sluggish feeder cells. Together, Mikky and his allies have to eliminate the multiplying foes to save the organism.
PC-Bakterien! is an isometric puzzle game against time. In every level, the basic objective is to clear the organism of all bacteria and viruses. As the enemies constantly multiply when they have the space to do so, this goal has to be achieved before there are too many foes around. Mikky is the only character you directly control. You have to instruct the helper cells to mark the enemies by moving Mikky to your allies, then the feeder cells are able to eat the critters.
However, your friends are not the smartest and you have to help them finding their targets. When the enemies are not close to them, the allied cells just aimlessly move around. Mikky himself can act as an obstacle to help the cells finding the way, but is more effective to make use of the items the chief microbe can pick up. Place barriers and arrows to guide the cells to the bacteria and viruses, certain less common items such as a whistle might also help you.
The first enemies are immobile and do nothing but multiplying, but later you also encounter moving bacteria, enemies that can only be defeated under certain conditions, and even predators that destroy the helper cells. You might also not find any helper cells in a level and have to create them yourself first. Various puzzle elements are introduced throughout the game, such as enzymes to open new ways by creating tissue, nerves that trigger certain pulses, multiple layers, or alcohol bacteria you have to lure away with beer...
You are able to choose between three difficulty levels, with the easiest one being a training level without multiplying enemies. For every level, your high score will be saved. You are awarded points for various things, such as instructing helper cells, collecting certain items, or when foes are eliminated. You also get bonus points at the end of a level depending on how fast you were and on the difficulty level.
PC-Bakterien! DOS You meet the first moving bacteria in the fifth level.
PC-Bakterien! DOS There is a description for every object in the game.
PC-Bakterien! DOS Create helper cells by dropping spores into the volcano.
PC-Bakterien! DOS The whistle can also help you guiding your helpers.
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Contributed to by Grandy02 (454) | <urn:uuid:43cf96f5-a578-4845-a0ee-c26c7ce0ce34> | http://www.mobygames.com/game/pc-bakterien | en | 0.94993 | 0.717 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Technical FAQs
Ask a Question
Does setting up a Micrologic for 3p 3w cause it to ignore the neutral if one is connected? And if so, does it apply to metering, protection, or both?In other words, what is the difference for metering and protection for setting a trip unit up for 3p 3w vs 3p 4w?
Circuit Breaker trip units and adjustments
Product Line:
Molded Case Breakers
Micrologice Solid State types
Application on 3w system
Setting for 3p3w will cause both metering and protection functions to ignore any input from the neutral CT if present. 3p4w will check for neutral CT input and factor it into GF calculations.
CTA-ID : 2059507
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What can we do to improve the information ? | <urn:uuid:a97912d7-ba48-4084-9dc5-6ae2dd80f28d> | http://www.schneider-electric.co.in/en/faqs/FA142762/ | en | 0.687267 | 0.059205 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Thursday, May 03, 2012
Ad Hominem
Other Terms and/or Related Concepts
Personal Abuse; Playing the Man (or person) Not the Ball; Personal Attack; Reductio Ad Hitlerum.
The advocate attacks his or her opponent rather than the argument put forward by the opponent. When an Ad Hominem attack is used, the content of the attack does not relate to objective facts about such things as the opponent's membership of a particular group, or the profession they practise (e.g. environmentalist, lawyer). Rather, the abuse is directed at the person's character or other personal attributes.
Phil Schnotter and Nigel Pennyweight are having a heated conversation in the pub about banks when Phil (the advocate) says: "I know why you think bank profits are too high Nigel... you're just prejudiced against banks because you're a penniless loser. If I were such a loser I would be prejudiced against banks too… You just hate hardworking, successful people who happen to have enough money to invest."
At times this fallacy may be hard to distinguish from other common fallacies such as Impugning Motives and Poisoning the Well. In fact, all three fallacies may be closely associated with each other and may even occur in the one sentence. The key characteristic of an Ad Hominem attack is that an abusive label is directed at the individual and used as a gratuitous insult (that is, an insult which really has no bearing on the subject under discussion).
In the example given above, the use of the word "loser" is the key indicator that an Ad Hominem attack is taking place. The label is simply a term of abuse, and Phil clearly intends to hurt and belittle Nigel by calling him a "loser". Use of such terms is likely to raise the emotional temperature of the discussion and result in an unproductive trading of insults. (Note that immediately after the personal abuse in the example above, Phil then impugns Nigel's motives in the words that follow the personal abuse. He says: "… You just hate hardworking, successful people...")
Another point to consider is whether the personal abuse is, strictly speaking, a fallacy; is there a link between the personal attack and the claim? In the example above, Phil clearly links his abuse of Nigel, calling him a penniless loser, to his hatred of banks, by using the conjunction "because". As such, Phil is fallacious.
If Phil had stated: "You are wrong about bank profits. It's important for banks to maintain a healthy cash reserve to be protected against economic slow downs and recession. And, also, you are a penniless loser." he would still be engaging in personal abuse, but would not fallacious. In this version, the abuse is merely an entertaining adjunct to the argument.
A form of personal abuse which is particularly common today is the unjustified use of a negative label associated with the topic under consideration. For example, a witless advocate might label a proponent of zero population growth a "racist" without justification. In doing this, he or she is actually seeking to undermine the proponent's credibility in order to evade discussion of the issue, rather than engaging in considered debate. It is commonly the case that for each term of abuse that may be directed at a person advocating one side of an argument, there is a term of abuse which may be directed at the other side. For every "greenie", there is a "redneck", for every "misogynist" there is a "feminazi", for every "fascist" there is a "stalinist", for every "homophobe" there is a "queer".
Arguably the most vile form of Ad Hominem is Reductio Ad Hitlerum. This variant, given its name, should be fairly obvious to spot. Comparing the disliked leader of a political party to Hitler is a seemingly popular fallacy that people who hold extreme political views like to make on occasions. Comparing any modern western democratically elected leader to Hitler should be self evidently absurd to the impartial observer. Any advocate of a point of view should avoid labelling an opponent with emotionally laden, abusive and grossly simplistic terms. Labelling invites retaliation, and the intellectual level of the debate plummets beyond any hope of recovery.
The authors of this book are particularly averse to puerile name-calling and gratuitous slander directed at individuals during any disagreement. It is our considered view that anyone who deliberately uses personal abuse in an attempt to win an argument is engaging in unconscionable conduct. No matter what the circumstances, any person who resorts to Ad Hominem only does so because they are a stupid bastard of the first order. | <urn:uuid:91b2afed-b8f4-417a-b938-94e9fb193329> | http://www.skepticsfieldguide.net/2012/05/ad-hominem.html | en | 0.958218 | 0.173341 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Messages in this thread
SubjectRe: SMP scalability: 8 -> 32 CPUs
>>>>> "Rik" == Rik van Riel <> writes:
> - - longer time slices (for CPU-bound tasks only!)
> - - make it harder to switch CPUs (depending on how long a process
> has slept)
Reminds me of a paper in the last ASPLOS (can't remember the title) from
some Stanford guys (IIRC) about providing more control on resources.
Basically they hacked the Irix kernel to allow partitioning the machine among a
few entities (can't remember the name they used, let's call them FURBs).
Each process is associated with a FURB (either by having one FURB per user or
one FURB per group or by mere inheritance, ...). Each FURB has access to some
subset of the machine's resources (they dealt with CPU, CORE and disk-IO).
The scheduling (and swapping and disk queue management) they use tries to make
sure that each FURB has indeed access to its alloted resources and if some FURB
doesn't use all of its resources, others can take advantage.
I.e. it gives you a mix of cluster and SMP, as well as another kind of `limit'
mechanism (you could simulate the SCHED_IDLE for rc5 by making a FURB with
0 CPU resources (it can only use idle resources of other FURBs)).
The reason why I thought about it is that they use the FURBs to partition
the machine at the CPU level: each FURB receives a (non-integral) number of
processors so it also somewhat limits processes hopping around from CPU to CPU.
(of course it's no replacement for a proper SMP-aware scheduler, but it's just
the reaosn why the orinigal message reminided of it)
Stefan "wondering what is the actual point of his messge"
the body of a message to
Please read the FAQ at
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Tag Archives: great vowel shift
A Word Taster’s Companion: The long and short of it
Today: the sixth installment of my how-to guide for word tasting, A Word Taster’s Companion.
The long and short of it
There’s something you should know about long and short vowel pairs in English.
They’re not.
Oh, the short vowels are short. And they’re even slightly shorter before voiceless stops than before voiced ones (the [æ] in mat is a bit shorter than the one in mad, for instance).
And the long ones are longer. But not because they’re long versions of the short ones. “Long i” is not actually a long version of “short i,” nor is “long o” an extended version of “short o.” “Long a” doesn’t have any of the sound of “short a” in it at all. Same goes for “long” and “short” e. And u? Even worse.
Let me show you what I mean. Pretend you’re at the doctor and say “ah.” Say it quickly first. There’s your short a. OK, now say “aahhhh,” nice and long. There’s your long a: a long version of a short a. But it’s not your “long a” at all. You know what “long a” is: the sound in fate. But if it were really a long version of “short a,” you would say that word like “faat.”
So why don’t we do that?
Well, we used to. Then something changed.
English “long” vowels actually were long versions of the short ones centuries ago. But accents change over time, pronunciation of phonemes shifts, and there was a big change during the 15th and 16th centuries, a thing called the Great Vowel Shift. The long vowels all moved up in the mouth while the short ones stayed put. The vowels at the top couldn’t move any further up, so they became diphthongs starting lower in the mouth and moving up.
So the word we used to say as “baat” is the word bate. The word we used to say as “bate” is the word beet. The word we used to say as “beet” is the word bite.
Meanwhile, things went even nuttier in the back. The word we used to say like “boat” is the word boot (hence the oo spelling) and the word we used to say like “boot” is the word bout. But what we call “long o” is really the shifted version of a long version of the sound in bought. What we call “long u” is another thing that happened to that vowel: the sound we used to say as in “booty” is the sound in beauty.
Does that seem stupid? Consider that in some versions of English (much Canadian English, for instance), the word stupid – which because of the vowel shift became like “styoopid” – is now back to a pre-shifted “stoopid.”
Meanwhile, the short vowels pretty much stayed put, resulting in these mismatched socks. Watch the zigzag your tongue makes as you say the vowels in bat, bait, bet, beet, bit, bite, in order. You might find it clearer if you say just the vowels and leave off the [b] and [t]. Now try them in the order of bat, bet, bit; bait, beet, bite.
Congratulations. You’ve had your tongue for how long? And you may just be getting to know its ways better now.
But why would this happen? Does it seem too strange for words? Well, in fact, changes to pronunciation keep on happening, everywhere, all the time. A language never stops changing as long as it’s in active use by people who speak it as their first language. The Great Vowel Shift is just the best-known vowel shift. There’s one in the United States called the Northern Cities shift that is in progress now and is responsible for the raised and fronted “short” vowels you hear from Buffalonians and others on and near the Great Lakes (why Ann can sound like “Ian” and gone can sound like “gan” to people from elsewhere). Think, too, about how people from the southern US often say their vowels – they’re different from the way Northerners say them even though way, way back in the mists of time all English speakers said them about the same way. Think about the “Canadian raising” I talked about in “Horseshoes, hand grenades… and phonemes”: eyes versus ice, loud versus lout.
And listen around for some other changes that might be more evident in some groups of the population than others (younger people, for instance) – such as a lowering that makes test sound more like “tast.” Listen for changes to consonants too, and differences between different speakers. The one constant in language is change. And sometimes that change can get pretty weird.
Next: on to consonants.
Sharpening and vowel shifts
Look at these two pictures. They’re the same photo, of course. Do you detect a slight difference? Does the second one seem somehow… sharper than the first?
It’s had some sharpening applied to it. Not a massive amount, but enough to make a difference. It’s something that I often do after resizing photos, since sharpness is often lost in the process. And it’s something that a lot of digital cameras do automatically to their JPEGs so they’ll look, well, sharper.
How does it work? Here are close-ups (500% magnification) of details from the two. What do you see?
I’ll tell you what you see: increased contrast, especially at edges – that is to say, places where there is already some contrast. It’s not that every last dark is darker and every last light is lighter; it’s that near the places where dark and light, or two different colours, come together, the difference is increased slightly.
If you oversharpen a photo, it can looks pretty frickin’ bad. Like someone wearing really excessive lipliner, heavy eyeliner with heavy highlighter right next to it…
It’s just gone too far. But you know, when it works, it works for the same reason that lipliner and eyeliner work: our eyes (and brains) love not just contrast but edges.
Look at kids’ drawings (or the average adult’s, for that matter). If they draw someone in solid clothing on a solid background, do they just make two fields of colour? Or do they draw outlines (and sometimes just lines)? (Answer: the latter, natch.)
When the light comes into our eyes, and when our eyes send it to the brain, what we’re seeing is just colour next to colour. But we look for edges. We even fill i edges in places where we don’t actually see them. Part of that is coloured by real-world experience – we can identify a figure even when the contrast within the figure is greater than the contrast at the edges because we have expectations regarding the shape of the figure. But part of it is just that we are made to find edges and we like contrast. Clarity. It’s well adapted. It makes it easier to deal with the real world. We see what we see, but we think of it how we think of it.
This also applies to sounds. We hear a continuous flow of sound, but we are able to parse it into separate phonemes when we know the language. We also perceive different sounds as being the same if they fit into the same expected phoneme – and we can hear the same sound as different it is presenting different phonemes (for instance, many people will say both vowels in kitchen the same but hearers will still perceive them as different). I talk about this phenomenon – categorical perception – in “Nothing to chauffeur a classiomatic” and “oot & aboot.”
It also plays a role in another phonological process, one that happens not in the instance of production and reception but over time over large areas: vowel shifts.
Vowel shifts are when some of the vowels (anywhere from one to all, but usually a certain set in a mutualle affecting way) in a language, or at least one dialect of a language, come to be pronounced differently from how they had been before. Many languages have undergone vowel shifts, and they are still taking place – a thing called the Northern Cities Shift has been going on in northeastern US cities for several decades, resulting in Buffalonians sounding to Torontonians as though they’re saying “Ian has gan to the affice” when they’re saying “Ann has gone to the office.”
The causes of vowel shifts are much argued over and certainly not exceedingly clear to anyone. Some people even argue that what we think of as shifts are often not shifts but mergers and similar other movements. I’m not going to hazard as guess as to why shifts happen. But there is one thing that vowels in shifts often – not always, but with a certain frequency – tend to do: diphthongize. They become a movement from one vowel sound to another.
Some examples: A sound like the a in father may become like the a in fate. A sound like o in toll may become like the o a in to all. A sound like the oo in loot may become like the ou in lout. A sound like the e in ell may become like the ye in yell. A sound like the i in machine may become like the i in mine. A sound like the a in bat may become like the i in bite.
Not all of these happen in the same language – some are not too likely to happen together in the same language, in fact. Not all of these are found in English. But what they all have in common is that they heighten the contrast. They use a glide (“w”, “y”) or contrasting vowel sound to make the original sound stand out more, and they may also move the original sound farther in the other direction from the glide. A high and tight sound (“ee”, “oo”) may get a leap into it from a lower, more open sound (becoming “ay”, “ow”). It may happen the opposite way: a glide opens into the sound (“et” becomes “yet”). Or the sound releases out (“toll” to “to all”). Or it becomes two sounds on opposite sides of the original (“bat” to “bite”).
In a way it’s similar to what we do to some consonants when we emphasize them: add an “uh” after them, or at least a strong puff of air. Think of the Barbara Woodhouse style of dog training: “Sit-tuh!”
These are certainly not the only kinds of vowel shifts. Sometimes a vowel simply moves in one direction or another. In English, as I discuss in “An appreciation of English: A language in motion,” [a:] moved to [eɪ], [e:] moved to [i:], and [i:] moved to [aɪ], while [o:] moved to [u:] and [u:] moved to [aʊ]. The vowels at the top, not being able to move farther in the same direction as the others, added a contrast element to make them stand out. They emphasized their position at the top by the addition of a contrast from the bottom. The others just moved, maybe adding just a little bit of diphthongization.
It can go the other way, too. Sometimes a diphthong is even smoothed out into a single sound. Think of how southern Americans often say I: “Ah” – something that had become a diphthing has stoppped being one, but by deletion of exactly that part that was the original sound. There are always two opposing forces operating: ease of saying and clarity of hearing. The contrast effect wins out when there is need for a greater distinction of the vowel. Other vowels may have come to have sounds that are a bit too similar, for instance, so this vowel takes on a bit of sharpening. It’s sort of like a backswing that allows you to deliver a stronger blow. In golf, I mean, of course.
I won’t go into whether similar effects can also be discerned in other sensory input. But I have suddenly developed a strange craving for salty caramel…
An Appreciation of English: A language in motion
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How do minerals form?
Quick Answer
Minerals form primarily through one of three processes: crystallization, crystallographic transformations or melting. Minerals may form in many environments, and their physical surroundings determine how minerals are produced. Most form using the method of crystallization, which begins with the evaporation of water into the atmosphere.
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Full Answer
Conditions must be right for crystallization to occur. Salt water is a key ingredient for starting the process. Salt water, which evaporates from oceans and other bodies of saline water, contains electrically charged atoms. These atoms may appear individually or in clusters called ions. As seawater evaporates, water salinity increases. Eventually, saline becomes so concentrated that ions bind together like glue to form mineral crystals. These crystals then attach to each other, eventually forming large minerals.
Minerals can also form through melting. This formation occurs as a result of volcanic activity. During melting, magma, lava and other molten rock-forming liquids cool and form crystals. As with crystallization, the crystals bind together to form large stones. While minerals produced by crystallization often stand alone, those formed by melting are often embedded in surrounding layers of rock.
Lastly, minerals may form during crystallographic transformation. This process takes place where there is a change in ambient pressure or temperature. These changes cause minerals to become chemically unstable and, in turn, form new shapes.
Learn more about Geology
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Showing Google+ Profiles in Google Contacts is a Privacy Issue
Recently, I needed to verify someone's gmail address. I had guessed that their gmail address might be same as their Blogger URL. But I couldn't send them a mail until I was sure. Then, I remembered that gmail shows your contact's Google+ profile. I added their gmail address to my contacts and voilà their Google+ profile showed up.
I later realized that this can be a privacy issue. A lot of people have their email IDs same as their Twitter or Facebook usernames or their blog addresses. Now you have a way to verify that. Even better (or worse), you can add a random gmail address to your contacts and find out to whom that address belongs.
Was this supposed to be a feature? Yes, and I actually liked having people's picture displayed along with their email address. But until they give an option to turn this "Let others find me by my email address" off, it is a privacy issue. | <urn:uuid:833f5e42-48f0-47b1-861c-93dad56ad8ac> | http://blog.mindprince.in/2012_12_01_archive.html | en | 0.982444 | 0.019314 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Seeing the effects of relativity with the naked eye
Our natural tendency is to think that to see the effects of Einstein's special theory of relativity you have to be travelling at some significant fraction of the speed of light. However, this is not the case. In solid state physics I am aware of three concrete phenomena that are purely due to relativistic effects.
1. Gold metal is the colour "gold".
According to Wikipedia, "non-relativistic gold would be white. The relativistic effects are raising the 5d orbital and lowering the 6s orbital.[11]"
2. Mercury is a liquid at room temperature.
This is nicely discussed in a recent blog post by Henry Rzepa concerning a recent paper that shows that relativistic effects shift the melting temperature by about 100 K.
3. Magnetic anisotropy and hysteresis in ferromagnets.
This results from spin-orbit coupling which is a consequence of relativity.
1. I was told once that 'tin pest' occurring at close to room temperature is because of relativistic effects (there is a competition between diamond and 'beta-tin' structures). See possibly this paper.
So if you believe a probably incorrect interpretation of history, (the inadequacy of) relativistic effects were involved in Napoleon's failure to conquer Russia.
2. Great post Ross!
Gold and Mercury are probably the best examples, but everything in their neighborhood also possess different chemical and physical properties due to relativistic effects. Lanthanide contraction being an example, but Thallium, Lead and Bismuth have different oxidation states than the other elements in their groups, which alter their structural forms for instance. In this row and the above we find the elements most commonly associated with topological insulators, where spin-orbit is pretty much relevant.
Unfortunately beyond that the elements are all radioactive, so not quite as much data on their properties. Nevertheless just wanted to emphasize your point, a lot of physical and chemical properties depend on relativistic effects, sometimes beyond perturbation theory, majorly when heavy elements are present | <urn:uuid:a176ab1f-ca42-46ff-8c71-caf6af740609> | http://condensedconcepts.blogspot.com/2014/07/seeing-effects-of-relativity-with-naked.html | en | 0.942658 | 0.829583 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |
Tag Archives: electrons
How Electricity Works
In the latest science blog for England’s North East ALBERT SIMPSON explains how electricity works.
Man’s discovery and ability to utilise the natural phenomena of electricity has perhaps changed the world like no other. From its beginnings, bringing daylight to the darkness of night, right through to its facilitation of the modern digital age, there is certainly no denying electricity’s importance.
As far as North East England is concerned few regions have played such an important part in the development of electricity as a resource to serve man and this was particularly the case in the pioneering developments of electric light during the nineteenth century.
Joseph Swan (left) Charles Algernon Parsons (right)
Joseph Swan (left) Charles Algernon Parsons (right)
The region saw the invention of the world’s first electric light bulb by Sunderland’s Joseph Swan (1828-1914), whose later Gateshead home was the first to be wired for electric light. Further north Cragside in Northumberland was the first house in the world to be lit by electricity generated from water power.
In Newcastle, Moseley Street was the first street lit by electricity and the city’s Portland Road saw engineer J.H. Holmes manufacture the first quick break electrical switch.
The Tyneside-based engineer Charles Algernon Parsons (1854-1931) can perhaps make an even greater claim, being occasionally referred to as ‘the man who invented the twentieth century’ from his development of turbines that enabled wide-scale generation of electricity. However we will leave the industrial pioneers for another day and ask a question:
What exactly is electricity?
Despite the huge role electricity plays in our lives few understand it and it is a wide ranging subject. Usually if you open any electrical text books you are quickly thrown into an array of complex laws and mathematics.
I will avoid the text book stuff and explain electricity as we most encounter it, as an energy supply channelled via wires.
My previous blog something about nothing explained how over ninety nine percent of each and every atom is in fact empty space and that less than one percent is mobile particle matter: namely protons, neutrons and the much tinier electrons. It also explained how interactive push and pull forces between those highly mobile atomic particles give an atom its space, volume size and shape, and how atoms are then joined to make the solids, liquids and gases of our world.
The Electricity of Wired Circuits
Electron particles do not like one another. Any electron moving the most miniscule of distance towards another electron will transfer energy in the form of a ‘push away’ to that electron and cause it to move. Any electron moving away from another electron will reduce the ‘push away’ on that electron encouraging the first electron to follow.
A battery (above) produces extra electrons at its negative terminal and removes electrons from the positive terminal. Consequently, electrons in a wire attached to the negative terminal are pushed away from that terminal and electrons in the positive wire are pulled toward that terminal.
Push and pull forces between electrons act at the speed of light (300,000 metres a second) and electrons, being light in weight and not held too tightly by their parent atoms, respond quite quickly to those transmitted forces and move.
Electrons on the move transmit changed forces to other electrons so that they in turn move and cause other electrons to move and so on. That is how energy is transmitted along wires.
Some people may term the electron movements in a wire as a flow.
However electron movements along wired circuits are slower than tortoise pace. That is so because although electrons move quite quickly between atoms they spend relatively lengthy times in their atom home
I prefer the term electron drift to electron flow.
Let’s be clear, it is not electrons whizzing around circuits that put our lights on almost instantly. It is the light speed transfer of energy via electrons to the electrons in our light bulb that does that.
Amperage is just a measure of the number of electrons involved in a drift. One amp equates to 6.25 billion, billion electrons drifting across a wire cross section every single second. That is a very big number but it is only equal to the number of electrons in about one tenth of a millimetre of wire length.
That is just one half of a metre every hour. Tortoises can certainly travel much, much faster than that.
Why we use copper in circuit wiring.
Electrons are active in the space volumes around an atom’s nucleic centre. Scientists call such space volumes electron clouds. Each cloud can have a maximum of two electrons.
Copper atoms have 29 protons, 29 electrons and 35 neutrons. The protons have little hold on outer cloud electrons so much so that some outer cloud electrons wander from atom to atom. This electron wander phenomenon is called an electron gas. Clearly the outer electrons of copper need almost no energy to move them along a circuit from atom to atom.
Copper is a good conductor because there is little energy wasted in moving its electrons along a wire.
Air is not a good conductor. Its atoms will in normal circumstances not release electrons in battery and mains circuits, so a switch that breaks a circuit makes for an easy way of stopping electron drift in a circuit.
Tungsten was until recently much used as the element in light bulbs. Tungsten does not give up its electrons like copper does. Tungsten has higher resistance. Many copper electrons have to move and thereby push or pull to make a single tungsten electron move. When the tungsten electron moves it has much energy and when it re-engages with a new ‘atom home’ it gives up that acquired energy as radiated light and heat.
Our UK mains supply
When a north magnet pole moves across a wire, electrons in that wire are encouraged to move in a specific direction. When a south magnet pole moves over the same wire, electrons are encouraged to move in the opposite direction.
This link between magnetism and electricity is extensively used by the rotating machines in generating stations and in wind turbines to produce our UK alternating supply or AC alternating current.
In the UK supply system, an electron push followed by an electron pull repeats itself 50 times every second.
Generated supply is three phase and at very high voltage. The high voltage is in fact a high electron push and allows the transmission of high energies at low amperages. This enables the use of light-weight overhead distribution cables. The three phases are actually three lots of similar push-pulls but they are out of sync with each other.
Our homes are generally supplied with just one of these three phases and at a transformed, lower and safer 250 volts. The electron to and fro movements in the two wire (plus earth) pin plug supply of our homes is happening as a result of energy transfers between electrons (as previously described) but now over hundreds of miles and probably via several transformers.
The live brown wire electrons are being pulled and pushed whilst the neutral blue wire electrons are being pushed and pulled. This is happening even when our domestic switches are turned off though the electron moves in such circumstances are so small as to not register on our energy meters.
When we close a switch, in a typical home circuit, electrons move back and forth in our wiring about one thousandth of a millimetre, albeit thousands of atom distances. This shifting of electrons back and forth in a load delivers energy to that load, say an appliance, just as it did in the direct current battery circuit.
The electrical load is the major energy consumer. It always resists electron movement but not always in the way the tungsten bulb did. For instance, the electrical machines in our homes that rotate all resist electron movement magnetically in a sort of reverse of the generating station action.
Something about nothing
North East science blogger ALBERT SIMPSON examines how we make something out of nothing.
SO, you think you’re something do you?
Well let me put you right:
You are NOTHING!
Well, 99 per cent nothing, but don’t worry, I’m just the same, in fact everyone and everything else is just the same. Let me explain. We’ll start by taking a look at the wonderful Bamburgh Castle.
Banburgh is as solid as a rock but it's 99% nothing: Photo, David Simpson
Bamburgh is as solid as a rock but it’s actually 99% nothing: Photographed by David Simpson
When we look at this imposing fortress up on the majestic coast of Northumberland it is hard to comprehend that everything we see is more than ninety-nine percent nothing. How can it be that this grand stone building and the apparently solid rock on which it stands are mostly nothing? Not to mention that they have been photographed by a person who is also more than ninety-nine percent nothing – sorry son.
You see, EVERYTHING in our world is ninety-nine percent nothing.
That’s because the tiny atoms that make up our world are all over ninety-nine percent the space of outer space. For example, one billion atoms make up the diameter of a human hair and in each atom less than one percent are matter particles.
Matter particles are protons, neutrons and the much smaller electrons. The rest of an atom is nothing but empty space. Yes, the rest is nothing but nothing.
OK, so we are nothing, but how is it we FEEL and SEE the solids, liquids and gases that SEEM to take up so much space?
Well TOUCH is only a sense of contact
It might appear to us that when we push a car or when we make love that we are making multiple contacts, but that’s not so. Atom particles don’t easily make contacts. Their speeds of motion and their interacting ‘push and pull forces’ stop them from doing so – how unromantic.
Your feeling of an object is actually the object’s particle forces and your particle forces resisting the close approach.
But atomic particle forces don’t just push; they also have a pull capability. In solids such as Bamburgh Castle, these complex push and pull particle forces combine to bind atoms strongly together.
Such binding is less strong in liquids (like Bamburgh’s neighbouring sea) allowing greater flow, and weaker still in gases including Bamburgh’s surrounding air (air is a mix of gases) where atoms and linked atoms (called molecules) move freely.
The human body is a combination of solid, liquid and gases maintained as an entity by particle forces. All these particles feel the gravity pull of the earth’s particle forces yet when our body particles come close to earth’s particles, the forces strongly resist contact.
When you push a car your applied forces are transmitted via the car’s particle forces to every part of the car so that the car moves as a whole. In the process not one atom particle touches another.
You might think that when you push on a wall no movement occurs but trillions upon trillions of atom particles make tiny adjustments throughout your body and throughout the wall and throughout the ground, that both you and the wall push upon.
Your muscles’ forces are not steady and that leads to continuous particle movements each requiring small amounts of energy that sum to much energy use. You do not move the wall but you use a lot of energy moving particles.
Your brain ‘feels’ the push because sensors in your skin constantly respond to the local force and frequency stimuli. They send electrical signals (which are also atomic particle force related motions) to the brain along the nerve pathways that form your central nervous system.
Okay so now we know – quite literally – how we all feel, so we should now be able to see things more clearly. Hang on though, how come we can SEE so much if it’s all 99% nothing?
Well, SIGHT is our brain’s interpretation of radiations
To explain how we see all this empty space we need to understand something of the sight process.
Radio and wifi waves, microwaves, heat waves, visible light, ultra violet light, x rays and gamma rays are all electro-magnetic radiations.
We experience these radiations in a number of different ways.
Our bodies feel heat radiations through skin sensors. Ultra violet and higher radiations might damage our skin while our eyes only see the radiations we call visible light . We see these as light because our eyes have evolved sensors able to monitor the small range of frequencies that make up the visible light radiations.
The spectrum of visible light
But what are these radiations?
Well, these radiations are supposedly mass-less photon particles that travel at the speed of light through the ninety nine percent space of atoms, as well as through atom free outer space.
Photons are the conveyors of energy packets. They are the parcel couriers of the Universe. And such couriers vary considerably in energy level which is frequency related. High frequency, high energy radiations are dangerous to humans; low frequency energies are not dangerous.
When a photon encounters atomic particles there is a probability that the total photon energy will be given up. Solids absorb almost all photon energies whilst liquids, glass and the gases of our atmosphere allow various levels of photon to pass through which is why we have varying degrees of transparency.
Sight involves photon absorption by the eye’s retinas.
Every point on each eye’s retina has numerous sensors designed to respond to visible light photons. Our eye lens focuses many radiations from a single view point onto a single retina point. Like piles of interesting informative packets of energy gathered together in some grand package delivery warehouse.
The brain receives electrical signals from the retina sensors, and interprets the data as an image of colours and shapes. So our brain is the sorting office that makes sense of it all and ensures we receive the information that help us make sense of the world.
Hot and Cold
High levels of energy emanate as radiations from hot particle motions, like those on the sun. But radiations also occur from cold objects which radiate any surplus energy they have. Like the sun, they radiate it in all directions.
In the daytime many objects on earth are absorbing sun-radiated energy and their atomic particle motions change as a result of the absorbed energy.
Some of the absorbed energy might be retained, leading to warmth or, in life forms, cell growth might result. However most energy absorbed is surplus and almost instantly given up as radiations in all directions.
The absorption and subsequent emission of energies by earth’s atomic particles is a never ending process. It is happening everywhere.
The shapes and colours of our world arise because the frequency-related photon packets of energy given up by earth’s objects are mostly not the same as those absorbed.
The radiation emanating from an object or life form is very much related to the object’s atomic structure. Such energies are released in all directions in a continuous process. Some energy goes back through our atmosphere and into space; much will pass to other earth objects for absorption and re-emission.
What our brain sees as the colours and shapes of objects is its own interpretation of the frequency of the energies radiated from those objects.
Man takes much pleasure in extensive experimentation with varying frequencies of radiated energies in our use of paint pigments, clothing dyes, make up and multi-coloured movie screens that can deliver desired results with so much visual satisfaction. Yet it is all so fundamentally nothing. Well, mostly.
So in summary, if you really think you’re something in this colourful, multi-sensory, hot and cold seemingly object dominated world, well you may want to think again.
Not as solid as it seems: Photo, David Simpson
Next time we will look at particle forces in motion or ‘electricity‘ as you will very probably know it. | <urn:uuid:5d4f4248-2d49-45aa-819b-69634cc96fc0> | http://englandsnortheast.co.uk/tag/electrons/ | en | 0.9172 | 0.643445 | mlfoundations/dclm-baseline-1.0-parquet |