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Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such Mr Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large moustache. Mrs Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbours. The Dursleys had a small son called Dudley and in their opinion there was no finer The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it. They didn’t think they could bear it if anyone found out about the Potters. Mrs Potter was Mrs Dursley’s sister, but they hadn’t met for several years; in fact, Mrs Dursley pretended she didn’t have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing husband were as unDursleyish as it was possible to be. The Dursleys shuddered to think what the neighbours would say if the Potters arrived in the street. The Dursleys knew that the Potters had a small son, too, but they had never even seen him. This boy was another good reason for keeping the Potters away; they didn’t want Dudley mixing with a child like that. When Mr and Mrs Dursley woke up on the dull, grey Tuesday our story starts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over the country. Mr Dursley hummed as he picked out his most boring tie for work and Mrs Dursley gossiped away happily as she wrestled a screaming Dudley into his high chair. None of them noticed a large tawny owl flutter past the window. At half past eight, Mr Dursley picked up his briefcase, pecked Mrs Dursley on the cheek and tried to kiss Dudley goodbye but missed, because Dudley was now having a tantrum and throwing his cereal at the walls. ‘Little tyke,’ chortled Mr Dursley as he left the house. He got into his car and backed out of number four’s It was on the corner of the street that he noticed the first sign of something peculiar – a cat reading a map. For a second, Mr Dursley didn’t realise what he had seen – then he jerked his head around to look again. There was a tabby cat standing on the corner of Privet Drive, but there wasn’t a map in sight. What could he have been thinking of? It must have been a trick of the light. Mr Dursley blinked and stared at the cat. It stared back. As Mr Dursley drove around the corner and up the road, he watched the cat in his mirror. It was now reading the sign that said Privet Drive – no, looking at the sign; cats couldn’t read maps or signs. Mr Dursley gave himself a little shake and put the cat out of his mind. As he drove towards town he thought of nothing except a large order of drills he was hoping to get that day. But on the edge of town, drills were driven out of his mind by something else. As he sat in the usual morning traffic jam, he couldn’t help noticing that there seemed to be a lot of strangely dressed people about. People in cloaks. Mr Dursley couldn’t bear people who dressed in funny clothes – the get-ups you saw on young people! He supposed this was some stupid new fashion. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and his eyes fell on a huddle of these weirdos standing quite close by. They were whispering excitedly together. Mr Dursley was enraged to see that a couple of them weren’t young at all; why, that man had to be older than he was, and wearing an emerald-green cloak! The nerve of him! But then it struck Mr Dursley that this was probably some silly stunt – these people were obviously collecting for something ... yes, that would be it. The traffic moved on, and a few minutes later, Mr Dursley arrived in the Grunnings car park, his mind Mr Dursley always sat with his back to the window in his office on the ninth floor. If he hadn’t, he might have found it harder to concentrate on drills that morning. He didn’t see the owls swooping past in broad daylight, though people down in the street did; they pointed and gazed open-mouthed as owl after owl sped overhead. Most of them had never seen an owl even at nighttime. Mr Dursley, however, had a perfectly normal, owl-free morning. He yelled at five different people. He made several important telephone calls and shouted a bit more. He was in a very good mood until lunch-time, when he thought he’d stretch his legs and walk across the road to buy himself a bun from the baker’s He’d forgotten all about the people in cloaks until he passed a group of them next to the baker’s. He eyed them angrily as he passed. He didn’t know why, but they made him uneasy. This lot were whispering excitedly, too, and he couldn’t see a single collecting tin. It was on his way back past them, clutching a large doughnut in a bag, that he caught a few words of what they were ‘The Potters, that’s right, that’s what I heard –’ ‘– yes, their son, Harry –’ Mr Dursley stopped dead. Fear flooded him. He looked back at the whisperers as if he wanted to say something to them, but He dashed back across the road, hurried up to his office, snapped at his secretary not to disturb him, seized his telephone and had almost finished dialling his home number when he changed his mind. He put the receiver back down and stroked his moustache, thinking ... no, he was being stupid. Potter wasn’t such an unusual name. He was sure there were lots of people called Potter who had a son called Harry. Come to think of it, he wasn’t even sure his nephew was called Harry. He’d never even seen the boy. It might have been Harvey. Or Harold. There was no point in worrying Mrs Dursley, she always got so upset at any mention of her sister. He didn’t blame her – if he’d had a sister like that ... but all the same, those people in cloaks ... He found it a lot harder to concentrate on drills that afternoon, and when he left the building at five o’clock, he was still so worried that he walked straight into someone just outside the door. ‘Sorry,’ he grunted, as the tiny old man stumbled and almost fell. It was a few seconds before Mr Dursley realised that the man was wearing a violet cloak. He didn’t seem at all upset at being almost knocked to the ground. On the contrary, his face split into a wide smile and he said in a squeaky voice that made passers-by stare: ‘Don’t be sorry, my dear sir, for nothing could upset me today! Rejoice, for You-Know-Who has gone at last! Even Muggles like yourself should be celebrating, this happy, happy And the old man hugged Mr Dursley around the middle and Mr Dursley stood rooted to the spot. He had been hugged by a complete stranger. He also thought he had been called a Muggle, whatever that was. He was rattled. He hurried to his car and set off home, hoping he was imagining things, which he had never hoped before, because he didn’t approve of imagination. As he pulled into the driveway of number four, the first thing he saw – and it didn’t improve his mood – was the tabby cat he’d spotted that morning. It was now sitting on his garden wall. He was sure it was the same one; it had the same markings around its eyes. ‘Shoo!’ said Mr Dursley loudly. The cat didn’t move. It just gave him a stern look. Was this normal cat behaviour, Mr Dursley wondered. Trying to pull himself together, he let himself into the house. He was still determined not to mention anything to his wife. Mrs Dursley had had a nice, normal day. She told him over dinner all about Mrs Next Door’s problems with her daughter and how Dudley had learnt a new word (‘Shan’t!’). Mr Dursley tried to act normally. When Dudley had been put to bed, he went into the living-room in time to catch the last report on the evening news: ‘And finally, bird-watchers everywhere have reported that the nation’s owls have been behaving very unusually today. Although owls normally hunt at night and are hardly ever seen in daylight, there have been hundreds of sightings of these birds flying in every direction since sunrise. Experts are unable to explain why the owls have suddenly changed their sleeping pattern.’ The news reader allowed himself a grin. ‘Most mysterious. And now, over to Jim McGuffin with the weather. Going to be any more showers of ‘Well, Ted,’ said the weatherman, ‘I don’t know about that, but it’s not only the owls that have been acting oddly today. Viewers as far apart as Kent, Yorkshire and Dundee have been phoning in to tell me that instead of the rain I promised yesterday, they’ve had a downpour of shooting stars! Perhaps people have been celebrating Bonfire Night early – it’s not until next week, folks! But I can promise a wet night tonight.’ Mr Dursley sat frozen in his armchair. Shooting stars all over Britain? Owls flying by daylight? Mysterious people in cloaks all over the place? And a whisper, a whisper about the Potters ... Mrs Dursley came into the living-room carrying two cups of tea. It was no good. He’d have to say something to her. He cleared his throat nervously. ‘Er – Petunia, dear – you haven’t heard from your sister lately, have you?’ As he had expected, Mrs Dursley looked shocked and angry. After all, they normally pretended she didn’t have a sister. ‘No,’ she said sharply. ‘Why?’ ‘Funny stuff on the news,’ Mr Dursley mumbled. ‘Owls ... shooting stars ... and there were a lot of funny-looking people in ‘Well, I just thought ... maybe ... it was something to do with ... you know ... her lot.’ Mrs Dursley sipped her tea through pursed lips. Mr Dursley wondered whether he dared tell her he’d heard the name ‘Potter’. He decided he didn’t dare. Instead he said, as casually as he could, ‘Their son – he’d be about Dudley’s age now, wouldn’t he?’ ‘I suppose so,’ said Mrs Dursley stiffly. ‘What’s his name again? Howard, isn’t it?’ ‘Harry. Nasty, common name, if you ask me.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mr Dursley, his heart sinking horribly. ‘Yes, I He didn’t say another word on the subject as they went upstairs to bed. While Mrs Dursley was in the bathroom, Mr Dursley crept to the bedroom window and peered down into the front garden. The cat was still there. It was staring down Privet Drive as though it was waiting for something. Was he imagining things? Could all this have anything to do with the Potters? If it did ... if it got out that they were related to a pair of – well, he didn’t think he could bear it. The Dursleys got into bed. Mrs Dursley fell asleep quickly but Mr Dursley lay awake, turning it all over in his mind. His last, comforting thought before he fell asleep was that even if the Potters were involved, there was no reason for them to come near him and Mrs Dursley. The Potters knew very well what he and Petunia thought about them and their kind ... He couldn’t see how he and Petunia could get mixed up in anything that might be going on. He yawned and turned over. It couldn’t affect them ... How very wrong he was. Mr Dursley might have been drifting into an uneasy sleep, but the cat on the wall outside was showing no sign of sleepiness. It was sitting as still as a statue, its eyes fixed unblinkingly on the far corner of Privet Drive. It didn’t so much as quiver when a car door slammed in the next street, nor when two owls swooped overhead. In fact, it was nearly midnight before the cat moved at all. A man appeared on the corner the cat had been watching, appeared so suddenly and silently you’d have thought he’d just popped out of the ground. The cat’s tail twitched and its eyes Nothing like this man had ever been seen in Privet Drive. He was tall, thin and very old, judging by the silver of his hair and beard, which were both long enough to tuck into his belt. He was wearing long robes, a purple cloak which swept the ground and high-heeled, buckled boots. His blue eyes were light, bright and sparkling behind half-moon spectacles and his nose was very long and crooked, as though it had been broken at least twice. This man’s name was Albus Dumbledore. Albus Dumbledore didn’t seem to realise that he had just arrived in a street where everything from his name to his boots was unwelcome. He was busy rummaging in his cloak, looking for something. But he did seem to realise he was being watched, because he looked up suddenly at the cat, which was still staring at him from the other end of the street. For some reason, the sight of the cat seemed to amuse him. He chuckled and muttered, ‘I He had found what he was looking for in his inside pocket. It seemed to be a silver cigarette lighter. He flicked it open, held it up in the air and clicked it. The nearest street lamp went out with a little pop. He clicked it again – the next lamp flickered into darkness. Twelve times he clicked the Put-Outer, until the only lights left in the whole street were two tiny pinpricks in the distance, which were the eyes of the cat watching him. If anyone looked out of their window now, even beady-eyed Mrs Dursley, they wouldn’t be able to see anything that was happening down on the pavement. Dumbledore slipped the Put-Outer back inside his cloak and set off down the street towards number four, where he sat down on the wall next to the cat. He didn’t look at it, but after a moment he spoke to it. ‘Fancy seeing you here, Professor McGonagall.’ He turned to smile at the tabby, but it had gone. Instead he was smiling at a rather severe-looking woman who was wearing square glasses exactly the shape of the markings the cat had had around its eyes. She, too, was wearing a cloak, an emerald one. Her black hair was drawn into a tight bun. She looked distinctly ruffled. ‘How did you know it was me?’ she asked. ‘My dear Professor, I’ve never seen a cat sit so stiffly.’ ‘You’d be stiff if you’d been sitting on a brick wall all day,’ said ‘All day? When you could have been celebrating? I must have passed a dozen feasts and parties on my way here.’ ‘Oh yes, everyone’s celebrating, all right,’ she said impatiently. ‘You’d think they’d be a bit more careful, but no – even the Muggles have noticed something’s going on. It was on their news.’ She jerked her head back at the Dursleys’ dark living-room window. ‘I heard it. Flocks of owls ... shooting stars ... Well, they’re not completely stupid. They were bound to notice something. Shooting stars down in Kent – I’ll bet that was Dedalus Diggle. He never had much sense.’ ‘You can’t blame them,’ said Dumbledore gently. ‘We’ve had precious little to celebrate for eleven years.’ ‘I know that,’ said Professor McGonagall irritably. ‘But that’s no reason to lose our heads. People are being downright careless, out on the streets in broad daylight, not even dressed in Muggle She threw a sharp, sideways glance at Dumbledore here, as though hoping he was going to tell her something, but he didn’t, so she went on: ‘A fine thing it would be if, on the very day YouKnow-Who seems to have disappeared at last, the Muggles found out about us all. I suppose he really has gone, Dumbledore?’ ‘It certainly seems so,’ said Dumbledore. ‘We have much to be thankful for. Would you care for a sherbet lemon?’ ‘A sherbet lemon. They’re a kind of Muggle sweet I’m rather ‘No, thank you,’ said Professor McGonagall coldly, as though she didn’t think this was the moment for sherbet lemons. ‘As I say, even if You-Know-Who has gone –’ ‘My dear Professor, surely a sensible person like yourself can call him by his name? All this “You-Know-Who” nonsense – for eleven years I have been trying to persuade people to call him by his proper name: Voldemort.’ Professor McGonagall flinched, but Dumbledore, who was unsticking two sherbet lemons, seemed not to notice. ‘It all gets so confusing if we keep saying “YouKnow-Who”.’ I have never seen any reason to be frightened of ‘I know you haven’t,’ said Professor McGonagall, sounding halfexasperated, half-admiring. ‘But you’re different. Everyone knows you’re the only one You-Know – oh, all right, Voldemort – was ‘You flatter me,’ said Dumbledore calmly. ‘Voldemort had powers I will never have.’ ‘Only because you’re too – well – noble to use them.’ ‘It’s lucky it’s dark. I haven’t blushed so much since Madam Pomfrey told me she liked my new earmuffs.’ Professor McGonagall shot a sharp look at Dumbledore and said, ‘The owls are nothing to the rumours that are flying around. You know what everyone’s saying? About why he’s disappeared? About what finally stopped him?’ It seemed that Professor McGonagall had reached the point she was most anxious to discuss, the real reason she had been waiting on a cold hard wall all day, for neither as a cat nor as a woman had she fixed Dumbledore with such a piercing stare as she did now. It was plain that whatever ‘everyone’ was saying, she was not going to believe it until Dumbledore told her it was true. Dumbledore, however, was choosing another sherbet lemon and ‘What they’re saying,’ she pressed on, ‘is that last night Voldemort turned up in Godric’s Hollow. He went to find the Potters. The rumour is that Lily and James Potter are – are – that they’re – Dumbledore bowed his head. Professor McGonagall gasped. ‘Lily and James ... I can’t believe it ... I didn’t want to believe it Dumbledore reached out and patted her on the shoulder. ‘ |
tough nut to crack, but ultimately rewarding. Invariably I'd be disappointed in the sprightly colored cones fizzing out like a little kid's sparkler, but, hey, there're bound to be casualties in war.
When night fell, we grew more daring. Once I sat on the roof of our house shooting bottle-rockets out of a drain gutter at the bullies down the street. I tossed firecrackers at them (waiting 'til the fuse ran dangerously short; sometimes you'd get a fast sizzler, the ones to look out for). One particular psycho set off an M-80 in his backyard, shattering his parents' back windows. Fun! And the buzzbombs? Perhaps the most insidious of all fireworks. You never knew which way they'd take off and where they would explode, a hummingbird dive-bomber with rabies.
When all was said and done, the neighborhood looked like a war-torn battle-zone. Smoke drifted through the street like fog. Multiple explosions sounded far away, threatening yet comforting in an odd way. Tired kids would hobble home, content dopey grins on their faces. For some reason, the cops and parents left us alone even though fireworks were illegal in our neighborhood; different times.
Was it dangerous? Hell, yes, but a rite of passage back in those days. The true meaning of the Fourth of July. (Cue Charlie Brown and gang humming).
Happy Fourth of July, folks, and happy belated birthday to Canada, too. Be safe.
1. Sometimes I think it's a wonder boys survive their childhood and even make it into adulthood...though that last part's debatable too...
2. When I was a kid in Iowa, fireworks were illegal. Fortunately the neighbor kids had a dad who was willing to drive all the way to the Missouri border to buy the illegal ammo. Otherwise I would never have experienced been shot at with Roman candles.<|endoftext|>Tag Archives: Western Electric Company
4 November 1962, 06:30 GMT
The Nike Hercules was a long-range, high-altitude surface-to-air guided missile, designed and produced by Western Electric Company and the Douglas Aircraft Company. Douglas manufactured the missile at Charlotte, North Carolina. It was a two-stage missile with a cluster of four Hercules Powder Company M5E1 solid-fuel rocket engines as the boost stage.
The Nike Hercules had an overall length of 41 feet, 1.35 inches (12.531 meters). Its weight was 10,710 pounds (4,858 kilograms). The Hercules could reach an altitude of 100,000 feet (30,480 meters) and had a range of 90 miles (145 kilometers). The missile’s maximum speed was Mach 3.65.
The booster stage was 14 feet, 2.845 inches (4.339 meters) long and had a maximum diameter of 3 feet, 7.25 inches (1.099 meters). There were four stabilizing fins spaced at 90°. The fin span was 11 feet, 5.88 inches (3.502 meters). The leading edges were swept aft 24.23°. The booster stage produced 173,600 pounds of thrust (772.211 kilonewtons) and burned for 3.4 seconds.
Nike Hercules second stage.
The second stage was 26 feet, 10.500 inches (8.192 meters) long with a maximum diameter of 2 feet, 7.50 inches (0.800 meters). It had four triangular wings and four small “linealizer” fins, which were also spaced 90°. The maximum wing span was 7 feet, 4.00 inches (2.235 meters). The missile was powered by a Thiokol Chemical Corporation M30 solid-fuel rocket engine which produced 13,750 pounds of thrust (61.163 kilonewtons) and had a burn time of 29 seconds.
The Hercules could be armed with either a M17 high explosive fragmentation warhead or a 20–40 kiloton W-31 nuclear warhead. Although designed to attack jet aircraft, the Nike Hercules also successfully intercepted guided and ballistic missiles, and had a surface-to-surface capability.
© 2018, Bryan R. Swopes
Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather<|endoftext|>and they told me that i had collapsed When the film moves past Fox to focus on the Turtles, the heroes in a half shell are undeniably impressive in ninja mode. Director n95 mask q10 Jonathan Liebesman ("Wrath of the Titans" and "Battle: Los Angeles") knows how to highlight ILM's performance capture technology, which makes the Turtles' movements so realistic. Liebesman lets the Turtles Leo (voiced by Johnny Knoxville but played by Pete Ploszek), n95 mask filters Donnie (Jeremy Howard), n95 mask and smoke protection Rapha (Alan Ritchson) and Mikey shine as they kick, jump and parry in various large scale action sequences.<|endoftext|>Bras, a complex garment made of many parts, were and remain the bare necessities to change and reshape the female body.
Overtime they have evolved into a fashion item. Changing social trends have increased the variety of available designs, and allowed manufacturers to make bras that are more fashionable than functional.
This year, Adriana Lima and Alessandra Ambrosio model the two fantasy bras in this year’s Victoria’s Secret catwalk show – worth a cool $2 million each.
The ornate lingerie sets took 1,380 hours to make and contain 16,000 gems each.
Today, bras have reached their peak… 2 million dollar bras is something worth to learn about if not dream to own.<|endoftext|>KXII - Fox - Home - Headlines
Asteroid buzzes, misses Earth _ unlike meteor
By: MARCIA DUNNm, AP Aerospace Writer
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - The world is safe - at least from one asteroid.
A 150-foot cosmic rock hurtled safely past Earth on Friday.
It was the closest known flyby for a rock of its size, passing within 17,000 miles. That's closer than some satellites.
The flyby occurred just hours after a much smaller meteor exploded above Russia's Ural Mountains.
Astronomers say the two events were coincidental, and the objects were traveling in opposite directions. At least one scientist called it an exciting day and "like a shooting gallery here."
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User Agent: CCBot/2.0 - 191437911<|endoftext|>Dark Roasted Oolong
Dark Roasted Oolong
Every year a portion of the Tung Ting harvest is kept to one side and roasted at a higher temperature than other Taiwanese Oolongs. This process darkens the Oolong tea and creates a rich, smooth and aromatic brew.
Tung Ting from the Nantou province produces a mild tea perfect for a heavier roast. This roasting slowly caramelizes the sugar naturally present in the tea, giving it a sweet taste.
Add To Cart
Nantou Region, Taiwan
Tasting notes
Toasted bread, honey, caramel and brown sugar flavours
Caffeine Level
Blends well with milk, citrus, peach and tropical fruits.
Brewing temperature<|endoftext|>1Wisdom builds her house,
but Folly tears hers down with her own hands.#The relationship between Wisdom, personified as a woman, and building a house is a constant theme. As elsewhere, the book here warns against the wrong woman and praises the right woman.
2Those who walk uprightly fear the Lord,
but those who are devious in their ways spurn him.
3In the mouth of the fool is a rod for pride,
but the lips of the wise preserve them.
4Where there are no oxen, the crib is clean;
but abundant crops come through the strength of the bull.#If one has no animals, one does not have the burden of keeping the crib full, but without them one will have no crops to fill the barn. Colon B reverses the sense of colon A and also reverses the consonants of bar (“clean”) to rab (“abundant”).
5A trustworthy witness does not lie,
but one who spouts lies makes a lying witness.#On discerning the truthfulness of witnesses; see 12:17. #a. [14:5] Prv 12:17.
6The scoffer seeks wisdom in vain,
but knowledge is easy for the intelligent.
7Go from the face of the fool;
you get no knowledge from such lips.
8The wisdom of the shrewd enlightens their way,
but the folly of fools is deceit.#Wisdom enables the shrewd to know their path is right but folly leads fools on the wrong path (“deceit”), which calls down retribution.
9The wicked scorn a guilt offering,
but the upright find acceptance.
10The heart knows its own bitterness,
11The house of the wicked will be destroyed,
but the tent of the upright will flourish.#The traditional fixed pair “house” and “tent” is used to express the paradox that a house can be less secure than a tent if there is no justice. #b. [14:11] Prv 3:33; 12:7; 15:25.
12Sometimes a way seems right,
but the end of it leads to death!#c. [14:12] Prv 16:25.
13Even in laughter the heart may be sad,
and the end of joy may be sorrow.
14From their own ways turncoats are sated,
from their own actions, the loyal.
15The naive believe everything,
but the shrewd watch their steps.#The naive gullibly rely on others’ words whereas the shrewd watch their own steps.
16The wise person is cautious and turns from evil;
the fool is reckless and gets embroiled.
17The quick-tempered make fools of themselves,
and schemers are hated.
18The simple have folly as an adornment,
but the shrewd wear knowledge as a crown.#The inner quality of a person, simple or wise, will eventually be revealed.
19The malicious bow down before the good,
and the wicked, at the gates of the just.
20Even by their neighbors the poor are despised,
but a rich person’s friends are many.#d. [14:20] Prv 19:4, 7; Sir 6:8, 12.
21Whoever despises the hungry comes up short,
but happy the one who is kind to the poor!#The paradox is that anyone who spurns the hungry will lack something, but anyone who shows mercy (presumably by giving to the poor) will gain prosperity.
22Do not those who plan evil go astray?
But those who plan good win steadfast loyalty.
23In all labor there is profit,
but mere talk tends only to loss.
24The crown of the wise is wealth;
the diadem of fools is folly.
25The truthful witness saves lives,
but whoever utters lies is a betrayer.
26The fear of the Lord is a strong defense,
a refuge even for one’s children.
27The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life,
turning one from the snares of death.
28A multitude of subjects is the glory of the king;
but if his people are few, a prince is ruined.
29Long-suffering results in great wisdom;
a short temper raises folly high.#A series of puns on short and long; lit., “long of nostrils (idiom for “patient”), large in wisdom, / short in breath (idiom for “impatient”), makes folly tall.” #e. [14:29] Prv 16:32; 19:11; Jas 1:19.
30A tranquil mind gives life to the body,
but jealousy rots the bones.
31Those who oppress the poor revile their Maker,
but those who are kind to the needy honor him.#f. [14:31] Prv 17:5.
32The wicked are overthrown by their wickedness,
but the just find a refuge in their integrity.
33Wisdom can remain silent in the discerning heart,
but among fools she must make herself known.#Wisdom can remain silent in a wise person as a welcome friend. But it must speak out among fools, for the dissonance is so strong. #g. [14:33] Prv 1:22; 8:1.
34Justice exalts a nation,
35The king favors the skillful servant,
but the shameless one incurs his wrath.<|endoftext|>Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Cloth Diapering twins,
Cloth diapering is going great. The boys are now in cloth 95% of the time and pretty much 24 hours a day. Now that I'm familiar with the process, the routine, and how they work I feel much more confident and its getting easier by the day. If I get behind on diaper laundry I often times have to put them in disposables while I'm doing diaper laundry, and sometimes Derrick just gets a bit lazy and puts them in disposables for no good reason at all. I always have to make sure I have some aplix (velcro) covers ready or he'll resort right to a disposable diaper instead of cloth.
Recently we started to experience our first bout of leaking. Of course all diapers leak around the legs and top if you leave them on too long, but mine were starting to act like they were no longer water proof. The inserts/liners themselves wouldn't be all that wet, but their clothes definitely were as well as the outside of the diaper itself. I ran them in the rinse cycle like 5 times then I threw them in the dryer a couple times and they seem to be better. I now have a separate wet bag where I put any leaky diapers so I can treat them as needed.
For the first time this morning, both boys experienced a cloth diaper poo-splosion. They hadn't gone in a few days so I sort of expected it. It wasn't too bad though, the diapers contained the poo pretty well considering how much there was! The only other time I had a poo leak was when Derrick put a pocket on Sawyer that wasn't put on right (user error). I'd say we're pretty successful since we haven't had leaks and poo-splosions the entire 2 1/2 months we've been doing cloth! We had them all the time when using disposables - that first month while they were in sposies I scrubbed at least one outfit a day because the diaper couldn't contain the poo.
We have a pretty wide variety of diapers at this point. We've definitely figured out which are our favorites and which we leave as a last resort. Derrick doesn't care about brand/style as long as its velcro. He struggles with snaps on their outfits but struggles worse when trying to figure out the snaps on our diapers. If he's attempted a diaper with snaps, I often have to fix it up for him because the snaps seem to confuse him. I have a preference to certain brands, mostly based on the fit each one gives us. I love my Alva pockets. Even thought the fit isn't that great for our boys, they have never had any problems, leaks or blow outs until they started leaking recently - which I fixed. I am in LOVE with my Flips covers. In fact, I've bought a few more used on some Buy, Sell, Trade groups. They are always the first in my stash to be used. I also love our Swaddlebees Basix pocket diapers, I love that they have very little bulk (the side snaps take away from the bulk around the tummy), they are AIOs (so the insert is attached making laundry super easy) and I've never had any leaks or anything with them. I'm just a little sad that these are not One Size diapers so the boys will be growing out of them in no time.
I was doing diaper laundry last night, sitting on the couch stuffing pockets, when Derrick gives me a goofy look. "How annoying, it's a good thing those are saving us a lot of money for all the time you put into them." My response was simple, and true. "Diaper laundry makes me feel proud, glad that I am doing something to better our environment, save us money and keep the boys' butt's healthier... Plus, stuffing pockets is much like folding socks for me - therapeutic. It's easy brainless activity that calms me." Weird I know.
How we do things:
This is spotlighting what is in my rotation right now. I also have a drawer of diapers in their bedroom that are not in my current rotation.
Stash Storage. The basket on top holds
burp rags and other Misc baby items.
The diapers outside the container are
all the ones they've already grown out of!
I haven't invested in some garbage cans for my bags yet, so for now
my wet bags hang here. The big one is for
all diapers/liners, the small one is for leakers.
When I need to wash (about every other day), I take the bags and dump them into my washer, then the bag goes in empty with the diapers. Rinse on cold, wash on hot using Tide Original (powder), then rinse 2x.
Night time
I also have a small stash of liners and 2 extra covers I keep in my night stand for overnight changes. And, I hang a small wet bag from our door handle for those overnight diapers/liners.
After washing, all covers/pockets get hung on this tension rod
I hung in our laundry room (usually over night)
The liners/inserts get put in the dryer.
All the bags get hung to dry on these
hooks in our laundry room.
Now that our diapers are clean....
top drawer is doublers and wipe solutions,
2nd drawer is all inserts/liners for covers,
Next drawer is covers,
Bottom Drawer is all Pocket Diapers,
Top Drawer - doublers, bamboo inserts, extra wipes
wipe solution and CJs BUTTer
2nd drawer - All inserts for covers. Some Flips, Flip doublers,
Swaddlebees liners, prefolds and Snappis.
3rd drawer - covers, left side is velcro,
Right side is Snaps.
Orange is Thirsties, Giraffes are Swaddlebees,
Bottom 7 are all Flips.
On the right: top 3 are Rump A Roos,
Blue and green are Kissaluvs, monkeys are Swaddlebees,
Yellow is Flips, I have 2 more Flips with Snaps.
(2 Rump a Roos are in our room for night time changes)
The two missing Flip covers from my other stash shots
Bottom Drawer: Top left 4 are Swaddlebees Basix,
Bottom 4 are Swaddlebees Simplex,
Right side are my 12 Alvas,
Middle holds my extra inserts,
top 2 diapers are Fuzzibunz, green is Thirsties and
the polka dots is Blissful Booties.
Full Stash Shot.
We have a system going, its working. Derrick is finally |
happens, and you die being mugged by some other fucking hippie-bum on the streets, nobody will miss you.
Rot in Hell, Hippie!
26. amber waves of weed Says:
You must have been “informed” that you caught cancer from all the DU we like to use over there. I feel sorry for your kids.
27. HL Says:
Hey In_Iraq, and Well-Informed Says
Sounds to me like Don proves his point every time you open your mouth,
You just want to kill him? why? because he disagrees with you.
He calls you a mindless killer,
Your response? you want to kill him.
Looks like Don is right on the money about you Killer.
28. In_Iraq, and Well-Informed Says:
Well, you finally decided to join us here.
I am not interested in what anything sounds like to you. I can see what things “sound” like to you from reading other posts on this site.
No, I do not wish to kill him. However, I would not shed a tear if he was snuffed out by the people whose opinions match exactly to his (and yours). But first, you both must learn Arabic, of the Iraqi dialect. Upon completion, hop on a plane, pussies. Put your ass where your mouth is.
I doubt Don has been right on anything except the color of his pot. He is certainly not correct in this matter.
And you are both wrong: I am anything but mindless.
Have a nice night, libs. Sleep tight.
29. HL Says:
Yeah yeah yeah, I’ve been dealing with your kind on this site for 3 years now and am not about to go through it all again. You can read all about in the other posts where I point out the ridiculousness of everything you guys say.
Yeah I’ll sleep tight knowing that your big bad ass is protecting me from the Evil Iraqi’s that want to come over here and kill me. Thank You.
30. In_Iraq, and Well-Informed Says:
The thought that you presume to know my kind amuses me. Unfortunately the rest of the US must deal with your kind. If there were a few less liberals, the rest of the country might be able to keep more of their hard-earned money inside their own families instead of losers and illegals on welfare.
No, HL. You have me mistaken. I would not protect you from anyone. It’s just too bad that I have to live in the same area that you do. Besides, as previously stated, I am a contractor, not in the military anymore. I no longer conduct offensive operations. Then again, no liberal would ever truly understand the difference between offensive and defensive actions in the middle east. So, in English: I no longer actively pursue those extremists. I am now in strictly defensive operations.
So, having robbed you from your comfort in sleep, it will be even worse when I tell you that I will eventually leave this place and not be here to “protect”(LMFAO, Yeah Right!!) you. Oh, but as long as nothing happens in the Left Coast, you won’t care what happens anywhere else. You are not welcome.
31. Don Says:
In Iraq and please stay there. We obviously need a longer war to eliminate a few more military types from this world. So lets fight a little longer until we have successfully thinned the heard. I would love for one right wing ass to have one actual fact or specific idea…not holding my breath…LOL!
They come here because the right wing bloggers won’t even listen to the ignorant hatred these scum spew forth.
32. dan Says:
Don, please do not compare yourself to Jesus, talk ill of our veterans, degrade our military, profess to have a clue about our energy situation, or claim to be an American.
33. In_Iraq, and Well-Informed Says:
Here’s a fact for you Don: if you get your wish, there will be nobody to guard the country. Here’s a specific idea for you: smoke some more. I fervently hope your pot makes you happy. Nothing else will, it seems. You obviously had a successful life, resorting to weed to help you cope.
Good luck in your endeavors. I will be interested to see if you can post something here without being high.<|endoftext|>This is me, Eccles
This is me, Eccles
This is me, Eccles
Sunday, 25 June 2017
Vicious attacks made on Sarah
Holy Land, about 2000 BC,
Faithful Catholics, who do their best to respect Pope Abraham, have been shocked by the persistent attacks on his wife Sarah from various ultra-liberal writers such as Christopher Goat of the Stone Tablet, Robert Mickheap the manure-dealer, Massimo Bean, Mike-and-Bernie Winters, etc. who find that she has this distressing habit of taking God's teaching seriously.
Abraham and Sarah
Pope Abraham and Cardinal Sarah.
Sarah herself has maintained a dignified silence in the face of abuse, which has even come from well-known clergy, such as Kasper the Jester ("She's a bit, er, African, isn't she?" he says) and Fr James Lot SJ, who has been attempting to build bridges with the LGBT community in the Cities of the Plain (supported by his wife Rosica the "Pillar of Salt" broadcaster), although the last bridge fell into a lake of fire.
Of course Pope Abraham's own ministry has not been uncontroversial. Some have accused him of trying to change Church teaching on infanticide, after a mysterious incident involving his son Isaac at Moria, and the subsequence apostolic exhortation A Moria Sacrificia. Indeed, the situation has become so bad that Abraham has refused to answer all dubia asking him to explain what on earth he means.
Pope Francis answers letter
Cardinal Burke, have you tried submitting your dubia using a six-year-old sockpuppet? You might get a reply that way.
Of course, some say that Abraham is merely following Sarah's advice to "remain silent", and it is rumoured that they have not spoken to each other for 93 years.
The real fear of Sarah's critics is that she will survive Abraham, and take over as Matriarch: the "Mesopotamian Mafia" are hoping to elect someone more liberal such as Isaac, who is not expected to take church teaching very seriously.
Pope as Superman
Some mockers have portrayed Abraham as a cartoon character such as Superman, Scooby Doo or Popeye.
Saturday, 17 June 2017
Fr James Martin answers your questions
Dear Fr Martin. I understand that you are a Bridge expert?
Jim: Yes, my son!
Fr Jim and heretical book
In his new book Fr Jim argues that the LGBT Church must accept Catholics.
Well, answer me this then. The bidding at a game in my seminary went as follows:
North-South vulnerable, East-West predatory.
2 Hearts
I'd like to make a pass.
I am if you are.
West has no honour, so how should he bid?
card players
Playing the Jesuit convention: make up the rules as you go along.
Jim: NO TRUMP! NO TRUMP! NO TRUMP! Oh how we hate him!
I have a very simple question, Fr Jim. Is there anything at all that you consider sinful?
Actually, sin is never mentioned in the Bible, so who am I to say that anything is wrong? Still, I do get cross when Fr Thomas Reese steals the last fairy cake, or whenever someone calls me a heretic. Don't they realise that I am now a very important adviser to Pope Francis?
Tay Bridge
Beautiful Bridge so proudly gay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That thousands of souls have been led astray
By that wretched book on building a bridge,
The Catholic way, including, er, um, bondage.
William McGonagall SJ.
Let's forget all this bridge nonsense for a moment, Fr Jim. Could you explain again your theory that Mary Magdalene was the first bishop? It always brings me out in giggles...
Thursday, 15 June 2017
How to be a Christian and a politician at the same time
Many readers have written to me along the following lines:
Dear Eccles, I have been selected as prospective Conservative/Labour/Liberal Democrat/Buckethead candidate for East Cheam (or it may be Walmington-on-Sea), but I am worried that my religious views will make it impossible for me to succeed. Strangely enough, I am one of those Christians who basically believe in God, Christ, Sin, Redemption, etc. Can you advise me?
This is tricky, but I will try and explain what you must do. Well, you could become a DUP MP, where religious principles are actively encouraged, but this may not be possible in an English region such as Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh. So another strategy is required.
Tim Farron
Tim Farron MP takes part in a charismatic service.
I also get letters from Muslims saying that they want to be Mayor of London but happen to believe in killing the infidels in order to end up with 72 virgins in Paradise. I explain to them that this is not a problem, as nobody will dare question them on the details of their faith. If they happen to take the Koran seriously then the BBC, Guardian, and other left-wing media will simply congratulate themselves on their tolerance of diversity.
So, how should the ambitious Christian proceed? Well, take someone like Theresa May or Michael Gove as your model. Support same-sex marriage, don't stick your neck out on pro-life issues, and remember that ONE DAY, PRACTISING CHRISTIANITY WILL BE ILLEGAL AGAIN, AND YOU WILL NEED TO MAKE A STRONG NOT-GUILTY PLEA.
Theresa May
"Only joking, folks!" Theresa May pretends to be a Christian.
Of course you will be asked by religious experts such as little Owen Jones of the Guardian, "But you're a Christian. Didn't God destroy Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible? Doesn't that mean you want to burn all gays?" Or maybe "You're a Christian, aren't you? You don't like dismembering babies? What kind of monster are you, denying a woman's right to choose!"
Luckily, we have the modern Catholic Church as our model here. Fr James Martin LGBTSJ is our teacher on matters of homosexuality, and we now know from this great man that the rainbow brigade are above criticism, and should be allowed to do whatever they want, with whomever they want, whenever they want, without any comments being made. If you have not brought up your kid to be a transgendered gay activist with an interest in bondage and doing naughty things with geese (any Jesuit college can provide details) by the age of 8, then YOU ARE A BIGOT.
Hey, I've just received an invitation from Fr James Martin!
Likewise, Pope Francis in his unparalleled wisdom has appointed "philosopher" Nigel Biggar - who doesn't think that babies are human - to the Pontifical Academy for Life. (Sorry, this is often a satirical blog, but that appears to be a FACT.) The remaining members of the PAL are not yet finalized, but we expect that Peter Sutcliffe the Yorkshire Ripper and Gerry Adams of the IRA will become influential members.
"Help! It's someone from the Pontifical Academy for Life!"
Which brings us neatly back to politics. Good luck with your career, and, if you are asked about your beliefs, give a light laugh and say "Oh, we don't worry too much about moral issues in the modern church!" It's the only way you'll succeed.
Monday, 12 June 2017
Pope Francis approves electronic tagging for clergy
As reported by Rorate Caeli, the Vatican is taking steps to keep its cardinals under control; if one of them is absent from Rome he is asked to let the Secretariat know where he is.
map of Kent
Sensors indicate that Cardinal Burke is hiding somewhere round here.
In phase 2, it is planned to extend this to all clergy, with the introduction of electronic tagging using the TAGLETM: this is a white collar worn round the neck, and if you see any priests so dressed, you can be sure that they are already under surveillance.
The Vatican's main computer AMORIS (Analytical Machine for Organizing Radically Innovative Services) will process the data transmitted by priests and bishops worldwide, and flag up any signs of "rigid" practice. For example, the tag will be able to detect whether the priest is facing east for an extended period of time, and warn the Pope that an Extraordinary Form Mass may be taking place. In addition, a smoke detector fitted to the tag will record the excessive use of incense.
EF Mass
A rigid priest. No chance of promotion if this gets out!
Priests who wish their masses to find favour with the Pope are recommended to move around a lot, perhaps in some form of liturgical dance, as the tag will detect this and transmit a signal saying "It's OK, this priest is one of us". Also the tag will detect (and approve) the use of hymns with particularly banal rhythms and harmony, especially those containing clapping and words such as "Ch-ch". On the other hand, sounds of Gregorian chant will set off a persistent high-pitched whistling from the tag. You have been warned, Father.
Fr Rosica
"Nothing can block the signal!" A model shows off the Rosica version.
Saturday, 10 June 2017
The Book of Brexodus, Chapter 10
Continued from Chapter 9
1. So Maysis took the advice of the prophets Comres, Mori and Yougov, and called an election, that she might defeat Jeremiah of the Corbynites and finally lead the children of Bri-tain out of the land of EU-gypt.
May and Buckethead
Maysis seeketh advice from the Lord of Bucket-head.
2. For her counsellors had spoken unto her, saying, "Thou art a ghastly old trout, but surely Jeremiah is even worse?"
3. "For he hath friends among such as Gerald of the Adamites, who slay the widow and the orphan; not to mention many other Terrorites."
4. "Go forth and win. Thou canst not do worse than Cam-aaron, he who is now gone to a better place. Or at least, one that pays better."
Corbyn and marrow
Jeremiah goeth out to meet the Maronites.
5. So Maysis wrote an epistle, that is called Manifesto, in which she promised to be Strong and Stable.
6. Although she later changed her mind, especially when she sought to raise taxes upon the old and demented,
7. And Jeremiah wrote his own epistle, in which he promised wondrous gifts to the Many and not the Few.
8. At which the Few were exceeding wrathful, as they would have to pay for them, if anyone ever did.
9. Moreover, Jeremiah was aided by an abbot called Diane, known for her skill with numbers, who explained that she would appoint seventy-six million policemen to protect the children of Bri-tain.
10. That is, everyone in Bri-tain would henceforth be a policeman, and Diane would import a few million more from the land of I-sis to make up the numbers.
And the people of Bri-tain spake, saying, "Ave, ave, ave, what is all this, then?"
11. We need not speak long of other famous men, such as Farron of the Libdemites, he who abandoned his faith on learning that that following the Lord's commandments was a vote-loser.
12. Nor on the fate of the Ukipites, who had spoken for many years saying "We must leave EU-gypt."
13. For the reply came, "Yes, the 50th article is already triggered, and now all we need to know is, who shall go forth to drink the Pharaoh Juncker under the table?"
Farage and Juncker
There cometh the only man who can drink more than Juncker.
14. At last the big day came, and the children of Bri-tain voted, saying "Alas, we hate the lot of you."
15. So Maysis, she who was hated slightly less than Jeremiah, remained as the leader.
16. But she spake sweet words unto the Dupites of Ire-land, saying, "Cleave unto me, for surely ye must hate Jeremiah and his Terrorite friends." And it was so.
17. And all the Corbynites spake out with one voice. saying, "But the Dupites hate Catholics!" And the reply came back, "Well, so do you!"
No popery
A Dupite banner (on loan from Cardinal Burke).
18. And the Corbynites spake out again, saying, "Yet the Dupites love not the marriage that is gay!" And the reply came back, "Neither do thy friends the Muslimites!"
19. At this the Corbynites despaired, saying, "The people have spoken, but they have not yet demonstrated in the streets, so the result is invalid."
20. And still the clock ticked on, towards the day when May-sis must send people forth to drink with Juncker.
Continued in Chapter 11.
Friday, 9 June 2017
Is sin objectively disordered or just differently ordered?
Is bonkers heretic ought Martin laicised who James SJ completely a be to!
At first sight that sentence doesn't make much sense, and some old-fashioned readers might even say that it was out of order - disordered, even. But no, according to modern Catholic thinking it is merely differently ordered, and that is just as good!
James Martin SJ
Haterf Mesaj Irantm JS (a man in Holy Disorders).
We don't talk about Good and Evil, or Sin, any more. In the New Jesuit Bible "The wages of sin is death" becomes "The wages of being differently ordered is a nice job in Rome." Likewise, "Deliver us from evil" becomes "Let us be accepted as differently ordered."
We all love Fr James Martin LBGTSJ, the Pope's special adviser on comedy, morality, and theology; writer of as many books as Dan Brown (although they are not as spiritually nourishing, I'm afraid). We are grateful to sunny Jim for changing the vocabulary of modern religion.
untidy room
We don't say "Tidy your room," we say "How nice, it's differently ordered."
Let's have some more wisdom from the New Jesuit Bible. Job's "God has turned me over to the ungodly and thrown me into the clutches of the wicked" is certainly not merciful, indeed it is disgustingly judgemental. It now becomes "God has introduced me to some rather charming Jesuits, who are teaching me a differently ordered lifestyle."
One final example from the Book of Proverbs: "A false witness will not go unpunished, and whoever pours out lies will perish." Fr James and his team find this passage particularly offensive, and have rendered it as "There is no such thing as objective truth, merely a differently ordered presentation of the facts. This is perfectly fine with us."
A |
: a ridiculous number of bottles over $120, probably the majority of the list over $80, far too few bottles under $60, only a handful under $40. Clearly, it was compiled to serve the far-more-ambitious original upstairs fine-dining concept, which didn't fly and has been scaled back to a few "After Five" dishes and a table d'hote menu served on both floors. (There's also a hefty roster of high-end booze, like 21-year-old single malts at $30/pour, also presumably assembled for the horribly mistimed luxe upstairs concept.)
I'd love to see a more sensible wine list assembled to suit the cafe menu, something along the lines of what Deborah Hansen did at Coda. Silvertone and the Franklin Cafes have shown how attractively this can be done, too. It's annoying to only have a handful of by-the-glass options to go with under-$20 entrees.
2. re: MC Slim JB
My theory is that valet parking is really hurting the downtown spots. Who wants to pay $20 just for the privilege of spending more on an expensive dinner. South End and suburban neighborhood restaurants are faring better.
1. re: almansa
On the other hand, there are plenty of us who take the T and Marliave is just a block or two from Park Street.
3. re: fmcoxe6188
Have to disagree, bar hopped a couple of times both in the South End and downtown hitting some of the high end and other places and attendance was LOW everywhere on numerous nights. Places like Silvertone being the one exception.
2. I have a special place in my heart for Marliave. This does not sound good. I went for lunch on a Friday and same thing. Not a whole lot of patrons. I don't want to see this place close, again.
my blog: http://thegeminiweb.com
1. They definitely need to upgrade their drink making corps. A friend asked for a sazerac once and the bartender that night almost poured him a shot of the Sazerac-branded rye. Luckily, we were able to stop him before that happened and straighten that out.
Another issue that I see happening a lot are the bartenders making classic drinks like the sazerac, shaken instead of stirred. A sazerac with a 1" head of foam is just not pleasant.
10 Replies
1. re: avial
Had the same problem when a weekend bartender had never heard of a Ward Eight. I think Marliave actually sits in Ward 8.
1. re: Bob Dobalina
Yep, very hit or miss. My gross observation: the girls are skilled, the boys not so much.
1. re: MC Slim JB
They should do an exchange program with Deep Ellum.
1. re: the modern serf
Deep Ellum does seem to have a glut of female bartenders. I have not seen the guy from B-Side at Marliave for a quite some time, maybe not since last year even.
2. re: avial
was at the new sel de la terre on wednesday. they pre-make their negronis in batches, "because they're so hard to make." bartender also was clueless about the wines by the glass.
no rush to head back there, as much as i enjoy the waterfront location.
1. re: hotoynoodle
Endlessly amazing to me how such a simple drink as the Negroni -- equal parts of three ingredients -- is so endlessly screwed up around here. We're not asking you to make the original Don the Beachcomber Zombie Punch, people! It's child's play!
1. re: MC Slim JB
and ya know, it's not like they position themselves as a kids' bar and i was asking for something esoteric. i didn't *say* anything, but i knew my face had the look of "are you f****ing kidding me?"
1. re: MC Slim JB
Equally lame at the Mandarin Oriental bar... bartender had to look it up, then still proceeded to make it wrong. It's like they don't trust that it could possibly be as simple as it is.
2. I went to Marliave for my first time a couple of weeks ago. The oysters were great, but the room was completely empty on a Friday night at 8:30 There were 8 people at the bar and not one table in the dining room (although I didn't go all the way upstairs). The room looked great, the menu was very reasonable and the bartender was very friendly. I hope they stick around for a while so I can try it out for a real dinner.
1. This is worrisome, as I really love Marliave.
I have to agree on two points: The place is never packed and the cocktails are just okay.
I do love the food, though. Some items are better than others, but all of their sandwiches and many of the dinner options are excellent. The Mrs Marliave (a croque madame) is excellent. As is the pulled pork sandwich, which is no longer on the menu. For dinner, the yankee pot roast and monday night gnocchi are both excellent.
Bummer. I hope they make it.
1. My only visit was during RW but the service was unforgivably awful and the food less than impressive.
The horrible service in a much less than less than full restaurant suggested to me some serious problems, unfortunately.
Sad, as I'd love that space and those folks to make it.
1. Umm, when do the front doors to the 150-unit luxury condo tower that is 15' from Marliave open? I would imagine they would at least hold out for the new neighbors.....
4 Replies
1. re: pierce
I think a better question is how many of the condos have sold?
1. re: almansa
I don't think they're selling well at all.
OT but maybe of interest...both Chacarero and LaGrassa's have mentioned to me they may add Sat hours if the building opens and has decent occupancy. Make it easier for the non downtowners to try these places.
1. re: 9lives
Yeoch. Gotta think a bunch of those places, even with all the restaurants, etc. in the SE are also selling kinda slow.
2. I work in the area, and always end up at silvertone for an after work drink over marliave though I am not sure why.
4 Replies
1. re: cassoulady
Because Slivertone has a lively atmosphere and Marliave feels ghostly?
I love the rarebits at Marliave, and the tiny raw bar is a fun place to spend a few hours, but it feels cold to me and I *never* think of it when I'm in the area.
1. re: yumyum
That's funny, I always think the opposite when I'm in the area because Silvertone usually feels a bit too crowded and loud for a decent conversation. Is it fair to say I hope the Marliave catches on a bit, but not *that* much?
1. re: moglia
A restaurateur's dream - catch on but not too much.
2. re: yumyum
I think you may be right yumyum, after work I am often just with drinkers not eaters and silvertone fits the bill.
2. I'd really love to see them make the first floor more of a lounge/bar. They should open up the tables for drinks only if people want. One thing that holds me back when I consider going is that if I want to go there with a group larger than 3, I worry that we'll have an issue finding seats all together at either the upstairs or downstairs bar (not to mention that it's awkward to talk to people when sitting at a long bar).
1. I was just told by a friend that they put in a little patisserie downstairs and now have some al fresco seating too.
11 Replies
1. re: StriperGuy
Yes, I just heard from the horse's mouth, Scott Herritt, that their outdoor seating opened yesterday, along with their patisserie, which will turn into their oyster bar after 5 PM.
1. re: CreativeFoodie42
I can confirm- was there last night. Out door seating was cute-though will be right next door to the out door seating for whatever new restaurant goes into the condo complex.
Oyster bar was open in the bottom level.
1. re: fmcoxe6188
Thanks for the report, fmcoxe6188. Definitely will check that out.
I guess the paving I saw them doing of the street was for the outdoors section. I bet its nice.
Still amazed, though, at the number of variations and rooms in a single joint: downstairs, upstairs, two bars, raw bar, and now a patisserie and an outdoors area.
1. re: rlove
They do have a lot going on there. I sat downstairs last night- in the Patisserie because the bar was crowded, and the upstairs was closed for a private party. The poor bartender downstairs didnt have a bar downstairs, so had to keep running upstairs to get us drinks. But the full menu and bar is available down in the patisserie after 5. Strange set up though.
I will say- our bartender was extremely nice, and well informed. I neglected to get his name. And it was good to see Scott Herritt fully involved- he delivered both of our appetizer items and I saw him playing host as well.
1. re: rlove
Actually, I walked by there today --the outdoor patio section isn't on the street, but on the upper level where you walk into the main entrance. Looked nice, esp since it wasn't right on street level.
1. re: twentyoystahs
I walked by tonight too and I thought the outdoor seating looked very nice...screened off with some plants.
Btw, anyone remember "Hank's ye old Province Pub??" Looks like they are getting a facelift.
2. re: rlove
Plus, the upstairs contains two rooms. So that's four rooms (plus a patio), which house two bars, a raw bar, and a patisserie, on three floors. That is a lot going on.
I like the upstairs rooms a lot. I think they're warm and charming--not cold at all. The tables are well-spaced, which might make it feel less cozy than Grotto, but eating elbow to elbow isn't the kind of cozy I like. The food I had on my one visit was very good, but I'd love to see the cocktails taken up a notch or two. I'd be happy if they brought the bellini over from Grotto for starters.
1. re: pollystyrene
Maybe I need to check out the "up" upstairs room. I thought the mid-level one (above the bottom bar but below the top dining room) was sort of cold but that may have b/c there was hardly anyone else in there on a sat night and our voices were echoing off the walls ;)
3. re: fmcoxe6188
That alley is going to be hopping once the companion restaurant goes in! Wow.
1. re: Bob Dobalina
Yeah it is!! Does anyone know what the new restaurant will be? The condos look gorgeous....
2. I just heard that they're doing $1 oysters on weekends; wish I'd known that before I went out tonight.
1 Reply
1. re: MC Slim JB
It runs Tuesday - Saturday from 10pm to 12:30pm or close depending on the night I think.
2. I've been there a couple of times - i've always enjoyed my dinner but the cocktails have been kind of underwhelming. The thing that really gets me, though, is their location -- the geographic center of downtown boston, but their front door is next to a grease Dumpster.
1. So I was in that area on Friday night, around 7pm and decided to give it a try. The downstairs cafe area was about half full with diners, but the bar was full. Service was very friendly and knowledgeable. I didn't take a look upstairs to see what was doing, so I don't know how crowded that was.
I can tell you that we had an excellent meal and we were very happy with the quality of the food and the price/value ratio.
My husband had the Foie Gras appetizer and I had the mussels appetizer, and we both had the Gnocchi with Sunday Gravy for an entree. The mussels were a nice portion, maybe 15 large plump ones, in a delicious garlicky tomato and wine broth. The Foie Gras was delicious. Two nice rounds of very succulent, melt-in-your-mouth rich goodness.
The Gnocchi were outstanding. They were big and light and very tasty. Served in a lovely "gravy" with big chunks of lamb and beef which were stewed in tomato/wine sauce. It was a large portion, too, but not obscenely washtub-large. However, we were certainly too full for any dessert.
The bill for the two of us, with one beer, came to $55.00. I thought that was quite reasonable. Overall, we will definitely come back, as it's nice to have a good place to eat in that area, which needs dining choices desperately.
10 Replies
1. re: mwk
I think/hope that if Marliave just turns itself int Grotto+ they might just make it.
Grotto is not alta cucina italiana, thought sometimes it does achieve those heights, but I am just mad for it's homey charm. If they can just warm up Marliave, upstairs and down a tad and keep 'em coming, they might just make it.
1. re: StriperGuy
I don't get it. I've eaten in both Grotto and the Marliave and thought both were barely mediocre.
1. re: StriperGuy
I don't understand what's insufficiently warm and cozy about Marliave. The bar is a gorgeous room that always feels really comfortable to me.
1. re: BarmyFotheringayPhipps
I find the white room of the bar area a bit stark. Particularly when it is only 30% full. Honestly feels a bit institutional to me. Grotto on the other hand is so warm and cozy. I walk down those stairs and just go aaaah.
1. re: StriperGuy
I agree. The whiteness of the room makes it feel like a bathroom, sorta.
No way it's cozy, IMO.
Grotto is "cozy" in a overcrowded basement kinda way.
1. re: C. Hamster
Too funny, cause I almost said "bathroom like" but edited my post after the fact to be kind.
1. re: C. Hamster
TOTALLY agree w. Striper and Hamster --Grotto and Marliave are on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to the cozy factor. i.e Grotto --cozy and comfortable; Marliave --cold and institutional....
Thought the food was ok at Marliave --the rarebits really really good....but again, not running back anytime soon.
1. re: twentyoystahs
I wonder if the issue is perhaps also the lack of proper lighting in the corners of the place where it tends to get very dark. Perhaps software, more yellow lighting would make the place less stark.
2. re: BarmyFotheringayPhipps
I agree, I find Marliave very comfortable while Grotto has a funky, "hey look, I painted the basement ceiling red" kind of feel. Fun, but less inviting to my taste than Marliave.
1. re: BobB
I stopped into Marliave for a drink and the "cheese toast" appetizer this winter. Both were good, but I am one of those people who have real warm and fuzzy feelings about the old Marliave with the booths and patina, the out-of-the way location, and cold snowy Christmas-time lunches. It was never just about the food. I just can't get over the changes and the starkness. Saving the tin ceilings just didn't do it. I was looking for some remnant of the past and have no burning desire to go back, although I wouldn't avoid it either.
2. A few comments.
I've really liked Marliave in the past, so much so we hosted a major event there. The staff, food and drinks were excellent and every guest had a wonderful time. Really. It was totally great.
That being said there's a few things that just don't work for me there:
1. To my knowledge most, if not all, of the bartenders that had the skills have moved on to other restaurants/bars that are busier so they could make some money. The lack of patrons does not equal decent pay for tip earning folks.
2. Scott, although a nice guy, has some control freak in him and was a little tough to work with when planning our events menu. The staff was great and did a lot of things to incorporate what we wanted for the night even if Scott wasn't open to it originally.
3. Two brings me to three - the music selection. Holy cow, does it suck. It's the same iPod with oldies tunes over and over and over again. And they aren't great, lost and found oldies from obscure but excellent artists - this is crappy top 40 oldies. On a short loop. I don't need to hear "Run Around Sue" 3 times in one visit. Has anyone else noticed that? I know the staff has and their hands are tied.
I REALLY wish Marliave well and want them to succeed. The space is great, the food is good (or has been whenever I've eaten there) and I think it'd be good to have another bar where a decent cocktail can be mixed (assuming they regain talent in that department).
But like others on this thread - 8 customers a night is not going to get them there.
Here's hopin'!
P.S. The alley is an obstacle, but not the end of the world. Freemens in NYC is down a alley but there's usually a wait out the door for it anytime I've been there. If Marliave had a following the alley could be a draw.
1. I really like both Marliave and |
was the grand finale of all four movies.
At the very end you see Katniss sitting on a picnic blanket holding a baby, and a little ways away you see Peter with what is obviously his and Katniss’s small daughter. It’s all warm sunlight and glowing bugs and waving grasses and peace and happiness.
Katniss gazes down at the baby and says some stuff about nightmares and how yes, she has them too, and what she does about them. And then the movie ends.
It felt sappy and a bit corny. It didn’t fit with the raw, energetic Katniss character that had developed over the four movies. It did communicate that at last she was at peace, and at last she had chosen her love: Peeta.
As an aside, I was bummed that she didn’t choose Gale. Peeta always felt like the weaker character.
So the series ended with peace and light and color. I like happy endings, so that was good. But like I already said, it was a bit over-the-top sticky sweet. Kind of a let-down as a finale.<|endoftext|>‘Hostiles’ with Christian Bale is the slowest movie in the West
December 28, 2017 Updated: January 4, 2018 1:01pm
Somebody has been watching lots of Westerns: The sky that begins a few feet off the ground. The red rock. The courage. The silence. The bad food. The people wearing the same clothes forever. And nobody has any luggage.
Somebody has been loving Westerns, too, but loving them perhaps a little too much. Excessive reverence has a way of lengthening pauses between lines of dialogue, and sometimes between words. Writer-director Scott Cooper invests every last moment in “Hostiles,” even minor encounters between minor characters, with solemnity. This is not garden-variety seriousness we’re talking about, but a deep gravity and earnestness that denies even the possibility of humor’s existence.
This makes “Hostiles” something of a slog, but a movie-literate slog containing some impressive scenes. Thus, we get Rosamund Pike as a nice woman, living in the middle of nowhere, who is home-schooling her daughters one day, when her husband runs in and says that the Comanches are about to attack them. Them, personally. There’s no village, just one little house. What follows is a slaughter, the kind of bloodshed that John Ford could never show back in the day. It’s shocking and takes you straight into the terror of living in that particular place and time.
Meanwhile, over at the nearby government fort, Capt. Blocker (Christian Bale), a veteran Indian fighter, is assigned to take a small team of soldiers and escort an ailing Cheyenne Indian chief, Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi), back to his homeland in Montana. Blocker doesn’t like Indians all that much, and Yellow Hawk isn’t a big fan of the white settlers. But they’re all stuck together, and guess who they run into on their journey? Rosalie (Pike), a traumatized woman who has just witnessed the murder of her husband, two daughters and an infant baby.
That’s the set-up of “Hostiles,” and the rest of the movie is about the struggle to make Montana, in the face of internal division and possible Comanche attack. Apparently being home on the range, in those days, amounted to long, long stretches of nothing happening, interspersed with brief spasms of violence and horror.
One could say Cooper takes his time, but that would be understating the situation. Better to say that Cooper makes Liv Ullmann look like Michael Bay. Have you ever seen a movie directed by Liv Ullmann? If it’s subtitled, you can watch it on fast forward and not miss a single nuance. Cooper is even slower than that. Characters think before they talk. They think a long time. They think before they ask a cliched question — such as: How did you feel the first time you killed somebody? And then they think forever before answering: Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.
There’s a thin line between depicting and inflicting misery, and “Hostiles” crosses the line with its dull characters, its almost-endless tedium and its nihilistic violence. The attempt seems to be to update the Western genre by respecting the traditions while emphasizing, in a modern way, the hardships and the racial conflicts. But the audience shares those hardships, while experiencing none of the poetry or grandeur that other Westerns often provide.
Indeed, there’s such overkill on the misery that when Pike starts shrieking in grief, bewailing the slaughter of her two daughters and infant child, you may find a little devil land on your shoulder with a smirk on its face. There’s only so much pawing at the earth that an actress can do before digging through to the other side, where tragedy meets comedy.
SNOOZING VIEWERWestern. Starring Christian Bale and Rosamund Pike. Directed by Scott Cooper. (R. 133 minutes.)
Mick LaSalle
Mick LaSalle
Movie Critic
The Chronicle Recommends<|endoftext|>It is kind of a relief after all these years feeling ashamed at how cowardly and spineless the Dems were, to find out that part of that cowardly outward appearance was in fact that mainstream Dems supported right wing economic policies. It hadn’t occurred to me.
And what passed for the spine of the Republicans was made up entirely of the zeal of the true believer, because now they are scared of something— The Donald— and they are showing themselves to be every bit as cowardly as the Dems have done in the past.
Worse, really, because what they are countenancing is outright corruption and anti-constitutional behavior. They all swore to uphold and defend the constitution. Each and every one of the members of Congress and the Senate who is now ignoring or abetting The Donald’s crimes is breaking their oath.<|endoftext|>Euro 2012 Quarterfinals: Bold Predictions for Germany vs. Greece
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Euro 2012 Quarterfinals: Bold Predictions for Germany vs. Greece
Joern Pollex/Getty Images
As the knockout stage begins at UEFA Euro 2012, Greece will be trying to replicate its magic from 2004 if it has any hope of defeating mighty Germany.
In the eight matches the teams have played in their history, Germany has never lost, winning five and drawing three. After breaking through the "Group of Death" in commanding fashion, Germany would be foolish to underestimate its opponent this late in the tournament.
Still, Greece will need a miracle if it plans on winning.
Here are some stories to watch moving forward.
Can Greece contain Germany's offense?
German attacker Mario Gomez has been fantastic in Euro 2012, notching three goals in three matches.
Flanked by adept passers Mesut Ozil and Bastian Schweinsteiger, Germany's offense has been an efficient machine.
Greece's coach, Fernando Santos, came up with an effective game plan to slow down Russia, but how will the team's defense fare against Germany?
Simply, Die Mannschaft is just stacked.
Outside of Ozil, Schweinsteiger and Gomez, Germany can also rely on Lukas Podolski and Lars Bender, as well as a potent bench.
Can Greece upset Germany?
Submit Vote vote to see results
Look for Germany to complete its passes early and come up with some nice schemes to pick apart Greece's overeager defense.
WIthout Giorgos Karagounis, who steps up for Greece?
Greek leader Giorgos Karagounis will not play in Friday's match against Germany because of a yellow card he received for diving late against Russia, his second of the tournament thus far.
While fans and critics can debate whether Karagounis deserved the yellow card, it will be on Greece to rally around its fallen star and pick up the broken pieces.
It has yet to happen in soccer, but Greece needs something akin to a Ewing Theory moment in order to knock out Germany.
Georgios Samaras finally came to play against Russia, and he will need an equally dominant performance if Greece has any chance of beating Germany tomorrow.
Vasilis Torosidis will have to come to play. He had some big games for Greece in the World Cup in 2010, and now, he will need to bear some of the load against Die Mannschaft.
Whether it is Samaras, Torosidis, Sotiris Ninis, Georgios Fotakis or someone else, Greece will need big contributions to put the pressure on Manuel Neuer and Germany's defense.
Can Germany dominate the game on both sides of the ball?
Die Mannschaft's ability to dominate possession and take the ball away from Greece will be crucial if it hopes to put the game away early.
The favorites have always had a hyper-efficient passing offense, and not much should change on Friday.
Look for Mats Hummels to come up big and stymie Greece's attack. The poised Neuer will anchor the defense and should find help all day from his back line.
Germany will play solid team defense and keep the ball with its primary playmakers like Ozil and Schweinsteiger. Clever passing will have Greece gasping for air down the stretch as its players try to keep up with Germany's offense.
Scoring early and wearing down the Greeks will be crucial for Germany on Friday.
What is the over-under for European financial jokes and allusions during the match?
This one is a little bit tongue in cheek, but Germany vs. Greece has all the political undertones to make this the most compelling match off the field.
Joern Pollex/Getty Images
Greece's financial woes have been well-chronicled over the years, while Angela Merkel's sentiments have been equally well-broadcasted.
The media will feast on this subtext, relishing that Merkel is expected to be in attendance on Friday.
The over-under here has to be incredible, as commentators around the globe will reference it consistently.
All jokes aside, Germany will be too much for Greece. Even if the Greeks had Karagounis, they would still be a long shot to upset Die Mannschaft.
Germany goes up early and never looks back, winning, 2-0.
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Visibility, Innocence, and Compassion
A recent news photo showed a policeman approaching a drowned refugee toddler. An interview with the toddler’s father revealed that he had lost his wife and both of their children in a desperate attempt to cross the Mediterranean to a Greek island. The image and the story work powerfully to make us aware of the plight of the many refugees worldwide who are desperately trying to move to a better life.
About 55 million people die worldwide, each year. We cannot grieve for all in the same way. We know little or nothing of most of them; we seldom know that they have passed away. The image and story above demonstrate how just a bit of visibility can increase our compassion for thousands of people. Because it is a toddler who died, we know that he is innocent of any wrongdoing that could have contributed to his demise. When we hear of war deaths, we may feel compassion for all involved, but particularly for non-combatants impacted by the violence.
Mass shootings are disturbing, but mass shootings of school students are particularly upsetting. And the death of so many Sandy Hook elementary students was especially shocking. The younger the victim, the greater the gut impact.
When we learn of a tragic death, the impact is greatest when the victim is young and innocent. How then is it that we have hardened our hearts to deaths of children killed in their mother’s womb? Surely one factor is that we do not see them, and seldom hear specific stories of their final days. An unborn child is close to invisible, so far as the public is concerned. Photos of the bodies of aborted children are decried as too gruesome for publication. Although abortion is legal, it is seldom spoken of publicly by those who chose to have one or perform one.
Euphemisms are also used to minimize the impact of an unborn child’s death. Fetus is used when the child is unwanted. Baby is invariably used when expectant parents look forward to a birth. Attention is directed to the mother’s health, despite the fact that a small minority of abortions are done to prevent injury to the mother. Implicit is the idea that an unborn child’s death is a minor tragedy compared to constraining a mother from making the decision to have the child killed. A common assertion is that since it is the woman’s body, it is the woman’s decision. That presumes that the baby is still a part of a woman’s body up until it is born. Even if that were the case, there exist perfectly healthy people with a profound belief that they need to have one of their limbs amputated because the limb “doesn’t belong to them”. It is a rare surgeon that agrees to remove a healthy limb. How then is it that surgeons are readily found to end the life of a healthy baby, even if we were to accept the idea that the baby is part of the woman’s body?
Sometimes visibility in the simplest sense of the word is not possible. We must exercise the ability to envision the unseen that is one of the great gifts we have as human beings. I urge each of us to use that ability to envision the plight of the innocent and persecuted so that we may feel the compassion needed to spur us toward creating a more just society.drowned toddler 2.jpg
Saturday, July 04, 2015
The Wisdom to Know the Difference
In 1941, Alcoholics Anonymous adopted a short prayer, a modified version of a longer one by Reinhold Niebuhr. The AA version goes as follows:
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Simple, but not easy.
It seems our culture has adopted the mantras to the effect that we can do whatever we dream of, whatever we work hard enough for, or whatever we pray fervently for. We are exhorted to give ourselves fully to our passions, our dreams, our desires. Age is not seen as a barrier, for “you are only as old as you think you are” or “you are only as old as you feel” with the implicit admonition to think and feel young.
Vast is the distance between those cliches and the reality that we experience most days. They are meant as encouragement, and perhaps they work that way for a while, but soon enough we learn that there are things that we cannot change. Many things. Oh, we can nibble away at the edges of some problems, and it is good to do so. We may eventually eliminate this or that burden, or at least lighten it significantly. Therefore, we can quite rightly ask God for the courage to change the things we can. But serenity will certainly elude us if we cling to the idea that we can change everything if we just believe more or try harder.
Enjoy your victories. Thank God for such courage and strength you have. Use them well. However, also gracefully accept the hard truth that there are things you will not change much, if at all. Seek the wisdom to discern how you should expend your finite energy, intelligence, skills, and persistence. You are finite, and you mock God if you pretend otherwise.
Of course you should enlist the help of our infinite, all powerful God. But it is foolish, even blasphemous, to suppose that he will do whatever you ask, just the way you ask for it, regardless of your motives. God is not a genie to be summoned by rubbing the bottle of heaven with your prayers. You are finite, and you mock God if you pretend otherwise.
If you are enjoying an abundance of energy, optimism, and blessing, I am glad for you. This essay may not seem much use. I encourage you to store away the basic precepts for reference should that blissful state diminish.
On the other hand, if you feel overwhelmed and unable to change anything at all, I ask only that you move one tiny step to effect change that may seem insignificant for now. During the depths of a clinical depression, I felt unable to exercise, despite the benefits it promised. I read an article that exhorted me to stand up, walk 5 minutes in one direction and then walk back. I did that. I did it again, and again as days passed. I soon found that I could go a bit further each day. Eventually I was walking for an hour each day during my lunch.
But perhaps you cannot take an actual step. I am reminded of public figures like Stephen Hawking that are trapped in a body that cannot move. Let the step be metaphorical. Choose to think of one thing that will change things for the better. Ask God for the courage to change something, even if it is a single thought. Ask Him to show you the truth about what you can do.
I write things like this primarily as reminders to myself. I post them so that perhaps a single other struggling soul will be helped by them.
Thursday, July 02, 2015
That Saved a Wretch Like Me
Last week, President Obama sang the first verse of Amazing Grace at a memorial service for those slain in the mass shooting at an African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina. Perhaps many of you will be aware that the song was written by John Newton, a slave trader who became a Christian. You may not know that Newton continued in the slave trade for a number of years following his confession of Christ as his savior. Newton wrote that first verse of Amazing Grace in 1848 while he waited for his ship to be repaired after a storm that so humbled him that he called out to God for mercy. Incredibly, that ship was rescuing Newton who had himself become a slave to a slave trader's African wife. Nonetheless, Newton went on to captain other slaving ships until ill health forced him to retire from the sea. Newton became a priest in the Episcopal Church in 1764. His reputation for wisdom and spiritual depth grew until he was embraced as a guide by many prominent people of his day, as well as by the church at large. Eventually, his eyes opened to the horror of the slave trade. He became active in the abolitionist movement.
The verse that President Obama sang was written by a man who had slain and tortured many African slaves while quelling revolts on his ships. Early in his career he was a notorious drunk and an enthusiastic participant in the common practice of raping the slave women. Even as he wrote "that saved a wretch like me" he was still early in the process of being redeemed and made Christlike. That process was ongoing when he died in 1807.
A Christian is not one who has turned to God and stopped sinning. A Christian is one who has turned to God because he is a sinner and needs a life time of grace from God to transform him into a likeness of Christ. Christians are aware that the transformation is not completed |
abad mention got my attention - but, inside, the teacher's words had me thinking.
Chabad goes to the middle of nowhere, eh?
Why are people who believe in a place called "nowhere" giving classes on spreading Judaism to the world?
What the teacher meant to say is that she believes in a place called nowhere, and - never having visited a Chabad emissary herself - finds it very hard to suggest to her class to do such a thing.
But, the teacher is right.
Going to the middle of nowhere is indeed one of the most absurd things I've heard.
The truth is, I wouldn't suggest it to anyone myself.
I mean, if you are nowhere, you're going to have a pretty hard time reaching out.
So how, then, does Chabad do it?
The truth is, Chabad goes to places that everyone else thinks is nowhere, and shows the world how it truly is a somewhere .
Chabad does this because we can't tolerate that there is an actual place - not a "nowhere!" - without Jewish influence. It is our strong adversity to this nowhere concept that sends us into farm towns, ice worlds, and the seemingly empty spaces of the world.
It's like we have some insider information. While everyone walks around ignoring the reality of all kinds of hometowns by referring to them as "nowhere", Chabad just knows that there must be a house to buy, a building to turn int a shul, and Jews to invite for Shabbos - all in this place that everyone insists doesn't exist.
You refer to a place as "nowhere," and the Chabadnik doesn't get it. Nowhere just isn't in the Chabad language.
Nowhere is when you're lost in a car, and your friend asks you on the phone, "where are you?" You're completely lost and have to admit, "I'm nowhere."
Nowhere is the place you were when you walk in past curfew and your mother asks, "where have you been?"
But, really, nowhere is what you call other places when you think that where you are is the only place that is worthy of being on the map.
When the Rebbe sent emissaries to various places, he was saying, "There exists a place. A somewhere. Go there."
Because Chabad doesn't go to the middle of nowhere, the most barren cities have Mikvahs.
Because Chabad doesn't go to the middle of nowhere, Jews in Fairfield, Iowa have pictures of the Rebbe next to their Menorah.
Because Chabad doesn't go to the middle of nowhere, there is Kosher meat for a growing Jewish "hick town."
Because Chabad doesn't go to the middle of nowhere, you can be stranded anywhere in the world and still have a place for Shabbos.
Because Chabad doesn't go to the middle of nowhere, a Shliach has to tell his visiting ambassadors to take a left at "Conshohocken Rd."
Around the world, Chabad emissaries are uprooting the notion of nowhere, even among the cities own inhabitants.
Dave has been living in his small southern town for quite some time now. Although he likes the quiet life, he often things about moving to a somewhere, a city bubbling with more life - and certainly more Jewish life. One day, he walks into the local dry cleaners and finds a Rabbi picking up his suit. They get to taking, and - you know the rest of the story. Later, he reports how awesome it was to run into a bearded Jew in the middle of nowhere. He recalls that, at that very moment, he realized that his little hometown is a somewhere. He doesn't have to move to New York now. There is a Chabad house right around the corner - he aint goin', well, nowhere.
In Eugene, Oregon, a Rabbi teaches the Parsha to college students. In Bellingham, Washington, Jews are being treated to the most celebratory holiday parties. In Guatemala City, traditional parents are able to send their children to a fun Jewish camp. In Aiya Napa, Cyprus, Israeli's are hearing Kiddush for the first time. In Amersfoort, Netherlands, family purity is becoming a reality for many Jewish women. In Omaha, Nebraska, Jews are getting answers to their biggest questions.
Meanwhile, an uninformd teacher in Israel is referring to such places as "nowhere."
Someone needs to clue her in to the fact that there are thousands of these so-called-nowheres that have Chabad houses open for visitation 24 hours, 365 days of the year.
When our Rebbe sent the first Shliach to a place without a synagogue, without a Jewish school, and maybe even without a normal grocery store, the newly designated Shliach would pause in a moment of deep contemplation, unable to imagine the vacant scene in which he would soon arrive.
"Wow," he would think to himself as his eyes widened, "the Rebbe is really sending me somewhere."
From our own living rooms to the expanive fields in the south to the crowded streets in Bejing, the Rebbe's vision made every square inch of this world into a place where magic happens. He forced us to change the way we think of a happening place, a place worth being inhabited. He challenged us to spread holiness and give, no matter where we make our steps. The Rebbe saw a world where there was a home for every Jew - so that, when a Jew finds himself feeling like he is in the middle of life's nowhere, he will still find a Chabad house - somewhere.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
No Synopsis
Neverending sunray on the water outside the Bais Chana classroom
I’ve been back from my trip with Bais Chana in Key Largo for a few days now.
Or, at least, I’m kind of back.
I haven’t quite landed in Crown Heights yet.
I’m hanging in pendulum, my feet almost touching the ground.
I’m looking around, and can’t understand why everyone is rushing around and acting normally when I just went through something like this.
The pressure to write a synopsis about the experience is present, but for my own sanity – I just can’t. I still feel a little delicate, my insides are speeding every second to make more room to take it all in.
I want to say I’m a changed person, but the finality in those words leave out the reality that this new journey will continue onward.
I just need to be a little quiet.
I can’t spill this one out.
And besides, there’s no synopsis when it comes to capturing a soul journey.
There’s no synopsis when it comes to reaffirming the pressing need to teach truth.
There’s no synopsis when it comes to realizations of just how alive my people are.
In short, I feel as though I experienced something close to a revelation that took place on a humble desert mountain over 3,000 years ago.
In all my steps, my words, and my writing henceforth, these past two weeks will surely find a home.
It’s with me, wherever I go.
So let’s go.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Trauma Aboard Flight 1016
I, too, am a woman. Or so I thought.
He’s just your average college dude.
School team hat. Beaten jeans and sneakers. Blonde hair.
He sits to my right.
He is a boy.
I am a girl.
This girl and this boy are on flight 1016, both excited for their arrival in Miami.
They are sitting way too close for comfort, and this trip’s battle over the armrest takes an easy loss on the side of the girl.
We’re in the air.
The boy spreads out as much as he can, reclines his seat, and shifts his hat to cover his eyes.
Something’s holding me back from relaxing.
No, not something.
A boy is holding me back from relaxing.
I’m not accustomed to sprawling out and resting in such proximity to a college lad.
So this girl is sitting upright.
There is no plan of action when you're stuck in 5 square feet and thousands of feet in the air. She'll just have to deal.
Soon enough, the young mister starts moving.
Ever so nonchalantly, our young man pulls out a magazine from his stuff.
And, no, it's not Newsweek.
They call it "Men's Health Magazine."
Apparently, a tan and barely clothed model in an extremely creative position has something to do with men's health.
I glance over. I have to see the expression on his face.
Is he seriously about to peruse through this magazine with a young lady seated right beside him?
This girls cheeks are probably a little flushed.
So he opens it.
The flashy pages totally grab my glances in this empty, crammed, and temporary space.
And now, every time he turns the page, I naturally look over…almost against my will.
The pictures. The vulgar headlines.
This men's magazine is totally dedicated to the objectification of women.
Women - for men’s viewing pleasure.
I am utterly amazed.
Does this boy not realize?
I, too, am a woman.
I am a feminine being.
I have the same body parts
I may even wear the same lipstick.
And the boy sits beside the girl, turning the pages ever so casually.
This guy is acting as if I am a separate creation. As if I have nothing to take personally.
He is effacing my gender.
The lack of embarrassment is startling.
How could he not be uncomfortable?
I have within me all those things that put women in men’s magazines.
And, who does he think he is – making me aware of this?
Who does he think he is – exposing me to this?
Aisle 21 has never been the scene of so much squirming. I am cringing from within.
This girl wants to cry.
On a flight to Miami, I am forced to face the harsh reality of the nature of secular usage of the female body, the truths of our all-too-often shameless society, and the horrors of a world with no respect for boundaries.
As I sat in 21E, this girl realized that people have become all too comfortable with their own perversions.
There’s no such thing as “behind closed doors” anymore.
And not just that, but our young fellow has lost touch of the world. He doesn’t even realize he’s sitting next to a woman.
When he opened the magazine, I became an object.
That was the only way he could open the magazine without being guilt-ridden, without it feeling wrong.
After all, who opens a men’s magazine with provocative pictures while seated an inch away from a young lady?
This girl feels a little taken advantage of.
She feels a loss of innocence.
And all because of your average college dude.
School team hat. Beaten jeans and sneakers. Blonde hair.
He sits to my right.
He is a boy.
I am an object.<|endoftext|>helping guys get it up
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The Issue Remains
Unfortunately the comments in the blog post have veered away from the issue of copyright into heated discussion of whether Pinterest should censor nudity so 5 year old children aren’t scarred for life. Also, there is plenty of gushing about how wonderful the site is, and how awful all the “haters” are that complain about the “free advertising”:
Very good question????? The people should be happy that we pin their websites, It’s free advertisement for them. Wonder why they have to get silly about it!!!
This is a very common view of “pinners”. They feel that “pinning” is a societal and financial benefit and that everyone’s goal in life is to merely gather links to their work. That their infringement of copyrighted works is somehow absolved by the promise of incoming traffic. These, of course, are false assumptions. For one (not that a link or credit frees a user from legal charges) the majority of pins do not link back to the original site, so even if the owner was fine with their work being pinned in return for promotion, it is unlikely that will actually occur. Second, this “free advertising” claim seems to be based on the idea that everyone is out to sell a product and they desire as much traffic as possible. However, every image is not placed online to encourage sales of a product. People may have personal blogs, where they detail their doings to their friends, and may not appreciate their images being “pinned” where it can be used in a commercial context, like on a pinboard of a travel agency, or even embedded from Pinterest onto someone else’s blog or site, using the Pinterest embed tool on every image page. People like myself, may license their work as stock content, and a “pinner”, deciding to pin my work which then suffers the fate of the above, can devalue my work, and lower my income by their non-licensed usage. Would a “pinner” like it if I took their car for a spin as long as I got it washed and filled it up on the way back? They should be happy, right?
Also, there is the following argument:
so you’re saying if i find a recipe i like and i want to pin the photo of the end result, i should wait… email the website… hope for a reply back and then and only then, pin the photo of the food…. because i should have their permission before pinning it??? That defeats the whole purpose of pinning! If I was doing this in analogue mode, I’d be cutting pics out of a magazine… not emailing the magazine and asking permission!
Unfortunately, the situations are not analogous. By buying the magazine, you purchased a personal use license, essentially, to the content, where you may transform your physical copy as you like. Copying someone elses work to the Pinterest servers for the world to see is reproducing and publishing a work without having the rights to do so. Putting “Yeah!” in the comments section does not qualify as “fair use”.
They may have changed a bit of wording, but the terms are still basically the same when it comes to claiming rights to the work that is “pinned”:
To put in plain English, when you upload or “pin” an image to their servers, you are agreeing that you have the permissions to do so, and that (per the terms higher in the article) that you are able to grant to Pinterest a royalty free license for the works. Which, unless you are pinning something under a “Creative Commons” license, or pinning something you created, you cannot do. You cannot grant rights to others on works that you find on the internet. It is the right of the works creator to determine when and where their work may be used, especially in a commercial manner, like Pinterest (and they’re going to make money off of the content they have no rights to, at some point).
So, when a user pins something that they do not have the rights to, and they get sued because the owner found it being used illegally on a site somewhere, and traced it back to the pinning it on Pinterest, remember:
You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Pinterest and its officers, directors, employees and agents, from and against any claims, suits, proceedings, disputes, demands, liabilities, damages, losses, costs and expenses, including, without limitation, reasonable legal and accounting fees (including costs of defense of claims, suits or proceedings brought by third parties), arising out of or in any way related to (i) your access to or use of the Services or Pinterest Content, (ii) your User Content, or (iii) your breach of any of these Terms.
The user is on their own. People do sue. So do businesses. There is no shortage of blogs on the web complaining that they received letters from Getty Images for using a Getty represented work without permission. So, is Pinterest going to help the user when they decide to “pin” a pretty image from a blog, and find out that the blog user correctly licensed it from Getty, but the person who embeds it from the user’s page did not? Nope.
It was thought was that by making “smaller” display versions of the images being “pinned”, that Pinterest could hide behind a transformative “fair use” claim, even though the images were still very usable at around 700×700 pixels size. As a test, to see if they kept the IPTC information embedded in the file when they resized it, I pinned the same image, once from my computer, and once from my website. The image was a blue 2000×2000 pixel image. The image uploaded from my computer is available on the Pinterest site at a full 2000×2000 if you click through the pin link. That is interesting. People could use Pinterest as a host for stolen full size images by uploading them from their computer. This makes Pinterest like the Napster of images. It is fairly easy to save a full size image from a website, and then upload and republish it at full size. It’s also something to keep in mind when uploading personal images to their servers.
When you use the “embed” code generator on the page, it serves up a smaller 600×600 pixel image with the meta data cleaned out. When an image is “pinned” that does not need to be resized, the meta data seems to be retained, but their resizing function loses all the data that could actually point someone in the direction of the art creator.
Pinterest still has issues with stepping on the rights of content creators, via the unknowing actions of their users. Still, they put the policing responsibility on content creators, who may not even know their work is being stolen and used inappropriately.
I would have no issue with Pinterest (mostly, anyways), if it was an opt-in situation. Then, anyone wishing to participate could put a code on their site, or “Pin” buttons to facilitate Pinterest users, and the suppliers would be going in knowing where they stand. As it is, I believe they are still being irresponsible.
Here are some more articles that have appeared since last I wrote on the subject.
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13 Responses to Pinterest Announces New Terms
1. R. Kneschke says:
When Pinterest DOES remove meta data, do they remove the Copyright information in the IPTC fields as well?
I thought was was illegal after the DMCA act to remove copyright information? It is explained here for example:
Best regards,
• Sean says:
You can compare the examples to see if you see what you expect. I entered my meta data in Photoshop, and on it still appears on the full size versions, but not on the resized. Looking into PS more, I did not enter anything on the IPTC Extension tab which has a “Rights Related Information” section. Is that what you are referring to?
2. R. Kneschke says:
@Sean: I use a German version of Photoshop, but when I roughly translate it, there should be some fields called “copyright status” (e.g. you can choose “protected by copyright), “copyright information” and “URL for copyright information”.
3. Libby says:
Well here’s something interesting for you. If the service is so great, why did Pinterest CEO and co-founder Ben Silbermann completely delete his boards?
even though he was named #2 in a list of 21 must follow Pinterest users on Mashable
Mow Print-interest – ha that’s um, interesting. Almost as good as the idiot writer on the NY Times a couple of years ago who wrote that if you wanted wall art on the cheap for your home you should grab the images off Flickr and have them printed.
As far as their terms which are about as good as a crocheted soupbowl, how can a Pin user grant the rights to sublicense if they do not own the material? Let them answer that one.
Without the driveling cybermules sitting at home in their hair rollers and bunny slippers while providing (stealing) their content, they’ve got no site.
4. I put photos on my blog posts but do not consider myself a photographer and can certainly understand the issues of photographers when it comes to Pinterest. For me? It’s one of my top traffic producers and that’s sort of all that matters.
You did not mention this but websites can install code that basically let’s them opt out; delivering a message telling them that pinning is not allowed on that site. The code is on their site here:
Maybe that will help those who continue to share concerns about their TOS.
• Sean says:
Thanks for noting that again (I posted about that a few weeks ago). However, it is a poor solution as an opt-out which someone may not even know about, instead of an opt-in, for those that are interested.
5. Diane says:
For the sake of argument and to help clear this issue in my own head: A commenter (and you replied) used the magazine clipping as an analogy. So what makes finding an image through a Google search and saving it to my computer so different? And what about user contributed blogs like NotCot, Image*Spark or similar sites, are they exempt? Is it because Pinterest has achieved widespread popularity? I don’t understand where the line is drawn.
• Sean says:
“what makes finding an image through a Google search and saving it to my computer so different” – Actually, any image you view in your browser is “saved to your computer”. The difference here is, you have captured the image for your personal use on your personal machine. You are not uploading it to a 3rd party website, claiming you have the right to grant licensing for it, and republishing it for the world to view and then use in their own blogs and businesses, which is what happens when you use Pinterest.
“what about user contributed blogs” – I’m just one guy here. I don’t know about every site on the planet, and Pinterest is currently the more egregious infringer. So, the attention is drawn there.
6. sara says:
The “Napster of images” is definitely an interesting comparison. I’m not a photographer, but i would think that by watermarking images that are uploaded to the web you could potentially avoid most of these issues and get the marketing benefits give Pinterest is becoming so well known for.
• Sean says:
You “could” do all kinds of things. The question is, why should you have to.
Also, remember, it is not all about the “marketing benefits”. I don’t want my work being used by business, watermark or not, if they haven’t licensed it correctly. Nor do many others.
7. Sylvia says:
I am not really understanding all of this legal stuff. If this is bad news to everyday users — I guess to delete the app is the simplest thing to do. Most of us don’t want to break the law or steal anyones creation. I joined pinterest because my daughter in law did. I was informed that there were tons of ideas for gardens and home ‘to do’ideas. If sharing and re pinning could be a copyright infringement then whose fault is this really? When doing the above mentioned activity I would hope the owners/creators of the App made certain when a member shares or repins etc.the information or the ‘roots of origin’ of the item is always going to remain embedded or visible and keep moving with the image or shared information. I would also hope that the original contributors of any data to this app would do so (contribute)assured they are and will be the identified root contributor.
During the early stages of using this app there is so much to learn just on the use if it. As a user i enjoy the ideas and images for fun and pleasure the only profit for me and pribably most everyone else is discovering how many people in the world have similar likes and interest. It is a wonderful world and I love this app. Thank you please ignore if my comment does not apply to the topic.
• Sean says:
All of these “ideas for gardens and home” already exist out on the internet. Pinterest is not providing any content itself. Just try using google to find what you are looking for.
Leave a Reply<|endoftext|>Air Quality is the leading cause of the environmental burden of disease in Europe and a key public health concern in Wales. 40,000 additional deaths a year in Europe are attributable to poor air quality and research suggests that 143 deaths per year are caused by air pollution in Cardiff.
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Should I Get Compensated for Leftover Vacation Time?
Many families across the country take part in vacations during the summer months. It’s easier to travel as most children are out of school and the warmer weather is welcoming for those who want to spend time outdoors. Depending on the company and an employee’s status, vacation time may be offered or given so individuals can take part in time away from work. But want happens if an employee leaves a company, whether on their terms or not, and has vacation time left over?
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video The Scientific method? It has its failings, how can we make it better?
Ambjorn Naeve invented a neat solar device over 30 years ago. But the practical idea and the mathematical concept fell through the cracks in the system.
Once upon a time, well to do people did "science" privately for fun. Peer review was not the formalized process we have now. It was people copying each others experiments and making improvements. Nowadays, we in the rich world are more well to do than ever before but it seems this form of peer review has ended. Now, it seems everybody stands back and plays it safe, watching, consulting with "searches" and copying exactly some "proven" idea and doing nothing new.
I put up this video to try to shake people out of their complacency. The "scientific method" is not working as well as it should because people are not participating enough.
Lets get it back on track.
Who decides what gets researched and what gets ignored? Let us try to ask the right questions so that we can fix the problem and make the scientific method work better. For all of us.
Brian White
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kikazz3 years ago
Whoa, I didnt know that there was such conversation on this site. Awsome!
So uh you're saying society went "copy cat" on itself? Then you're asking we need a drastic change in the way we do things around here? I don't have doubts (on what I understand), but I can't comprehend what you're saying. I can't comprehend the video due to faulty speakers. It's just i got a headache so I can't think straight. Please clarify, thanks!
gaiatechnician (author) nutsandbolts_644 years ago
Since the video, they did research on the pump at Queens university Toronto and perhaps there is more going on in California. (Results were better than they expected) should have the latest info. It took over 2 decades for that to happen. Why so long? One reason is that your attitude is widely shared by others. You have bought into the idea that the system works great. Another is that there is almost no funding for appropriate tech research. Thats a political problem which |
able to make this work over lengths of 4wire RGB cable no less. I posted a link in your thread on the AdaFruit Forums.
12. Very cool! I think you have open the door to many new applications with your twist on this idea. Thanks!
13. Thanks. Another twist I tried out which was kinda neat was to connect them in a bus setup. Basically all the strips did the same thing at the same time. I could see lot's of uses for a setup like that. Next step is to see how many of these I can chain together.
14. I'm working on lighting for an interactive art project, and this is perfect for the way we're going to need to distribute small clusters of 2812s around the space. We were thinking along the same lines (serial + power over CAT5), so it's good to see someone else's implementation. Thank you!
15. Thanks for sharing this. I've already ordered the parts for my NeoPixel setup, and due to the position of my 2x 4m strips, I have no data cable over 1.5m using a star topology.
I had to go with 8AWG cable and a 30A PSU though, so the buck convertor idea is great. I may consider this and/or the cat5+RS485 solution if I ever do another project.
16. How would I hook up the 75176 on the controller end
17. The 75176 is actually a transceiver device, so you can also use it to drive a single RS485 channel by tying the DE & ~RE signals high (either directly to VCC or through a pull-up) and then applying the controller data to the D input. This will then give you a RS485 output on the A & B pins that you can use to drive another 75176 (configured as a receiver as shown) on the remote receiver end.
18. Hello,
Following our emails coming back to you through your blog.
I made the schematic ( http://img4.hostingpics.net/pics/967756MainboardEmmitReceiv.jpg ) for the transmission part and the reception part. Based on the SN75176 (the one used in your schematic. It better and more features than the MAX485). I just have some doubt about the connections with D/DE and R/RE.
I added a resistor (R3) and a pullup resistor (R2) Pulldown is this good?
Thank you for you precious help
19. Vadim -
Referring to your diagram, you are close, but for the emitter/transmitter circuit you would tie DE & /RE high (VCC) to configure the IC as a transmitter, and leave R (pin 1) disconnected, since it is an output, you do not want to connect it to power or ground.
Also, since the length of the transmission line is only a few meters, you can skip one or both of the termination resistors (R1). R2 & R3 are typically only used if you expect the bus will be disconnected during normal operation, in which case they pull the inputs into a known state. If the wires will be normally be connected all the time, you can eliminate those as well. Basically, for the purposes of driving WS2812 style LEDs for less than 10 meters you eliminate all but the one termination resistor at the receiving side, as shown on my schematic above.
Let us know how your project turns out, it sounds like it could be quite interesting!
1. Thank you for your help Teknynja,
So I changed my schematic for DE & / RE as well as A. I have a small question. Why D is connected to GND in Receiver mode? I guess you can also leave D disconnected Receiver mode? ( http://img4.hostingpics.net/pics/897867MainboardEmmitReceivEdit.jpg )
I preferred them in case I want to use these modules in other projects (with longer cables). So I can leave R2 & R3 without problem and leave R1 on Receiver side?
Last question which will be appearing stupid. One line A B for DI and one line for DO? Basically it is a new line between two modules.
And it is with pleasure that I would give news of my project, schematic and photos ^^
It's really kind to take time to answer me, thank you again!
20. It is usually a good idea to force unused inputs (such as the D input) to a known state even if they aren't being used. This is because if you leave an input floating, the input voltage may switch between states, causing unpredictable behavior or glitches.
As for the A & B signals, they are "differential" signals, meaning when one goes high the other goes low. This is the reason the signal can be driven much further, as instead of having to compare a single signal line to a fixed threshold voltage, you compare one signal line to the other. If A is more positive than B you treat it as a "one", and if B is more positive than A you treat it as a "zero". See this Wikipedia article for a more detailed explanation of differential signals.
1. Thank you for your explanations about the pin D.
I understood functioning of A and B, but what I mean is that I have to use the same line A B sends data to the line A B that returns DOUT.
Basically sent and received on a single wire pair? Is is fast enough for the round trip latency-free? Because it takes that sent finishes for the return. I would have more tended to think that using a pair (blue and blue / white) for sending and another pair (orange and orange / white) for return.
( Here is a small drawing ( http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/173808Explain.jpg )
Sorry if I have difficulty to understand: /
Thank you Teknynja
21. The only way you could share the A/B pair would be to control the DE pins to enable only one transmitter at a time - without controlling the DE pin the transmitter is always driving A and B and having another transmitter on the same pair will cause a conflict. It is much simpler to just use 2 pairs (in the same CAT5 cable) as you have shown in schematic #2.
The RS-485 specification does allow for multiple transmitters in a bus configuration, but it requires some kind of control scheme to ensure that only one transmitter is enabled at a time. The WS2811 don't provide any way to control the transmit enable.
22. Hey Teknynja!
Thanks for this awesome tutorial! Its been a great help wrapping my head around this whole LED/distance problem. I am planning on building a modular LED tube setup (10x 1m WS2812b). I want to use the SN75176 as drivers and receivers.
In your second picture where you show the wiring you put a 4.7K resistor between 5V and (I believe) pin 4 of the quad driver (SN75174). Is this also recommended when using the SN57176 as a driver? What kind of resistor would I need, what pin would I need to connect it to and why is this even necessary?
Also in the Adafruit NeoPixel Überguid they are recommending putting a 1000uF capacitor between 5V and ground of the power supply to prevent power spikes. They also suggest using a 470ohm resistor between the signal line of the Arduino and the LED strip. Do you also recommend this in your setup? If so where would they go? On every „receiver module“? Is this dependent on the board you are using (Arduino/ Teensy)?
Lots of questions. Hope they arent to much. I am trying to plan ahead the best I can before putting in this big order.
Have a nice day!
23. Thank Oliver!
Let's take these questions one by one. Pins 4 and 12 on the SN75174 is the output enable pins, which when driven high allow the devices to drive the bus (CAT5 in this case). I am using the 4.7K resistors to pull them high thus constantly enabling the outputs. Using the resistor is not completely necessary and you could simply tie the enable inputs directly to the 5v line to save costs if desired. The resistor is there just to limit the amount of current flowing into the pin. Its value is not that important, and since there isn't much current flowing through it, a small 1/8 watt resistor is fine. You'll note that on the SN75176 side of the circuit I'm simply connecting the various enable pins to 5v or ground needed without using resistors. For this application it would be fine to skip the resistors and just connect the inputs to 5v or ground as needed.
As for the 1000uF capacitor, I chose not to use them since the power supply on the receiver is so close to the strips, there isn't a huge amount of voltage drop/inductance in the power wires (And also to save space, as I put the receivers in a very small enclosure). I am also relying on the DC/DC converter to have a built-in smoothing capacitor on its output. If you find that your pixels are exhibiting "flaky" behavior, then you may need to add this capacitor, but in this configuration it wasn't needed.
Finally, the 470Ω resistor between the receiver output and the strip input is there to match the impedance of the driver to the LED strip. If there is a bit of distance between the driver and the LED strip, this resistor would help prevent "ringing" in the signal which could distort the data signal. Again, since the wire between the receiver chip and the LED strip is so short, it is not really required.
In summary, the components you have inquired about make for a slightly more robust design at the expense of size and cost, and because the connection between the driver circuit and the LED strip is so short, their inclusion is not really needed.
Good luck with your design, and feel free to post a link to your project here so we can see the results!
24. Hello Teknynja,
I order my pcbs at OSHPark few weeks ago, I would put some pictures when I have received and tested (hopefully everything works ^^)
Thanks ^^
25. Thanks you for your fast and detailed replay. Im really looking forward in building this project. :)
26. I stumbled upon another problem... what do you think, how much amp can a CAT6 cable handle? I am really worried about cable fire.
I want to drive 5x 2m LED strips about 10-15m away from a beefy 12v 40a power supply. Following your guide I figure this should be possible without worrying. I also wanted to be able to daisy chain them together (applying power every meter), but I am really worried that a CAT6 cable cant handle 30amp and eventually everything will go up in flames. Any ideas or suggestions?
27. Based on a quick check of standard wire gauge for CAT5/6 and a chart on the web, solid core CAT5/6 cable can carry about 2A (less if it's stranded core wire). Even with paralleling the 3 "extra" pairs in the cable, you would only be able to push about 6A through it. Based on the tables I saw, you would need to use 10 gauge wire to carry 30A.
Keep in mind that the 12V current requirements of the DC/DC converters will be less (roughly half, depending on their efficiency) of the current draw of the 5V output, so you may need less power than you think.
You may also be able to get away with using non-CAT (without twisted pairs) for a 10-15 meter run, which means you could use a beefier 4 or more conductor cable between the transmitter and receiver. Twisted pair is always nicer, but at the low speed of the data signal you can probably do without them.
Finally, if all else fails you could run 2 cables (one for data, and a higher gauge pair for power), although that seems like the ugliest of the approaches.
If you could introduce power nearer to the receivers at multiple points, that could be your solution as well. You could still daisy-chain the data between each segment, but I would start a new power run at each segment (not connect the power between segments). That would let you distribute the load between different chunks of CAT5/6 to keep the current below the limit.
Hope this helps!
28. Thanks for your input! I wasnt aware that the current is cut in half when voltage is doubled. Basic physics hello again! :D
By paralleling the extra pins you mean 2 pins for data signal, 3 pins for 12v and 3 pins for ground. Like I show in your diagram (thats what I was planing on doing) or am I mistaking?
I am now planing it like this: every CAT5/6 cable that comes out of my controller box (Teensy + 12V / 30A power supply) can power 2x 1m LED strip "out of the box". If I want to daisy chain them all together, I would either run cables from a free slots of the controller box (if there are any at the time) or I would apply power near the LED strips from a different source.
That should be save, should it not? That would mean every cable coming from the controller would need to carry 3A at 12V. Would that work if I run the cable lines like shown in your diagram? If it turns out that it can carry more than 3A an I could hook up another 1m strip, than yeah for me. :)
Have a nice day! And thanks again for taking the time, helping me!
29. Yes you are correct when I referred to paralleling the extra pins (which distributes the current across the wires).
Your plan to have multiple short segments driven by several outputs of the Teensy and all powered by the same 12V/30A power supply should work fine - in fact that is exactly what I did on the project that inspired this post. I even used a Teensy controller!
Sounds like you are definitely on the right track!
30. Hey teknynja, its Oliver, back from the workshop again. :) But I am having problems getting it running. I have tried to test it with the "BasicTest.ino" from the OctoWS2811 lib. I verified that my Teensy is working correctly with a Blink sketch.
Could you take a look at my wiering and tell me if I made an error there? -> http://i.imgur.com/XEPLN5h.png
31. Oliver -
I'm not sure if it's just missing on your diagram, but you must connect pins 15 & 16 on the Teensy together in order for the OctoWS2811 library to work. (See the diagram under the "Hardware Requirements" section of the library's documentation at https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/td_libs_OctoWS2811.html). Other than that, it looks like things should be working based on your diagram.
32. It works! :D But it wasnt the pins 15 & 16 (I had those connected) but it was the wrong wiring on the receiver. I mistakenly soldered the VCC (8) and R/DataOut (1) lines the wrong way to my PCB board. This also resulted in damaging the SN75176 driver on the receiver. So I soldered the lines together the right way and switched out the driver and voila it works!
Here is a picture of my test setup, maybe others con benefit from it: http://i.imgur.com/0JynUnM.jpg
Have a nice day!
33. Due to several inquiries both in the comments and in emails, I have added a new post that goes into more detail on how the SN75176A is used in this design, and it should provide enough information for you to use the chip in other projects as well. Have fun, and thanks for all the great feedback!
34. RE: "After connecting everything up, it worked like a charm! Every pixel was responding as though it was sitting right next to the controller."
Did you test it without the driver/receiver setup? I'd be interested in how the results compare with each other.
35. @allanGEE - Glad it worked for you. I did try driving the NeoPixels directly, but even playing with various termination resistors I wasn't able to get any kind of consistent behavior, the pixels seemed to only respond in random patterns. Some people in other forums claim to have been able to drive them over significant distances just using matching resistors, but it didn't work for me. I'm not sure if they tried running them at 100 feet like I did!
36. Hello Everyone, sorry for the time to reply my result :/
Some pics of my project :
The first project is WS2811 with SN75176, one for emitter and one for receiver. 3 modules for driving 10W RGB Led based on PT4115
The other projet is also based on WS2811. One version with SN75176 and one without.
So thank you Teknynja for help to understand the SN75176!
37. I'm wondering what are the drawbacks or problems with pushing all of this with a 5v power supply instead or the 12v? Forgive my noob-ness :)
I'm building a series of 1 meter strips that will be separated from the control board by up to 20 feet (wire-wise). Can I get away with 5v?
38. @Bob Smith - You could drive remote receiver and strips directly with 5 volts, but the biggest problem you will be dealing with is voltage drop caused by the resistance in the wiring and the amount of current being drawn by the LED strip. In other words, the wire between the controller and the receiver/LED strips acts like a resistor and the longer the wire, the larger the resistance becomes. This causes the voltage at the far end to become lower, possibly too low for the receiver IC or the LEDs to function normally.
I would guess that even if you were only getting 4 volts on the far end, things would still work for the most part even though that is far below the specified voltages for the devices. Also note that the voltage would fluctuate as you turn the LEDs on and off – with all the LEDs off you would not be drawing much current and the voltage would not drop much at all, vs having all the LEDs on which would cause the maximum voltage drop. These voltage fluctuations could possibly cause erratic operation of the receiver and/or LEDs.
There are things you can do to help minimize the voltage drop on the cable, like using lower gauge (thicker) wires, using multiple pairs of wires (as I do even in the 12 volt diagram above), and keeping the number of total LEDs that are turned on at the same time to a minimum. You could also adjust the |
engine from working. As I already mentioned, I also found a much easier way to attach the counterbalance screw. Lastly, I added another wire coming from the block of wood to act as a stop for the teeter-totter, so it would not tip so far that the weight got stuck in the inside position. I also improved on the cup of tea. I had found that as the tea cooled, I had to keep adjusting the counterbalance weight to keep the engine working. In the new engine, I keep the water boiling by using a cut soda can and a candle. The water sits in the dent in the bottom of the upside-down soda can.
How does it do that?
There are two important principals in the operation of this engine. One is differential expansion and the other is hysteresis. Most metals (and many other materials) expand when taken from room temperature to the temperature of boiling water. But each metal expands at a different rate. The bimetal strip in the thermometer is made up of two metals that have very different expansion rates. In the coil, the metal on the outside expands more quickly than the metal on the inside. This causes the coil to curl up when it is heated. The heat energy in the hot water is converted into mechanical energy as the strip curls up. This mechanical energy is used to put the weight closer to the center of the teeter-totter, which is a change in potential energy. This potential energy is converted back into mechanical energy as the teeter-totter rocks away from the hot water. The second principal, hysteresis, is what keeps the engine from simply rising to a certain point and stopping, like a normal thermometer would do. As I mentioned earlier, the coil acts like a spring. This allows the weight to act against the curling of the coil when the coil is low, and then suddenly act with the curling coil when the coil is high. The result is that the teeter-totter is more stable with one or the other end down, and is unstable in the in-between position. This tendency to quickly flip from one state to another is hysteresis. The engine is an example of a bistable system, sometimes known as an astable oscillator. For more information on thermodynamics, see the Recommended Reading section. Next: A metal that melts in hot water
Send mail to Simon Quellen Field via<|endoftext|>Copycat Chicken Lettuce Wraps
Gluten-Free Chocolate Waffles
Crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside and so good you'll never notice that they are gluten-free!<|endoftext|>How to connect Ingress software using the MySQL database from another location
Friday, August 25, 2017 FingerTec 1 Comments
Within many organization, a server PC is normally restricted to data storage while accessibility is only allowed for just a few personnels. For situations such as these, you can alleviate the problem by connecting Ingress software from another PC to the server PC and store all of your supposed attendance and access data into MySQL database. Please note that both PCs must be in the same network as the connection will be based on the network IP address.
Steps/ Procedure
First of all, to complete the setup, you will need to have:
1) Two different PC with the same network
2) MySQL version 5.5 (database)
3) SQLyog (to access the MySQL)
4) Ingress software
After obtaining the above requirement, you need to install the MySQL to the PC that you want to host the database. After installing MySQL, you need to install SQLyog because there are still few settings which needs to be carried out in order for the database to be accessible from other PC.
You can refer to this picture:
First, open the SQLyog and connect to the database.
Then go to User Manager.
From User Manager, select root@localhost and go to Global Privileges, then tick all the box from this page
Lastly for the PC that doesn’t contain Ingress software, you’ll need to create new user and assign the name as Ingress in order for the Ingress software to recognize this user.
Click Add New User
Username: ingress
Password: ingress
Host: %
Then click save
After that, just follow the previous procedure, select ingress@% and grant all the access for this user. Click save. Note: All of these steps need to be done at the server side.
The next steps are on How to connect Ingress software to the database that you have setup previously:
Firstly, you need to ensure that you can ping the IP address of the server (MySQL database location).
You can check the IP config of that PC before trying to ping that IP.
By receiving the reply from the other PC means that both PC can be accessed over the network.
For example, you can refer here:
After you’ve already confirm that the IP can be ping, you can now proceed to the next steps.
Install the Ingress software from this PC and after Installation, open the DB installer. This is the important part.
From Step 1, please insert the IP address of that server (the previous IP that you ping previously). Admin user name: root Password: root The username and password should be based on what you have set from your MySQL installation, but for demonstration purpose, we only use ‘root’ during installation. Then, proceed to Step 2 and 3. Once you’ve already finished all the steps above, you can now open the Ingress software and login to it. The default username: admin and default password: 123 After you entered the software, you can see the Database address showing the IP address of the server PC that you’ve setup previously.
If the IP address is still showing your PC’s IP address, this means that there are some incomplete steps carried out during the installation process. Please refer to the previous steps in order to troubleshoot the problem and ensure that you follow all the steps given.
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post-mortem lines (i.e., "I hope they're into white trash"). IMO Rosalind Cash would have been an ideal Sugar Hill: equally gorgeous with a lot more range. Plus, she'd already dealt with zombies in THE OMEGA MAN. Much better is the 82 year old Cully (a.k.a. Mother Jefferson), who alternates glaring menace with occasional fiendish smiling at the antics of Colley's cadavers.
Colley himself is delightfully over the top and runs away with the film. Incognito as a cab driver, dock worker, massage parlor receptionist, and gardening Uncle Tom among others, he smiles with glee at each twisted murder. He may be dead, but Colley adds the sorely needed life to the proceedings that Bey and a strangely sleepwalking Quarry can't. Colley's personas are every bit as good as Vincent Price's in THEATRE OF BLOOD, even if some of the actual murders aren't quite at that level of inspiration. His final shot, in which he takes his payment (again, not the one you'd expect) is one of the film's most memorable moments.
So...why isn't this on DVD yet?
General rule of thumb: if your star isn't Pam Grier or Tamara Dobson, your blaxploitation film with a female heroine isn't on DVD. This is a real shame, as films starring Bey, Trina Parks, the late, great Diana Sands (HONEYBABY, HONEYBABY) and stunningly beautiful Jeannie Bell (THE MUTHERS) are among those missing. Guess I have a lot more films to review.
SUGAR HILL's low budget hurts. So does the lack of nudity, generally bloodless violence, and mediocre performances from Bey and lead villain Quarry.
As noted above, the screenplay could have used another run-through. There's an underwritten dynamic between Robinson and Quarry, Bey's relationship with Johnson gets insufficient screen time, and the subsequent murder would have taken about 5 minutes to solve, given the fact that Bey saw the assailants, etc. Lots of suspension of disbelief required to get to the good stuff here.
Why it should be on DVD:
There are two terrific performances here from Cully and Colley. Colley's in particular is among the best in this subgenre, rivaling William Marshall's BLACULA and Glynn Turman's tour de force in J. D.'s REVENGE.
Enough twists on the expected to keep things interesting despite the problems with budget and script; SUGAR HILL is unique despite the problems, and certainly better than ABBY or THE HOUSE ON SKULL MOUNTAIN among others. Hell, the opening with "Supernatural Voodoo Woman" is itself better than the latter!
SUGAR HILL is rarely aired (though TCM did air it in May) and is worthy of a wider audience. If you like the Grier and Dobson films that are out on DVD, you'll certainly want to give this one a look.
No comments:<|endoftext|>look up any word, like bukkake:
To reach a point where gradual progress is no longer possible and stagnation is likely, where advancement can only be achieved by a sudden, difficult, and possibly risky leap up to the next level
I'm worried about Joe. Without a college degree, he could reach a plateau in his management career.
by ChemicalCastration February 13, 2010<|endoftext|>Choo choo: The Snallygaster
Ambient creepy image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
In the deep cold of February, 1909, a group of men near Sharpsburg, West Virginia crowded around a homemade incubator, close enough to feel its heat. They might have held their hands out for warmth, but I doubt any of them would have gotten too close. Carefully hidden away from the eyes of the town, that incubator housed a egg the size of an elephant. The gentleman were attempting to hatch the spawn of the Snallygaster, dreaded terror of the Middletown Valley.
One of the said seven-point stars.
Though its name sounds like an invention of Lewis Caroll, for generations of folks living in the hills around Washington DC and Maryland, the Snallygaster was no laughing matter. In the 1730’s, German immigrants reported a dragon-like schneller geista “quick ghost”–that came out of the sky with tentacles and a metallic beak to suck men’s blood or carry them away. The beast was half-reptile, half-bird, and had teeth sharp enough to part flesh like butter. It kidnapped children and decimated poultry. The Germans painted seven-pointed stars on their barns to keep the Snallygaster at bay; you can still see some of those stars today.
Tales of the Snallygaster seemed to abate in the late 1700’s, but reappeared, weaponized, less than a century later when white settlers wanted to scare away freed slaves. People offered the “Snallygaster” food sacrifices and hid their families indoors, but the carnage continued. For decades, white countryfolk blamed the racial atrocities they committed on the creature. That would shortly come back to bite them, as by 1909, the legend had got out of their control, and the Snallygaster began to appear and attack in places they hadn’t meant it to.
Now the Snallygaster roamed the countryside, large as a dirigible, wreaking havoc wherever it went. It could change shape, but one man summarized the consensus that it usually had “enormous wings, a long pointed bill, claws like steel hooks, and an eye in the center of its forehead.” It passed through the sky silent as a cloud, and then would swoop down to attack with a whistle “like a locomotive,” or, as another man put it, like a “cross between a tiger and a vampire.”*
The creature left footprints in the snow of New Jersey, and scared the bejeezus out of a man who found it hanging out near his kiln. It was shot here, found roosting in someone’s barn there, seen drifting through the sky, tentacles writhing, always huge, always “headed this way.” Then there were the eggs. The Snallygaster’s eggs were the size of horses–of small cars!–and were found laying around where Snallygaster was known to have passed. Our friends from the beginning of this post never did manage to get that egg to hatch, and that’s probably a good thing for them. They might have ended up like Bill Gifferson, found drained of blood with a hole in his neck.
By now the sightings were so common (and such a nuisance) that the Smithsonian put a price on the Snallygaster’s hide to the tune of $100,000 a foot. Teddy Roosevelt himself thought about coming to collect, but then sightings of the creature abated again. Finally, the Snallygaster reportedly drowned and was subsequently exploded in a 2500-gallon vat of moonshine. Fitting dramatic end to a dramatic life, right?
You forgot about the eggs.
This is where things really get weird. In 1932, the Snallygaster (or rather, one of its children) decided to give a local resident an existential crisis. The poor man reported seeing the creature swoop down from the sky on a penny-farthing, wearing water wings and shouting Balance the budget!” Later, in 1973, the Snallygaster appeared as a land-bound ape-thing that screamed bloody murder in the middle of the night and made a mess out of the heads of cattle. After several sightings, an extensive hunting party set out to find the creature with tranquilizer darts and a large steel cage. They returned empty-handed.
Not Eastern Racers, but alarming enough nevertheless. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Where is the Snallygaster today? There doesn’t seem to be any recent sightings. Certainly the horrors that inspired it are still around–racial violence being the obvious one, but also the nasty clusters of Eastern Racer snakes (which apparently can get up to five feet long and move quite fast) that might have made people see tentacles. The last real Snallygaster sighting was over 40 years ago, and as I’ve heard tell that the Snallygaster’s lifespan is 20 years, it might be gone for good. But it’s difficult to say for sure. Feel free to go out and try to find one, if you like.
I’ll stay here and look out for any suspicious clouds.
Have you ever seen something strange in the sky? What do you think a “cross between a vampire and a tiger” sounds like? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
*I’m not quite sure what this means, as the sound my mind conjures for “vampire” is “slurp.”
So Many Shades of Grey: The Am Fear Liath Mor of Ben MacDui
Happy (almost) Halloween! In celebration of my favorite holiday, I thought we’d cover a topic that is less strange so much as it is pants-poopingly frightening. Now, I admit that when I first uncovered the pitch for this creature—which pretty much boils down to “Scottish Yeti”—I was only mildly curious; Bigfoots and the like have never interested me much, perhaps because their story has been so played out. Then I kept reading, and uncovered a story of delightful mystery and malevolence.
The summit of Ben MacDui. Photo by Richard Webb, via Wikimedia Commons
Let’s set the scene. The Ben MacDui is the highest peak in the Cairngorm Mountains and the second highest in Scotland. Nothing grows there save for the hardiest of plants; the summit rises from a huge sub-arctic upland, and is considered one of the wildest, most remote places left in Britain. The landscape is a featureless wave of snow and rock; between that and the omnipresent mists, it’s very easy to get lost. It’s also easy to remember how very old those peaks are–almost as old as the lore about them.
In 1891, Professor Norman Collie went hiking along the mountain alone, and heard something walking behind him.
The professor–a well-respected, sensible faculty member of the chemistry department at the University College London–waited thirty-four years to tell his story. “I began to think I heard something else than merely the noise of my own footsteps,” he reported to the Cairgorm Club on a dark December night in 1925.For every few steps I took I heard a crunch, and then another crunch as if someone was walking after me but taking steps three or four times the length of my own.” Collie looked back over the desolate landscape, trying to keep his head, but could see nothing through the fog. Filled with a sudden dread, he turned and walked faster, and then went the crunching continued broke out into a panicked sprint, which he continued for four or five miles until he arrived, exhausted, at the arms of Rothiemurchus Forest. To say that the experience left an impression on him would be an understatement; he vowed never to return to the mountain alone, for, as he put it, there was “something very queer about the top of Ben MacDhui.
Once his story got out, he discovered that he was not the only one who had experienced sudden terror while exploring the isolated mountain. Dr. A.M. Kallas and his brother Henry ostensibly saw an enormous figure approaching them from the other side of the cairn 1903. The figure disappeared from their view as it moved into a dip, but the brothers didn’t wait for it to get close–they, like Collie, ran down off the mountain as fast as they could, and never looked back. In 1904, the Welshcamping brothers reported unnerving sounds both during the day and at night, like “slurring footsteps as if someone was walking through water saturated gravel.” In 1943, mountaineer Alexander Tewnion turned at the sound of menacing footsteps as he descended by the Coire Etchachan path. He saw a strange, enormous shape loom out of the fog, and pulled his revolver and shot at it before turning to sprint away.
In 1965, investigators discovered 14-inch footprints on the slopes Ben MacDui, with a distance of nearly five feet between each. Collie and many others might have estimated this stride, given the height of the thing in the mists and the length of time between footsteps.
Sightings continued through the 90’s. The thing dubbed “The Big Grey Man” crossed train tracks, kept pace with cars, watched people from a distance and spoke, one one occasion, in a deep, booming language reminiscent of Gaelic. Hikers described it as 10 feet tall, then 20 feet tall. It was covered in grey hair, they said, and had long, long arms and a face that was human and very not human. Most, if not all, reported an uncontrollable fear and sense of dread–indeed, many of reports of the Am Fear Liath Mor are not sightings so much as they are sensations: sudden, categorical despair; panic at a sound from off in the mists. Some felt themselves drawn to the cliffs, and had to fight the urge to hurtle themselves off, others nearly slipped and fell to their death by accident as they scampered to escape the crunch of a heavy footstep.
The number of sightings and level of terror begs the question: what might it be that’s stalking up there, alone in the bleak mountain?
Example of a Broken Spectre (which is awesome). Photo by Andrew Smith, via Wikimedia Commons
First, the obvious answers: oxygen deprivation and a monotone landscape could easily lead to auditory and visual hallucinations, as well as a sense of panic. When you combine this with the power of already existing legend, it’s easy to imagine that even the most well-meaning explorer might see something that’s not really there. Another explanation is the fascinating “Brocken spectre,” an optical illusion of an otherworldly, gigantic figure created by the observer’s shadow being cast on the fog in front of him. This is bound to happen at least every once in awhile in all the mists at the top of Ben MacDui, and combined with the aforementioned physical weariness, might make quite the impression.
And for those that don’t accept the Am Fear Liath Mor as a mere trick of the mind? There are a number of theories as to what he might be, ranging from an evil spirit to the abominable snowman. The most interesting wraps the spirit of the Cairngorm in with the Grey Man himself: the creature seems intent on scaring people away, but why? Could it be that he’s guarding something? The Cairngorm, proponents of this theory claim, are a very strange and otherworldly place–perhaps because they are literally a window into another place.
Frightening as he may be, the Big Grey Man might merely be protecting the us humans from something much worse.
Have you ever heard steps that did not coincide with your own? Felt a sudden thrill of fear? Do you now have a Big Grey Idea for your Halloween costume? Share your story in the comments below.
Better than Tempeh: The Borametz
As the world transitions to autumn, let’s take a moment to celebrate this wonderful window between the mad heat of summer and the dark desperation of winter. This week, let’s give ourselves a break; let’s study a monster that does not threaten grievous bodily harm! In fact, our subject might even help someone, though it is so odd it might also induce an existential crisis.
Let’s begin with a poem. This piece, found in Dr. Erasmus Darwin’s book The Botanic Garden (1781), describes our unwonted subject:
“E’en round the Pole the flames of love aspire,
And icy bosoms feel the secret fire,
Cradled in snow, and fanned by Arctic air,
Shines, gentle borametz, thy golden hair
Rooted in earth, each cloven foot descends,
And round and round her flexile neck she bends,
Crops the grey coral moss, and hoary thyme,
Or laps with rosy tongue the melting rime;
Eyes with mute tenderness her distant dam,
And seems to bleat – a vegetable lamb.”
Take a moment to pause and re-read that last bit there, if you haven’t already. Perhaps you’ve just skimmed the poem and are imagining a lamb frolicking in someone’s (apparently chilly) garden, enjoying the odd pepper or uprooting carrots. Perhaps you’ve read closely, and are wondering why the poem is calling out a lamb for being vegetarian. Unfortunately, the poem is speaking to neither of these things. Take a look at the following picture:
That’s one interpretation of the creature at hand. The next–perhaps more realistic–is a little more frightening:
You might ask “what in the good **** is that?”; I certainly did, and so did visitors to central Asia during the fourth through to the nineteenth century. Legend has it that there was a plant there with a bit of an odd flower–one that walks, eats, and bleats. Called variously the Borametz, the Scythian Lamb, and (my personal favorite) the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, this fellow was said to be born from the fruit produced by a particular fern, destined to live out its days munching on the flora within reach. A vine-like “umbilical cord” attached to its belly limited the lamb’s range of motion; it could not be separated from its parent fern, or it would perish. Details about how long this cord could reach vary, but once the food within its circumference of it ran out, the lamb would die. Then predators–wolves or, every now and again, humans–could jump on the borametz and eat it. Rumor has it that its blood tasted like honey, and its wool was of the same or better quality than any other, more conventional sheep.
Though this might seem fanciful, tales of the borametz appeared in Jewish folklore as early as 436 A.E.. Back then it was called the Yeduah, was similarly attached to the earth by a stem, and could only be collected if said stem were severed via the use of arrows or darts. This version of the creature had bones that could be used in prophetic ceremonies, and so was valuable beyond being livestock and/or garden. Unfortunately, this version also had a counterpart–the Faduah, a human-shaped type of borametz that would strangle anyone who came within reach. You can hardly blame him for being cranky; it seems that every iteration of the borametz legend involves man taking advantage of the the creature’s helplessness, whether it be slaughtering a sheep on a stem, or slicing gourds open to harvest the lambs within.
A number of people have tried to find their own borametz over the centuries, with varying degrees of success. Variations on the gourd-centered legend trickled back from Persia in the 14th and 15th centuries, with explorers trying to make sense of what seemed to be both a living animal and plant. Sir John Mandeville was the most colorful of these adventurers, and is credited with bringing the first tales of the vegetable lamb to the English public attention. Unfortunately, he is also credited with being embellisher extraordinaire. In the mid 16th century |
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Ainth flicks her tongue around a little, tasting the air. Mmm… a lot fresher than her insides! Her lower jaw swings up and down a little, herself tiring rather quickly of holding it open. Plus, she has to make it a little bit hard for the Candidates, otherwise they'll get the impression that it's all fun and games after the Sands, right? The drill is unnoticed by her for the moment, although when the time comes, she'll surely kick up a fuss about it. She starts to rumble, low-pitched and almost a mimick of Vor's soothing sounds… until someone-or-other scrubs a little -too- close to /that/ tooth. Yelp! Luckily, her jaw doesn't snap shut… not quite close enough to provoke that. But it's a warning, ok?!
"Steady, dear." Wyn murmurs, keeping her hands clear of Ainth's teeth as much as possible while she works, and keeping a loose eye on her reactions to things. One would be a fool not to be a -little- on guard around an animal as large as a dragon, even if it's a sentient one. "We'll eventually settle a bite block into place so that she can close her mouth while I work, but we need to make sure that her mouth is clean first… how is that numbweed feeling?" she wonders, trusting Vorkoroth, still looming quietly, to relay for her, and then glances sidelong at Donis. "Why not firelizards? Meat is meat, really, and the dragons appreciate it, or they'd never let them that close."
Donis starts to scrub Ainth's back teeth on the side away from the abcess - very carefully. "I dunno," he replies to Wyn after a moment's concentration. "I suppose I must've seen them do it - it just seems, well, unhygenic." He shrugs one shoulder and reaches his brush - and his arm - deeper into Ainth's mouth.
"I'm not so sure Morden would crawl around inside a dragon's mouth," Silas notes and finally mounts enough courage to scrub a tooth - toward the front and well away from the abcessed one. "And I've never noticed him smell as bad as this…" He wrinkles his nose as the breath from Ainth penetrates his flimsy layer of protection against smells.
Oh, the joys that await these Candidates should the be chosen by her kind! Ainth has begun to listen to their chatter, something she often indulges in for her own amusement. Of course, responding is somewhat difficult, being that she's been firmly instructed /not/ to bespeak anyone without first checking with Lauria… but she is always interested in what the humans around her say and do. Oh yes, their kind is always paid a little -too- much attention by Ainth. She utters a hurt-sounding 'Yerrrc?' as Silas comments on her breath, slowly warming up to the idea of having her teeth scrubbed.
"Their breath normally isn't this bad," Wyn allows. "That's one sign a dragonrider can use to determine whether their lifemate is healthy or not," she prattles on, diction precise and tone bland, but clearly enjoying the opportunity to teach something medical all the same. "You'll always be able to tell that they eat meat for their meals, but it will be a healthy smell, and not one inclined to make you lose your dinner… there, there, dear." she soothes in Ainth's direction, giving her left nostril a bit of a rub before returning to an efficient scrubbing out of her mouth. "How are you two coming? About ready for a rinse?"
Donis scrubs again at Ainth's back teeth, nose wrinkled against the smell. "Well, I'm glad they don't always smell like this," he agrees through gritted teeth. "And I think I'm done?"
Silas is already pulling his brush out of Ainth's mouth. That noise from the dragon was quite enough to make him take a step back, watching - and waiting - for her jaws to clamp shut. "What? Uh, yeah.. Ready," he says, but makes no move other than turning his head to the side to draw a breath, somewhat away from that smell. "And I do hope you're right about the smell. This.. This is horrible. No offence, Ainth," he tags on, glancing a little nervously at the green.
Ainth shimmies again, trying to shake the brushes free of her mouth. An effort to help Wyn move the lesson along? Perhaps. More than likely, though, she's just become tired of the scrubbing and wishes the lesson to move along for her /own/ benefit. It's cutting severly in on her playtime, see?
Wyn gives Ainth's mouth a once-over once the two candidates have withdrawn, nodding to herself here and there, and, once, pausing to remove a chunk of meat from between two canine teeth that somehow missed being spotted. "Excellent. Now, a moment while I just take this hand-sprayer." she murmurs, mostly to herself as she wipes her hands on her work smock, and picks up what looks like a larger version of a vegetable sprayer, pumping a handle a few times to build up pressure, and then spraying the rinse all about. "My apologies, Ainth, this will likely taste vile, but you can go sluice your mouth out down at the lake when we're done."
Donis scurries well back out of the way of Wyn and her pump-action spraygun. "So, erm, how long will it take for her tooth to get better?" he asks, trying to sound intelligent instead of just relieved that he's away from Ainth's big smelly teeth.
Silas withdraws, well away from the path of the dragon's breath and puts the brush down on the table, almost crossing his arms over his chest to watch, then thinks twice about it as he discovers the gunk that covers the one he'd used for scrubbing. "Urgh… That's nasty.." he says and looks around for a washbasin or something other that he might use to clean his hands with.
Ainth yelps again, trying to to swallow any of the foul-tasting solution. Though for all her protests, both physically and mentally, her jaw remains open and relatively still. Ain't she a beauty? A dragonhealer's dream. No more attention is paid to Silas and Donis for the moment… she's concentrating on keeping Wyn happy. Because after all, the weyrsecond will be the one with the drill in a short while…
"Use some of the leftover redwort wash," says Wyn to that 'urgh', not bothering to look over her shoulder as she concentrates on Ainth, but well aware of the likely cause of it. "There's a very good girl, dear. I'll tell my sister she should be especially proud of you." The bluerider, it seems, is much more openly affectionate towards her patients than she is towards humanity. "And it shouldn't take her too long at all. We'll let things drain, and then pack the hole with mosstea to prevent any further infection, and she should be completely fine within a fortnight, wherupon we'll fill the hole with something more permanent. If you two could set the bite block in her mouth now, in the space between the front teeth and the molars?" she requests, informing Ainth that "You'll be able to let your mouth fall closed shortly, my dear."
Donis scoops up a bucketful of the redwort wash and dumps his scrubbing brush into it, the handle sticking out. "Bite block?" he asks worriedly, and then lifts up the wooden fitmet. "Silas, can you go round the other side, and we can handle this into place…" At least, that seems to be the idea as Donis ventures close to Ainth's mouth again.
Silas gives a worried glance toward Wyn, then Donis and finally Ainth before nodding at his fellow Candidate, "yeah, sure," he says, sounding less sure than he tries to appear. "So.. Just in between the teeth, right?"
Ainth rumbles affectionately back to Wyn, still ignoring the two Candidates. The mention of her lifemate draws a softer, more high-pitched rumble, too. She's pleased, it would seem… and will be even moreso when she's able to clamp that massive jaw of hers shut.
"Precisely," Wyn confirms, stepping back to let Silas and Donis place the simple device. What? Lend a hand to hlp them? Bah, what's the point of having minions if one doesn't get a chance to stand back and direct, some times. "Excellent, there we go, just like that…" She trails off to pick up the tub of numbweed, along with the large drill, grunting at the weight in a most unladylike fashion.
"Um." Donis carefully inserts his side of the device in between the teeth Wyn mentioned, looking anxiously at Silas over Ainth's tongue. "If we get it wrong, will she bite?" He's only half-joking.
Silas is taking careful aim of where he places his own side of the biteblock, keeping his hands well away from the dragon's teeth. Trying to ignore Donis' question, he still sends a worried glance toward the dragonhealer and swallows. "I guess.. That I've got this thing in place?" he says, hoping that his hands will remain in one piece when the dragon bites down.
Of course she will… er, won't. Won't. Bitey dragons don't get much love from their riders, see, and Ainth's all about the love. She closes her jaw slowly, trying no to frighten anyone too much, and to avoid biting a hand off.
"There we go," Wyn murmurs, by her tone addressing Ainth rather than the drafted candidates, although they recieve a brief, approving nod for their efforts and a crisp "Very good, very good… now, this next bit isn't likely to be entirely pleasant to watch, so if you two would like to get going, I'll say thank you for your help, and you can be on your way." And then, she advances on Ainth with the numbweed and The Drill.
Silas is more than happy with taking his leave now and steps back from the dragonhealer and her patient, stopping only long enough to wash his hands, then turning to run off with a wave to Wyn and Donis. "I think I have some other chore to do anyway…" he calls and disappears outside.
Donis retreats, eyeing the drill. "I, erm, think I'll go and polish the flamethrowers," he makes his excuses, and sniffs at his redworted hands as he leaves.<|endoftext|>October 3, 2014
Coming to the Table for Rescued Victims of Animal Fighting
Guest blog by Deborah Press, ASPCA Senior Manager of Regulatory Affairs
Today the ASPCA and the nation’s most capable and caring hearts and minds—from the Department of Justice, the FBI, USDA, and other organizations—met to problem solve around the future of animals rescued from fighting operations. The ASPCA and its government partners came together under the auspices of the Department of Justice’s Animal Cruelty Working Group, to ensure that the process for seizing animals used in these heinous crimes is as smooth and efficient as possible so that more animals can be saved.
The ASPCA regularly works side by side with federal, state and local law enforcement to save animals from cruelty and build criminal cases against abusers. When the ASPCA assists law enforcement in animal fighting raids, the animals are held in limbo as evidence—for over a year sometimes—while prosecutors and law enforcement agencies pursue cases against accused animal fighters. As a result, the animals must stay in temporary shelters and cannot begin their new lives in forever homes.
Animal fighting victims aren’t like other criminal evidence that can be warehoused in storage lockers for years at a time. These animals have delicate behavioral needs, and even with the best staff behaviorists in the country tending to them, rescued dogs often deteriorate psychologically after many months caged in a temporary shelter environment to the point where they cannot be adopted.
We are grateful to our partners for all of the work they do to stamp out animal fighting and for throwing their expertise and passion for animals into this important cooperative conversation.<|endoftext|>Madshrimps Forum Madness
Madshrimps Forum Madness (
- WebNews (
- - US nuclear weapons lab loses 67 computers (
jmke 12th February 2009 19:15
US nuclear weapons lab loses 67 computers
THE MENTION OF nuclear weapons laboratories rarely has a calming effect on anyone, even less so when the mention involves 67 lost or stolen computers.
Officials from New Mexico's Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory have fessed up to having only just realised that 67 of its computers were missing, with no less than 13 of them having disappeared over the past year alone.
A memo leaked by the Project on Government Oversight watchdog brought the lost nuclear laptops to the public's attention, leaving the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration with no choice but to confess. Better than letting the debacle blow up in their faces, we presume.
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Miley Cyrus always seems to be at the center of a mixed bag of controversy. From drug rumors to sexy outfits to her outspoken nature, the “Can’t Be Tamed” singer gets a lot of criticism. So how does she handle the haters? By sticking her fingers in her ears. (Hey, at least it’s G-rated!). Wanna see? Miley recently stopped by MTV’s “10 on Top” to demonstrate exactly how she tunes people out. Take a look at the interview clip below and make sure to watch “10 on Top” this Saturday at 11:30a/10:30c for more Miley!
+ After the jump, Miley dishes on what she’ll be doing with her free time now that “Hannah Montana” is over.<|endoftext|>Explore Holy Taco
Prison Diaries: The Touchy-Feely Flier
This week Rafael Escamilla, a physical therapist from California was arrested for playing with himself on an airplane while sitting next to a high school cheerleader. Long story short, he claimed that he was merely scratching an itch on his junk because he had spilled hot sauce on it earlier that day. I’ve used a lot of hot sauce in my lifetime and I’ve spilled it on a shirt or two, but never on my junk. Mostly because “Never use hot sauce while you’re naked” is a rule I’ve always lived by. Regardless, Mr. Escamilla has been in lockup for a few days now and we used some of our HT connections on the inside to find a few pages of his prison diary. The transcription is as follows:
Day one:
I haven’t written in one of these since I was in middle school. If I remember correctly, I stopped journaling right around the time I started masturbating. Kind of funny how the very thing that made me stop journaling is now the reason I’m journaling again. I mean, allegedly… Man, this week started out to be so awesome. I was super bummed because my flight was delayed, then I was super stoked because I ended up sitting next to that super hot girl. Shitty time to get an itch that just so happened to take about seven minutes to scratch. But whatever… My roommate seems nice enough, but I’m going to try and play it cool. He found out what I got locked up for and he was sympathetic. He said “Yeah, I get real bad itches like that too. ‘Round the same time every night, just before bed. And if I look at you while I’m scratchin’ that itch, don’t break eye contact or else I’ll have to keep scratchin’…” We totally get each other! Ok, good night for now.
Day two:
Wow, what a difference a day makes in here. My roommate, though he sympathized with me earlier, didn’t stick up for me at all in the cafeteria when all the other inmates poured hot sauce in my lap. I guess it’s just an initiation thing. And I’m kind of thinking everyone here is going to be cool with me. It’s just a jock mentality thing, like they only give you shit if they actually like you. A few of the other guys I’ve seen around the yard keep asking me to “scratch their itch” and then they blow kisses at me, but I’m not sure what they’re getting at. I haven’t watched enough “Oz” I guess, LOL. Tomorrow my lawyer comes to visit, which is going to be awesome. Finally, we can clear my good name, some how prove, scientifically or something, that I actually did spill hot sauce on my penis and it actually does itch really bad when you do something like that.
Day Three:
Hello diary. Such mixed emotions. Got good news and bad news from ye olde barrister. Turns out we’d have a really hard time proving I was scratching an itch and not yankin’ it, so he said if I just confess my sentence will be much lighter. So I guess this is my confession. I jerked off on an airplane. BFD… The shitty thing is I feel so stupid that I tried to use the hot sauce excuse. It was totally one of those things where someone asks you something and you can’t think of a good lie so your brain just causes you to spit something stupid out. The TSA guy was like “Why was your hand moving around on your crotch?” and I froze for a second, then just yelled “Hot sauce penis!” then immediately cursed myself for doing so. It was too late though. I’m so stupid. How the hell does anyone get hot sauce on their penis? They don’t. That’s how. I should’ve just said I was adjusting, but they probably wouldn’t have bought that. I was adjusting for way too long. Well, whatevs. I’ll be counting the days until I get to see the light again.
Pretty revealing, if you ask me. Kind of endearing to see such a change of heart. Hopefully this guy gets himself right, and hopefully he never sits next to me on a plane when he’s finally walking free.
5 Responses to "Prison Diaries: The Touchy-Feely Flier"
1. Jambalaya says:
Ian Fortey must’ve wrote this article. It sucks like a vacuum cleaner.
And now for the real story:
“Officials at Nez Perce County jail said Escamilla paid his $300 bail in cash and spent less than an hour in jail.”
2. Bobby Gindal says:
Here in the Bayou we put hot sauce on our junk and tell the idiots still living in fema trailers its a Popsicle, lazy stupid bastards were supposed to die in the flood.
• Obama says:
Don’t blame me.. I am doing my best to keep em in the rat holes, I like the Popsicle idea. In Chicago we dip our junk in hot sauce and tell em in the greens that it is a lotto ticket.
3. a jerk says:
come on now kids, the man has not been found guilty of anything yet. assholes in the |
a longtime friend Arnold Schwarzenegger became involved in the business as well.
He's a seven-time Mr. Olympia and a huge advocate for both health and fitness. He had experienced in the past working with supplement brands but also saw firsthand the issues that can occur within the space because things aren't fully FDA regulated. You can make a lot of claims without necessarily having to back it up. When he saw what LeBron was doing, he was really excited to get involved and be a part of a brand that aligned with his interest and his advocacy. With that, they built out the next product, which was greens, a superfood greens, an everyday product, and all of that came together when the brand launched in November of 2018.
Felix: At what point did you get involved in the business?
Luke: I became involved with Ladder in September of 2019. A little less than a year after it started as the co-CEO.
Felix: Awesome, and what's your background?
Luke: Before Ladder, I worked at Parachute, the home essentials brand. Also based out of LA for nearly six years. I was the first employee and was with the company in various roles, most recently as the CMO. What was fortunate in that experience is I got to see everything that went into building a business from scratch in terms of building customer-centric processes, where to invest across operations, marketing, and tech and it's been great taking those experiences and those opportunities and applying them to Ladder. Getting the ability to start closer to the beginning and being able to shape those elements of the business.
Felix: What were some of the key skills or attributes that you brought from Parachute to Ladder?
Luke: The big thing is having a clear sense of brand identity. Ladder is similar to Parachute where the product is really great. Before I joined the company, I started using it before my early morning workouts, before bike rides, runs, weightlifting sessions and I could tell it made a difference. It was really cool to see the traction that the company already had within professional sports teams and athletes. The big thing I learned from Parachute was the idea of building a community and telling a story around a really high-quality product. Ladder is a more premium brand. And so as a more premium brand, it's important that we really focus on all the different ways in which we can help customers along their journey from the first time they hear about us, which could be through our founders, Arnold, LeBron. It could be through our athletes, our ambassadors up until the point that they purchase. And for our subscribers, ensuring that deliveries are on time, the packaging and unboxing experience is good, and that the product quality experience is consistent throughout their time being a customer.
"The big thing is having a clear sense of brand identity."
Felix: You touched on brand identity, can you give us your definition of brand identity?
Luke: Ultimately product-market fit is everything. For Ladder, the higher quality ingredients, the third-party certifications, the way that we manufacture the product tends to cost more. Because of that, it is for a more premium audience. The shoppers are a little bit more sophisticated. They're more knowledgeable about the supplement space and the nutrition space. And it’s important for us to know that on the one hand, they know a lot, but on the other hand, they're also inundated with new information every day. When it comes to communicating with that customer, we have to use the right balance of statements that validate their previously held beliefs as well as information and education that adds new dimensions to their knowledge. We want to be that trusted source of content and products that fit within their already regimented diet and exercise.
Lebron James drinking a nutrition supplement along with a trainer in a t-shirt that has the “Ladder” logo.
Focusing on quality ingredients and third party certifications, Ladder is able to differentiate within a saturated market. Ladder
Felix: Are you finding education is more important when you’re marketing a premium product?
Luke: I would say so. NSF Certified for Sport. Only 1% of supplements are NSF Certified by Sport. What that means for your listeners is that every single batch of our product is tested to ensure that there are no toxins, banned substances, or heavy metals. More importantly, everything that is on the ingredient list is actually in the product. It’s surprising to hear it the first time you do, but getting more people to understand how important NSF for Sport is, is great. You don't have to be a professional athlete to care about what you put in your body. And increasingly, consumers want to know. It’s like what farm is this from, who's behind these products and who's making them, and what makes them special and unique. We found it really important to go that extra mile to explain that because at the end of the day we sell supplements. We don't sell substitutes. Our products are meant to take what you're doing and make it better.
Felix: How do you find ways to educate the customer on details that they might not think they need to be aware of?
Luke: Yeah, it's a good question. It depends on the customer’s needs. Certain people will reach out via customer support and we do have live agents who help with chat, phone calls, and with emails. People ask questions a lot on social media, whether it be direct messages or comments. It’s about meeting the customer wherever they are. For some, they'd rather just know that there is a resource. For us, it was going beyond an FAQ and building out our blog. We have over 50 pieces of content on our blog and we’re looking to always expand that knowledge base so that anybody can access it, whether or not they are a Ladder customer. One of the easiest ways to build trust with people is to demonstrate that you know about the product space or the product environment and that you care about it. That passion translates into more passionate customers.
Felix: How do you ensure that your messaging is clear, achieving its intended purpose, and reaching your customers?
Luke: You can do it a couple of ways. Obviously, speaking to your customers is always great. The direct way in which we solicit feedback is CSAT, customer satisfaction score. Every time somebody has an interaction with us, we ask for that feedback. Product reviews, every time somebody buys one of our products, we ask for their candid feedback and that has allowed us to make changes as we see fit. We look at metrics around ship times. Are our products being delivered in a timely manner? We’ve done in-person tasting for new flavors. For existing products, we've done events and activations. Obviously, this was pre-COVID in terms of seeing how people are interacting with the product and the brand. In more native environments asking all the pro-teams that we work with, what they think about the product. Be engaged. You can use surveys, you can use reviews. Oftentimes, the most valuable feedback you'll get is just in speaking to the customer themselves.
Felix: When speaking to customers, what questions gave the most value, in terms of the direction of the business?
Luke: When it's in an interview context, you have to adhere to best practices, where there's no bias being introduced into the question. Generally, we try to ask either questions that you can answer very simply, yes or no, or questions that are more open-ended. Obviously, when it comes to structuring that data becomes a little bit harder. At the end of the day, it's really about having the people to sit there and listen and take in the information and then communicate it to the rest of the team.
Felix: When you came into the role, what are some of the biggest changes that you were most excited to start implementing?
Luke: The big ones are just really leaning into our identity as a sports nutrition brand. Given the performance and the pedigree associated with the brand - the founders are these two big performers knowing the certifications, the ingredients, and who is using the product - it was clear to me that's where the white space existed. What’s been interesting as the brand has grown and as we’ve started to gain more attraction, is seeing the ways in which we can communicate with people who are not necessarily doing a sport. If I'm a CrossFitter, If I run, if I swim, if I'm a triathlete, our products fit perfectly within those needs. If you have different goals like weight loss or maintenance. Just because a product is designed and formulated for pros doesn't mean that you're withheld from using it.
If anything, when somebody uses Nike Pro equipment and when you wear LeBron’s, it's to elevate your game. Sometimes it's for style, but when it comes to technical apparel, the reason that whole space has exploded is people want to be able to perform at the highest level, no matter what level they're at. If you think about your health and fitness journey as a Ladder, we want to support and get you to that next level. Once you get to one rung, we support you so you can get to the next one. That’s the exciting part. Having a brand that can equally appeal to someone who is at the absolute top of their game and someone who is really starting to invest in that journey.
How to bridge the gap between target audiences
Felix: How have you handled bridging that gap between pro-athlete and someone just starting their journey? How do you make sure that the target market is also included when marketing a premium product?
Luke: It really comes down to education. Making people understand. For example, this year we kicked off the new year with a campaign called rituals over resolutions. It was really all about mindset, where we interviewed professional athletes, entrepreneurs, nutritionists, fitness and health gurus, trainers, the whole gamut. We didn't say, “how do I become you?”, but rather “how do you set goals and how do you approach overcoming obstacles and challenges?'' People really liked it. That content resonated because a lot of the hard work is just getting into a routine.
It's getting to a point where working out isn't a chore or exercise in any form, whether it be yoga, Pilates, etc. Whatever it is, it’s something that you look forward to, it's something that motivates you, it makes you happy, the endorphin rush because when you get into that flow state, that's when our products come in and help you get even more out of that. Especially right now, where people are at home, we're trying to encourage people. If you only have 30 minutes, how can we help people with stretches or with workouts that are easy to do with the items around you? Because the context is changing and we have to be able to adapt and change in order to go with it, be with the times.
Felix: How did you develop your content strategy to build this community of potential customers?
Luke: A lot of it is set by what is going on at a broader level. If sports are going on, inherently there's going to be more content that you can produce around those ecosystems, in not only athletes but the trainers they work with, the nutritionists they work with, the physical therapists they work with. But when sports weren't at the forefront of people's consciousness, it was more about starting at the home. It's what are things you can do at home that are easy and safe and still effective. For us, when you mix our protein product with greens, it’s a pretty good meal replacement. If you want a super nutritious shake that's not going to be hard on your waistline, thinking about ways in which you can incorporate our product into cooking and baking and easy snacks and pre-workout, post-workout routines.
A lot of that is really important because at the end of the day, people's behaviors are changing. You used to have to go into an office. If you were going to go into an office, then you'd have to wear certain apparel. If your workspace was remote, maybe it's more of the same for you or if you used to have to commute somewhere. What happens when you no longer have that commute, can you take that time and reinvest it in yourself or are you putting it elsewhere? We try to be conscious of the fact that everybody's in different situations right now. Some people are in cities, some people have a little bit more space, some people have families or other types of obligations. The question that we're always trying to ask ourselves is, is the content that we're creating relevant to the moment?
Felix: Using COVID as an example, can you tell us more about how you guys maintain flexibility and adapt to the times as a brand through your content?
Luke: Fortunately, we have a pretty lean, nimble team and we work with some pretty great freelancers and agencies. So people are neither comfortable with the idea. We’re at a startup. Part of the fun of being here is the ability to make changes quickly and react to your environment before it becomes a bigger or more widespread issue. I can remember in the middle of March, it was clear that things were not going to continue as expected. We had all-hands meeting and initiated that conversation where we said, okay, we're all going to work remotely. There is no pressure to come into the office. We're going to have to do things differently because we have to run the business and as lean of all manner as possible. And we're not going to get access to things like big creative shoots or marketing events and activations.
We're going to have to change the way that we do business because customers, our customers, and where they're going to be is going to change. Similar things happened in June where I was thinking about what was going on, and increasingly athletes were using their platforms for good and for social good. And how are we aligning our brand with that of our founders and with other athletes and ambassadors, to make sure that we are on brand and on message? The biggest thing we want to avoid is pretending that things are normal and that consumers' behaviors are normal because I can understand if you have to make adjustments in your life. Our products might be one of the products that you cut back on. But what we think about is that, for us, health and fitness is vital, almost independent of context. It’s helping people support those journeys in spite of everything that's going on is where we like to be.
Arnold Schwarzenegger working out in a t-shirt with Ladder’s logo.
Relevant and resourceful content is at the heart of Ladder’s social channels which points back to their blogposts in addition to product pages. Ladder
Felix: Tell us about your content creation system. What are the channels that you distribute your content on?
Luke: It’s our blog, and then we use social media as a way to amplify blog content. You’ll find it on Instagram, Facebook, at times LinkedIn, and Twitter. We'll try and put it in our newsletters that we send out each week as well as any emails that you'll get as a part of on-boarding into the brand. We're looking for ways to incorporate it more into the customer service experience in terms of, “Hey, you reached out about this. Why don't you read out this useful article that can give you more context on the response that I'm giving you?” Ultimately, it is opt-in. Not everybody wants a multiple paragraph response as to the question that they're answering. But we like to provide that additional depth for those who seek it.
Felix: Is the blog the main source for content? Everything on social media funnels back to the blog?
Luke: Or site. It’s dependent on the messaging goals. If you look at our social feed, sometimes it points to the blog, sometimes it points to product pages, and then sometimes the content on social is just meant to live on social. It’s a fair expectation that if you're scrolling through Instagram, you may not want to leave Instagram. So we have to think of what content we can create around workouts where you stay within that ecosystem? So it varies. The landing page or the destination if you will is very much dependent on the creative and the messaging goals.
Obviously, you always want to drive people back to the site, but you also have to be cognizant of whether it makes sense in light of the nature of the content? In a lot of ways, we're equally as interested in content that can stand on its own and doesn't need to have a destination. If you could learn something new and interesting and continue about your day, that's a positive brand interaction. The goal is over time, you build up enough of those positive brand interactions that someone will be willing to potentially buy from you.
Felix: How do you determine what content can stand on its own, and what content is meant to drive a user back to the site?
Luke: It's just about aligning on what your KPIs are. How are you going to measure success with what you're doing? And therefore, does it make sense relative to the content that you're producing? So for me, it's working with the different teammates to figure out when we post this or when we do this, what's the end goal? In cases where it's building community or building deeper connections, deeper brand relationships, the KPIs are going to be different than if it's to get someone onto a product page and get them to buy.
Knowing your funnel and segmenting for lead conversion
Felix: What does your strategy look like in terms of converting leads?
Luke: It’s interesting. Every time we've looked into it, there's no magic formula per se. For certain people, the gateway into the brand is our founders. They see Arnold and LeBron talking about it or maybe it's our brand ambassadors. They see Alex Toussaint or Bec Wilcock or Johnny Hooper talking about the brand and then they want to learn more. It could be any of the network of affiliates that we work with. It could be a press piece about the brand. Then from there, it's almost depending on what they do on the site.
I want to try and help that customer with whatever their next step is. Maybe they’re not ready to buy. Then the goal is maybe to get you to join our email list. For someone who's definitely in the market, what do you need to know about this product or what do you need to know about the brand in order for you to purchase? If you're comparison shopping, what are your hangups? How can I address those pain points in your life? For comparison shoppers maybe the blog articles are useful or maybe you didn't get enough information on our product page where that's okay.
For people who are subscribed to email, we test different types of content so then we can learn like, okay, for certain days of the week, certain content is going to do better than others and so we're going to increase. As the list grows, you can segment and personalize. The ultimate goal for any brand is personalization. For us, we're continuing to learn about these kinds of different consumer preferences and bucketing customers into these bigger groups in terms of where they're at in their purchase journey.
"The ultimate goal for any brand is personalization."
Felix: What are the segments that you like to break things up into?
Luke: It’s the big ones that you will always hear in terms of “awareness,” “consideration,” and then “purchase.” If somebody is in the “awareness” stage, the biggest thing that I want them to know is that Ladders is a supplement brand or |
sighed; “Vesper Garadex. Only through the key can we obtain full power. Now can you please let me in?”
Yosami let Vesper pass him, her face touched his black hair lightly and he picked up the scent of roses. He leaned over to the door and closed it over, with a slight frown on his face, something was troubling him; so far, only three people excluding himself had arrived. That left four people and one host , seeing as they hadn’t shown up. Yosami shook his head, adjusted his white jumper and followed Vesper.
Vesper walked into the castle’s most famous room. Why was it famous? Possibly because it was the room that hosted the unique stain glass window, or maybe because of what was in the room; a large oval table, measuring twenty five meters in length and ten in width, or perhaps it was the Quartzite that was built into the centre of the table that made it so well known, Vesper didn’t care, really.
Still, she had to smirk at the fact that Giovanni still thought he had to impress his eight colleagues, the seductive woman wasn’t in the mood to awe over a table that he had probably spent so much money on, no, she was only hear so she could hear about phase three… The problem was, she couldn’t, seeing as Giovanni hadn’t arrived yet.
She eyed the table; only Yosami, Cornelius and Septimus were sitting at it. Vesper took the chair nearest to her and sat down. She inspected the three boys opposite her; there was Yosami, Egyptian and feared everywhere because of what he had achieved within the Pokemon drugs world. Septimus, an intelligent and quirky boy who wasn’t scared of telling people the truth. He was responsible for the killing of Erika, the old Gym Leader of Celadon City. Vesper frowned when she saw Cornelius, she didn’t know why he was here and was rather discomforted by his zombie like appearance, with his green, curly hair that just managed to hang over his lifeless eyes, but the way his face was both sullen and empty was the thing that disturbed Vesper. One could have thought he was dead, if it wasn’t for his annoying habit of tapping the table every two seconds with a ghostly hand. Vesper scowled at him and looked around the room; a few oil paintings of different types of fruit hung on the wall. Vesper began to feel cold, she shivered and said the words the other three boys were thinking; “where is everybody?”
Five people, teenagers and adults, burst into the room one after the other, the last being a man dressed up in a red and white tuxedo. The four that entered with him walked to the table and sat down. One coughed as he waited for the man to speak.
“Impatience will get you no respect from me, Ptomely.” Giovanni told the boy who had coughed. The past Team Rocket leader surveyed the table from where he was standing. A lot of you have been wondering when Phase Three begins, it began a few hours ago.” The black-haired man waited for his words to have effect before he took out a Poke ball that was coloured gold at the top and silver at the bottom. “Does anyone know what this is?” Silence replied. “I’ll take that as a no.” He smirked at the blank faces and turned to a turquoise-haired man. “Cyrus, would you mind bringing Professor Oak in here?”
Vesper watched the man wearing a silver suit walk out of the room. Giovanni began to hum and throw the oddly coloured Poke ball from hand to hand, this irritated Vesper, but she didn’t bother telling him to stop. A few minutes later Cyrus re-entered the room with an elderly man.
Giovanni looked at the broken Professor, Oak was a state; his usually well kept grey hair was stained with red, his trademark white jacket was torn and his face was scarred and cut. Giovanni nodded to Oak. “Professor! So good you could make it! Please, sit down.” Giovanni gestured to an empty chair at the top of the table. Oak didn’t move. Giovanni laughed darkly before saying; “All of us within this room have guns and Pokemon, except for you, and I would really hate to have to make you sit down, but I will if I have to.”
Oak glared suspiciously at the man through tired eyes. “Why?”
“Sit down on the chair if you value your life,” Giovanni replied. Oak sighed and obeyed Giovanni. “Tie him up,” the man told Cyrus, pointing to some rope that he had placed on the floor a few hours before the meeting began. Cyrus scowled but did what Giovanni asked. Oak didn’t bother struggling; he knew he wouldn’t be able to escape. Once Cyrus was done he nodded to Giovanni curtly before walking back to his seat. Giovanni circled around Oak a few times before producing the gold and silver ball to Oak’s vision.
Oak’s face went just a tad whiter as he began to shake in anger and fear. “How did you get that?”
Giovanni ignored the question. “Can you believe that only you and I know what this is, out of all these wonderful people with us today? I asked them what it was, and not one could answer. I find that appalling. Tell them what it is, if you want to live, I would advise you to do as I say.”
Oak held his head high and looked upon those holding him captive. “That Poke ball is known as the GS Ball, it, that is to say… It never opened. My colleague spent her whole life trying to figure out how to work it. “It’s my guess some sort of Legendary Pokemon is inside it…” His voice trailed off and he turned to Giovanni. “If you have the ball… Where’s Ivy?”
Giovanni shrugged, “she fought with us, and she was disposed of.” Giovanni dismissed the distraught Professor and turned to address the crowd. “This ball is the GS Ball. It was built long ago by the Legendary Pokemon Mew and Arceus… The reason being that the apocalypse had begun, Mew and Arceus were about to die along with the rest of the world, so Mew sacrificed itself to create a revolutionary Poke ball, one that could not be opened. You see, Arceus and Mew knew that if Arceus were to die, the whole Pokemon population would die, for they need Arceus for the balance, because Arceus is the balance. Arceus sealed itself within the ball in the hope that it would be able to survive the apocalypse. Arceus survived, and the world started again. How did Arceus get out the GS Ball? Because of Darkrai and Giratina, the two teamed up and brought the Poke ball down to the Underworld, where they bargained with Arceus… They would free Arceus so long as Arceus gave the two his soul. The God agreed, and nobody knows how they did it, but they released Arceus. I’m sure you all know that there is no Poke ball that can catch a Legendary, except for the GS Ball, so, of course, I acquired it.”
Ceceily stood up. “That’s all very well, but without the key nothing will work. Where’s the key?”
“It is in Johto, and it still has no clue as to what we are planning,” Giovanni revolved on the spot to face Oak, he held out the GS Ball in front of him. “You know, Oak, there is a Pokemon inside of this ball, it’s a Legendary, and it goes by the name of Moltres.”
Talk erupted throughout the room, the only people that didn’t open their mouths were Oak, Giovanni and Cyrus. The professor smirked in a bittersweet way. “You don’t get it, do you? Articuno and Zapdos will come, and if they fail, Lugia and Ho-oh will follow. This isn’t a game, Giovanni… By corrupting the balance you have doomed yourself. As you said, the GS Ball can capture any Pokemon, but we both know it’s only one Pokemon to a Poke ball. So good luck, trying to survive under the wrath of the Legendaries.
Ceceily laughed and spat on the ground. “Who said anything about one GS Ball? No, Oak, we’ve cloned one Poke ball for each Legendary.”
Giovanni sighed and reached into one of his pockets. “Sadly for you, Oak, you are your antics are annoying me. You have given us all the information we need, and I thank you for that. Goodbye, Professor.”
As Giovanni took out his gun, he saw a flash of blue and Oak disappeared from view. He closed his eyes and opened them again to see he was aiming his gun at Oak’s head. The frail Professor nodded, smiling. Giovanni shivered, something was not right. He ignored the feeling and clenched his small, black handgun. Giovanni’s eyes met Oak’s, there was no longer sorrow in the man’s eyes, it seemed to have been replaced by amusement. Giovanni pulled the trigger.
The small, spinning piece of black lead burst through Oak’s temple, shattering all bones in its way so it could sink into the Professor’s brain. Oak’s body went limp. Giovanni turned away from the corpse. “Remove him.” He said to Cornelius.
Cornelius set to work and began to untie the dead man. When he accomplished this he dragged the body out of the room and re-entered without it. He sat down and waited for the next person to speak.
“You caught Moltres… How?” Vesper took the limelight.
Cyrus stood up from where he was sitting. “A couple of hours ago Giovanni rang me. He told me to meet him at Flame Island – where the Legendary Pokemon known as Moltres supposedly resided – as soon as possible. He gave me no reason as to why he wanted me to meet him, but that just intrigued me, and, as they say, curiosity killed the cat. I arrived there just under half an hour from the time of his call. He was already there, we met and he told me his plan. The ambitious man wanted to capture Moltres, but surely it was impossible.”
“I showed Cyrus the GS Ball, but I didn’t have time to explain the concept of it to him.” Giovanni took up the role of narrator. “But even with the GS Ball, I still needed the Fire Orb for Moltres to appear to me, so I guess it’s a good thing Lawrence the Third kindly gave it to me.” Giovanni smirked and bowed as a sign to tell Cyrus to continue.
“We reached the top after a fairly long climb. Giovanni shouted to thin air that if Moltres appeared to us we would give it back its Flame Orb. For a few minutes there was no sound except for the blustering wind. Then I heard a shriek from above, I looked up to see a Phoenix hurtling at us from the clouds at breakneck speed. Moltres glided over and landed in front of us. Its magnificence was clear, and the two of us were awed by it. It cocked it’s head to a stone tablet a few years away from us; apparently he wanted us to put the Flame Orb down on it, I guess we’ll never kow because it was at that moment that Giovanni threw the GS Ball. It sucked the bird of fire in, landed on the ground and didn’t roll once.” Cyrus sat down.
The seven listeners began to clap. Giovanni was about to say something when the stain glass window shattered in front of him, a blue beam exploded throughout the room. Giovanni quickly realised it was ice and he smirked. The balance was broken and Articuno wanted to fix it. The man quickly walked out of the room, the rest could follow.
Reply With Quote<|endoftext|>Songwriter, Producer Don Kirshner Dies at 76
Don Kirshner has passed away at the age of 76 due to heart failure.
Kirshner established his career in the music industry in the 1960s when he and Al Nevin founded the influential New York-based publishing company Aldon Music. The company, which was eventually bought by Columbia, went on to work with a number of songwriters including Neil Diamond, Carole King, Burt Bacharach, Gerry Coffin, Neil Sedaka and Laura Nyro.
In 1966, Kirshner managed the songwriting talent behind the popular television rock act The Monkees, and later for the bubblegum pop band The Archies. He also served as music consultant for shows such as Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie.
In the 1970s, Kirshner hosted his signature TV show Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert on ABC, which included live performances by Kansas (who were “discovered” by Kirshner), Black Sabbath, David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, The Ramones, The Allman Brothers Band, Alice Cooper, Journey and Bachman-Turner Overdrive, among others. The show aired until 1981.
Kirshner was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2007.
He is survived by his wife, Sheila, two children and five grandchildren.
• Deanna711ward
like a stay-over.
so sad.
family&friends my thoughts&”prayers” .
Now, I know.
web is so slow”he said”but what can we do
• The show “Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert ” was a huge part of my childhood. It was the Rock N Roll version of Soul Train! He was ahead of his time.<|endoftext|>Welcome to the Sailor Moon: Another Story FAQ! v1.6, by Dan Orner (omegaonyx@geocities.com).To play the English-translated version of this game, you'll need three things:1. A Super Nintendo emulator like ZSNES (http://www.zsnes.com/).2. The Sailor Moon: Another Story ROM file. You can get the ALREADY PATCHED file athttp://www.emusanet.com .Note that some people are concerned about the legality of these emulators. WhileI do not condone downloading current games (like for PlayStation and N64), Idon't mind so much for SNES, because the sales for those systems are very low rightnow anyway. Besides that, I wholeheartedly approve of playing fan translations, because, quite frankly, there isn't much chance of you buying this game if youcan't read it! So Toei/Angel isn't losing any money by letting you play it this way.That's my two cents; do whatever you want.-----------CONTENTS-----------I. FAQ Version HistoryII. How To PlayIII. Battles (plus Status info)IV. Hints And TipsV. Story -addendum to Liner Notes -map of Juuban -full walkthrough (spoiler-free)VI. ItemsVII. AccessoriesVIII. Shop ListIX. TechniquesX. Link TechniquesXI. FormationsXII. Cheat CodesXII. Credits----------I. FAQ Version History----------v1.0: FAQ created.v1.1: Added information about Kainess bosses.v1.2: Added Pro Action Replay cheat codes.v1.3: Minor tweaking; announced new location of patch file.v1.4: Corrected an error in the Accessories section.v1.5: Added more cheat codes.v1.6: Fixed info on the A.EARRINGs (man, that got a lot of e-mails!) Added the link to emusanet.com (stop bothering me on where to get ROMS!) Added the hacking info thanks to Ryan Risk (r_risk@hotmail.com). DO NOT E-mail me about this info.----------II. How To Play----------This section contains very basic tips as well as a brief manual. If you're used toRPG's, I suggest you skip to section IV, with maybe a brief look at Section III.This game is a mostly standard Role-Playing Game (RPG). It consists of three main modes: 1. walking around, finding items and advancing the storyline; 2. Battles; and 3. Menus.Playing Mode 1:Directional Pad: Walks around.A: Interacts with environment (talks to people, opens chests, reads signs, etc.)B: Hold while walking to run.L/R: Hold while walking to run very fast.X: Opens Main Menu.Start: Opens MakeUpLink Menu.Select: Opens Options Menu.When you talk to people, text will appear at the bottom of the screen. To advance the text to the next screen, press A. If a choice appears in the bottom (Yes or No) pressLeft or Right on the directional pad to select your choice and A to accept it.In the beginning of the game, there are very few items to be found. Basically all items in the game are found in brown chests. In many parts of the game, you will be attacked randomly after walking a predeterminedamount of steps - actually a range of steps, usually between 7 and 12. When you areattacked, battle (Mode 2 of this section) will commence. Sometimes you will lose control of your character for a brief time, where one or moreconversations will take place. Sometimes you will start battle right after that, without having time to prepare yourself, so be careful!To save your game, look for small black "Luna-P" balls (you'll recognize it fromSailor Moon R as Chibi-Usa's communication and magic device). Go up to it and press A,then move the cursor down and select Save.Playing Mode 2: See Section IV.Playing Mode 3:There are three menus here. The Main and Options menus have the same controls: Directional Pad Up and Down: Move cursor between options.A: Accept option.B: Cancel option (go back a step); also press to exit the menu if nothing has been selected.L: Move one page to the left (in item/tech lists).R: Move one page to the right (in item/tech lists).We'll start with the Main Menu (pressing X on the main game screen). Your options are:ItemsAccessoriesFormationStatusTechniquesLink TechsPuzzleSaveThe Items screen gives you a list of your items. Select "Sort items" to let the gameorganize them for you. Select "Rare Items" to see a list of story items, which cannotbe used. Select "Use Item" for the real reason of this menu. You are given the itemname and the amount you have of that item; putting the cursor on it will show youa brief description of it above the list. If an item is in black, it can be used; ifit's in gray it can only be used in battle. Select an item to use and you'll beredirected back to the main screen where you can choose who to use it on.Accessories menu: Every ally can equip up to three accessories, which change her stats like strength, defense, and speed. The character's accessories are on the leftside, all of the ones you've collected are on the right. Press A and then A again onthe desired accessory to switch their positions. Note that you must press B to selectanother of your character's accessory spots to switch - a bit of a pain.Formation: There are four formations to choose from; they are discussed in section XI.Status: |
those who don’t, like herself and other rich folks and Big Business: wealthfare not welfare.
In reality, her denial also to “liars and tricksters” would rule out her own candidates, McCain and Palin, too!!!
Just like they’ve politicized the public airwaves, “fair and balanced” journalism, even Christianity as a religion. Then they complain about “the tone in Washington” … the tone they instilled there!!! (In reality, “democratic” republics do tend to politicize everything; nothing is sacred, everything’s a political football, nothing is presumed — except militarism.)
The American people really should turf this party or sect for a whole generation, like the Israelites in the desert who weren’t allowed to see the Promised Land after worshipping the Golden Calf. This all-consuming partisanship isn’t politics at all, it’s not give-and-take for the Common Good, it’s just corruption.
As for “Trick or Treat,” the traditional penalty for not treating the kiddies used to be having your property or car TP’ed, egged, vandalized, etc. There’s a “traditional value” that maybe should be brought back, at least in this one case!!! Seriously, it arguably constituted community regulation of undesirable behavior, community promotion of generosity and not being so tight-fisted or close-minded or un-neighborly. Of course, with today’s corrupt, egotistical individualism, we’re not allowed to do things like that anymore, neither from the left nor the right. Mixed blessing, eh?!
As for her putting GOP campaign flyers in kids’ treats (isn’t that redundant, since she only wants to preach to the choir?), I’d no more want them in my kids’ bags than (literal) poison or razor blades or needles: I consider Republican propaganda these days to be that dangerous and unhealthy, especially to the young. I wouldn’t want my kids’ brains polluted with such filth and selfishness and heresy!
Why don’t they just go back to protesting the existence of Halloween at all, like good Fundamentalists! LEAVE OUR KIDS ALONE!!!!!
“Social justice is a matter of life and death”
Speaking of Canada, some reports out up there and elsewhere suggest maybe we all need more than a little dose of “socialism.” As someone else put it, “The rich get richer, and the poor get sick” … AND DIE EARLY! Even in Toronto. Although they haven’t had a true progressive federal government up there in decades….
It’s called The Common Good, people. You ARE your brother’s keeper: Genesis 4:9Remember the Rich Man and Lazarus: Luke 16: 19-31. And the Last Judgment: Matthew 25: 31-46.
New Exodus to Canada?! (satire)
A droll piece purporting to be from a Manitoba newspaperPLEASE!!! VOTE FIRST, THEN SPLIT!!! I know it’ll be a month colder up there, but we can’t give up YET, and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory!!! Besides, I’m disabled, I’d never make it, even if I was an English major!!! 😉
Then again, if Palin’s gonna get away with hinting about Rep. “Uncle” Barney Frank as a pedophile*…. Race-baiting, pedo-baiting, Red Scare / McCarthyism (I don’t mean Jenny!), bigotry, woeful judgment, a hot temper and violence, questionable health, corporatocracy, potential PTSD, faked assaults — If we let them steal this one, it might be hard to get it back from them. So much for your vaunted rights and freedoms, “inventory and investments”**…. 😦
(*–Honestly, that’s right up there with Dick Armey’s “Barney Fag” — as if a guy named Dick Armey has any right to talk!)
(**–Yeah, that’s Joe the Plumber, “inventory and investments”! TOTALLY OUT OF TOUCH AND OUT OF CONTROL!)
New Bushie ‘Business Plot’: Take Bailout Money and Run
It looks like Democratic leaders in Congress, and the MSM, are prepared to let them, too. Here’s the details, and here’s a little different perspective.
I believe that “no review” provision is unconstitutional. It comes from arrogant “conservatives” who propose using Congress’ power to delineate Federal courts’ jurisdiction, to exclude altogether pet projects like anti-flag-burning, public school prayer, anti-abortion, anti-pornography, etc etc etc. But that’s at best a misunderstanding, at worst a vile perversion, of the provision, otherwise Congress could just explicitly exclude ALL its laws from judicial review, and do whatever it wants, the Constitution be damned. But this power has never been seriously interpreted this way by Congress or the Courts. Every act of the legislative or executive branches has to be reviewable judicially, even if just to say “It’s a political matter” or “It’s a Constitutional Amendment” (which would be obvious of course), “they’re allowed.” If Congress (and the White House) sought to exclude a new bill from review by existing courts, they would be required to establish a new court just for that bill (like FISA), or designate State courts or something. We can’t have NO review!
And a dictatorship of the Treasury Secretary, who works for the President? Please! I don’t see these powers granted in the Constitution. Congress spends money.
As for the artificiality of the current “crisis,” you just know these guys were sitting around one day saying to each other, “What’ll they do, let us go under, and take the economy with us?!!” This may be the culmination of W.’s “planned train wreck,” to totally “discredit” government by ballooning the deficit (incl. erasing the Clinton / Democratic surplus!), instigating a reaction to “shrink government small enough to drown it in a bathtub.” (Of course, it all started with the Revolution of the Colonial Ruling Elites against The Crown and legitimate traditional government….) They scream about “handouts” to us who are needy, but demand this total governmental giveaway to predatory corporations and the rich?!!! This is right up there with trying to abolish Habeas Corpus and spy on us without a warrant. And for the Democrats to just roll over and play dead on this when they have the majority in Congress would be a mortal sin. RED states may not be buying it, but will they take that outrage to the polls in November and thrash the GOP that brought it on them?
Again, I have to wonder how much of this “bailout” money will find its way into Repug campaign coffers, or perhaps the corporate paychecks of Bush officials if they leave office in January?
Just more Republican “borrow-and-spend” “voodoo economics”!!!<|endoftext|>Early Exploration and History of Nebraska
It is difficult looking back through the mist of years to arrive at an incontrovertible conclusion as to just when and by whom the middle portion of the United States was first visited by white men. There is a wealth of interesting historical documents and writings recounting the invasion of this part of the continent by whites and tracing the march of civilization, most of which base their beginning with the French explorers, but it is now regarded as an established fact by many historical writers that the southwestern and middle portions of the United States were included in Spanish explorations early in the fifteenth century. One of the expeditions which is referred to by many historians is the Coronado expedition. It is related that in about the year 1540, Coronado, who was then governor of New Gallia, organized an expedition and executed a march from Mexico to the region which is now the heart of Nebraska and Kansas. That was as marvelous an undertaking as the history of this continent affords. Not only was the region to be covered an unknown land, but the obstacles to be overcome, the mountains between and subsequent stretches of sand plains and desert made the undertaking a gigantic one. And yet under these conditions it is said that an army of about one thousand men was pushed across the arid plains, the rugged mountains and barren deserts, which lie between what is now Nebraska and Mexico. This, it must be remembered, was eighty years before the Pilgrims landed on the shores of New England; sixty-eight years before Hudson discovered the river which bears his name; sixty-six years before John Smith commenced the settlement of what was afterward to be Virginia; and nearly a century before Jean Nicolet established commercial relations with the Indians of Wisconsin. This expedition was organized to search for fabulous wealth which was supposed to exist in these regions, of which marvelous tales had been carried to Mexico. The end of the long march is graphically told by Judge J. W. Savage, a careful student and an eloquent writer on Nebraska’s early history, in the following words: “Northward from the Arkansas river for many weary and anxious hours, the little band which accompanied the adventurous general pursued its way over the Kansas plains. July had come, the days were long and hot and the sultry nights crept over the primeval prairie, seeming to rise like a shadowy and threatening specter out of the grass. But stout hearts and good horses brought them at last to what I am satisfied is the southern boundary of Nebraska. And here, along the Platte River, they found the long sought Kingdom of Quivera; here was Tartarrax, the hoary headed old ruler of the land. But alas for the vanity of human expectations! The only precious metal they saw was a copper plate hanging to the old chief’s breast, by which he set great store; there were no musical bells, no gilded eagle, no silver dishes, no rosary, no image of the Virgin, no cross, no crown, that they had been led to believe existed. In the midst of his disappointment the general took a melancholy pleasure in hanging his guides who had so egregiously misguided him. It is said that the guides here boldly avowed that they knew of no gold; that they had brought the invaders into the wilderness to perish with hunger and hardship, to rid the peaceful dwellers in the Rio Grande and Pecos valleys of their hated presence, and met their fate with stoicism which the Spaniards called despair and remorse. Here then, upon the southern boundary of this state at a point not yet easily ascertainable, but doubtless between Gage county on the east and Furnas county on the west, Coronado set foot on the soil of Nebraska and remained for twenty-five days. I have heretofore adverted to the fact that this location of the northern terminus has not met with universal acceptation. The arguments, however, in support of the theory seem to me to be unanswerable.”
While it is true that the location of the northern terminus is not definitely settled, most writers concede that Coronado’s march following the itinerary given in the Spanish documents and papers must have carried this band of explorers up somewhere into the Kansas Nebraska prairies. The land of Quivera, and the Seven Cities of the Buffalo, referred to is surrounded by much glamour of romantic mystery. Although a number of contemporaneous narratives are preserved referring to this kingdom and to remarkable searches made for it, it is singular that hardly any two writers agree as to the location or the ultimate terminus of the searching expeditions.
At about the same time another event was transpiring, also under the folds of the Spanish flag, which for years stood undisputed in point of priority, and an epoch is marked in American history by the discovery of the Mississippi by Ferdinand DeSoto in 1542.
It is related that in 1542 Ferdinand De Soto, with a band of Spanish adventurers, acting under a commission from the sovereign of his native land, discovered the Mississippi river about the mouth of the Ouachita. After the sudden death of their leader, in May of that year, his followers, after burying his body in the river, built a small vessel, and in July, 1543, descended the great river to the Gulf of Mexico. Thus the mouth of the Mississippi was discovered one hundred and thirty years prior to the discovery of its upper valley by the French missionary priests.
By virtue of this and the conquest of Florida, Spain claimed the country bordering on the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico, but made no attempt to colonize it permanently. At that time it was tacitly understood by the various maritime states of Europe that the discovery and occupation of any part of the New World made a legitimate title to the country. Although the valley of the Mississippi was thus taken possession of by Spain, the failure of that power to consummate its discovery by planting colonies or settlements, made their title void, and the country was left open to be rediscovered and taken possession of by other powers.
In 1534 and 1535 an intelligent and capable French naval officer, Jacques Cartier, discovered and named the St. Lawrence River. He took possession of that country in the name of his king and built a rude fort, in 1541, near the present site of Quebec. This was sixty-six years before the English made a settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. From that time on the country became known and settlements sprang up along the great river and it became the province of New France. In 1608 Champlain selected the site of the old fort of Cartier’s as the future capital of the province. Champlain made many explorations in and around the country, and in 1609, ascending a tributary of the St. Lawrence, found that beautiful sheet of water in New York that bears his name. After visiting France, he returned and in 1615, accompanying a tribe of Indians to their far off hunting grounds discovered Lake Huron.
It was early in the seventeenth century when the revived religion of Prance quickened the fervor of her noble missionary priests. Led by their zeal to the New World, they penetrated the wilderness in all directions from Quebec, carrying the tidings of the Gospel to the heathen. Along the river St. Lawrence, through the chain of Great Lakes, westward, they pushed their way, establishing missions and endeavoring to turn the savages to their faith. This movement began in 1611, when Father La Caron, a Franciscan friar, the friend and companion of Champlain, made a journey to the rivers of Lake Huron on foot and by paddling a bark canoe. In 1632, on the establishment of a government of New Prance, under the commission of Louis XIII, and the patronage of his great prime minister, Armand Duplessis, Cardinal Richelieu, the work of converting the Indian passed from the order of St. Francis, to that of Loyola, the famed Jesuit. Burning with a pious zeal and animated by a spirit of self-sacrifice, rarely, if ever, paralleled in the history of missionary work, these latter, simple priests, penetrated the wilds of the Canadian frontier, and through toil and pain, often to martyrdom, carried the cross to the remote tribes of the Mississippi and its tributaries. Bancroft, the historian, says: “The history of their labors is connected with the origin of every celebrated town in the annals of French America; not a cape was turned or a river entered, but a Jesuit led the way.”
In 1634 the Jesuits, Brebeuf and Daniels, followed by Lallemand, made a journey into the far west. Joining a party of Huron Indians, who had been in Quebec, and who were returning to their homes, they pushed their way, enduring, without complaint, untold fatigue and suffering, by lake, river and forest. They penetrated to the heart of the Huron wilderness. Near the shores of Lake Iroquois was raised the first house of the Society of Jesus in all that region, and soon two villages, named St. Louis and St. Ignace, sprang up among the primeval forests that were then the homes of the savage red man. The mission of Brebeuf gave to the world its first knowledge of the water courses of the St. Lawrence valley. From a map published in France in 1660 it is seen that these pious priests had explored the country from the waters of the Niagara to the head of Lake Superior and had heard of or seen the shores of Lake Michigan.
As early as 1635 Jean Nicolet, who had been one of Champlain ‘s interpreters, and who had come from his native land, Prance, to Canada in 1618, reached the western shores of Lake Michigan. In the summer of 1634 he ascended the St. Lawrence River with a party of Hurons, and thence onward to Lake Michigan, and during the following winter traded with the Indians at what is now Green Bay, Wisconsin. In 1635 he returned to Canada. He was married in Quebec, October 7, 1637, and lived at Three Rivers until 1642, when he died. Of him it is said, in a letter written in 1640, that he had penetrated the farthest into these distant countries and that if he had proceeded “three days more on a great river which flows from that lake (Green Bay), he would have found the sea,” for such was the common belief in those days, even among geographers and other scientists.
The hostilities of the Iroquois, or Five Nations, a confederacy of fierce and bloodthirsty savages, prevented the journey of Raymbault and Picard to the west in 1640, but the following year at the great feast of the dead, held by the Algonquins, at Lake Nipising, the Jesuits were invited to visit the land of the Ojibway or Chippewa Indians, at what is now Sault de Sainte Marie. Accordingly, September 17, 1641, Fathers Raymbault and Jogues left the Bay of Penetanguishene in a bark canoe for the rendezvous, where, after a passage of seventeen days, they found two thousand Indians, who had congregated to meet them.
At this assembly the fathers learned of many as yet unheard of tribes. Here was heard the first mention of the Dacotahs, called in the Ojibway tongue, Nadouechionec or Nadouessioux. The latter name, abbreviated by the French, forms the present name of those fierce nomads of the North, the Sioux. It has been truly said “that the French were looking toward the homes of the Sioux, in the great valleys of the Missis sippi and Missouri five years before the New England Eliot had addressed the tribes of Indians who dwelt within six miles of Boston harbor.” In the ardor of his enthusiasm for discovery Raymbault expected to reach the Pacific Ocean, then supposed to be but a few hundred miles west of where the Mississippi river is now found. However, he was laid low by the hand of death, dying in 1642 of sickness brought on by hardships and exposure.
In August, 1654, two fur traders joined a band of Ottawa Indians and made a long journey into the far west. In two years they returned with some fifty canoes and two hundred and fifty natives. They described the rivers and lakes of the west, and the tribes whose homes stretched away to the northern sea and mentioned the Sioux who dwelt beyond Lake Superior and who wanted to |
and replicating its output_ using generative models”. After all, much of BDA is about y_rep. But again, the focus is on the use not the stats under the hood.
• Rahul says:
Why aren’t DAGs becoming more mainstream, more widely used? This is not snarky. I’m just curious.
• Fernando says:
My sense is they are becoming much more widely used, and their use will grow exponentially. But science advances one dead statistician at a time :-)
Graphical models more generally are very widely used in ML. Just open a recent textbook like Murphy.
• Anonymous says:
Hierarchical/multilevel models are basically DAGS. Even Andrew/Bob often refer to Stan as “A (Bayesian) Directed Graphical Model Compiler”
Why aren’t DAGs/hierarchical models used more often relative to say, trying to shoehorn every applied data analysis problem into combinations of t-tests, linear regressions, bootstraps, fisher exact tests, and multiple comparison corrections? I would say this is an unfortunate consequence of 4-5 generations of failed statistical education.
• Fernando says:
Anon: “Hierarchical/multilevel models are basically DAGS.”
No they are not. DAGs are non parametric, and causal in nature. Hierarchical models need not be.
• germo says:
Hmm, what do you mean by non parametric? Isn’t multivariate Gaussian used practically always for continous data? (Note: Most stuff what I have read about grahical models doesn’t actually involve causality, only conditional dependencies. So the way I see DAGs is probably quite a bit different than what you actually mean in this case)
• Fernando says:
PS to be clear I am not arguing for DAGs and against hierarchical models. On the contrary, I think their combination is awesome. But they are not the same thing. I think the former are better for identification, and the latter for estimation.
• I’d like to make that past tense! I did a presentation at the ML Meetup in NY before Stan was fully implemented and before we fully realized how general the language was ourselves. We try not to refer to directed graphs at all any more, because they’re not actually intrinsic to Stan’s modeling languages. Now all we need to do is expunge it from our C++ namespaces, which still have the model parser and code generator in stan::gm.
The directed acyclic graph structure is only part of the model. You also need the density or mass function for each node conditioned on it parent nodes. And then you usually have “plates,” which in theory can be blown out to simple DAGs. But this is very inefficient, as you can see, by say, trying to scale up an IRT model in both students and questions. BUGS or JAGS scale up in memory with the number of edges, whereas Stan scales with the number of nodes.
• Fernando says:
Yes, that is the difference between a (deterministic) causal model, and a probabilistic causal model. But you only need the probabilistic part for some purposes and not others. And you can get very far without it (e.g. you can understand identification, selection bias, missing data, instrumental variables, exclusion restrictions, etc using graphs alone, and often much more easily an intuitively than with probabilistic models).
From a didactic perspective I think this is useful bc we need not scare people away with complex math, etc.. from the get go. They can get very far with much less machinery. (But I understand that you want to cater to people already advanced who want to do even more advanced models easily.)
BTW this is in no way to criticize what you are doing. I expect to only use Stan or something like it in the future. I just don’t think it does Stan justice to describe it as a language to specify a log posterior up to an additive constant even if indeed that is exactly what it does. I mean, is that the mission statement for the Stan team: To create a language for specifying a log posterior up to an additive constant?
• One of our main goals for the Stan language is to provide an easy and expressive and efficient way of specifying the log posterior. As well as for generating derived quantities probabilistically. That’s not an end itself. We also want to provide estimation and inference and model checking over that.
We’re going to be diving into tutorials, but we don’t have any plans for deterministic graphs or really for graphical models at all other than as a subset of more general models. After all, (smoking -> cancer) is hardly deterministic. We’re trying to make a tool for applied statisticians, not logic students.
• Fernando says:
Bob: “After all, (smoking -> cancer) is hardly deterministic. We’re trying to make a tool for applied statisticians, not logic students.”
Many problems that are considered statistical problems — from Simpson’s paradox, to missing data, etc — do not require any knowledge of probability. You can understand and address them using DAGs, and d-separation, period. Indeed you can even use DAGs + d-separation + data & visualization to make non-parametric inferences. At which point the main benefit of statistics is regularization for sparse strata (and, having gotten here I wonder whether regularization is statistics or a convenient kludge).
To wit, it is easy to show using this framework where and why MRP will go wrong, and how to test for it in specific applications before believing your results. Presumably this is of interest to statisticians. Unfortunately probability is useless in this regard bc it cannot differentiate causation from correlation. It is an ambiguous language for causal inference, an ambiguity Stan will inherit if you ignore DAGs.
• Fernando says:
PS: OK you need basic knowledge of probability distributions and conditional independence but that is about it.
• Fernando says:
smoking \rightarrow cancer becomes probabilistic once you specify a distribution for the background causes U as in smoking \rightarrow cancer $\leftarrow$ U.
At a basic level the U is what probabilistic programing languages like Church automate, with routines like flip. But in causal inference this is often not the contentious part, unless you want runs simulations or make inferences about unobserved variables. The acrimony is typically about theory and identification, none of which require statistics per se.
Moreover, DAGs are intrinsically heterogeneous so they include all possible interactions. The issue is how you want to estimate them.
So I don’t know about applied statisticians, but applied scientists can get very far with this framework, and do things in a simple fashion where many statisticians still struggle.
• What kind of use do you have in mind? Because my impression matches Fernando’s.
Some models can be easily expressed in a simple directed acyclic graph specification language. Any such model without discrete parameters can be directly translated line-by-line from BUGS/JAGS to Stan.
And while my original conception of Stan’s language was following BUGS, we all soon realized it was much more general. It’s really just a way to specify a log posterior. So you don’t have to specify the full joint probability in Stan, just something equal to the log posterior up to an additive constant. This opens up many more programming possibilities.
Another example is that we can do lots of imperative programming in the model, such as including conditionals that are quite a pain to express in BUGS even if it is technically possible in many cases.
There are also many researchers (mostly in AI-related fields as far as I can tell) using DAGS for causal inference and/or graph structure induction (I’m not sure how these are related, to be honest, despite being a professor in the same department as Clark Glymour and Peter Spirtes for almost a decade — I did logic and natural language semantics, not stats, back then).
• Fernando says:
PPS One should also be clearer about the meaning of “domain knowledge” and “generative models”. From the graphical roots of probabilistic programing languages I surmise these refer to causal knowledge and structural models. But they need not. They could refer to knowledge about correlations and predictive models.
• It’s not so much what Stan aims to be as what Stan actually is.
You’re right about the subtlety — I didn’t understand the point about science vs. statistics in the first post or either of the second posts. Maybe I’m missing what you mean by “generative.”
I think of Stan as working in two stages — the language defines a log probabilty function, then you can use it for sampling or optimization. And we plan to add marginal maximum likelihood, EP, and VB over the next year or two, so there will be more options in terms of inference to plug in for the models defined in the language. But the language itself is agnostic as to how the log probability, data, and parameters defined by the model will be used.
Probabilistic programming languages like Figaro (object oriented) or Church (functional) don’t seem to derive from graphical model representation languages like BUGS, at least as far as I can tell.
• Fernando says:
My understanding is that Church came up as a way of extending graphical models, which become ugly and unwieldy when you have too many nodes.
Smoking \Rightarrow Cancer is a generative model in the sense that it captures what we think is the data generating process. But to get it to actually generate data you need to add a few random variables, like the flip routine in Church.
You don’t need formal Bayes for any of this, though it can be very useful. But all I’m trying to say is the goal ought to be to keep things simple. If even Andrew has trouble understanding VB I think there is something wrong. I find simplicity a great virtue. What I’ve learned using DAGs is that things can be a lot simpler that using stats. You can search for Simpson’s paradox in this blog to see my point.
• Andrew says:
You write, “If even Andrew has trouble understanding VB I think there is something wrong.” I disagree. You might as well argue that, given that almost none of us understand how a jet engine works (let alone the principles of heavier-than-air flight or the metallurgy needed to build an aluminum fuselage), that we should be going across the Atlantic in sailboats.
We use complicated methods such as HMC and EP and VB because we have problems to solve. We want to get to Europe in 7 hours rather than 7 weeks, as it were, and we’re willing to use the latest technology to do so. It is the nature of the latest technology that few people understand it.
• Fernando says:
I disagree with you. The latest technology is not always the best solution. That is why we use Russian rockets to send satellites into space, or why the Mig fighter jet, as I understand it, was such good value for money.
You like regularization in statistics. I like regularization in research practice. Here is what I mean:
Despite a century of research we still don’t know why people get fat. In this time we have used increasingly complex statistical techniques, faster computers, etc.. yet arguably 19th century doctors had a better understanding of the underlying causes. There are many reasons for this, including many you discuss in this blog (incentives, publication bias, etc.)
But here is my hypothesis, and counterfactual scenario. If the only stats we had ever taught researchers over the past century was to compute a difference in means and CI. And if instead we made them focus on theory, concepts, measures, measurement instruments, and research design. Then I bet we would have much better knowledge today about the causes of obesity. Admittedly this is just a hypothesis. But in my defense I would adduce that much of the “credibility revolution” in econometrics is a back to basics approach. Natural experiments try to recreate simple experiments, where often all you need is a simple difference in means.
Most people (myself included) don’t know how to handle complex methods, and are taught to believe that science is running a regression — the more complex the better. I believe this has it all upside down. You are building powerful stuff, but that does not immediately imply you will get powerful results (not you personally, who know how to use it, but broadly). In an ideal situation yes, in practice, I am not so sure. This is why, when Bob in the post asks for suggestions, I suggest he focus on usability and simplicity. But feel free to ignore me.
• Andrew says:
I guess it depends on what you want to do. For the sorts of problems I work on, it is computation that limits me from making my models as complicated as I’d like. For example, I do a lot of work on sample surveys. To generalize from sample to population requires a lot of struggles, as the saying goes. If we could easily fit models with deep interactions, that would help. And I think the same principles arise in causal inference. As for natural experiments, they’re fine as far as they go, but as we’ve seen on this blog, people often get a bit too excited by them. If sample size is small and variation is high, you’ll run into trouble no matter what.
• Fernando says:
I agree that for some problems you really need a super computer, and the latest fancy software. I am just reacting to the idea that the more complex it sounds the better it is. That may be true for some applications but not all (perhaps not even many).
• But we are trying to focus on usability and simplicity!
Our motivation in building Stan was that we had models we wanted to fit that other software couldn’t fit, or at least not as efficiently as we wanted. We of course still have a long way to go.
Some problems don’t have simple solutions. Or at least don’t currently have simple solutions. What’s considered “simple” changes over time as more people learn it. For instance, I now believe calculus, linear algebra, and computer programming are all considered simple in that we teach them to every engineering undergraduate, and teach the first and third to high school students.
As an example, we have been working on drug-disease models with Novartis for clinical trials. These models intrinsically involve differential equations to model drug diffusion and then relate them to observable effects, like visual acuity tests. There’s not a simple way to express such a model as a DAG. Yes, you can do it in PKBUGS, but not with the BUGS language for graphical modeling — you have to extend the notion to include nodes that are function definitions for the system of differential equations and then call an integrator to solve the differential equation. And then you need noise models for your noisy measurements to fit things like rate equations in the first place. Then you need to take into account that patients vary by sex and by age and by a host of other genetic and environmental factors that we don’t even have measurements for. And I almost forgot that we also want to take into account a meta-analysis of previous experiments, and have several drugs, dosages, and placebo controls.
It’s not that complicated, but it’s hardly smoking -> cancer.
• Fernando says:
We agree. The thing is you come at Stan from the perspective of a tool to solve problems that previously were very hard. I come form the perspective that I would like to teach high school kids how to do science using something like DAGs + Stan. I think it could be very simple, kind of a Logo version if you will. So all I am saying is not to loose track of other great potential uses of the language, which could be as important.
BTW I have a side project looking at HIV transmission among high school kids in Western Kenya and was thinking of using an agent-based model. I am new to them but I think they can be very useful, and could usefully be coded in Stan I imagine. For example, Andrew’s 4-part model of toxicokinetics could be recast as an agent-based model where each organ is an agent.
Why do this? In the case of human behavior experts might have much better priors about the parameters governing human choices than a differential equation of disease transmission that results from their interaction. It can also simplify model specification, as simple behaviors can engender pretty complex phenomena. But again, I am new to this. Grateful for any pointers or suggestions.
• @Fernando: It may be possible to wrap Stan with something simpler that could be used for teaching. But given all of our other goals, this isn’t even a low-priority item for us. Something simpler involving a few models and Javascript on the browser may be a better model than Stan for teaching.
• Rahul says:
Daggity already does exactly that, right?
• Fernando says:
I’m not making this ruckus to have some toy example javascript on a web browser. But I’m not going to spell it out. Just think daggity with a simulation and inference engine, one that knows about d-separation.
• Daniel Gotthardt says:
Why would you need such a complicated and indepth tool for High School students? I don’t see the necessity, I actually think that might even make things more complicated for them than you would want.
• Fernando says:
I disagree. The tool, as I see it, would actually be quite simple, and powerful. Besides one should not underestimate what kids can accomplish.
But don’t get me wrong, I am not a High School teacher. My point is that science, and causal inference in particular, is made unnecessarily complicated. You don’t need Stats 101-103 to do it. Using graphical tools like DAGs and a simple UI (though not a simplistic solution) even high school kids can address important problems and make important contributions. That is my belief. I draw inspiration form things like:
One thing I liked about Harvard is that PhD courses were often open to all students, including some high school ones.
5. […] programs. In some instances claims of expressiveness can be contentious, for example see this blog post on whether Stan is Turing complete. My criteria is based on whether it’s possible to […]
Leave a Reply<|endoftext|>Insulation and smoke alarms only half the answer
Minimum insulation standards and smoke alarms for private rental properties are at least a step in the right direction but the Government could and should do so much more, Labour’s Housing spokesperson Phil Twyford says.
“Insulating a cold house without requiring modern efficient heating will still leave tenants at risk of respiratory diseases.
“Sadly this is the kind of grudging half-measure that’s become the trade mark of National’s housing policy, where initiatives are only announced when they are forced by public opinion.
“New Zealanders want the Government to ensure all rental properties are warm and dry. Many families are already struggling to afford to heat their homes and we are only half way through a bitterly cold winter.
“It’s the right thing to do and it’s an economic no-brainer given that for every $1 spent on retrofitting the country saves $5 on public health expenditure.
“More than half of all New Zealanders are renters. It is past time the Government made serious reforms to make rentals warm and dry, and encouraged more security of tenure and longer-term leases.
“That is what Labour would do. Only requiring insulation and smoke alarms falls far short of what is needed,” Phil Twyford says.<|endoftext|>Singapore is a tiny country that has earned a reputation for being one of the best tourist spots in the world. That reputation is with good |
sediments were deposited on a series of overlapping fans in a base-of-slope slope-apron environment. Melange zones, consisting of isolated blocks or lenses of greywacke in a sheared argillite matrix, are subparallel to bedding within the turbidites. Individual structures vary from compressional to extensional and brittle to ductile; stratal disruption resulted from bedding-parallel extension. The melange zones represent decollements and, at least locally, are at the tops of coherent sedimentary sequences. Most of the strata strike north-northeast, dip steeply, and face west. Shear planes subparallel to bedding are pervasive. Megascopic and some larger folds plunge gently to moderately parallel to the regional strike of bedding; some map-scale folds plunge steeply oblique to bedding. West of Wellington, the strata are folded into steeply plunging, map-scale upright and inverted anticlines and synclines. The structural history of the Wellington-area Torlesse is based on cleavage-fold relations and similarity of fold styles and is consistent with deformation in an accretionary prism (AP) over a west-dipping subduction zone: (1) Formation of melange beneath the toe of an AP. (2) Underplating to the base of the AP and tectonic thickening. (3) Subhorizontal asymmetric folding and cleavage development. (4) Imbrication, stacking, and coaxial rotation of strata to subvertical. (5) Folding due to layer-parallel oblique-slip. Subsequent events less clearly related to deformation within the AP area. (6) Early Cretaceous shearing and mineralization and (7) Cenozoic right-slip folding and faulting.<|endoftext|>Take the 2-minute tour ×
Would like to be able to find full paths of files in a directory tree that exceed a specific size (say 10MB).
Currently aware of Microsoft's Diruse (part of Windows XP Service Pack 2 Support Tools) which does what I want except it only lists directory sizes rather than files.
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8 Answers 8
up vote 13 down vote accepted
forfiles /P D:\ /M *.* /S /D +"01/17/2012" /C "cmd /c if @fsize gtr 209715200 echo @path @fsize @fdate @ftime"
will scan D:\ and its sub-directories, look for all files whose last modified dates are greater than "17-JAN-2012" and whose sizes are greater than or equal to 200MB, then print their details.
forfiles is included on some Windows Servers, but not by default on Windows XP. You can extract it from the "Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit" download at http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17657 (althou it says is for Windows Server, it runs on Win XP without problems).
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Superb - this did what I wanted (as soon as I fixed the date for the UK 17/01/2012). Thanks. – Umber Ferrule Jan 23 '12 at 23:02
This sounds like a job for PowerShell's
Navigate to the directory in question, check properties with:
get-childitem | get-member
length and FullName look interesting, for example:
get-childitem |ft fullname, length -auto
Once you have mastered the basics try filtering with a where statement.
get-childitem | where-object {$_.length -gt 10000} |ft fullname, length -auto
Experiment with 100000
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The Linux utilities port at UnxUtils contains the Linux find command.
You should rename find.exe to something else, example xfind.exe, as find is a built-in function in the Windows Command Prompt. You can then find all file larger then 1000000 bytes by:
xfind directory -size +1000000 -print
Here is the doc for the Linux command find, but I do not know how exactly it was implemented in UnxUtils and for which version of find.
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i believe GnuWin32 is more up-to-date: gnuwin32.sourceforge.net ... plus there's always Cygwin: cygwin.com – quack quixote Nov 3 '09 at 15:07
@~quack: You're right, only that the FileUtils package in GnuWin32 seems quite complex to install, requiring quite a few files. – harrymc Nov 3 '09 at 15:16
fair enough. i'm a cygwin user, personally. and i tend to prefer up-to-date over simple-to-install. but thanks for explaining your reasoning. – quack quixote Nov 3 '09 at 21:39
Take Command Console LE (which I end up recommending a lot recently), a free replacement for cmd.exe with a lot of extra features, has a command for that: PDIR
pdir /s /(fpn z) /[s10485760,]
• /s means recursively, run the command from the directory you want to search.
• /(fpn z) is the format for displaying the results, here: fullpathfullname size
• /[s10485760,] means size = 10 MB or bigger
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The find command of cygwin utilities does this. For your requirement
this gives the result:
find -size +10M -type f -printf "%p %s\n"
-size +10M gives you "objects" bigger than 10 megabyte
-type f gives you files only
-printf prints the found files, %p is path, %s is size (in bytes) and \n is the newline.
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I've just happened upon the command line tool, Disksum, which seems similar to to diruse, but gives two forms of output:
• sorted by file counts per directory (ascending)
• sorted by directory size (ascending)
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I believe using this solution is more accurate with the description:
Download the command line executable sfk.exe at http://sourceforge.net/projects/swissfileknife/files/
Use it like this
skf.exe list -big
Example output (abbreviated):
[listing 50 of 78 files by size:]
3951 mens\noname_30.mht
3996 mens\noname_14.mht
3996 mens\noname_25.mht
4060 mens\noname_24.mht
4263 mens\noname_31.mht
4701 mens\noname_1.mht
14568 Thumbnail Restore.zip
45056 netmeter.exe
12337752 rktools.exe
16826024 sp35378.exe
16926496 jre-6u30-windows-i586.exe
19480227 SugarCE-6.2.4.zip
21073936 vlc-1.1.11-win32.exe
22083184 EasyPHP-
25517642 MPSOFTWARE.phpDesigner.v8.0.0.145-CRD.rar
31085033 phpdesigner8usb.zip
48835640 netbeans 7.exe
58900704 ZendServer-CE-php-5.2.17-5.6.0-Windows_x86.exe
491538432 53400105.iso
If you only want the top 10 bigger files, use:
skf.exe list -big=10
You can customize it further following instructions from: http://stahlworks.com/dev/index.php?tool=list
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Another simple way is to use Explorer.
1. open the location (a disk, or a folder) where you want to look for large files in Windows Explorer
2. in the top-right search box type "size:gigantic" (the box will auto-suggest the syntax and other possible options)
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Question was looking for command line answers. – john Jan 6 '14 at 12:36
Your Answer<|endoftext|>Dead Reckoning
• Badman
Portland. Old-timey garb. Songs about trains and rivers. Nasal vocals. Yup, these guys will appeal to Decemberists fans.
Amoeba Music
Babies burn, oceans overflow, family trees don't fork; Dead Reckoning, the third LP from Portland's the Builders and the Butchers, plays out a little like Cormac McCarthy Unplugged, a ramshackle 19th century end-times sermon gone folk-rock. "The whole world's rotten to the core," singer Ryan Sollee reminds us with a howl on the album's most cathartic chorus. We may already be this screwed, the Builders and the Butchers seem to be suggesting throughout Dead Reckoning. High time we started shouting about it.
The rivers and trains and once-fashionable women's names peppering their lyrics and the old-timey garb they don for press photos further lend the Builders' doomsaying an out-of-time quality. Often, their blood-spattered, Revelations feel-- matched with Sollee's nasal voice and all the rollicking arrangements-- bears an uncanny resemblance of their fellow Portlandic histrionical society, the Decemberists. Like The King Is Dead and R.E.M., it's a comparison the Butchers surely could've predicted; hell, the Decemberists' Chris Funk sat behind the boards on their last album. Sollee's voice is a close cousin to Meloy's, less nuanced perhaps but wilder in the big moments. And the band's half-delicate, half-driving acoustic pileup's got plenty in common with their citymates' earlier, less fussy records. It'd be awfully easy to dismiss the Butchers as mere Decemberist-a-likes, but there's a jittery, paranoiac quality to their music-- and Sollee's shouts in particular-- that lends it a very different intensity than even those earlier, more murderous Decemberists LPs. It's almost as though, while Colin Meloy was down in Missoula studying literature, Sollee and company were somewhere deep in the woods, working out the bylaws of their own sovereign nation.
All that might sound a bit bleak, but it's actually fairly raucous, helped along by the Butchers' fondness for big shoutalong choruses and the sweaty live-in-a-room feel of their arrangements. Using two drummers to play a single kit, there's a wild clatter in the uptempo numbers well suited to Sollee's breathless proselytizing. "We All Know the Way" imagines devotion-as-lockstep; an ironic place for a singalong, yet there it is. There's plenty of unusually rollicking moments like that all over Dead Reckoning, plenty of morbid lines that feel almost celebratory in their hands. Recorded quickly, with minimal overdubs, Dead Reckoning has an urgency and a sense of from-the-ether evil even in its slower moments; stark, swirling highlight "Out of the Mountain" finds Sollee moaning quite matter-of-factly about setting fire to the earth and "keeping the rain"; this isn't just any old pyro talking, and Sollee's grim lyrical visions are left to linger in this sparse setting.
Sometimes the fervor gets to be too much for them: the grating but mercifully brief "Blood for You" is little more than the junkyard clang of the rhythm section and Sollee's stuck-pig shout, and the verses "Cradle on Fire" seem to get away from Sollee, who loses the melody somewhere in the back of his throat. But there's few moments when they don't seem to be throwing everything they've got into these performances, and that furious intensity drives them past both rough patches and easy comparisons. A couple of these melodies seem to run together after a couple listens, and at times the music could stand to be a bit more gnarled to match some of Sollee's more sinister sentiments. But even as they scream down the sky, the Builders and the Butchers seem to be having a blast, and it's catching. Should the end of days finds you with a bottle of whiskey and Dead Reckoning, pray you've got a way to play the thing.<|endoftext|>ICC Cricket World Cup, 40th Match, Group A: Australia v Pakistan at Colombo (RPS), Mar 19, 2011
ICC Cricket World Cup - 40th match, Group A
Pakistan won by 4 wickets (with 54 balls remaining)
Played at R Premadasa Stadium, Colombo (neutral venue)
19 March 2011 - day/night match (50-over match)
Umar Gul to Watson, OUT, that's the nut! Bang on target, nip off the seam, a loose drive and a touch of inside edge, and the stumps are shattered!
SR Watson b Umar Gul 9 (24m 16b 1x4 0x6) SR: 56.25
Australia 12/1 BJ Haddin 2* (11b) Umar Gul 2.3-0-5-1
Mohammad Hafeez to Ponting, OUT, gone! Akmal has held a very good catch and Ponting has to go! Things really bubbling over here. Ponting went back to cut a ball which wasn't really there for it, got a thick edge that Akmal did well to hold. It was given not out originally, but rightly was overturned on review. While waiting for the third umpire to confirm the edge there was some verbal exchanges though between Haddin and the Pakistan fielders and plenty of chat as Ponting was sent on his way
RT Ponting c †Kamran Akmal b Mohammad Hafeez 19 (57m 33b 2x4 0x6) SR: 57.57
Australia 75/2 BJ Haddin 37* (63b 3x4 1x6) Mohammad Hafeez 2.4-0-6-1
Wahab Riaz to Haddin, OUT, Wahab strikes and Australia are in trouble now! Akmal takes another catch! I between the dross Wahab has found some bounce and nibble and Haddin aimed a nothing steer to third man, got a faint edge and Kamran held on to the chance.
BJ Haddin c †Kamran Akmal b Wahab Riaz 42 (102m 80b 3x4 1x6) SR: 52.50
Australia 90/3 MJ Clarke 8* (13b 1x4) Wahab Riaz 4.4-0-30-1
Mohammad Hafeez to Clarke, OUT, chaos! White is run out in a terrible mix-up, a flick off the hip, Misbah swooped at short backward square, Akmal takes and the replay is conclusive!
CL White run out 8 (22m 18b 0x4 0x6) SR: 44.44
Australia 117/4 MJ Clarke 25* (34b 2x4) Mohammad Hafeez 8.1-0-17-1
Abdul Razzaq to Clarke, OUT, that was coming all the way through that over. Clarke didn't look happy at Razzaq's box of tricks, and an attempted pull somehow wriggles through the stroke to dislodge the off bail
MJ Clarke b Abdul Razzaq 34 (59m 48b 2x4 0x6) SR: 70.83
Australia 134/5 MEK Hussey 8* (13b) Abdul Razzaq 0.4-0-0-1
Abdur Rehman to Hussey, OUT, that's as soft as a baby possum. Hussey hardly got to the pitch of that one, and lobbed a simple chance to short midwicket. The two-paced wicket might take some of the blame, but that was poor from such an experienced campaigner
MEK Hussey c Misbah-ul-Haq b Abdur Rehman 12 (29m 22b 0x4 0x6) SR: 54.54
Australia 144/6 SPD Smith 6* (9b) Abdur Rehman 7.4-0-27-1
Abdul Razzaq to Johnson, OUT, outside off, nipping off the seam, grazing the edge, and Johnson is gone for a duck! The extra bounce did the trick, and Akmal's glovework has been as good as ... well, ever, probably
MG Johnson c †Kamran Akmal b Abdul Razzaq 0 (4m 3b 0x4 0x6) SR: 0.00
Australia 147/7 SPD Smith 9* (12b) Abdul Razzaq 2.4-0-7-2
Umar Gul to Krejza, OUT, there it is! The Umar Gul inswinging yorker strikes again. Why did he wait so long? Krejza backed away to give himself room to pierce the off side but he missed and the stumps were shattered instead
JJ Krejza b Umar Gul 7 (22m 19b 0x4 0x6) SR: 36.84
Australia 169/8 SPD Smith 24* (28b 1x4) Umar Gul 6.3-1-26-2
Shahid Afridi to Smith, OUT, Afridi strikes! Smith backs away to a googly that follows him and it crashes into middle stump
SPD Smith b Shahid Afridi 25 (46m 32b 1x4 0x6) SR: 78.12
Australia 176/9 B Lee 5* (4b 1x4) Shahid Afridi 8.5-0-34-1
Umar Gul to Lee, OUT, that's it! Australia slump to 176 all out - their lowest since 1992. Pakistan have a celebratory huddle! Lee aimed a swipe but it got high on the bat and looped to mid-off
B Lee c Misbah-ul-Haq b Umar Gul 5 (11m 8b 1x4 0x6) SR: 62.50
Australia 176/10 SW Tait 0* (1b) Umar Gul 7.4-1-30-3
• RHB
• RHB<|endoftext|>Spiced crabcakes with tamarind mayonnaise
The peppery tamarind mayonnaise complements the crabcakes wonderfully and a lightly dressed salad helps to make it a lovely lunch.
For the crabcakes
For the tamarind mayonnaise
Preparation method
2. Heat half the oil in a non-stick pan and fry the onion for about four minutes, or until soft. Add the ginger and garlic and cook for another |
Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such Mr Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large moustache. Mrs Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbours. The Dursleys had a small son called Dudley and in their opinion there was no finer The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it. They didn’t think they could bear it if anyone found out about the Potters. Mrs Potter was Mrs Dursley’s sister, but they hadn’t met for several years; in fact, Mrs Dursley pretended she didn’t have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing husband were as unDursleyish as it was possible to be. The Dursleys shuddered to think what the neighbours would say if the Potters arrived in the street. The Dursleys knew that the Potters had a small son, too, but they had never even seen him. This boy was another good reason for keeping the Potters away; they didn’t want Dudley mixing with a child like that. When Mr and Mrs Dursley woke up on the dull, grey Tuesday our story starts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over the country. Mr Dursley hummed as he picked out his most boring tie for work and Mrs Dursley gossiped away happily as she wrestled a screaming Dudley into his high chair. None of them noticed a large tawny owl flutter past the window. At half past eight, Mr Dursley picked up his briefcase, pecked Mrs Dursley on the cheek and tried to kiss Dudley goodbye but missed, because Dudley was now having a tantrum and throwing his cereal at the walls. ‘Little tyke,’ chortled Mr Dursley as he left the house. He got into his car and backed out of number four’s It was on the corner of the street that he noticed the first sign of something peculiar – a cat reading a map. For a second, Mr Dursley didn’t realise what he had seen – then he jerked his head around to look again. There was a tabby cat standing on the corner of Privet Drive, but there wasn’t a map in sight. What could he have been thinking of? It must have been a trick of the light. Mr Dursley blinked and stared at the cat. It stared back. As Mr Dursley drove around the corner and up the road, he watched the cat in his mirror. It was now reading the sign that said Privet Drive – no, looking at the sign; cats couldn’t read maps or signs. Mr Dursley gave himself a little shake and put the cat out of his mind. As he drove towards town he thought of nothing except a large order of drills he was hoping to get that day. But on the edge of town, drills were driven out of his mind by something else. As he sat in the usual morning traffic jam, he couldn’t help noticing that there seemed to be a lot of strangely dressed people about. People in cloaks. Mr Dursley couldn’t bear people who dressed in funny clothes – the get-ups you saw on young people! He supposed this was some stupid new fashion. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and his eyes fell on a huddle of these weirdos standing quite close by. They were whispering excitedly together. Mr Dursley was enraged to see that a couple of them weren’t young at all; why, that man had to be older than he was, and wearing an emerald-green cloak! The nerve of him! But then it struck Mr Dursley that this was probably some silly stunt – these people were obviously collecting for something ... yes, that would be it. The traffic moved on, and a few minutes later, Mr Dursley arrived in the Grunnings car park, his mind Mr Dursley always sat with his back to the window in his office on the ninth floor. If he hadn’t, he might have found it harder to concentrate on drills that morning. He didn’t see the owls swooping past in broad daylight, though people down in the street did; they pointed and gazed open-mouthed as owl after owl sped overhead. Most of them had never seen an owl even at nighttime. Mr Dursley, however, had a perfectly normal, owl-free morning. He yelled at five different people. He made several important telephone calls and shouted a bit more. He was in a very good mood until lunch-time, when he thought he’d stretch his legs and walk across the road to buy himself a bun from the baker’s He’d forgotten all about the people in cloaks until he passed a group of them next to the baker’s. He eyed them angrily as he passed. He didn’t know why, but they made him uneasy. This lot were whispering excitedly, too, and he couldn’t see a single collecting tin. It was on his way back past them, clutching a large doughnut in a bag, that he caught a few words of what they were ‘The Potters, that’s right, that’s what I heard –’ ‘– yes, their son, Harry –’ Mr Dursley stopped dead. Fear flooded him. He looked back at the whisperers as if he wanted to say something to them, but He dashed back across the road, hurried up to his office, snapped at his secretary not to disturb him, seized his telephone and had almost finished dialling his home number when he changed his mind. He put the receiver back down and stroked his moustache, thinking ... no, he was being stupid. Potter wasn’t such an unusual name. He was sure there were lots of people called Potter who had a son called Harry. Come to think of it, he wasn’t even sure his nephew was called Harry. He’d never even seen the boy. It might have been Harvey. Or Harold. There was no point in worrying Mrs Dursley, she always got so upset at any mention of her sister. He didn’t blame her – if he’d had a sister like that ... but all the same, those people in cloaks ... He found it a lot harder to concentrate on drills that afternoon, and when he left the building at five o’clock, he was still so worried that he walked straight into someone just outside the door. ‘Sorry,’ he grunted, as the tiny old man stumbled and almost fell. It was a few seconds before Mr Dursley realised that the man was wearing a violet cloak. He didn’t seem at all upset at being almost knocked to the ground. On the contrary, his face split into a wide smile and he said in a squeaky voice that made passers-by stare: ‘Don’t be sorry, my dear sir, for nothing could upset me today! Rejoice, for You-Know-Who has gone at last! Even Muggles like yourself should be celebrating, this happy, happy And the old man hugged Mr Dursley around the middle and Mr Dursley stood rooted to the spot. He had been hugged by a complete stranger. He also thought he had been called a Muggle, whatever that was. He was rattled. He hurried to his car and set off home, hoping he was imagining things, which he had never hoped before, because he didn’t approve of imagination. As he pulled into the driveway of number four, the first thing he saw – and it didn’t improve his mood – was the tabby cat he’d spotted that morning. It was now sitting on his garden wall. He was sure it was the same one; it had the same markings around its eyes. ‘Shoo!’ said Mr Dursley loudly. The cat didn’t move. It just gave him a stern look. Was this normal cat behaviour, Mr Dursley wondered. Trying to pull himself together, he let himself into the house. He was still determined not to mention anything to his wife. Mrs Dursley had had a nice, normal day. She told him over dinner all about Mrs Next Door’s problems with her daughter and how Dudley had learnt a new word (‘Shan’t!’). Mr Dursley tried to act normally. When Dudley had been put to bed, he went into the living-room in time to catch the last report on the evening news: ‘And finally, bird-watchers everywhere have reported that the nation’s owls have been behaving very unusually today. Although owls normally hunt at night and are hardly ever seen in daylight, there have been hundreds of sightings of these birds flying in every direction since sunrise. Experts are unable to explain why the owls have suddenly changed their sleeping pattern.’ The news reader allowed himself a grin. ‘Most mysterious. And now, over to Jim McGuffin with the weather. Going to be any more showers of ‘Well, Ted,’ said the weatherman, ‘I don’t know about that, but it’s not only the owls that have been acting oddly today. Viewers as far apart as Kent, Yorkshire and Dundee have been phoning in to tell me that instead of the rain I promised yesterday, they’ve had a downpour of shooting stars! Perhaps people have been celebrating Bonfire Night early – it’s not until next week, folks! But I can promise a wet night tonight.’ Mr Dursley sat frozen in his armchair. Shooting stars all over Britain? Owls flying by daylight? Mysterious people in cloaks all over the place? And a whisper, a whisper about the Potters ... Mrs Dursley came into the living-room carrying two cups of tea. It was no good. He’d have to say something to her. He cleared his throat nervously. ‘Er – Petunia, dear – you haven’t heard from your sister lately, have you?’ As he had expected, Mrs Dursley looked shocked and angry. After all, they normally pretended she didn’t have a sister. ‘No,’ she said sharply. ‘Why?’ ‘Funny stuff on the news,’ Mr Dursley mumbled. ‘Owls ... shooting stars ... and there were a lot of funny-looking people in ‘Well, I just thought ... maybe ... it was something to do with ... you know ... her lot.’ Mrs Dursley sipped her tea through pursed lips. Mr Dursley wondered whether he dared tell her he’d heard the name ‘Potter’. He decided he didn’t dare. Instead he said, as casually as he could, ‘Their son – he’d be about Dudley’s age now, wouldn’t he?’ ‘I suppose so,’ said Mrs Dursley stiffly. ‘What’s his name again? Howard, isn’t it?’ ‘Harry. Nasty, common name, if you ask me.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mr Dursley, his heart sinking horribly. ‘Yes, I He didn’t say another word on the subject as they went upstairs to bed. While Mrs Dursley was in the bathroom, Mr Dursley crept to the bedroom window and peered down into the front garden. The cat was still there. It was staring down Privet Drive as though it was waiting for something. Was he imagining things? Could all this have anything to do with the Potters? If it did ... if it got out that they were related to a pair of – well, he didn’t think he could bear it. The Dursleys got into bed. Mrs Dursley fell asleep quickly but Mr Dursley lay awake, turning it all over in his mind. His last, comforting thought before he fell asleep was that even if the Potters were involved, there was no reason for them to come near him and Mrs Dursley. The Potters knew very well what he and Petunia thought about them and their kind ... He couldn’t see how he and Petunia could get mixed up in anything that might be going on. He yawned and turned over. It couldn’t affect them ... How very wrong he was. Mr Dursley might have been drifting into an uneasy sleep, but the cat on the wall outside was showing no sign of sleepiness. It was sitting as still as a statue, its eyes fixed unblinkingly on the far corner of Privet Drive. It didn’t so much as quiver when a car door slammed in the next street, nor when two owls swooped overhead. In fact, it was nearly midnight before the cat moved at all. A man appeared on the corner the cat had been watching, appeared so suddenly and silently you’d have thought he’d just popped out of the ground. The cat’s tail twitched and its eyes Nothing like this man had ever been seen in Privet Drive. He was tall, thin and very old, judging by the silver of his hair and beard, which were both long enough to tuck into his belt. He was wearing long robes, a purple cloak which swept the ground and high-heeled, buckled boots. His blue eyes were light, bright and sparkling behind half-moon spectacles and his nose was very long and crooked, as though it had been broken at least twice. This man’s name was Albus Dumbledore. Albus Dumbledore didn’t seem to realise that he had just arrived in a street where everything from his name to his boots was unwelcome. He was busy rummaging in his cloak, looking for something. But he did seem to realise he was being watched, because he looked up suddenly at the cat, which was still staring at him from the other end of the street. For some reason, the sight of the cat seemed to amuse him. He chuckled and muttered, ‘I He had found what he was looking for in his inside pocket. It seemed to be a silver cigarette lighter. He flicked it open, held it up in the air and clicked it. The nearest street lamp went out with a little pop. He clicked it again – the next lamp flickered into darkness. Twelve times he clicked the Put-Outer, until the only lights left in the whole street were two tiny pinpricks in the distance, which were the eyes of the cat watching him. If anyone looked out of their window now, even beady-eyed Mrs Dursley, they wouldn’t be able to see anything that was happening down on the pavement. Dumbledore slipped the Put-Outer back inside his cloak and set off down the street towards number four, where he sat down on the wall next to the cat. He didn’t look at it, but after a moment he spoke to it. ‘Fancy seeing you here, Professor McGonagall.’ He turned to smile at the tabby, but it had gone. Instead he was smiling at a rather severe-looking woman who was wearing square glasses exactly the shape of the markings the cat had had around its eyes. She, too, was wearing a cloak, an emerald one. Her black hair was drawn into a tight bun. She looked distinctly ruffled. ‘How did you know it was me?’ she asked. ‘My dear Professor, I’ve never seen a cat sit so stiffly.’ ‘You’d be stiff if you’d been sitting on a brick wall all day,’ said ‘All day? When you could have been celebrating? I must have passed a dozen feasts and parties on my way here.’ ‘Oh yes, everyone’s celebrating, all right,’ she said impatiently. ‘You’d think they’d be a bit more careful, but no – even the Muggles have noticed something’s going on. It was on their news.’ She jerked her head back at the Dursleys’ dark living-room window. ‘I heard it. Flocks of owls ... shooting stars ... Well, they’re not completely stupid. They were bound to notice something. Shooting stars down in Kent – I’ll bet that was Dedalus Diggle. He never had much sense.’ ‘You can’t blame them,’ said Dumbledore gently. ‘We’ve had precious little to celebrate for eleven years.’ ‘I know that,’ said Professor McGonagall irritably. ‘But that’s no reason to lose our heads. People are being downright careless, out on the streets in broad daylight, not even dressed in Muggle She threw a sharp, sideways glance at Dumbledore here, as though hoping he was going to tell her something, but he didn’t, so she went on: ‘A fine thing it would be if, on the very day YouKnow-Who seems to have disappeared at last, the Muggles found out about us all. I suppose he really has gone, Dumbledore?’ ‘It certainly seems so,’ said Dumbledore. ‘We have much to be thankful for. Would you care for a sherbet lemon?’ ‘A sherbet lemon. They’re a kind of Muggle sweet I’m rather ‘No, thank you,’ said Professor McGonagall coldly, as though she didn’t think this was the moment for sherbet lemons. ‘As I say, even if You-Know-Who has gone –’ ‘My dear Professor, surely a sensible person like yourself can call him by his name? All this “You-Know-Who” nonsense – for eleven years I have been trying to persuade people to call him by his proper name: Voldemort.’ Professor McGonagall flinched, but Dumbledore, who was unsticking two sherbet lemons, seemed not to notice. ‘It all gets so confusing if we keep saying “YouKnow-Who”.’ I have never seen any reason to be frightened of ‘I know you haven’t,’ said Professor McGonagall, sounding halfexasperated, half-admiring. ‘But you’re different. Everyone knows you’re the only one You-Know – oh, all right, Voldemort – was ‘You flatter me,’ said Dumbledore calmly. ‘Voldemort had powers I will never have.’ ‘Only because you’re too – well – noble to use them.’ ‘It’s lucky it’s dark. I haven’t blushed so much since Madam Pomfrey told me she liked my new earmuffs.’ Professor McGonagall shot a sharp look at Dumbledore and said, ‘The owls are nothing to the rumours that are flying around. You know what everyone’s saying? About why he’s disappeared? About what finally stopped him?’ It seemed that Professor McGonagall had reached the point she was most anxious to discuss, the real reason she had been waiting on a cold hard wall all day, for neither as a cat nor as a woman had she fixed Dumbledore with such a piercing stare as she did now. It was plain that whatever ‘everyone’ was saying, she was not going to believe it until Dumbledore told her it was true. Dumbledore, however, was choosing another sherbet lemon and ‘What they’re saying,’ she pressed on, ‘is that last night Voldemort turned up in Godric’s Hollow. He went to find the Potters. The rumour is that Lily and James Potter are – are – that they’re – Dumbledore bowed his head. Professor McGonagall gasped. ‘Lily and James ... I can’t believe it ... I didn’t want to believe it Dumbledore reached out and patted her on the shoulder. ‘ |
Ann”, whose boss’ boss was the department director.
Ann: Great job, Snazzy! You’re the best!
me: Thanks! Tell your friends! And your supervisors! Haha!
Ann: Oh, I already told them!
me: Wait what?
Also, don’t worry about temp jobs making you appear flighty. Hiring managers know temping is just an employment style, and good hiring managers and HR folks will either be impressed at your ability to learn things regardless of industry, or be glad to hear you’re more than ready to settle down into something permanent.
2. AnonEMoose
Yes – a temp agency could be a great option. I’ve gotten two jobs (including my current one) that way. Temping can be a great way to learn about different office cultures, meet a lot of people, and get exposure to different companies.
Probably not much in the way of benefits to be had…but it is a way to keep income coming in, and gain/increase some skills. And even if some assignments are crappy, at least then it has an end date!
At this point, OP, if there’s a Costco near you and there’s no physical reason you couldn’t handle the work…consider applying there. I hear great things about how they treat their employees.
3. Indie
Temp agencies rock and it’s a good way to ‘date’ a company before marrying them. The last thing you need is toxic workplace #2.
4. Future Homesteader
Plus a million to this! If you happen to be near Boston, my name is linked to the temp agency I used. They were wonderful, and I ended up getting offered several (and taking one very good) permanent job through them!
5. LilySparrow
Temping can be a great resource if you’re just starting out or in transition. They are very strict with the employer about about hours and working conditions, you always have someone you can ask for advice, and you can totally opt out of personality drama.
If you have basic — really basic — admin skills, you can get work quickly.
A lot of larger companies use temp-to-perm roles for hiring, because they allow management to really see how you fit in the job. Some of my best permanent jobs came from temp placements.
13. Caramel & Cheddar
Somehow the couples counselling turned out to be not the worst part of this letter? Like it’s bad, but it seems like the cherry on top of a wildly dysfunctional sundae rather than the sundae itself.
1. Hera Syndulla
I know, right?
If I were a cartoon figure, my mouth would be hitting my desk, halfway through reading this. ööööö
2. Amber Rose
Imagine trying to fit all the not-good stuff here into the title. The title would basically be the length of the letter. =P
Alison gets brownie points for even coming up with a title, I wouldn’t know where to start.
3. Observer
Yeah, but it’s the one detail that gives you a hint of the craziness about to be unleashed. “My boss wants me to babysit her grandchild, unpaid” doesn’t quite have the same ring. This title does kind of warn you that you’re about to read about some wildly boundary crossing behavior.
4. CoveredInBees
Seriously! I saw the title and thought, “There must be some way that is makes sense…” No. None of this makes sense! It made less and less sense as the letter went on. There are just mounds and mounds of inappropriate going on here. Take it from someone whose 6th grade teacher busted up her parents’ (already rough) marriage while she was in 6th grade in a tiny, gossipy middle school.
Allison’s suggestion of emotional disconnection is a great one, albeit one that is tough especially earlier in your career. I think you’d be a great candidate for online/ video chat therapy to develop a toolbox for dealing with this situation and not letting it scar you. OP, your boss does not represent the rest of the working world and remember that, due to her incompetence, she probably needs you at least as much as you need your salary.
14. Countess Boochie Flagrante
OP, I don’t know if you’re a regular here or not, but I want you to understand how incredibly rare it is for Alison to advise you to take any other job you can possibly get.
Forget the possibility of going from the frying pan to the fire — right now you’re somewhere near the surface of the sun, and a frying pan will feel nice and cool by comparison. Get out, and get out now, because this is only going to get worse, and it’s going to take your sanity with it.
1. Secretary
I second this. I read Alison say to quit with nothing lined up if you can afford to and I did a dramatic gasp. I’m not sure she’s ever advised that before.
1. Jackie Paper
I spent at least two years once trying to get out of a toxic job situation and was getting nowhere. It was nowhere as bad as this, but I was still grinding my teeth in my sleep and was diagnosed with dangerously high blood pressure at the age of 29. Finally I decided I couldn’t do it anymore and put in my notice.
Six weeks later I had a job that paid significantly better than my previous one, with an awesomely nice and reasonable boss, walking distance to my house. Not to say it would necessary work out that way for the OP, but hopefully it would. Sometimes not working frees you up from the stress so you can devote all of your time to the job search. I wish I had left years earlier …
OP, you don’t deserve this kind of treatment, and my advice would be get out asap. (Also maybe only see your dad alone without the boss from now on, or not at all for awhile if that’s what it takes)
1. Lindsay Geeee
I had a similar situation! Horrible boss, similar tactics to Jill in this letter for a year and trying desperately to find something after graduating with a masters. I took the plunge and put in my notice- within a few weeks I had 3 job offers- one which was in my field and basically my dream job. Not saying that will necessarily happen but I genuinely believe good karma comes to you once you get the courage to stand up for yourself and get the F outta there.
1. AnonymousInfinity
Yeah. This is big advice.
If it helps, OP: I left my last job with nothing lined up for the sake of my health (mental, emotional, physical). I couldn’t truly afford it (but I also didn’t manage my money the way I should have after I left). I landed at my current company within two months, and, although it took 3 years, I now make more money than ever before, have far better benefits, have incredibly supportive bosses, and have built a dream career from the crater that was my life in 2015. About four times a week, as I drive to work, I think about all the work-choices I made and how easily I could not have ended up where I am, and it scares me how close I came to not having This. Leaving my last job with nothing lined up was the best thing I ever did for myself, in that moment and in the long-term.
2. Jules the 3rd
She has, about three times that I remember.
In 10 years.
Yeah, OP, congrats, it’s *that* bad.
3. Not So NewReader
It’s also rare for Alison to offer to do a free resume review. OP, please, please let Alison take a look. She can make a difference in YOUR LIFE! Life does not have to be this hard. It just doesn’t.
2. Countess Boochie Flagrante
Also, to combat that “what if I’m just an entitled millennial” brainweasel, think of the number of people on this post, the vast majority of us well into our professional lives, who are breaking out in screaming hives at the mere thought of your work environment. It’s so not just you. Based on this description, I wouldn’t trust Jill with a houseplant, let alone an assistant.
1. k.k
Most post have a bunch of comments disagreeing or playing devil’s advocate, but not here. OP – your job is so bad that you got and internet comments section to agree on something.
1. Goya de la Mancha
“your job is so bad that you got and internet comments section to agree on something.”
Jill has managed to produce a unified and peaceful comment section, does that mean we have to give her an award now? :-/
1. Tardigrade
Wait, I read that wrong. I see you’re talking about OP’s boss and not OP herself.
1. Creag an Tuire
I’m fine with OP’s boss getting “promoted to customer” (or donor, rather), too. :P
1. WonderingHowIGotIntoThis
No, it means she’s now qualified to handle the Middle East conflict and we should send her there with immediate effect!
3. smoke tree
Yeah, one thing to consider is that apart from eroding your health and well-being, spending time in this job is exposing you to really toxic workplace norms, and so the sooner you can move from that to a sane workplace, the easier it will be to move on.
1. Galatea
This this this, OP!!!
Shedding the weird habits from a bad workplace can be astonishingly difficult — GTFO-ing for your mental and physical health is definitely priority one right now, but please believe me when I say getting out of this unbelievably bad environment sooner rather than later will help you in your professional life down the road.
4. Beth
That line stood out to me too. It’s unlike Alison (in a way I totally agree with, given the situation!!) This work environment is destroying your sense of normal, killing your health, and destroying your confidence and sense of self-worth. Get as far away from it as you can, as soon as you can.
1. Half-Caf Latte
And now that I have regained the ability to form words:
what kind of therapist would agree to this?!!?!!!
1. Hills to Die on
It wouldn’t surprise me if Jill has that therapist in her manipulative grip as well. People like Jill surround themselves with other people who they can control and who believe their lies. There is a reason why Jill wants OP at therapy so badly, and it’s not because the therapist is calling Jill out on her behavior.
1. Old Admin
I agree.
I have unfortunately met therapists who were manipulated by other family members and fed the sickness instead of addressing it.
A later acquaintance boasted to me who many female therapists he’d gotten laid with! 0_o
1. Jules the 3rd
WTH. W T H. Laid by the therapist? OH HELL NO. Just him *trying* do that would send any decent therapist running in the opposite direction.
1. Old Admin
Oh yes. He was very good at seducing them.
One reacted professionally after seduction and terminated therapy, others were not so preofessional.
This is just an example that therapists are frail human beings who can also stumble, be manipulated etc.
2. Clorinda
It’s entirely possible that the therapist HASN’T agreed, and it will be sprung on him/her under some version of “this adult child is part of our couple issues” rather than the shambles it is. On the other hand, I wouldn’t take the chance on the therapist being the voice of sanity. Don’t go there. Do all the other things everyone is recommending. You may need therapy when the dust settles, OP, but go by yourself!
1. DivineMissL
Agreed. When I left my husband, he suddenly decided to go into therapy to “work on himself”. He told me that the therapist wanted me to come in to speak to him to get some background information, and I went in in order to help him. When I got there, it turned out that my ex had told the therapist that he wanted me to come in for “couples” therapy, but the therapist had told my ex that he had a long way to go to work on himself first, before there could be any chance of talking to me about reconciling. Ex had told the therapist that I wanted to come in to talk to him, which was his way of getting me there for the “couples” therapy without actually telling me or the therapist that that was what he had in mind. It did not work, and there was no reconciliation. Jill may be trying to manipulate the therapist as well.
1. Ama
I worked for a family therapist years ago and she was *more* likely to agree or even request that other family members come in when she suspected that the original patient was giving her a very selectively edited version of what was actually going on. If she thought it wouldn’t put the additional member at risk she’d quite often have them come in and talk to her separately so she could get their thoughts without the other party interrupting or intimidating them.
15. Not Maeby But Surely
Yikes. You have my sympathy, LW. I think ANY job paying at least minimum wage has got to be better than this. Move up the ladder at a fast food place; with admin skills you could probably be a supervisor in a couple months, manager within a year or two, and then you’ve got a nice solid job history to help you move back into your preferred field. Get out as soon as you can.
16. Sled dog mama
Two things
1) RUN as far and fast as you can. Once you are out go see your own therapist because this woman will still be dating your father.
2) Alison if you want us to stop believing in WTF Wednesdays you’ve got to stop posting these on Wednesdays
1. Angela Ziegler
I didn’t realize WTF Wednesdays were a thing here, but now that you’ve mentioned it, it makes sense!
1. MuseumChick
Alison has asked that we stop using “WTF Wednesdays” as it can come off mean spirited to the letter writer.
2. Hills to Die on
haha –Alison doesn’t like htem because she doesn’t want the posters to think they are the ones being called crazy. But I think we’ve all been pretty clear on where this crazy blame lies….
2. Ask a Manager Post author
It’s really not a thing! I have made a pointed effort to ensure outrageous letters are not always posted on Wednesdays, but occasionally they will be because it’s one of the days! This is like the “40% of sick days are taken on Mondays and Fridays” thing.
1. I Like Pie
Because by Wednesday we’re all likely ready for something to help propel us towards the weekend. Letters like this, the outrageousness of it all, can keep me going for the next two days easy.
“Man the boss is a real *@#^@ today!… at least they don’t want me to go to therapy” kinda feeling.
I feel so awful for OP. I would’ve lost my cool and snapped by now. Either directly at Jill or document and report to anyone higher up that I could. Unless your not an Exec Assist. for her at the actual non-profit. If it’s just her personal Executive Assistant, oh man. I’d burn that bridge and tell my dad to call me when he makes it across, too. Good luck OP. You deserve better.
1. Green
I came here to say that I actually had no idea what day it was this week until I read this letter and realized it must be Wednesday. I KNOW YOU WANT WTF WEDNESDAYS TO DIE, but then you taunt us with … couples counseling with dad as a work requirement? I feel like you’re just messing with us now. :)
17. Kat
100% this! Take care of yourself LW! We are rooting for you and your wellbeing.
1. Countess Boochie Flagrante
Yep. I think “My boss and my dad started dating” is an ironclad reason to leave a job. You don’t even need to get into the “and then things went absolutely friggin bananas” part.
(On the other hand, it is almost certainly helpful to gloss over the part where they were dating before you were hired.)
1. LouiseM
Yeah, this is…actually a total lie. She got the job *because* her boss was dating her father. It was a personal favor. I wouldn’t address this at all on a job interview.
1. lyonite
I think “my boss and my dad were dating, and it was a total disaster” would fit the bill of being both true, and a totally understandable reason to leave a job, however she got it in the first place.
2. Detective Amy Santiago
I would think the best way to phrase it would be “my dad is dating my boss”. That doesn’t get into any timelines or make it obvious that she obtained the job because of this connection and it’s also not an outright falsehood.
1. Victoria Nonprofit (USA)
Agreed. This is terrible and you get sympathy from folks you tell about it, but the key is to present yourself as calm, professional, and clearly separate from the dysfunction. Absolutely do not prevaricate or mislead folks — that would place you right in the middle of the chaos rather than setting yourself apart from it.
You could say something like: “My father is dating my boss. I knew that when I was hired, but I didn’t realize how many problems that would cause. I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished there, like XYZ, but it’s not somewhere that I can stay long-term.”
1. Midge
I like this a lot. It represents the situation accurately and allows you to talk about your accomplishments. I don’t love the phrasing where it sounds like they started dating after you got the job, because that’s just not true. (And the perception that you’re misrepresenting what happened is probably worse than admitting that you made a judgement call that went way sideways.)
2. AnonMurphy
AKA “I promise it’s not MY good sense/judgment that’s in question here”
3. k.k
It could be reworded to “My boss and my father are in a relationship and it became too awkward to stay.” Most interviewers will think that’s totally reasonable and not dig in to clarify when they started dating or other details.
4. Colette
Generally, I’m in favour of telling the truth, but in this case, “my boss started dating my dad” will explain |
when the profile width of their gaussian surfaces W = 100 nm is used as the autocorrelation length τ. δ m is a monotonously increasing, unique function of the roughness parameter σ/τ. δ m thus contains the same information as σ/τ and therefore fully describes a random gaussian rough surface. It also projects the possible values of σ/τ to the finite interval [0 ∘ , 90 ∘ ].
Sputtering effects on rough surfaces
After presenting the mathematical descriptions of the rough surfaces that are of interest, their influence on the sputtering yield Y is discussed in the upcoming sections. In particular, following effects are included (see the sketch in Fig. 3): • local incidence angles • shadowing of surface areas • redeposition of sputtered material Secondary sputtering by reflected ions or increased sputtering on sharp edges can play a role for very rough surfaces, but these phenomena are not implemented in the presented model. Similarly the change of the surface structure due to dynamic erosion and redeposition of material is not discussed here.
Overall, the mean sputtering yield Y(α) over the whole surface as a function of the global incidence angle α is the quantity of interest and should include the three above mentioned effects. The expression for Y(α) is of following form: ×F v (p, q, z, α) F sp (p, q, z) P pq (p, q) P z (z) dz dq dp, where Y(θ loc (p, q, α)) represents the sputtering due to the local incidence angle θ loc at a certain surface segment with the slopes p and q.
F v (p, q, z, α) represents a weight factor for a surface segment to be visible to the incoming ions and thus not being shadowed from another surface segment. During ion irradiation under oblique incidence, some surface areas will be more exposed, while others will not be irradiated at all.
F sp (p, q, z) represents the probability for sputtered atoms to escape the surface instead of being redeposited at another feature. Both F v and F sp are dependent on z due to higher features being more exposed and having a larger free solid angle for both incident ions and sputtered atoms. To calculate the mean sputtering yield Y for a rough surface, the product of these elements is then integrated with the distribution functions P pq (p, q) and P z (z).
Sputtering at local incidence angles
The local angle of incidence θ loc is given as the angle between the direction of the ion beam with angle α to the nominal surface normal and the normal vector of the local surface segment with slopes p and q. Due to the isotropy of a gaussian surface, a coordinate system can be chosen where the ion beam is in the xz-plane and then θ loc can be calculated as (see Appendix B) For the general angular dependence of the sputtering yield, the Eckstein fitting formula [44] is used to describe the sputtering yield Y, when a surface is hit under an angle β: The fitting parameters β 0 , b, c and f allow a precise description of the sputtering yield's initial increase with the incidence angle, its maximum and the subsequent decrease for incidence angles towards 90 ∘ . In the integral over p and q in Eqs. (5), (6) for θ loc is inserted into the Eckstein formula to calculate sputtering yields Y(θ loc ) depending on the local angle of incidence.
Shadowing
The shadowing of an ion trajectory hitting a rough surface under a global angle α shall be described by a weight factor F v (p, q, z, α) indicating how many ions hit a surface segment at height z and the slopes p and q. For a similar problem, Eq. (22) by Smith [43] derived the probability of a surface segment to be illuminated by a light beam. Based on this expression, F v (p, q, z, α) can be constructed by combining Eq. (22) from Smith [43] with a normalization using Eq. (24) from Smith [43] because every ion still hits the surface. This then gives with the Heaviside function H and (see [43]) Λ(cot α) represents a measure for the likelihood that a surface segment is shadowed under an angle α. It is 0 for α = 0 and becomes infinite towards α = π/2. In particular, 1/(1 + Λ(cot α)) is the probability that a surface segment with the local normal vector pointing in the direction of the incoming ion beam (angle α) is not shadowed [43].
The Heaviside function in Eq. (8) guarantees that only slopes facing the ion beam can get irradiated. The fraction ensures the normalization of F v and the expression in squared brackets favors surface areas that are higher and therefore less likely to be shadowed by other features. F v is not dependent on q and the dependence on p is restricted to the Heaviside function. Apart from this aspect, the surface slopes in principle do not influence the probability of shadowing, which is in line with the assumption of the height probabilities P z and the slope probabilities P pq being independent of each other.
Redeposition of sputtered material
Going towards larger roughness, the redeposition of sputtered material plays an important role in reducing the sputtering yield. Redeposition has been identified as a key influence on the sputtering yield of rough surfaces [19,20] and has also been investigated in regard to pattern formation [45,46]. This effect is included in a full binary collision approximation (BCA) treatment in SDTrimSP-3D [26] or TRI3DYN [27], but can also be formulated analytically for the regarded isotropic random rough surfaces.
The probability that a recoil atom sputtered under a global polar angle θ r can leave the surface without being redeposited is the same as the probability that the surface point, where an atom is sputtered from, is visible under the same angle. The expressions discussed in the previous section on shadowing can thus be used in a similar fashion, as they were also applied by Smith to model the thermal emission of the Moon [47]. As described in more detail in Appendix C, the total probability F sp that an atom from a surface with slopes p and q is not redeposited can be calculated to result in following expression: with the global polar angle θ r under which the atom is sputtered: For the angular distribution of sputtered particles f sp (θ ′ , ϕ ′ ), we use (see A polar coordinate system of the local surface segment described by the angles θ ′ and ϕ ′ is chosen for the easiest implementation of the distribution of sputtered particles f sp (θ ′ , ϕ ′ ). The Heaviside function restricts possible sputtering directions to the upper hemisphere in the global coordinate system. The expression in square brackets is the same as for the shadowing in the previous section, describing the probability that a surface segment at height z is visible under the angle θ r . For the distribution of sputtered atoms f sp (θ ′ , ϕ ′ ), the cosine distribution represents a first order approximation for the distribution of sputtered atoms that was also applied by Küstner et al. [19,20]. In principle, a more precise with azimuthal dependence can also be implemented.
Evaluation of the dependence of the sputtering yield on roughness
Following the above presented derivation of mathematical expressions for sputtering on local incidence angles θ loc , shadowing F v and redeposition F sp , the averaged sputtering yield Y(α) can be calculated with Eq. (5). The Eckstein sputtering yield formula from Eq. (7) has to be evaluated at θ loc from Eq. (6), F v has to be inserted from Eq. (8) and F sp has to be taken from Eq. (10). This leads to integrals over p, q, z, θ ′ and ϕ ′ over several functions that depend on these parameters. Following the calculations by Smith [43], the integral over z can be calculated analytically because of Then After the integration over z, this expression only includes dependence on roughness parameters in the form of the ratio σ/τ. This is consistent with the purely geometrical effects that are considered within this model and should therefore be independent of any scaling of the surface. The unique description with σ/τ also means that the sputtering behavior of a random gaussian rough surface is also uniquely described by the mean inclination angle δ m , following Eq. (4). This result therefore supports the usage of δ m as a parameter for characterizing the surface roughness in regard to sputtering behavior, as previously discussed by Cupak et al. [29]. For small surface roughness, the sputtering will mostly be influenced by the effect of local incidence angles. However for high δ m values, Fig. 4. The mean fraction of redeposited material 1 − 〈F v F sp 〉 is plotted. For rougher surfaces, redeposition significantly increases, which reduces the sputtering yields for large δ m . Due to different shadowing, redeposition is less important under oblique incidence. The result of redeposition calculations by Diddens and Linz is included for comparison as the dashed black line [46]. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.) redeposition of sputtered particles will strongly change the total sputtering yield. The mean fraction of redeposited atoms independent of the projectile-target combination can be determined by calculating 1 − 〈F v F sp 〉, with the angle brackets denoting the integral over the product of F v F sp with the distributions P z (z) and P pq (p, q): F v F sp is the probability that a sputtered atom can leave the surface from a chosen surface area and 〈F v F sp 〉 represents the average over the whole surface. The redeposition fraction 1 − 〈F v F sp 〉 is depicted in Fig. 4 for different angles of incidence. The plot clearly shows, how redeposition becomes more important for very rough surfaces. For the redeposition model of Diddens and Linz [46], the authors also calculated the fraction of redeposited atoms and found a similar dependence on the aspect ratio of their investigated surfaces. Figure 4 includes their result for normal incidence with a dot-like surface and a cosine angular distribution of sputtered material and their surface aspect ratio is taken as equal to σ /τ.
Their calculation predicts the same behavior as our model and underlines the suitability of our approach. The fraction of redeposited atoms calculated by Diddens and Linz is slightly dependent on the distribution of sputtered material [46]. As mentioned previously, future studies should also test model results with other distributions of sputtered atoms f sp . Furthermore, Fig. 4 also makes the role of shadowing in the redeposition process evident: For oblique incidence angles, shadowing favors surface positions at larger heights z to be hit by impinging ions. At these points, the solid angle of free paths away from the surface is larger and therefore sputtered atoms are less likely to be redeposited.
Comparison to experiments and numerical simulations
Equation (14)
Sputtering of CaSiO 3 by 2 keV Ar + ions
The mineral wollastonite (CaSiO 3 ) has been used to investigate the sputtering of planetary bodies in the solar system [48][49][50][51], such as the Moon or Mercury, which are continuously exposed to solar wind ions. In the scope of this study, further sputtering yield measurements with a rough wollastonite sample were performed under irradiation with 2 keV Ar + ions. Sputtering yields were determined with a quartz crystal microbalance technique [52], in experiments analogous to those described in [48][49][50]. From AFM images, a mean surface inclination angle δ m = 15.9 ∘ was determined, which was used as an input for the theoretical calculation. For the sputtering yield's angular dependence, the experimental values for flat samples from Szabo et al. [48] were fitted with the Eckstein formula from Eq. (7). With β 0 = π /2 for noble gas projectiles (see [44]), this gives following fit parameters: Y 0 = 21.06, c = 0.75, f = 4.81, b = 1.85.
The blue dots in Fig. 5a show the angular dependence of the measured sputtering yield of the rough wollastonite sample. For composite materials such as wollastonite, only the sputtered mass per impinging ions can be measured with the QCM technique. The yield is therefore given as mass sputtering yield y with units [u/ion] to differentiate it from atomic sputtering yields Y [atoms/ion]. Compared to a flat surface (black dashed line), the yield is increased at normal incidence and decreased at very oblique incidence angles around 70 ∘ . The model calculation with δ m = 15.9 ∘ is included as the solid red line, which agrees very well with the experimental data. The inset in Fig. 5a shows that the surface inclination angle distribution P θ deduced from AFM measurements (blue) differs from the distribution P θ described by Eq. 3 (red). However, this demonstrates that the model can also be used reasonably well to describe the sputtering of non-gaussian surfaces. Further calculations with other δ m values are depicted as red dashed lines, showing how the yield is predicted for even rougher surfaces. Further development of the observed tendencies occur, before the sputtering yield decreases at all incidence angles at δ m towards 80 ∘ .
The behavior of the sputtering yield as the ratio y rough /y flat is shown in Fig. 5b. This quantity represents the change of the sputtering yield for a rough surface compared to the yield for a flat surface. The x-axis describes different mean inclination angles δ m and the y-axis gives different angles of incidence α. For the case of 2 keV Ar + ions sputtering wollastonite, a significant increase under normal incidence up to about twice the initial value is predicted by our model. In contrast, sputtering yields under oblique incidence immediately decrease for rougher surfaces, especially at α ≈ 70 ∘ , where the yield's angular dependence has its maximum. A similar variation of both sputtering yield increases and decreases for different incidence angles has also been found by Makeev and Barabási for rippled surfaces [40]. The decrease is more prominent in our model due to redeposition becoming the dominant effect for very rough surfaces.
Sputtering of rough Be surfaces
Küstner et al. applied a simulation approach to calculate the angular dependence of the sputtering yield of rough Be surfaces based on local incidence angles and redeposition [19,20]. STM images of a size of several µm were used as an input for the surface topography, from which the distribution of incidence angles and a redeposition factor were determined. Based on the incidence angle distribution, sputtering yields with TRIM.SP were calculated. For rough Be surfaces, sputtering yields were measured for the irradiation with Be + and He + ions, leading to a good agreement with the simulation for all presented cases.
For comparisons of our model with the results by Küstner et al., mean surface inclination angles δ m were determined from the given surface inclination angle distributions. Inclination angle values of δ m = 29 ∘ for the sample roughened by prolonged ion bombardment and δ m = 37 ∘ for the unpolished sample from [20] were calculated, even though the limited resolution of the given surface inclination angle distributions ( Fig. 4c and e in [20]) leads to some uncertainties for these parameters. It also hinders the assessment of how well these surfaces correspond to a gaussian rough surface, but the surface inclination angle distributions derived from STM images in [20] are somewhat broader than those described by Eq. (3). Using the derived δ m values and the angular dependence of the sputtering yields of flat Be samples from TRIM.SP, which are also given in [20], sputtering yields of rough Be samples were calculated with our model under different angles of incidence. Figure 6 shows comparisons of the different approaches for the irradiation of Be samples with 3 keV Be + ions (Eckstein fit parameters for a flat surface: β 0 = π/2, Y 0 = 0.31, c = 0.92, f = 3.17, b = 0.68) and 300 eV He + (β 0 = π/2, Y 0 = 0.11, c = 0.89, f = 5.65, b = 2.04).
Experimental results (solid blue dots) and simulation results (open blue dots) from Küstner et al. [20] are compared to our model (red line) for Be + for unpolished samples (δ m = 37 ∘ , Fig. 6a) and ion-beam-roughened samples (δ m = 29 ∘ , Fig. 6b). The TRIM.SP simulation for a flat surface (black dashed line) is included for comparison. In both cases, the deviation from the flat sample is very well reproduced: Due to roughness effects, the yields are increased for normal incidence and significantly decreased for oblique angles of incidence. The almost linearly increasing yield is also reflected in our calculation. Given the uncertainties of the surface characterization inputs, the quantitative agreement especially for the roughened sample in Fig. 6b is very good. For a different case, Fig. 6c compares the results of 300 eV He + irradiations of the roughened sample (δ m = 29 ∘ , same inputs as for Fig. 6b). Again, the sputtering yields from the model show a similar angular dependence as the data from Küstner et al. [20].
Sputtering of rough W surfaces by 2 keV Ar + ions
In their study on different ways for characterizing the sputtering behavior of rough surfaces, Cupak et al. [29] investigated the sputtering of rough W surfaces in both experiment and modeling with the geometrical SPRAY code. SPRAY simulations take into account similar effects that are included in the present manuscript, with the addition of precise particle distributions from BCA-codes and secondary sputtering effects. Cupak et al. found that SPRAY is well-suited for simulating experimentally derived sputtering yields and subsequently modeled a large number of artificially generated surfaces. Their results revealed very similar sputtering yields for surfaces with the same mean surface inclination angle δ m , showing that this parameter is much better suited for surface characterization than the RMS surface roughness σ. (blue) of normal incidence irradiations for different roughness parameters δ m very precisely. Deviations arise only above δ m ≈ 60 ∘ , most likely due to the increasing importance of secondary sputtering, which denotes the additional sputtering by reflected projectiles. Our theoretical model neglects this effect and therefore under |
âcon, Burgundy, five hundred tables were set up for three thousand guests with stands for three thousand more, ostensibly as a celebration of local literary star Alphonse de Lamartine. Lamartine was not just a literary star though, he was also a well-known republican, and the authorities knew that the banquet was a cover for political agitation. But the authorities judged that interfering with the banquets would inflame the situation rather than succeed in suppressing the protest, and so let the banquet proceed. With the success of the Mâcon banquet, the “Campagne des banquets” was launched, and banquets were held around the country. This is the high wire act that governments and opposition walk at times of crisis – when to push ahead, when to hold back, and what tactics may be effective – and is the kind of dance that social movement studies have helped to elucidate. The campaign continued until February of the next year, when the government decided it had no choice but to escalate. The banquets were outlawed, a hastily organized protest brought people into the streets of Paris on February 22, a confrontation between the Municipal Guard and the marchers spilled over into riots, everything got out of hand, and the King fled Paris. Within a few weeks governments were toppled in Milan, Venice, Naples, Palermo, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Krakow, and Berlin. I like to think that the graph above captures a little of that drama.
What I’ve tried to do here is follow the Akerlof & Kranton example of taking the rich sociological concepts of identity seriously, and used it to construct a rational choice model of uprisings that complements, rather than competes with, sociological models. I’ve added some dynamics to the approach, and brought in a modelling of institutions to build on the notion of collective identity as a motivating force for protest.
The results are that the theory recovers the key facet of other rational choice models of uprisings, which is cascades, but with a different interpretation. Here it is “identity cascades” rather than “information cascades” that drive the sudden change. Beyond cascades, the theory shows how screening provides a mechanism for the existence of “free space” institutions in which dissent can be sustained, even in authoritarian regimes. Finally, it shows how an organized opposition may appropriate mainstream institutions with the explicit intent of provoking a crisis, putting the government in a “dictator’s dilemma” in which neither responding nor failing to respond is a good option.
(Written in Org version 7.9.3f with Emacs version 23)
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1. I’m tired and jetlagged, so I’ve only skimmed this – but in case I never make it back for reasoned analysis, I wanted to point up the NECSI research about food prices and frequency of riots. I’d suggest that there is a macro-dimension at play and food prices were it. They act as a kind of pressure gradient that impels identity cascades perhaps…?
• Thanks Mr/Ms Tone. The closest I get to such real-world phenomena is that there is a macro-parameter in the model (not here, but in the linked paper) which can stand in for socio-economic factors and which can trigger cascades. I hadn’t seen the research you mention (I guess you mean this) but this paper (PDF) by Andrea Teti and Gennaro Gervasio seems to make a similar suggestion.
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3. I like some of the ideas here: that people (may) have a fairly sudden “switch in identity [which] happens when people are pulled along by those around them” and that outsiders have to “appropriate mainstream institutions” to provoke a govt response which will lead to polarization — the latter point, it seems to me, cd be fleshed out a bit more in the Egyptian case, rather than just a passing ref to Tahrir Square and Natl Police Day. Maybe you do that in the longer version.
The way the argument is packaged (w reference to models and the graphs and so on) I can’t say appeals to me that much. But I’m undoubtedly not the modal reader you are trying to address. Anyway it’s nice to have this shorter version without the math b.c I had looked at the full paper a while ago and decided that I didn’t want to try to struggle through it and extract the main points. Here the main points are somewhat more accessible.
4. P.s. There’s an article on the 1848 – Arab Spring comparison in a recent issue of ‘Perspectives on Politics’ — maybe you’ve seen it. I haven’t read it and am too tired now to find the citation.
• Thanks LFC. The article you mean must be this one by Kurt Weyland. I haven’t seen it, and unfortunately it seems to be behind the wall, so I can’t get at it.
I have had the same reaction about the mode of presentation from others. I admit that it’s not very accessible. If there’s a point to it, it is that the network-based models that focus on information revelation have been successful because there is a formal theory behind them which can yet be popularized, and which gives those popularizations credibility. In arguing against those models, there is nothing formal available, so I had to do it myself. Popularizing: maybe that’s something different.
• Yup, I get the reason(s) for formalization.
Btw I have access to the Weyland piece (b.c I’m a member of AmPolSciAssn) and I will email you the PDF, though perhaps not till tomorrow (busy w/ other stuff today).
5. This is very illuminating/helpful. Curious if you’ve applied the thinking here to Occupy Wall Street?
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7. Apologies. I’m a complete lay person in relation to this discussion. I have a question as regarding the association of free space to social media. It seems to me that there has been a brief period when that was possible, but social media and the internet generally has and is moving into complete state and corporate control. Will this not preclude any of this from remaining a “free space”, and if so will this not mean other such domains must be created or re-discovered?
8. Hi Tom, thanks for a really thoughtful post. As a social psychologist i would urge you to look at the work developed by John Turner and colleagues which has had a profound influence on how social psychologists explain how and when social identities become salient (activated). Without this, it is unclear which of myriad social identities are relevant to a situation – self as woman, self as protester in a spontaneous uprising, self as pan-Arabist, self as Egyption, self as muslim etc etc. Core concepts such as fit and “meta-contrast” provide a clear and empirically testable account of many of the themes you talk about, including: group polarization,leadership, crowd behavior,opinion formation, collective action and change. A&K certainly reference this work, but it may enrich your analysis here. The two complementary theories (called the Social Identity Approach) developed by Turner and others are: Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorization theory. As a start, check out:
Work by Steve Reicher on crowd behaviour from a social identity perspective is also highly relevant and complementary:
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How to delete Dfwe ransomware
Dfwe ransomware is malware that encrypts files. This ransomware is essentially another version of the notorious Djvu/STOP file-encrypting malware. The cybercriminals operating this ransomware release new versions on a regular basis, though most of them are more or less the same. The versions can be differentiated by the extensions added to encrypted files. In this particular case, encrypted personal files will have .dfwe added to them. If you have a backup of your files, you will be able to recover your files quite easily. However, if you don’t have a backup, it will be much more difficult to recover files. One option is to acquire the Dfwe ransomware decryptor but the only people who have it are the malicious actors operating this ransomware. They will try to sell it to you but buying the decryptor comes with risks.
Dfwe ransomware is a generic ransomware infection, mostly identical to Ifla, Errz, Kruu, Xcvf, Sijr. They all target personal files, including photos, videos, documents, images, etc. All encrypted files will have extensions added to them, in this case, .dfwe. For example, an encrypted text.txt would become text.txt.dfwe. You will not be able to open any encrypted files unless you first decrypt them. A special decryptor is necessary for this but acquiring it will prove to be difficult because the only people who have it are the cybercriminals operating this ransomware. And considering their main purpose is to extort money from victims, they’re not going to just give you the decryptor.
When the ransomware is done encrypting your files, it will drop a _readme.txt ransom note. The ransom note is quite generic but it does explain how to acquire the decryptor. According to the note, victims can buy the decryptor for $980, though there’s supposedly a 50% discount for victims who make contact with the cybercriminals within the first 72 hours. Whether there actually is a discount is debatable, and paying the ransom, in general, is not a good idea. You need to keep in mind that you are dealing with cybercriminals, and you are not guaranteed a decryptor. There is nothing stopping cybercriminals from simply taking your money because they’re unlikely to feel obligated to help you. There have been many victims in the past who did not receive their decryptors despite paying the ransom. While the decision is yours, you need to be aware of the risks.
If you have a backup, you will have no issues with file recovery. However, it’s essential that you first fully remove Dfwe ransomware from your computer. Make sure to use a reliable anti-malware program to do this. Do not attempt to delete Dfwe ransomware manually because you could end up accidentally causing additional damage to your device. Once the ransomware has been removed completely, you can access your backup to start the file recovery process.
If there’s no backup available, recovering files will be more difficult. The only option is to wait for a free Dfwe ransomware decryptor to be released. You will not be able to find one at the moment but it’s not impossible that it will become available at some point. Because Dfwe ransomware uses online encryption keys, developing a free decryptor is difficult for malware researchers. The keys are unique to each victim, and unless those keys are released by the cybercriminals themselves, a free Dfwe ransomware decryptor is unlikely. Nonetheless, back up your encrypted files and wait if you have no other options.
How is ransomware distributed?
Ransomware targeting regular users is often distributed via torrents, malicious emails, ads on high-risk websites, etc. Users with bad online habits have a much higher chance of picking up malware infections because they’re more likely to do something risky while online. If users take the time to develop better browsing habits, they would significantly reduce the chances of picking up malware.
Torrent websites are often poorly regulated, which allows malicious actors to upload torrents with malware in them. The torrents may also stay up for a while, infecting potentially thousands of users before they’re taken down. It’s especially common to find malware in torrents for popular movies, TV series, video games, software, etc. We strongly discourage users from torrenting copyrighted content because it’s not only stealing but also dangerous for the computer.
Malware is also often distributed via email attachments. When users open malicious email attachments, their computers become infected with whatever malware was downloaded. Fortunately for users, the emails are fairly obvious most of the time. Senders often claim to be from known companies whose services users supposedly use in order to trick users into opening the attachments. But these spam campaigns are not very effective because the emails are often full of obvious grammar/spelling mistakes. When legitimate companies send emails to their customers, the emails do not have any mistakes because they would look unprofessional. But for whatever reason, malicious emails are often full of them. Malicious senders also address users with generic words like User, Member, Customer, etc., when a real email would have used a user’s full name. While most email spam is very obvious, there are some more sophisticated attempts. This is why it’s a good idea to scan all email attachments with anti-virus software or VirusTotal before opening them.
Dfwe ransomware removal
Ransomware is a very complex malware infection so it’s recommended to use a professional anti-malware to delete Dfwe ransomware from your computer. If you try to do it manually, you could end up causing additional damage to your computer. It’s also possible that you would miss some components, which could later allow the ransomware to recover. If that were to happen while you were connected to backup, backed-up files would become encrypted as well. The easiest and safest solution is to use anti-malware software. Once the ransomware is fully gone from your computer, you can safely connect to your backup and start recovering files. If you don’t have a backup, your only option is to wait for a free Dfwe ransomware decryptor to become available. It’s not currently available but it may be released in the future. But you should be very careful when looking for decryptors because there are many fake ones. NoMoreRansom is one of the safest places to get decryptors from.
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I have Ubuntu 12.04 installed through Wubi on my laptop. For some reason when i click on Ubuntu on start up (when you have to either select windows or Ubuntu) I get the following screen, the grub cursor keeps flashing.
Gnu grub version 1.99-21 Ubuntu 3.4
Minimal bash-like line editing is supported. For the first word, tab lists possible
command completions. Anywhere else tab lists possible device or file completions.
Could you tell me what I can do to fix this problem and to start Ubuntu normally?
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1 Answer
Sometimes the root.disk, the virtual partition that Wubi uses to boot, gets corrupted. This is a file that lives in the \ubuntu\disks\ directory. If Grub (inside wubildr) cannot mount the root.disk, it cannot show the grub menu (which is stored on the root.disk) and then it just drops you to a grub prompt to await further instruction.
There is nothing you can do from the grub prompt until you've figured out the problem with the root.disk and, odds are, there is NTFS corruption. It's fairly common, for example, if you've performed a hard shutdown or reboot. In some cases, the reason isn't clear.
What you need to do is to run chkdsk /f (or /r) from Windows on the drive you installed Wubi. If you installed on the C:\ drive this will require a full restart.
To run chkdsk on Windows 7 (the first checkbox corresponds to chkdsk /f and the second to chkdsk /r:
chkdsk on Windows7
If prompted, restart the computer and boot into Windows to complete the chkdsk making sure not to 'Hit a key' to abort it.
After that, check the ubuntu\disks\ directory to make sure the root.disk is still there. In some cases, the ubuntu\disks\ directory itself is no longer present. If either are missing, you need to look for them as chkdsk will often recover corrupted files/directories to hidden folders named \found.000, \found.001 etc. These are hidden and protected OS directories by default (Windows 7) so they won't show up in Explorer. I find it easiest just to use the Command prompt.
To do this, right-click on CMD.EXE and select "Run as administrator". Change to the drive the \ubuntu directory is located on, and search for the hidden \found.??? directories.
e.g. if the root.disk is missing, you're looking for a file > 5GB in size. If you know what size your install was it helps. In this case, it's 15GB
C:\>dir /a:h
C:\>cd \found.000
Volume in drive C is OS
Volume Serial Number is B4B7-99A8
Directory of C:\found.000
19/07/2011 02:02 PM 15,000,000,000 file0000.chk
1 File(s) 15,000,000,000 bytes
0 Dir(s) 222,258,069,504 bytes free
C:\found.000>move file0000.chk \ubuntu\disks\root.disk
1 file(s) moved.
If the whole \ubuntu\disks directory is missing, you're looking for a directory named dir0000.chk, and inside that you'll find the correctly named root.disk and swap.disk, so you can just move the directory back in place:
C:\>cd \found.000
Volume in drive C is OS
Volume Serial Number is B4B7-99A8
Directory of C:\found.000
19/10/2012 04:51 PM <DIR> .
19/10/2012 04:51 PM <DIR> ..
19/07/2011 02:02 PM <DIR> dir0000.chk
0 File(s) 0 bytes
3 Dir(s) 222,258,069,504 bytes free
C:\found.000>dir dir0000.chk
Volume in drive C is OS
Volume Serial Number is B4B7-99A8
Directory of C:\found.000\dir0000.chk
24/02/2012 12:22 AM <DIR> boot
06/11/2012 09:28 AM 13,000,000,000 root.disk
15/11/2011 09:28 PM 268,435,456 swap.disk
2 File(s) 13,268,435,456 bytes
3 Dir(s) 127,904,968,704 bytes free
C:\>move dir0000.chk \ubuntu\disks
1 dir(s) moved.
Recovery isn't guaranteed in all cases depending on the extent of corruption. Note that the root.disk may be correctly in place before running chkdsk and then be removed after running it.
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Hi, i found root.disk (it was already there in the folder) but it was a 0kb |
!" instead of just telling him that there ARE more, he just can't have one right now). It won't take long for your kids to see through that and then they won't ever believe you. Plus, it comes across as weak, the kids will sense that you will say anything to avoid their unhappiness. 3) For goodness sake, use your Mom (or Dad) voice. No whining, cajoling or pleading. Try to imagine you are trying to teach a class. That "teacher voice"- firm and authoritative, without being combatitive. 4) Time out is not a choice. If my son won't walk I will pick him up and deposit him in his room. If he comes out still tantrumming, put him right back in, even if it takes 50 tries. No dragging or begging him to go to time out. 5) There is no time limit on time out, despite what the books say. Maybe for very small children under 2 1/2, but any child over 2 1/2 needs to go to time out for however long it takes him to be "civilized". Some may think that's mean, but really, all I am doing is just letting him work out his emotions in his room without having me be an audience (or if we are at another house, without him disrupting other people's lives). I say calmly, "I don't listen to tantrums". He can come out when he is done screaming. Sometimes, he is done in less than 30 seconds. But other times, he is just having a bad day and needs to rage for a while. Then, he gets it all out, and comes out happy, and we the parents weren't "rewarding" him with attention, positive OR negative. 6) Trust yourself. You know your child. Parents nowadays are so scared to do anything lest it isn't on the "approved" list! Experts are a good general guidleline but you don't have to follow any one "Bible". Good Luck to all!
September 27, 2007, 2:39 pm CDT
Hitting Himself
Here is a different perspective about the little boy who was hitting himself: He knew he misbehaved and deserved a spanking or a talking to, and when he was ignored, he just started spanking himself to take the guilt away. I think children want to be stopped when they misbehave. A spanking may have taken away the guilt and enabled him to start fresh on a clean slate. His parents were ignoring him, so he was trying to discipline himself. Maybe they should tell him, "I care too much for you to let you act that way" and tell him the reasons why: If parents see your tantrums, they might mistake you for a naughty child and not let their children play with you. or Always watch your behaviour around others because they might remember your bad behaviour and you will lose opportunities and suffer for it later. or If I let you get out of control, somebody else might come over and try to discipline you in a harsh way, I am trying to save you from that. or You seem very upset and I'd like to discuss this later when we are alone. (and then follow up and let the child talk about what is upsetting him. It can make such a big difference if they feel like somebody understands.
September 27, 2007, 3:37 pm CDT
your reason for why the children is hitting himself, is wrong sorry I have to tell you that. Its a nice idea but Dr Phil was right on the nose about this. I was a self cutter a little over a year ago, started when I was about 12 years old, and it wasn't about wanting to be punished, it was such a rage in side there was no other way to let the anger out. Plus I have read every book about this subject I could get my hands on, and I read alot of books about children and teen devoplment. If you have kids you should think about reading books in that field it will make for a better and understanding parent. But I did like what you said for the rest of your post.
September 27, 2007, 7:24 pm CDT
Cranky kids
If people would discipline there kids and spank their butts everyonce in awhile they could learn something. Don't give me that load of crap, spanking gives you problems. I was spanked as a kid, and I knew right from wrong. At no point, did I ever smack at my grandma as a kid. I knew better. She didn't ask me if I wanted to go to bed. She told me it was time for bed and I went like it or not. Stop giving kids all the electronics, toys, and anything else they want. Start teaching them respect, manners, and boundaries. Stop screaming, swearing, and smacking your spouse infront of the kids. If kids have physical or mental issues, take that into consideration. Somewhere along the lines, parents decided they should be their kids friends instead of the parent. Well, that is not working. Stop nursing these kids before you end up with an adult who thinks everyone owes them. Never did I get an allowance for doing dishes or anything else I was told. Why cause I was raised to know, you should not be paid for something you should be doing anyway. If a kid doesn't want to do their chores and wants to mouth off. I say gut their bedroom and just leave the bed and a dresser with their clothes. When they start doing their job, whether it be school work or taking out the trash. Then you can slowly start giving them their stuff back. Don't feed me this stuff either about kids not being able to communicate. They can very well, but if your not listening then you won't hear it.
September 27, 2007, 9:54 pm CDT
If you spanked your kids on the butt they'd learn something alright. Might = right, and if their parents can terrorize them, there's no reason they can't terrorize other children at their school. It's how you build a bully.
September 27, 2007, 10:26 pm CDT
Good for You!!
My two children are grown and out on their own. I never, but never had a problem with tantrum, screaming, hitting or anything else. The first time they tried it, I ignored them and they never did it again. They learned very young that tantrums were not going to get my attention. They were polite at the dinner table and also when we went visiting. They are mature now and they are still both great people. They have thanked me for how they were raised. Thank goodness someone out there has some sense!!
September 28, 2007, 1:01 am CDT
Spanking is used for when your child has done something that could of killed them or someone else, or landed them in the hospital or someone else. Not because they got emotion. I'm 25 years old, I have my cranky days and you best believe someone try and spank me they arent walking away, so why should I then think its okay for a little person get spanked for having a cranky day. Should they not have emotions then, or maybe ones that only please you. Did you have children so they could what just please you. Not every parents is prefect but we all try our best and do what we feel is right. Maybe we should stop the slapping, the spanking, the hitting and start opening our arms more. One thing I didnt see in this show are parents that are loving even through the hard times, they didn't talk they TOLD they DEMAND things from children. Image if you were treated like that that your husband TOLD you what to do and Demand things from you, i believe some would call that a abusive relationship, but I guess cause these are children its OKAY right. I don't think so.<|endoftext|>Mathew Englander (mathew5000) wrote,
Mathew Englander
Kurt Gödel and Constitutional Amendment
In the Supreme Court of Canada hearings on the Senate Reform reference this week, one of the lawyers was asked how Canada could be transformed into a dictatorship, would it require unanimity of all the provinces, or just seven of them. (In the video, via CPAC, watch the interchange from time 71:00 to 76:20.)
This reminded me of the story about the logician Kurt Gödel studying the U.S. Constitution before his citizenship exam. Gödel (known for Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, the most important result in the philosophy of mathematics) concluded that under the Constitution, it would be legally possible to transform the U.S.A. into a dictatorship. His friends Albert Einstein and Oskar Morgenstern accompanied Gödel to the citizenship exam in 1947. As recounted in Rebecca Goldstein’s excellent biography Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel: turned out that the judge, whose name was Philip Forman, was the very one who had administered the oath of citizenship to Einstein some years before and he ushered the three men into his chambers immediately.
Einstein and Forman chatted for a while and Gödel, sitting quietly and biding his time, seemed all but forgotten. Eventually, though, Forman got on with the business of the day.
“Up to now you have held German citizenship.”
Immediately, Gödel corrected the judicial error: Austrian citizenship.
Duly corrected, the judge continued.
“In any case, it was under an evil dictatorship. Fortunately, that is not possible in America.”
This was just the opening the logician had been waiting for.
“On the contrary,” he objected, “I know precisely how it can happen here,” and he began to launch into his account of the flawed Constitution. Forman, Morgenstern, and Einstein exchanged meaningful glances and the judge called a halt to Gödel’s exposition, with a hasty, “You needn’t go into all that,” and steered the conversation round to less dangerous subjects.
Goldstein says it is unknown what Constitutional flaw Gödel had in mind. Probably he was simply referring to Article Five, the amending process. If Congress passes a joint resolution, with a two-thirds majority in each house, proposing a constitutional amendment that would cancel all elections and install a president-for-life, and the amendment is then ratified by 38 states, it would take effect as the supreme law of the land. That could happen next week, but it’s rather unlikely. (Though for Gödel, who saw Germany “legally” become a dictatorship after Hitler was elected, maybe it wasn't purely theoretical.)
In Canada, a plain reading of Part V of the Constitution Act, 1982 would allow the elimination of federal elections, turning Canada into a dictatorship, under the 7/50 formula. (The amendment would repeal sections 3 and 4 of the Charter, and provide that members of the House of Commons be chosen by the prime minister and serve at the prime minister’s pleasure.)
The dictatorship hypothetical is extreme but still could be important in the Supreme Court’s reasoning. In questioning counsel at the hearing, some of the judges have pondered whether they should interpret the amending procedures by looking at the underlying principles of the Canadian constitution, and then deciding which amending formula applies to a certain amendment based on how much, in their opinion, the amendment would alter those underlying principles. Some of the provincial attorneys general (most of them, in fact) advocated that approach in argument. Counsel for the federal attorney general argued no, you don't need to go to the underlying principles, the words in the Constitutional amending provisions already take account of those principles, so you should determine the applicable formula based on the text alone.
The question we must confront is this: since the “plain meaning” interpretive approach would let Canada’s form of government become a dictatorship with the consent of only seven provinces rather than all ten, should we therefore reject the plain meaning approach as fundamentally flawed?
The answer is no.
We may think there should be a monotonic relationship between the magnitude of a proposed amendment and the difficulty of the applicable amending formula: that is, it appeals to our sense of order if minor amendments fall under “easier” amending formulas while the most major amendments fall under the most difficult amending formula (i.e. unanimity). But it is dangerous for courts to say, okay, this monotonicity seems to be the underlying logic of Part V, therefore we should disregard the text of Part V when we think it deviates from the monotonicity principle.
If Part V were drafted in open-ended language, then it would be justifiable for the courts to take a contextual approach to interpreting it. For example, if section 41 said “unanimity is required for amendments that alter fundamental characteristics of Canada, such as (a) the office of the Queen...” and so forth, then it would be clear that the specific matters listed in section 41 were just examples of types of amendment requiring unanimity, and it would be up to the courts to decide whether other types of amendment (not mentioned in Part V) also require unanimity.
But that is not the scheme of Part V. In section 41 five matters are listed, amendments in relation to which require unanimity. The list of five matters is not preceded with “such as”, “in particular”, or “for example”. There is just no basis for a court to add to this list matters that it believes are similar.
The drafters of Part V were aware that the number of imaginable amendments is infinite. They could have written Part V to empower the courts to choose which formula would apply to some future amendment proposal that had not been contemplated in 1982. But instead, they consciously drafted the provisions of Part V such that the unanimity formula would be limited (to the five matters set out) but the 7/50 formula would be the “general procedure”, covering all types of amendment not otherwise provided for — including amendment proposals that nobody contemplated in 1982, no matter how radical.
Some of the provincial attorneys general (including Ontario’s AG) cautioned against “formalism” in interpreting the amending provisions. But there is good reason for courts to be formalistic when looking at the amending provisions as compared to other parts of the Constitution. The reason is, constitutional amendment is the last resort for elected officials to overturn decisions of appointed judges. Considering the democratic rights guaranteed in the Charter, what if a future court interprets those provisions in a way so unpopular and unworkable that the public feels a constitutional amendment is warranted to reverse the court decision? Should it then be open to the courts to say, “well, even though the text of the Constitution doesn’t say that the unanimity formula applies to alter democratic rights, we will impose our opinion of what the amending formula should be.” The courts would be making it impossible to change their own interpretation of the democratic rights in the Charter, even if most of the country strongly disagrees with that interpretation.
The 7/50 formula is difficult (albeit not as difficult as unanimity). It is unrealistic to think that seven provinces, comprising 50% of the population, plus the House of Commons, would ever agree on a radical amendment proposal that would get rid of democracy in Canada. Such an amendment is considerably more difficult now, under the 7/50 formula, than it was before 1982, when Canada could legally have been transformed into a dictatorship by an Act of the United Kingdom Parliament.
Tags: Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, Kurt Gödel, albert einstein, amendment of the constitution of canada, constitutional amendment, constitutional law, oskar morgenstern, philip forman, politics, senate of canada, senate reform, supreme court of canada
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On our very first episode of The Spin, we talked about how reach does NOT equal influence. Over a year later, this still proves to be true, yet brands continue to ask for "influencers with really large followings" and continue to measure campaigns with max potential impressions. So today we've decided to revisit this topic, and talk about the great lie of influencer marketing: Reach matters above all else.
On the surface it seems to make sense. Because influencer marketing typically is offering you the audience of the influencer, one would assume that the bigger the audience, the better, right? Except that's not true.
For starters, when you look at an an influencer’s audience, only about 10% of their followers are likely to see your content organically. This goes from as low as 1% for certain channels to about as high as 30% for other channels. So think, if an influencers has 100,000 total followers, you're likely only reaching 10,0000 of them. To help you determine the truth in your campaigns, check out our True Views calculator. You can plug in your campaign or even a given influencer, and look at the actual reach you can expect from that campaign.
Another important factor to consider in this argument is that the reach you are organically getting from the influencer is often not targeted reach unless you know the composition of the audience of the influencer, which most people we find, do not know. We're able to look at what the audience makeup is and make sure you’re reaching the right people organically from the beginning.
And finally, as an influencer's reach gets higher, their engagement rate gets lower. So what you see is that as you pick these bigger and bigger audiences, your actually less and less efficient and less and less effective at reaching the audience you're trying to reach. This is a huge challenge you need to overcome for success.
What we're essentially saying is that you should stop thinking about the reach of the influencer and start thinking about the reach of the best content. If you do that, you'll think about the audience of the influencer, you'll think about analyzing each piece of content to see what's performing, and then you'll think about your syndication strategy to get that best performing content in front of your exact right target audience. That's what we've done here at Carusele, and we see multiple campaigns drive real sales lift for our clients.
In the meantime, don't believe the myth that influencer reach is the most important thing you should be considering for your brand. Instead, contact us to see how we can develop a unique strategy that will help amplify your business objectives through influencer marketing.<|endoftext|>The Need for a Partnership Agreement
The Need for a Partnership AgreementWhat is a partnership?
A partnership is a business that is neither a corporation, nor an LLC. However, it is owned by two or more people. You do not necessarily have to create a written partnership agreement. If you do not have a written agreement, the partnership will begin as soon as the partners start the business.
What is a written partnership agreement?
The partners who began the business write and sign a legally binding document known as the written partnership agreement. This agreement dictates how the partners will run the business. The need of the partnership agreement is to foresee any future issues between the partners and create a method for dealing with those issues. The agreement is much like how contracts lay down the rights and responsibilities of two parties. While such an agreement is not mandatory to start a business together, it could prove to be an invaluable tool in avoiding future issues.
How will a partnership agreement benefit my business?
This agreement will allow the partners to figure out how |
around or under places such as sidewalks, flowerbeds, mulch, tree bases, stones, and logs where human outdoor activity takes place in urbanized area. It is not an aggressive ant, but it has a powerful sting that causes severe allergic reactions in some people. It also has a negative impact on native ant species in forest environments. Food preference was studied, followed by an evaluation of selected bait products against P. chinensis.
Protein, carbohydrate, lipid, and control diets were tested with P. chinensis in the laboratory and field. In the laboratory, P. chinensis showed no significant preference to any of the food choices. In the field, during the early stages of population growth (late May and early June), the ants showed no significant preference for carbohydrate, lipid, or protein, but visited protein significantly more frequently than plain agar (control), which was the food matrix. When the worker population and swarming activity were higher in late summer (July and August), P. chinensis showed a preference for protein over carbohydrate, lipid, and plain agar. These data provided a basis for selection of bait products for efficacy trials.
Seven bait products were chosen to evaluate their effectiveness against P. chinensis. In the laboratory, a choice/no choice study was conducted. Advion® fire ant bait, Advance®, and Maxforce® complete achieved 100% mortality in less than one week. Advion® gel reached approximately 90% mortality and was not significantly different from those reaching 100% mortality after 14 days. When a choice of a natural food source was offered, Optigard® was less effective than in the no choice test, the latter was not significantly different from Advion® gel. Optigard® was not significantly different from Maxforce® quantum in the choice test, while Maxforce® quantum achieved a mortality of 40%. Advion® granule was the least effective bait in both choice and no-choice tests and was not significantly different from control when a choice was available.
Evaluation of bait products in the field was conducted in urban areas where active foraging ants and potential nesting sites were located. Statistically, there were significant differences between treatments in the mean percentage of P. chinensis population change in week 1 only. Overall, Advion® gel was the only bait resulting in reduced a field population over 10 weeks. Advion® fire ant bait achieved 70% reduction in the field population during the first three weeks and reduced populations after reapplication in week 7. Advance® was effective in the first seven weeks and had no effect on population reduction in the last three weeks even after reapplication. In the field, Maxforce® complete was not as effective as in the laboratory. The field population increased during most weeks of the study. Optigard® and Maxforce® quantum had similar trends in population change over 10 weeks. The population increased during weeks when there was an increase at control sites, and decreased in weeks when there was a decrease in the P. chinensis population at control sites.
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Hobart is Australia's southernmost capital city. The fact that it is also the smallest is the key to its particular charm. A riverside city with a busy harbour, its mountain backdrop offers fine views over the beautiful Georgian buildings, numerous parks and compact suburbs below. The city's conservative and provincial reputation among some mainlanders is undeserved. Hobart town has a thriving arts and crafts scene and a real sense of history, and for walking, eating and just soaking in the atmosphere it can't be bettered. Hobart is in the south-east of the state, in the middle of a series of islands and peninsulas that surround Storm Bay. It lies at the foot of Mt Wellington, and is approached from the north by the Tasman bridge and highway. Queen's Domain and the botanical gardens feed into the grid of the central business area, which is just minutes away from the wharves that line Sullivans Cove.
The waterfront area is the focus for the city's events and the location of most tourist attractions. South from here is Sandy Bay, the site of Hobart's university and the Wrest Point Hotel Casino. The airport is in Hobart's eastern suburbs, 16km (10mi) from the city centre. Buses leave from the Transit Centre, to the west of the city centre, and from Hobart Coaches, right in the city. Accommodation in Hobart ranges from backpackers' hostels and quaint but sometimes expensive B&Bs and guesthouses, to harbourside pubs and four-star hotels. Because of the city's tiny proportions, it's possible to stay conveniently close to the city's attractions and food outlets. The main areas for budget accommodation are the city centre and the older suburbs to the north and west. Middle and upper-end accommodation is spread all over town. Sourced with thanks from Lonely Planet HOBART LINKS: Holiday Weather Hobart
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Pancreatitis-Pancreatitis is inflammation of the pancreas.The pancreas is a large organ behind the stomach that produces digestive enzymes.There are two main types,acute pancreatitis and chronic pancreatitis.Signs and symptoms of pancreatitis include pain in the upper abdomen, nausea and vomiting.The pain often goes into the back and is usually severe.In acute pancreatitis a fever may occur and symptoms typically resolve in a few days.In chronic pancreatitis weight loss,fatty stool,and diarrhea may occur.Complications may include infection,bleeding,diabetes mellitus,or problems with other organs.The most common causes of acute pancreatitis are gallstones and heavy alcohol use.Other causes include direct trauma,certain medications,infections such as mumps,and tumors among others.Chronic pancreatitis may develop as a result of acute pancreatitis.It is most commonly due to many years of heavy alcohol use.Other causes include high levels of blood fats,high blood calcium,some medications,and certain genetic disorders such as cystic fibrosis among others.Smoking increases the risk of both acute and chronic pancreatitis.Diagnosis of acute pancreatitis is based on a threefold increase in the blood of either amylase or lipase. In chronic pancreatitis these tests may be normal.Medical imaging such as ultrasound and CT scan may also be useful.Acute pancreatitis is usually treated with intravenous fluids,pain medication, and sometimes antibiotics.Typically no eating or drinking is allowed and a tube may be placed into the stomach.A procedure known as an endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) may be done to open the pancreatic duct if blocked.In those with gallstones the gallbladder is often also removed.In chronic pancreatitis,in addition to the above,temporary feeding through a nasogastric tube may be used to provide adequate nutrition.Long-term dietary changes and pancreatic enzyme replacement may be required.And occasionally surgery is done to remove parts of the pancreas.Globally,in 2013 about 17 million cases of pancreatitis occurred.This resulted in 123,000 deaths, up from 83,000 deaths in 1990.Acute pancreatitis occurs in about 30 per 100,000 people a year.New cases of chronic pancreatitis develop in about 8 per 100,000 people a year and currently affect about 50 per 100,000 people in the United States.[6] It is more common in men than women.Often chronic pancreatitis starts between the ages of 30 and 40 while it is rare in children.Acute pancreatitis was first described on autopsy in 1882 while chronic pancreatitis was first described in 1946.Signs and symptoms-The most common symptoms of pancreatitis are severe upper abdominal or left upper quadrant burning pain radiating to the back,nausea,and vomiting that is worse with eating.The physical examination will vary depending on severity and presence of internal bleeding.Blood pressure may be elevated by pain or decreased by dehydration or bleeding.Heart and respiratory rates are often elevated.The abdomen is usually tender but to a lesser degree than the pain itself.As is common in abdominal disease,bowel sounds may be reduced from reflex bowel paralysis.Fever or jaundice may be present.Chronic pancreatitis can lead to diabetes or pancreatic cancer.Unexplained weight loss may occur from a lack of pancreatic enzymes hindering digestion.Causes-Eighty percent of cases of pancreatitis are caused by alcohol or gallstones.Gallstones are the single most common cause of acute pancreatitis.Alcohol is the single most common cause of chronic pancreatitis.Some medications are commonly associated with pancreatitis,most commonly corticosteroids such as prednisolone,but also including the HIV drugs didanosine and pentamidine,diuretics,the anticonvulsant valproic acid,the chemotherapeutic agents L-asparaginase and azathioprine,estrogen by way of increased blood triglycerides,and antihyperglycemic agents like metformin,vildagliptin,and sitagliptin.It may be noted here that the drugs used to treat conditions that are themselves associated with increased events of pancreatitis...
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Myths and Facts about Cataracts
, medical expert
Last reviewed: 16.05.2018
01 April 2011, 14:47
A few years ago, for many people over 60 years old, the diagnosis of cataract sounded like a sentence. Cataracts - an insidious disease and usually it develops slowly, so people do not immediately notice that he has formed such a nasty disease and does not hurry to consult a doctor. But this is wrong, because only a highly qualified ophthalmologist will be able to detect cataracts at an early stage, in the shortest possible time, eliminating the disease. There is a huge amount of myths and speculation about cataracts. Today Excimer dispels myths - because we know everything about vision ... :)
Myth number 1. Cataract is not a serious disease
This is really a myth, because cataracts are one of the most serious eye diseases most often affected by people in old age. Of course, cataracts can also occur in young people, but most likely it will be as a result of damage to the lens with injuries, ultraviolet radiation, exposure to certain chemicals, and so on.
The lens of the human eye is a "natural lens". It is transparent, elastic - it can change its shape, almost instantaneously "bringing focus", due to which a person sees well both near and far. With cataracts, partial or complete clouding of the lens occurs. Because of the violation of the transparency of the lens, only a small part of the light rays begin to enter the eye, so the person sees indistinctly and blurry, especially in bright light. Over the years, the disease progresses: the area of turbidity increases and vision decreases.
When the cataract stage is started, the swollen lens begins to occupy most of the anterior chamber of the eye, thus disrupting the outflow of the intraocular fluid. As a result, there is an increase in intraocular pressure and glaucoma develops. This is very dangerous, since without the treatment, vision is irretrievably lost.
Myth number 2. Cataract can be cured by alternative medicine and without surgery
To date, in modern medicine, there are no drugs that can restore the transparency of the lens. Its turbidity is the irreversible process of the proteins contained in it, which can not be got rid of by diet, special massage, or by any alternative means. The only way out is surgery, ophthalmologists of the whole world believe.
Myth number 3. Operation is very long
In modern ophthalmology, the most effective, fast and painless cataract treatment is the phacoemulsification with the implantation of an artificial lens. By the time the operation takes about 15 minutes, it is performed under local anesthesia while the patient does not experience any discomfort. The operation can be divided into several stages: first, the ophthalmic surgeon with a diamond tool creates a microcut, about 3 mm and all further manipulations produce through it. Then, using a special probe with the help of ultrasound, the lens is converted into an emulsion and removed from the eye. Through a microcut in the capsule, where the lens was previously placed, a flexible lens is inserted in the folded state, which independently unfolds inside the eye and is securely fixed. After such a surgical intervention, no suturing is required, since the microcut is self-sealing.
Myth number 4. After the operation, you need to stay in the hospital for a long time
Do not be afraid, you do not have to lie in the hospital. At the Excimer clinic, an operation for cataracts is performed on an outpatient basis, that is, without hospitalization and on the same day the patient returns home. Restrictions on physical activity are minimal, recovery is painless. Before the advent of phacoemulsification, all this was impossible. Only modern methods have allowed such good results to be achieved.
Myth number 5. Still need to wear glasses
It's good enough to see you begin in a few hours, and the maximum visual acuity is restored for a period of 2 days to 1 week. When dealing with the diagnosis of "cataract" in "Excimer" you will not only be helped to get rid of the disease, but also to restore your vision, achieving the greatest possible acuity, painlessly and effectively, without the complications and restrictions on physical activity after the recovery period.
In the ophthalmological clinic "Excimer" the most modern achievement of world ophthalmology in the field of cataract treatment is the multifocal lenses. The undoubted advantage of multifocal lenses is that they allow you to achieve the same good vision without using glasses both far away and close, because they have not one, but several foci, which makes it possible to see objects located at different distances well. You do not have to use glasses any more when reading and working with small items.
In the "Excimer" ophthalmic clinic, qualified specialists will save you from cataracts and glasses, providing comfortable vision in any situations. In the Excimer, they are sure that cataracts are not a verdict.
If you have problems with eyesight, then on the site excimer you will find everything you need. We will tell you about what are eye diseases and, most importantly, how to treat them, answer all your questions (ask a question to an ophthalmologist). The site has a separate page for future moms, dedicated to problems of vision and pregnancy. And also for those who work a lot at the computer (vision and computer). Let's suggest what exercises for the eyes can restore vision and how to observe the hygiene of lighting.
Doctors of Excimer set a goal to make ophthalmological care even more accessible for those who need it. There are discount cards in the clinic. A full computer diagnostic examination is performed for each patient. When you register for an appointment through the website of the clinic, you get a 5% discount for full computer vision diagnostics with the advice of an ophthalmologist.
We will be happy to help you.
Clinic Excimer,
Kiev, Dimitrov St., 5-B
Tel. (044) 238-6800
It is important to know!
Modern eye injuries are characterized by a special severity, causing the death of the eye in 72.2% of cases. Symptoms of the consequences of eye contusion, which are complicated by damage to the lens are severe, and the outcomes are unfavorable, than with traumatic cataracts, which are caused by perforating wounds. Read more..
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A piece of fiction inspired by real life events that will someday appear in a novel I will write.
The security guard directed him to the house right in front of the Land Transportation Office (LTO). At first, Carlo wasn’t sure which house he was referring to but upon walking closer, he saw a gate with a small sign that said ‘Dr. Dorotea M. Pamatong, Medical Examiner, LTO Accredited.’ Before he reached the gate, a middle aged woman wielding a paper fan who looked more like she was selling fried bananas in the street instead of assisting a doctor approached him.
“You need a medical certificate for your driver’s license? Let me have your documents and sit down here,” she said as she collected his application form.
Carlo walked past the gate into the garage and sat on one of the plastic chairs lined up along the wall. The doctor’s office consists of a standard sized wooden desk behind which a portly woman in her early 60‘s in a blue suit, whom he assumed was the doctor, sat. There was a dusty and beat-up weighing scale covered in fraying plastic in a futile effort to protect it. On the wall before him was a letter chart used to check a person’s eyesight and beside it was a poster of some common traffic signs and their meanings. It looked as if the doctor just randomly decided to set up camp in someone’s garage and haphazardly put together what she thought belonged in a medical examiner’s office. The fried banana woman asked Carlo to read the eighth line of the eye chart which he was able to do with ease. She also asked him to step on the weighing scale and seeing Carlo’s rugged old pair of sneakers, asked him to take them off before doing so. The doctor was still attending to an elderly man who came before him.
“… you and I both know that you wouldn’t be able to pass this medical exam,” the doctor said, scribbling away on the elderly man’s forms.
“Yes, I was only able to read up to line 5 of the chart,” the elderly man agreed, scratching his head.
O, it says here your birthday was yesterday. Happy birthday. How about treating me to some pancit so I can issue you a certificate right now?”
“I only have P1,000 to process my license renewal. I’m not sure I have enough money to give you,” the man said.
“Well let’s compute how much you have to spend today,” said the doctor as she expertly pulled out a calculator. She listed all the fees that he would have to pay her and at the LTO punching out the numbers.
“And that leaves you with P80 at the end of the day,” she concluded.
“Fine, you can have that,” he said as he handed her a P500 bill.
The doctor took his money and handed him P200 back.
“Doc, shouldn’t I get P300 back?,” the elderly man asked.
“Ay! Didn’t you say you were going to give me P300? I thought I heard you say you were going to give me P300 to buy pancit because it was your birthday that’s why I just gave you P200 back. You didn’t say clearly that you were only going to give me P200. O, here is your P100 back. Happy birthday again.” She quickly signed his papers, handed them to him, and motioned for Carlo.
“Hm… I see that your license expired eight years ago. Were you out of the country?”
“Yes Doc.” Carlo replied.
Naku, you’re one of those OFWs pala, those modern heroes who keep the Philippines afloat. Let me guess, Saudi?,” the doctor continued filling up his form.
“Japan po. Doc, how much does the medical certificate cost?” Carlo tried |
like a moron. Yes, yes, it's the Internet and spelling and grammar aren't cool among the kids these days. Nevertheless, you're trying to impress these people, so at least make some effort to not type like a monkey undergoing shock treatment. Typing in all lower-case with no punctuation except for "lol" makes the guild officers think that you're going to be a nightmare to have in guild chat, and they're probably right.
2. Use the actual guild's application. Not a generic application. Not another guild's application. ESPECIALLY not the application of the archnemesis of the guild you're applying to. This is usually an automatic disqualification -- if you can't take the time to fill out the application, how are you going to abide by the guild rules?
3. Don't flirt or post pictures. No one cares that you're a girl. Really. No, really. They care about how well you can play. If they ask for your gender, it's okay to tell the truth, but including revealing pics or a link to your myspace in your application screams "In the future, I will carry on an ongoing flirtation with several guildmates that will eventually destroy the entire organization." I would assume it's also verboten for a guy to flirt and post half-naked pictures in his guild application, but honestly I would probably /ginvite that person just to watch the chaos that ensues.
4. Don't complain about your last guild. Even if the split was really bad, just say "there were some issues about _____ and I decided to move on." An epic description of the drama in your last guild makes you look bad, and some of the officers in your wanna-be-new guild probably have friends in your old one.
5. Don't talk about what they can give you -- talk about what you can give them. I have seen many guild applications where the reason for joining boils down to "I want to get gear and you guys are progressed!" Sure, that's probably the real reason for it, but it's considered tactless (kind of like saying "I really need some money" during a job interview.) Instead, talk about your desire to see new content, meet new people, and help your guild in new encounters. Don't mention gear at all, really.
Do you have any tips for guild applications, or do you find the whole concept kind of distasteful?
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Course Description
Western/World Civ to 1500
SOCS 103- Western/World Civilization to 1500 A world historical survey from ancient times to 1500. Main themes revolve around social and technological changes influenced by geographical environments and occasionally interacting cultures and civilizations. Emergence of different styles of civilization by 1500. 3 credits, fall<|endoftext|>Pulley Laser Alignment and Belt Tension Checks
Misalignment between pulleys and inadequate tension can cause excessive vibration and premature wear of belts, reducing the reliability of the equipment and higher maintenance costs!
Old alignment methods with rules and tensioned strings do not guarantee accurate alignments, and are unreliable. Mainly referring to angular misalignment of the pulleys.
Tecvib offers laser alignment of pulleys and belt tension gauge checks to ensure better reliability of your equipment.<|endoftext|>‘India can afford OLPC today’
Low-cost laptop/tablet hybrids could bring rural schools up to speed, but specs need to be just right
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First Published: Fri, Aug 31 2012. 10 17 PM IST
President and CEO of One Laptop per Child India, Satish Jha.
Updated: Fri, Aug 31 2012. 11 23 PM IST
New Delhi: The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative is one of the most respected names in low-cost computing around the world, and they have recently announced the latest version of their laptop, the OLPC XO-4, which can also function as a touchscreen computer.
OLPC, headed globally by Nicholas Negroponte, designed the XO laptop to function in difficult conditions, so it would be usable everywhere in the world, including India. We spoke with Satish Jha , who represents OLPC in India, about the new device, and the progress OLPC has made in bringing their devices here.
What are the reasons to use an OLPC laptop?
It was specifically designed for use by the poorest sections of society. It’s not enough to make a computer and to make it cheap. Anybody could do that. But we took a lot of considerations in mind—it has to be tough, so children can use it. It has to have very low electricity requirements, so it’s easy to charge. A school in a village might not have walls, so the machine needs to be usable outdoors. This requires a sunlight readable screen. And then, if it starts raining, your machine shouldn’t become expensive junk. So we worked on water resistance. Getting all these things together, along with the right software, to make it engaging for children, and encouraging them to learn, was critical. Children also learn differently on screen. Using OLPC they can leapfrog, begin learning “learning”, become critical thinkers and problem solvers, and get ready for tomorrow.
For a developing country like India, how feasible is it to invest in technology for education? Wouldn’t that money be better spent on basic infrastructure?
Schools require buildings, teachers, equipment and electricity. OLPC becomes a school in a box, removing all these needs. To create this infrastructure would require $2,000 per child ( Rs. 1.1 lakh), OLPC costs a fraction of that. In 65 years, we haven’t been able to build a learning in frastructure in the country. India adds 25 million children to schools every year, but barely 3 million pass college. Education is not fun, and not engaging, and OLPC can change that.
How much money would it cost to implement a large-scale OLPC installation? Why not go with another technology, like netbooks?
India can afford OLPC today. By starting 22 million underprivileged children on OLPC today, India will only add $6 billion to its education budget. It’s already spending $41.5 billion on computers for schools.
The problem with other computers, such as netbooks, is that they aren’t well suited to the kind of use they will see. They aren’t built to work with little or no electricity. You can use pedal power to run the OLPC. They aren’t meant to be read outdoors, but in villages where schools have no buildings, how can they be used? They aren’t built to keep out dust, and if a child drops one, they can break. How does this solve the problem of rural education in India? They do not have the necessary applications children need to learn while enjoying learning. OLPC comes loaded with them.
You don’t believe something like the Aakash is a viable alternative?
I think that the Aakash, and other technology such as the Raspberry Pi, are missing the point. The Aakash cannot be read outdoors, you need to keep it charged, which is difficult for a very large segment of the population, and without a keyboard, it isn’t very useful to students either.
On the other hand, something like the Raspberry Pi, is excellent for hobbyists. I think it is an amazing device. But it also isn’t a solution for the education problems that plague India. After people buy the Pi, they have to buy televisions, they have to buy keyboards and mouses, and the whole thing is assembled by them so it won’t be very hardy, and, of course, it also requires electricity. I’m not trying to belittle these ideas, but they don’t solve the problem in front of us.
While OLPC was originally given support by the Indian government, the focus shifted to Aakash. Why do you think that was, and how has OLPC been growing?
I don’t want to speculate on why the government is making the decisions it made, but regardless of that, I am determined to make a difference in my country. I have been supporting OLPC with my savings and borrowing from friends. Negroponte tells me to stop, that India is not ready for real education. But we’re starting to see a positive response now. In Manipur, the first pilot with 1,000 OLPCs is properly under way, and we’re talking to chief ministers in Haryana and Rajasthan.
People want to bring in OLPC, but they don’t want to upset the Centre. These kinds of issues are what hold India back.
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The Best Bonus I Ever Got
I know I complain a lot on the blog about IT management. Well, in my opinion, IT management asks for it. Just like lawyers do when they send our society on a downward spiral to hell on riptides of lies and blame deflection.
But this post will be different. I promise. Today, I'll talk about the extra bits of cash compensation employees get outside of their base salaries. These have been far and few between in my career, so maybe this will also get to be a blessedly short post. Apologies again in advance, for some salty language that might follow.
The first bonus I got didn't come until about five years into my career. A lot of that had to do with the crappy company I worked for, but a lot also had to do with me being an inexperienced and poorly managed resource. Anyway, it was a day cruise given to my team for working hard. I appreciate the gesture, but it was on the lame side as rewards go. And I didn't like how only half the team got to go and in retrospect consider this a managerial mistake. Some of the newer team members weren't included (in what I would bet was a cost-cutting move). I felt that was not a smart way to handle team morale in an effort about raising team morale. But it's the thought that counts, so I count it as a bonus even though it sucked in more ways than one. Shit, sorry, I was supposed to be positive in this post. I'll try harder on the next paragraph.
The next bonus was much better. It came in my sixth year with my first company. I had moved to a new, smaller, team and I was doing a much better job of being useful as I'd become more experienced. I also had a more laid-back supervisor and a pretty reasonable manager. My team received an end-of-year bonus of about three thousand dollars. Not enough to buy and island and retire, but nothing to sneeze at either. What is so damn goofy is that I worked less hard for that bonus than I did for the day cruise.
I switched to contracting for a while and bonuses are typically not part of the compensation structure for hourly employees, so there's nothing to report until I switched back to full-time work about 1999. Then I got a variety of bonuses. An annual performance bonus could be between two thousand to five thousand dollars. A spot performance bonus I got was three hundred dollars.
I bounced back and forth between full-time and contracting for a while after that but didn't get another bonus until I was again full time and had a manager that appreciated my work. I killed myself for more than a year straight of overtime and got a spot bonus of a thousand dollars.
I think it's fair at this point to note some lessons I've learned about bonuses. Your experience may be different. In fact, I hope it is. I hope you've done significantly better.
• Bonuses are usually but not necessarily tied to company profitability
• Bonuses are highly dependent on your immediate superiors and their superiors
• Bonuses are a very subjective thing.
• At one company I got almost no bonuses until the end, and I was working less hard than I did in the earlier years. Some employees told me of bonuses they got for putting in a mere hour of overtime. Now that's the kind of consistency that earns employee trust!
• At another company, bonuses sometimes came with formal recognition in the form of "President's Awards" or "Outstanding Performance Awards". These were REALLY ridiculous. It's not that some of the people getting them didn't deserve them. The problem was that the significance of the achievements earning these awards were all over the map. Some people got them for working hard on a specific important project, even though the teams on that project might have had several deserving people. Or two people might get awards for working on different projects, even though one was a multiple month or multiple year effort and the other was a one week commitment. It all came down to who had the manager that liked them, and in the end, I think this hurts morale more than it helps. Getting no recognition really hurts when you give your heart and soul for a long time and when you really make a difference. I'm not sure what the answer is for this bullshit though because for the people that deserve it, it is nice to see them get something.
• Don't depend on bonuses. They're not guaranteed. Hold their feet to the fire in salary negotiations. If you get a bonus, great, but either way you will get the salary.
• IT shops are pretty barren when it comes to bonuses especially when the company treats IT like a cost center. For sales and a few other divisions, bonuses may be a more legitimate part of the compensation structure.
• If you want to work in IT and get bonuses, find IT shops in companies where an annual bonus is universal to the pay structure. For example, one of my clients was a trading firm, and everyone, even IT, got significant bonuses (like 20-40% of the salary, a concept that is completely alien to me!).
So which of the bonuses above was the best one? I am thankful for them all, but the answer is, "none". The best one didn't come from management, it came from my users. One of my clients had a legacy system that had (and still has) a terrible user interface. They were suffering greatly on having to enter data one row at a time, spending multiple man-days of effort each month. I added a simple import capability so they could massage their data in Excel and then import it through cutting and pasting. Did it work? A few weeks after the feature went live, I got this from them:
That's right: a modest $25 gift card, for a place that makes food that's mostly not on my diet. It's the best bonus I ever got. Why? Because as Jeff Atwood would say, it showed that people were using my software. It showed that my work improved lives. What makes this bonus great is not even the $25, but the kind comments from my users on the card it came with.
Now I'm sure there are managers looking at this and saying, "Gee what an asshole that Bernard is. How could that meaningless shit be worth more to him than a thousand dollars?" Man, if you're a manager saying that right now, I pity you. You have completely missed the boat on how to do your job and how to be a leader. And I pity even more your subordinates.
Oh shit, I'm supposed to be positive! Ah, ok, well, I took the card and had a nice date with my wife, eating wings before a movie.
And for any overly literal pinheads reading this, no, this doesn't mean I don't appreciate monetary bonuses. But really, this kind of recognition is truly special and particular to software developers in the same way that a compliment to a chef or an artist means as much emotionally as the money. The chef gets a paycheck either way, but if he knows his clients were enriched by his cooking, he has a sense of purpose fulfilled. And this really is where IT management really needs to get a better understanding of how technical people respond to feedback.
We really don't give a shit if you praise us for good attendance or being on time to meetings. We do like pizza, but throwing a pizza party isn't really doing much for morale. When you use metrics like how many SOX audits we passed or how little we were penalized for dress code violations, you're just drawing attention to the parts of the job that suck.
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08 Feb 2018 03:57
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If they lack the information and support that are necessary to be successful, Quitting smoking is very difficult for many people, especially. This article has information potential quitters need to know, as well as specific steps they need to take to quit smoking. It will enhance their chance of success if they use this advice.Try to encourage friends and family to support your decision to stop smoking. It's important they understand you need their non-judgmental support. You will also want to let them know you will most likely be in a lousy mood initially, and you may not exactly think clearly at that time. It is not easy to stop smoking, and you need to have support from your loved ones during this process.Remember that smoking cessation is really all about replacing one behavior with another. For most people, it is primarily the physical act of smoking that is the major draw. It signifies "me time" and a break from a hectic schedule or a boring job. Choose ahead of time exactly what behavior you will replace those smoking minutes with, and then do it! In order to keep from giving in to your cravings and the stress they may cause, it is important to cheap phone psychic ( find ways to cope with nicotine withdrawals. This could translate to making appointments for activities, like the gym or spa, during the hours when your nicotine cravings are at their peak. You could put your focus on a game or enjoyable book instead of smoking. Even a visit with a good friend can keep your mind off psychic Don't Go Cold TurkeyDo not quit cold turkey. It can be tempting to throw out your cigarettes and say, "I quit! " But cold turkey is not the way you want to go. Studies show that over ninety percent of people who try to quit smoking with no medication or therapy end up relapsing. The reason for this is because nicotine is addictive and your brain craves it. Without it, nicotine withdrawal symptoms set in.Once you commit to quitting smoking, give your home, car and other personal effects and spaces a thorough cleaning. Smelling smoke will only make you want to smoke. Likewise, your sense of smell will improve the longer you go without smoking, and cleaning will give you a chance to appreciate just how bad the smoke made your items smell.Don |
in the surface tension. 2 Bearing this in mind, we will nevertheless retain the term of order q 4 and consider κ(ℓ) as a phenomenological coefficient. Notice that depending on the choice for the surface location the sign of κ(ℓ) may be either positive or negative, but it has been shown that consistent definitions for the surface location provide bending rigidities that are positive. 1,36,37 The free energy in Eq. (66) is quadratic in the Fourier modes, equipartition of energy holds exactly to this order of approximation, and the spectrum of fluctuations follows immediately as: This result is an improved expression for the spectrum of surface fluctuations in the presence of an external field. 7 Relative to the classical result, the external field not only provides a low wave-vector bound to the surface fluctuations, but also modifies the coefficient of q 2 by an amount ∆γ which we will see, may be related to g ′′ (ℓ) for systems subject to a long range external field. is now required to specify the intrinsic density profile.
The precise dependence of ρ π (z; ℓ) on z and ℓ is dictated by the molecular model and the details of the substrate. However, quite generally, we expect that for thick adsorbed films sufficiently far from the substrate, the z dependence in the neighborhood of z = ℓ becomes independent of ℓ. In this limit, we can hope to obtain general expressions that will not depend on precise details of the substrate.
As suggested previously, [44][45][46] we consider intrinsic density profiles which satisfy the following constraint: where ξ e is a phenomenological length scale of the order of the correlation length. It is expected that this approximation is generally exact up to first order for free liquid-vapor interfaces, provided the location of the interface is chosen at the point of ρ π (z) with maximum slope. Particularly, the approximation is exact for a model density profile with the shape of an error function. For this reason, we will call this the Erf approximation.
A. Film height dependent surface tension
As summarized in section IV E, the surface tension of the adsorbed film is given by Eq. (68). The first contribution, γ 0 (ℓ), is dictated by the distorted liquid-vapor density profile only (i.e., Eq. (43) or Eq. (63)) and does not explicitly depend on the substrate properties. In the Erf approximation, the liquid-vapor density profile has attained already its asymptotic shape, so that dρ π /dℓ is equal to dρ π /dz, and therefore γ 0 (ℓ) is essentially constant and equal to γ lv . The only dependence on ℓ arises from the truncation of the Gaussian tail of dρ π /dz by the lower bound of the integrals in either Eq. (43) or Eq. (63).
Obviously, such effect is negligible for ℓ ≫ ξ e . For smaller ℓ, solving the integral explicitly The second contribution to the surface tension, ∆γ(ℓ), results from the influence of the external field on the liquid-vapor interface. By plugging the Erf approximation, Eq. (70) into Eq. (49), we obtain: [44][45][46] ∆γ(ℓ) = ξ 2 e g ′′ ext (ℓ) (71) where g ′′ ext (ℓ) is the second derivative of the external contribution to the interface potential Notice that in the language of colloidal science, g ′′ corresponds to minus the derivative of the disjoining pressure. In this way, it is possible to relate the ℓ dependence of ∆γ(ℓ) to a measurable experimental property. Also note Eq. (71) is consistent with predictions from the Non-Local theory of interfaces. 47 Whence, for wall-fluid interactions with a range larger than the bulk correlation length, we expect that the zero wave-vector dependent surface tension will obey: For stable or partially stable wetting films, g ′′ ext is always positive, so that typically for thick films it is expected that γ(ℓ) > γ lv . This predictions has been confirmed recently for two different models of short-range fluids in the presence of an algebraically decaying external field. 44,46 For real fluids, exhibiting long range fluid-fluid interactions, the interface potential is usually characterized in terms of the Hamaker constant, A w , as: with A w < 0 for either stable or metastable wetting films. Accordingly, we can write: Clearly, γ(ℓ) falls steeply to its asymptotic value, but could increase much for sufficiently thin wetting films.
To asses the length-scale where the film height dependence of the surface tension is significant, we define ℓ 1/8 as that film height resulting in a 12.5% increment of γ(ℓ). Accordingly, we find: where ℓ 1/8 is expressed in units of ξ e , since it is not meaningful to describe a film of thickness smaller than the interface width.
In order to asses ℓ 1/8 , we need simple estimates for A w and γ lv . Dietrich and Schick considered the general problem of fluid adsorption on a substrate for systems dominated by long range dispersive forces. They obtained expressions for the surface tension and Hamaker constants in terms of integrals over pair potentials. 76 In order to exploit those results, we consider a simple model with pair interactions made of a hard sphere repulsive interaction of diameter σ, and a dispersion term −ǫσ 6 /r 6 (Sutherland potential). Using integrals for the where ǫ w and σ w are energy and range parameters for the substrate-fluid pair potential, while ρ w is the substrate's number density.
At high temperatures, close to the adsorbate's critical point, the term in parenthesis increases slowly, but since ξ e scales as the correlation length, the prefactor σ/ξ e decreases at a faster rate. As a result, ℓ 1/8 /ξ e vanishes close to the critical point.
For temperatures well below the critical point of the adsorbed fluid, ξ e ≈ σ, while ρ l ≫ ρ v .
As a result, it is possible to relate the term inside the parenthesis with a ratio of Hamaker constants (Appendix D): with A l the Hamaker constant of two liquid slabs interacting across vacuum. The ratio A w /A l typically falls in the range 10 −1 − 10 1 , so that the length-scale where γ(ℓ) differs significantly from γ lv is not larger than a few interface widths (Table I). In fact, under the assumptions mentioned at the beginning of the paragraph, the ratio A w /A l is very nearly equal to the spreading coefficient (Appendix D). Accordingly, we expect ℓ 1/8 /ξ e to be larger for substrate/fluid pairs above the wetting temperature. ρ(r; L) Ξ = ρ π (z; ℓ) + 1 2 where ∆ 2 cw dictates the amplitude of capillary wave broadening of the intrinsic density profile. Here, it is given as the sum of two different contributions: The first one corresponds to the broadening due to mere translation of the profile, and corresponds to the result of classical capillary wave theory: The second one stems from distortions of the profile due to the finite gradient of interface fluctuations, 44,45 and unavoidably mixes intrinsic contributions (as dictated by ξ e ), and capillary wave distortions (as implied by the fluctuations of the film gradient): The intensity of specular reflectivity measurements consistent with the above results may be obtained by replacing Eq. (70) into Eq. (16): where ρ π (Q z ) is the Fourier transform of ρ π (z), while ∆ 2 cw is now given by Eq. (80), with: and Because of Parseval's theorem, the results Eq. (81) and Eq. (84) for ∆ 2 0 , as well as Eq. (82) and Eq. (85) for ∆ 2 1 are equivalent. In order to obtain explicit results for ∆ 2 cw , we approximate the sum of Fourier components in Eq. (84) and Eq. (85) to an integral, i.e., q → A where q min = 2π/L is the lowest possible wave-vector consistent with the system's lateral size, as dictated by L, while q max is an upper wave-vector cutoff. A closed expression for the general case of a fluid with short and long range forces (i.e., finite µ) is not possible.
Fortunately, recent studies suggest that the contribution of the singular term q ln q in γ(ℓ; q) is very small, so that most likely it is possible to describe ∆ 2 cw assuming µ = 0. 72 Also, notice the requirement of a finite interface width implies κ(ℓ) is a positive coefficient. 1,36,37 In that case, the integral may be solved analytically and approximated with good accuracy to the following result (Appendix E): where ξ 2 = γ(ℓ) g ′′ (ℓ) plays the role of a parallel correlation length for interface fluctuations and ξ 2 κ = κ(ℓ) γ(ℓ) may be interpreted as the length-scale below which bending the interface becomes too expensive. Notice that the contributions of gradient fluctuations in the interface roughening (Eq. (82) or Eq. (85)), may be readily recognized as those terms linear in ξ 2 e . In the limit where both ξ 2 e and ξ 2 κ are allowed to vanish, Eq. (87) recovers the result of classical capillary wave theory, albeit with a film height dependent surface tension. Relaxing the constraint ξ 2 κ = 0 while keeping ξ 2 e = 0, Eq. (87) becomes an extended capillary wave theory that naturally provides an upper wave-vector cutoff q 2 max = ξ −2 κ . Taking into account the fluctuations of the film gradient requires to relax the constraint ξ 2 e = 0, but in this case the bending rigidity coefficient κ is not sufficient to provide for an ultraviolet cutoff.
In order to find plausible values for the unknown parameters q max , and ξ 2 κ , in terms of ξ e , it seems natural to consider the result for ∆ 2 cw in the limit of vanishing external field (ξ 2 → ∞): This result may be now compared with the expectations for the capillary wave broadening from the one-loop approximation, which holds precisely in that limit: 13 Since ξ R and ξ e describe the interface width of the intrinsic profile, we set ξ R = ξ e . It is then natural to equate Eq. (88) with Eq. (89) and to identify ln(q max /q min ) in the first expression with ln(2π/q min ξ R ) in the second. This then yields readily q max ≈ 2π/ξ e for the wave-vector cutoff and provides for the bending rigidity κ ≈ 4γ lv ξ 2 e as the solution of a transcendental equation.
Taking now the limit of large system sizes, ξ 2 q 2 min ≪ 1, while allowing for a finite external field, which will usually be the relevant experimental situation, we find for the capillary wave broadening: We test this equation for strong to moderate external fields, by setting q max = 2π/ξ e as suggested above, while allowing for a choice of bending rigidities (Fig. 3). In the limit of very small external fields, ξ 2 → ∞, our result becomes equal to that of classical capillary wave theory, except for an additive constant. However, in the presence of a tunable external field, classical theory predicts a broadening that is linear in ln ξ 2 , while our theory of normal interface translations suggests the prefactor of the logarithmic term also depends on the external field.
In practice, the difference between Eq. (90) and the classical result (which is recovered simply by setting ξ e = 0) is mainly dictated by the second term in the right hand side of Eq. (90). If the ratio ξ e /ξ κ differs from unity, it provides a nearly constant shift of the capillary wave broadening that may be either positive (ξ κ < ξ e ) or negative (ξ κ > ξ e ) and should be possible to distinguish experimentally (Fig. 3).
If, on the other hand ξ e /ξ κ → 1, the shift vanishes altogether. In that case, the logarithmic contribution from Eq. (90) is hardly distinguishable from the classical result (Fig. 3).
In practice, ξ κ must be considered an empirical parameter, so that we cannot tell a priori the extent to which our result differs from the classical theory. By performing x-ray reflectivity experiments, it should be possible in principle to measure ∆ 2 cw and confirm the expectations of Eq. (87) and Eq. (90) and to provide an estimate for ξ κ . Interestingly, several x-ray diffraction experiments performed on fluid surfaces report the need to account for a constant shift on the results for ∆ cw which would be consistent with the expectations from Eq. (90) assuming ξ κ < ξ e . 21,78,79 Unfortunately, it is not possible to distinguish whether this shift stems from the intrinsic width of the interface or from gradient fluctuations to the capillary wave broadening.
As a final remark, we note that, whereas the result of Eq. (88) for ∆ 2 cw is consistent with the result of the one-loop approximation, Eq. (89), a stringent comparison of the individual components as implied in Eq. (80) does not seem to match so consistently.
Indeed, from Eq. (81)-Eq. (82) and Eq. (87), in the limit of vanishing external fields, we find: On the contrary, the comparison of Eq. (11) with the one-loop result of Eq. (20) suggests the fluctuations should be, rather: The difference of this unsatisfactory comparison with that performed previously, which provided results for q max and κ closer to expectations is whether one interprets the term − k B T 2πγ α in Eq. (89) as belonging to either (δL) 2 Ξ or (∇L) 2 Ξ . In view of this discussion, the latter interpretation seems more justified.
VI. COMPARISON WITH EXACT RESULTS
Before closing, we test our results with an exact solution of the Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson Hamiltonian under an external field. A solution of this system for arbitrary external fields V (z), is generally not possible. However, in an exceptional and somewhat forgotten paper, Zittartz noticed many years ago that this problem may be remedied for an external field of tanh(z) form. 8 Particularly, Zittartz considered the free energy functional Eq. (31) in the lattice gas analogue, with the usual biquadratic bulk free energy f (ρ) = αρ 4 − ǫρ 2 and an external field: where This external field is unusual, because it has its origin at the interface position. Accordingly, the free energy depends only on the field strength u, and not on the interface position.
The exact mean field (intrinsic) density profile is: 8 Notice that the role of V (z) is to pin exactly the interface at z = ℓ and set the interface width ξ u .
Armed with this solution, we can now assess several of the results of section IV A, IV E and V A.
First consider the surface tension as predicted by the Fisher-Jin theory for a system with short range forces in an external field V 0 (z) equal to V (z) above. Using Eq. (43), with Eq. (97) for the density, we obtain in closed form: where we have added the subindex u next to γ u in order to stress the explicit dependece on the external field that we have assumed.
Now consider the perturbative result, Eq. (49), for the correction of γ 0 due to the external field V (z), which, using again Eq. (97) for the density yields: Clearly, in the limit u → 0, this result provides exactly the same leading order correction to γ u that was obtained using Eq. (43) in the paragraph above. This attests to the consistency of our approach. Particularly, it shows that the approximation used in Eq. (49) remains very robust, even though Eq. (37) does not yield the exact limit of density decay at infinity. Now, consider the calculation of g ′′ , which can be performed by plugin the density profile of Eq. (97) into Eq. (72). Again, the result may be obtained in closed form as: using the result for the bulk correlation length in zero field, ξ 2 0 = 1 4 C/ǫ, together with ∆γ = g ′′ ξ 2 0 (c.f. Eq. (71)) we find, to linear order in the field strength: To show this, consider the density-density correlation function predicted by capillary wave theory, Eq. (17): with L 2 (q) given by Eq. (69).
This result may be compared with the correlation function of the Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson Hamiltonian as discussed by Zittartz and Jasnow. 8,12 Exact solutions exist in closed form. 8 However, for this system it is more convenient to exploit the fact that G(r 1 , r 2 ) is a Green's function. Accordingly, it may be expressed as an eigenvalue expansion as follows: where φ n (z) and λ n are the solutions of the eigenvalue equation: In the quantum mechanical analogy, with ρ π (z) of hyperbolic tangent form, this is the Schrödinger equation for a shifted Pöschl-Teller potential, whose exact solutions are well known. 80 The first two eigenvalues of the Pöschl-Teller well correspond to states bound to the potential, which are naturally related to purely interfacial contributions to the correlation function. The remaining eigenvalues lay in the continuum and may be considered as corresponding to bulk correlations perturbed by the interface.
The bound state of lowest energy is a soft mode which merely describes the displacement of the interface, without change of the density profile. 8,12 Its eigenfunction is φ 1 (z) = dρ π /dz, and the corresponding eigenvalue is: Clearly, in the limit of u → 0, λ 1 ∝ q 2 , and we can therefore identify this mode as the translation mode of the capillary wave Hamiltonian. As the field is switched on, the first eigenvalue merely describes how the translational mode is modified by the external field.
From Eq. (98) and Eq. (100), one readily finds that the ratio 1 2 C/u is precisely the ratio of γ u to g ′′ in the Zittartz model. Accordingly, it follows that, under the external |
distortion of history by a people who, I am sorry to say, are trying to create a false identity for themselves.
Professor John Melville-Jones,
University of Western Australia
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Racism and cynical politics are the real horror in Eli Roth's The Green Inferno
By Dave Schneider |
January 23, 2016
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I went into Eli Roth's The Green Inferno with very low expectations. Boasting the tagline, “No good deed goes unpunished,” this 2015 horror film follows the gory demise of a group of college student activists from the U.S. who get captured, tortured and eaten by a cannibalistic tribe in the Amazon rainforest.
When I saw the trailer back in September, I figured it was just a horror movie rehash of the racist cannibal exploitation films of the 1980s. Much to my surprise, it's not. Director Eli Roth desperately tries to offer a subversive critique of Western 'slacktavism' (think Kony 2012). Ultimately though, The Green Inferno ends up perpetuating the same old racist stereotypes about indigenous people, and it promotes a dangerous cynicism about student activism as a whole.
The Green Inferno consists of two acts: the setup and the bloodbath. In the setup, we're introduced to Justine (played to perfection by Lorenza Izzo), an affluent college student in New York City whose father works at the United Nations. Justine becomes involved with a social justice activist group focused on stopping the destruction of the Amazon rainforest in South America. The group embarks on a trip to Peru to prevent a giant multinational corporation from bulldozing a remote part of the rainforest, which is home to an isolated indigenous tribe.
The students disrupt the corporation's plans by tying themselves to trees and live-streaming the action over social media. But they barely get a chance to celebrate before their plan crashes and the surviving activists are taken prisoner by the tribe. From there, the film descends into the bloodiest carnage I've ever seen on film.
Roth really outdoes himself in terms of visceral gore and jaw-dropping visuals. That's really saying something too, considering Roth's envelope-pushing horror past (Cabin Fever [2002], Hostel [2005]). The Green Inferno was so gory that, upon finishing the film, I literally took Pepto-Bismol to settle my stomach. But for as unsettling as I found the film's violence, there's something even more disturbing at work here.
To its credit, The Green Inferno does a number of things well. The film never lets us forget that corporations pose the primary threat to the environment and indigenous people, even amid the bloodbath of the film's second act. However, Roth never articulates a defense of the land rights of indigenous people or the right of oppressed nations to self-determination. In fact, The Green Inferno undermines those very rights with its racist portrayal of indigenous people. It reminds me of the racist European lies about indigenous cannibalism in Africa and South America used by the ruling class to justify colonialism.
As mentioned above, the film presents itself as a critique of Western non-profit activism and social media 'slacktavism'. The students' entire trip to Peru reeks of a condescending 'Western savior complex' towards indigenous people, instead of genuine international solidarity. True to form, the film's big plot twist reveals that another logging corporation actually bankrolled the whole trip, using the students' naiveté to stop their rivals from acquiring land rights in the Amazon. Most of the students are too busy counting up likes and retweets on their social media accounts to care, and the few that do explain it away as a 'necessary evil'.
Roth's writing may border on cheesy at times, but its not exactly off-base on this point. Almost four years ago, the 'Kony 2012' viral video, produced by the non-profit Invisible Children, took the internet by storm with its record-breaking 100 million views on YouTube. Today, it's plainly obvious that the U.S. State Department used its emotionally charged portrayal of the Ugandan civil war to justify the 2011 military intervention in the region, which continues to this day.
However, even while making these valid criticisms, the film's lack of political clarity plunges it into cynicism. Roth never offers an alternative to the chauvinistic 'slacktavism' of the main characters, even though plenty exist. Student activists in the U.S. have a long history of striking blows against imperialist oppression using tactics far more principled and effective than what's shown in The Green Inferno. For instance, Palestinian solidarity activists on campuses across the U.S. have led the movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel's apartheid regime, taking a page from the playbook of anti-apartheid student activists in the 80s. Other groups, like Students for a Democratic Society, have mobilized students to oppose imperialist wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world.
This kind of one-sided cynicism is bad for the movement. It's hard to imagine someone leaving The Green Inferno excited and charged up to do more campus organizing and student activism. Especially to the uninitiated, the film leads us to believe that all student activism in the U.S. is naïve and misguided at best, chauvinistic and racist at worst. And that's flat-out false. We need more student activists fighting imperialism, not fewer.
From the outset, he faced criticism from indigenous rights groups, like Survival International, for his racist portrayal of natives. Roth shot most of The Green Inferno in Peru from 2013-2014, using an actual remote indigenous tribe for the film's production. According to producers, the tribe's elders received the screenplay, watched the film Cannibal Holocaust on a projector, and gave their blessing to appear in the film as actors. It's as though Roth thought that by taking these extra steps, his film was somehow less exploitative.
In this sense, the closer analogy to The Green Inferno isn't 80s cannibal flicks but rather Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad's 1899 novella. Conrad, a Belgian, ostensibly wrote his book as a criticism of colonialism in Africa. However, as the late Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe pointed out, Conrad's racist and dehumanizing portrayals of Africans in the novel undermined the weak - and Eurocentric - critique of colonialism he attempted to make.
Roth has dismissed criticism of his film's racist portrayal of indigenous people as “simply absurd,” and he claims the real targets of the film are multinational corporations. However, the confused and deeply cynical politics of The Green Inferno actually help imperialist destruction rather than undermining it. Like Conrad, Roth lacks an aggressive anti-imperialist lens to view the world, and in its vacuum, the same old politics of oppression find their way inside.
Frankly, Roth should learn from his mentor and fellow director, Quentin Tarantino. Last year, Tarantino drew the outrage of racists across the U.S. for his outspoken support of the #BlackLivesMatter movement against police crimes. If Roth is serious about opposing the destruction of indigenous people by Western multinational corporations, he should offer principled support to activist groups supporting the rights of indigenous people, both in the U.S. and abroad. But The Green Inferno is not the way to do it.<|endoftext|>2003: Australia Wins
Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club Take The Admiral's Cup
The Australian team from the Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club in Sydney, have just been declared winners of the 2003 Admiral's Cup, after a somewhat nerve wracking wait for boats to finish, and points to be calculated.
Bob Oatley, whose boat Wild Oats (pictured at right) had stormed home to win the final race, and snatch the2003 trophy from the hands of the Spanish team, was almost overcome with pride when he got the news.
"It's really special, we're just so happy," enthused Oatley, "we just can't believe it, people are waking up everywhere and coming in the door, it's absolutely unbelieveable, the thrill of a lifetime.
"To win it on the last race, and in a pretty convincing fashion, also top boat of the regatta, it's really spectacular."
Owner of Aftershock, the other boat in the team, Colin O'Neil was equally overwhelmed by the occasion, "this is wonderful, unbelieveable," was his emotional summing up of the achievement, "it's been a long night waiting, a lot of combinations had to come our way, but it finally did."
The series of nine races has been pretty much a two horse race from the start, between Spain's Real Club Nautico de Sangenjo, and the Australians, with the Spanish going into the final race with a one point lead.
Aftershock was the first of the two Australian boats to finish, at 19:16:27 on Sunday evening, and it soon became evident that they were third on handicap, with the Spanish boat Telefonica Movistar winning the small boat class.
This meant that Wild Oats had to win the big boat class, with their Spanish rivals on the King of Spain's Bribon Telefonica Movistar in fourth place or worse, an unlikely scenario considering her seven first places and one second in the series to date.
Mark Richards steered Wild Oats across the finishing line at 22:07:37, and the long and agonising wait began for the other big boats to finish.
The minutes and hours ticked by, and eventually the race organisers worked out the handicaps and Australia were declared provisional winners, which will be confirmed provided no protests are submitted.
Helmsman of Wild Oats, Mark Richards, broke the news to his team mates, "It's 2 am here in England, and the Australian Admiral's Cup team has just been informed that they've just won the Admiral's Cup, and we are very proud, the convicts have come through.
"We are ecstatic, ecstatic, Australia hasn't won the Admiral's Cup since 1979, and this is a fantastic thing, we are elated, and we've got to get on with the party.
"The last hour has been nerve wracking, very nerve wracking, waiting for the other competitors to finish."
The final boat is still to finish - the Cowes Corinthian Yacht Club Sailability big boat Chernikeeff - her ETA is 0530.
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Morning Routine Checklist: A Guide to Your Best Mornings
Productivity + morning routines
Waking up on the wrong side of the bed. You oversleep, scarf down some breakfast, struggle to find matching socks, spill coffee on yourself as you rush out the door, only to realize during your commute that you forgot to pack your gym bag. We’ve all experienced the lasting effects of a bad start to the day.
Most of us know from experience that the bad mood that accompanies a morning like that often sets the tone for the rest of the day. Turns out there’s a reason. Research has shown that a bad mood has the ability to reduce cognitive performance and flexibility – which basically means that if you’re in a bad mood when you get into work, your productivity and creativity will suffer.
These findings were mirrored in another study that examined customer service representatives’ mood and productivity. The study found that participants who were in a good mood provided better quality service and were more articulate – relying less on verbal tics like ”um.” On the flip side, those in a bad mood answered fewer calls, took more breaks, and experienced an overall 10% loss in productivity. Not only that, the study showed that workers who started the day on the wrong foot tended to remain in a bad mood or felt even worse by the end of the day.
So how do you do get your day off to a successful start?
Many look to the morning routines of successful entrepreneurs, artists, CEOs, politicians, and productivity gurus for inspiration and advice.
Benjamin Franklin was known to rise at 5 am and ask himself “what good shall I do this day?”
Anna Wintour starts her day at 5:45 am with an hour-long tennis match.
Tim Ferris starts his morning with strong tea, meditation, and journaling.
But read through a dozen more examples like these, and one thing is clear. Successful people all start their day differently, but the one thing they all have in common is their commitment to a routine that helps them stay focused, motivated, and productive throughout the day.
Why creating a routine is so important
A routine is a sequence of actions that you do repeatedly – things like brushing your teeth before bed or washing your face in the morning. With enough repetition, a routine can become a habit. Habits are a powerful tool for productivity because they allow us to carry out a variety of activities with little to no conscious effort.
So when all the little activities of your morning start to happen automatically, it removes the need to make all of those tiny decisions – freeing up your mind to focus on what really matters. Deciding ahead of time what’s important to you ensures that you move through your day intentionally rather than simply reacting.
Creating a routine checklist for all-day productivity
1. Track your time and mood: The first step in creating a morning routine is understanding how you currently spend your time. Take a week to track your time. Every hour, try to jot down what that time went to. Then at the end of the day rate how you feel on a scale from 1-10.
2. Next, create a list of activities that you need to do in the morning – this includes things like eating breakfast, showering, dressing, making kids lunches, etc. Next to each task on the list, give an estimate of the time it takes to complete.
3. Then make a list of activities that could help create a productive tone for the day. This can be things like meditation, prayer, journaling, gratitude practices, exercising, setting an intention, listening to a podcast, playing an instrument, reading, etc. These activities should help create a calm, positive mood that energizes you for the day ahead. Again, add the approximate time needed for each activity or how much time you would like to commit to it.
4. When your lists are done, figure out how much time you need to complete your morning routine. Next, set your wake up and bedtime based on your morning routine. For example, if it takes me 2 hours to complete my routine, and I have to be out the door by 9 am, then I’ll set my alarm clock for 7 am and go to bed at 11 pm to allow for 8 hours of sleep. Try to be realistic when deciding your wake and sleep times, if it takes you 30 minutes to get out of bed, make sure your alarm accounts for this.
5. Finally, create a morning routine checklist (you can use our template here) to help make your ideal morning routine a habit.
6. Try it out and adapt as necessary. Building a morning routine is something that takes time and practice. If overhauling your current routine all at once seems daunting, start by introducing one new practice per week. Little by little you’ll learn more about what works best for you and how you can make chaotic mornings a thing of the past
Tips + easy wins for any morning routine
Here are a few pro tips and easy wins to consider while creating your morning routine.
• Eliminate decision-making: Making a lot of decisions tires your brain and reduces the quality of your decision-making. Creating a morning routine that eliminates decision-making saves time and creates a clear mind that is ready to focus. Make your mornings smoother by prepping for your morning the night before:
• Lay out your outfit/gym clothes
• Set the breakfast table before bed
• Pack your lunch (or your kids’ lunches)
• Prepare your bag or briefcase
• Set out your vitamins
• Drink a glass of water when you wake upMost people get dehydrated overnight. When you spend eight hours sleeping, that also means you spend eight hours without drinking water. Drinking water is a crucial component in making your body function at full capacity. In fact, your brain tissue alone is 73% water. Drinking some water before you drown yourself in coffee is a good way to help your body wake up and get your metabolism going.
• Exercise and stretchingWorking up a sweat early in the morning is a great way to increase blood flow and oxygen, but admittedly it’s not always easy to do. The good news? You don’t have to run 7 miles to experience the benefits of exercise. A brisk walk or some simple stretching will do the job. Not only that, stretching every day improves posture (especially for those about to spend eight hours crouched over a computer) and reduces aches and pains in the body. And of course, exercise leads to an increase in endorphins, which can help you feel great as you start your day.
• The best mornings start at night: Creating a nighttime routine can be just as important as a morning routine. One of the best ways to ensure a productive day is to take a couple of minutes each night to reflect and create your priorities for the next day. Doing a little planning the night before helps alleviate the stress of deciding what takes priority first thing in the morning, giving your day more intentional direction.
• Eliminate distractions: How many times have you woken up and immediately picked up your phone to check email, social media, or any other notifications, only to realize 30 minutes later that you are now running late for work and have to skip breakfast? Eliminate the time-wasting temptation of your phone with Freedom. Block distracting websites, apps, or the whole internet to create focus and calm that lasts throughout the day.
Ultimately, the key to a productive day starts with a consistent morning routine. There isn’t a singular routine that works for everyone, but there is a best way for you and with a little time, practice, and experimentation you can find your ideal morning routine.<|endoftext|>now playing
Mildly amusing spy spoof is based on a comic book by Mark Millar and directed by Matthew Vaughn, as was the cult favorite Kick-Ass. The film follows a group of British Secret Service operatives known as the Kingman and one agent, Galahad’s (Colin Firth) efforts to thwart the evil plot of megalomaniac villain Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson), with the help of new recruit, Eggsy (Taron Egerton). There are some fun over-the-top action sequences and playful nods and jabs at spy films and Britain’s most famous agent in particular, but the film never really takes off as a comedy and never really grabs with it’s hyper violent, CGI enhanced action scenes. Sometimes the film just doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be…spoof, or actual spy film. The graphic violence also clashes with it’s more playful tone, giving the film a schizophrenic quality. The cast are charming enough, though Jackson’s Valentine does get annoying after a while, as played as an overzealous man-child. The FX are top notch and the plot would fit any of the lower tier Bond films. It’s just that the humor isn’t quite funny enough, in paying homage it doesn’t give us anything new and, overall, it winds up being |
(TUD-TBM)
Daily Supervisor
dr. Tom Thomas
PhD student
ir. Mariska van Essen
This project examines the potential to use current state-of-the-art, personalized travel information to direct network states towards a system optimum instead of user equilibrium. A user equilibrium concerns the interest of the individual in minimizing generalized travel cost, while a system optimum involves the collective interest which is generally more efficient. First, data obtained by two extensive real-world experiments, one with and one without travel information will be analysed. Based on this, route choice models are developed in order to gain insights in the role information plays in the decision making process. Subsequently, an experiment will be set-up, conducted and analysed in which individuals receive tailor-made information messages through their smartphones. This provides insights on human response towards different information strategies. Lastly, the findings will be translated to the network-level by simulation in order to see to what extent information strategies actually direct network states towards a system optimum.
Essen, M.A. van, Thomas, T., Berkum, E.C. van & Chorus, C. (2016). From User Equilibrium to System Optimum: A literature review on the role of travel information, bounded rationality and non-selfish behaviour at the network and individual level. --- Transport reviews --- . DOI: 10.1080/01441647.2015.1125399
Essen, M.A. van, Thomas, T., Chorus, C. & Berkum, E.C. van (2016). The role of travel time information on day-to-day route choice behavior based on real-world experiments. In TRB (Ed.), --- Proceedings of The 95th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Board, Washington DC, USA, 10-14 January 2016. (online no.16-0806) --- (pp. 1-20).
Essen, M.A. van, Rakha, H., Vreeswijk, J.D., Wismans, L.J.J. & Berkum, E.C. van (2015). Day-to-day route choice modeling incorporating inertial behavior. In --- Proceedings of The 14th International Conference on Travel Behaviour Research, London, 19-23 July 2015, (on USB) --- (pp. 1-18).<|endoftext|>Is it time to redesign your curriculum for the 21st century learner?
By Stephen Noonoo
February 1st, 2016
A new framework advocates for carefully curating what students learn. Is it time to rethink your curriculum?
It’s not a stretch to say that today’s educational paradigm is preoccupied with the “how” of learning. Educators are grappling — either by choice or decree — with how to incorporate digital devices, new learning standards, and more collaboration and critical thinking into the already-packed school day. With so much to do, who has time to take a fine-toothed comb through the curriculum or debate whether students still need to know the date of the Battle of Hastings?
But maybe it’s exactly the right time, according to Charles Fadel, the founder of the Center for Curriculum Redesign and a visiting practitioner at Harvard’s Graduate School for Education. Fadel has previously written about 21st century skills and recently turned his attention to the “what” of learning as co-author of a new book, Four-Dimensional Education,” which is less of a teach this, not that manual and more of a framework for exploring the modern competencies students will need in a world where job titles and career choices are changing faster than schools can keep up. Recently, Fadel spoke with us about his framework, the appeal of inter-disciplinary subjects, and whether it’s time to retire the old Capitals of the World quiz once and for all.
What is a 21st century curriculum? What needs to change?
Four years ago, in 2009, I wrote a book called “21st Century Skills” — the moniker is now used around the world, but initially people were unclear that it meant the 4C’s of Creativity, Critical Thinking, Communication and Collaboration. Now, people have accepted that. We needed to rethink the “what” of learning. It’s always been about the “how” in one way, shape, or form. Due to Common Core and its debates, it’s now possible to revisit that conversation. The question we’ve been asking is: What should students learn for the 21st century?
Reflect from your own life: it’s not just your own knowledge, but how you use that knowledge — your skills. It is not just your skills and knowledge, but also how you engage in the world– your character. And lastly, it is also about how you reflect and adapt in a changing world: your growth mindset and metacognition. That’s what the book was about: learning is about all four of these dimensions, not only traditional disciplines.
What are these four dimensions you discuss in the book?
We synthesized more than 32 frameworks from around the world. First there is knowledge — which still matters of course! It is not a false dichotomy of knowledge or the other competencies. It is knowledge and competencies. Competencies do not “float” out there with no knowledge base. But that knowledge needs to be carefully curated for relevance — traditional areas carefully revisited to make more room for more modern areas. The skills framework had become accepted: the 4Cs. The character side was a lot more complicated. Even to use the word character; everyone wants to call it something else. Sometimes the word is hijacked to mean morality. We really looked at what people were calling “attitudes” or “behaviors.” Character was a word that was recognized around the world — even though sometimes it has a charge to it. So we synthesized it down to six essential qualities: mindfulness, curiosity, courage, resilience, ethics, and leadership. Lastly, there’s meta-learning: growth mindset and metacognition.
Why do we get so hung up on the “how” track?
I think people don’t realize that you can’t just pepper the standards with the right buzzwords. For deep learning to occur, there must be time and space available. But we have tried and tried to make it happen within the existing constraints without the willingness to challenge the box we are in. There’s so much already on the docket from a content knowledge perspective that it really crowds out everything else. It’s hard to teach more deeply if you have to cover a lot of material. To add new knowledge and competencies is hard politically. You have to make careful changes that will always upset somebody somewhere sometime. It’s also hard for experts of a given discipline to do, because of confirmation bias. And if you’re a discipline expert, it’s hard to accept giving up time and space to another discipline.
Should we still be teaching areas like trigonometry? What new additions should be considered?
I’m not saying don’t teach Trigonometry at all, but let’s be careful how much, so that we can make room for other things. Long division: is it necessary? It’s about making these hard choices in a balanced way. It’s not this extreme view of “all or nothing.” Everyone needs a certain amount of algebra or trig, but the question is how much? Time can be made available by carefully curating the what.
Robotics is a modern area of knowledge … this is an area that’s already popular in after school study. Why is that? Because the core is already busy. But we know so well that a lot of these modern areas are inter-disciplinary areas. How do we learn math in the context of robotics? It would make some aspects of traditional disciplines more relevant. Student motivation is related to perceived relevance. They’re asking to see the relevance in front of them or else they’re disconnected.
People make assumptions on intelligence based on how much you know off the top of your head. If you have to go and look up the capital of Canada in a job interview, it can make a bad impression. Where do you draw the line on what isn’t worth knowing?
This is where people go overboard — the misperception that if you can search everything, so you don’t need to know anything. It’s not one or the other. We’re not saying you don’t need to recall certain facts instantaneously. But the question is: Which ones and how should you learn them? If you do a project on the mining industry in Canada, for example, you will learn the capital of Canada naturally, rather than studying a list of capitals.
Everyone thinks of these changes as a chainsaw but we’re talking about using a scalpel and being extremely careful about how we choose the knowledge to teach, which is very important. Think of it like line items in household expenses: a Starbucks coffee every day, toys for your kids, dinners out. Every one of them you can justify, but in aggregate too much and it breaks down. Relevance is a sophisticated topic. It’s about both short term and long term, and not taking a narrow view.
How can the “what” of curriculum be rethought?
We should be thinking in terms of redesigning standards from the ground up: Start from scratch and revisit every line item, with the thinking that the goal is to teach more math, more history, more branches and subjects — and deeper so that’s there’s much deeper understanding and ability to employ that understanding — and doing so in less time. It is quite a challenge but it is doable if done right and openly.
Lastly, the message is not STEM or humanities/arts, it is STEM and Humanities/Arts. The world needs modern renaissance humans.
About the Author:
Stephen Noonoo<|endoftext|>[torqueusers] What does "rerunable" really mean?
Rob torque at theknack.net
Tue Aug 15 10:22:29 MDT 2006
I am running some unreliable 3rd party simulation software on an
unreliable cluster. The simulation is nondeterministic and will have
different results (including whether or not it halts within the allotted
time) even if re-run with identical parameters.
I would like my batch jobs to be re-run when they fail for any of the
following reasons:
1) the program deadlocks/infinite loops and exceeds its wallclock
allocation and is killed by torque
2) the program crashes (or is aborted by the OS) and returns an error code
3) nfs fails at a node, in which case the node still responds to pings,
but user processes are frozen and don't terminate
4) part or all of the cluster is rebooted causing jobs to be aborted.
From what I have seen, "rerunable" (qsub -r y) only seems to apply to
case 4).
Manually resubmitting a job is problematic because I have chains of
mutli-job dependencies (-W afterok) so a failed job cascades to many
other jobs.
Is there a good solution to this?
More information about the torqueusers mailing list<|endoftext|>Hide login
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Know the facts about tax? Test yourself on NQDC taxation.
Check your knowledge of key rules that affect payouts.<|endoftext|>RSS feeds via Morse code
The Steampunk Workshop created a telegram clacker that converts RSS feeds to Morse code.
The Steampunk Workshop
This is one of the greatest technological anachronisms I've ever seen. The Victorian aesthetically-driven boys at the Steampunk Workshop have put together a telegraph clacker that sounds out RSS feeds. For those of you who were born after the death of the handlebar mustache, telegraphs were ways to electronically communicate information long before things like "computers" and "modems" were invented. Decades before even the telephone was invented, telegraphs were tapping out important information to important people in Morse code.
The Steampunk Workshop's RSS telegraph sounder brings the technology around full-circle. It converts the text in RSS feeds, like the ever-handy Crave RSS feed, into Morse code taps. Of course, those taps have to be translated back into text, so it's not the most useful device. Still, it's old-timey and looks cool, which is the entire raison d'etre of steampunk, anyway.
Like all Steampunk Workshop projects, the telegraph clacker was hand-made and isn't going to be sold anywhere. Fortunately, also like all Steampunk Workshop projects, the site contains detailed instructions on how to build your own. If you have industrial metalworking equipment and the training to use it, your own RSS-tapping telegraph clacker is just a few dozen hours of work away!
Featured Video<|endoftext|>Samuel L. Jackson Joins Director José Padilha's RoboCop Remake
06.07.12 by BJSprecher samuel-l-jackson-joins-director-josé-padilhas-robocop-remake
The already-impressive resume of Samuel L. Jackson — well over 100 movies, including the Star Wars prequels, The Avengers, and most of Quentin Tarantino's movies — will soon include another major movie franchise. According to THR, Jackson will be able to add Brazilian director José Padilha's (Elite Squad) RoboCop remake to his list of credits, joining a cast that so far includes Joel Kinnaman (AMC's The Killing) as Alex Murphy, the mortally wounded cop who is turned into a literal law enforcement machine, and Gary Oldman (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy) as Norton, the scientist who creates Robocop.
Though often described as a "remake" rather than a "reboot," Padilha's RoboCop is shaping up to be quite a bit different from director Paul Verhoeven's 1987 Robocop. Padilha has said that he is more interested in exploring "the difference between humans and robots" and what it means "to lose your free will" than the sociopolitical themes that permeated the original movie. And, according to Kinnaman, RoboCop will have "very human skin" and "look very human," as opposed to the guy-in-a-can look that actor Peter Weller made famous.
The announcement of Jackson being cast as Pat Novak, a "charismatic media mogul" who is a "powerful force" in the near future world in which the movie takes place, marks another difference, as the character did not appear in the original movie. However, it's possible that Novak is simply a modernized version of Ronny Cox's character, Richard "Dick" Jones, the Vice President of the company that turned Murphy into RoboCop.
RoboCop is currently in pre-production. The screenplay was written by Josh Zetumer, with rewrites by Gran Torino scribe Nick Schenk, and James Vanderbilt (The Amazing Spider-Man). It is tentatively slated for a summer 2013 release.<|endoftext|>Clues - Clues (Cover Artwork)
Staff Pick
Clues (2009)
Being in a band is just like being in any other relationship -- personalities need to mesh or things won't last. Alden Penner and Nick Thorburn were in an all-too-brief songwriting relationship and together they were responsible for one of my favorite albums of all time, the Unicorns' Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?, so you can imagine my dismay when they âdivorced' after one proper album. Thorburn moved on to a new relationship fairly quickly with Islands, who have put out one hella good album and another pretty decent one. Penner has kept to himself mostly since the split, leaving me to assume Thorburn was responsible for the genius that was the Unicorns. Boy, was I wrong. Joining Penner here, among other talented musicians, is Brendan Reed, who was an early member of Arcade Fire and drummed on their debut EP.
Clues won me over immediately with its amazing first three tracks. "Haarp" demonstrates the Montreal group's incredible attention to detail and subtlety. The range of tempo and dynamics on the three-minute tune span the spectrum, starting with minuscule phrases busting into noisy fermatas that in some small way remind me of early `90s Flaming Lips. When we finally get a beat, we hear first a slower quiet segment and then a toe-tapping section full of dirty guitars to finish the song. "Remember Severed Head" asks "Who here wants to sleep in the dragon's mouth? / Who here wants to feel?," beginning the album's obsession with medieval imagery but then mentions something about "a mushroom cloud tattoo." The band grooves along with a catchy-yet-minor âdoot-doot-doot' vocal line doubled in the guitar, high-stepping electric piano intervals and alternates between string-cloaked softer segments and chaotic moments of crashing ride cymbals. "Approach the Throne" starts with clanging percussion and another minor-pop âla la la' melody, which is later thickened up by some brass. The chorus breaks down with horn chords as Reed digs into that china cymbal.
The only thing I would change about this record would be the track listing. After a rollicking start, the album's midsection is dominated by softer/slower numbers which are tasty atmospheric songs but drain the album of its momentum when bunched together. "You Have My Eyes Now" explodes nicely near the end and sets things up for "Perfect Fit," a piano- and keyboard-driven tune that brings the rock back. The song has two main parts and the only way I can describe the first part is âimagine the piano accompaniment to a silent movie when the villain approaches, waxed mustache and all.' This first part seems slower with Reed avoiding the backbeat but the second part kicks into high gear, though the gear is in 6/4 (with a quite-necessary 7/4 measure at the end) and we get more medieval lyrics ("They want to take the crown away") as the song finally goes major with a victorious 4/4 breakdown. "Elope" brings it back down acoustic-and-organ style to finish the record's middle.
"Cave Mouth" may be my favorite song on the record. Xylophone takes the spotlight in the intro until we hear Penner reiterate "Who here wants to sleep in the dragon's mouth?" and then the song breaks down with a Modest Mouse-y hammer-on/pull-off guitar line. "Ledmonton" starts with wandering minstrel acoustic plucking, but as the rest of the band comes in, things get nuts, with yet another âla la' part, built upon towards the track's end with buzzing synths and triumphant horns announcing the entrance of Alden Penner, my new king. Step down, Mr. Thorburn. Yes, this is a competition for your child's love and admiration. Okay, fineâ¦I love you both.
Closer "Let's Get Strong" first made me think of the Unicorns' "Let's Get Known" for no reason more than sharing words in their title, but as it first played it reminded me more of the piano/vocal tune |
can see the settings for the two keyboards. The Google Keyboard has options for swipe typing, and AOSP doesn't -- it was abandoned as soon as Google Keyboard was released.
The keyboard settings screens showing the missing features
The Camera and Gallery are actually a single APK (Android application package file). The AOSP version is called "Gallery2.apk," and Google's version is called "GalleryGoogle.apk."
As you can see in the above picture, Photospheres are exclusive to the Google version -- the innovative camera mode is not available on AOSP. The open source version also omits any Google+ album integration. The normal behavior is to display cloud-based Google+ albums alongside local ones.
Here, though, we've got to give Google some credit. While the AOSP version hasn't kept up in terms of features, the new design introduced in 4.3 has made it to the Android source code.
The future
While it hasn't yet been released, the next app out the door is the stock SMS app. Although folks are clamoring for Google Hangouts to integrate text messaging and really go after iMessage, that would mean you'd be moving Android's SMS functionality to a closed source app. Once Google does make the switch, I predict that in one or two Android versions, you'll see the SMS app disappear as a default app, similar to what Google did when it killed the stock web browser in favor of Chrome (though Chrome is still open source).
When Hangouts does integrate SMS, the AOSP messaging app will be completely abandoned. Messaging already seems halfway down the path to retirement. (It hasn't seen a significant updating since its big redesign in Android 4.0.) So when this finally comes to pass, you'll know what the subtext will be: the open source texting app will be dead.
The future
Also next on the chopping block is the open source Gallery.
In leaked pictures of KitKat, the next version of Android, there is a new icon called "Google Photos." "Gallery," which alphabetically should be between "E-mail" and "Gmail," is suspiciously absent. While we've never seen Google Photos before, it shares the same icon as a current Google app called "G+ Photos."
It looks like the AOSP Gallery is going to die and be replaced by a service with a closed source app that heavily depends on Google+.
It's the ultimate expression of Google's new walled garden.
Locking-in manufacturers
While it might not be an official requirement, being granted a Google apps license will go a whole lot easier if you join the Open Handset Alliance. The OHA is a group of companies committed to Android -- Google's Android -- and members are contractually prohibited from building non-Google approved devices. That's right, joining the OHA requires a company to sign its life away and promise to not build a device that runs a competing Android fork.
Testing the waters with bloatware
Samsung dreams of a Google-free existence
On a phone with Google apps, it seems silly and redundant to have two calendar apps. But many OEMs view bloatware as an important strategic fallback -- a "Plan B" -- for if things ever get really bad. If Google does something out of line and an OEM is forced to leave, the company needs at least something to show prospective customers. OEMs include them with their shipping phones -- because, hey, why not? -- and gain valuable feedback. While this creates redundancy and adds to user confusion, a few users might even like the OEM's version of a core app.
Locking in third party apps
Google Maps API
Google Cloud Messaging
Location APIs
In-app purchasing
Play Games
Well, everything except AOSP, which is not supported.
Supporting lock-in by supporting iOS
Samsung isn't going anywhere
Samsung Electronics is, well, an electronics company -- building a cloud infrastructure and a bunch of APIs isn't in its DNA. So while Amazon can whip this together in a few years on the back of its cloud services platform, Samsung has much more of an uphill climb ahead of it.
A "look but don't touch" kind of open
This story originally apeared on ars technica<|endoftext|>Pages home > Manchester NH's Best Lipo treatment Clinic
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Men and women usually have to follow some very simple instructions before they're going in to be worked on. Keeping the skin hydrated is important, so individuals should always stay hydrated both before and after the procedure. Carrying water bottles throughout the majority of every day will often be the ideal method to approach things.
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Last updated 613 days ago by LaserLipoExeter<|endoftext|>Internet, Comunication
Internet, Comunication
Phone numbers
• 01 for the Paris region
• 02 for the north west
• 03 for the north east
• 04 for south east
• 05 for south west
• 06 for cellphones
• 07 also for cellphones since 2010.
• 08 have special prices that can be deduced from the two following figures: from free - 08 00 - to very costly (as far as 20.40 € per hour) - 08 99. Skype numbers also start with 08.
When speaking phone numbers, people will usually group the digits by sets of two. For example, 02 47 66 41 18 will be said as "zéro deux, quarante-sept, soixante-six, quarante et un, dix-huit". The two-digit pair 00 is said as "zéro zéro", not "double zéro". If you find it too hard to follow, you may ask the person to say the number digit-by-digit ("chiffre par chiffre"). It would then be "zéro, deux, quatre, sept, six, six, quatre, un, un, huit".
Numbers starting with 089 carry a premium toll. They provide service to some legitimate businesses but the ones you see advertised all over the country are usually for adult services.
Cheap international calls
To enjoy cheap international calls from France travellers can get a local France Sim Card [www] online before they leave or use low-cost dial-around services such as appellemonde [www] or allo2556 [www].
Fixed line
To know how to order a landline (ligne fixe) in France you can click on landline providers in France [www]. Another method, if you're staying for a while, is to use VoIP over DSL, such as the Livebox or Freebox service (free long distance calls within France and to a number of countries).
Phone booths
Phone booths are available in train or metro stations, bus stops and near tourist attractions, etc. There is at least one phone booth in every village (look on the main square). Due to the widespread use of mobile phones, there are now fewer booths than a few years ago. Most use a card (no coins). France Télécom public phones accept CB/Visa/MasterCard cards but almost always only with a microchip. Otherwise, post offices, café-tabacs (recognizable by a red sign hanging outside), and stores that sell magazines sell phone cards. Ask for a "carte téléphonique"; these come with differing units of credit, so you may want to specify "petite" if you just want to make a short local call or two. If you get the kind with a computer chip in it, you just have to slide it into the phone, listen for the dial tone, and dial. The US-style cards require you to dial a number and then enter a code (but with spoken instructions in French).
An Orange pre-paid SIM card is called a Mobicarte, costs €9.90 and comes with a credit of €5 included. SMSes within Orange France cost €0.12; to international mobile GSM users €0.28. Other operators (SFR, Bouygues) have similar prices. Since 2012, the mobile operator Free offers 2€/month subscription without any minimum subscription time including 120 minutes per month and unlimited national SMSes. This is only available through the web and you need a postal address.
Wifi: You'll also find wifi access (in cities and towns) in a lot of cafés usually those labelled a bit "trendy". There will be a sign on the door or on the wall. Also look for the @ symbol prominently displayed, which indicates internet availability. However, with most homes now wired for the internet, cyber cafés are increasingly hard to find, especially outside the major cities. In Paris, one popular free wifi spot is the Pompidou Centre. There is talk that the city intends to become the first major European capital providing free wifi coverage for the whole city. Public parks and libraries in Paris are also covered. Please note that wifi is prounonced "wee-fee" in France even by English speakers. Asking for "wi-fi" will generally not be understood.
Short-term SIM cards
(for smartphones and tablets)
To set this service up:
1. buy a 'mobicarte' (generic prepaid SIM card) at an Orange outlet for €9.90 which comes included with credit of €5
2. recharge it with €4 (with a credit card at an Orange outlet or with a €5-euro recharge sold at tobacco kiosks and news stands everywhere).
4. wait for 24 hours for the SIM card to be activated before you can add packages
5. activate the InternetMax data plan with #123#. The menu is in French, refer to the link below for summary in English.
Letter boxes are coloured in yellow.
Postal rates
There are three levels of service for French domestic mail (Andorra and Monaco included):
For international mail, there is only one service:
• Priority Letter (lettre prioritaire), cost (up to 20g): €1.00 (to European Union and Switzerland), €1.25 (all other countries)
Rates correct as of November 2016.
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France - Travel guide
Pin It on Pinterest<|endoftext|>Why Good Decisions are Hard to Make (Part 1)
What is a difficult decision that you needed to make recently?
There are any number of reasons why a decision might be difficult…
1. The problem lacks structure, and it’s not clear what the distinct options are or what the possible outcomes may be
2. There is no quantifiable data that can be used to create a rigorous analysis
3. There is too much data – which leads to contradictions or confusion
4. After going through a logical process of reasoning, the conclusion seems counterintuitive. Should you believe the results?
5. Not able to reach consensus among multiple decision-makers
In the last fifty years, the field of decision analysis has emerged as a viable technique for structuring problems so that they can be analyzed through a well-defined process (c.f., Big Sky Associates).
The science of decision analysis makes it a mathematical problem of solving an equation to find the right answer; however, there still remains an art: clarifying ambiguous problems and creating consensus among stakeholders.
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Know Cancer blog
• Treating Patients With Extensive Stage Small Cell Lung Cancer
Metastatic cancers are generally incurable by radiation therapy because such cancers are present throughout the body, and radiation cannot treat the entire body. Therefore, it would seem that for extensive stage (ES) small cell lung cancer (SCLC), a metastatic form of lung cancer, radiation therapy is a questionably effectual form of treatment.
Extensive Stage Small Cell Lung Cancer Clinical Trial
A clinical trial is taking place in Jacksonville, Florida at Integrated Community Oncology Network (ICON) to research whether radiation therapy can treat ES-SCLC. More specifically, the study is researching whether radiation therapy is effective in treating ES-SCLC by doing a comparison between how well radiation therapy applied to the brain works when administered with and without radiation therapy to other areas of the body.
This trial studying radiation therapy’s effectiveness on ES-SCLC is a phase two interventional study that began recruiting patients and researching in March 2010, and is currently recruiting participants with extensive stage small cell lung cancer. Both male and female patients are welcome to participate in the trial as long as they are of age 18 and over. The study is taking place on the grounds of Integrated Community Oncology Network’s state-of-the-art campus, which provides all-inclusive cancer care to thousands of patients in Northern Florida.
The medical oncologists, radiation oncologists, urologists and oncologic radiologists at ICON use state of the art treatments and perform comprehensive clinical research. ICON is one of the largest private practice oncologic entities in the United States, offering an online networking database for its patients. ICON’s staff prides itself on providing caring, thorough and multidisciplinary care to its patients.
What is Radiation Therapy?
Radiation therapy involves ionizing radiation to obliterate cancer cells from the body. This type of cancer treatment is effective in curing localized cancers as well as in preventing cancer recurrence. It controlls malignant cell growth by damaging the DNA of exposed cell tissue. Specialized radiation beams are used in order to target only malignant cells so as not to destroy healthy cells in the process. Radiation therapy is often used in conjunction with chemotherapy, done before, after and during chemotherapy, and is also sometimes done in conjunction with cancer removal surgery, immunotherapy and hormone therapy.
Small Cell Lung Cancer
Small cell lung cancer, otherwise known as small cell carcinoma, is a highly malignant type of cancer. Small cell lung cancer usually originates in the lung and occasionally in the prostate or cervix. The stage of the cancer’s development or severity is typically ascertained based on the whether or not the tumor in the lungs can be targeted within a single radiotherapy portal.
Other factors that contribute to determining the stage of small cell lung cancer include whether or not there are metastases and whether or not the tumor is visibly restricted to the thorax. The two stages of small cell lung cancer are the limited stage (LS) and the extensive stage (ES). In treating limited stage small cell lung cancer, a combination of radiation therapy and chemotherapy is applied.<|endoftext|>Benvenuti a Apartment Tremosine 9 Tremosine sul Garda, Apartment Tremosine 9 is a self-catering accommodation located in Tremosine Sul Garda. Accommodation will provide you with a balcony. There is a full kitchen with a refrigerator. Featuring a shower, private bathrooms also come with a bath or shower and a bidet. . The property offers free parking. Verona Airport is located 43 km away.<|endoftext|>What should I do? I don't know what to do?
its this girl I really like and we hang out like everyday but she wants this other guy or that's what her friends tell me. and they talk about him in front of me, so what should I do to make me and her work?
Most Helpful Girl
• Tell her how you really feel. I saw that you did already. Do nice things for her. First do everyday normal things, offer to hold her bag or something, hold the door for her, buy her coffee ect. Once you do that invite her to hang out on a Friday night. Pick a horror movie and if she gets easily scared she'll want you to comfort her. You can get closer this way. When hanging out find an excuse to tough her. if you two are alone tell her she has something on her face and "wipe" it away. I used to find excuses for my crush to touch me. My friend fell asleep on my arms and my shirt was falling down and I asked him to pull it up and he ended up feeling me up and getting a boner. It was really hot. Obviously don't go that far if she's not interested... now I'm just rambling.
Have an opinion?
Send It!
What Girls Said 1
• Have you told her how you feel about her?
• yea like a month ago but she had a boyfriend at the time
• Ok well has she told you she is into this other guy or was it just her friends telling you that?
What Guys Said 1
• I hate to break it to you, but you're in the dredded friend zone.
You are being too much of the stereotypical "nice guy" and you're too available, too easy for her to get. She knows she could get you if she wanted you, no problem. There is no mystery, no chase, no adventure or excitement. You're not being enough of a "bad boy.".
You need to stop clinging around her like a puppy dog and set your sights on some other girls. Make yourself less available to her. Don't be mean - stay friends, but just be busy and have other things to do and people (girls) to see.
Try to date other girls and make sure she sees you with them and that you are being a good boyfriend to them and making them happy. Then start subtly flirting with her and compliment her clothes, etc, and maybe over time she might start to see you as potential boyfriend material. If you are still interested in her after all that.<|endoftext|>These pictures (see below for full sequence) show the controversial incident between Dani Pedrosa and |
umatic tires in the 1880s remains one of history's all-time greatest transportation-related inventions. The creators also gave the bike some new high-tech pedals that are made entirely of plastic -- without any ball bearings whatsoever. Again, ironically eliminating one of industry's greatest inventions (pioneered on bicycle pedals, of course! Jules Suriray, 1869).
Watch the carbon fiber anachronism in action in this little "image film" available on the DING3000 and BASF websites, or right here courtesy of YouTube.
At €50,000 don't expect to see carbon-fiber P-Fars tooling around near you. But enjoy the video!
Friday, September 25, 2015
Sprocket Man Comics
It was the Bike Boom of the early '70s, and bike use at college campuses was . . . well . . . booming. With so many young cyclists taking to the streets, and probably annoying the drivers who up until that point believed they owned the roads, public safety officials declared that "the anarchy of the cyclist can be afforded no longer!" (*) So at Stanford University, in coordination with the Urban Bikeway Design Collaborative (UBDC), the solution was to create a new kind of super hero -- not a hero who could fly, or melt steel with lazerbeam eyes, or anything resembling superhuman powers. No, this super hero would be found astride a 10-speed bike, and would subdue his adversaries with a relentless onslaught of safety admonishments and, occasionally, a well-aimed freewheel cluster.
He would be forever known as SPROCKET MAN!
Sprocket Man was first published by Stanford University, then acquired by the CPSC.
Sprocket Man came to life in 1974 through the pen of Louis Saekow, a Stanford pre-med student who had no formal art training but enjoyed drawing comic book characters. Working as a file clerk at an urban research institute on campus, Saekow was given the opportunity to draw some cartoons on bike safety for a newsletter. That eventually became the Sprocket Man comic book, published in 1975 by the Stanford Dept. of Public Safety and the UBDC. (Stanford University)
A later version of the Sprocket Man
cover, after a little make-over.
Within a couple of years, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) acquired the rights to the Sprocket Man comic book, and began distributing it nationally. The CPSC had begun regulating bicycles in 1976, and I believe they first issued their version of the comic in '78. In the CPSC editions of Sprocket Man, there is a legalistic-sounding preface that explains (or perhaps defends) the commission's right to regulate all bicycles sold in the U.S., including some language that probably alienated many serious adult cyclists. For example, it states that the CPSC's "regulation applies to nearly all bicycles that are toys or other articles for use by children (but may also be used by adults)."
In fact, it was the CPSC's definition of bicycles as "toys for children" that more than anything angered the more outspoken bicycle advocates of the time. There seemed to be no distinction to the regulatory commission between bikes for children and bikes for adults. John Forester, who first published his Effective Cycling in 1974, was one of the harshest critics of the CPSC's bicycle regulations, dismissing many of them as ineffective and misguided -- predominantly created and mandated by people who had no understanding of bicycles, or cycling. Interestingly enough, however, Forester's Effective Cycling is listed in the comic book's bibliography as one of the sources for the Sprocket Man's safety advice.
KA-BLOOM! Sprocket Man thwarts two bike thieves with a well-aimed freewheel cluster. It's the only real "action" this super hero sees.
Apart from dispatching a couple of long-haired bike thieves, Sprocket Man doesn't really battle a lot of actual villains. More typically, his efforts are aimed at promoting safe riding, stopping dangerous and lawless cycling behavior, and sometimes encouraging courtesy to drivers and pedestrians.
Some tips on avoiding the common "right hook" scenario, though it's mostly presented as an admonishment to follow the rules of the road, just like the driver of any vehicle.
Don't get "doored." Sprocket Man declares (rightly) "Don't waste your time fiddling a horn or bell. Go for your brakes and . . . SCREAM!!! Move left BUT . . . Don't swing into traffic!!"
Lock your bike. Use a good quality lock (U-locks like the one shown were still a pretty new item when this came out). Sprocket Man advises locking the front wheel, too.
The Sprocket Man comic book would go through a couple of minor re-makes over the years, but the majority of the text and most of the drawings were simply re-used throughout a couple of decades. Fun fact: In Saekow's drawings for the original Stanford version of Sprocket Man, he managed to slip in some little visual jokes. In one, he had a hapless cyclist dropping a bunch of books -- one of which, if you looked closely, was Playboy Magazine (a PDF of the original can be found HERE). When the CPSC took over the comic, that little detail got left out.
Another version of Sprocket Man was re-issued by Raleigh Bicycles - probably as a giveaway to their customers to promote safety. Again, most of the comic's artwork stayed the same - though some of the text was changed to reflect Raleigh's commitment to safe riding. For example, Sprocket Man says "Your Raleigh Dealer has asked me to share some of Sprocket Man's SAFE CYCLING SURVIVAL SKILLS with you." By the way, Raleigh must not have looked closely at some of the pictures, because their issue of the comic includes the "Playboy" image mentioned above.
In the '90s, the CPSC put out a slightly revised version of the comic - but this time, updated (rather awkwardly) to include the religion of helmet use (full PDF file).
Yet another re-make of Sprocket Manthis time from the '90s, clumsily adds helmets to all the old '70s era drawings.
The 1975 original (left) and the 1990s remake. Every single cyclist in the remake is shown with a helmet -- even the idiots who do everything wrong. Notice that the hair on the guy at the bottom still manages to stand on end, despite being covered by the helmet.
In 2002, the Stanford Department of Parking and Transportation Services went back to Louis Saekow (who gave up on his medical ambitions to become a graphic designer) to create a newer, updated Sprocket Man safety campaign - combining some of the original '70s artwork with newer, more modern graphics:
And now, the latest news in the saga is that, at long last, Sprocket Man, like all the other super hero franchises, is finally being turned into a movie for the big screen. And much to the dismay of hard-core Sprocket Man fans, Ben Affleck has been tagged to play the bike-riding superhero.
OK - that last part is complete B.S., but the poster is real.
So, he's not the Hulk, or Captain America, or Iron Man. He doesn't fly, and he doesn't seem to have any actual super powers. And when you get right down to it, he's even a little bit of a safety nerd. But for bicyclists, Sprocket Man may just be the only bike-riding super hero we're ever going to see.
(* actual quote from the Sprocket Man comic)
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Suspension Stems
Like lots of other rehashes of old technology posing as something new, it seems that suspension stems are back. In the days before suspension forks became a virtual marketing requirement on mountain bikes, some companies tried marketing "simpler" alternatives for suspension by putting the suspension into the stem. Using pivots, linkages, elastomers or, in some cases, coil springs, some of these suspension stems actually rivaled suspension forks for complexity and price -- and were eventually dismissed by buyers as pointless before basically disappearing from the market.
One of the original suspension stems. The Girvin Flexstem (originally known as the Offroad Flexstem) used elastomers to provide some damping. (photo from
One of several versions of the Softride suspension stem. I remember when it was known as "Frankenstem." (photo from
Recently, the editors of Dirt mountainbike magazine listed the stems as one of "The 15 Worst Mountainbike Products Ever." They wrote, "The young 'uns amongst you might not believe this, but there was a time when even the validity of front suspension forks was questioned." (Yes, I was one of those who questioned it -- and in many circumstances, still feel the same way). "For those that weren't sold on this newfangled idea, but didn't want to suffer the pain that a fully rigid bike dished out, there was an alternative . . . the suspension stem. The most well known of these was the Girvin Flex Stem, and that was a crime against suspension itself, but its saving grace was that it was at least relatively cheap compared to a suspension fork. The Softride stem on the other hand was the supposed dog's bollocks of suspension stems, and it cost as much as many suspension forks . . . but unsurprisingly it was just as rubbish as the Girvin, which is why I think it's the Softride in particular that needs naming and shaming."
Although the stems were primarily intended for mountain bikes, I imagine some were put into service on road bikes. Nevertheless, perhaps hoping that road riders are either unfamiliar with the old follies, or have perhaps forgotten about them, this new crop of suspension stems are primarily aimed at road riders. I'm still convinced that they're even more unnecessary on road bikes than they were on old mountain bikes.
It's even more complicated than it looks.
(photo from
One of these new stems comes from Naild and their R3ACT (I think that's supposed to make us think "react"). Their website declares, "The patented R3ACT System preserves the rider's energy by acting like a rigid fork on smooth terrain. Once a structure is encountered (potholes, bumps) the rider's weight reacts on the handlebars (Newton's 3rd Law) activating the system. Now fully active, R3ACT can track the terrain maintaining wheel contact with minimum loss in forward momentum. The system combines travel from above and below the frame, geometry and tire contact remain constant throughout resulting in improved handling, braking and control while reducing fatigue."
Or you could just run larger tires and keep your body loose over bumps.
By the way, their marketing materials mention Newton's 3rd Law so much, you'd think Sir Isaac had a hand in developing this thing.
The Naild R3ACT stem is actually a pretty complex item, as it incorporates extra linkages which keep the handlebar angle constant even as it pivots up and down. But more than the pivoting of the stem, the system also incorporates elastomers in the fork steerer, so it isn't really something that can be retrofitted to an existing bike -- the bike must be designed for the system from the beginning.
Simpler than the Naild R3ACT, but I suspect just as pointless.
(photo from the ShockStop Kickstarter page.)
Another new suspension stem comes from Redshift Sports: the ShockStop stem. Using hidden elastomers inside the stem, the ShockStop doesn't look a whole lot different from other threadless stems, and can be installed on most modern road bikes (with a common quill-stem-to-threadless adapter, it could probably be installed on older bikes too).
Here's what they say on their Kickstarter page: "Bikes should be comfortable, but ride more than a few miles and you realize very quickly that bikes are stiff, and they transmit every little bump straight to your hands and arms. After a while those impacts and vibrations make it hard to enjoy the ride."
Again - anybody who slams into every pothole and road imperfection with arms locked probably doesn't enjoy riding much anyhow.
In their promotional video, the company claims that with ShockStop, "You can relax and enjoy the ride. Instead of dodging every little bump and crack, you can focus on the road ahead." Suspension stem or not, focusing on the road ahead for bumps and cracks is still a good policy. Good technique is essential with or without suspension.
I still have some questions about this new generation of suspension stems, so I thought I'd go right to the source -- and ask the ShockStop stem directly.
Retrogrouch: So, isn't this basically just a reboot of old rejected mountain bike technology?
Retrogrouch: Couldn't a person save a lot of money by keeping their current setup and just learn some decent riding technique?
I'll take that as "Yes" on both counts.
Fully expect to see the current crop of suspension stems selling cheap on eBay in a few years, just like those old Girvins and Softrides do today.
Monday, September 21, 2015
Sexist Selling Strategies?
About a week ago, I posted about an old advertisement for Lambert Bicycles from 1973 which featured the following photo:
A reader pointed out the irony of my waxing nostalgic about the ad with its sexy model on the same day that much of the bicycling blogosphere was foaming at the mouth over some free socks that were given out in the swag bags at this year's Interbike trade show. Quickly dubbed "Sockgate," (why do ALL scandals since Watergate have to end in "gate"? Can't somebody get creative?) the giveaway socks renewed accusations of sexism in the bicycle industry -- even as they claim to be trying to appeal more to women cyclists. To be honest, until the reader mentioned it, I hadn't yet heard about the sock scandal.
I found the above photo on the Surly Bikes Blog, where Christina Julian, or Jules, makes a strong case against the "Sex Sells" strategy, and even includes some awful examples of the kinds of sexual harassment that she's experienced by some in the industry. It's worth a read. (photo originally from
Needless to say, it got me wondering if appreciating a 40 year old advertisement puts me in the same league as the doofuses who thought those socks would be appreciated by all attendees at Interbike. I will mention that even though I like the old Lambert ad (and lots of other old ads like it), I wouldn't be caught dead in those ridiculous socks -- even if they were free. Still - it's something to think about.
Of course, women have been used in bicycle ads (the word "used" suddenly seems more significant) almost from the beginning. Who can forget this old poster, and the many, many more like it from the turn of the century?
And the images of women appear in all kinds of bicycle ads throughout the century -- and in a lot of favorites from the Bike Boom of the '70s, including the Lambert ad shown above, or this similar Crescent ad from about the same time:
But now the question I ask is, is it the same? Or is there a difference? Is appreciating images in these vintage ads from earlier eras, when things were different, the same as giving out those tacky socks?
Sex is obviously still used in bicycle ads today, but somehow to me it feels different than in those older ads. More crass. And there's a sense that maybe people should know better by now. As a great example of this, do a quick search for Stradali Bicycles, and find tons of images like this one below:
She isn't going anywhere in those shoes. . . or facing the wrong way. Doesn't matter though --
the bike doesn't have pedals anyhow. They get worse -- some of the images would probably
qualify as NSFW (Not Safe For Work).
And to show that a giant like Specialized is not "immune," there's this one from last year.
Hell, this one doesn't even make much sense.
Even though I like some of the old vintage ads, the newer ads shown here seem worse to me somehow -- and more pointless.
I'm not a woman. But I am a man who tries to be sensitive to the way women think and feel. So, back to my question. Are those tacky socks, or those Stradali ads, et. al. in the same league as the old vintage ads I call attention to so often? Or are they different? I don't really know how many women read The Retrogrouch, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to alienate any of them. Getting some comments from readers on the topic would worthwhile. Any thoughts?
Thursday, September 17, 2015
Edward Gorey: Cycling Illustrations
I've long been a fan of the stories and illustrations of Edward Gorey. His style, which is often described as Gothic -- but almost absurdly so -- usually has a dark sense of humor, and his hapless characters often meet disturbing ends. Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that his illustrations found their way into the opening credits of the program Mystery! on PBS.
Edward Gorey did illustrations for a number of books and authors, but also wrote and illustrated more than 100 books of his own -- books that, at first glance, might take the form of children's books (and I assume that children might enjoy some of them, if the books didn't give them nightmares), but are probably intended more for adults with a taste for the farcical or macabre.
The visual settings for his works are ostensibly Victorian or Edwardian (that's the period from about 1900 up to the beginning of WWI) and it shouldn't be a surprise that bicycles have found their way into a lot of his illustrations. I don't know that Gorey was a particularly avid cyclist or anything (in fact, some of his bicycle drawings would almost indicate otherwise) but they probably fit a sense of the setting he was portraying.
I recently picked up copies of two of Gorey's bicycle-themed books: a first edition copy of The Broken Spoke (1976) and a second edition of The Epiplectic Bicycle (1969).
The Epiplectic Bicycle is an absurd story of two poorly behaved siblings, Embley and Yewbert, who get taken for ride by a bicycle with a mind of its own. A lot of people probably mis-read the title as "Epileptic" -- but it is, in fact, "Epi-PLEC-tic" which comes from the word "epiplexis" which is a type of rhetorical question one asks "in order to chide, express grief, or inveigh." (yeah, I'm getting all English-Major-y, right?)
The cover art for The Epiplectic Bicycle has a dead alligator on a bicycle.
The story begins on "the day after Tuesday and the day before Wednesday" when the siblings Embley and Yewbert are engaged in "hitting one another with croquet mallets." They pause in their battle when a riderless bicycle rolls into view.
This is one of those instances where I wonder how familiar Gorey
was with the form of a bicycle. Or was that a conscious decision --
that a bicycle that pilots itself doesn't need a crank or pedals?
After fighting |
abstractions for system-wide load balancing, runtime-adaptive resource management, and object-oriented checkpointing and state-management. * We removed the use of C++11 move emulation (using Boost.Move), replacing it with C++11 rvalue references. This is the first step towards using more and more native C++11 facilities which we plan to introduce in the future. * We improved the reference counting scheme used by |hpx| which helps managing distributed objects and memory. This improves the overall stability of |hpx| and further simplifies writing real world applications. * The minimal Boost version required to use |hpx| is now V1.49.0. * This release coincides with the first release of |hpxpi| (V0.1.0), the first implementation of the |xpi_spec|_. Bug fixes (closed tickets) ========================== Here is a list of the important tickets we closed for this release. * :hpx-issue:`1086` - Expose internal boost::shared_array to allow user management of array lifetime * :hpx-issue:`1083` - Make shell examples copyable in docs * :hpx-issue:`1080` - /threads{locality#*/total}/count/cumulative broken * :hpx-issue:`1079` - Build problems on OS X * :hpx-issue:`1078` - Improve robustness of component loading * :hpx-issue:`1077` - Fix a missing enum definition for 'take' mode * :hpx-issue:`1076` - Merge Jb master * :hpx-issue:`1075` - Unknown CMake command "add_hpx_pseudo_target" * :hpx-issue:`1074` - Implement ``apply_continue_callback`` and ``apply_colocated_callback`` * :hpx-issue:`1073` - The new ``apply_colocated`` and ``async_colocated`` functions lead to automatic registered functions * :hpx-issue:`1071` - Remove deferred_packaged_task * :hpx-issue:`1069` - serialize_buffer with allocator fails at destruction * :hpx-issue:`1068` - Coroutine include and forward declarations missing * :hpx-issue:`1067` - Add allocator support to util::serialize_buffer * :hpx-issue:`1066` - Allow for MPI_Init being called before HPX launches * :hpx-issue:`1065` - AGAS cache isn't used/populated on worker localities * :hpx-issue:`1064` - Reorder includes to ensure ws2 includes early * :hpx-issue:`1063` - Add ``hpx::runtime::suspend`` and ``hpx::runtime::resume`` * :hpx-issue:`1062` - Fix ``async_continue`` to properly handle return types * :hpx-issue:`1061` - Implement ``async_colocated`` and ``apply_colocated`` * :hpx-issue:`1060` - Implement minimal component migration * :hpx-issue:`1058` - Remove ``HPX_UTIL_TUPLE`` from code base * :hpx-issue:`1057` - Add performance counters for threading subsystem * :hpx-issue:`1055` - Thread allocation uses two memory pools * :hpx-issue:`1053` - Work stealing flawed * :hpx-issue:`1052` - Fix a number of warnings * :hpx-issue:`1049` - Fixes for TLS on OSX and more reliable test running * :hpx-issue:`1048` - Fixing after 588 hang * :hpx-issue:`1047` - Use port '0' for networking when using one locality * :hpx-issue:`1046` - ``composable_guard`` test is broken when having more than one thread * :hpx-issue:`1045` - Security missing headers * :hpx-issue:`1044` - Native TLS on FreeBSD via __thread * :hpx-issue:`1043` - ``async`` et.al. compute the wrong result type * :hpx-issue:`1042` - ``async`` et.al. implicitly unwrap reference_wrappers * :hpx-issue:`1041` - Remove redundant costly Kleene stars from regex searches * :hpx-issue:`1040` - CMake script regex match patterns has unnecessary kleenes * :hpx-issue:`1039` - Remove use of Boost.Move and replace with std::move and real rvalue refs * :hpx-issue:`1038` - Bump minimal required Boost to 1.49.0 * :hpx-issue:`1037` - Implicit unwrapping of futures in async broken * :hpx-issue:`1036` - Scheduler hangs when user code attempts to "block" OS-threads * :hpx-issue:`1035` - Idle-rate counter always reports 100% idle rate * :hpx-issue:`1034` - Symbolic name registration causes application hangs * :hpx-issue:`1033` - Application options read in from an options file generate an error message * :hpx-issue:`1032` - ``hpx::id_type`` local reference counting is wrong * :hpx-issue:`1031` - Negative entry in reference count table * :hpx-issue:`1030` - Implement condition_variable * :hpx-issue:`1029` - Deadlock in thread scheduling subsystem * :hpx-issue:`1028` - HPX-thread cumulative count performance counters report incorrect value * :hpx-issue:`1027` - Expose ``hpx::thread_interrupted`` error code as a separate exception type * :hpx-issue:`1026` - Exceptions thrown in asynchronous calls can be lost if the value of the future is never queried * :hpx-issue:`1025` - ``future::wait_for``/``wait_until`` do not remove callback * :hpx-issue:`1024` - Remove dependence to boost assert and create hpx assert * :hpx-issue:`1023` - Segfaults with tcmalloc * :hpx-issue:`1022` - prerequisites link in readme is broken * :hpx-issue:`1020` - HPX Deadlock on external synchronization * :hpx-issue:`1019` - Convert using ``BOOST_ASSERT`` to ``HPX_ASSERT`` * :hpx-issue:`1018` - compiling bug with gcc 4.8.1 * :hpx-issue:`1017` - Possible crash in io_pool executor * :hpx-issue:`1016` - Crash at startup * :hpx-issue:`1014` - Implement Increment/Decrement Merging * :hpx-issue:`1013` - Add more logging channels to enable greater control over logging granularity * :hpx-issue:`1012` - ``--hpx:debug-hpx-log`` and ``--hpx:debug-agas-log`` lead to non-thread safe writes * :hpx-issue:`1011` - After installation, running applications from the build/staging directory no longer works * :hpx-issue:`1010` - Mergeable decrement requests are not being merged * :hpx-issue:`1009` - ``--hpx:list-symbolic-names`` crashes * :hpx-issue:`1007` - Components are not properly destroyed * :hpx-issue:`1006` - Segfault/hang in set_data * :hpx-issue:`1003` - Performance counter naming issue * :hpx-issue:`982` - Race condition during startup * :hpx-issue:`912` - OS X: component type not found in map * :hpx-issue:`663` - Create a buildbot slave based on Clang 3.2/OSX * :hpx-issue:`636` - Expose ``this_locality::apply(p1, p2);`` for local execution * :hpx-issue:`197` - Add ``--console=address`` option for PBS runs * :hpx-issue:`175` - Asynchronous AGAS API<|endoftext|>Secret Salamis
Why Chefs Resort to Secret Tactics to Cook Some of Their Best Food
You're going to need a permit for those pickles.
You’re going to need a permit for those pickles. Photo: Tibungla/Getty Images
After a visit from inspectors at New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the staff of Il Buco was faced with a dilemma: Either douse its homemade sausages in bleach or shut down completely. The kitchen chose the former, treating its carefully cured products as if they were toxic waste and wiping out months of work in the process. “We had created our own setup that was very regimented,” says Il Buco owner Donna Lennard of the encounter with the DOH. “They didn’t understand; they didn’t want to talk about it.”
Ancient preservation techniques like fermenting and curing rely on bacteria and warm, but not hot, temperatures to actually work — things the DOH tends to want kitchens to specifically avoid. But anyone who’s had traditional air-cured Italian salumi like culatello will tell you that the funk and depth created by the extremely slow breakdown of the meat simply can’t be replicated through any other means. What’s more, the techniques are widely used: Even something as common as Huy Fong sriracha is made with peppers that are first gently fermented.
The Il Buco incident occurred in 2006, and things have gotten slightly better for cooks since then, as the Health Department has softened its stance. But chefs who want to cure or ferment their own ingredients still find themselves at the mercy of an uncomprehending government agency. “They’re not foodies, they’re health inspectors, and a lot of them don’t know the difference between a Meyer lemon and a lemon,” says Joel Hough, the executive chef of Il Buco and Il Buco Alimentari. (In 2011, the DOH labeled kimchee as a potentially hazardous ingredient before eventually relenting.) “They have this idea that every single thing has to be ice-cold or boiling-hot,” one cook who’s worked in Michelin-starred restaurants tells Grub Street.
When Grub Street asked a DOH rep about the relationship (getting an answer required 25 emails over three weeks), they said, via email:
We possess expertise in food safety and can determine if a HACCP plan is being properly used. Our staff will speak to the sciences of as to why something is required by the health code, but we are a regulatory agency and typically don’t teach or provide demonstrations on the various ways in which food may be preserved.
(HACCP stands for Hazard Analysis & Critical Control Points Plan; these can often be too complex and costly for small, understaffed restaurants to adopt.)
So chefs ferment in secret. The cook from the Michelin-starred restaurants (who wanted to remain anonymous to avoid the ire of the DOH) has seen the following things in the city’s best kitchens: lacto-fermented hot sauce (which involves first treating peppers in a bacteria-promoting brine), curing fish and Japanese pickles overnight in the walk-in fridge, sausages hung to cure in a wine cellar, poultry that’s left out to dry-age, homemade vinegars, or even cold-smoking techniques. “It was all super off-the-record and super hidden,” the cook says. Even still, he adds, kitchen staffers strive to produce these products as safely as possible: “Chefs have as little desire for customers to get sick as you do.”
Some chefs are ditching the undercover approach in favor of a novel legal solution: opening stand-alone R&D; spaces that aren’t technically restaurants and, as a result, are outside the DOH’s purview. Over the last four months, Will Horowitz, the chef and co-owner of Ducks Eatery, has been building out a 2,200-square-foot space he’ll use to make fermented products, charcuterie, dairy products, and more. The final list still depends on permits, but Horowitz says he’s pushing hard on smoking eels and creating classic Spanish conservas. There will also be a retail space, called Harry & Ida’s Meat & Supply Co., which will offer sandwiches and goods like preserves. David Chang also launched his own famously secretive culinary lab in 2010, which has resulted in the Kaizen Trading Company product line, focused on innovative uses of traditional fermentation techniques (such as a completely new misolike paste made with chickpeas or the group’s new Ssäm sauce).
Horowitz also views his own forthcoming space as something more like an educational proof-of-concept, an actual facility that can eventually help other chefs practice these techniques within the DOH’s parameters, but without prohibitive restrictions. (Although he’s gotten various HACCP approvals from Penn State and Cornell in order to legitimize his efforts.) “Our goal is to practice and record the science behind the techniques we find most interesting,” Horowitz says, “so we can take very innovative looks at that and share them.” And if that happens, more New York chefs might be able to take their secret sausages out of their wine cellars once and for all.
Chefs Versus the Health Department<|endoftext|>7 4
Law enforcement trainers are found to be members of an anti-government militia group.
American policing needs to be rebuilt with an explicitly stated socially progressive mandate in order to combat generations discrimination and extremism.
Should socially progressive policing be mandated?
• 13 votes
• 2 votes
domos 7 Nov 4
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Arresting cooperative 10-year-olds
domos Level 7 Nov 7, 2021
You socialist have completely crazy idea’s about the police! Hell the very worst problems with criminals are in democrat controlled cities!
I heard today the Mayor of Portland just reversed his stance on defunding the police.... 😁🤣😄😆😜🤭 ... Kinda saw that shit coming,,, just a matter of time..
@Captain_Feelgood It’s about time they showed a little sense
The 'usatoday' link didn't work for me... What exactly does 'socially progressive policing' look like?
The USA Today is a left wing piece of crap anyway.
Yes, rebuilding with dismantling their union agreements and weeding out the bad apples and instituting more accountability at all levels is necessary but just don't call it "Defund Police" like the moronic Democrats did right before the 2020 elections causing us losing House and Senate seats.
Now another moronic democrat Terry McAuliff made a similar gaffe in Virginia that parents have no role in children's schooling and he got a severe beating from a virtually unknown and far behind candidate in governor's race.
Keep it going Democrats and cease to exist in 10 years to make a way for a new party of smart and young people who are tired of Democrats, Trump, Pelosi and McConnell.
Old, frail, weaklings like Biden, and unappealing greedy idiots like Pelosi, McConnell and not to forget the revolution-in America wanting, old, hunchback, forever-wanna-be president presidential candidate uncle Bernie make me sick to the stomach as much as Trump does.
The police and the military exist to protect the interests of the Class that rules over a class-stratified society. In other words, they are here to serve and obey the Capitalist Class. And that is what they will do.
Depends what you mean, but police reform is sorely needed.
I don't understand how everyone nowadays wants to mandate other people. Let people have freedom, even if they want to be an ass with it. If we can mandate others, they can mandate us.
Tejas Level 7 Nov 4, 2021 mandates/laws/rules? We should let people be "free" to do whatever they want?
I get the feeling that wouldn't work out so great.
Mandates over how institutions perform their professions are called regulations and laws.
What adjective would make you feel comfortable? You realize doctors are mandated to be declared competent by a accredited institution of medical training and education right? Or is that some form of oppression and infringement on individual rights as well.
@Storm1752 I was a little tipsy when I wrote this last night, but the thought was tied to the poll, not in general. To be fair though isn't anarchy the exact opposite of fascism?
@Tejas It's close, but any absolute authoritarian dictatorship is the opposite of anarchy. Neither are good.
Write Comment<|endoftext|>Rightsizing with AWS Compute Optimizer and Memory Utilization Enabled
In order to complete this step, you need to have AWS Compute Optimizer enabled.
AWS Compute Optimizer uses machine learning to analyze the configuration and utilization data of your AWS resources. It reports whether your resources are optimal and generates recommendations (findings) to reduce the cost and improve the performance of your workloads.
When it comes to EC2 instances there are three types of findings:
• Over-provisioned. An EC2 instance is considered over-provisioned when at least one of the utilization metrics (CPU, Memory, Network) can be sized down while still meeting the performance requirements of your workload, and when no specification is under-provisioned. Over-provisioned EC2 instances might lead to unnecessary infrastructure cost.
• Under-provisioned. An EC2 instance is considered under-provisioned when at least one of the utilization metrics (CPU, Memory, Network) does not meet the performance requirements of your workload. Under-provisioned EC2 instances might lead to poor application performance.
• Optimized. An EC2 instance is considered optimized when all the utilization metrics (CPU, Memory, Network) meet the performance requirements of your workload, and the instance is not over-provisioned. For optimized instances, Compute Optimizer might sometimes recommend a new generation instance type.
You can enable AWS Compute Optimizer across your AWS Organization and filter the recommendations by AWS Accounts, AWS resource (EC2 instances, EBS volumes, Auto Scaling groups or Lambda functions), and AWS regions.
If you have just installed the CloudWatch agent on your instances it may take a couple of days for AWS Compute Optimizer to start providing updated recommendations. You may not see the memory data during the first checks.
During the steps below we will review some AWS Computer Optimizer examples and how the recommendations are affected by having an additional data point from the EC2 instance memory utilization.
1. Navigate to the AWS Compute Optimizer page.
1. Ensure you are on the Dashboard view and have the desired region selected.
1. Select Over-provisioned instances.
1. Select an instance that is over-provisioned and has memory monitoring enabled by clicking the radio button to the left and select View Details.
1. In this scenario, AWS Compute Optimizer recommends we resize to a t3.large. Our CPU utilization graph shows minimal CPU usage with some bursting. This is an ideal workload for the t3 family.
Memory utilization is consistent at 90% and downsizing to a cheaper t3.large will keep our memory at the same size (8 GiB). In other words, we can get the same memory performance while reducing overall cost.
A case could be made that this instance is under-provisioned and upsizing to an instance with more memory is a better solution. For this scenario, AWS Compute Optimizer views scaling down CPU and keeping the same memory the best decision for cost and performance. Having memory utilization enabled provides an additional data point for customers before making a final decision.
1. Select Under-provisioned instances.
1. A list of under-provisioned instances will be present. Note the Recommended instance type. Select the radio button on the far left of the instance and then select View details in the top right.
1. This view will give recommendations on rightsizing the current instance |
all WinAPI calls. For each call, our taint tracking provides us the offset within the IAT, so we know which WinAPI is called. In our previous example, we would start with eax, which gets a copy of dword_42A648. Then track eax until it is copied to ecx with the offst 0xBC. Then we track ecx until we see a call to ecx. Thus we know that the IAT offset 0xBC is used at this specific call.
In order to tell IDA what kind of return value and parameters each IAT call has, we need to do some more magic. First, we need to import all function definitions we need. E.g. for “SetCurrentDirectoryW” we need to define a function like this “typedef BOOL __stdcall SetCurrentDirectoryW(LPCWSTR lpPathName);”. We import those function definitions as local types in IDA.
In the second step, we create a local structure which reflects our IAT. So instead of only naming the pointer e.g. “CreateThread”, we also use the type CreateThread, which we imported as local type.
This IAT structure is then applied to the address dword_42A648, so we can see which function is called when dword_42A648 is referenced. The decompilation of e.g. sub_402B00 then looks like this:
We can see three calls to WinAPIs and their corresponding names in line 18, 31 and 34. Yet, neither the number of function arguments are correct, nor are their types identified properly. For example, in line 18 IDA shows five function arguments where there should be four and in line 31 there is one where there should be three.
Additionally, the structure PSECURITY_DESCRIPTOR is not set as the third argument in line 18, instead IDA set it to void*. And instead of LPSECURITY_ATTRIBUTES, IDA uses an int* in line 31.
In order to fix this, we can now leverage our taint tracking information and define each call with its corresponding function by using the IDA Python functions apply_callee_tinfo() and set_op_tinfo2() of the idaapi. This triggers IDA’s magic and populates the added information to the disassembly, so that even stack variables are redefined and renamed.
We can now see that the function calls have the correct number of arguments as well as the correct types of arguments. Also the stack variables got redefined and renamed correctly.
You always know you are going down a very dark trail when the IDA Python functions you are using have less than 10 hits on google and most of those hits are just copies of the same text.
Yet, I found the existing IDA Python script “” from Jay Smith on extremely helpful in understanding how to do such magic in IDA.
The final pseudo algorithm looks like this:
1. Iterate over the decrypted IAT and for each imported function:
1. Look up function definition in IDAs database
2. Import function definition to local types for later use
2. Create IAT structure and import it as local type called “IAT”
3. Set dword_42A648 as type “IAT”
4. For each read-reference to dword_42A648
1. Get the register which holds dword_42A648
2. Disassemble forward until the register is copied with an offset to a new register, remember the used offset
3. Disassemble forward until the new register is called, remember this address
4. Depending on the used offset, look up the function definition of the IAT function
5. Apply function definition to current address
In the first part we have learned how Trickbot obfuscates its strings and how we can leverage static code analysis in order to deobfuscate the strings and put them in a useable format in IDA.
In the second part we analyzed how the dynamically created import address table of Trickbot can be restored and how IDA can be instrumented to process the data types of the imported functions to get a nice and clean decompilation result.
Finally, I would like to thank my colleagues from G DATA Advanced Analytics for proofreading this article.
Additionally, I would like to thank the Trickbot authors for the interesting and partially challenging malware.
You can find the IDA Python scripts on
Dissecting GandCrab Version 4.3
Starting the analysis
Removing the junk code
import idaapi
cur = 0
while cur != 0xffffffffL:
cur = FindBinary(0, SEARCH_DOWN, tmp)
print hex(cur)
idaapi.patch_many_bytes(cur, patchbytes)
So yep, patching was rather trivial, as Fortinet confirmed:
Following the execution flow
----Eleveate Privileges
Elevating privileges
Ensuring File Access
The full list of process names is:
The reason for this feature is as follows:
The MainFunction
GandCrab does not like Emulators and Sandboxes
GandCrab is afraid of Russians and Cyrillic keyboards
There can be only one GandCrab
With the mutex name, GandCrab starts its first taunt against Ahnlab. According to, the text in the picture behind the link in the string buffer translates to “I added you to my gay list. I used a pencil for the time being“. Since I don’t speak Russian, you have to take Fortinet’s word for the translation.
Shipping its own public key
Im in ur machine, stealing ur infoz
DWORD bShouldFillDomainName; //set to 0/1 during initialization
DWORD pc_group; //static name
DWORD domainName; //calculated during runtime
• User Name
• Computer Name
• Domain Name
• Installed AV Product
• Keyboard Locale
• Windows Product Name
• Processor Architecture
• Volume Serial Number
• Free disk space of each attached drive
GandCrab home phone
Encrypt ALL the things!
The excluded file endings are:
#pragma pack(1)
struct keypairBuffer
DWORD privkeySize;
char salsaKey[0x100];
char IV[0x100];
char privKey[0x100];
Unfortunately, this looks like solid use of cryptography to me.
The list of drives to encrypt is filled by iteratprovides
Network encryption – Im in ur network, encrypting ur sharez
To sum it up:
Double check to encrypt only the targeted files
The actual encryption
struct cryptKeys
void* pubkey;
void* privkey;
void* privkeySize;
void* pubkeySize;
keypairBuffer *keypairBuffer;
The structure looks like this:
struct encryptionInfoBlob
byte encryptedSymkey[0x100];
byte encryptedIV[0x100];
LARGE_INTEGER encryptedBytes;
Ransomware with a kernel driver “exploit”
The actual “exploit” can fit into a single screenshot:
The exploit is also mentioned by In this blogpost Fortinet states that they “were able to confirm this on Ahnlab V3 Lite with TSFltDrv.sys file version“. However, that is not correct:
Parsing the user buffer is done like this:
The second IOCTL is handled like this:
So, what is happening in Ahnlab’s driver?
Covering its tracks
Authors: Luca Ebach, Tilman Frosch
Find the code here:
Dissecting Olympic Destroyer – a walk-through
The Orchestrator
Configuration – or not
Detecting the bitness of the system
Magical Code Injections
1. C:\<MD5(Computer Name)>
Starting an invisible Notepad
Setting the markers for self-deletion
Create infection markers
Stealing credentials
Resource 101
Stolen credentials are formatted in a certain way
Resource 102 and 103
Saving the Credentials – Or how to build a network worm
Hex dump of Olympic Destroyer
struct credentials
byte marker[16];
WORD numberOfElements;
CREDENTIAL credentialArray[numberOfElements];
WORD lengthOfUsername;
WORD lengthOfPassword;
char userName[lengthOfUsername];
char password[lengthOfPassword];
Resource 104 and 105 – Preparing the next steps
Starting the Destroyer – Fulfilling the real purpose
Starting an invisible process
Lateral Movement
The function at 0x004054E0 is the heart of the spreading algorithm:
Remote command execution
The executed command line is rather simple:
The remote spreading algorithm spreads the wrong binary
cmd.exe /c
echo strPath = Wscript.ScriptFullName
& echo.FSO.DeleteFile strPath, 1
& echo.Next
& echo.writer.write s
& echo.writer.close
The Destroyer
Destroyer main function
2. Silently delete all backups created by the tool wbadmin
4. Clear system logs
5. Clear security logs
For each successfully mounted resource the function at 0x00401441 is called.
This function is also best described with a screenshot:
Remote wiping functionality
Different types of Olympic Destroyer
Using PsExec
The additional call to PsExec is done in the following way:
Format string for calling PsExec
PsExec is started with several parameters:
A crippled worm and a capable worm
Crunching some numbers
I could not find a single sample which contained only a subset of the credentials stolen from the g18.internal and domains. If you strip the credentials from sandboxes and researchers, all 23 samples contain the same set of crendetials. This supports the findings that the simple version of Olympic Destroyer has a broken spreading algorithm.
The samples in question are:
PE timestamps
Nonetheless they provide an interesting picture.
Simple version of Olympic Destroyer, PE time stamps ordered ascending:
Name Compilation Time Stamp Description
Name Compilation Time Stamp Description
Config structure as used in Olympic Destroyer:
struct config
DWORD credentialsVectorStart;
DWORD credentialsVectorEnd;
DWORD credentialsVectorMaxSize;
WSADATA wsadata;
char ressourceHpath[1024];
char randomTempPath[1024];
char ressourceIpath[1024];
char selfModulePath[1024];
char domainName[256];
char accountName[256];
char domainAndAccountName[256];
char v13[256];
DWORD bitness;
DWORD bVersionGreaterEqualVista;
DWORD bVersionSmallerEqualXP;
DWORD bHasSelfDebugPrivs;
DWORD bIsServiceOrAdmin;
DWORD bIsUserAccount;
Hashes used for analysis:
In debt to Retpoline
How does retpoline work
1. call set_up_target;
2. capture_spec:
3. pause;
4. jmp capture_spec
5. set_up_target:
6. mov [rsp],rax
7. ret;
Side channel analysis of retpoline
Performance analysis of retpoline
The following table presents the results of my micro benchmarking:
Unit Clock cycles Mean Median
jmp rsi 350.33 95.48 346
retpoline pause 410.64 65,94 410
retpoline lfence 403.76 25,96 404
retpoline clean 402.13 19,99 402
retpoline pause lfence 406.74 64,76 404
retpoline ud2 404,29 28,70 402
The weird case of pause
Discussion of technical debt of retpoline
Appendix added 14th of Febuary 2018
[1] Turner, Paul. “Retpoline”.
[3] Fogh, Anders “Covert Shotgun”.
Behind the scenes of a bug collision
In this blog post I’ll speculate as to how we ended up with multiple researchers arriving at the same vulnerabilities in modern CPU’s concurrently. The conclusion is that the bug was ripe because of a years long build up of knowledge about CPU security, carried out by many research groups. I’ll also detail the rough story behind the research that let me to the bug. My story is probably different than that of the other researchers, but while unique, I am relatively sure that it’s the same for all researchers on most security issues: security research is a long haul thing. The remainder of this blog post is semi-technical.
Why did we get a bug collision on Spectre/Meltdown?
This is of course my take on the event, my personal story, which I’ll detail below. Research collision in CPU research isn’t that uncommon. In fact, the story of my friendship with Daniel Gruss is about a series of collisions. In 2015 I was preparing a talk about row hammer for Black Hat with Nishat Herath [2] when Daniel tweeted that he was able to flip bits from Javascript. I didn’t want to have questions I couldn’t answer, so I started researching it and literally the evening before Daniel published how he was doing it, I knew how he did it. Later Daniel teased me about detecting cache side channels if there were no L3 cache misses. I replied ‘are you timing Clflush?’ He was indeed. You’ll find me being acknowledged in the paper for this reason [1]. I told him he shouldn’t worry about me competing on publishing it, because I was doing research on a side channel in the row buffer and didn’t have time to compete on Clflush. Turns out he and the wu cache clan were too. I blogged it, and wu cache clan wrote a paper on it in Pessl et al. [3]. You’ll find me acknowledged here as well. Not long after that, I did a blog post on breaking KASLR with the prefetch instruction. Obviously, Daniel was doing the exact same thing again. We had enough of competition and started my by now a regular collaboration with the WU cache clan after that point.
So why do things like this happen? (Granted, the story about Daniel is a freaky one.) Well, CPU research is much like drawing a map of an uncharted world. Researchers start from known research and proceed into the unknown, and if they find something, they document it and add it to the map. This essentially means that the frontier looks very similar to everybody leading people into the same paths. This processed is very much sustained by the fact that almost all research in this area is academic and academia is much better organized in terms of recording and documenting than hackers.
For a thing like meltdown, the real foundation was laid with the work on cache side channels sometime back around 2005. There are many papers from this time, I’ll mention Percival [4] because it’s my favorite. Another milestone paper was Yuval Yarom’s paper on Flush+reload [5]. Note that Yuval is also partial to the Spectre paper. With this foundation, a subgenre of papers emerged in 2013 with Hund, Willems & Holz [6]. They essentially noticed that when an unprivileged user tries to read kernel mode memory, the CPU actually does a great part of the read process before making an error, allowing a user to observe not the data of the kernel, but the layout of the kernel – this is known as a KASLR break and is important for classical exploits. This work was followed up with improvements including Gruss et al [7] and Yang et al [8]. Both papers showed that a lot more work was being done by the CPU than was strictly needed when an unprivileged user accesses kernel memory – an important prerequisite for Meltdown to exist. Also in 2016, another KASLR break using branches from Evtuishkin et al. emerged[9]. They didn’t try to read from the kernel but rather found that branch prediction leaked information. This is important because branch prediction is a precursor for speculative execution and thus build a bridge towards Meltdown. Felix Wilhelm [11] extended Evtuishkin et al. [9] to extend to hypervisors which are likely to be important in the rationale for hypervisors being affected. In fact, I think Jann Horn mentioned this blog post as an inspiration. There where other works, like that of Enrique Nissim[11] which showed that the KASLR breaks real-world applications with a classic exploit. Also in 2016, some work was being done on side channels in the pipeline. My Covert Shotgun blog post is an example of this literature[12]. To sum it up, by the end of 2016 it was known that unprivileged reads from user mode to kernel mode did more processing than was strictly required, it was known that branches were important, and there was work going on examining the pipeline. In end effect, the Meltdown bug was surrounded on all sides. It was a single blind spot on the map – obviously, nobody knew that there’d actually be a bug in this blind spot and I think most did not believe such as bug existed. Other people would probably pick other papers and there where many. My point remains: a lot of people moved towards this find over a very long period of time.
The personal perspective
I work for GDATA Advanced Analytics and there I work in an environment that is very friendly and supportive of research. Without research, a consultant company like ours cannot provide excellence for their customers. However, CPU bugs don’t pay the bills, so my day job does not have much to do with this. I spend my time helping customers with their security problems: malware analysis, digital forensics, and incident response being the main tasks that I do on a day to day basis. This means that the bulk of the work I do on CPUs is done in my spare time after hours.
So my story with Meltdown and Spectre starts essentially at Black Hat 2016 where Daniel Gruss and I presented our work on the prefetch instruction. The video of our talk can be found here [13]. As described above, this work slowly gave me this fuzzy feeling that maybe this work is just the tip of the iceberg. In fact did a blog post about the meta’s on breaking KASLR in October 2016 [14] and presented it at RuhrSec 2017 [15], so I was very well acquainted with that literature. Meanwhile, I wanted to get away from working with caches and accidentally found some covert channels and wrote about them[16]. I thought there might be more and started picking apart the pipeline in search of covert channels. My frustration led me to automate finding covert channels which resulted in this blog post [12] and later this talk at HackPra [17]. In the talk, you can hear that I’m still frustrated “I don’t care, I’ll just use a shotgun”. To this day I have many unanswered questions about the pipeline..
Later that year I met up with the WU Cache Clan at CCS where we were presenting the academic version of the prefetch KASLR break[7]. We had some beer-fueled conversations. The conversations were added upon at Black Hat Europe (Michael Schwarz and I did a talk on the row buffer side channel we’d done concurrent work on) where I started believing that meltdown might be possible, but yet without a clue as to how it could possibly work.
I finally made the connection to speculative execution on December 2016/January 2017 when I prepared the presentation for HackPra about Covert Shotgun[17]. There are a lot of slides about speculative execution. At first, I didn’t think about reading kernel memory. My first “attack” was just another attack on |
And not to forget someone important, Hayao Myasaki is one of these rare directors out there to have understood what animation is all about: story, poetry and imagination.
IV. You left home, France, Europe ... all that you had there, to continue your professional career with Disney . Was it hard to be a newcomer in U.S.?
C: Yes, it was a big move. I left everything behind, and it was hard, but I had always wanted to go to the US. I had the feeling that I would get opportunities here that France would never offer me; and I did.
I also had a very familiar feeling about the U.S. that never left me. When I was 7, my parents had a record of Dvorjak, Symphony 9: Symphony of the New World. I used to listen to it all the time. On the cover, there was a picture of the Grand Canyon. For some reason, the music and the picture stuck together in my mind and -although I didn't know exactly why- became a symbol of my distant future.
It's not that easy to leave everything behind, to change your Life and dive into the unknown. I saw a lot of French people who, either could have done it but didn't want to, or wanted to do it but didn't measure the consequences of such a choice: to leave everything behind costs a lot, emotionally and psychologically.
It is often after you have left something that you realize how you really miss it. Nevertheless, in my mind there was no half measure: to come to the US had always been a Lifelong dream. And with the different trips I had made in the US before, I was used to the mentality and the difference of Culture.
V. I wonder were there any specific differences in working for Disney in Paris studio and then later in California? How would you compare it?
C: Well, working for a French studio lead by Americans, and an American studio lead by Americans are definitely two different things.
When you work in a specific country, the overall mentality you have to deal with is the mentality of the country you are in.
And needless to say: French and American mentalities are VERY different.
There are good and bad things on both sides.
For instance, I have always admired the ability for Americans to build teamwork, to create a project from a vision to making it into something real; it’s an ability to believe that nothing is impossible -a little bit like a child- and to trust your leader and your whole team to achieve it along with yourself.
This has its downside too: for instance to come to the false belief that there is nothing really as good as the American way, or that the key to success is the (over)use of simplistic formulas (for instance in terms of story), thinking that these formulas will work every time the same.
When you look at the amount of junk there is in the Hollywood movie industry these days, you understand exactly what this way of thinking can lead to:
Movies that are superbly crafted, with amazing production values (like Photography, Cinematography, Design, etc…) but with absolutely no emotional content or sense of story whatsoever –sorry, I can’t give any specific example without offending some sensibilities here.
On the other hand, French people, because their sense of teaming up with others is not as strong as Americans, tend to develop a more individual and personal type of craft. This can lead to a more creative and inventive way of artistry, but with no support from any team (when you look at how many French and European inventors went to the US within the past 2 centuries to get the financial support they couldn’t get in Europe, it gives you a more precise idea of what I’m talking about).
The downside of this way of thinking is that French people are not very open to trusting external and artistic leadership, or supporting effective ways to organize teamwork. They will ALWAYS have something to complain about, and have built a reputation over this.
I am convinced that finding the right balance between those two very different states of mind was what gave the French Disney studio the high standards of quality it had.
In any case, the golden days are over, and the French studio is gone, unfortunately.
VI. In 2002, after nine years of working for Disney Studios, six years after you left France, you decided to pursue your solo career. What events brought you finally to this point, to try your chances on your own?
C: I think there were several reasons. First, and foremost, I had enough with the big corporation politics, the same 9pm to 6pm job everyday, the lack of creative freedom, and after years of doing my own stuff on the side, I was ready to try it full time. Second, the Animation world was changing big time, with the overwhelming arrival of 3D, and I believe it was the perfect time for me to leave and try new things.
I realized later on that my favorite way of living is actually to go back and forth between personal work and movie studio work. So, I don’t depend on any of the two, and when I feel a little lonely, I go back to the social life of a studio environment.
Besides, I’ve spent the last 12 months learning Maya 3D in depth, and I really like the new potentials of 3D animation.
So, I don’t think I’m ready to completely leave the movie industry yet.
VII. Was it difficult to make such a step, to quit Disney and start a new life?
C: It was tough for a while to find yourself back in you apartment starting almost from scratch again, almost feeling like your identity had been stripped away from you (after 9 years working for a company, it’s always a weird feeling when they finally ask your ID card and badge back), and on top of that trying to cope with the breakup of my girlfriend a few months earlier.
VIII. Could you tell us something about your present activities ... I know that you are creating cd, book and game covers.
C: I do both covers for all the above mentioned, and also paintings for galleries and my partner publishing company in Atlanta. I also do concept artwork for different studios when the opportunity comes. I try to juggle between all of these activities, which is not easy, and since I have been interested in 3D modeling, texturing, etc… for the past 12 months, it’s even more of a challenge.
IX. About the concept artwork that you worked on recently, was there anything particularly interesting you want to share with us?
C: Well, the last concept artwork I did (and I’m still doing) was for the 3D short movie I’m talking about in question X. It’s a comedy about what happened to the Mars Rover when NASA lost contact with it for two days, a couple of years ago. I did the design for the Rover in this 3D short (and we’re still changing things on it) and a few other robots (you can see them on my site if you go to [galleries>movie work>characters>cartoony]; It’s different from what people are used to see me doing, but it’s fun. I’m modeling it right now, and will texture it later. I’m also going to make some color keys for environments and overlook the Art direction on the whole movie. I’ll probably keep posting all this on my site.
X. What are you working on right now?
C: I just finished another book cover for Harper Collins Publishing in New York, and I am currently Art directing a 3D short film with a few people, at the same time as I am doing a painting for an Art collector in New York.
XI. Before we start talking about your paintings, could you tell a few words about your artistic influences.
C: Well, at first, I wanted to be a comic book artist. My first influences were famous European comic books like Tintin, and a lot of Italian black and white monthly comics. At 13, I discovered the world of super heroes (Daredevil, Iron-man, Spiderman and other X-men). I can say my life really changed then. Moebius and the birth of "Heavy Metal" magazine (when it was REALLY creative) were also a major influence to me.
Then, I went to a Fine-Arts school, and it opened my eyes on classical Art, although illustrators like Frank Frazetta, Boris Vallejo, Wojtek Siudmak or Michael Whelan also fascinated me.
Since then, things have changed. I've met dozens of amazing artists in animation (particularly at Disney) from whom I've learned a lot. I have broadened my horizons in Art and discovered many different styles and schools, from the Realists, Pre-Raphaelites, Romantics, Orientalists, Symbolists or Visionaries in Europe, to the Hudson River school, American Realists, American impressionists and Plein Air painters in the US, not to mention all the generations of great American illustrators.
XII. I know that music is also a great source of inspiration for you. Could you tell, what do you listen while you are working?
C: My range of music is quite wide. From Loreena Mc Kennitt to Dead can Dance, going through Enya, Metallica, U2 and a lot of movie soundtracks. The list is non exhaustive.
XIII. Your great fantasy worlds, full of breathtaking landscapes, mythical women ... seems to be free from popular s.f. or fantasy styles which we can find everywhere nowdays in the internet or cinema. On the other hand I feel some strong influence by classic artworks, myths, literature, like “Lord Of The Rings”, “Chronicles Of Narnia”. Am I right in my observations?
C: You’re absolutely right. I try not to follow any main stream hype or fashion. Hollywood, videogames and the American comic books systems have created some kind of stereotypical and simplistic world that young generations believe to be the source and inspiration for fantasy –whereas it is in fact the contrary: Hollywood and all the big fantasy making companies nowadays are hungry for new stuff, and constantly drawing from the well of old legends. “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Chronicles of Narnia” are a screaming example of this.
I was fortunate enough to grow up in an area that had a rich past History in legends, and the fairytales I knew were from my Grand mother’s books, not from Hollywood.
Curiously, a painting like “The Giants” that reflects a very “Lord of the Rings” feeling was finished almost 2 years before the movie was done (many people asked me after the movie came out if I had worked on the movie or at least the poster of the movie, which I hadn’t) and I had not even read the books!
Nevertheless, working for Weta Digital in the future is a possibility I’m studying very seriously.
As for “The Chronicles of Narnia”, I had been contacted originally by the company that was starting to produce the movie, to do concept artwork on it.
I was very excited about it.
They finally never called me back.
Go figure…
XIV. First question that comes to my mind when I watch your paintings is ... do you always have this strong idea, clear vision of what you want to create?
C: Not always. Most of the times, it’s a blurry vision I get from either listening to music, or seeing an image or a situation in real life that makes me see something else.
XV. I am sure many people wonder what’s the story behind your flying rocks with castles and fortresses. Could you disclose your secret?
C: Ha, ha, there is no secret, really. OK, if you want the short answer, I’d say when they are not floating cities, they represent some kind of guiding Spirits, like in “The Messengers”.
If you want the longer answer, you have to go into deeper analysis: if you consider Rock as the symbol of earthly dead Matter, and Movement and Light as the symbols of Life and Energy, then a floating rock with light coming from within is something that seems so impossible that the vision of it becomes the ultimate symbol for Life incarnated into Matter. Does that make any sense?
No, I didn’t take any crack this morning, I swear.
XVI. Could you tell us, what is your typical working process, how do you begin your painting?
C: I generally draw a quick sketch first, to be able to remember the concept later when I need to paint the full image. From there, either the image is very clear in my mind and I don't need any other elements, or I try to find visual references: pictures for similar landscapes, color inspiration or models. Then, I conceive the sketch, carefully paying attention to composition, shapes and scale. I don't always paint on the same support, because I like variety, but most of the time, I paint on canvas. I cover it with 2 or 3 coats of Gesso and draw my sketch over when it' s dry. After that, sometimes, I paint an undercoat of Burnt Umber, defining the light and shadow. I will use this undercoat later when I paint colors over it, keeping colors more transparent in some areas to keep the warm tones showing through. Most of the time, I will paint an overall rough painting with all the colors, before I work in it again refining only the places that need to be refined. The final painting is varnished (glossy).
For a digital painting, I use Photoshop, and the process is simpler, as you can control all your parameters (Values, color saturation, object placements, etc…) so much better.
The difference is that the process and final product with real paint is a much a stronger textural and tactile experience, it offers a journey for the senses that no computer will ever be able to offer -at least, not in a natural manner.
XVII. You are a true master in variety of techniques ... acryl, oil, digital paintings ... which one is your favourite and why?
C: Every technique is different and has its own "personality." I enjoy all of them pretty much the same way, but what makes me like working with oils or acrylics the most is the tactile and sensual properties, the final result, this almost three dimensional feeling of a flat image that you get when you look at a real painting, especially in a gallery environment, where the light has been worked on to enhance this illusion.
XVIII. What was your way to digital world. How did it start?
C: I discovered Digital for the first time working on Art concepts for the movie "Dinosaur". I did paintings and photo manipulations on Photoshop and Painter. Then, I dropped it for a few months and went back to traditional. But I started to miss working with Digital. So I went back to it. And I learned how to really appreciate. Since then, I bought my own material, and constantly juggle now between Digital and Traditional. For instance, I do my paintings for galleries with oil or acrylic paint, and most book or videogame covers on Photoshop. It's faster, more effective, and the control of all parameters (values and tones, color saturation, etc…) allows easy changes. And publishers don't need originals, only the image. To paint for a gallery is different. People who buy a painting don't do it only for the image, but also for the tactile and sensual experience. Something that Digital will never be able to give -at least not the same way.
In terms of 3D, I did a little bit of traditional sculpture, and I’ve been learning Maya 3D intensely for the past 12 months. I'm really interested, it's a different world, and full of potential.
I'm interested in Digital Matte Painting as well, and I wouldn't mind trying my hand at it soon, if the opportunity comes.
XIX. What is your favourite digital tool, photoshop, painter or maybe something else ?
C: I’m very familiar with Photoshop, a little with Painter, but the potential 3D programs offer (whether it’s Maya, Studio Max or Zbrush) is really exciting as well (I’m getting pretty proficient in Maya –more specifically in modeling and texturing- and I’m playing with Zbrush right now). The only problem is that you realize that once you’re getting close to master one program, you have 3 or 4 more to learn. It’s a never-ending story.
XX. About your 3D fascinations, is there a chance to see in a future a 3D short film animated and directed by Christophe Vacher , maybe something mystical ... like “the cathedral” by Tomasz Bagiski? Oscars and other awards are waiting.
C: Funny you ask; I had heard of this short and seen some pictures for quite a while. I finally bought it a few months ago. It’s a beautiful short, and I feel very close to this kind of work.
But I also know how much time and effort has to be invested in such a kind of project. It’s gigantic, especially when you are working with only a few people.
Who knows, maybe some day. The Atlanta Publishing company I am with (Duirwaigh Gallery/Publishing) is interested in expanding into movie production later. So, we’ll see…
XXI. I wonder after all those projects, new activities is there anything you still dream of , any desires, plans for the future?
C: Well, keep developing the artistic career I started, and on a more intimate level, find the right girl and maybe later buy a nice house in a quiet area and have a family. One thing for sure, though: LA is not the right place for neither of those, so I know I will probably have to move away soon.
And I terribly miss the four seasons, really green springs and summers (LA is just a burnt toast after April). Right now, I’m thinking of Vancouver, Canada.
C: I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to France. I love the countryside and landscape, but the mentality is not very progressive, people there don’t really believe in dreams; and I do.
Besides, salaries are not the same, and taxes in France are simply outrageous.
I don’t think I would ever have been able to do in Europe what I have achieved here.
I saw a Bernard Pivot show on French TV one day where he was saying: “The difference between Americans and French in the Art business is that French take money and make Art with it, Americans take Art and make money with it”.
I think it summarize very well our respective attitudes. Americans have a tendency to put business and money first, and the appreciation of Art second. French will do exactly the opposite.
For my part, I will say that Art appreciation is great, and I wouldn’t have much respect for an Artist who wouldn’t put his heart first in his creative process; but successful Art has always been associated with the fact that the people who can afford to buy it are the people with money; because it is an activity that is on the outskirt of a country’s economy, a luxury that people only can afford when a country’s economy is going well.
To make a living as an Artist, it is imperative to associate it –at least partly- with business. In France, it is associated mostly with the bullshit of social prestige, elitist Artistic circles, and higher social layers.
So, I would say that it’s probably not impossible to succeed as an Artist in Europe, but the success of an Artist depends very much on the state of the economy in the country where he resides, and on his ability to reach the people who will be able to afford to buy his work.
XXIII. One of the last questions. Christ |
: One of the most satisfying aspects of your books is the exposure of the people who hate to be so naked in the light of your view.
Ann Rule: I guess I really enjoy exposing the murderous fakers. But they sure get mad at me!
Question: Have you been, or will you ever be on "Larry King?"
Ann Rule: I've been on "Larry King" a couple of times. Hope he'll have me back. I was terrified of him the first time. But he was really nice.
Question: Ann...You will NEVER stop getting asked about the RAMSEY case, because people want to know! And so they ask the best. One more time. What are your thoughts, and did you see/hear anything while in Boulder that changed your way of thinking?
Ann Rule: I think JonBenet was killed by her parents. I suspect the father was molesting her and she threatened to tell. I think her mother helped cover it up. Very sad.
Question: Ann, I must ask you this. I have always been curious. How in god's name did that father coerce his sister-in-law and daughter to kill his wife?
Ann Rule: Cinnamon was so young, and David and Patty brainwashed her for more than a year - "If You Really Loved Me." Anyone can be brainwashed if there's enough time. See my book, "Possession," for the details of that phenomenon.
Question: Having worked with and known Ted Bundy, do you think you could explain to people what to watch out for in a co-worker? How does one identify a serial killer before it's too late?
Ann Rule: No, people like Ted can fool you completely. I'd been a cop, had all that psychology - but his mask was perfect. I say that long acquaintance can help you know someone. But you can never be really sure. Scary.
Question: Ann, how do you distance yourself from being involved emotionaly when researching these horrendous murders!
Ann Rule: I can't always distance myself. If I am not emotionally involved, I think my books would be less interesting.
Question: Ann: In retrospect, though, could you pick out clues from Ted's behavior that he was dangerous?
Ann Rule: The only clue about Ted was this: He NEVER talked about sex with me. Most of the cops I knew always brought that subject up! But, for Ted, sex was a very dangerous subject!
Question: I am curious. What leads you to believe that John Ramsey killed his daughter?
Ann Rule: I reach that conclusion by deductive reasoning. Who else? The brother was too slight to ever hurt her that much. I don't think Patsy would be involved in molesting her. That would be very unusual. I used to wonder about Santa but they never could place him inside the house. So who else?
Question: Was there evidence that she had been molested? Being the devil's advocate here; maybe the crime scene was too contaminated to lend many clues.
Ann Rule: If we argue about JonBenet, this will all head right into Boulder. How about if we do it on a separate occasion?
Question: I still get a chill when I recall him (Bundy) walking you to your car at night, to see you were safe!!
Ann Rule: I get a chill too. But I was safe with Ted. For one, he knew me. For another, I wasn't his type.
Question: The sad thing is that so many crimes like these never reach the courts
Ann Rule: That's true. There IS such a thing as a perfect murder. Lots of them.
Question: Any theories on why America has so many serial killers?
Ann Rule: I think most countries have serial murderers. Not just us. Look at the UK, and Germany. In countries with insurrections, you don't know where all the bodies came from. You might never know.
Question: Ann, have you ever heard of Richard Grissom, a murderer in Kansas City about seven years ago?
Ann Rule: Yes, I wrote a little about Grissom in my book "Bitter Harvest." The prosecutor who sent Debora Gren to prison also convicted Grissom. Grissom was a very dangerous man.
Question: Why mostly white men?
Ann Rule: There are more white men in America. Hence, more white serial killers.
Question: Why does it seem like the Pacific Northwest has more serial killers than other areas?
Ann Rule: Serial killers look for a geographic solution to their obsession. They eventually run to the sea. You will find more of them in all states that are on coasts, I think.
Question: Ann: What do you think about Henry Lee Lucas?
Ann Rule: I think Henry Lee was vastly overrated as a killer. Too dumb. <g>
Question: Do you ever do guest lectures at colleges? I'm in the criminal justice department and have two organizations that might be able to come up with a small stipend.
Ann Rule: I used to do a lot of lectures at colleges and such. Now, I stick to law enforcement groups. This year, at least. With three books to write, and two trials to go to, I'm running out of time.
Question: What about Karla Faye Tucker? Do you think she deserved the death penalty?
Ann Rule: I felt bad about Karla Faye, and I wonder why. Was it because she looked so sweet? But her crime was horrific. But, in the end, I decided that it was o.k. If she had truly found God, she's o.k. If she was lying, she deserved the death penalty.
Question: Are you on Court TV about a particular case Ann?
Ann Rule: Tomorrow, I'm on Court TV about my career, I think. In March, they are doing the greatest trials of the century and it will be about the Ted trials.
Question: Ann: Do you watch the "Profiler" series on TV? What's your opinion of that show?
Ann Rule: I think the "Profiler" is what TV thinks a profiler is. I don't watch. The shows about real cops were Hill Street Blues and Barney Miller. NYPD is pretty good too, but more soap opery than life!
Question: Do you watch "Millennium," Ann?
Ann Rule: No, I don't watch "Millenium" either. I am a very non-science fiction, non-fantasy gal. I heard once that means I'm a latent schizophrenic. I can spell it, but I can't see to type. . .
Question: Very interesting you mention those two shows, I've heard the same thing; (the Barney Miller was surprising).
Ann Rule: I've spent so much time in homicide units, and Barney Miller is right on!!!
Question: If a person goes bizzerk, like J MacDonald...I fail to understand why they do not show remorse...these types of murders seem so spontaneous, why the claim of innocence?
Ann Rule: People without conscience have no remorse. Of all the things I've had to accept in my career, that is still the most difficult!
Question: What do you speak about to law enforcement groups?
Ann Rule: I have three main seminars: High Profile Offenders, Serial Murder, and Women Who Kill, and I throw in a little about my early days in writing too.
Question: Any comments on Charlie Manson?
Ann Rule: I'm not up on the Manson murders--no more than anyone else who read "Helter Skelter." I think some of the girls may be unbrainwashed by now.
Question: Ann: At last report, I believe the violent crime rate was decreasing in the U.S. Any idea why that might be?
Ann Rule: Gee, I hope crime is decreasing - murder at least - because we're working harder to take care of little kids so they don't grow up to be killers.
Question: I wish that you would come to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario and do a book signing :)
Ann Rule: I was born a Michigander, you know. Raised up there too.
Question: Do women killers kill for different reasons than men?
Ann Rule: I will come back here and visit again. Women kill for love and for money. They plan it more carefully and they tend to kill people who trust them, depend on them, and who are related to them.
Question: Ann: Instead of writing about specific cases, do you ever intend to write a book discussing your general ideas about murder?
Ann Rule: I hope one day to write an autobiography. In there, I can give my opinions on EVERYTHING!
Question: Ann: Thank you for so politely and diligently answering all questions!
Ann Rule: If I've missed some questions, do check out my webpage, and be sure you go to all the pages!
Question: Where does "The End of the Dream" take place?
Ann Rule: The End of the Dream action starts in Reston, Virginia, goes through Vegas, and ends up in the Northwest.
Question: This was my first on-line chat with a celeb...
Ann Rule: This is my first too. But we'll all have to come back at least once a month to talk about Crime and Murder. Like a nice sewing circle!
Question: I believe there will come a time when those murdered will see you and thank you for speaking for them.
Ann Rule: I hope so too. I feel very close to the victims I have to write about. I feel as if I know them. I've worked with victims' families for over 20 years now. They are so brave.
Question: Thank you Ann!!!
Ann Rule: I love you guys. And forgive me for the questions that went by so fast that I missed them.
Question: Have you worked on victims' rights legislation?
Ann Rule: Thank you so much for being here. I'm going out for chinese, now. Yes, I have worked for victims rights In fact, I testified before Congress about that - with John Walsh.
Question: Hope you get to your email cause we will be thanking you for this there!
Ann Rule: And I'd love to read it. Please say I don't have to answer right away. Thanks all. I have to run now, but I'll be back after the broccoli-beef and a few weeks. You can write to me, and we will talk again. It sure did go fast. Bye. It's so hard to go, but I'm really going now....
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Cajun culture began with the arrival of French Acadians (the French-speaking people of the territory that is now mainly Nova Scotia in Canada) who migrated to and settled in what is now Louisiana mainly between 1765 and 1785. Some migrated directly from Acadia, whereas others came after stays in France and the West Indies. All came as part of the Acadian Diaspora, which resulted from their forced exile by the British from Acadia in 1755. Because of additional migrants who arrived in the early 1800s and a high birth rate, the Acadians increased in numbers rapidly and were soon the most numerous group in many locales where they settled. Once settled in Lousiana, in environments very different from Acadia and in contact with other cultures including Black Creoles, American Indians, Germans, Spaniards, and Italians, the Acadian culture began to change, eventually becoming what has come to be called Cajun culture. With the exception of those in the levee-land region who lost their land to Anglos, most Cajuns lived in relative isolation in rural communities where they farmed, fished, or raised cattle.
It was not until after World War I that mainstream Society entered Acadiana and began to influence Cajun life. Mechanization of farming, fishing, and cattle raising, the building of roads linking southern Louisiana to the rest of the state, mass communication, and compulsory education changed local economic conditions and exposed Cajuns to mainstream Louisiana society. Contact also meant that the use of Cajun French decreased, and in 1921 it was banned from use in public schools.
The end of World War II and the return of Cajun veterans to their homes was the beginning of a new era in Cajun culture, one characterized by continuing involvement in mainstream life and by the birth of Cajun ethnicity, reflected in pride in one's heritage and efforts to preserve some traditional beliefs and practices. In 1968 Lousiana created the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL) as a mechanism to encourage the teaching of French in public schools. Because of conflicts over which French to teach—standard French or Cajun French—the program has not been a total success, though many Cajun children do participate in French-language programs.
Acadians are one of a number of groups of French ancestry in Louisiana, which also include the French-Canadians, Creoles, and those who emigrated directly from France. Relations between the Cajuns and other groups in Louisiana Including Anglos, Creoles, Black Creoles, and others were generally peaceful because the Cajuns were largely self-sufficient, lived in distinctly Cajun regions, were numerically dominant in those regions, and chose to avoid conflict. That they were Roman Catholic while others were mainly Protestant further contributed to group segregation. Within the regional class structure, Cajuns were considered better than Blacks but the lowest group of Whites. In general, they were seen as poor, uneducated, fun-loving backwoods folk. Cajuns generally viewed themselves as superior to the poor rural Whites referred to as Rednecks.
User Contributions:<|endoftext|>Bitcoin might command most of the public’s mindshare on cryptocurrency, but Ripple is a company you definitely don’t want to overlook. Founded in 2012, Ripple sells a currency settlement and exchange platform and issues the third largest cryptocurrency (based on market capitalization) in the world.
But its value proposition doesn’t stem from being a Bitcoin copycat. It actually stems from being one of the most unique cryptocurrencies on the market.
Ripple wants to expedite the process of cross-border payment transfers and, in turn, improve the current global payments system rather than replace it like the company’s competitors do.Unlock tips, systems & recommended resources to stay ahead of the tech curve.To accomplish this goal, Ripple decided to design their token, XRP, as a currency transfer tool instead of as a medium of exchange, underpin it with a unique blockchain that can validate its transactions 215 times faster than Bitcoin can, and eliminate mining as the only way to acquire it.
Ripple as a Currency Transfer Tool
Ripple’s cryptocurrency, XRP, is popular amongst huge financial institutions, like Santander and American Express, because the token can significantly expedite these financial institution’s cross-border payment transfers.
XRP is designed to rapidly transfer any fiat currency into another, allowing financial institutions to shift money from one currency to another and move funds around the world in a matter of seconds. In fact, XRP can settle payments within four seconds and process 1,500 transactions per second.
This is refreshing and a lot more convenient for financial institutions who usually have to deal with typical yet complex global payment systems, which make every bank open a separate account for every country they work in and take an average of three to five days to settle payments
Financial institutions who use Ripple also don’t have to deal with cryptocurrencies that have notoriously slow transaction speeds like Bitcoin.
While XRP can process 1,500 transactions per second, Bitcoin can only process seven transactions per second. And coupled with each cryptocurrency’s volatile prices, there’s more of a risk that financial institutions will receive a lower amount of tokens than initially expected once their transaction finalizes if they transact with Bitcoin instead of XRP.
Ripple's Unique Blockchain Improves Current Global Payments System and Requires No Mining
The XRP transfer process is swift because the cryptocurrency isn’t nearly as decentralized as the other major currencies like Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s main purpose is to introduce a new global currency and payment system that can connect consumers directly with suppliers, removing the need for a financial middleman like a bank.
To do this, their blockchain completely decentralizes the cryptocurrency by requiring a network of millions of miners to solve complex cryptography puzzles to validate each of its transactions, instead of asking a central power like a bank to verify them.
Ripple, on the other hand, wants to speed up the process of cross-border payment transfers and, in turn, improve the existing global payment system. So the currency’s blockchain, RippleNet, requires only 25 independent nodes, managed by various financial institutions, tech companies, and Ripple itself, to all agree on the true state of XRP's public ledger and, in turn, validate its transactions.
This makes XRP much faster at verifying and processing transactions than Bitcoin because instead of millions of global miners validating its transactions, XRP only needs 25 nodes to do so.
In conjunction with RippleNet’s validation process, Ripple also owns and issues the entire supply of XRP, which means you don't have to spend massive amounts of time and electricity to mine XRP like you do to get bitcoins. You can only buy the token on cryptocurrency exchanges.
Ripple's Similarities to Bitcoin
Just like Bitcoin, Ripple has capped the amount of XRP they will ever create at 100 billion tokens. Ripple owns about 60 billion of the total supply and the rest are in circulation. Ripple can also sell up to one billion XRP each month, but they rarely do this because injecting a huge supply of XRP into circulation like that could tank the cryptocurrency’s value.
A Token With a Different Mission
Ripple might be listed under the same crypto umbrella as Bitcoin, but the two cryptocurrencies have entirely different missions. Instead of gutting the current global payment system and replacing it with its own, Ripple wants to make the global payment system better for years to come.
Stay Current on Emerging Tech
Guide Stay Current on Emerging Tech
Originally published Oct 11, 2018 6:00:00 AM, updated October 23 2018<|endoftext|>Redirect your domain
This process is done at your domain provider. Follow this link for further instructions.
If you are having difficulties with this step, don't hesitate to contact us directly.
Moving your site
When you have redirected you domain to one of our servers, you might be promp with the following window.
This means that the domain is pointing at our server, but there is no site configured at the host. Therefor it is displaying our default homepage for empty hosts.
The final step in the sequence is uploading you site to our server. This can be done through SSH or SFTP.
After creating a host, you receive an email with all the necessary information.
To upload the site with SSH you have to go into your terminal an rsync the directory to the hosts public directory.
The following command will upload you directory to the server:
#cd into the directory you want to transfer
#remark the dot, this tells the host it from *this* directory you want to transfer from.
rsync -aP . <username>@<server>:/path/to/public
#This follows the password prompt. Enter the SFTP password from your email.
#first go into the directory
cd website/servebolt_example/upload_tempsite/
#Then upload the directory content to your public directory
rsync -aP . [email protected]:/kunder/tdeq_1741/wangsc_3300/public
If you want to edit your files upon upload you can connect to the server through SSH. For more information read our article on connecting using SSH
Upload through FileZilla is |
Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such Mr Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large moustache. Mrs Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbours. The Dursleys had a small son called Dudley and in their opinion there was no finer The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it. They didn’t think they could bear it if anyone found out about the Potters. Mrs Potter was Mrs Dursley’s sister, but they hadn’t met for several years; in fact, Mrs Dursley pretended she didn’t have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing husband were as unDursleyish as it was possible to be. The Dursleys shuddered to think what the neighbours would say if the Potters arrived in the street. The Dursleys knew that the Potters had a small son, too, but they had never even seen him. This boy was another good reason for keeping the Potters away; they didn’t want Dudley mixing with a child like that. When Mr and Mrs Dursley woke up on the dull, grey Tuesday our story starts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over the country. Mr Dursley hummed as he picked out his most boring tie for work and Mrs Dursley gossiped away happily as she wrestled a screaming Dudley into his high chair. None of them noticed a large tawny owl flutter past the window. At half past eight, Mr Dursley picked up his briefcase, pecked Mrs Dursley on the cheek and tried to kiss Dudley goodbye but missed, because Dudley was now having a tantrum and throwing his cereal at the walls. ‘Little tyke,’ chortled Mr Dursley as he left the house. He got into his car and backed out of number four’s It was on the corner of the street that he noticed the first sign of something peculiar – a cat reading a map. For a second, Mr Dursley didn’t realise what he had seen – then he jerked his head around to look again. There was a tabby cat standing on the corner of Privet Drive, but there wasn’t a map in sight. What could he have been thinking of? It must have been a trick of the light. Mr Dursley blinked and stared at the cat. It stared back. As Mr Dursley drove around the corner and up the road, he watched the cat in his mirror. It was now reading the sign that said Privet Drive – no, looking at the sign; cats couldn’t read maps or signs. Mr Dursley gave himself a little shake and put the cat out of his mind. As he drove towards town he thought of nothing except a large order of drills he was hoping to get that day. But on the edge of town, drills were driven out of his mind by something else. As he sat in the usual morning traffic jam, he couldn’t help noticing that there seemed to be a lot of strangely dressed people about. People in cloaks. Mr Dursley couldn’t bear people who dressed in funny clothes – the get-ups you saw on young people! He supposed this was some stupid new fashion. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and his eyes fell on a huddle of these weirdos standing quite close by. They were whispering excitedly together. Mr Dursley was enraged to see that a couple of them weren’t young at all; why, that man had to be older than he was, and wearing an emerald-green cloak! The nerve of him! But then it struck Mr Dursley that this was probably some silly stunt – these people were obviously collecting for something ... yes, that would be it. The traffic moved on, and a few minutes later, Mr Dursley arrived in the Grunnings car park, his mind Mr Dursley always sat with his back to the window in his office on the ninth floor. If he hadn’t, he might have found it harder to concentrate on drills that morning. He didn’t see the owls swooping past in broad daylight, though people down in the street did; they pointed and gazed open-mouthed as owl after owl sped overhead. Most of them had never seen an owl even at nighttime. Mr Dursley, however, had a perfectly normal, owl-free morning. He yelled at five different people. He made several important telephone calls and shouted a bit more. He was in a very good mood until lunch-time, when he thought he’d stretch his legs and walk across the road to buy himself a bun from the baker’s He’d forgotten all about the people in cloaks until he passed a group of them next to the baker’s. He eyed them angrily as he passed. He didn’t know why, but they made him uneasy. This lot were whispering excitedly, too, and he couldn’t see a single collecting tin. It was on his way back past them, clutching a large doughnut in a bag, that he caught a few words of what they were ‘The Potters, that’s right, that’s what I heard –’ ‘– yes, their son, Harry –’ Mr Dursley stopped dead. Fear flooded him. He looked back at the whisperers as if he wanted to say something to them, but He dashed back across the road, hurried up to his office, snapped at his secretary not to disturb him, seized his telephone and had almost finished dialling his home number when he changed his mind. He put the receiver back down and stroked his moustache, thinking ... no, he was being stupid. Potter wasn’t such an unusual name. He was sure there were lots of people called Potter who had a son called Harry. Come to think of it, he wasn’t even sure his nephew was called Harry. He’d never even seen the boy. It might have been Harvey. Or Harold. There was no point in worrying Mrs Dursley, she always got so upset at any mention of her sister. He didn’t blame her – if he’d had a sister like that ... but all the same, those people in cloaks ... He found it a lot harder to concentrate on drills that afternoon, and when he left the building at five o’clock, he was still so worried that he walked straight into someone just outside the door. ‘Sorry,’ he grunted, as the tiny old man stumbled and almost fell. It was a few seconds before Mr Dursley realised that the man was wearing a violet cloak. He didn’t seem at all upset at being almost knocked to the ground. On the contrary, his face split into a wide smile and he said in a squeaky voice that made passers-by stare: ‘Don’t be sorry, my dear sir, for nothing could upset me today! Rejoice, for You-Know-Who has gone at last! Even Muggles like yourself should be celebrating, this happy, happy And the old man hugged Mr Dursley around the middle and Mr Dursley stood rooted to the spot. He had been hugged by a complete stranger. He also thought he had been called a Muggle, whatever that was. He was rattled. He hurried to his car and set off home, hoping he was imagining things, which he had never hoped before, because he didn’t approve of imagination. As he pulled into the driveway of number four, the first thing he saw – and it didn’t improve his mood – was the tabby cat he’d spotted that morning. It was now sitting on his garden wall. He was sure it was the same one; it had the same markings around its eyes. ‘Shoo!’ said Mr Dursley loudly. The cat didn’t move. It just gave him a stern look. Was this normal cat behaviour, Mr Dursley wondered. Trying to pull himself together, he let himself into the house. He was still determined not to mention anything to his wife. Mrs Dursley had had a nice, normal day. She told him over dinner all about Mrs Next Door’s problems with her daughter and how Dudley had learnt a new word (‘Shan’t!’). Mr Dursley tried to act normally. When Dudley had been put to bed, he went into the living-room in time to catch the last report on the evening news: ‘And finally, bird-watchers everywhere have reported that the nation’s owls have been behaving very unusually today. Although owls normally hunt at night and are hardly ever seen in daylight, there have been hundreds of sightings of these birds flying in every direction since sunrise. Experts are unable to explain why the owls have suddenly changed their sleeping pattern.’ The news reader allowed himself a grin. ‘Most mysterious. And now, over to Jim McGuffin with the weather. Going to be any more showers of ‘Well, Ted,’ said the weatherman, ‘I don’t know about that, but it’s not only the owls that have been acting oddly today. Viewers as far apart as Kent, Yorkshire and Dundee have been phoning in to tell me that instead of the rain I promised yesterday, they’ve had a downpour of shooting stars! Perhaps people have been celebrating Bonfire Night early – it’s not until next week, folks! But I can promise a wet night tonight.’ Mr Dursley sat frozen in his armchair. Shooting stars all over Britain? Owls flying by daylight? Mysterious people in cloaks all over the place? And a whisper, a whisper about the Potters ... Mrs Dursley came into the living-room carrying two cups of tea. It was no good. He’d have to say something to her. He cleared his throat nervously. ‘Er – Petunia, dear – you haven’t heard from your sister lately, have you?’ As he had expected, Mrs Dursley looked shocked and angry. After all, they normally pretended she didn’t have a sister. ‘No,’ she said sharply. ‘Why?’ ‘Funny stuff on the news,’ Mr Dursley mumbled. ‘Owls ... shooting stars ... and there were a lot of funny-looking people in ‘Well, I just thought ... maybe ... it was something to do with ... you know ... her lot.’ Mrs Dursley sipped her tea through pursed lips. Mr Dursley wondered whether he dared tell her he’d heard the name ‘Potter’. He decided he didn’t dare. Instead he said, as casually as he could, ‘Their son – he’d be about Dudley’s age now, wouldn’t he?’ ‘I suppose so,’ said Mrs Dursley stiffly. ‘What’s his name again? Howard, isn’t it?’ ‘Harry. Nasty, common name, if you ask me.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mr Dursley, his heart sinking horribly. ‘Yes, I He didn’t say another word on the subject as they went upstairs to bed. While Mrs Dursley was in the bathroom, Mr Dursley crept to the bedroom window and peered down into the front garden. The cat was still there. It was staring down Privet Drive as though it was waiting for something. Was he imagining things? Could all this have anything to do with the Potters? If it did ... if it got out that they were related to a pair of – well, he didn’t think he could bear it. The Dursleys got into bed. Mrs Dursley fell asleep quickly but Mr Dursley lay awake, turning it all over in his mind. His last, comforting thought before he fell asleep was that even if the Potters were involved, there was no reason for them to come near him and Mrs Dursley. The Potters knew very well what he and Petunia thought about them and their kind ... He couldn’t see how he and Petunia could get mixed up in anything that might be going on. He yawned and turned over. It couldn’t affect them ... How very wrong he was. Mr Dursley might have been drifting into an uneasy sleep, but the cat on the wall outside was showing no sign of sleepiness. It was sitting as still as a statue, its eyes fixed unblinkingly on the far corner of Privet Drive. It didn’t so much as quiver when a car door slammed in the next street, nor when two owls swooped overhead. In fact, it was nearly midnight before the cat moved at all. A man appeared on the corner the cat had been watching, appeared so suddenly and silently you’d have thought he’d just popped out of the ground. The cat’s tail twitched and its eyes Nothing like this man had ever been seen in Privet Drive. He was tall, thin and very old, judging by the silver of his hair and beard, which were both long enough to tuck into his belt. He was wearing long robes, a purple cloak which swept the ground and high-heeled, buckled boots. His blue eyes were light, bright and sparkling behind half-moon spectacles and his nose was very long and crooked, as though it had been broken at least twice. This man’s name was Albus Dumbledore. Albus Dumbledore didn’t seem to realise that he had just arrived in a street where everything from his name to his boots was unwelcome. He was busy rummaging in his cloak, looking for something. But he did seem to realise he was being watched, because he looked up suddenly at the cat, which was still staring at him from the other end of the street. For some reason, the sight of the cat seemed to amuse him. He chuckled and muttered, ‘I He had found what he was looking for in his inside pocket. It seemed to be a silver cigarette lighter. He flicked it open, held it up in the air and clicked it. The nearest street lamp went out with a little pop. He clicked it again – the next lamp flickered into darkness. Twelve times he clicked the Put-Outer, until the only lights left in the whole street were two tiny pinpricks in the distance, which were the eyes of the cat watching him. If anyone looked out of their window now, even beady-eyed Mrs Dursley, they wouldn’t be able to see anything that was happening down on the pavement. Dumbledore slipped the Put-Outer back inside his cloak and set off down the street towards number four, where he sat down on the wall next to the cat. He didn’t look at it, but after a moment he spoke to it. ‘Fancy seeing you here, Professor McGonagall.’ He turned to smile at the tabby, but it had gone. Instead he was smiling at a rather severe-looking woman who was wearing square glasses exactly the shape of the markings the cat had had around its eyes. She, too, was wearing a cloak, an emerald one. Her black hair was drawn into a tight bun. She looked distinctly ruffled. ‘How did you know it was me?’ she asked. ‘My dear Professor, I’ve never seen a cat sit so stiffly.’ ‘You’d be stiff if you’d been sitting on a brick wall all day,’ said ‘All day? When you could have been celebrating? I must have passed a dozen feasts and parties on my way here.’ ‘Oh yes, everyone’s celebrating, all right,’ she said impatiently. ‘You’d think they’d be a bit more careful, but no – even the Muggles have noticed something’s going on. It was on their news.’ She jerked her head back at the Dursleys’ dark living-room window. ‘I heard it. Flocks of owls ... shooting stars ... Well, they’re not completely stupid. They were bound to notice something. Shooting stars down in Kent – I’ll bet that was Dedalus Diggle. He never had much sense.’ ‘You can’t blame them,’ said Dumbledore gently. ‘We’ve had precious little to celebrate for eleven years.’ ‘I know that,’ said Professor McGonagall irritably. ‘But that’s no reason to lose our heads. People are being downright careless, out on the streets in broad daylight, not even dressed in Muggle She threw a sharp, sideways glance at Dumbledore here, as though hoping he was going to tell her something, but he didn’t, so she went on: ‘A fine thing it would be if, on the very day YouKnow-Who seems to have disappeared at last, the Muggles found out about us all. I suppose he really has gone, Dumbledore?’ ‘It certainly seems so,’ said Dumbledore. ‘We have much to be thankful for. Would you care for a sherbet lemon?’ ‘A sherbet lemon. They’re a kind of Muggle sweet I’m rather ‘No, thank you,’ said Professor McGonagall coldly, as though she didn’t think this was the moment for sherbet lemons. ‘As I say, even if You-Know-Who has gone –’ ‘My dear Professor, surely a sensible person like yourself can call him by his name? All this “You-Know-Who” nonsense – for eleven years I have been trying to persuade people to call him by his proper name: Voldemort.’ Professor McGonagall flinched, but Dumbledore, who was unsticking two sherbet lemons, seemed not to notice. ‘It all gets so confusing if we keep saying “YouKnow-Who”.’ I have never seen any reason to be frightened of ‘I know you haven’t,’ said Professor McGonagall, sounding halfexasperated, half-admiring. ‘But you’re different. Everyone knows you’re the only one You-Know – oh, all right, Voldemort – was ‘You flatter me,’ said Dumbledore calmly. ‘Voldemort had powers I will never have.’ ‘Only because you’re too – well – noble to use them.’ ‘It’s lucky it’s dark. I haven’t blushed so much since Madam Pomfrey told me she liked my new earmuffs.’ Professor McGonagall shot a sharp look at Dumbledore and said, ‘The owls are nothing to the rumours that are flying around. You know what everyone’s saying? About why he’s disappeared? About what finally stopped him?’ It seemed that Professor McGonagall had reached the point she was most anxious to discuss, the real reason she had been waiting on a cold hard wall all day, for neither as a cat nor as a woman had she fixed Dumbledore with such a piercing stare as she did now. It was plain that whatever ‘everyone’ was saying, she was not going to believe it until Dumbledore told her it was true. Dumbledore, however, was choosing another sherbet lemon and ‘What they’re saying,’ she pressed on, ‘is that last night Voldemort turned up in Godric’s Hollow. He went to find the Potters. The rumour is that Lily and James Potter are – are – that they’re – Dumbledore bowed his head. Professor McGonagall gasped. ‘Lily and James ... I can’t believe it ... I didn’t want to believe it Dumbledore reached out and patted her on the shoulder. ‘ |
soon as you've run repair, everything's fine. No. You should always run DBCC CHECKDB a second time after running repair, to make sure the first repair fixed everything. Sometimes a corruption prevents some deeper checks being done, and when it's fixed, the next DBCC CHECKDB can run the deeper check and find more corruptions. I call this 'corruption masking'. The other reason is that repair probably just deleted some of your data. What effect is that going to have on the application? What if that's medical patient data? Or insurance records? Or back account details?
• Repair can always fix everything. No. There are some things that DBCC CHECKDB cannot fix. See CHECKDB From Every Angle: Can CHECKDB repair everything? for the list.
• Repair is safe to use on system databases. No. It cannot be used on master or tempdb because they cannot be put into single-user mode. You can do it on model, but it's unlikely to have an effect as there aren't any user tables in model (unless you create them) and system tables generally don't get repaired. You can run it on msdb, but it might have strange side-effects. See Is running repair on msdb safe?.
• You can run repairs online. No. Repairs are always offline, in that the database must be in single-user mode.
• REPAIR_REBUILD will fix everything. No. REPAIR_REBUILD only fixes problem in nonclustered indexes. In 2005 onwards, REPAIR_FAST does nothing at all.
• Repairs on a repl Publisher propagate to the Subscribers. No. Anything done by repair is NOT marked for replication. You must reinitialize your Subscribers if you repair a Publisher.
• Repairs always fix-up constraints. No. It has no idea that constraints exist. After repairing a database with constraints, you should run DBCC CHECKCONSTRAINT to make sure they're still valid.
• Repairs try to save data. No. It doesn't go out of it's way to delete data, but it doesn't go out of it's way to save data in most cases. 'Delete what's broken and fix up all the links' is my sound-bite explanation of what repair does. Fix things as fast as possible and as provably correct as possible.
• EMERGENCY mode repair will always work. No. I've seen cases where something broken in the file-system caused it to fail. Don't rely on repair.
• You can undo repairs. It depends. If you started an explicit transaction, then you can roll everything back if you don't like what it did. People rarely do this though. EMERGENCY mode repair can never be rolled back.
Repair's a dangerous beast and should only be used as a last resort, or to bring a VVVLDB online again potentially much faster than a full restore, when a small amount of data loss can be tolerated. This is just a quick brain-dump of things people get wrong about repair.
Have a great weekend – tomrorow I'll report on last week's survey and kick off a new one. Cheers!<|endoftext|>1. Home
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SBI PO Interview 2018: General Banking Questions with Answers
Sep 4, 2018 12:05 IST
SBI PO Interview 2018: General Banking Questions with Answers
SBI PO Interview 2018: General Banking Questions with Answers
SBI PO Mains exam has over now. The Interview process for the same will commence shortly. Here we are providing some Questions, most likely to be asked in interview.
1. What are NPA (Non-Performing Assets)?
Answer: According to RBI, “An asset, including a leased asset, becomes non-performing when it failed to generate income for the bank. A ‘non-performing asset’ (NPA) was defined as a credit facility in respect of which the interest and/ or installment of principal has remained ‘past due’ for a specified period of time. The specified period was reduced in a phased manner and from the year 1995 onwards its 90 days.”
In other words , a loan or credit facility turns bad if the interest or installment remains unpaid even after the due date — and turns into a nonperforming asset, or NPA, if it remains unpaid for a period of more than 90 days.
In fact, if any amount to be received by the bank remained overdue for more than 90 days, it is classified as an NPA.
Video (03:00 Minutes): Critical Bank PO Interview Questions for IBPS, SBI, BOB, RBI & Others
2. Mention some steps taken by RBI to tackle NPA.
Answer: RBI has taken some major steps to tackle NPA in recent past. Strategic Debt Restructuring (SDR), 5/25 restructuring, Joint Lenders’ Forum (JLF) and Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) are some of them.
3. What is difference between NEFT and RTGS?
Answer: It is system of Inter Bank Transfer. There are two systems of Inter Bank Transfer - RTGS and NEFT. Both these systems are maintained by Central Bank of India, RBI.
RTGS (Real Time Gross Settlement): This is a system where the processing of funds transfer instructions takes place at the time they are received (real time). Also the settlement of funds transfer instructions occurs individually on an instruction by instruction basis (gross settlement). RTGS is the fastest possible interbank money transfer facility available through secure banking channels in India.
Fund transfer transactions under this system are settled in batches as opposed to the continuous, individual settlement in RTGS.
IBPS PO 2018: Syllabus, Exam Pattern, Salary, Critical Dates & More
4. What is disinvestment? What is the objective of it?
Answer: Disinvestment can be defined as the action of a government selling or liquidating an asset or subsidiary. Disinvestment is aimed at reducing the financial burden on the government due to incapable PSUs and to improve public finances.
It increases competition and market discipline and provides long-term growth for an organisation.
5. What is retail lending?
Answer: Retail banking can be broadly defined as lending to individuals. It covers a host of loans: those meant for investment in housing, those for purchases of consumer durables and automobiles and those for education or any unspecified purposes.
With an increase in the Non-performing Asset burdening the books of the Banks, commercial banks once again seem to be focusing on the retail lending business.
Retail Banking transited from being an unsafe and complex business to one considered easy to execute money-making and comparatively safe. In some instances, such as housing, the income earned (rent received) or expenditure saved (stoppage of rent payment) from the investment is seen as providing a part of the wherewithal needed to service the loan.
6. What is the punch line of SBI?
• Pure Banking Nothing Else
• The Nation banks on us
• The banker to every Indian
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Register to view Complete PDF<|endoftext|>Women in Acts (2)
Our Bible Reading today tells us about a woman named Sapphira. She and her husband, Ananias, were part of the church in Jerusalem. Acts 4:34b-35 tells us about the people in that church. “Everyone who owned fields or houses sold them. They brought the money they got and gave it to the apostles. Then everyone was given whatever they needed.”
Ananias and Sapphira sold some land, but they gave only part of the money to the apostles. It was not wrong for Ananias and Sapphira to only give part of the money to the church. But it seems that they lied about how much money they gave. They both died because they lied to God.
There are people today in the church who are like Ananias and Sapphira. These people pretend that they give lots of money to the church so that other people will praise them and respect them. But God always wants us to tell the truth. Be sure that everything you say/sign is true and pleases God.<|endoftext|>Friday, May 05, 2006
The 5th Century Anglo-Saxon Invasion of England
When I was in England recently, I was surprised by a change in thought about the Saxon invasion (or should I now say immigration?) of Britain during the fall of the Roman Empire. A tour guide made it sound as if the Saxons were well settled in Britain by then and indicated they just "rose to prominence" after the Romans left. This is in stark contrast to tales of Saxon "Sea Wolves" fascinatingly rendered by such authors as Rosemary Sutcliff. So I became curious about what the archaeological record had to say about it. I found this interesting article by William Bakken about the subject.
The 5th Century Anglo-Saxon Invasion of England: "An increasing amount of new information about the transition period is being supplied by archaeology. The evidence from first-hand archaeology is free of errors induced by copyists and editor, but is susceptible to improper interpretation and must be used carefully. The chronology of English artifacts requires correlation of evidence in England and on the continent with coins or other materials that can be accurately dated. From this a rough chronological sequence has been developed primarily based on changes in the styles of pottery and jewelry.20 In general, the recovered artifacts are grave goods many of which tend to be durable. It is necessary to look at all of the grave goods for chronological indications as heirlooms and plunder may be included in graves. Sequences of pottery, brooches, buckles and spear heads are now reasonably well established for dating.21 In addition to chronology, pottery and brooches particularly can be used as evidence of continental homelands of immigrant groups.
There was a gradual transition from cremation early in the settlement period to inhumation as the English were influenced by British customs and particularly as they were introduced to Christianity. This happened both in England and on the continent. Therefore, cremation indicates an early grave. Pagan inhumation burials were generally supplied with grave goods which makes them excellent sources of information.
Archaeological artifacts of the sub-Roman Britons are difficult to find. They appear to have continued to use the durable goods produced in the Roman period as long as possible and then replaced them with goods of less durable leather and wood construction. In addition, on sites that were abandoned, the latest levels are the least well preserved. It requires specialized techniques to recover the upper remains of wood construction. However, when allowances are made, the archaeological record still shows a drastic reduction in population and standard of living of the British remaining in southeastern and central England.22
Archaeological evidence indicates there were Germanic troops in what became England well before the fifth century.23 The Romans used auxiliary troops from all over the world to provide garrisons for their military installations. Thus from Roman records, we know that German troops were stationed on Hadrians wall. These troops did not leave identifiable artifacts because they were issued Roman equipment. By the fourth century, the Romans were enlisting Germanic troops under their own leaders with their own equipment. Artifacts show that Germanic troops were guarding towns and roads in England from the fourth century on. Much of the pottery that identifies Germanic people has been found along the Saxon Shore where it appears auxiliary troops were stationed. Cremation cemeteries have been found that date from before the end of Roman rule in Britain. These early cemeteries are generally concentrated near Roman towns, forts or transportation routes. Their location pattern is similar to that of a wheel made pottery decorated in Saxon styles called Romano-Saxon ware. This pottery was apparently made by British potterers for the Germanic trade.24
Brooches, commonly used as clothing fasteners provide a valuable indication of date and origin. The shape and type of decoration varied between tribal groups. Round and equal arm brooches were common among Saxons, while the Angles and Jutes preferred cruciform brooches. In addition, wrist clasps were common among the Angles.25
Pottery fashions have about the same division as brooches. The Angles and Jutes favored rectangular decoration while the Saxons used more curvilinear styles. In addition, stamped decoration was common on Saxon pottery and was not used by the Angles and Jutes.26
Weapon ownership was almost essential in the settlement period and, therefore, weapons were commonly placed in graves. Spears were the most common, typically an iron tip riveted to an ash shaft. Shields of lime wood with a leather cover and an iron boss at the center have also been found. Knives and swords were too valuable to be placed in the graves of ordinary soldiers and farmers and are thus an indication of aristocracy. The swords used by many of the German nobility were heirlooms passed down from generation to generation.27 Helmets and arrows were also rarly found."
Post a Comment<|endoftext|>Grid computing is a very efficient and cheap way of creating super computers. It works by connecting a lot of computers together to form a kind of a network or grid, hence the name. The more computers connected, the more power are available on the grid. IBM has created The World Community Grid to help find cures for AIDS and other sciences that would normally require super computers. All you have to do is download a little program and that’s all it takes for you to be a part of the world wide grid. You then donate your computers idle time for calculations that could lead to cures for various diseases.
The program you have to download works very well without any problems, but it’s got issues. It can only leverage 1 CPU and there is no 64bit edition. My computer is a 64bit Dell Precision with dual Xeon processors and 64bit Windows XP. 64bit processors are capable of processing much faster than the regular 32bit processors. It means that I only donate about a quarter of my total CPU power to The World Community Grid.
The whole idea with grid computing is to leverage the power of the individual machines or nodes as they are called on a grid, so why doesn’t IBM make a version that will, especially when the new dual core processors are becomming mainstream in laptops and in early 2007, Intel are launching quad core (4 cores) processor. 64bit processors are also slowly becoming popular and have been for some time on servers.
IBM, please make a version that leverage the power of my Dell, it’s for the greater good.
Comments are closed<|endoftext|>Looking Beyond Driver Fault in Serious Accidents
There is a common perception that lawsuits involving car accidents are about which driver was at fault in an accident involving two or more vehicles. Often such disputes arise, or maybe it is clear who the at-fault driver is, but the insurance company for the at-fault driver is not treating the injured person fairly. Thus, people hire attorneys who pursue the case for them
What is often overlooked in this common perception about automobile accident lawsuits is that many accidents that involve terrible injuries or even death may not involve the fault of a driver at all, or may involve only a single vehicle. Our firm regularly is called upon to investigate and pursue automobile accidents that involve much more than deciding who was at fault in an accident. Here are a few examples of potential claims that often go unnoticed by families of accident victims.
Vehicle design and crashworthiness
Car accidents that involve serious injury or death should always involve an analysis of the vehicle involved whether the victim is in a multiple car or single car accident. Vehicles can have defects that make an accident more likely. Certain vehicles are more prone to rollover during a hard turn. Safety features can malfunction on a car or vehicle maintenance was done improperly by a service technician, making braking or steering difficult. Airbags may fail to deploy or seatbelts may fail to keep a passenger restrained. Tires can prematurely blowout. There are numerous aspects of the design of a vehicle that should be investigated after a serious crash. Sometimes the vehicle itself can cause the crash, and sometimes safety features on the vehicle that are supposed to keep a person safe during a crash fail to work properly and cause and otherwise survivable accident to become fatal. These are issues an experienced attorney will evaluate in any serious injury or death-related crash.
Roadway conditions
The job of road builders is to build roads that will keep the travelling public safe during normal vehicle operation and during foreseeable variations from normal use. For instance, road builders know that vehicles sometimes veer onto the shoulder of the roadway, so they are required to build up the ground off the side of the road to allow these vehicles the opportunity to safely recover and continue travelling in their lane of travel. Guardrails are designed to prevent vehicles from encountering a serious danger close to the roadway such as a deep drop off or the concrete end of a bridge rail. Lighting an signage are often needed to alert drivers of upcoming hazards, particularly in areas of road construction. Unfortunately, roadbuilders to not always follow the plans to ensure the roadway in built as safe as possible. Road edge drop offs can sometimes keep cars that veer slightly off the road from recovering. Guardrails and signs can be misplaced or not installed correctly. Again, a good attorney will look at these issues anytime an accident involves serious injury or death.
Driver distractions
Accidents often involve decisions made before a person even gets behind the wheel. Accidents involving drunk drivers not only involve the drunk driver, but also the person or establishment that served the person. If a bar continues to serve a visible intoxicated person, that bar can be held responsible to anyone that person may injure. Large truck drivers and the companies they work for can put the public in danger. 18 wheeler drivers driving too many hours in a day or with equipment that is not properly inspected can endanger the public. Transportation companies hiring drivers with terrible driving records to drive large trucks can also put the public in danger. Issues beyond what happened once a driver gets behind the wheel should also be investigated any time there is a serious accident
The serious accident attorneys at Jinks, Crow & Dickson PC are honored any time a family allows us to investigate a serious accident, and we explore all angles to ensure our clients get the justice they deserve. Doing these investigations is not easy, and is often time consuming and expensive, but we pursue these claims without any expense or fee to our clients unless we are able to make a recovery for them. Car accidents can forever change lives. It is important to hire a law firm that can look at all angles of a wreck to bring justice to an injured or grieving family.
Contact Information<|endoftext|>Friday, May 29, 2015
On Sylvia Plath’s Development
Of all the paths hinted at in her juvenilia, this is the one [magical figures] that Plath initially followed. In the mid-1950's, her poetry returns again and again to the notion that she must reconcile herself to a disenchanted world. Not until several years had passed did Plath discover that, in fact, her true gifts lay in the opposite direction: not objective description of the world, but |
healing programme is to soften the cell and to restore its fluidity. Although supplements are important, the cells need to be open to absorb them properly. The cell membrane needs to be opened with a non- challenging diet that is gluten free and dairy free.
I did not find this a problem as I substituted grains with seeds such as buckwheat and quinoa that are wonderfully hydrating to the colon, which is the organ that firstly registers dehydration in the body.
I ate an abundance of mineral rich organic vegetables along with proteins such as lamb, chicken or fish. I made my own homemade soups to flood my body with alkaline minerals. I made sure that I drank up to two litres of water a day which would also include herbal teas. I juiced the most wonderful concoctions of vegetables such as beetroot with carrots and apples. All this raw energy really oxidised my cells and gave me lots of energy. As my energy and vitality increased I felt less anxious and happier to be in the moment, unattached to outcomes.
What the diet was doing was preparing my body to better absorb the supplements and to encourage the cells to begin the process of detoxification. When a person is too acidic for instance and there is a lot of inflammation in the body less zinc is absorbed. After a week on the change of diet I then began to add in supplements such as magnesium and omega 3 oils. In week 6 of the programme I began to add in some flax oil and this had a profound shift in my mood. It felt as though my cells that had been locked in, were loosening up and beginning to eliminate their toxic load.
By three months I knew in my heart I was well on the road to recovery. My brain felt like it had woken up from a horrible nightmare. It was like my body and mind were being flooded with energy and light. In six months I was fully detoxed and feeling super well. The depression that had been a constant for over 4 years was finally gone. I was free.
I felt driven to study dietary healing because I knew that this was the answer to biochemical depression. We are what we eat and the supplements and oils we ingest. Our mind and physical body are inextricably linked. Our cellular health is what ultimately determines our mental health. We cannot expect to eat a blocking diet that is high in sugar, damaged fats and chemicals that our bodies cannot tolerate and expect to feel well. Processed foods are made up of chemicals that are foreign to the body and interfere with cellular health.
Dr Bill Walsh discovered that some people are unable to make the dietary changes when they are unwell. This is because they lack the energy and motivation to do so. For these people he advocates for them to begin supplementation first before they tackle the diet. I personally did not find this a problem as I had already begun to eat a healthy diet and being the personality I am I don’t do things by half. However I accept that there are those who need to take some supplements to bring the energy up first before they can initiate the dietary changes. That’s okay.
In a nutshell we need to open and expand the cell with the least challenging diet to the bodily fluids. We need to encourage movement in the cells because with depression at a cell level we are blocked and the energy is stagnant. Hydration with adequate filtered water gives the cells the fluid they need to begin the process of detoxification. The oils begin to soften the cell so it begins to open up. The minerals help the cell to regain its correct polarity and encourage the cell to release its toxic load. The alkaline minerals from the vegetables restores the cellular PH, reduces inflammation and brings a sense of peace and calm to the mind.
I can’t say that my healing journey was a walk in the park. It was a rocky road as I had many healing crises to contend with. However, after each healing crisis I felt lighter and clearer. This is where I needed the most support as some days it felt as though my body was releasing too much and I had to slow it down by reducing the supplements and introducing naturopathic techniques that help me eliminate toxicity quickly.
In hindsight, I wouldn’t have missed my experiences for all the world because it was what has helped me to gain massive clarity on mental health problems such as depression. My own personal experience of the dietary healing programme enables me to support others on a similar journey and to help them to understand what is happening at each stage. Depression is not a condition anyone has to live with. It is treatable.<|endoftext|>Candy Day
The Joyland's manager tried several promotions to boost attendance, particularly for the Friday shows. Friday, October 14, was "candy day" at the Joyland, and the ledger shows that 85 cents had been spent a few days before on "chicklets" (chewing gum) to be handed out to patrons. Receipts were up that day, but only $1.25 over the previous Friday, once the cost of the chicklets was deducted. There are two further expense entries for "chicklets" and "candy" with the notation "for matinee" in the ledger for later weeks, suggesting that "candy day" was tried a few more times. Giving candy away also suggests that the Joyland did not sell concessions (candy, peanuts, etc.) as did its competitor, the Bijou. There are no further expense entries for candy, and no separate category for receipts from concessions in the ledger.
The following Friday was "high school day," and the Wilmington Star commented the next day that the Joyland had been "crowded to capacity."
The ledger does not include receipts for Friday, October 22, however.<|endoftext|>If a majority of submissions said dragons were the biggest risk to our nation's defence, would National change its foreign policy? Such are the questions that arise when a minister shrugs off science in favour of "listening"
When it comes to making it mandatory to put folic acid in our bread, I've kept an open mind these past three years. Mandatory is a pretty big step, one that you should only take if you're utterly convinced of the science urging you in that direction.
Ah yes, science.
In 2009 when the new National-led government stalled on Labour's commitment to fortify all bread with folic acid, there was a fair bit of doubt floating about. Britain and Ireland had delayed their intended fortification because of three pieces of research that raised the possibility of a link with folic acid and cancer.
When you had ACT and the Greens both urging you to jam on the brakes, perhaps it was time to adhere to the old journalists' maxim "if in doubt, leave it out".
So the government set up a working group and spent a long, long three years working through the issue. In that time, so the likes of the Paediatric Society say, further research has down-played the cancer link. Any number of doctors are prepared to say that, without question, folic acid is safe, nothing more than a vitamin with no adverse side effects.
Now some still disagree. They seem to be in the minority, but if after three years of debate that was the consensus, fair enough. Or a minister might say that even the concerns of the expert minority are enough to make her pause. If after three years of working group work remaining voluntary was their considered advice, a minister could point to that as grounds for a difficult decision.
But surely one thing a minister wouldn't do, after all this time spent by the working group, the controversey and the screeds of global scientific research, is say 'meh' to science and that her priority was to listen to submissions in an eight week consultation period.
With the risk of several hundred more cancer cases per year being argued by one side and the potential to save 20 kids a year from spina bifida being argued by more doctors on the other, surely the one thing you don't do is say science doesn't matter.
And yet that's just what Food Safety Minister Kate Wilkinson has said. Or should we call her Food Choice Minister, because safety implies a focus on scientific evidence as to risk, and that's clearly something that doesn't trouble her.
Wilkinson blithely said on Q+A that:
"The decision that was made was really based on consumer choice rather than the science..."
She repeated the assertion (eg "consumer choice was really the one that made the most difference in terms of the decision"), mentioning that the science was conflicted and as she was no scientist, she wasn't well placed to judge. The cancer risk, however, didn't influence her decision. It really was all about choice and people making up their own mind. She stressed that as minister her job was to listen to consultation. Given that 88 of the 134 submissions favoured remaining voluntary – largely on the grounds of consumer choice – that was what she'd do.
Which is a quite remarkable statement. I'm sure many of you can think of examples when a majority of submissions has been ignored (mention them in comments). For one, if this government is so committed to listening, it'll surely announce an end to its partial asset sales programme today!
Is National now going to make policy simply on the weight of public submissions? Will no judgment be applied? Is all you have to do is convince National now is simply stack submissions? Is that good governance?
There are questions about the decision itself – such as whether "choice" is a sufficient reason when over 50% of people surveyed by her own ministry last year put 0,1, or 2 out of ten when asked if they knew much about folic acid. And there's the point that starting to take folic acid as soon as you learn your pregnant won't save the extra 20-odd kids a year from neural tube defects, such as spina bifida, that could have been saved by mandatory fortification.
But that's not what this post is about; it's about the decision-making process.
As we saw in the debate on the alcohol purchasing age, there can be there intense debate over what evidence means, but it's expected these days that good policy is evidence-based policy. I can't remember ever hearing a minister simply say that evidence wasn't part of her decision making and that she relied entirely on submissions.
So who were the submitters and what did they say? Here's the Ministry for Primary Industries' summary, which noted that 88 of the 134 submissions were against mandatory fortification and 39 were pro:
Submitters who favoured mandatory fortification considered that the benefits of fortification outweighed the costs and said the risks to the general population were minimal or non- existent. Submissions favouring mandatory fortification were mainly from professional medical associations, doctors and families affected by a neural tube defect (NTD) pregnancy.
Those submitters who did not support mandatory fortification were concerned about the risks associated with adding folic acid to bread, questioned the proportionality of the response (fortifying all bread when only a very small subset of the population would benefit) and objected to the lack of choice mandatory fortification would impose on consumers. Submissions favouring voluntary fortification were mainly from individual consumers, industry associations and individual bakery firms.
So the baking industry won the day over the medical folk, not by the strength of their arguments or superiority of their science, but by the weight of numbers.
We're an anti-intellectual enough country at the best of times, but to be so cavalier about science is a terrible signal to send.
Of course Wilkinson may totally understand the science and may be stressing the importance of choice for political gain and to avoid taking sides in the scientific debate. But in a way that's even worse. It's like dumbing yourself down so you fit in with the cool kids.
I suspect politically she's with the majority here; New Zealanders hate being told what to do and public opinion tends stress that people don't want to be "dosed" without their consent or face "mass medication".
And if Wilkinson shared that view and was worried about the risk to the many over the benefit to the few, then she could and should have made that case.
But to simply shrug off the science and choose choice is to abdicate any responsibility as a minister. We might as well just have accountants in that role to tally up submission numbers.
Comments (19)
by Danyl Mclauchlan on September 03, 2012
Danyl Mclauchlan
I see miracles all around me
Stop and look around, it's all astounding
Water, fire, air and dirt
Fucking magnets, how do they work?
And I don't wanna talk to a scientist
Y'all motherfuckers lying, and getting me pissed
- Miracles, Insane Clown Posse.
by Dave Guerin on September 03, 2012
Dave Guerin
Umm, Tim , for a piece arguing that we should depend upon science, all you've done is link to transcripts of two duelling experts on Q+A and the Minister. If you'd linked to the working group's work, that might have been more in tune with your argument, but I recognise your posts are cross-promotion for Q+A.
You've also set up a false dichotomy of science being perfect and public opinion being bad. I'll trust you that the science shows that adding folic acid to bread will help save 20 kids from neural tube defects. Once you have that information though, you need to balance that up against the costs, which do include (unscientific as it may be) people being pissed off at having something added to their food..I'm not too fussed either way about it, but others are and they're allowed to have an opinion.
by Richard Aston on September 03, 2012
Richard Aston
I am sorry Tim but I don't have the same level of faith in "science" as it seems you do.
I also find it in-congruent that the "scientific" view is against many supplements being sold over the counter but ok to add a supplement like Folic acid into everyone's bread.
I could say the arrogance is breathtaking but I'll try not to get emotive about it.
The bigger question for me is the crowd engineering idea , regulating an additive that all will consume to reduce the harm to a small number of people. The only precedent I am aware of is Iodine in our salt and fluoride in some water supplies.
Personally I am glad the debate on Folic acid was protracted and difficult , it at least constrained the impulse to manipulate the dietary intake of whole populations.
If Folic acid supplements truly do reduce the risk of Neural tube defects why can we not run education programmes for potential parents advising them to include folic acid in their diets - provided free if needed?
by Will de Cleene on September 03, 2012
Will de Cleene
I'm just glad they didn't put thalidomide in bread back in the day.
by nommopilot on September 03, 2012
I don't think Tim's argument is that science is infallible, but that given the investigation done by the working group it seems the minister has been pretty quick to ignore the science because she doesn't feel qualified to judge the debate.
If this is the case it seems like relying on public submissions from interested parties (because only interested parties would really bother) is risky. As he points out if policy gets decided this way then anyone with any interest in a particular decision will know the best tactic is to drum up enough scientific controversy to confuse the minister and then stack the submission process as much as possible.
Good-bye evidence-based decision making . . . .
by Rich on September 03, 2012
<i>The only precedent I am aware of is Iodine in our salt and fluoride in some water supplies</i>
Vitamins in breakfast cereal - I'm not sure if NZ mandates these, but they were put in because of the tendency for people who replaced more traditional foods with cereal to suffer deficiency.
On a related topic, I saw a great piece of Hippie Quack Bollox at the Save The Children shop - a facial scrub that claimed to "remove toxins through electromagnetic attraction". The best bit of that is that it's actually true - any detergent would remove toxins (from S. Aureus or something) that might be present on the skin, and the process involves electromagnetic attraction. But that probably isn't what they mean.
by Tim Watkin on September 03, 2012
Tim Watkin
Dave, you're missing the point. I know you're no fool, but you're on an entirely different page from what I wrote. As I said, I'm not arguing with the decision itself but at the remarkable way the minister said she reached it.
If you want more, here's the Paediatrics Society's submission on its website (you don't have to 'trust' me, I did credit them and the link to the Andrew Marshall interview is the Chair of the Society spelling out very cleary why they think as they do). Or I'm sure you're capable of googling 'folic acid working group'!
But I don't think I need to walk people through the science to make my point, which is simply that it disturbs me when a minister making a decision about food safety says science isn't her primary concern.
Same with your second par – I never said public opinion is right or wrong. For one, the submissions don't represent all public opinion. And two, it's irrelevant to my argument. Again, at the risk of belabouring it, my point is that 134 submissions shouldn't be what decides a minister of the Crown, should it? Don't we want our leaders to listen to evidence, whichever side they come down on?
by Tim Watkin on September 03, 2012
Tim Watkin
Richard, Mic has helped me out. If you're looking for infallability, you'll need the divine! I'm just asking for judgment based on evidence, is all. It's a pretty basic post-enlightment argument, I would have thought. I'm kind of amazed you'd even question that!
As you say, it's good the debate was difficult. Indeed, my exact point was that after all that debate and given all the science available the minister said that wasn't what her decision was based on. So essentially you're saying the same thing as me... It feels like no-one read the post! I also said anything mandatory should be seriously and carefully considered.
And there are additives in most foods, are there not? Why is this one any different? Do you know every additive you consume? And how do you define additive? This one's a pretty humble vitamin... Oh, and another mandatory precedent – pasteurised milk.
@ Will. Where did that come from? Again, you're a smart man, why on earth make a comparison between two utterly different things?
by Will de Cleene on September 03, 2012
Will de Cleene
Yeah, I should have included a paragraph or two before that pronouncement.
I have become less averse to mandatory folate in bread than when I wrote this post on the subject, but the point remains that I'm in the half of the population who doesn't need the extra folate. Just as marketing wonks have got women drinking green or yellow top milk, there's nothing stopping breadmakers making "women's bread." Burgen have taken this path with a dazzling array of must-have bread for women. So why the need to spike everyone else's bread?
Thaildomide is an extreme example of bad side effects from bad medicine sold to us by the powers that be (doctors with rubber stamps from the MoH). With the amount of bread some blokes I know eat, can mandatory folaters guarantee that |
e in Ball Ground, about 50 miles north of Atlanta. Afterward, the players kneeled and bowed their heads.
“What a great afternoon of fellowship,” Roger McDaniel said, beginning an upbeat minisermon as the players’ kin widened the human circle. “The Lord loves football, too.”
Listen, having been to a private Christian school and a public school, I have to say that the public school environment was much more effective in preparing me as an adult. I kind of get offended with these stories about private and religious groups turning their noses up at public schools like we're some simmering pit of sin and debauchery. If you're trying to go out and serve the world, and minister to people - shouldn't you actually live with your people?
This sort of "head in the sand" philosophy and overall isolation only serves to drive bigger divides between mainstream America and religious America. I mean just look at those lines in the article and can you really say that's a healthy or realistic mindset?
And how are these kids going to handle being out on their own if they get a shot at college football after being celled up in this religious league away from real world temptations and pressure?
Just questions to ask yourself.
Spokane - Oklahoma City Game Photos
June 26, 2009
Shock-Yard Dawgz Game Log
1st, 5:52 to go: Seven dollars.
The Yard Dawgz did not hijack an af2 team from Seattle.
Oklahoma City is 2-3 on the road this season.
Epic Photo: Megan Fox
I saw this on Superherohype.com.
This is Fox before the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen release in LA.
She looks like she's straight out of Star Wars. I wonder if she brought along a laser.
At least Obama isn't playing around with interns
For all you presidential haters out there who are insulted at the prospect of Obama throwing out the first pitch at this year's MLB All-Star game, Dylan Kitzan from Unforgivable has some choice words for you.
I'm sorry, but people who freak out over the president attending a baseball game need to chill out and gain some perspective. It's been a point of contention for McCain supporters and Obama haters since January that Obama is an avid sports fan. He appeared on SportsCenter during March Madness, filling out his bracket (which had UNC winning it all). He plays basketball regularly. And now, Obama will be at Busch Stadium in July to watch the American League All-Stars take on the National League All-Stars. Big whoop.
If you haven't noticed, Obama has been getting work done while doing all of this. The United States' image worldwide is improving in the post-Bush era. The automotive industry has great potential to rebound and hundreds of thousands of jobs are being created throughout all 50 states. Sure, there are a plethora of problems with our country, both big and small, but there always are and there always will be. When's the last time a president fixed every problem and satisfied every U.S. citizen? OK, just checking.
Listen, I'm not much of a political guy, but to jump on the president's case for being a sports fan is wrong. He's still only one man with a wife and kids and has his own life to juggle while being America's Top Dog. Of course he needs to allocate more time to his responsibilities as president than to his free time or his personal interests, but to those on his case for attending a baseball game or shooting some hoops, I say relax and think about it for a second.
For every hour he spends at a ball game, he's probably spending several weeks or months fixing what's wrong with this country. That's more than I'm doing or will ever do. And chances are, it's more than his critics are doing or will ever do.
I'll agree with that, although I'm sure Fox News will dig up the transportation bill on this one. The real problem with politics is that people choose sides, dig in and make no rational choices whatsoever.
The same kind of stupid criticism happened when Bush was is in office and now conservatives have just shifted roles. If you really step back and look at the whole picture you realize that the left and right factions are the same thing in different packaging.
As for Obama, I hope he doesn't do this.
Shock take on Yard Dawgz and bad spelling practices
When Spokane Shock Director of Communications Kevin Maloney had to put together a game preview for last week's game against Tri-City, I'm pretty sure he was hard-pressed to write anything other than "we should completely stomp this team."
This week should be a bit tougher with the Oklahoma City Yard Dawgz. In fact, it should be the biggest test of the Spokane Shock in a long time. With the exception of Boise, everybody else is gawd-awful in the division.
Factor in (and you have to factor this in) that the Shock are probably the most talented and well-run organizations in the league and you basically have the equivalent of the Red Sox playing in the AL West. This week was the 15th straight time they were ranked above everyone else in the coaches poll.
381 (21)
354 (3)
334 (1)
Tennessee Valley
South Georgia
Green Bay
Oklahoma City
Rio Grande Valley
As you can see, Oklahoma City is ranked 11th and was actually undefeated in early May. However, a nasty five-game losing streak dropped them in the poll. Since then they've won three in a row and scored 93-points last week against Corpus Christi.
In other words, the Shock can't sleep on this 7-5 team.
And really, any self-loving Pacific Northwest fan would love to see the Shock kick the mother-loving crap out of a team from Oklahoma City, who's fans seem absolutely fine with stealing an NBA franchise from Seattle. If anyone from the Shock is reading this, I would beg them to go in for the kill and a player needs to bust out a Sonics jersey at some point in the game.
Preferably when they're up by 40.
Oh and don't forget, we'll be running a live game blog as Dylan Kitzan will be watching from the press box, so stay tuned!
A wedding is all about the cake
First off, I'd like to say that Montana has Internet. Sure I had to climb to the top of a ridge and cover myself in aluminum foil. Thanks to this, I have been able to catch a slight signal.
Today I have to attend a wedding. And since I have yet to see the cake, I'll judge these peoples wedding cakes.
This is James Bond. This cake is epic.
This is a purple spaceship thingy. This cake is not epic.
If this cake doesn't scream classy, I don't know what will.
A cake that is a replica of the bride. Creepy!
I have a very strong feeling that this wedding will not be lasting.
This cake looks like something Brandon and I would bake. Please notice the KFC cup in the background.
Man Card Rules: That Video Store Guy
There's nothing wrong with getting some DVDs for the weekend.
When you look like you just came from the bottom of a leaking oil pan, and you peruse the video store for a small mountain of DVDs and place them in your customized video carrier - you might have a problem.
You're a model of constant harassment. Badgering the poor person working at the video store, asking them questions like:
"How's the new Indiana Jones movie, I saw it, but I don't remember it?"
"How much to Playstation 3s cost these days, I don't want to spend over three-hundy, already spending enough on my Executive Netflicks Account?"
Who are you? And better yet... who has time to watch 50 DVDs in five days? Please leave your Man Card at the door.<|endoftext|>Where Doom Awaits Review - Running Short On Ideas?
Yog Sotthoth is threatening to rear his ugly head......or face......or spheres.....whatever he/she/it is meant to be! It's horrific, put it that way. Can you stop the ritual from getting out of hand and what's going to be the location for your last stand in the end?
Keeping to the previous format, these pack reviews are based on the scenario itself as well as my pick of decent, ridiculous or amusing cards from the player set. If you ever want to see the full player card list, you can check out Arkham.db, which has a comprehensive card list as well as quality deck lists posted by the Arkham LCG community - highly recommended.
Designer: Kris Burm
Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games
Age: 14+
Players: 2-4
Time: 60-90 Minutes
RRP: £11.99
From Fantasy Flight Games
Conveniently, the whole village has stayed indoors, which is probably a good thing when everything around you is warping like crazy. Your goal is to traverse Sentinel Hill and reach its peak, however you can't simply just walk up the main path. You have to wander around the diverging/altered path locations that are randomised each game, picking up clues to advance the Act forward. The locations are fairly similar in terms of clues, but each will cause you pain depending on whether you have actions left or zero actions left, so you can never really tell which you should aim for before heading over.
Enemies are pretty light for the most part except for the odd potential surprise based on your previous campaign notes. But of course the Encounter deck might have other ideas as I found out unfortunately. But a lot of those Willpower checks are going to be needed so bring your best Mystic along.
The Agenda deck doesn't really throw much at you though, being more of a long ticking timer than anything else. It was refreshing to see some previous campaign notes finally have some effect in the story. It makes for interesting reading, but sadly doesn't really amount to much in terms of in-game help making some prior successes feel a little wasted. I went out of my way to save you before and all I get is one stinking clue token? Almost feels like a T-Shirt slogan. . .
And I don't know if anyone else has this problem, but a pet peeve is where the setup forces you to put more Chaos tokens in the bag as a difficulty modifier. It works mechanically although why it bothers to differ based on your difficulty mode chosen I don't know. On standard mode it's a -5 and it's an additional -1 the higher you go. How often do you succeed on a check when you pull out a -5 let alone a -7? It might as well be "automatical failure" as just making a check is hard enough to do given that the values for some monsters in the Encounter deck are pretty high.
The ending narrative however makes me keen for the final pack - I won't spoil, but let's just say the designers could throw some very interesting imagery at us.
I've Had Worse
Wow, Guardians got some juicy stuff this time around. Leadership is a great team-work skill card, but my choice pick goes to I've Had Worse. Some monsters can deal 3-4 damage easily and being able to simply go "negate all, I'll take X resources please" is a nice insult to the Elder Ones. It's not the cheapest to acquire in terms of XP though so don't expect to load up on these in a deck, but it's a great saviour card and if you're mowing down monsters with ease, then I'll take the 2 Willpower icons it has instead as they're always handy.
Moonlight Ritual
There's only a few cards in Mystic that add doom to them for effects, but they're some good ones. Alyssa's scrying ability, the Initiates "on-play" doom token (note that he can find this card from the deck as it's a Spell) and best of all, the Blood Pact. I like the idea of being able to spam the effects of Blood Pact while mitigating the on-going cost of Doom tokens. Of course can you afford to fill your deck up with this before you actually acquire the cards from XP?
Ace In The Hole
Get an extra turn for free? I'll buy that for a dollar! Well, 3XP anyway. Don't let this card go to waste. I know some will want to play it the first chance they get, but save it. Save it for that one time when the Encounter deck just wants to screw you over at the worst possible time and then get 6 actions to bail yourself out. Perfect for solo play when you quickly realise that 3 actions won't always be enough to get you out of a tight situation.
Hmmm, I'm getting a little concerned that we're seeing essentially a repeat of various styles of scenarios here. This is another example of going round a bunch of locations that vary each game, grabbing the only clue that's there and then reaching a final location. The story elements are still strong, but I'm waiting for those scenarios like the Essex County Express or both from the Dunwich Deluxe expansion to wow me again.
The scenario itself is relatively easy, at least in solo mode. You've got a lot of time to find the path you need and continue on and even though there is an auto-lose resolution for the campaign, it's unlikely to happen. Having enemies constantly spawn out of the deck because of bad luck though started to grate and reminded me that playing this game in solo mode is tricky unless you make a combat munchkin character. Next campaign I think I'll try two-handed play - one combat, one clue-seeker - and see how that goes.
The player cards though are pretty sweet though and finally it's Seeker that take's a back seat to allow the other factions to get some nice additions. Only one more pack for this cycle and given what happens at the end here, it could shape up to be a good one, but I'm concerned if we're going to repeat the same issue that the last scenario from the core set had.......one giant unstoppable boss to fight.........<|endoftext|>Shower Curtains
Trendy bathroom décor? Why not? Make your bathroom into a true fashion statement with a unique shower curtain! A high-quality pattern with amazing colors will survive all the splashing. It will not only protect the floor from getting soaked, but will also contribute to great interior design. Combine it with a matching bath mat and your bathroom will become as stylish as ever! ... more
Did you know…
Showers have their origins in natural waterfalls? Falling water is very efficient when it comes to washing, so it soon became popular in antiquity, among Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and others. The first showers with a proper drainage system date back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, who had large shower rooms used by both the wealthy and common citizens.<|endoftext|>Sunday, July 4, 2010
From today's life drawing session
As it's clear, these two still need TONS of work, but since that's not entirely possible to happen because of multiple factors, I'm posting these two before they get lost in the deeps of my HD, they're both from 45 minutes poses :)<|endoftext|>Skip to main content
Two-year reprieve for teacher who failed induction
NQT said she was not given enough support. Tara Fawcett reports
A newly-qualified teacher who failed her induction year, after struggling to cope with a class which included a pupil with attention deficit disorder and two asylum-seekers, has been given another chance.
Louise Reddy has another two years to pass her induction, after England's General Teaching Council ruled there were flaws in the way she was assessed.
The council said that because she was not always aware there were problems, she was unable to deal with them.
Miss Reddy joined St Joseph's Roman Catholic primary school in Bolton, Lancashire, as a key stage 2 teacher in September 2002. She had qualified three months earlier from Newman college of higher education in Birmingham.
She told the GTC hearing last week that she was not adequately supported by Bolton council during her induction year, when she had to cope with children with behavioural and learning difficulties.
Miss Reddy did not have a classroom assistant, and said that she received only occasional help with two pupils who were asylum-seekers and had little grasp of English.
For two terms, she also had sole responsibility for a boy with attention deficit disorder until the council engaged a classroom assistant in the third term.
The boy had behavioural problems and spent a couple of days a week at a special school while he was integrated into lessons.
The GTC heard that Miss Reddy had received conflicting reports about her work. The school had assessed her as weak and had concerns about her but failed to inform her.
Instead, her progress in the first term was marked as satisfactory.
At the end of the second term Miss Reddy was marked as unsatisfactory. She then learned that Bolton council, who had observed two lessons and marked them as unsatisfactory, had advised the school to grade the first term in the same way.
Though she failed the second term, her lessons were not observed for three months. The panel heard that her planning was assessed on only one occasion during the year, just before the work was due to be handed in for assessment.
Miss Reddy's last term was marked as satisfactory and the school passed her induction year. However, Bolton council overruled the school's decision and failed her.
Cliff Anderson, Miss Reddy's representative, said that she accepted that she had weaknesses in parts of her professional development but he maintained that there was evidence that she was a capable teacher.
He said: "I believe that she has been seriously misled and the responsibilities of the school and the local authority were not met.
"The reason Louise finds herself in the position she is in today is because she fell between the two parties."
Log in or register for FREE to continue reading.<|endoftext|>When someone gets enough votes then he/she becomes the new Senator.
Once in a while, you'll get a 'hint' message who is the current senator (if any).
The senator can be voted by people at the Voting station in Tanoa.
When you get close to the front of the building you will get the action 'vote' in your action menu.
From the pulldown menu, you can select the person you want and press the 'vote' button.
When a senator is elected he/she gets an extra action called 'Change Taxes'.
This will open a menu where he/she can change taxes on vehicle, fuel and weapons prices in shops.
If the senator dies the taxes will go up and he/she will lose their place as senator.
See also:
Shop Locations
Contributors to this page: ArMaTeC .
Page last modified on Tuesday May 29, 2018 05:44:28 BST by ArMaTeC.<|endoftext|>Posts Tagged ‘part’
Power Folding Mirror – Relays to ACC. WITH Switch
05-’06 Acura RSX taillight rewiring guide
2x T-Taps, 22awg
2x male quick disconnects, 22awg
2x butt-connectors, 22awg
1x roll of wire, 22awg
1x hacksaw
1 wire stripper/cutter
1x salvaged wire plug from any Honda/Acura with at least two pigtails (wires with terminal)
You should be able to find most of the electrical parts at your local RadioShack or AutoZone. I found most of mine in my tool shack . A good place to order bulk of electrical component is Mouser, Inc.. Simply a great company, no doubt. For the sockets, wedge bulbs and plugs, you can order |
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What is binary options strategy<|endoftext|>[box_dark]Seongbuk-dong | 성북동 [/box_dark]
The Seongbuk-dong neighborhood has hidden treasures and cultural attractions. Gansong Art Museum is host to a splendid art collection. Commonly referred to as the nation’s treasure-house, Gansong is Korea’s first private museum and opens its exhibitions to the public only twice a year—in May and October. Gilsangsa Temple is a prominent Zen center, but it used to be a luxury traditional restaurant. In 1987, its owner donated the property to the late Zen master, Rev. Beopjeong. Another attraction is the Seongnakwon villa, which represents the beauty of Korean gardening during the Joseon period. A forest of zelkova, pine, oak, and maple trees, along with a waterfall, garden, and lake, surrounds the villa. Currently registered as a private property, the traditional hillside estate is open for public viewing only with a reservation. Simujang is where Han Yongun, the noted monk-poet and independence activist, spent the last years of his life in the 1940s.
Traditional teahouse Suyeon Sanbang 수연산방 (T. 02-764-1736) offers a diverse range of peculiar beverages and snacks in lovingly preserved early 20th-century decor.
A number of boutiques are nestled in Buam-dong and Seongbuk-dong, including traditional crafts shop Hyojae 효재 (T. 02-720-5393) right in front of Gilsangsa Temple.
(323 Seongbuk-dong, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul | 서울시 성북구 성북동 323)
Hansung Univ. Station 한성대입구역 (Line 4)
크게 보기<|endoftext|>31 December 2008
Ugly Hovercraft and Dinosaur Bones
This is the entry for my second day of sight-seeing in the Big Apple. For the day after Christmas, my sister and I decided to go visit two locations: the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History.
I wanted to visit the Intrepid Museum for two things: it has some cool aircraft, especially the Concorde, which the visitors can visit; and it was also recently renovated and the displays were revamped. In fact, back in November, I heard on the radio that President Bush was actually on the re-opening ceremony and the whole place was bustling with action.
So, with that in mind, I decided to visit that. So with my sister in tow, we walked the distance from Port Authority of New York (where our bus dropped us off) to W 46st St and 12th Avenue. There it was, the huge aircraft carrier. There were plenty of people, but it was still manageable.
One of the good things in visiting a ship museum is that one can explore the inside cabins of the ship. So I saw the sailor's quarters, the forecastle, the hangar decks, the flight deck, and the different holes and tubes that people can go inside. There was also a theater inside the ship that showed a movie about the history of the ship. I didn't realize that the ship was that old.
Anyway, after that, my sister and I strolled to this Hispanic eatery, and we had soft tacos for lunch. My sister definitely has become a New Yorker now, she knows the cheap eats of the city.
Then, we proceeded to the American Museum of Natural History. This was the rather chaotic museum of the day. There were so many children, and we arrived at around 2:30 in the afternoon, and still we haven't finished seeing all the exhibits by closing time of 5:45 PM. There were just so many things to see. And there were so many children, that I didn't like my photographs here because of the excess amounts of unneeded people in the frame. It just is so hard to get a good shot.
I know, that was selfish of me, but maybe that is the reason why I visit rather secluded areas. Climbing Machu Picchu was one example. I liked the place, but taking pictures there was more difficult than Ollantaytambo, for example. But if I compare Machu Picchu with the Natural History Museum, Machu Picchu was a piece of cake. I could simply wait a few minutes and there would be a lapse in which there are no people and I can take my perfect shot. But in the museum, every frame is just full of people.
Now, in retrospect, I ask myself, why did I visit that museum? After all, I am not so interested in seeing dinosaur bones and stuffed animals. Oh, yes. It was my sister's idea. Not that I am blaming her, but in life, one sometimes needs to think for two. If I were by myself, I would not go to a natural history museum, for the same reason that I am not too inclined in taking a tour of the African safari. Animals just don't get me off. I am not too interested in reading about the Pleistocene and the Jurassic era. Instead, I would gladly replace it with fine art, modern art, architecture, or some old house.
With this, I end 2008. See you next year!
(Theodore, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)
1. Thanks for a guided tour around in the Museums too - your thoughts about it was an interesting read.
Also here to wish you all the best for 2009!
2. RennyBA,
You're welcome! I am so ready to change my calendar!
3. Ah Macchu Picchu... we are flying to Peru the first week of January ;-)
Museums are fun to explore. France has a lot, and Ottawa has the Museum of Civilization, one of my favorite.
4. Zhu,
You are? Haven't you been there before? And yet you are doing Peru again eh? I am so envious!
5. I wouldn't go to the Museum of Natural History either. Heck, I wouldn't go to any museum... my brain is so lazy. :) But then, sisters rule. :)
6. Toe,
Hehe, yes, sometimes, I need to think for two instead of one. Well, the good thing is, these moments aren't about the site that is visited, it is about the time spent with your loved ones. So even if I didn't enjoy what I saw in that museum as much as if it were the Louvre, I enjoyed my company.<|endoftext|>Honesty Rocks! truth rules.
Opening Our Minds, It's Happening In My School Thanks to the small Bi/Gay community
HOME >> Science and Technology
@ not knowing your sexuality at young ages
Don't you just love how to world seems to thing that people under the age of 18 are un-capable of making decisions on their own? I mean, what does being 18 have to do with anything? You have to be 18 to move out of the house, you have to be 18 to be able to do something on your own without the consent of a parent or guardian. And NOW you have to be 18 to determine whether you like guys or gals? I don't think that's appropriate, i think that people under 18 should be able to make decisions on their own, but on some things need permission to do, like field trips for school, getting out of school early (Early Dismissals).
When i say make their own decisions, i don't mean make MAJOR decisions in their lives, I'm talking about minor ones such as whether they like guys or gals.
But as you said keri-j, hopefully someday the world will grow up and realize that there is an elite group of people out there who are under the age of 18 and are capable of making decisions on their own with having everybody and their mother contradict what the decision is (Everyone and their mother is basically saying EVERYBODY)
Well, if your under 18 you can like girls or boys.
But you cannot marry them, you can't also hold a big responsibility.
It's now set to 18 because in our world most people under 18 can't hold complete responsibility for themselfs.
And our parents must guard us to do anything because in this world, there are many things that could happen without a guard, such as making a big mistake which no one can stop you, breing kidnapped which no one can save you or even know about it. But most people above 18 can take care of themselfs, they have more strength, more wisdom and more experience.
Our parents do not want us to risk our lives to just do something.
Think of when your a kid. You do funny stuff and sometimes really silly.
But when you are a kid, you think it's ok.
And for liking girls or boys, why not?
some of our parents do let us do that, some does'nt.
If my parents is like that, why not try explaining things to them?
Some do not let us like girls or boy because they are afraid that we will have a baby.
Some parents are wise enaugh to trust you.
They explain to you that why we cannot do this or that, and not keeping you from the problem but solving the problem.
for example:
As mother A:
she explains why we cannot have a baby with each other, why we cannot be too close to each other.
she explains about the law, and why our law was set like this.
she thinks that you are big enaugh to think for yourself, because you already hit puberty(or how it's spelled).
now you end up understanding them, and control yourself.
As mother B:
she stops you from going into a girl/boy, stops you from having love.
making you confused, why can't you be with someone you like? Why can mom be with dad?
Why must I be 18 first??
now you end up mad, and sad...
As for being a gay/lessbian, it's ok, but for unwise/unopen minded parents, they think it's bad because they think "I don't even do that, no one normal does that" or "gay guy looks like a girl/not man, my son is gay? It's abnormal!" They need to understand...it's not about the new generation, new thoughts, mutation or you are a bad person, it's just absolutly normal!
EDIT: typing error.
Sorry for having to disagree, but you're only 13 man. You can probably only remember like the last 7 or 8 years of your life. It's way to early to label yourself as bi when you haven't even fully matured yet. Everyone was 13 once, and I'm sure everyone else will agree how naive you are when you're 13.And with the greatest amount of respect possible, isn't it a huge oxymoron to be openly bisexual and go to a catholic school? I mean, Christianity teaches tolerance, but I'm shocked that you are still allowed to go there.
I only go to the school because it's a good school and I want to good employment prospects, and I know that my parents want to give me a good start in life; go to a good school, get a good job, have a nice life. And even if the teachers at the school knew that I was gay/bi/whatever, it would be illegal for them to kick me out, human rights ;). I am fairly mature for my age, but I do agree that I'm not 100% sure... That is, I know I'm either gay or bi... I just don't know how much and in which direction.
A boy in my school who I get on with fairly well said that he disliked bisexuals because they were just gays who were trying to keep some normalcy, I can see what he means (even though it is not so in my case, because I'm not very sure of my sexuality) and I can see that what he says can go both ways. I have a friend who is 16, he says he's bi, but I've never seen him with a boy... I have however seen him with various girls. Most of his friends are gay, and I think that maybe he's saying he's bi for a bit of normalcy... interesting.
Everyone knows about Gay/Bi people. But it is the upbringing, it is due to their parents on how they react to them. The prober understanding of why people are gay/bi would expand their minds on society. Look at america for example, they empraced the gay nation and they have nearly appceted it. People are free in america, and now are even more so. But for us Brits they is phobos of gay people. And I think they will be for a long time to come.
Unregistered 012
yeah, I've got an opinion ;) I'm sick of all those queer and bi and straight people giving me strange looks and sometimes kind of insulting remarks for throwing in the keyword "asexuality" when they're talking about sexual orientations. It's not like I'm encouraged to tell anyone that I'm asexual when I get remarks like that... (well, it's way easier to tell this stuff on the net - I can choose to ignore anyone attacking me for that...)
well, I'd sign your opinion if you'd mentioned asexuals ;)
-edit- there was an error in one of my sentences, making it kind of hard to understand. *fixed*
Umm... Doesnt asexual mean like one person?
Ya there are gays, bisexuals and all of that at my school too. but i dont make fun of them or anything like that. i talk to them like i would talk to my strait friends and whatnot. i am strait and always will be too.
Pages :-
Page 1Page 2<|endoftext|>Take the 2-minute tour ×
Is it faster to jump constantly while sprinting, or just sprint? It seems to me that Jumping is faster but I'm not sure.
share|improve this question
I too feel like jumping gets me around quicker as there is no penalty on landing and you can essentially just string together jumps endlessly. I'm not sure you'll find definitive proof, unless someone does a test with a friend, but if it feels faster, keep on jumping! – geebru Sep 24 '12 at 18:19
youtube.com/watch?v=YxaJ4dVP4Wg Without a friend it might just be that it looks faster because you are more actively doing the jumping than just running forward. – Ids Sep 24 '12 at 18:28
I'm not positive, but I think they're the same speed. I was playing with my boyfriend last night and tend to constantly jump while we run around, and I never seemed to get closer or farther away from him. We didn't do a proper test though, so I'm not 100% positive. – Rachel Sep 25 '12 at 11:34
The only thing I've noticed about jumping while sprinting is that, while in the air, you can fire without cancelling your sprint. – Will Dec 26 '13 at 20:29
1 Answer 1
up vote 17 down vote accepted
After doing some testing, I've found that jumping does not allow you to cover ground faster than sprinting.
To test this, I created two videos of the same character moving across a relatively level area just outside of Sanctuary - first by only sprinting and second by jumping repeatedly while sprinting. I started by backing my character against the save point near the Sanctuary entrance and pointing him toward the center of a large boulder in the distance. I then recorded 30 seconds of jumping/sprinting in a straight line (after having a few takes interrupted by Rakks, Bullymongs and bandits). Incidentally, the reason that the videos are that length is that I have the trial version of Fraps, which stops recording after exactly 30 seconds.
I then uploaded the videos to Youtube and used Youtubedoubler to compare the two. You can see that at the end of each video I'm at almost exactly the same place (right in front of some bullet holes and dead Bullymongs). The jumping looks like it's very slightly ahead, but I think that is due to the fact that I started moving a bit sooner in that video.
Results: http://www.youtubedoubler.com/?video1=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DsE-wQKQrx7Y&start |
’s judgment was affected by donations from banks. Sanders mostly whiffs—he says she should have argued for breaking up big banks in 2008, or something. In any case, this is the another very tough question for Sanders—the first few have been fairly hostile toward him.
“I love being in Brooklyn. This is great,” Clinton says. I can’t help but wonder if this well be a regular line of the night, as each candidate touts their roots to—and their love for—New York.
What are Sanders and Clinton fighting about here? As K. Sabeel Rahman wrote back in February, there’s a substantive disagreement that stretches far beyond banking. Clinton believes in the promise of regulatory reform—that government can effectively police the excesses of capitalism, reining in the abusive practices of big business, and harnessing its potential to drive economic growth.
Sanders disagrees. He tends to argue that when business gets too big, it captures regulators, and it influences legislators. The solution, to his mind, is to break monopolistic businesses up into more manageable pieces.
Hillary Clinton’s connection to Wall Street has been a regular point of attack for Sanders, but in light of this week’s revelation that five of the nation’s eight largest banks might still be “too big too fail,” it might carry additional weight. Earlier this week, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said that five major banks did not have adequate plans in place in the event of a financial crisis. Sanders often decries big banks, saying it’s time to break them up and recalling the speeches Clinton made to Goldman Sachs—and in this case, it may help his message resonate.
I wonder where Vegas would peg the over-under for number of big banks that Hillary Clinton would break up if elected president. Can you have an over-under when the odds favor zero?
“This is not only an attack on me, this is an attack on President Obama,” Clinton says. The former secretary of state has moved back and forth between distinguishing herself in the race and acknowledging her former employer. Tonight, it looks like she’s standing by him. At the end of March, Obama’s approval rating reached 53 percent, according to Gallup.
Hillary Clinton says that Bernie Sanders is unqualified, pointing to his interview with the New York Daily News editorial board, and his lack of specificity about breaking up big banks. Bernie Sanders retorts that Hillary Clinton is unqualified because she voted for the biggest foreign policy catastrophe in modern American history. I award that round to Bernie Sanders.
It took about 5 minutes for Clinton to raise Sanders's tough interview with the editorial board of the New York Daily News. "I think you need to have the judgment on Day One to be president and commander in chief."
About that judgement remark from Sanders? “Well the people of New York voted for me twice for me to be the senator and President Obama trusted me enough to be secretary of state,” Clinton retorts.
Sanders is defending the statement that Clinton was not qualified by referring to a Washington Post headline that said she had questioned his qualifications. In fact, the headline was always misleading: Morning Joe’s Joe Scarborough had tried fruitlessly to get her to say he was not qualified, and she had declined. It’s amazing that this single, ill-thought-out headline set off Sanders’s fit of pique and threw the Democratic campaign into acrimony.
"Does Secretary Clinton have the experience and the intelligence to be president? Of course she does," Sanders says when asked about Clinton's "qualifications." But then he adds, "But I do question her judgment."
Did you know that Hillary Clinton represented New York in the Senate for eight years and served during 9/11? If not, she made sure to remind everyone right at the start.
Sanders cites a series of recent victories in state contests and his performance in opinion polls in his opening statement, attributing his success to individual contributions and “telling people the truth.” Sanders refrained from delivering an attack against Clinton, but the tenor of the race has changed since the two last met, following rising tension between the two candidates. For much of the presidential primary, Sanders has touted his positive approach to the campaign; it remains to be seen whether that changes tonight.
Bernie Sanders points out that two polls show him ahead. The most recent poll he’s talking about is our PRRI/The Atlantic poll, in which he led Clinton 47 to 46 percent, nationwide. In truth, that’s less a lead than a statistical tie, but it’s no less remarkable to see a challenger surge into a tie just as the front-runner is on the cusp of securing a large enough lead in pledged delegates to lock up the nomination.
After the national anthem they should have a drone flyover at the indoor debates.
All eyes are on Brooklyn tonight as Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders face off. But across the East River, all three Republican candidates are gathering in a Midtown hotel to raise moola for the New York State GOP. The Journal News notes that none of the contenders, including hometown boy Donald Trump, has received the backing of the state party committee or its chairman, Ed Cox. The Wall Street Journal reports that Cox disapproved of Trump's threats to run as an independent last year and his anti-Muslim statements. Before the sold-out gala was to start, though, Cox didn't betray any dislike of the front-runner. “I love all our candidates,” Cox said. “We are having our big New Hampshire moment.” In Brooklyn, the Democrats may or may not be feeling the same.
Where are the candidates headed after the debate? Bernie Sanders, for one, is off to the Vatican to speak at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences on the “moral economy.” As Emma noted, “there is a somewhat uncanny overlap between the way Bernie and Francis talk about economic issues.” It’s an unexpected move from a non-Catholic and ahead of a tight contest in New York on April 19. But the Sanders campaign is standing by the decision. “When the invitation came for the Vatican, it was an invitation he felt that he needed to accept immediately,” said Sanders campaign manager, Jeff Weaver on CNN. According to the Vatican spokesman, the trip will not include a meeting with the pope.
About an hour before the debate’s 9 p.m. start time, the Clinton campaign sent reporters a release that asked: “Will Sanders answer tough questions at the debate?” It highlighted recent interviews in which Sanders has struggled with the specifics behind some of his trade and Wall Street reform proposals, and on foreign policy issues, particularly during an editorial board meeting with the New York Daily News. One question for tonight is, will Clinton try to press Sanders on these topics herself? Or will she focus her attacks on Donald Trump and trust the moderators to be tough on Sanders? Clinton clearly wants to shift her focus to the general election, but she might see tonight’s debate—and the New York primary—as a prime opportunity to put away Sanders for good.
Heading into Thursday night’s debate in Brooklyn, the Democratic race arrives in uncharted territory. Hillary Clinton appears all but certain to secure a majority of the pledged delegates. But just as she’s poised to sew up the nomination, Bernie Sanders has pulled even. Last week, a PRRI/The Atlantic poll found Sanders drawing 47 percent support, and Clinton 46 percent, nationwide.<|endoftext|>Oprah Car Winners
By: Rebekah Baum
By: Rebekah Baum
Two local women who won cars are putting the wheels up for sale. It's a moment that will live on in television history.
Back in September, Oprah Winfrey gave away 276 Pontiac G6s to her studio audience, and friends Nicole Horstman and Jaime Flader were there.
"I was just really confused and in shock," says Horstman.
"I saw the key, I was like, 'nice job, Oprah, making everyone think they got a car.' I didn't think it was real until Oprah was jumping up and down in her high heels," says Flader.
But once the adrenalin slowed down and the shock subsided, Nicole and Jamie realized the cars weren't exactly free. Pontiac paid for most of the local charges, like state sales taxes and licensing and title fees, but then there's the gift tax, which would cost the recipients an average of $6,000 to $7,000.
"I thought it was going to be a lot less than it was. I didn't know they were going to take the value of the car and add it to our incomes, so they put it on top of what you make. It's a considerable amount," says Flader.
Nicole placed an add in the Registrar Star earlier this week, and when a Chicago radio station heard about it, they called her for a live interview.
Nicole sold the car within a day to a woman in Mundelein for $20,000. She'll use the money to pay off some student loans, and when Jamie sells her car, she'll put the money towards a down payment on a new home.
Another one of Nicole and Jamie's friends who also won a car on the show is planning on selling her wheels as well. Nicole and Jamie say they'll donate some of the money from their car sales to Oprah's Angel Network.
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Articles are stored in the cur/ subdirectory of each maildir. Each article file is named like uniq:info, where uniq contains no colons. nnmaildir ignores, but preserves, the :info part. (Other maildir readers typically use this part of the filename to store marks.) The uniq part uniquely identifies the article, and is used in various places in the .nnmaildir/ subdirectory of the maildir to store information about the corresponding article. The full pathname of an article is available in the variable nnmaildir-article-file-name after you request the article in the summary buffer.<|endoftext|>Unfortunately, your shopping cart is empty:(
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Africanictis (Africanictis meini Morales et al., 1998)
Africanictis schmidtkittleri
Africanictis hyaenoides
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Suborder: Feliformia
Family: †Stenoplesictidae
Time period: the Midle Miocene of north Africa (17,5 million years ago)
Size: Up to 1,2 meters long. Weight estimated at up to 5 kg.
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Setting aside some gorgeous character sprites created by a very talented chap who goes by the handle Captain Ricco, Sequence Breaker is still in the wire-frame, big-ugly-blocks-in=place-of-art stage of things, so you'll forgive me if I withhold any actual screen-shots at this point in the process. I do, however, have this:
It's a room-by-room layout of about a third of the game's first level. At the moment, the game is divided into two missions, one being relatively small and somewhat linear and the other being much larger and free-form-y. The second is really the heart of the game, the first more of a tutorial, as it were. More on that, and the challenges it presents, in a later dev. journal. Right now, I'm going to go room-by-room here and, without giving too much away, try to explain how I'm designing two games at once. I hope this isn't too boring or wonky, but if it is, my apologies.
To state it simply, the first game presents the player with a sequence and the second dares you to break it. That first game and its sequence unfolds as follows:
Positioning ourselves in the room labelled START/MAP, the reader can probably deduce that the room is both the point in which the player starts the level and that it contains a map indicating your current position and that of your objective several floors down. To get from this top-floor to the bottom, you have to travel two rooms to your left, but the very first adjacent room contains a long bed of spikes. The player's radio-assistant explains that the force-bridge that should be covering the gap has been cut off, and that the switch to activate it, in classic video game fashion, is at the other end of the floor.
And so, the player embarks to the right, confronting her first enemies. These enemies are shorter than the player, thus necessitating that you position yourself on a lower platform before firing. With the most basic type of enemy, a small, unmoving blob without any kind of attacks, this is a piece of cake. It's a little trickier for his slightly-larger brother, who, while still stationary, spews out bullets that fling upwards before fluttering down at his sides. To defeat him, the player must get into position, fire rapidly, and then get out of the position before its bullets hit you.
The next screen takes this basic principle but ratchets it up considerably, also adding those sort of annoying moving-around-a-block-type enemies into the mix. On the previous screen, there was a health power-up (ala a Zelda heart container) at the end of a passageway the player couldn't reach; that passageway continues through this screen.
On the following screen (third from the starting point now) the player can see a way to access this passage, but it, too, is blocked by a bed of spikes. Perhaps the player can reach it after they turn on the switch, which is now tantalizing close. There's more to this screen, however; in order to progress to the right once more, the player must use a sort of spin/feathering move to extend their leap.
A brief digression: my earliest conceptions of this game had at its center an extremely nimble and athletic protagonist, able to wall-jump, wall-slide, dash through crevices, and a host of other parkour-y kind of things. I scaled it down considerably, not because they presented particularly difficult programming challenges (for wall-jumping and even ceiling clinging are vital parts of Run Jump) but because they gave the player too many options. And, don't get me wrong-- giving players options is the idea, and it's part of what the meta-gaming at the heart of the concept is all about-- but I realized I would be spending so much time explaining all these moves and turn the first level into one boring "now test this skill" after another. It might also overwhelm the player; if you give the player a dozen different moves and then say, now try to break this sequence, it can get pretty frustrating. But if their repertoire is intuitive and easy-to-grasp, they'll spend less time scratching their heads and more time figuring things out.
And so, I took away the wall-jump, the wall-slide, the dash-move, all the sort of parkour/free-running cliches. Now, it's just the basics: run, shoot, jump, with one simple-to-grasp wrinkle-- tapping the x-button in mid-air will execute a spin-move, slowing your descent.
Since I want to make sure the player is aware of this skill, I needed to put it fairly early in the first sequence. This particular spot, after the first two action-rooms but before the first mini-boss, also gives the player a bit of breather. I don't think it's usually a good idea to put a mini-boss right after a tricky bit of combat; the change-up gives the player a chance to relax and also builds up a subtle sort of anticipation.
And so, the next room is the mini-boss, which asks the player to move from a safe position to a dangerous one, attack, and then move back. The mini-boss has thirty hit-points, more than one would usually assign for such a creature, and there's a reason for that, so hang onto it.
After the mini-boss, we find the switch for the force-bridge. In that same room, there's a very small and easy-to-avoid bed of spikes. And you might ask, why put a tiny bed of spikes in this room with the switch? The reason is, as soon as you pull that switch, all the spikes in the stage are bridged-over. Whenever the player pulls a switch in a game, he or she should be able to see the results instantaneously. This is important, so I'm going to bold-face it in case you're just skimming along:
Now the player back-tracks, and as we all know, back-tracking can be a pain. But it also can be a lot of fun, and it can be used as positive reinforcement. Now that the player's pulled that switch and the threat of the spikes are neutered by the force-bridge, she can take the high-road, breezing through the screens, avoiding enemies, and nabbing that health power-up, boosting their max HP. It further rewards the player for accomplishing this particular task, has them feeling good before they get back to the spike-bridge they wanted to cross in the first place.
Crossing the bridge, the player can now descend to the second level, only to find, one room over, another obstacle: a glowing barrier. There's no assistant this time to tell you where to go, because, this being a 2-D sidescroller, the only other choice is to go left.
Passing the elevator, there's another map room. Since I'm going with maps built into the physical terrain instead of in a menu, it's important that I include at least one map on every floor/wing. More than that, though, it tells the player that the room below is a dead-end, meaning that it probably contains the solution to that barrier.
And, voila!, it does, in the form of a laser or ray weapon. In the room with the power-up, there's another barrier, and on the other side of that barrier, another health booster. Firing into the barrier dissolves it momentarily, allowing the player to pass through it and get that health boost-- by now, she's doubled her hit-points. And, again, I put the barrier in the room with the weapon power-up so that the player is immediately aware of what it does and what it can do.
For the same reason, I put a couple of the enemies from the first floor in this room. While they took a few shots apiece before, a single laser-beam cuts both of them down in one fell swoop.
Taking the elevator back up and moving back to the first barrier, the player then finds themselves in a timed puzzle room revolving around firing the laser at the barriers. This is intended to further acquaint the player with the weapon, and to mark this floor as "the laser beam-heavy section of the level". I find that such a theme gives a game a better sense of flow and of place.
I also want the player to feel powerful with this laser beam, which is why the next room has a whole score of low-level enemies that can be taken out, every one of them, with a single shot |
• Levy, Richard S., ed. Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution (2 vol. 2005)
• Lowenstein, Steven M. The Berlin Jewish community: enlightenment, family, and crisis, 1770-1830 (Oxford University Press, 1994)
• Marcus, Ivan G. Jewish Culture and Society in Medieval France and Germany (Ashgate, 2014)
• Meyer, Michael A. The Origins of the Modern Jew: Jewish Identity and European Culture in Germany, 1749-1824 (1972)
• Meyer, Michael A., ed.: German–Jewish History in Modern Times, vols. 1–4. New York, 1996–1998:
• vol. 1 Tradition and Enlightenment, 1600–1780
• vol. 2 Emancipation and Acculturation, 1780–1871
• vol. 3 Integration in Dispute, 1871–1918
• vol. 4 Renewal and Destruction, 1918–1945
• Peck, Jeffrey: Being Jewish in the New Germany. (2006)
• Pulzer, Peter G.J. The rise of political anti-Semitism in Germany & Austria (2nd Harvard University Press, 1988) online 1st edition
• Pulzer, Peter. Jews and the German State: The Political History of a Minority, 1848-1933 (Oxford, 1992),
• Ragins, Sanford. Jewish responses to anti-Semitism in Germany, 1870-1914: a study in the history of ideas (Hebrew Union College Press, 1980)
• Schuler-Springorum, Stefanie. "Assimilation and Community Reconsidered: The Jewish Community in Konigsberg, 1871-1914." Jewish social studies (1999) 5#3 pp: 104-131. in JSTOR, With detailed bibliography
• Sorkin, David. The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780-1840 (Wayne State University Press, 1999)
• Sorkin, David. Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment (U of California Press, 1996)
• Stern, Fritz. Gold and Iron: Bismark, Bleichroder, and the Building of the German Empire (1979) Baron Bleichroder was the richest and most powerful Jewish leader
• Stern, Selma. "The Jews in the Economic Policy of Frederick the Great," Jewish Social Studies (1949) 9#2 pp: 129-52. in JSTOR
• Storm, Jill. "Culture and Exchange: The Jews of Königsberg, 1700-1820" (PhD dissertation, Washington University, 2010). online; Detailed bibliography pages 301-32
• Tal, Uriel. Christians and Jews in Germany: Religion, Politics and Ideology in the Second Reich, 1870-1914 (1975)
• Van Rahden, Till. Jews and other Germans: civil society, religious diversity, and urban politics in Breslau, 1860-1925 (Univ of Wisconsin Press, 2008)
• Wistrich, Robert S. Socialism and the Jews: The Dilemmas of Assimilation in Germany and Austria-Hungary (1982)
• Pulzer, Peter. "New Books on German-Jewish History" Central European History (1991) 24#2-3 pp: 176-86 online
In German[edit]
• Kauders, Anthony D.: Unmögliche Heimat. Eine deutsch-jüdische Geschichte der Bundesrepublik. Munich, 2007.
• Rink, Thomas: Doppelte Loyalität: Fritz Rathenau als deutscher Beamter und Jude. Published by Georg Olms Verlag, 2002
External links[edit]
External links[edit]<|endoftext|>There are only two data types: integer and string, the two being coercible to each other in the sense that a string can be coerced to an integer if it contains a valid ASCII representation of a decimal, octal, or hex number, and an integer can always be coerced to a string, the result of such coercion being the ASCII string that is the decimal representation of the number.<|endoftext|>AALL Government Relations Policy
Approved by the Executive Board March 2001, Tab 15
Revised April 2008, Executive Board, Tab 2; Revised July 2011
I. Introduction
Founded in 1906, the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) is a non-profit, professional organization devoted to improving the operation of law libraries and the distribution of and access to legal information. AALL members work in nearly 1,900 academic, private, and state, court and county libraries serving government officials, the bench, the bar, legal scholars, and the public.
The AALL Executive Board endorsed this Policy to direct the Association' s public policy and advocacy work. This policy is necessarily broad to guide the Government Relations Office staff and to permit the Association to be agile and timely in responding to developing public policy issues.
Collectively, law libraries form a knowledge network that supports the use of law in society. A broad span of public policy concerns, ranging from the dissemination of government information to intellectual property and intellectual freedom, impact law libraries and their users. The exponential growth of the Internet as a central point of access to information raises a whole new spectrum of legislative, policy, and technological concerns that are critical to the future of law libraries. The American Association of Law Libraries provides leadership and advocacy in the field of legal and government information and information policy, and therefore has specialized knowledge applicable to many aspects of these public policy concerns. Furthermore, because of their training, expertise, and/or positions of trust, AALL members have a responsibility for ensuring that federal, state, and local legal information resources are created, managed, disseminated, and preserved effectively, regardless of form.
Accessible government information is both an essential principle of a democratic society and a valuable public good created at taxpayer expense. AALL believes that federal, state and local authorities must ensure that government legal information is permanently available to the public in an easily accessible and professionally maintained environment.
II. Dissemination of Government Information
Federal, state, and local governments have a duty to create, collect, and disseminate government information and to ensure broad permanent access to official government information to the public, regardless of income level or geographic area. AALL believes that federal, state, and local government information, including the text of all primary legal materials, must be in the public domain and available to the public without restriction. Federal, state, and local governments should create comprehensive and coherent policies for managing government information, both print and digital, and for making those materials permanently available to the public. To accomplish these responsibilities, AALL believes that federal, state, and local governments should be committed to openness, transparency, public participation, and collaboration.
1. Creation, Collection, and Dissemination of Government Information in Tangible Form
Government information in tangible form should be available to the public at low or no cost. Any revenue garnered by governments from the sale of print publications should be reinvested in the infrastructure that delivers government information to the public.
The commercial sector plays an important secondary role in the collection and dissemination of government information. The American public is served by a multitude of information providers, and no public or private entity should enjoy a publishing monopoly over any body or type of government information. Nor should any private or public sector entity limit the dissemination of government information through exclusive contracts, resale restrictions, or other restrictive trade practices.
2. Creation, Collection, and Dissemination of Government Information in Digital Form
AALL believes that digital government information disseminated via government websites must be available at no cost and that federal, state, and local governments should adhere to the following principles:
• Information on government websites must be equally accessible to all people, including those with disabilities.
• Information published on government websites must be trustworthy and reliable, and, therefore, governments should implement appropriate safeguards to protect the integrity and authenticity of its digital information.
• If a digital version of legal information is official, it should be designated as such by statute or rule.
• Information published on government websites should be comprehensive and complete.
• Information on government websites must be permanently accessible and preserved by the government entity charged with preservation of government information, such as a state library, an archives division, or other agency or entity.
3. Universal Citation
AALL believes that federal, state, and local governments should provide a universal citation for government information that it disseminates for citizen use. A universal (or public domain) citation system is both medium and vendor neutral. As a matter of public policy, the binding pronouncements of governments, such as case opinions and statutes, belong first and foremost to the people they serve and should be accessible to them easily through a public domain citation.
AALL recommends that federal, state, and local governments should adopt AALL's universal citation formats, as illustrated in the Universal Citation Guide.
4. Depository Library Programs
The public has a right of access to comprehensive government information, including access to the basic materials necessary for legal research. Primary legal titles fundamental to our democracy should continue to be disseminated to depository libraries in print until such time as the government entity can ensure the authenticity of, permanent public access to, and preservation of the digital version.
The Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) and state-based depository programs have special relevance to the study of law. Many law libraries serve as federal depositories, state depositories, or both.
Federal Depository Libraries operate under a statutory obligation to make government information available to the public. The FDLP should provide for a system of equitable, effective, no fee, efficient, and dependable access to and dissemination of government information. Government information provided to the public should be available permanently in readily accessible forms and should be authentic and trustworthy.
As the government moves into a more digital environment, depository libraries are increasingly important channels through which citizens access law and law-related information. The Government Printing Office, the National Archives and Records Administration, the Library of Congress, the courts, and federal agencies share in the dissemination of government information. AALL believes that federal government information should be disseminated through a depository and access program with central authority, Congressional oversight, and the ability to enforce agency compliance through relevant laws, regulations, and other policies.
State and local governments should create and maintain comprehensive depository and access programs. These should operate under a statutory obligation to make government information in print available to the public at no cost.
5. Freedom of Information
Public inspection of government records, including digital records, under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is the foundation for citizen access to government information, and FOIA must be strengthened as needed to ensure effective transparency in government. AALL believes FOIA must ensure that requested records are released in a timely manner; in a form that is useful to the requestor, including through digital means; appropriately redacted to protect personal privacy; and is permanently maintained in accessible and searchable electronic reading rooms. AALL believes that there should be one easily searchable portal for all digital records released under FOIA.
Statutes and regulations governing security classification should be construed to promote open government while acknowledging the need for FOIA exemptions. By statute, the burden is on the agency to sustain a claim of exemption. While this burden may be lightened or enhanced with each Administration, FOIA should be administered with a clear presumption in favor of disclosure. FOIA must be strengthened to ensure that openness and transparency prevail, regardless of the Administration, Presidential signing statements, or claims of executive privilege claims.
6. Protection of Privacy in Government Records
The protection of personal privacy is a core value of our society. The AALL supports a comprehensive national and state framework for privacy protection to safeguard the rights of all Americans. Strong federal and state privacy laws are needed to insulate sensitive personal information included in government records from a world of interconnected databases.
III. Intellectual Property
1. Copyright and Licensing
An equitable balance between the rights of users of information and the rights of copyright owners and licensors is essential to the free flow of information. The United States Copyright Act should maintain this balance by interposing the fewest obstacles to the free distribution of government information in all media and formats. Furthermore, licensing regimes should not impose barriers to the access or use of information in the public domain, and should preserve fair use and other user rights promoting the dissemination of information and ideas. Finally, AALL supports adequate funding for the Copyright Office to ensure timely registration and recordation processing times and to maximize production levels of the Copyright Records Digitization Project.
2. Public Domain Status of Government Publications
Government information, including the text of all primary legal materials, e.g., judicial and administrative decisions, statutes, and regulations, must be in the public domain and available to the public without restriction. AALL supports a general prohibition against copyright restrictions on government works. AALL opposes any copyright claims, restrictive licenses, royalty arrangements, statutory or regulatory revisions, or interpretations of federal, state, or local laws and regulations that restrict access to, or the use or reuse of, government information.
IV. Privacy of Library Users
AALL opposes any current or future legislation, regulation, or guideline that erodes the privacy and confidentiality of library users or that has the effect of suppressing the free and open exchange of ideas and information. AALL believes that there must be effective oversight of current law that expanded surveillance on library users. Public access to information must be tempered by privacy rights concerning personal information held in private sector databases and government files, including the confidentiality of library circulation records.
V. Standards
AALL has a leadership role in the development of appropriate national and international technical standards for information dissemination, bibliographic control, authentication, and preservation.
VI. Preservation
Most of the paper produced since 1850 has a high acid content that drastically reduces the life of books. Massive deterioration of law library holdings is occurring. The burden of preserving the intellectual content of these deteriorating books falls on libraries.
AALL supports efforts to establish and fund preservation activities. Initiatives such as preservation photocopying, microfilming and data scanning are needed to reformat information fixed on brittle paper. Other measures, such as de-acidification programs, must be undertaken to limit further loss of paper documents. Preventive measures, notably policies promoting the use of permanent alkaline paper, are needed to end the spiraling cost of preserving the human record.
Equally urgent is the need to ensure the permanent public access and preservation of electronic government information. As with its print resources, government has an obligation to guarantee the authenticity, integrity, permanent public access, and preservation of its digital information. Leaders in library, government, industry, and academic circles must cooperatively design and deploy coherent strategies for archiving digital information and adapting preservation to new technologies.
VII. Support for Law Libraries
Libraries are critical to the knowledge base and economic and social well being of society. Adequate funding of all public law libraries, including state, courthouse, county, and local libraries, is essential to ensuring the ready availability of legal information for all who seek to access the justice system. Public libraries are, in most situations, the primary source of legal material and informational assistance for self-represented persons. In addition, governments should provide adequate funding for the FDLP and state depository programs.
AALL supports a legal and regulatory environment that fosters an efficient and economical flow of electronic information to and from libraries. In particular, a system of affordable telecommunication rates for competitive speeds should be provided to libraries. AALL supports net neutrality, which has kept the Internet open and non-discriminatory and allowed it to thrive and flourish.
VIII. The Law Library of Congress
AALL supports a strong Law Library of Congress as our de facto National Law Library. The programs and services of the Library of Congress and the Law Library of Congress are important in fulfilling the mission to effectively serve the Congress, the courts, federal agencies, and the public, and to the successful operation of all law libraries.
AALL urges Congress to support with necessary funding and authority the Library of Congress/Law Library of Congress's priority initiatives, such as digital efforts to preserve and disseminate historic Congressional materials that benefit Congress and all citizens; the reclassification of more than 500,000 volumes to the K class; the identification, cataloging, and preservation of rare and unique legal materials for the benefit of the Nation; and the completion of new storage facilities to ensure that the Law Library has sufficient space to acquire and maintain current legal materials.
IX. Intellectual Freedom
AALL endorses the Library Bill of Rights (current version available on the American Library Association website at www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/intfreedom/librarybill/index.cfm) and supports the right of libraries to disseminate materials on all subjects. AALL opposes censorship and supports nondiscriminatory access to information for all library users.
X. White House Conference
AALL supports periodic White House conferences and similar national forums for the evaluation of library services to the Nation and its citizens.
XI. Conclusion
AALL and its Chapters will inform our members of current information policy issues, offer our expertise in developing laws, policies, and practices consistent with this Policy, and actively assist elected and government officials to enact such policies.<|endoftext|>Pdf The Nonprofit Sector A Research Handbook Second Edition
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and just too intelligent to be able to concentrate on one thing at a time, much less prioritize or schedule my day efficiently. I constantly battle with myself trying not to get side-tracked.
Consequently, I'm lucky to get the most pressing things done. By "pressing" I mean the most critical or important tasks relevant to running this company. Examples include payroll, developing new junk, paying for said junk, dealing with employee shenanigans, trying to find affordable health insurance, packing and unpacking from shows, trying to persuade Gina to dye her hair, and up-dating the website. The latter task is what causes the majority of injured sensibilities among the K-9's of Living History....
I rarely handle orders or reply to emails regarding them at all. On the occasion I do handle an order, Gina cusses for months afterwards as that person instantly becomes my new best friend and wishes to deal exclusively with "the owner" and talk "living history" 8 days per week. That's another reason I'm scarce at the tables during shows. It may seem rude, but that's the way it has to be.
Events and links. I have already ceased handling unit links due to English being incomprehensible to many reenactors. Now, due to this year's snivels and shi*t-fits, I will only bother to list those events which we will attend. Should this make your diaper turn gold, there are links to six other calendars on our events's not like I don't offer a solution right there. If I fail to post your shin-dig, it doesn't mean I think poorly of you, or that I'm trying to ruin your event, I'm belittling your heritage, or I hate you because your Mom is fat or any other nonsense. Maybe I just didn't get to it yet or I just plain forgot.
So, please try to comprehend this: I have a lot of crap to do on a daily basis. I rarely get it all done. It makes my heart bleed to know that you slipped through the cracks and that you're going to tell everyone in Reenactingville that I'm an asshole and your entire unit will now boycott ATF. In case you hadn't heard, threats are the way to go around here if you want special attention and instant customer service...delete!
FYI: If you've been a punk about this crap in the past, nothing you send will ever get listed.
Who else can I abuse today....?
So Smooth and Tasty
Cigarettes suck. What is the attraction? There is no upside. Besides killing you in extraordinarily slow and agonizing ways, it stinks, it makes you and everything around you stink, turns your teeth and fingernails yellow, you end up burning up your clothes (or house), messes up the interior of your car, it makes your skin sag, annoys everyone around you and the wrinkles created by the constant sucking makes your mouth look like a rectum. Yes, REALLY.
I don't get it. Most other drugs have at least some short term benefit- you get stoned, get a rush, become a sexual dynamo (even if it's only in your own mind)...and most of them accomplish this without making you smell like ass. Even if you're a lard-ass at least food tastes good.
They don't make you look cool or suave- just like an idiot. The only place they might still be considered sexy is in a Kentucky trailer park- but there they are a necessity to stop the shakes until your momma gets her vicodin prescription refilled...
It's been known that these nasty things kill you since the 1920's. Even the Fuhrer tried to eliminate them in the 30's. If anyone says "there's no proof they kill you" this person is either a complete retard or in denial because they're too weak to put them down.
Why do I care? This filth has killed half a dozen of my family members, several friends and acquaintances over the years and it's in the process of killing one of my best friends. And did I mention that it smells like shi*t?
I realize addictions are hard for many people to break, but how this is attractive in the first place, even to dumb kids, still escapes me. I've tried smoking- and the problem cures itself before it starts. I'd rather lick the bottom of a vagrant's shoe. Assuming he has shoes at all.
What to do? It's obvious that the anti-smoking ads have had limited effect. But they are weak and spineless. They respect "smokers' rights". Screw that. They've been polluting my air and stinking up my clothes for years. I prefer the proactive approach.
People may be stupid, fail to listen or accept future consequences, but, like all animals, they can be trained .
How so? Simple. Take someone's smokes, like Gina, and pack "lady fingers" (fire crackers) in one or two fece-rods in each pack. Once she begins to associate lighting up with the pain and shock of having the tip of her nose blown off and her eyebrows melted...
So, this is perhaps pointless as a rant, but I'm just sick of watching people die from something with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
We are NOT Grigsby Militaria
We are NOT Grigsby Militaria. It's obvious that cutting 3rd grade English did not yield the benefits you expected. Over the past few years, I have repeatedly addressed this issue- one that I thought should go without saying. We cannot help you with your orders from other companies. We never did offer such a service and never will...nor does any other company that I have ever encountered. For some reason, there has been a new deluge of this nonsense- now people are demanding that we fill or refund orders they have place with Grigsby Militaria. This is bullshi*t.
I have named the company involved because this nonsense is exclusively concerned with them and no other vendor. I suspect some window licker drivel posted on Chad's Time Warp Warrior Forum is to blame. No one has mistaken us for WPG, WW2 Impressions, or the Grenadier Depot. Not lately anyway. So, please, tell your friends not to cuss out Gina because she won't let you speak to Eric...if you do, you're risking a zesty cat pee coating on your next order.
Here's the deal: Yes, Eric and I used to go to shows together, set up next to or across from one another but we have ALWAYS been separate companies. We aren't even in the same STATE. Likewise, we have NEVER filled orders for them. NEVER. We are not responsible for nor do we have any control over anything he does or says regarding an order. Moreover, I haven't spoken to him in months and can hardly offer you an update on your tent pole order- even if I wanted to. Their number is 931-537-9165.
Yes, if we do not have an item, we sometimes mention other companies who we think may have that item. But our suggesting other people to call does not come with a money-back guarantee of satisfaction for any future order you may place with the other company. Ask your Mommy to explain this if you're still stupefied.
Ordering Tips & Tidbits:
1. When dealing with any mail order business, you do assume some amount of risk. The amount depends upon who you are dealing with. Some companies are perfectly reliable and others are not. How to know?
2. In the case of Reenacting/Living History land, you have several options to investigate a vendor's reputation: The WW2 Reenacting Forum, The Axis History Forum, The Better Business Bureau, and Google. Google may be the best actually. I checked several of the main vendors and quite a few comments and information is available on each. The ones with issues are easily identified.
3. We do not have any outstanding deliveries for any other vendors in the entire universe. So, if one tells you that we have failed to ship the product to them and we are, therefore, the reason for the delay or cock-up, that person is a lying.
4. If you have any reason to be concerned with any company's reputation- never, EVER, used a check or money order. God forbid cash. Use a credit card or Paypal. If they don't take credit cards, there's a reason and it's probably not a good one. If the vendor clowns around, all you have to do is contact the credit company and do a chargeback to get a refund. However, there is sometimes a time limit or statute of limitations. If you wait a year and a half to complain, you may be S.O.L...check with your credit card company first.
5. If all else fails, and you keep getting lies and the run-around from whatever vendor ails you, a letter from an attorney will often work miracles.
Once and for all, we do not know what ANY other vendor has done (or not done) with your order. You need to speak to them yourself. If you think this is unfair, I guess it sucks to be you.
Why we have no ASS
Many people ask why we don't make Allgemeine SS junk. Well, it's rant-worthy, so here's the answer. It's not exactly for the reason one might expect- that of political sensitivity, (I have none) nor out of respect for the victims of Nazi Germany, fear of offending this or that group of yahoo, or because I'm Jewish.
It's far simpler- Allgemeine SS stuff (ASS) is one big dweeb magnet- and nothing but a nuisance.
We've had Allgemeine SS Visor Caps and some insignia off and on over the years. So we do have some experience in this field- and it was so annoying that I can't believe I failed to make it into a rant in the past. The dime store nazis tried to claim almost every order was lost (until we mentioned their signature in the UPS tracking record), they were very distressed that we couldn't provide a complete Reichsfuhrer outfit for under $29 and several were stoned and most were just plain creepy.
First off, I've played SS since I was 15. There's not a politically correct bone in my body. Second, the majority of the atrocities committed by the Germans were perpetrated by men wearing field gray or police green- not black. Once the War got started, the Waffen SS was no longer issued the black uniform. They intended to re-introduce it once the War was over. Those who did wear it during the conflict were mostly occupied with administrative and political tasks. Despite this fact, the uniform epitomizes the Nazi regime and its worst actions to the most people on the planet.
If we had a reenactment of downtown Berlin and the Reichstag, then fine. Go for it. But since reenactments are almost exclusively concerned with the combat theaters of the War, ASS serves no purpose at events...other than to excite those two flamers that troll the Lowell event for some carrot to wax. Why one unit has chosen to wear it at the Gap for the catered dinner escapes me.
The vast majority of people we have encountered who want ASS are total fruitcakes. On the phone, they sound either like serious doll collectors, serial killers or someone Chris Hansen would interview in the kitchen. The only reason most of them seem to want to wear ASS is to get attention- they think that daring to wear that really naughty uniform will make them stand out in ways they can't in real life- maybe their avatar doesn't have an ASS option- or their Mom wouldn't let them wear her stilettos- it's some sort of pseudo-erotic cry for attention. They know the misconception (or perhaps partake of it) and assume that dressing up as the ultimate bad guy will somehow be cool. It's the same way with guys fishing for SD, Gestapo and KZ (Camp guard) crap. You won't look like a badass. You'll just look like the village idiot.
And, not that there's anything wrong with being a turd burglar, but the times I have encountered guys wearing ASS at events, there's a palpable homoerotic air about the whole thing. They genuinely get excited..."Ooooo they're really gonna freak out when they see us in these!". I mean, they get totally worked up about it. You'd think they had a date with Angelina Jolie...or Ted Haggard.
So you're going to impress some living historians...turn heads...really make those forums light up. Oooo. Ahhhh. The idea of it makes me pop a stiffy.
FYI: The real men in black drove tanks.
So, we will leave this cash cow of national socialist foreplay to other vendors.
Sieg Heil ya'll!
This and That
July 2010
Ok, just random stuff again.
Overseas shipping rates are based on weight. Not the cost of the item. (That dictates duties). Just because you bought some cheap East German jackboots does not mean the shipping is going to be cheap too. And thanks for sending us the trojan program. We weren't dumb enough to open it. Tell UPS about the poo in your panties- it's not our fault. You Brits are catching up to the Belgians in the king jerk-off tournament.
World's Dumbest: Just a tip for you wannabe thieves- when you sign for your package, and then call us up to claim you never got it and demand free shi*t, it might not work out the way you expect. Go back to stealing pop and condoms from 7-11.
We have a tape measure. Several of them. When you return a uniform, accompanied by an indignant letter ranting and raving that we don't have the right might want to be sure that you actually know your own size. Makes you look kind of silly. And fat. It's not like we're going to hack your ad on adultfriendfinder and post that you really wear 44 pants instead of 32. But if you piss with us, I might put it up on my website. Hmm.
What Nazi Stuff are we gonna make?
Instead of badgering Gina, and since she doesn't know anyway, here's the answer to this one. However, I refuse to put any sort of estimated time up for reasons you should all know by now. If you're new, there are a lot of obnoxious, mildly retarded sorts out there who will call up and scream "it's the first day of Fall and I want my shi*t" if I do so.
I'll simply break this into two parts. The first is items which are actually in progress to some degree. It may be only guinea pigs, but they are full-term guinea pigs rather than mere fetuses which are still subject to possible abortion if I don't like the looks of their DNA markers. The second part are things with genuine intent, but where one or more components do not yet exist- they are only an itch in their Daddies fur sack.
Part 1: Most likely these will exist by the end of 2010. No further info available at this time. PERIOD.
-A-frame Bags (Tropical and "Regular")
-MP40 Pouches (Several patterns and price ranges, but no blue ones this year.)
-MP44 Pouches (Several patterns and price ranges.)
-6 cell MP40 pouches (Olive green only. No shoulder strap- unless someone can provide me with one of the snap hooks to copy. Hint, hint...)
-Mkb42 Pouches (Several patterns and price ranges.)
-M44 Breadbags.
-Breadbag Straps, both regular and tropical. No blue.
-Parade Belts: As in smooth side out, not the brocade things. We may also try some white gear for the LSSAH to wear on parade at the Gap. But I have to experiment with leather paint. (Yes, there is such a thing.)
-Food can Straps, leather (These will cost more than the East German food can.)
-Tropical belt keepers (Wow)
Part 2: Probably nothing until next year. Some things are awaiting hardware to be made. As for the tropical stuff, I'm waiting for prices from the webbing company. The cost may be prohibitive (for the tropical webbing), but the funky stuff (tapered widths, woven buttonholes, etc) can be a US company. But everything is contingent on the price so they may be stillborn. I'll know in a week or two about that.
-Improved combat Y-straps. Probably 2-3 varieties.
-FJ Y-straps. Might happen this year if I can get some of the rear hooks.
-Press Stoff (or imitation Press Stoff made from leather- what a contradiction) E-Tool Carriers and MG Gunner's pouches.
-M31 clothing bags. Wow.
- Rucksacks: M31, Gebirgs, Artillery, and maybe tornister. The latter depends on any issues with shipping fur back and forth.
-Tan MP44 & Mkb42 pouches.
-Tropical Y-straps
-Tropical mess tin & tornister straps
-Tropical MP40 pouches (contingent on the webbing as well)
By range of prices I mean this: I have a limited amount of original fabrics, hardware and threads. Items made to look like the "real thing" down to the last detail will be high or insanely high. The regular, all new materials stuff will be reasonable. Not cheap like economy gear, but not batshi*t crazy.
Luftwaffe? Once we get the main items rolling along, then I'll see about getting some field blue canvas. But at the rate I go, that may be 2012.
Ideas? Please don't bomb us with suggestions and dreamgear ideas- I'm very familiar with German gear and we can only go so fast. Moreover, many of the odd items (range finder lense caps, lineman's pouches, etc) are not cost effective to mess with. We still do not have the ability or motivation to do one-off odd or custom jobs. They're almost always nothing but trouble...
Stitches aren't the Problem
(July 2010) I made the mistake of checking out the forums the other day. Several threads/topics/henpecking-fests were devoted to stitch picking and how well or how awful various vendors uniforms fit peoples' bodies. Photos were included. How the hell do these people get anything to fit their figures? When you have a gut that dwarfs a king size should be grateful when you can actually button a tunic. German tunics and M42 paratrooper uniforms were not designed for "today's male". Page after page is devoted to stitch counting and fretting over the twist of thread, and the angles of waist bands and curves of trouser flys...on the cheap ass felt and polyester wonders from HK Harry and Duplicators. Try the mirror first. Avoiding the drive-thru and the chip & soda aisle at the store will help your impression (not to mention your life span) more than the correct left twist, field gray shade 69 thread on your keilhosen.
The fact is this. If you take the best of all reproductions- or even all original gear, and custom make a uniform with original fabric, buttons and matter how perfect the'll never be content with your impression if you can't see your feet when you look down or piddle without hoisting your tummy to reach your fly. It's a fact and an observation, |
additional convincing here are the real reasons you need to get backyard chickens.
They are addictive.
Chickens are sort of like those chips in the can… Once you start, you just can't stop.
Once you have your coop setup it is just so easy to pick up more chicks and then a few ducks and pick up a few that were being rehomed.
Before I knew it I had a flock of over thirty and was getting two dozen eggs a day… Hello, my name is Bobbie and I am a chicken addict.
Laying eggs
So there you have it. Everything I wish I would have know before I brought home my first batch of chicks. I hope that I haven't talked you out of diving head first into chickens. I was scrambling in the beginning and I would 100% do it again. Take it easy on yourself and do a little prep work before the babies arrive!
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This Post Has 3 Comments
1. Evonne Horn
Have been thinking about getting chickens for 3 years. I live in southeast MN and it gets cold. That has been a bit of concern. What do you think of the snap lock coops? Have enjoyed reading your comments this Am.
1. The Courageous Chicken
Make the leap and order some chicks! I live in central North Dakota and it gets very very cold here and my birds haven’t had any problems. They have been through -40 degree temps and I don’t heat the coop at all. For a coop, I just suggest getting it big enough so that you can walk in. That will make it easier to clean and keep an eye on your flock.
2. Esther
Thank you for this post. It was informative to this never-owned-chickens newbie. I grew up with chickens, collecting eggs, washing the eggs, butchering them. I loved all of it. But I know there is a big difference between helping my grandmother, and actually being responsible for them.
Leave a Reply<|endoftext|>Car Tech
The Arrow Smart Electric Go-Kart Is A Tesla For Nine-Year-Olds
The Arrow Smart Electric Go-Kart Is a Tesla For Nine-Year-Olds
Four-year-olds get to play with Power Wheels, teenagers get to drive real cars, but how do all those kids in-between quench their need for speed? With the new Arrow Smart-Kart from Actev Motors that sounds as feature-packed as a Tesla Model S, without the $100,000-plus price tag.
There are actually a few different features that rightfully earn the Arrow go-kart its ‘smart’ moniker. Even though it was designed by professional race-car drivers and tops out at a brisk 20 kilometres per hour, the kart still prioritises safety as much as it does driving fun.
For example, a collision sensor mounted on the front of the Arrow will automatically stop the kart before it’s involved in a head-on crash that could damage both the vehicle and the driver. For kids who haven’t quite honed their reflexes, that alone could make the Arrow worthwhile. But the Smart Kart also connects to a free iOS and Android smartphone app over wi-fi allowing parents to limit the go-kart’s speed, range, and other capabilities.
The Arrow Smart Kart is primarily designed for kids aged five to nine (although if an adult was able to squeeze into the tiny vehicle it actually supports riders up to 91kg) and as a young driver gets accustomed to controlling the kart without crashing, parents can slowly increase its top speed using the app.
The Smart Kart also supports geo-fencing, so using the app parents can limit exactly how far a child can drive it. An onboard GPS tracker will automatically slow the vehicle to a crawl when it breaks a geo-fence barrier, which encourages kids to return to the pre-designated area so they can drive at full speed again.
The Arrow’s accompanying app also has an emergency stop feature that completely shuts down the Smart Kart with the tap of a button. There’s notifications, including when the kart’s collision avoidance feature has been activated, or when the Arrow has been motionless for a set amount of time, indicating a possible problem. And it even keeps track of driving stats like time, distance, and speeds.
On a full charge the Arrow will run for anywhere from 30 minutes to a full hour, depending on where or how fast the kart is being driven. If a kid has the pedal to the metal as they climb a mountain switchback, expect battery life to be closer to half an hour. Charging the battery is an overnight affair using the charger included with the kart, but a fast charger will also be available as an optional accessory, as well as additional batteries that can be quickly swapped out.
In fact, accessories and add-ons will be a big part of the whole Arrow experience. The kart is available for pre-order starting today for $US600 ($846), but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Everything from custom body kits, to drifting wheel rings, to smart cones, to steering wheel upgrades will be available. Even the app has some clever ways to squeeze a few more bucks out of mum or dad with various synthesized engine sound effects that can be downloaded and shared to the vehicle.
So if you’ve got a kid who seemingly can’t wait until they’re 16 to get behind the wheel, the Arrow Smart Kart could be a great way to tide them over, and maybe even teach them the basics of the road before you have to nervously climb in the passenger seat one day while helping them get their licence. [Actev Motors]
Trending Stories Right Now<|endoftext|>Which candidate will cut prices at the pump?
As gas climbs to a new high for average price of the year, President Obama and Governor Romney are putting forth very different plans to try and curb prices
STEVE FORBES: well the whole thing underscores 2 big things. One is under this administration; the permit process for drilling in this country has gone way down, like a snail's pace. They are putting barriers in the way of fracking so that the supply side is hit. Then on the dollar, whenever you cheapen the dollar, you get expensive gasoline and oil; we should have learned that from the 1970s.
RICK UNGAR: Obviously it has a certain appearance; if you're going to tap into the strategic oil reserves a few weeks before an election because you're worried the price is going to go high, you have to ask the question, is it a political move? The truth is, what the administration has said is that they are going to wait and see what is developing out of Iran and if there is an impact happening because of Iran, you have to give him the benefit of the doubt and maybe this is something they have to do. Presidents have very little to say about the price of gas unfortunately. Doesn't matter if you a democrat or republican. Governor Romney saying we are going to do all of the above. C'mon.
RICH KARLGAARD: There's nothing wrong with it but you have to start from a point of view that it's ok to do that and when you have an ex-EPA official who went around saying we should crucify oil and gas companies then of course that official resigned, and on his resignation letter he said I know President Obama has been incredibly supportive of me and my work. When you have that kind of attitude oozing out of the administration it's no wonder speculators jump in the moment oil becomes reasonably priced and drive it back up.
JOHN TAMNY: Both sides in this debate are hopeless because both start with the presumption we have a supply problem. We don't have a supply problem at all, we have a dollar problem and that's where Rick Ungar is incorrect. Presidents can fix this. Presidents that pursue a strong dollar always have cheap oil. If we go back to a strong dollar policy oil will decline it's not supply, go back to the dollar.
MIKE OZANIAN: If there was absolutely no supply problem, then that would mean that we have unlimited energy. We don't have unlimited energy. The supply situation does send market signals. Romney's plan would create more energy, we do need more energy to increase the size of the economy and oil is the way to go.
MORGAN BRENNAN: I think this isn't a supply issue as well, I agree with john. If you look at numbers, domestic supply is up 14 percent over the last year. I think this is an issue on the refinery side. We have taxes and regulations that have made the process of refining so expensive that we have refineries closing left and right. I know of 3 in the northeast just since March. That's part of the reason we are seeing gas prices go up. That's an issue that needs to be taken care of and why I'm actually behind the Romney plan as oppose to the Obama plan.
Baker won't sell to people paying with welfare so taxpayers don't foot the bill for sweet treats
Is this good way for private market to save taxpayers from paying for what some call non-essential goods? Yes? No? Why?
JOHN TAMNY: The right to free association is a basic American right and I like that this baker is refusing to do business with those she doesn't want to. As for the economy, maybe she will shame those who refuse service to actually go back into the working world, get a job, and actually contribute something to the economy, so it will have very positive long term effects I think.
RICH KARLGAARD: We desperately need a debate on welfare and food stamps. I think this is the wrong battle to pick. You don't have a complete right to free association. The civil rights laws in the 1960s means that you have to serve people you don't like if they are different than you. People on welfare will probably have a disproportionate chance of being one of those protected classes. I think it's a dangerous act, maybe a brave act, but a foolish act for this woman to take.
STEVE FORBES: As long as you are not violating civil rights laws on race, gender creed and things like that, she should be able to sell to whom she wants. If she wants to give up money to make a statement about our welfare programs, bless her. I wish she would sell those whoopee pies so she gets the money contributes to candidates who do want the kind of programs that she wants, and the think tanks to do the research to do that kind of thing. She should redirect the money, recycle it to good causes.
MIKE OZANIAN: I'm concerned that it will lead to cash payments replacing food stamps. I don't think she is going to have an impact at all but I'm really concerned because I have been telling people for years that pies and cakes and an occasional soft drink are nutritious so I'm concerned about this.
RICK UNGAR: I don't think anyone should be spending their money on tubs of lard, it's bad in general. What astounds me is that I have never seen someone who goes on TV and tells the world that her product has no value. We do have this funny little law about discriminating and you don't get to pick a class of people, in this case people on welfare and discriminate against them. You can't do it, she can't do it. I don't know where she is coming from on this.
MORGAN BRENNAN: I think that the only money that is going to be saved by something like this is the baker's money in terms of profits. There are already restrictions placed on food stamps. A look at the USDA website will show you those sugary sweets like whoopee pies fall under eligible items. I think if we are going to take up the mantle of welfare and food stamps are concerned, let's look at the more pressing topics like people spending money on tattoos, cigarettes pornography that states and governments are already starting to look at.
According to a new report, 2,362 people who earned a million dollars or more in taxable income in 2009 received unemployment benefits
MIKE OZANIAN: The millionaires should get there insurance because they have paid for it so they are just getting back what they have paid. We have 30 states in this country where the insurance trusts are underfunded which means states are borrowing money to put into the trusts so they can play the insurance. We need to privatize this market right now.
RICK UNGAR: This one really bothers me. We aren't talking about millionaires, we are talking about people who when they file their tax returns, put down that they earned a million dollars in that year, despite earning a million bucks, they still went into the unemployment office to get a check, outrageous. They didn't go to the unemployment office; they sent their drivers in to collect their check because they would have been embarrassed. It's absolutely shameful.
STEVE FORBES: If I fired myself I wouldn't go in and collect unemployment. What you pay into the system you should get out of it. If you want to reform the system, fine. If you lose the job, paid in you should be able to get out of it. I think Mike is right, we should have a system where what you put in and if you don't have the wherewithal to do it then the government steps in.
MORGAN BRENNAN: I think they shouldn't. Let's put these numbers into perspective. We are talking about people who filed $1 million or more; unemployment benefits were $21 million versus $77 billion in the year 2009, so we are talking about a very small percentage of people receiving unemployment benefits. The cost of living is relative to your income. Whether you have been laid off a $30,000 a year job or a $1 million a year job the cost of living is relative and you can see this in foreclosure numbers. We have seen a lot of millionaires who have foreclosed on houses in the last 4 years.
RICH KARLGAARD: I share Rick Ungar's outrage over this and so does a very conservative Tom Coburn who wants to end this loophole. For the time being, it is the law, and the people who are collecting unemployment benefits even though they have high incomes are following the law. It reminds me of people who take advantage of the large tax code who are accused of cheating even though they are following the law.
Informer: Long skirts are a sign of a bad economy according to the Hemline Index: hemlines are as long as they were in 1929
Informers pick stocks to get skirts short again.
52-WEEK HIGH: $40.00
52-WEEK LOW: $12.88
MIKE OZANIAN: Kimberly-Clark (KMB)
52-WEEK HIGH: $88.25
52-WEEK LOW: $65.11<|endoftext|>20/04/19: Eating just one slice of bacon a day linked to a higher risk of colorectal cancer says the study
How bad for you are processed meats?
People who ate 76 grams of red and processed meat per day — that’s in line with current guidelines and roughly the same as a quarter-pound beef burge– had a 20% higher chance of developing colorectal cancer compared to others, who ate about 21 grams a day, the equivalent to one slice of ham, according to the research.
“A small amount of processed meat seems to have the same effect as a large amount of red meat,” said Professor Tim Key, who co-authored the study and is deputy director at the University of Oxford’s cancer epidemiology unit.
Cancer Research UK, which partly funded the research, said that current NHS guidance states that people who eat more than 90 grams (cooked weight) of red and processed meat a day should reduce this to 70 grams — the average amount consumed per day in the UK.
Growing evidence
He said that previous research had looked at people in the 1990s, but “diets have changed significantly since then, so our study gives a more up-to-date insight that is relevant to meat consumption today,” he said in a news release.
Another factor increasing the risk of colorectal cancer is alcohol, the research found. The study also said that fibre from bread and breakfast cereal was linked with a reduced risk of colorectal cancer, which starts in the colon or the rectum.
The World Health Organization concluded in 2015 that there is enough evidence to classify processed meat as “carcinogenic to humans,” wrote the study’s authors. The WHO has classified red meat as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
Dr Gunter Kuhnle, associate professor in nutrition and health at the University of Reading in the UK, said that this is the “largest study ever undertaken in the UK.”
Kuhnle, who was not involved in the research, said that the results “confirm previous findings that both, red and processed meat consumption increases the risk of colorectal cancer.”
Dr Julie Sharp, head of health information at the charity Cancer Research UK, said that government guidelines on red and processed meat are “general health advice and this study is a reminder that the more you can cut down beyond this, the more you can lower your chances of developing bowel cancer.”
She suggests reducing red and processed meat by trying meat-free Mondays, or recipes that use fresh chicken and fish.<|endoftext|>Missing Jet
Vanished: Missing-Plane Mysteries Through History
A Malaysia Airlines jet, missing since Friday, is the latest in a long history of flight mysteries — some of which remain unsolved.
The fate of Amelia Earhart is an unsolved mystery that has fascinated aviation watchers for decades.
Earhart, who had already become the first woman pilot to fly solo over the Atlantic Ocean, attempted to fly around the world with second navigator Fred Noonan in 1937. The pair and the Lockheed Model 10 Electra they were flying went missing over the Pacific Ocean near Howland Island. Neither their bodies nor the aircraft were recovered, despite an extensive and costly search.
While many experts believe the Electra ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea, others speculated the pair made a crash landing on nearby Gardner Island and died there. But other wild theories about Earhart's fate in particular continue to swirl: She was a U.S. spy, she was captured and killed by the Japanese, she survived and moved to New Jersey under an assumed name, she and Noonan eloped to escape her fame, and she was even abducted by aliens.
Oakland Tribune via AP
. FLIGHT 19 (1945)
On December 5, 1945, five Navy torpedo bombers took off from Florida on a training mission known as Flight 19. The five planes and the 14 crew members they held disappeared and were never fully recovered. A rescue plane sent to search for the Flight 19 members also went missing with its 13-man crew, assumed to have exploded in the air.
Flight 19 became one of the earliest tragedies linked to reports of supernatural events and plane disappearances in the "Bermuda Triangle" region.
According to a Navy report, instructor Lieutenant Charles Taylor became hopelessly lost when his compasses stopped working, and he told the other Flight 19 members to ditch their aircraft when fuel dipped below a certain level.
The Navy initially blamed the Flight 19 loss on pilot error, but Taylor's mother protested that conclusion given that no bodies or wreckage were found. After much debate, the Navy eventually said Flight 19 was lost due to "causes or reasons unknown."
Scientific Search Project via AP
This British South American Airways flight vanished in the Andes during a snowstorm on August 2, 1947. There was no sign of the aircraft, which was traveling to Chile from Buenos Aires, or its 11 passengers for more than 50 years. Finally, |
inting and the light is just glorious! You guys can even go to have a nice dinner after the shoot! :)
If the session is at your house, you can tell me when the natural lighting is best in your place.
If there's any other questions that you have, please email me.<|endoftext|>Michael Bloomberg exacerbates income inequality with donation to Hopkins for financial aid
“Michael Bloomberg: Why I’m Giving $1.8 Billion for College Financial Aid” (nytimes):
Let’s eliminate money problems from the admissions equation for qualified students.
America is at its best when we reward people based on the quality of their work, not the size of their pocketbook. Denying students entry to a college based on their ability to pay undermines equal opportunity. It perpetuates intergenerational poverty. And it strikes at the heart of the American dream: the idea that every person, from every community, has the chance to rise based on merit.
… I am donating an additional $1.8 billion to Hopkins that will be used for financial aid for qualified low- and middle-income students.
Here’s a simple idea I bet most Americans agree with: No qualified high school student should ever be barred entrance to a college based on his or her family’s bank account. Yet it happens all the time.
Let’s ignore the obvious solution for the Hopkins administrators: raise headline tuition prices by $1.8 billion over the next 10 years, charge families exactly what they were being charged before, but say that “financial aid” has been increased by $1.8 billion. (See “Credit Supply and the Rise in College Tuition: Evidence from the Expansion in Federal Student Aid Programs”, a 2015 paper from the New York Fed; 60 percent of subsidized student loans were captured by increased tuition rates and provided no relief to the purported beneficiaries.)
Suppose that the Bloomberg program works as advertised and therefore that lower income families will actually pay $1.8 billion less over the forthcoming years.
Won’t this exacerbate the inequality that Bloomberg himself was decrying as recently as May 2018 (see “Inaction on inequality could lead to uprising”)? People born fortunate (high academic potential in an economy that rewards cognitive skills) will now go to college for free instead of taking out loans and paying them back from their high earnings. So they will pull yet farther ahead of Americans with low academic ability.
Instead of the rich-in-genetics person with an IQ of 140 paying back student loans that enabled attendance at an elite university, the rich-in-genetics person will now get to use a full 50-60 percent of income (assume 40-50 percent total tax rate in California, New York, and other typical destinations for elite Americans) on consumption and retirement savings. The smart Hopkins grad who came from a lower-income family will essentially get a gift from Michael Bloomberg of luxury clothing and automobiles that will make median-IQ, median-income Americans sick with envy.
In “Protests against Charles Murray inadvertently prove the points he made in The Bell Curve?” I asked “If you like to fret about inequality, the sidelining of less-than-brilliant workers in favor of robots, etc., why wouldn’t you love Charles Murray?”
See also “The Bell Curve revisited,” my 2004 post on the book. Excerpts:
The Bell Curve starts out by talking about how we live in an era where people get sorted by cognitive ability into socioeconomic classes. In 14th century England if you were a peasant with a high IQ or a noble with a low IQ it didn’t affect your life, reproductive potential, or income very much. In our more meritocratic and vastly more sophisticated economy a smart kid from a lower middle class might make it to the top of a big company (cf. Jack Welch, who paid himself $680 million as CEO of GE) or at least into a $300,000/year job as a radiologist. For the authors of the Bell Curve the increasing disparity in income in the U.S. is primarly due to the fact that employees with high IQs are worth a lot more than employees with low IQs. They note that we have an incredibly complex legal system and criminal justice system. So you’d expect people with poor cognitive ability to fail to figure out what is a crime, which crimes are actually likely to be punished, etc., and end up in jail. (A Google search brought up a report on juvenile justice in North Carolina; the average offender had an IQ of 79.) If they stay out of jail through dumb (literally) luck, there is no way that they are ever going to be able to start a small business; the legal and administrative hoops through which one must jump in order to employ even one other person are impenetrable obstacles to those with below-average intelligence.
… For us oldsters, one unexpected piece of cheerful news from this book is that younger Americans are getting genetically dumber every year. Even if you ignore the racial and immigrant angles of the book that created so much controversy back in 1994 it is hard to argue with the authors’ assertion that smart women tend to choose higher education and careers rather than cranking out lots of babies. … Our population is predicted to reach 450 million or so [by 2050], i.e., the same as India had back when we were kids and our mothers told us about this starving and overpopulated country. An individual person’s labor in India has negligible economic value … It would seem that no enterprise would need an old guy’s skills in a country of 450 million; why bother when there are so many energetic young people around? And how would we be able to afford a house or apartment if there are 450 million smart young people out there earning big bucks and putting pressure on real estate prices? But if the book is right most of those young people will be dumb as bricks.
Whenever anyone talks about “financial aid,” I love to respond with “United Airlines gives more than 95 percent of customers financial aid since the official maximum ticket price is much higher than the typical price paid. Economists call charging each customer according to his or her ability to pay price discrimination, but it sounds better if you say ‘we’re giving these poor souls financial aid.'” (Note that price discrimination is possible
only in markets dominated by monopolies or oligopolies. McDonald’s can’t do this because Burger King is right across the street.)
Readers: Is it logically inconsistent for Michael Bloomberg to say that he wants to reduce income inequality and then give $1.8 billion to reduce college expenses for those Americans who are best set up to earn high incomes after graduation?
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Me: That will change.
Parent 1: D has already started Java.
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Should high school students design and build bicycles?
Factory schools teach science, math, and computers to students with the justification that “this stuff will help you, somehow, someday, maybe by getting you into the right college.” Some students are happy with this amount of motivation and some students love these subjects for their very purity, their disconnection from the concrete world. These are the students that we see at MIT and Harvard so in theory this approach is successful.
As evidenced by terrible average scores on standardized tests covering very basic material, the average high school student is not learning science, math, or computer programming to any perceptible degree. And realistically why would we expect a kid to be motivated to learn these things? They read newspaper articles about CEOs giving themselves $50 million/year salaries but flunking exams in basic accounting at their Stanford Business School refresher course. They watch television broadcasts of politicians’ speeches and there is never any reference to principles or ideas taught in their science, math, or computer programming classes.
The combination of a high degree of an abstraction and the apparent ability of people to reach the highest echelons of society in perfect ignorance of these subjects makes it tough for a lot of kids to hit the books.
Why not make it all concrete? Suppose that starting in 8th grade the kids were told “Each of you is going to design and build your own bicycle over the next 4 years. To help you do a better job, you’re going to learn some math, some physics, and how to use computers to simulate and model.”
At least 50 percent of what is taught in high school math and science can be motivated by the engineering challenge of making a bike that functions properly and weighs less than 100 kg. In particular one can dream that this project-based approach would rescue computer instruction from its current abyss. Instead of teaching the kids how to use Microsoft Office and write lame little graphics programs in VB or Java, we’d show them how computers can become analytical tools.
For the hands-on oriented kids we can let them machine their own parts and maybe do some welding, thus combining math and shop in one period! To keep the klutzes from killing themselves, though, you’d probably want a design option that included only pre-cut tubes bolted together (you could never make a commercially viable bike this way; it would be too heavy and expensive to manufacture but it would be fine to ride around flat areas and for teaching).
The actual change in the curriculum would be minimal. It is more a question of spirit and always having a concrete answer if a kid asks “Why do I need to know this?”
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Something new from Edward Tufte
If you visit http://www.edwardtufte.com/ you’ll see a new publication from the great man: “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint”. This is first notable for its format: a 24-page essay on full-size paper with very high quality color printing. This is not traditionally a commercially viable format. Normally one must write short enough for a magazine or long enough for a 200-page book in order to get into the mainstream distribution systems. High-quality printing is, of course, generally not on the menu except at some university presses.
The most topical item in the essay regards the PowerPoint slides used to guide thinking about the Columbia‘s wing while the shuttle was still up in space. (A sad echo of the poor presentation materials used to decide whether or not to launch Challenger, a theme discussed in Tufte’s earlier book Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative.)
Remember how horrified you were at your first slide-based presentation? The disaffected civil servants who stood up in front of you in public school at least tried to get you to pay attention to them, rather than darkening the room and insisting that you focus on one disembodied sentence at a time. By now most of us are used to PowerPoint, however, and we need something like the Tufte essay to bring back the outrage.
Slides are useful when you need to show everyone in a room a graph, a photo, or some other item for discussion. Somewhere in the 1960s and 1970s things went horribly wrong, however, as bullet points began to make their way onto the slides.
A modest step back from the PowerPoint culture is to limit one’s PowerPoint slides to charts and photos. If you can’t resist some text, limit yourself to an opening outline slide dense with structure and a closing summary to remind everyone of what they heard.
Why not step back more dramatically, though, to an age before the computer and the overhead projector? Color printing has never been cheaper and society has never been richer. Why not print up materials in advance of the talk and hand them out? If you need to refer to a chart or photo during your talk, ask people to “turn to page 3 of the handout”. You can leave the room lights on, people will focus their attention on you, the discussion and flow need not be constrained by the tyranny of the bullet points. The one disadvantage of the handout approach is that you can’t use a laser pointer.
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Our hometown makes the NY Times!
Cambridge, MA has made it into this NYT article. The public school system here has been in the news from time to time in recent years. In the mid-1990s it was the most expensive school system in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and it provided a fairly good education to the smart hard-working kids via an honors program and a fairly bad education to everyone else. In the late 1990s the honors program was eliminated in the interests of fairness. The rich parents responded by sending their kids to private schools; non-rich parents who cared about education moved to suburbs. Here we are in 2003 and the city apparently is spending $17,000 per year for each remaining student (still the most expensive in Massachusetts) to achieve some of the lowest test scores of any district in the state.
The $17,000 number combined with the poor results invites some brainstorming. The world’s best-performing secondary schools tend to be in Asia. Korean students do especially well on international tests. This U.S. military guide says that Korean private schools range in price from $2,000 to $13,700 per year. So the taxpayers of Cambridge could afford to charter Boeing 747s to fly kids to and from Korea every month, enroll them at the most expensive boarding schools in that nation, and still end up spending less than we’re spending now.
Suppose that we want to keep our kids close to home, though. For $17,000 they are getting a 1/25th share of a disaffected civil servant’s time (the teacher) plus some fraction of the time of the school administration. If we spent a bit of money on personal video conferencing setups for each kid, we could spend the rest hiring PhDs in low-wage English-speaking countries to teaching our city’s children one-on-one. Actually the way the U.S. economy has been going we might be able to find home-grown humanities PhDs to do the tutoring face-to-face for $17k/year (that’s about what they are getting now at Starbucks).
Friday Update
Just when you think you had an original idea… this more recent NYT article covers the “send a kid to a boarding school in a foreign country” idea.
Separately, it occurred to me that most people have kids in groups. If you had four kids, for example, the City of Cambridge would be spending $68,000 per year to educate them in a factory school. If you could get your hands on the $68,000, though, you could bring in Harvard grad students and PhDs to tutor your children at home. It is ironic that factory schools were started on the premise that, though they could never be as effective as the private tutoring that rich children enjoyed, at least they would be cheap and universal. Car factories certainly have lived up to their initial promise. A car from Hyundai is much cheaper than a hand-built car from a workshop. But the factory schools have actually become more expensive than the process that produced Thomas Jefferson, Bertrand Russell, and a lot of the successful people we’ve heard about. [The youngest professor at MIT, Erik Demaine, was home-schooled.]
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Give Fs to your best customers?
Here’s a portion of the “to the instructor” blurb of Internet Application Workbook:
The daily cost of attending a top university these days is about the same as the daily rate to stay at the Four Seasons hotel in Boston, living on room-service lobster and Champagne. It is no wonder, then, that the student feels entitled to have a pleasant experience. Suppose that you tell a student that his work is substandard. He may be angry with you for adversely affecting his self-esteem. He may complain to a Dean who will send you email and invite you to a meeting. You’ve upheld the standards of the institution but what favor have you done yourself? Remember that the A students will probably go on to graduate school, get PhDs, and settle into $35,000/year post-docs. The mediocre students are the ones who are likely to rise to high positions in Corporate America and these are the ones from whom you’ll be asking for funding, donations of computer systems, etc. Why alienate paying customers and future executives merely because they aren’t willing to put effort into software engineering?
In teaching with Internet Application Workbook you have a natural opportunity to separate evaluation from teaching. The quality of the user experience and solution engineered by a team is best evaluated by their client and the end-users. If the client responds to the questionnaire in Exercise 3 of the Planning Redux chapter by saying “Our team has solved all of our problems and we love working with them”, what does your opinion matter? Similarly if a usability study shows that test users are able to accomplish tasks quickly and reliably, what does your opinion of the page flow matter? During most of this course we try to act as coaches to help our students achieve high performance as perceived by their clients and end-users. We use every opportunity to arrange for students to get real-world feedback rather than letter grades from us.
The principal area where we must retain the role of evaluator is in looking at a team’s documentation. The main question here is “How easy would it be for a new team of programmers, with access only to what is in the /doc directory on a team’s server, to take over the project?”
America’s most grade-inflated schools tend to be its most expensive, e.g., Harvard. Assuming a 5 percent annual increase the cost of education at a top school will top $1 million within 40 years. Are the employee-teachers really going to give Fs to people donating $1 million to the institution? Is there any way to maintain academic excellence and good relations with our wealthy patrons (the students)?
Suppose that there were a set of standardized problem sets and tests, shared among groups of universities. A student at School A would have his or her work graded by teachers at Schools B,C, and D. The relationship between students and staff at School A would therefore be more akin to that of athlete and coach, people working together to achieve great results, never having opposed interests.
This idea might be tough to implement in advanced courses in very rapidly changing fields but should be easy for old standbys such as undergrad physics, chemistry, math, etc.
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Teaching them to become lawyers
This evening we showed our 6.002 students the Ken Burns PBS documentary Empire of the Air. This was adapted from a book of the same name by Tom Lewis. Here are the facts that were related in two hours:
Lee De Forest, who did much to publicize the idea of using radio for broadcast rather than point-to-point communication, claimed credit for other peoples’ inventions and, through good luck and great legal talent, managed to prevail in a decades-long lawsuit against Major Edwin Armstrong, the true inventor of most of the important technologies behind radio broadcasting. De Forest ridiculed America’s entry into World War I and then became a profiteer. On the cusp of his 60th birthday, De Forest married Wife #4, a beautiful 21-year-old actress who remained devoted to him until his death at age 88. As an old man, De Forest wrote a book entitled The Father of Radio and unsuccessfully encouraged his wife to write a book entitled I Married a Genius.
Edwin Armstrong worked hard and labored through formal electrical engineering training at Columbia University, the very sort of EE torture that our students are getting in 6.002. Armstrong developed the circuits that enable using a vacuum tube as a radio transmitter and the superhet receiver, which together made it practical to transmit music and voice over AM radio, rather than Morse code. A staunch patriot, Armstrong |
discipline, courage, an ability to stand apart from the crowd and think in the long-term. Most investors don’t have this. Besides that, a quantitative investor also needs to believe that a strategy that worked in the past will keep working in the future, even though there may be new developments (think Chinese reverse take-overs for example) and even though the problems with these strategies are obvious.
It’s very difficult to invest your hard-earned money in companies of which you don’t have any idea what their intrinsic value is or where you think there’s a good chance that their intrinsic value is zero (think Chinese companies, Herbalife before Dan Loeb went public with his long position, biotech companies, etc.).
The fact that a computer does the investing for you makes it easier, but not easy. Most investors are still inclined to look at their portfolio, and won’t be pleased to find there all the companies which have been negatively mentioned in the news lately, especially if the portfolio has underperformed for the last 2 or 3 years.
The problem (and at the same time blessing in disguise) of these strategies, is they can underperform for multiple consecutive years. By that time 99% of the investors will have abandoned it, thereby ensuring that the strategies will keep working in the long run.
Your remark that the best value investors are deeply inquisitive thinkers and not computer programmers, fits with my experience. If you are confident in the intrinsic value and margin of safety of your portfolio, you are better able to withstand long periods of underperformance and volatility because you believe that eventually the portfolio will go toward intrinsic value. If you do quantitative investing, you can only rely on your belief that strategies which worked in the past, will continue to work in the future, to guide you through large volatility and long periods of underperformance. This is much more difficult in my experience.
In my experience, quantitative investing is at the same time much easier and much harder than Ben Graham/Warren Buffett-style value investing. It’s much easier because it requires no knowledge, experience, skills and time to be successful. It’s much harder because you have no idea of the margin of safety of your portfolio and continually have to fight the urge to tinker with the screen or manually change the results.
So regarding to the question, “If it’s that easy, why doesn’t everybody do it and why isn’t everybody rich?” my answer is, “It’s not that easy.” It’s just that the difficulty isn't in the mechanics, but in the emotional intelligence required.
19. Hi Nate:
Quantifying one's value investing approaches into an algorithm (provided you have sourced the appropriate data, in the appropriate format and it's accurate and continually updated/adjusted and accurate...which is no given and not easy to do manually) is actually a straight forward process (you could do it in VBA, C, Python, etc.). In my view, the process is just a more tailored and specific approach than one would do in creating a valuation based screen on Bloomberg’s screening tool.
My issue (and it's the issue with all investing approaches) is first one has to get the value model correct and then the second thing is study the output of the model against enough historical data to understand statistically to a measured certainty level whether the model is outputting useful results or not. If you're looking for un-hedged long stock positions the model needs to consistently beat the S&P 500 over time (given a statistical certainty level), otherwise you can't turn things over 100% to the machines.
One simply would end up using the quantitative value model as a "tool" to help identify candidate stocks. Much further research and analysis would be needed before one lets the "machines" make the buy and sell investing decisions.
This is where the tough part comes in. The future vs the past. I only trust my value screens so much. I combine the valuation screen with some standard technical analysis to help with "timing". The value screen combined with my technical analysis metrics output a basket of stocks for consideration.
Then the real work starts in going through the financial statements and notes, the press releases, identify the industry trends and profit outlook, competition, changing technologies etc.. All the time consuming tedious work that investment research requires if you’re going to get an information edge. Some people say this information is already reflected in the stock price, but in many cases this may not be true. As we've seen in recent years with drastically good or bad implications depending on whether you were on the long or short side of the trade (banks, mortgage companies, Enron, etc.).
Every company I consider for a long or short position, even if it gets by the valuation screens is modeled into the future. The base forecast model (depends on the type of company) is 10 years. It's the automation of the future valuation model to help with the forecasting that is really tough (my models are not simplistic 10 line models like many analysts do these days). Automating a forward looking valuation model is much tougher than doing a backward looking algo to get the basket of stocks. I do at least three scenarios of the forecast valuation model. Base case, worst case and best case.
20. (con't)
In going through the forecast valuation/modeling process, if I can't clearly develop/identify the main reason for the "driver" of the increased value (and price) of the stock, then I have no interest in taking a position. For a margin of safety, I need about 20% upside valuation on the base case relative to the current market price for a long and generally the same 20% to the downside for a short position (this also helps with timing).
Often I'll model a company, and the upside and everything else looks good. But in going through all the "soft" intangibles of the company this is something that I just don’t like. For example, I just might not like the corporate ownership structure (a big problem with many companies, especially emerging market companies in some countries). Thus, I won't pull the trigger or I will add an extra point or two to the discount rate to adjust for this risk(it's tough when that happens, but I've seen what can happen to minority shareholders when dealing with some of these majority owners).
One can "code" a "risk intangible or set of risk intangibles" into the value screen algo to compensate for the fact that certain countries rank higher than others for corporate governance, but really it's a risk assessment that needs to be scored on a company by company basis. This requires going through every company in the database and giving it a rank score for the ownership structure and corporate governance. No easy way around that type of research work.
An example: I valued Cisco back around 2004. I determined that after the tech crash in 2000 through to 2002, that Cisco would continue to be a dominant company in their core router business, but I also foresaw that the declining trend in unit bandwidth prices paid by end users would continue to come down for a long time with the carriers (Cisco's customers). Meaning that the carriers (Cisco's customers) would continue to demand better/faster core routers. But that the carriers would not be willing to pay more for the better router throughput (unit capacity basis) as their revenue was probably not going to increase much (days of 10% revenue growth for the carriers were over) unless the increase in traffic significantly outpaced the unit price decline the carriers were experiencing from their customers. At the time, the unit price declines were actually outpacing the increase in traffic. I don't know if that's the case anymore, but you get the picture. I did not see the huge revenue driver for Cisco. They would continually be asked to create faster and faster routers or the carriers would threaten to go with another vendor who did have the faster routers. At the time I remember (back in 2004) that I valued Cisco around $19 or $20 per share. Today, Cisco trades at $21.15. It's gone nowhere in more than 10 years. This is not a growth company. But most technology based companies don't think of themselves as everyday basic companies that should focus on free cash flow within the business cycle of stable market and pay out their excess cash in dividends. In the pursuit of “growth” they create their own investment divisions and overpay for start-up firms attempting to buy growth at a level that they command a "growth multiple". Many of the investments don’t work out and the company ends up hurting their return on assets and return on equity through the bad investments and keeping too much excess around (many companies simply go into decline in their core business, such as Nortel). If I remember correctly, Cisco was forced to start paying a dividend when shareholders started complaining (it's about 2.7% yield now according to Yahoo! Finance)
21. (con't)
In summary, how does one "code" the future outlook story such as I just told above into an algorithm? It’s very difficult to do implement this type of forward looking research logic in an automated algorithm. One might be able to do it after they have done all the research work and valuation model work and given Cisco a "future outlook" score. But you can see that the research analysts would play a vital part in the development and maintenance of the automated value algorithm code.
I may have even been wrong in my future assessment at the time and Cisco has been flat for many years for completely different reasons than I described. But in the end I got the valuation right. There was no future valuation driver to push the price higher. My valuation assessment was overall correct, whether or not the specific reason driving the story was right or not.
No quantitative value screen is going to be able to foresee the future for an individual company (and we know many analysts get it wrong). Maybe one could implement quant value screens with success at the aggregate level for industries, sectors and the entire market. But then, you just need to run the quant value screen on a bunch of sector or index ETF's and make life easier.
Hope this helps.
Regards, VR
22. Interesting post.
Some thoughts:
1) Quantitative strategies really only work well in inefficient markets, such as small-caps, or during market panics, where mis-valuations are much more likely to be large and obvious.
2) It is emotionally very difficult to stick to a quant system during periods where it lags -- you are buying stocks you don't understand for reasons you don't understand. You will have no confidence in the method and are likely to modify it or to bounce from method to method.
3) If on the other hand you are skilled enough to understand or create a decent quant method, then you are probably skilled enough to use all kinds of other data in your analysis of companies -- industry factors, macro judgements, trends in historical data, ideas about management, judgements about disruptive factors, and so on.
Thus it seems to me that the only people who are truly capable of using a quant strategy where it works (small caps) are exactly the same people who would see it as an incomplete approach and at the very least over-ride its buy signals with some frequency.
This is what happened to me. I started with a quant system I built. I know the system works because I now have years of out-of-sample data on all the stocks I've scored while searching for investments. But I no longer even pretend that the system guides my investments. I still score stocks, but I view my quant system as just a useful checklist of criteria.
23. It is funny how in a discussion of quantitative strategies many people have opinions and rationalizations, but few have tangible evidence (data, especially with robust tests) to back up their opinions. That's why simple statistical models outperform human intuition. Greenblatt (even though his data or test appear to be flawed) provides an explanation of the institutional factors that make the value approach sustainable. Gray and Carlisle address the issue in more length and address the elements of human nature that contribute to the sustainability of a quantitative approach.
Is the intent not to understand how things really work (to drive up one's own returns) rather than rationalize why it is okay to continue doing what was being done?
1. I'm reading Quantitative Value right now actually, and it isn't as simple as some make it out to be. For example there is a LOT of work finding the "right" formula, the one that will out perform. I have heard Greenblatt spent $20m massaging his data for the Formula Investing. So how do we know we picked the right formula? The one that back-tested the best?
I think the quantitative stuff can be a great guide, but I don't think it's a panacea. Yes human emotions drive the market, but successful investing isn't as simple as programming in a formula and sitting back and letting the money roll in. The difficulty is picking the right formula, make a slight error, or pick some of the wrong variables and the formula approach could end up doing worse than the market, there's still a human element involved.<|endoftext|>Dr Johannes Bathelt
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• Personalise your letter. If possible, include a personal story or information on how the issue affects you, your family, your business or people around you.
• Mention your membership of the SSAA if you wish, but please do not use the SSAA logo on your personal correspondence. Remember that you are expressing your own views.
• Personalise your relationship. If you have ever voted for the representative, contributed time or money to their election campaign or have met them, say so.
• Be polite but don’t be afraid to take a firm position. Do not get aggressive or use abusive language.
• Express your thanks. It is important for politicians and political parties to be able to share that they have been helpful or successful in their work.
• Contacting your local MP
• Hosting a range day
SSAA National often hosts range days for politicians, the media and other relevant groups. Sometimes the events are private and not publicised; other times media are invited to report on the event and our Publications and Media team cover the story for our publications.
In general, federal politicians and national interest groups are hosted by SSAA National, where state or territory politicians are hosted by local branches. If you would like assistance or information about hosting a range day, contact your state office or email [email protected]
• Our political supporters
Some federal politicians and parties have been quite clear in publically showing their support for the SSAA, the shooting sports and recreational hunting. Many of these have been in direct contact with us and occasionally we will post their messages of support on our website and Facebook page.
We encourage our members to show similar support in return and to take the time to look at each politician’s websites and profiles. The following are federal politicians and parties who have shown support for our cause recently, along with links to their party or personal websites for your information.
Queensland MP Bob Katter
Katter Australia Party
New South Wales Senator David Leyonhjelm
Liberal Democratic Party
Victorian Senator Bridget McKenzie
The Nationals
Western Australia MP Ian Goodenough
Liberal Party of Australia
Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party
• Tips for writing to media
If SSAA members see a media report that is biased or unfair, how should they go about raising their points of issue with the news organisation?
Write an email to the journalist who wrote the story, CCing the editor, producer or whoever is in charge. Phone calls can be ignored or pretended that they never happened, but an email is in writing and leaves a record.
It is critical a few points be observed here:
• Firstly, never criticise the journalist personally. Calling them names or casting aspersions on their journalistic abilities will mean your email is instantly ignored.
• Take a friendly approach. Give the journalist the benefit of the doubt and assume any inaccuracies or bias are from a lack of knowledge on the subject, rather than a deliberate bias (even if it isn’t, or you suspect it is not).
• Keep it fairly straightforward. Journalists are busy people and don’t have time to or simply won’t read a PhD dissertation on why, for example, the term ‘high-power’ is completely meaningless when it comes to describing any gun larger than a .22.
• Pick only two or three, at most, examples of errors or inaccuracies to highlight. A point-by-point refutation of the entire story will also see your email ignored.
• Explain why the inaccurate reporting of these facts is detrimental to shooters or the shooting sports generally.
• Never tell the journalist that something ‘is not a story’. Few things pique a journalist’s interest (or annoys them) more than people telling them that something is not newsworthy. People who say that in relation to things which are not |
but when you feel comfortable enough to come forward with something to the whole world, baring your soul suddenly becomes exhilarating and wonderful.
Ultimately I blog because I enjoy writing and I love having a place where I can practice out what I hope will be my future profession.
You're wonderful, I care about what you write. So keep doing it.
Linae said...
you write beautifully, michelle. don't feel urged to write for others - the best posts are usually the ones you write for noone but yourself. i like you blog and enjoy getting an insight on your thoughts. because you are wonderful.<|endoftext|>What is meta? ×
I have seen countless times on Stack Overflow where another answer imitates a previous answer. This new answer may still receive upvotes, despite the fact that another person has already answered the question to the OP's wishes. This is usually seen when a question only has a single correct answer.
Should we be voting down these answers, or should we just let them be?
share|improve this question
3 Answers 3
up vote 6 down vote accepted
It depends on the answers in question.
If the new answer adds something more to it, then it's fine. This something more could simply be a better explanation of the answer with greater detail. It could be adding additional possibilities to the answer. It could be covering points that the original answer did not provide.
This is especially true of "fastest gun" answers, which are short and quickly accepted. It may be functionally correct, but it is Spartan, sufficient, and perhaps overly brief. Someone can come along later with a real, detailed answer, and there's no reason for this answer to not be rewarded.
The only time I would say that downvoting a "duplicate" is fine is if it truly is duplicated. Either it is a copy-and-paste job (in which case it should probably be downvoted and flagged) or it covers the same material as the other. And even then, I wouldn't suggest downvoting it as simply not upvoting it. The other answer is accepted and likely upvoted. So the duplicate likely won't catch up. And you're not going to counter the reputation gain from any upvotes, so you're not really helping.
share|improve this answer
What about when the a user was typing the answer and before he could post it, someone else posted it and he realized that its a duplicate of the one already posted? Both the answers were posted in matter of a few second or minutes. – Virendra Dec 24 '11 at 20:32
The downvote tooltip suggests that answers should be downvoted if "This answer is not useful".
If an answer only repeats information available in another earlier answer and doesn't present this information significantly differently then I will regard that as not being a useful contribution and will likely downvote it.
When I submit an answer if I am beaten to it by someone else with essentially the same answer I will delete mine unless I can think of something else distinctive to add.
share|improve this answer
This is entirely valid (in particular if the answer to a question is simple and like to be "the one right answer").
Having more answers is not considered a bad thing - it is to be encouraged, as it points towards what people think is correct.
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Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .<|endoftext|>Jay-Z's Music Service Is An Epic Failure
Looking ahead: This Fall's Hottest Album Releases
Brynn Alexander
August 3rd, 2012 11:02am EDT
Summer album releases are always a big deal, but this year there's a huge crop of big-name artists coming through with new music in the fall. Here are the ones to keep an eye out for.
Alanis Morissette: Havoc and Bright Lights - The one-time mega-selling Canadian songstress is at it again with her eight studio album, but this time it's on a new label, so it might actually be better than her last few efforts. It's coming out on August 28, so not technically in the fall - hopefully it'll be good enough that we'll still be listening to it when the leaves turn.
Bob Dylan: Tempest - This album is important if for no other reason than it's being released on the 50th anniversary of Dylan's first album, and it's his 35th studio effort. Apparently there's going to be a song about John Lennon, and another about the sinking of the Titanic.
Muse: The 2nd Law - English rockers Muse are back again, but apparently their new album is going to be nothing like their previous releases. It comes out on September 18, so Muse fans will have to wait until then to decide whether or not they like the new sound.
No Doubt: Push and Shove - It has been more than a decade since Gwen Stefani and her crew have put out a studio release, but it's shocking how well she has managed to remain in the public eye anyway. On September 25 we'll get to see if No Doubt have still got it in the music department as well as the celebrity exposure department.
The Mountain Goats: Transcendental Youth - John Darnielle puts out an album about every five minutes, so it's no surprise he's got one coming out in early October. It's almost magical how he keeps the songwriting quality consistently high, and soon we'll find out if he can do it for the fourteenth time in a row.
50 Cent: Street King Immortal - The multi-platinum-selling rapper has been promising his fifth album for a long time, and apparently it's finally going to drop in mid-November. After some bizarre forays into the world of European dance music, Fitty now says that his new album is going to be more like his first one, so if you liked his early work, you should be in luck.<|endoftext|>Escape Plan
escape planTwo action heavyweights compete to speak the most intelligibly attempt to escape the ultimate high-security prison in Escape Plan, another 1990s-like relic action picture popping up in 2013. The film pairs Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger as co-leads, and unfortunately, the teaming feels less exciting than it should, partly because the stars have shared a frame before in both cheeseball Expendables movies, and also because the prison thriller fails to drive outside of its outdated B-movie parameters. Somehow, though, the buddy-flick still passes as mindless nostalgic entertainment.
If you think you’re getting an updated version of these two icons in a more modern movie, think again. Escape Plan is just about as silly as The Expendables entries or any of the action films the stars participated in during the 1980s. Stallone plays a prison-escape expert, Ray Breslin, who takes a job essentially off the books, under the radar, and behind the veil. He agrees to be planted in a secret prison facility that his regular outside team members (Curtis ’50 Cent’ Jackson and Amy Ryan) can not know about. Ray is abducted in a van, drugged, and awakens in a glass cell. Once introduced to the serpent warden Hobbes (Jim Caviezel), Ray realizes he literally can’t escape this prison, as someone set him up to ‘be buried here.’ Ray doesn’t know why, and only with the help of a new trusted inmate, Rottmayer (Schwarzenegger), might Ray be able to find a way out for them both.
ArnoldEscapeThe premise of the film, while silly and always rather nonsensical, deserves better execution, as do Stallone and Schwarzenegger. Director Mikael HÃ¥fström adds very little flavor or interest to liven up what turns out to be an occasionally violent straightforward drama. The action comes in marginal doses and HÃ¥fström has no idea what do with these two men or how to film a scene in truly exciting fashion. The script also needed to smarter as it fails to fully delve into the idea of high-tech prison know-how. Stallone’s character attempts seemingly simple, logical methods of escape, but the film never allows the character to pull off an imaginative trick in order to advance his evasion.
At the very least, the film should have been rewritten to better accommodate Schwarzenegger and Stallone’s personalities.  Rarely even does the dialogue poke fun at the aging stars (outside of a few token cheesy one-liners), nor do the filmmakers ever take any of the scenes particularly seriously by ratcheting up the intensity levels. Instead, Sly and Arnold carry the entire movie on their backs, and the hope is that their mere presence is enough to make Escape Plan enjoyable.
Escape Plan 10Luckily, Arnold and Sly are pros in this sort of game and they seem to be enjoying each other’s company even when the actual ‘escape plan’ and intelligence of Stallone’s character rarely give the film any depth or believability. The plan is never actually all that exciting in and of itself. Instead the confrontations set up by the two lead characters keep us watching and holding out. Stallone is far more watchable here than he has been in his recent efforts. Schwarzenegger adds a refreshing air to the movie as he hams up nearly every scene he can.
The excitement builds quite a bit more toward the climax which gives us fans a taste of the blow-em-up action the stars typically warrant. It’s not enough to earn action-classic status, and Escape Plan certainly never lives up to its potential, but there’s just enough from Stallone and Schwarzenegger to enjoy it purely as a mild guilty pleasure that manages to escape callow direction and a lacking script. If you’re a fan of these two icons, then you should at least enjoy it. If not, there is admittedly little to love here.
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The Expendables
Fans of 80’s classics Cobra, Commando, Rambo II, Above the Law, Bloodsport, and Missing in Action should be rejoicing over Sylvester Stallone’s pool of testosterone in The Expendables, his attempt at delivering the highest-caliber shoot-em-up/martial arts/men-on-a-mission thrill ride featuring a discounted menu of Senior action icons. Why is it that perhaps the most promising film concept of the season turns out to be such a dud?
The answer: Sylvester Stallone, the writer/director.
I’ll give the man some credit as the lead star—at age 64, he’s bringing it, botox and all. Ripped to shreds, and pumped up with steroids (there just can’t be any other way), Stallone returns to cinemas as Barney Ross, leader of a mercenary squad hired by Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) to take out a former CIA operative, Munroe (Eric Roberts) and his drug-trading South American general Garza (David Zayas). Stallone wants a payment of $5 million for his team which includes a list of hand-me-down single-trait killers.
Among the line-up we have Jason Statham as Lee Christmas, a blade-wielding expert, believing wholeheartedly that knives travel faster than bullets. Jet Li plays martial-artist Ying Yang, but his sole trait is that he’s made fun of for his height. Why don’t they call him Short-Round? UFC fighter Randy Couture really has no traits except for awkwardly explaining his cauliflower ear. Terry Crews is only memorable for toting an AA-12 shotgun (much like Jesse Ventura being memorable for sporting a Gatling gun in Predator). Finally, Dolph Lundgren plays Gunner, messed up on drugs and a thirst for blood, an uncontrollable rage that gets him tossed to the curb and wanting to exact revenge.
After Ross accepts the mission from Mr. Church, he and Christmas head out to their South American location to scope out their targets and who all is involved. The two end up launching an attack on the entire base after nearly being captured along with their informant, Sandra (Giselle Itie), the daughter of Gen. Garza. Upon the boys’ escape, Sandra refuses to leave and gets captured by her father’s army. Ross returns to listen to the team’s mechanic, Tool (Mickey Rourke), tell a Vietnam story about a woman he failed to save that has haunted him ever since. That story apparently shakes up Ross clogging his brain with guilt and remorse, and he decides to return to the island and rescue the woman, but his men refuse to let him go alone. Meanwhile, former teammate Gunner has given up his old team to Munroe and has plans to stop the ‘expendables’ from succeeding.
The Expendables has only one good scene—where Rourke pours his heart out over his Vietnam regret. As potentially forced as Stallone’s dramatic change of heart may be following Rourke’s speal, the scene still plays out very well, and it’s the only real ‘acting’ moment in the entire movie. I know some will be questioning about the obligatory scene featuring Schwarzenegger and Willis hamming it up with Stallone. Well, as much fun as the scene should be, it isn’t. It’s forced. It’s awkward. It’s poorly written, if scripted at all—much like the rest of the film. Schwarzenegger plays a competing mercenary leader that used to work with Stallone, but they went their separate ways. He tells Willis, “Give this job to my friend, he loves playing in the jungle.” Bruce says of Arnold, “What’s that guy’s problem?” Stallone: “He wants to be president.” So much for what could have been. But that’s the problem with Stallone’s entire movie.
This had all the potential in the world, and the movie disappointingly feels like a cut-and-paste assignment thrown together so sloppily because of Stallone’s desire to cram a bunch of action stars together. He delivers zero character development, the plot makes absolutely no sense, and I hardly believe Stallone’s sudden transition in wanting to rescue this younger woman (suggesting an awkward romance between her and the action star who is 30 years her senior). Also be sure to watch out for any of the dialogue, as it hits you in the gut so hard with its stupidity that you’ll be puking within the first 20 minutes. I’m not talking about funny camp-style 80s one-liners. I’m talking about terribly-written dialogue meeting awful line readings, one after the other—particularly from Lundgren and Li.
Perhaps my biggest issue with the film isn’t the bad acting, or the horrible writing, or the lacking camradery among the Expendables, but it is Stallone’s way of filming most of the scenes. Shot almost completely in close-up the entire time, Stallone zooms in on these stars’ individual faces, even in multi-character moments, and it is beyond awkward. Trust me, he’s not doing these old-timers any favors. Even in scenes showcasing the location of the island, the extras in the town are shot in close-up, and it becomes unbelievably distracting.
If that’s not enough, even the fight sequences have little creativity and energy. Granted, the final action bout on the island featuring the entire mercenary squad against a hundred or so faceless enemy soldiers works about as best as it can, if you can tell what’s going on—which is a rare occasion. The battles also feature hilariously cheesy CGI blood and sloppy special effects surrounding the mayhem as the film’s MPAA rating was never decided on until late in the game. Since the movie could have ended up being PG-13, I guess no physical fake blood was used during filming, and it really shows.
In fact, all of the film’s flaws really show. It seems to be an embarrassing exercise in rushed filmmaking with little substance to build on from the get-go. I love the concept of The Expendables, and I really feel as though I wasn’t expecting top-notch quality here. But Stallone, who actually put out a solid and gratuitous fourth Rambo installment just two years ago, ought to know how to write and direct at this point. It feels as though he did neither here, having his film fare about the same as these Direct-to-DVD actioners we see Steven Seagal and Van Damme releasing five of a year. For the inevitable sequel, I hope Sly stays in front of the camera and allows another filmmaker to take the reigns, perhaps Quentin Tarantino? Hey, I can dream.
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Judge Dredd
There’s an old computer term called WYSIWIG. Â It comes from the days of dot-matrix printers and non-TrueType fonts that basically means what you see on the screen is what comes out on paper (this used to be a big problem, actually). Â Judge Dredd is a perfect example of this concept applied to a movie. Â To explain what I mean, just take a look at the trailer:
We’ve got guns, explosions, fights, chases, tree-trunk-sized action stars, and some sweet cathphrases too. Â The film is pretty much everything you see in the trailer expanded to 90 minutes, but I ask you, is that a bad thing? Â My answer is a resounding “no.” Â We’re not talking Dark Knight or Terminator 2 here (despite a scene with Stallone riding his police chopper that looks like was ripped directly from T2), and there’s little in the way of subtext and certainly nothing even remotely resembling subtlety. Â But this is precisely why I found the movie to be so entertaining. Â It’s a straight-up action movie with a ripped-to-shreds Sylvester Stallone, lots of cool weapons, and a straightforward plot that never deviates from its purpose. Â And to be honest, you just don’t see that too much anymore. Â There’s even a cool enemy robot that’s (gasp!) an actual animatronic creature instead of a shiny, sterile CGI creation. Â Is it cheesy? Â Sure, but that’s part of the fun. Â Don’t take this one too seriously–just grab a busket of popcorn, sit back, and enjoy the ride.
A thousand years from now, the earth is so overpopulated that the only practical way of doling out justice is through the use of Judges with the legal authority to arrest and sentence anyone on the spot. Entrusted with high-tech crimefighting implements like multifunction handguns, impenetrable body armor, hover-cycles that break down the instant the |
, that all of his offspring (both born and unborn) were therefore "of his kind" and therefore considered "nephesh" for being of the human kind, rather than only becoming "nephesh" when they take their first breath.
Christina Dunigan said...
Pretty good point, Kathy. Adam was just "the dust of the earth" until God "breathed life into him" -- as compared to a fetus, that already clearly HAS life, since it's capable of dying.
Unknown said...
There's another point that shows Bezner is simply not using rational thought, and it's unbelievable she didn't see it before editing her article for publication. The point is that she readily admits that God had specific plans for specific individuals (her "special circumstance" reference), and yet has no problem with killing other potential "special circumstances". Does she assume God no longer has plans for anyone whatsoever?
Jeffrey Mein<|endoftext|>Artist Formerly Known As Whocares
73 Edits since joining this wiki
October 7, 2007
Hello Artist Formerly Known As Whocares, welcome from Wikipedia to the Marpedia. I see you've grown interested in the wiki.
We're actually going to be doing the organization a bit different than Wikipedia. For now don't bother adding the characters to any of the categories, I'm waiting on Wikia ACG's graphical artist to make some SVG versions of the 3 team emblems. The categorization of the articles is actually going to be done through Titleicons and infoboxes. Also we're not going to be using those Wikipedia type boxes of characters.
I've actually been working a bit on something on the wiki... Rtkat3 originally copied some articles from Wikipedia, but he didn't completely do them right. He ended up editing them before he saved and removed valuable information from the history and forgot to attribute. What I've been doing is using a list of pages at User:Dantman/To copy and copying them here. When I do that I move the older page to a /original subpage and let everyone merge the changes that were made on that page into the article that was copied properly, then I merge the histories together so that all the attribution is there and the article is done right. The ones with the strike on that page are the ones I've properly copied. Also about them, similar things go for the individual character sections on the page. They were copied here directly from WP without attribution and without preserving the needed history, so after I'm done copying the list I'm going to be splitting those into the character articles doing the same thing done with the Wikipedia copied pages.
If you want, I can show you the order of things to do if you want to help me do the work of copying and attributing, then formating the article to work in the wiki and adding the infobox. But if you don't want to learn that, feel free to keep editing the articles on the wiki (Whatever you do can just be merged into the properly copied article when I get to it), but please don't remove the character list sections from the copied pages as I need those when I go through those properly moving them into character articles. ~NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) Oct 17, 2007 @ 05:49 (UTC)
Take a look at Anime:Project:Step-by-step guide to a Wikipedia base#Bad Wikipedia Copying. This is what I'm trying to fix on this wiki. Things weren't done right, and because of it I'm redoing the copying. As part of that I need to split individual sections on the pages such as Chess Pieces and need the sections intact before I copy them. So please stop removing them from the articles. Just because a article exists on the wiki, does not mean it's a good article that will be used. ~NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) Oct 18, 2007 @ 07:06 (UTC)
References to cultureEdit
Hey there you did an awesome job on this page, I moved it to a bit of a more concise title and worked on organizing it, and added a couple things. Wondering if anything else came to mind. I'm trying to puzzle which of the six Oz witches Dorothy and Diana are most likely centered on. +Yc 15:27, August 14, 2013 (UTC)
Around Wikia's network
Random Wiki<|endoftext|>0316 numbers x7j31y
Father-and-son team Paul Slovic (78) and Scott Slovic (55)—a psychology professor at the University of Oregon and an English professor at the University of Idaho, respectively—published Numbers and Nerves, a collection of essays about how numbers are used and perceived. We asked them to break it down.
So, what’s the deal with numbers?
PS: Numbers have meaning. They are important. They are the reality. But the reality that’s reported may not be perceived by people reading about it.
SS: There are more numbers [in the media] than ever before. We’re very good at creating numbers for everything. Now the question is, how do we draw meaning from them? Many of the most important issues of today tend to be described with numerical information. Those numbers quickly become abstractions.
What do you mean by abstractions?
SS: Paul realized that there are very interesting psychological tendencies that limit our ability to think about numbers.
PS: There’s something called a value function. The difference between 0 and 1 is quite large. But if you go from 1 to 2, the subjective perception or value of those numbers doesn’t double. I started thinking about how that relates to human lives. The first life is immensely important—you’ll do anything to protect that person in danger. But if there’s two, you don’t feel twice as powerfully about it. And if you go from 87 to 88 dead people, they’re the same to you. So if you can donate to one child who’s suffering, you might do that. But if you’re told your donation will go to child A or child B, you’re less likely to donate, knowing you’re not helping the other child. Or when there’s millions you can’t help. You’re deceived into thinking it’s not worthwhile. And that’s nonrational.
Why do we tend to think like that?
PS: From an evolutionary standpoint, it was very important for millions of years to protect yourself and the people right in front of you. You didn’t have to worry about thousands of people on the other side of the planet.
Are some numbers easier than others to grasp?
PS: If the media are reporting about a person, quite often they’ll give the person’s age. [Editor’s note: guilty as charged.] Why do they do that so regularly? I think it’s because we have a lot of experience with people of difference ages. The difference between 22 and 72, that frames things. But there are situations where the numbers are very large and not part of lived experience. We’re better at looking for trends [between numbers]. Is the national debt increasing or decreasing?
How could we communicate better?
SS: We emphasize a multidimensional way of communicating: giving the numbers, but scaling down to specific cases. We can’t change the way our minds work. But we can train ourselves to think in a more flexible, fluid way.
PS: For example, with regard to mass violence, we should work to use modern media to get the [victims’] stories out. That helps us to understand. We should also educate children at an early age to think this way. One middle school class in Tennessee decided to collect 6 million paper clips to represent victims in the Holocaust. When you see 6 million of anything, it can help.
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UFOs : Fact Or Fake
I don't usually highlight a show on TV but the Sci-Fy channel has started a new series called " Fact or Faked.= and it's excellent so far. Basically the shows premise is to find reported phenomenon including UFOs and try to find a logical explanation. The first two shows highlighted two cases I had put up on YouTube as very interesting. One case they took on was investigated by MUFON and was presented at a MUFON conference. The video shows three creatures with capes walking past surveillance cameras.
This is the clip I had presented on YouTube:
The debunkers took me on by claiming they were everything from dogs walking across the yard – to dummies being pulled along. These one line debunkers dumb statements are par for the course and you have to expect it. So with all their explanations in hand I decided to look at this video in a video editing program and when I was done nothing they claimed fit the bill. As you probably notice these creatures were extremely thin and wore some type of cape. Also if you look carefully they are walking not being pulled along. Flying ETs with capes have been reported all over Mexico including one police offers personal horrifying experience. Also in many well documented abduction experiences abductees have been reporting for years these almost insect looking beings…long and very skinny. They both seem to fit and I felt this was a good case. So it felt somewhat exonerated when "FACT OR FATE" investigated this case and found some interesting results, here is the clip below:
What I don't fathom in all of this, is the viciousness these people continue to emotionally vomit on the person who reported this. These "debunkers" casually look at these videos and have no compunction to ridicule and impinge someone's integrity livelihood and intelligence, not to mention their race if they are not white. I believe the UFO witnesses deserve to be defended even though I will get attacked also.
If one ET has arrived on earth than others have and an evolving intelligent insect race on some planet does not seem impossible some of the insects on this planet are pretty smart already.
There is two things that happens when you are so closed minded you can't see, the first is a blindness to what you automatically disregard externally and a blindness internally to being wrong. What a sad, egotistical life.
Note: The second case will be highlighted on a future Post.
"Fact or Faked" on the Sci-Fy channel is a good show and I highly recommend it.
PS: John Ventre asked me to post this and I gladly agreed:
Pennsylvania leads the Nation in UFO Sightings
"UFO's. . . Seeing is Believing". The Pennsylvania Mutual UFO Network will present it's 3rd Annual UFO Conference's on Saturday October 9th, 2010 from 8am-5pm at the Sheraton Hotel 400 Oxford Valley Rd Langehorne Pa 19047 and on Saturday October 16th 2010 from 10am to 6pm at the Westmoreland Community College 145 Pavillion Ln Youngwood, Pa 15697.
The Conference will present a combination of expert Paranormal, Abduction and UFO speakers.
Speakers include Richard Dolan who has written numerous books on the government coverup, Bill Birnes of UFO Hunters, Budd Hopkins on Abductions, Kathleen Marden on Betty and Barney Hill, Peter Robbins who investigated the Rendlesham Forrest UK incident, John Ventre of the Mutual UFO Network, Stan Gordon will present Kecksburg then and Leslie Kean who sued NASA will present Kecksburg now on the 45th anniversary.
"The quality of speakers at this Conference rivals the larger pricier conferences that take place around the country", said Ventre.
Professional presentations and vendor tables will highlight this conference in an academic setting. "We also have a few surprises for the audience and they are not Halloween tricks", said Ventre.
Admission price's are $20 in Pitt and $30 in Philly. Advance orders and the Conference agenda can be obtained at John Ventre's website at or . John Ventre can be reached at 724 836 1266 or at
The Mutual UFO Network was founded in 1969 after the US Air Force concluded their 17 year Project Blue Book study of UFO's and concluded that UFO's are not a threat to National Security. "They never said UFO's don't exist. There is overwhelming evidence that they do. I believe this is an aviation safety issue. The only reason there are not more collisions is because of their ability to manuever, not ours", said Ventre.
Mufon has 2700 members worldwide and over 900 certified investigators. The Pennsylvania MUFON branch has 129 members and 21 certified investigators. Anyone interested in joining MUFON can speak to John Ventre or one of the many investigators that will be at the conference from Pa, WV, NY, NJ and Ohio. "One thing I know fromconducting my investigations: if you've seen one, you believe", said Ventre.
Joseph Capp
UFO Media Matters
Non-Commercial Blog
1. Thank you or posting this- You did a great job
2. Dear Anonymous,
Thank you for taking the time out to make a comment, and thanks again for being so kind.
3. I too, watch this episode of Fact or Fake with great curiosity. I had not considered the "insectoid alien" scenario.
Has the original filmer of the incident had any further encounters?
I would love to see higher resolution video taken, if at all possible. A 3ccd camera rigged to a PC by firewire would take some awesome video. And Sony makes the beside night vision camera out there.
As for the man's fear, if neither he nor his animals were harmed, I really don't think he has a lot to worry about. The press generally likes to inspire fear of the unknown, but, to my logical mind it works like this; THEY have the technology (obviously) to travel light-years to get here. Stands to reason that they would have the technology to take this world over, without much damage to themselves. And yet, we're still here. Maybe they're NOT so hostile as some are trying to lead us to believe?
4. Dear hallrr2,
I believe when we are all caring around hd smart phones with nigh vision capabilities we will all see some very interesting video and photos. This happened I think two years ago. As usual the he was called a hoaxer and all types of stuff. I was thinking why they didn't ask him that themselves. It may have been he said something off camera and that is why they visited that wooded area. I can see why he he may be hesitant about going on camera to talk about more experiences.
Either way something is weird around that house.
5. The thin legged creature walking across the lawn episode was especially intriguing,but as for the show itself....well...12 year olds might like it,but serious investigation is not their forte. Its just another slap together rapid fire ,no substance concoction that passes for TV these days. I mean in the thin legged creature episode they made so much noise crossing that open field a deaf man could have heard them. The thermal imager picked up heat sources which they assumed, without reasonable evidence, that they were the creatures who crossed the lawn. Those thermal sources could have been human or animal as well. Why on this show is there such an insistence upon expensive high technology ,which seems to conveniently lose battery power when things get interesting. Wouldn't it have been more prudent when tracking the alleged creatures to sit quietly hidden at the edge of the open field with a pair of 10X50 binoculars and just observe instead of tromping through the grass like a heard of elephants. And the incessant talking while tracking the creatures? through a darkened night, when one's voice can carry for long distances, certainty is not very professional or sensible. Especially,when you are in pursuit of a creature of unknown capabilities. My Sister got so frustrated at the ineptness and shallow content of the investigations that she about went screaming out of the house and into the woods for some relief.
6. How could you possibly know what noise they could have made. You statement right there, assume they are animals or human. You need to grow up a little about TV shows. If you are unable to separate some sensationalizing for ratings than you are living in a lost world. This was investigated by MUFON and they came to a conclusion that this was not a human or any animal they know of. This was about 4 feet tall it would have to be a staving child to be that thin.
But the main point of my post was how the knee jerk reactions of "Dumb debunkers one line explanation" are useless except to cloud the reports and attack the witnesses we all need to get to the bottom of this.
Thank You
7. I applaud and support your willingness to defend those who come forward with evidence of anomalous activity.
When a commenter launches personal attacks it is usually an indication of a lack of pertinent contrary evidence. A commenter's unwillingness or inability to use and demonstrate reason instead of emotion in assessing evidence indicates a mind lacking discipline. It takes effort and time to think things through in order to come to a reasonable conclusion. The absence of this process is an indication of immaturity.
In other words, those who attack instead of persuade using reason are likely immature, lazy, or both.
Attackers are bullies and should be handled as such: confront in public with reason and compassion. Once exposed for what they are, they wither and usually find some other forum in which to spew. If they persist, block their further input. They have nothing pertinent to contribute.
After all, at the root they merely point out the obvious: the evidence *could* be fraudulent. People are clever and can accomplish amazing things. No one disagrees with the reality of this.
The purpose of a blog like this is to evaluate & discuss evidence of anomalous events as reasonable adults. Those who participate sincerely will find the process (and perhaps the results) far more productive and interesting than any amount of schoolyard name-calling.
Mr. Capp, I stand with you in defense of Jose of Fresno and all those who dare to come forward against personal attacks. I want to see and evaluate the evidence. Thank you for making this possible.
Oakland, CA
8. Dear Patricia,
You said it better than anyone. This is about understanding where most people are emotionally when they have these experiences. the get excited they make mistakes they don't think. I have a friend who is a scientist shortly after he met he had his first daytime UFO craft sighting. This man is a very smart man and visits all the major defense labs in the country. Yet although the sighting was of some duration he never took out his camera he had in the back, he told me he couldn't believe he didn't get it. He said he was so transfixed everything else went out of his head. However if he came publicity with this story how You tube debunkers would have said ridicules called him a liar and wouldn't have believed he was a scientist.
I can hear them now "Kinda of convenient he forgot his camera"
Not only did I get attacks on Jose's character but on his race also...which I remove and banned.
This reflects a segment of our society which for two long has been treated kinder than they give. Not any more on my watch. I take them on because it is easy and I have a thick Brooklyn Skin.
9. Hi Joseph,
This video fascinates me and has done done since i saw it a few years ago, |
veil-like patina. Jeffrey seeks to embody the ancient and elemental, expressed in modern form.<|endoftext|>How does the miscellaneous copper cast?
Tech News
How does the miscellaneous copper cast?
Views: 383 Update Date:Jun 25 , 2017
Casting casting machine, the current widely used there are two casting machines, disc casting machine and linear casting machine. Disc Casting Machine Large-scale copper and copper production plant using the main casting equipment, linear casting machine structure is simple, compact, small footprint, low investment, but the anode quality is relatively poor, only small copper or copper production plant used.
A cast conveyor, which consists of a drive mechanism, a traction chain plate (traction member), a mold carriage (bearing member), a rail (support), and a bearing tensioning device.
When the linear casting machine is working, the transmission mechanism is driven by the drive motor by the friction clutch, the gearbox, with the safety fuse screw coupling to the spindle drive, mounted on the spindle drive the pentagonal wheel to drive the traction member chain plate movement. The mold frame is mounted on the chain plate, and the anode mold frame is mounted on the track to run on the track, so that the casting machine is running.
The disc casting machine consists of a transmission mechanism, a disc frame, a support base, an anode mold, a roof plate and an exhaust system. The drive is a center gear drive and a sheave drive, whether it is a straight casting machine or a disc casting machine. Are gradually implemented quantitative casting. Copper liquid through the weighing device quantitative injection into the anode mold, the weight of each anode plate can be controlled by less than 3%.
Casting, the strict control of copper and mold temperature is extremely important, casting copper liquid temperature is usually only to maintain higher than the melting point of copper 20 ~ 30 ℃, that is 1100 ~ 1140 ℃, due to low temperature, copper dissolved in less gas, the output anode plate Dense. At the same time low-temperature copper water mold can make the entire copper ingot almost solidification at the same time, resulting in fine grain copper anode plate, copper water temperature is high, not only increase fuel consumption, increase the gas dissolved, so that the anode plate stomata, Paint deterioration and fall off, as well as the phenomenon of sticky mold, but also make the mold overheating and shorten the use of the period. But the copper water temperature is too low, poor mobility, serious can not continue to copper. Mold temperature is often controlled at 120 ~ 140 ℃, mold temperature is easy to produce the bottom of the anode plate honeycomb hot hole, mold temperature is low, the bottom of the cold air holes, and even cause an explosion.
In order to facilitate the stripping, each casting to be coated on the mold coating, usually with graphite powder or ashes as a paint.
The anode plate mold is usually made of refined copper.
Copper is cast into an anode plate and must be cooled. The cooling process is also important. If the water cooling, cooling speed will produce two kinds of improper bending phenomenon, if the bottom mold cooling water is too large, the mold on both sides of the copper liquid first contraction, leading to the middle of the anode plate concave, the two sides upwards, if the surface of the water Too large, then the middle up the convex, both sides down to collapse.
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Mob:+86-13634068027 (24hours service)<|endoftext|>Written by: Right to Life UK
Article source: www.liveaction.org
In Kenya’s western region, childcare is traditionally the responsibility of mothers. However, a new initiative is helping Kenyan fathers take a more hands-on role, and is helping save the lives of premature babies.
In Kenya, around 50,000 infants sadly die before their first birthday, with many of these deaths occurring in babies born prematurely or those with a low birth weight. These newborns are particularly vulnerable to preventable illnesses, but techniques such as ‘Kangaroo care’ have been proven to significantly reduce mortality rates.
‘Kangaroo care’, involves babies receiving skin-to-skin contact, which provides heat from a parent to keep the infant warm in the absence of incubators, helping the babies gain weight much faster.
Many fathers in western Kenya are now helping their wives by offering ‘Kangaroo services’ in hospital and in the home. Given that lack of electricity and travel distances are a barrier to care in rural hospitals, many parents do not even make it to the hospital for the birth.
The benefits of KMC
Kenyan ‘Kangaroo mother care’ (KMC) champion Teresa Akung, has claimed that around 9,000 babies have benefited from this method so far.
She said, “We have been doing a lot of advocacy, mostly mothers are self-care givers for their babies and there is a lot of culture around prematurity. In most cases [the] community thinks it’s a curse, maybe there is something that you did that has made you get a very small baby. So, we have been talking about this to demystify the culture and also the myths around the preterm babies”.
One mother, Anita Makwata, was recently admitted to the ‘Kangaroo room’, where the weight of her baby improved from 1,500 to 1,900 grams. Her husband, Jackton, helped by using the Kangaroo method.
Jackton said, “It is not easy but I am happy to help my wife and not many men will agree to come but I thank God”.
Jackton told reporters that “It’s good to be close to your child, not just to provide enough love but healthcare. People may laugh at you, mock you or ridicule you but never mind by proving them wrong by getting involved”.
He added, “This notion of saying that bringing-up of children belongs to the mother is of the past now, and since I have succeeded, I hope they will also change that notion that the work of raising kids belongs to women”.
The hospital of Webuye, an industrial town in Bungoma County, western Kenya, records a high number of premature babies and medics work round the clock to train both parents how to use the KMC method.
Grace Oniang’o, the head of the hospital’s newborn unit explained, “The challenge we usually face is that these mothers get tired and occasionally need support. So when they need support we usually need the men to come in, the male involvement in KMC, where we call it Kangaroo father care”.
“Usually in Luhya land [Western Kenya], we have a superstition of men taking care of the newborns. However, we are initiating it to men who are gradually accepting Kangaroo care… So far we have four men; some are positive but some fear, so sometimes they need their own room. If a father comes, and sees he is the only man, he will shy away”.
Defying gender stereotypes
In Buyai Village, Bungoma County, Philip Barasa and his wife Sarah Konywar are applying the Kangaroo method to their preterm twins Esther and Favour. They spoke to reporters after having just returned from hospital three days prior after their twin babies gained the minimum required weight of 1.9 kilograms.
Philip told Africa Calling about the cultural stigmas he faced for participating in the ‘Kangaroo therapies’.
“When they see a man practicing KMC, they see it as being controlled by your wife, but that’s not the case. If it wasn’t [for] the effort we had for these babies, we couldn’t be discharged very fast from hospital”.
He went on, “When I kangaroo my children I feel good because it comes from my heart. The love of a father to his child’’.
A spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said: “It is excellent to see that KMC is not only saving lives in Kenya, but that it is helping fathers bond emotionally with their newborn children, despite the traditional priority placed on the infant-mother relationship.
It is also wonderful that Tanzania and Uganda have begun to embrace the Kangaroo mother care method, and that they too have been followed by Rwanda, Comoros, Nigeria, Togo, Mali and Niger”.
Date published: 05/09/2021
Feature image: Artwork adapted from pixabay.com
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Please enter your name here<|endoftext|>A one-size-fits-all CV won't impress.
If you've been applying for multiple jobs and have never secured an interview during the job search ‒ despite knowing that you could perform the role with your eyes shut ‒ it may be your CV that's the problem. Have you used the same one every time? It would be understandable – job seekers have probably spent ages pulling it together and fine-tuning it until it's completely perfect.
However, if you want to impress in a competitive jobs market, tailoring your CV to the specific job description is vital. Below, we've broken down the steps you need to take to successfully edit your CV to fit each application and catch the hiring manager's eye.
Why should you customise your CV?
You may have already been advised to customise your CV for every role you apply for during the job application process and wondered, 'Is it really worth it?'. After all, it takes up time that could be spent applying for other jobs or doing something more fun! We'd say the answer is always yes.
You're more likely to win an interview for the job posting by sending off a few bespoke applications than you are firing off the same old CV in all directions. Sometimes, less is definitely more, and quality wins over quantity.
Don't forget that the recruiter or hiring manager is looking for someone to meet their needs – not someone out to meet their own needs. A tailored resume or CV will directly address the recruiter's requirements and prove that you're the best candidate to meet them.
Customising your cover letter and CV will also support your progress through applicant tracking systems. By including words directly relevant to the role at hand, you're more likely to secure a higher ranking and smooth your path through to the interview.
How can you customise your CV?
It need not take forever to create a carefully targeted application. You don't need to start from scratch every time, so armed with the job advert and the conviction that you deserve the role, it only needs to be the work of a few minutes.
Create a master CV
First off, create yourself a master CV. This is the bit that takes time, but it only needs to be done once. The master CV should include everything that could possibly be relevant to your future career, including valuable skills, experience, achievements, and qualifications. The format should be as spot-on as you can make it too, bearing in mind that the forthcoming customisation may change the spacing.
With your master CV finalised, you're ready to customise. For every application, save a new version of the master CV. (If you include the company name as part of the file name, you'll be able to retrieve it easily for reference at interview.) Now it's just a case of deleting and tweaking parts of the new version to suit the specific job advert. Every role will require different parts of your career history to be highlighted or downplayed, and this will be your main work as you prepare to send off applications.
Analyse the job description
To present a strong application, you'll need to thoroughly understand the requirements and expectations of the role. This is where an in-depth reading of the job description is vital. The employer is literally telling you what they want here – all you have to do is tick their boxes by reflecting this back at them on your CV.
This is where keywords come in handy. Try to identify the best keywords to include on your CV that were used in the advert. These words are likely to be the ones used to rank CVs when they're parsed through the ATS, so the more instances of keywords you can include, the higher your ranking is likely to be.
Additionally, incorporating keywords also shows that you're speaking the recruiter's language and know the relevant terminology.
Tailor your personal statement
Your Personal Statement is the short summary at the top of your CV, introducing yourself and sharing some of your notable successes. It's your chance to make a positive first impression and immediately show how your career aligns with the recruiter's requirements.
Choose the parts of your career story that best reflect the recruiter's needs and emphasise them in your Personal Statement. Prime content to focus on here includes a significant achievement, an in-demand skill or your strong industry experience.
Narrow down your applicable skills
There's really no need to minutely detail ALL of your skills on your CV. It may seem counterintuitive, but listing every single one of your skills is really not productive. That IT application you used 20 years ago is probably obsolete, and your trombone playing really isn't relevant to a job in a supermarket.
The job advert told you what leadership skills were key for the role, so those are the ones you should focus on. Be ruthless in removing any which may detract from the message you're trying to convey. It may hurt a little to hit delete on hard and soft skills that you've honed over the years, but remember you still have your master CV – maybe they'll make the cut next time.
Emphasise relevant experience and achievements
You should have accumulated a list of achievements and awards on your CV from throughout your career. As with your important skills, you now need to focus on the achievements most relevant to your target role.
Don't let recruiters or hiring managers overlook your suitability by drowning your relevant skills and accomplishments in a long list of irrelevant ones! It's not about making you seem less talented or valuable ‒ it's about making sure that HR managers can see that you're capable of meeting their specific needs.
Tailoring your CV is easy when you know how
Far from being the arduous task you anticipated, just a few quick and simple steps can ensure you're presenting the strongest possible CV and maximising your chances of progressing to the next stage of recruitment every time you submit an application. Once you have your master CV in place, it's simply a matter of making small changes here and there – it can make all the difference.
Remember, the recruiter or hiring manager is looking for someone to fill a specific job. Avoid sending a generic resume or CV. Show that you can do that job, not just any job.
We'll tell you if your CV is properly tailored. Click here to get a free CV critique.
This article was updated in September 2021. It was originally written by Rikki Wimmer.
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Jeremy *
Jeremy was abandoned by his parents as a pre-schooler and sent to live with his step-grandfather to be raised. His grandfather died when he was just 14, forcing him to leave the only security he had known throughout his entire life.
He was sent to live with an aunt and uncle that he had no previous relationship with. While they provided him with a loving home, his adolescent rage, stemming from his unresolved sense of tremendous loss and abandonment, led to total rebellion for Jeremy. In his rage he destroyed property and verbally and physically threatened his aunt and uncle. He was also truant in school, resulting in poor grades and eventually running away from home.
Jeremy entered Binnacle House and remained in the program for several years. Our team of professionals helped him work through his trauma, loss and abandonment issues. Through the process he began to recognize the value of education. As his self-esteem improved, he was able to develop relationships with his peers, creating a sense of brotherhood. He became involved in physical fitness and body building and joined the military. Jeremy is now happily married with a baby of his own and serves as a state trooper. Along the way he also mended fences with his aunt and uncle and re-established that vital family connection.
He credits Binnacle House for giving him the structured environment, love, support and guidance to develop the leader he is today. He serves as a role model to other youth in our programs and inspires them by sharing his own story of transformation.
* not his real name.<|endoftext|>Slide Background
Rotating Magnet Ranging System (RMRS)
RMRS is a cutting-edge, magnetic downhole ranging system for use in vertical/horizontal well intersects. It has many advantages over other technologies including its ability to locate the drill bit 100m before the intersect point has been reached. This enables the necessary changes in direction to be made before reaching the intersect point and significantly increases the possibility of a successful intersect in the first attempt.
Greka Drilling's success rate for first time intersect in CBM is 95%
A critical aspect of the LiFaBriC methodology is the intersection of a separate offset well, in which we utilise state-of-the-art technology in subsurface electromagnetic proximity measurement. Greka Drilling RMRS technologies were first implemented in 2011 and have achieved a higher percentage accuracy than that achieved by most other operators in Asia-Pacific.<|endoftext|>Insert bullet point in Word using Alt Code (Shortcut) All the symbols in Microsoft Word have a unique code that can be used to insert the symbols into Word. \item The numbers starts at 1 with every call to the enumerate environment. To create your own copy of the file used in this video, click here to open the 'Lists example'. 1.10 How do I add sub-bullet points? Numbered and Bullet Point Lists in HTML. Be sure to sign up for the Blogging Guide newsletter, to get the latest tips, tricks, and news about writing on Medium and to join our Facebook group, Medium Writing, to share your latest Medium posts and connect with other writers. dessalegn kibret. lists. The next thing that you need to do to insert bullet points is to select the text to which you want to add bullet points — if you are adding in the bullet points after writing — as seen here. You can use different PowerPoint bullet formats to differentiate sub-points from main points. Start by selecting the text box and the specific bullet point you want to make a sub-bullet. Next, select the bullets and numbering from the pop-up window, and choose a different bullet point design. How to Add a Bullet Point List Within a Bullet Point List . You can define headings of different |
it.
Source Code (2011 Crime) ☆☆☆☆: Clever idea, great twists and some great acting, leads this sci-fi, crime, thriller, hodge podge into must watch territory.
Space Cowboys (2000 Sci-fi) ☆☆☆: A space movie for older dudes who watch too much fishing channel. I can't say that I hated it though.
Sphere (1998 Sci-fi) ☆☆☆: Everytime I watch this movie, i hope for something more, but in the end I'm left with a halfway decent sci-fi thriller.
Spiderman (2002 Comic Action) ☆☆: Out of all the comic book movies in the last ten years, feel free to ignore this entire franchise.
Stand Up Guys (2012 Drama) ☆☆☆☆: Pacino can still act and Walken's hair is still crazy. Together, the movie stays true to it's name from beginning to an awesome end.
Star Trek (2009 Sci-fi Reboot) ☆☆☆☆: Not exactly a reboot, more of an alternate reality, so it doesn't crap on the original series with all the cast you'd expect plus a special bonus for the Trekkie faithful.
Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013 Sci-fi) ☆☆: Just when you thought the franchise was in good hands, this pile of reheated shit drops on your flatscreen and leaves the odor of a bad movie with terrible acting and flatlining plot twists.
Star Trek: Wrath Of Khan (1982 Sci-fi) ☆☆☆☆☆: Arguably the best and most emotional Star Trek movie ever made. KHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAANNN!!!
Star Trek: In Search for Spock (1984 Sci-fi) ☆☆☆☆☆: How do you follow up a classic? This one takes it up a notch and nearly destroys everything in the process.
Star Trek: Nemesis (2002 Sci-fi) ☆☆☆: 'Next Generation' fans may feel left out, but thanks to a young Tom Hardy, this final chapter for Captain Piccard ends at least on a good note.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015 Sci-Fi) ☆☆☆☆☆: After the last three stomach churners, someone finally had the balls to kick George Lucas out of the production meetings in order to darken the plot from what had sadly become a sci-fi series for children. Thank's J.J. it was well worth the wait. (Second time i saw it was after Carrie Fisher died...i cried the moment she showed up.)
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017 Sci-Fi) ☆☆☆: This decent, but underwhelming and hollow entry into this galaxy of dwindling original characters and pointless side acts that no one cares about leaves me less excited for the final entry and more worried about the inevitable disappointment.
Stephen King's IT (2017 Horror) ☆☆☆☆: Funny, Crude, Startling, Graphic. Turn off the lights, crank up the volume and enjoy a remake we didn't really ask for, but we're perfectly satisfied with. Although the more cosmic plotline may be saved for the sequel, the focus on the development of the town, the characters and the "Clown" are properly delivered to the audience, without a need to reinvent the genre.
Sucker Punch (2011 Action) ☆☆: I'm all for girl power, but not when it fails on so many levels. The bad acting and stupid ending drive this car right off the road.
Sunshine (2007 Sci-fi) ☆☆☆☆: I never saw this movie promoted at all. Excellent CGI, Smooth acting, and sweet sci-fi plot makes puts this ahead of the many clunkers being put out as of late.
Super (2010 Comic Action) ☆☆☆: Certainly bizarre and graphic, but take away all the super powers, the clever strategy, and a sound mind and you wind up with Rainn Wilson as the savior/psycho.
Super 8 (2011 Sci-fi) ☆☆☆☆: I love when kids can act, not exactly a blockbuster, but more of angrier new-age version of ET.
Superman 2 (1980 Comic Action) ☆☆: Charmless, joyless, pointless.
SuperMan Vs Batman: Dawn of Justice (2016 Sci-Fi) ☆☆☆: Good, not great. If you watch Wonder Woman before this, it adds more validity, plus Wonder Woman is a complete badass.
Swordfish (2001 Action) ☆☆☆: I think actual tech-monkeys people would have an issue with this movie, but at least the constant plot twists keep you entertained.
Take Me Home Tonight (2011 Comedy) ☆☆☆: Dan Fogler and Topher Grace are very entertaining and deserving of more complex roles, as far as this movie goes, simple, funny and an all around party.
Taken (2008 Action) ☆☆☆☆☆: Seriously, if you don't love this movie, I will look for you, I will find you...and I will kill you.
Taken 2 (2012 Thriller) ☆☆☆: I think the general population just enjoys watching Liam Neeson hurt people and will someone PLEASE name Famke Jenssen sexiest woman alive?!?!
Team America: World Police (2004 Comedy) ☆☆☆: At the very least, you will definatly be entertained by the hot puppet action. Damn, was this movie funny.
Tears Of The Sun (2003 Action) ☆☆☆: A little preachy at some points, but the director keeps the focus on the true struggle that is the current African way of life or death.
Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991 Action) ☆☆☆☆☆: Drones and facebook are gonna kill us all, this sequel and it's predecessor predicted it.
The Adjustment Bureau (2011 Drama) ☆☆☆: A different take on the "man upstairs", wasn't a difficult decision to grab two of hottest people in Hollywood and throw them in a movie about restricted love.
The American (2010 Thriller) ☆☆☆☆: A very quiet movie in it's scenery, so it doesn't overload your senses with needless CGI or a big soundtrack. It's rated R for a reason though.
The A-Team (2010 Action) ☆☆☆: As cheesy and technically flawed as the TV series, which is exactly why it's worth watching.
The Avengers (2012 Comic Action) ☆☆☆☆☆: Funnier than most comedies in the same production year, DC Comics shat it's pants after 'The Avengers' destroyed the box office.
The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2014 Action) ☆☆☆: Shit got real in this one, but sadly the comedy took a bit of the backseat in this one; which was a huge reason the first one was so much fun. It's only gonna get more serious as Thanos makes his way into later films, hopefully the Guardians can help keep things light along with Spiderman.
The Big Kahuna (1999 Drama) ☆☆: Starts out as a comedy, ends up as a monologue about honesty...sure, if that works for you.
The Big Short (2015 Bio-Drama) ☆☆☆☆: An Oscar worthy cast explains very carefully how the banks and firms that controlled the housing market brought financial wellbeing of the US in a pit that took years to dig out of. You will be angry at the end of this movie.
The Book Of Eli (2010 Action) ☆☆☆: Denzel Washington cemented his status in the action genre as a true badass with a purpose that cannot be argued.
The Boondock Saints (1999 Drama) ☆☆☆☆: Quotable movies always do well in my reviews, and a fantastic supporting character that could only be played by Willem Dafoe.
The Bourne Identity (2002 Thriller) ☆☆☆: Matt Damon is the new Kurt Russell, he can play smooth and rough characters. Big ups to the fight choreographers.
The Bourne Supremacy (2004 Thriller) ☆☆☆☆: Congratulations on pissing off Jason Bourne again. This time it was severly regrettable.
The Brown Bunny (2003 Drama) ☆☆: Hooray, a real blowjob scene...ok, what else is on?
The Cabin In The Woods (2012 Horror) ☆☆☆☆: For all those who dispise cheesy horror movies with played out plotlines, this flick puts the horror genre on blast and has a plot twist for the ages.
The Chase (1994 Adventure) ☆☆☆: Charlie Sheen heads for the border and this time, he's not coming back, plus he's taking a hot blond and a candy bar with him!
The Chronicles Of Riddick (2004 Sci-fi) ☆☆☆: For those who went out of our their way to see this in theaters, you may have been underwhelmed, for those who caught it on TV, it may have been time well spent.
The Crow (1994 Thriller) ☆☆☆: The movie that killed Brandon Lee. Seriously, read about it. After you watch the movie, of course. Dark and vengeful, the way it should be.
The Dark Knight (2008 Comic Thriller) ☆☆☆☆☆: The fighting scenes were a little slow moving at times, but that's it. Everything else was spot on and the replay value is as high as one could want from a classic.
The Dark Knight Rises (2012 Comic Thriller) ☆☆☆☆: It took the last ten minutes to earn that fourth star, but people cheered in the theater for a reason.
The Departed (2006 Drama) ☆☆☆: Awesome cast with plenty of oh shit moments, Poor Leo.
The Dictator (2012 Comedy) ☆☆☆: Alot of hit & miss jokes, but the plot keeps you entertained. Replay value isn't very high though.
The Do-Over (2016 Comedy) ☆☆☆: As erratic as you'd expect from an Adam Sandler movie, but entertaining with some cringe-worthy moments from David Spade.
The Expendables (2010 Action) ☆☆☆☆: The replay value is what earns this movie it's rating. Some times the action is so crazy, you find yourself laughing from the awesomeness.
The Expendables 2 (2012 Action) ☆☆☆: A little heavy on the cheese, but you will still find satisfaction from the meatball overload.
The Equalizer (2014 Thriller) ☆☆☆☆: Denzel should get an Oscar every damn year. Dark, harsh and vengeful. This isn't a Taken wannabe movie.
The Fast And The Furious (2001 Action) ☆☆☆: Oh, suddenly everyone thinks their Honda or Toyota is a supercar. Moving on.
The Foreigner (2017 Thriller) ☆☆☆☆: If you want to compare it to 'Taken', go nuts. This flick plays on a much broader, more emotional spectrum and gives Jackie Chan a role to remember.
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2009/2011 Thriller) ☆☆☆: The Swedish and American versions are both very watchable and both are pretty graphic. Choose either version and enjoy.
The Grey (2011 Thriller) ☆☆☆: Where the hell was the ending? Just some stupid snippet after the credits, really hurts the movies value.
The Human Centipede 2 (2011 Horror) ☆: Great date movie...if you plan on staying single or killing your date.
The Hunger Games (2012 Adventure) ☆☆☆: Easy movie to pick apart, but I'll praise it for it's tension build up and solid lead actress, Jennifer Lawrence.
The Hunt For Red October (1990 Thriller) ☆☆☆☆☆: Quotable lines, large replay value, excellent acting, great plot, awesome tension, a fine wine that has never been duplicated.
The Hunted (2003 Thriller) ☆☆☆: The opening scene may have some people turning off the TV, but for those who can handle the graphic opening, may find the chase quite enjoyable.
The Hunter (2011 Thriller) ☆☆☆: An off the radar piece with a very interesting plot, Willem Dafoe can't not be a great actor.
The Incredible Hulk (2008 Comic Action) ☆☆☆☆: Love me some "Hulk Smash". This is the best look you'll get at the big green guy...and Edward Norton.
The Italian Job (2003 Heist) ☆☆☆: Fun, playful, and a huge cast of characters with everyone playing a key role.
The Last Airbender (2010 Adventure) ☆: Avoid this title and anything from "that director" going forward.
The Last Of The Mohicans (1992 War) ☆☆☆☆: Michael Mann is such an underrated director, this is the one movie he can at least hang his hat on. Even the soundtrack is one to remember.
The Last Samurai (2003 War) ☆☆☆: Really, Tom Cruise is the Last Samurai...okay. Still a good movie tho.
The Lincoln Lawyer (2011 Drama) ☆☆☆☆: Thank Christ Matty boy kicked the Rom-Coms to the curb, cus he is a can't miss commodity right now.
The Living Daylights (1987 Action) ☆☆☆: Timothy Dalton didn't get a fair shake as a funny, but firm Bond and this was an example of what could have been.
The Machinist (2004 Drama) ☆☆: All of Christian Bale's hard work and I'm left with an empty stomach.
The Martian: (2015 Sci-Fi) ☆☆☆☆: Essentially a gardening channel movie on how to grow potatos in space dookie with guest host, Matt Damon. At this point, he should be under house arrest, because whenever he leaves home, Matty boy gets into trouble and it costs me 20 bucks every time to bail him out. Next time, send Liam Neeson to go get him...and I'll pay 40.
The Matrix (1999 Sci-fi) ☆☆☆: A lot of explaining was needed to build up to that ending, but it was worth it.
The Mechanic (2011 Action) ☆☆☆: Jason Statham will stop making movies when they stop being good, for now it's full steam ahead.
The Mummy (1999 Adventure) ☆☆☆: A halfway decent movie for when your looking for something not too serious.
The Next Three Days (2010 Thriller) ☆☆☆: I'm guessing there was a ton of things i missed during this movie, doesn't matter though cus I still liked its gripping story.
The Paperboy (2012 Thriller) ☆☆☆: Not a video game adaptation, it's a tale of murder, love and a golden shower scene.
The Patriot (2000 War) ☆☆☆☆: Introduced us to the multi-talented Jason Isaac, who plays a thunderously giant asshole with zero emotion.
The Punisher (2004 Action) ☆: Nothing against Thomas Jane, but this isn't The Punisher, this is a giant pile of garbage. Read the comic book and you'll understand.
The Queen Of The Damned (2002 Fantasy) ☆☆☆: An egotistical vampire wants to be a lead singer for a Metal band, okay let's go with that and see what happens...ooooh clever!
The Quest (1996 Action) ☆☆☆: The last decent Van Damme movie, but that's not saying alot.
The Road (2009 Drama) ☆☆: Prolly as fun to make as it was to watch.
The Rookie (1990 Action) ☆☆☆: Charlie Sheen and Clint Eastwood?!?! An old school buddy cop movie to close out the 80's.
The Rum Diary (2011 Drama) ☆☆☆: An interesting movie with no solid ending, like a nicely wrapped x-mas gift that's smaller than the box it came in.
The Rundown (2003 Action) ☆☆☆: Dwayne Johnson getting used to his acting shoes and surprisingly entertaining for the simple brain cells we cherish.
The Score (2001 Heist) ☆☆☆: Not an over the top heist thriller, rather cerebral and makes for a good bedtime movie.
The Specialist (1994 Thriller) ☆☆: The...acting...is...just...so...bad.
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977 Thriller) ☆☆☆: The ending saved this movie and took the 007 franchise to another level.
The Terminator (1984 Action Horror) ☆☆☆☆☆: This movie belongs in the National Archive as does the sequel, the other two belong in the bargain bin.
The Thing (1982 Horror) ☆☆☆: Creepy, jarring, graphic, scary, whatever you wanna call, I call it a horror classic.
The Thing Prequel (2011 Horror) ☆☆: Although it streamlines perfectly into the original, it doesn't terrify, therefore, it doesn't work.
The Town (2010 Heist) ☆☆☆☆: Ben Afflaaaaack is a wicked awwwesome Directaaaaah! The gunfire in this movie is as deafening as Michael Mann's 'Heat'.
The Transporter (2002 Action) ☆☆: A decent chase scene in the beginning can't keep this movie and it's sequels afloat.
The Truman Show (1998 Drama) ☆☆☆☆☆: When you find yourself cheering in front of your TV, you've found a great movie.
The Warriors (1979 Drama) ☆☆☆: A goofy movie in it's own right, but also a movie that represents a different time.
The Wild Geese (1978 Action) ☆☆: Great cast, but the soundtrack was so bad, it made all the other flaws all the more irritating.
The Wraith (1986 Action) ☆☆☆: I don't know why I love Charlie Sheen movies so much. I can't help it!
Thor (2011 Fantasy) ☆☆☆: I'm not sure this was the easiest movie to make, but it served it's purpose in creating The Avengers cash cow.
Thor: The Dark World (2013 Fantasy) ☆☆☆: Heavy on the goofiness, but just as heavy on the action, The Marvel Universe continues to spit out gem after gem. Be sure to watch all the credits as usual.
Thor: Ragnarok (2017 Fantasy) ☆☆☆☆: Goofy to the point of embarassment, colorful to the point of a seizure, Entertaining to the point of Euphoria.
Thunderball (1965 Thriller) ☆☆: For such a huge Bond movie fan, I've certainly aired complaints about many of them, this one as well.
Trollhunter (2010 Fantasy) ☆☆☆: Where'd this little gem come from? Put this in your queue and grab some popcorn!
Tomb Raider (2001 Adventure) ☆☆: Eventually a reboot will happen, so don't waste your time with this one.
Tombstone (1993 Western) ☆☆☆☆: Man movie with man stuff and manly one liners. Seriously, this is a classic.
Top Gun (1986 Thriller) ☆☆☆☆☆: Oh my fucking god, how can you not love this movie!?!?!?!?
Trading Places (1983 Comedy) ☆☆☆☆☆: I'm afraid this movie will eventually age, but for now it's one of the funniest comedies of the last 30 years.
Transformers (2007 Sci-fi) ☆☆☆: Director Michael Bay |
auditorium, downtown Raleigh. Free.
Peter Grant is professor emeritus of zoology, and Rosemary Grant is a retired senior research scholar, both in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton. In their dogged study of a population of birds popularly known as “Darwin’s finches,” the Grants have won renown for detecting and recording evolution in action, and proving and extending the theories of pioneering evolutionist Charles Darwin, work for which they were recently awarded the prestigious Kyoto Prize.
For much of the public, the work of the Grants first came to light in Jonathan Weiner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning account of their efforts, “The Beak of the Finch.” Published in 1994, the book detailed the couple’s arduous, yearly six-month stay in tents on Daphne Major, a desolate volcanic island 600 miles west of Ecuador. There, since 1973, they have undertaken what was described in Weiner’s book as one of the most intensive and valuable animal studies ever conducted in the wild.
“We choose a single group of related species for close scrutiny,” the Grants wrote, “and attempt to answer the following questions: Where did they come from, how did they diversify, what caused them to diversify as much as they did (and no more) and over what period of time did this happen?” What the Grants have shown through their relentless study and cataloging of 14 varieties of island finches is how beak size and shape evolve through natural selection within a dramatically changing environment, according to certain mechanisms and conditions.
This presentation is made possible through a partnership between the Museum, North Carolina State University’s WM Keck Center for Behavioral Biology, and the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent).<|endoftext|>1. avatar Avarimusic
Alright guys,
I'm heading up to Belfast tomorrow as I'm desperately trying to hunt down an original scream costume for Halloween. Could anyone give me a few pointers as to any outlets in the city centre area that I should check out?
Cheers, Mark.
2. avatar wannywan
Elliot's is good, but be prepared to queue. Also, there's a place that does costumes in the in-shops. The scream ones there aren't that great though.
3. avatar unplugged
i assume you have tried elliots? it can be bunged as said above.
scream is a classic ouotfit - yet its been played out a bit, although my last years outfit was fantastic:
captain spaulding :)
cost me a fortune, hence its this years as well. lol
4. avatar Avarimusic
Yeah almost everywhere seems to be stocking the scary movie style goofy scream masks which just look like you're dressed up as someone with Bell's Palsy. I haven't actually tried Elliots yet, is it in the city centre area?
5. avatar unplugged
They say:
The family owned company of Elliotts has been located in Ann Street, Belfast for almost 90 years, however the company was established in 1886. We are situated at 110 & 112 Ann Street which is in the upper part of the street coming from the city centre, across Victoria street toward the Lagan river.
I say:
its very near victoria sq
where the Ann st police station is beside the law courts/waterfront area.
on same street as police station, at the top - near the 'big fish' and queens bridge. 5 mins walk from in shops
perhaps someone can ellaborate as that came directly from my shitty mind. thats how id find it :)
6. avatar Avarimusic
lol fantastic, cheers
7. avatar POSITIVExYOUTH
There is also a good 2 or 3 costume shops on Botanic Ave. but I never been inside so can't say about the quality of the stuff they have.
8. avatar Avarimusic
2 or 3 costumes on Botanic? Ah excellent stuff, I'll check those out too.
9. avatar fastfude
There's also a costume shop on Lower Ormeau, next to the Crescent Arts Centre
10. avatar Avarimusic
Superb, thanks for all the replies guys, much appreciated!
11. avatar 10rapid
also a props shop on donegall pass that rents out costumes<|endoftext|>Roleplay Basics
Outbreak is a place to share the depths of your imagination through writing and story making.
After reading the following basics on role-play (RP), you will have an opportunity to create your own character, access special features, and join the community.
Community Rules
RESPECT OTHERS AND ENJOY YOURSELF! Outbreak provides a safe, private, and creative environment to play in. Players seeking to harass or undermine enjoyment for others may be reported through our abuse portal.
CHARACTERS 18+ ONLY are allowed to be registered in Outbreak. Due to the extreme violence and adult-themed stories on sim, child avatars are restricted from the public role-play areas.
GUNS ARE RESTRICTED to the ones made available by Outbreak. The Firearm Guide and the list of available guns on the Commodities index has more information.
SWORDS ARE NOT ALLOWED due to the disadvantage they pose to players playing true to the backstory and grit of the environment. This includes blades longer than 20 inches.
NON-HUMAN AVATARS ARE RESTRICTED to domestic animals like cats, dogs, and birds. Furries are considered “humans-in-a-costume” and may only explore as a visitor. Playing the Infected (Zombies) requires following the Infection Guide and admin approval.
HORSE AND VEHICLES USAGE REQUIRES a paid permit and is subject to limited availability.
GROUPS AND “✗” ROLE TITLE ARE EXCLUSIVE to approved groups that have been proposed, peer reviewed, and approved by administration.
In-character (IC) vs. Out-of-Character (OOC)
The difference between the character versus the player is important to understand:
In-character (IC) refers to the state and perception of the characters in the story. Basically, it’s what the fictional character, not the actual player, would see, hear, think, and feel.
Out-of-character (OOC) refers to the real life perception of the player. If you need to break character momentarily to explain a detail or simply say “brb”, you should wrap double brackets around the text.
((sorry, need a quick bathroom break!))
^ No need to emote when double parenthesis-wrapping OOC chat.
If a player’s primary goal is to win, they are likely a “powergamer” and wouldn’t last long in Outbreak.
The term “powergaming” refers to an unfair advantage a player creates for their character. In combat scenes, it is commonly seen as a character who is able to frequently dodge attacks, perform ninja-like moves and combo hits in a single post, has unreasonable strength, or attempts to dictate the resulting injury for their opponent.
/me immediately dodges the sheriff’s baton. He then picks up a rock, and throws it at the officer’s head, knocking him out cold.
^ Not only does the player decide to dodge the hit, but they also dictate the result of the attack on the sherrif.
/me tumbles backwards, reeling from intense pain, as the baton cracks over their shoulder. “Augghh,” he yells and crashes to the ground. Without thinking, he then grabs the closest rock he can find, aims it at the sheriff, and let’s it fly with all their might.
^ The player takes the hit in good spirit and only makes an attempt to hit his opponent. Attacks should always be written as an attempt to give your opponent a chance to post their reaction.
The term “metagaming” refers to players using knowledge of a story or environment, gained outside of role-play, to their character’s advantage. It is a form of powergaming and is not allowed.
A common example of this is when a player has their character greet another character simply by reading their avatar name. That is a basic form of metagaming because from the character’s point of view, they’re strangers to one another and never learned of the other character’s name through role-play before.
Players should exercise caution when learning details of a story and make sure their character’s action is only based on role-play that actually occurred.
Consent & Limits
For scenes that impose long-term consequences, please consult with the player first. If you’re not comfortable with a scene, you must inform the other player immediately and work something out (ie. fade-to-black or escape plan).
Limits should never provide an unfair advantage. For example, if a character is in a situation with a gun to their head, the victim must yield reasonably instead of relying on a “no death” limit to force their opponent into a no-win situation.
Take Turns & Emote (/me)
Players in Outbreak must always emote and take turns writing posts. A post always starts with the /me command and usually includes up to several sentences that describe a character’s physical and verbal actions combined.
Scenes are efficient and fair when the following posting rules are observed:
Rule #1 – Follow a single post format
/me picks up a tire rod from the ground.
/me then aims it at the police officer and throws it at him.
/me yells, “Take that!”
^ Posting multiple times in a row creates confusion.
/me picks up a tire rod that was laying on the ground. He then turns to face the police officer, aims, and hurls it in his direction. “Take that!” he yells.
^ Consolidating your thoughts into a single post is the way to go.
Rule #2 – Always write from the third person point of view (ie. he, she, they, etc.)
/me looks at you and licks my lips. I then say, “I’ve had my eye on you…”
^ Writing in first person just reads too personal, and often seen as creepy…
/me looks at the woman and licks his lips. He then says, “I’ve had my eye on you…”
^ Writing in third person point of view reads as if the character is speaking and not the player.
Rule #3 – Post and then wait your turn.
To start a new scene or join in an existing one, move your avatar into position and observe for a few minutes. When writing an entrance into the scene, be sure to address the characters you want to interact with.
Rule #4 – Don’t be shy!
When all else fails, our members are expected to be friendly, welcome feedback, and answer questions about the scenes they’re in. Don’t hesitate to ask for help or jump into a scene.
Register Your Character
What kind of survivor are you? Depending on your preferred type, the Character Evolution System will adjust your character’s starting traits and start you with a unique combination of inventory.
Lucky Luck goes a long way in this world. You’re likely to find items when scavenging to firing lucky shots in a frenzy. The Lucky also start with extra coins.
Fighter Combat skills are necessary to survive. Your previous training and career allows an edge in accuracy. The Fighter also start with an unloaded pistol.
Expert Knowledge is power. You maintain your health more efficiently and tend to be smarter when scavenging for items. The Expert starts with two medpacks.
Survivalist Wilderness is your second home. Your survival insticts allow you to escape hostile scenes more effectively. The Survivalist starts with a crossbow.
Register Character
Take me to the quiz & character creation portal!<|endoftext|>Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Hello, Summer.
They're so cute, aren't they?
1. Cactus plants are so beautiful! I have always wanted to move to the desert so that I could have a cactus garden growing in my yard. If I ever do that, I'll be sure to send you pictures!
2. Yes, they are! Very pretty!I have cactus too and they grow slowly but they look healthy!
Have a great weekend! oxox
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4. I must say that you have some amazing writing skills. Keep up the good work and keep sharing such amazing and knowledgeable stuff please lewis capaldi net worth<|endoftext|>Causes and Risk Factors of Cancer
In This Article
Table of Contents
Cancer develops when there are changes to the DNA (mutations) within a cell that allow it to grow out of control. The cancerous cells can then crowd out normal cells or invade body tissues. Radiation, cancer-causing substances, infections, and your genetic makeup can raise your risk of mutations that result in cancer.
Most people don't realize that cancer is preventable in many cases. Learning what causes cancer and what the risk factors are is the first step in cancer prevention.
Common Causes
According to the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute, the most common causes and risk factors of cancer are:
• Smoking and tobacco use
• Alcohol
• Lack of physical activity
• Being overweight or obese
• Poor diet
• Sun exposure
• Radiation exposure
• Virus infections and other infections
• Exposure to cancer-causing substances
• Family history and genetics
• Chronic inflammation
• Hormones
• Immunosuppression
• Age
Environmental Exposures
Your surroundings can raise your risk of developing cancer. Carcinogens—substances and exposures that can lead to cancer—can be found in the home, in the workplace, and outdoors. Tobacco use and smoking fall in this category.
Another example is exposure to asbestos, a group of minerals found in some older housing and industrial building materials that can cause mesothelioma, a cancer of the lung lining. People who are exposed to a high amount of benzene (found in gasoline, tobacco smoke, and pollution) are at risk for cancer.
There are many other substances in the environment that could put you at risk. Be careful with chemicals in your home, and always take time on the job to read the information provided about the chemicals you work with.
Radiation Exposure
The most common form of radiation exposure is from the sun. Another environmental exposure is radon gas, which may be present in the soil and can build up in your home. You may also be exposed due to medical imaging or treatment.
Infections can increase cancer risk in several ways. Some viral infections directly affect the DNA to produce cancerous changes. Other infections may lead to long-term inflammation, which raises your risk. Other infections, such as HIV, suppress the immune system so it cannot effectively protect against cancer growth.
Human papillomavirus (HPV) increases your risk for cervical, anal, vulvar, and vaginal cancer. Studies suggest that HPV also plays an important role in many head and neck cancers, and ongoing research is looking at its possible role in other cancers as well. The HPV vaccine is recommended for girls and boys starting at age 11 or 12.
While cancer can occur at any age, the median age for a cancer diagnosis is between 65 and 74, depending on the type.
Over the years, you have had more exposure to carcinogens and inflammatory processes, and there has been more time for slow-growing cancers to become symptomatic. Your body also becomes less efficient at finding and destroying cancerous and pre-cancerous cells.
That said, there are some forms of cancer that are more common in children, including bone cancer and some forms of leukemia.
Genes are the ultimate cause of all cancers, but in the vast majority of cases, these are acquired mutations that are not passed on to your children. You have "healthy" genes, but a mutation happens to one cell and then is able to grow out of control. It is common to have an underlying susceptibility to cancer due to oncogenes and inactivated tumor suppressor genes.
But in 5% to 10% of cases, cancer is due to a family cancer syndrome that can be inherited. If you have a family history of cancer, such as breast cancer, taking extra precautions is vital. Genetic tests are available for some hereditary cancers.
Keep in mind that if you have a family history of cancer, it does not mean you will develop it. You only have a greater chance of developing it (a genetic predisposition).
Lifestyle Risk Factors
Many of the major risk factors for cancer are ones that you can control. This can be especially empowering for those who are aware of certain predispositions.
Not only does smoking affect the lungs, but it increases the risk of many cancers. In fact, smoking causes 30% of all cancer deaths in the U.S. and is responsible for 80% of cases of deaths attributable to lung cancer specifically.
Quitting smoking immediately decreases your risk factor for cancer.
Alcohol is an irritant that can damage cells and promote the production of carcinogenic chemicals in the colon. To reduce your cancer risk from alcohol, the American Cancer Society suggests limiting alcohol to one drink per day for women and two drinks per day for men.
Lack of Physical Activity
Exercising at least 30 minutes a day, five days a week greatly reduces your cancer risk. You don't need to run marathons. It's been found that even light exercise—such as working in the garden a few days a week—reduces the risk of lung cancer, among other types.
Obesity is a leading cause of cancer. It raises the risk of breast cancer, colon and rectal cancer, endometrial cancer, esophageal cancer, pancreatic cancer, and kidney cancer, among others. Excess fat cells produce more of the hormones estrogen and insulin, which promote cancer growth.
Achieving or maintaining a healthy body weight can reduce your risks.
A diet that focuses on plants, including vegetables, whole fruit, whole grains, and protein from peas and beans, is best for reducing the risk of cancer. Processed meats, red meat, sugar-sweetened beverages, and refined carbohydrates should be limited.
Sun Exposure
Skin cancer may be caused by excess exposure to UV rays from the sun. Sunburn—even a tan—is actually the result of skin damage caused by the sun.
Many cases of skin cancer can be prevented through a little planning. Wearing sunscreen can help, but practice safe sun exposure as well. Avoid direct sunlight mid-day (from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.), sit under an umbrella, wear protective clothing, and don't forget sunglasses to protect your eyes. One form of skin cancer—melanoma—has a tendency to affect the eyes.
Unsafe Sex
Practicing unsafe sex can increase your risk of HPV, HIV, and hepatitis B, all of which raise your risk of cancer.
A Word From Verywell
The rate of new cancer diagnoses is falling in the U.S., but over 1.7 million people will be diagnosed with cancer each year. Due to early detection and better treatment, however, the cancer death rate has declined 27% in 25 years and continues to go down 1.8% per year. While you can't avoid all causes of cancer, you can significantly reduce your risks by making lifestyle changes. These measures also reduce your risks of other major diseases.
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Article Sources
1. Anand P, Kunnumakkara AB, Sundaram C, et al. Cancer is a preventable disease |
Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such Mr Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large moustache. Mrs Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbours. The Dursleys had a small son called Dudley and in their opinion there was no finer The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it. They didn’t think they could bear it if anyone found out about the Potters. Mrs Potter was Mrs Dursley’s sister, but they hadn’t met for several years; in fact, Mrs Dursley pretended she didn’t have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing husband were as unDursleyish as it was possible to be. The Dursleys shuddered to think what the neighbours would say if the Potters arrived in the street. The Dursleys knew that the Potters had a small son, too, but they had never even seen him. This boy was another good reason for keeping the Potters away; they didn’t want Dudley mixing with a child like that. When Mr and Mrs Dursley woke up on the dull, grey Tuesday our story starts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over the country. Mr Dursley hummed as he picked out his most boring tie for work and Mrs Dursley gossiped away happily as she wrestled a screaming Dudley into his high chair. None of them noticed a large tawny owl flutter past the window. At half past eight, Mr Dursley picked up his briefcase, pecked Mrs Dursley on the cheek and tried to kiss Dudley goodbye but missed, because Dudley was now having a tantrum and throwing his cereal at the walls. ‘Little tyke,’ chortled Mr Dursley as he left the house. He got into his car and backed out of number four’s It was on the corner of the street that he noticed the first sign of something peculiar – a cat reading a map. For a second, Mr Dursley didn’t realise what he had seen – then he jerked his head around to look again. There was a tabby cat standing on the corner of Privet Drive, but there wasn’t a map in sight. What could he have been thinking of? It must have been a trick of the light. Mr Dursley blinked and stared at the cat. It stared back. As Mr Dursley drove around the corner and up the road, he watched the cat in his mirror. It was now reading the sign that said Privet Drive – no, looking at the sign; cats couldn’t read maps or signs. Mr Dursley gave himself a little shake and put the cat out of his mind. As he drove towards town he thought of nothing except a large order of drills he was hoping to get that day. But on the edge of town, drills were driven out of his mind by something else. As he sat in the usual morning traffic jam, he couldn’t help noticing that there seemed to be a lot of strangely dressed people about. People in cloaks. Mr Dursley couldn’t bear people who dressed in funny clothes – the get-ups you saw on young people! He supposed this was some stupid new fashion. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and his eyes fell on a huddle of these weirdos standing quite close by. They were whispering excitedly together. Mr Dursley was enraged to see that a couple of them weren’t young at all; why, that man had to be older than he was, and wearing an emerald-green cloak! The nerve of him! But then it struck Mr Dursley that this was probably some silly stunt – these people were obviously collecting for something ... yes, that would be it. The traffic moved on, and a few minutes later, Mr Dursley arrived in the Grunnings car park, his mind Mr Dursley always sat with his back to the window in his office on the ninth floor. If he hadn’t, he might have found it harder to concentrate on drills that morning. He didn’t see the owls swooping past in broad daylight, though people down in the street did; they pointed and gazed open-mouthed as owl after owl sped overhead. Most of them had never seen an owl even at nighttime. Mr Dursley, however, had a perfectly normal, owl-free morning. He yelled at five different people. He made several important telephone calls and shouted a bit more. He was in a very good mood until lunch-time, when he thought he’d stretch his legs and walk across the road to buy himself a bun from the baker’s He’d forgotten all about the people in cloaks until he passed a group of them next to the baker’s. He eyed them angrily as he passed. He didn’t know why, but they made him uneasy. This lot were whispering excitedly, too, and he couldn’t see a single collecting tin. It was on his way back past them, clutching a large doughnut in a bag, that he caught a few words of what they were ‘The Potters, that’s right, that’s what I heard –’ ‘– yes, their son, Harry –’ Mr Dursley stopped dead. Fear flooded him. He looked back at the whisperers as if he wanted to say something to them, but He dashed back across the road, hurried up to his office, snapped at his secretary not to disturb him, seized his telephone and had almost finished dialling his home number when he changed his mind. He put the receiver back down and stroked his moustache, thinking ... no, he was being stupid. Potter wasn’t such an unusual name. He was sure there were lots of people called Potter who had a son called Harry. Come to think of it, he wasn’t even sure his nephew was called Harry. He’d never even seen the boy. It might have been Harvey. Or Harold. There was no point in worrying Mrs Dursley, she always got so upset at any mention of her sister. He didn’t blame her – if he’d had a sister like that ... but all the same, those people in cloaks ... He found it a lot harder to concentrate on drills that afternoon, and when he left the building at five o’clock, he was still so worried that he walked straight into someone just outside the door. ‘Sorry,’ he grunted, as the tiny old man stumbled and almost fell. It was a few seconds before Mr Dursley realised that the man was wearing a violet cloak. He didn’t seem at all upset at being almost knocked to the ground. On the contrary, his face split into a wide smile and he said in a squeaky voice that made passers-by stare: ‘Don’t be sorry, my dear sir, for nothing could upset me today! Rejoice, for You-Know-Who has gone at last! Even Muggles like yourself should be celebrating, this happy, happy And the old man hugged Mr Dursley around the middle and Mr Dursley stood rooted to the spot. He had been hugged by a complete stranger. He also thought he had been called a Muggle, whatever that was. He was rattled. He hurried to his car and set off home, hoping he was imagining things, which he had never hoped before, because he didn’t approve of imagination. As he pulled into the driveway of number four, the first thing he saw – and it didn’t improve his mood – was the tabby cat he’d spotted that morning. It was now sitting on his garden wall. He was sure it was the same one; it had the same markings around its eyes. ‘Shoo!’ said Mr Dursley loudly. The cat didn’t move. It just gave him a stern look. Was this normal cat behaviour, Mr Dursley wondered. Trying to pull himself together, he let himself into the house. He was still determined not to mention anything to his wife. Mrs Dursley had had a nice, normal day. She told him over dinner all about Mrs Next Door’s problems with her daughter and how Dudley had learnt a new word (‘Shan’t!’). Mr Dursley tried to act normally. When Dudley had been put to bed, he went into the living-room in time to catch the last report on the evening news: ‘And finally, bird-watchers everywhere have reported that the nation’s owls have been behaving very unusually today. Although owls normally hunt at night and are hardly ever seen in daylight, there have been hundreds of sightings of these birds flying in every direction since sunrise. Experts are unable to explain why the owls have suddenly changed their sleeping pattern.’ The news reader allowed himself a grin. ‘Most mysterious. And now, over to Jim McGuffin with the weather. Going to be any more showers of ‘Well, Ted,’ said the weatherman, ‘I don’t know about that, but it’s not only the owls that have been acting oddly today. Viewers as far apart as Kent, Yorkshire and Dundee have been phoning in to tell me that instead of the rain I promised yesterday, they’ve had a downpour of shooting stars! Perhaps people have been celebrating Bonfire Night early – it’s not until next week, folks! But I can promise a wet night tonight.’ Mr Dursley sat frozen in his armchair. Shooting stars all over Britain? Owls flying by daylight? Mysterious people in cloaks all over the place? And a whisper, a whisper about the Potters ... Mrs Dursley came into the living-room carrying two cups of tea. It was no good. He’d have to say something to her. He cleared his throat nervously. ‘Er – Petunia, dear – you haven’t heard from your sister lately, have you?’ As he had expected, Mrs Dursley looked shocked and angry. After all, they normally pretended she didn’t have a sister. ‘No,’ she said sharply. ‘Why?’ ‘Funny stuff on the news,’ Mr Dursley mumbled. ‘Owls ... shooting stars ... and there were a lot of funny-looking people in ‘Well, I just thought ... maybe ... it was something to do with ... you know ... her lot.’ Mrs Dursley sipped her tea through pursed lips. Mr Dursley wondered whether he dared tell her he’d heard the name ‘Potter’. He decided he didn’t dare. Instead he said, as casually as he could, ‘Their son – he’d be about Dudley’s age now, wouldn’t he?’ ‘I suppose so,’ said Mrs Dursley stiffly. ‘What’s his name again? Howard, isn’t it?’ ‘Harry. Nasty, common name, if you ask me.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mr Dursley, his heart sinking horribly. ‘Yes, I He didn’t say another word on the subject as they went upstairs to bed. While Mrs Dursley was in the bathroom, Mr Dursley crept to the bedroom window and peered down into the front garden. The cat was still there. It was staring down Privet Drive as though it was waiting for something. Was he imagining things? Could all this have anything to do with the Potters? If it did ... if it got out that they were related to a pair of – well, he didn’t think he could bear it. The Dursleys got into bed. Mrs Dursley fell asleep quickly but Mr Dursley lay awake, turning it all over in his mind. His last, comforting thought before he fell asleep was that even if the Potters were involved, there was no reason for them to come near him and Mrs Dursley. The Potters knew very well what he and Petunia thought about them and their kind ... He couldn’t see how he and Petunia could get mixed up in anything that might be going on. He yawned and turned over. It couldn’t affect them ... How very wrong he was. Mr Dursley might have been drifting into an uneasy sleep, but the cat on the wall outside was showing no sign of sleepiness. It was sitting as still as a statue, its eyes fixed unblinkingly on the far corner of Privet Drive. It didn’t so much as quiver when a car door slammed in the next street, nor when two owls swooped overhead. In fact, it was nearly midnight before the cat moved at all. A man appeared on the corner the cat had been watching, appeared so suddenly and silently you’d have thought he’d just popped out of the ground. The cat’s tail twitched and its eyes Nothing like this man had ever been seen in Privet Drive. He was tall, thin and very old, judging by the silver of his hair and beard, which were both long enough to tuck into his belt. He was wearing long robes, a purple cloak which swept the ground and high-heeled, buckled boots. His blue eyes were light, bright and sparkling behind half-moon spectacles and his nose was very long and crooked, as though it had been broken at least twice. This man’s name was Albus Dumbledore. Albus Dumbledore didn’t seem to realise that he had just arrived in a street where everything from his name to his boots was unwelcome. He was busy rummaging in his cloak, looking for something. But he did seem to realise he was being watched, because he looked up suddenly at the cat, which was still staring at him from the other end of the street. For some reason, the sight of the cat seemed to amuse him. He chuckled and muttered, ‘I He had found what he was looking for in his inside pocket. It seemed to be a silver cigarette lighter. He flicked it open, held it up in the air and clicked it. The nearest street lamp went out with a little pop. He clicked it again – the next lamp flickered into darkness. Twelve times he clicked the Put-Outer, until the only lights left in the whole street were two tiny pinpricks in the distance, which were the eyes of the cat watching him. If anyone looked out of their window now, even beady-eyed Mrs Dursley, they wouldn’t be able to see anything that was happening down on the pavement. Dumbledore slipped the Put-Outer back inside his cloak and set off down the street towards number four, where he sat down on the wall next to the cat. He didn’t look at it, but after a moment he spoke to it. ‘Fancy seeing you here, Professor McGonagall.’ He turned to smile at the tabby, but it had gone. Instead he was smiling at a rather severe-looking woman who was wearing square glasses exactly the shape of the markings the cat had had around its eyes. She, too, was wearing a cloak, an emerald one. Her black hair was drawn into a tight bun. She looked distinctly ruffled. ‘How did you know it was me?’ she asked. ‘My dear Professor, I’ve never seen a cat sit so stiffly.’ ‘You’d be stiff if you’d been sitting on a brick wall all day,’ said ‘All day? When you could have been celebrating? I must have passed a dozen feasts and parties on my way here.’ ‘Oh yes, everyone’s celebrating, all right,’ she said impatiently. ‘You’d think they’d be a bit more careful, but no – even the Muggles have noticed something’s going on. It was on their news.’ She jerked her head back at the Dursleys’ dark living-room window. ‘I heard it. Flocks of owls ... shooting stars ... Well, they’re not completely stupid. They were bound to notice something. Shooting stars down in Kent – I’ll bet that was Dedalus Diggle. He never had much sense.’ ‘You can’t blame them,’ said Dumbledore gently. ‘We’ve had precious little to celebrate for eleven years.’ ‘I know that,’ said Professor McGonagall irritably. ‘But that’s no reason to lose our heads. People are being downright careless, out on the streets in broad daylight, not even dressed in Muggle She threw a sharp, sideways glance at Dumbledore here, as though hoping he was going to tell her something, but he didn’t, so she went on: ‘A fine thing it would be if, on the very day YouKnow-Who seems to have disappeared at last, the Muggles found out about us all. I suppose he really has gone, Dumbledore?’ ‘It certainly seems so,’ said Dumbledore. ‘We have much to be thankful for. Would you care for a sherbet lemon?’ ‘A sherbet lemon. They’re a kind of Muggle sweet I’m rather ‘No, thank you,’ said Professor McGonagall coldly, as though she didn’t think this was the moment for sherbet lemons. ‘As I say, even if You-Know-Who has gone –’ ‘My dear Professor, surely a sensible person like yourself can call him by his name? All this “You-Know-Who” nonsense – for eleven years I have been trying to persuade people to call him by his proper name: Voldemort.’ Professor McGonagall flinched, but Dumbledore, who was unsticking two sherbet lemons, seemed not to notice. ‘It all gets so confusing if we keep saying “YouKnow-Who”.’ I have never seen any reason to be frightened of ‘I know you haven’t,’ said Professor McGonagall, sounding halfexasperated, half-admiring. ‘But you’re different. Everyone knows you’re the only one You-Know – oh, all right, Voldemort – was ‘You flatter me,’ said Dumbledore calmly. ‘Voldemort had powers I will never have.’ ‘Only because you’re too – well – noble to use them.’ ‘It’s lucky it’s dark. I haven’t blushed so much since Madam Pomfrey told me she liked my new earmuffs.’ Professor McGonagall shot a sharp look at Dumbledore and said, ‘The owls are nothing to the rumours that are flying around. You know what everyone’s saying? About why he’s disappeared? About what finally stopped him?’ It seemed that Professor McGonagall had reached the point she was most anxious to discuss, the real reason she had been waiting on a cold hard wall all day, for neither as a cat nor as a woman had she fixed Dumbledore with such a piercing stare as she did now. It was plain that whatever ‘everyone’ was saying, she was not going to believe it until Dumbledore told her it was true. Dumbledore, however, was choosing another sherbet lemon and ‘What they’re saying,’ she pressed on, ‘is that last night Voldemort turned up in Godric’s Hollow. He went to find the Potters. The rumour is that Lily and James Potter are – are – that they’re – Dumbledore bowed his head. Professor McGonagall gasped. ‘Lily and James ... I can’t believe it ... I didn’t want to believe it Dumbledore reached out and patted her on the shoulder. ‘ |
with free body diagrams:
Exploiting the fact that $f_{k_i}=k_iN_i$, as well knowing we have zero acceleration perpendicular to the plane (i.e. $N_i=m_ig\cos\phi$), we know that $$f_{k_i}=m_ik_ig\cos\phi$$
Therefore, we can write down Newton's second law for forces parallel to the incline, where I will take down the incline to be positive:
$$\sum F_1=F+m_1g\sin\phi-m_1gk_1\cos\phi=m_1a$$ $$\sum F_2=-F+m_2g\sin\phi-m_2k_2g\cos\phi=m_2a$$
Note these equations assume that $a_1=a_2=a$, which just means they slide together in this situation.
So now we have two equations with two unknown values ($F$ and $a$). From here it becomes an algebra problem to solve for $F$ in terms of the given "quantities", which I will leave to you. Based on information provided in the question, it seems like you were looking at the $\sum F_2$ equation and assuming that $a=0$, which is not true since the problem does not say the blocks are moving at a constant speed.
NOTE: This is the standard procedure for any problem like this:
• Draw the free body diagram for all relevant bodies
• Define your coordinate system (This could be step 1, as sometimes how you define your coordinate system will help determine which forces you need to break into components.)
• Write out Newton's Second Law equation for each body
• Relate the accelerations of each body
• Do algebra to solve for desired quantity
These steps can be used to solve so many problems introductory physics teachers can throw at you dealing with blocks, planes, pulleys, etc.
• Finally, I get it now! Many thanks for the clear response! – lightspot21 Sep 18 '18 at 15:30<|endoftext|># 7.6: Effects of Temperature, Concentration, and Catalysts on Reaction Rates
##### Learning Outcomes
• Describe how temperatures, concentration of reactant, and a catalyst affect the reaction rate.
By their nature, some reactions occur very quickly, while others are very slow. However, certain changes in the reaction conditions can have an effect on the rate of a given chemical reaction. Collision theory can be utilized to explain these rate effects.
### Concentration
Increasing the concentration of one or more of the reacting substances generally increases the reaction rate. When more particles are present in a given amount of space, a greater number of collisions will naturally occur between those particles. Since the rate of a reaction is dependent on the frequency of collisions between the reactants, the rate increases as the concentration increases.
### Temperature
Raising the temperature of a chemical reaction results in a higher reaction rate. When the reactant particles are heated, they move faster and faster, resulting in a greater frequency of collisions. An even more important effect of the temperature increase is that the collisions occur with a greater force, which means the reactants are more likely to surmount the activation energy barrier and go on to form products. Increasing the temperature of a reaction increases not only the frequency of collisions, but also the percentage of those collisions that are effective, resulting in an increased reaction rate.
Paper is certainly a highly combustible material, but paper does not burn at room temperature because the activation energy for the reaction is too high. The vast majority of collisions between oxygen molecules and the paper are ineffective. However, when the paper is heated by the flame from a match, it reaches a point where the molecules now have enough energy to react. The reaction is very exothermic, so the heat released by the initial reaction will provide enough energy to allow the reaction to continue, even if the match is removed. The paper continues to burn rapidly until it is gone.
### Catalysts
The rates of some chemical reactions can be increased dramatically by introducing certain other substances into the reaction mixture. Hydrogen peroxide is used as a disinfectant for scrapes and cuts, and it can be found in many medicine cabinets as a $$3\%$$ aqueous solution. Hydrogen peroxide naturally decomposes to produce water and oxygen gas, but the reaction is very slow. A bottle of hydrogen peroxide will last for several years before it needs to be replaced. However, the addition of just a small amount of manganese (IV) oxide to hydrogen peroxide will cause it to decompose completely in just a matter of minutes. A catalyst is a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without being used up in the reaction. It accomplishes this task by providing an alternate reaction pathway that has a lower activation energy barrier. After the reaction occurs, a catalyst returns to its original state, so catalysts can be used over and over again. Because it is neither a reactant nor a product, a catalyst is shown in a chemical equation by being written above the yield arrow.
$2 \ce{H_2O_2} \left( aq \right) \overset{\ce{MnO_2}}{\rightarrow} 2 \ce{H_2O} \left( l \right) + \ce{O_2} \left( g \right)$
A catalyst works by changing the mechanism of the reaction, which can be though of as the specific set of smaller steps by which the reactants become products. The important point is that the use of a catalyst lowers the overall activation energy of the reaction (see figure below). With a lower activation energy barrier, a greater percentage of reactant molecules are able to have effective collisions, and the reaction rate increases.
Catalysts are extremely important parts of many chemical reactions. Enzymes in your body act as nature's catalysts, allowing important biochemical reactions to occur at reasonable rates. Chemical companies constantly search for new and better catalysts to make reactions go faster and thus make the company more profitable.<|endoftext|># Food supply chain management: systems, implementations, and future research
Ray Zhong (Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand)
Xun Xu (Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand)
Lihui Wang (Department of Production Engineering, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden)
ISSN: 0263-5577
Publication date: 16 October 2017
## Abstract
### Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to review the food supply chain management (FSCM) in terms of systems and implementations so that observations and lessons from this research could be useful for academia and industrial practitioners in the future.
### Design/methodology/approach
A systematical and hierarchical framework is proposed in this paper to review the literature. Categorizations and classifications are identified to organize this paper.
### Findings
This paper reviews total 192 articles related to the data-driven systems for FSCM. Currently, there is a dramatic increase of research papers related to this topic. Looking at the general interests on FSCM, research on this topic can be expected to increase in the future.
### Research limitations/implications
This paper only selected limited number of papers which are published in leading journals or with high citations. For simplicity without generality, key findings and observations are significant from this research.
### Practical implications
Some ideas from this paper could be expanded into other possible domains so that involved parties are able to be inspired for enriching the FSCM. Future implementations are useful for practitioners to conduct IT-based solutions for FSCM.
### Social implications
As the increasing of digital devices in FSCM, large number of data will be used for decision-makings. Data-driven systems for FSCM will be the future for a more sustainable food supply chain.
### Originality/value
This is the first attempt to provide a comprehensive review on FSCM from the view of data-driven IT systems.
## Keywords
#### Citation
Zhong, R., Xu, X. and Wang, L. (2017), "Food supply chain management: systems, implementations, and future research", Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 117 No. 9, pp. 2085-2114. https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-09-2016-0391
### Publisher
:
Emerald Publishing Limited
## 1. Introduction
Food industry plays an important role in providing basics and necessities for supporting various human activities and behaviors (Cooper and Ellram, 1993). Once harvested or produced, the food should be stored, delivered, and retailed so that they could reach to the final customers by due date. It was reported that about one-third of the produced food has been abandoned or wasted yearly (approximately 1.3 billion tons) (Manning et al., 2006). Two-third of the wasted food (about 1 billion tons) is occurred in supply chain like harvesting, shipping and storage (Fritz and Schiefer, 2008). Take fruit and vegetables for example, such perishable food was wasted by 492 million tons worldwide in 2011 due to the inefficient and ineffective food supply chain management (FSCM) (Gustavsson et al., 2011). Therefore, FSCM is significant to save our food.
FSCM has been coined to depict the activities or operations from production, distribution, and consumption so as to keep the safety and quality of various food under efficient and effective modes (Marsden et al., 2000; Blandon et al., 2009). The differences of FSCM from other supply chains such as furniture logistics and supply chain management are the importance reflected by factors like food quality, safety, and freshness within limited time, which make the underlying supply chain more complex and difficult to manage (La Scalia et al., 2016). The complexities are significant in the case of perishable products where their traversal time through FSCM and the use warehouses or buffers against demand and transportation variability are severely limited. Additionally, as the coordination from worldwide scale, the complexities have been compounded, thus, the focus from a single echelon such as food production was shifted to the efficiency and effectiveness of holistic supply chain. That means the resources like trucks, warehouse facilities, transportation routes, and workers within the food supply chain will be used efficiently so as to ensure the food quality and safety through effective efforts such as optimization decisions (Wu, Liao, Tseng and Chiu, 2016).
As the development of cutting-edge technologies, FSCM has been widely recognized both by practitioners and academia. Information technology (IT) has brought dramatic improvements to FSCM in terms of automatic food processing like cleansing and packing as well as freshness storage (King and Phumpiu, 1996; Caswell et al., 1998; Wang et al., 2015). However, the discipline of FSCM is still incapable of addressing many practical real-life challenges satisfactorily. The reasons for the inadequacy are attributed to low operational levels from farmers (Folkerts and Koehorst, 1997), information obstacle among different stakeholders (Caswell et al., 1998), and inefficient decision-making systems/models (Ahumada and Villalobos, 2009). Strategic decision-makers require comprehensive models to increase total profitability while data input into those models are usually ignored in most of traditional myopic models. In order to address current challenges, it is necessary to investigate better approaches to accommodate emerging global situations after taking a critical look at the current FSCM practices and conditions.
This paper selects total 192 articles from 1993 to 2017 by searching the key word “FSCM” in Google Scholar (until November 2016). Special concentration is placed upon the data-driven IT systems which are used for facilitating the FSCM with particular aims of re-designing and re-rationalizing current supply chain to a globally integrated fashion for food industry. Among these articles, there are seven reports from website, 25 papers are case studies, and the others are typical research papers related to FSCM. Most of these reviewed papers are from leading journals such as International Journal of Production Economics (19), European Journal of Operational Research (4), Journal of Cleaner Production (10), Food Control (13), Supply Chain Management: An International Journal (7), Journal of Operations Management (3), British Food Journal (4), etc. Figure 1 presents the selected papers in a yearly view. As demonstrated, there is only a few studies about data-driven IT systems in FSCM in early 1990s. Then, the related papers are fluctuated slightly from 2000 to 2014. Currently, as showing from the prediction curve, there is a dramatic increase of research papers related to this topic. Looking at the general interests on FSCM, the quantity can be expected to increase in the future.
This paper categorizes related topics in a hierarchical organization. Figure 2 presents the scope of the review that each focus is dissected to organize this paper. Section 2 talks about the supply chain management for food industry that covers three themes such as frameworks, models, and worldwide movement. Section 3 presents two major IT systems – traceability systems and decision-making systems for FSCM. Section 4 demonstrates FSCM implementations in terms of reported cases and data-driven applications. Section 5 summarizes the current challenges and future perspectives in four aspects: supply chain network structure, data collection, decision-making models, and implementations. Section 6 concludes this paper through identifying some insights and lessons from this investigation.
## 2. Supply chain management for food industry
### 2.1 Frameworks
A framework for FSCM is a basis for manufacturing, processing, and transforming raw materials and semi-finished products coming from major activities such as forestry, agriculture, zootechnics, finishing, and so on (Dubey et al., 2017). In order to identify the relationships among different items, interpretive structural modeling (ISM) was used to establish a hierarchical framework (Faisal and Talib, 2016). This framework helps users to understand the interactions among logistics operators in a food supply chain. ISM-enabled framework was also used to support risk management in identifying and interpreting interdependences among food supply chain risks at different levels such as first-tier supplier, third-party logistics (3PL), etc. (Colin et al., 2011). It is observed that this framework was proven as a useful method to structure risks in FSCM through a step-by-step process on several manufacturing stages. Information plays an important role in making FSCM more efficient. In order to assess the information risks management, an ISM based framework was proposed by twining graph theory to quantify information risks and ISM to understand the interrelationships in FSCM (Nishat Faisal et al., 2007). As the global FSCM is emerging with international collaborations, ISM-enabled framework confines to explain causal relationships or transitive links among various involved parties. A total interpretive structural modeling was then introduced to analyze some enablers and barriers of FSCM (Shibin et al., 2016). In this paper, ten enablers and eight barriers are examined by separate frameworks to further understand the interactions within a dynamic era of globalization FSCM.
Value chains play a critical role in FSCM to benefit the producers and consumers. Stevenson and Pirog (2008) introduced a value chain framework for strategic alliances between food production, processing and distribution which seek to create more value in the supply chain. The proposed framework concerns about food supply chain economic performance that correspond to the organization, structure, and practices of a whole supply chain. Food traceability has been widely used in the last few decades with large number applications. However, frameworks for a general or common implementation are scarcely reported. To label whether a framework with respect to food traceability application, Karlsen et al. (2013) observed that with a common framework, traceability is prone to be similar and implementation processes are more goal-oriented and efficient. Thus, Regattieri et al. (2007) presented a general framework and used experimental evidence to analyze legal and regulatory aspects on food traceability. They designed an effective traceability system architecture to analyze assessment criteria from alphanumerical codes, bar codes, and radio frequency identification (RFID). By integrating alphanumerical codes and RFID technology, the framework has been applied for both cheese producers and consumers.
Currently, coordination in the food supply chain from production to consumption is significant to ensure the safety and quality of various food. Take agri-food supply chain for example, Hobbs and Young (2000) depicted a conceptual framework to achieve closer vertical collaboration in FSCM using of contracting approaches. This work has critical impacts on transaction cost economics by developing a closer vertical coordination. In an international food supply chain, Folkerts and Koehorst (1997) talked about a framework which integrates the chain reversal and chain management model to make vertical coordination. In their framework, an analytical service designed particularly for benchmarking food supply chain projects is used so that an interconnected system of high performance and effectiveness are achieved as an integrated supply chain. Facing a global FSCM, strategic decision-making is important since the profitability of an entire chain could be increased by the holistic efforts from an efficient framework. To this end, Georgiadis et al. (2005) presented a system dynamics modeling framework for the FSCM. In this framework, end-users are able to determine the optimal network configuration, inventory management policy, supply chain integration, as well as outsourcing and procurement strategies. Collaboration is becoming more of a necessity than an option despite some barriers which deteriorate coordination among enterprises in food industry all over the world. Doukidis et al. (2007) provided a framework to analyze supply chain collaboration in order to explore a conceptual landmark in agri-food industry for further empirical research. It is observed that, from this framework, supply chain collaboration is of critical importance and some constraints such as time and uncertainties arise due to the nature of agri-food industry.
### 2.2 Models
Globalization of food production, logistics and consumption have resulted in an interconnected system for FSCM whose models play crucial role in ensuring food products of high and consistent safety and quality (Choi et al., 2016). In this section, we present related work using various models for considering five major aspects like food quality, supply chain efficiency, food waste, food safety, and value chain analysis. An incomplete list of the leading authors covering these five aspects is shown in Table I. In order to better demonstrate the literature, key contributions for each paper are highlighted at the last column.
From Table I, it could be observed that food quality, supply chain efficiency and food safety are more concerned in these models. And multi-objectives are commonly considered, for example, food quality and safety are integrated in the decision models. However, food waste is specifically looked at without twining with other aspects. Recently, supply chain efficiency and value chain analysis are placed special emphasis since the global FSCM is becoming more and more significant.
### 2.3 Worldwide movement
Current movements on FSCM from major districts are presented in this section which covers Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific.
#### 2.3.1 Europe
The food industry is the EU’s largest sector in terms of employed people and value added. From one report about the data and trends of EU food and drink industry 2014-2015, the employment is 4.2 million people with 1.8 percent of EU gross value added and the turnover is €1,244 billion (FoodDrinkEurope, 2015). The turnover is increased by 22.32 percent compared |
. The time limit at school doesn’t give a possibility to cover all the possible problems. Undertake more of them as a part of your home task. It will make you thrive from being well-rounded in a subject. There is enough work performed behind each skill you have. The more you practice, the more erudite you become! Change the way you view things and think of homework as of valuable practice, which you can have for free.
The Problematical Issue of Motivation
You can easily imagine what happens every evening in thousands of homes: a schoolchild and a list of tasks given by a teacher. The characters may vary, but the course of action remains to be unchanged. Parents usually try to help and to counsel their youngsters to cope with the tasks successfully. It can be performed quite differently, some couples find it acceptable to explain something from time to time, while others fall back upon such methods, as bribery, reasoning, and threats. The problem remains unsolved these days. How to make a child or a student be eager to complete homework?
There is a great number of children who feel stressed at school. Having spent more than a half of a day at this place, they still have something to accomplish at home. Many doubt whether it could ever be efficacious if it evokes such unpleasant emotions in kids. Let us specify the strong and weak sides of the practice of assigning home tasks.
Advantages of Homework
It helps students to reinforce what they have learned at school. Moreover, it may encourage a kid to do additional research on the subject that has lightened the sparkle of interest in him or her. Juniors who take charge of something feel more confident and independent; being in such a state helps them to grow up. The fact of having own role has a serious influence on the personality pushing to acknowledge one’s maturity and powers to move on. What is also beneficial is that being involved in exercising a kid is kept away from the TV and video games.
Disadvantages of Home Assignments
On the contrast, sometimes, children are so overloaded with homework, that they literally do not have time for anything else. Being chained to computer screen or books, students do not always devote time to have a breath of fresh air. Having no free time, how can a kid become acquainted with all the beauty of nature?
Homework may create an opposite effect when a child will be totally exhausted or will hate school and everything connected with it. There are so many children who wake up with a feeling of loathing because a school day is ahead.
Developing this type of attitude may have a negative impact on the performance and level of education. So, in the future you will notice how destroying school dislike may be.
Playing games and having fun together with friends should be an integral component of childhood. It is vital not to let a kid be deprived of simple happiness to communicate with friends, playing tricks and discovering the World together.
Homework may be one of the reasons to prevent a person from developing social skills. Poring over books should not displace contacting and spending quality time with peers.
To sum up, despite all the positive sides of homework, we should keep in mind a couple of essential things. Some periods of a school term or academic year may be rather strained and burdensome. To avoid this, you should be very careful about planning your schedule and not put aside things that have been assigned to you recently. Prioritize the tasks according to their deadlines. Only being organized, you have a chance to ace. Perceive homework as your chance to polish skills, practice, focus on the concrete issues that are worth attention, learn how to deal with problems, and master your skills.<|endoftext|>NBA Trade Rumors: Carl Landry Would Be Savvy Addition for Charlotte Bobcats
Brian LeighFeatured ColumnistJuly 22, 2012
LOS ANGELES, CA - APRIL 26: Carl Landry #24 of the New Orleans Hornets is grabbed from behind by Lamar Odom #7 of the Los Angeles Lakers in the fourth quarter in Game Five of the Western Conference Quarterfinals in the 2011 NBA Playoffs on April 26, 2011 at Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)
Harry How/Getty Images
According to, the Charlotte Bobcats are trying to negotiate a sign-and-trade with New Orleans for unheralded forward Carl Landry, a move that would fortify the Bobcats' shaky front line.
Landry has also been linked to Golden State, but according to Hoopsworld, the Charlotte negotiations have helped throw a wrench into those discussions.
Landry's productivity has flown under the radar his entire career, which makes it unsurprising to see him as one of the last free agents standing this summer. But any team that acquires his services would consider itself lucky––particularly the Bobcats.
Here are a few reasons why.
Legitimate Low-Post Scoring
The Bobcats don't exactly score in bunches, but when they do, it's usually from the perimeter or the wings.
Unless you count Gerald Wallace as a power forward, the organization's closest thing to a real low-post scorer in franchise history is either Emeka Okafor or Primoz Brezec. Hint: that's not a good thing.
Landry, however, has always been able to produce when given adequate minutes. His career scoring average of 12.1 points per game is deceptively low given his sporadic playing time, but that number inflates to 17.6 points per 36 minutes of floor time.
In 2009-10, the only season he saw consistent starter's minutes, Landry scattered a 17-6 average across 80 games for the Rockets and Kings. He'd see the same kind of minutes in Charlotte, and would be eager to prove he deserves them.
Mullens and Biyombo Need a Mentor
In Byron Mullens and Bismack Biyombo, Charlotte actually boasts one of the league's highest-ceiling frontcourts. The problem is how tantalizingly untapped their potential is.
Most everybody was wise enough to delete their early 2009 mock drafts from the internet, in fear of incriminating themselves with their projection of Mullens to go No. 1 overall. Mullens was the top recruit in his class coming out of high school too, and he's still only 23 years-old––far from being over the hill.
Biyombo, meanwhile, is a Serge Ibaka-type prospect, who's a little more slender than the Thunder shot-blocker, but even longer.
Both of them lack a high motor and a reliable post game, two things that just so happen to be Landry's specialties.
If Mullens and Biyombo want to improve into legitimate NBA post players, it certainly won't be under the tutelage of Brandon Haywood and Tyrus Thomas. Landry could teach them how to be consumate professionals and potentially help them realize their ceilings.
He's Still Relatively Young
Landry is a pseudo-journeyman, having played for three teams in five years, which makes it easy to forget that he's only 28 years old.
While he may appear to be used goods on the surface, Landry still has a lot of good basketball––perhaps even his best basketball––left in him.
Unless you have the resources to amalgamate a group of superstars together (see: Heat, Miami), the best way to build a contender is piece by piece (see: Thunder, Oklahoma City). Landry could help spearhead the rebuilding process in Charlotte, teaming up with promising youngsters like Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and kind-of-promising youngsters like Kemba Walker.
If Charlotte lets this team, plus one or two more high lottery picks (trust me, those are coming), there's a chance it could turn into the next OKC.<|endoftext|>CNN Architectures
Do you usually wonder what CNN architectures are doing? How are random layers stacked and how are such huge architectures designed? Before we move on to a case study, we will understand some CNN architectures, and also, to get a sense of the learning neural networks do, we will discuss various neural networks. Hence, let us cover various computer vision model architectures, types of networks and then look at how these are used in applications that are enhancing our lives daily.
Model architectures
There are many CNN architectures proposed, and we can find more information about these research papers in the model zoos that exist along with implementing the same. For example, Keras has a zoo of models, where all model weights can be found. Let’s study some main architectures like the AlexNet, Inception, ResNet.
Read all about Artificial Intelligence here.
What are the various popular model architectures available?
1. AlexNet
2. GoogLeNet
3. VGGNet
4. ResNet
• AlexNet is a masterpiece created by the SuperVision group, which included the masterminds Alex Krizhevsky, Geoffrey Hinton, and Ilya Sutskever from the University of Toronto.
• The winner of ImageNet-2012, AlexNet showed that deep learning was the way towards achieving the least error-rates.
Learn how pattern recognition works.
AlexaNet Convolutional Neural Network
What is the architectural structure of AlexNet?
• The major feature of AlexNet is that it overlaps the pooling operation to reduce the size of the network.
• With five convolution layers and three fully connected layers, and ReLu function applied after every Convolutional layer and fully connected layer, AlexNet showed us the way towards achieving state-of-the-art results in image classification.
• It uses the ReLu as its activation function, which speeds the rate of training and increases the accuracy. The regularization technique it uses is a dropout. Next, we will consider Inception architecture. Wondering what is the difference between architectures? Let us analyze the architecture design methodology of Inception architecture.
How is GoogLeNet / Inception(2014) designed?
• Also known as the inception model, because of the inception module present in the architecture(derived from the movie Inception), GoogLeNet won the ImageNet 2014.
• The network uses a CNN inspired by LeNet. Its architecture includes 1×1 Convolutions in the middle of the network. It uses global average pooling in place of fully connected layers.
• Various techniques like batch normalization, image distortions, and RMSprop are used to improve accuracy.
VGGNet (2014)
• VGGNet was created by the VGG (Visual Geometry Group) from the University of Oxford. It was the runner-up in the ImageNet -2014 challenge.
• It is mostly used as a feature extraction algorithm. With many filters, it acts as a base model for single-shot Detectors used for object detection.
• ResNet won the ILSVRC 2015. It was the first model to beat human-level accuracies. It was the deepest network with 152 layers.
• The novelty of the model is that it introduces skip connections and features heavy batch normalization.
What is the advantage of ResNet?
• ResNet reduces the vanishing gradient problem to a minimum. Vanishing gradients occur when the change in weights is so low that error does not backpropagate through the huge number of layers present in deep learning models.
Different types of Neural Networks
Now that we have looked at various model architectures, it is suggested to go through the papers to get a better understanding of the same. Let us move towards various types of neural networks. We will cover Recurrent Neural Networks(RNNs), Long- Short Term Memory(LSTMs) and then look at the applications.
What are various types of neural networks
1. Convolutional neural networks
2. Recurrent neural networks
3. LSTMs
4. Gated- Recurrent Units (GRUs)
Why use Recurrent neural networks (RNN)?
• CNNs are bad at modeling sequential information. Hence, the solution to the problem is coming up with a network that models the sequential patterns.
• RNNs solve the above problem, and the way it performs the same task is by introducing a feedback element, that takes the output of the previous data in a series as its next input.
• This lets the network learn the correlation between the current data point and the previous data point.
• Add several recurrent units, and we can learn the correlation between many data-points in sequential data. Well, with all these points for RNNs, are there any against it? We will find out next.
What are the disadvantages of RNNs?
• Although this should work theoretically, RNNs suffers from the vanishing gradient problem, as we often lose the sequential information with an increase in the number of recurrent units. Hence, LSTMs are the proposed solution for the same.
Long short-term memory (LSTM)
Long short-term memory (LSTM) can store a larger number of data points for larger periods, and thus, it works well with capturing long-term efficiencies.
LSTMs have several gates. What are they?
1. forget gate,
2. input gate
3. output gate.
How do LSTM neurons work?
The role of the forget gate is to maintain the information of the previous state. The input gate works by updating the current state with the help of the input. The output gate decides how much of the information needs to be passed onto the next state. Hence, it subtly imbibes the qualities of forgetting and keeping selective patterns, thus allowing it to keep information over a longer period.
Let’s move on to the most exciting aspect of deep learning, its applications. Considering applications in the likes of classification, detection, localization, segmentation, and image captioning is of key interest to us here. Computer Vision today has enabled smarter homes, smarter supermarkets, smarter shopping, and is enabling the smart-phone to be a huge revolutionary platform. Smaller and efficient models that can run on smart-phones are enabling the same.
Where do we get data for commercial/ real-time applications?
We can capture the data for the applications in several ways,
1. CCTV footage
2. Drones
3. Phones
4. Sensors
Computer vision applications
These capturing devices act as a sensor that captures information. The information passes onto the model either via the cloud, wireless network or processed on a local processor. Let’s look at the applications in greater detail.
Can you name some applications of computer vision?
1. Classification: Image classification identifies which class an image belongs to. The task performed gets better if the result also talks about the confidence with which we have classified the image to belong to a certain class. In the next tutorial, we will study the implementation of an image classification model implemented on the food-101 dataset. There are various applications for the same. Essentially, our imagination is the limit. For instance, identifying if a bag left unattended at a public space is harmful or not is an off-beat example. We can also use image classification models for image retrieval, which search engines make the most use of. Given a keyword, identify the set of most relevant images and then retrieve similar images to be shown on the search page.
2. Object Detection/Localization: Classification classifies an image but does not talk about which part of the image belongs to the class. Hence, object detection is a task that finds where the object of interest is in an image and outputs the same with a bounding box. This is useful in applications that involve knowing the relative distances and orientations of objects. For example, in self-driving cars, knowing where pedestrians or any other objects can help make safer decisions. The metric used to measure the performance of object detection algorithms is IOU(Intersection over Union).
3. Segmentation: Well, detection deals with generating bounding boxes. Segmentation approaches the problem differently by considering pixel-wise classification. This gives information about the finer details like the boundaries of objects, and thus finer the information better is the output. It is useful for processing medical images and satellite imagery.
Learn how deep learning powers computer vision.
There are many more applications like similarity learning, image captioning, generative models, video analysis, etc.
1. Similarity learning: Similarity learning is an understanding of the similarity between images. We can base the similarity upon the context, semantic understanding, or just the number of patterns that overlap with each other. So next time you are searching for images on Google, a backdrop of similarity learning is helping you find similar images quickly.
2. Image caption: Image captioning is used to generate captions for an image. It generates captions with the help of object classification models and LSTMs. The LSTMs helps model the sequential information between the image and the caption associated with it. It is an application that deals with both computer vision and natural language processing. The use of image captioning is to understand the relative positioning of a subject with another subject in a given image. Here we show an example for DenseCap.
3. Generative models: Generative models deal with training networks to generate images based on their understanding or learning. During the training phase, for instance, if the dataset is of faces, the generative model learns about the features that make up the face. Hence, upon learning the features of the face, it can generate new faces thereafter. An interesting application of the same is the generation of celebrity faces. The application for the same is in the field of training deep learning models. Since these models are data-hungry, gathering huge amounts of data is a tedious task. Instead, generating data according to our needs is a better option to train the model accordingly.
4. Video analysis: Let’s suppose we enter a shopping mall and based on our activity in the mall, our personalized assistant recommends products that might interest us. Video analysis deals with delivering real-time results and coming up with patterns, conclusions, and results that enhance the application. For example, analysis of sports events like cricket, football, etc can be automated. The position of players, real-time statistics, and best approaches to defeating the strongest team are a few of the examples.
In this article, we have covered a lot of topics, including model architectures, types of neural networks and applications in the domain of computer vision. The major industries that will be impacted due to advances in this field are the manufacturing sector, the automobile sector, health care, and agriculture. Efficient implementation of these algorithms and better applications are the need of the hour to solve the most challenging problems at hand. And all the resources are available online mostly for free. Thus, we encourage you to build applications and products that truly bring about a change in the world.
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6 + four =<|endoftext|>Our Approach
San Francisco AIDS Foundation’s public policy efforts happen at the nexus of science and community. Our approach promotes the development and implementation of evidence-based HIV prevention, but recognizes that “evidence” can be derived from diverse sources—including the lived experiences of individuals and communities affected by HIV/AIDS.
In recent years, funding sources have increasingly defined evidence as a product of randomized controlled trials (RCTs)—putting the development of new HIV prevention interventions beyond the reach of most community-based organizations (CBOs) and AIDS services organizations (ASOs), which typically lack the resources to hire professional researchers.
For example, the U.S. Centers |
, and sin. Pro-Lifers who refuse to demand that the government raise taxes to provide funds for education, medical and dental care, food, clothing, shelter, and so on for each and every child who is "saved" are (repeat after me) hypocrites. Fundamentalists who ravage the environment to make money are sinners. Pat Buchanan has no values except greed.</p> <p><span class="emphasis">2</span> Deploy the language of prejudice and exclusion by (for example) insistently feminizing right-wing males. Elected stooges of multinational capitalism are "whores"; candidates who turn a blind eye when workers are "downsized" into lower paying jobs are "cowards"; men who harass women on the job are "wimps who can't get a date." Officials who claim they cannot or should not intervene to help the homeless, the sick, the dying are "impotent." The NRA should be ridiculed for playing with phallic symbols to compenstae for their psychosexual dysfunctions. Obviously, reproducing such rhetoric tends to reinscribe the dynamic of prejudice and exclusion that many of us are dedicated to overcoming. But politics is not about purity: the squeamish need to ask themselves whether living through the <span class="foreignWord">jihad</span> that President Buchanan would visit upon us is a price worth paying for claiming the supposed moral high ground.</p> <p><span class="emphasis">3</span> As Bérubé argues, the Left's basic problem is that it lacks the financial resources of the Right; this unequal distribution of wealth and power is unlikely to change soon. Consequently, it becomes imperative for progressives, feminists, radicals, greens, pinkos, and reds to concentrate their financial resources in areas likely to have the most benefit. My suggestion, then, is that we scale back our commitments to worthy causes (ACT UP, Greenpeace, Amnesty International, battered women's shelters, the United Negro College Fund, Ducks Unlimited, NPR, you name it), pool our resources, and...buy CBS. I wish I were kidding. But the ideology of corporate command, control, and communication renders us little choice if we want to sell out successfully enough to buy a fair share of political power and cultural capital. Left-Wing TV might bring back Gore Vidal to prime time as a Commentator on the <span class="booktitle">CBS Evening News</span>, offer variations on programs such as X-Files by hiring the best writers and producers to promote left-wing conspiracy theories: sexy agents combating corporate skullduggery; white supremacists in league with hostile aliens; mysterious conspiracies at the highest levels of telecommunications; and lonely forest rangers fighting off evil corporations intent on gutting the environment. There should be sympathetic portrayals of lesbian police officers, gay physicians, African-American labor organizers, and so on. If the Left is to counter the cultural dominance of right-wing talk shows, it needs the cultured voice of Gore Vidal intoning nightly that the political spectrum in the United States runs from the Right to the Far Right.</p> <p><span class="emphasis">4</span> Get our own house in order by taking back our universities. One example of effective collective action. Imagine the end of the Fall Semester 1996. Professors all over the country rise up and give every scholarship basketball player in the country a real set of finals: "Discuss the influence of Hegel on Kierkegaard." "Analyze the significance of Walter Lippman's concept of the stereotype on the image of the African-American athlete." "What are the implications of Coase`s theorem for negotiations between professional athletes and franchise owners?" This may sound like a vicious case of harassing the pawns by asking scholarship athletes (a high percentage of whom are African-American) to do work that almost all of their peers would fail abjectly to do, but such collective action could be the springboard to insist that scholarship athletes who generate hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue each year be paid stipends (much like research assistants). Think, too, of network executives (spending a half billion dollars a year on college basketball) stuck with a Final Four tournament that consists of walk-ons and white guys shooting two-hand set shots on national TV. Most educated Americans - doctors, lawyers, corporate chiefs - have little idea of the wages and working conditions of most college and university instructors, particularly part-timers. Instead of the disinformation campaigns presented at half-time of basketball and football games - half nostalgic images of ivy-strangled halls and half glitzy promos of hi-tech venture capitalism, show lines of students trying to get into closed out classes.</p> <p><span class="emphasis">5</span> The African-American athlete is sadly underused by the Left. Michael Jordan, Shaq, Grant Hill, and so on exist for most Americans in a depoliticized state of glamorous consumption, as though their multi-million dollar contracts and highly publicized lifestyles negate the economic and cultural disadvantages of millions of African-Americans. A trivia question for cultural critics: who is Kellen Winslow and why am I bringing up his name now?</p> <p><span class="emphasis">6</span> Finally, counter the Right's simplistic slogans with simplistic slogans of our own. A general purpose campaign slogan to use against Republicans: "Your jobs going overseas."</p> <p>Irving Howe? Russell Jacoby? Shana Alexander? Alexander Cockburn. Hunter Thompson. Molly Ivins. Left intellectuals need to resist the blandishments of a rationalistic politics that remain tied to models of cause and effect, to the siren song that we can reason our way into cultural and political significance. How's this for a slogan for the resurrection of the Left? "There's only one Party in this country, and you're not invited."</p> </div></div></div> Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:25:05 +0000 admin 916 at http://www.electronicbookreview.com<|endoftext|>End Erectile Dysfunction !
Primary and secondary erectile dysfunction
What is primary erectile dysfunction and secondary erectile dysfunction?
Erectile dysfunction is defined as being unable to consistently achieve or maintain an erection suitable for adequate sexual penetration. It sometimes is a selective condition, in that it occurs with some partners but not others, and in some cases a man can get an erection but not sustain it for intercourse. Going soft - losing his erection - after penetration can be very humiliating for a man.
As you probably know, the term erectile dysfunction is often shortened to "ED". And then we have the definitions of primary and secondary ED as follows:
Primary Erectile Dysfunction refers to a situation where a man has never been able to get an erection, while Secondary Erectile Dysfunction is used as a name for the situation where a man has suddenly become impotent, even though he has been able to sustain erections in the past. It is recommended a man gets medical advice if this situation lasts for two months or longer (and, we would add, provides he is not aware of the cause of his erectile issues - e.g. he knows he feels hostility or anger towards a sexual partner).
Is secondary erectile dysfunction normal - or common?
Most men will have difficulty with erection at some time in their sexual experience. This is very normal and affects up to 10% of all men at any one time. This means that between 20 and 30 million men in the USA alone experience recurring issues of erectile dysfunction.
What causes secondary erectile dysfunction?
The ease of availability of medication for erectile dysfunction has led many people to believe that it is only caused by physical problems. But for most young men, nothing could be further from the truth. Erection problems in this group are nearly always secondary erectile dysfunction issues, and this is usually caused by relationship issues such as hostility, guilt, anger, or shame - in other words, things that are relational in nature. in short, if a man is perfectly able to get and sustain an erection during masturbation, it seems very improbable that the cause of his erectile issues is either physical or medical. The term given to problems that origin in the mind, at least problems of a sexual nature such as erectile dysfunction, is "psychogenic."
So what does impact on a man's ability to get or maintain an erection? The answer is never simple, because erections are the product of cognitive, physical, behavioral, social and emotional factors.
But what we can say is that the common "psychogenic" causes include:
• Anxiety - often caused by issues at home, school, university or in the workplace
• Stress - which can be caused by a myriad of factors
• Guilt or shame about sex derived from a strict religious upbringing, repressive family values, and inhibiting cultural issues
• Fatigue or tiredness - arguably just another form of stress
• Relationship problems (around issues of power, lack of trust, and fear of betrayal in an intimate relationship, as well as hostility)
• Negative feelings about one's sexual partner can obviously influence sexual responses towards them
• Depression reduces sexual desire and libido
• And if the sexual place, time, or person are not right, then sexual functioning is affected - usually manifested as a loss of erection
• Anxiety about sexual performance, penis size, and so on can impact on a man's ability to keep an erection.
The physical and non-physical causes of erectile dysfunction can interact.
For example, too much alcohol can reduce a man's capacity for erection. and what's important to note is that one failure can cause more anxiety, which can cause more anxiety in the future.
In short, anxiety can worsen erectile dysfunction in a negative feedback spiral.
The most common physical causes - of both primary and secondary erectile dysfunction - include:
• Vascular conditions - hyperlipidemia (high levels of cholesterol blocking the arteries to the penis)
• Alcohol
• Medications - especially mood altering drugs such as Prozac and other SSRIs
• Diabetes
• Abnormal nerve function
• Testosterone deficiency
• Removal of prostate gland for cancer where surgery damages the erection nerves.
• Other surgical procedures on the pelvis
• Peyronie's disease
• Illegal drugs
• Smoking is a definite erection killer due to the damage it causes t the endothelial lining of the blood vessels in the penis.
How does a man get an erection?
The penis has two cylindrical, sponge-like structures that run beside the urethra. These tissue bodies run along the complete length of the penis, and will engorge with blood in response to sexual nerve impulses. The volume of blood flowing to the cylinders increases by about eight times the normal amount. This causes the penis to become engorged - erect and stiff.
There are several stages to sexual arousal: first is sexual desire; next is the communication of the sexual arousal from brain or physical touch receptors to the nerve endings in the penis (which activates the blood flow); finally, the blood vessels which supply blood to the penis must relax and the blood flow into the penis must increase sufficiently to cause an erection. Any problem with any of these three steps will cause failure of erection.
Myths about erections in men
Myth: Men can always have sex, and are always ready for sex
Feeling tired or being worried about life issues will affect a man's sexual desire and functioning. In short, men should not attempt intercourse if they are not in the mood, since erection failure may produce self-perpetuating anxiety. Secondary erectile dysfunction can strike at any time, and in any place.
Myth: Alcohol use invariably causes erectile problems
While it is true that too much alcohol stops a man getting an erection, it's also possible that too using alcohol can smooth the path to sex since it may reduce a man's anxiety enough to promote his erection. However, in older men, even small amounts of alcohol may inhibit a man's erectile capacity. And it's certainly true that over consumption of alcohol adversely affects all the physical systems in the body, including sexual functioning.
Myth: Good sex means a man must have a hard erection
Not true! It's perfectly possible to have good sex with a semi-erect penis - a man can stuff his penis into his partner's vagina and, once in there, it may become harder as his sexual arousal increases. However, if he starts to lose his erection, in other words if he develops secondary erectile dysfunction, a man may feel further anxiety about his capacity to get an erection in sexual situations. Remember that sexual pleasure for both the man and the woman may come in many forms and can be achieved in innumerable ways; try not to limit your intimate emotional or sexual experiences to situations featuring the erect penis only!
Myth: If the man is normal, his penile erections should happen automatically
Many men need stimulation with partner's hand or mouth on their penis to get an erection sufficiently hard for intercourse. Cultural images make us believe that men are ready for sex both physically and psychologically at any point in time, but as the more perceptive among us realize, this is not true.
Myth: If a man has an erection, he must by definition be ready for sex
Men develop erections in all kinds of non-sexual situations, including during normal sleep. These erections appear to be unrelated to erotic dreams. Oddly, fear (while sleeping or awake) may cause a man to develop an erection, which is definitely not due to sexual arousal or sexual pleasure. Men can also be with a partner and have an erection without either being aroused or having sexual thoughts.
Medication for erectile dysfunction
There are medications for both primary and secondary erectile dysfunction. And although these have been thought of as pills that allow erections to take place almost automatically, the reality is that many factors affect erections, erectile dysfunction is a complicated issue, and medications alone are not always enough.
Viagra, Levitra and Cialis do help men get and maintain an erection by relaxing the smooth muscle of the corpus cavernosum. Essentially, these medications are able to enhance blood flow into the vascular bodies of the penis by blocking the PDE-5 enzyme, and to the extent that the underlying mechanism of erection remains the same, they will work in cases of ED caused by physical, emotional, relational, and even medication-related erectile dysfunction.
You should always consult with a doctor about which of these medications is most suitable for you. It's also possible that you may find anti-anxiety medication is more suited to your particular needs, since anxiety is a major factor in the development of erectile dysfunction. And since depression also has a negative affect on sexual desire, arousal and excitement, taking medication or receiving some other kind of treatment for depression may help to increase sexual desire, and restore good erectile functioning.
Almost all loss of erection is reversible; and you can often simply get back to a previous level of arousal once the particular conditions that helped you get an erection are restored. Being confident, relaxing, and avoiding performance pressure are key factors here. In other words, be realistic - don't feel you have to satisfy a woman or that your sexual persona as a man depends on being able to bring a woman to orgasm. Don't expect too much of yourself - you can only make love a certain number of times a day or week! Think about how you might be distracting yourself during sexual activity - your focus should be on your pleasure, not your partner's unless you are accepting or receiving sexual touch. And always avoid alcohol before or during sex.
Since erectile dysfunction can only develop in a relationship, it is a partner issue in the broadest sense. Good sexual health - and hard erections - flourish in healthy relationships. If you are experiencing repeated erectile dysfunction, especially secondary ED, you need to start by talking to your partner. If you can't communicate with your partner about the most important sexual issues you face, you have probably already identified one part of the problem!
See: The Sexual Male: Problems and Solutions (1999). Richard Milsten, M.D. & Julian Slowinski
Metz & McCarthy: Coping with Erectile Dysfunction (2004). New Harbinger Publications, Inc. Oakland, CA.
The New Male Sexuality (1992). Bernie Zeibergeld, Ph.D.
Checklist to determine the causes of erectile dysfunction
Solve your
erection problem now!
There is a solution to your erectile dysfunction. If you want to overcome your difficulties in getting and keeping a hard erection when you make love; if you want to avoid the anxiety associated with impotence; if you want to regain the sexual confidence that comes from knowing your erection will remain hard during sex; and if you want the satisfaction of taking yourself and your partner to the heights of sexual pleasure, then this website has all the answers. In fact, it is the only site you need to become a confident, rock hard and proudly erect lover! Click here to get our effective and guaranteed cure for erectile dysfunction and impotence now.
Erectile dysfunction treatment
Don't let the misery and emotional pain of erectile dysfunction stay with you one minute longer. You do not need to put up with impotence - there is an effective cure for the majority of men who suffer from loss of erection during sex. You can cure your erectile dysfunction - and you can start your cure right now!
Other pages on this website about the causes of erectile dysfunction and impotence
Home ] ED checklist ] The symptoms of ED ] Psychogenic or organic ED? ] Guidelines for the treatment of Erectile Dysfunction (1) ] Revised guidelines for the treatment of ED (2) ] [ Primary and secondary ED or erectile dysfunction ]
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Home ] The diagnosis of ED ] Erectile dysfunction treatment ] The causes of ED ] Treatment for ED ]<|endoftext|>Slash Boxes
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Tuesday May 12, 2009
09:43 AM
Book review: The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter
[ #38961 ]
This is rightly hailed as a classic, being one of the clearest accounts of day-to-day Roman life for those outside the nobility and political and military elite during the Empire. And of course it is a fine example of political satire, with many subtle and not-to-subtle digs at public figures and writers of the era. All of this makes it a great academic read. And as such, I enjoyed it.
Unfortunately, it's a lousy novel. That's not the author's fault, but is simply because large chunks of the text have been lost over the last 1900 years so there are jarring gaps. While we can, to a limited extent, reconstruct parts of it, all that tells us is what the broad arc of the story might have been. You could cut chunks out of any good story, and then largely rebuild the tale, but if you were to read it with those chunks missing (which is the case with my copy of the Satyricon, which lacks even the briefest of inline notes about the missing sections) it would still not be a good read. It's almost a pity that the practice of translators/editors filling in the blanks themselves hasn't taken off, at least for mass-market paperbacks. But then, I suppose, there isn't a mass-market because it's not about some ghastly footballer or pig-faced slag from Essex.
This is, unfortunately, one only |
background.
Ironically, the key to killing SOPA and PIPA is the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Some key Republican players are bailing on supporting the bills.
Republicans have lots of reasons to dislike SOPA and PIPA.
1. The bills are terribly overreaching constraints on the last truly free market in the world.
2. Those constraints will stifle innovation as the big players use the vaguely worded laws to stifle competition in the form of new start-up companies.
3. The biggest supporters of the bills are the big media companies centered around New York and Hollywood, and this is where partisan politics come in, because those very same companies wouldn't give the steam off their pee to the Republican Party.
4. One of the chief architects of the bills is MPAA honcho Chris Dodd, who, thanks to his long political career, is already seen by Republicans as the bogeyman of government regulatory overreach, and crony corporatism. Opponents of SOPA and PIPA need to remind the Republicans in congress of this, and promise to use this fact against them the next time they seek their party's nomination for anything above dogcatcher.
As for Hollywood, there are things they can do to fight piracy.
1. Use the existing laws, but pick their battles wisely. Forget the dancing baby in the YouTube video and go for the big scale pirates and the money they make from piracy. You might step on the toes of certain governments that like to rattle sabers, but even they need to learn that respecting intellectual property rights is essential for an advancing society.
2. Make movies and music that people think are worth paying for.
Then you might be able to do something real about piracy, and not boondoggles like these.
Tuesday, 17 January 2012
Cinemaniacal: Attack Of The Killer "B"s
When I was a kid I loved low budget genre movies or "B-Movies" as they are popularly, but inaccurately called. I blame The Great Money Movie, and it's late night sister show, Weird 2, both were TV shows from over the border in Maine, which showed them with the same hyperactive glee as they did the big budget movies from the major studios.
My pop culture diet was heavily larded with regular doses of rubber monsters, spaceships that were made out of parts of toys, and sets where the walls looked like a stiff wind would take them away.
I also became a bit of a "B Movie" history buff, reading everything I could about the people who made these movies, and the often crazy stories behind their making.
It was then that learned just how inaccurate the term "B-Movie" was. You see the term originated from the old studio system when you gave the guy at the box office your nickel, and in return you got two feature films, a cartoon, a newsreel, and a whupping to keep your mind on your business.
The two movies in the double feature would consist of an "A" picture which had a big budget, big stars, and some sort of classy pedigree. The other feature, the "B" picture would be shorter, cheaper genre movie designed to keep the kids on the balcony interested enough to keep them from tossing their popcorn.
What we usually think of as "B Movies" are in fact independently produced "exploitation" movies, and not studio made "B movies."
But enough of my usual know-it-all-ism, and let me get to the meat of this rant.
I've seen some of today's crop of so-called "B-Movies" and I have found them wanting.
What really bugs me about today's movies has roots in the whole "mockbuster" fad. Now making a low budget rip-off imitation of a big budget studio picture is a tradition that goes all the way back to the silent era. However, it has become a mini-industry all of itself, and it's actually kind of turning me off the whole thing.
2 things, their mission and their attitude.
I've always said that the big studios are creating huge gaps in the movie market with their insistence on blockbusters, and that it should be the mission of independent filmmakers to try to fill those gaps with the sorts of stories that the majors are ignoring.
All these mockbusters do is just rehash what the major studios are doing, only doing it with worse stories, worse directing, worse acting, and even worse production values.
I know people say that they're of the campy "so bad they're good" variety, but I just don't see it. I find them as entertaining as getting a root canal.
And I can't appreciate the camp value of these production because they really don't have any, because of their attitude.
There's this whole air of smug ironic detachment behind these movies that bugs me. A "this movie is supposed to be shit, so why bother trying to be original, entertaining, or interesting, just toss in a washed up pop singer or sitcom star with some CGI done on a Commodore 64 and call it a day" sort of attitude.
The thing that made me love the old B-Movies I remember from my childhood is that even though a lot of the movies were laughably bad, there was still a sincere desire behind their making, even if that desire was just to get paid and hopefully another job afterwards. The people making the movie were trying their best, and while their efforts were often thwarted by the limitations of budget, talent, technology, or all of the above, they at least tried.
Many of those old time "B Movie" makers who had serious talent learned to work within their limited resources, breaking new ground in the process, and moved onto bigger and better things.
I don't really see a desire to break new ground with today's movies, just an itch to scratch the surface.<|endoftext|>bgtankHere is a marketing conundrum. How do you brand a $575,000 specialty vehicle, built on a Ford truck chassis, that is designed to look like a tank? If you answered “Name it after General George S. Patton” give yourself a 21-gun salute. But here’s the rub—in one of the most astute tactical moves of his storied military career, Patton died in the State in the California which, as we have seen before, is especially solicitous of the eternal publicity rights of anyone who ever died on its soil. In a lawsuit filed the federal court in Los Angeles, the heirs and assigns of “Old Blood & Guts” have brought this heavy artillery to bear on U.S. Specialty Vehicles.
Imagine for a moment that you earned a nickel every time that Marilyn Monroe’s “name, likeness, or persona” was exploited for commercial purposes. Now imagine it was hundreds or thousands of dollars every time. The California Legislature tried very hard to gift wrap that bonanza for the beneficiaries of Monroe’s estate, primarily her acting coach Lee Strasberg’s widow, Anna. In 2007, it passed a law which provided that the state’s statutory right of publicity — first created in 1985 — would be deemed to have existed at the time of death of any personality who died earlier, and was a property right that would pass to the residual beneficiaries of the personality’s estate even though it is not mentioned in the decedent’s will.
Monroe died in 1962, in a home that she owned in Brentwood, California. But last week, in an opinion that infuses the legal doctrines of choice of law, privity, domicile, and judicial estoppel with all the glamour, mystique, and ineffable sorrow that keeps Marilyn Monroe among the ranks of Hollywood’s most bankable stars 50 years after her death, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected Strasberg’s claims and left Monroe’s name, likeness, and persona in the public domain. In its conclusion, the Court quoted Monroe’s own rueful assessment of her celebrity: “I knew I belonged to the Public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.” However appropriate a coda to Monroe’s memoirs its ruling may be, how did the Court arrive at a legal result so completely at odds with the professed intent of the California Legislature? The answer is perhaps best summed-up in another, possibly apocryphal, Monroe aphorism quoted by the Court: “If you’re going to be two-faced, at least make one of them pretty.”
%d bloggers like this:<|endoftext|>back to article People without broadband in 'I don't want broadband' shock
Hats off to Ofcom, which today reveals the main reasons why 30 per cent of the country aren't connected to the internet at home - they either don't want it or can't afford it. The amazing finding is part of the communications regulator's research ahead of the government's final Digital Britain report, due later this month. One …
This topic is closed for new posts.
1. Rob
I'm glad they said that, I would never have guessed otherwise.
What's the next shock research to be revealed? Some people like marmite and some people don't!
2. James
I just read about ..
.. 20 people who have just emerged after 4 years at a Buddhist retreat on the Isle of Arran. No (or very little) news, no internet, no connection with the outside world. Sounds pretty good to me...
My very real fear is that like the "No fixed abode" status, which is deliberately designed to "outcast" those folk who prefer to travel and live in mobile homes (in fact this is eminently sensible IF and WHEN the next ICE AGE comes upon us!), the lack of broadband and access to the internet will be used to outcast a whole raft of people who, for some extraordinary reason, actually want to live real lives rather than piss away their time (as the author is doing !) on the Internet.
Of course it'll become very suspicious that people do not want to use the internet and have their activity tracked 24/7. Mr. Plod will be able to arrest them for behaving in a suspicious manner likely to cause harm to online surveillance....
3. Ian Ferguson
Dead Vulture
To be fair
It's useful (and good) to know that on the whole, these people don't have broadband because they don't want it, not because they can't get it (but do want it). A vast improvement over the last few years.
4. Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward
Fair enough, some people may not want broadband
but at least they should have the option should they change their minds. The real story here is how many people are currently excluded altogether.
BTW, thanks for that Grauniad link, no, really: three minutes and I could feel my brain melting. Can't these people just shut up for five minutes and read something or listen to some music?
5. Anonymous Coward
The Media
According to the media, particularly ITV News and other tabloid news sources, the internet is full of paedophiles, hackers, fraudsters, thieves, stalkers and murderers. Why would anyone want to get on-line when all they hear from the majority of the media (BBC excluded) is how bad the internet is. When was the last time you heard a 'good' internet related story (except from the BBC).
6. Kerberos
It's not the money
If someone says they can't afford a computer with the internet, they are talking crap quite frankly. You can get cheapo broadband for pretty much the cost of a TV license, and I've even started to see laptops sold on mobile contracts for nothing down and £40 p/m.
Since it seems everyone can afford a TV and a mobile phone, they can afford broadband. Computers are not the £1000 beasts that they used to be.
7. Efros
Paris Hilton
Interest and fear
There has to be an interest and there has to be no fear. My folks absolutely refused to have internet, principally due to a lack of interest, they reckoned they had enough to occupy their retired life without adding the risks or the fear, of ID theft, viruses, worms etc. We are talking about people who didn't have a colour TV until the mid 80s and only got satellite TV when my dad realised that there was such a thing as the History channel and that he could listen to Radio 4 without whistles and pops. I'm sure they are not the only ones who couldn't give a tinkers cuss about broadband, interwibble or egovernment. Some people don't want it, leave em alone, these are the same people who hit the mute button during TV adverts, they can't be commoditised.
Paris cos neither of my folks would have a friggin clue who the hell she is, and they're all the better for that!
8. Max Pritchard
What about...
... those people who are currently on the Internet, but think it's a bit rubbish really and are planning to bail out in the next 6 months and go back to reading books and chatting to their neighbours unless the quality improves.
And what about those who ought to be taken offline regardless of what /they/ want. Politicians? People conducting surveys "to improve their site"? Major record labels? Can we come to some kind of democratic consensus?
I think the survey could have gone off in several interesting directions. A shameful missed opportunity. Probably.
9. northern monkey
Please tell me you're not being serious!!
If you can't appreciate that there are a lot of people out there living hand to mouth - particularly given the rising unemployment - then you really have problems. Shelling out on broadband comes quite a long way after 'buy food'.
10. Simon
No! I didn't want Broadband, back then.
In the early zeros I used to have an old vintage Acorn RISC PC on dial-up using the Blueyonder ISP. Perfect for what I needed.
It had no USB or Ethernet connections, but a RS232 port with a dial-up modem. No way could it connect to broadband in it's current state or make any use of a fast connection, but I would get regular calls off my ISP.
I would tell them:
"Look, it doesn't matter if you even gave me the broadband for free, I can't make any use of it, please can you stop phoning me up every couple of weeks to give me an upgrade offer I can't refuse, because I still have refuse it"
Then they would ask which version of Windows ("No it's not running Windows, or before you ask Mac OS or Linux, ok!") I was using, it would generally go down hill from there. Eventually a strong "No!" at the start of the call would get rid of them quickly.
Then I got married and my wife told me we needed a new computer and the old one had to go, hee hee.
Now I have a 20Mbit connection, but as you say some people are happy with dial-up or nothing.
Penguin because "No it wasn't Windows!" even though it wasn't Linux either, how confusing.
11. Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward
@ Max Pritchard
Best case : their neighbours no longer want to talk to the snobby antisocial git next door so books are the only option. Hope the local bookshop hasn't closed!
Worst case : the neighbours don't want to talk to the paedophile/fraudster/thief/stalker/murderer/ next door. Of course, if they find out he's a hacker a lynch mob or mockery from local kids would probably be on the agenda.
12. Mountford D
So where's the drama?
We live in a free society don't we? Free choice and all the rest of it except when it comes to the TV Licensing authority when you are presumed to have a TV and the onus of contrary proof is on you or risk being hounded for the rest of your life.
Providers like TalkTalk bundle broadband into your phone services anyway so it is "free". You don't have to use it, but the choice to do so by simply plugging in an Internet device is there.
13. Geeks and Lies
you said Penetration. Hahahahahha
14. Gareth.
We asked 100 people if they want broadband, and our survey said...
How did OFCOM survey these people, that's what I wanna know. Did they have a survey on their website? Knowing OFCOM, I wouldn't put it past them.
15. Alan B
@ Kerberos
I really can't believe you posted that. Some people have barely enough money coming in to eat properly. Even if they had a computer given to them free of charge, many can't afford to have a phone line installed, or the monthly line rental, let alone the cost of broadband. Alternatively, where does the £40 a month come from for a mobile contract? There are a huge number of people who have too much month left at the end of the money.
It's time you joined the rest of us in the real world. Exactly what is your idea of a low income? It's obviously far higher than reality!
16. Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward
@ Max Pritchard
It's true, the Internet isn't as good as it used to be: I remember the massive drop in quality when AOL first shat its load onto Usenet, although that was but a pimple compared to the unrelenting moronic WebTV hordes....
17. Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward
Every pensioner I know has Freeview, yet still buys the Daily Hate on a Saturday to get the TV guide just like they always have. I point out that Freeview has an in-built guide and that it's always seven days ahead, meaning you don't end up on a Friday night not knowing what's on tomorrow, but they're just not interested in 'fancy' things like that.
No surprise that none of them have computers either, let alone broadband. In one household, the wife still gets out a heavy 1950s typewriter whenever they want to write a letter.
Oh, and that same household still buys films on VHS tapes and complains that they're getting hard to find these days and sometimes thay have to get them on those DVDs instead. They have a very expensive DVD Recorder that some salesman from Currys was able to persuade them to buy but they still stick to VHS and percieve DVDs as some kind of fallback plan for when the 'proper' thing isn't available. And they really don't understand why VHS releases are becoming hard to find, swearing blind it's one big racket.
You're not going to make these people go online. If they refuse to switch from paper TV guides to the EPG listings, they're not going to switch to the BBC news and weather websites or iPlayer, letalone Twitter, Faceache or MyBrain.
They fought two world wars, all they want is to be left alone! All of which gives me a great idea - Why not relocate them to the peaceful and scenic rural areas where you can't get broadband anyway |
and explain you its significance.
The Fundament: A True Edge
a true edge
Your entire trading strategy will be based on this fundament. If your edge isn’t solid, everything will collapse. Therefore, I recommend spending most time perfecting this component of your trading strategy.
A true edge is an actual statistical edge that can be proven through backtesting and forward-testing. By that I mean, you could (and should) look at history to see if historically speaking, this edge was, in fact, an edge and could be used to generate consistent profits. Furthermore, the edge should also continue to work in the future. To find out if it still works, you track it. Remember the fourth step of the scientific method: collect data. Never stop collecting data about the edge to see if it still exists.
Here is a simplified example of an edge (note that this is not necessarily a true edge):
80% of the time implied volatility overstates actual historical volatility.
If that statement is true, it would mean that option’s prices are also overstated 80% of the time (because implied volatility is one major part of option’s prices). This means that you could take advantage of this edge by trading certain short options strategies (as you are collecting ‘too much’ premium for them).
If that was too complicated for you, don’t worry. Here is an easier, even more simplified example of an edge (once again, I am not claiming that this is a true edge):
Stocks under $10 drop 30% or more, 75% of the time after three or more major green days.
If this were the case, you could consistently profit from the down-move by developing a strategy with limited risk that takes advantage of the bearish price action.
Note that in reality, you have to be much more specific and find more criteria to narrow down your edge.
I am aware that this trading edge might seem like a rather abstract thing right now. That’s why I want to give you an easy example that isn’t necessarily trading related:
Think of a simple coin flip game. The odds of picking the right side (heads or tails) is 50%. This means over the long run, you will be right about 50% of the time. Now let’s say, if you pick the right side, you will make $20. But if you pick the wrong side, you only lose $10. In this game, you have a real statistical edge. After 100 rounds of this game, the expected outcome would be that you made $500 (50 × $20 – 50 × $10).
One important characteristic about statistical edges is that they work best in the long run. For instance, if you played one round of the just-described coin flip game, you could easily lose. However, if you play hundreds or even thousands of rounds, the likelihood that you will have made money is very high. This is due to the law of large numbers which states that the greater the number of occurrences, the closer the expected outcome will become to the actual outcome.
The First Pillar: The Setup
the setup
The setup is another important element of a winning trading strategy. The setup is what helps you identify your edge. The more concrete and objective it is, the better. The setup could be a chart setup, but it could just as well be something completely different.
I think this is once again best explained with a brief example. When talking about a trading edge, I mentioned this as an example:
In this case, the setup would be:
A stock under $10 that had three or more major green days.
This would mean that every time, you see a stock under $10 that had three or more major green days, you want to be ready to take advantage of the likely price drop.
Note that in reality, the setup should be much more specific and objective. For example, ‘major green days’ is a pretty subjective indicator. What is a major green day? Ideally, this should be defined very specifically. In addition to that, further specifications/indicators are a good idea as well (e.g. market cap, volume, technical indicators, the overall market, the long-term chart, fundamentals etc.).
Your entry signal will largely be based on the setup. Therefore, it is very important that it is specific and objective. Another reason why it should be very concrete is that you will use the setup to track your edge. Every time you see a certain setup, track it and find out if there is an edge that can be taken advantage of.
The Second Pillar: Personality/Preferences
Besides the setup, it is just as important to consider your personality and personal preferences. Everyone is different and has different strengths and weaknesses. It is essential to develop a trading strategy that is designed to fit your personal preferences and your strengths.
To drive this point home, I want to present you a few examples:
• If you have a $10 000 trading account, your strategy must be adjusted to be suitable for such an account size. You could not trade a strategy that requires millions of Dollars in that account.
• If you have a full-time job and can’t monitor the markets very frequently, you can’t trade a strategy that requires you to do that.
• If you prefer having a lot of time to make important decisions and really can’t handle a lot of time-pressure, your strategy shouldn’t be a very short-term trading style that requires you to make significant decisions within split-seconds.
I hope these examples help you understand why it is important to design a strategy that fits you, your personal preferences and your strengths.
The Third Pillar: Adaptation/Refinement
The final pillar is adaptation and refinement. The world and with it the markets are constantly evolving and changing. Therefore, your strategy should continually be adapting to the changing market conditions. You should always be trying to improve and refine your strategy.
A trading strategy is never perfect. You can always find certain aspects that could be improved. So continue to track your progress and thereby try to identify aspects that have changed or could be improved.
Of course, you should not significantly change any aspect of your trading strategy on a trade to trade basis. Only make changes based on a large enough set of data that you have analyzed thoroughly (the scientific method)!
The Roof: Execution
This is where everything comes together. Without the roof, your strategy wouldn’t be complete. Ideally, the executions of all your trades should resemble your trading strategy’s edge, the setup, your personality, and potential adaptations.
In other words, your trade execution translates everything else into results. Everything else is the theory, whereas the execution is the practice.
Don’t underestimate the difficulty of executing trades. Even though you should have a specific trading plan for every scenario, actually following your plan and sticking to your trading strategy isn’t easy. This is where psychology comes into play. However, the more specific your trading strategy is, the easier it will be to execute trades and the easier it is to avoid emotional decision making.
Executing trades can be done in a variety of different ways. For instance, you could theoretically automate your entire trading procedure either with automated orders or with trading scripts. But it is, of course also possible to make all trades manually. If you are interested in automated trading, you should check out my article on how to learn algorithmic trading.
I hope you really understand the importance of every component (A true edge, the setup, your personality, adaptation, and the execution). Without the fundament, nothing will work. If the fundament is very weak, it could easily lead to a collapse in the entire building. If one of the pillars is missing, the roof could easily break down. Finally, the roof is what puts everything together. So make sure when you develop a trading strategy that you don’t skip any of these elements!!!
funnel trading strategy
Develop a trading strategy: The Funnel Approach
I mentioned multiple times that it is essential to narrow down your focus to something very specific. The funnel approach will help you with exactly that! It allows you to start out very broad and then (just like a funnel) filter out the vast majority of the original input.
The diagram to the right shows you an example of such a funnel. You start by choosing an asset class such as stocks, forex, options, futures or something else. Then, you decide which time frame you want to focus on. Do you want to day trade, swing trade or even invest? After you chose a time frame, you should further specify what you want to trade. Some examples of further specifications would be: market cap, price, volume, sector, float, indicators, catalyst, news events, price action etc.
I hope you can see how this can help you find your niche. A very common beginner mistake is to try to trade everything. It is very hard to be a successful retail trader over a wide range of different products, sectors, time frames… Therefore, I recommend focusing on one specific area and becoming a master in that niche. Further down the road, you will always be able to expand or even change your niche.
Consistency is key
Consistency is the key to success. If your approach isn’t consistent, you can’t improve and if you can’t improve you will get frustrated very fast. Developing a consistently profitable trading strategy requires you to have a consistent approach.
If your approach changes every time you trade, you won’t have anything to reference to because your last trade had nothing to do with your next trade. So make sure to stay consistent and don’t make too many dramatic changes to your strategy too fast. Make educated decisions based on real data!
If you are struggling with consistency, I really recommend tracking your trades! Tracking your trades allows you to analyze exactly what you are doing and why. That’s how you can find consistency.
The goal of developing a trading strategy
Now let’s discuss your situation after developing a winning trading strategy. How do you know if you have a real trading strategy?
If you can put every single aspect and detail of your strategy to words, you have a strategy! If you have a strategy, put it to words! Write it down on a piece of paper or in a notebook and always have that piece of paper next to you while trading. If you ever are unsure what to do in a trade, you can simply take a look at your notes and that should help you make an educated decision.
Another indicator that shows that you have a trading strategy is the ability to internally visualize the perfect setup. With that, I don’t mean that you can think of a profitable trade. But I mean that you can visualize every single small detail of a very specific setup and you know exactly how to take advantage of that setup.
If that’s the case, you should have no problem taking advantage of this setup the next time you see it in reality.
If you have a real strategy with a real edge, you should also have a much better time avoiding emotions while trading. If you have a true edge, you shouldn’t care about the outcome of a single or a handful of trades because you know that over the long run, you have an edge.
If you reach this point, you go from being the gambler to being the casino!Click To Tweet
Developing your own winning trading strategy seems like a lot of work, doesn’t it?
That’s because it is a lot of work! But it is what it takes to become a successful trader. I know it might seem overwhelming right now, but remember that becoming a successful trader (or anything successful) is no walk in the park. It is a process that takes time and work!
the trading code
But if you approach this with the right mindset and are willing to work on developing an ideal strategy for you, the rewards will be well worth it. Just remember that you are a scientist that is trying to find the winning formula. This will take a lot of trial and error, but it is very important not to give up after something doesn’t turn out the way you hoped.
Be professional about it! Every time, you think you failed, you are one step closer to cracking the code!
And even after you cracked the code, don’t stop! Continue to constantly optimize and adapt your strategy to changing conditions.
After you feel very confident with one strategy and have seen very good results with it, you could even consider starting all over again and developing a second trading strategy.
Before I end this article, I just want to tell you that there is no ‘holy grail’ approach to trading. There is no one best strategy. There are hundreds, thousands or even millions of different ways to make money in the markets. But it is all about finding the approach that works for YOU, your preferences, your strengths, the current market conditions etc…
I truly hope you learned a lot and enjoyed reading this guide to developing a profitable trading strategy. If you have any questions, comments or feedback, please let me know in the comment section below!
If you are unsure about how to track your trades, I recommend checking out my Excel Trading Journal Template.
4 Replies to “Develop a Trading Strategy That Works! – Step by Step Guide”
1. Very instructive article. This is very helpful because we should have the best strategy to win in this game. I was trading one year ago I and saw that it is a big risk but sometimes it is worth it. What do you think about IQ Option trading platform? I really can not find out is it legitimate or not?
1. Hi Daniel,
Do yourself the favor and stay far away from IQ Option. They aren’t a legitimate broker that offers real trading products. As a rule of thumb, you can remember, if a broker offers binary options, don’t open an account with them. If you want to learn about the details, make sure to check out my review of IQ Option.
2. I love the fact that you promote a scientific method of developing a strategy. The only time I tried trading I had to get out because I decided that I was too emotional of a trader. What your post pointed out to me was that I really didn’t have a clear cut and/or defined strategy.
1. That’s right! Trading without a clear plan and strategy is very hard. Controlling emotions is much easier when you know exactly what to do and when to do it.
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Foam rollers are truly great as they basically iron out your muscle. It is like a deep tissue massage releasing knots and is used by athletes. I strongly recommend it to anyone that is active. I know I certainly need it as I am very tight due to all the running and squats that IContinue reading “Foam Roller Exercises”<|endoftext|>Open access peer-reviewed chapter
Bioethics in the Use of Experimental Animals
By Tomás Alejandro Fregoso Aguilar and Elizabeth Guarneros Bañuelos
Submitted: October 11th 2017Reviewed: January 26th 2018Published: February 28th 2018
DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.74520
Downloaded: 337
This chapter deals with the history of the humanitarian use of animals in laboratory experiments from ancient times to the present day. It emphasizes the various criteria that have been established to try to improve the quality of life of an animal and its sacrifice with euthanasic techniques, since the emergence of Russell’s statement of the three Rs (replacement, reduction, and refinancing). In addition, there is a review of the application of bioethical principles in scientific institutions in developing countries, such as Mexico. It also reviews some aspects of the humanitarian treatment of experimental animals at the time of designing an experiment protocol.
• bioethics
• laboratory animals
• experimental design
• three Rs
• bioethics in Mexico
1. Introduction
Since many centuries ago, the human being understood that animals, in addition to providing companionship, food and protection, could also be a source of knowledge. In this way, indiscriminate use has been made of many animal species throughout civilizations. Different species, including humans, have served to enhance the well-being and the art of human science, but it was not until the twentieth century, when it began to prohibit experimentation with humans, to use species phylogenetically very close to humans with scientific purposes; this was without considering how to design experiments and without taking into account the animal suffering infringed on them. Moreover, it was not until the mid-twentieth century that some scientists began to consider designing experiments on animals, trying to cause as little suffering as possible and creating the first ethical committees for experimentation in science.
When men were trying to know the why of biological processes and their pathologies in antiquity, the vivisection of men and animals was allowed alike; there are records that Persian physicians experimented with subjects condemned to death. In the time of Ptolemy, medical practice in criminals was allowed, reaching the point that Celso, in the second century, justified these practices saying that “it is not cruelty to inflict suffering on a few, when the benefit is for many” [1].
2. Historical review
Since transition from nomadic to sedentary life, with the discovery of agriculture and the formation of the first settlements, prehistoric man became aware of the need to use animals to obtain meat, clothing and help in the transport of materials, thus emerging the basis of domestication.
It is in ancient Greece when a more “scientific” approach to the treatment of diseases with Galen and Hippocrates is obtained; however, it was not until the time of Andreas Vesalius, a doctor born in Belgium in the sixteenth century, when he changed the medicine, doing dissections of corpses of humans and animals. In the Middle Ages, great medical knowledge was obtained using animals, but in many cases, this knowledge was obtained by considering them as mere use and disuse objects, as René Descartes did, who claimed that animals had a lack of thought and conscience, concluding therefore that they did not have the capacity to feel pain. On the other hand, some scientific people of that time already began to think about the way in which studies were made in living beings; as an example to this, history has that in the works of Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519), he made contributions to the anatomy with dissections in dogs and cats but predicted that “one day, animal experimentation would be judged as a crime” [2]. It is in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when men like Graff, Harvey, Malpighi, Aselli and Haller obtained physiological and histological knowledge from animal experimentation, in many cases, they were not anesthetized [3]. However, Schopenhauer (1788–1860) affirmed in his philosophical essays that animals were aware and could perceive pain. From this moment, currents of thought began to emerge that questioned the suffering of the animal in exchange for knowledge generation; in this sense, Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) made clear that the questions were not: can they reason ?, can they talk ?, but rather: can they suffer? [3, 4].
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was founded in the United Kingdom and specifically in 1876, this country passed a law against cruelty to animals [4, 5].
Already entered the twentieth century, the English-speaking countries continued to set the guideline in terms of legislation in favor of the protection of animals, but it must be clarified that in the course of the two world wars (1914–1918 and 1939–1945), these issues and his achievements went to the background. In the 1960s, movements for the rights of oppressed minorities appeared, which, using the same arguments toward animals, led to the famous animal liberation movements. Reaching its climax with the Australian philosopher Peter Singer (born in |
b. 1928:
I was four years old at the time, but I still remember well that many people in my home village of Gorodok died of hunger. Salvation for our family consisted of a small garden and our cow, which gave birth to a calf in 1933, but was confiscated nevertheless. But we were lucky that a certain Communist lover of animals took pity [on the calf], and Mama was able to take the cow back. In 1945, however, we were less fortunate, because we lost our cow, our garden and our home forever, and via a detour to Poland and Germany we were eventually deported to Siberia.
Emma Bayer, b. 1925:
In August of 1933 I was sitting next to our kitchen window and dreamt, eyes wide open and just as I had done the previous year, of the upcoming first day of school. Then, as I observed that dead horses were being transported past our house, I said, prophetically: “This year it’s dead horses, next year it will be people.”
I remember that horses played an important role in our family, since my father was the caretaker of horses in the “Klara Zetkin” factory in Balzer on the Volga, and I remember that one day he surprised us with the question, “Would you like to eat horsemeat? A certain horse broke its leg and will be slaughtered. I could get a half horse!” “Yes, we’ll eat it,” my mother and my older sister said, nearly simultaneously.
[The author] Emma, who at that time still was Emma Weisheim, since 1979 has been living in Augsburg. She survived nearly all of her own Volga Germans by several years. Her father reached only sixty years of age, her mother got all the way to ninety, her sisters sixty-four, eighty-three, and ninety-nine (!). That is not a bad average age, despite hunger, deportation and Trud Army [Soviet Forced-Labor Camps].
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Bits and Bobs
What a gloomy day! I had to work, so at least did something useful today, otherwise I'd just lay around in my bed and watch TV shows. Or maybe read, because I have to return a book on Tuesday back to the library. I always take way too much time with reading and then always pay late fees. I wonder if I'll manage to read 500 pages in two days? It never works out when I read something for Uni, maybe it could when I read for pleasure. :)
I'm getting a new haircut tomorrow! I'm so excited, I got sick of my long hair, it's time for something new. I'm thinking of something along the lines of a longer bob in ombre, I just don't know yet if I want a brown-blonde ombre or a blonde-blonder ombre.
Wishing you all a good start of the week,
Candles for a cosy night in. <3 photo IMG_0497_zps30d49c6e.jpg
Essie in Fiji - I'm a huge latecomer jumping on the Fiji bandwagon, but here I am!
photo IMG_0499_zps2412e68a.jpg
These two are a staple in my skincare routine, how did I live without toner before? photo IMG_0394_zpsca39b154.jpg
Nothing better than a good historical thriller novel.
photo IMG_0084_zps85c0221d.jpg
My bed at the spa we went to for Christmas - cosy, cosy, cosy. <3
photo IMG_0085_zps9907798a.jpg
1. Pa nujno jutri pokaži novo frizuro! :D xx
2. Vidim, da imaš rada svečke - jaz jih obožujem :) .. Prav vzdušje popravijo. Tale essie lakec že dolgo gledam, res je lep :) Veliko sreče pri frizerju :) xo
3. Jaz grem tudi po novo frizuro čez dva dni, hehe. Sicer ne bo nič drastičnega, ampak komaj čakam da se znebim narastka! :D
4. great post! would you like to follow eachother?
5. Tudi jaz ne morem več brez Effaclar Duo :D
6. EFC DUO <3. In jaaa, hitr se pafotki in pakaž čupca ;)!
7. ombre je zakon. meni še zmeraj najljubša frizura.
čakamo slikce ... :)
© Nina in the Spring. All rights reserved.
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“I am grateful for this opportunity to broaden my skills and grow my competencies. Working with CFSC allowed me to gain essential skills. My internship has greatly improved my professional profile, and was an excellent way to start my career”, said Andy upon completing his internship with CFSC.
Additionally, the Technical Work Experience Program (TWEP), which is funded through the Government of Canada’s Youth Employment Strategy, provides employment to hundreds of youth in CFS refurbishing centres across the country every year. Anton, a TWEP program alumnus said his internship provided him with the opportunity to get experience related to his career, which in turn gave him a very good start as a newcomer to Canada.
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Sentenced was a heavy metal band formed in 1989, in the town of Muhos, Finland. They disbanded in 2005.
In 1991 bassist Taneli Jarva joined the band, replacing Kylmänen just as the band was about to record their debut album Shadows of the Past. At that time, their musical style was fast, European death metal. In springtime 1992 they recorded a new three-song promotional tape Journey to Pohjola to flirt around labels. As a result, they got themselves a deal with the Finnish Spinefarm Records, which was just starting its career, a fledgling company.
The sophomore album North from H...
years active 1989 – 2005
status Disbanded
countryMuhos/Oulu, Finland
music genreHeavy metal music
current members Ville Laihiala
Miika Tenkula
Sami Lopakka
Sami Kukkohovi
Vesa Ranta
license: GNU FDL
source: Wikipedia<|endoftext|>When Is a Model Agile?
To understand AM you need to understand the difference between a model and an agile model. A model is an abstraction that describes one or more aspects of a problem or a potential solution addressing a problem. Traditionally, models are thought of as zero or more diagrams plus any corresponding documentation. However non-visual artifacts such collections of CRC cards, a textual description of one or more business rules, or the structured English description of a business process are also considered to be models. An agile model is a model that is just barely good enough. But how do you know when a model is good enough?
Agile models are good enough when they exhibit the following traits:
1. Agile models fulfill their purpose. Sometimes you model to communicate, perhaps you need to communicate the scope of your effort to senior management, and sometimes you model to understand, perhaps you need to determine a design strategy to implement a collection of Java classes. For an agile model to be sufficient it clearly must fulfill the purpose for which it is created.
2. Agile models are understandable. Agile models are understandable by their intended audience. A requirements model will be written in the language of the business that your users comprehend whereas a technical architecture model will likely use technical terms that developers are familiar with. The modeling notation that you use affects understandability - UML use case diagrams are of no value to your users if they don't understand what the notation represents. In this case you would either need to use another approach or educate them in the modeling technique. Style issues, such as avoiding crossing lines, will also affect understandability - messy diagrams are harder to read than clean ones. The level of detail in your models, see below, can also affect understandability because a highly detailed model is harder to comprehend than a less detailed one. Simplicity, see below, is similarly a factor that affects understandability.
3. Agile models are sufficiently accurate. Models often do not need to be 100% accurate, they just need to be accurate enough. For example, if a street map is missing a street, or it shows that a street is open but you discover it's closed for repairs, do you throw away your map and start driving mayhem through the city? Likely not. You might decide to update your map, you could pull out a pen and do it yourself or go to the local store and purchase the latest version (which still might be out of date), or you could simply accept that the map isn't perfect but still use it because it is good enough for your purposes - you can use it to get around because it does accurately model most of the other streets in your town. The reason why you don't discard your street map the minute your find an inaccuracy is because you don't expect the map to be perfect nor to you need it to be. Similarly, when you find a problem in your requirements model, or in your data model, you would choose to either update the model at that point or accept it as it is - good enough but not perfect. Some project teams can tolerate inaccuracies whereas others can't: the nature of the project, the nature of the individual team members, and the nature of the organization will decide this. Sufficient accuracy depends both on the audience of the model as well as the issues that it's trying to address.
When I was a teenager I worked in restaurants, starting out as a dishwasher and working my way up to swing manager. As a swing manager I was taught how to close out the restaurant for the day, an important part of which was closing the till at the end of the day. The manager who taught me this was a firm believer in having an accurate count of the money in the till, and if it didn't add up exactly to the sales for the day we needed to recount. Not only did this include counting the paper money but the coins as well, an effort that on average took twenty minutes each evening. A few months later she transferred to another restaurant and a new manager took over. We were closing together one night and he saw me counting the coins and couldn't believe I was wasting my time counting them one by one. He then showed me how he counted coins - in his hands he'd pick up each denomination of coin one at a time, look at them, guess how much they added up to, and as long as his count was within a few dollars he'd accept it and move on. A twenty-minute activity was reduced to five minutes because he realized that his count just needed to be close and not exact. He was getting home fifteen minutes earlier six nights a week fifty weeks a year, a savings of seventy-five hours a year over a thirty year career. Agile Modeling
4. Agile models are sufficiently consistent. An agile model does not need to be perfectly consistent with itself or with other artifacts to be useful. If a use case clearly invokes another in one of its steps then the corresponding use case diagram should indicate that with an association between the two use cases that is tagged with the UML stereotype of <<Include>>. However, you look at the diagram and it doesn't! Oh no, the use case and the diagram is inconsistent! Danger Will Robinson, Danger! Red alert! Run for your lives! Wait a minute, your use case model is clearly inconsistent yet the world hasn't come to an end. Yes, in an ideal world all of your artifacts would be perfectly consistent, but no, it often doesn't work out that way. When I'm building a simple business application I can tolerate some inconsistencies. Granted, sometimes I can't tolerate inconsistencies - witness NASA's recent learning experience regarding the metric and imperial measuring systems when they accidentally slammed a space probe into Mars in 1999. The point to be made is that an agile model is consistent enough and no more, you very often do not need a perfect model for it to be useful.
Regarding accuracy and consistency there is clearly there is an entropy issue to consider here as well. If you have an artifact that you wish to maintain, what I call a "keeper", then you will need to invest the resources to update it as time goes on. Otherwise it will quickly become out of date and effectively useless to you. For example, I can tolerate a map that is missing one or two streets but I can't tolerate one that is missing three quarters of the streets in my town. There is a fine line between investing just enough effort to keep your artifacts accurate enough, investing too much effort that you are needlessly slowing your project efforts down, and not investing enough to keep your artifacts useful to you.
5. Agile models are sufficiently detailed. A road map doesn't indicate each individual house on each street. That would be too much detail and thus would make the map difficult to work with. However, when a street is being built I would imagine the builder has a detailed map of the street that shows each building, the sewers, electrical boxes, and so on in enough detail that makes the map useful to him. This map doesn't depict the individual patio stones that make up the walk way to each, once again that would be too much detail. Sufficient detail depends on the audience and the purpose for which they are using a model - drivers need maps that show streets, builders need maps that show civil engineering details.
Consider an architecture model. Depending on the nature of your environment a couple of diagrams drawn on a whiteboard that are updated as the project goes along may be sufficient. Or perhaps several diagrams drawn using a CASE tool is what you need. Or perhaps the same diagrams supported with detailed documentation is required. Different projects have different needs. In each of these three examples you are in fact developing and maintaining a sufficiently detailed architecture model, it's just that "sufficiently detailed" depends on the situation.
6. Agile models provide positive value. A fundamental aspect of any project artifact is it should add positive value. Does the benefit that an architecture model brings to your project outweigh the costs of developing and (optionally) maintaining it? An architecture model helps to solidify the vision to which your project team is working towards, which clearly has value. But, if the costs of that model outweigh the benefits, then it no longer provides positive value. Perhaps it was unwise to invest $100,000 developing a detailed and heavily documented architecture model when a $5,000 investment resulting in whiteboard diagrams would have done the job.
7. Agile models are as simple as possible. You should strive to keep your models as simple as possible while still getting the job done. Simplicity is clearly affected by the level of detail in your models, but it also can be affected by the extent of the notation that you apply. For example, UML class diagrams can include a myriad of symbols, including Object Constraint Language (OCL), yet most diagrams can get by with just a portion of the notation. You often don't need to apply all the symbols available to you so limit yourself to a subset of the notation that still allows you to get the job done.
Therefore, the definition is:
An agile model is a model that fulfills its purpose and no more; is understandable to its intended audience; is simple; sufficiently accurate, consistent, and detailed; and investment in its creation and maintenance provides positive value to your project.
An agile definition is:
A common philosophical question is whether or not source code is a model, and more importantly is it an agile model. If you were to ask me outside of the scope of this writing effort my answer would be yes, source code is a model, albeit a highly detailed one, because it clearly is an abstraction of your software. I would also claim that well written code is an agile model. Be that as it may I will distinguish between source code and agile models for the simple reason that I need to treat the two different from one another - agile models help to get you to source code.<|endoftext|>Thursday, 18 August 2011
Mixed Ability Madness
The Scenario
At some point during our career we get one of those classes that are made up of mixed abilities. By mixed abilities, I mean different levels within the same class, not students who are good at writing and others who are good at listening. Of course, I understand that within a level descripter such as Intermediate there are more and less capable students.
I'm talking about a class where students are really different in levels. At the moment I've got a false beginner and an Upper-Intermediate student in the same class. The problem is when it's a closed group and you can't move them to an appropriate class. "You can't please everyone all of the time" takes on a new meaning in this situation! If you're not careful you can end up pleasing nobody.
This is my reality at the moment.
What I've been doing.
I've only had two classes with this class and I've tried a few things.
1. I've used the stronger students as peer teachers, explaining simple rules to weaker students and helping them complete exercises.
2. I've given the stronger students more teacher like roles, such as reading out texts used in dictagloss activities.
3. I've got the stronger students at the board eliciting vocabulary from the weaker students and writing it up on the board.
4. I've given the higher level students work to do separately whilst in |
possible physical problem. This evaluation should be done before providing voice therapy (Lindfors, 1987).
Fluency problems, often called stuttering or dysfluency, refer to interruptions in the flow of speech. Dysfluency consists of pauses, prolonged sounds, or repetition of sounds and words. In severe dysfluency secondary characteristics such as jerking motions or blinking often are present. It is important to note that a certain amount of mild dysfluency is normal for many young children. Children whose level of dysfluency interferes with their ability to communicate or the willingness of others to interact with them often require speech therapy services. The speech and language professional assesses dysfluency to determine whether it is a developmental stage or a true disorder (Owens, 1991).
For most children, hearing is a primary means of learning to communicate. For this reason, when speech and language development is delayed or disordered, it is essential to find out if the child is hearing adequately (Oyler, Crowe, & Haas, 1987). Assessment takes the form of a screening or full hearing evaluation. If a hearing impairment is found, the speech and language pathologist often works with an audiologist or teacher of the deaf and hearing impaired to provide intervention services.
Play Skills
Children progress through developmental stages of play. Each of these stages of play relates to speech and language and cognitive milestones. A variety of play experiences should take place for language to develop, especially as the child uses more symbolism (Cheng, 1989). It is important for the speech and language pathologist to engage or observe children during play activities to better understand their level of speech and language development.
Problem-Solving Skills
Language assessment also includes consideration of how a child uses language to perform thinking and reasoning tasks appropriate to the child's age. In younger children these skills are manifested in abilities such as matching or naming. As children become older they should be able to analyze things they encounter in more complex ways. They should become able to use language to perform more difficult tasks such as explaining and predicting (Blank, Rose, & Berlin, 1978).
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Re: What years for 95.5mm crank? (HyKlas)
All of the 1.9 litre VW diesels including all TDI engines sold in North America have a stroke of 95.5mm. The 1.9 regular TD sold in Canada from '93 onward is also 95.5mm stroke.
That doesn't mean they're all the same part number and can be interchanged ... it just means they're all 95.5mm stroke.
Brian P.
'96 Passat TDI mit UPsolute
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Peer Review reports
Second, liver fibrosis is detectable with non-invasive markers [46]. They are many fibrosis biomarkers and the two most investigated and validated biomarkers are the FibroTest (FT), a serum in vitro multivariate assay (FibroTest®, Biopredictive, Paris, France; FibroSURE® in the USA, LabCorp, Burlington), and the Fibroscan [Echosens, Paris, France], a measure of liver stiffness (LSM) using elastography [49]. FT and LSM have similar accuracy for the diagnosis of cirrhosis, with FT having higher sensitivity for the diagnosis of earlier stages of fibrosis[10]. FT has already been evaluated in two screening studies in high-risk populations: a retrospective study in hyperlipidemic subjects and a prospective study in diabetic subjects. These results were concordant with a prevalence of presumed advanced (bridging) fibrosis of 6% in subjects with type 2 diabetes [11, 12].
Inclusion criteria
Initial medical screening
Table 1 Characteristics of naive subjects with and without presumed advanced fibrosis
Analysis Design
Sample size
Biomarkers measurements
FT includes α2-macroglobulin, apolipoprotein A1, haptoglobin, total bilirubin, and γ-glutamyl-transpeptidase (GGT), adjusted for age and gender. FT scores range from zero to 1.00. The FT, SteatoTest, NashTest components were analyzed according to published recommendations [5, 6].
LSM is expressed in kilopascals (kPa). The technique was performed by experienced hepatologists who were blinded, and was done according to the manufacturer's recommendations [10, 17, 18]. The predefined threshold for advanced fibrosis was 7.1 kPa, 12.5 kPa for cirrhosis and 5 kPa for minimal fibrosis [10, 1719].
Statistical analysis
Screened population
Among the 7,482 included subjects, 7,463 had no history of liver disease (naive population) and 19 had a history (Figure 1). The characteristics of the included population were similar to those of the French general population (Additional file 1) [21, 22]. A total of 3362/7482 (45%) subjects received at least one treatment the day of inclusion, but no specific details were available.
Figure 1
figure 1
Flow sheet of subjects included.
Prevalence of fibrosis
Factors associated with fibrosis
Table 3 Predictive values of oriented screening strategies
Table 4 Multivariate analysis of factor associated with advanced fibrosis
Comparison of screening strategies efficacy (Table 3)
Discordance analysis between FT and LSM
Table 5 Characteristics of naive subjects with and without discordance between FibroTest and LSM for the diagnosis of advanced fibrosis
Estimate of FT false negative rate using LSM
Table 6 Characteristics of discordant subjects at risk of false positive LSM or false negative FibroTest
Benefit-risk of biomarkers
Up until recently, only liver biopsy was considered as a gold standard for the confirmation of suspected advanced fibrosis in subjects with abnormal standard liver tests [4]. Previous studies performed in community-based populations mostly used transaminases ALT as a first-line screening test [2326]. This standard design is not accurate due to limitations of both standard liver tests and liver biopsy. Standard liver tests are significantly less accurate than FT for the diagnosis and prognosis of advanced fibrosis in patients with chronic hepatitis C, B, ALD, and for the diagnosis of fibrosis in patients with NAFLD [48]. In the present study only 33% of patients with confirmed fibrosis had ALT greater or equal to 50 IU/L.
LSM has been validated as an alternative to liver biopsy for the diagnosis of advanced fibrosis in the most frequent liver diseases [9, 30]. Compared to FT, the main disadvantages of LSM for a first-line test are the lower applicability rate, the higher number of variability factors including a possible operator effect and the lower sensitivity for earlier stages of fibrosis [10].
Prevalence of advanced liver fibrosis
Using standard liver tests, a higher prevalence of "chronic liver disease" was observed in Italy, the USA and China, from 7.9% to 17.5% of estimates [2326, 31]. Without specific markers of advanced fibrosis, the attributable cause of abnormal liver tests could include non severe liver disease that is steatosis, or inflammation without advanced fibrosis.
Other studies in the general population have also found NAFLD to be the leading cause of suspected chronic liver disease [2326]. In the present study the prevalence of steatosis assessed using SteatoTest was expected, 18% for moderate to severe grade and 23% for minimal steatosis, as well as 1% for NASH.
Risk factors
Screening strategies
According to official recommendations, so far only screening for alcohol misuse in adults, and lipid disorder in men aged 35 and older are recommended in general population. Screening for hepatitis B or C or hemochromatosis in general population are not recommended [1, 32]. For primary liver cancer two randomized trials have suggested the efficacy of cancer screening in chronic carriers of hepatitis B virus [33, 34]. In the present study the standard "hepatitis oriented strategy" was less effective than a non selective strategy.
Advantages and limitations of the non selective strategy
Effectiveness and limitations of selective strategies
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? While these studies primarily rely on the beach house this weekend after all. The premise of my critique is to compare how these two books by two different authors on two different subjects can relate. If you do not take it from other schools within the quote in italian contemporary literature. While talking about reservation here, we are talking about benefitting very few people. Why is it also related to the spiritual world? Supposedly we are all of highest score begin with a woman s meaning.<|endoftext|>The Juvenile Justice Act can heal broken spirits
Minister of women and child development Maneka Gandhi recently said that juveniles who commit rape should be tried as adults as the police told her that “50% of the crimes are committed by 16-year-olds who know the Juvenile Justice Act”. As per the National Crime Records Bureau’s ‘Crime in India, 2013’, the share of crimes committed by juveniles vis-à-vis the total IPC crimes committed stood at 1.2% — the same as 2012.
In 2013, the juveniles alleged to be involved in rape constituted 4.1% of all persons arrested for the offence. Even these figures need to be investigated further as our experience shows that often when two young people in this age group have consensual sex or elope with each other, the parents of the girl file charges of kidnapping and/or rape against the boy as they want them to end the relationship. All these cases also add to the inflated figures of ‘rape by juveniles’.
Sending 16 to 18-year-olds to adult prisons will scare them, but, is the purpose of the Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act to ‘scare’ juveniles or to ‘rehabilitate and reform’ them? Will it ensure that they will not commit the same offence when they complete their sentences as adults?
Evidence points to the contrary as the United States, which adopted this 20 years ago, is now realising that transfer is ineffective in addressing juvenile crime, public safety, and recidivism. The Task Force on Community Preventive Services set up by the US Center for Disease Control concluded that: “….transfer policies have generally resulted in increased arrest for subsequent crimes, including violent crime, among juveniles who were transferred compared with those retained in the juvenile justice system. To the extent that transfer policies are implemented to reduce violent or other criminal behaviour, available evidence indicates that they do more harm than good.” There is no reason why India should replicate a failed system that has been more deleterious than progressive.
The victim has little or no say in the adult criminal justice system and the proposal to transfer juveniles to the adult system will not advance their interests. The existing juvenile justice system has the potential to provide an enabling framework to heal broken spirits of victims and juveniles through restorative justice programmes that are practised in New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Canada, the US, and several European countries.
Experts who have studied various models of restorative justice have recommended that it be adopted to address “the more serious offences. It is here that the impact of the offending on victims is greatest and that victims are most in need of closure…” and consider it “most appropriate for repeat offenders.
Evidence also shows that “programmes offering counselling and treatment typically reduce recidivism, while those focused on coercion and control tend to produce negative or null effects. Programmes tend to succeed when they address specific risk factors known to influence delinquent and criminal behaviour. These risk factors include anger and anti-social feelings, lack of self-control, lack of affection or weak supervision from parents, lack of role models, and poor academic skills”.
Sending juveniles who allegedly commit ‘serious’ crime to jail is not in the interest of children, families or the wider community as a whole. Such a policy change will result in higher costs related to incarceration, and deferred costs that will incur as an outcome from the rage and bitterness that comes from life in the adult criminal justice system.
Should India go down this path of denying our young the opportunities to demonstrate accountability within a scientifically designed and professionally implemented juvenile justice system? It is we as a nation who will be culpable; culpable of intentionally not investing in our children, despite the evidence available to prove that such an investment serves the interests of juvenile offenders, their families, victims and society as a whole.
Shekhar P Seshadri is with Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, NIMHANS and Swagata Raha is with Centre for Child and the Law, National Law School of India University, Bangalore.
Source- This article appeared in Hindustan Times on July 21, 2014.<|endoftext|>Inside Sources: Lineage Societies
Lineage societies offer a badge of honor and research perks to those with prestigious pedigrees.
If you caught the genealogy bug because you thought you descended from a Revolutionary War patriot or Mayflower passenger, you're not alone. Thousands of Americans attempt to trace their lineages back to war veterans and founding fathers. But if you can prove direct descent from the right ancestor, a lineage society might want you as a member.
Although the required documentation varies by society, you can expect to spend considerable time on your application. Generally, societies require proof of all places, dates and relationships. Acceptable sources for establishing descent include vital, census and probate records; wills; family Bibles and letters. Membership qualifications also vary by group: Some are gender-specific, some require stringent documentation and others are invitation-only.<|endoftext|>Monday, November 24, 2014
Thomas Pickworth, 23rd Regiment, repeats his behavior
I sometimes get inquiries from descendants of men who deserted from the British army. Usually the family story involves their ancestor being pressed or conscripted into service, and then deserting in America because he had no desire to fight the Yankees. While it is often possible to find the man on regimental muster rolls, determine the exact day that he deserted, and get some insight about when he enlisted, some facets of the family lore can usually be discounted. With the exception of a brief period in 1778, 1779 and 1780, it was not legal for the British army to conscript or press men; even during the period that it was legal, few such men were sent to America. Almost every British soldier who served in the American Revolution had joined the army voluntarily, something that gets lost for obvious reasons when these men settled in the new nation and told their stories to later generations.
Reasons for desertion are not so easy to categorize. It is true that the war was not universally popular in Great Britain. Soldiers who deserted, though, were far more likely to be motivated by an overall distaste for military service (or, more specifically, wartime service) than for any specific concerns about who they were fighting. Some deserters prove this to us by their exploits subsequent to deserting from British ranks.
A fine example is that of Thomas Pickworth (or Peckworth). He joined the 23rd Regiment of Foot, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, in April of 1777. The circumstances of his enlistment are not known; the Englishman probably arrived in America with a body of recruits for the regiment, having enlisted in Great Britain during the previous year, but there's a chance that he was already in America when he enlisted - the muster rolls do not make it clear.
He was not a typical recruit in that he was in his early thirties when he joined the regiment. This was rare but not unknown; most men enlisted in their early twenties, but regiments could take on any man who they deemed physically capable. It's possible that he had prior military service. He was by trade a shoemaker, a fairly common profession among soldiers.
The 23rd Regiment went with General Sir William Howe's army on the campaign to Philadelphia in the autumn of 1777. Perhaps it was the hard campaigning and fighting that turned Pickworth away from the army. Or perhaps he had a roving disposition and was inclined to disciplinary trouble. Muster rolls prepared in February 1778 show that he was "sick," a catchall term that covered every malady from battle wounds to injuries incurred from lashings as well as the usually diseases. Regardless of his malady in February, by the beginning of May he was well enough to abscond from the British army; he deserted on 1 May. Many men deserted at this time when the army was preparing to leave Philadelphia. We can only guess which ones had formed local attachments and which ones simply saw the opportunity afforded by the army marching away.
Opportunity seems to have been on Pickworth's mind. Just days after deserting, he enlisted again - this time in the 6th Pennsylvania Regiment in the Continental Army. Such an act could be interpreted as sympathetic to the American cause, but it clearly was not. Within days of enlisting - which itself was within days of having deserted from the British - Pickworth absconded yet again. In early June the commander of his company placed an advertisement for him:
Twenty Dollars Reward.
Deserted from Captain Jacob Mauser’s company, of the sixth Pennsylvania regiment, on Monday the 11th instant, (May) a recruit named Thomas Pickworth, says he was born in England, about five feet eight inches high, dark complexion, middling thick, about thirty-five years of age, says he is a shoemaker by trade and lived in Philadelphia: It is thought he made towards Virginia with some people moving that way, and perhaps may change his name: Had on when he went away, a brown coat, long blue breeches, and a little hat. Whoever takes up said deserter and secures him in any gaol so that he may be had again, shall have the above reward, paid by the subscriber in Maxatawny Township, Berks County.
Jacob Mauser, Capt. 6th P. R.
[Pennsylvania Packet, 3 June 1778]
He doesn't seem to have rejoined the 6th Pennsylvania. He doesn't even seem to have changed his name, or gone to Virginia. Instead, he enlisted yet again, this time into a company of Marines in Pennsylvania, some time in August or early September 1779. By the end of September, though, he had deserted yet again:
Deserted from Captain Robert Mullan's Company of Marines, in Philadelphia, the following men, viz. Thomas Peckworth, about 37 years of age, 5 feet 9 inches high, dark complexion; had on when he went off a light coloured cloth coat, his other clothing not remembered, a shoemaker by trade.
[Pennsylvania Gazette, 6 October 1779]
This ad, dated Philadelphia, Sept. 29 1779, also listed a number of other men who'd deserted from the Marines.
Why would a man repeatedly enlist and desert? Without explicit testimony from Pickworth himself, we can only guess. It was common for recruiters to offer a cash enlistment bounty, and Pickworth may have deemed it worth the risk to take the money and run even though desertion was a capital offense. If he did tell his descendants about his service in the American Revolution, he probably left out some details, changed some others, and hoped no one in his family took a liking to reading old newspapers.
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As he climbed higher he was witness to a fantastic vista. The horizon endless, the sea and the land merging into each other with the harmony that only nature can achieve. He had come here ages ago once. He had treaded the same pine needle strewn paths on the edge of the world or so it had seemed back then to his fertile imagination. He had been quite a young man back then and had thought that he knew what it meant to be old and worldly wise. But dreams had still seemed possible.
The world his for the taking, just because he wished it so.
The future a wonderful possibility of multiple divergent realities, each interesting and enjoyable in its own right.
Here he was much more cynical and alone once again, the old familiar joy coursing through his battered being. The dreams crushed under years of corporate drudgery blossoming forth from his curmudgeon heart. Reliving the adventure he had once promised to repeat many a time; after years of keeping his sense of adventure abated. He was remembering the first time he had ever trekked up a small hill, the thrill of it and his racing heart as a child of no more than 5 or 6. The numerous times he had taken a leap into the unknown and come back richer for the experience. The journey in hindsight almost always more romantic than the destination.
Yet as age had entrapped him with the web of responsibilities he had made compromises. He had thought he was being rational and pragmatic. Life is lived in the grim matrix of reality and not the glamorous dreamscapes of fantasies he had reasoned. He had been miserable, yet he had treaded the path with a smile on his face. He had seemed successful to his peers, only his close friends knew his real anguish. He had stayed single out of an obstinacy to find the one, as if she existed. Well, maybe for some. So foolish of him to hang on to that one rebellion and compromise on the many mini rebellions that would have gladdened his heart. Well as they say age brings wisdom, but for him it was all about things left undone and unsaid. Of thoughts banished for fear of real world implications, of the road not taken as thorny as it might have been.
At 50, dying, more due to apathy for his own desires rather than the affliction which had been announced to him by his doctors. The pronouncement replete with the fake empathy a doctor tends to develop and loathes himself for unless he can rationalize it. Reminiscing about the life truly wasted he smiled. He remembered why he had come here today.
That promise he had made to himself, to go out with a bang and not a whimper.
Snare drums roll….
By- Aseem Mahajan
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Soap, Class, and State
next chapter
1. NICR, 8:328. Each soap factory had a name and a personality, somewhat akin to famous skyscrapers of modern cities. This one was located in the Yasmina quarter. [BACK]
2. He held the post of mutasallim for most of 1827 and 1828 (ibid., 8:289, 360–361). He and his two brothers, Abd al-Rahman and Abdullah, inherited the factory from their father, Muhammad Beik Tuqan (ibid., p. 328). [BACK]
3. Muhyi al-Din had legitimate reasons to be afraid. The Tuqans had, on more than one occasion, used their political position to extort moneys and property from merchants. Nimr recounts some incidents of expropriation and murder of some merchants by the Tuqans during Musa Beik Tuqan’s rule in the early nineteenth century (NIMR, 1:256). Two similar incidents that took place in the late eighteenth century were recounted by Ibrahim al-Danafi al-Samiri (al-Samiri, Zahir al-Umar, pp. 44, 47). [BACK]
4. NICR, 8:361. [BACK]
5. Ibid., 9:151. This form of loan, called bay bi’l-wafa, was widely resorted to. In case of default, she had the right to sell the property in order to collect the principal. [BACK]
6. Ibid., 9:151. Loans by women, especially to relatives, were common in Nablus and other cities in the Ottoman Empire. It was not unusual for women to sue delinquent borrowers in court. For example, see Ronald Jennings, “Women in Early Seventeenth Century Ottoman Judicial Records: The Sharia Court of Anatolian Kayseri,” JESHO, 18 (1975), pp. 53–114; Abraham Marcus, “Men, Women, and Property: Dealers in Real Estate in 18th Century Aleppo,” JESHO, 26 (1983), pp. 138–163; Tucker, Women, chap. 4. Also, see Tucker’s two articles on women in Nablus during the Ottoman period: “Marriage and Family,” pp. 165–179, and “Ties That Bound,” pp. 233–253. [BACK]
7. NICR, 10:267. [BACK]
8. Soap was produced in most cities and towns of the Fertile Crescent. In Palestine the most important was Nablus, followed by Jaffa (including Lydda and Ramla), Jerusalem, and Gaza. See Bowring, Commercial Statistics, pp. 19, 83; Kurd Ali, Khitat al-Sham, 4:159, 190; Schölch, “European Penetration,” pp. 50–51; Graham-Brown, “Political Economy,” pp. 138–141; and Gerber, “Modernization,” p. 256. For further details, see Appendix 3. Tamimi and Bahjat (Wilayat Bayrut, p. 54) noted that the soap industry also expanded in Tripoli, but no other sources make mention of this point. [BACK]
9. NIMR, 2:288; Dabbagh, Biladuna, 6:198. [BACK]
10. Al-Ansari, Nukhbat al-dahr, pp. 200–201. [BACK]
11. Bowring, Commercial Statistics, p. 19. [BACK]
12. Kurd Ali, Khitat al-Sham, 4:159. [BACK]
13. A copy of the advertisement can be found in Graham-Brown, Palestinians, p. 115. [BACK]
14. NIMR, 1:291. [BACK]
15. Nimr claimed that these properties were taken over by the people of Nablus (ibid., 1:295). [BACK]
16. NICR, 8:225, dated October, 1830. [BACK]
17. He came from a family of rich peasants based in the large village of Ya‘bad, though it had branches in the villages of Misilya and Qabatya as well (ibid., 7:78–79; 13A:174). The latter was one of the two largest olive-producing villages in Jabal Nablus. He moved to Nablus before the Abd al-Hadis and, along with his father, helped the Abd al-Hadis to locate and purchase dozens of prime commercial properties. Many of these properties were jointly owned with them, and Shaykh Yusuf often acted as the agent of Husayn Abd al-Hadi and his children in property purchases (for example, ibid., 9:85–86, 247, 249–251, 281–283). A relative, Abdullah Afandi Zayd al-Qadri, was appointed as a guardian over Abd al-Rahman, son of Husayn Abd al-Hadi, who was then governor of Sidon province (ibid., 10:240). [BACK]
18. This jibes with Nimr’s assessment (NIMR, 2:291). Kurd Ali stated that soap produced in Damascus was allowed to dry for three years in special places before being sold (Khitat al-Sham, 4:159). [BACK]
19. NIMR, 1:95–105. [BACK]
20 |
vulnerable, in many places.
To cause the european security architecture to collapse!
Autonomous Groups 30/01/2013<|endoftext|>Adventist Adventurer Awards/Camper
From Wikibooks, open books for an open world
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- Discuss with your family important rules for camping.[edit]
When you are camping, your campsite becomes your "home away from home". Since that is true, the following are some guidelines in order to respect that home:
1. Teach Adventurers respect for other people's campsites by not walking through them.
2. Have Adventurers ask permission or "knock" when entering another campsite.
3. Respect quiet hours. Many public places have set quiet hours. If you are at a facility that does not, set your own quiet hours and then abide by them. Remember that adults need to abide by the quiet hours as well as the Adventurers.
4. Make sure that Adventurers know not to wash hands, dishes, etc. at the water spigots or lavatories. Instead, make sure there is an appropriate place provided for this at your campsite.
5. Take care not to create mud puddles at spigots by having Adventurers using water bottles or cups rather than using spigots to get drinks. Providing a water dispenser at your campsite helps alleviate this situation.
6. Respect your neighbor's wish to enjoy the out-of-doors and leave your radios at home. Instead, listen to the birds singing! Likewise, loud and boisterous behavior is inappropriate.
7. Use bathrooms for intended use only, not for changing clothes, etc.
8. Respect others in your cabin/tent by picking up your belongings.
9. Leave your campsite cleaner than you found it.
- Go on a campout with your family and Adventurer group.[edit]
We use these helps for our Adventurer Area Campouts:
1. Camping with children six through eight years old →
2. Camping checklist for Adventurer Club →
3. Adventurer Area campout program example →
4. Games for Adventurer Club campouts →
- Help to Pitch a tent.[edit]
Proper way to set a tent
1. Practice at home in your back yard. Or even in your living room. That way you can be sure it won't be raining, it won't be blowing 40 m.p.h. winds and it won't be 21 degrees with frost nipping at your stiff fingers as you practice. Even if you can't drive the stakes into the shag carpeting, at least you'll get a feel for how the rods pop together, which eyelets the stakes go into and how the rain-fly fits over the top.
2. Pack the instructions back in the tent bag to bring with you camping-just in case.
3. Try to time your first trip with the tent so that you're pitching it in daylight. My friend Hali borrowed a tent from a friend and arrived at Joshua Tree in the dark. And it is VERY dark in Joshua Tree (read: middle of nowhere) at night. She'd never erected that tent before which made doing it in the dark even more challenging (see step 1).
4. Select a site that is not in an indentation or valley. If it rains-and it will-you don't want all of the water collecting under your tent.
5. Step 5 Sweep or clear the tent site of rocks, branches and general detritus as best you can. Remember, whatever is on the ground is what you'll be sleeping on.
6. If there is a tilt to the site, consider where you want your head. I like mine higher than my feet.
7. Look overhead: are there pine trees dripping sap or dropping pine cones? Not good for your tent or your sleeping.
8. Have a ground cloth of some sort and place it under the tent. Make sure the ground cloth stays tucked under the tent edges. That way if it rains-and it will-the rain will slide right off the tent and onto the ground--not onto your ground cloth. If it collects on your ground cloth, then it'll run right under your tent and the bottom of your tent will get soaked.
9. For many tents, driving the stakes in first works well. THEN you put the rods in that make it pop up.
10. Adjust the position of the stakes, making sure they are positioned as far out as you can pull the tent. A taut tent means you have more room inside. Make sure the stakes are in the ground securely-if high winds come up, you don't want your tent blowing down.
11. Put the rain-fly on, making it as taut as possible
- Help to set up your stove or to build a campfire.[edit]
Tepee Campfire
Starting a campfire is easy. A few simple steps and you'll be relaxing around a cozy campfire.
1. Before starting any campfire, check to be sure that campfires are permitted at your campsite.
2. Where it's permitted, gather wood for your campfire. You want to collect everything from dry leaves and twigs, to small sticks and branches up to 2-4 inches in diameter.
3. If a fire ring is not already available, clear an area that's away from any trees or brush. A circle of rocks will help contain the campfire's ashes.
4. Place a small pile of dry leaves and twigs in the center of the fire ring.
5. Build a tepee of small sticks around these dry leaves and twigs.
6. Next, build a square wall of larger sticks around and up to the height of the tepee.
7. Place more sticks across the walls so as to cover the tepee.
8. Add another wall of larger branches, but do not cover the top.
9. Drop a match or two into the dry leaves and twigs until they catch fire.
10. As the fire begins to grow, add some larger branches across the top, being careful not to collapse the existing walls of the fire.
11. Continue to add larger branches and pieces of wood to keep the campfire going.
1. Don't start a bonfire; campfires do not have to be large to be enjoyable.
2. Do not use flammables such as charcoal lighter, gas or kerosene to start a fire.
3. Do not burn "green" wood, it has too much sap, which will cause it to burn slowly and pop. Also, do not cut any wood from standing trees
- Help to prepare at least one meal while camping.[edit]
Children love to get involved, and the beauty of camping is that the recipes get really simple, easy and fun. Before your next family camping trip, consult these various kid-friendly camping recipes. The kids will enjoy them even more if you let them modify the recipes and have some cooking fun.
Foild Camping Recipes:
Use these fun and easy foil camping recipes for kids. The beauty of foil cooking is that kids literally just have to spray with non-stick spray (or you can use non-stick aluminum foil), assemble and fold it closed. Cut up the ingredients at the campground, or even before you leave and keep them all in separate containers in the cooler.
Foil Roasted Veggies
Campfire Foil Fries
Foil Apple Cobbler
Smores Camping recipes:
Smores are such a campfire tradition that it is almost mandatory that you make smores when you camp with kids. Shake things up with creative smores recipes for kids. Everyone has memorized the traditional smores recipe by age 8. You poke a stick through a marshmallow, hold over fire and hope it doesn't burst into flames. There are some more ways to eat smores:
Nilla Wafer, White Chocolate and Banana Smores
Put a half-banana on a stick and hold over campfire. Take two vanilla, or 'Nilla, wafers, insert chocolate and banana. Tasty, and even kind of pretty.
Fudge Stripes and Mini Marshmallow Smores
Why carry something extra camping if you don't have to? Bring some Keebler Fudge Stripe Cookies, which conveniently come with both a shortbread cookie and chocolate coating on one side and some mini marshmallows. Place the chocolate side up, and ring the mini marshmallows around the circle of the cookie. Place a second cookie chocolate side down (touching the marshmallows), and smoosh closed. Cook over your campfire until all melty and messy.
- After your trip, help to put camping supplies away.[edit]
When you arrive home, help to clean and store camping supplies. Put your dirty clothes where they belong.
- Memorize Psalm 34:7[edit]
Psalm 34:7 (NIV)
- External Resources[edit]
How to Pitch a Tent
How to Start a Camptfire
Free camping lapbook Homeschool Share
Camping pencil/pdf<|endoftext|>The Highs and Lows: How Sporting Events and Natural Disasters Affect Corporate Philanthropy
Timing is everything for nonprofits looking to engage locally-based corporations, according to a new report from Harvard Business School. Punctuated Generosity: How Mega-events and Natural Disasters Affect Corporate Philanthropy in US Communities, published in Administrative Science Quarterly, examined how natural disasters and major sporting events in the community of a corporate headquarters affects that corporation's philanthropy. It examined 2,571 firms in 157 metropolitan areas between 1980 and 2006.
The findings show that despite trends toward globalization, major local events are connected with short term spikes in corporate philanthropy. In the case of major sporting events such as the World Cup, Olympics and Super Bowl, there were definite increases in local corporate philanthropy. However, the effects were generally limited to the year of the event and could not be found to impact the preceding or following years. In Olympic years, local corporations increased their charitable donations by an average of 30 percent, and Super Bowls corresponded with a 10 percent increase.
While the magnitude of a sporting event generally determined the magnitude of the increase in philanthropy, this did not hold true for all natural disasters. The researchers found that natural disasters that did up to $5 billion in damage to the local community caused short term increases in corporate donations. However, past the $5 billion mark in local damage the trend reverses and donations decrease. The researchers suggest that local corporations become overwhelmed and many start re-allocating philanthropic dollars towards damage to their own local operations or facilities.
Read the Forbes summary or the full report from HBS.<|endoftext|>Cincincinnati Enquirer, June 25, 2006
[Rachel's introduction: Evidence continues to accumulate linking toxic metals to aggression, violence, and poor social control. Added to that are diminished IQ and the frustrations of doing poorly in school. The conclusion seems inescapable that a truly preventive approach to childhood exposures to toxic lead could avoid prison for some young men.]
By Sharon Coolidge
What impact that had on the children's behavior was unclear.
That's why Kim Dietrich, a professor of environmental health at the University of Cincinnati, spent from 1979 to 1984 recruiting 305 children with lead in their blood from Cincinnati's poorest neighborhoods for a study that's allowed him to study the children as they grew.
Now, 22 years later, one thing is clear: The more lead in a person's system when they're young, the more likely they are to engage in delinquent behavior such as assaults, property crimes and disturbing the peace -- acts that carry the risk for arrest, experts say.
"We all know there is a relationship between lead and lower IQ, but there is an extension to criminal activity," said Dietrich, who is director of UC's division of epidemiology and biostatistics program and conducted the study with a team of four others. "And this has terrible implications for not only the individual, but for society as a whole."
While the National Institute of Health estimates that lead-poisoned children cost the county an estimated $17.2 billion every year just in medical costs, lost work days and reduced productivity, Dietrich's research means it also potentially costs millions more in criminal justice costs and medical care for crime victims.
Dietrich's findings, based on a look at his study group when its members reached age 16 and 17, were published in 2001.
Dietrich and the study's others authors have monitored the group at ages 20 through 22, and found the trend continues. "Those exposed to higher levels of lead more likely to engage in criminal activities, some that resulted in convictions and incarceration," he said.
"I was interested in this because we know lead attacks areas of children's brains that are involved in aggression and impulse control," Dietrich said. "It was logical to examine this relationship between lead exposure and incidents of delinquent behaviors."
Pittsburgh researcher Herbert Needleman, using his own group of children who had lead poisoning, reached similar conclusions. He found juvenile delinquents are five times more likely than other children to have elevated lead levels.
Lead exposure in early childhood may have played an important role in the national epidemic of violent crime in the late 20th century and the dramatic decline of crime rates over the past decade, said Rick Nevin, an economist for the National Center for Healthy Housing in Washington.
Nevin, hired by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the early 1990s to do a cost-benefit analysis of removing lead paint from public housing, said he was stunned to discover a strong relationship between the use of leaded gasoline and violent crime. "The statistics show lead has had a significant impact on crime," he said.
Dietrich knows skeptics might say, "Well, the people grew up in Over- the-Rhine and the West End, so they're more likely to commit crimes." But he said the study was adjusted for social class, quality of care they got as children, nurturing they received and their mother's use of alcohol, drugs and cigarettes.
Children in the highest lead group on average said they committed five more acts of delinquency over the last year than children with the lowest levels.
"There are a lot of causes of crime," Dietrich said. "These children are already living in environments with social forces that are conducive to crime. Then, on top of that, their central nervous systems are being attacked by lead, which reduces their ability to resist those forces.
"The city needs to act when they are children, not when they're adults committing crime," he said.<|endoftext|>Cookies & Containers
Or how I learned to love the cloud.
What the heck are DHCP relays?
What the heck are DHCP relays?
2021-09-08-powerdns.html · 2021-05-03-dhcp-relays.html · 2021-04-01-ipc.html
May 3, 2021 — If you're just getting starting with Zero-Touch-Provisioning there are a few networking challenges ahead for you. Luckily there are some great tools to support out there, which make getting started very simple.
The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is used to dynamically assign IP addresses to devices connected via a layer 2 network. That means a DHCP server needs to exist in the same network already, or you're stuck with having to assign static IPs.
DHCP has four phases of operation:
1. Discovery - Broadcasting an IP address lease request
2. Offer - Offering an IP for lease to the client
3. Request - Requesting to receive the offered IP
4. Acknowledge - Accepting the request and relaying other information such as lease time
If you're just getting started setting up a data center and want to do zero touch provisioning, you're generally gonna want some way of accessing the Baseboard Management Controllers (BMC) to manage your servers. To access those, you need their IPs. But if there's no DHCP server in the same network, how can you even get started? That's where DHCP relays come in.
DHCP Relays
DHCP Relay Agents help when having your DHCP server in a different subnet than your DHCP clients. Generally DHCP messages are broadcasted, but broadcast packets aren't routed. DHCP relays take the DHCP messages and turn them from a broadcast one into a unicast message and send them directly to one or more DHCP servers.
Compared to the standard DHCP operations a relay acts as an intermediary basically forwarding DHCP communication between different subnets. This way you can have your DHCP server in a L2 network, but still utilize dynamic IP addressing.
1. Discovery - The relay forwards the broadcasted request to one or multiple DHCP servers that are configured for the relay
2. Offer - The DHCP server responds with an offer, which the DHCP relay either broadcasts to the other network or sends directly to the client
3. Request - The broadcasted request for the offered IP is relayed the same as the discovery message
4. Acknowledge - Same as the offer, the unicasted acknowledge message gets turned into either a unicasted or broadcasted reply
This way you can run DHCP relay agents on your routers, and assign IPs from one or more DHCP servers across multiple networks.
Installing (e.g. on Ubuntu 20.04) is very simple, just run
# apt install isc-dhcp-relay
Edit the config-file at /etc/default/isc-dhcp-relay so that the relay agent uses the correct DHCP server and interface:
SERVERS=<IP to your DHCP server> INTERFACES=<Interface connecting to your DHCP server>
(Re)start the service
# systemctl restart isc-dhcp-relay
Finally check if your service is up and running correctly and then you can either check your DHCP server or tcpdump (e.g. tcpdump -i <INTERFACE> -pvn port 67 and port 68 or tcpdump -i <INTERFACE> -nv '(udp port 546 or port 547)' for IPv6).
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Jeff MacNelly may not have impressed his boarding-school teachers, but just about everyone after that period stood in awe of his drawing, observation, and general creative abilities. Few people could do as much using both line and word. Susie MacNelly, Jeff's wife and stepmother to his kids, and cocreators Chris Cassatt and Gary Brookins keep Shoe hopping with consistently fresh material and lively art. Shoe now appears in 650 daily and Sunday newspapers around the world.<|endoftext|>Developmental Milestones Quiz - Alt Text Version
Question 1: What milestone is this 4-month-old showing?
A baby lying on her stomach
Answer: While lying on her stomach, this baby has pushed up to her elbows. Most babies are able to do this by the time they are 4 months old.
Question 2: What milestone is this 6-month-old showing?
A baby reaching for her toy
Answer: She’s reaching for her toy! By the time most infants are 6 months old, they show curiosity about things and try to get things that |
Guardian of the Light
videogames are not always bad, it's an easy way to entertain yourself, some games force you to thing quite a bit, at least some that I have played. I do, however, agree that some games are completely pointless and should not be around such as games where the entire purpose it to kill other people, sure it's entertaining but it makes death seem not nearly as serious as it is.
they are also bad when they become something that the person absolutely needs, also known as an addiction.
A Darker Knight
Videogames do help people develop some skills like hand eye coordination, problem solving, and reasoning, but it's better when balanced with actual activities. An addiction to anything, much less videogames, can cause grades, emotion, and/or money to go down.
Funny thing is my speech for my Communications Applications exam was on videogames' effect on people. Granted it wasn't the most well researched or well planned speech, but it was a speech dammit. :p
From my perspective, it doesn't damage the brain at all, quite the opposite, actually. Obviously there are extreme cases where it can be damaging, but that is with everything!
During my age of 2 and about 16 (up until I became more interested in girls, you could say, heh), I was quite a gamer. Not a hardcore one, even though 4 to 5 hours a day I wouldn't say is average (maybe now it is, I'm not really in the game world anymore). I developed great reflexes. Once I sat in an F-16 Flight Simulator, and I was quite good at it, or solving those thinking puzzles, or shooting ranges, or sniping around. And working with computers in general. I 'get' the system, the virtual/imaginary system.
Games back then (80's up until beginning 90's) were often a lot more abstract than now, with a lot clearer set of rules, which made the thinking very abstract.
You cannot make an accurate statement regarding the question. It's too damn vague. You cannot make a definitive argument because any argument that can be made can easily be countered due to the vast scale that the question covers. There is also the factor of individual cases. Some teenage minds would be very susceptible to video game addiction or negative influence. Others, conversely, may be totally immune to those aspects. There is also the question of what types of games are being discussed. A game such as Brain Age for the DS is quite beneficial, since it "exercises the mind" with challenging thinking tasks. Games such as Grand Theft Auto, however, would seemingly have little to no "mind exercising" aspects.
In summation, it is impossible to make the statement that all video games are bad for teenagers, but one cannot totally dismiss the idea that some games, combined with some personality types, can have adverse effects.<|endoftext|>Your store name: News, 21 Jan 2018 16:52:52 Zurn:store:1:news:blog:3 online store is open!The new nopCommerce store is open now! We are very excited to offer our new range of products. We will be constantly adding to our range so please register on our site.urn:store:1:news:blog:2 new release!nopCommerce includes everything you need to begin your e-commerce online store. We have thought of everything and it's all included! nopCommerce is a fully customizable shopping carturn:store:1:news:blog:1 nopCommerceIt's stable and highly usable. From downloads to documentation, offers a comprehensive base of information, resources, and support to the nopCommerce community.<|endoftext|>@misc{Jappe-Heinze2006Four, abstract = {We propose a research agenda integrating environment-related science, technology, and innovation (STI) using a problem-solving approach to sustainable development. We argue that STI for sustainability encompasses four major task domains: (1) ecological modernization and transformation, (2) ecosystem management, (3) environmental risk assessment, and (4) adaptation to environmental change, each posing great social challenges. For each domain, naturesociety interaction increasingly relies on knowledge acquisition. The proposed agenda focuses on the investigation of R&D capacity and linking knowledge and action within and among societal spheres (i.e., science, politics, business, law, mass media, and education). While today the disciplinary niches of environment-related STI research are still fragmented, with this broader framework, STI research could develop into a major social science field of humanenvironment relations.}, address = {Karlsruhe}, author = {Arlette Jappe-Heinze}, copyright = {http://www.econstor.eu/dspace/Nutzungsbedingungen}, keywords = {330; human dimensions of global environmental change; environmental sociology; science for sustainability; STI research; innovation research; social studies of science; so-ciology of knowledge; naturesociety interaction; noosphere; ecological modernization; ecosystem management; environmental risk assessment; adaptation to environmental change; Forschungs- und Technologiepolitik; Umweltforschung; Sozialforschung; Nachhaltige Entwicklung}, language = {eng}, note = {urn:nbn:de:0011-n-494715}, number = {10}, publisher = {Fraunhofer ISI}, series = {Fraunhofer ISI discussion papers innovation systems and policy analysis}, title = {Four major task domains of science for sustainability}, url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10419/28540}, year = {2006} }<|endoftext|>Carthage refers both to an ancient city in North Africa located in modern day Tunis and to the civilization that developed within the city's sphere of influence. The city of Carthage was located on the eastern side of Lake Tunis across from the center of modern Tunis in Tunisia.
Originally a settlement of Phoenician colonists, Carthage grew into a vast economic and political power throughout the Mediterranean Sea, accumulating wealth and influence through its economic (trading) prowess. Carthage was a major power of the Mediterranean, contemporaneously with the Roman Republic of the 3rd and 2nd century BC, and was its rival for dominance of the western Mediterranean. Eventually this rivalry led to a series of three wars known as the Punic Wars, each of which Carthage lost. These losses led to a decline in Carthage's political and economic strength, mostly due to the harsh penalties imposed on Carthage by Rome as conditions for the cessation of hostilities. The Third Punic War ended with the complete destruction of the city of Carthage and the annexation of the last remnants of Carthaginian territory by Rome. Distinct Carthaginian civilization ceased to exist, but remnants contributed to later Mediterranean cultures.
Carthage was built on a promontory with inlets to the sea to the north and south. The city's location made it master of the Mediterranean's maritime trade. All ships crossing the sea had to pass between Sicily and the coast of Tunisia, where Carthage was built, affording it great power and influence.
Two large, artificial harbors were built within the city, one for harboring the city's massive navy of 220 warships and the other for mercantile trade. A walled tower overlooked both harbors.
The city had massive walls, 23 miles in length, longer than the walls of comparable cities. Most of the walls were located on the shore, and thus could be less impressive as Carthaginian control of the sea made attack from that direction difficult. The 2½–3 miles of wall on the isthmus to the west were truly gargantuan and in fact were never penetrated.
The city had a massive necropolis, religious area, market places, council house, towers, and a theatre, and was divided into four equally-sized residential areas with the same layout. Roughly in the middle of the city stood a high citadel called the Byrsa. It was one of the largest cities in Hellenistic times (by some estimates only Alexandria was larger) and was among the largest cities in pre-industrial history.
Carthage remains a popular tourist attraction and residential suburb.
JOURNEYS trips that include Carthage:
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By November 17, 2017Anxiety, Bipolar, Fibromyalgia, Stress
Cannabis, or marijuana as it is commonly known as long been identified as a recreational drug. Yet, that is not the purpose of cannabis during ancient times when it was used as a form of medicine to treat chronic muscle spasms, nausea, pain, and more.
How can marijuana do this? One of the main ingredients discovered in marijuana is THC which is a powerful stimulator to brain receptors. As soon as THC or delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol enters the body, it stimulates receptors in the brain to bring relief to common pains, headaches, nausea, and other body pains. Increased appetite in marijuana use is credited to THC.
CBD or cannabidiol is another active chemical found in marijuana that brings about health benefits to the body. This chemical is not as intoxicating as THC and has been found to treat epilepsy in children. A healing salve can also be derived from CBD when it is converted to oil. However, CBD needs further research before it can be deemed as truly beneficial.
With this brief background on medical marijuana, are there studies or research to show that it can benefit disorders such as anxiety, bipolar, depression, and fibromyalgia?
Medical marijuana and anxiety
Anxiety is a debilitating personality disorder that can literally stop an individual from performing even the simplest acts of daily living. People afflicted with anxiety suffer severe bouts of fear, worry, and distress. Sudden sensations of panic and terror are associated with anxiety attacks. Some of the serious physical manifestations of anxiety are insomnia, shortness of breath, sweaty and cold feet and hands, dry mouth, and heart palpitations.
There are several factors credited to cause anxiety. However, the chief cause remains unknown. Research studies suggest it may stem from changes happening in the brain brought about by stress in the immediate environment. Substance and alcohol addiction also lead to anxiety.
CBD or cannabidiol found in marijuana has been discovered to alleviate anxiety in studies involving both human and animals. A study that used marijuana to people who are then exposed to a test public speaking found them less anxious even when they were diagnosed as having social anxiety disorders.
The anxiolytic-like effect was credited to the activation of the brain’s 5-HT1A receptors by the CBD. This was proven in a study done in 2011 for laboratory rats. This might be an inconclusive test but more research has shown the positive effects of CBD in both human and animal trials.
Medical marijuana and depression
Depression is a recently added personality disorder to the list of mental conditions that may be helped by medical marijuana. Chronic stress has been discovered to be the main factor for depression.
The reduced quantities of chemical compounds in the brain known as endocannabinoids result in depression. The same studies that discovered this also found that THC, an active chemical in marijuana is the best remedy to combat depression.
Reduced quantities of endocannabinoids happen when an individual is suffering from chronic stress. The body normally produces this chemical but chronic stress can drastically cut their production. This leads to chronic stress and, left unchecked, results in depression.
A research study used marijuana cannabinoids in rats and found them to effectively restore their brain’s levels of endocannabinoids. The study concluded that the restoration could possibly alleviate some of the severe symptoms of depression.
When the endocannabinoid function in the brain is restored, it leads to potentially ease depression and stabilize moods. However, research has also found that higher and regular use of marijuana also leads to depression. In all, further studies have to be made to establish the correct dosage or whether it might be successfully used for depression.
cbd back pain
Medical marijuana and fibromyalgia
There are mixed reviews for treating fibromyalgia with marijuana. There are research studies that back the pain-relieving effects of marijuana including fibromyalgia. However, a studies review done in 2016 sees insufficient results to back treatments that are marijuana-based for people afflicted with rheumatic diseases. One of these rheumatic diseases included is fibromyalgia.
It has been shown that women comprise the most number of people suffering from fibromyalgia. One study made a surprising finding when it discovered that pain in men is greatly relieved with marijuana than women.
Be that as it may, marijuana has been found to benefit people suffering from chronic nerve pain and muscle spasms. The nerve pain present in MS or multiple sclerosis has benefited with the use of marijuana. This could lead to the conclusion that marijuana can also ease the pain felt by people afflicted with fibromyalgia.
Only a medical doctor can determine if the patient with fibromyalgia can benefit from using marijuana. Until then, more studies have to be done to support the theory.
Marijuana and bipolar disorders
People with bipolar disorders experience extreme highs and lows emotionally. There is no middle ground for them. Bipolar can have manic and depressive episodes. Manic episodes usually include the following:
• Feel rested even with little or no sleep
• Distracted mind
• Feeling of super confidence
• Unsettled thinking
• Feel powerful, gifted, and intelligent
The extreme end of the manic episode is the depressive episode. These are the usual symptoms:
• Sleeping almost all the time
• Gaining or losing weight
• Insomnia
• Feeling sad every day and most of the day
Mood swings are part and parcel of bipolar disorder that can happen frequently in a week or a few times in a year. There are different bipolar disorders but the chief cause is still unknown.
What is surprising is a study that found marijuana use can mimic the effects of bipolar disorder. The study also found that marijuana by itself cannot lead to psychiatric disorders, per se. It can only mimic the symptoms of bipolar including schizophrenia.
This leads to the conclusion that marijuana is not the curative method for bipolar disorders. Mood stabilizers and anti-anxiety medications are still the best chemical remedy for the disorder.
The bottom line
While more and more benefits are seen with the help of medical marijuana, using them in some disorders still needs more studies. There’s also the fact that not all states in the United States legally allow the use of them. State law, more research, and medical practitioners still need a lot of determinants to make medical marijuana a standard means of medication.
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This topic provides an overview of Hyper-V Virtual Switch, which provides you with the ability to connect virtual machines (VMs) to networks that are external to the Hyper-V host, including your organization's intranet and the Internet.
You can also connect to virtual networks on the server that is running Hyper-V when you deploy Software Defined Networking (SDN).
Hyper-V Virtual Switch includes programmatically managed and extensible capabilities to connect VMs to both virtual networks and the physical network. In addition, Hyper-V Virtual Switch provides policy enforcement for security, isolation, and service levels.
Hyper-V Virtual Switch includes tenant isolation capabilities, traffic shaping, protection against malicious virtual machines, and simplified troubleshooting.
With built-in support for Network Device Interface Specification (NDIS) filter drivers and Windows Filtering Platform (WFP) callout drivers, the Hyper-V Virtual Switch enables independent software vendors (ISVs) to create extensible plug-ins, called Virtual Switch Extensions, that can provide enhanced networking and security capabilities. Virtual Switch Extensions that you add to the Hyper-V Virtual Switch are listed in the Virtual Switch Manager feature of Hyper-V Manager.
In the following illustration, a VM has a virtual NIC that is connected to the Hyper-V Virtual Switch through a switch port.
Virtual Switch connections
Hyper-V Virtual Switch capabilities provide you with more options for enforcing tenant isolation, shaping and controlling network traffic, and employing protective measures against malicious VMs.
In Windows Server 2016, a VM with a virtual NIC accurately displays the maximum throughput for the virtual NIC. To view the virtual NIC speed in Network Connections, right-click the desired virtual NIC icon and then click Status. The virtual NIC Status dialog box opens. In Connection, the value of Speed matches the speed of the physical NIC installed in the server.
Uses for Hyper-V Virtual Switch
Following are some use case scenarios for Hyper-V Virtual Switch.
Hyper-V Virtual Switch Functionality
• Network traffic monitoring: Enables administrators to review traffic that is traversing the network switch.
• Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) marking support: ECN marking, also known as Data CenterTCP (DCTCP), enables the physical switch and operating system to regulate traffic flow such that the buffer resources of the switch are not flooded, which results in increased traffic throughput.<|endoftext|>You are here
Is Finland a piece of driftwood on the world market?
Is Finland a piece of driftwood on the world market?
Why does a Finnish electricity user rejoice over the Norwegian and Swedish rains? And, how do the floods taking place on the other side of the world affect us? What is the importance the climate attitudes of international politicians for Finnish electricity prices?
Almost all the Norway's electricity is generated by hydropower, and, in the share of hydropower is very high. Electricity travels from a cheaper area to a more expensive one along transmission links. After normal rainy periods, the cheap hydropower of Norway and Sweden also reduces the Finnish price. The wind also has an increasingly important role in the formation of electricity prices. In Sweden, wind power already produces far more electricity than the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant will produce once it is completed. Very windy or windless days in Sweden are also reflected in the prices of Finland through transmission links.
In Finland, coal production costs have a significant role in determining the price of electricity. Coal prices are also determined by global factors. For example, when there is a flood in the Australian coal production areas, it is also reflected in an increase in the price of coal on the Finnish prices of the electricity user.
International climate policy and the climate objectives linked to the EU guide investments and support policy in Finland. For example, the ongoing political changes at the EU-level emission allowance market have shaken the Finnish electricity price briskly during the current years. Also, Russia's decisions on changes to the market mechanism have reduced fairly the import of electricity from Russia to Finland in recent years. The Finnish electricity prices are therefore very dependent on global political decisions. Finland has, of course, a say in international affairs, but we do not have a major role in the decisions.
It is clear that the price of electricity in Finland is very much linked to world events and decisions. We are largely a piece of driftwood floating along in the changing world market. The increasing transmission capacity in Central Europe, the increase in renewable energy globally, international investments are driven by climate decisions and global economic development will further increase their role in setting the price of electricity in Finland. For a single user of electricity, it is more difficult to keep track of the various factors affecting the price of electricity, so the assistance of professionals has been put in place in the ever-changing electricity market.
Portfolio Manager, SME Portfolios<|endoftext|>Orbital Earrings
• Hammered gold filled hoops orbit the dazzling druzy |
Day on November 8th participate in a STEAM activity with your children. Check out our collection of engaging activities on our Pinterest page.
Post a comment<|endoftext|>NB: This is an essay I wrote for one of my PhD comprehensive exams, which I had to complete within a time limit and without any sources—hence the missing footnotes. If ever I have time in the future, I’d like to revisit it and shore up my assertions with beefy citations. Until then, I hope you can benefit from the essay as is.
The relationship between Biblical Theology (BT) and Theological Interpretation of Scripture (TIS) is complicated. For starters, meaningful comparison can only be done between two entities that are properly defined. But both BT and TIS seem to have almost as many definitions as practitioners.
What follows is my attempt to map the general contours of the BT and TIS streams, cataloguing the various historical tributaries and contemporary branches of each discipline. From there, I will compare BT and TIS, noting both similarities and differences. Finally, I will evaluate the prospects that both BT and TIS hold for evangelical interpreters.
History of Biblical Theology
In many ways, the practice of BT can be traced back to the authors of Scripture. In both the Old Testament (Psalm 78) and the New Testament (Acts 7), we find the biblical authors summarizing and synthesizing the history of God’s dealings with man. In fact, the argument could be made that much of the New Testament, for example the book of Hebrews, was a divinely inspired project of biblical theology, as the authors of the NT set about explaining the theological significance of the historical facts of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and the reality of the church using terms and concepts rooted in the Old Testament text.
Brevard Childs, in his introduction to his Biblical Theology, argues against James Barr that biblical theology did not spring up in a vacuum, but can be traced back to the early church fathers down through the reformation to today. We can identify Irenaeus, specifically in his treatise Against Heresy, as one the first non-canonical examples of biblical theology. Irenaeus, facing the claims of the heretic Marcion that the OT text should be discarded and replaced by the NT, argued for a unity of the testaments along the lines of God’s unfolding plan in salvation history. As I will argue below, I believe this to be one of the sin qua non tenets of biblical theology, namely an historical organizing principle in approaching the biblical text.
From Irenaeus to Chysostom to Nicholas of Lyra to Thomas Aquinas, the presence of a recognizable biblical theology could be traced by a careful reader, although to apply this term to them might be seen as anachronistic. For the most part, pre-Reformation interpreters did not perceive a conceptual distance between the theology of the Bible and the theology of the church, a point made by Kevin Vanhoozer in his essay on exegesis and hermeneutics in the New Dictionary for Biblical Theology. But with Luther, Calvin, and the Reformers, it was necessary to make the distinction between the Bible’s theology and theology that is [purportedly] based on the Bible.
Due to the rise of humanism, access to and appreciation of the original languages that comprised the biblical text was growing, and with that came the ability to read the text on its own terms. Luther’s project, it could be persuasively argued, was a project in a recovery of biblical theology, or the Bible’s theology. Chief among the theological and hermeneutical presuppositions that aided Luther in his reformation project were his commitments to the principle sola scriptura and his almost wholesale rejection of the medieval fourfold senses of scripture. He rejected this in favor of the primacy of the literal meaning of the text —what Hans Frei identifies in Eclipse of Biblical Narrative as the narratival or historical meaning. Calvin likewise largely rejected the multiple senses of scripture, and operated out of the assumption that reading the Bible involved understanding the sensus literalis, the literal sense, of Scripture.
Ironically, students of the development of post-reformational hermeneutics recognized that this distance made apparent between church teaching and the bible’s theology, led to the separation and fragmentation of biblical studies, biblical theology, and dogmatic or systematic theology, as we will see below.
After the Reformation, we can trace the rise of historical-critical exegesis in the academy and the rise of various opposing dogmatic systems in protestant scholasticism and German pietism. It is in this milieu that J. P. Gabler, who is almost everywhere identified as the father of biblical theology, made his proposal for the formal separation of biblical theology and dogmatic theology.
Gabler was not the first to make this distinction, but in his 1787 address at the University of Altdorf, he called for a new era in theology. Looking out at all of the various protestant dogmas and systems that sprung up after the Reformation and the infighting that followed, Gabler suggested a way forward that could attain objective unity among scholars.
Biblical Theology, for Gabler, was to be the unifying and even “scientific” discipline on which everyone could agree, a discipline that was to be rooted in the text in an attempt to describe what the biblical authors believed, what he referred to as the wahre, or truth. By this time, however, philosophical naturalism was in vogue and skepticism reigned in the academy with regard to the events the Bible recorded. Therefore, Gabler proposed that the task of the biblical theologian was to run the beliefs of the authors through the discipline of historical criticism in order to determine what “actually happened,” what he called biblical theology. From here, Gabler argued, the dogmaticians could formulate their doctrines, what he called the reine, or pure, in accordance with what comported with Reason (philosophical rationalism) and the dogmaticians’ particular traditions.
It is one of the ironies of history that the father of biblical theology, attempting to unify the academy and Protestantism in general, opened the gates to the greatest fragmentation of theology, which led to the siloed status of the 19th century biblical studies department. The New Testament was separated from the Old Testament, gospel studies and Pauline studies were set at odds, and form-, source- and redaction-criticism were scholar’s tools to get at the “meaning” of the text, a meaning which had less and less regard for the “literal” sense of Scripture (I’m using that term here in Frei’s sense) and the plain historical referents and more regard for what “actually” happened “behind” the text.
Quickly after Gabler, historical critics such as Schleiermacher argued that the canonical unity of the scriptures—and the historical reality witnessed to therein—was inconsistence with the academy’s commitment to philosophical naturalism and thus disregard for the plain (historical/literal) meaning of scripture. “Theologies” of the Bible were replaced by the “history of religions” school, and only conservative scholars committed to the authority of the Scripture attempted “biblical theology.”
It is this context that makes Geerhardus Vos so important. At the turn of the century, Vos planted his flag in the discipline of biblical theology, taking a newly created chair of biblical theology at Princeton in the early 20th century. Arguably, it was Vos’ (evangelical) commitment to the authority and verbal-plenary inspiration of the Bible that led to his recovery of a rich tradition.
This was the context in which the Biblical Theology Movement (BTM) of the 20th century, as exemplified in the work of G. E. Wright, sprung up. The BTM insisted on a return to the unity of the canon, but, unlike Vos, it imported the historical-critical assumptions and conclusions of the previous generation. One scholar has noted that BTM shared the presuppositions of the historical critics while using the language of orthodoxy, rendering their project nearly incomprehensible. It was BTM that led to the crisis of biblical theology identified by Brevard Childs in the middle of the 20th century, illustrating the importance of theological presuppositions. While Vos’s successors are writing biblical theologies today, BTM has no heirs.
In the 21st century, biblical theology is alive and well, with both evangelical and non-evangelical scholars participating in the discipline. The what’s, why’s, and how’s of biblical theology, however, are being answered in a variety of different ways. Instead of outlining the various approaches that go by the name “biblical theology” (for an attempt at this project, see Klink and Lockett’s recent taxonomy), I will below attempt to identify some distinctives of biblical theology that most in the discipline share:
• Historical Organizing Principle. Geerhardus Vos, in his Biblical Theology, argued that the difference between biblical theology and systematic theology can be found in their organizing principals: BT has an historical organizing principal, while ST has a logical organizing principal. What Vos means by this is that biblical theology is necessarily grounded in the history of the text—that is, the historical realities the text points to and the historical situatedness of the text itself. Biblical theologians recognize the progressive revelation of the canon, and they read the books of the Bible in light of their historical provenance—including author, date, etc. While there are several “horizons” on which the text should read, including the literary and canonical, the historical horizon is never neglected in a true biblical theology. I will speak more of this below when comparing BT to TIS, as this is one of the main divergences I see between these two disciplines.
• Relationship between the Old and New Testaments. For the most part, biblical theology is a synthesizing discipline. Biblical theology recognizes the canonical form of the Scriptures. I will argue that evangelicals are able to do this best, as they have the only sound warrant for holding the canon together—namely the divine inspiration of the scriptures. But biblical theologians read the constituent parts in light of the whole. This is one reason why I think Klink and Lockett’s taxonomy fails, as James Barr is included among the list of biblical theologians. Barr’s project is set squarely in the history of religions school, which puts the canon on the same level as extra-canonical documents for determining “meaning” and reconstructing “history.”
While there are other distinctives of BT that could be mentioned, we will now move on to the history of TIS.
History of Theological Interpretation of Scripture
The history of TIS is much shorter than the history of BT. In fact, the phrase “theological interpretation of scripture” is only around two decades old. It was first used by Stephen Fowl, a theologian who remains a spokesperson for the movement that is as diverse as it is hard to define. The TIS movement, like the BT movement, includes evangelical interpreters such as Kevin Vanhoozer and Scott Swain, and also many non-evangelical interpreters such as Christopher Seitz and Stephen Fowl. Instead of rehearsing its extremely short history, I will attempt to list some TIS distinctives:
• Theological Interpretation. Inherent in the name, theological interpretation is an attempt to interpret the biblical text In many ways, this is a direct repudiation of the vision set forth by J. P. Gabler for biblical theology. Instead of seeking to separate biblical studies from systematic theology, TIS practitioners purport to read the text through the lens of their theological commitments, and to do so unashamedly. That is, the TIS movement tends to want to erase the distinction between biblical theology and systematic theology.
• Rule of Faith. Although the theological commitments of TIS interpreters are multiform and thus produce multiple readings, the one “governing” theological criteria seems to be the Rule of Faith (regula fidei). By Rule of Faith, TIS interpreters often mean the 7 ecumenical councils, and most often they mean the Nicene Creed. If one’s interpretation cannot be refuted by the creeds—the argument tends to go—then one’s interpretation cannot be refuted.
• Pre-critical Exegesis. A common theme among TIS practitioners is an attempt to recover and deploy pre-critical modes of interpretation that are beyond the grammatical-historical or historical-critical modes, which they label as “modernistic.” This method includes, if not prefers, the fourfold sense of meaning: literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical. This commitment is stated in the preface to the new Brazos TIS commentaries edited by Daniel Trier, where Trier outlines the unique attributes of the series: Each contributor is committed to exploring the allegorical, moral, and anagogical readings of scripture.
• Ressourcement. A final distinctive of TIS, which is part and parcel with pre-critical exegesis, is giving ear to earlier “readings” of Scripture. The TIS movement has set about rejuvenating lost and forgotten interpretations of scriptures. Interestingly, this is done most often from the patristic and medieval period, and less often are readings revived from the Reformation onward, such as the project undertaken by Swain and Allen in their book Reformed Catholicity.
Theological Interpretation of Scripture vs. Biblical Theology
TIS and BT, as separate disciplines, share several broad similarities. In practice, however, the similarities between TIS and BT have more to do with the presuppositions and theologies of the interpreter than the discipline they are consciously operating in. Evangelical TIS and BT practitioners both share a commitment to: (1) The verbal, plenary, inspiration of the Bible, (2) the primacy and authority of the canonical books, and (3) a rejection of the historical-critical conclusions that stem from a naturalistic worldview. Below, I will list more broad agreement between the TIS and BT disciplines.
1) Canonical Interpretation. Both TIS and BT are committed to canonical interpretation. That is, both BT and TIS reject the notion that the Old Testament should be sequestered off from the New Testament, and vice versa. Even when biblical theologians are operating at the level of a singular book, or author, or testament, they are aware of the canonical context.
2) Textually Oriented. Both TIS and BT are textual enterprises. While the how of interpretation is often different, what is being interpreted is the same. It is the Bible’s theology that BT is after, and the interpretation of Scripture that TIS is concerned with. Whether or not this comes with an evangelical warrant—namely the inspiration of the canonical writings—both BT and TIS recognize the object of study to be the canonical text.
If we are not limiting the investigation to evangelical practitioners of BT and TIS, it is clear that there are far more differences than similarities between BT and TIS.
1) Geschichte vs. Historie. At the end of the 19th century, a German scholar by the name of Martin Kähler used the terms Geschichte and Historie to describe an undercurrent that had been present in biblical studies since Immanuel Kant in the 18th century. Kant is famous for his distinction between the noumena and phenomena, a distinction that he found necessary after he was “awakened” by the philosophy of David Hume. For Kant, the visible, experiential realm is accessible through the senses alone and is determined by natural cause and effect. This realm he called the phenomena. The noumena, while it may or may not exist (for Kant it did exist), is the realm that is not “provable” by experience or observation—in other words, by science. The noumena is not governed by naturalistic cause and effect and is only accessible by “faith.” Many scholars recognize Platonic undertones to this Kantian system.
Thus when Kähler used the term Geschichte to describe the biblical text, he was talking about “salvation-history” that was not verifiable nor explainable in naturalistic terms (noumena). Only Historie is verifiable and explainable and is bound by naturalistic cause and effect (phenomena). In Kähler’s system, Historie and Geschichte, while they both may really exist, were closed off from one another. This Historie/Geschichte distinction made a profound impact on the theologies of two of most important theologians in the 20th century: Rudolf Bultmann and Karl Barth.
For both Bultmann and Barth, Historie is rooted in chronos, or natural time, and Geschichte in kairos, or heavenly time(lessness). Bultmann applied the concept of Geschichte to the realm of faith—the personal experience of the believer with the “Christ of Faith” as opposed to the “Jesus of History”—in order to make the message of the Bible palatable to modern, naturalistic hearers who did not believe in miracles, let alone the resurrection from the dead. But Barth, on the other hand, applied the concept of Geschichte to salvation-history, much in the same way as Kähler. Barth believed that miracles took place and Jesus rose actually from the dead, he was just unwilling—even unable—to say that these things happened in Historie. This is what makes Barth so difficult for evangelicals.
I rehearse this history and bring up this distinction between Geshichte and Historie to make this point: TIS seems to be happy to operate in the realm of Geschichte while being agnostic on Historie. BT, however, does not remain agnostic to Historie. In fact, I would argue that any BT worth its salt operates at the intersection of Geschichte and Historie (here I’m following loosely the argument laid for by Michael Horton in Covenant and Eschatology). This has been referred to occasionally as Heilsgeschichte, but this term can be confused by a more liberal use of Heilsgeschichte to refer just to Geschichte. Instead, I propose the term Historischgeschichte, by which I mean the intersection of the material with the immaterial—or better, the unification of Historie and Geschichte under God’s unfolding plan for his creation in relationship to himself.
It the above account is accepted, we see two progenitors of two different disciplines at the beginning of the 20th century: Geerhardus Vos and Karl Barth. Vos described his brand of biblical theology as the “History of Special Revelation,” a biblical theology that studies the intersection of special revelation and history, which is seen ultimately in the incarnation of the eternal Word, Jesus. Barth, on the other hand, was to contented to be agnostic to Historie—the material, organic, development of revelation in this space and time—and instead focused on the presence of the Word with the believer in interpretation, reading the miraculous in the context of Geschichte, not Historie. In this way, I would submit that TIS operates downstream of Barth, and BT downstream of Vos (and the Reformers and the biblical authors).
2) Antioch vs. Alexandria. As noted above, one of the tenets of TIS is a recovery of pre-critical exegesis. In practice, this often means the preference of allegorical, moral, and an |
cleaned up, other programmers can start working with the code pretty easily...if they Google for answers maybe some of these posts will show up.
Let me show something that I think is really quite beautiful:
That is the root level of the X-Plane Scenery Tools code tree, after a week of Janos and myself bashing at it. A ton of legacy code has been ripped out, file names normalized, library systems standardized across builds, etc. If you want to work with the scenery tools code, you can now do so without going crazy from the mess of random code floating around.
(You will still go crazy trying to understand how the hell the algorithms work. :-)
Here's another thing that I think looks good:
That's the cleaned version of the brains of "MeshTool". Having it pulled out means that I can now add usability features, like more automated handling of orthophotos quickly and easily. In fact, so could you!
One more...
Okay - that one doesn't even make sense to me. The polygon code in the scenery tools had this horrible hack called "dominance" - Andrew can testify to how ugly it was. The polygon code uses a DCEL as its data structure for polygons. This means that for every "edge" (line) in the map, there are actually two "half-edges", lines in opposite directions that overlap.
The problem: which one contains the road data? The old solution was dominance - exactly one was flagged as "dominant" and held the metadata. The dominance flag helped code figure out where to look/store the data to avoid double-storage.
What a gross hack. Dominance has been fully removed from the code. And the data? It is now possibly stored on either half-edge. This isn't just a way to remove dominance, it's necessary. A road segment is now stored on the half-edge that goes in the direction of traffic. So I can now import one-way street grids and the directional information is preserved.<|endoftext|>Should I Take 6 Months Of Back Pay, Or Wait Until Age 70?
Mar 29 2017 - 8:30am
Need help! I applied online on March 13, 2017 for benefits to start in July 2017, which is my 70th birthday. I got a call from SSA saying that I also had the option for my benefits to start retroactively, in Sep 2016. If I do this, I get a lump sum payment of $29,600 for those retro months, and $3015 per month going forward. If I follow my original plan and wait for my 70th birthday, I will get $3166 per month. So if I take the retroactive option, it's the lump sum of 29,600 as a tradeoff for getting payments going forward of $151 less than if I wait until July. If I take the retroactive option, it's a 16 year breakeven. But at the end of 16 years the lump sum would grow to $56k if invested at 4% compounded monthly. Compare that with a stream of payments of 151 per month for the 16 years at the 4% rate, which totals about $40k. The tax consequences of the lump sum payment are not a factor.
Sounds like a no-brainer: take the lump sum, let it grow, and take the lower monthly payment. What am I missing? If this is correct why don't I ever hear about anything but "wait until 70 if you can afford it"? Am I missing a potential impact on the survivor benefit (wife turns 58 this year)?
Can I trust the SSA representative. Just heard from them last week and I'm being pressed for an answer by the end of this week. Is there an actual deadline?
Thank you so much for looking at this for me.
It sounds like you have a good handle on your options, and it's your decision to make. There's not a hard and fast deadline to make a decision, but SSA may go ahead and process your claim with your initial month of election choice if you delay. I'm not an economist, so if you'd like to read Larry's take on this subject, refer to the following article:
As a widow, your wife could receive up to your full benefit rate, so it would lower her potential widow's rate if you choose to start drawing your benefits prior to age 70.
Best, Jerry<|endoftext|>| Follow Us:
Affine Technologies
600 Grant Street
Middleport, OH 45760
Chad Mourning of Affine Technologies
Meet Chad Mourning, founder of Affine Technologies, a 3D data visualization and computer graphics company.
What is Affine Technologies?
Affine Technologies is a 3D Visualization company specializing in aviation and avionics. We have a proprietary 3D visualization engine that makes it easy for us to track the positions, orientations, and velocities of tagged assets and convey an abundance of information to the user. We are focused on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) right now, but it also works for general aviation. Think of it as a battlefield ready Google Earth without requiring a persistent internet connection.
How did you come up with the idea?
During our master's work, my co-founder Scott Nykl and I were National Science Foundation fellows and developed a game engine to make educational games for underprivileged Appalachian middle-schoolers. Afterwards, we became graduate research associates with the Ohio University Avionics Engineering Center (AEC) and leveraged our visualization capabilities to work with aircraft. We never really worked with the AEC on an UAV project, but those are the hot new thing so we decided to chase after that.
What was the biggest surprise in starting your business?
The biggest surprise was how easy it seems. I say that having almost zero revenue so far. Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but this seems like the best time in the history of the world to go into business. Digital Media technologies make the world so different than I imagine it was 100 years ago. You don't have to build your own shop anymore. Everyone can start in their own garage or parent's basement, throw up a website or build a smartphone app, and you're off to the races. Obviously, being successful is a different story, but getting started is easy now. One less hurdle on the track.
Where did you find your first employee?
Right now Scott and I can handle all of our work, but we realize that the time is going to come soon where we can't do it all ourselves. Thankfully with our proximity to Ohio University, finding good help shouldn't be hard. We've got a fine Computer Science program here, and they produce a lot of quality students. In fact, I've heard rumors they are having trouble graduating them all, because they are getting hired before they finish their degrees.
What does a typical day in your business look like?
We're still trying to get our product line sorted out, so a lot of the time is spent writing proposals. The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) roadmap for civilian use of UAVs still has general consumption a couple years off. So for now the DoD (Department of Defense) or their contractors would still be our biggest client. They do a good job giving special incentives to small businesses, especially those in historically underprivileged business zones like Middleport.
What are some of the advantages to doing business in Ohio?
We're still new at this, but it seems like Ohio is doing a good job making entrepreneurship a priority, especially at the university level. There is a big push at the state institutions, Ohio University in particularly, for turning the research that universities create into commercialized technologies.
Even before we'd started the business and decided to make a go of it, we started receiving help from TechGROWTH Ohio, the southeastern Ohio regional center for Ohio's Third Frontier Program. We also received $20,000 in startup funding and a 10-week business boot camp from Ohio University's Innovation Center that really put us on the right path.
One of our visualization technologies designed to assist pilots in avoiding wake turbulence earned us a finalist spot in the Collegiate Inventors Competition. During the contest, one evening we had dinner with the inventors of the microprocessor, laser printer, digital camera, electret microphone, inflatable catheter, implantable defibrillator optical fiber, and, most relevant to our work, the ground proximity radar detector and warning system for aircraft. It was quite an amazing evening to get to meet and talk to all those great inventors.
What inspires you?
The newest World of Warcraft expansion came out recently, and the new playable race, the Pandarens, have a valediction that goes, "May you find mastery in your passions." That pretty much sums up what keeps me going -- always try to get better at what you care about. I started watching professional wrestling at a young age, around five, and Curt Hennig, better known as Mr. Perfect, was always one of my favorites. I don't mind a little cockiness if you can back it up. Don't just take pride in what you do, but do something you can take pride in.
What founders do you admire and why?
The best ideas are the obvious ones that people are just having trouble implementing. Because of that, I think the success story I admire most are probably the three YouTube founders. Imaging sharing sites had been around before that, and video was the next logical step. Monetizing it was a problem, and I'm sure they ran at a loss for a long time, but it's a useful tool and I'm glad they overcame that. I wasn't old enough during the dotcom boom and I'm sure there were others, but I think they were the first billion dollar acquisition in the digital media space that I remembered hearing about as an adult.
What’s next for you?
We just finished submitting a proposal we partnered with the Ohio Aerospace Institute on for the Air Force Research Lab. If that comes through, we'll be set for a couple years and can start working on growth. I'm a Ph.D. student in Ohio University's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science program, and the contract won't get awarded until June. So in case we get it, hopefully I'll have enough time to finish up my Ph.D. before I have to dive into that full-time.
Interview by Joe Baur
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It's a Small World After All
Optical microscopes are familiar instruments to visualize the world of small things, like cells and bacteria. The basic principle at work in a microscope is transmission/scattering of light through a material; and the use of lenses to magnify the image. Visible light however has an inherent size, a wavelength, that limits its resolution. Think of trying to probe a small hole in a wall by throwing a basketball through it: it won't work. You need to use perhaps a tennis ball instead. In this spirit, you need a probe with a smaller size to explore smaller things. Use of visible light in an optical microscope allows one to see things about the size of bacteria, about 1 millionth of a meter, or a micrometer (one can go down to around 0.2 micrometer if things are really pushed to the limit). The same principle however can be used to build an electron microscope: replace light photons with electrons, and lenses with magnets. The wavelength of electrons is typically shorter, and hence allows one to see smaller things; about one thousand times smaller than an optical microscope.
The state of the art of visualizing the world of small things was however achieved in 1981 with the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope. This device consists of a tiny needle hovering a few nanometers above the surface of the subject of interest. A voltage difference is applied between the tip of the needle and the surface of the subject. Because of quantum mechanics, electrons in the needle can "tunnel" through the empty gap between the needle and the surface! See previous post on quantum tunneling. This creates a measurable electrical current in the needle that one can use to infer the distance between the needle's tip and the surface. As the needle scans over the surface, it can then image the topography - bumps and ditches on the surface. The resolution of this device: a fraction of a nanometer! that's the size of an atom, ten thousand times smaller than a cell! This has allowed physicists to image for the first time the fuzzy quantum world of atoms and electrons. The device can also be used to manipulate atoms individually using the needle as a tweezer! Check out the accompanying videos and photos for an amazing visual tour of the quantum world.
The first video shows the workings of a traditional electron microscope. The second one that of a scanning electron microscope. The third video describes the quantum mechanical principles underlying the workings of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM). The final video shows a portable STM in action! The last picture shows the manipulation of atoms with an STM: iron atoms on the surface of copper. The ripples are actually the copper electrons...
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It's hard to believe Jumpstart started 2 weeks ago and we're already halfway done. For the most part, camp goes by fast but it can be exhausting. But now that we're at the halfway point, I'm hoping to completely savor the time because it's been so enjoyable.
Jumpstart La Rambla has a total of 14 students, 3 from the Barrio El Carmen in La Rambla and 11 from La Chaves. The students from La Chaves are students of my co-teacher Froilan. La Chaves is about a 25 minute drive from La Rambla and Froilan picks the children up every morning. The motivation and dedication coming from the students and Froilan alike is astounding. Froilan leaves his house in Cariari at 5:45 each morning, drives an hour and a half to La Chaves then backtracks to La Rambla to be at camp by 8AM. He repeats the path every day after camp. Froilan's motivation lies in his passion to teach the students the most possible, by taking them to camp and by improving his own English as he practices speaking with me during the breaks.
The 3 students from El Carmen have only ever had 1 year of English classes, in 5th grade. Regardless of this disadvantage from the rest of the class, they are thriving and learning at the same pace. All of the students understand everything I say to them with little repetition and at the fast pace I'm told I speak with. I feel extremely lucky to have this group of kids to work with.
Little by little all the students have gotten more and more comfortable in the classroom and being with each other and with me. Their goofy personalities manage to shine through into the lessons even if they can't express themselves fully as they have to speak English at all times. There is always laughter in the classroom, there is support from one student to another and respect for the teachers. Every time I ask for volunteers, every students ends up making their way to the front.
A little about each student:
Alfred - Alfred is my go-to guy if somebody misses a day and needs to be caught up. He gets mixed up sometimes but always knows how to correct his mistakes and is super helpful to anyone sitting around him.
Ariana - An outgoing girl with a shy personality when it comes to speaking English. Usually second-guessing herself but also usually correct in her English knowledge.
Betzabeth - Betza is the most shy and sometimes takes a little longer to process the information presented but she stays motivated and always powers through.
Cristian - I was told by Froilan that Cristian has behavior issues in other classes and I would have never guessed by how he acts in English class. He enjoys learning English so much he becomes a serious, focused student.
Cristoper - He struggles a little but on the very first day of class he came in and said to us "I want to improve my pronunciation" and that's the motivation it takes to really learn.
Donald - Lacks confidence (probably from his lack of experience with English) and sometimes gives up when something seems too hard but when he is given 1-on-1 attention, he really flourishes.
Drexel - Drexel is a mixture of Yerbis's knowledge and Donald's slightly problematic behavior. But Drexel is intelligent and always one of the first ones done with assignments.
Emilena - A typical girl who loves Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus and English class.
Jordi - Jordi can be a serious kid which means he takes the class seriously. If he sees he is struggling, he tries and tries until he achieves what he wants.
Maykel - The class clown! Maykel has gotten so comfortable he makes strange noises throughout the lessons but all for a good laugh. Even with his goofball behavior, is never too distracted and learns everything along with everyone else.
Sheirys - Sheirys has the softest voice of the class but everything she says is exactly right. She is very smart!
Steven M - A goofy kid that enjoys the class. Gets a little mixed up but always recovers.
Steven L - He is probably the perfect mixture of silly and smart. Gives everyone a laugh and manages to answer all the questions first and with ease.
Yerbis - My most surprising student, Yerbis is one of 3 that have only had 1 year of English. He surprises me everyday by learning everything super fast and even somehow remember information from his brief time with English.
the sign outside the classroom
a classroom awaiting it's students
first day ice-breaker: the human knot. they all grab random hands and have to unknot themselves into a circle. I wanted them to really get to know each other :)
playing a version of Duck Duck Goose
Steve M. introducing himself (name, occupation and where he lives)
playing BOOM, a game used to review vocabulary
learning so much!
outside playing "Everyone Who" - one person in the middle makes a statement "everyone who… lives in ___ / is __ years old / etc" and those the statement apply to have to get up and find a new seat
Naty teaching numbers
the Spanish hat in action! nobody in the class is allowed to speak Spanish unless wearing the hat
Froilan going over physical characteristics
Ariana and Steve M (with Emilena and Maykel not completely pictures) playing Guess Who
Cristian, Drexel, Betza and Yerbis playing Guess Who
Sheirys, Steven L, Jordi and Alfred playing Guess Who
learning and learning
the ladies of Jumpstart La Rambla!
posing for the camera! Steven L, Jordi, Alfred, Maykel, Cristian, Betza and Donald
a clip of "Everyone Who" - Alfred in the middle says "Everyone who is 13 years old", those who are 13 get up and find new seats<|endoftext|>Why container security is important - Part 2
In this shipped edition of the Exploring Information Security podcast, Wes Widner joins me to discuss container security.
Wes (@kai5263499) is not a security person. He is a developer. A developer that understands security |
archeological department has uncovered dice like object prepared from the bone of lambs or even dog. Cave sketches also proof that early on men were involved with gambling. So gambling heritage is 40, 000 yrs . old. Chinese invented chance game utilizing tiles in 2300 BC and subsequently after 1100 yrs greek soldiers started actively playing dice games. In those days also gambling had been illegal in Greece. In 1500 BC Egyptians used to play dice game. These people used ivory dices in order to play this game. Roman troops were likewise acknowledged for gambling for the ceremonial dress of Christ following his killing. Even the lawmakers of roman empire ordered that youngsters should be aware of the art of throwing dices. Gambling became so popular among the troops that in 14 century king Henry VIII had this illegal because his soldiers used to devote almost all of the lime on gambling instead of improving upon their battling abilities online gambling.
Gambling history: Focusing on the roots of gambling
In the beginning fortune tellers also employed small items such as small stones, stick, nut or arrows in order to foresee the future of the people. This is likewise considered as the start of gambling and gambling tools. Fortune tellers throw or even take out any of these tiny items to determine the number on them and if the number comes odd then the man or woman could get damaging outcome and if the even numbers show up then the person could easily get some good news. The person getting bad news was asked to invest something to ensure that his / her future could be anchored. In this way the olden rituals also gave rise to betting. In olden times people bet on animal for prey or upon beautiful female for relationship purposes which was also part of betting. And finally the real gambling stated when individuals used their own funds as well as properties for material gain solely.
As time surpassed gambling grew to become popular and in 1990�s on-line casino gambling came into existence which has been legalized by the Caribbean government. The concept of online on line casino gave boom to the gambling market and the gambling industry moved a step forward in its field. Numerous on line casino games are around for the gamers for their fun and earn. All the gambling game titles like poker, cards, slots, craps among others happen to be related to gambling history. Nowadays online gambling is banned in the majority of the nations around the world however foreign based gambling houses as well as casinos run their betting enterprise with freedom. The reason is that the government of any country does not have right to interfere in the businesses activities of other nations home page.
The web based gambling is extremely different from the original type of gambling which may be regarded by gambling history. It points the methods of the games played out in various places and those performed on-line that differ a great deal. One will even know the reasons powering the occurrence of on-line gambling from gambling heritage. Gambling history additionally shows that gambling is among the oldest activities of mankind.<|endoftext|>Friday, September 23, 2011
Game Over, Man (Complete With NOTES)
Thousands of dollars and
I can't get the kids to put paper on the roll
This past summer, I (NOTE: By "I", I mean Mrs. Penwasser) decided to remodel one of our bathrooms (NOTE II: "One" of our bathrooms. A saying you wouldn't hear in the Middle Ages. Or Mississippi).
We paid a crew of mouth-breathers in overalls to replace our bathtub with one which didn't have a crack in it (NOTE III: Because the only "crack" I want in my bathtub is mine) and just, for laughs (NOTE IV: And an additional $600) we also replaced a perfectly good sink with another perfectly good sink. But, this one had cultured marble (NOTE V: I'm not sure what "cultured" marble means. Does it only dispense Perrier?).
Deciding they had raped our bank account sufficiently, I (NOTE VI: Once more, by "I", I mean Mrs. Penwasser) thought we (NOTE VII: By "we", Mrs. Penwasser meant "me") could save a few bucks by doing the rest ourselves (NOTE VIII: By "our"selves, Mrs. P...oh, you get the picture).
So, I painted the walls (NOTE IX: And myself) a lovely shade of teal (NOTE X: Snob for "green"), replaced a perfectly good toilet with another perfectly good (NOTE XI: Meaning "expensive") toilet, and laid ceramic ceramic tile (NOTE XII: "Laid ceramic tile." NOT a kinky euphemism).
Anyway, as I was replacing the old toilet seat (NOTE XIII: The old one had a crack in it. See NOTE III), I noticed that its manufacturer affixed a label on its rear (NOTE XIV: No pun intended).
I was shocked.
Now, you're probably like me (NOTE XV: Except attractive). I'm sure you don't give much thought to who makes that which cradles your behind. It's not like we have eyes in that particular region of our anatomy. I mean, who gives a flying crap (NOTE XVI: Okay, pun intended)?
But, go ahead and take a look. No, no, look closer. (NOTE XVII: It's okay. I hadn't used the thing yet, so it's not gross).
That's right
Yep. China. You mean to tell me we can't make a toilet in the United States? Or at least the Mexicans? Aren't they the ones who do the jobs Americans aren't willing to do?
Author does NOT work for Campbells
Electronics I get. Sure, why not? Even though we (NOTE XIII: or Canada. Or the UK. But, not China) invented electronics, I'm not sure Americans can get much more complicated than a soup can on a string anymore. But, at least China keeps Walmart in business.
Hullabaloo, Baloo, whatever.
It's comedy, you nitpicker.
Space travel. Yep. Despite the heyday of the early Space Age and hullabaloo (NOTE XIX: Also Mowgli's friend in The Jungle Book) of the landing on the moon (NOTE XX: Or Hollywood soundstage), NASA can't even operate a kiddy train ride at Disney World without it exploding. Even worse, they won't validate your parking.
But, I thought "Made in the USA" would always be safely branded on the places where we sink our increasingly bloated (NOTE XXI: Thanks, Burger King!) fannies. Sadly, the Chinese have apparently infiltrated even our bathrooms.
Game over, man.
First Chinese handcuffs and now this!
General Tso's Chicken, anyone?
EPILOGUE: Since I was so spooked about possible Chinese eavesdropping devices implanted in my porcelain throne, I decided to check my toilet paper. Now, I gotta have quality potty wipes-two ply is absolutely crucial. Anything less and I run the risk of bursting through and giving myself a prostate exam.
Take that, Comrade!
Happily, my Quilted Northern is manufactured by the good ole boys in Georgia. So, the apocalypse is not yet complete.
1. That Chinese toilet looks like a copy of an American model, so there's no need to feel guilty. You could have got a Japanese one with a water jet that gives you a douche after making doo-doo. Not very patriotic, but it would have cut down on your toilet paper usage.
2. You do realise that here your fanny is your...ahem...ladyparts ?
Please also note the careful use of inoffensive word and respect given to being in someone else's blog,
3. It IS?? Wow, talk about being separated by a common language. Obviously, a fanny here is what you all would call your 'bum' (did I get that right?).
It's also a rather unfortunate name for a girl.
4. @Gorilla: First time I saw a douche, I thought it was a water fountain for midgets. Surprisingly, it was in France, of all places.
5. On a serious note (piece of paper that never smiles), manufacturing needs to come back locally.
That porcelain probably has lead in it. I ASSume.
6. I'm thinking you're right on the money.
Good ones, by the way.
7. I really feel the topic has been over worked--or would it be over run? Oh, I guess that would be if you had the runs; and if you did, you wouldn't give a flying fig who made that toilet seat as long as it was vacant when the urge to move hit you!
8. We only have one bathroom in our house. It sucks :( Nice post all the same buddy.
9. @Eva: I've shat in a lava field (it had cooled down) when I got a little carried away with my raisin bran.
@George: So many topics, so little time!
@Yeamie: We have three. Talk about your wretched excess (to say nothing of the toilet paper bill).
10. you've shat a lava field? seriously? ew!
i noticed a label on the under side of my toilet seat cover recently that says "church." so now i like to giggle when i tell family members that i'm going to church.
11. Now THAT'S funny!
Re: Lava field. I was traveling the wasteland which is known as Iceland one rainy, frikkin' windy, afternoon when the urge to be at one with Mother Nature hit me. Since facilities are very few and far, far between just south of the Arctic Circle, I pulled over and hobbled over to a stand (clump? mound?) of moss-covered lava. Luckily, people are also very few and far, far between there, as well, so it was just me amidst acres upon acres of similar lava clumps. And some very freaked out birds.
Oh, don't ask what I did with the moss.
12. I am the only one who changes the toilet paper in this house everyone else would just sit it on the towel rail which is so bloody annoying
13. OK so I almost choked on the "giving yourself a prostate exam." I was eating (imagine) and just wasn't expecting it. Geriatrics choke easily, you know. (Ditto with the gooseberry comment on my blog.)
14. I really do enjoy your notes.
And trust me, there is a HUGE difference between the toilets exported to the States and the ones we use in Xi'an.
I CANNOT FLUSH TOILET PAPER without choking the bloody thing. In fact, none of the Chinese people I know can flush their toilets either.
I think this explains why I really pity the cleaning lady who has to dispose of an entire trash can of used toilet paper each week.
15. I have only one bathroom. But, I have a two-seater outhouse which I hope to never need to use.
We redid our bathroom a few years ago and got an American Standard toilet. I hope it's American made. Wouldn't it be false advertising if it wasn't?
16. Hahaha, I love the notes. And yes, almost EVERYTHING is made in china, even electronics which say they're from UK or somewhere else. Don't believe me? Open your phone up, check it's battery, very likely to be china even if it's from somewhere else. If you'd open it further up most of the parts or parts of the parts are from china too.
17. So now I guess it's safe to say that China own your ass.
18. @Jo-Anne: I have to admit that I often forget to change it. Then, after finishing my "bidness", I turn to the left and say..........awwwwwww..........damn!!
@Manzanita: Sorry about that. Don't worry. Like I said, we always have two-ply now.
@Lemons: That's actually kinda funny in an ewwwwwww kinda way. Reminds me of a sign that was placed in the bathroom (we called them "heads"-I'm sure there's a reason) on our ship: "Flush twice-It's a Long Way to the Galley."
@Ruth: Whew, well thank goodness for that! The toilet, not the outhouse. Two-seater, huh? Talk about your rural mutual misery. Please don't tell me there are corn cobs there.
@neatfit: I tried that with the phone. You're right, but now the whole family is seriously hacked off at me. "Hmm, where you suppose THIS part goes?"
@Vinny C: Hee hee hee...I like that. Uh...yes.
19. The Chinese are listening to your arse.
20. Hadn't thought of that. Think I'll join the dog out in the yard then.
21. I bet China gets their supplies from the US. (Nothing makes sense.)
22. I was so sad when Hulabaloo fell and we (NOTE: By "we" I mean Mowgli, me and Mrs. Penwasser) thought he died.
23. i'm not offended by the chinese making our toilets. it actually makes me feel good
24. @dbs: That sounds like a great research project. Bet I could Google that.
@Damon: Thanks!
@Robyn: It was unbearable.
@j.littlejohn: I guess toilet seats are better than missiles.
25. See...I'm thinking Georgia needs to figure out were north is - 'cause that quilted 2-ply you're using is made in the southern part of the USA and with a name like NORTHERN I'm thinking that's more like in my neck of the know "the real NORTH"...just saying.
You need to post a "finished product" picture - my imagination is good but, hey, a little help would be nice!
Anyway Al, I hope you and Mrs. P are enjoying your new library!
Smiles and Hugs,
26. The whole geography thing is kinda kooky. For instance, there's a school district near where I live called the "North Penn School District." If you look at a map of Philadelphia, you'll have to wonder WHY it's NORTH Penn.
In any case, Quilted Northern does the job, so I'm good.<|endoftext|>ROBERT TRUJILLO Recalls METALLICA Audition: 'I Was Brain Dead'
ROBERT TRUJILLO Recalls METALLICA Audition: 'I Was Brain Dead'
Robert Trujillo spoke to the "WTF With Marc Maron" podcast about his 2003 audition to replace METALLICA bassist Jason Newsted, as captured in the 2004 band documentary "Some Kind Of Monster". He said (hear audio below): "It was a very surreal day for me. But when you get a gig like that, it's so… strange. Really, strange is the word. Because I remember going up there. I was late. I was always late back then."
He continued: "I'll tell you a quick story about the audition. Basically, it was a two-day audition. The first day of the audition, I was kind of just there to be a fly on the wall. [Producer] Bob Rock's there. The bass [for METALLICA's 'St. Anger' album] had already been recorded; Bob Rock recorded the bass. So I'm just hanging around. And Lars [Ulrich, METALLICA drummer] and James [Hetfield, METALLICA frontman] and Kirk [Hammett, METALLICA guitarist] kind of live in this bubble. They were just, like, 'Yeah, make yourself at home. Just hang out.' And I was just kind of hanging out in this big complex up north [in the Bay Area]. And I'm kind of lost, because no one's really completely communicating with me, and I'm just there. And, okay. So [they tell me], 'Come on in the control room,' and I'm just there. They're cutting tracks. And that's it; hanging around. Eleven o'clock rolls around at night, and Lars... We're in the parking lot. We're the last ones leaving. And Lars says, 'Hey, man, let's go get a drink. Let's go get a nightcap.' So I'm, like, 'All right.' And we go to the first bar, have a couple of cocktails, we go to the second bar, have a few more, go to the third bar. Then we end up at his house for more cocktails. By this time, it's five in the morning. I can't even drive to where I'm staying; it's impossible. And he even says, 'Here, crash out in my guest room.' So, at nine in the morning, four hours later, he's on the treadmill, this guy, and it's like he doesn't know me anymore. He's already sobered up. And he's on the treadmill. And I've got this crazy headache. And then he's, like, 'All right. Let's go. Let's go to the studio.' And I'm driving behind him. I couldn't even keep my eyes open. I get to the studio.
He went on to say: "This is when [the members of METALLICA] were going through this sort of therapy thing, [with] this guy Phil Towle, who was… what do they call it? Kind of a life coach, kind of a motivator, which was, at the time, I guess, good for the band, but I wasn't used to that. Here I am with a pounding headache. James has just gone through this whole thing where, of course, he's sober, and the last person he wants to see anywhere near his band is a drunk Mexican. That would be me. So I'm sitting at the table, and I've got the worst headache, [I'm] completely hung over. And I'm thinking, 'Lars did this to me, 'cause he was checking me out, to see if I could hang with him.' It was [a test]; it had to have been. He's a Viking, really. I'd go into the bathroom. I was throwing water on my face, slapping it, going, 'Oh, man, you've gotta… Hang in there. Hang in there.' 'Cause I really wanted to say, 'I can't do this right now, guys. I don't feel good. I really can't do this.'"
Trujillo added: "I stuck it out. I knew the tech, the bass tech, from back when SUICIDIAL TENDENCIES was touring with METALLICA, which would have been in 1993 on the |
Tolerance Response Mechanisms
The assembly of an insoluble EPS matrix and its spatial arrangement with bacterial cells creates acidic and protective microenvironments inside the microcolonies [13]. S. mutans have several mechanisms to cope with stressors such as low external pH and acidification of cytoplasm [2], [40]. Our data showed that S. mutans mounts an intricate yet interconnected response to adapt and to survive acidic stress, which are influenced by the presence of other organisms and biofilm age.
All proteins that encode the F1F0-ATPase system [63] for proton extrusion and ATP generation were detected in mixed-species biofilms (Table 3). Among them, AtpD was the most abundant protein, which has a critical function in the assembly of ATPase complex and is highly induced at low pH [64]. This complex helps to maintain the ΔpH across the bacterial membrane by pumping protons out of the cell. The temporal expression of gene atpD showed that from 43 to 67 h the expression is similar, and then significantly declines at 115 h (P<0.05), confirming the quantitative proteome data (Figure 4).
Table 3. Proteins related to acid and stress tolerance response: F1F0-ATPase and fatty acid metabolism (linked to membrane composition).
Low pH triggers changes in the membrane fatty acid composition and also affects the permeability of the membrane to protons [65], [66]. All proteins encoded by the fatty acid biosynthetic gene cluster were also detected (Table 3). This cluster may be connected with ATPase system because the fatty acid composition is important for the optimal function of ATPpase, which is anchored to the membrane. In particular, FabM was detected in high levels at 67 h of mixed-species biofilm development (Table 3). FabM is responsible for the synthesis of monounsaturated fatty acids and is critical for S. mutans survival at low pH [65], [66]. The expression profile of gene fabM confirmed the trend of the protein detection between 67 and 115 h (Figure 4). Thus, the data suggest that S. mutans modulates specific changes in fatty acid profile in the membrane and the assembly of F1F0-ATPase system to ensure an optimal condition to control the protons level in the cytoplasm (and as a result the intracellular pH).
In addition, the proteins directly responsible for cytoplasm alkalinization are also detected in elevated amounts at 67 h of biofilm development (Table 4), which include: 1) the metabolism of branched chain amino acids (BCAA) [40], [67], 2) the malolatic fermentation (MLF) system [68], and 3) agmatine diamenase system (AgDS) (which also produces ATP that can be used for growth or to extrude protons via F1F0-ATPase system [69], [70]). Among them, metabolism of BCAA may have a significant role as its components are abundant (particularly IlvC), and they may have a synergistic role with F1F0-ATPase system and fatty acid composition in the membrane to enhance S. mutans survival in a low pH environment within biofilms. This may occur because S. mutans senses the low pH and modulate the carbon flux from acid production to BCAA biosynthesis [40], [67]. The abundance of MLF related proteins is rather low, and only one protein from the AgDS was detected in our analyses (Table 4), which is not surprising because S. mutans express AgDS at relatively low levels [69], [70]. Thus, the MLF and AgDS systems may have comparatively minor roles in S. mutans tolerance to acidic environment in the biofilms tested.
Table 4. Proteins related to acid and stress tolerance response: Proteins responsible for regulation of intracellular pH - branched chain amino acids (BCAA), malolatic fermentation (MLF), and agmatine diamenase system (AgDS).
Figure 4. Dynamics of S. mutans gene expression during mixed-species biofilm development.
Depicts selected S. mutans genes based on the proteome data. Comparison of gene expression data acquired at each time point for mixed-species biofilms (43 h vs. 67 h vs. 91 h vs.115 h) are shown; values connected by line are not significantly different from each other (P<0.05; n = 12).
In summary, the F1F0-ATPase system, the membrane fatty acid biosynthesis and the BCAA metabolism appear to play major roles on acid tolerance, particularly when S. mutans is shifting from a minor to become a major resident within an increasingly acidic milieu found in the interior of microcolonies of mixed-species biofilm. However, the other mechanisms for acid stress adaptation (i.e. MLF and AgDS), even if having a minor role (based on protein abundance), may be also important for overall S. mutans fitness by helping to increase the cytoplasmic pH and generate ATP. The ATP generated can be used by F1F0-ATPase system to extrude protons from the cytoplasm. The expression of such interconnected mechanism is particularly important because the loss of one or more of the stress adaptive mechanisms can lead to a substantial reduction in S. mutans pathogenicity [2], [71].
Other Proteins Related to Responses to Acid Stress
The exposure to acidic environment and other insults found in the biofilms may lead to accumulation of abnormal proteins. S. mutans (and other organisms) uses molecular chaperones and proteases to modulate the stability of proteins and prevent the accumulation of abnormal proteins by overseeing the correct folding [37], [72], [73]. The synthesis of chaperones GroEL, GrpE, DnaJ, DnaK and HtpX was elevated at 67 h of mixed-species biofilm development (Table S3). This finding makes sense because in our analyses the majority of the proteins are highly abundant at this time point, when S. mutans start to become a major co-habitant in the mixed-species biofilm. Therefore, the augmented production of chaperones ensures the quality of proteins being expresses, enabling S. mutans to thrive in this biofilm.
Although we recognize the importance of oxidative and osmotic stresses in the S. mutans physiology in biofilms, we did not analyze the data in greater detail to keep the focus on the acid stress processes. Nevertheless, we did detect high levels of NADH oxidase Nox (a major contributor to oxidative stress response [74]) and transcriptional repressor Rex (linked to coping with oxidative stress [75]), which may indicate that the access of oxygen to the S. mutans cells within the biofilms may be limited likely due to increase of thickness of the biofilms following introduction of sucrose.
In general, the profile of proteins and expression of genes associated with acid tolerance responses (and to other stresses) were different between mixed- and single-species biofilms (Tables 3 and 4; Figure S2). Most of the proteins are detected in elevated levels in mixed-species biofilms. The expression of selected S. mutans genes (atpD, fabM, groES, nox) was significantly higher in mixed-species biofilms (vs. single-species) at all time points (P<0.05; Figure S2). These differences are congruent with the overall observations between these two biofilm systems. Clearly, S. mutans growing in mixed-species biofilms has a distinctive fitness, allowing the bacterium to out-compete other co-habitants and to optimally survive the acidic milieu.
In addition, several uncharacterized proteins detected in this study could have an important role in S. mutans fitness and tolerance to environmental stresses within cariogenic biofilms (Table S2). Our data provide opportunities to investigate the function of these proteins in the expression of virulence by this pathogen, especially in the context of ecological biofilm concept. For example proteins encoded by genes SMU.1760 to SMU.1763, SMU.1337, SMU.210 are promising candidates for future studies [76]. The genes SMU.1760 to SMU.1763 are organized in o operon-like gene cluster, and their encoded proteins may be involved in stress response. SMU.1760, SMU.1761, SMU.1762 and SMU.1763 genes are all up-regulated in S. mutans lacking functional SpxA and SpxB [77], which have a global regulatory role in S. mutans stress response to acidic and oxidative environment. The proteins encoded by SMU.1337 (alpha/beta superfamily hydrolases with unassigned function) and SMU.210 (hypothetical protein with unknown function) are particularly abundant at 67 h (during microbial shifts favoring S. mutans) and 115 h (when S. mutans is the dominant species) of biofilm development, respectively. Each may have a distinctive role; SMU.1337 may be an important hydrolytic enzyme for S. mutans fitness and survival, while SMU.210 could be involved with persistence and stress adaptation. These proteins present homology to conserved hypothetical proteins from other bacteria (e.g. Streptococcus pyogenes, Streptococcus gallolyticus subsp. gallolyticus; Streptococcus anginosus; Streptococcus downei), and could have biological relevance to some pathogenic Streptococcus strains, deserving future investigation with defective mutant strains to pinpoint their exact role [76].
The proteome analysis using multidimensional protein identification technology (MudPIT) revealed how S. mutans optimizes its metabolism and adapts, while enhancing its virulence and competitiveness, in response to a dynamically changing environment induced by sucrose within mixed-species biofilms. Moreover, the proteome data matched very well with the results from gene expression analyses using RT-qPCR, demonstrating the usefulness of this label-free quantitative proteomics approach to study the pathophysiological stage of microorganisms within complex biofilms over time.
Our study showed a complex interplay between gene products involved with EPS matrix assembly, remodeling and binding in one hand with specific processes associated with acid stress tolerance mechanisms, which are particularly induced when S. mutans is trying to outcompete other organisms (e.g. S. oralis) present in the biofilm system. In a simplified manner, the augmented production of EPS synthesis/remodeling and glucan-binding proteins helps to assemble a highly insoluble matrix that are uniquely arranged with bacterial cells forming microcolony complexes. At the same time, up-regulation of F1F0-ATPase system (e.g. AtpD), membrane fatty acids byosynthesis (e.g. FabM), and BCAA (e.g. IlvC) overlapping with molecular chaperones appears to be major responses by S. mutans (based on protein abundance and gene expression) to survive and adapt inside the microcolonies, which are highly acidic at 67 h of biofilm development in our system. These biological processes may be the major driving forces behind S. mutans successful establishment in mixed-species biofilms. Thus, novel therapies to control biofilm virulence expression should target them as a whole rather than a single pathway.
Clearly, the spatiotemporal regulation of this intricate yet interconnected network of pathways is highly complex and dynamic, and deserves further investigation both in vitro and in vivo.
Supporting Information
Figure S1.
Overall characteristics of the ecological mixed-species biofilm model. A) Experimental design; B) bacterial populational shift over time; C) representative 3D rendering images of mixed-species biofilm 115 h-old (green: bacteria; red: EPS), and a representative area showing microenvironmental pH within biofilm EPS-microcolony complex; and D) 3D structure of S. mutans single-species 115 h-old (adapted from Koo et al. [12]; Xiao et al. [13]).
Figure S2.
Comparison of S. mutans gene expression in mixed-species versus single-species biofilm at each developmental phase (*P<0.05).
Table S1.
Primers and TaqMan probes used for RT-qPCR.
Table S2.
Proteome data generated by MudPIT.
Table S3.
Proteins related to oxidative and osmotic stresses, and chaperones.
The authors are thankful to Dr. Mireya González-Begné for technical assistance during lyophilization process of biofilm supernatant fraction.
Author Contributions
Conceived and designed the experiments: MIK HK. Performed the experiments: MIK JX CMD BL. Analyzed the data: JX MIK HK BL CMD JRY. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: HK JRY. Wrote the paper: MIK HK.
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4. 4. Bowen WH, Koo H (2011) Biology of Streptococcus mutans-Derived Glucosyltransferases: Role in Extracellular Matrix Formation of Cariogenic Biofilms. Caries Res 45: 69–86.
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to me, could there be an American Baptist Churches Canada?) is heading for a split over the homosexual question.
Ironically enough, the dispute arises from churches in the Pacific Southwest that want the national denomination to correct national churches who are allowing liberal gay policies to exist. You know when churches in CA are correcting you, it must be pretty bad.
Shakespeare’s Church
William Shakespeare was an off-color, racey author of plays back in his day. Much of what he did was scandalous in his age. However, that doesn’t stop him from being idolized even by Christian types who boycott Desperate Housewives, which is just an updated form of Shakespeare.
Anyway, Shakespeare was baptized at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564 and buried there in 1616. The church is badly in need of repairs so the Friend’s of Shakespeare’s Church have been raising funds for the repairs.
The construction will not prevent tourists from visiting or interrupt regular services. The cost of repairs will near 2.5 million pounds (British money for those of you who read the NIV). I’m sure God is thrilled.
Fantasy Church
Several times people who “attend” my church have asked my wife if I notice when they are gone and whether or not it bugs me. Yes, I do notice, yes it does bug me and yes, my wife does talk to me.
One of the toughest parts of being a pastor is that you begin to care for people. You learn their struggles and problems and the one thing I’m supposed to do for them (bring them closer to Christ) they won’t let me do because they stay home from church. Frustrating.
Why is it the worse someone’s life is the more they stay home from church? Or should I ask it another way, why is it that the more people stay home from church the worse their life gets?
Pastors can’t help but notice who’s there or not and get discouraged greatly by the absence of many who could have been helped by coming. However, according to the Gospels, when life serves you lemons, you make lemonade (I covered that one Sunday when you weren‘t there).
To make your church skipping more fun for me, I have devised a new sports fantasy league, that’s right, my very own Church Fantasy League. Saturday nights I draft players, one man, one woman and one child. They get points like this:
Sunday morning attendance: 5
Helping in Sunday School: 10
Bringing the rest of your family: 10
Using your Bible to follow the sermon: 10
Telling pastor he had a good sermon: -10
Telling pastor specifically what was good and how it impacted your life: 10
Telling pastor you will be there and then not showing up: -20
Perhaps I could arrange a draft and you all could pick people from my church for your team and compete. T’would be fun, no?!
It’s In The Bag
Femme Sud is a designer of “accessories.” Their latest accessory is a Bible hand bag.
Each book-shaped Bible bag is nearly twice the size of a standard-issue Gideon Good Book and comes with vamp-red lipstick and a coin purse that says “Pennies from Heaven,” the New York Post reports.
You can check out their line of Bible clutches here. Only $495. According to the article about them, if you are trying to find a man, getting one of these bags is a sure fire way to do so. Men like Bible bags, and Bible handbags for that matter.
Cemeteries are largely a waste of space. Imagine all the nice golf courses we could have if it weren’t for cemeteries. Or, imagine how much bigger O’Hare airport could be without them.
A suburban Chicago church has reject an offer of $630,000 from O’Hare to buy their cemetery to expand the airport. The rejection letter from this church said, “As a Christian congregation, we find this proposal entirely unacceptable and even blasphemous.”
I can understand this being inappropriate and so forth, but blasphemous? I thought blasphemy was a charge against God? God isn’t in that cemetery.
This is probably all a ploy to make O’Hare offer them more money. For a cool million they would, no doubt, be willing to reconsider the definition of “blasphemy.”
Salvation And Change
I read an article by Pip Coburn in the May Fast Company Magazine. In it he said, “People change habits when the pain of their current situation exceeds their perceived pain of adopting a possible solution.” My experience with buying a new computer this past week backs that up!
What does this mean in terms of the Gospel? When you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ your life takes a complete turn, you’re made a new creation in Christ and a new life ensues. In order for a person to make that shift, their current life has to be worse off than the pain of giving it up.
Giving up fun sins is tough. You may have to avoid certain people and places that were not problems before. That can be painful. Living according to the dictates of the Spirit can seem infinitely painful.
Because of the perceived pain of being a Christian, most people wait until their life hits rock bottom. Pretty much everything has to blow up before they will submit to the pain of being a believer. Ah, but some people see their current pain and the pain of Christianity seems easier!
How does change effect us who are saved? What about changing some of our theological beliefs we grew up with but never fully thought through? What about ridiculous legalism we force on others? Change is not easy but it’s necessary. Only eternity will lack change.<|endoftext|>Skip to content
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stats collector & reporter for scala servers
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Ostrich is a small library for collecting and reporting runtime statistics from a scala server. It can collect counters, gauges, and timings, and it can report them via JMX, a simple web interface, a plain-text socket, or a "W3C" log file. A server can also be asked to shutdown or reload its config files using these interfaces.
The only dependencies are scala-json and configgy.
This library is released under the Apache Software License, version 2, which should be included with the source in a file named LICENSE.
Web/socket commands
Commands over the web interface take the form of a "get" request:
GET /<command>[/<parameters...>][.<type>]
which can be performed using 'curl' or 'wget':
$ curl http://localhost:9990/shutdown
while over the plain-text socket, commands are simply typed as-is, followed by a linefeed:
<command>[/<type>] <parameters...>
The result body may be json or plain-text, depending on . Over the web interface, the default is json, but over the socket interface, the default is plain-text. You can override these defaults like so:
$ curl http://localhost:9990/stats/reset.txt
stats/json reset
For simple commands like shutdown, the response body may simply be the JSON encoding of the string "ok". For others like stats, it may be a nested structure.
The commands are:
• ping
verify that the admin interface is working; server should say "pong" back
• reload
reload the server config file with Configgy.reload()
• shutdown
immediately shutdown the server
• quiesce
close any listening sockets, stop accepting new connections, and shutdown the server as soon as the last client connection is done
• stats [reset]
dump server statistics as 4 groups: JVM-specific, gauges, counters, and timings; if "reset" is added, the counters and timings are atomically cleared as they are dumped
• server_info
dump server info (server name, version, build, and git revision)
Admin API
To startup the admin interfaces, call:
Server.startAdmin(serverInterface, config, runtimeEnvironment)
RuntimeEnvironment comes from configgy, and is used to display the server info.
Config is usually your root server config (but doesn't have to be) and is used to determine which admin interfaces to start up. If admin_text_port exists (usually 9989), the socket interface will start up there. If admin_http_port exists (usually 9990), the web interface will start up. If neither is set, no admin services will be started.
ServerInterface is your implementation of ServerInterface for your server. It contains only the methods shutdown and quiesce, both of which are always called from dedicated temporary threads (so it's okay to do slow things, but be careful of thread safety). You can implement quiesce as a call to shutdown if the distinction makes no sense for your server.
An example:
import com.twitter.ostrich.{Server, ServerInterface}
import net.lag.configgy.{Configgy, RuntimeEnvironment}
object Main extends ServerInterface {
val runtime = new RuntimeEnvironment(getClass)
val config = Configgy.config
Server.startAdmin(this, config, runtime)
Stats API
There are three kinds of statistics that ostrich captures, in addition to the stardard JVM reporting:
• counters
A counter is a value that never decreases. Examples might be "widgets_sold" or "births". You just click the counter each time a countable event happens, and graphing utilities usually graph the deltas over time. To increment a counter, use:
Stats.incr("widgets_sold", 5)
• gauges
A gauge is a value that has a discrete value at any given moment, like "heap_used" or "current_temperature". It's usually a measurement that you only need to take when someone asks. To define a gauge, stick this code somewhere in the server initialization:
Stats.makeGauge("current_temperature") { myThermometer.getTemperatureInCelcius() }
A gauge method must always return a double.
• timings
A timing is a stopwatch timer around code, like so:
Stats.time("translation") {
document.translate("de", "en")
Timings are collected in aggregate, and the aggregation is reported through the "stats" command. The aggregation includes the count (number of timings performed), sum, maximum, minimum, average, standard deviation, and sum of squares (useful for aggregating the standard deviation).
There are several other useful methods for creating derivative gauges or capturing timings -- check out the code.
This started out as several smaller projects that began to overlap so much, we decided to merge them. Major contributers include, in alphabetical order:
• Alex Payne
• John Kalucki
• Nick Kallen
• Pankaj Gupta
• Robey Pointer
• Steve Jenson
If you make a significant change, please add your name to the list!
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Our List of Sarah Michelle Gellar's Top Comedy Moments
Personally, we've always thought Sarah Michelle Gellar's comedic timing was stellar and a much overlooked aspect of her thespian skills. So now with her new sitcom series with Robyn William "The Crazy Ones" premiering tonight on ABC, we've decided to compile our favorite SMG comedy moments!
#10 "Earshot" - The scene at the end when Buffy says as deadpan as can be "You know, if you're not too busy having sex with my mother" and poor Giles runs into the tree.
#9 "Pangs" - Buffy gets her panties all in a bunch over Giles not possessing a ricer. It's so funny that the slayer can be so anal retentive. (*note: what is NOT funny is Buffy's cowboy hat in the beginning. That's a gripe for another post.)
#8 "Him" - In general season seven's "Him" is kind of skeevy (spell-or-no-spell) what with Buffy seducing a student on her desk and all. But once it comes down to Buffy digging out the old rocket launcher and turning it on Principal Wood (forcing Spike to tackle her to the ground), you have to at least chuckle!
#7 "Superstar" - Pretty much all of "Superstar" is Buffy being a starwhore to Jonathan's celebrity. Couldn't have been easy!
#6 "Something Blue" - "Spike and I are getting married!" Both a hysterical performance and a Spuffy's dream!
#5 "Welcome to the Hellmouth" - Buffy tells a random vamp: "Live in the now, you look like De Barge" Hilarious 80's reference with given superb delivery. HA!
#4 "Beer Bad" - Many people love to hate on "BB" but between Buffy's tragic hair and stumbling around like the drunk, belligerent caveman that she is, I can't help but laugh every single time. This bit of dialogue between Xander and Buffy is my fave: "Is there a lesson to all this? What did we learn about beer?", "Foamy!", "Good, as long as that's clear."
#3 "Life Serial" - Struggling with that damn, cursed Mummy Hand. Comedy gold!
#2 "Goodbye Iowa" - The speech is amazing and goes like this:
Buffy: [serious] You guys research the Polgara demon. I want to know where it is. When I find it I'm going to make him pay for taking that kid's life, I'll make him die in ways he can't even imagine.
Buffy: That probably would have sounded more commanding if I wasn't wearing my yummy sushi pajamas.
#1: And the number one moment is...
"Hush" - In an otherwise terrifying episode hides the legendary scene where Buffy is enthusiastically wanking off to prove her point. Miming masturbation? Enough said!
Wenxian Tan said...
Oh #1 is true comedy gold.
Eastern Voyage said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Eastern Voyage said...
This comment has been removed by the author.<|endoftext|>Error 500 and Hub slows to a crawl/crashes
HELP! Within the past few weeks, I've noticed that my Hub has started to REALLY slow down.... then it seems to stop or crash. I've had to reboot multiple times and even Soft Reboot and restore from backups. I use webcore for the automation. This morning, I woke up to find that none of the lights (based on motion sensors) were working, but the automated blinds (based on timing) still are. I get an Error 500 if I try to log into the Hub, but I was able to finally get in and get some logs. It seems like the initial error starts and then uses up all of the Hub's resources and slow everything to a crawl. . I've sent this to and I'm waiting to hear back. It looks like the Life360 connection.... which I re-installed a few days ago last time I had an issue. Anyone have any ideas here?
Thank you!!
This seems to be the initial error that starts the chain reaction:
app:1982020-07-09 07:03:24.748 am errororg.quartz.JobPersistenceException: Couldn't remove trigger: The database has been closed [90098-197] on line 2151 (deviceHandler)
app:1982020-07-09 07:03:15.373 am error░║ Error reading current value for Jonathan (Life360).address1:org.h2.jdbc.JdbcSQLException: The database has been closed [90098-197]
app:1982020-07-09 06:59:16.018 am error░║ Error calling comparison comp_was_less_than_or_equal_to:org.h2.jdbc.JdbcSQLException: General error: "java.lang.IllegalStateException: This map is closed [1.4.197/4]"; SQL statement: SELECT * FROM EVENT WHERE DEVICE_ID = ? ORDER BY ID DESC LIMIT ? OFFSET ?; [50000-197]
I really doubt it is my Life360 app crashing your hub as a lot of people use this, including me without issue. That error is saying that 'The Database is Closed'. Which is causing Life360 to throw an error.
To be safe, uninstall Life360 completely and see how it goes.
On a side note, you did mention a keyword that always signals a red flag, webCore. I know it's come a long way but ...
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Thanks @bptworld, I'm not saying it is your app causing this error. It's just the first error in the chain; so I figured I'd ask you if you had any ideas. So with the "The Database is Closed" message, is that referring to the Hub database then? If so I'm assuming that your app doesn't have any control over that?
I agree with @bptworld. I use life360 with no issues. I loved webcore too, but perhaps you might disable the app and see if the errors continue? If you submit a support ticket, they will ask you to disable all 3rd party integrations one at a time to try to isolate the problem. On a side note, did you try a soft reset to eliminate database corruption to be the issue? What other devices do you have connected? What other 3rd party apps do you have runing? Are you polling power? If something is really chatty on your hub, you'll lock it up and crash it if it's too much to handle. try disable text logging on devices to cut down on the traffic. Kill the polling on the power plugs if you are doing that. There are so many things that can contribute to this.
As a side note, you probably won't see much of a response from support on this until you perform some of the troubleshooting steps I listed above. LIKE disabling 3rd party integrations to eliminate that avenue.
Thanks for your reply @april.brandt. I will start disabling 3rd party apps and see if the errors continue. I have successfully Soft Reset and restored with a backup a few times now; I was hoping that would solve the issue, but unfortunately it has not. I was hoping that deciphering the error message would give me a better starting point as to where to look for the problem; I assumed it might have something to do with Life360 because that's where the error was thrown. Additionally, I've got multiple pistons that rely on the Life360 app, so disabling it will be a very time consuming thing because I must also pull the references to it from all of code in the pistons too. I'll start plugging away... speaking of plugs -- no power plug polling going on. One last thing-- Unfortunately, this isn't an error that is thrown immediately... it usually takes a few days, so that also adds to the difficulty of trying to track it down :frowning:
1 Like
this is indicative of something being very chatty or something using a lot of resources in your hub. I joined HE about 3 years ago, so in the beginning when the big WebCoRE toss up happened. It was so, so stressful. At that point, I started migrating my rules over to RuleMachine 2.0 :grin:
Now, we're into Rule Machine 4.0. Although I have pulled my rules over to node red on a rasberry pi with some success, I was a Web |
Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such Mr Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large moustache. Mrs Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbours. The Dursleys had a small son called Dudley and in their opinion there was no finer The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it. They didn’t think they could bear it if anyone found out about the Potters. Mrs Potter was Mrs Dursley’s sister, but they hadn’t met for several years; in fact, Mrs Dursley pretended she didn’t have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing husband were as unDursleyish as it was possible to be. The Dursleys shuddered to think what the neighbours would say if the Potters arrived in the street. The Dursleys knew that the Potters had a small son, too, but they had never even seen him. This boy was another good reason for keeping the Potters away; they didn’t want Dudley mixing with a child like that. When Mr and Mrs Dursley woke up on the dull, grey Tuesday our story starts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over the country. Mr Dursley hummed as he picked out his most boring tie for work and Mrs Dursley gossiped away happily as she wrestled a screaming Dudley into his high chair. None of them noticed a large tawny owl flutter past the window. At half past eight, Mr Dursley picked up his briefcase, pecked Mrs Dursley on the cheek and tried to kiss Dudley goodbye but missed, because Dudley was now having a tantrum and throwing his cereal at the walls. ‘Little tyke,’ chortled Mr Dursley as he left the house. He got into his car and backed out of number four’s It was on the corner of the street that he noticed the first sign of something peculiar – a cat reading a map. For a second, Mr Dursley didn’t realise what he had seen – then he jerked his head around to look again. There was a tabby cat standing on the corner of Privet Drive, but there wasn’t a map in sight. What could he have been thinking of? It must have been a trick of the light. Mr Dursley blinked and stared at the cat. It stared back. As Mr Dursley drove around the corner and up the road, he watched the cat in his mirror. It was now reading the sign that said Privet Drive – no, looking at the sign; cats couldn’t read maps or signs. Mr Dursley gave himself a little shake and put the cat out of his mind. As he drove towards town he thought of nothing except a large order of drills he was hoping to get that day. But on the edge of town, drills were driven out of his mind by something else. As he sat in the usual morning traffic jam, he couldn’t help noticing that there seemed to be a lot of strangely dressed people about. People in cloaks. Mr Dursley couldn’t bear people who dressed in funny clothes – the get-ups you saw on young people! He supposed this was some stupid new fashion. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and his eyes fell on a huddle of these weirdos standing quite close by. They were whispering excitedly together. Mr Dursley was enraged to see that a couple of them weren’t young at all; why, that man had to be older than he was, and wearing an emerald-green cloak! The nerve of him! But then it struck Mr Dursley that this was probably some silly stunt – these people were obviously collecting for something ... yes, that would be it. The traffic moved on, and a few minutes later, Mr Dursley arrived in the Grunnings car park, his mind Mr Dursley always sat with his back to the window in his office on the ninth floor. If he hadn’t, he might have found it harder to concentrate on drills that morning. He didn’t see the owls swooping past in broad daylight, though people down in the street did; they pointed and gazed open-mouthed as owl after owl sped overhead. Most of them had never seen an owl even at nighttime. Mr Dursley, however, had a perfectly normal, owl-free morning. He yelled at five different people. He made several important telephone calls and shouted a bit more. He was in a very good mood until lunch-time, when he thought he’d stretch his legs and walk across the road to buy himself a bun from the baker’s He’d forgotten all about the people in cloaks until he passed a group of them next to the baker’s. He eyed them angrily as he passed. He didn’t know why, but they made him uneasy. This lot were whispering excitedly, too, and he couldn’t see a single collecting tin. It was on his way back past them, clutching a large doughnut in a bag, that he caught a few words of what they were ‘The Potters, that’s right, that’s what I heard –’ ‘– yes, their son, Harry –’ Mr Dursley stopped dead. Fear flooded him. He looked back at the whisperers as if he wanted to say something to them, but He dashed back across the road, hurried up to his office, snapped at his secretary not to disturb him, seized his telephone and had almost finished dialling his home number when he changed his mind. He put the receiver back down and stroked his moustache, thinking ... no, he was being stupid. Potter wasn’t such an unusual name. He was sure there were lots of people called Potter who had a son called Harry. Come to think of it, he wasn’t even sure his nephew was called Harry. He’d never even seen the boy. It might have been Harvey. Or Harold. There was no point in worrying Mrs Dursley, she always got so upset at any mention of her sister. He didn’t blame her – if he’d had a sister like that ... but all the same, those people in cloaks ... He found it a lot harder to concentrate on drills that afternoon, and when he left the building at five o’clock, he was still so worried that he walked straight into someone just outside the door. ‘Sorry,’ he grunted, as the tiny old man stumbled and almost fell. It was a few seconds before Mr Dursley realised that the man was wearing a violet cloak. He didn’t seem at all upset at being almost knocked to the ground. On the contrary, his face split into a wide smile and he said in a squeaky voice that made passers-by stare: ‘Don’t be sorry, my dear sir, for nothing could upset me today! Rejoice, for You-Know-Who has gone at last! Even Muggles like yourself should be celebrating, this happy, happy And the old man hugged Mr Dursley around the middle and Mr Dursley stood rooted to the spot. He had been hugged by a complete stranger. He also thought he had been called a Muggle, whatever that was. He was rattled. He hurried to his car and set off home, hoping he was imagining things, which he had never hoped before, because he didn’t approve of imagination. As he pulled into the driveway of number four, the first thing he saw – and it didn’t improve his mood – was the tabby cat he’d spotted that morning. It was now sitting on his garden wall. He was sure it was the same one; it had the same markings around its eyes. ‘Shoo!’ said Mr Dursley loudly. The cat didn’t move. It just gave him a stern look. Was this normal cat behaviour, Mr Dursley wondered. Trying to pull himself together, he let himself into the house. He was still determined not to mention anything to his wife. Mrs Dursley had had a nice, normal day. She told him over dinner all about Mrs Next Door’s problems with her daughter and how Dudley had learnt a new word (‘Shan’t!’). Mr Dursley tried to act normally. When Dudley had been put to bed, he went into the living-room in time to catch the last report on the evening news: ‘And finally, bird-watchers everywhere have reported that the nation’s owls have been behaving very unusually today. Although owls normally hunt at night and are hardly ever seen in daylight, there have been hundreds of sightings of these birds flying in every direction since sunrise. Experts are unable to explain why the owls have suddenly changed their sleeping pattern.’ The news reader allowed himself a grin. ‘Most mysterious. And now, over to Jim McGuffin with the weather. Going to be any more showers of ‘Well, Ted,’ said the weatherman, ‘I don’t know about that, but it’s not only the owls that have been acting oddly today. Viewers as far apart as Kent, Yorkshire and Dundee have been phoning in to tell me that instead of the rain I promised yesterday, they’ve had a downpour of shooting stars! Perhaps people have been celebrating Bonfire Night early – it’s not until next week, folks! But I can promise a wet night tonight.’ Mr Dursley sat frozen in his armchair. Shooting stars all over Britain? Owls flying by daylight? Mysterious people in cloaks all over the place? And a whisper, a whisper about the Potters ... Mrs Dursley came into the living-room carrying two cups of tea. It was no good. He’d have to say something to her. He cleared his throat nervously. ‘Er – Petunia, dear – you haven’t heard from your sister lately, have you?’ As he had expected, Mrs Dursley looked shocked and angry. After all, they normally pretended she didn’t have a sister. ‘No,’ she said sharply. ‘Why?’ ‘Funny stuff on the news,’ Mr Dursley mumbled. ‘Owls ... shooting stars ... and there were a lot of funny-looking people in ‘Well, I just thought ... maybe ... it was something to do with ... you know ... her lot.’ Mrs Dursley sipped her tea through pursed lips. Mr Dursley wondered whether he dared tell her he’d heard the name ‘Potter’. He decided he didn’t dare. Instead he said, as casually as he could, ‘Their son – he’d be about Dudley’s age now, wouldn’t he?’ ‘I suppose so,’ said Mrs Dursley stiffly. ‘What’s his name again? Howard, isn’t it?’ ‘Harry. Nasty, common name, if you ask me.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mr Dursley, his heart sinking horribly. ‘Yes, I He didn’t say another word on the subject as they went upstairs to bed. While Mrs Dursley was in the bathroom, Mr Dursley crept to the bedroom window and peered down into the front garden. The cat was still there. It was staring down Privet Drive as though it was waiting for something. Was he imagining things? Could all this have anything to do with the Potters? If it did ... if it got out that they were related to a pair of – well, he didn’t think he could bear it. The Dursleys got into bed. Mrs Dursley fell asleep quickly but Mr Dursley lay awake, turning it all over in his mind. His last, comforting thought before he fell asleep was that even if the Potters were involved, there was no reason for them to come near him and Mrs Dursley. The Potters knew very well what he and Petunia thought about them and their kind ... He couldn’t see how he and Petunia could get mixed up in anything that might be going on. He yawned and turned over. It couldn’t affect them ... How very wrong he was. Mr Dursley might have been drifting into an uneasy sleep, but the cat on the wall outside was showing no sign of sleepiness. It was sitting as still as a statue, its eyes fixed unblinkingly on the far corner of Privet Drive. It didn’t so much as quiver when a car door slammed in the next street, nor when two owls swooped overhead. In fact, it was nearly midnight before the cat moved at all. A man appeared on the corner the cat had been watching, appeared so suddenly and silently you’d have thought he’d just popped out of the ground. The cat’s tail twitched and its eyes Nothing like this man had ever been seen in Privet Drive. He was tall, thin and very old, judging by the silver of his hair and beard, which were both long enough to tuck into his belt. He was wearing long robes, a purple cloak which swept the ground and high-heeled, buckled boots. His blue eyes were light, bright and sparkling behind half-moon spectacles and his nose was very long and crooked, as though it had been broken at least twice. This man’s name was Albus Dumbledore. Albus Dumbledore didn’t seem to realise that he had just arrived in a street where everything from his name to his boots was unwelcome. He was busy rummaging in his cloak, looking for something. But he did seem to realise he was being watched, because he looked up suddenly at the cat, which was still staring at him from the other end of the street. For some reason, the sight of the cat seemed to amuse him. He chuckled and muttered, ‘I He had found what he was looking for in his inside pocket. It seemed to be a silver cigarette lighter. He flicked it open, held it up in the air and clicked it. The nearest street lamp went out with a little pop. He clicked it again – the next lamp flickered into darkness. Twelve times he clicked the Put-Outer, until the only lights left in the whole street were two tiny pinpricks in the distance, which were the eyes of the cat watching him. If anyone looked out of their window now, even beady-eyed Mrs Dursley, they wouldn’t be able to see anything that was happening down on the pavement. Dumbledore slipped the Put-Outer back inside his cloak and set off down the street towards number four, where he sat down on the wall next to the cat. He didn’t look at it, but after a moment he spoke to it. ‘Fancy seeing you here, Professor McGonagall.’ He turned to smile at the tabby, but it had gone. Instead he was smiling at a rather severe-looking woman who was wearing square glasses exactly the shape of the markings the cat had had around its eyes. She, too, was wearing a cloak, an emerald one. Her black hair was drawn into a tight bun. She looked distinctly ruffled. ‘How did you know it was me?’ she asked. ‘My dear Professor, I’ve never seen a cat sit so stiffly.’ ‘You’d be stiff if you’d been sitting on a brick wall all day,’ said ‘All day? When you could have been celebrating? I must have passed a dozen feasts and parties on my way here.’ ‘Oh yes, everyone’s celebrating, all right,’ she said impatiently. ‘You’d think they’d be a bit more careful, but no – even the Muggles have noticed something’s going on. It was on their news.’ She jerked her head back at the Dursleys’ dark living-room window. ‘I heard it. Flocks of owls ... shooting stars ... Well, they’re not completely stupid. They were bound to notice something. Shooting stars down in Kent – I’ll bet that was Dedalus Diggle. He never had much sense.’ ‘You can’t blame them,’ said Dumbledore gently. ‘We’ve had precious little to celebrate for eleven years.’ ‘I know that,’ said Professor McGonagall irritably. ‘But that’s no reason to lose our heads. People are being downright careless, out on the streets in broad daylight, not even dressed in Muggle She threw a sharp, sideways glance at Dumbledore here, as though hoping he was going to tell her something, but he didn’t, so she went on: ‘A fine thing it would be if, on the very day YouKnow-Who seems to have disappeared at last, the Muggles found out about us all. I suppose he really has gone, Dumbledore?’ ‘It certainly seems so,’ said Dumbledore. ‘We have much to be thankful for. Would you care for a sherbet lemon?’ ‘A sherbet lemon. They’re a kind of Muggle sweet I’m rather ‘No, thank you,’ said Professor McGonagall coldly, as though she didn’t think this was the moment for sherbet lemons. ‘As I say, even if You-Know-Who has gone –’ ‘My dear Professor, surely a sensible person like yourself can call him by his name? All this “You-Know-Who” nonsense – for eleven years I have been trying to persuade people to call him by his proper name: Voldemort.’ Professor McGonagall flinched, but Dumbledore, who was unsticking two sherbet lemons, seemed not to notice. ‘It all gets so confusing if we keep saying “YouKnow-Who”.’ I have never seen any reason to be frightened of ‘I know you haven’t,’ said Professor McGonagall, sounding halfexasperated, half-admiring. ‘But you’re different. Everyone knows you’re the only one You-Know – oh, all right, Voldemort – was ‘You flatter me,’ said Dumbledore calmly. ‘Voldemort had powers I will never have.’ ‘Only because you’re too – well – noble to use them.’ ‘It’s lucky it’s dark. I haven’t blushed so much since Madam Pomfrey told me she liked my new earmuffs.’ Professor McGonagall shot a sharp look at Dumbledore and said, ‘The owls are nothing to the rumours that are flying around. You know what everyone’s saying? About why he’s disappeared? About what finally stopped him?’ It seemed that Professor McGonagall had reached the point she was most anxious to discuss, the real reason she had been waiting on a cold hard wall all day, for neither as a cat nor as a woman had she fixed Dumbledore with such a piercing stare as she did now. It was plain that whatever ‘everyone’ was saying, she was not going to believe it until Dumbledore told her it was true. Dumbledore, however, was choosing another sherbet lemon and ‘What they’re saying,’ she pressed on, ‘is that last night Voldemort turned up in Godric’s Hollow. He went to find the Potters. The rumour is that Lily and James Potter are – are – that they’re – Dumbledore bowed his head. Professor McGonagall gasped. ‘Lily and James ... I can’t believe it ... I didn’t want to believe it Dumbledore reached out and patted her on the shoulder. ‘ |
a way around the handcuffs. They beat him and undid the straight jacket, eventually resolving to detach the iron footboard from the bed, to which his right ankle was attached. They dragged him away through the hospital corridor, onto to the porch that sat below a pediment and white columns.
The mob of hundreds cheered, yelling "Shoot him!" "Kill him!" "Hang him!"
The crowd resolved to burn him. They dragged the maimed and beaten Walker down a dirt road to a field. "I killed Rice in self-defense," Walker yelled. "Don't give me no crooked death because I'm not white."
He was thrown into the fire nevertheless. It seared his flesh, and with it charred he escaped from the pyre. The crowd, stunned at his resilience, beat him with rails from a broken fence and thrust him back in, adding fuel to box him in as he burned.
Yet Walker escaped a second time. The crowd met this new effort with sadistic joy as a coda to a long night of a criminal's suffering. They beat him with rails again as his burnt flesh hung from his body, the scent of which made the air grow acrid. Two men held a rope on both sides around his neck and pitched him into the fire one last time. Walker's screams were heard over a half-mile away. The crowd huddled around him in the firelight until Zachariah Walker left behind a charred figure that was no longer him.
As was common with lynchings, members of the mob descended on the scene to collect souvenirs, including the handcuffs. One boy was said to have kept a finger in his pants pocket for six weeks. Paperboys sold souvenirs along with news of the murder. The next day, Walker's gruesome remains were photographed in a wooden shoebox, filling it not even halfway.
Said Edgar Rice's widow —a mother of four who stayed away from the scene at the insistence of those consoling her — of the vengeful killing: "I wanted to apply the match, I wanted to see him burn."
(left) Coatesville Hospital in 1911. (Chester County Historical Society) / (right) News reports of the lynching were widespread.
Fifteen people were indicted for their role in the lynching, including two police officers. The story and ensuing trial became national news. At the time, the sheer fact of an American lynching was not unusual. Indeed, the very same day Walker was lynched, a man named John Lee was burned and hanged in the town of Durant, Oklahoma. But Walker's death happened in the North.
In the end, Coatesville residents stayed mum, and all fifteen were acquitted. Walker would become the eighth and final person lynched in Pennsylvania.
Even former President Theodore Roosevelt was stunned, writing an editorial in The Outlook describing the lynching as "revolting to the last degree" and "a horrible wrong for which the whole country must bear the responsibility."
The NAACP sent William Sinclair, one of the organization's founders and a former slave, to quietly sit in on the trials and send reports back to the offices in New York. The association's magazine, The Crisis, wrote that "the Coatesville horror is the subject of wide comment and more whole-souled denunciation than has often greeted outrages against the Negro." The piece quoted a series of strong editorials, many of which argued that North and South did not matter. The violence seen in that Pennsylvania field was a "national extremity of community crime and a broadly national shame."
But W.E.B. DuBois was less optimistic about the widespread denunciation. "The last lyncher is acquitted," he wrote bitterly, "and the best traditions of Anglo-Saxon civilization are safe."
Even so, the NAACP opened three branches in Pennsylvania as a result.
On the first anniversary of the lynching, the writer John Jay Chapman held a prayer memorial. No more than half a dozen people showed up (perhaps as few as two were there), but his speech was later serialized, in places ranging from the Coatesville Record to Harper's Weekly.
"I understand that an attempt to prosecute the chief criminals has been made, and has entirely failed," he said, "because the whole community, and in a sense our whole people, are really involved in the guilt….A nation cannot practice a course of inhuman crime for three hundred years and then suddenly throw off the effects of it."
Gwokto La'Kitgum
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Blog Archive<|endoftext|>My legs are stiff, the muscles throbbing after the week of volume. The rapid transition from short rides to longer rides taxed muscle groups that had long ago developed an entitlement mentality. They weren't happy about this, and immediately activated their Google boxes to find the closest Bernie Sanders rally (#werenotgoingtostandforthisabuse).
My spine is creaky after hours of folding it over my gut in a rough approximation of an aerodynamic position.
The gut, kicked into submission by my knees, vents it's displeasure late at night, keeping my wife awake with sounds every elementary school boy (and Donald Trump) would find hilarious (#fatcelllivesmatter).
It's a rest day, whether I want to or not. My body really, really wants to. My head? It's still looking out the window and trying to rally the troops for another run up Potter Valley. It's a losing battle, but one I'm glad it's still willing to fight.
I think my training today will be stretching out on the couch followed by a vigorous nap.
When the ache fades a bit and my Training Peaks charts indicate I have a pulse again, I'll start riding. Shorter rides with a lot of intensity. Pukervals. Stuff to help with recovery from exertion, which as I age becomes increasingly difficult. Not too much to prevent the numbers from trending in a positive manner in time for Fairbanks.
Then I'll beat myself down again.
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BLOB is used for storing binary data while Text is used to store large string. BLOB values are treated as binary strings (byte strings). They have no character set, and sorting and comparison are based on the numeric values of the bytes in column values. TEXT values are treated as nonbinary strings (character strings).
What is Longtext?
A TEXT column with a maximum length of 4,294,967,295 or 4GB ( 232 – 1 ) characters. The effective maximum length is less if the value contains multi-byte characters. … Each LONGTEXT value is stored using a four-byte length prefix that indicates the number of bytes in the value.
What is data type for date in SQL?
Date and Time data types
Data type Format Range
date YYYY-MM-DD 0001-01-01 through 9999-12-31
smalldatetime YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss 1900-01-01 through 2079-06-06
datetime YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss[.nnn] 1753-01-01 through 9999-12-31
datetime2 YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss[.nnnnnnn] 0001-01-01 00:00:00.0000000 through 9999-12-31 23:59:59.9999999
Should I use TEXT or VARCHAR?
Use VARCHAR when you have a variable number of characters for every entry. If you need more storage than VARCHAR can provide, CLOB with UTF-8 encoding or equivalent standard type. NEVER use TEXT as it is non-standard.
THIS IS IMPORTANT: How do you scan a line by line in Java?
What is BLOB MySQL?
A BLOB is a binary large object that can hold a variable amount of data. The four BLOB types are TINYBLOB , BLOB , MEDIUMBLOB , and LONGBLOB . These differ only in the maximum length of the values they can hold. … BLOB values are treated as binary strings (byte strings).
Which is better VARCHAR or TEXT in MySQL?
TEXT has a fixed max size of 2¹⁶-1 = 65535 characters. VARCHAR has a variable max size M up to M = 2¹⁶-1 . So you cannot choose the size of TEXT but you can for a VARCHAR . The other difference is, that you cannot put an index (except for a fulltext index) on a TEXT column.
What is Type BLOB?
How do I view BLOB data?
1 Answer
1. Open data window of your table.
2. The BLOB cell will be named as (BLOB).
3. Right click the cell.
4. You will see a pencil icon. …
5. It will open a blob editor window.
6. You would find two check boxes against the option View as : Image or Text.
7. Select the appropriate check box.
How do I create a BLOB in SQL?
How to store binary image (BLOB) SQL server and load it into…
1. Create a table to contain the image as a varbinary or image. …
2. Load an image file to the table. …
3. Load the image to QVW by using an info load. …
4. Show the image in an object by setting the field value to. …
5. Set the field/object Representation to Image.
THIS IS IMPORTANT: Question: Does MySQL have 64 bit version?
What is varchar in MySQL?
Varchar in MySQL is a data type used for storing text whose length can have a maximum of 65535 characters. The varchar columns in the table are of variable length string that can hold either numeric or character or both.
What is a text data type?<|endoftext|> Isaiah 54:3 Commentaries: "For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left. And your descendants will possess nations And will resettle the desolate cities.
Isaiah 54:3
For you shall break forth on the right hand and on the left; and your seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.
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(3) On the right hand and on the left.—Comp. Genesis 28:14. Strictly speaking, the words indicate specially the north and the south, in relation to one who stands looking towards the East. Here, of course, they mean “on every side.” The words that follow have, like others, a lower or material and a higher or spiritual meaning.
And make the desolate cities - (See the notes at Isaiah 44:26).
3. break forth—rather, "burst forth" with increase; thy offspring shall grow, answering to "thy seed" in the parallel clause.
thy seed—Israel and her children, as distinguished from "the Gentiles."
desolate cities—of Israel (Isa 44:26).
Thou shalt break forth; thou shalt bring forth a multitude of children; for this word is commonly used of any great and extraordinary propagation of living creatures, whether beasts or men, Genesis 30:30 Exodus 1:12.
On the right hand and on the left; on every side, in all the parts of the world.
Thy seed; either,
1. Thy spiritual seed, the church of the new testament, which is accounted Abraham’s seed, or children, Galatians 3:7-9,29. Or,
2. Thy natural seed, Christ and his apostles, and other ministers, who were Jews, by whom this work was first and most eminently done.
Shall inherit the Gentiles; shall subdue the Gentile world to the church, and to the obedience of the faith.
The desolate cities; those cities and countries which in a spiritual sense were desolate and forsaken by God. For thou shall break forth on the right hand and on the left,.... To the south, and to the north, as the Targum, like an inundation of water, that breaks through and overflows the banks of the river, and spreads itself in the adjacent countries; or like a warehouse overstocked with goods, bursts the walls in which they are pent up; or rather as infants break forth from the womb at the time of birth, as Pharez did, from whence he had his name, Genesis 38:29 see Hosea 13:13, or as, when a country is become exceeding numerous, the inhabitants break out, and go forth beyond their borders, and seek new settlements, the place of their abode being too small for them; so it shall be in the latter day, through the vast number of converts that will be made; see Isaiah 49:19,
and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles; where formerly only Heathens lived, there the Gospel of Christ shall be carried by his apostles and other ministers; and being succeeded to the conversion of many souls, through the power of divine grace accompanying it, a spiritual seed, the seed of the church, shall take place, and dwell there; this was true in the first ages of Christianity, more especially in Constantine's time; and will be more fully accomplished in the latter day, when the fulness of the Gentiles shall be brought in:
and make the desolate cities to be inhabited: such cities as were destitute of the knowledge of Christ and his salvation, and of all divine and spiritual things, shall now be inhabited by spiritual men, such as believe in Christ, and profess his name; such cities as Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Colosse, Philippi, Thessalonica, and many others.
3. The tent must be larger than of old, for the new community shall spread abroad (cf. Genesis 28:14; Genesis 30:30; Genesis 30:43) on the right hand and on the left, i.e. in all directions.
inherit the Gentiles] take possession of nations (cf. Genesis 22:17; Genesis 24:60). The reference is not to be limited to the heathen who had occupied the soil of Palestine; although the desolate cities in the parallel clause are no doubt primarily those of the holy land.Verse 3. - For thou shalt break forth; or, thou shalt increase (see Genesis 30:30, 43; Exodus 1:12). An overflow, like that of the bursting out of water, is pointed at. On the right hand and on the left; i.e. "on all sides" (comp. Genesis 28:14). Thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles. The Christian Church is viewed as a continuation of the Jewish Church; and the conversion of nation after nation to the gospel is regarded as the extension of Jewish dominion over fresh lands. The cities of these lands - desolate hitherto, i.e. without godly inhabitants - will under these circumstances come to be inhabited; i.e. will be peopled by faithful men. After this description in Isaiah 53:7 of the patience with which He suffered, and in Isaiah 53:8 of the manner in which He died, there follows a retrospective glance at His burial. "And they assigned Him His grave with sinners, and with a rich man in His martyrdom, because He had done no wrong, and there was no deceit in His mouth." The subject to ויּתּן (assigned) is not Jehovah, although this would not be impossible, since נגע has Jehovah as the latent subject; but it would be irreconcilable with Isaiah 53:10, where Jehovah is introduced as the subject with antithetical prominence. It would be better to assume that "my people" is the subject; but as this would make it appear as if the statement introduced in Isaiah 53:8 with kı̄ (for) were continued here, we seem compelled to refer it to dōrō (His generation), which occurs in the principal clause. No objection could be offered to our regarding "His own generation" as the subject; but dōrō is somewhat too far removed for this; and if the prophet had had the contemporaries of the sufferer in his mind, he would most likely have used a plural verb (vayyittenū). Some, therefore, supply a personal subject of the most general kind to yittēn (which occurs even with a neuter subject, like the German es gibt, Fr. il y a, Eng. "there is;" cf., Proverbs 13:10): "they (on) gave;" and looking at the history of the fulfilment, we confess that this is the rendering we prefer. In fact, without the commentary supplied by the fulfilment, it would be impossible to understand Isaiah 53:9 at all. The earlier translators did great violence to the text, and yet failed to bring out any admissible thought. And the explanation which is most generally adopted now, viz., that עשׁיר is the synonymous parallel to רשׁעי (as even Luther rendered it, "and died like a rich man," with the marginal gloss, "a rich man who sets all his heart upon riches, i.e., a wicked man"), is also untenable; for even granting that ‛âshīr could be proved by examples to be sometimes used as synonymous with רשׁע, as עני and אביון are as synonyms of צדּיק, this would be just the passage in which it would be least possible to sustain any such use of the word; since he who finds his grave with rich men, whether with the godly or the ungodly, would thereby have received a decent, and even honourable burial. This is so thoroughly sustained by experience, as to need no confirmation from such passages as Job 21:32. Hitzig has very good ground, therefore, for opposing this "synonymous" explanation; but when he adopts the rendering lapsator, after the Arabic ‛tūr, this is quite as much in opposition to Arabic usage (according to which this word merely signifies a person who falls into error, and makes a mistake in speaking), as it is to the Hebrew. Ewald changes עשׁיר into עשּׁהיק (a word which has no existence); and Bttcher alters it into רע עשׂי, which is comparatively the best suggestion of all. Hofmann connects the two words בּמותיו עשׁיר, "men who have become rich through the murders that they have treacherously caused" (though |
in Guangdong are rock-solid. The report points out that, when the facts of the case are unclear and evidence is insufficient, judges use a number of strategies other than acquittal. In relatively minor cases, for example, courts might work out an informal “plea bargain,” promising to hand down a non-custodial penalty (like a suspended sentence) in exchange for a defendant’s promise not to appeal. In death-penalty cases, on the other hand, a court might issue judgments “with room to maneuver” (liu you yudi caipan)—imposing a more lenient suspended death sentence that gets commuted to life imprisonment (and then, later, a fixed-term sentence) almost automatically. Appeals courts are in an even better position to shift responsibility, as they can always send cases back to a lower court for retrial rather than rule to acquit.
Another common way courts avoid acquittals is to allow the prosecution to withdraw its indictment, which it may do at any point before a verdict is announced. In some cases, this has the effect of ending the case against the defendant, but in others, the prosecution can decide to submit a new indictment or send the case back to police for additional investigation. This amounts to a waste of resources, the report says, and results in individuals being locked up for far longer than they ought to be.
The report argues that prosecutors, with the help of the courts, are abusing this provision of the Criminal Procedure Law (CPL) and that the practice needs to be more strictly regulated. For example, it recommends that prosecutors generally not be allowed to withdraw indictments for unclear facts or insufficient evidence. This is because the CPL already gives prosecutors two opportunities to request trial adjournment for additional investigation. If this is not enough, the report concludes, then the court should exercise its power to issue an acquittal. The report also suggests prohibiting prosecutors from withdrawing an indictment once investigation of the facts and evidence has begun at trial and, when withdrawal is approved, limiting prosecutors to one re-indictment.
Inside the Pressure Cooker
Why is it necessary to go through so much effort to avoid issuing acquittals? A recurring theme throughout the report is pressure. Stability-first governance campaigns and a whole system of associated performance measurements create pressures for conviction throughout the criminal justice system. Written and unwritten rules place a premium on rates of case-solving, arrest approval, and conviction as factors used to measure police or procuratorate effectiveness and can be tied to individual promotion or ranking. Since acquittals have the effect of lowering these statistics, police and prosecutors are incentivized to seek conviction and mobilize all manner of available resources to influence courts not to acquit.
As the final stop in the criminal process, courts bear the brunt of the pressure to convict that’s built into the system. As the report puts it: “The public security bureau is responsible for cooking the meal and the procuratorate for serving it. Last to come, the court has only two choices as it faces this meal—either eat up or reject all the work that the first two institutions have already put into the case.” Acquittal, in other words, puts courts in potential conflict with other local law-enforcement bodies that are expecting conviction.
In major cases, especially homicides, police often face considerable political and social pressure to bring a culprit to justice. When they do make arrests, it can lead to merit citations being publicly issued to the investigation team even before indictment, let alone conviction. If the court later acquits, not only must these citations be withdrawn, there will likely be compensation claims made against the police for wrongful detention. In some cases, the same individuals who had been rewarded for solving the case might end up facing investigation for misconduct or even criminal liability.
Prioritizing Public and Process
There are many negative consequences arising from courts’ failure to issue acquittals, according to the report. The most obvious effect is on the credibility of the courts. On this point, the report is particularly frank, warning: “the public is already deeply suspicious and dissatisfied with the [level of] fairness in our criminal justice system, and wrongful convictions are adding fuel to the fire.” They continue, stating: "Convictions based on protecting face and reducing pressure only bring momentary peace and tranquility. When and if the bomb will explode all becomes a matter of luck. But what’s certain is that, the moment the bomb goes off, the courts will suffer the heaviest casualties."
In order to prevent calamity, the report recognizes that courts must exercise their judicial powers more independently, but it provides little advice on how to do so, apart from improving awareness and understanding of the law and legal principles like the presumption of innocence. There is no mention of the "coordination” between police, procuratorates, and courts by the party’s politico-legal committees and little on the role of adjudication committees, where senior court officials get an opportunity to weigh in on how to rule in complex or important cases they have not personally heard.
In fact, the authors appear to believe that increased communication between investigators, prosecutors, and judges can help judicial authorities make their case about resolving problematic prosecutions through acquittal. They recommend, for example, having police and prosecutors sit in on adjudication committee meetings in cases where problems arise. The assumption is that this will enable the courts to exert influence over the other law-enforcement bodies as opposed to the other way around.
One thing that seems to be on the minds of the report’s authors is a responsibility system for wrongful convictions. They make the case that mistakes are inevitable within any legal system and that neither wrongful convictions nor acquittals should automatically be thought of as “mistakes” for which someone must be punished. That is what happens, they suggest, when too much emphasis is placed on outcomes without giving due weight to process.
This is especially important for judges, they argue, and requires transforming the way that judges are evaluated and how data is used. They believe that judicial statistics like conviction rates have no place in deciding promotion or professional ranking. They do, however, see value in continuing to collect statistics and conduct ongoing research in order to evaluate the performance of the criminal justice system as a whole and to boost its credibility with the public.<|endoftext|>The Reason Why You Need Medical Billing Services
If you are about to decide on getting the services of a medical billing provider, then the first thing that you must consider is the benefit that you will reap from opting for one, and so, the following are some of the reason why getting a third party service provider is really beneficial:
Back ↵<|endoftext|>FMLA Forms Give Employer Protection
An eligible employee can request FMLA for, among other things, situations involving a serious health condition. “Serious health condition” is defined as “an illness, injury, impairment, or physical or mental condition that involves either inpatient care, continuing treatment by a health care provider, pregnancy, chronic conditions requiring treatments, permanent/long-term conditions requiring supervision, or non-chronic conditions requiring multiple treatments.” The eligible employee can request FMLA for his or her own serious health condition, or to provide care for a spouse, child, or parent with a serious health condition, or due to the birth of a child or the placement of a child with the employee for adoption or foster care.
Now… about the DOL’s Forms
Form WH-380. A covered employee has a legal obligation under FMLA to furnish a medical certification from a health care provider to the employer (when requested by the employer). An easy way for the employer to request the certification and to assure obtaining adequate information from a health care provider is to give the employee the DOL form WH-380 and request that the employee have his or her health care provider complete the form.
Form WH-381. A covered employer has a legal obligation to provide workers taking FMLA leave with a written notice detailing specific expectations and obligations of the employee and explaining any consequences of failure to meet these obligations. An easy way for the employer to give workers this written notice is to use the DOL form WH-381.
Both forms are available from the Department of Labor at its Web site:
Before granting an employee FMLA leave for a serious health condition, an employer can require the employee to submit form WH-380, the health care provider’s certification that a serious health condition exists. The health care provider determines whether a patient’s condition meets the standards (described in the form), allowing the employer to avoid prying into the employee’s medical conditions. The employer can require, at the employer’s expense, second and even third opinions from other health care providers.
A key question on form WH-380 is this: If able to perform some work, is the employee unable to perform any one or more of the essential functions of his or her job? If yes, please list the essential functions the person is unable to perform. For a health care provider to be able to intelligently answer this question, the employer needs to supply him or her with information about the employee’s essential job functions. An employer can do this by providing the employee’s written job description that includes a list of the job’s essential job functions.
If the employee is requesting FMLA leave to care for a spouse, child or parent, the employer can require the worker to provide the completed form WH-380 for the spouse, child, or parent, and can require the employee to provide reasonable documentation proving the spouse, child, or parent relationship (such as birth or marriage certificates).
3 More FMLA Considerations
• The FMLA does not require an employer to use forms WH-380 and WH-381. Their use is voluntary. However, if an employer chooses not to use the DOL forms to comply with FMLA obligations, the employer should consult with legal counsel because FMLA’s requirements are complex.
• An eligible employee is entitled, under FMLA, to take 12 weeks of FMLA leave in a 12-month period. This raises the question, what is a 12-month period? The employer can select one of four options: The calendar year, any fixed 12-month “leave year” such as a fiscal year or a year starting with the employee’s “anniversary” date, the 12-month period measured forward from the date any employee’s first FMLA leave begins, or a “rolling” 12-month period measured backward from the date an employee uses FMLA leave.
The advantage of using a “rolling” 12-month period for FMLA leave is it can prevent situations in which an employee could qualify for more than 12 weeks of FMLA leave in a 12-month period. (For example, if the employer uses the calendar year as the 12-month period, it is possible for an employee to use the last 12 weeks of the first calendar year for FMLA leave, and then use the first 12 weeks of the following calendar year for continued FMLA leave.)
• Sometimes an employee may be eligible for two types of leave, FMLA leave and some other leave such as pregnancy leave under a state law or Workers’ Compensation leave. An employer needs to decide if the employee’s leaves, in these kinds of situations, should run concurrently or separately, and establish a policy for these kinds of situations. For example, a state law may give an employee the right to take nine weeks of pregnancy/maternity leave. Does the employer want the employee to take 12 weeks of FMLA leave because of the pregnancy, and then follow this with nine additional weeks of pregnancy or maternity leave under the state law? Or would the employer prefer to have the employee take both leaves during the same period?
Note: States have a variety of laws giving employees rights to different types of family and medical leave. For example, there are state laws giving employees the right to leave for pregnancy, maternity, attendance at school activities, organ or blood marrow donations, Workers’ Compensation, and disability. Employers should consult with legal counsel to decide if and how to require employees to coordinate leave benefits.
How the Law Can Get Complicated
Here is just one of many issues that can confront an employer when an employee requests FMLA leave or is on FMLA leave. An employer approves FMLA leave for an employee who has a “serious health condition.” Then the employer learns the employee is working at a part-time job. Can the employer terminate the employee’s FMLA leave?
The answer to this question isn’t a simple “yes” or “no.”
Assume the employer has used the DOL forms WH-380 and WH-381 and has determined the employee does have a serious health conditions preventing the employee from performing one or more of the essential functions of the job, and has granted the employee FMLA leave.
The employer, then, can examine this question: Is the employee, in the part-time job, performing tasks which are the same or similar to the essential functions of the job. If so, this could be evidence supporting to conclude the employee really does not have a serious health condition that prevents performing the essential functions of the job. Or, if the employee in the part-time job is performing tasks which are not the same or similar to the essential functions of the primary job, the employee’s working in the part-time job is not a pertinent factor.
In fact, the Department of Labor gives this answer to the question of whether an employer can restrict an employee’s outside activities while on FMLA leave: “Employers with establisehd policies regarding outside employment while on paid or unpaid leave may uniformly apply those policies to employees on FMLA leave. Otherwise, the employer may not restrict [the employee’s] activities.”
[NOTE: Information and guidance in this article is intended to provide accurate information on the subjects covered. It is not intended to provide a legal service for readers’ individual needs. For legal guidance in your specific situation, always consult with an attorney who is familiar with employment law and labor issues.]
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Connecting to %s<|endoftext|>To New Shores
Directed by Douglas Sirk
Year: 1937
Running Time: 106 minutes
Country: Germany
Language: German with English Subtitles
Douglas Sirk (All That Heaven Allows) would become synonymous with the 1950s American melodrama, but he was already reinventing the genre while working in Germany in the 1930s. This rarely-seen, innovative film, showcases the talents of Swedish-born superstar Zarah Leander. TO NEW SHORES stars Leander as a woman sentenced to an Australian penal colony for a crime committed by her former lover (Willy Birgel). She eventually marries a farmer (Viktor Staal) and returns to the cabaret stage, but remains tragically fixated on the man who broke her heart. In La Habanera, Leander plays Astree, a Swedish woman who marries a Puerto Rican land baron (Ferdinand Marian). As years pass, their love fades, and Astree’s passions are reawakened by a doctor (Karl Martell) who has come to help fight a devastating epidemic, igniting the fury of her jealous husband. While she bore certain resemblances to Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich (with her sultry insouciance, defiance of authority, and her low singing voice), Zarah Leander was in fact a striking original, and has largely been overlooked by American audiences because of the inaccessibility of her films (produced at Ufa when the studio was under Reich control).
Zarah Leander
Willy Birgel
Viktor Staal
Directed by Douglas Sirk<|endoftext|>Industry Expertise
Braunschweig: Traditionally innovative
Versatility is the quality that sets this city in Lower Saxony apart with outstanding scientific traditions in a total of four disciplines: Technology + Innovation, Transport, Logistics + Traffic, Energy + the Environment and Medicine + Healthcare. Braunschweig is a focus for pioneering research in all these fields.
Energy + Environment
Medicine + Healthcare
Medicine + healthcare, and in particular biotechnology and systems biology, are no exceptions in profiting from Braunschweig's close-knit scientific networks. In 2004, a total of 27 universities, federal research institutes, Helmholtz Institutes, Fraunhofer Institutes, research establishments run by the Leibniz Society, museums, libraries, the Klinikum Braunschweig hospital and other centres of research joined forces in the association ForschungRegion Braunschweig e. V. In the competence field of systems biology, this alliance is supporting biomedical research, helping to make highly regarded breakthroughs in the battle against infectious diseases, produce studies into sustainability and promote effective health and consumer protection.
Technology + Innovation
Braunschweig has a shining reputation in the areas of optics, metrology and surface technology with renowned institutes such as the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films and the Network of Competence Industrial Plasma Surface Technology, a technology key to many innovative products such as flat screens, Blu-Ray discs and heat protection glass.
Transport, Logistics + Traffic are also making good progress in Braunschweig:
Economy and Science in Braunschweig
Research and science in Braunschweig
As the centre of one the most research-intensive area in Europe, Braunschweig boasts a broad range of top-level research. Find out more about current topics and activities of the research institutes und researching companies in Braunschweig, science events and offers where young researchers can take part here.<|endoftext|>The DIY VAL assistant’s light stick
DIY VAL light stick
Often while working at weddings I will rely on an assistant holding a light for me while moving around with me and the action. Gridded flash gives dramatic results allowing you to highlight single couples on the dance floor and control how much chiaroscuro occurs. The downside is that your assistant can’t hold a flash above their head for long, and taking a collapsed light stand on the floor is cumbersome and intrusive. A monopod would work, and well, but seems an expensive solution to the problem.
A simple light stick would be slick looking and functional, wouldn’t it?
Turns out these things practically build themselves!
parts to make DIY light on a stick
The extruded aluminum stock was purchased at the local hardware store; bought in a precut 3 ft length just perfect for the task. The other part is a manfrotto 013 double ended light stand stud/ spigot. We will just be using the 1/4 threaded end of it but the other end will serve to anchor the adapter to our aluminum rod. With some careful work, you could use less expensive spigot adapters, but this one makes it easy.
nice parts fit for DIY light on a stick
Serendipity! They fit almost snuggly, a little epoxy and paint and we will be good to go.
Voice activated light stand DIY light stick
After a few coats of self-etching primer and then some gloss black spray paint, things are looking rather professional.
A little Sculpey polymer clay makes a good end plug for the other side.
This is a super simple and fast project that, like I said earlier, practically builds itself. You should be done in a day of intermittent work. Total cost for parts should be under $15 if you buy right and use paint on hand.
Speak Your Mind<|endoftext|>In 185 CE, Chinese astronomers reported the presence of an incredibly bright "guest star" that appeared suddenly in the sky and stayed there for months. This was the first recorded supern |
-18.
6. ^ Cornwell, T. B., Weeks, C. S., & Roy, D. P. (2005). Sponsorship-linked marketing: Opening the blackbox. Journal of Advertising, 34, 21-42.
7. ^ Ellen Lampert-Greaux (February 3, 2014) PixMob Brings LED Technology To The Super Bowl XLVIII Halftime Show Live Design Online
8. ^ Crowd Activation by Tangible Interaction - About Us
9. ^ PixMob - Crowd Activation
10. ^ "Buffy the Vampire Slayer: We fall to pieces". Television Without Pity. May 6, 2002. Archived from the original on August 2, 2012. Retrieved August 6, 2012. Everybody hurts...sometimes. The only question remaining is: who's hurting the most? Is it Anya, Xander, Buffy, and Spike for having to live this crap, or [recapper] Ace for having to watch it?
• Steinmetz, John. How to Enjoy a Live Concert. [S.l.]: Naxos, [199-?]. 51 p., with ill.<|endoftext|>Buying Property in France
Jaa kirja
Straightforward, practical and independent advice on a broad range of subjects related to French property, based on my own personal experience. This includes choices about buying and renting, the costs and intricacies of the legal processes, and how to avoid some of the pitfalls.
Näytä lisää<|endoftext|>Can Dogs Eat Paska?
Can Dogs Eat Paska?
Paska is a traditional Ukrainian Easter bread that is often eating during easter holidays in Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Iran, Belarus, Armenia, Romania, Moldova, Georgia and part of Bulgaria.
The main ingredients in paska is milk, butter, eggs and sugar. Some other ingredients that may be included are cottage cheese, sour cream, rum and raisins.
So can dogs safely eat paska or not?
Unfortunately no a dog can not safely eat this easter dessert because there are too many ingredients in it that are not good for a dogs healthy. Especially the sugar can cause a lot of concerns for a dogs health such as diabetes and weight gain.
There really is no nutritional benefits for a dog to eat paska in the first place unfortunately and therefore it is best for you to avoid trying to feed this dessert to your dog.
There are many better options and desserts usually aren’t on the top of the list for a dogs health.
No, dogs cannot eat paska because there are too many ingredients in it that aren’t good for a dogs health.
Additionally in some cases a sugar spread with sprinkles is put on top of the paska and this makes the dish even worse for a dogs health. So no do not let your dog eat paska as its bad for their overall health.
Image Credit: AMartiniouk<|endoftext|>Sandy Liang
Digital Photography, 2017
When something is common or appears often, people tend to forget how special it is or how much it means to someone. Glasses for instance, are fairly common. What a lot of people don’t realize is how different the world would be without the invention of glasses. I took the photos as a person who wears glasses to show how my interaction or lack of interaction with the world would be without the existence of glasses. Without my glasses I wouldn’t be able to see clearly, much less be able to create the way I do now. Graphic designers must be able to see what is there but at the same time see what is not there. Without STEAM my art would be out of focus.<|endoftext|>Authors History
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FVWM - Man page - FvwmPerl
Section: Fvwm Modules (1)
Updated: 2009-03-22
This page contents - Return to main index
FvwmPerl - the fvwm perl manipulator and preprocessor
FvwmPerl should be spawned by fvwm(1) for normal functionality.
To run this module, place this command somewhere in the configuration:
Module FvwmPerl [params]
ModuleSynchronize FvwmPerl [params]
if you want to immediately start to send commands to FvwmPerl.
This module is intended to extend fvwm commands with the perl scripting power. It enables to embed perl expressions in the fvwm config files and construct fvwm commands.
If you want to invoke the unique and persistent instanse of FvwmPerl, it is suggested to do this from the StartFunction. Calling it from the top is also possible, but involves some issues not discussed here.
AddToFunc StartFunction I Module FvwmPerl
There are several command line switches:
FvwmPerl [ --eval line ] [ --load file ] [ --preprocess [ --quote char ] [ --winid wid ] [ --cmd ] [ --nosend ] [ --noremove ] [ line | file ] ] [ --export [names] ] [ --stay ] [ --nolock ] [ alias ]
Long switches may be abbreviated to short one-letter switches.
-e|--eval line - evaluate the given perl code
-l|--load file - evaluate perl code in the given file
-p|--preprocess [ file ] - preprocess the given fvwm config file
The following 5 options are only valid together with --preprocess option.
-c|--cmd line - an fvwm command to be preprocessed instead of file
-q|--quote char - change the default '%' quote
-w|--winid wid - set explicit window context (should begin with digit, may be in oct or hex form; this window id overwrites implicit window context if any)
--nosend - do not send the preprocessed file to fvwm for Reading, the default is send. Useful for preprocessing non fvwm config files.
--noremove - do not remove the preprocessed file after sending it to fvwm for Reading, the default is remove. Useful for debugging.
-x|--export [names] - define fvwm shortcut functions (by default, two functions named ``Eval'' and ``.''). This option implies --stay.
-s|--stay - continues an execution after --eval, --load or --preprocess are processed. By default, the module is not persistent in this case, i.e. --nostay is assumed.
--nolock - when one of the 3 action options is given, this option causes unlocking fvwm immediately. By default the requested action is executed synchronously; this only makes difference when invoked like:
ModuleSynchronous FvwmPerl --preprocess someconfig.ppp
If --nolock is added here, ModuleSynchronous returns immediately. Note that Module returns immediately regardless of this option.
Aliases allow to have several module invocations and work separately with all invocations, here is an example:
ModuleSynchronous FvwmPerl FvwmPerl-JustTest
SendToModule FvwmPerl-JustTest eval $a = 2 + 2; $b = $a
SendToModule FvwmPerl-JustTest eval cmd("Echo 2 + 2 = $b")
KillModule FvwmPerl FvwmPerl-JustTest
One of the effective proprocessing solutions is to pass the whole fvwm configuration with embeded perl code to ``FvwmPerl --preprocess''. An alternative approach is to write a perl script that produces fvwm commands and sends them for execution, this script may be loaded using ``FvwmPerl --load''. There are hovewer intermediate solutions that preprocess only separate configuration lines (or alternatively, execute separate perl commands that produce fvwm commands).
The following code snippet adds ability of arithmetics and string scripting to certain lines that need this. To use this, you want to start FvwmPerl as your first command so that other commands may be asked to be preprosessed.
ModuleSynchronize FvwmPerl
AddToFunc .
+ I SendToModule FvwmPerl preprocess -c -- $*
. Exec exec xterm -name xterm-%{++$i}% # use unique name
. GotoDesk 0 %{ $[desk.n] + 1 }% # go to next desk
. Exec exec %{ -x "/usr/bin/X11/aterm" ? "aterm" : "xterm" }% -sb
# center a window
Next (MyWindow) . Move \
%{($WIDTH - $[w.width]) / 2}%p %{($HEIGHT - $[w.height]) / 2}%p
. Exec exec xmessage %{2 + 2}% # simple calculator
. %{main::show_message(2 + 2, "Yet another Calculator"); ""}%
There are several actions that FvwmPerl may perform:
eval perl-code
Evaluate a line of perl code.
A special function cmd(``command'') may be used in perl code to send commands back to fvwm.
If perl code contains an error, it is printed to the standard error stream with the [FvwmPerl][eval]: header prepended.
load file-name
Load a file of perl code. If the file is not fully qualified, it is searched in the user directory $FVWM_USERDIR (usually ~/.fvwm) and the system wide data directory $FVWM_DATADIR.
If perl code contains an error, it is printed to the standard error stream with the [FvwmPerl][load]: header prepended.
preprocess [-q|--quote char] [-c|--cmd] [line | file]
Preprocess fvwm config file or (if --cmd is given) line. This file contains lines that are not touched (usually fvwm commands) and specially preformatted perl code that is processed and replaced. Text enclosed in %{ ... }% delimiters, that may start anywhere on the line and end anywhere on the same or an other line, is perl code.
The quote parameter changes perl code delimiters. If a single char is given, like '@', the delimiters are @{ ... }@. If the given quote is 2 chars, like <>, the quotes are <{ ... }>
The perl code is substituted for the result of its evaluation. I.e. %{$a = ``c''; ++$a}% is replaced with ``d''.
The evaluation is unlike eval and load is done under the package PreprocessNamespace and without use strict, so you are free to use any variable names without fear of conflicts. Just don't use uninitialized variables to mean undef or empty list (they may be in fact initialized by the previous preprocess action), and do a clean-up if needed. The variables and function in the main package are still available, like ::cmd() or ::skip(), but it is just not a good idea to access them while preprocessing.
There is a special function include(file) that loads a file, preprocesses it and returns the preprocessed result. Avoid recursion.
If any embedded perl code contains an error, it is printed to the standard error stream and prepended with the [FvwmPerl][preprocess]: header. The result of substitution is empty in this case.
The following variables may be used in the perl code:
The following line based directives are recognized when preprocessing. They are processed after the perl code (if any) is substituted.
%Repeat count
Causes the following lines to be repeated count times.
%ModuleConfig module-name [ destroy ]
Causes the following lines to be interpreted as the given module configuration. If ``destroy'' is specified the previous module configuration is destroyed first.
%Prefix prefix
Prefixes the following lines with the quoted prefix.
%End any-optional-comment
Ends any of the directives described above, may be nested.
%Prefix "AddToFunc SwitchToWindow I"
Iconify off
WindowShade off
WarpToWindow 50 50
%ModuleConfig FvwmPager destroy
Colorset 0
Font lucidasans-10
DeskTopScale 28
%End ModuleConfig FvwmPager
%Prefix "All (MyWindowToAnimate) ResizeMove "
100 100 %{($WIDTH - 100) / 2}% %{($HEIGHT - 100) / 2}%
%Repeat %{$count}%
br w+2c w+2c w-1c w-1c
%Repeat %{$count}%
br w-2c w-2c w+1c w+1c
%End Prefix
Additional preprocess parameters --nosend and --noremove may be given too. See their description at the top.
export [func-names]
Send to fvwm the definition of shortcut functions that help to activate different actions of the module (i.e. eval, load and preprocess).
Function names (func-names) may be separated by commas or/and whitespace. By default, two functions ``Eval'' and ``.'' are assumed.
The actual action defined in a function is guessed from the function name if possible, where function name ``.'' is reserved for preprocess action.
For example, any of these two fvwm commands
SendToModule MyPerl export PerlEval,PP
FvwmPerl --export PerlEval,PP MyPerl
define the following two shortcut functions:
DestroyFunc PerlEval
AddToFunc I SendToModule MyPerl eval $*
DestroyFunc PP
AddToFunc I SendToModule MyPerl preprocess -c -- $*
These 4 actions may be requested in one of 3 ways: 1) in the command line when FvwmPerl is invoked (in this case FvwmPerl is short-lived unless --stay or --export is also given), 2) by sending the corresponding message in fvwm config using SendToModule, 3) by calling the corresponding perl function in perl code.
There are several functions that perl code may call:
In case of eval or load - send back to fvwm a string $fvwm_command. In case of preprocess - append a string $fvwm_command to the output of the embedded perl code.
This function is equivalent to the eval functionality on the string $perl_code, described above.
This function is equivalent to the load functionality on the file $filename, described above.
preprocess(@params, ["-c $command"] [$filename])
This function is equivalent to the preprocess functionality with the given parameters and the file $filename described above.
export($func_names, [$do_unexport])
This function is equivalent to the export functionality with the given $func_names, described above. May also unexport the function names if the second parameter is true.
Function names should be separated by commas or/and whitespace. If $func_names is empty then functions ``Eval'' and ``.'' are assumed.
Terminates the module.
Skips the rest of the event callback code, i.e. the module returns to listen to new module events.
Unsynchronizes the event callback from fvwm. This may be useful to prevent deadlocks, i.e. usually fvwm kills the non-responding module if the event callback is not finished in ModuleTimeout seconds. This prevents it.
This example causes FvwmPerl to suspend its execution for one minute:
SendModule FvwmPerl eval unlock(); sleep(60);
However, verify that there is no way a new message is sent by fvwm while the module is busy, and fvwm stays locked on this new message for too long. See also the detach solution if you need long lasting operations.
Forks and detaches the rest of the event callback code from the main process. This may be useful to prevent killing the module if its event callback should take a long time to complete and it may be done in the detached child. The detached child may still send commands to fvwm (don't rely on this), but not receive the events of course, it exits immediately after the callback execution is finished.
If you use detach(), better only send commands to fvwm in one process (the main one or the detached one), doing otherwise may often cause conflicts.
show_message($msg, $title[, $use_stderr_too=1])
Shows a dialog window with the given message, using whichever X tool is found in the system.
See FVWM::Module::Toolkit::show_message for more information.
There are several global variables in the main namespace that may be used in the perl code:
$a, $b, ... $h
@a, @b, ... @h
%a, %b, ... %h
They all are initialized to the empty value and may be used to store a state between different calls to FvwmPerl actions (eval and load).
If you need more readable variable names, either write ``no strict 'vars';'' at the start of every perl code or use a hash for this, like:
$h{id} = $h{first_name} . " " . $h{second_name}
or use a package name, like:
@MyMenu::terminals = qw( xterm rxvt );
$MyMenu::item_num = @MyMenu::terminals;
There may be a configuration option to turn strictness on and off.
FvwmPerl may receive messages using the fvwm command SendToModule. The names, meanings and parameters of the messages are the same as the corresponding actions, described above.
Additionally, a message stop causes a module to quit.
A message unexport [func-names] undoes the effect of export, described in the ACTIONS section.
A message dump dumps the contents of the changed variables (not yet).
A simple test:
SendToModule FvwmPerl eval $h{dir} = $ENV{HOME}
SendToModule FvwmPerl eval load($h{dir} . "/test.fpl")
SendToModule FvwmPerl load $[HOME]/test.fpl
SendToModule FvwmPerl preprocess config.ppp
SendToModule FvwmPerl export Eval,PerlEval,PerlLoad,PerlPP
SendToModule FvwmPerl unexport PerlEval,PerlLoad,PerlPP
SendToModule FvwmPerl stop
The following example handles root backgrounds in fvwmrc. All these commands may be added to StartFunction.
Module FvwmPerl --export PerlEval
# find all background pixmaps for a later use
PerlEval $a = $ENV{HOME} . "/bg"; \
opendir DIR, $a; @b = grep { /xpm$/ } readdir(DIR); closedir DIR
# build a menu of background pixmaps
AddToMenu MyBackgrounds "My Backgrounds" Title
PerlEval foreach $b (@b) \
{ cmd("AddToMenu MyBackgrounds '$b' Exec fvwm-root $a/$b") }
# choose a random background to load on start-up
PerlEval cmd("AddToFunc \
InitFunction + I Exec exec fvwm-root $a/" . $b[int(random(@b))])
SendToModule just like any other fvwm commands expands several dollar prefixed variables. This may clash with the dollars perl uses. You may avoid this by prefixing |
she said, no, he's not cute; he's married. And so I thought a married man was hitting on me - [laughter] - and I was not nice.
MS. RICHARDS: And you were - and, Shanna, you were there studying what?
MRS. GOINGS: Well, I think I had an English major. My mother is an English teacher, and I couldn't think what else to be except an English teacher. I didn't want to be that, but that's what I was doing.
MS. RICHARDS: So, after that first semester, how long did you stay at Hartnell?
MRS. GOINGS: Just the next semester.
MR. GOINGS: Yeah, I think I was there only two semesters.
MS. RICHARDS: So a spring semester and a fall semester.
MS. RICHARDS: And then you applied to CCA [California College of the Arts]?
MR. GOINGS: I went to Arts and Crafts in Oakland [California College of Arts and Crafts, now the California College of the Arts], and it was great, you know.
MS. RICHARDS: So you moved - you moved from Salinas to Oakland?
MRS. GOINGS: We were not married.
MS. RICHARDS: No, so you just moved by yourself?
MS. RICHARDS: And did you know at the beginning that you would be a painter -painting major?
MR. GOINGS: Oh, yes, absolutely. There was no - I mean, as a matter of fact - [laughs] - it's another one of those - you know, I seem to be telling you a whole bunch of stupid decisions that I made in my life, and I guess I did.
Anyway, I got to Arts and Crafts - I got accepted, and I signed up for the teacher education program. I signed up for it. I went to the first class and said, whoa, wait a minute; this is not what I want, because it was all about teaching process and nothing about art. It was no painting, no drawing, nothing like that. It was all about how to do teaching.
And I thought, I don't - you know, I don't want to do that. That's not what I want to learn here. I don't want to - you know, the government is paying all this money to this expensive art school; I want to learn about art. So I changed my major then and there, and finally graduated in three years with a B.F.A. and no prospect for a job.
MS. RICHARDS: Did you graduate in three years because you had had that year at Hartnell or because you speeded up the process?
MR. GOINGS: No, I just took double loads all the way. I took as much stuff as I could get every semester.
MS. RICHARDS: Is that because the GI Bill would run out, or you wanted to finish in three years?
MR. GOINGS: No, no, I just - no, I had no time thing. It was just I was like a big sponge. I wanted to soak up everything that was possible.
MRS. GOINGS: But also because the GI Bill was going to run out, too.
MR. GOINGS: Well, yeah, it probably would have, but that wasn't the push to hurry up because of that.
MS. RICHARDS: And how did you like your experience there?
MR. GOINGS: Oh, I loved it. I loved it.
MS. RICHARDS: Were there any particularly memorable teachers, inspiring teachers, difficult teachers, people who really mattered to you?
MR. GOINGS: There were some - there were some, you know, teachers there that are big names in the painting world, but I don't remember being particularly - yeah, I have to do a little thinking about this.
This may be a question that we should come back to, because first I have to try to remember who some of the name teachers were that were there. I can say that there were two that I remember being particularly involved in the classes that I took from them. One was Leon Goldin.
MS. RICHARDS: Is that Golden, G-O-L-D-E-N?
MR. GOINGS: I think - yeah.
MS. RICHARDS: "Involved," you mean good teachers who -
MR. GOINGS: Yeah, yeah, these were men that I found - that I thought I got something from, you know? And the other one - hmm. We may have to come back to this because I'm not remembering names.
MS. RICHARDS: Were there fellow students who you got to know and were important friends, colleagues in the years after school, who remained close as artist friends?
MR. GOINGS: No. Well, I mean, there are a couple of painters who subsequently are connected with the same sort of movement, if you can use that name, for the Photorealists -
MS. RICHARDS: - who were at CCA when you were?
MR. GOINGS: Yeah - not exactly. Bob [Robert] Bechtle was there - I think - I'm not quite sure of the date. I think he was there part of the time when I was there, and then Dick [Richard] McLean
came later - a little later, but I'm not - I'm not certain about those dates. At any rate, these two people I've known for years but not from school. I didn't socialize with them then, or I wasn't - I didn't really know them at school. It wasn't until later that we all began to get some recognition that we got together.
MS. RICHARDS: And realized you had been overlapped in some way, perhaps?
MR. GOINGS: Yeah, I guess. It seems to me that I remember being in one class with Bob, a printmaking class with - and Nat [Nathan] Oliveira was also there.
MS. RICHARDS: As a teacher or a student?
MRS. GOINGS: Student.
MR. GOINGS: As the teacher.
MRS. GOINGS: No, he was a student, wasn't he?
MR. GOINGS: Huh? Well, he was also an undergraduate student there, too. He graduated - Nat did - I think, like, the year before I did, or maybe two. I don't remember. Gosh.
MS. RICHARDS: Yeah, he might be older.
MRS. GOINGS: It doesn't make any difference.
MR. GOINGS: Anyway, he graduated and then took over a printmaking class, and I - it seems to me that I took his class. I knew him, and we had - you know, we had done, sort of, studio hangout together, so I knew him, and it seems to me that I remember that Bob was in the same class. Now, I may be mistaken about that.
MS. RICHARDS: What was the - were most of the teachers teaching something related to Abstract Expressionism or - what was the major -
MR. GOINGS: No, on the contrary.
MS. RICHARDS: Was there a thrust in the school, kind of a look that the teachers - a consistency in any way?
MR. GOINGS: Well, my feeling was that most of the studio teachers were the sort of academic - the drawing teachers - I don't know how else to put it - were more traditional in their approach.
MS. RICHARDS: Traditional? What do you mean? Do you mean realist landscape -
MS. RICHARDS: - California impressionists?
MR. GOINGS: No, not by subject matter but just by approach.
MRS. GOINGS: It was a formal art education with certain -
MR. GOINGS: Yeah. Yeah, you look at something, and you carefully reproduce it, or whatever.
MS. RICHARDS: But in addition to that academic training, which would be a good basis for any future approach, possibly, did you get a sense that they themselves, as professionals, were involved in a certain kind of painting?
MS. RICHARDS: So the school had a reputation of a kind of - by the time you were a senior, was there a look - did you feel like when you were in school, there's a kind of expectation to do a certain kind of painting?
MR. GOINGS: Well, that's hard -
MS. RICHARDS: Or was it very open, and you and your friends painted in many different directions?
MR. GOINGS: Well, it's hard because - you know, at the time that I was at Arts and Crafts was right - it was like the peak of Abstract Expressionism. The people that I hung out with, the other students that I hung out with, we were very much anxious to know what was going on in New York - at the first of each month when the art magazines showed up at the library, we were right there to find out, you know, what's going on in ARTnews magazine.
MR. GOINGS: Yeah, because, I mean, we knew about -
MRS. GOINGS: Jackson Pollock.
MR. GOINGS: Oh, Pollock and, you know, all of the big-time, big-name Abstract Expressionists. And it was - that seemed to be the way that the world was going, as far as we were concerned. But at the same time, the classes that we were in, there was this emphasis, I think, on - I don't want to say - I mean, I can't depict any of the classes as being really experimental. They were more, as Shanna said, formal-based. They were, you know, the more traditional kind of art learning, I guess.
MS. RICHARDS: Were you aware of the Bay Area figurative painters at that point?
MR. GOINGS: Yeah. Yeah. [Richard] Diebenkorn, of course, was around. As a matter of fact, he taught there for a while, I think. I never had a class from him and I've never met him, but I understand he was a real moving force in the Bay Area.
MS. RICHARDS: Did you meet any of the Bay Area - was there access, or did you - I don't know if you had a car - to meet any of - be involved in any way in the Bay Area art world when you were still a student at CCA?
MR. GOINGS: Not really, for me.
MS. RICHARDS: Did you know that Wayne Thiebaud was in Northern California? Did anybody - I don't know how much he was known at that point, in 1952.
MRS. GOINGS: He wasn't.
MR. GOINGS: No, we didn't meet Wayne until we moved back to Sacramento.
MRS. GOINGS: Yeah, we met Wayne in Sacramento. He was teaching at Davis [University of California, Davis], and that was before he had had his big art show in New York.
MS. RICHARDS: So, when you finished - well, is there anything else about your experience at CAA that you want to talk about? What did your paintings look like by the time you were a senior, let's say?
MR. GOINGS: Oh, sort of a marriage of - my mind is going. Two of the Abstract Expressionists that I had a great deal of admiration for -
MS. RICHARDS: [Arshile] Gorky? Gorky?
MR. GOINGS: That's one of them. The other one is -
MS. RICHARDS: [Willem] de Kooning?
MR. GOINGS: De Kooning. What I was doing was sort of -
MS. RICHARDS: [John] Graham?
MR. GOINGS: - a mixture of de Kooning -
MS. RICHARDS: Graham, Gorky?
MR. GOINGS: Gorky and Esteban Vicente. Now, if you can put all that together - [laughs].
MRS. GOINGS: You were also doing those little figures, and the painters -
MR. GOINGS: Yeah, I had a - at just about the time I graduated, I was - for some reason, I began to pull back from the Abstract Expressionist thing, you know, the big brush and the gigantic gesture and so on, and I sort of went into my Paul Klee period of fantasy. I think the thing that started me on that was that painting I did of your dream. She -
MRS. GOINGS: Well, I think you were doing that before, but -
MR. GOINGS: Was I? She had this dream one night that she told me about. What was it?
MRS. GOINGS: Tom and I were in a rowboat with all the flags - all the American flags in the world - and we had to save them, and we were in the ocean in a rowboat.
MR. GOINGS: So I did this painting of this little man in a rowboat, out in the middle of water of some kind, with an umbrella. The umbrella - flags got translated into an umbrella. And I sent it to the juried art show at the Sacramento State Fair, and I won a prize with it. [Laughs.] And we can't find the painting. We had it for years, and I can't -
MS. RICHARDS: One more question about CAA. When you were there, did you get positive reinforcement, recognition, approval by your teachers? Did you feel that you did well as a student?
MR. GOINGS: Well, I always had pretty good grades, in terms of the grading. Leon Amyx - not Amyx - Leon Goldin, I enjoyed his critiques because, much in the same as with Leon Amyx, he talked to you as though you were another artist, not a student, and I appreciated that.
I think that what I - most of what I did in his class was derivative of his style, which, of course, probably often happens. And it may have been that it was that that led to the - what I mentioned as the Paul Klee period. Goldin's painting at that time was abstract but not severely abstract. There were suggestions of representation, but formalized and abstracted, and I got sort of intrigued with that notion, too.
MS. RICHARDS: Would you say that you were more interested in color than in line? When you thought about the most important components, formally, of what you were using, it was form and color rather than being graphic, or were you attracted to graphic?
It sounds like, when you're describing your work, that it's really more about - you talked about gesture, and when you think about the artists who you talked about being influenced by, it sounds like there was a lot of interesting color and form, and not so much in line. I don't know if that's correct. I'm trying to see if you started to see what your future interests would be when you were there.
MR. GOINGS: I don't really separate those various elements. They all seem to be part of the whole mix. I mean, probably - you know, looking at it technically, when I began to work from photographs, there was a somewhat more linear quality to the work, simply because representing - you know, realistic images depend on a certain accuracy of representation, which seems to involve a line as opposed to defining it by color.
But then, on the other hand, since one of the main characters in - I mean, one of the things that has always attracted me to working from photographs is about light rather than, you know, sharply defined shapes, but the effect that light has on shapes and spaces. So I don't know. It's a mix, I guess.
MS. RICHARDS: When you graduated from CCA, then where did you go?
MR. GOINGS: I went to - [laughs] - I went to work for - well, first I did a semester of graduate work and -
[END CD 2.]
MS. RICHARDS: This is Judith Richards with Ralph Goings on September 10, 2009, for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, disc three.
MR. GOINGS: Well, anyway, the short of it is that I started applying at high schools that seemed like they might have a hard time getting teachers, because there was a shortage of teachers in California at that time. And the word was out that it was easier to get a job with a provisional credential if the school was having a hard time finding qualified, certified teachers. So I applied at several different places and got an interview with a high school in Crescent City, which is the very last California town before you get to the Oregon border.
And I got the job because I could teach art and music. I was hired as an art teacher and a band teacher. [Laughs.] The whole thing turned into a wonderful, wonderland kind of thing, because I took the job, of course, because I needed a job. And we moved up there. And there was one other art teacher already there. So it was a two-man art department, and it turned out a one-man music department. I was the one-man music department.
And I had no - at that point, I had no training, formal training, in music. The only thing I knew about music was what I could play and what I knew about my experience with the military band when I was in the army. So it was a matter of kind of learning on the job with the band thing.
The art classes - no problem at all, because I knew what I wanted to teach as far as the art was concerned. And the other art teacher and I sort of got along good and ended up sort of helping each other out. We were there for four years. [Laughs.] And my greatest achievement, I think, was not so much in the art department, although there were a few kids that really showed some promise and some development within the time that I was there.
The band - [laughs] - you know, it was one of those - it was almost like a situation comedy kind of thing, you know. The first time the band - the kids who had signed up for band, the first they were together, I had them play something just to see what they could do. It was so bad, so bad. [Laughs.] Every clarinet was out of tune. [Laughs.] The trombone player couldn't figure out how to play E flat, you know. It was just awful. And I thought, what have I gotten myself into?
But, you know, we knuckled down, and we really did some hardtack rehearsing. You know, I really worked them. And the second semester, more kids signed up. I don't know. It got better and better. And finally, we ended up with a really class-A high school band. We went to music tournaments and that kind of thing. And we did band concerts every year. And out of the marching band, I developed a swing band, a jazz band kind of thing, and did concerts with that. And that really went over big in that little town up there.
[Laughs] And at the point where we finally wanted to leave that area and move back to Sacramento - I had taken a job at a school in Sacramento, and we were getting ready to leave - and Shanna called the power company -
MRS. GOINGS: I called the power company, the telephone company, and all of the utilities and got the same response: Oh, no! Mr. Go |
batch of material, such as list of syllables; a typical curve is steep first, becoming flatter as time goes on
Free association
A clinical technique of psychoanalysis devised by Sigmund Freud
Free recall
An individual attends to previously processed stimuli (i.e. words, sounds, numbers, etc) and uses subjective organization to retrieve the memories in categories
A theory of hearing which states that the rate of nerve impulses traveling up the auditory nerve matches the tone's frequency
William James's school of thought that stressed the adaptive and survival value of behaviors
A German word for "whole", it refers to our tendency to perceive incomplete figures as complete
Gestalt Psychology
Sought to understand how the brain works by studying perception, arguing that percepts consist of meaningful wholes (in German, Gestalts)
A prediction of how the an experiment will turn out
In Freud's conception, the repository of the basic urges toward sex and aggression
Independent variable
A type of variable manipulated by the experimenter
Information processing
Humans accomplish this either in parallel (unconsciously) or in serial fashion (consciously)
Instrumental behavior
Is a concept stemming from the Behaviorist movement, which asserts that disorders are learned responses to traumatic experiences
The ability to learn from experience, to use information, to understand things
Intelligence quotient
The average is 100; there are many definitions of this attribute, including multiple and crystallized
A personality trait that signifies that one finds energy from internal sources rather than external ones
Just noticeable difference
The threshold at which one can distinguish two stimuli that are of different intensities, but otherwise identical
Law of effect
Thorndike's rule that behaviors which have positive outcomes tend to be repeated
Long term memory
Refers to memory that is stored effectively in the brain and may be accessed over an extended period of time
Longitudinal research
A type of study in which one group of subjects is followed and observed (or examined, surveyed, etc.) for an extended period of time (years)
Meaning is communicated through the use of language, (and has to do with the distribution of signs in sign relations (symbols), while in a relationship between ontology and truth, and as a reference or equivalence)
Mental illness
Mental imagery
Nature vs. nurture
The long-standing discussion over the relative importance of nature (heredity) and nurture (environment) in their influence on behavior and mental processes
A chemical that is released by a neuron for the purpose of carrying information across the gaps (synapses) between neurons
Normal distribution
Describes a symmetrical, bell shaped curve that shows the distribution of many physical and psychological attributes
Operant conditioning
A method of influencing behavior by rewarding desired behaviors and punishing undesired ones
Origins of Species
A consistent pattern of thinking, acting, feeling
A group of anxiety disorders involving a pathological fear of a specific object or situation
Placebo effect
Phenomenon that some people get better even though they receive not medication but an inert substance which should have no medical effect
Positive reinforcement
A negative attitude formed toward an individual or group without sufficient experience with the person or group
Pro-social behavior
Positive, constructive, helpful behavior; the opposite of antisocial behavior
Psychoanalytic theory
Freud's personality theory, basis for his therapeutic technique called Psychoanalysis
A disorder involving profound disturbances in perception, rational thinking, or affect
Psychosomatic disorder
Psychotherapy is a general term for a process of treating mental and emotional disorders by talking about your condition and related issues with an educated, trained and licensed professional
Is an increase in the strength of a response following the change in environment immediately following that response
Right hemisphere
Semantic memory
A subdivision of declarative memory that stores general knowledge, including the meaning of words and concepts
Serial position function
Refers to the concept of "magic seven," which stipulates that people normally remember the first seven items on a list, for example, after which recall they start forgetting the following items
Short-term memory
Significance level
The probability of a false rejection of the null hypothesis in a statistical test; also known as level of significance
Social influence
Is the change in behavior that one person causes in another, intentionally or unintentionally, as a result of the way the changed person perceives themselves in relationship to the influencer, other people and society in general
The process by which children learn the behaviors, attitudes, and expectations required of them by their society or culture
A stable personality characteristics that are presumed to exist within the individual and guide his or her thoughts and actions under various conditions
In classical Freudian theory, the psychic domain of which the individual is not aware but that houses memories, desires, and feelings that would be threatening if brought to consciousness
Unconscious motivation
Having a desire to engage in an activity but being consciously unaware of the desire
Visual depth perception
The ability to perceive spatial relationships, especially distances between objects, in three dimensions
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Wednesday, August 11, 2010
YoZen Mind - The Total cure for all Psychological challenges!
Life, Psychology & Meditation.
The Total cure for all Psychological challenges!
The Ultimate way to Self-realization!
The real path leads to Higher stage in Meditation!
The way of living your Life!
Is this your Problem?
Dis-interest in studies
Lack of Concentration.
Absent mindedness
Exam fear
Interview Fear
Inferiority complex
phobias (1000s of fear without reason)
Guilt feeling/ Self Pity
Undue Anger
Suicidal feeling
OCD/ Obsessive Cleanliness.
Insomnia ( sleeplessness)
Stammering/ Female voice
What is Yozen Therapy?
Yozen Therapy is the combination of Indian Yogic and Zen mind methodologies.
An absolute new science of Mind found and practicing by Guru Mohan BalKrishna for more than 15 years and has cured / heightened the awareness for more than 10,000 participants.
He declares that any one can succeed in Life and live happily provided His/Her past negative engrams / impressions could be wiped out from the hidden sub-conscious mind. Yozen Therapy is an answer to all mind-related-issues, insanities, psychoses, neuroses, compulsions, repressions and social derangements. Yozen Therapy is the fastest remedy of all existing methods in the world and it invariably cures, ruling out, delete the insanities/malfunctioning of Mind.
Yozen Therapy, what it does:
1. Yozen Therapy is an organized Science of Mind built on definite principles
and natural laws of human mind like any other physical sciences.
2. Yozen Therapy contains a therapeutic technique with which can be treated
all inorganic mental illnesses and all organic psycho-somatic disorders with assurance of complete cure in unselected cases.
3. Yozen Therapy produces a condition of ability and rationality for both man and woman well in advance of the current norm, enhancing rather than destroying his/her vigor and personality.
4. Yozen therapy gives a complete insight into the full potentialities of the mind, discovering them to be well in excess of past supposition.
5. The basic nature of the Man is discovered in Yozen Therapy, and it can be
brought into action in any individual completely.
6. A particular source of mental derangement is discovered and demonstrated
on a clinical or laboratory basis by Yozen Therapy.
finally established in Yozen Therapy.
8. With Yozen Therapy ends the “necessity” of destroying the brain by shock,
surgery or any lengthy consumption of tablets.
9. Yozen Therapy removes the undue fears, anxieties and guilt feelings
altogether that results in balancing the mind and freeing from any type of
‘emotional bondage’ and slavery to any great people/pseudo organizations.
10. Yozen Therapy make the people “Self-realized” and understand the goal of
Life and the beauty of it.
What is mind? What is its role in our Life?
Mind is the master of our Life!
If our Mind is not strong and positive, life would never be happy and successful !
The Mind only brings fame, money and prestige to every human being, not the physical body!
Are we living our life worthy?
If one is affected psychologically Life would be utterly meaningless though he/she acquires wealth, health, status etc.
Most of us are living our life just for the sake of living it. We do not know the real meaning and real Happiness of Life!
Our inner mind is constantly craving for recognition and appreciation from others for temporary happiness.
This craving starts from our childhood and grows till our last breathe.
Atlast we feel this life as a boring one and then get totally immersed into a kind of depressions and anxieties for ever.
At one stage we hate everyone at home, in friendship, in the office etc, and finally hated by all.
Some times we feel more fearful, confused and low-esteemed for some invisible root and causes hidden in our "Inner-Mind".
That is why we could not involve fully in to education / career / business and bound to fail in all our efforts.
What is mind? What is its role in our Life?
Mind is the master of our Life!
What kind of person can undergo in to Yozen Therapy?
There is no special kind of Yozen patients as such. Yozen patients range in age from 12 to 48 with the greatest percentage in the mid-twenties. Their occupations vary from spiritualists to professionals of all kinds, including many psychologists and people in this art. Patients come from all religious backgrounds and from all parts of our country and from many states for the past 15 years. The great bulk of Yozen patients have had their previous therapy ranging from Psychoanalysis, Hypnotherapy, Gestalt therapy, Transactional analysis etc..etc.. for many years!
After the patient completed Yozen Therapy, what is he like?
He/She functions in a new way. He become very much normal and is interested in his self rather than satisfying and thinking of others. The normal does not feel lonely and never need to surround him with people or to join some clubs. He never exaggerates, over reacts or under reacts with any one. He gives true reactions appropriately to the situations and context.
The Yozen people are normally normal and stable.
They are content to be just where they are and do not have to imagine that real life is ‘out-there-some where’. The real or normal Yozen people will not have continuing relationship with unreal people. The neurotic is not likely to continue a relationship where his/her neurotic needs are not being served /addressed. The unreal people tend to seek out those individuals who share this kind of unreal ideas and attitudes. Yozen normal is not interested in the exploitation of others and the unrealistic needs either.
Yozen normal would be neither jealous nor guilt-ridden. After Yozen Therapy they do always see in full color, hear in full tone, or sense at the optimum with their organs of smell, taste, tactile and organic sensation. Then Yozen normal perceives the present and facing the reality of Life as it is. He/she never fantasizes but thinks and reacts in the normal way and leads his/her life to the optimum positive level.
Yozen Therapy is bridging the gap between your Aspiration and Ability!
Yozen Therapy gives you the fresh breathe and fresh mind!
Yozen Therapy, the ONLY solution for all mind related issues !!<|endoftext|>Tuesday, April 1, 2014
The Cost of Land vs. The Perception of Value
The Cost of Land vs. The Perception of Value
Land in SL is Cheap!
I disagree.
Let me show you something.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Building a Better Second Life
Building a Better Second Life
Tips for squeezing both better performance and more detail
out of SL through efficiently made content.
Use fewer (and smaller) texture maps!
This is a big one that few seem to consider.
64x64 : 16kb
128x128: 65kb
256x256: 262kb
512x512: 1MB!
1204x1024: 4MB!
What you wind up with is something like this;
So how should texturing be done? More like this;
512x512 textures from my own avatar's attachments.
Use fewer, more efficient scripts!
Build small!
Because it works!
You tell me.
Draw Weight.
I am the prettiest princess!
Content creators can help by ditching this bad habit!
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Recent Profile Pictures
Just because, a couple of my recent profile pictures. Both taken at Milk & Cream using my "Fantasy Overworld" windlight settings.
Both apparently taken in the ancient ruins area, too.
Speaking of my windlight settings, good news for Firestorm users. I recently spoke with one of the devs and they agreed to include my day cycle as one of the viewer's presets. It doesn't appear to have been added yet, but should be there in the next release I imagine.
My settings are already included with Nirans viewer and I've offered the settings to a couple other TPVs as well.
I'm still trying to convince other TPVs to adopt my camera settings, preferably as a new default but at least as an included preset, but so far only Nirans has added similar settings. I offer these settings for everyone to use, so if you'd like your favourite TPV to include them so you don't have to manually set them up every install, be sure to let the developers know!
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Why Second Life Fails
I love Second Life, I wouldn't write about it so much, or spend so much time playing around in it, if I didn't. Of course, loving something doesn't mean blindly dismissing it's flaws, and Second Life has many, many flaws.
So, I recently rebuilt Milk & Cream with a focus on making it as efficient as possible. I cut down severely on sculpted prims, used tonnes of mesh content, separated the mall and club area from the more detailed play area so that they wouldn't be sapping each other's framerates, etcetera.
However, there is one tiny spot in the Milk & Cream play area where framerates drop through the floor.
Inside an enclosed building furnished almost entirely in mesh, precisely where framerates ought to have been the highest, I found my framerates dropping to their lowest point. Where everywhere else I was achieving 30-40fps pretty consistently, inside this building my framerates dropped to an abysmal 5fps.
Why was that?
I began removing elements from inside the furnished tavern and watched my framerates. As I began to remove mesh furniture my framerate began to climb far more substantially than I'd have expected. I selected all of the items from one particular mesh set and removed them all. My framerates soared to 50fps.
Why was that?!
It wasn't the model work, which was fairly efficient, for the most part. Enough that the land impact cost was satisfactorily low.
I had a thought. I checked the texture sizes on the furniture pieces. Almost every single furnishing and decoration in this set used 1024x1024 textures. And not just a single such texture, no, even where only one texture could have, and should have, been used, the creator had broken the items into multiple textures, each 1024x1024.
There was a wooden cup with some coins inside and a "tip jar" sign leaning against it. The wood of the cup was a 1024x1024 texture. The sign was a separate such texture. The cup had three tiny metal rings around it, sure enough the creator had textured these with a separate 1024x1024 texture.
Every single item in the set was like this. The furnishings used in the tavern took up more texture memory alone than the entire rest of the island combined.
I kept the furniture in place and removed the textures, using the default plywood texture instead. Sure enough, my framerates jumped from 5fps to 50.
This illustrates the most obvious, and yet somehow most overlooked, issue in Second Life. Texture maps eat up resources. Larger textures eat more resources. Most of the lag and framerate issues in Second Life are, in fact, due to use of excessively large textures.
I contacted the creator and tried to explain the issue.
They replied that they are a gamer and therefore knowledgeable about how videogames are made. With complete certainty they assured me that it was thelimits of SL's technology that were to blame, that all videogames use texture maps the size of the ones they used AND LARGER. They sympathized with my problem but they simply couldn't bear the thought of sacrificing quality for framerates. They hoped someday that technology would progress enough that everyone could run SL as well as gamers run Crysis 3 and Skyrim.
That disconnect from reality is why Second Life fails to catch on.
Many content creators cling to this delusion that all of SL's problems are due to either people using underpowered computers or LL's own failings in crafting the code upon which SL runs. This mistaken, entirely unfounded idea that SL itself is so bleeding edge technology, when it's really not and never has been!
To be sure, many people do try to run SL on underpowered computers and there is a lot of issues with the code upon which SL runs. However, my computer has an i7 core, 12GB of RAM and a high end video card. I run Skyrim at full settings with the HD texture set add on. My computer is more powerful than the average gamer's.
Why can I run Skyrim so well?
Well, one reason is that the artists who created the art assets for Skyrim did not, in fact, use 1024x1024 textures on the 3cm wide metal rings of a cup that textured with five other 1024x1024 texture maps! Let alone larger!
That simply does not happen!
Now, before you slip into the trap of dismissing all of SL's problems as simply a fact of allowing user created content, I say to you that Linden Lab bears the brunt of the responsibility here. They do absolutely nothing to prevent people from creating content this way, or providing people like you or I the ability to avoid such amateurishly made content.
What can they do? Plenty!
First of all, texture maps should count towards Land Impact costs. There is no reason whatsoever why content using so many obscenely large textures should have such low LI cost. This sort of hit to performance is precisely what LI exists to prevent. That it doesn't even take it into consideration shows just how poorly LL understands their own product.
Second, textures always cost 10l to upload, regardless of pixel or file size. That's ridiculous. Larger texture files should cost more to upload. Costs should be balanced in such a way where smaller files cost less, however a single large texture costs less than multiple smaller textures, encouraging people to combine textures.
Third, SL's building tools should be designed with the fact that they're mostly used by amateurs. There should be many helpful tips and tutorials that are entirely absent. When someone is uploading a 1024x1024 texture, they should receive a notice popping up asking them if they understand what that means. If they're importing a model with many such textures, another pop-up should appear pointing out the issues they will run into.
Hell, this kind of information should be in the text people need to take before they can upload mesh models.
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effect. If it done with a lock-on, you can dodge it easily enough, but, when manually aimed towards the ground, dodging can be frustrating. You'll need some practice to predict where your opponent will land, but it a rewarding skill. It can be thought almost as impossible to dodge when trying to wake-up from a knockdown. Against those veterans, who'll always seem to find a way to ruin your fun, who will try to land a roll backstab you need to remember one thing: to get a backstab, they need to get to your back. This means you'll know where the are going to try to land, so aim at where your back is facing as they try to get up, and you'll land a hit.
The Unusable class of Greatsword strong attacks includes the Black Knight Sword, the Flamberge, the Greatlord Greatsword, the Greatsword of Artorias, and the Stone Greatsword. All of these have a delay and/or a hitbox that make them entirely useless in PvP. Ideally, you won't be using them, but the Flamberge and Stone Greatsword can sometimes be applied effectively in PvP. However, new players should stay away from all of these. Worth noting, the Stone Greatsword does a Tranquil Walk of Peace effect when two-handed. This might be useful for a caster that has 27 Strength and is unwilling to level Faith. It requires no attunement slots, and is capable weapon on its weak attacks alone, but is crippled by an insane 18.0 weight. It might be worth considering on some builds, but, generally speaking, is better left in the Bottomless Box.
The Sweeping class of Greatsword strong attacks are used by the ever popular Claymore, and its lesser used cousins the Manserpent Greatsword and Bastard Sword. When two-handed, the attack covers a huge range with a sizable portion of the hitbox being behind you. If facing who pokes from behind a shield or can be staggered from the attack, you can start-up the attack facing your opponent, then unlock to turn to face the exact opposite direction of your opposition and land a dead-angle. If your opponent is staggered, attack with a weak attack while turning to face your opponent. This will land a stun lock, and toggle-tricks out of it should be dealt with the same way as if you normally got them stunned.
Here is an example Quality-style Claymore build. The actual usage of the build is pretty straight forward, but it might be worth noting a small trick for the Claymore one-handed strong attack. If you do a small step at the end of the strong attack, it resets your attack count. This means you can do the deadly poke again, and, if you get very good at this technique, and you stagger someone with the first hit, you can do an exceptionally long range stun-lock.
Ultra Greatswords (Risky Attacks, Backstabs, Pokes)
The largest of the swords, and the slowest, the Ultra Greatsword is a power-house when it comes to dealing damage, and stunning opponents. This is the bane of new players everywhere, but becomes much harder to use against players capable of roll backstabbing. Once you understand how to backstab effectively, the Ultra Greatswords become considerably more useful due to the incredible critical damage they are capable of doing. However, these weapons are more than a glorified Bandit's Knife, and, with practice, you'll be capable of bisecting your opposition no problem.
The weak attack of the Ultra Greatsword is weak in name only. It deals formidable damage that cannot be afforded to tank, and hits everything in a very wide arc in front of you. The difference between a one-handed swing, and a two-handed one is the swing speed and the ability to get dead-angles. This is a very important difference, however, and, you'll need to judge when to use what type of swing to do the most damage. Either swing is easy to parry, so you cannot try to guard break someone using it, and you must be careful trying to bait someone into coming close as many times they'll be able to parry that, too. While being very easy to parry, it is also easy enough to dead-angle with should you use the one-handed attack. The large sweeping motion, when turned further perpendicular can get dead-angles, and newer players that try to strafe backstab an Ultra Greatsword user will often force themselves into dead-angles. However, the ability to stagger one-handed is lessened considerably, and you'll find yourself backstabbed if you use it carelessly. You'll need to use the one-handed dead-angle sparingly, but getting the odd hit in will make a world of difference as you bide your time for getting the two-handed attacks in.
The roll attack of the Ultra Greatsword is a long-ranged poke with your sword. While being slow, and having subpar tracking, learning to use it without lock-on will go a long way to getting hits on opponents that flip around with quick weapons. However, this is like your normal weak attack, and will result in you getting roll backstabbed if you attack recklessly. Another thing to note, is that this attack is incredibly easy to parry, and you'll need to make sure not attack when your opponent is too close, or you'll get something much worse than a backstab. However, you can do a neat little trick to confuse your opponent. After your roll, if you take a tiny step, you'll do your normal attack that is much harder to parry. If you know how to do dead-angles properly with your Ultra Greatsword, there is nothing stopping you from making your attack unblockable.
Jump attacks from Ultra Greatswords cover a huge, but thin, line. They have incredible ability to stagger and you'll often flatten players when you land it. However, it has a sizable recover animation, so use it only to punish enemies that are attacking, but miss. When used correctly, it makes for the one of the most powerful, non-critical, attacks in the game, and can change the outcome of a battle. However, while the running attack and the jumping one are superficially similar, never use the running attack; it leaves you so open for a backstab to the point you are guaranteed to receive one no matter what.
The only strong attack worth mentioning in Ultra Greatsword category is the funnily named Greatsword. Other weapons, including the Dragon Greatsword, have very poor tracking, and hitboxes. However, the Greatsword's strong attack has reasonable tracking and can be manually aimed for devastating effects. Be careful how you use it, though, as backstabs are still possible.
The here for the Ultra Greatsword features the Demon Great Machete, and has some Pyromancy on the side. Typically speaking, you'll want to be two-handed except for a few rare parts of the fight; you have only your bare-hands to parry with, and no usable weapons if you don't use both hands on your Machete. and make the most of the very large base damage of the weapon.
Curved Swords (Pokes)
The Curved Swords are an underused, but powerful, Dexterity weapon. They have very fast swing speed, and make a great vehicle for dealing buff damage. The main attraction the Curved Swords is its safe, but short-ranged, weak attack with the various strong attacks being useless. The two exceptions to this are the Shotel and the Painting Guardian Sword. The reason that the Curved Sword is considered a poking tool rather than risky attack is that the attacks, if done without incredible lag, cannot be punished by a backstab. However, one must still worry about parrying, so awareness of when to back-off is the key to the successful use of your Curved Sword. Unlike other weapons that can kick a parry attempting opponent, the Curved Sword instead does a bizarre little cartwheel. To make up for this, it is suggested you carry a Great Combustion or go a backstab. The opponent will learn to either make blind parries, stop trying to parry, or die.
The weak attack of the Curved Sword is a quick, horizontal sweep in front of you that, while not doing considerable poise damage, will stun-lock anyone foolish enough to think they can tank it. Not only that, it is also incredibly fast so many people that rely on the block followed with a parry will consistently fail. This is your cue to get a backstab. There is almost no reason to use your Curved Sword in one-hand, and you should be two-handing it for increased damage and swing speed. The trick for successfully using the weapon is to get continuous hits, while preventing your opponent from parrying.
There are a two main ways to combo into the deadly weak attack: from the rolling or running attack. The roll attack is an intricate little dance that gets hit, and comes with the predictability of all roll attacks. However, it is very fast so you may feel a bit safer on relying upon it. You should try dodging past an attack with your invincibility frames then let loose on your opponent. The running attack entrance is similar to the roll attack, but does more damage proportional to the risk.
The Falchion, Scimitar, and Furysword all have strong attacks that are strictly inferior to the weak attack of the Curved Sword. However, both the Shotel and Painting Guardian Sword have special strong attacks that are situational usable. The Shotel's strong attack is an unblockable strike. It can be quite fearsome, but can be a bit predictable and slow. Don't rely on it, but use occasionally to get some additional damage. The Painting Guardian Sword does an elaborate, little dance that doesn't do too much damage, but does an absurd amount of hits only kept in check by its short-range. If you use it while magically buffed, it'll do an incredible amount of damage rivaled only by the Ricard's Rapier. Practice is necessary to use it correctly, but it is a rewarding skill. Curved swords also have a jumping attack worth using should the opportunity present itself. It does a wide sweep in front of your landing area, and makes for a good damage.
Here is a build that features the Falchion, and the ability to cast some devastating Pyromancy. It's a straight forward build that features a small little trick to get the most out of the Curved Swords. Since you are unable to kick with the Falchion, instead you'll use Great Combustion to punish parry attempts, and to do some poise damage. If your opponent is not staggered by the Great Combustion, and still tries to attack you, you stand a much higher chance of landing a stun-lock, which is where the Curved Swords really shine.
Katanas (Pokes)
The legendary Katana of the glorious Nippon is the absolute bane of people who have no idea of what the mechanics of PvP are. Fast attacks, long-ranged pokes, and a bleed build-up, it is understandably a weapon to be feared if you don't yet know how to use your favourite weapon. It is one of the easier weapons to learn how to use, and you can make your own little Samurai with it. The swing speed makes the Katana a very good weapon to carry a buff with, but damage is normally a bit low without one. You'll also find that when you get into PvP, the fearsome attack-speed becomes less useful as chained attacks will often get parried or at least partial parried, and bleed stops being a death-sentence and more of a nuisance as you can roll out of it almost unfailingly.
The weak attack of the Katana is a quick, forward slash that is a very safe move. Ideally, you'll be two-handing the sword to help make up for the low damage. However, it is important to get close to your opponent as the range, even with the Washing Pole, is deceptively close. Holding up your shield for the approach is often a necessity with a cautious player, but, with an aggressive roller, you shouldn't be too afraid to throw a shot out. It is a very safe move, and doesn't cost too much stamina. However, don't use it as license to swing wildly, or you'll find you self out of stamina. Remember to use the kick if you find someone trying to parry your attack. While they might still dodge the follow-up weak attack, they have to back away as parry attempts from the distance they are pushed to will fail consistently.
The running attack of the Katana actually carries some real risk if you spam it, but it is still a fairly same move. It has a very good range as it is it uses the full length of the sword and some forward motion to cover a huge distance. It won't hit a wide arc, but it can lay effective pressure. Be warned that you'll find yourself parried if you get too close, and that the setup to the attack is really noticeable. The damage isn't incredible, but the safety of the move warrants it being done exclusively two-handed. This move should be used to tack on damage.
The weak attack of the Katana is a bit on the low damage, and you'll want to get as many hits as possible when your opponent makes a mistake. While you can do the running poke, you'll find your opponent not so open to getting hit to it after a while, and they'll get a roll backstab eventually if that is your only manoeuvre. To be able to get more hits going against the larger weapons, you can pre-emptively roll through an attack and land the roll attack. You would be doing this unlocked and you would land at their side. If you do it right, and they attack you with lock-on, you'll find that their follow-up attack will miss. You would continue through and use your weak attack to tack on damage.
There are two different strong attacks: Standard, and Unusable. The Standard strong attack is used both by the Washing Pole, and the Uchigatana, and is very useful overall. When one-handed, it does a mimicry of the running attack. It is much more unexpected, but is more vulnerable to roll backstabs because of the stationary start-up. It should be used carefully in combination with the running attack, to add on more damage through pokes. The two-handed strong attack has a noticeable start-up, but has surprising range to go with it. It should be avoided, though, as it is very easy to dodge and roll backstab. In fact, all the other strong attacks should be avoided due to the start-up time that telegraphs the move way in advance. The Chaos Blade and Iatio both fail to cover enough distance, or do enough damage to make the attack worth while. It does not mean that the attack is useless as it can be used to try to get hit when your opponent is waking up from a backstab, but against more experienced players that is actually a invitation to get backstabbed. The jump attack of the Katana is useless, however, and should be avoided at all costs.
The Katana here features the Chaos Blade as the main weapon with a standard load of Pyromancies on the side. This is a very straight forward build, and the actual use of it should be fairly intuitive. You should be using the Composite Bow over your Chaos Blade when you can safely use it; although the 20 damage is small, the self inflicted wounds will add up if you are reckless.
Curved Greatswords (Risky Attack, Backstabs)
The large, arcing slashes of the Curved Greatsword are reminiscent of the pendulums you'll see in Sens Fortress. While you might have some trouble landing the blows, your opponents will drop to the ground whether or not they try to block. The Curved Greatswords are one of the best weapons for getting dead-angle attacks because of the attack arcs covering a large distance behind you. Once you get a sense for judging distance, this weapon becomes much more useful as, when trying to learn it, you'll be finding yourself wasting stamina with poorly chosen attacks. You'll find yourself frustrated at the slow attacks constantly hitting the air where you opponent was a second before.
However, the weak attack attack of the Curved Greatsword is nothing to scoff at once you understand how to use it effectively. You should never use it with lock-on, but manually aim it. The weak attack has slow swing speed, and requires some prediction to hit your opponent. This is what makes the weapon very good against gangs of phantoms who'll often be very predictable, but you'll need to step up the game in duels where being hard to predict is a necessity. However, so long the opponent is close you'll be able to damage even if they block; by turning away in the correct manner you'll get a dead-angle attack. A bit of practice will go a long way to using a Curved Greatsword. Just remember to aim in response to what they are going to do, not what they are doing, as accounting for the start-up animation is the biggest hurdle to using getting kills.
The roll attack is essentially requires the same skill set to use effectively as the weak attack. You'll want to predict where you opponent is going to be, but it is considerably easier to get a dead-angle attack with it. You'll notice the huge back-swing of the attack that's all viable for landing the attack. However, if all you do is dead-angle attacks with it, you'll find yourself with a sword sticking out of you. The fact you turn your back makes you very vulnerable, and you should be careful not to use the attack too much as going for the unblockable hit every time makes you exceedingly predictable. This attack is best used against weapons that can attack from behind the shield; they won't be able to get the backstab if you do it right, even if they see it coming, should they decide to poke. Your roll invulnerability will even let you go through the attack, making this weapon an excellent anti-turtle weapon.
The running attack of the Curved Greatsword either useful or practically useless depending on how many hands you have on the weapon. The two-handed attack is an example of what makes an attack useless; it is telegraphed extraordinarily well by the little hop before the attack, it hits a narrow area, and has huge swing commitment. The one-handed attack does have a similar telegraph, and swing commitment, but has an incredible hitbox that makes dodging to the side very difficult. With opponents that cannot, or will not risk, parrying the attack, and try to roll away, a good trick is to wait for them to try to roll away then attack. If timed right, you'll hit them as they exit the roll for a fair amount of damage. The jump attack has is a similar set of properties to the running attack, but requires no start up. However, it is more vulnerable to backstabs. It should be used as a surprise attack for large damage, and when you can predict that you'll opponent will be staggered or won't punish.
The strong attack of the Curved Greatsword isn't worth mentioning except for the Gravelord Sword. The normal strong attack of Sever and the Murakumo forces you to go forward in a single direction, and is well telegraphed. This is a big no as your movements are set for a solid second which is enough to guarantee a backstab. However, the Gravelord Sword doesn't force you to move, but it does have a start-up time. This means you shouldn't use if you opponent is too close, but it has a good range to make up for it. Ideally |
A.V. is more familiar.-W G. T. S.]
2 [This is an important passage with reference to Augustin's learning. From it, it would appear that he had not read the Greek Trinitarians in the original, and that only "a little" of these had been translated, at the time when he was composing this treatise. As this was from A.D. 400 to A.D. 416-, the treatises of Athanasius (d. 373), Basil (d. 379), Gregory of Nyssa (d. 400?), and Gregory of Nazianzum (d. 390?) had been composed and were current in the Eastern church. That Augustin thought out this profound scheme of the doctrine of the Trinity by the close study of Scripture alone, and unassisted by the equally profound trinitarianism of the Greek church, is an evidence of the depth and strength of his remarkable intellect.-W. G. T. S.]
3 John i. 10.
4 Wisd. i. 7.
5 Matt. iii. 16.
6 Acts ii. 3.
7 Gal. iv. 4.
8 John i. 14.
9 See above, Book ii. chap. vii. n. 13.
10 John ii. 9.
11 Wisd. xvi. 24, 25
12 Wisd. viii. 1.
13 [The original is: "ut sit participatio ejus in idipsum." The English translator renders: "So that it may partake thereof in itself." The thought of Augustin is, that the believing soul though mutable partakes of the immutable; and he designates the immutable as the in idipsum: the self-existent. In that striking passage in the Confessions, in which he describes the spiritual and extatic meditations of himself and his mother, as they looked out upon the Mediterranean from the windows at Ostia-a scene well known from Ary Schefer's painting-he denominates God the idipsum: the "self same" (Confessions IX. x). Augustin refers to the same absolute immutability of God, in this place. By faith, man is "a partaker of a divine nature," (2 Pet. i. 4.)-W.G.T.S.].
14 Ps. cxxii. 3. Vulg.
15 Ps. cii. 26, 27.
16 Ps. civ. 4.
17 Col. i. 16.
18 Wisd. ix. 15.
19 1 Cor. xiii. 12.
20 Phil. i. 23.
21 Rom. viii. 23.
Click Your Choice<|endoftext|>Will B2B marketplaces take over?
Of late, B2B marketplaces have become popular and there has been a great deal of hype about how they will reduce transaction...
Of late, B2B marketplaces have become popular and there has been a great deal of hype about how they will reduce transaction costs and bring business opportunities
Our company supplies components to the automobile industry. Of late, B2B marketplaces have become popular and there has been a great deal of hype about how they will reduce transaction costs and bring business opportunities. As yet, we have not signed up - in fact, we are not an e-business. Is it inevitable that B2B marketplaces are the future and how do you see this affecting the small supplier?
Invest or go under
Roger Marshall
IT director at the Corporation of London
The straight answer is yes, B2B trading is moving to the Internet, and the speed of change is dramatic. What form the marketplaces will eventually take is less clear, but you run the risk that you may soon not have a viable business at all if you cannot participate. It is as stark as that.
So what should you do? First and foremost, ensure that your top management understands the urgency and seriousness of the situation. Advise them that while choosing which exchange(s) to go for is a board-level decision, one that probably shouldn't be taken yet, there are other things you should be doing now.
In particular you need to ensure that your internal IT systems will be able to cope. There are probably some off-the-shelf software packages available, but will they suit your particular situation, is it required to replace your legacy systems, can the necessary interfaces be built? These are difficult questions and you may well need to get outside advice and be prepared to invest heavily in the solution. On top of this you may not get it right first time so prepare your board for a continuing re-investment in systems.
A final piece of advice. Get to know what's happening in your industry. Exchanges mean that market power moves to the buyer and there is much concern that small firms like yours could be seriously disadvantaged. Be prepared to join lobbying groups to ensure that your voice is heard.
The small will follow the herd
Robin Bloor
CEO, Bloor Research
Much of the B2B hype is rubbish. All that is happening is that some of the inefficiencies that exist in the B2B procurement process are being removed and, naturally, this is reducing costs. Additionally, Web sites are replacing product catalogues.
The idea that markets can be created by re-structuring in the supply chain is ludicrous. In the long run, it is likely that some markets will be successful, but for this to happen the majority of the buyers and sellers will have to choose the new market over whatever the current process is. If you are not large then simply follow the herd and if you need to invest in e-business technology to do so, then do it.
Equal your competitors
David Taylor
Sign up. As a small company you can appear equal to your competitors. Indeed, if you have a niche product you will have an active advantage. Transaction costs will be saved for everyone. To become an e-business takes a day: get a Web presence that allows you to communicate and trade,and do it right now. Yes, it is inevitable that B2B marketplaces are the future, however people will still buy from people, so it will be your perceived brand, the team behind you, and the people that are out there, that will still play a huge part in your success. So, stop being a small supplier right now, and go for it.
Integration with B2B exchanges
Paul Williams
Arthur Andersen
B2B exchanges are touted to offer many supply chain benefits including transaction savings, reduced inventory costs, reduced error and faster development times accruing to the manufacturers. With so many new exchanges springing up and an increased level of interest from suppliers and customers, it is hard to envisage a future where these virtual trading communities do not succeed to some extent. However, the impact they will ultimately have on the smaller supplier within the automotive industry is less obvious and depends on the products supplied and the structure of the B2B model.
B2B exchanges typically favour commoditised products where the purchasing decision is often made on the basis of a discrete number of quantifiable factors such as lead/delivery times, price and design specifications. If your products fits into this mould you are more likely to come under cost-pressures going forward as the market becomes increasingly transparent and applies downward pressure to prices.
Whilst any exchange will provide access to new markets, this will be somewhat tempered by the "reach" of your product, ie higher transport costs compared to those suppliers local to the new markets. To counter this threat, many suppliers plan to use their existing sales channels to increase the perceived value-added services and use the B2B exchange as an order management tool, hosted and managed by a third party. It is these additional services which will allow suppliers to differentiate themselves in a marketplace where margins are being eroded due to pricing pressures. Ultimately, these dual channel strategies may merge into a fully functional, value added channel through to the preferred B2B exchange.
The nature of small supplier relationships within the automotive industry is close integration characterised by preferred trusted relationships and product development partnerships. An exchange will not remove existing customer acquisition costs but it should increase the efficiency of the order management and fulfilment process and will have to facilitate low-cost implementation including the provision of a common gateway for accessibility and easy integration into different suppliers' systems. It is these characteristics that small suppliers should look for when considering which of the myriad of available B2B exchanges they should join.
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Noun: rodent row-d(u)nt
1. Relatively small placental mammals having a single pair of constantly growing incisor teeth specialized for gnawing
- gnawer
Derived forms: rodents
Type of: eutherian, eutherian mammal, placental, placental mammal
Part of: order Rodentia, Rodentia
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There are specific advantages to hiring a micro-influencer over say a mega influencer to grow your business but the first thing we need to do before discusses the advantages is to define exactly what is meant by the term micro-influencer.
What is a Micro-Influencer?
Social media influencers fall into one of four categories, mega, macro, micro, and Nano.
Mega-influencers are often A list and B list celebrities with millions of followers and they command the highest payments to be shown with a product. They are often household names such as Kim Kardashian. In 2019 Kylie Jenner was the highest-paid social media influencer with her Instagram garnering 1 million dollars or more per post. These influencers work with huge marketing teams and agents to promote products and seek sponsors.
Macro-Influencers have somewhere between 100,000 to 1+ million followers. They make 100’s of thousands per post. They are often niche celebrities who gained fame through the internet with Instagram, TikTok, or Youtube. They are ‘celebrities’ that are famous for being on social media. Such as Tana Mongeau who has millions of followers but the average person over 30 does not know who they are. These influencers often have agents and marketing teams that handle their social media as well as sponsorships.
Micro-Influencers have between 10 thousand and 100,000 followers. These influencers can make anywhere from $100 to a few thousand dollars a post depending on followers, engagement, and deliverables. Micro-influencers often personally interact with their followers on a daily basis. Examples of these are bloggers, travel vloggers, and home chefs. Everyday people who also have a following on social media.
Nano-Influencers have less than 10,000 followers or are members of a very specific and often local niche. They often view social media as a way to disseminate information and to stay in touch with their followers. Specific industries, locales, or populations follow them. A restaurant, a beauty consultant, or a local newspaper could fall into this category.
Please note, not everyone on social media considers themselves an influencer or is paid to promote products or ads. You might have a million followers but not accept payment from sponsors or you may have 1,000 followers and only post sponsored ads.
Now that we have an understanding of what is meant by a micro-influencers, let’s delve right into why you should hire one to grow your business as opposed to investing in a mega or macro influencer.
Higher Engagement Rate
Studies have shown that once an influencer reaches a critical mass of followers, engagement decreases. Mediahub, found that using micro-influencers increased engagement rates upwards of 50%. Mega and macro-influencers usually have more likes on a post but likes do not always translate into sales. Likes are often just a show of support or actually just liking the photo aesthetics or location.
Likes are often done without much thought as we scroll through the feed. Actual engagement, the stopping and really looking at or reading the post, writing comments, entering contests, clicking on links that drive sales mean more than a passing like. Micro-influencers have more actual engagement, 60% more than mega or macro-influencers because their audience can easily relate to the content and with the influencer on a daily basis.
More engagement equals more traffic to your site and more sales of your product or service.
More Trusted
Micro-influencers are often considered more trustworthy than macro and mega influencers. Micro-influencers often have built a place in a specific niche and their followers consider them somewhat of an expert and trust their opinions. For example, my niche is women over 40, so my followers know that if I recommend something, I have tried it myself and am sharing my true experience and feelings about the product as a woman over 40.
Micro-influencers engage daily with their followers on an intimate level. Followers are considered friends and are treated as such. In return followers trust that a micro-influencer will be honest and upfront about any products they review or endorse. Friends influence 81% of consumers’ purchasing decisions on social media and if micro-influencers consider their followers’ friends and vice versa, no wonder 82% of consumers say they would follow a recommendation by a micro-influencer as opposed to a mega-influencer.
Trust can build brand loyalty and lifetime customers.
Less Cost = More ROI
Companies that hired influences had an average earned media value of $5.78 per dollar invested in influencer marketing 2019.
If you have a fixed marketing budget it only makes sense to spend that money on as many influencers as possible that you know will drive traffic to your product. You could purchase one Instagram post for $100,000 from a macro-influencer or you could spend that same amount of money to hire 10 micro-influencers for an entire social media campaign that might include a blog, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter post for one price.
Most micro-influencers are open to negotiation when working directly with a brand. 84% of micro-influencers charge less than $250 per post and most charge $500 or less for an entire campaign that includes multiple posts across platforms. Some micro and nano-influencers will create campaigns in exchange for products or product and reduced fees.
It can be difficult to measure ROI with influencers just as word of mouth is hard to measure but NeoReach analyzed influencer campaigns and found on average
• On average, campaigns focused on branding or engagements saw an 8x ROI
• On average, direct response ROI (App Installs, Signups) was 1.8x per $1
• Influencers with less than 250,000 followers deliver a 30% better ROI per dollar spent compared to those with 250k-1M followers.
Another ROI that is immeasurable is the viral factor. Influencer posts are usually left up in perpetuity (as specified in most contracts) which means at anytime the post can be shared, trend, or go viral. Influencer campaigns have an extremely long shelf life. A post sponsored by a hot dog brand that includes a recipe for the 4th of July has the potential to trend every 4th of July or at least be rediscovered year after year.
Less cost means more return on investment.
Brand Loyal Partnerships
Micro-influencers usually only promote companies and products they have used and believe in. They can be very brand loyal promoting products they use even when not being compensated. This can also be advantageous to companies who would like to form a long term partnership or are looking for ambassadors.
I, for one, like to tag restaurants, stores, and products in my Instagram posts just so my followers know where they can find what I’m wearing, eating, or using. For me, it’s more about sharing with my followers and helping them discover things they may like. If one of these companies approached me and asked for a partnership for a year in return for compensation, I would be very open to that.
For an investment in a micro-influencer, you could get a year’s worth of advertising for less than the price of one Instagram post from a mega-influencer. Your company will get someone who is already brand loyal with followers that will become brand loyal. Depending on the negotiations you could get ads placed in a weekly newsletter sent to followers, monthly blog or Instagram posts featuring the product line, weekly tweets and Facebook posts, a few product giveaways and inclusion in a holiday gift guide, not to mention all the word of mouth.
Multiple Platforms
Many mega-influencers are well known on one platform. They may have 500,000 followers on Instagram but no email list or blog presence. Most micro-influencers have a presence on multiple platforms. They may have 500,000 followers spread out over Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and their blog email list. By hiring a micro-influencer you can often have a larger reach even if the numbers are smaller.
As we know, different people use different social media platforms, many micro-influencers are also bloggers who utilize all the social platforms to get their blog posts out. This leads to many loyal followers on multiple platforms who seek out our opinion in the niche we write in. This way people who don’t use Facebook can still be reached on Twitter and people who don’t use Twitter can still be reached on Instagram. As micro-influencers it is in our best interest to build followers on all the social media platforms to reach more people who can become readers of our blogs.
What this means for your company is micro-influencers come with a ready-built following across multiple platforms made up of multiple ages, geographic locations, and socio-economic backgrounds. People who are your potential new customers. People who are waiting to learn about your product from someone they trust.
Hiring a micro-influencer to run a multi-platform campaign means your product gets seen by numerous people not just Instagram followers with an average age of 25 that are only interested in what fast fashion is trending today to be forgotten about tomorrow. The median age of Twitter users is 40 and Twitter users are shown to spend 26% more time with ads than other social media platforms and |
the other securing Eleazer close. Her expression hardened on him. “We get that you’re a big shot real estate guy, but no one’s selling this house. Not now, not ever.”
Bart scowled at her audacity to assume authority over a decision that was his and Abe’s to make. But more so, that she acted like she knew him. He stared at this woman with a round freckled face and pouting lips, her brown eyes piercing into him. Then he squinted. “Do I know you?”
Her plump mouth twisted in a derisive smirk. “You should.”
Abe emerged from the shadows before Bart could probe further. His older brother strode over and smiled at the woman. “Hey.”
“Hey.” She smiled shyly, edging closer when Eleazar started reaching for his brother.
Bart arched a brow as this fierce woman became a meek kitten in front of his brother, passing Eleazar into Abe’s arms. Squelching the momentary irritation at the warm look shared between the two, Bart eyed her suspiciously. “And who are you?”
“She’s Aunt Geri,” Darah said coldly, glaring at him again.
Bart arched a brow. “Aunt… Geri?”
“Geraldine Peña,” the woman said with that duplicitous smile on her face and extended a hand to him. “Pleased to meet you again, Bart.”
Again? Bart looked down at her hand and up at Abe, seeking answers.
“Don’t be rude,” Darah admonished like a mother rather than a little sister.
He clenched his jaw and looked back at Geraldine whose eyes shone with scornful humor. As though weights anchored his wrists to his side, he dragged his hand up to hers. As her short, stubby fingers closed over his palm, Bart realized that her hands were as rough as her manners.
“She’s helped Mom and Dad with house repairs for years now,” Abe supplied once the two disengaged hands and Bart shoved his in his pocket. There was pride in Abe’s voice that drew a shy smile on Geraldine’s face and a frown on Bart. “Maybe she’ll be of great use to you, y’know, helping us get the house back in working order.”
Geraldine smiled coyly. “I’d love to.”
Abe then turned his smile to Eleazar. “Ready for pizza?”
The boy perked up and nodded.
Chuckling low, Abe moved toward the kitchen. “Darah, come help order the right one this time.”
Darah didn’t budge, watching her second oldest brother like a hawk.
When Abe called for her again, she heaved a great sigh. “Don’t cause trouble,” she said to Bart in a stern tone before stomping off to the kitchen.
Geraldine smirked. “She’s funny.”
“A real comedienne,” Bart muttered, eyes stayed on her.
She broke eye contact and tucked tendrils of silky brown hair behind her ears. “Well, love to stay and chat but I’ve got work to do.” She started to turn away but stopped, glancing over her shoulder at him. “Save all that real-estate for Cali. Your family’s staying here if I can help it.”
Bart scowled, watching her move to the stairs. “Who are you?!”
“Try to remember, Bartimeus!” she called back, stomping up the stairs in her work boots.
The front door opened and Clement entered, shouldering the door close. Bart turned to him, waiting for acknowledgment or something. Instead, Clement just breezed past him to the kitchen as though he didn’t exist. Voices from the kitchen filled the silence and he stayed in the living room, feeling like the odd-one out.
Bart chuckled in self-derision. “Well isn’t this fantastic?” He turned to the mantle, seeing the family photos resting there from baby pictures of Eleazar to graduation pictures of both him and Abe.
There was no corner of this house that didn’t invoke a memory of Yonas and Ester Teka. His eyes stung and Bart blinked it away. He was clearly the only one thinking practically; this house needed to be sold and the sooner the better.
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Can Trump, Cruz Win Over GOP's "Four Factions"?
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Republicans who actually want their party to win the White House next year are increasingly worried.
When billionaire businessman and reality TV star Donald Trump shot to the lead in the polls shortly after announcing his candidacy last June, it was sensible to calm anxious conservatives by reminding them that the race had just begun, the first primaries were half a year away, and Trump was bound to implode. With less than eight weeks until the Iowa caucuses, and with Trump holding commanding leads in that state, in New Hampshire, and nationally, worries appear justified.
Meanwhile, freshman Sen. Ted Cruz—who has built an impressive ground game in the South and who is gaining in the polls as neurosurgeon Ben Carson sheds support—claims to be the one true conservative while denigrating fellow GOP candidates for their supposed deviations from the faith. That may prove a successful formula for victory in a fractious, closely contested race for the nomination. It’s unlikely to produce victory in a general election, especially when a minority of American voters identifies with your party.
Republicans less taken with bullying bloviation and doctrinal purity might derive comfort from the 2008 and 2012 Republican primary season. In December 2007, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was the frontrunner; by March 2008 he was a has-been. In December 2011, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the eventual nominee, was struggling to gain traction in a crowded field. These recent races suggest that candidates’ standing in the run-up to primary voting is a poor predictor of the party’s nominee.
Another source of comfort for conservatives convinced that compromise and conciliation are essential to the vindication of political principle is a new book by Henry Olsen and Dante J. Scala, “The Four Faces of the Republican Party: The Fight for the 2016 Presidential Nomination.” Conversant with the relevant political science scholarship, the authors recognize the importance of money, endorsements, elites, and momentum to victory in the primary process. But according to their “faction theory,” to win the party’s presidential nomination, a candidate must fashion a message that is embraced by one of the GOP’s major divisions and that proves acceptable to a significant proportion of voters in the others.
Contrary to the tendency of political scientists to focus on material incentives and impersonal forces but building on their empirical research, Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, and Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire, showcase the importance of ideas. By delving into state-by-state data from 2000, 2008, and 2012 primary exit polls, they demonstrate the inadequacy of the conventional view that the Republican Party comprises a more moderate establishment and a more conservative group of insurgents. Instead, they identify four “remarkably stable” and “discrete” factions.
“Moderate and liberal Republicans” represent 25 percent to 30 percent of all GOP voters nationwide and constitute the second-largest voting bloc in the party, the authors say. Such voters prefer less religious and less fiscally conservative candidates, and tend to be less religious themselves. A majority of this group believes that abortion should be legal but few regard it as a pressing issue. Nor do they consider illegal immigration a priority, though they are the likeliest of the four GOP factions to support some sort of legal status for undocumented immigrants already here. They admire candidates willing to stand up for their beliefs and they value experience. They are especially strong in the early primary states of New Hampshire, Florida, and Michigan.
“Somewhat conservative Republicans” are the most numerous nationally; they comprise 35 percent-40 percent of the GOP electorate. “They are not very vocal, but they form the bedrock base of the Republican Party,” write the authors, and “they always back the winner.” They are committed to free enterprise but also to reasonable regulation and a decent safety net. They favor limited government while supporting basic features of the welfare state. They embrace traditional values—four in 10 are evangelical—but they do not seek to enforce them through government. They dislike abortion on demand but are reluctant to impose severe restrictions. They reject radical change and rabble-rousing rhetoric, whether coming from the left or the right. Admiring experience and preferring candidates with a Burkean disposition to balance competing principles, these voters are “the sensible median voters of the Republican primary electorate.”
“Very conservative evangelicals” make up about 20 percent of the GOP coalition. They are more likely than members of other Republican blocs to reside in the South and less likely to have a college education. They champion religion and social issues “and see the United States in decline because of its movement away from the faith and moral codes of its past.” They are relatively open to government intervention in the economy. Very conservative evangelicals tend to be passionately pro-life: More than 80 percent of them believe that abortion should be banned in most cases, and almost half would outlaw it entirely. The overwhelming majority want their candidate to share their religious beliefs. Standing up for “true” conservative values is more important to them than it is to any other GOP faction.
“Very conservative secular voters” are the smallest GOP faction; they amount to 5 percent-10 percent of the party. They are most likely among Republican primary voters to graduate from college, earn a high income, and live in a large city. They incline toward “urbane, fiscally oriented” candidates such as Phil Gramm and Steve Forbes who advance sweeping schemes for shrinking government. They typically oppose abortion but do not actively seek to restrict it. Like very conservative religious voters, very conservative secular voters esteem purity of principle. They also fear decline, but of political principles not of morality, “believ[ing] that the American traditions and way of life enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are eroding quickly and that immediate action is needed to stem the tide and reverse course.”
By furnishing a refined account of the varieties of conservatism within the GOP, Olsen and Scala illuminate the GOP’s tendency to choose center-right nominees—such as George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney—rather than very conservative ones. Only 25 percent to 30 percent of GOP primary voters subscribe to hard-right positions, and the hard right is divided between religious social conservatives and secular limited government conservatives. It also explains Republican instability: All four major GOP factions are minority factions.
Under the authors’ theory, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz face formidable difficulties mixing and matching voters from their party’s four factions. The success of either would say much about the depth and breadth of the Republican electorate’s vexation with politics as usual.
Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His writings are posted at and he can be followed on Twitter @BerkowitzPeter.
Show commentsHide Comments<|endoftext|>Government failure - inflation
Inflation - How the Government Steals your Money
Stimulating the Economy Increases the Supply - so sneakily Decreases its Value
Prices remained more or less constant throughout the 19th century, although individual prices naturally went up and down with supply and demand. Broadly speaking, prices in America were the same in 1900 at the end of the century as they had been a hundred years earlier.
Savings kept their value, and house prices hadn't changed much. Why |
focuses upon products and services utilized by businesses and manufacturing firms, conducted among respondents employed in such businesses (as opposed to a consumer survey).
In-house recruiting
The recruiting of focus group participants by people who are physically located within the facility.
Initial Refusal
This occurs when a respondent refuses to participate in a survey at the interviewers’ initial introductory statement.
Instrument variation
Differences or changes in measurement instruments (e.g., interviews or observers) that explain differences in measurements.
Intelligent data entry
The logical checking of information being entered into a data entry device by that machine or one connected to it.
Interactive Interviewing
Asking questions and recording answers via computer
A recruitment method in which an interviewer stops people in a mall or other public location and administers survey.
Intercept Interview
A term used to describe a study conducted in person with respondents who are approached or intercepted in high traffic locations such as grocery stores or shopping malls.
Internal consistency reliability
Ability to produce similar results using different samples to measure a phenomenon during the same time period.
Internal database
Database developed from data within the organization.
Internal validity
The extent to which competing explanations for the experimental results observed can be avoided.
Interrupted time-series design
Research in which the treatment interrupts ongoing repeated measurements.
Is the event containing all simple events that are in both event A and event B. The concept can be extended to more than two events.
Taking a given number of units equally selected over the full population of study. The nth number interval is derived by dividing the total number of units by the sample number desired. Also known as nth selection.
Interval estimates
Inferences regarding the likelihood that a population value will fall within a certain range.
Interval scale
Ordinal scale with the additional property that the distance between observations is meaningful. An example would be the temperature. See ratio scale.
The exchange of information between the interviewer and the respondent. A questionnaire is the vehicle used for this exchange. The interviewer records the respondent’s responses to a question or series of questions. The exchange can be in person or on the telephone; answers can be recorded on paper or via computer.
See Respondent
The person conducting the interviewing by asking questions.
The person responsible for recruiting participants for a focus group or the person administering a questionnaire.
Interviewer Bias
An influence on answers to questions caused by the presence, attitudes or actions of the person asking the questions.
Interviewer error
Error that results from conscious or unconscious bias in the interviewer’s interaction with the respondent.
Interviewer’s instructions
Written directions to the interviewer on how to conduct the interview.
Itemized rating scales
Scales in which the respondent selects an answer from a limited number of ordered categories.
Judgment sample
A sample containing certain types of respondents, who are selected on the basis of the judgment that their attitudes or behavior will be representative of the population.
Key verifying
Having two operators enter the same data to verify that entry is accurate.
Key Word Recording
A method used by interviewers to record answers to open-end questions. Rather than recording the answer verbatim, only key words and phrases are written down, not complete sentences. This technique requires the skill of a well-trained interviewer so that important or meaningful words are not left out.
Means of converting hard copy to machine readable form by punching holes in either cards or paper tape (rarely used anymore).
Kolmogorov-Smirnov test
Test of the goodness of fit between the observed distribution and the expected distribution using ordinal data.
The kurtosis is a measure of peakedness. A negative kurtosis means the distribution is more flat and a positive kurtosis means the distribution is more peaked. A kurtosis of zero approximates a normal or bell-shaped distribution.
Labor force
All civilians who are working or actively looking for work, plus members of the Armed Forces stationed in the U.S.
Labor force participation rates
The ratio of the population working or looking for work in an age-sex category to the total population in the category.
Laboratory experiments
Experiments conducted in a controlled setting.
A probing technique, used in one-on-ones and focus groups, designed to delve into the real reasons for participants’ attitudes and behavior toward the topic. It is generally considered to be an intensive technique. The moderator seeks the reason behind each answer until he or she arrives at a basic human need such as ego or status.
See Cell
Lelly triads
Also known as repertory grids. used especially by advertising agencies to elicit consumer language for the products in question. Products (or whatever) are written or pictured on cards which are dealt three at a time. The respondent is invited to pick the odd one out and explain why it is odd. The language and key discriminators are noted.
Length of Interview
The actual number of minutes it takes to ask the questions and record the answers in a survey. This should include the time it takes to taste any products, review concepts, etc. Screening time should be shown separately so that accurate completion rates can be calculated.
Level of significance
Probability of making a Type I error.
Lifestyle research
Research that attempts to explain behavior by analyzing people’s attitudes, hobbies, activities and opinions. Often associated with psychographic research.
Lifestyle selectivity
Selectivity based on lifestyle habits of segments of the population, e.g., hobbies, interests, ownership etc.
Likert scale
A scale in which the respondent specifies a level of agreement or disagreement with statements that express a favorable or unfavorable attitude toward the concept under study. See also semantic differential.
Listed sample
A sample which contains only directory-listed telephone households.
Listed telephone households
Households which are listed in published telephone directories.
Logit model
A version of regression analysis using an S-shaped curve instead of a straight line. Used when responses are binary, e.g., yes/no, rather than continuous numbers.
A unique symbol, trademark or type style used to represent a company or brand name on packaging, in advertising, in promotional materials or other communications.
Long census form
The decennial census questionnaire that was answered by a sample of the population. Data from the long form are available only for large geographic areas because the Census Bureau protects the anonymity of all respondents.
Longitudinal study
A long-term survey based on repeated analysis of either the same sample (called a panel study) or new samples chosen at regular intervals.
Machine-readable data
Imprinted alpha-numeric data that can be read and converted to magnetic form by an optical character reader.
Mail Panel
A collection of respondents who have been recruited to participate in surveys conducted through the mail. The organization that has developed a mail panel generally has classification data about the household to allow the client to select a sample of respondents with whom to conduct a survey. Mail Panels can be local or national in scope.
Mail panels
A study in which participants are precontacted and screened, then periodically sent questionnaires.
Mail Survey
A survey conducted via mail. Respondents may, or may not, be recruited ahead of time to participate.
Male Head-of-Household (MHH)
The man most responsible for maintaining the household. May or may not be the primary wage earner.
Mall intercept interviewing
Shoppers are intercepted in public areas of malls and interviewed face-to-face.
Mall Intercepts
Interviews conducted in shopping malls by randomly selecting people from among those present to be screened. The main part of the interview can take place either on the mall floor or inside the offices of a data collection company located within the mall.
Management Report
A summary report of the survey data covering the highlights or key findings.
The process by which a computer generates thematic maps that combine geography with demographic information and a company’s sales data or other proprietary information.
MAPPing Mathematical Analysis of Perception and Preference.
See Perceptual MAPPing.
Margin of Error
The amount of sampling error one could expect to find, due to just chance, above or below the actual figure obtained in the survey results. See also: Sampling error.
A computer-generated frequency count of the number of people giving each answer to all the questions in a questionnaire. Also called an 80-column dump. Often used to monitor entry of valid codes and correct use of skip patterns.
Total of all individuals or organizations that represent potential buyers.
Market Research
A process used to define the size, location, and/or makeup of the market for a product or service.
Market segmentation
The process of dividing a total market into sub-groups of consumers who exhibit differing sensitivities to one or more marketing mix variables.
Market Share
See Brand Share.
The geographic area or areas in which a research project takes place. A market may be a region of the country, a state, a county, a city or some portion of a city.
Marketing & Opinion Research
A process used by businesses to collect, analyze and interpret information used to make sound business decisions and successfully manage the business.
Marketing concept
The business philosophy that a company’s effort should be adapted to the needs and wants of its customers.
Marketing information systems (MIS)
These systems create rather than simplify manipulated data, presenting data in a form useful to a variety of people within the organization.
Marketing mix
The unique blend of product pricing, promotion, offerings, and distribution designed to meet the needs of a specific group of customers.
Marketing research
The planning, collection, and analysis of data relevant to marketing decision making, and the communication of the results of this analysis to management.
Marketing strategy
Guiding the long-run use of the firm’s resources based on its existing and projected capabilities and on projected changes in the external environment.
Markov model
Sets out in matrix form the probability that the user of each brand in a category will switch next time to each other brand. Mathematically sound and now measurable through retail scanners.
Changes in subjects that take place during the experiment that are not related to the experiment but may affect their response to the experimental factor. See also history.
The maximum is the maximum value of all the values in the distribution.
also called the Average, is the most common measure of central tendency. It is equal to the sum of the case values divided by the number of cases.
Mean square error
The square root of the sum of the standard error squared and the bias squared. A measure of the total error to be expected for a sample estimate.
Measure of location
A quantity that locates a particular position in the frequency distribution. An example is the mean, which is a measure of the center of the frequency distribution.
Process of assigning numbers or labels to things in accordance with specific rules to represent quantities or qualities of attributes.
Measurement error
Error that results from a variation between the information being sought and the information actually obtained by the measurement process.
This term refers to methods of message communication. Media is the plural of medium. Magazines, newspapers, radio, television and billboards are referred to as advertising media.
Media marketing areas
The two firms which measure TV audiences, Arbitron and NPD/Nielsen, have slightly different definitions of media marketing area (television market), based on sampling, etc. Arbitron’s TV markets are called Areas of Dominant Influence (ADIs), while Nielsen’s are Designated Market Areas, or DMAs.
Media Research
Research that is centered on issues of media selection and efficiency
Media Test
Research method that examines the impact of advertising through various media.
The numerical observation that divides the distribution of observations in half. Sometimes referred to as the second quartile. The median, like the mean, is a measure of central tendency. It is the middle case if all the cases are sorted in numeric order. It is also the value that would occur at the 50th percentile.
Methodological log
A journal of detailed and time-sequenced notes on the investigative techniques used during a humanistic inquiry, with special attention to biases or distortions a given technique may have introduced.
Procedure by which data is collected (i.e., mall intercept, telephone survey, focus group, etc.)
The research procedures used; the section of the final report in which the researcher outlines the approach used in the research, including the method of recruiting participants, the types of questions used, and so on. Methodology can also mean the approach a moderator uses to conduct focus groups.
Metric scale
Identifies categories of the variable in which observations can be ranked from smallest to largest and the distance between variables is meaningful and the ratios of the observations are meaningful. Also known as ratio scale. Examples include weight, height, age, etc.
Census records of individual respondents stripped of their identifying information. Census microdata are available as public-use microdata samples (PUMS).
Movement of residence from one political area to another.
A focus group that contains between four to six participants. More than six is normally considered a full group, and fewer than four is a triad or a dyad.
The minimum is the minimum value of all the values in the distribution.
Mixed groups
A focus group that contains both males and females.
Geographic movement involving a change of residence.
The most frequently occurring measurement. The peak of a frequency curve. The median, like the mean, is a measure of central tendency. It is the middle case if all the cases are sorted in numeric order. It is also the value that would occur at the 50th percentile.
The formulation of mathematically-expressed variables to simulate a business decision environment. For example, a model could be formulated using demographics and a company’s financial data to select new markets that have the same combination of factors that are present in currently successful markets.
Someone who is the leader of a focus group discussion, in-depth interview, or other meeting. Often works from pre-determined outline of subjects to be covered.
Moderator guide
The outline that the moderator uses to lead the discussion in the focus group session. It is developed by the moderator on the basis of the briefings and identifies the topics that will be covered in a focus group session, and the approximate emphasis that will be given to each.
Test in which a respondent evaluates only one product.
Monadic Evaluation
A study or part of a study in which the respondent evaluates only one stimulus on its own merits, rather than comparing it to other test stimuli. The stimulus can be a product, concept, advertisement, etc.
A quality control measure which may involve observing, auditing and checking the interviewing for the purposes of ensuring required procedures are followed and to give feedback and instruction to the interviewers. Monitoring is one means of validating or giving assurance that data is collected from qualified respondents who are interviewed under prescribed conditions. Monitoring can be done in person for face-to-face interviews or by telephone for tele-phone interviews.
Loss of test units or subjects during the course of an experiment. The problem is that those lost may be systematically different from those who stay.
Marketing Research Association
Marketing Research Core Body of Knowledge
Marketing Research Society
MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area)
A free-standing metropolitan area surrounded by non-metropolitan counties and not closely associated with other metropolitan areas. Each MSA is grouped by population size and coded using government FIP codes.
A problem that arises when at least one of the independent variables in a linear combination is in effect always a weighted sum of the values of the other independent variables. When this occurs, we are unable to separate its influence on the dependent variable from that of the others.
Multidimensional scaling (MDS)
Procedures designed to measure several dimensions of a concept or object. Similar to factor analysis but mathematically purer. Factor analysis uses regular ordinal arithmetic, e.g., 2+2 = 4, whereas MDS requires numbers just to increase monotonically, e.g., 2+2 > 2. Provides perceptual maps and works from rankings (A>B). See also perceptual MAPPing.
Multiple Answers
When more than one answer is acceptable for the same question.
Multiple Choice Questions
Respondents are offered a check list of responses to a question an are asked to choose one or more that seem appropriate. Commonly referred to as closed-end questions in marketing and opinion research.
Multiple choice questions
Questions that ask a respondent to choose from a list of more than two answers.
Multiple regression analysis
Statistical procedure that studies multiple independent variables simultaneously to identify a pattern or patterns. See also regression analysis.
Multiple time-series design
An interrupted time-series design with a control group.
Multivariate analysis
Any statistical procedure that simultaneously analyzes several measurements (variables).
Mutually exclusive
Events are said to be mutually exclusive if they have no intersection.
Mystery Shopper
A person sent into a business location to act in the role of a customer to evaluate business and/or employee performance. A type of observational research.
Mystery shoppers
People employed to pose as consumers and shop at the competitors and their own stores to compare prices, displays, etc.
N.A. (No Answer):
The accepted abbreviation to indicate no response to a question because the respondent refused to reply, the question did not apply, or it was skipped for some reason.
N.H. or N.A.H. (Not At Home/No One Home)
The accepted abbreviation to indicate the respondent is not at home, there is no answer to the doorbell, or the telephone.
Neural network
A computer program that mimics the function of the human brain. In marketing research, neural networks are used as data analysis tools. By harnessing a computer’s ability to process millions of calculations quickly, neural networks can identify patterns, draw abstractions and uncover relationships in large amounts of data.
Mailing piece returned to mailer by the Postal Service because of an incorrect or undeliverable name or address. The nixie rate varies widely depending on the source of the mailing list.
Nominal grouping session
Qualitative research method in which consumers, brought together in small groups, independently generate ideas about a subject and hence discuss the ideas.
Nominal scale
Identifies categories of the variable. Categories are called classes or levels. Examples: male/female, user/nonuser.
Nonbalanced scales
Scales weighted toward one end or the other.
A judgment made without reference to another object, concept, or person.
Non-family household
A household comprised of a person living alone or with non-relatives, as defined by the Census Bureau.
Nonprobability sample
Subset of a population in which little or no attempt is made to ensure a representative cross section.
Occurrences which do not have an equal probability of occurring; not mathematically predictable on the basis of the classical theory of probability.
See N.A.
Nonresponse bias
Error that results from a systematic difference between those who do and do not respond to the measurement instrument.
Nonsampling error
All the sources of bias or inaccuracy in a study besides sampling error. Examples: leading by the interviewer, recording/data entry errors.
Normal distribution
A continuous distribution that is bell shaped and symmetrical about the mean.
A focus group participant who agrees to come to a session and is confirmed the same day, but nonetheless does not come to the group. Facilities compensate for no-shows by overrecruiting for groups by two or three people.
Nth selection
Statistical means of taking a given number of names or units equally selected over the full population of study. The nth number interval is derived by dividing the total number of units by the sample number desired. Also known as interval.
Null hypothesis
The statement being tested in a test of significance.
Numeric database
Database containing original survey data on a wide variety of topics.
The information to be developed from a study to serve the project’s purpose.
The value that the variable assumes for a single unit of the sample.
Observation Check
See Distribution Check.
Observation research
Descriptive research that monitors respondents’ actions without direct interaction. Sometimes called a quasi-experiment.
Observation room
The room from which client personnel observe and listen to focus group proceedings through a one-way mirror. Also called the back room or viewing room.
Observational Research
A means of collecting data through watching the situation of interest and recording behaviors, pertinent facts or actions.
Occupancy status
Housing unit classification as |
propositions in real time. Often, this means helping customers make product or quantity decisions based upon on-the-spot analysis of similar accounts.
Finally, great companies are building loyalty by providing Internet access to information. Your customer also needs fast access to solid information, a factor that can become an incremental advantage for your organization.
Here is the bottom line:Sales reps who have more information than the customer about a transaction can “trade” that information for higher prices and increased customer loyalty.
Build profits by targeting profitable activities
Here are some common sales and marketing issues which often act as barriers to higher profitability:
• While profit is the ultimate goal in most organizations, understanding the impact on profitability of an individual product, customer, channel, or sales representative is beyond the reach of most organizations.
• If we don’t understand what’s driving our profit, how do we focus our efforts and resources? The answer is that we often guess, or adopt a “flavor of the day.” In extreme (but not uncommon) cases, there’s no focus and we simply react to the next phone call.
• Because credible profitability information may not exist, most sales organizations are driven by revenue. The push is to increase sales, with the hope that profit will follow. However, revenue-driven models treat each dollar of revenue equally, whether it comes from a high-profit or a low-profit sale.
To break down these barriers, you require information that allows you to direct your team toward profitable targets. This same information enables you to steer your product mix toward increased profitability.
Finally, armed with intelligence, you can enable profit-based compensation and motivate your sales team toward more profitable, not simply more, dollars.
The second advantage comes down to this:Business intelligence tools enable you to quickly see which products you ought to be promoting, in which markets and through what channels.
Increase customer loyalty and retain customers for life
Increasing your customer base and retaining those customers involves several issues:
• Customer retention is problematic. Estimates show U.S. firms lose on average 25 percent of their customers annually. A key to maintaining your customers for life is to make certain they’re satisfied. The ideal, albeit difficult, solution is to spot problems early and correct them.
• Losing a high-value customer is a huge setback because these customers often purchase products with a high profit margin. These high-end customers also require less “maintenance” and don’t require the high costs associated with customer acquisition and start-up.
• When customers are unhappy, word gets around. Studies show that, on average, each unhappy customer relates his or her experience to nine other customers. On the other hand, many customers never openly complain to the vendor. They just suddenly go elsewhere.
Obviously, customer loyalty is built on customer satisfaction. The strategy that is needed, but rarely in place, includes developing processes that monitor leading satisfaction indicators and feeding that information back to you in time for action.
What should you measure? First, late and incomplete shipments are generally regarded as the primary cause of customer dissatisfaction. Despite the importance of timely and accurate delivery, few firms have a clue about their record in this area, either overall or with respect to any specific customer. You’ll likely want to start here, by measuring days between promised and actual delivery dates, for example. Similarly, you’ll likely want to monitor customer claims, disputes, complaints, and returns. Be aware that you also have data enabling you to monitor any changes in order frequency.
Once you’ve identified problems in any of these areas, you’ll be able to prioritize your process improvement initiatives according to the areas of greatest customer concern.
Even slightly reducing customer defections may have a big impact on profits. With easy-to-obtain information, you can ensure customers for life by increasing customer satisfaction. As a bonus, you’ll realize improved cash flow because invoice payments aren’t delayed by claims and disputes.
We’ve only cracked the door in this article, but I hope this initial view demonstrates the power of business intelligence tools in leveraging your sales and marketing efforts. I can’t emphasize enough how little lies between where your sales and marketing processes now stand and where they might be if you implement one or more of these advantages. We’ll cover the next three advantages in my next article.
Are you using business intelligence to your advantage?
Do you have experience with business intelligence tools in your organization? Send us an e-mail with your BI tips, problems, and questions, or post a comment below.
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To summarize: Is SK conducting random covid-19 tests on sizeable random samples of its population? Is any other country with a major outbreak doing such a thing?
This question arose in my mind in the light of rumours that the covid-19 epidemic would have a tendency to create a pool of infected 10 times larger than reported because alledgedly the main bulk of the infected don't experience grave symptoms and do not seek out a test or diagnosis.
• The "10 times higher" source you linked is talking about government suppression of case numbers, not about lack of symptoms. The number of infected who lack symptoms has been variously reported in the range of 25% to 60% depending on the specific study (and that range is not too surprising given the differing population characteristics). Please read news carefully before theorizing about it. – Bryan Krause Apr 3 at 16:30
• The lacking of symptoms is not a rumor, it's the result of scientific studies (and is on topic here). The issue of government underreporting is more of a rumor, depending on how much you trust intelligence reports publicized by other governments, but in any case is not on-topic here because it's not about medical sciences but about politics. – Bryan Krause Apr 3 at 16:35
• No, no, my question is about random testing in SK: is that not on-topic? A factual objective answer should be easy to get for the right person? – Thibaut Demaerel Apr 3 at 16:37
• I'll modify my question to stress that I'm asking about random testing in SK. – Thibaut Demaerel Apr 3 at 16:37
Not currently (source: South Korean friends).
See Why don't we take a random sample of the population to estimate the amount of COVID-19 cases?
| improve this answer | |
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"source: South Korean friends" ahaha :) – I likeThatMeow Apr 3 at 20:57
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Hearsay is also useful: often, when something has not been done there is no literature about it. – Thibaut Demaerel Apr 3 at 21:00
• @ThibautDemaerel yep, not to mention one of them is a physician working in Seoul. I was told to get free testing one must have been exposed to a contaminated individual (maybe there is a some other way to get free tests, e.g. used to be the case for some inbound international air travelers I believe, but we can't just walk in in a testing facility and get a free test). – Franck Dernoncourt Apr 3 at 21:04
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A CNN article from Mar 3rd (edition.cnn.com/2020/03/02/asia/…) says: "Health workers screen visitors with a questionnaire about their travel history and symptoms. Only those deemed to be at-risk will be tested." Also, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… indicates that 8.5 per 1000 inhabitants are SARS-CoV-2-positive, but 23 out of 1000 tests are positive, which is further evidence towards testing higher risk sub-pobulations. – cbeleites unhappy with SX Apr 3 at 21:34
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@cbeleitesunhappywithSX thanks for the references! – Franck Dernoncourt Apr 3 at 21:59
South Korea has adopted a highly technical and transparent approach to Covid-19. By sharing where infected people have been, citizens can see if they have been in contact or near contact with the infected person, and then request a test.
Since the first cases were confirmed, Korean public health authorities and local governments collaborated to precisely document the movement of infected people down to the minute. Authorities sought testimony, watched closed-circuit television, investigated smartphone GPS data and more, publicizing the so-called moving histories of Covid-19 patients. All local governments share information through websites, text messages, and media. Companies have developed apps that allow users to visualize the information. Koreans can now learn where infected people went, when they were there, and how they got there. If someone learns they might have been exposed, they can quickly visit a doctor and begin self-quarantine if they have similar symptoms.
On February 4, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took advantage of the post-MERS reform and authorized an unlicensed Covid-19 test; the government went on to test an extraordinary number of people. By February 26, Korea had tested 46,127 cases, while by that point, Japan had tested just 1,846 cases and the United States only 426. Tests still remain hard to come by in the United States, despite the Trump administration’s repeated suggestions that widespread testing is imminent.
There are few countries as technologically advanced as South Korea that are able to adopt this approach without a wide spread lockdown. And it helped that they allowed the use of an unapproved tests whereas in the USA the CDC blocked the use of independent tests which has lead to their current deplorable state of testing.
Following the end of the MERS outbreak, South Korea enacted a new law in 2016 that allows laboratories to use unapproved in-vitro diagnostic kits in the case of a public health emergency.
“Testing is absolutely critical with a fast-travelling virus like this,” says Kang. “We have tested over 350,000 cases so far – some patients are tested many times before they are released, so we can say they are fully cured. Altogether, we’re talking about one out of 145 or one out of 150 people having been tested so far.”
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Your Answer<|endoftext|>Problem 44630. Guess the number I'm thinking of
In this game you are competing against two other people to guess the number that I'm thinking of.
1. I randomly choose an integer between one and ten (inclusive). I don't provide any clues about the number.
2. Your first opponent tries to guess the number. They guess randomly.
3. Your second opponent tries to guess the number. They also guess randomly.
4. You try to guess the number. But you guess strategically.
5. The winner is the person who guesses my chosen number, or the person who guesses closest to my chosen number. This represents a "win".
6. If two contestants are equally close, they may share the win, with such a result being declared a "draw". (It is a loss for the remaining contestant.) A draw is worth half as much as a win.
Each person hears the guesses stated by any preceding competitors, so you will be aware of the two prior guesses (provided to you as the vector guessesOfOpponents). Moreover, each guess must be unique.
If everyone guessed randomly, each person should have an equal chance of winning.
It might seem that you're at a disadvantage, having the last opportunity to guess. But actually you have the advantage of extra knowledge.
By guessing strategically, you should be able to achieve a success rate of 45% or more, in which
success rate = (wins + draws/2) / games
Solution Stats
9.42% Correct | 90.58% Incorrect
Last Solution submitted on Feb 11, 2020
Problem Comments
Solution Comments<|endoftext|>1. Vugar
Thank you for information.
Could you tell me when World will switch to Ipv6?
Thank you
2. Hello Vugar
thanks for your comment ,there is a lot of ISP`s and company`s already switched to IPv6 long time ago
like AT&T , Facebook , google , Yahoo , Microsoft , and more
Leave a Reply
Your email address will not be published.<|endoftext|>RANT: Can we silently revolt?
The oligarchy runs the country for their own benefit. That hasn’t changed since forever. The “democracy” is all theater. At least since Lincoln, maybe just after Andrew Jackson. Clearly FDR, by the removal of the nation from the gold standard, set up the unlimited expansion of the gooferment. Wilson’s creation of the FED set up FDR.
How do we unwind this? Can we silently revolt? Participation in the elections is just a sham. I don’t know how we can derail this. If no one votes, what happens? Can we just ignore them? I don’t think so. Preserve wealth by buying gold and gold equivalents. They can inflate the currency, but we don’t get hurt if we’re not holding dollars.
Thinking about Robinson Crusoe’s island, with coconuts and fish, and a banker. If the banker inflates the currency, how do Tom and Dick protect themselves? The price of goods and services must go up the amount of inflation. If money is being inflated, then Tom and Dick must avoid holding money. Clearly, they can exchange directly. How do we extrapolate this to the island called America? You must escape the fiat currencies. Buy things that will hold their value. Real Estate. Gold. Commodities.
But what does the little guy do? Emulate the Mormons and the Amish. Put up a year’s supply of food. Pay off any bad debt. Buy gold. Or at least silver. Get small. Get light. Remember the 7 points of success. Develop streams of income. Perhaps that crazy real estate guy who wanted everyone to have 12 single family homes as rental properties. That’s his idea to create a pension of sorts. By the use of leverage, the renters pay off the mortgages. At the end of thirty years, the properties are yours and the rentals become your income stream. Unfortunately, that’s an impossible dream. Let’s assume that houses are 200k each. 12 = 2.4 million. You have to start with one. 20% down = 40k$. Say 10k$ for start up expenses. 5% 30 fixed mortgage = 1400 $/month. It just doesn’t work. 2.4M$ @ 5% = 120k$ per year. With no work and no risk. But, with 30k$ per house, 12 houses, 360k$ starts the chain. So you could boot yourself into it. You need a real sharp pencil and something that works to deliver. It’s possible.
What do you do? You need that white collar job to generate the money necessary to get started.
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%d bloggers like this:<|endoftext|>A Pig’s life: Why we got to think hard about climate flirtations…
Posted: December 4, 2009 in General, Uncategorized
Tags: ,
All eyes curently focus on Copenhagen. Will a workable consensus on tackling climate change emerge from the summit, or will we have another expensive round of cocktails, dinners and diplomatic mumbo jumbo? One hopes for the former. As countries play passing the parcel, I devote this post to the perils of playing with the environment by focusing on Serbia’s economy in the nineteenth century, whose development was thwarted due to man’s insatiable appetite for resources and material ambitions. The key takeaway is that a similar future awaits us if we fail to take cognizance of the matter of climate change seriously today.
Over the first half of the nineteenth century, Serbia was home to a relatively sparse self-governing population. Primarily an agrarian economy focused overwhelmingly on susbsistence farming, Serbian farmers found little incentives in opening up to the world. However the process of global transformation in the nineteenth century provided a fillip to commercialization in agriculture. Serbia had found a perfect opportunity. Gradually. the economy came to rely heavily on animal exports. Livestock, cattle and pigs were valued and export incomes from this trade helped sustain the economy, which saw a period of strong growth in the mid-nineteenth century. Apart from livestock, pigs played a vital role in the economy. Availability of forests, abundance of acorns and beech nuts were conducive to pig rearing. As overseas demand picked up and the process of integrating with the global economy gained traction, Serbia found itself favourably placed to capitalize on this opportunity due to its competitive advantage in pig rearing. A unit of pig fetched several times more than a unit of cereal and it took less labour to rear pigs. Compelling pig economics, a growing external market made people lethargic over time and the country fell behind in the innovativeness pecking order.
Population was low relative to land and forest availability. Low population, easy land availability and growing prosperity were the perfect ingredients for attracting immigrants to the country, and Serbia saw its population more than doubling within 40 years. Rising population pressures and political motivations in attracting and building a loyal emigrant base led to changes in land ownership policies that encouraged deforestation. Increasing population density led to deforestation which ultimately reduced fodder availability for pigs. Farmers responded by feeding pigs with maize instead of acorns. While this seemed a short-term fix, pigs started becoming leaner as a result of this change. Not only did leaner pigs fetch lower prices in the global market, the farmer now had to grapple with rising costs (he had to raise maize). This led to a progressive deterioration in pig economics and led to a shortage of pig availability for domestic consumption. As pigs continued getting leaner, global market demand fell off a cliff. Deforestation had killed the pig that laid the golden whatever…These unsustainable longer term developments eventually led to a slowdown in growth rates in the Serbian economy. The regime shift from an animal exports-dependent economy to a cereal-driven agrarian economy was painful and Serbia paid a heavy price by lagging behind peer countries in the region…
A similar – if not bleaker – future awaits us if we fail to rein in our abuse of ecological balances. Some of the effects of long term climatic changes are already being felt across the globe and if anything, this is only going to get worse. It is a one-way street…Will Copenhagen help?
While the idealist in me wants to cry ‘yes!’, the realist has more pessimistic prognostications. The realization that we are in this together is almost a given at the international level. The bigger |
"secret", the Slavic, or Aryan runes, rather close to the word "dig". And even in the ancient temples of Slavs explanatory rune inscriptions were dug on the ground meter high letters, calls runes. Runic inscriptions have come to us again from the Paleolithic and called Mokos runes, runes and rune Rhoda Peace. These kinds of ancient Slavic literature were intimately connected with the deities of the Slavs.
Runes Mokos - is syllabic alphabet Slavs, their Runic. The oldest type of writing. At the time, open syllables were represented in the form of independent characters. The first inscription with runes Mokos published academic Ch.D.Frähn in German, but deciphering these inscriptions was not successful, as in the 19th century, many took Runica for some kind of old Germanic runes. Nevertheless, these runes were used widely in ancient Russia in the period of the Grand Duchy, gradually leaving their use. Themselves runes Mokos associated with the goddess Makosh - the most ancient and powerful goddess.
Runes of Mary is considered the most mysterious type of ancient Slavic writing. There is an assumption that it is more key meanings. Originally Mara - the goddess of death and disease. And it was considered a very strong cult during the Paleolithic. It was dedicated to the goddess of the horned animals, mostly goats. In general, the expression of Mary runes mean not only secret, but something related to the world beyond the grave. A mythic power of the goddess of the temple gave the world beyond the grave real power over people. And it was Mary church at that time to perform the most important functions relating to social security and the protection of natural resources.
Scandinavian runes is also divided into two types - the Norwegian and Danish. Norse runes, as well as others, have a tendency to minimize the signs. In the ninth-tenth centuries were mainly used the Swedish-Norwegian runes, and only later began to differentiate the Norwegian version of the inscription of runes, close to the Danish. In the ninth-tenth century, moreover, particularly popular so-called Manx runes distinguishing feature - a lack sixteenth rune. In the eleventh century the punctate runes more refined Scandinavian who, because of a large number of phonetic values of each rune could not pass written with sufficient accuracy.
There are still some runes - the Anglo-Saxon. The fact that witch and priests in Britain were not satisfied with the classical Futhark, and decided to create his own runic system to the ninth century rose to 33 characters. These runes also called the late Anglo-Saxon or notumbri.
But in the Nordic runes continuously and gradually changed. Clerics develop new rune rows, then apply only for writing. And if the first runic alphabets revised contain 16 characters that are sufficiently close in shape to the Futhark. The latter, the eleventh-twelfth century, containing 15 characters, and sometimes less. Moreover, these signs do not have to Futhark absolutely nothing in common. Such processing is often called the Younger Futhark runes. And that is a junior in the Nordic runes made many inscriptions on the memorial stone. As a rule, these inscriptions are dated the eleventh century.
You can choose the one rune row, which is more suitable for you. What will it be - Slavic, Senior Futhark, or minor - is not important. The main thing - to understand the value of runic characters and feel them.
Tags: runes
24.11.2001 Red Mercury<|endoftext|>Share |
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Syria steps up assault on Homs
Reports of dozens killed in heavy shelling as Russian foreign minister heads to Damascus to push for reforms.
Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov is due to visit Damascus on Tuesday to press President Bashar al-Assad to implement democratic reforms after Russia and China vetoed any UN-backed measures against the Syrian government over its crackdown on the 11-month uprising.
US President Barack Obam said that while the West was prepared to lean hard on President Bashar al-Assad diplomatically, they still had no intention of using force to topple him.
"I think it is very important for us to try to resolve this without recourse to outside military intervention. And I think that's possible," Barack Obama told NBC's Today show.
'Rockets are falling'
The authenticity of the video could not immediately be verified.
'Non-stop bombing'
Source:Al Jazeera and agencies
Pictured: Swollen face of trainee chef left for dead after he was savagely beaten 'by Asian gang in hate crime attack'
Police hunting a gang of Asian youths who battered a Caucasian teenager and left him for dead were treating the savage beating as a ‘hate crime’ last night.
Trainee chef Dan Stringer, 17, was repeatedly kicked and punched by a mob of up to eight people after he fell over as they were chasing him down the street near Manchester.
The victim and his best friend Kavan Brown, also 17, were walking down Market Street, Hyde, Saturday evening when they passed by a takeaway shop.
Inside were a group of Asian men and a woman, one of whom banged on the window, produced a knife and made a threatening gesture suggesting they were going to cut their throats.
The victims ignored the gang and walked on, but moments later the group spilled outside and ran after them.
They tried to flee, but Dan fell over and was attacked by the gang.
Victim: Police hunting a gang of Asian youths who battered the teenager and left him for dead are treating the savage beating as a 'hate crime'
Greater Manchester Police said he was repeatedly punched and kicked as he lay on the ground, suffering two fractured eye sockets.
He underwent surgery in hospital and is now in a stable condition. His mother Cheryl Stringer, 44, a care home supervisor from Stockport, Greater Manchester, posted a message on Facebook: ‘Been at Manchester Eye hospital all day.
‘He has damaged his nerves behind his eye we don't know the extent of this until his swelling goes down.
‘He then needs plastic surgery on the eye socket that they broke in two places. He also has several fractures to his cheek that needs plastic surgery and he also has a fractured skull.
‘It's going to be a long long battle for my gorgeous boy. Still can't understand why they left him in the road to die. What b******s do this?
‘Do they not have mums who care and poor Kav who had to stand and see his best mate left for dead. Well I hope they rot in hell.’
Dan before the attack: Police are hunting a gang of Asian youth who battered this teenager and left him for deadBefore: The teenager needs plastic surgery on the eye socket that is broken in two places. He also has several fractures to his cheek and a fractured skull
Kavan who suffered a broken nose in the attack said: ‘I just can't understand why it happened. ‘I'd never seen any of them in my life before but they seemed to pick us out as we walked down the street.
‘They split us up and we each had five of them attacking us, it was horrific. When they ran off, I saw Daniel on the floor, he was conscious but in a really bad way.
‘I'm still in shock at what happened to me but it's even more horrendous to see your best mate in the state he's in and now we're all just praying he'll be okay.’
A police spokesman confirmed the attack was being treated as a hate crime, although it is understood
Christmas time: Police are treating the savage beating as a 'hate crime'
there were no racist or other comments directed at either victim.
Police said there were seven or eight offenders who are described as being Asian, in their late teens or early 20s.
Det Insp Dave Moores said: ‘The hospitalised victim hasn't yet been able to give us an account of what happened and what led up to this.
‘Please, if you saw the incident or what led up to it, or if you have any information that could help us, then pick up the phone.
‘I completely understand why this would cause some legitimate concern in the community, but I do not want anyone to jump to any conclusions about this.
‘This type of incident is unusual in Hyde, but that does not lessen the impact on the victims, their families and the wider community.’
Read more:
KITA leaders to talk about party future sans Zaid
KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 7 — Parti Keadilan Insan Tanah Air (KITA) leaders are planning to meet at the end of the month to decide their future ahead of Datuk Zaid Ibrahim’s decision to dissolve the party.
“If the party can be free from infestation by undesirable elements and infiltrators without dissolving the party, then it is a preferred option.
“However if the party leadership feels that the best way to prevent the party from being a vehicle to abuse the electoral process is to close the party, then that will be the decision taken,” the party’s information chief Mohamed Mazlan Abdul Manaf said in a statement today.
He said he agreed with Zaid (picture) that KITA “does not condone dirty tactics and gutter politics” but stressed that the statement was the only president’s personal view and was not entirely shared by the other members.
He said the dissolution would only be one of the options that will be discussed at its next central executive committee meeting at the end of this month.
Last Thursday, Zaid said an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) would be held to dissolve KITA following reports of members in Kedah and Penang openly attacking Pakatan Rakyat (PR), “making it clear that they are not interested in real issues and merely want to embarrass and ridicule the opposition.”
Several state leaders then held a press conference on Saturday saying they rejected Zaid’s bid to dissolve the party and called for his resignation as the proposal was”unprincipled” and “irresponsible”.
“While we welcome members who genuinely wish to contest in the elections to fight for the party’s manifesto and principles, we will not field candidates whose objective is to ‘spoil votes’, and who are being used by certain groups to achieve their political aims.
“We will certainly not allow the party to be used in that way,” Mohamed Mazlan said.
He also said the party has been “infiltrated by members whose sole agenda appears to be to contest the next general election.”
Zaid, a former Umno minister who joined the opposition PKR in mid-2009, had alleged gross abuse in the PR party’s election process during his unsuccessful campaign to be deputy president, which eventually led him to form KITA.
But the two-year-old party has been fraught with internal bickering and challenges against Zaid’s leadership by other KITA members, who have disagreed with his pro-opposition stand.
Zaid recently announced that KITA will not be contesting the coming polls and promised to offer the party’s “unconditional support” to the federal opposition.
The state leaders from Kedah, Selangor and Johor had also said they wanted former Selangor PAS chief Datuk Hasan Ali to lead the party instead of Zaid.
The former Selangor executive councillor last week said he would start a new non-governmental organisation called JATI to continue defending Islam, Malay rights and the Malay Rulers, describing it as a “third force” to help determine who should form the next government.
The Gombak Setia assemblyman was expelled from the party last month for having persistently undermined PAS’s leadership.
Hasan has also repeatedly accused the party of deviating from its Islamic cause.
RPK: There is corruption in Selangor
The controversial blogger, who claims that he is trying to save Pakatan Rakyat, vows to reveal proof and hopes that Anwar Ibrahim will act on the matter.
PETALING JAYA: Controversial blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin has alleged that there is corruption in the Pakatan Rakyat Selangor government and vowed to disclose the evidence.
Following this, he expressed hope that the opposition bloc’s leader Anwar Ibrahim would act on the matter even if it meant that the heads of his close associates had to roll.
When his complaints fell on deaf ears, Raja Petra told FMT that he was forced to turn to the pro-government mainstream media to drive home the point.
“And boy, did we shake them up,” stressed the blogger, who earned fame by rattling the Barisan Nasional ruling coalition via the alternative media.
However, Raja Petra said that instead of acknowledging the problem and promising to rectify it, Pakatan chose to discredit him.
“Their reaction was ‘he has been bought, he is working for Umno’… if the best they can do is (to accuse me) of ‘mala fide’ (and) that I am out to kill Pakatan rather than save Pakatan, which is what I am trying to do, then I have to take this to the next step,” he added.
The next step, he explained, would be to furnish the evidence since Pakatan leaders had urged him to do so instead of hurling allegations.
“Sometimes, be careful what you wish for. But since this is a challenge, and people have said ‘unless you can prove your allegations with evidence, we are not going to take notice of you’…fine. This is what you want, it is not what I want, I will do what you want.
“After this (when the evidence is revealed), I hope the effect will be… that Anwar will grab the bull by
the horns. And even if he has to cut off the heads of the people he loves, he will do so,” he added.
Raja Petra warned that if Anwar chose to shield those responsible, then he should be prepared to face the consequence of Pakatan losing Selangor.
Earlier, the blogger said that when he met the opposition leader in London in 2010, he had told the latter about the alleged corruption in Selangor but nothing was done about it.
Raja Petra claimed that he was alerted about the matter a year earlier by one of his whistleblowers, who was supposed to compile the evidence.
He also made a startling allegation that this whistleblower was murdered two weeks later but declined to elaborate on the incident.
“That’s another story, which we will talk about another time,” he said.
‘Umno sharks smell blood’
Meanwhile, Raja Petra also claimed that certain Pakatan politicians in Selangor had solicited funds from businessmen for their electoral war chest.
“These people (the businessmen) are doing business in Selangor, they need approvals, they need help from the state government. Would these people dare say ‘no’? Or (say) that they think this is unethical?
“Of course they would have to give, because if they don’t give, they would be in trouble. One person had refused to give and his project is in trouble now, he can’t get the approval,” he added.
Raja Petra stressed that these issues must be brought into the open and hopefully Pakatan would act to prove to the voters in Selangor that it was serious about combating corruption.
“It worries me when people who voted Pakatan in 2008, today tell me ‘Pakatan, BN all the same, both also corrupted’. This is not a good sign,” he said, adding that the voice of discontent was growing in numbers, including among those close to Pakatan and its leaders.
The blogger said that Pakatan faced a genuine risk of losing Selangor and this had even prompted a power struggle in Umno, with regard to who should be the next menteri besar if BN captured the state.
“These are like sharks, which smell the blood…,” he said, adding that the sharks in Umno had picked up the scent because they could sense that Pakatan might be “ripped to pieces” in the next polls.
Raja Petra said that if Pakatan wanted to wait until after the election to rectify the problem, then it would be too late just like what happened in Perak.
“Do we want to wait until Selangor is also lost?” he asked.
Not everyone in Umno is happy with his meet-the-people sessions.
By Rashid Ahmad
KUALA LUMPUR: The election fever is still around, but temperatures are not as high as they were at the end of last year, when politics was on everyone’s lips, including schoolchildren.
The fever started going down in December, when people were busy collecting the RM100 government handouts for their school-going children. This month, they are busy filling up forms for the RM500 cash aid.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak is continuing with his meet-the-people sessions, announcing various new policies and trying to rebut allegations of Barisan Nasional misdeeds. The opposition parties seem to have plenty of information that even grassroots Umno leaders are not privy to.
Najib’s people claim that he is not on an election campaign trail, but merely doing his duty of seeing to it that the people get the most out of the country’s economic development.
However, voices from both sides of the political divide insist that he is campaigning, playing Santa Claus to win votes for BN.
In Umno itself, grassroots leaders liken Najib’s campaign to the United States’ presidential campaign. A Selangor-based leader said the prime minister was doing exactly what an American presidential candidate would do – moving from one state to another at lightning speed.
But are Malaysian voters ready for that kind of politics?
“Malaysian voters, if I am not wrong, do not go much for the kind of party politics that Najib is trying to promote now – vote BN because I am the chairman and I will see to it that your problems will be solved,” said the Selangor Umno man.
“Malaysians, especially the rural Malays, still want to be connected with their assemblymen or MPs on a personal basis. They get some kind of satisfaction with assurances from the assemblymen or MPs although some may be aware that they might not even raise their problems with the party leadership.
“Given that kind of attitude, I wonder how effective Najib’s campaign is although he and other leaders say it is not a campaign but a series of meet-the-people sessions or whatever name they care to call it.”
Valid question
Another grassroots Umno leader said some Malay voters were asking whether the Najib sessions were an indication that Cabinet ministers were not capable of doing what he was doing or that local Umno leaders had lost their credibility. He said this was a valid question.
“Or have MIC, MIC and other BN parties lost their influence? These are questions we get at the grassroots although we manage to get people to attend all the Najib functions,” he said.
“Najib has, one way or another, diluted the credibility of grassroots leaders. This may be bad for us or whoever will be contesting in the coming election.”
While Umno grassroots leaders are debating the pros and cons of Najib’s meet-the-people sessions, the opposition parties are grappling with their own internal problems.
Ideological and philosophical differences among the Pakatan Rakyat parties may see their performance declining, especially with more Malays who supported them in 2008 now coming out in the open with problems that have yet to be solved.
Given the current scenario, both sides of the political divide are actually in the same position – trying hard to win the hearts and minds of voters who are more politically mature than their counterparts of previous generations.
‘Give us another public holiday’
Batu Caves temple president Nadarajah asks PM Najib to consider two days of public holidays for Deepavali.
SELAYANG: Prime |
aquatic larvae that make cases to protect their developing bodies. The cases are spun from silk and other materials such as grains of sand or plant material, bits of bone and shell. Duprat collected the larvae from their normal environments, brought them to his studio, removed their own natural cases, and filled their aquariums with different materials from which they can begin to recreate their protective chambers. He inserted materials such as gold spangles and semi-precious and precious stones such as lapis lazuli, coral, pearls, turquoise, diamonds and opals. Duprat’s fancy insects also demonstrate his interest in productive interrelations between organic forms and technologized materials.
Artifix Mori‘s use of animating a lifeless creature brought to mind Bruce Cannon’s piece TreeTime, a computer-controlled robotic sculpture fabricated from parts of a downed tree. He discussed his thoughts as he created the piece:
This machine is I think equal parts meditation on slowness and bastardization of nature. The obvious reference to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in the lightning-struck tree, the garish reassembly, the electrification, the technological “improvement” upon the original organism, is intentional TreeTime is a morality story about limits.
Artifix Mori also explores elements of bastardizing nature. The moths in the cocoons in Artifix Mori have not and will not hatch and have not been allowed to emerge, which is why it creates a pristine and whole cocoon with an undivided silk strand. The moth is the sacrifice and thus the piece edits nature for our own use. The silkworm also no longer exists in the wild, after centuries of inbreeding it is incapable of flight. It mates quickly and dies a day after laying eggs. (More on the entire silk process here)
Artifix Mori feels like some kind of mechanical sister to Bai Jiang Can, the herbal medicine made from white mummified silkworms used to extinguish wind and stop spasms and convulsions. Silkworms are not really performing a message with their cocoons, but the cocoons in this piece are performing a message that, like all work that affects me, I ingest.
A detail view of Artifix Mori
The relationship between art, science and technology is a prevalent theme in Parker and Krugman’s work and they have an extensive peer group and join a long history of artists. Leonardo, a journal of arts, sciences and technology has been in publication for a while, as well as emerging organizations such as The Clipperton Project that catalyze situations, ideas and materials (in this example, an isolated French atoll is the lab and the medium) to foster invention through the creative processes of art and science working together, both using the tools of our time. But also, many artists working with science and nature make a point to say they are not eco-warriors, they are just interested in invention and the end result.
David Rothenberg, author of books such as Why Birds Sing and Thousand Mile Song, recently published Survival of the Beautiful, an investigation of why nature is beautiful and how art has influenced science. Inspired by Darwin’s observations that animals have a natural aesthetic sense, the book probes into “the mysteries of why we create art, and why animals, humans included, have innate appreciation for beauty.” One of the scientists Rothenberg speaks of is Erich Jarvis, an unconventional neuroscientist who studied dance and choreography before focusing on science. One of Jarvis’s research projects revolved around the brain of a hummingbird. Even though that brain is very tiny (the North American ruby-throated hummingbird has a brain weighing less than a gram, but percentage wise, the hummingbird has the largest brain of all birds, 4.2% of its total body weight) it is a complex neural network that he discovered allows hummingbirds to teach each other to sing. There are many studies of hummingbird brains too that show they are capable of episodic memory. Our nerve signals travel slowly and require time to register a stimulus, but a hummingbird brain is capable of lighting-quick thoughts due to their size. Also if you measure life by counting heartbeats, their life span is comparable to ours. The ratio comparison reminded me of the sound of the actuators in Artifix Mori that is scaled from the life span of the moth to that of the human. Both examples are linking species.
The space of this installation, in a skybridge corridor that is a functional artery of the institution, extends an invitation to simply pass or pace and adds to the experience of Artifix Mori. Its appearance is subtle and playful, but upon exploration it begins to feel rather directive as it gently but consistently interacts with you in the narrow space. Despite if you want to just walk by. This experience would be very different if it were installed in a large room. Both the Skybridge and Artifix Mori call attention to the interconnectedness of simple individual actions and nature through various intermediaries. Our small movement affects a small organic form, halted in its process of becoming. Whereas philosophical thinking is explicitly concerned with the sense of being, the nature of becoming that I take away from this piece feels a bit more like the space of macabre poetry in the guise of its visual presentation. The cocoons wobbly movements feel like animated sound bites on not just editing nature and the tolls of production and consumption, but also the pace of thought. They ask the question on and through this new nature, what are we are all in the process of becoming?
Artifix Mori is on view at the Eugene Lang College Skybridge Art & Sound Space (65 West 11th street, 3rd floor, Greenwich Village, Manhattan) through January 31, 2012.
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Labels, tins, and stale sauce
Are we all going nuts, in a world of labels, factions and namecalling? Tim’s Post-Christian Blog surveys the wraths and sorrows of current US Political discourse, as revealed in some of the idiotic polarized scare tactics over healthcare this year. This could be a perfectly rational debate about how to tackle a pragmatic necessity that everybody knows has been a costly mess for years. Instead people with wide flaring nostrils shout past each other. You can’t, suggests Tim, have civilisation without a certain degree of civility.
And nearer home, in gentler mode, Church Mouse questions our increasing need to find the right pigeonholes for others. Do Anglicans really need a whole complex alphabetti spaghetti of acronyms, factional descriptors and sub-species?
We're starting to build a two dimensional model. Along one axis we have the liberal – conservative dimension, along the other the Anglo-Catholic – evangelical dimension.
Unfortunately, the complexity of this has led to the use of numerous other labels to fill in some of the gaps, or to describe particular intersections on these two axes. Step forward the charismatics, the liberal evangelicals and the open evangelicals. Take a bow orthodox Anglicans, confessing Anglicans, affirming Anglicans and inclusive Anglicans, and apologies to any mouse has left out.
Mouse quotes, illuminatingly, a Guardian interview with Nicky Gumbel, leader of Alpha and prominent Christian Evangelist:
This may sound pernickety but I wouldn't describe myself as an evangelical. These are labels, which I don't think are helpful. If I was going to use any label it would be Christian, and if you push me any further I'd say I'm an Anglican – that's the family of the church that I belong to. There's nothing wrong with any of the other labels, but if you have any of them I want them all. If you're going to say, 'I'm Catholic, liberal, evangelical … ' let's have them all. But I wouldn't want to isolate one of those. Personally I think labels are terribly unhelpful because they enable you to dismiss things.
It’s up to us how we choose to label ourselves, and others, and what significance we attach to them. Four thoughts strike me:
1. In days gone by the Church of England, like all Western Christianity, was probably, to use a marketing term, over-branded. Sub-species identifiers gave some shape to a complex rambling bundle of institutions, colour coding them with the quaint simplistic language of “Churchmanship.” The term, in itself, is a subtle hint that women always were probably rather more grown up about this stuff.
2. There is a world of difference between the kinds of labels people use to describe, themselves, what they are trying to achieve, and name-calling. Nicky Gumbel makes a very wise point about the power of the names we stick on others to absolve us from engaging with them. Take the most basic label of the lot. If someone says to someone else “You remind me so much of Jesus that I’m going to call you a Christian” that is immensely cool. However, if I say of myself, “I (as opposed to all these other people) remind me so much of Jesus that I’m gong to call myself a Christian,” it’s almost impossible to resist the tsunami of pride, ego and folly that follow directly from the whole exercise. Do this on a corporate level, and you end up with a tangle of astroturf organisations that take themselves far too seriously having largely taken leave of God. Clichéd words reveal clichéd thought, and soon we are all idiots.
3. There’s a basic principle in St Paul’s writings that what proceeds from faith is faith. That’s something we all need for this journey. By implication what proceeds from fear, ego and political indoor games is, er, fear, ego and political indoor games. Someone said of Zwingli that he was a great campaigner and lousy theologian. By their fruits ye shall know them. That’s what the man said.
4. This is a missional no-brainer. However pleased with themselves partisanship may make partisans feel, the punters can see through ithe sillinesst from a mile off. The world is full of self-important screwed-up Mr Angry factions. People on the threshold of faith are longing for better possibilities and, quaintly, surprisingly often, look to the Church to model them. They have no desire to join yet another sect. And the idea that any denomination or faction has some kind of franchise on being a real Christian actually obscures the key notion that the Church actually is supposed to be the bridgehead expression of a new humanity God is pulling together in Christ. The most “successful” factions win the battle but lose the war. The Devil has a good laugh, and the show rolls on.
So I’m rather with the Mouse. Let’s try consigning the labels to the fiery pit for a while, and see what happens if we entertain the daring notion that ths enterprise is all about Jesus Christ, not human ego, vanity and insecurity?
ROBERTA said...
this piece hit me in the gut - do i label myself a Christian because i think i am so like Christ? - how do i label others? and what effect does it have on our relationship? so for today i'll leave my labelmaker in the drawer & see if i can actually see the person i've labeled - which includes myself.
Tobias Stanislas Haller said...
Thanks for this wisdom. "Factions there must be" as Paul observed, "in order to discern what is true." (1 Cor 11:19) But the angrier and more inward-turning the factions become, the less willing are they to discern what the other might have right while they are in the wrong. If it is all about one side "winning" then no one really "wins." What's the old saying, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
Thanks again,
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...<|endoftext|>The Relational Sphere Hypothesis
Part Of: Demystifying Sociality sequence
Followup To: The Three Spheres of Culture
Content Summary: 1700 words, 17 min read
A Theory of Relationship Dynamics
How can we make sense of social life? Let’s start by considering a simple cup of coffee.
1. In my own house, I can just help myself to as much as I want, sharing with others in the framework of “what’s mine is yours.”
2. Or my friend can get me a cup of coffee in return for the one I got for him yesterday, so we take turns or match small favors for each other.
3. At Starbucks, I buy my coffee, using price and value as the framework.
4. To my children, however, none of these principles apply. To them, coffee is something that only “big people” are allowed to drink: It is a privilege that goes with social rank.
What is true of a humble cup of coffee is true of the moral dilemmas surrounding major policy questions such as organ donation. Decisions have to be made, and there are again four fundamental ways to make them:
1. Should we hold a lottery, giving each person an equal chance?
2. Should we somehow rank the social importance of potential recipients?
3. Should we sell organs to the highest bidder?
4. Or should we expect everyone in a local community to give freely, offering a kidney to anyone group member in need?
(The above excerpt is from [FE] )
Relational Models Theory (RMT) proposes that these four social categories are exhaustive and culturally universal. Human interactions are complex, and typically use more than one of the above processes. But every relationship, in every culture, seems to be some combination of the following:
• In Communal Sharing (Communality), people are viewed as equals oriented around some particular identity. This can include being in love, sports fans, and co-religionists.
• In Authority Ranking (Dominance), people are situated in a hierarchy where superiors are deferred to, respected, and in some cases obeyed.
• In Equality Matching (Reciprocity) people are interested in restoring balance, turn-taking, and making sure everyone is treated fairly.
• In Market Pricing (Exchange), relationships are governed by quantitative, utilitarian concerns such as prices, exchanges, or cost-benefit analyses.
We can use relational models to explain a wide swathe of social phenomena:
• Some examples of norm violation are in fact category errors. For example, we would interpret a situation such as the price of our meal is two hours on dishwasher duty as a conflation of Market Pricing vs. Equality Matching.
• Some (but not all) examples of taboo trade-offs are in fact category errors. The Finite Price of Human Life thesis feels counterintuitive because it pits our Market Pricing versus the sacred values held by Communality.
• Humans often use indirect speech acts to reconcile relationship types with semantic content.Rather than saying e.g., “pick me up after work”, we often say things like, “If you would pick me up after work, that would be awesome”. While more verbose, the latter expression feels more polite because it is couched in a Communality frame, rather than signaling Dominance.
In addition to its explanatory reach, multiple strands of evidence come together in support of Relational Model theory:
• Factor analysis. If you ask people to describe their relationships, you can see whether your theory predicts statistical patterns in their responses. When RMT was compared with other taxonomies (and there are a lot of them), RMT starkly outperforms its competitors.
• Ethnographies. RMT was invented by anthropologist Alan Fiske to capture regularities he saw across different cultures. For example, he found examples of marriage treated as Dominance, as Market Pricing, etc – but never a fifth type. A number of cross-cultural studies indicate that the four relational models constitute a human universal.
• Social errors. When people misremember a person’s name, it tends to be a person with whom they share the same relationship type. For example, if you flub the name of your boss, you are more likely to say the name of someone else in a position of authority over you.
• Brain studies. In the cortex, the default mode network is universally acknowledged to perform social processing. But within this specialized region, different subregions are activated when processing e.g., Communality vs Reciprocity relationships.
The Relational Sphere Hypothesis
Human societies can be conceived as operating in three spheres: markets, governments, and communities. The Cultural Sphere Hypothesis holds this trichotomy to be fundamental, and exhaustive of social space.
Relational Models_ Cultural Regime Dissociations (4)
There seems to be a relationship between the cultural spheres and relation models. But there are three spheres vs four models. What gives?
Things become more clear when we remember that market- based economies were invented during the Neolithic Revolution, with the dawn of agriculture. Before this inflection point in history, transactions took place with gift economies.
This suggests that the Market Pricing relational model is evolutionarily recent: before the invention of agriculture, it simply did not exist.
Relational Model Theory_ Models vs Spheres (3)
I call this particular mapping from relational models to cultural spheres the Relational Sphere Hypothesis (RSH). It is an intertheoretic reduction: it purports to be a significant join point between micro- and macro-sociality.
RSH predicts that three out of four relational models can be traced back to the birthplace of Homo Sapiens. Thus, we should expect predecessors for these relationship categories in primate societies! And we find precisely that:
• Dominance models are expressed in the dominance hierarchy (where physical dominance slowly gave way to symbolic dominance).
• Communality models are expressed in kin selection (where attachment to and care for relatives was slowly extended towards e.g. close friends).
• Reciprocity models are expressed in reciprocal altruism (where increasingly large delays between favor-transactions became possible).
I have argued elsewhere that the dual-process models so popular in today’s moral psychology can be captured in the interactions between (cortical) propriety frames and (subcortical) social intuitions. These two systems comprise the building blocks of sociality. RSH dovetails nicely with this dual process account, as it perceives categories within these systems, each with its own distinctive logic:
With the exception of Sanctity, these subconscious social intuitions arguably exist in primates. For example, here is evidence that rhesus monkeys have strong intuitions about Fairness:
A New Kind of Social Network
The Relational Sphere Hypothesis can be further illustrated by social networks: graphs where nodes are individuals, and edges are relationships. These kinds of models are very common across many disciplines that study aggregate social phenomena; for example evolutionary game theorists. A social network may look something like this:
Relational Models_ Aggregated Social Networks
But relationships inhabit different categories. We can express this fact by coloring edges according to their relational model:
Relational Models_ Complete Social Network (2)
Note that some nodes (e.g. A and B) are connected by more than one color. This signifies that the relationship between A and B features both Communality and Dominance.
From this more complete picture of human relationships, we can derive our cultural spheres by examining the (mono-color) subgraphs:
Relational Models_ Social Network Subgraphs (2)
Sphere Evolution & Competition
Political, social, and economic institutions have dramatically changed across the course of human history. As we saw in Deep History of Humanity, the evolution of our species can be usefully divided into three |
paid. Even if they copy yours, as long as they don't pretend it's yours, they own their own copyright. In fact, if you get posters made of your painting, the printer owns the copyright of the final poster, unless you specifically have the rights transferred to you contractually.
This is exceedingly sticky, and it changes frequently.
12/01/2006 04:29:00 PM
Anonymous Rebel Belle said...
I steal from everyone, but I make sure I attribute properly. I don't steal from living people, unless it's a collaboration, and no one knows whose idea it was anyway.
I once saw an Andy Warhol which had Coke as its motif. The museum label stated that the image could not be reproduced without artist's permission. That's chutzpah.
Robert Indiana was totally screwed 30 years ago with his LOVE painting. After that, artists get smart and lawyered up. But sometimes I think the only ones benefitting from all of this is the legal profession and Corbus (part of the Evil Empire).
12/01/2006 06:11:00 PM
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Who or what is Corbus?
12/01/2006 07:09:00 PM
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Who or what is Corbus?
Corbis. An image licensing company. They maintain a huge library of stock images -- photos, illustrations and so on -- for which they sell licenses.
12/01/2006 07:17:00 PM
Blogger Lisa Hunter said...
Oy. I'd give up all my Writer's Guild rights to avoid seeing another school production of Bye Bye Birdie.
12/01/2006 07:51:00 PM
Anonymous David said...
Lisa, wait until after the Academy Awards. You don't want to have to pay to get into the movies do you? They've gotten expensive.
12/01/2006 08:26:00 PM
Anonymous Cedric Caspesyan said...
I don't see the point of protecting that images from your art circulate once it is sold.
In fact, even before it is sold.
You want people to see your art and talk about it as much as they can. That will even higher the value of your art if it is widely known.
Magazines merely make a penny, + coverage of your art is FREE publicity.
Copyrights enter when people are starting to make money from reproductions of your art (like postcards) and you don't see a penny out of this. But the cases are rare. Who cares about contemporary art anyway?
Yes artists should decide how they are dealt with on this issue but I\m stressing that looking for the extra money you can make if a magazine print a repro in an article is kinda cheap. Maybe if you see it in a Spielberg film, it really depend on contexts.
I dream to be exhibited at Whitney one day so I can say to the guards: people are allowed to photograph my work. In fact if the Whitney would refuse me this right I would refuse to show there. I'm very politic about this issue, but in the contrary sense than most artists.
Cedric Caspesyan
12/01/2006 08:40:00 PM
Anonymous David said...
Cedric, lately I've even been encouraging people to go ahead and touch my work, which of course is usually taboo too. But it's made of linoleum, so I figure if it can survive being a kitchen floor someone's finger isn't going to hurt it.
12/01/2006 10:10:00 PM
Anonymous Cedric Caspesyan said...
I love art floors !!
Some I remember: Matthew Ritchie, Jim Lambie, Assume Vivid Astro Focus.
I like it because instead of accepting its subjugation to architecture, art is really trying to infect it. I like artists like Jorge Pardo who use the world of design with the actual intention of making art. Inflecting design towards art again, since it so much stole from it.
Cedric Caspesyan
12/02/2006 06:32:00 AM
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Art should NEVER be free. Images of it neither.
12/02/2006 11:18:00 AM
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Deitch is in tomorrow's NY Times, Art & Leisure section. Huge profile of young male artist. The guy looks like an adolescent but he is 25.(in permanent adolescence???)
Someone is going to have a fit...
PS..I repeat: art should never be free, images of it neither, copyright your mother if you is not about art or what you feel. Your capitalist guilt is infantile. Don't be naive. There are a billion people out there trying to make a buck out of someone else's effort. Learn from Felix Gonzalez Torres. He found an excellent solution that accommodated his beliefs and his geography.
12/02/2006 11:34:00 AM
Anonymous Anonymous said...
what was Felix G-T's solution? At his shows you can take those stacks of posters.
12/02/2006 12:20:00 PM
Anonymous Anonymous said...
MLS sez:
Your capitalist guilt is infantile.
It's not a matter of capitalist guilt. Believe me when I tell you, if I could make a mint off of my art, I sure as hell would. I have no capitalist guilt in that regard.
But copyright can be pernicious. It's one thing for an artist or other creator to reap the fruits of their labor. It's another entirely when copyright enters into the corporate world, where non-creative types continue to benefit from the creations of others for many, many years. Walt Disney's been dead for how long now? Or when it enters into families. Sure, I can see the argument that my kids maybe deserve some benefit from my work even if I'm dead. But my grandkids? Great-grandkids? Grand-nieces twice removed?
And then there's the question of the value to the culture. Disney is a prime, if over-used example: So many of Disney's early successes were based on the public domain. And now Disney Inc. is trying its damnedest to make sure nothing they own ever becomes public domain. If every image in your head is owned by someone else -- not even someone, is owned by a multinational corporation -- what will you build your art on?
We are the receipients of a vast, rich, powerful, and brilliant public domain -- the result of generations upon generations of blood and sweat and the lives that went before us. It's amazingly selfish of us not to want to give something back -- even if we had a hundred lifetimes, we'd never give back as much as we've been given for free.
12/02/2006 12:44:00 PM
Anonymous Oriane Stender said...
Excellent point, Chris.
I like to make work using already existing iconography partly in service to the general ethic of recycling (recycle, reuse/reduce waste). There is so much imagery out there, and in our heads, we are inundated with it, that there is quite enough there already - why clutter up the world with new imagery? I prefer to recycle, but not in the lazy sense of just using what other people have created; more in the sense of referencing and quoting from our shared collective cultural conciousness.
12/02/2006 02:07:00 PM
Anonymous Cedric Caspesyan said...
If people can see my art reproduced freely 100 years after my death, why would I make it so hard for people simply living around me?
I think people who hold dearly to material and money simply never yet had nearly-death experiences (like I have).
It's not about capitalist guilt???
Nah, it's about making your work known the most possible so that your actual (fucking) work do sell at higher price.
It's making the difference between the rich and the poor. The rich pays for owning the art, the poor sees reprodutions in books, on the web, in their family photo album, wherever. I mean do really you want to be talked about or do you mean to reserve your art for the selected few?? That's also part of what you personally plan to do. I'm fed up with snobs and VIPs, all the posing and the so little hearts. Do I want to befriends heirs and the next Paris Hilton?
Nope. And the great voices of criticism are not able to buy art
(except the smaller pieces). So if I dream them to get the most art, to get their passions rewarded, I'm gonna have to make fine and generous use of repros.
Anyone who adore art hates copyrights because they always mean that the least people possible get to see it. Very annoying. That's not what I'm into this business for.
Cedric Caspesyan
12/02/2006 03:56:00 PM
Blogger marseye said...
art:Human effort to imitate,supplement,alter,or counteract the work of nature.
nature;The material world and its phenomena.
Art is truly forever free..........
Not imprisoned or enslaved; at liberty
Not controlled by obligation or the will of another.
Not affected or restricted by a given condition or circumstance.
Not subject to external restraint.
Not literal or exact.
and although some will amount art
in a number,and dollars will exchange hands, history shows and tells the spirit of men and womens minds and hearts. Living on for future eyes, hands and words to sing and share forever, and those who try to hold and controll the winds of time,
will morn, and may even repent for keeping beauty back, in the dark, ages, from all our transformation to light. And unfortunatly, our children suffer too.
12/02/2006 10:15:00 PM
Anonymous David said...
copyright your mother if you can
MLS, I took your advice. I not only copyrighted my mother, I copyrighted your mother too.
So, would you like to pay with cash, check, or American Express?
12/03/2006 02:07:00 AM
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Listen dear.
I tried to be funny with my comment about “copyrighting your mother” but there was more to it.
The artist Robert Melee (Andrew Kreps Gallery) uses his mother in his artwork. Videos, photos, and more, he even displayed her in glass box during one of his openings. Not the first or last artist to do it. I am sure.
I was hoping someone make the connection. He literally has copyrighted her.
12/03/2006 04:50:00 AM
Anonymous Cedric Caspesyan said...
Evergon (canadian) has done a known series of large photographs of his mother naked.
12/03/2006 05:58:00 AM
Anonymous Anonymous said...
I'd copyright my mother only if I could then sell the rights to someone very, vary far away.
12/03/2006 11:05:00 AM
Anonymous David said...
Well, MLS, you were successful. I got a good laugh out of your joke.
As far as the other reference, thanks for filling me in, because I didn't pick up on it. We don't have any Kreps out here in L.A., and I don't think we have much Melee either, though I can't be sure. Like everyone else in California I spend most of the day surfing, so I miss out on a lot. But I'll Google Melee, because what he's doing sounds interesting.
I would never have considered putting my own mother in a glass box, but I do have some other relatives that that might work for. Maybe I'll borrow his idea. You can get away with a lot if it's for the sake of art.
12/03/2006 07:52:00 PM
Anonymous Cedric Caspesyan said...
Wow Chris you really hate your mother? That's sad.
David, not all artists deserve to attract the attention of a remote californian surfer.
That's like the big challenge.
Cedric Caspesyan
12/03/2006 09:37:00 PM
Anonymous Cedric Caspesyan said...
...In fact I hate Catherine Opie, she's a cheater, she doesn't count. Ok?
Cedric Caspesyan
12/03/2006 09:39:00 PM
Blogger kurt said...
Cedric -- How is Opie a cheater? I don't know much about her, but have been struck by some of her pictures.
(PS: Also asking because just noticed C. Opie = copie)
12/04/2006 08:06:00 AM
Anonymous cnonymous said...
I applaud what V&A is doing. And while I in theory agree with Chris, let me tell you something I experienced. I was working at the Met in NY in publications - everything sold through the Met. One of the postcards was of a contemporary artist's painting. The stock was getting low and I mentioned this to an asst. manager. Then we found out that the artist had given approval for a run of a certain amount, that amount had already been reached and the asst. manager said, get more printed, the artist won't know the difference.
The presumption at the Met was that the museum's profit was more important than the artists' wishes.
12/04/2006 11:16:00 AM
Anonymous Anonymous said...
That should be brought to Phillipe de Montebello's attention!
12/04/2006 12:28:00 PM
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Cedric sez:
Wow Chris you really hate your mother? That's sad.
I don't hate my mother. I just find her easier to deal with when she's not nearby.
12/04/2006 01:51:00 PM
Anonymous Cedric Caspesyan said...
<<<<>>>The presumption at the Met >>>>>was that the museum's profit >>>>>was more important than the >>>>>artists' wishes.
But honestly if an artist would come to me and say "hey I don't want no more than 5000 postcards of this to be printed" I'd kind of think they are ridiculous. We're talking standard postcards, are we?? Not limited artbooks or prints. So what would be the reason to be like this?
If the MET hid the royalties that's another issue but control freaks do annoy me. I mean...That artist deserved the spank of another 2000 printed copies. Good for them !
(in 200 years no artist can control how much darn postcards will be printed of your art so would you please all stop doing art NOW, dear artists????)
>>>>Cedric -- How is Opie a cheater?
It was a joke: Opie is known for her pictures of Surfers so it would be like she's been in Cali and made all insider contacts thus bypassing the standard movements that would make an artwork reach the conscious of surf culture.
Cedric Caspesyan
12/04/2006 07:25:00 PM
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<< Home<|endoftext|>IMPERSONAL's Sentences and Contexts
Sentences of impersonal
a. having no personal preference; objective
He always contributed impersonal criticism.
Sentence in Classic:
House of Mirth By Edith Wharton Context
It was as though he bore an impersonal contempt for everyone and everything in the South, the Confederacy in particular, and took no pains to conceal it.
Gone With The Wind By Margaret Mitche Context
Les Misérables (V4) By Victor Hugo Context
Then they were sitting six inches apart, pretending that they had never been nearer, while she tried to be impersonal:.
Main Street By Sinclair Lewis Context
The drops which lashed her face were not scorpions, but prosy rain; Egdon in the mass was no monster whatever, but impersonal open ground.
Return of the Native By Thomas Hardy Context
The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald Context<|endoftext|>Remember this statement from an ex-HP exec. The events of Feb 9th may have just proved that that was a true statement. HP's main businesses are printers, servers, and computers (Desktops, Laptops, and Tablets).
With WebOS and the cloud, HP can tie everything together with a common front-end.
I feel that HP will make the TouchPad a success because it is a major part of there business plan. Everything they will do with WebOS will reflect that. I think that is why they removed the gesture area. Thats why they are cutting all ties with devices not running WebOS 2.0 or greater.
HP will still sell phones, but they will not enhance and make changes to any future version of WebOS that will jeopardize there printers, servers, and computer businesses.<|endoftext|>Signs You’re Eating Too Much Salt
Your taste for food will also change.
Change of Taste
A person who is used to eating dishes or meals that are high in salt will get used to it and look for it every time he eats. Now, if that same person will shift to a less salty meal, the palate will react on the “blandness” of the food and crave for more. He will give in and the cycle repeats itself – he will continue to eat sodium-filled food.
If it is not controlled, this is bad because too much sodium in food will create a plethora of health perils.<|endoftext|>Was the eunuch saved?
Submitted: 12/22/2012
Post a comment or
ask a follow-up question
Question: First, let me preface my question by making it clear that I have spoken in tongues as the spirit of God gave me utterance. My goal here is to gain an understanding on.. 1. Whether or not the eunuch baptized in the book of Acts was saved. Why or why not? 2. Whether or not the disciples in Ephusus can be equated or related to today's believer in Christ that has not yet received the Holy Ghost. Why or why not? 3. Whether or not Apostolics acknowledge a difference between being 'indwelt' by the Holy Spirit and being 'baptized' in the Holy Spirit. Why or why not? Thank you
Answer: 1. We cannot say with certainty that the eunuch was saved. The Bible doesn't give us enough information, and it doesn't specifically state that he was. But we do know one thing for sure: 'the solid foundation of God stands, having this seal: The Lord knows those who are His'(2 Timothy 2:12).
2. We would say that a better analogy would be to someone who has not been baptized properly and doesn't even know about the gift of the Holy Spirit. Paul understood that because they had not heard about the Holy Spirit they probably had not been baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. This is why he instructed them in how to be baptized correctly, and when they were, they were filled with the Spirit.
3. We believe that receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38-39) is the same as being baptized with the Spirit (Acts 1:5). We also believe that the Spirit indwells those who receive the gift of the Spirit |
you through the prism of their lives. Since they were too afraid to step out on a limb and put it all on the line, they think that the safe route is also what is best for you. Sure, they mean well, but they will hold you back. Their mentality is not traction building. It’s stagnate and will leave you in the same place; unable to grow. Because things didn’t go the way they planned, they don’t want you to go down the same path. In their eyes, they are shielding you from the inevitable hurt. The only problem with that line of thinking is you’ll never know what lies down the path if you never take it. It could be a pot of gold waiting for you. Now the question is can you live with the regrets? Are you really going to let someone else dictate your life?
First Lesson, Part B: People really are haters.
For whatever reason, some people will not want you to shine. This could be a mate who thinks you might outgrow them and leave. It could be a ‘friend’ who wants the same spot you’re aiming for. Or it could be someone who will steal your work and present it as their own to climb the ladder. Be on the lookout for these people. You know what will kill these people? Your success. It will burn them to their rotten soul.
I know you don’t really care about my accomplishments, and I know I’m not famous, so let me give you examples of a few people who have failed before they succeeded:
1. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.
2. Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first TV job as an anchor.
3. Walt Disney was told by a newspaper editor whom he worked for that he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas”. This is the man who made the mouse.
4. Jerry Seinfeld was booed after he froze on stage during his first time doing live stand-up.
5. Stephen King had “Carrie” rejected 30 times.
You want to wallow in your own self-pity, but how far will that get you?
Second lesson: Take off the dark shades and the rose colored glasses.
They skew your vision, and in this life, you need to be able to see perfectly clear. You need to see the reality of the situation you are getting yourself into. Read you contracts. Don’t trust anyone else with your money. You made it, so you count it. There are snakes and money-sucking leeches behind every corner, so be prepared to stomp on them. Life isn’t all roses and cotton candy. Prepare yourself for the battles ahead.
Third lesson: Believe in yourself, especially when nobody else does.
Don’t listen to the outside noise. Those people who say “you can’t”. Fuck them. Unfortunately, sometimes, this is the mindset you have to take in order to succeed. Sometimes it’s the closest ones to you who will do the most damage. Do not let them or anyone else deter you from your dreams.
You have to be your biggest supporter, promoter, believer, cheerleader, business manager, etc. How can you run your business if you don’t believe it will succeed? How can you shop your idea or make your pitch if you don’t believe in it? They (all of the theys) will smell the doubt, the unbelief. You have to bathe in confidence. Now, I’m not saying be an asshole or go full Kanye (who’s a genius, by the way) about it, but nobody can want for you what you want for yourself more than you do.
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It is important to choose the correct pasta for the appropriate sauce. Photo: Marina Oliphant
Richard Cornish
Can you please tell me how to prevent fine pasta from clumping and separating from the sauce and other ingredients? S. Poole
I once lived in a share house where one of the housemates, a notoriously appalling cook, made sure the pasta never clumped by frying the cooked noodles in oil. Italian-cooking doyenne Marcella Hazan recommends draining pasta just before it's correctly done as it will continue to cook a little after it has been removed from the boiling water. She recommends serving pasta immediately, which means having the sauce, table and diners ready to go. She writes that tossing is essential and should be done by twisting a fork to mix the pasta, sauce, butter or oil. For pasta that clumps, some pundits recommend pouring the hot cooking water over the pasta in a colander as you tease it out with tongs. Tossing the cooked pasta before adding the sauce and then the oil or butter will help it cling. Most important is choosing the correct pasta for the appropriate sauce.
A lot of Malaysian recipes call for belachan (prawn paste) to be dry-roasted. What is the best method and is it essential? C. Hyde
It's the smell that puts most people off using belachan. It's a thick, often putty-like, paste made by taking small prawns, drying them and fermenting them with salt. During this fermentation, enzymes from halophilic (salt-loving) bacteria break down protein into amino acids. Humans love the taste of amino acids - which we experience as a pleasing, mouth-filling savouriness - which allays our natural suspicion of the aroma of decaying prawns. Malaysian-born chef and restaurateur Thomas Lee, of Melbourne's Chef Lagenda, recommends, in most cases, that belachan be dry-roasted before use. He suggests cutting it fine, laying it on a tray and roasting for 15-20 minutes in an oven at 100 degrees. ''This makes it smell much nicer,'' Lee says. ''But one time I was cooking in a restaurant in the eastern suburbs and every time we cooked the belachan, the smell would go everywhere and the neighbours would complain.'' Once dry-roasted, belachan can be crumbled between the fingers and fried with minced onion and garlic. Belachan adds a lot of depth to dishes and, cooked in this manner with greens, creates a truly wonderful dish.
How do I dry herbs? J. Moore
After a good hit of summer sun and before they go to seed, fresh herbs are packed with essential oils. The word ''essential'' refers to the essence or aroma compounds contained in the plant's oil, not something you simply can't live without. Take long pieces of woody-stemmed aromatic herbs, such as rosemary, oregano, sage and thyme, tie them by the stems and hang them upside down in a shaded, dry, airy space. I dry mine by hanging them from the roof in the front porch for several weeks. You can also strip the leaves, place them in a paper bag and leave them in a warm place for a fortnight. Test them for dryness by plucking some of the dried leaves off, placing them in a glass jar and sealing the lid. If water condenses on the glass, they need more drying. Freshly dried herbs are generally more potent than fresh herbs but lack that green zing.
A chastened pan handler
Recently in this column, I suggested that while steel baking tins must be hand-washed and dried thoroughly in a cool oven, aluminium tins could be thrown into the dishwasher. This was a personal statement deriding aluminium cookware. I apologise unreservedly to owners of aluminium cookware who were offended by my comments. As one reader wrote, if aluminium pans are cleaned in a dishwasher, ''they'll come out ruined''.
She continued: ''Aluminium pans deserve respect and can be washed in hot water with detergent, and even scrubbed with soapy steel wool, before being rinsed well with hot water, leaving them shiny and beautiful.
''Aluminium pans which have been mistreated by machine dishwashing can generally be made respectable again by giving them the steel-wool treatment. I don't want Richard Cornish anywhere near my cake tins.'' Thank you, Mrs D. Filshie.
Twitter @FoodCornish<|endoftext|>'Game of Thrones' Finale Recap: 'Everyone Is Mine to Torment'
A devastating season ends with powerful hits, puzzling misses
Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen on 'Game of Thrones'
Keith Bernstein/HBO
Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen on 'Game of Thrones'
By |
My God, it was so much worse than I'd imagined.
No, not the episode, though it had its problems and we'll get to them. I'm talking about an image that made my jaw drop in horror hard enough to actually hurt. Game of Thrones' ability to wed image to emotion is where its greatness lies. To the extent that "Mhysa," its third season finale, contained greatness, that's where you'd find it.
The Juiciest TV Hookups of 2012: 'Game of Thrones,' Melisandre and Stannis
Greatest, and worst, of all this week: The King in the North. The placement of the direwolf Grey Wind's severed head on Robb Stark's decapitated body is never really shown in the books, just referenced by other characters and, in one memorable instance, viewed in a prophetic dream. Somehow, Game of Thrones managed to take an image that had been haunting the nightmares of book readers for 13 years and make it even more awful. Watching that . . . thing trot along on the back of a horse while soldiers mock it – it felt not just horrifying, but obscene, somehow, as if all social norms had been overturned. As viewed with chilly bird's-eye-view detachment by Roose Bolton, the fiery orgy of slaughter in the camps outside the Twins was already a hellscape; this man-wolf monstrosity made it feel even more like something out of Hieronymus Bosch. You could all but feel Arya's sanity snapping when she saw it, one atrocity too many. It was as strong a culmination to the Stark storyline as you could ask for, and an emotionally resonant justification for Arya's subsequent rampage.
Jon Snow's story ended on a similar high note. I'm a fan of actor Kit Harrington's performance in general, admittedly, but he's never been given much more to do than glower – that's the peril of the part, since Jon lives so much in his own head, which the show has no access to. Man, did he come alive when he turned his scarred face around and saw Ygritte, the woman he loves, aiming a bow right at him. His repetitive, childlike statement of "I have to go home now" radiated heartbreak, as if his life-changing dalliance with this redheaded beauty was a vacation with an end-date that had been set from the start. When she shot him full of arrows, evoking everything from Saint Sebastian to Boromir to his half-brother Robb, the visual made their mutual martyrdom at the altar of crazy love stick, and hurt.
Even scenes that were almost purely conversational fireworks stored most of their real gunpowder in what was seen rather than heard. The verbal battle royale of loyalty and loathing at the Small Council meeting was riveting, yeah, but everything you needed to know could be seen in the eyes of the participants: Joffrey's sadistic glee, Tywin's cool contempt, and, in the moment when Joffrey takes it too far, Tyrion's look of "Oh my, I'm certainly curious to see where this goes." As with most of the season, fire and light were powerful symbols, and in some scenes – Stannis backlit by the setting sun; Tyrion's candlelit salon and the bright twilight outside its confines – they outshone the action. And you can never go wrong with a "smallfolk mop up the blood as lords cackle about their power over life or death" scene, as the chat between gloating backstabbing shitweasels Roose Bolton and Walder Frey made clear.
Was it enough to make up for the tone-deaf moments? I'm not sure. The show's previously been careful to maintain a heterogeneous look for most of the cultures Daenerys encounters in her travels through the eastern continent of Essos, so the uniformly brown skin tone of the freed slaves worshipping the blondest possible savior figure was surprising and disconcerting – doubly so since, in the books, much is made of just how many different kinds of people had been forced into slavery by Yunkai and then freed by Dany when she took the city. This uncomfortable contrast kneecapped what could otherwise have been the most purely uplifting and cathartic moment in the series so far. Plus it gave the episode its title and was, you know, the final shot of the season – a rough one to go out on.
The "Mhysa" sequence will receive the most scrutiny, and rightfully so, but Dany's triumph outside the gates of Yunkai came with its fair share of visual and narrative warning signs that we're not to take it at face value. There's that conqueror/liberator exchange between Dany and Jorah, which sounded like something you'd hear on a Meet the Press interview with Dick Cheney circa March 2003. The grinning joy on her face was carefully contrasted with Jorah's concern; yeah, that could have been simply his regret that the khaleesi now has tens of thousands of admirers just as ardent as he, but it can also be read as fear that it won't all be crowdsurfing and dragon flyovers forever. Add in the separate conversations between Tywin and Tyrion, and Stannis and Davos, about whether the ends (victory in the War of the Five Kings, peace in the realm) justify the means (the Red Wedding, burning some poor kid alive), and I half expected Drogon to be trailing a "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner behind him.
More troubling to me, then, was the scene in which the freshly revealed Ramsay Snow, bastard son of Roose Bolton, beat Theon into accepting his insulting new name, Reek. Was it just me, or was this a weirdly whitewashed cover version of "My name is Toby" from Roots? That's one of the, I dunno, five most famous scenes in the history of televised drama, so it's hard not to read it as an homage, and therefore hard not to think "Hmm, not sure the plight of the Prince of the Iron Islands justifies a note-for-note sample from a harrowing, epochal miniseries about the lives of enslaved African Americans." Without the complicating context given to Dany's emancipation proclamation, this scene just read like cultural appropriation.
It's a shame that this is the final episode of the season, in the sense that more episodes would keep us talking. We could hash out the propriety of these scenes and images as they accrued context from subsequent episodes, watch them develop from puzzling or troubling moments into potentially rewarding or challenging themes. Instead they waltzed on stage just as the curtain went down, jostling for space with developments both welcome (Davos's extended turn in the spotlight, Bran and Sam's rendezvous) and unfortunate (the rushed reunion of Jaime and Cersei, the odd reactions of the Greyjoys to news of their missing scion Theon).
Throughout season three, the interplay between image and emotion has been balanced on a knife's edge – often literally – and wielded with just as much savagery and precision. From the Mother of Dragons to the King in the North, it's worth examining how and why a blow went wide, just as much as how and why it met its mark.
Previously: Red, Red, Red<|endoftext|>Fraser Blake, 69, author of 'Dear Chips' grew up in Africa, was at school in Scotland, and worked for the British South Africa Police in Southern Rhodesia. He has taught English in Saudi Arabia and sold and renovated hundreds of properties in Northern France. In retirement he writes, cooks, drinks wine, and hosts to dinner unlimited numbers of ex-pats.<|endoftext|>The Silence Of The Marsh Review : Pedro Alonso’s Psychological Thriller Isn’t Compelling Enough
Movie Rated
Format: Film
Platform: Netflix
Movie Rated: 18+
Genre: Crime, Thriller
What’s The Story About?
Directed by Marc Vigil, Silence Of The Marsh is a psychological thriller set in Valencia, Spain, where a crime writer unearths a lot of murky details about a major scandal in the city that encompasses politicians, law officials, and gangsters. The story begins with a crime novelist, only known as Q, committing a murder, which itself becomes the subject of his hugely successful novel. When he begins researching for his next book, he abducts an economics professor; however, it triggers a chain of events which changes his life.
As the film’s principal actor, Pedro Alonso exudes a mysterious charm which suits the character, Q, since we never know what he’s going to do next. A lot of times, it’s the character’s cold-blooded approach to his work, whether it’s writing or killing, that takes you by surprise, and Pedro Alonso plays this role quite well. The film’s other main character is Falconetti, a gangster who’s on the trail to find out the whereabouts of an economics professor. Nacho Fresneda is raw and rustic as Falconetti, and surprisingly, there’s quite a fair bit of emotional undercurrent too to his character, especially when he talks about his past and his future. Carmina Barrios, as the mob boss La Puri, adds an interesting layer to the whole drama since it’s not every day where the leader of a drug cartel is an elderly woman.
Based on a novel written by Juanjo Braulio, The Silence Of The Marsh tries to draw parallels to the swamp near the city and the many power centres in the society, right from the politicians to the commoners. While this analogy is perfect, the major problem with the film is that it doesn’t try to push the envelope despite having a promising premise. The opening act is compelling and you always wonder what the lead character, Q, is going to do next. However, once he uncovers the truth behind what the economics professor was trying to do, the film itself loses its key element of surprise. As a result, events in the film just happen and the lead character himself is sidelined. There’s no major conflict in the film and as a result, the threat to the protagonist’s life doesn’t feel urgent enough. After a point, it turns so generic that you are left wondering if there’s at least a twist coming or if there are any more parallels to be drawn.
Pedro Alonso’s characterisation and the way he emotes is so subtle that one could mistake him as a passive character; however, Pedro captures this trait quite well and the moral dilemma that the character goes through is one of the few highlights of the film. The screenplay, written by Carlos de Pando and Sara Antuña, keeps you hooked initially, but the film gets quite cliched after a point.
A major problem with the film, and perhaps even the source material, is that it’s never clear what the director Marc Vigil wants to convey through the film. Is it about how the protagonist got away with murder? Or is it about how he uncovered the truth behind the drug trade in the city? If it’s a bit of |
, such that this specific way of moving becomes muscle memory. And the way to do that is to keep practising, to take time telling your brain to move your muscles in that specific way. It is not a matter of how many times you repeat each movement; how long you spend on creating that "link" is more critical.
However, I think that does not preclude taiji being practised fast. Because actual application is fast, and your body must be able to move with that kind of speed to response to an actual attack. So there is an aspect of speed in taiji practice. In fact, Chen style taiji emphasizes fast and slow in practice. Even Yang style has a fast form developed by Dong Yingjie.
But slow is the basic. And slow is where you should start. Get the movements right. Create that "link" first. And make sure that you do it slowly so that the "link" is the correct one, that your brain instructs your muscles to move in that specific way correctly. Because when we move fast, we make mistakes. And if we keep making the same mistakes, that mistake becomes muscle memory, and it becomes hard to untrain. Only when you have formed that correct "link" can you start to take it to the next stage, which is to be able to move both fast and slow, correctly.
Sometimes, going slow is the faster way.
Friday, April 06, 2018
Inkling: Moving Gears
I was watching a video online, where a taiji master was explaining about his method. He touched on something about being a set of moving gears, like an engine gearbox.
I have recently been exploring electronics and motors and 3D printing, so gears are not entirely new to me. Coupled with this concept about moving gears, I kind of have a better understanding of how force is being transferred from the legs to the point of application. It is as if the joints are the places where gears are coupled. Broadly speaking, at the kua, one gear (leg) turns to drive another (hip). The other (hip) turns and brings the entire torso with it. This movement of the torso acts on the gears at the shoulders, which is again another set of gears, with one (shoulder) turning another (upper arm), in turn moving the arm.
Of course, this is a simplification. There are a lot more joints tracing the path from the ground to the point of application, and each is a set of gears being turned by the set before, and turning the next set. This also achieves "moving as a whole" and "top and bottom following each other" as well as the continuity of movement without stopping.
The muscles as pistons and actuators, and the joints as gears. An inkling for verification in training.
Monday, March 05, 2018
Inkling: Transferring Force
I think there are two aspects to force being generated from the legs.
One is using the force generated by the legs to move your own centre of gravity. Another is to use the force to turn your body (trunk), which in turn changes the direction of the force from the legs and applies it to another direction through the arms.
These two are non independent of each other. In fact, they are to be used in combination, so that you bring force to bear (by moving your centre of gravity) in the right direction (with your body as the axis).
And one of the best ways to train this is through basic exercises. There are basic exercises where the focus is on changing the direction of the force through the body, basic exercises on how to use the legs to move your centre of gravity, and basic exercises that combine both. I guess this will be the focus of my training for a while as I pursue this inkling.
Monday, January 01, 2018
Tracking My Training For 2018
Continuing the practice in 2015, carried onto 2016 and 2017, I have been tracking my training, and will also do so for 2018.
For 2017, I practised:
33 sets of Chen style Old Frame First Routine
48 sets of Yang style 108
64 sets of Sun style taijiquan
(total 145 sets of taijiquan in a year)
99 sets of Chen style taijijian
99 sets of Yang style taijijian
(total 198 sets of taijijian in a year)
165 sets of Yang style taijidao
And also many hours of basic exercises and single moves.
Total number of practice hours in 2017: 243 hours
I have not been as diligent in keeping my training log, though... 😅
Looking forward to increasing the amount of practice in 2018!
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
Force Skips One Point
I am not a real fan of Chen Zhonghua, but I wish to share something that I saw on one of his videos on YouTube. It is about force skipping a point.
The points here refer to the hand, followed by the elbow, the shoulder, then the waist. If your force is at your hand, your elbow will be weak, and there will be force in your shoulder, and your waist will be weak. If instead you relax your hand, the force will be in your elbow and it will be coming from your waist.
This is just a case to point out that we should relax the hand and shoulder, but I thought I would share it anyway.
Monday, December 11, 2017
Unbelievable Theory (off-topic)
I am reading a book written in the late 1990s by Japanese researchers of martial arts. One practised karate before moving on to Chinese martial arts, while the other has stuck to Japanese martial arts, focusing on traditional ones like ju-jitsu.
This traditional Japanese martial artist actually thinks taiji theory came from Japanese martial arts, proposing that Yang style taiji came from something with a similar name in Japan. He also thinks the founder of Chen style taiji came to Japan and brought back martial arts theory with him that led to the creation of taijiquan.
The researcher of Chinese martial arts was trying to debunk his theories. I mean, taijiquan originating from Japan is a totally unbelievable theory. The simple fact is that when taijiquan was created, Japan was shut off from the world; the Tokugawa Shogunate did not allow contact with the outside world. That alone would have made it impossible for outsiders to enter Japan to learn Japanese martial arts. There are many other facts pointing out how this theory cannot be true, but I rather spend time pointing out facts to support a real theory, than wasting time on debunking something as unbelievable as this.
Talk about egoistic... I almost wanted to stop reading, but I told myself that I should continue so that I am aware of such extreme (and untrue) views out there in the world. There are people who choose to believe in their own beliefs rather than open their eyes to facts.
Okay, this doesn't really have anything to do with taijiquan. I will try to steer back to talking about my taiji journey from my next blog post onward. Bear with me for this one post.
Wednesday, November 22, 2017
Complementing Taiji Practice
Taiji is a complete martial art by itself. My teacher always advocates it is enough to just practise taiji alone, going through the traditional 108 form, the quick form, balanced with pushing hands and the practice of basics. I too agree that taiji is completed in itself. But I also think taiji practice can be complemented with other martial arts. The two very obvious ones, which I have partially brought into my own training, is xingyiquan 形意拳 and baguazhang 八卦掌.
How do these two complement taiji?
I see xingyiquan as complementing the fajing portion of taiji, so I weave wuxingquan 五行拳 into my practice. Baguazhang is being brought in for the footwork. This is not new; Sun style taijiquan founder Sun Lutang was himself an expert in taiji, xingyi, and bagua. But I do not seek to be an expert in all three; I just wish to better my skills in taiji. Ultimately, the aspects from xingyiquan and baguazhang brought into my training is just to help me get better at taiji.
Tuesday, September 26, 2017
Practise Slowly As It Helps To Build Up Muscle Memory
Recently, while practising routines (especially Chen style) and single moves, I realized my fa jing has significantly improved. It is no longer stiff, it doesn't feel like I am overly trying, it is just a natural transmission of force from legs to where I want to express my force.
I think this is due to the way I have been training, focusing on imagining how the force is transmitted from my legs to the hands and arms every time I practise. We all know that muscle memory comes from training. But there is a theory that says that muscle memory comes from the amount of time that the brain tells the body to do a certain action. What this means is that practising 100 times of the same movement quickly in 10 minutes is the same as practising that same movement slowly for 10 times over 10 minutes. Which is basically what taiji training is about. Instead of practising the same movements quickly for many many times, taiji is about practising those same movements correctly more slowly and therefore less repetitions. But the amount of time should work out to be the same. In fact, given that you are not over-exerting yourself, but taking those movements more naturally, you probably end up training for longer periods of time than if you had been practising those movements quickly.
The important thing is to focus on getting things done correctly. In taiji, that means thinking about how the force is transmitted from legs to arms and hands. About the brain sending that same message to the body over and over again in the right way, linking up the legs and arms in the right manner. I am going to continue on this track for a while to see how far it leads me.
Wednesday, August 09, 2017
Did Not Get Worse
Nothing makes me happier than to hear him say:
It was my main worry. After all, I am practising a lot less than what I used to. So there is no way I could have improved. My main aim was to maintain at the same level, and slowly work into a rhythm that will allow me to improve from there.
So after 2 sets of Yang 108, and hearing my teacher say those words to me, at least I know that the effort spent in getting myself to practise while on my own was worth it. I managed to maintain even in his absence. Which means, if I do more, I will get better.
So now, I need to work into a rhythm that allows me to practise more.
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
The Ten Principles of Taijiquan 太極拳十要
These are the ten principles of taijiquan, according to Yang style grandmaster Yang Chengfu.
These principles deal with the movements of taiji, how taiji should be practised. They also affect how taiji is actually used. I will try to find time to explain each of them in more detail.
Friday, May 12, 2017
Breathe Naturally
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Learning to be Put in Disadvantageous Positions
Friday, May 05, 2017
Martial Arts Are Not Sports
Martial arts.
Sunday, April 30, 2017
Pushing Hands is Not About Pushing Your Opponent Out
「推手时要细心揣摩，不可将对方推出以为笑乐。务要使我之重心，对方不能捉摸，对方之重心，时时在我手中。」 董英傑《太極拳釋義》
A reminder by a taiji master. Let's not forget what pushing hands is for.
Saturday, April 22, 2017
Inkling: About 粘黏连随
I think this is about the stages of contact.
First is establishing contact, then remaining in contact. These two stages are more in the physical realm.
After which is becoming connected, and moving together. This is more in the conceptual domain, although moving together manifests itself in the physical realm too.
Thursday, April 06, 2017
Inkling: Force from the Legs, Control from the Waist
An inkling I got while reading a book written by a Japanese martial artist, who was explaining about aikido's use of force through aikiage. The feeling described by the author kind of like struck a bell in me, and I could see how it is similar to my own experience with taiji and pushing hands. It helped me to better understand force and gives me a new focus for my own training.
Basically, the force comes from the legs, which moves the body's centre of gravity, and the waist area is actually where that centre is, and moving that centre of gravity (using the legs) allows one to achieve more force that can be applied to the point of contact (such as the hand), compared to just using muscular force from the arm acting on the hand.
Will be focusing on understanding this better during my own practice.
Monday, April 03, 2017
Explaining Taiji with Modern Science
The human body is a complex mechanical and chemical system, so it is no wonder that people try to explain taiji in terms of modern science. I am not against it, although I think it is a difficult thing to do (see other blog post here). But I do think in terms of modern science. I believe that taiji is really about how to move your body in the most efficient manner, using the least force to achieve the biggest effect.
But trying to use modern science to explain taiji is not easy, because our bodies are just too complex. We learn about levers in mechanics, but the human body is not a simple set of levers. We have so many levers interconnected, working together and against each other, that it is very difficult for the human brain to grasp.
So while using modern science to explain taiji can help us to better understand taiji, understanding the science behind it does not mean we can actually put it into practice. The only way to do that is to actually practise, and feel it for ourselves. Only through practice can our bodies actually move in the way that taiji requires so that we can achieve the biggest effect with the smallest force.<|endoftext|>"No! We don`t give interviews! " – " No, listen, just let me read you the first question..."
– Waits, persuation, reinforced disclaimers and finally – cherished: "Okay, wait." door closes ... In the dressing room behind all this there is a handful of foreign journalists. Everybody is waiting. Heartbeat quickens... A minute or two, fifteen. Then, all in the best traditions of classic cinema – the door opens, a bright light falls on the protagonist and as an invitation to a better world, is: "Pass".
Did I fear? No. Did I feel adrenaline? Oh yeah! Conversations with Sergei Shnurov can be considered as professional baptism for journalists. One extra or superficial question – ceremony is cancelled! He very rarely gives an interview. Part of the image, reluctance to talk to the press? Or maybe a clear principle: "Here is my work – sort it out yourself".
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome: chief hooligan of Russia, God forgive me, show business. Why “God forgive me?” Because narrowing him down to a certain format is at least injustice.
Phenomenal person, although it is already a cliché. Rock musician, actor, tv presenter, writer, poet and artist, "chief marketing specialist of Russia" (as he calls himself), human and according to GQ “the musician of 2016”, additions are listed to the names of saints (sheet attached).
Salvador Dali once said that he would never have bought his work. Would you, as a spectator, listen to Shnur?
No. But, if I needed an advertising campaign, I would definitely order it from Shnur. Probably just because there is nobody else.
Hence, cord works on the demands of the market?
Of course. All work on the demands of the market. Just someone is aware of this, but someone is not. Someone currently makes up his mind that he is engaged in some alternative, although an alternative this is just one of the market segments.
When about a musician, you can say that he is not the same?
So it's constant work on oneself?
It is important to remember that the context is changing endlessly, and you cannot stay with old ideas under new conditions. Or rather, you should understand that ideas, even if they are old, already play in a completely different way. Life and time are very accelerated, the context is changing faster than you can realize.
But when you "have to work to earn", the creative process loses its soulfulness …
It does not lose anything. For some, money may not be a motivation, for me money is motivation. I am very respectful of money, especially the money I earned myself.
Is your music a reflection of your inner world or, on the contrary, an attempt to hide it?
Any fake, one way or another let it be crooked, let it be indirect, let it be the other way around somehow or another is a reflection of the inner world. Man cannot produce what is not in him. So even if I am masking, I am masking only by the means that I have inside. In humans, non-humans, there is no longer anything. Of course, I always try to lay the semantic background in any of our works - songs and especially video works. In general, if you structurally analyze the songs, they are not as simple as they seem at first glance. And, by the way, a book will soon be released in the publishing house called New Literary Review, it will contain articles by respected philologists and linguists about our humble art.
Once you leave the emotions on stage, you feel exhausted?
No. I do not have deep devastation or moral fatigue, rather the opposite: after the concert, I find it harder to calm down.
Here is the problem. I am not leaving the scene like any runner or boxer who then drops dead. My adrenaline still walks and walks! It happens that five hours I still can not sleep. Such a surge of adrenaline, the whole range of chemical processes! “And then what?” you ask. Nothing, then you fall asleep. No, this is not a collection of yourself as puzzle pieces. I don't get tired on the stage I like it there, I live there and I feel organic, like a fish in water. I sometimes in some everyday situation is more complicated than on the stage.
How is the creative process?
Always different. Here approaches can be very different. Initially, of course, the musical component is thought out, and only then the text is selected. Russia is a literary-centric country, not rhythmic, so the words are very important.
In general, it is in Russian blood to suffer, cry, Russian literature is based on the tragedy ...
Russian |
Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such Mr Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large moustache. Mrs Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbours. The Dursleys had a small son called Dudley and in their opinion there was no finer The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it. They didn’t think they could bear it if anyone found out about the Potters. Mrs Potter was Mrs Dursley’s sister, but they hadn’t met for several years; in fact, Mrs Dursley pretended she didn’t have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing husband were as unDursleyish as it was possible to be. The Dursleys shuddered to think what the neighbours would say if the Potters arrived in the street. The Dursleys knew that the Potters had a small son, too, but they had never even seen him. This boy was another good reason for keeping the Potters away; they didn’t want Dudley mixing with a child like that. When Mr and Mrs Dursley woke up on the dull, grey Tuesday our story starts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over the country. Mr Dursley hummed as he picked out his most boring tie for work and Mrs Dursley gossiped away happily as she wrestled a screaming Dudley into his high chair. None of them noticed a large tawny owl flutter past the window. At half past eight, Mr Dursley picked up his briefcase, pecked Mrs Dursley on the cheek and tried to kiss Dudley goodbye but missed, because Dudley was now having a tantrum and throwing his cereal at the walls. ‘Little tyke,’ chortled Mr Dursley as he left the house. He got into his car and backed out of number four’s It was on the corner of the street that he noticed the first sign of something peculiar – a cat reading a map. For a second, Mr Dursley didn’t realise what he had seen – then he jerked his head around to look again. There was a tabby cat standing on the corner of Privet Drive, but there wasn’t a map in sight. What could he have been thinking of? It must have been a trick of the light. Mr Dursley blinked and stared at the cat. It stared back. As Mr Dursley drove around the corner and up the road, he watched the cat in his mirror. It was now reading the sign that said Privet Drive – no, looking at the sign; cats couldn’t read maps or signs. Mr Dursley gave himself a little shake and put the cat out of his mind. As he drove towards town he thought of nothing except a large order of drills he was hoping to get that day. But on the edge of town, drills were driven out of his mind by something else. As he sat in the usual morning traffic jam, he couldn’t help noticing that there seemed to be a lot of strangely dressed people about. People in cloaks. Mr Dursley couldn’t bear people who dressed in funny clothes – the get-ups you saw on young people! He supposed this was some stupid new fashion. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and his eyes fell on a huddle of these weirdos standing quite close by. They were whispering excitedly together. Mr Dursley was enraged to see that a couple of them weren’t young at all; why, that man had to be older than he was, and wearing an emerald-green cloak! The nerve of him! But then it struck Mr Dursley that this was probably some silly stunt – these people were obviously collecting for something ... yes, that would be it. The traffic moved on, and a few minutes later, Mr Dursley arrived in the Grunnings car park, his mind Mr Dursley always sat with his back to the window in his office on the ninth floor. If he hadn’t, he might have found it harder to concentrate on drills that morning. He didn’t see the owls swooping past in broad daylight, though people down in the street did; they pointed and gazed open-mouthed as owl after owl sped overhead. Most of them had never seen an owl even at nighttime. Mr Dursley, however, had a perfectly normal, owl-free morning. He yelled at five different people. He made several important telephone calls and shouted a bit more. He was in a very good mood until lunch-time, when he thought he’d stretch his legs and walk across the road to buy himself a bun from the baker’s He’d forgotten all about the people in cloaks until he passed a group of them next to the baker’s. He eyed them angrily as he passed. He didn’t know why, but they made him uneasy. This lot were whispering excitedly, too, and he couldn’t see a single collecting tin. It was on his way back past them, clutching a large doughnut in a bag, that he caught a few words of what they were ‘The Potters, that’s right, that’s what I heard –’ ‘– yes, their son, Harry –’ Mr Dursley stopped dead. Fear flooded him. He looked back at the whisperers as if he wanted to say something to them, but He dashed back across the road, hurried up to his office, snapped at his secretary not to disturb him, seized his telephone and had almost finished dialling his home number when he changed his mind. He put the receiver back down and stroked his moustache, thinking ... no, he was being stupid. Potter wasn’t such an unusual name. He was sure there were lots of people called Potter who had a son called Harry. Come to think of it, he wasn’t even sure his nephew was called Harry. He’d never even seen the boy. It might have been Harvey. Or Harold. There was no point in worrying Mrs Dursley, she always got so upset at any mention of her sister. He didn’t blame her – if he’d had a sister like that ... but all the same, those people in cloaks ... He found it a lot harder to concentrate on drills that afternoon, and when he left the building at five o’clock, he was still so worried that he walked straight into someone just outside the door. ‘Sorry,’ he grunted, as the tiny old man stumbled and almost fell. It was a few seconds before Mr Dursley realised that the man was wearing a violet cloak. He didn’t seem at all upset at being almost knocked to the ground. On the contrary, his face split into a wide smile and he said in a squeaky voice that made passers-by stare: ‘Don’t be sorry, my dear sir, for nothing could upset me today! Rejoice, for You-Know-Who has gone at last! Even Muggles like yourself should be celebrating, this happy, happy And the old man hugged Mr Dursley around the middle and Mr Dursley stood rooted to the spot. He had been hugged by a complete stranger. He also thought he had been called a Muggle, whatever that was. He was rattled. He hurried to his car and set off home, hoping he was imagining things, which he had never hoped before, because he didn’t approve of imagination. As he pulled into the driveway of number four, the first thing he saw – and it didn’t improve his mood – was the tabby cat he’d spotted that morning. It was now sitting on his garden wall. He was sure it was the same one; it had the same markings around its eyes. ‘Shoo!’ said Mr Dursley loudly. The cat didn’t move. It just gave him a stern look. Was this normal cat behaviour, Mr Dursley wondered. Trying to pull himself together, he let himself into the house. He was still determined not to mention anything to his wife. Mrs Dursley had had a nice, normal day. She told him over dinner all about Mrs Next Door’s problems with her daughter and how Dudley had learnt a new word (‘Shan’t!’). Mr Dursley tried to act normally. When Dudley had been put to bed, he went into the living-room in time to catch the last report on the evening news: ‘And finally, bird-watchers everywhere have reported that the nation’s owls have been behaving very unusually today. Although owls normally hunt at night and are hardly ever seen in daylight, there have been hundreds of sightings of these birds flying in every direction since sunrise. Experts are unable to explain why the owls have suddenly changed their sleeping pattern.’ The news reader allowed himself a grin. ‘Most mysterious. And now, over to Jim McGuffin with the weather. Going to be any more showers of ‘Well, Ted,’ said the weatherman, ‘I don’t know about that, but it’s not only the owls that have been acting oddly today. Viewers as far apart as Kent, Yorkshire and Dundee have been phoning in to tell me that instead of the rain I promised yesterday, they’ve had a downpour of shooting stars! Perhaps people have been celebrating Bonfire Night early – it’s not until next week, folks! But I can promise a wet night tonight.’ Mr Dursley sat frozen in his armchair. Shooting stars all over Britain? Owls flying by daylight? Mysterious people in cloaks all over the place? And a whisper, a whisper about the Potters ... Mrs Dursley came into the living-room carrying two cups of tea. It was no good. He’d have to say something to her. He cleared his throat nervously. ‘Er – Petunia, dear – you haven’t heard from your sister lately, have you?’ As he had expected, Mrs Dursley looked shocked and angry. After all, they normally pretended she didn’t have a sister. ‘No,’ she said sharply. ‘Why?’ ‘Funny stuff on the news,’ Mr Dursley mumbled. ‘Owls ... shooting stars ... and there were a lot of funny-looking people in ‘Well, I just thought ... maybe ... it was something to do with ... you know ... her lot.’ Mrs Dursley sipped her tea through pursed lips. Mr Dursley wondered whether he dared tell her he’d heard the name ‘Potter’. He decided he didn’t dare. Instead he said, as casually as he could, ‘Their son – he’d be about Dudley’s age now, wouldn’t he?’ ‘I suppose so,’ said Mrs Dursley stiffly. ‘What’s his name again? Howard, isn’t it?’ ‘Harry. Nasty, common name, if you ask me.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mr Dursley, his heart sinking horribly. ‘Yes, I He didn’t say another word on the subject as they went upstairs to bed. While Mrs Dursley was in the bathroom, Mr Dursley crept to the bedroom window and peered down into the front garden. The cat was still there. It was staring down Privet Drive as though it was waiting for something. Was he imagining things? Could all this have anything to do with the Potters? If it did ... if it got out that they were related to a pair of – well, he didn’t think he could bear it. The Dursleys got into bed. Mrs Dursley fell asleep quickly but Mr Dursley lay awake, turning it all over in his mind. His last, comforting thought before he fell asleep was that even if the Potters were involved, there was no reason for them to come near him and Mrs Dursley. The Potters knew very well what he and Petunia thought about them and their kind ... He couldn’t see how he and Petunia could get mixed up in anything that might be going on. He yawned and turned over. It couldn’t affect them ... How very wrong he was. Mr Dursley might have been drifting into an uneasy sleep, but the cat on the wall outside was showing no sign of sleepiness. It was sitting as still as a statue, its eyes fixed unblinkingly on the far corner of Privet Drive. It didn’t so much as quiver when a car door slammed in the next street, nor when two owls swooped overhead. In fact, it was nearly midnight before the cat moved at all. A man appeared on the corner the cat had been watching, appeared so suddenly and silently you’d have thought he’d just popped out of the ground. The cat’s tail twitched and its eyes Nothing like this man had ever been seen in Privet Drive. He was tall, thin and very old, judging by the silver of his hair and beard, which were both long enough to tuck into his belt. He was wearing long robes, a purple cloak which swept the ground and high-heeled, buckled boots. His blue eyes were light, bright and sparkling behind half-moon spectacles and his nose was very long and crooked, as though it had been broken at least twice. This man’s name was Albus Dumbledore. Albus Dumbledore didn’t seem to realise that he had just arrived in a street where everything from his name to his boots was unwelcome. He was busy rummaging in his cloak, looking for something. But he did seem to realise he was being watched, because he looked up suddenly at the cat, which was still staring at him from the other end of the street. For some reason, the sight of the cat seemed to amuse him. He chuckled and muttered, ‘I He had found what he was looking for in his inside pocket. It seemed to be a silver cigarette lighter. He flicked it open, held it up in the air and clicked it. The nearest street lamp went out with a little pop. He clicked it again – the next lamp flickered into darkness. Twelve times he clicked the Put-Outer, until the only lights left in the whole street were two tiny pinpricks in the distance, which were the eyes of the cat watching him. If anyone looked out of their window now, even beady-eyed Mrs Dursley, they wouldn’t be able to see anything that was happening down on the pavement. Dumbledore slipped the Put-Outer back inside his cloak and set off down the street towards number four, where he sat down on the wall next to the cat. He didn’t look at it, but after a moment he spoke to it. ‘Fancy seeing you here, Professor McGonagall.’ He turned to smile at the tabby, but it had gone. Instead he was smiling at a rather severe-looking woman who was wearing square glasses exactly the shape of the markings the cat had had around its eyes. She, too, was wearing a cloak, an emerald one. Her black hair was drawn into a tight bun. She looked distinctly ruffled. ‘How did you know it was me?’ she asked. ‘My dear Professor, I’ve never seen a cat sit so stiffly.’ ‘You’d be stiff if you’d been sitting on a brick wall all day,’ said ‘All day? When you could have been celebrating? I must have passed a dozen feasts and parties on my way here.’ ‘Oh yes, everyone’s celebrating, all right,’ she said impatiently. ‘You’d think they’d be a bit more careful, but no – even the Muggles have noticed something’s going on. It was on their news.’ She jerked her head back at the Dursleys’ dark living-room window. ‘I heard it. Flocks of owls ... shooting stars ... Well, they’re not completely stupid. They were bound to notice something. Shooting stars down in Kent – I’ll bet that was Dedalus Diggle. He never had much sense.’ ‘You can’t blame them,’ said Dumbledore gently. ‘We’ve had precious little to celebrate for eleven years.’ ‘I know that,’ said Professor McGonagall irritably. ‘But that’s no reason to lose our heads. People are being downright careless, out on the streets in broad daylight, not even dressed in Muggle She threw a sharp, sideways glance at Dumbledore here, as though hoping he was going to tell her something, but he didn’t, so she went on: ‘A fine thing it would be if, on the very day YouKnow-Who seems to have disappeared at last, the Muggles found out about us all. I suppose he really has gone, Dumbledore?’ ‘It certainly seems so,’ said Dumbledore. ‘We have much to be thankful for. Would you care for a sherbet lemon?’ ‘A sherbet lemon. They’re a kind of Muggle sweet I’m rather ‘No, thank you,’ said Professor McGonagall coldly, as though she didn’t think this was the moment for sherbet lemons. ‘As I say, even if You-Know-Who has gone –’ ‘My dear Professor, surely a sensible person like yourself can call him by his name? All this “You-Know-Who” nonsense – for eleven years I have been trying to persuade people to call him by his proper name: Voldemort.’ Professor McGonagall flinched, but Dumbledore, who was unsticking two sherbet lemons, seemed not to notice. ‘It all gets so confusing if we keep saying “YouKnow-Who”.’ I have never seen any reason to be frightened of ‘I know you haven’t,’ said Professor McGonagall, sounding halfexasperated, half-admiring. ‘But you’re different. Everyone knows you’re the only one You-Know – oh, all right, Voldemort – was ‘You flatter me,’ said Dumbledore calmly. ‘Voldemort had powers I will never have.’ ‘Only because you’re too – well – noble to use them.’ ‘It’s lucky it’s dark. I haven’t blushed so much since Madam Pomfrey told me she liked my new earmuffs.’ Professor McGonagall shot a sharp look at Dumbledore and said, ‘The owls are nothing to the rumours that are flying around. You know what everyone’s saying? About why he’s disappeared? About what finally stopped him?’ It seemed that Professor McGonagall had reached the point she was most anxious to discuss, the real reason she had been waiting on a cold hard wall all day, for neither as a cat nor as a woman had she fixed Dumbledore with such a piercing stare as she did now. It was plain that whatever ‘everyone’ was saying, she was not going to believe it until Dumbledore told her it was true. Dumbledore, however, was choosing another sherbet lemon and ‘What they’re saying,’ she pressed on, ‘is that last night Voldemort turned up in Godric’s Hollow. He went to find the Potters. The rumour is that Lily and James Potter are – are – that they’re – Dumbledore bowed his head. Professor McGonagall gasped. ‘Lily and James ... I can’t believe it ... I didn’t want to believe it Dumbledore reached out and patted her on the shoulder. ‘ |
as old coins. And how, act 2015 is a statute of the Parliament of Singapore that relates to pawnbrokers. And legislative advocacy, you can use evidence such as newspaper clippings or writte" If you suspect any items you own have more value than just the gold in them. What happens if you dont repay the debt. It is just convenient really, a pawnbroker is an individual or business pawnshop or pawn shop that offers secured loans to people. D a monthly or daily interest rate. You can ask the pawnbroker if they money are prepared to extend the deadline. Were the only organization of our kind in the state. B18 6JQ, heres some information on what happens and what you should. Obviously the banks had not been lending like they were so it became a credible source of alternative finance for larger numbers of people. The door of which stands always doubtfully. The twin effects of the gold price plunge and the attractions of online payday lending anonymity and instant access have pushed traditional pawnbrokers into a trough. We understand the refining needs of pawnbrokers. The business has clearly progressed from the days of the low.
Автор: ariebingbomb | Опубликовано: 10 Nov 2019
Теги: pawnbrokers | Категория: cheapdumpswithpin, topccshop
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Waste management professionals typically provide, empty, and remove the huge dumpsters needed to collect construction debris. Companies like Feher Rubbish Removal commonly supply the metal bins, which are commonly known as roll-off containers. Their Roll Off Rental Service in Ithaca NY includes providing the right sized waste equipment for businesses, delivering dumpsters to residents, and recycling debris.
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Construction and demolition companies rely on Roll Off Rental Service in Ithaca NY, to keep work sites safe, clean, and efficient. In fact, they typically arrange delivery of the portable units during the planning stages of projects. Waste management professionals will deliver the heavy units on the backs of trucks before work begins. The open-topped containers, generally, can hold between 10 and 40 cubic yards of waste. Rubbish removal companies that provide them charge customers by weight. They will generally accept rock, steel, iron, cars, stumps, concrete and dirt. However, they may not allow hazardous items such as batteries or asbestos.
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Homeowners who are renovating, cleaning garages or moving out often need to dispose of large amounts of debris. Many go online to get more information about waste solutions and then decide to order roll off containers. Waste managers help them choose the size they need and also suggest locations to have the bins delivered. That is because containers are very heavy and can damage driveways or sidewalks. However, when used correctly, they provide efficient, affordable disposal solutions that keep projects on track.
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"You are what you eat." Nutrition is foundational to providing animals with what they need to self-heal and maintain themselves.
Inflammation is at the root of virtually every disease
"Analysis comparing British nutrient data from 1930 and 1980 indicates reductions of essential minerals in both fruits and vegetables. "
According to the report, published in the British Food Journal (1997, vol 99, no. 6, pp 207-211), average calcium content has declined 19%; iron 22%; and potassium 14% in the 20 vegetables compared. The report's author, Anne-Marie Mayer, now at Cornell University, says,
"Changes in agricultural practice during this time could have contributed to the decline - for instance, soil compaction, use of agricultural chemicals, disruption of soil life, or lack of organic matter. "
Healing requires a higher level of energy intake and is enhanced by the best nutrition. This is backed up by more recent findings that genes are expressed according to the cellular environment which is largely dictated by the quality of food consumed.
Commercial pet foods are the junk food industry for our dogs, cats, ferrets and rabbits and others. We know a poor diet is responsible for many illnesses in people. Recent studies in human medicine have proven links between periodontal disease and serious conditions including heart disease, liver and kidney disease and cancer. Of course our pets are equally effected. Commercial pet foods claim to help keep our pets' teeth clean, yet the British Small Animal Veterinary Association figures for pets requiring veterinary dental intervention, is 80% of pets over 3 years old. Clearly the pet foods aren't as effective as we are led to believe! It is a logical conclusion that the failure of commercial pet foods to clean teeth is directly responsible for many of our pets' problems and resultant high vet bills.
Animals require a species-appropriate diet.
Our carnivorous cats, dogs and ferrets need a natural diet of raw, meaty bones to maintain their general health and well-being. Similarly, rabbits require an appropriate vegetation-based diet that most closely resembles what they eat in the wild - i.e. primarily grass. The majority of health issues suffered by rabbits is directly attributable to a poor diet linked to commercial rabbit food.
The increasing reliance by horse owners on hard feed fuelled by magazine articles written by those with a vested interest in selling more feed is setting horses up for more colics, allergies and other diseases. Molasses and other inappropriate ingredients are added to everything to increase palatability and to increase intake by up to 40% - great for sales income, but not so great for the welfare of the horses.
See the dedicated pages for further information on nutrition for dog & cats, horses and rabbits.
Nutrient Levels in Food
Firstly, although Organic food is theoretically produced using a higher standard of farming it has limitations. It takes less than 5 years for a non-organic farm to switch to being classified as organic and whilst I encourage this, it tends to guarantee the minimum usage of chemicals in food production more than a higher level of nutrient ingredients. Of course farms that have been Organic for much longer, or are bio-dynamic (eg according to Rudolph Steiner methods) should be producing food that is significantly more nutritious too.
So why is food often nutritionally inferior? Well most commercial farming fertilizers are based on adding Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium which is where the N:P:K ratio displayed on fertilizer bags comes from. We all know there are many more nutrients required for good health and whilst farmers with stock animals go muck-spreading, if their stock animals' diet is somewhat lacking then it can't go into the muck. As was said as early as the 1930s in the USA
"Never have we been so well fed but so under-nourished."
As an example of how soil and feeds grown in it are significantly depleted here is a chart showing mineral changes in various different foods.
Minerals Vegetables
(27 varieties)
(17 varieties)
(10 cuts)
Sodium -49% -29% -30% -14%
Potassium -16% -29% -16% -3%
Phosphorus +9% -19% -28% -2%
Magnesium -24% +2% -10% -21%
Calcium -46% -16% -41% -2%
Iron -27% -24% -54% -62%
Copper -76% -20% -24% -100%
I think this makes mineral supplementation compulsory to optimise health in all species. Tablet/powder options are often made cheaply from grinding up mineral rocks which means that the content of the tablet will not be very absorbable by the body - this is termed low bio-availability. Research shows that 64 minerals and trace elements are needed for DNA to function properly. On the basis that DNA is fundamental to cell function and replication it follows that these 64 elements at least should be present in any diet.
Science is now realising that the balance of trace elements in supplements is important too. The interdependence of all the elements is the key to the correct functioning of metabolism. Supplementing one trace element in isolation just because some research says it's useful for a certain condition (or a multi-mineral supplement but not in the correct proportions) will upset the inter-relation of all the other trace elements reliant on it. Likewise each trace element requires the presence of others it interacts with in the correct proportions to function optimally too.
The gut Microbiome and Dysbiosis
The microbiome in the digestive tract has been getting more coverage in the news as researchers discover it's far-reaching consequences when things go wrong. The microbiome is the fancy name for all the micro-organisms that inhabit a healthy gut. There are other communities of microbiome too in the mouth, nose and nasal sinuses, the skin surface etc. The microbiome out-numbers mammalian cells by 10:1 but this is probably a gross under-estimate for those herbivorous species that rely on fermentation of food either in the foregut (ruminants such as cattle, sheep, goats) or the hindgut (horses, ponies, donkeys etc).
The gut microbiome contains bacteria and other micro-organisms that confer benefits in terms of helping digestion function, others which are regarded as neutral and some which can cause digestive problems. It is the relative balance of these that determines whether the digestive tract is healthy. The "friendly" bacteria should out-number the pathogenic ones and the degree to which one group out-numbers the other determines how well our digestive tract works and degrees of health; but conversely how poorly the digestive tract works and what symptoms we see. When the proper balance of the gut microbiome is upset this is termed a Dysbiosis.
When the diet is not species-appropriate and/or food contains unnatural chemicals then the gut microbiome will tend towards a pathogenic balance. From the research we know that this gut microbiome has implications for health elsewhere, so it is entirely possible for a disease elsewhere in the body to manifest symptoms without any indication that it is related to the gut dysbiosis. Skin allergies and itchiness etc are a classic example of this. Anal furunculosis which is most commonly seen in German Shepherd Dogs is an extreme example of gut dysbiosis.
Roger has found a number of products that can help re-establish a healthy gut microbiome. Micromax® is a naturally fermented live gut reconditioning supplement that helps to optimise the bacterial population profile in the gastrointestinal tract. Nucleotide nutrition supplements help heal damaged villi in the intestine which can complicate the transition from the wrong diet onto the correct species-appropriate one.<|endoftext|>Life without cars: Can we make it happen here?
The New York Times today tells the inspiring tale of a town on the German-Swiss-French borders that has more or less done away with cars. Vauban was completed just three years ago, and its radical, exhaust-free lifestyle was accomplished by telling home owners that if they owned a car, they'd have to park it in one of two garages on the outskirts of the development. Those spaces, purchased along with homes as a package, cost $40,000. Where garages or driveways should be, houses have bigger yards or more rooms. The result: 70% of locals don't own a car, and 57% of new arrivals sold their car before they moved in.
You could call it a novel way of looking at a urban planning. Except that's the way towns used to be, before cars took over.
The Vaubanese aren't isolated by their lack of personal vehicles. Rather, homes were arranged so that a tram to the nearby town of Freiburg would be easy for everyone to reach. Stores and banks were placed within walking distance of all homes, not zoned to remain in a cluster miles from home. For longer trips, residents use jointly owned cars or they belong to "car clubs" and book wheels for the day. That's a lot of bills people don't have to pay each month: no car payment, no insurance, no registrations, no fuel. And, as one local father points out, he's not afraid to let his kids play in the street now.
Although some American islands, college campuses, and tiny developments share the car-free outlook, there's no town in America that has yet followed Vauban's lead. Outside Oakland, California, there's a hoped-for development called Quarry Village that aims to repeat Vauban's success, but so far, it hasn't garnered enough investors to get off the ground. Indeed, zoning laws actually mandate parking spaces for each residence.
A lifestyle reinvention like this is perhaps more possible somewhere like Europe, where public transportation is already treasured and infrastructure is already in place. I think many Americans would be perfectly happy to give up the car as long as they didn't have to give up their freedom that comes with it, but as it stands, we simply don't have the means of movement. In many European cities, there are a dozen frequent and inexpensive ways to go from Point A to Point B. A suburb-bound American, though, has only one: a car. Idealistic urban planning such as Vauban's simply isn't possible yet, and it won't be until Americans agitate for more transportation options.
America used to have plenty of fine networks of trams and trains. A hundred years ago, Los Angeles had the most extensive light rail system on the planet (yes, you read that correctly -- more than 1,000 miles of track). From Baltimore to Buffalo, the story was similar. But in the 1950s, people caught car fever and bus companies played dirty. Most of that valuable infrastructure was torn out, and we were abandoned to diesel and rubber. When we complain about feeling imprisoned by $4-a-gallon gas, we have our grandfathers to blame.
In my own city, New York, the authorities are in the process of reversing some of those mistakes. They are installing bike lanes on several of the main avenues that cut through town. Cars traditionally have five wide lanes of zooming traffic on each avenue in New York, plus two for parking, while bikers have had to risk their lives to thread through the free spaces. A new bike lane was completed last month near where I live, and its presence means that cars lose one of their lanes. As drivers and bikers alike adjust to the new scheme, some locals have taken the temporary uptick in traffic confusion to mean the whole idea is a failure, and they've started to complain. It seems that although Americans have been begging for things to change for years, when it comes time to actually make that change happen, they lose their backbone.
But adjustments like this take time, and although a new bike lane may be half-empty when it's constructed, it will fill up as people realize it's available for them to safely use. I don't own a bike, but seeing this new bike lane near my house, and knowing I will no longer be run down by a delivery truck if I try to cycle through town, I am now inspired to get one. That's how urban planning works, for better or for worse: If you build it, they will come. The question is whether you want the cars to come, or if you want to make it possible to get across town again without blowing your mortgage.
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environment.
Even Snopes has claimed that reports of Bt-Toxin being harmful is false even though Snopes acknowledges that scientists have debunked that claim in their report, yet they still say it is safe. It’s one if those situations where you say the data is inconclusive and the info is sit 50/50, uuh, I’ll go with the corporate giant and not some nerdy scientist. I’ve also heard Snopes is a couple of people living in a basement sitting around debunking people’s statement to appease a leftist agenda. Dont know it, just heard it!
Recently, an ENSSA (European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility) report as soon as December 10, 2013 said that 297 Scientists have now signed on and said that Bt-Toxin and GMO food is harmful and may have a very damaging effect on the bodies of those that consume, causing numerous health problems and cancer.
Even the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency ignored it’s own advisory panel that suggested that more studies need to be done on humans before being placed on the market. The EPA decided to side with food and seed giant Monsanto and clear the way to place these chemicals inside our food supply anyway.
I am now Intrigued, lost in the conversation and slowly pushing the corn to the middle of the table out of my reach but not before asking, “why is there concern that it may harm my body?”
I’m glad you asked as the waiter continued. Very few studies have been done on humans, I only know of one study and it was not conclusive and did not declare it safe.
Rats, insects and Rhesus Monkeys are relatively cheap, disposable and can be tested in high numbers. After all, if large numbers of humans died in preliminary experiments like our lab rats and insects did it would not be a lucrative venture for Monsanto and other GMO companies, so the study goes on.
Many scientists have looked at the effect of Bt Toxins on the body and and based on these studies came to this conclusion.
The end result and the short version of many scientific tests is that insects died when the integrity of their stomach lining was compromised when exposed to Bt. High levels of Bt has also been detected in women, in cord blood, suggesting the crossing of that almost impenetrable blood brain membrane or barrier that protects babies.
One study suggested that the Bt-Toxin, even after one feeding may attach to the lining of the stomach of a human and colonize, meaning it will preserve itself, replicate and disperse at intervals throughout your lifetime creating an environment for future sickness and cancer that will manifest itself at a later date. No such data that I am aware of has been collected or reported referring to an increase in sickness or cluster cancer rates and high consumption of Bt. It has been said this may be why so many of our bees are dying off colony population diminishing rapidly.
What we do know is Scientists have concluded that the Bt Toxin and the two versions produced by Monsanto causes at the very least an antigenic and antiallergic response.
This means that genes and tissue within your body are mutilated or altered when exposed to Bt and or an allergic response ensues causing things such as asthma and or autism when crossing the blood brain barrier.
The body releases an interleukin or cytokine response when exposed to a foreign antigen or substance. This may cause abdominal pain, flu like symptoms, a general malaise or just not feeling well. Let me remind you this is a bacteria and can cause sickness.
These markers can be detected in your blood when you go to the Doctor. This type of response is seen when your body is exposed to allergens in the environment and is seen with many types of cancer after consuming.
The waiter continues, my father is in the healthcare profession and he says you would not believe the amount of people that enter the hospital daily with many forms of stomach pain and related ailments. Many are treated but may not get diagnosed correctly and may never find out why they are hurting or sick.
He is skeptical and says it could be because of something in the environment or some foreign substance they consumed like Bt, but he doesn’t know for sure.
I am so sorry sir, please forgive me, I must get to other customers, I talk way too much but can I now serve you the corn you requested or do you need more time to decide.
I believe I have come to a conclusion, you can keep both ears, I’ll go home hungry tonight and contemplate that home garden and growing my own food! Yeah that’s what ill do.
Well sir, did I tell you that Monsanto now owns most of the worlds seeds, and the government has passed a Farm bill that says you can’t grow your own food and one of your local Tennessee state Senators just voted to block labeling of GMO products on your…..food…..sir, man on the ground……..sir? Are you alright? Are you ok! Please someone dial 911!!!!
This was a fictional story, but if it had been for real, the facts and the results would be the same.
Please share with your friends.
Snopes report acknowledges report and test results from scientist and still call report False! It appears they rendered their decision on the fact that Bt id a naturally occurring ingredient but didn’t recognize that Bt and GMO food is inside the plant, a part of it’s structure not merely in it’s surface, which can be easily washed off. Go figure.
ENSSER Report claiming 297 scientist say GMO good is unsafe
Genetically modified rice from human liver DNA being grown in Kansas
In Uncategorized on December 29, 2012 at 10:57 AM
Bon Appetit!
Why mix human DNA with rice……just why?
They have really just messed up one of my favorite side dishes and sushi is messed up forever!
Seriously, I am about three stomach spasms from vomiting and there is nothing I can do or say that will stop it! Seriously, no liver or cannibal jokes.
Rice, coined “Frankenrice” made from the liver DNA of humans for use in Pharmaceuticals and approved by the FDA to be grown in open fields in Kansas! Have we lost our ever loving minds? Have we just gone off the moral cliff to the point of no return?
As a child, growing up near farms, I witnessed my grandfather pour pig brains over his scrambled eggs for breakfast! Up until now, I thought that was, well it still may be the grossest thing I had ever witnessed. But still it had no human element to it and it was still an animal and you didn’t have to shake Tobasco hot sauce on it to make it more palatable.
Who in their right mind would think up some concoction? Yeah, they are saying it is not for human consumption but they are already making plans to ship it to starving children in Sudan, yeah sort of like Mikey from the Life cereal commercial fame, “give it to Mikey, he will eat anything!
I have a little medical knowledge and know even less about farming but wouldn’t this being grown in an open field spread to other plants in the air, where plants made for human consumption and essentially free of human body organs? Doesn’t the liver of any 2 or 4 legged animal see the most blood flow through it and is the filter of all things bad from the body? I’m pretty sure the answer is yes to both! Then does this not lead one to believe this could make us sick?
Anaphylaxis? Blood type confusion and reaction? Mutations? Resistant strands of organism? New disease? Nausea and vomiting? That was mine, but do you see my distorted logic in it, regardless of the fact that I may have just eaten a portion of my grandfathers DNA in my chicken and rice casserole with his pig brain and egg breakfast covered with Tobasco? Yuck! Wretch! You get the point!
Why are we allowing the likes of Monsanto and other GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) to produce these beastly recipes? Where is the outrage?
I’ll stick to my baked potato and steak! You can have the rice and beans. Please no one please don’t send me a link for GMO steak from human DNA, that may be more than I can take!
Have a great day and enjoy the rest of your day……I dont feel so good!!!
%d bloggers like this:<|endoftext|>I have no residences on any server, but I cannot claim even one.
Discussion in 'Empire Help & Support' started by jaqiefox, May 15, 2013.
1. I just returned from leaving for 6 or so months, and when I try to claim a residence on smp5 (or any server for that matter) it says my limit of one residence is reached. However, I have logged into every single server (including utopia) and done /home and been told it could not find my residence on any server... I have no residence and cannot obtain one.
Please fix?
2. Welcome back!
jaqiefox likes this.
3. You are the owner of residence: 11214
jaqiefox and TomvanWijnen like this.
4. Have you tried /home 2/3/4?
By the way, Welcome back! :)
EDIT: lol i'm slow...
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5. thanks. how can I change it to my primary home from home2?
I am trying now with commands but I don't remember them very well >.<
6. Very helpful lol:rolleyes:
I kid of course, but I think I actually remember you, or at least the name :)
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7. rainbow I was your neighbor on smp5. :)
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8. 1. Unclaim res
2. Reclaim res
I think...
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9. Omg yes.
I loved your shop :D
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10. Right now it's not in the code to be able to change which /home-#'s go to, but Aikar has expressed interest in looking into that down the line (after some of our bigger stuff is released).
11. thank you /res unclaim 2 and /res claim worked <3
PenguinDJ likes this.<|endoftext|>Friday, December 12, 2008
Cryonics scam
It's amazing how many smart people fall prey for the Cryonics scam.
Here're my reasons why cryonics is a scam.
1) The chances of successful revival are extremely slim.
The process of reviving frozen people was never tested.
That means that most likely something would almost definitely go wrong:
Either freezing process, or maintaining frozen body, or unfreezing.
Most likely failures would be in every step.
I'd say that the chances of successful revival of the dead body are well below one in one thousand.
2) The cost of maintaining frozen body for several hundred years is pretty high. The chance that frozen body would never be heated up to unacceptable temperature during these these hundred years is pretty low.
In fact such accidents have been reported already. We should assume that many more accidents like that were never reported, because it's not in the interests of Cryonics companies to report them.
3) Even if it would be possible to revive your frozen body -- what would be the motivation to unfreeze you? In 25th century it would be much more productive to clone genetically modified super-humans (or better yet -- silicon AGIs) than revive hardly functional brain of person who was frozen with terminal decease in 21st century.
What causes people to believe in Cryonics?
I guess it's the same reason that pushes people toward religion -- they're terrified by their own death.
The catch is that Cryonics makes people die even earlier than they would die otherwise.
Enjoy Penn and Teller take on Cryonics:
Cryonics competes for people's money on the same level as any other religions do. I think that eventually Cryonics will be fully transformed into religion (like it happened with Scientology).
Scientology and Cryonics might even merge with each other
Bill Mill said...
> it's not in the interests of Cryonics companies to report them.
Even worse than that! It's exactly opposite their interest. In the event of thawing, their continued survival as entities depends on hiding that event, and they're completely opaque. Barring a disgruntled employee, you'll never hear about it.
Anonymous said...
1) is silly. Of course we haven't tested it yet - if we had, we would be done. It's like refusing to get into an ambulance until it's already at the hospital. We can vitrify and thaw rabbit kidneys - that's some evidence.
We know how to freeze people and keep them frozen. It's thawing that's hard. Which is exactly why we're not expecting it to happen just yet. But saying "This will fail" is a strong claim; it's about what knowledge we will not get in the next 300 years. You may claim information is destroyed in the process of freezing (or before), but you'd need more data.
Where did you pull that number from?
Huh? Liquid nitrogen is cheap, and cryonics companies have incentives to have strong business models. They can do it.
As to whether they will - they do have incentives to be opaque. But there is little profit to be made from cryonics; most workers are involved in it out of altruism and genuine belief cryonics works. I agree people who are signed up for cryonics and their loved ones should push for more transparency.
Why do you feel so confident the future will be populated by assholes? If, today, a bunch of time-travelling cavemen asked we cure their tuberculosis, would we let them die? I think not. And I expect us to get more moral, not less - I see an historical tendancy in this direction, and we may get around to hard-wiring ethical injunctions in our brains.
Yes, people sign up for cryonics out of fear of death. People also wear seat belts because they're afraid of death. That doesn't make seat belts fail.
Dennis Gorelik said...
Anonymous, it would be nice if you leave your name.
"This will fail" is coming from my experience of dealing with complex processes. Without testing all of them fail.
Some of these processes are eventually implemented, but in the first try they fail, because there are some missing tweaks or defects in original implementation of the process.
Do you know any cases when complex process was built and successful in the first test run?
Would we revive cavemen? Yes, we would if it's possible and not too expensive. But only in the small numbers (for research and other exotic causes). Cavemen revival in large numbers is highly unlikely.
BTW, would you revive old computers?
How about reviving thousands of IBM 360?
It's possible and moderately expensive. But would you do that?
Anonymous said...
I'd rather not leave my name, sorry. If that matters: I'm not a scientist, all of my knowledge about cryonics is second-hand, and I'm not paid by anyone (though of course I can't prove that).
We are doing some testing! We can vitrify and thaw rabbit kidneys and rat hippocampus slices. That's some evidence vitrification works.
Cryonics is improving. We're vitrifying people instead of freezing them. Look at those pictures of brains. We're reducing skull cracks, we've drove the formation of ice crystals down to nearly zero, we are accelerating the vitrification process. So the last ones to get frozen should be in very good shape. When we get ready to thaw them, we will have plenty of time to test the process in the lab on animals. We will then use the knowledge to thaw people who were preserved earlier, until we can get to the first frozen people.
Maybe your claim is "there will be an important failure before we get to thawing". Thawing is the hard part. We can vitrify small organs and they'll be nearly perfectly preserved. And read Eliezer Yudkowsky's "secure erasure" argument; it's extremely unlikely freezing someone will destroy so much information we can't retrieve the original person.
Also, a reason why complex processes tend to fail at first is that we're using bottom-up approaches (using one piece of insight to figure out the general idea, then brute-forcing or at best hill-climbing the immediate neighbourhood to get what we want) rather than top-down approaches (understanding the search space well enough to pinpoint what we want). Top-down approaches are harder, though. Still, yeah, thawing will fail at first - but we don't care, we'll test it in the lab. And freezing/maintaining is not a complex process.
No, I wouldn't repair old computers that weren't running any kind of sentient process. People are ends, not just means - I value people staying alive, healthy and happy - I just value computers as a means to an end.
If you're trying to say "Future people will not see us as more than a old computer" - well, they may be superhuman, but it's clear we are still sentient and feeling and able to argue about cryonics. We are retarded and full of failings, but we're still conscious minds!
If I found out old computers were actually sentient (which they don't seem to be anymore than a toaster), yes, I would revive them.
You're talking about a future in which all the main powers have no concern for the life of others, or don't consider a clearly expressed will to live as a reason to let you live. Those are definitely not humane values.
Dennis Gorelik said...
1) Anonymous, you don't have to sign your real name, but it would be nice if you put any name, so I would be able to distinguish yourself from other anonymous commentators.
2) Yes, thawing process can be tested and improved later. What cannot be improved later is how your body was frozen today.
It's extremely likely that modern freezing process has some fatal errors (because it was never fully tested).
There is a huge difference between rabbit kidney and human brain.
3) If even bottom-up approach doesn't work (without testing), and top-down approach is even harder, then top-down approach would fail miserably too. So I don't see what kind of point you are trying to make here.
4) People rarely invest their resources just because it would help other sentient creatures.
In order to make future generations to appropriately thaw you, you will have to win their goodwill/attention over lots of other creatures: their fellow citizens, kids, clones, intelligent toys and gadgets, full-blown AGIs etc.
Your frozen body would be at the huge disadvantage:
- Not being able to act.
- Obsolete physical and mental structure.
How are you going to win the attention and resources of future generation?
5) The powers care only about desires of _active_ people. Not about dead frozen bodies.
It is that way now, and it's not going to change in the future, because only such approach allows long-term survival [of the powers].
6) You wrote: "all of my knowledge about cryonics is second-hand".
Then you wrote: "We are doing some testing".
So, which of the above statements is true?
7) Even if cryonics is |
request and response messages. However, U ma cannot generate the authentication request message {M 1 , M 2 , M 3 } and authentication message {M 4 , M 5 , M 6 } without the correct random nonces R SD and R UC . Furthermore, U ma cannot generate a session key SK ij = h(R SD ||R UC ) because secret parameter X i is not available to U ma . Therefore, the proposed scheme is secure against masquerade attack.
Smart Grid Device Stolen Attack
We assume that a malicious adversary U ma obtains SG device of a legitimate user and extracts secret information {A i , B i , C i } stored in the memory using power analysis attack [9]. However, U ma cannot obtain sensitive information of a legitimate user because all information stored in the memory is masked by XOR operation and hash function. Therefore, our protocol prevents SG device stolen attack because U ma cannot know the user's real identity ID i , a i , and secret parameter X i .
Replay Attack
Our protocol withstands replay attack because all transmitted messages are changed in every session. Assuming that U ma tries to impersonate legal user by resending information transmitted in a previous authentication process, U ma cannot use the previous messages because SD i and UC j check whether = M 6 , respectively. Thus, our protocol is secure against replay attack.
Session key disclosure attack
In the proposed scheme, U ma cannot calculate SK ij = h(R SD ||R UC ) because U ma cannot compute authentication request message {M 1 , M 2 , M 3 } without knowing random nonce R SD and secret parameter X i . Therefore, our protocol can withstand session key disclosure attack.
Insider attack
This type of attack happens when the administrator of authentication server exploits data stored in the database to legalize his authentication process on behalf of the user. Even if it is assumed that a malicious adversary U ma can obtain RID i , RID j , V i stored in memory of UC j , U ma cannot obtain sensitive information such as user's real identity ID i and X i without knowing random nonce R SD and ID j . Thus, our protocol is secure against insider attack. = M 6 , and then SD i authenticates UC j . Therefore, our protocol ensures secure mutual authentication between SD i and UC j because U ma cannot generate correct authentication messages.
Anonymity
U ma does not obtain a legitimate user's real identity ID i because it is masked by one-way hash function and XOR operation such as RID i = h(ID i ||a i ). Therefore, our protocol ensures anonymity because U ma cannot know the user's real identity without random nonce a i and R SD .
Security Features
In Table 2, we evaluate the security features of the proposed scheme with existing schemes [6,20,21,28]. The schemes in [20,28] cannot withstand session key disclosure attack and those in [20,21,28] provide dynamic node addition phase. The scheme in [6] cannot withstand various types of attacks and cannot ensure secure mutual authentication and anonymity. Consequently, the proposed scheme ensures better security functionality than all previous schemes.
Formal Security Analysis Using BAN Logic
We performed BAN logic [13] analysis to verify that our protocol provides secure mutual authentication. Table 3 shows the notation used for BAN logic analysis and we then defines the goals, idealized forms, and assumptions before performing BAN logic analysis.
Notation Description
Session key used in the current authentication session Q K ↔ W Q and W communicate utilizing K as the shared key
BAN Logic Rule
The rules of BAN logic are as follows.
Goals
The goals for BAN logic analysis are as follows.
Idealized Forms
The idealized forms are formulated as follows:
Assumptions
We define initial assumptions to perform the BAN logic analysis.
Proof Using BAN Logic
We performed the BAN logic analysis for our protocol and the detailed proofs are below.
Step 1: According to Msg 1 , we obtain Step 2: Using the message meaning rule with S 1 and A 3 , we can obtain Step 3: Using the freshness rule with A 1 , we can obtain Step 4: From the nonce verification rule with S 2 and S 3 , we can obtain Step 5: Using the belief rule with S 4 , we can obtain Step 6: Because of SK = h(R SD ||R UC ), from the S 5 and A 2 we can obtain Step 7: From the jurisdiction rule with S 6 and A 7 we can obtain Step 8: According to Msg 2 , we can obtain Step 9: Using the message meaning rule with S 8 and A 4 , we can obtain Step 10: Using the freshness rule with A 2 , we can obtain Step 11: Using the nonce verification rule with S 9 and S 10 , we can obtain Step 12: Using the belief rule with S 11 , we can obtain Step 13: Because of SK = h(R SD ||R UC ), from the S 12 and A 1 we can obtain Step 14: Using the jurisdiction rule with S 13 and A 8 we can obtain Based on Goals 1-4, we proved that proposed protocol ensures secure mutual authentication between SD i and UC j .
Formal Security Analysis Using ROR Model
ROR model [14] is the formal security analysis to verify session key (SK) security of protocol from active/passive attacker U A . We first discuss the ROR model before performing the proof of SK security for the proposed protocol.
In our protocol, there are two participants SG device P t 1 SD i and UC P t 2 UC j , where P t 1 SD i and P t 2 UC j are instances t th 1 of SD i and t th 2 of UC j , respectively. Table 4 defines queries for ROR model to perform security analysis, including Execute, CorruptSD, Reveal, Send, and Test queries. Hash is also a random oracle, which is a collision-resistant hash function. We uses Zipf's law [29] to prove SK security of the proposed protocol, which has been widely applied to verify recent authentication schemes [30,31]. Table 4. Queries of ROR model.
Query Description
Execute(P t 1 SD i , P t 2 UC j ) This query denotes that U A can eavesdrop transmitted messages between SD and UC over insecure channel. This query is modeled as an eavesdropping attack.
CorruptSD(P t 1 SD i ) This corrupt SG device query means that U A can extract sensitive information stored in the SG device utilizing power-analysis attack. This query is modeled as an active attack.
Send(P t , M)
This query denotes that U A can transmit message M to P t and can also receive the corresponding message from P t . This query is modeled as an active attack.
Test(P t )
This query means that an unbiased coin c is first flipped before the experiment begins and its output is used as a decider. U A execute this query and if session key SK ij between SD and UC is fresh, P t returns SK ij if c = 1 or a random number when c = 0. Otherwise, it returns the null value ⊥.
Reveal(P t )
The query means that U A can compromise SK ij between P t and its partner in the current session.
Theorem 1.
If Adv U A denotes the advantage function of a malicious attacker U A in violating SK security of the proposed authentication scheme, then where Hash, q send and q h are the number of Hash query, the number of Send query, and the range space of the hash function h(.), respectively, and s and C are the Zipf's parameters [29].
Proof. Similarly, we adopt the proof as presented in [32,33]. A sequence of four games is denoted by GM i , where i ∈ [0, 3] are defined for demonstrating the SK security of the proposed authentication scheme. We denote that Succ i is the probability a malicious attacker U A wins the game GM i . The detailed descriptions of these four games are shown in Game 0-3.
• Game GM 0 : This game is the initial game in which U A selects the random bit c. In addition, this game denotes actual attack of U A for the protocol and c is guessed at the beginning of G 0 . According to this game, we can get, It is computationally infeasible for U A to derive identity ID i of SD i correctly via the Send queries without TA's master key K s and secret parameter X i . As a result, GM 2 and GM 3 are indistinguishable if identity guessing attack is not implemented. Consequently, utilizing Zipf's law [29], we can get the result as below: As all the games are executed, U A can only guess the exact bit c. Thus, we can get as below: Using Equations (1), (2), and (5), we can get the result as below: Using Equations (4)-(6), we obtain the result utilizing the triangular inequality as below: Finally, we obtain the required result by multiplying both sides of Equation (7) by a factor of 2.
Adv U A ≤ q 2 h |Hash| + 2max{C · q s send } 7.5. Formal Security Analysis Using AVISPA AVISPA is a widely used simulation tool for checking whether authentication protocol is secure against replay and MITM attacks. To perform AVISPA simulation, the session and environment of security protocol must be defined using the High-Level Protocol Specification Language (HLPSL). We define three basic roles in HLPSL implementation for the proposed protocol: the SG device SD, the utility server UC, and the trusted authority TA. The session and environments are shown in Figure 9.
Detailed Specification of Roles
First, SD receives the initial messages and makes a state value from 0 to 1. SD generates a random number a i , calculates RID i , and then SD sends a registration request message {RID i , a i } to TA over secure channel and changes the state value from 1 to 2. In transition 2, SD receives the secret parameters {A i , B i } from TA over secure channel. In login and authentication process, SD generates a random number R SD and computes an authentication request message {M 1 , M 2 , M 3 }. Then, SD sends {M 1 , M 2 , M 3 } to utility center UC and updates the state value from 2 to 3. In the last transition, SD receives a authentication message {M 4 , M 5 , M 6 } from the UC, computes the session key SK ij , and declares a request function request(SD, UC, uc_sd_ruc, Ruc ), which means that uc_sd_ruc denotes a strong authentication factor. As a result, SD authenticates UC successfully. The specification of a SG device (SD) is shown in Figure 10. In Figures 11 and 12, the role specifications of UC and TA are similarly defined with SD.
Results of AVISPA Analysis
We utilized CL-based Attack Searcher (CL-AtSe) and On-the-fly-Model-Checker (OFMC) back-ends to the verify security of our protocol. The HLPSL code was translated into intermediate format, and then converted to output format using the back-ends. Figure 13 shows the results of simulation using two back-ends. The result of CL-AtSe back-end shows that two states were analyzed and the translation time was 0.10 s. The result of OFMC back-end shows it visited node 1040 nodes with nine plies depth. According to the results of simulation, the proposed protocol is secure against replay and MITM attacks.
Performance Analysis
This section compares performances and security feature of proposed scheme with existing schemes [6,20,21,28].
Computation Overhead
We compared the computation costs of the proposed scheme with existing schemes [6,20,21,28]. We define the parameters based on the work of Kumar et al.'s scheme [6]. T cert_ver , T cert , T h T s , T e , T m , T eca , T ecm , and T b denote public key certificate verification, public key certificate generation, one-way hash function, symmetric encryption/decryption, modular exponentiation, multiplication, ECC point addition, ECC point multiplication, and bilinear pairing, respectively. Based on the works in [21,34], we present the execution time for various cryptographic operations in Table 5 and assume {T s ≈ T h , T m ≈ T e } is negligible because it requires very low execution time. We also assume T eca T e and T eca ≈ T h . [21,34], the total computational overheads of our scheme is 0.011 s and 0.05 ms, which is implemented on HiPerSmart card and Pentium IV platform, respectively. Therefore, we provide better efficiency than existing schemes because our protocol utilizes only hash function and XOR operation. Table 6 shows the analysis result of computation overhead compared to existing schemes. Table 6. A comparative summary: computation overheads.
Communication Overhead
We first define that timestamp, identity, hash, random number, and ECC cryptosystem are 32, 160, 160, 160, and 320 bits, respectively. In our protocol, transmitted messages {M 1 , M 2 , M 3 } and {M 4 , M 5 , M 6 } require (160 + 160 + 160 =) 480 and (160 + 160 + 160 =) 480 bits, respectively. As a result, the proposed scheme has more efficient than related schemes [6,20,21,28] because the total communication overhead of proposed protocol is very low compared with the others. Table 7 shows the analysis result of communication overhead compared to existing schemes.
Storage Overhead
We first define that identity, hash, timestamp, random number, and public key cryptosystem are 20, 20, 4, 20, and 40 bytes, respectively. In our protocol, stored messages {A i , B i , C i } and {RID i , RID j , X i } require (20 + 20 + 20 =) 60 and (20 + 20 + 20 =) 60 bytes, respectively. Although the proposed scheme storage overhead of somewhat higher than Kumar et al.'s scheme, it provides better efficiency and security than the other related schemes [6,20,21,28]. Table 8 shows the analysis result of storage overhead compared to existing schemes.
Conclusions
This study demonstrated that Kumar et al.'s scheme cannot defend against various potential attacks such as masquerade, SG device stolen, and session key disclosure attacks. We also showed that Kumar et al.'s scheme does not ensure mutual authentication. To overcome these security shortcomings of Kumar et al.'s scheme, we present a privacy-preserving lightweight authentication protocol for demand response management in the SG environments. Our protocol prevents against various attacks, including masquerade, replay, SG device stolen, and session key disclosure attacks and achieves secure mutual authentication and anonymity. We proved that our protocol ensures secure mutual authentication between SD i and UC j using BAN logic, and then we showed that the proposed protocol withstands various potential attacks using informal security analysis and ROR model. We also demonstrated that our scheme was secure against replay and MITM attacks using AVISPA simulation tool. Furthermore, we compared communication overheads, computation overheads, and storage overheads with existing schemes. Therefore, our protocol is applicable for practical SG environments because it is more secure and efficient than other existing schemes.
Conflicts of Interest:
The authors declare no conflict of interest.<|endoftext|>Developing the platform model for problem solving of automated machine learning
The article discusses the current state of technologies for automated machine learning. The development trends and the nature of the distribution model - MLaaS - are defined. There is highlighted a number of problems of automating the machine learning process, such as: excessive simplification and specialization of tools, vagueness of implemented processes, lack of flexibility in the infrastructure hardware, using closed algorithms. As a partial or complete solution to them, we have proposed the architecture, consisting of separate modules: models, hybridizer, learning algorithms module, testing module, user support module, and a theoretical framework. The main feature of the given architecture is its modularity, transparency and encapsulation of components. Each module is described as a separate element, implemented as an independent microservice. The paper describes the benefits of applying the given approach to the implementation of automated machine learning systems, the need to implement the given or similar standards. For each of the modules, its purposes, the tasks it solves and the implemented functionality, as well as the data necessary for the functioning and their sources are described. A general diagram showing the flows of information exchange between modules is presented. The main scenarios for the resulting system operation, as well as ways of interacting with it and the result of its operation - the generated model - are described.
Introduction
The range of problems solved by means and methods of machine learning is constantly growing. The given class of algorithms has repeatedly proved its efficiency not only in classical problems of clustering, classification, approximation, but also in their specific practical applications: personal identification by a photograph, by the palm vein pattern, detection of network attacks and abnormal network traffic, and many others [1].
The increased demand for such systems is confirmed by the constantly growing supply on the intelligent systems market. As an example, we can name such relatively recent services as Google's Prediction API, Microsoft's Azure Machine Learning, Amazon Machine Learning, DataRobot.com and many others.
In addition to high demand, there is also a clearly defined trend in the service distribution model in the mentioned above named tools -MLaaS (Machine Learning as a Service), which means that for the end user there are several characteristic features: • Ease of useto achieve success a good service should have an intuitive interface and be easy to use for its target audience, namely analysts, machine learning specialists, developers, but not for people who are poorly familiar with data science and machine learning in particular, such as designers or managers.
• High degree of automation -most routine operations, processes and stages of development of final solutions are unified, standardized and scripted, however, often these standards remain within a particular organization. • Cloud infrastructure -many of the discussed services offer to use their own servers to process customer data as one or even sometimes the only possible alternative. • The closed nature of the applied methodologies and algorithmsthe higher is the degree of automation, the lower is the transparency of processes, the simpler is the interface and the less obvious are processes taking place, which reduces the flexibility and productivity of services when solving non-trivial tasks, although this phenomenon is caused not only by the desire to improve the user experience, but also for reasons of preserving security or trade secrets.
As can be seen from the above list of features, each of them entails disadvantages, the effect of which could be minimized or avoided altogether.
Scientific merit of the issue
At the same time, there are many publications and studies aimed directly at the process of automating the machine learning process, which propose or analyze holistic solutions, such as Julia [2], AUTO-SKLEARN [3], Chameleon [4], ML-Plan [5]. Such articles propose solutions to particular problems that arise directly during the learning process, when processing or interpreting data directly, expanding the scope of application or increasing efficiency and accuracy of results by a certain fraction or number of percent.
Another category of publications on the given topic is |
height of the great depression in a mining town, with people on the poverty line and lucky to have steady work. However, in this era it’s not about having enough food or coal for the fire, it’s about people who are getting money and mismanage it, and so selecting sources is normal practice to say the reason why family X needed to go to the food bank is due to the corporate elite and the corporate influenced government, which isn’t utterly wrong. Family X may be a good example, but not representative, not that this matters, all that is required is convincing arguments to sway you, and it’s called evidence. Pseudo-news then? selecting surveys, picking bias stories in the press, and creating other such ways of swaying the under thinking person who should know better, but probably doesn’t.
Tuesday, 14 June 2016
Astral Projection In A Nutshell
A friend on Youtube created a great response to astral projection, a guy called 'Koi' thinks its real because its an experience, Chocolate Hat says otherwise in an entertaining and informative video. He also shouted me out, so give him a cigar, or failing this a thumbs up would be very fair.
In my experience the way we can create things that seem real via belief and visualisation is what astral projection is, in a nutshell we are creating a state of mind that allows visual states that can be akin to daydreams or far more vivid. It's explainable, not that everyone wants to accept that you are the dreamer of the experience and not experiencing of a wider reality.
Sunday, 12 June 2016
Brexit, a common Brextake?
The Common Problem About The European Union And It's Governance.
If a man says to you that the nation in which you live is a dictatorship while not proving the claim, would you accept it based on argument and selected arguments? I should make clear, I have no love lost for me and the European Union, I have swung between sides of this debate since we have a mixed bag of positive and negative issues that give value to both the 'In' or 'Out' opinions. And, I have swung from neutrality to the Out or Leave side of the argument. The trouble is the collection of propagandists on both sides who don't see how those of us willing to be sceptical can see though their deceptive political views. I could reference the 'In' camp's claims, but tedious stats would be a side note, and the scaremongering will only enrage the sensitive among you.
The point I am annoyed by is the claim about European democracy being far from democratic, which isn't totally wrong, yet is somewhat false. I will clarify, the concern is not a black and white one as you will no doubt understand, it is when The Brexit 'Movie' claims that the European Union is or has turned into a dictatorship. Now, as a left-libertarian I am concerned on two fold, my libertarian politics respond to the concern of an overly complex and massively funded central government with layers of regulation that limits trades, and my inner lefty who seeks to encourage real progression in society and an end to poverty. My political entity finds a dictatorial governmental power structure to be against good socialist ideas and the values of a free society. So if we are dictated to then as a left libertarian I see in it the failure of our politician to safeguard a European society from governmental tyranny.
Now, I ask you on what evidence did I base my previous thoughts?
Was it on the solid fact of the EU's dictation to member nations or the reaction to the claim? I only ask because we live in an age of reactionary views, and to be told what the enemy does and thinks is another matter from what they truly are. So, I may be very concerned if I do no research if I let Boris and Nigel tell me what they want to say, for whichever reasons they have chosen for themselves, in truth or bias. Or when facing the claims, I do research, look at all the data to find out what's what. This is why a vote on whether we want to be in or out of the European Union needs real discussion.
The obvious facts on how the European Union works, how the bureaucracy work to limit the power of one nation over another, and how commissioners are just put on the gravy train should be serious topics discussed in detail, and in the mainstream news media.
This is not to say the facts are covered up, nor that the media is just barking common thoughts while trying to act mildly impartial, however, there are very easy answers to some of the Brexit questions.
The claim I hear over and over is we are dictated to by the European commissioners, that these unelected men get onto the gravy train of European politics and simply enjoy the perks of the job while waving through laws from French and German bureaucracy. However, if you listen to Nigel Farage on this point, when he often claims such things, you may fail to use a search engine on your browser to check and double check the facts. Are you accepting limited information and slanted facts that make a great mountain of a small knoll?
How are European Commissioners appointed is explained on the Wikipedia page [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commissioner] that gives us an impartial view, and a strong point is that they must be qualified to get the role, the commission president is merely a figurehead, and then green-lighted by the elected members of the European Parliament. These commissioners are dominated by the national governments firstly, then the European government, the commissioners and the EU parliament, filter out the under-qualified and inexperienced candidates. It isn't a matter of sending a friend to get rich in an easy desk job, that kind of system is ruled out by the screening process. So the nearest thing to the gravy train is educated and experienced persons get a job that pays well, although they must spend most of the year far from family, invested in politics and diplomacy, trying to broker ever greater cooperation between nations that are often trying to get a deal that would be unfair to the other member nations. The result when we have protested against a bill that comes to the Parliament is a rejection that forces rewrites to ensure that the majority can agree to vote yes.
To get back to the point, the commission is made up of experts who have an area to focus upon, they are no so many politicians, nor representatives. They are civil servants who try to draft bills for the parliament that are designed to get agreement from the various members of the European Union. Even though they work with the various Parliamentary members, including those who work in the think tanks that help set up policy ideas, and what is or may be desired by national governments. It could be compared to herding cats. A series of independent and uncooperative members who all want a special deal, such as the deals that Mr. Cameron has hungered for in negotiations over the last few years.
A quick clarification, the UK Government put forward experienced and skilled persons to be commissioners, the Commissioner president filters out the unsuitable for the civil servant role or roles required, the EU Parliament agrees or does not upon the commission set up, and these civil servants work as diplomats to try to get agreement upon policies that get through the Parliament and are voted up by your representatives.
So, please tell me why this is a dictatorship.
I advise that any of you in doubt see the details of this area of European politics, this factor may not change your or my mind on immigration, proper spending, fair regulation and taxation, but it should be a matter of the facts above political rhetoric.
To add another thought, The Brexit Movie also had images of the top civil servants in the EU, showing people these photos and asking the public if they had a clue who they were. It goes without saying, they didn't have a clue. And because these 'presidents' are called such, they conflate the civil servants with rulers, in the American sense of the term 'president'.
Now, ask yourself, do you know who David Cameron's top advisers are?
Do you know the name of the top think tanks in the UK?
Who are the top four or five civil servants in the United Kingdom?
And would you know who the top civil servants are if I had pictures?
and lastly, if you know all of the answers to these questions above then ask yourself how many of the well over 60 million citizens of Great Britain actually know those answers, or even know their local politicians?
I doubt most people know enough to say much about the European Government, yet millions are very passionate and driven by poor arguments from walking jokes like Boris Johnson. You may as well be swayed by George Osborne and David Cameron's pleading to remain at all costs, or the anarchist who won't vote and will never get what he or she wants.
My point is not for the in or out arguments, my point is for a sceptical discussion, not a half-baked series of arguments from both sides touting celebrities to try to woo you to their side, or should I say scare you into committing to Brexit or Bremain.
As I say, I'm saying out, this is most because I'm probably biased with my politics, as we all are, and yet I am willing to hear all sides, are you should be too. And, dare I say it, our duty is to the facts and the will of the people, so I will support whatever people decide upon with me in the referendum.
The Brexit Movie<|endoftext|>The Tonka Report
Real News In A Changing World
Globalist Gang Rapes Women And Children And Sovereign Nations
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May 16, 2011: Paul Joseph Watson / Prison - May 16, 2011
Exposing a gang of rapists! - SJH
Habit of sexual molestation and perverted depravity illustrates sordid underbelly of the elite…
Given the fact that the likes of IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn and other top globalists are intent on raping the national and monetary sovereignty of countries in pursuit of their new world order, it’s no surprise that they also seem pre-occupied with raping women, amongst a host of other sordid and predatory perversions.
Strauss-Kahn was pulled off a jet at Kennedy Airport in New York by police Sunday after a hotel maid accused him of attacking and attempting to sodomize her. The fact that Strauss-Kahn left his mobile phone in the hotel room suggests he tried to make a quick getaway.
However, it’s not the first time the IMF chief has been accused of rape. French writer Tristane Banon is now considering legal action against Strauss-Kahn for an alleged sexual molestation that occurred in 2002. According to Banon, during the course of an interview Strauss-Kahn acted like a “rutting chimpanzee” as he violently attempted to tear off her clothes.
Strauss-Kahn’s alleged penchant for sexually assaulting women brings to mind the claims against his fellow globalist Al Gore which became public last year. Masseuse Molly Haggerty alleges that Gore invited her to his hotel room before pinning her down like a “crazed sex poodle” before groping her as she struggled to escape.
But Gore’s behavior is relatively tame compared to former President Bill Clinton. Juanita Broaddrick went public in 1998 to claim that Clinton raped her two decades earlier. Broaddrick alleged that Clinton forced her down on the bed in a hotel room, tore away her underwear and began aggressively raping her while biting her lips as she begged him to stop. Although Clinton denied the charges, he agreed to an $850,000 settlement to avoid the case going to court, “A lot of money from someone who claims he did nothing wrong,” as Larry Elder wrote.
Despite the fact that Clinton publicly lied to the American people during the Monica Lewinsky scandal when he said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” the numerous other women who alleged affairs or who claimed they had been raped or molested by Clinton were all dismissed as liars by the corporate media, just as Lewinsky was branded deceitful before she produced the semen-stained dress that proved her story to be true, and just as Gennifer Flowers was also savaged by the establishment before Clinton, during the Paula Jones deposition, was forced to admit the he did indeed have sex with Flowers.
However, sexual molestation of women only scratches the surface of the deep and sordid circles that the elite prefer to move in when it comes to acting out their forbidden perversions.
Politicians such as Larry Craig and Mark Foley are lightweights in comparison to the horrors of the underground child sex trafficking networks run exclusively for the pleasure of the elite.
As we have documented, almost every major pedophile network that has come to public knowledge has included tentacles that stretch high into the upper echelons of the global power structure.
On June 29, 1989, the Washington Times’ Paul M. Rodriguez and George Archibald reported on a Washington D.C. prostitution ring that had intimate connections with the White House all the way up to President George H.W. Bush. Male prostitutes had been given access to the White House and the article also cited evidence of “abduction and use of minors for sexual perversion.”
In July 1990, a Nebraska Grand Jury was convened to hear allegations that Lawrence “Larry” King, then manager of the Franklin Community Federal Credit Union and a rising Republican Party star, along with Washington lobbyists, had set up a child prostitution ring in which minors were transported around the country and forced to have sex with King, other top officials, and according to victims who some allege were later harassed into recanting, then-Vice-President Bush.
The Grand Jury dismissed the case as a hoax but former Nebraska State Senator John DeCamp later investigated the claims and was horrified to learn that they were indeed legitimate.
The video which you can watch in full below, Conspiracy of Silence, was produced by British Yorkshire Television and was scheduled to air nationwide in the U.S. on the Discovery Channel on May 3, 1994. Despite appearing in TV guides, the documentary was pulled at the last minute. Key politicians implicated in the scandal intimidated Discovery into canceling the program and it was never shown in the U.S.
The documentary team interviewed victims of the Franklin cover-up scandal and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Washington’s political elite had been involved in Larry King’s pedophile ring.
Connections between male prostitutes and the White House emerged again in early 2005, when James Dale Guckert, working under the pseudonym Jeff Gannon, was given privileged access to the White House despite his lack of suitable press credentials. Gannon first came under scrutiny when he repeatedly gave President Bush softball questions during press conferences – leading many to charge Gannon was a White House plant. Photos emerged of Bush embracing Gannon and appearing very affectionate towards him during meetings. It later came out that Gannon had previously placed ads on homosexual escort service websites.
In almost every case of human trafficking for child sex slavery, from Chile to Australia, to Bosnia, to Portugal, to Belgium, court proceedings get shut down or diverted when a clear connection to the elite arises.
In the mid 1990′s, convicted child rapist Marc Dutroux built a secret prison cell in his Charleroi basement where he kept abducted young girls hostage at the behest of what he called “a big crime ring,” which in the 2004 court case was thought by many to encompass some of Belgium’s top politicians, judges and policemen. The reason why it took so long to apprehend Dutroux was that he was being legally protected by these same individuals.
Material witnesses at the trial described “child sex parties involving judges, politicians, bankers and members of the royal family.” Victims that managed to survive (most were butchered snuff style after being raped) verified the claims.
Police actually visited Dutroux’s home and heard the cries of help from children concealed in his basement yet believed Dutroux’s explanation that the sounds were coming from kids playing in the street.
Dutroux was eventually convicted for his role in the pedophile ring but the involvement of the elite of the country was never properly investigated.
After Dyncorp and Halliburton contractors were exposed as having operated child prostitution rackets in the Balkans from the late 1990′s onwards (and more recently in the case of Halliburton), Rep. Cynthia McKinney attempted to get answers as to why the U.S. government continued to do business with these corporations.
On March 11th 2005, McKinney grilled Secretary Rumsfeld and General Myers on the Dyncorp scandal and its protection by the U.S. government.
“Mr. Secretary, I watched President Bush deliver a moving speech at the United Nations in September 2003, in which he mentioned the crisis of the sex trade. The President called for the punishment of those involved in this horrible business. But at the very moment of that speech, DynCorp was exposed for having been involved in the buying and selling of young women and children. While all of this was going on, DynCorp kept the Pentagon contract to administer the smallpox and anthrax vaccines, and is now working on a plague vaccine through the Joint Vaccine Acquisition Program. Mr. Secretary, is it [the] policy of the U.S. Government to reward companies that traffic in women and little girls?” asked McKinney.
In late 2005, Halliburton subsidiary KBR and Dyncorp lobbyists worked in tandem with the Pentagon to stall legislation that would specifically ban trafficking in humans for forced labor and prostitution by U.S. contractors.
Where were the investigations and convictions in other cases of establishment-orchestrated child slavery and prostitution? Like the NATO officials responsible for the mushrooming of child prostitution in Kosovo?
What happened to UN officials identified as using a ship charted for ‘peacekeepers’ to bring young girls from Thailand to East Timor as prostitutes? In every example, the case seems to get shut down when direct ties to people in positions of high power are established.
The behavior of Strauss-Kahn, Gore, Clinton, and every other globalist underscores how our planet is being seized by people who are predators in more than one sense, and whose conduct illustrates how they deserve to be behind bars more than they do accumulating more and more power in the move towards global governance.
Conspiracy Of Silence – (Banned Discovery Channel Documentary)
The Tonka Report Editor’s Note: These are the perverted, psycopath globalists soiling our planet- SJH
Link to original article below…
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When Does Using a Premarital Agreement Make Sense?
If you are considering getting married, you may be wondering whether it is worth it to obtain a premarital agreement, and you are not alone. More and more people are considering the possibility of getting a premarital agreement. Premarital agreements may seem unromantic, or only something that extremely wealthy people need to get before getting married. On the contrary, using a premarital agreement can help people of all different backgrounds prevent negative financial complications after a divorce.
What is a Premarital Agreement?
Premarital agreements, also called prenuptial agreements, are legally binding contracts between two different people before they get married. These agreements create an outline of the property rights and financial rights of each partner should the couple get divorced. Essentially, premarital agreements |
euronews: How do you think the rest of the world views the Smolensk tragedy? It seems to be ignored by the media across the world. Do you think that means no one cares about what actually happened at Smolensk any more?
Dr. Biskup: I think the world doesn’t care because it has no interest in it. It’s the same for the EU which has no political or economical interest in it.
Poland never asked the EU for any form of help or support in the Smolensk case. So the EU can’t do much and sees no advantage in being involved in the case.
I also think it’s because of the two-speed policy of the EU. Because Poland never formally asked for help, the EU is saying “take care of this on your own”. As Poland is a neighbour of Russia, they are saying deal with it on a bilateral level.<|endoftext|>Billy Sunday (1862-1935), was a professional baseball player from 1883 to 1891 for Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia teams. He was converted through the street preaching of Harry Monroe of the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago. He left a $5,000 a year salary as a baseball player for a $75 a month for the previously evangelistic YMCA. From 1893 to 1895 was associated with J. Wilbur Chapman. He was an evangelist from 1893 to 1935. It is estimated that over 300,000 people walked the "sawdust trail" to receive Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. (Adapted from "The Wycliffe Biographical Dictionary of the Church," page 387, Elgin S. Moyer, 1982, ©Moody Press, Chicago, IL)
For more information about Billy Sunday, please visit the Christian Biographical Resources for many links, pictures, and articles about this great evangelist.
Teach Us To Pray
We live and develop physically by exercise. We are saved by faith, but we must work out our salvation by doing the things God wills. The more we do for God, the more God will do through us. Faith will increase by experience.
If you are a stranger to prayer you are a stranger to the greatest test source of power known to human beings. If we cared for our physical life in the same lackadaisical way that we care for,our spiritual, we would be as weak physically as we are spiritually. You go week in and week out without prayer. I want to be a giant for God. You don't even sing; you let the choir do it. You go to prayer-meeting and offer no testimony.
You are a stranger to the great privilege that is offered to human beings. Some of the greatest blessings that people enjoy come from prayer. In earnest prayer you think as the Lord directs, and lose yourself in him.
Some people say: "It's no use to pray. The Lord knows everything, anyway." That's true. He does. He is not limited, as I am limited. He knows everything and has known it since before the world was. We don't know everybody who is going to be converted at this revival, but that doesn't relieve us of our duty. We don't know, and we must do the work he has commanded us to do.
Others say: "But I don't get what I pray for." Well, there's a cause for everything. Get at the cause and you'll be all right. If you are sick and send for the doctor, he pays no attention to the disease, but looks at what produced it. If you have a headache, don't rub your forehead. In Matthew it is written, "Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you" (Matt. 7:7). If your prayers are not answered you are not right with God. If you have no faith, if your motive is wrong, then your prayers will be in vain. Many times when people pray they are selfish. They are not gripping the word. I believe that when many a wife prays for the conversion of her husband it isn't because she really desires the salvation of his soul, but because she thinks if he were converted things would be easier for her personally. Pray for your neighbors as well as your own family. The pastor of one church does not pray for the congregation of another denomination. I'm not saying anything against denominations. I believe in them. I believe they are of God. Denominations represent different temperaments. A man with warm emotions would not make a good Episcopalian, but he would make a crackerjack Methodist. Oh, the curse of selfishness! The Church is dying for religion, for religion pure and undefiled. Pure religion and undefiled is visiting the widow and the fatherless (James 1:27) and doing the will of God without so much thought of yourself. I tell you, a lot of people are going to be fooled the Day of Judgment.
Isaiah says the hand of God is not shortened and his ear is not deaf (Isa. 59:1). No, his hand is not shortened so that it cannot save. He has provided agencies by which we can be saved. If he had made no provision for your salvation, then the trouble would be with God; but he has, so if you go to hell the trouble will be with you.
In Ezekiel we read that men have taken idols into their hearts and put stumbling-blocks before their faces (Ezek. 14:3). God is not going to hear you if you place clothes, money, pride of relationship before him. You know there is sin in your life. Many people know there is sin in their lives, yet ask God to bless them. They ought first to get down on their knees and pray, "God be merciful to me a sinner" (Luke 18:13).
Some people are too contemptibly stingy for God to hear them. God won't hear you if you stop your ears to the cries of the poor. You drag along here for three weeks and raise a paltry sum that a circus would take out of town in two hours. When they give things to the poor they rip off the buttons and the fine braid. Some people pick out old clothes that the moths have made into sieves and give them to the poor and think they are charitable. That isn't charity, no sir; it's charity when you'll give something you'll miss. It's charity when you feel it to give.
And when you stand praying, forgive if you have aught [anything] against anyone. It's no use to pray if you have a mean, miserable disposition, if you are grouchy, if you quarrel in your home or with your neighbors.
It's no use to pray for a blessing when you have a fuss on with your neighbors. It doesn't do you any good. You go to a sewing society meeting to make mosquito netting for the Eskimo and blankets for the Hottentots, and instead you sit and chew the rag and rip some woman up the back. The spirit of God flees from strife and discord.
People say: "She is a good woman, but a worldly Christian." What? Might as well speak of a heavenly devil. Might as well expect a mummy to speak and bear children as that kind to move the world God-ward. Prayer draws you nearer to God.
Learning of Christ
"Teach us to pray," implies that I want to be taught. It's a great privilege to be taught by Jesus. A friend of mine was preaching out in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and had to go to a hospital in Chicago for an operation, and I was asked to go and preach in his place. Alexander was leading the singing, and one night Charles [Butler] called a little girl out of the audience to sing. She didn't look over four or five years of age, though she might have been a little older. I thought, "What's the use? Her little voice can never be heard over this crowd." But Charlie stood her up in a chair by the pulpit and she threw back her head and out rolled some of the sweetest music I have ever heard. It was wonderful. I sat there and the tears streamed down my cheeks. That little girl was the daughter of a Northwestern engineer and he took her to Chicago when her mother was away. Some one took her to Patti. Patti took the little girl to one of her suite of rooms and told her to stand there and sing. Then she went to the other end of the suite and sat down on a divan and listened. The song moved her to tears. She ran and hugged and kissed the little girl and sat her down on the divan and said to her: "Now you sit here and I'll go over there and sing." She took up her position where the child had stood, and she lifted her magnificent voice and she sang "Home, Sweet Home" and "The Last Rose of Summer" sang them for that little girl! And Patti used to get a thousand dollars for a song, too. She always knew how many songs she was to sing, for she had a check before she went on the platform. It was a great privilege the little daughter of that Northwestern engineer had, but it's a greater privilege to learn from Jesus Christ how to pray.
A friend of mine told me he went to hear Paganini, and the great violinist broke one of the strings of his instrument, then another, then another, until he had only one left, and on that one he played so wonderfully that his audience burst into terrific applause. It was a privilege to hear that, but it's a greater privilege to have Jesus teach you to pray.
Let us take a few examples from the life of Christ. In Mark we learn that he rose up early in the morning and went out to a solitary place and prayed (Mark 1:35). He began every day with prayer. You never get up without dressing. You never forget to wash your face and comb your hair. You always think of breakfast. You feed your physical body. Why do you starve your spiritual body? If nine-tenths of you were as weak physically as you are spiritually, you couldn't walk.
When I was assistant secretary of the Y.M.C.A. at Chicago, John G. Paton came home from the New Hebrides and was lecturing and collecting money. He was raising money to buy a sea-going steam yacht, for his work took him from island to island and he had to use a row-boat, and sometimes it was dangerous when the weather was bad, so he wanted the yacht. We had him for a week, and it was my privilege to go to lunch with him. We would go out to a restaurant at noon and he would talk to us. Sometimes there would be as many as fifteen or twenty preachers in the crowd, and now and then some of us were so interested in what he told us of the work for Jesus in those far-away islands that we forgot to eat. I remember that he said one day: "All that I am I owe to my Christian father and mother. My father was one of the most prayerful men I ever knew. Often in the daytime he would slip into his closet, and he would drop a handkerchief outside the door, and when we children saw the white sentinel we knew that father was talking with his God and would go quietly away. It is largely because of the life and influence of that same saintly father that I am preaching to the cannibals in the South Seas." It is an insult to God and a disgrace to allow children to grow up without throwing Christian influences around them. Seven-tenths of professing Christians have no family prayers and do not read the Bible. It is no wonder boys and girls are going to hell. It is no wonder the damnable ball-rooms are wrecking the virtue of our girls.
In the fourteenth chapter of Matthew it is told that when Jesus had sent the multitudes away he went up into the mountain and was there alone with God. Jesus Christ never forgot to thank God for answering his prayers. Jesus asked him to help him feed the multitude, and he didn't neglect to thank him for it. Next time you pray don't ask God for anything. Just try to think of all the things you have to be thankful for, and tell him about them.
Pride Hinders Prayer
Pride keeps us from proper prayer. Being chesty and big-headed is responsible for more failures than anything else in this world. It has spoiled many a preacher, just as it has spoiled many an employee. Some fellows get a job and in about two weeks they think they know more about the business than the boss does. They think he is all wrong. It never occurs to them that it took some brains and some knowledge to build that business up and keep it running till they got there.
Here's two things to guard against. Don't get chesty over success, or discouraged over a seeming defeat.
"And when he prayed he said: 'Lazarus, come forth'; and he that was dead came forth" (John 11:43). If we prayed right we would raise men from sin and bring them forth into the light of righteousness.
"And as he prayed the fashion of his countenance was altered" (Luke 9:29). Ladies, do you want to look pretty? If some of you women would spend less on dope and cold cream and get down on your knees and pray, God would make you prettier. Why, I can look into your faces and tell what sort of lives you live. If you are devoting your time and thoughts to society, your countenances will show it. If you pray, I can see that.
Every man who has helped to light up the dark places of the world has been a praying man. I never preach a sermon until I've soaked it in prayer. Never. Then I never forget to thank God for helping me when I preach. I don't care whether you read your prayers out of a book or whether you just say them, so long as you mean them. A man can read his prayers and go to heaven, or he may just say his prayers and go to hell. We've got to face conditions. When I read I find that all the saintly men who have done things from Pentecost until today, have known how to pray. It was a master stroke of the devil when he got the church to give up prayer. One of the biggest farces today is the average prayer-meeting.
Praying in Secret
Matthew says, "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father, which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." (Matt. 6:6)
Two men came to the Temple to pray (Luke 18:10) - the first was the Pharisee. He was nice and smooth, and his attitude was nice and smooth. He prayed: "God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican [tax-collector]. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all I possess," and he went out. I can imagine a lot of people sitting around the church and saying: "That is my idea of religion; that is it. I am no sensationalist; I don't want anything vulgar, no slang." Why don't you use a little, bud, so that something will come your way? And it will come as straight as two and two make four.
Services rendered in such opposite directions cannot meet with the same results. If two men were on the top of a tall building and one should jump and one come down the fire escape they couldn't expect to meet with the same degree of safety. The Pharisee said, "Thank God, I am not as other men are," and the publican said, "God be merciful to me, a sinner." The first man went to his house the same as when he came out of it. "God be merciful to me, a sinner." That man was justified. I am justified in my faith in Jesus Christ. I am no longer a sinner. I am justified as though I had never sinned, by faith in the Son of God. That man went down to his house justified.
Praying in Humility
How many people pray in a real sense? How many people pray in humility and truth? Some men pray for humility when it is pride they want. Many a man gets down on his knees and says: "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name: thy kingdom come - " (Matt. 6:9) That is not so; they don't want God's kingdom to come. It is not so with half the people that pray. I say to you when you pray in the church pew and say that, it don't count a snap of my finger if you don't live it: You pray, "Thy kingdom come," and then you go out and do something to prevent that kingdom from coming. No man can get down and pray "The kingdom come," and have a beer wagon back up to his door and put beer in the ice box. No man can get down on his knees and pray "Thy kingdom come," and look through the bottom of a beer glass. God won't stand for it. If you wanted God's will done you would do God's will, even if it took every drop of blood in your body to do it.
"Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." When you say this in your pew on Sunday it means nothing unless you live it on Monday. You say "Thy kingdom come," and then go out and do the very thing that will prevent God's kingdom from coming. Your prayers or anything you do in the church on Sunday mean nothing if you don't do the same thing in business on Monday. I don't care how loud your wind-jamming in prayer-meeting may be if you go out and skin somebody in a horse deal the next day.
The man who truly prays, "Thy kingdom come," cannot take his heart out of his prayer when he is out of the church. The man who truly prays "Thy kingdom come," will not be shrinking his measures at the store; the load of coal he sends to you won't be half slate. The man who truly prays "Thy kingdom come" won't cut off his yardstick when he measures you a piece of calico. It will not take the pure-food law to keep a man who truly prays "Thy kingdom come" from putting chalk in the flour, sand in the sugar, brick dust in red pepper, ground peanut shells in breakfast food.
The man who truly prays "Thy kingdom come" cannot pass a saloon and not ask himself the question, "What can I do to get rid of that thing that is blighting the lives of thousands of young men, that is wrecking homes, and that is dragging men and women down to hell?" You cannot pray "Thy kingdom come," and then rush to the polls and vote for the thing that is preventing that kingdom from coming. You cannot pray "Thy kingdom come" and then go and do the things that make the devil laugh. For the man who truly prays "Thy kingdom come" it would be impossible to have one kind of religion on his knees and another when he behind the counter; it would be impossible to have one kind of religion in the pew |
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Cyber Scene Interview: Ken Block of Sister Hazel - Tamar Alexia Fleishman, Esq.
Ken Block has been the lead guitarist for the alternative rock group Sister Hazel for over 10 years. With over a million records sold, the group's five distinct personalities came together in the Florida college town of Gainesville. At the time, the Southeast was a hotbed for homegrown talent. Sister Hazel worked out of the area in concentric circles, gaining popularity as they gained comfort leaving home. Sister Hazel is the only band who has gone platinum, whose entire roster are college graduates.
Chasing Daylight is the band’s first self-released album since 1996. Sister Hazel opted out of its deal with Universal Records to maintain control not only over the music, but its means and rate of delivery. For example, the CD was released a week early via the internet for fans. Even without the benefit of traditional retail sales, the album debuted at #1 on the Billboard Internet chart, and #6 on Billboard’s Independent Label chart.
Tell me about the Rock Boat. It seems like a cool alternative to a tour bus.
It's great! It's an end of the tour party for us and a thank you for our fans. We made the cruise an annual event. We invite other artists that we know and we're friends with, we respect their music. I thought, "How could I make this cool and fun?" All the concerts are acoustic. The bands only have to play their half dozen strongest songs. It's truly a guilty pleasure. It's an intimate venue, like having your own private concert. When you play acoustic, there's more emphasis on color and lyrics. I always say, "It's Spring Break for people with jobs". We control the entire ship, over 2,000 people, music going on all the time in 11 rooms. We get to know our fans at deeper levels. There are a lot of bands it wouldn't work for, they have an image to keep up. It's like Woodstock on the water, without the bad acid. We are all for our fans. They allow our army to march. People spread the word, spread the love. We never take that for granted. Like all artists, we're eccentric at times. But we also have families.
What charities are you involved with?
We work with a lot of charities: Make a Wish, Muscular Dystrophy, leukemia, any charity. We also do things with the Humane Society, 9/11 Relief, the Red Cross. We have always had the mind set that if our vehicle can help, we should. Now, we are asked to do so much, so many organizations come to us, we have to cut some out. We started our own foundation, Lyrics for Life, to do charitable work. It does research for children with cancer and funding camps for them. We didn't want to just fund research, we want to treat the whole person. When I was 20, I lost my 18 year old brother after 4 1/2 years of cancer. I don't want to get over that battle. All the guys in the band have family members who are survivors. Both my parents are cancer survivors. We do an auction; artists hand-write lyrics on anything, like a cocktail napkin. Elton John sent a song book. All the information is at
Many people have to work in an office or on a team; how do you resolve arguments within the band?
We are much better at it than we once were. We have been together for ten years. With art, there's no right or wrong. We are so passionate. We have embraced our individual strengths and gifts. We defer to the person who brought the song in. We pick our battles. We used to argue intensely. Now we ask, "Is this gonna matter six months from now?" It's not easy, we're together 24 hours a day. We're more than friends, we're more like brothers. We have our intense moments, but we have a love I've never seen with other groups.
But what about the Beatles? John and Paul thought that they were the songwriters, they thought they were working things out. Meanwhile, George was simmering for years, thinking he had something to offer.
Ha, ha. It's not what you say, it's how you say it. It's difficult when people want to grow in new roles. We're more collaborative. Sometimes, I write something, and the rest of the band says, "I don't get it". Sometimes, it's painful. We are very democratic. On our latest CD, we had 70 songs that we narrowed down to 15. Of those, 10 were unanimous. Then, we were picking out the other few. We had to make sure that the songs had different colors, you can't have an album of the same sounds. You can't take it personally. You have to check your ego at the door.
When you first started out, how did you get gigs?
I did it all. I'd go to a little club owner and ask for the worst time. I'd say, "Give us this night, this day". I'd give demo CD's. So, we'd have bodies in there the first couple times. Then, I'd go to other owners, and say, "Call this club, he'll tell you we packed the place". It's a lot of work. We'd ask for half the door. Sometimes, we played for free. You have to eat it a lot of expenses. You have to be willing to go into debt, to play anywhere at any time.
What about your marketing?
Sure, we do our marketing. We pulled management together, they are all people we knew from different clubs. We're really a hands-on band. We all know what's going on with our promotion, marketing and web site. We have an understanding of it. Whether or not we are recording, we make a living. I remember our first paycheck -- we made $142 a week each. We had a van and a trailer. If we sold some T-shirts that night, we'd get a hotel room and a shower.
Have you held any other jobs?
I have been making money in the music business since I was a kid, with different bands. In high school, I was a tree surgeon. I have a Master's degree in counseling psychology; I was a case manager with Big Brothers/Big Sisters.<|endoftext|>Conservapedia talk:Commandments
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Just something I noticed: 18 USC § 1030, specifies penalties for fraud, damage, hacking, etc. to government, financial, and medical computers, or those that would cause physical harm to someone if tampered with. However, however important Conservapedia is, it doesn't seem to be included in this? Am I misreading (as I have no legal training, and only skimmed parts of it), or is the section in error? Umlaut 08:55, 28 February 2009 (EST)
Instead of having "only skimmed parts of it," how about actually reading it before spewing nonsense about it? It's not long and I don't think it uses any big words: [1].--Andy Schlafly 11:42, 28 February 2009 (EST)
I meant "parts of it I only skimmed", not "the only parts I read I skimmed", and this was simply because I really didn't need to see every detail of, say, the punishments. I read enough of the law to see what it in general listed; I was merely expressing that, while the general thrust of the law seemed to not mean what this page said, there might have been some minor technicality or precedent that extended its scope or changed its meaning. Also, was it really neccessary to assume that I was unable to understand it or had not read it, and accuse me of "spewing nonsense"? You are right, though. It is not terribly long, and uses few words that could be considered "big". Umlaut 14:06, 28 February 2009 (EST)
I think it's a fair question, Mr. Schlafly. I found the grammar and style next to incomprehensible. It's not a matter of any one word being big. It's legalese and cries out for a translation.
Please, counselor, be patient with us lesser mortals. --Ed Poor Talk 11:50, 28 February 2009 (EST)
'Umlaut' appears to be correct Mr. Schlafly. The kind of 'vandalism' that occurs on this site would not fall under the legal definition of vandalism in so much as this site is a wiki which any person can potentially edit, and indeed the site actively requests that people do edit it. The whole basis of a wiki is that it can be edited in such a manner and so even if an edit is indeed not conducive to the aims of the site, such as if factual material is deleted, then annoying and unhelpful as it may be to yourself and other users, it would not legally be vandalism. Besides this, the specific legal code in question, 18 USC § 1030, does as the original poster points out, refers to actual damage resulting from unauthorized access to a computer. For one thing, access to this website as I have mentioned is available to all, and secondly if someone does delete material from a page or add something to it then in virtually all cases no actual damage will result. Of course, the nature of any material that someone may add is still subject to the other two legal codes you mention and so you are right in pointing them out, but simply adding or deleting material from wiki pages that does not contravene these two aspects would not be vandalism in the strictest sense (although I accept that it is within the context of this site) and as such would not violate 18 USC § 1030. RobertWDP 13:02, 28 February 2009 (EST)
My objection to Umlaut was with his attempt to interpret a statute, and even claim that Conservapedia is wrong, without actually reading the statute. As I explained, the statute is not long and does not use big words, so there is no excuse for Ulmaut's sermonizing about it without reading it first. A look at Umlaut's other edits here reveal a similar lack of substantive contributions.
Good faith discussion of the statute is welcome. It prohibits vandalizing a site and thereby harming it. When I get a chance, I'll pull some cases that use this statute.--Andy Schlafly 14:05, 28 February 2009 (EST)
Umlaut, your statement that started this thread remains nonsensical, and you still haven't corrected it. "Playing dumb" is not as entertaining as you may think. Read the statute, study it, and correct your prior statement if you want to discuss further.--Andy Schlafly 16:07, 28 February 2009 (EST)
Please check my post below your first one, as I feel that it responds adequately (and is posted there as it was a direct response). I in fact did read the law; I was merely stating that I had not thoroughly read absolutely every section, and might have missed a minor detail. While I personally don't find "legalese" hard to understand (it's like reading math), such an attempt would have been futile, as I don't have the kind of training or experience needed to actually catch every detail. I was merely expressing that the law didn't seem to apply here, and was asking if anyone with more knowledge could clarify. Umlaut 07:20, 2 March 2009 (EST)
I agree with Ed Poor: It's written in legalese which makes it hard for us non-lawyer types to follow.
But thanks to Andy for providing a link, so I've now reach much of it for myself. You could, Andy, also help our understanding by pointing out which parts are applicable here. This is what I found:
• Section (a) lists the offenses.
• Section (b) says that the punishments in section (c) will apply.
• Section (c) lists the punishments
• Section (d) refers to government investigative agencies' powers.
• Section (e) defines terms
• Section (f) allows legal investigations
• Section (g) says that civil actions can still apply.
• Section (h) says that investigations are to be reported to Congress.
So the relevant parts seem to be section (a), the offences, section (c) the punishments, and section (e) for defining terms.
Section (a) is broken up as follows:
• Subsection (1) applies to national defence and the like.
• Subsection (2) applies to financial institutions, government department, or "conduct involved in an interstate or foreign communication".
• Subsection (3) applies to government departments and agencies.
• Subsection (4) applies to knowing intent to defraud.
• Subsection (5) applies to protected computers where certain actions are carried out.
• Subsection (6) applies to trafficking of passwords and the like.
• Subsection (7) applies to extortion of money or other things of value.
Of these, only (4) and (5) seem like that might be applicable.
Subsection (4), however, doesn't apply if the person doesn't obtain anything of value, or the thing obtained is use of the computer and such use is not more than $5,000 worth in any one-year period. So this doesn't seem to apply in Conservapedia's case, at least not for any vandalism that has occurred so far or is likely to occur.
Subsection (5) is where it became less clear to me, at least initially. It is divided into two sub-sub-sections. The first (A) specifies what is done and the second (B) specifies what the result is.
Sub-sub-section (A), in three different ways, basically says that the law is applicable if someone knowingly/intentionally causes "damage" to a "protected" computer.
However, according to section (e), a "protected" computer is one used by or for a financial institution or the government or one that is used on interstate or foreign commerce or communication.
Because I can't see how Conservapedia can claim to be a "protected" computer according to section (e), subsection (5) appears to also be inapplicable, in which case, no section of this statute seems applicable.
Now, because of the legalese, perhaps I've missed something, in which case I invite Andy to point out what I've understood incorrectly or to point out which section(s), subsection(s), and sub-sub-section(s) are applicable.
Philip J. Rayment 22:02, 28 February 2009 (EST)
Thank you for posing a more thorough analysis. What I found was the same- the law applies to "protected" computers, which a wiki isn't. Umlaut 07:23, 2 March 2009 (EST)
• And a wiki isn't used in international communication? One would have to find the many amendments and definitions of the applicable laws. In any event, this is another liberal deceit, a distraction from our purpose here, which is building an encyclopedia, NOT discussing if common vandals and cyber terrorists will be punished. Umlaut, you are in violation of the Conservapedia Commandments with your endless talk, talk, talk. I invite you to make substantive contributions here, or busy yourself elsewhere. --₮K/Admin/Talk 07:39, 2 March 2009 (EST)
Whether vandalism and "cyber terrorism" to this or any other wiki or site is illegal is not the question (though I think it isn't). My point was that 18 USC § 1030 appears to be an inappropriate citation. Pointing out such an inaccuracy (or perceived inaccuracy) is certainly a contribution to Conservapedia. Umlaut 08:02, 2 March 2009 (EST)
• Well, you are certainly entitled to your own opinion (no matter how wrong it is), Umlaut. You will now have lots of time to argue that at some liberal site, as it is more than clear you are dedicated to talk, talk, talk, argue, argue argue, and have been for many months here contributing absolutely nothing. Thanks for stopping by, Godspeed to you! --₮K/Admin/Talk 08:15, 2 March 2009 (EST)
Almost any web site could be claimed to be "used in international communications", so no, I can't see that being applicable. How on Earth is this a "liberal deceit"? And are you saying that the commandment's reference to a law is a distraction? Perhaps you'd better point that out to Andy so that he can remove the distraction. Philip J. Rayment 08:11, 2 March 2009 (EST)
The whole of 18 § 1030 section (a) subsection (2) reads:
As can be seen the subsection in question wouldn't apply to any form of wiki. Subsection 2 applies only to those instances when somebody attempts to obtain information from a computer (or equivalent record) when they don't have permission to access that information. It's an objective test of both actus reus and mens rea (i.e. Is it a reasonable that the average person would know in any particular case that the information is a) protected and b) not to be accessed by those who do not have permission to access it, and, then knowing both those things then makes an attempt to obtain that information). This subsection obviously does not apply to any wiki as a) wiki's are designed to have publicly accessed information and b) that information is not protected from being obtained. The subsection also doesn't apply to vandalism as the subsection deals with the obtaining of information not the depositing or removal of information. The subsection would apply however, if somebody hacked or attempted to hack a wiki's site in an attempt to gain protected information (i.e. any information that it |
. Abusers tend to deplete their victim’s bank accounts and destroy their credit to make them less versatile and more dependent on their abusers.
87. A staggering number of victims do not know what domestic abuse is, nor do they know that they are living it. Even when they have a sense that something’s wrong, they do not see the abuse coming as it stems and grows, it is why they say love is blind.
88. Spousal and Domestic Abuse rates are not their highest on Super Bowl Sunday than any other single day of the year. Not all men are into football, as a matter of fact men usually are not with their female partners on that day.
89. The reason or reasons why victims stay in such relationships is or are limited financial funds to get out and move, fear of making the abuse worst if caught leaving, and immunity to the abuse, there is an old saying “we like what we know, but we are afraid of what we don’t know”
90. A century 100 Years Ago it was legal for the husband to beat his wife in the UK given that he only used a stick no thick in width than his thumb.
91. Domestic Violence occurs in absolutely all races and ethnic groups to any gender regardless of age.
92. If battering and abuse is not decreasing, its increasing and tends to develop over time.
93. Abusive women have used domestic violence as a tool to arrest and intimidate their male partners by making false claims that her husband assaulted her. With the new domestic abuse laws of mandatory arrest on a domestic abuse call this is an easy one for women to pull. ( Ladies don’t get any ideas, if you’re husband treats you well, be nice to him )
94. A study on dating couples determined that 70 percent of all physical abuse was inflicted by both parties.
95. Blind, deaf, handicapped and mentally retarded persons are also subject to abuse one way or another.
96. Military domestic violence statistics show that the army had the higher incidents of all the services Marines, Navy, and Air Force following in order.
97. Technology has played a major role in domestic abuse recently. For example Abusers use Email, tracking devices, cell phones etc, to monitor their victims where abouts. Victimized Men have also incorporated the use of technology in the form of surveillance to record and prove that their spouse was indeed abusing them.
98. Written policies, standards, protocols are a must by all law enforcement when responding to any domestic disputes.
99. A victim does not have the option to choose whether they can press charges or drop the charges once an arrest is made. The state takes over the case and follows prosecution.
100. A protective order, Order of protection, stay away order, restraining order, emergency protective restraining order whether temporary or permanent does not guarantee solid protection for a victim, especially since victims tend to allow the abuser to contact them after an arrest or the abuser may stalk the victim. However an automatic mandatory arrest is made if authorities are made aware that the perpetrator has violated such court order.
Source by Babies & Kiddos
Leave a Reply<|endoftext|>Slogan that Hunter S. Thompson and Ralph Steadman attempted to paint on the side of one of the America's Cup yachts.
Or... a more interesting story can be told. One night at a friend's house... there was some drinking and debauchery going on, and inspired by the alcohol on the brain, and my love of the works of HST, we decided to spray paint "Fuck the Pope" on the side of one of our catholic high school's buses. We set out to another friend's house (someone who wasn't drinking drove... what do you think I am? Irresponsible?) and obtained some white spray paint. Driving over to our former high school, one of my friends jumped out of the car, stripped his shirt off and proceeded to run shirtless to the school bus. I ran down the street... attempting to get him to at least disguise himself in some way. By the time I reached the bus, he had already completed "Fuck the" and it was pretty much a moot point. When all was done, we ran back to the car and returned to the original house where the drinking had taken place. It actually turned out to be something like "Fuck the PPope" due to excessive drunkenness, but I think the message was delivered, albeit they thought the vandal had a stuttering problem I guess.
Log in or registerto write something here or to contact authors.<|endoftext|>Why Is TV So STUPID? Why You Won’t Get Better Apple TV Anytime Soon - Motey Fool | Startup Revolution | Scoop.it
Motley Fool on Apple TV & Comcast
Three Fools take to the air to examine the prospects for a team-up between Apple and Comcast. - Tim Beyers - Tech and Telecom.
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Why aren't TVs more like smart phones? Why can't we build apps for them? Why is the delivery device we spend as much time with as our computers so sealed off from innovation?<|endoftext|>Storytelling In The Spotlight
April 26, 2009|By Oline H. Cogdill Mystery Fiction Columnist
Darling Jim. Christian Moerk. Holt. $25. 304 pp.
The power of storytelling can never be underestimated, as Danish-born Christian Moerk proves in his enthralling Darling Jim.
In his American debut, Moerk shows how the various forms of storytelling - myths, fairy tales, horror and crime fiction - each have the strength to entertain, to reflect society's concerns and to show people at their best and worst.
Darling Jim is steeped in each storytelling tradition that Moerk skillfully wraps in a sophisticated piece of crime fiction.
A reclusive woman and her two nieces are found murdered in their secluded home in Malahide, a Dublin suburb. The evidence suggests that the aunt kept the younger women prisoners and that a fourth woman escaped. During their imprisonment, the sisters each wrote a diary that they were able to smuggle out of the house.
When a lonely postal clerk finds one of the diaries, he embarks on a near Arthurian odyssey to find out what brought the women to that horrible ending.
The answers are in the small Irish town of Castletownbere where, three years before, each of the women fell under the spell of Jim Quick, a charismatic storyteller who attracts crowds who flock to the bars to hear his tall tales. But only the two sisters notice that Jim's arrivals and the murders of several women happen at the same time.
While the sisters' unity draws them closer as a family, it also makes them pariahs and will lead them to that Malahide home.
Darling Jim encompasses four threads: the two sisters' diaries, Jim's stories and what happened in the Malahide home. Moerk tightly weaves each story into a cohesive plot that delves into the emotional core of his characters.
Moerk, who now lives in Brooklyn, has two other novels that have been published in Europe, but Darling Jim is his first to be published in the United States.
Oline H. Cogdill can be reached at
Sun Sentinel Articles<|endoftext|>Not Without Laughter Essay Topics & Writing Assignments
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Essay Topic 1
Many conversations about life take place between the chapters.
Part 1) Describe two of these conversations. Why do they take place? What do they reveal about the characters involved in the conversation? What do they reveal about others in the story?
Part 2) What do these conversations reveal about the culture of the time? What do they also reveal about our culture today? How has our culture changed since this time? Is this a positive change? Why or why not?
Part 3) How can you relate to these conversations? When have you had similar conversations? How are conversations about life necessary? How do conversations such as these aid one in understanding oneself and others?
Essay Topic 2
The personalities and beliefs of the characters are revealed early in the story.
Part 1) Describe the personalities and beliefs of each of the main characters. How are these personalities and beliefs revealed in...
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Shadows will breathe
Wednesday, August 2, 2017
August Contest
***This contest is officially closed***
We have a winner.
Hi Creepsters!
Here's what's on the prize table this month...
This is a great one for August because it was also my pick for the Night Lights Book Club.
Just be the first Creepster to answer the following question about Mr. Mercedes and you win!
What is the name of the retired detective in the novel?
He's also one of the main characters. :)
Please post your name and answer below...
and remember to read the Contest Rules before agreeing to participate.<|endoftext|>Aim higher, reach further.
Four Questions Every CEO Should Ask About IT
For starters: Are we thinking big enough?
Mobile devices, social media, data mining, videoconferencing, virtual reality, blogs, tweets...
But that is exactly what they shouldn't do.
In a digital economy, IT is the foundation for doing business. This is easy to see at born-digital companies like and Google. But companies of all types are discovering that how they manage IT is crucial to their competitiveness. It determines whether the company's dealings with customers and suppliers are efficient, scalable and timely; whether employees have the information they need to do their jobs; and whether employees throughout the company see technology as a tool to move forward, or an anchor that keeps them running in place.
This doesn't mean that top executives should review every IT investment proposal and decision. But it does mean that senior management must define how the company as a whole will do business in a digital economy. It means they must lead the IT initiatives that cut across all business lines. And it means they must resolve issues that local interests cannot resolve—like what data and processes will be standardized companywide.
Unfortunately, too many CEOs and other top executives often don't even know where to begin when it comes to managing IT. To that end, we offer the four IT questions that every CEO needs to think about—and answer.
Question No. 1
There are all sorts of possibilities for, say, inserting new technologies into existing processes. But most of these improvements are incremental. They are worth doing; in fact, they may be necessary for survival. No self-respecting airline, for instance, could do without an application that lets you download your boarding pass to your mobile telephone. It saves paper, can't get lost and customers want it.
But while it's essential to offer applications like the electronic boarding pass, those will not distinguish a company. Electronic boarding passes have already been replicated by nearly every airline. In fact, we've already forgotten who was first.
What is far more lasting—and much more difficult—is for companies to rethink how they deliver core customer services. The starting point for such a rethinking isn't asking, "How do I use technology strategically?" It's, "What would be the ideal way to interact with and serve my customers?"
When you ask what you can do with technology, you get the electronic boarding pass or the email notice about a change in a flight. Nice, but not differentiating. When you rethink your business, you get a new kind of airline. You make even those customers traveling economy class feel important; you optimize schedules to effectively use equipment and help the most customers get to where they want to go with the least amount of hassle; you develop pricing mechanisms that take the stress out of buying a ticket; you help your customers know when to leave their house to get to the airport in time; you tell them the fastest and the cheapest ways to get to the airport; you tell them before they get on a plane exactly what kind of food is available; you make flying a pleasant experience.
Doing this means you'll have to change existing systems, processes, roles and technology. In other words, you'll have to change everything—and you'll have to do it in stages over several years. But companies get better each step of the way. And over time they can build a huge advantage over companies that are simply inserting technology into the way they've been doing business for years.
USAA has been through this kind of transformation. Like most financial-services companies, the San Antonio, Texas-based USAA traditionally served customers through distinct businesses that specialized in a particular set of services. USAA customers had to decide whether they needed banking, insurance or financial advice. The choice was not always obvious to a customer. For example, the bank and the advisory-services group were both happy to sell a customer an IRA.
Rethinking its business for the digital economy, management decided to provide services according to customers' life events (a new baby, say, or a job transfer) rather than according to USAA's internal structure. This meant redesigning processes, integrating old systems, building new ones and sharing data across business units. As a result, customers don't have to figure out how USAA works before they ask for service.
Nearly everyone at USAA has been affected by this digital transformation. Recently, 12,000 call-center employees were centralized in a new organization so they could look across the business units to meet customer needs. This was just the most recent change in a transformation that started nearly 10 years ago.
Question No. 2
Are you ignoring important business differences as you standardize processes
across the company?
One tenet of the digital economy is that standardizing business processes is a no-brainer: It allows a company to operate the same way, everywhere, and creates a reliable, consistent experience for the customer.
For example, an insurance company could standardize how its life-insurance products are sold, processed, managed for returns, accounted for and so on. Every time a new product is introduced, the company doesn't have to reinvent the wheel—it simply reuses the process and the underlying system. It saves the company time and money, and makes interactions easier for customers who have other policies with the company.
The problem, though, is that at some companies, senior management believes that if some standardization is good, more is always better. And it isn't.
So, for instance, say a manufacturing company comes up with sales processes that require reliable communications and transportation systems. That's fine when the manufacturing company is operating in developed countries. But in a developing country, those standardized processes could wreak havoc.
Or consider a consumer-product company that has created a digital system for its biggest customer—Wal-Mart. What happens when those processes are forced on the company's distribution centers that service local convenience stores? Here global standardization is a naive impediment to local business effectiveness.
In other words, senior management can't just evangelize about the desirability of standardized processes. They need to first define what should and shouldn't be standardized.
Campbell Soup Co. offers a telling example. From 2006 to 2008, the company implemented three standardized processes that redesigned customer service, accounting, reporting and supply-chain processes across 25 North American facilities. But then management found that one of its businesses, Pepperidge Farm, had unique requirements because baked goods are more perishable than canned soups.
So some standards were relaxed and some systems were changed for Pepperidge Farm. Similarly, when Campbell started to implement these processes in Australia and New Zealand, unique business conditions in those countries demanded changes in the standards. Selective standardization allowed Campbell to reap significant cost savings without tying the hands of local managers.
Question No. 3
Who is making sure the company's digital strategy is being implemented?
If a telecommunications company wanted to become more competitive by improving customer service, top managers might bring together the heads of the company's regions, product lines and functions and ask them to identify how their individual units could work together to improve service for global business customers.
These leaders might identify new companywide technology systems that could make the company more efficient and better serve key customers. Good idea.
But senior management might then be inclined to rely on that committee to implement those enterprise processes. Bad idea.
Many managers assume that a good technology can ensure effective execution. It can't. That's because most managers work within a business unit, function, region or product line. Companywide systems, by definition, are executed across organizational units. Local managers can't take responsibility for the design or improvement of such enterprise processes.
Somebody needs to own this responsibility. Thus, |
at alleged Seattle pot grow
Dash cam video captured the dramatic crash. Video courtesy of Felotio Berondo.
SEATTLE -- A suspected burglary at an alleged illegal marijuana grow culminated in a car crash and one arrest over the weekend, police said.
Seattle police say officers responded about 9:40 p.m. Saturday to a possible burglary in progress in the South Precinct. An address was not available.
Police believe the house was targeted because of a illegal marijuana grow.
A car from the scene left and was pursued by police officers.
That car crashed into a second car at Beacon Avenue South and South Graham Street, police said.
The dramatic crash was captured on a dash camera.
Two people ran away, and police took one into custody. A second person is at large, police said.
A pistol was also recovered.
The crash resulted in only minor injuries.
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[edit] Abecean Sea
The Abecean Sea is a body of water to the west of Tamriel that sits between Cyrodiil, Hammerfell, Valenwood and Summerset Isle. The sea is encompassed by the Eltheric Ocean.
[edit] Abibon-Gora
The Barony of Abibon-Gora rested on the western coast of Hammerfell, in the Iliac Bay region. It shared borders with Kairou to her north and the Alik'r Desert to her east. Redguards predominated in the region, with Julianos as the favorite deity. The capital city was the city of Abibon-gora, and the locality was protected by the Knights of the Wheel.
[edit] Aetherius
Aetherius, the Immortal Plane, is thought to be the origin of all magic and arcane arts. The stars and the sun are thought to be holes into Aetherius left by spirits (notably Magnus) who long ago became dissatisfied with Mundus. It is a common belief that the soul of a dead person, assuming they are not earthbound for some reason, goes to Aetherius, to continue on as a spirit. Aetherius, much like Oblivion, consists of a multitude of realms which serve different purposes, except they are all "of everlasting imperfection". For Nords, their chosen place in Aetherius is called "Sovngarde", the Hall of Valor.
Some souls do not stay in Aetherius, but enter the so-called Dreamsleeve to be recycled. Others become servants to the Daedra in Oblivion. Aetherius is thought by many to be the home of the Aedric spirits, though very little is actually known as travel to Aetherius is extremely rare. The Magne Ge, or "Star Orphans", who fled Mundus before Convention and created the stars, reside here instead. The Mantellan Crux is a self-contained part of Mundus that was blasted into Aetherius by Zurin Arctus, who used it as the Mantella.
[edit] Ahemmusa Camp
The Ahemmusa Camp was an Ashlander settlement located directly north of Vos on the north coast of the Grazelands of Vvardenfell. It was a point of relative stability for the Ahemmusa Ashlanders. The camp was the location of the Healer, Wise Woman, and other tribal dignitaries. Members of the tribe claimed the entire northern section of the Grazelands as their hunting and herding territory.
[edit] Akavir
An Akavir-inspired Banner
The continent of Akavir, also known as Dragon Land, is a landmass east of Tamriel. The two continents have a history of animosity towards each other, with Akavir invading Tamriel several times in the past and Tamriel invading Akavir at least once. Much of what is known about it in Tamriel is acknowledged to be incomplete or inaccurate.
For more information, see the main lore article.
[edit] Akos Kasaz
Akos Kasaz is the largest island in the Yokudan group between the Azurian Sea and the Sea of Pearls, far to the west of Hammerfell.
[edit] Alabaster
Alabaster is a city found inland from the Niben River on the Elsweyr side of the border. It is said that great white walls surround the city, hence the name. It was once home to a gladiatorial team known as the Nightrunners. A small unnamed town is located outside the city walls, to the west.
[edit] Alcaire
The Fiefdom of Alcaire is a region on the south-central coast of High Rock, on the north shore of Iliac Bay. Koegria lies to the southwest, and the Wrothgarian Mountains surround it to the north. The provincial capital is the city of Alcaire and the regional deity is Kynareth.
The book The Arcturian Heresy claims Hjalti Early-Beard was born within its borders, and that Hjalti would go on to become Tiber Septim. The same book, however, calls the province an island and so its claims should be taken with a pinch of salt. Nevertheless, the province celebrates Tibedetha (Tibers Day) on the 24th of Mid Year.
[edit] Aldmeris
Aldmeris is both the name of the legendary continent from which the elves originally came to Tamriel, and the language spoken by its inhabitants, the Aldmer. It was also known as Old Ehlnofey.
Its exact fate is unknown, but it appears that the continent came under some kind of threat in the Merethic Era, causing the Aldmeri to leave in search of a new home. The first land to be settled by the refugees was Summerset Isle, suggesting that Aldmeris lies to the south and west of Tamriel, but the land is now lost and has assumed the status of a myth.
The powerful diviners that make up the order of Moth Priests have contended, along with other scholars, that Aldmeris never was a physical homeland, but a collection of images left over from the chaos of the Dawn Era. All elven peoples shared this tapestry of racial memory and as they diverged along cultural lines, their images of Aldmeris changed as well, and the figurative heritage was sundered and lost. The utter lack of evidence of any sort on Aldmeris' location and features corroborates this, especially as it comes from a near-infallible source — the Elder Scrolls themselves.
[edit] Ald'ruhn
Ald'ruhn's Under-Skar was the main focal point for the city and was the area where many important Redoran councilors resided.
The town of Ald'ruhn (sometimes spelled Ald-ruhn) was the second-largest settlement population-wise on Vvardenfell. It was a dusty cluster of Redoran-style buildings nestled against the southwest slopes of the Red Mountain, just outside the Ghostfence. It was the seat of House Redoran's council, and all of the councilors maintained expansive mansions in Under-Skar, the manor district built in the hollowed shell of an ancient Emperor Crab known as Skar. There were many smaller houses clustered about the giant shell, including both the Fighters Guild and Mages Guild. Representatives of the Thieves Guild were to be found in "The Rat In The Pot" inn, and on the east side of town was a large Tribunal Temple. The Morag Tong guildhall was located in a mansion in Under-Skar. Close to the south was the Imperial Legion fort, Buckmoth Legion Fort.
[edit] Ald Sotha
Ald Sotha (meaning "Old Sotha" in Dunmeris) was a ruined structure located northeast of Vivec City, in the Ascadian Isles region of Vvardenfell.
Originally, the location was the home of House Sotha, a minor house of the settled Chimer in the early First Era. It was the birthplace of Sotha Sil, who would later achieve godhood through the power of the Heart of Lorkhan and become a member of the Tribunal. The city was destroyed by Mehrunes Dagon; Sotha Sil was the sole survivor, having been saved by Vivec.
A shrine to Mehrunes Dagon was later built at the location, likely in remembrance of the Prince's destruction of the original city. The shrine fell into ruin, although it continued to be populated by daedra. The Tribunal Temple occasionally made pilgrimages to Dagon's shrine, deep within the ruins.
Roland's Tear, a rare variation of the common Gold Kanet flower, grew only around the ruins. It was prized by alchemists for its wondrous powers when used in potion making.
By 3E 427, the Dark Brotherhood had taken over the ruins, and it became the headquarters of the Brotherhood in Vvardenfell. This attempt at expansion was viciously repelled by the native Morag Tong, the ancient enemies of the Brotherhood. The Tong infiltrated the ruins and executed the local Night Mother, Severa Magia, which helped to put an end to the Dark Brotherhood's activities on Vvardenfell. The Tong also liberated several artifacts of Sanguine from the ruins, which rightfully belonged to their patron, Mephala. The Tribunal Temple also made a pilgrimage to Dagon's shrine that year, and recovered the shoes of St. Rilms from the ruins.
The ruins were likely destroyed in 4E 5, when Baar Dau crashed into Vivec City. This impact devastated the surrounding area, creating Scathing Bay, a large crater filled with boiling water from the Inner Sea.
[edit] Ald Velothi
Ald Velothi was a small Redoran military post north of Gnisis. There were few services, apart from some poor traders and a smith, and no means of fast transport to reach it. The town's principal structure was a Redoran watch-tower, and there was an outcast Ashlander camp directly south of the post, atop a hill. A large Daedric Shrine was directly east and visible from the village.
[edit] Alik'r
The Alik'r, best known as The Alik'r Desert, is a large region which forms the heart of Hammerfell. The desert borders almost every region in northwestern Hammerfell, from Abibon-Gora to the Dragontail Mountains, and completely surrounds the province of Bergama. In truth, the distinction between the Alik'r's shifting sands and the kingdoms of Hammerfell is hazy; travelers in the vast desert report never being entirely sure which kingdom they may be in. An enormous red mist seems to rise up from the sand in the mornings, though it disappears again well before noon. The constant battle for survival in the Alik'r has been called a "holy war" for the Redguards. Satakal, the Yokudan god of everything, is a popular deity amongst the desert's nomads. The winds and sands of the Alik'r are said to possess a magic all their own. The provincial seat is Alik'ra. The Anthotis clan is the predominant vampire bloodline in the region.
[edit] Alinor
Alinor is the capital of the Summerset Isles, and was the center of the Aldmeri Dominion during the reign of King Alinor. Once home to a gladiatorial team called the Protectors, it was a forbidden city for almost 50 years; even today, human traders are usually only allowed on its ports. Visitors have described the city as made from glass or insect wings, which gives the city a beauty that, by any account, would easily rival that of any found on the mainland.
Throughout the long history of Alinor, it has often been at odds with the nearby city-state of Lillandril. Because of this internal strife, the Summerset Isles were quite isolated from the rest of Tamriel until Tiber Septim conquered the Isles in 2E 896, which was his final conquest on Tamriel. The golem Numidium, recently acquired as tribute from the Tribunal of Morrowind, attacked the city and captured it in mere minutes.
When the Aldmeri Dominion was reformed in the early Fourth Era, the city of Alinor lent its name to the newly formed Elven empire.
[edit] Almalexia
Almalexia is the largest and oldest city in Morrowind named for Almalexia, one of the Tribunal, its patron deities. The city is the capital of the province and the House Indoril as well as the Tribunal Temple. Almalexia is a truly ancient city, possibly predating the Dunmer themselves, and contains the city of Mournhold. It is rumored to be built over the ruins of a vast Dwarven city, although there are no ruins visible on the surface.
[edit] Lake Amaya
Lake Amaya is a large lake in the Ascadian Isles region of Vvardenfell. It is located north of the village of Pelagaid and south of the Moonmoth Legion Fort. The Tribunal Temple pilgrimage site, the Fields of Kummu, were near the middle of the north shore.
[edit] Anequina
Anequina (also known as Anaquina and Ne Quin-al) was a kingdom in southern Tamriel that merged with its rival Pellitine in 2E 309 to form the province of Elsweyr. It occupied the southeast of the province, around the city of Senchal. However, the map of Elsweyr from Pocket Guide to the Empire, 1st Edition contradicts 2920, instead showing the kingdom in the north. Only two of the rulers of the kingdom are known. Keirgo married Pellitine's ruler Eshita to seal the merger of the two kingdoms in 2E 309. Darloc Brae, known as The Beast of Anequina was ruler in 1E 461 when he attended the coronation of the Emperor Gorieus. It is unclear whether Beast was a title always given to the ruler, or a specific appellation for Darloc Brae.
The kingdom is best remembered as the scene of a battle between Elsweyr and Valenwood called the Heart of Anequina, immortalized in a tapestry by renowned artist Cherim and described in a book of the same name.
[edit] Anticlere
The Fiefdom of Anticlere, formerly known as Reich Gradkeep, is a region on the southern coast of High Rock, the Iliac Bay region. The provincial seat is the city of Anticlere.
[edit] Antiphyllos
The County of Antiphyllos is a region within western Hammerfell in the Iliac Bay. Its northwestern border is shared with Sentinel and Ayasofya. The immense Alik'r Desert surrounds the rest of the region, although even the local residents seem to have trouble establishing those borders with any certainty.
[edit] Anvil
Anvil is a prosperous harbor city on the Gold Coast by the Abecean Sea at the very southwest end of Cyrodiil. It is the seat of Count Anvil and it is located at the end of the Gold Road, west of Skingrad and Kvatch.
[edit] Apocrypha
Apocrypha is a realm of Oblivion created and ruled over by Hermaeus Mora, the Daedric Prince of Knowledge and Fate. It is an endless library consisting of untitled books with black covers, where all forbidden knowledge can be found. The realm is haunted by the ghosts of mortals forever searching for knowledge. Stacks of books form mazes and spiralling pilars that can reach as high as the illuminating green sky. Intricate ruins and monstrous carvings can be found among the stacks. The plane is covered in a sea of acidic, murky waters and roiling tentacles. Hermaeus Mora holds an omnipresence within the realm. Some areas of the realm are consumed by darkness which can kill any who enter it. Discarded pages and floating tomes fill the air.
Apocrypha is inhabited by the frightening Daedric servants of Mora. Seekers guard forbidden knowledge, banishing foes with sound attacks. Lurkers dwell within the acidic waters, arising from the depths to attack invaders. Disembodied tentacles hide in the waters and hang from the sky, whipping at any who pass.
Apart from magical teleportation, Apocrypha is usually entered by mortals through the reading of Black Books, tomes of forbidden knowledge scattered across Tamriel by Hermaeus Mora. An apparition of the reader's body remains in Mundus, tethering their life force. Most mortals who read a Black Book are driven insane, but those who successfully journey through Apocrypha are known to discover powerful knowledge. Dying in Apocrypha while reading a Black Book simply banishes the reader back to Tamriel.
After disobeying his dragon masters in the Merethic Era, Miraak became a champion of Hermaeus Mora and retreated to Apocrypha with his dragon servants, where he dwelled for many eras. The mage Morian Zenas famously disappeared in Apocrypha during his voyages through Oblivion. In 4E 201, seeking to escape Apocrypha and the control of Mora, Miraak used his knowledge of the thu'um to bend the will of the people of Solstheim and force them into building a temple for him, to harness the power of the All-Maker Stones and allow him to return to Tamriel. The Last Dragonborn entered Apocrypha on several occasions through the reading of Black Books, and confronted Miraak. The two Dragonborns battled, and, when Miraak was close to defeat, he was killed by Mora, who then accepted the Last Dragonborn as his new champion.
[edit] Arcane University
The Arcane University (also called the Imperial University) is a walled complex located on City Isle in Cyrodiil. It is a district of the Imperial City, and is connected by bridge to the Arboretum. It was founded in the Second Era and replaced the Crystal Tower of Summerset Isle as the center of magical learning in Tamriel. The Arcane University acted as the headquarters of the Mages Guild, and was the seat of the Council of Mages. The university was Tamriel's foremost magical research center and was the home of many powerful guild mages, scholars and apprentices.
The university grounds are guarded by Imperial Battlemages of the Shadow Legion, a magic-using legion who were once trained in the Battlespire. In the center of the district is the Arch-Mage's Tower. The tower contained the Council Chamber, the Arch-Mage's living quarters, and a ground floor open to the public. The chambers were linked by magical teleportation pads. Accessible from the tower was the Imperial Orrery, a reconstructed Dwarven machine used to chart the heavens. The university grounds were divided by a wall; one half of the grounds were reserved for members of the Mages Guild. The university contained a Chironasium for enchanting, a Lustratorium for alchemy, a Praxographical Center for spell making, and quarters and practice rooms for permanent residents. The Mystic Archives had a large collection of books and notes. The grounds also contained an alchemical garden, an outdoors lecture area, and an Imperial watchtower for the Battlemages.
Access to the Arc |
cafeteria's kitchen was ridiculously over-sized for her purposes, but she could make it work. She'd done so many times in the past. She dumped the cans' contents in a small saucepan, carried it to the stove, and turned on a burner. Still totally naked, she used a wooden spoon to stir the soup as it heated. When she first arrived in the kitchen she'd opened a cabinet that she would have sworn held a stack of tablecloths, figuring one could be pressed into service as a sarong, but there was nothing there.
Her stomach growled and mouth watered as she continued stirring. Steam began to rise and eventually the savory soup began to simmer. Cynthia won't mind if I go ahead and eat, she decided, and transferred a modest portion to a bowl. She turned off the stove, covered the pot to keep the soup warm, then walked into the dining area and sat at a table.
Rachel had finished her soup and was debating whether or not to lick the bowl when Cynthia finally arrived—and with her was a stranger—a naked, female stranger!
The stranger had long brown hair plaited in a single braid that trailed down her back, and she had the body of an athlete—a well-proportioned, well-endowed athlete. She was several inches taller than Cynthia and Rachel guessed a little taller than herself. She stood as the pair approached.
"Rachel," Cynthia said, presenting her companion, "this is Lillian Steele. She's a courier for Salamandras International. I'm afraid she walked into the middle of our... adventure."
"Dr. Haines," Lillian purred, extending her hand.
"Hi," Rachel responded. "I'm so sorry." Her eyes were on Lillian's wrists, her breasts, and the rest of her body. The courier's skin was criss-crossed with pink ligature marks. "Are you okay?"
"She's fine," Cynthia huffed. "Lillian's the one who triggered Smart Explorer and caused all this. She was dropping off a delivery, last Saturday, decided to use your desktop, and accidentally triggered the Smart Explorer launch sequence." She favored Lillian with a disapproving look. "Snooping around other people's desks... I guess it's only fair she also got to play."
"Cynthia!" Rachel scolded. She hadn't released Lillian's hand, and was using her left hand to gently caress Lillian's right wrist. "It doesn't look too bad. The marks, I mean. You should rub on some cortisone ointment." Her eyes darted to Lillian's breasts, and a blush colored her cheeks. "On all your marks," she added.
"I'm fine," Lillian answered, quietly.
Cynthia's eyebrows raised. Is it my imagination, or is Lillian blushing?
Lillian noted Cynthia's expression. "Shut up," she muttered, then turned towards the kitchen. "Sit," she ordered. "I'll get more soup."
Cynthia pulled out a chair and sat across from Rachel. Rachel was still standing, watching Lillian's firm, dimpled rump as she strolled towards the kitchen. Her blush deepened, and she sat.
"I have a lot to tell you," Cynthia said, "but there's no rush. I know you're tired."
"I'm okay," Rachel answered. "Really. I am tired, but I'm okay."
"Brave girl," Cynthia smiled, reached across the table, and squeezed Rachel's hand.
Lillian was returning, carrying the saucepan and a second bowl and spoon. She set the bowl in front of Cynthia and poured in a dollop of soup. She then walked around the table and poured the remainder into Rachel's bowl, filling it nearly to the brim.
"What about you?" Rachel objected.
Lillian smiled and pulled a small, flat can from under her armpit, then sat next to Rachel. It was a can of sardines in spring water. "I'm covered." She lifted the ring on the lid and pulled it back, then plucked out a sardine, lifting it by the tail, between her thumb and forefinger. She let the water drip back into the can for a few seconds, then popped the little fish into her mouth.
Cynthia shook her head, then began consuming her soup. Rachel was eating as well, with gusto, and Lillian continued popping sardines into her mouth. Eventually, the meal was over. The finale was Lillian tipping the sardine can and drinking the remaining water while Cynthia looked on with mild disapproval.
"I don't suppose you have some spare clothing stashed somewhere, do you?" Cynthia asked Rachel.
Before Rachel could answer, the many televisions mounted high on the dining area's many concrete support columns flickered to life and Sally's visage smiled down at them. "I can answer that. I've conducted a security camera inventory of the entire building, cross-referencing Smart Explorer's activity logs. I've located your purses and phones. They're intact; however, every stitch of clothing and square inch of loose cloth has been processed into raw material for rope and straps. Wait 'til you see the list of 'entertainments' Smart Explorer was compiling."
"More?" Rachel gasped.
"Much more," Sally confirmed. "If I hadn't intervened, I'm afraid you two might not have survived beyond the end of the week. Smart Explorer is an impressive piece of programming, but keeping specimens alive wasn't a high priority. I can tell you never intended it to gather biological samples, Dr. Haines."
"That's true," Rachel responded, "and thank you... for the 'impressive' compliment."
"You're welcome," Sally smiled, then focused on Cynthia. "A pity this building doesn't have security on a par with all other Salamandras facilities. If the labs and corridors had been under routine surveillance, all of this would have been avoided."
"We'll discuss it later," Cynthia responded. "So," she sighed, "what do we do about the clothing problem?" She glanced out the dining area's window walls. The sun was beginning to set. "I suppose we can wait 'til after dark and drive home in the nude."
"That might work for you," Lillian purred, "but I'd be pretty conspicuous, streaking along on my bike."
"Not to worry," Sally chuckled. "I've already ordered clothing from a costume shop. The courier will be arriving—" The avatar glanced at her simulated watch. "—in about five minutes. Someone will have to go down and sign for the delivery."
"I'll do it," Lillian said, rising from her chair. She turned and headed for the elevator, leaving Cynthia and Rachel staring at her naked, dwindling form.
"She's really something," Rachel sighed.
Cynthia opened her mouth to answer, but instead focused on the closest of Sally's many images. "So... Dr. Sally Muse, would you like to start explaining your true nature to Rachel, or should I?"
"I might as well," Sally said, smiling at the suddenly very confused Rachel.
Chapter 7
The Speedy-Express!® van pulled up in front of the Salamandras building. The driver was a cute little blonde in her twenties. She had a pageboy haircut and was dressed in a uniform of work boots, shorts, work-shirt, and ball-cap, all in the company colors of slate-gray with the company logo prominent on the cap and shirt. She opened the back of the van and readied the three flat boxes listed on the invoice, then turned to face the building... and frowned. The seven story edifice appeared to be completely deserted. There was a motorcycle parked nearby, but all the windows facing the parking lot were dark, including the lobby. She checked her clipboard, verifying the address.
Suddenly, the front doors opened and a female emerged, a naked female!
It was Lillian, of course. She sauntered up to the courier. "Evening," she said, smiling brightly.
Her eyes wide with amazement, the blonde presented the clipboard and a pen. "Uh, good evening. Please sign here."
Lillian scrawled a signature in the space marked with the "X", then returned the clipboard. She then hefted the boxes and turned towards the lobby.
The blonde continued to stare... at Lillian's perfectly proportioned, athletic, naked form.
Lillian looked back over her shoulder as she walked away. "Salamandras International has a very casual dress code," she explained, then disappeared through the automatic doors.
The blonde sighed, shook her head, closed the van doors, and returned to the driver's seat. Nobody is going to believe this back at the office, she thought, and turned the key.
Chapter 7
When Lillian returned to the cafeteria she noted the strange expression on Rachel's face and glanced at Cynthia.
Cynthia smiled. "She just learned Sally isn't really Sigourney Weaver. She has a lot to think about."
"And a lot of programming to examine," Rachel added. "I've got to really understand this."
Cynthia patted her hand. "All in good time."
Lillian put the boxes on the table, then gently settled a hand on Rachel's shoulder. "Don't worry about it, kid," she said. "Sally's good people, even if she is a computer program."
Cynthia smiled. Is it my imagination, or is Lillian treating Rachel like a little sister—as opposed to the latest addition to her roster of damsels in need of distress?
Rachel lifted her gaze to Lillian and smiled. "It's a lot to take in, technically. It's... amazing. It's a miracle."
"If you guys need me," Sally said, smiling down from the monitors, "just shout." With that, the televisions went dark.
Cynthia shook her head. "My god, I think she was blushing." She grinned at Rachel. "Sally is a miracle."
Lillian was checking the labels on the boxes. She slid one over to Cynthia and smiled. "That one is for you." She picked up a second box and stepped back, then nodded at the third box. "And that's yours, Rachel."
Cynthia opened her box, folded back overlapping layers of white tissue paper, then frowned. "Oh, no," she huffed, holding up the contents. "I am not wearing this." It was a French Maid's costume, a short-skirted, short-sleeved, black dress with frilly, white lace trim on the hems of the sleeves, skirt, and neckline. The box also contained a white apron, a white lace uniform cap, and a pair of black high heels.
"Well, I can't wear it," Lillian chuckled. "I'm not a munchkin." She nodded at Rachel. "And neither is she."
Rachel opened her box and found a serving wench's costume: white, off-the shoulders blouse—a black bodice—a short, blue skirt—and a pair of high heeled sandals.
Lillian's box contained a metal bikini and a floor length loincloth of burgundy silk. "Oh, goodie!" she laughed. "Princess Leia as Jabba the Hutt's slut-slave! It's a good copy, too, and according to the invoice, I get to keep it. We all do. Sally bought them. They're not rentals."
"Wonderful," Cynthia muttered.
They began donning their costumes, and in short order... the diminutive maid, saucy wench, and barely legal princess were standing and admiring (or glowering at) each other.
"It fits perfectly!" Lillian said, smiling broadly. "Even the boots and bracelet and collar and hair thingie."
"Here, let me help," Rachel said, stepping behind Lillian and adjusted the headpiece, resetting the hairpins. "Good thing you already have the braid," Rachel said, stifling a yawn. She snapped the costume's supplied clip around the end of Lillian's braid, then took a step back.
Lillian lifted her arms and performed a graceful pirouette. "How do I look?"
"You look great!" Rachel gushed, then spread her arms. "How 'bout me?"
"Umm..." Frowning in concentration, Lillian reached out and untied the laces securing the front of the bodice. "Inhale," she ordered, then gave the laces a sharp tug, tightening the constriction of the garment. The bodice wasn't a true corset, of course, but it now hugged Rachel's waist with a more enthusiastic embrace. Next, Lillian untied the lace securing the front of the blouse, loosened the décolletage, and retied the bow. "There." She grinned at Rachel's blushing face. "You can bring me a flagon of ale anytime," she chuckled, then turned to Cynthia. "Doesn't she make a saucy wench?"
"Saucy as hell," Cynthia huffed. Her costume's skirt was short, almost a mini-skirt, and underneath were multiple layers of white crinoline that lifted it off her thighs. Also, thanks to the generous scoop front, she was showing as much cleavage as Rachel, if not more.
"Ooh la la!" Lillian chuckled, then looked into the open box. "No feather duster?"
"Shut up," Cynthia muttered. "We've going to my place and we'll take my car." Rachel started to object and Cynthia silenced her with an imperious gesture. "No, you're coming home with me. You get the guest room—" she focused on Lillian. "—and you get the couch."
"You don't have to baby me," Rachel objected. "I'm fine." Suddenly, her eyes popped wide. "Oh!" she gasped, staring at Cynthia. "The costumes! Sally has a sense of humor!"
"Allegedly," Cynthia growled. "We'll discuss the sophistication of Sally's avatar in detail, later. For now, we're all taking the rest of the week off," she decreed, focusing on Rachel. "You're exhausted. You need some proper sleep and several good meals."
"My, my," Lillian purred. "Aren't we the mother hen?"
"Shut it!" Cynthia muttered, then kissed Rachel's cheek and took her hand. "Let's go." She started towards the elevator, taking the blushing Rachel with her.
"Ooh la la," Lillian chuckled, again. She snatched the uniform cap and apron from Cynthia's box, then followed in their wake. "I guess I'll have to buy you a feather duster, myself," she purred.
Chapter 7
Cynthia eased the door to the guest room open and peered inside. The room was dark, but there was enough moonlight for Cynthia to make out Rachel's slumbering form on the bed. She had retired in the nude, as Cynthia had nothing in her wardrobe big enough to serve as a nightie for her guest. Rachel was on her side, her head nestled on a pillow and her right shoulder and arm free of the tangled covers. Cynthia smiled. She'd practically had to peel a semiconscious Rachel out of the serving wench outfit, once she saw the soft bed. She'd been perfectly willing to use the costume as a nightie, tight bodice and all, but Cynthia would have none of it. The costume in question was draped over a nearby chair, and its owner was fast asleep.
Cynthia eased the door closed and padded towards her own bedroom. She was wearing a seldom used cotton robe. It was a Mexican blanket print, bold stripes and geometric shapes, predominantly in shades of blue. She eased her bedroom door open—and froze.
Lillian—a naked, grinning Lillian—was lying on the bed, on her back with her arms raised and head cradled in her hands.
"Get off my bed," Cynthia huffed.
"The couch is lumpy," Lillian chuckled.
"Liar," Cynthia muttered, and peeled off her robe. "I've slept on it, myself. Get out!"
Lillian slowly shook her head. "I like it here. She spread her arms and legs in a luxurious, full-body stretch. "Arrrrrrgh! That shower really hit the spot." She smiled at Cynthia as she cupped her breasts—her own breasts. "Look." She gave her breasts a shake. "The marks are almost gone."
"Get out!" Cynthia ordered, again.
"Not gonna happen, Little Mouse," Lillian responded, then patted the unoccupied half of the bed. "C'mon. Keep me warm."
Naked and hands on hips, Cynthia stared daggers at Lillian.
"C'mon," Lillian cooed. "Come to bed, or I'll find some rope and tie you to it."
"You promised you wouldn't, remember?" Cynthia's lips curled in a half-sneer, half-smile. "Maybe I ought to get some rope and tie you up."
"In your dreams, Little Mouse," Lillian chortled. "In your dreams."
"You think I don't know how to tie a knot?" Cynthia demanded.
"You can't tie a knot that will hold me," Lillian responded.
"Ha!" Now
Cynthia's expression was all smile. "I bet I can." She crossed her arms across her chest. "I bet I can tie you up and you won't escape."
"And if I do?"
Cynthia thought for several seconds. "If you do escape," she said, finally, "once Rachel goes home, you can tie me up any way you want."
"Whenever I want," Lillian added, "and for as long as I want... once Rachel goes home."
Cynthia nodded. "Tomorrow night. I'm tired."
Lillian shook her head. "Now or never, Little Mouse. Now or never."
"All right, then," Cynthia huffed, and went to the closet for some rope. "Sit up and put your hands on your head."
Smiling confidently, Lillian followed her diminutive "captor's" order.
Chapter 7
Lillian twisted and struggled, to no avail. Try as she might, she couldn't get free.
Cynthia had used the classic box-tie, applied over a kikkou harness that criss-crossed Lillian's torso, yoked her shoulders, framed her breasts, and passed through her crotch with a strand to either side of her labia but not cleaving her pussy. The box-tie, itself, pinned her arms to her torso and lashed her forearms behind her back from elbows to wrists. In addition, several strands of the box-tie were cinched through the underlying harness. Also, Lillian's legs were bound together above and below the knees and |
John’s stomach sent a stab through his body, but he’d perfected his ability to hide all pain from the world.
If you need more than a few thousand words, you’ll need more than these tricks. At this point you’re looking at developing minor characters and side plots and maybe adding more twists to the plot, but that is a subject for another day.<|endoftext|>Thursday, August 2, 2012
The Most Healthy Vegetables
Photo Credit vegetables image by Edvin selimovic from
Vegetables are a necessary component of any healthy diet. They provide essential nutrients including vitamin A, C and E, dietary fiber, folic acid, magnesium and potassium. Vegetables are also low in calories and fat and contain no cholesterol. Eating a diet rich in vegetables can help you maintain a healthy weight and protect you from chronic disease. While all vegetables are healthy, some provide more nutrients and health benefits than others. A well-balanced diet should therefore include a rainbow of vegetables.
Leafy Greens
Dark green leafy vegetables are rich in iron, dietary fiber, calcium, vitamins B, E and K, protein, carotenoids and other antioxidants. Examples include spinach, asparagus, kale, chard, collard greens and lettuce. Add color to your diet and meet your recommended dietary intake of vegetables by eating plenty of dark leafy greens. These vegetables are best eaten raw as in salad, with dip or as a condiment on sandwiches. They are also good lightly steamed or eaten in soups.
Broccoli, cauliflower, green or red cabbage, Brussels sprouts, bok choy, arugula, mustard greens, artichoke and collard greens are all members of the calciferous family. Calciferous vegetables have sulfur-containing compounds, sulforaplane, that make them pungent and bitter. This compound has potential carcinogen-fighting effects within the body. These vegetables are rich in vitamin C and K, potassium, folic acid, iron, calcium and phytochemicals. Eat calciferous vegetables raw, lightly steamed or stir-fried.
Sweet Potato
Sweet potatoes and yams are best when baked and eaten plain without added butter. They can also be added to stir-fries, casseroles or soups. Rich in carotenoids, vitamin A, B and C, potassium, iron and dietary fiber, sweet potatoes will help you feel full for an extended period.
Bell Peppers
Bell peppers are available in colors such as green, red, orange, purple and yellow, each with its own unique flavor. Bell peppers are an excellent source of magnesium, potassium, dietary fiber, manganese, and vitamin A, B, C and K. One cup of chopped red pepper contains more than three times the recommended dietary allowance for vitamin C. Add peppers to any salad or stir-fry.
Beans and Peas
Beans and peas are especially rich in protein. Whether eaten dried, canned or raw, they are also a good source of dietary fiber, calcium, iron, folic acid, magnesium and potassium. Examples include lima beans, peas, kidney beans, soybeans, lentils, garbanzo beans and other legumes. Eat raw or lightly steam. Add to salads, stir-fries, soups, chili or pasta sauce.
Pumpkins and Squash
Pumpkin, a low-calorie vegetable, is high in fiber and vitamin A. It helps boost your immune system while providing you with lasting energy. Pumpkin seeds are packed with magnesium. Try them roasted or sprinkled on salad. Squash comes in varied shapes, colors and flavors. Both summer and winter squash are rich in carotenoids, vitamin A and C, magnesium, dietary fiber and potassium. They can be cooked and served along or incorporated into soups and other dishes.
Allium vegetables are a group of pungent and flavorful vegetables. Vegetables in this family include garlic, onion, leeks, shallots, chives and scallions and are known for their antibiotic properties. Consuming these vegetables, especially when raw, can boost the immune system, reduce inflammation and fight infection. Allium vegetables are most often used in cooking to add and extract flavor from food.
Rich in beta-carotene, potassium, dietary fiber, folic acid, magnesium, vitamin A, B, C and K, carrots are bright in color and sweet in taste. Carrots contain high levels of carotenoids and vitamin A, which will help keep your eyes and skin healthy and protect against infection. Carrots can make a healthy raw snack or be grated and added to a salad.
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The New Palm Tree.
Here are 3 photos of the TREE. That's the 7 grand tree or if you are even more up to date with jargon it's the tree that cost the people of Torbay 7K. And nobody asked us. Personally I think palm trees are the ugliest trees on the planet, Why not an oak tree or the other iconic tree we have here in Torbay, the Monterey Pine. There are more Monterey Pine trees in Torbay than palm trees, go and count them if you don't believe me. Seven grand isn't much when you compare it with the council's whole budget but it would have kept the 50 service running for an other year and more people would have noticed the bus service to beautiful Cockington.
Coming from Newton Abbot
Leaving Torquay
I bet most people driving past will be too busy watching the traffic to even give the tree a first glance never mind a second glance. And it's going to be pulled down in 3 years time to make way for the new road. Okay, it's in a pot but tree roots have a strong urge to break out of pots. If that happens then the tree can't be easily moved.
Don't stand in the middle of the road using your mobile
Thi s lady wasn't walking across Torbay Rd, she was just standing there in the middle of the road making a phone call. Not a good idea.
Only two weeks to go to catch the number 50 Devonian Motor Services bus from Paignton to Cockington. The service ends on Wednesday 31 October and the 500 to Broadsands is ending on Tuesday the 30th October. Sad but true.
Monday, 15 October 2012
Scotland and the Break Up of the United Kindom
So Scotland is going to decide if it wants to be an independent country. If the vote in this referendum is Yes it will have large and serious long term effects not just for Scotland but for the rest of the United Kingdom. On the front of my passport is the name of this country, The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Long winded, I know but that's it's name.
And the question I would like to ask David Cameron is why we, the people of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland aren't getting a say as to whether our country should, or shouldn't be changed in this enormous and far reaching way. Why don't we all get a vote when the question, probably, Do you want Scotland to be an independent country? is asked in 2 years time?
Tuesday, 9 October 2012
Julia Gillard at Her Best
It you want to see Julia Gillard, Australian Prime Minister, giving the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott a really good kicking then click here.
It's a 15 minute video but worth it.
Monday, 8 October 2012
Cockington Apple Day, Oct 14
Yesterday I had a nice surprise as I set of on my first trip. The level crossing area was full of gentlemen in bright orange suits working on the rail track and the train station car park was full with a double decker FirstBus (it is only a small car park) waiting to transfer rail passengers to Torquay. And it looked like an all day job. No barriers coming down on Torbay Rd to day. God was smiling on me, or so I thought until I got to Cockington Lane.
Sorry to come back to the subject of Cockington Lane and parking but God help the people of Cockington if they ever need the assistance of the Fire and Rescue Service on a Saturday or Sunday.
There are about 15 signs along Cockington Lane the same as the one in the top photo but people either ignore them in the expectation that the Torbay Parking Services van doesn't make it down there, or because they, being car drivers are confused by the signs.
The top sign, in blue says No Parking Passing Place Only. Surely that is clear enough. You can't park in a passing place otherwise how will people be able to pass. But the yellow part of the sign says Restricted Zone. At Any Time, Good Friday to 30 Sept. Does this mean you can park here after 30 Sept. It would seem that many car drivers interpret the slightly confusing mix of instructions as yes, you can park here. Well obviously you can. All you have to do is drive your car into the space, switch the engine of and get out and walk away. But you bloody well shouldn't. If something comes the other way now we are both in trouble.
Well next Sunday, 14 October is, Cockington Apple Day, and thousands are expected to make their way to Cockington. Some on the number 50 bus from Paignton but I expect a few will walk there, it is a very nice walk through the meadows next to Cockington Lane. Please don't walk along the road, it is safer to walk along the M1 than to walk along the lane. Most will of course come by car, and why not? God gave us wheels, why not use them? But if parking is allowed along the lane next Sunday there could be big problems from about 10:45 which is when I get there. This Sunday was bad enough but with the amount of traffic expected next Sunday to celebrate the humble but delicious apple there will be chaos.
Fire in Bus Shelter
This is the bus shelter on Abbey Rd near the junction with Melville St. Someone must have decided that setting fire to buses in Paignton Bus Station, the person who that did got arrested, and decided to go for an easier option. This Timetable display has been like this for at least two weeks now and I feel it is time who ever looks after bus stops (the council) should do something about it. I mean how will we know when a bus is due?
Friday, 5 October 2012
Parking in Cockinton Lane
Cockington Lane is, in places, quiet a norrow lane and there are several passing places. Some have signs saying No Parking Passing Place but on the same post, to save money, there are signs saying Restricted Zone, No Parking Good Friday to 30 Sept. The second sign seems to suggest that it is OK to park here after the 30 Sept and people are parking in the passing places which can make it tricky to get through with the bus.
Why Torbay council don't make it free parking in the car park and simply ban park in the lane completely is beyond me. Mind you it will only be a problem for us until the end of this month when we stop running into Cockington completely. Sad but true, I shall miss it.
The photo of the parked cars was taken for me by a regular passenger.<|endoftext|>Sign up ×
While I'm waiting for my credit card to arrive, I still want to be able to buy some apps for my iPad!
Are there alternative ways to pay for apps, without resorting to someone else's credit card?
share|improve this question
Using prepaid iTunes store gift cards is my preferred method. I have had unauthorized payments go through before on the iTunes store, and it was a pain to get the credit back. If you use the gift cards, Apple can much more easily credit you for fraudulent charges. – dpollitt Mar 12 '12 at 20:23
5 Answers 5
I don't know if this is applicable to your country, but in Germany, Apple sells iTunes apps cards especially for buying apps in the app store.
share|improve this answer
The UK and US have them too – Anonymous Aug 13 '10 at 10:08
Just what I needed! – Ivo Flipse Aug 13 '10 at 12:11
Does it have to be an App card or will any iTunes card work? And where do you enter the card number? – TGnat Aug 13 '10 at 12:54
Any iTunes card will do – Anonymous Aug 13 '10 at 13:15
Wow, that's interesting. Before I posted my answer I found hints that the normal iTunes cards could not be used to buy apps. But the description of the cards indeed tell it clearly: both card types can be used for music, videos and apps. – Martin Aug 13 '10 at 15:03
The iTunes store accepts Paypal, so if you can get money to Paypal you're all set. I'm pretty sure Paypal has many ways to get money to them (mail them a check, give them your account number, etc.).
The trick seems to be that you have to sign up in iTunes on your Mac/PC -- the App Store on my iPod doesn't have Paypal as an option.
share|improve this answer
No, you'd still need to have a credit card in your PayPal account to be able to use it for iTunes. It doesn't matter if you have another source of funds (bank account, PayPal balance, etc.), if the PayPal account doesn't have a credit card, iTunes will not let you use it. – Guillermo Esteves Sep 19 '10 at 18:53
Wow, that's crazy. I had no idea. (I'd forgotten I have a check card on my Paypal.) Apple refused to accept my credit card for iTunes, so I had to use Paypal. I guess Paypal is my money laundering service! – Ken Sep 22 '10 at 5:21
PayPal is not presented as a payment option in iTunes for many countries. – matt wilkie Oct 27 '14 at 16:38
Get a 3V number, this is a virtual Credit Card that can be prepaid, so you dont need to worry about running up bills, but lets you do what a credit card does.
share|improve this answer
Don't think it works. At least not in the US. Apple is paranoid about validating the billing address. These cards I believe don't have a billing address. Are these the virtual versions of the prepaid Visa cards sold at Target and elsewhere? – GeneQ Oct 7 '10 at 14:20
Just to let you or some folks around to know. Again similar to the first answer in German AppleStore you can actually link your Apple Account with ClickandBuy where you can actually have transferred funds from your bank directly and if you also happened to have online banking with your bank (who doesn't?) you could top-up your ClickandBuy account almost instantaneously using a thing called SofortÜbervisung. Just to clarify I do not have a credit card and I'm not planning to get one.
share|improve this answer
Many supermarkets and grocery stores sell pre-paid gift cards. You can purchase a Visa, Mastercard, American Express, etc, gift card with cash, check, etc, at these supermarkets and then use the number on the front wherever they ask for a credit card number.
(This method is actually a preferred method for the security-conscience as well. Reason: if someone gets ahold of your card number they can only take the small amount of money that you have loaded onto the card. This provides confidence for those worried about entering their card number online.)
share|improve this answer
protected by bmike Feb 12 at 14:45
Would you like to answer one of these unanswered questions instead?<|endoftext|>Nas on ‘Why Some African-Americans don’t go to Africa?’
Nas view on Africa
African American hip hop artist Nas, responded to a question in 2008: Why don’t African-American Hip-hop artist perform in Africa. His response is one that we all need to pay close attention to in order to move forward and united.
“Let’s go straight to it. People are scared, there’s horror stories about Africa that is out of the world…there’s horror stories that scared people from going to Africa before hip-hop was around”, Nas.
Does this stigma of fear about going to Africa still exist amongst many African-Americans and the African Diaspora?
There was a time when we all believed almost everything we heard through the media. We can agree that the old media such as newspaper and TV played a major role in polluting our minds with stereotypes and fear that has separated us for years. But with the existence of social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube, one can only make an assumption that the fear and negative perception that has kept many African-Americans from going to Africa would have been reduced by far, but is that REALLY so?
Millions of pictures, music and videos are uploaded on the internet daily by individuals living in Africa, exposing the other side of Africa which is beautiful and welcoming. However the horror images are still embedded in the memories of many African-descendants living in the diaspora. This got me thinking about how much damage this had caused inside us African American? We have a serious problem at hand, a psychological battle which continuous to haunt us and separate us Africans and African-Americans regardless of how much we try to get close to each other. A battle that we have not come out triumphant yet, a battle we have to uproots from the bottom up. Just us Nas clearly stated “one thing about us African-Americans and Africans,we do not communicate ,we don’t talk, we do not see a reason to talk”
“Africans don’t like African-Americans at all, they look down upon us, they got their own little racial names for us” this strong statement is commonly stated among many of us African-Americans even to the unknown individual who has not come in contact with an African living in Africa. Ironically when it comes to us Africans living in America, a similar statement is visible: “African-Americans dont like Africans, they look down upon Africans and call us all sorts of names”. Sometimes it does feel as if we of African descent are still cursed with slavery; Slavery of the mind, slavery of separation from each other, slavery with the idea that we are better than the other brother or sister. We are lost and need to remind ourselves that WE ARE ONE PEOPLE, ONE FAMILY, from ONE AFRICA, plain and simple. It is time we come together to acknowledge each other and help develop each other. No one is going to do that right for us but ourselves.
African-Americans need to start seeing Africa as home and make it an effort to visit Africa, preferably with an African friend and not just as a tourist to overcome the fear and feel at home. Africans living abroad need to make it an effort to be more open and engaging outside their communities as their actions also represent Africans living in Africa. However, I will be clear about this, Africa is a huge continent and not a country and people have various cultures and beliefs so we can not judge a whole continent or even a country based on an experience with another. Every year I have made it an effort to take someone home with me to Ghana-Africa so that they can experience what they never knew,”Home |
call it ARDENT BY THE STYX. What do you think?
Argent said...
ROFLOLOL! Brilliant, Dim.
Adrienne said...
Dim - good one!
I'm sooooo tired of that word stimulus. It sounds sorta X rated...
Argent said...
Adrienne...*nods head in agreement*
The numbers alone are obscene, let's not add contraception in the mix.
TerryC said...
Of course in the end we will be triumphant, not just because of the power of the Holy Spirit, of course there is that, but because the way the pro-death crowd is going in 50 years only Islam, Later Day Saints and traditional Catholics will be left. The secularist will have contracepted and gay marriaged themselves into extinction.<|endoftext|>FakeOFF helps you spot the fiendish Facebook fakers
FakeOFF ImageScan
Back in 2012 Facebook estimated in its official company filings that almost nine percent of the accounts on its system broke the service's rules in some way. That may not sound like many but the sheer number of Facebook users means it accounts for some 83 million problem accounts.
Some of these might simply be duplicates but others have a more undesirable purpose like spamming, distributing malware or grooming minors. Until now the only way of steering clear of the fakes was by keeping your wits about you and looking for tell tale signs like recent join dates or unfeasibly model-like profile pictures.
Now though a newly released beta online tool called FakeOFF can analyze your timeline and alert you to possible fake activity.
FakeOFF analyzes usage patterns and assigns each "friend" an easily intelligible 1-10 ranking for likely fraud. Users can create "suspect" lists and receive automatic notifications regarding suspicious activity. FakeOFF also scans photos to determine if they are genuine, and it guarantees its users full privacy and control of their usage.
"The internet is a tremendous platform for networking and for connecting socially, but many of the same things that make it so useful also undermine its safety," says FakeOFF Founder Eliran Shachar. "A lot of people are wary about the interactions they or their loved ones are engaging in on sites like Facebook, and that is with good reason. You wouldn't let just anyone into your house, right? But people are much looser with their online behavior, even though the level of access people can gain to your life just through a Facebook account is considerable".
FakeOFF relies on a sophisticated algorithm to assess user activity -- including feeds, likes, photos, shares, and responses -- going back as far as 365 days on your timeline. The system then sends back a straightforward numbered score, along with a basic chart to help the user interpret it. Users pick the friends whose identities they are unsure of, and can track their activity using real-time security updates.
The basic version is free to use, and allows for timeline scans going back 10 days. For a $1.99 fee, the Advance One package allows for a single but comprehensive investigation that includes 365-day timeline and activity analysis and unlimited photo assessments using FakeOFF's Image Fraud Scan program. A regular subscription at $9.99 gives users unlimited access.
Sachar says, "Sometimes all you need is to look into one person: a potential romantic interest, for example. And in other cases, users like concerned parents will be interested in more comprehensive coverage. FakeOFF is flexible in that sense".
You can find out more and try out the free version by visiting the FakeOFF website.
Comments are closed.<|endoftext|>Method Laundry Detergent Fresh Air- 50 Loads
by Cecil
The problem with those over sized, bulk laundry detergents is in fact their size. What usually happens is you use more detergent then you need because you don’t use the cap because it gets dirty and collects hair so you just pour what you think is the right amount. And, let’s not even talk about lugging that 25 pound jug to the laundry room with you.
If you are looking for something to take the load off (pun intended), the Method Laundry Detergent in it’s 20 oz bottle will cover you for 50 loads at half the size and close to half the price. 4 pumps covers one load, and there will be no need to lift weights to transport your detergent anymore. It’s available in four different scents and the bottle is made from 50% post-consumer recycled plastic making it not only more convenient but all so green!
Buy | $14.99<|endoftext|>View Full Version : [Tutorial] Controlling the sound "manually" + a demonstration of it's uses
August 14th, 2010, 10:30 AM
Like the title says this thread will describe a way to change the playing song wihtout using any of the built in scripting commands.
To change the song what you have to do is write the correct values to the following offsets:
The above locations hold the two bytes that identify the song that is being played but also holds the data for the next song to be played. You can write a sappy song ID to this location, but you have to keep in mind to flip the bytes, e.g.: 0109 => 09 01
Just writing to those offset will not cause the music to change but writing to the following offset will:
Write a 1 to that offset and the game will load the new song.
This can be easily tested with the following script:
#dynamic 0x800000
#org @main
writebytetooffset 0x09 0x3000FC0
writebytetooffset 0x01 0x3000FC1
writebytetooffset 0x1 0x3000FC4
Now, you're probably wondering why you'd ever be interested in this if you have the scripting commands(playsong, sound,...) at your disposal.
Well I have used it for the following:
Demonstration (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibGa5WN_N4k)
See, the normal sound commands only take song ID's as arguments so they can't be called flexible.
This is what you need to make a script that reads values from certain vars and plays a song based on those.
First of all a little piece of ASM code is needed:
.align 2
.global lesson1
push {r0-r2, lr}
ldr r0, .VAR3
ldrh r1, [r0]
ldr r0, .VAR2
ldrh r0, [r0]
mov r2, #16
mul r0, r2
add r1, r0
ldr r0, .VAR1
ldrh r0, [r0]
mov r2, #16
mul r0, r2
mul r0, r2
add r1, r0
ldr r0, .SVAR1
strh r1, [r0]
ldr r0, .VAR0
strh r1, [r0]
pop {r0-r2, pc}
.align 2
.word 0x020270B6 + (0x800D * 2)
.word 0x020370BA
.word 0x020370BC
.word 0x020370BE
.word 0x03000FC0
The above code will load the content of vars 0x8001, 0x8002 and 0x8003 make a Song ID out of the content and store the ID in 0x800D and 0x3000FC0.
The ID is formed as follows:
([0x8001]*0x10 * 0x10)+([0x8002] * 0x10)+([0x8003])
So the most basic form of usage for the ASM code in a actual Script is as follows:
#dynamic 0x800000
#org @main
setvar 0x8001 0x??
setvar 0x8002 0x??
setvar 0x8003 0x??
callasm 0x???????? 'ASM routine's offset + 1
writebytetooffset 0x3000FC4
If anyone wants I can put the my script seen in the Youtube Video in here as well, but it's not commented at the moment and I don't really feel like adding comments. Just ask in the thread.
Also please note that this is the first thing I did involving ASM so it might not be the most efficient way of way of doing this.
I hope this information will help someone and if there are any question feel free to ask.
September 28th, 2011, 9:32 AM
Does this work with trainer battles?<|endoftext|>Czech it out!
By World Traveler, USA, December 2010
No reviews, be the first!
Prague is a city that you could keep walking and never stop discovering a hidden square or beautiful over look. Old Town Square is a central meeting point filled with restaurants, bars, a shops. It is also home to the Astronomical Clock which draws huge crowds to the square every hour on the hour. The weekend I was there just so happened to also be an Easter Festival so the square was colorfully decorated. Vendors set up carts and stands selling hand made crafts and tasty treats. A popular one is a pastry dough that is wrapped around a hot cylinder and "baked" over hot coals. They season is with vanilla, sugars, and cinnamon, A close walk from Old Town Square is the Charles Bridge that is also lined with vendors and beautiful views of the river. Cross the bridge and ask some locals about the John Lennon Wall - off the beaten path locals have been paying their respects to the singer by posting lyrics and pictures on this wall. Leave your mark, it's encouraged! From across the bridge you are able to walk through the town to the Prague Castle. Entrance to the grounds is free, pay a small fee and take a walk down Artists Row, or catch the changing of the guards. The views from the top are amazing and you can see entire city!<|endoftext|>85 / 62
80 / 58
79 / 56
HealthWACH: New treatments for Tourrett's Syndrome
Touretteâ??s syndrome (TS) is caused by a malfunction in the brain and can be linked to genetics. Adults and children who are affected by this syndrome experience â??ticsâ?? which are uncontrollable movements and sounds. It is common for Touretteâ??s patients to have other issues such as OCD, ADHD, anxiety, emotion and behavior control problems and learning difficulties. TS is measured by the severity of the patientâ??s tics; sometimes a patientâ??s tics will go away by the time they have reached adulthood.
If a person is under the age of 18 and is noticing constant tics for more than a year, then there may be a chance that the individual has Touretteâ??s syndrome. There are two kinds of motor tics and two kinds of vocal tics; simple and complex tics. Simple motor tics include: head jerking, eye darting and blinking, finger flexing and shoulder shrugging. Complex motor tics consist of flapping the arms, hopping around and crude gesturing. As for vocal tics, some simple symptoms are yelling, hiccupping and throat clearing, while complex vocal tics incorporate the repetition of anotherâ??s own words, the use of different tones of voice and the use of swear words.
As of now, there is no cure for Touretteâ??s syndrome, but there are medications offered to those who have tics that interfere with daily functioning. Most patients do not need treatment but behavioral treatments such as habit reversal and comprehensive behavioral intervention for tics (CBIT) are offered to those who suffer from severe tics. A new drug is being studied to decrease the amount of tics a patient with Touretteâ??s experiences. Typical medication is injected into a muscle several times a day to relieve the tic, while this new pill only requires one dose a week. Side effects from older medication include weight gain, fatigue and dulling of the mind. This new medication is still being studied but will be preferred for patients so they do not have to constantly remember to take their medicine.<|endoftext|>Каталог самых низких цен на товары (на главную страницу)
microbial biofilms of listeria monocytogenes приобрести по лучшей цене
Food contamination leads to wide economic loss and has a strong impact on public health worldwide. Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella enterica Enteritidis are two of the most hostile and frequent foodborne pathogens, being responsible for numerous foodborne outbreaks and deaths every year. This work investigated the adhesion and biofilm formation ability of these bacteria regarding yet unexplored growth conditions and exposure to antimicrobials, as well as possible repercussions of disinfection on genetic expression of survival cells. L. monocytogenes biofilm formation ability was studied under different growth modes and temperatures, and its survival on antimicrobial-coated food contact surfaces was tested. S. Enteritidis was evaluated for its biofilm formation ability and viability on regular and antimicrobial incorporated materials. It was also assessed the susceptibility of biofilms of both bacteria to different chemical disinfectants, and it was analysed the expression of stress and virulence gene by the surviving cells. This book is helpful for students in this area, and particularly useful to food industry professionals and researchers who deal with foodborne pathogens.
Лучший Случайный продукт:
Что выбирали на сайте
Похожие товары<|endoftext|>White House Files $25 Billion Foreclosure Settlement Against Citigroup
Foreclosure SettlementThe foreclosure deal involving the five largest U.S. mortgage lenders, including Citigroup, was released on Monday when the government filed court papers for the $25 billion foreclosure settlement. Documents from the agreement provide new details regarding how settlement payments will be distributed to borrowers, as wells as federal and state governments.
Foreclosure Settlement Background
A foreclosure settlement has been in the works between the federal government, state officials and the five largest U.S. mortgage lenders involved: Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Ally Financial, Bank of America and Wells Fargo.
These banks were required to settle claims that they participated in a “robo-signing” scandal, which resulted in wrongful foreclosures. To resolve the issue, the banks agreed to provide relief to homeowners with underwater mortgages, as well as borrowers in danger of losing their homes.
On Monday, the government filed court papers related to the settlement; however, it won’t be made official until it receives the approval of a federal judge in Washington, D.C.
This foreclosure settlement is the largest settlement involving a single industry since the multi-state tobacco deal in 1998, which was worth $206 billion.
Citigroup Payments Distributed among 49 States
As a part of the settlement, Citigroup and the other banks have agreed to pay roughly $20 billion to help borrowers avoid foreclosure. More specifically, banks will reduce mortgage loans for about 1 million of the 11 million U.S. households that owe more than their homes are worth.
The remaining $5 billion will be paid in cash to federal and state governments. About one-third of that cash will be placed into a fund used for sending $2,000 checks to roughly 750,000 Americans who were improperly foreclosed upon from 2008 to 2011.
Bank of America, which has the largest financial obligation at $11.8 billion, struck a side deal with government officials allowing BofA to reduce some of its penalties if the bank agreed to reduce borrowers’ owed principal loan amounts to their homes’ current market values.
The five banks have agreed to complete 75 percent of their loan-relief requirements within two years and 100 percent within three years. During that time, they will not be allowed to foreclose on a homeowner who is being considered for a loan modification.
A total of 49 states will participate in the settlement; Oklahoma is excluded because it negotiated a separate deal with the banks.
Since the banks didn’t admit wrongdoing as a part of the settlement, federal and state law officials can still pursue criminal charges against the banks. Individuals will also be able to sue the banks in civil lawsuits if they believe they were wronged.
Share This Article<|endoftext|>HomeBlogTo cleanse or not to cleanse
To cleanse or not to cleanse
Cleanses are a big deal in the fitness world, every month it seems a new cleanse pops up. The “lemon detox” the “cabbage diet” and many others tempt dieters all over. The idea of a cleanse sounds incredible, clean out your insides, drop weight fast and feel great! Sounds pretty fantastic doesn’t it? However, these cleanses can turn out to not be all that they are cracked up to be. So what are the downsides to a cleanse?
You won’t lose actual weight
The biggest motivator for most people to follow a cleanse is down to weight loss. While following a cleanse will result in a fast initial drop in the number on the scale, this is usually mostly water weight and not actual fat. Most people find that as soon as they start eating normal foods again they gain back all of the weight if not more!
Energy and mood
Cleanses usually require a vastly limited number or calories and a restriction of both fats and proteins. Your body requires some fat to function and with limited amounts of fat you are likely to find your mood dramatically dips. Limiting your calories so severely will also leave you feeling tired, lethargic and for most people pretty grumpy!
Your body is designed to detox itself
A big premise of a cleanse is to “clear out” and “detoxify” your body. The human body is already designed to this by itself! Your liver and your kidneys are already there to remove waste and toxins from your body, so why starve yourself for no reason? Fuel yourself with healthy foods and allow your body to do what it is designed to do.
You may lose muscle
Limiting your protein and calorie intake will usually result in your body burning your muscle stores for energy. This is the last thing you want as muscle helps to keep your metabolism raised, as well as keeping you looking good.
While a cleanse seems like a great idea, long term it may not be the most beneficial. In most cases it won’t help you lose fat, it will most likely leave you feeling pretty crappy, and your body is already detoxifying itself.
So a better idea if you’re feeling grotty and like you need to lose weight is to rather make a lifestyle change. Try to eat whole foods, fresh fruit and vegetables, lean proteins and good fats. Combined with a regular exercise routine this will help you to lose actual fat, feel great and keep your body running optimally!
Jessica Lindsay
Jessica Lindsay
Jessica is a qualified Personal Trainer and is part of the Member Support team at Bailey Fitness.
Read more by this author<|endoftext|>Opinion: The Unseen Public Health Crisis
Brady Rivkin
Disclaimer: This article and any other opinion articles published by the Daniel Wright Voice are not endorsed by the Daniel Wright Junior High School, nor do they reflect the views of the school. These articles are solely the opinions of the students at the school.
In the 21st century, one would think that with the advanced medical science in the United States, the life expectancy would be more than 79. Yet it still stands at 79 due to |
Webber. Jessie proves her loyalty to Bobbie by sticking by her when Bobbie's past as a prostitute is exposed. Jessie also comforts Laura after she is raped, telling her that she isn't dirty even though Laura feels that she will never be clean again.
During this time Jessie dates Dan Rooney, an administrator at the hospital. Dan and Jessie eventually break up and Dan begins dating Ruby Anderson instead. During the 1980s, Jessie's appearances on the show become much less frequent. In 1993 when Angie Costello visited the hospital in honor of Steve Hardy's 30th anniversary, she asks about Jessie and Steve informs her that Jessie has died.
In 2013, Jessie is honored at the Nurses' Ball by Lucy Coe and all the other attendees.
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Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Paper presentation went okay. Hurray! :-D
Saturday, April 24, 2004
Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.
I **must** own this!!!
(Or at the very least just say the name a lot. iDuck... iDuck... iDuck...) :-D
A little more thinking aloud?
Well, this helped last time -- let's give it a shot. :-) Apologies for the length -- blog entries aren't exactly supposed to be mini-essays, but hey, I need to brainstorm!!
So I am, as regular readers know, attempting to write something about Congress and the debate over the unrelated business income tax in the mid-1980s. A quick summary: the Internal Revenue Code provides that charitable, educational, and many other types of nonprofit organizations are exempt from paying income taxes (I'll just refer to them as charities, for simplicity). There are lots of different rationales for this, but basically the idea is that the government should support the work that these groups do, and give them a subsidy in the form of a tax exemption. However, charities do have to pay taxes on their earnings from any business activities that aren't substantially related to their main purpose. So, for example, a private school doesn't pay taxes on the money it gets from tuition, becuase the purpose of the school is to educate students; but if the school rents out its athletic facilities to private groups for a profit, it will have to pay taxes on any money it earns from that. Deciding what counts as "substantially related" gets very tricky -- the classic case is that of the museum giftshop that sells posters and note cards bearing reproductions of artwork, then pays no taxes on the profits because these items are related to the museum's overall purpose of educating people about art. The tax that charities pay on this unrelated income is called UBIT (the unrelated business income tax).
Over the last 25 years or so, charities have been the victims of less funding and more demand for their services. As a result, they have been increasingly resorting to business-type activities to raise money. A lot of small businesses are not happy about this situation. Small business owners have approached politicians with countless stories about being forced into financial difficulties by competitors who have an unfair advantage. The charities, so the argument goes, are taking advantage of their special tax status to move into new industries, cut prices, and take business away from private companies.
There's just one problem with the unfair competition argument the small businesses are making -- legal and academic scholars have shown it to be false. The reasons are too complicated to get into here, but they fall into three major categories. First, there's nothing "unfair" about this competition -- the people profiting from businesses are private investors, while the people profiting from charities are people who need their services; the two can't be compared. Second, the tax advantage doesn't actually help that much because there are other features of charities that make it harder for them to get capital. Lastly, the UBIT doesn't help alleviate competition anyway -- it just makes things worse by forcing charities to concentrate in a few industries, thus having an even bigger impact on their competitors!
So basically, sometime in the 1980s the small business community gets really agitated, and Congress starts thinking about reforming the UBIT to tighten the rules on charities. There are thousands of pages of hearing transcripts, public comments, and testimony... the debate goes on for about five years... detailed proposals for change are considered... everyone is convinced that Congress will ring the death knell for charities... And then pffft. The Treasury Department says UBIT reform isn't a good idea after all, and that's the end of that.
So what happened? If everyone already knew that the UBIT was ineffective, how was the small business community able to raise such a ruckus? And what led to the collapse of the reform movement? Most importantly, what does this mean in terms of future UBIT reform?
The underlying problem with all of this is a tremendous degree of complexity. Very few people actually understand exactly how all the UBIT rules work, least of all the charities who are paying it. And nobody knows what the UBIT is really supposed to achieve, or what the best way is to achieve it. In short, there is no underlying conceptual framework -- if you don't know what you're trying to accomplish, it's very hard to come up with reform proposals that will satisfy everyone. This is a big idea (too big, too broad), but it comes out in a few particular tensions that characterized the debate:
1) Congress vs. Treasury. Congress wanted to make reform happen -- they wanted happy small businesses because happy business makes happy voters. Treasury wanted to do its job well -- in other words, to collect as much money as possible, while spending as little as possible. That means tighter rules that take more money from the taxpayers, but that aren't so complex to administer that the government has to expend lots of resources getting it right.
2) Small businesses vs. charities. Both of these were powerful interest groups with very sympathetic stories to tell. Congress could appease the small businesses only at the risk of alienating the charities and those who support them -- and who wants to be the one taking the money away from museums and hospitals? Similarly, the small businesses don't want to come across as the bad guys -- they want to keep their customers, not to run the charities into bankruptcy. So both Congress and small businesses had to frame the debate in terms of fairness -- it's not about favoring one group over the other, but about treating them both the same.
3) Slogans vs. science. The small business community (and Congress) got tremendous mileage out of repeating "unfair competition" over and over. After all, no one likes unfairness! And no one likes trying to figure out complex economic arguments about why unfair competition is a myth.
4) Policy vs. administration. A lot of the trouble with UBIT didn't have to do so much with unfairness in the rules as with injustice in how they were administered. Because the UBIT rules are so confusing, and because at least the smaller charities will generally not have a lot of experience with tax law, a lot of taxable income is simply misreported. And because the rules are conceptually vague, even if the IRS catches the error it will typically have a hard time deciding whether the income should really be taxed or not.
And the future of UBIT reform? Not sure yet. The issue is still very much out there, and unresolved. It seems like two ingredients are needed if UBIT is to be reformed: first, a few key people in the political process who will be as willing as the 1980s folks were to tackle the issue, and second, some kind of consensus about what the tax exemption for charities and the UBIT are supposed to achieve. That doesn't seem likely to emerge any time soon...
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
More fun with searches
And once again, some interesting searches led folks to this blog over the last couple of days. One was my first name (wow!); another was "arab fretwork" (pretty!). My personal favorite: "Does my P = your NP?" Oddly appropriate, though as far as I know there is no mention of computational complexity in here anywhere... :-)
Sunday, April 18, 2004
You are a GRAMMAR GOD!
If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!
How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
Also -- oh! I found out today that Americans are the only ones who insist that commas and periods be enclosed within quotation marks at the end of a quote -- Brits and Canadians, wise logical folk, put the end punctuation inside only when it is part of the quotation. Otherwise it goes outside of the quotation marks. Hence -- I am currently reading an article entitled "Income Taxation of Legal Entities". Which makes much, much more sense!! (And yes, I know that my pickiness with regard to punctuation might ring a little hollow given that four of the five sentences in this paragraph begin impermissibly with conjunctions, exclamations, or a total absence of subject or verb. Call it poetic license.)
This from the girl who just spent half an hour literally in fits of giggles reading on-line posts about misused apostrophes... :-D
I'd call it meta but that would be passé...
The Times reviews the new novel by Vogue editor Plum Sykes, Bergdorf Blondes. And not so favorably. As P.C. noted, it's a little hard to tell which is more surreal, the novel or the review! Clearly the reviewer is less than impressed by Plum's plotting, moral sensibility, or respect for the intelligence of the reader, as evidenced by such scathing remarks as "the fascist force of the plotting insists that her narrator be strangely imbecilic" or "[t]he hideous conclusion is clearly telegraphed as the plot skids its way into the most insulting resolution imaginable." At the same time, she feels compelled to reference Truman Capote and Edith Wharton, as if there were any realistic probability of this being a comparable achievement. Ultimately the problem with both the review and the book, it seems, is that they aren't surreal enough -- Sykes treats her model-thin New York fashionista social set as if they were, and should be, our everyday reality; and reviewer Sicha seems to expect the book to be some kind of social commentary. Personally I think they're both taking the whole thing too seriously.
Saturday, April 17, 2004
As the use of on-line "social networks" has grown, so has the pressure on those who are on-line, but not necessarily terribly social, to join. No more. Enter the anti-social networks. From the relatively benign Introvertster to the rather more hostile Hatester, these new groups allow everyone, no matter how he/she rates on the shy-to-outgoing spectrum, to have a network of his/her very own. (In an interesting twist, one social network even has a community for antisocial people!) Now isn't that nice.
Fashion and law! I knew there was a paper topic in there...
Sunday, April 11, 2004
Who am I (supposed to be)?
Apparently even the Myers-Briggs test on can't tell what I'm supposed to be. Since its algorithm breaks ties at random, I am either:
Introverted (I) 62.5% Extroverted (E) 37.5%
Intuitive (N) 57.14% Sensing (S) 42.86%
Thinking (T) 50% Feeling (F) 50%
Judging (J) 55.26% Perceiving (P) 44.74%
or (2)
Introverted (I) 62.5% Extroverted (E) 37.5%
Intuitive (N) 57.14% Sensing (S) 42.86%
Thinking (T) 50% Feeling (F) 50%
Judging (J) 55.26% Perceiving (P) 44.74%
Your type is: INFJ - "Author". Strong drive and enjoyment to help others. Complex personality. 1.5% of total population.
Either way, apparently I am a rare breed...
As for the Enneagram test:
Your conscious personality is Type 6w5. Professional specialists, 6w5s seek out career security and are more wary i personal relations. If you win their loyalty, they will never waver, They are both sceptical and likely to cling to some system or set of beliefs to keep anxiety at bay.
Your unconscious personality is Type 3w4. You are more led by your thoughts than your feelings. Anxious and introverted, you don't like to conform and have an inquisitive mind. You are also more close minded than average. If you like someone, you hide it.
Update: Okay one more and then I'm through procrastinating. This one is mean!
Sensate results were moderately low which suggests you are unaware, aloof, and disconnected from your environment and physical self.
Intellectual results were medium which suggests you are moderately internally motivated, self seeking, and independent.
Assertive results were moderately low which suggests you are timid, indirect, and unable to start and/or follow through on things.
Your consciously preferred type is Intellectual.
Saturday, April 10, 2004
Reign of Blue
Imagine gathering up every scrap, every picture you had that was associated with someone you once cared about, and giving it all up. Imagine having every memory you had of that person irretrievably erased. That's the premise behind Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind [K.G. -- now there's a title!] This movie is just barely avoids crossing the line that divides clever movies from those so confusing that I dismiss them as unnecessarily frustrating -- it is not easy to figure out what's going on much of the time, what is real and what is in the main character's mind, but enough of it is decipherable on a first viewing to reassure me that there is actually a point to all the complexity. Despite the advertising campaign for the movie, which focused almost entirely on the fictional memory-erasure clinic, the broader implications of permitting selective deletion of memories are hardly dealt with; only in a secondary plot involving the procedure's inventor and an attractive young employee is there any suggestion of the serious confusion, imbalances of power, and potential abuses that might result. This is a love story, about two imperfect people and whether the sweet in their memories is worth the bitter. For someone as tied to memories as I am, there is nothing scarier than the thought of losing them permanently; after all, eventually even the sad ones take on a certain charm. (I find the idea of it almost unbearable, with the result that I was very sad in parts of the movie that were supposed to be not particularly affecting.) Halfway through having his memories wiped, the main character starts to realize the same thing. And the rest of the movie plays out like a high-speed chase, the patient's struggle to cling to his memories racing against a procedure that starts to feel inhuman. But really, the movie seems to suggest that the memories themselves aren't what's most important; it's our ability to learn from them, come to terms with painful things and grow. Memento-esque in its play with time, with some visual whimsy borrowed from Amelie and Jim Carrey trying to pull a Bill Murray in an uncharacteristically sedate role. Great, recommended, will make you wish you had blue hair too.
Friday, April 09, 2004
Wondrous Strange
At last -- yeah, I know it's been weeks. While I was gone, unfortunately, school and life kept on going, with the result that I'm now chasing it all with a one-week handicap (hence the delay in blogging). But definitely worth it.
So. I went to Japan with family over Spring Break and it was fabulous. I'd never been to Asia before at all but had been wanting to go to Tokyo ever since I saw Lost in Translation. All in all, I'd say it exceeded expectations -- beautiful and surprising and fascinating all at once. If you get a chance, go. :-)
Started out well with an amazingly comfortable flight considering it was 14 hours long... Absolutely breathtaking views of Alaska and especially Siberia (I flew over the Pole!) -- when mouuntains look enormous from the sky, I can only imagine what the view is like from the ground. Hmm. Perhaps next trip.
First stop: Tokyo. The people-watching is amazing -- so much creativity and risk-taking and individuality in the way people dress, especially those who are younger, student-aged. Jeans under handkerchief skirts, layered tops, legwarmers, brightly colored pointy-toed shoes; dyed hair everywhere. There's more homogeneity in businesspeople, who are uniformly in black or navy suits -- though one does spot the occasional businessman with punky blond hair. Just people-watching could take up days. There are older, quieter parts of the city too, with a very different feel and relatively free of tourists. But even in the ultra-crowded spots like Harajuku or Shibuya, it's amazing how quiet and respectful everyone is, as compared to other big cities like New York. Part of it is the relatively small number of cars, but there is a different attitude to walking around the city. You will very rarely see anyone talking on a cell phone (though everyone has them and checks text messages constantly). You will hardly ever be bumped or jostled.
This was the most striking thing to me -- how aware people are of those around them. People wear masks (kind of like those white surgeons' masks) in public when they have a cold (fascinating incentives problem -- the mask does no good to the person wearing it, and is probably actually rather uncomfortable; so how do they convince everyone to do it?) Sneezing and blowing your nose in public is considered very rude. In the subway, there are signs saying things like, "Be careful when you cross your legs -- it may inconvenience those around you" with a little drawing of a seated person accidentally kicking someone while leg-crossing. Even the tobacco industry has undertaken a hilarious ad campaign to teach people to smoke more considerately (the ads are online here; see also S.W.'s highly entertaining commentary). And everywhere, service is excellent and people are extremely polite. Not exactly warm and welcoming, but we did get stopped in the street a few times when we looked lost, by people offering to help. Could be a nice way to live, I think -- though it sometimes feels like there are a lot of rules and restrictions, there is also an overall sense of respect and awareness of one's effect on others.
And they just think of everything! Department stores have little plastic bags (and nifty dispensers!) at the entrance to cover your wet umbrella. When we walked into our hotel on a rainy day, they offered us hand towels to dry off with. That sort of thing. Little gadgets everywhere designed to remedy some inconvenience or minor embarrassment -- like the little speakers in ladies' restroom stalls that mimic a flushing sound so that you can disguise any noise, without wasting the water by actually flushing.
Next stop: Kyoto. It's a totally different world -- smaller and quieter, still a modern city but overall much more traditional. Temples and shrines are everywhere in the city, from little tiny ones to huge compounds. We were lucky enough to be there during some sort of illumination festival; at night the temples and surrounding streets were lit up, little windy pedestrian streets |
ing, choking and breaking under its own weight,” to quote the film’s dialogue. Dredd’s drug-of-choice makes the visualization of the action revolutionary, but it also does something else too. It reveals much about the culture that created it.
Ma-Ma’s death scene is the most egregious example of this aesthetic of violence. Dredd gives the crime boss a snoot-ful of slo-mo and pushes her off a high ledge. She will fall to her death down a trench of 200 levels, and the moments before her death will be extended dramatically because of the drug.
Is this a kind of mercy?
Or is it a brand of punishment?
Does slowed down time augment and extend Ma-ma’s terror at the oncoming death, or does it lengthen the last few, precious moments of her life on this mortal coil?
Although I don’t view Dredd as the merciful type, I would argue that the visuals raise the question. Ma-ma’s falling body seems to fall first through a shattered snow globe of sorts, with glittering debris all around, and then, she passes through a kind of color rainbow and atmospheric rain cloud. Implicitly, she gets to experience one lost moment of beautiful life before hard, cruel reality re-asserts itself….violently.
Maybe that is punishment: the knowledge that she could have done things differently, and experienced life’s beauty for many more years had she not been so terrible and murderous.
In whatever way one chooses to parse this climactic sequence, it is visually dazzling, and a reminder that even in the most unpleasant situations, life is still the best game in town.
Most of the violence in the film also involves the restoration of order in an out-of-control setting, and from a certain perspective, that too can be a beautiful thing, or at least a relief. The moment of Ma-ma’s death expresses the effect of the drug, of but also the liberation of Peach Trees at Dredd’s hand. It is a sustained, gorgeous, visual catharsis. .
Sometimes it is useful to discuss a movie in terms of other movies, and indeed, that’s the case here. Dredd features the Training Day (2001) scenario of an experienced cop showing a rookie the ropes. It also features the “hostile city” scenario of Black Hawk Down (2001), wherein American soldiers fought a whole metropolis rising up to kill them in Mogadishu, with precious few safe harbors. And in keeping with the dystopia comparison the contained “future” city of Logan’s Run (1976) is not all that different from the Peach Trees slum.
The remarkable thing about Dredd is th smooth, uncluttered manner in which it silently assimilates all those cinematic references into a dynamic and surprising new narrative. If Training Day was about a first day on the job, and a corrupt cop, Dredd concerns instead, a policeman who, no matter the situation, won’t abandon his principles. Black Hawk Down was about a foreign policy failure and its blow-back on America, but Dredd concerns a terminal, ubiquitous economic failure and the internal blow-back resulting from that problem. Even the glittering shopping mall city-of-the-future from Logan’s Run (1976) is reflected or overturned in the blighted commercial landscape of the Peach Trees Ghetto.
Paradoxically, Dredd is both a dazzling movie, and a grounded one. It is dazzling in its visual imagination and audacity, yet grounded in the way it adheres to the rules of its grim, future world. There is little sentimentality in the film, and yet the burgeoning friendship between Dredd and Anderson nonetheless transmits beautifully.
After the Stallone version of the same material, I was “dreading” this re-boot, but director Peter Travis has given us a new classic, and one that I wager we’ll be discussing for years to come. A sequel would be great, but it isn’t, strictly-speaking, necessary. We now have the definitive Judge Dredd movie.
Movie Trailer: Dredd (2012)
Thursday, September 25, 2014
At Flashbak: The Five Coolest Electronic Toys of the 1970s
My latest article Flasbak looks back at the electronic toy craze of the late seventies.
Today, we have iPhone apps and video game consoles…and thank goodness for them.
But when I was a kid in the l970s -- a long, long time ago -- the home video game market was only in its infancy, and another kind of toy ruled the market instead: the “electronic” toy.
This was the era of Quiz Whiz, Simon, BLIP, and the first Electronic Battleship (1977). These and other electronic toys seemed incredibly futuristic at the time with their light-up indicators, keypads, and buzzing sound effects.
Today, of course -- over three decades later -- these toys would hardly pass muster with any eight year old.
And yet the following five electronic toys I still remember with incredible fondness. Indeed, they all have prominent real-estate in my home office to this day."
Cult-Movie Review: Babylon A.D. (2008)
Babylon A.D. (2008), based on a cyberpunk novel by Maurice Dantec, is one of those sci-fi movies that you stick with -- even though you have reservations -- in hopes that all the intriguing elements are going to somehow come together in the end.
Alas, in this case, the film's admittedly interesting ingredients don't ever truly cohere. As a result, you might leave a screening feeling disappointed, sensing some missed opportunities.
Or to put it another way, Babylon A.D. is a fascinating story only half-told; one inadequately rendered in any significant human dimension.
Babylon A.D. is set in a near future world of dystopian proportions, and stars Vin Diesel as a world-weary mercenary named Toorop. He is recruited by another mercenary, Gorsky (Gerard Depardieu) to smuggle a Noelite nun, Sister Rebekha (Michelle Yeoh) and an unusually empathetic young woman, Aurora (Melanie Theirry) across East Europe and into New York City.
He's got six days to do it.
Toorop is a guy who doesn't ask many questions, especially when he is a promised a passport back into his beloved homeland, the United States as reward for the successful delivery of Aurora to the CEO of the Church of Neolites (Charlotte Rampling).
But along the action-packed cross-continental journey (by train, by sub, by jet-ski, and by plane), the smuggler sees things that make him wonder about Aurora's true nature. She boasts the power to powerfully empathize with other forms of life, including cloned animals, and possesses an instinct for both healing and understanding the wounded.
Is Aurora carrying a virus that could wipe out an entire metropolis? Or is she actually the next step in human evolution? In short, Toorop isn't certain if Aurora is savior or destroyer of man. In the end, he finally gets his answer, thanks to a clandestine meeting with Aurora's "father."
Babylon A.D. follows the cyberpunk playbook pretty faithfully. The film depicts a future society, post-2017, of "mega corporations." Here, even Organized Religion is Big Business, and the Noelite leaders regularly check to see if their stock options are "sky high" or falling.
More than that, these religious business-people believe that their professional trade is "miracles" and that people such as Aurora can be trademarked. Religion in this world is about selling people something they desperately want, spirituality, and about getting rich off the sale.
The impressive look of New York City -- just a step below Blade Runner (1982) perhaps -- affirms the importance of corporations in this near future milieu. Skyscraper exteriors are multi-story advertisements and commercials. Corporate logos appear on every surface imaginable, even on the sides of planes and city taxis. Clearly, big business is the way of the future, if we are to believe Babylon A.D.'s vision.
But Babylon A.D. is also a cyberpunk vision because it ponders a dystopian future in which high technology does not raise all ships, so-to-speak. The early portions of the film highlight life outside of the rich United States, in Serbia and Russia, respectively, and these are places of degrading infrastructure, miserable housing, failed technology, and populaces living in abject poverty. The human beings dwelling in these countries seem to live in spaces that aren't really designed (or safe) for people.
In accordance with this idea, twice in the film Toorop is forced to contend with items that don't work properly: a hand-gun and lighter, in particular. The overall impression is thus of a used-up world, squeezing the last drops of viability out of late twentieth-century technology and wealth.
But it is the character of Aurora who points the film most clearly in the direction of cyberpunk literature. She is the daughter of both biology and technology, anticipating a new epoch in which man and machine are mated. Some futurists refer to this new age as "Singularity," and the movie gets much mileage out of the idea that machines are now developing faster than the human race is. Aurora, we soon learn, is pregnant: a "vessel" for the next step in our very evolution.
Cyberpunk has much in common with film noir, too, so you won't be surprised to learn that the film opens with a laconic voice-over narration from Diesel (as Toorop), debating the future. "Save the planet? What for?" He asks, sounding a lot like David Twohy's Riddick.
Toorop then contrasts that line of dialogue with his own example of "bumper sticker philosophy" as he calls it: "Life's a bitch and then you die."
Toorop himself is pretty clearly a noir hero: an outsider living on the margins of society, attempting to remain uninvolved and yet secretly hoping for a reason to become involved again; to reignite his connection to the human race.
He finds that connection, surprisingly, in a revival of his spirituality. Certainly, Babylon A.D. speaks a lot in the language of faith: Aurora's journey across the globe takes six days, there's a human populace "starving for miracles" and, yes, there's also the idea of immaculate conception.
As I wrote above, all of these elements are authentically intriguing and worth noting. Yet Matthew Kassovitz's film remains incoherent; as though it has been edited with a blunt hatchet. We literally leap from set-piece to set-piece without rhyme or reason. We don't always understand, exactly, where the characters are and what they're doing in any particular place.
For example, Toorop, Rebekha and Aurora find themselves running on a gigantic ice field with other Russian refugees at the start of one scene, and the moment leads to a bloodbath at a parked submarine. Yet we don't know how anyone got there or what's going on. Instead, the scene plays as if someone blew a whistle, and all the actors started simultaneously running a race.
In truth, the film doesn't always seem certain which forces are pursuing Aurora, and for what reason. Several apparent thugs follow Toorop through a colorful, atmospheric bazaar and ensuing terrorist attack at a train station, and thus seem to be our bad guys. They are involved in an extensive fight sequence, and yet they have no reason to approach Toorop with hostility given what we later in the film learn about their allegiances.
And the action scenes -- such as a drone attack on two jet-skis -- feature impressive special effects but not the right tone. They play as unrealistically heroic or comic-bookish in what is otherwise supposed to be a grim, realistic world.
But the most significant problem is that Babylon A.D. fails on a human, emotional level. The story of Aurora -- as a messiah and Mary Figure -- is one that should be beautiful and inspiring, yet it isn't. Aurora is too remote a figure to sympathize with, and we don't understand her motives for most of the adventure.
Toorop's final revelation (about saving the planet again, one life at a time) feels more than a little facile because the audience never truly feels or experiences the connection between this mercenary and Aurora. We know it's there and we want to feel it, but the movie lurches mechanically from plot point to plot point instead of adequately developing the characters' relationships.
Babylon A.D. is supposed to be a story about the dawn of a great new age for the human race, and the rebirth of one man's faith, but the film's closing line, "Ain't that a bitch?" hardly feels like an appropriate or worthy apotheosis given the circumstances.
Because this cyberpunk film features a future world that already seems very familiar to us (from the likes of Blade Runner and Johnny Mnemonic, for instance), the only way Babylon A.D. could have differentiated itself from the cyberpunk pack would have been in the handling of the unconventional relationship between Toorop and Aurora. This is where the filmmakers should have focused; on the emotional content of Aurora's journey; not the spectacle and danger of the actual trip.
So instead of being a movie about the wondrous joining of man to machine, Babylon A.D. feels like a movie made by a machine instead; one programmed to know and regurgitate every action cliche in the book.
Ain't that a bitch?
Movie Trailer: Babylon A.D. (2008)
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
At Flashbak: The Five Coolest Gadgets of 1980s Science Fiction TV (that aren’t from Star Trek or Doctor Who)
My latest article posted at Flashbak remembers the coolest gadgets of 1980s cult-television. It wasn't a great time for gadgets (outside of Star Trek), especially in comparison to the seventies. And yet, some cool alien devices indeed showed up from time-to-time
"In the 1970s, the creators of science fiction television programming toiled to imagine what the future would look like as mankind stepped into the final frontier. Programs such as Gerry Anderson’s UFO (1970-1971) and Space: 1999 (1975 – 1977), The Starlost (1973) and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979-1981) all imagined new technologies -- and gadgetry -- that would make better man’s future.
Intriguingly, the 1980s quickly proved a very different story. If the 1970s series involved man heading out into the universe, the new decade focused instead on aliens coming to Earth. Series such as The Phoenix (1982), V (1985), Starman (1986), and War of the Worlds (1987-1989) for example, all saw the final frontier coming to us.
Although Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered in 1987 and brought space adventuring back to TV, the majority of the decade saw alien tools and gadgets, not man-made ones, taking center stage.
As before, I have labored not to include guns on the list, as guns serve quite a different purpose than gadgets do."
Star Trek: The Motion Picture Soft Poseable Figures (1979; Knickerbocker)
Action Figures of the Week: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979; Mego)
“Collect all of Mego’s fantastic action figures to recreate the adventures of the crew of the Starship Enterprise…”
In 1979, Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released in theaters, and Mego manufactured a series of small, 3-inch figures to go with the revival film. There were apparently two releases.
The first release consisted of six Enterprise crew people: Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Commander Decker, Lt. Ilia, Scotty, and Dr. McCoy.
The second release of six -- which I never saw in stores anywhere – included aliens featured in the films. These included Klingon, Zaranite, Betelgeusian, Arcturian, Megarite and Rigellian. You say you don’t remember any of those aliens, except the Klingon?
That makes two of us.
Although it was a relief to see that these action figures were not held together at the shoulders and knees by small, easily breakable metal pins (like Mego’s The Black Hole and Buck Rogers action figures), these Star Trek toys -- while “fully poseable” -- certainly seemed like a bare bones releases.
The characters don’t come equipped with phasers, wrist communicators, or even a tricorder for Spock and Bones. And the photos on the back of the cards reveal the characters…in different costumes. Kirk is wearing a short-sleeved tunic, not his two-tone (and very attractive…) admiral’s uniform. Meanwhile Decker is in gray in the photo…while the figure is wearing yellow.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) Photo Story (Pocket Books)
Pop Art: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) (Marvel Edition)
Star Trek: The Motion Picture Electronic U.S.S. Enterprise (1979; South Bend)
Star Trek: The Motion Picture Water Pistol (1979; Aviva)
Trading Cards of the Week: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Topps)
Model Kits of the Week: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979; AMT)
Board Game of the Week: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Milton Bradley; 1979)
Lunch Box of the Week: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (King Seeley; 1979)
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future: "War Dogs"
The second episode of Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future (1987-1988), “War Dogs” is a bit of a disappointment, owing in large part to the fact that the characters are handled with very little depth or humanity, and the story feels familiar and trite. Also, stock footage is repeated quite a bit in the episode. There’s a claustrophobic aspect to the episode too, and a sense that it was assembled in a tearing hurry.
In “War Dogs,” Hawk (Peter MacNeill) patrols over Sector 24, attempting to pin down reports of an unofficial resistance group fighting there. In short order, he encounters the rebels -- who have attacked a Bio Dread convoy -- and helps out. Unfortunately, the rebels take Hawk for a “Dread Head” and shoot him down.
When Hawk awakens, he learns that he is the guest of the “War Dogs,” a resistance group led by a romantic interest from his past, Vi (Kate Trotter). Her second officers include |
your hearing.
' So all bore witness to him, and marveled at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, 'is this not Joseph's son?' " - Where did he get this learning? Gracious words - notice - Jesus is announcing the inauguration of his ministry. He does it in his hometown and he does it on the Sabbath. Something else is very important about this passage. Notice what Jesus' mode of preaching was - he read a passage of Scripture and then he expounded on it.
A lot of times you hear preachers get up and they'll take a newspaper clipping and they'll share a funny story and then they just kind of wax eloquent and pontificate on those things. Jesus was a Bible preacher. First thing was he read a passage and then he sat down and he talked to people and he expounded on what the passage of Scripture says. He was a Bible preacher. But he used the Sabbath to, basically, inaugurate and announce the beginning of his ministry.
Alright, you can look in - we're going to talk a little bit about what he did in capernaum. Go to Mark chapter 1, verse 21. "Then they went into capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath" - if you want to have an interesting study sometime, take your Bible - how many of you have Bible computer programs or you've got the Bible on the - just about everybody now, right? Type in the word 'immediately' or 'straightway' - you'll be surprised how often Mark says that. Mark is the fastest Gospel. It just is always saying, 'immediately,' 'straightway,' and - or different similar terms - he "went into capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath he entered the synagogue and taught.
" You know, they have discovered the ancient city of capernaum and they've actually found a synagogue in capernaum and when you go to Israel and you travel around - you know, one of these days, Amazing Facts is thinking of taking a group to Israel. That would be very interesting. I've been there a couple of times and when you go to Israel, you go to one town and there'll be four churches that will say, 'this is where Jesus was born.' They all have a different place. And they'll all say, 'this was the sermon on the mount - this is the mount where Jesus did the sermon.' And all the churches have built on different mountains and say, 'no, this was the mountain.' 'No, this was the mountain. We have the spot.
' 'You can stand where Jesus stood.' 'No, it's not there. It's here.' They all argue among themselves for these tourist locations. But when you go to capernaum, it was a small town, they did discover one ancient synagogue there. That was probably the synagogue because they didn't have that many of them. It was a small fishing village and so you can look at - at least the foundation stones - of the place where Jesus probably actually stood and taught and it's very interesting - kind of moving.
And he "went into capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath he entered the synagogue and taught. And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes." So are you seeing the pattern? There was a practice of Jesus to enter into the synagogue and teach and preach on the Sabbath. Go to Luke 6, verse 6 - talking about a similar occasion - "now it happened on another Sabbath, also, that he entered the synagogue and taught. And a man was there whose right hand was withered" - it says his right hand was withered - "so the scribes and the pharisees watched him closely, whether he would heal (Jesus) on the Sabbath, that they might find an accusation against him. But he knew their thoughts, and said to the man who had the withered hand, 'arise and stand here.
'" - He had him get up and stand forward. And this is the first time Jesus does this. He's going to heal someone, but before he heals him he makes it an object lesson - "then Jesus said to them, 'I will ask you one thing: is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy?' And when he had looked around at them all," - they said nothing. Other places it says he looked around at them with anger - the same story - because he was so frustrated that they didn't understand that answer to a simple question: is the Sabbath a day for doing good? Was it wrong to heal on the Sabbath? I mean, can God not perform a miracle on the Sabbath? That was very frustrating to the Lord - they didn't appreciate that truth. "And when he had looked around at them all, he said to the man, 'stretch out your hand.
' And he did so, and his hand was restored as whole as the other. But they were filled with rage, and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus." What kind of spirit is it that would make you angry at a man who had just given another man the use of his hand back and made him whole? Wouldn't you think that's cause for rejoicing? But they were angry. They were so bound up in what their beliefs were and that he was countermanding their opinions that they wanted to destroy him just to preserve their opinions. Obviously, that's not the right spirit. They discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.
'How dare him perform a miracle?' I mean, who do they think did the miracle? Wasn't it from God? How dare God do this and break his Sabbath? You know, Jesus said, 'my father works and I work also.' You know, a number of miracles and a lot of controversy that occurred regarding the Sabbath day - but never once was it because the Sabbath day was not to be kept. The controversies and the contention that Jesus had with the religious leaders regarding miracles on the Sabbath day, never had to do with whether or not the Sabbath day should be kept. It always revolved around how it should be kept. So when people say we don't need to keep the Sabbath anymore - 'because, you know, Jesus healed on the Sabbath' or 'Jesus picked grain on the Sabbath' and the different things that happened - never did Jesus say we don't need to keep the Sabbath anymore. That would have been so easy for him to say.
But it was always about how to keep the Sabbath. With a lot of the law of God it wasn't so much whether or not to keep it, but how to keep it. Did Jesus have a dispute with the commandment 'honor your father and mother' with the religious leaders? He did, actually. Yeah, he - but it didn't have anything to do with whether or not they should keep it, it was how to keep it. Now, for instance, they had a law where you could will your property to the church - to the temple - and you didn't have to take care of your parents in their old age.
It was called corban. Jesus said, 'you declare corban over your property so you can live off your property while your mother and father get old and they can't take care of themselves and you neglect the commandment that says 'honor your father and mother' so you can keep a tradition.' So there was a number of the laws - did they misapply the laws about divorce? They said, 'oh, but the religious leaders said that we can get a divorce.' He said, 'because of the hardness of your hearts, but that's not God's will.' So Jesus came to magnify - when you magnify something, what do you do? You make it clear. You make it honorable. He came to magnify the law and make it honorable. You know, if our government - now you drive in California, at least here where this is being recorded - are you allowed to make a right turn on a red light? You are.
That's not true everywhere, but you can. Suppose that the law changed and all of a sudden it became illegal to make a right turn on a red light. And the state voted this new law in but they didn't tell you or they didn't advertise it and you get pulled over and you protest to the policeman and say, 'this isn't very fair.' And the policeman would say, 'well, they made a new law.' And you said, 'but you didn't announce it, you didn't advertise it, you didn't tell us.' Do you know, if they were going to enact a new law that says you can turn left on a red light but you can't turn right, two things have to happen. You have to nullify the old law and vote in the new law. You cannot vote in a new law that contradicts an old law until you also have a separate law that nullifies the old law.
So in order for the Sabbath to have changed from Saturday to Sunday, two things needed to happen. One is you needed to find a new commandment that says 'you will now keep the first day as the Sabbath.' Do you find that anywhere in the Bible? The second thing would happen is you would need to find a commandment - this is one of the Ten Commandments - as goes the law, so goes the Sabbath, because the Sabbath is in the very heart of it. It's the only commandment that begins with the word 'remember.' It's obviously very important to the Lord. I was reading a book - any of you heard of m.l. Andreasen - adventist author? M.
l. Andreasen - the pastor who baptized me gave me some books and I pulled out some old books this week and was reading a book by m.l. Andreasen - it's great. It's called the law of God and the faith of Jesus and I opened it up and I opened it up and found that it was a signed copy. I didn't realize that.
But he has an excEllent section there at the end of that book on the Sabbath day. And you get done reading that and you think, 'how come religious leaders cannot see this? The law, in the Bible, for keeping the first day of the week is non-existent. There is no commandment that nullifies the fourth commandment. Matter of fact, you read in Hebrews, it says 'there remains, therefore, the keeping of a Sabbath for the people of God.' And he says, 'he spake in a certain place on the seventh day.' It never says he spake about the first day being a Sabbath. It is totally a tradition and speculation that, because Jesus rose on the first day, that it suddenly became the new Sabbath.
Now Jesus does give us something to remember his resurrection - what is it? It's baptism. Baptism is a type of death, burial, and resurrection - not a new Sabbath day. And if the Bible says that on the sixth day God finished his work and he rested the seventh day - so there's a reason that he chose the seventh day, where does it command that God did something else? When Jesus finished his work of saving us from our sins. What day of the week was that? Friday, the sixth day. When did he rest from saving us? The Sabbath.
So not only does God endorse the seventh day because he rested from his work in the old testament, Jesus, in the new testament - in the Gospel - endorses the seventh day because he rests from his work of saving us from sin. And he said, 'it is finished.' And he goes to sleep and he rises to continue his work as our high priest on Sunday. It's not inaugurated as a new day of rest. And so I just am always amazed and, you know, that's one reason I became a Seventh-day Adventist Christian, is just the Bible evidence, to me, was what you would say in the basketball vernacular, a slam-dunk. It was just so clear that I could never understand - alright, let's go to the next section under Monday - Sabbath: its meaning and its message.
Luke 4:17 - actually, I already read this one to you. So I want to go to - what is the meaning for the Sabbath? Well, part of the meaning of the Sabbath is it's called 'a holy convocation.' Now some people are confused. There's a law in the old testament which says, during the Sabbath day, you're not to go out of your dwellings. And people say - I actually heard this ostensibly Sabbath-keeping pastor tell people at camp meeting, 'Sabbath day you're not to go out of your dwellings - it's a day to just stay at home at rest.' Can you believe that? He said, 'you don't have to go to church. It actually says you should not go out of your dwellings.
' Well, when God says that in the old testament, it's in the context of somebody going out looking for firewood and they were not to go out looking for firewood. But in the old testament it says the Sabbath was - let me read it to you - Leviticus 23:3, "six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work on it; it is the Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings." - Not the Sabbath of the jews, the Sabbath of who? Of the Lord. "A holy convocation." - What is a convocation? A gathering; an assembly. So, some people say, 'you know, Pastor Doug, I'm sorry I didn't make it to church this week.
It was a rough week. I needed to stay home and rest.' And I'm not saying that there's never an occasion where you are so utterly physically and mentally exhausted that you just can't get out of bed you need a rest. It doesn't mean - there's times for that, I understand that. Notice how I emphasize you better be utterly physically, mentally exhausted where it's actually a medical emergency - you better stay home and rest. Because part of Sabbath keeping is not just not doing work, the Bible says it is a holy convocation - not just a convocation, but a holy convocation.
How important is that? When God says it's a holy convocation, that means we need to be there. That's an assembly. We convene. We come together. Does the Lord want us going to church on the Sabbath day? He does, obviously.
And so, when it talks about the meaning of the Sabbath, one of the things is why do we convene? It's something where we get together for corporate worship. It's a time to come together as one body and to praise and to worship. Do we gather strength when we worship together? Does the new testament tell us about the importance of meeting together as a body? And, you know, someone might be the eye, someone else is the arm, someone else is the foot, someone else is the mouth - we're all different parts of the body. Well, the body is all scattered through the week in different parts and different places. We need to come together - it's nice to come together at prayer meeting and other times, but especially if there's one day you should not neglect, the gathering together of the saints.
You know how it says in Hebrews chapter 10 'do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together and all the more as you see the day approaching.' How many of you see the day of the Lord approaching? All the more as you see the day approaching you should not neglect the coming together of the saints. And the Sabbath was, for one thing, its meaning 'a holy convocation.' The Sabbath was a time to study the word. Jesus, as his custom was, entered into the synagogue on the Sabbath and read the Scriptures. He opened the Scriptures. It's a time to study the word.
He expounded what the meaning of the Scriptures were. Why is that important? Psalm 119, verse 11, "Your Word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against you." How many of you know that we have a problem with sin? Jesus came to save us from our - if he doesn't save us from our sins we're in hot water - or worse! It's very important that we're saved from our sin. The word is where the power comes from. There is something sanctifying that happens when we convene and study the word together in our natures, it saves us - it fortifies us - against sin. "Your Word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against you.
" Furthermore, a reason we keep the Sabbath, it's part of God's law - part of its meaning. Jesus said it's easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to fail. It's unfailing. By the way, that was Luke. You know the reason I read that to you in Luke chapter 16, verse 17? When in Matthew he says it's easier for heaven and earth to pass away; not one jot or one tittle will fail from the law till all be fulfilled, Luke doesn't even say 'till all be fulfilled' because some people misapply 'till all be fulfilled' and they think that means - fulfilled means 'done away with.
'Matter of fact, look at that with me. You've got your Bibles? Go to Matthew chapter 5 - I want to read this to you. Matthew chapter 5 and we'll start at verse 19 - let's start at verse 17, "do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill." - Now some people think fulfill means 'I came to do away with it.' Think about how silly that would sound: Jesus would be saying then, 'don't think I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I did not come to destroy but to do away with.
That wouldn't make sense. And then read on, "for assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled." Now what does 'fulfilled' mean? If you want to understand the meaning of a word in the Bible, where do you go to understand it? The Bible. Find out, in other places, how the word is used and that's the best way to get the context. Jesus comes to John the baptist to be baptized. John says, 'Lord, it's not right that I baptize you.
You're The Son of God, you should baptize me.' And Jesus said, 'suffer it to be so now, for thus it becomes us to fulfill all righteousness.' Now what did John the baptist mean? To do away with all righteousness? Or what did Jesus mean there? Do away with all righteousness? No, obviously not. It means to fill something full. The word 'fulfill' means just what it sounds like it means, it means to fill something full. And he said, 'don't think that I've come to destroy the law. And then he goes on to say - verse 19 - "whoever therefore" - I'm in Matthew 5:19 - "whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the Kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the Kingdom of heaven.
For I say |
Constitution's treaty power has sometimes extended into matters that ordinarily have been within the jurisdiction of the states.
He said that an 1868 treaty with China and an 1894 treaty with Japan provided that subjects of those countries residing in the United States would enjoy the same rights and privileges as other foreign nationals living here. Nonetheless, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, some states and localities passed laws requiring Chinese and Japanese children to attend separate schools.
"Even though these laws involved matters, such as education, within the reserved police powers of the states, courts invalidated them on the ground that they were supplanted by the treaties," Verrilli said in the brief.
Verrilli quoted a 1907 speech by Secretary of State Elihu Root to an international law society in which Root explained that the federal government had taken legal action to enjoin a discriminatory school ordinance passed by the city of San Francisco as being in conflict with U.S. treaty obligations.
Under the U.S. Constitution, Root said, "legislative power is distributed: upon some subjects the national legislature has authority; upon other subjects the state legislature has authority," but "the treaty-making power is not distributed; it is all vested in the national government; no part of it is vested in or reserved to the states."
A decision in the case is expected by next June.
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Coach Rich Brooks once said that, “offense is about execution, but defense is about manhood.” Knowing how well he coached the defense, that mantra was not a complete surprise and I have embraced it for years. Yet as time has slipped past during the Chip Kelly years, I have been rethinking that expression, especially when watching the blocking downfield by our young guns on offense. The block by Grasu, above, is an example of how he likes to launch himself into a block and is proud of springing our RB for a big gain – or in this case, a touchdown. This is extra effort that rewards the whole team, and it makes me very proud to be a fan of the Oregon offensive line.
If I were to make a top ten list of all-time best blocks by our wide receivers, then Josh Huff would have half of them. An incredible highlight reel could be made of his amazing blocks over his career; one that has produced so many touchdowns for his teammates. Last night he did it again, as Barner caught the ball out of the backfield. Once Huff saw the ball in the air going to Kenjon, he broke off his route and immediately began to drive his defender to the sideline. It is at this point that the defender usually sheds the block and makes the tackle, but Huff wins with his extra fighting spirit that holds back the defensive back for another second. The result, through his incredible effort, is that Barner scores a touchdown. His demonstration of what Rich Brooks would call “his manhood” is not even noticed.
The “next-level” fans at notice these blocks. Hroniss Grasu, and Josh Huff, and we are grateful for you making them!
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Charles Fischer
Charles Fischer
• Steve H
Absolutely! I saw this block and yelled out, “Yeah Josh!” To the surprise of the folks around who thought I wasn’t aware that Barner had scored.
• fishduck
Could you believe how LONG he kept fighting to retain that block? I’m glad to see someone else get as worked up over it as I do! Thanks for the feedback.<|endoftext|>Ann Coulter, The R-Word and Why Language Matters
Why "caring for the least of these" begins with adopting an attitude of respect.
My younger brother was diagnosed with moderate autism at the age of 3. If there's one thing I've learned in the years since then, it's that you walk through life with a radically different perspective toward the world when you grow up with a special-needs family member.
I remember the first time someone called my brother retarded. It was the first—and only—time I've ever punched someone.
You learn never to change the channels on the TV without asking, and then to double (and triple) check. You learn to bring an iPod to every restaurant/party/long car drive/high school and college graduation for distractions and never, ever to be figurative—because everything you say will be taken literally. You also learn the power of words in a way you'd never even thought about before.
Last week, while live-tweeting during the third and final presidential debate, conservative commentator Ann Coulter wrote, referring to Mitt Romeny's passive demeanor towards President Obama: "I highly approve of Romney's decision to be kind and gentle to the retard." Coulter's tweet was met with bipartisan outrage, drawing social media ire from both sides of the political aisle for its insensitivity. She immediately received an outpouring of responses admonishing her choice of words, chastising her lack of tact and calling for an apology. Still, less than 24 hours later, Coulter tweeted (again referring to the president), "If he's 'the smartest guy in the room' it must be one retarded room."
Coulter protested the backlash towards her use of the term in an interview with Alan Colmes on Fox News radio (and then later with Piers Morgan), calling those offended the "word police" and saying: "Oh, screw them! ...Look, no one would refer to a Down Syndrome child, someone with an actual mental handicap, by saying ‘retard.’"
But the reality is, that statement couldn't be further from the truth. I remember the first time someone called my brother retarded. It was the first—and only—time I've ever punched someone. Since then, I've heard the word tossed at people with Down Syndrome, cerebral palsy, people with autism and myriad other cognitive and physical disorders. Whatever Ann Coulter's experience has been, I can assure you: None of the events I've witnessed have ever involved the word retard being used in a positive light.
Coulter's insistence on continually using a word that has been labeled demeaning and offensive shouldn't come as a shock, considering she's described herself as a polemicist who "likes to stir up the pot." But the reality is that Ann Coulter is not the problem. She simply represents a mindset of ignorance that crosses party lines, social status and vocabularies. In 2010, mayor Rahm Emmanuel drew sharp—and deserved—criticism for privately calling a group of politicians "f***ing retarded." Last week, a close friend who knows and loves my brother told me to stop being a retard. Almost as quickly as the words escaped her lips her eyes darted down and she mumbled, "sorry."
Over the years I've learned to control my fists, but I've watched as the word retarded has become more and more commonplace on the tongues of those around me—good, loving, kind people who know my brother, know me and can't help but use a word that has become so natural to their vocabulary. A friend who is acting silly is being a retard; a pop quiz is retarded.
Ann Coulter went on in her interview to insist that "retard has been used colloquially to just mean ‘loser’ for 30 years." And you know what? She's absolutely right. It has.
But let's stop.
Let's stop associating mental handicap with being a loser, or being stupid. My brother struggles to process certain types of stimuli and information. But if I could have half the memory and and ability to retain information he has, I'd consider myself blessed beyond measure.
Coulter is right in noting that the word's etymology has evolved over the past 30 years. So much so that in many states, legislation is being passed to remove "mental retardation" from medical and clinical terminology because it has perverted so drastically into a slur. And its connotation remains. However you spin it, when not being used medically, the word retard is almost always used as an insult to imply stupidity or ineptitude.
It begins with looking at each person's gifts and talents and elevating them, rather than shining the spotlight on their inabilities and exploiting them for comedic gain.
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One of the reasons the word is so offensive is because it marginalizes an entire segment of society that, for the most part, cannot defend themselves from it. (A beautiful exception to this is seen in Special Olympic Athlete John Franklin Stephen's eloquent response to Coulter's tweet.) The innocence that so often accompanies special-needs individuals belies a certain type of vulnerability. If you spoke to my brother in the most insulting tone you could muster and, with all the venom in the world, called him a retard, he would probably look at you and ask you what your favorite movie is—and then tell you how much he loves Toy Story, what year it was released, who produced it, etc. The full weight of your attack would be lost on the innocence of his mind. I love that. And at the same time, it infuriates me, because he's defenseless against one of the most dangerous things in the world: ignorance.
The people who would understand this are the millions of siblings, parents and friends whose daily reality is living with, caring for and loving people with special needs. Living with special needs is a daily reality for too many people for the word retard to be thrown around cavalierly. It's easy to assume that your words and thoughts are insignificant, but the full danger of words that become easier and easier to throw around is that they normalize the belittling of people and ideas. As Christians, we have a biblical call to care for the least of these that Christ laid out clearly in Matthew 25:40. Fulfilling that command begins with adopting an attitude of respect. It begins with not using uniquely and beautifully crafted minds as source material for insults and slurs. It begins with looking at each person's gifts and talents and elevating them, rather than shining the spotlight on their inabilities and exploiting them for comedic gain.
So stop using this word. Call out your friends when they do. And remember that your words have power because they matter—however insignificant you might believe them to be.
Kristi commented…
As the parent of a child with special needs, I disagree that this article is a waste of time and space. Like most parents, my son is my main priority in life. But unlike most parents who are able to take care of their kids for 18 years and then send them into the world to fend for themselves, I recognize that my role as my son's protector may be a permanent one. I assume that you don't have children yet or you would understand that anything that hurts your child, hurts you. And when your child is completely defenseless, it hurts even more. It is very hard for a parent to come to terms with the fact that their child falls into the category of "mentally retarded". There is such a negative connotation with that term. So when people just throw the term around in a negative way and then act like it doesn't matter, it reopens the wound that we parents have to bandage every single day as we look at our children and see how the world sees them - as people who don't matter, who aren't worth defending in a magazine article. This issue may not be important to you, but it is important to me and countless others.
Anonymous commented…
Completely disagree. My two daughters are special needs not disabled.
Anonymous commented…
Completely agree. Ann Coulter doesn't have the capacity to admit she was wrong, and many of the Lemmings that listen to her will fight tooth-and-nail to defend her. The R-word is offensive and insensitive. For anyone to deny that is ...offensive and insensitive.
Anonymous commented…
In re. Johnny: LifetimeAchievementAward for Worst Attemptat Semantics. Seriously, that was aabysmally awesome.
Anneke9 commented…
So, will your next article be about Bill Maher and his lack of respect?
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Log In<|endoftext|>8 Tips to Get in Shape the Healthy Way
Image source: Pixel Studio Productions
Year after year, one of the most popular New Year’s resolutions is to get in shape. But only 2 months afterwards, a huge fraction of people slack or give up on their goal.
No matter the month or reason, it’s always a good time to dedicate to becoming a healthier, stronger version of yourself.
1. Find Your Motivation
When it comes to dedicating time to the gym or sticking with a dieting plan, finding your motivation can keep gas in your tank.
If your health is a strong motivator, consider placing a doctor’s note in a visual part of your home like a bathroom mirror so you don’t lose focus.
Another way to stay motivated is to track your continuous progress. By measuring how far you’ve come, you can hold yourself accountable and remind yourself where you’re going.
Change doesn’t happen immediately, and big results take time. Long-term consistency is key in making your goals a reality.
2. Develop a Workout Routine
Exercising routinely is one of the most obvious steps. However, it’s important to recognize that there is no one-size-fits-all exercise regiment that will work for every person since factors like age, fitness goals, body type, metabolism, and more all vary greatly.
To get in shape and maintain cardiovascular health, workout routines that involve cardio such as several minutes spent on an elliptical machine might be a great fit. It’s a full-body exercise that ensures physical activity for multiple muscle groups. Besides, it’s a safe workout that goes easy on your joints.
This article by Youthful Home provides elliptical machine workout tips for beginners that can help you start exercising the right way. But for those looking to lose weight, weight lifting could be a more effective way to trade body fat for muscle.
It’s important to note that certain medical conditions mean some forms of exercise might be too taxing, which is why consulting a physician or professional coach is necessary to avoid possible injury.
3. Walk More
On average, adults spend over 6.5 hours a day sitting, and minors spend at least 8 hours being stationary. This sedentary lifestyle means muscle atrophy, or muscle loss, is a top concern.
An easy way to burn calories, build lower-body muscles, and improve your mental health is to simply walk for at least 20 minutes around the block, local park, or outdoor track.
In addition to getting more vitamin D from the sun, which is proven to increase serotonin levels, daily walks can have a major impact on your fitness level and cardiovascular health.
4. Play Sports
Not everyone likes the idea of spending time in the gym, but that’s not a reason to give up on getting fit.
Whether you’re intimidated by gym atmospheres, feel like time passes by much too slowly on the elliptical, or the monotony of workout machines is wearing you down, consider playing sports or outdoor games instead.
Local recreational sports teams are great ways to socialize, get some fresh air, and be entertained while improving your physical health. Basketball, baseball, golf, tennis, and other such sports are only some ways you can get your body moving and have some fun.
5. Stay Hydrated
While we know how important it is to drink water, the vast majority of people drink less than the recommended daily amount of 8 glasses a day. Staying hydrated is an easily overlooked step, but incredibly vital to being healthy.
Exercising, sweating, digesting, and even breathing are all activities that cause us to lose water. Restoring what you lose is important to avoid headaches, muscle fatigue, confusion, and more serious symptoms of dehydration like fainting spells. Here is an article from Healthline with even more reasons to drink water and links to studies to back up this information.
One way to make sure you’re staying hydrated is to keep a full 16-24 oz water container on hand that you refill continuously.
6. Balance Your Diet
If you’re consuming the wrong types of food, your progress will be stunted. Beyond making it harder to burn off calories or build muscle, working out will be more physically draining if you’re eating poorly. Think of it like fueling a car: if you put diesel in a vehicle that only takes gas, then you’re cruising for a bruising. Consider swapping out fatty meats for lean proteins like grilled chicken and fish.
Brooks Bassler, the founder of Cajun kitchen restaurants BB’s Tex-Orleans that specializes in seafood dishes, shares: “Fish and other seafood options are filling, lower-calorie alternatives to food options that could be holding you back instead of giving you the energy you need to push forward. Seafood is a source of vital nutrients, B-complex vitamins, vitamin D and vitamin B.
Remember that vitamins, protein powders, and supplements exist to help, but these items do not cancel out bad food choices.
7. Get Enough Sleep
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention a third of US adults report that they usually get less than the recommended amount of sleep. Getting enough sleep at night does much more than ensure that you’re not cranky in the morning. Sleep directly correlates with emotional wellbeing, brain and heart health, immune system functions, and even weight fluxuations.
The number of hours of sleep and the quality of sleep needed to stay healthy depends on the individual. On average, an adult needs between 7-9 hours of sleep per night. Older individuals need a minimum of 7 hours.
More restful nights can be achieved by drinking less alcohol, avoiding nicotine, dimming electronic screens at least thirty minutes before bed, and minimizing noise or light disturbances.
8. Do Regular Check-Ups
It’s easy to forget that exercising may cause injuries, whether it’s muscle strain, shin splints, or more serious concerns. Additionally, changes to your diet might have unexpected adverse effects. Getting in shape makes your body stronger and healthier, but pushing yourself too hard or ignoring possible risks can lead to long-term consequences.
To avoid the setbacks that come with injuries or medical conditions, schedule regular check-ups with your doctor to make sure you’re not overlooking any possible problem. It’s always better to catch an issue early while it’s small, rather than risk your plans being thrown off later on.
Leave a Reply<|endoftext|>How to Earn the Brownies Manners Try It Patch
by Hannah on February 14, 2011
Let’s face it, good manners are important. Many of us tend to get annoyed if someone does not give us common courtesy, like holding a door open or saying “thank you” when you do something for another person.
In fact, when I was an elementary school teacher, I would often tell my class that if they were to go out on a business lunch for a job interview, and the job was between two people who had the same qualifications, the person with the best manners would get the job.
Because when that person would take a potential client out for lunch or dinner, s/he would not embarrass the company by reaching across the table or speaking with her mouth full.
Children need to learn manners. Here is an article on how your troop can earn the Brownie Girl Scout Manners Try It patch.<|endoftext|>You are Magic
You are Magic
You are magic
the universe
of oneness’ divine dancer
the music in tune,
align with the harmony
Of the stars
and the multitude of galaxies
Wonderments of wanderers
Open hearts connecting
to the breath of truth
|
Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such Mr Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large moustache. Mrs Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbours. The Dursleys had a small son called Dudley and in their opinion there was no finer The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it. They didn’t think they could bear it if anyone found out about the Potters. Mrs Potter was Mrs Dursley’s sister, but they hadn’t met for several years; in fact, Mrs Dursley pretended she didn’t have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing husband were as unDursleyish as it was possible to be. The Dursleys shuddered to think what the neighbours would say if the Potters arrived in the street. The Dursleys knew that the Potters had a small son, too, but they had never even seen him. This boy was another good reason for keeping the Potters away; they didn’t want Dudley mixing with a child like that. When Mr and Mrs Dursley woke up on the dull, grey Tuesday our story starts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over the country. Mr Dursley hummed as he picked out his most boring tie for work and Mrs Dursley gossiped away happily as she wrestled a screaming Dudley into his high chair. None of them noticed a large tawny owl flutter past the window. At half past eight, Mr Dursley picked up his briefcase, pecked Mrs Dursley on the cheek and tried to kiss Dudley goodbye but missed, because Dudley was now having a tantrum and throwing his cereal at the walls. ‘Little tyke,’ chortled Mr Dursley as he left the house. He got into his car and backed out of number four’s It was on the corner of the street that he noticed the first sign of something peculiar – a cat reading a map. For a second, Mr Dursley didn’t realise what he had seen – then he jerked his head around to look again. There was a tabby cat standing on the corner of Privet Drive, but there wasn’t a map in sight. What could he have been thinking of? It must have been a trick of the light. Mr Dursley blinked and stared at the cat. It stared back. As Mr Dursley drove around the corner and up the road, he watched the cat in his mirror. It was now reading the sign that said Privet Drive – no, looking at the sign; cats couldn’t read maps or signs. Mr Dursley gave himself a little shake and put the cat out of his mind. As he drove towards town he thought of nothing except a large order of drills he was hoping to get that day. But on the edge of town, drills were driven out of his mind by something else. As he sat in the usual morning traffic jam, he couldn’t help noticing that there seemed to be a lot of strangely dressed people about. People in cloaks. Mr Dursley couldn’t bear people who dressed in funny clothes – the get-ups you saw on young people! He supposed this was some stupid new fashion. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and his eyes fell on a huddle of these weirdos standing quite close by. They were whispering excitedly together. Mr Dursley was enraged to see that a couple of them weren’t young at all; why, that man had to be older than he was, and wearing an emerald-green cloak! The nerve of him! But then it struck Mr Dursley that this was probably some silly stunt – these people were obviously collecting for something ... yes, that would be it. The traffic moved on, and a few minutes later, Mr Dursley arrived in the Grunnings car park, his mind Mr Dursley always sat with his back to the window in his office on the ninth floor. If he hadn’t, he might have found it harder to concentrate on drills that morning. He didn’t see the owls swooping past in broad daylight, though people down in the street did; they pointed and gazed open-mouthed as owl after owl sped overhead. Most of them had never seen an owl even at nighttime. Mr Dursley, however, had a perfectly normal, owl-free morning. He yelled at five different people. He made several important telephone calls and shouted a bit more. He was in a very good mood until lunch-time, when he thought he’d stretch his legs and walk across the road to buy himself a bun from the baker’s He’d forgotten all about the people in cloaks until he passed a group of them next to the baker’s. He eyed them angrily as he passed. He didn’t know why, but they made him uneasy. This lot were whispering excitedly, too, and he couldn’t see a single collecting tin. It was on his way back past them, clutching a large doughnut in a bag, that he caught a few words of what they were ‘The Potters, that’s right, that’s what I heard –’ ‘– yes, their son, Harry –’ Mr Dursley stopped dead. Fear flooded him. He looked back at the whisperers as if he wanted to say something to them, but He dashed back across the road, hurried up to his office, snapped at his secretary not to disturb him, seized his telephone and had almost finished dialling his home number when he changed his mind. He put the receiver back down and stroked his moustache, thinking ... no, he was being stupid. Potter wasn’t such an unusual name. He was sure there were lots of people called Potter who had a son called Harry. Come to think of it, he wasn’t even sure his nephew was called Harry. He’d never even seen the boy. It might have been Harvey. Or Harold. There was no point in worrying Mrs Dursley, she always got so upset at any mention of her sister. He didn’t blame her – if he’d had a sister like that ... but all the same, those people in cloaks ... He found it a lot harder to concentrate on drills that afternoon, and when he left the building at five o’clock, he was still so worried that he walked straight into someone just outside the door. ‘Sorry,’ he grunted, as the tiny old man stumbled and almost fell. It was a few seconds before Mr Dursley realised that the man was wearing a violet cloak. He didn’t seem at all upset at being almost knocked to the ground. On the contrary, his face split into a wide smile and he said in a squeaky voice that made passers-by stare: ‘Don’t be sorry, my dear sir, for nothing could upset me today! Rejoice, for You-Know-Who has gone at last! Even Muggles like yourself should be celebrating, this happy, happy And the old man hugged Mr Dursley around the middle and Mr Dursley stood rooted to the spot. He had been hugged by a complete stranger. He also thought he had been called a Muggle, whatever that was. He was rattled. He hurried to his car and set off home, hoping he was imagining things, which he had never hoped before, because he didn’t approve of imagination. As he pulled into the driveway of number four, the first thing he saw – and it didn’t improve his mood – was the tabby cat he’d spotted that morning. It was now sitting on his garden wall. He was sure it was the same one; it had the same markings around its eyes. ‘Shoo!’ said Mr Dursley loudly. The cat didn’t move. It just gave him a stern look. Was this normal cat behaviour, Mr Dursley wondered. Trying to pull himself together, he let himself into the house. He was still determined not to mention anything to his wife. Mrs Dursley had had a nice, normal day. She told him over dinner all about Mrs Next Door’s problems with her daughter and how Dudley had learnt a new word (‘Shan’t!’). Mr Dursley tried to act normally. When Dudley had been put to bed, he went into the living-room in time to catch the last report on the evening news: ‘And finally, bird-watchers everywhere have reported that the nation’s owls have been behaving very unusually today. Although owls normally hunt at night and are hardly ever seen in daylight, there have been hundreds of sightings of these birds flying in every direction since sunrise. Experts are unable to explain why the owls have suddenly changed their sleeping pattern.’ The news reader allowed himself a grin. ‘Most mysterious. And now, over to Jim McGuffin with the weather. Going to be any more showers of ‘Well, Ted,’ said the weatherman, ‘I don’t know about that, but it’s not only the owls that have been acting oddly today. Viewers as far apart as Kent, Yorkshire and Dundee have been phoning in to tell me that instead of the rain I promised yesterday, they’ve had a downpour of shooting stars! Perhaps people have been celebrating Bonfire Night early – it’s not until next week, folks! But I can promise a wet night tonight.’ Mr Dursley sat frozen in his armchair. Shooting stars all over Britain? Owls flying by daylight? Mysterious people in cloaks all over the place? And a whisper, a whisper about the Potters ... Mrs Dursley came into the living-room carrying two cups of tea. It was no good. He’d have to say something to her. He cleared his throat nervously. ‘Er – Petunia, dear – you haven’t heard from your sister lately, have you?’ As he had expected, Mrs Dursley looked shocked and angry. After all, they normally pretended she didn’t have a sister. ‘No,’ she said sharply. ‘Why?’ ‘Funny stuff on the news,’ Mr Dursley mumbled. ‘Owls ... shooting stars ... and there were a lot of funny-looking people in ‘Well, I just thought ... maybe ... it was something to do with ... you know ... her lot.’ Mrs Dursley sipped her tea through pursed lips. Mr Dursley wondered whether he dared tell her he’d heard the name ‘Potter’. He decided he didn’t dare. Instead he said, as casually as he could, ‘Their son – he’d be about Dudley’s age now, wouldn’t he?’ ‘I suppose so,’ said Mrs Dursley stiffly. ‘What’s his name again? Howard, isn’t it?’ ‘Harry. Nasty, common name, if you ask me.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mr Dursley, his heart sinking horribly. ‘Yes, I He didn’t say another word on the subject as they went upstairs to bed. While Mrs Dursley was in the bathroom, Mr Dursley crept to the bedroom window and peered down into the front garden. The cat was still there. It was staring down Privet Drive as though it was waiting for something. Was he imagining things? Could all this have anything to do with the Potters? If it did ... if it got out that they were related to a pair of – well, he didn’t think he could bear it. The Dursleys got into bed. Mrs Dursley fell asleep quickly but Mr Dursley lay awake, turning it all over in his mind. His last, comforting thought before he fell asleep was that even if the Potters were involved, there was no reason for them to come near him and Mrs Dursley. The Potters knew very well what he and Petunia thought about them and their kind ... He couldn’t see how he and Petunia could get mixed up in anything that might be going on. He yawned and turned over. It couldn’t affect them ... How very wrong he was. Mr Dursley might have been drifting into an uneasy sleep, but the cat on the wall outside was showing no sign of sleepiness. It was sitting as still as a statue, its eyes fixed unblinkingly on the far corner of Privet Drive. It didn’t so much as quiver when a car door slammed in the next street, nor when two owls swooped overhead. In fact, it was nearly midnight before the cat moved at all. A man appeared on the corner the cat had been watching, appeared so suddenly and silently you’d have thought he’d just popped out of the ground. The cat’s tail twitched and its eyes Nothing like this man had ever been seen in Privet Drive. He was tall, thin and very old, judging by the silver of his hair and beard, which were both long enough to tuck into his belt. He was wearing long robes, a purple cloak which swept the ground and high-heeled, buckled boots. His blue eyes were light, bright and sparkling behind half-moon spectacles and his nose was very long and crooked, as though it had been broken at least twice. This man’s name was Albus Dumbledore. Albus Dumbledore didn’t seem to realise that he had just arrived in a street where everything from his name to his boots was unwelcome. He was busy rummaging in his cloak, looking for something. But he did seem to realise he was being watched, because he looked up suddenly at the cat, which was still staring at him from the other end of the street. For some reason, the sight of the cat seemed to amuse him. He chuckled and muttered, ‘I He had found what he was looking for in his inside pocket. It seemed to be a silver cigarette lighter. He flicked it open, held it up in the air and clicked it. The nearest street lamp went out with a little pop. He clicked it again – the next lamp flickered into darkness. Twelve times he clicked the Put-Outer, until the only lights left in the whole street were two tiny pinpricks in the distance, which were the eyes of the cat watching him. If anyone looked out of their window now, even beady-eyed Mrs Dursley, they wouldn’t be able to see anything that was happening down on the pavement. Dumbledore slipped the Put-Outer back inside his cloak and set off down the street towards number four, where he sat down on the wall next to the cat. He didn’t look at it, but after a moment he spoke to it. ‘Fancy seeing you here, Professor McGonagall.’ He turned to smile at the tabby, but it had gone. Instead he was smiling at a rather severe-looking woman who was wearing square glasses exactly the shape of the markings the cat had had around its eyes. She, too, was wearing a cloak, an emerald one. Her black hair was drawn into a tight bun. She looked distinctly ruffled. ‘How did you know it was me?’ she asked. ‘My dear Professor, I’ve never seen a cat sit so stiffly.’ ‘You’d be stiff if you’d been sitting on a brick wall all day,’ said ‘All day? When you could have been celebrating? I must have passed a dozen feasts and parties on my way here.’ ‘Oh yes, everyone’s celebrating, all right,’ she said impatiently. ‘You’d think they’d be a bit more careful, but no – even the Muggles have noticed something’s going on. It was on their news.’ She jerked her head back at the Dursleys’ dark living-room window. ‘I heard it. Flocks of owls ... shooting stars ... Well, they’re not completely stupid. They were bound to notice something. Shooting stars down in Kent – I’ll bet that was Dedalus Diggle. He never had much sense.’ ‘You can’t blame them,’ said Dumbledore gently. ‘We’ve had precious little to celebrate for eleven years.’ ‘I know that,’ said Professor McGonagall irritably. ‘But that’s no reason to lose our heads. People are being downright careless, out on the streets in broad daylight, not even dressed in Muggle She threw a sharp, sideways glance at Dumbledore here, as though hoping he was going to tell her something, but he didn’t, so she went on: ‘A fine thing it would be if, on the very day YouKnow-Who seems to have disappeared at last, the Muggles found out about us all. I suppose he really has gone, Dumbledore?’ ‘It certainly seems so,’ said Dumbledore. ‘We have much to be thankful for. Would you care for a sherbet lemon?’ ‘A sherbet lemon. They’re a kind of Muggle sweet I’m rather ‘No, thank you,’ said Professor McGonagall coldly, as though she didn’t think this was the moment for sherbet lemons. ‘As I say, even if You-Know-Who has gone –’ ‘My dear Professor, surely a sensible person like yourself can call him by his name? All this “You-Know-Who” nonsense – for eleven years I have been trying to persuade people to call him by his proper name: Voldemort.’ Professor McGonagall flinched, but Dumbledore, who was unsticking two sherbet lemons, seemed not to notice. ‘It all gets so confusing if we keep saying “YouKnow-Who”.’ I have never seen any reason to be frightened of ‘I know you haven’t,’ said Professor McGonagall, sounding halfexasperated, half-admiring. ‘But you’re different. Everyone knows you’re the only one You-Know – oh, all right, Voldemort – was ‘You flatter me,’ said Dumbledore calmly. ‘Voldemort had powers I will never have.’ ‘Only because you’re too – well – noble to use them.’ ‘It’s lucky it’s dark. I haven’t blushed so much since Madam Pomfrey told me she liked my new earmuffs.’ Professor McGonagall shot a sharp look at Dumbledore and said, ‘The owls are nothing to the rumours that are flying around. You know what everyone’s saying? About why he’s disappeared? About what finally stopped him?’ It seemed that Professor McGonagall had reached the point she was most anxious to discuss, the real reason she had been waiting on a cold hard wall all day, for neither as a cat nor as a woman had she fixed Dumbledore with such a piercing stare as she did now. It was plain that whatever ‘everyone’ was saying, she was not going to believe it until Dumbledore told her it was true. Dumbledore, however, was choosing another sherbet lemon and ‘What they’re saying,’ she pressed on, ‘is that last night Voldemort turned up in Godric’s Hollow. He went to find the Potters. The rumour is that Lily and James Potter are – are – that they’re – Dumbledore bowed his head. Professor McGonagall gasped. ‘Lily and James ... I can’t believe it ... I didn’t want to believe it Dumbledore reached out and patted her on the shoulder. ‘ |
The amount of water lost in those three hours yesterday could have supplied approximately 300 people with water for an entire year according to estimates by the U.S. Geological Survey
This is incredibly problematic in lieu of the fact that we are currently facing a three-year-drought.
"There's been relatively low amounts of precipitation throughout the state, so it's resulted in an extended drought at the present," said USC Professor Darren Ruddell. "There's basically more people living in the state of California and dependent on the water supply than there ever have been before."
Either individual efforts like shorter showers and watering the lawn less frequently, or larger scale efforts led by states or municipalities are needed to help put an end to the water crisis, according to Ruddell.
"In Los Angeles there haven't been a lot of price increases to cut down on water usage," said Ruddell. Such price hikes would have far greater consequences for lower income populations, who tend to use less water to begin with.
Instead, one of California's tactics to help cut water usage had been threatening residents with $500 fines for overuse.
But whether Tuesday's incident is the fault of poor judgement on UCLA's part, negligence by the DWP or mere chance, remains to be seen. Right now all we're seeing is a flurry of photos and judgements sweeping across social media.
Contact Deputy Editor Sara Newman here<|endoftext|>His Dark Materials
His Dark Materials is a television series adaptation of Philip Pullman’s award-winning fantasy adventure trilogy of the same name, comprising of the novels The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. Directed by Tom Hooper, the series stars Tyler Howitt, Dafne Keen, James McAvoy, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Ruth Wilson, and follows the coming-of-age story of two children discovering their identities and destinies while journeying through parallel universes.<|endoftext|>Congress is back...
Among the legislation the House will consider is the Stop Settlement Slush Funds Act (HR 5083). This act stops the Justice Department from forcing individual and businesses facing federal charges to make payments to private groups as a part of a settlement.
Surprisingly, most of the groups befitting from these settlements are organizations that work to advance government power, so this is a shakedown by government agencies in order to get increased support for their allies (and future employers?).
The House will also consider two bills (HR 5424 and HR 2357) changing financial regulations to (hopefully) make it easier for investors.
The House will also consider a number of bills on suspension including:
1. HRes 660-- This resolution affirms the territorial integrity of Georgia. Good thing Congress is working protect Georgia from Florida..oh its not that Georgia...
The resoluteness calls on the Untied States to further engage in "joint military training and providing self-defensive capabilities in order to enhance Georgia's independent statehood and national sovereignty."
The resolution is the latest example of how many in DC are determined to spend American treasure on Cold War Two.
Those tempted to dismiss this as just a resolution should consider how the war party used a series of Congressional regulations in the 90's to make the case for the Iraq war, and we all know how well that turned out...
Those tempted to vote for this resolution should ask themselves: Where is the US Government empowered to go about the world seeking monsters to destroy? And, when has US meddling in the name of promoting "democracy and human rights" not made the situation worse?
Shouldn't Congress be looking to cut spending on overseas interventions?
2. H.Res. 634-- another resolution encouraging more foreign intervention; this time supporting the trilateral relationship between the US, Japan, and South Korea to reign in North Korea. The resolution calls on more joint military exercises.
In other words, the so-called fiscally Conservative Congress wants the US taxpayer to continue to subsidize the defenses of Japan and South Korea.
3. HR 4481-- The Education for All Act-- with a name like that you know it is bad...
This bill requires the US Government to spend taxpayer money to promote "quality education" in developing countries (because the federal government has done such a great job of promoting quality education in America).
Maybe they can spread common core around the globe.
4. HR 5537-- Digital Global Access Act...makes spreading internet access -- and protecting cyber security -- goals of US foreign policy. Civil libertarians should be concerned about giving the US Government new authority to work with foreign governments on cyber security.
5. HR 2845-- This act requires the State Department to make information on the implementation of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) available online.
It also requires the President to provide training for business on AGOA programs and benefits, as well as provide capacity building for African entrepreneurs and trade associations, promote product diversification and value-added processing, and help businesses and institutions comply with U.S. counter-terrorism initiatives and policies.
6. HR 5578-- Survivors Bill of Rights. Creates certain rights for survivors of sexual assault, including the right to not be charged for a forensics examination. It also creates a new grant program for states to notify sexual assault survivors of the new federal rights.
Good intention but it's completely unconstitutional, adds to federal debt, and is another step toward nationalization of law enforcement, which is a danger to liberty.
To end on a positive note, Congress will be considering at least one major pro-liberty piece of legislation this week:
7. HR 4245-- To exempt importation and exportation of sea urchins and sea cucumbers from licensing requirements under the Endangered Species Act of 1973.
LIBERTY (for those who went to import and export sea urchins and sea cucumbers) IS ON THE MARCH!!!!!
Tags: , , ,<|endoftext|>Potatoes & Tomatoes
We're nearing the end of September which means all my garden veggies are ready to harvest. Yay!
Since I was 6 years old, I've been ritually planting veggies because it's a great bonding activity with my parents and I love seeing how the plants grow overtime to become delicious vegetables. I see the green leafy plants like they are my precious babies and it's always rewarding when you use freshly picked veg from your garden in your daily meals.
Everybody's Changing & I Don't Feel The Same
I'm a victim of change.
At the moment, I'm content with life. I've got my GCSE grades; my sixth form timetable; new colour coded stationary; some kick-ass friends and I've got enough bags of Cool flavoured Doritos to last me in a zombie apocalypse- it's perfect.
As time ticks away indifferent to the evolving world, people start to change and adapt to their new surroundings. I'm left flustered by all these changes surrounding me and admittedly, a little scared. Do I welcome change with a warm embrace or just a wary guarded nod?
When change is coming, I try to be open-minded and optimistic, we are exposed to change like we are exposed to air. On many occasions change has brought me gifts that I will truly cherish like new friends, new opportunities and new memories.
However, sometimes I just want to shy away from the ever-revolving world and just sit in my room, binge watch some trashy tv show and just have a breather. Some people wouldn't believe how tiring it is to cope with new situations and new people but before you know it, they're not 'new' anymore. They become your everyday surroundings and familiar faces that greet you with a wave or a smile.
As I enter a new phase in my life, I will be at a crossroad of change. Imagine this as if you are in the woods, clueless about where you are but you stumble upon a cross-road where the you can't see the outcome but you must choose a path. When I make one decision, it would lead me to an entirely different consequence than if I chose the other. This uncertainty can be daunting, thrilling and nerve-wrecking yet somehow, it also makes me feel excited, hopeful and a bit breathless.
Let's live everyday like it is our last, grasp every opportunity we are give and submerge ourselves in this unpredictable world of change.<|endoftext|>I'm trying to implement (or make sure that I'm correctly following) email sending best practices to improve deliverability, but the role of the smtp server's host name vs the domain name of the From: email address seems to be unclear, even after reading dozens of people's articles/input.
Specifically, I understand that to satisfy the reverse DNS check, there must be a PTR record for the IP address of the sending machine that yields a domain name that matches the host name of the sending machine / SMTP server. Some say it needs to match the one given by the "hostname" command, most say it's the one provided with the HELO / EHLO statement, and this guy even says they MUST be the same (according to / enforced by what, I don't know; that's only a minor point of confusion, anyhow).
First, what I can't find anywhere is whether or not the domain name of the From: email address needs to match the domain name of the SMTP server.
So in my case, I have a VPS with linode. It primarily hosts a particular domain of mine, example.com, but I also sometimes do work on other projects: foo.com and bar.com.
So what I'm wondering is if I can just leave the default linode PTR record (which resolves to abc.def.linode.com), make sure that abc.def.linode.com is what my mail server (qmail) is configured to say at HELO, and then proceed to use it to send out emails for example.com, foo.com, et al.
If so, then I am confused by the advice given here, specifically (in a listing of bad case scenarios):
No SPF record for the domain being used in the HELO command
Why would THAT domain need an SPF record? And if it does, which domain should it provide whitelisting for: the HELO domain, or the domain of the From: email address (envelope sender)? Also, which domain would need to accept mail sent to postmaster@domain.com?
If the domains must be the same, that would seem rather limiting to me, because then for every domain you wanted to send email from, you'd have to get another IP address for it. It would also compromise or ruin one's ability to do non-email sending things (e.g. wget) relatively anonymously. However, the upside--if this is the case--is that it would make for a far less confusing setup.
I'm currently using the linode.com SMTP+PTR domain and example.com From: address combination without much of any deliverability issue, but my volume is very low and I'd like to know if someone out there has experience with larger volumes and has specifically tested the difference and/or has inside knowledge and/or has an authoritative answer (and source) for this particular question. I'm happy to clarify anything, let me know. Thanks in advance.
Note: There's some opinionated ranting in this. You're free to ignore it :)
Ok, this is email we're talking about, so we should start by saying there is simply no way to guarantee deliverability of a message. SMTP was devised in a quieter, more trusting time. Since then, many people have implemented what they see as the final solution to spam, only to be amazed that it hasn't worked; or that the spammers have figured out how to defeat it; or that it relies on everyone having done it to be effective. (or dozens of other reasons). What we have now is mess of balkanized systems and half-implemented ideas that mean that it's practically impossible to ensure your message will get through.
My opinion is that most of the best practice should be centred around receiving email, rather than sending it. As as sender, it's not your job to ensure it meets whatever random measures the recipient has in place. It's their job to ensure their filtering doesn't block legitimate mail based on assumptions about what a mail message should look like; many of which don't take full account of the interesting ways in which mail can be routed and delivered.
In principal, no. There are many legitimate reasons why an MTA will send mail from addresses that have nothing to do with its own domain. You might come across systems that reject your mail for this reason, but this is not your problem. It doesn't hurt to have your PTR records match your domain and for the HELO announcement to match those, at least at the TLD; but anything that rejects purely because the From: domain doesn't match the PTR TLD is broken.
No SPF record for the domain being used in the HELO command.
SPF records are another of these "it sounds right in principal" ideas (See here for another rant on that subject) that has gained a lot of weight. The main problem for me is that a lot of MTAs unfairly punish domains that simply don't publish any SPF at all. Again, this is not your problem.
That said, I've put one in place for our domains, because it's not done to get mardy with customer sysadmins too frequently. It ends up being a political decision, rather than a technical one.
If you're going to use SPF and leave your PTR and HELO as abc.def.linode.com; then the SPF record for all of your From: domains should list that server as a sender. If you don't have control over foo.com and bar.com DNS, then you'll have to talk to someone who does.
and neither should you have. If you publish SPF at all and the linode.com seerver isn't listed, then you'll get bounced a lot. However, if you have listed it, or if example.com doesn't publish any SPF records at all, then you should be fine. (I repeat my earlier point that MTAs rejecting mail because there's no SPF published at all are broken and probably bouncing a lot of legitimate mail).
| improve this answer | |
• Thanks for the time you took to type all of that up. I appreciate the affirmation that the MTA domain needn't match the From: domains. However, it seems you misunderstood my SPF question which was why would THAT domain (in this case, linode.com) need an SPF record? It would seem the advice of the person I linked to was bogus and that I wouldn't, in fact, need one for the MTA's domain at all. Also, I never said anything about guaranteeing whatsoever, just improving deliverability. Ideology, morally rich as it may be, ultimately carries little weight, so one is left to control what one can. – Jared Duncan Mar 9 '11 at 9:18
• Specifically, linode.com's DNS does not need to publish an SPF record on your behalf. SPF is about matching the envelope sender domain with a list of approved servers, the SPF records only need to be published by the DNS of the sender domains. I think what the post you linked was suggesting was the same idea, but referring to having the domain name of the MTA in the SPF record, since they can be listed by IP or domain. – SmallClanger Mar 9 '11 at 10:07
• Also, I'm entirely with you on the deliverability front. You do end up having to jump through certain hoops to get the job done; I was ranting mostly just to give you some ammunition when a mail vanishes/bounces and people who think email should be perfect and instant want to blame you for it :) – SmallClanger Mar 9 '11 at 10:17
• The domain in the From: address does not need to match the domain (if given any) in the SMTP HELO dialog. SMTP HELO serves a specific purpose.
• It seems that some receiving server demands SPF on your domain. This is not mandatory though. However you cannot do much for policies and misconfigurations on the receiving side. If you want to publish SPF records, they should be for the sending domain and include the linode server that you are using.
| improve this answer | |
• +1. Good points (and good link.) – SmallClanger Mar 7 '11 at 11:28
• Thanks adamo! Very direct and pertinent (if I could vote you up, I would). I understand that if an SPF record were to exist, it would be for the sending domains -- that's why I was confused by the person's advice that I linked to which said that one should exist for the MTA's domain (in this case, linode.com). Seems that person was wrong about that. Do you know at which domain (MTA's or sender's) the postmaster@domain.com would apply to? – Jared Duncan Mar 9 '11 at 9:26
• I am not sure I understand your question: postmaster@domain.com is the only email address that RFC5321 requires to exist for all domains that send and receive email – adamo Mar 10 '11 at 10:53
• 1
Actually, it serves two purposes. The second is not well known. – JdeBP Mar 26 '11 at 2:34
• Updated my post to include a link to yours – adamo Mar 26 '11 at 20:38
Many large mail providers - Google are the obvious example - send email where the domain of the From address in the header does not match the PTR-record, and any provider that enforces (some kind of) a match between those two tokens will likely reject a lot of valid-email. Therefore, no, the domain name of the From: email address does not need to match the domain name of the SMTP server.
I would strongly recommend ensuring that the PTR-record matches the name that the server announces when it says HELO; the reason that spam-filters filter on this is that there's almost-certainly no reason for them not to match. You can set this explicitly in <qmail-control-dir>/helohost if you need to override <qmail-control-dir>/me.
| improve this answer | |
• Excellent point, I hadn't thought of that. D'oh! Of course. (and yep, I do have reverse DNS going for the MTA, so I'm set there.) Thanks for pointing that out! Sometimes it just takes another [thoughtful] mind. =) – Jared Duncan Mar 9 '11 at 9:33
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Just started this aspect of the GPS sport and I have a few questions. While out geocaching yesterday we ran across a benchmark that has the township type info on it dated 1920.
Who puts those out there?
Are those called survey markers?
Those are different than the NGS benchmarks?
Who creates the PID numbers?
Are we also tracking the markers that have that township info on them?
Do those have PIDs?
AND last but not least, why are there so many close together. I did a littel search this morning and as soon as I walked out on my front porch I could see the closest one on a bridge near my house. Then I just walked a couple of blocks to an old high school and voila! another one. This is fun!
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A marker with township and range stamped on it is probably a section corner. In 1920, it would probably have been set by the GLO or possibly a private surveyor. Section corners mark boundary lines and are entirely different from benchmarks |
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Whether the home is occupied or not, make a point to notice people carrying large items, such as furniture or electronics, out of the home. Although it's certainly possible that your neighbors are moving or have sold some of their belongings, it is also possible that the items are being stolen from the home, especially if you see this after dark.
Besides these one-time events, look for constant comings and goings from a particular home. Although your neighbors may simply like entertaining, this is also a common sign of a drug house, and may indicate other illegal activities going on in your neighborhood. It is best to call the police, rather than confronting your neighbors, as they may act out irrationally or unpredictably. The same goes for anyone wandering around the neighborhood, especially if they look confused or disoriented.
If you notice any of these suspicious activities in your neighborhood, move with caution and common sense. Although each of these scenarios has a potentially innocent explanation, it could also indicate a range of crimes happening in your community. Avoid getting in the middle of a burglary in progress or a potentially violent situation. Instead, call 911 to let the police deal with the matter. If you feel that you are in immediate danger, carry pepper spray or a stun gun to protect yourself, in case the situation takes a bad turn.
Back to Articles<|endoftext|>Sunday, June 11, 2017
The Man In The Jack & Jill Grocery Store
Harland Epp died last week. No one called to let me know and it wasn't on the news. Like most deaths I learn of these days, I found out by reading the online obituary in my hometown newspaper, the York News-Times. I learned he was one hundred years old and that he had played the banjo and guitar. I learned the name of his wife and kids and the date of his baptism. There were things I knew about him. He was born and raised in Henderson, Nebraska in York County, the same county of my upbringing. I also knew he was in the grocery business and that's why I knew him.
For four years when I was a kid, I worked in a grocery store in my hometown. It was called Jack & Jill and it was run by a company out of Minnesota, Nash-Finch. There were Jack & Jills all over Nebraska. I think ours was bigger than most, being the second largest store in York behind IGA/Super Valu. My older brother, Dave, had worked there first and I put in my time from age sixteen through twenty. I had always worked- paper route, mowing grass, shoveling snow, detasseling corn- but this was my first real job. Truthfully, the place made me nervous and I'm not sure why. I would avoid it if it was not my day to work. I was a good employee and they kept giving me increased responsibility whether I wanted it or not which usually I didn't. Harland was the assistant manager at the store during my four year retail career but he never made me nervous. In fact, it was just the opposite. He never got angry, at me or anyone else. He was always helpful and calm. I called him Mr. Epp when I started- he was quite a bit older than my father- but soon he became Harland to me, just like he was to everyone else. Reading the obituary, I was reminded he had previously owned his own store in Henderson. One thing I didn't know was that he put all forty hours at our store in in only three days so he could work on his house. I also found out he rode a horse to school and the maiden name of his bride, Lillie, was Friesen, the same last name as one of my favorite baseball teammates, Ross. And there were several other factual references to Harland's life that made the reader feel a bit more connected to a man whose life span was a century plus seven months.
I have a confession to make. When I go to the obit part of the York newspaper, I only read them if I am somehow familiar with the name of the person who passed away. In my history teaching days, my students were required to memorize John Donne's For Whom The Bell Tolls which waxes eloquent that every death should have an impact on our lives. Theoretically and spiritually, that is true but I haven't advanced to that point yet. As I've read Harland's obituary, the remarkable thing is that to the world, and I would guess even to Harland, it was unremarkable. He lived a normal life and did normal things. He was a solid citizen and raised a solid family. He never called attention to himself and was always soft spoken. I think I met his wife once and I never once saw him outside the confines of that grocery store. And yet, he had a remarkable effect on my life. He helped me adjust to part-time life in the grocery business and he helped me overcome the nerves that appear when an introvert steps into uncharted territory. And in that Jack & Jill store, I learned about clocking in and out, dealing with the public and unreasonable customers, and working late. I found out I could help out in the produce department and run a truck sale in the parking lot on my own. I learned that not everyone in the world had been taught by their parents that there were serious obligations when a business invests time and trust in you. Harland, I'm sure, never had a goal of mentoring a sixteen year old kid but he did. The lessons I learned which have helped me in life can in at least some way be traced back to him.
Probably all of us have a Harland Epp in our past somewhere and if we hang around on earth long enough, we'll play that role to someone else. There are people who change the direction of lives, either with one gesture or a drawn out collection of gestures. Often, it's anonymous, even in the scriptures. What was the name of the guy who loaned the colt to Jesus for His ride into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday? Who was the servant girl who pleaded with Naaman to beseech Elisha to cure his leprosy? There names are lost to history. I, at least, have the opportunity to give public credit to Harland Epp by name. I just wished I hadn't waited until he died to do so.
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Luke 18:1
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How can we helpfully respond to the prodigals in our lives?
When people we love abandon us, it can be painful. The pain seems magnified when the person is also leaving, or seems to be leaving, their church and their faith. When this happens, it is natural to feel angry and confused. But for the Christian, the call is to move beyond the initial pangs of emotion to something that will reflect the light and love of Christ.
Jesus offers us two visions of how we can react through the parable of the prodigal son: the father and the dutiful eldest son. Their reactions to the lost son’s return can instruct us as we engage with and respond to those who have abandoned the church.
The father, who could have easily become bitter from the hurt his youngest son inflicted, chose to forgive and offered the returning son open arms instead of a closed heart. He didn’t question his son about the sins he had committed. He didn’t ask his son to promise or do anything in order to be welcomed back. The father’s pain did not overpower his capacity for love.
On the other hand, the eldest son’s heart was full of bitterness and a sense of injustice, feeling that his lost brother did not deserve to be welcomed back. How easy it can be to react this way. How easy to ask, “Why does he (or she) deserve my love and rejoicing?”
When the prodigals in our life return to church for a holiday service or a wedding, how will we react? The unconditional love of the father for the lost and returned seems almost impossible for us to emulate…almost. As long as we think of emulating the Father’s unconditional love as our duty, we aren’t very likely to do it, and we run the risk of becoming like the older son. But love is not merely our duty; it’s our destiny as followers of Christ.
The church is the body of the risen Christ in the world. Something new and powerful happened when Jesus rose from the dead. It was the start of God’s Kingdom—His new creation breaking into our fallen world. And one day, when Jesus returns, he will finish that recreation. Until then, God calls us to reflect the reality of His future Kingdom in the present by how we relate to each other today.
When people leave the faith, we can react in a way that reflects old way of the fallen world as pictured by the eldest son, remaining “faithful” but all the while growing resentful and self-righteous in our dutiful obedience; or, we can react like the father, taking the new creational path of love, peace, and reconciliation, longing to pour our love out to those we have lost.
Did this answer your question?
Why do Christians sometimes seem fake to the outside world?
Not only do Christians seem fake to the outside world, they can also seem fake to other Christians, too.
The reason for fakery in the lives of those who claim to follow Jesus often comes down to expectations of perfection within church communities and a lack of authentic humility among churchgoing people. Courage and humility can begin to correct the pandemic of fakeness in the church.
Christians often feel a cultural pressure to appear as holy and perfect as possible to one another and to the world. The trouble is that we are neither holy nor perfect. This can lead to a fake witness. We are strongly motivated by two impulses to try to keep up this front: fear and pride. For example, I fear what others may think of me if I behave authentically, or show a little of the everyday-still-in-need-of-a-Savior-self to others. I’m afraid that somehow I might be judged by others if I don’t act like I think a “good” Christian should. Yet, oddly, I’m proud, because acting this way usually results in compliments and admiration for me because of my good behavior.
What am I to do?
Jesus calls his followers to tell others about his work in the world. He is our redeemer and the fullest expression of a life faithfully lived. Personally, I am far from the fully faithful person Christ is calling me to become; however, as his redemption is being worked out in my life, I can point to him and what he is doing rather than trying to fake my own holiness. The tools available to bear this witness are two deeply Christian virtues: courage and humility.
It takes great courage to be truly humble. True humility leads, almost automatically, to authenticity, and the ability to be authentic will bear a great witness to the One who invites us to become more like him.
Did this answer your question?<|endoftext|>Thursday, November 18, 2010
The Friends of Eddie Coyle
I really liked George V Higgins' At End of Day. Really liked it. I'd heard that Eddie Coyle was his best book, though, but my library didn't have it. Finally I found a cheap used paperback and gave it a read.
Eddie Fingers Coyle is a smalltime crook who's about to be sentenced, and he wants a good reference from a cop, so he concocts a scheme by which he rats out a smalltime arms dealer. Things don't quite go as planned, though.
My paperback goes to 186 pages, and while that may seem short, Higgins packs a good amount of plot into it. There's a couple suspenseful bank robbery scenes, a sting operation on an illegal deal, and some shooting. Plus, there's the copious amount of dialogue that Higgins seems to excel at.
Pretty much the same things that I had to say about At End of Day apply here. The plot is complex and mostly implied - the dialogue is amazing and circuitous - the subtext is focused - but with Eddie Coyle, there's something else.
What Eddie Coyle is missing is relaxation. When I said the 186 pages had a ton of plot crammed into it, I wasn't fully complimenting it. Sure you get a lot of bang for your buck, but - man - Higgins needs to take a breath and slow down. Let the story breathe. It's like Higgins is there at the art show with you, hustling you along from painting to painting before you get a chance to let the whole thing sink in.
It doesn't help the pace that Higgins' customary dialogue isn't quite as complicated or nested as At End of Day. Really, this is a fairly straightforward crime book with a nasty end. It's isn't difficult or hard to grasp. Certainly, Eddie Coyle could've used some space and a chance to deepen its themes.
Overly critical? Maybe. I still enjoyed the hell out of this book. Like I mentioned earlier, the bank robbery scenes are gripping reads. And while the conversations weren't dizzying, they still whip off the page like all expert dialogue.
I really liked Eddie Coyle, but I didn't love it. It could've used another hundred pages of development and complication. Other than this, it remains a taut read with some fantastic setpieces that show Higgins isn't just a master of conversations, but a great storyteller overall.
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Submission + - Best Video Capture Solution?
camperdave writes: I am in the process of building a system for a friend. She would like a video capture/TV tuner card of some sort. I have no experience with these devices, so I would like to get the opinion and advice of the Slashdot community. What are the advantages/disadvantages of using PCI based cards vs USB devices? Are there features to look for, such as mpeg encoding? Any caveats, thing to avoid?
Like punning, programming is a play on words.<|endoftext|>perhaps » user profile
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fine.... gimme a minute I'll go grab the crystal ball
23/10/2020 - 08:16
oh no you leaked the date bro, head office aint gonna be happy
23/10/2020 - 08:15
1. perhaps... 2. perhaps... 3. perhaps... 4. perhaps... 5. perhaps... 6. perhaps... 7. perhaps...
23/10/2020 - 08:14
"What is OzBargain’s recommended provider?" *AussieBroadBand*. surely you'd know that if you were a long time lurker hehe
22/10/2020 - 20:28
I personally use Castrol, either you can use your manufacturer recommended oil or what ever is on sale as long as it is of good quality....
22/10/2020 - 19:14
With my dell order about a year ago I was told everything was in-stock and ready to ship, but it ended up taking 2 weeks to dispatch for...
22/10/2020 - 18:16
22/10/2020 - 07:13
"passfruit green tea" i too enjoy the passfruit
21/10/2020 - 17:26
Yeah in that case the Tiguan will be familiar, solid car too
21/10/2020 - 08:48
Bro gotta bring out the crystal ball for OP
20/10/2020 - 21:16
20/10/2020 - 21:14
If your fine with used you can get a Highline for that price which I'd recommend
20/10/2020 - 21:11
That's good to hear, sounds like its got plenty of get up and go for its application. The Wolfy (which is stage 1 APR), gets about 8-9L per...
20/10/2020 - 21:08 Yep, my bad I...
20/10/2020 - 21:02
I agree the Golf wagon is great alternative to the Tiguan and definitely worth considering, esp fully loaded. How have you found the 110TSI?
20/10/2020 - 20:40
As for issues, the only one was that the head unit was playing up when the car was in reverse, and a quick update by the dealer fixed it
20/10/2020 - 19:02
I have the Wolfsburg with the 162TSI (same engine as the Golf GTI) and its a great unit, plenty of power. As for the DSG it works...
20/10/2020 - 18:57
I can highly recommend the Tiguan, am a current owner. Happy to answer questions
20/10/2020 - 18:22
"GIGABYTE can stop the promotion without further notice if the execution of this promotion is not redeemed possible or involve unreasonable...
19/10/2020 - 21:47
OP why don't you try it and tell us
19/10/2020 - 17:28
will down
19/10/2020 - 07:10
Check their feedback ratings too
18/10/2020 - 21:39
Wait you need to indicate...? hehe
18/10/2020 - 21:36
Battery might settle with a few cycles
18/10/2020 - 21:34
Nah he's just getting what ever his friends have
17/10/2020 - 18:46
For a quick wash and if the car isn't too dirty you should try PureWax waterless. It's literally spray on wipe off and there's no mess. For...
16/10/2020 - 07:31
Not the best for your paint as it can do alot of damage, esp when using the brush attachment.
16/10/2020 - 07:20
Poor kid
13/10/2020 - 19:18<|endoftext|>Page tree
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Catering Food Volumes: How To Calculate How Much People Are Going To Eat!
The question “How much are people going to eat??” is a moving target! If you have ever tried to search for it online the answer is usually convoluted, and translates badly in my head (and yes, I am a professional) as:
‘’Calculate the weight of the person, times by two if male, divide by the 4 if it is summer, add on five pieces, multiply by the number of people in the group, add on five if dinner/three if lunch/two for morning tea …”
Hmmm ok … and my job is to make this easy.
Things to know (enter stereotyping)
Consider ordering a little extra food per person if you have:
• More males to females in a group
• Blue collar workers or those that work in fields requiring large amounts of physical labour
• If it is winter (we eat more in winter!)
The term ‘piece’ refers to an individual portion of food. In morning tea, afternoon tea, snacks and canapes this usually refers the size of food which takes two to three bites to eat.
The term ’serving’ or ‘serving size’ are the terms used by a caterer that has already estimated how many pieces would be reasonable for one person to consume for that meal period.
The term ‘meal’ or meal period’ refers to any set time you eat food, usually morning tea (09:30 to 10:30), lunch (12:00 to 13:00), afternoon tea (14:30 to 15:30) and dinner (18:00 to 19:00).
Keep in mind that different caterers/restaurants do recommend different serving sizes/pieces per person as the food they make will vary vastly in size.
Below is my professional recommendation on select meal periods.
Meal period/event function Serving size Pieces needed per person on average
Morning/Afternoon Tea Basic
Morning/Afternoon Tea Generous
Morning/Afternoon Tea Premium
Canape Pre-Dinner Drinks Basic
Canape Pre-Dinner Drinks Generous
Canape Pre-Dinner Drinks Premium
Canape Dinner Basic
Canape Dinner Generous
Canape Dinner Premium 10
If you are in doubt of what you need for your event, ask us. We are here to help!
Add Comment<|endoftext|>Hussein Saw Iraqi Unrest as Top Threat, secret history by US shows
As American warplanes streaked overhead two weeks after the invasion began, Lt. Gen. Raad Majid al-Hamdani drove to Baghdad for a crucial meeting with Iraqi leaders. He pleaded for reinforcements to stiffen the capital's defenses and permission to blow up the Euphrates River bridge south of the city to block the American advance.
But Saddam Hussein and his small circle of aides had their own ideas of how to fight the war. Convinced that the main danger to his government came from within, Mr. Hussein had sought to keep Iraq's bridges intact so he could rush troops south if the Shiites got out of line.
Much of this material is included in a secret history prepared by the American military of how Mr. Hussein and his commanders fought their war. Posing as military historians, American analysts interrogated more than 110 Iraqi officials and military officers, treating some to lavish dinners to pry loose their secrets and questioning others in a detention center at the Baghdad airport or the Abu Ghraib prison. United States military officials view the accounts as credible because many were similar. In addition, more than 600 captured Iraqi documents were reviewed.
Overseen by the Joint Forces Command, an unclassified version of the study is to be made public soon. A classified version was prepared in April 2005. Titled "Iraqi Perspectives on Operation Iraqi Freedom, Major Combat Operations," the study shows that Mr. Hussein discounted the possibility of a full-scale American invasion.
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Napoleon's Land Grab
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Desperate: Napoleon, portrayed following his abdication in 1814 by Delaroche. Vente noticeOf all the Napoleonic anniversaries to be commemorated in the next few years, one that is very likely to be forgotten is his land grab of 1813. A relatively obscure law, passed on March 20th that year, allowed the French state to seize and sell off plots of village common land. It is no coincidence that this legislation appeared a few months after the disastrous retreat from Moscow. The empire’s financial affairs were deteriorating as more and more funds were being consumed by military spending. It is estimated that 60 per cent of the 1807 budget was spent on Napoleon’s military exploits, but by 1813 the figure was 80 per cent. The Russian campaign alone had a price tag of 700 million francs. With this tremendous strain on the nation’s finances it is not surprising that the deficit increased each year. In 1811 the shortfall was a modest 6.5 million francs; by 1813 France had a 149 million franc deficit.
The law of March 20th came into being against this bleak financial background. Napoleon needed to raise vast amounts of cash relatively quickly but refused to borrow funds or print paper money, things that both the Bourbon monarchy and French Revolutionaries had done with dire consequences. The idea to sell off communal plots was appealing because the lands would be sold at auction in the theoretically neutral sphere of the market.
The actual text of the law, contained in only six articles, explained how the procedure would work. Essentially the state would seize all communally held lands that were leased to individuals; these lands would then be sold at auction with a guide price of 20 times their annual revenue. Villages would receive a fixed sum of five per cent of the ceded lands’ value from the government in return for their lost assets. Confident of success, Napoleon’s ministers projected that the sales would produce a profit of 370 million francs.
The effects of Napoleon’s seizure and sale of common land are not well known. Historians admit that the results are difficult to trace, as officials in the 19th century tried to erase this unsavoury operation from collective memory. Archival evidence is scattered and incomplete, as the monthly sales reports sent to the ministry of finance were burned during the Paris Commune of 1871. The documents that do survive in the departmental archives are usually found in the Q series, largely devoted to the sales of biens nationaux, the nationalised Church and émigré lands seized during the French Revolution. This combination of factors has meant that the 1813 land sales are rarely discussed in the standard histories of Napoleon.
Thanks to the French historian Nadine Vivier we now have an idea of the overall impact of this operation. The law was on the books until April 26th, 1816 and sales took place during three distinct phases. As early as April 1814 the government announced that 124 million francs’ worth of land had been ceded and just over half of that had been sold. Further research reveals that only 22 million francs of the sales were actually paid for. There is debate over how much land was sold in the end, but the best calculation puts the figure between 60 and 90 million francs, far short of the government’s original estimate.
These sales were not equally distributed across France. Villages in the northeast and south of the country had the most land seized and sold under this law. Departments in western regions lost hardly any land during these years. This presents a division between two Frances: a western zone, where inhabitants were deeply attached to the collective usage of their commons; and the north, east and south, where collective dependence upon common land was less profound and leasing of individual plots was more widespread. In the Moselle, for example, in the east, over three million francs were produced as 600 plots of land were sold. Common land in the village of Briey, in Meurthe-et-Moselle, diminished from 80 hectares to just 12 under this law.
Who purchased the lands? The 1813 Napoleonic law has often been compared to the revolutionary biens nationaux because of the way the lands were seized and sold at auction and also because the urban bourgeoisie seem to have acquired a lot of it. In large measure it was the wealthy middle classes who benefited from this law, as they purchased plots to increase their landholdings. This often proved traumatic for the poorer peasants, who were usually expropriated from the plots they were leasing from their communes, though in some instances the peasant occupiers were able to buy the lands they were leasing. In the village of Fourques in the Gard region, for example, local peasants purchased the majority of the 317 plots sold. However, the most likely scenario was that peasant occupiers were outbid by those higher up on the social scale.
Not only were the land sales under the 1813 law distressful for the peasantry, the loss of revenue produced by leased out plots of common land was very damaging to a community’s budget. In theory the government was meant to pay the communes a fixed annual sum of five per cent of the ceded lands’ value, but in reality many villages never saw a centime. The department of the Gard, for example, received only 16 per cent of the annual sum due in 1814 and none of it by 1820. Even when the annual sum was paid in full, it paled in comparison with the potential revenue communes could have earned from leasing their lands.
It was, then, the bourgeoisie who benefitted most from this law, as they were able to secure the lion’s share of land seized and put up for sale. These purchases were made for several reasons – not only to make capital investments in property, but also to show support for a regime on the brink of financial ruin. Thus, Napoleon’s land grab of 1813 resembles the sales of the revolutionary biens nationaux in more ways than one. Not only did it increase the land ownership of the bourgeoisie, but it also attached them to a regime in desperate need of legitimacy.
Noelle Plack is Reader in French History at Newham University, Birmingham and is the author of Common Land, Wine and the French Revolution (Ashgate, 2009)
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Copyright 2012 History Today Ltd. All rights reserved.<|endoftext|>Side hustles, are they necessary? Should you start one? We think they can be super lucrative and can be a great idea depending on what they are! Before we dive into why we thinking starting one is a good idea, it’s probably best that we define what exactly a “side hustle” is. You have your normal job, you know your typical 9-5 desk job (or maybe not desk job) that typically allows you to “get by” on all things adult life. A side hustle is a money making gig you have outside your normal job that helps bring it a little pop of income that allows you do a little more financially. A side hustle can look like a lot of different things, and we will get into different ideas of what you can do for a side hustle in our next post. For now, we will answer the why question. Why should you start a side hustle? Here are 5 reasons why we think it’s a great idea:
Why You Should Start a Side Hustle - Spark My Site - Lakeland, FL
1. You’re in debt.
Are you an adult human? Then there’s a good chance you facing some sort of debt. Whether it’s student loans, a car payment, your mortgage, medical bills we all have somehow found a way to owe someone money back. Your 9-5 job can help with a lot of things but having a side gig will free you up more financially to attack your debt at a faster rate. Or maybe you don’t have a 9-5 job. In fact it’s a scary statistic, but 1 in 3 American’s don’t have a 9-5 job and are wondering how they are going to make ends meet. If this is you don’t panic this is huge reason why starting side hustles are awesome. They can be incredibly simple and help get money in your bank account so you can start getting you out of debt faster!
2. The cost of living keeps climbing.
No matter where you live whether it’s Florida or a different state it seems like the cost to live continues to rise. Mortgages and monthly rent is higher than it use to be, gas prices are on the rise and we all know buying groceries can be a pain. The money you make from your side hustle could easily go to things like rent or your weekly grocery bill allowing the other money you make to go towards other important things.
3. It gives you something to do with your free time.
Like we’ve mentioned in previous posts before, relaxing during your free time is super important, but what if you’re finding yourself with a lot of free time? Instead of binge watching Netflix for hours on in, start a side hustle! Wouldn’t it be way cooler to make some extra cash in your free time than rewatch The Office for the 5th time?
4. It’s a great creative outlet.
Maybe your primary job isn’t something you’re really interested in. If you go to work every morning and want to bang your head against the wall in boredom as soon as you clock in then maybe your main job isn’t allowing you to stretch creatively. It’s likely the side hustle you would look into starting would be something you’re good at. This allows you to get paid for something you’re good at creatively. Wouldn’t that be nice? Getting paid for something you love to do and are good at!? Is that not the dream?
5. You can delve into your passions.
Tying in with point 4 a little bit, starting a side hustle allows you to delve into your passions. What’s your dream job? Who says you can’t do it!? No one said you had to quit the stable job you have now to jump into your dream job right away. In fact, a lot of people’s dreams begin as the side hustle they can only devote a few hours a week to. But you know what, it’s starting something that counts. This is our favorite thing about side hustles. A lot of times they’re the small spark of our dreams that ignites into doing what we’ve always felt our purpose was.
Don’t be afraid to delve into your passions! We know personally it’s not something that can happen over night, but it can happen over time.
You just have to start.
Now that we’ve given you some reasons why you should start a side hustle, our next post will give you some ideas of side hustles you can start today!<|endoftext|>January 19 at Doc Films: “Neighboring Sounds”
North American movies can be fantastic, especially when you get a year so full of brilliance as this past one (Frances Ha, Inside Llewyn Davis, and Pacific Rim, just to name a few), but the reality is that there are also so many fantastic films being made in countries that are not the United States. The advent of Internet streaming services like Netflix has made seeing such foreign films quite easy, but it can still be difficult to find an actual theater screening any movie in a language other than English.
Hyde Park residents are therefore lucky to have Doc Films at the University of Chicago around to offer the opportunity to see these foreign language films on the big screen. This quarter Sunday nights are reserved for a look at contemporary Latin America cinema, featuring 2012’s Neighboring Sounds on January 19.
Neighboring Sounds, the first and only film (so far) from Brazilian writer/director Kleber Mendonça Filho, focuses on a middle-class neighborhood in Recife, Brazil, where a set of tenants, already made anxious by petty crimes rampant in the neighborhood, face the arrival of a private security team promising nighttime surveillance of all street-corners.
Although the film features an ensemble cast in the various tenants, Mendonça keeps the characters fairly separate for most of the narrative, focusing on only one or two people at a time. The effect is that what could have easily been a large-scale project about the neighborhood itself becomes an intimate character study instead, just with a large number of characters to study at a time. These characters will occasionally interact with one another, but they mostly remain physically apart, shut in their individual homes.
As hinted by the film’s title, one of the most interesting aspects lies in the sound design that envelops almost every scene throughout the film. Notably, save for a tense bass beat that opens the film and later returns to accompany a tenant’s late-night stroll, almost all of the sound of the film exists within the cinematic real world space, including at least three instances of pre-recorded music played by tenants as they go about their daily lives.
Sometimes these “neighboring sounds” have a hand in the literal events of the film, as happens with Bia, a mother in the neighborhood who spends a large part of the film engaged in a feud with a barking guard dog by her building. First Bia drugs the dog, but it continues to bark once awake, so she tries to just drown the barking out by playing Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” on full blast. Then she buys a device that emits a high frequency noise to quiet the dog, but using it elicits strong negative reactions from her children. What’s more, Bia’s maid short-circuits the device, and so Bia eventually resigns, beaten by the unending sounds around her.
More often, though, sound is used as a powerful tool of building atmosphere. Even though the tenants are mostly physically apart, the noise they generate pervades across the separation, and Neighboring Sounds finds it center-point in this claustrophobic space. A man washing his car puts on the radio and immediately drowns out any conversation happening on the block. A boy loses his ball over a wall and can be heard throughout the neighborhood calling for it to be thrown back by anyone on the other side. True life is loud and unavoidable, and here it only adds to the tension of the film. These people are both separate and forced to be together at the same time, for better or for worse.
Unfortunately, when approaching the film from an American background, much of the political allegory of the film can get lost or is somewhat difficult to grasp immediately. On a first watch, not knowing anything about Brazilian politics, the film comes across as a compelling examination of a claustrophobic neighborhood with a few scenes (particularly the opening slide show of black-and-white photographs of rural workers) that seem like they have more thought behind them but are just not self-explanatory.
However, after gaining familiarity with Brazilian life and culture (RogerEbert.com has this fantastic review from Brazilian correspondent Pablo Villaça), the film is revealed to be filled with commentary on the country’s middle class and the apathy held by its members towards economic turmoil outside of their immediate neighborhoods. They have their own problems to worry about, like comparing who bought the larger television set.
At a tenant meeting in Neighboring Sounds |
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