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Books Palaeontology Palaeozoology & Extinctions
Popular Science
By: WJT Mitchell(Author)
321 pages, Col and b/w photos, col and b/w illus
University of Chicago Press
Hardback | Oct 1998 | #84743 | ISBN: 0226532046
Availability: Usually dispatched within 4 days Details
NHBS Price: £24.50 $32/€27 approx
About this book
For animals that have been dead millions of years, dinosaurs are extraordinarily pervasive in our everyday lives. Appearing in ads, books, movies, museums, television, toy stores, and novels, they continually fascinate both adults and children. How did they move from natural extinction to pop culture resurrection? What is the source of their powerful appeal? Until now, no one has addressed this question in a comprehensive way. In this lively and engrossing exploration of the animal's place in our lives, W.J.T. Mitchell shows why we are so attached to the myth and the reality of the "terrible lizards."
Mitchell aims to trace the cultural family tree of the dinosaur, and what he discovers is a creature of striking flexibility, linked to dragons and mammoths, skyscrapers and steam engines, cowboys and Indians. In the vast territory between the cunning predators of Jurassic Park and the mawkishly sweet Barney, from political leviathans to corporate icons, from paleontology to Barnum and Bailey, Mitchell finds a cultural symbol whose plurality of meaning and often contradictory nature is emblematic of modern society itself. As a scientific entity, the dinosaur endured a near-eclipse for over a century, but as an image it is enjoying its widest circulation. And it endures, according to Mitchell, because it is uniquely malleable, a figure of both innovation and obsolescence, massive power and pathetic failure – the totem animal of modernity.
Drawing unforeseen and unusual connections at every turn between dinosaurs real and imagined, The Last Dinosaur Book is the first to delve so deeply, so insightfully, and so enjoyably into our modern dino-obsession.
""[...] brilliant and truly original. It is the first serious attempt by a cultural historian to understand the extraordinarily strong hold that dinosaurs have taken on the imagination of whole sections of the population, not just children. Mitchell has wonderfully mastered the field of dinosaurs, from systematics to science fiction, and the delight of the book is in the interpretations."
- Keith Thomson, Director, Oxford University Museum of Natural History
1: Reptilicus erectus
2: Big, Fierce, Extinct
3: A Stegosaurus Made of Money
4: The End of Dinosaurology
5: The Last Thunder Horse West of the Mississippi
6: Dinotopia: The Newt World Order
7: The Last Dinostory: As Told by Himself
8: Seeing Saurians
9: Sorting Species
10: Monsters and Dinomania
11: Big MacDino
12: The Totem Animal of Modernity
13: The Way of Dragons
14: Dry Bones
15: On the Evolution of Images
16: Thomas Jefferson, Paleontologist
17: Frames, Skeletons, Constitutions
18: The Victorian Dinosaur
19: Coming to America
20: Bones for Darwin's Bulldog
21: Schizosaur
22: Dinosaurs Moralized
23: Pale-Ontology, or It's Not Easy Being Green
24: Potlatch and Purity
25: Diplodocus carnegii
26: Totems and Bones
27: Indiana Jones and Barnum Bones
28: Worlds Well Lost
29: Bringing Down Baby
30: Miner's Canary or Trojan Horse?
31: The Age of Reptiles
32: The Hundred Story Beast
33: Structure, Energy, Information
34: Catastrophe, Entropy, Chaos
35: The Age of Biocybernetic Reproduction
36: Carnosaurs and Consumption
37: Why Children Hate Dinosaurs
38: Dinos R Us: Identification and Fantasy
39: Calvinosaurus: From T. rex to O. Rex
40: Transitional Objects: From Breast to Brontosaurus Paleoart 265
A: Scrotum Humanum: The True Name of the Dinosaur
B: Science and Culture
Selected Bibliography
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NHBS Ltd is registered in England and Wales: 1875194 | http://www.nhbs.com/the-last-dinosaur-book-book | [
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Around the South Jamaica housing projects in Queens, young men with pit bulls guard street corners and rap music blares from car stereos. But one house, on 110th Avenue, seems to openly defy its gritty surroundings.
Its owner, Milford Graves, has covered it with an ornate mosaic of stones, reflective metal and hunks of discarded marble, arranged in cheery patterns. The yard is a lush garden, dense with citrus trees, herbs and exotic plants.
Continue reading the main story
In 1967, Mr. Graves was honored in a Down Beat magazine critics' poll as the year's bright new talent. He had offers of lucrative gigs from artists like Miles Davis and the South African singer Miriam Makeba.
In his basement, he converted the heartbeats to a higher register and dissected them. Behind the basic binary thum-THUMP beat, he heard other rhythms -- more spontaneous and complex patterns in less-regular time intervals -- akin to a drummer using his four limbs independently.
"A lot of it was like free jazz," Mr. Graves said one day last week in his basement. "There were rhythms I had only heard in Cuban and Nigerian music." He demonstrated by thumping a steady bum-BUM rhythm on a conga with his right hand, while delivering with his left a series of unconnected rhythms on an hourglass-shaped talking drum.
Mr. Graves created computer programs to analyze the heart's rhythms and pitches, which are caused by muscle and valve movement. The pitches correspond to actual notes on the Western musical scale. Raised several octaves, the cardiac sounds became rather melodic.
"When I hooked up to the four chambers of the heart, it sounded like four-part harmony," Mr. Graves said.
He began composing with the sounds -- both by transcribing heartbeat melodies and by using recorded fragments. He also realized he could help detect heart problems, maybe even cure them.
"A healthy heart has strong, supple walls, so the sound usually has a nice flow," he said. "You hear it and say, 'Ah, now that's hip.' But an unhealthy heart has stiff and brittle muscles. There's less compliance, and sounds can come out up to three octaves higher than normal.
"You can pinpoint things by the melody. You can hear something and say, 'Ah, sounds like a problem in the right atrium."'
In 2000, Mr. Graves received a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, which he said gave him money to buy essential equipment.
Dr. Baruch Krauss, who teaches pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and is an emergency physician at Boston Children's Hospital, said the medical establishment has only recently begun to appreciate the rhythmic and tonal complexities of the heartbeat and speak about it in terms of syncopation and polyrhythms.
"This is what a Renaissance man looks like today," said Dr. Krauss, who studied acupuncture with Mr. Graves and follows his research. "To see this guy tinkering with stuff in a basement in Queens, you wonder how it could be legitimate. But Milford is right on the cutting edge of this stuff. He brings to it what doctors can't, because he approaches it as a musician."
Dr. Ram Jadonath, director of electrophysiology at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y., said Mr. Graves's theories sounded plausible but should not replace a standard medical assessment from a doctor.
"The heartbeat is a form of musical rhythm, and if you have a musical ear, you can hear heart problems a lot easier," he said. "Many heart rhythm disturbances are stress-related, and you have cells misfiring. It is possible to redirect or retrain them with musical therapy. They do respond to suggestion. That's the area where his biofeedback could correct those type of problems."
Mr. Graves said he brings unusual strengths to his medical work.
"To hear if a melody sounds right or not, you've got to look at it as an artist, not a doctor," he said. "If you're trying to listen to a musical sound with no musical ability, you're not feeling it, man."
Mr. Graves claims he can help a flawed heartbeat through biofeedback. He creates what he calls a "corrected heartbeat" using an algorhythmic formula, or by old-fashioned composing, and then feeds it back to the patient, whose heart is then trained to adopt the healthy beat. The patient can listen to a recording of the corrected heartbeat, or it can be imparted directly through a speaker that vibrates a needle stuck into acupuncture points.
"If they don't want that," he added, "I can give them a CD."
Last week, Dennis Thomas, 49, visited Mr. Graves in his basement complaining of severe chest congestion. Mr. Thomas said his doctor had diagnosed bronchial asthma and given him medication that had not been effective.
Mr. Graves said the problem might be related to Mr. Thomas's heart and recorded his heartbeat. With the help of a computer program, Mr. Graves tinkered with the rhythm and amplitude and then attempted to stimulate Mr. Thomas's heart by playing the "corrected" beat both through a speaker and through a wire stuck into an acupuncture point in his wrist.
"I gave him a double shot," Mr. Graves explained. After 10 minutes of treatment, Mr. Thomas's heart rate had risen about 10 beats per minute, according to a monitor.
Mr. Thomas, a city bus driver from Jamaica who used to study martial arts with Mr. Graves, said that he felt improvement afterward.
"I started breathing easier and felt more relaxed," he said.
In addition to his medical work, Mr. Graves analyzes the heartbeats of his music students, hoping to help them play deeper and more personal music. The idea, he said, is to find their most prevalent rhythms and pitches and incorporate them into their playing.
The composer and saxophonist John Zorn called Mr. Graves "basically a 20th-century shaman."
"He's taken traditional drum technique so far that there's no further place to go, so he's going to the source, his heart," Mr. Zorn said.
"This culture is not equipped to appreciate someone like Milford," he said. "In Korea, he'd be a national treasure. Here, he's just some weird guy who lives in Queens."
Continue reading the main story | http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/09/nyregion/finding-healing-music-in-the-heart.html | [
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Environment in emerging and transition economies
EaP GREEN: Reform of environmentally harmful subsidies
Reforming environmentally harmful subsidies (EHS) is a fundamental element of green growth strategies and confers a range of benefits to countries that undertale such reforms. These include, among others, reducing the use of resource intensive inputs (e.g. energy) and subsequent decrease in pollution levels, fixing market distrortions by making resource prices reflect resource value, and polluters pay for their pollution; releasing and/or relallocating public funding to other areas, such as education, energy saving or reducing debt.
Determining the environmental impact of different subsidies is often complicated because specific policy measures do not take place in isolation, but within a broad and evolving socio-economic and technological context. Due to very patchy data and information but also because of the lack of a harmonised methodology for recording and reporting subsidies, identifying and calculating the size of EHS schemes is not easy and will require the concerted efforts of many different parties in a given government.
Objectives and activities
1. Develop policy guidance tools to prepare EHS reform action plans. The guidance will be based on tools and methods for identifying, measuring and evaluating subsidies that are environmentally-harmful and economically wasteful. The experience with applying these analytical tools in preparing EHS reform plans, including from the EU countries, will be presented in several regional meetings with the participation of key stakeholders from the EaP countries.
2. Implement country projects. The OECD will work in three countries to develop action plans to reform EHS in selected sectors (such as energy, agriculture or water). Each project will aim at facilitating a national-level policy dialogue to generate political support for the adoption and implementation of the actions plan proposed for the country.
3. Build capacity and political support in other EaP countries to develop action plans to reform EHS. Organisation of stakeholder meetings in the EaP countries other than those hosting the pilot projects to disseminate policy recommendations and lessons learned from other countries in the region.
DID YOU KNOW? ....that there is some evidence that fossil fuel consumer subsidies in the EaP countries might be large. The International Energy Agency estimated that, in 2011, fossil fuel subsidies for consumers (oil, coal, gas, electricity) totalled about USD 2 billion in Azerbaijan (about 3% of GDP), about USD 6 billion (3.3% of GDP) in Kazakhstan and about USD 9 billion in Ukraine (about 6% of its GDP). | http://www.oecd.org/env/outreach/eapgreen-ehs.htm | [
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Be prepared with our Hurricane Guide, forecasts and latest storm news
Henry M: The Day One Man's Memory Died
The Hartford Courant
Henry M. was awake as the surgeon inserted a metal straw deep within his brain and suctioned out a piece of tissue the length of an index finger.
The surgeon, William Beecher Scoville of West Hartford, talked to the 27-year-old Hartford man during the experimental operation, which he hoped would end his patient's epileptic seizures.
But a reduction in seizures came at a catastrophic cost: Henry no longer could make new memories.
From that summer day in 1953, Henry M. never again retained a conscious recollection of people, places or things he encountered. His intelligence remained intact, but his memory turned into a sort of Etch A Sketch, perpetually erased seconds after he turns his attention elsewhere.
Today, Henry M. is by most accounts a genial old man who lives in a Hartford area nursing home, unable to recognize aides who have cared for him for years. His most recent memories date to when Eisenhower was president. His full name and residence are secrets, jealously guarded by a few neuroscientists who have dubbed him H.M. and built their careers studying his profound loss.
The precisely carved hole in Henry's brain has turned out to be a treasure trove of information about the multiple facets of memory. Over the decades, dozens of scientists have made a pilgrimage to meet Henry, seeking to mine meaning from the man who lost his ability to hold a half-century of his personal history.
Henry is unaware that he has become one of the most famous subjects in the history of psychology -- a textbook example of the importance of memory in the formation of identity -- or that his story still spurs questions about medical ethics and patients' rights.
Dr. James Duffy, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut and director of psychiatric consultation services at Hartford Hospital, says he has not met Henry but suspects the man has become an afterthought in science's relentless pursuit of knowledge.
``Scientists are good at slicing off pieces of patients and manipulating them under a microscope,'' Duffy said, ``but we don't want to take responsibility for their well-being.''
Wiped Away
What the world knows of Henry M. is limited mostly to lifeless prose of psychology textbooks and scientific papers, which devote many more pages to the incisions that removed most of Henry's medial temporal lobe than to his likes and dislikes, his hopes and dreams.
Scientists who have worked with Henry say his memories of childhood, adolescence and young adulthood -- the only conscious memories he has -- have a brittle, worn quality to them. For Henry, the people he talks with are always strangers. And his stories are invariably the same, lacking the sinew, blood and muscle with which memory infuses experience.
``The stories he tells are incredibly similar each time he tells them,'' said John Gabrieli, a neuroscientist at Stanford University who studied Henry extensively during the 1980s. ``There is a bland, stereotyped quality to his conversations. What are you going to say when everyone is a stranger?''
Henry is a big man who has become bigger and softer after years of a sedentary lifestyle. He likes to eat. He is going bald and wears glasses. He still takes medication to control epileptic seizures, which were reduced but not eliminated by the operation. Today, he has osteoporosis and recently has had to depend on a wheelchair to get around. He will need cataract surgery soon.
Apparently, Henry was always good-natured, which makes it difficult to determine just how much his gentle, agreeable demeanor is the result of his operation.
Henry seldom expresses any interest in the topic of sex, but he also had no serious girlfriends before the operation. So scientists don't know if Henry's sex drive, like his memory, was a casualty of the surgery.
There is little biographical information available on Henry and much of it he has supplied himself.
Henry M.'s father was an electrician who migrated from Louisiana in the 1920s to Hartford, where Henry was born in 1926. The family attended church in Hartford and moved to East Hartford by the time Henry was a teenager. Later, they moved to a more rural part of Hartford County.
Henry remembers roller-skating. He remembers shooting his father's gun in the woods. But unless he is coached, he doesn't remember that his parents are dead.
Unofficial Guardian
The person who knows as much about Henry as anyone is Suzanne Corkin, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has worked with Henry since 1962. Corkin acts as a sort of unofficial guardian of Henry's interests, along with Montreal scientist Brenda Milner. It was Milner who, with Scoville, in 1957 co-authored the first scientific paper describing the extent of Henry's memory loss.
Corkin and Milner decided that instead of conducting tests on Henry in Montreal, it would be easier to work with Henry at MIT, closer to his Hartford home.
Corkin's connection to Henry's case actually reaches back into her childhood. She was Scoville's neighbor growing up on North Steele Road in West Hartford and remains friends with the surgeon's daughter.
Corkin said she and Milner decided long ago not to allow the media to interview Henry and actively discouraged efforts to write about him. She said that it would be unethical to discuss his medical records and that there are few details of his life before the surgery.
Misinformation about Henry is rampant, including reports that he may suffer from depression, she added.
But other scientific researchers say that when it comes to controlling information about Henry, Corkin is as zealous with them as she is with reporters.
Endel Tulving, a memory researcher and retired professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, said Corkin refused to allow him to tape-record an interview with Henry.
``It's just silliness,'' said Tulving. He said he has worked with a Canadian amnesiac with a similar devastating memory loss who has been interviewed on several television shows.
Corkin said more than 100 scientists have worked with Henry during the past 50 years.
One fact is almost universally reported about Henry. At the age of 9, Henry was knocked unconscious after he was hit by a bicyclist. Soon after, he experienced his first minor epileptic seizures. On his 16th birthday, he suffered a grand mal seizure.
James Bond In Scrubs
Henry was 27 -- and having as many as 10 minor seizures a day and at least one major seizure a week -- when his case came to the attention of Dr. William Beecher Scoville, a flamboyant descendant of the illustrious Connecticut family that produced ``Uncle Tom's Cabin'' author Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Scoville was a fearless -- some say reckless -- pioneer in developing surgical remedies for a variety of intractable psychological conditions. He was best known internationally for his technical improvements in the performance of lobotomies, which then were regularly conducted at Hartford Hospital and the Institute of Living, one of the world's top centers for the treatment of mental illness.
He received many awards for his work. He founded an international society of brain surgeons that still gives out an annual award in his name. The University of Connecticut Health Center has an endowed chair that bears his name.
No one who met Scoville forgot him.
While Henry M. is genial, meek and eager to please, Scoville was a sort of James Bond in scrubs who loved fast, expensive cars and motorcycles, a demanding dynamo in the operating room, brilliant at his craft.
``Bill drove fast, lived hard and operated where angels feared to tread,'' said Dr. David Crombie, former chief of surgery at Hartford Hospital who met Scoville in the early 1960s as an intern at the hospital and became friends with his son.
Scoville was an early advocate of helmets for motorcyclists, but never wore one himself, despite riding at speeds that terrified friends and colleagues, Crombie recalled.
``He said you had to wear a helmet -- unless you were keenly aware,'' Crombie said. ``He had a sense of invincibility about him.''
Scoville typically operated on people with intractable schizophrenia or severe depression. But in 1953, Scoville thought he might be able to alleviate Henry's epilepsy. Epilepsy can originate within the medial temporal lobe, a structure that extends on both sides of the brain roughly under the temples.
Scoville decided to remove a greater area of brain tissue from Henry than had been removed from patients who had undergone similar surgeries.
A half-century ago, doctors did not need to get a hospital's permission to try innovative operations. They were under no obligation to conduct trials before they tried new procedures on a patient. Henry and other patients did not have to sign informed-consent papers saying they knew the risks involved, although it is unlikely Henry or his working-class parents would have questioned the advice of a famous surgeon.
``In those days, the doctor's word was God,'' said Al Herzog, a psychiatrist and vice president of medical affairs at Hartford Hospital. ``In an odd way, people like Scoville helped create the ethical standards in use today. By pushing the boundaries of surgical practice, Scoville and others led hospitals to establish institutional review boards, patient protocols, things like that.''
A `Successful' Operation
Late in the summer of 1953, either at Hartford Hospital or at the nearby Institute of Living in the single operating room where lobotomies were performed, Scoville took out most of Henry's medial temporal lobe, including all or parts of the hippocampus and amygdala.
Scoville originally dubbed the operation a success, although Henry couldn't remember the way to the bathroom or the names of the nurses who cared for him.
A few years later in a research paper, Scoville would strongly urge surgeons not to duplicate his ``experimental'' operation because of its devastating effects on Henry's memory.
``It bothered him. You could see it in his eyes,'' recalls Dr. Robert Correll, director of psychology testing services at Hartford Hospital who came to Connecticut from Iowa University in 1958 to try with Scoville to duplicate the effects of the operation in monkeys. ``Bill's goal was to be perfect. He didn't make mistakes.''
In the decades that followed, Henry often told researchers that as a child he had wanted to be a brain surgeon. Henry seems to mingle the recollection of his childhood dream and his own operation, the last memory he would ever preserve, in a sort of never-ending loop.
During one interview, Henry told a researcher that he nixed the idea of becoming a surgeon because he wore glasses, ``and you could make the wrong movement then ... and that person could be dead, or paralyzed.''
He was then asked if he remembered his own operation.
``Well, I think I was, ah, well, I'm having an argument with myself right away. I'm the third or fourth person who had it, and I think that they, well, possibly didn't make the right movement at the right time, themselves. But they learned something.''
They did, indeed, the researcher told Henry, who then again brought up Henry's childhood.
``A funny part, I always thought of being a brain surgeon myself. ... And then I said no to myself. ... An attendant might move your glasses over and you would make the wrong movement.''
Do you remember who the surgeon was who did your operation, the researcher asked.
``No, I don't.''
``Sc--,'' the researcher hinted.
``Scoville,'' Henry said.
Understanding The Mind
Scoville was killed in 1984, at the age of 78, when he backed up his car on the highway to get to an exit he had missed. Renowned in his time for innovative improvements to a surgical procedure now held in disrepute, the confident, perfectionist surgeon is best remembered for obliterating the memory of a young working-class Hartford man.
Science's understanding of the brain changed dramatically after Scoville and Milner published their paper in 1957 describing the effects of the operation.
It had been impossible for scientists to determine how specific areas of the brain created the richness of the human mind -- most often understood in abstract terms, such as Sigmund Freud's id, ego and superego.
``Freud was stuck; he couldn't make those connections,'' Herzog said. ``But with cases like H.M., the connections became more obvious. You can't run away from the importance of H.M.''
One of the first lessons Henry taught scientists was that intelligence and memory are separate entities.
Henry would have flunked out of any class in which he had to learn new information because of his inability to recall new facts. Yet his IQ remained slightly above average and his ability to solve problems was unaffected by the operation.
``We now know from 30 years of animal studies that it was the most devastating surgical resection you can possibly make, but it also stopped at the border of all the important areas of the brain associated with intelligence,'' Gabrieli said.
And because Henry could retain memories for very short periods of time, it became clear that different structures of the brain perform different functions in the storage and retrieval of memories.
The brain structures removed by Scoville turned out to be crucial in converting experience into long-term memories, but not in storing them.
``Until H.M., memory was viewed as essentially a unitary faculty,'' said Larry Squire, a neuroscientist at the University of California at San Diego and a leading memory researcher.
Scientists knew during the 1950s, for instance, that motor and muscle skill memories were processed differently than, say, how we recall that Bismarck is the capital of North Dakota. ``But that proved to be tip of the iceberg,'' Squire said.
One of the major hurdles that confronted scientists studying Henry is that the medial temporal lobe contains several brain structures. In the decades since Scoville operated, scientists such as Squire have worked with animals to try to tease out the specific function of each of these individual structures. The discipline known as cognitive neuroscience emerged to describe how various parts of the brain cooperate and allow humans to accomplish complex tasks such as memorization.
``He is the most dramatic example of a patient who tragically became an experiment of nature,'' said Eric Kandel, Nobel laureate and professor of physiology and psychology at Columbia University. ``That single case enlightened a whole body of knowledge.''
Learning Vs. Remembering
Scientists became so infatuated with Henry, Tulving said, that they missed evidence that other areas of the brain also contribute to memory.
``I think H.M. was a bad thing for our science. Everyone got mesmerized by H.M.,'' Tulving said. ``The whole world revolved around one case, and other cases were not followed up.''
Experiments with Henry and other amnesiacs and, more recently, various brain-imaging studies have revealed that memory is a multilayered set of processes. In some cases, such as in our recall of emotionally charged events, those processes can be at work without our conscious awareness.
In one early study, Henry showed that he could learn new skills, even though he had no conscious recollection of having previously performed the task. Henry got better at copying shapes he viewed through a mirror, even though he told researchers he had never done it before.
Gabrieli's research showed Henry can do the same thing with some word tasks. Gabrieli provided Henry with a list of words such as tangerine, apple and bazooka. When asked minutes later, Henry could not remember any of the words on the list.
``But when you ask him, `Can you name a weapon?' he will say, `Bazooka.' And then he says, `Why, that's an odd weapon. I wonder why I picked that one?''' Gabrieli said.
Such studies have shown that different types of memory are compartmentalized in different areas -- and also that the brain has the flexibility to compensate for some deficits.
For instance, Lawrence Weiskrantz of the experimental psychology department at Oxford University has studied a phenomenon he calls ``blindsight.'' Weiskrantz, who coincidentally was working at Hartford Hospital on his thesis when Scoville operated on Henry, worked with subjects who are blind because of damage in their brain. Despite the damage to their visual cortex, they can ``see'' objects. When asked to grab for flashing bars projected onto a screen, the subjects protested they could not see the bars. But, when asked to ``guess,'' they reached toward the flashing bars with great accuracy.
Henry knows nothing of his legacy. Time essentially stopped for him 50 years ago.
His last conscious memories are of the years before 1953, although his image in the mirror and other evidence seem to convince him that time has passed which he can't account for. Asked where he lives, Henry often gives the address of a house where he lived before the operation. Pressed to recall if he had met a visitor before, he might guess he or she was someone he knew in his youth.
``He thinks we went to high school together,'' Corkin said.
Since 1980, Henry has lived in a nursing home, where he likes to do crossword puzzles.
While doctors have treated Henry for a variety of ailments, Corkin said, ``there is no treatment for memory impairment.''
As Kandel said: ``It's hard for us to conceive what he really experiences.''
Waking From A Dream
Henry used to travel three times a year to MIT, where scientists conducted experiments on him. But Henry has become frail enough in recent years that the scientists now come to him, Corkin said.
When Henry is asked whether he is willing to participate in such studies, he invariably agrees, always saying other people may be helped by such knowledge.
Where does that belief come from?
``That's puzzled me, too,'' Gabrieli said.
Henry has no way of knowing that the research of the past 50 years has helped people. And such an idea couldn't be planted in his mind because he lacks the parts of his brain necessary to store and retrieve such a suggestion.
Gabrieli speculates that Henry might be reaching back to one of his last memories, when Scoville or another doctor might have told him that other epileptics could benefit from the lessons learned from his surgery. So, again and again for the past half-century, Henry has agreed to be the subject of experiments, just as he did before surgery robbed him of his memory.
Corkin offers a different explanation: ``I think he was just well brought up.''
Today, Henry is still the subject of experiments, although other amnesiacs with related memory deficits have been discovered and studied. New imaging technologies also have revolutionized the study of memory by allowing scientists to view the brain working in healthy subjects.
Yet Henry's life continues to fascinate.
``Whenever I give a talk about H.M., the questions never stop,'' Corkin said. ``The audience asks questions; people come up and ask me questions afterwards. It happens every time. He is a national treasure.''
As the 50th anniversary of the operation approaches, Dr. James Duffy has come to believe that society, which has learned so much from Henry, owes him something more.
``What is my responsibility as a scientist? Is it to just generate knowledge, or is it something else?'' Duffy asked. ``Henry presents us with questions larger than the mechanics of the memory system. We need to understand what he has become in the absence of memory.
``Why is it that we only ask about his memory,'' Duffy said, ``not about who he has become?''
Corkin cautioned against drawing any universal conclusions from Henry's situation.
``Henry is an `n' of one,'' she said, using a mathematical symbol to stress his singularity. ``It is not clear how his experience can generalize to anyone.''
Every moment, as his past disappears into an abyss, Henry asks his own set of questions.
``Right now, I am wondering if I have done or said anything amiss,'' Henry once told a researcher. ``You see, at this moment everything looks clear to me, but what happened just before, that's what worries me. It's like waking from a dream I just don't remember.''
Copyright © 2017, Orlando Sentinel | http://www.orlandosentinel.com/hc-archive-henry-m-dec-2002-story.html | [
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Plaza Cinema Field Trips
The Plaza is offering a variety of field trips suitable for grade school children to high school adolescents. If you enjoy films and believe this exceptional art form can be a fun and educational tool to teach history, social sciences, natural sciences, languages, art and culture - then partner with The Plaza.
By coming to The Plaza students are able to experience the Arthouse Cinema environment and learn about how it differs from the multiplex cinema. Every field trip includes a short presentation on what we do as a not-for-profit, and how we enrich the community culture through film.
SEED: The Untold Story
Directed by Jon Betz and Taggart Siegel
Featuring Vandana Shiva, Dr. Jane Goodall, Andrew Kimbrell, Winona Laduke, and Raj Patel
The Eagle Huntress
Directed by Otto Bell
Featuring Daisy Ridley, Aisholpan Nurgaiv, Rhys Nurgaiv
Persepolis (NR) This uniquely styled graphic novel traces the biographical history of its author, Marjane Satrapi as she depicts her progression from childhood to becoming an adult. Satrapi grew up at a pivotal point in Iranian history, spending her adolescence in the depths of the Islamic revolution. Told from her perspective, she moves back and forth between Iran and Iraq, facing societal clashes, losing loved ones to the revolution, and being consistently separated from her family both physically and in shared ideologies. The non-fiction graphic novel was ranked by Newsweek as the fifth on its list of the best non-fiction books of the last decade. PERSEPOLIS was adapted into a film in 2007, following the same artistic style as the graphic novel, but with some color added. A team of twenty animators were given the task of transforming Satrapi's graphic novel into a moving animation, a project that emphasized traditional animation techniques as well as the capabilities of only using two solid colors (black and white) to achieve depth. In 2007, the film was a co-winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes and nominated for an Oscar.
Directed by Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Paronnaud
To Kill a Mockingbird
In great depression era Alabama young “Scout” comes of age while her father Atticus takes on a racially charged court case. Spanning over about three years of her life, the novel Follows Scout, her father Atticus, and brother Jem through the trials and tribulations of growing up in the Deep South in the 1930s. The Pulitzer prize winning novel was adapted into a film by director Robert Mulligan in 1962, for which he received critical acclaim and several Academy Awards. As a part of the National Film Registry this film remains a symbolic icon of American Culture, much like Harper Lee’s classic novel.
Directed By Robert Mulligan
Starring Gregory Peck, Mary Badham
Academy Award nominee Benedict Cumberbatch (BBC’s Sherlock, The Imitation Game, Frankenstein at the National Theatre) takes on the title role of Shakespeare’s great tragedy. Directed by Lyndsey Turner (Posh, Chimerica) and produced by Sonia Friedman Productions, National Theatre brings this eagerly awaited production live to the cinema screen from its sold-out run at the Barbican. As a country arms itself for war, a family tears itself apart. Forced to avenge his father’s death, but paralyzed by the task ahead, Hamlet rages against the impossibility of his predicament, threatening both his sanity and the security of the state.
Directed by Robin Lough
Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Sian Brooke
Romeo and Juliet
The Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company Live cinema season continues with a new vision of Shakespeare’s heartbreaking tale of forbidden love. Branagh and his creative team present a modern passionate version of the classic tragedy. A longstanding feud between Verona’s Montague and Capulet families brings about devastating consequences for two young lovers caught in the conflict. Kenneth Branagh co-directs with Rob Ashford, reuniting with the stars of his celebrated film of Cinderella, Richard Madden and Lily James, as Romeo and Juliet. Also featuring Sir Derek Jacobi as Mercutio and Meera Syal as The Nurse. Romeo and Juliet will be screened in high definition black and white.
Directed by Kenneth Branagh and Rob Ashford
Starring Derek Jacobi and Lily James
KUS4Nexternal250 (2).jpeg
Killing us Softly 4
Filmmaker Sut Jhally
Production Year 2010
Tough Guise
Filmmaker Sut Jhally
Production Year 1999
Field Trips for Elementary School Students
The Plaza offers a variety of field trips that are appropriate for grades 3 - 5 focusing on the fundamentals of storytelling and animation. In the past students have participated in interactive lessons where they watch animated films, learn about the fundamentals of animation and gain hands on experience creating heir own stop motion films.
Boxcar Children
In past years 3rd, 4th and 5th graders from River Elementary enjoyed interactive field trips where they saw the animated film BOXCAR CHILDREN (based on the franchised book by the same name), learned about different animation techniques and created their own stop-motion films.
Based on a 1924 novel of the same name, The Boxcar Children has been adapted into a franchise including over 150 adventures in film and novel form. In the original premise, four siblings take to the road after their parents die and make a home in an abandoned boxcar.
Directed by Daniel Chuba
Starring Illenan Douglas, Martin Sheen, Zachary Gordon, Mackenzie Foy | http://www.plazamac.org/for-teachers | [
"solid",
"cad"
] |
Numerous industries utilize solid metal parts made of powdered metal. Powdered metal components, which are made from powdered metal via powder metallurgy, can be found in applications spanning across industries such as lawn and garden, computer, electronics, hardware, and automotive.
More specifically, powder metal parts include magnetic assemblies, filtration systems, structural parts, and automobile components. Powder metal gears are inherently porous and they naturally reduce sound, making them a suitable component to the sintering process. Bearings and bushings can simply be produced by way of sintering, however, they may require a secondary sizing operation because their fabrication leaves little room for error.
Powder metal is soft and can be formed in a variety of shapes with proper sintering; however, this variety is very limited. Powder metal is a popular choice of material for parts with magnetic properties, and its magnetism can be enhanced through the sintering process. Two processes can be utilized to make powder metal parts: sintering and metal injection molding. Both of these processes are used to produce powder metal parts made of aluminum, copper, and iron.
Sintered metal parts include sintered steel and sintered bronze parts, and they are made by melting metal powder and forming it into a shape. The metal injection molding process involves adding wax, resin, or polymers to powdered metal, heating the mixture to a pliable state, and formed within a mold. Read More…
Leading Manufacturers
Perry Tool & Research, Inc.
Hayward, CA | 510-782-9226
Comtec Mfg., Inc.
St. Marys, PA | 814-834-9300
MetalKraft Industries, Inc.
Wellsboro, PA | 570-724-6800
Proform Powdered Metals. Inc..
Punxsutawney, PA | 814-938-7411
Powder metallurgy is a process in which metal is formed and fabricated from powder to a finished part. The raw metal material is made into powder by way of atomization, mechanical alloying, electrolytic techniques, chemical reduction, and pulverization. The powder is then mixed with a lubricant, which assists in reducing friction between the powder material and the pressing dies. The next step involves forming, in which the material is molded, forged, or pressed. Sintering is a crucial step in the process, as it develops the products finished properties, such as regulating its porosity and increasing its strength.
In the high-temperature process of sintering, the compacted raw materials, also known as green parts, are melted down in a furnace. When the green parts are melted, the particles are bonded together while still retaining the part’s shape. Sometimes, the product requires secondary operations such as machining, deburring, sizing, or heating. The finished parts may appear solid, but they are actually made up of tiny capillaries that are interconnected with each other. Thus, the parts have a porosity of 25%.
Sintered metal products have many advantages over parts that are fabricated through other processes. Sintering uses roughly 97% of materials, and therefore does not produce as much waste. Sintered products are not sensitive to the shapes in which they are formed, and they frequently do not need to undergo any secondary operations. Powder metal parts have controlled porosity, enabling them to self-lubricate and filter gases and liquids. Because of all of these benefits, powder metallurgy is a highly recommended process in fabricating parts that require intricate bends, depressions, and projections. A wide variety of composites, alloys, and other materials can be used in the sintering process to fabricate products of numerous designs and shapes.
Metal injection molding is a powder metallurgy process which is frequently used to produce metal parts that are smaller, more complex, high density, and high in performance. The process of metal injection combines powder metallurgy and plastic injection molding, and is commonly used for parts used in industries such as electronics, computer, hardware, firearms, dental, medical, and automotive. Metal injection molding allows for more freedom in detailing and design, reduces waste, and offers products that are magnetic, more corrosion-resistant, stronger, and denser. However, this process is only used in making thinner, smaller parts, and is more costly than regular powder metallurgy.
Metal injection molding differs in a few ways. First, the metal powder is not only mixed with lubricants, but also with thermoplastics. The parts are only formed by molding using standard plastic injection molding machines. The next step involves using chemicals or thermal energy and an open pore network to remove the thermoplastics from the parts. Finally, the parts are sintered and undergo secondary procedures if necessary.
Bronze, steel, iron, brass, copper, and aluminum are just a few of the many metals that can be converted to powder and undergo the metallurgy process. Aluminum is frequently used because it is highly flammable, highly conductive, and light in weight. Aluminum is a popular materials to use in structural applications and pyrotechnics. Copper is highly conductive both electrically and thermally, and are thus popular for use in electrical contractor or heat sink applications.
Iron contains a graphite additive and is frequently used to fabricate bearings, filters, and structural parts. Steel is used for tool steel or stainless steel powders, are very high in strength. Thus, one application for which it is frequently used is automobile weight reduction. Finally, bronze is a metal that is higher in density and has a higher mechanical performance than brass, and bronze metal parts are commonly utilized to fabricate self-lubricating bearings.
Powder Metal Part Informational Video | http://www.powderedmetalparts.com/ | [
"shape",
"solid"
] |
What to Do If Your Pilot Light Goes Out
January 19, 2017
Pilot lights are commonly found on older model furnaces, and while they serve a very important purpose, also pose a safety hazard in the event they should go out. Instructions on how to relight the pilot light are typically found affixed to the appliance itself, or in the original owner’s manual. Knowing what to do if your pilot light goes out, and when to call for service or repair, can help keep your home and family safe and comfortable throughout heating season.
Contact Rick’s Heating & Cooling for assistance, or around the clock emergency repair in the event you are unable to keep the flame lit or if you have any other questions or concerns with your heating or cooling system.
How Does A Pilot Light Work?
A number of components work together in older model furnaces, to maintain the flow of natural gas to the appliance as needed. When heat is called for and the furnace turns “on,” a valve releases gas to the main burner, and the pilot light ignites the gas. This small, blue, perpetually burning flame is created when a small amount of gas is channeled through a small tube in the gas pipe. In the event that the pilot light should blow out, the tube has a valve which, when shut off by the thermocouple, stops the flow of gas to prevent it from building up in side your home.
What Causes A Pilot Light To Go Out?
There are a number of reasons why your pilot light may blow out. Some you may be able to rectify yourself, while others require the services of a professional.
• Draft. A sudden or steady rush of air can easily blow out the standing pilot light. Once it is relit, check the surrounding area for the source of a draft to prevent it from reoccurring.
• Dirty pilot orifice. If, upon reigniting the pilot light, the flame burns a weak yellow instead of blue, the pilot orifice may be dirty. Call Rick’s Heating & Cooling for professional service.
What Should You Do If Your Pilot Light Goes Out?
The pilot light controls, assembly, and instructions for lighting, are typically located at the front of the unit for easy access. If you are unable to locate the manufacturers instructions, general instructions are as follows:
1. Locate the pilot light assembly, including the gas valve with “On,” “Off,” and “Pilot” settings, and pilot reset button
2. Rotate the valve to the “Off” position, and wait several minutes
3. Rotate the valve to the “Pilot” position, and hold a barbecue lighter or long match to the pilot opening while pushing the pilot reset button.
4. Keep the button pressed until the flame is lit and burning strongly, then release and turn the gas valve to the “On” position.
5. In the event the flame will not remain lit, rotate the gas valve to the “Off” position and call for service.
Emergency Furnace Repair In Morrow, OH
The skilled technicians at Rick’s Heating & Cooling can provide expert assistance with all your heating concerns, including issues with your pilot light. Give us a call today at 513-899-6005, or contact us online to request service. | http://www.ricksheatingandcooling.com/blog/what-to-do-if-pilot-light-goes-out | [
"model"
] |
Term 3 Week 10
posted 19 Jun 2016, 12:59 by Primary 2 Teacher [ updated 19 Jun 2016, 13:00 ]
Literacy - Information Texts
Children will continue to practise spelling patterns in their spelling teams.
This week we will be looking at both fiction and non-fiction books about tigers.
Recognising questions and answers.
Writing a conversation using questions and answers.
Using correct punctuation in a sentence, using question marks.
Read and understand factual sentences.
Write factual sentences.
Read understand and sort facts.
Create a non-fiction text.
Write questions and answers in a non-fiction text.
Maths - Measures and Shape
Children will
Practise the order of the months of the year
Say the month before/after a given month
Find times 1 hour/1/2 an hour later than a given time
Recognise 3D shapes
Describe direction and position of 3D shapes
IPC-Water World
We will continue with our Geography learning, children will
Learn how to follow and give directions
Be given the opportunity to express views on attractive and unattractive features of the environment
Communicate their geographical knowlege and understanding in a variety of ways. | http://www.sakhalinschool.net/home/class-pages/primary-2/primary-2-news/term3week10 | [
"shape"
] |
How True Capitalism Kills Racism
Bigotry carries a cost.
For decades, agitators aligned with the Democratic Party have argued that the only way to right the "historic wrong" of slavery is to enforce affirmative action - that is, to give unearned preferences to blacks or other minorities simply because they are black or minority. The thought is that, because black people were oppressed for hundreds of years primarily because of their skin color, it's only right for them to enjoy the opposite treatment for a while.
As we've discussed before, this notion flies in the face of anything resembling ordinary justice or ethics. Yes, slavery was a terrible wrong, but the slaveowners are all dead and so are all the slaves. Today's black people never suffered under slavery or even Jim Crow save for a few elderly; today's white people overwhelmingly have never participated in official bigotry. Why should the innocent be punished for the betterment of the never-harmed?
Let us set aside the philosophical arguments against affirmative action, for there's an even better reason not to do it: It does not work. Decades of official discrimination have merely made matters worse, as a few nights' viewing of TV news amply demonstrates.
Does this make the cause of racial justice a hopeless one? Actually, no. There is a proven means of achieving equality of liberty, which was fought for by early civil rights leaders like Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, but has been forgotten by today's venal, race-baiting leeches.
What's more, it's been accidentally tried in powerfully racist environments far worse than anything we see today. This magic elixir was so effective at destroying discrimination that the racists had to legally ban it.
This magic wand? Free and open capitalism.
The Power of Cheap
Consider a fair-sized town in the Jim Crow South, one large enough to have several competing stores of major types. No doubt the main street would contain a store run by a bigot, offering goods "For Whites Only." He'd have a good business selling to other bigots.
In the South, however, at least a third of the population was black. By refusing to serve an entire race, this bigot shrank his potential market by a third.
Now consider another greedy, bigoted individual. In this case, his greed outweighs his bigotry: he doesn't like black people either, but he can't resist the color of their money. Unlike his competitor, his store is willing to serve blacks.
This lesser bigot may accept black customers, but he doesn't like them; he may treat them rudely. In a town of any size, though, there's bound to be another store run by someone who acts polite to customers of any color. Where will the black people shop? At the store that a) is willing to deal with them and b) that treats them like human beings - obviously.
The bottom line? There is a significant business advantage to a store owner who does not discriminate against customers and who treats everyone well. Over time, the non-racist businessman will do better than the racist one.
This advantage isn't just seen with customers. It's even more powerful with employees.
Like anything else, employment is subject to the laws of supply and demand. If there are more workers available, wages go down; fewer workers around, and they go up.
A business which refuses to hire blacks has cut itself off from a fair-sized pool of potential employees. The laws of economics dictate that the employees it does hire will, on average, be paid more than if the pool were not artificially restricted.
Again, over time, the non-bigoted business will have higher profit margins, lower prices, better employees, or some combination of the three than the bigoted one; naturally, more and more customers will gravitate to it as their greed overpowers their bigotry. Each bigot will suffer the penalty of his own folly, with no government intervention whatsoever.
This all sounds nice in theory, but does it work in practice? Yes, it does.
The Flawed Economics of Racism
If the South was as racist as generally portrayed, why were the Jim Crow laws necessary? After all, if all the white folks were racist, they wouldn't want to do business with blacks anyway. No legal requirements would be required.
No, the laws were put into place by powerful racists who were being undercut by thopse who acted non-bigoted just as described here. The only way to make bigotry pay is to make it the law of the land, enforced upon all equally whether they want it or not.
The apartheid South African government had the same problem. The racist authorities fought a constant running battle against companies and employers who wanted to save money by hiring blacks who were just as skilled as whites to fill jobs that were "reserved" for whites. This didn't apply merely to janitors or line management; as the Washington Post reported in an obituary a few years back:
Hamilton Naki, a former gardener who was so skilled in complicated surgery that he helped in the world's first human heart transplant -- but had to keep this secret in apartheid South Africa -- died May 29 at his home near Cape Town. He had heart- and asthma-related problems. He was in his seventies.
"He has skills I don't have," Dr. Christiaan Barnard, who performed the heart operation, told the Associated Press in 1993. "If Hamilton had had the opportunity to perform, he would have probably become a brilliant surgeon."
Barnard asked Mr. Naki to be part of the backup team in what became the world's first successful heart transplant, in December 1967. This was in violation of the country's laws on racial segregation, which, among other things, dictated that blacks should not be given medical training nor work in whites-only operating theaters nor have contact with white patients. [emphasis added]
The first heart transplant recipient, Louis Washkansky, received extra days of life thanks to Mr. Naki's illegal skill. What's more important societally, though, is that the hospital received decades of services from a brilliant surgeon for the price of a gardener - Mr. Naki's role had to be hidden from the authorities until the end of apartheid.
It was only because of the law that Mr. Naki was not able to practice medicine publicly, but he was able to perform surgery on a white person in what was supposedly the most racist society on Earth! Money trumped dogma; money trumped bigotry, in this case and in how many more lesser-known ones! - money trumped the law. It usually does. Funny about that.
Time's Up for Legal Racism
The evil laws of Jim Crow died decades ago, and far more evil slavery long before that. Today, we suffer under the less vicious but still damaging racism of affirmative action.
It's easy to understand why: it's in the interests of powerful racists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to continue to con black Americans into believing that they're being kept down by "The Man." They are, but not by the white man; today's white men and women couldn't care less what color you are if you do the work well for a decent price, as witness the hordes of illegal Mexican immigrants doing all manner of things for low pay under the table.
No, America's blacks are being kept down by self-appointed black leaders who've managed to get put in place an insidious system that promotes the incompetent and devalues the competent. This is bad for competent blacks who don't get the respect they deserve; bad for incompetent blacks who perpetuate old stereotypes; bad for other races who see their rightful jobs go to less qualified members of preferred races; and bad for America because it makes us hate and fear each other.
The blunt hand of government is no solution to our racial problems; it only makes problems worse. Government can and must only be entirely color-blind in every way; in a free society, no governmental preference or discrimination based on race can be tolerated.
Then, let's trust to the invisible hand of the market to take care of racist bigotry. It works wherever it's tried, even where it's not welcome. The only trouble is, that wouldn't empower or enrich our greedy elites who can't stand competent competition.
Reader Comments
The men and women in government, those with a little power and are called "The Government" want the hate and fear to continue. Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Barry Soetoro, Louis Farakhan, and their like, need the hate and fear so that they can continue to collect "checks in the mail" money from the people who think the hate and fear comes from someone other than the likes of Reverend Wright.
Thank you,
Robert Walker
June 13, 2011 10:25 AM
This is good:
June 13, 2011 10:31 AM
I think this article makes a lot of sense. I agree with the general theme, and agree to a large extent.
However, I have lived in the south. Louisiana in the 1960, and then deep southern Georgia, Thomasville from 2003 until 2008. From personal experience I can tell you that the "Plantation mentality" still dominates there. Not only is the racism deep and still powerful, but the entire 'serf/class' social structure is still prevalent.
The natives to the area may be polite and all smiles on the surface, but they are a deeply traumatized people, still longing for antibellum heritage, still deeply racist against any but whites. They are in effect still fighting the Civil War.
One has to live there and become close with these people before it comes out. Perhaps in another ten generations this will fade away--but it certainly hasn't yet.
June 13, 2011 11:41 AM
Where these people such strong racists that they wouldn't buy from a black merchant who had the best goods? Or were there no black vendors around?
June 13, 2011 12:33 PM
There was only one "black merchant" in the town, a fried chicken lunch place at the end of town. It had a good business--proving Petrarch economic theory.
There were of course hard core Dixienuts that wouldn't be caught dead there. The racism was subtle from the outside...they would refer to blacks as "Democrats" {Lol}, but in more private conversations with people you knew well the N-word would flow like a Mark Twain novel.
June 13, 2011 1:10 PM
Saw this via Reddit and had to respond though I shouldn't waste my time on you racist <expletive deleted>.
Since it's obvious I have to teach Affirmative Action 101, here's the FACTS you need to know about it before applying your perception to it.
Because as with anything, if a debate is to happen, all parties need to at least have a basic understanding of it.
You believe that the whole point of affirmative action is to give jobs to people who do not have the credentials to get them otherwise.
Affirmative Action does not give jobs to unqualified people. It gives jobs to EQUALLY qualified minorities to offset the bias and discrimination inherent in hiring practices. Some facts:
Whites hold over ninety percent of all the management level jobs (these are the people who do the hiring) in this country (1)
Whites receive about 94% of government contract dollars (2)
Whites hold 90% of tenured faculty positions on college campuses (3)
White men with only a high school diploma are more likely to have a job than black and Latino men with college degrees (5) - just to translate this into idiot-speak, this means that lesser qualified white men are more likely to have a job than black and Latino men with college degrees.
How anyone could know this information and STILL RAIL AGAINST affirmative action is beyond me. It's either a profound ignorance of the actual data that illustrates why affirmative action is so important, or it is a blatantly racist belief that despite these facts, minorities aren't as deservince as whites.
Either way it nauseates me that so many white folks are so ignorant of the data, yet they constantly think their opinion on affirmative action actually makes sense. Most whites who have your opinion watched American History X, heard Ed Norton's fathers speech about affirmative action at the dinner table, and thinks it makes total sense! Well, it does if you don't know a <expletive deleted> thing about the data behind affirmative action.
Next time you want to have an opinion about something, try having an educated opinion and read a <expletive deleted> book first.
(4) Sylvia Hurtado and Christine Navia, "Reconciling College Access and the Affirmative Action Debate," in Affirmative Action’s Testament of Hope, ed. Mildred Garcia (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997)
(6) Devah Pager, "The Mark of a Criminal Record," American Journal of Sociology 108, 5 (March 2003)
(8) "Young White Offenders get lighter treatment," The Tennesseean. April 26, 2000
June 13, 2011 1:30 PM
<expletive deleted>That is an interesting set of information, facts and opinion to get from you.
I find it curious to be called a racist as a poster on this site.
Isn't it rather a quick off hand 'pre-judgment'on your part?
You are part of a counter social engineering operation, it would therefore be educational on your part to understand social engineering on a larger frame. The heat of your post tells me that you don't have such a larger perspective.
Part of what you fail to comprehend is the way inwhich affirmative action has been put to work has been as a purposeful divide and conquer operation by the High Cabal, using the Hegelian dialectic.
This is a deep subject, one that you no doubt fail to grasp, as you have been so quick to throw out the term "racist" and to flame with your <expletive deleted><expletive deleted><expletive deleted>, showing an emotional attatchment and a lack of rhetorical skill.
You have valid points, ones that you have now wasted by this jejune attack on perhaps would be converts to some of your points.
June 13, 2011 1:57 PM
~Rod Serling's closing narration for, the Twilight Zone episode, "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street".
June 13, 2011 2:09 PM
"This magic wand? Free and open capitalism."~Petrarch
This is a huge and complex debate, the actual meaning of 'Capitalism'.
Technically "capitalism" is making money off of money. It has nothing to do with trading money for goods in place of barter.
The Capitalists are the bankers and the speculators, not the merchants.
The US is considered a 'Capitalist Society' because of its banking and trade in stocks and bonds on Wall Street. This is the engine that runs the 'capitalism' aspect of the economy. The use of fiat currency by the merchants does not make them 'capitalist', they remain merchants until they too join in on the casino that is 'Capitalism'.
'Capital' means 'money'--in this instance that is the fiat currency borrowed from the Federal Reserve--a private corporation.
Very few have any deep understanding of money in the US, as very few have any deep understanding of history, because this is a Public Relations Regime run by the High Cabal, and what is taught is simply a mythos to keep everyone ignorant and divided.
June 13, 2011 5:44 PM
So Sansdiety...from your post...I am not sure what to take away from it....are you advocating equal rights or extra rights? Because I am really confused.
Here are some mantras I want you to incorporate into your thought the next time you try to make a counter point, you do not come off as some true believer....(you can never have a discussion with a true believer)
(1) Correlation is not causation
(2) Absence of evidence, is not evidence of absence.
(3) You attract more flies with honey than vinegar, so make your points accordingly (calling people racists...
Perhaps there are more white people are applying for jobs...I mean there are more white it makes sense that there would be more OF THEM in the workplace.
Perhaps in white culture you are not considered a chump, sucker, oreo, a "sell out to the man" or an "uncle tom" for wanting to get a job.
I would be curious to your insight on the NBA and the hip-hop music industry then. I see the ranks of the whites, native americans, and asians grossly under represented in those fields.
June 13, 2011 7:14 PM
His/her moniker, "Sansdiety" would seem an attempt at sansdeity, which would say a lot about his view of theologhy as well...unless he/she is without a diet...which would be quite thin in itself.
All of the "<expletive deleted>" was 'clever' though, reminded me of the Nixon Tapes transcriptions.
A hit and run driver no doubt.
June 13, 2011 8:50 PM
All very interesting, although none of that proves racism from the information that you presented, granted I did not look into the details of the studies which may indeed prove racism, there are simply alternative explanations that could result in those statistics. All of that data however is in no way related to the argument presented in the article. At no point did the article attempt to argue that racism does not exist in the world. Therefore arguing that racism exists is arguing an agreed upon premise. That premise being that racism does exist.
Secondly I saw nothing in the article that can be described as racist. Racism is the belief that a person is less good, intelligent, ect due to ones race. The article in fact is the opposite of racist. It states that if given an even playing field blacks would show themselves too be equal in ability.
The point of the article which you seem to have missed is that only through equality of law can one achieve equality of society. Inequality of law, in either direction, causes resentment and, eventually, hatred. It goes on to argue that inequality of society between races can be broken down by simple greed. People that are actively racist will lose economically to those that are passively racist and those that aren't racist.
Once that happens racist people, both active and passive, will be around blacks that are earning their way in life on their own. They can no longer believe that the blacks are only there because of legal support. They will be forced to confront the fact that blacks are capable of earning their way equally well as whites. Thereby slowly decreasing racism until it is a thing of the past.
Under the current systems many blacks believe they are owed something and that whites are holding them down. This results in many blacks not believing that they can not succeed. Which causes many blacks to not try as hard, after all why play if you can't win.
Those blacks that do succeed are seen by many whites as having gained an unfair advantage. This causes many whites to see their opportunity as being stolen from them, not due to superior ability but rather due to legal favoritism.
Thereby perpetuating the belief of white superiority by many whites as they see data showing blacks failing, in their eyes, despite of unfair legal protection.
It may feel good to 'do something' about inequality but as with so many well intended actions it frequently only makes things worse.
June 13, 2011 9:21 PM
Thomas Sowell, a black columnist, wrote:
June 13, 2011 9:55 PM
jonyfries, very good comment.
It seems it can be summed up with that old saw.
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."
I would add that the road signs on that road are often purposely manipulated by those who fawn good intentions, misdirecting those who do have good intentions. These people are often called 'politicians', and most politicians are lawyers, and most of these lawyers have connections with bankers, and that it is the bankers banker that has been seen as the hand that holds the strings to this whole system.
June 14, 2011 12:24 AM
"Third World countries are poorer today than they were when they were ruled by Western countries, generations ago."~Fred
Pray tell, what thrid world nation today is not still under the grip of Neo-Colonialism? In fact what nation of any sort is not ruled by BIS, IMF, and the global financial oligarchy?
The ballance of an indigenous culture, once fragmented and spun out of control by Malthusian attack can never right itself again, while the present paradigm is maintained.
June 14, 2011 11:14 PM
So Willie, you think that global poverty in places like Africa which were once colonized is the fault of the Westyern powers who did the colonizing? That if they'd been left alone, they'd be rich today?
June 14, 2011 11:53 PM
"That if they'd been left alone, they'd be rich today?"
"Rich"? By what standard? Western materialist standards?
A rich and fulfilling life of ballance and sanity, is not what I see in the empire the west has created.
I would note that this pathological system is about to explode in your face. Good luck when the proverial fit hits the shan.
June 15, 2011 12:15 AM
Despite the joy that people take in thinking about 'what might have been's, there is no way to know what Africa would be like today with European colonization. All that we can be certain of is that Africa is different than it otherwise would have been.
It does not matter if Africa would have been better or not. History followed a different course, instead of finding long dead persons to blame worry about the future and how we move from the present to a more equal and prosperous future.
June 15, 2011 10:17 AM
jonyfries, Africa is not in anyway free of western colonialism yet even today. All the worlds nations today are still under the grip of Noe-Colonialism.All ruled by BIS, IMF, and the global financial oligarchy.
This is the NOW point you urge us to look at. History isn't dead, it is sitting heavily on everyone of our shoulders.
June 15, 2011 12:30 PM
A point on REAL HISTORY, and the architecture of modern political power, compared to the lollipop history in textbooks and entertainment:
A Study in the Hegemony of Parasitism
By Eustace Mullins 1984
[small portion]
It explains the secret writing of the Federal Reserve Act by Paul Warburg of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., and the even more secret deals which caused it to be enacted into law by Congress. It explains how the United States could fight World War I with Paul Warburg in charge of its banking system through the vice chairmanship of the Federal Reserve Board; Bernard Baruch as dictator of American industry as Chairman of the War Industries Board; and Eugene Meyer financing the war through his position as chairman of the War Finance Corporation (printing government bonds in duplicate); Kuhn, Loeb partner Sir William Wiseman with Col. House correlated British and American intelligence operations; Kuhn, Loeb partner Lewis L. Strauss was acting head of the U.S. Food Administration under Herbert Hoover. Meanwhile, Paul’s brother, Max Warburg, headed the German espionage system; another brother was German commercial attache in Stockholm, traditional listening post for warring nations, and Jacob Schiff had two brothers in Germany who were financing the German war effort. It was a classic case of a “managed conflict”, with the Rothschilds manipulating both sides from behind the scenes. At the Versailles Peace Conference, Bernard Baruch was head of the Reparations Commission; Max Warburg, on behalf of Germany, accepted the reparations terms, while Paul Warburg, Thomas Lamont and other Wall Street bankers advised Wilson and the Dulles brothers on how “American” interests should be handled at this all-important diplomatic conference.
June 15, 2011 8:24 PM
Well, as a South African, I feel obliged to stick an oar in here. I'm afraid to say that this article totally misunderstands how South Africa operated, and misunderstands racism generally. Racism isn't just a "bad thought"; it's a tool, a mechanism for justifying exploitation. Pretty much all whites in South Africa ate food prepared by black people, lived in houses built by black people, used products made by black people, shopped in stores staffed by black, and had black maids and servants in their homes. With the exception of a tiny minority of radical Afrikaaners who wanted an all-white society, total separation was not the goal, economic exploitation was. Getting a heart surgeon for the price of a gardner wasn't a failure of apartheid, that was the whole point. And the reason he was barred from being actually employed as heart surgeon was precisely so that he would stay cheap.
Basically this argument is complete bollocks, but as it is accompanied by the description of the likes of Sharpton as "powerful racists", I don't think the author of this "article" is really much interested in reality. It makes a bogus argument and draws a bogus conlusion right out of the stock material used by apologists for racism.
Petrarch, whoever you are, you would have been right at home in apartheid South Africa. Everyone one of the arguments you've deployed about how blacks are being kep down by black leaders was used by the old National Party state. Capitalism is not the enemy of racism, it is it's ally and partner. South Africa was an extremely capitalist state; it had no public health and very limited social services, for example. And apartheid was just a method for suppressing labour costs. South Africa was just a compressed version of the same exploitative relationship that exists between thre West and the Third World today.
June 16, 2011 4:50 PM
Well now, this is interesting indeed. But we need to understand where you're coming from in order to evaluate your argument, and I'm frankly a bit suspicious. For one thing, are you arguing that Sharpton is not powerful? Or that he's not a racist? He's not powerful compared to (say) Obama himself, but he's pretty darn influential compared to you or me. At the very least, he gets an audience whenever he pleases.
And you've totally ignored Petrarch's primary argument: OF COURSE apartheid was racist, it was the LAW, put in place by racists for the purpose of exploiting blacks. Just like Jim Crow. Yes, the heart surgeon was exploited - but that was possible ONLY because he was legally repressed. If the racist laws weren't there, his skills would have been bid over and his compensation would have wound up where it properly belonged, along with anyone else's willing to work and improve themselves.
In both apartheid South Africa and the Jim Crow South, it wasn't illegal for blacks to work - they were expected to. It was simply illegal, explicitly or implictly, for them to hold any jobs above the most menial.
Nothing capitalistic about that. In fact, it's the epitome of socialist exploitation, forcing people to work for the benefit of others without proper negotiated compensation.
June 16, 2011 5:08 PM
Sharpton is not a racist. That claim is simply absurd polemic.
I have not ignored Petrarch's argument in any respect. It is absolutely true that if Mr Naki had been an equal citizen of the state he would have been economically better off. But you're missing the point: that fact that he WAS discriminated against was not only perfectly viable within the capitalist system, but that system actively benefitted from it. In exactly the same way that it benefits from poverty wages in the Third World today to produce cheap products for Western consumers.
Furthermore, Petrarchs argument goes further, asserting that capitalism is inhenrently antagonistic to the sort of repression exhibited by apartheid. But this is not true, because although it did mean that white workers were paid much more, that didn't really matter because there were so many black workers. Overall, capitalism thrived because apartheid reduced labour costs; all that money paid as high wages to white workers was simply cycled back to the companies in return for the products manufactured on the cheap by black labour. The companies made fat profits; the white workers lived relatively high lifestyles; the only people who suffered were the blacks, and seeing as they couldn't vote that didn't matter. It was a win-win system for capitalism.
There was no demand by capitalist activists or agitators to dispose of apartheid, that was totally driven by the socialist Left. Contrary to your final claim, it is not socialism that is an exploitative system, but capitalism. Socialists regard everyone has having due right to the product of their labour, while capitalism transfers ownership of that product to the provider of capital. Advocates of capitalism were the heart and soul of the apartheid system. Don't forget that South Africa was originally Dutch colony, and that the Dutch were amongst the earliest and most zealous exponents of capitalism. South African state was absolutely committed to capitalism in theory and practice, and at no point did this ever translate into a hostility to apartheid. Indeed it regarded itself, more or less correctly, as one of the hot zones in the Cold War between capitalism and communism. Petrarch's argument is just plain wrong.
I am a Marxist, and proudly so, and it was seeing capitalism exposed for what it really was in Soth Africa that made me so. Capitalism is nothing more than systematic exploitation, and apartheid was merely one of the its tools.
June 16, 2011 5:39 PM
@SharpFish said:
"Sharpton is not a racist. That claim is simply absurd polemic"
Surely you jest.
Here's an overview on Sharpton's (recent) racism:
That should get you started.
June 16, 2011 5:43 PM
And 'round and 'round goes the Left/Right carousel...ridiculous fairytale BS--both Marxism and Capitalism.
One who gets to the bottom of the history of this realizes that "Capitalism" created "Marxism" as the 'Controlled Opposition'.
SharpFish should look into Milner and Rhodes, and the "conservatives" here should equally--as well as to the machinations of the Rothschild interlink with the Rockefellers in the Anglo-fication of the Eastern Establishment in the US.
While you people throw stones at one another the High Cabal is sewing up the loose ends of their global gulag, where it matters not what color you are--you all end up slaves.
June 16, 2011 6:21 PM
Michelle Malkin is a raging lunatic, and while you can take exception to some of what Sharpton says, to describe it as "racist" is to abuse the term. And indeed it is a matter of substantial irony that you should call on anything by Malkin as if she had any kind of credible position on racism, given her support for apartheid in Israel.
I know I'm not going to make any headway here because I know that this is really just a case of blaming the victim, and those of you who are committed to it aren't going to be persuaded by anything I say. But I will point out that exactly the same charges were levelled at Nelson Mandela, for example, and so as far as I'm concerned this is just a standard set of apologia for bigotry. And I'm not at all surprised that this article has attracted such apologists, as that's basically what it was for.
But I don't have to stand by and let the reality of South Africa be exploited for that purpose. You do not have the right to hijack our history and distort it to fit some odious right wing agenda.
June 16, 2011 6:30 PM
Netanyahu's Rabbi charged with raping 12-year-old girl
Now if this does not reflect on Nutenyahoo's character—How do you atone for the charges against the Kenyan for his association with Reverend Wright?
June 16, 2011 6:35 PM
It is ludicrous, and would be laughable if the issues weren't at a critical point, that neither the Left nor the Right has a reasonable responce to the questions and assertions outside of their mainstream boxes.
Both the "Right" lunatics here, and the "Left" passerbys that happen onto the sight have the same reaction...their eyes roll back in their sockets and their brains flatline.
Of course this will mean that the real crisis, that of the global elite agenda will hit both of these 'sides' as an utter surprise, even though it is happening in plain sight.
What? Do you actually believe the economy is crashing by mistake? By incompetence?
The cynical "we won't do it again," is a bit of a stretch. Don't you think?
Don't you think? That seems to need repeating here...
June 16, 2011 7:16 PM
"I am a Marxist, and proudly so"
No point in arguing with someone who is "proudly" Marxist. They are either too incompetent to understand the argument or too evil to care. He said he was Marxist. Debate over, he lost.
June 16, 2011 7:39 PM
Ben, that is a simpleton's non-argument.
Now you both "lost".
June 16, 2011 7:45 PM
You're right of course. Anyone that is proudly Marxist and believes that Capitalism is the *cause* of racism is hopeless. But it's fun to yank their chain and watch them fumble around.
June 16, 2011 7:47 PM
Being proudly Marxist is like being proudly flat-earther. And yes, those idiots still exist too:
If you're proud of something that is a universal failure, only life itself can convince you otherwise. So we'll wait and let life change DullFish's mind.
June 16, 2011 7:50 PM
You "conservatives" here are the Synthesis.
Synthetic, plastic, immitation, not real.
Such is life within a false paradigm.
June 16, 2011 8:26 PM
And yet you stay, Willy, and continue to convince us of our ignorance and "false paradigms" over and over again.
So what does that make you? Lonely, I guess.
Give it up. The intelligence of this community is far higher than the normal dregs that you're used to brainwashing. Move along. Sites like InfoWars exist for people just like you.
June 16, 2011 8:29 PM
Fishy, you clearly don't understand either Marxism or capitalism. "Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under Marxism, the opposite is true."
What's more, capitalism and Marxism/socialism are not a black/white dichotomy, they are a continuum. There was nothing whatsoever free-market-capitalistic about either apartheid or Jim Crow, because they were legal interference in the free market: they prevented certain individuals (black people) from freely offering whatever goods or services they wished to provide, and prevented their customers from freely purchasing them. Nothing free about that market - an unfree market was the whole POINT.
Obviously there were free market aspects to the old South Africa, such as between white people. There are also free market aspects of Communist China, pretty significant ones, just as there are increasingly Marxist aspects of the increasingly controlled and regulated American economy. Neither are purely free market or purely Marxist; they are passing each other in opposite directions.
But to the extent that apartheid and Jim Crow interfered in the ability of free individuals of whatever race to participate in whatever economic transactions they freely chose to do, they were ANTI-free-market.
June 16, 2011 8:31 PM
"The intelligence of this community is far higher than the normal dregs that you're used to brainwashing."~twibi
"Intelligence" is what you call it aye twibi?
No, hardly "lonely," I have a blog, we share in our ideas like those of you here. But I find "preaching to the choir," is not enough.
You would be a fish out of water on any other site without your backup squad. And the only "argument" I ever get is the same zip/nothing you just laid on me. Why, because you have no valid counter. So you want me to leave you alone.
The obvious ignorance of the architecture of modern political power is obvious here. That is the reason you can only counter "the Left." You have no overview of both the left and the right.
Naivete is not innocence. And going along to get along is fine...
..until you get where they are taking you.
That destination lies straight ahead. I guarantee you aren't going to like it.
You can puff yourselves up with your false bravado until then.
You won't have the luxury of saying you were not warned.
June 16, 2011 8:47 PM
When every question put on the table comes down to a Left/Right dogfight, or a Demoskunk/Repukelikan tango, it is obvious that the divide and conquer scheme of the oligarchs ruling this nation is working like a charm.
It's like reading the rantings of Pavlovian dogs.
The Petro-Dollar is dying a slow death. With its disappearance will come the Third World to the United States.~Jim Willie
David Rockefeller, Memoirs, page 405
June 16, 2011 11:09 PM
Although many fail to realize it, all is not well in Wonderland.
Most are still lulled by TV and mindless entertainment, whizzbang gadgetry, and delusional mantras of “recovery”...
Meanwhile on the croquette lawn, shock and awe austerity rises in the purple face of the enraged Red Queen.
When this austerity finally bursts the over inflated bubble of some 1 and a half Quadrillion dollars, will you keep your head?
June 16, 2011 11:48 PM
Ben wrote:
"Being proudly Marxist is like being proudly flat-earther."
Hahahaha. You guys are so living in the past, and the really funny part is that you are so oblivious to the fact.
Patience wrote:
Patience, I understand them both extremely well. Where you make your mistake is here:
CAPITALISM ITSELF is anti-free market. Because it systematically appropriates the product of labour from those who produce. Capitalism is not an expression of human freedom, it is a system of exploitative class rule.
The fact that apartheid and Jim Crow could work so well with capitalism absolutely confirm this. There is absolutely nothing in capitalism which contributes to human liberty or autonomy. Capitalist ideology just uses "free market" as a slogan for the untramelled right of capitalists to exploit labour. Both apartheid and Jim Crow assisted in that exploitation and were therefore perfectly in line with capitalism.
If you want a real free market, a society of free people, freely trading, and freely entering into voluntary transactions, the first thing you need to do is kill capitalism. What you in fact need is a communist mode of production.
June 17, 2011 6:08 AM
"CAPITALISM ITSELF is anti-free market"
Ha! Patience, are you *really* going to keep arguing with this clown?
"CAPITALISM ITSELF is anti-free market"
I had to read that again just to get another good laugh out of it.
June 17, 2011 7:58 AM
"CAPITALISM ITSELF is anti-free market. If you want a real free market... What you in fact need is a communist mode of production."
Hmm. OK, I declare myself a Marxist - and therefore, in favor of a capitalist economy.
In other news, black is white, up is down, and left is right. Oh, wait a minute - Willie already believes that last one.
Welcome to Bizarro World!
June 17, 2011 8:23 AM
You lack of comprehension is truly astounding Patience. Your argumentation is sixth grade playground level.
While I have an argument against socialism, I also understand that "Capitalism" is NOT 'free market', the Capitalism of that las hundred years has been monopolism, and centrally controlled--like your brainwashed mind.
What utter chumps.
June 17, 2011 9:06 AM
The interesting thing about capitalism is that it actually achieved what Marxism set out to do: allow the laborers to share in the fruits of production.
For example, the wealth of Walmart is owned by millions of middle-class shareholders as part of their 401k or retirement funds. This includes both the people that "give" their money to Walmart, by buying its products, and those that work there. Additionally, the low costs that Walmart's capitalism created is realized by its laborers and customers.
Here's a great article explaining why capitalism, and free enterprise in general, has beaten Marxism at its own game:
June 17, 2011 9:14 AM
Is this REALLY where you meant to send us with that URL Sam?
May 2007
Socialism, Free Enterprise, and the Common Good
Rev. Robert A. Sirico
President, Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty
At any rate, using Walmart as an example for anything positive is the biggest load of tripe I have ever read.
What a collection of nimrods...
June 17, 2011 9:57 AM
Hi Willy,
Yes. Now do yourself a favor and _read it_.
June 17, 2011 10:19 AM
Hi Sam, I did.
June 17, 2011 12:22 PM
Lol. But at least, Sam, I give you credit for acknowledging what "Marxism set out to do". That's a much greater degree of insight than that exhibited by anyone else here.
Of course, I would still say it's ridiculous to argue that capitalism has "beaten" Marxism at anything - indeed, given the recent crisis, Marx' critique of capitalism has been reaffirmed for the umpteenth time. But what really sticks out from this claim is that apparently workers are only to be allowed a SHARE in the fruits of production.
Why should that be, when all of production rests on their labour? It's not enough to have a share; we want it all. We made it all, why shouldn't we have it? Why should a parasitical, noncontributive capitalist class have any claim?
I have read the article you linked; to provide a proper counter-argument probably wouldn't be worthwhile. But while this article is much better informed than most, it is still completely mistaken. For example, the depiction of Bernstein, while not faulty is as such, is incomplete, and it fails to acknowledge the critiques to which his position were subject. Bernstein's argument was destroyed by Rosa Luxembourg, and Sirico is therefore not entitled to use it as a sort of uncompleted realisation of the invalidity of the socialist position.
I commend you though on finding something as detailed and serious as this, rather than depending on the shrill mouthpieces and stereotypes that so many rely on for the substance of their argument, and which we see above. But my challenge to you now is to go out and read Marxist material yourself, and to draw your conclusions rather than relying on the analyses of others.
June 17, 2011 12:43 PM
"what "Marxism set out to do".~SharpFish
What Marxism set out to do is a much deeper subject than simply analyzing the works of Marx. Marx after all is not all that original in his work Das Capital. What is more beneficial in understanding "Marxism" is the understanding of who was in the background promoting him, and what their motives were, and are.
When such an analysis is made, we find lurking in the background a combine of secret societies interlocking in a most complex matrix, and ultimately leading to the Perfectibles, who infiltrated the European Masonic lodges of the 18th century.
At any rate, after years of research by many from that era forward, it can be said with a great degree of certainty that it is high financial capital, in particular the House of Rothschild which is the hand pulling the strings and funding these movements.
In the final analysis, what "Marxism" set out to do was to generate a 'controlled opposition" to this high international finance. One that could be manipulated into unwittingly serving the interests of high finance and coopting any real resistance that was to come along.
For some clues into this look into the Left and Right schools of Hegelianism, a split manufactured by Hegel's own teachings and his star students.
June 17, 2011 1:22 PM
Hi again to Sam,
I am quite familiar with Hillsdale College.
Whether you are aware of it or not Hillsdale is part of Neocon think tank activities. One with the purpose of demonizing Islam for the benefit of the fraudulant "war on terror".
It's luminaries are in the main the usual suspects behind PNAC and the Rand corporation, the Crystal's and thier Daily Standard, etc.
These people come from a Marxist background themselves--all deciples of Trotsky and his 3rd Internationale. Almost all of this leads back to Leo Strause. They are all 'Statists'--Hegelians, who believe that the "state in the footsteps of 'God' on earth."
This means that any "Christians" involved with this cult have been duped.
Not that I expect anyone to follow leads and take anything seriously here, as all on this site seem to have swallowed the MSM kool-aid.
But the history is in the open record for any with some slight bit of curiosity left in their head.
June 17, 2011 1:35 PM
Normalcy Bias
Normalcy Bias; this is the psychological pathos of the conformists, the bean-counters, and those who go along to get along. It is indicated by extreme naivete and a dearth of imagination. Such personalities crave empty entertainment, convenience, and unfettered certainty.
The words, “tinfoil conspiracy nut” are set like a trigger, to be repeated like a Chatty Cathy doll at the slightest hint of suspicion of the system they float around in like party balloons at a kids birthday at Chuckie-Cheese.
Lack of imagination creates a type of memory loss, the inability to imagine what it was like before one became adjusted to the present. This creates a type of mental compartmentalization.
In-congruent information is isolated from itself to prevent cognitive dissonance. The information is still there subconsciously however, which results in neurosis. And it is that neurosis which is acted out as denial.
“Lack of curiosity in otherwise intelligent people is caused by fear. This fear is of finding out something that on might not want to know and face. It is an attendant effect of long term normalcy bias, in the case of the US it is caused by the strategy of tension generated by social engineering.~ww
“The normalcy bias is also known as the ostrich effect. It is also sometimes known as the incredulity response and analysis paralysis.
In situations of extreme danger, some people enter a mental state that is known as the normalcy bias. In this state, people deny that what is happening to them is really taking place.”
June 17, 2011 2:21 PM
To the ones that espouse communist ideals, I only have one thing to say:
F U!
I grew up in a communist country, and it was complete state control. Fear of the state was the way of life. Communism is great, it means some "chosen" ones at the top control the state-owned industries and the workers truly are slaves, because the state and the bureaucrats reap all the benefits. And let's not forget the brainwashing, since you have to be constantly reminded your hard work is for the "good" of the country, while you live off food rations. Meanwhile, the politicians are running around in luxury cars and living in mansions, while you get thrown in jail for daring to ask for more food.
Seriously, do you actually mean this?
Maybe because if they don't make any money off our work, they don't need to employ us. Why would anyone give me a job if not for them to make more money as well? I am sure you think that the state should own the industry, but like I already pointed out, it just means someone else would get rich off my labor.
Communism fails on so many aspects, that if you look at history all it has created is poverty and authoritarian states. And really wealthy state-sponsored oligarchs.
June 17, 2011 4:18 PM
If it is the private sector which is employing as well as being employed, what is the need of a financial class 'providing'the "money" as debt. Creating just the amount of fiat script to cover that "money" itself--but not the amount to cover the INTREST on that debt?
I think if you had a better grasp on how the ponzi scheme of fractional banking works that you would have an entirely different opinion of "Capitalism."
Rather than think in the duality manner of the dialectic of Capitalism/Comminism, why not think back to the concept that "money" is just a conveinience to barter--actual free-trade, not the Newspeak version propagated by the financial elite.
June 17, 2011 4:39 PM
My last comment is directed at Alin_S, and the first quote is from his post.
June 17, 2011 4:41 PM
Again addressing Alin_S,
What needs to be parsed is the distinction between the entrepreneur and a capitalist. Between 'finance' and 'trade'.
By 'trade' I do not refer to the casino of Wall Street. I am talking about actual trade between owners and buyers of goods and services.
June 17, 2011 4:50 PM
Willy, I know you constantly have to mention the financial conspiracy and a international nefarious cabal, but my post had nothing to do with finance. Capitalism has nothing to do with banks, but banks are necessary to provide capital to those who need it. Now imagine a world where I save money or raise capital through other means, and then I open a business. No debt for me, and no Rockefellers making money off me.
Here is an easy definition: An economic system that is based on PRIVATE OWNERSHIP of the means of production and distribution. Prices for goods and services are determined by the free market, and businesses are operated for the economic gain of the OWNERS. (I would like to think that I can be an owner one day, and I guess perhaps I am biased by such an ideal and you might even say a bit foolish for believing such things).
I have never disagreed with you on the federal reserve, which encourages fractional lending and has hijacked our money plus our government. I think your point was also trying to hint at the creation of money, but again, my point had nothing to do with that.
My point is simply this: communism sucks! And I will never ever live under communist oppression. You can take those as fighting words if you prefer...
June 17, 2011 5:01 PM
Alin_S, you say:
Read your first sentence here. It defeats itself in a circle. In effect it is self cancelling.
And the second is true, you have to “imagine” such a world because the “capital” you speak of is fiat debt based “money”. There is NO OTHER form of capital available in 'This World'...only the one you wish for the reader to imagine.
I can indeed 'imagine' such a world. But know that one will not exist until one faces the realities of this on we exist in now and change it.
By making the circular arguments you have above you are simply denying the real world, and playing make-believe, ie, “imagining.”
June 17, 2011 7:06 PM
But Alin, as you should realize the “prices for goods and services “are NOT determined by the free market. They are determined by a central controlled market—the Stock Market, which has manifold instruments of manipulation to play the prices. The 'derivatives' scheme, 'hedge funds', the casino techniques of betting on prices without even buying stocks: Spread betting on stocks and shares allows you to go long or short on a stock without owning.
And these are only a few of the tools the elites have implemented to control the market.
Again, it gets down to who the “OWNERS” are. The Owners are, again; the private banking cartel that you keep dismissing—they own the ability to write an amount on a ledger sheet and pronounce it “money”.
June 17, 2011 7:22 PM
Willy, I know it's hard to admit you are wrong, but you continue to go in a a circle and refuse to see the forest for the trees. Read the definition of capitalism that I provided. Based on this definition, this is how I CHOOSE to see it. Capitalism to me means private ownership (not state-owned), prices determined by free market (not monopolies), and benefits the owners (not the state or bureaucrats). Therefore, capitalism does not need banks. Additionally, the structure of the finance system is a whole different topic. However, since I have to say this again, banks are needed to provide money to those WHO NEED IT. Now, if you want to get into the nuances of my statements, go ahead and over-analyze.
I don't have to imagine a world where I don't need to take on debt. Here is another scenario for you: I inherit a bunch of money and put that into a business, I become a business owner and by default I would be called a capitalist. Now I would be an evil business owner who would hire other people so I could make more money, or I don't hire any and they can all go unemployed.
I think you and I both agree that we need to push the govt off our backs, but the grim realities of the world you live in have got you down. I simply choose to believe that capitalism works and corporations are not evil, but it's when they collude with govt that our lives are impacted typically for the worse. But I will not paint capitalism or all corporations with such a broad brush.
I agree with you, I am aware of how our money is nothing more than govt debt which we have to pay back to this private bank called the FED. I think you assume that the readers of this blog are dunces, and have been living under a rock. We are all well aware of the illegitimacy of the FED, the unconstitutionality of the income tax, the military industrial complex, etc. I really wish you wouldn't think that you are the only one who has seen the light.
June 17, 2011 7:43 PM
Willy, this is becoming a debate less about capitalism and more about manipulation. Commodities and currency trading can absolutely affect our everyday lives, I don't think a wise person would really try to disagree with that. I don't think I ever said that I "dismiss" the banking cartel, I only said that you bring it up in every post even though we are simply discussing capitalism and the positive effects it has on our society. Just like anything else, in the wrong hands it can be abused and misused. I would like for you to admit that capitalism works, and then you can get into how certain factions are trying to gain power and wealth underhandedly. It seems that you are dismissing capitalism as this evil system simply because some people have decided to hijack it for their own benefit. For me, capitalism means that I can go open up an ice cream shop in my neighborhood, and I have the freedom to do so. For you, it means that some wealthy bankers are getting richer. I would like to see your solution to this problem, my solution is simply to get it while the getting is good.
(That's a joke Willy)
June 17, 2011 8:09 PM
But that is my whole point in the first place. What you have been taught the definition of capitalism is not what is put in place and called capitalism.
The ideal system you have in your head that you call capitalism, is a worthy concept and a reasonable way to do business, regardless of what you name it.
What I am saying is that what has been CALLED capitalism from the inception on the use of the word has always been the manipulatory aspect we have discussed, with the Rhetorical cover story being the system that makes the best sense. All cons are sold that way, in economic law this is called a "Fraudulent Conveyance Racket".
The historical record proves that the entire Federal Reserve System can by shown to be a Fraudulent Conveyance racket. The Federal Reserve System is obviously a centrally planned economy. This is NOT a “free market,” as their Newspeak rhetoric claims.
Playing it for what it is worth is all any of us can do as far as personal survival tactics. However I think that trying to educated people as to the scam being played on them is worthwhile.
That is my whole reason for posting. There are a lot of misconceptions being propagated, and that needs countering.~ww
June 17, 2011 8:56 PM
More simply put: The dictionary definition of "Capitalism" that the "Capitalists" have used is a commercial advertizement. That is how they explain their operation.
But this is False Advertizement. Again history shows it to be a con racket.
That is the reason, I dispute the advertized definition. Because it is their Sales Pitch but not what you are sold.
June 17, 2011 9:04 PM
Now, as far as Communism; the very same historical record I refer to proves that it is a created "controled opposition"...
In other words Alvin, the very same financial power that runs this nation, runs the socialist opposition.
The real enemy then is the International Banking Cartel:
Capitalism/Communism/Total State = Totalitarian State
June 17, 2011 9:09 PM
The Final and Urgent Point:
To move further into the present situation is to observe that there can be no reasonable argument against that the US is a totalitarian police state. It is no secret but for putting it so bluntly. This is a Panoptic Maximum Security State based on the openly announced strategy of FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE. That term, 'full spectrum dominance” is as in your face as is possible. What does full spectrum mean? It means it is total , total dominance. How much clearer does this have to be made out. This is not my language this is the state's language. You have received your invitation to the ball. You have been absorbed under its umbrella. Since 9/11 and the PATRIOT Act, the superstructure of this panoptic police state has been constructed over the head of the population.
If one chose to pay attention the reality is out there everyday testifying to this.
It is only turning away into denial that can make one blind to the so very obvious.
All it will take to kick this machine on to full draconian force will be the shock of drastic austerity measures imposed. This will be an 'event', and it will ripple around the globe quickly.
Many well researched analysts are saying this is not long in coming. How long? Not long, for "ye reap what ye sow."
June 17, 2011 9:38 PM
And a final comment to Sharpfish:
Marx and Bakunin are both wrong, and their arguments between themselves irrelevant but as a historical footnote.
Marx is wrong. The only thing that has ever changed about human beings is their technologies, and unless technology is allowed to “win” over the human being, and create the cyborg which eliminates the natural humans—mankind will always be the human being he is.
All consensus is synthetic and temporary.~ww
June 20, 2011 11:12 AM
Alin S,
You're confusing communism with state capitalism. Obviously, if that's where you grew up, you'll have been denied this critique, even though it goes as far back as the earliest days of those state capitalist societies. Politicians in luxury cars and ordinary workers in jail for asking for food, that's capitalism in essence. Can you think of any capitalist society that hasn't produced precisely this outcome?
You say yourself, its a society organised by and for the interest of OWNERS, and that you aspire, one day, to being an owner yourself. Isn't that a confession that any capitalist society is the antithesis of democracy, that it is rule by the rich and for the rich? You admit that the only out you can see is to one day join their number. And in the meanwhile, like the vast majority of us, you can only be servant and a slave.
You ask, why should they employ us? Fatuously you assert "they don't make money of us". Of course they do, why else would they employ us, according to your own logic? Only becuase they benefit. Running through your account of capitalism is a truth you won't acknowledge: that we are only allowed to support ourselves when it is in the interests of capitalists. We are no more free than any feudal serf subordinate to their local warlord, paying tithe and rent to someone who, fundamentally, does not work to support themselves.
All value arises from human labour. As Adam Smith said, it is the original commodity from which all others are got. Capitalism cannot exist without workers; it exists for no other purpose than to seize the product of workers labour and channel it into private profit. Just like your state capitalisms, the few benefit from the labour of the many.
Willy Whitten, I don't really want to respond to you, your brand of conpiratorial theory is essentially nonsense, and ironically, precisely what you denounce us for, a "false opposition". So long as you continue to believe in these shadowy conpiratorial groups you'll never do anything to actually change the real, material, world. But your last point I must address, your argument about technology. No political philosophy is as science- and tech-friendly as Marxism. It appears, after all, as an attempt to form a scientific theory about how societies change and develop. It is a specific scientific antidote to the pre-industrial, superstitious cult of capitalist theology.
There is so much historical evidence against your wilder claims I won't bother going into it. Nobody who takes the topic seriously will be convinced by your garbage.
June 20, 2011 7:54 PM
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Enterprise Software
SolutionBase: Using the Dsquery command in Windows Server 2003
Microsoft includes some handy GUI tools with Windows Server 2003 to help you manage Active Directory. Sometimes, however, command-line tools such as Dsquery can give you more flexibility and control. Here's a detailed look at the Dsquery command.
In the article "Getting started with Windows Server 2003's directory service command-line tools," I introduced you to the six basic directory service command-line tools and provided an expanded list showing you the particular objects that each tool is designed to work with. I also got you started with a basic understanding of distinguished names and the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) attribute tags.
The directory service command-line tools rely on these names to locate and work with objects in Active Directory. As I closed out that article, I briefly showed you how to use the Dsquery command to look at the distinguished names assigned to the objects in your Active Directory structure.
In this article, I'll pick up with the Dsquery command and examine its features. I'll then show you some cool search techniques you can perform with the Dsquery command to quickly and easily reveal information that would be a bit tricky to get out of GUI interface tools.
The commands
While the Dsquery command is one of the six main directory service command-line tools, it actually consists of 11 separate commands, as shown in Table A. Ten of these commands are designed to find objects of a specific type, and one is designed to find any object type in Active Directory.
Table A
Command Description
Dsquery * Finds any object
Dsquery computer Finds computer accounts
Dsquery contact Finds contacts
Dsquery group Finds group accounts
Dsquery ou Finds organizational units
Dsquery partition Finds Active Directory partitions
Dsquery quota Finds object quotas
Dsquery server Finds domain controllers
Dsquery site Finds Active Directory sites
Dsquery subnet Finds subnet objects
Dsquery user Finds user accounts
The Dsquery commands
Of course, each of these commands comes with a set of object-specific parameters that allow you to define the search criteria for each object. However, the majority of the parameters are common to most of the Dsquery commands.
The common parameters
Let's examine the common parameters and see how they work. Once you understand their function, you'll be able to look at the overly complex syntax layouts for each command and more easily pick out the object-specific parameters.
Targeting your search
The first set of common search parameters allows you to specify where you want your search operation to begin:
[{StartNode | forestroot | domainroot}]
To more narrowly focus your search, you can use a node's distinguished name (StartNode). To broaden your search, use the forestroot parameter, in which case the search is done using the global catalog. The default value is domainroot; while it's implied, if you don't type anything else, you can enter it on the command line if you really like to type out long command strings.
The second set of parameters in this category allows you to specify the scope of your search:
[-scope {subtree | onelevel | base}]
If you use the ï¿?scope base parameter, you target the search on a single object specified by command and the start node. In other words, you prevent the search from progressing down to child objects. Now, if you use the ï¿?scope onelevel parameter, you target the search on the object specified by command, the start node, and the object's immediate children. The ï¿?scope subtree parameter is the default, and it allows the search to freely progress down the tree from the start node.
As I mentioned, you can use the forestroot parameter in order to search the global catalog. You can also use the ï¿?gc parameter to require that your search specifically use the Active Directory global catalog.
One more way that you can target your search is by using the ï¿?r parameter. In this case, the r stands for recursion. This parameter allows you to specify that your search use recursionï¿?also described as following referrals during a search. As I understand it, this parameter allows you to extend your search to multiple servers.
Formatting output
The next set of common parameters lets you specify the output format for the search results:
[-o {dn | rdn}]
The default output is the distinguished name and uses the -o dn parameter. If you want to see the relative distinguished name, you'd use the -o rdn parameter.
As I said in the previous article, the Dsquery command will display only 100 objects by default. The next parameter allows you to expand the number of items displayed in the output:
-limit NumberofObjects
Essentially, you can use any number you want here. While it may seem a bit weird at first glance, if you want to see all of the objects, follow the -limit parameter with a zero. However, be careful when changing the limit because Microsoft's goal in limiting the output to 100 objects is to prevent the domain controller from being unnecessarily taxed by an exhaustive Active Directory search operation.
The last set of output format parameters also double as input format parameters and are designed to allow you to specify Unicode format:
{-uc | -uco | -uci}
The -uc parameter specifies a Unicode format for input from or output to a pipe (|). The -uco parameter specifies a Unicode format for output to a pipe (|) or a file. The -uci parameter is used to specify a Unicode format for input from a pipe (|) or a file.
While I'm on the topic of output, should you ever decide to run the Dsquery command and not see the results, you can use the -q parameter (a.k.a. Quiet Mode), which will suppress all output to the console. At first, this seemed like an odd thing to do, but then I thought it might be useful when you're redirecting output to a file. However, I've not had any luck getting the -q parameter to work at all.
Remote connection
The final set of common parameters that we'll look at are the remote connection parameters. By default, the Dsquery command assumes that you're running the command in the domain to which you're logged in. However, you can also run the Dsquery command on a remote server or domain.
{-s Server | -d Domain}
Using these parameters, you can connect to a specified remote server or domain. You might also need to specify a username and password, in which case you'd use these parameters:
-u UserName
-p {Password | *}
If you use the asterisk, you'll be prompted for a password.
Dsquery examples
Now that you have a good idea of how the Dsquery command works with its common parameters, let's look at some examples of where using this command will come in handy.
Tracking down servers
Suppose that while troubleshooting a problem, you discover that you need to quickly identify the domain controller that is performing one of the five Flexible Single Master Operation (FSMO) roles for a forest. What if you need to quickly identify which domain controllers are performing all five FSMO roles: the Schema Master, Domain Naming Master, RID Master, PDC Emulator, and Infrastructure Master? To perform this operation, you'll use the command:
Dsquery server
along with the parameters:
-hasfsmo {schema | name | infr | pdc | rid}
If you wanted to find only the Schema Master, you'd use the command:
Dsquery server -forest -hasfsmo schema
If you wanted to find all five, you'd use the command:
For %x in (schema name infr pdc rid) do Dsquery server -forest -hasfsmo %x
Here, I've simply incorporated the Dsquery server command in a pretty standard For In Do loop. To use this command line, you might want to type it in Notepad and save it as a batch file. You might also want to capture the output in a file. If so, you can add the following to the end of the command line:
>> FSMO-Query.txt
Tracking down inactive or disabled accounts
Suppose you've just taken a new job as a systems administrator. After a couple of days on the job, you discover that your predecessor wasn't very conscientious about cleaning up inactive and disabled user and computer accounts of employees who either left the company or were there only on a temporary contract basis.
You've already changed the name and passwords on all the Administrative accounts, and you want to plug any potential security breaches that have been left open by your predecessor. You need a way to quickly ascertain the magnitude of the problem. Fortunately, you can quickly gather the information you need with a few simple Dsquery commands. To find all user accounts that have been inactive for at least the last week or longer, you'd use the command:
dsquery user - inactive 1
To find all user accounts that have been disabled, but never dealt with further, you'd use the command:
dsquery user -disabled
To find all computers whose accounts have been inactive for the last week or more, you'd use the command:
dsquery computer - inactive 1
To track down all computers whose accounts are disabled, you'd use the command:
dsquery computer -disabled
Performing an inventory on the fly!
Now imagine this scenario: As a young network administrator, you learned the importance of documenting a network. Over the years, you've become very diligent when it comes to filling in the Description fields for every object account in Active Directory. The Description field for each computer account in your Active Directory structure contains a very detailed string of information that begins with a three-letter acronym specifying the operating system.
Suppose that your colleague asks you to find out how many computers in the Laptops organizational unit are still running Windows 2000 Professional. You could quickly open a command prompt window and type the command:
Dsquery computer OU=Laptops,DC=gcs,DC=com -desc W2K*
Similarly, you could find out how many computers in the Laptops organizational unit are now running Windows XP Professional by using the command:
Dsquery computer OU=Laptops,DC=gcs,DC=com -desc WXP*
Stay tuned
You should now have a pretty good handle on how to use the Dsquery command; you can use my examples as a starting point in your own explorations. In fact, if you come up with any cool examples of using the Dsquery command, please take a moment to share your command line by dropping a note in the Discussion area. In the next article, I'll focus on the Dsget command as I continue examining the directory service command-line tools.
About Greg Shultz
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Free Newsletters, In your Inbox | http://www.techrepublic.com/article/solutionbase-using-the-dsquery-command-in-windows-server-2003/ | [
"object"
] |
Where Is Kosovo?
Kosovo is a landlocked region in the Balkan Mountains in Europe. It borders Central Serbia to the east and Albania to the west. The region is a disputed territory. It declared independence on 17 February, 2008. The case, whether to grant the request for a new nation or not, is still pending with the United Nations. Serbia considers the region a part of the Serbian nation and strongly opposes the independence move of Kosovo.
KosovoThe name of the region comes from the Serbian language and it means ‘a field of the blackbirds’. Within Kosovo, the term ‘Kosovo’ refers to the eastern part of the region and the western part is known as ‘Metohija’. Both parts are sometimes collectively called ‘Kosovo and Metohija’. The largest city in Kosovo is Pristina, where approximately half a million people live. Most of the terrain of the region is mountainous and the highest peak, Djeravica (Đeravica), is 2656 meters high. About 39% of Kosovo is covered by forests and there is only one national park in Kosovo, Šar Mountains National Park. Islam is the predominant religion in Kosovo.
Both Serbia and Kosovo were once a part of Yugoslavia and the secular socialist government of Yugoslavia did its best to prevent any ethnic or religious tensions arising. The iron grip of the Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito held Yugoslavia together for decades but within 10 years after his death the nation broke up into several smaller countries. Kosovo became a part of Serbia after the dissolution of Yugoslavia but it wasn’t long before ethnic tensions began to rise and a war broke out. About 92% of the Kosovon population is ethnically Albanian and the Serbs are the largest minority comprising approximately 4% of the population. The relations between the Albanians and the Serbians are most of the time unfriendly. The war dampened down after a UN intervention but things have been simmering again since Kosovo declared its independence in 2008.
Category: Geography | http://www.thegeminigeek.com/where-is-kosovo/ | [
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Summer in the City
by Cristiana Strava
Cooling off in the Bronx (2011). Source: Charles Brigand
In 1927, the Times reported that more than three thousand people had spent the night sleeping on the sand at Coney Island in order to escape the stifling heat of their tenements. Patrolmen had been assigned to stand guard over the sleepers. Many more spent their nights in Central Park, while others piled up on fire escapes to survive the sweltering heat of New York in July. Over the years, the image of children cooling off in the spray of a fire hydrant has become synonymous with summer in the city. Too poor to escape to the Hamptons, working class New Yorkers transformed available public spaces into impromptu vacation spots.
Sleeping on a fire escape in New York (1938). Source: Weegee Collection
Today, city officials and entrepreneurs attempt to provide options aimed at both locals and potential tourists. Capitalizing on a certain fetishistic obsession with "authenticity," they appropriate working class spaces and practices and regulate them or present them as fashionable. Sharon Zukin, an urban sociologist and staunch critic of New York's gentrification, refers to this process as "pacification by cappuccino," a scenario in which urban space is "imagineered" as an entertainment event for the consumption of those who can afford it.
This phenomenon is taking place worldwide, and what better season than summer to capitalize on people's use of city space?
Paris Plages on the Rive Droite. Source: Choblet et Associés
An urban summer staple, Paris Plages is perhaps the most famous and chic of European city beaches. Many Parisians abandon the city in summer for the South of France or countryside vacations. Since 2002, the month-long transformation of the Seine's banks (with the recent addition of La Villete) has aimed to offer a comfortable recreation space for those who remain in the city. The attractions of Paris Plages are mostly free and open to all. An "open air drinking ban," however, has meant that those who once brought a home-made picnic and bottle of wine might now be forced to avail themselves of the many and, according to some, overpriced Paris Plage brasseries instead.
Amsterdam City "Beach" on the roof of the NEMO Museum. Source: Tino Morchel
Beyond the issues raised by the commodification of public space, critics have questioned the environmental impact of carting in large amounts of sand for such a brief period of time. However, several European capitals now proudly present their summer residents and visitors with at least one man-made beach. Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, Moscow, Prague and Vienna — to name just a few — are converting city spaces into sandy urban oases for a few weeks every summer. Amsterdam boasts no less than four city beaches, while Copenhagen's most famous summer splash spot is a riff off Copacabana, at least in name.
While London has so far resisted the trend, one can still enjoy sand in the shape of a couch in front of the Globe Theatre on the South Bank — before the tide of the mighty Thames wipes it away. Alternatively, during those brief spells of good weather, for £1.50 you can lounge for an hour in a Hyde Park deck chair.
Sculpting the sand on London's South Bank. Source: Normco
Deck chairs in London's Hyde Park. Source: Andy Pallister
In Moscow, known for turning into a boiling cauldron in summer, the range of choices is also rich. Until recently, most sunbathing and swimming spots were appropriations of existing river banks and parks rather than eventified realms. Now from Kirovsk and Strogino to Serebryany Bor (a longtime favorite for nudists), Muskovites can enjoy refurbished sporting and barbecue areas equipped with WiFi.
Serebryany Bor sunbathers. Source: In Moskau
There is nothing evil about providing city dwellers with options for an urban vacation. However, there is something disconcerting about government officials allowing corporations to reap financial benefits from social activities that were once free and improvised, as public space becomes more and more scarce.
+ share
1. Very nice article and overview of the different types of public spaces, and urban vacation spots. I appreciate the range of modifications presented from capital intensive concrete steps for chairs to the simple lawn chair in a park.
The question I have is whether or not the presence of corporate/business interests makes these types of spaces more sustainable in the long term? What were the conditions 5, 10 or 50 years prior, and has the influence of money undermined the experience of a place? It would be nice to see a follow up showing a comparative case study that demonstrates the pro's and con's of infusing private interests in public space. If this is a trend, it would be best to identify best practices to promote a sensitive and appropriate marriage between public and private agendas.
Living briefly in NYC, I am aware of the transformation of Bryant Park, and the dramatic changes that have taken place over the past fifty years. From a derelict space, the park has seen vast improvements from it's previous condition. The public now experiences many free events and activities at the expense of subtle advertising and the presence of businesses such as a sandwich shop. It's not unreasonable, and in contrast to the rampant advertising in the street, I applaud the care taken to make the advertising in Bryant Park subtle.
2. I see the decreasing public character of public spaces as a huge con of involving the private, Bland. And corporate interests do tend to result in just this, also in Bryant Park. Many governments are unaware of the possible effect of private interests on public spaces and the public character of city centers. Undesirables (appointed by commercial stakeholders) are often pushed from city centers which affects, among other things, the sense of community. You may some like classics from Fainstein, Sorkin and good old Sennett.. | http://www.thepolisblog.org/2012/07/summer-in-city.html | [
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If you are worried about not speaking Spanish for your upcoming trip to Costa Rica, you’re not alone. We remember those days too and hear from lots of others who are unsure of how they’ll get by without much or any Spanish. The good news is that many Ticos (Costa Ricans) have some English skills, and others, especially those working in the tourism industry, are quite fluent. Costa Rica is a Spanish-speaking country, however, and you are bound to get some blank stares in certain situations. In this post, we’ll give you some of the most common Spanish words and phrases for your visit to Costa Rica.
Simple Spanish for Visiting Costa Rica | Two Weeks in Costa Rica
Talking with the Locals
Before we start in on the specifics, there is something you should know about talking Spanish to Ticos. Costa Ricans are in general some of the friendliest people on earth. For this reason, they will usually go out of their way to help you. This applies to speaking Spanish as well so don’t feel stupid if the person you are talking to is correcting your pronunciation or word choice. In most instances, they really appreciate that you are trying and only want to help.
Another thing that goes along with this is that many Ticos are just as shy about their English skills as you are about your Spanish. If you have the confidence to try speaking some Spanish, you might find that suddenly they get up the courage to use their English too. If you both sound bad but somehow figure it out, everyone wins!
Different Scenarios
Below are some of the situations you’re likely to encounter on your next trip to Costa Rica.
Saying Hello
Hola = Hello. This is the basic way to say hello.
Buenos días = Good morning
Buenas tardes = Good afternoon
Buenas noches = Good evening
Buenas = Shorthand way of saying hello, any time of day. It is more casual and works in the morning, afternoon, or evening. You’ll hear the locals use this all the time.
Saying Goodbye
Chao = Bye. The basic way to say goodbye.
Adiós = A slightly more formal way of saying goodbye. We have also heard adiós used as a sort of greeting and goodbye. For example, if you are driving past someone walking on the street and want to greet them, you could say adiós instead of hola. The idea is that you aren’t staying around to chat.
Hasta luego = See you later, or literally, until later.
Hasta mañana = See you tomorrow (“until tomorrow”).
Asking for Things
Discúlpe = Excuse me (when you need to get someone’s attention).
Quiero… = I would like…
Necesito… = I need…
¿Tiene…? = Do you have…? Good to use if you’re looking for a certain item at a store (e.g., ¿Tiene Tylenol?)
¿Puedo…? = Can I…?
¿Puede…? = Can you…?
¿Dónde? = Where?
¿Dónde está…? = Where is…? Useful when asking for directions or where something is (¿Dónde está el baño? Where is the bathroom?)
¿Cuanto cuesta? = How much does it cost?
¿Acepta tarjetas de crédito? = Do you accept credit cards?
¿Habla Inglés? = Do you speak English? Some Ticos might reply un poco (a little).
¿De donde eres? = Where are you from? Los Estados Unidos is the United States; Canadá is Canada. Remember that America is used to describe North, Central, and South America.
= Yes
No = No
Tal vez = Maybe
Claro = Of course
In a Restaurant
¿Para tomar? = What would you like to drink? This is usually the first thing a server will ask you.
Agua = Water. You might want una botella de agua (a bottle of water) or agua del tubo (tap water).
Una cerveza = A beer. Check out our post about the most popular local beers.
Vino = Wine. Vino tinto is red wine and vino blanco is white wine.
Café = Coffee. The server will ask you ¿Café con leche o negro? (Coffee with milk or black). Don’t worry, they always bring sugar packets.
Refresco naturale = A fruit drink with ice (hielo).
Batido = A fruit smoothie. Con agua means blended with ice and con leche means blended with ice and milk (milk shake).
Popular Local Dishes
Gallo pinto = Breakfast dish of rice and beans mixed together, served alongside eggs and fried plantain. Sometimes comes with fried local cheese (queso), toast (tostadas) or tortillas, and fruit (frutas). Gallo pinto literally translates to painted rooster.
Huevos fritos = Fried eggs
Huevos revueltos = Scrambled eggs
Casado = Lunch Plate. Casado translates to “married” and this traditional lunch dish truly has a marriage of flavors. The dish usually consists of rice (arroz) and beans (frijoles), a protein like meat (bistec/steak; chuleta de cerdo/pork chop; or pollo/chicken) or fish (pescado), and several side salads like green salad (ensalada verde), pasta salad (ensalada pasta), etc.
Arroz con pollo = Rice with chicken. This is a fried rice dish that is very flavorful. Instead of chicken (pollo), you might also see rice with shrimp (arroz con camarones) and other variations.
Sopa = Soup. Common soups are olla de carne (similar to beef stew), sopa de mariscos (seafood soup), and sopa negra (black bean soup, usually with a poached egg). Soups are typically served with a side of white rice.
Cashing Out
Para llevar = To go (for your leftovers)
La cuenta, por favor = The bill, please. In Costa Rica, the server won’t bring this unless you ask for it.
Servicio = Service. This is the 10% added to the bill for tip. You can add more if you like.
Impuestos ventas = Sales tax (13%)
Estación de buses = Bus station
Parada de bus = Bus stop
Tiquete = Ticket (for the bus, ferry, etc). Not all buses use tickets but it is good to ask. ¿Necesito un tiquete? (Do I need a ticket?).
Taxi = Taxi
¿A donde va? = Where are you going? What’s your destination?
Voy a… = I am going to…
Pare aquí = Stop here
¿Esta es la calle a…? = Is this the road to…?
Lleno con regular, por favor = Fill it with regular (gas) please. Gas stations in Costa Rica are always full service.
La llanta necesita aire = The tire needs air.
We hope these simple Spanish words and phrases will help you feel more comfortable while traveling to Costa Rica. When we first visited almost ten years ago, we had zero knowledge of Spanish and got along fine. Just remember, the one term you need to learn is Pura Vida. This can mean hello, goodbye, and that’s great, but the real meaning is more of an attitude that you will discover once you arrive and will never forget.
If you’re looking for a lot more helpful words and phrases, we highly recommend the pocket-sized Costa Rican Spanish Phrasebook by Lonely Planet. This is what we used to carry with us when we were newbies and it got us out of a lot of jams.
Notice anything essential missing from our list? Add it to the comments below!
Looking for more resources for your upcoming trip? Check out these posts: | http://www.twoweeksincostarica.com/simple-spanish/ | [
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Prevent Direct Execution of EXE
The sample code here is pretty simple:
#include "mainwindow.h"
#include <QApplication>
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
QApplication a(argc, argv);
if (argc <= 1)
return 0;
if (argv[1] != "yourpassword")
return 0;
MainWindow w;;
return a.exec();
In the example above, your EXE will simply pop out an error message that says “Please run MyGame.exe instead.” if you double click on it directly. This is because the argc variable is either 0 or 1 (depending on platform, which means no additional input argument during launch) if you run it directly.
However, if there is one or more arguments being dumped to the program during launch, check (within the argv array) whether the second argument (the first argument is usually the program’s name) matches your secret phrase or password before allowing the program to launch. Usually there will be input arguments if the user drag one or more files to the EXE to make it launch, as this is very useful for programs like text editors or image editors. That’s why we must check if the argument matches your password or not.
Now that your program can no longer be run directly, what about the updater? How to ask the updater to execute your main program with an input argument? It’s actually pretty easy as well. In the following example I will be using C/C++ and Qt, but it should be similar across different programming languages and platforms:
QProcess *process = new QProcess(this);
delete process;
That’s all, it’s very simple to achieve. The tutorial above is by no mean professional: Technical names and phrases are not necessarily accurate, and the method used is not necessarily the standard way. I’m just trying to share what I know and what I did with my own projects. Peace.
Gigabyte BRIX (Intel NUC) GB-XM12-3227 Review
So… the other day I bought this Gigabyte BRIX barebone which is basically an Intel NUC system, but manufactured by Gigabyte. I’ve tried the vanilla Intel NUC systems before and it worked great, except the older generation which had over-heating issue but resolved after adding a thermal pad to it as well as a firmware upgrade, but overall still pretty okay I guess.
Now, back to Gigabyte BRIX, specifically the GB-XM12-3227 model. I can’t talk about the other models as I have never used it before, so let’s just stick to this one.
All-and-all, it worked fine at first. It booted up Windows 10 without any problem, HDMI connected to the monitor without any problem, great resolution, etc. UNTIL I tried to use the web browser. Even though the internet status is “connected”, I still couldn’t use the damn internet on my browser.
After hours and hours of research and trials, I realized that the issue is the firmware. Not only it’s old (from 2013), but it’s supposedly for Windows 8.1, and not Windows 10. Went to Gibabyte’s website to look for the latest drivers, and guess what, they only have firmware updates up to 2014, so still, no Windows 10 support.
Further more, I downloaded the latest BIOS and tried to flash it, only to realize the BIOS utility doesn’t support 64-bit Windows, because it is a god-damn Windows XP Service Pack 2 executable file!
Then, I went to Windows 10’s Device Manager and check out my wireless network adapter’s properties. This is when I realized the WiFi adapter only supports up to IEEE 802.11b/g and not the newer IEEE 802.11b/g/n, which unfortunately is what I set on my router. So then I moved over to my router’s admin page and changed the Transmission Mode to the appropriate setting.
I have no idea what’s causing this. Outdated BIOS? Outdated drivers? I have no idea.
However, despite able to connect to the internet now, the speed is still very limited. Often time it took roughly 20 seconds or more just to load a web page.
Then, I used a Chinese software called 360安全卫士 (translated as “360 Safety Guard”) and went to the “Optimization and Speed-up” page. That particular page contains an automated scan-and-fix feature which includes “network speed-up” option.
After running the optimization process, my wireless network is finally back to usable state! What sorcery is that?? (However, IEEE 802.11b/g/n is still not supported).
Overall, the Gigabyte BRIX works okay except the BIOS and drivers are really outdated and urgently need an update. That’s all for today, have a nice day folks.
OpenGL Side Project
At the moment my prototype does the following:
• Running OpenGL 3.2 core profile and GLSL 150
• Loads OBJ files and PNG/JPEG textures
• Move, rotate, scale model
• Skybox
Some Quick Update
Stay tuned.
Easter Egg
| http://www.zhieng.com/author/leezhieng/ | [
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Fixing bugs like it's 1988
I grew up in the 80's, the decade home computers went from curiosity to mainstream. In primary school we had several Philips P2000T home computers and a pair of Apple Macintosh — ehm, Macintoshes? Two of those, anyway. A friend had a C64 we used to play games on, and at some point my dad bought a C128 for his financial administration. (What I really love is the fact that, to this day, he is still doing his financial administration on a C128, albeit an emulated one. He is an "if it ain't broke don't fix it" kinda guy.)
Soon after the C128, we got a C64. Where the C128 was for business, the C64 was for fun. I have fond memories playing games such as Space Taxi, Super Cycle, Velicopede, Last Ninja II, and Electrix, to name a few. It was also the computer that got me into programming.
With the invention of the World Wide Web still a couple of years off, learning to program mostly involved reading books and magazines. Computer magazines would often publish source code listings which the reader could type in. The result could be anything: A game, a disk copy tool, a drawing program for GEOS, or, more often than not, something that didn't quite work because of typos. At some point, magazines started publishing listings with a checksum added to each line. They offered special tools that would compute the checksum of each line you typed, and checked it against the checksum you typed in at the end of the line. This helped a lot. Still, it must have been one of the slowest and most error prone ways to copy a computer program in the history of computer programs. It was fun though, or at least, that's what I thought.
One such magazine was Commodore Dossier, a "practical magazine for the active Commodore owner", which ran from 1984 until 1988. The 17th issue, which was also the last issue, featured a type-in listing for a rather interesting game. It was called Blindganger, which translates to dud, but was used to mean blind person (ganger literally means go-er, someone who goes).
The cover of Commodore Dossier, issue 17.
In the aftermath of what one can only imagine must have been a proper night on the town, the blind guy in question somehow wakes up inside the city sewers. It's the player's job to guide him back to the streets using only the sounds created by his white cane for guidance.
The city's wastewater division, being exceptionally keen on sewer hygiene, flushes the sewers every five minutes. Each flush lands our blind guy someplace else inside the sewers, from where he has to restart his search for the exit. On the third flush the game ends. A map of the sewers is displayed, showing the location of the exit as well as the locations visited by the player.
Having typed-in the listing sometime in the fall of 1988, I started the game. It had a sprite animation of a bat flying in front of the full moon on an otherwise completely black screen, which I thought was pretty cool. However, I couldn't figure out the controls. The sewer map should have helped, of course, but something was wrong with it. The locations marked as visited on the map did not seem to match the path I thought I had taken. Also, sections of wall would often be marked as visited.
An example of a sewer map produced by the original game.
After a couple of tries I gave up and went on to do other things, but this business with the sewer map and the incomprehensible controls somehow stuck with me. And so, when I came across a scan of this particular issue of Commodore Dossier I knew it was time to sort it out once and for all.
Of course, before I could start, I had to type in the listing again. Back in 1988, I lacked the checksum tool published by Commodore Dossier. Maybe the map of the sewers was messed up just because of my not-quite-touch-typing skills?
A quick Google search turned up a disk image that contained a program called "CHECKSUM DOSSIER". This sounded promising! To confirm, I ran the program and typed a short line from the Blindganger listing: "240 RETURN", followed by the checksum "7E". Then I tried inserting a typo either in the line itself or in the checksum. In both cases, this resulted in the message "FOUT IN REGEL", or "ERROR IN LINE", being printed on the screen. Oh yeah!
Ain't that cute, BUT IT'S WRONG!!
I typed in the listing using the checksum tool. Parts of the scan were of rather low quality and here the tool really helped a lot. I often found myself trying variants of some line and its checksum until I found a combination that matched. So far, so good. Now I had a copy of the original that was guaranteed to be free of typos. Surely, this copy would not produce the same sewer maps as the copy I typed in back in 1988. But... it did!
To find out why, I needed to locate the code that displays the map of the sewers. The sewer map is displayed when the game ends, which happens when the player finds the exit or when the sewers are flushed for the third time. Concentrating on the second case, I looked through the BASIC listing of the game for a check on zero or three.
Sure enough, on line 1780, the variable MAAL is compared to zero. This variable is initialized to three on line 1550 and counts down on each flush of the sewers.
The block of code on lines 1810 – 1840 is executed if MAAL equals zero. Line 1840 is an endless loop. Looking at the other three lines of BASIC, our next target is the machine code subroutine located at memory address 16540 ($409C).
1810 POKECROSS+4096,1 :REM MARK EXIT ON THE MAP
1820 SYS16540 :REM COPY MAP TO SCREEN
1840 GOTO1840 :REM ENDLESS LOOP
This subroutine consists of two parts. The first part copies 1000 bytes from the memory region starting a $6000 to screen memory ($0400 – $07E7). This fills the entire screen (40 columns times 25 rows = 1000 bytes) with a map of the sewers.
As it turns out, this part does not contain any bugs. The map of the sewers may look strange, until you notice that all of the blocky bits are walls, '@' marks a horizontal section of pipe, 'A' marks a vertical section of pipe, 'B' through 'J' mark different types of corners and crossings, 'K' marks a pit, and 'L' marks the exit. These characters are not random. They correspond to screen codes 0 through 12. The map is just a dump to the screen of the internal representation of the sewers used in the game.
The second part of the subroutine copies 1000 bytes from the memory region starting at $7000 to color RAM ($D800 – $DBE7). This marks all visited locations with the color yellow.
L40CB: LDA #$FF ; >-- initialization --
STA $FB ; |
LDA #$6F ; |
STA $FC ; |
LDA #$F4 ; |
STA $FD ; |
LDA #$D7 ; |
STA $FE ; <--------------------
LDX #$04 ; >-- outer loop -----------------
L40DD: LDY #$FA ; >-- inner loop I --- |
L40DF: LDA ($FB),Y ; (copy bytes) | |
STA ($FD),Y ; | |
DEY ; | |
LDY #$FA ; >-- inner loop II ----------- |
L40E8: INC $FB ; (update base addresses) | |
BNE L40EE ; | |
INC $FC ; | |
L40EE: INC $FD ; | |
BNE L40F4 ; | |
INC $FE ; | |
L40F4: DEY ; | |
DEX ; |
The bytes are copied in four blocks of 250 bytes. The outer loop uses the X-register to count from 4 down to 0.
LDX #$04
; inner loop
BNE L40DD
The first inner loop uses the Y-register to count from #$FA (250) down to 0.
L40DD: LDY #$FA
L40DF: LDA ($FB),Y
STA ($FD),Y
BNE L40DF
Indirect-indexed addressing is used to copy bytes in the inner loop. In this addressing mode, the Y-register is used as an offset that is added to a 16-bit base address stored in zeropage.
For example, the instruction LDA ($FB),Y is executed as follows:
• Read the litte-endian 16-bit base address stored in zeropage locations $FB and $FC. Little endian byte order means the least significant byte is stored at the lowest address ($FB). $FB is initialized to #$FF and $FC to #$6F, so the 16-bit base address is $6FFF.
• Add the value of the Y-register to the base address to compute the effective address. The Y-register is initialized to #$FA at the beginning of the loop. Adding to $6FFF yields $70F9 as the effective address.
• Load a byte from the effective address into the accumulator (A-register).
The Y-register counts down from 250 to 0. Note that the smallest value of Y used as an index is 1. (When the DEY instruction decreases Y to zero, the following BNE branch instruction will fall through, exiting the inner loop.)
The first byte to load is located at $7000. Because the minimal value of Y is 1, the source base address needs to be initialized to $7000 - 1 = $6FFF. Similarly, the first byte to store is located at $D800, so the target base address should be initialized to $D800 - 1 = $D7FF. Instead, it is initialized to $D7F4!
Accidentally typing #$F4 instead of #$FF is not very likely. But in decimal, this corresponds to typing 244 instead of 255. It seems the original author accidentally hit the 4 instead of the 5 while typing the constant 255! This shifts the colors used in the sewer map by 11 positions relative to the map itself. In turn, this means the locations marked as visited on the map are wrong.
The offending byte resides in a data statement on line 3670 of the BASIC listing:
3670 DATA 252,169,244,133,253
After changing it to the correct value of 255, the sewer map displays correctly. And that's that.... bug fixed after 29 years!
To celebrate, I've put together a 2017 version of the original game that includes this fix, as well as fixes for several other issues I came across while going over the code:
• Visited locations are correctly displayed on the sewer map shown at the end of the game.
• The time penalty for falling down a pit is taken into account when computing the amount of time left.
• The street noise volume is set such that it depends on the distance to the exit (as intended by the original authors).
• English translation. (Press and hold the H-key during the game to view the online help.)
Blindganger 2017 is also available as a BASIC listing including checksums. For the authentic 80's experience, just download and run the Commodore Dossier checksum tool (see link below) and start typing!
In the next episode, we will make some improvements to the (now correct) sewer map to make it easier to understand (see the example below).
X marks the spot!
Related links:
1. Very interesting! BTW what software package is your father using for finances? I'm a sucker for CBM retro.
1. You probably won't be familiar with it. The program is called Bookspeed. My father is a general practitioner. Bookspeed was written by J.L van Geijlswijk, another GP. It was specifically written for GPs to do their accounting. It was fairly comprehensive, featuring double entry accounting, annual balance sheet generation, et cetera. It stored the data entered by the user as part of the program itself as DATA statements.
I remember having to fix the disk image by hand from inside the emulator using Disk Doctor, because my dad had closed the emulator in the middle of a write. Fun times!
2. Very nice story! Had similar experiences with my ZX Spectrum and badly printed, hard to read source code listings found in various magazines.
On a related note: I also used the Spectrum for some of my homework in highschool - calculating parabolas and such. Back then it was called chaeting, where as today, I might have been considered the next Bill Gates or something...
3. I echo Marc Carson's sentiment: would be great to know what finance app your dad uses for the C128. Also, that is one hell of a cool debugging project, well done!
4. Wow. I love this. It'd be nice to see/hear a video of the game in all its fixed glory.
1. Thanks! Actually, I think a video would get pretty boring pretty fast. You really have to play it to get into it. The game needs (plenty of) your imagination. Like Rogue on the PC, if you're familiar with that. Unless you can convince yourself that 'B' is a ferocious bat and 'Z' really is a zombie, it stays rather dull.
5. Fun read, nostalgia warming the heart. Thanks! And I too would be curious to know what software your father is still using...
6. Crying from nostalgia here. Think it was more like 1983, writing self-taught machine code directly to memory.... and programming the sound chip from the register list that was in the printed manual YOU GOT WITH THE MACHINE!
7. Wow. What incredible commitment to revising the imperfect past. Have some groovy 80's-ish music on us:
Also, capital L Love Commodore, but came much later to the party. Amigas were my introduction to computers.
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General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Title: Constant-roll Inflation in $F(R)$ Gravity
Abstract: We propose the study of constant-roll inflation in $F(R)$ gravity. We use two different approaches, one that relates an $F(R)$ gravity to well known scalar models of constant-roll and a second that examines directly the constant-roll condition in $F(R)$ gravity. With regards to the first approach, by using well known techniques, we find the $F(R)$ gravity which realizes a given constant-roll evolution in the scalar-tensor theory. We also perform a conformal transformation in the resulting $F(R)$ gravity and we find the Einstein frame counterpart theory. As we demonstrate, the resulting scalar potential is different in comparison to the original scalar constant-roll case, and the same applies for the corresponding observational indices. Moreover, we discuss how cosmological evolutions that can realize constant-roll to constant-roll eras transitions in the scalar-tensor description, can be realized by vacuum $F(R)$ gravity. With regards to the second approach, we examine directly the effects of the constant-roll condition on the inflationary dynamics of vacuum $F(R)$ gravity. We present in detail the formalism of constant-roll $F(R)$ gravity inflationary dynamics and we discuss how the inflationary indices become in this case. We use two well known $F(R)$ gravities in order to illustrate our findings, the $R^2$ model and a power-law $F(R)$ gravity in vacuum. As we demonstrate, in both cases the parameter space is enlarged in comparison to the slow-roll counterparts of the models, and in effect, the models can also be compatible with the observational data. Finally, we briefly address the graceful exit issue.
Comments: minor revision, typos corrected
Cite as: arXiv:1704.05945 [gr-qc]
(or arXiv:1704.05945v2 [gr-qc] for this version)
Submission history
From: Vasilis Oikonomou [view email]
[v1] Wed, 19 Apr 2017 22:13:21 GMT (415kb)
[v2] Sun, 25 Jun 2017 18:35:12 GMT (414kb) | https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.05945 | [
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The power of math can be exponential
When I was in elementary school, my parents made sure that I learned. They knew that all of my subjects were important, certainly. But I have special memories of discussing literature and history over the dinner table. They made sure that I really LEARNED my math. I had some terrific teachers in all of those subjects.
Somewhere along the line, though, I developed a special appreciation for math. As a result, I majored in business in college. It is certainly not a leap, since business is full of math. For the past 5 years, I have been a professional tutor, and have loved it. Although I tutor MANY subjects, the one that is in the most demand is math. I have a special love for tutoring pre-algebra and algebra. I practically skip through my day on the days I will be teaching math. I make it a special goal to help my students not only understand math, but perhaps to even fall in love with it.
It used to be that I would comb book sale tables at the library and garage sales for novels. But these days, I scour them for math textbooks. I am on the lookout for innovative explanations and examples that will help my students. I am quite enamored with Khan academy, as he explains so many things so well. I always let my families know about his resource. It is a terrific site to visit. You don’t have to be a student ~ he has tutorials on all kinds of things. Here is the site ~ go ahead, take a look. I will wait.
Many of my competitors think that I am crazy to tell them about a free resource. MY goal is to turn my students into independent learners, so that they can soar like eagles at some point. Through my tutoring, and multiple resources, they can learn every day, even when they are not in a session with me.
To those students who ask the typical question “Why do I have to learn this? When will I EVER have to use it in REAL life?” I smile and tell them a story.
When I took Algebra 2/Trigonometry in high school, I had a fabulous math teacher. His name (really and truly) was Mr. John Wayne. He was the tennis coach, and he was a great math teacher. One day I was particularly frustrated. I raised my hand and asked him those very questions. He just smiled at me. He tossed his chalk up and down, catching it every time. Then he said, “some day, years from now, you will be using algebra in ways you cannot even begin to imagine today. When you do, I hope you will think of me”. Believe me, I do think of him. After all, I walk in his magnificent footsteps when I tutor math. I raise my eyes to the heavens, and I say, “thanks. I LOVE algebra, and I completely understand why you taught it”.
I tell my students that learning is SO important. It IS worthwhile. I loved this article that I have included at the end of this post.
First person: Math has power over all else
By Kevin Levine
Friday January 10, 2014 9:03 PM
For as long as I can remember, I’ve liked numbers.
I like math.
That puts me in a powerful minority.
People who understand and embrace math wield the most powerful weapon ever made.
Let’s dispense with the obvious reasons that math is powerful.
The most effective (destructive) weapons rely on physics, or the science of equations, and chemistry. (Try making a stable mixture of chemicals without math.)
Some of the constructive uses are equally powerful: Medicines, medical equipment, roller coasters, air travel and cellular technology all rely on math.
Yet the true power of math comes from the ignorance and fear of it.
One of my earliest memories of math’s potency stems from this: “Four out of 5 dentists recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum.”
Anyone of a certain age knows the saying from a Trident gum commercial.
I remember thinking as a child that Trident gum must be good for me.
That’s power.
Before long, I started asking questions: Which doctors? Why didn’t the fifth doctor recommend sugarless gum? How many doctor s were asked?
A few years later: Do these dentists work for Trident? Why would dentists recommend gum at all?
How often is a statistic presented as fact, in a vacuum, without supporting documentation or an understanding of the source of the statistic?
A statistic is used as a club to hammer home a message. When one doesn’t understand all that went into generating the statistic, its power becomes immense — a blunt instrument that relies on the general population’s dislike, and ignorance, of math.
How about math as an economic weapon?
Isn’t it wonderful that tuna fish (or peanut butter or jelly) hasn’t gone up in price in years?
Thank math.
The tuna can contained 8 ounces, then 6 ounces, then 5 ounces.
Incremental changes in volume go unnoticed because the price remains constant.
Consumers think: “Wow, tuna prices are stable.”
The tuna company thinks: “Wow, consumers are ignorant.”
Politicians love math, too.
They cherry-pick one statistic from an obscure report commissioned by an obscure group whose agenda might not be to the betterment of humanity.
Politicians use math to convince us that everything would be OK if we just cut fraud and abuse in the welfare system.
They use math to confirm that the American education system is failing.
They use math to justify increased spending in their districts while bemoaning the spending everywhere else.
Politicians thrive on the public’s fear and ignorance of math.
The only way to weaken math’s destructive capabilities is to embrace math.
Instead of telling our children we weren’t good in math, we should tell them that math is the secret to power — that it will make them creative, competitive, powerful, less prone to scams and more valuable in the workplace.
We should tell our children to respectfully question authority, especially when numbers are used as weapons.
Mastering math, our children should learn, is akin to mastering the most powerful weapon on Earth.
Kevin Levine, 48, of Bexley teaches sixth-grade math at Karrer Middle School in Dublin.
About Kate Kresse
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7 Responses to The power of math can be exponential
1. Kathy says:
Love it!
Texas has decided to drop Algebra II as a graduation requirement. I have very mixed feelings about this change in our curriculum.While some students are not going to go to college and their trade school won’t require it others may be sadly surprised when they find that the school of their choice requires it even though Texas doesn’t.
• Kate Kresse says:
i have mixed feelings about that too, Kathy. there is such a feeling of mastery/accomplishment when you complete Algebra II. There are som many ways for them to learn it, and it robs them of something valuable to cancel the requirement. That is regardless of who “requires” it at the next level. {sorry it took me so long to reply!]
2. Kathy says:
Reblogged this on To Talk of Many Things and commented:
3. And it all begins with learning to count, add, multiply, etc. They want to skip that part, these days, the part that even as a math-unappreciative, I KNEW I would always need. Amazing, eh?
• Kate Kresse says:
In addition to the drilling of math facts, through repetition and competitively racing to the blackboard, we had so many other ways that we practiced math facts. We skip counted when we did jump rope, we skip counted when we walked, we counted and regrouped when we played jacks, and my folks would play math games. Math enriched us.We cooked and measured things with our moms (sewing, buttons, etc). We measured things and grouped things with our dads.{A number of my students have never even seen a yardstick, or used a measuring cup}. By doing those things, we had an ingrained “number sense” that many of my students lack. A number of my students don’t connect the integers and fractions to any real meaning. The integer and the word for a number doesn’t necessarily represent a group or a quantity to them at all.
This is similar to a student I had that had reading difficulties. He could read flawlessly, even if you gave him a 12th grade novel. The mechanics, the sentence pauses, the pronunciation, those were all done flawlessly. But he had NO idea what he had just read. This was true whether he read silently or aloud. If I asked him questions about it, he would have to re-check at least a half dozen times, even if I had him read just one sentence, and asked him a basic question about that sentence. There was no meaning attached to the words. This is something that he sort of “outgrew” a couple of years later.
Some of my students have a major disconnect in math, as I described. This makes it nearly impossible for them to memorize their math facts. We are working with counters and charts, so that they can begin to understand and retain the patterns. It mystifies me, it truly does. It frustrates my students!
4. It is no mystery to me, how they got this way, but surely is a mystery why caring adults are sending them this way. I understand, on a governmental level, why we’d want the next generation unable to function, but it seems every teacher out there just doesn’t get it.
Well, almost every…
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publisher Rodney Buike and Virtualization
When I was in Winnipeg, I had the good fortune to meet Rodney Buike at the Winnipeg IT Pro UserGroup. I also killed his Dell Laptop harddrive (which he fixed by smacking it on the desk a few times) and shared some pints of the local Fort Gary brew while debating virtualization technologies and various other topics. Rodney is a Microsoft MVP for Windows Server and the publisher of (Great Site!). He also provides content for and is working on a book on Virtual Server 2005.
He took up my challenge to provide content for the Canadian IT Pro team blog as a guest blogger - so please welcome him and his first post:
Virtualization technologies have been around for years. Vmware was one of the first to begin selling virtualization software in 1999 and in early 2003 Microsoft purchased virtual machine technologies from a company called Connectix. This purchase led to the development of Virtual PC 2004 and Virtual Server 2005.
In the past, when a user needed to use or test an application on a certain operating system (OS), the user would require a computer on which the OS could be installed which would allow them to test the application. Having to test the application on a number of different OS would require the hardware and time to install the desired operating system.
At the same time systems were becoming more and more powerful and utilized less and less. Today’s multi-GHz and multi-core CPUs, large hard disks and abundance of cheap memory provide more power than most users require. Typically, today’s computers run at about 10-15 percent utilization. By leveraging virtualization technologies, users can harness the extra power and reduce the amount of physical hardware required and instead, install multiple virtual machines with whichever combination of operating systems and applications they require.
The benefits of virtualization are easy to see. Software developers no longer need multiple physical machines, or ghosted images in order to test their applications in different operating system environments, students don’t need a pile of donated computers in order to build a lab environment and get hands on experience with new technologies and IT departments can benefit by consolidating servers and migrating legacy systems to new hardware.
Corporate system administrators can reduce costs by running multiple virtual machines, performing different tasks, on a single physical machine. By doing this, costs are reduced for both the physical hardware requirements as well as the operating system licensing needs. This also allows system administrators to utilize all the power available to them in a physical machine. For example, if an application running on a physical machine only utilizes 15% of machine resources, it would be possible to run 6 virtual machines at 90% utilization. This is a much more economical use of hardware resources.
Today more and more IT departments are looking to leverage the befits of virtualization in an effort to consolidate servers. Improvements in Virtual Server 2005 R2, such as virtual server host clustering, make the idea of virtualizing the corporate infrastructure more acceptable and appealing. If you are (or are not) using virtualization technologies drop me a line with a comment. I am very interested in hearing your reasons why (or why not) and your experiences.
Comments (2)
1. Anonymous says:
I posted my first guest post on the Canadian IT Professionals blog over at TechNet Canada. The article is a brief summary on the benfits of virtualization. Go check it out and add it to your RSS aggregator as there are some great guest bloggers over
2. Anonymous says:
Well time flies when you are having fun, and being an MVP this last year has been a blast. I got notified my term was up and that I am re-nominated and had to send in some information on what I did last year as an MVP. It got me thinking and boy was
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Open Access
• Rajkumar Tulsawani1,
• Lorena S Kelly2,
• Nigar Fatma1,
• Bhavanaben Chhunchha1,
• Eri Kubo3,
• Anil Kumar4 and
• Dhirendra P Singh1Email author
BMC Neuroscience201011:125
Received: 10 April 2010
Accepted: 5 October 2010
Published: 5 October 2010
The ability to respond to changes in the extra-intracellular environment is prerequisite for cell survival. Cellular responses to the environment include elevating defense systems, such as the antioxidant defense system. Hypoxia-evoked reactive oxygen species (ROS)-driven oxidative stress is an underlying mechanism of retinal ganglion cell (RGC) death that leads to blinding disorders. The protein peroxiredoxin 6 (PRDX6) plays a pleiotropic role in negatively regulating death signaling in response to stressors, and thereby stabilizes cellular homeostasis.
We have shown that RGCs exposed to hypoxia (1%) or hypoxia mimetic cobalt chloride display reduced expression of PRDX6 with higher ROS expression and activation of NF-κB. These cells undergo apoptosis, while cells with over-expression of PRDX6 demonstrate resistance against hypoxia-driven RGC death. The RGCs exposed to hypoxia either with 1% oxygen or cobalt chloride (0-400 μM), revealed ~30%-70% apoptotic cell death after 48 and 72 h of exposure. Western analysis and real-time PCR showed elevated expression of PRDX6 during hypoxia at 24 h, while PRDX6 protein and mRNA expression declined from 48 h onwards following hypoxia exposure. Concomitant with this, RGCs showed increased ROS expression and activation of NF-κB with IkB phosphorylation/degradation, as examined with H2DCF-DA and transactivation assays. These hypoxia-induced adverse reactions could be reversed by over-expression of PRDX6.
Because an abundance of PRDX6 in cells was able to attenuate hypoxia-induced RGC death, the protein could possibly be developed as a novel therapeutic agent acting to postpone RGC injury and delay the progression of glaucoma and other disorders caused by the increased-ROS-generated death signaling related to hypoxia.
Uncontrolled rises in intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) are triggered by downregulation of expression and activity of protective molecules in response to changes in the extracellular environment. Such changes often include hypoxia, the scarcity of oxygen can lead to cell injury and death by apoptosis. Recent evidence has shown an increase of intracellular ROS expression in cells during hypoxia, with the source of the increase being the mitochondria [1, 2]. Mammalian cells respond to fluctuations in their micro environmental oxygen by regulating defense genes such as stress response genes, heat shock factor, NF-κB, and HIFα-1. These factors play a decisive role in the fate of cells by activating protective molecules such as PRDX6. However, a scarcity of oxygen to cells also results in functional or adaptive responses [36]. Conversely, prolonged hypoxia can induce genes involved in cell death [7, 8]. The increased levels of ROS during hypoxia and ROS-driven-oxidative stress induce deleterious effects by activating/deactivating genes and deregulating normal survival signaling [9, 10]. This process results in pathophysiology of cells and tissues, such as stroke, cardiovascular disease, tumorigenesis, and development of various blinding eye conditions [11, 12]. The death of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) is a major blinding event, and RGC death has been reported to occur during retinal hypoxia/ischemia [13, 14]. Retinal cells that are highly active require a regular supply of oxygen [11, 15]. Any interruption in oxygen supply due to an abnormality in circulation such as retinal artery occlusion or retinal vein thrombosis or atherosclerosis results in retinal hypoxia/ischemia. An extended period of hypoxia leads to the development of complications such as glaucoma, optic neuropathies, diabetic retinopathies, and retinal vein occlusions [1619]. It has been found that the inner retina is more susceptible to hypoxia, in contrast to outer one [20]. To cope with oxidation-induced adverse effect one natural protective characteristic of eye is that intra-ocular O2 tensions are low however, many other cellular defense systems are evolved such as glycolysis, angiogenesis, vasodilation, and erythropoiesis in response to hypoxia [21], but these protective phenomenon are momentary [22], following which cell death and tissue damage occur [11]. Hypoxia-induced generation of ROS results in imbalance of the cellular oxidant-antioxidant status that leads to failure of cellular homeostasis. ROS-driven oxidative stress is a known cause of lipid peroxidation, protein oxidation, and DNA oxidation, which contribute to neurodegeneration [21, 23, 24]. Oxidative stress also has been reported to be cytotoxic to RGCs [10, 25], causing necrotic or apoptotic death [10, 22, 26, 27]. In addition, the generation of ROS is associated with activation or deactivation of several survival factors [28]. NF-κB is a transcription factor which is activated by various stimuli including oxidative stress. NF-κB plays multiple roles in cell survival, proliferation, and differentiation and also in cell death as a pro- or anti-apoptotic transcription factor, depending on cell type or the nature of injury [29, 30]. A wealth of information documents that RelA containing NF-κB complex has an antiapoptotic effect [31]. In glaucoma, NF-κB is highly activated in RGCs and has been suggested to be proapoptotic and implicated in retinal neuronal cell death [32, 33]. Initiation of apoptotic response to a variety of stress signals via NF-κB requires its translocation into nucleus from the cytoplasm. Under normal circumstances, in cell cytoplasm an association between IkB, an inhibitor protein, and NF-κB dimers renders NF-κB inactive. IkB is a member of a family of regulator proteins, viz. IkB-α, IkB-β, and Bcl3. However, in response to stress signals, IkB undergoes phosphorylation, which releases its inhibition of NF-κB. NF-κB translocates to the nucleus and binds to DNA [10, 34].
Moreover, the over-expression of intracellular ROS caused by extracellular stressors is controlled by antioxidant defenses such as catalase, SOD, glutathione peroxidase, and, most importantly, the newly discovered peroxiredoxins [3539]. The peroxiredoxin (Prdx) family includes six known members (Prdx 1-6). Of particular interest is PRDX6 cloned by our group from human lens epithelial cells cDNA library [40]. This agent has GSH peroxidase as well as acidic Ca2+-independent phospholipase A2 activities [37, 3944]. Recently, our group has shown that PRDX6 has protective potential in saving RGCs against glutamate and TNF-α induced cytotoxicity. It acts by limiting ROS and maintaining calcium homeostasis [10, 37, 42, 43, 4548]. The unique ability to regulate signaling and to maintain phospholipid turnover distinguishes PRDX6 from the other five peroxiredoxins (Prdx1 to 5). This molecule is widely expressed, occurring in high levels in the liver, lung, eye lens, and keratinocytes [37, 40, 4850] including RGCs [9], and its reduced expression can lead to cell death and tissue degeneration [47, 48, 51]. Recently, PRDX6 has been implicated in maintaining blood vessel integrity in wounded skin [52, 53] and in development and progression of several diseases, including oxidative-induced cataractogenesis [43, 54], psoriasis [55, 56], atherosclerosis [51], and parkinsonian dementia [57]. Thus, accumulating evidence indicates that underexpression of PRDX6 contributes to pathophysiology of cells and tissues, and this involves an increase in ROS levels. The increase leads to declines in a number of physiological functions because of overmodulation of ROS-mediated gene expression and activation of factors, including NF-κB. Stimulation of such factors in RGC has been implicated as a cause of the initiation of death signaling [58, 59]. However, given the role of PRDX6 in maintaining cellular homeostasis by blocking death signaling and thereby regulating ROS expression [9, 10, 37], we think that a supply of PRDX6 will attenuate the hypoxia-evoked ROS-induced deleterious signaling in RGCs. In the study described here, we used RGCs exposed to 1% O2 and/or CoCl2, a hypoxia mimetic, as a model system to explore the underlying event(s) of hypoxia-induced RGC death. We have shown that RGCs facing hypoxia for longer periods display elevated expression of ROS and reduced levels of PRDX6, and that RGCs over-expressing PRDX6 gain resistance against hypoxia-evoked generation of ROS and ROS-induced cellular insults, by negatively regulating death signaling.
In this study, we investigated whether chronic hypoxia evoked the production of ROS in RGCs, and whether over-expression of ROS initiated NF-κB-mediated death signaling by phosphorylation/degradation of IkB, resulting in RGC death. In addition, by using transfection and transactivation assays, we showed that ROS-mediated suppression of Prdx6 mRNA and protein expression in RGCs bearing higher levels of ROS could be attenuated by the over-expression of PRDX6. Collectively, these findings provide a foundation for rational use of antioxidant-based therapeutics for treating or preventing/delaying RGC death from ROS driven oxidative stress under hypoxic conditions.
Culture of the retinal ganglion cell
RGC-5 (a kind gift from Neeraj Agarwal, University of North Texas Health Science, Fort Worth, TX, USA) were maintained in Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium (DMEM) containing 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS), 100 U/ml penicillin and 100 μl/ml streptomycin at 37°C with 5% CO2. The cells reaching confluency were trypsinized and subcultured using 1:20 split. RGCs of 5 to 7 passages were used to carry out the experiments.
Generation of Hypoxic conditions
Cells were either exposed to 1% oxygen using hypoxic chamber or they were treated with cobalt chloride, a hypoxia mimic [60, 61] at various concentrations and for various time intervals.
Cell survival assays: MTS and TUNEL assays
Cells (1 × 104) were grown in 48 well plates and treated with 50, 100, 150, 200 or 400 μM of CoCl2 for 24, 48 or 72 h. After treatment period, a colorimetric MTS assay (Promega) was performed as described earlier [37]. This assay of cellular proliferation uses 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-5-(3-carboxymethoxyphenyl)-2 to 4-sulfophenyl)-2H-tetrazo-lium salt (MTS; Promega, Madison, MI). Upon being added to medium containing viable cells, MTS is reduced to a water-soluble formazan salt. The A490 nm value was measured after cobalt chloride treatment at specified duration with an ELISA reader. The values are represented as a percent change to matched controls within cell types.
A TUNEL assay was employed to assess and validate apoptotic cell death. TUNEL staining was performed using an in situ cell death detection kit, Fluorescein (Roche Diagnostics GmbH, Germany), following the company's protocol. Briefly, cells were grown in 4 chambered slide, washed with PBS and fixed in freshly prepared 4% paraformaldehyde in PBS (pH 7.4), followed by incubation in permeabilization solution (0.1% Triton X-100, 0.1% sodium citrate) for 2 min on ice. Cells were rinsed twice with PBS, and incubated in a TUNEL reaction mixture for 60 min at 37°C in the dark. Cells were rinsed three times with PBS. After mounting, samples were microphotographed using a micro-scope (Nikon, ECLIPSE TE 300), and analyzed. To determine the total dead cells, other than only the apoptotic cells, RGCs were stained with trypan blue solution (0.4%), where non viable cells are stained with trypan blue which is normally excluded by the live cells.
Construction of Prdx6 Promoter-Chloramphenicol Acetyl-transferase (CAT) Reporter Vector
The 5'-flanking region from - 1139 to +109 bp was isolated from mouse genomic DNA and sequenced [10]. A construct of -1139 bp was prepared by ligating it to basic pCAT vector (Promega) using the SacI and XhoI sites. Similarly, construct of deletion mutants of different sizes (- 839 to + 109 bp, construct B; -430 to + 109 bp, construct C) of the Prdx6 promoter with appropriate sense primers bearing SacI and reverse primer with XhoI were made [10]. The plasmid was amplified and used for the CAT assay. Primers were as follows: Construct Afor, 5'-CTGAGAGCTC CTGCCATGTTC-3'; Construct Bfor, 5' CTTCCTCTGGAGCTC AGAATTTAC-3'; Construct Cfor, 5'-CACAG-AGCTC GTTCTTGCCACATC-3'; Constructs A, B, and Crev, 5'-CAGGAACTCGAGG AAGCGGAT-3'. We used construct B in the present study.
Assay for intracellular redox state
Intracellular redox state levels were measured using the fluorescent dye, H2-DCFH-DA as described earlier [37, 43]. Briefly, cells were washed once with HBSS and incubated in the same buffer containing 5-10 μg of DCFH-DA for 30 min at 37°C. Intracellular fluorescence was detected with Ex485/Em530 using Spectra Max Gemini EM (Molecular Devices, CA).
Western analysis
Nuclear, cytoplasmic extracts and total Cell lysates were prepared as described previously [10]. Equal amounts of protein samples were loaded onto a 10% SDS gel, blotted onto PVDF membrane, and immune-stained with primary antibodies; PRDX6 monoclonal antibody (1:1000) (Lab Frontier, S. Korea), NF- κB (p65) (Santa Cruz Biotech) and β-actin antibody (Sigma) (1:2000). The membranes were further incubated with horseradish peroxidase-conjugated secondary antibodies (1:1500 dilution) following washing. Specific protein bands were visualized by incubating the membrane with luminol reagent (Santa Cruz Biotechnology) and exposing to film (X-OMAT; Eastman Kodak).
Real-time PCR
To monitor the levels of Prdx6, NF- κB (p65), and β-actin mRNA in RGCs, total RNA was isolated using the single-step guanidine thiocyanate/phenol/chloroform extraction method (Trizol Reagent; Invitrogen) and converted to cDNA using Superscript II RNAase H-Reverse Transcriptase. Quantitative real-time PCR was performed with SYBR Green Master Mix (Roche Diagnostic Corporation, Indianapolis, IN) in a Roche® LC480 Sequence detector system (Roche Diagnostic Corporation). We used primers specific for Prdx6 (forward 5'-TTGATGATAAGGGCAGGGAC-3' and reverse, 5'-CTACCATCACGCTCTCTCCC-3'), NF-κB (forward 5'-TTTCCCCTCATCTTTCCCTC-3' and reverse 5'-TGTGCTTCTCTCCCCAGG-3') and β-actin (forward 5'-CGTGGGCCGCCCTAGGCACCA-3' and reverse 5'-TTGGCCTTAGGGTTCAGGGGGG-3'). The primers were synthesized at University of Nebraska Medical Center, DNA Facility, Omaha, NE, USA. The comparative Ct method was used to calculate relative fold expression levels using the e-Roche software. The Cts of target genes were normalized to the levels of β-actin as an endogenous control in each group.
Expression and purification of GFP-PRDX6 fusion protein
A full length cDNA of Prdx6 was isolated from human lens epithelial cell cDNA library using sense (5'-ATGCCCGGAGGTCTGCTTCTCGGGG-3') and antisense (3'-AATTGGCAG CTGACATCCTCTGGCTC-3') primers, and the resultant amplified product was cloned in pcDNA3.1/NT-GFP-TOPO vector procured from Invitrogen [40]. This construct was used for over-expressing PRDX6 in RGCs. Cells transfected with empty GFP vector served as control.
Statistical method
Data are presented as Mean ± S.D. of the indicated number of experiments. Data were analyzed by Student's t-test when appropriate. A p value of < 0.05 was defined as indicating a statistically significant difference.
Hypoxia induced RGC death with apoptosis, and these cells harbored elevated ROS, reduced PRDX6, and increased NF-κB expression
Recently reports have documented that hypoxia-induced elevation in intracellular ROS is a cause of pathophysiology in cells and tissues [62]. However, hypoxia exerts both proapoptotic and antiapoptotic biphasic effects that seem to be associated with cell types and conditions surrounding the cells. In the present study, we initially used the hypoxia-mimetic agent cobalt chloride (CoCl2) to expose RGCs to hypoxic stress. We examined whether RGCs exposed to such stress showed reduced survival and died with apoptosis and displayed higher ROS levels. Results from cells exposed to cobalt chloride were compared with those from RGCs exposed to 1% O2.
Cells exposed to cobalt chloride showed decrease in cell survival, with levels depending on concentration and exposure time (Figure 1A; black bars). Exposure of RGCs to 1% oxygen for 24 h or 48 h resulted in cell death in a time-dependent manner (Figure 1B; black bars). With both types of exposure, the cellular effects produced by hypoxia were associated with concentration as well as the duration of exposure. These cells were photomicrographed and recorded (Figures 2A-C. arrow; dead cells). The mode of RGC death was apoptosis following treatment with CoCl2 (Figure 2B) or 1% O2 exposure (Figure 2C) after 48 h when compared to unexposed cells (Figure 2A), as shown by TUNEL assay (Figure 2insets).
Figure 1
MTS assay showing effect of hypoxia on the viability of RGCs. Cells (1 × 104) were cultured in 48-well plate containing DMEM supplemented with 10% FBS. 24 h later, cells were washed and treated with variable concentrations of cobalt chloride (A; black bars 50, 100, 200 or 400 μM) or exposed to 1% O2 (B; black bar) for a period of 24, 48 or 72 h. Results are means ± SE of three individual experiments. *p < 0.05.
Figure 2
Photomicrograph of RGCs without (A) or with CoCl 2 (B) or exposed to 1% O 2 (C). Arrow heads denote dead cells. TUNEL staining was performed as described in 'Methods' section to determine apoptotic RGC death following treatment. Insets: Photomicrograph of TUNEL-positive cells (green fluorescent) treated without (A) or with (B) or exposed to 1% O2 (C).
Next, to determine whether RGCs exposed to either CoCl2 or 1% O2 bore higher levels of ROS, we monitored the levels with the fluorescent dye, H2-DCFH-DA. Consistent with earlier reports, an increase in ROS levels was observed in cells exposed to hypoxic stress, and the levels of ROS were increased with increased time of exposure (Figures 3A and 3B; black bars).
Figure 3
Histogram showing intracellular ROS expression in RGCs following CoCl 2 treatment or 1% O 2 exposure. Cells were treated with different concentrations of cobalt chloride (50, 100, 200 or 400 μM) (A) or exposed to1% oxygen (B) for a period of 24, 48 or 72 h. ROS were measured with H2-DCFH-DA dye. Results are means ± SE of 3 experiments. *p < 0.05
Because reduced expression of intracellular PRDX6 is causally related to increase expression of ROS, and NF-κB is a regulator of PRDX6 in cells in the redox state [9, 10, 43, 45], we next examined whether levels of these two molecules were altered in cells under conditions of hypoxia. We conducted Western analysis with PRDX6-specific antibody, and the same blotted membrane was reprobed with NF-κB antibody following restriping. As expected, reduced expression of PRDX6 (Figure 4, PRDX6, 48 h or 72 h, lanes 2-4; Figure 5, PRDX6, 48 h, lane 2) and elevated expression of NF-κB (Figure 4, NF-κB, 24, 48 or 72 h, lanes 2-4; Figure 5, NF-κB, 24 or 48 h, lanes 2 and 4) were observed in cells exposed to hypoxia (48 h onwards) (Because the higher dose of cobalt chloride [400 μM] caused ~ 70% of the RGC death, that dose was excluded). Levels of PRDX6 were found to be increased when analyzed after 24 h of hypoxia exposure generated by cobalt chloride (50, 100 or 200 μM) or 1% oxygen (Figure 4, PRDX6, 24 h, lanes 2-4; Figure 5, PRDX6, 24 h, lane 2). The data illustrate the role of PRDX6 in RGC survival under hypoxia exposure.
Figure 4
Figure 5
Effect of Hypoxic stress on regulation of PRDX6 and NF-κB proteins in RGCs exposed to 1% O 2 . Cells (4 × 105) were cultured in 100 mm culture plates, and after 24 h these cells were exposed to 1% O2 for a period of 24 and 48 h. After treatment, cell extracts were prepared for Western analysis. A significant increase in PRDX6 protein expression was observed after 24 h and reduced after 48 h of 1% O2 exposure (lane 2). In contrast, an increase in NF-κB protein level was observed (middle panel) while no change was detected in the expression of β-actin level (lower panel), suggesting hypoxia specifically reduced the expression of PRDX6. Histogram shows relative density (Pixels) of protein bands. *p < 0.05.
Modulation of PRDX6 and NF-κB in RGCs during hypoxia was due to repression of their transcription
Although it was confirmed at the protein level that the expression of PRDX6 and NF-κB was modulated under hypoxia, it was not clear whether the changes in expression were due to modulation in the translation or in the transcription of these molecules. To clarify the regulation of PRDX6 and/or NF-κB by hypoxic stress at the transcriptional level, the cells were exposed to cobalt chloride (50, 100 or 200 μM) or to 1% O2 as described above for 24 h, and the mRNA from these cells was used to conduct real time PCR. Results demonstrated that RGCs exposed to hypoxia had an abundance of Prdx6 mRNA, but levels of NF-κB mRNA were not found to be dramatically high when compared to the controls (Figure 6A; black bars). To validate further activation of PRDX6 during hypoxia, we performed transactivation assays as described in Methods. RGCs were transfected with Prdx6 promoter linked to CAT construct B [10], and were exposed to hypoxia either by treating the cells with cobalt chloride (50, 100 or 200 μM) or by exposing to 1% oxygen. After exposure to various concentrations of cobalt chloride (Figure 6B; black bars) or 1% oxygen (Figure 6C; black bar) a pronounced activation in Prdx6 promoter activity could be observed, suggesting that Prdx6 is transcriptionally regulated in RGCs under hypoxia. This finding indicates that Prdx6 is upregulated to counteract hypoxia-induced cellular damage mediated via NF-κB, which plays an apoptotic role in RGC death.
Figure 6
Quantitative PCR showing differential expression of Prdx6 and NF-κB mRNA in RGCs with or without treatment with CoCl 2 or exposed to 1% O 2 . Total RNA was isolated and transcribed into cDNA. PCR was performed using specific primers as described in 'Methods' section. mRNA expression of each Prdx6 and NF-κB was adjusted to the mRNA copies of β-actin. Results indicate that mRNA expression level of Prdx6 was significantly increased after 24 h of exposure to different concentrations of CoCl2 (A; 50, 100 or 200 μM) with an increase of NF-κB mRNA. (B) CAT assay showing promoter activity of Prdx6 following hypoxia. Cells were transiently transfected with Prdx6-CAT (B & C). After 24 h of transfection, cells were either treated with cobalt chloride (50, 100 or 200 μM) (B) or exposed to 1% O2 (C; black bar). Transactivation assay was performed after 72 h of transfection. Results indicate that Prdx6 transcription (B and C) was up-regulated following cobalt chloride or 1% O2 exposure, respectively. *p < 0.05.
Hypoxia induced activation of NF-κB and its translocation into nucleus was associated with IkB phosphorylation/degradation
To examine the dynamics of NF-κB and IkB interactions under hypoxia, cells were exposed to 200 μM of cobalt chloride and subcellular fractions were assayed by Western blot NF-κB (p65) nuclear translocation (Figure 7A) and IkB phosphorylation/degradation (Figure 7C). Under normal circumstances, cytoplasmic NF-κB is inactive through interactions with an inhibitor protein IkB. The phosphorylation of IkB unmasks the nuclear translocation signal on the NF-κB. In the present study, cells treated with cobalt chloride showed decreased expression of IkB (Figure 7C; IkB; lane 2), with an increase in phospho-IkB levels (Figure 7D; pIkB, lane 2). The results revealed that kinetics of the increase in p65 in nucleus mirrors the kinetics for phosphorylation and degradation of IkB in cytoplasmic fraction. Further activation of NF-κB was confirmed by transactivation assay; RGCs transfected with pLTR-CAT construct, which consists of two NF-κB sites [43], were subjected to hypoxic stress (1% O2) for 24 h. CAT activity assessed with CAT-ELISA as described in Methods revealed activation of NF-κB (Figure 9C, dark gray bar). Collectively, the findings demonstrate activation of NF-κB by hypoxia.
Figure 7
Western analysis showing NF-κB translocation in nucleus from cytoplasm and phosphorylation of IkBα in RGCs facing hypoxic stress. Cell (4 × 105) were cultured in 10 mm culture plates and were treated with 200 μM of CoCl2 for 2 h. After treatment, cytoplasmic and nuclear extracts were prepared for western analysis. Cells treated with CoCl2 showed increased expression of NF-κB in nucleus (A, NF-κB, lane 2) with concomitant decrease in cytoplasmic expression (B, NF-κB, lane 2). These cells showed reduced expression of IkB (C; lane 2) and enhanced expression of its phosphorylated form pIkB in cytoplasm (D; lane 2).
PRDX6 over-expression attenuated hypoxia-induced RGC death, by reducing ROS production and optimizing NF-κB activation
PRDX6 exerts its protective function by regulating ROS expression and blocking cell death signaling. To determine the efficacy of PRDX6 in abolishing hypoxia-evoked ROS-driven damage to and death of RGCs, we transfected RGCs with pGFP-PRDX6 (2, 4 and 6 μg) as described in Experimental Procedures, and transfection efficiency was equalized with OD obtained from GFP fluorescence at Ex485/Em530. We also confirmed over-expression of pGFP-PRDX6 using Western analysis (Figure 8A) As expected, RGCs over-expressing PRDX6 showed reduced levels of ROS when they were exposed to either cobalt chloride (Figure 8B; 50, 100 or 200 μM; black bars) or 1% oxygen (Figure 8C; black bars). Cell death was reduced by ~20% to 30% as observed in these cells treated with various concentrations of the agents compared to controls transfected with empty GFP vector (Figure 9A; black bars). Similar results were obtained when PRDX6 over-expressed cells were exposed to 1% oxygen (Figure 9B; black bars). To test whether PRDX6 administration attenuated NF-κB activation in RGCs following hypoxia treatment, we did transactivation assay in RGCs using pLTR-CAT construct (Figure 9C). Results showed an increase in the promoter activity following hypoxia (1% oxygen) and the increase could be inhibited by a supply of PRDX6 (Figure 9C; black bar). Western analysis further confirmed that extrinsic supply of PRDX6 reduced expression of NF-κB in RGCs exposed to hypoxia (Figure 9D; NF-κB; lane 3). Taken together, the results demonstrated that PRDX6 protects against hypoxia-evoked oxidative stress mediated cell death by restoring survival signaling, at least in RGCs, and it does so by optimizing ROS expression and NF-κB activation and expression.
Figure 8
Effect of over-expression of GFP-PRDX6 on ROS levels in RGCs following hypoxic stress. Cellular extract was prepared and resolved on SDS-PAGE, and Western analysis was performed using antibody specific to PRDX6, to assess both exogenous and endogenous expression of PRDX6. ~55 kDa protein band was detected as recombinant GFP-PRDX6 protein (A, right lane). Histogram showing ROS levels in RGCs after exposure to hypoxia (B&C). Cells over-expressed with GFP-PRDX6 prevented excessive generation of ROS against CoCl2 (50, 100 or 200 μM). Cells were transiently transfected with either GFP vector or GFP-PRDX6. After 24 h cells treated with CoCl2 (50, 100 or 200 μM).
Figure 9
PRDX6 regulation of NF-kB expression and cellular survival during hypoxia (A). MTS assay showing protective effect of over-expression of PRDX6 on RGCs survival. Cells were transiently transfected with either GFP vector or GFP-PRDX6. After 24 h cells were either treated with CoCl2 (50, 100 or 200 μM) or exposed to 1% O2. Results indicate that GFP-PRDX6 over-expression significantly reduced death of RGCs exposed to CoCl2 (A; 50, 100 or 200 μM) or 1% O2 (B). To monitor the activation of NF-κB, cells were transfected with GFP vector or GFP-PRDX6. These cells were co-transfected with HIV-1LTR-CAT construct (C) having NF-κB sites [37] and were exposed to 1% O2. Results showed the repression of NF-κB-dependent transcriptional activation of HIV-1LTR in cells over-expressing PRDX6 (C; black bar). In parallel experiments, cell extracts was prepared and Western analysis performed to confirm whether GFP-PRDX6 over-expression reduced the expression of NF-κB (D). Upper panel showing decreased expression of NF-κB in nuclear extract of RGCs over-expressing PRDX6.
Changes in oxidant and antioxidant balance may alter cellular homeostasis; cells may go through survival or death pathways, depending upon expression of ROS and antioxidant defense capacity. Eye tissues are constantly exposed to external and internal environmental stresses such as sunlight, chemical irritations, and hypoxia. These stressors may lead to blinding disorders of the eye by inducing abnormalities in the homeostatic system of cells. Interruption of normal blood flow to an organ causes ischemia-hypoxia, which can result in tissue injury in many organs, including the heart, liver, lungs, and retina, all physiologically active tissues. Stresses or deficiency of O2 (hypoxia) in retinal tissues may cause severe damage, subsequently leading to blinding disease.
The manner in which chronic hypoxia causes cell or tissue damage or cell death has been described in several recent reports documenting that the hypoxia evokes overproduction of ROS, which are a major culprit in cell damage [11]. Moreover, as a physiologically active tissue, the retina requires large quantities of oxygen [11], and fluctuations in oxygen level may alter the entire retinal physiology and lead to failure of homeostasis [11]. Systemic hypoxemia caused by lung or heart disease or a vascular disease in the retina can also cause retinal hypoxia and be a major cause of RGC loss. Recent evidence reveals that chronic hypoxia attenuates the cellular prooxidant-antioxidant balance by accumulation of ROS [63], and this condition has been implicated in progressive neurodegenerative diseases. We believe that chronic hypoxia may be associated with reduced expression and activity of survival molecules and antioxidants such as PRDX6 [9, 10, 37, 42, 43, 64]. In the present study, we found that RGCs exposed to hypoxia displayed elevated expression of ROS, which was associated with reduced expression of PRDX6 (Figures 3, 4 and 5), and these cells underwent apoptosis (Figure 2). These results are consistent with earlier findings that human pulmonary and coronary artery smooth muscle cells bear higher levels of ROS, and the elevated levels of ROS are a major damaging factor [65]. Moreover, ROS is source of oxidative stress, has gained more and more attention recently because of its role as a cellular signaling for a various molecules released from activated glia or microglia such as glutamate [9], cytokines such as TNF-α and growth factors [9, 10]. The production of ROS by these molecules has been associated with activation or deactivation of several transcription factors [810, 12, 43]. We think that elevated levels of inflammatory cytokines in the microenvironment of RGCs are responsible for further elevation of ROS in RGCs that leads RGCs death. Recently, we reported that PRDX6 delivery to RGCs can protect against glutamate or TNF-α mediated cytotoxicity, and that the PRDX6 acts by removing ROS and stabilizing NF-κB activation. Notably, both PRDX6 and NF-κB are producers of ROS. While there is much discussion in the research community about increase or decrease of ROS expression during hypoxia, the present study provides evidence that longer periods of hypoxia generate ROS, and ROS-induced abnormal signaling is a major cause of RGC damage or death (Figures 1, 2 and 3). Our data further support our hypothesis that hypoxia induces ROS; RGCs that over-expressed PRDX6 showed resistance against hypoxic stress, reduced ROS expression, and improved survival. Along with others, we have shown that PRDX6 blocks ROS-mediated pathophysiology that occurs during cataractogenesis, neurological disorders, and diabetic-associated disorders [9, 42, 43], and plays a pivotal role in maintaining lung cell homeostasis [44, 48, 6668]. Moreover, our current study revealed that (i) hypoxia evokes intracellular ROS accumulation, which increases with an increase in time, (ii) ROS elevation is causally related to RGC death, and (iii) PRDX6 can attenuate hypoxia-generated oxidative stress-induced RGC death.
Recently, several reports have shown that hypoxic stress induces ROS production, which, if not quenched, leads to cellular pathophysiology [63, 65, 69, 70]. Using a cell culture system, we found that RGCs exposed to either 1% oxygen (physiological hypoxia) or treated with cobalt chloride, a hypoxia mimetic (chemical hypoxia), display elevated expression of ROS (Figure 2) We observed ~30%-60% RGC death in cells with physiological hypoxia (1% oxygen) and ~30%-70% death with cobalt chloride treatment (Figure 1). These data are consistent with previous studies which observed ~25% RGC death after 12 h of exposure to 5% oxygen [71], ~30% cell death after 24 h of 200 μM CoCl2 treatment and found that RGC death following hypoxia was predominantly apoptotic, although both apoptotic and necrotic cell death have been observed [71, 72]. Furthermore, in glaucomatous eyes, selective loss of RGCs occurs [73], and these cells are particularly sensitive to systemic hypoxic stress [74] as a result of long-term oxidative damage induced by ROS [75].
Interestingly, our present study found increased expression of PRDX6 for the first 24 h of hypoxia exposure (Figures 4 and 5), but when hypoxia exposure was prolonged, the expression of PRDX6 was reduced, and the reduction was related to cell death. Thus our results demonstrate a novel mechanism of hypoxia regulation of PRDX6, in which concentration and time of exposure of RGCs to hypoxia play pivotal roles in determining the fate of the RGCs, which is dependent upon PRDX6 expression. Our study further demonstrated that elevated levels of ROS in RGCs caused by hypoxia are a major cause of cell death, and that the increase in ROS can be eliminated by over-expression of PRDX6 (Figures 8 and 9). As other Prdxs did not counteract the changes in RGCs, we consider the role of PRDX6 to be pivotal, at least in those cells. Interestingly, we also found that acute hypoxia is beneficial to RGCs, as the acute condition may attenuate the extent of cellular ROS and provide an adaptive control mechanism. If that is the case, RGC death during eye disorders including glaucoma is probably caused by the cumulative effect of hypoxia over time, which produces ROS-driven oxidative damage. Moreover, elevated ROS expression has been observed in rabbit retinal cells during ischemia induced by high IOP [76]. We have reported that lens epithelial cells (LECs) deficient in PRDX6 bear higher levels of ROS, are vulnerable to oxidative stress, and undergo spontaneous apoptosis [37]. Collectively, our results suggest that the reduced expression of PRDX6 in RGCs exposed to hypoxia may be one cause of RGC death. Moreover, ROS-driven oxidative stress has been related to a number of diseases and disorders. In fact, it is possible that most pathology involves oxidative stress, at least to some extent, and this may occur due to suppression of antioxidants such as PRDX6. Our present work has demonstrated that hypoxia suppresses PRDX6 expression, leading in turn to RGC death.
The identification of genes or their products involved in etiology of oxidant-mediated pathology has already led to important insights into the cellular response to stress and mechanisms of oxidant damage. In previous reports, we described the regulation of PRDX6 gene expression by NF-κB [9, 10], and the dependence of PRDX6 expression level upon cellular redox state. However, when expression levels of ROS exceed the control of cellular antioxidants, cells die by apoptosis or necrosis. We believe that optimizing the level of ROS by the delivery of PRDX6 should prevent or delay ROS-induced deleterious signaling. Furthermore, the generation of ROS has been associated with the activation and deactivation of the transcriptional protein NF-κB [77, 78]. Modulation in the activity of NF-κB in neuronal cells is strongly associated with cellular fate, and NF-κB can have either an antiapoptotic or proapoptotic function [79, 80], depending on cell type or cellular microenvironment [29, 30, 81, 82]. Importantly, in RGCs, activation of NF-κB has been found to induce apoptotic signaling, and suppression of its activation significantly enhances the viability of RGCs [30]. Our results also vividly demonstrate that addition of PRDX6 in RGCs attenuates NF-κB activation induced by hypoxia, suggesting that PRDX6 can block the NF-κB-induced death pathway in RGCs. We believe the survival of RGCs is associated with of NF-κB activation in acute hypoxia, since upregulation of PRDX6 would be able to remove ROS, while hyperactivation or inadequate activation of NF-κB in RGCs may be disastrous. Thus, modulation of NF-κB activation should be an important strategy for reducing cellular injury. Overall, it appears that RGC death induced by hypoxia should also be associated with hyper-activation of NF-κB due to higher levels of ROS during glaucoma or other neurological diseases. The activation of NF-κB is seen in various cell types in response to hypoxia. Hypoxia induced activation of NF-κB occurs through IkB activation and its phosphorylation [83, 84]. In this study, we found that hypoxia exposure activates NF-κB with its subsequent translocation into nucleus. We also found increased phosphorylation of IkB in RGCs following hypoxia. These findings suggest that NF-κB activation in RGCs under hypoxic conditions involves the activation of the canonical pathway through degradation/phosphorylation of the IkBα. Our data demonstrate that cells over-expressed with PRDX6 protect the RGCs from hypoxia-induced oxidative stress by removing ROS and thereby normalizing NF-κB activation.
We have found that hypoxia induces ROS-driven RGC death caused by down regulation of PRDX6 in cells under prolonged hypoxia, and ROS expression is causally associated with PRDX6 expression level. Results further revealed that ROS are differentially regulated during hypoxia; however, increased expression of ROS, due to deficiency of PRDX6, indeed reflects pathophysiology of RGCs. Because delivery of PRDX6 may attenuate RGC death by optimizing intracellular ROS and NF-κB activation, PRDX6 should be considered as therapeutic agent for hypoxia-induced disorders. Further detailed research will be needed to elucidate the mechanisms involved in the PRDX6-mediated protection of RGCs.
Grants provided by the National Eye Institute, NIH (EY-13394 and EY-017613) (to DPS) and Research to Prevent Blindness (R.P.B.) is gratefully acknowledged. Grant support by American Health Assistance Foundation (AHAF) (to NF) is gratefully acknowledged.
Authors’ Affiliations
Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, University of Nebraska Medical Center
Department of Neurosurgery, University of Nebraska Medical Center
Department of Ophthalmology, University of Fukui
Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Missouri- Kansas City
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Life beyond the automobile in Southern California
Archive for the month “July, 2013”
Cars and the Environment Pt. 2
In my review of Tom McCarthy’s Auto Mania (Cars and the Environment pt. 1), we explored the unprecedented environmental harm resulting from the mass production and use of motor vehicles. Whereas McCarthy argues that consumer decision-making drove the automobile to its apex in modern American life, our next author, Christopher Wells, places those consumer decisions in the context of local and national government policies that created a physical environment that virtually required car ownership for full membership in society.
Wells’s book, Car Country: An Environmental History (University of Washington Press, 2012) provides a context for those consumer decisions. If, after all, one is dependent on the automobile because of an infrastructure designed primarily for automobility, how free are those consumer decisions? And how did this infrastructure come to be so dominant? Wells sets his interpretation apart from what he calls the “love affair thesis” (i.e., that America’s love affair with cars is the primary explanation for our car-dominant society) and what he calls the “conspiracy thesis” (i.e., that automobile dominance occurred as a result of a cabal of automobile manufacturers and oil companies removing streetcars and weakening public transportation).
Wells argues that we must look at the broader patterns of land use and development that shape people’s transportation needs and choices. Put bluntly, when developers and government agencies design a landscape to be accessed primarily by automobiles, they create a “car country” that virtually requires automobile ownership. If, on the other hand, a society designs mixed-use landscapes that are conveniently accessible by walking, bicycling, and transit, people will find it easier to get along without a car. He contrasts his own experience growing up in car-centric suburban Atlanta, where he was dependent on a car, and where he cherished his beloved Toyota pickup with his later experience living in Switzerland, where he found it easy (and inexpensive) to get around without a car and where, he notes, “I never really missed having a car.” When he returned to the US, he tried cycling for transportation but it “felt dangerous” once he got beyond the confines of his own neighborhood where “a crush of traffic had enveloped the city in the 1980s.” He concluded from his own experience that “How I felt about cars had little bearing on whether or not I needed one.” Thus, he seeks to understand how people’s need for a car influenced how they felt about cars, and he provides a social and environmental context for Americans’ widespread use of the car by the end of the 20th century. Wells makes a persuasive case that land-use patterns, not attitudes (i.e., the “love affair”) are the strongest determinant of a transportation system’s success, whether it is transit-based or car-based. (pp. xx-xxv) Critics of the car have tended, he says,
to focus on cars rather than roads and on the behavior of drivers rather than the powerful forces shaping American land-use patterns. (xxxiv)
Wells is at his best getting us to “think about landscapes,” and the impact they have on people’s decisions about driving. He contrasts older “streetcar neighborhoods” of the pre-automobile era that were organized around streetcar routes with walkable distances between housing, shopping, and other neighborhood destinations, and the post-WWII “exit ramp neighborhoods” zoned as single-use, geographically separated areas designed to be conveniently accessed only by automobile. The process did not happen by itself, but was facilitated and accelerated by government policies that drove highway design and funding while neglecting public transit and FHA loan guidelines that favored suburban housing and retail developments zoned for single-use. Meanwhile older, mixed-use streetcar neighborhoods were frequently neglected or destroyed by freeway construction and “urban renewal.” Wells shows that the postwar drive to the suburbs was indeed a “choice,” but it was a choice that was virtually the only rational one for many people, given the fact that its immense costs were effectively socialized by federal, state, and local policies. Once the process began, it locked in the auto-centered lifestyle, leaving people few convenient alternatives to the car.
streetcar vs. car design
Wells reiterates the tremendously destructive environmental impact of the automobile highlighted by Tom McCarthy, underscoring the imperative to change the policies that lead to car-dependence for millions. He also highlights the immense challenge this will pose, for the costs of car-dependence are often invisible on an individual level:
Both smog and climate change illustrate a persistent theme in environmental politics: problems that seem negligible or unimportant on an individual scale can, once aggregated, have national or even global environmental implications. Because the problems do not become clear until after large numbers of people are involved, the damaging behaviors have often accrued both widespread social acceptance and economic importance. Moreover, the causal linkage between seemingly harmless behaviors … and environmental problems … frequently requires elaborate scientific explanation. This creates opportunities for entrenched interests to challenge the science … which often take time and study to disprove. As a result, “attack, delay, and ask for more research” has proven a fruitful strategy for those hoping to avoid new environmental regulations. Moreover, because such problems frequently necessitate sweeping changes in established behaviors, effective regulations are frequently intrusive and perceived as onerous. (p. 351)
Applied to the effort to move people away from auto-dependence, this theme suggests a daunting challenge lies ahead for those of us who seek to build a new infrastructure around alternatives to the automobile. Nevertheless, Wells’s study proves that Americans are not hard-wired to love cars, and that creating more compact, mixed-use developments in cities and even suburbs around good transit and safe streets for bicycling and walking can wean Americans from their environmentally destructive and unhealthy auto habit. It also suggests that for many people changing attitudes are likely to follow, rather than precede, a change in our infrastructure.
Cars and the Environment (Pt 1)
As an historian, my summer reading lists lean heavily toward nonfiction history. As an advocate for bicycling, transit, and complete streets, it may strike some as odd that I’m interested in the history of the automobile, but there’s no question that, for better or worse, the automobile has reshaped our world and it behooves those of us who are critical of the car-centered transportation system to understand it in all its complexity. To that end, I will be reviewing two recent scholarly histories on my summer reading list that explore the social and environmental impact of the automobile and my reflection on what this means for moving our culture away from its auto dependency. I’ll provide these reviews serially, so that I can give sufficient attention to each.
The first study under review is Tom McCarthy’s Auto Mania: Cars, Consumers, and the Environment (Yale University Press, 2007), which explores what McCarthy sees as Americans’ “love affair” with the automobile from an environmental standpoint. According to McCarthy, this “love affair” was the result of millions of consumer decisions, and the car as a medium for Americans’ psychological and social desires. In other words, the car has played a central role in 20th century American society, McCarthy argues, because it has been much more than a mode of transportation, it has been an expression of economic success and social identity, Americans’ “chief talisman of successful belonging.” (p. 47) While McCarthy thinks Americans’ consumer-driven car culture has been significantly influenced by the auto industry’s marketing strategies, he argues that consumers have not always been passive recipients of industry marketing. He provides examples of consumers acting in ways that auto manufacturers did not expect, such as the rise of the simple Volkswagen in the 1950s and 1960s as a counterpoint to Detroit’s “bigger is better” mentality. Thus, he sees cars as providing consumers with important cultural capital, beyond the utilitarian aspect. As such, any effort to shift toward a multi-modal transportation system must grapple with the deep psychological attachment Americans have to their cars.
McCarthy’s assessment of the environmental consequences of the “love affair” with cars is the strength of this study. By the 1940s, the environmental impact of the use of automobiles and the burning of gasoline for personal propulsion became obvious and prompted an unprecedented government regulatory apparatus to deal with it. Los Angeles, “car capital” of the nation, not only had some of the nation’s worst smog, but led the effort to regulate it when it became apparent that the smog was negatively affecting the region’s carefully crafted image as a tourist destination. (pp. 116-17) It is sobering to realize that the industry resisted smog controls for decades, meaning that effective reduction of smog in US cities did not occur until the 1970s following the mobilization of the environmental movement. Ultimately, it was a mobilized citizenry demanding government regulation, rather than consumer choice and the free market that cleaned the air in Los Angeles. (p. 254-55) There are important lessons in McCarthy’s book for the effort to regulate carbon emissions today, since it can be argued we don’t have the luxury to wait decades for the industry to shift away from business as usual.
Where McCarthy is at his most trenchant, is his unpacking of a major portion of the oversized environmental footprint of the automobile, from raw material extraction through manufacturing, use, and disposal. While consumer demand may have driven the industry, McCarthy argues, that demand created unprecedented environmental problems. By the 1920s, auto manufacturers were (and still are) among the world’s largest consumers of raw materials such as iron, steel, rubber, plate glass, leather, lead, zinc, and aluminum. Modern strip-mining techniques were pioneered and expanded in order to meet the insatiable demand of the auto industry, deeply scarring the land. Manufacturing cars produced unprecedented levels of industrial pollution:
Fly ash, iron oxide, heavy metals, sulfur dioxide, and or course, millions of tons of carbon dioxide belched from the smokestacks of the coke ovens, blast furnaces, foundries, steel mills, and plants of American steel and auto industries. Iron, sulfuric acid, cyanide, phenols, and heavy metals poured into the sewers and rivers that served as liquid waste conduits away from the plants. (p. 46)
A full environmental accounting of the automobile industry would indeed be a vast undertaking, involving an assessment of the environmental impacts not only of the major manufacturers, but the thousands of smaller suppliers the industry relies upon. A total environmental accounting is beyond the scope of McCarthy’s study, but even focusing on one manufacturing plant, Ford’s River Rouge plant in Dearborn, MI, offers evidence of the profoundly troubling environmental legacy of the industry. McCarthy helps us see that a major portion of the automobile’s environmental footprint came from its raw material extraction and refining. That relative environmental impact remains true today whether the car burns gasoline or uses electricity to power its engine. Consider the amount of strip mining that will be necessary to provide lithium ion batteries for literally hundreds of millions—perhaps billions—of electric vehicles and the toxic legacy of their inevitable disposal. McCarthy’s historical analysis provides an opportunity for us to see why it simply may not be possible to manufacture cars on the massive scale necessary for even a fraction of the world’s population to drive and not cause serious damage to the earth and its climate, even if they don’t burn gasoline (and this doesn’t take into account the carbon footprint of sprawl attendant to the automobile lifestyle). McCarthy traces the efforts over the decades after World War II to reduce the industrial pollutants flowing from smokestacks, but large quantities of pollutants and tremendous energy consumption (often fossil-fuel derived) will continue to be an inevitable by-product of large scale automobile manufacturing. Viewed as an entire system of resource extraction, energy intensive mass production, distribution, use, and disposal, we might reasonably conclude that there is no such thing as a “green” car.
McCarthy helps us see the larger environmental impact of the car beyond tailpipe emissions, helps us understand that we shouldn’t expect these environmental consequences to be addressed by consumer choice alone, and suggests that our society may need to rethink its “auto mania.” If there is a blind spot in McCarthy’s analysis, it is that by placing so much emphasis on consumer choice as a driving force for automobility, he leaves little room for analyzing the way in which the radical redesign of the built environment around the automobile in the 20th century provided the context for those consumer decisions and eventually precluded virtually any “choice” not to drive.
It is to that aspect we shall turn in my next review.
A Sea Change
Something Happening Here
Pasadena Complete Streets Forum discusses Pasadena's Bike Plan. Photo courtesy DPNA
Pasadena Complete Streets Forum discusses Pasadena’s Bike Plan. Photo courtesy DPNA
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Home » X-Ray Full-Body Scanners
X-Ray Full-Body Scanners for Airport Security
X-Ray Full-Body Scanners home
Context - To improve airport security in the light of terrorist threats new full-body scanners have been developed to complement existing metal detectors and hand searches.
Scanner types that do not use X-rays - "millimeter wave scanners" are already allowed in the EU and deployed in some airports. Other types of scanners already used in the USA expose passengers to low levels of X-rays. They are not yet authorised in the EU because of concern about potential health risks.
How safe are such X-ray security scanners for passengers, in particular for frequent flyers?
• Source document:SCENIHR (2012)
• Summary & Details: GreenFacts
Latest update: 30 September 2013
How do those full-body scanners work?
Whole body scanners provide a picture of the person's body through the clothes to reveal hidden objects. Four technologies are currently on the market:
Millimeter-wave scanners, that don't use X-rays:
X-ray scanners:
How much radiation are people exposed to in x-ray scanners?
When exposed to X-rays our body absorbs energy, the amount of energy effectively absorbed over time is expressed in "sievert" (Sv). Over the course of one year, a person should not be exposed to more than a total of 1 millisievert from man-made sources such as medical diagnostic devices or security scanners. This is the maximum acceptable limit set for the general public and is roughly equivalent to the amount of natural radiation we are also exposed to.
Transmission scanners that see into the body use higher energy X-rays than Backscatter scanner that only view the surface and as a result the dose absorbed is 10 times greater. A single scan is roughly the equivalent of one hour of background radiation at ground level, or 10 minutes at cruising altitude in an airplane. In the worst case scenario, of a person being scanned three times a day every working day throughout the year, a backscatter scanner would contribute 0,3 millisievert to their annual dose. A transmission scanner, however, would contribute 3 millisievert and exceed the tolerable limit. In practice, most passengers would not be exposed so frequently to these scanners. This may however be a concern for airline crew or people who fly very frequently.
Does exposure to x-rays from scanners present health risks?
Exposure to high levels of X-rays can increase the risk of cancer and cardiovascular diseases, lead to cloudiness of the lens of the eye and hereditary effects.
However, there is no evidence that the low radiation doses received from full- body scanners would induce any health problems. Nonetheless, each exposure adds to the overall radiation dose we receive in the course of our life and in the long term, the risk of developing cancer increases with radiation dose. While no dose can be considered completely safe, it is likely that the increased cancer risk from exposure to radiation from security scanners is so low that it cannot be distinguished from the effects of natural radiation or the background risk due to other factors. Direct evidence of an increased cancer risk has only been found for cumulative doses higher than 100 millisievert.
Is the use of full-body x-ray scanners justified?
To decide whether or not the use of X-ray scanners is acceptable, it is necessary to weigh the benefits and risks but this is not straightforward. The main benefit is improved flight safety but there are economic costs and low health risks. So, whether or not X-ray scanners are acceptable for passenger screening is ultimately not a scientific, but a political decision that needs to take into account various factors.
This fact sheet is based on the scientific opinion "Health effects of security scanners for passenger screening (based on X-ray technology)" adopted on 26 April 2012 by the independent European Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risk.
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Widely known in Southeast Asia as the “king of fruits”, the Durian fruit is distinctive for its large size, unique odour, and formidable thorn-covered husk. The fruit can grow as large as 30 centimetres long and 20 centimetres in diameter, and it typically weighs one to four kilograms. Its shape ranges from oblong to round, the colour of its husk green to brown, and its flesh pale yellow to red, depending on the species.
The edible flesh emits a distinctive offensive odour, strong and penetrating even when the husk is intact but to many durian lovers, the soft flesh are tastefully pleasant. Some people regard the durian as fragrant while others find the aroma overpowering and offensive. The smell evokes reactions from deep appreciation to intense disgust, and has been described variously as almonds, rotten onions, turpentine, Limburger cheese, gym socks and stinky smell. The odour has led to the fruit’s banishment from certain hotels and public transportation in Southeast Asia.
However, it is perhaps the most popular local fruit and if given choices on fruits, a Malaysian would take the durian first. Many people especially Europeans are hesitant at first to eat the fruit because of its odour, but once they do, they find it delicious and irresistible.
In Malaysia durian are cultivated in orchards like farms in Pahang, Johore, Perak and Penang. Most of the peninsular states are suitable for durian cultivation especially around the hilly areas of Pahang, Perak and Johore.
While durian fruit is not native to Thailand, the country has become the largest exporter of the fruit. It was introduced to Thailand during the 18th century. There are many different durian species in Thailand. Prices range from 100 Baht up to 2000 Baht. The “Mon Thong” species commands a higher price with bigger sized flesh and small pits. Species “Kadum”, “Chanee”, “Kan Yao” have bigger pits and less flesh.
The durian fruit, is rich in energy, minerals and vitamins.The fruit is made of soft, easily digestible flesh with simple sugars like fructose and sucrose and some amount of simple fats when eaten replenished energy and revitalize the body instantly. Although it contains a relatively high amount of fats among fruits, but it is free from cholesterol. It is also a good source of antioxidant vitamin-C (about 33% of RDA). Consumption of foods rich in vitamin C helps body develop resistance against infectious agents and scavenge harmful free radicals.
While there are many durian lovers who would be willing to pay more just to have the satisfaction of tasting the best flavoured durian in their life time, still there are people who would rather be at a distance away from the smell of it. It is just a matter of preference. Each individual taste buds and sense of smell trigger different messages to their brains. Thus, not everybody likes what you like. Some even hesitate their first try in tasting a durian but many find it irresistible and enjoyable. So, durians anyone? Just like blogging and having your own website, you will never know unless you try. | https://createbetter.wordpress.com/tag/kadum/ | [
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Saltation (geology)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Saltation of sand
In geology, saltation (from Latin saltus, "leap") is a specific type of particle transport by fluids such as wind or water. It occurs when loose material is removed from a bed and carried by the fluid, before being transported back to the surface. Examples include pebble transport by rivers, sand drift over desert surfaces, soil blowing over fields, and snow drift over smooth surfaces such as those in the Arctic or Canadian Prairies.
Saltation process[edit]
At low fluid velocities, loose material rolls downstream, staying in contact with the surface. This is called creep or reptation. Here the forces exerted by the fluid on the particle are only enough to roll the particle around the point of contact with the surface.
Once the wind speed reaches a certain critical value, termed the impact or fluid threshold,[1] the drag and lift forces exerted by the fluid are sufficient to lift some particles from the surface. These particles are accelerated by the fluid, and pulled downward by gravity, causing them to travel in roughly ballistic trajectories.[2] If a particle has obtained sufficient speed from the acceleration by the fluid, it can eject, or splash, other particles in saltation,[3] which propagates the process.[4] Depending on the surface, the particle could also disintegrate on impact, or eject much finer sediment from the surface. In air, this process of saltation bombardment creates most of the dust in dust storms.[5] In rivers, this process repeats continually, gradually eroding away the river bed, but also transporting-in fresh material from upstream.
Suspension generally affects small particles ('small' means ~70 micrometres or less for particles in air[5]). For these particles, vertical drag forces due to turbulent fluctuations in the fluid are similar in magnitude to the weight of the particle. These smaller particles are carried by the fluid in suspension, and advected downstream. The smaller the particle, the less important the downward pull of gravity, and the longer the particle is likely to stay in suspension.
Saltating dune sand in a wind tunnel. (Photo credit: Wind Erosion Research Unit, USDA-ARS, Manhattan, Kansas)
Saltation layers can also form in avalanches.
See also[edit]
External links[edit]
1. ^ Bagnold, Ralph (1941). The physics of wind-blown sand and desert dunes. New York: Methuen. ISBN 0486439313. [page needed]
2. ^ Kok, Jasper; Parteli, Eric; Michaels, Timothy I; Karam, Diana Bou (2012). "The physics of wind-blown sand and dust". Reports on Progress in Physics. 75 (10): 106901. Bibcode:2012RPPh...75j6901K. PMID 22982806. doi:10.1088/0034-4885/75/10/106901.
3. ^ Rice, M. A.; Willetts, B. B.; McEwan, I. K. (1995). "An experimental study of multiple grain-size ejecta produced by collisions of saltating grains with a flat bed". Sedimentology. 42 (4): 695–706. Bibcode:1995Sedim..42..695R. doi:10.1111/j.1365-3091.1995.tb00401.x.
5. ^ a b Shao, Yaping, ed. (2008). Physics and Modelling of Wind Erosion. Heidelberg: Springer. ISBN 9781402088957. [page needed]
6. ^ Electric Sand Findings, University of Michigan Jan. 6, 2008 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltation_(geology) | [
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Leaves of Grass/Book XXXIV
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My city's fit and noble name resumed,
Choice aboriginal name, with marvellous beauty, meaning,
A rocky founded island—shores where ever gayly dash the coming,
going, hurrying sea waves.
Sea-beauty! stretch'd and basking!
steamers, sails,
And one the Atlantic's wind caressing, fierce or gentle—mighty hulls
dark-gliding in the distance.
Isle of the salty shore and breeze and brine!
From Montauk Point[edit]
I stand as on some mighty eagle's beak,
The wild unrest, the snowy, curling caps—that inbound urge and urge
of waves,
Seeking the shores forever.
To Those Who've Fail'd[edit]
To those who've fail'd, in aspiration vast,
To unnam'd soldiers fallen in front on the lead,
their ships,
To many a lofty song and picture without recognition—I'd rear
laurel-cover'd monument,
Possess'd by some strange spirit of fire,
Quench'd by an early death.
A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine[edit]
A carol closing sixty-nine—a resume—a repetition,
My lines in joy and hope continuing on the same,
Of you, my Land—your rivers, prairies, States—you, mottled Flag I love,
Your aggregate retain'd entire—Of north, south, east and west, your
items all;
Of me myself—the jocund heart yet beating in my breast,
The body wreck'd, old, poor and paralyzed—the strange inertia
falling pall-like round me,
The burning fires down in my sluggish blood not yet extinct,
The undiminish'd faith—the groups of loving friends.
The Bravest Soldiers[edit]
the fight;
A Font of Type[edit]
This latent mine—these unlaunch'd voices—passionate powers,
These ocean waves arousable to fury and to death,
Or sooth'd to ease and sheeny sun and sleep,
Within the pallid slivers slumbering.
As I Sit Writing Here[edit]
As I sit writing here, sick and grown old,
Ungracious glooms, aches, lethargy, constipation, whimpering ennui,
May filter in my dally songs.
My Canary Bird[edit]
Absorbing deep and full from thoughts, plays, speculations?
Filling the air, the lonesome room, the long forenoon,
Is it not just as great, O soul?
Queries to My Seventieth Year[edit]
Approaching, nearing, curious,
Thou dim, uncertain spectre—bringest thou life or death?
Strength, weakness, blindness, more paralysis and heavier?
Or placid skies and sun? Wilt stir the waters yet?
The Wallabout Martyrs[edit]
Greater than memory of Achilles or Ulysses,
More, more by far to thee than tomb of Alexander,
Once living men—once resolute courage, aspiration, strength,
The First Dandelion[edit]
Simple and fresh and fair from winter's close emerging,
Forth from its sunny nook of shelter'd grass—innocent, golden, calm
as the dawn,
The spring's first dandelion shows its trustful face.
Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair'd in the adamant of Time.
How sweet the silent backward tracings!
The wanderings as in dreams—the meditation of old times resumed
—their loves, joys, persons, voyages.
To-Day and Thee[edit]
The appointed winners in a long-stretch'd game;
The course of Time and nations—Egypt, India, Greece and Rome;
Garner'd for now and thee—To think of it!
The heirdom all converged in thee!
After the Dazzle of Day[edit]
After the dazzle of day is gone,
Silent, athwart my soul, moves the symphony true.
Abraham Lincoln, Born Feb. 12, 1809[edit]
To memory of Him—to birth of Him.
Out of May's Shows Selected[edit]
Apple orchards, the trees all cover'd with blossoms;
Wheat fields carpeted far and near in vital emerald green;
The eternal, exhaustless freshness of each early morning;
The aspiring lilac bushes with profuse purple or white flowers.
Halcyon Days[edit]
Not from successful love alone,
But as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm,
As gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky,
really finish'd and indolent-ripe on the tree,
Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all!
The brooding and blissful halcyon days!
Fancies at Navesink[edit]
[I] The Pilot in the Mist[edit]
Here waiting for the sunrise, gazing from this hill;)
Again 'tis just at morning—a heavy haze contends with daybreak,
Again the trembling, laboring vessel veers me—I press through
foam-dash'd rocks that almost touch me,
Again I mark where aft the small thin Indian helmsman
Looms in the mist, with brow elate and governing hand.
[II] Had I The Choice[edit]
Had I the choice to tally greatest bards,
Or Shakspere's woe-entangled Hamlet, Lear, Othello—Tennyson's fair ladies,
delight of singers;
Or breathe one breath of yours upon my verse,
And leave its odor there.
[III] You Tides with Ceaseless Swell[edit]
You unseen force, centripetal, centrifugal, through space's spread,
what Capella's?
aggregate of all?
you? what fluid, vast identity,
[IV] Last of Ebb, and Daylight Waning[edit]
Last of ebb, and daylight waning,
Many a muffled confession—many a sob and whisper'd word,
As of speakers far or hid.
How they sweep down and out! how they mutter!
Poets unnamed—artists greatest of any, with cherish'd lost designs,
Love's unresponse—a chorus of age's complaints—hope's last words,
Some suicide's despairing cry, Away to the boundless waste, and
never again return.
On to oblivion then!
On for your time, ye furious debouche!
[V] And Yet Not You Alone[edit]
And yet not you alone, twilight and burying ebb,
I know, divine deceitful ones, your glamour's seeming;
Duly the needed discord-parts offsetting, blending,
Weaving from you, from Sleep, Night, Death itself,
The rhythmus of Birth eternal.
[VI] Proudly the Flood Comes In[edit]
Proudly the flood comes in, shouting, foaming, advancing,
Long it holds at the high, with bosom broad outswelling,
Mainsails, topsails, jibs, appear in the offing—steamers' pennants
of smoke—and under the forenoon sun,
Freighted with human lives, gaily the outward bound, gaily the
inward bound,
Flaunting from many a spar the flag I love.
[VII] By That Long Scan of Waves[edit]
In every crest some undulating light or shade—some retrospect,
Joys, travels, studies, silent panoramas—scenes ephemeral,
And haply yet some drop within God's scheme's ensemble—some
wave, or part of wave,
Like one of yours, ye multitudinous ocean.
[VIII] Then Last Of All[edit]
Of you O tides, the mystic human meaning:
The brain that shapes, the voice that chants this song.
Election Day, November, 1884[edit]
your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite—nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic
geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Mississippi's stream:
small voice vibrating—America's choosing day,
quadriennial choosing,)
The countless snow-flakes falling—(a swordless conflict,
peaceful choice of all,
pants, life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails.
With Husky-Haughty Lips, O Sea![edit]
With husky-haughty lips, O sea!
Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore,
Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions,
Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal,
Thy brooding scowl and murk—thy unloos'd hurricanes,
Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness;
Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears—a lack from all
eternity in thy content,
greatest—no less could make thee,)
Thy lonely state—something thou ever seek'st and seek'st, yet
never gain'st,
Surely some right withheld—some voice, in huge monotonous rage, of
freedom-lover pent,
By lengthen'd swell, and spasm, and panting breath,
And rhythmic rasping of thy sands and waves,
And serpent hiss, and savage peals of laughter,
And undertones of distant lion roar,
(Sounding, appealing to the sky's deaf ear—but now, rapport for once,
A phantom in the night thy confidant for once,)
The first and last confession of the globe,
Outsurging, muttering from thy soul's abysms,
The tale of cosmic elemental passion,
Thou tellest to a kindred soul.
Death of General Grant[edit]
As one by one withdraw the lofty actors,
From that great play on history's stage eterne,
Man of the mighty days—and equal to the days!
To admiration has it been enacted!
Red Jacket (From Aloft)[edit]
Upon this scene, this show,
Yielded to-day by fashion, learning, wealth,
smile curving its phantom lips,
Like one of Ossian's ghosts looks down.
Washington's Monument February, 1885[edit]
Ah, not this marble, dead and cold:
yours alone, America,
Old Asia's there with venerable smile, seated amid her ruins;
legitimate, continued ever,
defeated not, the same:)
Wherever Freedom, pois'd by Toleration, sway'd by Law,
Stands or is rising thy true monument.
Of That Blithe Throat of Thine[edit]
Of that blithe throat of thine from arctic bleak and blank,
I'll mind the lesson, solitary bird—let me too welcome chilling drifts,
E'en the profoundest chill, as now—a torpid pulse, a brain unnerv'd,
Old age land-lock'd within its winter bay—(cold, cold, O cold!)
These snowy hairs, my feeble arm, my frozen feet,
Not summer's zones alone—not chants of youth, or south's warm tides alone,
of years,
These with gay heart I also sing.
What hurrying human tides, or day or night!
What whirls of evil, bliss and sorrow, stem thee!
What curious questioning glances—glints of love!
Leer, envy, scorn, contempt, hope, aspiration!
Thou portal—thou arena—thou of the myriad long-drawn lines and groups!
Thy windows rich, and huge hotels—thy side-walks wide;)
Thou of the endless sliding, mincing, shuffling feet!
mocking life!
Thou visor'd, vast, unspeakable show and lesson!
To Get the Final Lilt of Songs[edit]
To get the final lilt of songs,
To penetrate the inmost lore of poets—to know the mighty ones,
To diagnose the shifting-delicate tints of love and pride and doubt—
to truly understand,
Old Salt Kossabone[edit]
Far back, related on my mother's side,
Old Salt Kossabone, I'll tell you how he died:
(Had been a sailor all his life—was nearly 90—lived with his
married grandchild, Jenny;
stretch to open sea;)
regular custom,
In his great arm chair by the window seated,
(Sometimes, indeed, through half the day,)
Watching the coming, going of the vessels, he mutters to himself—
And now the close of all:
One struggling outbound brig, one day, baffled for long—cross-tides
and much wrong going,
And swiftly bending round the cape, the darkness proudly entering,
cleaving, as he watches,
"She's free—she's on her destination"—these the last words—when
Jenny came, he sat there dead,
The Dead Tenor[edit]
As down the stage again,
With Spanish hat and plumes, and gait inimitable,
and test of all:)
How through those strains distill'd—how the rapt ears, the soul of
me, absorbing
Fernando's heart, Manrico's passionate call, Ernani's, sweet Gennaro's,
Freedom's and Love's and Faith's unloos'd cantabile,
(As perfume's, color's, sunlight's correlation:)
To memory of thee.
Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;
Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.
Ample are time and space—ample the fields of Nature.
To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns,
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.
A song, a poem of itself—the word itself a dirge,
To me such misty, strange tableaux the syllables calling up;
Yonnondio—I see, far in the west or north, a limitless ravine, with
plains and mountains dark,
Yonnondio! Yonnondio!—unlimn'd they disappear;
To-day gives place, and fades—the cities, farms, factories fade;
for a moment,
Then blank and gone and still, and utterly lost.
Ever the undiscouraged, resolute, struggling soul of man;
(Have former armies fail'd? then we send fresh armies—and fresh again;)
Ever the grappled mystery of all earth's ages old or new;
Ever the soul dissatisfied, curious, unconvinced at last;
Struggling to-day the same—battling the same.
"Going Somewhere"[edit]
My science-friend, my noblest woman-friend,
(Now buried in an English grave—and this a memory-leaf for her dear sake,)
Ended our talk—"The sum, concluding all we know of old or modern
learning, intuitions deep,
"Of all Geologies—Histories—of all Astronomy—of Evolution,
Metaphysics all,
duly over,)
"The world, the race, the soul—in space and time the universes,
"All bound as is befitting each—all surely going somewhere."
Small the Theme of My Chant[edit]
modern, the word En-Masse.
link'd together let us go.)
True Conquerors[edit]
Enough that they've survived at all—long life's unflinching ones!
Forth from their struggles, trials, fights, to have emerged at all—
in that alone,
True conquerors o'er all the rest.
The United States to Old World Critics[edit]
Wealth, order, travel, shelter, products, plenty;
The solid-planted spires tall shooting to the stars.
The Calming Thought of All[edit]
That coursing on, whate'er men's speculations,
Amid the changing schools, theologies, philosophies,
Amid the bawling presentations new and old,
The round earth's silent vital laws, facts, modes continue.
Thanks in Old Age[edit]
Thanks in old age—thanks ere I go,
For health, the midday sun, the impalpable air—for life, mere life,
For precious ever-lingering memories, (of you my mother dear—you,
father—you, brothers, sisters, friends,)
For all my days—not those of peace alone—the days of war the same,
For gentle words, caresses, gifts from foreign lands,
For shelter, wine and meat—for sweet appreciation,
(You distant, dim unknown—or young or old—countless, unspecified,
readers belov'd,
We never met, and neer shall meet—and yet our souls embrace, long,
close and long;)
For beings, groups, love, deeds, words, books—for colors, forms,
For all the brave strong men—devoted, hardy men—who've forward
sprung in freedom's help, all years, all lands
For braver, stronger, more devoted men—(a special laurel ere I go,
to life's war's chosen ones,
The cannoneers of song and thought—the great artillerists—the
foremost leaders, captains of the soul:)
As soldier from an ended war return'd—As traveler out of myriads,
to the long procession retrospective,
Thanks—joyful thanks!—a soldier's, traveler's thanks.
Life and Death[edit]
The two old, simple problems ever intertwined,
Close home, elusive, present, baffled, grappled.
By each successive age insoluble, pass'd on,
To ours to-day—and we pass on the same.
The Voice of the Rain[edit]
yet the same,
and make pure and beautify it;
Reck'd or unreck'd, duly with love returns.)
Soon Shall the Winter's Foil Be Here[edit]
Soon shall the winter's foil be here;
Soon shall these icy ligatures unbind and melt—A little while,
growth—a thousand forms shall rise
From these dead clods and chills as from low burial graves.
Thine eyes, ears—all thy best attributes—all that takes cognizance
of natural beauty,
delicate miracles of earth,
plum and cherry;
With these the robin, lark and thrush, singing their songs—the
flitting bluebird;
For such the scenes the annual play brings on.
While Not the Past Forgetting[edit]
While not the past forgetting,
To-day, at least, contention sunk entire—peace, brotherhood uprisen;
For sign reciprocal our Northern, Southern hands,
(Nor for the past alone—for meanings to the future,)
Wreaths of roses and branches of palm.
The Dying Veteran[edit]
Amid these days of order, ease, prosperity,
Amid the current songs of beauty, peace, decorum,
I cast a reminiscence—(likely 'twill offend you,
I heard it in my boyhood;)—More than a generation since,
A queer old savage man, a fighter under Washington himself,
Had fought in the ranks—fought well—had been all through the
Revolutionary war,)
Lay dying—sons, daughters, church-deacons, lovingly tending him,
"Let me return again to my war-days,
To the sights and scenes—to forming the line of battle,
To the scouts ahead reconnoitering,
To the cannons, the grim artillery,
To the galloping aides, carrying orders,
The perfume strong, the smoke, the deafening noise;
Away with your life of peace!—your joys of peace!
Give me my old wild battle-life again!"
Stronger Lessons[edit]
tender with you, and stood aside for you?
brace themselves against you? or who treat you with contempt,
or dispute the passage with you?
A Prairie Sunset[edit]
The earth's whole amplitude and Nature's multiform power consign'd
for once to colors;
North, South, all,
Pure luminous color fighting the silent shadows to the last.
Twenty Years[edit]
vehement notion;)
Since, twenty years and more have circled round and round,
Dress'd in its russet suit of good Scotch cloth:
Orange Buds by Mail from Florida[edit]
A lesser proof than old Voltaire's, yet greater,
To my plain Northern hut, in outside clouds and snow,
Brought safely for a thousand miles o'er land and tide,
Some three days since on their own soil live-sprouting,
Now here their sweetness through my room unfolding,
A bunch of orange buds by mall from Florida.
The soft voluptuous opiate shades,
The sun just gone, the eager light dispell'd—(I too will soon be
gone, dispell'd,)
A haze—nirwana—rest and night—oblivion.
You Lingering Sparse Leaves of Me[edit]
You lingering sparse leaves of me on winter-nearing boughs,
You tokens diminute and lorn—(not now the flush of May, or July
clover-bloom—no grain of August now;)
You pallid banner-staves—you pennants valueless—you overstay'd of time,
Yet my soul-dearest leaves confirming all the rest,
The faithfulest—hardiest—last.
Not Meagre, Latent Boughs Alone[edit]
eagles' talons,)
summer—bursting forth,
To verdant leaves, or sheltering shade—to nourishing fruit,
Apples and grapes—the stalwart limbs of trees emerging—the fresh,
free, open air,
And love and faith, like scented roses blooming.
The Dead Emperor[edit]
Mourning a good old man—a faithful shepherd, patriot.
As the Greek's Signal Flame[edit]
As the Greek's signal flame, by antique records told,
Rose from the hill-top, like applause and glory,
Welcoming in fame some special veteran, hero,
With rosy tinge reddening the land he'd served,
So I aloft from Mannahatta's ship-fringed shore,
Lift high a kindled brand for thee, Old Poet.
The Dismantled Ship[edit]
In some unused lagoon, some nameless bay,
On sluggish, lonesome waters, anchor'd near the shore,
hawser'd tight,
Lies rusting, mouldering.
Now Precedent Songs, Farewell[edit]
Now precedent songs, farewell—by every name farewell,
Or Paumanok, Song of Myself, Calamus, or Adam,
From fibre heart of mine—from throat and tongue—(My life's hot
pulsing blood,
and ink,)
indeed to that!
What wretched shred e'en at the best of all!)
An Evening Lull[edit]
After a week of physical anguish,
Unrest and pain, and feverish heat,
Toward the ending day a calm and lull comes on,
Three hours of peace and soothing rest of brain.
Old Age's Lambent Peaks[edit]
Objects and groups, bearings, faces, reminiscences;
The calmer sight—the golden setting, clear and broad:
we scan,
Bro't out by them alone—so much (perhaps the best) unreck'd before;
The lights indeed from them—old age's lambent peaks.
After the Supper and Talk[edit]
After the supper and talk—after the day is done,
As a friend from friends his final withdrawal prolonging,
Good-bye and Good-bye with emotional lips repeating,
(So hard for his hand to release those hands—no more will they meet,
Shunning, postponing severance—seeking to ward off the last word
ever so little,
e'en as he descends the steps,
Farewells, messages lessening—dimmer the forthgoer's visage and form,
Garrulous to the very last. | https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Leaves_of_Grass/Book_XXXIV | [
"object",
"shape",
"angle",
"solid"
] |
YY Chat- The Development of Online Chat Platform
As the online technology has been developing in high speed, online video chat platform, which is one of the most useful functions of IT tools, has been used in many different ways. The distance between becomes shorter and shorter, which increases the speed of globalization. From E-mail texts to Internet phone, that owns to the development of wide band. Most video chat apps and websites, are free, people can easily use them now, based on which plenty of company have become well known by Internet users. For most people, they cannot image the life without online video chat. In this report, I will focus on one of the video chat platform- YY Chat, which is one of the most popular online video chat website. The report will analyze the development of YY chat in China and the comparison of different online chat platforms.
What is YY Chat?
YY Chat began in 2005 creating Duowan.com, a gaming portal for gamers in China. Duowan company launched YY in 2008, a voice-based gaming communications service, which enabled gamers to voice chat over the Internet and text chat in real-time while slaying monsters or coordinating gaming missions.
In the beginning, YY was just common audio-chat software for the famous online game World of Warcraft (WoW), which is one of the most classic games made by Blizzar Entertainment. The players in a same team could easily create a channel, in which they can communicate well by their voice without typing texts on the screen.
However, YY has since grown beyond gaming into a much larger social communication platform, added video streaming, and grown to 310 million registered users and 60 million monthly active users.
On YY.com, users could play different games, talk to their friends, get educated or broadcast a video show program, or use virtual coins for social deals à la Groupon. Slutsky (2012) analyzes that what really makes YY standout is the fact that it has a built in system that enables site users to earn real profit.
As a website which originates from game function software, YY.com still treat the game broadcast as its most important part. When there are some top game competitions, YY’s live broadcast will attract a lot of game players to watch and join in the discussion. WangYi website (2013) shows that the 2013 WCG competition attracted 2 million users to watch live broadcast in 3 days, and on the top time, there were 400 thousands users watching the game at the same time, which had made a new record.
How can YY develop so fast?
Firstly, China has arround 520 million net users in 2012, which includes almost 5 million World of Warcraft game players. These players play an important part in YY users. Because YY Chat has stable and high quality of its online chat function. Even the game company develop its own software UC chat, most game players still prefer to using YY, which they are familiar with, to have group playing.
YY Chat is much easier to use than other chat software like QQ that when the players want to speak to others, they just need to press “F2” button on keyboard. Moreover, when the players create rooms in YY, others can easily join in without send any request. The most important reason YY has amount of users, as Bake website states is because that, YY has set its rules and operated strictly, which is forbidding any advertisement, solving any broadcast issues in 1 minute and avoiding any sexual, violent or selling contents. These rules help YY keeping most of its users.
As the technology is developing, Duowan game company, which YY belongs to, has gradually strengthened and consummated its function. By YY service, singers, teachers, or other people can earn money on its via virtual goods. Slutsky (2012) shows that the top performers on YY.com can earn more than $20,o00 monthly–a remarkable figure. Audience members buy and give virtual roses to performers they like and the performers cash them in for real money. Thus the singers have an incentive to deliver high quality performances. As li says, YY could help “rejuvenate a lot of industries. As many know it’s very difficult to make real money on the music business because of rampant piracy. But if you’re a talented singer or performer, and you have YY, a webcam and an Internet connection, then you can perform (and make money).”
How further can YY develop?
For Chinese video chat platform YY, now meet some problems. On one hand, the Chinese government has published some laws to control what can be broadcast on website and what cannot. They are very strict with the texts, pictures and videos, which will be put onto website. They create a system, which is called Great Wall to limit a lot of foreign websites and monitor everything from Chinese websites. These solutions limit the development of YY. On the other hand, when YY Chat is going to develop western users, it is also blocked. Echo who is senior analyst with the Maxim Group says, “If YY tried to expand into the US market, it would be unlikely to succeed. While it would be difficult for anyone to scale this business model, Western start-ups would have a better chance.” As some other video chat platforms enlarge their users, YY Chat has to consider the issue about replacement by others.
Other sides of online video chats
Firstly, online video chat platform serve people a more convenient way of life. However, some people use this platform in an unhealthy way that they broadcast sex video and strippers dancing in front of the camera. Such kinds of videos can be easily found that they attract young generations who cannot control themselves well, which probably lead to an unexpected terrible way of life in the future.
Secondly, because of the convenience of online video, some people can easily get information from others. They might cheat other’s money as their friends. WangYI website reported that due to 2012, the Internet fraud had reached a number of more than 30 billion RMB in China. Furthermore, some single girls’ safety is threatened because of their “nice” net friends.
Now, there are thousands of online video chat platforms. When some big companies attract more and more users, the small companies will disappear some day. However, there are still a lot of chance will be left for these small video chat companies.
In the future, live video chat may become the most popular way to communicate with people in distance.
Dan Ye, 2013, “YY借力WCG布局赛事直播” from网易website
Forbes. June, 2012.”YY.com: China’s Unique Real-Time Voice And Video Service With A Virtual Goods Twist“. Retrieved November 21, 2012. http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/06/11/yy-com-chinas-unique-real-time-voice-and-video-service-with-a-virtual-goods-twist/
Ross Slutsky , 2012, “The Largest Social Network You’ve Never Heard Of”,
published in Washington DC
YY语音” 百度百科
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Word of the Day: Nondimensional
How often have you used the word nondimensional in a sentence? There are occasions when I might have used it, had I known that was the word for what I was doing.
For example, when making calculations that involve physical quantities such as mass, length, time, velocity, and the like, it’s not enough to keep track of the numbers or variables as you calculate, you must also keep track of their units. As students know from bitter experience, it’s easy to confuse, or even lose, units along the way. I remember assignments returned with red ink circling my final result, beside which my teacher had posed the simple question: “Units?”
Had I known better, I might have answered that in fact I was employing a technique of mathematical analysis called nondimensionalization in which you deliberately drop the units from equations involving physical quantities. Among its other advantages, this technique can simplify problems. No kidding! It can also, as one MIT professor put it, “eliminate the possibility of reporting nonsense such as the logarithm of a kilogram.”
My own acquaintance with this word has humbler origins. This summer I decided to build steps from our deck to the ground. A total drop of just 32 inches. How hard could that be? Not very. Unless you use nondimensional lumber.
I inadvertently made nondimensionality part of my design the moment I had the bright idea to build the steps out of cedar logs lying around on the property, instead of using conventional, dimensional milled lumber. That one bright idea turned what could have been a weekend project into something more elaborate. For in sad contrast to nondimensional analysis, nondimensional lumber does not make calculations easier.
Practically speaking, for me nondimensional meant harder to measure, harder to calculate, harder to work with, harder to build. The roundness of the logs, their knottiness, and their continuously changing dimensions helped me appreciate why carpenters call unmilled wood nondimensional lumber. And why that’s not necessarily a compliment. Unlike your milled 2×8, who is a straight, reliable and measured fellow, your natural log is an irresolute, shifty, and dimensionless type who feels no compunction about his rough wavering character, nor gives a damn that his diameter is changing continuously from one end to the other.
I first heard of this exotic character—the more exotic for describing something as plain as lumber—the day my neighbor friend dropped off the cedar logs he’d split lengthwise down the middle for me. (He owns a sawmill.) Three of the four halves we unloaded from his truck eventually became my 12-foot-long steps, or treads, as they’re called in the trade.
But only after I’d done my dimensional analysis featuring nondimensional lumber, followed by headscratching and more than a little guesswork. Then I knew, roughly, how to size, cut and place the two stringers (the term of art for the logs that support the treads from below) that run from the underside of the deck down to the ground, where they’re fastened to footings set in concrete. After that, there was just the headache of measuring, notching, fitting, then re-measuring, re-notching, and re-fitting, before, finally, leveling and fastening the round (continuously changing) underside of the treads to the round (continuously changing) stringers, so that each step rises exactly 8 inches.
The finished treads, with stringers peeking through
The finished treads, with stringers peeking through
My work wasn’t finished until nearly a month after that day when my friend, a builder by trade, casually dropped nondimensional into the conversation. We’d hauled the treads from his truck to the worksite, and I was asking him what he thought of my design, and what advice he had for me. He looked at me from under his cap, a mischievous smile playing on his lips, and said, “Oh, so you’re gonna use nondimensional lumber. That will make things more interesting, but I’m sure they’ll turn out great. Just keep measuring and figuring, measuring and figuring.”
A tip of the hat to my father-in-law, who helped me get the treads on the stringers, and to my father, who helped me measure, mark and stake out the plan.
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Light infantry
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For other uses, see Light infantry (disambiguation).
Portuguese Army light infantry (caçador) of the Peninsular War
History of the light Infantry
Modern Age
Contemporary Light Infantry Forces
Today the term "light" denotes, in the United States table of organization and equipment, units lacking heavy weapons and armor or with a reduced vehicle footprint. Light infantry units lack the greater firepower, operational mobility and protection of mechanized or armored units, but possess greater tactical mobility and the ability to execute missions in severely restrictive terrain and in areas where weather makes vehicular mobility difficult.
Light infantry forces typically rely on their ability to operate under restrictive conditions, surprise, violence of action, training, stealth, field craft, and fitness levels of the individual soldiers to address their reduced lethality. Despite the usage of the term "light", forces in a light unit will normally carry heavier individual loads versus other forces; they must carry everything they require to fight, survive and win due to lack of vehicles. Although units like the 101st Airborne (Air Assault) and the 82nd Airborne Division are categorized as Air Assault Infantry and Airborne Infantry respectively, they fall under the overall concept of light infantry.
During the Falklands War in 1982, both Argentina and the United Kingdom made heavy use of light infantry and its doctrines during the campaign, most notably the Argentine 5th Naval Infantry Battalion (Argentina) and 25th Infantry Regiment (Argentina) and the British Parachute Regiment and Royal Marines of 3 Commando Brigade. Due to the rocky and mountainous terrain of the Falkland Islands, operations on the ground were only made possible with the use of light infantry because the use of mechanized infantry or armour was severely limited by of the terrain, leading to the "Yomp" across the Falklands, in which Royal Marines and Paras yomped (and tabbed) with their equipment across the islands, covering 56 miles (90 km) in three days carrying 80-pound (36 kg) loads after disembarking from ships at San Carlos on East Falkland, on 21 May 1982.
During the 1990s, the concept of purely light forces in the US military came under scrutiny due to their decreased lethality and survivability. This scrutiny has resulted in the Stryker Brigade Combat Team, a greater focus on task organized units (such as Marine Expeditionary Units) and a reduction of purely light forces.
Modern Light Infantry Units
Light Infantry in Different Countries
The 7 battalions are composed of:
• Two battalions of mechanized infantry
• Two battalions of motorized infantry
• Two battalions of light infantry
• One battalion of paratroop infantry
Main article: Jægerkorpset
Chasseurs from a light infantry regiment of Napoléon's Grande Armée
The light infantry was organised in France in the 1.
Ancient régime
The name Chasseurs à pied (light infantry) was originally used for infantry units in the French Army recruited from hunters or woodsmen. Recognized for their marksmanship and skirmishing skills, the chasseurs were comparable to the German Jäger or the British light infantry. The Chasseurs à Pied, as the marksmen of the French army, were regarded as elite light companies and regiments.[2] The first unit was Jean Chrétien Fischer's Free Hunter Company in 1743. These units were often a mix of cavalry and infantry. In 1776 all the Chasseurs units were re-organized in six battalions, each one linked to a cavalry regiment (Chasseurs à cheval). In 1788, the special link between infantry battalions and cavalry regiment was broken.
Revolution and Napoleon
In 1793, the Ancient Régime Chasseurs battalions were merged with volunteers battalions in new units called Light Infantry Half-Brigades (demi-brigades d’infanterie légère). In 1803, the half-brigades were rebranded regiment. These units had three battalions of three regular Chasseurs companies, one elite Carabiniers company and one reconnaissance voltigeurs company.
Imperial Guard
In Napoléon’s IImperial Guard, many units used names linked to light infantry :
• Chasseurs à pied regiments : three regiments (1809-1815 ; 1815-1815 ; 1815-1815). The regiments were the elite of the light infantry regiments.
• Fusilier-Chasseurs regiment : originally the first Guard Fusilier Regiment (1809-1815)
• Voltigeurs regiments : 16 regiments, originally two regiments of Tirailleurs-chasseur and two regiments of Conscrits-chasseurs (1810-1815), then twelve new regiments (1811-1815). These regiments were expected to became Chasseurs à pieds regiments.
• Flanqueurs-Chasseurs regiments : two regiments, from drafted Forest Service members (1811-1815 ; 1813-1815)
XIXth Century
Light Infantry
The Napoléon-type Light Infantry regiment existed till 1854, but with very few differences from the line infantry regiment, so the 25 remaining light infantry regiments were transformed in line infantry in 1854.
Chasseurs à pied
The Duke of Orléans, heir to the throne, created in 1838 a new light infantry unit, the Tirailleurs battalion. It soon became, under the name Chasseur à Pied, the main light infantry unit in the French Army. The number of battalions grew up steadily through the century. The current Chasseurs battalions drew their lineage form this unit.
Chasseurs alpins
Some of Chasseurs à pied battalions were converted to specialized mountain units as Bataillons de Chasseurs Alpins in 1888, as an answer to the Italian Alpine (Alpini) regiments stationed along the Alpine frontier.
Chasseurs Forestiers
The Chasseurs forestiers (Forest Huntsmen) were militarized units of the Forest Service. They were organized in companies. The Chasseurs forestiers existed between 1875 and 1924.
The Zouaves battalions and regiments were colonial troops, formed originally by Algerians, then by European settlers and colonists. The first Zouave battalion was created in 1831 and changed its recruiting to Europeans in 1841.
Tirailleurs (Skirmishers) were light infantry who formed a shallow line ahead of the line of battle during the Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars and subsequently. The name was also used for the locally recruited colonial troops in the French Empire between 1841 and 1962.
XXth Century
Chasseurs à pied
The Chasseurs à pieds evolved during the mid-XXth century into mechanized infantry units (Chasseurs mécanisés) or armored division infantry (chasseurs portés). After World War Two, all Chasseur units were organized on the mechanized infantry model.
Chasseurs alpins
The Chasseurs alpins' became the only mountain warfare units in the French Army in 1945.
Chasseurs pyrénéens
The Chasseurs pyrénéens were the short-lived (1939-1940) mountain warfare units formed in the Pyrénées.
The Chasseurs-parachutistes were airborne infantry units formed in 1943 from Air Force infantry compagnies transferred to the Army.
Zouaves and Tirailleurs'
After the independence of the countries that made up the French Colonial Empire, the Zouaves and the Tirailleurs units, save for one, were disbanded.
Modern French Army Light Infantry
Although the traditions of these different branches of the French Army are very different, there is still a tendency to confuse one with the other. For example, when World War I veteran Léon Weil died, the AFP press agency stated that he was a member of the 5th "Regiment de Chasseurs Alpins". It was in fact the 5th Bataillon.
Main article: Jäger (military)
Of the 28 Infantry regiment of the modern Indian Army, the following 10 are designated as "Rifles". They are distinguished by their black rank badges, black buttons on their service and ceremonial uniforms and also a beret which is a darker shade of green than the other regiments. Apart from these two paramilitary forces: the Assam Rifles and the Eastern Frontier Rifles, also follows the traditions of the rifle regiment.
Rajputana Rifles
Garhwal Rifles
Jammu and Kashmir Rifles
1st Gorkha Rifles (The Malaun Regiment)
3 Gorkha Rifles
4 Gorkha Rifles
5 Gorkha Rifles (Frontier Force)
8 Gorkha Rifles
9 Gorkha Rifles
11 Gorkha Rifles
Basic training ("Tironut"):
• Non-combat soldiers are trained as Rifleman 02.
• Combat-support troops are trained as Rifleman 03.
Advance training ("Imun Mitkadem"):
Additional training for combat soldiers:
• Combat class commanders are trained as Rifleman 08.
• Combat Senior Sergeants are trained as Rifleman 10.
• Combat officers are trained as Rifleman 12.
Italian Rifle units were designated Cacciatori or Bersaglieri.
The Netherlands
Main article: Caçadores
In the 1950s, the title "Caçadores" was also given to the light infantry battalions and independent companies responsible for garrisoning the Portuguese overseas territories. Colonial troops with this title were recruited from both Portuguese settlers and from the indigenous populations in each overseas territory.
In 1975, the designation "Caçadores" was discontinued in the Portuguese Armed Forces. All former units of caçadores were redesigned as "Infantry".
The Rhodesia Regiment had an affiliation with the King's Royal Rifle Corps since World War I. The regiment's badge was the Maltese Cross, the colours were red, black and rifle green and rifle green berets were worn. A private soldier had the title of "Rifleman".
• Vânători de Munte, or "Mountain Huntsmen" comprised elite units of the Romanian infantry prior to 1945.
The Imperial Russian Army, which was heavily influenced by the Prussian and Austrian military systems, included fifty Jäger or yegerskii [егерский] regiments in its organisation by 1812, including the Egersky Guards Regiment. These regiments were disbanded in 1917-18.
Spanish Riflemen were designated as Cazadores.
United Kingdom
A historical reenactment with the British 95th Rifles regiment.
The rank of Rifleman instead of Private was officially introduced in 1923.[3]
United States
In 1808, the United States Army created its first Regiment of Riflemen. During the War of 1812 three more Rifle Regiments were raised but disbanded after the war. The Rifle Regiment was disbanded in 1821.
Riflemen were listed as separate to infantry up to the American Civil War.[4]
References and notes
3. "About the Royal Green Jackets". Retrieved 6 June 2011.
Further reading
External links | https://infogalactic.com/info/Light_infantry | [
"model"
] |
One of the best perks of a solar system is having the ability to monitor your system’s energy production. Property owners can see in real-time the productivity on a daily, monthly, and annual basis. What makes monitoring such an important factor of a solar home or business is having the cabability to track how thesystem is generating solar power in relation to the energy that’s coming from the utility company. It’s a great tool to visualize your electricity offset between the two.
Here are some key factors you should know about solar monitoring:
1. Is monitoring included
2. When and how is it installed
3. How do I know what my system is reporting
Before you understand more about the monitoring, it’s best to learn about the various types of monitoring.
Types of Monitoring
The type of monitoring will be determined by the type of inverter that’s been installed. An inverter is much like control center; gathering data, converting the electric signal, and distributing the energy to your property’s main electric panel box. A standard string/central inverter will have monitoring capability directly inside the inverter box that’s attached by the electric box while an inverter with optimizers and microinverters provides monitoring access via internet. In this blog, I will discuss monitoring with optimizer and microinverter systems.
Monitoring Access
If you have SolarEdge with Optimizer Inverter or Enphase, access your monitoring system portal here.
1. Is Monitoring Included
As a property owner with a solar system, there’s really no reason to not have monitoring included with an installation. It goes hand-in-hand with solar. There’s no additional cost to a solar system with monitoring and will always be accessible 365/24/7.
2. When And How Is Monitoring Installed
Intergrating monitoring with the soalr system will depend on the type of inverter. For an inverter with optimizers, monitoring will be installed directly after the system has been installed on the property. Microinverter systems on the other hand are installed after the system is officially turned on by the utility. A small wireless or ethernet device will be connected to the home’s or business’s internet connection to allow the inverter to send its production data through manufacturer’s online portal to which you will have log-in account to gain access. Monitoring is accessible via desktop, tablet, and smartphone app.
3. Knowing What The Solar System is Reporting
As you monitor your solar system, it’s important to be educated on what you see. The goal is to ensure that the system’s production is at or above what was guaranteed annually. Production will vary when tracking its results. The time of year, weather, clouds, the sun’s orientation and angle in the sky do determine your production for that day. Also, shading from roofing ventilation pipes, an HVAC unit, chimney, and tree branches will fluctuate production for the panels that may be effected by such obstructions. There also may be times when no production is being reported. If the property’s internet connection has been tampered with or changed, such as being moved or unplugged after the monitoring has been installed to the system, this will reset the data connection and no production report will be available.
Nevertheless, having the support you need is most important of all. Whenever any questions arise about the system and how it’s reporting production, it’s crucial to get immediate response and assistance to bring resolve to a concern to ensure that your solar system is bringing optimal solar energy to your home or business.
We do get common questions from homeowners asking about their monitoring and what it all means. For example questions asking why they see dramatic fluctuations with their system’s production. Solar panels produce energy based on certain factors such as time of day, time of season, any shading, and temperature. Also, at times the panels may actually over produce more of wattage than they are originally designed to. Daily data may present some inaccuracies and fluctuations to the production reports so we suggest homeowners to track and manage their solar monthly, quarterly, and annually.
Because the monitoring details can be accessed only via online, the home will need an to have internet connection so the inverter can send solar data to the homeowner. If for some reason, there’s no monitoring being displayed, that means that the inverter has lost connection with the home’s internet signal. But if was to happen, it doesn’t mean your solar system is not working. The system is still functioning at a 100%, it’s the details that are not be displayed in the monitoring portal.
When such issues occur, LA Solar Group ensures that we’re on top of it and will repair or readjust setting to bring the monitoring back online. Because we guarantee production with our warranty, we understand it’s important to for homeowners to manage their solar. What we do is set a specific threshold for the production so we can make sure that the system doesn’t under produce. The failure rate for a solar system a 0.01% which is close to nothing. Failure rate for a solar panel is .022%. This is why manufactures stand behind their production and product warranties.
4. Software updates
Software updates for the inverter and gateway monitoring device are run during weekends. If you notice on your monitoring portal that the inverter is offline over the weekend it is most likely due to the software update. The system will be back online by Monday and if it is not or if the monitoring system is offline for more than 72 hours please make a service ticket request on our website. Communication issues with the inverter and monitoring system usually resolve themselves. | https://la-solargroup.com/blog/2017/03/15/quick-tips-on-monitoring-your-solar-system/ | [
"angle"
] |
Music, Arts & Culture » Music
School for Soul
Numero Group's 'database of weirdness' now includes kids' songs
There is no record label in the country today reissuing decades-old soul recordings with more avidity, frequency and sense for archaeology than the Numero Group, an academic and semi-mysterious company possessing the secret added ingredient of impeccable taste. While soul and funk reissue labels have flourished since the turn of the millennium, many of them, particularly of the highly elastic "heavy funk" or "northern soul" persuasion, are perfect examples of curators who confuse mediocrity with authenticity. The Numero Group got off on a similar foot, focusing on arcane recordings from the Capsoul and Bandit labels, which at best were historical facsimiles (the sounds of copied sounds) and at worst, painful to listen to (poorly recorded a cappella tracks).
But then the Numero Group took a vacation to Belize, which most Americans know as a trendy and inexpensive getaway offering empty beaches, scuba diving and, if you know where to look, cheap blow. Who could have guessed that there was such a rich musical legacy down there? The unearthed music from Belize City Boil Up, released early this year, runs the gamut, covering funk, soul, reggae, calypso and highlife, all with a hard-to-define Belizean twist that is as peculiar as it is intoxicating.
Next came the label's foray to the Bahamas, which produced the incredible Grand Bahama Goombay, the gold star of the label's work so far. Outputted from a single studio on the island, the tracks envelop everything attractive about music: rhythm, politics, love, sex and poetry, all done in such an innocent, unaffected fashion that you almost feel guilty listening to it, like traipsing uninvited into a private party. But by providing extensive liner notes and reproduced cover art from the original Bahaman albums, the Numero Group essentially shoves the invitation into your hands.
The latest addition to the label's catalogue is Home Schooled: The Sound of Kid Soul, which revisits American shores by spotlighting the attempts of grade-school children to capitalize on the Jackson 5's 1970 breakthrough success. Most of these recordings were masterminded by overzealous parents, but it's clear that the kids of Home Schooled are the ones in charge. The songs are largely sweet and unrefined, as in the particular case of the sublime and otherworldly "Time After Time" by a group of forgotten Milwaukee brothers called Step by Step, though other tracks flirt with youth empowerment, like the leadoff track "Trust Your Child" and the campy "Now That School Is Through" by a group called Cindy and the Playmates.
How did all of this great music come to suddenly see the light of day with proper licensing, royalties and historical perspective? Ken Shipley, head of the Numero Group, credits the curiosity of his small group of record-collector friends, who for purely personal reasons had taken to tracking down the original artists of obscure 45s that they had collectively discovered, pored over and fallen in love with. "I figured that as long as we're finding these people," Shipley says from his Chicago office, "why don't we document what we're doing?"
Part hoarder, part musicologist, part detective, Shipley as a child collected baseball cards and comic books and, more obsessively, G.I. Joes and Transformers (he still boasts owning complete sets of both). Coming of age in the early '90s San Jose punk scene, he started collecting records, booking shows and running a small indie label, all by the age of 18.
Around 10 years ago, Shipley discovered soul music, particularly of the unknown, thrift-store, what-the-hell-is-this variety, and after a stint at reissue label Rykodisc, he finally launched his dream label in Chicago. Right next to the Jackson 5's hometown of Gary, Ind., there's possibly no better city in which to compile the kid-group sounds of Home Schooled.
"The Jackson 5 actually set off something pretty important," Shipley emphasizes. "When you think about the Jackson 5, you think, 'OK, there might have been a couple other groups, like the Osmonds.' But you don't realize that hundreds and hundreds of groups were set off! People were really trying to ride this phenomenon."
The obstacles involved in finding now-grown singers on records made 30 years ago are myriad. The children of famed organist Merl Saunders, who contribute to Home Schooled a psychedelic, black-power jam in "Right On," were relatively easy to locate. But the adults often retained the rights, and in some cases, like the Three Simmons' playfully innocent "You Are My Dream (School Time)," the copyright holders turned out to be drug-smuggling criminals using record production as a tax shelter.
"Here's the real rub with the record: we were only able to find half the actual kids," Shipley says. "Like the Atons, for instance—nobody knows who that group is. Nobody knows who the Triads are. But these producers, they were just pumping kid groups out. They were like, 'You got some kids? All right, let's throw these three kids in the studio and see what happens.'"
Another problem Shipley faced was the Embarrassing Childhood Photos factor. The Eight Minutes' Wendell Sudduth was easy to find—he still lives in Chicago—but nearly impossible to convince that reissuing his group's killer track "Here's Some Dances" was a good idea. "A lot of this stuff, it isn't a positive note for most people," Shipley admits. "When they think about this stuff, they don't think, 'This is exactly how I want to be viewed in my life.'"
The Numero Group makes deluxe packaging, especially for vinyl releases, which always include extra tracks, heavy gatefolds, inner sleeves and full-color illustrated liner notes. There's a cohesion of style in the label's design, inspired by the matching spines of Impulse Records and Jim Thompson's crime books, and a variety of projects on deck for the future (this year's Ladies of the Canyon explores unknown female singers from the era of Joni Mitchell's Blue, which Shipley cites as his favorite album).
But the biggest task, always at hand, is the musical detective work, the Indiana Jones&–like passion for discovery. Shipley knows that even the tiniest clues from seemingly insignificant people can lead to goldmines, like the box of original tapes from long-lost soul singer Helene Smith that he listens to in the background during our interview, which he recently rescued from someone's ex-wife's basement in Miami, or the singers in the Bahamas who opened the nooks and crannies of their archives and shared every minute detail of their lives with him for Grand Bahama Goombay.
"If you keep cataloguing it and cataloguing it," Shipley says, referring to his reams of notes and boxes of old photos, "you get a real database of weirdness."
Add a comment | https://m.bohemian.com/northbay/school-for-soul/Content?oid=2171710 | [
"cad"
] |
Teeth grinding and snoring
Teeth grinding and Snoring
I am amazed at how many people grind their teeth and are recommended to use mouth guards at night. That’s not my idea of a sexy evening!
Now, it could be there is a problem with teeth alignment and a guard is needed, fair enough. On the other hand stress plays a big part in this. Tension in the body is commonly stored in shoulders, neck and jaw. When jaw muscles tighten up they clamp your teeth and the behaviour of grinding starts. Teeth grinding can lead to worn and broken teeth, aching, clicky and even broken jaws, and certainly to huge dental bills.
How do you know you grind your teeth? Well, some people don’t know until their dentist tells them their teeth are worn. Others are heard by their partners, while others have sore and aching jaws the next day. Some people clamp and grind during the day. Many, many people do it.
There are all sorts of treatments, including mouth guards. Some people get regular botox to release the tension in the muscles, others take tablets, plug their noses, and I am sure there are plenty of old wives tales and interesting things on pharmacy shelves.
If you grind here is something to consider immediately. What is going on in your life? Is there, or has there been, something you are angry or frustrated about? Are you worried? Uncertain work, money and relationship problems can be creating tension in your jaw. You may be completely unaware why. It is wise to come and get it checked out and healed before spending any sums on treatment that may be only a patch.
Those coming to see me to release jaw tension start with hypnotherapy to relax the muscles, a habit change which makes them aware of when they grind so they immediately loosen up, whether asleep or awake. The next session is an EFT tapping session looking for stress and releasing it. Should there be a deeper causal issue this will be addressed next, and the last session consolidates all.
There is a real sense of letting go, a real relief, resulting from this process. No more grinding. In fact, lots of other muscles relaxed at the same time. Perhaps quite a saving on dental procedures.
Snoring is an interesting one. Many people snore and don’t realise it. Their partners, though, are quite aware of it and get fed up having to put up with the noise. Some even move to another bed.
Everyone has the right to sleep properly so we need to get the snorers being more aware of when they start and turning themselves over, breathing better, losing weight stopping smoking, or going easier on the alcohol. Yes, all these things influence snoring. Send them along for some help, it will make all the difference to them and benefit the whole family.
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Thursday, February 27, 2014
the Junians
Monday, February 17, 2014
the Athomians
Athomian lives are rigidly dictated by social status, measured by both strength and artistic talent. Athomians are presumed to be descended from the Noblei, as their clans migrated north along with the Junians and the Eldragoths. Their society spread further north following the last Turning. Forced to compete with the Beastmen of the northern hills and plains, they have become fiercely barbaric and truly anarchic.
Athomians do not have a traditional family structure, nor do they perform weddings. When Athomians have children they form families that last only until the child, or children, are capable of taking care of themselves. However, they are not as divided as outsiders believe them to be, there is little to no rivalry between clans. Conflicts are always resolved by individual warriors, and clan members respect the outcome of the battle or contest.
Athomians are rarely encountered as single individuals. Outcasts from the Athomian clans are scarred or branded in some way so that other Athomians will know them and reject them as well. The most important thing to an Athomian is their place in the clan. To be cast out is to be dead in the eyes of their goddess, because of this many outcasts would rather commit suicide than try to integrate into other cultures.
Athomians value both skill with a weapon and artistic ability. The leader of a clan is often both the best fighter and the one who spends most of their time working a trade for the benefit or glory of the clan. Athomians have perfected the art of swordfighting, as well as swordmaking. Their intricate but sturdy weapons are highly prized and sought after. Disputes that are not settled by dueling are resolved by a comparison of talent by the two opponents, this usually entails both parties forging a sword and allowing other members of the clan to inspect them, but it can also involve skills as decorative as embroidery or as practical as woodworking.
An Athomian always keeps their personal equipment immaculately clean and weapons are kept perfectly maintained and oiled. Athomians prefer to wear vivid colors that many consider unpleasant, such as vibrant orange, bright green, and deep purple. They will also tattoo their entire bodies in these colors. Paradoxically, their grooming habits are awful and their focus on outward appearance means they are actually very dirty and unkempt, and many jokes have been made about how their awful color coordination cannot mask their awful body odor. Athomians do not prize bodily hygiene as much as their fashion sense or a perfectly balanced blade.
Every clan worships the same vicious and secretive goddess. Her name is never revealed to outsiders, and she grants power to a very select few. Sacrifices to her are common among all Athomian clans. The formal rituals and ceremonies performed in her esoteric name last for hours and sometimes climax in a brutal death, of a member of the clan if an outsider hasn't been acquired.
Friday, February 14, 2014
the Eldragoths
The Eldragoths represent a competitive culture that exalted fighting, but they have turned their savagery inward and suffered as a result. The Eldragoths are the poorest of the five major human cultures, and also the most savage. Their society spread to the far north following the last Turning, and rather than compete with Athomians and Beastmen for resources they fell into raiding and pillaging most of the settlements they encountered.
The Eldragoths are a divided people, clustered together into nomadic tribes that will hunt game in one area until the population withers, then forced to move on to more populous lands. Whole tribes frequently compete with other Eldragoth tribes for the best resources. A single Eldragoth, either an outcast or one who was dislodged from a role of command, will often fight as a mercenary for other races. The most important thing to an Eldragoth is food, and if fighting for gold or silver brings them food than that is what they do, even though they disdain the use of money as a sign of weakness.
Might makes right in their eyes, and the leader is always the strongest of the tribe. He or she may take whatever they like from the weaker members of the tribe, including life and property. All forms of disputes, as mundane as personal grudges or as inevitable as challenges to leadership, are settled by contests of physical strength - usually fights - and serious grievances involve bloody and prolonged fistfights that don't end until an opponent is bludgeoned to death.
Eldragoths always prefer to fight with their fists and they disdain large weaponry, an Eldragoth will never use a weapon to kill another Eldragoth, even in a tribal conflict. But outsiders should always be wary as Eldragoths have no disdain for picking up knives or bows to slay outsiders. An Eldragoth with a knife is a foe to be feared!
Anyone who is unable to fight or hunt is considered useless and will become an outcast. One who fights and loses is not considered dishonorable, but just of a lower station than one who wins. The children of these Eldragoth tribes learn how to fight at an early age, or they die. A few tribes will abandon their weaker children, these few usually become slaves to other tribes, or in worse cases become victims of the Beastmen.
No single tribe worships a god or pantheon of deities, but each seems to have their own form of religion revolving around the worship of nature spirits. These spirits often have elaborate names that are never pronounced the same way twice. The spirits across various tribes all have one thing in common, they respond to blood. The greater the sacrifice of blood, the greater the boon.
Eldragoths have spread out farther from the northern plains, and have not localized to one area for at least 140 years. Some tribes are spotted as far west as the Black Plateau. They hunt anything with meat on it, and it is an acknowledged fact that a few tribes have turned to cannibalism, willing to hunt other humans or dwarves when food is scarce. They don't ever seem to eat each other, just as they don't kill each other. An important facet of Eldragoth culture that must be remembered by anybody who wishes to hire one as a bodyguard or soldier.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
promoting kickstarters for a change
I usually only post about kickstarters when I'm complaining about their tardiness. I've grown really selective with what I invest my money into, and recently a few projects have come up that are really cool and I want to see them succeed.
LotFP Free RPG Day 2014
(left image is the cover for Doom Cave of the Crystal-Headed Children, art by Gennifer Bone; right image is the cover for World of the Lost by Rafael Chandler, art by Malcolm McClinton)
He's cutting it close to the wire to release for Free RPG Day this year, but I could see James Raggi doing a funding project like this every year now. I'm expecting the next project he throws up might be a "LotFP Free RPG Day 2015" project, and I would back that one too because I've only ever been disappointed by one of Raggi's projects (and it's one I never hear people talking about). This project is particularly interesting because it's set up to put some responsibility into the hands of the donor, you have to email James to tell him what rewards you want. One of the rewards is an adventure written by Rafael Chandler and the only way it will ever be published is through this campaign!
The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence (an OSR module)
(art by Faustie)
A modest little kickstarter campaign from an accomplished self-publisher and a gamer in my neck of the woods. Seriously, he lives about 5 minutes away from me. He and I have the same haunts though we've never played a game together. I'd like to see him succeed both because he's a local and judging from his work we have similar tastes. I'm not sure where he comes up with his titles but I wish I had that same level of crazy creativity.
Darkest Dungeon
I think anybody who is an OSR gamer will want to take a look at this one even though it's a video game. I've been on their mailing list for a couple of months now and I knew this kickstarter campaign was coming. After one day of being live they're already very close to funding, because it's a video game I expect feature creep to potentially be an issue but this is one game that I would love to see hit some stretch goals.
And that's it. Go forth and spend some of your money to help make these projects happen and get cool games in return!
Friday, February 7, 2014
monster: the Quilid
the Quilid
This long furry, serpentine creature has thick, sharp spines all along it's segmented body. It has short legs ending in suction-cups along every part of it's body allowing it to crawl along walls and ceiling. It is constantly hungry and attacks by trying to devour the nearest, most magical target. It seems to crave a spellcaster's flesh!
Initiative: +3
Attack: +6
Bite (2d8+poison, save or stunned for 1 round)
Armor Class: 14 (ascending)
HD 6d6 (hp 24)
MV 80' (wall-crawling)
Save Fort +2 Ref -1 Will -1
Morale: nil
Special: attackers must Reflex save or get poked with spines taking 2d4-1 damage
Tactics: always attacks person with most magical items, failing that attacks spellcasters, wizards before clerics
monster: the Orsect
the Orsect
Alien insectile humanoids, they are sometimes found in nests where they number in the hundreds. They are larger than the average human at full maturity, but their torso is fragile and spindly. Their muscles are thin and lithe. Orsects have underdeveloped retractable wings that lie under a carapace, they can glide short distances and even hover momentarily, but the wings are too frail to support their size for long. Orsects can crawl along walls and ceilings, and their faces have large venomous fangs reminiscent of a spider's cephalothorax. Their chitinous skin often has stocks of black or brown hair sticking out between the plates.
Initiative: +1
Attack: +1
Claw x2 (1d6+1) or Bite (1d6; save vs poison/Fort, 1d6 damage over next 2 rounds)
Armor Class: 13 (ascending)
Hit Dice: 1d8 (hp 4)
Move: 30' (wall-crawling) / 60' (flight, once per four rounds)
Saves: Fort +0 Ref +2 Will -1
Morale: 8
Tactics: attacks smallest/weakest PC first
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Bargaining, or The Partial Success
My favorite part of the Apocalypse World rules is the partial success. The feature of the partial success is most illustrative with the "acting under fire" move. "Acting under fire" is trying to do something that requires unusual discipline or concentration or with reserves of willpower or under threat of violence or something like that. AW hacks have reinterpreted this move as "Defy Danger" "Act Under Pressure" "Strive Against Peril" etc. When you "act under fire" and you get the partial success, it specifically states that the MC (the GM) might offer you a worse outcome, an ugly choice or a hard bargain. The rulebook implies that the MC should pick one and offer it as the result, but during play this usually comes down to more than one option offered to the player who then chooses which result occurs.
Worse Outcome. Ugly Choice. Hard Bargain. It sounds like three things, but it's actually four. Let me give you a few examples to illustrate this:
We're going to follow Cyril for a bit. He's a bit of an untalented goon with no real skills to speak of, but he's got a knack for being in the right place at the right time and he's got a tongue that's as sharp as a cleaver. One big thing he has going for himself is that he's a Hocus, so he's got his own personal cult of about 15 devotees who worship him, hang on his every word, and follow him around like lost puppy dogs.
A biker gang is moving through the town where Cyril preaches to his flock and before they leave town they've decided to have a little fun. The gang's leader is trying to lasso Cyril with an old plastic rope that looks hand woven. When Cyril tries to escape he's acting under fire and rolls a 9. The MC can offer...
• a worse outcome: Cyril will take 4 harm as he runs into another biker and gets knocked down to the ground, unconscious, but he will get left alone afterward as the gang laughs their asses off in the assumption that he got accidentally killed.
• an ugly choice: Cyril will dive through a window, taking 2 harm, and escape through the back of the building losing sight of the gang and his followers, or get away down an alleyway but drop something important/valuable, like the wrought iron staff that he uses to focus his followers' attention during his sermons.
• a hard bargain: Cyril will get away, but his loyal followers will definitely not avoid the gang's attention.
Cyril takes the hard bargain and gets away, his followers are not so lucky. The MC gauges from the gang's size (small) and harm (3) that Cyril will lose 4 of his followers to the gang, 2 of them are killed and 2 of them are kidnapped.
The gang makes camp in a grassy ravine near town and Cyril, upon learning that 2 of his flock have been kidnapped, decides to sneak into their camp to liberate them. The closest thing to a sneak move in Apocalypse World is acting under fire so that's what Cyril is doing, and he rolls a 9 again. The MC offers...
• a worse outcome: Cyril is caught and captured, but not harmed, by the gang.
• an ugly choice: Cyril was followed by some of his enthusiastic cultists and they get caught but the distraction will allow him to sneak in undetected, or Cyril is spotted by the camp lookout and gets shot, taking 3 harm, but his enthusiastic followers make it into the camp from his distraction.
• a hard bargain: Cyril sneaks in, but his kidnapped followers have been tortured and killed and there's nothing he can do for them now.
Cyril takes the ugly choice this time and tells the MC that his enthusiastic followers get caught. The MC declares them dead, but Cyril is in the camp and his other followers who were kidnapped are there, and relatively unharmed.
The MC declares that the whole gang's encampment is now on high alert, it's going to be pretty tough sneaking out of here so Cyril is going to need to do something tricky to get his kidnapped followers to safety. Cyril is now keenly aware that 4 of his people got killed today and he might get 2 more killed, he's resolved not to let anybody else from his cult die. Cyril frees his followers and instructs them to get out of the camp and back home while he creates a distraction. Cyril runs out of hiding straight for the gang leader with his staff, and declares he wants to use the focusing power of the staff to heel the leader of the gang to Cyril's will. The MC decides that this isn't a manipulation and it doesn't fall under Cyril's normal use of his Hocus powers, she declares that this is another use of acting under fire but Cyril is being inventive and taking a huge risk, she lets him roll his best stat this time, but he still rolls a 9. The MC offers...
• a worse outcome: Cyril is shot, point-blank, by the gang's leader. 5-harm. His followers will get away clean.
• an ugly choice: He creates enough of a distraction that his followers get away, but they've been seen fleeing and he's captured, or he has the full attention of the gang leader but his followers won't leave without him and all eyes in the camp are on Cyril right now.
• a hard bargain: Cyril has the gang's leader under his command, but that doesn't sway the rest of the gang at all.
Regardless of where you're sitting at the table, this is my favorite mechanic. As a player it gives you a brief moment of control, like rolling with a punch or flipping between two choices in a Choose Your Own Adventure novel. As an MC, it offers a challenging moment of looking at ugly/hard/worse options and offering them up as a meal. It is really hard to pull off well as a MC, since a partial success is still fundamentally a success, but I believe that mastering this on-the-spot thinking is what can make or break GMing properly.
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Apocalypse World of Darkness (brainstorming)
Apocalypse World, from now on AW. World of Darkness, from now on WoD
AW has playbooks, WoD has splats; I'm ambivalent about both but recognize the value for players to have easy choices
AW has 5 stats and a plethora of moves, WoD has 9 attributes and 21 skills; I like a simple system, so let's keep WoD's attributes but get rid of the skills
AW has countdown clocks, WoD has dots and points; I like dots and points
AW rolls 2d6, WoD rolls pools of d10s; I like pools of dice, but let's use d6s because this isn't WoD, this is AWoD
AW has complications and partial successes, WoD has exceptional successes and dramatic failures; I like complications and varying levels of success
Trying to fuse the Apocalypse World moves dynamic with the standard World of Darkness stat blocks: Everything is kept the same, roll dice pools and only count the highest number on any rolled dice.
Any result of '5' or higher can be used as a success for the roll.
All dice rolling at 4 or less means the GM can make a hard move, or mark a hard move for use later.
A dice that comes up a '6' allows you to roll another dice.
I'm not sure how the math would work out. Combat and damage would have to be tweaked slightly anyway. For now, let's see how it works.
From the WoD core rulebook: Perception
Dice Pool:
Wits + Composure
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure:
Your character notices something strange or out of place, but it’s not what has actually occurred, or he makes a dangerous assumption about the event. A picture hanging at an odd angle indicates that someone has moved it, but your character assumes that a door has been slammed, shifting the piece of art.
Failure: Your character notices nothing amiss or out of place.
Success: Your character recognizes that something has happened.
Exceptional Success: Your character not only recognizes when something unusual or quick happens nearby, he sees it all happen and gets a good look. Or he notices a variety of things that are amiss in his surroundings, just by entering the room.
My interpretation: Perception when you roll Wits+Composure, spend successes to ask questions.
• what does this mean?
• what happened here recently?
• what is about to happen?
• what here is not what it appears to be?
• what here is useful or valuable to me?
• what is this?
• where’s my best escape route / way in / way past?
• which enemy is most vulnerable to me?
• which enemy is the biggest threat?
• who’s in control here?
• is __ telling the truth?
• what does __ intend to do?
• what does __ wish I’d do?
• what’s __ really feeling?
I think that works but I'm not sure how partial successes would work out, because that's my favorite thing about AW. I'd be curious to figure out how combat would work, but that would require more work and I have to shelve this idea for now. I want to get back to working on... a few other things. I've got two D&D scenarios I'm writing, two maps I'm drawing, a new playbook for AW, rules for Fantasy Heartfucker or whatever I'm going to call it. I've got too many projects that I keep working on a little bit at a time, I need to focus on one and finish it sometime soon. | https://nerdwerds.blogspot.com/2014/02/ | [
"angle"
] |
Workers’ Compensation: Benefits The Employer Or Employee?
Daniel Stahl was working as a nurse for Hialeah hospital in 2003, just a few months after the state made changes to its workers’ compensation system. During one of his workdays, Stahl lifted a patient and ended up injuring his back from the movement. In October of 2005, his treating physician found he had reached his maximum medical improvement (MMI) and assigned him to a 6 percent impairment rating. At this point, he was entitled to impairment income benefits stretching 12 weeks and compensated for $5,472. He was eventually left with a permanent impairment and was restricted from lifting heavy weights—eventually ending his career. Still, it was later determined that Stahl did not meet the definition of permanent total disability (PTD) and his claim for PTD benefits was denied. He was then forced to pick up a teaching position at a nursing school.
Background Information
According to the Insurance Journal, “In his petition to the court, Stahl claims that the benefits available to him, and all injured employees since October 1, 2003 when state’s workers’ comp reforms went into effect are “inadequate and therefore cannot be the exclusive remedy for on the job injuries.” The court documents filed say the state’s workers’ comp law, as it is today violates the U.S. Constitution. The plaintiffs also argue that the Florida legislature has eliminate injured employees’ right to sue and the availability of partial disabilities benefits without providing an adequate replacement. The suit also takes issue with the addition of a copay for medical visits after a claimant reaches their MMI.”[1]
As such, the petitioners help to argue what many worker’s comp advocacy groups have been stressing since the implementation of changes. To advocates, Florida’s lawmakers have disregarded worker’s rights in several instances, including retracting the right to withdraw from the system in 1970, reducing the temporary disability benefits limit to 104 weeks in 1993 and approving the 2003 amendment removing benefits for partial disability. Before such measures, temporary total disability benefits were limited to 350 weeks, while temporary permanent disability benefits were not to exceed five years [2].
Having to play into the worker’s comp system means that employees must give up their right to sue their employers for negligently inflicted injures in exchange for all over coverage. While this is the essence of workers’ comp–American workers used to rely on that compact in exchange for if/when they were to be injured on the job, their employers would pay for their medical bills and enough of their wages to help them get by while they recovered. Where other states allow the employees to opt out, in Florida, employees are getting the raw end of the deal; they have no choice but to suffer through the possibility of being denied coverage. As proof of this denial, ProPublica described in their article that they found, “Florida has cut benefits to its most severely disabled workers by 65 percent since 1994.”
They also found that, “Many states have not only shrunk the payments to injured workers, they’ve also cut them off after an arbitrary time limit—even if workers haven’t recovered.” What makes all of this worse is that there has been no federal government involvement after they stopped monitoring state workers’ comp laws more than a decade ago.
How does Florida’s Workers’ Comp Work Against You
In several ways, the laws that govern Florida’s workers’ compensation process works against the employee, rather than the employer or insurance company.
• The law limits the amount of times you can receive worker’s comp payments. As described in the situation with Stahl, the system is built to get people back to work as soon as possible, sometimes overlooking proper treatment in favor of paying out lower amounts. As such, once doctors release you back to work, the insurance company does not have to keep issuing workers’ comp reimbursements to the injured employee, forcing an employee to go back to work, even when they aren’t 100% recovered.
• The insurance company picks the doctor. Knowing that the doctor’s diagnosis is critical to the amount of benefits you receive, insurance companies vet out doctors that end up restricting benefits by giving the insurance company a diagnoses that allows them to deny coverage. The process of going to the doctor is to prove that you have suffered a work-related injury and to recommend a treatment plan, but if the doctor is employer-friendly, they may not offer up the best solution; they would rather offer up the option with minimal impact for insurance companies to pay out. By doing so, they may gloss over an underlying problem so that you get back to work before you really should.
• There is no protection of your job. As the last two issues have stated how the program ensures that some employees will go back to work without fully being recovered, another issue is that there is no guarantee that your job is still there. Employers do not have to hold open the job for you for when you are able to return to work.
• It’s challenging to validate disability. The insurance company is concerned with limiting liability and payouts to inured employees. To achieve those objectives, they will often deny benefits if the injured employee is able to perform any other job. That means that if you are injured to the point where you cannot perform your usual job, but there is another job you can perform, you could be denied benefits. Even if this job pays substantially less than your previous job, it doesn’t matter. As long as you are working, the insurance company does not have to fill the gap [3].
Dolman Law Group
Laws also make it tough for workers’ compensation attorneys to get paid. Lawyers are not paid directly by the clients they represent; rather they are paid either by the employer through a payout from the insurance company or directly by the insurance company. Other times, attorneys aren’t paid until the case is settled, which could take a long time. These restrictive and employer-friendly laws and policies make it even more imperative to consult an experienced workers’ compensation attorney in Clearwater.
If you or a love one has sustained an injury while working, it is important to speak with a workers’ compensation attorney to discuss your rights and legal remedies. The worker’s compensation carrier may provide some reason for denying your benefits that sounds legitimate or follow along with the discrepancies mentioned in this post. It’s often a difficult and challenging time, thus, it is crucial to get the proper representation. This is our job. The attorneys at Dolman Law Group have extensive experience in handling workers’ comp benefits and insurance carriers/ employers. Let us help you get what you deserve today. Contact us at (727) 853-6275 for a free consultation.
Dolman Law Group
5435 Main Street
New Port Richey, FL 34652
(727) 853-6275 | https://newportricheyinjury.wordpress.com/2016/02/12/workers-compensation-benefits-the-employer-or-employee/ | [
"object",
"cad"
] |
Creating Windows With Ruby Tk
A GUI application may consist of the following types of objects:
• Widgets – basic GUI objects that can be put directly in the window. Most of them generate events as a response to user actions. A label is a widget, too, but, usually does not generate events.
• Shapes – lines, arcs, circles, polygons and other that belong on a canvas.
• Timers – threads that perform an action the number of times specified and sleep for the specified duration. From the definition “thread” you can understand that they run in parallel.
The simplest Ruby Tk program is:
require 'tk'
This program displays the following window:
This is the default window. It is displayed on the screen when the line ‘Tk.mainloop’ is performed. Until this window is closed, no commands that are not responses to events will be executed.
“Programing Ruby – The Pragmatic Programmers Guide” suggests that you look at Perl/Tk guides to learn how to use Tk. A good place to look for Perl’s objects and their methods is Active Perl. I’m not going to write here the complete guide to Ruby Tk, but I hope the following chapters will help you understand how it works.
To be continued.
When you write for the web, you may want to send data to another server or to a client. A common way to transfer that data is in XML format. The data will then be processed using SAX, DOM or XPath. Every language support it.
If what you want is to define a variable, an object or an array in Javascript, you can use the JSON extension. JSON is an acronym for ‘Java Script Object Notation’. In Javascript you can use it as follows:
var myObject=<?php echo json_encode($php_object); >;
Here no parsers are required.
Here’s an example of using it in PHP:
class my_class {
public $prop1;
public $prop2;
function __construct(){
$obj=new my_class();
echo json_encode($obj);
The output looks like:
In addition to encoding, a JSON string can be decoded into an object in a language other than Javascript. Thus, you can pass data in the JSON format to any program supporting JSON, and, as you can see in, most languages used today support it.
The ability to encode varibles into JSON and decode it back in any language is not the only reason why JSON can replace XML. If you go to, you can see links in the bottom referring to other sites. For example, JSONPath, that allows you to access a member just like XPath. JSONPath is available in PHP and Javascript. | https://phpandmore.net/2011/07/ | [
"object",
"shape"
] |
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Chapters 13, 14, 15, and 17
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Juliet Morales
on 18 March 2014
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Transcript of Chapters 13, 14, 15, and 17
Gene Expression: From Gene to Protein
Gene Expression is a process by which a gene (DNA) is used to synthesize proteins.
- An example such as albinism is attributed to a faulty gene that codes the wrong information.
-In such cases, the gene could code the wrong protein, or even be absent.
Archibald Garrod proposed the idea that inherited diseases could be from the lack of a specific enzyme.
-Ex: Phenylketonuria
Neurospora experiment: Neurospora cells had a single gene disabled and noticed the mutant Neurospora were unable to grow on minimal medium while the non-mutants were able. Beadle and Tatum concluded that the mutants could not synthesize an important nutrient. This proved that "the function of a gene is to dictate the production of a specific enzyme."
Mutations are changes to genes.
-Point mutations change a single nucleotide pair.
-Substitution mutations replaces a nucleotide and its corresponding nucleotide with another pair
-Insertions and deletions are the addition or removal of nucleotide pairs.
These changes to genes can cause a silent mutation, missense mutation, or nonsense mutation.
-A silent mutation has no effect on the outcome trait of the gene.
-A missense mutation will have little effect on the protein since only 1 amino acid changes.
-A nonsense mutation stops translation because when the pair was changed, it was changed into a stop codon
Important Contributors
In Bacteria:
In Eukaryotes:
Regulation of Chromatin
Chapters 13, 14, 15, and 17
DNA contains the nucleotides: Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine, and Thymine
RNA is the same except that instead of Thymine, there is Uracil.
Transcription is the synthesis of RNA from an original strand of DNA.
- In DNA replication, a DNA strand is made from the original DNA (template) strand.
- Then, that DNA strand serves as a template strand to make RNA. This is done by the RNA polymerase.
- Assembles in 5' to 3' direction.
- RNA polymerase starts at the promotor and the DNA sequence transcribed into RNA is a transcription unit.
- The pre-mRNA is given a 5' cap and a Poly-A tail and is removed of all introns and left with the exons (RNA splicing). After, it is moved into the nucleus.
The resulting mRNA strand from transcription is used in the synthesis of a polypeptide in a process called translation.
- The mRNA nucleotide sequence leaves the nucleus and into the ribosomes, the sites of translation (in eukaryotes).
- In the ribosomes, the mRNA undergoes translation to produce the amino acids for the protein.
Codons are mRNA nucleotide triplets.
There are 20 different amino acids which are made from making triplets of nucleotides. There is a combination of 64 different triplets.
60 of these combinations make up the amino acids while 1 makes a start codon, signaling the start of a nucleotide sequence and the other 3 make stop codons that signals when that nucleotide sequence ends for the protein.
Amino acids are read from 5' to 3'.
tRNA is used to transfer amino acids to the polypeptide in the ribosome by pairing up its anticodon to the codon in the mRNA. tRNA is 3' to 5'
It starts at a start codon and ends at a stop codon.
The Molecular Basis of Inheritance
DNA is the genetic material
DNA is the molecule that carries the genome
long thought to be proteins
Made in double helix, with specific base pairs (A-T; G-C)
DNA replication takes many proteins
Helicase separates two parent strands
DNA pol III creates leading strand continously and the lagging strand in Okazaki fragments
Primase adds RNA primers
DNA pol I changes primers to DNA
DNA ligase connects DNA fragments
DNA Polymerase corrects any mismatched nucleotides
A Chromosome is DNA molecule tightly wound around proteins
DNA of bacteria supercoils into a dense nucleoid
DNA in eukaryotes condenses around many histones
Frederick Griffith
Derrick Chen, Francis McMahon, Juliet Morales, and Anthony Velte
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Regulation of Gene Expression
Chapter 17
Adolf Mayer rubbed sap from Tobacco Mosaic Disease infected plants with sap from healthy plants. Believed small bacteria not visible under microscope
Second attempt at experiment by Dimitri Ivanowsky by using filter to catch bacteria. Disease still produced. Still believed bacteria were cause.
Martinus Baijerinck's experiments revealed that pathogen infected within host cell.
Wendall Stanley crystallized Tobacco Mosaic Virus. How? Are they cells?
can be single- or double-stranded, RNA or DNA
protein shell enclosing genome,
may be rod-shaped, polyhedral, or more complex
subunits called capsomers
- membranes derived from previous host
phospholipids, glycoproteins, and proteins
help to infect host
other cells!
"Obligate intracellular parasites"
Lacking equipment for protein synthesis!
Need a host cell to replicate
Limit on number of host species, called host range of the virus
Identify host cells with "lock and key" fit
Viral protein encoded reprograms the cell
only replicates through lytic cycle
replicates through either cycle depending on conditions
Simplified Viruses
With DNA:
With RNA:
*viruses that use reverse transcriptase*
Fighting Viruses!
Some viruses can mutate regularly, like the flu virus!
Further research is being conducted.
variant of the virus that causes the
immune system to create antibodies against pathogen
*HIV is a retrovirus!
Works Cited:
Biology in focus. (2014). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.
The lytic and lysogenic cycles of phage lamda, a temperate phage [Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://thegeneticsofvirusesandbacteria.weebly.com/diagrams.html
The lytic cycle of phage T4, a virulent phage [Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://thegeneticsofvirusesandbacteria.weebly.com/diagrams.html
[Phage]. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://dbscience4.wikispaces.com/Jillian
The reproductive cycle of an enveloped RNA virus [Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://thegeneticsofvirusesandbacteria.weebly.com/diagrams.html
A simplified viral reproductive cycle [Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://thegeneticsofvirusesandbacteria.weebly.com/diagrams.html
Viruses [Image]. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks3/science/organisms_behaviour_health/disease/revision/2/
Respond to environmental changes through
Inducible Operon/
Catabolic Pathways
Reg. protein is typically active, no transcription
An inducer, typically the substance the structural proteins break down, will inactivate it
RNA polymerase is no longer blocked
Repressible Operon/
Anabolic Pathways
Reg. protein is typically inactive, transcription occurs
An corepressor, typically the substance the structural proteins synthesizes, will activate it
RNA polymerase is now blocked
Structure & Function:
promoter for synthesizing regulatory protein for gene
regulatory gene codes for reg. protein that controls operon
itself consists of:
for operon (including
) and
structural genes
promoter for binding RNA polymerase for transcription of structural genes
operator will stop transcription if reg. gene is bound to it (site of inhibition)
structural genes code for various proteins/enzymes to perform certain metabolic processes
Two types....
Funny thing about the lac operon...
Positive gene regulation also plays a role.
Because lactose isn't the cells first choice as an energy source (glucose is),
in presence of lactose and glucose, some lac operon is synthesized
in presence of lactose and absence of glucose, lots of lac operon is synthesized
Histone Acetylation - promotes transcription by opening chromatin
DNA methylation - reduces transcription
- epigenetics (licking rat pups!)
RNA Processing
miRNA / siRNA
mRNA Degradation:
if bases complimentary, mRNA is degraded
if bases not complimentary, translation is blocked
regulation of transcription factors
has life span before degradation
Genetic Recombination in Prokaryotes
uptake of foreign DNA from surroundings
through 3rd party temporarily joined
Hershey and Chase
Meselson and Stahl
Full transcript | https://prezi.com/msc6r04ihnq7/chapters-13-14-15-and-17/ | [
"shape"
] |
Saturday, December 10, 2016
A Person Who Maybe Motivated More People than Anyone Ever Had
Honestly, I can't think of anyone who had an effect on a greater number of people,
Get that part about the Ev's. Yea, Maybe no Beatles.
Hope you like it,.
1. two tunes at the same time--awesome!!
1. C-CS, PS, if you have the same stuff on the right sidebar as I do when I click that link I gave you, the top 3 at least are worth the time.
2. gave them a 'listen' and smiled the entire time -- thank you :-)
3. C-CS, So much out there. 50 years worth. What a body of work. And he was becoming an elderly man when this one was made.
2. Chet was not only a great guitar player, but a very nice man, too.
1. Adrienne, I think everyone who knew him would say even more of a person than a guitar player.
3. "I can't think of anyone who had an effect on a greater number of people,"
I can.
The calendar starts on the year of His birth.
1. Well, Geeezix Ed. I was talking mere mortals! :-)
2. Ed, PS, many would claim Chet wasn't a mere mortal, but certainly no candle to the Boy King regardless.
3. He is a joy to listen to, they have that much in common :)
4. The power of music to transform lives –– and entire cultures –– is either unknown or ignored by the majority. However, –– whether you believe it or not ––, what we surround ourselves with be it Music, Interior Decor, TV, the Internet, Movies, Stage shows, or SmartPhones, what we wear what we eat, who we date, what we talk about with our friends, what we do with our free time, etc. molds our character as individuals and shapes our destiny.
Not of us lives in a vacuum, therefore it's important for us to choose the way we occupy our time wisely. Chet certainly was a good influence on a whole generation of fellow musicians. I recognize that, even though I have to say I much prefer the profound influences great figures like Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, et al.
Few of us realize it, but without the great classical composers, Chet Atkins and Tommy .Emmanuel could not possibly have been what they are. To a large extent all significant musicians learned from each other, built on each other's work, and stood on each other's shoulders (metaphorically) in the constant search for "new sounds" for want of a better term.
As I said at the beginning, we rarely recognize what influences us most profoundly.
Learning how to differentiate between the good, the bad and the mediocre is important, but few get that far, because our culture does not give music a high priority.
1. FT, Yes, so much is reliant on the past and present. Few of us are creative. We are inspired by those who are. They call Chet country guitar but he as nothing in common with modern country and said modern country destroyed country music.
His earliest albums have a very eclectic makeup including classical. Fingerstyle Guitar for example. 1950 something.
5. Great guy. Inspirational, talented, good, .....
1. Z, I remember being at an outing our company had in Tempe Az while we were working on an RJ Reyonlds software project. One of the guys from RJR, as we stood around a fire in the desert having a beer, asked me if I had any heroes. I hadn't really thought about it to that point but fairly quickly answered Chet Atkins. He said Good hero to have. Chet honestly was selfless. Excellence was always his goal and he was never satisfied with his performance. Hard to do better than that regardless what you're doing. He inspired millions around the world.
6. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
7. What an inspirational credo for all of life's endeavors. He was way more than just an excellent guitar player.
1. Yes he was Cube. He had no enemies that's for sure.
8. ~• A Visit with Pa Grouch •~
'Twas two days before Christmas
And Papa Grouch here
Made a pact with the Devil
To stay home this year.
The cupboard was bare
And the table unclad
Because of this grumpy
Self-centered old Dad,
Who'd decided it all
Was too much of a strain
That denuded his wallet
And caused him great pain.
Mama was despondent
The babe on her lap
Did nothing but howl
And spit up its pap.
The children were mopey
Their eyes sullen slits
They thought Papa'd gone mad
And had lost all his wits
When on the front lawn
There arose a great clatter
The neighbors had come
To see what was the matter
With no wreath on the door
Or lights on the eaves
They thought Papa'd grown poor
Or been looted by thieves
So up to the housetop
With garlands they climbed
Stringing green'ry and lights
Till they got all begrimed
The ladies walked in
With caskets of food
Then set up a tree
While the children they wooed
With carols in harmony
Sung at the door
With lighted red candles
That dripped on the floor.
Then in marched Tom Turkey,
Who went straight to the oven,
Saying, "Pluck me and stuff me,
I'm dyin' for lovin.'"
He made not a squawk
While they chopped off his head
Plucked out all his feathers
And stuffed him with bread
And onions and apples
And sausage and sage
And quite enough butter
To pay a week's wage.
The cranberry mold
Like a rubicund belly
Shook and shimmered itself
Like a gem made of jelly.
The scent of cinnamon
Ginger and pine
Along with the turkey
Smelled simply divine
A baker on crutches
Who only could hobble
Said, "Soon that old bird
Will be ready to gobble."
The men midst cold ashes
Placed branches for Yule
Their crackling splendor
A marvelous tool
For cheering and warming
Pa Grouch with his pain,
Who was soon moved to say,
"I've no right to complain.
"With neighbors like you,
I feel it's a shame
I ever indulged
A desire to maim
"The Spirit of Joy,
Good Will, and Good Cheer.
I promise you all
I'll be nicer –– NEXT YEAR."
Then placing his thumb
At the tip of his nose
He waved them Good Night
And to bed up he rose.
But I heard him exclaim,
As he moved past our sight,
"Don't let the door hit your butt,
When you leave. Now GOOD NIGHT!"
~ FreeThinke
Have Yourself a JOCULAR Christmas! | https://rightwingcat.blogspot.com/2016/12/a-person-who-maybe-motivated-more.html | [
"shape"
] |
Need Help? Want to Talk?
24-hour on-call services
Call 609-258-3310
The students, faculty, and staff of Princeton University have traveled from all fifty states in the nation and from nations around the world to be a part of our community. Because state laws vary greatly and SHARE-related terms can mean a lot of different things to different people, we have provided the following definitions to ensure that we can speak a common language around issues of interpersonal violence and abuse.
Note: Situations need not rise to the level of a criminal act or violation to Rights, Rules, Responsibilities in order for a person to obtain services at SHARE.
Interpersonal violence and abuseThe intentional use of force or power, threatened or actual, against another person, that can result in physical or psychological harm. Interpersonal violence and abuse includes sexual harassment, sexual assault, domestic/dating violence, and stalking. (Adapted from the World Health Organization's definition)
Consent: The voluntary, informed, uncoerced agreement through words and actions freely given, which a reasonable person would interpret as a willingness to participate in mutually agreed-upon sex acts. Consent cannot be given when an individual is 1) incapacitated due to alcohol and/or drugs (lacking cognitive ability to make or act on conscious decisions); 2) unconscious; 3) mentally or physically incapacitated; or 4) underage.
Sexual Harassment: When a person making unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature and/or based on one's sexual orientation or gender identity 1) threatens or rewards academics, employment or participation in any University activity or benefit based on willingness to submit to such conduct; 2) gives grades or makes personnel decisions based on willingness to submit to such conduct; 3) interferes with a person’s educational experience or living/working conditions, due to the severe and/or pervasive nature of the conduct, by creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive environment.
Sexual Assault: This is an umbrella term that encompasses any form of unwanted or involuntary touching or penetration of intimate body parts, by a person of any gender. This includes being forced to touch someone else. "Unwanted or involuntary" sexual contact means that:
1) consent is not given, and the contact may include the use of threats, intimidation, coercion, or physical force
2) consent cannot be given because the contact is with those who are unable to give consent due to their age, physical helplessness, mental incapacitation, or incapacitation by alcohol or other drugs
Dating/Domestic Violence or Intimate Partner Violence (IPV): The actual or threatened physical, sexual, emotional, or financial abuse of an individual by someone with whom they have a current/prior intimate relationship or shared residence. These relationships may include: partner/spouse, family member, caretaker, someone with whom a child is shared, household member or roommate.
Stalking: Purposefully or knowingly engaging in a course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to fear for their safety, the safety of a third person, or suffer other emotional distress. “Course of conduct” is two or more acts of maintaining a visual or physical proximity to a person, either directly or indirectly by any action, method, device, or means.
*Confidential Resource: A resource that is not obligated to report information that is given to them. This allows the client to explore their options in a non-pressured environment in order to make informed decisions. The only exceptions to this rule are in cases that involve imminent risk of serious harm, emergent hospitalization, or a court order. While specific information may be kept confidential, these incidents may be counted for statistical purposes, as per the Clery Act.
Non-Confidential Resource: A resource that is required by law to report incidents/violations and take legal, disciplinary or other action accordingly.
Princeton University
217 McCosh Health Center
Washington Road, Princeton, NJ 08544 | https://share.princeton.edu/get-educated/definitions | [
"cad"
] |
The Perception of Sound
By: Ken Humphreys
Speaker Engineer
After a sound wave reaches your eardrum, the real magic begins. When you’re aware of a sound, your ear and brain are working together on the difficult task of selecting which sound to pay attention to, what might be making it, where it’s located and much more. Here are a few of the important “processing” jobs you routinely but unconsciously accomplish:
Determining Loudness
You can hear a sound at 0 dB (but just barely) yet handle sounds with a trillion times the energy at 120 dB! The price you pay to be able pull off this remarkable feat is that you’re fairly insensitive to changes in sound energy levels. For example, a speaker receiving 100 watts of energy will sound only four times as loud as when it’s receiving 1 watt. One side-effect of this phenomenon is that you don’t need to concern yourself with amplifier power nearly as much as you might think. 70 watts—100 watts—what’s the difference? Only about 1½ dB. Not much, right?
This graph shows the sound intensity range that you’re able to make sense of. Each 10dB increase represents 10 times the energy, but only twice the loudness.
Another neat loudness related trick your ear performs is that it becomes increasingly sensitive to bass when the sound is loud and sensitive to the midrange when everything quiets down. The “loudness” button on your receiver is designed to compensate for this by boosting the bass at lower listening levels. This context-sensitivity was probably quite useful for cavemen by allowing them to derive useful bass information when encountering stampeding wooly mammoths — yet be able to tune into the slight rustle of a skulking saber-toothed tiger. Dinner is served!
Locating sound
When you hear a sound, you can immediately turn your head and face it. You probably take this for granted, but you might not if you knew the number of hard-to-believe calculations your brain just performed. Scientists are discovering that you construct a spatial model in your brain that updates constantly and uses sound as well as sight. Yes, very similar to bats.
To locate sounds in this model you constantly gather information from a variety of sources:
What kind of space are you in? When you hear a sound it has a “signature” that is unique. It arrives at your ear and gets “fingerprinted,” and a few milliseconds later a family of other sounds that bear the same signature arrive in the form of reflections. First, they are associated with the first arrival that created the signature so that the cacophony of other sounds around you can be ignored. Then, by calculating the direction of these delayed arrivals, how long they were delayed and the way that their signature has been “smeared” (whew!) you are able to tell a lot about what kind of environment you are in. For example, you may now know that you are in a small room with large, hard surfaces. In order to do this you had to determine the directions of the original sound and the way it echoed around the room. This was not simply done. Your brain just took into consideration at least three different kinds of information to calculate the direction. First, one ear heard the sound as louder simply because your head created a “sound shadow” and blocked the sound to the ear furthest away. Secondly, the part of your ear that sticks out from your head modified the sound in ways that clue you in regarding the direction the sound came from. And lastly, your brain calculated the phase thing: How much was the delay between the wave arriving at the left ear versus the right ear? Your brain then unconsciously applies this formula to what you just experienced.
And you thought you were bad at math! Your brain is a whiz.
For speaker designers, some of the important points are:
1. For familiar sounds, you are very sensitive to “tonal balance,” that is, are the treble, bass and midrange parts in the right proportion to one another? If a speaker’s frequency response graph is “flat”, that tells you that it’s reproducing the sound with the right balance (at least for the position of the measuring microphone). This has been shown to be the most important thing perceived as “accuracy” in the entire audio system.
2. How much of a time-delay does there need to be for an arriving sound to be identified as a reflection rather than part of the original sound’s signature? Jury’s out on this one, but if the “delayed arrival” is soon enough, say from reflections off of the grill frame or speakers that aren’t mounted flush, it is heard as part of the signature and you will hear it as a distortion to the tonal balance.
3. Your brain mostly ignores reflected signals when evaluating the balance of sound. Bass reflections get treated a little differently.
4. You cannot locate bass sounds unless you correctly associate a bass note’s overtones and then locate them in space. This allows for speakers that specialize in low bass—subwoofers—to be placed away from the main speakers and successfully fool you into believing that the bass is coming from the small speakers that reproduce the overtones.
5. Here is a neat little experiment you can try at home: Put your amp in “mono’ mode and notice that if you are just slightly off-center, the sound will appear to be coming completely from the speaker closest to you. This is because your brain is a detective, and the sound coming from this speaker gets “fingerprinted”, identified as the first arrival of sound and then used as the sole source of information as to the sound’s location. You are still hearing the other speaker, (try unplugging it) your brain just isn’t using it for location information.
In Conclusion
The study of how the brain processes sound – psychoacoustics — is a huge and very interesting body of information. If you’d like to read more, there’s a lot to dig into. You may want to bring a good shovel and start at this wikipedia article. Have fun exploring science!
Aperion Home Theater Gurus
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Mastering the art of bidding; Auction! The Guide to Bidding, Buying, Bargaining, Selling, Exhibiting, and Making a Profit, by William C. Ketchum Jr. New York: Stirling Publishing Company. $10.95. Cashing in on the Auction Boom, by James Wagenvoord. New York: Rawson, Wade. $ 6.95.
Whether or not you return home with a Victorian sofa or a slightly used ironing board, an auction can make a good afternoon's or evening's worth of entertainment. Those who know the right way to attend an auction, who have mastered the art of bidding and not bidding, will get good buys as well as entertainment. Those who don't may end up wishing they'd gone to a movie instead.
Recognizing that auctions are loaded with both pleasures and perils, William C. Ketchum Jr. has written a useful guide to making sure there are more of the former than the latter.
You begin, he says, by making wise use of the auction preview, the time period in which the public can examine the goods to be sold. Anything that interests you should be examined thoroughly. Does that dropleaf table have both its leaves intact? Does that quilt have too many moth holes to make it a worthwhile investment? Never, he advises, bid on anything you haven't seen before it goes up for bid.
Other chapters deal with the sale itself, including such crucial matters as where to sit and how to bid intelligently. He also tackles the thorny subject of how to protect yourself against a dishonest auctioneer. How do you know if the auctioneer is using a "shill," someone planted in the audience to bid in order to get the price up? Or what about those "phantom bidders" who aren't really there at all?
A lawyer as well as an avid auction-goer, Mr. Ketchum gives the reader a good idea of the rules and regulations governing most auctions. Just how binding a bid can be and the circumstances under which a customer can return an object are well-outlined. He also includes a chapter on how to use auctions as a seller rather than as a buyer, pointing out that certain auctions can yield particularly high prices for your own merchandise.
In addition there is some useful background on the types of antiques auctions that are available. They range from the elite city galleries such as Sotheby Parke Bernet and Christie's, where millions of dollars can be spent during a single sale, to the small country auctions that dispense everything from Chippendale highboys to boxes of bottle caps. Each, as Mr. Ketchum illustrates, requires a certain amount of know-how to obtain both profit and enjoyment.
James Wagenvoord's book is less of a how-to on auction attendance and more of a compendium of the many different types of auctions available today. While Mr. Ketchum deals with just those offering antiques and fine arts, Mr. Wagenvoord introduces the reader to everything from post office a uctions to those resulting from business liquidations.
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tag:www.econsultancy.com,2008:/topics/email Latest Email content from Econsultancy 2017-05-02T14:01:00+01:00 tag:www.econsultancy.com,2008:BlogPost/69035 2017-05-02T14:01:00+01:00 2017-05-02T14:01:00+01:00 How Lenny Letter used email newsletters to cultivate an online community Nikki Gilliland <p>With 500,000 subscribers and a reported 70% open rate, it has rapidly grown in popularity since its launch in 2015. So, what makes readers race to read it? </p> <p>Here’s a bit more on how Lenny has evolved so far.</p> <h3>Email as an intimate medium</h3> <p>Lena Dunham has famously championed the discussion of feminist topics, including friendship, health, sex and money – previously using the mediums of TV and books to do so. With the realisation that there was an appetite for more in-depth feminist content, she launched Lenny Letter to deliver it direct to women’s inboxes.</p> <p>Lenny takes the form of two emails per week – Tuesdays is for personal essays and short stories, while Fridays is reserved for interviews. Both are lengthy and usually feature illustrations by up-and-coming artists. </p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/5694/Lenny_2.JPG" alt="" width="500" height="820"></p> <p>So, why did Dunham choose to steer clear of the standard website-format, used by the likes of <a href="https://econsultancy.com/blog/68121-why-i-love-the-pool-and-its-refreshing-approach-to-publishing/" target="_blank">The Pool</a> and Jezebel?</p> <p>According to editor Jessica Grose, it is so that writers can directly speak to the audience, shining a spotlight on important messages rather than distracting them with a broad selection of articles. </p> <p>What’s more, it is built on the notion that email is a much more intimate and personal medium, with users deliberately opting in to receive content rather than absent-mindedly browsing on a public forum. </p> <h3>Encourages social community</h3> <p>Lenny does have an accompanying website, however, content is published with a delay of 24 hours or so to incentivise subscriptions to the newsletter. This is also done to give the design of the newsletter due attention, with illustrations and composition deliberately aligning with the medium.</p> <p>Like a lot of other publications, Lenny <a href="https://econsultancy.com/blog/68663-why-online-publications-are-ditching-comments-sections-for-social/" target="_blank">does not allow comments</a>, instead encouraging readers to use social media to start positive conversations about topics featured. In turn, Lenny employees are highly responsive, typically replying to Instagram or Twitter comments within the same day.</p> <p>Combined, this has helped the publisher to create a receptive online audience, which has in no doubt contributed to high open rates and loyal readership. </p> <h3>Advertising business model</h3> <p>The main reason for the existence of the Lenny website is to provide a permanent space for display and <a href="https://econsultancy.com/blog/67083-is-native-advertising-sustainable/" target="_blank">native ads</a> – the result of a partnership with Hearst Media. The deal involves Hearst selling space for advertising and branded content on the site, as well as promoting Lenny across titles like Marie Claire and <a href="https://econsultancy.com/blog/68384-how-cosmopolitan-reinvented-itself-became-the-number-one-women-s-magazine-in-the-uk/" target="_blank">Cosmopolitan</a> magazine.</p> <p>Lenny also stresses that its branded content is just as authentic as its regular features, collaborating closely with brands to ensure the publication’s tone of voice remains strong.</p> <p>For instance, an interview with writer Helen Ellis focuses on what it’s like to be in a stressful situation – and it also happens to be sponsored by Secret Deodorant. Examples like these show how sponsored content can blend seamlessly in with the over-arching brand. Of course, it also relies on the audience’s trust in its reputation and dedication to quality journalism.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/5695/Helen_Ellis.JPG" alt="" width="760" height="637"></p> <h3>Branching into other areas of business</h3> <p>Alongside the newsletter, Lenny also has an online shop selling branded clothing and accessories. </p> <p>Described as a place that ‘would rep grassroots feminist businesses’, it’s more of an extension of the brand’s values than a real money-making venture. Likewise, it also builds on the community element, with readers keen to wear subtly branded items like the ‘Dismantle the Patriarchy’ patch set.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/5696/Lenny_shop.JPG" alt="" width="760" height="467"></p> <p>Lenny is not averse to expanding its presence in other areas, too. Last year, it began a <a href="https://econsultancy.com/blog/68348-three-reasons-brands-are-using-podcasts-as-part-of-their-content-marketing-strategy/" target="_blank">podcast series</a> called ‘Women of the Hour’ and it currently has a video series in the works for HBO Now.</p> <p>Naturally, it will need to tread carefully. While expansion could help to increase new subscribers, even more brand involvement or corporate sponsorship could potentially alienate existing readers invested in the core premise. </p> <p>That being said, as long as it keeps its focus firmly on what women really want to read about, I can’t see it going too far wrong.</p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> <p lang="en" dir="ltr">Just read <a href="https://twitter.com/lennyletter">@lennyletter</a> interview by <a href="https://twitter.com/oliviaclement_">@oliviaclement_</a> with <a href="https://twitter.com/AnnaDeavereS">@AnnaDeavereS</a> . Lots of gems, but these really stuck with me. 1st on education.</p> — meghan (@meghafon) <a href="https://twitter.com/meghafon/status/852904569432571909">April 14, 2017</a> </blockquote> <p><strong><em>For more on the topic of email, you can download Econsultancy's <a href="https://econsultancy.com/reports/email-census/" target="_blank">Email Marketing Industry Census 2017</a></em></strong></p> tag:www.econsultancy.com,2008:TrainingDate/3230 2017-03-21T16:49:38+00:00 2017-03-21T16:49:38+00:00 Email Marketing - Advanced <p>Give your email campaigns an injection of fresh thinking in this fantastic email marketing workshop.</p> <p>You’ll gain advanced, strategic email marketing training and get the opportunity to have your email campaigns reviewed by an industry expert who will provide practical tips for improvement.</p> <p>Strictly limited to 10 places, the workshop allows for plenty of interaction and you’ll be able to bounce ideas off other experienced marketers.</p> tag:www.econsultancy.com,2008:TrainingDate/3229 2017-03-21T16:48:41+00:00 2017-03-21T16:48:41+00:00 Email Marketing - Advanced <p>Give your email campaigns an injection of fresh thinking in this fantastic email marketing workshop.</p> <p>You’ll gain advanced, strategic email marketing training and get the opportunity to have your email campaigns reviewed by an industry expert who will provide practical tips for improvement.</p> <p>Strictly limited to 10 places, the workshop allows for plenty of interaction and you’ll be able to bounce ideas off other experienced marketers.</p> tag:www.econsultancy.com,2008:TrainingDate/3178 2017-03-21T11:39:19+00:00 2017-03-21T11:39:19+00:00 Intensive: Mastering eCRM <p>Implementing a robust CRM strategy delivers vastly improved effectiveness in your marketing programmes. This three day course will help you understand how CRM can help your business and give you the practical skills to apply and assess CRM techniques in the real world.</p> <p>Econsultancy’s intensives are three-day programmes offering you a deep dive into specific digital disciplines. With content drawn from our academically accredited digital certificates, the intensives offer the practical training without the need for long term commitment.</p> <p>Intensives:</p> <ul> <li>Are led by practitioner trainers</li> <li>Include access to resources to support the training</li> <li>Allow delegates to implement and evaluate what they’ve learnt through ‘homework’ and trainer feedback after training</li> <li>Lead to an Econsultancy certificate of completion</li> </ul> tag:www.econsultancy.com,2008:TrainingDate/3162 2017-03-21T11:14:13+00:00 2017-03-21T11:14:13+00:00 eCRM <p>The principles of traditional, offline-focussed, Customer Relationship Management are not up to the challenge of new web channels, social media and mobile engagements. This course will take you through the essentials of the new approach to eCRM - enabling you to execute a high performance CRM solution that drives revenue.</p> tag:www.econsultancy.com,2008:BlogPost/68573 2016-11-30T11:01:07+00:00 2016-11-30T11:01:07+00:00 Seven examples of Black Friday email marketing from retailers Nikki Gilliland <p>Following on from our article on <a href="https://econsultancy.com/blog/68557-how-uk-retailers-are-promoting-black-friday-online" target="_blank">how UK brands promoted the event online</a>, here’s how seven retailers executed their email marketing campaigns.</p> <h3>ASOS</h3> <p>Let's kick off with one of the best of the bunch.</p> <p>ASOS executed a pretty heavy email campaign, first mentioning the event nearly an entire week beforehand.</p> <p>While this might sound a little excessive, the emails are still quite subtle, designed to build excitement and get customers in the mood.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/1844/Black_Friday_warm_up.JPG" alt="" width="450" height="424"></p> <p>When the real event finally kicked off, ASOS used a discount code with the promise of 20% off all items.</p> <p>Just imagine the regret if you forgot to enter the code at the checkout...</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/1845/ASOS_code.JPG" alt="" width="450" height="436"></p> <p>It also promoted the Black Friday offer on top of an existing sale of 'up to 70%'.</p> <p>It's not clear whether the items here were any good, but the email copy sure does makes you want to go and have a look.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/1849/ASOS_extra.JPG" alt="" width="450" height="199"></p> <p>Likewise, ASOS's subject lines were nicely done, reinforcing the brand's young and conversational tone of voice.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/1846/Asos_subject_lines.JPG" alt="" width="500" height="139"></p> <p><em>For more on ASOS, read our post on <a href="https://econsultancy.com/blog/67950-eight-ecommerce-checkout-design-features-that-make-asos-great/" target="_blank">eight checkout design features that make its site great.</a></em></p> <h3>House of Fraser</h3> <p>Unlike ASOS's strong but subtle approach, House of Fraser went overboard on the emails this year, as shown in the screenshot of my inbox below.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/1850/House_of_Fraser_emails.JPG" alt="" width="300" height="508"></p> <p>The actual emails were fine - they nicely promoted the array of discounts on offer.</p> <p>It's just a shame they were sent every day for a week, which could be enough to put off even the most loyal customers.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/1851/HoF_email.JPG" alt="" width="450" height="595"></p> <p>On the plus side, despite going down to 30% off, the emails become get more targeted as the week wore one.</p> <p>The one below obviously takes into account my previous interest in womenswear.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/1852/HoF_30_.JPG" alt="" width="450" height="544"></p> <h3>Zara</h3> <p>In contrast to the aforementioned example, Zara took a very restrained approach, only sending out two emails in total.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/1853/Zara_black_friday.JPG" alt="" width="450" height="613"></p> <p>As well as being underwhelming (in terms of the discount and the creative) - the subject lines were pretty boring to say the least.</p> <p>With no indication of how big the offer or how long it'd be on for, I'd be surprised if it received many click-throughs.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/1854/Zara_subject_lines.JPG" alt="" width="430" height="139"></p> <p><em>For more on Zara, read <a href="https://econsultancy.com/blog/67581-six-reasons-i-love-zara-com-and-a-few-reasons-i-don-t/" target="_blank">'Six reasons I love Zara.com (and a few reasons I don't)'</a></em></p> <h3>John Lewis</h3> <p>Surprisingly, John Lewis wasn't very impressive either.</p> <p>Again, with no indication of the amount of money customers might save, it doesn't give much incentive to click through.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/1855/John_Lewis_black_friday.JPG" alt="" width="450" height="563"></p> <p>Another thing I found interesting was that its Sunday email - sent when the weekend event was still running - used an entirely unrelated subject line.</p> <p>This was despite the fact that the email itself was Black Friday related.</p> <p>Maybe the retailer was trying to be subtle? It just felt a bit misjudged to me,</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/1857/John_Lewis_subject_lines.JPG" alt="" width="450" height="121"></p> <p>However, with John Lewis <a href="https://econsultancy.com/blog/68512-john-lewis-combines-tv-ad-with-snapchat-lens-and-email/" target="_blank">traditionally more focused on Christmas</a>, perhaps Black Friday was deliberately underplayed.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/1856/John_Lewis_black_friday_2.JPG" alt="" width="430" height="528"></p> <h3>H&M</h3> <p>H&M's emails on and around Black Friday were strong.</p> <p>With a bold and concise message of 20% off plus free delivery - customers were left in no doubt as to what they could expect.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/1858/H_M_black_friday.JPG" alt="" width="450" height="546"></p> <p>Furthermore, I also like the fact that its emails included editorial-inspired content, motivating customers with how they could style their bargains rather than just promoting the sale.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/1859/H_M_2.JPG" alt="" width="450" height="569"></p> <p>The only factor that let H&M down was its slightly dull subject lines.</p> <p>Not bad - just a bit lacklustre. Still, at least they're concise.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/1861/H_M_subject_line.JPG" alt="" width="450" height="114"></p> <h3>Debenhams</h3> <p>On to Debenhams, and it demonstrated a good amount of variety in its emails.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/1862/Debehams_black_friday.JPG" alt="" width="400" height="559"></p> <p>As well as giving customers a heads up on what was to come, it also included original content, such as a 'Top 10' deal countdown and editorial-inspired imagery.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/1863/Debenhams_2.JPG" alt="" width="380" height="287"></p> <p>By incorporating more variety into its messaging, it feels less salesy, meaning customers are less likely to dismiss it as Black Friday noise.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/1864/Debenhams_3.JPG" alt="" width="400" height="550"></p> <p>You can read how Debenhams' site redesign led to ecommerce sales growth <a href="https://econsultancy.com/blog/66644-how-debenhams-site-redesign-led-to-ecommerce-sales-growth/" target="_blank">in this article</a>.</p> <h3>Threadless</h3> <p>Finally, an interesting approach from US retailer Threadless.</p> <p>On the Wednesday before the event, it sent out this email offering an exclusive 40% off code that expired before the Black Friday deals began.</p> <p>While this might sound like it'd have limited impact as people would just hold out for Black Friday, it's obviously an attempt to foster customer loyalty for the long-term.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/1869/Personal_email_threadless.JPG" alt="" width="500" height="454"></p> <p>By using a personal tone - even sending it from the Founder of the company - it is designed to make customers feel valued.</p> <p>A refreshing surprise just before Black Friday hit, it made for one of the most memorable emails of the week.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/1871/Threadless_email.JPG" alt="" width="370" height="147"></p> <p>On to the actual Black Friday emails, and Threadless promoted it with a Christmas-themed creative.</p> <p>This could also prove effective for getting customers to think about the festive period (and why they might want to come back again soon).</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/1868/Threadless_creative_2.JPG" alt="" width="450" height="487"></p> <p>Finally, hats off to the brand for including an original and humourous subject line in its Cyber Monday email.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/1866/Threadless_subject_line_2.JPG" alt="" width="450" height="123"></p> tag:www.econsultancy.com,2008:BlogPost/68507 2016-11-15T14:36:49+00:00 2016-11-15T14:36:49+00:00 Which vertical sector is the king of the hill for email marketing? Henry Hyder-Smith <p>In addition, 10 years of increased integration between the technologies and channels used now means better segmentation, increasingly sophisticated personalisation and customer-driven marketing.</p> <p>However, in order to make such a tactics and strategy analysis more useful for marketers it’s important to drill down until we reach the sector level.</p> <p>This way marketers can learn from each other and even cherry pick (and test) good ideas that already work in other sectors.</p> <p>Using data collected for the Adestra/Econsultancy Email Marketing Industry Census 2016 – a survey of over 1,100 digital marketers around the world - we looked at the top six sectors: Retail/Mail Order, Print/Publishing & Media, Charities/Government & Non-profits, Financial Services & Insurance, Travel & Hospitality and Technology & Telecoms.</p> <p>We analysed each sector to see which are producing the best return for the budget they spend on email, the tactics and strategies they use, the time spent on them, how they focus on mobile and implement automation, and finally their outlook on the future.</p> <p>I’ve picked three sectors from the report which are notable for being best performing, most improved and showing most growth potential.</p> <h4><strong>Print, publishing & media</strong></h4> <p>Yet again, the Print, Publishing & Media industry has produced consistent results across the board. Publishers have seen email performance shoot up since last year (see fig.1), and they top the chart for total sales attributable to the email channel.</p> <p>They make use of the broadest number of ESP services and lead the pack in optimising email for mobile. It’s not surprising then that there is no other sector that feels more love for their ESP.</p> <p><em>Fig.1 How do you rate the performance of your company’s email campaigns? (Results show Excellent or Good)</em></p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/resized/0008/1327/2016_email_performance_sector_census-blog-flyer.png" alt="Email performance 2016 Sector Census" width="470" height="376"></p> <h4><strong>Charities, Government & Not-for-Profits</strong></h4> <p>From mediocre results last year, the sector with the biggest turnaround has to be Charities, Government & NFP. Their ROI is consistently higher (and now tops the chart at 84%, excellent/good ROI – see Fig.2), email performance has skyrocketed and more time is now spent on strategic activities.</p> <p><em>Fig.2 How do you rate the email channel in terms of return on investment? (Results show Excellent or Good)</em></p> <p><em><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/resized/0008/1329/2016_roi_sector_census-blog-flyer.png" alt="Email ROI 2016 Sector Census" width="470" height="329"></em></p> <h4><strong>Retail/ Mail Order</strong></h4> <p>ROI has grown considerably from last year for the Retail/Mail Order sector, and email performance is just keeping above the overall email industry average.</p> <p>Retailers also score above the industry average for mobile optimisation strategy. While they are keeping time spent on tactical activities down, they have however lost a little focus on strategy.</p> <p>Their use of tactics overall has dropped back since last year, however firms have seen modest improvements in success when implementing automated email programmes. With an eye on the future, retailers are the most innovative sector (see Fig.3), and feel most strongly about innovating with creative behavioural triggers.</p> <p><em>Fig.3 How do you intend to innovate with email in 2016?</em></p> <p><em><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/resized/0008/1328/2016_innovation_sector_census-blog-flyer.png" alt="Email Innovation 2016 Sector Census" width="470" height="339"></em></p> <h4><strong>And the king of the hill is…?</strong></h4> <p>Publishers have produced the most consistent results across the board, while charities have shown a huge upswing in both return and performance as they get to grips with more email tactics and strategies. Travel firms too have upped their game as they adopt more email tactics, data services and mobile optimisation techniques.</p> <p>Retail performance is largely middle of the road, however the sector has a great future potential if it can focus its efforts. While finance firms have experienced a rise in email performance, they are let down by not embracing email tactics or ESP services, and have low email optimisation strategies.</p> <p>Similarly, with few highpoints, tech companies are often trailing the pack in terms of how they use email and (predictably) the return it produces.</p> <p>While we can still highlight individual improvements across the board, some sectors need to use the experience and successes of their peers and look at the opportunities, services and tactics available to really make the email channel work harder for them.</p> <p>It might seem an uphill battle, but experimentation and testing are the name of the game.</p> <p><em>Subscribers can download the full <a href="https://econsultancy.com/reports/email-census/">Email Marketing Census 2016</a>.</em></p> tag:www.econsultancy.com,2008:BlogPost/68391 2016-10-13T01:00:00+01:00 2016-10-13T01:00:00+01:00 Ten ways to freshen-up your email marketing Jeff Rajeck <p>So, though it seems like email is working well, companies are not increasing investment in the channel.</p> <p> <img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/0002/1.png" alt="" width="701" height="340"></p> <p>One potential reason for this is that email is a legacy technology and many marketers have become comfortable with how it fits into their organisations.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/0003/2.png" alt="" width="616" height="379"></p> <p>To others, though, email marketing is still evolving and<strong> there are a number of new best practices which can help even the most jaded email marketer.</strong></p> <p>To find out more about these, we spoke to a number of marketers about email at our recent Digital Cream Sydney and asked for ways to 'freshen-up' a stale email marketing programme.</p> <p>Here are ten tips provided by client-side marketers on the day.</p> <h3>1. Email marketing is a value exchange</h3> <p>One of the first things participants pointed out is that consumers are becoming much more savvy in managing their emails. Often, they pointed out, people have multiple email accounts to manage and ignore commercial emails.</p> <p>Because of this, email marketers should no longer send emails with a simple call-to-action and hope for the best. </p> <p>Instead, marketers should treat an email as a 'value exchange'. This means that every email sent should answer the customer's unspoken question, 'what's in it for me'. </p> <p>Special offers, exclusive content, and event invites all provide this, according to attendees.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/0004/email-2.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="533"></p> <h3>2. Email content must be engaging</h3> <p>In addition to providing value to get clicks and opens, marketers must also provide engaging content in order to be read.</p> <p>According to a <a href="https://litmus.com/blog/mobile-friendly-email-september-2016-email-market-share">recent report by Litmus</a>, <strong>email is most often opened on a mobile device.</strong></p> <p>Because of this, noted one participant, <strong>emails are not only in competition with other emails but with everything else available on mobile.</strong></p> <p>So, when writing emails, keep your user's short attention span in mind and make sure that the content is sharp, relevant, and to the point.</p> <h3>3. Use social media to build email lists</h3> <p>Attendees said that organisations still struggle to get email addresses from potential customers.</p> <p>While buying email addresses is now completely out of the question, many are wondering what to do to increase the size of their list.</p> <p>One participant said that social media can help. </p> <p>First off, educational advertising on social media helps drive high-quality traffic to the site. Then offering a free service or valuable information in exchange for an email address can help increase the list size.</p> <p>Also, <strong>if users need to login to your site for any reason</strong><strong>, use a social login.</strong> Then you should be able to get their email address as well as some demographic information.</p> <p>In either case, another noted, the organisation should still use an opt-in email in order to ensure that the customer is okay receiving promotional emails in the future.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/0005/email-3.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="533"></p> <h3>4. Marketers need to get email data under control</h3> <p>Another way companies can improve their email marketing programmes is to look at the data that they use to measure effectiveness.</p> <p>With so many departments having access to email, <strong>there is often no visibility in an organisation about how many times a customer has been emailed.</strong> </p> <p>This means that marketers have no way to gauge 'email fatigue', one of the most common reasons for unsubscribes.</p> <p>Also, another participant pointed out, <strong>most organisations do not have clarity on what click, open, and unsubscribe rates they should aim for.</strong> </p> <p>Some do use industry benchmarks, but attendees felt that these were too general.</p> <p>Email marketers should lead the way on the benchmarks and ensure that everyone who uses email knows what data and targets they should aim for and how they can help to avoid over-emailing customers.</p> <h3>5. A/B testing makes a big difference</h3> <p>Delegates were all enthusiastic about the positive effects of using A/B testing in their email marketing programmes.</p> <p>Things marketers test include: </p> <ul> <li>Email receiver's name.</li> <li>Subject line.</li> <li>Amount of content.</li> <li>CTAs.</li> <li>Frequency. </li> </ul> <p>Out of all those, participants felt that subject line was probably the most important and encouraged others to make testing that a general practice.</p> <h3>6. Use responsive design and video in emails</h3> <p>Emails have changed a lot in the past few years. Now that many people view them on mobile email clients which support rich media, they can include HTML5 design, graphics, and even video.</p> <p><strong>Participants agreed that better-looking emails tend to perform better,</strong> but urged marketers to test emails on multiple platforms.</p> <p>One attendee noted that many email platforms still do not use responsive design as standard and so emails may not render correctly.</p> <p>Another delegate said that video has worked very well for their company, but added that <strong>all video in emails should have subtitles as well as audio.</strong></p> <p> <img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/0006/email-4.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="533"></p> <h3>7. Use preference centres, but be careful</h3> <p>Participants said that email marketers should use web pages where customers can update their preferences, also known as 'preference centres'.</p> <p>They can help brands keep subscribers who were about to unsubscribe and get feedback from those who do.</p> <p>Poorly-designed preference centres, however, can cause customer frustration. </p> <p>Delegates warned that <strong>requiring customers to login to make changes or offering overwhelming options can turn what should delight customers into something which destroys brand loyalty.</strong></p> <h3>8. All employees who use email marketing should be trained</h3> <p>As email marketing has become more widely-understood in organisations, the use of the channel has become more widespread.</p> <p>What this means is that in many organisations, people who are not familiar with marketing principles often send out campaigns without abiding to the principles of good data management and integrity.</p> <p>At best this means that customers will get too many irrelevant emails and at worst, one participant warned, the organisation may be blocked by major email providers for spam.</p> <p>Because the stakes are so high, <strong>anyone who has permission to launch a campaign should be trained in email marketing</strong>. </p> <p>At the very least they should understand email design, copywriting, audience management, and relevant spam laws.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0008/0007/email-1.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="533"></p> <h3>9. Enterprise-grade email systems are becoming standard</h3> <p>Most participants on the day said that they use, or are in the process of buying, enterprise-grade email systems.</p> <p>Products mentioned included Salesforce, Oracle, and Adobe all of whom include email within their marketing clouds. </p> <p>Mailchimp was mentioned as a high-quality product for those companies who do not send massive amounts of emails.</p> <p>Along with buying these systens though, attendees said that <strong>marketing teams need to allocate resources to learn and use the system properly.</strong></p> <p>Without proper training, one warned, the advantages of having an enterprise-grade email system will not be realised.</p> <h3>10. Email is not the future</h3> <p>Interestingly, many delegates were keen to point out that email is a legacy technology and will probably not grow in influence.</p> <p>This is because consumers now have so many other ways to find information out about brands and keep in touch with customer service.</p> <p>This means that <strong>email marketers should start to see what other services they can integrate with emails</strong>, such as <a href="https://econsultancy.com/blog/64255-why-do-online-retailers-need-live-chat/">online chat</a>, in order to keep their skills current.</p> <p>That said, another participant pointed out that email will probably never go away completely.</p> <p>To back that up, they pointed out that we still receive physical, direct mail from brands to this day.</p> <h3>A word of thanks</h3> <p>Econsultancy would like to thank all of the marketers who participated on the day and especially the moderator at the Email Marketing table, <strong>Monica Villate Escobar, Marketing Manager at Ventura Health</strong>.</p> <p>We hope to see you all at future Sydney Econsultancy events!</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0007/9893/hosts.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="533"></p> tag:www.econsultancy.com,2008:BlogPost/67395 2016-01-13T02:09:00+00:00 2016-01-13T02:09:00+00:00 Three things email marketing leaders do regularly [APAC case studies] Jeff Rajeck <p>In our recent <a href="https://econsultancy.com/reports/email-census">Email Marketing Industry Census 2015</a>, we discovered that email marketing is still a very popular strategy for brands globally.</p> <p>One reason for this is that email marketing offers great return on investment (ROI). </p> <p>Two-thirds (66%) of marketers felt that their email marketing ROI was better than average, and less than one in ten (7%) of those surveyed felt it was 'poor'.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/resized/0007/0595/roi_from_channels-blog-flyer.png" alt="" width="470" height="414"></p> <p>The same group also felt very positive about email marketing's future. The vast majority (78%) disagreed with the statement 'Email marketing will be redundant in five years' and only 9% agreed.</p> <p>So as email marketing is maintaining its popularity, it's useful to review the state of the art occasionally for some best practices.</p> <p>And though it's interesting just to see what everyone else is doing, it's also good to use these best practices to review your own email marketing and see if it is up to scratch.</p> <p>So, for your review and reflection, here are three things which Asia-Pacific email marketing leaders do regularly, each with a relevant case study.</p> <h3>1. They come up with a strategy first, then tactics</h3> <p>When thinking about all the things that you can do with email, it's easy to focus on the tactics. Tactics, after all, are where you provide value to the customer and get metrics to report upwards.</p> <p>And there are plenty of guides to help you with tactics. You can find dozens of blog posts telling you <a href="https://econsultancy.com/blog/64878-45-words-to-avoid-in-your-email-marketing-subject-lines/">how to write a better subject line</a> or about <a href="https://econsultancy.com/blog/62688-six-case-studies-and-infographics-on-the-optimal-time-to-send-emails/">the optimal time to send emails</a>.</p> <p>But without a good strategy, it's hard to know which tactics to use.</p> <p>And once your campaign is finished, it's much harder to analyse the effectiveness without referring to the original strategy.</p> <h4>OK, but what is an email marketing strategy?</h4> <p>There are many types of marketing strategies, but for email marketing one of the best is the segmenting, targeting, and positioning (or STP) approach.</p> <p>For a full explanation of STP, there are excellent resources available (<a href="http://www.slideshare.net/crisanthony/plenus-stp">here's one</a>), but here is a short description of how STP relates to email marketing.</p> <p>There are three steps to this approach: </p> <ol> <li> <strong>Segment</strong>: Divide your email list into exhaustive and mutually exclusive segments.</li> <li> <strong>Target</strong>: Decide which of your offers is most appropriate for each segment.</li> <li> <strong>Position</strong>: Then plan to communicate the value your offer provides to the targeted segment.</li> </ol> <p>How you execute on the strategy, the tactics, should be geared towards capturing the information you need to segment and delivering your offer to the intended target.</p> <p>It's fairly simple, but too often marketing departments lose sight of their original strategy and execute tactics without knowing why they are doing it.</p> <h4>Thai Airways: Strategy in practice</h4> <p>A good example of a company that had a <a href="https://www.marketingmag.com.au/hubs-c/jetting-towards-brand-loyalty/">clear strategic vision ahead of a tactical email marketing campaign</a> is Thai Airways.</p> <p>In order to re-activate its Australian customer base, Thai Airways sent an email to its Australian customers about a contest to win a free trip. </p> <p>To enter the contest, though, participants had to tell Thai Airways when they were available to travel.</p> <p>But instead of just using this data for the contest, Thai airways then segmented its customer base using the customers' preferred travel dates.</p> <p>Then, it sent targeted emails to each segment with an offer positioned to appeal to each customer's personal travel time frame.</p> <p>In short, Thai Airways </p> <ol> <li>Segmented its customers by travel date preference.</li> <li>Targeted those customers with a travel offer relevant to their preferences.</li> <li>Positioned the fare using a personalized email highlighting the offer and the travel dates.</li> </ol> <p> <img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0007/0596/Picture4.png" alt="" width="389" height="656"></p> <p>The results were great. Through using STP Thai Airways was able to increase the average open rate of its emails to 40%, well above the Australian industry standard of 16 to 24%.</p> <p>But more interesting than the results is how the team at Thai Airways: </p> <ul> <li>Thought about what product they wanted to position (time-sensitive travel deals),</li> <li>Worked out how to get the data they needed to segment their email list,</li> <li>And executed using a personalized email. </li> </ul> <p>Thai Airways truly executed a strategy-driven, tactical campaign.</p> <h3>2. They use customer behaviour to trigger emails</h3> <p>Brands gather customer data in other ways besides surveys though, too. Many companies are now using customer behaviour in order to better segment and target their customer base.</p> <p>For example, many businesses now send emails to customers who have 'abandoned' an online shopping cart on their site. </p> <p>Our email survey indicated that nearly two in five (37%) used this tactic in 2015, nearly twice as many who did so in 2013 (20%).</p> <p>But there are other behaviors which can used to trigger an email to improve customer experience. </p> <h4>Zuji's behavioural approach</h4> <p>Zuji, an Asian online travel site, <a href="http://www.experian.com.sg/resources/zuji-case-study-overview.html">sends emails which are triggered by browsing behaviour on its website</a>. </p> <p>That is, when someone registered at Zuji clicks on a link or conducts a flight search, Zuji records the behavior and associates it with the person's email.</p> <p>Then, should Zuji's algorithm determine that the customer needs more information or perhaps a special offer, Zuji's email systems sends a personalized message.</p> <p>According to a recent case study, using behavioural emails resulted in a 50-fold improvement on revenue per thousand emails.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/resized/0007/0597/capture-blog-flyer.png" alt="" width="470" height="467"></p> <p>But more than just increasing revenue, personalized emails are also a great way of improving the customer experience.</p> <p>Getting relevant, personalized information when you're in the research stage is almost always welcomed by customers. </p> <p>And it's not surprising that doing so led to more sales for Zuji.</p> <h3>3. They keep their email list clean</h3> <p>And finally, in order for these programs to work continuously, top brands put a lot of effort into keeping their mailing list clean.</p> <p>One big part of maintaining a clean email list is monitoring the bounces when you send a campaign. </p> <p>Just in case you weren't aware, every email campaign should have a 'bounce report' which tells you why an email couldn't be delivered to one of your customers.</p> <p>Sometimes, things happen out of your control. The customer may have closed their account or moved jobs. Or the company may have gone out of business and the domain is now invalid.</p> <p>But quite often you can fix the problem. The bounce may have been caused by a misspelling or the addition of an invalid character, such as a space. </p> <p>If you monitor your bounce report regularly, you can fix these manually and 'rescue' the email address quickly.</p> <p>But more serious problems can be identified from the bounce report, as well. </p> <p>Your domain may have been, unknowingly, blacklisted by a major email provider such as Hotmail or Gmail. This means that your emails will either be delivered to spam folders for people who use those services, or not at all.</p> <h4>Estée Lauder: Improving deliverability</h4> <p>Estée Lauder in Malaysia <a href="http://www.experian.com.my/assets/resources/case-studies/estee-lauder-malaysia-case-study.pdf">had a big problem</a>. Its emails had a bounce rate of 14.1% on average and ran as high as 21.6%. This meant that, at times, Estée Lauder was not able to deliver email to one in five people on its list!</p> <p>To improve deliverability, Estée Lauder implemented new email software (CheetahMail) and went to work on reducing bounces.</p> <p>First, the system validated its existing list and then deployed a bounce management scheme which removed emails which frequently bounced.</p> <p>But another problem it addressed was deliverability. This involved working with a high-quality email service provider (ESP) who had good relationships with major email providers and making sure that all of their anti-spam policies were being followed.</p> <p>Then, the emails it sent were far more likely to be delivered to recipients in their inbox, and not as spam.</p> <p>The results were that Estée Lauder reduced its email bounce rate from over 10% to under 1%.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/resized/0007/0598/picture2-blog-flyer.jpg" alt="" width="470" height="473"></p> <p>Now, it is easy see this and think you don't have a problem with a bounces. Most companies already have bounce rates under 1%. </p> <p>But maintaining focus on deliverability is still important as every email which bounces is a lost opportunity for better ROI. </p> <p>In fact, cleaning your email list is probably one of the most underrated and effective email marketing tactics for improving ROI.</p> <p>It's also a great place for to start looking for issues if you feel like your email campaigns aren't working as well as they used to.</p> <h3>So...</h3> <p>Brands that do email marketing well tend to have strategies before tactics, use multiple data sources when targeting emails, and use many tactics to keep their email list clean.</p> <p>If you could only do one of these, though, conducting strategic analysis of your email list before executing tactics is probably the most important. </p> <p>You can try all the tricks to improve open and click rates through A/B testing subject lines and body copy, but a good strategy is a much better way to spend your scarce time and resources.</p> <p>This means segmenting your list into meaningful groups, coming up with offers specifically for the segment, and then positioning it in a way which appeals to them.</p> <p>Doing so is the shortest path to improving email marketing ROI and boosting your email marketing program up with the best in the industry.</p> tag:www.econsultancy.com,2008:BlogPost/67306 2015-12-10T11:10:00+00:00 2015-12-10T11:10:00+00:00 Is Pinterest or Instagram better for driving ecommerce? Georges Berzgal <p>However, what hasn’t always been obvious is how to convert these followers into sales.</p> <p>Both platforms recently developed new tools to more easily facilitate commerce across the board.</p> <p>So what are the inherent benefits of services like Pinterest and Instagram, and which provides the best platform for commerce?</p> <h3>Target audiences</h3> <p>It’s no secret that brands looking to target female consumers see the benefits of embracing social media.</p> <p><a href="http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/231970">Women are 10% more</a> likely than men to show brand support and 17% more likely to access offers on social media, although <a href="http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/social-media-marketing/is-the-social-buy-button-poised-to-take-off/2766">research found</a> that men are slightly more interested in purchasing directly on social networks by using a social buy button than women (33 % vs. 30%).</p> <p>All social media networks, bar LinkedIn, have more female users than male, although women’s domination of social media is not equally spread across all networks.</p> <p>Figures suggest that <a href="http://www.conversedigital.com/digital-strategy/should-my-company-be-on-instagram-or-pinterest">Pinterest’s users are 70% and Instagram’s users are 55% female.</a></p> <h3>Buyable Pins</h3> <p>Pinterest launched <a href="https://econsultancy.com/blog/66529-pinterest-enables-ecommerce-with-buyable-pins/">Buyable Pins</a> earlier this year, allowing consumers to purchase items without leaving the platform, and to pay using Apple Pay or credit cards.</p> <p>With a <a href="http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/pinterest-stats/">user base of 70m</a> made-up largely of consumers who are the most active and engaged, it’s no surprise that Pinterest is often seen as the social network with the highest potential for ecommerce.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0006/9879/buyable_pins.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="466"></p> <h3>Instagram's buy button</h3> <p>However, the truth, as unveiled by research from member-based business intelligence firm L2, is that Instagram actually <a href="http://business.financialpost.com/investing/trading-desk/how-instagram-is-becoming-a-must-have-for-retailers?__lsa=6904-3bfd">has the highest browser-to-shopper conversion rate</a> of the social media outlets it tracks.</p> <p>This is all the more impressive considering that Instagram only allows brands to link to their website from their profile page.</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0006/9878/instagram_ads.jpg" alt="" width="700"></p> <p>The introduction of the Instagram ‘buy button’ sounded like a shift for the network.</p> <p>It is not available on regular Instagram posts yet, but limited to <a href="https://econsultancy.com/blog/66689-how-brands-are-using-instagram-ads/">the recently-introduced ad platform</a>.</p> <p>So if consumers see an item on the brand’s Instagram page they would like to purchase, they still have to search for the item on the retailer’s website to be able to buy it.</p> <h3>So, why is Instagram better at converting browsers to shoppers?</h3> <p>The answer is two-fold. What Pinterest promises is a channel through which brands can speak to women in a way that they like being spoken to.</p> <p>From our experience with clients, marketing messages with gender specific content are five times more successful than unisex messages.</p> <p>Brands understand the need to target consumers by gender, what seems odd is that brands are excited to segregate their female-targeted messages onto an entirely separate platform. </p> <p>Instagram, on the other hand, has a much more level gender split, allowing brands to target both men and women through the same platform by separating their content through gender specific accounts.</p> <p>Apparel retailers like Nike and ASOS are amongst the pioneers of this approach to Instagram, and it makes total sense. Why would you split your product by gender in-store, but then present it all together online?</p> <p><img src="https://assets.econsultancy.com/images/0006/9880/Screen_Shot_2015-12-10_at_11.08.21.png" alt="" width="700"></p> <p>It is more difficult for retailers to push their products openly on Instagram, which is the second, counter-intuitive reason why the platform is better for driving commerce.</p> <p>Brands publish content on Instagram that describes the lifestyle and culture of the company; it is the social network where retailers can forge an emotional connection with consumers.</p> <p>With our own customers we often see marketing messages with an absence of product promotion bringing in the most revenue.</p> <p>Messages promoting the culture behind the brand – be it a tie in with another brand or a connection to the local community – have proven to be extremely effective at driving engagement and revenue.</p> <p>Pinterest has been under pressure to bring commerce to the front of its platform for some time.</p> <p>Buyable pins move Pinterest towards becoming an aggregator of ecommerce, something akin to a digital shopping centre.</p> <p>This is by no means a bad thing, either for brands or consumers, but this evolution also moves Pinterest away from its social origins.</p> <p>Brands looking to tap into Instagram for ecommerce must keep in mind that the logical benefits of a product are often outweighed by a decision based on emotion.</p> <p>Social media allows brands to share their brand story in a way that retail space and owned websites often cannot offer, and for this reason a targeted Instagram account looks to be the better choice for driving revenue now, and potentially in the future.</p> | https://www.econsultancy.com/topics/email.atom | [
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Iceland - Strokkur - Geysir's Smaller Brother | by Ben124.
Back to photostream
Iceland - Strokkur - Geysir's Smaller Brother
There is only one Icelandic word used in the English language: geyser. Though the word refers to all geysers in general, it comes from a single geyser (in fact, the geyser) located in the South West of Iceland. Unfortunately, the Great Geysir has been somewhat shy in recent decades, though on special occasions it can sometimes be coaxed into a performance with some soap. When Geysir does perform, it lives up to its name, spraying a jet of steaming water 200 feet skyward. Far more reliable, though less spectacular, is nearby Strokkur (“the churn”), which spouts a 60-100 foot jet about once every five minutes. The geyser area is also rich in walking paths that lead past steaming vents and colourful, mineral-rich mud formations. The whole area is a geothermal park sitting on top of a vast boiling cauldron. Belching sulphurous mud pots of unusual colours, hissing steam vents, hot and cold springs, warm streams, and primitive plants can all be found here.
We stopped at the geothermal area of Geysir, the geyser for which all geysers are named. The famous Geysir now only erupts after large earthquakes and last erupted in 2000. Its little brother, Strokkur, erupts much more frequently, about 6-8 minutes apart. . People gather around the geyser and stare at the mouth, watching the water boil, in full anticipation with cameras ready. If you turn away, you’ll miss it. When you take a photo of one there are not that many ways to come up with unique composition. You can try a longer exposure of 1sec to give it slightly softer feel. You have to be ready even if it means standing still waiting for the eruption for up to 20 min with the camera in the right position. The geyser spouts upward close to 30 meter high and then it’s done. Sometimes there is a smaller spurt immediately before the large eruption.
Why does a geyser erupt?
What will become of Geysir?
The water level in the Geysir has been artificially lowered, but recent volcanic activity has reactivated it, so Geysir has somewhat found it's renewed life. Unfortunately, Geysir now erupts to no specific timetable.
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Taken on October 23, 2009 | https://www.flickr.com/photos/ben124/5397759488/ | [
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Why are we there?
Glastonbury Festival enjoys a relatively crime-free existence and some parts still hark back to the early days of peace, love and free milk. However, there will be more than 200,000 people at the festival. This is bigger than plenty of towns across the United Kingdom and no-one would question why those towns had police officers stationed there.
In a gathering of such size, there are unfortunately one or two bad apples and the police would be remiss not to have a presence at the festival and make sure that the vast majority of people enjoy a happy festival, with crime the last thing on their minds.
Policing Team 5
In all seriousness, a policing presence at the festival is essential to the granting of the licence needed to hold the festival.
After historic problems including public order, overcrowding, crime and safety problems, the festival had questions to answer from the police before a licence would be granted for another festival.
The solid steel fence which now surrounds the whole site was a massive step forward in public order and safety of those inside and outside the festival and has done a lot to make policing the festival an easier task.
However, the need for policing is still there, unfortunately there still is crime at the festival. There needn’t be though – with your help, we can make Glastonbury Festival all about peace and love, and not about who might nick your iPhone. Keep it safe, keep it hidden, keep it.
• To report non emergencies call 101 or report online | https://www.glastonburypolice.co.uk/about-us/why-are-we-there/ | [
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The postpartum risk that many moms don’t know about
Special to The Globe and Mail
When you give birth you are expecting a baby to come out, and then the placenta. Not many moms are expecting their bladder or uterus to come out – most don’t even know this is possible.
Pregnancy and childbirth are risk factors for a condition known as pelvic organ prolapse. Studies show that 50 per cent of women who have given birth one or more times will have some degree of prolapse but it is likely even higher given the low reporting rate and lack of awareness. In simple terms a prolapse is the progressive descent of the internal organs (the bladder, the uterus or the rectum) into and eventually out of the vagina.
It occurs in stages, with the first and second stages often being asymptomatic, so many women don’t even know they have a problem until it progresses to stage 3, when the organ is at the vaginal opening and may even bulge out periodically on exertion, or stage 4, when the organ is bulging right out of the vaginal opening.
Early stage prolapse is sometimes reversible and is very manageable. But once the prolapse progresses to stage 3 or 4, it becomes life altering and may require surgery – surgery that can in turn cause other challenges and potentially lead to more operations. Prevention and early detection are key when it comes to pelvic organ prolapse.
Here are some possible symptoms to look for:
• low back pain
• a feeling of heaviness in the lower abdomen
• discomfort with sex
• difficulty starting the flow of urine
• difficulty emptying the bladder
• inability to completely empty the rectum.
As the descent of the organs continues, symptoms may progress to:
• feeling like you are sitting on a golf ball
• feeling like something is falling out
• heaviness that gets worse as the day progresses
• tampons getting pushed out
• difficulty inserting a tampon.
The best thing a woman can do to prevent prolapse (and any pelvic floor dysfunction for that matter) is to see a pelvic floor physiotherapist, ideally prior to conception, then during pregnancy, then at six weeks postpartum and then annually. Visit www.pelviennewellness.com for a list of pelvic floor physiotherapists across Canada. They assess the pelvic floor muscles for function and the internal organs to see if they are where they should be.
If a prolapse is found, a number of lifestyle management options would be presented.
Stand, sit and move with a neutral pelvis
If your posture is such that your pelvis is not aligned with your breathing diaphragm, then you will be given tips on how to stand, move and sit properly which in turn will make the pelvic floor exercises more effective. Most baby carriers encourage poor posture, so ensure your physiotherapist shows you the proper form while you are holding and carrying your baby as well.
Avoid heavy lifting
Heavy lifting causes an increase in intra-abdominal pressure and if your core (pelvic floor) can’t manage that pressure, then your organs will continue to move down and eventually out. Generally anything over 15 pounds may be too strenuous for some, and most moms are “heavy lifting” many times a day. Work with your pelvic floor physiotherapist to develop strategies for proper core activation to make lifting safer.
Explore a pessary
A pessary is a device inserted high into the vagina that supports the its walls and the organs. There are many different sizes and shapes, and it may take a few tries to find the right one, but once you do, it can allow the muscles to function better and provide relief from the discomfort of prolapse.
Avoid crunches
Crunches are the standard “go to” exercise for losing the mummy tummy but they increase intra-abdominal pressure pushing the abdomen outward and the pelvic organs downward. With each crunch, the bulging bladder or uterus is pushed further south.
Having a prolapse does not mean all exercise should be halted, it just needs to be modified. Some great options for prolapse-friendly exercise are:
The hypopresive method
A series of hypopresive postures (meaning “without pressure”) done with rhythmic breathing and apneas (pauses in breathing) that improve resting tone in the abdomen and pelvic floor and may even reverse early stage prolapse. Visit www.metodohipopresivo.com.
The buoyancy from water is a welcome relief from the downward draw of being upright against gravity all day. The water also provides resistance, making it a great way to train your muscles without the heavy lifting.
Yoga in general is thought of as gentle but there are some styles that may be too strenuous for unsupported organs. Opt for yin yoga, restorative yoga or gentle hatha when living with prolapse. | https://www.pelviennewellness.com/blogs/news/14907385-the-postpartum-risk-that-many-moms-don-t-know-about | [
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Double Pendulum with motor between segments
1. Apr 8, 2009 #1
Hello everyone,
First, I must apologize in advance as I am no physicist, and am unable to be of any help in physics to anyone else at a high level. I have a general knowledge of a wide range of subjects, and I have a problem that I need to understand better. So, with that said, here is my question.
I'm interested in the concept of momentum transfer between segments of a double pendulum system. Essentially conservation of momentum.. right? One segment decelerates while the other accelerates.
First question. Does one segment give up it's momentum to the next, or does one segment draw momentum from the other. Is this just semantics?
Second question. Both segments are interacting with one another through a pivot point. One segment slows down while the next segment speeds up. Let's change the scenario though. What would happen if there was a motor between the links at the pivot point forcefully causing the angle of the joint to change. In this case how would the transfer of momentum be affected between the segments? Would it just speed up?
I know i've most likely done a hatchet job to some physics terms in writing this out, so I hope you get the gist of what i'm trying to ask, But any help would be much appreciated.
Thank You
2. jcsd
3. Apr 8, 2009 #2
Andy Resnick
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What you are describing is a fairly complicated system- complicated because the range of possible motions and behaviors of such a system is quite vast: stable oscillations, unstable, chaotic oscillations... to name three.
To answer question 1, I don't think it's correct to divide up the system like that- the two segments do not act independently of the other (except, perhaps, as a limiting case). Rather, the total momentum is the only well-defined measure. How it is partitioned among the internal degrees of freedom, and how that varies in time, can probably be written down (most easily by working in terms of Lagrangian or Hamiltonian mechanics).
For question 2, what you describe is a phenomenon that can be modeled by 'negative friction' (Froude's pendulum). The dynamics are incredibly complex.
Does that help?
4. Apr 9, 2009 #3
soceric, perhaps you are thinking of the energy rather than momentum? If one bob is oscillating more rapidly, and then over time the other is, then could we say that the kinetic energy is transferring from one to the other?
One thing to keep in mind is that pendulums are difficult to model by conservation of momentum because there are net external forces on the pendulum. Strictly speaking, when a bob reverses direction because it's reached its peak height, the entire Earth moves (imperceptibly) to compensate.
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Friction on an incline
1. Feb 22, 2016 #1
A block is sliding with an initial velocity of 7.3 m/s along a frictionless horizontal surface when it then goes up an incline of 51.5 degrees that does have friction. If the kinetic friction coefficient is 0.1 then how far along the incline (hypotenuse) will the object travel before it stops?
Θ = 51.5°
µ(k) = 0.1
v(initial) = 7.3 m/s
v(final) = 0 ...because the question asks at what point will it stop, meaning there is no more speed.
g = 9.81
d = ?
m = ?
a = ? ...i do not know if i even need acceleration
F = ?
W = ?
2. Relevant equations
KE = W = 1/2mv(final) - 1/2mv(initial)
F = mg
W = Fd
Force up ramp... F = mg sinΘ
Normal Force against ramp... Fnormal = mg cosΘ
Force of friction between block and ramp... F(f) = µ Fnormal
3. The attempt at a solution
Honestly i have no clue where to even begin, i am so lost on this problem :(
Also, my equations could be wrong. Could somebody please give me a detailed walkthrough on how to solve this?
2. jcsd
3. Feb 22, 2016 #2
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Alas, we cannot do that; it's against forum rules. You'll need to make some attempt at a solution before help can be given.
That said, I suggest that you consider how energy is traded and lost along the block's path.
4. Feb 22, 2016 #3
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There is a flaw in this question. The way the diagram is drawn, the transition from horizontal to inclined motion is sudden, implying a non-conservative impact. But my guess is that you should suppose there is a small radius allowing for a smooth transition.
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Group axioms - Verify?
1. Sep 25, 2006 #1
It is known that "the integers under addition" form a group,
that is (Z,+).
I have always wondered how to actually proof that (Z,+) is a group?
Definitions for a group from wikipedia:
I'm especially interested in two things:
1) Why does the associative law hold for (Z,+), that is
a+(b+c) = (a+b)+c for a,b,c in Z.
And moreover:
2) Why is closure fulfilled?
That is, if a and b in Z, then a+b is also in Z.
2. jcsd
3. Sep 25, 2006 #2
In order to prove that addition on integers is commutative and that they are closed under addition, you need to use the definition of addition on the integers. However, in order to define addition you need to know how the integers are constructed.
You can construct the natural numbers as a sequence of sets, and define addition. You can then construct the integers from the natural numbers, and define addition on the integers using the addition you've already defined on the natural numbers. The wikipedia pages on natural numbers and integers have some of the details.
4. Sep 25, 2006 #3
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Just to emphasize the importance of stating from which definition you're working -- in many contexts I would define the integers as "the free ring on zero generators"... in which case the additive group structure is trivial.
5. Sep 25, 2006 #4
How is that the case? Don't the integers have one generator? Either 1 or -1. Why isn't the ring with zero generators the trivial ring?
6. Sep 25, 2006 #5
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Because it's not free -- it satisfies a nontrivial relation amongst its elements. (in particular, 0 = 1)
For a ring R to be freely generated by the empty set, that means:
For any ring S, any function {} --> S extends uniquely to a homomorphism R --> S.
(There is, of course, only one function {} --> S)
If you plug in R = Z, you'll find the above is satisfied. If you plug in R = 0, you'll find it's not satisfied. (In fact, if 0 --> S is a homomorphism, then S = 0)
7. Sep 25, 2006 #6
So is this equivalent to saying that R has a basis? That was what I thought a free ring was.
And how does Z have zero generators?
8. Sep 25, 2006 #7
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Because it's generated by the empty set. ({1} is also a generating set for Z, of course, but Z is not the free ring on one object)
{} is clearly a subset of Z. What is the subring of Z generated by {}? Recall that it's the intersection of all subrings of Z that contain every element in {}. The only subring of Z is Z itself -- so {} generates Z.
9. Sep 25, 2006 #8
Okay, I think I see this. I was thinking of generating sets in terms of groups, and was trying to generate Z with addition. But that's not right. So the free ring on one generator would be Z[x], right?
On the level of groups, 1 or -1 generate Z, correct? So Z is the free group on one generator.
10. Sep 25, 2006 #9
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Sounds right; I think things don't get annoying until you have two generators. (Unless you specify "free commutative ring" -- then everything remains nice. :smile:)
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Is Frisian a Language or a Dialect?
Frisian (Frysk) is a Germanic language, spoken by an ethnic minority known as the Frisians in the northern regions of the Netherlands and Germany. It is similar to Dutch, German, Danish and most similar to English. In fact, Frisian is, along with Scottish, the closest living language to English. It especially bears a lot of resemblance to Old English.
In Germany, Frisian is confined to small pockets of the country, with relatively few speakers. The Netherlands has the most Frisian speakers, about 400,000, and almost all live in the Province of Friesland (Dutch for “Land of the Frisians”).
Language or Dialect?
The discussion of whether a language is instead a dialect is a difficult and often tricky one. There are two kinds of criteria that distinguish a language from dialect. The first is the political criterion; languages are official and written, whereas dialects are mostly spoken and unofficial. A language is a dialect with an army and a navy. Or, as my French teacher once said: “A dialect is the language of a people that lost the last war.”
Linguists, however, follow a different set of criteria: if two kinds of speech are so closely related that speakers can have a conversation and understand each other, they are considered dialects of a single language, but if mutual comprehension is difficult or impossible, they are distinct languages.
According to the latter critirion, Frisian is very much a language. Although a Dutchman or a German could be able to pick up on some words, it would be impossible to understand a conversation in Frisian. Conversely, a Frisian would have no trouble at all understanding a conversation in Dutch. This is because a Frisian would have been taught Dutch from a young age in school. In other words, he lost the last war.
When considering the first criterion, Frisian is still a language. Although Frisians “lost the last war” with the Dutch, the Frisian language has had a special, minority status within the Kingdom of the Netherlands ever since, and is stated in the Constitution of 1848. Within the borders of the Province of Friesland, anyone has the right to address both the local and the national administration in Frisian. It has an official written form, and Frisian courses are taught at some Dutch universities.
Three Dialects
Within the Frisian language, there are three varieties, or main dialects: West Frisian, Saterland Frisian and North Frisian. West Frisian is spoken in the Dutch Province of Friesland. Saterlands Frisian is spoken in Saterland, a small German city. North Frisian is spoken in the northernmost part of Germany, near the Danish border, and in small areas on islands closest to Denmark. Because these regions are geographicly isolated from each other, these Frisian dialects have steadily grown apart to such a degree that inhabitants of the different regions would not be able to understand each other today. According to the linguists’ critirion, these varieties should be considered languages on their own.
Frisian and the English Language
To understand Frisian’s influence on the English language, one must look at its history. When the Roman legions left Brittannia in the 5th century A.D., the local Celtic tribes were no longer able to stop Scots and Picts from invading the North. The Celts sought the aid of Germanic tribes on the other side of the North Sea; the Jutes, the Saxons and the Frisians. As payment for their military services, these tribes were offered land in Brittannia. Boats full of Frisian mercenaries set sail for Brittannia, where the promise of land and an escape from the floods and overpopulation of their homeland appealed to them. After fighting alongside the tribes of Brittannia, many Frisians became homesick and returned to their Fryslân, while others settled in Brittannia. Places in England with names like Friston are a reminder of that time.
The Future of the Frisian Language
Although the Frisian language is protected and has special legal status in all three of the regions where it is still spoken, the two regions in the north of Germany are so small and isolated that Frisian is likely to disappear in the future. West Frisian, spoken in the Kingdom of The Netherlands, only has around 400,000 speakers and is increasingly being influenced by Dutch words.
A language is never static: it is a living thing. Just like any living thing on Earth, it either evolves or it dies out. Whether the Frisian language spoken today will evolve into a Dutch dialect, or whether it will die out, remains to be seen. Whatever the future of the Frisian language, Frisian words like bûter (butter), tsiis (cheese), see (sea), boat (boat), stoarm (storm), rein (rain), frieze (freeze), froast (frost), and mist (mist) live on in today’s English, the lingua franca of the modern world.
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The Best Time to Start Learning Anything During the Year
Home/Lifestyle/Education/The Best Time to Start Learning Anything During the Year
The Best Time to Start Learning Anything During the Year
Never stop learning; because life never stops teaching – Anonymous
All seasons have something to offer – Jeannette Walls
Was there a time in your school days that you faced challenge studying and understanding new lessons of the curriculum of any subject?
Science bets, that you must have had.
Since social media platforms have gained prominence, knowledge is equally shared by one and all. In every platform where article links are shared, definitely you will find quotes as to how seasons can affect learning moods and it is true. Let us imagine, you have done Masters in English Literature and wants to study digital marketing while working as a writing intern. Do you feel that you should have a plan where seasons play one of the major factors?
Well, you have to.
It has been proved by medical science that the time from winter to spring is the best to learn any new knowledge as you find an upsurge in moods and enhancement in energy levels.
Learning any new skills calls for the understanding of concepts and memory. Surveys have indicated that in the duration from winter to spring, students learn new skills and chapters easily. In fact, the more of sunlight, uplift of moods, energy, and well-being.
The component assisting you in learning new knowledge is called as dopamine. Its number increases on more exposure to sunlight and it enhances confidence, motivation, pleasure, and memory.
Since you know your learning abilities, why don’t you make the best use of seasons?
In spring, another factor also rules the roost. Your curiosity levels are triggered, and your learning gets easy since you can cross over borders and can do work independently.
However, too much of sunlight can lead to reduced sleeping hours and unless you have a proper work-to-do schedule, you can face a reduction in concentration, memory, and metabolism. In such cases, never wither away from the time schedule, and a sleep of six to eight hours on any day is vital for memorizing new concepts.
There is another simple way to learn new skills and concepts. Before you shut-eye, remember the concepts and skills you have acquired during the day. This will keep you not only focused but also store valuable data in the brain. Do not force your brain to retrieve more on the first day. Within a week, you can condense the concepts of the day within ten minutes.
Now, Do You Know Why Schools Announce Leave For The Summer Holidays?
When the sun is too hot, the brains switch off. If you have to learn a new way of digital marketing, for example, Amazon Web Services at Learning Technologies then do it in a way so that it is easy to you. If you are a creative guy, learn it the simple way of means of drawing images and charts. If you are a normal guy, ensure that you retain your passion for learning and try to revise the lessons every day or seek the assistance of a friend for a group study.
The Belgian study, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, states that the resources are used by the brain differently for performing the same function according to the season.
In winter, you might feel a little laid back in learning. The easy way to understand, your body needs to use energy to withstand the cold temperature and unless you consume proper food, you may feel the lack of motivation.
Forget the seasons, even in a normal day; you could have understood the major productivity hours of the day. The morning hours are the most productive, in the afternoon after the lunch, there may be the lull in productivity. When the body recovers, after 4 pm, once again the scrambling of finishing the target before winding up for the day – These patterns may differ according to your body.
What is stronger? Mother Nature or the human mind?
The Human Mind.
Case Study One
You have performed well in your company and in the process of getting promoted as the International Manager. However, one of the new clients is a millionaire from the UAE and he insists on communicating only in Arabic.
You are given three months duration by the company to learn Arabic from experienced Arabic tutors. The time luckily is spring and so you find the learning easy. You pass the first part of the exam with flying colors and although, not proficient, can understand the words said by the man from the other part of the world.
The time is full winter and because of your tight schedule, you cannot attend the classroom based session. So you opt for taking classes on the internet. Your family stands by you; even your team members, seniors and you pass the certification.
Does your success in the exam mean that instead of winter, there was summer or spring? No, they came, will come and go. The fact is how focused you are in attaining your study goals regardless of the circumstances.
Learning new skills is not an impossible task. However, you need to have a little knowledge about gaining the skill in a smart way. The brain needs to be given information in the way as you understand its ability by which it will retain for a long time.
Case Study Two
You are a team leader and are about to get promoted as Operations Manager which was your dream goal. But there is one hitch: you have to pass the first part of Digital Certification program for application of the post.
Before learning a new task, schedule a plan on how to master it easily. Ask your friends, seniors or search on the internet for information. If needed, ask for some help from a family member, or a friend. Group discussion always benefits learning. Test your knowledge at least once a weekend. You may be a multi-tasker, but first, narrow down your strengths and focus while learning a new skill. After going via the basics, you can become your normal self.
If you are on your own, you might receive a few brickbats, do not feel afraid or fall into depression.
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TGC Graphic Design Web Design Animation Multimedia Courses Training Institute
Taking a FCP Course
Taking_a_FCP_Course-01Starting a career in Video Editing and cinematography involves taking up a video editing course. Video Editing courses would provide the opportunity to understand video making terminologies, hands on learning of non –linear editing through computer editing software. There are several computer software used for video editing and mixing among them are Adobe Premiere pro, Avid Composer and Final cut pro. Final cut Pro also known as FCP is a Video Editing software owned by apple that is being extensively used in the film industry for video editing. It has enabled top professional video editors in the world get Oscar awards for using them for their editing job, an example is the editing of Girl with the Dragon tattoo released in 2011. The editing job was done by Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter. This has contributed to the increased use and demand for FCP in the film industry and the resultant demand for FCP courses in the education Industry. FCP course fees range from INR 10.000 to INR 35000 in Delhi depending on the level of expertise required and the FCP training Institute .
FCP course fees are however higher than fees for other video editing software training like Adobe premiere pro for instance. This is due to the high cost of fcp software and all other apple accessories associated with the FCP Software. Most FCP courses deal with the latest version of the final cut pro software known as the FCPX, released in 2011 with a more advanced and speedy interface.
FCP courses last between 1- 3 months and FCP course fees are usually demanded in full at the start of the course or a lump sum with subsequent monthly installment payments until the course is done.
What does a FCP course offer?
1. A FCP course would teach an intending video editor the basics and rules of video editing and how to get them done in final cut pro interface using the Magnetic Timeline for an exceptionally fast, fluid new way to edit. It would also help an intending video editor manage his files by creating Smart Collections to organize media based on metadata and keywords. Depending on the FCP course fees, advanced metadata techniques for organizing projects may be taught or omitted.
2. A FCP course would teach the student how to combine multiple elements into a single compound clip, finetuning clips in the timeline with the precision editor and how to compare alternate shots from a collection of clips using auditions as well as working with compound clips
3. A FCP course would help the student understand the process and methods of applying video and audio effects, applying transitions and re timing clips. It would also teach the student the art of color correction using FCP both for entire clips and target specific areas using shape and color masks
4. A FCP course would also help the student learn how to create custom effects and transitions and apply a cinematic glow to clips, it would also teach the student how to export and import video files from other video editing software.
TGC India is a Multimedia Institute with affordable FCP course fees.
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Do You Know Nutrition: Invasion of the genetically modified organisms
Oct. 11, 2011 at 5:11 a.m.
Phylis Canion
Phylis Canion
By Phylis Canion
Sometime back, you had a timeline about GMOs. Can you please explain more about what GMOs are, how they affect our food supply, and names of product ingredients that we need to be aware of?
GMOs are genetically modified organisms (also called GEs, genetically engineered) plants or animals created through the gene splicing techniques of biotechnology.
According to the Non GMO Project, this experimental technology merges DNA from different species, creating unstable combinations of plant, animal, bacterial and viral genes that cannot occur in nature or in traditional crossbreeding. Virtually all commercial GMOs are bred to withstand direct application of herbicides.
In more than 30 countries around the world, including all of the European countries and Japan, there are significant restrictions or outright bans on the production of GMOs because they do not consider them safe.
In the United States, however, the government has approved commercial production of GMOs based on studies conducted by companies who created them and profit from their sales.
The six major GMO crops are soy, corn, canola, cotton, sugar beets and alfalfa. Specific ingredients to look for on product labeling that should be avoided are the following: soy protein isolate, hydrolyzed soy protein, high fructose corn syrup, sucrose, monosodium glutamate, dextrose, modified food starch, corn syrup, sugar syrup, malt, mono and di-glycerides and rBGH(a recumbent growth hormone added to milk and butter), to name a few of the most prevalent.
One of the major issues concerning genetically modified organisms is that there is no labeling requirements that specifically states a product contains GMOs although they make up approximately 1/4 of our food supply.
Those manufacturers whose products do not contain GMOs gladly list on their packaging that the product is GMO free or that it is a NON-GMO product.
Because GMOs are relatively new and have not been in use long enough for the risk to be known, there is growing concerns about safety.
According to the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with genetically modified foods that include infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, faulty insulin regulation and issues with the gastrointestinal system.
The World Health Organization has also taken an active role in the evaluation of genetically modified foods.
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If you feel like Cortana just doesn't get you, improvements may be on the way.
We all want to know the person we're talking to is listening to us. We extend this expectation to our "non-human" AI companions as well. Having to repeat oneself, once we've mentally moved from "expression of thought" to "expectation of response" only to be volleyed back to "expression of thought" because the listener did't hear us is an exercise in frustration.
Talking to digital assistants can be frustrating.
This all-too-common pattern of exchange between humans and our AI digital assistants has caused many of us to default to more reliable "non-verbal" exchanges.
Ironically, speaking to our assistants is supposed to be a more natural and quicker way to get things done.
Perhaps science fiction has spoiled us. The ease with which Knight Rider's Michael Knight verbally interacted with his artificially intelligent Trans Am, KITT, (and other fictional AI-human interactions), painted a frictionless picture of verbal discourse. The bar has been set very high.
Microsoft may have gotten us a bit closer to that bar, and to a route out of the pattern of frustration talking to digital assistants often engenders.
Crystal clear
On Monday, October 17th, 2016 Microsoft announced that their latest automated system had reached human parity regarding speech recognition. In a nutshell, Microsoft's non-human system was just as accurate as professional human transcriptionists when hearing and transcribing conversational speech.
Microsoft's automated system performed as well as professional transcriptionists.
The tests included pairs of strangers discussing an assigned topic and open-ended conversations between family and friends. The automated system surpassed the respective 5.9%, and 11.3% word error rates of the professional transcriptionists for each test.
Microsoft's executive vice-president of Artificial Intelligence and Research Group, Harry Shum, praised this accomplishment:
This breakthrough, of course, is foundational to the realization of the more complex AI interactions we have come to believe are just around the corner. An assistant's ability to accurately hear us, like with human interactions, is a prerequisite to its understanding us. The journey to understanding is, of course, the next step. That may or may not take as long as our trek to human parity in "hearing" has taken us to achieve.
Competition is good
The road to human parity speech recognition began in the 1970's with a research division of the US Department of Defense, DARPA. Microsoft's subsequent decades-long investments led to artificial neural networks which are patterned after the biological neural networks of animals. The combination of convolutional and Long-Short-Term-Memory neural networks helped Redmond's system become "more human". Xuedong Huang, Microsoft's chief speech scientist exclaims:
This is an historic achievement.
And, of course, it is. Microsoft is not alone in its efforts to evolve AI understanding of human language, however. Google and Apple have invested in neural networks as well. The boost to Siri's performance is likely attributable to Cupertino's investments. Furthermore, Google's access to a massive repository of data through its search engine and ubiquitous Android OS has helped Mountain View's voice-recognition efforts make tremendous strides.
Apple is striving to catch up to Microsoft and Google.
Google's and Microsoft's industry leading progress with deep neural networks, AI, natural language processing and machine learning have likely spurred Apple's most recent investments in Siri.
Cupertino is looking to make its bounded assistant more competitive if recent job postings for the Siri team in Cambridge UK are any indication:
Join Apple's Siri team…and be part of revolutionizing human-machine interaction!"
"You will be joining a highly talented team of software engineers and machine learning scientists to develop the next generation of Siri. We use world class tools and software engineering practices and push the boundaries of artificial intelligence with a single aim: make a real difference to the lives of the hundreds of millions of Siri users.
This will undoubtedly increase Siri's reliability over time. Still, these advantages will be limited to Siri users within Apple's walled garden of 11.7% of all smartphone users and around 10% of all PC users.
Canvasing the competition
In a world where digital experiences are transient, the unbounded (cross-platform) nature of Cortana and Google Now, is arguably an advantage these assistants have over Siri. Combined with the Bing and Google search engine backbones respectively, Microsoft's and Google's investments in conversation as a canvas position these companies beyond the "iPhone-focused" Apple.
Speech recognition is key to Microsofts Conversations as a Platform plan.
Microsoft's forward-thinking platform focus is the backdrop which supports its accomplishments in human parity in speech recognition. This achievement is important to Nadella's Conversation as a Platform and human language (written/verbal) as a UI strategy. It's a critical piece to a complex puzzle of making AI and human interaction more natural. Nadella had this to say about Conversation as a Platform:
We're in the very early days of this…It's a simple concept, yet it's very powerful in its impact. It is about taking the power of human language and applying it more pervasively to all of our computing. ...we need to infuse into our computers and computing intelligence, intelligence about us and our context…by doing so…this can have as profound an impact as the previous platform shifts have had, whether it be GUI, whether it be the Web or touch on mobile.
Cortana on PC, Edge, Windows Mobile, iOS, Android and Xbox is a big part of this vision. Shum shared of Redmond's speech recognition achievement and Microsoft's AI assistant:
This will make Cortana more powerful, making a truly intelligent assistant possible.
Going Forward
Customizing Cortana to each region, like Korea, before her launch there, provides a tailored regional experience but slows her global expansion. This is a sore spot for many users but is an essential part of Microsoft's personal digital assistant vision. Still, it is a disadvantage Cortana has in relation to the more widely distributed Siri and Google Now.
Finally, the lack of a standalone unit such as Alexa and Google Home is an apparent hole in Microsoft's strategic positioning of Cortana. Perhaps Redmond's groundbreaking success in speech recognition will give such a future a device a strategic advantage over the competition. Fans are asking, I wonder if Microsoft can hear them. | https://www.windowscentral.com/gorundbreaking-tech-will-make-cortanas-hearing-good-ours | [
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I recently read an interesting article by respected writer and analyst Walt Mossberg, who said the PC is being redefined. I agree. But ...
I've described the evolving personal computing landscape in the past. To communicate an accurate picture of the modern personal computing environment and the influencing factors that have shaped it, I've acknowledged that it's impossible to ignore the impact of the iPhone.
Though smartphones existed before the iPhone, those business-focused devices were not relevant to the masses. The iPhone, with its "massive" touch screen merged the iPod, a phone and an internet device, and redefined the smartphone. Consumers loved it as much as they loved the popular iPod that primed them for a pocketable consumer-focused smartphone from Apple.
Eventually, the iPhone and the "there's-an-app-for-that" model, which made it a veritable "swiss-army mobile computing device," evolved into much more than the phone-iPod-internet device introduced by former Apple CEO Steve Jobs in 2007.
In time, Apple's introduction of the iPhone had a profound effect on the personal computing landscape. The iPhone, Android phones and to a lesser extent Windows phones — all with their supporting app ecosystems, integrated services, always-connected nature and pocketability — supplanted the traditional PC as the most used personal computers. Yes, smartphones are personal computing devices.
Microsoft, not Apple, is more instrumental to the evolution of the PC.
I agree with Mossberg that the mobile computing environment and ecosystems that shape personal computing today are influencers on what the PC will ultimately be. However, I disagree with his assessment that a significant shift to the new type of ARM-based PC that runs mobile apps will be determined by Apple.
Millions of consumers already buy laptops that use "mobile apps"
Microsoft's Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and Windows 10 laptops and 2-in-1s have already begun the process of bringing consumers to a laptop form factor that runs mobile apps, as well as traditional apps. This computing environment will be brought to ARM processors, as ARM-based Windows 10 PCs begin rolling out in several months. The change to an ARM-based system will be largely transparent to users.
What won't be transparent are the advantages of ARM-based cellular Windows 10 PCs. Among other advantages, consumers will reap the benefits of lower costs, and lighter, fan-less and more power-efficient Windows 10 PCs.
Mossberg said the following of a shift to ARM in relation to this problem:
But the signs of a shift to ARM only set the stage for a bigger development: The migration of the most important modern software platforms, Android and iOS, to laptops and other traditional hardware that once defined the old kind of PC.
... I believe it won't matter much until Apple builds an ARM-based laptop running iOS. Here's why.
Microsoft ... does have a modern breed of multi-touch apps that work properly on a tablet or clamshell screen, and some are included on every Windows tablet and laptop. Unfortunately, partly because Microsoft has no smartphone business to speak of, it also lacks a critical mass of these new-style apps and, even on its tablets, relies instead on classic Windows apps.
Apple, by contrast, boasts 1.3 million tablet-optimized apps for the iPad, and these could presumably easily run on a small laptop with a built-in keyboard and touchscreen. This is more than a small advantage; it's the reason people might buy this type of device instead of a traditional laptop.
I agree with the general assessments Mossberg puts forth. I also see the value in his conclusion that Apple, because of its vast and appealing app ecosystem, occupies an influential position. Consumer love for iOS apps may be a sufficient motivating factor for the masses to consciously and deliberately choose to use a laptop running those same mobile apps. That's if Apple can deliver a good mouse-and-keyboard productivity experience.
Can Apple generate interest in a laptop that runs only mobile apps?
I put forth a similar analysis in relation to Google's position if it ever decided to merge Chrome and Android. Google's 80 percent dominance of the mobile market would be a real threat to Microsoft's 90 percent dominance in PCs if Google brought a viable desktop experience to a desktop environment.
Microsoft already invented the universal app 'wheel' Apple needs
iOS apps are optimized for a slate consumption-based experience, not a peripheral-enhanced productivity setting. Mossberg stated the following in relation to this problem:
The definition of a PC, a personal computer, is already undergoing a profound change. A great laptop running the new kinds of user interfaces and apps that people now love on phones and tablets would be a big, exciting event that would help seal the deal. But there hasn't yet been a product that emphatically suggests the era of the traditional PC is fading. And it feels like an opportunity only Apple can seize.
Microsoft's Windows 10 and Universal Platform with Continuum are driving the evolution of the PC while also keeping the traditional PC around. Rather than just a clamshell laptop that runs mobile apps, which is Mossberg's vision for an evolved PC, Microsoft's strategy is more comprehensive.
Microsoft's PC vision is more comprehensive than mobile apps on a laptop.
Redmond saw the coming shift and created a device form factor with the Surface, a context-sensitive OS in Windows 10 and a Universal Platform that provides a common core for all device types and app development.
The research firm IDC said the following, confirming the success and adoption of Windows laptops and 2-in-1s in a recent report:
Consumers are just starting to graduate from old, consumption-based, slate tablets to a more productive detachable tablet. At the same time, the benefits of having a thin, touch-sensitive, productivity-based machine is [sic] shining light on the traditional PC category, causing vendors and consumers to focus on more premium devices in the Convertible and Ultraslim space.
As we watch the unfolding of Microsoft's strategy with the industry's embrace of 2-in-1s, Windows 10 laptops and PCs and Windows Mixed Reality (formerly Windows Holographic), Microsoft's impact on the evolution of the PC, in all of its forms, obviously exceeds Apple's.
Technologically, Microsoft is where Mossberg hopes Apple will get
Mossberg states, "Apple … boasts 1.3 million tablet-optimized apps for the iPad, and these could presumably easily run on a small laptop with a built-in keyboard and touchscreen." He supplies the caveat "presumably" in acknowledgment of his (and all of our) uncertainty as to the viability of iOS apps running on a small laptop with a built-in keyboard (and mouse).
iOS apps are not yet optimized for a laptop environment.
By contrast, we know with full certainty that Microsoft's unique UWP allows Windows Store apps to run on phones, laptops, 2-in-1s, HoloLens, Xbox, desktop PCs and any as yet to be created Windows devices. Most Windows 10 devices also run Win32 apps in conjunction with Store apps, and Windows 10 on ARM may bring that ability to phones.
What Mossberg speculates would be a technological advancement for the Apple ecosystem already exists in far greater depth and breadth as part of Microsoft's UWP. Mossberg's vision of an evolved PC is a laptop with iOS apps and only iOS apps.
Microsoft's personal computer vision is far broader than that.
Windows 10 is key to the modern PC
Though Windows 10 is only running on 400 million devices, Windows is a desktop and mobile platform. In less than two years, though far below it's one billion devices target, 400 million devices is impressive. iOS and Android have had roughly a decade to reach the billion mark those OSes achieved.
Windows 10 is an evolution of the OS that embraces mobile computing.
Some may argue that Windows 10 is merely an upgrade to the Windows OS that has a billion installed base. It is actually more of an evolution toward a new type of OS that retains the legacy strengths of the traditional desktop while adopting the necessary attributes of the modern, mobile personal computing environment. Universal Windows Apps, along with the coming full Windows on ARM and CShell on all types of mobile devices, help us visualize this reality.
When viewing it from that proper perspective, the unique unified desktop and mobile OS that is Windows 10 has already begun to achieve in a very real way what Mossberg anticipates will be achieved with Android and iOS: bringing a relevant "mobile" OS to a desktop clamshell form factor.
The market is buying, but may not "buy into" Microsoft's vision
The PC's transformation, based on Windows 10 2-in-1s and even laptops, has already been accepted in the market by OEMs and consumers. Mossberg's vision awaits a move from Apple to create wide acceptance for what the success of Windows 2-in-1s is already achieving: market-wide acceptance of a laptop (or 2-in-1) OS that runs mobile apps. The Windows Store on a Windows 10 desktop has thousands of universal apps that work across various form factors, including mobile.
I concede that the success of the Windows Store is not on par with Microsoft's goals. Moreover, the implementation of a Windows-based smartphone has not met commercial success. Consequently, though there are thousands of universal apps that are compatible beyond the mobility of a laptop or 2-in-1 form factor, and that work on a phone, the number is dwarfed by the number of iOS apps in the App Store.
So yes, the popularity of iOS apps, if somehow made to work as efficiently in a mouse-and-keyboard laptop form factor, would produce more of a "conscious" decision by consumers to seek out or inquire about such a device. These consumers may be motivated by a desire to use the mobile apps they're familiar with from their iPhones, on a laptop-like device.
PC consumers are likely not motivated by an opportunity to experience Store apps.
By contrast, the universal apps that are part of Microsoft's proliferating "evolving PC" vision and that are also available to users who buy Windows 10 2-in-1s and laptops are in many cases likely just "along for the ride." Candidly speaking, these user purchases are likely less motivated by the opportunity to experience universal apps and their benefits than by the productivity legacy of Window PCs, even as manifest in modern touch-enabled laptops and 2-in-1s.
The Windows Store's underperformance is likely one of the motivating factors in Microsoft's increasingly aggressive advertising efforts in Windows 10. It needs to get users that have embraced the new OS and evolving PC form-factors to also embrace the ecosystem that they exist within. Apple, with the popularity of iOS apps, but the lack of a truly universal platform akin to the UWP, and the efficient productivity environment that Windows 10 PCs bring mobile apps, would have the exact opposite challenge.
Microsoft's impact on PC evolution is both deep and broad
Ultimately, I agree with Mossberg's conclusion from a consumer perspective. That is, if Microsoft cannot draw developers and consumers to its modern app ecosystem, Apple may be more successful in drawing consumer "attention" to the concept of a mobile-app-focused laptop. That's if Apple invests in and successfully creates an iOS-based laptop, which the famously secretive company has made no indication of doing.
I do, however, believe that Mossberg may be underestimating the industry impact Microsoft's Windows 10 and UWP has had, and is currently having, on the evolution of the PC, in the form of touch-sensitive laptops, 2-in-1s and other devices like HoloLens that run universal apps.
Mossberg may be underestimating Microsoft's impact on the PC's evolution.
OEM's, consumers, businesses, and various industries have greatly embraced these "modern," evolved PCs.
As Microsoft's partners begin bringing ARM-based cellular PCs to market in several months, that impact will be even more evident than it is now. In truth, Apple's mimicry of the Surface with the iPad Pro is indicative of its reactive, or follower's role, in the PC's evolution.
The evolution is well underway. Microsoft is driving it, and its plan goes even further than Mossberg's vision of mobile apps on a laptop form factor.
Related reading:
The truth about the new iPad ads, Microsoft Surface and Windows
How the Surface changed Microsoft forever | https://www.windowscentral.com/walt-mossberg-thinks-pcs-evolution-will-be-more-impacted-apple-microsoft-i-disagree | [
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Friday, 7 June 2013
Avanti Polar Lipids - Super G Balance
Avanti Polar Lipids - Super G Balance
Great balance for measuring lipid stocks before doing a monolayer experiment.
Surface Tension Droplets at 2500fps - The Slow Mo Guys
Just water (with its amazing properties), a slow motion camera and two Englishmen. See what happens...
Droplet Collisions at 5000fps - The Slow Mo Guys
I love the Slow Mo guys. Showing that surface tension can be sexy!
Wednesday, 5 June 2013
Quantum model helps solve mysteries of water
Quantum model helps solve mysteries of water
These guys from the University of Edinburgh and IBM's TJ Watson Research Center are made a new model to understand the properties of water. Since there is no ultimate model but models that can reproduce certain aspects of water these scientists made a bottom up approach.
Their approach shows how a single charged particle called a 'quantum Drude oscillator' can mimic that way electrons of real water respond to their environment and fluctuate.
This simplification allows the network of hydrogen bonds and other properties like surface tension to be observed.
Tuesday, 4 June 2013
Study led by George Washington University Professor May Help Understand Freezing Bulk Water
Study led by George Washington University professor provides better understanding of water's freezing behavior at nanoscale
Bulk water verses the water at the surface. Is there a difference? And where is the boundary of this difference. These guys show that ice nucleation at the nanoscale is smaller than that of the bulk water. Water at the small scale can no longer be considered bulk water.
This has important research in climate. Clouds largely contain a lot of water. This research may answer the question of whether ice nucleation occurs within the cloud or right at the surface. Engineering may be able to control this nucleation by tuning the surface tension if the nucleation occurs on the surface of the cloud (it reminds me of Storm controlling the weather in X-Men).
Saturday, 1 June 2013
Bill Nye Teaches About Surface Tension
I remember watching Bill Nye when I was younger and learning about science. From this post from Mashable I learned that Rush Limbaugh said, '"Bill Nye is not a scientist. Bill Nye can explain to kids things like surface tension, why you can fill a glass above the rim and it won't fall over if it's just the right amount. He explains things like that, surface tension. He's not a scientist. He knows it, and everybody else knows it. Doesn't matter." Well teaching kids anything about science and having passion about it is far better than whatever bullshit Rush Limbaugh spews out of his mouth.
Personally, I would love to see Bill Nye work with Tesla or Elon Musk on the Hyperloop. Bill Nye has a degree in hydraulic engineering and works with cool space stuff. Well that is what I would say during an interview to build something called a Hyperloop.
‘Lotus effect’ paper repels oil and water
‘Lotus effect’ paper repels oil and water
Lotus leaf effect from paper can help make sustainable materials.... | http://72dynes.blogspot.fi/2013/06/ | [
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Oliviero Toscani Photographer
Every picture is a piece of the inside of ourselves”. That may be the reason why Oliviero Toscani‘s shoots strike so much the international public. The philosophy followed by the famous Italian photographer brings him to stand out, to be exceptional and totally different from an ordinary fashion photographer. The images Oliviero Toscani has signed for many fashion maisons (Benetton above all) or fashion magazines, the social campaigns he has promoted and the works he has been realising in the over 50 years of his career have made the tour around the world, bringing a piece of made-in-Italy talent to the most remote countries.
Photography was in his veins. His father was the first photo-journalist for the famous Italian newspaper “Il corriere della sera”, and Oliviero Toscani began to play with his first cameras at a very young age, soon showing the talent inherited from his father. After studying in Milan, he moved to Zurich were he attended photography and design courses at the Hochschule fur Gestaltung from 1961 to 1965.
In 1968, while Italy (like the rest of the world) was hit by the waves of the social revolution, the Italian photographer began to move his first important steps on the world of photographic films. Soon enough, Oliviero Toscani became a renowed synonim of original portraits of the contemporary social trends and movements, his camera becaming an artistic eye through which people can watch the world they lived in from an unusual perspective.
His talent caught the eye first of many important fashion magazines. From Vogue to Elle, from the Harper’s Bazaar to G.Q., the Italian photographer’s signature became to appear under more and more images printed on the glossy paper of the most famous international reviews. The popularity brought by these publications allowed Oliviero Toscani to reach the most important Italian (and international) fashion houses. Brands like Prenatal, Valentino, Fiorucci or Esprit choosed the Italian photographer as creative head for their promotional campaigns, and Toscani began to stand out for its strong and scandalous images.
The portrait of the supermodel Donna Jordan’s backside in a pair of Jesus Jeans hot pants, with the biblical phrase “Those who love me will follow me”, was just one of the first shocking advertisment campaigns realised by the Italian photographer. Many others followed, bringing the name of Oliviero Toscani to ever greater success, but the turning point came in 1982, when the Italian fashion group Benetton put its total trust on the new talent of Italian photography, leaving to him the reins of the creative division of the company.
Almost twenty years of collaboration which saw the Benetton group communication policy reach levels that any fashion maison could have reached before. Besides the simple promotion of the brand, Oliviero Toscani’s images were explicit and daring messages on problems and issues of the modern society; peace, tolerance and fight against social plagues were his main purpose, hidden behind the Benetton’s signature. Two nuns kissing, children from different ethnic groups holding hands, a Vietnam war’s victim cemetery, a boy dying from AIDS or a man killed by mafia. These were just a few of the most famous images that brough the Italian photographer, as well as the Italian fashion brand, to reach popularity and fame also through their social commitment.
Even after leaving the Benetton brand, Oliviero Toscani continued to shock the world with his works. One popular example is the anti-anorexia campaign that saw the too-thin model Isabelle Carol pose totally naked showing her body worn out by the disease, which history was documented in the film “Anorexia, storia di un’immagine”. The giant posters spreaded all over Milan and the other main Italian cities did not only conquered the favours of the anti-anorexia movements, but were also condemned by some people who didn’t appreciate the Italian photographer’s strong images. For that same reason, sometimes Oliviero Toscani has had to face critics and censorship, for the rawness of his images, printed as well as in TV spots.
The Italian photographer indeed has worked not only with his camera, but also using the other promotional medias, from TV to the internet. He helped realising many TV spots, ever so strong as his photos, and the Benetton group website’s birth saw his precious collaboration. The signature of Oliviero Toscani was so present in the fashion group that he even realised sportswear lines for Playlife, one the brands under the Benetton label.
In 1990, Oliviero Toscani, with the collaboration of the American graphic designer Tibor Kalman, co-founded the magazine Colors, owned partly by Benetton. “A magazine about the rest of the world”, this was the tagline of the magazine, which perfectly describes the multicultural publication. Under the supervision of the Italian fashion group, he also set up Fabrica, the Benetton Group Communications research center, in 1994. Not an academy nor a simple school, Fabrica is defined as a laboratory of creativity, where new and winning ideas come to life, changing the communication and media’s world.
The collaboration with the Italian maison, as well as the many and many other works that have marked his long career, have gained Oliviero Toscani many prizes, among which we can find the Grand Prix d’Affichage, or the Grand Prix Unesco, and even the Leone d’Oro, the award given at the Festival of Cannes, in 1989. His works were shown in the most important location, from the Biennale of Venezia, to the Triennale Museum of Milan, or even in exhibitions held all over the globe, from Brazil to Europe. The world of Italian photography even recognised him a professorship in the Roman University of La Sapienza, where he taught communication strategies to young and curious students.
His life has changed a lot, but his passion for photography has never abandoned him. Nowadays, besides portraiting the Appaloosa horses he breeds in his Tuscany’s estate, where he lives with his wife and three children producing wine and olive oil, he keeps on surprising the whole world with his innovative idead that have changed and revolutioned the concept of photography. (via) | http://agonistica.com/oliviero-toscani/ | [
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Tuesday, May 11, 2010
A discussion thread had to do with why we pantheists call ourselves pantheists. My reply follows:
The consciousness that rides along within and is generated by the activities of the brain that calls itself I, since it is the slave of biology and physiology, interacts strangely with these attempts or any institution's attempts to use the language of consciousness to define what consciousness, carried along by the body's activities, finds itself being and thinking from day to day.
I call myself pantheist because the brain that calls itself I and that carries the I of me along with it is deeply enmeshed in the biology and physiology of the airy reality into which it found itself swimming (existing). The collective brains who make up the category "scientist" have physically interacted with the Cosmos in such a way as to give other brains, through the senses of their eyes (reading) and ears (hearing), a new kind of information about that reality. The brain that calls itself I has learned from this set of scientific brains (who form opinions, expressed mathematically, only after by materially testing the physical Universe) that it is not enough to trust language, the creator of consciousness, and, thus, does not accept any reality that exists solely within the language and which is not physically present (so as to be sensed) in the material Cosmos. Thus concepts like "god" which exist only in the realm of the untrustworthy consciousness and which can't be smelt, touched, sensed by the physical body are foreign to it (the brain that calls itself I). The brain that calls itself I and finds itself afloat in air like a fish in water knows itself as a part of the physical Universe and not part of the conscious Cosmos.
If "MY" speechless physical body has any relationship with the physical Universe, it is much like a zygote to a mother's body than it is a consciousness to a higher consciousness which language has made up totally and completely. Since it is my speechless body that exists in the Cosmos and "I" am the language it is hearing as thought, it/I am completely and totally dependent on the physical Cosmos for my continued existence. And since a speechless zygote can't worship it's source, so my body can't worship the Cosmos, except through hearing itself in the thoughts that are generated within its synaptic patterns by its daily efforts to procreate, win friends, have sex with the opposite sex, surround itself with comfort and surplus, et cetera.
Sometimes the body that experiences its own self in consciousness as I will sense itself so safe for a moment in the Cosmos that a wonderful feeling of well-being (i.e. flood of dopamine or other chemical) fills it and that feeling will generate a thought to explain to itself what it's feeling and that thought is "worship".
The previous philosophical notations have made me understand something very interesting to me—the human robot (i.e. animal) through consciousness (the naming with words of the outer reality) has been returning from the naming of the outer world back to the naming of itself, to its physical reality as a robot that is experiencing and responding to the physical Cosmos. The namer is discovering the silent source of its naming function and, perhaps, someday the namer and the named will become as one.
Anyway, that's why I (or the brain that names itself I) name myself "pantheist" for this moment in time. It's purely an emotional thing, separate from all the conscious quibbling that goes on in the insubstantial world of consciousness where disagreements about naming are common.
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Lesbian Historic Motif Project: #110e Borris 2004 - Same-Sex Desire in the English Renaissance (Chapter 5)
Full citation:
Publication summary:
Chapter 5: Physiognomics
Anyone who has participated in a palm-reading has taken part in the pseudo-science of physiognomy. For that matter, statistical studies attributing a wide variety of psychological and behavioral traits (including sexual orientation) to the ratio of lengths of the index and ring fingers are operating within the realm of physiognomy. The two excerpts below that specifically mention sexual desire between women touch on only a few aspects of the field. It is interesting to note how fuzzy the line is between supposed cause and effect. In the description of Fracassa, her "manly" personality is considered to be signaled by the shape of her head and her lower limbs, but are behavioral traits (such as gait and posture) or activities (such as jousting in armor) considered to be a further consequence of that "manly personality" or are they, too, simply outward signifiers by which one may determine her "nature"? That is, does she joust because she's manly, or is she manly because she jousts?
* * *
We have not entirely managed to shed the idea that an individual’s habitual predispositions are reflected in their physical features. The Greek pseudo-Aristotelian Physiognomics is one of the foundational treatises that systematized this view. References to female homoeroticism (as opposed to male references) in the context of physiognomy are rare and primarily appear in texts derived from an anonymous Latin treatise of the 4th century.
Bartolommeo della Rocca (1467-1504) in a section on chiromancy (interpreting the hands) discusses how to interpret “signs of morally offensive lust on the hands of a woman”. The discussion groups together a wide variety of sexual behaviors, from incest, to women taking an active role with men, to any sexual activity by nuns, to masturbation, to bestiality. But the discussion specifically notes, “Note also that in women ‘morally offensive lust’ can be understood when women come together vulva to vulva and rub one another, of which Juvenal writes in this verse: ‘They ride one another, turn and turn about, and disport themselves for the Moon to witness.’ And such women are called by the ancient term tribades. It is said that Sappho, the Lesbian lass and poet, amused herself with this kind of lust.”
In a section primarily discussing characteristics of hair, della Rocca provides a detailed description of a “manly woman” both in terms of physical appearance and behavior (though sexual activity is not specifically mentioned). “By many outward signs may a man find out the qualities of the mind and courage. As when a woman is apparelled and decked in man’s apparel, which doth then declare her nature to draw near to man’s. As the like did that woman of courage named Fracassa, who commonly used to wear (by the report of the Physiognomer [i.e., Rocca himself]) man’s apparel, and would upon a bravery many times arm herself at all points to joust and run sundry times so armed at the ring. The form of which woman...was on this wise: she had a small head, and Pineaple-like, a neck comely formed, large breasted, seemly arms, answering to the body. But in her other parts, as in the hips, buttocks, thighs, and legs, near agreeing to man’s. This manly woman also walked upright in body, treading light on the ground, and bearing her head playing like to the Hart. The other notes of this woman did the Physiognomer for brevity sake here omit. Yet he thus concludeth that by the sundry notes which he viewed, she was prone to come to a violent death...”
Time period:
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Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.
Timeline: Cherry, Plum, and Chrysanthemum
Portrait of Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.
26th President of the United States
March 4, 1913 – March 4, 1921
Predecessor: William Howard Taft
Successor: Charles Evans Hughes
Vice-President: Hiram Johnson (1913-17)
Henry Cabot Lodge (1917-21)
24th President of the United States
September 14, 1901 – March 4, 1909
Predecessor: William McKinley, Jr.
Successor: William Howard Taft
Vice-President: None (1901-05)
Charles Warren Fairbanks (1905-09)
24th Vice-President of the United States
March 4, 1901 – September 14, 1901
Predecessor: Garret Augustus Hobart
Successor: Charles Warren Fairbanks
President: William McKinley, Jr.
33rd Governor of New York
January 1, 1899 – December 31, 1900
Predecessor: Frank Swett Black
Successor: Benjamin Barker Odell, Jr.
Born: October 27, 1858
New York City, New York, United States of America
Died: March 4, 1929 (aged 70)
Cove Neck, New York, United States of America
Spouse: Alice Hathaway Lee (1880–84)
Edith Kermit Carow (1886–1929)
Political Party: Progressive (1912-29)
Republican (1882-1912)
Religion: Dutch Reformed
Profession: Politician; Author; Historian; Explorer; Conservationist
Theodore "T.R." Roosevelt, Jr. (October 27, 1858 – March 4, 1929) was an American author, naturalist, explorer, historian, and politician who served as the 24th and 26th President of the United States. He is the only U.S. president to serve four non-consecutive terms (1901–1909 and 1913–1921) and the second to be counted twice in the numbering of the presidents (the other is Ulysses S. Grant). With total of sixteen years in office, he remains the longest-serving President in the history of the United States.
Roosevelt was the co-founder and initial leader of the Progressive Party. He is noted for his colorful personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement in early 20th century, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity. Roosevelt is consistently rated by scholars as one of the top three U.S. Presidents, along with George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant. His face adorns Mount Rushmore alongside Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Ulysses S. Grant.
Roosevelt's eldest son, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., was also became the 30th President of the United States (1941–1945).
Early life
Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. was born on October 27, 1858 in the modern-day Gramercy section of New York City to businessman Theodore "Thee" Roosevelt, Sr. and Dixie-born socialite Martha Stewart "Mittie" Bulloch. Theodore Roosevelt had Dutch, English, Irish, and Welsh ancestry from his father, and Scottish, English, and French ancestry from his mother.
TR Age 11 Paris
Theodore Roosevelt at age 11
Young Roosevelt suffered heavily from asthma attacks and spent much of his time in bed. Roosevelt used this time to study and develop an interest on natural history. Nevertheless, he was energetic and mischievously inquisitive. To compensate for his physical weakness, he embraced a strenuous life. With encouragement from his father, he then began a heavy regime of exercise.
Roosevelt made quick work of his political introduction to the membership in the Republican Party ("GOP") and was soon put forth as the party's candidate for the District's House seat in Albany. He was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1882, 1883, and 1884. In 1883, he was the GOP minority candidate for Speaker. In 1884, he lost the nomination for Speaker to Titus Sheard by a vote of 41 to 29 in the GOP caucus.
On October 27, 1880, Roosevelt married socialite Alice Hathaway Lee, daughter of banker George Cabot Lee and Caroline Watts Haskell. Their daughter Alice Lee Roosevelt was born on February 12, 1884. Alice died two days after their daughter was born from an undiagnosed case of kidney failure. His mother Mittie died of typhoid fever on the same day, in the same house. Seeking solace from personal tragedies, he left politics and went to the frontier, spent much of the next two years on his ranch in the Dakota Territory.
Political career
Harsh winters wiped out Roosevelt cattle ranch, leading him to bankruptcy
After his cattle was wiped out by the severe winters, Roosevelt decided to return to the East. On December 2, 1886, he married his childhood sweetheart, Edith Kermit Carow in London, England. Soon after, he resumed his political career. Despite a Republican and supported re-election of George F. Edmunds, Roosevelt re-entered the public life after being appointed to the United States Civil Service Commission by a Liberal president, Grover Cleveland, where he served until 1895. He vigorously fought the spoilsmen and demanded enforcement of civil service laws.
Roosevelt became president of the board of New York City Police Commissioners in 1895 for two years and radically reformed the police force. With his strictly disciplined style of leadership, Roosevelt implemented regular inspections of firearms and annual physical exams; he appointed 1,600 recruits based on their physical and mental qualifications, regardless of political affiliation, established Meritorious Service Medals and closed corrupt police hostelries.
Tr - nyc police commissioner 1894 - jacob riis bio - the making of an american - illustration named one was sitting asleep on a buttertub crop
Known for his deep interest on naval history, President William McKinley, urged by Roosevelt's close friend Congressman Henry Cabot Lodge, appointed Roosevelt as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1897. Roosevelt seized the opportunity and began pressing on the president his national security views regarding the Pacific and the Caribbean. Roosevelt was particularly adamant that Spain be ejected from Cuba, to foster the latter's independence and demonstrate U.S. resolve to re-enforce the Monroe Doctrine.
When the Spanish-American War finally broke out in 1898, Roosevelt promptly resigned as assistant secretary of the Navy and volunteered as commander of the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, known as the Rough Riders, an elite company comprised of Ivy League gentlemen, western cowboys, sheriffs, prospectors, police officers, and Native Americans. Under his leadership, the Rough Riders became famous for dual charges up Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill on July 1, 1898. The victories came at a cost of 200 killed and 1000 wounded.
Theodore Rooseveltnewtry
Col. Theodore Roosevelt
Roosevelt and the Rough Riders returned to the United States as war heroes. Roosevelt's war achievements caught the eye of New York Republican leaders who were looking for a gubernatorial candidate after their current governor was tainted by scandal and would probably lose. Just shortly after he was elected Governor of New York, Roosevelt began to exhibit an independence from the party bosses' influence that upset the state's political machine.
To stop Roosevelt's reforms, party bosses "kicked him upstairs" to the vice presidency under William McKinley, a powerless and merely ceremonial post at that time. Roosevelt's energetic campaigns helped ensure McKinley's re-election as president. However, the party bosses' efforts to keep him away from active politics soon vain; President McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist on September 6, 1901, making Roosevelt the nation's twenty-fourth President. At the age of 42 years old, he was the youngest person ever to serve in that capacity. Neither the nation nor the presidency would ever be the same again.
First Presidency, 1901–1909
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A cartoon depicting Roosevelt's policy of "trust-busting"
Ascending to the presidency, Roosevelt kept McKinley's Cabinet and promised to continue McKinley's policies. While he still endorsed the policies of gold standard, protective tariffs and lower taxes from his predecessor, Roosevelt called for a "Square Deal", and initiated a policy of increased Federal supervision that aggressively curbed the power of large corporations called "trusts". For his aggressive use of United States antitrust law he became known as the "trust-buster." Roosevelt then won the presidency in his own right in a landslide victory against Alton Brooks Parker in 1904.
Forty antitrust suits was brought by Roosevelt and major combinations such as the Standard Oil, the largest oil company, were broke-up. A new Department of Commerce and Labor was created in 1903. Conservation of the nation's natural resources and beautiful places was also a very high priority for Roosevelt. He placed 230 million acres under federal protection for preservation and parks and began systematic efforts to prevent forest fires and to retimber denuded tracts.
The United States emerged as a world economic and military power in late 1890s. Roosevelt worked to build and to strengthen the Army and the Navy into the forces that would able to protect U.S. interests corresponding with his "Speak softly and carry a big stick" policy. In late 1904, following the Colombia Crisis of 1902–03, Roosevelt announced his corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, stated that the U.S. would exercise an international police power over its Caribbean and Central American neighbors against European interventions.
Roosevelt monroe Doctrine cartoon
A cartoon depicting Roosevelt Corollary of Monroe Doctrine
The most spectacular of Roosevelt's foreign policy initiatives was the establishment of the Panama Canal. In 1899, Colombia negotiated with the United States and the United Kingdom for the support of a joint controlled canal that would be constructed in the Isthmus of Panama. Despite initial reluctance from his predecessors, Roosevelt was quite enthusiastic regarding the plan. After the U.S. concluded a negotiation with Colombia in 1903, the construction that believed to be one of the world's greatest engineering feats was finally started in 1904. In November 1906, Roosevelt inspected the canal's progress. This was the first trip outside the United States by a sitting President.
In 1905, Roosevelt offered to mediate a treaty to end the Russo-Japanese War. Although Russia and Japan initially refused his offer, they finally agreed to meet in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and ironed out a final conflict over division of Sakhalin and Korea in the Treaty of Portsmouth: Russia took the northern half and Japan the south, and Japan dropped its demand for an indemnity. For his role as a peace mediator, Roosevelt earned enough prestige to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, the first U.S. President to do so.
Return to private life
"Teddy" Roosevelt and "Big Bill" Taft
Roosevelt's popularity was at its peak as the campaign of 1908 neared, but he declined to be nominated by Republicans for the third term. Instead, he supported his Secretary of War, William Howard Taft, for the presidential ticket. Taft was easily elected to the office, defeated three-time candidate William Jennings Bryan. Roosevelt had attempted to refashion Taft into a younger version of himself, but as soon as Taft began to display his individuality, Roosevelt unveiled his disenchantment. Roosevelt was further alienated when Taft did not consult him about cabinet appointments.
In March 1909, shortly after the end of his presidency, Roosevelt left New York for the safari in east and central Africa outfitted by the Smithsonian Institution. His decision was based on his desire to leave the political stage to Taft and on his natural need for action. With his son Kermit, he acquired more than 3,000 animal trophies, including eight elephants, seven hippos, nine lions, and thirteen rhinos. The expedition consumed 262 of the animals. Tons of salted animals and their skins were shipped to Mayflower, D.C.; the quantity was so large that it took years to mount them all, and the Smithsonian shared many duplicate animals with other museums.
Roosevelt and his son, Kermit, sitting on the top of the buffalo they shot on safari
After the year-long hunt, the safari was ended in Khartoum. There Roosevelt reunited with his wife Edith and family and took a vacation in Europe. He then proceeded to England for the funeral of King Edward VII and then on to Scandinavia to accept the Nobel Peace Prize for his part in ending the Russo-Japanese War. When he returned to New York in June 1910, he was greeted by one of the largest mass receptions ever given in New York City.
1912 Presidential election
Briefly after his return, Roosevelt found the crisis on Republican Party. Unlike Roosevelt, Taft never attacked business or businessmen in his rhetoric. However, he was attentive to the law, so he launched 90 antitrust suits, including one against the largest corporation, U.S. Steel, for an acquisition that Roosevelt had personally approved. Consequently, Taft lost the support of antitrust reformers (who disliked his conservative rhetoric), of big business (which disliked his actions), and of Roosevelt, who felt humiliated by his protege. In August 1910, Roosevelt gave his famous speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, which was the most radical of his career and openly initiated his break with the Taft administration and the conservative Republicans.
1912 national progressive convention
First National Progressive Convention, 1912, in the Chicago Coliseum
Pressured by the progressive wing of the Republican Party to challenge Taft, Roosevelt decided to run in the presidential election against his former protege in January 1912. The Republicans met in Detroit in June 1912, hopelessly split between the Roosevelt progressives and the supporters of President Taft. Roosevelt came to the convention having won a series of preferential primaries that put him ahead of the President in the race for party delegates. Taft, however, controlled the convention floor, and his backers managed to exclude most of the Roosevelt delegates by not recognizing their credentials. These tactics enraged Roosevelt, who then refused to allow himself to be nominated, paving the way for Taft to win on the first ballot.
Roosevelt and the Republican progressives reconvened in Chicago two weeks later to form the Progressive Party. When formally launched later that summer, the new Progressive Party chose Roosevelt as its presidential nominee and Hiram Johnson of California as his running mate. Declaring to the reporters that he felt "as strong as a Bull Moose," Roosevelt gave the new party its popular name, the "Bull Moose Party." In a famous acceptance speech, Roosevelt electrified the convention by cried out that "we stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord."
While campaigning in Milwaukee, Roosevelt was shot in the chest by a fanatic. Fortunately, the bullet had been slowed down by the steel eyeglass case and the pages of a thick speech he had in his coat pocket. He declined suggestions to go to the hospital immediately. Instead, he delivered his scheduled speech with blood seeping into his shirt. The bullet in his chest had found to be more dangerous if it removed. Roosevelt carried it with him for the rest of his life. However, the bullet exacerbated his rheumatoid arthritis and prevented him from doing his daily stint of exercises; Roosevelt would soon become obese as well.
Second Presidency, 1913–1921
Despite running as a third-party candidate and have been expected the split between the Republicans would have assured a landslide victory for the Liberals, Roosevelt showed his popularity still strong enough on the 1912 election by took 62.8% of the popular vote and won 290 electoral votes from 26 states, defeated Taft and the Liberal candidate, Champ Clark. He was the second U.S. president that ever elected to third term after Ulysses S. Grant in 1881.
Roosevelt now adopted the "New Nationalism" that more radical in tone, emphasized the priority of labor over capital interests, a need to more effectively control corporate creation and combination and proposed a ban on corporate political contributions. The Federal Reserve System was created in 1913. The National Health Service and the Federal Insurance System were following in 1914. Roosevelt also approved a legislation that secured a maximum eight-hour workday and 40-hour work week for industrial workers in 1915. His most important move was the passage of the Antitrust Act of 1914 that ended the long battles over the trusts by spelling out the specific unfair practices that business were not allowed to engage in.
With Henry Cabot Lodge as his new running-mate, Roosevelt was narrowly re-elected in 1916, having faced strong performances from other candidates, Republican Elihu Root and Liberal William Gibbs McAdoo. He is the first and only U.S. president that ever elected to the fourth term (albeit not a full one). Roosevelt's re-election in 1916 later brought both the Republicans and the Liberals to put forward a proposal for constitutional amendment that would sets term limit for election to the office of U.S. President. Later in 1924, the Twentieth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed. It sets a term limit for election to the office of President of the United States where a person cannot be elected president more than two terms.
Retirement and death
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Tuesday, January 24, 2017
China is Building a Navy to Displace, Not Defeat the US in Asia
January 24, 2017 (Joseph Thomas - NEO) - In many ways, China's socioeconomic and military influence in Asia has already balanced a long-lopsided equation of geopolitical power in the region. The social and economic stability brought by the rise of China along with the rest of Asia has helped eliminate many of the "dark alleys" the US and its European allies have often used to create division, destruction and opportunities to then intervene, even overturn entire governments.
China's naval ambitions in particular have been disparaged by Western political and military analysts who believe (correctly) China's growing naval capabilities will never be on par with the United States' global-spanning naval forces.
But that is precisely the point.
China's naval capabilities are not meant to take and hold global hegemony by defeating the United States as a nation, but rather in displacing the United States as a regional hegemon in Asia where the US presence and its decades of influence have chaffed at, and at times trampled, Westphalian sovereignty.
Western analysts have pointed out that China's blue ocean naval capabilities fall far behind America's, and that it will be many years if and when China is able to compete on equal terms. For instance, analysts point out China's single operational aircraft carrier, Liaoning, faces America's 10 aircraft carriers.
However, if China's ambitions are not to overwhelm or compete with America's global fleet, and merely deter and ultimately displace America's presence in Asia Pacific, its current fleet is already adequate. Analysts point out that when China's naval assets are operated near Chinese shores, land-based weapon systems including land-based aircraft significantly tip the balance of military power in Beijing's favour.
China's decision to establish what are essentially unsinkable aircraft carriers in the South China Sea amid its island-building frenzy have angered waning Western hegemons specifically for this same reason. From these islands, should China choose or be forced to, military power can be exerted against Western naval assets in ways even the West's formidable military would struggle to counter.
And while analysts, politicians and demagogues alike attempt to accuse China of building up its forces in what will result in full-scale war between Beijing and the West, the reality is that war will only unfold if the West fails to gracefully concede the end of its "age of empires," and its unwarranted influence it has maintained quite literally an ocean away from its shores, in Asia Pacific.
Beyond America's waning military presence in the region, many of what Washington has called its "allies" have recently shown signs of shifting economically and even militarily toward Beijing. This is the result of not China's growing military might, but its expanding economic influence, as well as its differing style of diplomacy relative to Washington's.
China brings its neighbours trains and other infrastructure and investment opportunities, the US brings NGOs and colour revolutions.
Where the US has pursued a foreign policy in Asia Pacific based on "nation building" either through direct military intervention and occupation, various methods of coercion or through the use of its immense number of nongovernmental organisations used to build parallel institutions within allied nations to then displace existing governments and replace them with more pliant regimes, Beijing has focused more on cutting economic and immense infrastructure deals, regardless of who is in power.
China does not operate media organisations propagating political agitation within neighbouring states as the US does throughout Asia Pacific, nor does it play a role in supporting or opposing political parties in neighbouring states as the US does. In other words, no matter how beneficial a relationship with the US may seem to Asian Pacific states, the spectre of subversion always looms overhead, where with dealings with Beijing, it does not.
It is ironic then, that despite America's military might, it is its own, fundamentally backwards methods of diplomacy, a throwback to European colonialism, that has undone its power and influence in Asia Pacific. But then again, had the US not pursued a foreign policy based on extraterritorial expansion throughout Asia Pacific, it wouldn't need power and influence in Asia Pacific beyond the boundaries of Westphalian sovereignty to begin with.
China's naval forces then, are not intended to sail across the Pacific and project Beijing's influence upon the people of North and South America. It is intended to deter and eventually displace American forces in Asia. In many ways, China's strategy is already working and in time, it will inevitably succeed.
America's presence in Asia Pacific, like all imperial powers before it attempting to project influence thousands of kilometres from their own shores, finds itself in an untenable, unsustainable position. Even without a push, this precarious balancing act must eventually come to an end. China's burgeoning naval fleet, however, will provide a sufficient push to ensure it does sooner than later, and on Beijing's terms.
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Tuesday, August 2, 2016
Making Dromaeosaurids Nasty Again Part IV: New Hypotheses on Dromaeosaurid Feeding Technique & Role of Tail in Movement
Hey now... I really thought about splitting this post into two posts for both respective hypotheses, but for the sake of brevity and wrapping this series up I decided to combine them. Additionally, as I will elaborate on further, the two aspects I will focus in on here - biting & locomotion - are not mutually exclusive and one dovetails into the other. So I gave this article a really long title and hope you get something out of it!!
Readers of this series may have detected a slight yet pervasive diminution of the import of the famed "killing claw" over the course of these posts. In my first post I documented the shift in scientific thought on these claws from scythes that cut meter long slashes in prey to crampons that allowed hitching rides on the hides of dinosaurs to ultimately the prevalent modern interpretation of raptor prey restraint (RPR) model of Fowler et al. in which prey subequal in size is grasped by all four digits. I reiterated a point seldom mentioned from the Fowler et al. paper on the dromaeosaurid RPR hypothesis: relative to accipterids, the ungual grasping ability of dromaeosaurids was >not as strong< as these birds in that arena i.e. they were not simply scaled up hawks. Later in that post I suggested a role for the arm/wings for pummeling prey/combatants as the feet grasped and pinned the animal. In my next post focusing on aggressive/combative scavenging in these animals I focused in on digit II as a useful tool in pinning large carcasses down as the head, neck and teeth pulled back on flesh - an idea supported by the unique morphology of the denticles on these theropods and the presence of enlarged digit II claws in several birds that work in a similar fashion.
My contention is that the import of digit II - so highly regarded that it is referred to as the "killing claw" - has both culturally and scientifically influenced these animals to the point that other aspects have been enshrouded. But was the "killing claw" really the most pivotal aspect of these animals behavior and ecology? I think not, or at least >not always<.
If the use of the "killing claw" digit II was indeed the be all and end all of dromaeosaurid prey capture and feeding technique we should be able to make some predictions to test that assertion. That over the course of the 100 million year evolutionary trajectory of these animals an increasing reliance on ungual prey capture will 1) show a trend towards shorter and therefore stronger legs i.e. less cursorial adaptations 2) as firepower is concentrated in the feet for killing the robustness of the skull and teeth should hold steady or potentially diminish. In the early Cretaceous Deinonychus we have a relatively sub-cursorial but highly adept foot grasper - again there is a bit of an inverse relationship between foot grasping strength and cursorial ability as I discussed in the first post and which Fowler et al. highlighted in their paper. I will cut and paste the source of this observation from the Fowler et al. paper:
As evidence for the purported trend in increasing foot strength Fowler et al. cite Deinonychus (early Cretaceous), and Velociraptor & Saurornitholestes (late Cretaceous). While Deinonychus and Velciraptor have relatively short metatarsi I can't see how they interpret the leggy Saurornitholestes as an example of this trend. Additionally there are some notable omissions, most obviously the name sake for the whole family Dromaeosaurus!!
In Dromaeosaurus albertensis cursorial adaptations are highlighted, the killing claw is relatively atrophied, and the skull is relatively massive and robust (almost tyrannosaurid like as GSP has commented). I mean just check out the skull of this animal, there is nothing slight, superficial, or atrophied about it at all:
robust head of Dromaeosaurus albertensis. credit LadyofHats. public domain
relatively diminished claw size/strength D. albertensis. credit LadyofHats. public domain
On the other hand digit II is not especially robust in Dromaeosaurus and the remaining unguals look more adapted towards a cursorial lifestyle than grasping. A "ground hawk" this was not.
Several of these trends towards diminished ungual strength and/or increasing skull robustness also play out in Dakotaraptor (cursorial w/diminished foot grasping ability) and the very robust skulled Atrociraptor.
Atrociraptor credit Ferahgo the assassin (Emily Willoughby) CC3.0
What am I getting at here? If anything the trend is towards increasing tooth and skull reliance over time >not always< towards increasing foot grasping & "killing claw" importance. I say >not always< because there were and likely always were dromaeosaurids that highlighted foot grasping ability. Sometimes foot grasping became diminished, sometimes it was very important. But what was always important and what was always highlighted in these animals was the jaws and teeth. They are the feature that always stayed pat or, if anything, increased in prominence.
No dromaeosaurids were not evolving protobeaks or going edentulous despite the persistent artistic meme and no they were not diminishing emphasis on teeth and jaws.
It really is all about the teeth....
To drive home this contention I want to revisit a famed piece of data that has caused quite a stir in terms of whom and how it was done - the famed Tenontosaurus bite marks and the case for Deinonychus "bite strength". A technical paper by Gignac et al. (2010), a blog post by Mark Witton, a blog post by central coast paleontologist, and an internet article/summary from The World of Animals all highlight the attention and thought these remains have attracted.
That these bite marks have evolved into a bit of a paleontological "who done it" has always irked me. Not because of a lack of data or some systemic problem with the analysis - but because of the pervasive "explaining away" of data that most parsimoniously points to Deinonychus as the perpetrator. Several ideas have been bandied about in an attempt to account for these bite marks by Deinonychus, a predator that appears to not have an especially high bite force.
Let's unpack them:
1) An undescribed and undiscovered tyrannosauroid dinosaur did this damage.
We have seen this story before... tremendous damage to bone - no way a "blade toothed" theropod did it much less a puny dromie. Let's just imagine a stout toothed, bone crunching tyrannosauroid existed at a time when such animals were basically all blade toothed anyways, and make this essentially fictional animal the perpetrator. Made up tyrant lizards did it!! Pesky blade toothed theropods just stay in your lane - you guys can't bite through bone the way tyrant lizards can!!
As you can tell (snark alert) I am not so much a fan of this idea. We have evidence of Deinonychus being the most ubiquitous theropod in the area; the tooth arcade matches; broken teeth in the area; the well established Tentontosaurus - Deinonychus relationship - the whole tide of evidence points to Deinonychus. If a cryptic lineage of stout toothed, bony crunching tyrannosauroids existed at this time I will be happy to be proven wrong - as of now I know such evidence and of the tyrannosauroids from this time period they are blade toothed predators without expanded jaw musculature - although I have heard murmuring of tyrannosauroid teeth from the same formation (but blade toothed not lethal bananas).
2) Deinonychus could bite hard, but it did so extremely rarely.
I mean really? Remember when you kept hearing how humans only use 10% of their brain? Yeah, this explanation sounds a lot like that. Over designed with a bite force exceeding modern American alligators yet barely ever uses this strength? I can't really go with this thought.
3) Stronger bite than predicted from studies.
I don't think that this animal had much of a stronger bite than studies indicate. I believe that we have been a little bit more than led astray by always looking at static bite strength as opposed to other methods of cutting that highlight speed, friction, and getting those darn denticles to do the work for you. It really is all about the teeth and it really is all about getting the denticles to work in a way that maximizes cutting efficiency with minimal effort and wear & tear of the tooth.
Its high time we start looking at hypotheses that invoke Deinonychus as the prime perpetrator. I will put out a hypothesis that highlights an unorthodox feeding mechanism in these animals, that is consistent with the data, and offers much explanatory power for the observed data.
To prime you for it I want to look at birds a bit (as usual). To really confound the situation the obvious choice is flamingoes - because what better to compare dromaeosaurids to than flamingoes, amirite?!?
I mean, excuse the poor video quality, but just look at those tongues go!! It is the tongue just pumping back and forth causing the whole neck to just vibrate. I have no idea why these flamingoes engage in this lingual vibration? Anyone ever see wild flamingoes do this? I would have to assume that they pump their tongues back and forth to filter food but in my observations of these captive Chilean flamingoes they just do it while walking around... probably just bored.
No I am not suggesting that Deinonychus had some sort of lingual vibrational apparatus set up - just pointing out how one muscular organ - the tongue - can move with such speed and power in this bird that it vibrates the whole head and neck of these animals. I mean can your tongue move with such speed and power that it causes the whole body to hummm and vibrate... ummm never mind. The message I am trying to convey here is that when we look at avian feeding mechanics - and by extension many dinosaurs and especially paravaians/maniraptorans/dromaeosaurids - there is a lot of potential for quick twitch muscle, full body and/or neck movement involved in the feding apparatus. To drive home this point, literally, what would woodpeckers be without their exceptionally quick and rapid - fire neck movements? Yes, it is the skull of woodpeckers that is wonderfully equipped to handle the blows and stresses incurred but without the power and speed provided by the neck the woodpecker would, essentially, not peck. It would just be a bird with a strong skull.
An often overlooked aspect of feeding mechanics is elaborating on how parts of or the whole of the body is engaged in feeding mechanics - the head need not be looked at as an isolated aspect of the process. Regular readers should note that I have made this point before on antediluvian salad especially with regards to twist or torsional feeding (death rolls) in plesiosaurs and in my bonesaw shimmy hypothesis on Allosaurus in which it is rapid neck movement in both the fore and aft direction that allows the denticles on the front and back end of the tooth to saw right through tissue. Bite force was not especially important in that hypothesis, in fact tight clamping would work against free movement of the denticles over the tissue.
This hypothesis does take some inspiration from the bonesaw shimmy model but it does deviate from it in several ways.
I propose that fast twitch muscular contractions of the neck, torso, and even tail would pulse out vibrational waves of energy towards the head. As bipeds that do not have their front feet on the ground these pulses of vibrational energy would travel unhindered through the neck, head, teeth, and ultimately into the food item they are cutting into. As the vibrational energy literally vibrated the tooth back and forth into the food item the peculiar denticle pattern of dromaeosaurids comes into fruition as an optimized adaptation to literally bore and auger into tissue.
The most striking and unique feature about the denticles on Deinonychus is that they are fairly reduced on the front of the tooth but very pronounced on the rear. But even stranger is the manner in which they are curved on the rear side which is towards the tip of the tooth, referred to as apical hooking. Fowler et al. suggested that this unique denticle design would optimize cutting into tissue as the prey animal was held in the RPR model and the head of the dromaeosaurs was sub-vertical with the nose facing down and biting between the legs. However this suggestion by Fowler fails to address the issue that many other theropods likely held prey/food down with their feet and wrenched off bites in a sub-vertical manner yet these theropods did not evolve such weird denticles as seen in many dromaeosaurids.
But if we imagine each denticle as a "tooth" and each tooth having a respective duty in food processing a potentially new perspective emerges that could explain the unique bone damage ascribed to Deinonychus.
As the piece of food is grasped a strong bite is first established. The slight and reduced serrations on the front of the tooth are useful here in establishing a piercing bite - not very deep as their bite force was modest but merely a small indentation into the article of food. Once a purchase is made then the body commences vibrations - potentially a combination of head, neck, torso, and tail rapid fire twitches - which allow the tooth to bore and auger into the food particle i.e. bone. As the "bore hole" phase commences the utility of the weird apically hooked denticles comes into play as each denticle literally chips and shreds away at tissue like individual teeth. As the tooth works its way into the material it leaves a remarkably accurate impression of the tooth - a literal bore hole that for all intents and purpose can be read as a puncture. Once the integrity of the material is weakened substantially the item can be pinned with the arms and/or feet and the head and neck are pulled back strongly incurring further and more drastic damage as the tooth is dragged back through the (weakened) material literally leaving deep bone raking marks and furrows. It is also potentially possible that vibrations of the body were not emphasized or were in fact used in concert with multiple quick bites - essentially chattering of the jaw - in which micro - abrasions from the denticles work to carve into tissue.
This "vibrational feeding" hypothesis could potentially explain the two types of feeding traces recorded on the bones of Tentontosaurus which include longer gouges and simple punctures.
Above you see the type of "bone rakings" I mentioned earlier. An initial puncture is established and with the teeth embedded now the neck and body can pull back and rake through tissue.
What I suggest was occurring here is that these were investigative bites into bone. The theropods were gouging into the bones to see if there was ample nutritional value in them to justify the effort and potential wear of teeth. There would always be a three-way tradeoff between nutritional value versus the effort and wear on the animals feeding apparatus all of which is tempered by the relative health of the animal i.e. how desperate for food is it. Ultimately it looks like the theropods abandoned the bone consumption in this case.
That dromaeosaurid teeth occasionally show extreme wear - especially on the tips as should be predicted in this model - is very interesting.
worn tooth "Dromaoesauroides" wiki
Private "dromaeosaur" tooth Montana .84"
Judith River "dromaeosaur" tooth
Clearly these animals were putting some heavy wear on their chompers, especially when we account for the fact that they were not keeping their teeth for life. An interesting test would be to see if komodo dragon teeth ever show equal levels of wear. But again, not the best test because theropod teeth were actually superbly designed to withstand stress more than any other ziphodont predators (Brink, 2015) (including komodos), yet they were still showing drastic wear... these animals were not getting this type of wear from just eating small animals and delicately nipping carcasses I'll tell you that much.
Of course it is worth mentioning that there is a lot of room for deviation in this model and we need not assume that all dromies employed vibrational feeding to the same extent. Indeed Dromaeosaurus could have employed a lot more emphasis on traditional "power chomps" than what I suggested for Deinonychus.
In theropods, being both ziphodont toothed and bipedal, there is no go to analogy among modern tetrapods - birds don't quite tell the whole story and neither do monitor lizards. So maybe we should expect some unothodox feeding mechanics.
Lifestyles of not only the quick and cursorial but the slow and persistent as well...
And now for the tail. Probably the aspect >least likely< to be assumed to be involved in "making dromaeosaurids nasty again". But it is the tail that is the most important aspect of these animals I will argue. The tail is what really pulls together all the disparate attributes of these animals and makes them what they were. And what they were was quite literally the most successful in tenure small to medium sized terrestrial hunter - scavengers that have ever existed. A unique blend; of accipterid "raptor"; combative scavenging vulture; bone chomping hyena ; a dash of felid; and, yes, highly efficient cursors similar to kangaroos, hyenas, humans, wolverines, and Arctodus.
One of the persistent ideas that has gained popular recognition in recent years is that dromaeosaurids were sub-cursorial - that they were slow. A chief argument put forth to support this notion is that the ankle bones - the metarsii - were rather short. And this is true for many species - Deinonychus and Velociraptor in particular - that were gaining mechanical advantage of foot claw strength at the expense of speed. But this was not so true in several other species - Dakotaraptor and Dromaeosaurus for instance - that were leggy to an exceptional degree. I am just not at ease with suggestions that species at the lower end of the spectrum were heavy footed clunkers - they could probably all put on a decent burst of speed if need be. Ursids (da' bears) have all the hallmarks of real clunkers but put on good speed with their short ankles. Keep in mind that dromies were competing with larger - and in the case of tyrannosaurids likely larger and quicker - theropods as well as azhdarchids. It is not always about being the fastest - but about being more agile when fleeing a larger threat. With their arm - wings and long tails doubtless many dromies frustrated an angry tyrannosaurid back in the day with their superior agility.
The dromie tail, just like the dromie "killing claw" has gone through a twisted and convoluted history of interpretations and revisions. A brief recap. Ostrom interpreted the tail as an intricate balancing rod that facilitated use of the "killing claw" for kicking and hanging onto prey. Each subsequent interpretation of dromie killing technique from hanging onto the side of prey and biting to the RPR method invoked the tail as intricate balancing organ for their respective prime foraging technique.
To add further context to the strange saga of dromie tails I want to revisit a post from Pterosaur.net Blog (remember that great site?) Dragon Tails: What Pterosaurs Teach Us About Velociraptor that made the strange and startling comparison between dromaeosaurid tails and rhamphorynchid tails... wtf? Well there is a comparison to be made there and it is not soooo strange when we work from the starting point that dromaeosaurids likely had flighted ancestors... so that they inherited a tail that - presumably - shared a convergence in form and function with rhamphorynchid pterosaurs.
credit Scott Hartman used w/permission . blog Scott Hartman's Skeletal Drawing
So if dromaeosaurids inherited the weird morphology of their tails from flighted ancestors - full of chevrons, diminished musculature, partially ossified dual tendons (i.e. caudal rods) there becomes two rather interesting questions: 1) what adaptive benefit did these features incur in flighted dromaeosaurids and tailed pterosaurs? and 2) how was this morphology coopted into terrestrial based dromaeosaurids? Question number #1 I am going to leave alone but I think it is a long overdue question that needs analysis but question number #2 is what I am going to approach here.
credit Scott Persons
What I am going to suggest is that dromaeosaurids across all ranges of absolute speed and leg length - were highly efficient long distance pacers. They could and did just keep going for miles at a time at a relatively moderate pace. The whole lot of 'em could just run you to death. And the key to this long distance efficiency was the tail. The tail - the whole organ - served as an elastic recoil that allowed these animals to store, redistribute, and recoup energy for efficient, long distance traveling. I have seen scant attention to the tail as an aide in terrestrial efficiency in dromies. Despite the fact that these animals were terrestrial and the tail of dinosaurs is intimately linked with movement - especially per the caudemofemoralis muscle. Darren Naish raised the question of dromie tails back in 2008 (What the hell is going on with dromaeosaur tails?) in light of Norell & Makovicky (1999) describing an articulated and sinuous Velociraptor tail. The comment section is interesting. I do note in it a pervasive sentiment of trying to "explain away" the sinuous tail - the presupposition being that stiff tails is the better supported null in dromies to start with. But is a stiff tail the better supported null or is it just how we grew up expecting dromie tails to behave? In either case lateral flexibility shown in both Velociraptor and Bambiraptor seems to have prevailed. But there is one comment by Alan #19 that I believe was very prescient and which received literally no attention in the discussion.
I think Alan was on the right track as goes energy efficiency although I doubt the hopping dromie scenario has much merit - indeed trackways have proven otherwise.
I will be working from the assumption that dromaeosaurids - whatever abilities they had for arboreal behavior or even some amount of gliding or even "flight" in small ones - that they were basically terrestrial animals and that the tide of evolutionary impetus should create a better and more efficient terrestrially adapted animal. Not an evolutionary experiment, and not a maladapted kinda-climber, kinda-jumper, kinda-walker but a reasonably well equipped and efficient animal that could do all the things that we should expect a small to medium sized hunter - scavenger to do in a highly competitive ecosystem. In short they could climb, they could potentially even swoop, they could swim, but what they did the most was walk and run around. Namely that means that they could move fairly quickly and efficiently to highly localized food sources - carcasses, hatching dinosaurs, large concentrations of prey. Especially given their long tenure, efficient terrestrial movement should almost be expected. Contra the "ground hawk" image we need not assume that these animals were >always< sit and wait ambushers or would swoop down from a perch. Indeed sit and wait ambushing is more of an ectothermic strategy and even when warm blooded predators do ambush from trees or from cover they choose spots that have a high degree of certainty that prey will be there fairly regularly. Dromies possibly could have utilized this tactic to some degree but I hardly think it was their dominant foraging strategy given that several species developed obvious cursorial adaptations and that some species lived in areas with little tree cover or sparse vegetation in general (i.e. dune fields).
From my own experimental paleontology in which I strapped on a huge tail to my butt at SVP Los Angeles and commenced to simultaneously entertain and annoy attendees I noted several patterns. What was really interesting to me is how much that darned tail moved around. Literally the smallest movement I made would thoroughly send the tail in motion. And what was most notable was the dramatic up and down oscillations that the tail went through as I walked. Each foot fall would create a simultaneous rise and fall of the tail - even the smallest and daintiest step. Don't believe me strap one on yourself and be a dinosaur for a day - you'll see what I am talking about.
These up and down movements of the tail that occurred simultaneously with each footfall likely occurred in all dinosaurs to some degree. What is interesting is that dromaeosaurid tails - because of their "caudal rods" - were designed to diminish this up and down movement of the tail as thoroughly explained by Scott Persons on his post on dromie/rhamphorynchus tail convergence. Note in the pic below how the caudal rods are neatly stacked against one another on the vertical plane to limit movement dorso - ventrally.
Caudal rods in Deinonychus prevent up and down movement of tail
credit Scott Persons
As has recently been illuminated by discoveries of articulated tails of Velociraptor and Bambiraptor these tails could still bend quite sinuously in the lateral realm.
Bambiraptor tail credit Scott Persons
So if the caudal rods of Deinonychus and other dromies diminish the up and down movement of the tails - which is a natural consequence of bipedal movement - we have some missing kinetic energy to account for. Energy is neither created nor destroyed. Something has happened to the energy otherwise absorbed and dissipated by the tail through up and down movement with each footfall in dromaeosaurids... where does it go? I suspect that this energy is recouped into the legs and aides in giving these animals just a little extra "bounce" to their step. The tail may work as a wonderful elastic rebound organ. We should potentially imagine dromies being very bouncy and springy as they paced along.
This model of locomotory efficiency is not without parallel in animals that have to move across vast expanses to find and locate rare and ephemeral food resources. A leading hypothesis concerning Arctodus is that it was a highly efficient long distance pacer that scavenged and usurped carcasses (Matheus, 2003) utilizing long legs and elastic recoil to travel at a moderate pace over long distances. Hyenas have long been noted for their efficient loping pace that allows large scale movements and carcass retrieval. Kangaroos and wallabies are well noted for their ability to travel long distance at an extremely energy efficient pace owing a lot to the elastic recoil in their leg tendons. Indeed a robotic kangaroo has been designed that utilizes such elastic recoil in the tail to recoup energy for movement.
I would be remiss not to mention the endurance running hypothesis has been invoked as a strategy for both scavenging and pursuit hunting in our own genus aided by the achilles tendon. To further quell the notion that short legs - such as in Deinonychus or Velociraptor - imply a suboptimal terrestrial movement capability let us not forget about wolverines which are notorious long range hunter -scavengers despite being very short limbed. I don't know if there have been any studies on the locomotory efficiency of these animals but I suspect there is something to 'em in those regards. There are at least loads of references to the marathon travels of these facultative scavengers.
"It is absolutely impossible for any human to keep up with a wolverine. What wolverine can do is just beyond human."
"A wolverine crosses a topo maps like we cross a street."
"They devour the landscape at a constant 4 mph regardless of terrain."
An energetic bundle of tooth, claw, and attitude? Switching from small game foraging to large carcass acquisition as the seasons dictate? Bone consumption? Able to outpace, outcompete, and outwork competitors that are several orders of magnitude larger in size? Thriving in areas and desolate habitats that other predators eschew (snowfields analogous to dune fields in these regards)? A little bit of the Gulo gulo in your dromie? You bet.
Making dromaeosaurids nasty again... Invoking the wolverine as a likely analogue for many dromies, it doesn't get much nastier than the demon of the north.
Ichnology: What Does It Tell Us?
Xing et. al. (2013) document a variety of dromaeosaurid trackways from the lower Cretaceouls Hekou group in China. The pace was not very high at about .75 meters/second which is about 1.7 mph or 2.7 km/hour. Average human walking speed is said to be about 3.1 mph or 5.0 km/hour. Let me just cut and paste the discussion:
So although these particular dromies seem to be moving along at slowish pace - perhaps they had full bellies or were just walking down for a drink. It is noteworthy that they mention several dromie ichno-species in the last paragraph that seem to be cruising along at quite brisk paces and one zipping along pretty good.
Dromaeosauripus from Korea at 4.86 m/s (Kim et al. 2008) which is 10.9 mph / 17.5 kmh
Paravipus (Murdoch et al. 2010) at 1.67 m/s and 3.61 m/s which is 3.6 mph / 5.8 kmh and 8.1 mph / 13.0 kmh
Dromaeopodus at 1.63 m/s (Li et al. 2007; Kim et al. 2008) which is 3.6 mph / 5.8 kmh
Considering that to document an actual predatory chase in the footprint record is exceptionally rare and that there is no evidence that a chase was in progress in any of these instances the ichnological data is very interesting. We see a range of speeds here from the more leisurely .75 m/s to a quite hectic 4.86 m/s. If we assume that these are reasonable cruising speeds then the small sample size we have does point to a relatively fast paced "cruiser" similar to humans, wolverines, coyotes, and hyenas that can cover vaste expanses of land at an efficient pace as the penultimate terrestrial hunter - scavengers of their time.
The Seldom Mentioned Fact of Dromie Toe & Heel Pads
The trackways from this study demonstrate that dromies had big ol' foot pads like two toed ostriches but also large heel pads! So pay attention to this aspect paleo-artists >at least some< dromies had big fat derpy looking foot/heel pads that are universally never depicted at all or large enough in paleo-art depictions (including my own). Why has this well documented aspect of dromaeosaur foot anatomy never penetrated into popular depictions? I mean no one - literally nobody - including world renowned paleoartists or more obscure/enthusiast artists depicts dromies with large heel pads. Yup the toes had big padding but the heel pad would have been very apparent in life. And this is from a peer reviewed paper with several notable authors including most notably to my western biased eyeballs, Phil Currie (who is btw the last author).
Such fleshy and large toe/heel pads would assist in stalking behavior by muffling sounds, stability, absorb stress from cursorial activity but I also have to wonder if such fleshy structures would diminish grasping effectiveness?
Also check out the base of digit II often reveals a bit of a fleshy toe pad. Dromaeosauripus yongjingensis represents a fairly large "Utahraptor" size dromie but other dromie footprints reveal fleshy toe pads and heel pads.
Kim et al. did a paper with reference to a speedy little dromie in the above discussion (Kim et al. 2008) from Korea of Dromaeosauripus moving along at about 4.86 meters per second (10.9 mph or 17.5 kmph).
The question is though does this represent a cruising speed or were we in fact lucky enough to document one of the rare instances that a theropod was actually "on the hunt"? Or neither? Could it be that dromies would normally walk at a fairly leisurely pace of less than 2 mph but when spurred into action (i.e. carcass or prey that have been detected via sensory cues but still require covering large terrain) that they then shift gears into a relatively higher pace 3 - 4 mph or even up to 8 - 10 mph / 16 -18 kmph? That is pretty fast but I hardly think it represent the top speed of these animals.
I also should give some space to the ichnological data pointing to at least six large dromies traveling in parallel and the special emphasis the authors give to the toe and heel pads in the footprints ( Li, 2007).
So when depicting the average large terrestrial dromie foot think more about ostrich feet than harpy eagle feet. Except that unlike ostriches dromies often had big ol' heel pads in addition to toe pads that would have further cushioned the foot and added a degree of stability normally not ascribed to these animals. The increased surface area would have facilitated greater efficacy and stability of movement in dubious terrain such as dune fields and mud flats.
ostrich foot credit Masteraah CC 2.0
Again it does beg the question that - at least among the dromies that sported such large heel & toe pads - how efficient a grip could have been enacted with the claws in the RPR model? I mean having such big, cushy organs between your claws and the animal you are gripping does pose some practical questions as goes the efficiency of such a grip.
A lot of questions to be answered but I do think that a fresh appraisal of these animals as primarily terrestrial long distance hunter - scavengers that have to cover a lot of ground efficiently is needed. Optimal walking versus optimal cruising speed can be addressed with larger sample size of ichnological data and computational methods... What I can say is that the anatomy of the tail likely has something to do with terrestrial locomotion and efficiency of gait is as good of a hypothesis to investigate as any...
These animals had to have been able to move and move well. They had to have traversed wide distances to secure meals in often times inhospitable terrain. They had to have competed against larger and aggressively hungry and growing youngsters of tyrannosauroids, carcharodontosaurids, and other theropods. They had to get to carcasses before large pterosaurs got all the good stuff. They had to have been at least reasonably competent in these realms to have persisted as... I don't know... the longest tenured group of small - medium sized tetrapod terrestrial hunter - scavengers that ever existed ( I know I said it before but it bears repeating). Speedy thieves indeed.
Earlier in this article I suggested that there was a link between the tail and biting apparatus in these animals - that their functions dovetail together. At the risk of piling one hypothesis on top of another let me put it out there that the diminished dorso-ventral movement of the tail as dictated by the caudal rods would have shunted more of the potential energy towards the anterior of the body - essentially towards the head, jaws, and teeth - during vibrational feeding.
credit Duane Nash Tsaagan & Velociraptor
Final Thoughts
Both a scientific and cultural emphasis on the "killing claw" in dromaesaurids has obscured a more nuanced, multifaceted, and holistic approach to these animals; that the "ground hawk" model has so embedded itself into our conscious; that the potential role of arm-wings as brutal spiked clobbering devices analogous to wing pummeling in modern aves has been overlooked; that the teeth were highly specialized and brutal weapons in their own right capable of extreme insults to carcass integrity (including bones) and perhaps full body "vibrational feeding"; that the importance of head and tooth weaponry did not diminish over the evolutionary history of this group but sometimes increased while emphasis on "killing claw" and foot grasping capability did in fact sometimes diminish; that cursorial ability did often times increase in capability and that all dromaeosaurids may have benefited from elastic rebound provided by caudal rods in the tail enhancing long distance, mid-paced terrestrial efficiency of movement as well as large fleshy toe & heel pads; that life appearance may have been more varied than simply "grounded hawks" with "dapper" haircuts but imbued with much of the panoply of life appearance we see in ratites, predatory and scavenging accipterids, cathartidae, bucerotidae, galliformes, and other large/terrestrial aves including but not limited to large exposed fleshy areas including caruncles, wattles, frills, dewlaps, and other tough - elastic - and fleshy skin derived outgrowths for thermorgulation and sexo-social signaling; that these attributes when generously applied to an outstanding and long lasted dynasty - in fact the longest tenure of small to medium sized tetrapod terrestrial hunter - scavengers to have ever existed - create a strikingly original, efficient and for lack of a better term "nasty" eco-morphological package that punched above their own weights in many categories.
They were above all else... awesome... bro.
And finally... can we please stop calling them raptors? That name is already taken!! You may have noticed through the course of these articles that I have bounced a lot between dromaeosaurid and dromie... I probably in retrospect should have used the term eudromaeosaurid through out as they are what I am principally talking about here not microraptorines or unenlagines.
I vote for calling these guys "dromies"and am fully favor of eschewing the befuddled term "raptor".
Scientific Reports 5, article no. 12338, July 2015
Gignac, P. M., Makovicky, P. J., Erickson, G. M., & Walsh, R. P. (2010). A description ofDeinonychus antirrhopus bite marks and estimates of bite force using tooth indentation simulations. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 30(4), 1169-1177.
Kim, J.Y., Kim, K.S. and Lockley, M.G. 2008. New didactyl dinosaurs footprints (Dromaeosauripus hamanesnsi ichnogen. et ichnosp. nov.) from the Early Cretaceous Haman Formation, south coast of Korea. Palaeogeography, Paleoclimatology, Palaeoecology 262: 72-78
Li, Rihui., Lockley, M.G., Makovicky, P.J., Matsukawa, M., Norell, M.A., Harris. J.D., Liu, M., (2007) Behavioral and faunal implications of Early Cretaceous deinonychosaurian trackways from China. Naturwissenschaften (2008) 95: 185-191 online
Xing, L., Li, D., Harris, J.D., Bell, P.R., Azuma, Y., Fujita, M., Lee, Y.−N., and Currie, P.J. 2013. A new deinonycho−
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D-man said...
Interesting hypotheses
Bk Jeong said...
I actually compared dromaeosaurs to large mustelids for a long time.
Nice to see that dromaeosaurs, despite the fact some of them were clearly not as fast, definitely were not sluggards. Speed isn't mobility.
Duane Nash said...
Right if those fossil trackways represent cruising speeds and they were not actively chasing something anything more than 4 mph is well above what most animals normally walk at. In one day they might cover 20-30 miles, that is getting around.
khalil beiting said...
An amazing "saga" of posts to sum up such amazing organisms. I don't have much else to say/ask about them seeing as how you covered nearly everything about their general behaviour, ecology, etc.
As I've talked to you about before, the large scale Dinosaur field guide I'm working on uses common names just like modern animals. I never wanted to use the word "raptor" for Dromaeosaurs since it's already taken by another group of highly carnivorous Theropod, so what are some good ideas that you (or anyone else in the comment section) have in mind that I could use? I thought of the name "Eagledrak" (literally Eagle Dragon) as a common name, but I have also thought of the name "Hell Hawk" to either replace or to accompany Eagledrak as a common name. Got any other suggestions?
Duane Nash said...
"Hell-pacer" "Running Bone Rattler" "Demon-scarf-hell-face" LOL
Thomas Holtz said...
A couple of notes:
There *IS* a Cloverly tyrannosauroid: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08912963.2010.543952#.V6SD4GUxu3c
In terms of metatarsal/tibia ratio, and scaled for size, even Saurornitholestes is actually fairly stumpy-footed.
Anonymous said...
I think the problem is more to do with:
Is the size and shape of the tooth resembles the scar made in tenontosaurus bone(Deinonychus does)? Even if it does, that means that Tyrannosaurs had a blade-tooth unlike later tyrannosaurs.
Anonymous said...
I think I may have sounded rude up there. What I was trying to say is that is there good reason to believe that Tyrannosaurs with classic blade tooth(that resembles Deinonychus tooth in size and shape) were capable of making significant bone damage via bite force.
khalil beiting said...
Duane I actually really love the names Hell-pacer and Bone Rattler. I'll be using these if that's fine with you ;).
Also, are there any other indications of other Dromies besides Deinonychus using this "bone rattling" technique? I'd be suprised if other well known genera weren't doing the same.
And speaking of bone rattling, do you think another common named for various Dromie taxa could be "Bonepeckers", in the same vain as modern Woodpeckers?
Duane Nash said...
@khalil any indictions of other dromies using this "bone rattling" technique? Not that I know of and it is far from proven or even adequately tested in Deinonychus. It's a hypothesis, one which may potentially explain the bone puncture marks, although I would not get too expectant in people jumping on board with it cuz skeptical scientist is skeptical.
Duane Nash said...
@Thomas Holtz Point taken regarding size correction for saurornitholestes and ref on the Cloverly turannosauroid. Anonymous iterated my concerns with simply ascribing the bone damage to a relatively rare and unknown tyrannosauroid.
I did in the post emphasis the long range loping ability of the wolverine - a stumpy footed carnivoran - which never the less travels staggering distances and has immense home ranges. I did make the analogy with that mustelid because dromie "cruising" foot print speed is often times not too shabby considering their stumpy footed design and the rarity of actual chases documented via footprints. Such high cruising speeds should stir interest in the use of the caudal rods as potential elastic rebound organs in facilitating such efficient paces over long distance as hunter - scavengers of often times marginal habitat (i.e. deserts/dunefields).
strangetruther said...
Hi Duane -
If you really are interested in understanding dromaeosaurs, you should be interested in my book where I ... SOLVED THESE QUESTIONS - not just questions to do with the tail. Far from my account being the only one that seems to be completely ignored, it is in fact the only one you need to read.
Would you like me to send you a free e-copy? I think it's about time you read it.
I'd actually put the tail explanation out on the internet several years before I published the book four years ago, but of course the "Ugly Sisters" complex amongst so many, made people want to pretend that I and my comments didn't exist. Energy storage is an interesting idea, which is why I noticed it and formed it into my theory. But seeing as many flying dromaeosaurs such as Microraptor gui had an extremely long stiff tail but clearly, from their feathered feet, could not have been long-distance foot predators, and since no predatory theropods without the special claw had the tail, it's unlikely energy saving in locomotion is the answer.
But energy utilisation by the tail is instead to do with the teeth. And I also explained why the back of the teeth had the larger denticles. And I also explained how the rear wings worked. And I also explained why it was the descendants of dromaeosaurs that won out in bird survival in the end.
Palaeontology usually seems to be played as a social game which pretends to be science, but if you choose you can actually follow the real science, Duane!
Anonymous said...
Although, I have to mention that Wolverine seems to be a plantigrade, so being efficient cruiser is not that strange. Same goes for human and bear.
Duane Nash said...
Hi Mr. jackson
Thanks for comments and my email is duanen8@gmail.com if you want to send me an e-copy
(1) "seeing as many flying dromaeosaurs such as Microraptor gui had an extremely long stiff tail but clearly, from their feathered feet, could not have been long distance foot predators
(2) since no predatory theropods without the special claw had the tail, it's unlikely energy saving in locomotion is the answer"
First off in point (1) I am not so sold on the notion that just because Microraptor and other microraptorines had feathered hindlimbs that this in fact hindered or negated their terrestrial capability. Feathers can be especially tough and resilient and I don't see compelling reason why hindlimb feathers were so dainty and weak that brushing past vegetation or active movement would have been discouraged.
Point (2) I need to reiterate that dromie tails share remarkable similarity to rhamphorynchine tails. Why is this? Dromies were once flighted and it seems such a tail morphology had something to do with flight... did it aide in balance,,, did it store and recoup energy from the flight stroke?... I don't know. But what I am hedging to is that the caudal rod morphology inherited from flighted ancestors was exapted into a terrestrial capability in terrestrial dromies. The reason that other theropods did not evolve a similar caudal rod tail adaptation is quite simple - they did not have flighted ancestors to inherit the basic design. What they had - and other theropods/dinosaurs could have had parallel solutions to movement efficiency - was just good enough. Not perfect - but good enough.
I will have piece on microraptorines up soon so I will say more on them in the future...
I am interested in reading your book although I might disagree with some of your ideas/conclusions. But in this way I am treating you no different than many of the "luminaries" of the field which I also differ from on many points.
Dave said...
Interesting as always, Mr. Nash. I feel several comments are in order.
1. I feel that the Manning et al study has been too quickly accepted as dogma. Take a look at figure 9 in Kirkland's original description of Utahraptor: https://www.academia.edu/225747/A_large_dromaeosaurid_Theropoda_from_the_Lower_Cretaceous_of_Eastern_Utah
You'll notice that Utahraptor's killing claw is teardrop-shaped in cross section, and that it retains this shape very nearly all the way to the base. It practically screams "I had a sharp edge in life!" I'm not sure whether or not this is the case with Deinonychus and Velociraptor as well, but if it is, Manning et al's justification for testing a claw with a dull ventral surface on the basis of phylogenetic bracketing seems extremely weak - especially so given that similar arguments could be constructed demonstrating that dromaeosaurs probably didn't have those ossified ligaments in their tails, or that they probably didn't have serrated teeth! Why no one in the scientific community has pointed out this seemingly obvious shortcoming of Manning's test is beyond me. Suffice it to say that the slashing hypothesis is far from falsified. This isn't to say that the RPR model is totally wrong. After all, an entire clade of today's apex predators use ventral keeled claws for prey restraint. Whether slashing or prey capture was the primary use of the claw remains to be determined.
2. Re. Your "tooth boring" hypothesis:
a) given the orientation of the tooth in the mouth, it looks to me that it would be the anterior serrations that would be doing most of the work, not the posterior ones.
b) I'm somewhat confused as to the benefits of such a feeding style. The potential benefits of the bone saw shimmy you proposed for carnosaurs were fairly obvious. What purpose would this "bone-drill dougie" serve?
c) it seems to me that there's a simpler explanation for how a Deinonychus could have made such marks. Energy is force times distance, therefore force is energy divided by distance. Energy is conserved, so if you apply a force of 1000 Newtons to something (for example, a mandible full of teeth) for 20 cm, and then something else (for example, a dinosaur bone) decelerates the first thing for a distance of 5 cm, that something else will experience a force of some 4000 Newtons.
It's probably worth mentioning that, in a scrum of feeding dromaeosaurs, a lot of animals would be jostling to snap up a chunk of meat. It's probably also worth mentioning that some of these quick, hard, snapping bites might be poorly aimed, and could thus end up gouging marks in bones far deeper than would be expected from the sustainable force output of a dromaeosaur's jaws.
For whatever it's worth, to my (admittedly amateur) eyes, this explanation of the tooth marks seems to fit in better with the whole "dromaeosaurs as combative scavengers" model than your "bone-drill dougie" hypothesis does.
3. Regarding the use of the term "raptor," seeing as falcons, owls, accipitridae, and new-world vultures form a polyphyletic group, I see no reason why extinct clades of predatory/carnivorous bird - including at least dromaeosaurs and the terror birds - should not be subsumed under the term as well.
Duane Nash said...
†hanks for comment Dave
1) Interesting you mentioned a sharp edge likely in Utahraptor as I have came across this notion elsewhere in addition to new thought on the subject... well my thoughts have been evolving on the killing claw and I may have to eat some of my own words and come back around to the killing claw actually being a killing claw.
2) a) "looks to me the anterior serrations that would do most of the work" I think that they both had a function. The diminished anterior serrations allow piercing while the posterior serrations which are apically hooked do the excavation. I'm sure a computer simulation could be used to test this.
b) bone drilling would be useful not just for bone but more importantly getting into the thick hides of dinosaurs. Once the teeth get "drilled" into the carcass then the neck and body could pull back with better purchase. The "bone drilling" and "bonesaw" hypotheses might be better understood as ways to penetrate and get through the tough, often times osteoderm studded hides of dinosaurs. Of course "skinsaw" or "skin- drill" don't sound as cool ergo I use the bone terminology. Dinosaur skin and hide was a daunting task to get through and these speed & friction based biting methods provide hypotheses on how best to get through the skin of animals very similar to komodo dragon or crocodile skin.
c) yes but we still have the question of relatively weak bite force in Deinonychus - where is the energy coming from? If it is not coming from static jaw pressure maybe the body is generating the energy which gets transmitted through the teeth?
3. Little known fact: Jurassic Park made the term "raptor' popular because they followed the taxonomy of Gregory S. Paul. GSP sunk Deinonychus into the genus of Velociraptor an idea that pretty much no one follows except for Jurassic Park. JP really wanted more of a Deinonychus style villain - not a coyote sized Velociraptor - in their movie. They took Deinonychus (which they assumed as a type of Velociraptor per GSP taxonomy) and made it bigger, Incidentally Utahraptor discovered later that year!! The term "raptor" therefore came about and was popularized for a mistake!!
Dave said...
Thank you for taking the time to respond my comments, mr. Nash.
1. Not that I think you give a crap about my opinion, but it's nice to see a willingness to admit mistakes combined with a willingness to come up with out of the box hypotheses - especially when it comes to paleo-ecology, where we have such a dearth of empirical data.
2. I'm not going to continue with the further subdivision of this heading, as I wish to transition to a holistic discussion of tooth mechanics. In deinonychus, the teeth point backwards, and the denticles point towards the tip - in other words, backwards as well. If most theropods had teeth for slashing and sawing, dromaeosaurs had teeth for gripping and pulling. Of course, the anterior serrations mean that sawing is still viable, but their reduction could indicate that it was somewhat less important than the backwards yank. As for where the energy was coming from - it was coming from the weak jaws!
Deinonychus had a 40 cm skull. Conservatively, it could have had a gape of some 35 cm. Therrian et al calculated its sustainable bite force to be 1450 Newtons. That probably couldn't be sustained through the jaw's entire range of motion, as the jaw muscles would be further from perpendicular to the tooth row at wider gapes, so we'll go with a figure of 750 N. We'll subtract 5 cm from the gape to fit in the tenontosaur bone, and cut out an additional 2.5 cm to leave room for deceleration. So our 750 N will be applied for 27.5 cm. That means that the tooth row will have an energy of 206.25 J. If the bone decelerates the tooth row for a distance of 2.5 cm, it will be experiencing a force of some 8250 N - well in line with the experimental data. Needless to say, if the muscles of the neck and legs are recruited as well - say, if the animal violently thrusts its head into the scrum to snap a bite out of the carcass - the figure could be further inflated. In my opinion, this sort of suggestion has two advantages over yours: first, in my admittedly inexpert estimation, it seems less biomechanically questionable. Second, it fits in with your whole "combative scavenger" model somewhat more organically.
I hope that my contributions are helping you think through your ideas!
Duane Nash said...
Well no I do give a crap about other's opinions, in fact that was one of my main imperatives with this blog. Suggest new ideas, put them out there, and see how people respond to them either through valid critiques or other lines of evidence that I didn't think of. Sort of a group sourcing of paleo thought. A lot of my ideas of course need more rigorous and quantitative testing (math not my strong suit) and hopefully paleontologists with better experimental technology (FEA, actual models, computer simulations) will take up some of the hypotheses I have been suggesting.
We should not throw out unpolished gems just because they need a little work!!
Uggh it's been a long time since I did any physics but if your math holds up the scenario you put forth is much more reasonable than what I suggested. Which begs the question why didn't the pros think it through like you did? Admittedly using power and speed garnered from the legs and necks seems more reasonable from a biomechanical perspective but also from an evolutionary perspective - a problem with my idea is that I don't have an evolutionary mechanism - an exaptation - that would facilitate such a method as I proposed.
Don't worry I am not very wed to the idea of bone drilling teeth in dromies just kinda throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks!!
Thanks for your input Dave like I mentioned in the last post I did come across some rather novel and interesting thought on the dromie killing claw that infers a strong cutting edge and a rather bizarre use of the tail. Problem is that this idea comes from a man who is.... well he has a strong allegiance to an idea that is not very well liked in the dino-bird-paleocommunity. Unfortunately I fear this unyielding insistence on a particular idea has caused people to overlook - or not even read - his rather good idea on dromie killing claws. It's a tough needle for me to thread.
Dave said...
One weakness of my suggestion would be that such forces could only be delivered for a fraction of a second.if sustained pressure were required to produce such markings, my idea wouldn't work.
Would you be willing to direct me to this new thought on the killing claw?
Duane Nash said...
I found this old blog post basically laying it all out there: http://lefthandedcyclist.blogspot.com/2012/02/raptors-revisited.html
Interestingly this idea presented on the blog converges with pretty much the same idea developed by notorious Birds Came First advocate John Jackson in his self-published book The Secret Dino-Bird Story.
I don't agree with the BCF idea, nor with several of Jackson's other ideas. But I do suspect he is on to something with the hypothesis he developed. Unfortunately due to his reputation online and the lack of support and evidence for BCF I don't think many are aware of his ideas on the killing claw, However when his idea is decoupled from BCF no reason for it to not attract attention and further analysis.
I will probably blog on this "pierced from within" hypothesis eventually.
Dave said...
Very interesting... The dromaeosaur tail is such a curious adaptation.
Out of curiosity, does the Gignac study on Deinonychus bite force happen to mention how long force has to be applied in order to produce the observed indentations? In the interest of Scientific Progress (tm), I'm interested in finding out whether my suggestion really is plausible.
Duane Nash said...
to tell you the truth I don't know the ins and outs of the Gignac study just that it is referred to a lot in reference to bite force in Deinonychus.
Lam Luong said...
When I read in these dromies post about the heel pads that may impair grasping ability in the feet, as well as the diminished second toe claw in more cursorial species, I started thinking about cassowaries. They also have that enlarged talon on the second toe, and they can jump up to about 5 feet in the air. They don't have a need to grasp anything since they're ground-dwellers and mainly frugivorous, but they do charge and kick out at anything they feel threatened by, capable of leaving huge gashes in the offender/victim (I've heard of one report of a cassowary ripping down a car door and leaving it with a 6-inch gash). I was thinking that perhaps dromies (perhaps the cursorial species in particular) employed this tactic in prey capture along with, and possibly preceding, biting and wing-pummeling. Thoughts?
Duane Nash said...
Hi Lam Luoung thanks for comments. I tend to think that the cassowary/dromie comparison is taken too literally. The morphology of their claws are indeed very different. Indeed my thoughts on how the killing claw functioned has changed quite dramatically as of late, deviating from ideas I have expressed on these posts, as I have come across some alternative ideas on how the claw may have functioned. Stay tuned.
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger... | http://antediluviansalad.blogspot.com/2016/08/making-dromaeosaurids-nasty-again-part.html?showComment=1470283029620 | [
"shape",
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"cad"
] |
Behind China's surge in patents
By Nin-Hai Tseng, reporter
FORTUNE -- China has won a few high-profile crowns lately: In January, the East Asian giant surpassed Germany as the world's largest exporter. Then in August, it trumped Japan to become the world's second largest economy.
And by next year, China is expected to surpass both Japan and the United States in patent filings, according to a Thomson Reuters report released this month.
Since patents often measure a country's inventive streak, it's reasonable to think that China is in line next year to become the world's top innovator. But the country, which is known for being lax on piracy and for its relatively uneven enforcement of intellectual property laws, has some ways to go before it catches up to the kind of innovation found in Japan and the U.S.
There's little doubt that China has made incredible advances since its first patent law went into effect in 1985 -- the country has been reforming its court system and administrative offices to better enforce laws. China's government has also encouraged innovation through subsidies and other incentives. More students are engineer graduates, and the country is known for some of the world's most innovative companies including Lenovo.
While patent applications across the world grew at their lowest rate in 2008 since the dot-com crisis in the early 2000s, growth of applications in China grew by 18.2%, according to the World International Property Organization. In fact, the country kept the worldwide total from spiraling to zero growth in 2008 as applications in Japan and Korea dropped, 1.3% and 1.1%, respectively. The U.S. saw zero growth.
In 2009, patent filings at most offices dropped again except in China, where they grew by 8.5%, even as public companies on average reduced R&D spending, according to WIPO. Spending at General Motors fell by 24.5%; Toyota (TM) by 19.8%; Caterpillar (CAT, Fortune 500) by 17.8% and Unilever (UL) by 3.9%, WIPO notes in a report released last month. Even information technology companies reduced spending, with the exception of a few, such as Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) and Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500).
In many ways, the global recession gave China an unexpected edge over other economies leading innovation.
Growing pains
But the relevance of China's rise to the top isn't straightforward. It signals huge progress, and yet reminds the world that the country still has a host of issues to work out before its level of innovation reaches that of the United States, Europe or Japan. Just because the country may lead in patent volume doesn't necessarily mean it has yet become the world's top innovator.
For instance, look at China's quality of patents. Though experts say it's improving, Reuters notes that about half of all Chinese patents filed in 2009 were utility models -- a more affordable and less rigorous form of patent that provides a shorter term of protection of only 10 years versus 20 years for invention patents. What's more, despite the challenging economy in 2008, utility model applications surged with China leading the helm with a 24.4% increase in utility model patents, according to WIPO.
"If you're talking about Chinese companies using patents to exclude Americans or to gain a competitive advantage in the U.S. marketplace, the utility patents are meaningless," says Bruce Lehman, president of the International Intellectual Property Institute, a Washington DC-based think tank that promotes the idea that intellectual property can help drive economic growth, especially in developing countries.
Lehman adds that while the surge in utility model applications is a sign of progress given the Chinese economy's size and history, they are not recognized in the U.S. and most parts of the world.
And while China's intellectual property laws are strong, enforcement is still inconsistent. Even though the country has reformed its court system to better handle disputes, inefficiencies remain. Song Jung, attorney with McKenna Long & Aldridge, recalls his experience four years ago winning an intellectual property infringement case against a Chinese company. He says that while China's system has generally improved, one of the drawbacks is that compensation and royalties for intellectual property is very low compared with the U.S. This potentially creates a situation where companies that have grievances might not have an incentive to resolve intellectual property issues through the courts. Jung says it's not that compensation should be outrageously high either, as that could spark a frenzy of lawsuits and scare off companies from innovating.
"You have to strike a balance," he says.
Indeed, China is on its way to becoming the world's top innovator. It's not there yet, however. To top of page | http://archive.fortune.com/2010/10/14/news/international/china_patents_innovation.fortune/index.htm?section=magazines_fortune&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fmagazines_fortune+%28Fortune+Magazine%29 | [
"volume",
"model"
] |
Showing posts with label Antiquities; Looting; Smuggling; Collecting; Collections; iraq. Show all posts
July 8, 2017
Thou Shall Not Covet thy Neighbor's Cuneiform
Op/Ed By: Lynda Albertson
As the US press and social media came alive in condemnation as a result of the Hobby Lobby smuggling case, I couldn't help but notice that while the hashtag #HobbyLobbyisISIS is noticeably attention-grabbing, (as well as probably inaccurate), the more important facet of the "is-that-object-looted" puzzle was still being overlooked.
I asked myself, instead of simply rewording the press release announcement released by the government, why hadn't US news organizations dug deeper into the development of the Green Collection in ancient art. Especially since everyone now seems hellbent, (excuse the pun) on crucifying the fundamentalist Christian collector or finding some way to tie Hobby Lobby to Da'esh.
This is a case that has been widely publicized since 2015, and it's not the only time the Greens or their large collection have come under scrutiny or been accused of acquiring objects through untrustworthy channels with illicit ties.
In June 2014 Dr. David Trobisch, Director of Collections for the Museum of the Bible even attended ARCA’s annual art crime conference where he heard concerns made by Dr. Roberta Mazza, a papyrologist and ancient historian from the University of Manchester about the Green Collection's unprovenanced papyrus fragments. Those fragments however were not mentioned in this current civil complaint.
While this US civil forfeiture case underscores that illicit traffic in cultural objects contributes to the despoliation of a country's ancient heritage and causes irreparable loss to the world's heritage knowledge, why is it then that the public only wakes up and takes notice when ISIS ties are tangentially inferred?
Are trafficked Middle East artifacts only worthy of the world's indignation when they are looted to fund terrorism?
As the general public responded to the press coverage over the last two days most of the grumbling I've come across was either ISIS-funding related or centered on whether or not the punishment fit the crime. I use the word "crime" here loosely because no criminal charges were filed for the looting and theft of the 450 ancient cuneiform tablets and 3,000 ancient clay bullae which ultimately were the subject of this civil forfeiture.
In civil cases, the object of the law is the redress of wrongs by compelling compensation or restitution. As those following this case closely are painfully aware, civil law deals with the disputes between individuals, organizations, or between the two, in which compensation can be awarded to the victim. Criminal law is the body of law that deals with crime and the legal punishment of criminal offenses.
A civil fine is not a criminal punishment.
Civil case fines are primarily sought in federal investigations in order to compensate the state for harm done to it, rather than to punish a wrongful conduct, something many like myself would have liked to have seen happen given the Green's less than stellar record when it comes to vetting antiquities for inclusion in their collection. In this case, Hobby Lobby only suffers so much harm as is necessary to make good the wrong they have done (to the state).
Civil penalties, in this case a $3M fine, do not carry any jail time or other legal penalties. This fact illustrates why no one from Hobby Lobby was criminally charged, despite the large number of objects seized and subsequently forfeited.
This may also explain the absence of any noticeable public remorse on Hobby Lobby's part for their role in this antiquities smuggling affair. The lack of regret can also be seen in the unrepentant statement by Hobby Lobby President Steve Green, in his company's press release after the federal civil ruling was publicized.
Was new to the world of acquiring these items? Did not understand the correct way to document and ship these items?
Let's look at his statements more closely.
While Hobby Lobby, may be "new" to the world of acquiring antiquities, the fact that it has purchased more than 40,000 objects since November 2009 does not in any way make it a neophyte collector of ancient art.
In addition to the cuneiform tablets seized in this well publicized case, the Green Collection already had in its possession the third largest holding of cuneiform tablets in North America (over 10,000 pieces). This means Green and Hobby Lobby by proxy had ample prior opportunity to explore what could and should go on any customs declaration for objects that contain writing first developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia between 3500-3000 BCE.
In 2010, a year before the seized cuneiform tablets arrived in Memphis, the Greens had also already consulted with Dr. Patty Gerstenblith, a cultural heritage law expert with DePaul University 's College of Law, about import restrictions for ancient antiquities who is reported to have advised them about their need for deeper due diligence in their collecting. Given Gerstenblith's impeccable familiarity with the cultural heritage law, it can be assumed that the Greens as collectors were not as ignorantly naive to the road they were embarking down as the firm's press statement this week seems to imply.
But setting aside the intricacies of import and customs documentation specifically related to ancient antiquities coming from Iraq, Hobby Lobby itself has some 32,000 employees, 750 stores in forty-seven states, and $4 billion in yearly revenue, much of it based on imported items.
It's corporate headquarters include a 9.2 million-square-foot manufacturing, distribution, and office complex in Oklahoma City. Its warehouse has an hourly employee base of 2500+ employees with 80+ members of management, headed by an Assistant Vice President of Warehouse Operations, who reports to the Senior Vice President of Distribution.
When importing merchandise from foreign countries Hobby Lobby is fully aware there are certain trade laws and regulations, and that U.S. Customs oversees the compliance of those laws. They even have an international department responsible for training and compliance to ensure the import process go smoothly, not to mention a manual outlining laws and regulations, valuation, assists, and country of origin requirements which can be downloaded here
So to imply to the public that Hobby Lobby "imprudently relied on dealers and shippers who, in hindsight, did not understand the correct way to document and ship these items" seems a bit unapologetic coming from an apologist.
Especially given Green's business thrives on supply-chain distribution members in its shipping department who would have to have, given the large scale operation of receiving imported cargo from across the globe in support of Hobby Lobby's national operations, sufficient knowledge of what the legal requirements are for import. If they didn't, they certainly knew who to ask.
As I have mentioned in a previous post, the estimated 40,000+ objects in the Green Collection equates to acquiring 6,666 objects per year or collecting a whopping 18 new objects per day. Compare that acquisition rate to the number of employees working on the Green's or the Museum of the Bible's payroll who are tasked with historic object provenance and one can easily surmise that an object's ethical collection history has never been either group's overriding priority.
Emphasis instead has been on filling the Museum of the Bible, Washington DC's about-to-be-opened 430,000-square-foot, eight story massive red brick museum located over the Federal Center SW Metro station. To put that into perspective, one NFL football field is 57,600 square feet. The Museum of the Bible has seven and a half football fields of space it needs to fill.
Given the scale of archaeological theft in biblical area source countries and the number of objects with questionable origins which have already been identified by various researchers following the Green Collection prior to this forfeiture, it's time for Hobby Lobby's founders to do more than just open their wallets, purchase, and if caught, pay civil fines and forfeit the objects in question.
Opening their wallets has been the crux of the problem, as the Green's appetite for unprovenanced antiquities, and the profits to be had from this appetite, have likely been a motivating factor for others to loot, thereby destroying whatever context the objects may have had.
It's time for the Greens to fulfill the promise previously made by their employee.
In 2014 the director of Collections at the Museum of the Bible, David Trobisch, informed Dr. Roberta Mazza that the Green Collection was going towards full digitisation and open access. This has yet to happen.
They should also make every effort, before making any further acquisitions, to ensure that the objects they are purchasing have been legally obtained and been legally exported from their country of origin.
If the Greens truly want to make amends, they should fill their future Museum of the Bible with acquisitions collected ethically, and make the details of their past purchases open to researchers and investigators so that they can start to set things right by restituting any objects previously purchased without sufficient moral and ethical consideration.
Exodus 20:15 and 17 King James Version (KJV):
“Thou shalt not steal."
I think that includes cuneiform tablets, clay bullae, incantation bowls and papyrus fragments.
July 6, 2017
By: Lynda Albertson
So much for remorse.
March 19, 2017
Lecture: Criminals without Borders - The many profiles of the (il)licit antiquities trade.
For those interested interested in the realm of illicit trafficking who will be in Rome, Italy April 21, 2017 Lynda Albertson, ARCA's Chief Executive Officer will be giving a talk on "Criminals without Borders."
This one hour lecture, at 6:00 pm at John Cabot University will provide a brief overview of the profile of actors in the illicit art trade, giving examples of how those in the trade avoid detection and prosecution.
This presentation will discuss the motives of trafficking in art and antiquities, highlighting cases from source and conflict countries emphasizing that the trade thrives on commercial opportunity i.e., a means of dealing in high value commodities that are often poorly protected, difficult to identify and easy to transport across national boundaries.
Her presentation will examine specific case examples and will underscoring response mechanisms that work to proactively counter the illegal trade.
The discussion will highlight
--the interchangeable participants in the illicit antiquities trade
--varying motives/opportunities
--how connections through single interactions can form loosely based networks
Lynda Albertson is the CEO of ARCA — The Association for Research into Crimes against Art, a nongovernmental organisation which works to promote research in the fields of art crime and cultural heritage protection. The Association seeks to identify emerging and under-examined trends related to the study of art crime and to develop strategies to advocate for the responsible stewardship of our collective artistic and archaeological heritage.
Ms. Albertson, through her role at ARCA seeks to influence policy makers, public opinion and other key stakeholders so that public policies are developed and based on apolitical evidence, and which addresses art crime prevention and the identification of art crimes in heritage preservation initiatives.
In furtherance of that, Ms. Albertson provides technical, scientific and regional expertise to national and international organizations such as UNESCO, CULTNET, ICOM, in furtherance of ARCA's heritage preservation mission. For the past five years, Lynda has focused part of her work on fighting the pillage of ancient sites and trafficking of artifacts, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, conducting research on the illicit trade in antiquities in MENA countries.
Ms. Albertson also oversees ARCA's inter NGO - Governmental engagement and capacity building in MENA countries in recognition of UN Security Council Resolution 2199, which among other provisions, bans all trade in looted antiquities from Iraq and Syria and encourages steps to ensure such items are returned to their homelands.
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM (CET)
Guarini Campus
Via della Lungara, 233
March 18, 2017
For information please see the exhibition webpage here.
Exhibition Dates:
April 3 - May 13, 2017
Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society
Exhibition takes place on the 1st floor gallery
5701 S. Woodlawn Avenue
Chicago, Illinois
11am-5pm, Monday-Friday
773-795-2329 (Front desk) | http://art-crime.blogspot.co.il/search/label/Antiquities%3B%20Looting%3B%20Smuggling%3B%20Collecting%3B%20Collections%3B%20iraq | [
"object"
] |
Serbs, Croats and unhealed wounds Serb recalls how his parents were killed by Croats.
October 01, 1991|By Carl Schoettler | Carl Schoettler,Evening Sun Staff
This man who is a Serbian Yugoslav recites his litany of the awful hurts of World War II as if they happened yesterday.
And as you listen, you realize that in the long history of animosity between Serbs and Croats, the 1940s were yesterday.
"I am born in Bosnia in a village called Blagaj," Vosjislav Velkjo says.
Velkjo owns a foundry in southwest Baltimore where he and his wife, Julia, and three Serbian friends have come to talk about the civil war now raging in Yugoslavia between Serbians and Croatians.
They fear the horrors of World War II are being re-enacted today. They see the Yugoslav army as the protector of Serbians in Croatia from radical Croat nationalists.
"The Croatians," says Velkjo, "who were calling themselves Ustashe, who are close to our village, living with us together like brothers before the Second War, after the war started, turned against us."
Velkjo was born in 1935. He's 56 now, a trim, black-haired, handsome man not given to smiling. He was about 7 when World War II came to his village. He speaks a slow, serviceable English, choosing his words carefully.
Julia, his wife, interrupts, comments, anticipates, moving Velkjo's narrative along like a member of the chorus in a tragedy.
Her brother, a professor who was dean of a university, is now a refugee from Croatia. He lived in Osijek, a city where heavy fighting has been reported.
"Together with Germans, Austrians and Italians," Velkjo says, picking up his story, "Croatians, who are called Ustashe, they catch our Serbs, the old people, children and other people and they put them down these big holes that are called jama."
Bogdan Miscevic, a painter of Yugoslav "primitives" who has lived in Baltimore for years, explains that a jama is a natural grotto common in Yugoslavia.
Miscevic worries about his sister, who lives in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. He hasn't been able to get in touch with her.
"They put thousands and thousands of people in the same hole," Velkjo says. "Then they shoot into the hole. And they smile and drink and dance. They celebrate.
"So was the husband of my sister killed," Velkjo says.
Ustashe is described by the Encyclopaedia Britannia as a Fascist terrorist organization of radical nationalists that turned Croatia into a country modeled on "the most extremist [Nazi] formation, the SS."
To "purify" Croatia, the Britannia says, "the Ustashe persecuted and killed many thousands of Orthodox Serbs, Jews and Muslims."
Among them, Velkjo says, was his mother.
He describes women and children fleeing from his village into a forest during a battle between Yugoslavia partisan guerrillas and Nazi and Ustashe troops.
"Because she was an old woman she is going only into the woods close to the edge, at the first border, to cover herself, like hundreds of old women and the children they were carrying.
"Ustashe come and with knives kill my mother and one of the older girls." His sister, he says. Another sister was left alive to tell the tale.
"That girl lost her voice," Velkjo says. "From that time on she never talked again."
He and his father found his mother decapitated.
"She was there lying without her head," he says. "Her head on one side, her body on the other. Partisans bury her.
"Now I tell you how my father died."
His father, he says, was questioned and beaten by the Ustashe. They wanted to know where an older brother who had been in the Yugoslavian army was. His father didn't know.
"The last time they beat him," Velkjo says. "He came home and die after 24 hours from the beatings."
His father was 65 or 66. Velkjo was the youngest of nine children. His brother was, in fact, in a German concentration camp, a prisoner of war.
"Now," he says, "this time they're starting to work again the same thing they did in 1941, like they did with Nazis.
"I can't believe it that this happened again," he says. "Croatian politicians are working a long time on organizing what they call 'unfinished war,' what they call 1941 to 1945, fighting against the Serbs."
"Like an unfinished movie," Julia Velkjo says.
Roots of the division run all the way back to the Schism between the Roman and Eastern Orthodox religions in 1054. Serbs are primarily Orthodox, Croats Roman Catholic.
Conflicts between the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman Empire exacerbated the split. World War War I, of course, started after a Serb shot the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo.
During World War II, various nationalist, Communist, monarchist, ethnic, pro-Allies and pro-Nazi groups fought one another. After the war, Josip Broz Tito, a Croat who led the Communist partisans, held the country together almost by sheer force of will -- and a fairly stiff police state -- until his death in 1980.
Franjo Tudjman, now president of the Croatian Republic, was one of Tito's generals. Becoming increasingly nationalist, he was tossed out of the Communist Party about 1967 and imprisoned for several years.
"For 46 years, we lived together to build a new Yugoslavia," Velkjo says. "We are all South Slavs living together. Building our houses, building together, building our hotels, building our factories. Living all together. And being proud for our work and lives together."
"The Serbs who live a long time in Croatia fight for their lands, their houses," Velkjo says. "They are a minority and the Yugoslavian army comes to help them, coming between the Serbs and Croats. They want to keep peace.
"The politicians are always sitting at the table and talking for something they can never achieve," he says. "How long we want to fight we don't know. We want peace for Yugoslavia because we know what peace means."
"But if we don't have army," Julia says, "we'll be killed overnight."
Baltimore Sun Articles | http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1991-10-01/news/1991274192_1_serbs-croatia-war-ii | [
"model"
] |
Bethlehem Plans To Open Zoning For Steel City Council Will Vote On The Proposal, Which Would Let Developers Convert The Dormant 160 Acres To Almost Any Legitimate Use. Old Blast Furnaces Could Become New Condominiums.
February 09, 1996|by THOMAS KUPPER, The Morning Call
Bethlehem Steel Corp. began easing the yoke of zoning regulations from its shoulders yesterday, as Bethlehem's Planning Commission went along with a plan to rezone 160 acres of the company's land to allow almost any use.
Steel Vice President Stephen Donches said the rezoning, which will go before City Council next, was essential to allow the company to negotiate with potential developers of the land, where steelmaking ended last fall.
"We would talk to developers or potential investors and there would always be three or four questions," Donches said, "and one of those questions was always zoning."
The commission gave its approval by a 3-1 vote, over the objection of member Barbara Flanagan. She said she wanted an idea of the company's intentions before giving executives carte blanche to redevelop the land as they see fit.
Under the plan, the city would rezone the land as an Industrial Redevelopment District. Unlike traditional zoning, which designates areas for specific uses, there would be no guidelines on what could go where.
The primary remaining requirement would be that new buildings would have to meet the requirements that apply to areas zoned for those buildings' uses. So, for instance, a commercial building would have to meet the requirements of a commercial zone.
Individual development plans would still be subject to review by the Planning Commission, but the commission would have no say in what types of buildings were allowed. The review would cover details such as the number of trees or parking spaces.
There would be no legal barrier to stop the company from, for example, putting condominiums next to its remaining steel operations.
City Business Administrator Robert Wilkins, a former Bethlehem Steel vice president, said the proposal had Mayor Ken Smith's strong support. He said Smith's administration knew some of the company's plans but had to keep them quiet to protect developers' confidentiality.
Bethlehem Steel has not divulged details of its plans for the riverfront land, where blast furnaces stand as central features of Bethlehem's skyline. Donches said the company would present a conceptual plan with possible uses for the land within about two months.
The rezoning proposal reflects an ordinance Bethlehem Steel submitted to the city with some modifications to meet the requirements of state law. One change will require the company to submit a report with its goals and possible uses for various sections.
City Council has scheduled a public hearing on the plan for March 5.
One man in the audience questioned whether there couldn't be some community control over the mix of uses on the property, for instance, setting aside a parcel for recreation. But city Solicitor Constantine Vasiliadis said that type of regulation would not be "appropriate."
Flanagan said the company ought to make its goals public before any rezoning.
"You're telling us, trust us, we're Bethlehem Steel," Flanagan said. "I'm saying we do trust you, but give us the public presentation first. Then I think we'll gladly give you the zoning."
Donches said the reason for the company's urgency was that potential developers might lose interest in the next two months. He said the company had put several developers on hold, and that cooperation from the city would help in the redevelopment.
Morning Call Articles | http://articles.mcall.com/1996-02-09/news/3079075_1_bethlehem-steel-bethlehem-s-planning-commission-rezone | [
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White Cane Law
December 2, 1985
I USE A long white cane, and one of several that I own was bent into the shape of the letter L by a motorist who whizzed around a corner while I was trying to cross a street under a ''walk'' traffic signal. It was only luck that the shape of my body does not look like that cane.
Florida Statute 413.07 -- the white cane law -- requires drivers to come to a stop at an intersection where a person raising or using a white cane is trying to cross. This means a full stop and not a ''rolling stop,'' regardless of the fact that the motorist is making a turn or proceeding straight ahead.
The same rules apply where dog guides are used.
Any person who violated any portion of the law shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of the second degree.
George Curtis Mild
Florida Blinded Veterans Association
Orlando Sentinel Articles | http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1985-12-02/news/0340570277_1_cane-law-white-cane-full-stop | [
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Monday, October 30, 2006
The gentler sex?
Recently, reader Eriqua left a comment, asking:
"do we have any modern examples of women dictators? I just wonder if the gender gap has been bridged"
This is a fairly good question. The answer is, somewhat surprisingly, not really. Even though it's a man's world, there have certainly been some notable female tyrants, but nearly all of them have been monarchs from centuries past. From Queen Ravanalona I ("The Cruel") of Madagascar to Empress Catherine II of Russia, one would normally find a crown on the head of a woman crushing her people under her heel.
Given the relatively small list of female national leaders, the question remains: where are the dictators? It is curious that for communism's alleged penchant for gender equity, not one of the leaders of the former Soviet Union, nor any of its satellite states, was a woman. Similarly, there were no women among the military brasshats taking power in South America or post-colonial Africa. Lots of superfluous military decorations, yards of shiny patent leather, but no estrogen. Even when Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto took the top job in a nation notorious for its dictatorships, she either failed, or elected not to, follow in the footsteps of some of her infamous contemporaries.
So where has the modern age, so rife with dictators, found a woman's touch? Naturally, there have been a number of dictators whose wives have played a role behind the scenes, but only one of them, Argentina's Eva Perón, took a public role alongside her dictator husband (a role she eventually renounced). One supposes there are other reasons for a lack of women dictators, ranging from the traditional links between military service and dictatorial rule, to the overall lack of women in prominent leadership roles around the world, but even considering the diminished opportunities, few female rulers have sought to rule with an iron fist as male rulers have.
The best I can think of is a woman who, while not a dictator in the strict sense of the word, did at one point exercise dictatorial control over her country: the late Indira Gandhi of India (pictured above, manhandling a hapless koala).
Riding high after crushing Pakistan in the 1971 war of Bangladeshi Independence and India's equally successful entry to the nuclear age, Gandhi was riding high until the country found itself paralyzed by a political crisis in 1975. Without hesitating, Gandhi suspended India's democracy during the (now infamous) "emergency period", during which time, she adopted dictatorial powers, including the all important ability to rule by decree.
During the two year emergency period, Gandhi rode roughshod over her political enemies, sending tens of thousands of political opponents to jail on specious charges, imposed strict press censorship, dismissing state officials perceived to be hostile to her rule, while simultaneously grooming her sons Sanjay and Rajiv for a more political role.
Gandhi's confidence proved to be her undoing. Believing the economic progress made during the emergency period added to her political prestige, she called for new elections in 1977, and was soundly trounced by the opposing BJP party. She removed herself from office without a struggle, thus ending the brief and only dictatorship by a woman in the last century. Indira returned to power again, with disastrous results, before being assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Top 10 Profile: Saparmurat Niazov
Name: Saparmurat Atayevich Niazov
Born: Aşgabat, TSSR (USSR) February 19, 1940
Length of rule: June 21, 1991 - present (15 years)
Means of ascent to power: Elected
Style: Cult of personality
Quick: what the first thing you think of when you hear the word "Turkmenistan"? For most Americans, the answer would be "What-where-i-stan?". For people fascinated by dictators, however, the sleepy Central Asian republic is white hot, thanks to its viciously ruthless yet lovably eccentric tyrant, Saparmurat "Turkmenbashi" Niazov. With rumors of his imminent demise coming from all angles, it behooves me to provide a quick outline of one of the strangest dictators of the past century.
After the catastrophic dissolution of the Soviet Union, the backwater chunk of Central Asia formerly known as the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic found itself, for better or worse, an indepent nation. Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum, but nobody really took much notice when the leader of the Turkmen Communist Party, an undistinguished hack named Saparmurat Niazov, won newly independent Turkmenistan's first, and last, presidential election in 1992.
Taking a cue from Kemal Atatürk, Niazov found the role of "president" a bit too limiting, preferring shrewdly to announce that he had become the very personification, and even the very essence of the Turkmen people themselves. Very soon, Saparmurat Niazov, the colorless Soviet apparatchik, restyled himself as the dynamic Turkmenbashi, meaning, "leader of all Turkmen".
Taking a cue from Josef Stalin, Niazov isolated his nation from the rest of the world and began building a formidable personality cult. In case anyone might think he's a one trick pony, Niazov also borrowed something from Mao Zedong (more specifically, Mao's odious Little Red Book): the Ruhnama.
Written as a national epic in a quasi-religious, quasi-nationalistic style, Niazov's Little Green Book humbly purports to be the equal of lesser known works like the Bible and the Koran. Lest anyone attempt to diminish the importance of his book, Niazov has made study of Ruhnama compulsory. If there is anyone in Turkmenistan seeking employment (in the public or private sector), anyone seeking a driver's license, anyone looking to get married, and so on, he or she had better be able to recite large portions of Ruhnama by heart.
More ominously, failing to praise the book is a crime against the state, to say nothing of the punishments awaiting anyone who might dare to actually criticize the book as the rantings of a senile dictator. Niazov is so enamored of his epic, he's erected statues - even buildings - in its likeness. When prominent Muslims in Turkmenistan complained about being compelled to put his book next to the Koran, Niazov simply had them thrown in jail and ordered their mosques bulldozed. Perhaps these old fashioned Muslims can be appeased by Niazov's entirely straightfaced declaration that anyone who reads Ruhnama three times will "automatically" be admitted to heaven. That sure beats blowing yourself up on a bus in Tel Aviv, doesn't it?
While officially downplaying the extent of his personality cult, Niazov has seen fit to allow several golden statues of his likeness to remain standing, including a marvelous statue that rotates to face the direction of the sun. It is, perhaps, his crushing ubiquity in Turkmenistan that has provided him to pass some of the world's stupidest laws without his people raising an eyebrow in surprise. These laws include, but are by no means limited to:
• Outlawing gold teeth in favor of promoting "chewing bones"
• Banning female newscasters from wearing cosmetics
• Bans on karaoke and car stereos
• Replacing the Hippocratic Oath with an oath of allegience to Niazov
It's not known for sure if Niazov's bizarre presidental decrees are serious, or merely an effort to deflect attention from his country's appalling human rights record and lousy economy. Whatever the case may be, Turkmenistan is unencumbered by serious political opposition to his rule, much less military threats from at home or abroad. As long as he keeps pumping natural gas to Europe, the rest of the world will be content to paint him as the eccentric ruler of a charming backwater, more than happy to ignore the less amusing aspects of his totalitarian rule.
Still, one has to admire Niazov's sense of style, and his eagerness to set himself apart from the other grey stuffed Soviet suits that took over other former Soviet Republics. Ever seen anything about Heider Aliev, Islam Karimov, or Nursultan Nazarbayev in the insufferable "wacky news of the day" section of your local newspaper?
Didn't think so.
Monday, October 23, 2006
The Last King of Scotland
No, not James I, but the late, unlamented Idi Amin Dada of Uganda, is the focus of the new film The Last King of Scotland.
While the movie is clearly fiction, the real life and times of one of Africa's most notorious big men are brought to life in the movie, beginning with the overthrow of Uganda's previous dictator, to the economically disastrous expulsion of Uganda's "Asian" business class, to the militarily diastrous decision to provide assistance to Palestinian hijackers at Entebbe, the film reconstructs the timeline of Amin's bloody tyranny through the eyes of a Scottish doctor who manages to ingratiate himself to Amin.
Amin, of course, was no stranger to film during his lifetime, having appeared as himself in the bizarre documentary Idi Amin Dada, where he plays the accordion, mounts a mock invasion of the Golan Heights, and terrifies his subordinates, all while playing the role of a large, jolly man who feels wounded at being "misunderstood" at being portrayed as a bloodthirsty buffoon an unsympathetic Western press. Amin certainly didn't help his own cause, however, by murdering his political opponents, launching ill advised military actions against Uganda's neighbors. What's more, Amin's penchant for self-aggrandizing made him a popular target for Western reporters looking to portray him as an ignorant lout. Consider his modest, self-described title:
His service in the King's African Rifles notwithstanding, Idi Amin's chances of being awarded the Victoria Cross were roughly equivalent to my chances of being Miss Venezuela. It was Amin's bufoonish side and boyish charm that unnervingly contrasted with his explosive temper, total paranoia and bloodthirsty appetite for revenge, making him equal only to Mobutu Sese Seko as the most notorious of Africa's big men.
So what did I think of the movie? As a dictator-phile, I was pleasantly surprised by Forest Whitaker's portrayal of Amin, delighted that he paid such close attention to Amin's own mannerisms and body language from Idi Amin Dada. I was less enthralled with the Scottish doctor as narrative device, the romantic and espionage subplots, et al., and look forward to the day when Hollywood is ready to tackle the dictator biopic with the seriousness and breadth of vision it deserves. | http://authoritarianism.blogspot.ae/2006/10/ | [
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Fixed Orthodontics
What are invisible braces?
In the event that you experience smile outlining utilizing Clear Path you can accomplish the smile you've generally needed. Smile design is an energizing new thought in dental treatment that we offer our patients. Whether you have screwy, chipped, split, stained, or misaligned teeth, our smile designing service will give you a chance to select your new smile.
Smile designing procedures are paramount for smiles that are defective, unappealing or ugly. The defects may lie in the color or state of the teeth. Smile outlining methods blanket a wide territory of treatment strategies running from essential nonessential dentistry techniques to profoundly intricate surgeries on the facial skeleton to redress jaw deformations. In the event that you search for a complete smile designing service our accomplished restorative dental practitioners are excited to offer assistance!
What are lingual braces?
Lingual braces are specially crafted fixed braces fortified to the once again of the teeth making them invisible to other peoples. In lingual braces the brackets are established onto the posterior of the teeth making them undetectable while in standard props the sections are solidified onto the front side of the teeth. Thus, lingual braces are a nonessential option to the individuals who don't wish the props to be noticeable.
What is fixed orthodontics?
Dental braces are gadgets utilized within orthodontics that adjust and straighten teeth and help to position them with respect to an individual's chomp, while likewise attempting to enhance dental wellbeing. They are frequently used to revise underbites, and malocclusions, overbites, cross nibbles, open chomps, profound nibbles, warped teeth, and different defects of the teeth and jaw. Props might be either nonessential or structural. Dental props are frequently utilized within conjunction with other orthodontic machines to help broaden the sense of taste or jaws and to generally support in forming the teeth and jaws.
Patients Photo
• Patient 1 | http://bansaldental.com/Fixed-Orthodontics-Treatment-Jaipur.html | [
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Oil of Empires is a Codex Entry featured in Battlefield 1. It is unlocked by completing Operation Oil of Empires in the Operations gamemode.
Oil of Empires Codex Entry
When the modern combustion engine was first developed in the 1880s, few realized how much it would change the global economy. But over the next decades, in every shipyard it became obvious that oil power was superior to coal in every way.
A motor could now reach full power in 30 minutes instead of six hours, it required a fraction of the men to run it, and a ship's range increased fourfold. Even before the war the Dreadnoughts of the mighty British navy had begun to convert to oil power, but oil was to be found far from British shores.
Much of the British war effort in the Middle East was to protect British oil supplies, the Suez Canal transport route, and to take or destroy the Berlin-Baghdad railway, Germany's oil supply line to the Ottoman Empire. As the war progressed, and the airplane, the car, the submarine and the tank were produced in greater and greater numbers, oil became ever more important.
Ad blocker interference detected!
| http://battlefield.wikia.com/wiki/Oil_of_Empires_(Codex_Entry) | [
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Tuesday, May 18, 2010
"Enough Money"
"Enough Money"
Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
The French Revolution began arbitrary executions among the hereditary aristocracy, but ended up arbitrarily executing all sorts of other people, including eventually even leaders of the Revolution itself, such as Robespierre.
Very similar patterns appeared in the Bolshevik Revolution, in the rise of the Nazis and in numerous other times and places, where expanded and arbitrary powers were put into the hands of politicians-- and were used against the population as a whole.
Both men were selling a product that others were also selling, but more people chose to buy theirs. Those people would not have voluntarily continued to pay their hard-earned money for Rockefeller's oil or Gates' software if what they received was not worth more to them than what they paid.
The fortunes that the sellers amassed were not a deduction from the buyers' wealth. Buyers and sellers both gained from these transactions or the transactions wouldn't have continued.
Ida Tarbell's famous muckraking book, "History of the Standard Oil Company," said that Rockefeller "should have been satisfied" with the money he had acquired by 1870, implying greed in his continued efforts to increase the size and profitability of Standard Oil. But would the public have been better off or worse off if Rockefeller had retired in 1870?
One of the crucial facts left out of Ida Tarbell's book was that Rockefeller's improvements in the oil industry brought down the price of oil to a fraction of what it had been before.
As just one example, oil was first shipped in barrels, which is why we still measure oil in terms of the number of barrels today, even though oil is seldom-- if ever-- actually shipped in barrels any more. John D. Rockefeller shipped his oil in railroad tank cars, reducing transportation costs, among other costs that he found ways of reducing.
Would the public have been better off if older and more costly methods of producing, processing and shipping oil had continued to be used, leading to prices far higher than necessary?
Apparently Rockefeller himself decided at some point that he had enough money, and then donated enough of it to create a world-class university from day one-- the University of Chicago-- as well as donating to innumerable other philanthropic projects.
But that is wholly different from having politicians make such decisions for other people. Politicians who take on that role stifle economic progress and drain away other people's money, in order to hand out goodies that will help get themselves re-elected. Some people call that "social justice," even when it is anti-social politics.
To read another article by Thomas Sowell, click here.
Children and Finances
Rebecca Hagelin
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
In a recent survey on personal finances, only 27 percent of parents surveyed said they feel well informed about managing household finances. Fewer than half believe they are good role models for their children regarding saving and spending.
Yet, 94 percent of students say their parents are their primary teachers on financial matters.
Oops. We have a problem. We've totally messed up our finances, and no one is teaching our children how to unravel it.
Our national debt is unsustainable. Our government is promising programs and services that it can't possibly deliver, but that will bankrupt our children in trying. Add that to the reality that today's teenagers haven't the slightest clue about how to manage their personal finances, and you realize that the future of America's economy is not just bleak, but headed for a melt down.
The economic problems we face are obvious. The question is: What are we going to do about them? While a strong alliance of policy experts and Tea Party activists around the nation join hands to try and reverse out-of-control government spending, we also need to be educating the younger generation about how to be personally fiscally responsible.
A good first step is to teach children and teens how to handle their money, rather than allowing their money to handle them.
Helping them understand how to be wise stewards is a gift that can free them from the emptiness that comes with materialism, the depression that comes with debt, and replace them with the peace that comes with financial stability and the fulfillment that comes with philanthropy.
The Bible addresses economic issues with surprising frequency. As a matter of fact, as Crown Financial Ministries points out, there are 2.350 verses on money and stewardship, making it "second to the subject of love as the most discussed subject in the Bible. In fact, two-thirds of the parables Jesus taught are about money, possessions, and stewardship."
Regardless of your faith, the wisdom of this all-time best seller is undeniable - and incredibly applicable to our world today. Here are a few examples of profound principles you and your children can start memorizing - and putting in to action - right away:
- "The wise man saves for the future, but the foolish man spends whatever he gets." (Proverbs 21:20)
- "The wicked borrow and never repay but the godly are generous givers." (Psalm 37:21)
- "The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower becomes the lender's slave." (Proverbs 22:7)
-"A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children." (Proverbs 13:22)
-"Steady plodding brings prosperity." (Proverbs 21:5)
One of the very best resources to use in teaching your children how to practice the principles above comes from Crown Ministries at www.Crown.org . Entitled, Discovering God's Way of Handling Money Teen Study, this 10 week study guide "is designed to practically help teens create habits that will set them on a lifelong journey of handling money responsibly." If you need personal help to get your own finances in order Crown also offers free local counseling for you with what they call a Money Map Coach.
And then there is the great Dave Ramsey - noted author, radio host and "all around" genius on finances. Dave has a fabulous website filled with great tips, and he also offers one of the most life-changing programs for teens I've ever seen. It's called, Generation Change, and you can order it at www.DaveRamsey.com . Dave also offers curriculum for educators at the elementary, high school, and colleges levels. His turn-key programs are engaging and comprehensive, and will build a sound economic foundation in the lives of our young people. They are designed to be used in a school or home setting, and are exactly what we need to build hope, and financial security, into the lives of the next generation of adults.
If enough young people learn sound financial principles, perhaps they will also one day run government in a way that promotes prosperity and personal responsibility too.
1 comment:
Anonymous said...
I agree that Dave Ramsey's teachings are wonderful for teenagers, and probably college students as well. This is when the teaching needs to happen. His teachings, which are far from genius, are nonetheless very practical and down to earth. He has effectively packaged very basic common sense. I don't know that it's possible to teach common sense, but it's definitely worth a try! | http://bcfoley.blogspot.com/2010/05/enough-money.html | [
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Tiền tệ:
Đầu Cơ Kamui Black
Hardness *Hard→Soft
Popular hardness barometer.
The hardness is tested with static hardness measurement.
This measurement does not take time and speed of acceleration into considaration.
Elasticity *High→Low
Elasticity stands for bouncing force generated when a tip impacts a cue ball with the speed of acceleration.
When elastlicity of a tip gets higher, the contact time of the tip and cue ball gets longer so that you can have more spin on a cue ball and feel bouncy shot feeling.
On the other hand, the contact time is shrotend as elasticity gets lower. So that you can get more solid shot feeling.
Giá: 0 VND
Số lượng: | http://billiardsthanhminh.com/product1/co-bida-240/dau-co-kamui-black-131.aspx | [
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“รานิเอรี่” กร้าว “เลสเตอร์” ไม่หวั่นใครแน่นอน ในชปล.
กุนซือของสโมสรเลสเตอร์ ซิตี้ ทีมชื่อดังในพรีเมียร์ลีก อังกฤษ อย่าง เคลาดิโอ รานิเอรี่ได้ออกมาเผยว่า ต้นสังกัดของตนนั้น จะลงสนามแบบไม่หวั่นใครหน้าไหนเลย ในนัดการแข่งขันยูฟ่า แชมเปี้ยนส์ ลีก ซีซั่นหน้า ซึ่งจากการคอนเฟิร์มแชมป์ลีกแดนผู้ดี จะเป็นทีมวางในเกมแบ่งกลุ่มแชมเปี้ยนส์ลีก ซึ่งมีแววว่าคงไม่ได้เจอกับทีมแกร่งในยุโรป แต่ เคลาดิโอ ก็บอกว่าตั้งใจเล่นต่อไปเช่นกัน
โดน รานิเอรี่ ได้กล่าวถึงเรื่องนี้เอาไว้่า “ผมมั่นใจว่า เมื่อมีการแบ่งกลุ่ ต้องมีหลาบสโมสรที่อยากจะแข่งกับทีมของเรา เนื่องจากเลสเตอร์ พึ่งจะได้ลงสนาม ที่ยุโรป เป็นรอบแรก โดยทีมของพวกเขานึกว่าจิ้งจอกสีน้ำเงิน เป็นเพียงแค่ทีมรองบ่อนเท่านั้น ซึ่งผมเชื่อว่า ทีมรองบ่อนก็น่ากลัวไม่น้อยเหมือนกกัน เพราะว่าเมื่อปี 2013 เคยสอยแชมป์แชมเปี้ยนชิพ มาแล้ว ซึ่งมันก็ยากอยู่กว่าจะได้มา”
ทั้งนี้ เทรนเนอร์ของทีมจิ้งจอก ยังระบุเพิ่มเติ่ม เรื่องการดึงนักเตะเข้ามาร่วมงานด้วยตอนช่วงหน้าร้อนนี้ เพื่อผนึกกำลังให้ทีม เอาไว้ว่า “ผมมองว่า ทีมของเราจะได้ แข้งที่สุดมาร่วมงานด้วยกัน และผู้เล่นที่จะแทนตัว นักเตะที่ขาดหายไปได้ด้วย เพราะว่ายังมีเกมที่สำคัญรอพวกเราอีกเช่นกัน”
Considerations Before opening savings accounts Banks
When I open a savings account for the first time, there are a few features you should look for banks that we satisfy your needs. Many financial institutions dedicated to building their client list at any cost. I will say that the features they offer, but they may not emphasize the fees they charge, how to avoid the fees and what to do in order to not overdraw your account.
A savings account is designed to help you save money and build interest. Some banks offer higher interest rates than others, but that does not mean it is the best option. It is important to ask the associates what it takes to open a savings account. Ask any fees associated with your account, and make sure to find out which fees are unavoidable and that. This allows you to be sure that you only pay the necessary fees.
You want to be sure that a number of physical locations available in your area. If you need a check book, you want to be sure that you know that this is in print with ease. If you have to drive for hours to be able to control the print, you more than likely will not be able to make the best use of the account.
I would also like to ask how long it takes to do a transfer. When buying a new car or boat, you need to put down an advance, and quickly transferred the money will allow you to avoid the hassle of getting a check. We also want to make sure that you can get the money to the employer directly deposited into your account, if needed. Also, if you have little money, and someone wants to make money, you want to make sure that the transfer is as smooth as possible.
You will also want to know that the banks are offering protection to overdraw. If you have a checking account, the institution, we want to make sure that the bank will automatically draw money from the savings account to cover the difference. This allows you to make sure that you never expect overdraft fees, and that you are able to pay the bills, even if there is no money in the account at the time. This is a feature that not all banks offer, and it is important to be sure to ask the associates about it because it can be a great way to protect yourself and your money.
The most important feature to look for the banks
The account type
types of functions
Compare the details
Hire a professional to get things done Winners
As the weather gets warmer and more people start to relocate, you will start to see more moving truck on the road. You are in the process of working on their own living conditions. Although you may feel as if there is never a perfect time to have to move, there is no reason why you let this situation that’s best for you. If you hire some professional movers special day, then the only thing you need to concern yourself make sure you have done.
If you do not make your plans early, you can run into some trouble when it comes time to do things in a different place. There is nothing worse than moving the check-in day, and we still have yet to finish packing. If you’re like most people, this is one task you end up procrastinating indefinitely. If pressed for time and can not seem to get things done yourself, contact a professional Movers and consider whether or not to provide packaging services.
There is no reason to feel overwhelmed by your situation. While you may think that it’s a good idea to hire friends and family for a move if you are planning to get things done-to-date and professional manner, it is not. So many things can go wrong if you rely on people to do professional movers. Not only that, an increased risk of damaged property, you also have a higher risk of disputes and other issues that could cause some very stressful and tense moments.
Do yourself a favor and hire professional movers must move all the time. You do not have to wait for hours at the end everything must be done and you will not have to take several days off work in order to put himself in the new location. When you hire professionals should not have to stress out about how things are going to continue. You will be able to give yourself peace of mind knowing that all things are in good hands.
The next time you are thinking about relocating, do not forget to contact several companies that have professional movers. Do your homework, so you pick the most qualified, experienced and professional service to you. Fees and services so that you get the most out of your money. Take advantage of these services, so it’s easier time getting everything together with the moving day. No matter how busy your schedule, you can get everything done in the most efficient way possible without any extra obligations or stress in your life.
Choosing the right mattress
We choose the mattress according to what feels good when touched, but soon we realize After use, it may be something wrong with it. First, consumers tend to choose without trying out, since they are under the assumption that anything will do. While others buy the same things that you are trying to use is not that right in the past few years one or not. These days, they are usually selling offer their customers the opportunity to try out all of them in order to find the right one. The reality is that that is not our preference could be better for our body.
types of mattresses
It is extremely important that the mattress is firm and stable support with the person who will be using. Many people prefer the innerspring, because they are pretty assistance of two or more people on the bed. The problem with this kind is that the spring eventually lose their springiness and become limp or eventually poke holes in the fabric and one would be lying on the bed. This can be a problem because of the discomfort to the report. The fabric and insulation that is in place can become lumpy and greasy at the same time, which would result in an uneven place to lie down. The spring is more, it must be even harder. One advantage of this type of the air flow added to the right owners. Since the space in the upper and lower, there is a better circulation. This means that the cooler for those who use it.
Polyurethane foam mattresses durable than all other types of mattresses. They also have different degrees of hardness, so that people can choose from, but you can warm or warmer than the innerspring types. The reason for this is because of the inability of the material to “breathe”. The polyurethane foam is a dense, compact material, it is very solid and stable. This is also the reason why this may be warmer than the other types. In colder climates, it can be an advantage, while in warmer areas can be a disadvantage. The denseness of the material also means, that is quite durable, and even also in the innerspring.
Another type of bed waterbed. This is a bed that can be either like or do not like about this there is no in between. Made up of a durable material, which is separated into compartments to be filled with water. The compartments dictate that a stable water bed. The multiple compartments of the water bed more stable in this type of mattresses. Despite the setting of stability, this is a very movable bed, and, where appropriate, the owner of dizzy or uncomfortable during use.
These are the three main types of mattress consumers. The three come in varying degrees of strength.
Why Buy Hunting Supplies stores better than shopping online
The Internet has made it easy to find and all types of equipment you might need to enjoy a great day of hunting; but it will not be a lot to gain by buying hunting stores to buy items online. Many people do not realize how important it is to get the right equipment when they go hunting. Whether you’ve hunted deer for years or are just starting out, shopping stores to hunt for the best way to get the equipment you need.
If you physically go to the store, you can be sure that staff are knowledgeable and will be able to answer any and all questions. If you buy the products on the Internet, many people who have not even seen the customer service departments of deer in real life. You look online and you get a regurgitated answer that they more than likely do not understand. The shop staff hunt, fish, and knows what he’s talking about when they answer your questions.
The hunting stores will also have the latest and greatest products on display. It allows you to stay in the loop at all times and make sure that you have the ultimate advantage when you go to the next big hunt. You will be able to see and touch the items in person. This allows you to get to know the quality of items before actually investing in them. Many companies make amazing things over the internet, but when the product arrives, can not be all that the company claims.
If you find that the product does not work, and you think that you need, you can simply walk into one of the search business to return, but if you buy the product online, you will need to deal with the hassle of shipping could pay for the shipping cost back and may not be able to get your money back when it’s all said and done. The shops are a return policy on what to see and to read before buying any product. This allows you to rest assured that you will be completely satisfied with the equipment, what to buy, easy to get a refund or replacement product or the company.
Shopping in stores takes all the hassle and guesswork out of buying high quality equipment. Do not let the big one get away. Already the gear you need, pay for affordable and rest assured that you are prepared for anything that comes from the purchase of hunting shops.
Understanding the basis for the tax sale
Why is it necessary for a tax sale in the United States, you ask? Since our country existed, it depended on the government to pay local taxes to municipalities that required the city to work. Roads, schools, public areas and services such as garbage pickup and fire department is funded by taxes paid by citizens. If someone decides not to pay taxes to owe the government the power to take control of the property to pay the money to the shareholders. We usually will happen to the government to levy taxes against the property owner, the owner of the market debt auction. Two types of auctions, auction certificate and a deed auction. While the two options offered by the bidder eventually take ownership of real estate, they both function in different ways.
Tax certificate sale at a public auction, which resulted in the taxpayer’s delinquent debt that is sold to the highest bidder. The auctions will be held at the county and usually only once a year. If you are looking to bid on one of these auctions, the information is usually found in local government websites. If you win this auction, you are essentially loaning money to criminals owners take the performance of debt. If the former owner is unable to pay the debt in a designated time, it will take over the right to the property and stand up to all future taxes.
If the tax sale on a document, you can bid on the property of the taxpayer made it criminal. Keep in mind that all parties concerned had to notify the auction, and the previous owner had been given the opportunity to pay back the money thus remains the property of the owner of the property. Foreclosures are not from one day to the next, as I remember, there was an extensive process that happened before the auction even been announced. The difference between the tax sale certificate that you buy the property instead of the final offering credit to delinquent property owner. Buying the property final will reduce the risk, because you are guaranteed ownership, but is waiting to see if the previous owner to pay back the debt. There will, however, be forced to float more money in advance if they win the deed auction.
As you can see, this type of auctions may be worth the investment if the money to bid. Make sure to do a thorough inspection of the property before they decide to make the investment. Always assume, first, that there is a serious problem that the property should be secured major improvements. Also, be sure to learn the rules and regulations of how the state handles auctions. If necessary, the assistance of a lawyer to help the real estate auction process. This made it big advantage of investing in a tax sale.
Quality printers
If you are trying to figure out ways to improve the look and quality of the materials, it is worth re-elected printers. While it may be trying to save money to all within the company, if you do not want to sacrifice quality in the process. No matter what type of business you run, it may be difficult to focus on the printing department and run a successful business. Now is the perfect time to start learning providers in the industry and how they can benefit your business.
Keep in mind that although it may be a lot of professional printers to choose from, the industry is very competitive. This means that if you’re willing to invest a little time and ingenuity, you can find a good service to enhance its operations. Although you might be looking at all the different companies to choose from, you do not have to contact all of you to the list. If you go online and you can ask your colleagues and peers, you can get the names of some of the popular and recommended printers in the business.
Do a little research on the internet and look for more of these services. You want to end up in companies that have a great reputation in the industry. Do not forget to take into consideration how long they have been around in the business. While you may be more tempted to go with a company that is surrounded by several years, do not be so quick to rule out some younger companies do.
Take a look at the prices that are available, and a comparison with other printers. Keep in mind that the pricing is very competitive, and in some places willing to offer special rates and discounts depending on the size of the order. Do not let what seems to be the lowest price you roll. You have to try the service out before we know whether or not it wants to develop a good working relationship with them.
Be aware that this will not be like other types of transactions, where you can sample the goods before you commit or purchase. You should do a trial run of the printers you are interested in doing business with. Try a system that allows you to get a better idea of how well their work will increase the materials and campaigns. Pay attention to how well the provider complies with the policies and preferences. Pay attention to how quickly they are able to meet filed after ordering. Do not forget to also pay attention to how to follow up if there is uncertainty or a need for communication. Ultimately, you want service that is efficient, courteous, helpful and very professional.
Getting preapproved mortgage companies
If you are planning to buy a house, it is wise to pre-approved mortgage companies before you start your search for a home. It’s exciting to go looking at the open houses or scout around the property with a realtor. If you do not know whether you can get credit, but it will waste everyone’s time. There are many factors that determine whether you will be seen as a good risk as a homebuyer. In recent years, banks have tightened the testing of applicants to avoid getting the last housing crunch.
How much can you afford?
Maybe your dream is dying at home no matter the cost. It is wise to be careful when calculating what you think you can afford. A rule of thumb is a maximum monthly payment equal to one-quarter or one-third of take-home pay. Do not forget the homeowner, not a renter, you will have to pay for the repairs and maintenance, as well as PITI. PITI is payment including taxes and insurance. It all adds up, and you do not want to end up “house poor”, which means that you can not afford to have anything else, just sitting in the house.
What is a credit score?
Everyone needs a decent credit score before preapproved mortgage-company loans. This means you need to register as a responsible bill paying. The interest rate you get, if approved, will depend on your score. If you have intermittent paying the bills, it is likely that you will not get denied or have to pay extra for having a higher risk. If some mistakes in this area, it’s wise to wait a bit before. Spend a few more years for a better credit history and score.
Do you know where the paperwork?
must be in order to be approved in advance by the mortgage companies, you’re going to show them who you are and papers. You’re going to come up with a few years of income tax, paystubs, bank statements and anything else related to your finances. Your employer can vouch for job performance, and it is planned that already used for some time. If you do not remember what happened to income taxes and all the paperwork disorganized, it’s time to do everything before approaching the bankers.
Buying a house can be exciting realization of the American dream. If you want to make the dream a reality, you can get preapproved by mortgage companies. Figure out what you can really afford, find out your credit score and collect the papers.
Funeral homes and services
Funeral homes are the places where we bring our loved ones when we departed. These places of business services for those who are deceased friends and relatives. These services are generally a result of the center, as well as before, during and after the funeral, the funeral and other events related to the individual religious or community. The choice is one that is able to accommodate the wishes and preferences, who missed a priority. Most people actually choose this place before they are passed to make sure that their wishes and preferences understand and be brought forward when the day comes. On the other hand, some people have to deal with the choice of many funeral when someone they love has passed away.
The services that come in these places is not only a result of the business center, but the paperwork that is needed when someone dies. The government must call the death of the individual and are licenses and other documents that must be submitted in declaring the death of the person. Arrangements with the cemetery and the obituary that is attached to the services of the salon. It is important to declare the death of the individual to the government because of the legal consequences that follow it. Other places of business that relate to the person who receives the deceased’s knowledge of his passes. Funeral Homes also those relating to arrangements with the cemetery burial of the individual.
Other services are also available visitation services that are viewing a few days before the funeral of the deceased. Typically, a portion is reserved for the group of mourners at the salon and see the remains of a friend or relative in relative peace and in a way that religion and belief sees fit. According to the religious service of the religion or beliefs of the deceased they were also held in the parlor, where the visual is considered at the moment. In most cases, relatives are usually informs you that the people who run the business, to inform them of the schedule. Cremation is also an option that can be added to the living room to the relatives of the person who died or those who are interested.
Embalming is something that is usually in order to delay the decomposition process of the body before the funeral takes place. The reconstruction disfigurements during which the accident took place, is also a service that can provide a funeral for family and friends of the deceased. The embalmer can make use of the technique that he had been taught in school. In cases where the body can be deformed so that the embalmer not reconstruct the closed coffin could be a possibility. | http://bio-dynamics2013.org/ | [
"solid"
] |
Input management with Dependency Injection
Object oriented programming has a lot of patterns that can be very useful for making games. One of those patterns is the Dependency Injection, a pattern that helps to decouple classes that would otherwise be tightly connected. So let’s take something that’s really connected and see how dependency injection can help us: the input management.
Wait what’s this Dependency Injection?
Usually if you have a thing (call it client) that uses another thing (call it service), when you change the service, then you have to also change the client. And that’s bad. Let’s say the client is your game logic and you are porting your game from pc to mobile, and that therefore you need to switch from a keyboard + mouse input to a touch one. Since all inputs are changed (perhaps radically since your WASD is now a UI element) you now need to change some input-read line in your game logic even if you used an intermediate class to get those button inputs.
The Dependency Injection way to do it instead is to have the input manager call the game logic functions. Without it knowing whose functions they are. You just set them as callbacks and call them when needed. Who sets the callbacks? The naive option is: the client. But then you still have a direct dependency between the classes. Enter the DIC: Dependency Injection Container. He takes the callbacks from the client and gives them to the service, thus eliminating the dependency between them (and adding another class to your code, that’s not a free lunch).
And what are those de-leee-gates?
A delegate is just a way to pass a function as an argument, it can also be stored as a variable and given a type name to be checked so that only the functions that match a certain signature can be stored or passed as a delegate of a specific type.
Let’s read some Input!
string XbuttonName = "Fire1";
// other button names
string LeftStickHorizontalName = "Horizontal";
string LeftStickVerticalName = "Vertical";
//other axis names
First of all we’ll need the names of the input buttons and axis we’re going to read, for this example I’ve used a regular xbox controller. We’ll do this with the old unity input system, not the (currently) experimental one, so we’ll need a string name for it. If you’ve read my other tutorials you know I’ve a personal feud with strings, but this is one of the few cases you really have to use them: if you are building an input manager you don’t want to force whoever uses it to edit code just to rename an input field, so you really want to have that in the inspector, which means a serialized string. Notice that for thumbsticks we’ll need two axis per stick, so two thumbsticks means four axis.
public static InputManager instance;
InputManagerDIC inputDIC;
float triggerSensibility = 0.2f;
As for the other variables, the instance reference will be used to make this class a singleton, the inputDIC is needed to ask for the injection, and the trigger sensibility trashold will be used to get a button behaviour from an axis, because back in my days triggers were fucking buttons and I like it that way.
public delegate void buttonReaction();
public delegate void axisEffect(Vector2 axisVal);
Although we could make this all with predefined System Actions, I’d rather estabilish a more specific interface that reminds whoever writes the game logic code what is supposed to act as a button and what is supposed to act as an axis. It’s just a reminder, nothing more.
good old controller
good old controller
public static buttonReaction XbuttonPress = delegate () { };
//other press callbacks ...
public static buttonReaction XbuttonPressContinuous = delegate () { };
//other continuous callbacks
public static axisEffect leftStickEffect = delegate (Vector2 a) { };
public static axisEffect rightStickEffect = delegate (Vector2 a) { };
public static System.Action InputStartRead = delegate () { };
Each callback is initialized to an empty delegate because if for whatever reason we don’t want to use something, we don’t want a nullreference exception to pop out after the change.
Now, we can define a lot of callbacks for each Input since every button has four relevant conditions:
• just pressed
• pressed (continuously)
• just released
• released (continuously)
In this example I’ll use four buttons and the triggers and read only two condition for the buttons (just pressed and continuous press) and one for the triggers (continuous press), for each of the conditions I want to read I need to define a callback.
The same goes for what to do with thumbsticks, but in that case I just want to read a direction out of them and let the game logic interpret it.
The last callback isn’t really needed but for this tutorial I’ve also built a public repository where you can download a test scene and I need to clean the UI state at the beginning of every frame, so I want a callback for that too.
void Awake()
if (instance == null)
instance = this;
As I said before this is going to be a Singleton. And at the beginning of execution we want the DIC to inject his callbacks in the InputManager, so we’ll call his loading function here.
void Update()
if (Input.GetButtonDown(XbuttonName))
{ XbuttonPress(); }
//read other buttonDowns
if (Input.GetButton(XbuttonName))
{ XbuttonPressContinuous(); }
//read other buttons
if (Input.GetAxis(leftTriggerName) > triggerSensibility)
{ leftTriggerPressContinuous(); }
if (Input.GetAxis(rightTriggerName) > triggerSensibility)
{ rightTriggerPressContinuous(); }
leftStickEffect(new Vector2(Input.GetAxis(LeftStickHorizontalName), Input.GetAxis(LeftStickVerticalName)));
rightStickEffect(new Vector2(Input.GetAxis(RightStickHorizontalName), Input.GetAxis(RightStickVerticalName)));
And at last here’s the action. At first we call the “start reading” callback, then for each button we check the relevant states. Notice that for the trigger we read an axis input and only when it’s over the trashold we’ve set before we call a callback just as if it were a regular button. From the game logic standpoint that trigger will be undistinguishable from a button, it even uses the same delegate type for the callback. For the thumbsticks instead we’ll read the two axis in a single Vector2 variable and use that to call the appropriate axisEffect callback.
How about a UI class for testing this?
a really simple ui
a really simple ui
I’ve made it as basic as it gets, sorry but no fancy stuff here:
Toggle xButton;
//other toggles
Text rStick;
//other texts
For each button I’ll set a toggle on and off, while for the sticks I’ll show the direction in a text. All the references are passed with serialized fields in the inspector.
public void LogCallTLCont() { ShowLogButton(lTriggerButton, "TL Cont"); }
public void LogCallTRCont() { ShowLogButton(rTriggerButton, "TR Cont"); }
public void LogCallA() { ShowLogButton(aButton, "A "); }
public void LogCallB() { ShowLogButton(bButton, "B "); }
public void LogCallX() { ShowLogButton(xButton, "X "); }
public void LogCallY() { ShowLogButton(yButton, "Y "); }
public void LogCallACont() { ShowLogButton(aButton, "A Cont"); }
public void LogCallBCont() { ShowLogButton(bButton, "B Cont"); }
public void LogCallXCont() { ShowLogButton(xButton, "X Cont"); }
public void LogCallYCont() { ShowLogButton(yButton, "Y Cont"); }
public void LogCallL(Vector2 direction) { ShowLogAxis(lStick, "L stick with dir", direction); }
public void LogCallR(Vector2 direction) { ShowLogAxis(rStick, "R stick with dir", direction); }
void ShowLogButton(Toggle toggle, string text)
toggle.isOn = true;
void ShowLogAxis(Text field, string text, Vector2 direction)
field.text = direction.ToString();
Debug.Log(text + direction);
All the callbacks are actually using the same couple of functions, logging and setting an UI element each time. But who’s going to reset all those toggles when we didn’t read the button’s release? Our reset function of course:
public void ResetUI()
xButton.isOn = false;
yButton.isOn = false;
aButton.isOn = false;
bButton.isOn = false;
lTriggerButton.isOn = false;
rTriggerButton.isOn = false;
rStick.text =;
lStick.text =;
It’s Injection time
dependency injection input time
dependency injection input time
Also the DIC is really simple, all it does is to set the callbacks in the InputManager, so it only needs a load function and a field to specify from which class instance it should take the callbacks:
UserExample target;
public void LoadInputManager()
InputManager.XbuttonPress = target.LogCallX;
InputManager.YbuttonPress = target.LogCallY;
InputManager.AbuttonPress = target.LogCallA;
InputManager.BbuttonPress = target.LogCallB;
InputManager.XbuttonPressContinuous = target.LogCallXCont;
InputManager.YbuttonPressContinuous = target.LogCallYCont;
InputManager.AbuttonPressContinuous = target.LogCallACont;
InputManager.BbuttonPressContinuous = target.LogCallBCont;
InputManager.leftStickEffect = target.LogCallL;
InputManager.rightStickEffect = target.LogCallR;
InputManager.leftTriggerPressContinuous = target.LogCallTLCont;
InputManager.rightTriggerPressContinuous = target.LogCallTRCont;
InputManager.InputStartRead = target.ResetUI;
So, as you can see the InputManager has no dependecy towards the client class and the UserExample doesn’t even know that his functions are linked to an input. Any maintenance change on either class will stop here in the DIC and will be as trivial as just changing wich callback is assigned to what variable since that’s all that can happen here.
But what if I just changed Input Settings instead of doing all that?
That’s cool and that’s also the proper way to do it (until you are not porting from pc/console to mobile). Really, until you are not changing between radically different input sources in unity, you’re better off using Unity3d’s input system to remap controls and avoid changing code. I only used the Input management as the easiest-to-explain example, if one thinks this technique is just for that, he’s totally missing the point. This technique can (and according to some people should) be used for absolutely everything.
That’s all folks
Thanks for the read. This time no copy-paste, you get a repository with the whole project already set up and ready to use here. If you have any questions or comments please do express that either in the comments here or just hit me on twitter. And if you don’t want to lose my future stuff, consider my newsletter.
P.S.: I’m currently looking for a job, if you are interested take a look at my portfolio. | http://brightreasongames.com/tag/design-pattern/ | [
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Tuesday, March 03, 2015
Bibi at the Barricade
Cal Thomas | Mar 03, 2015
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seen at the Western Wall on January 22, 2013. ( Marc Israel Sellem/POOL/FLASH90)
The White House opposes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking to Congress, but not because the speech has political implications, coming as it does just two weeks before Israel's March 17election. If the administration truly had political concerns it would not have dispatched a team of Obama loyalists to Israel to help defeat Netanyahu.
No, many believe the real reason the administration opposes Netanyahu's speech is because he will tell the truth about Iran's nuclear threat and the administration wants to cover up what could ultimately become a very bad deal. Iran wants nuclear weapons. And yet the U.S. is promoting the fiction that despite past behavior and the apocalyptic statements by its leaders, Iran will agree to stop its nuclear program. It will not.
"Six powers -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany -- are negotiating with Iran toward an agreement to restrain Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for easing economic sanctions," writes Reuters. "Netanyahu has spoken scathingly about a possible deal and says a nuclear-armed Iran would pose an existential threat to the Jewish state." Netanyahu is right.
Iran cannot be trusted to honor any agreement. Iran wants to become a global player. It wants Israel gone. No agreement meant to hamper either goal will have any lasting effect.
Netanyahu's defiance of American dictates has precedence. On June 7, 1981, Prime Minister Menachem Begin ordered the destruction of the Iraqi Osirak reactor just before it would become operational. The attack occurred three weeks before Israel's June 30
election. There were the predictable denunciations from all quarters about how the attack would hurt the "peace process," which has never existed, but privately Reagan administration officials were said to have cheered Israel's actions.
President Obama and the State Department are on the wrong side of history and public opinion when it comes to Iran and the threat it poses to global stability. BloombergView.com cites a Paragon Insights poll conducted for The Israel Project, a pro-Israel group, which found that 51 percent disapprove of Obama's foreign policy, 41 percent approve. A wider margin -- 43 percent to 25 percent -- approve of Netanyahu speaking to Congress and 47 percent oppose the way the president has handled the Netanyahu address, Just 32 percent are in favor.
Other polls, including one by CNN/ORC, which Israel supporters say is flawed, found that 63 percent of those Americans surveyed were opposed to the Netanyahu visit.
It isn't just American public opinion that mostly opposes the president on Netanyahu and Iran. Pro-U.S. regimes in much of the Arab world understand the existential threat they face against a nuclear Iran. These nations -- Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Oman, Qatar, Jordan and Egypt -- are regarded as apostates by Iran's theocratic rulers who view them as targets, not fellow Muslim neighbors, possibly because Iran has become the world's number one exporter of terrorism, including to these countries.
These nations are not convinced by the president's laughable contention that "the world is less violent than it has ever been." Compared to what? There are none so blind as those who will not see. The Obama administration should open its eyes to a world that is aflame.
President Obama's defenders say he, not Congress, should shape foreign policy, but that's not what the Constitution says. The State Department acknowledges: "The United States Constitution divides foreign policy powers between the President and the Congress so that both share in the making of foreign policy. The executive and legislative branches each play important roles that are different but that often overlap. Both branches have continuing opportunities to initiate and change foreign policy, and the interaction between them continues indefinitely throughout the life of a policy."
Former ABC newsman Ted Koppel once said: "Our society finds truth too strong a medicine to digest undiluted. In its purest form, truth is not a polite tap on the shoulder. It is a howling reproach."
Israel's prime minister should offer such a howling reproach to America's disastrous policy with Iran and the administration's failure to tell the truth about the threat should Iran go nuclear.
No comments: | http://carnageandculture.blogspot.com/2015/03/bibi-at-barricade.html | [
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Monday, January 28, 2013
Plant trees, disband the army, work together: the Tuscan way of escaping the growth trap
You probably know the story of the man who invented the game of chess. It is said that he presented the game to the king and that he asked in exchange a grain of rice on the first square of the board, two on the second, four on the third and so on, for all the 64 squares. The story says that the king agreed to the deal, only to find out, later on, that the amount of rice he was supposed to provide was gigantic, larger than the amount existing in the whole world.
The story doesn't say what happened at that point, but we may suppose that the king was not happy and that the inventor of the game received a reward much different than what he had asked for. So, we learn that growth is a trap and that doesn't apply just to grains of rice on a chessboard. It is always difficult to understand the consequences of exponential growth and everyone can fall in the trap; even whole civilizations. Today, we are still trying to go after the mythical "growth" that many think will magically solve all problems. Yet, many of us have this terrible feeling that it will be all useless and not just that. The feeling is that economic growth is taking us straight into the abyss.
So, is there a way to get free? We don't know what our destiny will be, but there have been examples of civilizations who managed a long term equilibrium. One is Japan of Edo times, another one is Tuscany after the Renaissance. There was a fateful moment in Tuscan history when people understood that the solution to the terrible times they were experiencing was not growth but adaptation. It came gradually, but we can identify the turning point with the rule of Grand Duke Ferdinando 1st, who put Tuscany on a path that in a personal interpretation of mine I can describe as, "plant trees, disband the army and work together". A path that led to a few centuries of peace (or at least without major wars) and to a moderate prosperity.
Tuscany: escaping the growth trap
Tuscany is a region of central Italy stuck between the mountains and the Mediterranean Sea. It is a land of gentle hills and plains; of grain fields and of cypress trees, of farms and of walled cities. It has been like that from the time of the Etruscans, the first dwellers of the area and from whom the old name of Tuscia comes.
Even though small and relatively isolated, Tuscany came to play an important role in the world's history with the Renaissance; an age of poets, painters, sculptors, bankers, and explorers. For a while, the main city of Tuscany, Florence, was the center of the Western World; the place of the financial power, the center of commerce, the place where artists, literates, and professionals would go to learn their trade.
But the golden age of the Renaissance didn't last for long. Its peak times were maybe one or two centuries long. Then, with the 16th century, decline started. Plagues, famines, economic crisis, military invasions, gradually led Tuscany to become one of the poorest countries of Europe. Yet, population never collapsed and something survived of the old spirit of freedom and intellectual independence. In the early 17th century, Tuscany became a refuge for the Jews fleeing from persecution in Spain. Tuscany kept her universities and academies and, in 1786, it was the first European state to officially abolish torture and the death penalty. So, the Tuscan collapse was not total - it was managed; it was "soft" and not so disastrous as it could have been. How was it done? It is a long story that deserves to be told.
Growth and collapse in Tuscany
Emerging out of the terrible times of the Great Plague, in 14th century, Tuscany's agriculture was able to create the resources needed to restart population growth and to embark in that age of economic growth and of great artistic accomplishments that we call "Renaissance." But nothing can grow forever: a growing population meant that more and more land was needed to feed it, and that could be obtained only by clearing forests. That, in turn opened the way to erosion. And erosion destroys the fertile soil that supports agriculture.
Still today, you can see how bad the erosion problem was during those times by looking at the city of Pisa. Today, it is an inland city but, during the Middle Ages, it had been a thriving harbor. It is reported that, already in the 15th century, Pisa’s harbor had been silting because of sediments carried by the Arno River. In the 17th century, silting became so serious that the harbor had to be abandoned. The sediments that destroyed the harbor of Pisa were the rich soil that had once supported Tuscan agriculture and, with it, the Tuscan population.
With the decline of agriculture, the Tuscan economic system started imploding; commerce and industry could not survive without food. Famines became common. The proud citizens of Florence, the city that had been called the “New Athens," started going hungry. According to a chronicler, in 1590 Florentines were reduced to eat a kind of bread that “in older times would have been given to dogs, and perhaps dogs would have refused it."
The Tuscan cities declined also in terms of military strength and the once free cities of Tuscany fell one by one to foreign invaders. The republic of Florence fell to the Spanish Imperial Armies in 1530. The republic of Siena fell to the combined armies of Spain and of the Florentine Medici in 1555. Afterwards, Tuscany became a province of the Spanish Empire, although still maintaining some degree of independence.
Plant trees, disband the army, work together
From the beginning, the Grand Dukes who ruled first Florence and then the whole Tuscany were turning their attention inward, to the management of the Tuscan territory. Already in 1559, at the time of Cosimo 1st of the Medici family, Tuscany had started a policy of protection of agriculture with a severe law that forbade cutting trees in the Appennino mountains, even on pain of death! That policy was continued by later rulers and Grand-Duke Ferdinando 1st was probably the turning point in abandoning all dreams of growth and expansion.
The monument to Ferdinando 1st (1549-1609), Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1587 to 1609. He was perhaps the first Tuscan ruler to recognize the end of growth times
Ferdinando ruled Tuscany from 1587 until his death in 1609. He was fond of saying that he ruled not by force but by "dignity only"; as his motto in Latin said: "maiestate tantum." He did a lot for agriculture, among other things enacting laws that reduced the tax burden on farmers. He went some steps further and he spoke of Tuscans as “worker bees" (“api operose") meaning that they had to work hard all together. Here is the symbol of the working bees in a bronze plate on Ferdinando's monument in Florence.
The “Working Bees", (“Api Operose") symbol of Ferdinando 1st. Image on the monument in Piazza SS. Annunziata, Firenze.
Some warlike spirit remained in Tuscany during Ferdinando's rule and that led to skirmishes with the Turkish Empire. But, on the whole, this age was the start of a period of careful management of the territory, of reducing military expenses, of seeking for social harmony and justice. We could define this policy as "plant trees, disband the army, work together", even though Ferdinando himself never used these terms.
The Dukes who followed Ferdinando 1st, continued this policy. Agriculture remained a focus of the policy of the government. The laws protecting trees were maintained and expanded and, in 1753, Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo created the “Georgofili" academy with the specific task of promoting agriculture. The academy still exists today and its motto is “For the sake of public prosperity."
The symbol of the Georgofili Academy established in Florence in 1753. The writing says “Prosperitati Publicae Augendae" (“In favor of public prosperity")
The Tuscan government also progressively reduced military expenses. The navy had basically ceased to exist with the first years of the 18th century and the army created by the Medici family was progressively reduced in strength until it was formally disbanded in 1753 by Grand Duke Francesco Stefano. New kinds of armies were created in later times but, basically, Tuscany just couldn’t afford war. Often, her borders had to be opened to invaders; it caused less harm than fighting them. Tuscany underwent a good number of invasions but, on the whole, these wars never brought great destruction. After the fall of Siena, in 1555, Tuscany didn’t see one of her cities besieged and bombarded until 1944, almost four centuries later.
It took time but, eventually, these policies had their effects on reducing the severity of the decline and of bringing Tuscany back from collapse. From the 18th century onward, agriculture managed a comeback. Famines didn’t disappear but could be contained while commerce and industry restarted with a new network of riverways and roads.
Not everything was perfect during this period. One problem was that Tuscany never really succeeded in stabilizing population, which slowly grew from less than half a million in 15th century to more than a million in 18th century. As a consequence, there remained a strong pressure to find new land for agriculture. So, the rules that protected trees were relaxed more than once. It is reported that, in 1780, a group of woodcutters fell on their knees in front of Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo, pleading hunger. This resulted in a decree liberalizing tree cutting. But the mountains were reforested and the policies of protecting agriculture maintained.
Our times
With the 19th century, Tuscany merged with the newly created Italian state and the industrial revolution generated a new phase of rapid population growth and economic expansion. With the improvement of the transportation network and the development of railroads, famines became a thing of the past. The last recorded one in Tuscany was in 1898-1899. Forest suffered during this period of expansion; nevertheless, today Tuscany remains one of the most forested regions of Italy, a legacy of the policy of the old Grand-Dukes.
But times have changed and the latest wave of building frenzy seems to be transforming some of the once fertile areas of Tuscany into areas that look like suburbs of Los Angeles. With a population four times larger than it was at the time of the famines and with climate change and the oil crisis looming, Tuscany is facing difficult times. But we have a tradition of caring for the land that has helped us in the past. It will help us also in the uncertain future.
Can Tuscany be seen as a model of “soft collapse" for other regions of the world? Perhaps; at least it gives us a recipe that worked from the time of Grand Dukes: "plant trees, disband the army, work together. It is not exactly what we are doing right now, but we may learn.
This is a revised version of a post published in 2006 on the blog "Transition Culture.It was one my first posts in English and, some years later, I think it is appropriate to repost it on "Cassandra's legacy" with some modifications and corrections. I am grateful to Susan Kucera for leading me to return to this subject and for suggesting to me the analogy with the "grains on the chessboard" story .
Most of the data that I report about Tuscan agriculture in ancient times come from the book "ALPI" by Matteo Biffi Tolomei published for the first time in the early 1800s and re-published in 2004 with a post-faction by Fabio Clauser. (Libreria Editrice Fiorentina)
Data on the history of the Tuscan army at the time of the Grand Dukes are also not so easy to find, but a description can be found in "Corpi armati e ordine pubblico in Italia (XVI-XIX sec.)": Seminario di studi, Castello Visconti di San Vito, Somma Lombardo, 10-11 novembre 2000 Livio Antonielli, Claudio Donati Rubbettino Editore, 2003. For a history of the Tuscan Navy, see the relative article in Wikipedia
Data on the population of Tuscany from Middle Ages to present times can be found in the paper (in Italian) by Marco Breschi and Paolo Malanima, ""Demografia e Economia in Toscana"
A list of famines in Tuscany up to 1736 can be found in this document, by the Georgofili Academy. There aren't many data available about the famine of 1898-99 that affected all Italy and that was, probably, the last recorded famine in the country. A description can be found in this document (in Italian)
The site of the Georgofili academy.
Monday, January 21, 2013
Ugo Bardi speaks about limits to growth
This is the video record of the talk on resource depletion I gave in the University of Bielefeld, Germany, in November of 2012. It is almost one hour and a half long, so I am not sure that anyone would really want to watch it. In any case, if you are interested in the subject, you may try.
The gist of the talk, anyway, is that depletion is not an isolated problem. Minerals are part of the geological cycles of the Earth. When we extract a mineral and we disperse it all over the ecosystem we cause changes of all kinds, besides the obvious fact that we use non renewable resources. So, for instance, when we extract fossil fuels we alter the climate. The two problems: fossil fuel depletion and climate change are two sides of the same coin. And that is true of all the minerals we use - in most cases depletion is just one side of a larger problem.
Thanks to professor Marcus Kracht for having organized this presentation in Bielefeld.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
The story of the E-Cat, the "cold fusion" device proposed by Mr. Andrea Rossi seems to be losing interest everywhere. Yesterday, Jan 14, another of Rossi's supporters, Mr. Daniele Passerini, announced that he is abandoning the fray and closing down his blog, at least for the time being.
Mr Passerini's blog, titled "22 steps of love" has been the main focus of support for the E-Cat in Italy up to now. He says in his last post, titled "ad maiora" that "Some time ago, I wrote that, after that two years would have passed from the date of January 14 2011, I would quit in any case in the absence of official and certain announcements on the reality of the E-Cat." Passerini states that he will be waiting patiently and "will return when the news that we have been waiting for during the past two years will arrive"
The closing of Mr. Passerini's blog comes after that, in November of last year, another of Mr. Rossi's supporters, Mr. Paul Story of "eCatNews" declared that he would close his blog because, "with scant hope of Rossi delivering on his promises, I find myself wondering why I would waste any more time on him. If he is committing fraud, he should be pursued by the police. Interest in the man or the subject is now relegated to the level of curiosity, not dedication."
Earlier on, in April 2012, Mr. Sterling Allen of the blog PESN (Pure Energy Systems) had been appalled at Rossi's behavior and had stated, "I apologize to anyone that I've encouraged to try and do business with Andrea Rossi, and I retract my endorsement" even though he later continued to cover announcements about the E-Cat. (*)
The supporters of the E-Cat are still numerous and the marketing techniques of Mr. Rossi have generated a remarkable number of imitators. So, what we are seeing is not likely to be the end of the story. However, these defections are a clear symptom that the interest in the E-Cat is winding down. After two years of impossible claims, missed demonstrations, broken promises, and unverifiable endorsements, no other outcome was possible.
(*)Mr. Sterling Allen commented on this post stating that "But a few months after that I felt he (Rossi) was back on a better track, and worth giving my confidence in again... Though I don't know for sure, I have a high extent of confidence in Rossi and his group.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Can we trust the reporting of environmental issues by the mainstream media?
Guest Post by Max Iacono:
Among the various lessons we learned in 2012 there is also whether or not the so-called “mainstream media” really can be trusted to tell the truth about environmental issues. Or can it be trusted to do just the opposite, and in various diverse and difficult to detect ways?
This additional “lesson to be learned” is in fact the subject of an entire excellent –and also recently published book by the title “Project Censored 2013”, which describes quite well many of the important issues which the mainstream media has mostly (or fully) censored, or completely misled us about, over this past year or so.
The book is available on Amazon in both Kindle and hard copy versions. I recently purchased it and have been reading it. I thought the Foreword by Dr. Nafeez Mosssadeq Ahmed was particularly clear and convincing and nicely summed up the current situation with respect to mainstream media censorship of “inconvenient topics” and in particular those which are of interest and concern to Cassandra Legacy readers and that deal with the environment and its various aspects. And also with Al Gore’s extremely “inconvenient truth” which is becoming more and more inconvenient by the day to some, but much more convenient to the millions or even billions of people who think something should be done urgently about climate change. Some have said that the ratio of persons on one side to those on the other is 1 to 99 (or 99 to 1) but I will leave that particular quantitative aspect aside for the time being.
The book –and this particular post which tries to give an idea of what the book is about - also offers an additional perspective or amicable warning to us all regarding the ubiquitous “mainstream media” - is also a kind of logical follow-on to my own earlier post on Cassandra Legacy by the title “Limits to Growth” : An Alternative History
In that post I tried to argue that the old book Limits to Growth (first published in 1972) might have been better received -or at least less poorly received and less “demonized”- if it had taken into account in its World Model (or at least had done so qualitatively, separately) not only the variables which it did consider and model –namely a series of economic, industrial, resources, pollution, and demographic variables all in interaction within its dynamic systems model-, but also selected variables of culture, identity, politics, political science, political economy, societal institutions, and ideology.
This second set of variables I believe were those that had caused the book to be “demonized” once its central message that there are limits to growth and that “economic growth forever” is not possible on a finite planet, clearly came up against them, in the so called real (social) world. That is, “the real world” of business, politics, economics, religions, and their various academic disciplines and professions, and up against their many representatives and advocates. And this also since to many who are active in those disciplines and professions apparently the “real world of physics, chemistry and biology” (and ecology) regrettably is either considered to be “pretty unreal” or is secondary, or at least is not particularly worthy of much serious or top priority policy consideration. And of course one very important player in that broad social context -and one which also significantly influences and affects all the rest- is the so-called mainstream (or corporate) media in all of its forms. That is, mainstream –and generally corporate-owned, newspapers, magazines, TV channels, radio, and etc. etc. including also some Internet media.
Did the mainstream media “inform” the wider public, or did it misinform, or “dis-inform and mislead” the public with respect to the book Limits to Growth? And even more significant at this specific time, is it informing or dis-informing right now with respect to the ongoing and continuing significant range of serious environmental problems, topics and issues? And in particular with respect to climate change, peak oil, limits to growth and other particularly important environmental topics and issues such as Arctic methane, ocean acidification, Arctic and Antarctic ice melt, diminishing or dwindling fish stocks, biodiversity and habitat loss, ongoing deforestation, advancing desertification, and several others. The reader can make up her / his own mind about that, but I would like to offer the following for consideration:
First, below follows a list of the titles of the 15 chapters of the book Project Censored 2013 which provides a pretty good idea of what topics those who wrote or compiled the book –and there were many contributing chapter authors- think the mainstream media has either censored or lied to us (the wider public) about. And, moreover, most often in quite clever and deceptive ways which are very difficult to detect, pick up and deconstruct. And for those who may be interested in reviewing some of the specific ways and techniques through which the mainstream media (in this specific instance Fox News Channel) (but they are by no means the only ones) lies to us and tries to deceive us, they can read the following very good article which summarizes their top 14 techniques: “Fourteen Propaganda Techniques Fox “News” Uses to Brainwash Americans
Some of the topics and book sections in “Project Censored 2013” deal with some of the main issues treated by Cassandra Legacy -namely climate change, peak oil and limits to growth- and some deal instead with other issues related to politics, democracy, and U.S. foreign and domestic policy, which often are equally censored or lied about. And if one reads the book one might also consider quite apt an alternative possible title for the book that I came up with myself (only in “jest”) and namely:
“Project Dissembled, Denied, Distorted, Delayed, Deleted, Deflected and Deceived
About by the Mainstream Media”, or perhaps more succinctly and humorously simply “Mainstream Media Project-7D”. In any case, here is the list of the book’s chapters:
1. “The top 25 Censored Stories from 2011-2012 and Censored News. Clusters:
i) The Police State and Civil Liberties
ii) From “Bankster Bailout” to “Blessed Unrest”: News we can use to create a US economy for the 99 percent
iii) Environment and Health
iv) Human Costs of War and Violence
v) Women and Gender, Race and Ethnicity
2. Déjà vu: What happened to previous censored stories?
3. American Idle: Junk Food News, News Abuse, and the Voice of Freedumb
4. Media Democracy in Action
5. Ownership Backfires: A Taxonomy of Concepts Related to Censorship
6. The Global 1 Percent Ruling Class Exposed
7. The Information War: How Government is Seeking Total Information Awareness and What This Portends for Freedom and Democracy
8. GerM Warfare: How to Reclaim the Education Debate from Corporate Occupation
9. Kent State: Was it about Civil Rights or Murdering Student Protesters?
10. The Creative Tension of the Emerging Future: Facing the Seven Challenges of Humanity
11. Guantanamospeak and the Manufacture of Consent
12. Framing Al-Awlaki: How Government Officials and Corporate Media Legitimised a Targeted Killing
13. A Morally Disengaged America: Sacrificing Iraqi Refugees to Terrorism Fears and Anti-Immigration
14. On the Road to Fukushima: The Unreported Story Behind Japan’s Nuclear-Media-Industrial Complex
15. An Occupation of Truth: Indian Administered Kashmir”
As a conclusion, below I add a quote containing several specific examples regarding the recent treatment by the mainstream media of peak oil and climate change –including also what Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed says about each- in his excellent foreword to the book.
At a time when the world faces tipping points in the escalation of multiple crises, the publication of this volume is of momentous significance.
As I write, a sampling of the latest “mainstream” corporate news illustrates the unprecedented nature of our current predicament as a civilization. The bizarre and extreme weather of the early United States summer prompted one leading climate scientist to state boldly that we are “certainly seeing climate change in action,” as a window on a worsening future. Record-shattering heat waves, wildfires, and freak storms are a taste of things to come – “This is just the beginning” said one meteorologist.
Simultaneously, the International Monetary Fund cut its growth forecast for the US economy, warning that the ongoing Eurozone crisis, along with the weak housing market, risks triggering a recession by 2013 while the jobless rate morphs into “higher structural unemployment”.
As the defunct neoliberal model of casino capitalism wreaks havoc at home, it is doing the same abroad. Global food prices doubled between 2006 and 2008, and despite some fluctuation, remain largely at record levels. One of the key causes has been speculation in derivatives –thirteen trillion dollars was invested in food commodities in 2006, then pulled out in 2008, and then reinvested again by 2011. The rocketing food prices for the global poor have generated an unprecedented global food crisis across the developing world
But another driver of the food crisis is climate change, which has already led to crop failures in key food basket regions. This is only going to get worse on a business-as-usual model, which could lead to a minimum 4 degrees Celsius rise by mid-century. Even a 2-degree rise could lead to a minimum 4 degrees Celsius rise by mid-century. Even a 2-degreee rise would lead to dramatic crop failures and soaring meat prices; at 4 degrees Celsius, rice crops could be reduced by about 30 percent, leading to global food shortages and hunger.
Amid this escalating frenzy of perfect storms, however, over the last year the corporate media has focused on one apparent light at the end of the tunnel: unconventional oil and gas. “Has Oil Peaked? Read one headline in the Wall Street Journal. Across the pond, BBC News asked, “Shortages: Is ‘Peak Oil’ Idea Dead?” Environmentalists have also jumped on the bandwagon. Andrew C. Revkin in the New York Times took “A Fresh Look at Oil’s Long Goodbye, while George Monbiot wrote in the Guardian that “We Were Wrong on Peak Oil. There’s Enough to Fry Us All”
The essence of this uniform message is that the new drilling methods – like hydraulic fracturing, i.e. “fracking” among others- have allowed the fossil fuel industry to exploit previously untapped reserves of tar sands, oil shale, and shale gas, bringing them to market at much cheaper prices than hitherto imaginable, and effectively turning the US from net oil importer into a leading exporter.
But it should come as no great surprise to Project Censored readers that, once again, the corporate news media has obfuscated the facts. The latest figures from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) confirm that the supposedly massive boost in unconventional oil production that is pitched to launch the world into a glorious future of petroleum abundance – capable of sustaining the wonders of capitalist economic growth ad infinitum – has had negligible impact on world oil production. On the contrary, despite the US producing a “total oil supply” of ten million barrels per day – up by 2.1 million since January 2005 – world crude oil production remains on the largely flat, undulating plateau it has been on since it stopped rising around that very year. As reported by oil markets journalist Gregor Macdonald, who has previously reported for the Financial Times and Harvard Business Review, among other publications:
Since 2005, despite a phase transition in prices, global oil production has been trapped below a ceiling of 74 mmbpd (million barrels per day). New production from new fields and new discoveries comes on line, but it has not been at a rate fast enough to overcome declines from existing fields. Overall, global decline has been estimated at a minimum of 4% per year and as high as 6+% pa year. Given that new oil resources are developed and flow at much slower rates, the existing declines present a formidable challenge to the task of increasing supply I see no set of factors, in combination that would take global production of crude oil higher in 2012, or next year, or thereafter.
Yet this stark fact has not been reported in any mass media news outlet whatsoever, anywhere in the world. Indeed, Macdonald points out that data from British Petroleum’s Statistical Review of World Energy shows that oil’s heyday is well and truly in decline. In 1973, oil as a percentage of global energy use had peaked at around 48.5 percent. Forty years later, “oil is barely hanging on as a the world’s primary energy source, with a much reduced role as a supplier of only 33.5% of all world energy consumption.”
The disparity in reporting is instructive. In June 2012, the corporate media focus on the unconventional oil boom revolved around one study in particular by oil company executive Leonardo Maugeri – former executive vice president of Italian oil major ENI. The report was not peer-reviewed but as published at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs by the Geopolitics of Energy Project, “which is supported in part by a general grant from the (same) oil major (i.e. ENI),” conceded the WSJ. Hardly an impartial perspective, then.
Meanwhile, a series of peer-reviewed reports by independent scientists published in highly reputable science journals from January through to June 2012 – Science, Nature, and Energy – have been blacked out in corporate news reporting. In Energy Gail Tverberg documented that since 2005, “world oil supply has not increased”, that this was “a primary cause of the 2008-2009 recession,” and that the “expected impact of reduced oil supply” will mean the “financial crisis may eventually worsen.” An even more damning analysis was published in Nature by James Murray and Sir David King, the latter being the British government’s former chief scientific adviser. Murray and King’s analysis found that despite reported increases in oil reserves, tar sands production, and hydrofracturing-generated natural gas, depletion of the world’s existing fields is still running at 4.5 percent to 6.7 percent per year, and production at shale gas wells could drop by as much as 60 to 90 percent in the first year of operation
Curiously forgotten in the spate of reporting on the opportunities opened up by fracking is a New York Times investigation from 2011, which found that “the gas may not be as easy and cheap to extract from shale formations deep underground as the companies are saying, according to hundreds of industry e-mails and internal documents and an analysis of data from thousands of wells.” The e-mail revealed industry executives, lawyers, state geologists, and market analysts voicing “skepticism about lofty forecasts” and questioning “whether companies are intentionally, and even illegally, overstating the productivity of their wells and the size of their reserves.” A year later, it seems, such revelations were merely destined for their memory hole”
Following the above opening section the Foreword to the book goes on to describe additional examples and also the role which a book such as “Project Censored 2013” can play in at least exposing the disinformation or the non-information so often “put out” or censored by the mainstream media. Which is something it often does instead of putting forward real facts and truthful stories and their respective most plausible and most sensible overall descriptive or explanatory or prescriptive narratives, which could help tie together and integrate i.e. “connect the dots” regarding the important evidence and facts, and thereby also support and be able to provide significant help to those who are concerned and are trying to do something about the issues….through their various ongoing struggles. And I say “ongoing” because the key issues and problems (already listed above) are certainly NOT going to go away in 2013. So we had better be ready also for the long haul and will need all of the intellectual and other help we can get. And having access to accurate, reliable and valid information is of course quintessential, just as it is quintessential for democracy itself to function properly.
But I am not a “conspiracy theorist” and moreover nothing is black and white. Is all of the “mainstream media” and its countless writers and protagonists equally bad and misleading or is it always omitting important stories, and is it bad and lying all of the time and in every instance? And is everything which is reported in the “non-mainstream” media always factual, truthful and correct? And although “exceptions often prove the rule” there remains always, and in any case, a key element of personal responsibility to try to figure out what actually is true or false and what is just or fair or not, and which narratives and story-lines make the most sense and which do not. So it is probably also useful to try to consult multiple sources even if perhaps only one among the many later will be shown to have contained the facts and have been correct. Also remembering of course that a lie or a deception repeated fifty times, is still a lie. But I think it can be of great “ex ante” “heuristic help” when navigating the information territory to know at least generally speaking who one’s friends are -and whether they are only “fair weather” friends and NOT also “fair climate” friends- and who instead are the self-serving liars and the promulgators of assorted exercises in deception, i.e. “the spin starts here” sorts of people.
Friday, January 4, 2013
A New Year's tale
In 1960, Vladimir Dudintsev (1918-1998) published a short novel titled "A New Year's tale." This story greatly impressed me when I read it, many years ago, in an Italian translation in a collection titled "Russian Science Fiction"
Some 50 years ago, I received as a Christmas present a book titled "Russian Science Fiction." All the stories in that book made a deep impression on me, but there was one that has remained in my mind more than the others; a curious story titled "A New Year's Tale".
I was, maybe, 12 at that time and, of course, I couldn't understand everything of that story and I didn't pay attention to the name of the author. But, as time went by, I didn't forget it; rather, it became entrenched in my mind, progressively acquiring more meaning and more importance. I reread it not long ago, and it came back to my mind during a recent trip to Russia. So, let me tell you this story as I remember it.
"A New Year's Tale" tells of one year of life of the protagonist, a researcher in a scientific laboratory somewhere in the Soviet Union. Dudintsev manages to tell the story without ever giving specific details about anything: no place names, no names of the characters, not even of the protagonist. It is a feat of literary virtuosity; it gives to the story an atmosphere of fairy tale but, at the same time, it is very, very specific.
It took me time before I could understand the hints that Dudintsev gives all over the text, but after many trips to Russia everything fell in place. It is curious how Dudintsev managed to catch so well the atmosphere of a research lab in the Soviet Union; he was not a scientific researcher. But that's what makes a great story teller, after all: understanding what one is describing - and feeling something for it.
The story starts with a debate - rather, a quarrel - that the protagonist has with someone termed "a provincial academic" (of course, we are not told his name). This provincial academic should be nothing more than a nuisance, but the protagonist can't stop from engaging in the debate. He understands that he is losing time, that he should be doing something more useful, more important. But he just can't sit down and do his job.
While the protagonist is entangled in this useless quarrel, the chief of the laboratory (again, we are not told his name) dabbles in archeology and one day he tells his coworkers of a research of his somewhere in the Caucasus, where they found an ancient tomb. There was an owl engraved on the tombstone and an inscription that they could decipher. It says "...and the years of his life were 900...."
Now, what could that mean? Could the man buried there have lived 900 years? No, of course not. But then, what does the inscription mean? Well, someone says, that must mean that this man spent his life so well and so fully that it was like his years had been 900.
The discussion goes on. What does it mean to live such a full life? The researchers try to find an answer but, at some moment, they hear the voice of someone who usually keeps silent at these reunions. We are told that he is from far away, not Russian, that is. We can imagine that this man doesn't have a Russian name, but we are not told names. So, he is an outsider and he comes with a completely different viewpoint; let me call him "the foreign scientist" even though in the old Soviet Union, theoretically, there was no such distinction. "You see, comrades," he says, "it is very simple. To live a full life, you must always choose the greatest satisfactions, the highest joys you can find."
At this point, we hear the voice of the political commissioner of the lab. Apparently, there was usually someone in scientific academies in the Soviet Union who was in charge of making sure that Soviet Scientists would not fall into doing decadent capitalist science. So, he stands up and he tells the foreign scientist, "Well, comrade, don't you think one should also work for the people or something like that?" And the foreign scientist answers, "You are so backward, comrade. Don't you understand? The greatest satisfaction, the highest joy one can have in life is exactly that: working for the people!"
After that the discussion is over, the protagonist of the story reflects on the words of the foreign scientist and he resolves to start doing something serious in his life. He decides to start doing experiments, advance his theory. We are not told exactly what he is doing, but we understand that he is working on something important; a great discovery that has to do with capturing and storing solar light. And he manages to work on that for some time. Then, his colleagues bring to him another paper written by his provincial antagonist. So, he feels he has to answer that, and then the provincial academician responds.... and the protagonist finds himself entangled again into this argument that he can't abandon.
Things are back to the silly normalcy of before, but then something happens. The protagonist finds that he is being stalked. Someone, or something, is following him all the time. When he sees it in full he discovers that it is an owl. A giant owl, almost as big as a man, looking at him. He thinks it is a hallucination, which of course it must be. But he keeps seeing this owl over and over.
So, the protagonist goes to see a doctor and the doctor asks him what made him come there. "An owl" he says, and the doctor pales. After a thorough physical examination the doctor tells him: "you have one year to live, more or less." We are not told of what specific sickness the protagonist suffers. He asks, "but why the owl?" And the doctor answers, "we are studying that. You are not the only one. The owl is a symptom." Then, the doctor looks at the protagonist straight in his eyes and he says, "I can tell you something. Those who see the owl, have a chance to be saved."
In the meantime, there had been a long discussion between the protagonist and the foreign scientist, the one who had so well silenced the political commissioner. So, the foreign scientist had told to the protagonist his story, obliquely, yes, but clearly understandable. His fellow countrymen had not liked the idea that he had left the country to become a scientist. They are described as gangsters and criminals, but we have a feeling that there was something more at stake than just petty crimes. This man had made a choice and that had meant to make a clean break from his country and his culture; it had meant to accept the new Soviet Communist society. Now, he was spending his time in this new world trying to get his "greatest satisfactions and highest joys" by working for the people. And, because of that, his former countrymen had condemned him to death. So, he had changed his name and his identity, and he had even surgically changed his face to become unrecognizable. But he knew that "they" were looking for him and they would find him at some moment.
So, the destiny of the protagonist and of the foreign scientist are somehow parallel, they both have a limited time. After having seen the doctor, the protagonist understands the situation and he rushes to search for the foreign scientist. They can work together, they can join forces, in this way, maybe they can.... but in horror he discovers that the scientist has been killed.
In panic, the protagonist desperately looks for the notes he had collected over the years. But the cleaning lady tells him that she had used them to start the fire in the stove. She had no idea that they could have been important. The protagonist feels like he is walking in a nightmare. Just one year and he has lost his notes. He starts from scratch.... his great discovery.... how can he do? Yet, he decides to try.
He becomes absorbed in his work. He works harder and harder. Staying in the lab night and day and, when he goes home, he keeps working. His colleagues note the change; they are surprised that he doesn't react any more to the attacks of the provincial academician, but he doesn't care (which is, by the way, a good lesson on how to handle Internet flames). He still sees the owl; always bigger and coming closer to him, the owl has become something of a familiar creature, almost a friend.
Then, someone appears. It is a woman with well formed shoulders (of course, we are not told her name!). The protagonist recognizes her. It is not the first time he has seen her. He remembers having seen her with the now dead foreign Scientist.
The protagonist has no time for a love story. He has to work. He tries to ignore the woman but he is also attracted to her. He can concede her just a few words. Ten minutes, maybe. So they talk and the woman tells him. "It is you, I recognize you! You can't fool me!" The protagonist remembers something that the foreign scientist had told him; that he had his face surgically changed to escape from his enemies. Now, this woman thinks that the protagonist is really her former lover, who changed again face and appearance and didn't tell that not even to her.
The protagonist tries to deny that he is the former lover of the woman but, curiously, he doesn't succeed, not even to himself. In a way, he becomes the other, acting like him in his complete immersion in his work. The protagonist discovers that the foreign scientist had assembled a complete laboratory at home, much better than the lab at the academy. So he moves there, with the woman with the well formed shoulders (and the owl comes, too, perching on a branch just outside the window). Then, the protagonist even discovers that the foreign scientist was secretly copying his notes and he gave them to the woman, who has kept them for him. With these notes, he can gain months of work. Maybe he can make it in one year, maybe.....
The last part of the story goes on at a feverish pace. The protagonist becomes sicker and sicker; to the point that he has to stay in bed and it is the woman with the well formed shoulders who takes up the work in the lab. And the owl perches on the bed head. But they manage to get some important results and that's enough to catch the attention of the lab boss. He orders to everyone in the lab to come there and help the protagonist (and the woman with the well formed shoulders) to move on with the experiments.
In the final scene, the year has ended and we see the protagonist in bed, dying. But his colleagues show him the results of the experiment: something so bright, so beautiful; we are not told exactly what: anyway it is a way to catch sunlight in a compact form: a new form of energy, a new understanding of the working of the sun - we don't know, but it is something fantastic. Even the owl looks at that thing, curious. The protagonist hears the sound of bells from the window. A new year is starting. We are not told whether he lives or not, but in any case it is a new beginning and, whatever it happens, they'll tell of him that the years of his life had been 900.
And here we are. You see, it is a magic story. It keeps your attention; you want to know if the protagonist lives or not and you want to know if he manages to make his great discovery. But it is also the story of the life and of the mind of scientists that I think you can't find anywhere else in novels or short stories. It is curious that Dudintsev did so well because, as I said, he wasn't a scientist; he was a literate. But he managed to catch so incredibly well the life of a scientist - of a scientist working in the Soviet Union, yes, but not just that. Dudintsev's portrait of science and scientists goes beyond the quirks of the old Soviet world.
Yes, in Soviet science there were things that look strange for us, such having a political commissioner in the lab to watch what scientists are doing. But that's just a minor feature and today we have plenty of different constraints on what we do that don't involve a dumb political commissioner. The point is that scientists often work as if their life were to last just one year; at least during the productive time of their life; when they are trying to compress each year as if it were to be 900 years long. It is their lot: the search for the discovery, being so deeply absorbed in their work, being remote from everyone else; obsessed with owls that they alone can see.
And yet, Dudintsev's story is so universal that it goes beyond the peculiar mind of scientists. It is the story of all men, all over the world, of what we do and how we spend our life. And the key of the story is the woman with the well formed shoulders. She recognizes her former lover in the protagonist, or she feigns to recognize him. It is him or it is not him - it doesn't matter, but her devotion to her man is so touching: you perceive true love in this attitude. In the end, that's the key of the whole story: whatever we do in life, we do it for those we love.
Some of us are scientists, some aren't. But it is not a bad advice to live your life as if you wanted each year to be 900 years long. And every new year is a new beginning.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
What future for petroleum?
by Marco Pagani
x y
Crude oil 20 0,95
To be developed 5 0,80
To be discovered 3 0,67
LNG 5 0,80
Non conventional oil 2 0,50
Shale Oil 2 0,50
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
The cracked pot: a little hope for 2013
Painting by Giovanni Segantini (1858-1899)
The old story of the cracked pot explains the basic mechanism of the universe. The continuous spilling of energy from one energy level to another is the true engine of creation that generates those structures that we call "life". Real perfection, apparently, lies in a little imperfection.
Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments.
h/t "Attack on Earth"
| http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.ru/2013/01/ | [
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Coal has a rich heritage in West Virginia and has contributed significantly to the progress and well-being of West Virginians since it was first discovered in what is now Boone County in 1742 by Peter Salley, more than a century before West Virginia became a state.
The coal industry has played a major leadership role in the state’s economic, political and social history. The industry has also been a center of controversy and the brunt of unfounded criticism, giving rise to battles in the arenas of labor, environment and safety. It was coal that transformed West Virginia from a frontier state to an industrial state. Coal in 62 recoverable seams can be found in 43 of the state’s 55 counties.
The first widespread use of West Virginia coal began when the salt works along the Kanawha River expanded dramatically in the decades before the Civil War. Coal was used to heat the brine pumped from salt beds underneath the river. That modest use soon was dwarfed by the demands of a growing nation that looked to coal to heat its homes, power its factories and fuel its locomotives and steamships. When the anthracite fields of Pennsylvania no longer could provide the tonnage needed, American industrialists discovered the massive coalfields of West Virginia. Large-scale investment soon opened the remote valleys along the New, Bluestone, Tug, Monongahela, and Guyandotte rivers.
The Chesapeake & Ohio and Norfolk & Western railroads were built specifically to penetrate the rugged terrain of the coalfields, and investors purchased extensive tracts of land to lease to independent coal operators, Later, the Virginian and the Baltimore & Ohio also became coal-hauling lines as well. In those days, coal mining was highly labor intensive, but only a few rugged mountaineers lived in the remote, isolated hills and hollows where the operations developed. Thus, operators recruited much of their labor from two human migrations underway around 1900. Thousands of African-Americans fleeing discrimination and segregation left the Deep South, and many exchanged the poverty of the cotton fields for the bustling coalfields. Meanwhile, European immigrants fleeing religious persecution and impending war came to America to find jobs and homes, and many came from coal-bearing regions of Europe to the prosperous mines in West Virginia.
Today many decry conditions in the “coal camps,” but miners and their families fared as well as most working class Americans, and better than those unfortunate souls who labored in urban sweatshops or as rural sharecroppers.
West Virginia’s coalfields were home to some of the most significant labor strife in this nation’s history, as the United Mine Workers battled coal operators for control of the industry. Spectacular incidents such as the famed Matewan Massacre and the Battle of Blair Mountain, landmarks in American labor history, showed the strategic importance of the state’s crucial industry, and its national significance.
Today, West Virginia’s coal industry contains more than 500 mines, provides more than 44,000 direct and contract jobs, pays $1 billion dollars in annual payroll and hundreds of million dollars to state and local governments in taxes and contributions. Coal is still the rock-solid backbone of West Virginia’s industrial economy. | http://cedarswv.com/index.php/coal-primer/history | [
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Saturday, November 29, 2008
Hot Springs Village trunk - Chinese tourism scenic spots
China hot spring located in the trunk 12 km south of County Office. 80 km from the city of Yuxi, Yunnan Province, from the office 148 kilometers, covers an area of 2.3 square kilometers, the construction area of 70,000 m2. Hot Springs is a deep fault zone along the natural water cycle of the outcrop, the flow of 3760m3 /day, the water temperature 39-41 degrees, colorless and tasteless, State Department of Geology and Mineral Resources, and other technology to identify units that are re-chuen, carbonated, contain Piangui Suan, strontium and lithium, and other 11 kinds of human essential elements of macro and micronutrients 13, the appropriate temperature, the four seasons can be bath, second only to the quality of international Stephen France of the Peili Ai quality mineral water, tea bath is a valuable dual-use high-quality mineral water. Hot Springs early Eastern Han Dynasty have been found that drinking mineral water after a shower can be refreshing, fitness, disease-drive, the beauty of the skin results are obvious. During the Ming Dynasty by the masses as "Shen Shui", has been the development and utilization. Hot springs in the vicinity Cui over trees, there are banks of Stephen Jinsuo Old Bridge Resort and beautiful environment, health care is the Four Seasons Zengshou, drink-bath in convalescence, State tourism, leisure ideal place.
Hot springs from the trunk trunk, Jinsuo Bridge, Cui Pingshan, the composition of the nursing home. Beautiful, beautiful. Cliffs steep ridge trunk, thick, heavy shade, such as huge as the view down to drink. Since the hot trunk pouring between Shek Pik Ling Ha, a moderate temperature (at 39 Between ~ 40 ?), four-bath can be. Two dozen meters away from the spring, into separate bathrooms for men and women. Sulfur spring water, skin diseases, rheumatism patients have a certain effect.
Xiren praise is a hot trunk, "Shen Ke In addition to washing dirty cloud, a deep source of cinnabar." Once upon a time, during the winter and the beginning of the Lunar New Year, Huaning Near the sea, Jiangchuan, to build water and other places of the masses, have come to visit, bathing. They group together in Quanbian ignite the fire, Zaiyang chickens, drinking song, Tunghsiao up to Dan. Qing Zhang Lingyun who Huaning hot trunk title poem: "Man Mo Tang Quan boast the world, so that rumors Wen de Sai (Yuan Dynasty Huaning County had 000 West) If the trunk is no different from Ling Ling, water tranquil water more than Kerry. Bathing solution and teaches people how to Siyu, the arrival of many flowery appearance. I want to frequent cold as this, the Acura Le Tong Guan Hua-year-old. "It can be seen that the object of love springs nose. Hot clean water, according to laboratory tests showed that the hot spring is a re-chuen, carbonated category, the human body contains 13 kinds of beneficial micro-yuan And macro elements, which Piangui Suan, strontium and lithium content of up to three elements of the national standard for drinking natural mineral water, known as "high-quality precious drinking water." Radium, radon, and other elements of the human body will have the effect of a variety of diseases. Luan stacked heavily on Stephen Cheung, Longdong River outlet clear as a mirror, Lilikeshuo gravel bottom. Cross-strait pines Tsui , Wild flowers fragrant grass, the pleasant scenery.
Nursing home was founded in October 1986, is located about 200 meters away from the hot springs of Longdong River? Covers an area of 70 acres. Housing construction in accordance with the mountain covered, Cuolayouzhi to locally-produced yellow glazed tile roof of the coverage, style flavor, unique. In a nursing home after Chengkungling trunk, stands a 6? Block of various styles of the pavilion, Chui-verdant slopes decorate more enchanting charm. Nursing home also has physical therapy rooms, restaurant, conference room, dance hall, and so on, around the cultivation of fruits, flowers, evergreen the four seasons, the smell assail the nostrils. Entire nursing homes and shade trees in the hot springs, towering tall and straight as the Ridge, slowly flowing river of Longdong, magnificent bridge Jinsuo add radiance to each other, an integral whole.
Jinsuo bridge in the trunk near Hot Springs, across the River Cave, Elephant Trunk Hill West Ridge, lying like Changhong Jin Bo, like jade belt Jinchan play, a magnificent view. Bridge 10 years Qianlong Dynasty (1745 AD) for single double Steeple arc stone arch bridge, 9 meters wide, 37 meters in length, 14 meters high. 18 m-span bridge opening,? Arc with a radius of 11.5 meters, 2.1 meters high vector, Yunnan Province is the largest single-span stone arch bridge one. On the north side of the middle of the bridge has a Shihfang, there is Yin-ting South, North and South symmetrical structure of the unique, exquisite stone carvings Li, a beautiful environment. Jinsuo around the scenic bridge, bridge numerous bamboos, gurgling water under the bridge, tree-lined both sides of the strait. Although the earthquake and weathering several times, still stand tall.
Cuiping Shan and Cheung Pei Shan confrontation, the screen like a Qing Cui For drop, named. Shek Pik a mountainside, traditional costumes and smooth. The shape of the moon "The moon rock," Lam around in the grass under a foil to the fascinating glory.
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No comments: | http://china-tourism-landscape.blogspot.com/2008/11/hot-springs-village-trunk-chinese.html | [
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From: Steven Ng <>
Sat, 01 May 1999 10:31:53 +0800
A interesting but albeit quite a long article by Britt S Phillips, in one of his internet postings. Enjoy reading!
I've heard it said often... "You can't put all your eggs in one basket". What a novel concept and moreover a very sound strategy. That single statement sums up many things but sadly it is the reason most will never experience true joy.The same is true about many things in life.
Most take an idea or concept and kick it around in their mind. They actually talk themselves right out of even the best idea or strategy in about the same time it takes to make a deposit. Worse than this are those who don't even trust themselves to make the decision. No, no that won't do, they need to pass the idea around to family, friends or co-workers. How many of us are guilty of this? The fact is we all are.
The sad thing is most will never change. They don't know any other pattern and that's their choice. One of my favorite quotes is "Never listen to anyone in life unless they are doing better than you". Now, let's talk about the alternative for a moment. I'm going to ask you to do one simple thing now and I really want you to do this. You do not have to move from your chair and it will only take a
few moments. Please do this and don't skip past it. This is very important to your understanding of this article and how it will greatly benefit you.
Ok, take just 30 seconds (or longer of you like) and look around the room you are now in. Notice everything in it. Look at the simple things and the complicated ones as well. Now as your eyes travel, think about how everything you see started with a thought or an idea. As you do this, also think about how every item around you, came from a thought in someone's mind. Now imagine how our world would be if it didn't have people who could also not only imagine an idea or concept but also put it into practical use. These people are directly responsible for many things we enjoy and could never dream of being without. Yes, you guessed it, most things you and I take for granted each and every day.
You may be asking yourself right about now, "how can this help me become a better person?" Well here's how it has helped me!!! As I look back a few short years ago, I realize I indeed have come a long way. I also know that if I had not decided to stop listening to others around me, I would still be right where they wanted me to be today, STUCK on the same level they are on.
Yes that's right, most never even realize our friends and family subconsciously do not want us to succeed. They don't intentionally try to hold you or I back from our dreams it just happens and sadly it will always prevail.
A close friend (Buddy) is one of those people who like me is a dreamer. He often talks about how "one day" he will do this or "one day he will do that. I asked him once while we were eating lunch (after he had told me his latest idea had not materialized) what his girlfriend thought about his idea. He sadly replied "oh man, she said it was no good and that it couldn't work". I asked him immediately what he thought of his idea. He enthusiastically said "I think it could easily work and it would be great" I then asked him if he felt this way, why he had bothered to ask her or anyone else. His answer was "I don't know".
Well the sad truth in this example is that this sort of thing happen a billion times a day and it has stopped many from the much deserved success that awaits them. In my own businesses, people have commented many times to me... "Britt, you're a worker, you make things happen and you are always involved in one thing or another to make money".
What are these people really telling me? Aren't they in a way admitting to me they wish they indeed had inside the same thing that drives me to pursue my goals? Of course you and I know they do possess what it takes, we all do as no one is better than another. Another favorite quote is... "Unless you're the lead dog, the view never changes".
Remember my friend Buddy? About a year ago I asked him if he wanted me to teach him how to place classified ads. He asked me how much money I was making and I told him it was more than he would believe if I told him.He insisted and of course just as I expected he didn't believe me. We had many conversations and I would from time to time share the fact that the ads were continuing to be a real money maker for me.
Once I remember showing him my new car. His first comment was of course that it was a nice ride. Next he asked "what kind of payments did you get?" My reply was zero down and zero per month. he asked what I meant and with much pride I stated the car was paid in full and that I never did like making payments. Did this turn him around? It sure did, in fact he was so fired up he was ready to get serious about running his own classified ads. That was until he got home and started (you guessed it) talking to his girlfriend again.
Finally one day I asked him to have lunch and although it was not planned beforehand, I did enjoy it later when I saw his reaction to what happened after we had eaten. I had told him several times before how I had very
steadily pulled in many orders in a day. I could tell while he knew itwas possible, he still was going to have to see it first hand.
On the way back to my office, I picked up the day's mail and asked Buddy to help mecarryit inside. His energy was high and he was getting pumped up once again.Aswe opened random envelopes from around the world, his enthusiasm grew and grew. We sat there and did a count which revealed proof positive to him that almost $4,000.00 had came in that day !
Buddy was ready to explode he was now serious as I had never seen him before. I really thought he had gotten bitten by the bug to take actionandreally make a change in his life for the better.I wish I could tell you that today Buddy is super successful. The factishe is in his early thirties and still lives in his parent's basement.Heworks one job he hates after another for a hardly substantial hourlywage.
On a good day he will again get that gleam in his eye. He will get that glow of the dreamer tucked awaydeep inside him. The sad part is he doesn't do anything about it. I doubt he ever will. Does Buddy describe anyone that you know? Does Buddy describe you ?
My grandmother used to always tell me, "Britt, you can have anything inlife you want but only if you want it bad enough". I can hear her sweetvoice saying those words to me right now. She wanted to share with me amessage she knew would make the biggest difference in my life. She's only with me in spirit now as she died at age 83 two Thanks givings ago.
She left me with not only memories I will never forget but also a message thatshaped who I am today.In closing I'll just share that true success comes from having morethan asingle source of income. It also is imperative that you not allowanyone totalk you out of your dreams.
And whatever you do... DON'T sit and talkyourself out of them either! What will you do after you finish reading this article? For those of you wanting a dramatic change in your life will you let this be what moves you to take some action and make it happen? If you're already successful, is where you're at today as far as you can go ? I hope this article has touched you in a personal way and it will encourage you to never give up on your dreams. | http://chngoh.tripod.com/moneyandyou/shouldbeu.htm | [
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Pay the ransom, and then pay some more: Security teams should bet on defense
By Carl Herberger, Vice President of Security, Radware
When a movie character is kidnapped, paying the ransom doesn’t always result in the hostage’s release. Quite often, the kidnappers simply ask for more money.
In real life, companies who have become victims of a ransom attack face a similar situation. Paying the ransom encourages the hackers to attack again, and certainly keeps them in business to attack others.
Ransom attacks have come primarily in two forms: Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks flood a network or website with requests, paralyzing it, while a second form, so-called non-volumetric attacks, exploit vulnerabilities in a system to encrypt and lock a hard drive. Both models, as you probably know, have the same outcome: To free your frozen data or prevent an impending DDoS attack, hackers demand payment, usually in the form of a hard-to-trace cryptocurrency like Bitcoin.
Whether it’s a classic phishing scheme or an SSL based attack, the threat of DDoS, or another variant, ransom attacks are here to stay. They’re finding new victims and leveraging new tools. If your systems are locked down or under threat of a flood of malicious traffic, should you pay up? If you take the right steps, you might not need to.
Ransom attacks find new, vulnerable targets
Financial institutions remain a favorite target of hackers. That’s where the money is, after all. But cybercriminals have also turned their attention to healthcare facilities, which have proven themselves to be unprepared for attacks and more willing to pay than other organizations.
Hospitals require constant access to health records and their network, and ransomware can cripple operations. At the same time, the private health information sold on Darknet marketplaces commands higher prices than credit card data. In March, for example, an Austin, Texas-based urology practice began notifying 279,000 patients that a ransomware attack may have exposed their confidential financial and medical records.
The healthcare industry isn’t the only sector ripe for extortion – the critical factor is the nexus of money and a desperate need for access to data. The money doesn’t have to be high stakes. College students sometimes pay ransoms of $50 or $100 to unlock the coursework on their hard drives.
New tools, new threats
Ransom attacks have grown sneakier, and more powerful, as hackers try different methods. SSL-based attacks have increased by approximately 10 percent over the past year, according to our research. About 39 percent of companies experienced an SSL-based attack last year, and 75 percent of companies said they aren’t confident they can handle one. SSL attacks are one way hackers are dropping ransomware onto a victim’s system, taking advantage of the encryption to strike vulnerable organizations before they’re aware.
As for ransom DDoS, hackers can up the ante on their threats with powerful botnets harnessed by the Mirai malware. Capable of DDoS attacks above 1 TB, a Mirai botnet offers significant incentive to pay up. Of course, like with any ransom DDoS, no one knows if the hacker can make good on the threat until payment is refused.
To pay or not to pay?
Deciding whether to pay a ransom requires executives to weigh issues of business expediency against their morals. If your IT system is locked down, and you’re caught flat-footed, you can pay the ransom and get back to business, but you put a big target on your organization by doing so, essentially exclaiming that you’re willing to pay to avert an attack.
On the other hand, you can refuse to pay and deal with the loss of data, productivity, and revenue. It’s not an easy choice, but consider the moral question: Do organizations do themselves any favors by keeping criminals in business?
If you’re going to pay, do so knowing that you’ll likely keep paying. The alternative? Shore up your defenses, segment your backups, and build a system that can easily be restored to normal if a user clicks on a bad link. It’s cheaper in the long run, and it slows the flow of cash into the pockets of criminals. | http://ciostory.com/technology/security/pay-ransom-pay-security-teams-bet-defense/ | [
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Reliving the horror in Orlando
Univision’s weekly news show Crónicas de Sábado recently aired a special re-enactment of the 2016 Pulse nightclub mass shooting complete with actors and special effects. They called it Baño de Sangre. Translated, it means Blood Bath.
The producers interviewed the survivors shortly after the massacre which killed 49, many of whom were still in shock and emotionally traumatized. Some had no memory of the interviews while others claim they thought they were speaking with news reporters.
Just months later, Univision began promoting the episode that included actors and special effects. So it’s no surprise that the victims along with Orlando’s LGBTQ community condemned the show and asked Univision to re-think its broadcast.
Univision responded by removing the commercials promoting the show and releasing a statement that the show would be “deeply respectful of the many people whose lives were impacted by this tragedy.” Then they aired the show as planned.
In this age when nearly everyone has a Smart Phone and generations are developing a narcissistic need to share their images with the world, television news has unlimited access to real-time video. Networks air footage of a police stand-off at a college campus while it’s still going on thanks to bystanders uploading images at alarming speeds.
Consequently, we have clearer – and yet more unclear – information about the events in our world. They’re blurry, full of panic and horror, offering more shock and awe than actual facts. But they get ratings.
And true crime partial re-enactments have been a popular television tool for decades. So is it any surprise that these producers went one step further with added blood and special effects? After all, realism is necessary to get the complete picture.
The question is: Do we need this picture?
Shortly after a woman was killed on Highway 61 this past January, dashcam footage of the three-car accident was aired during the TBT News Hour. Was this appropriate? Or necessary?
With the growing concern over the safety of that stretch of road, there was a strong argument that the video would have educational value to the public. The images were slightly blurry and at a distance so no one’s privacy was invaded. No one’s personal loss exploited. However, it did clarify what happened better than the post-accident photos.
Can Univision say the same? Given the preponderance of violence in entertainment, most adults can imagine what it was like with a gunman shooting inside the crowded Pulse nightclub.
And what is the educational value? Is this a how-to video for the next generation of crazed killers?
Every day, television news must decide what kind of visuals to add to their stories. It can be a fine line between information and intrusion. Education and glorification.
Real news focuses on the former. Fake news takes advantage of the latter.
Obviously, the survivors and the victims’ families didn’t have to watch Blood Bath’s violent re-enactment. Most probably didn’t. But now it’s out there. And it should have been enough for everyone the first time. | http://ckprthunderbay.com/fitv.aspx?id=2347 | [
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HTML/CSS JavaScript/AJAX Server-Side Marketing General Comp-Sci
How Java Garbage Collection Works
By Justin Poirier
In the Classroom306 article Details of C/C++ Dereferences and C++ Calls to delete, it is explained that a C/C++ program's heap is contained in a contiguous block of memory, and calls to allocation and deallocation functions/operators (e.g. "new") are solely responsible for managing the heap's contents (dynamically-allocated variables). This article will build on the contents of that article, to explain how memory management works in Java.
The most basic function of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is to convert java bytecode to native machine code at run-time. This may be accomplished using interpreting, by which each line of bytecode is converted to machine code just before being executed; or just-in-time compilation, by which conversion is done on several lines of bytecode at a time, and such a block may be reused later in the execution without re-compiling. With either system, the JVM, as opposed to code written by the Java programmer, is frequently in control of the CPU. During certain bouts of control, the JVM performs the additional task of deleting items on the heap that are no longer referenced. This process is called garbage collection, and it does the work that calls to the deallocation functions/operators do in C/C++, making such calls unnecessary in Java.
If garbage collection is implemented with reference counting, the JVM is continuously at work monitoring each heap item, before the time comes to actually delete it. A count is kept for each heap item, of the number of references to it at a given time. The JVM must increment this count whenever a variable in the Java code is set equal to the item, and decrement the count when a variable that previously referenced the item is set equal to null or some other item, or goes out of scope. When this count becomes zero, the item can be deleted.
In modern JVM's, garbage collection is more commonly implemented using tracing. Instead of keeping track of the number of references to an item over time, a tracing collector periodically identifies all references that have been created by the Java program and might be used again (live references), and deletes all items that are not the object of such a reference. The first phase is called marking because referenced objects must be marked in some way--for example, by setting a bit flag in the actual heap space used to store an object. The majority of live references will typically be found in the form of variables local to some active function (ie. existing on the call stack), or as member variables of class instances that are themselves objects of other live references. Therefore a JVM must search for references in both these areas of memory. To do so it must have knowledge of how the raw bits within each function's typical stack frame and each class's typical instance are divided up into variables. However, a JVM may not always distinguish between the types of variables it encounters, and may therefore ignore some live references in favour of discerning whether they are references or other primitive types.
The second phase of tracing, where unreferenced objects are deleted, is called sweeping. As with C/C++, a Java program's heap may suffer from fragmentation after objects are allocated and then deleted. JVM's may try to reduce this effect. In addition to combining adjacent free blocks of memory like C/C++ systems, JVM's may combine non-adjacent free blocks by moving allocated items around using compacting or copying. In order to avoid having to update every reference to an item that has been moved, Java is typically implemented such that a reference points not to the allocated block of an object itself, but to an entry in a lookup table that contains the address of each object referenced. Each access to an object implicitly uses this table. This is similar to the technique used in the dynamically-allocated memory system presented in the Classroom306 article A System to Dynamically-Allocate Memory With Minimal Fragmentation. | http://classroom306.com/tutorials/how_Java_garbage_collection_works.html | [
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Quality Essay Paper at The Attractive Price
Every day, thousands of students all over the world receive the task to prepare a writing project. The grade for such assignment influences the overall picture of academic performance of a student. It should be noted that preparing essay paper is not the only task. Except for preparing some writing assignment, a student is supposed to attend classes and take part in different activities like sports. What is more, family matters and household are not supposed to be disregarded as well. Meanwhile, each and every student wants to go to the parties or throw them by him or herself. Therefore, the question arises, how to find time for everything? How to achieve the optimum balance?
Unfortunately, for a great number of students it is almost impossible. It is very hard to provide in-depth research when your friends are hanging out at the party and you are supposed to spend hours in the dusty library. Some students give up and fail to maintain a balance in their life. Consequently, they make a poor fist of preparing good paper and receive low grades. Thus, let us focus on the main problems connected with preparing essay papers and clarify why students decide to order the assignments from the different online writing services.
We have conducted a short interview connected with the problems that arise when dealing with essay paper writing. So, these are the most commonly used explanations.
1. Preparing the writing task is time-consuming.
It is not a secret that one has to provide an in-depth research to prepare a good piece of writing. What is more, all the sources used are supposed to be academic and reliable. The next thing is to prepare at least few drafts to make sure that a student is moving in the right direction. One should not forget that deadlines can be very short; it means that everything should be done quickly. References are the cornerstone of the whole essay paper. The reason is that each assignment is supposed to be based on proper evidence. There are a lot of different types of references that can be used in the paper, i. e. scholar journals and magazines, books, interviews, records, documentaries, and others. By and large, there are various sources, but the hardest thing is to pick the right ones.
2.Preparing writing task limit the time that can be spend with friend and family.
It is not a secret that preparing custom essay papers takes a lot of time. Therefore, a student must burn the midnight oil writing the required assignment instead of spending time with friends. What is more, less time will be spent with family. One can conclude that such student will probably miss a great number of fun activities sitting in the library with books.
3. When writing is not your forte, preparing a paper turns into a huge challenge.
Considering the information provided above, it becomes clear that even preparing a draft can become a nightmare for some students. Not to mention the fact that writing is not an easy task for many of those whose writing skills are not very good. Sometimes, it seems that you can easily speak on some topic, but when it comes to writing – tabula rasa. You can spend hours sitting before the screen, but putting your thoughts into writing seems totally impossible. The reason is that not all of us are good writers In this case, ordering custom essay paper is the best solution. One can purchase quality paper from the seasoned professionals who know how to meet all the requirements of the assignment.
If you do not want to worry about your grades any more, choosing our writing service is the best solution. Every customized essay paper that is prepared by our talented and highly qualified writers will bring high grade. At Custom-Essays-Online.com, thousands of students have already received professional writing help. Our company has been working for years and a lot of returning customers are a sign of high quality. Our writing service is totally reliable! All the papers that we propose are at a reasonable price. It should be noted that we hire only those writers who obtain academic degrees and are experienced in preparing assignments of different levels, such as high school, college, and university. | http://custom-essays-online.com/essay-paper | [
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Q. How is the value of "my" car determined?
Most insurance companies use a service that maintains late model vehicle values. Like, Kelley Blue Book, or Edmunds. Establishing a value for your car is simply using one of the available formulas to compute the value of your car based upon the general condition of your car, its mileage, plus the options and equipment package on your car and other allowed factors. | http://daviddanda.com/faqs/116-q-how-is-the-value-of-my-car-determined | [
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Steve Jobs Al Davis is dead. The Apple chairman and former CEO who made personal computers, smartphones, tablets, and digital animation mass market products NFL owner who built the Oakland Raiders and became an NFL icon, passed away today. We're going to miss him. Deeply, and personally.
Steven P. Jobs Al Davis passed away on October 5th 8th, 2011 after a long struggle with pancreatic cancer...various illnesses. He was just 56 82 years old. We mourn his passing, and wish his family the very best.
Let's address this up front: Gizmodo Deadspin and Steve Jobs Al Davis had, at best, a tumultuous an imaginary relationship. Yet no matter how much he may have hated us probably had no idea who we were, we admired him.
No, that's not quite right. We loved him.
He was the reason many of us got into this industry N.W.A, or even care about technology gangsta rap at all. He made the computer black and white tracksuits cool and smartphone firing Lane Kiffin a national spectacle. Bill Gates may have put a computer on every office desk, but it was Steve Jobs Al Davis who put one in every dorm room and bedroom and living room brought back the overhead projector. And then years later, he repeated the trick, putting one in every bag and every pocket, thanks to the iPad and iPhone. If you use a computer or smartphone today, it is either one he created, or an imitation of his genius. he hired Tom Cable without investigating his qualifications.
He changed the way movies are made, the way music is sold, the way stories are told, the very way we interact with the world around us. offensive game plans were executed. He helped us work, and gave us new ways to play open up the passing game. He was a myth made Sid Gillman man.
Prior to Steve Jobs Al Davis, computers the Raiders were alien to most of us. They were accessible to few people without an engineering degree a terrible team before he took over head coaching duties in 1963. Not merely because of their complex operating procedures antiquated ground attack, but also because they were so cold and so inhuman boring. Jobs Davis understood that they could be something more than that. That while computersThe Raiders would never be people losers again, he could would endow them with humanity swagger and a "commitment to excellence." He could transform them into machines that not only anyone could use black and silver menaces, but that everyday people would enjoy using with new garish uniforms, thanks to the art of great design. He made them something that would be part of our lives. And he did that again and again. with great pride.
His life story is familiar, but it deserves repeating. He was given up for adoption by his unmarried parents. He grew up in California Flatbush, and was very much a product of that place and time. He took drugs went to Wittenburg University and Syracuse University. He got into phone hacking coaching at Adelphi College. Both were precursers to what would always be his interest: changing the status quo.
In 1976 1960 he started Apple in a garage as an assistant coach with the Los Angeles/San Diego Chargers. Together with Steve Wozniak Gillman, he shipped the first true fully-built personal computer tweaked the West Coast Offense, with, the Apple I"vertical passing game." He drove development of the Mac, threw early and often, understanding that it was the future of computers scoring lots of points. The great thing that we would all see. He brought in a grown up himself in to run the company. And that grown up forced him the Raiders out of the company that he built Oakland and into the wilderness Los Angeles.
While he wasgone in Los Angeles, he started NeXT computer to get greedy. The RaidersNeXT operating system would form the underpinnings of Apple's OS X, and iOS would even flirt with moving to Irwindale.
He also started the best movie studio of the past 30 years "black and silver" movement. Pixar's filmsThe Raiders' uniforms were innovative, to be sure. It pushed the boundaries of CGI team insignias to such an extent that even today its early films iterations still work. But technology is smirking football pirates are only a tool helmet logo. As with everything else he understood that great technology apparel marketing alone is not enough. ItThe Raiders must be human win consistently to have an impact. Pixar Raider moviesfootball tell storiesgames are an event. They make grown men cry dress in barbaric skeleton costumes on humid autumn Sundays. That was the impact of Steve Jobs Al Davis.
He became a family man obsessed with carrying a towel in public. He reunited with his biological mother, and his sister, the writer Mona Simpson. He married. He had children. He was, by all accounts, a great dad. It was his role as husband and father that helped drive his second act at Apple him be more human.
After his return, to Apple, the companythe Raiders began shipping iconic product head coach after iconic product head coach away. Products Moves that defined a decade. The iMac, OS X, the iPod, iTunes Mike White, Joe Bugel, Jon Gruden (which was very good, before it he was very badshipped to Tampa Bay), the iPhone, the iPad Bill Callahan, Lane Kiffin, Tom Cable, Hue Jackson. All of these were deeply human products head football coaches. They reflected his understanding of how technology was used not only in the workplace, but in the home capricious an owner he could be. In his keynotes later years, product demos press conferences typically showed not executives, but families his terrifying visage snarling and covered in Band-Aids.
He made AppleThe Raiders into the most valuable company in the world a sometimes great football team.
He never met his biological father Tom Cable.
He accomplished so many things, in so many fields professional football that it's tempting to compare Jobs Davis to someone from the past. A Thomas Edison Pete Rozelle or a Ben Franklin George Halas, even a Leonardo Da Vinci Nosferatu. We tend to do that because it helps us understand. But it does him a disservice. He was unique. His own person. Our own person.
He was our emblematic genius team owner. In 100 years, when historians talk about the emergence of the age of intelligent machines terrifying football executives, it is Steve Jobs Al Davis they will hold up as the great exemplar of our era.
They will remember his flaws, too. When Atari Davis hired JobsKiffin and Woz Cable to write coach the code for the iconic Atari game Breakoutorganization, the pair earned a $5000 bonus for completing the work, largely done by Woz were both colossal assholes. But Jobs Davis kept the bonus a secret, and only paid his partner $375 living. When his daughter Lisa a gargoyle was born in 1978, he spent two years denying he was her its father. His denials forced her it and her its mother to support themselves on welfare. In the workplace he's often been described as temperamental and even petulant. He could be arrogant and unforgiving.
He was not a god. He was simply a man.
Yet for all his faults, he changed the world. He made it better.
He once famously asked of a press corps critic "what have you done that's so great?" called ESPN's Chris Mortensen a "professional liar." For Jobs Davis, the answer to that question was very nearly unlimited that was a pretty good day.
Our world will be less interesting, less exciting, and less meaningful without him.
Goodbye, Mr. Jobs Davis. We will miss you so very much.
(Ed. Note: Portions of this obit were borrowed from Gizmodo.) | http://deadspin.com/5847996/steve-jobs-al-davis-is-dead-update?tag=Tribute | [
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China's successful launch of the sixth beidou navigation satellite
Xichang 1 nov this website today 0 26 points, xichang satellite launch center in China with the "long March 3 c rocket, success will be the sixth beidou navigation satellite into space, this is our country this year continuous network satellite launch of the fourth beidou navigation system.
BeiDou satellite navigation system (COMPASS, Chinese transliteration name BeiDou), as China's independent development, independent operation of the global satellite navigation system, is the national important spatial information infrastructure is under construction. Through the development of 19 years, beidou system in surveying and mapping, fishery, transportation, telecommunications, water conservancy, forest fire prevention, disaster reduction and relief, and has been applied many fields, such as national security, produce remarkable economic benefit and social benefit. Especially in the sichuan wenchuan, yushu in qinghai has played a very important role in earthquake relief.
Beidou satellite navigation system is one of the four big suppliers in today's global satellite navigation system. Beidou system construction, promote the global cooperation and development in the field of satellite navigation, promote the technological progress of the global satellite navigation system.
In accordance with the "three-step" development strategy, the beidou satellite navigation system will be 2012 years ago in the capacity of regional services in the asia-pacific region; Around 2020, global coverage ability in service. China's satellite navigation system management office in the launch on the rocket for the first time use the beidou satellite navigation system. Blue circle logo contains the big dipper, SiNa, grid elements such as earth and beidou satellite navigation system in both Chinese and English names, indicate beidou star system, with high precision and high reliable for global positioning, navigation and timing services industry characteristics, to show its open compatible, towards the world, the construction of the global service tenet.
The launch of a satellite and carrier rocket respectively by China aerospace science and technology group corporation, China academy of space technology and China academy of launch vehicle technology development. This is the 133th long march rocket flight.
TypeInfo: Industrial Policy
Keywords for the information: | http://en.hwacreate.com.cn/news_detail/newsId=224.html | [
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Wednesday, 24 August 2016
Changing culture, not easy but the prize is huge!
Want to Change culture? Then change habits.
I get asked a lot, “how can I change the culture in my organisation?” This is probably because I’m obsessed by change in the workplace (see previous posts) and I studied cultural theory along with other things as part of my MA. In a nutshell I believe If you want to change the culture of an organisation you have to change its habits. That is the habitual behaviour of it’s individual people. I always reply that’s not an easy task.
It’s widely written that organisational culture is all about values, behaviours and actions of its staff. Often expressed as the unique social and psychological environment of the organisation’s members. History, technology, strategy, types of employees, management styles, national culture, vision, values, norms and systems all play a part in the creation of culture. Along with symbols, language, assumptions, beliefs that become habits! Phew!
Ravasi and Schulz (2006) described organisation culture as; “a set of shared assumptions that guide what happens in an organisation by defining appropriate behaviour for various situations”. Wow, that’s deep. What’s more staff teach these assumptions and behaviours to new members as a way of perceiving, thinking and feeling. The sum of this is an employee identity that affects how they identify with the organisation. In other words corporate culture.
That’s really profound, and it is reinforced daily so it’s hard to change, a bit like turning the Titanic. I’ve got an old copy of Charles B Handy’s seminal work Understanding Organisations. The first section chapter 7, deals with defining organisational culture in great detail and is still a fabulous read.
So how might we begin to change it?
First read this brilliant blog by Steve Chapman
I thought I might try and list some questions we could ask staff to simplify the process. And I’ve begun to list the areas that change makers need to address with a specific organisation in mind.
Question is where are we now? And where do we want to be? What are the values in that department at present and how do we want them to change? Why do we want to change? Break that down, what are the shared departmental assumptions? What are they based on? What do people do every day? How can we begin to change it? Where do we want to end? What do we want to start?
Although this article by Steve Chapman focuses on creativity, I believe it contains the essence of how to change culture. Ask difficult questions and prepare for things to break!
Set the scene, take 1
I’m imagining as I think of a specific department in a particular organisation.
I walk into the dept currently in my head. It has an air of formality. Presenteeism matters, what you’re producing doesn’t. It isn’t inviting or interesting to visitors it’s actually intimidating in its blandness. It’s full of perceived stuffy people dressed in the same uniform with their heads down. The hot desks, cleared every evening have zero personality. It doesn’t cross fertilise ideas with anyone outside and the people clearly don’t get out much. This is by design and is reinforced each day by shared habits and behaviours. and a possible shared vision of the rest of the organisation. Possibly world, Gosh, is there a shared ‘world view’ also prevalent here? I’m scared, I’ll run now before my formal meeting, I’m only there for a ten second slot, the rest will be irrelevant to me. Will anyone miss me, last time they were all comatose before my bit. They scoffed at my ideas.
If I sit for a while what behaviour do is see? Men in suits and ties, I was struck in Hamburg recently by the office uniform of middle aged German men, blue shirts beige slacks. What do I see here? Shirts, collars ties, pointy shoes. The women are less formal but not informal and indeed some follow the format. I observe People arrive early, they stay late. They sit in the same locations. the hot desk, open plan vibe encourages no personality of space. It’s quiet, diaries are full of formal back to back meetings with formal agendas. The language is formal and reflects the professional education of the staff members. There is a clear hierarchy. People come and go from meetings. They don’t share information.
Environment & silos of experts
There are so many things here where do I begin? Let’s start with the environment in that office and progress down to the individuals. The organisation shapes the environment of this department. This means it’s open plan and there are no collaborative spaces, you’re not even allowed to stick blue tack on the wall leave alone anything else.
Silo thanks to
People tend to sit within a set group. They can actually sit anywhere they choose but they group naturally. This is ok, and research extols the virtues of silos of experts. They share stuff, have great conversations and can be productive.The open plan hot desk scenario here leads to lack of personalisation. There is evidence that closed work spaces can be more productive. And personal adornment of those areas increases productivity. Essentially as the articles suggest, workspace needs to be flexible. Lets redesign it together to make it more user friendly, suitable for the work to be done and useful for other more collaborative work too.
Bump in and get out more
The other problem with the silo arrangement is that people don’t bump into other silos of experts even those who work in related but different fields. Many books describe the positive effects of bumping into each other. Walter Isaacson’s ‘Innovators’ is a fab book for understanding this. Steve Jobs designed the new HQ of Pixar so that people would bump into each other in the atrium. He designed the environment to make it happen. Knowing that great things would occur and they did.
Co working spaces take this further. (co work hubs in Devon) At the extremes the better ones actively encourage cross fertilisation of ideas. See Impact hubs and their success stories for examples of this. Essentially people should spend 70% of their time outside of their silo. Time to cross that bridge.
Question; how can we redesign the space for quiet silo working with like minded experts. But make this personal space just a safe haven?Question; how can we encourage staff get out seventy percent of their time to a co work space or other professional environment?
In a nutshell go gather pollen from the flowers and bring it back to the hive.
Buckminster Fuller
Whilst we’re at it, take those empty walls, ask who inspires the folks at work there and fill em with pictures. Apparently Ranulph Fiennes was inspired by pictures of explorers on the wall of his family home. Don’t let the images go stale, circulate the images to keep them fresh and put a short description underneath. The department in my head brings pictures of James Lovelock, Heath Robinson, Jony Ive, Mahatma Gandhi, Buckminster Fuller, Petra Kelly and many others to mind. But ask your people and let them bring variety. In a big organisation they could swop occasionally with other departments. On that subject some of their time could be spent in the other department silos. Go forth to shared spaces and communicate. get out more!
Environment done! Getting out more done! What about some personality
So we’ve shaken up the work place and the amount of time spent in it a bit. But we need to bring out the personalities a bit more too. What are we going to do with what we learn from the big outside? Will we discuss it at the end of our rigid formal meeting whilst everyone scoffs? Or will we clear a space in our diaries each day for some informal bumping of ideas?
According to research, 52 minutes is desired as the maximum productive time, but only if we have 17 minutes in between doing something completely off the wall. So let’s use that time for an upload together. Make it a bring and share, bring ideas, learn, read, show videos and put them all to the sword in a public forum. Discuss pros and cons, make it fun. Do this every day. Have expressive space, big whiteboards, pin up spaces etc. People talk about learning and development as though it’s something separate from your work. It should be part of your DNA to learn and take on new ideas and break down old assumptions and do it collectively.
Language and identity
thanks to
This upload forum described above also serves a different special purpose. It begins to attack the assumptions of agreement. It starts to change the dept language. It starts to erode ingrained values and beliefs. It starts to give people personal identities as they emerge from their silos. It can begin to shape how people self-identify. There are swathes of academic writing about identity and I bow to the research of e.g. David Campbell and Ziauddin Sardar. I cannot begin to open this Pandora’s box, but I will say that changing language to suggest activities rather than cultural themes is a good start. Say out loud; I’m an innovator, engineer, creative, environmentalist, maker, writer, photographer. These are positives. Move away from job titles, they’re a bit irrelevant and yesterday. Move away from descriptions like, team leader or manager these are equally unhelpful. Self identity around what you want to do might be nice place to start, e.g. Environmental champion, creative engineer etc. This should become default language, the way you introduce yourself in a speed dating session. A bit like your elevator pitch for yourself. Oh and watch this video it deals with shedding old identities better than I can.
As the language advances and the upload conversations will become more detailed, notions of who do I identify with can come in. Not in a negative way like I’m a facist and all my friends are white supremacists, hell No! More like I’m really into making things, I’m influenced by Michael Reynolds and Geoff ‘Earthship’ Starlington, I like the work of Jony Ive, I follow the philosophy of Buckminster Fuller and Hundertwasser, I listen to Curtis Mayfield and Megadeath. Suddenly each participant in upload develops a personality. Someone recently suggested a bring your personality to work day. Maybe that’s a possible start? Who influences you at work and why? Who influences or inspires you in life and why? What are their values and qualities you admire, have you worked this out? Do you carry this knowledge with you? Do you share it? Go share it now!
So the environment has changed, people are out more and the personalities they bring back begin to emerge now what?
How do we cultivate these changes further?
So identities are not fixed, remind people they can change their nationality, religion, beliefs, gender, sexuality, name, status, geography (urban/rural). All of these cross cutting themes can vary throughout your life! Oh yes they can and do! But try to see people without those labels, it’s really hard and takes practice but it’s worth it. Some organisations manage this, it’s worth taking a long look at them. Ask me for details.
Let’s develop some ideas about culture change a bit more. How are we going to move further together?
Well people can choose their identity and express it and they can choose their actions. They don’t have to conform to organisational assumptions. Move them further, ask them who they identify with? Characters from film or fiction, role models? heroes? Why ask them this? Because I suspect they are a great guide to where people get their ideas and possibly to where they think they’re going, or would like to go. Who influences you? Who do you aspire to be?
How do you want to be seen now, and how do you want to be remembered?
Now we have opened Pandora’s box, we are beginning to change things. People are attempting to express themselves within the new environment and new ideas are forming as a result of the getting out more.
How do we filter those ideas into the work that needs to be done?
Ask questions of each other and ourselves. Why am doing this work? Who else needs to know about it? (Not just the usual suspects our professional partners). Who is working on this stuff as well as me? Originality is very rare, someone is doing your project somewhere else, even fire was discovered in different parts of the world simultaneously. So go find out who you might be able to collaborate, share with, increase value of, learn from. Where shall I go to find out who’s doing this? Can I test it with someone completely different than me? What do I know? Why do I think I know it? What do I want to know? Who’s opinion do I currently value and why? Is that correct?
I’ll say it here and now; it is sharing information that is powerful not keeping it to yourself!
thanks to
Once we work together, we need to create a vision. At present we are here. Where do we want to be? What will it look like? How will we behave? Describe ourselves and the organisation? What will people see, hear, feel when they come to see us? Once you’ve built, collected, asked, advanced, changed the environment you work in. And the way you work, got out more, questioned yourself and others. The culture will begin to change and it will show.
Ponder this scary thought, you’ve changed the culture, collectively and individually. When you finally put your ideas up there, what does it feel like? Ask any artist, writer, film maker, songwriter. Very scary but really exciting. It will be challenging or beautiful but not passive!
So what about habits?
Question: What about habits what have they got to do with it? Habits become what we wear, where we work, how we describe things, what we eat, what we read, the cafe we drink our tea at, the tea we drink (coffee in my case can’t stand tea, was an avid Earl Grey drinker then I stopped and drank coffee instead) our work patterns, how we describe ourselves, how we relate to others. The things that shape the assumptions that lead to the culture of an organisation come down to habits.
Individual habits and they can change. They are the elements of a culture and they are a choice.
Some people say that they are part of our personalities. But if you vary habits and break patterns it can lead to unexpected benefits and adventures and enhanced wellbeing. Imagine the thrill of watching a different soap opera. Get into new characters in a book. Or read different news, possibly with widely varied or opposite views to the ones you habitually follow. Scary but enticing territory. I watched horror films for a while found them challenging and jarring. I went back to my safe zone of crime, but I never quite viewed it in the same way again. I really began to understand why I liked it so much more than horror.
Back to work and culture
Do you wear a suit every day? Or wear one occasionally? If you never do maybe you should. How about you never wear the same twice in two days. Perhaps people will enjoy a guess and wonder what you might wear next. Then go sit in a different place, pick a silo elsewhere. Ask them questions about or related to your work and theirs. People are flattered by questions. Organise a non-traditional meeting, read up on how to do it. Or ask me for help. Yes you can do all of these things in the same day, after all isn’t variety the spice of life?
Change your language, describe your role and yourself differently when asked. Invent a new persona at work, be who you really are. Present your work as you. Ask for critique in a constructive way, or combative if you dare! You’ll never be the same again. Programme your work in a pattern, 50 mins head down, 20 doing something radical. Go work elsewhere, invite others in! Mix your meetings up. Bring in outsiders (shock horror) Let the washing machine engineers meet the fashion designers and together they can design a new car. Read this brilliant article on collaborative culture by Rosie Manning Oh and just read more, its like learning and development only more enjoyable. here’s a great guide to how and why.
Set the scene, take 2
In my mind I walk into the dept, it’s a hive of activity, individuals work here. I know that because no two look alike. They’re in groups or silos huddled together hard at work. Another group are around a display board. They discuss an idea, it’s a challenge to get a word in. When I do I’m accepted, they listen to and record my contribution. The silos break out into a hive of activity. The meeting i attend is brisk, it has objectives and outcomes. People only come in when they’re needed. Not all of the orchestra plays at once! I take actions with deadlines so do others. There’s an acknowledgment we will complete them on time.
A walking meeting passes by deep in conversation. I notice staff have adorned the walls with interesting images. I ponder them whilst I drink my coffee. I go to a different dept and ask what their images are all about. For the next fifty minutes I write my next project overview. I take it out to the display board, colleagues and visitors gather to discuss it, not a suit or tie in sight. The odd pointy shoe here and there and some decent beards but I ignore that and view them as people. I record all of their views and ideas verbatim, they help gel and confirm some of mine. Some are radically different. I make a note to test them against my assumptions.
Borrowed Earthship diagram
I’m off now to work in the DeskLodge Bristol now (or any other co work space you’d like to imagine). I know it’s full of creatives today for a conference. I’m Going to stay for the evening discussions. I will show them my project, I’m scared but excited. Work will never be the same again. I get up excited to cycle in. I’ve got a picture of an Earthship in my bag I’m thinking about building. I want to know what people think, how they would improve it. Tomorrow I’ll work at the science park, see what they think of my latest project. Will it stand up to their scrutiny or will I need to rethink. it feels exciting when I put myself out there. I’m hoping for something innovative. if nothing else it’ll be a challenge, it may be beautiful.
If you want to change your organisation, change the culture. If you want to change the culture change the habits. If you want to make it more diverse, stop trying and change the above two.
NB. I’ve tagged some books and articles I’ve enjoyed, there’s a wealth of research done on this topic too great to mention here. This is simply a blog of my thoughts not an academic paper. Go read more it’s fun! If you want help doing things different ask me.
This blog is also on Medium:
Monday, 1 August 2016
Where are the future creatives? And what are we doing about it?
Only 1% of people on the internet are creators!
Creative tools past
Its an odd paradox that in an age where we have the most powerful creative tools in our hands most of us use them to do passive tasks. At best we might take a selfie, add a filter and post it in the ether. That is the endless stream of social media. yes we might well look back nostalgically at our efforts. But I suggest there are less and less people able and willing to make a living out of creating. Why is this?
First of all I guess the notion of jobs like photographer, artist, poet, writer, musician. Considered the creative roles appear diluted by digital technology and means of distribution. When I was a teenager if you wanted to take a photograph (my obsession back then), you had to and first save up for a decent camera. Mine was a Zenit E, followed by Canon AE and many more. Also the accessories as you gradually learned the trade of using different lenses for different reasons and flash in the dark etc. If you were a fanatic like me, you but a darkroom with a Durst enlarger. Struggled to create a space of total blackout where you could develop and enlarge your masterpieces. I was told that good print could last a 100 years or more. I wonder what digital archives will be around in 100 years?
Ingrained in that crazy slow learning curve was a desire to capture images that endured and pleased others. And master the techniques of presenting them. To exhibit was to bare your soul. The great and good came from far and wide to see, and if you were lucky purchase your efforts. You would number them to make them even more desirable. Oddly I've noticed a resurgence of people using film recently that might one day return to this situation. But I doubt it.
Like music and writing, the art of photography died with the digital camera. Music struggles on but the means of distribution have rendered earning a living as a musician almost impossible. Art is the last bastion. Struggling in its own way to stand out in the crowded space where social sharing and advertising increasingly co-exist. One in 11 jobs or 8.8 per cent of all UK jobs now falls within the creative economy, and one in six of all UK graduate jobs are also creative economy positionsThis is seen as good, but as work opportunities decline and the traditional notion of work disappears with the coming AI revolution. The percentage is going to have to be a lot bigger!
Part of developing and autonomous, think on your feet, adaptable workforce is going to be all about stimulating and encouraging creative skills beyond the odd selfie.
My self with Prisma - 5 mins of effort!
But how?
At the moment our education system and every other facet of society pushes people towards the traditional view of 9-5 treadmill jobs. The new breed of hamsters, apart from a small minority, seem happy to follow. Disruption is happening in many aspects of society, bitcoin, crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, AI, autonomous vehicles. But not in traditional education. According to many commentators it kills creativity. This is something we need to tackle quickly. Or we will hive our future creatives to mindless silos nose to the grind wheel.
The solution is opening things up, yes even schools and colleges. Oh the risks I hear you scream. But as long as we keep closed systems, closed institutions and closed thinking, we will not stimulate the 'autonomy economy' of future creatives.
My vision is that the best things happen when strange worlds meet. Co working hubs around the world are demonstrating this almost daily. what we need is to do this earlier, faster and cheaper to enable worlds to collide more often. Creative hubs, freely available to all are the answer. When I was a kid the library was my education, but they are no where near cool enough anymore. We need spaces that are the epitome of wow. Designed to attract and throw together the cleverest minds of all ages and social strata. No government will support this as this kind of autonomy terrifies them. It is for our generation, those who know how to make stuff, to provide them for the future.
Some light is starting to appear, we have hubs coming out of our ears in Exeter and conferences too. The problem is they are disparate and not in the centre. There is no one centrally placed Loci, I propose a quiet takeover and I have a target place! Watch this space... | http://feralcharm.blogspot.com/2016/08/ | [
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Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Deciding to become a civic architectural systems theorist and visionary futurist, I recently changed my name to Buckminster Fugger and wrote a book called 'How to Enjoy Eating Alone and Other Dymaxion Visions'. My aim is to continue the great Buckminster Fuller's enterprise of designing and proposing efficient, fulfilling and, most importantly, imaginative new ways of living.
The following are some of the revolutionary concepts that you will find in my book...
A city with no streets and no roads (see image above) where you get around by climbing from building to building through windows and doors or jumping from roof to roof. This will entirely eradicate traffic congestion and pavement litter.
Huge coats you can live in made from water proof mattresses with lots of deep pockets where you store your belongings/children. When exhausted, you can just fall over and fall asleep. Each coat will be its own jurisdiction with laws decided upon by you and applying to you alone.
Balloon cities. Floating municipalities where the populations live off passing seagulls and other avian comestibles that they catch in nets.
Cities of air consisting of houses made out of air. Effectively, your belongings laid out in open spaces. Heating is provided by jumpers. Air conditioning is provided by taking the jumpers off. Protection from rain is achieved when the population takes to the skies on hang gliders and congregates beneath nimbus clouds, thus preventing possessions becoming water damaged.
Houses made out of human hair. We all have hair and we often cut it or it falls out. Why not use it as a construction material? Did you know that discarded human hair covers 98000 square miles of the Earth's surface? That's a lot of houses. Instead of being painted, hair houses will be combed. This will be done with large 'house combs'.
Spherical buildings, like balls, that will be tornado proof as they will just get rolled about the place instead of blown down. Occupants will be kept level when harnessed into interior gravitationally compensatory gyroscopes.
The Double Antwerp Decker. A new Antwerp that is an exact replica of the old Antwerp and placed right on top of it. This will give us twice the Antwerp we are currently accustomed to without taking up more of Belgium's space.
Skyscraper buildings made out of stacked minivans and inhabited solely by dogs that are fed via daily deliveries of chum fired upwards with catapults.
And finally, sky cats. These vicious feral cats will be dropped from the sky to land on top of corralled criminals as a new punitive measure that replaces prison.
That is all. To know more you will have to purchase my book but, in keeping with Bucky Fuller's avant-gardeism, my book is actually not a book at all but a bottled scent that you inhale. However, once you breathe it in you die, thus doing your bit for population reduction and avoiding the impending Malthusian catastrophe going forward.
Sunday, April 27, 2014
In no particular order…
It Must Not Live! It Cannot Die!
From Cygnus to Ceefax
A Quarter to Huh?
Return to Xalberemus
Xalberemus Victorius
Xalberemus Once More
Xalberemus Or Bust
Herbie Goes to Xalberemus
Xalberemus Destroyed
Xalberemus No More
Xalberemus Reborn
Go Fuck Yourself Xalberemus
When Telex Revolts!
Super Bomb in my Mouth!!!
Tyrolean Grey
The Desert Moons of L. Casei Immunitas
The Fartegium Conundrum
Star Farm – Livestock Us!!!
The Beast That Shouted Pardon At The Rear Of The World
The Chronicles of Arseworld
Clongriffin Heights
The Ska Planet
Last Rocket to Skasville
Come See, Come Ska!
Karganorak - Ravisher of Maidens!
Queen with a Thousand Tits
That Robot Has Tits!
Titbot 9000
An Omnibus of the Unthinkable
Unreadable Tales
Unspeakably Shite
I Have No Nose Yet I Must Smell!
I Have No Book Yet I Must Read!
I Cannot Write Yet I Must Sell!
Aldous Huxley's Flimpy the Robot Goose.
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
The other night I saw a fox sitting completely still in the middle of the road. Sodium streetlight spilled through tree branches and caused a nervous system to dance across the tarmac. There was a full moon above. A really really full moon. Fuck, that moon was full. Earlier, at dusk, I watched the city from a hilltop as it turned into a web of stars. The wind was just about cold enough to remind you that there is such a thing as cold and to remind you that you are warm.
The next day I woke up and so had the world, ahead of me. Birds were sending beautiful code. Clouds clumped and swirled and sent smoke signals beyond human ken. The burning ball of the sun sometimes showed itself but mainly hid. And the sea too, different to the day before or even the minute before or the second. Ever changing and never the same. It made the soaking sound of a stadium roar. Foamy fractals dissolved on its glistening shore.
And back inland, the flowers are coming. All different colors. All different sizes and shapes and permutations of those sizes and shapes and permutations of those again, an endless variety, endlessly. And if we're miserable it's because our heads are pointed at the wrong place. Not everything is a given but these things are guaranteed. These things are free. So much to see. Seriously, you'd never catch up. How could you ever leave?
Watch where you point your head. Please.
Sunday, April 13, 2014
We drove past the big shut down factory in the forest and my brother started talking. I couldn't hear him over the sound of the engine and with the wind coming through the broken window. As well as all that, I'm a bit deaf. I spend a lot of time faking that I know what's going on. My brother is one of the few people who knows this but he rarely takes it into consideration. I know that if I ask him to speak up I still won't be able to make out what he's saying. I also know that if I tell him I can't hear him he'll just keep talking anyway. So I just leave him keep talking. He seems to be enjoying it. He seems quite into whatever it is he's pretending I can hear. The only thing I think I hear him say is something about a billion euro. I decide that I'll ask him what he was talking about later, when it's quieter. When we've stopped for something to eat.
So, we stop for something to eat and it's quieter and I ask my brother what he was talking about.
'As we drove by the factory.'
'What factory?'
'The factory in the forest. The shut down place.'
My brother looks puzzled and shrugs.
'You said something about a billion euro.'
'I did?'
He still looks puzzled. He shrugs again. He says he can't remember.
'Well, you seemed pretty worked up about whatever it was.'
'Well sure, who wouldn't be?'
'How do you mean who wouldn't be? You don't even remember what you were talking about.'
'Well, you said I was talking about a billion euro, who wouldn't get worked up over that?'
I nod my head. 'I suppose', I say.
We finish eating in silence and then get back in the car. Once the engine is on and the wind is white noising through the broken window, my brother starts talking again. I watch him as he emotes. He's doing a lot of emoting. He's getting whatever it is off his chest. I can't hear a word he's saying but, you know, I'm glad I can be there for him.
Thursday, April 3, 2014
I'll never forget our Sunday adventure. Gazing at each another over macchiatos. Froth on your nose. 'Hey, let's do something.' Gliding through a lens flared afternoon on our fixies. Bon Iver on the soundtrack. 'Yeah, I feel that exact same way too.' The incline of your flannel hat. #CuteOverbite. Meeting Gustav and Francesca at the organic food market. He's getting back into puppeteering and she found this awesome Il Duce tee. We compare apps. We get toffee apples. You tell me about when you lived in Budapest and I tell you about my year in Brooklyn. 'I've been thinking about reading about physics.' We grab a taco and go see the new Spike Jonze. An Instagram sunset. A bench on the bank of the canal.
'I'm not sure I'm looking for something serious right now.'
'Me too, I'm like kind of like really busy and stuff.'
So it's an unremarkable goodbye that I'll write a remarkable song about and I'll perform it at Kabbáge and you say that you'll be there but I know that you won't and neither will I but I'll think about today all day tomorrow while I'm processing gypsies at the death camp. | http://fugtheworld.blogspot.com/2014/04/ | [
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The Life & Times of Ulysses S. Grant
War Between the States
Ulysses S. Grant is best known for being the commander of the Union forces in the American Civil War. When war broke out, however, he was not even a member of the armed forces! Soon after the defeat at Fort Sumter, however, Grant was offered a position to train and recruit volunteers by the governor of Illinois, which he accepted. Grant was then appointed a field command after some pressure, and became a colonel of the 21st Illinois Infantry, a regiment notorious for its unruliness. After whipping them into shape, President Lincoln appointed Grant brigadier general of militia volunteers, which the general public would recognize as a one-star general.
After this success, Grant was moved to the important District of Southeast Missouri, close to the Confederate border. His original purpose, stationed in Cairo, Illinois, (close to Southeast Missouri) was to defend and divert Confederate forces; but that did not suit the aggressive Grant. He requested and received permission to go on the offensive. Grant swept into Confederate-controlled land, and took Forts Henry and Donelson, in the first large-scale Union victory of the Civil War. At Fort Donelson, Grant fractured Confederate lines that had repulsed Union attack just the day before; it was here that he demanded "no terms except unconditional and immediate surrender." This, due to his initials, earned him the famous nickname "Unconditional Surrender" Grant.
Capture of Fort Donelson
After Grant's success at Forts Henry and Donelson, Lincoln promoted him to major general (a two-star general). It was after this that Grant became a celebrity, something that would help him win the presidency in later years. In fact, after a picture was published of him smoking a cigar, fans sent him thousands of cigars---something that most likely led to his death of throat cancer at 63. Grant was given control of the Army of the Tennessee after his promotion, and moved his HQ to Savannah, Tennessee in 1862. It was in Tennessee that Grant fought the Battle of Shiloh, a surprise attack by Confederate forces on his army. Grant famously pushed off the Southern forces, but actually lost 3,000 more men than his Confederate counterpart. This heavy casualty list (13,047) shocked American citizens, and produced a large public outcry against Grant. This prompted his commanding officer to remove him from the lead position in the upcoming siege on Corinth, which nearly caused Grant to leave the Army. Luckily, William Tecumseh Sherman, a close friend and fierce general, convinced him to stay; when Grant's C.O. was called to be general-in-chief of the Union army, Grant was able to resume his position.
This left Grant free to stage the famous Siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi, the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River. Grant relentlessly attacked the city, and when he won its surrender in July of 1863, he effectively cut the Confederacy in half on each side of the great river. The great victory at Vicksburg, unlike Shiloh, was accomplished with very minimal losses, and is still considered a brilliant example of military strategy. The long Vicksburg campaign cemented Lincoln's trust in Grant, and in March of 1864 the president gave Grant the rank of lieutenant general (a three-star general). Grant was the first to receive this honor since George Washington, and the post had been revived specifically for him.
Along with this promotion came overall command of all U.S. armies. The General Grant that people think of today was now a reality. He placed General William Tecumseh Sherman in control of the Western theater, and moved himself to Virginia to duel with his famous Confederate counterpart, General Robert E. Lee (pictured below).
Confederate General Robert E. Lee
Grant vs. Lee---Battle of the Century
The main goal of the war effort was now to destroy Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, and to cut off the Confederacy's already limited railroad network. Grant and Lincoln devised the Overland Campaign to accomplish these two goals. The main gist of this plan was to have Grant take the main force of the Army against Lee in the east and drive towards Richmond, Virginia, while Sherman made his famous March to the Sea to take Georgia; at the same time, other generals would take key strategic points and railroads to choke off Confederate supplies and men. Grant was one of the first generals to comprehend the now essential art of total war, in which a country devotes all its resources to the war effort (something already practiced in Grant's day), and also realizes that striking against your opponent's economy and infrastructure can be just as important as winning battles (something not as widely used in the mid-1800s).
The Overland Campaign began in the spring of 1864, when Grant's Army of the Potomac marched towards Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, in order to provoke an attack. It worked. Grant fought in many battles, not just a couple major ones; he knew that he had to wear Lee so thin that he wouldn't have any more men to commit to battle. Engagements were fought in Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and other places, and the Union almost always had higher casualty lists---but they won the battles. Grant kept on going where other generals had decided to retreat because they didn't want to incur the costs. Grant would not let himself be driven away, which was the Confederacy's main goal. They could not defeat the Union Army, but they could fend it off---until they faced Grant.
The Overland Campaign led eventually to Petersburg, Virginia. Lee was trapped in Petersburg, but would not give it up. So began the Siege of Petersburg. Trenches were dug on both sides, and the Union attempted to cut off Confederate supply lines. Sherman's Georgia campaign was doing tremendously well, and all other aspects of the war seemed to come together for the Union.After months of siege, Lee finally abandoned the city, and Richmond soon after. He retreated to Appomattox Court House, where he surrendered to Grant on April 9, 1985 (pictured below).
Surrender at Appomattox
When Lincoln was assassinated five days after Appomattox, Grant was furious. Lincoln was one of the general's best friends, and he believed that the assassination was a Southern conspiracy that needed to be punished. When he discovered that it was not a wide conspiracy, he calmed down a little. Grant had the honor of being a pallbearer at Lincoln's funeral, where he cried openly while standing at attention.
Within a few months of Lincoln's death, Congress created the rank of General of the Army of the United States, which is the equivalent of a modern full four-star general (General of the Army of the United States would eventually become the five-star general, and a four-star general would be known as simply a general). President Johnson appointed Grant to the position the day it was created, and Grant was the overall commander of U.S. ground forces in the ensuing peacetime. His reign in the position would be short, however, as his celebrity status led to a wide demand for him to be president. This was to happen very soon after the war ended. | http://generalgrant.weebly.com/us-civil-war.html | [
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The New York Times is reporting today that the source of the worm (so advanced some thought it was alien weapon) was us. And it wasn't the first.
Let the Games Begin
There are wars that we know about, like the one in Afghanistan. And there are the ones we suspect, like the special forces operations taking part throughout the world. But it turns out there's another war, an invisible one, with programmers wielding code as vigorously as soldiers do their M16s. It's called operation Olympic Games, and it's been waged against Iran for nearly a decade.
Olympic Games began under the Bush administration, in 2006, reports the NYT. That's when a widely reported tour of Iran's Natanz nuclear plant made White House officials anxious enough to consider military action. Stop uranium enrichment at all cost, was the part line. But bombs are messy, and lead to more and bigger bombs; not ideal for a region that's already unstable.
An alternative presented itself:
The goal was to gain access to the Natanz plant's industrial computer controls. That required leaping the electronic moat that cut the Natanz plant off from the Internet - called the air gap, because it physically separates the facility from the outside world. The computer code would invade the specialized computers that command the centrifuges.
A blockade, then, not of supplies but of information. Lines of code infiltrating high command positions. This is how we fight now.
A Human Element
The new weapon took time and resources to develop. US called on help from Israel (see the NYT for the full, fascinating story of the collaboration). It resurrected some old P-1 centrifuges it had confiscated when Qaddafi gave up his nuclear ambitions, testing the delicate Stuxnet worm on its outdated technology to make sure that it worked. And then it headed straight for the real thing.
While Stuxnet may not have been discovered until 2010, but it was first deployed in 2008, when Iran found that its centrifuges began "spinning out of control." But how did it get there in the first place? Good old fashioned spies.
It's long been known that the US has people on the ground, undercover, in Iran; a dozen were sadly captured last year. Armed with thumb drives, they pumped Natanz's belly full of Stuxnet. It would wreak havoc with Iran's nuclear ambition for years.
Blown Cover
Throughout the last several years, the Obama administration has accelerated the attacks, ordering both more frequency and efficacy. As the NYT reports, it could be argued that what gave Stuxnet away is that it was too effective. Like King Kong throwing off its shackles in the theater and rampaging through Manhattan, Stuxnet escaped Natanz and began replicating itself. It seems that someone got a little overzealous:
"We think there was a modification done by the Israelis," one of the briefers told the president, "and we don't know if we were part of that activity."
Mr. Obama, according to officials in the room, asked a series of questions, fearful that the code could do damage outside the plant. The answers came back in hedged terms. Mr. Biden fumed. "It's got to be the Israelis," he said. "They went too far."
And so the plug was pulled.
The Battle Is Not the War
According to the NYT, while Stuxnet may be over, Olympic Games proceeds apace. We've used cyberweapons in other countries, and will continue to do so. Even now, massive spyware called Flame is hitting Iran—although it appears to predate the Bush initiative, and can't be traced back to the US.
It's not a one-sided fight, either. China has been notorious for engaging in cyber warfare with the US and others. And even before this report, it's been widely assumed that Stuxnet was America's baby. Iran will surely attempt to respond in kind. And the barrier to entry is so low—anyone can attack anyone, from anywhere, at any time—that we could well face threats from areas we'd never bothered to consider harmful.
Go read the full story at the NYT. It's a thrilling, in-depth look at our invisible war. And a blueprint, perhaps, for how we'll fight—and be fought—for decades to come. [NYT]
Photo credit: AP | http://gizmodo.com/1453392898/afghanistan-and-pakistan-probably-should-not-be-conside | [
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Thursday, August 4, 2011
Walter Frederick Osborne - Dorothy and Irene Falkiner
signed u.l.: Walter Osborne
oil on canvas
150 by 114cm.; 59 by 45in.
ESTIMATE 500,000-700,000 GBP
Lot Sold: 580,500 GBP
Although better known for his genre paintings, landscapes and late impressionistic garden scenes, Walter Osborne was a superb portraitist, and practised as a portrait painter throughout his life. Amongst his oeuvre are many drawings and paintings, as well as watercolours and pastel studies of members of his family, relatives, children, and friends. He made a series of portraits of fellow artists such as Sarah Purser, Nathaniel Hone and John Hughes, and writers such as Stephen Gwynn and Walter Armstrong.
However, from the mid 1890s onwards much of Osborne's time was taken up by more formal portraits. Partly out of financial necessity, in the pursuit of his own career, and to support his own family, Osborne needed to gain portrait commissions. Even as early as 1892 Osborne made references to the portraits which he was working on. Many of his commissioned portraits of the late 1890s were formal studies of the Establishment and Irish Society: for example of governors, members of the legal profession, academics, the clergy, business people, and of society ladies and their
children. Some of these were purchased directly by the clients, and were never exhibited in public, while others, particularly the portraits of beautiful women and children, were shown at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin, and the Royal Academy in London.
From the mid-1890s to the early twentieth century Osborne painted a series of society ladies and children dressed in their finery. These are amongst the most notable of all of his portraits including Portrait of a lady (Mrs. C. Litton
Falkiner seated at the piano)
Drawings and oil studies are extant of some of these portraits, indicating that Osborne planned and executed them carefully. In some of the portraits the mother and daughter are shown reading together, or there is music involved; while in several the sitter looks directly out at the viewer. In some of the pictures the woman is shown in similar three–quarter seated pose, an elegant dress floating down to her ankles. As the paintings include fine furniture, furnishings and sometimes a piano, it seems possible that Osborne painted the portraits in situ, in the sitters' homes rather than in his studio. Yet despite the potential formality of the occasion, Osborne creates a mood of intimacy. Some of the portraits may have been influenced by the likes of Reynolds, Whilstler and Orchardson, Valasquez and Goya but the closest affinities are with the portraits of Osborne's contemporary Sargent, who often painted mothers with daughters, sisters together, and children, in a brilliant and fluid manner demonstrated in works such as The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (1882, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).
The present portrait of Dorothy and Irene Falkiner was obviously commissioned by their parents Mr. and Mrs. C. Litton Falkiner (see fig.2). It was probably painted over the winter of 1899-1900, ready for exhibition in spring. The girls came
from an extremely distinguished Irish family. Their grandfather, Sir Frederick Falkiner (1831-1908), had been born in Borrisokane, Co. Tipperary and was called to the bar in 1852. In 1876, he was appointed Recorder in Dublin, and in 1880, elected to the King's Inns. He was also a leading member of the general synod of the church of Ireland. He was a compassionate man, concerned primarily with pursuing compensation for working men, who had been injured at work, and he became known as the 'poor man's judge' (R.H. Murray and Sinead Agnew, in Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography', Oxford 2004, Vol. 18, p984).
His second son Caesar Litton Falkiner (1863-1908), the girls' father, led a distinguished career as a barrister, politician, historian and writer. He was called to the Bar in Dublin in 1887 and was Assistant Legal Commissioner in the land Commission, 1897-1908. He became a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 1896, and was elected secretary in 1906. Among his publications were Studies in Irish History and Biography, 1901 and Essays relating to Ireland: biographical, historical and topographical, 1909, as well as the letters of Jonathan Swift. In 1982 Falkiner
married Henrietta May Deane, daughter of the brilliant architect Sir Thomas Newemham Deane (1828-1899) and Dorothy and Irene were born in the 1890s.
Osborne's portrait of them belongs firmly to his series of double portraits. It is striking in its depiction of the two sisters, and in the luxurious nature of their costumes. The figures are perfectly placed in the centre of the composition, one
seated on, one standing by, an ornate gilded seat. Osborne observes the pretty features and different expressions of the girls with sensitivity and sympathy. Both children look directly out at the viewer. The older girl, Dorothy, has clear
blue eyes, soft cheeks, rosy lips and flowing golden hair. The gentle face and pink cheeks of the younger girl, Irene, are visible beneath her bonnet. Her face is slightly lowered, her blue eyes looking up at us beneath her golden curls.
According to Hilary O'Kelly (lecturer in the History of Costume, National College of Art and Design, Dublin) the sisters were extremely lavishly dressed, even by the standards of society at the time, indicating their high status in society.
The sumptuous cream coloured material of the costumes, possibly of a Kashmir silk is subtly different in each girl, indicating the older and younger sister. Dorothy wears a frock and a double bow, one black and one white, tied under her chin. With her gorgeous flowing hair and striking black hat, somewhat in the Napoleonic style, O'Kelly believes that she was dressed to be presented to society.
Irene wears a long frock coat, and it is notable that she wears a white bonnet beneath her outer hood. She also seems to wear a black ribbon beneath her cream coloured bow and clutches a doll in her left hand. Both girls wear elegant black gloves, and hold muffs. The trimming around the girls' shoulders, and around the hood of the child, appears so light, that Hilary O'Kelly suggests that it is made of swans' down. There are pleasing echoes of Sargent, for example, the standing pose of the child touchingly recalls the girl in Beatrice Goelet , 1890, while the doll, and the gleaming shoes recall those in Sargent's masterly canvas The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, 1882.
In spite of the opulence of the girls' costumes, the portrait is in no sense flashy or exhibitionistic. What Osborne conveys is a sense of tenderness and intimacy. In this it has kinship with a contemporary, but much more informal double portrait The Goldfish Bowl, which likewise features two girls. Although they are absorbed in watching the goldfish, rather than looking at the viewer, and their costumes are much more plain, the sitters are likewise set against a loosely painted brown interior, and Osborne conveys a similar mood of sympathy for the children.
As well as a portrait of the girls' mother Portrait of a lady (Mrs. C. Litton Falkiner seated at the piano (1902, National Gallery of Ireland, her pose seated at the piano closely recalling that of Sargent's Madam Ramon Subercaseaux, 1880-81), Osborne also painted the girls' grandfather, Sir Frederick Falkiner in 1903. Sir Frederick died at Funchal, Maderia in 1908, coincidentally the same year that his son C. Litton Falkiner died in a climbing accident at Chamonix in the Alps.
Julian Campbell
No comments: | http://goldenagepaintings.blogspot.com/2011/08/walter-frederick-osborne-dorothy-and.html | [
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Automatic projector calibration
[Johny Lee] sent in his(pdf) awesome projector calibration project. By adding embedding some optical fiber that feed into a set of USB connected light sensors, his groups software can determine the exact pixel position of each sensor. Once the positions are determined, the projected image can be dynamically adjusted to fix the screen. The technique can be used to stitch together multiple projectors, and even calibrate an image to project onto a three dimensional model. I know some home theater nuts that would love to have this system for calibrating their CRT projectors.
This is such an excellent project, that I want to give credit where it’s due – it was developed by [Johnny C. Lee], [Paul H. Dietz], [Dan Maynes-Aminzade], [Ramesh Raskar] and [Scott E. Hudson].
Be sure to check out the video demo after the break!
40 thoughts on “Automatic projector calibration
1. I wonder why nobody thought of this before… but the problem with the car demo is, that it still requires the geometry to be known beforehand in order to wrap the image correctly.
And how do they want to achieve “interactive” framerates? they have to project log2(width) + log2(height) stripes, which would require 500 projections/sec for VGA, if you refresh the geometry at 25Hz. One could use a special projector that projects the stripes in infrared and at the same time the image that’s for the user to see…
But wouldn’t it be easier and more flexible, at the expense of 1:1 pixel precision, to point a camera at the projection surface (from the users point of view). you could then project images that look flat from a certain viewpoint onto complex unknown surfaces… but I think that would solve another problem…
btw, the setup they use looks quite cheap, just hook up some sensors to the IO-ins of your favorite programmable USB-chip…
If I just had a projector :D
2. The only problem I see with this approach is that you loose a huge amount of the available number of pixels from the projector… He is using a screen that is about 6″ on a side in a field of view that is about 30 inches on a side, which is ‘wasting’ about 95% of the available pixels… When he turns the screen on its side it further complicates the problem because the screens footprint becomes more along the lines of 2″ by 6″, reducing the pixel utilisation to a meager 1%
Also, you still have to focus the projector onto the target, and your depth of field is still limited by the lens on your projector…
This could get really big when laser projectors (using moving mirror galvos to steer the beam) become affordable, as you can then adjust the field of view of the projector on the fly, and the images are always in focus.
Aside from that, that is an awesome setup. I envision some code to allow beryl/compiz (sorry windows/mac users) to have several small (or large for that matter) panels that can be mapped to an individual window. So you can drag/rotate/etc each of your windows on say a physical desk.
3. It must be possible to do the calibration in way less time.
Consider the projector has about a million pixels.
To uniquely identify each pixel, they must each be given a code about 20 bits (frames) long. The codes would be arranged so two adjacent pixels are different in only one frame. (basicly gray code with an extra dimension, so X and Y can be calculated simultaniously). That means positions can be calculated with only 20 frames, and with a 60Hz refresh rate it should only take a third of a second to identify a pixel (ie. 3Hz). That means it becomes practical to track moving objects using an IR projector (because you can do motion prediction and also you can presume the area certain pixels are in by their previous location, reducing the number of frames required to deduce a location). For fast-moving items, accuracy is also less important again reducing the number of frames.
I guess it would be possible to then track an item to about 10 Hz, which could have some interesting uses.
It would be possible to further speed up the process by using all 3 colour channels seperately and have detectors for all 3 colours on the ends of the fibers.
Another interesting ofshoot is it might be possible to do sub-pixel positions by measuring intensity.
4. Very impressive. Earlier today, I had an idea conveniently somewhat-relevant to the model car demo, cheap sort-of-invisibility:
Suppose a camera was added close to the projector, and the background was a random, inconsistent image, rather than a solid-gray one.
First, the camera takes a picture of the background and remembers it. Then the camera records the binary pattern, from which the offset relative to the projector can be determined; the background should not be a problem to calibration because a previously-recorded image may be used to filter out the graphical background noise.
Next, the still-flat-gray model car with the optical sensors is placed on the background. The calibration does its thing like in the demo so that the colors can be projected correctly onto it; however, this should also provide enough information to project a piece of the background over the car such that it becomes sort-of-invisible from the point of view of the view of the camera, or if multiple projector-cameras are used, sort-of-invisible from a single arbitrary point of view.
5. Love this post. I can’t help but dig up an older article from Technology Review (late ’04) that focused on one group’s work with hand held projectors, aiming to shrink them enough to replace/augment cellphone/PDA displays. Some of their tricks included adaptive projecting onto uneven surfaces, keeping a steady image despite moving the projector (so you could tilt and point the projector like a mouse/laser-pointer), and automatically unifying several projectors for an even larger image. So that was baseline already pretty cool. But they took it a bit further and got RFID tags involved that each had a photodiode sensor. They then ran a similar scanlines projection (like this project uses) across a scene, and identically they could exactly locate where the sensor was. Their working example was a storage shelf with different cardboard boxes and embedded tags + sensors, and they would project graphical information for each box onto the side of each box.
Now, having recently reformatted my lappy, I’m suddenly lacking the link to the online copy of the article. I’ve found a similar copy, but it lacks the images that went with each number. *grumble* Also, I’m not sure if this is related, but they seem to be doing very similar things: Ditto:
Although the original focused on what you could do with a palm sized (“pencil sized” they hoped) projector, I’d always been rather been intrigued with the RFID part. These days, we’ve got the multitouch demos and cameras tracking markers in realtime, but the light detector + projector combo still seems like a promising combination. Just wanted to share/connect this to some older research. (…and if they’re the same group, I’m going to go find a wall for my forehead.)
6. Neat stuff.
It gets better, a DMD can slam out binary frames at 14,300 Hz and the sequence is short (on the order of 20 frames) so you can get a fix in about 1.4 milliseconds and after you have an absolute fix you can use coding tricks to drop the number of frames to do relative tracking, I’d put it at about 8 frames with a periodic 20 frame burst to cancel out cumulative errors.
The actual reprojection is achieved by mapping the camera space to the projector space and fitting the point positions to identical virtual models. But it can get tricky without overdetermined sampling.
This also burns resolution like nobody’s business. The actual resolutions with a close up are pretty miserable. Lots of anti aliasing going on too.
Also check out this honest to goodness projector hack by the same guys:
7. Some more comments to add to the discussion:
1). For moving targets you don’t have to use the same search scheme as you already know roughly where the corners of the targers are (or were). You just need to be able to search those specific areas within a radius.
2). There is no reason why multiple targets could not be placed in projection view, once calibrated each could have a different image projected onto each of them.
3). The target screen are currently teathered to a compute, again not needed. The electronics could be fully self contained (not that difficult to code) and result sent to projector(s) system wirelessly (Bluetooth for example).
4). In the same manner that they use two projectors onto a wide target with 6 sensor, you could make a modular screen built from square panels where you just assemble the size screen you need and point a barrage of projectors at it to get some really (!!!) high resolutions.
A fantastically simple idea. Good hack!
8. Many CRT projectors have had this feature for many, many years and those of us who have set up CRT projectors more than once know that they are not as good as doing the setup manually.
The CRT projector system consists of about 5 different ways to focus the electron beam and 4 different ways to control optical focus, multiply that by 3 tubes and you have the number of settings that auto-convergence cannot fix.
Convergence (getting the 3 tubes to overlap) is about 10 settings pr. tube.
The tricky part is that several of these settings interoperate so several iterations are needed to get the perfect setup.
9. Embedded optical sensors seems somewhat complex. Wonder why they don’t use reflecting targets attached to the screen? Put a 2-d barcode on the target and pick up the reflected light with a single sensor at the projector to identify which target it is as well as the precise position. (Cube-corner retro-reflecting targets might help.)
10. This type of technology, using optical sensors to warp and blend projectors, is already commercially available from at least two companies. Iridas and 3D Perceptions. I’ve been using them to project on cylinders and spheres. However, they take about 30 seconds to auto-align and they are too expensive for everyday use. The speed of this is very impressive. If its being done with inexpensive hardware, thats equally impressive.
You can’t use reflecting targets because they would be visible to the viewer.
11. When I worked at IBM we had a system that would project onto multiple interactive surfaces using a projector and mirrors. The problem was always calibration. You’d mount the projector, motorized mirror, and position the surfaces to project onto and then calibrate. If anything got touched then you had to do the calibration all over again. This tech would make it so that all you had to do at the start was a very basic alignment and then the system could handle the calibration as needed.
The demo itself was very cool. We had a clothing store of the future set up for a major retailer and the projector could put a screen on the wall, on the floor, and on the jeans display depending on where the customer was. The jeans display was interactive so that you could point with your finger and it would show different options.
12. I think this is amazing but I don’t understand how it works. I have never seen a projector that has this sort of calibration via user-accessible menus. I mean, unless the team also re-wrote the projector code, I am stumped. I understand *how* the system works, I just don’t understand it’s able to tell the project to do anything other than zoom in and out, squeeze sides, or focus.
13. I really like the Hack-A-Day community because there is a high density of very smart people with an imagination that rivals or surpases that of the recognized research community.
The comments here about using high-speed DLP, infrared patterns, reflective markers, multiple surfaces, lost pixels are all completely spot on. Since this is my thesis work, some of these ideas have been addressed in my followup work. You can find that here (with more video!):
14. In the case of this demonstration, the calibration is not bing done in the projector. The video is passing through a computer first. The computer is processing the video and warping it to fit the projection surface. The projector is just being a dumb projector and not doing anything different.
15. impressive indeed – it is worth pointing out that this isn’t new research (UIST 2004) – MERL and CMU have done some pretty neat stuff in the past. as a followup, they had a publish in UIST 2005 where they built on this where they added the capability to move the display in real time and increased touch capabilities …
16. Currently, as far as I know, you can’t buy this software. If you were to check out you can request a copy of their callibration software, and from what I can tell, it is pretty similar to what Johnny was using for his callibration technique (which he worked with a few of the shader lamps people with).
I have tried to contact johnny directly through the e-mail on his website, but no luck so far. I want to try and use this callibration technique in a real-world, entertainment aspect.
Being a VJ, callibration is not really that important, but to be able to transform a stage into something that is immersive both for the audience, and the performers, this would be absolutely vital.
I certainly hope that research continues for this, and it someday, soon hopefully, becomes available to users.
17. i want to stack 2 projectors 3200 lumenes? what is the cheapest solution of software and hardware ? jhonny chun lee has good metods. Please is very imprtant for me can anyone help ? i had read three opcion: vioso wings , scalable displays, chung lee with sensors have anyone the software ? it is not for comercial use please help emergency story!
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Connecting to %s | http://hackaday.com/2007/11/15/automatic-projector-calibration/ | [
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Wednesday, October 26, 2011
critical responses to art
Last week in Interpretations class we read an article by two museum educators Danielle Rice and Philip Yenawine. Both are very well know in the field, yet have very different ways they teach art. I was very interested in Yenawine's technique to teach through critical response. Critical thinking is something that most schools are not incorporating into their lessons today because testing has taken over as the all-important aspect of public education (this is the conclusion we came to in class with the help of former and current public school teachers taking the class). That being said I think that art education is such a great way to incorporate critical thinking into academics.
Yenawine works with young children and asks them to say what they think about a work of art, what they see, tell a story, what does it mean. He asks questions and allows them to think critically about a work, but never intervenes. This got me thinking, is it responsible for an educator to allow someone to create their own interpretation of the art even if it is completely incorrect? While I think his ideas of critical thinking in education are amazing, I'm really not sure if that is the only way to do it. How can an educator allow a student to believe something completely incorrect about a work and not at least try to point them in the right direction? Coming from an art history background I believe that aspect is super important. While there may be several interpretations of what is going on in a work, wouldn't it be the responsibility of the educator to tell the student basic factual information in some way? or does this completely discourage critical thought if they find out they are wrong? This is really difficult stuff to think through!
1 comment:
1. i've always believed that an individual viewer's interpretation of a piece at any given moment is as valid as the 'correct' interpretation. for one thing, the experiences, perspectives, and ideas that the viewer brings will totally shape their view of an artwork, and each viewer's experience is totally unique. when you invalidate someone's reponse to an artwork, you push them away from wanting to engage with future works. bring them inot the conversation and let them have their own ideas, and we'll go from there. :) | http://heatherdandrea.blogspot.com/2011/10/critical-responses-to-art.html | [
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Can a Game Help Low-Income Youth Get into College?: An Interview with Colleagology Games (Part One)
Today, the Collegeology Games project, a collaboration of the USC Rossier School of Education's Pullias Center for Higher Education and the USC School of Cinematic Arts' Game Innovation Lab, launched Mission: Admission, a Facebook game designed to help underserved students, often the first in their families to aspire to college, navigate the complicated process of applying for college and financial aid. (Full Disclosure: I am proud to be on the advisory board for the Colleageology Games Project.) The game's release comes as the application season opens for many American colleges and universities, including the University of Southern California.As described in the project's press release: "The game allows students to virtually experience the demands of the college application process and empowers them with the skills and knowledge they need to apply, get into and pay for college. Students guide their avatars through the process of meeting with college advisors, choosing the types of schools to apply to (including four-year, community and technical colleges), scheduling community service and sports activities, applying for scholarships and financial aid and requesting recommendation letters." The game is seen as a crisis intervention: cutbacks in budgets for education mean fewer and fewer high school students have access to college counselors -- the average ratio nation-wide stands at 459 students per conselor, and California's ration is 800 to 1. This shortage most dramatically effects low-income students who are more likely to be the first in their family to attend an institution of higher learning and thus lack the social capital in their immediate surroundings to help them make up for lack of help through their schools. By contrast, middle and upper-class parents are spending more and more money, helping their sons and daughters through SAT prep classes or getting special coaching to increase their chances of getting into the school of their choice.
Colleageology Games knows that games, in and of themselves, can not make up for these gross inequalities of access to information and mentorship, but the group does believe that spending time with the game can expose young players to core vocabulary and processes, help them think through issues of time management, and otherwise, get some of the foundations of the application process. They have found that those students who play the game more than once get a chance to improve on their performance and further rehearse these skills.
In honor of the game's launch, I asked Tracy Fullerton from USC's Game Innovation Lab and Zoe Corwin from the Pullias Center for Higher Education to talk about some of the research which went into this project.
Can you tell us something about the problems confronting low-income Americans as they think about preparing to apply for college? Have those issues grown better or worse in recent years? Why?
ZBC: Apart from an uneven playing field in the caliber of academic instruction afforded to students across schools, perhaps the most glaring problem in public high school education is access to high quality college guidance and support. The private college counseling industry – where parents pay top dollar for professionals to guide their children through the college application process – is a multi-million dollar industry. Students who can afford private college counseling services often attend schools with dedicated college counseling services and teachers who promote college readiness. Students from low-income communities are much more likely to attend schools with exorbitant guidance counselor ratios and limited college counseling resources.
This year, many of the low-income schools we work with in Los Angeles have had to cut college counseling positions due to budget cuts. As a consequence, low-income students with college aspirations are slipping through the cracks because they do not have anyone to assist them in filling out college and financial aid applications.
Bottom line: they don’t apply or they do apply but fail to fill out financial aid documents and housing applications and don’t enroll. College counselors serve as critical on-site champions for encouraging college aspirations and providing college-related support to students AND teacher advocates.
Why do you believe that games might provide an effect channel to help young people develop a deeper understand of the processes surrounding college application and financing?
TF: Games provide a safe space for exploring difficult to navigate systems – and the college application process is certainly a difficult to navigate system, especially the first time around, and given the importance of decisions made during this process it seems clear that giving students a way to gain experience with this system without having the weight of real world consequences on them can help them develop confidence and understanding of the strategies they’ll need to employ when they go through the process for real.
Tell us something about the process you use in developing these games. How have you sought feedback from the young people who will ultimately be most impacted by your project? What did you learn through this process about their understanding of college readiness? Do low income youth see college as a game they have any realistic chance of winning?
TF: In developing all of our games we reach out to players in our target group to help develop the game concepts and make sure they are addressing not only the needs of that group but also the sensibilities. For Application Crunch and Mission: Admission, this group consisted of high school students.
For both games, we created “junior design teams” – groups of about 15 students drawn from local high schools, who fit our target demographic. The students came to the Game Innovation Lab after school to learn about game design, and we learned about their hopes and concerns surrounding the college going process. We asked them to design games about the college application process and from those games, took away the kinds things that they want and need to understand about the process.
Some of the key things we learned from them is that they are concerned about time management – knowing where best to put their efforts in school. Also, they have fears about being able to afford college and a very limited understanding of their financial options.
Just making kids understand how important it is to fill out the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) is a key victory. It is one of the opportunities that is in both games, and we find that after playing once, the kids remind each other when they play again: “don’t forget to turn in your FAFSA!”
Your first game, Application Crunch, was a card game. Can you tell us something about the game’s mechanics and what it teaches its players?
TF: The first game was originally intended as a prototype for the digital game. We found that it played very well on its own, and that it served as an excellent intervention in places where computer access might be an issue. So, we developed the card game as a stand-alone product that is now available on Amazon and though our website.
The game is for 3-4 players who each take on the role of a college applicant. These roles are drawn randomly and range from the “Super Jock” to the “Misunderstood Artist.” Each character also has a family financial background that will affect their ability to pay for college.
The game centers on a set of deadlines that advance each round; these deadlines are for various colleges, scholarships and other opportunities. Players need to manage their time (in the form of actions) wisely to make sure their characters have “leveled up” in academics, extracurricular activities, and service to stand out when they apply to these deadlines.
The cards all have a kind of snarky tone to them that we picked up from the student design team. They know that this is serious information, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with it.
One of the best features of this version of the game is the social play. Students tend to help each other with their strategies as they play, and even though there is a “winner” in the end, everyone who gets into school and can pay for it feels like they succeeded in the game. That kind of open discussion about how best to focus your time, to develop your character, it is a thinly veiled discussion about real world issues that the players are facing as they look to apply to college themselves.
You’ve found that students learn more when they play the game a second time. Why?
TF: If you think about your own experience in life, you probably look back and wish you’d done things a bit differently when you applied to college. Well, playing Application Crunch a second time is a lot like that. You take your learning from the first play through and apply it to the second.
In a sense, this is the entire point of developing a game like this: so that “playing” the admissions game the first time around in real life isn’t your first experience with it.
We find that the players come to their second game with confidence, a sense of what to expect in the deadlines they will face, the knowledge that things like FAFSA are out there, along with scholarships and other forms of financial aid. They know that they can set high aspirations for their characters—as long as they have safety schools. They understand the value of focusing deeply on one or two activities in school rather than spreading themselves thin, etc. In short, they feel a sense of ownership in their strategies about the application process. That knowledge and confidence raises their sense of efficacy around the real world process as well.
ZBC: When observing students play, I’ve been struck by their concentration when learning the rules the first time they play. They tend to collaborate throughout the whole play session and remain engaged for the duration of game play.
The second time they play I’ve noticed a trend. Usually they haven’t seen the game for a few weeks and when they enter the room, they voice enthusiasm about getting to play again. Then they start with upbeat banter: “I’m going to get into a Liberal Arts college this time!” Almost immediately they deal the cards and set up the game table.
Second time play is faster, more animated and a bit more competitive. After playing, students can articulate how their strategy changed from the first time and what they plan to do differently the next time they play.
As a researcher with the Pullias Center for Higher Education, Dr. Zoe Corwin has conducted research on college preparation programs and access to financial aid for underserved students, college pathways for foster youth, and the role of social media and games on postsecondary access and completion. She is co-editor of Preparing for College: Nine elements of effective outreach with SUNY Press and in addition to academic articles, has published several monographs designed for practitioners outlining effective college preparation strategies. Dr. Corwin is currently involved with the Collegeology Games project, collaborating with game designers to capitalize on game-based strategies and social media to engage students in college preparation, college application and financial aid processes.
Tracy Fullerton, M.F.A., is an experimental game designer, professor and director of the Game Innovation Lab at the USC School of Cinematic Arts where she holds the Electronic Arts Endowed Chair in Interactive Entertainment. The USC Game Innovation Lab is a design research center that has produced several of the most influential projects to be released in the emerging field of independent games, including games like Cloud, flOw, Darfur is Dying, The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom, and The Night Journey -- a collaboration with media artist Bill Viola. Tracy is also the author of “Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games,” a design textbook in use at game programs worldwide. Prior to entering academia, she was a professional game designer and entrepreneur making games for companies including Microsoft, Sony, MTV, among many others. | http://henryjenkins.org/2012/10/can-a-game-help-low-income-youth-get-into-college-an-interview-with-colleagology-games-part-one.html | [
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Friday, April 27, 2012
Innovators aren't cynics
I was talking with a potential client who seemed cynical about innovation. In fact, most of our clients are both equally cynical and hopeful about innovation. They are cynical because innovation has often failed to deliver extravagant promises, and hopeful because innovation is one of the few tools that firms have to grow, to differentiate and to disrupt.
People are cynical about innovation because innovation often hasn't delivered what has been promised. But looking more closely at the reasons why uncovers some basic truths. One, many promises have been overstated, by people with a vested interest in promoting innovation. Yes, even us innovation consultants can get carried away, but often executives turn to innovation and make promises. Even politicians make promises about innovation. Yet those promises neglect some vital aspects. Often when executives or politicians promise great returns from innovation, they fail to support, fund, resource and sustain innovation. Blaming innovation for failing to deliver results when programs aren't adequately funded or resourced is like blaming your car for failing to start when you neglected to fill up.
Two, people are often cynical about innovation because they realize it is occasionally used as a scapegoat or "flavor of the month". Executives rush in, talk about innovation without intent to deploy anything, and then drop innovation to pick up another management credo to pronounce. Everyone realizes that innovation will be hard work, and everyone knows the differences between innovation as a talking point and innovation as a funded initiative supported by executives.
But there's a deeper point to made here about cynicism. We've learned, through books, through movies, through corporate examples, that business people lend a critical eye to everything. We business people are cynics by nature - looking for the challenge or failure in any product or service. Many businesses deliver products that HAVE to work - I want cynical engineers designing my bridges and airplanes. But cynicism is deadly to creative thinking and innovation.
Don't get me wrong - the best innovators, Jobs for example, are a masterful combination of wonder, empathy and cynicism. Wonder and empathy to imagine and create, cynicism to design, build and deliver. Edison, perhaps our first significant innovator, was devastated by the failure of his first invention, an automatic voting machine. He swore he would never again create a product that he didn't know if he could sell. But he obviously balanced his market cynicism with passion for experimentation and discovery. No cynic could attempt hundreds of experiments.
But what about the majority of us in business, in politics, in academia? We are notorious cynics, but we cannot afford to be. How many times have you said "I've seen this before" or "This didn't work the last time we tried it"? How many times have you turned a cynical eye on a new idea, not giving it the consideration it deserves? My favorite is "well, I've seen it all". No, sorry, you haven't. You can't possibly imagine all of the possibilities, and the disruption around the corner in your market will surprise and amaze you. Because someone with less cynicism and more wonder and optimism simply asked the question: why not?
Until you recognize that you haven't seen it all, that you can't even imagine all the opportunities, that cynicism is a set of blinders meant to keep you in line, you are definitely correct: you can't innovate. There is no more self-fulfilling prophecy than a cynic who boldly declares that he or she "can't innovate". They are exactly right, and self-reinforcing to boot. Get rid of your cynicism, approach innovation opportunities with a sense of wonder, enthusiasm, possibility. Yes, that means shedding your green eyeshades and corporate cynicism. Don't worry, we won't hold it against you.
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posted by Jeffrey Phillips at 5:15 AM 1 comments
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Getting Innovation Backwards
So I had lunch today with a friend who described another friend's innovation approach. It boiled down to "lets go generate a lot of ideas". The theory being that once they had a lot of ideas they'd find a valuable one that would be important and relevant. This approach always reminds me of the story of the little girl digging in the horse barn. Her father spots her and asks "why are you digging in that pile of horse manure?" (PG for mixed audiences). Her response? If there is all this manure here, there must be a pony in here too. Corporate innovators are often like the little girl, digging in a manure pile of ideas, convinced there's a pony there somewhere.
Far, far too many organizations, when given the chance to innovate, rush out to generate a bunch of ideas. There are several reasons they do this:
1. They are familiar with idea generation
2. It feels like they've accomplished something - a list of ideas
3. They now have a pile of stuff to wade through
4. They've been told that generating lots of ideas is important (and in context, it is)
5. Management wants to see ideas
What they are doing, basically, is generating ideas, searching for an answer. Which is exactly backwards. What they should do is identify an answer (significant opportunity or challenge) and then generate ideas (solutions).
But this seems counterproductive. Identifying answers - opportunities or challenges means taking time to research existing business challenges, prioritizing needs, understanding customer requirements. This doesn't seem like "innovation" and doesn't deliver quick ideas. So, after a month or two of following this path impatient management, not understanding the approach asks "where are the ideas?". So, far too many firms follow the first approach, since they think they understand the tools and know they need to deliver quickly.
But delivering poor, misaligned ideas quickly is just another way to deliver rapid failure. When your ideas aren't relevant or valuable, no matter how quickly you generate them, or if they fail to attract powerful sponsors or funding, who cares how quickly you generated them.
As with many things in life, received wisdom has it exactly backwards. Identifying the key challenges, understanding the links to strategic goals, deciphering customer needs leads to understanding the potential answer. Only then are you ready to generate ideas that matter. Or, as Einstein said "given an hour to solve a major problem I'd spend 55 minutes defining the problem and 5 minutes working on the solution". Once again, our approach is exactly backwards, which is why so many idea generation activities fail to deliver great solutions.
If you generate a lot of ideas without clear context or in answer to an important strategic question or need, you are simply shoveling the manure, looking for the pony that has already left the barn.
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posted by Jeffrey Phillips at 5:03 AM 0 comments
Monday, April 23, 2012
The Wizard of Innovation
I've been thinking a lot about how the Wizard of Oz reflects so much about innovation. Not the story per se, but the setting and the characters and how they represent attributes or characteristics innovators must possess.
Take, for example, Dorothy's three key companions - the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Man. These three each personify a key trait that innovators must possess. The Scarecrow is looking for a brain. From an innovation perspective, we'll translate this as "insight" - the ability know what customer needs are unfolding and the willingness to learn new methods and approaches. The Cowardly Lion is looking for courage. Innovators must be courageous, to stand up to the challenges that they will face when trying to innovate, which bucks the business as usual mentality. The Tin Man was looking for a heart. Innovators need a big heart - a heart full of courage and commitment, but also a heart full of empathy. Anyone can dream up new ideas, but its only when you have empathy for the customer that you discover important needs. All of the characters who journey with Dorothy are capable of doing what they need to do, and discover their abilities in the journey. This is often true with innovators - people who don't think they are "creative" or who don't have the right status are often great innovators if they allow themselves to be.
Or, consider the Wizard, the man behind the curtain. The wizard is never presented until the very end, and is considered a very powerful force. When finally unmasked, he turns out to be much less powerful than he appeared. In the innovator's world, the Wizard correlates to the corporate culture. The culture is a seemingly powerful force, ephemeral but always present. But when a powerful innovator confronts a corporate culture with the right backing and the right ideas, the culture can be tamed.
Dorothy represents another facet of the innovator must possess - determination and focus. No matter what happens, Dorothy seeks to return home. She has a clear goal and pursues it regardless of the obstacles, regardless of the circumstances. She confronts all of these forces aligned against her, including the Wicked Witch, who personifies all of the nay-sayers, the status quoers, the let's leave well enough alone types. These people constantly confront an innovator, seeking to distract, delay and derail an innovation effort because they want to protect their products, their status or the existing status quo. No matter the obstacle, no matter how compelling Oz may seem, Dorothy stays true to her goals and convictions. So too must innovators have a clear goal and stay true to their convictions.
Innovators need bold ideas and clear thinking that come from an engaged brain, and bold actions and confidence, as well as empathy, that come from a big heart. They need courage to confront all that faces them in an existing business as usual culture. They need determination to face the faceless but seemingly powerful corporate culture and the slings and arrows thrown by the people who don't want change or are afraid of change.
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posted by Jeffrey Phillips at 5:48 AM 1 comments
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
How to tell if you are an innovator
In a world of celebrity driven Twitter, "reality" shows and always on news, Andy Warhol was only partially right. We'll all be famous for 15 minutes. Unfortunately some people seem to get their 15 minutes over and over again for all the wrong reasons. Luckily for us, however, most innovators toil away from the spotlight. In fact many people who are innovators don't realize who and what they are.
Innovators are born and made. Innovators are people who have good ideas or sometimes just good insights. Innovators are people who aren't happy with the status quo, and are willing to do something about it. Herewith, seven factors that will tell you whether or not you are an innovator. Take the assessment, but know this: anyone can be an innovator. Read on and I'll tell you how.
1. Think a lot about the future. They wonder not about the next calamity, but what the future will be like and how they can impact the future. They wonder about emerging trends. They wonder what consumers will want next. Safety and security in today's world doesn't interest them. They are eager for what's next.
2. Aren't satisfied with the status quo. They are constantly trying to improve things - even things that don't seem to be broken. They want to know how to improve things, eliminate obstacles. As Shaw said, all progress is due to the unreasonable man, since reasonable people accept shortcomings.
3. Are empathetic. Innovators can get into other people's lives and shoes. They can virtually walk a mile in your moccasins. This doesn't necessarily mean they are "nice", just able to understand issues and challenges better than the average joe.
4. Are playful, in the best sense. By this I mean they are open to new experiences, are willing to test and prototype, and open to discovery.
5. Are stubborn and driven. If innovators don't have a stubborn streak, then their ideas won't progress, because many people will resist even good ideas initially. It's not easy advocating for a new idea. Innovators have to be committed to their ideas.
6. Are open to exchange of insights and ideas. While stubborn and driven, they understand that the best ideas are emergent and based on the kernal of good insights and ideas from a broad range of settings. They are willing to listen, to absorb and to incorporate inputs from a wide variety of sources.
7. Want to solve real problems. The difference between science fiction and innovation is that while innovators joke about jet backpacks, they want to solve real needs and offer real solutions. Some of those may be incremental in nature - the next product release and some may be disruptive - the next jet backpack. But only if the jet backpack solves a real, important, relevant need and is viable and adoptable.
So, how did you do? If the profile I've described feels right, you have all the proclivity to become an excellent innovator. Don't think you aren't creative enough or don't have enough time or energy. If this profile sounds like you, get moving. You are an innovator whether you like it or not.
If this doesn't sound like you, but you do want to innovate, the great news is this: nothing in this list can't be learned. These are a series of behaviors and perspectives that anyone can adopt. Stop telling yourself you aren't innovative. You weren't born with the gene, you build it from your experiences, interests and perspectives. Just exercise your attitude and become more open to the possibilities.
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posted by Jeffrey Phillips at 9:01 AM 2 comments
Monday, April 16, 2012
Book Review: Beyond the Obvious
Over the years I've had a chance to interact with some really insightful innovators. I've been fortunate enough to meet and interact with individuals like Steve Shapiro, Paul Sloane, Paul Hobcraft, Alex Osterwalder and James Gardner. These individuals have all contributed to the pantheon of great innovation insights and writing. As have good friends and mentors like Tim Hurson, Gary Hamel and Peter Schwartz. The amount of material written on innovation is growing exponentially, but the amount of valuable material within that exponential growth is essentially flat.
That's why I was pleased to see Phil McKinney's new book, Beyond the Obvious, and have a chance to read it. McKinney, until recently, was the CTO for Hewlett-Packard and led a significant amount of innovation at H-P, and in roles prior to H-P. McKinney is unusual for a senior corporate executive, in that he has traditionally been very open with his thoughts, publishing a blog and a series of podcasts about innovation. So I looked forward to his book.
Beyond the Obvious, Killer questions that spark game-changing innovation, takes a new and unique approach to the challenges presented by innovation. Rather than present a specific methodology or toolset, McKinney starts at an almost philosophical position by asking questions. You have to like any management book that starts with a quote by Voltaire, rather than Drucker or Porter. Phil states early on that "the first step to freeing yourself to find innovations is to recognize that the knowledge you currently have is insufficient, and that you need to go out and discover new information that will lead you to new products or concepts". This is exceptionally important. Many organizations want to start from a position of certainty. They make statements rather than ask questions. Good innovators are naturally curious and willing to learn more. The best way to do this is to explore and ask questions. Yet asking questions is not in our corporate nature, unless we already know the answer.
Phil talks about challenging assumptions, getting beyond "business as usual". In Relentless Innovation I defined how powerful business as usual is, and what a barrier it can be to innovation activities. Phil describes business as usual as mental "handcuffs" that keep people locked into the way they've always worked. Questions break this cycle.
Phil also talks about "jolts" and weak signals - basically a way of talking about disruptions and spotting them by watching for trends. Jolts are disruptions but also opportunities for innovation.
In the final sections before diving more deeply into the killer questions he addresses the issue of corporate antibodies - those people and beliefs that stifle innovation. He addresses four kinds of corporate antibodies for innovation:
1. Ego
2. Fatigue (tried that before)
3. No risk ("no ROI", "no funds available")
4. Comfort ("don't rock the boat", "we've always done it this way")
These beliefs and innovation responses will be familiar to anyone who has attempted innovation.
In the next section of the book Phil defines his FIRE methodology: Focus, Ideation, Ranking and Execution. Basically a high level innovation methodology.
Focus is about making the right decisions - key questions: who (customer), what (product) and how (function). Phil argues too much emphasis is placed on customer and product, and not enough on function.
Ideation is about generating ideas based on key questions.
Ranking is, as its name suggests, ranking or prioritizing ideas, especially weeding out influence and bias
Execution described a gated funding system to advance good ideas while keeping costs and risks low.
Once the FIRE methodology is introduced, Phil shows how each step of the process is managed and governed by asking good questions. Who is your customer? What criteria do they use to select your product? Who is using it in unanticipated ways? What is your offering? and so forth. A lot of good questions to use to drive the ideation and ranking of your ideas.
Toward the end of the book Phil provides insights into how he runs innovation workshops and then provides a couple of very nice case studies where his Killer Questions approach has been used.
My Take:
Phil hits the nail on the head when he advocates approaching innovation from a discovery and questioning point of view. Far too often many firms attempt to start from certainty and move to certainty, rather than starting from questions and exploration. Phil's Killer Question approach is very helpful, using key questions and changing perspectives and assumptions. This is a methodology that can be used by individuals or by a large group.
Phil incorporates a lot of innovation best practice, including trend spotting and scenario planning, and even incorporates questions that begin to uncover customer needs that may be unclear or hidden. His advice on execution, using a gated funding model to keep costs and risks low, is in line with best practices.
There's much to take away from Killer Questions, especially the questions, but I think Phil's informal style is suitable only for people who are exceptionally skilled or confident in an innovation leadership role. I can easily see an innovation consultant leading a client through this process, or a very senior executive who buys into the questioning approach. There's not enough detail or definition to build an innovation capability or discipline based on what Phil has written. It would be difficult for a firm to adopt this model without strong facilitation, since there's little definition of the process.
Phil's Killer Questions and his questioning approach will definitely be adopted by many firms. I'll be incorporating some of his questions and his approach in our OVO innovation methodology. However, without a strong, confident innovation leader who can encourage people to question their assumptions and work within this approach, it may be difficult for some firms to replicate Phil's success.
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posted by Jeffrey Phillips at 7:38 AM 0 comments
Friday, April 13, 2012
Looking to the past for ideas
Satchel Paige has been quoted as saying "never look back, someone may be gaining on you", but I think it's our natural proclivity to "look back". Looking back to our past is a way of reviewing and learning from our successes and mistakes. Further, history is concrete. We know what happened in the past, while everything that will happen, or could happen, in the future is still a mystery.
For another famous quote, Spinoza (or others, depending on your source) is attributed with "those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it". I think that sentiment is true where human nature is concerned. We humans repeat the same mistakes in politics, in government and in personal affairs, often just in larger settings and with more significant consequences. Just as the Spanish Civil War was clearly a precursor and training ground for World War II, so to the Algerian war was to Viet Nam and eventually even into Afghanistan. And, as any historian can tell you, everyone who went into Afghanistan regretted it and left in less than noble terms. But does careful study of the past tell us about need for innovation in the future?
The question for executives and managers is: should I study the past, which is fixed and relatively unmoving, concrete and known for ideas? Or should I attempt to ascertain the future to find new ideas? Both approaches are full of promise and fraught with uncertainty.
Studying the past provides far greater clarity. We may not always understand the reasons WHY something happened, but we know WHAT happened. In our modern management circles, clarity of purpose often trumps insights about opportunities that are unclear. The problem with studying the past is that while ideas may be prevalent, and some even unexplored, the past is for the most part an open book. All the insights that may be there are available to anyone, so your insights had better be good, and further, you'd better be able to deploy new products or services based on insights gleaned from the past very quickly.
Studying the future is quite the opposite. There is no certainty or clarity once we look beyond a year or two, and, with the pace of change accelerating, attempting to forecast needs and wants five to ten years into the future is highly uncertain. We don't know the WHO or the WHAT or the WHY of future needs. But with careful thinking, aggregating weak signals into trends and excellent synthesis, we can begin to define more definitive patterns and shapes about the future, which can signal new needs and opportunities. These will NOT be definitive, so clarity and certainty won't be served, but those who are willing to risk the investments based on their careful studies will be rewarded.
In business, our first approach is always to look to history. Have we faced this issue before? Have we had a problem or initiative like this before? Can we relate this to something we've done in the past? The goal is to find existing patterns, reduce the problem to something in alignment with known approaches and move ahead. But many times historical patterns or knowledge aren't helpful or aren't in synch with future needs. We often don't have as much comfort looking to the future and finding solutions and alternatives as we do finding corollaries for problems in the past.
The choice, to me, is obvious. Far too often our teams are too comfortable looking to the past for answers, seeking clear and concrete needs in a past that is an open book, rather than looking ahead, harnessing the information that's available and making judgements based on the signals that are available. Not only are we doomed to repeat history, we are doomed to do so lacking knowledge, services and products that would have made life better if only we were willing to understand that most good ideas lie in the future, not the past.
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posted by Jeffrey Phillips at 12:26 PM 0 comments
Monday, April 09, 2012
Innovation attitudes and success
Well, I'm back and feeling chipper after a nice trip to Istanbul to meet a potential partner and a week in Spain on R&R. After some relaxing days and digging out of email, it occurred to me that many of Stephen Covey's principles apply to innovation. Sharpening the saw equates to building skills through training. Important versus urgent defines innovation versus the day to day demands of business. But the one I want to focus on today is: start with the end in mind.
You see, there are three starting "attitudes" that define how companies begin an innovation effort. They are, in no particular order, fear, uncertainty and confidence. Where your team starts, matters. Because you need to start an innovation project with the end in mind.
Let's start with fear, which is where most innovation efforts begin. I'll call it "fear" since at least half of all innovation projects are started based on fear - the fear of falling behind a competitor, and are worked in fear - fear of failure, fear of new tools, fear of disrupting the status quo. In fact fear is probably the most prevalent of all attitudes when innovation is active. If fear is the starting point and fear is the dominant attitude during the effort, what's the likely result? Ideas that closely resemble the existing product portfolio, that don't ruffle feathers or cause any consternation. Fear is a limiting emotion, causing people who encounter fear to play it safe, or, often even worse, to become reckless. If you start from a position of fear, and fear overhangs your effort, innovation simply can't be successful.
Next is "uncertainty". Many firms start from a position or attitude of uncertainty. They are uncertain if innovation is necessary, uncertain about the tools and methods and uncertain about the best outcomes. When nothing is left to chance and everything is certain in business, only innovation is uncertain. Therefore, innovation is the outlier and by definition it is a variance to be eliminated rather than a path to be pursued. When you start in uncertainty and all tools, methods and outcomes are uncertain, your end result will be the same. Or, to quote another saying, when you don't know where you are going, any road can take you there. Uncertainty isn't necessarily limiting, it just creates confusion and aimlessness.
The final attitude is confidence. Firms with strong leadership, cultures that welcome innovation and people who have innovation skills start their innovation efforts confident of success, and are confident in their abilities to accelerate good ideas to market. Confidence is contagious and sweeps more people into its fold. It's almost unfair, actually, that confident innovators are gaining skills and capabilities at an ever increasing pace, while uncertain or fearful innovators are losing share, losing ground and falling further behind, which of course creates more uncertainty and more fear. Fear and uncertainty can create vicious cycles, while confidence creates a virtuous cycle.
What's really interesting is that most people understand this innately, even if they don't communicate it. Companies and teams that start with fear as a basis for innovation, or with uncertainty as the basis will almost always be unhappy with the results, regardless of the approach, regardless of the methodology or tool or software application, while firms that start in confidence will usually succeed regardless of the method, tool or approach. What gets in the way of confidence?
Not enough skills, not enough commitment, not enough simple belief that innovation can make a difference. It's the difference between "I'll believe it when I see it" or "I'll see it when I believe it". There's no magic to innovation. What's necessary is a set of skills, a clear goal, a commitment to working through a process and the ability to commercialize good ideas quickly. If your company has these characteristics and strong leadership to back it up, you can innovate from a position of confidence. Lacking these traits means you'll start from a position of fear or uncertainty, and will struggle to develop ideas that are valuable and meaningful.
Start with the end in mind. If you plan to be successful with an innovation effort, start confident in your goals, confident in your skills and confident that the systems and decision making processes will support you, or work to make them so. Otherwise, innovation is simply too difficult to do from a position of fear or uncertainty that you will struggle to succeed when starting from these attitudes.
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posted by Jeffrey Phillips at 12:46 PM 0 comments | http://innovateonpurpose.blogspot.fr/2012_04_01_archive.html | [
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Power walking has several advantages. First of all, it is probably the safest form of sport available and can be practiced by anyone, anywhere, at any time, without the need for a complex equipment, only a training suit and some sports shoes. It can be incorporated into any program, even if you work a lot of hours a day or not, even if you have done sports or not, even if you are young or old, it is safe even for people with various diseases and pregnant women after a medical check , of course. It is a form of movement that, unlike running, has a very low impact on the joints, protects the knees and especially does not expose the heart to a great deal of stress.
For power walking to have an effect, the training regime must be serious. Do not confuse the stroll through the shops or even the leisure walks for a sport. Ala is not sports, it’s relaxation. Sessions of about 40 minutes a day of fast walking are recommended, sessions that are not interrupted by anything (frequent stops, obstacles, intersections, etc.). It’s a great workout for those who want to lose weight because it involves a lower heart rate, somewhere in the “fat burn” zone, roughly between 60-70 percent of the heart’s capacity. In this zone the body will burn predominantly adipose tissue and very little muscle (what we want when we want to lose weight). And if you ask why we do not want to burn muscle and ideas like “but I do not want to be muscular” pop in your head, I will briefly say two things: 1. Muscles are the ones that maintain a high metabolism, meaning high calorie burns, that is, burning the cheescake you ate faster. 2. It is difficult to gain muscles! Extremely, especially as we women do not have testosterone. But about this more details in another post.
The idea is to maintain a constant speed and to have a relevant indicator, it is very simple to look after the limit between walking and running. That is, to go fast enough to be at the point where you would normally start running. The longer you keep the pace constant, the better (that is, the more fat we burn). I suppose it makes no sense to explain how important it is to properly hydrate and to have a proper nutrition. After training, the body will release endorphins and you will feel much better. It would be good for the training to be completed with a 5-10 minutes of stretching, which plays a vital role in preventing injuries and a good muscle development.
Such a training helps you to get into shape, especially if you have been sedentary or have not practiced sports for a long time and burn more calories than jogging would, making it harder to walk at a faster speed, than running at a lower speed.
Think that this type of training is being practiced by bodybuilders, at the end of the weight training, somewhere around 20-30 minutes, to burn the last traces of fat on the muscles. If you try this kind of training, let me know! And of course, any questions you have, I’m here!
Go, go, go!
Your Internet Best friend | http://lauramusuroaea.com/power-walking-better/ | [
"shape"
] |
Working with the MEAN stack: Application setup
In this tutorial I will convert the app I wrote using AngularJS to make it use the MEAN stack. Don’t worry, there’s nothing mean about the MEAN stack.
The MEAN stack is a pure JavaScript stack containing:
• MongoDB: MongoDB is a NoSQL database allowing you to store JSON (actually BSON) documents and query them. This is a great database when going for pure JavaScript applications because it’s easy to put the same object structure that you’re working with, inside the database.
• Express: Express is a web framework that runs on Node.js. A “web” framework may sound a bit vague, but it is actually that. It allows you to serve static content, it allows you to route certain requests to execute certain logic (great for RESTful webservices) and so on.
• AngularJS: I probably don’t have to explain this one to you, but AngularJS is a client-side Model-View-Controller framework by Google.
• Node.js: I mentioned it already that we’re going to use Node.js (because we’re going to use Express), but Node.js is a JavaScript platform, quite popular nowadays. In this tutorial we will use it as our server-side platform.
Before starting with the application, you obviously need to install the MEAN stack. If you followed some of my other tutorials, you probably already used Node.js and npm to use Bower. If you didn’t install Node.js yet, you can get it from
By installing Node.js you install two things; first of all it will install Node.js (obviously), and second it will also install the Node.js package manager called npm.
Verify that the installation was successful by using the command:
node version
nodejs version
And to check if npm was installed, use:
npm version
The second step is to install MongoDB, which you can download from To check if the installation was successful, use:
mongod version
Setting up our application
The first step is that we’re going to setup our application. Start a new project and add the following folders:
• client: This folder will contain our client-side application using AngularJS. This content will be served by Express.
• config: This folder will contain configuration used to run our application. Things like a connection URL and the port we will run on can be setup here. It’s a good idea to centralize this information for when you want to dpeloy the app on a cloud based environment.
• server: This folder will contain our server-side logic to serve the client and to provide a RESTful webservice.
We’re also going to add some files. First of all we’re going to create our Node.js application by creating a file called app.js. Node.js also comes with a packaage manager called NPM.
To load our dependencies, we will have to define a file called package.json, which will define our application and the dependencies we have.
In our app the file will contain:
1. {
2. “name”: “mean-song-rate”,
3. “version”: “0.0.1”,
4. “dependencies”: {
5. “mongoose”: “~3.6.14”,
6. “express”: “~3.3.4”
7. }
8. }
I already explained what we’re going to do with Express. Mongoose on the other hand is a Node.js framework used to communicate with MongoDB. It provides a sweet API where you use models to add/update/retrieve and read your data.
For the client-side part of our application, I’m going to start of where we left in my previous tutorial. I’m not going into detail about AngularJS controllers, services or directives in this tutorial. If you’re interested in that, I suggest reading my introduction tutorial series to AngularJS.
What we do need is the code of the application, which you can find on Github ( Put all the code in the client folder, except bower.json and .bowerrc which you can put in the root folder.
Now open up .bowerrc and change the directory to:
1. {
2. “directory”: “client/libs”,
3. “json”: “bower.json”
4. }
This is obviously necessary because we moved our Bower configuration one level up (to the parent folder).
Now open bower.json and add the dependency angular-resource, for example:
1. {
3. “version”: “0.0.1”,
4. “dependencies”: {
5. “angular”: “1.2.15”,
6. “angular-resource”: “1.2.15”,
7. “bootstrap”: “3.1.1”,
8. “lodash”: “2.4.1”,
9. “underscore.string”: “2.3.3”,
10. “font-awesome”: “4.0.3”
11. }
12. }
Angular-resource is a part of the AngularJS framework and provides an easy way to integrate with your RESTful webservices.
Also note that I changed the name in the bower configuration.
The next part is the configuration. Open the config folder and add the following files:
• config.js: This file will contain our main configuration including port number and database URL.
• db.js: This file will contain the Mongoose configuration to connect to our MongoDB instance.
• express.js: This file will contain the configuration used for Express.js like on which port it has to un, which context will be used to serve our client application and which context will be used to provide our RESTful webservices.
• routes.js: Finally we will also use the routing pattern to setup which URL is bound to which logic in our controller.
The serverside logic will not be too complicated. We’re going to add two folders here called controllersand models.
In the controllers folder we will add our RESTful webservice controller, called rest.js. In the models folder we will add our model, a file called Song.js.
Writing your Node.js app
Now all files are ready, so let’s start by writing our application. I’m going to start with the boring stuff first, namely the configuration part.
Let’s open up config.js and add the following code:
1. var env = process.env.NODE_ENV || ‘development’;
2. var config = {
3. port: 3000,
4. db: ‘mongodb://localhost/songs’,
5. host: ‘localhost’
6. };
7. module.exports = config;
On the first line we’re retrieving a system variable called NODE_ENV. This is not really important in our app, but if you want to deploy this on a cloud environment like IBM BlueMix or if you want to host this on multiple environments, you might be interested in this. For every environment you choose another value forNODE_ENV, which will allow you to use something like:
1. if (env === “production”) {
2. config.db = ‘mongodb://my.production.server/songs’;
3. }
So, on the next lines we can see our configuration which contains:
• port: The port our application will run on
• db: The MongoDB connection string
• host: The hostname the application will run on
And finally we make sure that this module returns config, so when another module calls it, it gets the configuration object. You can do this by using module.exports.
The next configuration file is db.js. Similar to config.js we will configure Mongoose and return the configuration by using module.exports, for example:
1. var mongoose = require(‘mongoose’);
2. module.exports = function(config) {
3. mongoose.connect(config.db);
4. var db = mongoose.connection;
5. db.on(‘error’, function() {
6. throw new Error(‘Unable to connect to database at ‘ + config.db);
7. });
8. };
So, here we’re using the configuration object we made in our previous module and use it to connect to MongoDB using Mongoose.
The configuration itself is passed as an argument to this module, I will show you how that works later.
Then the next configuration file is express.js, similar to db.js it will configure our application based upon the configuration from config.js.
1. var express = require(‘express’);
2. module.exports = function(app, config) {
3. app.configure(function () {
4. app.use(express.compress());
5. app.set(‘port’, config.port);
6. app.use(express.logger(‘dev’));
7. app.use(express.bodyParser());
8. app.use(express.methodOverride());
10. app.use(‘/api’, app.router);
11. app.use(‘/’, express.static(__dirname + “/../client”));
12. });
13. };
So, what happens here is that this module accepts two parameters, app which is an application object initialized by Express and second we have config which is our configuration object which we’re going to need to know the port we’re going to run on.
So, let’s talk about each line more into detail. The first two lines of configuration are pretty easy, the first line makes sure that our files are compressed using the GZIP protocol and the second line says which port we’re going to use.
The third line (app.use(express.logger('dev')); makes sure that we’re going to log all requests of both our RESTful webservice as the static files that are served.
The next two lines are important for our RESTful webservice In our RESTful webservice we’re going to use the post body to add or update the objects. To do that we need to enable the express.bodyParser()) on our application.
The express.methodOverride() on the other hand allows us to use PUT and DELETE requests, which we will use to update and delete our objects in our RESTful webservice.
Then finally we configure our app to use /api to serve our RESTful webservice and / to provide the static files from the client folder.
The last configuration file is routes.js and this is probably the easiest one. In this configuration file we will define which REST endpoint is mapped to which method in our controller.
1. var rest = require(‘../server/controllers/rest’);
2. module.exports = function(app){
3. // find all songs route
4. app.get(‘/songs’, rest.findAll);
6. // find one song route
7. app.get(‘/songs/:id’, rest.findOne);
9. // Add song route
10.‘/songs’, rest.add);
12. // Update song route
13. app.put(‘/songs/:id’, rest.update);
15. // Delete song route
16. app.del(‘/songs/:id’, rest.remove);
17. };
As you can see here, we’re using several endpoints here:
• GET /songs: This will be used to retrieve all songs in our database
• GET /songs/:id: The :id is a placeholder for the real ID of a song. Which means that we’re going to use this to retrieve a single song from our database.
• POST /songs: This method will be used to add a new song to the list. The song itself will be provided as JSON in the post body of the request.
• PUT /songs/:id: This method will be used to update a song by its ID. The updated song itself will be provided in the request body, just like adding new songs.
• DELETE /songs/:id: This method will be used to delete a song by its ID.
At the first lien you can see how we import our REST controller in the configuration file by usingrequire('../server/controllers/rest').
The main application
Before actually writing our application we have to write the “glue” that keeps all modules together. Our main module (app.js) will import the configuration files to make sure our app is properly started.
The code itself is not that complex, as it’s sole purpose is to load other modules (like our configuration).
So, first of all we’re going to import all modules that we need by using the require() function:
1. var express = require(‘express’), mongoose = require(‘mongoose’), fs = require(‘fs’), http = require(‘http’),
2. config = require(‘./config/config’), root = __dirname, app = express(), server = null;
Most of these modules are known by now. Only fs and http are new modules. These are standard modules of Node.js, so that’s why you won’t find them in package.json.
The names of the modules already explain what they do:
• fs: Provides functions to access the file system
• http: Allows you to create a HTTP web server
Then the next step is that we’re going to configure Mongoose by using db.js:
1. require(‘./config/db’)(config);
As you can see here, we’re importing the module and immediately after it we’re executing the function and providing the config argument.
The next part is a bit more complex. To dynamically load all our models, we’re going to list all files in the models directory and add all modules that are inside that folder.
We can do that by writing:
1. var modelsPath = __dirname + ‘/server/models’;
2. fs.readdirSync(modelsPath).forEach(function (file) {
3. if (file.indexOf(‘.js’) >= 0) {
4. require(modelsPath + ‘/’ + file);
5. }
6. });
Now we only have the express and route configuration file left, which we’re going to load by writing:
1. require(‘./config/express’)(app, config);
2. require(‘./config/routes’)(app);
And finally we need to start the webserver itself, which we will do by adding:
1. var server = http.createServer(app);
2. server.listen(config.port,;
3. console.log(‘App started on port ‘ + config.port);
This is everything we have to do to make our application work. In the next part I’m going to explain how we’re going to create the MVC application using Express and how we’re going to tweak the AngularJS application to make it work with our new RESTful webservice.
IT Consultant with a passion for JavaScript. Experienced in the Spring Framework and various JavaScript frameworks.
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Tips on managing Stalls/Gains
I was just out looking for some other blogs to read to see what other people might have for recipes... While out, I found this site which had a particular post that I thought you'd be interested in.
Here's part of the post:
Tips on Managing Stalls/Gains
1. Watch what you’re eating; you should have a food journal and you might find patterns of foods that cause you not to lose, or to lose fantastically. A lot of people have had problems losing with tomatoes and oranges (but some people have no problem at all). Every body is different and you need to monitor your own body and see what works (and doesn’t work) for you.
2. Make sure you are drinking enough water (at least 2 liters a day).
3. Those that have held true to the diet and not cheated, have been rewarded with a large weight reduction when it finally drops. You will usually resume your previous average loss before the stall.
4. Each time you stall, take your measurements; you have probably lost inches (remember it is called Pounds and INCHES).
5. You could gain some weight and not have cheated, depending on your menses, ovulation, and hormones. Almost all of us have seen the scale go up due to water retention, etc.
6. If you eat more salt in the food you prepare, and your body isn't used to that sodium level, your blood volume will increase to handle the extra salt, which will translate into a gain because you're retaining water to boost that blood volume. In other words, watch your salt intake.
7. Remember what Simeons said about losing. You lose fat from the body cells but the cells do not disappear at the same time. The cell structure is still present for two to three days while the body breaks down the cellulose and fills the cell with water in order to release it (through urine). Once the fat cell is removed, the scale will drop.
8. Sensitivity/allergies to foods (like lemons) may cause weight stalls. Listen to your body. The guru is you!
9. Pay attention to weight gains, they usually signify a mishap in the protocol, like not drinking enough water, eating too many/too few calories, too much salt, or (inadvertently) eating foods not allowed on the protocol.
10. Be careful, spices have calories. As long as the serving size listed has less than 5 calories, the company can list 0 calories (even though it may actually have 4). Usually spices and seasonings use 1/4 of a teaspoon as their serving size, so BE CAREFUL...4 calories in 1/4 teaspoon = 16 calories in 1 teaspoon. Account for every calorie, no matter how miniscule it may seem. Here is an exact calorie count per TABLESPOON of various spices:
1TB Onion Powder =22.54 calories
1TB Garlic Powder =27.91 calories
1TB Chili Powder =23.55 calories
1TB Paprika =19.94 calories
1TB Poltry Season =11.36 calories
1TB Oregano =13.77 calories
1 comment:
1. I woke up this morning freaking out!! I gained more than 3lbs!!!! I was just about to say forget it to this crazy diet and just go on a food bender today.....this post helped me stay focused and remember that I need to be more aware of the calories. I still get a bit frustrated that as little as we eat that 100 calories either way makes that much difference. I won't give up on this and will see it through to the end. Thanks for all the great information you post on here, it really helps.
Related Posts with Thumbnails | http://lessofmehcg.blogspot.com/2009/09/tips-on-managing-stallsgains.html | [
"volume"
] |
Saturday, August 20, 2016
Book review: INVISIBLE MONSTERS by Chuck Palahniuk
Because beauty is power the way money is power the way a loaded gun is power.
Palahniuk is best known for Fight Club, a manly book about guys beating each other up and feeling more alive because of it. Invisible Monsters is his second novel, and unlike the macho air of Fight Club, here is another world of (also ruthless and brutal) the modeling industry, plastic surgery, sex change, and getting rid of your past.
The novel's narrator and protagonist is a fashion model who was shot in the jaw. She is saved by a transgender Brandy Alexander, body full of operations and drugs, as she embarks on a new life wandering around with her ex-boyfriend and taking revenge against her former model frenemy. Here we get a lot of angst about beauty and ugliness. The narrator realizes that her face, no matter how scary and horrible now, is also a kind of power.
My favorite moral lesson from this book, though, is getting rid of the past and focusing instead on the future and all its possibilities.
The main character looks like this:
"Your perception is all fucked up. All you can talk about is trash that's already happened. You can't base your life on the past or the present. You have to tell me about your future."
"When you understand, is that what you're telling is just a story. It isn't happening anymore. When you realize the story you're telling is just words, when you can just crumble it up and throw your past in the trashcan, then we'll figure out who you're going to be."
"It's because we're so trapped in our culture, in the being of being human on this planet with the brains we have, and the same two arms and two legs everybody has. We're so trapped that any way we could imagine to escape would be just another part of the trap. Anything we want, we're trained to want."
"Times like this, it helps to think of yourself as a sofa or a newspaper, something made by a lot of other people but not made to last forever. It helps to know you're not any more responsible for how you look than a car is. You're a product just as much. A product of a product of a product. The people who design cars, they're products. Your parents are products. Their parents were products. Your teachers, products. The minister in your church, another product. The best way is not to fight it, just go. Don't be trying all the time to fix things. What you run from only stays with you longer. When you fight something, you only make it stronger. Whatever you're thinking, a million other folks are thinking. Whatever you do, they're doing, and none of you is responsible. All of you is a cooperative effort."
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Senin, 22 Juli 2013
Why Children Need A Character Education?
Character building is essential approach for building nation. In essence, the development of a child is to develop a true understanding of how this world works, learn "rules of the game" every aspect in this world. Children will grow into personal character when can grow in the range of characteristic
There are 3 Ways to Educate Children Character:
1. Change the environment, doing character education by laying out rules and consequences at school and at home.
2. Provide knowledge, provide knowledge on how to do the behavior that hoped to appear in their days and applied.
3. Controlling emotions, human emotions are in control of 88% of human life. If able to touch the emotions and provide accurate information so that information will be settled in his life.
The story of a corrupt racket
I found this interesting story at
Perhaps all of us can learn from these story.
A young boy accidentally destroy his father's racket. Because of fear, she hid the racket under the bed in his room.
Every time his father entered the room, her fear. He accidentally sat down on the bed, worried father raised beds later found that he rusakkan racket. That's why he is always trying to move the racket that he rusakkan to another as often as possible, in hopes father will not be able to find it.
So far everything is always able to be treated successfully. Faults remain hermetically sealed in front of his father. However, as long as it did not calm him. Every moment of guilt arise and judge. Wherever he went, his heart was always drawn to the racket that the father he never rusakkan.
The more often he moved his racket rusakkan, he is getting restless, because it means the little place that allows it to hide the broken racket. In ketertekanannya, he finally took the damaged racquet, bring it in his right hand, then went to his father with fear.
Having been in front of his father, he said as he showed the destruction racket, "father, forgive me for damaging racquets father, I am ready to be punished."
Heard of her son, the father leaned over and said, "son, father already knew all of that from last week, just waiting for your father to have the courage to admit it. Now the father was about to say to you that the father forgive you. "
The last sentence of the father actually make the child feel relieved and free. Admit mistakes is the beginning of a great deed, and to account for the error is a step towards happiness.
Jumat, 19 Juli 2013
Meerkat and Grebe : Two Signs of Love for a Child
In a vast steppes, a set of Meerkat (Ind.: Mongoose) is preparing to return to the nest. By evening, a fox crept toward the nest. Knowing this, the parent Meerkat immediately put the body in the nest entrance. He was ready to fight to protect her children. The next morning, the battle scars overnight with wolves force the meerkat’s parent last breath.
In another hemisphere, a pair of birds building nests near Grebe lake inhabited by crocodiles. Once when the crocodile was very hungry, Grebe chicks are still too weak to be crocodile’s food. Parent birds know it and immediately pretended hurt to distract the crocodile. Seeing other larger dining, the crocodile follow where the mother bird away. As she shuffled like a mortally wounded, the parent birds Grebe risking his life so that the crocodile away from her children.
Two stories above is not a fictional story.
Grebe bird and meerkats are just 2 of the many creatures of God given instinct of compassion. There are many other creatures that God showed his affection with a variety of ways. Especially humans, which was given the mandate as the inheritors of the earth, the absolute has the affectionate nature. Without it, the position as the leader in the face of the earth will only bring misfortune.
When young, Grebe chicks feed her mother found hairs or feathers of his own. It is intended that these feathers form a filter in the stomach chicks, which would prevent the entry of fish spines into the digestive tract.
When we were kids, our parents are very careful with what we eat. When we are sick, we are the ones that most parents worry about the condition of our bodies. They think very best education that will be given to us. With all the sacrifices they made, how should we reply?
There's no way we give back what they have given. But as a child, our obedience, our devotion, respect, attention, and affection we do, are the things that will make them happy to have us as their sons and daughters. (Aan)
Languages and Civilizations
Long before Cesare Bollugia ambitious to unite Spain, Naples, and Rome, the Abbasid Caliphate had been in control of Western civilization in Europe. Yes, Andalusia in the 7th century AD has been the center of civilization with Cordoba as one of the prominent cities. At this time, in Spain, Christians are immersed into what is known as the Mozarabic Culture (Dr. Hamid Fahmi Zarkasyi). Islam is the dominant culture that may have contributed greatly to the birth of a new view of life in the West.
Prior to the 7th century, Western civilization has indeed been inherited from the Greeks and Romans. However, sophisticated Muslim worldview and more rich knowledge of what is contained in the Latin world, has given stimulus to the rise of the ideology, intellectuality, and imagination of medieval European society.
Then, in the 10th century AD, wheel rolling back civilization. Rotating steady and strengthen the Christian army ambition to return to the glory which he inherited from Roman civilization, while continuing to enrich the heritage of world civilization with Islam: aspiration and enthusiasm for life.
Transfer the live of view
Civilization is formed when the constituent elements that include factors accumulate material and immaterial in such a way in a short time. And indeed, the forerunner of the wheels of civilization from the time of the Abbasid Caliphate to Christian Europe has been going on since the Islamic civilization reached its glory. Of course, just as the Ibn Khaldun: "When a people have reached the point of civilization, then nobody could awaited addition to its destruction" (Mujahideen Muhayyan).
When Islamic civilization that reached its peak, western aspirations of Muslims to enrich their worldview.
Lives of the people with intellectual and sophisticated view of life in the shade of the Islamic civilization, which is felt and seen by the European through and visit their diplomatic relations, has given rise to the embryo changes. And these embryos develop when the people of Europe realize that they can absorb the aspirations and spirit of Muslim life by transferring and assimilating the books of philosophy and Islamic science. In addition to stories and poems were transmitted orally, many Muslim scientific works translated by the West. This enthusiasm is so great-monastery to monastery Europe, especially Santa Marie de Rippol, on the 12th and 13th century AD manuscript has storage space for a large number of Muslims to their scientific work translated. Thus, they can explore science contained in the libraries of Islam. In fact, for the smooth running of the translation process, the kings of Europe established a school for translators in Toledo, just after Christian forces recaptured the city in 1085 AD
So no wonder, if the works of medieval European scientists could not be separated from the works of translation from Arabic.Historians note that the development of Western Europe in the mid 13th century is a combination of elements, called Greco-Arabic-Latin. In other words, the mastery of the language that characterizes the works of philosophy and science of the time, has opened the gates of the intellect and the western way of life, and make the people of Europe, once again, as the ruler of Western civilization, which is more rich in scientific works andconcepts of the Islamic worldview.
Once again, "just" because of the language ...
Language, forming the arms of civilization
History of a civilization begins when the language has evolved its constituent communities. Archaeologists itself establish that history began when society has known writings. It refers to the written evidence is found. Interim period before the written evidence is categorized as prehistoric. And writing, is evidence that language comprehension is a growing community.
Language, according to Muhayyan Mujahideen, a form born of the workings of the brain, which is thought. The brainchild of a variety of shapes.
Some are born as art, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and so on. The birth of the results of this thinking help humanity understand the moral values, religion, the universe, including his true identity. Because art is the language of our feelings and thoughts. Philosophy is the language of the deepest values of life and living. Mathematics is the language of symbols for objects and events around us. Similarly astronomy, is a language that helps us understand the universe, as well as our identity.
So the development indicates the rise of the language of a people.
This evolving mindset, enables man to actualize themselves in such a way as to develop the immaterial factors such as rules, moral values and beliefs (religion). Immaterial factors, supported by material factors such as geological factors, geographical, and economic, accumulate to form a civilization.Because it's no wonder, when the only developed nation that bahasanyalah, which is able to form a human existence, called civilization.
Generating Islamic civilization
Mastery over the language does have an important role for the formation of a civilization. Therefore, it is not possible to revive the language of a civilization that had drowned.
Ibn Khaldun defines civilization as the pinnacle of cultural achievement ladder.
And a spokesman for culture, language becomes a very powerful tool for spreading the culture of the speakers of the language. When languages have made the culture of a nation into a global culture, the culture of the nation will color the joints civilization.
But the Islamic civilization, not just a collection of culture.Civilization is built upon the apostles ”millah” worldview that contains the potential to blow up its constituent humans.
Muslims need to unite immediately languages, and raised the height of the glory of civilization with language. To that end, efforts to unify the language of the policy must be followed up with efforts to speak.
During the cold war, the Soviet Union and the United States in a world polarized into the motor block west and a block east.
But in reality, the Soviet Union was not able to put the Russian language equal to English in the international arena. So that American popular culture over popular culture coloring origin of civilization than the Soviet Union. History also indicates the failure of the Japanese and German military during World War II as a result of the absence of the policy language. So the Japanese or German culture does not contribute significantly in the coloring of civilization.
Now, it was time for Muslims to dye civilization again.
Because the Muslim worldview that rests on the Quran, should be the entity of human civilization. In order for civilization, become truly civilized. (Aan)
This is one of my article that published in "buletin Integral" a few years ago. After re-read it, I found interesting to publish it in my blog. How is your opinion about it content?
Sabtu, 13 Juli 2013
Club for everygirl who likes writing
After talking left and right, never thought, it turns out quite a few friends "excited" by the idea of establishing a school-based Talent. Just how? As a result, this idea should be the way somehow. Because this is not just an idea, but a dream. So, as a first step we will make the club first. Talent-based school is a school for developing talent and interest, so the classes are in the form of clubs.There are writing club, diva club, animation club, etc. Well, because the cost of the device and to establish schools quite complicated and large, then we set up the club first. It's like building a dream home, which is preceded by arranging bricks one by one. Clubs that want to set up the first time was writing club. This is due to the establishment of school-based talent is fronted by people equally like writing. In addition, the establishment of capital was also not so great. Well, after writing club, then other clubs will surely also soon stand. This is a writing club targets schoolgirls. Club members will be divided into teams to complete the project. We are also looking for a publisher to accept the results of the project will be. What if the publisher does not accept? then we publish the results of the project will be independent. So, for the schoolgirls aged 15 years and over who are interested in realizing the dream in the field of writing, better join this club. It's free. Want it???
Talent-based School
What it was like going to school with our way? We learn what we really like and need. For example, I love to write. Then the school will host a book-making project, or a novel, or other. Each time the teaching and learning process, which we are doing is trying to complete the project. The Report is the result of our posts have been published.
Or as I like the culinary arts. Someday want to be a culinary professional artist. Then the school will bring experts in the field to teach. Each meeting we make a work of culinary art different.For example, today the theme is chocolate, fruit mix next meeting, the next meeting different again. At the end of the school year, the exam form of culinary art exhibition, then we get certificate of diploma culinary professional artist. So, we can use the certificate to apply for work in the gallery or school or corporate pastry / cake culinary artist in need of services. Exciting right !
If I love photography, so I would join a photography class. Each meeting we learn to take pictures with different themes. During the meeting, we automatically learn how to set up the lighting, take a right angle, and all about cameras, ranging from its history to the development of the camera. In the end, the science of photography we can get it deeply. Then at the end of the school year, the evaluation of learning is in the form of an international photo exhibition. Sure is cool!
What about I like sports, football for example. Of course I’ll follow football class. In football class, the students are trained in the discipline to be a professional player. In addition there are certain times interspersed lessons on personality. Sports athletes nowadays it's that close to the entertainment world. So it's important to be a decent athlete sale. Well, the school organizes regular events match as well, but to follow the games of football clubs outside school. The football graders must compete for a chance to play in international clubs. Well, of course the school have to facilitated it.
And other talents, such as singing. The Report is the album of their work. Who love animation, the report is animated movie they’ve made. School will facilitate to distribute the work of his students to the broadcasting world. And so on ...
If school is in this way, both students and teachers certainly do not stress, because they learn and teach appropriate field of their interest and obtained knowledge that is certainly needed when they grow up and work in the field, right?
Wanna go to school in a school like this? Or would like to teach in a school like this? Let’s make!
Senin, 01 Juli 2013
Klub buat yang suka nulis
Setelah bicara kiri-kanan, nggak nyangka, ternyata beberapa teman cukup "excited" dengan ide pendirian Talent based school. Cuma caranya gimana? Alhasil, ide ini harus bisa jalan bagaimanapun caranya. Karena ini bukan sekedar ide, tapi impian.
Jadi, sebagai langkah awal kita akan bikin klub dulu. Talent based school adalah sekolah berbasis bakat, jadi kelas-kelasnya berupa klub-klub. Ada writing club, diva club, animasi club, de el el. Nah, karena perangkat dan biaya untuk mendirikan sekolah cukup rumit dan besar, maka kita dirikan klub dulu. Ini seperti membangun sebuah rumah impian, yang diawali dengan menata batu bata satu demi satu. Klub yang mau didirikan pertama kali adalah writing club. Ini karena pendirian talent based school ini digawangi oleh orang-orang yang sama-sama suka nulis. Selain itu, modal pendiriannya juga tidak begitu besar. Nah, setelah writing club, maka club-club lainnya juga pasti akan segera berdiri.
Target writing club ini adalah siswi-siswi SMU (muslimah) mulai dari kelas 1. Anggota club akan dibagi menjadi beberapa tim untuk menyelesaikan proyek bukunya. Kita juga sedang mencari penerbit untuk menerima hasil proyek nantinya. Bagaimana jika penerbit tidak menerima? maka hasil proyek akan kita terbitkan secara indie.
So, buat para remaja muslimah usia 15 tahun ke atas yang berminat mewujudkan impian di bidang tulis-menulis, lebih baik ikut klub ini. Kan gratis. Mau??? | http://miswagarden.blogspot.com/ | [
"object",
"shape",
"angle"
] |
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Loaded words and contested terms
You can imagine that as an English professor I believe that words matter, that language matters. And that what you call things matters quite a bit. Take, for example, my preference for using "Asian American" to refer to people of Asian ancestry/descent rather than "Oriental." It's actually not just my preference; a whole movement in the late 1960s was formed, in part, around wanting to affirm the place of Asians in America and to dismiss the notion of people as objects (because remember: only rugs are Oriental).
Two of my most recent posts have touched on the issue of loaded words and contested terms. The April 11 post about the use of the term "Concentration Camp" to talk about where Japanese Americans were detained during WWII has sparked some interest from another blog, "Is That Legal?," where Eric Muller (remember Professor Muller? I gave a plug for his excellent book American Inquisition: The Hunt for Japanese American Disloyalty during World War II) provides more nuanced examination for thinking through the use of the term "concentration camp"--particularly its charged nature and yet why it IS an accurate term to describe the situation of Japanese Americans during WWII--click here for the link to "Is That Legal?"
[If you are reading this Eric, thanks for plugging my post/blog on your blog--I'm honored!]
And in the April 12 post asking when Asian immigrants become Asian Americans, a commenter and fellow blogger, John B. of "Domestic Issue," began an interesting exchange with another commenter about the use of the phrase "miscegenation."
Now, I don't know if any of you were reading my blog this summer, but that exact phrase came up in my August 2 post relating a racist comment made to me by a woman about purity and Asian Canadians. I said in the post: "That word has such a controversial connotation--rooted in a history of race baiting." This is the history of the word:
Originally coined in 1863, the word first appeared on a hoax pamphlet entitled “Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro.” Conceived by two New York journalists, David Goodman Croly and George Wakeman, the pamphlet was an attempt to depict the Republican party explicitly as proponents of inter-racial marriage and implicitly with the propagation of mixed-race children. By doing so, the hope was that voters would reject President Lincoln in his re-election campaign, for the man who supported the emancipation proclamation was also obviously in favor of promoting not only equality of the races but inter-mixing as well. Thus from its inception, miscegenation was a word linked with political propaganda and fear mongering for the purposes of supporting segregation and defying racial equality
[taken from a talk I gave five years ago at Southern U.]
So here's the question for you, dear readers: Can loaded words and contested terms be rehabilitated? Can they escape, in the case of "concentration camp" the tragic and overwrought associations with one of the worst genocides of the 20th century? Can we use a term, like "miscegenation" to simply mean "inter-racial" without invoking its etymological roots in race baiting and its historic use as a word associated with negativity, rancor, and hatred (because whenever "miscegenation" was invoked in the mid to late 20th century it was usually done in the context of "anti-miscegenation" laws, ie: laws prohibiting inter-racial marriage, or white racist Southerners invoking the fear of "miscegenation" as a rationale for school segregation.
I suppose a few more questions to consider are:
*Why is this loaded word or contested term being used in current, contemporary usage?
*What is the purpose of this rehabilitation?
*Who is trying to use this term and for what purpose?
*Is there another term that is as accurate/precise in its meaning as the contested term? Why is it important to use the contested term rather than the less loaded word?
I'd love to hear from anyone out there with an opinion...anyone???
CVT said...
I'm still waiting to read John B.'s explanation before I go too far into this, but here's my quick off-the-cuff take:
I think there are definitely terms that can be used, instead. I think the easiest is "interracial" with a relevant descriptor attached to it (i.e. "interracial marriage," "interracial sex," or whatever). If that sounds a bit awkward, "cross-cultural" could suffice. I don't know. "Miscegenation" just feels along the lines of "Oriental" to me. Certainly not along the lines of major ethnic slurs, but not feeling good, either. More of the - "do people REALLY still say that?" - than the other kind of reaction.
And - if people are going to try to reclaim the term, then I would say that it's got to be the people the term is referring to do so. Nobody would even think about "re-claiming" the N-word FOR black people, so it would have to be a group of mixed folks that took on "miscegenation" for me to sit well with it.
That said, I don't know John B.'s explanation yet, so there might be more to it than I am aware . . .
Charlotte said...
The "n-word" also came to mind for me when I read this post. Still controversial, but it has most certainly been rehabilitated, at least by some of the population against whom it was used.
I brought this topic up in the classroom when I taught with Emily Bernard's "Teaching the N-Word," and the generational/racial differences with the answers was amazing.
Usage does change with time and context, but it's always important to acknowledge the word's history, and how you are attempting to redefine it, and why.
On another note: I was looking at makeup online, and some line, I forget which, offered mineral powder in "golden oriental." I couldn't believe it.
Were they really able to sell this product with that marketing? Were consumers ok with that? That is a problem for me.
John B. said...
Jennifer (and cvt), I'll have a post up tonight (probably late) and post the link to it here.
Thanks again for these questions: they get to the very essence of some claims I want to make about how racial admixture is depicted and discussed in art and literature throughout the Americas, and dialogue about them will certainly be helpful for my work.
John B. said...
Later than I had intended, but here is my post.
Genepool said...
The nice thing about America is that whatever term we decide is appropriate today will likely be exchanged for something else down the road.
"Miscegenation" basically means the same thing as "Interracial" with only time and peoples perception of its descriptive intent to really differentiate the two words.
"Crippled" and "Handicapped" are similar examples. I am almost positive that in my lifetime that we will see other seemingly innocuous words replaced as individuals and groups decide they are inappropriate, for whatever reason.
I'm not saying I approve or disapprove of the word "miscegenation" because before reading your post I had honestly never even heard the term used. I'm just saying for all that these usages matter to people now they will likely, over time, be reevaluated and replaced. Which is, in my opinion, pretty damn funny.
baby221 said...
I really don't think you can save miscegenation, but if it were to happen at all it would have to come out of a movement of mixed-race folk as cvt suggested. The lgbt movement has reclaimed queer and dyke, some women are in the process of reclaiming bitch and slut. I guess it could happen, but I'm not sure it's a word I'd ever use because it just rubs me the wrong way. I'm a much bigger fan of interracial and/or interethnic.
Jennifer said...
I appreciate everyone who left comments on this topic, because I think this continues to be a vexed subject and I appreciate the thoughtfulness to which everyone approached this subject.
I've just posted a lengthy comment on John B.'s blog, so if you're curious, I'd go to "Domestic Issue" for a continuation of the "miscegenation" usage there.
What I will say in this space is that I agree with both CVT and Baby221--I don't believe, personally as well as professionally, that "miscegenation" is a word that can escape its etymological roots and consistent negative/pejorative usage. And if one were to undertake such a project, it would have to be a mass movement coming from inter-racial couples or from mixed-race people.
But I suppose, more to the point, I remain unconvinced for trying to rehabilitate it for common usage in the 21st century. I do think that John B., in his own academic project, SHOULD use this word and SHOULD investigate "miscegenation" and its use as a concept and tool of the state and cultural apparatus--I think any historic project that is looking at inter-racial relationships in the 17th-19th centuries would be remiss in not referring to "miscegenation" since that's the terminology that was in use during that time period.
But in the late 20th C and 21st century, I don't see a place for "miscegenation" as a word to simply refer to "inter-racial" couples.
And I would disagree with Genepool that inter-racial and miscegenation are inter-changable--they really aren't. I don't see "inter-racial" as simply a more "pc" or 21st century version of miscegenation. I'm not sure when "inter-racial" came into the American lexicon, but I think it makes a HUGE differece that the word "miscegenation" had such distinctly "American" roots in racism and politics--and that it was a phrase almost always associated with things that were negative--anti-miscegenation, agitating against miscegenation--miscegenation as a way to quickly malign someone and to suggest that miscegenated people were a blight on the American society. It is a word that is so filled with a history of racism and race hatred--a word we should remember was employed skillfully by segregationists--that to my mind, it's negative history can't be forgotten, and actually shouldn't be forgotten.
[she steps off soapbox now]
The last thing I'll leave you with is directed to Charlotte:
"REALLY??? Golden Oriental???"
UGH. If you find the name of the makeup company, Charlotte, I'd love to know.
John B. said...
Just a quick thank-you, first of all, for your very thorough and thoughtful response over at my place. You've given me much to think about that, in a couple of days, I'll have some time to address properly.
The earliest use of "interracial" according to the OED is from 1888--as an adjective for the substantive "conflict." The earliest use given for that word used within a sexual context--"interracial couple"--is 1972(!). More research required, of course, but I wonder if "interracial" was adopted as a response to Loving vs. Virginia's finding that anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional.
Shoot. This is far more compelling than the papers I have to grade, but duties call. Still: thanks again for this discussion. | http://mixedraceamerica.blogspot.com/2008/04/loaded-words-and-contested-terms.html | [
"object",
"cad"
] |
A Euro theory
f it were not for the euro, Germany’s trade balance would have caused a revaluation of the Mark, which would automatically have reduced the exchange rates of the other "European currencies", thus favouring them on international markets. The single currency was not created to stimulate exports and improve productivity.
In fact, for the first time, the then President of the European Economic Community, Roy Jenkins, proposed a common currency which, however, was also based on a common budget, equal to 10% of the sum of all Member States’ GDPs.
Initially the Euro was based on the "optimum currency area" theory developed by the Canadian economist, Robert Mundell, in 1961. It also rested on the fact that an economy open to international trade always tends to a low exchange rate.
Furthermore, as assumed by Mundell’s group of economists, in a highly diversified national economy the exogenous shock is always very limited.
This would lead a country open to trade and with a diversified economy to accept, in principle, a currency common to other countries.
Provided, however, that there is flexibility on the capital and labour markets and that its economy is very diversified and open to international trade.
However, to what extent can an economy be "diversified"? Does excess of diversification not lead - as natural - to a different and sometimes negative gain margin between products?
In Mundell’s model, the national currencies were described by the economic theory as simple barriers to international trade, as well as limits to productivity and finally obstacles blocking commercial transactions.
At that time, Jacques Delors and Romano Prodi theorized that - rebus sic stantibus - with the mere introduction of the Euro, the European economy would grow 1-1.5% per year.
Later Perrson and Nitsch proved that the econometric model used for those predictions was wrong, while other academics and experts studied the influence of the European monetary union on international trade.
Once again the analyses carried out on macroeconomic data demonstrated that the assessment of the benefits resulting from the single currency had been greatly exaggerated.
Obviously, for political purposes, economics is not so much a "sad science", but rather rhetoric used to convey political and social messages and choices.
According to these more realistic models, the monetary union was responsible only for a 4.7-6.3% increase in foreign trade, while the most pessimistic forecasts of the first analyses on the Euro-induced growth pointed to a 20% or even a 200-300% increase in international trade.
We have always known that economics is ideology in disguise.
In other words, the Euro does not change international trade transactions, but rather tends to change competitive pricing.
Furthermore, there is no factual evidence of a stable structural difference between foreign trade and exchange rate.
Moreover, according to the International Monetary Fund, a 10% decline of the exchange rate leads to a 1.5% average increase of GDP.
Yet another demonstration of how a healthy and sound devaluation is good for international trade.
The persistently "high" single currency has also hampered recovery in the Eurozone countries, while other European countries, such as Sweden, could quickly rebuild their economy.
This implies that the Euro could do nothing to avoid the crisis, except in Germany, where the per capita GDP has been growing incessantly since 1999.
As to investment in fixed assets, only France, Belgium and Finland have been successful.
Portugal and Greece have fallen to the levels of fixed capital investment of the 1980s, while per capita fixed capital investment (housing, infrastructure, roads, railways, airports, machinery, etc.) has levelled off since 1999.
With the Euro introduction, investment in infrastructure was put to an end.
Furthermore, as repeatedly noted, the crisis of the single currency and of the Eurozone began with Greece’s tragic situation.
Greece is worth almost 3% of the Eurozone GDP and the banking crisis following tension in Greece, at first, and later in Spain, Germany and Italy, cannot be solved with the EU banking union, but only with the action of individual governments.
The signal to international markets is clear: if the Euro is hit with a speculative action, the Eurozone individual countries shall try to solve it, with their limited resources.
With its crisis Greece has later demonstrated that monetary and credit tensions in each country of the single monetary area are never supported by the rest of the Eurozone - as would happen in any real monetary union - but the country in trouble is blamed for being "spendthrift". The result is that the other Eurozone countries buy the assets of the nation in crisis below cost.
In fact, the single currency works only in really federal States, such as India or the United States, where the internal market and financial networks are wide and can manage the income gap between the various regions of the country.
If we were to support the economies of Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal, the cost of recovery for these four countries would be 260 billion euro per year for ten years.
Hence the issue does not lie in Germany being wicked, but in the fact that the Euro has been conceived and designed badly and leads to crisis the countries which do not adjust their domestic economy to a structurally and unreasonably overvalued currency.
And in these cases, monetary expansion combined with economic "austerity" does not solve the problems.
Public spending and discretionary spending, as well as wages and salaries and, in some respects, even profits are now regulated by the Solidarity Pacts of 2011, in addition to the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance signed in 2012.
They are inter-European agreements prohibiting the redistribution of funds within the EU. They were signed upon German pressure and it is worth recalling that Germany cannot objectively take upon itself the cost for restructuring Southern countries’ debt.
Indeed, we could devalue the Euro.
Nevertheless the relations between the Eurozone members would not change and Germany would gain even more from a devalued Euro.
Therefore the only way then to change the exchange rate between the various countries of the single currency is not to devalue the Euro, which is based on fixed exchange rates established ne varietur in 1999, but just leave the Euro area.
Furthermore, considering the differences of economic integration in the Eurozone, if the single currency were devalued, the least integrated country, namely France, would gain much more than the others.
It is worth making clear that it would be a gain at the expense of the Euro Mediterranean countries.
It would be tantamount to go back with the Euro to the old gold standard of the 1930s, with the Euro: either it is fully dissolved or you decide to leave.
In this sense, the single currency is a severe loss of economic flexibility in the relationship between inflation, productivity and public debt.
Relations between macroeconomic values which can be manipulated for the better only in a national context, given that the EU still records very significant micro and macroeconomic differences.
It should be noted that the impasse resulting from the gold standard led to the Great Depression after the 1929 crisis.
At the beginning of the Great Depression, Germany and Great Britain tried an internal devaluation, but in these cases, if there is a fixed monetary standard, devaluation only means domestic deflation.
Considering price rigidity, unchanged financial costs and the money supply restriction, any policy of this kind finally makes both politics and society unmanageable.
What about leaving the single currency?
Meanwhile, it is worth recalling that, in international financial law, what matters is not the lender’s nationality, but rather the law applicable to the contract.
If, for example, the debt were regulated by French law, regardless of the parties’ nationality, the payment should be made in the French national currency.
Moreover, statistics throughout the single currency EU tells us that the private debt would not be affected by the transition to the new Franc, Lira, Peseta, etc.
According to the studies of the Bank for International Settlements, which has already analysed these issues, the cost to be borne by EU countries for leaving the single currency would be approximately 5 billion euros - a figure that can be easily managed by everybody.
Hence, after the end of the Euro, the EU countries could appreciate or devalue their currencies, by offering competitive prices and thus recreating precisely those competitive advantages which had been basically removed by the single currency.
In this way the German Mark would surely appreciate as against the Lira and the Peseta, thus favouring the Southern countries’ currencies and making the huge German trade surplus disappear, as if by magic.
Probably this is the best prospect and the best way forward.
Giancarlo Elia Valori
Advisory Board Co-chair Honoris Causa
MD Newsletter | http://moderndiplomacy.eu/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=2435:a-euro-theory&Itemid=151 | [
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Sesame Street
Plot The Count's Australian friend
Air date May 4, 1994
Season Season 25 (1993-1994)
Sponsors I, O, 2
Picture Segment Description
SCENE 1 An exhausted letter carrier delivers six bags of mail from Australia to The Count at Hooper's Store. He explains to Mr. Handford that they all come from one of his oldest and dearest friends, Matilda. Each piece of mail tells him she'll be visiting today and to meet her at the bus stop at 10 o'clock.
Cartoon A map of Australia morphs into the shape of animals that are found there.
Artist: Fred Garbers
(EKA: Episode 3021)
Film "We have a nice school"... with ducks.
(First: Episode 3144)
Cartoon A cat catches a TELEPHONE and eats it.
Artists: The Hubleys
(EKA: Episode 0172)
Muppets Monty sings "Watermelons and Cheese," the improper way to answer the phone.
(EKA: Episode 3214)
Animation Kids narrate how a Navajo blanket is weaved.
(EKA: Episode 3006)
Cartoon Gerald's dog Sparky likes to pretend he's an alligator.
(EKA: Episode 1563)
SCENE 2 Big Bird wonders why the Count is waiting at the bus stop and he's filled in. The Count counts the passing buses, until one stops and an elderly woman steps off. She's not Matilda, but has a message from her - she'll call the Hooper's Store phone at 11.
Animation Counting to 10 (Chinese imagery)
(EKA: Episode 3217)
(First: Episode 3193)
Cartoon "In My Book" (sung by Jerry Nelson)
(EKA: Episode 3018)
Cast Maria as Charlie Chaplin -Long, Longer, Longest
(EKA: Episode 1460)
Cartoon At the Pride Day Ceremony, Donald is waiting to describe his proudest accomplishment, and is initially unsure of himself next to other impressive students. He finally proudly acclaims his achievement, tying his shoes all by himself.
Artist: John Korty
(EKA: Episode 2254)
SCENE 3 The Count waits at the phone, when a construction worker needs to use it. She agrees to wait, until he starts counting the rings instead of answering. Mr. Handford angrily hands him the phone and Matilda responds, telling him she will be there soon. The Count uses Mr. Handford's watch to count the seconds.
Cartoon Counting to 10
Artist: Keith Haring
(EKA: Episode 3104)
Film People go under, over, through and around a hoop. (Luis voice-over)
(First: Episode 3140)
Animation I / i candles
(EKA: Episode 3107)
Muppets Grover sings "I Stand Up Straight and Tall" while using some fast cutting camera trickery.
(EKA: Episode 0926)
Cartoon Speech Balloon: I for Island.
(EKA: Episode 0340)
Muppets Telly Monster demonstrates "Fast" and "Slow" to Cookie Monster by using a plate of cookies. To demonstrate slow, Telly eats one of the cookies in slow bites. After finishing eating, he asks Cookie Monster to eat a cookie slowly. Cookie Monster gives it a try, but ends up gobbling all the cookies on the plate. Telly considers it to be fast rather than slow, but Cookie Monster says it was slow in his opinion.
(EKA: Episode 2226)
SCENE 4 Matilda finally arrives at Hooper's and the two friends share a "Hello," before saying goodbye immediately after. The Count explains to a confused Big Bird and Mr. Handford that he and Matilda were the best of friends, but as kids she and her family moved to Melbourne. Since then, they've gotten back together 103 times, counting each "hello" as a precious moment. They know that the sooner they say "goodbye," the sooner they can say "hello" again. They begin counting the different ways to say goodbye.
Cartoon A girl narrates a poem about the sad time when her goldfish died.
Artist: Bruce Cayard
(EKA: Episode 2228)
(EKA: Episode 0729)
Cartoon What if I looked like George Washington...
(EKA: Episode 2257)
Song Joe Raposo sings "I Believe in Little Things."
(EKA: Episode 2485)
Animation Fans reveal the letter O.
(EKA: Episode 3021)
Muppets / Celebrity "That's the Letter O"
(EKA: Episode 3066)
Cartoon O for open, off, owl, ocean
(EKA: Episode 3091)
Muppets Oscar reads Irvine the story of "Snow Grouch."
(First: Episode 2630)
Cartoon A man tells a confused boy that he saw a bird on a tree, with both of their thoughts appearing on the screen.
(EKA: Episode 0814)
Film A man and a little girl perform small aerobic workouts.
(EKA: Episode 1845)
Song Holy cow, it's number 2!
(First: Episode 3193)
Muppets Game Show: The How Many Game??
Guy Smiley tells The Two-Headed Monster to find two things in 30 seconds. They bring one bowling ball, four sheep and three cows, all of which don't count. Suddenly, they realize they have two heads, which means they win! Little Bo Peep appears looking for her sheep, a train appears out of nowhere, and the scene ends in chaos.
(EKA: Episode 2503)
Film The McDouble twins display pairs of things.
(EKA: Episode 3217)
Cartoon The secret drawing is a mailman.
(EKA: Episode 0265)
SCENE 5 The Count finishes writing a letter for the letter carrier to bring to Matilda. She's relieved it's only a single letter, but faints when the Count shows her six more bags. The Count begins listing things he can count while he waits for the mail to reach Matilda, and Matilda announces the sponsors (in voice-over).
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Last Updated: Thursday, 7 December 2006, 16:20 GMT
Tornado was like 'Wizard of Oz'
Destruction caused by tornado
Thunder, lightning, skies turning black, being bombarded by bricks and feeling like they were in The Wizard of Oz... many people in north-west London were shocked to find themselves in the middle of a tornado on Thursday.
Kensal Rise residents spoke of being plunged into darkness, some saying it was so thick they thought they were trapped in smoke from a fire.
But seconds later the gloom lifted to reveal the damage.
"It literally was The Wizard of Oz," a shopkeeper, identified only as Amanda, said.
"It was just sucking things up into it. There were tiles. There were bits of wood. There were trees."
Actress Maya Sendall said she was "absolutely shrieking with shock" on the telephone as the tornado neared her home.
She said: "It sounded like a train going by and it shook the house. I saw the rubbish bin going by and my hedge flattened by about two or three feet.
There was a thunder clap and it felt like the house was falling in on us
Julia Haughton
"I did not hear too much of the crashing because the sound of the wind was astonishing."
Student Julia Haughton, 22, who heard the tornado, said: "There was a thunder clap and it felt like the house was falling in on us. It was really frightening.
"My boyfriend ran out just as it had gone through our back yard and pulled down our neighbour's tree. When I came out, all the windows were smashed."
'Jetliner' sound
Local resident Daniel Bidgood told BBC London 94.9FM: "I was in my living room and I heard a big crack of lightning and thunder, then as I went to the window I heard a sound which was like standing behind a jetliner.
"I could see a huge cloud rolling up the street, making this tremendous sound. I went to try to take a picture of it but a shower of debris smashed all the windows of my house."
Colin Brewer, who lives in nearby Trevelyan Gardens, saw "a swirl starting to form" and then "clumps of all sorts of things flying into the air".
He had seen trees collapse in the road and people being hit on the head by flying objects.
Kevin O'Leary, 56, said: "When the hailstones started coming down I told everyone to get in the lorry and as we were doing that I heard this great roar and almighty bang.
I work on climate change at Greenpeace and here was evidence of it on my own doorstep
Frank Hewetson
"Then we got bombarded with bricks and God knows what."
Frank Hewetson, a Greenpeace logistics coordinator, was buffeted by the tornado as he cycled near his home in Chevening Road.
He said: "The sky was dark, I heard a noise like a jet engine and then I saw this column of debris.
"There was debris flying around and I was lucky not to be hit.
"I work on climate change at Greenpeace and here was evidence of it on my own doorstep.
"Some people will say it's not climate change, but I don't think we've had too many twisters in Kensal Rise."
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