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A converted factory/warehouse studio in the heart of Clapham.
Offering 2500 sqft. of uninterrupted space, the studio boasts a beautiful oak floor, a lifestyle space with crittal doors and exposed brick walls, a large open space with stainless steel kitchen, a painted panelled wall, and a wood clad wall to offer different backgrounds and textures.
A versatile space available for photographic shoots, filming, and events.
Due to the large skylights and windows the space is flooded with daylight, and can also offer full blackout if desired. Set-built allowed.
We have individual photography studios in London, or if you’re working on a project that requires multiple spaces separate from one another, then we have studio complexes that offer a great range of diversity all within the same building.
height 12 ft (3.8m) to eaves, 19 ft (5.8m) to apex of roof.


# encoding: utf-8
import datetime
from south.db import db
from south.v2 import SchemaMigration
from django.db import models

class Migration(SchemaMigration):

    def forwards(self, orm):

        # Adding field 'ProductVersion.cc_version'
        db.add_column('core_productversion', 'cc_version', self.gf('django.db.models.fields.IntegerField')(default=0), keep_default=False)

        # Adding field 'Product.cc_version'
        db.add_column('core_product', 'cc_version', self.gf('django.db.models.fields.IntegerField')(default=0), keep_default=False)

    def backwards(self, orm):

        # Deleting field 'ProductVersion.cc_version'
        db.delete_column('core_productversion', 'cc_version')

        # Deleting field 'Product.cc_version'
        db.delete_column('core_product', 'cc_version')

    models = {
        'auth.group': {
            'Meta': {'object_name': 'Group'},
            'id': ('django.db.models.fields.AutoField', [], {'primary_key': 'True'}),
            'name': ('django.db.models.fields.CharField', [], {'unique': 'True', 'max_length': '80'}),
            'permissions': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ManyToManyField', [], {'to': "orm['auth.Permission']", 'symmetrical': 'False', 'blank': 'True'})
        },
        'auth.permission': {
            'Meta': {'ordering': "('content_type__app_label', 'content_type__model', 'codename')", 'unique_together': "(('content_type', 'codename'),)", 'object_name': 'Permission'},
            'codename': ('django.db.models.fields.CharField', [], {'max_length': '100'}),
            'content_type': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ForeignKey', [], {'to': "orm['contenttypes.ContentType']"}),
            'id': ('django.db.models.fields.AutoField', [], {'primary_key': 'True'}),
            'name': ('django.db.models.fields.CharField', [], {'max_length': '50'})
        },
        'auth.user': {
            'Meta': {'object_name': 'User'},
            'date_joined': ('django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField', [], {'default': 'datetime.datetime.now'}),
            'email': ('django.db.models.fields.EmailField', [], {'max_length': '75', 'blank': 'True'}),
            'first_name': ('django.db.models.fields.CharField', [], {'max_length': '30', 'blank': 'True'}),
            'groups': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ManyToManyField', [], {'to': "orm['auth.Group']", 'symmetrical': 'False', 'blank': 'True'}),
            'id': ('django.db.models.fields.AutoField', [], {'primary_key': 'True'}),
            'is_active': ('django.db.models.fields.BooleanField', [], {'default': 'True'}),
            'is_staff': ('django.db.models.fields.BooleanField', [], {'default': 'False'}),
            'is_superuser': ('django.db.models.fields.BooleanField', [], {'default': 'False'}),
            'last_login': ('django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField', [], {'default': 'datetime.datetime.now'}),
            'last_name': ('django.db.models.fields.CharField', [], {'max_length': '30', 'blank': 'True'}),
            'password': ('django.db.models.fields.CharField', [], {'max_length': '128'}),
            'user_permissions': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ManyToManyField', [], {'to': "orm['auth.Permission']", 'symmetrical': 'False', 'blank': 'True'}),
            'username': ('django.db.models.fields.CharField', [], {'unique': 'True', 'max_length': '30'})
        },
        'contenttypes.contenttype': {
            'Meta': {'ordering': "('name',)", 'unique_together': "(('app_label', 'model'),)", 'object_name': 'ContentType', 'db_table': "'django_content_type'"},
            'app_label': ('django.db.models.fields.CharField', [], {'max_length': '100'}),
            'id': ('django.db.models.fields.AutoField', [], {'primary_key': 'True'}),
            'model': ('django.db.models.fields.CharField', [], {'max_length': '100'}),
            'name': ('django.db.models.fields.CharField', [], {'max_length': '100'})
        },
        'core.product': {
            'Meta': {'ordering': "['name']", 'object_name': 'Product'},
            'cc_version': ('django.db.models.fields.IntegerField', [], {'default': '0'}),
            'created_by': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ForeignKey', [], {'blank': 'True', 'related_name': "'+'", 'null': 'True', 'to': "orm['auth.User']"}),
            'created_on': ('django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField', [], {'default': 'datetime.datetime(2012, 2, 25, 0, 0, 59, 558711)'}),
            'deleted_by': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ForeignKey', [], {'blank': 'True', 'related_name': "'+'", 'null': 'True', 'to': "orm['auth.User']"}),
            'deleted_on': ('django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField', [], {'db_index': 'True', 'null': 'True', 'blank': 'True'}),
            'description': ('django.db.models.fields.TextField', [], {'blank': 'True'}),
            'has_team': ('django.db.models.fields.BooleanField', [], {'default': 'False'}),
            'id': ('django.db.models.fields.AutoField', [], {'primary_key': 'True'}),
            'modified_by': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ForeignKey', [], {'blank': 'True', 'related_name': "'+'", 'null': 'True', 'to': "orm['auth.User']"}),
            'modified_on': ('django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField', [], {'default': 'datetime.datetime(2012, 2, 25, 0, 0, 59, 558895)'}),
            'name': ('django.db.models.fields.CharField', [], {'max_length': '100'}),
            'own_team': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ManyToManyField', [], {'to': "orm['auth.User']", 'symmetrical': 'False', 'blank': 'True'})
        },
        'core.productversion': {
            'Meta': {'ordering': "['product', 'order']", 'object_name': 'ProductVersion'},
            'cc_version': ('django.db.models.fields.IntegerField', [], {'default': '0'}),
            'codename': ('django.db.models.fields.CharField', [], {'max_length': '100', 'blank': 'True'}),
            'created_by': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ForeignKey', [], {'blank': 'True', 'related_name': "'+'", 'null': 'True', 'to': "orm['auth.User']"}),
            'created_on': ('django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField', [], {'default': 'datetime.datetime(2012, 2, 25, 0, 0, 59, 559819)'}),
            'deleted_by': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ForeignKey', [], {'blank': 'True', 'related_name': "'+'", 'null': 'True', 'to': "orm['auth.User']"}),
            'deleted_on': ('django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField', [], {'db_index': 'True', 'null': 'True', 'blank': 'True'}),
            'environments': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ManyToManyField', [], {'related_name': "'productversion'", 'symmetrical': 'False', 'to': "orm['environments.Environment']"}),
            'has_team': ('django.db.models.fields.BooleanField', [], {'default': 'False'}),
            'id': ('django.db.models.fields.AutoField', [], {'primary_key': 'True'}),
            'latest': ('django.db.models.fields.BooleanField', [], {'default': 'False'}),
            'modified_by': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ForeignKey', [], {'blank': 'True', 'related_name': "'+'", 'null': 'True', 'to': "orm['auth.User']"}),
            'modified_on': ('django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField', [], {'default': 'datetime.datetime(2012, 2, 25, 0, 0, 59, 560004)'}),
            'order': ('django.db.models.fields.IntegerField', [], {'default': '0'}),
            'own_team': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ManyToManyField', [], {'to': "orm['auth.User']", 'symmetrical': 'False', 'blank': 'True'}),
            'product': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ForeignKey', [], {'related_name': "'versions'", 'to': "orm['core.Product']"}),
            'version': ('django.db.models.fields.CharField', [], {'max_length': '100'})
        },
        'core.user': {
            'Meta': {'object_name': 'User', 'db_table': "'auth_user'", '_ormbases': ['auth.User'], 'proxy': 'True'}
        },
        'environments.category': {
            'Meta': {'ordering': "['name']", 'object_name': 'Category'},
            'cc_version': ('django.db.models.fields.IntegerField', [], {'default': '0'}),
            'created_by': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ForeignKey', [], {'blank': 'True', 'related_name': "'+'", 'null': 'True', 'to': "orm['auth.User']"}),
            'created_on': ('django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField', [], {'default': 'datetime.datetime(2012, 2, 25, 0, 0, 59, 562776)'}),
            'deleted_by': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ForeignKey', [], {'blank': 'True', 'related_name': "'+'", 'null': 'True', 'to': "orm['auth.User']"}),
            'deleted_on': ('django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField', [], {'db_index': 'True', 'null': 'True', 'blank': 'True'}),
            'id': ('django.db.models.fields.AutoField', [], {'primary_key': 'True'}),
            'modified_by': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ForeignKey', [], {'blank': 'True', 'related_name': "'+'", 'null': 'True', 'to': "orm['auth.User']"}),
            'modified_on': ('django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField', [], {'default': 'datetime.datetime(2012, 2, 25, 0, 0, 59, 562967)'}),
            'name': ('django.db.models.fields.CharField', [], {'max_length': '200'})
        },
        'environments.element': {
            'Meta': {'ordering': "['name']", 'object_name': 'Element'},
            'category': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ForeignKey', [], {'related_name': "'elements'", 'to': "orm['environments.Category']"}),
            'cc_version': ('django.db.models.fields.IntegerField', [], {'default': '0'}),
            'created_by': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ForeignKey', [], {'blank': 'True', 'related_name': "'+'", 'null': 'True', 'to': "orm['auth.User']"}),
            'created_on': ('django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField', [], {'default': 'datetime.datetime(2012, 2, 25, 0, 0, 59, 561818)'}),
            'deleted_by': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ForeignKey', [], {'blank': 'True', 'related_name': "'+'", 'null': 'True', 'to': "orm['auth.User']"}),
            'deleted_on': ('django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField', [], {'db_index': 'True', 'null': 'True', 'blank': 'True'}),
            'id': ('django.db.models.fields.AutoField', [], {'primary_key': 'True'}),
            'modified_by': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ForeignKey', [], {'blank': 'True', 'related_name': "'+'", 'null': 'True', 'to': "orm['auth.User']"}),
            'modified_on': ('django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField', [], {'default': 'datetime.datetime(2012, 2, 25, 0, 0, 59, 562003)'}),
            'name': ('django.db.models.fields.CharField', [], {'max_length': '200'})
        },
        'environments.environment': {
            'Meta': {'object_name': 'Environment'},
            'cc_version': ('django.db.models.fields.IntegerField', [], {'default': '0'}),
            'created_by': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ForeignKey', [], {'blank': 'True', 'related_name': "'+'", 'null': 'True', 'to': "orm['auth.User']"}),
            'created_on': ('django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField', [], {'default': 'datetime.datetime(2012, 2, 25, 0, 0, 59, 555711)'}),
            'deleted_by': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ForeignKey', [], {'blank': 'True', 'related_name': "'+'", 'null': 'True', 'to': "orm['auth.User']"}),
            'deleted_on': ('django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField', [], {'db_index': 'True', 'null': 'True', 'blank': 'True'}),
            'elements': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ManyToManyField', [], {'related_name': "'environments'", 'symmetrical': 'False', 'to': "orm['environments.Element']"}),
            'id': ('django.db.models.fields.AutoField', [], {'primary_key': 'True'}),
            'modified_by': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ForeignKey', [], {'blank': 'True', 'related_name': "'+'", 'null': 'True', 'to': "orm['auth.User']"}),
            'modified_on': ('django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField', [], {'default': 'datetime.datetime(2012, 2, 25, 0, 0, 59, 555910)'}),
            'profile': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ForeignKey', [], {'blank': 'True', 'related_name': "'environments'", 'null': 'True', 'to': "orm['environments.Profile']"})
        },
        'environments.profile': {
            'Meta': {'object_name': 'Profile'},
            'cc_version': ('django.db.models.fields.IntegerField', [], {'default': '0'}),
            'created_by': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ForeignKey', [], {'blank': 'True', 'related_name': "'+'", 'null': 'True', 'to': "orm['auth.User']"}),
            'created_on': ('django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField', [], {'default': 'datetime.datetime(2012, 2, 25, 0, 0, 59, 557817)'}),
            'deleted_by': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ForeignKey', [], {'blank': 'True', 'related_name': "'+'", 'null': 'True', 'to': "orm['auth.User']"}),
            'deleted_on': ('django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField', [], {'db_index': 'True', 'null': 'True', 'blank': 'True'}),
            'id': ('django.db.models.fields.AutoField', [], {'primary_key': 'True'}),
            'modified_by': ('django.db.models.fields.related.ForeignKey', [], {'blank': 'True', 'related_name': "'+'", 'null': 'True', 'to': "orm['auth.User']"}),
            'modified_on': ('django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField', [], {'default': 'datetime.datetime(2012, 2, 25, 0, 0, 59, 558002)'}),
            'name': ('django.db.models.fields.CharField', [], {'max_length': '200'})
        }
    }

    complete_apps = ['core']


A spellbinding storyteller with a stand-up comedian’s timing, Steve Donahue builds high-performance cultures – purpose driven and change ready.
People want more than a job. They want to feel like heroes and heroines on a noble quest. Steve Donahue deciphers the code of the world’s oldest story type to build high performance cultures that are purpose driven and change ready. Learn the 5 Key Components of The Epic Story® to transform your company and career in minutes a day.
If you want epic change you need an Epic Story. Lead like a legend on your shifting sands of change with this powerful 5 part process of transformation and triumph. Unleash your Narrative Intelligence to thrive on disruption, inspire innovation and create new opportunities.
The Iliad and the Odyssey are epic stories. So is Kung Fu Panda. Epic stories have created committed companions since the dawn of civilization. Story-savvy leaders can harness the power of this ancient narrative to overcome generational diﬀerences, fuel collaboration and achieve epic results. Create a culture of greatness with your own Epic Story.
Every conference tells a story. Take charge of your narrative with Steve Donahue’s ThemeWeaver®. He attends your entire event delivering one or more keynotes. Steve interacts with delegates and weaves their experiences with key concepts from other presenters in entertaining updates. Make your next conference the one they’ll talk about for years with this innovative approach to program planning.


A Kasi Originator is someone who uses the Kasi values of Brotherhood, community, hard work and local pride to create something which is game changing. Kasi Originators are people who challenge the negative stereotypes associated with the hoods we grew up in and create something that expose the mass market to Kasi ideals in a creative and constructive manner. These are the values, which we adopted when 6 young men from various Kasi’s in KZN came together to create the brand that is SMB. In an attempt to break down the cultural differences that made it awkward for the Kasi child to thrive in urban secular environments we decided to shake things up. The ethos was simple, bright, loud, bold statements that would introduce upcoming youth to our brand of street culture as well as create waves within the industry which we sort to compete in.
Our first benchmark range TIA (This is Africa) showed the industry what we were all about. We infused about 20 different African tribal prints into popular street ware apparel. This completely changed the way people saw dungarees, jeans and two pieces. We marketed the range with a string of Kasi inspired events that we used to introduce the youth of Durban to our clothes and the new international of Trap music trend. The aesthetic this created was that of Durban kids dressed in Kasi inspired clothing turning up in boujee urban environments. The youth of Durban took to it seamlessly. This grew our following around the country as well as internationally through our strong Tumblr presence.
TIA lead to the creation of our iconic #BAP$ range. We wanted to add a no nonsense trademark to our new age afro street style which people would be able to relate to locally and internationally regardless of language or place of origin. With this range we decided to rekindle the long lasting love affair Mzansi has with a Kasi favorite, the Bucket Hat. We sourced a range of pop culture inspired fabrics and used them to make colorful reversible bucket hats with our #BAP$ box logo. The garment is still our highest selling piece to date. The biggest complement for our creation was how every major upcoming and established street brand jumped on to the trend and made their own variations of the colorful hat.
Fast-forward to 2017 we’ve taken the customization culture we grew up on eKasi to the next level. It’s hard for 6 creatives to settle on a single fabric for a range so we decided to use the unorthodox solution of infusing all our choices into one garment. This decision gave birth to #BAP$ patchwork range. It’s a collage of our iconic bold materials, our tribute to street fashion. Our garments always have the youth in mind as this collection gives our clients the ability enter the world of high end street fashion without paying too much.
The Kasi bois that are SMB are still at it. Having fun while inspiring, empowering and putting the city of Durban and all our hoods on the map.
Written by the founders of Sophisticated Monkey Brand.


More than being an insider’s confirmation of the power of the pro-Israel lobby over Congress, the former US Senator’s letter also calls into question Noam Chomsky’s increasingly suspect looking motives

Press TV — Dec 20, 2013

The Islamic Republic of Iran’s Air Force (IRIAF) has launched massive military exercises over the Persian Gulf waters in the south of the country.

The drill which kicked off on Friday involves units from all IRIAF bases, and is the main phase of large-scale maneuvers codenamed Fada’eeyan-e Harim-e Velayat 4 (Defenders of Velayat Sanctuary 4), said the spokesman for the drill.

The latest military achievements of the IRIAF will undergo operational tests during the exercises, he said.

The drill features long-range operations by fighter jets without aerial refueling as well as pinpoint targeting using bombs and rockets in air-to-surface and air-to-air operations, the spokesman further said.

The military exercise also involves air-to-air shooting, targeting flying objects and air-to-surface bombardments using different types of home-made missiles and bombs.

Deputy IRIAF Commander Brigadier General Alireza Barkhor told reporters Thursday that the maneuvers are part of annual exercises aimed at testing indigenous air defense systems, improving the units’ combat readiness and displaying the country’s military might and achievements.

He also said that the drill seeks to send a message of peace, friendship and security to regional countries.

In recent years, Iran has made major breakthroughs in its defense sector and attained self-sufficiency in producing important military equipment and systems.

The Islamic Republic has conducted several military drills to enhance the defense capabilities of its armed forces and to test modern military tactics and equipment.

Iran says its military might poses no threat to other countries, stating that its defense doctrine is based on deterrence.


11.30am. Tate Britain. Victorian Art and Stereoscopic Photography (Brian May and Denis Pellerin) with an introduction by Dr Carolyn Bloore.
2.30pm. Media Space. Revelations: Experiments in Photography.
6.30pm. V&A. Captain Linnaeus Tripe: Photographer of India and Burma 1852-1860 guided by the exhibition curator Emeritus Professor Roger Taylor.
The day is free to members, but travel within London and admission charges are to be borne by those attending. Bookings must be made via the website and should be made early to avoid disappointment as numbers are limited.


The trunk can be accessed from the driver side (if so equipped) and passenger side of the rear seat for loading and unloading, as shown.
1. Move the front passenger seat to the most forward position.
2. Open the access cover on the rear parcel shelf.
3. Push down on the button 1 on the rear parcel shelf.
4. Fold down the passenger’s side seatback 2 .
● Never allow anyone to ride in the cargo area or on the rear seat when it is in the fold-down position. Use of these areas by passengers without proper restraints could result in serious injury in an accident or sudden stop.
● Properly secure all cargo with ropes or straps to help prevent it from sliding or shifting. Do not place cargo higher than the seatbacks. In a sudden stop or collision, unsecured cargo could cause personal injury.
● When returning the seatbacks to the upright position, be certain they are completely secured in the latched position.
If they are not completely secured, passengers may be injured in an accident or sudden stop.
● Closely supervise children when they are around cars to prevent them from playing and becoming locked in the trunk where they could be seriously injured.
Keep the car locked, with the rear seatback and trunk lid securely latched when not in use, and prevent children’s access to car keys.
To fold down the driver’s side of the rear seat, open the trunk and pull on the strap 1 .
The rear seats can be locked using the mechanical key to prevent unauthorized access. For more information on keys, refer to “Keys” in the “Predriving checks and adjustments” section of this manual.
Pull the armrest down until it rests on the seat cushion.


Get Dramatically Faster and Bigger Performance Improvements by Discovering How to Get the Truth Out of Your KPIs Using Smart Charts.
Designing great KPIs isn’t the only problem people have with performance measurement.
You work so hard EVERY month to find explanations for downward variances in your KPIs… and it never seems to end.
It’s a constant EFFORT to keep performance up near the target, pushing and cajoling and burning the midnight oil to get it done.
Your managers and colleagues have INCONSISTENT opinions about whether performance is improving or not (“it’s going up”… “no, that’s was because of BLAH – it’s really going down”… “yeah, but not compared to last year”… And on it goes).
You can’t demonstrate the IMPACT of your efforts on performance, and so all you can do is report all the completed projects as evidence that things MUST be better somehow.
You’re spending lots of time and money on managing performance, but have no way of working out how much the performance improvements are really costing.
There’s a culprit for this kind of dysfunctional performance management behaviour (yes, it IS dysfunctional!).
And the culprit is hidden in plain sight.
You’re NOT getting the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, from your KPIs.
In the electricity sector, one of the common performance measures used to track the reliability of the electricity network – the system of cables and transformers and so forth that deliver the power to homes and businesses – is called SAIDI, the System Average Interruption Duration Index.
A typical way to report SAIDI was a graph with a 12-month moving or rolling average.
Moving averages are often used to smooth out the seasonal fluctuations you see in a lot of financial data. When these seasonal fluctuations are smoothed out, you are supposed to be able to see the overall trend in your data.
For the manager who needs to track a lot of performance results, this sounds heaven-sent. And that’s why they are such a popular trend analysis technique.
For one energy company, their SAIDI KPI showed a lovely, downward trend. It convinced everyone that performance was improving (in response to their great management).
But performance WAS NOT improving. They were misled by their graph of SAIDI. The truth was that performance had not changed at all.
How could this be? How could the graph clearly show a downward trend but performance in fact be no better at all?
The culprit for dysfunctional performance management behaviour is the use of statistical methods WITHOUT appropriate statistical thinking.
One simple change to how you report your KPIs can sky-rocket your performance improvement.
And this change is using a charting method known as XmR charts, but I like to call them Smart Charts. They make our KPIs tell us the truth about performance, and they stop us from spinning our wheels and getting nowhere fast with performance improvement.
The anatomy of the Smart Chart (it’s actually been used by world-class companies for decades, but has flown under the performance management radar for too long).
Step-by-step instructions and demonstration of how to create the Smart Chart for virtually all your KPIs, WITHOUT special software or statistical skills.
The simple interpretation rules that make the Smart Chart the easiest chart to interpret validly, consistently and with confidence every time.
The broad range of KPI types that suit Smart Charts and how to know when it’s not appropriate to use Smart Charts.
How target setting becomes a breeze and a nifty new way to put targets on your KPI graphs that uses less ink/pixels but conveys more information.
How to put Smart Charts into your performance dashboards to achieve simultaneously what the space-saving sparklines and bullet graphs currently achieve together.
5 how-to video classes, teaching you the steps and techniques to create Smart Charts for your KPIs through online video replays of past live webinar sessions.
A collection of real-life examples to inspire and demonstrate for you how a wide variety of KPIs suit the Smart Chart approach to reporting.
The Excel template to create your KPI Smart Charts simply by adding your data – the calculations and charts are automatically updated for you.
Bonus Excel templates for seasonal, trend or ‘rare event’ KPIs, with instructions for how to prepare these measures so that Smart Charts can reveal insights and signals more clearly.
The full written transcripts of each lesson in the course to have as a handy guide and quick look-up resource during your implementation.
Immediately after you register, you can watch the videos and download the workbooks and templates when it suits you!
You can even benefit from the questions that participants in the live webinars asked, both in the transcripts and in a special Q&A report.
By registering, you’ll get full access to the online course videos and downloadable workbooks, templates and transcripts. You’ll get the most from this if you start the course with your data ready, so you can practice Smart Charts as you’re learning them, following along as I guide you.
You can also save on the registration fee for this course with a group registration for your company. These discounts ONLY apply to the number of registrants you include in the same registration.
The discounts are calculated automatically at checkout. And remember: these discounts only apply when you register your colleagues with you, in the same booking.
Are you ready to get the truth out of your KPIs and dramatically transform the speed and cost of performance improvement in your company or organisation?


Premiering tonight at 9:15 pm, Stories In Time host Ellouise Schoettler tells a story about swimming. Swimming is seen as a leisure activity, exercise, and a sport. For Ellouise, swimming is an important lesson in her family. This story is about overcoming fear, motivation, and courage.
For more information about Stories In Time, please visit here.
To watch previous episodes, please visit our YouTube Channel.


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You gonna see exactly what I look like.
And there some dressed-up too.
a beautiful Brazilian bubble bum.
I can go from mild to wild, try me!
I’m waiting for your call!
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*Chapter on electronic studying, plus new content material on electronic expertise through the book.
*Broader view of literacy; elevated realization to oral language and writing in addition to reading.
*Even extra consumer friendly--additional lecture room feedback from genuine lecturers, vignettes, and examples and images illustrating linguistic concepts.
*End-of-chapter "challenge questions" that motivate deeper reflection.
*Coverage of well timed themes, comparable to numeracy and the language techniques of textual content messages.
This ebook variation gains 18 full-color figures. (Figures will seem in black and white on black-and-white e-readers).
The Routledge instruction manual of Literacy experiences bargains a entire view of the sphere of language and literacy experiences. With forty-three chapters reflecting new examine from best students within the box, the instruction manual pushes on the obstacles of latest fields and combines with similar fields and disciplines to improve a lens on modern scholarship and emergent fields of inquiry.
This is the 1st guide of literacy reports to realize new traits and evolving trajectories including a spotlight on radical epistemologies of literacy. The Routledge instruction manual of Literacy Studies is a necessary reference for undergraduate and postgraduate scholars and people discovering and dealing within the parts of utilized linguistics and language and literacy.
for college kids, 5th grade is a time of accelerating independence and accountability. but fifth-graders differ broadly of their studying and writing abilities--and they're nonetheless younger sufficient to require significant instructor help. Depicting an exemplary instructor in motion, this integral ebook provides cutting edge, sensible techniques for developing an geared up, motivating, and literacy-rich fifth-grade school room. The authors convey find out how to investigate pupil wishes and enforce standards-based guideline that ambitions comprehension, vocabulary, writing, style learn, and different an important components. Grounded in present top practices, the booklet comprises precious making plans advice, illustrations, and reproducibles.
lately, a few books within the box of literacy examine have addressed the reviews of literacy clients or the a number of approaches of studying literacy talents in a swiftly altering technological surroundings. not like those reports, this e-book addresses the themes of literacy. In different phrases, it really is approximately how literacy staff are subjected to the kin among new types of hard work and the idea that of human capital as a dominant monetary constitution within the usa. it's approximately how literacies turn into varieties of worth generating exertions in lifestyle either inside and past the place of work itself.
As Evan Watkins exhibits, apprehending the that means of literacy paintings calls for an knowing of ways literacies have replaced in terms of not just know-how but in addition to exertions, capital, and economics. The emergence of recent literacies has produced massive debate over simple definitions in addition to the complexities of achieve and loss. while, the visibility of those debates among advocates of previous as opposed to new literacies has obscured the advance of extra basic adjustments. most importantly, Watkins argues, it's now not attainable to symbolize human capital exclusively because the type of long term source that Gary Becker and different neoclassical economists have outlined. Like company stock and company administration practices, human capital—labor—now additionally seems to be in a “just-in-time” shape, as though an influence of motion at the get together instead of a capital asset in reserve.
Just-in-time human capital valorizes the growth of selection, however it relies totally at the invisible literacy paintings consigned to the peripheries of focused human capital. In an financial system in which peoples’ cognizance starts to eclipse details as a first-rate commodity, a small variety of offerings seem with an immensely magnified depth whereas such a lot others disappear solely. As Literacy paintings within the Reign of Human Capital deftly illustrates, the focus of human hard work within the electronic age reinforces and extends a category department of winners at the within technological innovation and losers in every single place else.
There are many books designed to aid librarians and lecturers get a hold of programming rules, yet here's one who compiles, organizes, and indexes texts and tunes completely. This exceptional assortment, a stick with as much as the author's renowned Big ebook of Animal Rhymes, Fingerplays, and Songs, is geared up round the 4 seasons, concentrating on kid's rhymes, fingerplays, songs, and poems with regards to climate, time, and holidays.
Designed as a one-stop source to assist librarians and educators locate fabric for his or her courses quick and simply, the publication positive aspects nearly three hundred songs, rhymes, and fingerplays, together with a few Spanish-language types. fabric is topically prepared and offered in a structure that may simply be reproduced. there's a thematic index and beneficiant cross-referencing, in addition to age/grade degrees that might aid readers make sure which fabric is most fitted to a specific viewers. track for accompaniments is incorporated, as are instructions for acting the fingerplays.
In this leading edge historical past of analyzing and writing, Hoda Yousef explores how the assumption of literacy and its practices essentially altered the social cloth of Egypt on the flip of the 20 th century. She strains how nationalists, Islamic modernists, bureaucrats, reporters, and early feminists sought to reform interpreting behavior, writing kinds, and the Arabic language itself of their hopes that the proper of literacy practices could create the correct of Egyptians.
The effect of recent analyzing and writing practices went well past the elites and the newly literate of Egyptian society, and this e-book unearths the more and more ubiquitous analyzing and writing practices of literate, illiterate, and semi-literate Egyptians alike. scholars who wrote petitions, girls who frequented scribes, and groups who accumulated to listen to a newspaper learn aloud all used a number of literacies to take part in social exchanges and civic negotiations in regards to the most crucial problems with their day. Composing Egypt illustrates how examining and writing practices grew to become not just an item of social reform, but in addition a primary medium for public alternate. broad segments of society might have interaction with new principles approximately nationalism, schooling, gender, and, eventually, what it intended to be a part of "modern Egypt."


---
layout: docs
title: Troubleshooting/Restrictions
---

## Troubleshooting/Restrictions

Methods containing `memoize` blocks must have an explicit return type.
If you don't specify the return type, you'll get a confusing compiler error along the lines of `recursive method withExpiry needs result type`.

For example, this is OK

```scala
def getUser(id: Int): Future[User] = memoize {
  // Do stuff...
}
```

but this is not

```scala
def getUser(id: Int) = memoize {
  // Do stuff...
}
```


Rare Opportunity for your own Waterfront Villa. Spectacular Unobstructed 180 degree Views of Puget Sound, Vashon Island, Bainbridge Island & the Olympic Mountains. Terraced levels sweep down to 121’ low bank waterfront. Enjoy incredible sunsets, the Jacuzzi, or your own Wood Fired Pizza Oven Imported from Italia. Watch whales & ferry boats whisper by. Gourmet kitchen with La Cornue range, and open elegant floor plan. Complete Guest Level with kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, dining & living areas.


Home / Bankrupt / ATO Debts Becoming Unmanageable? Notice to all ABN holders, your ATO Debts may now harm your credit rating. Beware of ATO Bankruptcy!
Have overdue debts with the ATO that are more than $10,000 and are more than 90 days overdue; and.
Just so you know, the ATO must first notify you before they disclose your debt details to any credit agency.
If your ATO debts seem to become unmanageable and you don’t want your credit rating impaired then you have at least one workable option: Enter into a payment arrangement with the ATO. This may prevent you from ATO Bankruptcy.
On the other hand, if you think there is simply no hope or the ATO is threatening legal action against you because of your unpaid ATO debts, then bankruptcy may be a sensible option for you. If you would like to know more about how you can get out from under the debilitating burden of business or personal debts, just contact us here at Bankruptcy Experts Wollongong on 1300 795 575 or visit our website for more details: www.bankruptcyexpertswollongong.com.au.


Please tell the Bronx Zoo and the Wildlife Conservation Society that elephants do NOT belong in captivity and it is time to send their elephants to a sanctuary.
The Bronx Zoo currently houses three elephants: Patty, Maxine and Happy. However, you only see two elephants on display. Where's the third?
Driven mad by their captivity, Patty and Maxine killed Grumpy, a male companion to Happy, one of the Bronx Zoo's best held secrets. Grumpy was the same age as Happy and captured the same year as she, meaning he was probably a brother, cousin or other close relative (Brad Hamilton, New York Post). They were constant companions throughout their zoo-hopping lives before landing at the Bronx Zoo in 1977. After Grumpy's untimely death as a result of attacks from Patty and Maxine, Happy was removed from the exhibit and put in solitary in 2002.
Happy is one of the world's most famous elephants for proving elephants have self-awareness. After being captured from the wilds of Thailand, she has spent the last 37 of her 43 years in the cramped Bronx Zoo, with inadequate room to roam and inadequate companionship.
The Detroit Zoo, praised by animal advocates, scientists and behaviorists alike, has retired elephants once housed at their zoo to a sanctuary and now have better attendance in their zoo than ever. The Bronx Zoo has announced it would close its elephant exhibit after the remaining three elephants have died, but it cannot come soon enough for these very social creatures.
Tell the Bronx Zoo and the Wildlife Conservation Society that it is time to honor their commitment to animal welfare and close their elephant exhibit, sending Patty, Maxine, and Happy to a sanctuary.


// ==========================================================================
//  Squidex Headless CMS
// ==========================================================================
//  Copyright (c) Squidex UG (haftungsbeschränkt)
//  All rights reserved. Licensed under the MIT license.
// ==========================================================================

using Squidex.Infrastructure.EventSourcing;

namespace Squidex.Domain.Apps.Events.Schemas
{
    [EventType(nameof(FieldDeleted))]
    public sealed class FieldDeleted : FieldEvent
    {
    }
}


MapleStory 2 is keeping the Dungeon Drops and weekend giveaways going to help everyone get ready for the chaos to come in November! Get +8 Enchant Scrolls for your weapon and gear, 400 Red Merets and another week of Double Dungeon Drops from Normal Adventure Dungeons! Today MmoGah (a professional MapleStory 2 Trade site) will share more details with you Maplers.
• Double Dungeon Drop: Get two rolls on the loot table with every Normal Adventure Dungeon you complete!
。Event applies to all levels and in all Normal Adventure Dungeons. Get geared for Hard Adventure Dungeons twice as fast!
• Saturday and Sunday Giveaways: 2x 100 Red Meret Pouches each day!
• Note: European Maplers, make sure you check your clocks, Daylight Savings ends in the Central Europe time zone on Sunday, October 28th at 2:00 AM!
Thank you for reading. More updated MapleStory 2 News and Guides will be coming soon. More MapleStory 2 challenges are waiting for you. If you need a reliable MapleStory 2 Mesos seller to help you, MmoGah.com will be your best choice. As a trustworthy MapleStory 2 Mesos store, MmoGah has over 12 years’ experience in the gaming market. Whenever you need us, please feel free to contact our 24/7 Online Live Chat.


A pair of unforgettable Manolo Blahniks for a very special Tuesday Shoesday-Matchbook Magazine arrives today! I hope you've carved out some time in your day to drool-this is sure to be divine!
stunning! i would wear them with EVERYTHING!
Gorgeous! Such a beautiful color.
Would you come and visit me for a romantic tea-theme wedding?
I have always been in love with blue shoes for a wedding. Stunning!
My favorite color is blue ;)these are perfect and the pic is so beautiful!!!
I think if I actually owned a pair I'd be too scared to wear them. I'm hard on my shoes. Even fancy ones.
I absolutely love those! That blue is just gorgeous!!
Those Manolo's always remind me of SATC the Movie... and can't wait to drool over Match Book today!
I really wanted my something blue to be my shoes. When I told my step-mother-in-law about that, she said she was going to buy them for me. She didn't and that's okay because I loved the shoes I did wear but it would have been pretty amazing to sport these on my big day!
they're even prettier against that vintage print sofa!
I love this shoes. I really really really do! I think they are perfect and I'd love to wear them.
these are very nautical to me? maybe its the blue? Maybe its the buckle? but I feel like these are the shoes Wendy should wear when wedding peter.
they look as beautiful as jewelry!
And what a dreamy shade of blue it is!
blue is the new pink. I'm completely serious.
Kayla, I love when you say things like that. I am going to quote you in very serious color discussions to come in 2011.
If I could go back in time, I would wear blue shoes at my wedding. Seriously.
you know I love blue, but these beauties were on my wish list and never ended up in my hands. sigh. gotta love Jose Villa too...double sigh.


The Brood (1979)
*. I’ll begin by saying that this is probably my favourite David Cronenberg film. Not necessarily his best, but my favourite.
*. Why do I like it so much? I’d start with the screenplay. It seems to me to be the most mature statement of his theme of body horror: a brilliant, original, and disgusting concept grounded in a compelling, efficient, personal story involving real people that we care about.
*. I also like its visual imagination. Yes, the killer midgets in snowsuits may have been a borrowing from Don’t Look Now, but why not borrow the good stuff? And Cronenberg makes them his own.
*. But by visual imagination I also mean what I might call storyboard narrative. I don’t know how much Cronenberg uses storyboards, but there’s one passage in this film that is so perfect in its layout that I think it’s one of the very best episodes in any horror move I’ve ever seen.
*. I’m thinking of the murder of the teacher Ruth Mayer and the abduction of Candice from the public school. From beginning to end this whole sequence comes in at under four minutes of screen time, which is amazing.
*. Here are just some random thoughts about it. First of all, there’s the great use of high and low-angle camerawork. We look down on the crowd of ankle-biters because we begin with Frank and Wendy at an elevation above the school doors as the kids enter the school, an elevation that is duplicated inside the school as there is a platform above the classroom area that we also look down from (and will again as we look down on Ruth’s body). This keeps the identity of the brood children concealed (though we know who they are as soon as they’re isolated playing on the tire swing). This concealment can be quite subtle. Note how the important shot of the brood kids entering the school plays out in the deep background of a shot of Frank talking to Wendy.
*. Then there is the horrible impropriety of it. A murder not only in broad daylight, but in a classroom filled with small children! Is no place sacred? Terrorized tots are a horror gimme, but still you’ve gotta love it. That crayon drawing Frank pulls over Ruth’s bloody face is perfect.
*. I’d be remiss if I didn’t also point out a couple of things about this sequence that don’t work, and that are representative of where the film falls down.
*. In the first place, there is the weird imperturbability of Candice and her teacher when they come face to face with the brood children. Shouldn’t they seem more alarmed, or at least nervous? This blankness is something that I didn’t understand. Nola’s mother is also a little slow on showing any fear at the imp tearing apart her kitchen, and Frank doesn’t show much expression when Nola reveals her reproductive accessories to him. Was it intentional to keep things this low-key?
*. The other criticism I had was that the murder itself wasn’t very well staged. Again, this is a problem elsewhere in the film, particularly in the murder of Nola’s mother. It doesn’t look like either victim is being struck remotely hard enough to do any damage, and I’m not even sure those tiny wooden mallets the brood kids are using would be able to do much no matter how hard someone was swinging them (alas, plastic safety scissors would have made an even worse option). I would make the general observation that at this point in his career Cronenberg really wasn’t very good at filming action sequences. Even at the end it’s very clear Frank isn’t choking Nola.
*. I can’t leave Candice at school without mentioning that I had the very same Happy Days lunch pail when I went to school. I can smile about it now.
*. The Somafree Institute of Psychoplasmics. Well that sounds . . . different. Another Cronenbergian institute out in the hinterlands whose specialized cures are worse than the disease. But how far into the hinterlands are we? Those amniotic gas tanks the brood have on their backs must be pretty big if they’re walking all the damn way to Toronto, and back, on their murderous expeditions.
*. I love the police inspector’s lines as he leads Frank into the station and updates him on the case. It’s the sort of dry, absurd wit Cronenberg usually reserves for his scientists, but it plays just as well coming out of a cop’s mouth. “We were spending our time checking out an Estonian musician.” Gold. “My guess is it’s some crazy woman who didn’t want anyone to know she had a deformed child. She’s had this kid locked up in an attic for years and never told anybody. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
*. Hm. So you’re an old woman living alone and your kitchen is being smashed apart and you figure you should . . . go take a look. It’s probably just a very localized earthquake. Or a raccoon. Let’s open the door and find out.
*. Also very funny is Bob Silverman’s Jan Hartog. His gleeful revelation of his cancer (“It’s spreading!”) may be my favourite line in the entire Cronenberg oeuvre. He’s also very good in his brief role in Scanners as the isolated artist.
*. A father defending his messed-up family. There’s something essential to this, more even than it being Stephen King’s main theme in the 1980s. It’s a motif that you see developing more and more throughout twentieth-century fiction. I’m not sure what the full meaning of it is, but I’ve been wondering about it for a while.
*. As has been well reported, the idea for the plot came out of Cronenberg’s own messy divorce and custody battle. You really get a feel for this in Frank’s final confrontation with Nola, as he mouths a string of sensitive-man platitudes before she reveals herself to be a monster and he gets to strangle her. I love an angry filmmaker. It brings out the best in them.
*. I wonder if there was a nod to Cold Comfort Farm‘s “something nasty in the woodshed” in calling that building a woodshed. It looks like a pretty upscale woodshed to me.
*. I still think that Oliver Reed, with a gun, should have easily been able to handle a whole cabin full of those homicidal ankle-biters in their colourful jumpers. Yes, they’ve got lots of attitude. But they’re not very big, or strong. Though the one that kills Nola’s father has a hell of an arm throwing the glass globe through the wall.
*. Samantha Eggar’s accent works because it makes her seem even more alien. That her parents don’t have accents is par for the course. Perhaps she’s a brood baby herself. In any event, she also looks impressively bat-shit crazy, while Oliver Reed looks suitably repressed, like someone who is barely maintaining a reluctant sobriety.
*. The rest of the cast are pretty solid. Even Candy (Cindy Hinds) is effectively creepy, while Art Hindle is about as straight an everyman as you could ask for (though his hair is improbably glorious, looking like something out of a shampoo commercial).
*. Roger Ebert thought it “reprehensible trash.” He also thought it “a bore . . . because hardly anything of interest happens until the last 15 minutes or so.” This is not true. There are several excellent suspense sequences that come before the end. As with his negative response to Blue Velvet, one feels a bit of a knee-jerk attitude toward violence.
*. But then who doesn’t have such a reaction? Violence isn’t doing its job in a film if it doesn’t make your knee jerk. This one certainly has that, and even more, it’s a movie that gets inside you.
This entry was posted in 1970s on April 20, 2016 by Alex Good.
← Stop Me Before I Kill! (1960) The Haunted Palace (1963) →


At the recent Organometallic Chemistry Gordon Research Conference there was a noticible fashion statement being made on Wednesday night. Four people were wearing identical shirts. And just to show how cool the shirts are, a fifth person wore their shirt on Thursday night during a special session. I would give more details, but what happens at a Gordo stays at a Gordo. What was this shirt you might ask? It was our very limited edition 'Organometallica' tee-shirts from our 2016 workshop. Since the original production run we have been asked numerous times if we will ever make these shirts again. Well, that time could be now. We are seriously considering another run of shirts and we want to make them available to the entire IONiC community. We are going to change the color scheme slightly from the first edition as seen in the picture below. This is the ONLY option that will be available. They will be printed on Gildan 50-50 cotton-poly shirts with sizes available from YXS to 5XL. A sizing guide is available here. Price is going to depend on how many shirts we order and shipping. Shipping will be a little complicated as there will be an initial shipping cost for the bulk shipping to me, and then an individual cost for mailing them to you (you can save this second shipping cost if you are willing to wait until the Spring ACS meeting to pick up your shirt). We are not going to be making any profit from this. If you are interested in ordering, send me an e-mail with your shirt size and a maximum you would be willing to pay (don't forget to figure shipping costs in your estimate). If this order does happen, I will use something like Venmo or Pay Pal to handle all transactions. You have until August 27th to e-mail me and a final decision on placing an order will be made at most two weeks after that date.


Journal of Computational Neuroscience
Neural coding of categories: information efficiency and optimal population codes
Laurent Bonnasse-Gahot
Jean-Pierre Nadal
This paper deals with the analytical study of coding a discrete set of categories by a large assembly of neurons. We consider population coding schemes, which can also be seen as instances of exemplar models proposed in the literature to account for phenomena in the psychophysics of categorization. We quantify the coding efficiency by the mutual information between the set of categories and the neural code, and we characterize the properties of the most efficient codes, considering different regimes corresponding essentially to different signal-to-noise ratio. One main outcome is to find that, in a high signal-to-noise ratio limit, the Fisher information at the population level should be the greatest between categories, which is achieved by having many cells with the stimulus-discriminating parts (steepest slope) of their tuning curves placed in the transition regions between categories in stimulus space. We show that these properties are in good agreement with both psychophysical data and with the neurophysiology of the inferotemporal cortex in the monkey, a cortex area known to be specifically involved in classification tasks.
Categorization Population coding Exemplar models Mutual information Inferotemporal cortex
Action Editor: Jonathan D. Victor
This work is part of a project “Acqlang” supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR-05-BLAN-0065-01). LBG acknowledges a fellowship from the Délégation Générale pour l’Armement. JPN is a Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique member. The initial motivation for this work comes from (psycho- and neuro-) computational issues in the perception of phonemes: we thank Sharon Peperkamp and Janet Pierrehumbert for introducing us to this topic and for valuable discussions. LBG is grateful to the members of the Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique de l’ENS, especially to Emmanuel Dupoux, for numerous and stimulating discussions. We acknowledge useful inputs from the referees, and most especially, we thank one of them for a detailed list of constructive comments.
Appendix A: Derivation of Eq. (23)
The goal of this appendix and the following one is to derive Eqs. (18), (23) and (28). Remark: given the simplicity and the underlying identity of these results, we do not expect our derivations to be the simplest ones.
When N goes to ∞, we expect the mutual information I(μ, r) to converge towards I(μ, x), and we are interested in the first non trivial correction to this asymptotic limit. We thus compute for large N the difference
$$\Delta \equiv I(\mu, \mathbf{x}) - I(\mu, \mathbf{r}) \; \geq 0.$$
One can write
$$\Delta = - \int d^K\mathbf{x} \, d^N\mathbf{r} \, P(\mathbf{r}|\mathbf{x}) \, \phi(\mathbf{x}|\mathbf{r})$$
$$\phi(\mathbf{x}|\mathbf{r}) \equiv \sum_{\mu=1}^M p(\mathbf{x}) P(\mu|\mathbf{x}) \ln \frac{P(\mu|\mathbf{r})}{P(\mu|\mathbf{x})}$$
We follow the same approach as in Brunel and Nadal (1998). The first step consists in integrating over x. Taking the large N limit, we show that the leading order of the right term of Eq. (34) is zero. We then seek for the first correction using Laplace/steepest descent method. The last step eventually consists in integrating over r.
We introduce G(r|x) defined as :
$$G(\mathbf{r}|\mathbf{x}) \equiv \frac{1}{N} \ln P(\mathbf{r}|\mathbf{x})$$
and assume that it has a single global maximum at x = x m (r). We can rewrite Eq. (34) in the following way:
$$\Delta = - \int d^K\mathbf{x} \, d^N\mathbf{r} \, e^{N G(\mathbf{r}|\mathbf{x})} \, \phi(\mathbf{x}|\mathbf{r})$$
Integration over x. In order to integrate Eq. (34) over x, let us first show that
$$\phi \big(\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})|\mathbf{r}\big) = 0$$
We begin by evaluating
$$\begin{array}{*{20}c} P(\mu|\mathbf{r}) \!-\! P\big(\mu|\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})\big) &=& \frac{P(\mathbf{r}|\mu) q_{\mu}}{P(\mathbf{r})} \!-\! P\big(\mu|\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})\big) \end{array} $$
$$\begin{array}{*{20}c} &=& \frac{1}{P(\mathbf{r})}\! \int{\kern-2pt} d^K\mathbf{x} \; \, \exp \big(N G(\mathbf{r}|\mathbf{x}) \big) \varphi_{\mu}(\mathbf{x}|\mathbf{r})\end{array}$$
$$ \varphi_{\mu}(\mathbf{x}|\mathbf{r}) = p(\mathbf{x}) \big[P(\mu|\mathbf{x}) - P\big(\mu|\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})\big) \big] $$
By using saddle-point method and assuming that N ≫ 1 and K ≪ N, we find :
$$\begin{array}{*{20}l} &&{\kern-6.5pt}P(\mu|\mathbf{r}) - P\big(\mu|\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})\big)\\ &&{\kern.8pc} =\frac{1}{P(\mathbf{r})} \exp \big(N G_m(\mathbf{r})\big) \sqrt{\frac{(2\pi)^K}{\det \mathbb{H}\big(-NG(\mathbf{r}|\mathbf{x})\big)\big|_{\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})}}}\\ &&{\kern1.7pc} \times \frac{1}{2} \operatorname{tr} \left( \mathbb{H}\big(\varphi_\mu(\mathbf{x}|\mathbf{r})\big)\big|_{\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})} {\kern3pt} \mathbb{H}\big(-NG(\mathbf{r}|\mathbf{x})\big)^{-1}\big|_{\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})} \right)\\ \end{array}$$
where ℍis the hessian matrix of ξ,
$$ \mathbb{H}_{kl}\big(\xi(\mathbf{x})\big) = \frac{\partial^2\xi(\mathbf{x})}{\partial x_k \partial x_l} $$
evaluated at x m (r).
$$ P(\mathbf{r}) = p\big(\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})\big) \exp \big(N G_m(\mathbf{r})\big) \sqrt{\frac{(2\pi)^K}{\det \mathbb{H}\big(-NG(\mathbf{r}|\mathbf{x})\big)\big|_{\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})}}} $$
$$ \begin{array}{*{20}l} &&{\kern-6pt} P(\mu|\mathbf{r}) - P\big(\mu|\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})\big)\\ &&{\kern4pt} ={\kern-2pt} \frac{1}{2 p\big(\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})\big)}{\kern-1.5pt} \operatorname{tr}{\kern-2.5pt} \left({\kern-1pt} \mathbb{H}\big(\varphi_\mu(\mathbf{x}|\mathbf{r})\big)\big|_{\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})} \mathbb{H}\big({\kern-3pt}-{\kern-2pt}NG(\mathbf{r}|\mathbf{x})\big)^{-1}{\kern-1pt} \big|_{\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})}{\kern-1pt} \right)\\ \end{array}$$
As a result,
$$ \begin{array}{*{20}l} \phi \big(\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})|\mathbf{r}\big) \\ &&{\kern.3pc} \equiv {\kern-3pt} \displaystyle\sum_{\mu=1}^M p \big(\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})\big) P\big(\mu| \mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})\big) \!\ln \frac{P(\mu|\mathbf{r})}{P \big(\mu|\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})\big)} \end{array}$$
$$ \begin{array}{*{20}c} &&{\kern.3pc}={\kern-3pt} \sum_{\mu=1}^M{\kern-2pt} p \big(\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})\big)\! P\big(\mu| \mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})\big) {\kern-2pt}\ln{\kern-3pt} \left({\kern-3pt} 1 {\kern-2pt}+{\kern-2pt} \frac{P(\mu|\mathbf{r}){\kern-2pt}-{\kern-2pt}P\big(\mu|\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})\big)}{P\big(\mu|\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})\big)}{\kern-2pt} \right)\end{array}$$
According to Eq. (45), \(P(\mu|\mathbf{r})-P\big(\mu|\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})\big)\) is of order 1/N, which entails, as ln (1 + z) ≈ z when z ≪ 1, that
$$ \begin{array}{*{20}l} \phi \big(\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})|\mathbf{r}\big)\\ &&{\kern.3pc} = \frac{1}{2} \sum_{\mu=1}^M \operatorname{tr} \left( \mathbb{H}\big(\varphi_\mu(\mathbf{x})\big)\big|_{\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})} {\kern3pt} \mathbb{H}\big(-NG(\mathbf{r}|\mathbf{x})\big)^{-1}\big|_{\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})} \right) &&{\kern.3pc} = \frac{1}{2} {\kern-2pt}\operatorname{tr}{\kern-2pt} \left( \mathbb{H}\left(\sum_{\mu=1}^M \varphi_\mu(\mathbf{x})\right)\big|_{\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})} \mathbb{H}\big({\kern-2pt}-{\kern-2pt}NG(\mathbf{r}|\mathbf{x})\big)^{-1}\big|_{\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})} \right) \end{array}$$
$$ \begin{array}{*{20}c} &&{\kern.3pc} = \frac{1}{2} {\kern-2pt}\operatorname{tr}{\kern-2pt} \left( \mathbb{H}\left(\sum_{\mu=1}^M \varphi_\mu(\mathbf{x})\right)\big|_{\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})} \mathbb{H}\big({\kern-2pt}-{\kern-2pt}NG(\mathbf{r}|\mathbf{x})\big)^{-1}\big|_{\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})} \right) \end{array}$$
Now, as \(\sum_{\mu=1}^M \varphi_\mu(\mathbf{x}) = 0\) we have demonstrated that \(\phi \big(\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})|\mathbf{r}\big) = 0\).
We can return to Eq. (34), and apply saddle-point method knowing that \(\phi \big(\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})|\mathbf{r}\big) = 0\). This leads to :
$$ \begin{array}{*{20}c} \Delta = &-& \int d^N\mathbf{r} \exp \big(N G_m(\mathbf{r})\big) \sqrt{\frac{(2\pi)^K}{\det \mathbb{H}\big(-NG(\mathbf{r}|\mathbf{x})\big)\big|_{\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})}}}\\ &\times& \frac{1}{2} \operatorname{tr} \left( \mathbb{H}\big(\phi(\mathbf{x})|\mathbf{r}\big)\big|_{\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})} {\kern3pt} \mathbb{H}\big(-NG(\mathbf{r}|\mathbf{x})\big)^{-1}\big|_{\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})} \right)\\ \end{array}$$
Recalling that \(P(\mu|\mathbf{r})\!-\!P\big(\mu|\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})\big) \!\sim\! O(\frac{1}{N})\), it is straightforward to show that :
$$ \begin{array}{*{20}l}&& {\kern-6.5pt} \frac{1}{p\big(\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})\big)} \frac{\partial \phi(\mathbf{x}|\mathbf{r}) }{\partial x_k \partial x_l} \Big|_{\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})}\\ &&{\kern.3pc} = - \sum_{\mu=1}^M \frac{1}{ P\big(\mu| \mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})\big)} \frac{\partial P(\mu|\mathbf{x})}{\partial x_k} \Big|_{\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})} \frac{\partial P(\mu|\mathbf{x})}{\partial x_l} \Big|_{\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})} \end{array}$$
$$ \begin{array}{*{20}l} &&{\kern-6.5pt} \frac{1}{p\big(\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})\big)} \mathbb{H}\big(\phi(\mathbf{x}|\mathbf{r})\big)\big|_{\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})}\\ &&{\kern.4pc} = - \sum_{\mu=1}^M \frac{1}{ P\big(\mu| \mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})\big)} \nabla P(\mu|\mathbf{x})\big|_{\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})} \nabla P(\mu|\mathbf{x})\big|_{\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})}^{\top} \\ \end{array}$$
where \(\nabla \xi(\mathbf{x})\big|_{\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})}\) is the column vector of the partial derivatives of ξ
$$ \nabla \xi(\mathbf{x}) = (\ldots, \partial\xi(\mathbf{x})/\partial x_k ,\ldots)^{\top} $$
Putting Eqs. (44), (50) and (52) together eventually leads to:
$$ \Delta = \frac{1}{2} \int d^N\mathbf{r} P(\mathbf{r}) \left(\sum_{\mu=1}^M \frac{1}{ P(\mu| \mathbf{x})} \nabla P(\mu|\mathbf{x}) \nabla P(\mu|\mathbf{x})^{\top} \right) \bigg|_{\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})} : \mathbb{H}\big(-NG(\mathbf{r}|\mathbf{x})\big)^{-1}\Big|_{\mathbf{x}_m(\mathbf{r})} $$
where ‘:’ denotes the Frobenius inner product on \(\mathcal{M}_K(\mathbb{R})\), defined as follows:
$$ \forall A,B \in \mathcal{M}_K(\mathbb{R}), \; A:B = tr(A^{\top}B) = \sum_{k,l} A_{kl}B_{kl}. $$
Integration over r. By proceeding as Brunel and Nadal (1998, pp.1753–1754) in order to integrate over r, we get:
$$ \begin{array}{*{20}l} &&{\kern-6.5pt} I(\mu,\mathbf{x}) - I(\mu,\mathbf{r})\\ &&{\kern-6pt} = {\kern-2pt}\frac{1}{2}{\kern-2pt} \int{\kern-3pt} d^K\mathbf{x}\; p(\mathbf{x}){\kern2.5pt} {\kern-4pt} \left[{\kern-2pt} \sum_{\mu=1}^M{\kern-2pt} \frac{1}{P(\mu|\mathbf{x})} {\kern-2pt}\nabla{\kern-2pt} P(\mu|\mathbf{x}) \nabla P(\mu|\mathbf{x})^{\top} {\kern-2pt} \right]{\kern-4pt} :{\kern-1pt} F_{\text{code}}^{-1}(\mathbf{x})\\ \end{array}$$
where \(F_{\text{code}}(\mathbf{x})\) is the K×K Fisher information matrix of the neuronal population,
$$ \big[F_{\text{code}}(\mathbf{x})\big]_{kl} \;{\kern1.5pt} = {\kern1.5pt}\;- \;\int d^N\mathbf{r} \;P(\mathbf{r}|\mathbf{x}) {\kern3pt} \frac{\partial^2 \ln P(\mathbf{r}|\mathbf{x}) }{\partial x_k \partial x_l} \label{app_fisher_code_matrix} $$
Noticing that
$$ \sum_{\mu=1}^M{\kern-2pt} \frac{1}{P(\mu|\mathbf{x})} \frac{\partial P(\mu|\mathbf{x})}{\partial x_k} \frac{\partial P(\mu|\mathbf{x})}{\partial x_l} {\kern-2pt}= -{\kern-2pt}\sum_{\mu=1}^M{\kern-2pt} P(\mu|\mathbf{x}) \frac{\partial^2 \ln P(\mu|\mathbf{x}) }{\partial x_k \partial x_l} $$
we can introduce the K×K Fisher information matrix of the categories, \(F_{\text{cat}}(\mathbf{x})\), characterizing the sensitivity of μ with respect to small variations of x:
$$ \big[F_{\text{cat}}(\mathbf{x})\big]_{kl}{\kern1.5pt} \; = -\sum_{\mu=1}^M P(\mu|\mathbf{x}) \frac{\partial^2 \ln P(\mu|\mathbf{x})}{\partial x_k \partial x_l} $$
This eventually leads to Eq. (23):
$$ I(\mu,\mathbf{x}) - I(\mu,\mathbf{r}) = \frac{1}{2} \int d^K\mathbf{x} \, p(\mathbf{x}) \, F_{\text{cat}}^{}(\mathbf{x}):F_{\text{code}}^{-1}(\mathbf{x}) $$
Since \(F_{\text{code}}\) is of order N, one has in particular that I(μ,x) − I(μ,r) is of order 1/N.
Appendix B: Derivation of Eq. (28)
Each cell has an activity r i equal to 1 if x is in [θ i , θ i + 1], and 0 otherwise. The width of the ith tuning curves is thus a i = θ i + 1 − θ i , and we define the preferred stimuli as the center of the receptive fields, x i ≡ (θ i + θ i + 1)/2.
We want to compute
$$ \Delta \equiv I(\mu,x)-I(\mu,\mathbf{r}) = {\cal H}(\mu | \mathbf{r}) - {\cal H}(\mu | x) $$
$${\cal H}(\mu | x) = - \int dx {\kern1.5pt} \; p(x) \; \displaystyle\sum_{\mu=1}^M \; P(\mu|x) \ln P{(\mu|x)}; $$
$${\cal H}(\mu | \mathbf{r}) = - \int d^N\mathbf{r}{\kern1.5pt} \; P(\mathbf{r}) \; \displaystyle\sum_{\mu=1}^M \; Q(\mu | \mathbf{r}) \ln Q(\mu | \mathbf{r}) $$
in terms of the { θ i , i = 1,...,N + 1}, and to see what is the optimal choice of the { θ i , i = 1,...,N + 1}, or equivalently of the {x i , i = 1,...,N}, for having this difference Δ as small as possible for a large but finite value of N.
If we set:
$$ \widetilde{P}_i \equiv \int_{\theta_{i}}^{\theta_{i+1}} dx {\kern1.5pt} \: p(x) $$
$$\widetilde{P}_i(\mu) \equiv \int_{\theta_{i}}^{\theta_{i+1}} dx {\kern1.5pt} \: p(x |\mu) $$
$$\widetilde{Q}_{i,\mu} \equiv P(\mu | r_i=1) = \frac{\widetilde{P}_i(\mu) \, q_{\mu}}{\widetilde{ P}_i} $$
$$Q_{\mu}(x) \equiv P(\mu | x) $$
then we can write Δ from Eq. (61) as :
$$ \Delta = \sum_{i} \, \Delta_i $$
$$ \Delta_i = \int_{\theta_i}^{\theta_{i+1}} dx {\kern3pt} p(x) {\kern3pt} \Big[ \mathcal{H}(\{ \widetilde{Q}_{i,\mu}\}) - \mathcal{H}(\{ Q_{\mu}(x)\}) \Big] $$
where \(\mathcal{H}(\{Q_{\mu}\}_{\mu=1}^M )\) is the mixing entropy:
$$ \mathcal{H}\left(\{Q_{\mu}\}_{\mu=1}^M\right) \; = \; - \; \displaystyle\sum_{\mu=1}^M \, Q_{\mu} \ln Q_{\mu} $$
The quantity \(\mathcal{H}(\{ Q_{\mu}(x)\})\) is zero on a homogeneous domain, hence there is no contribution from intervals included in such domain. Suppose on the contrary that on the full range under consideration \(\mathcal{H}(\{ Q_{\mu}(x)\})\) is rapidly varying. We expect then the optimal θ i ’s distribution to be dense, that is a i = θ i + 1 − θ i small.
Recalling that x i = (θ i + 1 + θ i )/2 and assuming a i ≪ 1,
$$ \begin{array}{*{20}c} \widetilde{P}_i &=& \int_{-a_i/2}^{a_i/2} dz \left[p(x_i) + z p'(x_i) + \frac{z^2}{2} p''(x_i) \right] \\ &=& a_i \; p(x_i) + \frac{ a_i^3}{24} \; p''(x_i). \end{array}$$
Likewise, \( \widetilde{P}_i (\mu) = a_i \; p(x_i|\mu) + a_i^3/24 \; p''(x_i|\mu) \). Thus,
$$\widetilde{Q}_{i,\mu} = Q_{\mu}(x_i) + \frac{a_i^2}{24} A_{i,\mu} $$
$$ A_{i,\mu} = Q_{\mu}''(x_i) + 2 \frac{p'(x_i)}{p(x_i)} \; Q_{\mu}'(x_i) $$
A Taylor expansion then gives:
$$ \begin{array}{*{20}c} &&{\kern-6pt} \mathcal{H}\big({\kern-.2pt}\{\widetilde{Q}_{i,\mu}\}{\kern-.2pt}\big){\kern-3pt} ={\kern-3pt} \mathcal{H}\big({\kern-.2pt} \{Q_{\mu}(x_i)\}{\kern-.2pt}\big) {\kern-3pt}+{\kern-3pt} \nabla \mathcal{H}\big({\kern-.2pt}\{Q_{\mu}(x_i)\}{\kern-.2pt}\big){\kern-2pt} \cdot{\kern-4pt} \left( {\kern-4pt}\cdots{\kern-2pt} \frac{a_i^2 A_{i,\mu}}{24}{\kern-1pt} \cdots{\kern-4pt} \right)^{{\kern-2pt}\top} \\ &&+ \frac{1}{2} \left( \; \cdots {\kern3pt} \frac{a_i^2 A_{i,\mu}}{24} \; \cdots \right) \mathbb{H}_{\mathcal{H}}\big( \{Q_{\mu}(x_i)\} \big) \left( \; \cdots {\kern3pt} \frac{a_i^2 A_{i,\mu}}{24} \; \cdots \right)^{\top} \end{array}$$
where \(\nabla \mathcal{H}\big(\{Q_{\mu}(x_i)\}\big)\) and ℍare respectively the gradient and the hessian of \(\mathcal{H}\) evaluated in {Q μ (x i )} (see (53) and (43). A second order expansion leads to:
$$ \mathcal{H}\big(\{\widetilde{Q}_{i,\mu}\}\big) = \mathcal{H}\big(\{Q_{\mu}(x_i)\}\big) - \frac{a_i^2}{24} \sum_{\mu=1}^M A_{i,\mu} (\ln Q_{\mu}(x_i) + 1) $$
Thus we have:
$$ \begin{array}{*{20}l} &&{\kern-8pt}\int_{\theta_i}^{\theta_{i+1}} dx {\kern1.5pt} p(x) {\kern3pt} \mathcal{H}\big(\{\widetilde{Q}_{i,\mu}\}\big)\\ &&{\kern.6pc} = a_i p(x_i) \mathcal{H}\big(\{Q_{\mu}(x_i)\}\big) + \frac{a_i^3}{24} \left(p''(x_i) \vphantom{\sum_{\mu=1}^M A_{i,\mu}} \mathcal{H}\big(\{Q_{\mu}(x_i)\}\big) \right.\\ &&{\kern1.5pc} \left.- p(x_i) \sum_{\mu=1}^M A_{i,\mu} (\ln Q_{\mu}(x_i) + 1) \right) \end{array}$$
Moreover,
$$ \begin{array}{*{20}l} &&{\kern-8pt}\int_{\theta_i}^{\theta_{i+1}} dx {\kern1.5pt} p(x) {\kern3pt} \mathcal{H}\big(\{Q_{\mu}(x)\}\big)\\ &&{\kern.6pc} = a_i p(x_i)\mathcal{H}\big(\{Q_{\mu}(x_i)\}\big) + \frac{a_i^3}{24} \frac{\partial^2 \; p(x) \, \mathcal{H}\big(\{Q_{\mu}(x)\}\big)}{\partial x^2} \Big|_{x_i} \\ \end{array}$$
$$ \begin{array}{*{20}l} &&{\kern-7.5pt} \frac{\partial^2 \; p(x) \mathcal{H}\big(\{Q_{\mu}(x)\}\big)}{\partial x^2} \Big|_{x_i}\\ &&{\kern.2pc} = - 2 p'(x_i) \sum_{\mu=1}^M Q_{\mu}'(x_i) (\ln Q_{\mu}(x_i) + 1) \\ &&{\kern1.15pc} - p(x_i) \left(\sum_{\mu=1}^M \left\{{\kern-1.5pt} Q_{\mu}''(x_i) (\ln Q_{\mu}(x_i) + 1) + \frac{Q_{\mu}'(x_i)^{2}}{Q_{\mu}(x_i)} {\kern-2pt} \right\}{\kern-3pt} \right) \\ &&{\kern1.15pc} - p''(x_i) \sum_{\mu=1}^M Q_{\mu}(x_i) \ln Q_{\mu}(x_i) \end{array}$$
Putting Eqs. (73), (74) and (75) together eventually leads to :
$$ \Delta_i = \frac{a_i^3}{24} \;p(x_i) \sum_{\mu=1}^{M} {\kern3pt}\frac{P'(\mu |x_i)^2}{P(\mu |x_i)} $$
hence
$$ \Delta = \sum_i \frac{a_i^3}{24} \;p(x_i) \; F_{\text{cat}}(x_i) $$
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1.Centre d’Analyse et de Mathématique Sociales (CAMS, UMR 8557 CNRS-EHESS)Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences SocialesParis Cedex 06France
2.Laboratoire de Physique Statistique (LPS, UMR 8550 CNRS-ENS-Paris 6-Paris 7)Ecole Normale SupérieureParis Cedex 05France
Bonnasse-Gahot, L. & Nadal, JP. J Comput Neurosci (2008) 25: 169. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10827-007-0071-5
Received 11 May 2007
Revised 06 October 2007
Accepted 04 December 2007


It was the women in the streets of India that touched me most.
which appeared from behind the colorful drapery of their flowing garments?
holding their mission form being exposed?
that speak so loudly of the darkness and pain….
It was just after the last presentation of the day at the conference. I left the meeting hall to phone my family. I was closing my cell phone and looked down to put it back in my purse while I walked down a ramp that lead away from the couch I sat on while talking. The next thing I knew, I sat flat on the floor with a burning pain on my forehead. It was amazing how my brain tried to comprehend this crisis of disorientation. It was as if in the fastest way I could ever imagine I recalled moment-to-moment fragments of behavior retracing my steps to locate the reason for my sitting on the floor with an acing head. I realized almost instantly what happened after remembering in reverse order the blackness then the echo of a loud thump, the low wall-beam running across the ramp with a warning sign that I did not consciously see.
People in the vicinity heard the loud thump when my head hit the wall and came running towards me. As if in a surreal world, I heard the words: “Are you OK?”, as if it came from a far distance.
I did not understand or know how to answer that question. My stunned brain was no longer logical or capable of functioning rationally. I stared back blankly or maybe I did answer automatically in socially appropriate conditioned ways.
One woman put ice in the centre of a crumpled cotton napkin, stuffed it in my hand and instructed me to hold it to my forehead. I obeyed zombie-like, not able to think for myself, which hardly ever happens to me. I found myself confused and disoriented, embarrassed about the attention I drew.
I had to meet up with my friends so we could go together to a cheese and wine that night. When they heard about the accident, they talked to me, checked my responses and stayed to observe me. They discussed it amongst themselves deciding not to take chances about the extent of the shock and the potential seriousness of the concussion. They took me to the hospital. The stayed with me until my husband and son arrived to take care of me.
Their own schedules and plans were on hold until I was in caring hands.
On the way to the hospital, I wondered why I had to experience this knock on the head. What is the meaning of this experience?
While waiting for the doctor my mind traveled back through the day. Then I remembered.
On my way to the conference that morning, the traffic came to a complete standstill on the highway. At first, I thought this was just the usual result of dense traffic and I made myself comfortable behind the driver’s seat. I opened the sky roof, cranked up the music and sang along with the familiar nostalgic tunes.
Then I saw it. About 2 cars ahead of me a mother goose with a string of chicks waddling behind her crossed in front of the stationary row of revving engines which was ready to proceed their impatient journey towards who knows what urgent destination.
By now, tears were flowing with compassion realizing how, despite their urgent journeys, many regarded the lives of this mother and chicks more than their haste. This can only happen in Canada, I thought! Where in the world do you see a busy highway come to a complete standstill for a crossing mother goose and her babies! My warmed and touched heart suddenly jumped. It occurred to me that the danger was still real for them.
What seems to them like reaching safety is the side of the fast lane of the highway, next to the concrete barricade that separates the fast lanes of the two directional flows of vehicles! There was no-ware to go. This mother goose was in a scary unknown place, lost, not knowing the extent of danger she and her babies were in.
With the goose and her chicks out of the way, the traffic started to flow again. As my own vehicle started to accelerate, I looked back in the rear mirror to catch a last glimpse. A small car turned onto the shoulder off the fast lane where the birds were. A woman got out with a box and I knew that the little creatures would be safe from their traitorous position. How brave and timely the action of one person who had foresight and equipped with a box! Did she know she was going to be needed that morning? I think she just did what she knew was to be done and knew she had to do it in that moment, as she was willing to respond to the need. She went out on a limb.
The reflection on this memory happened in a split-second in the waiting room. I realized that when on the floor after the knockout bump, the concerned questions “Are you OK?” was just like all of us stopping our vehicles for the confused geese walking across to the centre of the busy highway. I thought of the compassion that stopped the traffic. I realized that concern and compassion was not enough. It took someone who was willing to act on that feeling of compassion to get out of her car with a box, pick them up and take them out of their precarious and dangerous situation.
I thought of how many times I asked others if they were OK, and then proceeded with my busy life, from my position in the ‘fast lane’ of life, without checking ‘deeper’ to see if they may need more than my concern. I realize now there is more to caring and compassion than checking. I realize from being at the receiving end of shock and confusion that it is not a logical state. Someone in shock and confusion or an emotional crisis needs to be stayed with and taken care of practically and patiently. Therapy needs to be deeper than empathy or logic.
I feel deep gratitude and love because of the deep care I received from my friends Donna, Pam and Carolyn, the day I needed them. I hope that I will recognize when I am called on to be the one to do the practical loving and caring. I hope that I will be ‘equipped’ and timely to be ‘the woman with the compassion and the box’ when you need to be taken out of a precarious situation. I hope I can be a friend like you.
She heard the echo of a taping noise through the forest. It penetrated to the center where the animals lay asleep. A metallic sounding zing followed every tap. Louder and louder it got as she moved closer to it, disturbed by the piercing sound of metal..
Then she saw two boys chipping at a huge rock at the entrance of the woods. Their chisels flashed and threw flickers of reflecting sunlight as they chopped away.
"What are you doing?" Her inquisitive voice was soft and caring.
Her unexpected interference with their efforts showed in their surprised glances. They hesitated then answered that they were trying to chop out the shiny piece of the big rock.
"Our teacher wants us to find interesting rocks to bring to school"
The interrupted chiseling made the birds chirp again.
Then the boys continued their mission. Immediately the sound of metal connecting rock stopped all other sounds.
"I wonder how this mother-rock feels about you trying to take a piece of her?" the woman said softly.
The boys stopped abruptly and looked at her with big eyes. She got their attention now.
" It looks like it's her heart that you want to take?"
Their eyes blinked with recognition, but they did not say a word.
"Did you ask the mother-rock if she would let you take a piece of her?"
"Maybe she doesn't want you to take that part of her....maybe there is another part of her that lies somewhere around here that she wouldn't mind you to have. Maybe the piece she's willing to give is not so difficult to get?"
Again there was a moment of silence while the brothers contemplated the strange woman's words. Is she cruel or what? Where did she came from anyway? She spoke as if she knew the rock?
"Shall we go and see if there are lose stones that are shiny that you can use for your project? Here are some!"
Wide eyed, the boys looked at the stones on the ground as if they saw them for the first time. They glanced back at the big rock at the entrance of the woods and glanced at the makings they made to remove the shiny part of it. They looked at the stones on the ground again and picked some up to investigated them closely.
"This one is nice" one of the boys said.
"I'll use this one" the other shouted.
Singing birds sounded closer again now that the chiseling has stopped. The boys ran home giggling, each holding a stone to show the next day at school.
At the entrance of the forest the woman smiled and touched the big rock lovingly, allowing her hand to hold the shiny core for a moment as if she wanted to wipe out the chisel marks.
A soft breeze rustled the leaves in the trees as the boys looked back to wave at the woman, but she was gone. Not many see the shiny glowing heart of the rock at the entrance of the forest. Not many know of the woman in the forest that watches over the stones.
The pond was dirty. Green slimy stuff floated on the surface. Like vomit, I thought. I glanced over the slimy bubbling algae that covered the stagnant surface.
The trees around the pond were changing color. Fall is in the air. The sun, still hot, steamed silently and clung like sweaty thoughts on the edge of my awareness. "Please God give me a gap, I need some kind of miracle. Let me out of this trap; this boring repetitive human existence, filled with pain and conflict."
The rock I sat on was hard, but I enjoyed being outside. I noticed a fat frog with big bulgy eyes, supported by the thick algae-carpet, basking passively in the now cooling sun. I wondered how it could keep so breathlessly still for so long....maybe in anticipation like me, 'of what?', I wondered.
The stillness is suddenly startled by the jump-swim vigorous motion of another frog closing in. The short bursts of activity were followed by silent moments of expectation as if he was waiting for my reaction. This frog was different. His golden eyes glowed with intensity, watching me with a fixed stare on his algae-marked face. I stared back. This frog communicated, talked with his eyes and wasn't asleep like the others.
It stared then jumped and moved and stared again. This went on for some time as I watched the frog trying to get some reaction from me. What was it trying to tell me?
Another frog joined, swimming from the bottom of the pond to the surface. It stopped mid stroke, went absolutely still for a moment and dived back into the deep to hide under the rocks again.
Most frogs behave like frogs. But some frogs don't.
"You are different". I said to him and thought I saw a wink.
I talked again and it started to jump, desperately trying to get itself up the rocks to get closer to me.
The frog became frantic. It jumped around at the edge of the rock trying to jump out of the water, its golden eyes desperate.
Tears of compassion dropped like blow-kisses on the frog.
The rocks were too high for it to jump out and it disappeared between the cracks, exhausted in its attempts to escape.
I looked down to see where it was. The frog with golden eyes disappeared and only lazy frogs lied passively contented on the green, slime-filled pond.
Did the time-gate close for a miracle to happen......? Or is the miracle that life can be meaningful life in a slime-filled pond?
grows in the compost of ignorance….
the depth hold me safe..


Sunday – Events at the Skratch – Beginning at 2 PM.
Electricity is on the air!!!
Another enjoyable early afternoon at Cactus with DJ Francois and Master Instructor Tony Rausseo.
Le Skratch has opened its doors to the public on Sundays. This is to the delight of many salsa dancers.
This is, in fact, good news to all the Salseras and Salseros out there. They all can have their “Salsa Fix” early. Then go home and do other things.
The DJ has prepared a special repertoire composed of Salsa, Bachata, Cha-cha, Kizomba and much more. In addition, you will see the latest video clips on the plasma screen. The DJ is planning to light up the place for all of you.
Tony Rausseo and his Hot Latin Salsa team have a bag full of Dance Tricks, fancy and flashy moves. He is ready to share them all with you. You will not leave the dance floor empty handed. There will be a move for everyone. This is, whether not, you are a beginner, an intermediate or an advanced dance student.
Needless to say, that is a perfect opportunity to practice your dance figures, steps and turn patterns.
Finally, you can enjoy a cool drink, outside, on the terrace or at the bar; before going dancing or after or in between. This will cool you off or put you in the mood to keep on dancing Hot Latin Salsa.
Get a crash course in salsa dancing WANT to learn the salsa?