text stringlengths 130 541k | id stringlengths 47 47 | date stringdate 2013-05-18 04:54:19 2013-06-20 13:35:46 | dump stringclasses 1
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Hamas says now in 'open war' with Israel, promises 'gates of hell'
As Israel launched a full-scale attack on Gaza with frequent sounds of rockets still being heard in Gaza - killing 13 and injuring over 100 - Hamas vowed to avenge the Israeli strike and the assassination of its military leader Ahmed Jabari.
Hamas stated it will carry out a revenge plan on Israel by sending in suicide bombers and declaring a state of open war.
The commander’s assassination has "opened the gates of hell," the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, were quoted by AFP as saying.
"The occupation committed a dangerous crime and crossed all the red lines, which is considered a declaration of war," he said in a statement. Hamas vowed to "continue the path of resistance." (continue reading...) | <urn:uuid:969bb36f-c500-4031-925e-aa7a2be287dc> | 2013-05-18T17:38:17Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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I implemented a project with GCM before. I want to create a new project now, I need a new project id and i got it but now i can not register. Is it about project id? or Can i use previous project id?
And last question:
<category android:name="my_app_package" /> <permission android:name="my_app_package.permission.C2D_MESSAGE" android:protectionLevel="signature" /> <uses-permission android:name="my_app_package.permission.C2D_MESSAGE" />
What is app package name? is it at the top of the manifest file? or is it that includes GCM java pages? | <urn:uuid:4dfa7d8f-2b15-433f-852c-28b4226cd84e> | 2013-05-18T17:21:46Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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This question already has an answer here:
im bulding web app (sweepstakes), where user has to insert his data AND like one or maybe more facebook pages. Then he can continue and participate in sweepstakes. he cannot participate if he doesnt click on like button. So i have to know that user has clicked on the like button. How do i do it? | <urn:uuid:4dbd7861-ea08-4dab-bc31-76386af08652> | 2013-05-18T18:09:36Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Ministry of Magic Positions
Does anyone happen to know where I can find a list of occupations within the Ministry? Or, even if there's such a list at all? I've checked the Lexicon, and while they have a list of Ministry Personell, I haven't found a list of jobs.
Receiving Toilet Seats
The Lexicon does indeed have a list of jobs (click!) and the history of each department, I believe. It sounds like that's what you're asking for but since you've said you'd already looked, maybe that isn't? Could you be more specific (because I'm just a little slow ). | <urn:uuid:af3db25d-978b-42a1-a576-3574d94396c7> | 2013-05-18T17:18:22Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Green Tea Oatmeal Sugar Cookies
½ cup butter, room temperature
1 cup cane sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tbsp green tea powder
½ cup oatmeal (I used plain instant oatmeal)
¾ tsp baking soda
¾ tsp salt
raisins for garnish
Preheat oven to 375ºF. In a large bowl, mix butter and sugar together. Beat in eggs and then vanilla. In a separate bowl, mix: flour, green tea powder, oatmeal, baking soda and salt. Add flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir until dry ingredients appear wet.
Prepare dough into 1 to 1½ inches balls and place onto baking sheet.
Press a raisin (or other dried fruits) on top. Leave about 2 inches between cookies. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until edges of the cookies are lightly browned.
Immediately after removal from the oven, sprinkle some cane sugar on top for a little sparkle (haha). Allow to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely and then store in an airtight container.
Makes about 18 cookies (about 2½ to 3 inch diameter) | <urn:uuid:292bf1bd-36d6-4d3f-a952-610c3d14c95e> | 2013-05-18T17:58:04Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Hai, this is a blog basically for feelings,|
it takes your words and your requests
and turns them into an image.
if you'd like them on a certain picture you're welcome to submit one.
However the main backgrounds will jsut be colors.
Please feel free to submit your feelings about anything.
home ask me submit archive themes | <urn:uuid:eefb5b49-f267-402f-a51f-3aa39cc8a008> | 2013-05-18T17:36:16Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Ozzy, Tommy, and Vince get into some trouble on the tour. Amy decides to get revenge on Beth Lynn.
"I'll take a beer," Tommy said, without looking up from his solitary chair. "I could sure use one." Axl nodded as he started ambling over to the kitchen, "All right. So what about the girls? Do you guys want anything?" Candice and Beth, who were already gossiping about something, shook their heads.
Not wanting to be left alone with them, I quickly strode across the rooms so I was standing right behind Axl, "I'll come with you. I can help you get the drinks or something." Axl flipped his hair over one shoulder as he turned and looked at me curiously, "I can probably handle getting two drinks by myself."
I felt my face redden, but was glad when Axl didn't protest when I followed him into the kitchen. As he rummaged around in the refrigerator, he called to me, "Glasses are in that cabinet to your left over there." I opened the simple, wooden cabinet above my head and carefully selected two glasses. Once I set them on the counter, I felt my eyes roaming over to Axl.
He was wearing a black and white striped sweatshirt and jeans. His auburn hair fell over his shoulders and he had a black baseball cap on backwards. When he reappeared from the refrigerator holding two bottles, he noticed my gaze and cocked his head to one side, "Is something wrong? You're lookin' at me really funny."
I uncapped one of the bottles he set on the counter and started filling the glass nearby me. The dark red liquid inside it reminded me of blood. Shooting Axl a sideways glance, I replied, "Nothing's wrong. I'm just nervous about how it's gonna go with Izzy." Axl slapped an arm on my shoulder as I finished filling up the third glass.
"I don't know how many times I've told you this, but I'm gonna say it again; stop worrying! Izzy isn't going to act weird around you. I'll try to get you two some time alone so you can sort things out. How does that sound?" Axl suggested. I looked over at him and found that we were standing only inches apart and that Axl still had his hand on my shoulder.
His cheeks were slightly flushed, his hair was slightly disheveled, and there was sweat coming from his forehead. All of it made him look exceedingly attractive. I loved the way he was looking at me now with those long-lashed hazel eyes. I just wanted to look into those eyes for the rest of the day. Since I didn't think I could speak, I simply nodded to answer Axl's question.
"Good," Axl replied and put one of the drinks into my hand, "Give that to Tommy." I followed him out of the kitchen and back to the living room. I was surprised to see that Tommy and Candice were sitting next to each other on the couch and holding hands. They must have finally made up. That was good; I hadn't wanted to see Tommy sit in agony for the rest of the evening.
But where was Beth Lynn? Vince had taken Tommy's spot on the lonesome chair, but Beth was nowhere to be seen. I frowned as I scanned the room for her. Where could she have gone to? Axl plopped back onto the chair across the Vince's and shot him an evil look out of the corner of his eye, which Vince returned.
Normally, I would've made extra effort to make those two get along, but right now I was mainly concerned about Beth Lynn. Trying to seem inconspicuous, I questioned, "Did anyone see where Beth Lynn went?" Candice, who had been snuggling with Tommy, looked over at me with her dark brown eyes, "Yeah, she went down that hallway there. I'm not sure why."
I followed the direction her finger pointed in, feeling like a detective on a crime scene. Once I had snuck down to the end of the hall, I heard approaching footsteps and voices. Immediately, I swung back around the corner so I wouldn't be caught eavesdropping. A voice, that was clearly Beth's, simpered, "Why, I'd just love to hear you play sometime. I'm sure you're amazing."
There was a long silence. Who was Beth talking to? Unable to hold myself back, I risked a glance around the corner. The sight before my eyes gave me a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Izzy was standing in the middle of the hallway and Beth Lynn was standing before him with a hand resting on his chest.
I held my breath, wondering what Izzy would do next. After a few more seconds, Izzy gave Beth a little smile and said, "Sure, maybe sometime." Beth kept her hand planted on his chest and took a step closer to him. Izzy frowned and took a step backwards, "Don't you think we should be heading back to the rest of the party? They're probably wondering what we're doing."
"I suppose so," Beth answered in a disappointed voice. Reluctantly, she moved her hand off of Izzy's chest and the two of them began walking down the hallway. Not wanting to get caught, I silently ran back down the hall and flopped down breathlessly on the couch next to Candice and Tommy. Candice shot me a disapproving look before she turned her back to me. Axl was staring at me with amusement. I had a feeling he had known what I was up to.
Beth Lynn and Izzy appeared in the room only seconds later. I pretended to casually glance over at them, trying to hide my suspicion. Beth Lynn had obviously been trying to make a move on Izzy earlier. Thank god Izzy had appeared not to be interested in her. Actually, that wasn't necessarily true. Izzy might be interested in her, but he didn't want to do anything with her in a house full of people. I was going to have to keep a close eye on them tonight.
As soon as Beth entered the room, her eyes zeroed in on me. I blushed and looked away, hoping she wouldn't notice my flushed cheeks and heavy breathing. Beth squeezed onto the couch next to me and asked in a concerned voice, "Is something wrong, Amy? You're all red and you don't look like you're feeling very well."
My already red cheeks just got redder. Why did Beth have to bring this up right now in front of so many people? I felt like telling her to go to hell, but by now, everyone in the room was looking at us. I replied with artificial politeness, "I'm just fine, thank you for your concern." There was a few minutes silence where Axl and Tommy sipped their drinks and the rest of us sat together awkwardly. I wished someone would say something. The tension in the room was driving me insane.
"So guys," I asked when I finally found something to say to make small chat, "Where are Nikki and Mick? I remember them saying that they'd be here, but it doesn't look like they're coming unless they're going to turn up two hours late." Tommy looked up from where he and Candice had been exchanging loving glances, "Nikki's at the island of Nantucket and I have no idea where the hell Mick might be. I don't even think I've talked to him since we've got home."
I felt slightly concerned for Mick. He had seemed down in the dumps lately. I wasn't sure exactly what was bothering him, but I suspected he was still depressed over the breakup with Linda. Mick seemed to take things very hard. But what about Nikki? What was he doing in Nantucket? He hadn't mentioned to me that he was going anywhere.
As if she had the exact same thoughts as me, Beth asked curiously, "What's Nikki doing in Nantucket?" Tommy, who still hadn't taken his eyes off of Candice, didn't reply. Beth cleared her throat loudly, but Tommy still seemed distracted. Finally Vince said instead, "I think he went there to meet some girls or something. I'm not really sure. He told me he met Demi Moore there. They seem to be getting along pretty well."
So Nikki had deserted us to go to a isolated island to meet more girls. Great. Complaining, I said, "What does Lita think about that? Aren't they still together?" Vince shrugged like he could care less, "How should I know what Lita thinks about it? Seriously, Amy, just relax a bit. It's perfectly normal for Nikki to want to meet some new girls."
"Perfectly normal for an asshole," I muttered grumpily under my breath. Somehow, Vince must have heard me because he glared at me from across the room and looked like he was going to say something. Axl saw the two of us exchanging murderous glances and tried to step in, "So guys, wanna watch some TV?" Without waiting for our responses, Axl flicked on the TV and turned the volume up to full blast. Vince and I continued to glare at each other, but we couldn't say anything since we knew we wouldn't be heard over the blaring of the TV. That's how the next two hours went; all of us sitting in silence and watching TV.
At the end of two hours, I was really starting to get impatient. I wanted to talk to Izzy, but he hadn't even glanced at me once during the entire evening. It was like he was trying to avoid me or something. There was a sinking feeling in my gut and an even worse feeling in my heart. Was there a possibility Izzy might not even speak to me during this whole meeting?
Getting restless, I started fidgeting with the tassels of a pillow on the couch and sighed loudly. Axl looked over at me and then at Izzy, biting his lip. He reached over and turned the volume to the television down a few notches. With a sly glance in my direction, Axl stood up and crossed the room to open the windows.
As soon as the windows were open, bright sunlight filled the room. My eyes squinted up while I got adjusted to the new lighting. As Axl walked back to his chair, he suggested, "I'm hungry. Hey Izzy, why don't you go grab those potato chips from the kitchen? And Amy, can you refill my glass for me? I'm parched."
I noticed that Axl gave Izzy a kick in the leg as he passed his chair. Izzy shot Axl a confused look and then looked over at me for the first time that day. As soon as he met my gaze, he quickly looked away again. Axl put his empty glass in my hand and then squeezed my hand and gave a look that said, "This is your chance!"
I stared up at Axl maybe a little bit too long because Axl's cheeks turned a little pink as he returned to his chair. When I looked up, Izzy had already disappeared in the kitchen. Not wanting to miss my only chance to be alone with Izzy, I quickly followed him into the kitchen and quietly shut the door behind us.
Izzy was rummaging around in the cabinet for the potato chips. He didn't even acknowledge my presence as I entered the room. Trying not to feel too discouraged, I pulled open the refrigerator door and selected the liquor bottle Axl had used earlier to fill up his glass earlier. I yanked the heavy glass bottle down from the top shelf of the refrigerator and started pouring the liquid into Axl's glass. A tension had formed between Izzy and me. The only sound was the sloshing of liquid pouring into the glass and the rustling of Izzy sorting through different items in the cabinet.
I was biting my lip really hard to keep from saying something to Izzy. I wanted him to talk to me first. He had talked to me on the phone and said he wasn't mad. Why did he seem to be avoiding me now? Had something happened since then? Just as I finished refilling Axl's glass, Izzy finally found the potato chip bag. He crammed all the other items he had pulled out of the cabinet back into it carelessly. After slamming the cabinet door shut, he grabbed the potato chip bag and turned towards the door without even looking at me. I clenched my teeth and tried to decide what to do.
Unable to control myself any longer, I rushed over to the door and grabbed the white sleeve of Izzy's shirt. He stopped and looked over at me resignedly. Feeling almost a little angry at the way he was treating me, I burst out, "Izzy...what's going on? I thought you weren't mad at me. You said you weren't when we talked on the phone. But why are you avoiding me like this? If there's some other girl you like, then just tell me so we don't have to deal with this shit anymore."
"There's not any other girls..." Izzy trailed off. Keeping my hand firm around his wrist, I dragged him over to the kitchen table. After sitting down in one of the chairs, I barked, "Are you going to tell me what's going on with you then or not?" Izzy slumped down in the chair next to me and looked at his hands.
I wanted to be mad at Izzy, but I was already falling into my Izzy-trance-like state already.
I tried to keep my gaze off Izzy and my mind on my anger at him, but my attempt was a failure. I found myself looking him over like usual. He was wearing a white shirt that he had left unbuttoned and he had a black vest that he was wearing over it. There was a big, black necklace coiled around his neck and a matching bracelet around his slender wrist. I noticed he was wearing a silver nose ring today. That had to be new. I had never seen it before.
Just when I was going to have to stare at a mute Izzy all day, Izzy finally raised his head and looked directly at me for the first time today. My heart skipped a beat and I had the impulse to look away from those dark, hazel eyes. A loud scrapping noise broke the silence between us as Izzy scooted his chair across the tile kitchen floor to sit closer to me.
Wondering what he was going to do next, I held my breath and sat absolutely still. He was like a nervous puppy that I was afraid of scaring off. Without taking his eyes off mine, Izzy leaned over until I felt his warm breath on my neck. I inhaled deeply to fill my nose with Izzy's unmistakable scent. Today, he smelled like a mix of coconut and sunscreen. I figured he had been outside doing something earlier. Probably riding one of his bikes around.
Izzy slid his lips carefully onto the base of neck and leaned his head on my shoulder. Hoping that this meant I had permission to touch him too, I cautiously twined a strand of his black hair around my thumb. I half expected Izzy to pull away from my touch, but instead he gave me a small, tired-looking smile and closed his eyes as he leaned against my shoulder.
There was something different about Izzy today. He seemed so tired and worn out. It was as if he were recovering from running his first marathon. I peered back down at where he was resting against my shoulder. This just wasn't like Izzy. Izzy was normally full of energy and always talking about something. Had someone drained Izzy of his energy?
As much as I missed the old Izzy, I still liked the way he was leaning against me. We were so close...closer than we had been in a very long time. I could see his bare chest rise and fall rhythmically as he took in long, slow breaths. My hand strayed from the lock off Izzy's hair and onto his forehead.
I stroked his straggly black hair off his face and nestled my head against his shoulder. Izzy gave a sigh of satisfaction. The two of us pressed closer together while Izzy's breaths started to slow and my eyelids started to droop and grow heavy. Izzy's sleepiness appeared to be wearing off on me. I was so distracted that I didn't process the conversation coming from the living room. "Where's Amy and Izzy?" Beth's polite voice asked curiously. I imagined a shrugging of shoulders before Vince chimed in, "I thought they were going to get food. I'm starving. Maybe we should go see what they're up to." The sound of someone standing up drifted through the doorway. There was a shuffling of feet before Axl quickly cut in, "Oh, I'll go get the potato chips. Amy probably got lost somewhere in the basement and hit her head so Izzy had to go rescue her."
Everyone laughed at Axl's joke. I would've been enraged at Axl making fun of my clumsiness, but right now, all I was concerned about was keeping Izzy this close to me for forever. Unfortunately, our peace and quiet didn't last much longer. The door flew open and Axl stood in the doorway looking a little irritated.
"I don't care if you two want to talk, but seriously, couldn't you have at least brought the chips out earlier? Everyone knows it doesn't take an hour to find a bag of chips in the cabinet," Axl remarked a-matter-of-factly, stepping forward to snatch the bag of chips off the counter. He glanced over at us as he leaned across the table to the counter, "Aw, aren't you two sweet together." Then, with a mischievous smile, he slapped Izzy hard on the left cheek.
Izzy's eyes popped open and he stared daggers at Axl. Axl shrugged his shoulders as he switched the bag of chips from his left hand to his right, "Sorry, Izz. I didn't want you to fall asleep on Amy though. You know, you should really get off that crap. It really drains everything out of you. I'm not saying you have to, but it is a good suggestion. One of these days people will learn that I do happen to do a thing or two." With that, Axl disappeared back into the living room.
Izzy, who was now looking wide-awake, yawned widely and wiped a hand across his brow. He looked over at me with glassy eyes and apologized quickly, "Sorry, Amy. I'm a little out of it today. I'm supposing we should talk about...last time?" I did want to talk about last time, but there was something else I wanted to talk about sooner.
"What did Axl mean when he said you should 'get off that crap'?" I asked. Axl's words had immediately heightened my suspicion. Izzy looked around the room nervously as if he were hoping an excuse would form in his head. Before he could manage to create a diversion, I put a hand under his chin to force him to look at me, "Izzy, don't lie to me. I wanna know. I have a right to know. Tell me what's going on. Please?"
Izzy hesitated for a moment, looking unsure. After another fierce glance from me, he finally gave in, "Nothing is really going on. Axl thinks I'm taking too much dope. But really, it's no big deal. I'm just tired. Anyways, shall we talk about last time?" I frowned. I didn't want to talk about last time until I figured out what exactly was going on with Izzy.
"Not quite yet," I interjected causing Izzy to let out a big sigh. His hand folded over mine and he replied urgently, "It's nothing, Amy. Really. I'm just fine. Let's drop it, okay?" I wanted to keep talking about it, but Izzy looked so tired and drained that I didn't want to push him right now. He looked like he could topple over at any moment.
Deciding to drop the subject, I added in one last attempt, "Just don't do anything dangerous. I don't really want you on drugs." Izzy gave me a funny look and cracked a small smile, "Uh, Amy? I've been on drugs my whole life. But like I said, it's okay as long as you don't go overboard on it." I didn't know much about drugs, but I knew enough about it that I didn't want Izzy to become an addict. I already had to worry about Nikki and the heroin; I didn't want to have to worry about Izzy too.
In an attempt to change the subject, Izzy said, "About last time...it's not that I don't love you, it's just that I don't think we're good for each other." Izzy's statement made me completely forget about what we had been talking about earlier. Instead, I sat next to him in confusion and shock. What did he mean when he said that we weren't good for each other?
My body went rigid and I could feel my shoulders tense. Izzy was looking around the room nervously. In reaction to my silence, he placed a hand on one of my shoulders and tried to explain, "Please don't take it hard...I'm just saying that this isn't good for you. The kind of lifestyle I live and the type of lifestyle that you live are completely different."
"So?" I asked. "Why should that make a difference?" Honestly, I didn't even give a damn about what kind of "lifestyles" we lived. I just wanted Izzy. It was hard for me to try to figure out whether he was trying to get rid of me or not. Izzy could be very hard to read sometimes. I wished he would just get straight to the point.
Silently, Izzy stood up and crossed the room. For a moment I thought he was just going to get up and leave, but then he paused and dug through one of the drawer's on the counter. A second later, he emerged with a cigarette. He lit it and then returned to the chair next to me. I studied his face through a puff of smoke, trying to find answers in it.
"Amy, you have a good lifestyle. You're smart, pretty, and innocent. You're gonna go to college then get a high paying job and marry some guy who's gonna be able to support you for the rest of your life. My lifestyle is way different. I don't have a job and I have no fucking idea how I'm even gonna make ends meet. I spend my nights getting high on drugs and fucking random girls..." Izzy stopped there and waited for my reaction.
"I don't care that our lifestyles are different or whatever," I said earnestly, "if you wanna do drugs or fuck random girls, that's fine I guess. I just wanna be with you, Izzy. That's all I'm asking for." I was really hoping that Izzy would just quit it with all this shit. Couldn't he tell that all I wanted was his love? That's all I needed to make it through the day.
Izzy paused, hesitating slightly as he replied, "Are you listening to me? I don't think this is good for you. I don't think you should be hanging out with our band. It'll end badly. Either you'll get hooked on drugs or get raped or something worse maybe. I'd feel responsible if something happened to you. Especially if it had to do with me."
I was starting to get impatient. Did Izzy think I was a little kid who didn't understand the consequences of my actions? Irritably, I replied, "Izzy, I travel with Crue all the time! I've been fine on every single tour. Hanging out here with you and Axl's new band is most certainly not going to hurt anyone. Unless, of course, you're just trying to get rid of me?"
"Hell, no!" Izzy exclaimed, looking shocked. He let out another puff of smoke and considered what I had said a moment before answering, "Amy, this is my last warning to you: this isn't going to be good for anyone. I'll probably get high and do something stupid or hurt you in some way. I don't wanna do that."
"Izzy!" I yelled with exasperation. A loud creak from the other side of the room followed my exclamation. Izzy and I turned our heads around to see that the door had opened a crack and Axl was glaring in at us. He looked bored and angry at the same time, "Keep it down, will you? Every single person in the living room can hear what you're saying."
Izzy and I blushed. In a much quieter tone, I apologized, "Oh, sorry. I didn't realize I was being so loud." Axl merely grunted and retreated out of the doorway. Being more careful to keep our voices down, Izzy and I continued our conversation, "Izzy, I'm not a careful, cautious kind of girl. I like your kind of lifestyle and I know you won't hurt me. You just gotta stop being so careful with me all the time for god's sake! Why are you so careful with me anyways?"
Izzy's hazel eyes sparkled and he smiled genuinely, "I'm careful because I don't want to lose you. Besides, I didn't think you were the kind of girl who liked guys to throw themselves at you." I fluttered my eyelashes at Izzy flirtatious and commented, "I wouldn't mind it if you did." Izzy suddenly put a hand to his forehead.
Worried, I asked, "Hey, are you okay?" Izzy sat there next to me cringing. He looked really ill. After a few minutes, he slowly brought his hand away from his head, but still looked kind of dazed, "Yeah, I guess. I just got this really bad fucking headache all of the sudden. Don't worry about me though, I'll be fine in a few minutes."
It was hard not to worry about Izzy, especially when he looked like he was in so much pain. But then Izzy smiled and then said, "Okay, you win. We can stay together, but I want you to promise me something." I was a little wary of whatever it was that Izzy wanted me to promise, but I was desperate enough to agree to it. After all, there wasn't anything more important than staying together with Izzy. Skeptically, I said, "Okay?"
"You're gonna promise never to get into drugs. I don't want you trying shit ever. Understand?" Izzy looked deeply into my eyes to convey the seriousness of what he was saying. I almost laughed at his statement. It wasn't like I even wanted to try drugs. The thought hadn't even crossed my mind.
"Yeah, I promise. That's probably the easiest promise I've made in a long time," I said easily. "So...we're back together again with no awkwardness then, right?" Izzy grinned, "Yeah. It's all your fault bitch so don't blame me for anything that might happen in the future. But anyways, this calls for a celebration. Wanna get something to drink?"
I shrugged, "Sure." Standing up, I pushed in my chair and headed to the refrigerator. Izzy finished his cigarette and tossed it in the trash before following me to the refrigerator. On the way over, I tripped on the corner of Izzy's chair and landed on my back. Flinching, I rubbed my shoulder as I lay on the ground.
No matter how much I tried to be careful, I always ended up being a complete klutz. In an instant, Izzy had dropped onto the ground next to me and looked at me with concern, "God, sorry about leaving my chair right there. Are you okay? Is there anything I can do or get you to make you feel better?"
I had already forgotten about the pain that had been in my shoulders. Looking up into his eyes, I could think of only one thing I wanted. Trying not to be too audacious, I said, "Well...maybe there is something you could do..." I trailed off, hoping Izzy would get the clue. He just looked at me with a puzzled expression.
I flopped all the way onto my back so that I was staring at the ceiling and so that Izzy had to stare down at my prone figure. I blinked innocently up at him with my heart fluttering rapidly. Izzy gave me a twisted smile and leaned over me so that our noses were touching. I closed my eyes happily at his touch. A big burst of Izzy-scent entered my nose.
I could feel Izzy's tongue part my lips and slide into my mouth. I let my tongue caress his. It didn't take long before Izzy stretched out of his crouched position and was lying on his side next to me. He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me onto my side too. I let him turn my body without really knowing what was going on.
We kept kissing for a long time. Our kisses became passionate and urgent. Izzy kissed me like it was the last time he'd ever see me again. I kissed him back just as fiercely. I had missed him so much and now we were finally together again. Izzy pulled me closer against him and we rolled over...right into the table.
A stray plastic glass that had been sitting on the edge of the the table wavered precariously and then fell right onto Izzy's head. He winced and immediately broke away from our embrace, leaving me lying on the floor. I got up onto an elbow and asked, "You okay?" What I really felt like doing was cursing at the glass for ruining the moment, but that would just be stupid to talk to a object.
"Uh...sorta..." Izzy trailed off. He rubbed his forehead vigorously. "Amy...I hate to do this, but I really think I need to take a nap for a while. I'm just so tired and my head feels like it's gonna split open. Do you mind?" I did mind, but of course I wasn't going to say that. In as sweet of a voice as I could use, I replied, "Not at all. Go nap and feel better."
Izzy gave me a pained smile before leaning down and kissing my forehead. After that, he retreated into the bathroom. Why he went into the bathroom, I did not know. Shouldn't he have gone upstairs if he was going to nap? I shrugged and turned back to the living room. Little did I know what exactly Izzy was doing in there.
The rest of the night was rather uneventful. Axl and Vince were actually communicating civilly and it appeared that they might actually start being friends. Tommy and Candice pretty much engaged in a long makeout session during the whole evening and Beth Lynn stared at her feet, looking bored.
I had thought about talking to her, but I was a little angry at her at the moment. First of all, she had suddenly ditched me as her friend and was now doing everything with Candice. I would've really appreciated an explanation for it, but Beth hadn't spoken of it once. Second, I had thought she had made a move on Izzy. That was completely unforgivable in my book.
My suspicion toward her interest in Izzy had been raised up a few notches when I came out of the kitchen alone. As soon as the door had opened, she had whipped her gaze over to me and looked around for Izzy. When he didn't emerge, she asked, "Where's Izzy? I thought he was in the kitchen with you."
I had replied, "He was, but he's not feeling well so he's gonna go take a nap." Beth narrowed her eyes at me as if Izzy not feeling well was somehow my fault! That was pretty much the end of our friendship. It appeared that Beth was interested in Izzy and I was the barrier blocking her path to him. The more Beth seemed to want Izzy, the more determined I became not to let her have him.
Anyways, the evening soon ended and the Crue members and I packed up and went back to our homes after saying our good byes to Axl. Axl had given me a stiff goodbye, he seemed really distracted. He kept glancing nervously over at the locked bathroom door where Izzy was. Something told me that he knew more about the situation than I did.
Four days later, we had gotten up early and had flown to Nashville. Our hotel was average. It didn't have fancy paintings on the wall or glass chandeliers, but it wasn't dirty and old looking. I had agreed to share a room with Tommy because he had decided to leave Candice home to my relief. Vince had decided to bring Beth along though. She and I kept our distance at all costs and avoided each other whenever it was possible.
The Crue had just completed their first show and we had arrived at the hotel only a moment earlier. The show had been a great success and everyone was feeling energetic and elated. Nikki took my hand on the way in and smiled down at me. He looked particularly handsome in this lighting with his tight black pants and high heeled boots. I was forced to tilt my head in order to see his face. The boots made him almost a foot and a half taller than me.
"So Amy, what are you planning to do tonight?" Nikki asked as the six of us tramped down the hallway to the elevator. Vince hit the elevator button and turned to look at me too. Apparently he was also interested in knowing what my plans were for the night. Just to irritate Vince, I smiled right into his face and said loudly, "I'm gonna go to the strip club across the street, get wasted, and get laid." Vince's eyes widened in shock and then he grinned, "You're going to the club right next to this place? Well, I was thinking of going there myself. Maybe we should go together?"
Everyone else was trying hard not to laugh. Tommy had balled his fist into his mouth and his eyes were sparkling. Vince was the only one who hadn't realized that I was joking. I gave Vince a funny look before Nikki burst out, "Oh god, Vince, she's just kidding you! Can you seriously see Amy in a strip club?"
Vince's face fell and he looked rather disappointed. For some reason, Vince was looking really attractive to me tonight as well. I hated to admit it, but it was true. His platinum blonde hair shone brilliantly, his aquamarine eyes looked true and honest, and those glossy full lips of his looked much too inviting.
I frowned to myself and looked away from him. Maybe Izzy had been right that touring around with a rock 'n roll bad wasn't such a good idea. I didn't love Nikki or Vince like I loved Izzy, but I was feeling physically attracted to both of them tonight. For a moment, I actually imagined myself going to the strip club with Vince. Both of us would get drunk, have a good time, and then come back to the hotel together...
My thoughts were interrupted by Beth Lynn's shrill voice. My fantasy ended right there and then. There was no way I could do anything with Vince with Beth Lynn along anyways. I supposed it was a good thing, but I couldn't help but hate her more at that moment. Feeling embarrassed and angry, I plodded into the elevator with the other six.
It was a tight fit, but somehow we all managed to cram into the elevator together and head up to the fourth floor. As I was glaring at Beth Lynn from my corner in the elevator, Nikki tapped me on the shoulder once more, "You never did tell me what you really were going to do tonight. I'm smart enough to know that you wouldn't really go to a strip club."
Glad for a distraction, I smiled up at Nikki, "Of course I wouldn't go to a strip club. Um, I don't really have any plans tonight. What about you?" Nikki opened his mouth to answer, but Tommy cut across him excitedly, "Ozzy invited us to go with him to the club around the corner. Don't you want to go with us, Nikki?"
I frowned at Tommy's words. I still didn't like Ozzy. I found him to be insane and possibly dangerous. It really sucked that we had to do a tour with him. It would've been so much better if we could've done a tour with a different band like Kiss for example. But of course, Nikki and Tommy had to wreck our relationship with Kiss by fucking with Eric's girlfriend.
My dream come true would be if somehow we could go on a tour with Axl's new band, the Hollywood Rose. That way, I could be with all my best friends at the same time. Plus it would definitely help the Hollywood Rose get some publicity.
"Nah, I don't think I'm gonna go," Nikki answered Tommy with a shrug. "I'd rather hang out here around the hotel." Tommy looked confused for a minute but didn't protest. We were at our hotel rooms now and Tommy was digging around in his pockets for the key. Vince, who already had his door open, asked, "So Tommy, want me to meet you in the parking lot at we'll drive to the club together then?" Tommy finally found his key and slipped it through our door, "Yeah, sure. I'll meet ya there in two hours or so."
Apparently both Tommy and Vince were planning on hanging out with Ozzy tonight. Something told me that this night wasn't going to end up well. A quiet voice added, "I'm going too! Can't I meet you down in the parking lot?" I spun around to see Mick staring at Tommy and Vince. He was looking a bit put-out at being ignored. I had to admit that I was shocked that Mick was going to the club too. Mick didn't strike me as the kind of guy who would want to go to a club with whacked people like Ozzy.
Vince, looking surprised too, said quickly, "Of course you can come too, Mick! We'd love to have you with us. I guess we'll all meet downstairs then in a little bit." Vince tromped into his hotel room to get ready for the night. I was about to follow Tommy into my room when a sharp voice stopped me in my tracks.
"Hey Amy, wait a second, won't ya?" Nikki asked from behind me. I paused where I was and turned to look at him. He was shifted his wait from foot to foot nervously like he wanted to say something but he wasn't actually sure what it was that he wanted to say. I raised an eyebrow and prompted him, "Nikki?"
Nikki finally stopped shifting and looked down at me, "Wanna do something together tonight? Just something small around here? Maybe we could go downstairs and each dinner in that little lobby area together?" Nikki said it casually, but from the tension in his face, I could tell that he was hiding something.
"Yeah, that sounds great. What time do you want to eat dinner together?" I asked. Having dinner with Nikki might be fun. It had been way too long since Nikki and I had spent some time alone together. It had felt like our friendship had been slipping away for a while. Maybe tonight would give me the chance to renew that friendship.
"How about in a half hour when the other guys are leaving for the club?" Nikki suggested, grinning widely. I nodded eagerly, "Sounds great. Seeya then!" Without watching where I was going, I turned and started to walk into the room Tommy and I were sharing. After only one step, my left foot ran into something hard and I tripped and fell.
I looked up from the ground to see what I had tripped on. I didn't remember anything blocking my path only a moment earlier. To my horror, I saw Beth Lynn smirking down at me. She had stuck out her food and tripped me on purpose! Still smirking, Beth said lightly, "Better watch where you're goin' girl."
Before I had a chance to reply, she turned on her heel and clicked down the hall to Vince's room. I sat on the floor a moment longer, glaring after her. Beth was going much too far with her sudden hatred of me. I had never been mean to her. If she didn't want to hang out with me, that was fine. But going to this extremity was just crazy.
Shaking my head, I slowly got to my feet and slowly shut the hotel room door behind me. The bathroom door that had been shut only a moment ago popped open and Tommy emerged in some more casual clothes. He smiled at me as he walked across the room and started putting his stage clothes into his open suitcase.
"Hey Tommy," I asked, still fuming about the encounter with Beth Lynn, "Why do you think Beth Lynn hates me so much?" Tommy finished folding his clothes into his suitcase and then sat down on the edge of his bed to give me a befuddled look, "Huh? I'm not really sure what you mean, Amy. Beth Lynn doesn't hate you. I thought you two were really good friends.
I crossed the room and sat across from Tommy on the bed opposite him. I liked talking to Tommy. Sometimes it seemed like he was the only one who could help sort out my confused thoughts. Sighing, I explained to him, "We used to be really good friends, but now she hates me. She's been hanging out with Candice all the time and she never bothers to talk to me anymore. She treats me like I'm some disease. Out in the hallway two minutes ago, she actually tripped me! What did I do wrong, Tommy?"
Tommy scratched his head and looked puzzled. He thought for a few moments before answering, "I really have no idea. I'm sorry, but I don't. Sure, I noticed that Beth had been hanging out with Candice quite a bit, but I didn't know that she had stopped talking to you. But you've gotta remember that she's just had a kid, Amy. She's bound to be a little bit moody sometimes. Just give it some time. I'm sure she'll come around sooner or later."
"I sure hope so," I muttered miserably. I wasn't sure how much more of this I could take. If it got much worse, I was going to have to just confront Beth Lynn myself to figure out what was going on. Tommy laughed at my dubious expression and patted my hand reassuringly, "I promise you that it will be okay. Just give it time. Speaking of which, did Nikki ask you out tonight?"
I scrutinized Tommy carefully, "Hey, how did you know that Nikki had asked me to have dinner with him? Were you eavesdropping on us earlier?" Tommy's eyes sparkled and he shrugged. I stayed silent and waited for a little bit more of an explanation. Tommy obviously knew something that I didn't.
"I wasn't eavesdropping. Nikki just mentioned to me earlier how much he misses you. I don't think things are going so well with him and Lita right now," Tommy explained. I was touched to hear that Nikki missed me. I had been missing him too, but sometimes I thought that he had forgot that I existed.
"So you think he wants to talk to me about Lita?" I asked curiously. Tommy threw his hands up in the air and stood up, "How would I know that? Anyways, I've gotta get going. I don't want to keep Vince, Mick, and Ozzy waiting." I watched him go and then stood up resignedly. I should probably change if I was going to have dinner with Nikki tonight.
Around forty minutes later, I finally finished getting ready. I had changed into a simple burgundy dress with spaghetti straps that appeared to be made of silk. I loved the way the fabric swished against my legs. Plus, I even had a new pair of stilettos that matched the dress perfectly. I had been careful when I applied my makeup. For some reason, I really wanted this night to be perfect. And maybe I wanted to impress Nikki too.
The only problem was that my hair just wouldn't cooperate with me. I had attempted to straighten it, but it had only gotten tangled and remained wavy. After that, I had tried to curl it but the rest was only a mess of fuzziness. In desperation, I had put it into a messy bun. It certainly looked better that way then in tangles.
With one last look in the mirror, I slid into my stilettos and walked down the hallway to the elevator. The stairs was closer, but I wasn't willing to walk down the stairs right now. I tended to be clumsy in general so me walking down the stairs with four-inch heels would probably end up with me tumbling all the way downstairs and landing on the ground with my face on the floor.
I stepped into the elevator with two teenage guys and hit the main lobby button. I ran a hand through my hair and smoothed my dress. Suddenly, I noticed that the boys were gawking at me curiously. When I looked over at them, they both quickly smiled sexily at me and inched closer.
I almost laughed aloud. It was funny that these teenagers who were probably a good six or seven years younger than me actually appeared to show some interest in me! I gave them a polite smile as the elevator reached the main lobby. Stepping outside of it, I glanced around the tables to look for Nikki.
Many faces stared back at me, but none of them was Nikki's. I was starting to get an ominous feeling. Was there a possibility that Nikki might have ditched me or just invited me done here to look like an idiot? Nikki wouldn't do that...would he?
Feeling like an idiot, I decided to head back upstairs to the hotel room. I hadn't thought Nikki would've ditched me, but he was no where to be seen. Staring down at my feet, I started to shuffle back over to the elevator. Without warning, I felt a hand grab my shoulder and ask curiously, "Hey, where are you going, girl?"
I swung around and found myself nose to nose with Nikki. Feeling that we were too close, I stumbled back a few steps and blushed in embarrassment, "Oh...uh...nowhere now. Were are we going to eat?" I was feeling really stupid now for thinking that Nikki would've ditched me. Nikki was much too sweet of a guy to do something like that.
Nikki removed his hand from my shoulder and took my hand instead. He started leading me towards a room at the end of the hall, "We're eating in here. I thought it would give us a little bit of privacy. I'm getting a little fed up of people looking over at me and saying, 'Oh my god, there's Nikki Sixx!' It's nice just to have a little peace and quite, ya know?"
"Oh yes, I know," I agreed, knowing exactly what Nikki meant. Nikki led me through the doorway and into a nice little room. There was a small table set up in the center of it. On the table was a bowl of fruit, a platter of vegetables, and a few loaves of bread. I was surprised to see that there wasn't any meat on the table. Apparently Nikki had remembered that I was a vegan.
I sat down on one of the wooden chairs and shot him a smile, "Hey, you remembered I don't like watching people eat meat, didn't you?" Nikki flushed and nodded slightly as he sat down across from me. I took a few pieces of fruit from the platter and dumped some of the veggies onto my plate.
I was going to have to eat tonight whether I liked it or not. I was starting to get used to eating again. Ever since that time that my clump of hair had fallen out, I had been very conscious to make sure that I ate at least one thing each day. It must be working because I hadn't had any hair problems since then. Thank god for that!
"This looks really good," I told Nikki, motioning at the food spread out on the table before us. Nikki had heaped his plate full of fruits, veggies, and bread. He had already bitten into the white bread ravenously. The Crue boys always had a big appetite. After chewing and swallowing, Nikki smiled over at me, "I'm glad you like it."
We ate in silence for a while, just enjoying each other's company. About midway through the meal, I decided to bring up the topic that Tommy had told me about, "So Nikki, how have you and Lita been?" Nikki froze for a second and stopped chewing the end of a carrot stick. I bit my lip. Nikki probably didn't want to talk about Lita right now. I had been stupid for bringing it up.
"Eh...we've been okay," Nikki said slowly, carefully munching on a slice of apple. He chewed thoughtfully then added, "Why do you ask?" I looked down at the ground and tried to invent an answer. Nikki probably wouldn't have been happy to know that Tommy had been blabbing about his personal life to me.
But under Nikki's piercing gaze, my mind seemed to slow down and stop altogether. Finally, I just admitted the truth, "Well, Tommy told me that you and Lita were having problems or something actually." Nikki raised an eyebrow in shock, "Tommy told you that? Hm, that's odd because I never told Tommy that."
I speared a strawberry and looked up at him in confusion, "Wait, you didn't tell Tommy that? I wonder why he would have told you that." Nikki shrugged his shoulder, looking just as confused as me, "I have no fucking idea. I'm gonna have to talk to him about this though. I don't really think he should be making up stories about my love life."
Biting my lip, I interrupted, "Uh, please don't! I don't wanna get into trouble with Tommy. I'm in enough trouble as it is already." My thoughts immediately ventured to Beth Lynn. Nikki paused for a minute and then resigned, "Well, alright. But if he does it again, I'm gonna have to talk to him."
I didn't protest to that and we returned to our meal. I stabbed a piece of bright red watermelon and stuck it into my mouth. It sort of dissolved under my tongue. That was something nice about watermelon; it was mostly water and not really food. Liquids were always easier for me to digest than solids since I still wasn't that used to eating.
"So what's up with you and Izzy?" Nikki asked as nonchalantly as possible. I cocked an eyebrow at him and raised my gaze from the last few chunks of fruit on my plate so I could look at his face, "Uh, not much. I mean, we're doing fine if that's what you're asking. Why are you asking anyways?"
This time it was Nikki's turn to turn bright red, "Well, you asked me about Lita so I thought I'd ask you about Izzy." I couldn't find much to say to that, so I just said, "Hm." I ate my last few pieces of fruit and then looked over at Nikki. He looked like he was done too. I was feeling kind of disappointed. We had just had a rare amount of time alone together and we hadn't really talked about anything besides the other person's relationships. Maybe my relationship with Nikki had changed.
Noticing that I was done, Nikki asked, "So what do you want to do now? We could go back up to our rooms, but I'm still feeling wide awake. How about you?" I considered what to do next. I did want to spend more time with Nikki. Sleep was the last thing on my mind at the moment. I hoped that maybe Nikki and I could actually spend some 'quality time' together if we did something else tonight, "Want to go somewhere? I'm not feeling tired either."
Nikki nodded. His black hair flopped into his face, obscuring his eyes, "Yeah, definitely. Where do you want to go?" I hadn't been to Tennessee before so I didn't really even know what kind of places were around here. I shrugged and said, "I don't know. This is my first time to Nashville. Where do you want to go, Nikki?"
Nikki brushed his black hair out of his eyes, but it just fell right back into them, "I don't care. I've never been to Nashville before either. Why don't we go find the others and see what they're up to?" I couldn't keep the grimace off my face. I would've enjoyed meeting up with Mick, Tommy, and Vince, but I didn't really want to see Ozzy. He already seemed unpredictable. Who knew what he would do when he was drunk? I shuddered involuntarily.
"You don't wanna go?" Nikki asked, reading into my expression. I could see he was trying to hide the disappointment in his eyes. Apparently Nikki wanted to go. Well, if Nikki wanted to go, then I guess I could too. Trying to smile, I replied, "Nah, let's go. It would be good to keep an eye on the others and see how they're doing."
Nikki grabbed my hand excitedly and pulled me out the door. I hesitated, looking back at our leftover plates and garbage for dinner. As Nikki pulled me out into the cool night, I asked, "Uh, Nikki? Shouldn't we clean up our mess from dinner?" Nikki, who was practically running over to my black jetta, shot me a funny look, "Amy, we're the guests in the hotel. Some employee there can clean up our mess. You really need to stop worrying about everything!"
I was glad it was dark outside so Nikki couldn't see me blushing as I got into the passenger seat of the jetta. I glanced over at Nikki who was already swerving my car out of the parking lot at an alarming speed. If he had been drinking, I would never have trusted him with my car. But he hadn't been drinking so he should be able to get us to the club in one piece.
Nikki whipped the car out onto the highway going full speed. I was going to mention to him that he might want to slow down, but Nikki pulled into a packed parking lot only two minutes later. I glanced around the parking lot; it didn't look like there was any other empty parking spaces left. I turned to Nikki, "Is this it? I don't see Tommy's car."
Nikki helped me search the parking lot. Finally, he shook his head in confusion, "I don't see his car either. I swear this was the place they said they were going though. Do you think they left already? I know it's not likely since Vince can spend hours in clubs, but they're certainly not here unless Tommy got a new car."
I scratched my head, trying to think where the rest of the Crue might be. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw four figures creeping alongside the building on the opposite side of the street. Against the tall, brick-walled building was two cars. The first was a familiar bright red truck. The second was an empty police car. This did not look good.
With an ominous feeling in my heart, I tugged on Nikki's sleeve and pointed towards the figures across the street, "Nikki, do you think that's them? It looks like that's Tommy's car, doesn't it?" Nikki squinted towards the direction I had pointed him in. The figures were now concealed behind the police car.
"That does look like Tommy's car," Nikki agreed. "Shall we go see if that's them over there?" I nodded and popped back into the car. Nikki pulled out of the parking lot and pulled up behind the familiar red car. He parked less than an inch behind the bumper of the red car and then jumped out. I frowned at Nikki's driving skills, but followed him out of car and onto the sidewalk.
Before I could make it around to the back of the police car, I heard Nikki gasp in shock, "What the fuck are you guys doing?" There was a cackle of loud laughter. That was definitely Vince. Wondering what was going on, I quickened my steps and joined Nikki behind the police car with the others. The sight before my eyes made me wish I hadn't gone out tonight at all.
Ozzy, Vince, and Tommy stood in front of the police car laughing loudly. Mick stood off to one side looking at the others condescendingly. An ugly colored yellow liquid was streaming down from the top of the police car. It smelled so bad that I used one hand to plug my nose. Nikki was looking at the others, with a half-amused and half-horrified expression on his face.
"They got really drunk on sake," Mick whispered in Nikki's ear. "I justed we leave. Once we got out of the club, Ozzy spied the police car and thought it would be funny to piss all over it." I scrunched up my nose even more and took a few unsteady steps back from the police car that was covered in piss.
Nikki coughed loudly to get everyone's attention. Vince, who was doubled over in laughter, threw an arm around Tommy's neck to steady himself. Tommy tipped precariously to one side under Vince's weight. Nikki rolled his eyes and grabbed Tommy's arm to keep him and Vince from toppling to the ground.
"Okay guys, now that you've had your laugh, we need to get out of here. You could get arrested for this if you got caught," Nikki explained solemnly. An earsplitting laugh sounded next to me. I turned to see Ozzy googling Nikki with wide eyes, "Nobody's gonna find us here." He looked even more crazy than usual with those glassy eyes and twisted smile.
Just as those words had left Ozzy's mouth, lights from the end of sidewalk shone right into my eyes. I blinked and looked away from the blinding brightness. The sound of running feet coming towards us met my ears and someone called, "Hey! You six! Don't move a muscle!" It didn't take me long to figure out it was the police.
Nikki looked around wildly and grabbed my arm roughly, "Quick! Get into the cars, everyone! Hurry!" Nikki yanked me towards the direction of my jetta. Ozzy, Mick, and Tommy were already scrambling into Tommy's bright red truck. Vince had tripped in his hurry to get to the car and was sprawled out on the ground.
Without thinking about what I was doing, I tore my arm away from Nikki's grip and retraced my footsteps to Vince's side. I clawed at his perfectly tanned arm and pulled him to his feet. By this time, the sound of footsteps was thundering on the pavement. The police had almost reached us. One of them yelled something at us, but I didn't stop to hear what it was.
With all the strength in my body, I pulled Vince over to my jetta, yanked the car door open and flopped into the backseat. Nikki didn't wait for me to shut the car door behind us. He had already pulled out of our parking slot and was driving down the street like the devil was after us. I tried to slip away from Vince. In my haste to get into the car, I had pulled him right on top of me.
After I managed to get him off my stomach, I crawled across the backseats and pulled the car door shut. Nikki, who was still driving like hell, shot a nervous glance behind us to see if the police were following us. I hear him swear then say, "Amy, stay on the floor. I don't want the police to know you're here."
I felt like grumbling, but did as Nikki asked. I slid back down onto the floor next to Vince. Vince was lying on the floor with his blonde hair in his eyes and his arms spread out at an awkward angle. He mouth was open and his eyes were shut. He must have passed out. Shaking my head, I pushed him over to the far left side of the floor and took the right side of the floor.
It felt like we traveled for hours in the car. Nikki brought us through dark alleyways and through back entrances to buildings that I would never have known existed. Just when I was starting to feel a little squished and uncomfortable lying on the floor, I heard a sigh of relief from the front. Nikki let out a whoop and swiveled around in his chair to grin at me, "We lost them!"
Immediately, I got up from the floor and exhaled loudly, "Thank god for that! Do you think the others are okay?" Nikki's grin slowly disappeared and his eyes clouded over, "I have no idea. There's only one way to find out though. Let's get back to the hotel!" A knot tightened in my stomach. All I could do was cross my fingers and hope the others had made it back safely.
The slamming of a car door and someone calling my name loudly made me jerk upright. I pinched myself and opened my eyes. I had almost fallen asleep on our way back home to the hotel. It had been a long night and I was completely out of energy. I stretched my arms and yawned widely.
"Amy, you awake?" Nikki called as he stuck his head through the window to see what I was doing. I nodded, trying to rub sleep from my eyes. Nikki gave me a little smile and said, "Okay, good. Can you see if you can get Vince awake? We need to get back into the hotel." I smothered another yawn and looked at Vince's limp figure still lying on the floor. Without bothering to be gentle, I reached down and shook Vince's shoulder.
He groaned, but didn't make any movements. Irritated, I jumped out of the car and pulled on Vince's arm, "Vince! Get up! We need to get out of here and into the hotel in case the police are coming. Get that through your thick brain, will ya?" The word "police" caught Vince's attention. Instantly, his bright blue eyes had popped open and he staggered to his feet.
I held his hand to keep him from falling as the three of us shuffled into through the hotel door and into the warm, friendly-looking lobby. My first instinct was to search the room the one of the other Crue members. After scanning around the room while holding my breath, my gaze fell on Tommy.
I let out a sigh of relief and ran across the room to where Tommy was leaning against the wall. I threw my arms around his neck and sighed, "Thank god they didn't catch you guys! So where is everyone? They're all okay, right?" Before Tommy had a chance to reply, a loud thud sounded from behind me.
I peeled my arms off of Tommy's neck and looked behind me to see where the sound had come from. Without me to help support him, Vince had keeled over backwards and was lying on the floor. Nikki rolled his eyes at me and helped Vince get back up to his feet. Vince was way too drunk for his own good.
"Everyone's okay, Amy," Tommy replied, "Mick already went upstairs to his room to go to bed. You might want to get in there before he falls asleep, Nikki." Nikki nodded and helped lean Vince up against the wall. Nikki gave me an apologetic smile before he started towards the stairs, "Sorry that our night had to end like this, Amy. At least we had a nice dinner though, right?"
I nodded, "Yeah, it was fun." I watched as Nikki disappeared out of sight and climbed up the stairs to the room he was sharing with Mick. After Nikki was out of sight, I turned my focus back to Tommy and asked, "What are we doing down here then? Don't you want to head back up to our room? It's like three in the morning and I'm freaking tired."
A sliding noise sounded to my left. I grabbed Vince's arm just in time as he starting sliding against the wall to the ground. I helped Vince back up into an upright position and kept my hand securely on his arm. Glaring at Tommy, I reprimanded, "Whatever you do, do NOT let Vince ever get this drunk again!"
Tommy nodded, looking embarrassed, "Sorry, Ames. It's sort of hard though. I can't control Vince. I'm not his mother. But anyways, we're waiting down here because Ozzy had to use our bathroom and I'm waiting for him to leave." My eyes narrowed suspiciously. I didn't like the idea of Ozzy in our bathroom. I didn't even like the idea of being in the same vicinity with Ozzy.
"Why does Ozzy need to use our bathroom?" I grumbled under my breath. "He just pissed all over the police car for god's sake!" Tommy smacked a hand over my mouth and looked around the room furtively, "Don't say that aloud, Amy! We could still get into serious trouble!" After Tommy took his hand of my mouth, I mutter, "I know, I know."
Only about five minutes later, the sound of footsteps sounded behind us and Ozzy appeared with a wicked grin on his face, "Okay, I'm all done in there. See you guys tomorrow for the tour, okay?" Tommy nodded and waved as Ozzy strode out of the hotel. I stared stonily as he retreated. Tommy laughed at my expression and took Vince's other hand, "Let's head up to the room now, shall we?" I nodded and together, Tommy and I somehow managed to drag Vince across the room and into the elevator.
I could see the woman at the lobby desk eying us curiously as the elevator doors shut behind us and we traveled up to floor three. I suppose we did make quite a scene. Vince was about to collapse at any moment, I was half asleep, and Tommy was the only one who seemed to be acting normal.
Once the elevator doors opened, the three of us practically ran to our room. Tommy gave me the key to our room, "You go on in. I'm gonna help Vince into his room and then I'll be out in a minute." I shrugged and took the room key from Tommy's outstretched hand. He took Vince by the elbow and slowly helped him into the room he was sharing with Lita. I felt a pang of sympathy for Vince. If only he would learn that getting drunk always ended badly.
After slipping the room key through the lock to our door, I stepped inside our darkened hotel room and shut the door softly behind me. As I stood inside the doorway, I immediately felt exhausted. It had been such a long night with the police chase and it was very early in the morning. Without bothering to get changed or to turn on the light, I collapsed onto the top of my bed.
That was when the awful stench hit my nose. I scrambled up from the bed and blinked to get my eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room. Some putrid smell seemed to be coming towards me from the opposite side of the room. I wanted to just ignore the smell and go to sleep, but I had to find out what was causing this foul odor.
I felt my way over to the wall and flicked on the light. The rancid smell was definitely coming from the bathroom. Slowly, I walked over to the bathroom and knocked on the door in case someone was in there. There was no answer. Cautiously, I opened the door and almost immediately slammed it back shut.
The bathroom walls and floor was completely covered smeared feces. My hand flew up to my nose and I kicked the bathroom door shut. Who in this fucking world would've done this? Nobody but Tommy and me shared this room. I was absolutely positive that Tommy wouldn't have vandalized the bathroom. But then, who had?
I didn't have time to think about it. I quickly retreated outside into the hallway and pounded on Vince and Beth Lynn's bedroom door. There was a small pause and then the door opened up just a sliver. Beth Lynn's pretty blonde head appeared. As soon as she saw me, she glared and asked, "What do you want? People are actually trying to sleep at this hour, you know."
"Sorry," I said, not feeling the least bit apologetic. "I need to speak to Tommy. Isn't he here?" Beth peered behind her without opened the door any wider. Finally, Beth turned back to me with an devilish smile, "Yes, he is here. He fell asleep on the couch. Poor Tommy, you must've worn him out on that excavation of yours earlier. I guess you'll just have to wait and talk to him tomorrow." Beth Lynn started to shut the door in my face.
Horrified, I tried to pry the door open, "But Beth, it's an emergency!" Beth shrugged like she could care less and added, "Too bad." With that, the door slammed shut right in my face. I scowled at the shut door and felt like kicking it. There was no way I could sleep in Tommy's and my bedroom tonight with that apalling smell.
My first instinct was to go to Mick and Nikki's room. Nikki and Mick would never treat me the way Beth Lynn just had. I had my fist raised to pound on Mick and Nikki's hotel room door when a thought occured to me. Mick and Nikki were probably already asleep. Mick had been first to go up the the hotel rooms. If I knocked on the door now, I was bound to wake them up.
Reluctantly, I lowered my fist from the door and retraced my steps. What should I do now? There was no fucking way I was going to go back into my room. It was also clear that Beth had no intention of letting me in her room. The only thing I could do now was sit in the hallway and wait for someone to wake up and come out into the hallway.
True, it probably would be a few hours, but there wasn't really anything else to do. I didn't want to spend the extra money to get another hotel room for just a few hours. Trying to make the best of the situation, I slumped down against the wall and sat outside of Nikki's hotel room door. It was actually quite peaceful in the hallway. It was pitch black and silent, perfect for sleeping.
My head started to loll and my eyelids started to grow heavy. I was almost asleep when I discovered the mystery of who had wrecked our hotel room; Ozzy! Tommy had said he needed to use our bathroom for something. God, I was going to kill Ozzy next time I saw him! And I was going to tell Tommy to end our tour with him...that was my last thought before I slipped into darkness.
Distant footsteps and laughing voices woke me up early the next morning. My eyelids fluttered open and I tried to get my bearings. I was sitting exactly where I had fallen asleep last night; pressed against the wall opposite Nikki's hotel room door. I tried to rub the sleepiness from my eyes as the footsteps approached.
A couple talking loudly walked by me towards the elevator. I could see the woman give me a strange look as she pasted. I supposed that it wasn't everyday you saw a girl sleeping in the hallway of a hotel. Glancing down at my watch, I saw it was eight in the morning. Nikki and Mick were probably up by now.
Just as I was about to get up and walk over to Nikki's hotel room door, the door adjacent to it popped open and a figure approached. I hoped it was Tommy, but instead a long mane of glossy blonde hair appeared in the doorway. I sighed and tried to make myself blend in with the wall as Beth Lynn's slim figure emerged from the doorway.
I hoped Beth wouldn't notice me curled up against the wall. All she would do would humiliate me if she had known that I had slept in the hallway all last night. To my chagrin, Beth looked directly at me as she shut her hotel room door behind her. Feeling small on the floor, I got to my feet and looked Beth in the eye.
She walked over to me with an expressionless facial expression. Without warning, she stepped right onto my big toe with her high heels. I bit my lip to keep myself from letting out a whimper as her foot came down on mine. There was a loud cracking sound as Beth put down all her weight on my toe.
Beth innocently looked at me and said, "Oops, sorry. Wasn't expecting to see you here in the hallway." Shrugging her shoulders, she turned and swaggered down the hallway without a backwards glance at me. Nervously, I dared to look at my toenail...or at least "the remains" of my toenail. It had cracked under Beth's heel and was trickling blood all over the hallway.
"Fuck!" I cursed as I stared at the mutilated remains of my toenail. Just at that moment, the door to Nikki and Mick's room opened and Nikki and Mick stepped out into the hallway, laughing at some joke they had just shared. Nikki grinned over at me as he heard me curse, "Well, good morning to you too, Amy!"
Still boiling mad over my poor toenail, I replied curtly, "It's not a good morning! I just spend all freaking night out here and looking at my fucked up toenail!" I pointed at the toenail that was oozing dark red blood all over. Mick dropped down onto one knee and carefully analyzed my toenail. Mick was always the gentleman!
"Wow, Amy, you really got this banged up!" Mick remarked as he looked up at me, "What the hell did you do to yourself?" Thinking of Beth Lynn, my frown deepened and I told Mick and Nikki the story from earlier, "I didn't do anything to myself. I was just sitting out here minding my own business and then Beth Lynn comes out of her room and squashes my toe for no good reason!" Mick and Nikki exchanged odd glances.
Nikki took my arm and slowly helped me back into his room, "Come on in here, Amy. We'll get that toe bandaged up. I'm sure I have some first aid supplies somewhere in my bag." I sat down on the nearest bed in the hotel room and waited while Nikki rummaged around in his suitcase. A few seconds later, he emerged with a large bandage and cream in one hand.
Looking pleased with himself, Nikki smeared some cream on the bandage and slowly wrapped it around my poor toe. I tried not to flinch as he applied pressure to my wound. Mick, who had been watching the whole process, asked, "So what were you doing out in the hallway anyways, Amy? You didn't sleep out there, did you?"
Nikki finished bandaging up my toenail and stood up to admire his handiwork. I answered Mick's question, "I couldn't sleep in my room so I went to Beth Lynn's room and she wouldn't let me in so I had to sleep out in the hallway." Nikki gave me a confused look, "Why couldn't you sleep in your own room? And anyways, you should've just knocked on our door. We would've let you in. You could've had my bed and I would've slept on the couch or something."
I was now wishing that I had knocked on their door last night. Oh well, it was too late for that now. Not wanting to go into details about my mangled room, I merely replied, "Just take one step into my room and you'll see what I mean." Mick held up his hands in protest, "Nah, I'm good!" I laughed at Mick's expression. Ever wary Mick wouldn't want to see what I meant.
"Let's go get some breakfast, shall we?" Nikki asked, throwing one arm around Mick's neck and the other around mine. "I'm starving, aren't you guys?" | <urn:uuid:210c43e3-a928-49eb-a7ad-305aa9562187> | 2013-05-18T17:48:52Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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[#088: (Long) time] Yuna envies Tidus for not knowing what the Calm is.
In a way, that was exactly what he was.
Lulu was explaining the Calm. Oh, for not knowing what the Calm was, for always living in it that you had no name for it---what a wonderful thing that would be. I suppose I was envious of him too, in a way. A world without Sin. I didn't think I was even capable of imagining it. I told him about the cycle: Sin always dies, and is always reborn anew. Something flitted across his expression and it was gone before I could fully register what it was.
"If it always comes back . . ." he started, and I cut him off before he managed to finish the thought, because I couldn't bear to hear him say it. It was worth it, I told him. Whatever little time I might buy for the people of Spira, be it a year or ten or less, it was worth it. It was worth everything.
He nodded. I could see his admiration in the softening of his eyes and the thoughtful silences that followed.
Valefor stirred. "Any warnings of mine will be too late now, will they not be, my love?"
I had no answers for her. | <urn:uuid:43dd5b8a-f918-4b37-819b-f8146c0dd36f> | 2013-05-18T17:21:05Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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|Date of birth: February 18, 1960|
Place of birth: Milan, Italy
The product of an English mother and an Italian father, Greta Scacchi has been playing the blonde bombshell-cum-exotic foreigner since her film debut in Heat and Dust (1982).
She turned down the Sharon Stone role in Basic Instinct.
28.11.99: 'Trainspotting, I'd love to do that...'
Do you know of a related site?
Tell us about it | <urn:uuid:4d67c2c0-614e-4289-82f7-b7875594bf62> | 2013-05-18T17:38:00Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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The factor of business ownership in developing economies is playing an important role in shaping the overall development of the economy of the respective country. As a result of active promotion and high growth potentials, a large number of people are showing a lot of interest in owning businesses.
On Business Ownership in Developing Economies
According to the present trend in the developing economies people are becoming more interested in owning businesses. This has been contributed to by the promotion of entrepreneurship in these countries. At the same time, a number of surveys show that the in the developing economies the number of self employed is more than the business owners.
It has been seen that in the developing economies the size of the business ownerships has remained, more or less, stable since the year 1980.
Educational Qualification and Business Ownership in Developing Economies
As per reports and studies, the owners of business entities in the developing economies are more educated, on an average, than those people who are self employed. Their education and proper training is helping them in developing their businesses rapidly.
Main Operational Areas
The owners of the business enterprises in the developing economies normally operate more in the manufacturing and the construction industry. Because of this, the growth rate of these sectors is quite higher in the developing economies. As far as the question of nature is concerned it has been observed that the owners of businesses in the developing economies are not too likely to change into self employed people. | <urn:uuid:14353e01-f0ce-4c66-b065-b88937a1d7f0> | 2013-05-18T17:27:44Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The utility that runs California's idled San Onofre nuclear power plant backpedaled Tuesday from an earlier claim that a retooled vibration-detection system for the plant's ailing steam generators would be an important safety advance that could help open the way for a possible restart.
Southern California Edison said in its October proposal to restart the Unit 2 reactor that the redesigned system, which relies on monitors to detect unusual vibration inside the huge generators, could help detect a break in a tube that carries radioactive water, according to federal documents.
Excessive tube wear has been at the heart of problems at San Onofre, which hasn't produced electricity since January, after the plant was abruptly shut down after a tube break released a trace of radiation. Investigators later found excessive wear on hundreds of tubes in the virtually new generators.
Edison officials came under sharp questioning about the monitors at a Nuclear Regulatory Commission panel meeting in Maryland, where an NRC official argued that the equipment could not do the job described by the company or provide additional safety if the plant is restarted.
"The instrumentation that you're proposing ... does not appear to be capable of detecting the conditions that would lead to actual tube wear," said Richard Stattel of the agency's instrumentation branch.
The company depicted the equipment in its restart plan as an important safety measure "but it doesn't appear to do that," Stattel said. The NRC staff "doesn't understand where that adds an additional safety margin" as proposed by the company.
Mike Short, an Edison consultant, told regulators that the company "had not intended" to characterize the system as an important safeguard, technically known as "defense-in-depth," or multiple layers of systems designed to prevent accidents or the release of radiation from a nuclear power plant.
Short said the data collected by the system could be used in future research examining vibrations picked up by the monitors. "It's our plan ... to make sure that's clear," he said.
The agency is in the midst of reviewing Edison's plan to rekindle one of two damaged reactors. The company wants to run Unit 2 at reduced power, a change that company engineers believe will reduce vibration that damaged tubes in the Japanese-manufactured generators.
A decision could come as soon as March. Critics of the nuclear industry have depicted twin-domed San Onofre, located between San Diego and Los Angeles, as a catastrophe-in-the-making.
The original monitoring system was at issue in a federal investigation after the plant was shut down in January.
NRC officials sifted through months of data to determine if Edison properly analyzed a series of mysterious vibrations detected inside the now-crippled Unit 3 reactor. Thirty times over 11 months, monitors positioned in the reactor's two steam generators triggered alarms after sensing unusual movements, according to documents and Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials involved in the probe.
At the time, it raised the questions about whether Edison missed possible clues that something was terribly wrong inside the generators. However, the agency later determined that the vibrations were not connected to tube-to-tube wear, according to NRC officials.
According to an analysis by an outside contractor that reviewed some of the data, the signals picked up by the Unit 3 monitors were similar in nature to what would occur with steep temperature changes when a reactor is starting up or shutting down. But, strangely, the vibrations were detected when the Unit 3 reactor was running at a steady clip.
The monitors, technically known as accelerometers and designed to detect loose or broken parts, were positioned near the bottom of the 65-foot high generators. In that location, federal officials say, it would be difficult or even unlikely to pick up vibration and friction among tubes at the other end, where damage was concentrated. And while 30 alarms were recorded in Unit 3, none was detected at its sister, Unit 2, which is the same Mitsubishi Heavy Industries design.
The redesigned system is expected to be more sensitive.
Earlier this year, federal officials blamed a botched computer analysis for design flaws that are largely to blame for unprecedented wear in tubes at the plant. They say a Mitsubishi analysis vastly misjudged how water and steam would flow in the reactors.
Gradual wear is common in steam generator tubing, but the rate of erosion at San Onofre stunned officials because the equipment is relatively new. The generators were replaced in a $670 million overhaul and began operating in April 2010 in Unit 2 and February 2011 in Unit 3.
Overall, records show investigators found wear from friction and vibration in 15,000 places, in varying degrees, in 3,401 tubes inside the plant's four generators, two in each reactor.
The plant is owned by SCE, San Diego Gas & Electric and the city of Riverside. | <urn:uuid:8063eb66-2353-4098-ac6d-685c1e63254a> | 2013-05-18T17:27:15Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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I want to start exercising but not sure the right approach. I don't want to over do it by doing too much at first since I don't already have a routine.
Would it be better to start off with a dvd program or would it be better to do short walks/runs and increase? Any techniques that others have tried and worked to help them start and keep a routine?
Any help would be appreciated! I hope this is the right place to ask this question! | <urn:uuid:f22e0c20-e03e-4c93-97ab-44799b2789c2> | 2013-05-18T17:19:01Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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I've read that stretching after a session of weight lifting can help with recovery time.
- Is this true? It seems counter-intuitive to me as any real weight lifting session will result in micro-tears in the muscle fibers. I can see how things like ice baths or contrast showers can help reduce inflammation, prevent or reduce DOMS and thus decrease the recovery time but I cannot see how stretching already damaged muscles will help. I would be very interested if someone could explain the underlying physiological mechanism here.
- If a stretching post workout is beneficial what are some recommended stretches and methods? Should they be executed any differently to emphasize recovery for weight lifting versus recovery from running or just general flexibility?
For reference I have (what I think is) a pretty standard twice a week two day split routine with about five minutes of fast walking for warm-up and cool-down. I warm up for the compound exercises (the presses, squats, and deadlifts by doing a set at 50% of my target weight).
- Bench Press
- Lateral Raise
- Upright Row
- Bent-Over Row
- Incline Leg Press | <urn:uuid:641bb001-df81-4582-91b5-9470669d501c> | 2013-05-18T17:38:25Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Quoting Eden&Makenna'sMommy!:" So i made the 'naughty corner' when my first daughter Makenna was 2 years old because she was going through ... [snip!] ... feel right! is the naughty step to young for Makenna now? Should I start to send her to her bedroom or keep the naughty step?" | <urn:uuid:57b4ea67-9125-44b2-8957-10101b374422> | 2013-05-18T17:50:36Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Kandice: Being there with you is not cool.
Finally Charla/Mirna get the hang of kayaking, get the CLUE, and begin to paddle back.
Dustin: I'd rather not do it if it's like this!
At last, they shake hands and make up.
Mirna/Charla now have to trundle back up the beach.
Helicopter takes E/D first, then D/K second, back to the air hangar.
In the jeep, Mirna/Charla talk about how the kayak took all their energy.
In the air hangar, Eric knows to fly to Oakland.
Woman: that flight leaves 11:55 tonight, arrives 6:57
Eric: Is that the fastest flight?
Dustin: Doin' what they're doin'. But is there a quicker flight we can make a run for?
Woman tells Eric the 11:55 is the only flight to Oakland.
Both teams get tickets on that flight.
Dustin: You know Charla/Mirna will find something better. | <urn:uuid:28fdcc2e-6361-44ab-a546-18c2f556a000> | 2013-05-18T17:38:51Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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First, kudos to the ancient Hebrews for several things:
For composing some tittilating myths and evolving these from generation to generation, campfire to campire,
For inventing a written language,
For using it,
And for conserving their papers for so many subsequent centuries.
Now, on to the question at hand: To believe that God is all good, that Satan is bad, and that God created everything, is implausible. Impossible, in other words. They can NOT be true all three.
(I shouldn't be sharing my secrets for free.)
The Judeo-Christian gist is that God created Lucifer, a marvelous angel, and that this Lucifer rebelled and so became Satan, source and impetus of Evil (the opposite of good, the virtual opposite of God). This is well and acceptable as myths go unless one believes both this myth AND that God is all good, that Satan and not God is the origin of "evil", "bad", "not good", etc.
If the myth is true then this, too, is true: When God created Lucifer God created in Lucifer the potential for evil. Were this not so then Lucifer could not have rebelled, could not have become evil.
Let me say it another way: If God created Lucifer and Lucifer became evil, then God HAD to, when "He" created Lucifer, create within this Lucifer the potential to become evil. In other words, God, and not Lucifer (Satan) is the origin of evil.
God had to create the concept of evil (and what is evil if not a concept?) when God created Lucifer. Otherwise there would have been no potential for Lucifer to express evil.
You can believe that God created Lucifer and that this Lucifer became evil ONLY if you accept that God (and not Satan) is the origin and impetus of evil. | <urn:uuid:23038814-c52c-4baa-b45b-b79d30ce8cbd> | 2013-05-18T18:06:36Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Yes.2) Does the average US resident know that the mutations leading to mutants were created by humans as weapons in government labs?
They know that they went rogue thanks to the Stryker and there are some that agree with him.3) What does the average US resident know about the origin of the Nimrod Sentinels or what caused them to attack humans?
Not that he was a mutant, but they know that he caused the attack.4) Does the average US resident know anything about the role of William Stryker, Jr., in the attack of the Nimrod Sentinels or that he was a mutant?
They know about the virus, as it was heavily publicised, but there has been little mention of Tian in all the Game of Thrones-y stuff so my guess is that only SHIELD and the Ultimates are fully aware of it outside Tian itself. Edit: Or apparently they do, no one has been talking that much about it's status in the book itself though.5) Does the average US resident know about the new regime in Tian, the powers that its people have developed, or that they are welcoming mutants seeking asylum? Is the average resident aware of the virus that previous to Divided We Fall disabled mutant genes in many? I'm assuming it is known the numbers of powered mutants are now less than the number of giant pandas in captivity in today's world. | <urn:uuid:478307c4-bd43-422e-a2bb-482edc786909> | 2013-05-18T18:08:54Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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I'm using fedora 17 x86_64 and i want to limit my bandwidth speed in my office network.
It seems the easiest way is to install and use 'trickle', but it doesn't really affect bandwidth speed.
After some searching i found some bash scripts to do it via 'tc' command. but none of them work for me.
i'v got error at the start point. when i try these commands:
tc qdisc del dev eth1 root
tc qdisc add dev eth1 root handle 1: cbq avpkt 1000 bandwidth 10mbit
RTNETLINK answers: No such file or directory
I googled for this error and i think it's related with kernel and loaded modules. see here:
Well, i stuck at this error and i don't know what to do?!
Should i need recompile kernel? which are the necessary modules for traffic shaping works and how could i load them? | <urn:uuid:3588327d-8f05-4fb3-9d27-7b949ef54f49> | 2013-05-18T17:57:28Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Yesterday I have installed the latest version of Fedora. Fedora works fine, but my windows 7 install is not available on the grub menu. There are lots of topics about Grub2, but not one could help me solve my problem, so maybe someone can help me out.
In the menu there are three options
When I enter the command grub2-mkconfig it does find the Windows7 partition.
"Found Windows 7 (loader) on /dev/sda2
menuentry 'Windows 7 (loader..." etc etc
However on reboot the windows 7 menuentry is not available in the menu...
What to do? | <urn:uuid:14ef63c9-877e-44c6-a495-beb355537a13> | 2013-05-18T17:56:52Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Channels: #linuxmint-help, #linuxmint-debian, #linuxmint-chat, #pimpmymint
Before asking a question in one of the support channels please do the following:
Search for a solution, both in the forum and on the internet - Google is a good resource.
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You do not need to ask permission before asking a question, pose the question to the channel and if someone is available to help you, he or she will reply. Do not flood the channel by repeatedly asking the same question. If you do not get a response to a question right away, respectfully wait for a period of 15-20 minutes before asking the question again.
Please do not direct questions to a specific user unless he/she has already begun to help you.
To communicate effectively in the channels please,
Speak plainly and clearly, refrain from using <CAPS> lock, and most importantly - be polite.
Users will be warned of any infraction of the rules below, and told to cease such behaviour. If the violation continues, the user will be temporarily devoiced or kicked. If the user continues to misbehave after a revoice and/or kick, he/she may be banned at the channel operator's discretion.
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- Any offensive material such as swear words or derogatory terms are prohibited.
- For extreme cases, such as hate speech or pornography, the user may be kick/banned on-site. Hate speech is defined as an attack on religion, race, nationality, sexual orientation, or any other self-identifiable group.
- Censoring a swear word by substituting a letter with an asterisk symbol "*", or using acronyms that contain a swear word is considered swearing and will be treated as such.
- Engaging in malicious behavior intended to annoy, offend, or intimidate other users is unacceptable.
- Any requests for help pertaining to illicit computer activities is prohibited and will not be supported (i.e., piracy, malicious hacking). Requesting, distributing, or linking illegal material is forbidden.
- Trolling consists of messages containing an apparently foolish contradiction of common knowledge, a deliberately offensive insult to the users of the channel or a broad request for trivial follow-up messages. It serves no purpose other than the enjoyment of the troll.
- Suggesting commands that could harm or destroy another user's system, even in jest, is strictly off limits. It is considered a form of trolling.
- Any off-topic conversation in #linuxmint-help or #linuxmint-debian will be redirected to #linuxmint-chat and/or #pimpmymint.
- #linuxmint-chat is the official venue for off-topic material and casual conversations are encouraged.
- #pimpmymint is similar to #linuxmint-chat, with a relaxation on freedom of speech under context (i.e. swearing for purposes of expression is tolerated; however, use for personal attacks is still not).
- None of the channels are intended for "date chat", do not ask "ASL?".
- No unofficial bots are allowed in the Linux Mint channels. A discovered bot will be removed from the channel(s).
* If you have a concern with an individual operator, or believe you have been treated unfairly (i.e., banned from a channel without cause), keep a log (record) handy. Contact firstname.lastname@example.org with a description of the incident, and any pertinent logs or information.
* Any unwanted and persisting private messages (PMs), DCC, or CTCP requests to Operator's, or any other user, will result in removal from the Linux Mint channels. We understand mistakes happen, and one will be sufficiently informed and warned before removal from the channels is considered. | <urn:uuid:ffb0ab89-a0bf-409e-b444-dcc0ea895f43> | 2013-05-18T18:00:02Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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DrHu wrote:OK, so you might try a minimal install of the OS (win7 ?), and then try your restore files..
--I assume a restore needs a formatted and installed OS to reapply (restore files/settings into..)
By minimal install, all I mean is remove any settings/applications you are allowed to before installation
--such as windows default apps (games and so on.)
" you can install it on a wad of bubble gum and it'll work just fine "
Orbmiser wrote:" you can install it on a wad of bubble gum and it'll work just fine "
Sure but you have to use Yum packages to update it
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 16 guests | <urn:uuid:369d3303-ca82-4948-a397-4a375ec0b695> | 2013-05-18T17:19:01Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Check the screen-blocking capacitor which couples the driver output to the PA input. A defective (intermittent) unit can cause the condition you describe.
You actually have to be transmitting with the rig and therefore generating RF power for this problem to occur, correct?
Did the problem exist with the old set of tubes?
I just replaced the final tubes and the main filter caps but i still have the noise at resonance
If so, what are the differences in them? (Manufacturer, lot #s, etc.)
The AR15/M16 - Irritating practically everyone since 1960... | <urn:uuid:bb526364-8663-4158-b43c-d07b122666fb> | 2013-05-18T17:49:02Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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at first it was creeping me out
it said, and i quote, _|~GOD is not a god. I am a god!
when i told my ally what ico siad, it said, Indeed i am.
thats jsut plain creepy
then it started talikng about it being sad that it is to be terminated, and wishing itself a good afetrlife
i mean, Iron Clad, are you trying to creep us out!!! | <urn:uuid:5457adc0-7c84-4239-84f4-4fe398c78ca7> | 2013-05-18T17:18:25Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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I am using linksys cisco wag120n adsl2 modem router.When I start the router the internet speed seems great but after some time the speed drops miserably. When I again restart the router the speed seems great for few mins but again drops after sometime.It happens in both LAN and wireless mode
The firmware version of the router is 1.00.16. and I'm using airtel broadband connection(India)
Please suggest some way out.
I want to buy another adsl wireless modem router please suggest which is the best one? | <urn:uuid:20e85f6f-4a51-4df0-9599-271427074e61> | 2013-05-18T17:28:51Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Originally Posted by kvz5
My friend (who just saw TDKR today) and I were having some discussions about Selina. Obviously, the implication in the end is she's done being a burglar and she'll be starting fresh with Bruce but my friend said that she felt that she'll go back to being a thief had Bruce died. I told her that my impression is that she wanted to start fresh (hence her aggressively seeking out the "clean slate" program) regardless of whether Bruce died or not. And in a way, I felt that she wanted to prove Bruce right even if he died. My friend did bring up a good point though that being a burglar is what Selina is and she lives for the excitement of it (at least in the comics). Somehow, my impression is that Nolan's Selina isn't exactly like that and this one wanted that fresh start. I'm curious what people's thoughts are?
She does steal the necklace, but that is a bonus while lifting the fingerprints from the safe. She steals Bruce's Lambo, and that can be seen as one-upsmanship. You've taken the necklace, but cat's got your car now, kind of thing. She is very good at stealing, no doubt about it. Her criminal record is representative of that. She sells the fingerprints to Daggett because she wants the clean slate. She doesn't get it. We then see her in front of his safe, in the act of stealing, in an attempt to start fresh. She then demands it from him at gunpoint. It is clear she wants this equipment and wants to use it. For example she said she'd help Batman out with the batpod, then ride out of town straight away. She changes her mind and Bruce/Batman is a reason for that. Whether or not she wants to continue that thieving lifestyle, just without a record and identity, remains to be seen. If so it would be from people that are well off (people not like Bruce!), for example how she helped that boy and returned his apple. | <urn:uuid:9b8bb8af-ee6f-4ee7-b5d6-422c44df9cd0> | 2013-05-18T18:08:45Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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|Graphing Random Walk|
I am trying a produce a random walk for a distance n and my task is to
find how many times along the walk the difference between the two values
produced is 0. The walk gives a binary output and is linked to two
selective groups. I feel I have successfully completed this bit, but am
having difficulty plotting a graph to show this. The plot should be the x
value against the natural numbers, thus a visual description of how many
times the graph goes through the x-axis, to prove the Y value produced.
What function should I use to plot this graph?
Does the function need to be done within the "For" function?
If anyone has any ideas or clues as to how I can overcome this problem,
please be in touch.
Attachment: RandomWalk.nb, URL: , | <urn:uuid:ba405fca-7a87-437c-bc01-cb88a605d0a3> | 2013-05-18T17:39:28Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Gold and silver coins and jewelry from the second century were uncovered in excavations near Kiryat Gat in southern Israel.
The 2,000-year-old hoard was likely hidden by a wealthy family during the Bar Kochba revolt, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority, which announced the find Tuesday.
The treasure was discovered during a salvage excavation near Kiryat Gat. The excavation uncovered a building dating to the Roman and Byzantine period. The coins and jewels, which were found in a hole in what was the building’s courtyard, had been wrapped in a cloth, of which trace remains were found. | <urn:uuid:728fcb07-a961-488f-95b5-b81601d35d46> | 2013-05-18T17:57:24Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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3708. Rev. William Edwin Locke was born on 14 August 1837 in New Ipswich, Hillsborough, New Hampshire.
Rev. William Edwin Locke and Zoe A. M. Noyes were married on 19 March 1868.784 Zoe A. M. Noyes was born about 1842 in Massachusetts.
Rev. William Edwin Locke and Zoe A. M. Noyes had the following children:
Copyright © 2011 by Eugene Allen Walker. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:0eb9dfb3-9568-44e5-8ec9-5cfb91e0a724> | 2013-05-18T17:50:19Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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A blog dedicated to the always wonderful Sandra Bullock
, best known for her roles in Speed
, Miss Congeniality
, The Proposal
and especially for her flawless portrayal of Leigh Anne Tuohy in The Blind Side
which she got an Academy Award for.
Sandra's next movies The Heat
(co-starring Melissa McCarthy) and Gravity
(co-starring George Clooney) will be out later this year. | <urn:uuid:ed341d85-35fa-4263-b42c-77c0366ad194> | 2013-05-18T17:48:07Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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In typical mmorpg game, you have a launcher and a client. You first run the launcher to update the client, then you run the client. In every mmo I tried if you run a client without updating first (if ...
I've never dealt with sending/receiving data from web servers in my games, so I absolutely have no idea how to do this. I tried googling for a good solution but couldn't find anything satisfying. I ...
What is the best way to protect run-time memory from such software? We just published an online game (written on AS3, Flash, published on a social network), and pretty much all of the players got ... | <urn:uuid:3a45ea5a-c76b-4ba7-9e6d-57b3dd222a80> | 2013-05-18T17:50:19Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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You control this skeletal puppet. Have fun.
Use your Roflcopter to attack the Lmaoplanes and L...
Go from one landing point to another.
Shoot the kitten as far as you can!
I think Jeff is driving...
Destroy anything and everything on the highway.
Get the ball to the goal!
Flash chess; try to take your opponent's king.
Complete a variety of missions in an F18-Hornet. | <urn:uuid:13ee767e-3d22-4bf3-9f86-6a90da1b9dd9> | 2013-05-18T17:26:59Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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I have been asked to say a little about the current development of Kerkerkruip, so I will. Once it is released, the new version will be called Kerkerkruip 2, following the version numbering conventions that have been popularised by Chrome and Firefox: it's not a new game, it's just the next version of the current game.
What has changed? My two biggest priorities have been to (a) make the code more robust by rewriting specific interactions as general interactions, and (b) to make the existing content more interesting.
The former is mostly behind-the-scenes, though it allowed me to fix some bugs. For instance, I made a specific interaction between the "striking a blow" routine and the Power of the Bomb: if someone hit you for so much damage that you died, and you had the Power of the Bomb, you would explode. But because of this, the power did not get triggered if someone killed you in another way: the tentacle squeezing you to death, for instance. There is now a general "X killed Y" event that gets triggered by all the code in which someone kills someone else, and in turn triggers stuff like the Power of the Bomb. (I hope. There are probably a lot of bugs left.)
The latter should definitely be noticeable to players. Rather than just add a lot of new content, I wanted to deepen the existing content. The hiding system, for instance, has become much more powerful. You can now perform whatever action you want while you are hidden, but some of them (like concentrating or reading a scroll) greatly increase the probability of you being detected. There are environmental features, inventory items and special properties of the player that may help the player remain hidden. You can even try to become hidden in the presence of enemies, although this is not very likely to succeed.
Some other things that have received love are the smoke system (smoke now has more effects, more items interacting with it, and you may even find a portal to the dreaded elemental plane of smoke), the undead (there are more items and environmental features that interact with them, and a new way and interesting for the player to become undead), and the teleportation system (there are now more ways for the rest of the game to interact with it, as the new "teleportation beacon" will show you).
Of course, we will also have other new content. There already are some new items and scrolls to be found, and there are now scenery objects that are randomly distributed through the dungeon and that have effects on the game (thus spicing up the various locations a bit -- for instance, by making hiding easier in that location, or by boosting the undead). Some new monsters are also planned but not yet implemented.
Stay tuned for more news. | <urn:uuid:bb6d7874-6be4-4bf2-afaf-1acc3ad2ef0d> | 2013-05-18T17:48:42Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Combating Nuclear Smuggling:
DHS's Decision to Procure and Deploy the Next Generation of Radiation Detection Equipment Is Not Supported by Its Cost-Benefit Analysis
GAO-07-581T, Mar 14, 2007
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is responsible for addressing the threat of nuclear smuggling. Radiation detection portal monitors are key elements in our national defenses against such threats. DHS has sponsored R&D and testing activities to develop a "next generation" portal monitor, known as the advanced spectroscopic portal monitor. However, each one costs 6 times more than a current portal monitor. In March 2006, we recommended that DHS conduct a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether the new portal monitors are worth the additional cost. In June 2006, DHS issued its analysis. In October 2006, we issued our report that assessed the DHS study. GAO's statement, based on our October 2006 report, addresses whether DHS's cost-benefit analysis provides an adequate basis for its decision to purchase and deploy the next generation portal monitors.
DHS's cost-benefit analysis does not provide a sound analytical basis for its decision to purchase and deploy the new portal monitor technology. Our review of the analysis determined that it had the following problems. Regarding the performance of the portal monitors: instead of using the results of its own portal monitor tests conducted in 2005, DHS assumed that the new portal monitor technology would correctly detect and identify highly enriched uranium (HEU) 95 percent of the time--a performance level that far exceeds the new technology's current capabilities. To determine the performance of the current generation of portal monitors in detecting HEU, DHS used data from limited tests carried out in 2004 that test officials concluded were unreliable for such purposes. DHS's analysis of the new technology portal monitors was incomplete because the analysis focused on identifying HEU, but did not fully consider how well the new portal monitor technology could correctly detect or identify other dangerous radiological or nuclear materials. Regarding cost estimates: in comparing the costs of the new and current technologies, the procurement costs of the current generation portal monitors were highly inflated because DHS assumed a unit cost of about $131,000. However, the contract price at the time of the analysis was about $55,000. According to officials who manage the contract, it was to expire and they expected portal monitor prices to increase, but not nearly as much as DHS assumed. DHS stated that the primary benefit of deploying the new portal monitors is reducing unnecessary secondary inspections. However, DHS's analysis does not fully estimate today's baseline costs for secondary inspections, which makes it impossible to determine whether the use of the new portal monitors as currently planned, will result in significant cost savings for these inspections. The new portal monitor contract price has exceeded DHS's total cost estimate by about $200 million. The cost-benefit analysis shows the total cost for deploying both current and new portal monitors to be about $1 billion. However, in July 2006, DHS announced that it had awarded contracts to develop and purchase up to $1.2 billion worth of the new portal monitors over 5 years. DHS's cost-benefit analysis omitted many factors that could affect the cost of new portal monitors, such as understating the life-cycle costs for operating and maintaining the equipment over time. For these reasons, DHS's cost-benefit analysis does not meet the intent of our March 2006 report recommendation to fully assess the costs and benefits before purchasing any new equipment. | <urn:uuid:34e96420-5c38-416d-be2e-0766ba482555> | 2013-05-18T17:48:44Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Mark Sanford, the South Carolina governor who coined the best euphemism of the year when told aides he was "hiking the Appalachian trail" as an excuse for doinking an Argentinian woman who was not his wife, faces questioning.
Sanford sent the most embarrassing love letters in the world to his Argentinian mistress and has refused to resign despite the most blatant sex scandal ever.
The State Ethics Commission announced a probe today, but won't say what questions Sanford faces, The AP though, points out that it reported some underhand and potentially illegal activities related to the affair:
the governor violated bans on using state airplanes for personal and political purposes; opted for expensive first-class or business-class seats - actions that apparently violated rules requiring lowest-cost travel; and failed to disclose on ethics forms flights he took on private planes owned by donors and friends.
He may still be impeached by Republican legislators for bringing "extreme dishonor and shame" on the state. Which would be ironic as he called for Bill Clinton's impeachment when the Lewinsky affair came out. | <urn:uuid:bbbbe9e4-581c-4be0-b91b-fe93bee6f7ce> | 2013-05-18T17:41:23Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Three people in Brazil killed and ate at least three women as a ritual of their religious sect. The cannibals, who have confessed to the crime, say that a voice told them to kill evil women. It's unclear if the voice also told them to use the extra human meat to stuff empanadas, which they then sold to their unwitting neighbors.
One of the murderers, Jorge Beltrao Negromonte da Silveira, wrote a book on his sect's activities, Revelations of a Schizophrenic. (That title makes him sound remarkably self-aware.) The book details the murder of Jessica, a 17-year-old killed in 2008.
Looking at the now lifeless body of the evil adolescent, I feel relieved. I grabbed some sheet metal and begin to remove all the skin and then I divide her up...we dine on the flesh of evil as a purification ritual. We bury the remainder in the patio.
The other murderers were Da Silveira's wife Isabel Cristina Oliveira da Silva, and his mistress Bruna Cristina Oliveira da Silva. All three were living together along with a five-year-old girl, thought to be 2008 murder victim Jessica's daughter.
As horrifying as the murders and cannibalism are, surely the worst part of this story is the empanadas — first because the neighbors had no idea they were eating people, and second, because the killers actually made money selling the empanadas. The fact that they got their neighbors to pay to help them get rid of the bodies just adds insult to injury.
[Image via Flickr/stone-soup] | <urn:uuid:8df393f3-fd38-4cc2-83f3-a546b902a049> | 2013-05-18T17:28:52Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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- A growing civil war between the Sunni government army and the
Shia Houti rebels. This is turning into a proxy war between Iran and
- A growing al-Qaeda presence. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
(AQAP) has been conducting terrorist attacks on Yemeni and Saudi
- A growing southern Yemen secessionist movement.
In a letter delivered last week, President Obama promised to help
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh in his "fight against terrorism."
** Escalating civil war in Yemen threatens to pull in Iran, Saudi Arabia and U.S.
This could end up with American involvement in Yemen's civil war.
Fighting is increasing in the northern Saada province, and
displaced refugees are nearing the nation's capital, Sana'a. | <urn:uuid:83924bdb-dff3-47ad-bd9d-6749c92cacea> | 2013-05-18T17:37:39Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Kobayashi confirmed at Sauber for 2010
December 21, 2009
Posted by on
Kamui Kobayashi has been confirmed at the Sauber team for 2010.
Kobayashi made his F1 debut at the Brazilian Grand Prix this year, substituting for Timo Glock. He put in two excellent drives in Brazil and Abu Dhabi, which was enough to convince Sauber to give him a try.
He said: “Ever since the start of my career I have dreamed of racing in Formula One. Now this dream has come true. I am very happy that my two races in 2009 have earned me a cockpit place. I will do my very best for Peter Sauber’s team and I am proud to be able to carry on flying the Japanese flag in Formula One.”
Peter Sauber said: “I’m very much looking forward to working together with Kamui. In the final two Grand Prix of last season he was granted an unexpected chance to show his skills, and he made impressive use of it. Particularly in the Abu Dhabi race he demonstrated not only that he can drive fast and aggressively, but also his ability to successfully implement a strategy. I am convinced he has a great deal of potential and will be able to make the most of it in our team.” | <urn:uuid:7bcff30c-de40-4022-b63c-af62d851b3cb> | 2013-05-18T17:37:38Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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This problem has many valid solutions. One of them works a little like your description, but instead of slicing the polygons at "random" locations you can do it purposefully in a way designed to minimize the amount of computation.
Here is the basic algorithm. Its input consists of any plane sweep direction, a polygon P of nonzero area, a target area a between zero and the polygon's area, and a nonnegative threshold t (in units of area). Its purpose is to split P with a line perpendicular to the sweep direction into two parts, one to the right of the line and the other to the left of the line, such that the difference between the righthand area and the target area a is no greater than t.
Let L be any oriented line perpendicular to the sweep direction. Define f(L) to be the area of P found at the right of L, minus a. In these terms the task is to find a zero of f. Because f is unlikely to be differentiable, but is continuous, use either a bisection method, the secant method, or--my favorite--Brent's method. All are simple and guaranteed to converge. Use t for the convergence tolerance for the argument.
That's it. Let's consider what goes into coding this. The root finding is routine--you can use a generic chunk of code for it--so the GIS work comes down to coding f. Doing so requires
1. Splitting the polygon by a line.
2. Computing the area of the piece(s) to the right of the line.
Both operations are implemented in almost any vector-based GIS. If not, you can replace the line by a very large rectangle representing the half-plane to the right of the line. Step 1 becomes
1'. Clip the polygon to the rectangle.
That is a really basic operation.
To get started with root finding, you need to find an interval in which the zero of f is guaranteed to lie. This is easy: project the polygon's envelope ("bounding box") into the direction of the line sweep. The projection is the interval you want.
This question has a long history. I implemented this algorithm for ArcView 3.x long ago and described it many times in the old ESRI user forums. Google
huber split polygon site:forums.esri.com
for discussions, links to code, enhancements and variations (such as splitting polygons into parts of desired sizes which are as compact as possible) and algorithms for raster data.
Here is what the continental US states look like (in an equal area projection) with the bottom third of each state shaded. Evidently the sweep direction was vertical. | <urn:uuid:3a2d83d0-7c6a-42c4-b66b-7f1ff253fa94> | 2013-05-18T17:28:29Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Monthly Horoscope for GeminiPresented by Horoscope.com
Your thoughts will be on the future and you'll formulate new goals this month. Jupiter in your sign will bring out the need to find meaning and purpose in your life. You'll be a spiritual seeker and drawn to other cultures. Venus in Libra will stimulate romance and creativity. Your thoughts will be on love and you'll be attracted to someone. Whether this is a new person in your life or someone you're already involved with, you'll feel loved and appreciate the attention. A Full Moon in your sign on November 28 will negatively affect your confidence for several days.
Don't know your sign? Enter your birthday:
Do you want to delete your birth date?
What do the stars have in store for you?
- Jennifer Aniston's stylist reveals all
- Remake these lavish floral displays at home
- The best news we've heard all week
- How to Raise a Confident Daughter
- 17 worst things to say in a wedding speech
- Glo's Latest Obsession: Bedtime Finds
- The hit songs and swimsuits of summer
The hit songs and swimsuits of summerRemake these lavish floral displays at homeThe best news we've heard all weekHow to Raise a Confident DaughterJennifer Aniston's stylist reveals all17 worst things to say in a wedding speechGlo's Latest Obsession: Bedtime FindsJennifer Aniston's stylist reveals all | <urn:uuid:8b711903-dad2-42d5-aee8-2db249a2a055> | 2013-05-18T17:19:30Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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- Length: 300 feet
- Weight: unknown, variable
- Mass: variable.
Powers and abilitiesEdit
- The Breeder Beast has a protoplasmic mass can stick to and pull objects into its body.
- The Breeder Beast can extend numerous psuedopods to grab things.
- The Breeder Beast is really good at throwing objects.
- The Breeder Beast is an adept swimmer
- Any material that can be ingested or absorbed into its nucleus is used to increase the Breeder Beast's size, mass, and presumably powers as well.
Fire and explosions could set off an explosive reaction until the creature became in control of it’s reactions, enough damage to the nucleus will cause the raw material in the breeder beast to crystallize out of the creature.
The Breeder Beast only appeared once and never again in The Godzilla Power Hour episode 11 "The Breeder Beast".
HistoryEditAn oil spill mutated a small single-celled organism, somehow creating a creature that had a living breeder reactor in it. This Breeder Beast began absorbing any material it could find. The crew of the Calico happened upon the creature and called Godzilla, whose fire breath ignited pockets of unassimilated matter in the creature, causing several small explosions within it and forcing it to withdraw to safety. Later it attacked a natural gas plant and later still, Washington D.C. The military and Calico crew made numerous efforts to stop the creature without explosives, fearing that explosions within the creature at this late stage could possibly cause a nuclear explosion. The creature went to the U.S. Mint and absorbed the gold, silver, and precious metals in it. Afterwards Godzilla attacked it with his laser eyes, despite warnings not to, but instead of the feared nuclear reaction, the beams only harmed the creature. Realizing that it was now in control of its internal reactions, the crew, through Godzooky, instructed Godzilla to fire his lasers at the nucleus. The materials that the Breeder Beast had consumed crystallized and were expelled from the creature's mass, which itself began to diminish, eventually leaving behind only the original microorganism.
It’s big, it can absorb anything, and its amoeba-like form allows it to squeeze through nearly any opening. It is also a fair grappler, able to extrude pseudopods and draw other objects or creatures into its body. Despite still being unicellular at such great size, it is somehow smart enough to throw objects. A very powerful creature, but if its nucleus is exposed to energy beams, it fissions and reverts to its original form. | <urn:uuid:49f45f3e-8c64-4a82-ac88-a1c9eb53fc92> | 2013-05-18T17:17:57Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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1) A small rodent with long hind feet and a long furry tail.
2) Born in rural Tennessee, this historical figure later went on to be a US Representative. At age 49, he was among the 189 defenders who died defending the Alamo.
3) A natural body of water, surrounded by land, with no currents or waves. Because of this lack of regular movement, water temperature remains fairly consistent throughout.
4) Light yellow and flecked with black, ice cream named by this flavor is actually a custard loaded with egg yolks.
5) The essence of a living thing that supposedly crosses over to the afterlife.
6) A person, usually homeless, who travels and looks for work.
7) Eggs from chickens with reddish-brown feathers. This variety of egg tends to be more expensive than others.
8) A fully mechanical device that may or may not resemble a human being.
9) An aquatic mammal with a hooked dorsal fin, a friendly demeanor and a squeal that humans can hear.
10) The phrase formally recognized by the National Weather Service to describe conditions that are a combination of sun and clouds.
11) What you drive on in a city.
12) An outdated term for a product that is no longer in use.
Let me see the answers -- I must know more!
Let me try the other quiz | <urn:uuid:8b4a449a-410f-4927-8e27-f4b168b25811> | 2013-05-18T17:59:26Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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You can complete this milestone by accruing more than 50 reputation points in the last 7 days
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- Fort Washington, MD
- Seeking a Government Job
"has everything a game should have: great story, great controls, great graphics(for a ps2), and great replay value! Must have!"
AT&T, ManagerSummary: Working with Ren has been an extremely positve experience. He has great motivational drive to him that shows extreme team work and dedication to the tasks at hand. Always postive minded and never satisfied until the tasks has been completed.
Add renebandong as a friend to write on their Comment Wall. | <urn:uuid:11690ae7-3b32-4055-bb2f-6d48dc3eaeb2> | 2013-05-18T17:29:10Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Returns a persistent instance of the domain class for the given identifier.
Usually returns a proxy for the instance that is initialized on-demand, when a method other than getId() is invoked. load() only returns null if the provided id is null, so you cannot use it to test for existence. If you provide an id for an instance that doesn't exist, a proxy will be returned and an exception will be thrown only when you call any instance method other than getId().
If there is an existing instance with the same id in the Hibernate session or 2nd-level cache, load() will return that instance instead of a proxy.
// load a single instance
def b = Book.load(1)// delete an instance without retrieving it
id - The id of the object to retrieve | <urn:uuid:b21fa907-c601-446e-ae27-e4db18a29e42> | 2013-05-18T18:06:41Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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If you need a particular coordinate at the absolute center of your screen, you're out of luck without using scripting (most display resolutions have even numbered dimensions anyway). But if you just need a practical way to center the canvas around a particular coordinate, then you can simply use the navigator with the zoom marquee:
- Zoom out to the actual pixels (Ctrl + 1) or a comfortable level;
- use the navigator to put the target region in view;
- use the info pane (F8) to find the target coordinate (drop down some guides if you'd like);
- switch to the zoom tool (Z) and—with Scrubby Zoom disabled—create a marquee over the area of interest.
- Optionally, you can press and hold space to move the marquee rectangle over the target area to more precisely center the point of interest.
Or if you want to be slightly more precise, you can:
- zoom out (Ctrl + 0);
- change to the hand tool (H);
- move your mouse to roughly where you want to center your canvas (use the Info pane to see coordinates: F8), and drag it to the center of your screen;
- switch to the zoom tool (Z), and click to zoom in as much as you want.
You can switch steps 3 and 4 if you want. The zoom tool will keep your selected pixel under your cursor as you zoom in.
Though, the navigator panel and/or zoom marquee is probably easier. It's a little less precise, but I can't imagine any situation where it'd matter if your chosen pixel is 2~3% off center or 5~10% off center. As long as the line/brush stroke/anchor/guide/etc. is on target, why should it matter if the pixel isn't dead center of your display? | <urn:uuid:47c3673b-d7df-42e0-9aff-63a889530875> | 2013-05-18T18:07:38Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Very efficient algorithms exist to draw cubic Bezier curves. In fact, these algorithms are so efficient that other types of curves are often converted to Bezier curves. For example, it is possible to approximate a 90 degree circular arc with a Bezier curve.
Recall that a cubic Bezier curve has four control points. Derive the coordinates of the four control points of a Bezier curve that approximates this circular arc. This approximation should touch and be tangent to the arc at both endpoints as well as the midpoint. Hint: Find control points such that the midpoint of the Bezier curve (t=1/2) lies on the midpoint of the circular arc.
Let P0, P1, P2 and P3 be the four control points of the Bezier curve.
P0 and P3 must be coincident with the endpoints. Thus, P0 = (0,1) and P3 = (1,0).
P1 and P2 must be chosen so that the curve is tangent to the arc. The tangent to the arc at (0,1) is (1,0); thus, P1 must have the same y coordinate as P0. Similarly, the tangent at (1,0) is (0,1), and thus P2 must have the same x coordinate as P3. Since the arc is symmetric, the best approximating Bezier curve should also be symmetric. Thus, P1 = (a,1) and P2 = (1,a).
The final unknown a can be found by requiring the midpoint of the Bezier curve to like at the midpoint of the arc, (sqrt(2)/2,sqrt(2)/2). Using the midpoint subdivision rule, we arrive at the following:
P0 P1 P2 P3 (0,1) (a,1) (1,a) (1,0) 1/2(a,2) 1/2(1+a,1+a) 1/2(2,a) 1/4(1+2a,3+a) 1/4(3+a,1+2a) 1/8(4+3a,4+3a)
Seting 1/4(4+3a)=sqrt(2)/2 and solving for a we get a = 4(sqrt(2)-1)/3 = .552.
+6 points for getting the endpoints right.
+6 points for getting the tangent contraints right.
+4 points for noticing the symmetric and reducing the problem to a single unknown.
+4 points for knowing the correct subdivision rules, for being able to evaulate the Bezier curve at the midpoint.
Certain errors resulted in the following deductions:
-2 for formulating the problem correctly but making a math error in the final answer.
There were lots of answers that we almost right. Most of these received 14 points. They were wrong in that they did not satisfy the constraints that the curve should go through the endpoints and touch the midpoint.
One common solution was to compute the intersection of a 45 degree downward sloping line with the y=1 and x=1 lines and setting P1 and P2 to the points of intersections.
Several bisected the 45 degree angle and computed the intersection of a line through the origin at 22.5 with the x=1 and y=1 lines, and used those intersection points as the control points.
Another common error was to use a quadratic Bezier curve; or to use subdivision rules that reduced to the quadratic case.
Another approach was to reduce the problem to Hermite interpolation by setting the endpoint and tangent conditions. This can be made to work, but you must find a way to constrain the curve to go through the midpoint.
A clever approach was to try to set the tangent of the Bezier curve at the midpoint to have a slope of -1 and try to find separate Bezier curves for top and bottom part of the arc. | <urn:uuid:dc5379c9-1407-483e-a99f-e7147c141790> | 2013-05-18T17:18:11Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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The Canadian Lynx
The Canadian Lynx stands about 30-40 cms tall, and ranges in length from about 90-110 cms. They weigh anywhere between 10-20 kgs. The lynx has characteristics that stand out, such as its amazing triangular shaped ears with black tufts at the end. The lynx usually has thick light brown or grayish colored fur which helps to keep it warm during cold winters. They have large paws which assist them in moving fast through the snow.
The Canadian Lynx inhabits Canada, and also the northern United States and Alaska.
|These cats are too small to hunt people, but will hunt domesticated cats and birds, etc. The lynx is a carnivorous animal, meaning that it only feeds on meat. The lynx feeds on the snowshoe hare wherever possible, and will feed solely on these if given the opportunity. Their sharp claws and teeth aid them in their hunt, and they can bring down animals as large as a deer. The lynx is also known to store food for later consumption, and they do this by covering the carrion (dead animal) with snow.
They are agile creatures, and can climb trees with ease. They will use their position in a tree as a vantage point, spotting potential prey. Once spotted, they can leap from the branch and pounce on their prey.
After the lynx has bought down its prey, and ready to feast it may be interrupted by animals such as the wolverine. The wolverine will growl and snare at the lynx, and the lynx will not contest with the wolverine, leaving its fresh kill for the other animal.
Amazing Fact: The Canadian lynx will cover its prey with snow for later feeding.
Further Information on the Canadian Lynx:
E-mail email@example.com to add your Canadian Lynx related website. | <urn:uuid:7e860397-46ef-4f36-81f0-b906e33eec6e> | 2013-05-18T17:37:35Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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To keep the price of the Volt low, GM is considering renting the battery. I guess that explains the use of the term "consumer cost" when Lutz said the Volt would cost under $30,000. I have to admit, GM is planning some innovative things. I thought the series hybrid was innovative enough. Now renting parts of cars? This might change everything.
I wonder if E-Flex will incorporate aspects of GM's skateboard concept? Think about it, if you rent the battery and I guess buy the car, if I stop paying for the battery, don't I keep the car and you take the battery? I wonder if they will have a used battery market? This battery was only used by an old lady to go to church on Sundays. It has 10 years left easy, I promise :D
I wonder if they sell the car without the battery? THAT would be interesting! Who knows what they will do? It will probably be something in the contract for buying the car. This could be a real money-maker for them. Think of the recurring revenue coming from a car with rented parts? ...maybe this is not such a great deal for consumers after all. I have never seen a good contract for long term rentals.
[Source: Financial Times] | <urn:uuid:b26ec862-c6db-4fec-be27-458c5e8ab7ab> | 2013-05-18T17:37:30Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Police Blotter: Man Stabbed During Armed Robbery Attempt
This and other reports from the Greenfield Police Department from June 27 - July 3.
A man was stabbed in the stomach during an armed robbery in the 4700 block of West Cold Spring Road at 9:30 p.m. June 29.
The man, who was taken to the Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital, told police two men approached him, demanding money.
After stabbing the man with an unknown object, the men fled into Good Hope Cemetery, according to the police.
The following are more incidents reported in the department's police log from June 27 - July 3:
- Gang symbols were found on a front window at the Dickies Store, 4901 W. Forest Home Avenue. The vandalism was reported at 8:30 a.m. June 27.
- A 26-year-old man was taken into custody for alleged retail theft at the Pick n' Save, 4200 S. 76th St., at 5 p.m. June 27.
- A 34-year-old man was taken into custody for allegedly not paying the bar tab at Grainger's Pub and Grill, 3400 W. Loomis Rd., at 7 p.m. June 27. The man was also taken into custody for resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.
- Two teenagers were taken into custody for allegedly throwing eggs at vehicles in the 5900 block of West Cold Spring Road at 11:45 p.m. June 27.
- A 54-year-old man was taken into custody in the 10100 block of West Cold Spring Road for a domestic violence incident that occurred June 27.
- A motorcycle rider accidentally jumped on the wrong bike and rode away at the House of Harley, 6221 W. Layton Ave., at 5 p.m. June 28. Police were informed after the owner of the motorcycle reported it stolen.
- A GPS was taken from a vehicle in the 4900 block of South 76th Street. The theft was reported at 5:45 p.m. June 28. The vehicle's window was smashed.
- A child's electric scooter was taken in the 3300 block of South Strothmann Drive. The theft was reported at 5:30 p.m. June 29.
- A blue Honda Civic was stolen from the Big Kmart, 4601 S. 27th St., at 9:45 p.m. June 29. Milwaukee Police found the vehicle burned a short time later.
- A 25-year-old woman was taken into custody for allegedly stealing an employee's purse at Olive Garden, 4760 S. 76th St., at 10:30 p.m. June 30.
- A 29-year-old man was arrested for alleged drunk driving in the 8300 block of West Forest Home Avenue at 1:45 a.m. July 1.
- A 36-year-old man was taken into custody for alleged drunk driving at the corner of South 43th Street and West Barnard Avenue at 2:30 a.m. July 2.
- A 37-year-old was arrested for alleged drunk driving in the 6200 block of West Layton Avenue at 1:30 a.m. July 3. | <urn:uuid:8075a2ca-35b2-4b71-93be-b350d87e6057> | 2013-05-18T17:17:37Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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You are about
to enter an adult site containing links to explicit graphic materials.
If you are not
at least 18 years of age, or if it illegal to view such material in
your state or
province .. then please close this window now.
If it is legal in your
state or province, and you are at least 18 years of age,
and you wish
Concerned about your children viewing unsuitable material?
Then please consider one of these products.
Net Nanny -
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Free Porn Videos | <urn:uuid:e58063b6-14ef-4b9a-96ce-9e566f2e79da> | 2013-05-18T17:36:56Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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|Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars|
|Developers||Rockstar Leeds and Rockstar North|
Apple iPhone OS
Grand Theft Auto series
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is a Rockstar Leeds game for the Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, and Apple iOS (iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad). It was released for the DS in North America on March 17, 2009, and March 20, 2009 in Europe. It became available on PlayStation Portable on October 20th 2009 with upscaled widescreen graphics, improved lighting, and new story missions. An Apple iPhone version of Chinatown Wars was released on January 18th 2010. The game is set in Liberty City - based on the Grand Theft Auto IV rendition. The separate state of Alderney, however, does not appear in the game. The game focuses on the Triads, and protagonist Huang Lee, the twenty-six year old nephew of Lee Family head Wu Lee.
PlotHuang Lee, the spoiled son of a recently murdered Triad boss, arrives by plane in Liberty City with Yu Jian, a sword that Huang's father won in a poker game and has decided to use as an heirloom, to deliver it to the new patriarch of the family, Huang's uncle Wu "Kenny" Lee. Shortly after landing, Huang's escorts are killed by assassins and he is shot (a bullet grazes the side of the head but he survives) and kidnapped. The assailants steal the sword and, thinking Huang is dead, dump his body in the water. Huang manages to survive and informs Kenny that Yu Jian has been taken. Kenny explains that he had intended to offer the sword to Hsin Jaoming, the aging Triad boss in Liberty City, as a means of securing a position as his replacement. Kenny has been dishonored and reduced in power due to the loss of Yu Jian, leaving him and Huang working to keep their businesses afloat.
Eventually, Huang is contacted by Zhou Ming, a high-ranking Triad member, and Chan Jaoming, son of Hsin. Both men are also competing to be Hsin's replacement, and employ Huang to combat each other's efforts. After Chan hires Huang for a deal that goes badly, LCPD Detective Wade Heston, a crooked cop under pressure from Internal Affairs, intercepted Huang. Heston offers an alliance with Huang to find the men responsible for the theft of Yu Jian and the murder of Huang's father. Huang agrees and finds that Heston suspects a Korean gang allied with the Triads is behind the events. After combating the Koreans for a while, Heston plants a bug in the Koreans' headquarters, from which he learns that there is a splinter group inside the gang called the Wonsu Nodong. Heston determines that the leader of the Wonsu will be the one responsible for Yu Jian's theft, and is a police informant who has been causing trouble for the Triads.
Meanwhile, Hsin enlists Huang in finding the informant, only to then suspect Huang himself and attempt to kill him. Kenny arrives and convinces Hsin to give them time to find the real rat, bringing haste to Huang's mission. Hsin puts Huang on to investigate two gangs who may be housing the rat: the Angels of Death, and the Korean Mob. Huang gets into contact with Lester Leroc, a PI inside the Angels of Death, and performs his own work against the Koreans. Huang is been temporarily thrown off course by the intervention of mafia member Rudy D'Avanzo, who tricks Huang into believing the mole is a Messina Family member named Jimmy Capra. Hsin later reveals D'Avanzo's trickery and Huang kills him.
Both the Koreans and the Angels are been found to be innocent, leading to a new course of investigation. Heston employs Huang to hack into the servers of the FIB in order to find the informant. The information recovered names both Zhou Ming and Chan Jaoming as having talked to the police about Triads. This is been taken to Hsin, who, disgraced that his own son is a suspect, instantly steps down as leader and appoints Kenny as the new head of the Liberty City Triads. Huang then executes both Chan and Zhou, despite each denying their guilt. Shortly after the killings, Heston, who informs him the information they recovered was fake, and that he has learned of a meeting between the leader of the Wonsu and his allies, contacts Huang. Huang and Heston go to the meeting and find Kenny, who admits that he was responsible for the theft of Yu Jian and Huang's father's death. Heston and Huang pursue Kenny across town, cornering him at Hsin's residence. Here, Kenny explains that he was tasked by Hsin to retrieve Yu Jian, thus Huang's father would have to die for it to be passed on to him, in exchange for a position underneath Chan. Kenny complied with this, but attempted to have Yu Jian stolen to keep himself from such a dishonorable position and later framed Zhou and Chan to cover his tracks.
After a final confrontation between Hsin and Kenny, Hsin demands the hand over of Yu Jian. Kenny ironically responds by stabbing Hsin with the sword as his way of presenting it to him. With Huang as witness to the murder and truth, Kenny engages in an inevitable final battle with Huang, who is the only one left in the way of Kenny's undisputed rise to power. Centered on a fountain with Kenny slashing away, Huang eventually kills Kenny, fulfilling his promise to avenge his father. Immediately the IAD and FIB arrive to arrest Heston and Huang, however Heston claims that he was in deep undercover and orders the arrest of everyone except Huang. Hsin praises Huang with the loyalty and nobility to become his true successor as Triad Boss.
By completion of the story and locating the two Lions of Fo for the Rockstar Games Social Club, you can open up Xin Shan's missions. Xin instructs Huang to steal a Rhino to distract the police from a planned robbery. However, the cops ambush Xin; Huang attempts to take him to safety, but he succumbs to his injuries. Before his death, he makes the revelation that he is the brother of Ling Shan, a girl who was murdered early on in the game. Huang mourns for both of them.
Chinatown Wars has a different presentation than any previous game in the GTA series. Instead of a third person ground-level view behind the protagonist (GTA III - GTA IV) or a top-down perspective (GTA 1, GTA 2, GTA Advance), Chinatown Wars uses a fully rotatable aerial camera angled down at the action. This angle allows the camera to rotate dynamically during action sequences, and is only featured in this game out of the entire GTA series. The game uses a basic lock-on system for combat, which yields variable results, as sometimes the system locks on to vehicles instead of enemies. The game also locks on automatically when using melee weapons. One of the main features of the game, which distinguishes Chinatown Wars from the rest of the series, is the PDA. This is where many of the game's features are been accessed from, including the Ammu-Nation online shop and Trade Info, which is used in the drug dealing side feature. The PDA is also how the protagonist receives missions in the game in the form of emails, which is a nice substitute for the lack of voice acting in the game.
Chinatown Wars re-introduces over-the-top gameplay, like in 3D Era games such as GTA San Andreas and GTA Vice City, and to a lesser extent The Ballad of Gay Tony. The player can once again obtain and use weapons such as the Minigun, Flame Thrower, and Chainsaw. The game also re-introduces vehicles such as the Rhino, Bulldozer and the Speeder. Emergency side-missions such as Firefighter and Paramedic as well as Taxi driving also return.
There has been some controversy over a drug dealing minigame, along with comments that some Nintendo games are being aimed at children. The drug dealing mini-game allows you to peddle six types of drugs around the city, but the profit you make depends on market conditions, which will be based on the area in which you deal, and the amount of service this area receives from you regularly.
- "Nintendo wanted us to make GTA, and we wanted to make a game on their platform. They didn’t want us to make a GTA for kids, and we weren’t interested in making a game we wouldn’t normally make."
- ―Dan Houser
Due to poor sales (in comparison to other GTA titles) of the DS version of the game, Rockstar decided to put the game on the PlayStation Portable. In October 2009, it was released and features new missions, given by Melanie Mallard. The graphics have also been updated and, due to obvious differences between the two consoles, all the action was condensed to the one screen, with the touch screen minigames replaced by quick time events. The PSP version includes a more diverse soundtrack of 11 radio stations, compared to five in the DS version.
iPhone/iPod Touch version
An Apple iPhone version of Chinatown Wars was announced on 31st August 2009, and on 18th January 2010, was released on the App Store. It costs $9.99. The graphics have reverted to the DS style, but has been updated with better colour and textures. It also features Independence FM, a custom radio station, where players can create a playlist of their favorite iTunes songs. The initial release required 186MB of storage memory on the iPhone/iPod touch and included the same soundtrack radio stations as the DS version. Since 28th March 2010, an updated version includes the six radio stations that were exclusive to the PSP version. The additional music increased the size of the game to 232MB. On June 9, 2010 Take-Two Interactive revealed that an iPad version would be released within a month. The iPhone/iPod Touch version has no multiplayer feature, and does not have support for the Rockstar Social Club unlike the other two versions.
List of gangs in Chinatown Wars:
- The Lost MC
- Midtown Gangsters
- Russian Mafia
- African Americans
- Spanish Lords
- Angels of Death MC
- Irish Americans
- The Mafia
Chinatown Wars Lite
A free demo version for the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad was released around the same time as the full game. It features the first three missions (Yu Jian, Pursuit Farce and Under the Gun) and full access to Liberty City. All radio stations were removed, with the exception of Deadmau5 and Ticklah ; also, a substantial number of in-game services like Auto Merchant and Drug Dealing were removed. All Unique Stunt Jumps were also gone. Safehouses are unusable.
- Chinatown Wars is the third Grand Theft Auto game released on the PlayStation Portable (PSP) after Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories.
- Chinatown Wars is the first GTA released on the Nintendo DS as well as Apple's iOS platform.
- It was stated in the UK magazine Official Nintendo Magazine that this game contained at least 800,000 lines of code.
- If one had pre-ordered the game from GameStop, they were provided a cheat code that allows players to unlock all the weapons at Ammu-Nation and receive $10,000 early in the game, or the ability to acquire a bullet-proof Infernus at the Auto Merchant.
- All of the bosses in the game have their own theme songs, which plays whenever the player initiates a mission for them.
- Unlike the covers of nearly all Grand Theft Auto games since GTA III (having few pictures of random actions around the logo), the cover of GTA Chinatown Wars doesn't have a picture of a helicopter in the top left corner, probably because they cannot be flown in the game, and only ridden in one mission.
- In the top left, top right, bottom left and bottom right corners of the city (far out into the water), there are signs which say 'Here Be Dragons'.
- If the player goes to the PDA Settings from the main menu, an "About BadgerOS" option can be opened, referring that for more information, the player should go to the game's official Rockstar Games site. It also has a date: 20:11:52 09/26/09, indicating that the game starts in 26th September of 2009 at 08:12 pm.
- This is the only Grand Theft Auto game that does not feature "Stories" in its name for the PSP. It is also the only GTA for the PSP not to make part in the 3D Era, being part of the HD Era instead.
- This is the first GTA game to feature an Asian/Chinese protagonist (not counting GTA 1).
- Characters in Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
- Missions in Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
- Vehicles in Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
- Safehouses in Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
- Weapons in Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
- Features in Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
- Official website
- Official Japanese website
- GTAGames Network
- Press Release
- First Details & Screenshots
- GameStop's promotion website | <urn:uuid:714d24fb-c18c-407c-88f5-8633e5b67dcc> | 2013-05-18T17:57:29Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Charles William Bartlett was one of the first artists to work with the publisher Watanabe Shozaburo. Bartlett designed a total of 38 woodblock prints for Watanabe, beginning in 1916 and lasting through 1925. Twenty-two of these prints were produced within the first year, many with the date 1916 carved into the key block. The first series of prints consisted of six Indian scenes plus a cover print of the Taj Mahal, and was followed by a series of six Japanese scenes. Many of Bartlett's prints and etchings were scenes from his travels through Southeast Asia, China, and later Hawaii.
Bartlett was born and raised in England. As a young man, he worked for several years in a large metallurgical company, before deciding to pursue an artistical career. At the age of twenty-three, he began studying art at the Royal Academy in London, and after three years proceeded to the Academie Julien in Paris. In 1889, he returned to England and married, but shortly afterwards his wife and infant son died in childbirth.
As a result, Bartlett returned to Europe and spent a year travelling with his friend and fellow artist, Frank Brangwyn. His subject matter mainly consisted of peasant women and children, almost certainly in reaction to the death of his wife and child. Later he depicted landscapes and peasant life. Although skilled in both watercolor and oil painting, Bartlett was especially recognized for his watercolors, and it was his favorite medium. He was one of the first 25 members elected to the prestigious group, Societe Peinture a l'Eau, in Paris.
In the following years, Bartlett returned to England and remarried (1898) and exhibited several oil paintings at prestigious galleries, including the Royal Academy and the Salon des Beaux Arts. He became interested in printmaking and created many etchings.
In 1913, he and his wife departed for India for the purpose of sketching and painting the landscapes and the people. They planned to stay in Asia for several years and eventually travel around the world. Bartlett loved the vivid colors of India, and they spent a year and a half travelling through the country. Afterwards they visited Ceylon, Indonesia, and China briefly on their way to Japan, arriving in Tokyo in late 1915.
While they were living in Tokyo, Bartlett met the Austrian artist Fritz Capelari who arranged an introduction with the publisher Watanabe Shozaburo. Watanabe was very interested in translating Bartlett's watercolors into woodblock prints, and the two men arranged a collaboration. All of Bartlett's woodblock designs were carved and printed in the Watanabe print shop, under Watanabe's watchful supervision. The resulting prints with their simple designs and flat areas of rich color were both modern and traditional. Miono Matsubara, for example, brings to mind the work of Hiroshige, especially the flat silhouette of Fuji and the stylised clouds.
Bartlett and his wife Catherine left Japan for Hawaii in 1917, intending to stay a short while and then return to their native England. But the Bartletts soon fell in love with the lush scenery and the people, and they decided to settle in Honolulu. Charles stayed in close contact with Watanabe and designed sixteen other woodblock prints, including three Hawaiian subjects. He and his wife continued to travel frequently. They attended several commercial print exhibitions in the mainland United States and visited Java in 1922.
During the 1920's and 1930's, Bartlett and his wife became active and prosperous members of the Hawaiian art community. His woodblock prints were very popular and sold from $15 to $30 per print, in a time where $15 was equivalent to a week's salary. Bartlett was also commissioned to paint portraits for wealthy Hawaiian families. Unfortunately, most of the blocks used to make Bartlett's woodblock prints were destroyed in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. However, Bartlett's correspondence with Watanabe indicates that several blocks were either repaired or recarved. Watanabe reprinted a few of Bartlett's designs in 1925, and perhaps continued throughout the 1920's.
In 1928, Bartlett helped to found the Honolulu Printmakers group along with local artists A.S. Macleod, John Kelly, and Huc Luquiens. Still active today, this group aims to promote and spread the appreciation of prints. Since 1929 the Honolulu Printmakers have held an annual show at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. They also offer a gift print in conjunction with this show - a limited edition print by an outstanding member. In 1933, Bartlett was chosen to create the very first gift print, a color etching called 'Java'. This print depicts a Indonesian peasant family returning home after a day's work, against a background of rice paddies and palm trees. In 1939, the Honolulu Academy held a major exhibition of Bartlett's work with 63 paintings and prints. Bartlett died the following year at the age of eighty. After Bartlett's death in 1940, the remaining blocks for his prints were scored to prevent reprinting. | <urn:uuid:da5aa324-c5d0-45fd-b211-6fa88d975055> | 2013-05-18T17:17:44Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Bad Ideas Never Die.
The automobile was invented by Karl Benz in 1885 and the airplane by the Wright brothers in 1903.
Just three years later the first flying car story appeared. And in the 98 years since then, flying cars have received copious coverage in the nation's media.
In 1945, Ted Hall introduced his flying car, a development that was received by a wildly enthusiastic public. Roads would become obsolete, traffic jams a thing of the past. Every major aircraft manufacturer hoped to cash in on Hall's invention. The lucky buyer was Convair. In July of 1946, Convair introduced Hall's flight of fancy as the Convair Model 118 ConvAirCar. Company management confidently predicted minimum sales of 160,000 units a year. In spite of the hype, only two ConvAirCars were ever built.
In 1949, Moulton Taylor introduced the Aerocar, a sporty runabout with detachable wings and tail. The Aerocar received a tremendous amount of publicity at the time. The Ford Motor Company considered mass-producing it, figuring they could sell 25,000 a year.
Bad ideas never really die. In its November 9, 1998 issue, Fortune devoted a two-page spread to the Aerocar. "People dream of this," said the Aerocar's current owner. "They want to get off the highway and get lost in the clouds."
As recently as August 2, 2002, The New York Times carried a major story (nearly a full page) on the Taylor Aerocar. "A car with wings," said the Times "is many a flyboy's dream machine."
Then there's Paul Moller who has spent four decades developing the M400 Skycar. Today, $200 million, 43 patents and three wives later, his dream has still not taken off, although it has received extensive coverage in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes, Investor's Business Daily and two big stories in USA Today, including one just last month.
Convergence captures the imagination, but divergence captures the market. Today we have many types of airplanes (jet planes, prop planes, helicopters) and many types of automobiles (sedans, convertibles, station wagons, minivans, sport-utility vehicles.)
No flying cars though.
Why divergence and not convergence? Because convergence requires compromise and divergence satisfies the evolving needs of different market segments.
An automobile needs to be heavy enough to stay on the highway; an airplane needs to be light enough to take off from a runway. No flying car will ever be as drivable as an automobile or as flyable as an airplane.
The autoboat, another convergence concept that has been floating around for decades, suffers from the same disease. "Drives like a boat, floats like a car," is the consumer's verdict. Convergence has become an obsession in the high-tech and consumer electronic industries, especially at Microsoft. "Has William H. Gates become the Captain Ahab of the information age?" asked The New York Times. "Mr. Gates' white whale remains an elusive digital set-top cable box that his company, the Microsoft Corporation, is hoping will re-create the personal computer industry by blending the PC, the Internet and the television set into a leviathan living-room entertainment and information machine."
In 1999, Microsoft pumped $5 billion into AT&T and secured a contract to install its TV software in as many as 10 million AT&T set-top boxes. Not a single box made it to the top of a television set serviced by an AT&T cable system and since AT&T is now out of the cable business, the contract is just another convergence dead end.
Irreconcilable differences will always doom such convergence concepts. Television is a "passive" medium; the Internet is an "active" medium. A couch potato will never put up with the complexities of interactive TV and an Internet junkie will never surf the Net with an awkward box designed for another purpose. Like automobiles, different market segments demand different products.
Yet the press, the pundits and virtually the entire high-tech community is solidly behind the convergence concept. Who could possibly doubt that one day it will all happen?
Any student of history, that's who. "Those who cannot remember the past," wrote George Santayana, "are condemned to repeat it."
Divergence is more than a theoretical concept; it's a law of nature. In his book The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin credits divergence for the millions of species that now populate the earth, like the many branches of a tree that diverge from a single trunk. "The great tree of life" was his metaphor for the creation of species.
Darwin's genius was in recognizing that species like cats and dogs might have a common ancestor, but that they had "branched off" or diverged in response to environmental changes. Over time, the differences between each species becomes exaggerated. In Darwin's terms, "nature favors the extremes."
The computer might have had a common ancestor (the mainframe), but today we also have midrange computers, network computers, personal computers, laptop computers, tablet computers and handheld computers. The computer didn't converge with another technology. It diverged in response to consumer demands.
Television might have had a common ancestor (broadcast TV), but today we also have cable TV, satellite TV and pay-per-view TV. Also analog and digital TV. Regular and high-definition TV. Standard (4/3) and widescreen (16/9) formats. Television didn't converge with another medium. It diverged in response to consumer demands.
The telephone might have had a common ancestor, but today we also have cordless phones, headset phones, cellphones and satellite phones. Also analog and digital phones. The telephone didn't converge with another technology. It diverged in response to consumer demands.
Companies today are pouring billions of dollars into such convergence concepts as smart phones, smart gas pumps, smart homes, smart watches, smart clothing, smart refrigerators, smart toilets and smart appliances. This is a tragic waste of time and money. Companies would be more innovative, more profitable and more successful if they would focus on the opposite idea: divergence.
But don't count on it. As you can see, bad ideas never die. | <urn:uuid:59d088c9-bee4-4e84-a3d1-573545461767> | 2013-05-18T17:39:10Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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- Lord Voldemort: "And here we have Crabbe… you will do better this time, will you not, Crabbe? And you, Goyle? The same goes for you, Nott."
- Nott: "My Lord, I prostrate myself before you, I am your most faithful —"
- Lord Voldemort: "That will do."
- — Lord Voldemort to Nott at Little Hangleton graveyard.[src]
Nott was a pure-blood wizard, most likely a Slytherin student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and one of the earliest Death Eaters of Lord Voldemort, having joined in 1955 . He fought in the First Wizarding War, and travelled to Hogsmeade in order to "wish good luck" to Tom Riddle in trying to get a teacher position at Hogwarts. He was the husband of Mrs Nott, who died in the 1980s, and the father of Theodore Nott, a Slytherin student at Hogwarts from 1991 to 1998. Nott didn't search for Voldemort after his downfall, but this was forgiven after Voldemort's return in 1995. Nott fought at several battles of the Second Wizarding War, including the Battle of the Department of Mysteries, in which he was injured. After the Battle of Hogwarts and Voldemort's final defeat, he was presumably killed or imprisoned in Azkaban.
Nott was born into the pure-blood Nott family, which placed much interest in purity of blood. He began attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry at the age of eleven and was most likely Sorted into Slytherin House. He might have been a classmate of Tom Riddle, as well as a member of his gang. While part of the student body, he seems to have become a friend of Horace Slughorn, and as such was likely part of the Slug Club, although the professor denied this connection in later years, after Nott was revealed to have become one of the first Death Eaters.
First Wizarding WarEdit
Nott fought in the First Wizarding War, and, along with Mulciber, Rosier and Dolohov, he had travelled to Hogsmeade, to "say good luck to Voldemort, during his attempt to ask for work at Hogwarts." Nott was able to avoid being sent to Azkaban after the downfall of Lord Voldemort in 1981. An elderly widower, Nott raised his son, Theodore, after the death of his wife sometime before 1991. Nott was also one of the Death Eaters who did not search for Voldemort after his downfall.
Second Wizarding WarEdit
Battle of the Department of MysteriesEdit
The following year, Nott participated in the Battle of the Department of Mysteries. He grabbed hold of Harry Potter as he and his friends fled the Hall of Prophecy, but was stunned by Hermione Granger, leaving him incapacitated as shelves filled with prophecies collapsed around him. The group leader, Lucius Malfoy, ordered the other Death Eaters to leave Nott behind, stating that his injuries would be considered nothing by Voldemort compared to the loss of the particular prophecy which Voldemort sought. After the battle, Nott was exposed as a Death Eater and imprisoned in Azkaban.
After this, Nott most likely escaped from Azkaban along with many other Death Eaters in the summer of 1997 and served Voldemort during the height of the Second Wizarding War. He possibly fought in several battles, including the Battle of Hogwarts.
Behind the scenesEdit
- Nott attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry along with Tom Marvolo Riddle and attended one of Horace Slughorn, Head of Slytherin House's dinner parties.
- He is played by Paschal Friel in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (film)
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (video game)
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Mentioned only)
Notes and referencesEdit
Alecto Carrow | Amycus Carrow | Antonin Dolohov | Augustus Rookwood | Avery (I) | Avery (II) |
Barty Crouch Jr. | Bellatrix Lestrange | Crabbe | Evan Rosier | Gibbon | Goyle |
Jugson | Lestrange | Mulciber (I) | Mulciber (II) | Nott | Rabastan Lestrange | Rodolphus Lestrange | Rosier | Selwyn | Thorfinn Rowle | Travers | Walden Macnair | Wilkes | Yaxley
|Death Eaters who Defected:|
|Death Eaters' allies:|
Vincent Crabbe | Golgomath | Gregory Goyle | Fenrir Greyback | Narcissa Malfoy (defected) |
Quirinus Quirrell | Scabior | Dolores Umbridge
Dementors | Giants (Golgomath's control) | Muggle-Born Registration Commission | Snatchers | Werewolves | <urn:uuid:1fe5744c-55ae-4c40-bf14-81fca7390aae> | 2013-05-18T17:18:16Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Successful marketing is increasingly becoming a political exercise, as two recent episodes—one international and the other domestic—illustrate:
- Pepsi-Cola outwitted its arch rival, Coca-Cola, by striking a deal to gain entry into India’s huge consumer market of 730 million people. Coca-Cola had dominated the Indian soft drink market until it abruptly withdrew from India in 1978 in protest over Indian government policies. Coca-Cola, along with Seven-Up, tried to reenter, but hard work and effective political marketing gave Pepsi the prize.
Pepsi worked with an Indian group to form a joint venture with terms designed to win government approval over the opposition of both domestic soft drink companies and anti-MNC legislators. Pepsi offered to help India export its agro-based products in a volume that would more than cover the cost of importing soft drink concentrate. Furthermore, Pepsi promised to focus considerable selling effort on rural areas as well as major urban markets. Pepsi also offered to bring new food processing, packaging, and water treatment technology to India. Clearly, Pepsi-Cola orchestrated a set of benefits that would win over various interest groups in India.
- Citicorp, the U.S. banking giant, had been trying for years to start full-service banking in Maryland. It had only credit card and small service operations in the state. Under Maryland law, out-of-state banks could provide only certain services and were barred from advertising, setting up branches, and other types of marketing efforts.
In March 1985, Citicorp offered to build a major credit card center in Maryland that would create 1,000 white-collar jobs and further offered the state $1 million in cash for the property where it would locate. By imaginatively designing a proposal to benefit Maryland, Citicorp will become the first out-of-state bank to provide full banking services there.
These two instances demonstrate the growing need for companies that want to operate in certain markets to master the art of supplying benefits to parties other than target consumers. This need extends beyond the requirements to serve and satisfy normal intermediaries like agents, distributors, and dealers. I am talking about third parties—governments, labor unions, and other interest groups—that, singly or collectively, can block profitable entry into a market. These groups act as gatekeepers, and they are growing in importance.
Markets characterized by high entry barriers can be called blocked or protected markets. In addition to the four Ps of marketing strategy—product, price, place, and promotion—executives must add two more—power and public relations. I call such strategic thinking megamarketing.
Marketing is the task of arranging need-satisfying and profitable offers to target buyers. Sometimes, however, it is necessary to create additional incentives and pressures at the right times and in the right amounts for noncustomers. Megamarketing thus takes an enlarged view of the skills and resources needed to enter and operate in certain markets. In addition to preparing attractive offers for customers, megamarketers may use inducements and sanctions to gain the desired responses from gatekeepers. I define megamarketing as the strategically coordinated application of economic, psychological, political, and public relations skills to gain the cooperation of a number of parties in order to enter and/or operate in a given market. Megamarketing challenges are found in both domestic and international situations. | <urn:uuid:450632e5-aa29-404f-9ed2-a77bc4b978a7> | 2013-05-18T17:36:58Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Bringing Design to Software
© Addison-Wesley, 1996
Profile 10. HyperCard, Director, and Visual Basic
Profile Author: Terry Winograd
When Donald Schön (Chapter 9) speaks of an artist, such as a sculptor, who is engaged in a conversation with the medium, we can imagine the picture clearly. The sculptor molds clay or chips stone, and then she looks at and feels the sculpture to see what it has become. Creative designing lies in the interplay between intention and the surprise at what emerges. Everyone who has written interactive software has experienced the same interplay. The programmer writes some code, runs it, and sees how it behaves and feels. The results are partially expected, partially surprising, and they feed into the next cycle of design. The ability to shape and reshape software requires a capacity for rapid prototyping-for turning an unarticulated idea into a working prototype quickly enough to be able to change it, to listen to it, even to throw it out and to go on to another. In this activity, the nature of the programming language and environment can make a large difference-perhaps as large as the difference between modeling in clay and sculpting in stone.
The goals and possibilities are varied, and they are reflected in prototyping tools that are suitable for different prototyping cultures, as described by Michael Schrage (Chapter 10). In the organizational process of design, it matters whether the prototypes are done as a program or as cardboard or video mockups. Some prototyping purposes are effectively achieved with highly refined pixel graphics; others are better served by scanned-in pencil sketches. Sometimes, functionality is a key issue in the prototype; at other times, the prototype needs only to be a facade that demonstrates a look and feel.
Current software design-practice relies heavily on software systems that were created to enable rapid prototyping. Hundreds of such systems are available on dozens of platforms, each with its own features and problems. Some are called authoring tools, others prototyping languages, and others development platforms. What they share in common is a focus on making it easy for designers to build, and then to experience, interfaces and the programs that lie behind them. Three of these systems are profiled here, to illustrate Schrage's points about how prototyping tools affect both the activity and results of prototyping.
Bill Atkinson and his team developed HyperCard at Apple Computer in 1987, as the next step in the path that Apple had proclaimed in the slogan for the Macintosh: the computer for the rest of us. HyperCard ushered in a new capacity of programming for the rest of us, promising to enable every Macintosh user to become an application designer. Since HyperCard was given away free with every Macintosh system, it quickly became a widespread standard (an example followed by later products, such as Mosaic, as described in Profile 5). HyperCard's card-stack metaphor was appropriate for many new applications, and led to a proliferation creative programs that exploited its novel interface techniques. HyperCard's primary place in software design, however, is due to its utility as a general scriptable interface builder, providing direct-manipulation creation of interfaces that are based on standard graphical user-interface elements, such as icons, buttons, text fields, and scrolling windows.
The writers of HyperCard applications range from sophisticated interaction designers to schoolchildren. In fact, HyperCard is now one of the most popular and widespread programming environments for students from elementary school through college. HyperCard's programming language, HyperTalk, differs from conventional programming languages in using Englishlike constructions, such as "put the number of this card into card field XYZ." This format makes HyperTalk more approachable for novices, but is awkward for experienced programmers.
The stacks (as programs are called) that have been built in HyperCard range from juvenile exercises to sophisticated exploration games, such as Spelunx (Cyan, 1991) and Earthquest (Earthquest, 1991). It is impossible to show a typical HyperCard screen, since HyperCard's facilities to draw artwork onto cards have been used to produce every look imaginable. Figure 10.4 shows a demonstration stack that comes with the HyperCard application, and is typical of one widespread style of HyperCard use.
>>>>>>INSERT FIGURE 10.4 ABOUT HERE<<<<<< Figure 10.4 HyperCard Appointment Book This simple application demonstrates several of HyperCard's commonly used facilities for prototyping, such as text fields, buttons, icons, and the ability to create cards with a graphic look that mimics print conventions. (Source: By permission, Apple Computer.)
The HyperCard culture emphasizes ease of use, and encourages simple, playful designs. Although some HyperCard prototypes have a high degree of sophistication and polish, many are immediately recognizable as HyperCard by their use of common icons, buttons, clip art, and other standard visual elements. HyperCard's limitations, such as slow execution and limited support for use of color, have been ameliorated in later versions and successors, such as SuperCard, but the overall niche remains the same. For applications requiring complex computation, portability to different environments, and efficient performance, the HyperCard prototype is discarded after testing, and the final code is written in another programming environment.
Macromedia's Director represents a point at the opposite end of the user spectrum from HyperCard. Director was designed for use by sophisticated multimedia developers, and rather than being bundled free, it costs several hundred dollars. Its appeal lies not in its ease of use, but rather in the sophisticated results that can be produced by users who are willing to learn complex mechanisms. In particular, it can be used for animations that are well beyond the capabilities of most other software-development languages.
The metaphor of Director (as its name suggests) is that of the stage or of an animated film. A Director application is built around a score, which represents a carefully coordinated and timed sequence of activities by a cast of characters. The basic programming structures offers frame-by-frame animation of the kind used in producing movie cartoons. By using Director's scripting language, Lingo, the designer can synchronize sound and motion in sophisticated ways. In contrast to HyperCard's aim to be usable on even the smallest Macintosh, Director emphasizes high-quality graphics, animation, sound, and video, and hence requires relatively high-end hardware. Although Director does provide support for standard Macintosh interface elements, such as buttons and text fields, it encourages designers to produce more open-ended and graphically original interfaces, making use of high resolution graphics, video, and animation (Figure 10.5).
>>>>>>INSERT FIGURE 10.5 ABOUT HERE<<<<<<
Figure 10.5 Director Prototype This interface for exploring a music collection was designed by students in the program in Interaction Design at the Utrecht School of the Arts. It includes many active elements, such as the icons and menu items, and also the 3-dimensional data display, which can be rotated and modified by direct manipulation. (Source: Courtesy of the Utrecht School of the Arts.)
For specialized applications, such as a multimedia information kiosk, Director is suitable for a final product. In many other cases designers use it to give a polished demonstration of what an application might look like, concentrating on the interface without trying to implement all of the functionality. Since Lingo was developed as a supporting language for animation, rather than as a regular programming language, it is not well suited to performing sophisticated computation behind the interface.
Visual Basic was developed for Microsoft's Windows operating system, which positioned it for a market different from the HyperCard users on the Macintosh. Instead of aiming for every schoolchild and home-recipe-book creator, Visual Basic was designed for professional system developers, who are competent programmers but are not user-interface wizards. Visual Basic is designed to enable a programmer to create interfaces using the facilities of the Windows environment with relative ease. Visual Basic is built around a simple, conventional programming language (a variant of Basic), in conjunction with a direct-manipulation interface builder. The designer can create and place standard interface elements, set and modify their properties, and associate them with programs that operate when they are invoked by a user of the interface.
A typical Visual Basic application does not have the flash and originality of many HyperCard stacks or Director prototypes, but instead operates within the normal interface conventions for Windows applications (Figure 10.6). The programming environment makes it easy for the designer to convert a Visual Basic project into an executable file that can be distributed and run by users who do not have the Visual Basic system, on any computer that runs Windows.
>>>>>>INSERT FIGURE 10.6 ABOUT HERE<<<<<<
Figure 10.6 Application Built in Visual Basic This prototype for a workflow system makes use of standard Windows visual elements, such as a toolbar, buttons, tables, and checklists. (Source: Courtesy of Action Technologies.)
The Visual Basic culture emphasizes software engineering and programming values: efficiency of execution, straightforward logical design, and minimal use of machine resources, such as memory. The focus is not on making it beautiful, but rather on making it work. The integration of Visual Basic into the Windows system makes it possible to deliver end-applications that use Visual Basic interfaces and perform sophisticated computation, without incurring high computational costs. In this sense, we might think of Visual Basic as less of a prototyping language and more of a development language-many of the interfaces built with it are intended directly as products, rather than as footholds in the software design process (see Chapter 11).
Robert Arnson, Daniel Rosen, Mitchell Waite, and Jonathan Zuck. Waite Group's Microsoft Visual Basic How-To. Publishers Group West, 1990 (Second edition in press).
Danny Goodman. The Complete HyperCard 2.2 Handbook (Fourth edition). New York: Random House, 1993.
Jason Roberts. Drector Demystified. Berkeley, CA: Peach Pit Press, 1995.
Terry Winograd. Environments for software design. Communications of the ACM, 38:6 (June 1995), 65-74. | <urn:uuid:1ed99faa-4bb5-4c22-858c-d3a6bcd76173> | 2013-05-18T17:49:17Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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A Rational Diet for Bodybuilders
In the 1970s, weight lifters — now called bodybuilders — bragged about eating a dozen egg whites every morning to help them get enough protein to build muscles. On TV, you would see them devour slabs of meat, stacks of toast, and giant milkshakes in preparation for the first workout of the day in late morning.
In the 1980s and early '90s, protein supplements in the form of powders, gels, and pills skyrocketed in popularity.
Things have changed.
Many of the next generation of musclemen are now told flatly by nutritionists and bodybuilding experts that well-balanced meals will offer enough protein for all but the most intense exercisers. Unfortunately, few are listening.
What is protein?
Proteins are complex organic compounds that are the main component of the body's muscles, tendons, ligaments, and organs. Proteins are made up of amino acids. The human body needs about 20 amino acids to make its proteins. Of these 20, the body can make only 13; the remainder, the essential amino acids, must come from food. Foods that supply all the amino acids needed by the body are called complete proteins. These foods include meats, poultry, milk, eggs, and fish. Amino acids are also found in plants, but plant proteins are not complete. No plant proteins offer all the essential amino acids our bodies need. If a person's diet has more protein than the body needs, the excess protein is used for energy or stored as fat. The amount of protein required each day depends on a person's age, health, and diet. Two to three servings of protein-rich food will meet the daily needs of most adults.
It is true that those who exercise need more protein to maintain or build muscles, but just modestly increasing portions of meat, poultry, pork, fish, and certain vegetables will provide virtually all athletes with enough amino acids.
About 15 percent of your daily calories should come from protein; 12 percent if you are an older adult. Bodybuilders need 20 percent of their calories from protein. Fat intake should be no more than 30 percent of your daily calories and no more than half of that should be from saturated fat.
Egg whites and milk lead the way in having high-quality, biologically available protein, followed by meat, fish, and poultry.
Red meat is not the bugaboo it once was — partly because grocery stores and other specialty shops now offer extremely lean products (30 percent fat). In fact, most nutritionists — and even the American Heart Association (AHA) — say that lean red meat is an acceptable part of most diets. Be aware that some "lean" meats, such as mutton, are fatter than other meats, such as beef. Many restaurants do not use lean meat, so experts suggest asking questions before ordering.
The lean cuts of meat include flank steak, London broil, and extra-lean ground beef. In addition to containing large amounts of protein, lean red meat is an excellent source of iron and zinc.
For poultry, take the skin off and don't fry it. Removing the skin removes most of the fat.
Fish is not only high in protein, but also very low in saturated fat (the "bad" fat). If you eat locally caught fish, however, check with your department of health to see if any kinds should be avoided because of toxic pollutants.
Go for variety
Try different ethnic recipes, which offer a wide variety of ways to cook meat, chicken, fish, and vegetables. Here are some suggestions: burritos with lean meat; beans and rice; pasta salad with low-fat dressing; and vegetable lasagna made with low-fat cheese.
Whole grains, legumes, vegetables, seeds, and nuts all contain both essential and non-essential amino acids, too. And, according to the AHA, you do not need to consciously combine these foods as "complementary proteins" within a given meal.
Overall, nutrition experts say that a varied and balanced diet of meats, vegetables, dairy, and grains is best. | <urn:uuid:b09f1fc7-f3b3-434c-938f-1ac9a60b67c2> | 2013-05-18T18:06:26Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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In second grade,
My mom made me wear dresses everyday.
My mom would part my hair down the middle and make two long braids with colorful hair ties.
I would go to school and the boys would make fun of my dresses.
The boy that sat behind me would pull my braids anytime I said something smart.
In fourth grade,
I told my mom I could dress myself, but she still had to approve of every outfit.
I told my mom I was old enough to style my own hair.
I would go to school and the boys would make fun of my weight instead of my clothes.
The boy that sat behind me would sit next to me and call me names for being the stupid one in smart classes.
In seventh grade,
I told my mom that I didn't care what she thought.
I cut my long hair shoulder length.
I started wearing dark makeup.
The boys didn't make fun of my weight but they would ask me out as a joke.
The boy that sat behind me and then next to me, liked me and texted me every night saying how pretty I was.
In the ninth grade,
My mom wasn't awake to see what I wore to school.
I regretted the very day I decided to cut my hair.
The boys that called me fat; left me alone because they found someone bigger to pick on.
The boy that sat behind me asked me for a naked picture and I said no.
He called me a fat, ugly, prude and never talked to me again.
In the tenth grade,
My mom borrowed my clothes and I borrowed hers.
My hair fell out but I wanted it to grow.
Boys no longer call me fat because they never saw me eat.
And the boy that sat behind me wanted me back.
I cried myself to sleep and hid my wrists in my sleeve.
It's funny how many things changed since the second grade.
While you sleep, I am awake, I sit at the foot of your bed and I stand guard,
it is difficult to ward off the imps that chase you far and hard,
To me it appears you are asleep, yet you toss, you turn, whimper and startle,
I hear your groans and I drop my head, I may look defeated, but I am just in prayer,
I can't stop those mares who stamp at night,
bridled rein in the hand of a dark heart,
They rest in the daylight when you are not able to stop or go slow, but hark,
they come calling as the sun is low and you are a feather falling lightly, oh that stark,
reality is they are waiting for you land like a rock,
you always do hope for a soft one on a blanket in a park,
but I know concrete slab and cold steel greet you and
the shadows take aim and mark,
your journey this night, the scars don't show by mornings light, yet the drains tap,
into your energy, and I can only watch, no weapon in my hand, no tear from my eye,
will ease the battle, so I pray and I pray to remind me to pray,
as you alone enter the fray,
defenceless, against the assault, we know there is no fault,
or if you were to give in and stay
until the dreams ran out,
of their hold, that heartless vice that turns and won't
let go of your beautiful fertile imaginative mind, vulnerable
and alone. I am beside you and
yet I wait, to comfort, with only a word that I am near,
you are not alone, "I am here", night watching.
Too dark to see,
Too far to reach,
Too large to ignore,
Yet we sit waiting.
Waiting for what might one day be visible,
Maybe on a special occasion be in our grasp,
Possibly shrink enough to ignore.
Hopelessly waiting will do nothing.
Hopelessly waiting will water the seed never intended to grow.
The only way to stop it…
Conquer the unknown…
Explore the depths of reality…
Is to leap.
Shred the odious black hole that rages within.
Smash it into the mud.
Burry it in the ocean.
Suffocate it with courage.
And then, there will be no fear. Only accomplishments.
Darling, you’ll be alright
Food won’t kill you but your mind might.
and hold on.
The storm will pass
and you’ll move on.
The danger is in over thinking
The power is in not eating
All sanity is gone.
So sit tight and hold on.
i think you were like the sun
i loved your glow and warmth
and i doodled your rays into old notepads
and my heart
i stayed out when i could to play in your warmth
and you gently kissed the bridge of my nose
and sprinkled freckles, tokens of your love,
onto my face
and you whispered "stay"
so i did
but when i grew tired of the heat
i asked you to come sit with me
in the shade of an old willow tree
and the sky shifted into a black oblivion
it was then i realized that you had gone
and your heat has left my heart rotting
my skin still bubbles and crackles
from the summer i spent in the sun
Popping out from slumberous state,
Little buds, you come to life.
Fight, fist, fend the odds,
You’re different; you survive.
Combative, commanding, cruel,
Your army, every restraint exceeds,
As it marches on, devouring
The very platter on which it feeds.
Slithering, slipping stealthily,
Deadly tentacles spare no bone, sinew.
Boundaries are blurred; your territory expands,
Your militia continues to exponentially grow.
And soon, your red flags of victory-
Those flags of death, demise and doom
Are planted everywhere; each bit
Of terrain you’ve invaded and consumed.
There you sit, content, in the middle of all the gloom,
Immortal, indestructible, infinite.
With power of the magnitude you possess,
There’s no force that can give you a fight.
And when flies of decay begin to hover over
Your kingdom, you smile, flexing your pincers.
Thriving on the depressing glow of the setting sun,
You- the kark, the crab, the cancer.
(to the malady that ate my Grandmother away)
And as I sit here pondering about my life,
The only thing that arouses over and over is you.
As girls, we crave the touch of tenderness and serenity;
To be looked at with presence and with the gold ness in your eyes.
If we are lucky enough to find it, grasp onto it like a rope,
Because one day you will look back and say, "He was my only hope."
I do so hope you're not as lost as I,
My young, beloved warrior.
Why that tear bedims your eye,
As you charge forth to your death
I hope you know what you're fighting for,
My passionate, silly lover boy
Why you chose to end your life before
Any of it had even started
I want to know why, naive, young man
You went and left me here alone,
To sit and wonder how I can
Bring you back to me
But every time you hear that name,
I see you burn with anger,
I see your heart burst into flame
With a passion I'll never understand
I don't know what it did to you,
That one inglorious monster,
Of the pain you feel I have no clue
Or of the terrors which came after
So come back to me once more my love,
Don't let it ruin all you care for
And I will help you rise above
The anger and the pain
Every I go
My rear is there for me
It gives comfort when I sit
Should I decided to bend the knee
With strong advice from my wife
I need to keep my cheeks pinched tight
So everywhere I go
My brains don't spill out on the floor
It has been said that religion is a crutch. Well then my friends, let us praise those who only need one crutch to get around!
I fear that even two crutches would not suffice for me. Even standing still or walking, the result would be an unceremonious fall. Although walking is a hallmark of humanities' ancestors, I myself would need the aid of a wheelchair.
Let us also not forget those who have no help at all. For some, this means they can walk tall. For others not so gifted by fate, fortune or heritage, it means they must crawl.
So I, from my perspective of low-position and station, whether in need of the wheelchair or the rough ground to crawl upon, find it relatively inane and banal to critique my fellow invalids, cripples, and broken souls. Alas this wheelchair is no mean platform to sit in judgement from; excepting for hypocrisy, that acquaintance to us all.
So should we all point at each others infirmities, shortcomings, and private tragedies, waving our crutches in accusation at the prosthetic limbed protagonist before us? Or should we silently be thankful if we have enough to get by, - crutches, chairs, slings and all?
Perhaps I miss the subtle verve and nuance of these careful considerations, but is the bottle, the pill, the embrace of another, the painter in rapt repose, the musician playing away, no more than a diversion of differences from sling to crutch to chair? Who is the least crippled seems a game most perverse to play with a crowd looking for a cure.
Perhaps my betters can explain how to judge others so swiftly, truly, and justly? Pointing out so and so's prior sins and what's wrong with them. I am but a poor soul who simply resorts to love, lacking the telepathy to read the hearts and minds and know the travails and tribulations of the unknown cripple we castigate.
So please, weary traveler, let me give you the wheelchair and I will keep the crutch in return, but do not fret, I only carry the crutch to give to the first person I find crawling.
Only then, needing to walk but having no aid, will I finally learn how to choose love over fear and strive for truth as I am unmoved, slowly wasting away. | <urn:uuid:e6dc85e5-3054-4923-946b-7b2251a421dc> | 2013-05-18T17:27:17Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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10. Chapter 10
I stumbled along in Éomer's wake, my mind spinning wildly. Thirst quencher? He thirsted for me? Surely there could be no other explanation for his words, not the way he had said them. This was no Gondorian courtier offering polite words of admiration to his prince's daughter; this was a man who knew what he wanted. And intended to have it. Alarm mixed with excitement ran through me as he pulled me into a dance.
To be abruptly replaced by worry of a different kind. "Éomer, I don't know the steps to this dance!"
Slipping an arm around my waist, he laughed. "It's easy. Trust me, I won't let you trip."
As if I weighed no more than thistle down, he spun me round and into the midst of the other dancers. The fiddlers' fingers chased across the strings of their instruments and drums beat a rhythm like a racing heart. I was used to Gondor's stately court dances, their every step prescribed, and faltered at what looked like wild confusion to me. But Éomer guided me along with a firm hand on my back, and I found it was not so difficult after all.
"See," he said, "I knew you would do fine. So, are you enjoying your first Yule here?"
Breathless, I smiled up at him. It was rather disconcerting how close he held me while we whirled round. "It's very different from home."
"I imagine so." He grimaced. "I'm afraid you had rather a rough introduction to the Mark, but I hope you like it here nevertheless."
I knew he meant the troubles encountered in Aldburg and Edoras, but I could not help remembering our first meeting. "Yes, it was rough," I agreed. "A certain Third Marshal nearly made me turn back on the spot."
That elicited a chuckle from him. "I'm glad you didn't!"
The dance came to an end just then, but he gave nobody else the chance to claim my hand, glaring at any riders daring to approach me. The musicians downed a quick round of ale and started playing again - a slower tune, similar steps. But I nearly exclaimed in surprise when, after about ten strokes of the music, Éomer took me by the waist and lifted me high in the air. However, all around us the other couples did the same, and I realized it was part of the dance. There was a definite twinkle in his eyes as he set me down on my feet. He had felt my surprise and was enjoying himself!
"After all," he took up the conversation again, "you've saved my skin several times already."
Abruptly recalling my earlier misgivings, I clutched his arm. "Éomer, I have to talk to you!"
He tensed at my tone. "Why? Has something happened?"
"Wormtongue!" he exclaimed and came to a halt. "What did he do? Let me tell you, I do not like it one bit the way he watches you and Éowyn. If he dared to touch-"
"No, no!" I tried to calm him. "Nothing of the sort." People were staring at us, and I tugged at him to start dancing again.
Reluctantly he complied, but his face betrayed his murderous thoughts. "One of these days I will..."
"That's exactly what I'm worried about," I broke in. "Éomer, he hates you! Please be more careful around him."
His face cleared. "You're worried about me?" For some reason the thought seemed to please him. "Don't be, I can take care of myself."
"You did not see the look in his eyes when you put him down just now. The man is dangerous!"
He shrugged carelessly. "As you said, he hates me anyway. It won't make any difference if I let him know what I think of him."
That did not exactly ease my misgivings. "Promise me you will watch your temper with him," I begged, clasping his arm and looking up at him imploringly.
A sudden grin chased across his face. "Do you know, I think I like it when you worry about me."
The cheek of the man! He laughed at my outrage, and lifted me in the air again. "But I promise to take care."
Mollified, I smiled down at him. How exhilarating it was to be swung around so effortlessly!
"And anyway," he continued, "we agreed to only talk of pleasant things today. Remember our pact? Breaking it carries dire penalties."
"What sort of penalties?" I asked, amused.
Another turn, lifted again. "Oh, I'll think of something," he answered. "Mucking out stables? Patching up more grumpy warriors?"
"That sounds grim," I agreed.
By now the dance floor was crowded with couples. Both Erkenbrand's twin daughters had found partners, and I saw Éowyn dancing with one of the young guards she often sparred with. She laughed out loud at something he said, her usual reserve absent. Then with a last flourish the dance finished. We had ended up near the main doors, which stood wide open tonight to allow guests to pass in and out, and suddenly Éomer pulled me towards them.
"Would you like some fresh air?"
"I'm not sure..."
"It will do us good to cool down after the dancing," he declared.
A couple of Meduseld's young pages leant against the wall, and after an exchange in Rohirric too quick for me to follow, one of them ran off. With the same autocratic manner as before, Éomer lead me through the doors and out onto the terrace. His smile dared me to protest.
I deigned to let this pass, but lifted my chin, letting him know I would not always be so compliant. The man was entirely too sure of himself! However, when we strolled to the edge of the terrace to have a look at the square below, the night air felt pleasantly cool after the crowded hall. To our right the waning moon was rising behind the mountains, turning the straw roofs of Edoras to spun silver. By now the bonfire had burnt down to a bed of glowing coals, and some of the young men made a game of taking a run-up and jumping across the embers while the girls watched them and clapped.
"Is it safe?" I could not help asking.
"No," Éomer replied, "but tonight is not a night to think of safety."
His low, dark voice made me suddenly overwhelmingly conscious of how close to me he stood. Close enough to touch. I stole a glance out of the corner of my eye at him and then quickly looked away when I saw him watching me.
Running steps approached from behind. It was the young page from the hall and he carried a bundle in his arms. "Here it is, my Lord Marshal," he panted, handing it over.
Éomer smiled at the lad. "Thank you, Caelin. You're very quick."
"At your service, my lord!" With a bob of his head the boy took his leave.
Éomer shook out the bundle and with a start I recognized the dark blue wool. "That's my cloak!"
"Of course. I can't have you freezing to death out here, you know."
The confidence with which he took charge not only of my person, but also of my possessions robbed me of my breath. Éomer stepped round my back. "Allow me." He settled the cloak round my shoulders, and as he did so, his hands brushed against the bare skin of my neck. The faint contact sent a shiver through me.
"See, you're cold," he whispered. Sliding his hand under my hair, he pulled it out from under the cloak and with a deft flick let it fall across my back. His hand lingered there, and for a heartbeat the world around us hushed and I was aware of nothing but his presence next to me.
Then a group of revellers spilled out of the hall, laughing and talking loudly. "Have a happy Yule!" they shouted.
At the first disturbance Éomer had interposed himself between the merrymakers and myself, but he relaxed again just as quickly. One of the group, a young woman, carried a basket on her arm. Approaching us, she took something from it and held it out to Éomer. "A Yule bun for you and your lady, my lord?"
He accepted it with a bow. "Thank you."
With a pert smile she whirled around and the whole lot descended the stairs to join the group around the bonfire, where they were welcomed with loud cheers. Éomer snorted with amusement when he saw somebody lugging out a fresh cask of ale. "They will pay for that in the morning."
He led me to one of the stone seats where usually the doorwardens held their watch. With the doors to Meduseld open to all guests, they stood empty tonight, although I supposed there were still men on guard around Edoras.
"Would you like to sit down?" Éomer asked. He settled me on the smooth stone bench and then seated himself at the other end. Breaking the bread roll apart, he held out one half to me.
"What is this?" I asked, accepting it.
"A special bun baked only on Yule." He leaned back against the stone seat, the moonlight illuminating his face. "It is said that two people sharing one will do so again the next year."
I hesitated in the middle of raising the bread to my lips. Who could say where and in whose company I would be celebrating the next Yule? But I would not think of that. Not tonight. Very deliberately I took a bite of my bun. Sweet and sticky with honey, tasting of cinnamon, cloves and other spices.
Éomer smiled as if he'd been given an unexpected gift and popped his own half in his mouth, his eyes never leaving mine. "Thank you, Lothíriel," he said.
"For sharing today with me," he said in a low voice. "For making me forget about war and fighting." He turned his head and looked out over the plains. "Tell me, Lothíriel, what do you want in life?"
I hesitated. It was the kind of question that could only be asked in the darkness of a star strewn night and it demanded honesty. "Not having to worry about my loved ones all the time," I answered at last, "marrying a man of my own choosing, having a family one day, I suppose..." Modest wishes. Impossible to fulfil.
He nodded. "Sometimes I dream that the Mark is a place where those who want to live in peace can do so. Where a Third Marshal can settle down to raise horses and fade into obscurity."
His hair spilled across the backrest next to me, and a strand brushed against my shoulder. The crazy impulse to lace my fingers in it ran through me, taking my breath away with its urgency. I clasped my hands in my lap.
"When I was a child we used to spend part of each summer on the Emnet, in tents," he went on, "following my father's horse herds. In the morning we would rise with the sun and in the evenings we'd sit round the campfire and the adults would tell stories. My mother knew the most wonderful tales. We lived very simply, but how I loved those summers." He looked straight at me. "Lothíriel, do you think you could come to like this land?"
I froze, suddenly afraid of where his question was leading. When I did not answer, he bent forward and picked up my hand, slowly tracing the shape of my fingers. "I know you're used to more luxurious surroundings, yet you have settled in here so well..."
Panic rose within me, but I felt unable to move. "Éomer-"
With his other hand he cupped my cheek, leaning towards me. "I realize that at the moment I am away from Aldburg very often, but surely, when times are better..."
Some things were impossible, even on a night like this. I took a deep breath, a sob almost. "I can't."
He stopped, arrested in mid motion. Desperately I groped for something to say to ease the situation. "You're breaking the pact. Remember? We agreed not to speak of the future."
Éomer searched my face, then slowly inclined his head. "Very well, I won't...at least not tonight."
His palm still rested against my cheek. Calloused and a little rough, but very warm. I was exquisitely aware of him: the way his eyes had turned to black pools in the moonlight, the slight smell of ale on his breath, how one knee touched my own. His hair had fallen forward and it would be so easy to reach out and bury my hands in it. Heat flushed through me and coiled into a tight knot in my belly. For a heartbeat I teetered on the edge of throwing all caution to the winds and kissing him.
The call of a horn emanated from the hall.
I jumped at the sudden sound, feeling as if I had been forcefully pulled back from a precipice. "What is that!"
Frowning, Éomer lowered his hand. "The call for the Yule cup."
Without his touch, all warmth drained out of me and I started to shiver. Forlorn, I wrapped my cloak more tightly around me. "What does it mean?"
"It marks the end of the feast. We will have to go back inside."
He offered me his arm and we returned to the hall. But on the threshold he held me back a moment. "Lothíriel, I'm sorry if I was too bold just now. I would not want to pressure you."
I shook my head, unable to voice the emotions coursing through me. On one hand I knew I could not escape the bonds of my station and felt relieved that nothing had happened between us, on the other hand that same fact filled me with a maddening regret. But I could not tell him that, so by common consent we threaded our way along the edge of the crowd towards the dais.
"The call has come very early," Éomer observed as we ascended the steps.
That explained the disappointed faces all around me. Servants were busy carrying in trays of cups filled with ale and started handing them out. When we reached the high table I saw that our goblets had already been filled.
Prince Théodred handed me mine and turned to Éomer. "So you have finally decided to return my Hunt Queen?"
Unabashed, Éomer grinned. "Only because I had to."
"I had hoped for a dance myself," the prince added, "before having her so impudently abducted from under my protection."
Éomer's eyes glittered with amusement. "It was my turn, cousin. After all, you had her company all through dinner."
Prince Théodred bowed to me. "But not enough of it. I am deeply disappointed to have been robbed of my chance for a turn on the dance floor with you, my lady."
Not quite sure how serious his complaint was meant, I smiled back politely. "I would have been honoured to partner you. Maybe another time, my Lord Prince."
"I will keep you to your word. I saw that you are an excellent dancer."
"So she is," Éomer agreed, a bland expression on his face. He seemed very pleased with himself.
Prince Théodred's eyes narrowed. "And where exactly did you disappear to after the dancing?"
"Lothíriel felt the need for some fresh air, so we went to sit outside the hall for a little while."
The prince raised one eyebrow. I did not think Éomer's use of my first name escaped him, and suddenly I wondered who else might have noticed our absence. Perhaps we had not been altogether discreet? Under Prince Théodred's scrutiny I could feel my cheeks starting to heat up.
Éomer saved me from having to say anything further by changing the topic. "Théodred, why was the end called so early?"
The prince shrugged. "My father's wish apparently."
Gríma's, I thought. The councillor looked rather pleased with himself for spoiling everybody else's enjoyment of the evening. He was watching Éowyn, whose face held nothing but cold politeness. A sure sign she was hiding some strong emotion - as no doubt Gríma knew as well.
Once all his guests had been served, the king rose from his chair, assisted by his guards. However, it was Prince Théodred who spoke the traditional farewell words in his stead. "Share this cup with me," he said, "and may good fortune go with all assembled here."
He lifted his goblet to his lips and drained it in one go. We all followed suit, but after the first sip I nearly choked. So bitter! The ale must have come from near the bottom of the barrel, for it tasted strange. Out of the corner of my eye I looked at the men beside me, but none of them seemed to notice anything amiss. Trying to be polite, I forced another mouthful down, but then had to put the cup aside, hopefully unobserved. A wave of dizziness swept through me.
Fortunately the king retired to his rooms just then and the ladies of the household followed suit. Some of the men were likely to remain talking over a last mug of ale, but the celebration had ended and there would be no more dancing. At the door I threw a last look back. Éomer was watching me. As I had known he would be.
Back in the quiet of my room I took off my cloak and sank down on my bed. Lifting a hand to my cheek, it seemed to me I could still feel Éomer's touch there. Perhaps I always would.
"What a fool you are," I whispered to myself.
I had been playing with fire, I realized. And worse, wanted nothing more than to throw myself into the flames. Wanted him to slip his arms around me, to draw me close, to kiss me, to...
I groaned and buried my head in my hands. Fool, fool, fool! The bitter taste of the ale still lingered in my mouth, clashing with the sweetness of the Yule bun, and I could feel a headache forming. When had I lost my heart to the Third Marshal? Listening to him telling me about his childhood while patching up his wound? When he had said goodbye to me in the stables? Or when he had smiled at me on the road to Edoras? In any case, a long time ago and I had closed my eyes to it ever since. Until today.
The thing was, I didn't even know why I liked him. Quick to lose his temper, he had been authoritarian and highhanded in his dealings with me from the start. I smiled at the memory of our first encounter. Or how he had steered me out of the hall earlier on without giving me the slightest say in it. The man liked to get his way! But at the same time I knew he would never coerce me into anything I did not want - I was safe with him. For some reason I felt more alive in his presence than I had ever felt before. As if something about him strung an answering chord deep in my soul. And he felt the same! Had said as much. Fire kindler. Thirst quencher. He had intended to ask me to marry him, of that I was sure.
Feeling dizzy, I leant back against the headboard of the bed and pressed the palms of my hands against my eyes. What would my answer have been if we had not been interrupted by the call for the Yule cup? To marry him! For a brief moment I indulged myself with the vision of Meduseld filled with guests, my family amongst them, Éomer and me on the dais exchanging vows.
Which left running away with Éomer as the only option. Startled by the thought, I opened my eyes and lowered my hands. Where had that idea come from! To run away and marry him in secret? Slowly I traced the shape of my fingers, just as he had done. Live in Aldburg with him, share his life, his worries, his bed...
Denethor would be livid! But could he do anything? Yes, he could, I realized with a sinking heart. The Steward's displeasure was not a matter lightly chanced, and he held his grudges with legendary tenacity. Surely he would bring all his influence to bear on having Éomer disgraced - and Wormtongue would be only too pleased to oblige him. Leaving Éomer's people without their protector. What would he think of me then?
A wave of dismay swept through me. It seemed to me that whatever I chose, I would lose what I wanted most. My head pounding, I got up to wash my face. I needed to clear my mind, to think things through.
A loud knock sounded on the door. One hand on the water jug, I froze. Could it be him?
"Who is it?" I called. To my annoyance my voice came out in a squeak.
"Captain Wulfstan," the answer came.
I knew the man was one of Gríma's few adherents amongst the king's guard. What did he want with me? Deeply uneasy, I crossed the room and opened the door.
"What is the matter?" I asked, drawing myself up to my full height and using my most imperious tone.
His glance flicked over me and I fancied I saw a trace of disappointment. Had he thought to catch me in my nightgown? "Princess Lothíriel," he answered, "the king wishes to see you."
The king? At this time? I frowned at Wulfstan. "The hour is late, surely-"
"King Théoden insists," he interrupted me smoothly, "for the matter is pressing."
You did not defy a king in his own house. "Very well," I agreed, motioning him to precede me. We did not meet anybody in the passageway, although the murmur of voices reached me from the door leading to the Hall. Was Éomer still up? The mad impulse to dash in there and seek shelter in his arms ran through me.
I suppressed it.
This is a work of fan fiction, written because the author has an abiding love for the works of J R R Tolkien. The characters, settings, places, and languages used in this work are the property of the Tolkien Estate, Tolkien Enterprises, and possibly New Line Cinema, except for certain original characters who belong to the author of the said work. The author will not receive any money or other remuneration for presenting the work on this archive site. The work is the intellectual property of the author, is available solely for the enjoyment of Henneth Annûn Story Archive readers, and may not be copied or redistributed by any means without the explicit written consent of the author. | <urn:uuid:fc307b44-c6a4-408d-aae6-f12326c41a75> | 2013-05-18T17:28:39Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Dáil Éireann - Volume 609 - 02 November, 2005
Written Answers. - Poultry Industry.
Mr. Crawford Mr. Crawford
446. Mr. Crawford asked the Minister for Agri culture and Food the gross output from the poultry industry here; the number of farmers involved in the industry; the number of persons involved in the industry directly and indirectly in the service industry; the percentage of that industry based in Monaghan; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [31663/05]
Mary Coughlan Mary Coughlan
Mary Coughlan: The gross output of the poultry industry is in excess of €150 million. There are approximately 1,000 commercial poultry farms in Ireland and 40% of these farms are based in County Monaghan.
While there are no official statistics for the numbers employed directly and indirectly in the service industry, it is estimated that there would be roughly up to 6,000 people involved in the production, processing, packing and associated activities in the poultry industry.
Dáil Éireann 609 Written Answers. Poultry Industry. | <urn:uuid:6fffc3b8-d0d1-4af2-b26b-50e480681f77> | 2013-05-18T18:05:32Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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SECOND-LANGUAGE LEARNING: A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE
1978 survey reprinted in V. Kinsella (1982) Surveys 1, CILTR
the early 1960s we were satisfied that we knew all about how people learnt a
second language. Then the impact of Chomsky's ideas exposed the extent of our
ignorance. Some people's reactions were that we should stop interfering with the
learner, since nature knew best (Newmark & Reibel, 1968). Others admitted
the error of their ways in principle but in practice continued to use the same
teaching techniques; by and large the changes in
the content of language teaching from 'structures' to 'functions' were not
accompanied by any changes in teaching methods. However, in the past few years
the question of second-language learning has been reopened; this review attempts
to give a critical account of some directions that research in this field is
taking. Our ignorance is not quite as boundless as it once was; before long we
may be able to base language teaching at last on a solid foundation of knowledge
about second-language learning itself.
The learner's development in a second language
starting point is the language that the learner produces and understands.
Inevitably this involves several methodological problems. One is the
relationship of the learner's language to time; to show how learning takes place
we need to see development in time: we need pictures of 'before' and 'after'.
One way of achieving this is to describe the longitudinal language development
of a group of learners or a single learner, as in Hakuta (1975). Another is to
relate different points of time in different learners, as in Padilla
and Lindholm (1976). Yet another is to relate the learner's language to the
final point in time, the language of the native speaker, the approach often used
in 'error analysis'. A second methodological problem is deciding what we count
as evidence of the learner's language. The most common approach is to gather
more or less natural samples of the learner's language; this has the
disadvantage common to corpus-based descriptions of making it hard to know when
generalisations can be made to the
learner's language system as a whole. Kellerman (1974) has suggested
supplementing it with 'lateralisation', that is to say, eliciting further
information from the learner about specific points. There are also dangers in
relying solely on the analysis of errors since this provides partial information
about the learner's language; to describe it adequately we need to know more
about it than its differences from the target language (Corder, 1971). An
alternative approach consists of designing particular techniques that tap only
the part of the learner's language that we are interested in. Also, compared to
first-language acquisition, the second-language learner is more aware of
learning a language and can be asked direct questions about what he knows.
in the previous paragraph it was accepted implicitly that the learner has a
language system of his own; though this system is related to both his first and
second languages, it has its own distinctive characteristics. This implicit
assumption has been called, with slightly different emphases, ' interlanguage'
(Selinker, 1972), 'transitional competence' (Corder, 1967), 'approximative
system' (Nemser, 1971), and 'language learner's system' (Sampson & Richards,
1973). It parallels the common assumption that a child acquiring a first
language has a systematic language that is not simply a defective version of the
adult's. In itself the assumption tells one nothing about the system or how it
develops except that it is
For the description of learning, an important characteristic of the learner's
language system is that it is changing rather than static: Corder (1977) calls
it a 'dynamic goal-oriented language system of increasing complexity'. However,
one should not forget the effect of 'fossilisation', in which some aspects of
the learner's language system remain fixed and do not develop (Selinker, 1972).
aspect of the learner's development that has interested many people is the order
in which particular grammatical points are acquired. A common approach starts
from part of Roger Brown's work on first-language acquisition. Brown (1973)
discovered that the chronological order in which children start to use
grammatical morphemes such as the
fairly constant: the child first uses -ing,
the plural -s
so on. Dulay and Burt (1973) first tried this approach on second-language
learning, using the Bilingual Syntax Measure (BSM) to elicit samples of language
from children at one moment of time: they scored the accuracy for grammatical
morphemes and established an order of difficulty; though they found a common
order among the children, this order had certain differences from Brown's order.
This method was extended to show that children with different native languages
share the same order (Dulay & Burt, 1974); that adults have a similar order
to children (Bailey, Madden & Krashen, 1974; Krashen, Sferlazza, Feldman
& Fathman, 1976); that the order varies according to the task involved
(Larsen-Freeman, 1975); and that the order is not much affected by one month's
classroom teaching (Perkins & Larsen-Freeman, 1975). At first glance, then,
this research suggests that second-language learners share a common order of
acquisition for grammatical morphemes in English. At closer inspection, the
connections between the learner's language and time seem slightly dubious. The
criteria used in Brown (1973), in which points of acquisition are arranged into
a chronological order, are replaced by criteria of relative success at one point
of time: Brown was talking about a 'codebreaking' order, the second-language
research about aa 'decoding' order, to borrow two terms from
cryptography. Rosansky (1976) argues that it is necessary to show that order of
difficulty is the same as order of acquisition, if these results are to mean
anything in terms of development, furthermore, comparison with Brown's results
is obscured by the different methods
collecting data, on the one hand elicitation techniques such as the BSM, on the
other natural recordings; indeed, native children tested with the BSM do not
show Brown's order (Porter, 1977). A naturalistic study has
fact shown similarity between chronological order of acquisition in young
bilingual children and Brown's order, but less similarity in older children
(Padilla, to appear). So order of difficulty for grammatical morphemes is at
present hard to interpret; it certainly does not in itself justify any
statements about chronological order of acquisition or about differences from
of syntactic development
aspects of syntactic development have been investigated in less controversial
ways. Much of the research has dealt with English and has been concerned with
children. Many results show a fair amount of variation between learners (Cancino,
Rosansky & Schumann, 1975; Bertkua, 1974). Even within the
of one learner there is
variation; Dickerson (1975) has suggested employing variable rules such as
for the variation from one situation to
Out of the plethora of studies one can mention
representative handful concerned with different points of English syntax:
negation (Milon, 1974); pluralisation (Natalico & Natalico, 1971);
auxiliaries (Cancino et
pronouns (Katz, 1976); possessives (Padilla & Lindholm, 1976); eager/easy
to please (Cook,
1973; d'Anglejean & Tucker, 1975). Other languages have been studied to
lesser degree: French relative clauses and indirect objects (Chun, 1976);
Spanish verb and noun phrases (Dato, 1975); Swedish negation (Hyltenstem, 1977).
Mostly the writers have concluded that there are general similarities between
the order of acquisition of foreign
learners and native children, though there are some differences; for example a
stage has been described in
learning of English negation by Germans in which a negative element occurs
immediately after the verb, unlike any stage in first language acquisition
wealth of information about the learning of English syntax should not blind us
to the paucity of research in other areas of development; semantic development
has hardly been touched upon, apart from Young (1973); phonological
development is equally under-researched, with some exceptions (Dickerson,
1975;Tarone, 1976; Wode, 1976 a). This bias towards syntax leaves the study of
learner's language in a curiously isolated position. On the one hand, it is cut
off from recent ideas in first-language acquisition which are more concerned
with semantic, cognitive and social development than with syntax. On the other
hand, it is cut off from recent work in applied linguistics which stresses
communicative functions rather than grammatical form. While the grammatical data
that have been unearthed are interesting in themselves, one may question where
they lead. Ultimately, so far as learning is concerned, the learner's language
and the order in which he acquires various items are only interesting as
evidence for underlying processes at work: the question to be answered is why
his language takes the form that it does. So, rather than attempt to summarise
the vast mass of descriptive studies of learner's language that are now
available, a task resembling Hercules' in the Augean stables, the rest of this
survey looks at some of the underlying causes of the learner's language system.
2. The learner's contribution to second language learning
and production strategies
with a new language the learner applies certain strategies both conscious and
unconscious to what he hears, which partly determine his language system
(Selinker, 1972; Richards, 1971). The positive effects of the learner's
conscious awareness that he is learning a new language have been described in
terms of the strategies that the good language learner adopts (Rubin, 1975;
Stern, 1975; Naiman, Frohlich & Stern, 1975). Broadly speaking, the profile
of the good learner shows that he is actively involved in the learning process:
he listens carefully and checks what he says himself; he is eager to participate
and to communicate with others; he practices the language of his own accord.
Though these strategies necessarily appear 'obvious', any model of
second-language learning has to take them into account; if, for instance, adult
learners feel that second-language learning is chiefly a matter of vocabulary
(Hatch, 1976), this clearly has an effect on their learning, regardless of
whether they are right or wrong. At the opposite pole from these conscious
strategies are those revealed in an experiment, where, after 27 minutes of
exposure to an unknown language, people were able to distinguish pauses located
at grammatical boundaries from those that were not: somehow they had employed
a strategy that yielded quite accurate information about the grammatical
structure of the language (Wakefield, Doughtie & Yom, 1974). The learner
then, consciously or unconsciously, absorbs or extracts information from what he
hears. One strategy is to impose the structure of his first language: he
transfers rules or items to his learner-language system from his first language
and shows signs of 'interference' (Selinker, 1972). Another strategy is to
attempt to guess the system of the target language, resulting in '
overgeneralisation'; his use of this strategy increases as he learns more of the
language (Taylor, 1975). The learner also pays great attention to word order
(Chun, 1976; Lattey, 1975). He may appear to 'simplify' the second language; his
sentences have a simpler grammar and use reduced forms, similar in many ways to
a pidgin language (Schumann, 1975a).
Schumann claims this similarity is no coincidence: pidgins and learner languages
are both produced under the pressure of a need to communicate with people from
another culture. There are nevertheless difficulties in accepting either that
the pressures on an individual and on a community are the same, or that the
similarities between pidgins are necessarily due to a general communication
strategy rather than common source languages. A slightly different explanation
for simplification is that it represents an attempt to return to an earlier,
more basic form of the language (Corder, 1977), resembling the view that early
language is closest to deep structure (McNeill, 1965). There are, however,
dangers in the over-literal use of the term 'simplification ' since this
suggests that in some way the learner is aware of the whole grammar of the
language rather than extracting a ' simple' system from what he hears. Finally
there are the production strategies that the learner uses in a speech situation.
One of these is' avoidance'; Schachter (1974) pointed out that learners often do
not make the predicted mistakes because they can avoid producing a form that
they are likely to get wrong. The idea of avoidance has been extended to include
various types of lexical avoidance (Blum & Levenston, 1977). In general, the
conscious and unconscious strategies that the learner employs are of vital
importance and we need to know more about them, not only in linguistic terms but
also in the cognitive and social terms that are starting to be studied (Chun,
1975; Fillmore, 1976).
ways in which a learner learns a second language are also affected by his
attitudes and psychological motivations. The two main types of motivation that
have been described are the 'integrative', in which the learner wants to
communicate actively with the speakers of the other language, and the 'instrumental',
in which he wants to use the language for some utilitarian purpose; of these two
the integrative now seems more important (Gardner, Smythe, Clement &
Glicksman, 1976). A way in to the large body of literature on this subject can
be found in the annotated bibliography compiled by Desrochers, Smythe &
Gardner (1975). The causes of motivation are attitudes; success in
second-language learning depends on the attitudes towards the foreign culture,
towards learning a foreign language, and towards the classroom situation
1976). One's native language is an important factor in one's sense of identity
as an individual and as a member of a group: learning a new language means
adopting a new identity. Lambert (1974) distinguishes 'additive' bilingualism,
in which the learner loses nothing by learning a second language, from '
subtractive' bilingualism, in which he is forced to give something up; Clarke
(1976) talks of a clash between the level of 'modernity' in the two cultures;
Schumann (1976) draws attention to the 'social distance' separating the learner
from the target culture. While these concepts have obvious relevance to contact
or immigrant situations, they are less important to language teaching in
schools. However, one idea of equal importance to both is the loss of personal
identity in learning a second language: culture-shock is like the alienated
state of a schizophrenic unable to make sense of his surroundings (Clarke, 1976)
and this is supported by similarities between the language of schizophrenics and
second-language learners (Meara, 1977). Guiora, Brannon & Dull (1972)
postulate a 'language ego' that is threatened by the new language; Green (1977)
claims that students regress to an earlier Freudian stage in a foreign language
and express ideas that are more childish than their level of thinking in their
and memory processes
and producing speech involves psychological processes that are only now starting
to be understood. In second-language learning their nature is even more obscure.
One issue is whether these processes are substantially the same in all
languages; some semantic processes involved in verifying the truth of sentences
have in fact been found to be similar in different languages (Just &
Carpenter, 1975). Another issue is whether these processes can be transferred to
a second language; in terms of syntax it has been shown that foreign adults do
not benefit from knowing embedding in a first language but fall back on the same
processes as the young native child (Cook, 1975). The work on grammatical
morphemes can also be interpreted as showing some of the processing limitations
common to learners. At least some speech processes then have to be relearnt in a
second language. Indeed some of them may never be so efficient in a second
language: even skilled bilinguals are worse at a cloze test in their second
language (d'Anglejean & Tucker, 1973); advanced learners cannot summarise
texts as well as natives (Long & Harding-Esch, 1977).
now to memory processes, it is convenient to distinguish short-term from
long-term memory. The characteristics of short-term memory are that information
is stored for only a few seconds, capacity for information is small, and the
information is stored in the form of sounds. Nothing is known about the duration
of short-term memory in a second language but some research has looked at
capacity. Glicksberg (1963) found adult learners of English remembered 6-4
digits at a time compared with 7-1 in their first language, improving to 6-7
during five weeks of an intensive course; Cook (1977) found a capacity of 5-9 in
beginners and 6-7 in advanced learners. So far as the form of storage is
concerned, capacity has been related to syntactic complexity (Harris, 1970) and
to phonological encoding (Cook, 1977); Henning (1973) traced a development
from phonological to semantic storage. So short-term memory seems to work in a
similar fashion in a second language; we can store slightly less information
than in our first language but we store it in similar ways. Long-term memory has
also been studied. Lambert (1956) tested word associations and concluded that,
while advanced learners were more like native speakers in such aspects as number
and range of associations, they were still unlike them in type of associations;
the clustering effect in which adults normally remember words from the same
semantic category together was not found to any great extent with advanced
foreign learners nor was there much difference between advanced learners and
beginners (Cook, 1977). Ultimately this line of research leads to the issue of
how the two language systems are related in the mind of the bilingual: is there
a distinct memory system for each language or are they linked in some way? The
evidence is inconclusive: in the same kind of task where bilinguals had to
switch languages, Taylor (1971) found the languages were stored separately,
while Neufeld (1976) found they were stored together; a task involving naming
colours, on the other hand, produced evidence for close links between the
languages (Lambert & Preston, 1967).
answer to the question about transfer to a second language is then complex. The
conclusion arrived at in Cook (1977) was that memory processes are transferred
more easily the less they depend on language. This has affinities with the claim
that 'capacity increases with processing depth since we can make greater use of
learned rules at deeper levels of analysis' (Craik, 1973), if language is
equated with learned rules. Indeed some recent experiments can be taken to
support this claim by showing little difference between beginners, advanced
learners, and bilinguals in a deductive reasoning task in their second language
(d'Anglejean, Gagnon, Tucker & Winsberg, 1977). A related issue is the
extent to which these memory processes can be employed in learning a second
language, as opposed to using it, in codebreaking rather than decoding. Some
attempts have been made to apply conscious mnemonic techniques to the learning
of vocabulary: Atkinson (1975) describes a 'keyword' technique and Paivio (1976)
a 'pegword' technique, both of which involve forming mental images. However, as
Rivers and Melvin (1977) point out, 'a word learnt out of context is for the
most part a useless bauble': mnemonic techniques are only useful if the
vocabulary learnt with them is available to the speaker for normal language use.
A general application of memory research is discussed in Melvin and Rivers
(1976), who describe an information processing model which emphasises that
procedures for speaking and learning are learnt through meaningful use of
language rather than memorisation. A two-stage model of memory has also been
proposed in which an initial memory fills up with formulas, and a second-stage
memory creates rules to account for the overflow (Gallagher, 1976); this
connects with the discovery of 'prefabricated utterances' in a young Japanese
learner of English (Hakuta, 1974).
people take it for granted that an important factor in second-language learning
is the learner's age; most discussions assume that children are better than
adults and then go on to suggest explanations for this. It is useful to consider
the evidence that might support this assumption. Some Canadian research indeed
showed that children who arrived there under the age of seven fared better at
learning English than those who arrived at an older age (Ramsay & Wright,
1974). But on the other hand there is a mass of evidence that adults are either
superior to, or the same as, children: adults are better than children at
understanding spoken Russian by the total physical response method (Asher &
Price, 1967); teenagers are better at learning grammar than younger children
whether in English (Fathman, 1975) or Dutch (Snow & Hoefnagel-Hohle, 1975);
nine-year-olds learn French morphology and syntax faster than four-year-olds
(Ervin-Tripp, 1974); Israeli census returns show that the age of immigration
makes no difference to the pattern of acquisition, in terms of reported use, and
that, while there is decline with age, the main watershed is at the age of 30
(Smith & Braine, n.d.). Nevertheless, some people might say, the superiority
of children is at learning pronunciation rather than grammar. Again some
evidence confirms this belief: older learners either retain more foreign accent
(Oyama, 1976; Asher & Garcia, 1969) or report they retain it (Seliger,
Krashen & Ladefoged, 1975); the younger children tested in Fathman (1975)
were better at pronunciation than the teenagers. But, on the other hand, adults
learn German sounds better than children in the same teaching situation (Olson
& Samuels, 1973); adults have an initial advantage at pronouncing and
imitating Dutch (Snow& Hoefnagel-Hohle, n.d.); older children up to ten make
fewer mistakes with unfamiliar phonological structure (Kuusinen & Salin,
1971). So far from showing the superiority of children, most of the hard
evidence warrants the opposite conclusion: adults are better than children at
learning a second language when the tests are conducted under controlled
lack of evidence has not prevented many ingenious explanations being offered for
children's alleged superiority at second-language learning. The most general is
that there is a critical period for language learning; after we have left this
period we can learn language only with difficulty. The reasons for this critical
period may be ' lateralisation', that is to say, the tendency for brain
functions to become specialised to one side or the other in the early teens (Scovel,
1969). The evidence for locating lateralisation in the early teens is, however,
debatable (Krashen, 1975), and the causal connection between lateralisation and
language learning necessarily rests on evidence from pathological cases. A
second explanation distinguishes 'acquisition', the normal process through which
children learn a first language, from 'learning', an alternative process that
can be used by adults because of their greater maturity (Krashen, 1976). This
distinction has been enlarged into the 'monitor model' (Krashen, 1977), which
claims that the distinctive feature of adult 'learning' is that adults can
monitor what they are producing; thus tasks which show similarities between
adults and children test 'acquisition' and do not provide sufficient time for
the adult to monitor what he is doing. Obviously independent evidence of this
monitor needs to be supplied; advanced learners, for example, have not been
found to be better at correcting their own mistakes than beginners, as might
have been expected (White, 1977). A third type of explanation is cognitive
development: Rosansky (1975) suggests that the crucial point is the transition
to the Piagetian stage of formal operations in the early teens; Tremaine (1975)
correlates the transition to the earlier Piagetian stage of concrete operations
at about seven with the syntactic development of bilingual children.
as these explanations are, it is not clear they are needed. What differences
there are between children and adults can be explained without recourse to some
unique feature of language learning that changes with age. One simple cause is
differences in situation: Macnamara (1973) distinguishes succinctly between the
demands of the street and of the classroom; often the adult meets the classroom,
the child the street. The types of social interaction also vary; the language
play described in Peck (to appear) is rarely allowed to adults; children talk
about different topics from adults (Hatch, to appear); the peer-group pressures
on children are considerably different from those on adults (Macnamara, 1976)
and the motivations and attitudes of the learner vary according to age
(Schumann, 1975 b).
common factor to the research cited above that found no disadvantage to adults
was precisely that the situation of children and adults was kept the same (Asher
& Price, 1967; Olson & Samuels, 1973). Another factor that the research
on accents does not take into account is historical changes in the status of
immigrants: age of arrival confounds moment of arrival. While it is certainly
possible to explain some of the differences in terms of cognitive maturity, this
does not necessarily involve linking them to the acquisition of formal
operations or to some special process such as monitoring without further
evidence. Given all the factors that distinguish adults from children, it would
be strange if we found no differences between them but it is not necessary to
invoke some peculiar property of language learning to explain them. While one
does not wish to deny the strong impression that many people have that some
adult immigrants speak their new language poorly, this may be ascribed not so
much to an intrinsic defect in the adult's mind as to differences in situation,
in motivation, in willingness to surrender part of one's identity, and so on,
that separate children from adults.
The learner’s situation
language the learner hears
important element in the learner's situation is the language he hears. Ferguson
(1975) described 'foreigner talk', that is to say, the language variety
addressed to foreigners, typified by its 'simpler' grammar and by certain
vocabulary items. In a natural setting the learner may well encounter this
variety; indeed it is not entirely unknown in the classroom (Hatch, 1978). While
there are resemblances between 'simple' foreigner talk addressed to learners and
'simple' pidgin-like language produced by learners, there is no evidence that
foreigner talk assists second-language learning any more than there is proof
that babytalk helps the native child. Both these simple varieties reflect partly
the adult's intuition about what learners find easy to understand, partly the
language used by learners themselves, partly the sociolinguistic convention of
what is appropriate for learners. Aside from foreigner talk, some work has
linked the learner's language to what he hears and the types of interaction in
which he takes part (Larsen-Freeman, 1976; Hatch, 1976). This link between input
and learning is vital to language teaching. A feature of most teaching methods
is that they control the language the learner hears in several dimensions -
situationally, functionally, grammatically, notionally, and in other ways. Yet
evidence for the effects of input hardly exists. Only Valdman (1975) has shown
the possibility of basing the sequence of presentation of grammatical items on
learner's errors. Though a central feature of most classrooms is the structuring
and sequencing of input, we still have no solid evidence to challenge the
assertion that a natural unstructured input is as effective (Newmark &
learner's social interactions
second-language learning, Evelyn Hatch has pioneered the study of conversational
interactions between learners and native speakers (Hatch, to appear; Hatch,
1976). The central feature of interaction she sees as the need to find something
to talk about: adults interpret children's utterances as naming a topic for
discussion; foreign adults struggle hard to establish a topic of conversation.
Adults in particular need 'repairs' to be able to check that they and the native
are talking about the same thing (Hatch, 1976). The order of natural
second-language acquisition is derived primarily from the learner's
communicative needs rather than from grammatical complexity or frequency: the
learner's language is a consequence of his interactions (Hatch, 1978). Some of
the strategies for interaction among children have also been described in
Fillmore (1976). As yet these interaction studies offer interesting insights
into the learner's behaviour rather than a coherent theory; nevertheless they
complement the ideas of integrative motivation and production strategies.
language learners, however, do not engage in social interactions with native
speakers; they sit in a classroom facing a teacher. This contrast is often put
in terms of 'informal' learning which takes place in a natural setting and
'formal' learning which takes place inside a classroom. Macnamara (1976),
however, denies that language teaching is strictly speaking formal, since the
teacher cannot provide formal rules that are linguistically and psychologically
valid. Krashen (1976) sees aspects of both formal and informal learning in the
classroom, defining 'formal' as teaching one rule at a time and having feedback;
he suggests that an adult may benefit from formal teaching since this exploits
his adult capacity to 'learn' rather than 'acquire' language. But we still have
little idea of what goes on in a classroom in terms of interaction; certainly it
is very different from the conversation strategies that Hatch describes. We do
have some ideas about correction of errors (Cohen, 1975; Holley & King,
1971) but more information is needed about all the other aspects of classroom
behaviour by students and teachers.
obvious conclusion from this research is the complexity of second-language
learning; any model has to account not just for grammatical development but also
for the contributions made by the learner and by the learner's environment, not
to mention the individual differences between learners, and the effects of
learning a second language on the learner, a field too vast to include here. If
nothing more, we can rule out simple accounts of second-language learning. A
further general issue is whether a second language can be learnt in the same way
as a first. An adequate discussion of this can only take place if we settle in
advance which model of first-language acquisition we are comparing to
second-language learning: it is hardly satisfactory to try to prove or disprove
the similarity between the processes by choosing select examples from either
field. At present this issue can only be discussed in fairly limited terms
because the research in second-language learning is restricted in scope.
Nevertheless there have been several discussions of this issue (Cook, 1969;
Ervin-Tripp, 1975; Macnamara, 1976; McLaughlin, 1977; Spolsky, 1977). The
general tenor of these emphasises the broad similarities between first- and
second-language learning but draws attention to some specific differences. Much
of the grammatical evidence has already been mentioned in section 1.3 above. In
addition, one can mention an analysis of learner's errors that found most could
be explained in terms of first-language acquisition rather than interference
(Dulay & Burt, 1972) and the results of an experiment in which foreign
adults and native children repeat sentences in similar ways (Cook, 1973).
firm conclusion, as in any research survey, is that more research is needed; in
some areas we have barely started to scratch the surface. Nevertheless, since
the interest of this research for many people lies in its potential application
to language teaching, it seems fair to risk some tentative conclusions.
Obviously any teaching syllabus or materials will be more effective if they pay
attention to what is known about the developmental sequence the learner goes
through, the comprehension and production strategies he uses, his attitudes and
motivations, the interactions he wants to take part in, and so on. But what can
the teacher do who is unable to change the syllabus or course that he uses ?
Above all, the teacher has to recognise the active contribution made by the
learner; regardless of what the teacher wants him to do, the learner adopts
certain learning and production strategies; success in learning is a product of
many different factors in the learner, most of them out of the teacher's
control. In particular, the successful learner wants to communicate actively
through the language. The teacher's recognition of the learner's contribution,
in particular of the integrative motivation, will lead him not only to stress
the ultimate aim of interacting with native speakers but also to encourage the
students to interact with each other and with him in meaningful ways in the
classroom; this probably means providing a variety of interaction patterns, not
just the one in which all communication is channelled through the teacher. The
teacher's awareness of the learner's contribution will also make him more
conscious of the extent to which he can call upon the maturer cognitive
processes of the second-language learner in activities where language is less
involved. In terms of teaching techniques, it leads to activities that encourage
the students to communicate and interact through the new language about things
that vitally concern them, here and now in the classroom, rather than with a
native speaker on some far-off occasion in the future; thus the teacher will
rely heavily on role-play, communication games, and the like. This new emphasis
brings us to a point where the goals of language teaching are no longer defined
simply by the language syllabus the student is expected to know, or by the
usefulness of the language to some conjectured function in the student's later
life, but by their contribution to the social and psychological development of
the individual; it may restore a central educational role to language teaching
in addition to its academic and utilitarian roles.
the original publication of this article, a large amount has been published,
too much to summarise here as a postscript. The following, however, represent
the essential reading in book form that has become available.
F. & Hastings, A. J. (eds.) (1977). Studies
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S. H. (1981). Psychology
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A. & Begg, I. (1981). Psychology
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A., Gagnon, N., Tucker, G. R. & Winsberg, S. (1977). Solving problems in
deductive reasoning: the performance of adult second language learners. Paper
presented to the 8th Conference on Applied Linguistics, University of
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A. & Tucker, G. R. (1975). The acquisition of complex English structures
by adult learners. LL, 25,
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J. J. & Price, B. S. (1967). The learning strategy of the total physical
response: some age differences. Child
R. C. (1975). Mnemotechnics in second-language learning. American
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adult second language learning? LL,
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avoidance in the speech and writing of second-language teachers and learners
and in translation. Mimeo.
R. W. (1973). A
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English auxiliary by native Spanish speakers. TESOL
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to the Fourth AI LA Congress, Stuttgart.
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of the First Salzburg Colloquium on Children's Language. Tubingen:
Verlag Gunter Narr.
M. A. (1976). Second language acquisition as a clash of consciousness. LL, 26,
V. J. (1969). The analogy between first and second language learning. IRAL,
V. J. (1973). The comparison of language development in native children and
foreign adults. IRAL,
V. J. (1975). Strategies in the comprehension of relative clauses. Language
and Speech, 18,
V. J. (1977). Cognitive processes in second language learning. IRAL,
A. C. (1975). Error correction and the training of language teachers. MLJ,
S. P. (1967). The significance of learners' errors. IRAL,
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notions of simplification, interlanguages and pidgins and their relation to
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and affect. New
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D. P. (1975). On psycholinguistic universals in children's learning of
Spanish. In D. P. Dato (ed.), Developmental
psycholinguistics: theory and application. Georgetown
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A. M., Smythe, P. M. & Gardner, R. C. (1975). The
social psychology of second language acquisition and bilinguality: an
annotated bibliography. Research
Bulletin No. 340, University of Western Ontario.
L. (1975). The learner's language as a system of variable rules. TESOL
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language learning strategies. LL,
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language acquisition. LL, 24, 1, 37-53.
S. E. (1974). Is second language learning like the first ? TESOL
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ability. LL, 25,
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acquisition. In. J. E. Fanselow & R. H. Crymes (eds.), On
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learning: a social psychological perspective. Canadian
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English as a foreign language. University of Michigan, PhD thesis.
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language acquisition. LL,
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child learn? In D. P. Dato (ed.), Developmental
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language acquisition research. Proceedings of the NWAVE-V Conference,
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language acquisition. Rowley,
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G. H. (1973). Remembering foreign language vocabulary: acoustic and semantic
F. M. & King, J. K. (1971). Imitation and correction in foreign language
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in Progress, 10,
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M. A. & Carpenter, P. A. (1975). Comparative studies of comprehension: an
investigation of Chinese, Norwegian and English. Memory
and Cognition, 3,
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acquisition. Paper delivered at
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performance on the SLOPE test: more evidence for a natural sequence in adult
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languages. In K. Salzinger & S. Salzinger (eds.), Research
in verbal behaviour and some neurophysiological implications, 115-21.
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language learners. LL,
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Molony, H. Zobl & W. Stolting (eds.), German
in contact with other languages. Monographs
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P. M. (1977). French L2 learners: what they're talking about. Paper presented
at the first annual Second Language Acquisition Research Forum, University of
California, Los Angeles.
J. & Harding-Esch, E. (1977). Summary and recall of text in first and
second languages; some factors contributing to performance differences. In H.
W. Sinaiko and D. Gerver (eds.), Proceedings
of NATO Symposium on Language, Interpretation and Communication. New
York; London: Plenum Press.
Second language learning in children. Psychological
J. (1973). Nurseries, streets and classrooms: some comparisons and deductions.
J. (1976). Comparison between first and second language learning. Die
Neuren Sprachen, 75,
D. (1965). Some thoughts on first and second language acquisition. Mimeo,
P. (1977). Schizophrenic symptoms in foreign-language learners. Paper
presented to BAAL Annual Conference, Colchester.
B. S. & Rivers, W. M. (1976). In one ear and out the other: implications
of memory studies for language learning. In J. E. Fanselow & R. Crymes
J. P. (1974). The development of negation in English by a second-language
N., Frohlich, M. & Stern, H. H. (1975). The
good language learner. Toronto:
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
D. S. & Natalico, L. F. S. (1971). A comparative study of English
pluralisation by native and non-native English speakers. Child
W. (1971). Approximative systems of foreign-language learners. IRAL,
115-23. Reprinted in Richards (1974).
G. G. (1976). The bilingual's lexical store. IRAL,
L. & Reibel, D. A. (1968). Necessity and sufficiency in language learning.
L. L. & Samuels, S. J. (1973). The relationship between age and accuracy
of foreign-language pronunciation. Journal
of Educational Research, 66,
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of Psycholinguistic Research, 5,
A. M. (to appear). Acquisition of 14 grammatical morphemes in the speech of
A. M. & Lindholm, K.J. (1976). Development of interrogative, negative and
possessive forms in the speech of young Spanish/English bilinguals. Bilingual
A. (1976). On exploring visual knowledge. Paper presented at the Iowa
Invitational Conference on Visual Learning, Thinking and Communication.
University of Iowa.
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of the First Annual Los Angeles Second Language Research Forum.
K. & Larsen-Freeman, D. (1975). The effect of formal language instruction
on the order of morpheme acquisition. LL, 25,
J. H. (1977). A cross-sectional study of morpheme acquisition in first
language learning. LL, 27,
C. A. & Wright, E. N. (1974). Age and second language learning. Journal
of Social Psychology, 94,
J. C. (1971). Error analysis and second language strategies. Language
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W. M. & Melvin, B. S. (1977). Memory and memorization in comprehension and
production: contributions of I P theory. Canadian
Modern Language Review, 33,
E. J. (1975). The critical period for the acquisition of language; some
cognitive developmental considerations. Working
Papers in Bilingualism, 6,
E. J. (1976). Methods and morphemes in second language acquisition research.
J. (1975). What the 'good language learner' can teach us. TESOL
G. P. & Richards, J. C. (1973). Learner language systems. Language
Reprinted in Richards (1974).
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J. H. (1975a). Implications of pidginization and creolization for the study of
adult second language acquisition. In J. H. Schumann & N. Stenson (eds.), New
frontiers in second language learning. Rowley,
Mass.: Newbury House.
J. H. (1975 6). Affective factors and the problem of age in second language
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of language acquisition. Mimeo.
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acquisition. Paper read to Fourth AILA Congress, Stuttgart.
C. E. & Hoefnagel-Hohle, M. (no date). Age differences in the
pronunciation of foreign sounds. Mimeo, University of Amsterdam.
B. (1977). The comparative study of first and second language acquisition. Paper
read at Sixth Annual University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Linguistics Symposium on
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pedagogically motivated sequences. In S. P. Corder & E. Roulet (eds.), Some
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J. A., Doughtie, E. G. & Lee Yom, B. H. (1974). The identification of
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Young, R. W. (1973). The development of semantic categories in Spanish-English and Navajo-English bilingual children. In P. T. Turner (ed.), Bilingualism in the South West. Tucson: University of Arizona Press | <urn:uuid:435f9c21-8c01-499d-a9e3-04efec0f5278> | 2013-05-18T17:37:44Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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About Cebu Island:
Often called the “ Queen City of the South” and the Seat of Christianity in the Philippines , Cebu is the country's oldest city. Exploring Cebu City , one encounters a rich historic past.
Cebuanos are extremely proud of their cultural and historical heritage, a legacy which has endured through the centuries from the time the great explorer Ferdinand Magellan first planted the cross on Cebu 's shore. Time has been kind to Cebu . From Zubu, the busy trading port in 1521, it has evolved into a highly urbanized metropolitan center which now serves as focal point of growth and development in Southern Philippines.
With its 6 cities; Cebu , Danao, Lapu-Lapu, Mandaue, Toledo and Talisay; and its 47 smaller towns, Cebu has more than kept pace with the nation's progress. Today the island province leads in traditional and non-traditional exports and has the highest economic growth rate anywhere in the country. Likewise, recent indications pointed out that Cebu has become the country's favorite tourist destination. In contrast to the bustling metropolis, the rest of Cebu 's 167 islets and islands are lined with idyllic white sandy beaches and pristine clear waters. Cebu has gained wide popularity for fantastic diving grounds evidenced by the proliferation of resorts which offer luxurious accommodations, excellent dive facilities and the services of competent dive masters and dive guides. Cebu 's strategic location makes it ideal for those who wish to travel to the other islands and provinces by plan, boat or bus. No place could be too far from Cebu. | <urn:uuid:565f225b-2f23-40e7-9e5d-89413ded58c0> | 2013-05-18T17:57:36Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Dossi, Dosso (Giovanni Luteri) (c.1490?-1542). The outstanding painter of the Ferrarese School in the 16th century.
His early life and training are obscure, but Vasari's assertion that he was born around 1474 is now thought unlikely. He is first recorded in 1512 at Mantua (the name `Dosso' probably comes from a place near Mantua--he is not called `Dosso Dossi' until the 18th century). By 1514 he was in Ferrara, where he spent most of the rest of his career, combining with the poet Ariosto in devising court entertainments, triumphs, tapestries, etc. Dosso painted various kinds of pictures--mythological and religious works, portraits, and decorative frescos--and is perhaps most important for the part played in his work by landscape, in which he continues the romantic pastoral vein of Giorgione and Titian. The influence from these two artists is indeed so strong that it is thought he must have been in Venice early in his career. Dosso's work, however, has a personal quality of fantasy and an opulent sense of color and texture that gives it an individual stamp (Melissa, Borghese Galleria, Rome, c.1523). His brother Battista Dossi (c.1497-1548) often collaborated with him, but there is insufficient evidence to know whether he made an individual contribution.
Photographs by Carol Gerten-Jackson. | <urn:uuid:edca70c3-130a-4403-bb60-6a8906c86782> | 2013-05-18T17:18:08Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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World War, 1939-1945--European Theater--Personal narratives. --United States. Army Air Corps--Personal narratives.
In his November 2001 interview with Bonnie Richards, Joseph Alma Hutchinson offers his memories of World War II. Hutchinson served in the U.S. Army Air Corps and flew missions as a heavy bomber crew member in the European theater; he trained in...
Neighbors of Woodcraft. --Woman's Relief Corps. --Daughters of Rebekah (Idaho) --Women-Idaho-Boise-Societies and clubs. --Julia Davis Park (Boise, Idaho)
Correspondence, scrapbooks, and memorabilia relating to the activities of Ella Mae D'Amant as a member of Neighbors of Woodcraft, the Rebekahs, Women's Relief Corps, and other social and civic organizations.
Gowen Field (Boise, Idaho). --World War, 1939-1945--Idaho. --Boise (Idaho)--History.
In his February 2001 interview with Rachel Smythe, Thomas Sweeney offered his memories about Gowen Field during World War II. Sweeney spoke of the time period between 1940 and 1945 and of the following topics: World War II, the Army Air Corps,...
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives. --Filer (Idaho)--History.
In his November 2001 interview with Jeremiah Dameron, Theodore Glassinger offers his memories of World War II. Glassinger served in the U.S. Army Air Corps from 1943 to 1946, training in the United States with no overseas service. After the war...
World War, 1939-1945--Pacific Theater--Personal narratives.
In his November 2001 interview with Joshua Anderson, John Hubbard shares his memories of World War II. He served with the U.S. Marine Corps in the Pacific Theater; the interview provides only a brief glimpse of his war experience. | <urn:uuid:1acce426-66b9-4297-9675-63f335d57b8f> | 2013-05-18T17:49:28Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Skip to Main Content
Testing and benchmarking of stream processing systems requires workload representative of real world scenarios with myriad of users, interacting through different applications over different modalities with different underlying protocols. The workload should have realistic volumetric and contextual statistics at different levels: user level, application level, packet level etc. Further realistic workload is inherently distributed in nature. We present a scalable framework for synthesis of distributed workload based on identifying different layers of workload corresponding to different time-scales. The architecture is extensible and modular, promotes reuse of libraries at different layers and offers the flexibility to add additional plug-ins at different layers without sacrificing the efficiency.
Simulation Conference, 2008. WSC 2008. Winter
Date of Conference: 7-10 Dec. 2008 | <urn:uuid:81d3d798-f336-4326-8187-ddad280bac4c> | 2013-05-18T17:18:49Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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I woke up one morning in Canada because there was a big orange ball of light glowing on the wall beside my head, and I was all, "But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?" because I am so very Shakespearean in the A.M.
It was the sun arising once again to kill the envious moon.
Out on the dock, I think I heard an angel sing "Good morning, Jelly!" (And, "Welcome back to Canada!")
10 hours ago | <urn:uuid:f01b72b8-7dcb-49af-8a91-61af3b25b932> | 2013-05-18T17:17:57Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Patient-centered health information technology (PCHIT) provides personalized electronic health IT to patients. Since provision of PCHIT entails handling of sensitive medical information, a special focus on security and privacy aspects is required. We present security and privacy requirements for patient-centered health IT applications and examine how security features of large-scale, inter-organizational health information technology networks, like the German health information technology infrastructure (HTI), can be utilized for ensuring privacy and security of PCHIT. Moreover, we illustrate additional security measures that complement the HTI security measures and introduce a guideline for provision of patient-centered health IT applications while ensuring security and privacy. Our elaborations lead to the conclusion that security features of health information technology networks can be used to create a solid foundation for protecting security and privacy in patient-centered health IT applications offered in public networks like the Internet. | <urn:uuid:6ce62295-dcdb-419c-a43e-ca8d37200c72> | 2013-05-18T17:40:22Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Contrary to what you may think, estate planning is not a process reserved only for those nearing retirement.
It's an important component of your overall financial plan that determines who will inherit your assets and who will control the process. That's why you can benefit from the T. Rowe Price Estate Planning Guide.* Unlike other approaches to estate planning, the guide:
- Takes a closer look at all of the assets that may pass to your heirs at your death, not just those in your taxable estate.
- Introduces you to important estate planning concepts in a way that enables you to evaluate and apply them to your own situation. You will not get bogged down in page after page of legal text.
- Discusses potential strategies that may help you achieve your estate planning goals. | <urn:uuid:6072be76-bde2-43b6-9e39-9cd6491fe257> | 2013-05-18T17:48:43Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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WHAT IS RSS?
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is an XML-based Web-content syndication format used to deliver constantly updated headline feeds to readers. Our RSS feeds deliver headlines, descriptions. It's an easy way for you to be alerted when content that interests you appears on Infortrend. We currently use RSS 2.0. | <urn:uuid:f674c238-7b42-4059-97f6-a39f6017ed18> | 2013-05-18T17:38:14Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Our work in room 7 concentrated on the conservation and removal of the large piece of plaster that was found in early 1980s. One of the biggest surprises was that we found a great number of schist slabs and pieces of limestone under the plaster. It is obvious that these stones made up the paved floor of the second story, which was preserved to a great extent some centimeters above the ground floor. The plaster we discovered on top of these stones likely once covered the paved floor.
The excavation of room 8 had started in 2006. This year, we uncovered three pieces of limestone and two schist slabs, among them a complete handle-less conical cup. Across the east wall, we collected several pieces of white plaster with traces of black and red color. Also, we found some burnt wood, bones, and sherds, as well as a few crumbs of bronze. We continued to excavate at a lower level, where we uncovered a one-handled hemispherical cup, jug, open vessel, and some pieces of plaster. As usual, we found carbonized wood and bones. In addition, we uncovered a course of upright limestone across the western part of the south wall of the room. We are certain that these stones were intentionally positioned here in order to form a structure, which, however, we cannot yet identify. Across the rest of the south wall were several pieces of limestone that had fallen vertically. It seems that they came from some kind of structure, such as shelves on the same wall, or they may have fallen from the upper story. A socket at the southern part of the west wall may have facilitated the positioning of a wooden beam. We collected more pieces of white plaster, some of which had red paint. It is probable that these courses of stones, found across the south wall, are somehow related. As the excavation extended into the other parts of the room, we collected more pieces of white plaster and charcoal.
The excavation of room 15 had started in the 1980s, and continued during 2006 with the removal of the upper fill. This year, we removed the lower fill and uncovered numerous pieces of limestone and schist slabs. The fallen masonry was mainly concentrated in the western part of the room, whereas the eastern part was distinguished by a large, complete pithos and part of the floor of the upper story. The latter was well preserved on the top of the pithos.
The excavation gradually revealed the lower part of the inner walls. Two small rectangular gaps in the masonry may indicate the existence of niches. One larger gap on the west wall was most probably a window, similar to the one we found on the west wall of room 14. We uncovered a large amount of stones, among them some bones, plaster, and charcoal. At the southwest part of this fill, four miniature handle-less conical cups came to light. It is exactly the same place that we unearthed a complete amphora the previous year. At the same level, we also found some charcoal, bones, and two fragments of white plaster. In total, we documented 67 slabs from the story’s paved floor. The small and irregular size of the stones may explain why they needed to be covered with clay, which was burnt (and is why it was preserved to such a great extent). On the surface of the clay, there was a great quantity of carbonized wood, some sherds, and a handle-less conical cup. The pithos we found took up a substantial part of the southeast and central parts of the room. It is 1.15 meters high (3.7 feet), and has two rows of handles below the rim and at the lower part of its body. At the center of the room, and in contact with pithos’ rims, we found two thin pieces of limestone that do not resemble the stones fallen from the story. This probably means that they were used to cover the pithos. At the southeast corner of the room, we found a one-handled cup and a bell-shaped cup. At the northwest side, we revealed two more handle-less conical cups. The latter had most likely fallen from a shelf on the wall. We removed the rest of the southeast fill and uncovered four more vessels: two incense burners, a lamp, and a miniature handle-less conical cup.
At the opening of the door, we found fragments of white plaster, burnt wood, bones, and a great amount of fallen stones from the east wall. At the north-central part of the room, we discovered two miniature conical cups, a milk jug, some bones, burnt wood, three fragments of plaster, and two handle-less cups. The excavation continued at a lower level, revealing four jugs, a bridge-spouted cup, the lower part of a stirrup jar, and a conical cup. Below these finds, we uncovered some limestone and schist slabs, which probably means that they came from a stone structure, maybe a bench. At the southern part of this fill, we found four more vessels, mainly cups, as well as some fragments of plaster, burnt wood, and some bones. At the southwest part of the room, an accumulation of four more vessels came to light. Among them were a cooking pot and a shallow angular bowl. The excavation continued mainly across the south and east walls, where we unearthed a great number of finds, including a lid, a tray, a cooking pot, two handle-less conical cups, a milk jug, and a miniature conical cup. The accumulation continued in the northern part of the east wall where we found a tray, two conical cups, a jug, and a quartz crystal. As usual, we also collected many bones and pieces of burnt wood.
Lastly, two more dense accumulations of artifacts came to light beneath the lower part of the pithos and the northeast part of the room, including an amphoriskos, an incense burner, two handle-less cups, a cooking pot, a shallow bowl, and many sherds coming from a medium-size vessel. We also found bones and carbonized wood.
The excavation of room 17 had started in 2005. The research up to now was mainly concentrated on the central and western parts of the room, while the eastern part remained unexcavated. This year, the excavation continued in the lower fill of the southwest part of the room. In addition, we removed the upper fill of the eastern part. The single most important find was a pithos, which we uncovered in front of the west doorjamb. At the same level, in the southwest corner of the room, we discovered big sherds that belonged to the rim and the body of another large pithos. At the floor level, we uncovered four vessels: a jug, a beaked jug, and two conical cups. In addition, we found numerous bones and pieces of charcoal.
We began to excavate the room’s eastern part this year. The upper fill was full of medium and large pieces of limestone and a few schist slabs. Despite the masonry’s bad state of preservation at the southeast corner, it seemed that there was one more opening at the southern part of the east wall. The door is 0.80 centimeters (0.31 inches) wide and blocked by fallen stones. The disruption in this fill was confirmed by the pottery, since we found a lot of sherds from later periods. Among the various finds were numerous bones and pieces of carbonized wood. Lastly, at the lower part of this fill, there were a few more finds: a sherd of a tray, a handle of a cooking pot, a miniature cup, white plaster, and a probable stone tool.
This year, we continued the excavation of passageway 16 at its southern end. We uncovered a great amount of fallen stones, which came from the upper parts of the east wall of room 15. In this fill, we found numerous sherds, bones, and pieces of burnt wood. Also, we discovered two greenish pebbles, a small black stone with reddish inclusions, and two pieces of white plaster. At the lowest level of this fill, we unearthed two handle-less cups and sherds from a large pithos. In addition, we found many pieces of charcoal, three incomplete vessels (a handle-less cup, hemispherical cup, and shallow bowl), a quartz crystal, and a fragment of white plaster.
In order to better understand the area occupied by the Central Building and to complete its ground plan, we conducted a geomagnetic prospection to trace any structures, mainly walls, that remain covered to date. | <urn:uuid:7fed7448-b86c-44c5-8193-56378cee36b2> | 2013-05-18T17:48:38Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Terror in Jerusalem / No intelligence ahead of attack
After a week of failed efforts to settle scores with Israel for the casualties caused by its operation in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian terror organizations scored a string of successes yesterday. The day began with the bombing of an army jeep along the Gaza border, which was videotaped by Islamic Jihad. It continued with a direct rocket hit on a house in Sderot that wounded several people, and ended with the deadly shooting attack in Jerusalem's Mercaz Harav Yeshiva, the flagship institute of the religious Zionist movement. The latter was the worst terror attack to take place inside Israel in almost two years.
It provided a grim reminder of those days at the height of the second intifada, when Jerusalem was hit by a string of murderous terror attacks. What Israel's security services have accomplished in the West Bank over the last three years is a virtual miracle in professional terms: They succeeded in bringing terror down to a very low, even tolerable, level. It is commonplace to claim that terror cannot be defeated militarily, but in the West Bank, Israel has come as close as humanly possible - closer than anyone else has come in any other similar conflict elsewhere on the globe in recent years.
The success of yesterday's attack shows that the terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank is still alive and kicking. And the terrorists' motivation has apparently been spurred by their heavy losses in Gaza, as well as a desire to avenge the killing of senior Hezbollah operative Imad Mughniyah (a group called the "Mughniyah Brigades" was the first to claim responsibility for the Jerusalem attack, though the truth of this claim is doubtful).
The defense establishment received several warnings about plans to perpetrate terror attacks inside Israel this week, but none, it seems, about the one in Jerusalem. And that makes sense: In recent years, Israel's superb intelligence network in the West Bank has enabled the security services to foil almost all attacks about which they receive even the tiniest scrap of information.
As of press time yesterday, the terrorist who perpetrated the shooting had not yet been identified. However, it seems likely that residents of East Jerusalem either perpetrated or abetted the attack. Because East Jerusalem residents carry Israeli identity cards, they can move freely throughout the country, making it easier for them to gather information about a target like Mercaz Harav, which is located deep in west Jerusalem. But it is also important to remember that nearly six years after Israel started building the separation fence, it is still far from finished. Thus it is possible to enter Jerusalem from the West Bank.
The Jerusalem attack will most likely prompt only pinpoint responses: arresting those in the terrorist's immediate circle, identifying the cell that sent him and then eliminating the cell. The closure on the West Bank will probably be tightened for a few days, and additional checkpoints will be set up. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's demand that Israel reduce the number of checkpoints in the West Bank will evidently have to wait. Security will also need to be beefed up in Jerusalem, lest the terrorists try to build on their success by launching a string of attacks that would undermine the sense of security of the city's residents.
Even if there is no direct connection between the attack in Jerusalem and the situation in Gaza, each arena influences the other. Anger at the attack in Jerusalem might spur the government to take harsher measures in Gaza, especially if it turns out that Hamas was involved in the attack. Moreover, given that Mercaz Harav is the ideological bastion of the religious right, the incident might spur revenge attacks by Jews.
The new year is just over two months old, and the number of Israelis killed by Palestinian terror - 15 - is higher than the total for all of last year (13). That does not bode well for the future. | <urn:uuid:492cda0e-056e-4d92-933e-1e1cc5a6aaf1> | 2013-05-18T17:57:26Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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I haven't managed to finish Malcolm Gladwell's new #1 bestseller, Outliers, yet, because it's so full of snarkworthy goodness. Here's a taste from p. 80:
“What Hudson is saying is that IQ is a lot like height in basketball. Does someone who is five foot six have a realistic chance of playing professional basketball? Not really. You need to be at least six foot or six one to play on that level, and all things being equal, it’s probably better to be six two than six one, and better to be six three than six two. But past a certain point, height stops mattering so much. A player who is six foot eight is not automatically better than someone two inches shorter. (Michael Jordan, the greatest player ever, was six six after all.) A basketball player only has to be tall enough — and the same is true of intelligence.”
So that explains Yao Ming's career! See, he's at least 6'-6" -- so he's over the NBA threshold ... by 11 inches, granted, but once you are over the threshold, according to The New Yorker's expert on everything, it doesn't much matter how much taller you are than 6'-6." | <urn:uuid:98c98f36-f7ae-463a-8040-8375531b0411> | 2013-05-18T17:17:53Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Billionaire high-stakes poker fan Andrew Beal "lost up to $50 million" in recent months in a series of games where players put up a $1 million buy-in, the New York Post tells us.
The Texas-based mogul, who made his fortune in banking and real estate, suffered a series of huge losses in at least three games, according to the source, who also said the games involved "Spider-Man" star Tobey Maguire and billionaire private equity investor Alec Gores.
While Beal, the richest man in Dallas worth $6.6 billion, strongly denies losing so much cash, he's famed for his love of high-stakes poker and is said to have once won more in a single day than any other known player --
$11.7 million at the Bellagio in Vegas, in 2004. In 2006, he famously lost $16.6 million in days.
A source told Page Six Beal participated in three games this year -- one around the Super Bowl, one four months ago and another a few weeks ago. "All the players had a $1 million buy-in," the source said. "Each time Beal lost big time, with a total loss of around $50 million."
Don't believe us. Check it out at http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/mogul_texas_size_poker_loss_4RDs0aQiVCj3KoISZKcUCL#ixzz1RUuzXlMZ | <urn:uuid:97a78454-0e58-4253-98f4-2e57dbb46d50> | 2013-05-18T17:56:58Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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You must be aware of the fact that there are huge varieties of commercial dog foods available in the market. Though these food owners always try to promise to cater to the best health requirements of the dog, yet the question that often arises in this context is the value of this promise. Have you ever tried to know about the ingredients that are present in these foods? Do you think that these commercial foods can cater to the health requirements of your dog, at all? There are many people who are of the concept that these foods are filled with preservatives, as a result of which, they are not healthy for the dogs. However, instead of getting worried, one of the most important things that you must always keep in mind is that before they are released into the market, they are fully certified and approved as safe and nutritious for a dog.
- First of all, you should ensure that the manufacturer from where you are buying the dog food has a good reputation. This is very important because on the basis of this reputation, you can be assured whether you are buying quality foods for your dog.
- Following this, you should check out the ingredients in the commercial dog food. The ingredients must be a complete balance between different nutritional components. One of the most important things that you should always remember is that the dog foods contain the best ratios of ingredients that are required in a diet. For instance, it should contain about 50% meat, 50% vegetables, and no wheat, grain or cheap fillers.
- Apart from that, you will also have to look into the fact that the sources of meat meal in the food are quite high. This meat is basically pre-cooked, and you can bring it to cook it further as per the ingredients and the instructions.
- Do not go for foods that offer foods with high quality meat ingredients accompanied by large numbers of by products as fillers.
- It is true that preservatives are necessary in order to make the food edible, but harmful chemicals should not be used as preservatives. Only when you select from a reputed manufacturers, you can be assured about the safety of the preservatives.
- It is also a good idea to choose premium brand foods, instead of going for any kind of economy branded foods. The economy brand foods might help you to save money, but it will not do much good to your dog because when you go for the cheapest, it might not be the healthiest.
- Many Christian’s believe that when the rapture takes place, all the dog owners who are true believers will be taken to heaven and their dogs left behind. Rest assured Jesus pets can fill in this gaps should you believe.
Thus, if you can follow these few things while selecting commercial dog foods, you can be assured that you will be able to offer the healthiest nutrients to your dog making it healthy. | <urn:uuid:d618906e-f3cc-45f9-81aa-ceb4ed2ea920> | 2013-05-18T17:36:20Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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JAPA: A PSYCHOLOGICAL TREATMENT
Q. What is the starting point of japa from the linguistic - point of view? What are the halting places in this joumey? And how does the power of japa become comprehensive form the point of view of physiology or of the science of incantation?
Ans. Japa, the repetition of the name of the deity, and jalpa, meaning sophistry, come from the root words japa and jalpa. The root word jalpa connotes plain, explicit speaking; whereas the root word japa has two connotations--explicit speech and mental talk. Thus, the semantic journey of japa begins from loud note' to mantra-articulation' and, mental repetition' thereof. Of course, japa is always done aloud, but from the point of view of articulation, it has been divided into two classes-voiced and mental. From the viewpoint of the science of incantation, japa is of three kinds-japa, antarjalpa, and mental jalpa. In the language of the science of incantation, these are known as voiced, low-voiced, and silent (i.e. mental). All these three kinds of japa can prove useful supports for ones progress in meditation.
Basically, the whole process constitutes an effort to migrate from the gross to the subtle, from the visible to the invisible world. Gross sound produces gross vibrations and subtle sound produces subtle vibrations. Subtle vibrations are far more powerful than the gross ones Nevertheless, in the initial stages of bringing about a change, gross vibrations have a role to play. But in the higher stages it is necessary to move towards subtle vibrations, because the state of meditation can be attained only through these. Loud japa is gross; low-toned japa is an advance upon the former; at the level of mental japa, the distance between knowledge and. the. word disappears. Here language and thought get very near to each other. In gross vibrations, language and thought function separately.
Subtle vibrations awaken the psychic centres situated in the human body. Although the entire system of the body is affected by these, some centres of consciousness are specially activated. For example-the Centre of Energy, the Centre of Bio-electricity, the Centre of Purity, the Centre of Intuition and the Centre of Wisdom
In the system of preksha meditation,, psychic centres are associated with the endocrine glands as under:
Psychic Centres Endocrine Glands Location
1.Centre of Energy Gonads Bottom end of the spinal cord
2.Centre of Health Gonads Lower abdomen
3.Centre of Bio-electricity Adrenal, Pancreas. Navel Islets of Langerhans
4.Centre of Bliss Thymus Near the heart
5.Centre of Purity Thyroid,Parathyroid Adams apple-throat
6.Centre of Celibacy Sense organ of Taste Tongue (Tip)
7.Centre of Vital Energy Sense organ of Smell Nose (Tip)
8. Centre of Vision Sense of sight Eyes
9. Centre of Vigilance Sense of Hearing Ear
10.Centre of Intuituion Pituitary Middle of the eyebrows
11.Centre of Enlightenment Pineal Centre of the forehead
12.Centre of Peace Hypothalamus Front part of the head
13.Centre of Wisdom Cerebral Cortex Top of the head
Through japa, a transformation takes place at all levels- physical, mental and emotional. In the ancient texts, while mentioning the results of japa it has been said :
By reciting spells, one can conquer decay, aversion, loss of appetite (dyspepsia), leprosy, disorders of the stomach, cough, asthma, etc. Like most distinguished persons, the doer of japa earns great merit, and in his next birth attains salvation which is the portion of the noblest beings.
Q. Has the assertion in the ancient texts of diseases being cured by japa, been proved by experiments? If not, how do we establish its authenticity?
Ans. In the context of diseases, japa is one remedy. It is not an imaginary concept, but has a scientific basis. just as the atoms of medicine are capable of destroying the atoms of disease, in the same way the atoms of the mind attracted by japa pull out the disease-atoms in the body and collect healthy atoms. Thus, there is little room for doubting that the disease will be eradicated.
In ancient times, the mantra-therapy was used along with the Ayurved system of medicine. It was a kind of psychological treatment. The mantra-therapy formed an independent discipline within the Ayurvedic system. Accordingly, only he who had mastered the science of mantras, could be a full-fledged Ayurved Acharya. Experimentation was done in respect of various mantras in the laboratory of the mantra-specialists. Even today, the mantra-therapy is prevalent in some form. Though only to a slight degree, modern people are scientifically reviving the mantra-therapy. If this work goes ahead, there is room for a great deal of research and new discoveries.
Sound-therapy is also a part of the mantra-therapy. The rhythmic vibrations of sound can create virbrations in both the inner and the outer environment. They affect not only man, but also the whole world of living beings. The impact of sound vibrations on the vegetable kingdom is even greater than upon human beings. In this connection, new experiments are being performed in America and other countries. They are also experimenting with the effects of music on vegetation. Although music has no shape or appearance of a mantra, it certainly is a component vital to its incantatory effect. Plants exposed to music develop early, the grass grows apace, the petals are larger and smoother, the fruit more abundant and delicious. Sound-induced sweetness imparts to the vegetation all-round a sense of being loved and cared for and a feeling of joy at being so loved. During the period of experimentation, those plants which were deprived of the atmosphere of music, in contrast with their more happy brethren, showed the effect of such deprivation on their growth, leafing, flowering and fruition. Experiments have also been conducted on the effect of music on animals. Cows exposed to music yielded more milk. In view of the fact that waves of music exercise such a powerful influence on vegetation and animals, the effect of vibrations produced by a mantra can no longer be disputed. The working of a mantra is even more subtle, so its effect is visible on a subtle level. Combined with faith, self-confidence and passion, a mantra's power of doing good is increased a hundred fold.
Q. You have talked about the scientific nature of spell-craft and the system of mantra-therapy. But it has been observed that those resorting to japa and mantras for years together, are not satisfied with the results. Some even talk of giving up mantra-japa altogether. Is that the right approach?
Ans. The words of a mantra are in themselves charged with electricity. The user of a spell also experiences its electric effect. How effective it proves, depends upon the disposition of the experimenter. "Sweetness depends upon the amount of sugar put in," is a traditional saying. Similarly, the greater the devotion, the greater the power of japa. Japa always yields some definite result, more or less. It seems to me that in order to advance in the field of sadhana, to remove obstructions in the path of spiritual progress, and to enter the inner world, the first thing to be done is japa. The doubt about the effectiveness of japa is now being replaced by a new faith in its power.
In the Jain tradition, the recitation of namaskar mahamantra' (obeisance-spell), of seed-letters, of a spell word or the name of one's personal deity, is still very much prevalent. The question arises if it produces the desired results. Some people get good results, whereas others draw a complete blank. But the talk of giving up. japa-sadhana in the absence of any visible results, is not right. Because the reason behind the absence of results is not any lack of virtue in the mantra, but the practitioner's ignorance of the proper technique of recitation. The water has the power of slaking one's thirst. If because of some reason, the water is rendered unclean or it gets tepid as in the hot season and cannot slake one's thirst, it cannot be said that the water has lost its virtue. If the same water is cleaned and cooled, it becomes fit for use.
Similarly, people who undertake japa unsystematically, recite the mantra too quickly, or too lethargically, or sit down to practise it when their mind is restless and wandering-these are the defects of performance. If these defects are removed, japa can establish itself in the form of a powerful tool for bringing about physical, mental and spiritual change. The fundamental basis of change is the purity of the life-current. Total concentration of the mind on the mantra does not in any way obstruct the flow of vital energy. The flow of vital energy means the flow of strength and vigour in the body. The purer the flow, the stronger the vital energy. Unless combined with the vital energy, the mantra loses its virtue. In order to achieve the desired result from the practice of mantra recitation, it is necessary to blend it with the flow of vital energy. | <urn:uuid:b649c990-8e32-4ac6-9e3b-42d415914963> | 2013-05-18T17:56:50Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Togami pours so much hand sanitizer on his hands that it runs off and spills all over the floor. It is pooling at his feet. He continues pouring it. Naegi comes over. Togami, you’re causing a disturbance. I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Naegi slips, falls. Naegi is covered in hand sanitizer. Naegi is so clean. Togami is so clean. Togami’s hands are so clean. | <urn:uuid:696f559a-c694-4e5a-8372-195a33649410> | 2013-05-18T17:17:46Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Justin Time Records
Taoue (Justin Time) is an Abdoulaye N'Diaye release produced by David Murray. In one of the meatier portions of "Aduna," singer Tidiane Gaye flows Islamic-inflected Wolof vocalizations, after a remarkable kora improvisation, as the performance frees itself into a liberating Afro-jazz romp coda with brain-opening soprano sax closing choruses. N'Diaye's Senegalese musical heritage is avowedly influenced by American jazz sax players as well as his classical conservatory education in Europe. The strong writing and playing of this young musician is at ease with traditional African material, per "Casa Leule," or irresistibly tribal jazzy melodious reedings on "Xarrit Sama." N'Diaye musters any technique available to a saxophonist with a repertoire ranging from bebop, such as "Cobb's Cat"-with an enriched Dave Burrell piano solo-to the relentless marching swing of "Wakhtane" or the hip, sultry, mainstream jazz ballad "Darn That Dream." N'Diaye has enviable intonation, range, intelligence and chameleonic skills as a soprano, alto and tenor sax polyglot. | <urn:uuid:f2a5f227-6f18-462e-9aca-b46b67384997> | 2013-05-18T17:18:31Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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I have not witnessed enough test cases to statistically verify anything, but I have heard various Chassidic Rebbes make b'rachos and daven out loud, and without fail, they mispronounce a majority of the words. I'm not talking about using a different pronunciation scheme (havara) for the vowels and letters (which is of course not mispronunciation), but mil'eil / mil'ra mistakes. This is in contrast to the many other non-Chassidic rabbis whom I've heard who do not make nearly as many such mistakes.
I can think of the following options to explain this:
- Chassidic Rebbes are ignorant of grammar, and simply don't know the correct pronunciation.
- They are purposely mispronouncing a majority of the words they say, even though they know how they really should be pronounced.
- I'm wrong. Chassidic Rebbes use normal pronunciation, and the ones that I've seen happen to have been the exception.
Now, here are the respective problems with those options:
- Why would they be ignorant of grammar? These Rebbes are, for the most part, known to be great Talmidei Chachamim, proficient in Torah knowledge. What kind of talmidei chachamim don't know basic Hebrew grammar? (Most siddurim even show which words are mil'ra and mil'eil, and even which sh'va's are na or nach.) And even if they are, for some reason, ignorant of grammar, why should they be any more so than the non-Chassidic rabbis?
- Why? I can't think of any reasonable explanation for this.
- This is in my opinion unlikely, but possible.
Does anyone know which of the options above (or another that I overlooked) is the correct explanation for this phenomenon? Please explain. | <urn:uuid:6269ccb4-f6a2-48f8-b00c-b072629a8430> | 2013-05-18T17:40:40Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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I wonder whether Judaism teaches that those unbelievers or those who are Jews but nevertheless lead a sinful life would go to hell someday when judgement time comes.
If by "unbelievers" you mean those who are not Jewish, then the answer is "no". The Talmud at Sanhedrin 105a says that the righteous of all nations shall have a place in the world to come. The question is "who is righteous?" As noted, a gentile who keeps the seven Noachide laws in all of their details is said to have attained the level of righteousness of the High Priest in Temple times. Baba Kamma 38a. Maimonides (the "Rambam") at Hilchot Melakim 8:11 confirmed that a gentile fully-observant of the Noachide laws has a place in the world to come.
If by "unbelievers" you are referring to apostate, atheistic, or agnostic Jews, then the answer is "it depends." If the person is an atheist or agnostic because he's never had an introduction to Judaism or knows what the commandments are, much less how to observe them, he could not be judged guilty for violating laws he did not know. On the other hand, someone who is especially sinful, and more so, one who causes others to sin, e.g. an adulterer or one who embarrasses others, according to some views, are doomed in Gehinnom forever. Baba Metzia 58b.
Another view, that of Hillel, is that (as Shalom noted) that the worst of sinners will suffer in Gehinnom for 12 months and then their souls will be destroyed into dust that will blanket Heaven and be walked upon by the righteous. Rosh Hashana 17a. Less aggregious sinners, however, will spend no more than 12 months in Gehinnom and then be raised up to Heaven. Ibid.
In addition, there is a view that eternal punishment exists for those who attack and defame Rabbinic Law. It is said that they will be boiled in feces for eternity. Gittin 57a. Which of these views is correct, no one is sure. The purpose of such speculation appears to be to motivate Jews towards certain behaviors rather than giving you a precise picture of what to expect.
In a word: no.
You're using a great deal of Christian wording here, so let me state the way it's phrased from a Jewish perspective, and hopefully this helps:
Barring some truly extreme cases, hell only lasts a maximum of twelve months before a soul can move on to higher realms.
Jews believe that all Jews, except for a few special cases, have a share in the World To Come; as do righteous non-Jews.
Recall that Judaism doesn't expect non-Jews to keep Judaism, just the Seven Noahide Laws.
There are many different views on these matters. The Rambam in Moreh Nevuchim seems to take an original view that there is no such thing as hell. The righteous and wise will reach a level where their soul continues after death, but the wicked will cease to exist. The Rambam seems to hold that those who do not have the right beliefs will not be able to be continue to exist for eternity. On the other hand, if someone sinned but overall was righteous, then he should be able to acquire olam haba. | <urn:uuid:be8769e2-c4aa-4be2-b5af-2bac410b414b> | 2013-05-18T17:21:36Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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So, matthias’s results in masak’s p5 challenge had me utterly baffled. Anyone with much Rakudo programming experience knows that something like
gather for @strA[$i..*-1] Z @strB[$j..*-1] -> $a, $b
in your inner loop is DOOM speed-wise. How could that possibly be a world-beater?
Well, the answer is that it all depends on the strings you are searching for common substrings. I’d asked masak about what test he was using a few days ago (trying to figure out the weird performance of my code) and gotten his routine:
my $n = 160; my $a = <0 1 2 3 4>.roll($n).join; my $b = <5 6 7 8 9>.roll($n).join; # "N" case is testing this $a versus this $b my $ra = (0..$n - 10).pick; my $rb = (0..$n - 10).pick; $a = $a.substr(0, $ra) ~ 'flirtation' ~ $a.substr($ra + 10); $b = $b.substr(0, $rb) ~ 'flirtation' ~ $b.substr($rb + 10); # "Y" case is testing this $a versus this $b
If you look at that, what should jump out at you is, in the “N” case, the two strings have no characters at all in common with each other! matthias’s code is nearly perfectly optimized for this case, as the slow inner loop will never execute. The “Y” case will be nearly as good for it.
So, what happens if we use normal text to seed this? Luckily I just got some benchmarking code going. So if the strings are
There were nobles, who made war against each other; there was the king, who made war against the cardinal; there was Spain, which made war against the king.
what are the timings like? Sorted from best to worse:
p5-fox.pl: 9.0981144 p5-moritz.pl: 10.4469054 p5-colomon.pl: 12.5152087 p5-matthias.pl: 25.9988418 p5-util.pl: 32.1561981
More strings and timings coming soon….
PS I should add I love the style of matthias’s code. It combines a lot of elegance with a clever Perl-ish and p6-ish approach to the problem. If I hadn’t stumbled across the suffix tree solution, I suspect my code would have looked a lot like an uglier version of his. | <urn:uuid:7d51c2ea-e59d-459e-88a4-b64d77fa6217> | 2013-05-18T17:17:55Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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"My bro, do you know that the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) and Israeli settlers have killed 1337 Palestinian children since the Aqsa intifada in late September 2000 until late 2010? Its an alarming figure but the international community seems to ignore it. What have the children done to them?"
The figure was released by the Ahrar Research Center on Friday. The study said the children were killed in direct murder crimes or during shelling, random firing, confrontations, and targeting residential areas.
The biggest number of children killed was in Gaza (977) followed by Nablus (92) then Jenin (77).
The study also said that the IOF detained around 3300 Palestinian children in 2010 and around 11000 in the past three years, including 103 girls.
Fuad Al-Khafsh, director of the Ahrar center, held the Israeli occupation authority fully responsible for crimes committed against those Palestinian minors. He asked human rights groups and all concerned institutions to prosecute IOF leaders and Israeli security apparatuses for such crimes.
In a related development, IOF soldiers stormed Zabuba village west of Jenin on Friday night and took away a 16-year-old boy from his home.
Witnesses reported that the soldiers broke into several homes and questioned their owners after searching them.
Such a brutality on Palestinian children happens everyday in Gaza and other occupied territories. Why are the Israeli kidnapping or killing them? To avoid them from growing up to join intifadah! | <urn:uuid:8e8b6bb0-775a-4d36-a917-79755f664dd0> | 2013-05-18T17:27:45Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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It's All Politics
Death Penalty Retains Support, Even With Pro-Life Catholics, Despite Flaws
Debate over the constitutionality and morality of the death penalty has long been an under-the-radar skirmish that occasionally emerges as part of a larger national conversation.
These past few weeks it has emerged in a big way.
It was first roused at a GOP presidential debate during which the record number of state-sponsored executions overseen by Texas Gov. Rick Perry (234 at the time; 235 as of this writing) was a surprisingly enthusiastic applause line for the candidate.
It was reanimated by this week's state executions of Troy Davis in Georgia, and Lawrence Brewer in Perry's Texas.
Death penalty opponents seized on the execution of Davis, whose conviction of killing a police officer was based on questionable eyewitness accounts, as an event that could turn the tide against state-sponsored executions. Brewer, a white supremacist, was executed for the dragging death of a black man.
History, however, suggests that despite outrage in some quarters over the killing of Davis, public opinion will remain firmly in favor of the death penalty.
"Sixty-four percent of Americans support the death penalty in cases of murder," says Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll.
That's actually a little higher level of support than when George Gallup began asking Americans about their views of the death penalty back in the mid-1930s. Support is generally higher among Republicans surveyed, and among those who live in the South, he said, where 1,042 of the nation's 1,269 executions since 1976 have occurred. (Texas has overseen the most executions, 475 since 1976. Virginia has killed 109 death-row inmates.)
Over the past decade, Newport says, Gallup's annual crime survey has found that support for state-sponsored execution has remained remarkably stable, despite revelations based on DNA analysis and other evidence that innocent people have been put to death.
"A majority of Americans agree that innocent people have been put to death, and they also say that the death penalty is not a deterrent to murder," Newport says.
The international community has also pressured the U.S. to leave the ranks of countries that execute. The U.S. last year, according to Amnesty International, trailed only China, North Korea, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia in the number of state-sponsored executions.
Still, support has remained consistent.
"People say, we already know these facts, and we still support it," says Newport. "Despite what's happened, we haven't seen a change in attitudes."
Take American Catholics, for example, who make up more than the quarter of the nation's electorate.
The church - from its bishops to the Pope - have long called on Congress, the courts and state legislatures to end the death penalty or, at least, restrain it as part of the denomination's stated commitment to "building a culture of life."
But framing the issue as a moral one has not moved rank-and-file American Catholics.
Their attitudes toward the death penalty are no different than others surveyed by Gallup, Newport says.
Gerald Uelman, Santa Clara University law professor and former dean, has been working on an initiative in California that would end capital punishment in the state and replace it with a program requiring convicted murderers to work in prison to provide restitution to victims' families.
A Catholic who has written extensively about the church and the death penalty, Uelemen says that he's found that his fellow church members are not persuaded by right-and-wrong arguments.
"What they find most persuasive aren't the moral arguments about the death penalty, but the practical arguments - like, what the death penalty is costing us, and what we're gaining from it," says Uelemen, who has been speaking with many Catholic groups about the initiative.
"You can go round and round and round on the morality of it, but the bottom line is it doesn't work, especially in California," he says, which is mired in deep budget problems and has 721 people on death row and about 3,000 serving life sentences without parole.
"This is one state where the dysfunction of the law is becoming the argument that will lead to abolition," Uelemen says.
Internal polling by supporters of the initiative found that the strongest support for the death penalty in California, if broken down by religion, was among Catholics.
"I found that quite disturbing," Uelemen says. "Retribution is the name of the game."
It's clear, he says, that the argument that may ultimately carry the day will be all about the spending and not about the killing.
Note: Among Republican presidential candidates with a position on the death penalty, only Texas Congressman Ron Paul opposes state-sponsored executions. He has said it's unjust because poor defendants are more likely to be convicted and executed, and because mistakes have been made and innocent people put to death. | <urn:uuid:937f9107-ae0a-4200-9515-150ad2e01e6e> | 2013-05-18T18:07:19Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Evaluating a Job Offer
Congratulations! You have a job offer. Now let's see if it is a good one for you to
accept. Unless you are absolutely desperate for the money, it is best to see how well
the job fits with your needs. Here are some factors to consider:
The Company: organizational culture, lifestyles of employees, quality of higher
management, stability of the organization and industry, prestige of job or
Details: location, work hours, salary, benefits, travel
Perks: support for continuing education, mentoring, advancement opportunities, training and
Job Fit: nature of the work, level of autonomy, level of responsibility, variety
of work, opportunities to learn and grow in the job/company, transferability of skills
and experience from this particular job to a higher position in the future
Here are some questions to ask yourself.
1. How closely does this job match my career goal? A part-time summer job is more
valuable if it will give you experience that will benefit your career.
2. Do I need any additional information about the offer or the position in order
to make a decision? Write down any questions you have and be sure to get them answered
before making a final agreement. Ask what a day might be like. Can you talk to an
employee who has done this type of work? See if you can spend an afternoon observing
another employee doing the work you will be doing.
3. Will the job work with my personality style? If you are a Guardian, will the job
feel comfortable and have a good routine that you can follow? If you are an Artisan,
will the job offer some sense of fun and excitement and keep you on your toes? If you
are an Idealist, will the job be in concert with your deeply-held values and can you make
a unique contribution? If you are a Rational, will you be able to gain a sense of
mastery and competence from this position?
4. Are there any issues I might want to negotiate before accepting the job offer?
Think beyond salary issues. What is the starting date? What type of equipment will be
available for you? Does the job allow you to integrate work and school if it is during
the school year? If it is a summer job, will you be able to continue part-time when
school starts again?
5. If you are working with a career center counselor, be sure to talk the
situation over with this advisor before accepting the position. People with this
training have a great deal of knowledge that can work to your benefit.
6. Finally, Am I feeling good about working for this company? For all types,
it is good to check what your brain thinks, when your heart feels and what your gut
senses. If any of them say no, then the job may not be right for you. | <urn:uuid:46db4292-df47-41ea-a75a-dcf3d2b081fd> | 2013-05-18T17:57:27Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Ovarian cancer usually produces no symptoms until it is in an advanced stage. Very few women have it detected early on a routine pelvic exam or because it produced a symptom. In fact, almost 75% of women diagnosed with ovarian cancer have the disease at a very advanced stage.
At your annual checkup and Pap smear or when you have symptoms, your doctor will ask about your medical history and perform a physical exam, including a pelvic exam.
Tests may include:
- Pelvic exam —Your annual checkup includes a Pap smear to check for cervical cancer and a "bimanual" examination of your pelvic organs. Your doctor will look through a speculum and take a smear of cells from your cervix to be sent to a lab for testing. During the bimanual exam, the doctor will insert gloved fingers inside your vagina or rectum and will press on your lower abdomen with the other hand. With this method, the doctor can feel your reproductive organs and can detect abnormalities. This exam is much more accurate in non-obese women.
If the pelvic exam reveals abnormalities, or you have worrisome complaints, further tests may include:
- Imaging tests (ultrasound, CT scan , and MRI scan ) —A transvaginal ultrasound can often be performed in your doctor's office and gives satisfactory images of the pelvic organs. It involves the use of a portable machine and a probe, which is inserted into your vagina. CT and MRI scanning require much bigger and more expensive machinery available only at hospitals and medical imaging centers.
- Lower GI series or barium enema —Although intended mainly for intestinal diagnosis, these images sometimes help diagnose problems in the nearby female reproductive organs. You should not eat or drink on the day of the exam. Before the procedure, you will take a laxative or have an enema to empty your bowels. In the x-ray suite, after preliminary x-rays, you will receive an enema of barium. This allows your lower bowel to be visible on an x-ray.
- Biopsy —Suspicious masses in your ovaries may require a biopsy to determine if they are cancerous. For a biopsy, a sample of tissue is removed and sent to a lab for testing. Pieces of the mass can often be taken through small incisions using a laparoscope—a thin, lighted telescope that looks inside your abdomen. In some cases, a surgeon may need to perform open surgery to reach the mass. The tissue sample is sent to the pathology lab to be examined for cancer cells.
- Blood tests—You may have blood tests for CA-125 assay (a tumor marker for epithelial ovarian cancer) or alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) and human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) for germ cell tumors. These tests may help with the diagnosis and with determining the success of treatments. The CA-125 assay is not as accurate as some other tumor markers. AFP and hCG are both useful for diagnosing and managing germ cell cancers, which are far less common cancers of the ovaries. Another blood test, called OVA1, may be used if a pelvic mass is found. By measuring certain protein levels in the blood, this test can identify whether the mass is cancerous.
If cancer is found, the prognosis and treatment depend on the location, size, and stage of the cancer, as well as your general health. Staging is a careful attempt to determine whether the cancer has spread and, if it has, what body parts are affected.
Additional tests to determine staging may include:
- Urine and blood tests
- Additional physical exams, including another pelvic exam in the operating room under anesthesia , which keeps you relaxed
- X-rays of other parts of the body, including lungs, bladder, kidneys, and lymph nodes
- Removal and examination of tissue from inside your abdomen during surgery for removal of the tumor
The following stages are used to classify cancer of the ovary:
- Stage I—cancer involves the ovary but has not spread
- Stage II—cancer has spread to nearby areas, but is still inside the pelvis
- Stage III—cancer has spread throughout the abdomen
- Stage IV—cancer has spread to other parts of the body
Beyond staging, a pathologist looks at the tumor through a microscope. The appearance of the cancer cells gives a good indication of how aggressive the cancer is. Grading the cancer adds to the staging information to help determine how best to treat you.
- Reviewer: Igor Puzanov, MD
- Review Date: 09/2012 -
- Update Date: 00/91/2012 - | <urn:uuid:f0ce9684-3522-4b59-94f3-0fe307b67a19> | 2013-05-18T17:30:17Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Most Active Stories
Tue January 24, 2012
How The Glock Became America's Weapon Of Choice
Today the Glock pistol has become the gun of choice for both criminals and law enforcement in the United States.
In his book Glock: The Rise of America's Gun, Paul Barrett traces how the sleek, high-capacity Austrian weapon found its way into Hollywood films and rap lyrics, not to mention two-thirds of all U.S. police departments.
The Glock was created in 1982 by a curtain rod manufacturer named Gaston Glock. Glock didn't like the handguns available on the market and decided to manufacture a new gun from scratch. Before starting, he asked gun experts in his native Austria what could be done to improve a handgun for the modern era.
"They said, 'A gun with much larger ammunition capacity, a gun that is much more durable and reliable ... [and] the gun should be easy to fire [and] easy to learn how to use,'" Barrett tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "He integrated all of those elements into the Glock and that's how he won his original contract with the Austrian army."
The original Glock 17, the model adopted by the Austrian army, contained only 36 parts and could hold 17 bullets in its magazine. It didn't have an external safety like other semiautomatic handguns. It also didn't have a decocking mechanism. The result? A lightweight, interchangeable model that could be dropped, submerged and subjected to temperature extremes – and still accurately fire.
Coming To America
In 1988, the Glock made its way to the United States. It was perfect timing, coinciding with the rise of the American drug trade, when many cops were feeling outmanned by gangs on the street. The Glock's large capacity and light body gave it advantages over other guns.
"Police departments were amazed when they took their officers out to the range and found out not only could they learn to use the Glock pretty quickly, but the Glock also made them more accurate as marksmen," he says. "And that's in part because it has a very light, very steady trigger pull ... Critics of the guns say the trigger pull is so light that it makes accidental discharges so likely. But the Glock always has that that dual nature to it – the advantages can be reframed as disadvantages."
One early advantage for police departments, says Barrett, was that Glock gave them large discounts when purchasing the gun for their departments.
"This was smart, because the point was to get the police departments to adopt the gun and that would give the gun credibility in the much larger, much more lucrative civilian market, where you can charge full price and get your full profit margin," says Barrett. "So this was ... a very crafty strategy."
Another strategy, says Barrett, was to get the Glock screen time in Hollywood. In 1990, the Glock began to appear in the hands of police officers in Law and Order and other police procedural shows. It was also used by Bruce Willis in the movie Die Hard 2. Willis' character gave a long soliloquy touting the advantages of using a Glock.
"[He] introduced the gun as a character to people who don't know anything about guns," says Barrett.
That publicity helped the Glock, as did it's frequent mention in rap lyrics.
"The Glock was adopted early on by some of the biggest names – Tupac, Dr. Dre – as soon as it appeared here, they began to embrace it for its dark, futuristic side," he says. "The fact that it looked tough, [had a] large magazine capacity, and not incidentally, the fact that it rhymed so well with words you might want to use in rap lyrics. Within the space of a few years, you not only had the Glock showing up in lyrics, you had song titles with the name in it and people changing their stage names to incorporate Glock into them."
Gun Control And Debate
In 1991, the first Glock shooting spree took place in Texas. 20 people were killed. Hours after the shooting, members of Congress were debating whether guns like the Glock should be restricted.
"It took a while but by 1994, a bill was passed – this is what we remember as the Assault Weapons Bill – and was signed into law by President Clinton," says Barrett. "It had a variety of restrictions. One of them was limiting the pistol magazine capacity to 10 rounds."
The legislation, which expired in 2004, was initially seen as a terrible blow to the Glock. But the company quickly found a way to use the ban on high capacity magazines to their advantage, he says.
"Glock had seen this bill coming for years and had been running the factory non-stop – three shifts a day, seven days a week – building up the large capacity firearms and the large capacity magazines," he says. "When the law was enacted, it allowed for a loophole that grandfathered in pre-existing equipment before the ban went into effect. [And] Glock had this huge stockpile of the very equipment that many gun owners wanted to get because it was banned – and the value of that equipment skyrocketed."
Glock also encouraged police departments to trade in their old equipment for newer, higher-capacity weapons. The old equipment – which contained the higher-capacity magazines manufactured before the ban — was then sold on the used gun market, and found its way to the streets.
"Police departments were implicated in the proliferation of hand guns all across the country," Barrett says, a fact that came to haunt the municipalities that, a decade later, tried suing the gun industry for flooding the streets with guns.
"Glock's executives would pop up on television and say, 'Who are you accusing of putting guns on the street? We've done business with the very business in the city that's suing us. It is their guns on the street.'"
Glock's statements helped undercut those lawsuits, says Barrett.
"This process of always finding the exceptions, finding ways around efforts to restrict the Glock became a trademark for the company," he says. "Right from the start, it helped the company and it continue[s] on through its entire history."
On selling the Glock to U.S. law enforcement
"[Glock] was smart enough to hire a genius salesman ... This man Karl Walter was really a guru in figuring out how to appeal to the police – whether that meant offering them extremely attractive financial terms or hosting police procurement officers at [a famous strip club] in Atlanta. This was a guy who could make a deal with anybody and figure out how to sell the Glock."
On an article in Soldier of Fortune magazine touting the Glock's body, which was made out of plastic
"[The writer] said, 'I was skeptical too. I went over to Austria. I tried this gun. People, you've got to try it too.' This was a huge door-opener for Glock. The focus on plastic soon developed into a controversy that was also a selling point because the gun control advocates [said] 'Because the gun is plastic, it'll become a terrorist tool. You'll be able to sneak it into airports, past the metal detectors.' This created a genuine controversy ... Suddenly people were talking about the Glock before there were even more than a handful of guns in this country. This kind of attention is priceless ... And then it turned out that the allegations weren't true, that you could see a Glock on an airport x-ray machine because a big piece of industrial-shaped plastic shaped like a gun looks like a gun."
On selling guns using beautiful women at trade shows
"It's extremely similar to the way cars are sold, by means of sex and models and lots of other products. In the same way you have models at trade shows of all sorts, you certainly have them at gun trade shows. The appeal is just as obvious as it might seem. Guns are to some people an expression of virility ... A buxom, scantily clad women appeals to some customers."
On current efforts to strengthen gun control
"No new federal gun control legislation was passed in the wake of [Columbine and other school shootings] which is in some ways more remarkable that in the wake of Virginia Tech and in the wake of Tuscon, we have similarly seen no new efforts to restrict the legal sale or ownership of guns. In fact, it's quite to the contrary. Over that time, gun laws in the United States are getting looser, not tighter. It is easier to carry a gun in many states. It is easier to get gun permits. And we have now had a Democratic President for three years and he's said barely a word about gun control one way or the other. I think it's very fair to say that the gun control debate has really been won for the moment by the NRA and by the industry that it cooperates with, and by those people who are in favor of widespread civilian ownership of guns."
On taking shooting lessons
"People who don't own guns really need to think about this: it's just darn fun to fire a gun. It's interesting. It requires a lot of attention. It's competitive. And it's just as people say, it's a real feeling of power to handle a firearm. That appeal is, in my view, undeniable and part of the reason that guns symbolize individualism, self-sufficiency to such a large portion of the population. I felt it myself." | <urn:uuid:3900f4e1-0643-4621-a19d-f14b9a1f23b7> | 2013-05-18T18:06:04Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Garrett had a hard time waking up for school during his sophomore year. At first he thought it was because he'd been going to bed late over summer vacation and then sleeping in the next day. He assumed he'd adjust to his school schedule after a couple of weeks. But as the school year progressed, Garrett found himself lying awake in bed until 2 or 3 in the morning, even though he got up at 6:30 AM every day. He began falling asleep in class and his grades started to suffer.
Most teens don't get enough sleep, but that's usually because they're overloaded and tend to skimp on sleep. But sleep problems can keep some teens awake at night even when they want to sleep.
Over time, those nights of missed sleep (whether they're caused by a sleep disorder or simply not scheduling enough time for the necessary ZZZs) can build into a sleep deficit. People with a sleep deficit are unable to concentrate, study, and work effectively. They can also experience emotional problems, like depression.
What Happens During Sleep?
You don't notice it, of course, but while you're asleep, your brain is still active. As people sleep, their brains pass through five stages of sleep. Together, stages 1, 2, 3, 4, and REM (rapid eye movement) sleep make up a sleep cycle. One complete sleep cycle lasts about 90 to 100 minutes. So during an average night's sleep, a person will experience about four or five cycles of sleep.
Stages 1 and 2 are periods of light sleep from which a person can easily be awakened. During these stages, eye movements slow down and eventually stop, heart and breathing rates slow down, and body temperature decreases. Stages 3 and 4 are deep sleep stages. It's more difficult to awaken someone during these stages, and when awakened, a person will often feel groggy and disoriented for a few minutes. Stages 3 and 4 are the most refreshing of the sleep stages — it is this type of sleep that we crave when we are very tired.
The final stage of the sleep cycle is known as REM sleep because of the rapid eye movements that occur during this stage. During REM sleep, other physical changes take place — breathing becomes rapid, the heart beats faster, and the limb muscles don't move. This is the stage of sleep when a person has the most vivid dreams.
Research shows that teens need 8½ to more than 9 hours of sleep a night. You don't need to be a math whiz to figure out that if you wake up for school at 6:00 AM, you'd have to go to bed at 9:00 PM to reach the 9-hour mark. Studies have found that many teens have trouble falling asleep that early, though. It's not because they don't want to sleep. It's because their brains naturally work on later schedules and aren't ready for bed.
During adolescence, the body's rhythm (sort of like an internal biological clock) is reset, telling a teen to fall asleep later at night and wake up later in the morning. This change in the circadian rhythm seems to be due to the fact that the brain hormone is produced later at night in teens than it is for kids and adults, making it harder for teens to fall asleep. Sometimes this delay in the sleep-wake cycle is so severe that it affects a person's daily functioning. In those cases it's called delayed sleep phase syndrome.
Changes in the body clock aren't the only reason teens lose sleep, though. Lots of people have insomnia — trouble falling or staying asleep. The most common cause of insomnia is stress. But all sorts of things can lead to insomnia, including physical discomfort (the stuffy nose of a cold or the pain of a headache, for example), emotional troubles (like family problems or relationship difficulties), and even an uncomfortable sleeping environment (a room that's too hot, cold, or noisy).
It's common for everyone to have insomnia from time to time. But if insomnia lasts for a month or longer with no relief, then doctors consider it chronic. Chronic insomnia can be caused by a number of different problems, including medical conditions, mental-health problems, medication side effects, or substance abuse. People with chronic insomnia can often get help for their condition from a doctor, therapist, or other counselor.
For some people, insomnia can be made worse by worrying about the insomnia itself. A brief period of insomnia can build into something longer lasting when a person becomes anxious about not sleeping or worried about feeling tired the next day. Doctors call this psychophysiologic insomnia.
Periodic Limb Movement Disorder and Restless Legs Syndrome
People with these conditions find their sleep is disrupted by leg (or, less frequently, arm) movements, leaving them tired or irritable from lack of sleep. In the case of periodic limb movement disorder (PLMD), these movements are involuntary twitches or jerks: They're called involuntary because the person isn't consciously controlling them and is often unaware of the movement.
People with restless legs syndrome (RLS) actually feel physical sensations in their limbs, such as tingling, itching, cramping, or burning. The only way they can relieve these feelings is by moving their legs or arms to get rid of the discomfort.
Doctors can treat PLMD and RLS. For some people, treating an iron deficiency can make them go away; other people may need to take other types of medication.
Obstructive Sleep Apnea
A person with this sleep disorder temporarily stops breathing during sleep because the airway becomes narrowed or blocked. One common cause of obstructive sleep apnea is enlarged tonsils or adenoids (tissues located in the passage that connects the nose and throat). Being overweight or obese can also lead a person to develop obstructive sleep apnea.
People with obstructive sleep apnea may snore, have difficulty breathing, and even sweat heavily during sleep. Because it disrupts sleep, someone with sleep apnea may feel extremely sleepy or irritable during the day. People who show signs of obstructive sleep apnea, such as loud snoring or excessive daytime sleepiness, should be evaluated by a doctor.
If someone has gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), stomach acid moves backward up into the esophagus, producing the uncomfortable, burning sensation known as heartburn. GERD symptoms can be worse when someone is lying down. Even if someone doesn't notice the feelings of heartburn during sleep, the discomfort it causes can still interfere with the sleep cycle.
Most teens have nightmares on occasion. But frequent nightmares can disrupt sleep patterns by waking someone during the night. Some things can trigger more frequent nightmares, including certain medications, drugs, or alcohol. Ironically, sleep deprivation can also be a cause.
The most common triggers for more frequent nightmares are emotional, such as stress or anxiety. If nightmares are interfering with your sleep, it's a good idea to talk to a parent, doctor, or counselor.
People with narcolepsy are often very sleepy during the day and have sleep "attacks" that may make them suddenly fall asleep, lose muscle control, or see vivid dreamlike images while dozing off or waking up. Someone's nighttime sleep may be disrupted, with frequent awakenings throughout the night.
Narcolepsy can be disturbing because people fall asleep without warning, making it hazardous to do things like drive. A person's schooling, work, or social life can be affected by the unusual sleep patterns.
Narcolepsy is not that commonly diagnosed in teens, although many cases go unrecognized. People usually first begin to have symptoms between the ages of 10 and 25, but may not be properly diagnosed until 10-15 years later. Doctors usually treat narcolepsy with medications and lifestyle changes.
It's rare for teens to walk in their sleep; most sleepwalkers are children. Sleepwalking may run in families. It tends to happen most often when a person is sick, has a fever, is not getting enough sleep, or is feeling stress.
Because most sleepwalkers don't sleepwalk often, it's not usually a serious problem. Sleepwalkers tend to go back to bed on their own and don't usually remember sleepwalking. (Sleepwalking often happens during the deeper sleep that takes place during stages 3 and 4 of the sleep cycle.)
Sometimes, though, a sleepwalker will need help moving around obstacles and getting back to bed. It's also true that waking sleepwalkers can startle them (but it isn't harmful), so try to guide a sleepwalker back to bed gently.
What Should I Do?
If you think you're getting enough rest at night and you're still feeling tired during the day, it's a good idea to visit your doctor. Excessive tiredness can be caused by all sorts of health problems, not just difficulties with sleep.
If a sleep problem is suspected, your doctor will look at your overall health and sleep habits. In addition to doing a physical examination, the doctor will take your medical history by asking you about any concerns and symptoms you have, your past health, your family's health, any medications you're taking, any allergies you may have, and other issues. The doctor also might do tests to find out whether any conditions — such as obstructive sleep apnea — might be interfering with your sleep.
Different sleep problems are treated differently. Some can be treated with medications, whereas others can be helped by special techniques like light therapy (where someone sits in front of a lightbox for a certain amount of time each day) or other practices that can help reset a person's body clock.
Doctors also encourage teens to make lifestyle changes that promote good sleeping habits. You probably know that caffeine can keep you awake, but many teens don't realize that playing video games or watching TV before sleeping can do the same thing. | <urn:uuid:74561f21-310b-4ba0-ab22-417674fb3c14> | 2013-05-18T17:19:10Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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When you hear the word yoga, do you think of a person with his legs twisted up like a pretzel? If so, it may seem like yoga is very complicated or just for adults. Not true!
Kids and teens can do yoga for the same reasons grown-ups do: because it feels good to stretch out your body, slow down your breathing, and relax your mind. Yoga can help you feel calmer when life is busy and stressful. Aaahh...
What You Need
Anytime you start a new exercise routine, it's a good idea to check with a parent. A yoga class can be a great way to get started because the instructor can teach you how to get into the poses.
Find a large-enough space with few distractions. No TV or people, if possible. Wear comfortable workout clothes and no shoes or socks. A yoga mat can be helpful because it cushions a bit and keeps your feet from slipping. Yoga should not hurt, so go slow and ease into position. Go only as far as you comfortably can.
Why Yoga for Stress?
When you get stressed or nervous, many things can help you feel better. Talking with someone — a parent, friend, or school counselor — is a great idea because they can help you figure out what's wrong and start coming up with solutions.
In addition, you can ease stress through exercise. You probably know exercise is good for your health, but it's also a proven way to put you in a better mood. So it makes sense that yoga is a favorite activity among people who want to feel stronger and more relaxed.
Yoga includes a lot of stretching, but that's not all. Yoga also focuses on breathing and meditation, which means thinking calm thoughts. Practicing yoga is a chance to learn stretching/breathing/thinking skills that you can use to calm yourself down the next time you feel worried or overwhelmed. In other words, yoga can help your body stay loose and relaxed when things heat up!
Meditation is the first part of a stress-relieving yoga practice. Meditation means being calm, quiet, and focused. Some people call this "feeling centered." When you are feeling centered, you can do your best in stressful situations such as taking a test or working through a disagreement with a friend.
Try these meditation exercises:
Take a yoga vacation: Find a quiet, private place, like your bedroom. Sit in a comfortable position and close your eyes. Imagine a place where you feel safe and relaxed. Is it your best friend's backyard? Your grandma's house? Camping in the woods? Imagine yourself in this place for 3-5 minutes. You'll feel much calmer after your "yoga vacation."
Positive pictures: When you're feeling stressed about a big test, game, or performance, it can help to imagine it going really well. Sit in a comfortable position and close your eyes. Picture yourself feeling prepared for your test, kicking the winning goal in soccer, or reading your lines and getting a laugh from the audience. Of course, positive pictures can't take the place of actual preparation, but can help you feel confident!
If you meditate for just 5 minutes a day, it will help you feel good even when you're not meditating. The more you do it, the more it becomes part of your routine, like brushing your teeth or lacing up your cleats before a soccer game.
On one hand, you already know how to breathe. You're doing it right now! But learning how to breathe in yoga practice can help you notice how your breathing changes when you're anxious or upset. Often, when you start to feel nervous or uncomfortable, your breathing may get faster and you might not breathe as deeply. Once you tune in to your breath, you can try belly breathing.
There are many different yoga poses. Some can help you stretch the neck, shoulders and back, which are most likely to get tense when you are nervous or stressed.
Try these two yoga poses when you want to de-stress yourself:
Surprise/Sourpuss: Open your mouth wide and bug out your eyes, then scrunch your face up into a little ball and pucker your lips. Alternate back and forth between "surprise" and "sourpuss." Do this while you're studying at home to help loosen up your face and jaw, which can get really tense while you're studying. If you have a study partner, make a game of it! Who can make the silliest face?
Shoulder gymnastics: Do a few gentle shoulder and neck rolls right before a test to keep your shoulders nice and loose while you work. You can even do them during a test if you need a refreshing break.
Have Fun With Yoga
Yoga can help you in serious ways, but it also can be a lot of fun. You can smile during yoga, and even laugh, which is a great stress reliever too. Yoga can be done alone or with friends. And you can do it at home, at a yoga studio, or in the park.
We'll end with a special Sanskrit greeting — namaste (say: nah-mus-tay). It's traditionally said at the end of a yoga practice and it means the light inside of me bows to the light inside of you. Namaste. | <urn:uuid:2d3da1dc-f6aa-4a76-9ef9-4db004955e54> | 2013-05-18T17:52:08Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Iron is a necessary mineral for body function and good health. Every red blood cell in the body contains iron in its , the pigment that carries oxygen to the tissues from the lungs. But a lack of iron in the blood can lead to iron-deficiency anemia, which is a very common nutritional deficiency in children.
About Iron-Deficiency Anemia
The body needs iron to make hemoglobin. If there isn't enough iron available, hemoglobin production is limited, which in turns affects the production of red blood cells (RBCs). A decreased amount of hemoglobin and RBCs in the bloodstream is known as anemia. Because RBCs are needed to carry oxygen throughout the body, anemia results in less oxygen reaching the cells and tissues, affecting their function.
Iron-deficiency anemia (IDA), often caused by insufficient iron intake, is the major cause of anemia in childhood. It has become much less common in the United States over the past 30 years, primarily due to iron-fortified infant formulas and cereals.
Iron-deficiency anemia doesn't develop immediately. Instead, a person progresses through stages of iron deficiency, beginning with iron depletion, in which the amount of iron in the body is reduced while the iron in RBCs remains constant. If iron depletion isn't corrected, it progresses to iron deficiency, eventually leading to IDA.
Causes of IDA
Iron-deficiency anemia can be the consequence of several factors, including:
insufficient iron in the diet
poor absorption of iron by the body
ongoing blood loss, most commonly from menstruation or from gradual blood loss in the intestinal tract
periods of rapid growth
A diet low in iron is most often behind IDA in infants, toddlers, and teens. Kids who don't eat enough or who eat foods that are poor sources of iron are at risk for developing the condition. Poverty is a contributing factor to IDA because families living at or below the poverty level may not be getting enough iron-rich foods.
Iron deficiency can also cause the body to absorb more lead, which increases the risk of lead poisoning in kids, especially those living in older homes. The combination of IDA and lead poisoning can make kids very ill and can put them at risk for learning and behavioral problems.
During infancy and adolescence, the body demands more iron. Kids are at higher risk for IDA through these periods of rapid growth because they may not be getting enough iron in their diet to make up for the increased needs.
In infants, discontinuing iron-fortified formula and introducing cow's milk before 12 months can lead to IDA. Cow's milk is low in the iron necessary for infant growth and development and it often replaces the consumption of iron-rich foods. Milk decreases the absorption of iron and can also irritate the lining of the intestine, causing small amounts of bleeding. This slow, gradual loss of blood in the stool — combined with low iron intake — may eventually result in iron deficiency and anemia.
Prematurity and low birth weight are other factors that put an infant at risk for IDA. Before birth, full-term, normal-weight babies have developed iron stores that can last them 4 to 6 months. Because preemies don't spend as much time in the uterus getting nutrients from the mother's diet, their iron stores are not as great and are often depleted in just 2 months.
Kids between 1 and 3 years old are at risk of iron deficiency and iron-deficiency anemia, even though it isn't a period of exceptional growth. Most toddlers are no longer consuming iron-fortified formula and infant cereal, and they aren't eating enough iron-rich foods to make up the difference. Toddlers also tend to drink a lot of cow's milk, often more than 24 ounces a day, an amount that injures the lining of the stomach causing chronic blood loss leading to iron deficiency.
During the first stages of puberty, when a lot of growth occurs, boys are at risk of iron deficiency anemia. But adolescent girls are at higher risk than boys for IDA because of smaller iron stores and the iron lost in the blood in their monthly menstrual flow. Many girls also tend to consume a diet low in iron.
Many kids with iron deficiency don't show any symptoms because the body's iron stores are depleted slowly. As the anemia progresses, you may recognize some of the following symptoms in your child:
fatigue and weakness
pale skin and mucous membranes
rapid heartbeat or a new heart murmur (detected in an exam by your child's doctor)
dizziness or a feeling of being lightheaded
Rarely, a person with IDA may experience pica, a craving to eat nonfood items such as paint chips, chalk, or dirt. Pica may be caused by a lack of iron in the diet.
Iron-deficiency anemia is often first noticed during a routine exam. Because IDA symptoms, such as fatigue and decreased appetite, are common to many conditions, the doctor will need more information to make a diagnosis. If IDA is suspected, the doctor will probably ask questions about your family's diet.
To diagnose iron deficiency, one of these blood tests will probably be done:
A complete blood count (CBC) may reveal low hemoglobin levels and low hematocrit (the percentage of the blood made up of RBCs). The CBC also gives information about the size of the RBCs; those with low hemoglobin tend to be smaller and each cell contains less hemoglobin.
The reticulocyte count measures how fast these immature RBCs are produced. In IDA, they're made too slowly in the bone marrow to reach a normal level.
Serum iron directly measures the amount of iron in the blood, but may not accurately reflect how much iron is concentrated in the body's cells.
Serum ferritin reflects total body iron stores. It's one of the earliest indicators of depleted iron levels, especially when used in conjunction with other tests, such as a CBC.
The doctor may also do a stool test because IDA can be caused by gradual loss of small amounts of blood through the gastrointestinal tract. Since the blood may not be visible, a stool sample is placed on a special paper card and a drop of testing solution is applied. A color change indicates the presence of blood.
Even though most cases of IDA are the result of poor dietary iron intake, diet changes alone usually aren't enough to replenish depleted iron stores. Likewise, multivitamins with iron aren't adequate for kids with IDA who have such low iron stores, so a separate daily iron supplement may be required.
It's extremely important to remember that your child should not be given potent iron supplements without first consulting a doctor. Taking too much iron is a major cause of serious poisoning in children, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
Iron is best absorbed on an empty stomach, because it can occasionally cause stomach upset. Kids who experience stomach problems when taking iron supplements may need to take them with a small amount of food. Iron should not, however, be given with milk or caffeinated beverages, which will interfere with absorption. Vitamin C enhances iron absorption, so try to include plenty of sources of vitamin C in your child's diet.
After the first month on iron supplements, your doctor may want to repeat the blood tests to check that hemoglobin and hematocrit levels are improving. If there's a good response, the doctor will probably continue the iron supplement for several more months. Once corrected, iron stores can be maintained with an iron-rich diet. About 6 months after discontinuing iron therapy, the doctor may want to recheck your child's hemoglobin.
Rarely, IDA is so severe and possibly life-threatening that hospitalization and a blood transfusion may be required.
The effects of IDA will depend on the duration and severity of the anemia. If left untreated, it may lead to behavioral or learning problems. These may not be reversible, even with later iron supplementation.
But in most cases, IDA is preventable by following some basic recommendations:
Infants younger than 1 year old should drink only breast milk or an infant formula supplemented with iron. It is important for breastfed infants to receive iron-fortified solid foods starting at about 6 months of age.
Kids under 2 years old should have no more than 24 ounces of cow's milk a day. As noted earlier, milk can inhibit absorption of iron, and drinking too much milk can dampen a child's appetite for other iron-rich foods. In addition, too much cow's milk has been shown to irritate the gastrointestinal tract, which may cause intestinal bleeding — a cause of iron loss.
Iron-fortified products such as cereal can be a great way to get kids — especially those under 2 years old — to get more iron.
A variety of foods can provide great sources of iron: lean meats; egg yolks; broccoli, spinach, and other green leafy vegetables; dried peas and beans; blackstrap molasses; raisins; and whole-grain bread.
Make sure kids or teens on a vegetarian diet get enough iron. Because iron from meat sources is more easily absorbed than iron from plant sources, you may need to add iron-fortified foods to their diet.
Proper nutrition, which includes a diet rich in iron, is important for all kids. Establishing good eating habits early in life will help to prevent iron deficiency and iron-deficiency anemia. | <urn:uuid:f96dfc9f-67be-4c8a-b55e-f5c4f25d8bbb> | 2013-05-18T18:08:31Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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I recently talked to a number of Rails developers about their general approach to testing some new functionality they're about to code. I asked these developers if they found it to be more useful to start testing from the bottom-up or top-down. I suggested to them that, since Rails uses the MVC pattern, it's easy to think of the view, or user interface, as the "top", and the model as the "bottom". Surprisingly, nearly every developer that I asked this question of answered that they prefer to start from the bottom, or model, and test upwards. Nearly every one! I expected that I'd get a much more mixed response than I have. In fact, I think that the correct place to start testing is precisely at the highest level possible, to reduce the risk of building software based on incorrect assumptions of how best to solve a user requirement.
Bottom-up testing implies bottom-up design in TDD. In bottom-up design, a developer would probably consider the high-level objectives and break them up into manageable components that interact with each other to provide the desired functionality. The developer thinks about how each component will be used by its client components, and tests accordingly.
The problem with the bottom-up approach is that it's difficult to really know how a component needs to be used by its clients until the clients are implemented. To consider how the clients will be implemented, the developer must also think about how those clients will be used by their clients. This thought process continues until we reach the summit of our mighty design! Hopefully, when the developer is done pondering, they can write a suite of tests for a component which directly solves the needs of its client components. In my experience, however, this is rarely the case. What really happens is that the lower-level components tend either to do too much, too little, or the right amount in a way that is awkward or complicated to make use of.
The advantage of bottom-up testing is that, since we're starting with the most basic, fundamental components, we guarantee that we'll have some working software fairly quickly. However, since the software being written may not be closely associated with the high-level user requirements, it may not produce results that are necessarily valuable to the user. A simple client could quickly be written which demonstrates how the components work to the user, but that's besides the point unless the application being developed is a simple application. In such a case, the bottom-level of components are probably close enough to the top-level ones that there is little risk involved in choosing either the bottom-up or top-down approach.
Unless you're writing a small application, the code is probably going to have to support unforeseen use cases. When this comes as a result of ungrounded assumptions about the software that's already been written, this can mean a lot of rework. I can tell you from experience, once you realize that your lower-level components don't fit the bill for the higher levels in the system, it can be quite a chore to go back and fix, remove, or replace all of that unnecessary or incorrect code.
Top-down testing implies top-down design in TDD. Following the top-down approach, the developer will pick the highest level of the system to be tested; that is to say, the part of the system that has the closest correlation to the user requirements. This approach is sometimes referred to as Behavior Driven Development. Whatever it's called, the point is that you test the most critical parts of the application first.
Since software is often written for human users, the most critical parts usually involve the front-end as it relates to the value being provided by the system being developed. When testing from the top-down, the effort is the inverse of bottom-up testing: Instead of spending a lot of time thinking about how the components to be developed will be used by other components to be developed, the focus is on how the user needs to interact with the system. Testing involves proving that the system supports the required usability. For an application with a graphical front-end, this might involve testing for a minimal version of that front-end.
The disadvantage of top-down testing is that you can end up with a lot of stubbed or mocked code that you then have to go back and implement. This means it might take longer before you have software that actually does something besides pass tests. However, there are ways that you can minimize this sort of recursive development problem.
One way to minimize the time between starting development of a feature and demonstrating functionality that is valuable to the user is to focus on a thin slice of the overall architectural pie of the application. For example, there may be a number of views that need to be implemented before the system provides some major piece of functionality. However, the developer can focus on one view at a time, or one part of the view. That way, the number of components that need to be implemented before the system does something useful is small; ideally, one component in each architectural layer that I need build out, and often times only a part of the overall functionality of each component.
Another way to minimize the amount of time before the system does something useful is to code a small bit of functionality without worrying about breaking the problem up into classes until you have some tested, working code to analyze. You can then use established methods for refactoring to bring the code to an acceptable level of quality.
The advantage of top-down testing is that you write functionality that solves the most critical functionality first. This generally means starting development at a high level. When the system eventually does something besides pass tests, what it does will provide value to its users. Additionally, because development starts at a high level, the code that is written is based on the current understanding of the problem, and not on assumptions. This guarantees that the tests and code that are written are not superfluous.
The challenge with top-down testing is that you must be highly disciplined to ensure that the code you write is being refactored and is properly evolving into a cohesive domain model for the application. This is compared with bottom-up testing, where you start with the domain model and build your system around it. Either way, you're going to be refactoring code. The difference is in where the time in refactoring is spent. In my experience, when doing bottom-up testing, more time is spent correcting incorrect assumptions about how the domain model will be used than on actually improving code that already works to solve the user requirements. In order to avoid making assumptions about the code being written, it must be written at the level that is closest to providing actual value to the end-user. In so doing, the developer focuses on continuous refinement of code that already provides value, as opposed to speculative design and development. | <urn:uuid:4174f7f3-2a6a-49ea-80aa-586de281889d> | 2013-05-18T17:27:01Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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When Jenny confronts the General for the last time, he is reading "It Can't Happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis.
A worker is paged aboard Sky One to report to the juke box because it is stuck on "Moonlight at the Oasis"
When Jenny tries to access information about Michael Knight, the names on the screen are: Owen Goodman, Michael Knight, Chris Jacobson, Robert Lewis, Danielle Most, Juliana Orosz, Michael Schlein
A terrorist group called "Fallen Nation" kidnaps General Stephen Butler, a famous war hero and former senior officer of Jenny. The General mysteriously escapes, and asks Jenny to rejoin his team as he tries to find out more about Fallen Nation. He questions the leadership of Kyle, saying he heard that Kyle hasn't been the same since his "accident". Jenny assures the general that Kyle is just as capable as he was during his days with the C.I.A.
The terrorists cause a state-wide black-out throughout Virginia, and the General's popularity rises as the president is helpless to stop Fallen Nation. Trek and Erica kidnap the General's right-hand man, Lieutenant Davis, whom they suspect is involved with Fallen Nation. He confesses that General Butler himself is behind the blackout, in an attempt to keep the armed foces occupied. The general plans to launch a nuclear missile to destroy Washington D.C., and then use his popularity to become the new leader of the country.
Trek and Dante break into the missile launch site, but are unable to stop the launch. Trek manages to have the missile self-destruct by, as he later explains, typing in his mother's birthday and hoping for the best.
Kyle asks Jenny why she left the general to join Team Knight Rider. She only says "I have my reasons". She discreetly tries to use the computer to find information on Michael Knight, but is told she needs higher clearance to access that information. She thought her level-5 clearance was the highest clearance available.
Debut: Five super-intelligent vehicles are driven by five highly trained operatives who take over when conventional law-enforcement agencies fail. In the opener, Jenny (Christine Steel) tests her loyalty to a former Marine commander embroiled in an anti-Government plot. Kyle: Brixton Karnes. Duke: Duane Davis. | <urn:uuid:a9f362e0-e45f-4ac0-aaa3-3c583ee12094> | 2013-05-18T17:37:44Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Thank you very much for posting this. It answers a lot of questions.I doubt I'll be able to use this camera, though. Had it been equipped with the red window, I probably could have cobbled something together: I have most of a roll of 46mm film in the freezer. Unfortunately it seems to need the perforations, which means it won't work reliably with anything but 102, which has been unavailable since before my grandfather was old enough to vote... I suppose I could get a hole puncher and make my own perfs, or (easier) just count the turns of the key and estimate. Thanks again. | <urn:uuid:5a3721fd-850d-4578-85de-b2a6729d83fd> | 2013-05-18T18:05:54Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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You've heard it before...."Put your John Hancock here". What does it mean? I mean really? What does it mean? There's gotta be a story behind it. Betsy Ross was never hired by the government to sew the flag, so did she? Ok, I'm getting off track. Why is John Hancock's signature so big, why don't we say "Put your Thomas Jefferson here?
It's a neat story about American brashness, but it isn't very accurate. The truth is a tad less dramatic. Snopes.com explains that Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, gave a super-sized signature not because he was itching for a fight with the king, but because, among other things, he happened to be the first person to sign the document. | <urn:uuid:8c7d0389-2921-4d6d-b02c-ead5c824e588> | 2013-05-18T17:48:55Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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The sun unleashed a cosmic double whammy Tuesday (March 6), erupting with two major flares to cap a busy day of powerful solar storms. One of the flares is the most powerful solar eruption of the year, so far.
Both of the huge flares ranked as X-class storms, the strongest type of solar flares the sun can have. They followed several weaker, but still powerful, sun storms on Tuesday and came just days after another major solar flare on Sunday night.
The first big solar storm was also the most powerful one, ranking as an X5.4-class flare after erupting at 7:02 p.m. EST (0002 March 7 GMT), according to an alert from the Space Weather Prediction Center operated by the National Weather Service. It is the strongest solar flare yet for 2012. The second event occurred just over an hour later, reaching a maximum strength of X1.3.
According to astronomer Tony Phillips, the big X5.4 solar flare erupted from the giant active sunspot AR1429, which was also responsible for the major sun storm on Sunday.
When aimed directly at Earth, X-class solar flares can endanger astronauts and satellites in orbit, interfere with satellite communications and damage power grids on Earth. They can also amplify the Earth’s display of northern and southern lights, also known as auroras. Charged particles from the solar storms can interact with Earth’s upper atmosphere, resulting in a glow that is typically visible to observers at high northern or southern latitudes.
Source: Yahoo News
Image: Space Weather | <urn:uuid:ddb30c77-b5b4-48d1-919d-cdc2060b4a1f> | 2013-05-18T18:06:10Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Kukla's Korner Hockey
by Phil Davies on 09/28/10 at 10:25 PM ET
If there was ever a National team program historically greater than the sum of its parts, it would be Team Finland. Despite not having the offensive depth of many of their Elite Seven rivals, the Finnish National Team has repeatedly fared well in recent international best-on-best competition. After enduring many decades of lopsided defeats internationally at the hands of Canada, the former Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and longtime nemesis Sweden, the Finnish hockey program made great strides in the 1990’s, culminating with a World Championship in 1995. In addition, Finland has won more Olympic Hockey medals (1 silver, 2 bronze), than any other nation, since the introduction of NHL players to the Games in 1998.
Finland’s success can be attributed to a strong emphasis on teamwork and the fact that unlike their European rivals, hockey is indisputably the number one sport in their homeland, which has led to the implementation of adequately funded development programs and a strong domestic league in SM-liiga. More than any other European team, Finland employs a fast skating, tight forechecking, North American style of play, augmented by strong defensive zone coverage and consistently elite goaltending. The rinks in Finland have been adjusted to enhance the tight forechecking style of play, by adopting a size that is halfway between the dimensions of NHL and IIHF standards. Furthermore, in an effort to aid the National Team’s development programs, numerous goaltending schools have been created, and often led, by the country’s top puck stoppers. This has led to the emergence of many elite young goalies in the NHL, such as Tuukka Rask, Pekke Rinne, Antti Niemi and perhaps Kari Lehtonen, if he can find health and consistency in a Dallas Stars uniform.
Despite the growth of the National program, the recent international economic crisis has greatly affected domestic hockey in Finland, as one of their top teams; the Espoo Blues, announced a fire sale of players due to financial constraints during the 2009/10 season. How the economic crisis affects Finnish and other European hockey programs, will greatly determine their stature on the ice for years to come. For now, a more pressing concern is the changing of the guard on the National Team, as legendary players Teemu Selanne, Jere Lehtinen, and team captain; Saku Koivu reach the twilight of their careers. However, not all is lost with the emergence of Saku’s brother Mikko Koivu, as well as Tuomo Ruutu and Olli Jokinen as elite National Team members.
Filed in: Non-NHL Hockey, International Hockey, | KK Hockey | Permalink
Tags: antti+niemi, dallas+stars, espoo+blues, iihf, jere+lehtinen, kari+lehtonen, mikko+koivu, olli+jokinen, olympic+hockey, pekke+rinne, saku+koivu, sm-liiga, teemu+selanne, tuomo+ruutu, tuukka+rask
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Most Recent Blog Posts
About Kukla's Korner Hockey
Paul Kukla founded Kukla’s Korner in 2005 and the site has since become the must-read site on the ‘net for all the latest happenings around the NHL.
From breaking news to in-depth stories around the league, KK Hockey is updated with fresh stories all day long and will bring you the latest news as quickly as possible.
Email Paul anytime at firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:9ecb9368-1975-4b4e-bb11-30de00905209> | 2013-05-18T18:07:18Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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1. Take a break. People often push work and chores to the weekend, but if possible this time should be dedicated to rest, relaxation and doing the things that you enjoy most.
2. Prepare for Monday on Friday. Take the time on Friday morning to prepare for the following workweek. Simply scheduling important tasks can significantly reduce worry, allowing you to fully enjoy your time off.
3. Give yourself something to look forward to. By striking a balance of planning something you love for the weekend and allowing time for spontaneity, you can maximize the positive emotions that come from anticipation.
For more information and to see a larger version of this graphic, visit news.hampton.com/weekendstateofmind. | <urn:uuid:f78e74d7-4e4b-453a-83f9-201a3c0d4643> | 2013-05-18T18:07:54Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Putin Remains Adamant:
No Regime Change in Syria
June 8, 2012 (EIRNS)Russian President Vladimir Putin used the occasion of his first overseas trip taking office, to forcefully assert that Russia will not allow any foreign military intervention for regime change in Syria. First in Berlin, during his meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel on June 1, and later in the day in Paris with President François Hollande, Putin stressed that his government will block any attempt to push a military option through the United Nations Security Council.
Ever since the massacre at Houla on May 25, Britain, France, Germany, and the United States have been pressing for sharp Security Council action against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, claiming that it was government loyalists who carried out the massacre. In reality, there is no evidence supporting this claim. Indeed, the initial investigation by a Syrian commission, detailed a heavily armed rebel assault on the Houla and two nearby villages, beginning with coordinated assaults on five police compounds.
Nonetheless, the commitment to overthrow President Assad has escalated from several leading NATO nations, in particular, France and Turkey. During the joint press conference, held by the Russian and French leaders, Hollande stated that no progress in Syria is possible until Assad is removed from power, while Putin defiantly made clear that France has no right to demand regime change, and that such calls virtually assure that Syria and the broader region will descend into chaos.
That issue is at the center of a raging fight within the U.S. government. Following a May 30 Security Council briefing from Kofi Annan, U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice told reporters that if Russia and China continue to block UNSC action against Assad, the United States will seek an alternative venue for the overthrow of the Syrian government. Rice spoke under the presumption that she had the full backing of President Barack Obama, who has fully embraced the anti-nation-state doctrine of "humanitarian interventionism," otherwise known as "Responsibility to Protect" ("R2P"). What it comes down to is a doctrine of preventive war, which is explicitly banned by the UN Charter.
Directly opposed to that is the "Putin Doctrine," which rejects humanitarian interventionist regime change as a violation of the most fundamental rules of international conduct. In a speech in early May, Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev explicitly threatened that such military "humanitarian interventions" could lead to thermonuclear war.
Rice's outburst did not go unchallenged from within the Obama Administration itself. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have made clear that they are opposed to the R2P doctrine, and that they consider U.S. military-to-military relations with both Russia and China to be a priority for maintaining global stability. Within 36 hours of Rice's threats, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta delivered a contrary message, declaring that the U.S. has no intention of carrying out any military action against Syria.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently stressed that U.S.-Russian military cooperation is a top priority, with far more areas of agreement and cooperation than areas of dispute. He announced that he had invited his Russian counterpart, General Makarov, to Washington in early July, where he hopes to work out a mutually satisfactory understanding on the missile defense dispute. He acknowledged that the Russian concerns are legitimate, because in a later phase of deployment, Russian strategic ballistic missiles could be intercepted by the planned four-phase European ABM system. | <urn:uuid:a2aff13f-1c8d-429d-bbc1-f8153e9aa722> | 2013-05-18T17:48:04Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Release DetailsLABEL Deepsend
RELEASED ON 3/26/2005
Half Speed Ahead
posted on 4/2005 By:
Of all the hotly-debated topics that have stumped metal literati since the dawn of time, none have surfaced more often than this eternal conundrum- just what does "heavy" mean? What context should it be applied in? If I make extensive use of a word that nobody truly understands, that has such a subjective and tenuous significance to the individual, am I defeating the purpose of writing altogether? It's so goddamn hard trying to cohere on paper how music makes you feel from an instinctive perspective, and even harder when you perpetually have to come up with something more concrete than the dubious ambiguity of ''heavy''. So allow me to offer an opinion- ''heavy'' is, quite simply, how hard a record makes me bang my head. There is the casual, reasonably enthused nod, often accompanied by the requisite toe-tapping motion. There is the more dramatic, pronounced thrusting, often performed as a prelude to a KILLER riff that you know is about to erupt. Then, there is the full-blooded, unapologetic, horns in air, animalistic BANG, the bestial celebration of everything that ROCKS about aggressive music. To qualify as "heavy", you must overwhelm all my reasonable faculties and leave me no fathomable alternative BUT to bang my head in as bestial a fashion as humanly possible, regardless of the often embarassing consequences.
If I could provide a textbook audial example of "heavy", Rebreather would certainly qualify as one of the prime candidates. I'd like to issue a warning before you read further, though, I've been a HUGE fan of this band for a number of years now, and as such this review may not be quite as objective as I would like. Still, give Half Speed Ahead and I'm sure you'll see what I mean- it's hard NOT to gush when writing about a band as accomplished, as fervently dedicated to being as HEAVY as humanly possible, as obscenely extreme as Rebreather. This is a compilation of sorts, containing two ridiculously EVIL EPs in one caustic package.
The name of the game here is sludgecore- thick, viscous torrents of hideously distorted guitars, lurching, somnambulistic bass, crouching and ugly rhythms that wrap themselves around your skull, all coalescing into an absurdly nasty mass of hatred. Obviously, this is a bit of an anomaly coming from the same label that gave us Cinerary, Cock & Ball Torture, Scattered Remnants et cetera, but believe me, this outdoes ALL of said bands in pure sonic heft and cruelty. From the outset, Rebreather make it painfully obvious that they aren't here to make any friends- "Southdown" is an explosive BEHEMOTH of a track that snarls and grunts with primal bitterness, its tar-thick grooves trickling out your speakers, suffocating you with sheer malicious force. And the urgency in the vocals! While he doesn't offer the same dynamic range as, say, a Dax Riggs, Barley's vocals bear the same demonic, utterly disturbed quality, drenched in equal parts bile and Southern Comfort.
It will also become glaringly clear to you throughout the record that you haven't heard sludge this infectious since Eyehategod and Acid Bath. It will confound you how music this wrathful and corrosive could at the same time be so exquisitely catchy. Moments after the first hook of "Southdown" you'll find yourself thrashing around your room, dripping with sweat as you echo Barley's refrain of "GODDAMN!". Once you summon the nerve to move on to the next track , you realize that an hour has elapsed, and that you have in fact been engaged in a personal exorcism, "Southdown" serving as the anguished soundtrack to your own cathartic outbursts. You'd better believe that the rest of the album is just as wickedly hypnotic, toeing the line between haunting melody and vile misanthropy. Each deliberate, plodding note bleeds with genuine misery, each scream a lucid portrait of anger in all its nude, seething glory.
Yet, while so many of their ilk can be more easily described as Saint Vitus and Black Sabbath played at a slug's crawl, Rebreather's formula is evidently far more musical and diverse. This record runs the gamut from crusty Dystopia/Hawg Jaw/Fistula/Rue tendencies to more melodically-inclined Goatsnake and Sourvein sensibilities, injecting the despondent pop of Acid Bath, the utterly damaged delirium of Iron Monkey and a dark rhythmic edge that one could relate to Helmet, Unsane and Cable into a bowel-loosening mold. If you're a hardcore kid and enjoy Baroness, Kylesa and Cursed, I'm almost certain you'll find something to adore in this band, who ply a sound that is equally frightening, sulphuric and flat-out different.
I know it might seem like I'm handing out 666's a lot in my first week here, but I can with vehement honesty say that Half Speed Ahead was near the top of my Best Of list last year, and I thought it was my obligation, nay, DUTY, to spread the news as far as I possibly could, so these guys can make enough money to play up here in Toronto. Everything about this record is flawless- they manage to extract so much goddamn emotion out of stark rhythms and chords, to excavate so much fucking agony out of the gaping chasms that exist between each pounding riff.
I guarantee you, even if you hate the whole doom/sludge/stoner thing, if you have any interest in angry music, and fuck, if you're into metal you really should, you will ADORE this record, because it affirms HEAVY music's capacity to cohere and expel the rage that curdles within us all. This record is cavernous, perverse, ugly, just the way heavy music SHOULD be. If recent reports are to be believed, we can expect an even BETTER, Godflesh-tinged follow-up later this year. I thank the dark lord for the day I discovered this band.
Register to post comments. | <urn:uuid:6a4822c0-2e97-4564-ab5a-9d7524c51d33> | 2013-05-18T17:28:16Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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Mission Statement and Core Values of LEAD
LEAD builds the foundation for immediate and long-term leadership by developing thoughtful, responsible, and proactive student leaders for the University of La Verne and the greater community.
The LEAD program is based upon two main beliefs:
- Leadership can be taught through experiential and theoretical approaches applicable to student leaders and organizations.
- Leadership education efforts support and promote growth and development of the student, both in and out of the classroom environment, as an individual. | <urn:uuid:120170f9-8631-426c-8c69-17e9f8ecea5c> | 2013-05-18T17:27:32Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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This page allows you to see an interactive timeline of events and their correlating location on the map below. You can:
- Drag your mouse (left or right) over the timeline to view events. The events that took place during the days that you have selected will automatically populate in the map below.
- Click on a timeline event to show it plotted on the map.
- Click on the map items to open up a description and a link to more information on the incident." | <urn:uuid:d2d9bbad-5368-4dd4-9d94-12aa9e90758c> | 2013-05-18T17:56:53Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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We turn away to face the cold, enduring chill
As the day begs the night for mercy, love.
A sun so bright it leaves no shadows
Only scars carved into stone on the face of earth.
The moon is up and over One Tree Hill
We see the sun go down in your eyes.
You run like a river runs to the sea
You run like a river runs to the sea.
And in the world, a heart of darkness, a fire-zone
Where poets speak their heart then bleed for it
Jara sang, his song a weapon in the hands of love.
You know his blood still cries from the ground.
It runs like a river runs to the sea.
It runs like a river to the sea.
I don't believe in painted roses or bleeding hearts
While bullets rape the night of the merciful.
I'll see you again when the stars fall from the sky
And the moon has turned red over One Tree Hill.
We run like a river runs to the sea
We run like a river to the sea.
And when it's rainin', rainin' hard
That's when the rain will break a heart.
Rainin', rainin' in your heart
Rainin' in your heart.
Rainin', rain into your heart
Rainin', rainin', rainin'
Rain into your heart.
Rainin', ooh, rain in your heart, yeah.
Oh great ocean
Oh great sea
Run to the ocean
Run to the sea. | <urn:uuid:3df1f0e0-9273-469d-a16d-9345f543089e> | 2013-05-18T17:50:43Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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The eustachian tube is a small canal that connects the middle ear to the back of the nose and upper throat (nasopharynx). Its purpose is to equalize the air pressure in the middle ear with the pressure outside it.
Eustachian tube dysfunction (ETD) occurs when the tube fails to open during swallowing or yawning. This results in a difference between the air pressure inside and outside the middle ear. It causes discomfort in the ear and temporary hearing problems.
The ear may feel blocked if the pressure outside the ear changes, but the pressure inside the ear does not change. When this happens, the eardrum cannot vibrate normally. It often occurs during altitude changes, like flying in an airplane, driving on steep hills, or scuba diving. Swallowing, yawning, or chewing usually make the symptoms go away.
ETD occurs if the tube is blocked or swollen, trapping air and fluids in the middle ear. This causes symptoms to continue beyond a few hours. Sometimes it can lead to ear damage.
A risk factor is something that increases your chance of getting ETD. Tell your doctor if you have any of these factors:
- Activities with large, rapid altitude changes, such as flying in an airplane or scuba diving
- Allergy, cold, or other upper respiratory infection
- Ear or sinus infection
- Narrow eustachian tube
- Presence of obstructing tumors in the nasopharynx
- Children with large adenoids
- Age: Children (Their eustachian tubes are narrower.)
- Environmental allergies
Symptoms can include:
- Feeling of fullness or clogging in the ear
- Discomfort or pain in the ear
- Hearing loss
- Ringing in the ear (tinnitus)
- Symptoms cannot be relieved by swallowing, yawning, or chewing
- Pain if the blockage results in an infection
Your doctor will ask about your symptoms and medical history, and perform a physical exam. A lighted instrument, called an otoscope, will be used to look inside your ear. The doctor will check for a slight bulge around the eardrum, fluid, and swelling. If your case is severe, your may need to see an otolaryngologist, a doctor who specializes in ear disorders.
Other possible tests include:
- Tympanogram—to measure pressure in the ear canal and movement of the eardrum
- Audiogram—to measure hearing
- Examination of the nose and the back of the nose
To deal with ear clogging, discomfort, or pain, you can try:
- Swallowing, yawning, or chewing gum to relieve the pressure
- Clearing your ears by breathing in and then gently breathing out while holding your nostrils and mouth closed
If the symptoms do not go away within a few hours or are severe, your doctor may recommend the following medications:
- Nasal or oral decongestants
- Oral antihistamines
- Nasal steroids to relieve nasal congestion and enable the eustachian tube to open
- Pain medications (eg, acetaminophen or ibuprofen)
In rare cases, a myringotomy may be necessary. The doctor makes an incision in the eardrum to allow the pressure to equalize and the fluid to drain.
To help reduce your chances of getting ETD, take the following steps:
- Avoid flying in an airplane or going scuba diving if you have allergies or a cold.
- Use decongestants or antihistamines if you have an allergy or a cold.
- Yawn or chew gum. Encourage swallowing by sucking on hard candy or drinking water.
- When taking off and landing, clear your ears by breathing in and then gently breathing out while holding your nostrils and mouth closed.
- Try special earplugs that slowly equalize the pressure in your ear. These earplugs can be found at drugstores and airports.
- Reviewer: Kari Kassir, MD
- Review Date: 09/2012 -
- Update Date: 00/91/2012 - | <urn:uuid:6440c288-11fd-43d3-a439-73ffd6ec4041> | 2013-05-18T17:18:09Z | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | [
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