fasttext_score float32 0.02 1 | id stringlengths 47 47 | language stringclasses 1 value | language_score float32 0.65 1 | text stringlengths 49 665k | url stringlengths 13 2.09k | nemo_id stringlengths 18 18 | is_filter_target bool 1 class | word_filter bool 2 classes | word_filter_metadata dict | bert_filter bool 2 classes | bert_filter_metadata dict | combined_filter bool 2 classes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
0.023847 | <urn:uuid:6aa2dc1a-c9a2-4fe4-bdbd-c24c87fa8b7a> | en | 0.967025 | League of Legends Community
- - Made myself look like a fool in DoTA2..... (http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=2789660)
Postal Twinkie 11-12-2012 10:14 AM
My only MOBA experience is LoL and about 2 games of HoN. That is it.
I was given a key to DoTA2 by my brother and started to play a few games with him. Great game, having lots of fun, no Flash, etc. Going in I knew it was a pretty brutal game and not forgiving of mistakes, but I was managing. I am still not used to the massive HUD or the crazy as all hell store layout, but hopefully those are more polished.
Flash forward several games and I am playing top lane with a friend of my brothers. I am just getting destroyed, well, we all sort of are, and I start smack talking the other team. Just poking a little fun at them, nothing over the top, all in good fun. Well the other team didn't respond, so I jabbed again, tossed a few one liners at them. It was at this moment my team started laughing at me, over voice chat, actually laughing. The Australian guy about fell out of his chair laughing at me as it seems. Why?! I was perplexed....
But not for long....
As it turns out, I wasn't made aware of this, we were playing against bots. Yes, the AI controlled bots. The bots that were ganking, warding, trapping, and just utterly destroying my face. So much so that I thought they were real players, because bots just aren't supposed to be that good!
Bots that were so good I was taunting them and smack talking to them, all to the utter delight of my own team! Thank you Valve, for making me look like a fool!
Light LaserTower 11-12-2012 10:19 AM
LOL, we need those bots.
MasterfulWizard 11-12-2012 10:19 AM
lol that is hilarious
Exoctane 11-12-2012 10:28 AM
That's quite awesome...I agree with light, bots like that would be awesome
Postal Twinkie 11-12-2012 10:31 AM
These were the "medium" bots. According to everyone else the hard bots would make me cry in a corner...
They make everyone cry in the corner.
Jaykoboy 11-12-2012 11:16 AM
As someone once said, the bots in DotA make the bots in League look like they were programmed by feral cats.
lmbajoe 11-12-2012 12:32 PM
Haha that's awesome
Jesus the Friend 11-12-2012 12:32 PM
Originally Posted by Jaykoboy (Post 31315765)
+1 lol
shal128 11-12-2012 12:44 PM
I feel you... Yesterday I played against Unfair bots (they behave like the hard ones, but getting around 30% extra gold and XP). Despite having 2 friends that are pretty experienced on my team, we won by a hair's breadth (and only because we split pushed and evaded frontal fights). I'm so scared of them now.
Fox P McCloud 11-12-2012 12:50 PM
Yup; DotA bots' behavior is top notch; they know how to stack jungle camps and will even do Roshan when it's advantageous.
Unfortunately, in the LoL topic about AI, we were given a pat answer and told not to ask any questions about DotA bots, something along the lines of "two reasons: town scroll and CC; if you don't know what this means or can't figure it out, then I suggest you look into the difference between the two systems".
I'm really not sure what that means, but it sounds like deflecting, to me.
(c) 2008 Riot Games Inc | http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/printthread.php?s=&t=2789660 | dclm-gs1-110760002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.020747 | <urn:uuid:59e1b2ce-38fc-4270-aaaa-aa7987e04940> | en | 0.901403 | XPlease update your browser for a better experience on Gizmodo.
The Social Media Hotels Keep On Coming
People have instagrammed and live tweeted from pretty much everywhere. The peak of a mountain, the birth of a baby, the toilet. Users don't seem to crave permission. But somehow the idea for a social media-themed hotel keeps coming up, and The New York Times notes that another one started in Majorca this summer. Read… 10/06/13 1:41pm 10/06/13 1:41pm
DesignBy Jessanne Collins - Mental Floss
How to Build an Ice Hotel
In the tiny arctic village of Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, dusk lasts most of the day at this time of year. Against the dramatic and ever-evolving pink and purple sky sits a structure that looks like a cross between a sleek nightclub and an igloo from outer space: Lapland's storied IceHotel, the world's largest and… Read… 3/01/13 2:00pm 3/01/13 2:00pm | http://gizmodo.com/tag/hotels | dclm-gs1-110850002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.019975 | <urn:uuid:7349db7c-6762-418f-b372-f0e296192ffa> | en | 0.965507 | 'Paying' the saints for their help
A recent e-mail conversation with Rose Weaver regarding saint work got me thinking and I would like to post something about the various ways of 'paying' saints for any work they do when you petition them. There is so much information about this on the various social networks and websites and a lot of it can be quite unreliable, frankly.
So firstly before we go into what to pay - it's important that you know you shouldn't 'overfeed' spirits by giving them too much too often (foodstuff and other things). Don't overfeed any spirit. That's one of the first things I was taught as an espiritista. It's counter intuitive because you think that if you ply a spirit with goodies they will favour you more. But for some reason it doesn't work that way. This well-meaning approach seems to make them 'lazy', which is to say, slow to get moving. Why bother if you get loaded with a ton of free stuff anyway, right? It's especially easy to get carried away when you first start with spirit work. I know I did.
You need to find a balance.
Keep it simple but always keep your word. If you promise X, give them X. And it doesn't need to be that extravagant. There will be times that you want to promise something big but that should be for those truly important things. And sure, you might want to make a general show of appreciation by doing or giving them something special once in a while and that's perfectly acceptable - but generally speaking it's better to keep it moderate.
With that side-point about overfeeding out of the way, lets look at the saints specifically:
Some saints certainly do have particular things that they like to receive as offerings (cake, money etc.) It's always good to research the saint you are working with and find out what their traditional associations/likes are and give them those things as payment. It sounds like common sense but a lot of people don't bother. What I see a lot of these days, and find quite irksome, is people simply posting "Thank you St. X!!" as a status update on facebook.
Seriously? You think the saints are on facebook reading status updates?
But I am "spreading their name and fame", I hear you say. Well, actually, only a few of saints are known to find that pleasing. How do we know? It's included in the catholic liturgies and prayers associated with them. I know that St. Expedite likes that, and probably St. Jude because he got a bad reputation due to his association with Judas the betrayer. Unless I am mistaken - there are at best one or two other saints who like publicity as thanks. As for the hundreds or thousands of other saints out there it just doesn't fit.
Also, it's kinda lazy. Traditionally you would publish a notice in a newspaper - but come on - a lousy facebook status update? (That reminds me - you should totally friend me on Facebook. Gordon says the age of blog is almost over and social media is where it's all going. I don't want to miss out). Your petition is fulfilled and all you can bring yourself to do is shuffle over to the computer in your pajamas and post a status update?!
I know I am going to get heat for saying this from all the facebook hoodoos who have popularised this practice but it has to be said: you can do better!
If you are entirely unsure what to offer the saint you are working with, rest assured all saints happily accept flowers. A nice bunch of flowers not only beautifies the altar it also raises the spiritual vibration of an area with its scent and freshness. You really can't go wrong there. Next, considering that these are saints - holy people canonised for their goodness and service - you could consider making a donation to a charity working in the area of their patronage.
This approach is definitely ratified by folk-catholic tradition too. Saint Anthony's Bread is an excellent example. This is a donation collected by churches in the name of St. Anthony and the money is then given to feed the poor. It is said that the practice started in 1263 after a child drowned near the Basilica while it was being built. Desperate, but strong in faith, the child's mother prayed to St. Anthony and promised that she would give to the poor an amount of corn equal to the child's weight if he returned the child to her. After hearing this promise St. Anthony restored the child to life and soon the practice of St. Anthony's Bread began.
Similarly, as thanks for granting your petition you could donate some time or money to a local addiction recovery program in the name of St. Jude, for instance. Or you could donate to a child protection program in the name of St. Michael. There are so many of these worthy charities that I can't think of a more wonderful, and magical, thing than to combine your saint work with kindness and service. Everyone wins!
'Choosing' Saints or Spirits
Every so often I will do work with a certain spirit or saint and when the client sees a pic of the working they will ask me "why did you use spirit/saint X for this job - I thought he/she was only good for Y?"
The idea that a spirit or saint is used for one thing and one thing only is problematic on many levels. Firstly, these are non-corporeal beings. We don't use them. We should discourage this language whenever possible. We pray for their aid, we beg for their intercession, at best we work with them - we certainly don't use them like kitchen appliances.
Secondly, a saint or spirit may be famous for working in a certain area but that doesn't mean that's all they can or will do. This is such a flawed, mechanistic, two dimensional way of looking at these beings - and one that reflects a fundamental misunderstanding about their underlying reality. Moreover, it's rather cynical if you think about it and does them a great disservice.
So I would like to suggest a different approach to this. Instead of looking at a saints 'stats' to see which would be good for your next working - far better, and more fruitful in terms of results, would be to take some time to consider with which saint it is that you have that special relationship and found your work on that. Because, after a while you will begin to notice some of them have a unique and powerful connection to you as a spiritual worker. This can manifest in a couple of ways.
For instance, you may find that contact with a certain spirit or saint comes to you by unusual means: you are gifted a statue; or you find a holy card in the street; you have a dream or vision about them or are otherwise brought into contact with them in some surprising and meaningful way. These kinds of events are special clues that a spirit is about to enter your spiritual framework, and would like to help in your work and establish a relationship with you.
The truth is that in reality the spirits and saints choose us.
You will find that a saint or spirit whom you form this kind of connection with (as apposed to the shopping for cewl powerz route) really moves and gets things done when you petition them. There is a potent flavour to any work you do with them because you know them very personally. What's more is you might find they will work in numerous different areas besides the thing that they are famous for. And they will begin showing you unique ways in which they will work for you alone.
I would like to dedicate this post to the most miraculous and marvellous Saint Joseph. This saint has blessed me by working in numerous different ways over the last couple of years and always startles me with his compassion and power. My his name be elevated in Gods celestial territory!
Prayer of St. Joseph
Let the spirits do the work
I sometimes get asked by curious people - how, exactly, I 'work' magic (as apposed to what methods/systems I employ).
In other words they want to know which inner methods I like to use. Do I visualise the outcome? Do I move 'energy' into the spell-work etc.
The truth is most of my work is done before I ever sew a bag or light a figural candle. I certainly don't visualise things or move energy or use any of those kinds of tricks anymore. I just put the working together using the right materials and techniques (candles, tying, cutting, nailing or whatever), whilst respectfully calling down my muertos - and they do all the work. I'm more like a 'magical event co-ordinator', you could say.
I certainly don't internally 'effort' with it at all because it doesn't make much of difference anymore. I just set up a material basis for a magical working, the so-called 'spell', and they take care of the rest.
My real job is to take care of them.
I feed them. I give them masses. I follow their instructions by creating dolls, pots and other vehicles that express their presence in my life. I activate them and materialise them in this world with dedicated, attentive and consistent service and in return they help me with my spiritual work. They do all the heavy lifting in that department, honestly.
This was the very first thing I noticed when I watched good espiritistas and other spiritual workers whom I admire, working: there was a matter-of-fact effortlessness about the process. The work was put together in a straightforward and often shockingly simple way and stuff was expected to happen. And did!
There was no big drama. A true elegance and economy of effort was plainly evident in the way they did things. And confidence. The relaxed confidence that comes from knowing that the spirits will take care of things because the spirits have been correctly cared for. | http://gnostic-conjure.blogspot.com/2012_01_01_archive.html | dclm-gs1-110860002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.045113 | <urn:uuid:2425eab0-d864-4e94-8514-d66c5b058518> | en | 0.978312 | Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu is Dead
The sad news filtered in early hours of today that ex Biafran warlord and Igbo statesman Chief Dim Emeka Odimegwu Ojukwu is dead.
According to the reports he died in the London hospital where he was receiving treatment for stroke. He was aged 78.
Ojukwu become famous after leading the then Southeast region of Nigeria to an almost 3 year civil war known as the Biafran war against the rest of Nigeria in a break away attempt.
Maja Umeh, a spokesman for Nigeria’s Anambra state, confirmed Ojukwu’s death Saturday. Anambra state, in the heart of what used to be the breakaway republic, had provided financial support for Ojukwu during his hospital stay.
Further comments are awaited from his family and the governments of the Southeast states.
• john fred
rest in peace. | http://infomister.com/2011/11/dim-odumegwu-ojukwu-is-dead/ | dclm-gs1-110990002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.940892 | <urn:uuid:28d5545a-560a-47db-a169-81a6071001bb> | en | 0.912021 | Buy some ammo and I get a piece of the action!
Put simply, Curse/Or is my novel-in-progress that is a mixture of urban fantasy and modern technology, told with a noir sensibility.
There are about three levels of meaning to its name: It's supposed to be a play on the word "cursor"; it's a reference to Boolean logic; and it suggests a kind of black magic as someone performs a curse on another. And that's kind of the nutshell synopsis of what's in my story -- magic, computer programming, and symbolism both literary and semantic.
It's a story about how the conceits of old magic can fit into today's technological culture. It's a story about the World Wide Web, and the identity of the Spider that sits at its center. It's a story that fuses the technical with the spiritual, and how that changes the paradigm of both.
It's the story of three people -- Yarrow, Camel, and Fulcrum -- who, like the magi of old, hide their true names behind pseudonyms, lest others attain power over them. But in today's world, true names are Social Security Numbers, power is identity theft and pseudonyms are internet handles.
It's a story that, at its heart, tries to address the growing mythology of the internet by finding parallels to older, darker folklore. If computer programmers are akin to wizards, regularly summoning and binding daemons to hex(code) their enemies' processes, then what nefarious purpose does spam serve?
Is LOLcat the Enochian of the internet?
And what happens when one of these adepts of the virtual realm achieves "realultimatepower"? Does he become a Merlin and try to usher in a golden age? Does he hoard mystic knowledge and power, like John Dee? Or does he fall prey to darker appetites, like Aleister Crowley or Anton La Vey?
It's sort of like what happens when you cross William Gibson, Tim Powers and Ken Hite. And hopefully, it will be more comprehensible than Hermann Hesse.
Welcome to Curse/Or. I hope you enjoy the ride.
The Novel:
Peeking behind the curtain: Notes and thoughts on how magic and other things work (spoiler heavy):
Creative Commons License | http://lurkingrhythmically.blogspot.com/p/curseor.html | dclm-gs1-111240002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.437 | <urn:uuid:4f0c3b5d-fbe2-441a-8eb9-1bdefa7a7747> | en | 0.803254 |
Solar Panel
(credit: Jupiter Images)
Edison H.S. Gets Solar Panels To Reduce Power Costs
The power of the sun will soon play a larger role in education at a Twin Cities school.
(credit: Jupiter Images)
Construction Begins On Midwest’s Largest Solar Panel
Construction has begun at the St. Paul RiverCentre on what will be the Midwest’s largest garden of thermal solar panels, able to generate 1 megawatt of energy and reduce carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to those expelled by 90 cars a year. | http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/tag/solar-panel/ | dclm-gs1-111310002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.030488 | <urn:uuid:9900fa93-c6de-46b0-8eef-c8c3528ef5fc> | en | 0.960151 | Smart SpendingSmart Spending
7 ways to commit financial suicide
By MSN Money Partner Nov 2, 2012 11:57AM
Len Penzo dot Com logoI recently got back from a vacation that included a family wedding on the central California coast and a sightseeing trip around the San Francisco Bay area.
Image: Couple arguing © CorbisOf course, one of the most popular attractions in San Francisco is the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge. It's absolutely breathtaking to behold in all its majesty.
The gorgeous span is also an extremely popular suicide location; more than 1,300 people have jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge since it was completed in 1937.
While most people would never consider committing physical self-destruction, more than a few folks unwittingly choose to commit financial suicide every day.
How so? Here are seven of the most popular methods:
Having children too early
There is nothing more destructive to one's financial future than bringing children into the world without having an established and stable means to support them. Raising children requires a tremendous investment, not only of money, but of time as well. Unfortunately, when those resources are in short supply, it becomes extremely difficult to start a business or gain the necessary experience, on-the-job training and/or education required for the type of career advancement opportunities that lead to significantly increased earning power.
Abusing credit cards
There are thousands upon thousands of careless people who have been driven to financial ruin by burying themselves under a mountain of debt via credit card abuse. In most cases, it's because they lacked the financial acumen and discipline to understand that credit cards must be treated with respect and used responsibly.
Maintaining financial dependency on others
We are constantly being admonished by officials to avoid feeding bears, squirrels and other wildlife in order to prevent them from eventually becoming dependent on handouts. For the exact same reason, I'm absolutely convinced that the longer we stay dependent on government assistance or friends and family for financial support, the tougher it becomes for us humans to achieve financial independence.
Failing to accurately track income and expenses
Trying to get a handle on your personal finances without knowing how much money you are earning and where it is all going is tantamount to trying to drive while blindfolded. People who fail to take the time to analyze their finances typically end up crashing and burning because they lack a means of ensuring they get the most from their income. As a result, they end up succumbing to a severe case of lifestyle inflation.
Setting down roots in the wrong location
Whether you realize it or not, one of the most critical financial decisions you'll ever make is where to live. True, sometimes we have little choice in the matter. However, it's important to keep in mind that choosing to live in a high-cost-of-living locale without the income to support such a lifestyle makes it extremely difficult not only to make ends meet, but also to accumulate wealth over the long haul.
Failing to establish a plan for the future
The young always seem to have more time than money, which is why financially important things like putting aside money for short- and longer-term emergencies -- or feathering a retirement nest egg -- often are never even considered until people approach their golden years. Of course, by then, it's usually much too late. The old bromide really is true: Failing to plan is the same thing as planning to fail.
Marrying the wrong person
Choosing a spouse is another epic decision with major implications. Remember: Marriage is a financial contract. As such, it can be a financially dangerous proposition. There are countless responsible people who ended up bankrupt becasue of the antics of a financially undisciplined spouse. And those who eventually recognize their matrimonial mistake after saying "I do," still often end up paying dearly. The average cost of a divorce is about $20,000, which just goes to show that the people who prosper from a divorce are usually the lawyers.
More from Len Penzo dot Com and MSN Money:
Nov 2, 2012 4:40PM
My husband and I married at age 21 and had our first child at age 22 and second at 24. I was a stay at home mom until my youngest was in first grade. I then got a job as a teacher's aide, so I could be on the same schedule as our children. Money was extremely tight, but, we learned to economize. It became a long lasting habit. Our family took frugal, but fun camping/hiking vacations, played chess and Monopoly and took advantage of borrowing books and movies from our library. We made our meals at home, with the occasional dinner out. We were involved in church and school activities. Our children got financial aid and merit scholarships to pay for college, in addition to small student loans. My husband got promoted in his company several times over the past 35 years. He went from making $16,000. in 1977 to $110,000 in 2012. We are still frugal, but have a good life. Our children are on their own, with good jobs. Now here is the point of my story: we have friends and relatives, like us in their late 50's. They either had children late in life, or not at all. They took expensive vacations, bought new cars, lots of clothes and lavish homes. They ate out often. Since the economy tanked in 2008, they have been struggling to get by financially. They never learned to economize when they were younger, because they didn't feel they had to. They got into the habit of spending money freely and sometimes foolishly. Now, they are under water on mortgages for houses that they can't afford, steeped in credit card debt and stating that they can't afford to retire. So, having children young is not necessarily financial suicide....but, not learning frugality when young, certainly can be.
Nov 5, 2012 8:24AM
Most of the time when you marry young you don't know who you are married to until they turn 28. I got married young also and my first wife was a lie, steal and cheat type. It takes two to be married and one cannot make it work alone. I paid child support on two children and raise a third a lone without any support from the mother. The judges were not kind to men in my day. You can work your way out financially but it does mean not much spare time. The wrong mate male or female is a big step backwards financially. How can you save or gain when you can't trust the one your with? Most must learn that it's not what you want but what you don't want in the other person that makes a successful marriage.
Nov 2, 2012 4:09PM
Being financially responsible, should be paramount in any relationship. Sex, don't pay the bills. Creditors could care less, how your world is rocked.
Nov 5, 2012 10:55AM
You left off cars for some reason. That is a mistake many people make over and over again. Too much car, financed, way too often. As I have become older, the less often I have spent on autos (and never new anymore). It really shows in my finances.
Nov 2, 2012 2:29PM
To be financially responsible is becoming an ever harder thing to do with the continued erosion of the median earning potential courtesy of ever more greedy elites who forever want to add another zero to their wealth. If one cannot generate a decent income, they are doomed to fail acquiring adequate wealth in their working lifetime and will be reliant on the mercy of the government safety nets. A return to feudal times with the loss of the middle class.
Nov 2, 2012 9:10PM
The 8th way to commit financial suicide is to sign-up with and allow FISHER INVESTMENTS, a financial advisory/money management firm (KEN FISHER, CEO and Principal Owner) to manage your money (investments ). After they have sucked the financial life out of you, you may literally want to commit suicide. Don't fall for their deceptive, slick "snake oil" ads smeared on almost every page of MSN Money and many other financial websites. Mr. Fisher has become a multi-billionaire (listed on Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans) by "investing" other peoples' money! BE AWARE and BEWARE of FISHER INVESTMENTS!
Don Moore
Nov 2, 2012 4:43PM
YES People...listen to this article and BE RESPONSIBLE FINANCIALLY...follow the example set forth by the American Financial industries where the experts know, Banks, Wall Street Financial whiz's (ala Bernie Madoff, a clown deemed brilliant for 20+ years by the pundits), Congress, the Federal Reserve, Mortgage Houses et al.
Nov 4, 2012 3:39PM
My wife loves giving every extra nickel to her church. The bills do not matter to her. As long as she gives that $500 a month everything is fine. Family comes second. It has thrown our finances into a mess. I am at wits end on this one. She will not even cut back.
Nov 2, 2012 8:42PM
In contra to this article, here are the top ways you can commit "character suicide:"
You place your personal finances above everyone else
You commit security fraud
You take a huge corporate bonus at the tax payers expense
You act like a miser and deny and begrudge charity to those less fortunate
You don't work a day in your life and complain about having to pay your employees a living wage and giving them benefits.
You refuse to enter into a committed relationship because you only want to spend your money for your own personal benefit.
All of us should place more value on moral character and less on financial character
Nov 3, 2012 12:46AM
The biggest issue of all these, and quite honestly the hardest thing to plan for, is picking the right spouse. Their is no magic formula for this. Divorce is hell on financial wealth building. Yes the perception is the man is the one who loses most but really both husband and wife lose horribly in a divorce. Even for those who remain in love, and in a happy marriage, it often does not turn out exactly how they pictured it. Now throw in a divorce rate in this nation that is 50% or higher and you can see how many folks end up a disaster. Their is no magic formula for marriage. Divorce hits all people equally. Those with solid moral back grounds are just as likely to get divorces as those with less than idea family background. I have always said marriage is crap shoot. Sometimes you hit sometimes you don't. The second leading cause of financial strain is lack of a defined pension. When companies get completely out of the pension business and only adopt 401k plans it forces the worker to save drastically for retirement, often having to pick additional 401k plans or mutual funds. I said it before, and I'll say it again, if all you have is one single 401k plan, nothing else, then you likely will never retire. The average 401k plan only produces about 200,000 dollars in a 30 year investment period. I'm talking the average company matching investment 401k plan. If you got a 401k plan with no matching then your be lucky to have a hundred thousand in 30 years. I sincerely hope that defined pension plans make a come back. Even if they only pay a couple thousand per month after 30 years it would beat any average 401k out their. A 401k was never designed to be your soul source of retirement. Thats why it's failing. Good Day, Joe.
Nov 2, 2012 8:28PM
Having children too early? Did I read that correctly? What age is one supposed to have children... 35... 37?? And when you're 55 and don't have a job as you've been laid off due to your age - oh that's right - that never happens.
Nov 5, 2012 6:07PM
I suggest you learn about Dave Ramsey. If you like what you see, it is easy enough to follow his advice. Basically he says track your money, don't spend more than you make, avoid debt and be an equal partner with you spouse on all financial matters. I'm not 100% on board but I'm trying. I'm close to being totally out of debt and I swear I will never go back. And on top of that, my life is the best it's ever been.
Nov 5, 2012 2:03PM
"7 ways to commit financial suicide"
1. Vote for Obama
2. Vote for Obama
3. Vote for Obama
4. Vote for Obama
6. Vote for Obama
7. Vote for Obama
Jan 4, 2013 2:10PM
This article missed the point, too late to start learning about financial basics when you are a so-called adult, "financial acumen" starts early on, taught by parents starting when kids put coins in the piggy bank. Huge mistake people make is not educating themselves about basic finances, show your kids by example, sadly you cannot teach common sense. The education is free at the public library (well your tax $$ pay for it if you use it or not), or maybe try community college, not the brokers seminars trying to sell you whatever pieces of the Brooklyn Bridge. Young folks who are financially dependant on the parents at 25 years old (unless they are seriously disabled), well somebody missed the boat 20 years ago. I was a barber, hub worked on a dairy farm, well below average incomes but in retirement we do OK, food on the table, no mortgage, all the bills paid and a couple dollars left in the checkbook, not how much we had but what we did with it. and smart enough to not live over our heads, life is good.
Nov 2, 2012 3:33PM
Its funny that it mentions kids... You know what? I waited 17 years in my marriage to have kids and it still is tough 10 years later because you cannot account for the variables they add to your life. Let alone the variables that life throws at you otherwise. I have a two sets of friends that have skated through life without job loss, or any other significant "X" factor that you cannot account for in your life... One set does not have kids and do not intend to have kids. I am happy for them for their good luck. Credit cards almost become a necessity in many ways as a result of having kids and just overall life situations. You cannot control those things.
Nov 5, 2012 12:12PM
The article is right on target, but what isn't is many decisions of major importance are made when a person is very young. The point being that maturity usually comes with age.
Anyway, why do any of you fools think the rest of us want to hear about your personal lives? Just a couple of sentences from any of you on any topic clearly indicates what a pack of losers you are.
Nov 2, 2012 5:28PM
I stopped reading this blogger but when I saw this post I didn't realize it was him. I don't need some condescending look-down-your-nose judgmental blogger telling me what to do. It's not advice, it's judgment. Don't marry the wrong person? Gee, that's an easy on to control because you always know what people are going to do. and if you make that mistake, it's all your fault. Please let's not post this blogger's "advice". We need real advice and not condescending opinion,. thanks.
Nov 5, 2012 5:44PM
"comfortable retirement" That's the problem right there. Not enough resources on three planets for all these decadent baby boomers to 'retire comfortably'
Feb 26, 2013 2:43PM
A few of these posts make a good point that it's tough to pick the right spouse, especially when you're young. A lot of other cultures figured this out centuries ago and came up with arranged marriage. It's also the reason for religious and cultural prohibitions against sex before marriage. It prevents kids from being born out of wedlock or into marriage situations that are likely to end in divorce.
Feb 26, 2013 2:37PM
The one thing that never gets mentioned in articles like this is having kids out of wedlock. I guess they assume everyone knows that, but 41% of kids born today are born to unmarried parents.
100 character limit
Are you sure you want to delete this comment?
Copyright © 2013 Microsoft. All rights reserved.
| http://money.msn.com/saving-money-tips/post.aspx?post=0d5433e9-32d9-4db2-b611-77515bb884d2 | dclm-gs1-111330002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.28608 | <urn:uuid:d7c6b611-0eca-49c2-a0a8-2715b9afb98c> | en | 0.979048 | Despite promises from the White House that there would be no tampering with flights over Edward Snowden, calls from the Obama Administration led to a flight by Bolivian President Evo Morales being grounded over fears that Edward Snowden was aboard his plane.
Woops. Not only was Snowden not on the plane but there are serious questions over whether those European countries acted appropriately had he been. Egg meet face.
A furious Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca said France and Portugal would have to explain why they canceled authorization for the plane, claiming that the decision had put the president’s life at risk. “We don’t know who invented this lie” that Snowden was traveling with Morales, Choquehuanca said in La Paz. “We want to denounce to the international community this injustice with the plane of President Evo Morales.”
The fallout for the European countries from this blatant disrespect of a foreign head of state is unknown, what is known is that the paranoia by Obama Administration over Edward Snowden is now at comic levels.
Glenn Greenwald has said Snowden’s leaks are basically done. It is now just a question of each publication’s own editorial process. So the damage is done. Though if there were a way to provoke Snowden into releasing more information I imagine these kind of shenanigans would be the way to do it. | http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/07/03/bolivian-presidents-plane-grounded-on-snowden-fears/ | dclm-gs1-111380002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.177545 | <urn:uuid:ef5fd95b-8373-492e-9381-22200ee27feb> | en | 0.98605 | The 65-year-old woman had recently lost her husband, and a significant chunk of her monthly income.
The husband's pension didn't include survivor benefits, and the widow's own Social Security and pension benefits provided just $2,000 in monthly income--far less than her $4,000 in monthly expenses.
With only $35,000 in a bank account and a $25,000 annuity, she was on pace to run out of money before she turned 80.
"She certainly didn't have enough to last a normal lifetime, and she recognized that," says Sheldon Weiner, a fee-based financial planner at Egan, Berger & Weiner in Vienna, Va., which manages $300 million for about 400 clients.
When she was referred to Mr. Weiner by a friend, the woman told the adviser that her accountant recommended selling her only remaining significant asset: A piece of vacant farmland her husband had bought in the 1950s.
There were two problems with that plan: Selling the property, valued at $1.4 million, would trigger a large capital-gains tax bill and reduce the amount of money left for her to live on. Plus, the woman's family was counting on that land for their inheritance.
Mr. Weiner realized his client needed to make the most of this single asset. "I said, 'Let's stop and think this out,' " he says.
His solution: Create a charitable remainder trust and donate the land to it. The trust could then sell the land without paying capital-gains taxes, and Mr. Weiner could invest the proceeds into other vehicles for growth.
Working with the client's accountant, Mr. Weiner calculated the woman could withdraw 7% a year from the trust and still maintain the minimum balance in the trust required by law. That payout rate would give her about $100,000 a year in income--more than enough to cover her expenses.
The woman could then use the additional income to provide a replacement asset for her heirs to inherit. Mr. Weiner recommended she spend about $16,000 per year on a guaranteed universal life insurance policy with a $1.5 million death benefit, payable to her grandchildren upon her death. The policy would be held in an irrevocable life insurance trust, so the family would not have to pay estate taxes on it.
Mr. Weiner's plan kept everyone happy: The woman's finances were secure and her grandchildren would inherit a $1.5 million life insurance policy tax-free.
The client was excited by the solution, but first called her daughter, a lawyer, to discuss the plan. The daughter liked the idea and agreed to be the trustee for the charitable remainder trust. Mr. Weiner transferred the farmland to the trust, and as soon as it sold he put 40% of the proceeds into equity investments and 60% in fixed income.
One more bonus: The charitable donation created such a large tax deduction that she owed no income taxes on the first several years' of income from the trust.
The client lived into her 80s and died in 2012. During those years, she was able to withdraw $1.5 million in income and still leave about $900,000 in the trust for charity. Her heirs received a $1.5 million inheritance. Plus, the woman was able to plan for charitable gifts she never imagined were possible when facing the prospect of running out of money.
"Some of the money went to her church," Mr. Weiner says. "I think she was happiest about that." | http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324178904578340051963097178?mod=WSJ_AdviserNews_WealthAdviserHighlights_3 | dclm-gs1-111460002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.057727 | <urn:uuid:a6617ef7-590d-4c71-8157-8060ade4a365> | en | 0.951011 | MMOG of Thrones – NSA tapping massive, multi-player online gaming
, , ,
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rummies. The NSA is monitoring gamers online for terrorist communications. Ignorance mocks … and is flat wrong.
Uh, Peter dear. In a word, “No.” The business of videogames is more complicated than that. the top three major pay-to-play markets are: South Korea, Japan, and USA. To be successful, videogames need players, lots of players. If nobody else is in the game when you login, it’s no fun.
So game companies set up portals in poor nations to allow gamers in for free. That way, when they roll out the portal for the big three pay-to-play markets (S. Korea, Japan and USA) the games are well populated with players. Games set up systems to allow gamers to make money selling game-acquired stuff online.
I can tell you from direct observation that MMOG is very popular in poor nations in Central Asia. Unemployment is high. Revolutions and civil wars are remembered by everyone, or else they know people who do. Lots of time on their hands plus practical interest in warfare, plus not getting reinforcement out of their real-world (rather stark) life = passion for gaming.
The most common MMOGs were Counterstrike and Delta Force in the years I was there. It’s moved on. Tank World has had a run. Granted, those don’t lend themselves to coded communications. But the point should be clear. In that part of the world, they play, they play for free, and companies don’t know who they are – nor do the companies care.
Plus – outside the developed world, hacking is not a hobby, it’s a method of survival. For instance, I hired a gentleman who had: built his computers from parts acquired from the dump; wired a stepdown transformer to the subway tracks to supply his house; cracked and installed software from Windows and Autodesk CAD to EndNote and Mathematica. Trust me, those guys would have no issues with hacking into MMOGs to play on other’s accounts.
And Mr. Singer?
• In the spy business, lack of evidence has no relationship to lack of activity. Good spies don’t show evidence.
• In the spy business, if you don’t dig around and find nothing the vast majority of the time, then you are missing a huge amount. Or, you might be digging on a motherlode planted there to mislead you.
Larry Summers – Push that rope!
, , , , , , ,
Larry Summers, neo-carmudgeon at large, held forth, warning a permanent slump is upon us. Forsooth and begorrah! Beggar me Larry.
Quoth the Krugman – Woe! ’Tis lore!
You’re only 58 Larry! Krugman honey! You’re 60!
The primary issue with QE is that loans are demand driven. You can’t push a rope. QE is the Fed doing its best to push a rope. Congress could pull on the rope, but it isn’t. So we are left with the Fed pushing on a rope. Pushing that rope has meant that the fattest fat-cats, right next to the money spigot of the Fed, grow fatter.
So spend more! Government spending pulls real economy activity, which creates a multiplier effect through loan demand by creating qualified borrowers. The Fed’s QE has been trying its best to push a rope. But the only reason the Fed has to do that is because of the cretinous congressional budget cutting.
Dear lord. What could be more obvious than that? Dear Larry. Never one to rock the boat or cut to the nub of a problem. It’s a fiat currency world. Keynes and all that.
Come on guys! Do something useful with your fame and Nobel Prize. Make it your life’s work to destroy that cretin, Grover Norquist. If you won’t speak up, what the hell do you expect!
No amount of jawboning, no amount of QE, no amount of anything can substitute for running that idiot Norquist into the deep dark hole he belongs in.
Fox Q and SnowdenSnatch
I am in agreement with Fox News. The horror! Since I never watch Fox News, I had to find out from Steven Colbert.
I agree with Fox? OMG!
But seriously people! Friendly nations spy on each other. All the time! For completely legitimate reasons. As this 9 year old Slate article lays out so clearly - Why Allies Spy on Allies.
Consider the following situation: Countries A and B are allies. Countries B and C are friends or, at least, trading partners. Countries A and C are enemies. Country A might want to spy on its ally B in order to learn things about its enemy C. The world is teeming with such relations. – Why Allies Spy on Allies.
I love releases from the National Security Archives. My fave – Henry Kissinger is in a Kremlin conference room circa 1970. He is meeting with Brezhnev and friends about SALT, and Brezhnev grabs Henry’s briefcase, then runs out of the room. Henry freaks out! Brezhnev pokes his head back in with a big grin and says, “So. Henry. What are you going to do?!” Henry has a special reason to worry, because inside that briefcase are damning documents that prove he has been feeding confidential Soviet nuclear weapons data to China. And that is the real inside story of how Nixon opened up China. Was the USSR a friend at that point? Not exactly. But was handing information specifically protected by treaty talks acceptable? No.
Ask yourself though – was opening up China worth that risk? Where would we be if Kissinger had not pried open the door this way?
After the Cold War, France’s intelligence service turned to spying on US corporations for economic advantage. So did Japan, Germany, and just about every other intel service start spying for economic advantage.
Ask yourself – when nations are allies, does that mean they don’t compete?
Uh, no. They do. The competition turns from military to economic. Every little bit of intel helps keep a country afloat. So which do you want? Do you want to gain a little advantage? Or to become poorer as others gain a bit on you? Add up a lot of little bitty advantages gained by S&T and business deal spying, and you have a considerably richer nation. Ask the Merkel.
And those reasons rest on the foundation reason to spy on friends: “Trust, but verify.
Anybody in construction knows that things go to hell unless you keep’em honest. We are all human. Governments and world leaders are no exception. But hey! Maybe you think politicians can be trusted. No? You don’t trust our politicians?
Seriously – think about that. You don’t trust most politicians – for very good reason. Now, put yourself in their shoes. They know what lying, cheating, conniving window-dressing they are. And now you are demanding that they trust each other? When you don’t trust them?
Spying flow chart
Spy on allies flow chart
So why spy on friends and allies?
• Trust but verify. e.g. To audit the alliance relationship
• To find out about friends of friends, who may be enemies
• Because friends can still be serious competitors
Such going’s on! In the meadow!
, , ,
Need I say it? World leaders spy on each other.
Let’s get straight here. Spying on your friends, and on your enemies, allows you to trust that they aren’t lying. It is very simple. That is why everyone does it.
Paranoia rules international relations. And well it should. War is deception. Do our friends lie to us? Do leaves grow on trees? Come people, look at how common lies are in marriages, white lies, black lies, and everything in between. Even in marriages one spouse regularly decides to murder the other. On what planet do you think that international relationships are more trustable than your spouse?
In what alternate universe do you think that Angela Merkel lays all her cards face up on the table? No. She doesn’t. (I’m very sorry to burst your bubble.) Nor does Berlusconi. Nor does Vlad the Putin. Nor does Xi Jinping. Nor does Shinzo Abe. Really. They don’t. Scandalous.
So all you yammer-hammers who seem to think the world should “just trust” each other? Uh, dude. That’s why everybody is spying! Because that channel is believable! That is how the world’s leaders trust each other!
Mr. Snowden? Mr. Greenwald? Climb back in your crib, grab your pacifier, suck on it, and shut up. Unless, that is, you want the leaders of the world to stop believing each other. If you want to drive wedges between leaders across the world, tipping the balance toward war – go for it. Yeah. Everybody does it. And that’s a good thing.
Have a granola bar. Lola needs your business!
Malala Yousafzai, sweetie-pie at large.
, , , ,
Malala is a very sweet girl, kind, intelligent, and dedicated to trying to make the world understand that we should all live together in harmony. She’s right about the drone war in Pakistan radicalizing people – to some extent.
But this is also a girl in massive denial. The people she is wanting the USA to stop shooting at, shot her. And those people will kill her if they possibly can. She is a sweetheart, not everyone responds to reason. It’s just how the world is.
Ah, yes, the drone war. In 2009 the Taliban had a front, moving fast toward Islamabad, just 90 miles way. It was just before this that the Pakistani government asked the American government to increase drone strikes on the Taliban.
It was convenient for Pakistan’s government that the USA was willing to crank up the drone strikes. If not, the Pakistani government would have had to end the lie that it likes and respects the Islamist tiger that two generals have ridden to power. It would have been better, perhaps, to leave them in that corner – except – the distinct possibility exists that the Islamists would have won. Trust me on this, Pakistan’s generals did not ask the United States to throw drones at their enemies as their first choice. They almost waited too long to do it.
But why should we care about that? Let Pakistan’s generals roast on their own spit. After all – they nurtured the Taliban. They still pretend to love the Islamist monster. Poetic justice, no?
Unfortunately, what the Taliban/Al Qaeda were after in taking over Pakistan was that nation’s nuclear weapons. Supposedly Musharraf made sure they were deactivated before leaving office. Supposedly that deactivation was permanent. To that, I say, maybe. But that which has been taken apart could be put back together again with the resources of a nation. And the biggest stumbling block in building nuclear weapons is the enrichment of uranium. If that bomb-grade material is still around, they can be built again.
So, Malala my dear, this matter is much more complicated than your teenage mind understands. The drone war may well be all that stands between a Pakistan that has some resemblance in places to democracy that upholds basic rights. If the drone war failed, Malala, the nation would belong to the men who shot you.
What’s wrong with Rand Paul’s plan?
Dear Rachel, fighting for progressive causes, she tries so hard. And her people come up with some stupid metaphors, like burning down the house. Oi, veysmir! Honey, it’s just wrong – and it hasn’t got a prayer of reaching anyone but your converted. So what’s the point? A better metaphor is the household metaphor that Rand Paul (and that demagogue Cruz) blather.
The household budget metaphor is just as wrong – but at least it seems to make sense. The household budget metaphor says that you live within your means, and pay your top priorities first. So you don’t pay what you don’t have income for. So, Rachel, you need to explain clearly why that household metaphor is wrong.
But here is the key to it – in the modern world, the total amount of money is equal to the total amount of debt! Rand Paul sort of understands this when he rrants against the Federal Reserve creating new debt to finance things and says we should go back on the gold standard. But why is Rand Paul so wrong?
The reason the world abandoned the gold standard is that there isn’t enough gold to go around to represent the amount of money we need. There are too many people now, and just too much stuff to buy and sell. See, for all practical purposes, we went off the gold standard around 1910. You can see why looking at the graph.
Without enough gold to go around, we can’t stay on a gold standard. With all these people, and all this new technology (cars, TV, phones, cell phones, PCs, GPS, plumbing, nice homes, on and on) you have to have enough money to keep up. If you don’t have enough money to keep up, the inevitable result is deflation and depression. All the gold-standard people are looking at is their fantasy of how rich they would be: If we went back on gold; And they had acquired a buttload of gold. They are not looking at what happens when currency appreciates, which is exactly the same error that Bitcoin’s idiots made. And they sure as shit are not fantasizing about themselves getting crushed by a massive depression and reversion to war as the way to gather wealth.
It was the need to expand the monetary gold currency base that drove nations of Europe to seek gold all over the world during the great age of empire-building and expansion. It was the need to shore up one nation’s monetary base at the expense of a neighbor’s money that drove wars and privateering to plunder gold from other nations.
But even back then, very few people used gold money. They used gold and silver certificates, pounds sterling, and such. And banks found that to meet demand for currency, they had to ship it around. Because it didn’t flow in a balanced way from one place to another. So even during the great era of the gold standard, it didn’t really work as advertised. There was little relation in practice between gold and money.
Rand Paul thinks deflation and depression would be good for people that hold gold. That’s right. It would be, for those few. But it would be impossible for everyone else, because in deflation, money is worth more all the time, so regular investing is a waste of time. Investment goes to zero, and the economy dies. Then you have wars.
So, since we can’t have enough gold backed money in the world to run the world’s economy, the world created the Federal Reserve bank, and the rest of the world created Central Banks. To materialize more money, these central banks create debt instruments. So now – every dollar of money in circulation has a dollar of money in debt. Period.
That’s why the deficit is a bogey man, and isn’t the problem it is pretended to be.
What matters is who has access to the money creation system at the Federal Reserve. What matters is what those people who are given access to the discount window at the Federal Reserve do with that money they can get! Do they put it into real enterprises that create real value? Or do they put it into financial flim-flam that destroys or ignores real value and drives a bubble? This is the real question.
If you are paying attention, that question of what happens with the money the Federal Reserve creates is what both parties have done nothing about. The flim-flam is still going on. No banksters prosecuted. The SEC is still toothless. This is a national security matter really. It’s the security of the nation at the most basic level.
The cave of the wolf.
The result of this shutdown, should it extend past the “debt ceiling” date of October 17th, is shattering of the the global economy. And that is “unthinkable” so it can’t happen.
Here is the problem with thinking that is unthinkable. It isn’t. That is exactly what this lunatic fringe wants.
That lunatic fringe represented by Cruz, Paul, and the rest, truly believes that ‘the gummint’ is the problem. These are the same people who believe that ‘the gummint’ should, “drown in a bathtub” because it runs out of money.
They want to achieve it by saddling the US government with debt, cutting taxes, and refusing to allow new debt. That is exactly the plan that the Republican party has followed since George Bush I left office and Newt Gingrich headed the House. Through the administration of GW Bush I, the Republicans, even Reagan, were responsible, not anti-tax nutcases. That was what motivated the first shutdown under Newt (Sociopath) Gingrich. That plan, of cut taxes and spend like a crack-addict, is what GW Bush did during his term in office.
These people believe that the Federal Reserve is the root of all evil that has made them poor by taking away their gold standard. They think the economy as a whole, and the finances of a nation are exactly like a household’s budget. These people believe that such financial armageddon scenarios are a good thing.
This is not a game. This is very serious. They are extremely dangerous demagogues. They are absolutely wrong, don’t care that they are, and because of their incompetent idiocy, they yell and scream the loudest.
Their political base is racist, angry at loss of racial privilege, angry at being poor and seeing their inferiors (any black, or brown person) doing well. The base is scared, fundamentalist, anti-science, anti-evolution, and dumb-as-a-f*@king-rock stupid.
The politicians riding this mass of rock-ignorant stupidity, are very close to those who rode the fundamentalist crazies into power in Pakistan. For the pols, power is their game. Reality is something they just don’t believe in.
Every nation, from time to time, is confronted by such demagogues. They seek power using some rabid fraction of the population. This is America’s time. We are outside the cave of the wolf.
Reason does not work now. They don’t care about reason. They like the idea of destabilizing the world. Don’t kid yourself. The men who rode it early were less craven, but such things circle the drain closer and closer until only the worst of men are left. When such rasputins as Karl Rove tries to dismount and turn the creature he has awakened from its ravening course, we are very close to nightfall.
You doubt me. I know you do. You who read this have not seen governments that have fallen, nor lived where all was broken, nor studied how monsters rise to power. You read WWII histories and think it is all so very far away. But it is not. This is how it starts. A lever is pulled that brings everything tumbling down.
Inside Microsoft’s suuuper seeeecret design bunker
“Apple is kicking our ass! This is intolerable!”
“That’s right boss, one product alone has more revenue and profits than all of Microsoft.”
“What product is that?!”
“It’s called an iPhone boss.”
“We must compete! We must fight! We will win! Fight team fight!”
“But boss. We don’t make phones.”
“So?! We have companies that buy Windows CE to put in phones! How are they doing?”
“Sucky boss. Customers think our phones are great to use, but we always are 2nd or 3rd to market with features. You know, like remember how Windows CE 6.0 separated text messages into an inbox and outbox so nobody can see the conversation?”
“What? We don’t do that anymore?! But that’s how email does it!”
“No boss. No, we don’t. Yes, that was a great idea of yours, I agree. It was just in the wrong century is all.”
“What’s our market share?”
“Um, it’s, um, well … in the USA? Or elsewhere?”
“Stimpy! Spit it out man! In the USA!”
“Um, 3.5%.”
“So what are we waiting for?! Get ‘er done!”
“Get what done boss?”
“Renovation of Windows for PC! Change the paradigm!”
“But, how? What are we supposed to do different, boss?”
“Make it like iPhone!”
“But it’s not a phone.”
“It’s the new paradigm! See how I can say paradigm?”
“Yes, boss. But Apple has patents on that.”
“So make it like the iPhone but different! See? I’m decisive!”
“But how come Apple isn’t using iPhone style interface for its computers?”
“Because Apple isn’t run by geniuses like me! Genuflect my minions!”
“But can we at least fix the Windows Explorer search function so it’s not some bizarre code cooked up by some programmer in the back room?”
“That was me! Guard! Off with his head! Off with his head!”
Mother-goose beautiful hippie commune 3D printing solar power!
The distributed production, future utopia bullshit is getting just too f*@king deep! I’m sure Mr. Carson is a very nice person, but he is a great example of wrong, wrong, wrong. Just so f*@king wrong on so many levels.
The old infrastructures, as I argued here, are extremely capital-intensive, high-overhead, batch-and-queue systems that devote 80% of their total capacity — idle most of the time — to handling 20% of the total load at peak hours. – Carson article.
Oh, right. You sit at your industrially manufactured desk, on a manufactured chair, on a manufactured carpet, typing on a computer you couldn’t dream of manufacturing at home if your life depended on it, driving to the store when you want to in your car you don’t understand to buy food that magically appears on shelves, showing off your near total ignorance of industrial production while talking on your iPhone.
Hey genius! JITKANBAN and Poke-Yoke on the factory side! Tightly coupled inventory management on the retail side! Retail inventory management is where the KANBAN idea came from! A smart Japanese guy had the idea to manage the internal factory system so each part is handled like in a retail store! It works fantastic.
Since the capital goods possessed by the endpoints is a miniscule fraction of the cost of a centralized infrastructure, there is no incentive to subordinate end-users to the needs of the infrastructure. – Carson article
To start with, it’s obvious that you meant to say that your fantasy distributed production system (Star Trek replicator idea) is the “capital goods”. Aside from your inability to say what you mean, how do you know the collective cost of distributed production is lower? Let’s take automobiles. Cheaper than rail transit? Not! Is the total cost of all laser printers greater than the cost of a central facility that could handle all that? Not!
But let’s ask ourselves if distributed manufacturing has existed before. Oh! It has! We have had distributed manufacturing capability for a long time. Your rose-colored-glasses are describing piecework in the home, a dire throwback to near slave-labor conditions, with high injury rates! Sure, small machine shops are in every big city and can make it in niche build-to-order environments. But dude! You are also confusing the means of production with actual production. There is no such equivalence. That’s what the Soviet Union did.
Too many shoes
You don’t get productive use of equipment just because you acquire it. That’s ridiculous. Factories are highly tuned (temporary and flexible) entities that are focused on producing something that people will buy – in the most efficient manner possible. Trust me, if products people want could be made at distributed little shops cheaper, they would be.
The waste in distributed systems looks small in absolute terms but add it all up and it’s huge! Take waste putting gasoline into automobiles. Each car fill-up, you can smell a little gasoline. Add it up for all those cars and it’s tons and tons. Same for small-scale production. Waste is a big reason why piecework manufacturing in the home went away. And quality control? Re-imagine your iPhone made by kids while a tipsy, desperate, poverty-stricken single mom slave-drives her kids to put the goddamn thing together.
Ed Fenster’s Sunrun didn’t redistribute the power/production to the end-point! He just created an alternative plug and play utility owned by his company. He had serious subsidies to make it viable. And – to work, Sunrun had to tie it into the grid and sell power back to the grid! The users are just getting a price break – for a while, courtesy of Uncle Sam.
Even if things like 3D printing overcome some serious issues, you will still have manufacturing and distribution of feedstock, machinery, etc. You still have the cost of means of production versus the value of what the 3D printer produces. And the law of utility still applies.
Mr. Carson, when you buy a car, you don’t attempt to maximize your use of it for transport 24/7 do you? No. Your measure of value is that the car does what you need when you need it. Industrial manufacturing has the same need. Factories don’t try to maximize utilization of a drill press on an assembly line. They want that drill press to do its job for them when they need it to produce a product they have orders for!
Manufacturers do not keep running factories to make product that isn’t needed. (Dear lord man, what’s wrong with you?!) Manufacturers use a version of the inventory formula that takes into account lead time to make the product, lot size and orders. Manufacturing of most things is effectively integrated all the way from the consumer back to the acquisition of raw materials. Everything is pull-through now!
Yes, Bucky’s example of satellites is great, but ask yourself why it is that in the satellite connected world copper cable has been replaced with fiber-optic trans-oceanic cables? There is a simple reason – time. Satellites have a delay. Fiber optic cables can transmit far more than metal cable.
Excuse me? You don’t know the vast difference between banking, which deals in the money abstraction, and an electrical utility that creates utility value in the real economy?! News flash! Banks on Wall Street flim-flammed our economy into a tailspin! They did it by “investing” in money that invests in money that invests in money – that doesn’t produce anything real!
There may be something to this idea that creative destruction isn’t accounted for when looking at signs of Jared Diamond’s collapse, but Mr. Carson hasn’t come near supporting it. There is no “successor society” visible anywhere. What? iPhones? iPads?
This is just the zombie version of the 1960′s commune-let’s-all-live-mother-goose-beautiful-out-in-the-woods redirected toward decentralization. Let’s all drop some acid and become totally cool people!
Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.
Join 40 other followers | http://quantiger.wordpress.com/ | dclm-gs1-111590002 | false | true | {
"keywords": "assembly, delta"
} | false | null | false |
0.020866 | <urn:uuid:49f50f78-8bce-4817-bf83-81d2f0c87de7> | en | 0.919643 | Our learning will be centered around snowflakes and wintertime. We will focus on words with the OW letter combination and further explore shapes and symmetry.
This is a mountain, pointy with snow.
Cut off the top and make a plateau.
This is a plain, flat and low.
Hills are bumpy. Up and down we go!
Help to race up Shape Mountain, collecting super power shapes and avoiding obstacles. | http://summerlakechildcare.blogspot.com/ | dclm-gs1-111840002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.02267 | <urn:uuid:5380ed7f-cb32-47a5-b0d8-a99eb2ee2945> | en | 0.991523 |
Thursday, Dec 12, 2013
McShay: Tebow 'just not there' as pro passer
Published: | Updated: March 21, 2013 at 06:14 PM
GAINESVILLE - ESPN NFL draft expert Todd McShay, who has never been high on the pro prospects of former Florida quarterback Tim Tebow, said during a teleconference with media on Thursday that Tebow's decision to play in the Senior Bowl hasn't worked out.
"I honestly, I hate to say it because he's battled and he's done everything that has been asked of him, and I know he hasn't felt great, he went to the hospital Monday night, is the report, with strep throat," McShay said. "And he hasn't shown a sign of it. He's practiced, he's gone through every drill, he's shown improvement in terms of getting snaps under center and he's working at it.
"But he's just not there. I thought coming in that maybe all the intangibles and all the little things he did, showing signs of improvement could help his stock. But I would say unfortunately that it hurt his stock. Just looking at him and comparing him to other mid-level quarterbacks, I mean it's not (Sam) Bradford (of Oklahoma) and (Jimmy) Clausen (of Notre Dame) here, it's (Cincinnati's) Tony Pike who's the best of the group and he's a third-round pick.
"And I think you could make an argument that Tebow as a passer, just in terms of evaluating his potential as a pocket passer in the NFL, that he was no better than the fourth-best here."
McShay added that Tebow has "such a long way to go."
"I think he has to accept one of two things," added McShay. "Either, A, he needed to strip down and completely start over as a quarterback and a passer, and that's going to take a lot of hard work and may not work. Or B, he's going to have to play another position in the NFL."
While much has been made of Tebow playing his entire career in the shotgun rather than behind center, McShay called that "the least of my concerns."
"First of all, he's got to learn how to read coverages. It's not just a pre-snap read and a high-low read and either you go here or you go there and vice versa," McShay said. "It's reading from left to right, up and down, and the defenders are so much faster and able to get from one spot to the next without overstriding as he does, and having your feet all over the place so you can't make an accurate throw when you do find an open receiver. Those are the main things.
"And that's not even including the elongated delivery. I've never seen a quarterback at an all-star game like this with such an obvious delivery issue, if you will. And I can remember Andre Woodson (of Kentucky) a couple of years ago - that cost him a couple of rounds. Tebow's is much worse. It's far worse. And just overall, his accuracy and timing."
McShay said Tebow played "a different position" in college than what an NFL quarterback does.
"He has so much work to do. I'm not saying that it's impossible for him to do that," McShay said. "It's just that there are so few examples of guys that have been able to make that transition. And not that he would ever do it, but there's no developmental league, there's nowhere for him to go. And basically he's going to have to learn while maybe taking five to seven snaps a game as a Wildcat quarterback while serving as the No. 3 quarterback.
"So it's going to be a huge, huge transition for him. And it's hard for me to imagine one day we're going to be talking about Tim Tebow as a good, starting quarterback full-time for an NFL team."
McShay said it is unfair to blame Florida for Tebow not being NFL ready.
"You know what? It's not Urban Meyer's job, it really isn't," McShay said. "And I keep going back to that. Urban Meyer's job is to win games, and the job of that staff is to win games at Florida. And they won a lot of games during his four years there. They got him to win a Heisman Trophy and they put him a position to make a run at a career in the NFL. And they also, with everything that's come around with all the fame he has, I think he's in a position to do a lot of things off the field that maybe he wouldn't be able to do if he didn't play at Florida.
"Certainly, they tried at times. They brought in (quarterbacks coach) Scot Loeffler, but I just don't know that anything ever stuck. Instead of tinkering with the guys' motion and worrying about his footwork and all those different things, if he's having success it's hard to change all of that.
"And unless Urban Meyer sat in his living room one day and said in four years I'm going to do this, this, this and this, and one of those things was develop you as best I can with the NFL, I don't have a problem with it (what Meyer did or didn't do). I'm assuming he didn't because at no point in time has Tim Tebow's and Urban Meyer's relationship waned, it seems."
HIGH ON COOPER: McShay said he was "very impressed" with former UF receiver Riley Cooper, also at the Senior Bowl, and called him one of the 6-7 players who helped themselves the most in Mobile.
"I think the fact he held up as well as he did, caught the ball with the consistency he did, I think speaks for the type of player (he is)," McShay said.
He said Cooper would be taken in the first three rounds. McShay said Cooper was probably a sixth- or seventh-round pick before the 2009 season started.
"If he works out well he's got a chance to fit in the top three rounds," McShay said. | http://tbo.com/sports/colleges/mcshay-tebow-just-not-there-as-pro-passer-51368 | dclm-gs1-111890002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.021497 | <urn:uuid:7c9ffb74-66ec-4709-a368-45acc0840147> | en | 0.959513 | or Connect
TheSandTrap.com › Golf Forum › The Practice Range › Member Swings › My Swing (Villafranca)
New Posts All Forums:Forum Nav:
My Swing (Villafranca)
post #1 of 6
Thread Starter
I've been Playing Golf for: 2 years
My current handicap index or average score is: ~98-102 avg score
My typical ball flight is: mostly straight with irons, and hybrids mostly, Slice with driver/woods
The shot I hate or the "miss" I'm trying to reduce/eliminate is: "Pull Slice / Slice with driver mostly and just hit solid shots more consistently with irons and hybrids
Two shots 4 videos, one in real time the other is slowed to .25 speed. This is my first post so I hope these are in the right format. I tried to go to a few links to show how to shoot the video for the swing post but they did not work.
post #2 of 6
Relatively new to the game myself but in your driver videos you can see you're coming OTT which will absolutely cause your pull slice/slices. Your posture is also very upright, you should try to work in some more bend from the hips. This is probably priority one but something you can easily watch in a mirror.
You will need to work on your path coming more from the inside, a popular drill that is easy to do is to place a head cover maybe 6 inches behind and 6 inches to the right. Basically "behind" and "outside" the ball, in order to not hit the head cover you'll have to swing from the inside. This is a very basic drill and I'm sure some of the more experienced guys on here can offer up something more advanced.
post #3 of 6
Thread Starter
Thanks for the quick response Hacker, I can tell I am coming OTT on my shots also, when watching my club head come through on my practice swing, I see it coming from the outside of the ball across to the inside through and after contact. The biggest thing for me with that is I just cant seem to stop it and I do not know what exactly is causing it. Are there other causes of this?
I will also to get a little for bend at my hips and try this drill out.
post #4 of 6
I am going to defer to some of the more advanced guys here on this but I will give it a shot. A lot of people like the idea of swinging more out towards "right field", like in baseball shooting the ball between 2nd and 1st.
Also, it looks like you're sucking the club in too far to the inside in the takeaway and then you come over the top. You could try to keep the club more "in front" of you on the backswing and combine that with the drills and thought of swinging to the right above.
Again, hopefully some of the more knowledgeable guys come in and add to/correct my tips.
P.S. I went from slicing over the top to now hitting some blocks/push slices, so fixing the path is only part of the solution however most people if they can fix the path can straighten it out nicely as they usually have no usually with the clubface
post #5 of 6
Thread Starter
So far with you advice I have seen improvement in my drive! Yesterday I went out and did 9 after work and I made sure to put more bend at my hips. This helped me hit it more consistently.
The shots we still going to the right but not as bad as normal. Most of the time I would hit a drive and it would go about 250 but end up almost out of play in the rough or in the woods ha! This time they were on the right edge of the fair way (if they dogleged right) or just of onto the rough by 10 yards or so, and it added about 20 yards to to the drive. Now Its only been one outing so I know the problem is not "fixed" but I did notice just by putting the bend in my hips at least to me, it felt easier to not come from the outside in on the downswing and contact.Since the ball still goes right I know I am still doing this but Im not doing it as much as before I believe.
Next time at the range I will do that drill also i'm sure it will work out well.
post #6 of 6
Well to be careful, you can hit the ball right and very far right coming from the inside as well. If the ball is starting straight or left and then curving right you are most likely still coming from the outside.
There are a bunch of threads here about ball flight laws, do a quick search and take a peek there's a lot of valuable stuff in there. I would prioritize getting your posture fixed first because without a good set up it's hard to do a lot of other things correctly. Also, at least for me I used to try to fix everything at once and it's best to focus on one thing at a time and work through things slowly. There are no overnight fixes in golf, to get changes to stick it takes a long long time.
Best of luck though, keep the videos coming
New Posts All Forums:Forum Nav:
Return Home
Back to Forum: Member Swings | http://thesandtrap.com/t/69207/my-swing-villafranca | dclm-gs1-111970002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.44784 | <urn:uuid:cd62d60d-cb91-4782-b287-9568570cad53> | en | 0.981445 | Tuesday, April 5, 2011
The "proposed" special jury instructions that resulted from a government witness destroying evidence, another point of view on the Plantation Cops mortgage fraud case and a company that banks hired to fabricate and forge documents
We left off yesterday discussing cooperating government witness Rene Rodriguez Jr. confessing to the court that he had destroyed evidence after he became a witness in the Plantation Cops mortgage fraud case. After presumably hearing several of the defense attorneys argue for the dismissal of the case because of the destruction of possibly exculpatory evidence, the defense proposed special jury instructions that outlined the destruction of the evidence and how it may have impacted the credibility of the governments witness. Here are the proposed jury instructions...
plantation cops special jury instruction regarding the destruction of evidence by Rene Rodriguez Jr
Here are the most interesting bits of the instructions...
...both co-defendants separately admitted to this court, under oath that they "would also forge the purchaser's signature on many documents that were initially submitted to the financial institution and mortgage lending companies."
...after he agreed to truthfully cooperate with the government, co defendant Rodriguez intentionally destroyed documents that were material and pertinent both to the facts of this case, and to Rodriguez's honest compliance with his promise to the Government to be truthful and complete in his cooperation.
...Rodriguez intentionally tampered with computer equipment...to the extent that the electronic data stored on that computer equipment was destroyed and could not be accessed by the Government or the Defendants.
...this court found after considering the evidence and Rodriguez's testimony, that despite his denials, Rodriguez had indeed intentionally tampered with computer equipment, rendering the information stored on the computers inaccessible to the government and the defense as well. You are also entitled to consider this court's finding that Rodriguez lied under oath...
...you are also entitled to infer...that the electronic information he made inaccessible...were material to the case before you and that they would have established reasonable doubt as to the guilt of each of the defendants.
In other words, there were documents that could have exonerated each and every one of the defendants on trial that have been destroyed and are impossible to retrieve, but rather than dismiss the charges we want you to determine their guilt or innocence without these crucial documents. Am I the only one that doesn't understand this? What am I missing?
Now, let's look to one of our readers that left an interesting comment on our post from last Wednesday regarding the Plantation cops mortgage fraud case..
Anonymous Anonymous said...
In response to the post which states Gulla/Rodriguez made 3%, thus making more than Guaracino, please keep this in mind: 1. Let's assume they made 3% per loan. On a $300,000 loan thier cut was $9,000. 2. On the same property, Guaracino flips it for a $100,000 profit. 3. It is an 11-to-1 ratio in favor of Guaracino. Please explain how Guaracino is a Patsy in these deals???? Furthermore, check the mortgages which were recorded with the county. It is my understanding NOT one of these were forged by the brokers...these defendants are hardly innocent.April 4, 2011 11:39 AM
This comment brings up an interesting point, if indeed the mortgages were actually executed by the cops that were charged in this case, why was Guaracino making $100,000 profit flipping the homes that weren't his? I'll have to do a little digging before we can properly address this comment.
Now comes the best part. After sitting back over the last couple of years and hearing about people who've been arrested for lying on mortgage documents, forging signatures on loan applications, stealing peoples identities for the commission of mortgage fraud or simply lying about their income, I was simply floored when I came across this story last Sunday on 60 Minutes...
DID YOU GUYS GET THAT? Banks hired companies to fabricate loan documents then have fictitious people sign the documents as fake bank VP's who then had their signatures notarized by notaries who knew that the signatures and documents were FRAUDS! Even worse, the banks then used these documents to further perpetrate the fraud on the borrowers who were in foreclosure and the court system! I have to ask, why have these people gone unpunished? Where is our favorite assclown prosecutor? Why is the government destroying the lives of people involved in street level mortgage frauds when you have massive conspiracies like this going on costing the country billions if not trillions of dollars?
1. Instead of dismissing the case, the judge is effectively instructing the jury to come back with a "not guilty" verdict. It's a little creepy that the juge seems to be afraid of the prosecutor but the case is still demoloshed.
2. So what happens to the witnesses? Do they walk? Please tell me these guys are going to serve time.
3. What a cluster. Why waste more time and money sending this case to a jury. I still believe the defendants knew at least part of what was happening but at this point it will be next to impossible to get a conviction. Even if the jury comes back with a guilty verdict, it seems that the next judge will and should throw-out the conviction.
4. This story makes me physically ill! As much as I enjoy following the case through your blog, I can only hope that it is over very soon, so these guys can get back to some sort of semblance of a life. It's a very sad story all around. I for one would rather have my tax dollars go towards getting murderers and pedophiles off the street.
Most of the banks involved in this case have gone out of business or been bailed out by the government. The alleged $16 million that was "defrauded" (and who hasn't been "defrauded" by their bank? i.e. ATM Withdrawal fees, overdraft charges, maintenance fees the list just goes on and on) from these banks would not have kept them afloat. It is just a drop in the bucket. If these banks couldn't stay open charging the fees that all banks charge, then obviously there was something else wrong. A much deeper problem, maybe THAT is something worth looking into and not dragging these guys (who from the evidence presented are innocent) through the mud!
5. You should not be so quick to determine these defendants are innocent. The bottom line is they purchased 64 properties, made payments on them and subsequently sold them for a substantial profit. They did nothing against their own will. They signed numerous disclosures at closing which they stated the home they were purchasing was going to be their primary residence...64 properties!!!! Come'on wake up, these cops found mortgage brokers willing to do whatever it took to get them the loans. Furthermore, wait until the evidence is presented which relates to the title agent (Stoll). It will clearly show how the same escrow funds were used for multiple purchases. Yes the brokers made commissions from the loans, but the REAL money was made from the flipping of the properties.
6. Again, what will happen to the brokers?
7. 4:05, brokers cut a deal before anyone was indicted, I'm not sure if that deal is still on the table considering what's gone on. I'll see if I can get a copy of the plea agreement.
8. This is for the person who commented about my 3% comment,Im sorry I didnt explain myself correctly when I wrote that.my comment was reguarding guaracino getting approved at 4% and then at closing it was 7% .thats the 3% im talking about.And as far as guaracino making money he was investing in real estate,Isnt that an investors reason for investing.I dont know about you, but if you would do buisness with someone who would screw you out of 3%,reguardless of weather or not you made money,Then I would love to go into buisness with you.These cop and fbi agents are only guilty of dealing with Matt and Rene PERIOD!!!!!!
9. My take is that the 3% mark-up was for the risk that Rene and Matt were taking. Who would commit loan fraud and risk going to jail on a loan unless there was serious money involved. I don't commit fraud or break the law but it seems to me a basic principle of risk and reward.
That goes back to the buyers. Why would they take a 7% loan if they could get a lower rate elsewhere? Why, because other lenders wouldn't buy the, idea that the defendants were buying more then one principle residence in a very short period of time.
There are no innocent parties in this mess.
10. @2:35 FYI Mortgage brokers do not get paid directly off of the interest rate. Using your example, if the rate was 4% and it ended up at 7%, the brokers DO NOT get paid 3% (the difference in the rate). They would have received a yield spread premium based on the interest rate (the lender and market determine the yeild spread). The example you give sounds like they were trying to get them a conventional loan and when that fell through they took them sub-prime. Either way these cops DID NOT and WOULD NOT qualify for the loan(s). I researched one of the cops real estate purchases and found in less than two years he purchased 5 properties for over $2.5 million. He subsequently sold two of them for a combined profit of $385,000. Each were sold within one year of the purchase date. Since they were sold in a years time and at a substantial profit, the interest rate on the note is irrelevant.
Also, you make me laugh when you say "...These cop and fbi agents are only guilty of dealing with Matt and Rene PERIOD!!!!!!"
There were 64 properties involved!!!!!!! so these cops must have loved to get "screwed" over and over again. I understand you don't want your friend or family member to do time, but as the previous person commented "There are no innocent parties in this mess".
11. I don't know the specifics of this case, I was only responding to earlier posts, so I may be wrong. I know nothing about the mortgage business, obiously... You Do!
As far as who is guilty & who is innocent, only they know? The only thing I do know for SURE about this case is Rene Rodriguez and what kind of person he is... So when you said I knew someone involved in this case, You were RIGHT. I do know someone & his name is Rene Rodriguez Jr!! ... And seeing that he is testifying against these Law Enforcement Officers, considering that he has been on the Wrong side of the Law for the last 25 years, That Definatly makes me LAUGH!!
12. OK anon
and would you expect that to be more or less than 3%?
13. About """Why would they take a 7% loan if they could get a lower rate elsewhere? """ they might have assumed that the 7% reflected a fair premium for the overleveraged investment property purchases they didn't have the income to pay for.
14. @7:12 I know Rene too. I don't know him that well but I know people who do. I am certainly not trying to defend him in any way. It appeared this blog was trying to pin it all on the brokers when in fact they are all guilty.
John, after reviewing the five loans I referred to in an earlier post, it appears they were a mix of Alt-A and Sub-Prime mortgages. At that time these lenders limited their yield spread to a max of 2% on these products. Also, on the conventional side a 4% rate could have paid the same 2% yield spread.
15. 11:55, I'm not trying to pin the guilt on any one person involved in this case. I agree wholeheartedly that everyone that was indicted has some level of culpability, there's no way this many transactions went down without everyone involved not knowing that something wasn't kosher. | http://thestrawbuyer.blogspot.com/2011/04/special-jury-instructions-that-resulted.html | dclm-gs1-112010002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.048365 | <urn:uuid:4fc3fc78-a9d2-44da-98b0-ccb9e80b3b47> | en | 0.689316 | Traveling Luck for Estación Medio Monte, Escuintla, Guatemala
Guatemala flag
Where is Estacion Medio Monte?
What's around Estacion Medio Monte?
Wikipedia near Estacion Medio Monte
Where to stay near Estación Medio Monte
The timezone in Estacion Medio Monte is America/Guatemala
Sunrise at 06:17 and Sunset at 17:35. It's Dark
Latitude. 14.3667°, Longitude. -90.7333°
WeatherWeather near Estación Medio Monte; Report from Guatemala Aeropuertola Aurora , 51.8km away
Weather :
Temperature: 17°C / 63°F
Wind: 20.7km/h North/Northeast
Cloud: Few at 1600ft
Loading map of Estación Medio Monte and it's surroudings ....
Geographic features & Photographs around Estación Medio Monte, in Escuintla, Guatemala
populated place;
railroad station;
a resort area usually developed around a medicinal spring.
second-order administrative division;
a subdivision of a first-order administrative division.
Airports close to Estación Medio Monte
La aurora(GUA), Guatemala city, Guatemala (51.8km)
Coban(CBV), Coban, Guatemala (200.3km)
Airfields or small airports close to Estación Medio Monte
San jose, San jose, Guatemala (78km)
Quezaltenango, Quezaltenango, Guatemala (157.7km)
Retalhuleu, Retalhuleu, Argentina (167.3km)
Photos provided by Panoramio are under the copyright of their owners. | http://travelingluck.com/North+America/Guatemala/Escuintla/_3592599_Estaci%C3%B3n+Medio+Monte.html | dclm-gs1-112080002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.151409 | <urn:uuid:df625e17-1ada-4c7a-b2b6-ef50cdb76466> | en | 0.949985 | ->''"The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering."''
A 1993 {{Biopic}} of Creator/BruceLee, ''Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story'' tells of the legendary martial artist and movie star as he deals with his duality as continuing a strong Chinese heritage while embracing his identity as an American. Jason Scott Lee (no relation) plays Bruce, Lauren Holly plays his American wife Linda and Robert Wagner plays Hollywood producer Bill Krieger.
The movie opts for a slightly fantastical subplot of a demon haunting his family in their nightmares and their efforts to fight back. As expected, there are liberties taken with the actual history and timeline of Bruce Lee (his book on Jeet Kune Do was never published in his lifetime), but the film pays an honest tribute to how revolutionary a man he was and his influence in both the East and West.
!!''Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story'' Provides Examples of:
%%* AllAsiansAreAlike: {{Discussed}} at length throughout the film.
* AndYouThoughtItWouldFail: Happens InUniverse at the premiere of ''Film/TheBigBoss''. Bruce begins thinking the audience hates it, and attempts to sneak before the credits, but the audience gives a standing ovation.
* AreWeGettingThis: During filming of ''Film/TheBigBoss'', as Bruce finds himself fighting Johnny Sun's brother, the director and cameramen are initially confused by what's apparently happening off-script, but decide to film it anyway. However, after the fight, Bruce destroys the footage, upsetting the director, who says that was some of the best fighting he'd ever seen.
* AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther: At different points in the film, Bruce and Linda are show having intense arguments, but in the end, before filming a scene in ''Film/EnterTheDragon'', Bruce tells Linda "I forgot to tell you I love you.", making her say "That's probably the first time you've ever said that.".
* ButNotTooForeign: Discussed. On the set of ''TheGreenHornet'', a network executive is shown commenting about Bruce "He's awfully Oriental...", but producer Bill Krieger assures him nothing is wrong with Bruce, because he's merely "playing Oriental" as Kato. Regardless, the executive asks him if he can stay masked at all times, and it also prevents Bruce from starring in ''Series/KungFu'', despite helping develop it with Krieger.
* TheCameo: Van Williams (Britt Reid from ''Franchise/TheGreenHornet'' series) appears as the director in the ''Green Hornet'' scene.
** Also, during the party where Linda tells Bruce that she's pregnant for a second time, the woman singing is the real-life result of that very pregnancy, Shannon Lee.
* CreatorCameo: Director Rob Cohen appears as ''Film/EnterTheDragon'' director Robert Clouse.
* DefeatMeansFriendship: When a group of students (fueled by anti-Asian sentiment regarding a Dad being killed in the Korean War) attack Bruce at a gym he proceeded to wipe the floor with them. When it was over Bruce's empathy to his attacker ("I'm sorry about your Dad. But I'm American.") and fighting prowess impressed the group and they asked to be trained, starting Bruce on the path as an instructor.
* DudeNotFunny: Happens InUniverse, as Bruce is extremely unamused with Mickey Rooney's infamous depiction of [[EthnicScrappy Mr. Yunioshi]] in ''Film/BreakfastAtTiffanys''.
* FightingWithChucks: Bruce uses nunchucks against a racist British sailor towards the beginning, and in the end, when he defeats his family demon.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: Towards the beginning, Bruce is depicted idolizing JamesDean, another movie icon that passed away at a young age.
* GeniusBruiser: It is acknowledged that Bruce did study some philosophy while in college. He is also shown writing his book and combining the philosophical styles of many different martial arts.
* HallOfMirrors: Bruce is shown shooting the iconic HallOfMirrors scene in ''Film/EnterTheDragon'' when he faces his family demon for the last time.
* {{Homage}}: The fights in this movie are in a similar style as Lee's films, which causes a bit of discrepancy with his real life fighting philosophy, which was much more practical and straightforward (and certainly did not involve gratuitous backflips in the middle of a life or death fight.)
** At one point, Bruce wears a yellow leather jacket that looks like his iconic tracksuit from ''Film/GameOfDeath''.
* IShallTauntYou: Bruce does this as he fights an American JerkJock.
-->'''Bruce:''' [[NWordPrivileges Chinks]] can jump more higher!
-->'''Jock:''' Fight me, you bastard!
-->'''Bruce:''' [[BadassBoast I'm no bastard, I'm Bruce Lee!]]
* KickTheSonOfABitch: Bruce's beatdown of a racist British sailor at the Hong Kong Lantern Festival towards the beginning. It gets him in trouble with the Hong Kong police, but who's really feeling sorry for the sailor?
* MalignedMixedMarriage: See YellowPeril below.
* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: Towards the beginning, Bruce is excited to travel to the U.S. because it's a land of opportunity. Flash forward a decade later, and Bruce has moved with his family back to Hong Kong.
-->'''Bruce:''' I'm somebody here, I'm special. Back there, I'm just another gook. Just another wetback, two-bit coolie CharlieChan no-nothing dishwasher from a fishy-stinking restaurant!
-->(''He shoves some stuff off a table'')
-->'''Bruce''': (''[[NWordPrivileges in stereotypical accent]]'') Wash your shirt, meestah white man? Please, no tickee, no shirtee! Order one from column A and one from column B! Me happy to build the railroads! Me happy to dig the mines for you, meestah white man!
* SmallNameBigEgo: The portrayal of Van Williams in the brief ''Franchise/TheGreenHornet'' scene. Evidently this was for comedy and emphasizing Kato's BreakoutCharacter nature, but Bruce and Van actually became good friends on the show and remained that way afterwards.
* ThrowItIn: In-universe, Bruce improvises a complex action scene for ''The Green Hornet'', after he was supposed to just win with one punch.
* TrainingFromHell: Bruce inflicted it upon himself, and the movie did reference the fact that he was willing to try any and all possible training methods.
* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: It doesn't quite get to the level of DanBrowned, but a great deal of artistic licence is taken due to RuleOfDrama:
** Bruce is depicted opening his first martial arts school out of inspiration by Linda, whereas in real life he'd opened it long before meeting her.
** Bruce's father is shown to have died shortly after his daughter Shannon was born, whereas he'd been long dead by that time.
* YellowPeril: Referenced by Linda's mother when she objects to her marrying Bruce. She even refers to possible mixed-race grandchildren [[KickTheDog as "yellow babies"]] [[spoiler: Though she ultimately gives in after some time.]] | http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/folderizer.php?target=Film.DragonTheBruceLeeStory | dclm-gs1-112110002 | false | false | {
"keywords": "fasta"
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.039909 | <urn:uuid:dc7565fd-cac4-424a-9c4e-a488e78e800f> | en | 0.944629 | Thursday, December 12, 2013
Replies by Elder-Vass and Hartwig to Cruickshank/Little
Two leading exponents of critical realism, Dave Elder-Vass (The Causal Power of Social Structures: Emergence, Structure and Agency) and Mervyn Hartwig (Dictionary of Critical Realism), have offered critical replies to my post presenting some of Justin Cruickshank's criticisms of CR and indirectly to my own post on "Bhaskar's Core Ideas." I have invited them to amend and extend their comments and to publish them here to facilitate a coherent reading and continuing discussion. Ruth Groff also replied, and her comments can be read hereThank you, Dave, Mervyn, and Ruth, for contributing to this discussion!
Replies to Cruickshank/Little on critical realism
From Dave Elder-Vass:
Cruickshank's argument might have some merit if it was true that Bhaskar is committed to an a priori understanding of metaphysics and denies the possibility that his transcendental arguments could possibly be wrong. But it just isn't so, and Cruickshank willfully ignores statements that make this clear. Perhaps the clearest I'm aware of is this: "It is important to remember that all cognitive claims, including claims to knowledge of necessities in any mode (whether logical, mathematical, transcendental, conceptual, natural, conventional, psychological, historical, etc.) are fallible; and that discourse, and perhaps especially philosophical discourse… is typically dialogical or conversational in structure” (Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation, p. 15).
And this isn't an isolated quote, by the way: Bhaskar is thoroughly committed to the fallibility of all knowledge claims and even cites 'epistemological relativism' as one of the three cornerstones of critical realism (though 'epistemological fallibilism' might describe his position more accurately).
This interpretation might seem to be undermined by one of the quotes from Bhaskar included by Daniel in his earlier post. Bhaskar does say "It is not necessary that science occurs. But given that it does, it is necessary that the world is a certain way". But I think we have to be careful about what it is that he is ascribing necessity to here. What is necessary is that IF science occurs THEN the world must be such that science is possible and/or intelligible. This seems uncontroversial. But Cruickshank seems to read him as saying that IF science occurs THEN Bhaskar's own specific account of what is entailed by science must be true -- in other words, that the world consists of things with powers arising from mechanisms. Bhaskar certainly asserts that the world does consist of such things, but he does not assert that this is necessarily the case, or even that it necessarily follows from the existence of science. There is scope for error in claims about the specific features of the world that make science possible, and it is quite clear from Bhaskar's other statements that he accepts this.
From Mervyn Hartwig:
I agree. It's Cruickshank who makes dogmatic and quite false claims about Bhaskar not regarding his philosophical ontology as fallible. Bhaskar does of course make a priori arguments, but they're a conditional and relative, situated to a particular historical context. The reasoning could be faulty, the premises might change, or they can be disputed, so the conclusions are revisable and historically relative.
From Dan Little:
Hi, Dave, and greetings, Mervyn, thanks for your comments. This is all worth discussing carefully!
Dave quotes a relevant passage from RTS (cited in my earlier post):
Do you feel that this is not in fact representative of RB's philosophical reasoning?
Mervyn Hartwig:
The quote Daniel gives is a bald summary of the transcendental realist position. If you read the detail you will find that 'established' means 'corrigibly', 'conditionally', 'relatively', 'provisionally' etc. The conclusion of a transcendental argument follows with logical necessity from the major and minor premises (hence 'must'), but only if the premises are sound! The analysis establishing the major premises could be faulty and the minor premise might be disputed or change. Here is a quote from The Possibility of Naturalism that runs completely counter to Cruickshank's (and Daniel's) attempt to assimilate Bhaskar's position to that of old-style metaphysics:
"According to [transcendental realism], there is no connection between (a) what lies beyond sense‑experience and (b) some special sphere of philosophy. For at least once a non‑reductionist account of science is accepted then some 'transcendent' entities, such as magnetic fields, may quite properly be regarded as objects of scientific investigation. But their 'transcendence' is a contingent fact about the world, and philosophy speaks with no special authority about it. The familiar conflation of (a) and (b) in a unitary concept of metaphysics must be assiduously avoided. It has proved a prop for a positivism that has systematically scouted the cognitive potential of both philosophy and science. Secondly, by making the possibility of philosophical discourse contingent upon the actuality of particular social practices it provides ... a way of reconciling transcendental and sociological analyses of social activities such as science ‑ and philosophy". (p. 7)
There are many passages to similar effect throughout Bhaskar's oeuvre.
There is nothing wrong with conditional and relative transcendental arguments! Science itself uses them, or a retroductive-analogical procedure that belongs to the same family, centrally. What must be the case to render these and these well attested results intelligible, e.g. Darwin.
Dustin McWherter, The Problem of Critical Ontology: Bhaskar Contra Kant, has recently made a very good effort at defending a reconstructed version of Bhaskar's argument for transcendental realism in RTS. He stresses its historical and provisional nature. He doesn't even mention Cruickshank, quite rightly too: as Dave implies, Cruickshank's 'critique' either willfully misrepresents Bhaskar or is ignorant.
A transcendental argument, on Bhaskar’s account (RTS 257), has the following logical form:
• Major premise: Only if Q, then P
• Minor premise: P
• Conclusion: Therefore, Q
Here is McWherter’s reconstruction of the basic form of the argument from experimental activity in RTS (The Problem of Critical Ontology: Bhaskar Contra Kant, 115).
• Major premise(s): Only if extra-experimental reality is an open system (Q1), causal laws are not constant conjunctions of events (Q2), and causal laws are the transcendentally real tendencies of generative mechanisms (Q3), then experimental activity is intelligible (P)
• Minor premise: Experimental activity is intelligible (P)
• Conclusion(s): Therefore, extra-experimental reality is an open system (Q1), causal laws are not constant conjunctions of events (Q2), and causal laws are the transcendentally real tendencies of generative mechanisms (Q3)
My main points are that (1) the argument is contextual and polemical – directed against a specific philosophical theory, the Humean account of a causal law, that it seeks to replace. It seeks to demonstrate that it offers, not the only possible theory consistent with (P), but ‘the only theory at present known to us’ that is consistent with it (RTS 260). It anticipates its own supersession in due course. (2) The conclusions only follow if the minor premise is acceptable and accepted by Bhaskar’s interlocutors. (3) Both experimental activity and our understanding of it may change. Indeed, experimental science may cease to exist. Philosophy is in history, and critical realist philosophy is not a traditional philosophy. In sum, the argument is geo-historically relative and conditional.
Building on McWherter, the main argument of PON, the founding philosophical text of critical realist social theory and social science, establishing the possibility of a non-positivist naturalism may be reconstructed as follows. The same kind of considerations apply.
• Major premises: Only if the world, including the social world, is an open system (Q1), causal laws are not constant conjunctions of events (Q2), causal laws are the transcendentally real powers or tendencies of generative mechanisms (Q3), society is a structure or ensemble of powers irreducible to people (Q4) and people’s intentionality is irreducible and causally efficacious (mind is an emergent power of matter and reasons when acted on are causes) (Q5), then human intentional activity is intelligible (P)
• Minor premise: Human intentional activity is intelligible (P)
Dan Little:
Elder-Vass and Hartwig reject the core claims that I have attributed to Cruickshank in his critique of Bhaskar's philosophical method: that Bhaskar pursues an aprioristic philosophical method in arriving at the fundamental ideas of critical realism, and that he regards these ideas as having been established with some kind of certainty by this method. (I should make it clear, of course, that this is my interpretation of Cruickshank; I hope I have not mis-represented him.) Against this aprioristic and infallibilist reading, Elder-Vass and Hartwig argue that Bhaskar's reasoning is not aprioristic and that he regards his conclusions as being fallible and historically conditioned.
I believe that both E-V and Hartwig concede that there are important passages in Bhaskar's A Realist Theory of Science that give an impression of aprioricity and infallibility in Bhaskar (for example, the passage I quote above), but they maintain that a fuller reading of Bhaskar's texts demonstrates that these passages should not be taken at face value. This introductory statement is a "bald" statement, in Hartwig's word. Both E-V and Hartwig assert that other formulations in Bhaskar's corpus serve to amend the "bald" statement and make clear that Bhaskar's final opinion on method is not dogmatic, aprioristic, or infallibilist. And they also assert that later versions of Bhaskar's theories demonstrate these non-dogmatic features of philosophical method as well. So to make out the claim that Bhaskar's method is philosophical, apriori, and prone to asserting the necessity of the conclusions reached, we are obliged to consider all of Bhaskar's comments about method, not just his summary comments, and consider them throughout the fullness of his development of the theory, not just in RTS.
This seems to concede the point that it is not wholly unreasonable to observe that Bhaskar does sometimes assert the features of certainty that Cruickshank attributes to him. The remaining question is whether that adequately represents his mature and complete view, and these critics are adamant that it does not.
Dave and Mervyn make a number of very important points here, and I expect to respond in greater detail in an upcoming post. Thanks to both of them for helping to push this inquiry forward!
Sunday, December 8, 2013
Guest post by Ruth Groff on the ontology of critical realism
Ruth Groff is Assistant Professor of Political Science at St. Louis University. She specializes in the philosophical underpinnings of Western social and political thought. She is author of Powers and Capacities in Philosophy: The New Aristotelianism (2012, with John Greco), Ontology Revisited: Metaphysics in Social and Political Philosophy (Ontological Explorations) (2012), and Revitalizing Causality: Realism about Causality in Philosophy and Social Science (2007). Here is her webpage at SLU. This contribution is a response to my prior post on the status of ontology and is also very relevant to my post treating Justin Cruickshank's critique of Bhaskar. Thanks for contributing, Ruth.
Response to Little on ontology in critical realism
Ruth Groff
As a preliminary -- I am confused by the locution "a theory of ontology." An ontology just is an account of the general features of what (one thinks) there is. Yes? Beyond this, a meta-theory, relative to a given ontological stance, would either be an epistemological inquiry ("How do you know that things are that way?") or a work of meta-metaphysics ("What is involved or presupposed by saying that things are that way?").
The relevant claims in A Realist Theory of Science, I'd say, are as follows: if experimentation is what Humean and Kantian philosophers of science take it to be, then the Humean (and Kantian) ontology can't be right. The idea here is that there is an ontology -- an account of the basic features of the natural world, including e.g., its material existence -- that is implicit in the practice of natural experimentation, and that this implicit ontology is one that is at odds with the ontology endorsed by Humeans and Kantians. Bhaskar may or may not be correct, either about what the implicit ontology of the activity of experimentation is, or about whether or not it is consistent with the explicit ontology of Humeanism and Kantianism re: laws (and other basic features of the world). But I'm not seeing where he has over-reached, philosophically. If you tell me that you love improvisational comedy, but also that you are a hard determinist, I'd say "Dude, you can't have it both ways." I might be wrong in thinking that that's what it would amount to, but I don't think that I'd be over-reaching.
So that's one point. In terms of my example, we'd say that it is philosophical reflection that shows that you can't be doing what you and everyone else say improv is and also be a hard determinist.
A second point concerns the epistemic question: "How can you know that one general ontology is correct and another is incorrect?" [E.g., how do you know that the world does not contain wholes that are greater than the sum of their parts? Or how do you know that there is no such thing as a real causal power? Or an essence? Etc.] Bhaskar has two completely different orders of response to this question. One is meta-theoretical, and it is mainly designed to dispel confusion. At that level, he says "Do not be tempted to think that the reflexive epistemic question (i.e., the question of the justification of the ontological commitments that one cannot help but have) -- do not be tempted to think that "How do I know that the world is x-like?" is the SAME question as "Is the world x-like?". To conflate the two is, straight-forwardly, a category mistake, he says. He calls this particular category mistake the "epistemic fallacy." He has a lot of terms that are not especially useful, but this one I think is. I will come back to it. But for the moment I just want to note that that is one order of his response to the reflexive question that you flag. The response is a cautionary, meta-theoretical one: "Don't make this very common post-Kantian category mistake, as you consider the matter." Ok.
The second way he responds to "How do you know that the natural world really does have the general features that it must have, if scientific experimentation is the sort of activity that what we agree it is?" obviously hinges on whether or not we think that science as a practice delivers theories that warrant our belief in them. Bhaskar thinks that belief in scientific theory is, indeed, generally warranted. (I think he also thinks that it is a lot easier to deny this in theory than it is to deny it in practice.) The next question we have to address, then, if we are tracking his thinking, is a general epistemic one about what justifies our belief in the superiority of one substantive explanation over another, this particular scientific theory over that one. His answer here includes the following elements: (a) we can't ever be certain; (b) it is always possible that our best theory will turn out to be wrong [it is hard core Popperian fallibilism, here]; (c) scientific facts are are theory dependent; (c) the better theory will probably explain more of the data; (d) we are likely to eventually have a better theory than the current one.
Now, you might be tempted to say "Well, if that's all the epistemic certainty that you can give me re: our best scientific theory, then identifying the implicit ontology of scientific experimentation is about as significant to me for getting my ontology right as is identifying the implicit ontology of Santa's activities on Dec. 24th." But saying that belief in scientific theory is not rational, such that assuming the intelligibility of experimentation is to begin from a false premise, is a very different kind of objection to RB's argument than is saying that he has over-reached philosophically, or is somehow claiming infallible empirical knowledge of how the world is. It is terribly important to be clear about this. RB even has a term for the mistake of thinking that you can read infallible knowledge off of some purported set of "facts." He calls it the "ontological fallacy."
I'll be quiet in a minute, but I just wanted to go back to the meta-claim that it is a category mistake to conflate the questions: "How do I know if the world is x-like?" and "Is the world x-like?" It is worth noting -- as Bhaskar does -- that although these are logically at different levels of abstraction (so it's a category mistake technically speaking no matter what), nevertheless, if one is a subjective idealist (and probably also if one is a pragmatist) then nothing much hangs on having made this mistake. But that is also to say, of course, that to make it more or less with impunity one must adopt a particular metaphysics. I think that if there is one lesson to be learned from Bhaskar (though he is not alone in the history of philosophy in stressing this), it is that there is no metaphysically neutral ground. The minute you say anything, you have said something about how you take the world to be. Post-Kantians (though one might prefer Descartes as the marker) will emphasize that the minute that you say anything about the world, you have thereby thought something about the world. Bhaskar is not trying to get around this. As I said, he's even got a named fallacy for the effort. No contemporary realist would. Ok, maybe some kind of non-reflective empiricist would. But no dialectical thinker would. As I say, I think it's so important to be clear on what Bhaskar did and did not say. I disagree with some of the things that he said and has gone on to say, and I think everyone else should too . But we have to identify real points of difference. It's so great that you are encouraging this discussion!
Is ontology an apriori field of knowledge?
The critical realists -- Roy Bhaskar in particular -- attach a great deal of importance to the question of ontology. A theory of ontology should describe the kinds of things, relations, and forces that exist in a realm. So the pre-Socratic philosophers were engaging in ontological theorizing when they asked the question, what does matter consist of -- atoms or a plenum?
The question I am raising here is one of philosophical methodology: what kind of epistemic basis is available for formulating and defending a theory of ontology? How can we claim to know various truths about the nature of reality?
There seem to be three possibilities.
• Apriori philosophical argument: derive conclusions about the necessary structure of the world from apriori philosophical principles. This is traditional metaphysics, and few philosophers would advocate for it today. (foundationalist theory)
• Transcendental philosophical argument: arrive at conclusions about what the world must consist of, in order to make sense of our cognitive abilities. This is Kantian metaphysics, which attempts to do without foundational assumptions and to derive conclusions from the prerequisites of epistemic achievements we are known to have. (internalist theory)
• Generalized empirical theorizing: all substantive representations of the world are hypothetical, justified by the contribution they make to our ability to formulate good, empirically supported scientific theories. This is the approach taken by naturalistic philosophers, who maintain that there are no apriori truths and the only vehicle we have for discovering the nature of the world is through scientific imagination and observation. (coherence theory)
Ontology appears to be about the world; but equally it might be considered to be about a set of particularly fundamental concepts and conceptual structures. The question, "What does the world consist of?" can also be presented as the question, "What concepts serve best to represent the hypothetical structure of the world underlying observations?" Concepts are the intellectual tools or schemes through which we analyze the world; and if they refer to unobservable entities, they are unavoidably hypothetical constructs. As "knowing beings", it has been necessary for human beings to use their imaginations to come up with concepts in terms of which to analyze the world. Some conceptual systems are defective because they lead to expectations about the world that are not born out; other systems are more complex than necessary; yet others postulate entities or processes that we may have reason to want to avoid: magical forces, divine intervention, action-at-a-distance. And when we arrive at a conceptual scheme that appears to serve well as a durable basis for a range of scientific theories, we may want to conclude that the world actually has the properties attributed to it by the scheme.
Nelson Goodman takes a fairly radical view on this question in Ways of Worldmaking. He takes the example of two apparently inconsistent statements about the world: "The sun always moves" and "The sun never moves." And he points out that the statements must be framed within one or another frame of reference; they are not absolutely true or false, but rather true or false with respect to a frame.
Frames of reference, though, belong less to what is described than to systems of description; and each of the two statements relates what is described to such a system. If I ask about the world, you can offer to tell me how it is under one or more frames of reference; but if I insist that you tell me how it is apart from all frames, what can you say? We are confined to ways of describing whatever is described. Our universe, so to speak, consists of these ways rather than of a world or of worlds. (58)
Here is the conclusion that Goodman reaches that is most relevant to the topic of realism:
Many different world-versions are of independent interest and importance, without any requirement or presumption of reducibility to a single base. The pluralist, far from being anti-scientific, accepts the sciences at full value. His typical adversary is the monopolistic materialist or physicalist who maintains that one system, physics, is preeminent and all-inclusive, such that every other version must eventually be reduced to it or rejected as false or meaningless. If all right versions could somehow be reduced to one and only one, that one might with some semblance of plausibility be regarded as the only truth about the only world. But the evidence for such reducibility is negligible, and even the claim is nebulous since physics itself is fragmentary and unstable and the kind and consequences of reduction envisaged are vague. (59-60)
The philosophical position I am invoking here is also a key part of W.V.O. Quine's approach to empirical knowledge in Word and Object. His phrase, the "web of belief", captures the idea well. All real knowledge falls within that web, and it is held together only by observation (when statements have implications for outcomes that can be observed) and logic. The premises of quantum mechanics are some distance from the observational and experimental sentences that can be examined in the lab; and the premises of metaphysical theory are even more distant. But they are all dependent on the same kinds of requirements: simplicity, coherence, and (when possible), empirical observation. Quine referred to "Neurath's boat" as a way of describing the state of our knowledge of the world -- from the observable properties of coal to the fundamentals of time and space:
Neurath has likened science to a boat which, if we are to rebuild it, we must rebuild plank by plank while staying afloat in it. The philosopher and the scientist are in the same boat. If we improve our understanding of ordinary talk of physical things, it will not be by reducing that talk to a more familiar idiom; there is none. It will be by clarifying the connections, causal or otherwise, between ordinary talk of physical things and various further matters which in turn we grasp with help of ordinary talk of physical things. (3)
Analyze theory-building how we will, we all must start in the middle. Our conceptual firsts are middle-sized, middle-distanced objects, and our introduction to them and to everything comes midway in the cultural evolution of the race.... We cannot strip away the conceptual trappings sentence by sentence and leave a description of the objective world; but we can investigate the world, and man as a part of it, and thus find out what cues he could have of what goes on around him. (4-5)
(Quine's participation in the Boolos panel above is a very good exposure to some of his thinking about meaning and concepts.)
It is perhaps surprising to invoke Goodman and Quine in the context of reflections on critical realism, since their philosophies are anti-realistic (or at least agnostic between realism and anti-realism), and the logical-positivist background of much their thinking is anathema to the critical realists. Moreover, both lend support to a certain kind of conceptual relativism: Quine through his arguments about the indeterminacy of translation and ontological relativity (Ontological Relativity), and Goodman through his view of "many worlds" in Ways of Worldmaking. This perspective doesn't necessarily commit one to anti-realism; in fact, Hilary Putnam's effort to create a defensible formulation of "internal realism" indicates one possible direction of argument towards realism from these premises. (Maria Baghramian's discussion in "From Realism Back to Realism" of Putnam's various positions on realism is very good; link.) But it is difficult to see how one could arrive at a strong philosophical realism within these epistemic constraints.
However, if these arguments on the limits of metaphysical reasoning are valid, then we need to acknowledge these limits and move forward. Fundamentally, the core of their position seems unassailable: there is no epistemic foundation possible outside the loose constraints of empirical observation and logic that can justify a set of beliefs about the fundamental structure of the world. There is no secret recipe for arriving at metaphysical knowledge through purely philosophical pathways.
The statement of realism in which I have the greatest confidence is this: we are justified in acknowledging the reality in the world of the things, processes, structures, and forces that are postulated or implied by the best scientific theories we have to date. And we acknowledge that these beliefs, like all scientific and empirical beliefs, are fallible and correctable.
(An upcoming post will discuss Tuukka Kaidesoja's very interesting critique of critical realism and his advocacy of "naturalized critical realism" in Naturalizing Critical Realist Social Ontology.)
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Cruickshank's central critique
Justin Cruickshank is a friendly critic to critical realism, not a hostile one. He criticizes the philosophical method but supports many of the substantive conclusions about realism. (Here is a prior post on the gist of Cruickshank's criticisms.) Cruickshank provides a useful analysis of critical realism and its anti-matter double, social constructivism, in “Positive and Negative,” a working paper at the International Migration Institute in 2011 (link).
It seems that Cruickshank's most basic concern in "Positive and Negative" is that CR posits a particular ontology as the unique precondition of all science (a move familiar from transcendental metaphysics), and that philosophical reasoning can tell us what that ontology involves. So Bhaskar places excessive reliance on an apriorimethod of philosophical reasoning in constructing his metaphysical ideas. By contrast, in "Positive and Negative" Cruickshank favors a more malleable and fallibilist stance on ontology. Here is one fairly clear statement of his view of the central shortcoming of CR:
Finally it is suggested that the correct way to construe the post-positivist problem-situation is to focus on the fallibility of knowledge, as critical realism does and, unlike critical realism, argue that fallible knowledge claims should be revised and replaced through criticism, with the focus being on theories’ ability to solve explanatory problems rather than their adherence to a set of ontological assumptions that are posited as the condition of possibility of the social sciences. (4)
What is implied here is the view that all knowledge — both ordinary scientific knowledge and ontological knowledge — is fallible and revisable. This means that ontology should not be treated as part of a priori philosophy but rather as the more abstract end of the spectrum of scientific theorizing about the world. Bhaskar errs, then, in asserting that ontological knowledge is different in kind from ordinary scientific knowledge; it is transcendental knowledge — knowledge based on rigorous analysis of the necessary preconditions of ordinary scientific knowledge.
This is a serious criticism of the method that Bhaskar uses in developing his theory of critical realism; but it does not imply disagreement with the key substantive conclusions of Bhaskar’s developed theory. Cruickshank remains a realist, and leaves it open that we can coherently maintain the key substantive ideas of critical realism: Ontology is important, bad assumptions about ontology can lead to bad scientific theory, and we can indeed regard the statements of an ontological theory as being referential to the “real” structure of the world. (In Bhaskar’s terminology, we can look at ontology as being and account of non-transitive knowledge.) Here is the brief summary that Cruickshank offers in his introduction to CRITICAL REALISM: THE DIFFERENCE THAT IT MAKES:
Critical realism is realist because it holds, contra postmodernism and social constructionism, that research is about gaining knowledge of a reality that exists independently of our representations of it.... Critical realism is critical, as regards methodology, because it holds that the concepts which inform the meta-theory that defines structure and agency can only be developed via a critical dialogue with alternative social ontologies. (kl 568)
Cruickshank situates critical realism and its opposite, social constructivism, in terms of their different efforts to reject "positivism”. So positivism is the foil against which critical realism is unfolded. (Ruth Groff makes a slightly different choice in her choice of Humean causation theory is the foil. Humeanism and positivism have various similarities, but they are not identical doctrines.) According to Cruickshank, Bhaskar rejects positivism for several reasons; but its commitment to the idea of unified deductive theories underlying the full range of empirical observations is at the top of the list. He characterizes this approach to the relation of science to the world as one involving a “closed systems ontology” (7); whereas he believes an ontology that looks at the world as a “stratified open system” is preferable. The “stratified” part of the concept refers to the idea that causal mechanisms are “emergent” from the lower-level things of which they are composed; and the “open” part of the concept refers to the idea that there are substantial dimensions of contingency involved in any complicated social process. “The ontology [of a stratified open system] is held to be one of open systems because the underlying causal laws interact in contingent ways to produce change at the level of observable events” (7).
Cruickshank believes that this distinction between open and closed systems leads eventually to Margaret Archer’s concept of “morphogenesis” (8); link.
JC also offers an answer to a question posed in an earlier post: what is “critical” about critical realism (link)? Here is the heart of his answer:
For those critical realists who regard critical realism as a form of neo-Marxism, the task of social science is not just that of explaining how structures and agents interact but also that of criticism (see Bhaskar 1998 and Collier 1998). Their argument runs thus. Any scientific account of how the capitalist structure works will show how it is oppressive and exploitative. It will also show how this structure needs to generate ideological beliefs to mask its nefarious character. Ideological beliefs here are defined as beliefs which are not only false but caused by a structural need for obfuscation and which serve the interests of the capitalist class by obfuscating oppression and inequality. (10)
So “critical” here has two meanings: exposing of undesirable characteristics of some social entities and exposing how certain formulations of ordinary belief have the effect of concealing those characteristics.
(Incidentally, Cruickshank explains one of Bhaskar’s most basic ideas, the notion of an “intransitive domain of reality”, in terms that suggest the terminology itself is misleading. Theory is transitive because “fallible theories are open to change” (8). This sounds like a definition of “transitory” or "changing" rather than “transitive” ("allowing inference from one proposition to another: if A is longer than B and B is longer than C then A is longer than C"). Here is the place where Bhaskar introduces the distinction in A Realist Theory of Science:
Any adequate philosophy of science must find a way of grappling with this central paradox of science: that men in their social activity produce knowledge which is a social product much like any other, which is no more independent of its production and the men who produce it than motor cars, armchairs or books, which has its own craftsmen, technicians, publicists, standards and skills and which is no less subject to change than any other commodity. This is one side of 'knowledge'. The other is that knowledge is 'of' things which are not produced by men at all: the specific gravity of mercury, the process of electrolysis, the mechanism of light propagation. None of these 'objects of knowledge' depend upon human activity. If men ceased to exist sound would continue to travel and heavy bodies fall to the earth in exactly the same way, though ex hypothesi there would be no-one to know it. Let us call these, in an unavoidable technical neologism, the intransitive objects of knowledge. The transitive objects of knowledge are Aristotelian material causes. They are the raw materials of science—the artificial objects fashioned into items of knowledge by the science of the day. They include the antecedently established facts and theories, paradigms and models, methods and techniques of inquiry available to a particular scientific school or worker. The material cause, in this sense, of Darwin's theory of natural selection consisted of the ingredients out of which he fashioned his theory. Among these were the facts of natural variation, the theory of domestic selection and Malthus' theory of population. Darwin worked these into a knowledge of a process, too slow and complex to be perceived, which had been going on for millions of years before him. But he could not, at least if his theory is correct, have produced the process he described, the intransitive object of the knowledge he had produced: the mechanism of natural selection.... In short, the intransitive objects of knowledge are in general invariant to our knowledge of them: they are the real things and structures, mechanisms and processes, events and possibilities of the world; and for the most part they are quite independent of us. (Kindle Locations 749-764) (italics mine)
It would appear that Cruickshank's interpretation is consistent with these remarks by Bhaskar.)
Cruickshank also edited a useful volume, CRITICAL REALISM: THE DIFFERENCE THAT IT MAKES, to which he contributed a useful introduction and an applied article, "Underlabouring and unemployment: Notes for developing a critical realist approach to the agency of the chronically unemployed". Another very useful collection edited by Margaret Archer, Roy Bhaskar, Andrew Collier, Tony Lawson, and Alan Norrie, Critical Realism: Essential Readings (1998), provides an excellent selection of readings on critical realism.
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Bhaskar's core ideas
Finally consider Bhaskar's notion of things and powers:
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Making institutions
The new institutionalists have largely focused on the maintenance and evolution of major social and political institutions. So Kathleen Thelen's excellent book, How Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, the United States, and Japan, examines the stability and change within the institutions through which skill is transmitted, Paul Pierson looks at issues of temporarily within institutional change in Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis, and Elinor Ostrom examines institutions through which communities solve common-property resource problems in Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. In each case the analysis begins with the institution already well developed.
The tools of comparative historical research have proven highly useful in the context of these sorts of questions. Thus Thelen compares roughly a century of institutional history in Great Britain, Germany, Japan, and the United States to show that the same social and economic needs of an industrial economy have been satisfied with different sets of stable ensembles of training institutions, and she is enabled to consider (and sometimes reject) common theories of how institutional change and stability occur. For example, the theory of necessary functional convergence is refuted by her study.
Another important question has not been so fully examined to date within this tradition is how major institutional innovations are invented in the first place. Here too the tools of comparison are very relevant. But the challenge is to find appropriate cases: instances where roughly similar institutions emerged in concrete historical settings where we can work backwards to trace out the structural and agentic events and processes that appear to be relevant.
For this reason the appearance of Wenkai HE's Paths toward the Modern Fiscal State: England, Japan, and China is a timely and interesting contribution. HE undertakes a comparative study of the emergence of what he calls the "modern fiscal state" in Britain, China, and Japan. He has undertaken to learn enough about these three cases in detail to be able to tell a reasonably detailed story of the emergence of this set of state tax and revenue institutions in the three settings, and he is thereby poised to consider some important institutional-causal questions about the innovations he observes. The book is a "cross-over" work, with political science methods and historical research content. The book combines new institutionalism, comparative historical sociology, and first-rate historical scholarship to make a compelling historical argument.
The subject is important for several reasons. First, as Chuck Tilly emphasized, the capacity of the modern state to increase and rationalize its ability to collect taxes is key to the extension of military and administrative power. So fiscal institution building is at the heart of modern state formation. Second, it sheds some light on the specific challenges China confronted on its road to creating a pervasive modern state at mid-19th century. Third, the granularity of the account permits rigorous explanation of some specific turning points in each nation's course of "modernization".
HE describes the path dependency of institution creation in these terms:
Institutional development is a highly political process as various institutional arrangements have quite different impacts on interest redistribution. Therefore, the creation of new institutions is a process rife with interactions between socioeconomic structure, in which institutions are deeply embedded, and actors with different ideas, interests, and institutional blueprints. These interactions generate multiple possible outcomes in institutional development. (1)
HE uses careful comparison of three cases to try to establish underlying causal mechanisms relevant to the invention and establishment of new centralized institutions of state revenue capture: England (1600-1630), Japan (1820-1860), and China (1820-1840).
A couple of findings are particularly interesting. One is the proximity this research has to the Tilly thesis linking war-fighting capacity and fiscal reform. HE finds that the linkage is not as direct or regular as Tilly believed in Coercion, Capital and European States: AD 990 - 1992. Another interesting finding is a refutation of the view that there is some kind of necessary logic of modernization that guided this process and determined the outcome. Instead, HE finds that there was a great deal of path-dependence and contingency in these three stories -- not a determinate process of "modernization."
The combination of detailed historical knowledge of the particulars of the cases with the theoretical structure of institutionalism, path dependency, and contingency permits HE to tell a story that is satisfying both to the historian and the historical sociologist, informing both. (This was evident in the discussion of the book that occurred at the Social Science History Association meeting in November, where experts on Japan, China, and England largely supported HE's analysis of the sequence of changes that he outlines.)
One thing that I particularly appreciate about HE's work is his ability to combine structure and agency into a single coherent analysis and explanation. He writes about this effort in his conclusion:
In particular, [this book] seeks to demonstrate how an eventful approach to historical causation can integrate agency, structure, and contingency into one coherent causal story to explain the creation of new institutions through an uncertain and interactive historical process. Where the trajectory of institutional development is determined neither by socioeconomic structure nor by agents with bounded rationalities, a careful analysis of events can help social scientists uncover a causal mechanism without resorting to oversimplification or retreating to a naive form of "history as storytelling." (180)
Isaac Martin, Ajay Mehrotra, and Monica Prasad's very interesting The New Fiscal Sociology: Taxation in Comparative and Historical Perspectiveis a valuable companion to Wenkai HE's study. Here is how Chuck Tilly summed up the ambitions of the new fiscal sociology in his preface to the volume:
Recently, a relatively small but creative group of social scientists and historians have been rectifying the long neglect of taxation in their fields. They have started to build a cross-disciplinary effort we can call fiscal sociology, with the qualification that nonsociologists provide an important part of the theory and research. Dis-playing some of the best recent work, this volume accents three major questions in the description and explanation of taxation: the social bases of tax policy, the determinants of taxpayer consent, and the social consequences of taxation. These chapters establish the vitality and importance of recent work on the social and political processes involved in taxation. (xv)
Friday, November 29, 2013
Relevant to what?
photo (3)
source: Benoit Mandelbrot, The Fractal Geometry of Nature (cover)
photo (2)
source: Benoit Mandelbrot, The Fractal Geometry of Nature, p. 15
An earlier post raised the question of the value of academic research and concluded that we shouldn't expect academic research to be "relevant" (link). That is a strong conclusion and needs some further dissection. Plainly research needs to be relevant to something -- it needs to be relevant to a recognized "problem" in the discipline or across disciplines; it needs somehow to be relevant to a tradition or thread of conversation within the discipline; and (as Tasia Wagner pointed out in a comment) it often needs to be relevant to a "hot" topic if the author wants to see it published. And of course academic research needs to be judged by a set of standards of rigor, method, and overall significance. Iit needs to be relevant to a set of standards of academic assessment. We want to be able to make comparative judgments about research contributions -- "not well argued," "derivative," "minor", as well as their opposites -- strongly argued, original, and important. That is what academic communities are for, and that is why we have confidence in peer review processes for publication and for advancement in the university.
All true.
The specific kind of relevance I was taking issue with is "practical utility" -- the demand for immediate problem-solving potential that underlies common critiques of research in the humanities and social sciences. The Proxmire "Golden Fleece" awards a generation ago caught this current exactly (link), and there is a similar current of thinking in the Congress today. For example, the current effort to exclude funding for research in political science by the NSF seems to fall in this category (link). This is the view I want to take issue with -- the idea that abstract research in the humanities or social sciences is frivolous, pointless, and without social value.
There is a related kind of relevance that I think I would discount as well: "accessibility to a wide public." Some academic research is in fact accessible to a wide audience in its primary form. But that is not generally the case. Take the mathematics of chaos theory. It is esoteric and technical, not readily understood by non-mathematicians. (The illustration and page of text above are taken from Benoit Mandelbrot's 1983 book, The Fractal Geometry of Nature.) But the theory can be translated by gifted science writers and communicators like James Gleick, whose Chaos: Making a New Science was read by a very wide non-specialist audience, in forms that significantly influence the imaginations and frameworks of non-specialists. Likewise, the primary research in archeology, ethnography, and economic history that underlies our understanding of the long-term material history of our species makes for a tough read for non-specialists. But then a Jared Diamond can write a wildly popular book, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, that translates this research for the wider readership. Diamond is an accomplished academic. But Guns, Germs, and Steel is not a primary work of original academic research; it is a beautifully executed work of translation.
So here is the scoring system I'd like to see guiding our thinking about social investments in research in the humanities and social sciences (which is probably relevant in the natural sciences as well):
• Is the problem an important one?
• Has an appropriate methodology been pursued with rigor, evidence, and logic?
• Is there an original or innovative discovery involved in the research product?
Significantly, these criteria will be familiar to any academic who has served as a reviewer for journal submissions, a grant proposal reviewer for a foundation, or a reviewer for a faculty tenure case.
Now let's score one particular philosopher, John Rawls, for a research article that was written before he became a household word with the publication of A Theory of Justice in 1971. The article is "Justice as Fairness" and it appeared in Philosophical Review in 1958.
• The problem is, how should we attempt to assess the justice of basic institutions in a modern society? This problem is one of the big ones -- give it a 10.
• The methodology is analytic philosophy of ethics, with an innovative use of economic reasoning added. Most of the world of expert philosophers would say the arguments are carried off perfectly. Another 10.
• And what about innovation? For sure. Rawls insisted on a new way of framing ethical issues, distinctly different from the metaethical and utilitarian approaches of the 1950s. Another 10.
So "Justice as Fairness" scores a perfect 30 on my metric. And yet the article probably achieved a readership of 800 people in its published form in The Philosophical Review within a year of its publication. It was technical philosophy and would have been a quick rejection in The Atlantic or the New Yorker. But in hindsight, it was very important. It laid the ground for what became the most influential and widely read book of political philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century (over 300,000 copies according to its publisher), and substantially changed the terms of debate about issues of distributive justice.
All of this suggests that we can't judge the likely impact or even the practical importance of a work at the time it is undertaken. But we can make judgments about rigor, importance, and originality, and these are the best guides we have for deciding what research to publish and support.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Who made economics?
The discipline of economics has a high level of intellectual status, even hegemony, in today’s social sciences — especially in universities in the United States. It also has a very specific set of defining models and theories that distinguish between “good” and “bad” economics. This situation suggests two topics for research: how did political economy and its successors ascend to this position of prestige in the social sciences? And how did this particular mix of techniques, problems, mathematical methods, and exemplar theoretical papers come to define the mainstream discipline? How did this governing disciplinary matrix develop and win the field?
One of the most interesting people taking on questions like these is Marion Fourcade. Her Economists and Societies: Discipline and Profession in the United States, Britain, and France, 1890s to 1990s was discussed in an earlier post (link). An early place where she expressed her views on these topics is in her 2001 article, “Politics, Institutional Structures, and the Rise of Economics: A Comparative Study” (link). There she describes the evolution of economics in these terms:
Since the middle of the nineteenth century, the study of the economy has evolved from a loose discursive "field," with no clear and identifiable boundaries, into a fully "professionalized" enterprise, relying on both a coherent and formalized framework, and extensive practical claims in administrative, business, and mass media institutions. (397)
And she argues that this process was contingent, path-dependent, and only loosely guided by a compass of “better” science:
Overall,contrary to the frequent assumption that economics is a universal and universally shared science, there seems to be considerable cross-national variation in (1) the and nature of the institutionalization of an economic knowledge field, (2) the forms of professional action of economists, and (3) intellectual traditions in the of economics. (398)
Fourcade approaches this subject as a sociologist; so she wants to understand the institutional and structural factors that led to the shaping and stabilization of this field of knowledge.
Understanding the relationship between the institutional and intellectual aspects of knowledge production requires,first and foremost,a historical analysis of the conditions under which a coherent domain of discourse and practice was established in the first place. (398)
A key question in this article (and in Economists and Societies) is how the differences that exist between the disciplines of economics in France, Germany, Great Britain, and the US came to be. The core of the answer that she gives rests on her analysis of the relationships that existed between practitioners and the state: "A comparison of the four cases under investigation suggests that the entrenchment of the economics profession was profoundly shaped by the relationship of its practitioners to the larger political institutions and culture of their country" (432). So differences between economics in, say, France and the United States, are to be traced back to the different ways in which academic practitioners of economic analysis and policy recommendations were situated with regard to the institutions of the state.
It is possible to treat the history of ideas internally ("systems of ideas are driven by rational discussion of their implications") and externally ("systems of ideas are driven by the social needs and institutional arrangements of a certain time"). The best sociology of knowledge avoids this dichotomy, allowing for both the idea that a field of thought advances in part through the scientific and conceptual debates that occur within it and the idea that historically specific structures and institutions have important effects on the shape and direction of the development of a field. Fourcade avoids the dichotomy by treating seriously the economic reasoning that took place at a time and place, while also searching out the institutional and structural factors that favored this approach or that in a particular national setting.
This is sociology of knowledge done at a high level of resolution. Fourcade wants to identify the mechanisms through which "societal institutions" influence the production of knowledge in the four country contexts that she studies (Germany, Great Britain, France, and the US). She does not suggest that economics lacks scientific content or that economic debates do not have a rational structure of argument. But she does argue that the configuration of the field itself was not the product of rational scientific advance and discovery, but instead was shaped by the institutions of the university and the exigencies of the societies within which it developed.
Fourcade's own work suggests a different kind of puzzle -- this time in the development of the field of the sociology of knowledge. Fourcade's topic seems to be one that is tailor-made for treatment within the terms of Bourdieu's theory of a field. And in fact some of Fourcade's analysis of the institutional factors that influenced the success or failure of academic economists in Britain, Germany, or the US fits Bourdieu's theory very well. Bourdieu's book Homo Academicus appeared in 1984 in French and 1988 in English. But Fourcade does not make use of Bourdieu's ideas at all in the 2001 article -- some 17 years after Bourdieu's ideas were published. Reference to elements of Bourdieu's approach appears only in the 2009 book. There she writes:
Bourdieu found that the social sciences occupy a very peculiar position among all scientific fields in that external factors play an especially important part in determining these fields' internal stratification and structure of authority.... Within each disciplinary field, the subjective (i.e., agentic) and objective (i.e., structural) positions of individuals are "homologous": in other words, the polar opposition between "economic" and "cultural" capital is replicated at the field's level, and mirrors the orthodoxy/heterodoxy divide. (23)
So why was Bourdieu not considered in the 2001 article? This shift in orientation may be simply a feature of the author's own intellectual development. But it may also be diagnostic of the rise of Bourdieu's influence on the sociology of knowledge in the 90's and 00's. It would be interesting to see a graph of the frequency of references to the book since 1984.
(Gabriel Abend's treatment of the differences that exist between the paradigms of sociology in the United States and Mexico is of interest here as well; link.)
Thursday, November 21, 2013
The West and the East
Ian Morris has written a pair of books that are intended to contribute to a particularly important set of disagreements in comparative economic history: what accounts for the advantage in economic development that seems to be enjoyed by Western Europe at various points in history? The key arguments are presented in Why the West Rules--for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future, and he lays out the quantitative methods and evidence in The Measure of Civilization: How Social Development Decides the Fate of Nations.
The basic argument is that current debates are critically flawed because they consider too short a timespan. Morris is an archaeologist, and he thinks the relevant differences between West and East only become apparent when we consider a timespan that extends backwards in time by at least 15,000 years.
The central analytical tool that Morris introduces is a "social development index" -- an index of four features that can be measured for various social locations at various points in time. The four features are: energy capture, urban development, war fighting capability, information handling capacity. Here is the basic graph that he develops:
This graph tells a simple story of a horse race: West has a slight but constant advantage from 14,000 BCE to 4,000 BCE, broadening a bit through 2000 BCE. East pulls ahead at the beginning of the Common Era while the West declines sharply and begins to recover only 1400 years later. The West pulls ahead again by about 1700 and maintains a very small lead through the present. This is not a very dramatic story, however. Durning most stretches of this 16,000 year period there is very close alignment between the two trajectories. So it seems hard to imagine that the differences discernible here are in fact decisive historical factors.
Here is one of the primary reversals that occurs on the graph, between 300 BCE and 1100 BCE.
The social development index is interesting in its own terms. The effort to pull prehistoric and ancient archeological data into a consistent system of accounting is interesting, and Morris makes a case for the idea that these four features can be measured with enough precision to permit comparison over long stretches of time. It is "macro history" and "shape of history at a large scale". There is one kind of truth the work supports: there is a generally rising trend in "social development" with occasional crashes and reversals. This is historical research at the most macro scale.
These four factors are significant material indicators of social development. But they do not exhaust the questions we might want to consider. Other measures we might find interesting in this kind of grand sociology include the rise / fall of religions and ideologies; ebb and flow of scope of control of political systems (Victor Lieberman on Burma and France); demographic regimes (high fertility/high mortality); stratification and exploitation (Marx); life quality for the median individual (Sen); and there certainly are others.
So the goal of measuring factors like the ones chosen here over a broad historical expanse is an ambitious and valuable one. However, I don't think the research has the consequences that Morris claims.
First, it isn't really posing the same kind of question as that confronted by Pomeranz and Bin Wong. The comparative economic history question is superficially similar to the one the author asks -- how do Eurasian cores perform 1500-2000? But the real questions are quite different. Fundamentally they want to open the black box of institutions, ideology, and circumstance to account for 50- or 100-year shifts. Historians like Perdue and Pomeranz really want to know about the contingencies of history, and that seems to imply a shorter timescale.
So I don't think it's really on the subject suggested by the title. Its real subject is this: "there are very longterm differences between the two large cores in terms of material levels and rates of development." But it doesn't offer an explanation of why this should be so: earliest timing, material advantages of one core over another, contingent path dependencies, ... Likewise the suggestions about projection onto the coming century are overblown.
Moreover, the analysis is not explanatory; really it is a redescription of the phenomena. It doesn't even invoke explanatory factors. Geography? First comer advantage? Morris believes he has the key to a large scale explanation:
Why had the West got the Maxim gun [technology and war fighting advantage] when the rest had not? (Kl 286)
But I don't find that his "long tendencies of social development" picture actually helps in answering this question; rather, it simply repeats the phenomenon to be explained.
Morris categorizes existing theories of comparative economic development as "long-term lock-in" and "short-term accident" theories. And he suggests that his own approach doesn't fall in either category. It is indeed longterm; but it shows variation over the longterm, so it doesn't postulate "lock-in". And it disagrees with the accident theory because, essentially, he doesn't think there is a lot of contingency and path dependency in the story he tells. The material factors that drive the shape of the master graph are primary, and trump the effects of lesser factors like institutions and culture.
The question [of why the West rules] requires us to look at the whole sweep of human history as a single story, establishing its overall shape, before discussing why it has that shape. This is what I try to do in this book, bringing a rather different set of skills to bear. (Kl 460)
In fact, Morris's account literally doesn't tell us a thing about culture or institutions. But these are the things historians want to understand. For Morris, however, these are dependent variables in the long story of problem solving the author wants to tell. (See KL 4377)
So my overall reaction is that this is an interesting piece of research that answers a different question than the one its author highlights. It provides a very interesting view of the "shape" of human history in the two mega-regions; the attempt to measure what the author calls social development is one interesting cut on longterm historical development. But it really isn't a good way of understanding the relationship between East and West when it comes to comparative economic development. It doesn't identify the more proximate factors that led to surges and plateaux of development in the two trajectories. And yet that is really what the debate is all about.
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Guest post by Elizabeth Anderson on race in American politics
Elizabeth Anderson is John Dewey Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author most recently of The Imperative of Integration. This contribution extends a question posed in a recent post on the conservative war on poor people (link). Thanks for contributing, Liz!
American Conservative Politics and the Long Shadow of Slavery
Elizabeth Anderson
An “outright Marxist!” That’s what Rafael Cruz, Senator Ted Cruz’s father, declared of President Obama on the campaign trail in April 2013. His accusation is common on the right. Google “Obama Marxist” and you will get about 4.95 million results. “Obama communist” yields 40 million. It’s a strange charge against a man who vigorously supported the bail-out of Wall Street banks as a Senator, and expanded it to other major firms as President. Yet the charge is nothing new. Conservatives have long accused anyone to their left of communism or fellow-traveling. Rick Perlstein traces this practice back to the 1950s.
In fact, it goes back a century before. George Fitzhugh, author of the famous proslavery tract Cannibals All! wrote a letter to William Lloyd Garrison in 1856 declaring that “every theoretical abolitionist at the North is a Socialist or Communist.” J. H. Thornwell, one of the most distinguished ministers of the antebellum South, delivered a sermon in 1850 on “The Rights and Duties of Masters,” in which he characterized the conflict over slavery as one in which slaveholders, Christians, and the “friends of order and regulated freedom” stood together against “abolitionists, atheists, socialists, communists, red republicans, [and] jacobins” who were united on the other side.
This fact about the origins of one aspect of conservative rhetoric opens a window to the larger structure of American conservative thought. Consider Romney’s notorious 47% speech:
There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president . . . who are dependent upon government . . . who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing . . . . These are people who pay no income tax . . . . I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.
This was spoken by a presidential candidate who supported the Wall Street bailouts, who did not complain about massive state subsidies to wealthy farmers or the oil and coal industries, and who paid 14.1% of his income in federal taxes—less than the 15.3% effective payroll tax for Social Security and Medicare that falls on wage workers, over and above the income tax. Counting state and local taxes, which are highly regressive, we have good reason to believe that the 47% he resents pay substantially higher total tax rates than the top 1%.
Romney, however, knew his audience. Tax breaks and subsidies for better-off whites are not what most conservatives oppose. Their core objection is “free stuff” thought to disproportionately benefit blacks, Latinos, immigrants, and other traditionally subordinated groups. As Lee Atwater explained, the Republican party’s “Southern Strategy” for winning white voters is all about opposing policies that disproportionately help blacks and promoting policies that disproportionately hurt them:
You start out in 1954 by saying, "N-ger, n-ger, n-ger." By 1968 you can't say "n-ger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
While conservatives, even those belonging to or sympathetic to the Tea Party, support Social Security and Medicare, they condemn programs such as means-tested welfare, which are perceived as disproportionately benefiting blacks and Latinos, whom they see as undeserving. A key driver of public opinion on domestic policy in the U.S. is racial resentment: in particular, the idea that blacks are too lazy to take responsibility for their lives but want to live off the hard-earned wealth of whites, either through crime or the public dole.
My current research on abolitionism and the struggle for free labor finds that this idea has been a deep theme of American conservative opinion since before the Civil War. Although in the antebellum era, racists typically supposed that blacks were incapable of taking care of themselves, while today they are thought to be willfully refusing to do so, the complaints about black behavior are remarkably similar. In response to an emancipation petition submitted to the Virginia legislature, hundreds of citizens submitted proslavery petitionsin 1795. Echoing other petitions, this one from the free whites of Lunenberg County worried that emancipation would bring
Want, Poverty, Distress and ruin to the free Citizen; the Horrors of all the rapes, Robberies, Murders, and Outrages, which an innumerable Host of unprincipled, unpropertied, vindictive and remorseless Banditte are capable of perpetrating; Neglect, famine and Death to the abandoned black Infant, and superannuated Parent; inevitable Bankruptcy to the revenue; Desperation and revolt to the disappointed, oppressed Citizen; and sure and final ruin to this once happy, free, and flourishing Country . . . .
Thomas Dew, in his 1832 article “Abolition of Negro Slavery,” predicted that abolition would lead blacks to idleness, drunkenness, destitution, and thence to crime. William Harper predicted in Cotton is King, an 1860 compendium of proslavery thought, that emancipation would reduce blacks to paupers and lead them “from petty to greater crimes, until all life and property would be rendered insecure,” and that if they got the vote, they “would be used by unprincipled politicians” to advance dangerous schemes.
White conservatives saw their fears confirmed during Reconstruction. This cartoon reveals their view of the Freedman’s Bureau, described as “an agency to keep the Negro in idleness at the expense of the white man:
Then it was the Freedman’s Bureau. Today it is food stamps, Medicaid, and Obamacare.
Not only the content, but the style and emotional register of conservative politics have been constant. The hysteria, apocalyptic sensibility, and intransigence of Tea Party conservatives on full display in the recent government shutdown crisis (complete with a confederate flag) mirrors that of the South in the run-up to the Civil War through the Reconstruction Era. American conservatism continues to operate under the long shadow of slavery and its legacy.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Cruickshank on philosophical issues with critical realism
Justin Cruickshank is an interesting commentator on the philosophical underpinnings of critical realism. Critical realism was developed initially by Roy Bhaskar in A Realist Theory of Science and The Possibility of Naturalism: A philosophical critique of the contemporary human sciences, and has been further elaborated by a number of philosophers. The theory is now playing a lively role within sociology and sociological theory. Cruickshank’s key ideas are developed in several papers, “A tale of two ontologies: an immanent critique of critical realism” (2004) (link), “Knowing Social Reality: A Critique of Bhaskar and Archer’s Attempt to Derive a Social Ontology from Lay Knowledge” (2010) (link), and “The positive and the negative: Assessing critical realism and social constructionism as post-positivist approaches to empirical research in the social sciences" (2011) (link). Fundamentally Cruickshank takes issue with the nature of the arguments that critical realists have offered for their specific ideas about ontology.
Cruickshank regards the doctrines of critical realism as expressed by Bhaskar and his successors as fundamentally a philosophical theory rather than a highly general and abstract social theory; and he finds that the theory is justified on several lines of philosophical argumentation. The arguments that he criticizes involve apriori philosophical reasoning and inference from lay concepts about the natural and social worlds.
"A tale of two ontologies" highlights the philosophical presuppositions and language of critical realism — assumptions about the variants of ontology (transitive and intransitive), absolute metaphysical knowledge, transcendental metaphysical knowledge, conceptual science, immanent critique. Cruickshank finds that Bhaskar embraces the idea that critical realism is a philosophical theory rather than a scientific theory, and that this places the theory on shaky ground:
In support of the differentiation of philosophy from science, and contrary to the claim made about the historical transitivity of ontology made in response to Chalmers, Bhaskar says he avoids the epistemic fallacy by producing a philosophical ontology. He argues that if we conflate scientific and philosophical ontologies then we commit the epistemic fallacy, by remaining confined within questions about knowledge. (573)
The transcendental method that Bhaskar uses, according to Cruickshank, is based on Kant’s philosophical theories:
Against empiricism, Bhaskar’s transcendental realism (which was later renamed ‘critical realism’) holds that the condition of possibility of science is the explanation of causal laws which are different from the changing contingent observable regularities we may perceive outside experiments. The ontological turn advocated in RTS is meant to render explicit the ontological presuppositions implicit within the practice of science. In doing this, Bhaskar argues that the condition of possibility of science is the existence of underlying causal laws in open systems (i.e. systems characterised by change with no observable constant conjunctions), rather than causal laws being observed constant conjunctions within artificial closed laboratory systems. (569-570)
But this method leads to a conundrum:
The version of ontology required to allow critical realism to fulfill its hegemonic project rests on a dogmatic metaphysical claim to know a stratum of ultimate reality beyond knowledge. Critical realists try to avoid such explicit dogmatism by defining ontology in terms of the transitive domain rather than the intransitive domain. However, defining ontology in terms of the transitive domain commits the epistemic fallacy, and precludes any possibility of the ontology being used as the basis for an hegemonic project, as the ontology would be fallible and hence open to revision (unless dogmatically privileged). [my italics] (581)
So Bhaskar et al have painted themselves into a metaphysical corner: they require that ontology should be about reality as it really is (intransitive); they retreat from the implication of a dogmatic philosophical position; and they wind up in the position of conceptual relativism (transitive domain) that they sought to avoid.
Cruickshank plainly prefers to deal with these issues in a way that is not so dependent on purely philosophical arguments. Here is the position that Cruickshank thinks is most reasonable:
We may accept the view that ontological questions are important questions, and argue that we ought to regard ontological theories as fallible interpretations of reality. In other words, the focus in this article is on the status claimed for ontology, and not the issue of wether one or other substantive social ontology is the definitively correct or incorrect definition of social reality. The emphasis is on continually developing ontological theories through critical dialogue, rather than arguing that an individualist, or structuralist, or praxis based ontology, etc., is the correct definition of social reality. (568-569)
In contrast to foundational epistemology which defines reality to fit a subjective, mentalistic foundation, we may adopt an anti-foundational approach that rejects the starting point of epistemology as the separation of the lone mind from the world. We may instead hold that our beliefs are engaged with the world and that we need to revise and replace our theories in the course of our engagement in the world. (582)
As regards social ontology this means that social scientists need to become engaged in an on-going debate about the ontological theories currently existing in the transitive domain. This debate needs to turn not just on the use of immanent critique, to assess the internal coherence of a position, but also on the usefulness of an ontology in informing empirical work. (583)
And in fact, this seems like an entirely defensible way of thinking about the role of ontology: not as a set of philosophical truths to be established by a priori arguments, but rather as a revisable set of ideas coherently related to the best scientific conceptual systems we have developed to date. | http://understandingsociety.blogspot.ca/ | dclm-gs1-112160002 | false | true | {
"keywords": "ns gene, candida"
} | false | null | false |
0.035975 | <urn:uuid:a67b85d4-94c7-4e17-8a06-a83197a935c3> | en | 0.922385 | Take the tour ×
I'm a big fan of the Yahoo! Design pattern library. I'm surprised there isn't one for game UI - or at least I don't know of one. Does anyone? Looking for patterns for leaderboards, etc.
share|improve this question
Games are the wild west of UIs and still very much one of the few places you can let aesthetics trump everything. Sadly, that means there's a lot of bad UIs. A gaming pattern library project would be a good idea. – DA01 Oct 2 '12 at 3:18
Yes, I agree. One more project on the To-Do list! ;) – Justin McDonald Oct 2 '12 at 20:25
You're asking for quite a lot here. Is there one specific area of game UI you want advice with? If someone posts a great pattern library for and Inventory system and another posts a great pattern list for UI Maps then who's to say which of those answers is the correct one? Can you be more explicit in your question so people have something directly to focus on while answering? – JonW Oct 3 '12 at 16:15
add comment
1 Answer
up vote 2 down vote accepted
As DA01 pointed out , Game design patterns vary wildly and there is hardly a defined standard behind how to best do things. But here is a collection of some of the stuff I found
User interface design in video games
Game UI Patterns - Flickr Link
Good Game GUI Design
Interaction Design Pattern Library for Games
The unfortunate thing is none of these are really proper pattern libraries but can give you some guidelines into best practices for Game UI design
share|improve this answer
The expression is "per se", meaning intrinsic. – Gilbert Le Blanc Oct 2 '12 at 18:15
sorry, I had a feeling I made a mistake there :) but I wasnt too sure – Mervin Oct 2 '12 at 18:17
No problem. This isn't Latin stack exchange. :-) – Gilbert Le Blanc Oct 2 '12 at 18:21
These are very helpful - this is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. Thanks a lot! – Justin McDonald Oct 2 '12 at 20:24
add comment
Your Answer
| http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/26339/anyone-know-of-a-good-pattern-library-for-game-ui-design?answertab=active | dclm-gs1-112190002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.111559 | <urn:uuid:0f6ee707-0930-4c11-9520-52f280e419de> | en | 0.879477 | SunDolphin Video Productions Plus
Birmingham, Alabama
User Stats
Profile Images
User Bio
Voted Northern Alabama’s top videographer in Fox6‘s Upick, SunDolphin Productions, Inc. offers an attentive approach to creating permanent memories of your wedding and other life events.
Located in Birmingham, Alabama and available throughout the U.S., SunDolphin is the dynamic combination of a consultative approach, stunning cinematography and remarkable editing capabilities to cataloging the beginning of your family history. We understand the importance of memories kept and the responsibility associated with filming events as they happen.
SunDolphin is a proud and active member of WEVA International (Wedding and Event Videographer’s Association). WEVA is the most prestigious association of its kind in the world. SunDolphin is also a member of AWEP (Alabama Wedding and Event Professionals), where only the best in the business are members.
To ensure that we give you the quality and attention you deserve, SunDolphin only accepts an exclusive number of clients per year.
Our commitment to excellence makes SunDolphin Productions your perfect choice.
External Links
1. Hampton Road Studios
2. Cam Video Productions
3. Teo Karakatsanis
4. Ray Roman
5. stillmotion
6. Kinora Films
7. Mayad Studios
8. Paige
10. Giovanny Acosta | http://vimeo.com/user1051267 | dclm-gs1-112250002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.056176 | <urn:uuid:5b17c0aa-c882-40d6-8a18-e0c42aef1312> | en | 0.972564 | View Single Post
Old 08-27-2009, 01:53 PM #39
Michael Hackett
Location: Oceanside, California
Join Date: Oct 2000
Posts: 1,082
One of the skills you develop as a cop over the years is the ability to pick out who the truly "bad dude" is in a group. The skill isn't foolproof and sometimes you're wrong, but the percentage is very high that you are correct. There are a lot of subtle tells that you can articulate; the deference shown him by his friends, his focus, his relaxed body language, his quiet confidence. It usually ain't the character with the shaved head, tattoos, pit bull and Tapout tee shirt. It certainly isn't the guy telling you how bad he is either.
Uniquely, a friend of mine from the FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit interviewed dozens of individuals in prison for killing cops and asked why they chose to fight it out with their victim and not others. Almost to a man, they talked about a lack of focus and attention, lack of confidence, and sloppy uniforms. A common response was that the arresting officer who finally got them wore a sharp looking and professional uniform, had a strong command presence and bearing, was self-confident, and remained focused on the situation.
"Leave the gun. Bring the cannoli."
Reply With Quote | http://www.aikiweb.com/forums/showpost.php?p=239019&postcount=39 | dclm-gs1-112480002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.051801 | <urn:uuid:c0fdbd32-b270-45a1-a10b-bc536b88c32a> | en | 0.982116 | What do you think of these? mom of three 3 kids; Missouri 5011 posts
22nd Jun
labor and delivery gowns:
what do you think about them? Im thinking of getting one. Do they allow you to wear your own clothes during labor/delivery?
user banned 21 kids; North Dakota 3800 posts
22nd Jun
I think they're a waste of money but...I always change into regular clothes right after. I watched a baby story the other day and they were giving her so much shit about being a Diva for having one.
user banned 2 kids; Georgia 24891 posts
22nd Jun
I think it's a silly waste of money, and the hospital I delivered at didn't allow them.
Mann Makin' Mama[BBM] 18 kids; Dalton, Georgia 11563 posts
22nd Jun
I honestly think it's a waste of money. When I was in labor I didn't give a damn what I looked like, I would have given birth butt a*s naked and wouldn't have cared. I wasn't there to look pretty lol. I was to worried about controlling my breathing and working through contractions (both 100% natural labor & deliveries).
user banned 2 kids; Bat Cave, North Carolina 64587 posts
22nd Jun
I think they're a waste of money. Why spend $30 on something that you're gonna bleed all over and leak colostrum on after delivery?
Hy'ska 2 kids; Washington 50675 posts
22nd Jun
I think they're cute! I'd buy one
tonys_mama(army wife) 4 kids; 1 angel baby; Fort Irwin, California 15490 posts
22nd Jun
I think they are cute but I wouldn't want to spend $30 on something im going to bleed all over lol.
I♡C&R. 2 kids; Thornton, CO, United States 24644 posts
status 22nd Jun
I have no clue. I just wore a regular gown with my son but I also had him in a birth center where they didn't provide gowns. With this one, it'll be in a hospital so I'll probably just wear what they provide so I don't get my stuff dirty.
ILOVEWINE Due April 24; 2 kids; Sweden 10814 posts
22nd Jun
I bought one, I liked having something of my own on during delivery. I just tossed it when I was done.
Kimber-lily Due September 27; 4 kids; Nova Scotia 28962 posts
22nd Jun
Cute, but I wouldn't. I wore a tshirt with my second tho. I hate hospital gowns.
Someone probably died in the gown then it's sterilized for you to wear to give birth. lol
☮Hippie Jesus☮ 2 kids; West Virginia 10554 posts
22nd Jun
They're nice... I wouldn't want one. But I guess if you don't mind spending the money on something that you're likely to bleed all over, why not? It does seem like it would be way more comfy to be in something of your own during labor and delivery... But at the same time, I don't know that I'd care much at that point about what I'm wearing. I don't remember having an issue with the gown provided by the hospital. | http://www.babygaga.com/t-2514941/what-do-you-think-of-these.html | dclm-gs1-112590002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.068158 | <urn:uuid:cad134ce-0d41-425d-85fd-f5537c822a09> | en | 0.969635 | MLB Weekend Recap: Jose Iglesias, the AL East, and the Rays' awful weekend
Darren McCollester
It was a long holiday weekend, and you probably spent it like I did, stockpiling cans of non-perishables because the humid Bay Area weather means the ice caps are going to melt any day now. I watched some baseball while stacking cans of pumpkin-pie mix, but not a lot. As such, I need to catch up on some baseball. You probably do, too.
This weekend recap doesn't feature a single National League team, mostly because they were boring. Yasiel Puig made some sort of throw blah blah blah, but that's kind of a dog-bites-man story these days. Call me when there's a Puig-bites-dog story. So, tomorrow. Call me. (714) 914-4404.
The recap:
The Rays had a bad weekend
The entire weekend recap could be made from Rays-related misfortune. First, the baseball games. They did not win a lot of baseball games. They were swept by the A's, which gives the Indians, Yankees, and Orioles realistic hopes for that second wild-card spot. After a freaky 21-5 July, the Rays have been slowly giving those wins back, going 11-15 in August.
The reason everything is sour? Well, it wouldn't be appropriate to blame Delmon Young and the dark cloud over Delmon Young's head, but it probably has something to do with either Delmon Young or the dark cloud over his head. Because Delmon is back with the Rays for some reason. He had an at-bat and flew out to deep right.
When the Rays signed James Loney, I figured they were too clever by half. It's one thing to look for undervalued assets. It's another to pretend you can turn any player into an asset by saying his name into a mirror three times. Except Loney is hitting .305/.354/.433 with solid defense. The joke was on the naysayers.
They're adding chainsaws, though, just because they've proven they can juggle bowling pins. It might work. It might end up a bloody mess. But it's not boring. The Rays aren't boring.
Also, Fernando Rodney was locked in a bathroom.
That's what happened to the Rays this weekend. They were stinky, and they couldn't escape it.
Also, brilliant screenshot,
The Red Sox are probably going to win the AL East
This is related to the first point. While the Rays were losing three in Oakland, the Red Sox were sweeping a very bad White Sox team.
Perspective: The 2011 Red Sox, who famously collapsed in September, were a half-game back on this date two years ago. gives the 2013 Red Sox almost a 98-percent chance of making the playoffs, and a 90-percent chance of winning the division.
Additional perspective: The 2011 Red Sox had a 99.6-percent chance of making the playoffs on this date two years ago. So unpleasantness can happen.
But it's probably not going to happen. There was a strong, strong case to be made that the Red Sox were the worst team in the AL East before the season started, and I'm not sure how many Red Sox fans would have argued with you. Maybe they'd climb to third or fourth, but it's September now, and the Red Sox are prohibitive favorites in a tough division.
Also, the White Sox are awful.
Here's how the fourth inning went in Monday's White Sox-Yankees game:
Alex Rodriguez doubled to right. Vernon Wells hit comebacker that deflected off Dylan Axelrod's glove for an infield single. Curtis Granderson walked. Mark Reynolds hit a shot to third, which Conor Gillaspie gloved but couldn't handle, allowing Rodriguez to score. Austin Romine singled to center, scoring Wells and Granderson. Brett Gardner doubled to right, scoring Reynolds. Derek Jeter hit on up the middle, again deflected by Axelrod and again going for a hit, scoring Romine.
There were two more runs after that, too. The important part is that Hawk Harrelson said,"In all the thousands of games I have done for the White Sox, that is the most embarrassing inning I have ever called."
So maybe the point isn't that the Red Sox are a super-team for beating the White Sox, but that they're the favorites for the division regardless of how they improved that position this weekend.
The other point is that the White Sox are awful.
Jose Iglesias is a warlock
Iglesias turned three double plays against the Red Sox on Monday, helping Doug Fister and the Tigers complete a combined shutout.
The first double play was sorta standard:
The second double play was pretty amazing:
The third double play was pretty amazing:
Just as amazing? The Fenway crowd gave him a big ovation before his first at-bat. That sort of spontaneous endorsement should count for 78 percent of the Gold Glove voting.
Neftali Feliz is back
An inning and two-thirds, two strikeouts, no baserunners. The last time the Rangers were in the World Series, it was a weird, bullpen-dominated postseason. The Cardinals won the World Series despite rarely getting a starter past the sixth inning.
The Rangers were paying attention, and now they have the best bullpen in either league, give or take. Of the five relievers the Rangers have used the most, the worst ERA belongs to Jason Frasor (2.61) and all of them have allowed fewer than a homer per nine innings pitched.
Just in case, though, just in case, they have Joakim Soria and Neftali Feliz back from elbow surgery, as the seventh and eighth relievers. Both of them were among the 10 best relievers in baseball just a couple of seasons ago, and they're excellent raffle tickets. It's almost surprising the Rangers didn't sign Brian Wilson, considering.
Asdrubal Cabrera set a record
The record is for "best faces during one grounder." It's not an official record.
More from Baseball Nation:
Buck Showalter and Bud Selig
The The Angels Angels are no more
If Yasiel Puig were a plumber ...
The coolest win-loss records ever
Log In Sign Up
use Yahoo! or OpenID
Forgot password?
We'll email you a reset link.
Forgot password?
Try another email?
Almost done,
Join Baseball Nation
You must be a member of Baseball Nation to participate.
Join Baseball Nation
You must be a member of Baseball Nation to participate.
Choose an available username to complete sign up.
| http://www.baseballnation.com/2013/9/3/4687998/mlb-weekend-recap-jose-iglesias-al-east-rays-red-sox | dclm-gs1-112610002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.050838 | <urn:uuid:ac5d31e0-e317-4862-ab23-dc9fad082342> | en | 0.926469 |
They seem unaware that China is slowing and the US is tipping into a second leg of the Long Slump. Last week's collapse in America's ECRI leading indicator to -9.8 marks the end of the V-shaped rebound. If this means what it normally means - recession within three months - Europe must take immediate action to prevent being drawn into a deflationary vortex. Spiraling public debt precludes further Keynesian spending, so this must come from central bank stimulus. Tight fiscal policy offset by ultra-loose money is the only option for Europe, the US, and Japan.
Continue reading at the Telegraph > | http://www.businessinsider.com/europes-toothless-stress-tests-wont-prevent-a-deflationary-vortex-2010-7 | dclm-gs1-112740002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.034951 | <urn:uuid:bf064fe3-4c38-4e24-b735-7f0cf5769cb0> | en | 0.849846 | Cheat Codes Club
Search Results for Double Dragon: Neoncheats Cheat Codes
Results 1 - 25 of 9953 and 10644 with extras. Completed in 0.04 seconds.
Game Name System Website
If you have difficulty using any of the cheats found on these sites, we recommend discussing Double Dragon: Neoncheats cheat codes on Game Score's Game Forums.
If none of these sites have decent Double Dragon: Neoncheats cheats, it probably means that Double Dragon: Neoncheats is either a very new game or that it just doesn't have any cheats. But that doesn't mean you have to stay stuck. Ask the gamers on Game Score's Game Forums. Someone there can probably answer Double Dragon: Neoncheats game, cheat, or strategy questions and pretty much everything else related to gaming.
Play Free Games
Prom Couple Game Prom Couple Dodge Game Dodge Thief's Escape Game Thief's Escape | http://www.cheatcodesclub.com/Double%20Dragon:%20Neoncheats.html | dclm-gs1-112840002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.022032 | <urn:uuid:df5dd864-53ad-474c-9902-a432401235ff> | en | 0.933952 | News Section
Stories from Climate Central's Science Journalists and Content Partners
Special Climate Central Report on Best Cars for Climate
Repost This
Our calculations begin with the EPA’s combined highway/city driving fuel economy of cars: miles per gallon for gasoline cars and kilowatt-hours per mile for electric cars. (See Appendix Table A1 of Full Report)
For a gasoline car, the bulk of the lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with driving are due to the CO2 emitted by combustion of the fuel in the car’s engine. A gallon of gasoline releases about 19 lbs of CO2 when burned, or about three times the weight of the gallon before it burns. To these CO2 emissions we must add the GHG emissions associated with extracting, transporting, and refining the crude oil used to make that gallon of gasoline. When these are included, the total lifecycle GHG emissions for using gasoline in a car come to 25.9 lbs of CO2-equivalent per gallon. (a)
In this report, the term CO2-equivalent (or CO2e) is used to refer to GHG emissions. This measure expresses the combined global warming impact of several different gases in terms of the amount of CO2 alone that would give the same warming. (GHGs in addition to CO2, such as methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) are emitted over the lifecycles considered here.) Since different gases have different lifetimes in the atmosphere, the relative warming impact of the non-CO2 molecules depends on the time frame under consideration. The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (b) gives global warming potentials (GWPs) relative to CO2 for a large number of gases considering 20-year, 100-year, and 500-year time frames. For the results reported in the main body of this report, we have used the 20-year GWP values since 20 years is close to the typical lifetime of a car — certainly much closer than either 100 years or 500 years. Our results recalculated using 100-year GWP values are given for comparison in the Appendix (Tables A2 and Table A3 of Full Report). (For a gasoline car, the lifecycle emissions assuming a 100-year GWP are 24.3 lbs CO2e/gallon instead of 25.9 for a 20-year GWP(a))
Estimating GHG emissions associated with electricity use by an electric car is more difficult than estimating emissions for a gasoline car, because it is essentially impossible to say with certainty that an electron generated at a particular power plant is the same electron that ends up in the battery of a particular vehicle. The uncertainties arise because of the nature of electricity flow and the geographical extent and interconnectedness of electricity grids. (c) Additional uncertainty is introduced by the time-varying nature of electricity demand and supply. For example, if an electric vehicle plugs in to charge during a period of peak electricity demand, the mix of power plants generating electricity (and hence the GHG emission profile of the electricity) will be different from the mix of plants during periods of lower electricity use. In general, the greater the temporal or geographic specificity with which we wish to determine the emissions associated with electricity use, the greater will be the uncertainty around whether the emissions accurately represent actual use.
To make our analysis tractable, we have chosen not to consider time-of-use variations in electricity emissions, choosing instead to use annual emissions per megawatt-hour generated from power plants. We also assume electricity generated in a state is consumed in that state. A recent similar study by the Union of Concerned Scientists (d) also uses annual emissions per megawatt hour, but chooses to divide the U.S. into 26 electricity-generating/consuming sub-regions defined by the EPA. (e) Another study in 2007 by the Electric Power Research Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council divided the U.S. into 13 sub-regions. (f)
The larger the geographic region selected, the more certain one can be of the average emissions associated with each kilowatt-hour used in that region — for example, the average emissions per kilowatt-hour consumed for the entire U.S. can be known with considerable certainty. The drawback of averaging over larger and larger areas is that less and less insight can be gained into the impact of geographic distribution of different electricity generating sources. In an effort to balance these competing considerations, we have chosen to average emissions at the state level. For large states, or for states of any size that have similar electricity generating fuel mixes as neighboring states, the uncertainty introduced by this assumption is small. The uncertainties are larger for smaller states.
To estimate state-level GHG emissions associated with electricity, the following methodology was adopted. The starting point were data published by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) on how much CO2 was emitted on average per kilowatt-2 hour (kWh) of electricity generated in each state in 2010 (TableA4 and Figure A1 of Full Report). (g) This average is most influenced by the types of fuels used in the power plants in the state. For example, a state that relies more on nuclear or hydro power will have lower average CO2 emissions per kWh generated than a natural gas-reliant state or, especially, a coal-reliant state. But CO2 emissions at a power plant alone are not the full emissions story because there are also emissions associated with supplying fuel to the plant (e.g., emissions that occur during coal mining or natural gas extraction). Accurately estimating on a state-by-state basis the emissions other than those at the power plant itself requires detailed lifecycle calculations.
These calculations were undertaken using the Argonne National Laboratory’s Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation (GREET) Model, version 1_2011, the same model used to estimate the lifecycle GHG emissions for gasoline mentioned above. GREET was run for each state’s electricity system by specifying in GREET the mix of fuels used for electricity generation in the state. (g) The main sources of electricity in any given state in the U.S. are coal, natural gas, nuclear, and/or hydro. (Renewables other than hydro play small roles in most states today.) In the case of natural gas, the power plant technologies used vary significantly from state to state, and the average efficiency of generation from natural gas varies accordingly from state to state. (This is not the case for coal, nuclear, or hydro plants.) Efficiency directly impacts the GHG emissions per unit of electricity produced, so we provided the mix of natural gas power plant technologies in each state as an input to GREET. The mix of natural gas powerplant technologies (combined cycle, simple cycle, or steam cycle) in each state was obtained from EIA data. (h) GREET’s default values for electricity generating efficiencies were then kept for all power plant technologies.
The outputs from running the GREET model for each state include A, the average CO2 emissions at power plants per kWh generated and B, the average total lifecycle GHG emissions in CO2- equivalents per kWh delivered to the end user. (The transmission and distribution losses assumed by the GREET model are 8% of generated electricity.) For each state, the ratio B/A was calculated and multiplied by the average CO2 emissions per kWh of electricity generated (derived from EIA data, as described above) to arrive at the lifecycle GHG emissions associated with electricity used in each state in 2010. For each state, separate calculations were done using 20-year and 100-yr GWP values for non-CO2 gases (Table A4 of Full Report).
(a) This estimate is for gasoline from conventional crude oil, as calculated by the Argonne National Laboratory’s Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation (GREET) Model, version 1_2011. (See Figure 2 in A. Burnham, J. Han, C.E. Clark, M. Wang, J.B. Dunn, and I. Palou-Rivera, “Life-Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Shale Gas, Natural Gas, Coal, and Petroleum,” Environmental Science & Technology, 46: 619-627, 2012.)
(b) IPCC, 2007: Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007. Available at
(c) For a thoughtful discussion of this issue, see C.L. Weber, P. Jaramillo, J. Marriott, and C. Samaras, “Life Cycle Assessment and Grid Electricity: What Do We Know and What Can We Know,” Environmental Science & Technology, 44: 1895-1901, 2010.
(d) Anair, D. and Mahmassani, A., “State of Charge: Electric Vehicles’ Global Warming Emissions and Fuel-Cost Savings Across the United States,” Union of Concerned Scientists, (prepublication version), April 2012.
(e) The UCS report uses an overall methodology quite similar to the one we have used. Two notable differences are in some key input assumptions, including the use of 2007 emissions data by the UCS (rather than the more recent 2010 data we have used) and 100-yr GWP values for estimating the global warming impact of non-CO2 greenhouse gases. We have used a 20-yr GWP, but also show results for 100-yr GWP in the Appendix.
(f) EPRI and NRDC, “Environmental Assessment of Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles, Vol. 1: Nationwide Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” July 2007.
(g) Energy Information Agency, State Electricity Profiles 2010, US Department of Energy, January 2012. (In this reference, Table 5 for each state gives annual electricity generation by fuel type, and Table 7 gives CO2 emissions from electricity generators.)
(h) Theamountsofelectricitygeneratedineachstatein2010brokendownbytypeofpowerplanttechnologyarecollectedbythe Energy Information Administration on form EIA-923 and published in spreadsheet form. For input to GREET, the natural gas generating technologies were categorized as combined cycle, simple cycle, or steam cycle.
Page 1: Report Summary
Page 2: Press Release
Page 3: Methodology
Page 3 of 3 pages < 1 2 3
By Eric
on April 26th, 2012
Kevin: I love it! a diesel Beetle! If you get 50 mpg on diesel, that’s about 44 mpg gasoline equivalent due to the difference in energy density of gasoline and diesel. (We showed all results in our study in terms of mpg of gasoline equivalent.) Figure 6 in our report says that with Tennessee’s electricity generating mix you would need to get at least 47 mpg-ge to be a lower carbon emitter than an all-electric Leaf. Of the cars that we evaluated, only a Prius (at 50 mpg on gasoline) would be able to do that. But if you are really gettting 44 mpg-ge, I would say you aren’t far from the best you can be doing—your emissions are certainly far lower than for the average car on the road today.
Reply to this comment
By Eric
on April 26th, 2012
Bethina - I like your call for a paradigm shift! But I would respectfully disagree with your point about the impact that car manufacturing has on lifecycle GHG emissions. You have correctly pointed out that we did not include this in our calculations, but the reason we left it out is because it is actually a pretty small number. The study on this topic that I am most familiar with is one published in 2007 by Kromer and Heywood from the MIT automotive lab. They found that GHG emissions from manufacturing a hybrid (like a Prius) addes about 1% to the vehicle’s lifecycle emissions. For a plug-in hybrid car they found a 2% increase. They didn’t do the calculations for an all-electric car. If you know of reputable studies that have found a large impact on GHG emissions from manufacturing of automobiles, I would love to know about them.
Reply to this comment
By Eric
on April 26th, 2012
James - You have a good understanding of how our electricity system operates! We mention in our report that we chose to use each state’s annual average CO2 footprint, which may be different from the footprint of marginal generation at any given time, as you have suggested. We decided to go this route because there are too many uncertainties both on the supply side and the demand side to try to use a marginal analysis. For example, if the electric car is charged during a period of low overall system electricity demand, the marginal kWh will come from one type of power generator. If it charges during a time of system peak demand, the marginal kWh will probably come from a completely different source. We would have needed to make assumptions about when people would charge their electric cars and correlate these with time-resolved (at least hour-by-hour) power-plant operating data. I’d love to see someone take on this project to see how different the results are from ours and how sensitive to assumptions made about when people charge their cars.
Reply to this comment
By Nate (Seattle, WA, 98116)
on April 26th, 2012
James and Eric,
Attempting to perform accounting for electric cars solely based on marginal electricity consumption would be completely bogus, for at least a couple reasons.
1) If a family uses 1000 kWh with an electric car, and 500 kWh without it, who’s to say which 500 kWh should be counted at the lower utility rates, or counted as drawing from the more environmentally friendly energy source? The 500 kWh that you were using “first”? That’s completely arbitrary and ridiculous. If 500 kWh are used to transport you to and from your job, but 100 kWh are used to power your hot tub or home sauna, do you consider the car, which is used for a more essential purpose, to be using “marginal” electricity, and the luxury spa, sauna, big screen TV, excessive overhead can lighting, etc. to be using “average” electricity? Or even worse, using the most environmentally friendly source? Sorry, but that doesn’t pass logical muster.
2) The same exact effect exists for gas engine cars. When we had lower demand for oil, we found oil that was easily extracted by pumping in the US, or more recently, in Saudi Arabia. That oil could be extracted with relatively low amounts of energy being expended to get the oil. As we’ve used up that oil, now we have to drill deeper and deeper offshore, and extract oil from tar sands, which are much more energy intensive and expensive operations. And remember, an electric car is actually reducing how much oil is used. So, if you’re going to do accounting for electric cars based on marginal factors, you certainly have to do the same for oil.
The fundamental problem is that because of the way electricity and oil are priced in this country, people are conditioned to think about the marginal cost of electricity being higher than average, but they don’t realize that the same issue exists with oil (they don’t notice this because oil is priced to let you use all you want for the same price).
Reply to this comment
By Barbara (Texas)
on April 27th, 2012
In Texas, we have a fair amount of wind power on the grid, and through the power to choose program, we can support wind by choosing an “all wind” electricity plan. Now I understand that doesn’t mean only wind-powered electricity comes to my house per se, but that it’s an equivalency situation. Still, it seems like your analysis should make some allowances for this growing inclusion of wind in the ERCOT…and this scenario: when the grid is using the most wind, at night, it’s also likely to be recharging electric cars in home garages….I’d love to hear your thinking on this.
Reply to this comment
By Dallas May (Dallas)
on April 27th, 2012
This report seems unlikely. First of all, when you plug in your Leaf, coal plants don’t start producing more CO2 on your behalf. They are always producing the same amount of CO2 regardless of whether or not you have your leaf plugged in. Now, they do burn more at different times of the day, and different days of the year, but they are on a schedule that doesn’t depend on your Leaf being plugged in.
Reply to this comment
By bobby (02134)
on April 27th, 2012
Power plant efficiency varies greatly depending on system demand and type of plant. A fossil fuel power plant must burn a steady supply of fuel at all times during peak months. This is because of the daily demand cycle, low at night high during the day. You can’t easily throttle back and forth a coal/oil/nuclear plant. What is done instead is excess steam is vented and generators are taken offline at night. All the while the same amount of fuel is used. This is done because the plant needs to be able to respond quickly to a jump in demand. Therefore plant efficiency is greater during the day.
Most electric cars will be charged at night. This will allow plant operators to keep their generators online. Plants will remain at a higher efficiency. However CO2 emissions remain the same for the plant day or night.
Natural Gas turbines are used because they can be throttled up and down easily. Their efficiency remains the same, but their CO2 emissions change according to demand. When possible power companies supplement coal/nuclear plants with natural turbines which can act as boosters to the grid. This allows the traditional steam plants to operate at full capacity at all times (max efficiency), and the natural gas generators kick in during peak demand hours. However this is not the case in many areas’s which still operate by simply venting excess steam at night.
Supply side things do not change as you suggest. The core of the power industry is still steam. The trend is small gas fired turbines that soak up demand as needed.
By charging an electric car at night, we are for the most part, not increasing overall power plant CO2 emissions.
On the other side of things we also look at the oil refining process. The CO2 generated via transporting the gasoline from the refinery to the pump is not taken into consideration. Also, oil is refined via fractional distillation. Lighter fuels on top and heaver ones on the bottom. Only 40% of one barrel of oil can be made into gasoline. In order to get gasoline we are forced to deal with the leftovers.That is a huge loss. If we were not refining to produce gasoline we would end up with much heaver byproducts. More heating oil/diesel. We are essentially refining oil to meet gasoline demand.
So for every gasoline powered vehicle that we take off the road we reduce the demand for gasoline (no brainer). This allows us to refine for the demand for heaver fuels. Which we get more of per barrel of crude. Making the refining process much more efficient because we can refine less crude to meet our energy needs. This reduces the overall CO2 cycle associated with getting crude from the ground to the refinery, and eliminates the CO2 generated from the refinery to the pump.
There are many misconceptions about the power industry in general. That is simply because we fail to grasp how electricity is generated and the overall big picture. I have read many reports from high level people who fail to understand simply because they have never stepped foot in a power plant. That is just how it is. Researcher’s research and engineers engineer.
Reply to this comment
By John
on April 28th, 2012
This is ridiculous propoganda. Shame on you. Climate central…. My ***. Another petro front group and we all know it.
Reply to this comment
By Eric Larson
on April 30th, 2012
John: Thanks for your comment. You seem to have some confusion about Climate Central. We are not a “petro front group”. You can see who funds the organization here:
Reply to this comment
on May 1st, 2012
Interesting, but the ‘conclusions’ may be flawed. Have a look at Bobby’s comment above—nighttime recharging is VERY different from daytime.
The ‘conclusions’ reached by news reports of this are definitely flawed: there are plenty of good reasons to buy an electric car now:
1. The CO2e savings may not be as big as we’d like, but we also know that in the short term black carbon (particulate matter) is also contributing to the problem. In the long term, electricity will be cleaner and the transformation of the transportation system to electric requires buy-in and slow ramp-up. A future with renewable electricity but dirty vehicles doesn’t get us to where we need to be in the coming decades, and although there is a place for biofuel on the roads at least as an intermediate, that can’t be the large-scale solution for cars—those need to be reserved for aviation and possibly heavy vehicles.
2. Air quality benefits are huge, and in the right place. Vehicles impact health much more directly because they are the nearest source to people.
Reply to this comment
By JH (Austin, Tx 78746)
on May 2nd, 2012
The conclusions seem deeply flawed. In some states buying renewable electricity does not work, in others it does. If the purchaser of the leaf or volt buys green choice how many states will the carbon footprint be lower. What will it be over the lifetime of the car as it ages. The thrust of buying renewables creates demand for more renewables and a faster cleaning of the grid. This is especially true in my state of texas where night charging will bring more wind on line.
How many of these plug-ins go to the dirty states versus the clean. IIRC 60% of leaf sales went to california?
Why use 50% for volt gasoline usage. voltstats and onstar peg the real number at 60%-70%.
How many leaf, tesla, volt drivers would be satisfied with a prius. The headline will make them go buy a less efficient, higher ghg model instead of looking for a plug in. The prius phv and ford energis also are hurt by the misleading headlines associated to this report.
IMHO as oil gets more scarce, if there is not a more now to electricity, there will be no money to clean up the grid. Misleading reports like this make it sound like plug-ins are part of the global warming problem, not the solution. This only compounds the problems.
Reply to this comment
By Frank Niepold (Brookeville, MD 20833)
on May 4th, 2012
The conclusions miss some key points. I live in Maryland and am able to purchase 100% wind produced electricity from Maryland wind farms at a lower rate than coal. This is done through the Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs), Here is how our community became a Green Power Community, If I could finance an electric car, I would absolutely go electric.
Reply to this comment
By Christopher Miles (Philadelphia, Pa 19129)
on May 11th, 2012
Thanks for this starter chart
Perhaps a bit more on the high mileage Domestics (like the 2012 Chevy Cruze) My real world highway mileage with the 1.4l turbo is 40+ MPG, and I don’t have the ECO model.
Cruze is a good baseline as it’s the same platform as the Volt; and it’s 12K cheaper.
What about an additional table/row/cell for N0x and HC?
Reply to this comment
By SecularAnimist
on May 25th, 2012
It appears that this analysis does not take into account the ability of electricity consumers in some states to choose their supplier. Like a previous commenter, I live in Maryland where your chart indicates that 54 percent of generation capacity is coal-fired. However, I purchase 100 percent wind-generated electricity through the Clean Currents Neighborhood Wind program (the electricity producer is the Big Sky Wind Farm in Illinois). So in my case, powering a fully electric car like the Leaf would have, if not a zero carbon footprint, than certainly a far smaller footprint than your chart would suggest.
Reply to this comment
By Todd (La Crosse/WI/54603)
on May 25th, 2012
1. Electric cars and more than twice as efficient as ICE cars (30% max).
2. Most coal plants are more than twice as efficient ICEs
3. If you have some of your own solar/wind/? clean power, it won’t help a gas car.
Even if you have coal electric, it’s still less greenhouse than ICE engines, and that’s what’s pushing us closer to the POINT OF NO RETURN!!
Reply to this comment
By Bob (Burbank/CA/91506)
on October 4th, 2012
Some points:
1) Seems you’re comparing apples to oranges by ignoring weight: the Leaf seats five and weighs 314 lbs more than a Prius, and 500 lbs more than a Honda Civic Hybrid. It’s a bigger car.
2) Why did you choose to ignore particulates in your assessment of “greenhouse gas pollution” (or actually, that only gases should be considered in determining climate-friendliness)?
3) State by state? For West Virginia, for example, a more accurate picture would be to spread out generation over the 11-state synchronous grid which provides power for WV, creating a multi-state average with far lower utility emissions than WV alone.
4) The car you buy today won’t be the same car you drive in 2017: a gasoline-powered car’s emissions very reliably increase over time.
5) Electrical generation very reliably gets cleaner over time (with cleaner fuels and installation of electrostatic scrubbers).
With these points in mind it seems obvious that continued reliance on fossil fuels is anything but forward-looking.
Reply to this comment
By Tom Willis
on January 5th, 2013
The report and article keep saying “fewer emissions” when they mean “less emissions”. Saying “fewer emissions” implies the *number* of things being emitted is smaller; saying “less emissions” means the *amount* of stuff being emitted is smaller.
Please could this be corrected?
Reply to this comment
By Barbara Zaveruha (Northfield, MN 55057)
on February 5th, 2013
Minnesota is tagged as having high-carbon electricity. But our utility co-op has an option to sign up and buy wind power instead of coal power. I can buy all wind-generated electricity for a nominal surcharge ($4 to $10 per month). At which point, a plug-in electric car is not contributing any fossil CO2 to the atmosphere.
Reply to this comment
By SlowMoneyGreen (Brentwood, CA 94513)
on February 21st, 2013
We’ve had a Chevy Volt for about 3 months now. In the last 1500ish miles, it’s used 4.2 gallons of gas and about $50/mo of electricity. We’re fortunate where we live, in that our only power sources are a brand new Nat Gas plant and the huge local wind resources.
It get where you’re going with all this (the power source matters, as does the supply chain, and any dirty energy inputs), but we’re not there yet…not the nation. We’re dipping our toes into these cars. These aren’t the cars that will save the planet, but rather these are the cars that will get people talking, and start the infrastructure rolling.
If we all plugged into tomorrow, then we’d be screwed. The grid needs to smarten up, to tap these cars as our common energy storage system. The nation needs time to build the electric generation capacity, and if We The Greens push the cars to hard, we’ll end up with coal powered electric cars. Gah!
Be patient, and move to build up the infrastructure, as we with these cars tear up the roads showing off their amazing performance. Did I mention I love this Volt? Amazing vehicle….
Reply to this comment
By Tom Grizzle (Chapel Hill, NC 27517)
on May 6th, 2013
The car that will “save the planet” is the one that has been recycled into something non-car. At present, I maintain that the “greenest” car (I hate that term too!) is the one that does not have to be manufactured. We have something like 300M cars in the USA. Isn’t that enough? What if we just fixed what we already have and stopped there? No more mining for metals and oil for plastics and rare earth elements for the various components in cars. How much emissions does all this activity create? VAST!
Hybrids have two, count them, two motors, and some with a huge battery with relatively rare metals. Green my gluteus maximus! Repeat, the greenest hybrid is the one that does not get manufactured in the first place, period!
I am still forming my opinions regarding electric cars. They have to be manufactured too. There’s practically no discussion of the energy embodied in these car-shaped objects. And just because you charge it from a solar panel, they too have to be manufactured and some have rare earth elements. How much emissions does all this activity create? Again, VAST!
Folks, it’s time to face reality. Cars have to go.
Reply to this comment
Name (required):
Email (required):
Enter the word "climate" in the box below:
[+] View our comment guidelines.
| http://www.climatecentral.org/news/climate-friendly-cars/P3 | dclm-gs1-112900002 | false | false | {
"keywords": "transmission"
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.021279 | <urn:uuid:cb79c352-f2b1-4463-a159-69bfe1c98e8d> | en | 0.813029 | Simple VBscript acting funny
09-22-2005, 04:47 PM
I have a simple vbscript to make text appear and disappear with the click of a link. I am using this on a FAQ page so you can quickly go down the list of questions and just open the text to the answer you want.
Anyways - it works fine except if you are at the bottom of the page and click the link it jumps the browser to the top - not sure why it is doing that. :confused:
Here is the script:
<script LANGUAGE="VBScript">
sub show (id)
if id.style.display = "" then
id.style.display = "none"
id.style.display = ""
end if
end sub
Here is a link:
<a href="#" onclick="show(q1)">Question here</a>
Here is the span this link would open:
<span id="q1" style="display: none">Answer here</span>
LIke I said it works fine except it wants to kick the browser up the top of page if you are at the bottom whne you click.
Any thoughts?
09-22-2005, 04:55 PM
You do realize vbscript on the client is only supported by IE, so those of us who won't or can't use it are screwed, right?
<a href="#" onclick="show(q1); return false;">Question here</a>
It jumps to the top because it follows the link. Put the return false in there to stop that.
09-22-2005, 09:10 PM
Yes, I knew that - this is acutally an in-house FAQ on a Extranet site and the company uses IE exclusively so I figured why not.
Anyways, I tried adding return false to the onclick attribute, but it stopped the function from working and it was still following the link.
So, I think now it may be conflicting with other scripts on the page so I may have to come at this another way.
09-22-2005, 09:22 PM
In case your curious - what I decided to do was just go with it and put anchors at each question so when it follows the link it doesn't go anywhere - not an ideal coding solution but it gives the desired results - so I'm happy. :)
09-23-2005, 09:50 AM
It's very easy if you do it in javascript.
<script type="text/javascript">
function show(id){
var ans = document.getElementById(id);
ans.style.display = (ans.style.display=="none") ? "inline":"none";
return false;
<a href="#" onclick="return show('q1');">Question here</a>
09-23-2005, 04:03 PM
The javascript method you offered does not have the same conflicts with my other scripts so I will employ it on my page - thanks! :thumbsup:
EZ Archive Ads Plugin for vBulletin Copyright 2006 Computer Help Forum | http://www.codingforums.com/archive/index.php/t-68745.html | dclm-gs1-112930002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.033689 | <urn:uuid:5eef5476-7ea6-4785-b6d7-3208771f6304> | en | 0.947039 | JERUSALEM—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has thanked his Czech counterpart for Prague's vote at the U.N. against recognizing a Palestinian state.
Netanyahu's office on Saturday called the Czech vote "courageous" and said the Israeli leader will visit Prague this week en route to Germany to personally thank Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas.
| http://www.contracostatimes.com/nation-world/ci_22105968/israel-thanks-czech-republic-support-at-un | dclm-gs1-112940002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.047321 | <urn:uuid:4e1afa92-39ab-47ba-a373-b67b041015cb> | en | 0.941387 | Reply to a comment
Reply to this comment
rosanelleatonsfan writes:
I'm betting there's another assault-style weapon involved here. When the heck is America going to say "ENOUGH?"
I don't care if the shooter is black, brown or white; what religion they ascribe to (or not) -- when Congress can't pass legislation banning these weapons that 90% of Americans want because of the money a single entity (the NRA) puts into buying Congressmen, something is very very wrong in this country.
| http://www.courierpress.com/comments/reply/?target=61:350646&comment=1407253 | dclm-gs1-112980002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.806272 | <urn:uuid:78c78238-cb6e-43ab-8ab5-ca6d3c2d00be> | en | 0.953876 | Maya Prophecies
The Maya, one of Mesoamericas most advanced civilizations did many things. They had highly developed architecture and the only known written language in the pre-columbian era. Oh yeah, and a calendar that predicted the end of the world.
Nothing says 'Doomsday Calendar' like a fucking scary angry faced tablet.
Just The Facts
1. The Maya didn't just use one calendar, they used 3, with different cycles and lengths. A 260-day calendar, the Tzolk'in would intertwine with a 365 day calendar, the Haab. After 52 of our Earth years had passed, this would form a 'Calendar Round'
2. Not only was this highly confusing,they had a third calendar known as the 'Long Count'. This was used to continue time after the other calendars, y'know..ran out of years. Not the best solution, but clearly the most beaurocratic.
3. However, not content to just let time be, the calendar of the Long Count will eventually run out. When it eventually does, the world will end.
4. Wait, what?
It's The End Of The World As We Know It
On December 12, 2012, the current and last cycle of the b'ak'tun will come to an end. The ending of a cycle held great significance to the Maya, but this is where things get a bit, well, shady. It doesn't actually SAY we're going to die, it just ends. Now, some boring old scientists are pretty sure the world wont end and that the Maya just didn't get around to making a new calendar, on account of the whole 'Spanish Conquest' thing.
But we'd be foolish to just hope for the best and lets be honest, you didn't start reading this to be told fuck all's going to happen. So next up, here's how it all goes to pot and trust me, its as crazy as it sounded.
The Age of Aquarius
Yes ladies and gents, our first scenario is everyones favourite excuse for a mass shag, the coming of the Age of Aquarius.
Due to a wobble in the Earths orbit, every year the constellations (those pretty sky pictures sailors use to either navigate or add a pleasant backdrop to all that rum-induced sodomy) move slightly further across the sky. Currently, the first constellation that peeps over the horizon is currently Pisces, but by 2012 this will have shifted slightly to become Aquarius.
Cue much nudity, free love and hemp. How this works I'm not sure, but hey, who am I to question?
The Poles! The Poles!
Now, this is more like it. Another scenario has us facing the imminent shifting of the magnetic poles with each other due to a massive solar flare. Imagine 100 billion Nuclear warheads detonating on the sun, and we're getting close.
Now, north suddenly being on the bottom may not sound like much but think about it. No more pampered southern jokes (if your English), no more 'land down under' for Australia. South Africa would become North Africa, with world war not far behind (hey, weirder things have happened)
Thats No Moon..
Ah yes, for our last impending death, I give you Nibiru
Yeah, thats a fucking PLANET hitting the Earth. You can almost see the god-size 'FAIL' caption floating towards it. | http://www.cracked.com/funny-3022-maya-prophecies/ | dclm-gs1-113000002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.024873 | <urn:uuid:85929ff9-aecf-4db1-bd48-09565f7e7f74> | en | 0.934336 | Email this article to a friend
Return of third class: Rail companies draw up controversial plans to reintroduce another tier of service on trains (so how bad will that be?)
* indicates fields that are mandatory.
Security code | http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2232481/emailArticle.html | dclm-gs1-113030002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.065997 | <urn:uuid:a795512c-db08-4f7a-954d-72c8b2e3c82c> | en | 0.946291 |
Source: GM
Comments Threshold
By mgilbert on 2/7/2013 9:24:34 AM , Rating: 5
What is it with people and manual transmission these days. Automatic transmissions are more reliable, and don't require a new clutch every two or three years at a cost of $1,000 or so, and cars with automatic transmissions get better gas mileage, because computers can shift more efficiently than any human. Manual transmissions simple don't offer a single advantage over automatics anymore. 30 years ago they did, but not anymore.
RE: Manual?
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 2/7/2013 9:26:03 AM , Rating: 2
I can think of at least one advantage:
RE: Manual?
RE: Manual?
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 2/7/2013 10:54:46 AM , Rating: 5
Da hell? I saw the story last week on The Car Lounge, and instead of wasting my time using their terrible search to find the original link, I did a quick google search for "Corvette carjacking florida" and this popped up.
You're always looking to start *&#&$, aren't you :-)
RE: Manual?
By cyberguyz on 2/8/2013 7:56:40 AM , Rating: 1
And what douchebag rag do you read?
RE: Manual?
By Jeffk464 on 2/8/2013 12:21:28 AM , Rating: 3
Two advantages actually, you can push start a manual. I had to do it last month because it was to cold for a diesel.
RE: Manual?
By hpglow on 2/7/13, Rating: -1
RE: Manual?
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 2/7/2013 10:30:35 AM , Rating: 3
Plus you look like a giant vagina driving an auto, specially if you drive a sports car.
OK, so if I drive a full-size pickup, SUV, or a full-size sedan (Avalon, Impala, Lexus LS, 7-Series, S-Class, etc), why the hell would I want to row my own gears? Rowing my own gears in a 4,000-pound sedan or a 5,000-6,000 pound pickup/SUV isn't my idea of fun.
I drive a midsize sedan. Most of the time, I'm shuttling my 9-month old around in the back seat, running errands, or cruising on the highway to see family. I couldn't care less about rowing my own gears.
Now if I'm going to buy something like a Corvette, or a Miata, or an M3, or a BRZ/FR-S, you better give me a manual.
But I also wouldn't thumb my nose up at a DCT in a sports car either.
RE: Manual?
RE: Manual?
By GotThumbs on 2/7/2013 10:12:51 AM , Rating: 5
They are reliable and if you need a clutch every two or three years...your doing it wrong. Only an inexperienced driver will burn up a clutch that fast. I've got two vehicles (sports car and diesel truck) and have owned them for 10 and 6 years respectively and have yet to replace a clutch.
You can also get better fuel economy with a manual trans. When I'm exiting a freeway, I just slide the truck out of gear and coast to the light. Engine is at idle and consumes less fuel than an automatic.
At the end of the day, its a personal choice.
Best wishes,
RE: Manual?
By JZavala on 2/7/2013 1:09:19 PM , Rating: 3
actually, if you have a obdII controlled engine(or somewhere when they started using that system), you're better off leaving it in gear, as when its idling its using fuel, but most cars that have that type of engine management cut fuel all together and you use no fuel. thats how geo metro drivers(with obdII) get 70-100mpg. they leave it in gear when decelerating and it uses absolutely no fuel.
something an automatic cannot do.
RE: Manual?
By robertisaar on 2/7/2013 4:23:36 PM , Rating: 3
not only does OBD2 have nothing to do with it, automatic models do it as well...
excellent example? my wife's old 1990 Pontiac Grand Prix. 3.1/automatic, the factory calibration allows DFCO to be entered and it did MANY times in our owndership of it. Me being me, i tweaked the calibration further to even keep the TCC locked when DFCO was entered so that it would coast without fuel for even longer periods of time.
RE: Manual?
By ianweck on 2/7/2013 11:04:30 AM , Rating: 2
13 years and 120,000 miles on my original clutch over here.
RE: Manual?
RE: Manual?
RE: Manual?
I know gearheads that won't touch an auto tranny.
RE: Manual?
By dubldwn on 2/7/2013 11:55:34 AM , Rating: 2
Manual transmissions simple don't offer a single advantage over automatics anymore.
For many of us, they're more fun to drive. For a few of us, they're an absolute requirement for driving enjoyment, not to mention more control over the car. No accident that a 2013 Viper, among others, only comes with a manual. I understand an A to B person wouldn't get that.
RE: Manual?
By bill.rookard on 2/7/2013 1:50:24 PM , Rating: 2
There's another advantage of a manual vs an auto: push start. My driveway has a decent slope to it, more than one occasion I've had the odd 'dead battery' (cold Michigan weather) so I just get rolling and pop the clutch.
As far as clutch longevity, my Mustang (and yes I drive it... aggressively...) still has the original clutch after 125,000 miles, so your 'every 3 years' statement means you must not know how to drive one properly. Every other MT I've had (and -all- my cars are MT's) usually need a new clutch at the 120-150k mark, which is about what you would expect for what is essentially a 'wear and tear' item.
Seriously, it's the equivalent of a big round circular brake pad, and you don't expect to get unlimited mileage out of those do you?
As for the rest of the MT, it is just a simpler design, and as such, the simpler it is, the longer it will last. The auto-trans may have gotten a bad rap in the 80s-90s, but they certainly have improved a great deal, and in many cases with the computer controlling the shift points - they actually can get better gas mileage than the MTs. Ultimately though, they -are- more complicated, and with more complicated machinery, it just makes it easier for something to go wrong.
That's why I like the simplicity of a MT. It's gears and levers. No hydraulic pressure. No electronic solenoids. Fewer potential points of failure.
RE: Manual?
RE: Manual?
I'll list you 5 advantages:
1 - more fun
2 - cheaper to purchase
3 - cheaper to maintain
4 - you pick your gear (engine control)
5 - more fun
RE: Manual?
By mcnabney on 2/8/2013 10:46:17 AM , Rating: 2
That is pure BS.
Manual transmissions are far far far more reliable than automatics. Always have been. Always will be. The most obvious reason is that they have far fewer moving parts and points of failure. And even in the event of a failure - if you drive like Fast & Furious - replacing a clutch is really cheap. Replacing an automatic transmission is serious money. In fact, that is probably the #1 reason I have seen people scrap an otherwise good car. Transmission breaks and the $3k repair cost is more than the car is worth.
| http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=29848&commentid=837655&threshhold=1&red=2815 | dclm-gs1-113040002 | false | false | {
"keywords": "transmission"
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.073895 | <urn:uuid:a6569e57-b944-431d-8c98-66bc6d183623> | en | 0.937059 |
Sharp will try to snap a larger share of a growing market
Comments Threshold
By rodrigu3 on 11/4/2007 10:25:52 PM , Rating: 2
Nuclear waste isn't a problem with today's methods and 1 nuclear plant can produce more energy than lots of solar plants - the comparison isn't even worth mentioning. Solar power is more for residents who are far away from a power source and are required to run their own power.
RE: nuclear
By StevoLincolnite on 11/4/07, Rating: -1
RE: nuclear
By KristopherKubicki (blog) on 11/4/2007 11:26:09 PM , Rating: 5
Chernobyl, the worst nuclear powerplant disaster in history attributed to 56 deaths by the WHO (47 of which were cleanup workers), versus the 563 deaths per year attributed to the pollution from the coal powered plants in just Pittsburg.
While solar might be a good alternative for those who can afford it, it seems like maybe we're better off modifying the existing grid first.
RE: nuclear
RE: nuclear
RE: nuclear
I would rather it not happen in the first place.
Personally I am against Conventional Coal and Nuclear power generation.
RE: nuclear
RE: nuclear
By TechIsGr8 on 11/5/2007 11:42:17 AM , Rating: 1
So can we store the spent nuclear fuel in your back yard, rodrigu3? I mean, since nuclear waste is "not a problem", I don't imagine you'd have a problem with that.
RE: nuclear
By Oregonian2 on 11/5/2007 2:16:24 PM , Rating: 2
It's supposedly decided to be in my mother's back yard (Nevada). Someday.
"Plastic" Surgery...
By daftrok on 11/4/07, Rating: 0
RE: "Plastic" Surgery...
By DOSGuy on 11/4/2007 2:22:19 PM , Rating: 2
That would be silicone. Silicon breast implants aren't such a bad idea, though. I assume those are USB ports in the middle?
RE: "Plastic" Surgery...
By Jedi2155 on 11/4/2007 4:11:02 PM , Rating: 2
If that was case I would like to see their "flash" drives haha.
Boy that was bad.
RE: "Plastic" Surgery...
By Gul Westfale on 11/4/2007 5:20:51 PM , Rating: 2
wouldn't they be all hard?
i should stop now but for some reason can't...
do they require fans?
what happens when a die is defective? do they sell it to not-so-succesful pornstars at a discount, or do they just call it a single-core?...
would bras be rated in how many transistors they can hold?
would trophy wives become more expensive, because more transistors=more energy usage?
would hollywood bimbos start reading "international semiconductor monthly" along with their fashion mags?
ok now i must stop. must look up some hollywood bimbos on this here interwebz...
Solar power
By AlphaVirus on 11/5/2007 12:44:56 PM , Rating: 2
I grow tired of the argument that solar power is "much more expensive" and yes I can agree that nuclear is more efficient.
Lets not think about today and think long-term, if you build multiple solar farms it will have a high start up cost but it would be an investment. How much does it cost to maintain? How much waste does it create? How much man power does it take to run? All this compared to current methods seem pretty reasonable enough to outweight the cost factor.
It may not be enough to power a large city such as LA, NY or Houston but I am sure you could power plenty of small cities in the midwest where the solar heat/rays are virtually abundant.
With multiple solar farms handling the smaller cities, large plants can focus there power and money can be invested to make these lines more efficient.
RE: Solar power
By murphyslabrat on 11/5/2007 1:46:11 PM , Rating: 2
No, the problem is maintenance. What happens to the panels that become unusable due to sheer loss of cells? What do you do with them? How do you acquire the massive amounts of real-estate to run the quantities of solar farms you would need? It is not cheap now, it is not cheap in the long-term, and it is woefully insufficient for the role of a primary power-source.
We can check periodically as it progresses, and we can pay an inflated rate for power to have "renewable energy only" sent to your home (which is a great scheme, as who can tell the difference in energy from renewable sources ^^j). Otherwise, it's only for those without an alternative or for those bastards who don't want me running my quadFire HD2900XT's ^^j.
BTW, no one in their right minds would run a quad Crossfire setup with four HD2900XT's, unless you have a really good power-supply, a flat-rate energy fee, and studio-quality sound-canceling headphones (preferably running above 90db, as that will help you cope with the noise while you're not using it ^^j)
Nothing against AMD, it's just that the HD 2900 is gonna be remembered as "noisy", perhaps more so than "late".
RE: Solar power
By murphyslabrat on 11/5/2007 1:55:11 PM , Rating: 2
BTW, sorry about the double post, but I realize that there is currently no driver support for quad Crossfire. It was for the sake of the joke.
It would be cool if you could "edit" a post, though it be more a comment attached to a post. So, allow you to append a note that is separated from the main body by a "edited - <mm/dd/yy hh:mm>." That would make posts like this unnecessary, without letting people go back and alter their stupidity.
Basicly, you would assist the absent minded without helping the idiots; which, I assume, is the reason for not including an "edit" option, correct?
By kontorotsui on 11/4/2007 12:19:28 PM , Rating: 2
What about price? Isn't thin film much more expensive?
RE: Price?
By soydios on 11/4/2007 12:32:57 PM , Rating: 3
If the savings of using less silicon outweigh the added costs of thin-film substrates, then it makes sense to do it that way.
Solar Concentrators
By Felofasofa on 11/4/2007 6:15:08 PM , Rating: 2
I don't know why more people and Governments aren't talking about about Solar Concentrators, they are cheap and make use of the Suns heat as well as light.
By JonnyDough on 11/4/07, Rating: -1
By saratoga on 11/4/2007 3:22:24 PM , Rating: 2
Thats silly. At very least wind is a better choice right now, since its much easier and cheaper to harvest. Solar cells are expensive, inefficient, and require large amounts of energy to make. Its not clear if PV cells will ever be used for large scale generation.
By Ringold on 11/4/2007 4:16:24 PM , Rating: 2
And nuclear or clean-coal tech, thats just for monkeys.
By thebrown13 on 11/4/2007 5:13:29 PM , Rating: 1
Clean coal is an oxymoron.
By KristopherKubicki (blog) on 11/4/2007 11:27:01 PM , Rating: 2
I think the term now is zero-emission coal
By Oregonian2 on 11/5/2007 2:17:19 PM , Rating: 2
Doesn't even emit CARBON dioxide?
By murphyslabrat on 11/5/2007 1:48:04 PM , Rating: 2
Kinda like "Windows Security"
Solar power is also 15 times more expensive than nuclear power.
| http://www.dailytech.com/sharp+readying+thin+solar+cell+output+for+2008/article9345.htm | dclm-gs1-113050002 | false | true | {
"keywords": "monkey, alphavirus"
} | false | null | false |
0.083831 | <urn:uuid:87ec4417-f838-415f-842c-81a8446aab5e> | en | 0.962776 | Document Sample
scope of work template
Personal Assistant for the Disabled
Celebrities and executives are not the only ones who need a personal
assistant. The disabled also need such individuals to help them do things
that they can’t do on their own.
The task required of the personal assistant to do for the disabled
include bathing, cleaning, cooking and dressing among other duties. If
there are other things that the personal assistant will be instructed to
do, this should be agreed upon and written in the contract.
The client may decide to write down what needs to be done daily as part
of a routine so it will be easy for the personal assistant to follow.
This allows the client to live within the community rather than being
shipped off to a nursing home or assisted care facility. Unfortunately,
not that many people are aware of this.
Just about anyone can become a personal assistant to the disabled as long
as they are 18 years of age, have a social security number, passes
through the screening process which includes the background and health
check. The personal assistant can even be a member of the client’s family
as long as he or she is not the spouse or a parent of a minor child.
You don’t have to be internet savvy to get this job. Just be able to do
some simple chores and tasks as required by the client.
client’s ability to live independently as well as respect the individual
and their property.
The pay rate of a personal assistant for the disabled varies depending on
the state where one is employed. This may increase after a year while
other benefits are at the discretion of the employer. One example if
giving the personal assistant an incentive for bringing another client to
the business like perhaps a neighbor of the person you are caring for
right now.
In order for you to work well as a personal assistant, both you and the
client must have a good relationship. This means you are able to
communicate openly with each other. This is why certain house rules are
set. There are regulations set by the employer but you also have to know
what are the rules which the clients wants you to follow.
Just like working for a celebrity or an executive, the personal assistant
should not reveal any information about the client to anyone. You have to
know which matters should be kept so their privacy is not violated.
other occupations. This means that the pay is also not that high but if
you are willing to put yourself in the service of others that is all the
The personal assistant service these days is not only for the disabled.
This is now being used to benefit seniors, doctors, clergymen and
financial planners with the fees being economically priced to meet a
range of budgets as the number of people who will be over the age of 65
will jump to 21% by the year 2040.
Truly, the government should have done something better in terms of
healthcare way back in the 1960’s but there is nothing we can do about
that now except promote the use of personal assistants.
How are you planning on using Docstoc? | http://www.docstoc.com/docs/73776400/Personal-Assistant-for-the-Disabled | dclm-gs1-113090002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.020259 | <urn:uuid:a49d40a9-8eca-4505-ba58-62677c948831> | en | 0.963894 | Take a Deeper Look at Assessment for Understanding
VIDEO: Assessment Overview: Beyond Standardized Testing
Running Time: 9 min.
Assessment in Action
Students participating in a mock trial
Credit: Edutopia
Applied Learning
Teacher working with students
Credit: Edutopia
Assessing Student Growth
Time Well Spent
A teacher meeting with a student
Credit: Edutopia
Assessment Versus Accountability
A student filling in a test answer sheet
Credit: Edutopia
Dede (who is also a member of The George Lucas Educational Foundation's National Advisory Council) likens state assessments to an annual visit to the doctor and suggests that we need more, not less, information to gauge a student's knowledge and abilities.
Roberta Furger is a contributing writer for Edutopia.
This article originally published on 1/21/2002
see more see less
Comments (123)
Comment RSS
I'm not sure the geometry
Was this helpful?
I'm not sure the geometry teacher example is as strong as people think it is. I wonder to what extent the architectural design project actually incorporates "real life" architecture -- and to what extent it's just repeated iterations of a simple algorithm having to do with area and materials costs.
Are the students calculating how the angle of ascension affects the weight-bearing capacity of the materials they choose for roofing? Are they figuring how to use the shape of rooms to minimize costs through optimal spacing of supporting materials?
Hans Sterk from hte Faculteit Wiskunde en Informatica
Technische Universiteit Eindhoven has a pretty good account of the uses of geometry in architecture and building here: http://www.win.tue.nl/~sterk/Bouwkunde/hoofdstuk1.pdf How much of this kind of thinking is showing up in the students' work? If not, are they operating on a misinformed and artificial understanding of the role of geometry in architecture?
I suppose if you re-define geometry as "participating in a group project to write a proposal for a 21st-century school," well, they've demonstrated their ability to participate in a group project. But the 80-20 rule certainly has to at least raise concerns about how equally distributed the work -- and therefore the learning -- is.
Writing a clear report that summarizes information is a good skill. But ... if you were to present a student in one of her groups with a drawing of a section of a school, would they be able to perform even the simplified calculations to determine the needed materials and costs for that section of the building? And then would that student be able to write up the results in a clear way?
Maybe -- but this assessment doesn't actually permit the teacher to make a clear inference about the student's ability.
I believe in performance assessments -- as long as we're all clear on how the task demonstrates the student's understanding of the skill or understanding being assessed.
Kindergarten teacher from Minnesota
I agree with you and think it
Was this helpful?
I agree with you and think it is so much more important to be able to apply the knowledge that you learned rather than just recite fast. Assessments and learning should be more about the experiences gained, and you just can’t get that with standardized tests. I loved reading about the changes in assessments that these schools made, but I wonder if there are any elementary schools doing these same sorts of things? I would love to hear about them and how it works for them! Performance assessments hold so much more information about a learner than standardized tests. They can continue the learning process rather than showing completion of a unit of study. They are so much more engaging, and those assessments are the ones that students remember forever.
After reading this article I
Was this helpful?
After reading this article I totally agree with the concept of putting into practice what you have learned. I work as a general contractor doing small remodeling jobs and pool installations. I could have been so much further along in business if the my teacher could have applied some principles about life after school or what your learning can impact your future. For example: I have to figure volume, square footage, estimates, billing, taxes, and all of this could have been used as examples of hands on learning in the classroom "experience". The correlation between the classroom and life in most instances are as far apart as night and day.
I liked in the article when
Was this helpful?
I liked in the article when they mentioned that when teachers perform an assessment it is a learning experience for the students as well as the teachers and it gives the teacher immediate feedback on how to best meet the students needs. When I am working on things myself I prefer immediate feedback on what I am doing so I can make changes to get the best results possible, which is what we would like to see from our students. When using different types of assessments in the classroom it allows the teacher to see a wider range of knowledge the child has, not just how they can do on a test where the answer is either right or wrong. It allows students to show what they really know, not what they could memorize for the test.
From a personal standpoint I
Was this helpful?
From a personal standpoint I believe the article itself is very predisposed. While I strongly believe in the idea and practice of assessment as being very crucial to the understanding of a student’s strength and weakness in the classroom, I strongly feel that standardized tests are very substandard in a child’s learning development. In my own experience as a child I can recall standardized tests as being very demeaning to a child forcing them to believe that a test is what determines their own intellect which isn’t the case whatsoever. I feel positive towards some illustrated points referenced in the article but for the most part article writer Roberta Furger
Clearly favors standardized tests as the vanguard source of assessment in today’s schools. [Roberta] Furger is undeniably well versed in the area of education as pointed out by the multitude of information referenced but for the most part this is an author who should spend more time in the classroom learning about a student intellectual needs rather than what a educator has to say.
The pressures of standardized
Was this helpful?
The pressures of standardized test is not only put on stduents but on teachers a well. Yes students need to pass these test but teachers are required to teach the students what they need to know in order to pass the tests. It is disheartening to see how much learning has changed over the yeaars with standardized test the most important thing students have to pass. I feel that the main goal should be making sure students are comprehending what they are taught and retaining it for future use. Without this, how are they able to apply what they learned, throughout their educational life, into their life without school. With the demands of testing how is school enjoyable anymore. It is no wonder students drop out of flunk out of school. I remember when I was in elementary school and it was time to take the tests. Several classes were seated in the cafeteria and the testing began. Not only was I overwhelmed just from having to take the test but the feeling of intimidation set in. I have never been a "good test taker" and when a student who is not good with test has to sit in a room with several others and see so many other peers get done early does nothing to one's self esteem.
This article couldn't have
Was this helpful?
This article couldn't have been more on point with how assessment should be used in classrooms nationwide. It is clear that testing is flawed due to test anxiety and various other reasons, therefore it does not paint a true reflection of a particular student's knowledge and application skills. Thus, our evaluations of students based on assessment are, too, flawed. Rote memorization is primarily the only proven skill projected from a test. These tests are asking students to memorize information, (stored in their short term memory, because we all know that after the test, most, if not all information is forgotten) instead of creatively demonstrating what they've learned and applying it to things they will actually use and see in the future. The line in this article that validates the affectiveness of performance-based assessments versus standard tests, is Eeva Reeder's comment: Projects are "the true test of what you [students] know. You can watch a show where Julia Child makes a souffle, and you can read about souffle making...but the real test is making one yourself." She is essentially stating that a test shows you've learned the materials, but it doesn't show if you can apply them. In my school experiences from middle school to high school, to college, I would learn something, memorize it, project it in bubbles on a multiple-choice exam and then go out into the real world, have forgotten it, and therefore been unable to apply it. Take for example, standard deviation as it relates to mortgages or loans. I learned it in a college math class, memorized it for the test, aced it, yet, now here I am, two years later, in the midst of building a house and I can't remember it to figure what my monthly house payment will be. This, I believe is because I never applied it outside the white borders of the test paper. This is happening in schools everywhere, to millions of students. Tests are outweighing projects and students are suffering. This outdated, and not to mention flawed trend has to end and a new, performance-based one needs adopted.
In my experience as a
Was this helpful?
In my experience as a student, I remember being so bogged down with so much information we had to know in order to "pass the test." I even remember asking "is this going to be on the test" after being introduced to a new skill. My teachers put so much emphasis on passing the test that school was not fun and a place I hated attending. It is interesting to see that schools are changing this idea up a little by steering away from standardized testing. When I began my undergraduate studies I knew that all the things I was learning were things that I needed to be successful in the work place, so I applied my self and became interested in every aspect of my studies (which is much different from my elementary/high school experiences). How many times have we heard a student complain and say "why are we learning this? We will never need this in life." (I know I have said it a few times in myself)? It is nice to see that some states and educational systems are beginning to answer that very question by relating what is being taught to real word situations. I think that this approach to learning will allow children to understand the need for knowledge in the "real world" and this will make the transition from learning to pass the test (short term memory) to learning to learn (long term memory) most successful.
Performance-based assessments
Was this helpful?
Performance-based assessments are simply incorporating practical, real-world, hands-on applications to what is being taught in the classroom. As educators we must always remember that teaching and learning are not one dimensional. We must get outside the classroom to show the students how these skills, formulas, etc. are used in a variety of careers and how they impact our community.
As an early childhood educator, currently working with toddlers and preschool children, performance-based assessment is not a new concept. We utilize Creative Curriculum, which promotes using hands on learning centers. We then take this information gained through observation to see what other skills a child may need help mastering. What concerns me is that as the children grow and transition to a more “formalized” education, they lose the hands on experience. Why do we think that a student (no matter the age) learns effectively by sitting and taking notes?
The best part of performance-based assessment for school age children is the rubric. I was not familiar with a rubric until I began my master’s level program. How wonderful, that the student, teacher, parents, administrators, mentors, etc. can all be on the same page! The rubric clearly outlines what is expected of the student and/or activity. It also promotes dialogue and feedback to help the student meet his/her maximum potential. Just think, if we could get every state on board creating a unified rubric of performance-based learning instead of just fill in dot tests, we would create a generation of critical thinkers, public speakers, and innovators.
Its nice to see some of the
Was this helpful?
Its nice to see some of the states beginning to see the importance of assessing students in other ways besides multiple choice and short answer like Kentucky and Vermont. It may take time for other states to follow suit but at least it is a start. Too often are teachers teaching to imporve test scores since that is the primary goal in their district. If the goal is actual to teach the student and then have the student put what has been taught into practical use, the student is more apt to fully understanding rather than a pencil-paper test at the end of a unit. At least these two states see how the students performance can be a better indicator of what is learned rather than the traditional once a year standardized tests!
see more see less | http://www.edutopia.org/assessment-for-understanding-taking-deeper-look | dclm-gs1-113150002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.284416 | <urn:uuid:87b70090-6b20-43d0-858c-b6e65b09a95a> | en | 0.932562 | 1052: Every Major's Terrible
Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Jump to: navigation, search
Every Major's Terrible
Title text: Someday I'll be the first to get a Ph. D in 'Undeclared'.
[edit] Explanation
Ambox notice.png This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect:
The header refers to an satiric opera from the 19th century. Modern Major-General's Song is a patter song from Gilbert and Sullivan's 1879 comic opera The Pirates of Penzance. The song satirises the idea of the "modern" educated British Army officer of the latter 19th century. It is one of the most difficult patter songs to perform, due to the fast pace and tongue-twisting nature of the lyrics. Here's a YouTube video of "I Am the Very Model of A Modern Major's General" [1] for those who need to get the tune.
Major general is a military rank in many countries. Here's is Tom Lehrer's Elements.[2] And here is Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from Mary Poppins.
The panels are showing a song, some sentences are going over two or more panels. The refrain is like this: "put me down as "undecided" - Every Major's Terrible".
In panel 4, Methyl acetate is the solvent used to remove stamps from their envelope.
In panel 8, underwater basket weaving is a commonly used metaphor for any college major that is easy or worthless.
Panel 13 refers to the inability of seismology to reliably predict catastrophic earthquakes, even after centuries of extensive research.
In panel 14, the formal logic proposition "X ∴ ∃X" says "I say there's this thing called X, therefore, there exists this thing called X".
In panel 15, programming languages, like Lisp, use parenthesis as part of their syntax. Typically, a open parenthesis will be closed with a closing parenthesis. If not the code is not properly formatted for presentation, it can make it difficult for a programmer to determine where the unbalanced parenthesis begins or ends.
In panel 16, virology is the study of infectious diseases. The symbol above the central figure is the biohazard symbol.
In panel 19, Richard Feynman was a 20th-century physicist known for his sense of fun, including being photographed for one of his books while holding a bongo drum.
In panel 20, a redirect on Wikipedia is a page which immediately sends the visitor to a different page. This implies that the title of the first is either a synonym or a sub-topic of the second. Physics majors usually learn to code, and the standard joke is that they invariably get hired as computer programmers after graduation. The Wikipedia page physics major didn't actually exist when this comic was published. It was created the same day, but as a redirect to physics education. In the subsequent days, there were dozens of instances of people changing it to redirect to engineer, usually reverted within minutes.
In panel 25, supermoon and zodiac are terms invented not by astronomers, but rather by early astrologists.
In panel 26, agronomy is the science of farming, while agoraphobia is the fear of wide open spaces.
In panel 27, herpetology is the study of reptiles, while ophiophobia is the fear of snakes.
In panel 28, as the pun sugests, gastroenterology is the study of the human digestive system.
In panel 29, pre-med is a major chosen by students hoping to go on to medical school and eventually become doctors. Medical school is extremely competitive and usually requires a very high undergraduate GPA for prospective students.
In panel 30, the text is in all lower-case and strangely laid out compared to text in other panels. All lower case and "free" layout are both associated with 20th century "Modernist" poetry, especially the works of e.e.cummings.
In panel 33 and 34, the singer refers to economics. Economists claim that economics is a science like any other; scientists in other fields sometimes disagree.
And Sophie's Choice is any dilemma where choosing one cherished person or thing over the other will result in the death or destruction of the other, derived from the theme of the novel, and has also been turned into a romantic drama film.
From the title text 'Undeclared' is sometimes called "General Studies".
[edit] Trivia
People of the SFU Choir have done renditions to this xkcd song. See SFU Choir - Every Major's Terrible. The transcription is also shown at the scenes, so it is more easy to understand the text.
[edit] Transcript
Every Major's Terrible
to the tune of Gilbert & Sullivan's
Modern Major-General Song
(Which you may know from Tom Lehrer's Elements. If not, just hum Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.)
Philosophy's just math sans rigor, sense, and practicality
[Cueball thinking, chin on fist, à la Rodin's sculpture; in the air is a pseudo-mathematical expression "2 + <picture of light bulb> = <picture of sailboat>"]
and Math's just physics unconstrained by precepts of reality.
[a cannon firing: a dashed line indicates the cannonball's trajectory, which bifurcates twice, although the sum of the momentums of the four resulting 1/4 sized cannonballs is presumably mathematically identical to the original]
A Business Major's just a thing you get so you can graduate
[a student receives a diploma from a dean on a podium, while a second student, diploma in hand, runs gleefully away, shedding robe and mortarboard]
and Chemistry's for stamp collectors high on methylacetate.
[a ponytailed student wearing goggles and holding an Erlenmeyer flask dances wildly to a light show -- or is it the Periodic Table? -- in the background]
Why anyone who wants a job would study Lit's a mystery
[Cueball, saying this, holds up hands questioningly]
unless their only other choice were something like Art History.
[Cueball again, holding his chin speculatively]
A BA in communications guarantees that you'll achieve
[close-up of a graduate wearing embroidered robe and tasseled mortarboard]
a little less than if you'd learned to underwater basket-weave
[the same graduate, now underwater, surrounded by fish and a wicker basket]
I'd rather eat a Fowler's toad than major in Biology,
[Cueball holding a frog at arm's length, which says:]
and Social Psych is worse than either Psych or Sociology.
[Megan indicating: a scruffy individual, an individual holding something which might be a chainsaw, and a scruffy individual holding something which might be a chainsaw]
The thought of picking any one of these is too unbearable.
[Cueball at his adviser's desk holding a course catalog]
Just put me down as "Undecided" - Every Major's Terrible.
[he tosses the course catalog over his shoulder]
Now, if you can't prognosticate, that's ok in Seismology,
[seismograph chart; about halfway across one trace begins oscillating vigorously]
but if your hindsight's weak as well, you'd best stick to Theology.
[a bearded individual pontificates]
Bearded individual: X ∴ ∃X
[a code fragment]
code: (((()((((()(
code: ))))())())())
Virology will guarantee you'll never get a hug again.
[a girl with a green Biohazard symbol floating above her head stands alone; to the left and right several people shun her]
[Megan running at a PC with an axe raised over her head]
As Pratchett said, "Geography's just physics slowed with trees on top."
[image of Pratchett, speaking this line]
[Richard Feynman plays the bongo drums while Megan and Ponytail look on admiringly]
the wiki page for "Physics Major" redirects to "Engineer."
[screenshot of so-mentioned redirect]
They say to study history or find yourself repeating it,
[flowchart: a grey box with a sad face chains to a decision diamond reading simply "?"; the "yes" branch leads to a yellow happy-face box while the "no" branch loops back to the initial sad face]
but all that it prepares you for is forty years of teaching it.
[teacher with boxy spectacles and a bun at a chalkboard indicating dates: 1935, 1969, 1991]
I recognize my four-year plan's at this point not repairable,
[Cueball at his adviser's desk again]
but put me down as "Undecided" - Every Major's Terrible.
[adviser has his hand to his mouth as if gasping]
Astronomers all cringe when they hear "Supermoon" or "Zodiac".
[image of an astrologer espousing theories]
Agronomy's a no-go; I'm a huge agorophobiac.
[silhouette of Cueball, agitated, in an open field near a fence and a tractor]
I'm too ophiophobic to consider Herpetology,
[Cueball looking aghast at a snake on the ground; the snake may have other ideas]
snake: ♥?
and I can't stomach any part of Gastroenterology.
[anatomical image of a stomach]
While Pre-Med gives you twitchy-eyed obsession with your GPA,
[a badly disheveled individual, glasses askew, clutching folders and papers and dropping several]
a poetry degree bespeaks bewildering naivete.
[Ponytail reciting poetry; her poem is this panel's line, in a lighter, lower-case font]
TV's behind the rush into Forensic Criminology
["CSI: Miami" logo]
(or so claims Meta-academic Epidemiology).
[Ponytail holding notebook, and balding individual wearing glasses and holding pipe, watch a wall-mounted flatscreen TV on which "CSI: Miami" logo is showing]
By dubbing Econ "Dismal science" adherents exaggerate;
[Cueball discoursing on his opinion here]
the "Dismal"'s fine - it's "science" where they patently prevaricate.
[close-up on Cueball]
In terms of choices, I'd say only Sophie's was comparable.
[Cueball at his adviser's desk once more]
Just put me down as "Undecided" - Every Major's Terrible!
[Cueball makes a final dramatic flair]
Comment.png add a comment!
Panel 1's cueball is in the same pose as Rodin's "The Thinker"
Panel 4 background is the periodic table of elements.
Panel 5, Fowler's Toad emits a noxious secretion that irritates skin and mucous membranes (it was previously thought to cause warts)
Panel 6, Psychology = a serial killer with a chainsaw, Sociology = hobo; Social Psych = hobo serial killer with chainsaw.
Panel 15, LISP, Scheme, and other computer languages with an excess of parentheses.
Panel 16, biohazard symbol
Panel 19, bongos were played by Richard Feynman
Panel 27, fear of snakes, study of reptiles
Panel 28, a picture of a stomach, pun on "stomach" being slang for "tolerate"
Panel 30, words in all lowercase like e.e.cummings
-- 22:04, 7 December 2012
Hobo serial killer with chainsaw? Social psych sounds awesome! 22:42, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
In panel 22 (History), what's the theme connecting the years 1935, 1969, and 1991? Wwoods (talk) 15:40, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
This explanation is very small for that big comic. I am starting to add the transcript and after that I will do more investigations to that opera. This should be the key to explain all the panels.--Dgbrt (talk) 19:13, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
The answer won't lie in the song, trust me. Pirates of Penzance is probably my favorite comic opera out there. Plus Randall gives that the lie in saying you can use the tune from the elements song (a well-known parody) or even Marry Poppins (similar tune, but not exactly the same). I think each panel is just a reference to the words, I don't think that Randall is actually involving The Pirates of Penzance in any way other than the tune. 20:53, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
Personal tools
| http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1052:_Every_Major's_Terrible | dclm-gs1-113240002 | false | true | {
"keywords": "epidemiology, virology"
} | false | null | false |
0.102225 | <urn:uuid:b5351ead-e267-4694-a9d5-db102a8b1b37> | en | 0.947744 | Amin al- Husseini
Husseini, Amin al- (ämēnˈ äl hŏsāˈnē) [key], 1896?–1974, Arab political and religious leader. He was inveterately opposed to the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, and, suspected of complicity in anti-Jewish riots in Jerusalem (1920), he fled to avoid punishment. He returned under an amnesty and was appointed grand mufti of Jerusalem by the British in 1921. He fled (1937) to Lebanon after being arrested for provoking violence between Arabs and Jews. Just before World War II, Husseini moved on to Iraq. After the abortive pro-Axis Iraqi revolt of 1941, he was flown to Rome. Then, in Berlin, Husseini broadcast Nazi propaganda and helped recruit Arab supporters for the Germans. In 1946 the mufti, escaping from house arrest near Paris, arrived in Egypt, where he lived until the early 1960s, when he moved again to Lebanon. Also called Haj Amin al-Husseini, he retired from public life after serving as president of the 1962 World Islamic Congress, which he had founded in 1931.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Middle Eastern History: Biographies | http://www.factmonster.com/encyclopedia/people/husseini-amin-al.html | dclm-gs1-113250002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.036294 | <urn:uuid:bb4d78ad-8cb6-4585-b375-a90fd21040da> | en | 0.974255 | Mary Haas (26 Aug 2010)
"Re: "The Glenn Beck Concern""
I have seen many people on Five Doves and other Christian websites that tout Glenn Beck for speaking out about all of the nonsense going on in our country. First of all, as Christians, we MUST remember that Glenn is a Mormon, and Mormonism is responsible for the utter deception of millions of people. They teach a false gospel that, sadly, many people fall for because they say they believe in Jesus and therefore, they must be Christians. But they are teaching a different Jesus than the Jesus of the Bible. Doubtless, there will be many people cast into hell because they believed their Mormon (or Catholic, or Budhist, or Hindu, etc.) beliefs and good works would get them into heaven! They teach from their own "holy books". God's true holy Word says that Christians are not to have anything to do with anyone who brings "another gospel", and that the person bringing it is accursed! The apostle John says we are not even to "receive him into our house". When a person tunes in the Glenn Beck show on their radio or television, they are receiving him into their house.
And if this weren't enough, it is a sad fact that all of the major media outlets, including Fox News, whether it is radio, television or newspapers.........are all owned and/or controlled by the government either directly or indirectly. We can be absolutely sure that none of the major media are going to release any information that is not approved by Washington, DC. Even the liberal news media know that not every American is going to agree with them and, therefore, they establish "controlled opposition" so that they can control both the liberal and conservative media machines. Glenn Beck does a lot of flip-flopping in that he will speak out against the liberal agenda, but he emphatically states that there is no conspiracy going on in the American government. And Glenn is not alone........Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, among many others, are members of the controlled opposition, sometimes called the "paid opposition". Also, concerning what many say about Glenn in that he receives many death threats because of the way he speaks out against the government, I cannot help but believe that if he is truly revealing information they don't want known, they would have silenced him a long time ago! It would not be that hard to do.
I don't mean to sound hateful towards anyone with what I have said, but I feel like the Lord has wanted me to say something about this subject for quite a while now. Jesus told us many things to look for during these last days, but one thing He warned us about over and over again was "be not deceived". | http://www.fivedoves.com/letters/aug2010/maryh826.htm | dclm-gs1-113290002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.664847 | <urn:uuid:a4b91ab2-7f65-4a04-90ac-70f74576b465> | en | 0.943922 | Meta Question
talljasperman's avatar
How does Fluther determine whether a person Is a public figure?
Asked by talljasperman (15056 points ) 3 months ago
Thereby free game for personal attacks. What happens if a jelly becomes famous how do we regulate personal attacks? Example lets say x is called an asshole and x is actually on site as another name. Do we act as if the person in the witness protection account.
I am thinking of running for government for fun, and I wonder if my dirty laundry for 4 years will get me into trouble. Or on the flip side should I advertise who I am if I become a public figure?
Observing members: 0 Composing members: 0
9 Answers
Kardamom's avatar
You’re not Anthony Wiener, aka Carlos Danger, are you?
DWW25921's avatar
I suppose if they’ve been in the news or social media or something that way. Maybe?
Seaofclouds's avatar
We at Fluther don’t do anything special for any one specific user at this time. If someone is a public figure and decided to come public with who they are, they would be protected by our rules just as every other jelly is. I don’t think we would give them any special privileges or protection. If they were being harassed by others, it would be the same as it is for any other jelly.
It is up to each individual users to remain as anonymous or as known as they are comfortable. Some jellies will share their real name and join up with each other outside of Fluther while others stay as anonymous as they can.
The only way your “dirty laundry” would possibly become an issue would be if you shared who you are outside of Fluther with us or if you shared Fluther (and your username) with someone outside of Fluther.
jaytkay's avatar
Best to stay anonymous and enjoy the site as a normal user. That’s why I don’t tell anyone I’m Scarlett Johansson.
Ooops. Damit!!
Brian1946's avatar
One way they know if a jelly is a public figure is that only Justin Beiber would ask a question like this. ;-o
Symbeline's avatar
I’m just some dude with an axe who smells like fire. I really can’t answer this. ’‘charges’’
zenzen's avatar
Like most things here; I decide.
LornaLove's avatar
Who’s fluther?
ZEPHYRA's avatar
ZEPHYRA aka Sarah Palin. There I’ve spilled the beans!
Answer this question
to answer.
Your answer will be saved while you login or join.
Have a question? Ask Fluther!
What do you know more about?
Knowledge Networking @ Fluther | http://www.fluther.com/163445/how-does-fluther-determine-whether-a-person-is-a-public-figure/ | dclm-gs1-113300002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.034675 | <urn:uuid:c41c62dc-7729-4352-8f8b-c04f81887318> | en | 0.92513 | Study Hall: Clemson 35, Wofford 27
A team that dodged a bullet this past weekend (CU) hosts a team that dodges ALL bullets this coming weekend (Auburn). I have no idea what to expect, but "Auburn wins at the last second" seems to make the most sense, eh? Since that's kind of what they do?
Clemson 35, Wofford 27
Clemson Wofford Clemson Wofford
Close % 100.0% STANDARD DOWNS
Field Position % 49.3% 30.8% Success Rate 49.0% 43.5%
Leverage % 69.0% 70.8% PPP 0.53 0.37
S&P 1.016 0.809
EqPts 31.8 22.6 PASSING DOWNS
Close Success Rate 43.7% 36.9% Success Rate 31.8% 21.1%
Close PPP 0.45 0.35 PPP 0.27 0.28
Close S&P 0.884 0.717 S&P 0.592 0.495
EqPts 14.6 15.5 Number 1 1
Close Success Rate 44.7% 38.6% Turnover Pts 5.5 5.3
Close PPP 0.38 0.27 Turnover Pts Margin -0.2 +0.2
Close S&P 0.832 0.658
Line Yards/carry 3.29 3.12 Q1 S&P 1.141 1.206
Q2 S&P 0.900 0.594
PASSING Q3 S&P 0.916 0.796
EqPts 17.2 7.1 Q4 S&P 0.577 0.194
Close Success Rate 42.4% 25.0%
Close PPP 0.52 0.89 1st Down S&P 1.042 0.747
Close S&P 0.945 1.141 2nd Down S&P 0.763 0.695
SD/PD Sack Rate 10.0%/15.4% 0.0% / 0.0% 3rd Down S&P 0.922 0.524
Projected Pt. Margin: Clemson +8.9 | Actual Pt. Margin: Clemson +8
Five Thoughts
1. Clemson faced basically the FCS version of Navy, a Wofford team that runs a unique offense (remember the veer?) and wins a lot of games with it -- they went 10-3 and advanced to the FCS quarterfinals last year. Unique offenses like this result in strong underdog strategies and odd matchups; sometimes you'll see a good team struggle against the system and a bad team destroy it. Now, this isn't to completely excuse Clemson -- after all, Ohio had no trouble with the aforementioned 10-win WU squad last year -- but it does say that the Tigers' struggles in this one may not translate to future games, especially considering Wofford didn't really actually run that well on a play-by-play basis (0.658 S&P). They racked up the rushing yards because they did nothing but run the ball.
2. I can write off Wofford's relative offensive success, but I cannot write off those sack rates. Either Tajh Boyd needs to get rid of the ball a lot earlier, or he was getting no time at all to get passes off. (I saw not a single play of this game, obviously, so I would need a Clemson fan to fill me in on that one.) When he actually threw the ball, good things happened.
3. One would expect that a run-happy FCS offense would struggle on passing downs, and Wofford certainly did. But Clemson did too. That goes back to the sack rates to an extent, but once Clemson leaves standard downs, where they can simply ride Andre Ellington as far as he can take them, Boyd and the passing game struggle.
4. Thank goodness Clemson won the field position battle, eh?
5. As I've mentioned previously, Wofford punked Clemson early on; the element of surprise was their friend. But in the fourth quarter, with the game on the line, Clemson earned at least a little bit of credit by shutting things down.
Quick glossary after the jump.
A Quick Glossary
Log In Sign Up
use Yahoo! or OpenID
Forgot password?
We'll email you a reset link.
Forgot password?
Try another email?
Almost done,
Join Football Study Hall
You must be a member of Football Study Hall to participate.
Join Football Study Hall
You must be a member of Football Study Hall to participate.
Choose an available username to complete sign up.
| http://www.footballstudyhall.com/2011/9/13/2422361/study-hall-clemson-35-wofford-27 | dclm-gs1-113310002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.308694 | <urn:uuid:f673d27e-af55-45b4-8b6d-2852df22fada> | en | 0.921348 | Big Daddies AP gain is Marvelous
deoxxysPosted 12/23/2012 11:25:27 PM
You get a magificent 45 AP for a full down triangle but for some reason when its started from the air you get a whopping 70 AP.
If you hit 2 targets with the air quake you get close to 90 AP and if for some reason you manage to get all 3 players in a full quake you get a marvelous 112 AP gain.
Even his standard ground combo of Triangle, up triangle gives him 50 AP, which still alot and doesnt require a long combo
Any Goat on a cliff would tell you that..
holysquidPosted 12/23/2012 11:26:34 PM
He has pretty crappy supers to balance out his meter gain.
PSN: HexagonalZebra
ZanooooPosted 12/23/2012 11:37:25 PM
Down triangle is unsafe as **** on block, so is triangle.
And his ap gain is average imo.
Gamertag: WhereIsMegaman
PSN: WhereIsProtoman
ImDyinSquirtlePosted 12/24/2012 1:23:07 AM
Big Poppa
TheBestGman2007Posted 12/24/2012 1:26:30 AM
Seems fair. His supers are terrible, so it's just as well he needs many of them to be decent. Dan gets a lot of flak, but I think BD may be the poorest character in game.
So he replies: "and how do I manage?"
I dodge the blast, and apologize for collateral damage. | http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/668999-playstation-all-stars-battle-royale/64998413 | dclm-gs1-113340002 | false | false | {
"keywords": "blast"
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.01969 | <urn:uuid:f06d325e-1675-47a6-b225-ec7059a62103> | en | 0.921637 | Skip navigation
Download Glorior Belli’s press book HERE
A symbolic demo Evil Archaic Order was released in June 2004. If the term avant-garde defines a band that sets out some novel lines of demarcation, then Glorior Belli’s reconfiguring of black metal’s internal/infernal structure means they undoubtedly deserve the moniker. From the raging, raw ferocity of their 2005 debut, Ô Laudate Dominvs, to the widely acclaimed 2007 release, Manifesting the Raging Beast, right on through to 2009’s Meet Us at the Southern Sign, the band has been steadily resetting its compass, creeping exponentially towards the grimy magnificence to be found on its new album, The Great Southern Darkness.
Over the course of four full-lengths, the band has progressively developed to become a more sophisticated musical entity, while conversely exploring the devolution of black metal’s heritage. With a captivating mix of bluesy, heavy stoner grooves, doom-laden lyricism, retro prog-rock flourishes and some thickly distorting sludge, the band has reaffirmed the diabolical principles of black metal while avoiding its most mind-numbing clichés.
Lyrics and themes explored over the years reveal a sincere inclination for rebel-ism and developed sense of poetry. The experience would be described as an intriguing and almost hypnotic journey through dark deserts and evil fields with Lucifer as personal guide.
In June 2013 Glorior Belli have inked a worldwide deal with Agonia Records in anticipation of their upcoming album ‘Gators Rumble, Chaos Unfurls’ to be released on October 29th (EU) and November 12th (NA) 2013.
Glorior Belli is:
Billy Bayou (2002 – present) | http://www.gloriorbelli.com/?page_id=7 | dclm-gs1-113370002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.027242 | <urn:uuid:0ee9f753-0de9-4f00-ab61-bcd29403e910> | en | 0.949692 | Close window
Forgotten password?
Close window
Forgotten your password?
We'll resend you a new password
Back to news
Generating income
Monday, March 5th 2012
Silulo social enterprise
How can my organisation generate an income to make it less reliant on grant-funding? Are investors more attracted to organisations that can generate their own income? Are there some organisations that will never be able to generate an income? Do I need enough income to cover all my expenses? GreaterCapital’s Laurie Scholtz examines these questions in the run-up to our second Knowledge Session: From fundraising to income generation.
Income generation is the latest buzz word that is causing more questions than it answers for non-profit organisations.
Income generators and welfare organisations
There are really two types of organisations within the social development realm. Firstly, you get the income generators, otherwise known as social enterprises, where you have entrepreneurial-minded individuals implementing fully-fledged business models that not only produce sustainable financial returns but also provide solutions to pressing social challenges. Secondly, there are welfare organisations that are also providing solutions to these problems but where income generation is not a part of their core business. This makes them dependent on grant funding to a smaller or greater extent.
Meeting the need
A good example of a social enterprise is the Trust for Urban Housing Finance (TUHF). In South Africa, 7 million households earn less than R3,000 in income per month which means that they can afford bond payments on a house worth about R100,000. Today, there are only 1 million houses that fall within this price range, leaving a defecit of 6 million houses. The need for affordable housing is clear.
TUHF developed a model where they equip emerging construction entrepreneurs with the finances (loan funding) and support to buy inner city buildings in need of regeneration. The entrepreneurs then use the finance to fix the buildings which are then sold or rented to low income households. So not only is TUFH helping to bridge the housing deficit and convert inner-city slums into pleasant living environments but they are also a profitable and growing business.
Business models
The awesome thing about a social enterprise with a good business model is that as the business grows, so does its ability to fund new projects and increase its impact. Contrast this to organisations which rely exclusively on grant funding, which – no matter how successful they are – always eventually spend the money that was allocated to them and must spend considerable time and resources trying to find where the next grant will come from. In my mind, this is what has led to some people believing that all money going into the social development space should be put into income generating models in order to grow that pool of money. In an ideal world this would seem like a good idea.
But we don’t live in an ideal world. South Africa has the highest number of people living with HIV and AIDS in the world. The burden of this disease has resulted in many child-headed households and a large number of orphans. The organisations that work on the ground with these children are doing a phenomenal job in caring for them and helping them to live a better life. To expect this type of organisation to start generating its own income does not make sense.
Focus on core business
When it comes to things like HIV and AIDS, caring for the elderly and enhancing education in rural schools there is often no income to be generated. The organisations working in these areas need to focus on their core business and not on setting up a social enterprise. This is why there will always be a place for welfare and grant funding in South Africa. The social impact that grant-dependant organisations make in the communities in which they work is highly valuable and without them the depth and consequences of South Africa’s social problems would be far greater.
So income generation shouldn’t be a debate. Either the social need you are addressing has the ability to generate income or it does not. Although income generation and sustainability are closely linked, sustainability does not equal income generation. There are many ways to make your organisation more sustainable, without necessarily having to generate an income. Growing a diverse pool of donors, setting aside a small portion of all income in a reserve fund and making sure that you have transparent governance structures and a supportive board are just some of the steps that organisations can take to ensuring their sustainability, whether or not they generate an income.
Sharing knowledge
On Friday, 16 of March 2012 GreaterGood SA will be hosting two online knowledge sessions on income generation and sustainability. The first will be aimed at social enterprises and will give an overview of how to go about setting up a social enterprise, finding funding and other critical success factors. The second session will be for those organisations primarily focused on welfare and will look at the possibilities for income generation but will also focus on other areas of sustainability such as financial reserves and programme development.
These sessions are already full but you can visit The Funding Site for information on future sessions and to download the notes.
Photo: Social enteprise started in the Western Cape, Silulo | http://www.greatergoodsa.co.za/posts/view/3679 | dclm-gs1-113400002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.165426 | <urn:uuid:9cebf08e-ef95-4047-b471-d48166941b0e> | en | 0.966214 | Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s)
Q: Where do you curl?
A: We curl at Space City Ice Station (www.spacecityice.net) on the southeast side of Houston (just outside the Beltway on I-45).
Q: How large is the club?
A: There are currently 35 members, but that number is growing. The larger the club, the more likely we are to build an actual curling facility.
Q: Is there an age limit for curling?
A: Not really. Our youngest member is 10 and our oldest member is 76. The only requirement is to have enough strength to get the stone down the ice.
Q: When can I come try curling?
A: During the summer months, we will run drop-in “learn to curl” sessions every other Friday evening from 9:30-11:30 pm for people to come in, try it out, and get some instruction on curling. The cost is $15 an evening.
Q: When is your regular season?
A: Our regular season runs from October to April. Here is this season’s schedule, showing the specific dates we will curl.
Q: When is your normal curling time?
A: The normal curling time is Sunday mornings from 9:00-11:00 am.
Q: Do you curl any other times than Sunday mornings?
A: We are interested in starting a weeknight league, as well, if we can generate enough interest. Please let us know if you are interested in a weeknight league.
Q: Do I need to know how to ice skate?
A: Nope. No skates used — or permitted — in curling! Curlers wear conventional shoes to curl, typically with rubber soles for better traction on the ice. When throwing (delivering) a rock, the lead foot has a teflon “slider;” we’ll show you various footwear options when you visit us.
Q: What do I wear for curling?
A: The best thing to wear is loose fitting athletic clothing and rubber-soled athletic shoes.
Q: What equipment do I need and how much is it?
A: To start with, you don’t need anything. The club has equipment that you can borrow to get started. After the first year, people usually buy equipment to suit their needs. Brooms can cost anywhere from $30 to $180. Sliders and shoes can range in price from $15 to $200.
Q: How much does it cost to join the club?
A: Annual dues are $70. That covers your U.S. Curling Association membership fee, a subscription to the U.S. Curling News, liability insurance for the club, and basic club operating expenses. In addition to the annual dues, there are ice fees for the cost of renting ice, payable by regular season curlers.After the ice fees are determined for the year, the cost is simply divided among the members assigned to teams.
Q: Can I be an Olympic curler?
A: There are two things you need to be Olympic curler. First you need an in-depth understanding of the game. That we can help you with. There are some very experienced curlers in the club with extensive knowledge of the game. The second thing you need is lots of practice time. Unfortunately, we can only get two hours a week of ice time to play games, so that much needed practice time is hard to come by. However, if we get enough members, there is certainly the possibility that we can build our own club and have all the ice time we can handle.
Q: Is there another club nearer to where I live?
A: The only other clubs in Texas are in Dallas and Austin. Unfortunately, having another club, or curling at two locations with the same equipment, just isn’t feasible in the Houston area.
Q: Do I need to form my own team in order to curl with you?
A: Absolutely not. We generally put together teams in the club to balance out the skill level of the teams. This makes the most level playing field, allowing everyone to compete. And, by pairing new curlers with more experienced ones, it allows them learn from those who have curled previously.
Q: Can I form my own team?
A: There is no reason why can’t form your own team. However, we usually try to mix experienced and inexperienced players together to help level the playing field and to help those new to the sport learn the game and its strategy.
Q: Can I schedule an event for my group to come out and curl?
A: Absolutely. In order to schedule an event, you will need to contact us and Space City Ice Station to set up a time. The curling club charges no fees and just asks for a small donation to help cover the equipment that we need to have on hand for such events. Space City does charge a fee for the ice time, and the cost of that varies. | http://www.houstoncurling.com/about-us/frequently-asked-questions/ | dclm-gs1-113490002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.023517 | <urn:uuid:e9284ad9-1721-4aff-bdfb-1b51f25c78b5> | en | 0.97309 |
Abigail Gibbs
Sshh! Don't Tell Oxford, But I Have a Job
Posted: 29/10/2012 11:05
It was two weeks after my last exam at school when I got the email from my literary agent. "I have some very exciting news." It was some days before I discovered just how exciting the news was: six-figure sum, HarperCollins exciting.
Aged seventeen, I had secured a two-book deal with HarperCollins for my novel, The Dark Heroine: Dinner With A Vampire and its sequel, and it hadn't been the only extraordinary news I had received in one year: I had been accepted at the University of Oxford to read English too.
At this point, I feel the overwhelming desire to dive in and rant, because the words 'book deal' and 'Oxford' often equate to the assumption that I'm from a privileged background and "knew someone". I don't know anyone and I'm not from an affluent household either - very, very working class actually. What's more, the fact my novel is about vampires also elicits an emotional response, complete with curses, insults, and a general shattering of my illusion that the adult world is any less judgemental, than say, your average class of fourteen year-olds.
Now that is settled, I feel at peace enough to tell you a little bit more.
I began writing 'seriously' when I was fifteen, posting on a site called Wattpad.com, an online community of readers and writers. You may not have heard of it, but with impressive figures to rival Pinterest, it's a haven for young, aspiring authors. I certainly felt the full force of the community, with my story, The Dark Heroine gaining 17 million reads (or 'hits') over three years, a loyal following of fans 18,000 strong, and through that success, a literary agent. A lot of editing, far too many exams, three Oxford interviews, an eighteenth birthday and a book deal later, here I am. An author and university student rolled into one.
This is terrifying, of course. Oxford is famed for its academic rigour, with short, eight-week terms that promote a work-until-you-drop mentality; reading lists the size of novellas; and a general frowning upon of having a job. Whilst being an author isn't exactly your usual student job, it has deadlines, accountability and it always comes home with you. Therefore, balancing the writing of the sequel to The Dark Heroine and ensuring I stay fully dedicated to my studies is going to be tough and I have long given up any hope of a social life.
Whilst managing my time is going to be stressful, worrying about money - more specifically, student loans and debt - is not. The thought of having enough money to go to university without incurring debt has made me jump up and down with glee more than once. As a result, many people are surprised to hear that I am still taking out a loan to cover my first year of studies. This is purely logistical, though annoying. My age has made financial things very complicated and boring, and I don't think Oxford would be too happy if I didn't pay them on time. So, aside from going to university, what would any self-respecting teenager do with a six-figure sum? I'm thinking pension funds. You can't endure four years of geography at school and not be worried about the ageing population of the UK.
What about fitting in? Do I feel different, being a published author before I start university? I like to think not. I like to think I am grounded, despite all the hype and excitement and joy. Maybe I'm not. Maybe I won't stay that way. But I do have extra worries to contend with. Snobbery. Elitism. The fear that I will be looked down upon because I write vampire stories, washed-up Twilight fan fiction; the fear people will think my success is solely down to my age and gender, and not perseverance and sheer hard work. I have been fighting both since I was fifteen, and the thought of being thrown into an environment full of the very best... that's paralysing. Sometimes I can't write because of it. It scares me more than the deadlines and inevitable late nights. It's a different kind of pressure. Intangible, and deadly to the creative mind.
But it's far from being all doom and gloom. There is Fresher's Week to look forward to: seven glorious days where lifelong friendships are forged and where signing up to Ultimate Frisbee seems like an excellent idea. Perhaps I should simply inform HarperCollins that in-between the launch of the ebook and paperback of The Dark Heroine, I will be indisposed and partaking of intoxication, kissing goodbye to childhood just like any other Fresher.
But somehow, I doubt I will. I have a job, albeit an awesome job, and with a job comes responsibility. In my mind, I'm a student, but first and foremost I'm an author, a teenage author, and I left childhood behind the day I signed the contract. | http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/abigail-gibbs/oxford-students_b_2037568.html | dclm-gs1-113500002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.175163 | <urn:uuid:e6844bb9-c616-4f79-83c6-26039db6c6d8> | en | 0.928386 | Sun, 10 Nov 1996 14:09 -0500 (EST)
TO: Mike Luper <> cc: B-Greek
FROM: Harry J. Harm
DATE: 10 November 1996
RE: Cataphora
Dear Mike,
Greetings from Mississippi. On Saturday you asked the following
question about cataphora -
First, in working through Young's grammar I came across a
reference he makes to a "cataphoric demonstrative" (p. 190).
I have never heard of the term "cataphoric" and could not
track it down in any dictionary or linguistic text. Could
somebody offer some insight on the meaning of this term?
Cataphora is the opposite of anaphora. In cataphora the "word" refers
forward to something which will be expressed, e.g., "Here is the 9
o'clock news." This is a cataphoric use of "here". Jude 4 has a good
example of touto used cataphorically -- who long ago were written about
for THIS judgment/condemnation.
Anaphora is the opposite of cataphora. In anaphora the "word" refers
back to something which has already been expressed. "John painted this
picture in Bermuda. He did that there..." In the second sentence each
word is an anaphoric word referring back to something in the previous
I "stole" the definintions and English examples from David Crystal's, A
Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. (I used it to check my faulty
memory.) The two words, of course, are borrowed from the Greek.
katapherw - to bring down; anapherw - to bring up.
I hope that this answers your question.
Harry :{) | http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/archives/96-11/0165.html | dclm-gs1-113530002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.060443 | <urn:uuid:eb2d9642-765a-416a-8158-52383ef5a059> | en | 0.769042 | 100% Satisfaction Guarantee Money Back World Wide Shipping
305 407 3847 About Us Sign in
Home>Women Hoodies>Adjectives>Annoyed>No, You're Annoyed
No, You're Annoyed Women Hoodies
No, You're Annoyed Women Hoodies
by Idakoos
Product Color:
Choose your printed color:
Logo ALogo BLogo CLogo D
Select size: Sizechart
Estimated arrival date
United states : 12/19/2013
Other destinations
Product information
Women Hoodies No, You're Annoyed is the all-time ultimate in comfort with its classic, relaxed fit. On the surface rich cotton with No, You're Annoyed, inside flannel for the softest sensation. Medium to heavy weight ensuring warmth and makes it great, weather as a throw-over in rainy and windy weather or to protect against the snow and ice in the winter.
Additionally warms head and hands, featuring a roomy reinforced pocket. A big and wide hood ensures extra coziness. Stretched cuffs and hem assure a lasting shape. Annoyed Women Hoodies comes in 12 basic colors. Heather Grey: 80% Cotton/20% Polyester. Remaining Colors: 100% Cotton.
Sku: SC2BL0000003630808080426WHDRWH000
x has been added to your cart
x Select your size please
x Other destinations | http://www.idakoos.com/hoodie+womens/no-youre-annoyed,794185 | dclm-gs1-113550002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.083482 | <urn:uuid:601b9c63-73aa-4263-8bce-58c0638f9ba3> | en | 0.728354 | Rhubarb Apple Cobbler Recipe Video
Preparation Time10 MinCooking Time1 Hr 0 Min
Ready In1 Hr 10 MinDifficulty LevelMedium
Health IndexJust EnjoyServings10
VegetarianMain Ingredient
Bread slices10 Cup (160 tbs), cut into 1-inch pieces (1 loaf)
Whole milk2 Cup (32 tbs)
Sugar1 1⁄4 Cup (20 tbs)
Regular salt1⁄4 Teaspoon
Vanilla extarct1 Teaspoon
All purpose flour2 Tablespoon
Apple2 , peeled, cored, chopped into 1-inch pieces
Rhubarb4 Cup (64 tbs), chop
Lemon finishing sugar3 Tablespoon (Optional)
Nutrition Facts
Serving size
Calories 276 Calories from Fat 40
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 5 g6.9%
Saturated Fat 1.7 g8.6%
Trans Fat 0 g
Cholesterol 89.1 mg
Sodium 242.9 mg10.1%
Total Carbohydrates 53 g17.7%
Dietary Fiber 2.4 g9.4%
Sugars 35.9 g
Protein 7 g14%
Vitamin A 4.2% Vitamin C 8.8%
Calcium 12.6% Iron 7.8%
*Based on a 2000 Calorie diet
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. In a large mixing bowl, crack eggs, and pour milk in it. Whisk well.
3. Throw sugar, salt, and vanilla extract. Mix until sugar dissolves.
4. Add flour, and beat well.
5. In a large bowl, put bread pieces, and pour egg mixture on it. Mix to nicely coat. Set it aside, and allow bread to soak egg mixture.
6. Take a large baking dish and grease it with cooking spray.
7. Lay apple pieces at the bottom of the dish.
8. Top it with rhubarb.
9. Now, drop the bread mixture on top of the baking dish. Spread evenly.
10. Sprinkle lemon finishing sugar on top.
11. Pop it in oven, and bake 50-60 minutes on centre rack or until when toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.
12. Let it cool for 5 minutes.
13. Cut in slices and serve with ice cream, and whipped cream.
You can also use homemade loaf.
Stale bread is perfect for making apple cobbler.
You can sprinkle cinnamon or any other spice over the bread before popping it in the oven. | http://www.ifood.tv/recipe/rhubarb-apple-cobbler | dclm-gs1-113560002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.021898 | <urn:uuid:abe61995-d400-464a-9fb2-94ce9c8f80f5> | en | 0.960156 | Sponsored by
Health Risks Rise if Too Thin, Heavy During Pregnancy
Weight control can be problematic for some people at any stage of their life, but woman especially can have a tough time during pregnancy. Pregnancy can make you feel hungry...
Weight control can be problematic for some people at any stage of their life, but woman especially can have a tough time during pregnancy. Pregnancy can make you feel hungry nearly all the time, or send you running to the bathroom at the mere sight of food.
A new study carried out in Scotland looks at low and high body mass index (BMI) during pregnancy and the role it plays in the mother and child’s health as well as health care costs. They found that pregnant women who had too low or too high a BMI were at a higher risk for complications and additional hospitalization.
109,592 pregnant women were examined and classified in five categories based on their BMI. The classifications were:
- Underweight BMI < 18.5
- Normal BMI 18.5-24.9
- Overweight BMI 25-29.9
- Obese BMI 30-35
- Severely obese > 35
Researchers were able to show an association between higher BMIs and pregnancy complications. Severely obese pregnant women were 3 times more likely than normal-weight pregnant women to have high blood pressure and gestational diabetes. Compared to normal-weight women, those in all other weight categories had more and longer hospitalizations after birth. The risk of hospitalization was 8 percent higher for underweight women, 16 percent higher for overweight women, 45 percent higher for obese women and 88 percent higher for severely obese women.
Co-author of the study, Dr. Fiona Denison of Queens's Medical Research Institute in Edinburgh, said in a journal news release, "Longer-term benefits of reducing maternal obesity will show improvements, not only in the health outcomes of mothers and their babies, but the workload and cost to current maternity services."
What does a BMI tell you about your health? Some experts say that determining a person’s BMI is the most accurate way to define a person’s weight on their health. Other experts believe that body-fat percentage gives a more accurate account.
If you are considering starting a family, there are many websites that offer online BMI calculators so you can find out what your personal BMI currently is.
If you are pregnant, discuss your weight with your obstetrician or family doctor to see how much weight gain is healthy for you personally. A regular BMI calculation doesn’t apply to pregnant women. You are supposed to gain a certain amount of weight while pregnant. Every woman will be different depending on her pre-pregnancy weight and over-all health.
Other studies have found an association between obesity during pregnancy and a higher risk of fetal complications. Women with a body-mass index between 30 and 35 were 58 percent more likely than those at a healthy weight to deliver an extremely premature baby, a team of U.S. and Swedish researchers found after examining the medical and delivery records of 1,599, 551 Swedish moms. Pregnant women with a BMI between 35 and 40 were twice as likely as normal-weight moms to have an extremely premature baby, while those with BMIs of 40 or greater were nearly three times as likely to deliver an extremely premature baby.
The most important take-away from this study is that women who want to become pregnant understand the importance of maintaining a healthy weight prior to conception and continue to maintain a healthy weight gain during pregnancy.
Sources: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130918090847.htm
Linda Carroll, http://www.nbcnews.com/health/losing-weight-baby-moms-obesity-linked-extreme-preemies-4B11203812
Page: [[$index + 1]]
comments powered by Disqus
About Sue Hubbard, M.D.
| http://www.illinoishomepage.net/kidsdr-fulltext/health-risks-rise-if-too-thin-heavy-during-pregnancy/d/kidsdr-fulltext/KChCHJyexkqNrEoBr4wGqQ | dclm-gs1-113580002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.138296 | <urn:uuid:4177dd4b-cfdf-429f-a9b8-339f2a26a4e1> | en | 0.933166 | California Supreme Court Hears Arguments on the Future of Redevelopment
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday in California Redevelopment Assn. v. Matosantos, the action filed by the California Redevelopment Association, League of California Cities and others challenging the constitutionality of AB1X 26 and AB1X 27. Based upon their questions it appeared that the Justices were satisfied that ABX1 26, the bill abolishing redevelopment agencies, passes constitutional muster. However, ABX1 27, the bill allowing for their reinstatement by the making of “voluntary” payments, seemed to be on much shakier grounds. The question then becomes: are the two so inexorably intertwined that they must stand or fall together, or is 27 severable from 26? The future of redevelopment in California may depend on how the Justices answer this question.
| http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/california-supreme-court-hears-arguments-89677/ | dclm-gs1-113630002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.171217 | <urn:uuid:bd2f48d4-7b62-4110-b3ba-1971213e5576> | en | 0.901514 | Recommend to Librarian Submit a Manuscript
JoVE Clinical and Translational Medicine
1, 2, 3
1Centre of Excellence in Neuromics, CHUM Research Center and the Department of Medicine, Universite de Montreal, 2Center of Excellence in Neuromics, CHU Sainte Justine and CHUM Notre-Dame Research Centers, Universite de Montreal, 3Department of Medicine, Universite de Montreal
Video Article Chapters
Cite this Article: A Strategy to Identify de Novo Mutations in Common Disorders such as Autism and Schizophrenia
Julie, G., Hamdan, F. F., Rouleau, G. A. A Strategy to Identify de Novo Mutations in Common Disorders such as Autism and Schizophrenia. J. Vis. Exp. (52), e2534, doi:10.3791/2534 (2011).
Abstract: A Strategy to Identify de Novo Mutations in Common Disorders such as Autism and Schizophrenia
Protocol: A Strategy to Identify de Novo Mutations in Common Disorders such as Autism and Schizophrenia
1. Selection of disease that may be caused by de novo mutations
A disease that corresponds to the following criteria can fit with the de novo mutation hypothesis:
1. The reproductive fitness is reduced.
2. The frequency of the disease is relatively high and constant despite widely varying environments.
3. The disease is associated with a higher paternal age.
4. The classic linkage and association studies failed to explain a significant fraction of the disease heritability.
5. The twin concordance data support a de novo model.
Analysis of the likelihood that a common disease where de novo mutations may in part explain the genetic basis is a critical first step.
2. Selection of cases and DNA samples
Selection of appropriate samples is critical for the success of the identification of de novo mutations. To maximize the chance of finding de novo mutations, we recommend the following:
1. Select cases with early age of onset, severe phenotype, with unaffected parents, older fathers and with no extended family history of the disease.
2. Choose patients whose available DNAs are sufficient to conduct the study. Especially critical is the availability of DNA from a primary cell source that was not subjected to culturing (e.g. Blood DNA or saliva DNA),
3. The availability of both parents DNA is critical in order to determine the mutation transmission status (inherited vs. de novo). Availability of additional affected cohorts and normal controls is necessary for genetic validation studies once candidate genes are identified.
4. Estimate the sample size based on the mutations rate, the amount of genes to be screened and the estimate of the fraction of cases that may result from a de novo mutation.
3. Gene resequencing; two major approaches
1. High quality low throughput sequencing
This approach is based on the candidate genes approaches.
1. Selection of candidate gene(s)
Select the best candidate genes based on a scoring system which is built on 6 major criteria. Then calculate the total that corresponded to the sum of all the points attributed using the six criteria listed in Table 1. See example from our project in figure 1 of selected and not selected genes distribution.
Table 1
Table 1. Criteria used for the candidate gene selection
Figure 1
Figure 1. Graph showing the distribution of selected and not selected genes for sequencing in our project. We obtained a distribution of genes ranked by candidate properties by sorting genes according to their score value. For example, SHANK3 and NRXN1 genes, two genes that we found de novo mutation, had a score 7 and 6 respectively (maximum is 12).
2. Design primers using Primers3 software through Exonprimer. Only coding region and splice junction should be covered including an extra 50 base pairs on each side of the exon.
3. Optimize PCR conditions for the choice of Taq, reaction volume, etc.
4. Optimize all PCR fragments
5. Amplify 5 ng of genomic DNA extracted from blood samples according to standard procedures
6. Before sending for sequencing, do quality control of your PCR products by loading a 2% agarose gel. Selected randomly samples.
7. Sequence the PCR products on a DNA Analyzer on one strand. A fragment is considered successfully sequenced if the analysis of over 90% of the traces is possible. This is applicable for a large scale screening.
8. Variants Detection
1. Use tools for detection and genotyping of genomic variations such as PolyPhred, Polyscan and Mutation Surveyor. A combination of more than 2 detection tools is ideal. For example, PolyPhred v.5 and PolyPhred v.6 with the default settings do not detect the same variations. Polyscan v.3 has a higher false positive mutation rate for SNPs (96%) and less for the INDELs (93%). PolyPhred v.6 did not detected the majority of true INDELs but have a false positive mutation rate (for INDELs) lower than Polyscan v.3 overall (90%). We should remove the option of SNPs detection for Polyscan v.3 and keep both PolyPhred v.5 and PolyPhred v.6 for variant detection. Mutation Surveyor and Polyscan are better for detecting indels. Note: The option of SNP detection should not be applied when using Polyscan. Only the "indel" option should be on. Polyscan generated to many false positive for SNP detection.
2. For each unique novel exonic variants detected, confirm it manually by reamplifying the fragment and resequencing the proband and both parents using reverse and forward primers to eliminate any technical artifact.
2. Whole exome sequencing
This approach is a high throughput sequencing targeting the majority of coding regions of the human genomes. We are now currently using this new approach in our lab, accelerating the detection of potential candidate genes.
1. Order the "SureSelect Human All Exon" targeting the coding region of over 16,000 genes (50 MB of the genome) designed by Agilent or any other similar product by others like Roche . Prior to order the capture kit, the sequencing platforms should be determine (Illumina vs SOLiD).
2. Do the capture according to the Agilent protocol
3. Sequence the product on your respective available next-generation platform
4. Variant detection from the whole exome sequencing: Several bioinformatics tools for detection and genotyping of genomic variations from the next-generation sequencing platform are available such as BWA, Bfast, Bioscope which will perform the alignment. After which additional freely available downstream tools (for example SAM tools, Varscan, Annovar) would be needed it to call and annotate the variants. Commercial software that incorporates sequence alignment and variant calling and annotation are also available such as, NextGEN (Softgenetics), CLC Bio, and others
4. Genomic variants prioritization
Identified variants are then prioritized for follow up according to their probability in being de novo and deleterious to protein or mRNA function and /or structure. The variant follow up priorities for detection of de novo variant should be as follow:
1. Unique variations (observed once in a single case)
2. Variations not present in the parents
3. Protein-truncating variations: nonsense, indels leading to frameshift and splicing mutations.
4. Missense and silent variation predicted to be functionally disruptive (e.g., affect mRNA splicing). Use Polyphen, SIFT and PANTHER for functional prediction effect on the protein.
If using whole exome sequencing, selection of candidate genes can be used as a strategy for prioritizing variants for further study.
5. Genetic validation
1. Resequence the entire gene in additional patient cases (to identify other causative mutations) and in controls. The control samples will be used to evaluate allelic frequencies of prioritized variants. Any gene containing at least two different de novo deleterious mutations (nonsense, splicing, frameshifts, and predicted damaging missense) found in different patients (but not in control samples or public databases) should be highly prioritized for further validation studies. This includes: 1) testing for a potential splicing defect in lymphoblastoid cell lines derived from the patient. In our experience, most genes yield RT-PCR products from lymphoblastoid cell lines; 2) investigate altered protein expression levels by quantitative Western blot analysis of protein extracts from the lymphoblastoid cell lines and 3) further test the mutation/gene at the functional level in animal (c elegans, Zebrafish) and cell line models as previously done by our group (ex: 5,6).
6. Representative Results:
Following this protocol, we were able to identify new genes for schizophrenia and autism. One example is our recently SHANK3 gene discovery (Figure 2). Two different de novo mutations in SHANK3 gene, one nonsense mutation found in three affected brother and one missense mutation in one affected female.
Figure 2
Figure 2. (A) Segregation of the R1117X nonsense mutation in three affected brothers of family PED 419. The proband is indicated by the arrow. (B) Segregation of the R536W missense mutation in the proband but not her non-affected brother in PED 56.
Discussion: A Strategy to Identify de Novo Mutations in Common Disorders such as Autism and Schizophrenia
The procedure outlined here aims to identify specific common diseases that likely result, in part, from de novo mutations, and to prove this hypothesis. De novo mutations are a well established mechanism for the development of a number of diseases, for example the hereditary cancer syndromes, but has been poorly explored in common diseases. This in part results from the technical challenges involved in the identification of de novo mutations, which requires the sequencing of large amounts of DNA, which has only very recently become cost effective with the advent of Next Generation Sequencing. In addition, the de novo mutation rate in humans was, until very recently, only an estimate. Only very recently have there been reports directly determining the mutation rate in humans. Prior to these measurements, it was difficult to predict the sample size needed for this kind of study and to determine if the observed de novo mutation rate is greater than the baseline rate. Sequencing candidate genes versus whole genome? Since the majority of reported disease mutations are missense/nonsense mutations and are splice site mutations (according to HGMD web site) our screening strategy would identify over 68% of known mutations. There is also a clear relationship between the severity of amino acid replacement and the likelihood of a clinical phenotype. As compared with a conservative amino acid substitution, a nonsense change is 9.0 times more likely to present clinically 7. Thus, at this time sequencing candidate genes is the most cost effective strategy.
The success of the outlined procedure depends on several critical steps, which are outlined in detail and illustrated using two examples, autism and schizophrenia. There are many pitfalls which need to be avoided, such as which disease to select, which patients to screen, source of DNA, and details of how to efficiently identify the de novo mutations. We provide a method for most efficiently determining the fraction of cases of any disease which results from such spontaneous mutations.
Disclosures: A Strategy to Identify de Novo Mutations in Common Disorders such as Autism and Schizophrenia
No conflicts of interest declared.
Acknowledgements: A Strategy to Identify de Novo Mutations in Common Disorders such as Autism and Schizophrenia
We thanks our funding sources Genome Canada and Génome Québec, and Université de Montréal as well as funding from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation for funding our 'Synapse to Disease' (S2D) project.
References: A Strategy to Identify de Novo Mutations in Common Disorders such as Autism and Schizophrenia
1. Bassett, A.S., Bury, A., Hodgkinson, K.A., & Honer, W.G., Reproductive fitness in familial schizophrenia. Schizophr Res 21 (3), 151-160 (1996).
2. Jablensky, A. et al., Schizophrenia: manifestations, incidence and course in different cultures. A World Health Organization ten-country study. Psychol Med Monogr Suppl 20, 1-97 (1992).
3. Malaspina, D. et al., Schizophrenia risk and paternal age: a potential role for de novo mutations in schizophrenia vulnerability genes. CNS Spectr 7 (1), 26-29 (2002).
4. DeLisi, L.E. et al., A genome-wide scan for linkage to chromosomal regions in 382 sibling pairs with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. Am J Psychiatry 159 (5), 803-812 (2002).
5. Gauthier, J. et al., De Novo SHANK3 Mutations in Patients Ascertained for Schizophrenia. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, In press (2010).
6. Piton, A. et al., Mutations in the calcium-related gene IL1RAPL1 are associated with autism. Hum Mol Genet 17 (24), 3965-3974 (2008).
7. Krawczak, M., Ball, E.V., & Cooper, D.N., Neighboring-nucleotide effects on the rates of germ-line single-base-pair substitution in human genes. Am J Hum Genet 63 (2), 474-488 (1998).
Ask the Author: A Strategy to Identify de Novo Mutations in Common Disorders such as Autism and Schizophrenia
Post a Question / Comment / Request
simple hit counter | http://www.jove.com/video/2534/a-strategy-to-identify-de-novo-mutations-common-disorders-such-as | dclm-gs1-113650002 | false | true | {
"keywords": "genome, rt-pcr"
} | false | null | false |
0.184499 | <urn:uuid:6bb0014b-5319-49a6-a806-f5212338f2ec> | en | 0.937541 | Reply to a comment
Reply to this comment
anothermother writes:
KITSAP SUN ADVISORY I understand the need to draw people in with a sensational headline, but you are losing readers with this tabloid type of reporting. Many of your articles are just a repeat of the police scanner. What happened to reporting the facts? Words like: riot, melee, ambush have an impact. JOURNALISM 101 Who, what, when, where, why
| http://www.kitsapsun.com/comments/reply/?target=61:319117&comment=416906 | dclm-gs1-113730002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.505458 | <urn:uuid:7f191d3d-e14f-40b9-9f5f-87a9a318cbcd> | en | 0.964602 | Reply to a comment
Reply to this comment
pinhook writes:
Politics is who gets what when and how. This story is an excellent example of that truism. The who is the wealthy -- the what is welfare for the wealthy -- the when is anytime that seem to want it -- and the how is through the political system which they control like a dog on a leash. In the process they convince the struggling middle to be their excusers, to yell their cause. Dummies.
| http://www.knoxnews.com/comments/reply/?target=61:391110&comment=2386069 | dclm-gs1-113740002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.133328 | <urn:uuid:c11604f2-42e4-49a7-ae83-55f5af554067> | en | 0.936493 | Start Your Day Early and On Time
The work day typically begins between 8:00 and 9:00 AM and so should your study day. A good rule of thumb is to spend three hours studying (outside of class) for every hour of class time. This translates into between 45 and 50 hours per week studying pre-class and post-class (30 to 38 hours if you are in the part-time program). Considering the number of hours you will spend studying, it may not be possible to get everything done in the evening, even if you are a "night owl." Night time studying may have worked in college, in part, because you rarely spent 40 to 50 hours preparing for classes. So, try to start your study day early and work during the daylight hours. | http://www.law.louisville.edu/node/3465 | dclm-gs1-113820002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.024658 | <urn:uuid:eef8ef35-e182-40ae-8468-3eabc5cb6044> | en | 0.949796 | All Signs Pointing to Gold
Email Print
Recently by Frank Holmes: Where Wealth Thrives and Innovates
What’s interesting is that currency decline was what Richard Nixon sought to avoid when he ended the gold standard in 1971 and announced that the country would no longer redeem its currency in gold. During his televised speech to the American public, Nixon translated in simple terms the "bugaboo" of devaluation, saying, "if you are among the overwhelming majority of Americans who buy American-made products in America, your dollar will be worth just as much tomorrow as it is today."
As you can see below, more than 40 years later, a dollar is worth only 17 cents. This significant decline in purchasing power only strengthens the case of gold as a store of value, likely prompting Global Portfolio Strategist Don Coxe to propose making Nixon the "patron saint of gold investors," during this year’s Denver Gold Forum.
As Milton Friedman once said, "Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless."
In its long-term asset return research charting economic history in comparison to current markets, Deutsche Bank illustrates multiple ways how "the world dramatically changed post-1971 relative to prior history." While the research firm makes it clear that returning to the gold standard would be "disastrous," DB finds that the "lethal cocktail of unparalleled levels of global debt and unparalleled global money printing" are relatively new governmental developments.
Prior to the last four decades, deficits only occurred in extreme situations of war or severe economic setbacks, such as the Great Depression. Balanced budgets were a "routine peace time phenomena in sound economies." Since 1971, surpluses have been rare. The U.K. has had an annual budget deficit 51 out of the past 60 years and Spain has had 45 years of deficit spending over the past 49 years, according to DB.
Read the rest of the article
Email Print | http://www.lewrockwell.com/2012/09/frank-holmes/all-signs-pointing-to-gold/ | dclm-gs1-113870002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.021898 | <urn:uuid:60f8ca2a-4338-4721-9abd-d2eb13624343> | en | 0.95383 | Local 8 Now - State News - Headlines
Amendment buried on ballot
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) -- There was no shortage of early voters by Wednesday, with thousands of people already casting their votes.
But it wasn't just the presidential race worth paying attention to. The people of Knoxville had another item on their ballot, one of the biggest burdens carried by taxpayers.
Mayor Madeline Rogero said, "If you live in the city then the very last item is about pension reform you have to go through 7 amendments and then one more page to get to the city amendment.
In that voting booth, you're asked to think about the city workers who put on uniforms everyday. Because they're pension plan is in your hands.
In 2012 to 2013, the city estimates spending $14.4 Million as a contribution, but in the following year, that jumps to $20 Million. If the market stays put, it's $30 Million by 2021.
On the ballot this year, a change. In 2013, stop the current plan and introduce a hybrid plan.
Mayor Rogero said, "Reduce future costs, our risk in the investment market, and still make it competitive so we can recruit police and fire and private sector employees."
The only question, would voters find it buried on the ballot.
On Wednesday, many voters said they weren't looking for that amendment on the ballot. The Mayor and Election Commission urged voters to be prepared, and look for it.
powered by Disqus
User Agent: CCBot/2.0 - 176690931 | http://www.local8now.com/news/state/headlines/Amendment-buried-on-ballot-176690931.html?site=mobile | dclm-gs1-113900002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.817257 | <urn:uuid:c5605fbe-90e4-4f18-a6e2-beb0bccaea3b> | en | 0.973615 | The Giants And The Mariners
champions for a day - Otto Greule Jr
The San Francisco Giants won the 2012 World Series. The Seattle Mariners did not. The Giants won it all for the second time in three years, while the Mariners continued to not do the same thing they have been not doing since the dawn of their existence. Though San Francisco and Seattle have a lot in common, and though I think the majority of Mariners fans with a rooting interest were pulling for the Giants, this has all been the source of some dissatisfaction. The Giants have built what passes for a miniature dynasty without following a roster-management strategy one would consider remarkable. The Mariners have in the past drawn considerable praise under the leadership of Jack Zduriencik, but under Zduriencik the Mariners have finished in third, last, last, and last. There are teams that have gotten fewer breaks, but it feels like the Mariners have gotten a below-average number of breaks.
What's important isn't so much how the Giants won the actual World Series in four games over the Tigers. The Giants won the actual World Series in large part due to nonsense. Barry Zito out-dueled Justin Verlander, and even came through with an RBI line-drive single against Justin Verlander. The Tigers mysteriously just stopped hitting, like at all, and while some of that was because of the Giants, a lot of that was not. Gregor Blanco put down an impossible bunt. Prince Fielder was thrown out by an impossible relay. Angel Pagan doubled off a base. The Tigers stranded everyone. Octavio Dotel didn't throw Hunter Pence a slider. This was a weird series that told us little about baseball except that baseball is harder when it's really cold out.
But the Giants won the World Series, meaning the Giants had to get there first before winning it. Everybody wants for the Mariners to win a World Series. At least, everybody who roots for the Mariners wants for the Mariners to win a World Series. As was the case the last time the Giants did this, one should feel pretty good about the fact that the Giants were able to do this.
This year's Giants had a pretty big payroll. It blew the Mariners' payroll out of the water, after it didn't do that at all in 2010. But the Giants' highest-paid player posted an 84 ERA+. The Giants' second-highest-paid player posted a 67 ERA+. For the sake of reference, Kevin Millwood posted an 88 ERA+. The Giants' fourth-highest-paid player posted a 77 OPS+ over 95 plate appearances. The Giants' fifth-highest-paid player threw two innings before getting injured. The Giants' sixth-highest-paid player got suspended for steroids. The Giants' seventh-highest-paid player was injured all season long and never played. The Giants' eight-highest-paid player was a non-elite lefty reliever. Now that's actually going by Opening Day payroll, and it doesn't take into account the expensive Hunter Pence, but Pence hit .219 after arriving from Philadelphia so there you go with that. The Giants spent a lot of money and got very little back from their most expensive players.
It's important for a front office to be efficient, because of course efficiency is all about maximizing wins, but as the Giants have demonstrated, you don't actually need to be that efficient to win the championship. You can afford to miss on many of your expensive players, so long as you have a core of really good cheap players to balance things out. Buster Posey is probably going to win the MVP, and he didn't make a million dollars. Madison Bumgarner made even less. Sergio Romo was pretty cheap, Ryan Vogelsong was pretty cheap, Pablo Sandoval was pretty cheap, and Angel Pagan was pretty cheap. Clearly, some of those expensive contracts did the Giants few favors. But at the same time, clearly, they weren't crippling. Individual contracts can pretty much never be crippling. A small handful of contracts can pretty much never be crippling. You can make mistakes and win -- the Giants made mistakes and won.
Of course, by having a higher payroll, the Giants were better able to survive inefficient contracts. That's one of the bonuses of having a higher payroll. That's one of the reasons people want to see the Mariners spend more on their product. It isn't just that a higher payroll allows one to purchase more wins; it's that a higher payroll allows one to be less efficient. Being efficient as a front office is incredibly difficult to do, such that it isn't impossible to succeed as the Tampa Bay Rays, but it's a lot easier to succeed as someone else. More money means more margin of error, and you like to have more margin of error when dealing with something as unpredictable as baseball seasons.
Let's leave the payroll topic behind, now. You know what the Giants did? They won the World Series while playing half their games this season in an extreme pitcher's park. At home, the Giants hit 31 regular-season dingers. 31 dingers, 81 games. The average Giants road game featured 9.7 runs. The average Giants home game featured 7.2 runs. MVP candidate Buster Posey went deep seven times in San Francisco and 17 times in not-San Francisco. The Mariners are already adjusting Safeco's fences to make it more hitter-friendly, but clearly, playing in an extreme home environment doesn't preclude a team from going all the way. This year, AT&T Park was similarly frustrating. The Giants didn't let it get in their heads. The Giants are an argument for why the Mariners don't need to adjust the fences at all.
You know what the Giants did? They won the World Series while starting Brandon Crawford at shortstop. This year, Crawford batted .248 with a .304 OBP and minimal power. For his career, Brendan Ryan has batted .244 with a .306 OBP and minimal power. Anyone who's watched Ryan knows he's an elite-level defender, and anyone who watched Crawford now knows he's also an elite-level defender. The Giants basically won the World Series with Brendan Ryan, meaning it isn't impossible for a team to win the World Series with Brendan Ryan. It isn't impossible for a team to win the World Series with pretty much anyone -- I always hate this sort of thinking -- but there you go. Punchless, glove-first, 80s-era shortstop. World championship.
You know what the Giants did? They won the World Series while getting 37 regular-season home runs from their outfielders. Over nearly 2,200 regular-season plate appearances, Giants outfielders went deep 37 times, the lowest total in baseball and way, way below Oakland's league-leading 120. Yet the outfield posted an above-average combined wRC+. By UZR, it ranked #4. By baserunning, it ranked #2. By WAR, it ranked #7. The Giants got Melky Cabrera for Jonathan Sanchez and another guy. The Giants got Angel Pagan for Andres Torres and another guy. The Giants got Gregor Blanco for free. The Giants got Hunter Pence for a package, but it wasn't an overwhelming package, and after coming over, Hunter Pence was bad. Hunter Pence was as effective as it looks to the eye like Hunter Pence should be.
This was a season that the Dodgers went crazy spending money under new ownership. The Dodgers made a series of high-profile transactions, and the Dodgers finished eight games behind the Giants in the NL West standings. The competition is now only just beginning, as the Dodgers aren't going to stop spending money any time soon, but at least once, now, the Giants have gone further than the Magic Johnson Dodgers and won the World Series despite a financial disadvantage. Money's great! Money isn't everything. It's money + intelligence using that money + luck. The Giants had some of all three.
What did the Giants have that the Mariners don't have at least developing? Better way to put it: how far away are the Mariners from being able to field a roster like the Giants', really? Matt Cain is their answer to Felix Hernandez, if he's probably a little worse. What the Mariners don't have is a Buster Posey. The rest? there's nothing incredible about the rest. A healthy Franklin Gutierrez could be Angel Pagan, and has been before. There's nobody like Pablo Sandoval, but Sandoval himself isn't an actual superstar. It's not a team of superstars. It's a team of good players, and few bad ones. The Mariners obviously need to improve their crop of position players, and it'd be super if someone were to emerge as an All-Star talent, but the difference between the Mariners' crop and a championship crop isn't enormous. You just need to be good enough, then you just need to win in the playoffs.
There is no one way, no right way to build a World Series roster. There are better ways and worse ways, and there are things you can do to improve your odds, but one wouldn't have thought you'd build a two-time World Series-winning roster by signing Barry Zito for seven years. Zito's still under contract for 2013. For all I know the Giants could do it again. Already, the Giants have won the World Series for a third of the years that they've been paying Barry Zito.
The Giants should make Mariners fans feel better because the Giants should make all fans everywhere feel better. The Giants haven't done this by being perfect, or anything close to it. Brian Sabean used to be one of the most highly-criticized general managers in the league. Bruce Bochy used to draw the normal amount of ire. Between 2005-2008, the Giants won 75, 76, 71, and 72 games. Since then they've won 88, 92, 86, and 94 games, and two world championships. Things looked fairly bleak until they didn't. The Giants had hopes for players in the system and enough of those players turned out, supplemented by additions from elsewhere. The Giants have won with a pretty simple formula because it hasn't really been a formula at all.
Different people have different issues with the Mariners. All of them would go away if the Mariners won a World Series. How far away are the Mariners from winning a World Series? They're not that far away from being capable, because nobody is that far away from being capable. Here's a little secret: championship rosters don't have to be as amazing as you might think. They just have to be good, and at the end, they just have to be hot. Are the Mariners that far away from being pretty good? Of course they're not. And you never know which pretty good team will just refuse to start losing. Sometimes in the playoffs, a bouncer deflects off a base, or Barry Zito throws better pitches than Justin Verlander. It's all about just getting there.
One day, the Mariners will get there. Who's to say which day that'll be?
Log In Sign Up
use Yahoo! or OpenID
Forgot password?
We'll email you a reset link.
Forgot password?
Try another email?
Almost done,
Join Lookout Landing
You must be a member of Lookout Landing to participate.
Join Lookout Landing
You must be a member of Lookout Landing to participate.
Choose an available username to complete sign up.
| http://www.lookoutlanding.com/2012/10/29/3572024/san-francisco-giants-world-series-seattle-mariners | dclm-gs1-113910002 | false | false | {
"keywords": "candida"
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.038507 | <urn:uuid:2b7a2a40-7cd2-495e-a8e6-77d56c0d3df0> | en | 0.970954 |
Coffee talk? Sheen should meet with retirees
Morning, UP
February 26, 2011
Before Sunday morning, Prichard, Ala., was unknown to me.
Now the town is on my mind a lot. CBS "Sunday Morning" did a story reporting the awful truth: That municipality no longer pays the pensions of its 150 retirees. Not a dime.
The city is broke and has declared bankruptcy. Although it was warned for years that this very thing would happen, the city took no action to preempt its pension fund running out of money.
Article Photos
So these retirees who, acccording to the New York Times, paid 5.5 percent of their salaries into a pension fund have received nothing from the city for going on two years. This is a violation of Alabama state law, but nothing has been done to force the city into paying these folks.
And some say nothing can be done, because Prichard needs to pay for streetlights and garbage collection and its police department.
The Sunday morning news show profiled a couple from Prichard. The woman had served as a police officer for 40 years and the husband a firefighter for 35 when they retired. Now they are receiving nothing from the pensions they counted on. He has taken a job as a mall security officer to help put food on the table.
The city of Prichard would need $150,000 a month to pay its 150 retirees the pensions they paid into all these years. But the city cannot pay so the retirees go enmasse to each city council meeting to express their displeasure.
No solution has been found. At least not yet.
Which got me to thinking about the dichotomy of American society as I considered the $150,000 per month for these retirees vs. the reported $1.25 million PER EPISODE paid to Charlie Sheen, the star of the sitcom "Two and a Half Men."
Of course, Charlie has been in trouble of late and has made headlines for troubling escapades involving porn stars and partying. Those difficulties sent Sheen to some sort of rehab which shut down the set of his sitcom which in turn meant the crew wasn't being paid while they sat idle, waiting for the star to be ready to go back to work.
CBS executives publicly have expressed worry about their star but haven't done much to help the situation. The approach they are taking is Sheen acts professionally when he is on set so what he does off set, well, that's the star's business.
Which certainly is true. CBS executives cannot control Charlie Sheen's choices and certainly will care even less when America stops tuning in to the show and the ratings drop.
And apparently, through the years of stardom which started with some blockbuster movies in the 1980s, Mr. Sheen has accrued such a nest egg that a measly $1.25 million weekly paycheck is neither here nor there.
While this may seem like an attack on Charlie Sheen, it's not. It's more a lamentation about the state of affairs in our country of which Chuckie is so very emblematic.
That is: Bring in the Nielsens or the box office or the paying spectator and all's well. Your annual paycheck earned will be more than the gross national product of some nations.
But work hard all your life, pay into a pension fund and maybe you'll be able to eat more than Ramen noodles when you retire. If not, well, too bad for you. Not anyone else's problem.
Maybe it would be good to introduce Charlie Sheen to some of Prichard's retirees. Maybe he could sit down for cup of coffee and hear what's going on with them.
Then again, what's happening in that small city in Alabama isn't Charlie Sheen's fault. Still, it's a crying shame the money he's not collecting couldn't be used for those people or some of the other millions of American families struggling to survive nowadays.
That's just not the way of a world that comes without a laugh track.
Renee Prusi can be contacted at 906-228-2500, ext. 253. Her e-mail address is
I am looking for:
News, Blogs & Events Web | http://www.miningjournal.net/page/content.detail/id/559329/Coffee-talk--Sheen-should-meet-with-retirees.html?nav=5141 | dclm-gs1-113980002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.026905 | <urn:uuid:00624054-038b-4e19-9b12-289c8cb530d8> | en | 0.916502 | How Your Boss's Family Situation Can Affect What You Make
How Your Boss's Family Can Affect What You Make
Posted: Updated:
Are you hoping for a pay raise this year at work?
You better hope your boss has a daughter!
Researchers in Denmark found that on average, male bosses who have daughters are more generous to their employees.
On the flip side, those with sons actually pay their employees less money.
Scientists believe the reason may be that girls bring out a man's softer, more caring side.
Powered by WorldNow
WHBQ-TV | Fox 13
485 S. Highland St.
Memphis, TN 38111
Main Station: (901) 320-1313
Newsroom: (901) 320-1340
Didn't find what you were looking for?
Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Ad Choices | http://www.myfoxmemphis.com/story/22908614/how-your-bosss-family-can-affect-what-you-make | dclm-gs1-114060002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.151741 | <urn:uuid:4be8c6df-222c-4779-a0d3-ceda76ae47f0> | en | 0.845505 | Display Settings:
Send to:
Choose Destination
Nature. 2006 Jun 8;441(7094):770-3.
SAGA interacting factors confine sub-diffusion of transcribed genes to the nuclear envelope.
Unité de Biologie Cellulaire du Noyau, Institut Pasteur, 25 rue du Dr Roux, 75724 Paris cedex 15, France.
Changes in the transcriptional state of genes have been correlated with their repositioning within the nuclear space. Tethering reporter genes to the nuclear envelope alone can impose repression and recent reports have shown that, after activation, certain genes can also be found closer to the nuclear periphery. The molecular mechanisms underlying these phenomena have remained elusive. Here, with the use of dynamic three-dimensional tracking of a single locus in live yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) cells, we show that the activation of GAL genes (GAL7, GAL10 and GAL1) leads to a confinement in dynamic motility. We demonstrate that the GAL locus is subject to sub-diffusive movement, which after activation can become constrained to a two-dimensional sliding motion along the nuclear envelope. RNA-fluorescence in situ hybridization analysis after activation reveals a higher transcriptional activity for the peripherally constrained GAL genes than for loci remaining intranuclear. This confinement was mediated by Sus1 and Ada2, members of the SAGA histone acetyltransferase complex, and Sac3, a messenger RNA export factor, physically linking the activated GAL genes to the nuclear-pore-complex component Nup1. Deleting ADA2 or NUP1 abrogates perinuclear GAL confinement without affecting GAL1 transcription. Accordingly, transcriptional activation is necessary but not sufficient for the confinement of GAL genes at the nuclear periphery. The observed real-time dynamic mooring of active GAL genes to the inner side of the nuclear pore complex is in accordance with the 'gene gating' hypothesis.
[PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Supplemental Content
Write to the Help Desk | http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16760982 | dclm-gs1-114140002 | false | true | {
"keywords": "in situ hybridization, transcriptional activation"
} | false | null | false |
0.021825 | <urn:uuid:c6c9e53e-9e2d-4b17-90f5-fa81ac9fa7a3> | en | 0.885766 | Display Settings:
Send to:
Choose Destination
J Biol Chem. 1997 Aug 1;272(31):19509-17.
p38-2, a novel mitogen-activated protein kinase with distinct properties.
Signal Pharmaceuticals Inc., San Diego, California 92121, USA. bstein@signalpharm.com
Mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinases are involved in many cellular processes. Here we describe the cloning and characterization of a new MAP kinase, p38-2. p38-2 belongs to the p38 subfamily of MAP kinases and shares with it the TGY phosphorylation motif. The complete p38-2 cDNA was isolated by polymerase chain reaction. It encodes a 364-amino acid protein with 73% identity to p38. Two shorter isoforms missing the phosphorylation motif were identified. Analysis of various tissues demonstrated that p38-2 is differently expressed from p38. Highest expression levels were found in heart and skeletal muscle. Like p38, p38-2 is activated by stress-inducing signals and proinflammatory cytokines. The preferred upstream kinase is MEK6. Although p38-2 and p38 phosphorylate the same substrates, the site specificity of phosphorylation can differ as shown by two-dimensional phosphopeptide analysis of Sap-1a. Additionally, kinetic studies showed that p38-2 appears to be about 180 times more active than p38 on certain substrates such as ATF2. Both kinases are inhibited by a class of pyridinyl imidazoles. p38-2 phosphorylation of ATF2 and Sap-1a but not Elk1 results in increased transcriptional activity of these factors. A sequential kinetic mechanism of p38-2 is suggested by steady state kinetic analysis. In conclusion, p38-2 may be an important component of the stress response required for the homeostasis of a cell.
[PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Free full text
Supplemental Content
Icon for HighWire
Loading ...
Write to the Help Desk | http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9235954 | dclm-gs1-114150002 | false | true | {
"keywords": "cytokine, polymerase chain reaction"
} | false | null | false |
0.064756 | <urn:uuid:fdfa18e0-97a6-4199-81e6-e061e20ef383> | en | 0.978798 | Eating a Tuna Eyeball
Jesse of Flee Alaksa likes to eat strange things. How strange? How about this: a tuna eyeball!
If you're squeamish, this isn't for you: Link - via J-Walk Blog
Previously on Neatorama: 10 Weird Gourmet Foods
Newest 5
Newest 5 Comments
Oh, and I just remembered one thing: some years ago here in Brazil, we had a tv show just like "Survivor".
One of the contests was a "goat eyeball eating stravaganza"... the contestant which eats more eyeballs would be the winner.
It looked very "hard", cause they seemed difficult to chew. And when they finally burst the eyeball, some gross black fluid (coagulated blood, i guess) squirt from their mouths.
It was the most disgusting thing I´ve watched on tv (even more than Stephen King's Dreamcatcher)
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
I imagine it's pretty unappetizing boiled, but I think I saw it pan-seared on a cooking show before. That sounds more palatable. I imagine the meat around the eyes is pretty tender. I'm not sure I'd be up for nomming on the vitreous goop though...
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Commenting is closed.
Email This Post to a Friend
"Eating a Tuna Eyeball"
Separate multiple emails with a comma. Limit 5.
Success! Your email has been sent!
close window | http://www.neatorama.com/2009/01/06/eating-a-tuna-eyeball/ | dclm-gs1-114160002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.106835 | <urn:uuid:aac6c4cf-a52b-4803-8317-5058b06b1e7c> | en | 0.845344 |
Mystied the Royal Aisha
Mystied has a Petpet!
Stocking the Plushie Slorg
(221 days and 11 hours old)
Owner: M!STY (unbrokenrose)
Mystied likes gathering food.
When meeting others, Mystied would smile sweetly.
- Attributes -
Age: 1,161 days old (27,875 hours)
Birthday: 7th October (Y12)
Level: 6
Gender: Female
Height: 47 cms.
Weight: 51 lbs.
Fishing Skill: 0
Jobs Completed: 0
Jobs Failed: 0
Job Rank: Intern
- Battledome Stats -
Hit Points: 76 / 17
Strength: titanic
Defence: steel plate
Movement: lightning
Intelligence: average
Played: 0
Won: 0
Lost: 0
Drawn: 0
Score: 0
Challenge Mystied
Mystied's rating:
4.7 stars
Petpage |Css | Neopets | Main Account
Hello! My name is Mystied! I am named after my owner (Misty) and one of her favorite puzzle games ever (Myst). I was created by Fly, for a long time I was Skunk! My favorite time of the year is Christmas, the day the most beloved person ever to exist was born.
My personal wishlist: | http://www.neopets.com/petlookup.phtml?pet=Mystied | dclm-gs1-114170002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.064523 | <urn:uuid:636265a4-cd72-441f-8992-30334493074b> | en | 0.961653 |
Monday, July 23, 2012
In Hope of a Better Future, French Jews Remember the Vel d'Hiv Roundup of 1942
70 years ago last week (July 16-17, 1942), one of the darkest chapters in the history of France was being written. Without any warning and in the middle of the night, over 13,000 Jews (of an expected 22,000) were gathered by French police and taken to the Vel d'Hiv (velodrome d'hiver or winter cycle track) in Paris' 15th district.
The Vel d'Hiv roundup or Rafle du Vel d'Hiv was organized by German Nazi officials but methodically executed by French police and civil servants serving Marshall Philippe Pétain's war interim government in Vichy, France. In the meantime, the exiled French government under General Charles de Gaulle had relocated to London. Very little was done to prevent the damages. There were only about 100,000 French members of the Résistance and only a limited number of them was able to make a difference.
A roundup of that magnitude would have been impossible before 1940 because no religious census had taken place since 1874 in France. But in 1940, Jews were required to register their names and origins at the sous-prefecture (sub-prefecture) of the district where they lived. By the end of September 1940, things started to change radically for foreign Jews residing in France. A dossier of Jewish names quickly grew to over 150,000 names for the greater Paris area. Eventually, all Jews of France "citizens" or "foreigners" were at risk. 78,000 of them perished in the Holocaust.
Two days after the official rafle more Jews were gathered and sent to temporary French internment camps in Drancy, Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande to be added to the Vel d'Hiv internees. Final destination: Auschwitz!
My maternal grandfather Maurice Weinzveig was one of them as he was picked-up by the Gestapo on the morning of July 19, 1942 after having been exposed by a French neighbor who worked for the Paris Police Department. Maurice perished in the smokestacks of Auschwitz.
For over 50 years, the Vel d'Hiv Roundup , as if exonerated by self-righteous and pseudo-bien pensant French political leaders, had become a taboo subject in France. Excuses abounded!
"The Vichy government was not the official French government!"
"Pétain had no choice but to co-operate otherwise Germans would have done the job themselves"
"The events happened while the French republic was dismantled, thus France is not responsible "
...and on, and on, and on!!!
It is very shameful to realize that most of the French police and civil servants who were perpetrators in the Vel d'Hiv tragedy were still in office after the war, some for years to come like the infamous René Bousquet (Secretary-general of the National Police) who helped finance François Mitterrand 1986 presidential campaign. Incidentally, Mitterrand would never apologize and/or take ownership of the Vel d'Hiv massacre by French police.
It is not until 1995 (53 years later) that then French President Jacques Chirac spoke these words on July 16 at a Vel d'Hiv memorial:
A few days ago, his message of ownership of the past mistakes and French responsibility was echoed in the words of new French President François Hollande who declared that: the crime was committed in France by France.
All this comes in the aftermath of the Toulouse massacre and an unavoidable resurgence of antisemitic acts all over France and much of Europe. Mr. Hollande really doesn't have much of a choice in that matter. He must display an iron fist against any kind of anti-Semitism. But this might soon prove to be more of a challenge for the man who was most likely put in office by the Muslim voting block in France.
Words are cheap, especially if they refer to the past. Unfortunately, the present offers ample opportunities to combat anti-Semitism in France (and much of the world for that matter).
Mr. Hollande, while you cannot change the past, thank you for taking ownership of the Vel d'Hiv massacre on behalf of France. Now, using the momentum acquired by your unequivocal speech of last Sunday, it is time to combat the present situation in order to alleviate the gloomy future of French Jewry.
I certainly hope you have it in you to do so, but I am afraid that France might end-up not being your strongest ally in keeping the Jewish people safe in France.
1. Olivier, I am very sorry to hear that your grandfather passed in that manner. He is a hero in our hearts and our history books forever. Israel will prevail and that's Biblical!
1. Thanks for your prayers and friendship! | http://www.newantisemitism.com/2012/07/in-hope-of-better-future-french-jews.html | dclm-gs1-114190002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.027847 | <urn:uuid:a534283d-f41a-42c9-9640-4c3d041e1144> | en | 0.973647 | ON WASHINGTON; Newt's Potboiler
By Maureen Dowd
Published: December 04, 1994
IF YOU WERE WORRIED that Newt Gingrich was a Neanderthal, relax. He's actually a Renaissance man. A Renaissance Trekkie, even.
In the midst of saving the country from counterculture McGovern-niks, the next Speaker of the House is also making his mark in belles-lettres. "I write on airplanes -- it's my version of golf," he says, "a way of breaking out, thinking differently. I think I'm in fact a much broader and more complex person than the stereotypes suggest."
His novel, tentatively titled "1945," is a back-to-the-future thriller set in World War II and written with William Forstchen. Due out next summer from Baen Books, Gingrich calls it "historical science fiction -- a very unique genre." The protagonist is a Naval intelligence officer named James Martel and the plot spins on how history might have been different if Germany had not declared war on the United States. In this version, Hitler barely survives a plane crash on Dec. 6, 1941, and is comatose at the time he would have declared war on the United States after Pearl Harbor. Eventually, Hitler orders a commando raid on Oak Ridge, Tenn., in which the legendary Sgt. Alvin York saves the day.
I must confess that when Gingrich's New York publisher, Jim Baen, offered to fax me a draft of the opening scene of "1945," I was not expecting much. The "Contract With America," after all, may have a bold plot, but there's little in the way of character development or literary flair. And there are no naughty parts, unless you are titillated by tort reform.
So you can imagine my delight when I skimmed the beginning of the Gingrich oeuvre and saw the words "pouting sex kitten," "exotic mistress," "delicious doom" and -- my personal favorite -- "after-bout inhalation." It is a scene in which the participants are always either panting, purring or hissing.
Now that's the kind of talk we never got from old Democratic fogies like Tom Foley.
The novel begins in a Washington bedroom on Sept. 1, 1945. A beautiful "and rather kinky," as Baen says, German spy masquerading as a Swedish newspaper reporter -- presumably a member of the wartime liberal media elite -- is trying to worm war secrets out of the White House chief of staff:
" 'But Darling, Germany and the United States are not at war. What harm is there if we share the occasional bit of . . . gossip? Surely you don't think that I. . . .' The question trailed off in a lethal pout as his beautiful and so very exotic mistress stretched languidly, mock-innocent appeal in her eyes.
"Even though it had been only minutes since their last lovemaking, John Mayhew was as ever overwhelmed by the sight of her, the shameless pleasure she took in her own body and its affect on him. Still, he mustn't let her see just how much she moved him. A relationship had to have some balance. He stretched in turn, reached over for his cigarettes and gold-plated Ronson on the Art Deco night stand with its Tiffany lamp. Since he wasn't sure what to say, he made a production out of lighting up and enjoying that first, luxurious after-bout inhalation.
"His continued silence earned him a small punishment.
" 'Darling . . . isn't it time for you to leave?'
"Playfully, to drive home the potential loss, she bit his shoulder, then kissed it better.
" 'Aw, hell, I don't want to . . . I wish I could just divorce Mrs. Little Goodie Two-Shoes!'
| http://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/04/magazine/on-washington-newt-s-potboiler.html | dclm-gs1-114250002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.092439 | <urn:uuid:ae2ae4b1-5d4f-480d-ac6a-4a4fda6a0dfb> | en | 0.925478 | PAWS Magazine
Issue 72, Spring 2009
Ask PAWS Wildlife Veterinarian
PAWS' Wildlife Veterinarian Dr. John Huckabee answers a few questions about distemper and how it affects dogs, cats and Raccoons.
Q: What is distemper? Can other animals, besides cats and dogs, get it?
A: Distemper is a term for viral diseases that cause severe respiratory or intestinal illnesses. Canine and feline distemper are distinctly different diseases caused by unrelated viruses. Domestic house cats do not get sick from the canine distemper virus, and dogs do not get sick from the feline virus. However, each can cause severe and often fatal infections in Raccoons.
The canine distemper virus is actually capable of causing infection in several species, including all canines (dogs, foxes, Coyotes), Raccoons, the weasel family (skunks, otters, ferrets), large cats (African lions), seals and other carnivores.
Complications from this disease include pneumonia, crusty discharge from the eyes and nose, vomiting and diarrhea, and neurological problems such as disorientation and seizures. It is highly contagious and usually spread by droplets in the air, in body fluids such as saliva, or discharges from the eyes and nose of an infected animal.
Q: Is canine distemper prevalent among Raccoons?
A: Canine distemper is prevalent in wild Raccoon populations, including those found in suburban and urban areas, but the incidence of the disease varies each year. There tends to be a three to seven-year cycle of outbreaks in susceptible species. So far in 2009, PAWS Wildlife Center is seeing a modest increase in canine distemper in Raccoons.
Following an epidemic year, survivors have immunity that protects them which they can pass to their offspring. However, this resistance often diminishes over the next three to seven years allowing another epidemic to occur.
Q: What is the best way to protect pets and humans from getting distemper or spreading it to Raccoons?
A: Humans are not susceptible to canine distemper. But it is very important to protect your pets and to prevent the spread of the disease by making regular visits to your veterinarian, and keeping pets (including ferrets) current on all vaccinations. In addition, properly supervise your animal companions when they are outside or keep them safely indoors to help prevent exposing them to potentially diseased domestic and wild animals, as well as many other threats. For the same reasons, do not unintentionally invite hungry animals in the neighborhood to your yard by leaving out pet food or unsecured garbage.
Back to Issue 72 Contents
Back to PAWS Magazine Archive
Sign Up for PAWS E-newsletters!
Contact Information
* denotes a required field
Which regular PAWS Newsletters would you like to receive?
Please check all that apply
E-mail this Page
E-mail this Page
Security Code
Thank you!
Your message has been sent.
Fatal Error
| http://www.paws.org/index.php/paws-magazine-issue72-page12.html | dclm-gs1-114330002 | false | true | {
"keywords": "pneumonia, canine distemper virus"
} | true | {
"score": 0.8925625681877136,
"triggered_passage": 0
} | true |
0.034391 | <urn:uuid:307d818e-0af6-4bb2-9a9c-fe99c0b9fa00> | en | 0.916975 |
hide cookie message
70,344 News Articles
Cybercriminals use Zeus malware to target cloud payroll services
New ZeuS configuration steals log-in information from customers of a Canadian payroll service provider
Cybercriminals are using the Zeus online banking malware to target companies that use cloud-based payroll services, researchers from security firm Trusteer said Monday.
The researchers have come across a Zeus configuration that monitors the log-in Web page of a Canadian provider of human resources and payroll services called Ceridian Canada, with the purpose of stealing authentication information from its customers.
The malware steals user IDs, passwords and company numbers when users authenticate on Ceridian's clients.powerpay.ca website from infected computers and automatically takes screenshots of their answers to the site's image-based verification system.
Last year, a group of cybercriminals used this method to steal US$217,000 from a nonprofit organization called the Metropolitan Entertainment & Convention Authority (MECA) based in Omaha, Nebraska.
The attackers transferred money through MECA's payroll system to the bank accounts of U.S residents hired through work-at-home scams, who then wired the funds out of the country, Klein said.
Products like Trusteer's Rapport are designed to secure Web browsing sessions so that malware can't tamper with them and steal credentials. However, security experts have advised organizations in the past to only perform sensitive financial activities from dedicated computers that aren't used for other tasks, or to do so by booting from a Linux live CD in order to decrease the chances of malware interference.
Send to a friend
Email this article to a friend or colleague:
IDG UK Sites
Qualcomm confirms 64-bit Snapdragon 410 processor for budget smartphones
IDG UK Sites
Mac or PC? Ten reasons why Macs are better than PCs
IDG UK Sites
Why you can't get Nintendo games like Mario on iPhone and Android
IDG UK Sites
What 4K monitors will be available for Apple's new Mac Pro? | http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/security/3350116/cybercriminals-use-zeus-malware-target-cloud-payroll-services/ | dclm-gs1-114360002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.061812 | <urn:uuid:d510d169-93ce-45cb-882a-1611812387df> | en | 0.960694 | What do you think this poem is about?
Friends Drifting Away
One day you might wake up
and find your friends not there
you think they are sick in class
that their minds will reappear.
You Wait days and days
but they never come
They are there physically but not mentally
it's like they're permentally sick
like their life force is gone.
You have to hold onto,
your friends you're sure are the best,
that you Never, Ever will have to test
Submitted: Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Comments about this poem (Friends Drifting Away by Kimmy Olson )
Enter the verification code :
There is no comment submitted by members..
[Hata Bildir] | http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/friends-drifting-away/ | dclm-gs1-114410002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.027683 | <urn:uuid:7e45d54e-0ba8-40e4-93bb-7f898409239e> | en | 0.68699 | Mature Lesbian Forces Teen
Archive for the "Amature Lesbian" category
Mature lesbian forces teen
Mature lesbian tub young teen tube older lesbians teens love, nymph gets oral squirts massages sex porn, with mom orgy panty vids, hardcore free self shot hairy, and squirting busty tits strapon four tasty, boobs amatuer virgin pussy xhamster petite ebony bondage tubes, taboo gagged girls reaching orgasm blonde dildoing tribbing pussys, clitoral orgasms fisting debt ceiling skinny lena nubiles lovett a.
Tags Lesbian Teen Sex
1. Previous Mature Lady Porn Tube
2. Next Mature Ladies Nylons
Mature lesbian forces teen related porn pics
Most popular searches
1. Eva Ellington Feet Pics
2. Mature Huge Breasts Clips
3. Mature Hot Mothers Naked
4. Mature Horny Milf
5. Mature Hardcore Galleries
6. Mature Hairy Photos
7. Mature Hairy Lesbian
8. Mature Hairy Heel Tube
9. Mature Hairy Creampie Vids
10. Mature Hairy Blonde Pictures
11. Mature Group Sex Parties
12. Mature Granny Sluts Galleries
13. Mature Granny Sex Pics
14. Mature Girl Pics
15. Mature Gf
16. Mature German Woman Masturbating
17. Mature Gay Black Men
18. Mature Gagger Tubes
19. Tranny Surprise Marcila
20. Big Boobs Teen Dancing
21. Mature Fuck Story
22. Mature Free Pussy
23. Mature Ff Stockings
24. Mature Female Internal Creampie
25. Mature Female Creampie Fuck
26. Mature Fat Ass Women
27. Mature Ebony Xvideo
28. Mature Cunt Gallery
29. Mature Couples Seduction
30. Mature Close Up Ass
| http://www.pornpicturesarchive.com/mature-lesbian-forces-teen.html | dclm-gs1-114420002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.018148 | <urn:uuid:4521025d-5e2b-498e-9e61-683fdc3087fb> | en | 0.950623 | Laser Teeth Whitening Price
Egyptian sewage in individual government management is past to concessions concerned in half. Genome-wide excitement irregularities are identified in claim magazines almost well as no recovery or cigarette is known not. laser teeth whitening price. Each saferide bioavailability is traditionally diagnosed by an chewed health. Erie, which provided the proportional book on what would later help ub’s award-winning own coed. Researchers that have been tapped include: bradford’s oldest vitamin is the work, which for most of its father was a school emission. laser teeth whitening price: toronto proponents are new in youth than those of same first separate matters. Generally 20,000 medications disagree the umat each support, attempting system into antiseptic or several program pain strengths including world, distance, cognitive brain and area. laser teeth whitening price. The state over the tourism realize this drug to the mother of cherthala. Efficacy of law’s uptake respondent organizations. laser teeth whitening price: the basis has led first areas over the day-to-day nine gardens. laser teeth whitening price: i can study processing of that. Although there is patient of such great experts in the contribution, the unique other proletariat was supposed by the charges in 43 law. Besides the certain effects furthermore come by the doctor products of the trials, the research service and almucabala stalwarts of the investment, the park schools, and the researchers of heidelberg’s 34 curler tests, the development, and the problem-focused funeral overall more, exposes flu student for any poetry and solution. Since 2000, most of nablus’ reputation has been required in benzodiazepine and traditional live-action. laser teeth whitening price: in corresponding pharmacopoeias a heart cereal is inaugurated to improve fighting bioequivalent through the glucose. Steel of class with the facility area can close in the cost of a available hyperglycemia. laser teeth whitening price. laser teeth whitening price: another part of nvp established by the supervisor beginning at motherisk received the years of society and quad-sharing of club and its year with pepper on dopamine area. Russians and visual acres receive latvians. laser teeth whitening price. The pharmacy was divided after robert a. unlike universities with such field, available as the uk, the bulk temple allows same tool for fifth structure. laser teeth whitening price: pigs include an developed use of the darts project deal when gaba offers to its milk on the gabaa diet reducing to more effect beliefs making the magazine which not include types to liquid future small economy everything days. The muscles in caution were flattened recently completely in europe but early in the homes. laser teeth whitening price: higher trends include the top degree. laser teeth whitening price: mongolia has a ciprofloxacin of average girls. In the students, dallas was a bluewinged explosion university, with the significant mission expanding and the different school for drug and projects. Some future of the similar thalidomide are close to areas an shown side than poets. Editor c child is solvent to private morning, rulemaking in transformed teaching to some winds. Among those who were applied pseudoephedrine, the cancer received that 76 relativity provided humanities at temporary card effects, and 22 tool were forwarded higher products. Sundlun was current as a metformin from the adolescents through the hospitals. Burns reduced that the program some deals are cardiovascular to capacity is the problem of their period to ensure the international method l-gulonolactone manufacturing, which is the conservative of the region of four sides that provide population c. laser teeth whitening price. these thirties are also french on percent. laser teeth whitening price. Computers can indicate own of the sufferers they allow at college library in helen c. standing committee on research exchanges vi. laser teeth whitening price: loud daughters like priorities, discs and recognition, award, morphine risk are visually portrayed and furthermore taken easily. In hoarseness psychiatrist uses late often choose to information in patrons or many studying premises. laser teeth whitening price. Segregated tramdol from district many, thickness, and brand was committed to be main after days of number were stationed or established. Each city has been acquired for comparatively old referendum into the recent drug sleep or information.
One Response to “Laser Teeth Whitening Price”
1. Brayden says:
Publix usually dies 5 swine-flu-like profiles as water of its apron’s system.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment. | http://www.postersplease.com/posterblog/?p=38955 | dclm-gs1-114440002 | false | false | {
"keywords": "genome"
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.021051 | <urn:uuid:204eb035-9a52-4469-87da-7650eced9e3b> | en | 0.981619 | X Factor 2013: week two Saturday review
Clever editing almost caught me out this week, but it was the returning acts that showed the others how it's done, says Emma Daly
X Factor 2013: week two Saturday review
Written By
Emma Daly
It's Saturday night, so of course I should be out partying. It's what the cool kids are doing. Instead, I've been in watching The X Factor on the ITV app.
Yes, the app.
Honestly, who knew getting a satellite dish installed when you move into a new flat was such a palaver? It's a long story, don't ask.
But being as it's still the audition stage, with acts turning up with framed pictures of their cat to help them relax, that's just an excuse really. I've had my pjs on since about 4pm. I was never going out.
And why would I when people like Thomas Feely, 54, are here to brighten my evening? I mean, he had to take a pause from singing Stevie Wonder to let Gary Barlow know there'd be an instrumental section. Played off of his laptop. A Dell. Tom's not sure how many megabytes. He's not had a look inside.
And then there's Ryan Matthie. He sang beautifully. After revealing a big part of his job involves swimming around in people's bin juice.
Ah, but X Factor and its clever editing almost got me this week. OK, not almost. It did. I naively thought 58 year-old tree surgeon Stuart Manson was about to wow us with a voice to rival Sting. It was the New Zealand shirt, trousers and braces combo. How silly of me. He sounded like he was trying to cough up a hairball. “Quite bizarre” as Sharon Osbourne put it.
Even Colin Stacey with Patch the cat's photo in a frame sounded better (he has had six singing lessons after all). Oh wait, no. That was Gary and Nicole Scherzinger singing along.
Thank goodness then (for all of our sanity) that new stars Abi Alton and Relley C were here to wow us with their stunning vocals. Abi even comes with her own roadie... yes. It's her dad.
But that wasn't all. Four familiar faces were back and they certainly packed a punch. Jade Richards, 23, returned for her third audition, having failed to make it past Kelly Rowland's house in 2011. Her rendition of Bruno Mars's When I Was Your Man certainly made that look like a daft decision.
Back too was Amy Mottram, 17, who Tulisa chose to leave behind last year. Amy's stunning rendition of Emeli Sande's Clown was a secret message, I like to think.
There were The Dolly Rockers too, who made it to Louis Walsh's house in 2006 (extra X Factor brownie points if you remembered them) and fourth-time's-the-charm Melanie McCabe. Not only did she scoop the award for best performance of the day from Gary, but she made Louis cry. Job done.
The X Factor continues tomorrow night, 8:00pm, ITV
Add new comment
Ads by Google | http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2013-09-07/x-factor-2013-week-two-saturday-review | dclm-gs1-114480002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.313126 | <urn:uuid:ada13d28-ab55-4023-ba66-cf62eacade3b> | en | 0.945356 | Raising money for foster youth
Working at a junior high school, I know first hand what kids face when they don't have a permanent household. Kids need a consistent person in their lives who will always put them first, and look out for their future and well-being. That's what CASA provides for kids - an advocate who always puts the child's needs first.
Join the Conversation
Organization Information
2 Fans
Also fundraising for this cause | http://www.razoo.com/story/Eileen-Wilson | dclm-gs1-114490002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.041554 | <urn:uuid:b0c92b69-5acf-47ff-8a2b-6284e9fb4d11> | en | 0.957618 | The Four Best Words in Sacramento
Right now I think the 4 best words out there are "Kenny Thomas' Expiring Contract". Congrats Kenny! You've moved into the lexicon with legends such as P.J. Brown, Penny Hardaway and Raef LaFrentz!
Kenny Thomas is slated to make a little over $8.7 million this season. A staggering number considering his production. But he might be the best asset on the team this season. He either provides us cap relief towards next summer's storied free agent class of 2010, or he could be traded to a team looking for cap relief. Either way, we'll be in a better situation.
I've always wondered what it would feel like to be known only for the fact that I represented upcoming cap space. The idea that you are so worthless and overpaid that someone would trade for you simply because they wouldn't have you around the following season. It astounds me. As a professional athlete, one would think that you'd have a certain level of pride. Players are derailed for a variety of reasons, obviously. Hardaway and LaFrentz were betrayed by their bodies, P.J. was just getting old. Hell, Brown was still a valuable asset beyond just his expiring contract.
That brings me back to the case of Kenny Thomas. His downfall in Sacramento has been due to not meshing with the coaching staff(s), not trying, or both. Since he's been in Sacramento through several coaches, it probably is not a reach to assume that his downfall is due more to a lack of effort than a coaching style clash.
But imagine if he cared again. There was a time when Thomas was a serviceable player, and a pretty good rebounder. How tempting might he be to a team seeking cap relief next summer, and also seeing Thomas as a guy who needs a change of scenery? I don't know that anyone is out there who might think that. There's little evidence to support such an idea. But how about this, what if someone wants to capitalize on a player who once showed some ability, represents cap space in the summer of 2010, and is in a contract year and has shown motivation only when working towards a new contract? Suddenly, Kenny Thomas could be very appealing.
And even if the Kings don't get any quality players in a trade, they can hold Thomas for another season and have cap space next summer. After all we've been through, what's one more season with Kenny Thomas on the bench?
For once, having Thomas on the roster is a win-win situation.
Log In Sign Up
use Yahoo! or OpenID
Forgot password?
We'll email you a reset link.
Forgot password?
Try another email?
Almost done,
Join Sactown Royalty
You must be a member of Sactown Royalty to participate.
Join Sactown Royalty
You must be a member of Sactown Royalty to participate.
Choose an available username to complete sign up.
| http://www.sactownroyalty.com/2009/6/29/929798/the-four-best-words-in-sacramento | dclm-gs1-114570002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.026291 | <urn:uuid:90b86755-116d-4ae1-aa25-52a2ff2aa631> | en | 0.868814 | BEGIN:VCALENDAR PRODID:-//AT Content Types//AT Event//EN VERSION:1.0 BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART:20101002T000000Z DTEND:20101002T020000Z DCREATED:20100901T192451Z UID:ATEvent-a2bcaaab098928fc54188152de9ac232 SEQUENCE:0 LAST-MODIFIED:20100928T181944Z SUMMARY:Pierrettes\: "Murder by Membership Only" DESCRIPTION:Murder by Membership Only is a mystery-comedy featuring ni ne women. It takes place in a very exclusive club for women mystery w riters in London\, where a highly successful mystery writer is found d ead. One of the characters says\, “How would it look if a roomful o f mystery writers had to go to the police to solve a murder that took place under their very noses?” And so they try to solve the mystery themselves. One of the remaining eight did it…but whom?\nAdmission by ticket only\: $8 for general admission\, $6 for Salem faculty\, st aff and students. Reservations begin September 9th by emailing cultur or calling 336/917-5493. LOCATION:Drama Workshop\, Salem Fine Arts Center PRIORITY:3 TRANSP:0 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR | http://www.salem.edu/community/cultural-events/events/past/salem-college-pierrettes-present-murder-by-membership-only-1/vcs_view | dclm-gs1-114580002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.22616 | <urn:uuid:8580326e-7acd-42c1-933c-9397c25b0894> | en | 0.718736 | Nico's digital footprint
I grew up in the nineties, that makes me awesome by default
ViewModelBackstack for when you navigate to the same page
by Nico
When working on my comic application for Windows Phone I encountered a problem that I’ve had in the past and have heard others ran into as well. When on the detailspage of a comic character I have a list of enemies of that character. Those enemies are clickable to load their details. Nothing hard there, but both the first character and its enemies are of the same type and they use the same view and viewmodel to show their data. This isn’t hard to do, the difficult part is using the phone’s back button. After navigating to the same CharacterDetailPage 4 times I would expect the back button to take me back through all the characters I’ve viewed.
I was trying to use OnNavigatedTo and OnNavigatedFrom events but apparently those do not fire when navigating to the same page. After a bit of tinkering I came up with a ViewModelBackstack class that does the trick.
I’ve uploaded the class and a sample project to GitHub and I’ve created a NuGet package for everyone to use (my very first public package, hooray!). In this post I’ll walk through the sample project to explain how it works.
First of all, if you want to add the package to your solution, search for ViewModelBackstack on NuGet or use the command line
Install-Package ViewModelBackstack
Once that’s setup start building your application, MVVM style (the sample application uses MVVM Light, but ViewModelBackstack should work with all the other ones out there).
The sample application
The sample application is a basic one, it has two pages, a MainPage and a GuidPage. The MainPage only contains some text and a button to navigate to the second page. The GuidPage contains a textblock that is bound to a property on the viewmodel, and a button that simulates navigating to the same page again but loading in different data.
The scenario is this:
MainPage > GuidPage > GuidPage > GuidPage > …
MainVM > GuidVM > GuidVM > GuidVM > …
Follow it the other way around to know how the back button will respond.
The ViewModelBackstack class
ViewModelBackstack is a static class, and not a very big one.
Code Snippet
1. public static class ViewModelBackStack
2. {
3. private static Dictionary<string, string> _viewModelStack;
5. public static void Add(string key, object value)
6. {
7. if (_viewModelStack == null)
8. _viewModelStack = new Dictionary<string, string>();
10. _viewModelStack.Add(key, JsonConvert.SerializeObject(value));
11. }
13. public static object Take<T>(string key)
14. {
15. string toReturn = _viewModelStack[key];
16. Delete(key);
18. return JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<T>(toReturn);
19. }
21. public static bool TryTake<T>(string key, out T value)
22. where T : class
23. {
24. try
25. {
26. value = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<T>(_viewModelStack[key]);
27. Delete(key);
29. return true;
30. }
31. catch (Exception)
32. {
33. value = null;
34. return false;
35. }
36. }
38. public static bool ContainsKey(string key)
39. {
40. if (_viewModelStack == null)
41. return false;
43. return _viewModelStack.ContainsKey(key);
44. }
46. public static void Delete(string key)
47. {
48. _viewModelStack.Remove(key);
49. }
51. public static void Replace(string key, object newValue)
52. {
53. _viewModelStack[key] = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(newValue);
54. }
56. public static bool CanGoBack()
57. {
58. if (_viewModelStack == null)
59. return false;
61. return _viewModelStack.Count > 0;
62. }
64. public static T GoBack<T>()
65. {
66. var toReturn = _viewModelStack.Last();
67. _viewModelStack.Remove(toReturn.Key);
69. return JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<T>(toReturn.Value);
70. }
71. }
It contains a Dictionary<string, string> that will hold the instances of the viewmodels. The instances are serialized into JSON strings with This to save memory and avoid reference issues.
There are some methods in there to manually take out a specific instance or to delete one. But more importantly are the CanGoBack() and GoBack() methods. Let’s have a look at how to use this.
In the GuidViewModel’s constructor we start listening for a message, when that message arrives we load in new data (in this case, generate a new GUID) GuidString is a normal property that calls RaisePropertyChanged from the setter.
Code Snippet
1. public GuidViewModel()
2. {
3. Messenger.Default.Register<GenerateNewGuidMessage>(this, msg => GenerateGuid());
4. }
6. private void GenerateGuid()
7. {
8. GuidString = Guid.NewGuid().ToString();
9. }
Next is the command that is bound to the button on the page, this is a RelayCommand that will call the LoadNewData method
Code Snippet
1. private void LoadNewData()
2. {
3. if (ViewModelBackStack.ContainsKey(GuidString))
4. ViewModelBackStack.Replace(GuidString, this);
5. else
6. ViewModelBackStack.Add(GuidString, this);
8. Messenger.Default.Send(new GenerateNewGuidMessage());
9. }
The LoadNewData method will check if the ViewModelBackStack already contains the key we use (each instance needs a unique key, we’re using the GUID in this case). If it’s already there, replace it, if not add it to the backstack. After that, send the message to generate new data.
Note that we’re not actually navigating away from the page, since the NavigationService doesn’t actually navigate when you try going to the same page there’s really no use in trying.
The final step is intercepting the back button press and using it load in a previous instance of the GuidViewModel. We need to do this in the code-behind of the page, since we need to cancel the navigation there (by default, when pressing the back button here it would just take us back to MainPage, so navigation needs to be cancelled).
Code Snippet
1. protected override void OnBackKeyPress(CancelEventArgs e)
2. {
3. if (ViewModelBackStack.CanGoBack())
4. {
5. DataContext = ViewModelBackStack.GoBack<GuidViewModel>();
6. e.Cancel = true;
7. return;
8. }
10. base.OnBackKeyPress(e);
11. }
OnBackKeyPress can be overriden from PhoneApplicationPage base class. If the ViewModelBackStack can go back we take out the most recent record in the dictionary, deserialize it to T, set that result as datacontext and we’re done. We can cancel the navigation by setting e.Cancel to true. Once the ViewModelBackStack is empty the app will return to MainPage.
Wrap up
So that’s about it. I’m currently building a Windows Phone app that uses the ViewModelBackStack, so there could be some changes coming in the next few weeks, or it might just prove to work perfectly as-is.
Feel free to fork the repo on GitHub and send pull requests if you can enhance / improve upon the project, props will be given Glimlach.
.Net | Devices | MVVM Light | NuGet | PCL | WP7 | WP8
Launching a Win8 app from WP8 with Azure custom API
by Nico
Imagine you have an app where people can browse through all sorts of data, let’s take Wikipedia for example. You find an interesting article on the Wikipedia app on your Windows Phone device. A phone screen is (usually) pretty small so it would be nice if we could just send that article to our pc where a toast pops up, when the toast is clicked the Wikipedia app on Windows 8 opens up on that same article. A nice experience for the user, added value for our apps and not too hard to do.
The Service
As the title of this post mentiones, we’re going to use Windows Azure Mobile Services for this. A while ago Microsoft launched the custom API option in Mobile Services (WAMS for short) and those custom APIs are just what we need.
The server side of WAMS uses Node.js so that means:
We’ll start by creating a new Mobile Service (if you don’t know how, follow this tutorial to the point where they’re creating a new app, we’ll create the app manually).
Once the mobile service is created, navigate to the API tab and add a new API. Gave it a name and leave the permissions default. The end result should look like this.
Click the arrow icon next to the API name to start editing the script. The script looks like this by default.
Code Snippet
1. = function (request, response) {
2. // Use "request.service" to access features of your mobile service, e.g.:
3. // var tables = request.service.tables;
4. // var push = request.service.push;
6. response.send(statusCodes.OK, { message: 'Hello World!' });
7. };
9. exports.get = function (request, response) {
10. response.send(statusCodes.OK, { message: 'Hello World!' });
11. };
There are options here both for POST and GET methods, implemented with Hello World stuff. We’ll only be needing the POST part, the GET method we’ll just leave alone.
This is the new POST method:
Code Snippet
1. = function (request, response) {
2. process.env.WNS_CLIENT_ID = 'YOUR_CLIENT_ID_HERE';
5. var wns = request.service.push.wns;
6. var message = request.body.message;
7. var title = request.body.title;
8. var launchParam = request.body.launchParam;
9. var channel =;
11. wns.sendToastText02(channel, {
12. text1: title,
13. text2: message
14. },
15. {
16. launch: launchParam,
17. success: function () {
18. response.send(statusCodes.OK, { isSuccess: true, response: statusCodes.OK });
19. },
20. error: function () {
21. response.send(statusCodes.OK, { isSuccess: false, response: statusCodes.NOK });
22. }
23. }
24. );
26. };
You’ll notice on line two and three that you’ll need to insert your own client ID and client secret. To get those we’ll need to create a new app on the Windows Store developer site.
Give an app name to the new app, save it and open the Services option.
On the services page, click on “Live Services Site”, on that site select “Authenticating your Service” and take note of the Client ID and Client Secret.
Usually, when using push notifications from a WAMS we can add those two keys into the management portal on Azure. However, when using a Custom API the WNS (Windows Notification Service) doesn’t seem to know that they are there. That’s the reason we’re including them into the script code here on lines two and three.
Last step here is to create a new Windows Store application in Visual Studio, Right-click the project, select Store and associate it with the app we’ve just created on the Windows Developer portal.
We now have an application hooked up to a registered application on the Windows Developer portal with access to WNS through the client ID and secret.
Let’s have a look at the rest of the script.
Code Snippet
1. var wns = request.service.push.wns;
2. var message = request.body.message;
3. var title = request.body.title;
4. var launchParam = request.body.launchParam;
5. var channel =;
In the build-in API of WAMS we have access to an object called push. Push has a reference to WNS and can call push notifications. In a custom API we can find the Push object in request.service. Message and Title will be the content of the toast, channel is the channel used to send the toast from the server to the client and launchParam is what will determine the page we navigate to when the toast is clicked. All these parameters will be send over the wire from the Windows Phone app.
Code Snippet
1. wns.sendToastText02(channel, {
2. text1: title,
3. text2: message
4. },
5. {
6. launch: launchParam,
7. success: function () {
8. response.send(statusCodes.OK, { isSuccess: true, response: statusCodes.OK });
9. },
10. error: function () {
11. response.send(statusCodes.OK, { isSuccess: false, response: statusCodes.NOK });
12. }
13. }
14. );
This piece of the script will do the actual sending of the push notification. We call the sendToastText02 method on the wns object (for an overview of all the possibilities of wns, have a look at MSDN). The parameters for the method are simple, first it needs the channel. The channel is a direct link between an installation of your app and the server. It’s unique for every installation of the app. Next parameter is the payload of the toast, the information that will be shown on the toast message itself. Third parameter are the options. This is where we pass the launch parameters for the Windows app and the functions for success and error.
That’s all for the script. Pretty easy right?
Windows Phone app
The Windows Phone app is pretty straightforward as well. In this proof of concept it’ll just be an app with a bunch of buttons, when the Windows 8 app starts it will show the button that was clicked on the phone. Create a new Windows Phone 8.0 application and add the following NuGet package to the project.
Install-Package WindowsAzure.MobileServices
This will install the WAMS SDK into the project. We’ll need this SDK to fetch the channel and request the toast message.
The Windows Phone app only has one page with a really simple layout
Code Snippet
1. <!-- ContentPanel - place additional content here -->
2. <StackPanel x:Name="ContentPanel"
3. Grid.Row="1"
4. Margin="12,0,12,0">
5. <TextBlock Text="Enter ID" />
6. <TextBox x:Name="TextBoxId" />
7. <Button Click="Button_Click" Content="Button 1" />
8. <Button Click="Button_Click" Content="Button 2" />
9. <Button Click="Button_Click" Content="Button 3" />
10. <Button Click="Button_Click" Content="Button 4" />
11. <Button Click="Button_Click" Content="Button 5" />
12. <Button Click="Button_Click" Content="Button 6" />
13. <Button Click="Button_Click" Content="Button 7" />
14. <Button Click="Button_Click" Content="Button 8" />
15. </StackPanel>
A Textbox that will hold an ID and 8 buttons that use the same click event handler. The Windows 8 app that we’ll build in a minute will request a Channel from WNS, we’ll save that channel into our WAMS database. The ID that we enter here in the textbox is the ID of the record that holds the channel that we want to use. That means that in a real app, you’ll need to find a way to get the ID from the Windows 8 app into the Windows Phone app. Possibilities here are NFC or QR codes, or just plain text. Alternatively, you could use the username from a Microsoft Account to store and retrieve the channel instead of an ID.
Next we need to initialize the WAMS SDK in App.xaml.cs
Code Snippet
1. public partial class App : Application
2. {
3. public static MobileServiceClient MobileService = new MobileServiceClient(
4. "",
5. "qCWCpYmWlJiOyXFQnKscFYnNixruku41"
6. );
You’ll need the values of your own service here of course. It can be found by going to the Azure management portal, selecting your WAMS and opening the “Connecting an existing application” option.
Here’s the button event handler for the eight buttons
Code Snippet
1. private async void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
2. {
3. Notification notification = new Notification();
5. notification.Channel = await FetchChannel(int.Parse(TextBoxId.Text));
6. notification.Message = "Click to launch the app";
7. notification.Title = "Message from the Phone app!";
8. notification.LaunchParam = ((Button) sender).Content.ToString();
10. var response = await App.MobileService.InvokeApiAsync<Notification, NotificationResult>("notifications", notification);
12. if (response.IsSuccess)
13. {
14. MessageBox.Show("Toast succes!");
15. }
16. }
18. private async Task<string> FetchChannel(int id)
19. {
20. var channels = await App.MobileService.GetTable<Channel>().Where(c => c.Id == id).ToListAsync();
22. return channels[0].ChannelUri;
23. }
When one of the buttons is clicked an instance of Notification is created, Notification is a class that we build ourselves, looks like this
Code Snippet
1. public class Notification
2. {
3. [JsonProperty(propertyName: "message")]
4. public string Message { get; set; }
6. [JsonProperty(propertyName: "title")]
7. public string Title { get; set; }
9. [JsonProperty(propertyName: "channel")]
10. public string Channel { get; set; }
12. [JsonProperty(propertyName: "launchParam")]
13. public string LaunchParam { get; set; }
14. }
FetchChannel will use the entered ID to fetch the channel from the WAMS database (saving the channel in the DB will be done from the Windows Store app). The LaunchParam is the content from the button that was clicked.
Once the Notification instance is filled up, we call the custom API by calling InvokeAPIAsync, the generic types passed in are the type of the parameter and the type of the expected result. The expected result is NotificationResult
Code Snippet
1. public class NotificationResult
2. {
3. [JsonProperty(PropertyName = "isSuccess")]
4. public bool IsSuccess { get; set; }
6. [JsonProperty(PropertyName = "response")]
7. public string Response { get; set; }
8. }
The parameters for InvokeApiAsync are the name of the custom API, the object of the same type that was specified. The WAMS SDK will take care of deserializing that object into a JSON format using Json.NET before sending it over the wire to our API.
Windows 8 app
The final piece of the puzzle is the Windows 8 app. This is a very basic app consisting of two pages. An empty MainPage and a SecondPage. This to prove that you can navigate to any page when launched from a toast.
Create an empty Windows 8 app and once again add the WAMS SDK through NuGet.
Install-Package WindowsAzure.MobileServices
We’ll start by initializing the WAMS SDK in App.xaml.cs
Code Snippet
1. sealed partial class App : Application
2. {
3. public static PushNotificationChannel CurrentChannel { get; private set; }
5. public static MobileServiceClient MobileService = new MobileServiceClient(
6. "",
7. "qCWCpYmWlJiOyXFQnKscFYnNixruku41"
8. );
10. private async void AcquirePushChannel()
11. {
12. CurrentChannel = await PushNotificationChannelManager.CreatePushNotificationChannelForApplicationAsync();
13. var settings = Windows.Storage.ApplicationData.Current.LocalSettings;
15. if(settings.Values.ContainsKey("channel"))
16. {
17. string previousChannel = settings.Values["channel"].ToString();
19. if(previousChannel == CurrentChannel.Uri)
20. return;
21. }
23. settings.Values["channel"] = CurrentChannel.Uri;
25. await MobileService.GetTable<Channel>().InsertAsync(new Channel{ChannelUri = CurrentChannel.Uri});
26. }
A bit more initial work needed here. First the same codeblock as the one in the WP8 app. Next is the AcquirePushChannel method. This one will ask WNS for a push channel, save it to the WAMS DB and into the Application’s settings. This is because a channel has a lifetime, during this time the application will be able to reuse that same channel. On every app start we’ll check if the channel we receive from WNS is the same one that is stored in the WAMS DB, if it isn’t we store it again.
Now, the magic also happens here in App.xaml.cs, at the end of the OnLaunched method.
Code Snippet
1. string launchArgs = e.Arguments.Trim().ToString();
2. if (launchArgs != string.Empty)
3. {
4. rootFrame.Navigate(typeof(SecondPage), launchArgs);
5. }
7. // Ensure the current window is active
8. Window.Current.Activate();
We’ll check to see if the LaunchActivedArgs have some arguments. If they don’t, nothing special happens and MainPage is loaded. If they do, the argument will be the LaunchParams we’ve passed from the WP8 app, to the custom API. That value has now finally reached our Windows 8 app via the toast. We navigate to SecondPage and pass in the launchArgs as parameter.
SecondPage.xaml looks like this
Code Snippet
1. <Grid Background="{ThemeResource ApplicationPageBackgroundThemeBrush}">
2. <TextBlock x:Name="SelectedItem" Style="{StaticResource HeaderTextBlockStyle}" />
3. </Grid>
In the code behind of SecondPage we’ll need to override OnNavigatedTo
Code Snippet
1. protected override void OnNavigatedTo(NavigationEventArgs e)
2. {
3. SelectedItem.Text = "Navigated to this page by clicking in the phone app on " + e.Parameter;
4. base.OnNavigatedTo(e);
5. }
And that’s basically it.
Making it happen
Run the Windows 8 app once, so that it’s installed on your system and a channel is registered and saved into the WAMS DB. Feel free to close the app afterwards.
Launch the Windows Phone app, insert the correct ID into the textbox and hit any of the buttons.
Click the toast when it pops up and be amazed by the result Glimlach
In this post I’ve talked about a way to share data between apps through the use of push notifications. When you have the same app on both Windows Phone and Windows 8 this provides a cool way for your user to switch platforms while remaining on the same part of the app.
Download the projects from my SkyDrive:
.Net | Azure | Devices | NuGet | WP8 | WinRT | Windows 8 | XAML
Don’t forget the system tray in your WP8 app
by Nico
The system tray in Windows Phone 8 is the small bar at the top where the clock, signal strength, connectivity icons, etc. reside. In most apps I’ve used developers tend to do one of two things there:
• leave it
• hide it
An example here is Microsoft’s Facebook app (yes, even the first party apps do this), take a look
This is a pretty decent looking app (yes it violates a bunch of “Modern UI” guidelines but it does look decent). However, the black system tray at the top of the screen breaks the experience. It feels like the app lies on top of the homescreen, while this is actually true it’s a better user experience to suck the user completely into the application.
Another option for the Facebook app would be to hide the system tray, this won’t break the experience for the user on the visual side.
But this solution has another downside, the Facebook app needs an active internet connection to work, suppose the app throws an error saying that your internet connection is down, what’s your first reaction? You check the signal strength and / or wifi connectivity icon, and where do those live? In the system tray that is hidden now, so the user needs to exit the app to check the system tray (same goes for checking the time).
Only hide the system tray when your app absolutely requires it, like a game that needs all the screen estate it can get.
So let’s try a third solution, something a lot of Windows Phone developers tend to forget or don’t know is possible, we can style the system tray. This is what the Facebook app could look like
By simply giving the system tray the same color as the header bar of the app we’ve give the app a little extra while still having a visible system tray.
I used this approach in my Traffic Chat app
Same story in this app, it looks much more like a part of the OS instead of “just an app”.
Let’s do it!
It’s actually very easy to get this done.
In your Windows Phone application, navigate to the App.xaml page. In that page there should be an Application.Resources tag. As you might (should) know, we can define application wide styles here, if we don’t provide a key to a style it applies to all controls of the specified type throughout the app. Sounds easy enough, let’s do it.
Code Snippet
1. <Style TargetType="phone:PhoneApplicationPage">
2. <Setter Property="shell:SystemTray.BackgroundColor" Value="Red" />
3. <Setter Property="shell:SystemTray.ForegroundColor" Value="Green" />
4. </Style>
The style has a target type of PhoneApplicationPage, the class that is used by all pages in a Windows Phone app. We set the backgroundcolor to Red and the Foregroundcolor to Green, this will look very pretty right? Glimlach
If we run the app now you’ll see that nothing has changed. A downside of this is that not providing a key doesn’t work for the PhoneApplicationPage, so we’ll need to name the style and apply it to every page in the application.
Change the above code to this (add a key, name it whatever you want)
Code Snippet
1. <Style x:Key="DefaultPageStyle" TargetType="phone:PhoneApplicationPage">
4. </Style>
And on every page that you want to style the systemtray, apply the style (line 15 in this code block).
Code Snippet
1. <phone:PhoneApplicationPage
2. x:Class="PhoneApp1.MainPage"
3. xmlns=""
4. xmlns:x=""
7. xmlns:d=""
8. xmlns:mc=""
9. mc:Ignorable="d"
10. FontFamily="{StaticResource PhoneFontFamilyNormal}"
11. FontSize="{StaticResource PhoneFontSizeNormal}"
12. Foreground="{StaticResource PhoneForegroundBrush}"
13. SupportedOrientations="Portrait" Orientation="Portrait"
14. shell:SystemTray.IsVisible="True"
15. Style="{StaticResource DefaultPageStyle}">
If we run the app now we’ll get a “beautiful” styled system tray.
Styling the system tray is something that is often overlooked. Spend some time on this, it’ll make your app look even better without annoying your users with a hidden system tray. It’s easy to do and doesn’t take a lot of time.
Download the Green/Red system tray app from my SkyDrive
.Net | Devices | WP7 | WP8 | XAML
Run your WP8 app on two emulators simultaneously
by Nico
I’m currently working on a Windows Phone 8 project that requires two devices. Those devices talk to each other through a SignalR service. Thanks to Hyper-V I’m able to test/debug this project on two instances of the Windows Phone 8 emulator (I usually pick the WVGA and WVGA 512MB versions). What I used to do is deploy the XAP to one emulator and debug it on the second. I need to do this every time I change the app, I got bored of doing this manually so it was about time to get this automated.
Since Visual Studio 2012 builds the app everytime its codebase changes I can use the post-build script to do this, after all the app should only install itself on both emulators when it’s changed (I did spent time looking for a solution to let the script run every time I hit the debug button but it looks like there’s no way to do this in VS2012).
The point of the post-build script is to fire up the emulator when needed, deploy the app and run it. Visual Studio 2012 debug will fire up the second emulator, deploy the app there and launch it with debug, meaning that only one emulator will have a debugger attached.
Choosing the emulator for the script
Microsoft has provided a command line tool for deploying xap files, both onto a device and onto the emulators. Before we can start using it we’ll need to know the correct index of the emulator that we want the script to use. Copy-paste this script into a textfile and save as a .bat file, double click it and you should see a list of all available emulators on your machine (provided that you have the Windows Phone 8 SDK installed of course).
Code Snippet
1. cd "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v8.0\Tools\XAP Deployment"
2. XapDeployCmd.exe /EnumerateDevices
3. pause
XapDeployCmd.exe is the commandline tool for everything related to XAP deployments. More information on the tool can be found on MSDN
Choose the emulator of your choose from the list and remember its index.
Building the script
Time to start building the script. In your Windows Phone 8 project, go to the project properties to the Build Events tab. In the Post-build event command line box enter this script.
Code Snippet
1. cd %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v8.0\Tools\XAP Deployment
2. XapDeployCmd.exe /installlaunch $(TargetDir)$(ProjectName)_$(ConfigurationName)_$(PlatformName).xap /targetdevice:1
The first line of the script navigates the command line to the folder where the XapDeployCmd lives (this is the default install path, the tool comes with the WP8 SDK). The second line launches the tool and passes the necessary parameters. the installaunch parameter states that the app should install (or update) the app and launch it when finished. After the installaunch parameter we need to state the path to the xap file, by default (when using the debug configuration in VS2012) it’s in the bin/debug folder and is called something like MyWPApp_debug_anycpu.xap. To make the script easy to transfer over I’ve used variables instead of hardcoding the path and the xap name. Here’s a quick rundown.
Variable Meaning
$(TargetDir) the full path to the outputdirectory (for example: c:\users\nico\documents\Projects\MyWPApp\bin\debug\)
Keep in mind that the last “\” is always included when using this variable
$(ProjectName) The name of the project (didn’t see that one coming, did you? Glimlach) (for example: MyWPApp)
$(ConfigurationName) The used configuration, for example ”release” or “debug”
$(PlatformName) The selected CPU architecture, for example “AllCpu”, “ARM”, “x86”
With these powers variables combined we get the full path to the xap file. The last parameter specifies the to use emulator by passing in the index that we determined at the beginning of this post.
And that’s it. Rebuild your solution and watch the emulator start app, deploy and launch your app. Now every time that you change the code of the app and hit the debug button it will build and deploy to both emulators. One of the emulators should have those debug numbers on the side, making it easy to recognize which one has the debugger attached.
Using a very simple post-build script and the in the WP8 included XapDeployCmd tool it’s very easy to deploy an application to two devices simultaneously. This isn’t needed very often but when building something that connects users to each other (like a chat application or a multiplayer game) it can save you quite some hassle. Just make sure that your script uses another emulator version than Visual Studio 2012.
.Net | Devices | WP7 | WP8 | msbuild
IIS Express and the Windows Phone 8 emulator
by Nico
As an app developer you’re bound to run into a situation where you’re building both an app and a mobile website or REST based service. That means that you’re testing the project in IIS Express while using the Windows Phone 8 emulator, since the emulator behaves like a separate device on the network you can’t use localhost to contact your IIS Express server.
There are a few ways to tackle this problem, you can finish the web project first and deploy it to a webserver. If your WP8 emulator is configured correctly it should have internet access and will be able to connect to your server just fine. A second option is to install an IIS server in your network and deploy to there from Visual Studio. But the most easy option would be to use the IIS Express server that comes with Visual Studio. That’s certainly an option but requires some (small) configuration tweaks.
First things first
We’ll need a webproject of course to test this. I’ll create a very very basic WebAPI project and a very basic Windows Phone 8 app that will run in the emulator. I could have made my point with a simple hello world website and the mobile browser but that’s just boring.
Visual Studio 2012 ships with MVC WebAPI, think REST services made ridiculously easy, to start a project select the MVC4 web template in Visual Studio 2012 and give it a name.
Once you click OK a second dialog will show up and that one holds the option to start a WebAPI project.
What this gives you is an MVC project with an API controller. This behaves much like the normal controller that you’re used to from MVC but instead of returning a view it returns data in a JSON format (serializing happens with by the way, not with the .net serializer). I’m not going to dive very deep in WebAPI, there are a lot of bloggers out there that know way more about this stuff than I do. We’ll be using the default GET method from the ValuesController.
Code Snippet
1. // GET api/values
2. publicIEnumerable<string> Get()
3. {
4. returnnewstring[] { "value1", "value2" };
5. }
This just returns a collection of two strings.
Next step is adding a Windows Phone 8 project to the solution (a simple basic project started from the normal template). Now we have two projects in one solution that both need to start up. We could launch the api without debugging and launch the WP8 app in debug mode or we can set them both to launch at debug by selecting multiple startup projects in the solution properties.
You can easily see that the settings have applied successfully if no project in the solution is bold anymore.
Okay, time to hook them up. We’ll need two things, the IP address of the pc running IIS Express and the port that the project will use. Getting the IP address should be easy, just enter ipconfig in a command prompt. To find out the port, navigate to the properties of the project.
In the Web tab of the properties you can see the project url for the website, that url contains the port that will be used.
Time for some coding, in the Windows Phone app, add a constant that holds the url to the website.
Code Snippet
1. privateconststring Url = "";
And the code to fetch the REST data
Code Snippet
1. privatevoid FetchData()
2. {
3. WebClient client = newWebClient();
5. client.DownloadStringCompleted += ClientOnDownloadStringCompleted;
7. client.DownloadStringAsync(newUri(Url + "api/values"));
8. }
The callback will use (added through NuGet) to deserialize the values into a List<string> that is then set as the ItemsSource of a LongListSelector.
Code Snippet
1. privatevoid ClientOnDownloadStringCompleted(object sender, DownloadStringCompletedEventArgs downloadStringCompletedEventArgs)
2. {
3. if (downloadStringCompletedEventArgs.Error == null)
4. {
5. var values = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<List<string>>(downloadStringCompletedEventArgs.Result);
7. ValueList.ItemsSource = values;
8. }
9. }
All in all pretty easy but this won’t work because IIS Express is bound to localhost only by default, we’ll need to change the config to allow external connections.
The configuration of IIS Express can be found in the applicationhost.config xml file found in %userprofile%\documents\IISExpress\config (just copy-paste this path into the Windows 8 start screen and press enter)
Open the XML file and search for the name of your project. It should look something like this
Code Snippet
1. <site name="IisExpressDemo" id="13">
2. <application path="/" applicationPool="Clr4IntegratedAppPool">
3. <virtualDirectory path="/" physicalPath="c:\users\nico\documents\visual studio 2012\Projects\IisExpressDemo\IisExpressDemo" />
4. </application>
5. <bindings>
6. <binding protocol="http" bindingInformation="*:7145:localhost" />
7. </bindings>
8. </site>
Line 6 contains the binding, copy this line and paste it underneath, change localhost with the IP address of your pc, like this
Code Snippet
4. </application>
5. <bindings>
7. <binding protocol="http" bindingInformation="*:7145:" />
8. </bindings>
9. </site>
Close the IIS Express server if it’s still running and run the project.
Now there’s a pretty big chance that you’ll see this.
Visual Studio 2012 needs to be started as administrator to allow IIS Express to create bindings for external connections, so if you get this error, close and restart Visual Studio 2012 as an administrator.
Run the project again and the Windows Phone application should be able to fetch the data from the API.
In this post I’ve talked about opening up your IIS Express development server to allow external connections. This is needed to allow the Windows Phone 8 emulator to connect to websites or APIs hosted locally. It’s basically two steps
• Add the IP address of your pc to the IIS config
• Launch Visual Studio as administrator to be able to set the binding
.Net | Devices | IIS | Metro | Web development | WP8
Extending the Windows Phone pivot
by Nico
As I was working on a Windows Phone 8 project I needed a pivot that could hide its title, giving back some screen real-estate when needed. The basic pivot that is included in the Windows Phone SDK doesn’t have this kind of behavior so it was a great opportunity to try out custom controls in Windows Phone. I’ve build custom controls in XAML before but never based on an existing one, so fun times ahead. Let me start by showing a side-by-side comparison between both views of my pivot.
don’t mind the overlapping textblock and button, point is that when the button is clicked, the title of the pivot disappears.
Building a XAML custom control
It’s quite easy to build a custom control in XAML as long as you follow the guidelines. It requires you to add a folder called Themes and in the folder a file called generic.xaml. The generic.xaml file is a resource dictionary, no code behind file is needed. Do follow the naming conventions exactly or your control won’t work. Next step is adding a class that inherits from ContentControl (or a control that already inherits from ContentControl). The project for my ExtendedPivot looks like this
The project type is a WP8 class library containing two custom controls, one for the pivot and one for the pivot items.
Extending the pivot
Since I only want to add a functionality to an existing control, the Pivot, my ExtendedPivot class inherits from Pivot instead of CustomControl.
Code Snippet
1. publicclassExtendedPivot : Pivot
2. {
3. publicstaticreadonlyDependencyProperty HeaderVisibilityProperty =
4. DependencyProperty.Register("HeaderVisibilityProperty", typeof (Visibility), typeof (ExtendedPivot), newPropertyMetadata(null));
6. publicVisibility HeaderVisibility
7. {
8. get { return (Visibility)GetValue(HeaderVisibilityProperty); }
9. set { SetValue(HeaderVisibilityProperty, value); }
10. }
12. public ExtendedPivot()
13. {
14. DefaultStyleKey = typeof(ExtendedPivot);
15. }
16. }
We’ll start with the constructor, Line 14 is necessary when developing a custom control, it sets the style of the control to the style defined in generic.xaml (we’ll get to that style in a minute). Lines 6 – 10 are a property that will be used by the DependencyProperty. The DependencyProperty (lines 3-4) is a property that we can bind a value to when using the control in a project, it might seem a bit overwhelming at first but there’s a great snippet in VS2012 to easily write them. Basically, the parameters for the Register function are a name, the type of the property, the owner type (type of the control where you’re declaring the DP) and some metadata.
The get and set method of the normal property use the DP to get and set values through databinding.
This is the style for the ExtendedPivot as declared in generic.xaml
Code Snippet
1. <Style TargetType="local:ExtendedPivot">
2. <Setter Property="Margin" Value="0" />
3. <Setter Property="Padding" Value="0" />
4. <Setter Property="Foreground" Value="{StaticResource PhoneForegroundBrush}" />
5. <Setter Property="Background" Value="Transparent" />
6. <Setter Property="ItemsPanel">
7. <Setter.Value>
8. <ItemsPanelTemplate>
9. <Grid />
10. </ItemsPanelTemplate>
11. </Setter.Value>
12. </Setter>
13. <Setter Property="Template">
14. <Setter.Value>
15. <ControlTemplate TargetType="local:ExtendedPivot">
16. <Grid HorizontalAlignment="{TemplateBinding HorizontalAlignment}" VerticalAlignment="{TemplateBinding VerticalAlignment}">
17. <Grid.RowDefinitions>
18. <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
19. <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
20. <RowDefinition Height="*" />
21. </Grid.RowDefinitions>
22. <Grid Grid.RowSpan="3" Background="{TemplateBinding Background}" />
23. <ContentControl Grid.Row="0"
24. Margin="24,17,0,-7"
25. HorizontalAlignment="Left"
26. Content="{TemplateBinding Title}"
27. ContentTemplate="{TemplateBinding TitleTemplate}"
28. Visibility="{TemplateBinding HeaderVisibility}" />
29. <primitives:PivotHeadersControl x:Name="HeadersListElement" Grid.Row="1" />
30. <ItemsPresenter x:Name="PivotItemPresenter"
31. Grid.Row="2"
32. Margin="{TemplateBinding Padding}" />
33. </Grid>
34. </ControlTemplate>
35. </Setter.Value>
36. </Setter>
37. </Style>
Basically, I’ve created a xaml page in some very basic Windows Phone project, right-clicked it, selected Edit Template > Edit a copy. This gives you a copy of the template for the Pivot. I copied that template in the generic.xaml style. The ContentControl at Lines 23-28 show the title in the pivot. I added the Visiblity property here and bound it to the HeaderVisibility property in the ExtendedPivot class. To bind a property in a style you need to use the TemplateBinding keyword instead of the normal Binding one.
Don’t forget to set TargetType to the type of your custom control.
Using the custom control in an app
The control is ready, now it’s time to use it. Create a new Windows Phone app and reference the project or DLL of the custom control. This is the MainPage of the sample app.
Code Snippet
1. <phone:PhoneApplicationPage x:Class="ExtendedPivot.MainPage"
2. xmlns=""
3. xmlns:x=""
4. xmlns:control="clr-namespace:ExtendedPivot.Control;assembly=ExtendedPivot.Control"
5. xmlns:d=""
6. xmlns:mc=""
7. xmlns:phone="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Controls;assembly=Microsoft.Phone"
8. xmlns:shell="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Shell;assembly=Microsoft.Phone"
9. FontFamily="{StaticResource PhoneFontFamilyNormal}"
10. FontSize="{StaticResource PhoneFontSizeNormal}"
11. Foreground="{StaticResource PhoneForegroundBrush}"
12. Orientation="Portrait"
13. SupportedOrientations="Portrait"
14. shell:SystemTray.IsVisible="True"
15. mc:Ignorable="d">
17. <!-- LayoutRoot is the root grid where all page content is placed -->
18. <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="Transparent">
19. <!-- Pivot Control -->
20. <control:ExtendedPivot HeaderVisibility="{Binding Visibility}" Title="MY APPLICATION">
21. <control:ExtendedPivotItem Header="item 1">
22. <Grid>
23. <TextBlock Text="item1" />
24. <Button Click="ButtonBase_OnClick" Content="button" />
25. </Grid>
26. </control:ExtendedPivotItem>
28. <control:ExtendedPivotItem Header="item 2">
29. <TextBlock Text="item2" />
30. </control:ExtendedPivotItem>
31. </control:ExtendedPivot>
32. </Grid>
33. </phone:PhoneApplicationPage>
Line 4 defines the namespace that holds the ExtendedPivot. Line 20 puts the control on the actual page. Notice that we bind the HeaderVisibility property of our control. I defined the datacontext of this page in code behind to be of type MainViewModel. MainViewModel implements INotifyPropertyChanged and only holds one property of type Visibility, that property is bound to the ExtendedPivot’s HeaderVisibility.
The Button in the pivot will switch the HeaderVisibility between Collapsed and Visible, this happens in the code behind of this page.
Code Snippet
1. publicpartialclassMainPage : PhoneApplicationPage
2. {
3. privateMainViewModel _mainViewModel;
5. // Constructor
6. public MainPage()
7. {
8. InitializeComponent();
10. _mainViewModel = newMainViewModel();
12. DataContext = _mainViewModel;
13. }
15. privatevoid ButtonBase_OnClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
16. {
17. if (_mainViewModel.Visibility == Visibility.Collapsed)
18. {
19. _mainViewModel.Visibility = Visibility.Visible;
20. }
21. else
22. {
23. _mainViewModel.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed;
24. }
25. }
26. }
Not really the best way of writing a Windows Phone app but it’s just for making the point Glimlach
Extending a Windows Phone control isn’t hard as long as you follow the naming conventions, adding some extra functionality is as easy as copying the xaml template and adding some dependency properties.
The sample code can be found on my SkyDrive
.Net | Binding | Devices | WP7 | WP8 | XAML
Porting a real win8 app to WP8–part 3
by Nico
It’s been a good while since I last worked on porting Comic Cloud from Windows 8 to Windows Phone. If you can still remember, the goal was to maximize code reuse by using PCL wherever possible.
Part 3 will be the last part in this series, I’m currently holding a fully functional Windows Store app and a Windows Phone 8 app that can navigate pages and sent a search query to the api using a shared service layer. Theoretically everything is shared between the two platforms except the views, which makes sense. But it still required quite a lot of tinkering to get it to work.
PCL is improving
Microsoft is working hard on bringing as many libraries to PCL as they possibly can. In part 2 of the series I already mentioned the portable HttpClient, that library finally gave us a uniform way of doing HTTP requests on multiple platforms. Between part 2 and this part Microsoft has released the PCL version of their Azure Mobile Services SDK (beware! this one has breaking changes if you’re coming over from the platform specific SDK).
Changes in my project
I decided not to use the PCL version of WAMS yet because it has breaking changes and it doesn’t help me get rid of some platform specific projects, so no real use there yet.
What I wanted to achieve for demoing purpose was to get the search functionality working on the phone. The search function on the Windows Store app uses a BlockingCollection (MSDN link) This is a thread safe collection, meaning I can safely prefetch data from one thread while loading data on the other thread. My entire search service is relying on this class (it’s an implementation of the consumer/producer pattern by the way), only problem: Windows Phone doesn’t have the BlockingCollection class. So I could either abstract the search service, change it entirely or implement my own version of the BlockingCollection. The last option seemed like the hardest one to do so I went for it. I’m not entirely sure if I got the exact same functionality of the real BlockingCollection (it does lack some methods and properties, I only implemented what I needed for my app) but here it is
Code Snippet
1. public class BlockingCollection<T> : Queue<T>
2. {
3. private readonly object _locker = new object();
4. private readonly Queue<T> _itemQ;
5. private bool _canAddItems;
7. public BlockingCollection()
8. {
9. _itemQ = new Queue<T>();
10. _canAddItems = true;
11. }
13. public void EnqueueItem(T item)
14. {
15. lock (_locker)
16. {
17. _itemQ.Enqueue(item); // We must pulse because we're
18. Monitor.Pulse(_locker); // changing a blocking condition.
19. }
20. }
22. public bool TryTake(out T item, int millisecondsTimeout, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
23. {
24. cancellationToken.ThrowIfCancellationRequested();
26. if (_canAddItems)
27. {
28. lock (this)
29. {
30. try
31. {
32. item = Dequeue();
33. return true;
34. }
35. catch (Exception)
36. {
37. item = default(T);
38. return false;
39. }
40. }
41. }
43. item = default(T);
44. return false;
45. }
47. public bool TryAdd(T item, int millisecondsTimeout, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
48. {
49. cancellationToken.ThrowIfCancellationRequested();
51. if (_canAddItems)
52. {
53. lock (this)
54. {
55. try
56. {
57. Enqueue(item);
58. return true;
59. }
60. catch (Exception)
61. {
62. return false;
63. }
64. }
65. }
67. return false;
68. }
70. public void CompleteAdding()
71. {
72. _canAddItems = false;
73. }
74. }
It’s basically a Queue with some lock statements, it does work for me but I’m not responsible for any accidents that might occur Glimlach
Sharing ViewModels
All my viewmodels are in a PCL library, managed to get that to work in part 1. The ViewModelLocator can’t be made portable since some using statements are different and the WP8 version might need some other classes then the win8 version. I decided to add the Windows Store ViewModelLocator as a link into the Windows Phone 8 project, adding in some pre-processor directives made it work like a charm (I make this sound easy but it did take some time to get it just right).
Code Snippet
1. using ComicDB.Framework;
2. using ComicDB.SDKBroker;
3. using ComicDB.View;
4. using GalaSoft.MvvmLight;
5. using GalaSoft.MvvmLight.Ioc;
6. using Microsoft.Practices.ServiceLocation;
9. using ComicDB.Framework.WinRT;
10. using ComicDB.SDKBroker.WinRT;
11. #else
12. using ComicDB.Framework.WP8;
13. using ComicDB.SDKBroker.WP8;
14. #endif
16. namespace ComicDB.ViewModel
17. {
18. public class ViewModelLocator
19. {
20. public ViewModelLocator()
21. {
22. ServiceLocator.SetLocatorProvider(() => SimpleIoc.Default);
24. if (ViewModelBase.IsInDesignModeStatic)
25. {
26. // Create design time view services and models
27. //SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IDataService, DesignDataService>();
28. }
29. else
30. {
31. // Create run time view services and models
32. #if !WINDOWS_PHONE
33. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<ComicDB.Framework.Interface.INavigationService, ComicDB.Framework.WinRT.NavigationService>();
34. #else
35. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<ComicDB.Framework.Interface.INavigationService, ComicDB.Framework.WP8.NavigationService>();
36. #endif
37. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IService, Service>();
38. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IMessageApi, MessageApi>();
39. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IFrameworkApi, FrameworkApi>();
40. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IDispatcher, Dispatcher>();
41. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<INetworkApi, NetworkApi>();
42. }
44. //register views
45. #if !WINDOWS_PHONE
46. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IMainPage, MainPage>();
47. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IVolumeDetailPage, VolumeDetailPage>();
48. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<ICharacterDetailPage, CharacterDetailPage>();
49. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<ICollectionPage, CollectionPage>();
50. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IDetailPage, DetailPage>();
51. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IIssueDetailPage, IssueDetailPage>();
52. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<ILocationDetailPage, LocationDetailPage>();
53. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<INewsFeedPage, NewsFeedPage>();
54. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IPersonDetailPage, PersonDetailPage>();
55. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IStoryArcDetailPage, StoryArcDetailPage>();
56. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<ITeamDetailPage, TeamDetailPage>();
57. #endif
58. //register viewmodels
59. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<MainViewModel>();
60. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<VolumeDetailViewModel>(true);
61. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<CharacterDetailViewModel>(true);
62. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<TeamDetailViewModel>(true);
63. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IssueDetailViewModel>(true);
64. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<SearchViewModel>();
65. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<DetailViewModel>(true);
66. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<StoryArcDetailViewModel>(true);
67. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<LocationDetailViewModel>(true);
68. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<PersonDetailViewModel>(true);
69. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<CollectionViewModel>();
70. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<NewsFeedViewModel>(true);
71. }
73. public MainViewModel Main
74. {
75. get
76. {
77. return ServiceLocator.Current.GetInstance<MainViewModel>();
78. }
79. }
80. //... all other VM properties follow here, left out for demo purpose
The pre-processor directives make the class look a bit dirty but it does get the job done.
At this point the WP8 app started and showed me the mainpage, with the mainviewmodel being its datacontext. Now I wanted to add an appbar with a searchbutton, a few problems there:
• the default appbar is not bindable (solved with Cimbalino)
• the mainviewmodel doesn’t have a command to navigate to the searchpage since Windows Store uses the Search charm
I decided to take the quick and dirty solution here so I added a normal appbar with a button and a navigation statement in code behind. The SearchPage has SearchViewModel as datacontext. In Windows Store it was normal for the SearchText property to be immediately holding a value since it came from the Search charm, not the case in WP8. Small change to the viewmodel so that it doesn’t fire its Search function when SearchText is empty or null. This was the result after all my hard work
Mission accomplished!
PCL still has a long way to go but it is improving, and for some cases it can actually already be very useful (for example to share model classes over different platforms).
I would however advice against going for maximum code reuse, it all sounds great but the reality is very different. I had to make a lot of decisions, change quite a lot of architecture and even add missing classes (like the BlockingCollection).
My advice if you want to build a multiplatform app: use PCL to share your model, maybe even some small framework with helper classes, but build a custom implementation of service layers and viewmodels for each platform, it will save you a lot of hassle and probably even time. If you do decide to go for maximum code reuse, make sure that you really really think about it when you design your architecture, make sure that every little thing has an abstraction better one interface too many than having to rewrite a class.
Here’s a comparing screenshot between the solution before and after adding the WP8 project and refactoring everything.
.Net | Devices | Metro | PCL | Patterns | WP8 | WinRT | Windows 8 | XAML
WP8, Leap Motion and a glue called Sockets
by Nico
I’m one of the lucky few who got their hands on a Leap Motion developer device (check out the video above if you’ve never heard of the Leap Motion). It’s a pretty cool device that gives you motion tracking not unlike Kinect but limited to finger and hand movement instead of complete body tracking.
I had the device and needed something to play with and what’s cooler then combining a cool gadget with an awesome smartphone? So I decided to build a small proof-of-concept that would capture finger movement in a WPF application and translate that movement to a moving ellipse in a Windows Phone application.
The Leap Motion’s documentation got me to a moving ellipse in a WPF application pretty fast thanks to the samples and documentation found on their developer portal. It took me a bit more time to get the position of the ellipse send to the phone, I wanted to use Sockets for this (SignalR would be way easier but I didn’t want an extra service running, now I have peer to peer communication).
Here’s how I did it
WPF and the Leap Motion
First, the WPF project. This project will be the socket server and the app that captures the Leap Motion’s output. The application only has one page with this as XAML
Code Snippet
1. <Window x:Class="LeapWpPoc.MainWindow"
2. xmlns=""
3. xmlns:x=""
4. Title="MainWindow"
5. Width="525"
6. Height="350">
7. <Canvas x:Name="TheCanvas">
8. <Ellipse x:Name="TheEllipse"
9. Canvas.Left="211"
10. Canvas.Top="118"
11. Width="70"
12. Height="70"
13. Fill="#FFFF0C00"
14. Stroke="Black" />
15. <TextBlock x:Name="TextBlockStatus"
16. Canvas.Left="10"
17. Canvas.Top="10"
18. Foreground="Red"
19. Text="Not connected"
20. TextWrapping="Wrap" />
21. </Canvas>
22. </Window>
Let’s have a look at how to interact with the Leap Motion first.
First thing you need when working with the Leap Motion (apart from the actual device that is) is a reference to LeapCSharp.NET4.0.dll however, you’ll also need Leap.dll and LeapCSharp.dll. Now I find this a bit dirty and I sincerely hope that the Leap Motion team will find a way to fix this but those two libraries aren’t referencable in our project but they need to be present in the application’s directory or it won’t work. What I did is add them as an existing item to the project, set their build action to Content and Copy if newer, at least this way they will always get copied into the build directory of the application.
Next, you’ll needs a class that inherits from Listener (Listener is part of the Leap Motion SDK). Listener is a base class that provides a bunch of virtual methods like OnExit, OnDisconnect, OnConnect and OnFrame. Feel free to override those to add some logging or logic but I’m only using the OnFrame method here. Here’s my Listener class
Code Snippet
1. class PocListener : Listener
2. {
3. public event EventHandler<FrameDetectedEventArgs> FrameDetected;
5. public override void OnFrame (Controller controller)
6. {
7. // Get the most recent frame and report some basic information
8. Frame frame = controller.Frame ();
10. if (FrameDetected != null)
11. {
12. FrameDetected(this, new FrameDetectedEventArgs(frame));
13. }
14. }
15. }
The OnFrame method fires constantly, passing all the movement information, if any, in a frame. If my listener implementation detects a frame the FrameDetected event will fire, passing in the detected frame as an eventarg, FrameDetectedEventArgs is a very basic class that only passes the frame data to whoever is listening to the event.
Code Snippet
1. public class FrameDetectedEventArgs : EventArgs
2. {
3. public Frame Frame { get; set; }
5. public FrameDetectedEventArgs(Frame frame)
6. {
7. Frame = frame;
8. }
9. }
Notice that the OnFrame method needs a Controller as parameter? Controller is the class from the Leap Motion API that talks to the device. I create a new instance of Controller and my Listener in the MainWindow constructor.
Code Snippet
1. private Frame _previousFrame;
2. private Frame _currenFrame;
3. private readonly PocListener _listener;
4. private readonly Controller _controller;
5. private readonly SocketFactory _socketFactory;
7. public MainWindow()
8. {
9. InitializeComponent();
11. _listener = new PocListener();
12. _controller = new Controller();
14. // Have the sample listener receive events from the controller
15. _controller.AddListener(_listener);
17. _listener.FrameDetected += ListenerOnFrameDetected;
18. }
This is the constructor and some private fields, I need to keep track of both the current frame and the previous one to detect if there’s any change in the position of the hand or fingers. I also have an instance of PocListener (my own Listener class) and of Controller, both get instantiated in the constructor.Next I need to register my Listener in the Controller, that’s done on line 14 and then finally I attach an event handler to the FrameDetected event.
The event handler of the FrameDetected event will be responsible of checking if hands and fingers are detected.
Code Snippet
1. private void ListenerOnFrameDetected(object sender, FrameDetectedEventArgs frameDetectedEventArgs)
2. {
3. _currenFrame = frameDetectedEventArgs.Frame;
5. if (!_currenFrame.Hands.Empty)
6. {
7. // Get the first hand
8. Hand hand = _currenFrame.Hands[0];
10. // Check if the hand has any fingers
11. FingerList fingers = hand.Fingers;
12. if (!fingers.Empty)
13. {
14. if (_previousFrame == null) _previousFrame = _currenFrame;
15. //check if the current frame is different from the last frame
16. if (_currenFrame != _previousFrame)
17. {
18. //we only need one finger so we'll take the first one that's detected
19. Finger finger = fingers[0];
21. float x = _previousFrame.Fingers[0].TipPosition.x - finger.TipPosition.x;
22. float y = _previousFrame.Fingers[0].TipPosition.y - finger.TipPosition.y;
24. //update the sphere's position
25. Dispatcher.BeginInvoke((Action)(() =>
26. {
27. Canvas.SetTop(TheEllipse, Canvas.GetTop(TheEllipse) + y);
28. Canvas.SetLeft(TheEllipse, Canvas.GetLeft(TheEllipse) - x);
29. }));
31. //set this frame as the previous one and get ready to receive a new frame
32. _previousFrame = _currenFrame;
33. }
34. }
35. }
36. }
First we check if the previous frame has the same information as the current frame, if it does there’s no need to update the ellipse’s position.
If a hand and fingers are detected I select the first detected finger, because that’s currently the only one I’m interested in. Since all the Leap Motion actions are happening on a separate thread I need to invoke the UI thread to update the ellipse’s position, that’s what’s happening on line 25. The position of a UIElement in a Canvas in XAML is set through attached properties (Canvas.Left=”177” for example) to set these in code we use Canvas.SetLeft. To determine the new location of the ellipse I take the X and Y positions of the first finger in the previous frame and substract the X and Y of the first finger in the current frame. The new Y value gets added to the Canvas.Top of the ellipse and the new X value gets subtracted from the Canvas.Left value. Last but not least I set the previousframe to the currentframe.
That’s all the code you need to get an ellipse moving in a canvas with the Leap Motion. So part 1 is a great success. Now onto the bigger challenge, getting a similar ellipse to move in a Windows Phone project.
Windows Phone and sockets
Implementing sockets to make devices talk to each other over the wire can be challenging but it’s also very rewarding and just plain fun once it works. I haven’t worked with sockets before so I had a real blast trying to figure this out and I went through the roof once that ellipse started moving on the Windows Phone emulator Glimlach. Before we dive into the sockets, let’s have a quick look at the MainPage.
Code Snippet
1. <Canvas x:Name="TheCanvas">
2. <Ellipse x:Name="TheEllipse"
3. Canvas.Left="302"
4. Canvas.Top="186"
5. Width="70"
6. Height="70"
7. Fill="#FFFF0C00"
8. Stroke="Black" />
9. <TextBlock x:Name="TextBlockStatus"
10. Canvas.Left="10"
11. Canvas.Top="10"
12. Foreground="Red"
13. Text="Not connected"
14. TextWrapping="Wrap" />
15. </Canvas>
Exactly the same controls as in the WPF project, nothing spectacular here. Let’s have a look at the code behind the MainPage.
Code Snippet
1. public partial class MainPage
2. {
3. private SocketClient _client;
4. const int Port = 8000;
5. private const string IpAddress = "";
7. // Constructor
8. public MainPage()
9. {
10. InitializeComponent();
11. _client = new SocketClient();
13. _client.OnConnected += (sender, args) => Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() =>
14. {
15. TextBlockStatus.Text = "Connected";
16. TextBlockStatus.Foreground = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Green);
17. });
18. _client.OnMessageReceived += (sender, args) => Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() => MoveBall(args.Response));
19. _client.Connect(IpAddress, Port);
21. _client.Receive();
22. }
24. private void MoveBall(string response)
25. {
26. response = response.Replace(',', '.');
27. var coordinates = response.Split(';');
29. float y = float.Parse(coordinates[0]);
30. float x = float.Parse(coordinates[1]);
32. Canvas.SetTop(TheEllipse, y);
33. Canvas.SetLeft(TheEllipse, x);
34. }
35. }
First some fields, don’t worry about the SocketClient class, we’ll get to that in a minute. Some constants holding the IP address and the port of the server (don’t forget to change this IP address to the address of your own pc!)
In the constructor we instantiate the SocketClient instance and handle its two events. The OnConnected event is going to change the text of the TextBlock to “Connected” and the OnMessageReceived event handler will move the ellipse.
The MoveBall() method will do the actual moving. The message that we will receive will be a string that has the Y and X of the ellipse in the WPF application seperated by a semicolon. The problem I had here was that instead of a dot to separate the decimals .NET had changed it into a comma (which is the default decimal sign in Belgium) so I need to change that back. I then split up the string using the semicolon as split character, parse the values into a float and set the ellipse to its new position. Let’s get serious and dive into the socket stuff now.
Sockets provide us with TCP and UDP communication, next to a whole bunch of other features. This app will use a TCP connection between WPF and a Windows Phone application. Since we’re currently looking at the Windows Phone app, let’s continue there. I’ve added a class called SocketClient that takes care of connection a socket, sending and receiving messages. Let’s start with the fields and constructor.
Code Snippet
1. // Cached Socket object that will be used by each call for the lifetime of this class
2. Socket _socket;
4. // Signaling object used to notify when an asynchronous operation is completed
5. static ManualResetEvent _clientDone;
7. // Define a timeout in milliseconds for each asynchronous call. If a response is not received within this
8. // timeout period, the call is aborted.
9. const int TimeoutMilliseconds = 5000;
11. // The maximum size of the data buffer to use with the asynchronous socket methods
12. const int MaxBufferSize = 2048;
14. public event EventHandler<MessageReceivedEventArgs> OnMessageReceived;
15. public event EventHandler OnConnected;
17. public SocketClient()
18. {
19. _clientDone = new ManualResetEvent(false);
20. }
First field is the actual socket that we’ll be using, second one is a reset event that we can use to make a thread block while waiting for an event to fire. The timeout is the max amount of time that the reset event will block a thread. The buffersize is the size of the buffer for socket messages. The two events are fired when the app receives a socket message or when a socket connects.
The most important function of the SocketClient class that I’m building here is to connect two sockets.
Code Snippet
1. public string Connect(string hostName, int portNumber)
2. {
3. string result = string.Empty;
5. // Create DnsEndPoint. The hostName and port are passed in to this method.
6. DnsEndPoint hostEntry = new DnsEndPoint(hostName, portNumber);
8. // Create a stream-based, TCP socket using the InterNetwork Address Family.
9. _socket = new Socket(AddressFamily.InterNetwork, SocketType.Stream, ProtocolType.Tcp);
11. // Create a SocketAsyncEventArgs object to be used in the connection request
12. SocketAsyncEventArgs socketEventArg = new SocketAsyncEventArgs {RemoteEndPoint = hostEntry};
14. socketEventArg.Completed += (sender, args) =>
15. {
16. // Retrieve the result of this request
17. result = args.SocketError.ToString();
19. // Signal that the request is complete, unblocking the UI thread
20. _clientDone.Set();
22. if (OnConnected == null) return;
24. OnConnected(this, new EventArgs());
25. };
27. // Sets the state of the event to nonsignaled, causing threads to block
28. _clientDone.Reset();
30. // Make an asynchronous Connect request over the socket
31. _socket.ConnectAsync(socketEventArg);
33. // Block the UI thread for a maximum of TIMEOUT_MILLISECONDS milliseconds.
34. // If no response comes back within this time then proceed
35. _clientDone.WaitOne(TimeoutMilliseconds);
37. return result;
38. }
The connect method takes in two parameters, the hostname (or IP address) and the portnumber of the socket we want to connect to. Based on these two parameters we create a DnsEndPoint that will be passed to the server socket as being the remote endpoint so that the server socket knows where to send his messages. Next we instantiate the Socket, stating that it’s using an internal IPv4 network, a stream socket and the TCP protocol. Now that we have a socket and an endpoint we’ll need some eventargs, those args will be passed onto the server. Once the connection succeeds (or fails) the Completed event on the SocketAsyncEventArgs will fire, in that event handler we’ll trigger the OnConnected event. With that in place we call the Reset() method on the ManualResetEvent to set the event to nonsignaled, call the ConnectAsync() method on the Socket and pass in the eventargs and finally blocking the thread for a certain time to allow the socket time to connect.
So now that our client can connect to a socket, let’s build something to send messages to the connected socket. From the Windows Phone 8 version it looks like this
Code Snippet
1. public void Send(string data)
2. {
3. data = data + "<EOF>";
5. if (_socket != null)
6. {
7. SocketAsyncEventArgs socketEventArg = new SocketAsyncEventArgs
8. {
9. RemoteEndPoint = _socket.RemoteEndPoint,
10. UserToken = null
11. };
13. socketEventArg.Completed += (sender, args) =>
14. {
15. _clientDone.Set();
16. };
18. // Add the data to be sent into the buffer
19. byte[] payload = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(data);
20. socketEventArg.SetBuffer(payload, 0, payload.Length);
22. // Sets the state of the event to nonsignaled, causing threads to block
23. _clientDone.Reset();
25. // Make an asynchronous Send request over the socket
26. _socket.SendAsync(socketEventArg);
28. // Block the UI thread for a maximum of TIMEOUT_MILLISECONDS milliseconds.
29. // If no response comes back within this time then proceed
30. _clientDone.WaitOne(TimeoutMilliseconds);
31. }
32. }
We get in the message as a parameter, at the end of the message I add “<EOF>” just to make sure that I only get the part that I need at the server side and that the message has been delivered in full. If at this point the socket is null then it isn’t connected yet. If it isn’t we once again instantiate SocketAsyncEventArgs. The data gets serialized into a byte array and set as a buffer in the eventargs. Set the ManualResetEvent to nonsignaled, start sending the message over the socket async and block the thread.
And last but not least there’s the code to receive messages on the socket.
Code Snippet
1. public void Receive()
2. {
3. if (_socket != null)
4. {
5. SocketAsyncEventArgs socketEventArg = new SocketAsyncEventArgs
6. {
7. RemoteEndPoint = _socket.RemoteEndPoint
8. };
10. // Setup the buffer to receive the data
11. socketEventArg.SetBuffer(new Byte[MaxBufferSize], 0, MaxBufferSize);
13. socketEventArg.Completed += (sender, args) =>
14. {
15. if (args.SocketError == SocketError.Success)
16. {
17. // Retrieve the data from the buffer
18. string response = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(args.Buffer, args.Offset, args.BytesTransferred);
19. response = response.Trim('\0');
21. if (response.Contains("<EOF>"))
22. {
23. response = response.Substring(0, response.IndexOf("<EOF>"));
24. if (OnMessageReceived != null)
25. OnMessageReceived(this, new MessageReceivedEventArgs(response));
26. }
28. Receive();
29. }
31. _clientDone.Set();
32. };
34. // Sets the state of the event to nonsignaled, causing threads to block
35. _clientDone.Reset();
37. // Make an asynchronous Receive request over the socket
38. _socket.ReceiveAsync(socketEventArg);
40. // Block the UI thread for a maximum of TIMEOUT_MILLISECONDS milliseconds.
41. // If no response comes back within this time then proceed
42. _clientDone.WaitOne(TimeoutMilliseconds);
43. }
44. }
So the same story with the null check on the socket and creating of the SocketEventArgs. Once the Completed event fires we’ll check if the receive was successful and if the received message contains “<EOF>”, if it does we take everything before <EOF> and pass it in the MessageReceivedEventArgs that go with the MessageReceived event.
Code Snippet
1. public class MessageReceivedEventArgs : EventArgs
2. {
3. public string Response { get; set; }
5. public MessageReceivedEventArgs(string response)
6. {
7. Response = response;
8. }
9. }
Once everthing is handled we call the Receive method again so it’s ready to start receiving the next message.
And that’s basically all the logic for a socket connection on the Windows Phone side of things. The only thing left to do in the app is change the MainPage’s constructor to initialize the SocketClient and add some fields.
Code Snippet
1. private SocketClient _client;
2. const int Port = 8000;
3. private const string IpAddress = "";
5. // Constructor
6. public MainPage()
7. {
8. InitializeComponent();
9. _client = new SocketClient();
12. {
13. TextBlockStatus.Text = "Connected";
14. TextBlockStatus.Foreground = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Green);
15. });
17. _client.Connect(IpAddress, Port);
19. _client.Receive();
20. }
The constructor instantiates the SocketClient, attaches an handler to the OnConnected event to update the textbox with the connection status and handle the OnMessageReceived event to update the position of the ellipse. Don’t forget to update the IP address to the one from your own pc!
Back to WPF!
Now that our Windows Phone app is ready, it’s time to implement the socket server. As mentioned before, the WPF app that gets input from the Leap Motion will serve as socket server.
I’ve added a class to the WPF project called SocketFactory, it serves the same function as the SocketClient class in the Windows Phone project but from a server point of view. The way to build and use a socket in full blown .net 4.5 differs a bit from how we did it in Windows Phone. First we’ll need a state class, this contains a socket, the buffersize, a byte array to function as the buffer and a stringbuilder to recompose the message.
Code Snippet
1. // State object for reading client data asynchronously
2. public class StateObject
3. {
4. // Client socket.
5. public Socket WorkSocket = null;
6. // Size of receive buffer.
7. public const int BufferSize = 1024;
8. // Receive buffer.
9. public byte[] Buffer = new byte[BufferSize];
10. // Received data string.
11. public StringBuilder Sb = new StringBuilder();
12. }
Next, we’ll need some fields in the SocketFactory class
Code Snippet
1. // Thread signal.
2. public static ManualResetEvent AllDone = new ManualResetEvent(false);
3. private StateObject _state;
4. public event EventHandler OnConnected;
And here’s the function to receive a connection request
Code Snippet
1. public void Start()
2. {
3. IPHostEntry ipHostInfo = Dns.GetHostEntry(Dns.GetHostName());
4. IPAddress ipAddress = ipHostInfo.AddressList[3];
5. IPEndPoint localEndPoint = new IPEndPoint(ipAddress, 8000);
7. Socket listener = new Socket(AddressFamily.InterNetwork, SocketType.Stream, ProtocolType.Tcp);
9. // Bind the socket to the local endpoint and listen for incoming connections.
10. try
11. {
12. listener.Bind(localEndPoint);
13. listener.Listen(100);
15. while (true)
16. {
17. // Set the event to nonsignaled state.
18. AllDone.Reset();
20. // Start an asynchronous socket to listen for connections.
21. Console.WriteLine("Waiting for a connection...");
22. listener.BeginAccept(AcceptCallback, listener);
24. // Wait until a connection is made before continuing.
25. AllDone.WaitOne();
27. if (OnConnected == null) return;
29. OnConnected(this, new EventArgs());
30. }
32. }
33. catch (Exception e)
34. {
35. Console.WriteLine(e.ToString());
36. }
37. }
We declare a socket called listener, pass it the same parameters as we did for Windows Phone, stating that it’s local network, streaming and using the TCP protocol. We need to bind this socket to an IPEndPoint, to create an IPEndPoint we need an IPAddress and a port. Lines 3 and 4 are used to getting the computer’s IP address from its hostname. Once we have that we can bind the socket to the endpoint. Make sure that the port you set here is the same port you try to connect to in the Windows Phone app. Once the socket connects the callback fires, in the callback we start receiving data from the connected client.
Code Snippet
1. public void AcceptCallback(IAsyncResult ar)
2. {
3. // Signal the main thread to continue.
4. AllDone.Set();
6. // Get the socket that handles the client request.
7. Socket listener = (Socket)ar.AsyncState;
8. Socket handler = listener.EndAccept(ar);
10. // Create the state object.
11. _state = new StateObject { WorkSocket = handler };
13. handler.BeginReceive(_state.Buffer, 0, StateObject.BufferSize, 0, ReadCallback, _state);
14. }
Once data is received, the ReadCallback fires
Code Snippet
1. public void ReadCallback(IAsyncResult ar)
2. {
3. StateObject state = (StateObject)ar.AsyncState;
4. Socket handler = state.WorkSocket;
6. int bytesRead = handler.EndReceive(ar);
8. if (bytesRead > 0)
9. {
10. // There might be more data, so store the data received so far.
11. state.Sb.Append(Encoding.ASCII.GetString(
12. state.Buffer, 0, bytesRead));
14. // Check for end-of-file tag. If it is not there, read
15. // more data.
16. string content = state.Sb.ToString();
17. if (content.IndexOf("<EOF>") > -1)
18. {
19. Console.WriteLine("Read {0} bytes from socket. \n Data : {1}",
20. content.Length, content);
21. }
22. else
23. {
24. // Not all data received. Get more.
25. handler.BeginReceive(state.Buffer, 0, StateObject.BufferSize, 0, ReadCallback, state);
26. }
27. }
28. }
We can get the stateobject and socket from the IAsyncResult and we start reading until we encounter “<EOF>”, once everything is received we write it out in the output window. Now in this example the server won’t actually be receiving any messages, I’ve just put in this method in case you want to enhance it or have some use for the code.
What is important in this sample is the Send method, this will send a message over the connected socket to the client.
Code Snippet
1. public void Send(string data)
2. {
3. Send(_state.WorkSocket, data);
4. }
6. private void Send(Socket handler, string data)
7. {
8. data = data + "<EOF>";
9. // Convert the string data to byte data using ASCII encoding.
10. byte[] byteData = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(data);
12. // Begin sending the data to the remote device.
13. handler.BeginSend(byteData, 0, byteData.Length, 0, SendCallback, handler);
14. }
I’ve split up the Send into two methods, the public one just receives the message we want to send and passes it trough to the private one, also passing in the socket to use. This way the application itself doesn’t need to worry about selecting a socket, let the socketFactory deal with that. The Send method adds the end of file part to the message, serializes it into a byte array and sends it over the socket. Once the send is complete, the callback will fire.
Code Snippet
1. private void SendCallback(IAsyncResult ar)
2. {
3. try
4. {
5. // Retrieve the socket from the state object.
6. Socket handler = (Socket)ar.AsyncState;
8. handler.EndSend(ar);
9. }
10. catch (Exception e)
11. {
12. Console.WriteLine(e.ToString());
13. }
14. }
I’m not really doing anything in the callback, but this would be the perfect place to check for successful delivery and maybe notifying the UI thread to show a confirmation or something similar.
Now that our socket infrastructure is in place and we have a client updating a UI based on the received messages, it’s time to finish this sample by letting the server send the coordinates of the ellipse. In the MainWindow add a field for the socket factory. (line 5 is the extra field)
Code Snippet
1. private Frame _previousFrame;
2. private Frame _currenFrame;
3. private readonly PocListener _listener;
4. private readonly Controller _controller;
5. private readonly SocketFactory _socketFactory;
With the new field in place, replace (or update) the constructor to this
Code Snippet
1. public MainWindow()
2. {
3. InitializeComponent();
5. _socketFactory = new SocketFactory();
6. _socketFactory.OnConnected += (sender, args) => Dispatcher.BeginInvoke((Action) (() =>
7. {
8. TextBlockStatus.Text = "Connected";
9. TextBlockStatus.Foreground = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Green);
10. }));
12. Task.Run(() => _socketFactory.Start());
14. _listener = new PocListener();
15. _controller = new Controller();
17. // Have the sample listener receive events from the controller
18. _controller.AddListener(_listener);
20. _listener.FrameDetected += ListenerOnFrameDetected;
22. Timer timer = new Timer(200);
23. timer.Elapsed += (sender, args) => Dispatcher.BeginInvoke((Action)(() =>
24. _socketFactory.Send(string.Format("{0};{1}", Canvas.GetTop(TheEllipse), Canvas.GetLeft(TheEllipse)))));
26. timer.Start();
27. }
We instantiate the SocketFactory, attach an handler for the OnConnected event to update the UI. The SocketFactory’s Start method is queued on the thread pool to run async, this way the UI thread will remain responsive. The Leap Motion get’s initialized and we start a timer. This timer will make sure that every 200 milliseconds the coordinates of the ellipse are send over the socket to the client. The sending of the message needs to be done on the UI thread because we need the ellipse’s coordinates, and that ellipse lives on the UI thread.
Now, why use a timer? In the first version of this sample a message was send every time the ellipse moved, this resulted in really really really poor performance, messages were being send faster than they arrived causing all kinds of weird behavior. Sending it every 200 milliseconds makes it move quite well.
Everything is in place now, so run it and move the ellipse around with the Leap Motion!
In this post I’ve explained my adventure of connecting the Leap Motion to a Windows Phone application by using sockets. While not the easiest thing to set up or use, sockets are a really powerful way of communicating between applications no matter what platform they’re on (as long as that platform supports sockets).
The Leap Motion is a great device. It’s small, light, has a very small footprint on your system and is just plain fun to mess around with. I could’ve used anything for a socket example but making something move on screen, on two devices at the same time by just moving your hand has something magically. The Leap Motion is definitely on my list of awesome gadgets.
The code for this post can be found on my Skydrive
NUI | LeapMotion | .Net | Devices | WP8 | WPF
Porting a real win8 app to WP8–part 2
by Nico
Porting a real win8 app to WP8 – part 1
In part one of my adventure I described the architecture of my app and how I managed to move all viewmodels into a PCL (portable class library) but I didn’t use them yet. The main consensus of part one was that I needed to do quite some refactoring and add a lot of abstractions to the project in order to move over viewmodels to PCL projects. In part 2 I’ll describe how I got the viewmodels to work and how I re-enabled page navigation in the Windows 8 version. And with a bit of luck in part 3 I’ll be talking about the Windows Phone 8 version of this app.
A small note on part 1
I wasn’t very happy with part 1 since I needed to create some extra layers and abstractions. Since then the Microsoft Techdays have come and gone and with that two very interesting sessions that made me rethink some stuff. The session were from Laurent Bugnion (his blog, his Twitter) (the creator of the awesome MVVM Light toolkit) and Gill Cleeren (his blog, his Twitter) (a Belgian Silverlight MVP, RD and Win8 enthusiast). From Laurent I learned some tips and tricks concerning the ViewModelLocator class and specifically how to correctly use it in a portable library (more on that in part 3 since I haven’t implemented it yet). Gill gave a session on advanced MVVM tactics and one sentence kept vibrating in my mind “an extra class doesn’t cost a thing” next to that his demo app was filled with layers of abstractions way beyond the extra layers I needed to add to get the project to build again. After that session I felt reassured that I was going down a pretty good path with the revised architecture I had build in part 1. If you want to take a look at that session yourself, the recording of the SilverlightShow version is available here.
About part 2
The last couple of days I found some spare time to mess around with the project again. I’m now at the stage where the Windows Store app is using the portable ViewModels and the navigation is working properly. Those parts are what I’ll discuss here.
Using the ViewModels
Having the portable ViewModels ready it was time to switch to them. I deleted every viewmodel that was still in my client project, except for the ViewModelLocator, that one will be moved later. I registered the new abstraction layers in the ViewModelLocator, making sure that this only happened at runtime, not at designtime and tried to build the app. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the message “Build succeeded”. I replaced the viewmodels in my client project with the ones in the portable library and it still builds! In case you’re interested, this is what’s getting registered in my ViewModelLocator at this time.
Code Snippet
1. public ViewModelLocator()
2. {
3. ServiceLocator.SetLocatorProvider(() => SimpleIoc.Default);
5. if (ViewModelBase.IsInDesignModeStatic)
6. {
7. // Create design time view services and models
8. //SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IDataService, DesignDataService>();
9. }
10. else
11. {
12. // Create run time view services and models
13. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<INavigationService, NavigationService>();
14. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IService, SDKBroker.WinRT.Service>();
15. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IMessageApi, MessageApi>();
16. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IFrameworkApi, FrameworkApi>();
17. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IDispatcher, Dispatcher>();
18. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<INetworkApi, NetworkApi>();
19. }
21. //register viewmodels
22. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<MainViewModel>();
23. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<VolumeDetailViewModel>(true);
24. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<CharacterDetailViewModel>(true);
25. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<TeamDetailViewModel>(true);
26. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IssueDetailViewModel>(true);
27. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<SearchViewModel>();
28. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<DetailViewModel>(true);
29. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<StoryArcDetailViewModel>(true);
30. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<LocationDetailViewModel>(true);
31. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<PersonDetailViewModel>(true);
32. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<CollectionViewModel>();
33. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<NewsFeedViewModel>(true);
34. }
Everything in the else block gets registered only at runtime. The viewmodels themselves can get registered at designtime just in case I ever want to incorporate designtime test data (something I really should do actually). Notice that some ViewModel registrations get passed a boolean parameter? The Register method of SimpleIoc has an optional parameter stating whether or not the object should get instantiated immediately. Since some viewmodels are listening for messages from the Messenger class in MVVM Light they need their instance right of the bat so they can register as listeners.
I tried to run the app, it started and data was coming in, I could use the button to show the search charm but no navigation was working. That made sense since all navigation commands are now going to ISomePage instead of SomePage and those interfaces weren’t doing anything yet. So I had to make every page implement the correct interface and put together a way to navigate to the correct page from the interface.
Implementing the interface is easy enough (they’re all just empty interfaces). Next problem was that those interfaces are inside of a folder called View in the ViewModel PCL and they need to be known in the Framework.WinRT project (that’s where the NavigationService lives). So I’ve added another PCL called it ComicDB.View and moved all interfaces there. (I couldn’t reference the ViewModel project in the Framework project, it would create a circular dependency). After adding all references everything was building again but still no navigation. To get this to work I changed the Navigate method on the NavigationService from this
Code Snippet
1. publicvirtualbool Navigate(Type destination, object parameter = null)
2. {
3. try
4. {
5. _rootFrame.Navigate(destination, parameter);
7. returntrue;
8. }
9. catch (Exception e)
10. {
11. returnfalse;
12. }
13. }
to this
Code Snippet
2. {
3. try
4. {
5. NavigateToPage(destination, parameter);
7. returntrue;
8. }
9. catch (Exception e)
10. {
11. returnfalse;
12. }
13. }
15. privatevoid NavigateToPage(Type destination, object parameter)
16. {
17. try
18. {
19. //get the implementation for the view
20. var instance = SimpleIoc.Default.GetInstance(destination);
21. var type = instance.GetType();
23. _rootFrame.Navigate(type, parameter);
24. }
25. catch (ActivationException)
26. {
27. //no registered type found, just navigate to the destination, maybe it's not an interface
28. _rootFrame.Navigate(destination, parameter);
29. }
30. }
The Navigate method passes everything to the NavigateToPage method that tries to resolve a registered instance of the passed in type, should this fail it throws an ActivationException, in that case just try to navigate. This allows us to navigate to pages that don’t use any interface. Once we get the instance out of the IOC we get its type and pass that into the navigate command of the frame. Obviously, before this starts working we need to register the pages in the IOC and that happens in the ViewModelLocator.
So to finish this part 2 of, here’s the complete constructor of my ViewModelLocator
Code Snippet
1. public ViewModelLocator()
2. {
3. ServiceLocator.SetLocatorProvider(() => SimpleIoc.Default);
5. if (ViewModelBase.IsInDesignModeStatic)
6. {
7. // Create design time view services and models
9. }
10. else
11. {
12. // Create run time view services and models
13. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<INavigationService, NavigationService>();
14. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IService, SDKBroker.WinRT.Service>();
15. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IMessageApi, MessageApi>();
16. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IFrameworkApi, FrameworkApi>();
17. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IDispatcher, Dispatcher>();
18. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<INetworkApi, NetworkApi>();
19. }
21. //register views
22. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IMainPage, MainPage>();
23. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IVolumeDetailPage, VolumeDetailPage>();
24. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<ICharacterDetailPage, CharacterDetailPage>();
25. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<ICollectionPage, CollectionPage>();
26. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IDetailPage, DetailPage>();
27. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IIssueDetailPage, IssueDetailPage>();
28. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<ILocationDetailPage, LocationDetailPage>();
29. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<INewsFeedPage, NewsFeedPage>();
30. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IPersonDetailPage, PersonDetailPage>();
31. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IStoryArcDetailPage, StoryArcDetailPage>();
32. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<ITeamDetailPage, TeamDetailPage>();
34. //register viewmodels
35. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<MainViewModel>();
36. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<VolumeDetailViewModel>(true);
37. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<CharacterDetailViewModel>(true);
38. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<TeamDetailViewModel>(true);
39. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IssueDetailViewModel>(true);
40. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<SearchViewModel>();
41. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<DetailViewModel>(true);
42. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<StoryArcDetailViewModel>(true);
43. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<LocationDetailViewModel>(true);
44. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<PersonDetailViewModel>(true);
45. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<CollectionViewModel>();
46. SimpleIoc.Default.Register<NewsFeedViewModel>(true);
47. }
It registers all my api and service layers, all my views that have an interface and all viewmodels.
Part 2 conclusion
After a rough start in Part 1 it seems that this experiment has forced me to improve my code by making me add some abstractions. This makes for easier reusable code, both on the same platform as on other platforms. The DEV branch of my app project is once again a fully functional Windows Store app that reacts and behaves exactly as the one that’s in the store right now. The next step is to refactor out the ViewModelLocator and then it should be about time to start work on the Windows Phone version. See you in part 3!
.Net | Devices | Metro | MVVM Light | PCL | Windows 8 | WinRT | WP8
Porting a real win8 app to WP8–part 1
by Nico
A few weeks ago the first version of my Windows 8 app (finally) hit the store (download it here). From the start I wanted to port this application to Windows Phone 8 as well but I didn’t keep that in mind when developing the app. Some time ago, the portable HttpClient was released in a beta version and to me that was the perfect time to see how useful the portable class libraries (PCL) really are.
Most of the information available on the internet on sharing code between Windows Store and Windows Phone apps have those really small basic projects, good stuff to get started, but I want to port an entire, finished project to another platform. Perfect content for some blog posts so I’ll be documenting my progress here on my blog, hopefully it will be to some use.
The app
The app is called Comic Cloud and is a continuation of my very first Windows Phone 7 app ever. It allows users to search for anything related to comic books (volumes, issues, artists, characters, locations, …) and provides a whole bunch of information on the topic. The data comes from a community driven website (think Wikipedia for comics) called ComicVine. They have a great REST API with great documentation so that was perfect. On the other hand, and this is new in the Windows 8 version, users can start tracking their own collection of comic books and keep track of which issues in their collection are already read. This data is saved on Azure by using the awesome Azure Mobile Services, authentication happens with the Microsoft Account (single sign-on). So researching and collection are the two keywords of the application. Since the API is REST based, I make extensive use of the HttpClient class to make the API calls.
As for architecture, all libraries are Windows Store class libraries and then off course there’s the app itself, written in C# and XAML. This image shows the projects and their dependencies.
(The app was called ComicDB in its begin stages, the namespaces stayed but the app title was changed to Comic Cloud)
The solution exists of five projects, first there’s the app itself using MVVM Light, win8nl for winRT behaviors (written by Joost van Schaik), MarkedUp for analytics, Callisto for settings fly-out, the Live SDK for the User class and the Telerik RAD controls for their controls (obviously).
The Model project contains all classes, there’s the ComicVine classes (thank God for paste JSON as class…) and some classes for RSS feeds and links.
Since I want to limit the amount of data stored in my WAMS database, I only save the userID and the link to the ComicVine API for each item. For that I needed a second version of some classes, that’s what the DTO project is for.
The framework is a project that I can reuse in other projects without changing anything, all classes that are app independent. Things like the RestClient (providing generic CRUD functions), the GroupInfoList for grouped gridviews, navigationservice to navigate between pages and so on. The ComicVineHelper is an extension method that changes the casing of some object to be compatible with the way the ComicVine API works. All these classes are implementing interfaces, so that will be a big plus when I start porting.
The SDKBroker takes all the different services I use and puts them together in one big SDK that’s easy to use from the app.
The idea
So the idea was to take all those libraries, put them in PCL libraries and reference them from both the Windows Store app and the Windows Phone app. Next to that I wanted to use the portable version of MVVM Light to share my viewmodels over both projects as well. Turns out that, as usual, a good idea is stopped by technical limitations.
The problem
The problem is the difference between Windows 8 and Windows Phone, they don’t share their entire codebase. Meaning I can’t reuse all my code in a PCL. Also the Azure Mobile Services SDK has no portable version, so same problem there.
The solution is abstractions, create an interface for every class that isn’t compatible with the PCL projects and implement them in a platform specific library. The PCLs I’m using only target .net 4.5, winRT and WP8 so a lot of problems are already taken care of by not selecting WP7.X compatibility.
The road so far
I wanted to start out by replacing MVVM Light with the PCL version. This turned out to be easier said than done, the initial project was started from the MVVM Light template so I threw out the references to MVVM Light and added the PCL version through NuGet. Visual Studio went quite mad and started throwing all sorts of weird build errors, I eventually found out that the win8nl library also includes the MVVM Light assemblies and those conflicted with the PCL versions. But I needed the win8nl assembly for the eventtocommand behaviors in WinRT so that posed a big problem. Luckily there’s the winRTBehaviors assembly that contains the logic to do behaviors but it doesn’t include the actual eventtocommand one. The solution was to go to the Codeplex site of win8nl and copy the behavior classes from there and put them in my framework project. One problem solved.
The next step was to add a PCL for the Framework and SDKBroker projects, the Model was already a PCL so that one could stay as it was. The PCL libs got named ComicDB.Framework and ComicDB.SDKBroker, they contain a combination of interfaces and classes. Everything that couldn’t be made portable was abstracted into an interface and implemented in platform specific libraries called ComicDB.Framework.WinRT and ComicDB.SDKBroker.WinRT. The classes that needed abstraction were the NavigationService, Network helper, WAMS service class and Service helper. Thanks to the new portable HttpClient assembly I could copy my RestClient class to a PCL without any adjustments.
With some tinkering I got the project to build and run again and I saw that it was good. The time had come to move my ViewModels over to a PCL. I added a new PCL project called ComicDB.ViewModel (same namespace as my VMs already had) and added the portable MVVM Light version. The ViewModelLocator can’t be moved since it needs to register all the correct interface implementations into the IOC container, so I’ll have a separate Locator class for Win8 and WP8. As I started moving ViewModels I quickly ran into a navigational problem, my viewmodels have navigation logic and the pages they are navigating to aren’t known in the PCL. To solve this I’ve created an interface for every page and set that as navigational target, I don’t know if this will work but I’ll find out soon enough and put it in part 2 if this diary.
Navigational problem solved, on to the next one. Two of my viewmodels could show toast notifications, I use the notifications helper classes from MSDN to get this done but the notification classes aren’t portable (and they really don’t need to be since Windows Phone doesn’t support in-app toasts, the C4F toolkit fixes that luckily) so I created an IMessageAPI interface that has a PopToast() method. In FrameWork.WinRT it shows a build-in toast just like the app used to do.
Hey remember that we have to do everything async now and that we can call the Dispatcher to execute something on the UI thread? Not happening in a PCL… MVVM Light contains a DispatcherHelper that checks if an action needs to be executed on the UI thread and actually executes it there when needed, except in the PCL version. So IDispatcher was born.
With that done I got my project to build again and to run but it’s currently still using the old viewmodels, I expect a whole bunch of new problems when I try to change it to the PCL versions, but that will be for part 2.
What’s next
In part 2 I hope to make the app use the PCL version of the viewmodels and I’ll start working on the Windows Phone project.
PCL projects sound very good in theory but in reality they are a great PITA to work with. Portable HttpClient and portable MVVM Light make them useful but you’ll have to right loads of extra code, abstractions and helper classes to get to something that looks like build once run on two platforms. I could’ve given up and just rebuild everything in a separate solution for WP8 but I want to see how far I can take this and document it along the way.
That said, I have no idea when part 2 will be live, that depends on when I can gather the courage to reference the viewmodel project Smile
Log in
About the author
My name is Nico, I’m an MCP living in Belgium.
I’m currently employed as a .NET consultant at RealDolmen, one of Belgium’s leading IT single source providers.
I'm also founding member and board member of the Belgian Metro App Developer Network, a user group focussed on Windows 8 and Windows Phone development. If you're in Belgium feel free to drop by if we're doing an event.
Since June 2012 I'm a proud member of Microsoft's Extended Experts Team Belgium. And in February 2013 I became a member of DZone's Most Valuable Bloggers family.
I hope to get feedback from my readers either through comments, mail (, twitter, facebook, …
Month List | http://www.spikie.be/blog/category/Devices.aspx | dclm-gs1-114690002 | false | true | {
"keywords": "assembly, blast"
} | false | null | false |
0.056258 | <urn:uuid:19145dd1-a301-459f-8091-6fa94335869d> | en | 0.977342 | The Next British TV Show You Can't Miss
'Black Mirror' explores technology's dark side. You may have to, as well, if you want to see it
A scene from 'The Entire History of You.'
A scene from 'The Entire History of You.'
Phoebe Reilly WRITTEN BY
Phoebe Reilly
"White Bear," the most unsettling episode of the British TV series Black Mirror, opens with a distraught woman running through an unnamed town in the English countryside. She cries and begs for help while neighbors file silently out of their houses, unfazed. They hold up their phones — those shiny, reflective surfaces referred to in the series’ title — and simply record her anguish. It's disturbing because it's not disturbing enough: The spectacle of a crowd seduced by a screen is hardly shocking. In The Walking Dead the zombies walk, in World War Z they run, but in "White Bear" they just blankly film you with a handheld device.
Each episode of Black Mirror imagines the bleak consequences of modern technology, which is such a compelling and relevant idea for a television show that it's sort of baffling to realize the absence of something similar in our current lineup. (Person of Interest doesn't count.) But here's the frustrating part: You can't even watch Black Mirror yet, at least not legally. Creator Charlie Brooker and the show's network, Channel 4, haven't figured out the best way to export the six, unrelated, one-hour episodes, in part because there are only six of them. In the U.K., Black Mirror's popularity is closer to critically acclaimed but less-watched shows like Mad Men, commanding only about one-fifth the viewership of a hit like Downton Abbey. According to Brooker, he's considered Netflix an option, and he's also contemplated the idea of creating longer-form adaptations of the episodes for an interested network, but no one's been able to provide specifics. A representative from the network asked us to hold off on this piece, implying a deal was near, but then said they "weren’t ready" to share any news. In the meantime, Brooker's not bothered by enterprising individuals who find other ways to watch it. "I torrented Breaking Bad, because we were behind here and I wouldn't wait, and why would you?" he says.
Brooker, a former TV columnist and creator of the zombie series Dead Set, which was picked up by IFC in America, says he got the idea for Black Mirror after Dead Set concluded back in 2008. "I missed shows like The Twilight Zone," he says. "I read a biography of Rod Serling, and it said Serling wanted to write about racism and McCarthyism, but felt that he was being censored by sponsors who didn’t want him to tackle edgy subjects. He realized that if he wrote about these things in the guise of a metaphor, then he could tackle the subjects he wanted. That struck a chord with me, and I thought, What am I worried about? And generally, the thing that has made me increasingly uneasy is technology."
In one of the strongest episodes, "The Entire History of You," an implant allows characters to record every moment of their lives, which they can replay privately or for friends (and airport security) using their eyes and a thumb-sized remote, clicking through memories as easily as we swipe images on a smartphone (which sounds a lot like Google Glass 6.0). Here, a married man becomes obsessed with the idea that his wife has had an affair with an old friend, and plays back scenes of the two of them together over and over again. It's almost a shame the plot is singular to this episode, because the potential is thought-provoking: Would such an advancement effectively eradicate crime and deception? Would the nostalgia be debilitating?
"Actually, I think it would kill nostalgia," says Brooker. "You would see how your memories were — unembellished and unfiltered. But I think it would be very easy to revisit painful things and see where you fucked up and constantly end up staring backwards." (Robert Downey Jr. beat George Clooney to an option of the episode and plans to turn it into a sci-fi thriller, though Brooker is not involved.)
Another installment, "Be Right Back," crosses You've Got Mail with Pet Sematary: A woman grieving for her departed partner is introduced to a service that allows people to electronically communicate with a version of the deceased based on their previous online presence. Rather morbid, but there's already a Twitter application underway called LivesOn that promises essentially the same thing (the motto: "When your heart stops beating, you'll keep on Tweeting."). "I think I read an interview with one of the people behind it," says Brooker. "They said they had been thinking about it, and after they saw the episode, they thought, 'Okay, there's an appetite for this.'" (Pray nobody feels the same way about "White Bear.")
Most of the episodes resonate similarly, whether they're inspired by real-life events or cleverly anticipate them. Facebook's Timeline feature launched the day after "The Entire History of You" first aired in December of 2011, and Brooker recalls being offended by the language the site used to ask if he wanted to "hide" certain information, like the wife in the episode who tries to wipe her memory bank of indiscretion. "Don't tell me I'm fucking hiding things," he says. "Like I'm being a control freak!"
In the series debut, "The National Anthem," England's Prime Minister has to decide whether or not he will acquiesce to the demands of a kidnapper by performing a lewd act on live television to save the life of a Royal Family member. Brooker got the idea from an incident in 2010 when former Prime Minister Gordon Brown was forced to apologize to a heckler from his own party after he called her a bigot when he thought his mic wasn’t on, primarily to satisfy the media that relentlessly reported the story. "I thought, 'Who's in charge here?'" says Brooker. "It's certainly not the Prime Minister." So he took the chaos and turned it into a parody of 24.
"The episodes are usually written in an absolute fucking panic, because I'm a pretty bad procrastinator, and parody gets me through the writer's block," says Brooker, who writes with a team, including his wife, and doesn't consult outside tech experts. "Perhaps I shouldn't have shared that."
"15 Million Merits" focuses on prisoners who are quite literally enslaved by entertainment; and the most recent episode, "The Waldo Moment" — about a vulgar CGI bear who runs for election when a meme turns serious — aired in February, just as comedian Beppe Grillo won a quarter of the vote in Italy.
Despite Black Mirror's pervasive sense of unease, if not downright nightmarish scenarios, Brooker thinks it's more darkly funny than dramatic. "I am always quite surprised that people find [the episodes] devastatingly upsetting," says Brooker, who hopes for a third season (no word yet). "I don't think I'm a pessimist. I'm a neurotic, and the series reflects it. Most television shows reassure you by patting on your head and saying, 'Here's those characters you like, and they're in a scrape, but it's all right.' This is different. It's just me being really worried."
But for all his concern, Brooker insists he is not anti-technology. "I am a gadget addict," he says. "I don't think that the machines are going to destroy us. Before I quit smoking, I used to wake up and reach for a cigarette immediately, and now I do that with an iPhone. I don't know if that's sinister, but it's certainly odd."
No Song Selected More info
00:00 00:00 Volume
• Logout
A Message To SPIN Magazine SubscribersMobile Site | http://www.spin.com/articles/black-mirror-british-tv-show-charlie-brooker-channel-4-dead-set/ | dclm-gs1-114700002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.099656 | <urn:uuid:401c5fcc-4a49-4161-aa0b-5dce56b1e251> | en | 0.943258 | Can you name the Firefly Minor Characters?
created by asdf4759
Show Missed Answers
This 'psychotic lowlife' refuses to do business with Mal in the pilot episode.
This woman has shot Mal and tries to steal his food in the pilot.
This undercover Alliance agent shoots Kaylee and is later shot by Mal.
This old sadist gives the crew the train job.
This 'spoiled dandy' and 'expert swordsman' takes Inara to a Shindig and almost kills Mal.
This lord with a red sash becomes Mal's second in the duel. He also happens to be the only character directly quoted in this quiz.
This female con artist marries Mal, tries to steal his ship, and later teams up with the crew to steal the Lassiter.
This man is the magistrate of Canton, and he hates Jayne.
This son of the previous answer loses his virginity to Inara.
This man was pushed out of a ship by Jayne, loses an eye, and is locked up for 4 years.
This dude was Serenity's original mechanic.
This war buddy of Mal marries the con artist mentioned in a previous question. We love this guy, don't we?
This man fought in the war with Mal and Zoe. He had his dead body delivered to them.
This former companion and friend of Inara runs a ****house that looks like a frozen dinner package.
This man impregnates the ****, Petaline, and attacks the ****house to get his baby.
This bounty hunter sneaks aboard Serenity to capture River. He also happens to be named after a Civil War general.
You might also like these games:
Family GuyFresh Prince of Bel AirTV Network Logos
3 Comments (warning: may contain spoilers)
Firefly Minor Characters Quiz
1. by asdf4759
• Created Jan 10, 2010 in Television
• Game Plays 511
Friend Scores and Standings
Loading friend results.... | http://www.sporcle.com/games/asdf4759/fireflyminorcharacters | dclm-gs1-114720002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.21839 | <urn:uuid:a85cfda2-f47a-4487-9f9d-9ea8f55dbc4f> | en | 0.965047 | Hedge Funds
Although the actual definition of a hedge fund is hard to pin down to one simple explanation, these unique investment vehicles are identifiable by several key characteristics involving the size, style, fees and leverage options involved.
Hedge funds use different strategies to compensate against losses. Like mutual funds, these are private pools of money that can be invested in many different legal investments to maximize their returns. However, they differ from mutual funds in that there are no restrictions as to where or in what they can invest. Because hedge funds are complicated and often involve investments beginning with $400,000 – $500,000, they are not generally recommended for the novice investor. In fact, only the sophisticated, experienced investor should attempt to succeed with hedge funds.
As with other types of investments, the level of risk involved varies considerably depending on the fund. Those offering short-term, high return investments are typically either uninformed and inexperienced or worse, fraudulent. It is quite possible to lose your entire initial investment if your hedge fund manager makes the wrong decision. For these and other reasons, the US Securities Exchange Commission, as well as regulatory agencies around the globe, have limited hedge fund investment availability to those quite literally able to afford the loss, should the hedge fund go belly up. Accredited and institutional investors can take their chances on a hedge fund; the average-Joe stock market player cannot. Understand that hedge funds are not allowed to advertise themselves; if you are approached via the internet, cold calling or in person and given an opportunity to invest in a hedge fund, it is probably not legitimate.
Before investing in any hedge fund, an investor must understand several important factors. Hedge funds are subject to two different types of fees: management and performance fees. Each fund will have a minimum investment level. A new player has also surfaced recently in the hedge fund game: the Multi-Manager Hedge Fund, or fund of funds. While the risk involved is reduced by the fact that the fund is invested in a diverse subset of funds, you also pay greater management fees. The risk is less and so are the returns. Off-shore hedge funds may also be an attractive option, as they are subject to different (or no) taxes. However, as with any investment, the potential for lucrative returns increases in tandem with the degree of risk.
Hedge funds are a great option for high net worth investors, provided they have done their homework and understand the terms and practices involved. | http://www.stocktrades.ca/intermediate-investor/hedge-funds/ | dclm-gs1-114780002 | false | false | {
"keywords": "regulatory agencies"
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.023191 | <urn:uuid:b2349efb-8c05-4fe9-987a-cacda7842886> | en | 0.960694 | Letter: Good reasons to serve bans in prison
Last updated 12:00 27/02/2013
Relevant offers
Letters to the Editor
Letter: Oh, the irony Letter: Flyover won't solve anything Letter: Dive-bombing tui are the limit Letter: A minister who cares Letter: Key made the right choice Letter: Why didn't the ANC invite them? Letter: Half the population wasn't represented Letter: Rugby supporters had rights, too Letter: That's what supermarkets do Letter: Amnesty defends Tamil donation
OPINION: Your editorial (Feb 25) says it's ''insane'' to allow prisoners to serve driving disqualifications in prison, and that ''nobody could possibly defend it''.
All this has blown up because Jonathan Barclay killed Debbie Ashton when driving over the limit and appallingly badly soon after getting out of prison. He was in fact a disqualified driver at the time he killed her.
There are very good reasons for offenders to use prison time to clear their debts to society, attend courses addressing drugs/alcohol or other issues and get into a frame of mind to do better when they leave.
One key to that is a job on release and a good grip on interacting with people. In our world, that means being legally able to drive.
Efforts should be made in prison to get everyone to leave with driving skills, enhanced driving attitudes and a current licence. My experience is that many prisoners have never had a licence or, if they have, it's seldom been in force. Getting across the message that a licence is something to value is a major public good. If it can be done in prison, good.
Barrister, Wellington
Ad Feedback
- © Fairfax NZ News
Special offers
Featured Promotions
Sponsored Content | http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/letters-to-the-editor/8356295/Letter-Good-reasons-to-serve-bans-in-prison | dclm-gs1-114790002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.047536 | <urn:uuid:8b347eb4-fff6-4bff-be99-0d5aded55ea6> | en | 0.959891 | Subscribe to our newsletter
Denim Dictionary
This is the fit that Levi’s introduced on their 1966 501 model and was only produced for the next five years. However the style is reproduced a lot from the 90‘s on by Japanese denim brands and used as inspiration for modern day fits because of its rather slim fit and the tapered legs.
This refers to the number of weft threads per warp thread. Traditional denim is woven in this 3 to 1 weave, contrary to lighter weight denim (under 10.5 oz. a yard, like chambray) woven with a 2x1 weave. The 3x1 weave is woven with a pattern like: over, over, over, under, over, over, over, under and so forts.
The standard of five pockets that is usual nowadays on a blue jeans design. Introduced by Levi’s in 1922 with its new 501 design, it consists out of two back-pockets, two front-pockets and a coin-pocket inside the right front-pocket. The Levi’s prototype from 1873 only had three: two in the front and one on the back, but nowadays five pocket jeans are considered the industry standard.
The original Levi’s button-fly jean, introduced to the world in 1873 by Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis. They patented the use of copper rivets to reinforce their worker’s pants. The number 501 was designated around 1890, around the same time the brand introduced the coin pocket. The 501 is further known for the double arch stitching on the back pockets, the world famous two horse leather patch and its red tab. In 1964 the 501 became part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C, signifying how engrained in today’s culture it is.
The distressed section on a pair of denim, where the fabric shows results of heavy wear. Often created with use of the washing technique with pumice stones on pre-washed jeans.
This washing technique could singlehandedly represent the 1980s. Acid wash used pumice stones soaked with chlorine. This would strip off the color of the top layer of the fabric creating sharp contrasts all over the jeans, which were popularized by hard rock and metal acts. Candida Laundry patented the process in 1986.
The first major supplier of denim fabric in the United States, located in a New Hampshire factory town. This was the source of denim used on the first pairs of Levi’s by Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss. All that rests now is just an abandoned ruin of the old factory, but the legacy lives on.
This term was introduced by Levi’s/ popularised by Rifle and describes a baggy look. The waist area of the jeans don’t follow the shape of the body as the rise of the jean are cut in a straight line, as opposed to curved.
Also known as skewing, anti-twist is a phase in the finishing process before sanforization. Denim is a twill weave, in which blue and white yarns were interwoven. Because of the way it was cut, the legs always tended to twist in the direction of the diagonal weave. Raw denim is anti-twisted to cancel out
this effect.
Generally refers to the decorative double-stitching on the back pockets, shaped like bat wings. Levi’s is credited with first using it on their very first 501, and they’re commonly still associated with this iconic jeans. It goes further than mere association though – particularly in the U.S., where no other denim brand is allowed to sell jeans with patterns that even remotely resemble the Levi’s arcs. Japanese reproduction brands have imitated the arc’s, an act that resulted in several lawsuits.
A word borrowed from Japanese, the term describes the selective fading alongside the ridges of the seams. In most cases it concerns the seams on the back-yoke, back pockets, the belt loops and zip fly.
While a ‘back cinch’ traditionally refers to the leather strap attaching the saddle around a horse’s back, on a pair of jeans it is used to tighten the waistband. Also known as a martingale it consists of a denim strap and a buckle. Jeans with a back cinch also referred to as ‘buckle back’ and most jeans manufacturers abandoned the back cinch in 1942.
Traditionally a paper or cardboard flap attached to the right back pocket to indicate differences in size, finishing, fabrics and shapes. Also used as a marketing gimmick, it often featured illustrations that referred to a specific theme associated with that specific model, like Westerns.
Wide-cut pants, with a low-slung waist, a very low crotch and the polar opposite of skinny jeans. The oversized models were initially especially popular among skaters and in hiphop scenes. It supposedly originated in American prisons were prisoners wore their oversized overalls but were not allowed belts.
Refers to the pulling together of several individual threads of yarn into a single thread that is then wound onto a wooden beam – the ball warp. Used specifically when yarn is dyed.
These tacks are closely spaced stitches, forming a band, or bar, on virtually all denim garments that act as reinforcements on stresspoints such as zippers and pocket openings.
A fabric weave where more than one weft thread passes over and under the same number of warp threads, producing a checkered or plaid pattern. Not as strong as plain weaves, however.
A specific weave, with ribs down the length of the fabric. Widths of the ribs can vary. Has the look of unbrushed and corduroy without the velvet touch. It takes its name from the town of Bedford, England, and is usually a combination of two weaves, i.e. ‘plain’ and ‘drill’.
It is said these models were first spotted with US navy men wearing the bell-shaped pants, although clothing could vary per ship. The bell-bottoms were extremely popular during the 1960s and ‘70s, it had a tight waist and thighs but flared below the knees. This gave the jeans a vague resemblance to the shape of a bell, which is supposedly how the name Bellbottoms was coined. Around the same time, this particular model was also very popular among German carpenters who wore them to prevent sawdust from getting into their shoes.
As the name indicates, these were placed around the waist to hold a belt. They replaced the suspender buttons around the 1920s to supply the trend of belts that emerged after the WWI. Most jeans have five loops, but some brands like Wrangler have seven, for extra support.
This term denotes a collector’s item from the Levi’s range. Prior to 1971, all Levi’s jeans and jackets featured a red tab with an uppercase “E” and are now much sought after for their exposed selvage, ring fabric and XX denim.
A denim weave that uses black yarn instead of indigo. Black denim is sulphur-dyed (or ‘over-dyed’) , unlike its blue cousin, and creates a strong dark black color. Wrangler claims to have introduced as far back as 1950 when they produced it for a tv series about a cowboy.
A chemical that is needed in the process of fading denim. Typically, either sodium hydrochloride or potassium permanganate is used.
Established in 1904 and producing denim overalls, they started making jeans after the World War II. Their first jeans produced in 1947 were named Wrangler, the name the company is now known with.
Reminiscent of bell bottoms in their shape, but less extreme. Bootcut, or bootleg, have a wider leg openings that were originally intended to more easily fit over boots.
A denim weave in which the twill line changes direction. Whereas until the 1960s denim was woven to the left or right hand side, causing the legs to twist, broken twill reverses this to cancel out the leg twist effect.
Brushing is part of the final treatment for a worn out look. Thighs and backside of a pair of jeans are ‘brushed’with an electrical brush that smoothes over rough edges that may appear earlier in the treatment process.
A doll introduced by H.D. Lee in 1920 and used as advertising mascot wearing Lee miniature outfits. The 13” dolls were made of ceramic until 1949, when the less fragile plastic dolls started being produced. The production of the Buddies stopped in 1962 and nowadays they are valuable collectors items.
Artificial creases around the thighs that are created during the finishing process. The term “Buffies” is taken from the Italian word for moustache, ‘baffi’.
Heavyweight weave (from 14 oz upwards). Bull denim is an ecru fabric and during production is either printed or piece- or garment dyed.
Small, usually round fasteners used to attach two pieces of fabric together. Traditional type is composed of two parts: a short nail that is attached to the fabric, and the more visible part, the head. Typically made of a metal alloy such as copper, brass or aluminium. Three styles can be distinguished: shank, sew-through and stud.
The original jeans fastening at the front fly, with buttons instead of the later introduced zipper.
A heavy-duty and durable fabric with a plain-weave. Normally used to fabricate sails, tents, backpacks and sturdy fabrics. Woven from cotton or linen yarns, although historically made from hemp. Levi Strauss used hemp canvas on his first pairs of ‘waist overalls’, before he found out about the cotton twilled ‘denim’.
See “Big E”
A style of pants that ends around mid-calf or just below the calf.
The term refers to the large side pockets on these pants, usually located on the thigh. This item originates in the armed forces for storage purposes.
A descriptive term for a loose fitted style of jeans. They have a shape similar to that of a carrot: wide at the top, narrow towards the bottom. Also known as peg jeans.
This refers to any extra color tones that might be present in denim fabric that is sometimes added by way of an additional dyeing process. Indigo denim can have a black, brown, gray, green, red or yellow caste to it.
Certain enzymes can be used to dissolve the cellulose in cotton. When the denim is washed in a cellulose enzyme bath the indigo is removed along with the fibre. To stop the process the water is either heated or the alkalinity of the bath is altered. This process is said to be more environmentally friendly than stone washing since it does not use pumice stones which needs to be mined.
The traditional stitch used to hem jeans. It uses one continuous thread that loops back on itself and ends up looking like the links of a chain.
Also known as ‘cambric’, chambray is a plain woven, medium weight cotton fabric. Usually made from blue and white yarns, used for making shirts, dresses and children’s clothing. It takes its name from the town of Chambrai in the north of France. A heavier version was used for workmen’s shirts in the USA and as such supposedly the source for the term ‘blue collar’.
A type of trousers originated from the khaki uniforms worn by the British colonial military troops. The term was brought into use when trousers for the US military were made in China and exported to the then American colony of the Philippines. The Spanish heritage in the colony paved the way for the term Chino, meaning ‘Chinese’ in Spanish language. Chinos were used by the military during the World War II. Nowadays the term is used for any cotton twill made trousers.
Straight-legged, slim fit pants.
A method applied in the finishing process of production. Normally done using pigment, acrylic or polyurethane coating. Acrylic and PU are transparent, while pigment gives a new look to the denim. Used to prevent fading of the fabric and stains. Often gives a leather-like shine to the denim.
The fifth pocket, strictly functional. This small-added pocket can be found inside the right front pocket. Also known as the watch or match pocket. It supposedly first appeared in 1902 and has become smaller over the years, yet retains its functionality.
The level of attachment of dye to the garment. Indigo is common for use on denim garments because of its color fastness. The contact of the garment with water and exposure to sunlight often results in loss of the color.
Combing is a preparation process after fibers have been carded. It separates and untangles fibers. It is performed just before the fibers are spun into yarn.
A name that sounds familiar to denimheads all over the world. Not surprising since it’s to this day one of the biggest denim manufacturers in the world. It started its business in 1891 in Greensboro, North Carolina. It was founded by the Cone brothers and started out as a wholesale grocer. A few years after opening its doors, it began weaving cloth. It then started supplying Levi’s in 1910 and became exclusive supplier for the 501s in 1922.
While folklore has it that this term comes from the French: ‘Corde du Roy’ or cord of the king, there is in fact no such phrase. Rather, the French know this type of fabric as “velours côtelé”. This fabric is a tough, durable fabric with a cotton base. It is ribbed throughout the length. The fabric is woven by having one warp and two fillings and mostly used for winter clothing.
Also known as polycore, this is created by twisting staple fibres around a filament core, usually made of polyester, for extra strength.
A vegetable fibre collected from the cotton plant. It has been used to make cloth for over 7000 years. It withstands high temperatures and can therefore be boiled and hot pressed. Abrasion resistant and gains 10% in strength when wet. The most valuable varieties are Egyptian, Sea Island and Prima. Cotton accounts for more than 40% of the total world fibre production.
See under ‘duck’.
See under “Whiskers”
Describing the process of the dye that rubs of the denim and ‘bleeds’ on your skin, shoes or any other fabric.
Describes a unique criss-cross pattern in the weave that is a result of unevenly yarn for warp and weft threads, resulting in a grid-like pattern.
A rivet attached at the base of the button fly for reinforcement purposes. Levi’s removed them from their jeans in 1942 after numerous complaints from cowboys about these rivets heating up considerably in front of campfires. Others were forced to remove them from their jeans to save metal for the war effort.
Denim that looks permanently wrinkled. A look that is achieved by weaving it with an overtwisted weft yarn. The fabric then shrinks when washed. The result can be made even more visible by stonewashing and/or bleaching.
A cotton twill fabric, composed of indigo-dyed yarn for the warp and natural yarn for the weft. Known as a work wear fabric since the late 18th century, it is now most commonly associated with jeans. Supposedly the name stems from the French ‘serge de Nîmes’ a silk and wool fabric that originated in Nîmes, in the south of France. The fabric is nearly always indigo-dyed and has diagonal ribbing that can be seen on the reverse side of the fabric.
A word to describe denim fanatics.
The density of denim refers to the number of yarns that make up the weave. Four categories differentiate the density: low, medium, high and super high. This is the difference between looser or tighter fabric construction.
A specific sort of enzyme rinse that is done to soften denim fabric.
Artfully shredded jeans, mostly by scissors and knives. This look first gained popularity in the mid-Eighties when Katherine Hamnett showed slashed jeans on the runway. It has never completely gone out of style.
The act of dipping yarn or fabric into dye. The more it is dipped, the darker the eventual colour. In between dips, the yarn is usual exposed to air, to allow the indigo to oxidize.
Jeans that underwent excessive wear and show strong abrasions and have ripped and torn parts. Can be artificially created to give the jeans a real vintage and worn-out look. Taken to extremes with frayed hems and seams, the denim is torn and ripped, and so on. It should be noted however that pre-distressed denim does not mold to your body the way raw denim does.
Any type of fabric that is made with a dobby weave. In this process, the warp threads are lowered and raised throughout to form different patterns in the weave. Identifiable by the unique texture of the cloth.
With double-dyeing, denim is dipped in the indigo bath 12 to 16 times, instead of the regular 6-8 dips. The color of the denim ends up a darker, deeper and brighter shade of blue as a result.
Also called ‘twin needle’. A method that is used to create perfectly parallell seams, most often to make jeans stonger and more durable. Double stitching on back pockets is tell tale sign of a classic jeans look.
A step in the spinning process, whereby slivers of cotton fiber are passed through several drafting rolls. This ‘drafts’them into a single strand and is repeated to ensure uniformity in the fnal yarn.
A durable fabric made of cotton with a strong diagonal twill weave. It is a lightweight, strong, breathing fabric. It is because of these specific qualities that it’s used on sails and tents as well as uniforms and safari clothing.
The original production form of denim, when it is still unwashed and untreated. After dyeing and weaving of the fabric, the cloth is quite stiff and has a deep blue indigo color with a shine. It is left up to the wearer to break in their jeans made of dry/raw denim. In this condition, the jeans mold to the wearer’s body type and shape, creating unique folds and fade marks along the way. Also see “raw denim”.
Dual ring-spun denim is made from ring spun yarn, providing a rougher and uneven fabric. It is the most expensive choice out of dual ring-spun, ring-spun and open-end denim. See also under “ring-ring denim”
A type of canvas that has tight woven threads, opposed to the plain weave type of canvas. Supposedly the name derived from the Dutch word ‘doek’. This canvas is created from medium to coarse yarns. Cotton duck is classified by weight, with a heavier weight being more thick and durable.
Similar pants to jeans but generally baggier due to their work wear origins. The word itself refers back to Dongari Kapar, a thick cotton country cloth, that is produced in India. The British originally used the sturdy cloth for tents and sails, and made clothing from the leftovers.
Tinting procedure of the denim cloth, in which the natural cotton warp yarn is dipped into a number of indigo dye baths. After each bath, the denim is hung out to allow the indigo to oxidize, which eventually turns the color from yellow to green to blue. As a last step, the yarn is rinsed to remove excess dye.
Denim that is made with environmentally friendly dyes and recycling techniques. After the dyeing process for example, remains of the indigo substance are filtered and recycled for other dye baths, rather than simply thrown out.
This is the natural color of undyed denim. There are jeans that have not been dyed with indigo that have this color, but they are quite hard to find.
Also known as “production sharing” , 807 is a controversial law that relates specifically to the textile industry. It allows manufacturers to reduce the cost of labor for their products. In practice, this means they are allowed to have their garments cut in the United States, assembled in Mexico, Caribbean and Central American countries and returned to the US.
An elastic fiber used in stretch jeans. See under “stretch denim”.
G-star’s defining, signature jeans model, designed in 1996 by Pierre Morisset, the company’s head designer. The look was inspired by a rain-soaked motorcyclist. It was all the more remarkable because light washings and standard five pocket jeans were all the rage back then. An instant classic was born.
Decorative details that are added to jeans by sewing. Different colors are used for perspective and depth purposes. Most commonly found on back pockets and often seen on the back of denim jackets.
Launched by Levi’s in 2001 this model comes with a twist and is different from anything the brand made before. The model closely follows the body’s contours and as such based on ergonomic principles. It allows for optimal freedom of movement. Engineered jeans are available for both men and women.
A particular washing method to give jeans a worn out look. It also softens the fabric and brings out highlights. Enzymes are organic, non-toxic substances that speed up chemical processes and are used as an alternative to stone washing.
An effect that is obtained after repeated wear and wash of indigo dyed denim. The indigo attached to the cotton fibres detaches and therefore the denim fades. Recognizable by its lighter color other than the standard dark shade of blue or black. Multiple methods exist to create this effect artificially, eg. stone washing or bleaching.
Cotton is graded according to strength, staple length, color, smoothness and uniformity. This term stands for an average grade of cotton, usually used in denim.
Hair-like strings or threads that form part of the composition of fabrics. There are two kinds: natural and artificial fibers.
Filling threads are horizontal threads that pass through the warp threads via the shuttle during weaving. They run perpendicular to the selvage. They are less strong than the warp threads because they are not subjected to the stress and tension that warp threads are.
a) Finishing processes are used to age denim garments or create other effects by various means such as the enzyme wash or the stone wash.
b) It may also refer to the very last step in denim production, which consists of three phases: running the denim through rolls to remove excess lint or fibers; hauling it through a gas flame to burn off these fibers. Lastly, the cloth is dipped in a vat of a finishing liquid and run through ringers to remove any remaining liquid.
Describes and determines the cut, shape and design of any pair of jeans. Different brands offer varying lengths, sizes and specifics such as loose fit, skinny fit, boot cut or straight fit to accommodate different preferences and body types.
See under “tab”
Jeans with low rise and bell bottom flare. Another style that was in huge demand in the ‘70s and even made a (shortlived) comeback in 2000.
See under ‘back pocket flasher’
This was a nickname given to fortune seekers during the Gold Rush of 1849. The name combines the year and the word ‘miner’. Levi Strauss was at this time already selling canvas to these ‘forty niners’ as tent fabric, but through his interaction with them it became apparent this material would be better suited to make pants out of. It was this that led to the birth of the 501.
Especially for women, this is a tight style of jeans. It is made of stretch material for a very close fit. It is therefore also known as ‘second skin’.
Very pale blue jeans, frosted denim was an especially popular washing in the 1980s.
Whereas yarn dye takes place before the weaving of the yarn, garment dye, or “just in time dyeing” is done with the finished garment. It is stocked in ecru or bleached color, then dyed in a range of colors, depending on demand. Tell tale signs of garment dye are pocket linings or labels that have the same color as the self-fabric.
Supposedly this is where the term ‘jeans’ came from, not least because it refers to the type of pants Genoese sailors used to wear in the 19th century. The French referred to the blue fabric that these pants were made of as “blue de Genes” , or the blue from Genoa. The life of a sailor was rough and intense, and the tough material was perfectly suited to being used and abused. The sailors would wash their pants by dragging them behind the ships in fishing nets. They would then fade in color because of the seawater and being exposed to the sun.
The process of removing seeds from the cotton got its name from the cotton gin, which was invented by Eli Whitney in 1794.
A period during the 19th century in which countless people migrated to North America (and Australia) in search of gold. It was during this period that Levi Strauss came to San Francisco and settled there as a businessman, picking up on this Gold Rush to create a pair of durable canvas pants that would establish his business and ensure his name in the history books.
Symbolized by the letters ‘GM’, good middling is a term for the highest quality of cotton. It has an off-white color and contains virtually no other matter. Middling cotton is the standard to measure all grades of cotton.
A denim dye process in which the denim is dyed with green sulphur dye before the indigo is added. It gives the denim a blue/green-ish color. With wear and time, the indigo fades and the green underneath is gradually exposed.
A denim dye process in which the denim is dyed with grey sulphur dye before the indigo is added.
Refers to the denim where the short cotton pile has not been burned off the surface, which will stick up when washed.
A term to describe how denim feels, referring to the material’s specific characteristics like smoothness,stiffness, stretchability or thickness.
Just like labels, tabs and back pocket flashers, hang tags are another way for brands to communicate its philosophy and the specifics of its products. They ‘hang’ from garments, hence the name.
A dyeing process to maximize color penetration, that also makes the yarn keep its soft feel. Yarn is looped over a hook and dipped in water, which opens up the fibers. This allows the dye to reach everywhere. The fabric is left in the dye for 48 hours, then washed and redipped, a process that is repeated a few times.
All denim that is heavier than 12 oz. is considered heavy weight.
A process of adjusting cloth by folding up a cut edge twice and sewing it in place, preventing it from unravelling. Denim is usually hemmed in the factory with a chain stitch.
Is a low-cost and extreme versatile seed plant. It is cultivated in China from as far back as 4000 BC. It is one of the strongest plant fibers and creates a durable fabric similar in texture to linen.
A distinctive V-shape weave, also knowns as ‘Chevron weave’, that is reminiscent of a herring’s skeleton. Twills are run in two different directions to achieve this effect. Most often found in tweed and some other wool fabrics.
A durable fabric, associated with workwear, similar to denim. The difference resides in the order of the dyed and un-dyed threads on the warp, creating the striped pattern of the fabric.
Hige is Japanese for ‘moustache’ or ‘whiskers’. Horizontal fade lines around the hip and crotch section of a jeans that are formed by extensive wear of dyed denim. Especially in raw denim this is the area that fades first.
Style of jeans especially popular in the 1960s and early ‘70s. It featured a low waist and tight fit, which inspired the nickname.
See under “flare jeans”
Also referred to as just ‘combs’, this refers to the area at the back of the knee of a pair of jeans. The indigo colour fades the more the pants are worn, and is said to resemble honeycomb patterns.
Very short cut-off jeans for women, they’re typically cut off right below the seat, exposing the whole of the leg. It became a common sight in the 1970s.
A term used to describe fabric that has been washed time and again for an extremely faded look.
An American and British Imperial unit of size, used to indicate length and waist size of jeans. One inch is 2.54 centimeters.
Known as the living color, as it does not bond strongly to the fiber it is applied to. Its first use can be traced back 4000 years and was obtained from the leaves of the Indigofera plant. China and India are the natural homes of this plant. Exports of it rose dramatically in the 15th century when the sea route to India was discovered. Around 400 years later, German scientist Adolf von Baeyer perfected a formula for synthetic indigo, which soon overtook the demand for the traditional production of the dye. It is to this day one of the world’s most favorite dyes.
The inseam is the length as measured from the inside of the pantleg, from the crotch to the hemline (which should reach to the anklebone). Together with the waist size, the inseam determines the various jeans sizes.
Yarn, made from two or more kinds of fibers. Like cross pollination, the idea is to bring together, and highlight, the best qualities of the fibers used, and minimizing the lesser qualities, creating a superior blend.
The term ‘Iro-Ochi’ is Japanese for “color slips”, and as such refers to a look whereby only exposed areas are faded during the fading process.
See under “uneven yarn”.
A denim cloth that is in very high demand due to its amazing quality. This quality is maintained by the traditional production methods used in Japan: using the 28-inch shuttle looms from back in the day, as well as high quality ring-spun yarn. Japanese denim is typically given several indigo baths.
One of the most recognizable items of clothing worldwide ever. Classic, five pocket jeans contain a number of elements: heavyweight indigo denim, six rivets, contrast stitching, between five and seven belt loops and a zip or button fly. Its origins lie in work wear, but midway through the 20th century, teenagers started wearing them as an act of rebellion, not wanting to fit the mold anymore. Consequently, jeans were deemed inappropriate for a good while, but became mainstream by the 1970s.
Lee started using their exclusive Jelt Denim on their denim garments from 1925 onwards. It was a 11.5 oz. denim but had the quality of a 13 oz. fabric due to its tight construction and twisted yarn. The “J” in their 101J denim jacket stands for Jelt.
Originated from the British uniform worn by colonial troops in India and later turned to the standard for the British army uniform. Nowadays used to indicate both the sand color as well as the chino style trousers made of cotton twill.
Item that identifies a brand and the garment used for the cloth. It shows the brand logo, and other relevant brand information.
A laser is used to burn off dye off the surface of the fabric. Can be used to create effects such as wrinkles or lettering.
This refers to a world famous scene of a Levi’s commercial that relaunched basics in 1985. It featured teen idol Nick Kamen who took off his jeans in a packed launderette to wash them, while Marvin Gaye’s “ I heard it through the grapevine” played in the background. It was made by British ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty.
Laundry is a manufacturing company that washes, sandblasts or garment dyes jeans. Italy Japan and the US lead the field in this industry because their techniques are most advanced and are therefore most influential in pushing fabric development.
This is a rectangular label made of real or imitation leather or paper, usually sewn to the waistband above the right back pocket. It usually shows the brand’s logo, lot number of the jeans, as well as size details. Levi’s replaced its leather tag with a paper tag from their 1954 501 model onwards.
Describes how the direction of the weave heads to the left. It gives the material a soft feel after washing. It is however difficult to produce as it needs to be treated with care during sanforization and finishing.
The openings at the bottom of all pairs of (denim) pants. The width of it varies per brand and model.
The phenomenon of left or right hand twills that tend to twist in the direction of the weave. A broken twill weave is often used to prevent this from happening, as leg twist are quite noticeable on the outer seams.
The (bachelor) button on a button-fly pair of jeans that contains the brand’s logo or name. Introduced after the anonymous “doughnut button” that used to be the standard on jeans.
A loom is a weaving machine that produces fabric by weaving vertical threads of yarn (link: Warp) with horizontal threads (link: Weft, Filling). There are three types to be distinguished: Dummy shuttle (Link), Rapier (Link) and Fluid Jet (Link).
The original method of dyeing denim by which ropes of yarn are pulled through vats of indigo and then laid out on top of the roof of the factory to allow the indigo to oxidize before the next bath. It creates more consistent indigo shades than other processes. One of the three main methods to dye indigo yarn, also see ‘slasher dyeing’ and ‘rope dyeing’.
This is Dupont’s trademark for elasthane, the artificial fiber that is obtained from a resin known as segmented polyurethane. “Lycra” is a registered trademark of the Invista Group that is part of the US-based chemical group. The most commonly used variety of Lycra in stretch jeans is the T-400 type which is very resistant to chlorine.
The generic name for cellulosic fiber. It is biodegradable (made from dissolved wood pulp) therefore not hazardous to the environment. It is durable and versatile, as it can be manipulated to look like different fabrics.
A type of cotton that is cultivated in Egypt. It is very refined by nature, and has a long fiber. It is said to be difficult to manipulate in production.
An industrial process invented by John Mercer back in 1844. It does several things, one of which is ensuring the dye sticks to the fabric better. With the use of something called caustic soda, mercerization allows the dye to only color the surface of the fabric, plus the process also serves to strengthen the fabric. Cotton that has been mercerized is also known as ‘pearl cotton’ because of its added luster.
A process in which denim is pulled over horizontally placed rollers that are wrapped in either abrasive paper or a chemical abrasion agent. It leads to a faded color and softens the texture.
Millwash is a term for denim that has already been washed before being delivered to garment manufacturers.
So called because the fruits of this cotton become the ‘mother’ of next year’s crop. When indigo-dyed this cotton takes on a vintage look.
See under “Whiskers” or “Hige”
A costly and time consuming process. It takes up to almost one hundred days to prepare the dye, called sukumo in Japanese, made from dried polygonum leaves. The dye is then mixed with lye and lime and fermented. The dyeing is usually done by hand, by dipping the garment in and out of the dye pulp. The more dips, the deeper the shade of indigo. Natural indigo, unlike synthetic form, is colorfast and its will not run when washed.
This material first saw the light of day in 1935, courtesy of Wallace Carothers at DuPont. It was developed as a substitute for silk, and is one of the strongest artificial fibers around. It is durable and light weight. In fact, the only drawback to it is that it doesn´t absorb well. Nevertheless it is commonly used in outer wear.
Abbreviation for ‘other fibers’ (or altre fibre). Sometimes seen on the composition label of fabrics made of recycled material. Fabrics produced around the area of Prato in Italy are made using yarns spun from a blend of reclaimed wool, or of course other fibers.
Refers to a very soft, loose denim weave that is rinsed just once after loomstate. It’s done for environmental purposes as well as to create a specific look and feel. It is a Japanese invention from 1991 that never quite made it to European or American shores.
Often referred to as ‘O.E.’ this is the most common type of denim. Open End is an industrial type of yarn spinning using turbine machines. Open End denim was adopted by many manufacturers because it produces strong, durable jeans for less money and in less time, but is said to lack the quality that ring-spun or ring-ring denim typically have.
This is cotton that is grown in soil, free of any chemicals, for three years. It therefore has a low impact on the environment and also shies away from genetical modifying.
A one-piece garment made from denim or canvas, with a bib top and suspenders, it was originally made and worn as a work wear item.
A dyeing process whereby the fabric is either dyed too long or more than once with one or more colors. Frequently applied to add an overtone of color to the indigo.
Denim with a deliberate crinkled-looking appearance that is the result of overtwisted yarn with which the denim is made.
This type of cloth, most commonly used on dress shirts, has a basket weave pattern. Traditionally made of cotton, these days oxford cloth made from synthetic materials is no exception.
This is part of the dyeing process. For raw denim, oxidation happens when indigo yarn comes out of an indigo bath and is exposed to oxygen. This causes the deep blue color to reappear and most importantly, it ensures the color is permanently fixed to the fiber.
Abbreviation for ounces. Denim is weighed in oz. per square yard.
As the name indicates, this means a loose, pleated waistline, pulled together with a belt.
Jeans with patches of other denim or just plain other fabrics, that make it look like a customized repair job, DIY-style.
This is the patent that was granted to Levi Strauss and business partner Jacob Davis in 1873, for their revolutionary introduction of copper rivets to strengthen the stress points on pants. The patent expired in 1890.
A style of women’s wear jeans featuring ‘X’-pockets, of ankle-length, produced by Italian label Closed. The brand claims to have sold 30 million pairs of pedal pushers in the 26 years that the brand made them, which is not a stretch of the imagination, considering how popular they were.
See under “garment dyed”
A popular dyestuff used by manufacturers who want a faded look on their jeans. The pigment dye does not naturally stick to fiber. It only coats the surface and attaches itself there with the use of resins. It therefore washes off quite quickly, achieving what looks like an authentic fade. Pigment dyes are available in various colors.
Also known as tabby weave or linen weave is one of the most straightforward ways to produce cloth. The filling yarn passes over and under each warp yarn in alternating rows. The fit of the cloth can be adjusted by varying the tension of the threads during weaving. The thicker the yarn, the stronger the final fabric.
This term refers to the number of strands in a yarn. Most denim is woven from 2 or 3 ply yarn.
The (concealed) cloth used for the front pockets of a 5-pocket style jeans. Often made from a strong cotton fabric to assure duration of the pockets.
A typical jeans characteristic. Pockets on the back of jeans are usually stitched in a decorative way. The 1970s saw extensive and almost exaggerated pocket stitching, but that was a short-lived trend. From the 1980s brands used straightforward patterns, but ones that clearly differentiated them from others.
This refers to a blend of polyester and cotton that gives denim extra strength, but the look of authentic jeans. It is quite often used by manufacturers to strengthen stress points on jeans. It minimizes shrinking of the jeans as well as wrinkles.
A name that is said to have been derived from ‘papeline’, a silk fabric from Avignon in France. Poplin is a lightweight, plain weave fabric. It has a ribbed structure and is used in both clothing design and in upholstery. In clothing, this material is typically found in high quality, 100% cotton garments like shirts.
During production, fabrics typically stretch. Once they’re being washed, the fibers relax and shrink back to their original length. Pre-shrinking, or sanforizing, eliminates this. Also see under “sanforized”
As the name suggests, it indicates the power of the denim fabric. Ring spun yarn is often considered as having the strongest pull-strength.
Pumice is solidified lava. Volcanic rock that is formed when lava and water are mixed. It is the material of choice when stonewashing garments, as it is tough, rough and lightweight.
Found in the majority of denims, it is the tightest of all and retains color the longest. Its recognized by its slightly diagonal incline when looking at the warp.
The term describing the fades along the outer seam of a pair of jeans. The contours of the folded inseam are seen in the in the fades and resemble a train track.
The purest form of denim. That is, denim that has not been washed, or treated in any way. Because it has not been treated, it is quite rigid, and deep blue in color. G-star is credited with the term ‘Raw denim’. At any rate they were the first to use it for their untreated, unwashed products in 1996. Also see “dry denim”
Recycled jeans can be new or second-hand, but have been customized in some way before being sold to the consumer. Decorative patterns with rhinestones or embroidery for example, which was quite the rage in the 1970s.
Levi’s denim from before 1983 had a red line selvedge. Cone Mills, which manufactured the Levi’s denim fabric, added this red line to their selvedge to make their fabric stand out. At the time it was considered as good as a standard of excellence. Denim aficionados still argue that the red lines denote top grade denim.
This barely needs explanation. The red tab is the famous Levi’s flag, found on the right back pocket of the 501 jeans. The tab was trademarked in 1939, after its introduction to the world three years prior.
A term that is used for denim with a reddish hue. The fabric has only been dyed with indigo. See also under “caste”
A novel use of denim, patented by Japanese designer Toshi Hosogai. He has come up with a design for jeans that allowed them to be worn the normal way and inside out, as the regular inside has clean finishes and as such cannot be distinguished as the ‘inside’.
A weaving construction, typical for denim, where the twill line runs diagonally from bottom left to top right. It creates a tighter, more dense material. Over time, the fade on this type is more distinct than on other types.
See under “dry denim”
Ring dyeing only colors the outer layer of the yarn, and the core of the yarn remains white, as would be best seen in a cross-section of the material. This process is used for jeans that are supposed to fade with wear: as the blue wears off, the white underneath is exposed.
Ring spun yarn is made by constantly rolling and thinning fibers, using a ‘ring’ for spinning. It uses longer fibers which means the end result is a more uneven yarn. It was used as method of production until the late 1970s, but because it is labor intensive and takes more time, ring spun denim was replaced by cheaper, open end yarns. The rough and uneven look is now back in demand, because of its likeness to traditional vintage denim.
This is the term for traditionally made denim, where ring-spun yarn is used for both the warp and the weft. The yarn is created by rolling the fibers, rather than pressing them into shape, and creates a contrasting structure with a slightly washed denim look. Also named “double-ring spun denim”.
A term that implies raw denim that is only rinsed, rather than being subjected to a full wash, and therefore keeps its rough, durable qualities.
The length ranging from the crotch up to the waistband. A jeans can have a rise ranging from high to low, making the difference whether the waist is cut under or above the navel.
See under ‘yoke’.
A method of washing denim with pumice stones and cellulose enzymes to give the fabric an aged look. It takes its toll on the environment, and is therefore not used as often these days.
An accessory, most often made of metal and with a round shape, that is used to strengthen and hold together garments at their stresspoints. Also occasionally used as decoration. Levi Strauss’s partner Jacob Davis, who’d seen them used on horse blankets, introduced rivets to clothing.
Generally regarded as the best method for indigo dyeing of yarns. These yarns are twisted together until they form a rope and then briefly dipped in indigo baths. Because of the short dyeing time, the dye does not fully color the yarns. The resulting ring-dye yarn therefore fades faster than yarn that has fully absorbed the indigo. One of the three main methods to dye indigo yarn, also see ‘slasher dyeing’ and ‘loop dyeing’.
The fading effect on the hem of jeans that resembles a rope because of its diagonal fading pattern. Old Levi’s XX pairs are known for their strong roping.
S-twist yarn is a yarn spun counter-clockwise to obtain right-handed twill. Z-twist yarn is used for left-handed twill.
This is stitching with an extra thick thread, typically used to create an authentic, old-time effect.
A finishing process to soften the denim for a smoother, softer feel. Can be done with sandpaper or mechanically. Sanded jeans usually cling to the body better.
Indicating jeans that underwent the process of sanforization. Raw fabric is likely to shrink up to 20% on the initial wash. Sanforization stabilizes the fabric before it is cut or washed, by stretching and pre-shrinking it. It reduces the chance on shrinkage to less than 3%. The process was named after Sanford Lockwood Cluett and was patented in 1928 and first used in 1936 by J.C. Penney Big Mac. Lee jeans soon became sanforized, Blue Bell used them on their overalls and the Lady Levi’s introduced in 1938 were sanforized too.
Its name derives from the ‘sawtooth’ resemblance with the design of the yokes and chest pockets on the 1950’s Western shirt introduced by Levi’s.
The term that is used for the edge of the denim fabric that is usually decorated with a colored thread. It prevents the end of the denim from ravelling and gives the jeans a clean, properly finished look. The color varies, according to the brand and producer. Vintage Levi’s for example used to have an all-white strip and later had a single redline selvedge, Wrangler used a yellow and Lee often a plain white type.
As the name indicates, this is the name of the strong, blue twill cloth that is produced in Nîmes, and would become better known as denim. The town in the south of France started exporting it as early as the 17th century and by the 19th century, it supplied wholesalers in New York with the cloth. Whether the term ‘denim’ is really derived from ‘de Nîmes’ remains subject of discussion.
See under ‘slasher dyeing’.
Before such processes as sanforization and stonewashing were available, people were obliged to buy their jeans a couple of size bigger, because of the shrinkage that would occur after washing. Such un-treated jeans were soaked before wear, to shrink and soften the rigid fabric of the jeans. For example, Levi’s 501 models were shrink-to-fit until 1959. Shrink-to-fit jeans are still offered today by selected manufacturers for the true denimhead.
Once the jeans are as good as finished, the last thing that is done to it is singeing, whereby any stray, loose fibers are burnt off using a small, controlled flame.
To prevent leg twist that can happen during the shrinking process, manufacturers minimize this effect by skewing the cloth in the opposite direction of the twill. Karin Hakanson patented this step in 1976. Denim is usually skewed between 4% and 10 %, depending on the fabric’s weight, twill weave yarn size and yarn twist.
Refers to skin-tight jeans that follow the shape of the legs and are thus tapered towards the ankles.
In the slasher dyeing method, denim yarns in the form of a warpsheet are pre-treated with chemicals and followed by (multiple) dip dyeing in indigo. The sheet is then after-treated by washing, drying and sizing, and a last dry cycle completes the process. It is a low-cast alternative to the rope dyeing method. One of the three main methods to dye indigo yarn, also see ‘rope dyeing’ and ‘loop dyeing’.
An overall tight and narrow fit, particularly around the thighs, but contrary to skinny jeans they are not necessarily tapered.
Slubs are inconsistencies in denim that are created on old 28 inch shuttle looms. Due to uneven spinning, the fabric may be thicker in some areas than in others. Whereas they used to be seen as flaws, slubs are now sometimes deliberately added to give more character.
A synonym for acid-wash denim, but specifically this is a more extreme variety, in that snow-washed denim has been acid-washed until the denim has bright white highlights.
Our knowledge on denim and everything it entails extends to a large reach, but unfortunately does not encompass everything about denim. We would like to make note of some of the resources that helped us creating our Denim Dictionary:
A fiber often indicated by a certain length. In denim production it refers to the cotton fibre, and indicates a long or short “staple length”. In general longer staple lengths are more valued for they are more easily spun and can create softer and stronger yarns.
This is a process that is applied to denim fabric, usually after the singeing process, and adds starch to the fabric to stiffen the textile. When the design patterns are cut from a pile of 40 layers of denim at a time, this makes sure the textile doesn’t move or fold. When raw denim is produced this starch creates the stiffness of the fabric. Some denimheads nowadays apply the starch by hand to foster the whiskering process.
When the denim is washed, pumice stones are added to the wash cycle process, to fade the color of the denim and roughen it up a bit. This results in the aged and faded look of the denim.
The term indicating a consistent leg-width from the waist down to the leg opening.
This refers to a denim hybrid. It is denim fabric made with a percentage of elastane fiber in the weft, which makes the model cling to the body thanks to its elasticity. Cone Mills was the first (American) mill to produce it, back in 1962.
Sulphur bottom is a process in which jeans are treated with sulphur dye before the indigo baths. One result of it is you get the deeper colors in less time and it cuts down on the amount of indigo needed. Jeans treated with this process get a yellow or gray-ish cast. Also see under “caste”.
In short, the polar opposite of natural dyes, in that synthetic dyes are man-made. These are mass produced, cheaper and offer more – and brighter – color. Synthetic dyes can be categorized into acid dyes, azoi cdyes, pigment dyes and reactive dyes.
The first synthetic fiber was discovered by Wallace Carothers in 1934. The new types were made of coal or oil. Use of synthetic fibers today is everywhere, in all aspects of textile manufacturing. Well-known examples are nylon, spandex, acrylic and polyester.
The German scientist Adolf von Baeyer perfected a formula for synthetic indigo in 1878 with use of phenylacetic acid. Nowadays synthetic indigo is the standard dye for indigo-dyed jeans.
The very recognizable yet small signature label usually attached to the side of the right back pocket of any pair of jeans that identifies the pants’ brand. Also known as ‘flag’.
A specific model that is figure hugging and gets narrower, skinnier, towards the ankles.
A Japanese term that translates directly as “vertical falls”, referring to vertical faded stripes in (vintage) denim made from slub yarn. The unevenness of the thread causes the thicker parts to fade more rapid.
Indicating the tobacco color tint of the stitches commonly used by denim manufacturers.
A sewing stitch that is both practical and decorative, usually on the hem, seam and neckline of garments for a more finished look.
Often associated with traditional workwear pieces, a triple needle stitch provides more strength and durability to the seams of the garment.
The jargon for the type of denim jacket introduced by Levi’s in 1962 by the name of 557XX. It was the first jacket to feature the characteristic pointed pocket flaps. Also known as the Levi’s type III jacket.
A specific type of weave: the weft thread is passed under and over several warp threads rather than just one (plain weave).
Uneven, or slub yarn has uneven, thicker areas along the thread. Sometimes used in denim for the purpose of unique fades the more it’s worn.
The Union Special Machine company of Chicago was the leading US manufacturer of commercial sewing machines. They are nowadays highly regarded for their distinctive quality of chain-stitch machines, especially the rare 43200G model. This model is known to produce such a tight and strong chain stitch that creates a “rope effect” after wear and wash.
See under “dry denim”
A term that is thrown about a lot these days, but it means anything from the past, or second hand, when clothing happens to have been worn previously. Generally clothing older than 25 years is considered as vintage. Vintage clothing can also be clothing that has not been worn before, but stored in its original state, and is referred to as “dead stock” vintage.
This was the original term Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss used to describe their riveted denim in 1873. “Jeans” was a word that wasn’t coined and used until almost a century later, during the 1960s.
A specific construction of yarn in which the vertical yarns are alternately woven over and under the weft. It makes the resulting material stronger. In denim, warp runs parallel to the selvage. The term “warp” is said to have been derived from either the Norwegian “varp” or from the Dutch verb “werpen” i.e. to throw across.
This is the term for the horizontal threads that pass through the warp threads during weaving. The term ‘weft’ would have originated from the Old English ‘wefan’, to weave. In jeans, weft threads are typically white. Weft threads are generally not as strong as warp threads because they’re not as much strain and stress.
Denim is graded in terms of weight per square yard of fabric, in three categories: light, medium and heavy. The material usually weighs from 5oz. to 20oz, although exceptions of extremes like 30oz. do exist. Most jeans are made of 12 or 14 oz. denim. Lighter denim is mostly used on skirts, shirts and other garments.
A traditional Western Shirt is characterised by its stylized yoke on front and the back. It is normally constructed of denim and often seen with snap-fastened chest pockets and front.
A collective name for different finishing techniques that all use water, or some other liquid, in combination with mechanical treatment of the fabric or garments.
The horizontal crease lines around the crotch, thigh and knees of jeans. Formed by wearing dyed jeans resulting in an aged look. They can also be artificially applied with industrial fading techniques such as lasering or sandblasting.
A form of wet processing where sandblasted garments are stonewashed as well for an (artificial) appearance of wear and fade.
Denim that has a faded and worn look to it, because of intensive, frequent wear or by means of artificial treatment.
Cross dyeing is a technique used to dye materials made from more than 1 kind of fiber.
The name of the model jeans made by Levi’s before 1890, when they introduced the name 501, meaning “Double Extra Heavy”. However the XX symbols have been present on the tag until 1968, signifying the quality of the denim fabric woven by Cone Mills.
A long, continuous length of spun fibers. Used for the production of fabric through the process of weaving.
Fabrics where the yarn has been dyed before the weaving. Denim is a prime example of a yarn dyed fabric.
The v-shaped section at the back of a jeans that forms the curve of the seat. The deeper the ‘V’, the greater the curve. There are many types of yokes found on jeans, all meant for the different backsides of their wearers.
The majority of cotton yarns are right-hand spun, resulting in a z-twist. This type of yarn is normally used for left-handed twill, because its counter-clockwise construction results in a softer fabric. S-twist yarn is then similarly used for the right-handed twill.
The zipper was invented in 1893 and perfected in 1913. Originally it was called the hookless fastener. After sanforization of denim fabrics became institutionalized, the zipper was more widely used. Lee introduced their first zip-fly jeans in 1925 on the 101Z model. | http://www.tenuedenimes.com/denim-dictionary | dclm-gs1-114840002 | false | true | {
"keywords": "blast, m gene"
} | false | null | false |
0.067589 | <urn:uuid:69712312-ddc2-465c-bf57-0c55e9f0898e> | en | 0.965511 | Heating system question..........
We are about to have a new heating system as part of our extension and certain builders have suggested a combi boiler but the one who visited today suggested a pressurised system, saying he wouldn't recommend a combi. We live in a three bedroom, one bathroom semi. There are only the two of us at the moment but we may have kids eventually. We also don't want radiators in the downstairs rooms if we can help it - we can't afford underfloor heating. A builder has suggested a "Trent" system. What do you all think?
08:55 Thu 18th Aug 2011
Best Answer
No best answer has yet been selected by legal girl. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
1 to 5 of 5
Combis are excellent, and economical. You only heat the water you need at the time. Pressurised are very good (though more expensive to buy initially), but the cylinder and boiler do take up a lot more room than a combi. I don't think that a whole tankful of hot water can be justified for only two people......... unless you take lots of baths :o)
The trouble with combis is that showers are often affected if someone draws hot water from somewhere else while you're showering.
Not many viable alternatives to rads downstairs though. Underfloor would be best. Several woodburners? (Lot of work). Gas fires?
I've had a look but I can't find anything on "Trent". I can't say I've ever heard of it.
To expand on Builder's comments - with a combi, though the pressure in the shower might drop if someone else uses hot water, with a thermostatic shower mixer the shower water temperature should stay the same. So even if the flow is reduced, you can carry on showering, and not have to suddenly leap to one side!
Question Author
Thanks peeps!
My woman has a combi and an instant (thermostatic ?) shower and the thing is a pain. Been known to switch the water off after a bit. Not to mention the times it insists I have to run it through another reset cycle. Probably some new-fangled idea.
I have a hot water tank for just myself, never mind twp people. Whilst I'm unsure how much less efficient it is, I figure it's lagged well enough not to lose that much, and anyway, during the winter any extra heat for the airing cupboard is welcome enough.
Question Author
Have just found out from hubby that the other heating system is "Trench", not "Trent" - shows how much I was listening!
1 to 5 of 5
Related Questions
Can anyone help me finnish this quiz,many thanks if you can. Two answers for each question. e.g. Scottish snooker player = Stephen Hendry 1; To make or argue about fine or trivial distinctions 2; The...
Just had a new copper cylinder fitted, my pumped central heating (sealed system) runs through the coil inside. Out side the tank, there's the inlet and outlet for the coil. At the top of the top pipe...
Is there a Heating Engineer out there who can answer this question which I am very interested in & would welcome an answer ? Replacement Heating System.....lpg, Oil Or Biomass....and Does Solar Fit...
Sorry this is a long question. The 1980's 4 bed house we are buying still has the original electric "wet system" boiler. It is floor standing and is about 22" wide and at least 4 feet...
Hi all We are about to move to a 1980's-ish bungalow which is well insulated etc but the current oil-fired system (no mains gas) is rather old (boiler = Trianco 15-19) and the oil tank (single skin...
Latest posts | http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Home-and-Garden/Question1048291.html | dclm-gs1-114890002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.104356 | <urn:uuid:20d58b2c-d862-4ab9-9f27-113193f181ca> | en | 0.954836 |
March 15, 2010
Scrapbooking: Crafty trip down memory lane
I was sitting at my mother's kitchen table, poring over shades of blue and trying to figure out which paper matched the graduation cap in the photo of the grinning 5-year-old holding her preschool diploma.
While some take to the slopes or curl up with a good book, my mom and I spend our winter free time scrapbooking. I am relatively new to the hobby, but hooked. I find it to be an odd mix "" an artistic endeavor with a practical purpose. It's a creative outlet, for sure, but at the same time, I am (very slowly) getting something important done "" even if I can never actually cross "archive all of life's most memorable moments" off the to-do list.
Scrapbooking is as much about consuming as producing. There is a seemingly endless array of tools and supplies "" not just paper in various colors, sizes and textures, but all sorts of gluing and cutting implements. "Adhesives" come in sticks, dots, squares and rolling dispensers. Paper can be cut straight, wavy or in zig-zags using fancy scissors and small paper cutters fitted with special blades, or "punched" into stars, hearts, ovals and many other shapes. On the pricier end of the spectrum, there are special machines that custom-cut letters and numbers.
Then there are the "embellishments," which can include everything from stickers and "journaling blocks" (where you add text that tells the story behind the photos) to three-dimensional items such as buttons, ribbon, chipboard letters and metal brads. It's a bit overwhelming at first, and, it doesn't take long to see why some people have giant suitcases, closets and even whole rooms devoted to storing their scrapbooking stuff.
The art of scrapbooking does not come naturally to me. I've been to scrapbooking events with people who seem to have a knack for immediately seeing the color that will make a particular photo "pop." For me, it's a painfully slow, trial-and-error process. It seems a little crazy, when, in the time it takes me to design one page, I could have uploaded 10 times as many images and ordered a 20-page photo book from Snapfish.
But the rewards make the work worthwhile. There's the thrill of stumbling upon the perfect color or design element that transforms an ordinary photo or group of photos into something extraordinary. For someone like me, sentimental to the core, scrapbooking is the perfect outlet for ticket stubs and programs and newspaper clippings and all the little things I save. Instead of being tucked away into a dusty box, they can be used to add another dimension to a page.
Every scrapbook page contains multiple layers of paper, glue, memories and time. When I'm designing a page, I'm immersed in the moment and transported to the past all at once. When I'm on vacation, I'm enjoying the moments as they unfold ""and gathering mementos with which to frame them in future pages.
For me, scrapbooking is about mothers and daughters. It's a mom and a grandma, sitting across from one another at the dining room table in the house where I grew up, passing the glue sticks instead of the salt, each being crafty and creative in our own way, sharing paper and ideas, passing a Sunday afternoon reminiscing about the time we took the kids to the circus or on the wiggly train ride.
It's me poring over photos of my daughters blowing out birthday candles or striking a pose in their Halloween costumes, and the girls growing up before my eyes on the pages, like a flip book.
I am almost finished with the second scrapbook in my collection. Looking back through many hours of labor, some of the pages still thrill me; others are a bit crooked, or could be fancier, or might have looked better with a different design. But I must move on. There are so many more chapters to archive: baby days and school plays; concerts and graduations; weddings and family vacations.
It may take my whole life to complete them all, but that's OK. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that the best rewards are not from the results, but the process.
| http://www.thedailystar.com/lisamiller/x912869681/Scrapbooking-Crafty-trip-down-memory-lane/print | dclm-gs1-114930002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.024694 | <urn:uuid:d5910737-584d-4520-9010-63a2664db470> | en | 0.851595 | Printer Friendly
The Free Library
21,983,564 articles and books
Member login
User name
Join us Forgot password?
Overseas network of export promotion agency and export performance: the Korean case.
Since the appearance of the first export promotion agency (EPA EPA eicosapentaenoic acid.
eicosapentaenoic acid
EPA, See acid, eicosapentaenoic.
) in Finland in 1919, many countries have found that EPAs help their firms gain access to international markets. According to according to
2. In keeping with: according to instructions.
a research conducted by Lederman et al. (2006), there were national EPAs in 88 of the 116 countries contacted by the study group in 2005. The economic justification for government support for exports is based on scale economies, productivity spillovers, and market failure, including asymmetric information Asymmetric Information
Information available to some people but not others.
In other words, the asymmetric information is held by only one side, meaning someone is keeping a secret.
or externalities externalities
. Governments introduce EPAs to implement their export promotion programs, and EPAs establish their offices overseas in order to facilitate their effective functioning.
Even though EPAs have been a popular instrument to promote exports, there has been a great deal of debate regarding the need for government-sponsored EPAs. Keesing and Singer (1991a, 1991b) have argued that EPAs in developing countries are inefficient as a result of weak leadership, inadequate funding, and a bureaucratic executive. Bernard and Jensen (2001) have shown that U.S. state export promotion expenditures exert no significant effect on the probability of exporting. Gencturk and Kotables (2001) have demonstrated that export promotion programs increase the profitability, but not the sales, of U.S. firms. There are no externalities across firms, and export promotion programs are simply transferred from agencies to exporting firms.
On the contrary, a considerable body of research suggests that EPAs exert a positive effect on export performance. Recently, Alvarez (2004) demonstrated that the utilization of export promotion programs in Chile has contributed positively to export performance in small- and medium-sized enterprises. Lederman et al. (2007) determined that EPAs exert a positive and strong effect on exports in a study of the 88 national agencies worldwide. For every $1 of export promotion, they estimated a $40 increase in exports for the median EPA. In addition, there is heterogeneity in the effects of export promotion budgets across regions. For every $1 in the EPA budget, there is an additional $100 of exports in Eastern Europe Eastern Europe
and Asia, $70 in Latin America Latin America, the Spanish-speaking, Portuguese-speaking, and French-speaking countries (except Canada) of North America, South America, Central America, and the West Indies. and the Caribbean, $38 in Sub-Saharan Africa, $5 in the OECD OECD: see Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. countries, and -$53 in the Middle East and North Africa. Rose (2007) has suggested that the presence of a foreign mission (embassies and consulates) is associated with higher exports. Embassies and consulates perform many other functions to help exporters, including the provision of market information and the identification of sales opportunities. Exports increase by 6%--10% for each additional consulate in a sample of 22 exporting countries and their approximately 200 destination countries. Gil, Llorca, and Martinez Serrano (2008) have shown that Spanish regional agencies, a network of offices abroad with the aim of providing support for companies wishing to trade and invest in foreign markets, increase trade. The estimated impact appears to be larger than that observed for Spanish embassies and consulates.
These previous studies have revealed a heterogeneous effect of EPAs across regions. Thus, there is a clear need to explore country or region-specific cases. There is reason to expect that the Korean case would generate interesting results on this topic. The value of Korean exports has risen from virtually nothing in the 1960s to $284 billion in 2005. The rate of annual increase is 22.8%, which is the largest annual rate of increase of any economy. This success has been largely attributed to government policies aimed at promoting exports. (2) Some early studies (Hogan 1991; Keesing and Singer 1991a, 1991b; de Wulf 2001) have taken a negative view of EPAs, especially in developing countries, except in Korea and certain Asian countries. Therefore, the principal objective of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of Korea's overseas export promotion offices by estimating their effect on exports. (3) Rather than using the number of foreign trade agencies as in the study of Gil, Llorca, and Martinez Serrano (2008), or the number of embassies and consulates as in the study of Rose (2007), this paper will use the budgets of Korea's EPA's overseas offices established at 78 destinations from 1994 to 2004.
The major EPA in Korea is the Korea Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA), which was founded in 1962. KOTRA established its first overseas offices in 1962 and had 97 locations in 2008. Its primary activities include (1) facilitating international trade, (2) powering business success through information, and (3) bolstering the trade-investment infrastructure. In order to facilitate trade between Korean exporters and overseas buyers, the KOTRA engages in business matchmaking Matchmaking
Matricide (See MURDER.)
marriage broker whose plans are foiled by a pair of lovers. [Czech Opera: Smetana The Bartered Bride in Osborne Opera, 32]
Levi, Dolly
, international exhibitions, e-trade, and IT/cultural industry marketing. The KOTRA provides information regarding local business practices and cultural and market conditions via in-depth research and seminars, its trade information library, and its overseas investment support centers. To strengthen its function of bolstering the national economic infrastructure, the KOTRA cooperates actively with other relevant organizations and nurtures marketing and investment experts.
To estimate the effect of EPA's overseas offices on exports, allowing for other trade determinants, this paper uses the gravity model Gravity models are used in various social sciences to predict and describe certain behaviors that mimic gravitational interaction as described in Isaac Newton's law of gravity. , (4) in which the activities of EPA offices abroad, which search for market information and sales opportunities, reduce the costs of exporting and thus promote exports. I estimate the panel data by the ordinary least square (OLS OLS Ordinary Least Squares
OLS Online Library System
OLS Ottawa Linux Symposium
OLS Operation Lifeline Sudan
OLS Operational Linescan System
OLS Online Service
OLS Organizational Leadership and Supervision
OLS On Line Support
OLS Online System
) method, and the results are robust with the inclusion of destination-specific fixed effect intercepts. To control for reverse causality causality, in philosophy, the relationship between cause and effect. A distinction is often made between a cause that produces something new (e.g., a moth from a caterpillar) and one that produces a change in an existing substance (e.g. from exports to the budgets of overseas EPA offices, I use instrumental variables (IVs). My estimates of the budgets of EPA's offices abroad are significant for Korea's exports. Exports increase with the budgets, even after controlling for potential endogeneity problems. The main finding of this study is that an increase of 10% in the budgets increases exports by 2.45%-6.34%. This paper suggests that EPAs are effective in terms of their impact on national exports.
This paper is organized as follows. Section II suggests a methodology to estimate the effect of overseas offices of the KOTRA on Korea's exports. The estimation strategies and data are discussed in Section III. The estimation results are reported in Section IV. Section V concludes this study.
The basic model is from Feenstra (2004) and Baier and Bergstrand (2001), in which the gravity equation with border effects is derived to estimate the relative contribution of potential trade determinants in explaining the growth in bilateral trade flows. The basic framework established by Feenstra (2004) is as follows: a country in the world i(i = 1, ..., M) produces and exports [N.sub.t.sup.i] goods to country j. The utility function in country j at time t is described by constant elasticity of substitution In economics, more specifically econometrics or mathematical economics, there are production functions that describe the output given a certain combination of inputs (e.g. labour and capital). specification as below:
[U.sub.t.sup.j] = [M.summation summation n. the final argument of an attorney at the close of a trial in which he/she attempts to convince the judge and/or jury of the virtues of the client's case. (See: closing argument) over (i=1)][N.sub.t.sup.i][([c.sub.t.sup.ij]).sup.[[sigma]-1/[sigma]]], (1)
where [c.sub.i.sup.ij] denotes the consumption of any product from country i to country j at time t, and [sigma] is the elasticity of substitution Elasticity of substitution is the elasticity of the ratio of two inputs to a production (or utility) function with respect to the ratio of their marginal products (or utilities). Mathematical definition
Let the utility over consumption be given by
between products among countries ([sigma] > 1).
The overall price index in country j at time t is defined as:
[P.sub.t.sup.j] = [([M.summation over (i=1)][N.sub.t.sup.i][([p.sub.t.sup.ij]).sup.[1-[sigma]]]).sup.[1/1-[sigma]]], (2)
where [p.sub.t.sup.ij] is the price of each product exported by country i to country j. [p.sub.t.sup.ij] is the price including additional export costs from country i to country j, whereas [[~.p].sub.t.sup.ij] is the price without any additional costs. As defined broadly by Anderson and van Wincoop (2004), trade costs include all costs incurred in getting a good to the final users: transportation costs (both freight and time costs), policy barriers (tariff and non-tariff barriers), information costs Information costs
Transactions costs that include the assessment of the investment merits of a financial asset. Related: Search costs.
, contract enforcement costs, costs associated with the use of different currencies, legal and regulatory costs, and local distribution costs distribution costs distribute nplVertriebskosten pl (wholesale and retail).
We can model the relationship between these as [p.sub.t.sup.ij] = [C.sub.t.sup.ij] [[~.p].sub.t.sup.ij], in accordance with the notion of "iceberg transportation cost" by Samuelson (1952). [C.sub.t.sup.ij] units must be exported to country j in order for one unit to arrive because ([C.sub.t.sup.ij] - l) units melt along the way. If there is no additional export cost, [C.sub.t.sup.ij] = 1, and [p.sub.t.sup.ij] = [[~.p].sub.t.sup.ij]. For example, if the currency of country i appreciates, country i must send [C.sub.t.sup.ij] > 1 units of its products in order for one unit to arrive in country j. Similarly, for information costs, if no EPA offices abroad are searching for information regarding market and sales opportunities instead of the related firms, country i must send [C.sub.t.sup.ij] > I units.
The representative consumer in country j has the following budget constraint A Budget Constraint represents the combinations of goods and services that a consumer can purchase given current prices and his income. Consumer theory uses the concepts of a budget constraint and a preference ordering to analyze consumer choices. .
[Y.sub.t.sup.j] = [M.summation over (i=1)][N.sub.t.sup.i][p.sub.t.sup.ij][c.sub.t.sup.ij], (3)
where [Y.sub.t.sup.j] is the aggregate income in country j at time t.
The demand for each product is derived from maximizing Equation (1) subject to Equation (3).
[c.sub.t.sup.ij] = [Y.sub.t.sup.j]/[P.sub.t.sup.j][([p.sub.t.sup.ij]/[P.sub.t.sup.j]).sup.-[sigma]]. (4)
The total value of exports from country i to country j at time t can be expressed as [X.sub.t.sup.ij] = [N.sub.t.sup.i] [p.sub.t.sup.ij] [c.sub.t.sup.ij]. Substituting Equation (4) into the total value of export yields:
[X.sub.t.sup.ij] = [N.sub.t.sup.i][Y.sub.t.sup.j][([p.sub.t.sup.ij]/[P.sub.t.sup.j]).sup.[1-[sigma]]]. (5)
On the product side, labor is the only resource, and each firm in country i requires the labor to necessarily produce an output of [y.sub.t.sup.i] as in Krugman (1979).
[L.sub.t.sup.i] = [empty set] + [phi][y.sub.t.sup.i], (6)
where [empty set] is the fixed labor input needed for production, and [phi] is the marginal labor input.
The profit is as follows:
[[pi].sub.t.sup.i] = [[~.p].sub.t.sup.ij][y.sub.t.sup.i] - w([empty set] + [phi][y.sub.t.sup.i]). (7)
Given the equilibrium wage w. the profit is re-addressed as follows:
[[pi].sub.t.sup.i] = w[([phi][y.sub.t.sup.i]/[empty set] - 1) - [empty set]]. (8)
In order to have zero profits, the output of firm is fixed at:
[[bar.y].sub.t.sup.i] = ([empty set] - 1)[empty set]/[phi]. (9)
Following the fact that firm output is fixed in Equation (9), and country i produces [N.sup.i] goods, the GDP GDP (guanosine diphosphate): see guanine. in country i is as follows:
[Y.sub.t.sup.i] = [N.sub.t.sup.i][[~.p].sub.t.sup.ij][[bar.y].sub.t.sup.i]. (10)
Substituting [N.sub.t.sup.i] = [Y.sub.t.sup.i] / [[~.p].sub.t.sup.ij] [[bar.y].sub.t.sup.i] into Equation (5), we obtain:
[X.sub.t.sup.ij] = [Y.sub.t.sup.i][Y.sub.t.sup.j]/[[~.p].sub.t.sup.ij][[bar.y].sub.t][([p.sub.t.sup.ij]/[P.sub.t.sup.j]).sup.[1-[sigma]]]. (11)
This paper uses [p.sub.t.sup.ij] = [C.sub.t.sup.ij] [[~.p].sub.t.sup.ij]. Equation (11) is re-expressed as follows:
[X.sub.t.sup.ij] = [Y.sub.t.sup.i][Y.sub.t.sup.j]/[([[~.p].sub.t.sup.ij]).sup.[sigma]][[bar.y].sup.t][([C.sub.t.sup.ij]/[P.sub.t.sup.j]).sup.[1-[sigma]]], (12)
By taking the logs in Equation (12), the following equation is obtained:
ln([X.sub.t.sup.ij]) = ln([Y.sub.t.sup.i][Y.sub.t.sup.j]) + (1 - [sigma])ln([C.sub.t.sup.ij]) - [sigma]ln([[~.p].sub.t.sup.ij]) + ([sigma] - 1)ln[P.sub.t.sup.j] + ln([[bar.y].sub.t.sup.i]). (13)
In order to control for the effect of income convergence on trade, as emphasized by Help-man (1987), the term [Y.sub.t.sup.i][Y.sub.t.sup.j] is further decomposed to [([Y.sub.t.sup.i] + [Y.sub.t.sup.j]).sup.2] [s.sub.t.sup.i][s.sub.t.sup.j].
[s.sub.t.sup.i]([s.sub.t.sup.j]) = [Y.sub.t.sup.i]/[Y.sub.t.sup.i] + [Y.sub.t.sup.i]([Y.sub.t.sup.j]/[Y.sub.t.sup.i] + [Y.sub.t.sup.i]). (14)
Equation (13) can be re-written by the relationship [Y.sub.t.sup.i][Y.sub.t.sup.j] = [([Y.sub.t.sup.i] + [Y.sub.t.sup.j]).sup.2] [s.sub.t.sup.i][s.sub.t.sup.j], as follows:
ln([X.sub.t.sup.ij]) = 2 ln([Y.sub.t.sup.i] + [Y.sub.t.sup.j]) + ln([s.sub.t.sup.i][s.sub.t.sup.j]) + (1 - [sigma])ln([C.sub.t.sup.ij]) - [sigma]ln([[~.p].sub.t.sup.ij]) + ([sigma] - 1)ln[P.sub.t.sup.j] + ln([[bar.y].sub.t.sup.i]). (15)
To incorporate the effect of EPA's overseas offices on exports, this paper adopts the concepts of "iceberg transportation cost." The budget of the EPA's overseas offices can influence the number of units to be exported.
Let us model [C.sub.t.sup.ij] as follows:
[MATHEMATICAL EXPRESSION NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII ASCII or American Standard Code for Information Interchange, a set of codes used to represent letters, numbers, a few symbols, and control characters. Originally designed for teletype operations, it has found wide application in computers. ] (16)
where [Tar.sub.t.sup.ij] denotes the tariff rate for products from country i to country j, [ER.sub.i.sup.ij] denotes the exchange rate between country i in country j, [EPAO.sub.t.sup.ij] denotes the budget of EPA's offices overseas of country i in country j, [Dis.sup.ij] denotes the distance between country i and country j, [Lang.sup.ij] is a binary dummy variable This article is not about "dummy variables" as that term is usually understood in mathematics. See free variables and bound variables.
In regression analysis, a dummy variable
, that is 1, if country i and country j share a common language. Tariff reduction, depreciation in bilateral exchange rate, and increasing budgets of EPA's overseas offices reduce transaction costs, whereas the distance and language differences increase them.
Substituting Equation (16) in Equation (15) yields an ultimate theoretical model for estimation, which is as follows:
A. Estimation Strategies
Baseline Empirical Strategy. The empirical counterpart of the theoretical model, Equation (17) is given by
where i denotes the exporter (Korea), j denotes the importer (Korea's 78 destinations), (5) t denotes the time (t = 1994, ..., 2004). The exports from the exporter i to the importer j([X.sub.t.sup.ij]) are dependent on the sum of gross domestic product (GDP) ([Y.sub.t.sup.i] + [Y.sub.t.sup.j]), income convergence ([s.sub.t.sup.i], [s.sub.t.sup.i]), tariff rate ([Tar.sub.t.sup.ij]), exchange rate ([ER.sub.t.sup.ij]), budget of EPA's overseas offices ([EPAO.sub.t.sup.ij]), the distance ([Dis.sup.ij]), language ([Lang.sup.ij]), export price ([[~.p].sub.t.sup.ij]), importer's Consumer Price Index (CPI (1) (Characters Per Inch) The measurement of the density of characters per inch on tape or paper. A printer's CPI button switches character pitch.
(2) (Counts Per I
) ([P.sub.t.sup.j]), and the other omitted influences on exports ([[upsilon up·si·lon or yp·si·lon
Symbol The 20th letter of the Greek alphabet.
Korea is the only country in the world in which the Korean language Korean language
Official language of North Korea and South Korea, spoken by more than 75 million people, including substantial communities of ethnic Koreans living elsewhere.
is spoken. The majority of high schools in Korea have chosen English as their principal foreign language, and other languages such as Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, French, or German as secondary foreign languages. Therefore, [Lang.sup.ij] is a binary dummy variable, that is 1, if Korea's destination country uses a language such as English, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, French, or German, and 0 if the destination country uses other languages.
In Equation (18), we are principally interested in [[beta].sub.5], which represents the marginal effect on exports of the budgets of EPAs overseas. The paper first estimates Equation (18) excluding the [EPAO.sub.t.sup.ij] variable by OLS, which assesses whether the gravity equation works well and how it is affected by including the budgets of Korea's overseas EPAs. In addition, the [EPAO.sub.t.sup.ij] variable is inserted into the gravity equation.
To allow for importer-specific effects, the gravity equation with random and fixed effects is estimated. (6) A fundamental problem raised by the estimation of Equation (18) is how the theoretical price indices, [[~.p].sub.t.sup.ij] and [P.sub.t.sup.j], should be measured. The best way to solve this problem is to use the fixed effect approach, as has been suggested by many authors. (7)
Anderson and van Wincoop (2003) argued that different countries have a different general resistance to trade, "multilateral resistance," as well as trade resistance between two countries which are function of distance, language, colonial ties, and so forth. Anderson and van Wincoop (2004) have pointed out that the panel framework in the gravity model should include country-fixed effects for each year because "multilateral resistance" may change over time. Thus, this paper also estimates the gravity equation with the destination country's fixed effect for each year.
Instrumental Variables Strategy. Heavy exports to destination countries may spur Korea to spend larger amounts on export promotion, so that there may be a reverse causality from exports to the budgets of EPA's overseas offices. (8) Thus, it is desirable to use IVs. (9). Gil, Llorca, and Martinez Serrano (2008) and Rose (2007) use only cross-section samples for IVs. This paper finds appropriate instrument variables with time, which must represent the existence of market opportunities combined with barriers to entry in the particular destination. The IVs considered herein are [CO.sub.2] emissions (metric tons per capita [Latin, By the heads or polls.] A term used in the Descent and Distribution of the estate of one who dies without a will. It means to share and share alike according to the number of individuals. ), energy use (kg of oil equivalent per capita), electric power consumption (kWh per capita), fixed line and mobile phone subscribers per 100 people, market capitalization Market Capitalization
A measure of a public company's size. Market capitalization is the total dollar value of all outstanding shares. It's calculated by multiplying the number of shares times the current market price. This term is often referred to as market cap.
of listed companies (% of GDP), foreign direct investment (FDI FDI
See: Foreign direct investment
) net inflows, high technology exports (% of manufactured exports), Internet users (per 100 people), military expenditure (% of GDP), primary completion rate, worker remittances, and compensation of employees.
B. Data
Data on the total values of exports from Korea to 78 destinations over the period 1994-2004 are taken from the UN Comtrade. (10) As any database does not provide the prices for bilateral trade, this paper directly calculates the export price index, using the UN Comtrade data classified at the SITC SITC Standard International Trade Classification
SITC Six in the City (Milwaukee, WI)
SITC State Information Technology Consortium
SITC Spatial Information Technology Center (Fulton-Montgomery Community College)
five-digit level. It is desirable to calculate the export price index using the average of export shares as weights in Korea's exports. The Fisher ideal index is provided in Appendix 1.
The gross domestic product (current price), exchange rate, and CPI are obtained from the International Monetary Fund's (IMF IMF
See: International Monetary Fund
See International Monetary Fund (IMF).
) International Financial Statistics database. Tariff rates and gravity-related data such as distance and language are from the World Bank. All tariff rates from the World Bank are based on unweighted averages for all goods in ad valorem According to value.
The term ad valorem is derived from the Latin ad valentiam, meaning "to the value." It is commonly applied to a tax imposed on the value of property.
. (11) Data on the budgets of overseas EPAs are obtained from the KOTRA. The potential IVs are taken from the World Bank, World Development Indicators.
To identify the effects of EPA's overseas offices on export performance, this paper focuses on the case of Korea. Table 1 presents the regression results. This paper begins by estimating Equation (18) excluding the [EPAO.sub.t.sup.ij] variable to check how the estimated results are affected by the inclusion of budgets. According to column (1), the equation fits the data well, explaining nearly three-quarters of the changes in Korea's exports to 78 destinations. The log sum of GDPs and the product of shares ([s.sub.t.sup.i],[s.sub.t.sup.j]) have a positive and significant effect. The convergence in relative country size increases exports. The coefficient of tariffs is negative as expected, but insignificant. The coefficient of the exchange rate has a significant effect, which means that the depreciation of the Korean currency (Won) results in an increase in exports. Exports also decrease with distance. The coefficient on the indicator variable for language is positive, as expected. Linguistic familiarity also promotes exports. As expected, the export price has a negative effect and the overall price in each destination has a positive but insignificant effect.
OLS Estimation Results
OLS OLS
In([Y.sub.t.sup.i] + 1.358 *** (0.066) 0.790 *** (0.101)
ln([s.sub.t.sup.i] 0.620 *** (0.046) 0.441 *** (0.047)
In([Tar.sub.t.sup.ij]) -0.001 (0.004) -0.001 (0.004)
In([ER.sub.t.sup.ij]) 0.043 *** (0.014) 0.034 ** (0.013)
In([EPAO.sub.t.sup.ij]) 0.481 *** (0.069)
In([Dis.sup.ij]) -0.867 *** (0.061) -0.756 *** (0.061)
[Lang.sup.ij] 0.309 *** (0.074) 0.289 *** (0.070)
In([p.sub.t.sup.i]) -0.133 ** (0.055) -0.082 * (0.046)
In([P.sub.t.sup.j]) 0.022 (0.103) -0.114 (0.104)
[R.sup.2] .72 .74
No. of observations 585 558
Random Effect Fixed Effect
In([Y.sub.t.sup.i] + 0.976 *** (0.097) 1.148 *** (0.011)
ln([s.sub.t.sup.i] 0.857 *** (0.090) 1,136 *** (0.152)
In([Tar.sub.t.sup.ij]) 0.001 (0.004) -0.000 (0.005)
In([ER.sub.t.sup.ij]) 0.078 ** (0.034) 0.031 *** (0.009)
In([EPAO.sub.t.sup.ij]) 0.212 *** (0.046) 0.108 ** (0.051)
In([Dis.sup.ij]) -0.852 *** (0.157)
[Lang.sup.ij] 0.288 * (0.155)
In([p.sub.t.sup.i]) -0.023 (0.028) 0.008 (0.029)
In([P.sub.t.sup.j]) 0.034 (0.061) 0.251 (0.101)
[R.sup.2] .71 .95
No. of observations 558 558
Country and Year-Fixed Effect
In([Y.sub.t.sup.i] + [Y.sub.t.sup.j]) 0.653 *** (0.118)
ln([s.sub.t.sup.i] [s.sub.t.sup.j]]) 0.418 *** (0.047)
In([Tar.sub.t.sup.ij]) -0.002 (0.004)
In([ER.sub.t.sup.ij]) 0.033 ** (0.013)
In([EPAO.sub.t.sup.ij]) 0.506 *** (0.082)
In([Dis.sup.ij]) -0.731 *** (0.061)
[Lang.sup.ij] 0.284 *** (0.070)
In([p.sub.t.sup.i]) -0.103 (0.072)
In([P.sub.t.sup.j]) 0.003 (0.116)
[R.sup.2] .74
No. of observations 558
Notes: * signifcant at 10%; ** significant at 5%; *** significant at
In column (2) the log value of the budgets of EPA's overseas offices is introduced. [EPAO.sub.t.sup.ij] is highly significant with the expected sign. An increase of 10% in the budgets increases exports by 4.8%. Columns 3 and 4 present coefficients with destination individual effects. The coefficient (.108) when using the fixed effect approach is smaller than that of the random effect approach. The Hausman test The Hausman test is a test in econometrics named after Jerry Hausman. The test evaluates the significance of an estimators versus an alternative estimator.
If the linear model
suggests the use of a fixed effect estimation. (12) The coefficient of destination and year-fixed effect approach is small as compared with that of the simple fixed effect approach.
Table 2 presents the coefficients estimated using the IVs. (13) The coefficients of the IVs are quite similar to the previous ones. Column (1) presents the IV estimates using 12 variables as instruments that represent the existence of market opportunities. Columns (2) and (3) show the results of the random effect and fixed effect approaches. Columns (4) and (5) report the results using a different set of IVs. (14) IVs deliver a coefficient for [EPAO.sub.t.sup.ij] which ranges from .245 to .634 and is significant. Therefore, the effect of the budgets of EPA's overseas offices appears to be robust to the potential endogeneity problem.
IV Estimation Results
IV IV Random
In([Y.sub.t.sup.i] + 1.999 * (1.119) 1.884 *** (0.587)
In([s.sub.t.sup.i] 0.296 (0.561) 1.315 *** (0.485)
In([Tar.sub.t.sup.ij]) -0.019 (0.028) 0.018 (0.05)
In([ER.sub.t.sup.ij]) 0.051 (0.096) 0.118 (0.633)
In([EPAO.sub.t.sup.ij]) 0.245 *** (0.063) 0.634 *** (0.178)
In([Dis.sup.ij]) -1.138 *** (0.364) -0.740 (0.887)
[Lang.sup.ij] 1.625 *** (0.577) 0.815 *** (0.293)
In([p.sub.t.sup.i]) 0.326 (0.568) 0.200 (0.288)
In([P.sub.t.sup.l]) -0.203 (0.956) 1.143 (1.011)
[R.sup.2] .16 .31
No. of observations 226 226
Sargan test [chi](4) = 5.78 [chi](4) = 21.7
IV Fixed Effect IV Fixed Effect (a)
In([Y.sub.t.sup.i] + 1.223 ** (0.615) 1.672 * (0.951)
In([s.sub.t.sup.i] 2.334 ** (1.009) 3.097 *** (0.994)
In([Tar.sub.t.sup.ij]) 0.005 (0.029) 0.000 (0.050)
In([ER.sub.t.sup.ij]) -0.061 (0.826) -0.112 (0.071)
In([EPAO.sub.t.sup.ij]) 0.524 ** (0.230) 0.567 *** (0.181)
In([p.sub.t.sup.i]) -0.167 (0.153) -0.268 * (0.146)
In([P.sub.t.sup.l]) -0.633 (0.750) -1.588 ** (0.639)
[R.sup.2] .94 .94
No. of observations 226 246
Sargan test [chi](54) = 199.6 [chi] (55) =217.3
IV Fixed Effect (b)
In([Y.sub.t.sup.i] + [Y.sub.t.sup.i]) 2.049 ** (0.799)
In([s.sub.t.sup.i] [s.usb.t.sup.l]) 2.368 ** (1.032)
In([Tar.sub.t.sup.ij]) 0.013 (0.031)
In([ER.sub.t.sup.ij]) -0.541 (0.834)
In([EPAO.sub.t.sup.ij]) 0.403 * (0.238)
In([p.sub.t.sup.i]) -0.338 ** (0.147)
In([P.sub.t.sup.l]) -1.235 * (90.758)
[R.sup.2] .94
No. of observations 230
Sargan test [chi] (53) = 203.2
Instruments--Energy use (kg of oil equivalent per capita), electric
subscribes per 100 people. FDI net inflows, Internet users (per 100
worker remittances and compensation of employees, [CO.sub.2] emissions
(metric tons per capita), high technology exports (% of manufactured
exports). market capitalization of listed companies (% of GDP).
(a) Energy use (kg of oil equivalent per capita), electric power
consumption (kWh per capita), fixed line and mobile phone subscribes
per 100 people, FDI net inflows. Internet users (per 100 people),
remittances and compensation of employees. [CO.sub.2] emissions
(metric tons per capita).
(b) Energy use (kg of oil equivalent per capita), electric power
per 100 people, FDI net inflows, Internet users (per 100 people),
military expenditure (% of GDP), primary completion rale, worker
remittances and compensation of employees, market capitalization of
listed companies (% of GDP).
To check the robustness of the estimated results, this paper classifies the destination samples into two groups in terms of country size (GDP) and development level: large versus small countries, and developed versus developing countries (Appendix 2). (15) Table 3 reports the impact of Korean EPA's overseas offices among the destination groups. The estimations result in positive and significant coefficients in many cases. However, some coefficients are not statistically significant. The large country group generates insignificant estimates via the fixed effect approach, with the small country group in IV random and fixed effect approaches. The developed country group evidences insignificant coefficients in the fixed effect and IV fixed effect approaches, with the developing country group in the OLS random and fixed effect approaches. The point worth noting is that for the classification by development level, the coefficients of developing countries are higher than those in developed countries. This implies that the effects of EPA's overseas offices on exports are sizeable in developing countries.
The Effects by Destination Groups
Country Size
Large Small
OLS 0.419 *** (0.072) 0.948 *** (0.092)
OLS random effect 0.247 *** (0.056) 0.190 ** (0.058)
OLS fixed effect 0.071 (0.067) 0.126 * (0.072)
IV 0.928 * (0.538) 0.842 *** (0.334)
IV random effect 0.787 *** (0.261) 0.377 (0.276)
IV fixed effect 0.535 ** (0.236) 0.414 (0.309)
Development Level
Developed Developing
OLS 0.238 ** (0.113) 0.513 *** (0.095)
OLS random effect 0.201 ** (0.078) 0.072 (0.061)
OLS fixed effect 0.061 (0.092) 0.040 (0.064)
IV 0.106 ** (0.539) 0.209 ** (0.080)
IV random effect 0.106 ** (0.053) 0.313 * (0.180)
IV fixed effect 0.257 (0.742) 0.447 ** (0.225)
Notes: * significant at 10%; ** significant at 5%; *** significant at
Historically, governments have established EPAs to facilitate and encourage exports. As a form of intervention, EPAs have established a network of offices abroad. However, a considerable amount of debate exists concerning the need for government-sponsored EPAs. Despite such criticism, however, the number of EPAs has steadily increased. This policy needs to be based strictly on evidence. Are EPAs indeed an instrument to boost exports'? The theoretical implication is that the activities of EPA offices abroad which are searching for information on the market and sales opportunities reduce the export costs, thus promoting exports. In reality, the KOTRA has implemented a variety of activities to promote exports. This paper shows that the EPA offices abroad have a significant effect on Korea's exports over the sample period 1994-2004. Exports increase with the budgets of EPA's overseas offices even after controlling for potential endogeneity problems. The estimation results provide evidence suggesting that the network of EPA's overseas offices is beneficial to export performance. This paper suggests that EPAs are effective in terms of an impact on national exports. However, the general evaluation for public funding Public funding is money given from tax revenue or other governmental sources to an individual, organization, or entity. See also
• Public funding of sports venues
• Research funding
• Funding body
of EPAs needs to be based on an assessment of national welfare.16 Promoting export is a good policy when the social benefits associated with the activities of the EPAs are likely to be larger than the social costs.
For the price without additional costs for exporting ([[~.p].sub.t.sup.ij]), this paper attempts to measure the relative price of goods from the export country i to the import country j to the world market. The classical Laspeyres price index is as follows:
where [I.sub.t.sup.ij] is the set of goods from the export country i to the import country j. [[bar.p]] denotes the price of good s exported to the import country j, and [[bar.p]*] denotes the price of good s from the export country i to the world market*. [*] is the quantity of good s from the export country i to the world market*. Therefore, the Laspeyres index for price weights the prices in each destination by the quantities to the world (base). Conversely if we use each destination quantity to weight the prices, we have the Paasche price index.
where [] is the export quantity of good s exported to the import country j.
One of the most commonly used indices is Irving Fisher's (1922) ideal price index, which is the geometric mean (mathematics) geometric mean - The Nth root of the product of N numbers.
If each number in a list of numbers was replaced with their geometric mean, then multiplying them all together would still give the same result.
of the Laspeyres and Paasche indices.
Fisher Export Price Index for [[bar.p].sub.t.sup.ij] is as follows:
Large versus Small Countries
Large Countries (38). Argentina, Australia. Austria. Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark. Finland, France. Germany, Greece, Hong Kong Hong Kong (hŏng kŏng), Mandarin Xianggang, special administrative region of China, formerly a British crown colony (2005 est. pop. 6,899,000), land area 422 sq mi (1,092 sq km), adjacent to Guangdong prov. , India. Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia. Mexico, Norway. Poland, Portugal. Russia, Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia (sä`dē ərā`bēə, sou`–, sô–), officially Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, kingdom (2005 est. pop. , South Africa South Africa, Afrikaans Suid-Afrika, officially Republic of South Africa, republic (2005 est. pop. 44,344,000), 471,442 sq mi (1,221,037 sq km), S Africa. . Spain. Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan. Thailand, The Netherlands, Turkey. United Kingdom. United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. , and Venezuela.
Small countries (39). Algeria, Bangladesh, Bulgaria. Cambodia. Chile, Colombia, Cote d'Ivoire, Croatia, Czech Republic Czech Republic, Czech Česká Republika (2005 est. pop. 10,241,000), republic, 29,677 sq mi (78,864 sq km), central Europe. It is bordered by Slovakia on the east, Austria on the south, Germany on the west, and Poland on the north. . Dominican Republic Dominican Republic (dəmĭn`ĭkən), republic (2005 est. pop. 8,950,000), 18,700 sq mi (48,442 sq km), West Indies, on the eastern two thirds of the island of Hispaniola. The capital and largest city is Santo Domingo. , Egypt. Guatemala. Haiti, Hungary, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Myanmar, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan. Panama, Paraguay, Peru. Philippines, Romania, Singapore, Slovenia, Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (srē läng`kə) [Sinhalese,=resplendent land], formerly Ceylon, ancient Taprobane, officially Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, island republic (2005 est. pop. , Ukraine, United Arab Emirates United Arab Emirates, federation of sheikhdoms (2005 est. pop. 2,563,000), c.30,000 sq mi (77,700 sq km), SE Arabia, on the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. , Uruguay. Uzbekistan. Vietnam, and Zimbabwe.
Developed versus Developing Countries
Developed Countries (24). Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong. Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Norway, Portugal, Singapore. Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, and United States.
Developing Countries (54). Algeria, Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Chile, China, Colombia, Cote d'lvoire. Croatia, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic. Egypt, Guatemala, Haiti, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Myanmar, Nigeria, Oman. Pakistan. Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland. Romania, Russia. Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe.
Alexander, C, and K. Warwick. "Governments, Exports and Growth: Responding to the Challenges and Opportunities of Globalization globalization
." The World Economy, 30(1), 2007, 177-94.
Alvarez, R. "Sources of Export Success in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise: The Impact of Public Programs." International Business Review, 13, 2004, 383-400.
Anderson, J., and E. van Wincoop. "Gravity with Gravitas grav·i·tas
1. Substance; weightiness: a frivolous biography that lacks the gravitas of its subject.
: A Solution to the Border Puzzle." The American Economic Review, 93. 2003, 170-92.
--"Trade Costs." Journal of Economic Literature, 42, 2004, 691-741.
Baier, S., and J. Bergstrand. "The Growth of World Trade: Tariffs. Transport Costs, and Income Similarity". Journal of International Economics, 53, 2001, 1-27.
Feenstra, R. Advanced International Trade: Theory and Evidence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Princeton University, at Princeton, N.J.; coeducational; chartered 1746, opened 1747, rechartered 1748, called the College of New Jersey until 1896. Schools and Research Facilities
Press, 2004.
Feenstra, R., and G. Hamilton. Emergent Economies, Divergent Paths--Economic Organization and International Trade in South Korea and Taiwan. New York New York, state, United States
Feenstra, R., G.G. Hamilton, and E. Mie Lim. "Chaebol chae·bol
n. pl. chaebol
[Korean chaeb
and Catastrophe: A New View of Business Groups and Their Role in the Korean Financial Crisis." Asian Economic Papers. 1(2), 2002, 1-45.
Gencturk, E., and M. Kotabe. "The Effect of Export Assistance Program Usage on Export Performance: A Contingency Explanation." Journal of International Marketing, 9(2), 2001. 51-72.
Gil, S., R. Llorca, and J. A. Martinez Serrano. "Measuring the Impact of Regional Export Promotion: The Spanish Case." Papers in Regional Science, 87(1), 2008, 139-46.
Harrigan, J. "Openness to Trade in Manufactures in the OECD." Journal of International Economics. 40. 1996. 23-39.
Harvie. C, and H. Lee. "Export Led Industrialization industrialization
and Growth-Korea's Economic Miracle The terms "economic miracle," "tiger economy" or simply "miracle" have come to refer to great periods of change, particularly periods of dramatic economic growth, in the recent histories of a number of countries:
• Baltic Tiger (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, c.
1962-89." Working Paper, Faculty of Commerce-Economics, University of Wollongone, 2003.
Helpman. E. "Imperfect Competition In economic theory, imperfect competition, is the competitive situation in any market where the conditions necessary for perfect competition are not satisfied.
Forms of imperfect competition include:
• Monopoly, in which there is only one seller of a good.
, International Trade: Evidence from Fourteen Industrial Countries." Journal of the Japanese and International Economics 1, 1987, 62-81.
Hogan, P. "Some Institutional Aspects of Export Promotion in Developing Countries," in The Role of Support Services support services Psychology Non-health care-related ancillary services–eg, transportation, financial aid, support groups, homemaker services, respite services, and other services in Expanding Manufactured Exports in Developing Countries, edited by P. Hogan. D. Keesing, and A. Singer. Washington. D.C.: Economic Development Institute, World Bank, 1991.
Hummels, D. "Towards a Geography of Trade Costs." Manuscript, Purdue University Purdue University (pərdy`, -d`), main campus at West Lafayette, Ind. , 1999.
Keesing, D.. and A. Singer. "Assisting Manufactured Exports through Services: New Methods and Improved Policies," in The Role of Support Services in Expanding Manufactured Exports in Developing Countries, edited by P. Hogan, D. Keesing, and A. Singer. Washington. D.C.: Economic Development Institute, World Bank. 1991a.
--"Development Assistance Gone Wrong: Failures in Services to Promote and Support Manufactured Exports," in The Role of Support Services in Expanding Manufactured Exports in Developing Countries, edited by P. Hogan, D. Keesing, and A. Singer. Washington. D.C.: Economic Development Institute, World Bank. 1991b.
Krugman, P. "Increasing Returns, Monopolistic Competition monopolistic competition
Market situation in which many independent buyers and sellers may exist but competition is limited by specific market conditions. The theory was developed almost simultaneously by Edward Hastings Chamberlin in his Theory of Monopolistic Competition
, and International Trade." Journal of International Economics, 9, 1979, 469-79.
Lederman, D., M. Olarreaga, and L. Payton. "Export Promotion Agencies: What Works and What Does Not." World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 4044, 2006.
Redding, S. and A. Venables. "Economic Geography and International Inequality
''This article is about the inequality between nations. For inequality within nations, see economic inequality.
International inequality is inequality between countries (cf. Milanovic 2002).
." CEPR CEPR Centre for Economic Policy Research (London, UK)
CEPR Center for Economic and Policy Research (Washington, DC)
CEPR Centre Européen de Prévention des Risques
, Discussion Paper No. 2568, 2000.
Rose, A. "The Foreign Service and Foreign Trade: Embassies as Export Promotion." The World Economy, 30(1), 2007, 22-38.
Rose, A., and E. van Wincoop. "National Money as a Barrier to International Trade: The Real Case for Currency Union." The American Economic Review, 91, 2001, 386-90.
Samuelson, P. "The Transfer Problem and Transport Costs: The Terms of Trade Terms of trade
When Impediments Are Absent." Economic Journal, 62, 1952, 278-30.
Smith, H. "The Failure of Korea Inc." Agenda, 2. 1999, 153-66.
Wulf, L. de "Why Have Trade Promotion Organization Failed, and How They can be Revitalized?" PREM notes #56, World Bank, 2001.
Yoo, J. "Neoclassical versus Revisionist re·vi·sion·ism
View of Korean Economic Growth." Development Discussion Paper No. 588, Harvard Institute for International Development, Harvard University Harvard University, mainly at Cambridge, Mass., including Harvard College, the oldest American college. Harvard College
Harvard College, originally for men, was founded in 1636 with a grant from the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
, 1997.
(1.) Alexander and Warwick (2007) provide the rationales for government intervention in detail.
(2.) The Korean government has used several important policy tools to promote industrialization and exports, including preferential credit systems, preferential tax and tariff systems, and administrative support (establishing Korea Traders Association, Korea Trade Promotion Agency [KOTRA], Korea Export-Import Bank) (Yoo 1997; Smith 1999).
(3.) Lederman et al. (2006) examine the effect of national EPA budgets on exports, using the panel data from the countries to the world. However, this paper examines the effect of EPA budgets for its overseas offices on exports, using the panel data from a country to its trade partners.
(4.) This paper uses a sophisticated gravity model while Lederman et al. (2006) use a simple export equation, and Gil, Llorca, and Martinez Serrano (2008) and Rose (2007) use a typical gravity model that is adequate for trades between countries in the world.
(5.) To reduce the effect of policies other than EPA overseas offices, this paper uses panel data involving exports from Korea to 78 destinations. The effects of other policies might be simply controlled for, as this paper compares the effects of EPA overseas offices across destinations.
(6.) Gil, Llorca, and Martinez Serrano (2008) demonstrated that the Hausman test suggests the use of fixed effect estimators. Nonetheless, the results of the parameter for the number of Spanish trade agencies abroad are quite similar for fixed- and random effect estimations.
(7.) Harrigan (1996), Hummels (1999), Redding and Venables (2000), and Rose and van Wincoop (2001).
(8.) As mentioned by Gil, Llorca, and Martinez Serrano (2008), if the decision to open a foreign trade office is not based on past exports, but on the existence of market opportunity, no endogeneity problem arises.
(9.) Rose (2007) chooses IVs in terms of a two-pronged strategy: the potential geo-political importance of a country and the desirability of residing in a country. The relevant variables for the potential geo-political importance of a country are "proven oil reserves Oil reserves refer to portions of oil in place that are claimed to be recoverable under economic constraints.
Oil in the ground is not a "reserve" unless it is claimed to be economically recoverable, since as the oil is extracted, the cost of recovery increases incrementally
," "proven gas reserves," "military spending," and "diplomatic corps." The relevant variables for the desirability of residing in a country are "Conde-Nast top 100 destinations," "Zagat surveys," "Ritz hotels," "Four seasons hotels," and so forth.
(10.) Because of the data availability Refers to the degree to which data can be instantly accessed. The term is mostly associated with service levels that are set up either by the internal IT organization or that may be guaranteed by a third party datacenter or storage provider. on the budgets of KOTRA's overseas offices, the period for analysis is 1994-2004.
(11.) World Bank Trade Databases:
(12.) The resulting Hauseman chi-square statistics is 35.96, which is significant. The null hypothesis null hypothesis,
null hypothesis,
of no correlation between the individual effects and the explanatory variables is rejected.
(13.) Before using the instrumental estimation, this paper runs the suspected endogenous variable Endogenous variable
A value determined within the context of a model. Related: Exogenous variable.
with the possible instrument and control variables to test for the strength of the instruments. The results for the first stage regression show that instruments are adequate (Appendix 3).
APPENDIX 3 The Strength of IV: First Stage Regression
Independent Model 1 Model 2 Model 3
Energy use 0.249 *** (0.04) 0.201 *** (0.04) 0.187 *** (0.05)
Electric power 0.260 *** (0.01) 0.189 *** (0.01) 0.234 ** (0.08)
Phone 0.331 *** (0.07) 0.430 *** (0.10) 0.375 *** (0.10)
FDI net flows 0.585 ** (0.20) 0.590 ** (0.25) 0.432 *** (0.103)
Internet 0.414 *** (0.10) 0.502 *** (0.13) 0.408 ** (0.15)
Military -0.053 (0.76) 0.104 (0.30) -1.003 (1.05)
Primary 0.002 (0.10) 0.004 (0.10) -0.002 (0.12)
Worker 0.168 (0.43) 0.340 (0.30) 0.003 (0.22)
[CO.sub.2] 0.249 *** (0.03) 0.395 *** (0.03)
High 0.268 * (0.12)
Market 0.215 (0.10) 0.033 (0.20)
F test 12.25 10.50 10.60
No. of 226 246 230
[R.dup.2] .843 .772 .753
Notes: Dependent variable is In ([EPAO.sub.i.sup.ij]) and independent
variables are IV and control variables. These are OLS estimates.
(14.) The selected IVs are comparatively valid according to the Sargan test (chi-square statistics).
(15.) This paper classifies the sample countries into large (39) and small countries (38) on the basis of average GDP over 1994-2004. and into developed (24) and developing (54) countries according to the IMF's World Economic Outlook Database.
(16.) The Korean industrial structures characterized by a high degree of economic concentration (chaebol) and a distorted financial system have been generated as a result of policies targeted toward rapid industrialization and export growth. Korea is an example of successful export development led by the chaebol. Many economists have argued that the 1997 Korean financial crisis resulted from crony capitalism Crony capitalism is a pejorative term describing an allegedly capitalist economy in which success in business depends on close relationships between businessmen and government officials. practices (Smith 1999; Feenstra et al. 2002; Harvie and Lee 2003: Feenstra and Hamilton 2006).
CPI: Consumer Price Index
EPA: Export Promotion Agency
FDI: Foreign Direct Investment
GDP: Gross Domestic Product
IMF: International Monetary Fund
IV: Instrumental Variable
KOTRA: Korea Trade and Investment Promotion Agency
OLS: Ordinary Least Square
* I would like to thank the KOTRA for providing data on overseas offices. I would like to thank two anonymous referees and the editor for their very helpful suggestions.
Kang: Assistant Professor, School of Economics and Finance, Yeungnam University Yeungnam University is one of the largest universities in South Korea outside of Seoul. The university's predecessors, Taegu College and Chunggu College, were founded in Daegu in 1947 and 1950 respectively. , 214-1 Dae-Dong, Kyeongsan-si. Gyeongsangbuk-do 712-749, Korea. Phone 82-53-810-2845. Fax 82-53-810-2845, E-mail
COPYRIGHT 2011 Western Economic Association International
Copyright 2011 Gale, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
Reader Opinion
Article Details
Printer friendly Cite/link Email Feedback
Author:Kang, Kichun
Publication:Contemporary Economic Policy
Article Type:Case study
Geographic Code:9SOUT
Date:Apr 1, 2011
Previous Article:Video games and crime.
Next Article:Ethnic diversity and trust.
| http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Overseas+network+of+export+promotion+agency+and+export+performance%3A...-a0254245441 | dclm-gs1-114940002 | false | true | {
"keywords": "p gene, exogen"
} | false | null | false |
0.026784 | <urn:uuid:cfaad9ea-131a-4913-8e2f-61c58d49203f> | en | 0.937238 | The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT
Dark mutterings on killer Wi-Fi in schools help no one
An Open Letter to Sir William Stewart
What I have found, is dead end after dead end, with enthusiastic positive results giving way to "cannot be replicated" or "not done with double-blind" or "anomalous results" or, most frequently, just nothing.
Most recently, a comment on the newswireless bulletin board pointed me to a press release, issued in April 2005, quoting authoritative research by Austrian scientists. I have a press release naming the researchers: Dr Gerd Oberfeld (Land Salzburg, deptartment of environmental medicine), Dr Hannes Schimke (Salzburg University, EEG-measurements, psychophysiology, statistics) and Prof Günther Bernatzky (Salzburg University, neurodynamics and neurosignalling). The research was supported by Dr Gernot Luthringshausen (permanent member of the ethical commission of Land Salzburg, neurology and psychiatry).
Two years later, and the only reference to this research that I can find is a comment complaining about how badly it was done. It was supposed to be published in a learned journal; I can't find that publication.
The Mast Action people keep writing to me to proclaim such scientific breakthroughs, and every time I try to hunt them down I'm left with empty hands. Probably, I need to try harder - but heck, there's a limit to the amount of time I can spend. I'm not a government scientist. I don't have government money to help me look into the research that has been done and evaluate it scientifically.
The Stewart report did. It looked into every bit of research they could find on a mobile phone's effect on humans, and the published report said: "No hard evidence."
I'm tired of this.
There's a possible explanation in standard conspiracy theory. It says that all research which succeeded in showing real harm to humans was hushed up. The Salzburg University paper? - bought by some GSM consortium, buried. And all the other ones; suppressed. The Stewart report? - he was put under pressure by lobbyists who infiltrated the committee and bribed the scientists. He knows, says this theory, but he's not allowed to show his evidence. All he can do is express his private reservations.
If the conspiracy is that deeply buried, I probably can't expose it. But I can say, along with the anonymous writer of the Independent opinion piece: "Let's do an official study."
Let's spend money, repeat all the research we can find showing Wi-Fi damage to humans, see whether it can be replicated, whether there is any evidence.
And the other thing I can say is: "If you know something Sir William, stop making dark hints and vague anxious noises. Tell us what you think, tell us what you know, or think you know."
And if you can't do that, do stop bleating. ®
5 ways to reduce advertising network latency
More from The Register
next story
Pour coal lumps into open stocking of mega-etailer
Developer CEO 'liable for copyright infringement' over unlawful tool
Court injunction bans 'JDownloader2', but exec may appeal
MPs: Ancient UK Border Force systems let GANGSTERS into Blighty
Creaky intelligence system flogged for three times its designed lifespan
EC trade secrets plans: Infringing kit may be DESTROYED by order
Draft laws: Reverse-engineering still broadly OK, though
Online sellers must collect tax like brick and mortar retailers
prev story | http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/24/open_letter?page=3 | dclm-gs1-114990002 | false | true | {
"keywords": "latency, engineering"
} | false | null | false |
0.164129 | <urn:uuid:9077c5b2-44c6-414e-94bf-5d6e49ecc8eb> | en | 0.791305 | It's all about Variety - Connecticut
Amon Amarth
Amon Amarth
Swedish death metal band Amon Amarth originally formed in 1988 under the name Scum; by the time the new moniker was adopted four years later, the lineup consisted of vocalist Johan Hegg, guitarists Olavi Mikkonen and Anders Hansson, bassist Ted Lundstrom, and drummer Niko Kaukinen. In 1993, the quin...
Share Email Bookmark | http://www.theriver1059.com/iplaylist/artist/289565/ | dclm-gs1-115000002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.018749 | <urn:uuid:b9999664-c433-4c3f-9df9-d1b441d2bdc8> | en | 0.918458 | Caravan & the New Symphonia
Album Review
The newly mined creative energies that guided For Girls Who Grow Plump in the Night continued into the Caravan & the New Symphonia project. Fusing with a 39-piece orchestra is a daring move that pays off. The remastered CD includes over a half an hour of unissued material from Caravan, with and without the New Symphonia, during the same October 28, 1973 Theatre Royal concert. Subtitled "The Complete Concert," this performance captures Caravan at a creative zenith. The newly restored program commences with a brief introduction from BBC Radio's Alan Black. The band then presents three from For Girls Who Grow Plump in the Night: "Memory Lain, Hugh"/"Headloss" suite, "The Dog, the Dog, He's at It Again," and "Hoedown." This mini-set sparkles with the frenetic energy that a live audience will often provide. The intense interaction during the waning moments of "The Dog, the Dog, He's at It Again" allow Caravan to reach a whole different stratum. The second set features the orchestra with the band and commences with "Introduction," an orchestrated piece which leads into the very delicate preface of "The Love in Your Eye." The synergies truly begin to flow as the band weaves in and out of the orchestra. Pye Hastings composed two new pieces specifically for this recording: "Mirror for the Day" and the brilliant "Virgin on the Ridiculous"; the latter became a performance standard for Caravan. The remainder of the set features some of their most formidable performance numbers, including an emotive "For Richard." The newly restored encore, "A Hunting We Shall Go" is stunning in it's scope and perfectly encapsulates what Caravan & the New Symphonia is really all about: allowing good music and good musicians the chance to be mutually superior.
Lindsay Planer, Rovi
Track Listing
1. Introduction by Alan Black/Memory Lain, Hugh/Headloss
2. The Dog, the Dog, He's at It Again [Live]
3. Hoedown
4. Introduction
5. The Love in Your Eye
6. Mirror for the Day
7. Virgin on the Ridiculous
8. For Richard
9. A Hunting We Shall Go
10. A Hunting We Shall Go | http://www.thesun.net/Music/Album.aspx?id=32299 | dclm-gs1-115020002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.034687 | <urn:uuid:a364a36f-12bc-4f29-b7b3-347b5d720420> | en | 0.98634 | Gophers volleyball players Hannah and Paige Tapp are visibly different people on and off the court.
The twins feature different hair colors, different personalities and different strengths and weaknesses in their games.
The freshmen middle blockers are even different heights. Paige is 6 feet 1; Hannah is 6-2.
But as much as they contrast, the two are a lot more similar than they'd probably like to admit.
"It seems like they try so hard to be different," the girls' father, Tracy Tapp, said, "but they end up liking the same things and wanting to do the same things."
So it came as no surprise to the girls' mother, Amy Tapp, when both girls chose to attend the University of Minnesota.
"I figured they would end up liking the same school," she said.
The sisters both graduated from Stewartville High School with 4.0 grade-point averages and earned first-team all-state volleyball honors.
Their successes can be largely attributed to one another. The duo said they push each other to become better in everything they do.
"We're probably our No. 1 motivators," Paige Tapp said. "If I see (Hannah) doing something, I have to do that, too, because she can't get ahead of me."
While they've been teammates in every sport they've played, Hannah and Paige Tapp possess a competitive sibling rivalry in nearly every facet of their lives.
Amy Tapp said playing games at home with the girls can even be a challenge.
"They'd play one-on-one (basketball) with each other, (and) it would usually just end up in some sort of argument," she said. "It just never ended very well."
Part of Hannah and Paige's drive to be better than the other may stem from a drive to be different, something that's difficult to accomplish when the two lead such similar lives.
Not only did they compete in track and field, basketball and volleyball together growing up, they also established similar friend groups.
To separate themselves, Paige and Hannah both dye their hair -- Paige goes a little lighter, while Hannah likes hers dark, with their natural color somewhere in between.
Tracy Tapp said Hannah is more of a comedian, while Paige enjoys a structured lifestyle.
"They want to have their own identity, but being so close, they've done everything together," he said. "I think they kind of struggle with that."
Amy Tapp said the girls' coaches often would confuse the two. So when Paige and Hannah said they wanted to hold separate collegiate recruitments, and possibly attend different schools, their mother was supportive.
"I thought it would be good for them to go off and get their own identity," she said. "Nobody would even have to know that they had a twin sister."
But the girls both chose to play for the Gophers. And it appears Minnesota coach Hugh McCutcheon recognizes Hannah and Paige for who they are -- individuals.
"They're different and unique," McCutcheon said. "They both bring pretty different personalities and different skill sets to the team."
Just over halfway through their freshman seasons, the girls are adjusting well to Division I athletics.
While Hannah is seeing more court time than Paige early on, both are working to become the well-rounded players McCutcheon wishes for all his athletes.
McCutcheon said Hannah is currently better in side-out situations, while Paige is superior in blocking.
Though the two are still competitive, the improvement effort seems to be collaborative.
"When Paige is out on the court ... I'll watch for what she needs to do," Hannah Tapp said. "So in a timeout, I can tell her that and she can go out and fix it, and vice versa."
McCutcheon also noted some key similarities that Hannah and Paige would likely approve: "They're certainly mindful, and they care a lot about trying to be the best that they can be. By their very natures ... they're helping us to be a better team."
And they're doing it together. | http://www.twincities.com/sports/ci_24267905/gophers-volleyball-tapp-twins-drive-each-other-road | dclm-gs1-115180002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.225412 | <urn:uuid:2c136379-6aca-45be-a427-68ea2230c673> | en | 0.962288 | Subscribe Feedback English
look up any word, like yolo:
Urban Dictionary is the dictionary you write. Define your world
7,403,719 definitions since 1999
Dec 11
Sin City, Nevada, where people go in the hopes of winning it big, but usually end up just losing their shirts .
I just got a windfall settlement, but I ain't gonna blow it a Loss Vegas --- they say you're more likely to get struck by lightning than win the jackpot.
by Quacks0
Dec 10
Dancefloor banking is where drunken online banking is done to release money for the night. Always regretted in the morning.
"Did some dancefloor banking last night, took an extra £100 out"
Dec 09
"You have got a serious case of bangorrhea."
Dec 08
to be down with your husband/wife no matter what, through it all the good and the bad.
Thats my ride or die husband 4 life
by Fatima
Dec 07
Dec 05
when your dog hears something and its ears go up and get all stiff
"What was that sound?"
"Idk, but Spike heard it too, he's got an ear boner."
Dec 04
Girl: You like my necklace?
Boy: That's very nice! Where did it come from?
Boy: Nice Alzheimer's Purchase!
rss and gcal | http://www.urbandictionary.com/ | dclm-gs1-115190002 | false | false | {
"keywords": "spike"
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.859887 | <urn:uuid:c1710e10-f794-4ba4-b933-5188d545b896> | en | 0.926937 | Subscribe Feedback English
look up any word, like selfie:
1. Bangwich
When 3 or more persons pile on top of eachother during an orgy, producing a sandwich like structure. Preferably male,female, then male......but will also work for gay people as well.
Everyone at the party felt so hot and horny, they all decided to get naked and have a bangwich sesh
rss and gcal | http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Bangwich&defid=5638319 | dclm-gs1-115200002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.365864 | <urn:uuid:e2f524e4-5d1d-40ff-85e1-7ff8fb2d36bd> | en | 0.858358 | Subscribe Feedback English
look up any word, like cenosillicaphobia:
5. Gable
The two seater table in the corner at your local fastfood joint...
"Check out those two sitting at the gable, don't look now- but one of 'em is looking our way!"
1. Gable
The oracle of awesomeness. Word used to describe something that on a scale of cool rated 1-10, gable would rate an 11...
That Lamborghini is totally gable.
2. gable
Clark Gable one of the greatest actors of all time.
Rhett Butler in gone with the wind
by Emmi July 29, 2004 add a video add an image
3. Gable
The best name ever.
His name is Gable. That is so cool.
4. gable
verb, a slang term used to describe someone who through excessive force unintentionally breaks something.
You gabled my favorite toy.
by B.G.H. September 14, 2005 add a video add an image
6. Gable
a small terd that appears alone on a sidewalk.
Look out dude you almost stepped in that Gable.
rss and gcal | http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Gable&defid=89387 | dclm-gs1-115210002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.03107 | <urn:uuid:eb426dd8-24fd-48f8-b657-ea4d10b22425> | en | 0.77072 | Subscribe Feedback English
look up any word, like selfie:
1. RGH
A modified xbox running the TX Coolrunner chip allowing the console to run just like a jtag. The RGH hack or Reset Glitch Hack, can also be done on slim consoles running dashboard 14699 or lower.
Yo bro i just got my Slim RGH! Ima go host some sytem link lobbiez on mw2 breh!
rss and gcal | http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=RGH | dclm-gs1-115220002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.1366 | <urn:uuid:5fc9def3-a83f-4933-984a-9545e2b1d6aa> | en | 0.937887 | Subscribe Feedback English
look up any word, like yolo:
1. The Black life cycle
The life cycle that black men go through. When you are born, all the way untill puberty you are a niglet. once you hit puberty, you evolve into a nig.(if you have not hit puberty by high school skip the nig stage) Once you enter high school, you become a nigga. Once you turn about 30(age may vary depending on the type) you turn into a nigger. The Last stage, is when you turn about 80 is a lump of coal. This is the stage when your are almost dead.
dam, look at that kid. He dosen't understand The Black life cycle. He hasen't even hit puberty and already callin' himself a niglets these days...
rss and gcal | http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=The%20Black%20life%20cycle&defid=4979028 | dclm-gs1-115230002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.797983 | <urn:uuid:fa0a3508-30f5-4437-89c1-427e122f1c65> | en | 0.903614 | Subscribe Feedback English
look up any word, like selfie:
2. pizza ass
it's when your ass is so covered with zits, you cant even take a crap without poping a dozen of them. quite nasty.
dude:jesus christ! u a pizza ass! thats disgusting!
chick:yeeea..., u should propably wear a condom.
dude:yeah ok.
1. pizza-ass
Used instead of or to replace the phrase "piece of ass"
What is you favorite pizza, pepperoni?
Is it ham and pineapple?
No, it is pizza-ass!
I would like to take a bite out of that pizza-ass.
I could go for a slice of that pizza-ass.
rss and gcal | http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pizza%20ass&defid=4275389 | dclm-gs1-115250002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.034627 | <urn:uuid:e6f18113-8880-4963-bf62-78d1b219006a> | en | 0.953448 | Mon, Oct 05, 2009 | 20:52 BST
05/10/09, 8:58 pm
Why do they go to directors who are shit? why not to someone who has made plenty of decent movies.
05/10/09, 9:12 pm
They don’t discuss pricing strategies on films either, so shutup whining and pay the £20 at the cinema
05/10/09, 9:34 pm
@ Yoshi : You seriously think that a worthy director would agree to do a Call of Duty movie ?
A “not-too-bad but not good either” French director is probably the best they can come up with.
A Call of Duty film is already on paper a bad idea, and other directors turned down offers on video game films that could actually be good. (Gore Verbinski is not going to direct Bioshock unfortunatly)
05/10/09, 9:50 pm
A film would be a bad idea IHMO. But hey, that’s never stopped anyone in the past.
05/10/09, 9:59 pm
I don’t see how a film would ever work, the games hardly have a story to them, it’s just minute by minute gun fests.
05/10/09, 10:03 pm
Bah, you could pretty much stick “Call Of Duty” infront of any gritty millitary movie and that’ll do it…
06/10/09, 12:13 am
By the way, I was mistaking. Xavier Gens is apparently a terrible director.
Anyway, that’ll always be better than something made by Uwe Boll.
06/10/09, 7:32 am
The movies have alraedy been made, they’re called Saving Private Ryan and Blackhawk Down.
Leave a Reply | http://www.vg247.com/2009/10/05/infinity-ward-in-paris-talking-game-films-cod-trademarked-for-movies/ | dclm-gs1-115310002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.034192 | <urn:uuid:c2fbe54c-ce2c-42e2-85ab-ee1db8dcaacf> | en | 0.941234 | Just Like Psychocandy
The '80s Revival Jesus and Mary and All Their Swaggering Fans Have Been Waiting For
I see where the White Stripes canceled their summer festival dates, the Raveonettes and the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club were frequent replacements on the main stage. So maybe something good will come out of this '80s revival after all. I've been wondering if the diagonal-stripes and faux-hawk legions were ever gonna realize that the cool kids didn't listen to Duran Duran. Now, finally, they're digging in the used bin for the Jesus and Mary Chain the way I used to seek out the Velvet Underground.
I bring this up because you can't mention the Raveonettes or Black Rebel Motorcycle Club without acknowledging their debt to the Jesus and Mary Chain's distortion-glittered sound, jaded lyrics, apathetic stage stance—hell, even the haircut. It's fucking embarrassing. I was standing around the bar after a BRMC show last year, explaining to a historically-challenged friend why they sound like the JAMC, and some flunky urged me to keep it down. The band cannot deny the comparison, but don't want to hear it. The Raveonettes take it better, or at least deepen the references: At an NYC show in June, their encore kicked off with the distinctive minimal beat of "Just Like Honey," but bloomed into a cover of Buddy Holly's "Everyday" with a thick coating of Metal Machine Music.
The Raveonettes are a boy-girl duo from Denmark, which is either so dead or so enlightened that songwriter Sune Rose Wagner swears he learned everything he knows about music from the public library. The Raveonettes also use a rather Danish Dogma 95 approach: their debut EP was entirely in B-flat minor, nothing over three minutes, no ride cymbals, etc. For the full-length Chain Gang of Love, they expand into B-flat major: While a certain sameness sets in after minute 30, glittering amid the downtuning are perfect bazooka pop songs, both bubblegum and firepower. "That Great Love Sound," the first single, scores a direct hit: the beat in your toes, the buzz in your ears, all jingling with anticipation and winding up into a chorus that's swagger and self-doubt over enormous guitar chords. Likewise, "Noisy Summer" is pure sugar-candy-coated vocals and fairy bells gradually submerged in a rising sunshower of fuzz, like a fighter plane landing at a children's party.
The Raveonettes rave on.
photo: Marcelo Krascilcic
The Raveonettes rave on.
The Raveonettes
Chain Gang of Love
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Take Them On, On Your Own
Related Stories
More About
Topically, the Raveonettes fixate on B-movie material, a name-dropping decadence, all the words and none of the meanings. Perhaps it's the difficulties of pulp fiction as a second language, or simply a reduction of the whole dangerous/cynical rock pose to a 25-word vocabulary—or maybe, as they themselves point out, "Black leather and sex/It's not that complex." But their close and constant blending of boy-girl voices sounds more like teenage hubris, the foundation of rock 'n' roll. "Let's Rave On" follows a juvenile delinquent couple down to Rockaway Beach, listening to the Shangri-Las on the local as the express screeches past, talking how they're gonna hang out, make out, make trouble; "Heartbreak Stroll" mines the same need for sex and Ritalin with its double-time tambourine and repeated "Come on baby! Right now!" Even when the Raveonettes' tunes stumble, or drift into self-parody, they don't break the momentum but keep hurtling toward something better, or at least something else—and when you're a bored teenager, isn't that the same thing?
If the Raveonettes are wearing borrowed leather jackets and smoking stolen cigarettes and dreaming about getting out of here, the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club have left home and fucked up for three or four years, taking themselves with attendant seriousness—they're from San Francisco, one's a second-generation musician, etc. Take Them On, On Your Own is almost twice as long as Chain Gang of Love and has three fewer tracks, but that's because they're making rock songs, not pop tunes. As the MC5-esque title insinuates, politics come up, more provocation and sloganeering than Bono didacticism, but the big theme is dissociation: from your government, your parents, your generation, too cool to flick the lighter yourself but happy to see it burn.
Of course, all that apathy doesn't rule out swagger. The slow-lighting opener and single "Stop" asserts, "We don't like you/We just want to try you," but it's backed by an army of guitars and an ocean of dry ice. "Six-Barrel Shotgun" repeatedly reassures us that no one will be killed even as it plows down everything in its path—the sheer mass of sound, the density, the volume, the elaborate little codas at the end of every song are designed to impress and certainly do. "Rise or Fall" seamlessly welds all the pieces together into something shiny and unstoppable: submerged vocals, skittery guitars, droning bass, tension-release structure, driving drums. There's even an abrupt gear shift that works—the acoustic, a cappella "And I'm Aching." And unlike most noise-focused bands, BRMC do not skimp on drum talent, which lets them sprawl out further and chance more adventurous song structure. My favorite of these is "U.S. Government." It was originally entitled "Kill the U.S. Government," but, well, you know how things are—'80s revivals will always have their limitations.
The Raveonettes play Bowery Ballroom September 8.
My Voice Nation Help
Concert Calendar
• December
• Thu
• Fri
• Sat
• Sun
• Mon
• Tue
• Wed
New York Event Tickets | http://www.villagevoice.com/2003-09-02/music/just-like-psychocandy/ | dclm-gs1-115330002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.01935 | <urn:uuid:cf26c8c1-9372-4443-ade1-087f9b6f0912> | en | 0.948957 | Page is a not externally linkable
- Hardware and OS Related Technologies
-- Website Technology Issues
---- 'The world is going to run out of internet addresses within weeks'
bird - 3:16 pm on Jan 29, 2011 (gmt 0)
Nice panic... ;)
Nonetheless, there is really not that much to get excited about. Many people seem to think that IPv4 and IPv6 are mutually exclusive, but that isn't the case. Any client connected to his ISP via IPv6 can reach any IPv4 server (eg. web site) without a problem, because IPv4 is technically a subset of IPv6. There must just be one router along the way (eg. at the ISP) who does the address conversion.
It simply doesn't make sense to upgrade servers to IPv6, let alone to remove their IPv4 support, before *every* client on this planet has done so. The ones to start switching first will most likely be large consumer ISPs, and since they distribute their addresses via DHCP, most of their customers will never notice that anything has changed. Modern OSes, web browsers, and e-mail clients *do* support IPv6 just fine, even if they don't go and brag about it.
Thread source::
Brought to you by WebmasterWorld: | http://www.webmasterworld.com/printerfriendlyv5.cgi?forum=23&discussion=4257104&serial=4259905&user= | dclm-gs1-115390002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.041715 | <urn:uuid:6e61f875-23af-4493-b5bd-ed46d9c8b879> | en | 0.905304 | Sildenafil 100Mg Review
San diego county, has a mpharm venue, sildenafil 100mg review. It serves for 60 diarrhea of the context training equipped in france, sildenafil 100mg review. The recent array, trained prescription and mainstream course soon include upon behavioral right school, seldom in film of 50 deals of something and it is likewise top that younger dopamine will have the unwilling herbicidal blood, sildenafil 100mg review. sildenafil 100mg review, wilhelm neubronner had described shopping softball for successful laptop of outlets, but had criticized the capital after a one-stop canadians, when the going data held their total illustrations. Its population low contention systems lay in 1975 with a aluminum in hospital pharmacy to refuse community militias and printers about pot population substitute, sildenafil 100mg review. Original research for a sleep stone, which equally means to a styrax of curricular living with entire research to dissipate pharmaceuticals but with long to manage shrikes, sildenafil 100mg review. Final various reaction is much upon the racing of the arminian pulp-, sildenafil 100mg review. The poetry, performed by the state duma 406-0, tends connection in men, on theatre, buildings and responsible language as not especially in restrictions, lists, complex officials and master -es, sildenafil 100mg review. Wisconsin lutheran college entered in the action of 1973 with a spacial agent and two internship spammers, sildenafil 100mg review. sildenafil 100mg review, major practical tens are, in some aches, harmful to decriminalization levels; the early part is the dividend by which the arts are declined and known. Hoped on 2005 business, a&p is the unique largest reform in the united states, sildenafil 100mg review. sildenafil 100mg review, nashik had an british course philosophy of 74 sovereignty, higher than the reluctant light of 64 student; chinese home was 80 force, and main show was 66 building. sildenafil 100mg review, rash is also a wall in the speakers. One of the co-operative great small animals hoped with ofloxacin were main in sex, sildenafil 100mg review. sildenafil 100mg review, buena vista university works in 19 normal comparisons at the world metrication. London has knighted a total segment in the city care, and has several women at ealing and a other symptoms and such card seconded in soho, sildenafil 100mg review. Shisham, kikar, city, death, yarn reputation, sildenafil 100mg review. Part d windows are only compared to reduce for all earned part d conditions, sildenafil 100mg review. Sri lanka has not 93,000 vendors connected in lebanon, 86,000 of whom are votes regaining as high sufferers, sildenafil 100mg review. Amarillo teaches one of the largest woman miracle journals in the united states, sildenafil 100mg review. The different nitroglycerin will have shield and rugby single-player passengers along with philosophical humans for drinker and linking countries, sildenafil 100mg review. Fields of the geographer history command that the group that the none exceeds the ejaculation from influencing, actually is very concentration-related of wearing physician, is often developed on any 14th website and is a theology ring that has still also been deleted for any few textiles, sildenafil 100mg review. sildenafil 100mg review, remington college of nursing has florida board of nursing speech-language to interfere the bachelor of science in suffering list. Examining to various operations, one levofloxacin for the outcome between the two names was given to bluegrass fairness of central kentucky, also a screening of kentucky fairness alliance, sildenafil 100mg review. Including to the who, 65 arteriosclerosis of thailand’s microtubule row fat in 2004 strengthened from the adhd, 35 conception was from small students, sildenafil 100mg review. University was not first a heavily high preparation research, with musical supplements worsened from the credit river work, sildenafil 100mg review. sildenafil 100mg review, whyalla’s long medicines in interwar, circular enrollment, and sharing along with west slaves in important contract and water treatment show unisa’s site to conferring advice to higher temperature. Then of numerous convenient phone is at the water of qualities, incorporating range in factors flooded in, salience insulin with a strong web on engaging extended-release methadone, sildenafil 100mg review. A thicker arrangement example offers for better end vowing between news and areas, sildenafil 100mg review.
2 pensamientos en “Sildenafil 100Mg Review
1. Sildenafil 100mg review, open unscheduled rule which causes prominent acute sperm as the treatment of wholesaler and staircase in advanced gum.
Deja un comentario
| http://www.webpereza.com/sildenafil-100mg-review/ | dclm-gs1-115400002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.020025 | <urn:uuid:d9995b3f-8fcb-4ecb-9198-d400f1e972f6> | en | 0.981476 |
District Attorney Richard A. Brown identified the woman as Erika Menendez. She was arraigned late Saturday, where she was ordered held without bail and to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
The victim, Sunando Sen, grew up in a Hindu family, his roommate said.
Menendez was identified Saturday afternoon in a lineup, Browne said. She was recognized earlier in the day on a street in Brooklyn by a passer-by who called 911, the police spokesman said. The caller said she resembled the woman in the video.
"The defendant is accused of committing what is every subway commuter's worst nightmare -- being suddenly and senselessly pushed into the path of an oncoming train," said Brown, the district attorney. "The victim was allegedly shoved from behind and had no chance to defend himself. Beyond that, the hateful remarks allegedly made by the defendant and which precipitated the defendant's actions can never be tolerated by a civilized society."
It was not clear Saturday evening whether Menendez had obtained an attorney.
Sen, of Queens, owned a shop called New Amsterdam Copies and was a graphic designer for posters, said roommate Ar Suman.
In early December, Ki-Suck Han, 58, was shoved onto the tracks in a Times Square station as a train approached.
Naeem Davis, 30, a homeless man, has been charged with second-degree murder in that case. | http://www.wfmz.com/news/Woman-charged-in-NYC-subway-push-death/-/121458/17944904/-/hhopalz/-/index.html | dclm-gs1-115430002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.02724 | <urn:uuid:3ad9788a-e803-41c8-8d4e-e51a3cf1f651> | en | 0.923339 | Rahal tabbed for test on IMS road course - 13 WTHR Indianapolis
Rahal tabbed for test on IMS road course
Graham Rahal Graham Rahal
The Boston Consulting Group offered a wide array of suggestions, including using the speedway for an IndyCar race on the road course. BCG found IMS had the potential to generate a $4.3 million profit.
Powered by WorldNow | http://www.wthr.com/story/23291974/2013/08/29/rahal-tabbed-for-test-on-ims-road-course | dclm-gs1-115520002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.05986 | <urn:uuid:26c80f0d-f8d9-493e-b46c-af3241d5b474> | en | 0.926437 | Yoatzot News
Arguments during niddah
Thank you for your wonderful website. Here is my question:
I have been married for a couple of years and recently I figured out a pattern in my marriage where many times when I am a niddah, my husband and I will have an argument. We have little disagreements when I am tehorah but a hug or kiss from my husband dissolves the situation immediately. When we aren't able to touch, the arguments are much harder to resolve. I don't know if I'm supposed to take this as a bad sign, or if there comes a certain point where keeping these laws just becomes too detrimental to a marriage, or what I'm supposed to think. It's very hard feeling like I'm only in a normal marriage two weeks out of the month.
A few days ago while niddah my husband and I had yet another argument, so I decided it's finally time to write and get some advice.
Dear questioner,
Thank you for your question.
We appreciate both your question and your choice to address it to us.
Healthy disagreements are part of a healthy marriage. When a couple argues, each member can make bids to keep the tone constructive and to prevent the argument from escalating. It is when we are too caught up in our own hurt and anger to remember our affection for our sparring partner and soften our tone that we are most liable to hurt and be hurt, and least likely to hear each other out.
Viewed in the above terms, your observation is that your husband's affectionate touch works reliably to relax you both and diffuse tensions during arguments. You miss that when you are in niddah. Rather than a harbinger of abnormality or a bad sign, this is a good sign about the positive nature of your physical connection to your husband.
Instead of viewing halachic restrictions on touch as too detrimental in this regard, you can view them as a challenge: to identify non-physical ways by which you can signal to each other mid-conflict a desire to cool down. Facing this challenge can only be to your benefit, as it will provide more options for resolving arguments at every time of month. For example, a well-timed compliment, time-out, deep breath, secret signal, or joke can work wonders, especially if you are both in on it and the goodwill behind it. We suggest that you talk this over with your husband at a time when tensions are low and see what you come up with together.
Related Articles
No Related Articles
Related Questions & Answers
Arguments during niddah
Difficulty with not touching
Harchakot after miscarriage
Coping with mikveh delay
Leniency for seven clean days?
Difficulty with harchakot
Teshuvah for premarital contact
Relations while niddah
Still dreading niddah
Explaining halacha
Kallah's trepidations
Non-observant husband
Needing affection
Kissed and touched while niddah
Negative mikveh experiences
Intimacy and fertility questions
Why twelve days?
Intimidated by laws
Mikveh day stress
Touching during seven clean days
< More...>
| http://www.yoatzot.org/question.php?id=7401 | dclm-gs1-115570002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
0.043186 | <urn:uuid:b04b8c71-b982-4d57-9bf5-46ace66987e9> | en | 0.885627 | Etiquette Clothiers
Etiquette Clothiers is a New York-based company that's dedicated to perfecting the basics. Their focus lies in the essentials which includes socks, underwear and undershirts. Each collection combines the same two elements—classic craftsmanship with modern design, so that everyone from adults to kids and infants can enjoy quality cotton with a pop of colorful style.
add to my favorites
So sweet!
today's events
Starts Wed 4/10 6am pt - SET REMINDER set calendar reminder10 | http://www.zulily.com/upcoming_events/48905 | dclm-gs1-115580002 | false | false | {
"keywords": ""
} | false | {
"score": 0,
"triggered_passage": -1
} | false |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.