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0.951718 | What is mulberry and where is it found?
Mulberry is a plant, which includes a wide variety of trees and shrubs and contains a fruit that resembles blackberries. The powdered leaves of white mulberry are used as an herb for medicine, while the fruit is eaten both raw and cooked. The fruit of the mulberry is high in phytonutrients, especially resveratrol, a flavonoid antioxidant. They are also high in protein, iron and many other vitamins and minerals.
What are the benefits of mulberry?
The mulberry has been used to treat diabetes by lowering blood sugar. It seems to slow the breakdown of sugar in the body, which increases the length of time food is absorbed prevents blood sugar from rising too rapidly. It is also used to treat high cholesterol, high blood pressure, joint and muscle pain, and the common cold. Some people use it for hair loss and premature graying, constipation and asthma.
Are there interactions between mulberry and medications?
Avoid taking mulberry during pregnancy and breast-feeding because very few studies have been done and there is not enough information known. |
0.994549 | It depends on your needs. Let us know what is your target output in terms of speed and flexiblility.
Yes, we periodically check your printer and provide you a report of your printer's condition. |
0.999998 | What are the advantages of brown bread?
It lowers the risk of gaining weight. Brown bread contains all the vitamins of the vitamin-B family as well as vitamin E, which help in fighting mental diseases. It helps in reducing the risk of heart diseases. Brown bread is rich in bran fiber, which is beneficial for healthy bowels, and as a result, it provides relief from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) too. |
0.928945 | For other people named Ivan Pavlov, see Ivan Pavlov (disambiguation).
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (Russian: Ива́н Петро́вич Па́влов, IPA: [ɪˈvan pʲɪˈtrovʲɪtɕ ˈpavləf] ( listen); 26 September [O.S. 14 September] 1849 – 27 February 1936) was a Russian physiologist known primarily for his work in classical conditioning.
From his childhood days Pavlov demonstrated intellectual curiosity along with an unusual energy which he referred to as "the instinct for research". Inspired by the progressive ideas which D. I. Pisarev, the most eminent of the Russian literary critics of the 1860s, and I. M. Sechenov, the father of Russian physiology, were spreading, Pavlov abandoned his religious career and devoted his life to science. In 1870, he enrolled in the physics and mathematics department at the University of Saint Petersburg in order to study natural science.
Pavlov won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1904, becoming the first Russian Nobel laureate. A survey in the Review of General Psychology, published in 2002, ranked Pavlov as the 24th most cited psychologist of the 20th century. Pavlov's principles of classical conditioning have been found to operate across a variety of behavior therapies and in experimental and clinical settings, such as educational classrooms and even reducing phobias with systematic desensitization.
Ivan Pavlov, the eldest of eleven children, was born in Ryazan, Russian Empire. His father, Peter Dmitrievich Pavlov (1823–1899), was a village Russian orthodox priest. His mother, Varvara Ivanovna Uspenskaya (1826–1890), was a devoted homemaker. As a child, Pavlov willingly participated in house duties such as doing the dishes and taking care of his siblings. He loved to garden, ride his bicycle, row, swim, and play gorodki; he devoted his summer vacations to these activities. Although able to read by the age of seven, Pavlov was seriously injured when he fell from a high wall onto a stone pavement. As a result of the injuries he sustained he did not begin formal schooling until he was 11 years old.
Pavlov attended the Ryazan church school before entering the local theological seminary. In 1870, however, he left the seminary without graduating in order to attend the university at St. Petersburg. There he enrolled in the physics and math department and took natural science courses. In his fourth year, his first research project on the physiology of the nerves of the pancreas won him a prestigious university award. In 1875, Pavlov completed his course with an outstanding record and received the degree of Candidate of Natural Sciences. Impelled by his overwhelming interest in physiology, Pavlov decided to continue his studies and proceeded to the Imperial Academy of Medical Surgery. While at the Academy, Pavlov became an assistant to his former teacher, Elias von Cyon. He left the department when de Cyon was replaced by another instructor.
After some time, Pavlov obtained a position as a laboratory assistant to Konstantin Nikolaevich Ustimovich at the physiological department of the Veterinary Institute. For two years, Pavlov investigated the circulatory system for his medical dissertation. In 1878, Professor S. P. Botkin, a famous Russian clinician, invited the gifted young physiologist to work in the physiological laboratory as the clinic's chief. In 1879, Pavlov graduated from the Medical Military Academy with a gold medal award for his research work. After a competitive examination, Pavlov won a fellowship at the Academy for postgraduate work. The fellowship and his position as director of the Physiological Laboratory at Botkin's clinic enabled Pavlov to continue his research work. In 1883, he presented his doctor's thesis on the subject of The centrifugal nerves of the heart and posited the idea of nervism and the basic principles on the trophic function of the nervous system. Additionally, his collaboration with the Botkin Clinic produced evidence of a basic pattern in the regulation of reflexes in the activity of circulatory organs.
He was inspired to pursue a scientific career by D. I. Pisarev, a literary critique and natural science advocate of the time and I. M. Sechenov, a Russian physiologist, whom Pavlov described as 'The father of physiology'.
After completing his doctorate, Pavlov went to Germany where he studied in Leipzig with Carl Ludwig and Eimear Kelly in the Heidenhain laboratories in Breslau. He remained there from 1884 to 1886. Heidenhain was studying digestion in dogs, using an exteriorized section of the stomach. However, Pavlov perfected the technique by overcoming the problem of maintaining the external nerve supply. The exteriorized section became known as the Heidenhain or Pavlov pouch.
In 1886, Pavlov returned to Russia to look for a new position. His application for the chair of physiology at the University of Saint Petersburg was rejected. Eventually, Pavlov was offered the chair of pharmacology at Tomsk University in Siberia and at the University of Warsaw in Poland. He did not take up either post. In 1890, he was appointed the role of professor of Pharmacology at the Military Medical Academy and occupied the position for five years. In 1891, Pavlov was invited to the Imperial Institute of Experimental Medicine in St. Petersburg to organize and direct the Department of Physiology.
Over a 45-year period, under his direction, the Institute became one of the most important centers of physiological research in the world. Pavlov continued to direct the Department of Physiology at the Institute, while taking up the chair of physiology at the Medical Military Academy in 1895. Pavlov would head the physiology department at the Academy continuously for three decades.
Starting in 1901, Pavlov was nominated over four successive years for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He did not win the prize until 1904 because his previous nominations were not specific to any discovery, but based on a variety of laboratory findings. When Pavlov received the Nobel Prize it was specified that he did so "in recognition of his work on the physiology of digestion, through which knowledge on vital aspects of the subject has been transformed and enlarged".
It was at the Institute of Experimental Medicine that Pavlov carried out his classical experiments on the digestive glands. That is how he eventually won the Nobel prize mentioned above. Pavlov investigated the gastric function of dogs, and later, children, by externalizing a salivary gland so he could collect, measure, and analyze the saliva and what response it had to food under different conditions. He noticed that the dogs tended to salivate before food was actually delivered to their mouths, and set out to investigate this "psychic secretion", as he called it.
Pavlov's laboratory housed a full-scale kennel for the experimental animals. Pavlov was interested in observing their long-term physiological processes. This required keeping them alive and healthy in order to conduct chronic experiments, as he called them. These were experiments over time, designed to understand the normal functions of animals. This was a new kind of study, because previously experiments had been “acute,” meaning that the dog went through vivisection which ultimately killed the animal in the process.
A 1921 article by S. Morgulis in the journal Science was critical of Pavlov's work, raising concerns about the environment in which these experiments had been performed. Based on a report from H. G. Wells, claiming that Pavlov grew potatoes and carrots in his lab, the article stated, "It is gratifying to be assured that Professor Pavlov is raising potatoes only as a pastime and still gives the best of his genius to scientific investigation". That same year, Pavlov began holding laboratory meetings known as the 'Wednesday meetings' at which he spoke frankly on many topics, including his views on psychology. These meetings lasted until he died in 1936.
Pavlov was highly regarded by the Soviet government, and he was able to continue his research until he reached a considerable age. He was praised by Lenin. Despite praise from the Soviet Union government, the money that poured in to support his laboratory, and the honours he was given, Pavlov made no attempts to conceal the disapproval and contempt with which he regarded Soviet Communism.
In 1923, he stated that he would not sacrifice even the hind leg of a frog to the type of social experiment that the regime was conducting in Russia. Four years later he wrote to Stalin, protesting at what was being done to Russian intellectuals and saying he was ashamed to be a Russian. After the murder of Sergei Kirov in 1934, Pavlov wrote several letters to Molotov criticizing the mass persecutions which followed and asking for the reconsideration of cases pertaining to several people he knew personally.
Conscious until his very last moment, Pavlov asked one of his students to sit beside his bed and to record the circumstances of his dying. He wanted to create unique evidence of subjective experiences of this terminal phase of life. Pavlov died of double pneumonia at the age of 86. He was given a grandiose funeral, and his study and laboratory were preserved as a museum in his honour.
Pavlov contributed to many areas of physiology and neurological sciences. Most of his work involved research in temperament, conditioning and involuntary reflex actions. Pavlov performed and directed experiments on digestion, eventually publishing The Work of the Digestive Glands in 1897, after 12 years of research. His experiments earned him the 1904 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. These experiments included surgically extracting portions of the digestive system from animals, severing nerve bundles to determine the effects, and implanting fistulas between digestive organs and an external pouch to examine the organ's contents. This research served as a base for broad research on the digestive system.
Further work on reflex actions involved involuntary reactions to stress and pain.
Pavlov was always interested in biomarkers of temperament types described by Hippocrates and Galen. He called these biomarkers "properties of nervous systems" and identified three main properties: (1) strength, (2) mobility of nervous processes and (3) a balance between excitation and inhibition and derived four types based on these three properties. He extended the definitions of the four temperament types under study at the time: phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine, and melancholic, updating the names to "the strong and impetuous type, the strong equilibrated and quiet type, the strong equilibrated and lively type, and the weak type."
Pavlov and his researchers observed and began the study of transmarginal inhibition (TMI), the body's natural response of shutting down when exposed to overwhelming stress or pain by electric shock. This research showed how all temperament types responded to the stimuli the same way, but different temperaments move through the responses at different times. He commented "that the most basic inherited difference ... was how soon they reached this shutdown point and that the quick-to-shut-down have a fundamentally different type of nervous system."
The basics of Pavlov's classical conditioning serve as a historical backdrop for current learning theories. However, the Russian physiologist's initial interest in classical conditioning occurred almost by accident during one of his experiments on digestion in dogs. Considering that Pavlov worked closely with animals throughout many of his experiments, his early contributions were primarily about animal learning. However, the fundamentals of classical conditioning have been examined across many different organisms, including humans. The basic underlying principles of Pavlov's classical conditioning have extended to a variety of settings, such as classrooms and learning environments.
Classical conditioning focuses on using preceding conditions to alter behavioral reactions. The principles underlying classical conditioning have influenced preventative antecedent control strategies used in the classroom. Classical conditioning set the groundwork for the present day behavior modification practices, such as antecedent control. Antecedent events and conditions are defined as those conditions occurring before the behavior. Pavlov's early experiments used manipulation of events or stimuli preceding behavior (i.e., a tone) to produce salivation in dogs much like teachers manipulate instruction and learning environments to produce positive behaviors or decrease maladaptive behaviors. Although he did not refer to the tone as an antecedent, Pavlov was one of the first scientists to demonstrate the relationship between environmental stimuli and behavioral responses. Pavlov systematically presented and withdrew stimuli to determine the antecedents that were eliciting responses, which is similar to the ways in which educational professionals conduct functional behavior assessments. Antecedent strategies are supported by empirical evidence to operate implicitly within classroom environments. Antecedent-based interventions are supported by research to be preventative, and to produce immediate reductions in problem behaviors.
The concept for which Pavlov is famous is the "conditioned reflex" (or in his own words the conditional reflex) he developed jointly with his assistant Ivan Filippovitch Tolochinov in 1901. He had come to learn this concept of conditioned reflex when examining the rates of salivations among dogs. Pavlov had learned that when a buzzer or metronome was sounded in subsequent time with food being presented to the dog in consecutive sequences, the dog would initially salivate when the food was presented. The dog would later come to associate the sound with the presentation of the food and salivate upon the presentation of that stimulus. Tolochinov, whose own term for the phenomenon had been "reflex at a distance", communicated the results at the Congress of Natural Sciences in Helsinki in 1903. Later the same year Pavlov more fully explained the findings, at the 14th International Medical Congress in Madrid, where he read a paper titled The Experimental Psychology and Psychopathology of Animals.
As Pavlov's work became known in the West, particularly through the writings of John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner, the idea of "conditioning" as an automatic form of learning became a key concept in the developing specialism of comparative psychology, and the general approach to psychology that underlay it, behaviorism. Pavlov's work with classical conditioning was of huge influence to how humans perceive themselves, their behavior and learning processes and his studies of classical conditioning continue to be central to modern behavior therapy. The British philosopher Bertrand Russell observed that "[w]hether Pavlov's method's can be made to cover the whole of human behaviour is open to question, but at any rate they cover a very large field and within this field they have shown how to apply scientific methods with quantitative exactitude".
Pavlov's research on conditional reflexes greatly influenced not only science, but also popular culture. Pavlovian conditioning was a major theme in Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel, Brave New World, and also to a large degree in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.
It is popularly believed that Pavlov always signaled the occurrence of food by ringing a bell. However, his writings record the use of a wide variety of stimuli, including electric shocks, whistles, metronomes, tuning forks, and a range of visual stimuli, in addition to the ring of a bell. In 1994, Catania cast doubt on whether Pavlov ever actually used a bell in his experiments. Littman tentatively attributed the popular imagery to Pavlov's contemporaries Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev and John B. Watson. Roger K. Thomas, of the University of Georgia, however, said they had found "three additional references to Pavlov's use of a bell that strongly challenge Littman's argument". In reply, Littman suggested that Catania's recollection, that Pavlov did not use a bell in research, was "convincing ... and correct".
In 1964 the eminent psychologist H. J. Eysenck reviewed Pavlov's "Lectures on Conditioned Reflexes" for the British Medical Journal: Volume I – "Twenty-five Years of Objective Study of the Higher Nervous Activity of Animals", Volume II – "Conditioned Reflexes and Psychiatry".
The Pavlov Institute of Physiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences was founded by Pavlov in 1925 and named after him following his death.
Pavlov was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1904. He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1907 and was awarded the Royal Society's Copley Medal in 1915. He became a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1907. Pavlov's dog, the Pavlovian session and Pavlov's typology are named in his honour. The asteroid 1007 Pawlowia and the lunar crater Pavlov were also named after him.
Ivan Pavlov married Seraphima Vasilievna Karchevskaya on 1 May 1881, whom he had met in 1878 or 1879 when she went to St. Petersburg to study at the Pedagogical Institute. Seraphima, called Sara for short, was born in 1855. In her later years, she suffered from ill health and died in 1947.
The first nine years of their marriage were marred by financial problems; Pavlov and his wife often had to stay with others in order to have a home, and for a time, the two lived apart so that they could find hospitality. Although their poverty caused despair, material welfare was a secondary consideration. Sara's first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. When she conceived again, the couple took precautions, and she safely gave birth to their first child, a boy whom they named Mirchik; Sara became deeply depressed following Mirchik's sudden death in childhood.
Ivan and Sara eventually had four more children: Vladimir, Victor, Vsevolod, and Vera. Their youngest son, Vsevolod, died of pancreatic cancer in 1935, only one year before his father. Pavlov was an atheist.
^ a b c Anrep, G. V. (1936). "Ivan Petrovich Pavlov. 1849–1936". Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society. 2 (5): 1–18. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1936.0001. JSTOR 769124.
^ a b John Powell, Derek W. Blakeley, Tessa Powell (eds.), Biographical Dictionary of Literary Influences: The Nineteenth Century, 1800–1914, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001, "Pavlov, Ivan Petrovich (1849–1936)."
^ a b c d e Cavendish, Richard. (2011). "Death of Ivan Pavlov". History Today. 61 (2): 9.
^ a b "The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1904". nobelprize.org. Retrieved 28 January 2013.
^ Haggbloom, Steven J.; Powell, John L., III; Warnick, Jason E.; Jones, Vinessa K.; Yarbrough, Gary L.; Russell, Tenea M.; Borecky, Chris M.; McGahhey, Reagan; et al. (2002). "The 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century". Review of General Psychology. 6 (2): 139–152. doi:10.1037/1089-2680.6.2.139.
^ Olson, M. H.; Hergenhahn, B. R. (2009). An Introduction to Theories of Learning (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. pp. 201–203.
^ Dougher, Michael J. (1 August 1999). Clinical Behavior Analysis. Context Press. Retrieved 1 April 2018.
^ a b c d Sheehy, Noel; Chapman, Antony J.; Conroy, Wendy A., eds. (2002). Ivan Petrovich Pavlov. Biographical Dictionary of Psychology. Routledge. ISBN 978-0415285612.
^ a b c d e "The Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine 1904 Ivan Pavlov". Nobelmedia. Retrieved 2 February 2012.
^ Todes, Daniel Philip (2002). Pavlov's Physiology Factory: Experiment, Interpretation, Laboratory Enterprise. JHU Press. pp. 50–. ISBN 978-0-8018-6690-6.
^ Windholz, George (1997). "Ivan P. Pavlov: An overview of his life and psychological work". American Psychologist. 52 (9): 941–946. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.52.9.941.
^ a b c Ivan Pavlov. Science in the Early Twentieth Century: An Encyclopedia.
^ Reagan, Leslie A.; et al., eds. (2007). Medicine's moving pictures. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. p. 285. ISBN 978-1-58046-234-1.
^ Morgulis, S. (1921). "Professor Pavlov". Science. 53 (1360): 74. Bibcode:1921Sci....53Q..74M. doi:10.1126/science.53.1360.74. PMID 17790056.
^ Lenin, V.I. (11 February 1921). "Concerning The Conditions Ensuring The Research Work Of Academician I. P. Pavlov and his associates". Izvestia.
^ Chance, Paul (1988). Learning and Behaviour. Wadsworth Pub. Co. ISBN 0-534-08508-3. p. 48.
^ "1904 Nobel prize laureates". Nobelprize.org. 10 December 1904. Retrieved 15 April 2012.
^ Rokhin, L, Pavlov, I and Popov, Y. (1963), Psychopathology and Psychiatry, Foreign Languages Publication House: Moscow.
^ William Moore, J.; Manning, S. A.; Smith, W. I. (1978). Conditioning and Instrumental Learning. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Book Company. pp. 52–61. ISBN 978-0070429024.
^ a b Tarpy, Roger M. (1975). Basic Principles of Learning. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman and Company. pp. 15–17.
^ a b Kern, Lee; Clemens, Nathan H. (2007). "Antecedent strategies to promote appropriate classroom behavior". Psychology in the Schools. 44 (1): 65–75. doi:10.1002/pits.20206.
^ Alberto, Paul A.; Troutman, Anne C. (2013). Applied Behavior Analysis for Teachers (Ninth ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.
^ Stichter, Janine P.; Randolph, Jena K.; Kay, Denise; Gage, Nicholas (2009). "The use of structural analysis to develop antcedent-based interventions for students with autism". Journal of Austim Development Disroder. 39 (6): 883–896. doi:10.1007/s10803-009-0693-8. PMID 19191017.
^ Todes, Daniel Philip (2002). Pavlov's Physiology Factory. Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 232 ff. ISBN 978-0-8018-6690-6.
^ Pavlov, I. P. (1927). Conditioned Reflexes: An Investigation of the Physiological Activity of the Cerebral Cortex. Translated and Edited by G. V. Anrep. London: Oxford University Press. p. 142.
^ Plaud, J. J.; Wolpe, J. (1997). "Pavlov's contributions to behavior therapy: The obvious and the not so obvious". American Psychologist. 52 (9): 966–972. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.52.9.966. PMID 9382243.
^ Russell, Bertrand (1931). The Scientific Outlook. London: George Allen & Unwin. p. 56.
^ Thomas, Roger K. (1994). "Pavlov's dogs "dripped Saliva at the Sound of a Bell"". Psycoloquy. 5 (80).
^ Littman, Richard A. (1994). "Bekhterev and Watson Rang Pavlov's Bell". Psycoloquy. 5 (49).
^ Eysenck, H. J. (1964). "Pavlov's Writings". BMJ. 2 (5401): 111. doi:10.1136/bmj.2.5401.111-b. PMC 1815950.
^ "Ivan Petrovich Pavlow (1849–1936)". Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 26 July 2015.
^ Schmadel, Lutz D. (2007). Dictionary of Minor Planet Names – (1007) Pawlowia. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. p. 87. ISBN 978-3-540-00238-3. Retrieved 10 January 2018.
^ Babkin, B.P. (1949). Pavlov, A Biography. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. pp. 27–54. ISBN 978-1406743975.
^ Pavlov's follower E.M. Kreps asked him whether he was religious. Kreps writes that Pavlov smiled and replied: "Listen, good fellow, in regard to [claims of] my religiosity, my belief in God, my church attendance, there is no truth in it; it is sheer fantasy. I was a seminarian, and like the majority of seminarians, I became an unbeliever, an atheist in my school years." Quoted in Windholz, George (1986). "Pavlov's Religious Orientation". Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 25 (3): 320–27. doi:10.2307/1386296. JSTOR 1386296.
Asratyan, E. A. (1953). I. P. Pavlov: His Life and Work. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House.
Boakes, Robert (1984). From Darwin to behaviourism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-23512-9.
Firkin, Barry G.; J.A. Whitworth (1987). Dictionary of Medical Eponyms. Parthenon Publishing. ISBN 978-1-85070-333-4.
Todes, D. P. (1997). "Pavlov's Physiological Factory". Isis. 88 (2): 205–246. doi:10.1086/383690. JSTOR 236572.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ivan Pavlov. |
0.998999 | The financial administration published a very important opinion on 24 November 2017 which reflects the decision of the Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) on including (or not including) VAT in the agreed price when applying the correct procedure for determining real estate transfer tax. The financial administration agreed with the decisions, and in September, it publicly accepted excluding VAT from the real estate tax base in cases where the tax was paid by the transferor and the transfer was executed between 1 January 2014 and 31 October 2016. The logical question is: What is the correct procedure for cases where the payer of the real estate transfer tax is the acquirer?
The financial administration came to the conclusion that VAT should not be included in the tax base if the VAT is included in the agreed price. The SAC's decisions have been generalised and extended for cases when the real estate transfer tax payer is the acquirer and the transfer was executed after 31 October 2016. The above-mentioned facts are implicit in the SAC's decisions when the Court did not state that the same principle should not be used for a tax payer who is the acquirer. The above-mentioned facts also comply with tax neutrality. There should not be cases where the acquirer is charged with a higher real estate transfer tax just because the transferor is a VAT payer (the VAT increases the real estate transfer tax base). With respect to the above-mentioned facts, the financial administration decided to change the methodology and the administration.
The financial administration will apply the stated conclusions to cases where the tax proceedings have not yet been finished. If the tax proceedings have already been finished (and tax is assessed), the tax payers can exercise their rights by submitting additional tax returns. Further, the financial administration recommends determining the amount of VAT in agreements related to the acquisition of property rights which should simplify calculation of the agreed price. The acquirer should thus easily and correctly determine the real estate transfer tax base, and this should also avoid pointless and additional paperwork, such as additional tax returns. |
0.998816 | To examine test the fears/phobias, responses of children, adolescents, and adults analyzed for anxiety-related symptoms. Of this sample, 64.6% indicated fears/phobias; females were significantly more predisposed; mixed-handedness was significantly related to fears of dogs and reduced response or functioning. Also, adults had a higher incidence of the specific fears/phobias characterizing agoraphobia than children and adolescents. Analysis of factors reported as triggering the fears/phobias led to a classification and theory of fears/phobias, obsessions/compulsions, and related anxiety symptoms based on realistic or traumatic, mechanisms rather than on DSM-III--R surface descriptions.
Simple or specific phobias have been quite effectively treated with behavior therapy (Marks, 1987). The behaviorists involved in classical conditioning techniques believe that the response of phobic fear is a reflex acquired to non-dangerous stimuli. The normal fear to a dangerous stimulus, such as a poisonous snake, has unfortunately been generalized over to non-poisonous ones as well. If the person were to be exposed to the non-dangerous stimulus time after time without any harm being experienced, the phobic response would gradually extinguish itself. Also, this assumes that the person does not also experience the dangerous stimulus during that same extended period of time. In other words, one would have to come across ONLY non-poisonous snakes for a prolonged period of time for such extinction to occur. This is not likely to occur naturally, so behavior therapy sets up phobic treatment involving exposure to the phobic stimulus in a safe and controlled setting. Foa and Kozak (1986) call this exposure treatment, so called because the patient is exposed to the phobic stimulus as part of the therapeutic process. One simple form of exposure treatment is that of flooding, where the person is immersed in the fear reflex until the fear itself fades away. Some phobic reactions are so strong that flooding must be done through one's imagining the phobic stimulus, rather than engaging the phobic stimulus itself. Some patients cannot handle flooding in any form, so an alternative classical conditioning technique is used called counter-conditioning (Watson, 1924). In this form, one is trained to substitute a relaxation response for the fear response in the presence of the phobic stimulus. Relaxation is incompatible with feeling fearful or having anxiety, so it is said that the relaxation response counters the fear response. This counter-conditioning is most often used in a systematic way to very gradually introduce the feared stimulus in a step-by-step fashion known as systematic desensitization, first used by Joseph Wolpe (1958). This desensitization involves three steps: (1) training the patient to physically relax, (2) establishing an anxiety hierarchy of the stimuli involved, and (3) counter-conditioning relaxation as a response to each feared stimulus beginning first with the least anxiety-provoking stimulus and moving then to the next least anxiety-provoking stimulus until all of the items listed in the anxiety hierarchy have been dealt with successfully. Biofeedback instrumentation has often been used to ensure that the patient is truly well-relaxed before going the next higher item in the anxiety hierarchy. Several indexes have been used in this adjunctive approach, including pulse rate, respiration rate, and electro dermal responses. Also, systematic desensitization can be paired with modeling, an application suggested by social learning theorists. In modeling, the patient observes others in the presence of the phobic stimulus who are responding with relaxation rather than fear. In this way, the patient is encouraged to imitate the model(s) and thereby relieve their phobia. Combining live modeling with personal imitation is sometimes called participant modeling (Bernstein, 1997).Rothbaum et. al. (1995) reports using a virtual-reality helmet being worn by the patient which then displays a phobic situation which is controlled and monitored by the therapist. The scene might be one of driving a car over a high bridge, while pulse rate is being monitored by the therapist. When the pulse rate gets too high, the scene is either shut down or frozen in frame to allow the therapist to counter-condition relaxation to replace the fear and anxiety response.Systematic desensitization in a variety of forms has been commonly used to treat specific phobias and, in some cases, can be achieved in a single therapeutic session (Ost, 1989; Zinbarg & others, 1992).Research conclude that the paradigm offers new opportunities for probing the role of generalization in the emergence of common and persistent fears. In this study, researchers investigated the acquisition of conditioned fear to a threat cue, and its capacity to generalize to other, perceptually similar safety cues. We were interested in demonstrating how fears could arise, for example, from a negative ‘‘encounter’’ with one particular person and could then generalize to fears of others with whom no previous encounters had been experienced.
Researchers are using data novel from a paradigm designed to examine fear condition and generalization in healthy individuals. The researchers used two females’ faces to serve as conditioned threat cue the (Cs+) and conditioned safety cue (Cs-) respectively. The participant (CS+) was paired repeatedly with a fearful, screaming face (unconditioned stimulus). The researchers measured eye blink startle reflex and self-reported ratings.
Generalization included intermediate faces which varied in their similarity to the (cs+) and (cs-). The researches acquired that fear of the cs+ generalized intermediate stimuli in proportion to their perceptual similarity to the cs+.The results demonstrate how fears of new individuals may develop based on the resemblance to others with whom an individual has had negative experiences.
"Conditioning Phobias" OtherPapers.com. 10 2018. 2018. 10 2018 <https://www.otherpapers.com/essay/Conditioning-Phobias/64831.html>.
"Conditioning Phobias." OtherPapers.com. OtherPapers.com, 10 2018. Web. 10 2018. <https://www.otherpapers.com/essay/Conditioning-Phobias/64831.html>.
"Conditioning Phobias." OtherPapers.com. 10, 2018. Accessed 10, 2018. https://www.otherpapers.com/essay/Conditioning-Phobias/64831.html.
Duets of a gaze are commonly insufficient in peeping what resides in the inside. Observation was utilized in the past as a tool for diagnosis.
Limited Brands is a billion dollar company that encompasses the men's and women's clothing and accessories stores: Victoria's Secret, Pink, Bath & Body Works, C.
What Do We Already Know About Changing Global Conditions? |
0.992936 | Let's talk about outlining novels. How do you plan your novel before writing it?
Here are three methods I’ve used.
I used this method for my fantasy novel Firefly Island. In the Detailed Outline, I will outline every scene in great detail. This outline might be fifty or more pages long, all outline, no actual writing. Before writing a single word of manuscript, every scene will be planned. I’ll have a good idea of how the pacing will work. I’ll know where every plot event occurs. The outline will be a complete blueprint.
For Firefly Island, my outline was so detailed, it contained the important lines of dialogue. For some chapters, it even detailed every paragraph!
Paragraph 14: Describe the ogre’s cottage. Broken roof. Vines. Lizards run across the ground and the sky is cloudy.
Paragraph 15: Aeolia enters the cottage. Rotting furniture, dank smell. Aeolia thinks about her brother.
This is similar to the way moviemakers will create storyboards before shooting any scene. The point of this method is: Before actually writing anything, I’ll know exactly how this novel will look.
When it comes to the writing stage, since I already know the entire story, I don’t have to write chronologically. I can decide one day to write scene 3 in chapter 8, and the next day go back and write scene 2 in chapter 3.
The outline will be so detailed, that I’ll write my copy right into the outline--in the same document. Thus, the outline will grow fatter and fatter, scenes coming into more and more detail, until one day it’s no longer an outline. It’s a manuscript.
This is the same method I use when painting. First I paint a rough sketch on the paper. Then I’ll fill in the basic tones. Then I’ll add another layer of color. Then I’ll add a layer of detail. With every layer, the painting comes into life. Same with the Detailed Outline. At first my document is a sketch. With every layer it grows and grows, until it turns into a novel.
With this method, I’ll plan the basic plot, but not every scene or chapter. This outline is only about five pages long. It describes the characters, the conflict, the overall storyline, and that’s it. It provides just enough detail so that I’ll know where the story should head.
Once I have the Brief Outline, I’ll write my novel in chronological order, from the first word to last. While I’m writing, I’ll keep the Brief Outline in mind. Because I’m not bound to a detailed structure, I’ll be free to explore possibilities while I write. I’ll just let the words flow. I’ll make sure the story is moving in the general direction I outlined, but have fun and discover things on the way.
The great thing about this method is that it lets you find the natural pace and flow of your story. You’re not constricted by a rigid outline.
When I finish writing a manuscript this way, I might find many pages that lack structure. Some scenes might be too long, others too short, some too slow, others fast paced. Perhaps I spent fifty pages with a single character, completely ignoring the other characters and their subplots. Some chapters might end at the wrong moment, without a cliffhanger. There was no thought put into a flow that would be exciting for the reader.
I’ll take this pile of pages and cut and paste and reorganize. I plan the structure of the manuscript after I had already written it. I’ll break long scenes into shorter scenes, cutting them at the exciting moments for cliffhangers. I’ll move scenes from here to there. All the work I would have done in the Detailed Outline (before writing anything), I do now with the pages I already have.
Some of the pages I might toss out. In other places, I’ll write new pages. Filmmakers might shoot hours of film, then spend many days in the editing room, piecing the bits together. That’s what I do with the Brief Outline, just with pages instead of film.
With “No Outline”, as its name implies, I don’t plan the plot at all. Does that mean I just jump into the book and write blindly? No. There is still a lot of planning involved.
I’ll spend lots of time planning each viewpoint character (those characters from whose eyes we see the story). For each, I’ll create a document where I write everything I can about the character.
I write about their physical traits. What is their hair like? What do their eyes say to the world? How tall are they, and how much do they weigh? Are they good looking or ugly? How does their physical appearance affect their behavior, and how does it affect the way others treat them?
I describe their background. Where do they come from, and what have they done in life? How does this affect the way they’ll act in the future? And—perhaps most importantly—what are their goals for the future?
I describe their personality. What do they like and dislike? I write about how they think, what they want, what they fear. Does the character have any quirks? What is the character’s favourite food? Favourite music?
Once I really know the characters, I let them write the story. I’ll know the premise, but have no idea what the plot will be, or how the story will end. I place the characters into the setting of the story, and let them direct the flow.
Every day when I sit down to write, I have no idea what will happen. I make it up as I go along. Because I know the characters so well, I know how they’ll act in each situation, and the story writes itself.
The first draft comes out a mess. Then I break it into scenes and restructure.
It depends on the writer and it depends on the novel.
Some novels place a strong emphasis on emotion. Thus, the “no outline” method can work best. You are not constricted by any outline, and are free to explore the characters’ lives and the drama between them. The one danger of this method is that you might be left with an unfocused first draft, and will have to spend a long time rearranging it.
The Detailed Outline works great for me personally. You know where the story is heading and have the freedom to write scenes out of order, depending on your mood and spare time that day.
Meanwhile, the General Outline combines the strengths and weaknesses of the two other methods. |
0.989745 | Blowout Sale! Up to 87% off on History at Translate This Website. Top brands include James Allen Herman A., Cengage Learning, University of Michigan Press, Brand: Routledge, Nick Fisher, Christina S Kraus Editor Jane D Chaplin Editor, University of Missouri, Routledge, Elizabeth James, Brand: Palgrave Macmillan, & Lexington Books. Hurry! Limited time offers. Offers valid only while supplies last.
By James Allen Herman A. |
0.980397 | Pythonic API to Linux uinput kernel module.
Python-uinput is Python interface to Linux uinput kernel module which allows attaching userspace device drivers into kernel. In practice, Python-uinput makes it dead simple to create virtual joysticks, keyboards and mice for generating arbitrary input events programmatically. |
0.999138 | Will the next Siri be empathetic?
"To create an empathetic AI, it’s not about seeing users as a group, but seeing each user as an individual. It’s about designing a system that picks up on the same subtle clues humans do when we gauge each other’s state of mind and intent and learn from those reactions. It’s about creating something that evolves and changes its behavior in the moment, just like we do in every conversation we have. It’s about making a technology that views users as the unique people they actually are. And if the next AI is going be empathetic, that’s exactly what we’re going to need to do." |
0.962713 | Incisor crowding can have a significant effect on the appearance of the smile and can, in some cases, make it more difficult to keep the teeth clean. It is one of the most common reasons for patients to seek orthodontic treatment. In modern times the problem of incisor crowding may have increased and this has been largely attributed to a number of factors: (1) a gradual reduction in jaw size caused by modern day diets that require less jaw activity to break down food and (2) genetic mixing of populations which has resulted in a mismatch between jaw size and tooth size. In reality the evidence is inconclusive and both factors may play an important role.
The incisors may also become crowded with normal age changes. It is common to see patients who had perfect alignment in young adulthood to become gradually less well aligned with age. This has been termed "late incisor crowding" and its causes are discussed below.
Essentially, crowding is due to a mismatch between jaw size and tooth size. Both upper and lower jaws may be too small to accommodate all the developing teeth. The size of teeth may be increased (macrodontia) or there maybe extra teeth (supernumerary teeth) within the dentition.
Late lower incisor crowding is thought to be due to late lower jaw growth. Evidence would suggest that lower jaw growth occurs well into adulthood. The magnitude of these adults growth changes are small (1-2mm) however they are significant enough to cause movement in the lower incisors that results in crowding.
Originally, it was thought that eruption of wisdom teeth (third molars) may contribute to late lower incisor crowding, however, this is no longer believed to be the case as many people who do not develop wisdom teeth can develop late lower incisor crowding.
Incisor crowding most commonly manifests as tooth displacement from the line of the arch. It is also common to see incisor rotations as rotated incisor teeth take up less space that non-rotated teeth. Very rarely if crowding is severe, a tooth maybe blocked from erupting into the mouth.
It is difficult to prevent incisor crowding if it is noticed in the growing child. Some strategies include extractions or in extremely selected cases arch expansion may be an option. In patients who have received orthodontic treatment, it is essential that retainers are used for as long as well aligned teeth are to be maintained.
How can incisor crowding be treated?
There are many different types of orthodontic appliances that can be used to correct incisor crowding. These include fixed appliances or removable appliances such as invisalign. By far the most effective appliance, producing the most predictable results, is the fixed appliance (see article on fixed appliances).
The exact method chosen depends on a number of factors including the severity of crowding.
Once crowding is corrected it is essential to keep the teeth straight using orthodontic retention (see article on retainers). These should be worn to some degree as long as the teeth are to be kept straight. |
0.951465 | Hi-vis: to use or not to use?
A helpful question to ask is: what is the intended purpose of the hi-vis vest?
The answer is likely to be: to increase the visibility of the worker to protect against being run in to.
If the worker is operating the forklift without any other vehicles in the vicinity, (e.g. a single forklift in a warehouse) the hi-vis vest does not provide any protection, so (unless the area is zoned a compulsory hi-vis area for other reasons by the PCBU), there is no legislated requirement to wear the vest while driving the forklift.
If a worker is entering an area where other vehicles are operating in order to drive the forklift, then that would be a very good reason to wear the hi-vis vest, to increase the visibility of the worker for other drivers.
Some workplaces expect all workers to wear hi-vis vests to distinguish them from others in the vicinity, which may also have a range of safety implications. |
0.999996 | Once a degraded swampland, the Eric Singleton Bird sanctuary in Perth, sandwiched between busy roads and suburbia on three sides, now provides an oasis for bird life – and the humans who visit.
Out of the brick and concrete, visitors enter the sanctuary and a wall of trees cause the sounds and sights of the city to fade. A plethora of bird song permeates the air, with frogs joining the chorus at dusk. Clean water twists along a horseshoe shaped waterway and an array of native plants flank the stream.
Skinny-legged birds, like spoonbills, herons, and even the humble ibis, have eagerly descended upon the haven, as have various other bird species. As hoped, black swans have returned to the wetlands after a long hiatus, restoring a species endemic to the area – its name being given to the nearby Swan River.
While the birds and amphibians clearly benefit, they aren’t the only ones to be given a new lease on life. The water quality has greatly improved as a result of the transformation. A process called denitrification has been established, which strips nitrogen out of the water, and deep and shallow pockets help alter the amount of oxygen. A system of pipes and a pollutant trap enables water to be further purified, removing sediment and garbage. Eventually, the cleansed water is fed into the Swan River.
But it hasn’t always been this way. Up until five years ago, the bird sanctuary was a degraded swampland with a slick of algae coating the surface. Eric Singleton saw the value of the wetlands in the 1970s and was instrumental in rescuing the site from development.
It’s been Jeremy Maher who has led the restoration project in recent years. He described the prior state of the site in an interview with ABC News, "What we saw was ... the continual decline of wildlife in there, particularly bird species."
This carefully curated site, while man-made, has enabled nature to take over. The growth of vegetation has been surprising, with regeneration being a couple of years down the track of what was anticipated.
Attention has now shifted upstream, to transforming the drains that feed into the wetlands into cleaner streams.
"This has been a project that I have been a part of over four years, and those were the years when my children were born as well," Mr Maher said.
"I used to come down with them as babies as the project was being built and I still come down with them on weekends, so they have seen it grow and it's a nice little connection for me."
No doubt many other locals and visitors share Maher’s enthusiasm for the new oasis, right in the heart of suburbia. |
0.999996 | Adult males of some stag beetle species have been found to exhibit more jaw- and head-size variations than previously thought.
A fourth form has been identified in at least two species of Odontolabis stag beetle. This number is currently unparalleled in any other stag beetle genus.
Male stag beetles usually have two types of mouthparts, known as mandibles. Each may offer the beetle different advantages in finding and competing for mates.
There are also a few species that have three different mouthpart variations. These are known as trimorphic species.
But new research shows that in some species of Odontolabis, found in southeast Asia, males have one of four mandible forms, making them tetramorphic.
Keita Matsumoto, a curatorial assistant at the Museum and author of the study, explains just how unique these tetramorphic beetles are.
Keita explains, 'Two morphs are standard for stag beetles with males that vary in size.
'But in this genus, Odontolabis, it's quite complex. It's got dimorphic species, trimorphic, and then there is also tetramorphic, which is a world first.
Keita's study introduced the fourth variation, named 'Boltcutter'. This newly identified morph is seen in the species Odontolabis brookeana and Odontolabis sommeri lowei - both found across the islands of Borneo, Sumatra and Java.
Why do stag beetles have different mandible shapes?
As well as studying head size, Keita examined the shape of the mouthparts.
One possible reason for the differences in stag beetle mouthparts is that they could each offer advantages and disadvantages when it comes to finding a mate.
However, no official studies of differing behaviour have been published to date.
Alphas (or major morphs) are the largest of the four types, with the longest and most elaborate mandibles. The size and shape of the mandibles may make them ideal for wrestling, allowing the beetle to pick up rivals.
Betas could also be suited to a life in the wrestling ring, although their head-size and mandibles are distinctly smaller and less elaborate.
Gammas are the smallest of the four morphs and so would be unlikely to stand a chance against an Alpha or Beta in a fight - but there is hope for them.
Keita speculates, 'The minor males may display a sneaking tactic. They approach the females, mate and then run off.
As for the new Boltcutter morph, its behaviour is not currently known. This study was completed using mounted Museum specimens, so their behaviour in their natural environment hasn't yet been studied - although their robust pincers seem adapted for cutting, perhaps to directly injure rivals.
Why are Museum collections important?
The new research was based on the Museum's Coleoptera collection, centring on the Odontolabis specimens mainly from the previously private collection of Hugues E Bomans.
During his life, Bomans published 113 papers on stag beetles, describing eight new genera and more than 200 new species. The collection, which proved vital to the study, was acquired by the Museum and holds an astonishing 25,000 specimens.
Of the research, Keita says, 'I looked through the collection, took photographs, collected data, then analysed the data to find patterns.
A special collection of butterfly specimens at the Museum helps tell a tale of extraordinary adventure and scientific insight.
Dr Erica McAlister, one of the world's ultimate fly fans, introduces some of the strangest-looking flies around, and their equally bizarre behaviour.
For most butterflies, finding a mate to share their short lives with is their most important mission. |
0.968039 | Introversion y extroversion yahoo dating, are you a introvert or an extrovert?
The idea is to understand that in times when we are exposed to dynamic situations, it is great to have a state of mind that is dynamic in nature. People who are considered Extraverts E in our model are not as sensitive to outer stimuli and need to seek them out in order to gain a kind of functional equilibrium and to perform well. They are more energetic and willing to take the lead in many situations, especially social ones, and they enjoy pushing limits and challenging both themselves and those around them.
Extraverted It is safe to say that Extraversion and Introversion are probably the oldest notions in the history of personality theories. So, I'd love to hear about your personal experiences with dating as an introvert, and your opinions on why introversion and dating are or aren't connected. They like to be part of groups, communities and probable places where they get a chance to interact. As Jung noticed, in each of us, one type is dominant than the rest. Each function may be experienced in an introverted or an extraverted fashion, se busca plantilla online dating and one of the functions is more dominant in each one of us.
Are you a introvert or an extrovert?
Jung noted that none of us are completely extroverted or introverted, but we certainly connect to one or the other attitude. Similarly, introverts depend on their thoughts and feelings too much. But in life we all face situations where the solution to our problems lies within us. While the extrovert feels more at home with the world of objects and other people, and is more concerned with their impact upon the world. However, I know that my experience isn't shared by everyone.
If one develops flexible approach to deal with their personality, then they are not narrowed by the limitations of being affiliated to their sole personality type. There are introspective Extraverts and non-introspective Introverts. If nothing, one gets a different perspective than the one making rounds in our head. Introverts are more comfortable living alone and being by themselves.
Much research has been done that shows introverts are at a greater risk of falling into depression because of their particular habit to isolate themselves in troubling times. Using the theory, you can delve deeper into your own mind and comprehend your thoughts and feelings.
Unlike Extraverts, Introverts can quickly exhaust their mental energy reserves, and they will only tolerate such situations so long before they yearn for solitude and quiet. In this situation, if extroverts learn to introspect, they would save themselves from a lot of anxiety and restlessness. For instance, Introverts are more likely to dislike coffee and energy drinks. Ultimately, this scale is about how much stimulation we require and can absorb from our environment, not about what happens in our minds afterwards. People with Extraverted personality types are also more likely to feel that they can handle any challenges life throws their way.
And so, he decides to find other ways to go about the situation. They also tend to be introspective and keep their social circle limited. None but ourselves can free our minds. Some of us depend on thinking and feeling rather than sensing and intuiting.
You can use this knowledge to know yourself and your actions better. Suppose, A and B are told to expect danger in a situation. For example, extroverts depend on their external environment all the time.
One has to work on choosing the right attitude that fits in context to the situation. The idea of being alone terrifies them, leaving them alienated from their inner selves. |
0.939502 | Is Williow a good role model for Wiccans?
I have a strategy and your not in it.
Well, as I never watched the show, I can't say. However, there are many wiccans who do worship only the goddess, and are usually in covens where only women are allowed. There's nothing wrong with that, if that is what they want to believe in.
I've seen the show a few times, TOTAL and COMPLETE FICTION! For the love of the gods, don't take ANYTHING that show says for truth!! Willow is about as good a Wiccan as the girls from Charmed, or the girls in the movie The Craft. TV shows and movies about witchcraft are always entertaining, but from my experience, definitely not true representations of what witchcraft is REALLY about. Usually in Hollywood, they make it all about the magick and spells. REAL Wicca/Paganism goes much deeper than that.
i love buffy and willow but i had no idea it had anything to do with wicca. Ha, but I agree that Media is a poor rep of paganism or wicca or any religeon.
And yes I am a witch and I practice without a male figuire around. Sometimes with my boyfriend FIrelord but most of the time by myself. Why would you need someone with you there all the time? Solitary practitioners dont have this.
thats about my 2 cents.
Well, from the times that I've seen the show, it does all seem to be fiction. Even if some things have a *hint* of truth to them, that's all it really is. For instance, using candles for rituals and spells, yes Wiccans/Pagans use candles for rituals/spells. Although if the actual spell itself is used by Wiccans/Pagans, probably not; and I've never seen an episode where she does a ritual for a holiday or just to honor a deity, and that in itself is where one of the major flaws is. I myself am not Wiccan, so I can't tell you definitely whether something IS or ISN'T Wiccan with much certainty, but what I will tell you is this: it's definitely NOT all about the spells and magick. It's a *spiritual path* dedicated to worship of a deity or deities of old. Spells are nothing more than a small part of that. Also, I don't know if it has ever been on the show, but usually most good hollywood witchcraft shows and movies will include one particle of truth called the Wiccan Rede: "An it harm none, do as ye will" If you've seen that in the show, that IS a true element of Wicca, but probably not much else.
all the show does is run around and Vanquish demons and the white lighters heal. Oh wait, thats Charmed.
I haven't watched too much Buffy since Willow became a witch or whatever. I just remember her as the smart one doing all the research in the library. Shes not a physical fighter ya know.
but i would say they dont follow the Rede or follow any particular deity.
Well, this is a topic I wasn't expecting to see, heh heh.
As far as it goes, I think through most of the series, she's a good role model in general. She is a genuinely sweet person who tries to help others and be compasionate.
However, the flip side is that most of what you see is far from real witch craft or magick and the whole banishing demons, vamps, etc... isn't exactly a realistic view. Not to mention the whole "dark Willow" thing that went on.
Aww, does Rune watch Buffy? That's so cute! Sorry, just had to get that outta my system.
I tend to leave whatever is on the television on when I'm working... you'd be surprised some of what I have sat through while working on the laptop, heh heh.
if the members on this boards start running round psychotically with black eyes and pulsating veins in there head and are about to destroy the world.... urm... I'm catching a plane to a desert island!
Wiccan Rede: "An it harm none, do as ye will"
that's in one of my favorite books just written a little different "an it harm no one, do what thou wilt". along with my favorite quote i usually use in my signatures"when you are born into life, you are dying from death, and when you die from life, you are born into death"
lols sorry for rambling.. again.
"I'll love you till the last one dies..." |
0.972203 | Why not do it manually?
There are good reasons to not do something like that manually.
I could potentially use an automated solution for more tests than just to test this one particular proc (case in point, I am already testing on multiple procs).
Human element could create some erroneous data.
Just like most things in SQL, there are multiple ways of tackling this particular issue. I have chosen two methods to demonstrate. The First method uses COALESCE, while the second uses the STUFF function with XML.
In this example, I have used a CTE to pre-populate a table full of values that I want to retrieve from SomeTable. Then I drop those results into the variable using Coalesce. This method is extremely fast. The cast of the Value should be adjusted to an appropriate size. When I run this particular query I see execution times of about 1ms.
The second option for performing this string concatenation is the STUFF, as previously mentioned. Here is an example of such a query.
In this example, I have once again used the CTE to pre-populate a list of values that I want to concatenate. This also helps to keep the comparisons on equal ground, by using the same population methods and ensuring that the list is the same size without consuming too many resources. With the code as-is, this particular example runs pretty fast and returns my string in about 90ms.
When comparing side by side with this “limited” testing, I would tend to lean towards the COALESCE method. However, both are good enough for my testing and I could use either depending on the day, or material. |
0.998651 | A quantitative property is one that exists in a range of magnitudes, and can therefore be measured. Measurements of any particular quantitative property are expressed as a specific quantity, referred to as a unit, multiplied by a number. Examples of physical quantities are distance, mass, and time. Many attributes in the social sciences, including abilities and personality traits, are also studied as quantitative properties.
In classical terms, the structure of a quantitative property is such that different magnitudes of the quantity stand in relation to one another as ratios which, in turn, can be expressed as real numbers. Measurement is the determination or estimation of ratios of quantities. Quantity and measurement are therefore mutually defined: quantitative attributes are those which it is possible to measure, at least in principle. The classical concept of quantity can be traced back to John Wallis and Isaac Newton, and was foreshadowed in Euclid's Elements (Michell, 1993).
In the representational theory, measurement is regarded as "the correlation of numbers with entities that are not numbers" (Nagel, 1932). In some forms of representational theory, numbers are assigned on the basis of correspondences or similarities between the structure of number systems and the structure of qualitative systems. A quantitative property is therefore one for which such structural similarities can be established. In other forms of representational theory, such as that implicit within the work of Stanley Smith Stevens, numbers need only be assigned according to a rule. The rule may be a purely operational one such as the statement by an experimental subject of a number in response to a physical stimulus, or the assignment of a number to a statement in a Likert scale. Stevens proposed four levels of measurement.
Whether numbers obtained through an experimental procedure are considered measurements is, on the one hand, largely a matter of how measurement is defined. On the other hand, the nature of the measurement process has important implications for scientific research. Firstly, many arithmeitic operations are only justified for measurements either in the classical sense described above, or in the sense of interval and ratio-level measurements as defined by Stevens (which arguably describe the same thing). Secondly, quantitative relationships between different properties which feature in most natural theories and laws imply that the properties have a specific type of quantitative structure; namely, the structure of a continuous quantity. The reason for this is that such theories and laws display a multiplicative structure (for example Newton's second law).
Continuous quantities are those for which magnitudes can be represented as real numbers and for which, therefore, measurements can be expressed on a continuum. Continuous quantities may be scalar or vector quantities. For example, SI units are physical units of continuous quantitative properties, phenomena, and relations such as distance, mass, heat, force and angular separation. The classical concept of quantity described above necessarily implies the concept of continuous quantity.
Recording observations with numbers does not, in itself, imply that an attribute is quantitative. For example, judges routinely assign numbers to properties such as the perceived beauty of an exercise (e.g. 1-10) without necessarily establishing quantitative structure in any sort of rigorous fashion. A researcher might also use the number 1 to mean "Susan", 2 to mean "Michael", and so on. This, however, is not a meaningful use of numbers: the researcher can arbitrarily reassign the numbers (so that 1 means "Michael" and 2 means "Susan") without losing any information. Put another way, facts about numbers (for example, that 2 is greater than 1, that 5 is two more than 3, and that 8 is twice 4) don't mean anything about the names corresponding to those numbers. A person's name is not, therefore, a quantitative property.
Whether counts of objects or observations are considered measurements is also largely a matter of how measurement is defined. Again, though, an important consideration is the manner in which resulting numbers are used. Counts are not measurements of continuous quantities. If, for example, a researcher were to count the number of grains of sand in a specified volume of space on a beach, the result denumerates how many separate grains there are; i.e. the number of separate distinguishable entities of a specific type. Arithmetic operations, such as addition, have meaning only in this specific sense. For instance, combining 5 and 4 grains of sand gives 9 grains of sand. The numbers used in this case are therefore the natural numbers.
Any object is characterized by many attributes, such as colour and mass, only some of which constitute continuous quantities. For example, the mass of a specific grain of sand is a continuous quantity whereas the grain, as an object, is not. Thus, the mass of a grain of sand can be used as a unit of mass because it is possible to estimate the ratio of the mass of another object to the mass of a grain of sand, given an appropriate instrument.
In the social sicences, it is also common to count frequencies of observations; i.e. frequencies of observable outcomes in an experiment. Examples include the number of correct scores on an assessment of an ability, and the number of statements on a questionnaire endorsed by respondents. Provided each observable outcome is the manifestation of an underlying quantitative attribute, such frequencies will generally indicate relative magnitudes of that attribute. Strictly speaking, however, counts and frequencies do not constitute measurement in terms of a unit of continuous quantity.
In prosody and poetic meter, syllable weight can be a governing principle. Syllables with naturally long vowels, diphthongs, and vowels followed by two or more consonants are said to be “heavy” (or “long”). Syllables with naturally short vowels, followed by only one or no consonant, are said to be “light” (or “short”). Some languages use syllable weight in assigning word accent. Some poetic meters are based on the arrangement of heavy and light syllables.
Nagel, E. (1932). Measurement. Erkenntnis, 2, 313-33, reprinted in A. Danato and S. Morgenbesser (Eds.), Philosophy of Sciences (pp. 121-140). New Yourk: New American Library. |
0.996756 | A history, how to make it, and where to find it now Absinthe. Edgar Allen Poe wrote about it. Vincent van Gogh's paintings expressed his enjoyment of it. Julius Verne, Ernest Hemingway, and even Leonardo DiCaprio indulged in it. Absinthe, a strong alcoholic drink with a mix of herbs, from the Artemisia absinthium plant, has been popular throughout history. Dr.
Pierre Ordinaire appears to have been the inventor, creating the drink in 1792. However, there are documents that say a manufacturer was making it in the 1750's. While who and when the drink was made is not clearly known, what is true is that the Pernod Fils Absinthe company went into production in 1852 and helped to promote the Absinthe drink throughout Europe and other continents.
The drink did become very popular, perhaps made even more famous because of the many artists and writers who have attributed part of the success of their work to the drink. However, the erratic behavior of such famous people (such as Van Gogh cutting his ear off and sending it to a lover) became a focal point and it was banned in certain countries in the early 1900's. Sugar and Absinthe Absinthe is thought to be too strong and too bitter a taste for most people. The famous image of a sugar cube burning in a spoon above a glass of absinthe is linked in the minds of many people.
Mixing sugar and water in absinthe is very common. The drink is also mixed with other types of sugars and other ingredients in order to make different recipes. Absinthe recipes mainly include some form of sugar, some sort of dilution like water, and often an additional flavor, like orange or other liqueurs.
One should note that the sugar cube burning is also very dangerous. Obviously the high alcohol content in Absinthe is highly flammable and one should take caution in attempting it. The method of pouring water over a sugar cube is probably a bit safer.
Absinthe and Eccentric Behavior There have been a lot of assumptions about Absinthe and the effects it has on people. Absinthe has a very high level of alcohol, being in a range of around 190 proof. While there are rumors of it being a hallucinogen, the effects appear to be subjective per person. While some might have little to no effect other than getting drunk or a buzz from drinking quicker than from other drinks, some say they experience 'clarity' or a sense of everything being 'crazy'. In any case, it was for the crazy part that was basis for it's original banning in certain countries in the 1900's.
Some say it was the nature of the person, rather than the drink, and that the drink only gave them 'courage' or lowered inhibitions. Some say that right alcoholic drink could induce similar behavior, however it is still deemed banned in certain countries, including the United States. Why is Absinthe Illegal? Traditional Absinthe is banned from being sold in the United States. The product traditionally had thujone in it, which is said to be a drug causing psychoactive. A psychoactive drug primarily alters brain function, changing things like perception and mood. This is the famous altering state that some people have said to experience from drinking Absinthe.
Therefore anything containing thujone, like Absinthe, is considered illegal to sell. On top of that, it is not legal to distill herbs in alcohol in the United States, at least without a license. However, companies are now able to remove the thujone from the drink, thus enabling them to sell the alternated Absinthe.
You might find such bottles in a liquor store or for sale online. Traditional Absinthe is available over in Europe, but illegal to import to the United States. Thujone might be the cause of breaking down of your ability of your brain to function normally. It is said that those who drink traditional Absinthe are more than likely going to end up in an asylum with continued use. This is probably why many countries, and the United States Food and Drug Administration, continue to ban Absinthe, at least if it contains thujone. How are people able to get Absinthe in the United States? Well a handful of people smuggle it in, or make it themselves.
A few companies are selling Absinthe making kits as novelty items. Selling the kits as novelty items is not illegal. You can find kits being sold and you can do what you want with it. Just know what laws are in place in the United States, and you take your own risks. Absinthe Today While still feeling like an underground movement, more people seem to be able to get their hands on a kit to make their own Absinthe, or manage to get a different version of the product. One could probably thank the Internet for the ability to locate Absinthe kit makers, learning how to make it themselves by buying the ingredients separately, or locating people who make it and are willing to let them have some.
However they are finding it, the popularity of Absinthe is growing. Many people are also alerting others on Absinthe and writing articles, blogs and talking with people about the history and use of Absinthe. There are some groups hoping to talk to the FDA and hopefully change the laws about thujone and traditional Absinthe. It isn't clear whether the FDA is listening yet, continual movement toward a Absinthe culture has been rising anyway. It truly has become a culture. The culture does seem to be rather underground, never openly pronounced, and heavily in tune with the more gothic cultures.
Absinthe has become popular not just as a drink, but also as an icon. Images of Absinthe are made into clothing lines, as part of decorating items, and even into art and music. Will there be changes in the future regarding this famous drink? Maybe. For now, even while it is banned, it is still obtainable for those who like to might care to indulge.
Green Devil is a leading supplier of absinthe kits online. Visit us today for absinthe kits, recipes and information on this historic product. |
0.952208 | What are all those Registers and Historic Districts?
The National Register of Historic Places is the nation's official list of buildings, structures, districts, sites, and objects that merit preservation because of their significance in American culture. Since 1968 more than 4,500 properties in Connecticut have been listed on the National Register and over 80,000 individual properties and districts have been listed nationwide. Although registration alone does not prevent an owner from altering a property, designation does assist preservation efforts in other ways, such as ensuring assessment of impact from federally sponsored projects and providing eligibility for federal tax credits and, when available, federal grants-in-aid. Properties may be listed individually or as part of a district. There are 9 National Register properties in Norwalk and 3 National Historic Districts. All National Register properties and Districts are also listed in the State Register.
There are no restrictions associated with a listing in the National Register and the property is protected under the Connecticut Environmental Protection Act.
Norwalk Preservation Trust is currently actively involved with individuals and neighborhoods to create National Register Historic Districts in Rowayton, Silvermine, and Wall Street.
The Lockwood-Mathews Mansion in Norwalk holds the distinction of being listed in this highly selective group of important buildings, sites and structures.
The State Register of Historic Places is Connecticut's official listing of structures and sites that characterize the historical development of Connecticut. The State Register uses the same criteria for listing as the National Register except that special-case considerations (such as a 50-year age requirement) are not applicable. Properties are listed on the State Register by the Commission on Culture and Tourism's Historic Preservation Council following review and recommendation by the staff of the Historic Preservation and Museum Division. Since 1975, over 50,000 properties owned by private citizens, organizations, municipalities, and the State of Connecticut have been listed on the State Register. A property may be listed individually or as part of a district. Norwalk has three State Register Districts in addition to those listed in the National Register.
There are no restrictions associated with listing in the State Register of Historic Places, but a listing may qualify a property owner for certain state tax benefits.
More information on the State Register may be found at the Historic Preservation and Museum Division of the CCT and the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation.
Towns may establish historic districts and historic properties for which exterior architectural changes are reviewed by local preservation commissions. The Division's State Historic Preservation Office staff meets regularly with local communities which are considering establishing local historic districts and historic properties. State Historic Preservation Office staff provides information regarding procedures to be followed under the state enabling statutes, responsibilities of the study committee, and preparation of the study report. Since 1959, 122 historic districts (comprising 8,046 buildings) and 78 individual historic properties have been designated throughout the state. These designations are found in urban as well as rural areas of a total of over 77 towns.
Towns which have a Local Historic District qualify for state grant funding which is not otherwise available. Norwalk, unlike New Canaan, Westport, Darien, and Wilton does not have a Local Historic District or Property.
More information on Local Historic Districts may be found at the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation. |
0.972655 | You are given n integers. Your task is very easy. You should find the maximum integer a and the minimum integer b among these n integers. And then you should replace both a and b with a-b. Your task will not be finished unless all the integers are equal.
Now the problem come, you want to know whether you can finish you task. And if you can finish the task, you want to know the final result.
The first line of the input contain an integer T(T≤ 20) indicates the number of test cases.
Then T cases come. Each case consists of two lines. The first line is an integer n(2≤ n≤ 10) as the problem described. The second line contains n integers, all of them are no less than -100000 and no more than 100000.
For each case you should print one line. If you can finish your task, you should print one of the n integers. Otherwise, you should print "Nooooooo!"(without quotes). |
0.938556 | I arrived in the bay in 2006 and left in 2007. I was the principal of Summer Bay High. Can you guess which Summer Bay character this is?
* I arrived in the bay in 2006 and left in 2007.
* I was in love twice.
* I was dumped at the altar.
* My wife died of cancer.
* I was the principal of Summer Bay High.
* I was involved in a boating accident. |
0.953648 | What actually is Mode-A/C, Mode-S and ADS-B? A brief overview.
Radar isn't a very old technology. Developed during WW2, it is 70 years old. Early radar was just to detect objects in the air. This was done by transmitting a powerful signal and waiting for the reflection from the flying object. The time between transmission and reception was twice the distance of the object. The position of the antenna provided the angular position. Something we still display even on modern systems. Such traditional systems are called primary radar.
However, due to geometry the altitude resolution on primary radar was not provided (or very inaccurate in systems with several beams). Also, if two aircraft were flying nearby, there was no identification provided for those bright spots on the screen. Due this demand a system was introduced permitting the aircraft to modify the received pulse: Using 12 bits, it returns either altitude or the squawk identification. The radar station has two request patterns which it transmits towards the aircraft, and the aircraft responds with either a Mode-A pattern for squawk or a Mode-C pattern for altitude. The pattern itself does not contain any information about its kind, so only the one who has requested that info will know how to post process. As a passive receiver such as we are, it is that we only hear a number between zero and 4095, but we don't know the question.
With growing air traffic, air traffic controllers required more information about the aircraft. Also, they wanted to get control over the transmissions in a crowded airspace. This is when Mode-S became introduced. Not at least the "S" stands for "Selective". Mode-S transmissions contains some more information like higher resolution altitude, aircraft capabilities and identification. As a passive listener we now got the capability to distinguish between several formats and collect information about each single aircraft.
Last, one special frame format within the Mode-S protocol, so called DF-17, became introduced to indicate the position of the aircraft and some more information. In fact ADS-B is only one message within Mode-S. It requires 2 DF-17 frames to calculate the position unambiguous, the so called even and odd formats.
Our Radarcape and the Mode-S Beast can receive Mode-AC messages and output them on the binary ports. But these messsages do not have position information within. They cannot be used for localisation within the processing capabilities of a Radarcape.
Also Mode-S does not contain location information, but as they have enougth information to distinguish among each other and combining data of at least 3 Radarcape with a precision time stamp and a process called Multilateration (MLAT) we are able to estimate the position of the aircraft from Mode-S transmissions.
Finally, using ADS-B transmissions, the aircraft directly tells us where it believes to be or where it wants us to think it currenly is. |
0.999986 | How much should I expect to pay for the recalibration of an advanced driver-assistance system?
You can expect to pay anywhere between $225 and $250 for a static or dynamic recalibration. When both methods are used due to certain vehicles requiring universal recalibration, the price range is between $450 and $500. |
0.963083 | How will I ever be able to read 1000 books to my child before he/she starts Kindergarten?
Read just 1 bedtime story every night for 3 years = 1095!
Read 10 books each week for 2 years = 1040!
What if I don’t have time to browse for books to check out for my child?
The staff will gladly prepare a bag of books for you to just stop in and pick up!
Yes, a repeated reading of favorite books is recommended. |
0.999976 | I'm new to home Improvement and have a rather specific question I need answered. I am not sure, however, if it is off topic.
In summary, I'm looking for some advice on selling my house during the off/slower season for home sales. I need to know what kinds of things people look for during the off season, and what kinds of projects or things I can do to improve my odds of selling the house.
Home Improvement seems pretty far from what I'm asking, but it is certainly the closest on the site. So, should I ask my question here, or look elsewhere? Also is there another SE, or website that you would recommend for this kind of question?
This is not the place for that type of question, and I don't know of any SE sites where that question would be on topic.
You should contact a local real estate agent, as they'll have more detailed information based on your specific location. |
0.93132 | How do they become Peers?
With the exception of 92 hereditary Peers and 26 Lords Spiritual—Church of England Archbishops and Bishops—Members of the House of Lords are appointed by the Sovereign, on the advice of the Prime Minister. Before a Member can be formally introduced, a title has to be agreed and Members may not take their seat until they have received Letters Patent from the Monarch and a writ of summons, issued by direction of the Lord Chancellor from the Office of the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery.
The membership of the House of Lords has changed over the last 100 years, first through the passing of the Life Peerages Act 1958, which enabled life peerages to be created, the Peerages Act 1963, which enabled women hereditary peers to sit in the House, and then through the House of Lords Act 1999, under which membership of the House by virtue of a hereditary peerage was restricted. Figure 1 shows the gross total membership of the House since 1911. It demonstrates the impact the creation of life peerages had upon the membership of the House. The sharp fall in the membership after 1999 was a result of the House of Lords Act 1999, and the removal of all but 92 of the hereditary peers. |
0.999994 | You are provided with the following apparatus.
b).Bend the wire in the middle so as to make an angle of 500. Attach the two small pieces of plasticine at both ends of the wire as shown in the diagram.
c).Place the bent wire on the optical pin and give a small horizontal displacement. Take the time for 10 oscillations and record in the table below.
d).Repeat the procedure above for other values of and complete the table below.
i). Set up the apparatus as shown below.
i). Measure angle A of the prism using a protractor. (1mrk) ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
iii). Place the prism on a plain paper and trace its outline with a pencil. Attach some plasticine to the prism to indicate the prism angle A, construct a normal at point T along LM. Draw an incident ray to strike the prism at 400. Replace the prism and stick pins p1and p2 to define the incident ray. View p1 and p2 from the opposite face (MN). Insert pins p3 and p4 so that they appear to be in line with images of p1 and p2. Remove the prism and join p3 to p4 to give emergent ray. Extrapolate the emergent ray into the prism so as to meet the extrapolated incident ray at Q.
iv).a) Measure angle D. (2mrks) ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
c).What is the significance of? (1mrk) ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
and give its units, where L is one meter. |
0.942508 | I think AI risk is disjunctive enough that it's not clear most of the probability mass can be captured by a single scenario/story, even as broad as this one tries to be. Here are some additional scenarios that don't fit into this story or aren't made very salient by it.
AI-powered memetic warfare makes all humans effectively insane.
Humans break off into various groups to colonize the universe with the help of their AIs. Due to insufficient "metaphilosophical paternalism", they each construct their own version of utopia which is either directly bad (i.e., some of the "utopias" are objectively terrible or subjectively terrible according to my values), or bad because of opportunity costs [LW · GW].
AI-powered economies have much higher economies of scale because AIs don't suffer from the kind of coordination costs that humans have (e.g., they can merge their utility functions and become clones of each other). Some countries may try to prevent AI-managed companies from merging for ideological or safety reasons, but others (in order to gain a competitive advantage on the world stage) will basically allow their whole economy to be controlled by one AI, which eventually achieves a decisive advantage over the rest of humanity and does a treacherous turn.
The same incentive for AIs to merge might also create an incentive for value lock-in, in order to facilitate the merging. (AIs that don't have utility functions might have a harder time coordinating with each other.) Other incentives for premature value lock-in might include defense against value manipulation/corruption/drift. So AIs end up embodying locked-in versions of human values which are terrible in light of our true/actual values.
I think the original "stereotyped image of AI catastrophe" is still quite plausible, if for example there is a large amount of hardware overhang before the last piece of puzzle for building AGI falls into place.
I'd classify #1, #2, and #4 as different problems not related to intent alignment per se (though intent alignment may let us build AI systems that can help address these problems). I think the more general point is: if you think AI progress is likely to drive many of the biggest upcoming changes in the world, then there will be lots of risks associated with AI. Here I'm just trying to clarify what happens if we fail to solve intent alignment.
I'm not sure I understand the distinction you're drawing between risk factors that compound the risks that you're describing vs. different problems not related to intent alignment per se. It seems to me like "AI-powered economies have much higher economies of scale because AIs don’t suffer from the kind of coordination costs that humans have (e.g., they can merge their utility functions and become clones of each other)" is a separate problem from solving intent alignment, whereas "AI-powered memetic warfare makes all humans effectively insane" is kind of an extreme case of "machine learning will increase our ability to 'get what we can measure'" which seems to be the opposite of how you classify them.
What do you think are the implications of something belonging to one category versus another (i.e., is there something we should do differently depending on which of these categories a risk factor / problem belongs to)?
I think the more general point is: if you think AI progress is likely to drive many of the biggest upcoming changes in the world, then there will be lots of risks associated with AI. Here I’m just trying to clarify what happens if we fail to solve intent alignment.
Ah, when I read "I think this is probably not what failure will look like" I interpreted that to mean "failure to prevent AI risk", and then I missed the clarification "these are the most important problems if we fail to solve intent alignment" that came later in the post, in part because of a bug in GW [LW · GW] that caused the post to be incorrectly formatted.
Aside from that, I'm worried about telling a vivid story about one particular AI risk, unless you really hammer the point that it's just one risk out of many, otherwise it seems too easy for the reader to get that story stuck in their mind and come to think that this is the main or only thing they have to worry about as far as AI is concerned.
I think the kind of phrasing you use in this post and others like it systematically misleads readers into thinking that in your scenarios there are no robot armies seizing control of the world (or rather, that all armies worth anything at that point are robotic, and so AIs in conflict with humanity means military force that humanity cannot overcome). I.e. AI systems pursuing badly aligned proxy goals or influence-seeking tendencies wind up controlling or creating that military power and expropriating humanity (which eventually couldn't fight back thereafter even if unified).
Even so, Christiano’s first scenario doesn’t precisely envision human extinction. It envisions human irrelevance, as we become agents of machines we created.
Human reliance on these systems, combined with the systems failing, leads to a massive societal breakdown. And in the wake of the breakdown, there are still machines that are great at persuading and influencing people to do what they want, machines that got everyone into this catastrophe and yet are still giving advice that some of us will listen to.
Often, he notes, the best way to achieve a given goal is to obtain influence over other people who can help you achieve that goal. If you are trying to launch a startup, you need to influence investors to give you money and engineers to come work for you. If you’re trying to pass a law, you need to influence advocacy groups and members of Congress.
That means that machine-learning algorithms will probably, over time, produce programs that are extremely good at influencing people. And it’s dangerous to have machines that are extremely good at influencing people.
The Vox article also mistakes the source of influence-seeking patterns to be about social influence rather than 'systems that try to increase in power and numbers tend to do so, so are selected for if we accidentally or intentionally produce them and don't effectively weed them out; this is why living things are adapted to survive and expand; such desires motivate conflict with humans when power and reproduction can be obtained by conflict with humans, which can look like robot armies taking control.
Yes, I agree the Vox article made this mistake. Me saying "influence" probably gives people the wrong idea so I should change that---I'm including "controls the military" as a central example, but it's not what comes to mind when you hear "influence." I like "influence" more than "power" because it's more specific, captures what we actually care about, and less likely to lead to a debate about "what is power anyway."
There is a different mistake with the same flavor, later in the Vox article: "But eventually, the algorithms’ incentives to expand influence might start to overtake their incentives to achieve the specified goal. That, in turn, makes the AI system worse at achieving its intended goal, which increases the odds of some terrible failure"
The problem isn't really "the AI system is worse at achieving its intended goal;" like you say, it's that influence-seeking AI systems will eventually be in conflict with humans, and that's bad news if AI systems are much more capable/powerful than we are.
Failure would presumably occur before we get to the stage of "robot army can defeat unified humanity"---failure should happen soon after it becomes possible, and there are easier ways to fail than to win a clean war. Emphasizing this may give people the wrong idea, since it makes unity and stability seem like a solution rather than a stopgap. But emphasizing the robot army seems to have a similar problem---it doesn't really matter whether there is a literal robot army, you are in trouble anyway.
I agree other powerful tools can achieve the same outcome, and since in practice humanity isn't unified rogue AI could act earlier, but either way you get to AI controlling the means of coercive force, which helps people to understand the end-state reached.
It's good to both understand the events by which one is shifted into the bad trajectory, and to be clear on what the trajectory is. It sounds like your focus on the former may have interfered with the latter.
I do agree there was a miscommunication about the end state, and that language like "lots of obvious destruction" is an understatement.
I do still endorse "military leaders might issue an order and find it is ignored" (or total collapse of society) as basically accurate and not an understatement.
I agree that robot armies are an important aspect of part II.
In part I, where our only problem is specifying goals, I don't actually think robot armies are a short-term concern. I think we can probably build systems that really do avoid killing people, e.g. by using straightforward versions of "do things that are predicted to lead to videos that people rate as acceptable," and that at the point when things have gone off the rails those videos still look fine (and to understand that there is a deep problem at that point you need to engage with complicated facts about the situation that are beyond human comprehension, not things like "are the robots killing people?"). I'm not visualizing the case where no one does anything to try to make their AI safe, I'm imagining the most probable cases where people fail.
I think this is an important point, because I think much discussion of AI safety imagines "How can we give our AIs an objective which ensures it won't go around killing everyone," and I think that's really not the important or interesting part of specifying an objective (and so leads people to be reasonably optimistic about solutions that I regard as obviously totally inadequate). I think you should only be concerned about your AI killing everyone because of inner alignment / optimization daemons.
That said, I do expect possibly-catastrophic AI to come only shortly before the singularity (in calendar time) and so the situation "humans aren't able to steer the trajectory of society" probably gets worse pretty quickly. I assume we are on the same page here.
Part I has this focus because (i) that's where I think the action is---by the time you have robot armies killing everyone the ship is so sailed, I think a reasonable common-sense viewpoint would acknowledge this by reacting with incredulity to the "robots kill everyone" scenario, and would correctly place the "blame" on the point where everything got completely out of control even though there weren't actually robot armies yet (ii) the alternative visualization leads people to seriously underestimate the difficulty of the alignment problem, (iii) I was trying to describe the part of the picture which is reasonably accurate regardless of my views on the singularity.
I think we can probably build systems that really do avoid killing people, e.g. by using straightforward versions of "do things that are predicted to lead to videos that people rate as acceptable," and that at the point when things have gone off the rails those videos still look fine (and to understand that there is a deep problem at that point you need to engage with complicated facts about the situation that are beyond human comprehension, not things like "are the robots killing people?"). I'm not visualizing the case where no one does anything to try to make their AI safe, I'm imagining the most probable cases where people fail.
Are you now very confident that no AI company would implement something with this vulnerability? Or does the paragraph below just mean that the part where the AI gets control of the camera has to happen before the robot armies (or even robot armies identified as traceable to the AI in question), which then happen?
Because it definitely seems that Vox got the impression from it that there is never a robot army takeover in the scenario, not that it's slightly preceded by camera hacking.
Is the idea that the AI systems develops goals over the external world (rather than the sense inputs/video pixels) so that they are really pursuing the appearance of prosperity, or corporate profits, and so don't just wirehead their sense inputs as in your benchmark post?
My median outcome is that people solve intent alignment well enough to avoid catastrophe. Amongst the cases where we fail, my median outcome is that people solve enough of alignment that they can avoid the most overt failures, like literally compromising sensors and killing people (at least for a long subjective time), and can build AIs that help defend them from other AIs. That problem seems radically easier---most plausible paths to corrupting sensors involve intermediate stages with hints of corruption that could be recognized by a weaker AI (and hence generate low reward). Eventually this will break down, but it seems quite late.
very confident that no AI company would implement something with this vulnerability?
The story doesn't depend on "no AI company" implementing something that behaves badly, it depends on people having access to AI that behaves well.
Also "very confident" seems different from "most likely failure scenario."
Haven't you yourself written about the failure modes of 'do things predicted to lead to videos that people rate as acceptable' where the attack involves surreptitiously reprogramming the camera to get optimal videos (including weird engineered videos designed to optimize on infelicities in the learned objective?
That's a description of the problem / the behavior of the unaligned benchmark, not the most likely outcome (since I think the problem is most likely to be solved). We may have a difference in view between a distribution over outcomes that is slanted towards "everything goes well" such that the most realistic failures are the ones that are the closest calls, vs. a distribution slanted towards "everything goes badly" such that the most realistic failures are the complete and total ones where you weren't even close.
I agree there is a robot takeover shortly later in objective time (mostly because of the singularity). Exactly how long it is mostly depends on how early things go off the rails w.r.t. alignment, perhaps you have O(year).
My own sense is that the intermediate scenarios are unstable: if we have fairly aligned AI we immediately use it to make more aligned AI and collectively largely reverse things like Facebook click-maximization manipulation. If we have lost the power to reverse things then they go all the way to near-total loss of control over the future. So i would tend to think we wind up in the extremes.
I could imagine a scenario where there is a close balance among multiple centers of AI+human power, and some but not all of those centers have local AI takeovers before the remainder solve AI alignment, and then you get a world that is a patchwork of human-controlled and autonomous states, both types automated. E.g. the United States and China are taken over by their AI systems (inlcuding robot armies), but the Japanese AI assistants and robot army remain under human control and the future geopolitical system keeps both types of states intact thereafter.
Why? I can easily imagine an AI takeover that works mostly through persuasion/manipulation, with physical elimination of humans coming only as an "afterthought" when AI is already effectively in control (and produced adequate replacements for humans for the purpose of physically manipulating the world). This elimination doesn't even require an "army", it can look like everyone agreeing to voluntary "euthanasia" (possibly not understanding its true meaning). To the extent physical force is involved, most of it might be humans against humans.
I somewhat expect even Part I to be solved by default -- it seems to rest on a premise of human reasoning staying as powerful as it is right now, but it seems plausible that as AI systems grow in capability we will be able to leverage them to improve human reasoning. Obviously this is an approach you have been pushing, but it also seems like a natural thing to do when you have powerful AI systems.
Is this future AI catastrophe? Or is this just a description of current events being a general gradual collapse?
This seems like what is happening now, and has been for a while. Existing ML systems are clearly making Type-I problems, already quite bad before ML was a thing at all, much worse, to the extent that I don't see much ability left of our civilization to get anything that can't be measured in a short term feedback loop - even in spaces like this, appeals to non-measurable or non-explicit concerns are a near-impossible sell.
Part II problems are not yet coming from ML systems, exactly, But we certainly have algorithms that are effectively optimized and selected for the ability to gain influence; the algorithm gains influence, which causes people to care about it and feed into it, causing it to get more. If we get less direct in the metaphor we get the same thing with memetics, culture, life strategies, corporations, media properties and so on. The emphasis on choosing winners, being 'on the right side of history', supporting those who are good at getting support. OP notes that this happens in non-ML situations explicitly, and there's no clear dividing line in any case.
So if there is another theory that says, this has already happened, what would one do next?
I'm not sure either, but I think the idea is that once influence-seeking systems gain a certain amount of influence, it may become faster or more certain for them to gain more influence by causing a catastrophe than to continue to work within existing rules and institutions. For example they may predict that unless they do that, humans will eventually coordinate to take back the influence that humans lost, or they may predict that during such a catastrophe they can probably expropriate a lot of resources currently owned by humans and gain much influence that way, or humans will voluntarily hand more power to them in order to try to use them to deal with the catastrophe.
I think such a failure can happen without especially strong coordination and commitment mechanisms. Something like this happened during the Chinese Warlord Era, when many military commanders became warlords during a correlated "military commander failure", and similar things probably happened many times throughout history. I think what's actually preventing a "world leader failure" today is that most world leaders, especially of the rich democratic countries, don't see any way to further their own values by launching coups in a correlated way. In other words, what would they do afterwards if they did launch such a coup, that would be better than just exercising the power that they already have?
The key issue here is whether there will be coordination between a set of influence-seeking systems that can cause (and will benefit from) a catastrophe, even when other systems are opposing them.
I agree with you that the "stereotyped image of AI catastrophe" is not what failure will most likely look like, and it's great to see more discussion of alternative scenarios. But why exactly should we expect that the problems you describe will be exacerbated in a future with powerful AI, compared to the state of contemporary human societies? Humans also often optimise for what's easy to measure, especially in organisations. Is the concern that current ML systems are unable to optimise hard-to-measure goals, or goals that are hard to represent in a computerised form? That is true but I think of this as a limitation of contemporary ML approaches rather than a fundamental property of advanced AI. With general intelligence, it should also be possible to optimise goals that are hard-to-measure.
Similarly, humans / companies / organisations regularly exhibit influence-seeking behaviour, and this can cause harm but it's also usually possible to keep it in check to at least a certain degree.
So, while you point at things that can plausibly go wrong, I'd say that these are perennial issues that may become better or worse during and after the transition to advanced AI, and it's hard to predict what will happen. Of course, this does not make a very appealing tale of doom – but maybe it would be best to dispense with tales of doom altogether.
- Unfortunate circumstances in future cooperation problems between AI systems (and / or humans) result in widespread defection, leading to poor outcomes for everyone.
- Conflicts between key future actors (AI or human) result in large quantities of disvalue (agential s-risks).
- New technology leads to radical value drift of a form that we wouldn't endorse.
But why exactly should we expect that the problems you describe will be exacerbated in a future with powerful AI, compared to the state of contemporary human societies?
That is true but I think of this as a limitation of contemporary ML approaches rather than a fundamental property of advanced AI.
I'm mostly aiming to describe what I think is in fact most likely to go wrong, I agree it's not a general or necessary feature of AI that its comparative advantage is optimizing easy-to-measure goals.
I'm not mostly worried about influence-seeking behavior emerging by "specify a goal" --> "getting influence is the best way to achieve that goal." I'm mostly worried about influence-seeking behavior emerging within a system by virtue of selection within that process (and by randomness at the lowest level).
Sounds like a new framing of the “daemon” idea.
That's my impression as well. If it's correct, seems like it would be a good idea to mention that explicitly in the post, so people can link up the new concept with their old concept.
So the concern here is that even if the goal, say, robustly penalizes gaining influence, the agent still has internal selection pressures for seeking influence? And this might not be penalized by the outer criterion if the policy plays nice on-distribution?
And if the internal goal doesn’t permit that? I’m trying to feel out which levels of meta are problematic in this situation.
There's a bunch of bullet points below Part 1 and Part 2. Are these intended to be parallel with them on the same level, or instances/subcategories of them?
Oh, this is only on GW. On LW it looks very different. Presumably the LW version is the intended version.
Paul, is anyone at MIRI or elsewhere doing numerical simulation of your ideas? Or are those just open-loop thoughts?
The distinguishing features of TTE's are that they were Trusted. A human put them in a position of power. Humans have refined, understood and checked the code enough that they are prepared to put this algorithm in a self driving car, or a stock management system. They are not lab prototypes. They are also Trial and error learners, not one shot learners.
Some More descriptions of what capability range I am considering.
Suppose hypothetically that we had TTE reinforcement learners, a little better than todays state of the art, and nothing beyond that. The AI's are advanced enough that they can take a mountain of medical data and train themselves to be skilled doctors by trial and error. However they are not advanced enough to figure out how humans work from, say a sequenced genome and nothing more.
Give them control of all the traffic lights in a city, and they will learn how to minimize traffic jams. They will arrange for people to drive in circles rather than stay still, so that they do not count as part of a traffic jam. However they will not do anything outside their preset policy space, like hacking into the traffic light control system of other cities, or destroying the city with nukes.
If such technology is easily available, people will start to use it for things. Some people put it in positions of power, others are more hesitant. As the only way the system can learn to avoid something is through trial and error, the system has to cause a (probably several) public outcrys before it learns not to do so. If no one told the traffic light system that car crashes are bad on simulations or past data, (Alignment failure) Then even if public opinion feeds directly into reward, it will have to cause several car crashes that are clearly its fault before it learns to only cause crashes that can be blamed on someone else. However, deliberately causing crashes will probably get the system shut off or seriously modified.
Note that we are supposing many of these systems existing, so the failures of some, combined with plenty of simulated failures, will give us a good idea of the failure modes.
The space of bad things an AI can get away with is small and highly complex in the space of bad things. An TTE set to reduce crime rates tries making the crime report forms longer, this reduces reported crime, but humans quickly realize what its doing. It would have to do this and be patched many times before it came up with a method that humans wouldn't notice.
Given Advanced TTE's as the most advanced form of AI, we might slowly develop a problem, but the deployment of TTE's would be slowed by the time it takes to gather data and check reliability. Especially given mistrust after several major failures. And I suspect that due to statistical similarity of training and testing, many different systems optimizing different proxies, and humans having the best abstract reasoning about novel situations, and the power to turn the systems off, any discrepancy of goals will be moderately minor. I do not expect such optimization power to be significantly more powerful or less aligned than modern capitalism.
This all assumes that no one will manage to make a linear time AIXI. If such a thing is made, it will break out of any boxes and take over the world. So, we have a social process of adaption to TTE AI, which is already in its early stages with things like self driving cars, and at any time, this process could be rendered irrelevant by the arrival of a super-intelligence.
Just before reading this, I got a shower thought that most AI-related catastrophes described previously were of "hyper-rational" type, e.g. the paperclipper, which from first principles decides that it must produce infinitely many paperclips.
However, this is not how ML-based systems fail. They either fall randomly, when encounter something like adversarial example, or fall slowly, by goodhearting some performance measure. Such systems could be also used to create dangerous weapons, e.g. fakenews or viruses, or interact unpredictably with each other.
Future GPT-3 will be protected from hyper-rational failures because of the noisy nature of its answers, so it can't stick forever to some wrong policy.
I think that's a straw man of the classic AI-related catastrophe scenarios. Bostrom's "covert preparation" --> "Treacherous turn" --> "takeover" story maps pretty nicely to Paul's "seek influence via gaming tests" --> "they are now more interested in controlling influence after the resulting catastrophe then continuing to play nice with existing institutions and incentives" --> " One day leaders may find that despite their nominal authority they don’t actually have control over what these institutions do. For example, military leaders might issue an order and find it is ignored. This might immediately prompt panic and a strong response, but the response itself may run into the same problem, and at that point the game may be up. "
I don't think this is an accurate description of the paperclip scenario, unless "first principles" means "hardcoded goals".
Ignoring how GPT isn't agentic and handwaving an agentic analogue, I don't think this is sound. Wrong policies make up almost all of policyspace; the problem is not that the AI might enter a special state of wrongness, it's that the AI might leave the special state of correctness. And to the extent that GPT is hindered by its randomness, it's unable to carry out long-term plans at all - it's safe only because it's weak. |
0.970638 | I've been meaning to blog about this article, to recommend it to everyone starting out with TDD (but since you get a lot more traffic than I do, why not write it here will people will actually see it?).
You really did a fine job of capturing the common gotchas, and giving good guidance for how to approach writing your tests. A lot of other sources tell you "what" and "why", but its tough to find a good source on "how". This is it. Thanks a lot!
congratulations Roy! It's definitely on my reading list in the near coming days..
Roy you mention in your article that you should "Avoid Dependencies Between Tests". I sometimes call one test from another to ensure that data/state is setup for this test to run. It does require that the other test is run before hand, but I guess it does create a dependency between the two.
What do you think is a better alternative to this? Like a database setup and tear down scripts for the test suite? Or to use the setup teardown sections of the test to seutp this data?
One thing I was thinking about, on multiple asserts. I mostly agree with the single assert per test, but sometimes I feel that we're just not using multiple asserts because the framework simply doesn't support that, and no other "best practice" reason.
Could this reduce some test code? Probably. Is it a good ideia? Don't know yet.
Another possible conclusion is that, currently, the feedback we get from tests is very limited (to a failed single assert). |
0.935959 | Send notification to run fan when indoor temp reaches ___.
In mild Spring weather when your system isn't running daily you may want to circulate air with the fan. Pick an indoor temp where you know your heat hasn't been running for awhile, or where you might appreciate a little circulation without turning on the AC, and send yourself a notification to turn on your fan. |
0.999977 | I keep coming across the term "visible universe." Could this mean there is something beyond what we see or beyond space and time?
Yes, the term "visible universe" refers to the fact that the actual universe might be bigger than the part of it we can see (in fact, it might be infinitely big). The part we can see is determined by the age of the universe. For example, suppose that the universe is 13.7 billion years old, as indicated by recent measurements from the WMAP satellite. That means that the farthest away from the earth that we can see, in any direction, is 13.7 billion light-years - i.e., the distance light can travel in the time since the universe was formed.
Note that we are able to see objects which are currently farther away than this distance, since the universe is expanding, and the objects would have moved farther away in the time since they emitted the light which is just reaching us now. So what I really should say is that the visible universe contains all the objects whose light had to travel less than 13.7 billion light-years to reach us. For anything that is farther away, the light from it would not yet have had a chance to get here. |
0.91774 | Article about Intel's graphics solutions should probably begin with i768 from 1986, though i860 from 1989 is nowadays often considered more of a "3D accelerator". It was 25-50 MHz microprocessor with extensive floating point functionality. It's FPU could theoretically deliver up to 100 MFLOPS using single cycle MADD, and there was also dedicated 3d fixed function hardware for pixel interpolation and z-buffer operations. Intel claimed high transformation, shading and fillrate figures, but real world usage could not get anywhere near and low compatibility buried its future as a CPU. But it was used also as a coprocessor or graphics frontend. Nevertheless, over the time this SIMD design evolved into widespread x86 extensions like MMX. Intel alos offered other products for graphics workstations like RapidCAD but these were just 486DX with crippled integer performance. In the wake of consumer 3d acceleration Intel decided to develop its own stand alone product competitive with best offerings. However complexity of modern graphics pipeline was a new challenge for Intel and rather than trying to do everything on its own a coalition was formed.
Chips and Technologies, one of the leading manufacturers of graphics chips for notebooks joined in. Intel purchased the whole company in July 1997 and put their 2d expertise into good use. Crucial partner was Real3D with three decades of experience from space and military 3d graphics. Coming from a futuristic world of expensive simulations, Real3D was a spun off by Lockheed Martin and targeting growing civilian market. They already got trust from Sega to use their graphics in arcade machines, and even delivered own arcade hit 'Desert Tank'. Real3D then made a splash in professional market with powerful Lightning/100. They made a deal with Chips and Technologies to be their world wide distribution partner of high-end graphics. Sega intended to use Real3D technology in Saturn 2 but price seemed too high for a home system. And the price was likely limiting jointly developed PC product as well, since the Auburn did not exactly eclipse the capabilities of 1996 Sega Model 3. But at the time the divide between arcade cabinets and home computers was still large. Contemporary graphics accelerators did not fully benefited from Accelerated Graphics Port, new bus made specially for 3d accelerators that was introduced by Intel's Pentium II platform. Project Auburn should change that- in fact, it should have been the unique feature to trump the rest. The chip combining 2d of C&T with 3d pipeline by Real3D was named Intel740. In January 1998, just one month before launch, Intel started buying substantial amount of Real3D shares.
Chips and Technologies adopted embedded memory early and succeeded in notebook market. However, at the time of acquisition they were losing market to NeoGeo.
The i740 was highly anticipated, after all joint effort of CPU behemoth and architects of Lightning/100 did not need much of the pre-launch hype. Intel promised their 3d product will show true potential of AGP. Excitement was all gone when Voodoo2 launched at the same time and completely eclipsed it. It turned out i740 is not about performance leadership, but mid-range cost effectiveness. Facing fierce competition of rapidly developing 3d market Intel gave up on its expected 50% CPU-like margins. Taiwanese vendors jumped after the chip and lowered prices as much as possible, cannibalizing on Real3D's own Starfighter boards. And of course Intel had its massive OEM channels. The i740 had its place in the market, but much shorter and less glorious than Intel would like to attach to its brand.
All of my Intel740 AGP cards have 8 MB of memory. It would be great to have variants with less memory to see how it performs with more buffers located in system memory. SDRAM or SGRAM memory runs always at 100 MHz and with 64 bit bus provides 800 MB/s bandwidth. Together with AGP 2x texturing bandwidth the i740 claims respectable 1.3 GB/s peak bandwidth. Local memory chips are usually rated for 10ns, that means minimal room for overclocking. I don't even have old enough Powerstrip to be able to change the frequency so overclocking investigation may come later.
I tested the green one, but there is no real difference.
Chips are shielded by heatsinks despite temperature tolerance up to ~100°C and BGA packaging transferring most of the heat to the PCB.
The Intel740 is indeed designed for the AGP bus. Its architecture consists of dedicated engines executing in parallel to deliver high performance 3d, 2d and video capabilities. The 3d and 2d engines are managed by the pipeline preprocessor allowing them a sustained flow of graphics data. Instructions are sent to low or high priority FIFOs and there is of course DMA FIFO for batch processing, efficiently fetching instructions from AGP memory. High parallelism continues in 3d stages. The i740 can execute multiple 3d commands at the same time and each stage of the pipeline can simultaneously work on different primitives or portions of the same primitive. 100 MFlops full geometry setup engine culls polygons not facing viewpoint and is dimensioned for output of up to four pixels per clock for rasterization stage. Scan converter works in parallel with setup engine feeding texture unit with vital information such as fog, specular RGB, and blending data. Texturing supports power of two rectangular texture sizes up to 1024 x 1024. The texture unit not only has a texel cache for fast filtering, but also for both texture coordinate and blending data. Mipmapping is done accurately per pixel. Texture chroma and color key match are supported and two pass trilinear filtering was heralded, but I could not produce such a thing even without mipmapping. What I've seen with mipmaps on was a bit of dithering along the edges, which hardly improves image quality. In final stages of the pipeline are implemented all the blending operations game developer could wish for. Alpha and depth tests are conducted, determining whether the frame and depth buffers will be updated with new pixel values. Chroma keying or alpha testing are full speed, alpha blending causes a minor performance decrease. More programmable features of professional class Real3D products such as stenciling were dropped. Z-buffer precision was reduced to 16 bit logarithmic. The Intel740 is optimized for a 2d resolution of 1024x768 and a 3d at 640x480. It can render 366000 full featured triangles per second with an average of 105 pixels per triangle. This is enough to deal with 10,000 triangles per frame, between 75 and 175 pixels per triangle, at 30 frames per second. With polygons of this optimal size i740 really outputs its theoretical 66 megapixels per second in a Gouraud shaded scene. Adding fog, blending and speculars for every triangle does not cause drop bigger than 30% percent, which puts it in performance per clock next to, or even above, the legendary Voodoo Graphics. 230 MHz RAMDAC supports various palletized formats, with capacity of 256 16 bit entries for 8 bit textures.
What makes i740 so special is AGP texturing. All other 3d accelerators with AGP texturing used it to upload textures faster through DMA mode in rare cases when local video memory is not enough. However the Intel740 abandoned texturing from local memory and can only use AGP memory. All of the local video memory is used for rendering and depth buffers. Most common are cards with 8 MB of memory, but even 2 and 4 MB versions were on sale. Two megabytes are enough only for 640x480x16 double buffered resolution, but the i740 can relocate pretty much any buffer to AGP aperture to get around this limit. After all, the chip in control of 32bit AGP addressing can use up to 2GB of write combined system memory. Putting the back buffer into AGP memory can be desirable to free up local memory for video overlay. The peak bandwidth of AGP 1.0 at 2x mode is 533 MB/s. Some of it is used for scene data and commands in any case of 3d rendering. Let's say i740 gains additional 500 MB/s bandwidth dedicated to texturing. Good for the card alone, but AGP memory is of course allocated in main memory. Back in 1998 PC66 SDRAM was common, with exactly the same bandwidth as AGP 2x. Main memory bandwidth can be crucial for performance with Intel740 AGP card as whole system performance suffers. Additionally the AGP memory latency, even with all the advantages over PCI bus, is higher then local memory. Intel and Real3D did their best to exploit AGP possibilities and deeply buffered the pipeline to hide host latencies. Sideband addressing is also implemented, allowing transfer of texture data and addresses at once. The real ace is direct "execute" mode- DiME. It would be impossible to get decent performance with plain AGP DMA transfers, where whole textures are being uploaded into local memory. The Intel740 can select only small chunk of texture if the rest of the raster map is not needed for rendering. Having reduced texture transfers to a fraction of usual amount the i740 achieves amazing performance considering its reliance on system memory.
High ambitions of Real3D did not last long.
It was only the summer of 1998 and prices of i740 AGP cards were already falling like a rock. Because AGP was not yet so widespread PCI card was developed as well. It required special bridge chip emulating AGP texturing with on-board memory, since i740 can only work with AGP aperture. These more complicated boards with more total memory cost around twice as much as discounted AGP cards, but that was still reasonable. PCI Starfighters carried 8 MB framebuffer together with 8 or 16 MB of texturing memory. Not that many were sold and nowadays are valued by collectors. The R3D-040 bridge chip does not have any sign of Intel on it, so one can very well ask if the force behing AGP endorsed this PCI endavour of Real3D. When i740 AGP failed to reach high end expectations some reviewers blamed the AGP texturing for slowing down actually powerful accelerator. That is why PCI cards were supposed to do better, in fact it was widespread believe because nobody made a comparative review. Maybe it is about time to make one?
Here are 12 and 16 MB variants of Starfighter PCI. The bridge chip not only manages local texturing from 8MB SDRAM chip(s), it also implements triangle strips and fans support. This vertex information sharing among triangles was a regular feature strangely omitted in i740, thanks to that the PCI cards have measurable advantage around 20% with many small polygons in a simple scene. But what about the local texturing, can we now unleash the full power of Intel740 by avoiding the 500 MB/s AGP "bottleneck"? If only people looked at the card.
The SDRAM memory is rated with 10ns latency, so we can assume it runs at 100 MHz, 50% improvement over AGP clock. But it is using only sixteen bit data bus, half of AGP width and sideband addressing ability is lost as well. 16 bits means that Starfighter PCI can fetch only one texel per clock, which is often enough for the pipeline, but sometimes you need to do better.
The upper half displays default settings, below is subpixel AA at work.
The Intel 740 supports, and with Starfighter drivers can even enforce, anti-aliasing (AA). Rendition was first with edge AA, Riva 128 introduced super sampled AA with incredible performance hit and now the i740 can do it sometimes at more acceptable framerates. Don't get your hopes up, framerate effectively drops to one third, but it is a step in right direction compared to the Riva 128. What more, I've found the compatibility is quite low, and older games with enforced AA usually end up unrecognizable. Should your card have less than 8 MB framebuffer, your chances are even lower.
Despite all the image quality praise I have some doubts about subpixel accuracy of i740. There are often polygon gaps in several games like CartX Racing or Ultimate Race Pro. Sometimes unnecessary color banding appears like in red sky of Incoming. Drivers are probably to blame for some flashing textures in Unreal. Proper texturing in MDK requires chroma key blending. Terrain around the track of Daytona USA is a bit transparent. Also, I could not get first Motoracer bilineary filtered with last driver. Shadow of Grim Fandango has problems. That is pretty much all of my complains, gaming with i740 AGP on a system with strong CPU is very enjoyable and really fast. Only Falcon 4.0 with its benchmark settings is too much for this card. Turok on the hand reported incredible 160 fps. Probably error, yet the game runs quite fast on i740 in any case. While only 16 bit textures and 3d framebuffer is available, high internal precision usually delivers nice colors and subtle dithering.
The PCI cards needs special driver and after Intel bought Real3D no more updates were provided. That means support for Starfighter PCI lasted only half a year. Very sad, but compatibility with old games is good enough. Only trouble is with Falcon 4.0, which freezes when haze is turned on. Without this feature Starfighter PCI performs admirably, but of course the result ought to be discarded. Viper Racing needs even older driver to run.
Quality of texture filtering is great just like many other operations. Check out i740 gallery.
Before anything else I wanted to see impact of main memory bandwidth on this "vampire" AGP texturing card. By the way my setting for general testing is 100 MHz CL2.
Choosing competitor for gaming benchmarks was easy. The Intel740 was not high end, but it is almost next gen architecture and has to challenge the best of last year. Nvidia's Riva 128 was a first successful obstacle to high end dominance of 3dfx in 1997. Throughout 1998 Riva's prices were falling and competed directly with Intel 740. And did you know it also had AGP/PCI execute mode long time before i740?
OpenGL of Nvidia looks good, but that is partially because of disabled vsync. Quake 3 has little mercy for old 3d chips. In Direct3d AGP cards are trading blows, on average performance is equal. In minimum fps Intel takes the cake, leading by almost 10%. You can click on the picture to see minimal fps results. Starfighter PCI is 15% slower than its AGP counterpart. Image quality considered I would prefer the i740 to Riva, maybe even in PCI form. With price taken into account, only the PCI Starfighters were not so competetive, all the bad press AGP cards got does not seem so justified, at least on my systems.
The Intel740 was expected to take large chunk of marker share, but instead struggled on mature markets. Who knows how much the i740 would fail if Intel did not bundle the chips at awfully low prices with other products in Asia? Meanwhile a refresh part was being designed, the i752. It was ready for release in spring 1999 but computer makers were not at all interested in it. Intel aborted the chip before high volume production and instead of improving they chose to scrap whole discrete video business almost immediately. Only few i752 cards made it into wild, making them super rare. But getting a taste of the technology is easy, since i752 was integrated into the i810 and following chipsets and served Intel's platform for four years. New features added were 16-tap anisotropic filtering, MPEG2 motion compensation, extended texture compression and embossed bump mapping.
Another victim was new generation project i754, a high performance AGP 4x chip scheduled for fall 1999. Lockheed Martin euthanized Real3D in October and sold its intellectual property to Intel. Most of Real3D staff ended there as well or chose always hungry ATI, also in Orlando. To this day Intel has not come out of its fortress of integrated graphics, but ambitions are still there as Larabee projects prove. Just remember the lesson of i740: if you want to sell to a gamer, better make sure your product stands up to your hype. Especially when you are named Intel. |
0.999998 | People sometimes ask me about temple garments, occasionally in disrespectful terms. What should I say to them?
First of all, when people use disrespectful terms to refer to temple garments, it is entirely appropriate for you to kindly ask them to show more respect, since the garments are sacred to us.
Also, you may want to point out that members and clergy in many other religions wear specific articles of clothing to represent their personal faith or their official responsibility, so the fact that our religious practice includes special clothing is really not unusual.
To explain the significance of temple garments, you can say that they are simple, modest underclothing given to adult members of the Church as part of special ceremonies in our temples. In these ceremonies, we commit ourselves to live the way Jesus Christ would have us live, and the garments are a constant physical reminder of this personal, spiritual commitment. In this way, garments can help protect us against temptation and evil. |
0.992106 | Handling the lack of coordination while designing efficient algorithms in distributed systems has been a major topic of study in the past decade. Coordination mechanisms have been proposed as a tool to deal with the issue as well as lack of access to global information in settings such as distributed systems. In the context of resource allocation, a coordination mechanism is a set of local policies that assigns a cost to each strategy based on the available local information. For example, in machine scheduling, this cost only depends on the processing times of jobs assigned to the same machine. Although a great tool to study distributed algorithms in the presence of self-interested agents, coordination mechanisms have few deficiencies as an analysis tool for distributed game theoretic environments. For example, in many real-world settings, we do not know the exact processing time of a job before it finishes. Furthermore, in many settings, jobs arrive online, and have different release times. Motivated by these requirements, we propose dynamic coordination mechanisms, in which each job selects a machine by looking at the set of jobs currently on each machine and it can change its decision over time. In other words, jobs can dynamically choose the (best machine dynamically. We study scheduling and resource allocation problems in this framework. Here, we are given a set of M machines and a set N of jobs or players. Each job j ∈ N has pj units of processing requirement. The mechanism designer, however, is not aware of the processing lengths of jobs. This is commonly referred to as non-clairvoyant setting in the machine scheduling literature. We consider two machine models: In the related machine model, each machine has a speed νi, and a job can choose any machine i ∈ M. In the restricted assignment model, every machine has same speed; however, a job j can only go to a subset of machines Mj . |
0.785964 | Can New York City's infrastructure handle climate change's consequences?
From 1600 to 1903, the position of the North Pacific jet stream over California was linked to the amount of winter precipitation and the severity of the subsequent wildfire season, the team found. Wet winters brought by the jet stream were followed by low wildfire activity, and dry winters were generally followed by higher wildfire activity. Wet winters no longer predict possible relief from severe wildfires for California, according to a new study. |
0.996497 | 6/30/03 - The Secret of N.I.M.H.: (Jerry Goldsmith) --All New Review-- "Animated films were undergoing a significant change in the 1980's, one which would eventually lead to the vast business of made-for-video animated pictures for small children. For a long time, Disney held a grip on the large-scale, animated film industry, but by the time The Little Mermaid revived their dominance in 1989, several offshoots of the industry were thriving. One such offshoot was Don Bluth, who had been a Disney animator until 1979, when he started his own animation business. Eventually, he would be best known for bringing to life the An American Tail and The Land Before Time series. One of his early efforts was the animated adaptation of "The Story of N.I.M.H.," the tale of rats (made intelligent in human laboratories) who escape and try to make a community life for themselves in the wild. Bluth certainly succeeded in stealing some attention from Disney, with his film The Secret of N.I.M.H. meeting with critical and popular success. One of the reasons for this positive response was the score by Jerry Goldsmith. The early to mid-1980's were a remarkable time in Goldsmith's career (and some will argue that it was the best), and The Secret of N.I.M.H. was a departure for the veteran composer into a realm which he had not yet explored: animation...." **** Read the entire review.
6/27/03 - Conan the Destroyer: (Basil Poledouris) --All New Review-- "With the stunning success of John Milius' Conan the Barbarian two years earlier, a sequel set with Conan once again in the Hyborean age was inevitable. Other than the executive production team, only three elements returned for the sequel: actors Schwarzenegger and Mako, as well as composer Basil Poledouris. Despite early ideas of utilizing a pop/rock score for the first film, Poledouris had beaten the odds and produced one of the finest pre-historic orchestral scores in the history of film. Twenty years later, Conan the Barbarian still stands as the most outstanding achievement of Poledouris' career. Thus, his return for Conan the Destroyer was an immediate necessity. Not returning for the sequel, though, was the same brutally classic vision of the Hyborean age that Oliver Stone and John Milius had created in the first film. Some will argue that new director Richard Fleischer, a veteran filmmaker in his own rights, built an extension of the Hyborean age in the sequel film... following a different avenue that developed other aspects of Conan's character and his surroundings. Others will argue that Conan the Destroyer was a monumental failure simply because it lost the classic realism and solitude that made the first film so enticing...." *** Read the entire review.
6/26/03 - Conan the Barbarian: (Basil Poledouris) --All New Review-- "And on to this Conan..." When director John Milius and his college buddy Basil Poledouris collaborated to produce their first fantasy adventure film, little did they know that they would be catapulting their own careers, as well as that of Arnold Schwarzenegger, into the bright lights of both cult and mainstream attention. When Conan the Barbarian hit the theatres in 1982, Hollywood was hitting the peak of its "sword and sorcery" phase (which some called the "swords and steroids" phase), and producers and directors struggled to create authentic representations of a fantasy Earth from the Middle Ages on limited budgets and do it during a time when audiences were being awed by the special effects of space age films. Film scores were also undergoing a renaissance in the early-1980's, spurred by John Williams' orchestral adventure scores, back towards large symphonic representations of the fantasy genre. The producer of Conan the Barbarian, Dino De Laurentiis, was an advocate of experimenting with pop scores in the epic fantasy genre, and recommended such an approach for the film. Milius and Poledouris recognized that a rock/pop score would not function for Conan the Barbarian because of the film would rely on the music and cinematography to take the place of dialogue in painting the correct canvas for the film's depiction of the Hyborean age...." ***** Read the entire review.
6/25/03 - Don Juan DeMarco: (Michael Kamen) --All New Review-- "One of the most successful songwriter/composer pairings in Hollywood during the 1990's was Bryan Adams and Michael Kamen. After their dominance of all music charts and awards for "Everything I Do..." from the 1991 Robin Hood film for which Kamen wrote the score, the two would collaborate once again for another blockbuster in Don Juan DeMarco. The 1995 film offers the story of a delusional Johnny Depp, who claims to be Don Juan, the world's greatest lover, and who claims to have rolled around in the sack with more than his fair share of beautiful females. His psychiatrist, Marlon Brando (who allegedly showed up at filming sessions naked from the waist down), must analyze his patient to sort out reality and, at the same time, live up to the romantic aspirations of his wife, played by Faye Dunaway. With lush flashbacks from the psychiatric sessions to the adventures of Don Juan in Mexico, the film is the ultimate romantic comedy. Some people have claimed that the entire Don Juan reference is false, because Depp's actions in the film more closely resemble those of Casanova rather than Don Juan, but that's beside the point. The film's charm resides in masterful dialogue (performed flawlessly) and Michael Kamen's score...." **** Read the entire review.
6/22/03 - Interview with the Vampire: (Elliot Goldenthal) --All New Review-- "Neil Jordan's sinister romance entry into the horrific world of vampires came at a time when blood sucking films were experiencing their comeback in the mainstream of American cinema. Just two years prior, the epic Bram Stoker's Dracula had captivated audiences with its grim drama and stellar cast, and Jordan's film would steer the genre towards the modern pop edge. His casting of several heartthrob actors in Interview with a Vampire led to a sort of cult status with young women, and the film performed very well. Jordan hired veteran classical composer George Fenton for Interview with the Vampire, soliciting a darkly romantic effort extended from the massive base established by Wojciech Kilar in Bram Stoker's Dracula. After Fenton was into his recording sessions, the producers admonished the composer by claiming that his work was too understated and slowly paced. Thus, Elliot Goldenthal, who had impressed with his work for Alien 3, was hired onto the project and given just three weeks to complete a score that exceeded Fenton's. While Goldenthal's effort culminated in an Academy Award nomination, critics were wildly varied in their responses to the score...." *** Read the entire review.
6/20/03 - The Dish: (Edmund Choi) --All New Review-- "Few people know that Australia played a pivotal role in the broadcasting of live images during Neil Armstrong's historic step onto the moon in 1969. The film The Dish is the story of the Australian satellite complex, located on a sheep paddock, that served as the backup transmitter for the live images from the moon to the rest of the world. Inevitably, when the primary NASA satellite in America failed, the Australians served a silent, heroic part in the adventure. A character drama with a decent cast, the film is a lightweight tale that received primarily positive reviews from critics in 2000, but failed to win the hearts of audiences. Director Rob Sitch was familiar with composer Edmund Choi, who had been director M. Night Shyamalan's first collaborator on two films and had worked to re-score a Sitch film a year before. With Choi's career still in the fledgling stages, his music for Wide Awake had been heard on album at about the same time. For The Dish, Choi would be given the task of writing a patriotic score for the hometown Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and a local choir. He indeed accomplished this feat, but at a cost. Choi's finished score, albeit pleasant, is a mirror image of those temp scores: James Horner's Apollo 13 and, to a lesser extent, Bill Conti's The Right Stuff...." *** Read the entire review.
6/19/03 - The Last Starfighter: (Craig Safan) --Updated Review-- "The early 1980's represented the peak of corny science-fiction movies, with one of the typical stories to streak into space at the time being The Last Starfighter. It's hard to imagine now that in 1984, The Last Starfighter was a rather innovative and serviceable film in the genre, featuring cutting edge special effects technology that served as the origins of computer-generated animation. You can laugh at it now, of course, with its silly effects displaying the modest budget of the film, but the early effects were a match for the subject matter of the film: video games. The story of the film is quite intriguing, especially for video game aficionados, basically entailing that aliens put certain video games on Earth as a test to see what humans would make the best pilots in for the real life representation of the game... in this case, a battle between advanced space-faring races. One particular everyday kind of guy is recruited from the arcade to the stars, and thus begins his fantastic journey. The choice for composer was not expected; with a music director to supervise song use in the film, Craig Safan was hired for the project. Safan is best known for his long-standing piano theme for the hit TV show Cheers..." **** Read the entire review.
6/18/03 - The Adventures of Pinocchio: (Rachel Portman/Lee Holdridge/Stevie Wonder) --All New Review-- "Several attempts have been made to market the Pinocchio story to young children over the years, and The Adventures of Pinocchio was a live-action/animated/digital combination adaptation in 1996. Very obviously aimed at small children, this adaptation failed to muster even minimal support among adults, with its confusing array of fairy-tale and modern day elements too illogical to comprehend. A colorful and overwhelming combination of mattes, miniatures, and digitized wonders conveyed a Pinocchio story with a modern edge of low humor, pop-musical songs, and off-hand humor. Its only redeeming factor may have been an outstanding Martin Landau as Geppetto, starring opposite of insufferable child-star Jonathan Taylor Thomas as the title character. Infused at the center of the music for the film is a cluster of songs by Stevie Wonder, which further confused the era and feel of the story. Also causing a blatant lack of consistency was the choice to make the film a pseudo-musical, with a variety of songs ranging from the pop variety to a full-blown opera libretto that steals the show. It's hard to wonder what the filmmakers were thinking with this one, though they did manage to hire some top notch talent for the project..." *** Read the entire review.
6/17/03 - Pumpkin: (John Ottman) --All New Review-- "It is hard to imagine what John Ottman's mental state must have been between the summer of 2001 and early 2002. The composer was in extremely high demand, scoring six projects during that span of time. One of the lesser known of these six was an odd job called Pumpkin, a character-driven film about the societal and personal problems which arise when a sorority college girl falls in love with a retarded male student, and vice versa. The awkward situation is played out on a campus stage that is saturated with peer criticism, and the two characters work to resolve their doubts about whether or not their affection towards one another is acceptable. The film is light years away from Cruel Intentions, but the project overlapped in its expression of what Ottman calls "wrong love," for which he was required to score scenes with a romantic, yet slightly twisted emotional edge. The directors of the film requested a score that was "musically off," representing the development of the problematic relationship, and this request was something of a challenge for Ottman. Any fan of the composer will note that his works fit their films like a tight glove, with Ottman always paying close attention to how the music could be edited in the film (given his editing and directing experience). Add to the equation an extremely limited budget and a delivery of a score for Pumpkin in about three weeks, and the project became one of midnight oil for Ottman...." *** Read the entire review.
6/16/03 - Marvin's Room: (Rachel Portman) --All New Review-- "A Scott McPherson off-Broadway play, Marvin's Room was translated onto the big screen in 1996 by director Jerry Zaks. The film featured a blockbuster cast, with several awards nominations spread among them for their performances in this project alone. It is an intimate tale of a family estranged by distance and brought together to take care of one another in a series of medical crises. Along expected lines, the characters grow in their harmonious union as the film progresses, and despite the rather grim circumstances of their problems, the film also features its fair share of black humor. It is a tear-jerker in the end, and there was not better a choice for the tender scoring assignment than Rachel Portman. The year 1996 was best noted in Portman's career as the one in which she scored her first Academy Award nomination and win for Emma. While Marvin's Room is a story set in contemporary times, its score shares the same deeply rooted dramatic sense of love and harmony as the one for Emma. At the time, Portman's music was still refreshingly new --especially with extensive re-use of her Only You work from just a few years before-- and her critics had not yet begun to assert themselves along the vein that her music for dramatic art house films all sounds alike. Looking back at Marvin's Room, a certain amount of repetition of sound will likely add fuel to that fire..." *** Read the entire review.
6/14/03 - Gone in 60 Seconds: (Trevor Rabin) --All New Review-- "By the year 2000, film producer Jerry Bruckheimer had clearly defined the kind of music that he liked to hear in his films. It's a ball-busting, head-slamming, in-your-face, no-nonsense attitude that Bruckheimer offers in his projects that requires s specific genre of music. After teaming up with Hans Zimmer in his early pictures, Bruckheimer chose former Yes band rocker Trevor Rabin --also a pupil of Hans Zimmer on the scoring side of things-- to be his regular guy when a testosterone heavy film was in production. Unlike Zimmer, Rabin typically caters more towards the "Yes" audience of rock fans rather than the Zimmer audience of open-minded orchestral film score collectors. In his early days, Rabin still would, if possible, attempt to establish a theme or motif that would at least bookend the film and its score. By 2000 and 2001, however, Rabin's compositions for film began to stray away from the basic rules of film scores. Between Gone in 60 Seconds and The One, Rabin had gone from being a film composer to a human sound effects machine whose job is to pump up the audience with adrenaline by using hard rock music at high volumes. As a sign of the times, perhaps, the scary side of this eventuality is the fact that the majority of mainstream audiences simply accepted this moment-to-moment blasting of loud, unorganized rock music as a new staple of summer blockbuster films. Part of this transition may be the result of Bruckheimer's insistence that this kind of sound effects serve as music..." ** Read the entire review.
6/12/03 - The Return of a Man Called Horse (Limited Edition): (Laurence Rosenthal) "After the success of A Man Called Horse in 1970, star Richard Harris collaborated with director Irvin Kershner to bring the title character back to the big screen in 1976. Despite positive audience response to the original 1970 film, it did several cinematic injustices to the representation of Native American lifestyles, and the new production team wished to correct those errors. The sequel, The Return of a Man Called Horse, was, through the involvement of Kershner and his associates, a significantly more sensitive and realistic portrayal of Native American culture on the big screen. The film contained several slowly developed visual elements that that gave it a documentary quality, including several expansive vista scenes without much more than Laurence Rosenthal's music to compliment their beauty. From the 1960's through the 1980's, Laurence Rosenthal was known as a composer of great consistency, a gentleman with classical inclinations, but also a talent for bringing sophistication to a score of any genre. Some of his works have aged better than others, but most critics and collectors will agree that the mid-1970's to early 1980's represented the most lasting period in Rosenthal's career. After The Return of a Man Called Horse, which even Rosenthal agrees to being one of his finest compositions, both Meteor and Clash of the Titans (despite the shortcomings of their films) would continue to interest film score enthusiasts...." **** Read the entire review.
6/11/03 - Romancing the Stone (Limited Edition): (Alan Silvestri) "It's difficult to imagine today, but there was a time in 1983 when director Robert Zemeckis couldn't find a composer to pair up with. So famous now is the Zemeckis/Silvestri collaboration that Zemeckis' troubles finding the right sound for Romancing the Stone make the project noteworthy for film score enthusiasts by itself. A struggling 20th Century Fox took a chance on Zemeckis for Romancing the Stone, which Michael Douglas had been pushing for a few years. Despite the fact that the film was a cash-cow success for Fox, the production was plagued with every imaginable post-production problem, from poor test audience reactions to, ironically, a need to distinguish the film from the concurrent Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Zemeckis was frustratingly fired from the upcoming Cocoon (and replaced with Ron Howard) before Romancing the Stone could even be finished. Perhaps the best thing to come out of all that mess was the suggestion that Zemeckis visit an aspiring television composer, Alan Silvestri, at his house to see if his ideas would match the music the producers were looking for. To further combat the competition (that pesky Indiana Jones film), the score for Romancing the Stone would have to be campy and more contemporary, with the bulky orchestral action held to a minimum. Silvestri, known professionally only by his work for the TV show CHIPS, impressed Zemeckis with his easy-going, free-flowing style..." ** Read the entire review.
6/9/03 - Magic (Limited Edition): (Jerry Goldsmith) "The 1978 film Magic was the fourth directorial outing for Richard Attenborough, who, after fielding moderate success for this film, would turn his immediate attention to Ghandi. At the time, Magic was not known for its star power, but most of the attention given to it today is due to the emergence of several people involved with the project. Its star, Anthony Hopkins, had already performed in several great roles for a decade, but had not yet achieved superstar status. The same applied to Attenborough. The film's strong supporting cast (which looks now like an awkward preview of the Grumpy Old Men supporting cast) was limited to just a few characters, with a tightly woven and introverted script telling a tale that involves only five characters. Five, that is, if you include Fats, the dummy. The film's plot is a horrific tale of mental derangement by the primary character, a magician and ventriloquist, who succumbs to the suggestions of his puppet and commits hideous crimes while haunted by the love for an old schoolboy crush. The body count swells to encompass most of the cast, and the film is ultimately a frustrating and disturbing endeavor in every possible way. When envisioning the score for the film, no task too tough was to exist for composer Jerry Goldsmith at the time. Goldsmith's music would be key in the development of the self-destructive relationship..." *** Read the entire review.
6/7/03 - The Bride (Limited Edition): (Maurice Jarre) "There have been dozens upon dozens of Frankenstein interpretations on the big screen over the past 80 years, but by the mid-1980's, a while had past since the last monster thriller involving the famed creature. Columbia Pictures decided at the time that audiences were ready for a modern Frankenstein interpretation, and they as usual wanted it to cater to young, pop-oriented audiences. Thus, they brought two enormously popular stars of the early 1980's onto the project: Sting (Dune) and Jennifer Beals (Flashdance). Unfortunately, the two stars of The Bride had no screen chemistry from the start, both out of place in an oddly baroque-turned-modern setting. The film also failed to do what all Frankenstein films are supposed to do: scare people! The end result of the film was a pseudo-sequel to the original Mary Shelley tale, and there wasn't enough serious horror or silly playfullness (a la Young Frankenstein) to make The Bride work. Thus, the film slipped away into obscurity, as did the acting careers of its two stars. The only redeeming aspect of the entire project was Maurice Jarre's score. Jarre had the musical sensibilities of the era from which Frankenstein films experienced all their glory. He was still in demand in the mid-1980's, scoring several high profile projects in 1985 alone, including Witness and A Passage to India. Jarre's job on The Bride was made all the more difficult by the film's multiple, concurrent storylines and jagged settings...." **** Read the entire review.
6/6/03 - Final Solution: (John Sponsler/Tom Gire) "With high praise from both within the international Christian community and from mainstream critics, the apartheid film Final Solution is a tale of personal transformation, redemption, and confrontation of past crimes. Its premise revolves around the character journey of a young, white South African whose childhood circumstances led him to adopt the idea of genocide as a solution for South Africa and its "black danger." After training paramilitary white groups to strike at blacks, the man is slowly shown and cured of his prejudices by his love interest, as well as a pastor. The film presents a mob scene confrontation that allows the story of this man to unfold, and offers the ultimate opportunity for salvation. Produced for showings in film festivals, on PBS, and in churches, Final Solution is a film created by a partnership of Christian filming and distribution companies. Despite the mainstream theatrical limitations that typically arise for films distributed by religious organizations, the high quality of Final Solution is extending the film beyond that nucleus. One such example is the soundtrack release for the picture. Composed by John Sponsler and Tom Gire, the score for the film was recorded in South Africa with a moderate orchestral group, a local chorale, and several instrumental and vocal soloists. Some John Debney fans may already own a snippet of John Sponsler's work, as Sponsler worked with Debney to provide music for the television show "Doctor Who" in 1996...." **** Read the entire review.
6/4/03 - Primal: (Andrew Barnabas/Paul Arnold) "Scores for video games have consistently been low-budget midi-technology efforts since their emergence decades ago in mainstream culture. If you stop to consider the sheer volume of video games existing on the market, it is easy to understand how the vast majority of those games use midi electronic scores or license out rock music from stocks created specifically for this purpose. In the past few years, however, a handful of directors of video games have convinced their executives to fund ambitious orchestral scores for the promising flagship gaming products. In the case of Primal, Sony's European Computer Entertainment division was convinced by the midi-score creators that an orchestral score would be viable and extremely effective in the game. Primal is among Sony's top projects at the moment, with the same creators having produced the popular Medievil games in the previous years. The decision to record an orchestra over the existing midi score for Primal was made in part because the game features several hours of storytelling in a cinema format. As the main female character, Jen, battles through several levels of hideous creatures to rescue her boyfriend, Lewis, the game offers these film-like passages in between many steps that Jen takes. Thus, an orchestral score became necessary for almost three hours of these moments..." **** Read the entire review.
Page created 6/17/03, updated 6/18/03. Version 2.1 (Filmtracks Publishing). Copyright © 2003, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. "Real Audio" logo and .ra are Copyright © 1996, Real Audio (www.realaudio.com). "Academy Awards" and the Oscar statue are ® AMPAS, 1996. |
0.776831 | Chivington gained infamy for leading a 700-man force of Colorado Territory militia during the massacre at Sand Creek in November 1864. An estimated 70–163 peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho – about two-thirds of whom were women, children, and infants – were killed and mutilated by his troops. Chivington and his men took scalps and other body parts as battle trophies, including human fetuses and male and female genitalia.
Three years prior to Sand Creek, on August 2, 1861, he became the first Grand Master of Masons of Colorado. Several Freemasons, some of whom were present at the Sand Creek Massacre, objected to Chivington's actions and publicly denounced them, while others supported him. Officially, the Masons in Colorado suspended Chivington until the report from Congress, after which his membership was reinstated. The Freemasons, including Chivington and the first Governor, John Evans, were instrumental in pressing for Colorado statehood.
Chivington was born in Lebanon, Ohio, the son of Isaac Chivington, who had fought under General William Henry Harrison against members of Tecumseh's Confederacy at the Battle of the Thames.
Drawn to Methodism, Chivington became a minister. Following ordination in 1844, his first appointment was to Payson Circuit in the Illinois Conference. On the journey from Ohio to Illinois, Chivington contracted smallpox. He served the Illinois conference for ten years. In 1853, he worked in a Methodist missionary expedition to the Wyandot people in Kansas, a part of the Kansas–Nebraska Annual Conference. His outspoken views in favor of abolitionism put him in danger, and upon the advice of "Congressman Craig and other friends," Chivington was persuaded to leave the Kansas Territory for the Nebraska Territory.
As a result, the Methodist Church transferred Chivington to a parish in Omaha, Nebraska. Chivington left this position after a year. Historian James Haynes said of Chivington's pastoral abilities: "Mr. Chivington was not as steady in his demeanor as becomes a man called of God to the work of the ministry, giving his ministerial friends regret and even trouble in their efforts to sustain his reputation."
In May 1860, Chivington moved, with his family, to the Colorado Territory and settled in Denver. From there, he sought to establish missions in the South Park mining camps in Park County. He was elected Presiding Elder of the new Rocky Mountain District and served in that capacity until 1862. Controversy would begin to mar Chivington's appointment, who stopped performing his function as presiding elder.[clarification needed] Chivington was not reappointed at the 1862 conference; rather, his name was recorded as "located." According to early Methodist polity, describing a minister as "located" means that the minister has effectively been retired. Historian of Methodism Isaac Beardsley, a personal friend of Chivington, suggested that Chivington was "thrown out" because of his involvement with the armed forces, an association that would lead to Chivington's claim to infamy. Chivington's status as being "located" did not remove him completely from Methodist politics. His name appears as a member of the executive board of Colorado Seminary, the historic precursor of the University of Denver and the Iliff School of Theology. His name also appears in the incorporation document issued by the Council and House of Representatives of the Colorado Territory, which was approved by then governor John Evans.
Chivington's command, among whom there was a detail of Colorado Mounted Rangers, descended the slope and crept up on the supply train. They waited for an hour in concealment, then attacked, driving off or capturing the small Confederate guard detail without any casualties. Chivington ordered the supply wagons burned, and the horses and mules slaughtered. Meanwhile, the Battle of Glorieta Pass was raging at Pigeon's Ranch. Chivington returned to Slough's main force to find it rapidly falling back. The Confederates had won the Battle of Glorieta Pass, but because of Chivington and his forces, they had no supplies to sustain their advance and were forced to retreat. Chivington had completely reversed the result of the battle. Sibley's men reluctantly retreated back to Texas and never again threatened New Mexico.
In the fall of 1864, several events took place. Major Edward Wynkoop received a letter from Black Kettle requesting a peace council and an exchange of prisoners, and Wynkoop succeeded in holding a conference with multiple Cheyenne and Arapaho chiefs, including Black Kettle and Left Hand, and securing the release of some prisoners who had been taken during earlier Dog Soldier raids. Wynkoop and Captain Silas Soule, after the peace conference, traveled to Denver with both the returned prisoners and some of the chiefs. Wynkoop convinced a reluctant Territorial Governor John Evans to meet with the chiefs. Known as the Camp Weld Conference, it resulted in Evans making an offer of protection to those Indians who would surrender to Major Wynkoop at Fort Lyon. The chiefs agreed, and, after gathering their peaceful tribes, camped about 40 miles north of Fort Lyon, at Big Sandy Creek.
Around the same time, Gov. Evans received permission from the War Department to found the 3rd Colorado Cavalry, which would consist of volunteers who would sign on for 100 days. The purported purpose of the regiment was to protect Denver and the Platte road, and it was assigned to the District of Colorado, commanded by Chivington. For political reasons, Evans had stoked the fears of the populace regarding Indian attacks, and he and Chivington had hoped successful military engagements against the Indians would further their careers. But most of the Indian war parties and attacks were occurring hundreds of miles away.
In October 1864, the 100-day enlistment of the 3rd Colorado Cavalry volunteers was nearing an end, and Chivington's Civil War enlistment had expired, meaning he would soon lose his command position. After learning of the agreement reached with the chiefs, Chivington complained to the head of the Department of Kansas, Samuel R. Curtis, that Major Wynkoop was too conciliatory to the Indians. Curtis replaced Wynkoop with Major Scott Anthony, who agreed with Chivington's goal of Indian eradication. But Major Anthony requested that Wynkoop stay and advise him for a short period, despite being under orders from Curtis to end the protection of the Arapaho and Cheyenne encamped near Fort Lyon, and end the distribution of provisions that had also been promised.
In November, setting out from Fort Lyon, Colonel Chivington and his eight hundred troops of the First Colorado Cavalry, Third Colorado Cavalry and a company of First New Mexico Volunteers marched nearly to the reservation. On the night of November 28, after camping, soldiers and militia drank heavily and celebrated the anticipated fight. On the morning of November 29, 1864, Chivington ordered his troops to attack.
Captain Silas Soule believed the Indians to be peaceful and refused to follow Chivington's order and told his men to hold fire. Other soldiers in Chivington's force, however, immediately attacked the village. Ignoring the U.S. flag, and a white flag they raised shortly after the soldiers began firing, Chivington's soldiers massacred the majority of the mostly unarmed Cheyenne, taking scalps and other body parts as battle trophies, including human fetuses and male and female genitalia. The attack became known as the Sand Creek Massacre.
A prominent mixed-race Cheyenne witness named Edmund Guerrier, said that about 53 men and 110 women and children were killed.
Soule and some of the men whom he commanded testified against Chivington at his U.S. Army court martial. Chivington denounced Soule as a liar. Within three months, Soule was murdered by a soldier who had been under Chivington's command at Sand Creek. Some believed Chivington may have been involved.
Irving Howbert, an 18-year-old cavalryman who later became one of the founders of Colorado Springs, long defended Chivington's role in the events. In his autobiographical Memories of a Lifetime in the Pike's Peak Region, Howbert argues that the Indian women and children were not attacked, but a few who did not leave the camp were killed once the fighting began. He said that the number of warriors in the village was about equal to the force of the Colorado cavalry. According to Howbert, Chivington was retaliating for Indian attacks on wagon trains and settlements in Colorado and for the torture and the killings of citizens during the preceding three years; evidence of attacks on the white settlers – including "more than a dozen scalps of white people, some of them from the heads of women and children" – was found in the Indian camp after the battle.
Howbert also said that the account of the battle made to the United States Congress by Lieutenant Colonel Samuel F. Tappan was inaccurate. He accused Tappan of giving a false view of the battle because Tappan and Chivington had been military rivals.
Chivington was soon condemned for his part in the massacre, but he had already resigned from the Army. The general post-Civil War amnesty meant that criminal charges could not be filed against him. An Army judge publicly stated that the Sand Creek massacre was "a cowardly and cold-blooded slaughter, sufficient to cover its perpetrators with indelible infamy, and the face of every American with shame and indignation". Public outrage at the brutality of the massacre, particularly considering the mutilation of corpses, was intense. It was believed to have contributed to public pressure to change Indian policy. The Congress later rejected the idea of a general war against the Indians of the Middle West.
Chivington resigned from the army in February 1865. In 1865 his son, Thomas, drowned and Chivington returned to Nebraska to administer the estate. There he became an unsuccessful freight hauler. He seduced and then married his daughter-in-law, Sarah. In October 1871, she obtained a decree of divorce for non-support.
Public outrage forced Chivington to withdraw from politics and kept him out of Colorado's campaign for statehood. The editor of the Omaha Daily Herald tagged Chivington a "rotten, clerical hypocrite."
The early spring of 1871 he skipped as I heard afterward to Canada ... Left me without means of support. I had no desire to live with a criminal.
To the end of his life, Chivington maintained that Sand Creek had been a successful operation. He argued that his expedition was a response to Cheyenne and Arapaho raids and torture inflicted on wagon trains and white settlements in Colorado.
Because of Chivington's position as a lay preacher, in 1996 the General conference of the United Methodist Church expressed regret for the Sand Creek massacre. It issued an apology to the Southern Cheyenne for the "actions of a prominent Methodist".
In 2005, the City Council of Longmont, Colorado, agreed to change the name of Chivington Drive in the town following a two-decade campaign. Protesters had objected to Chivington being honored for the Sand Creek Massacre. The street was renamed Sunrise Drive.
The episode "Handful of Fire" (December 5, 1961) of NBC's Laramie western series is loosely based on historical events. A Colonel John Barrington, played by George Macready, and presumably modeled on John Chivington, escapes while facing a court martial at Fort Laramie for his role in the Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota in 1890. The Laramie episode reveals that series character Slim Sherman (John Smith) had been present at Wounded Knee and hence testified against Barrington. Then Barrington's daughter, Madge, played by Karen Sharpe, takes Slim hostage. She has papers which she contends justify her father's harsh policies against the Indians. Slim escapes but is trapped by the Sioux and must negotiate with the Indians to save the party from massacre.
The American television series Playhouse 90 broadcast "Massacre at Sand Creek" on December 27, 1956. It recounted the massacre and the court-martial of Chivington, but changed the names of those involved. Chivington became John Templeton, played by Everett Sloane.
Ainslie Pryor had an uncredited role as Chivington in the 1957 film, The Guns of Fort Petticoat, with Audie Murphy as Lt. Frank Hewitt, Hope Emerson as Hannah Lacey, Jeanette Nolan as Cora Melavan, and Sean McClory as Emmett Kettle.
^ a b c Laura King Van Dusen, Historic Tales from Park County: Parked in the Past (Charleston, South Carolina: The History Press, 2013), ISBN 978-1-62619-161-7, p. 33. |
0.945325 | According to Scripture, education is and always will be the responsibility of the parents (Deut. 6:6-7, 11:18-19; Eph. 6:4). Does this mean that everything in which children are to be educated must come from their parents directly? In other words, while it is the responsibility of the parents to educate their children, do the parents have to be the ones doing the work of educating?
In some instances, yes! Deuteronomy specifically says that the parents are to be teaching the precepts of God to their children directly, and throughout every part of the day: "You [parents] shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise" (Deut. 6:7). And Paul alludes to this very concept in Ephesians 6:4: "Fathers...bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord" (cf. Gen. 18:19; Deut. 4:9, 6:6-7, 11:18-19; Ps. 78:4; Prv. 22:6). What else could Paul mean by bringing them up in "the instruction of the Lord." And when the child is older, it is his own responsibility to continue his education (Prv. 4:5-7, 18:15, 23:23).
But even in his younger years obviously not everything a child learns will come from his parents. Yet in that regard the child should still be directed by his parents in the pursuit of his education (Prv. 3:1-2, 13-18). We find in Scripture that in Paul's day, when parents could afford it, a large aspect of a child's education would be entrusted to a schoolmaster or guardian (Gal. 4:1-2). That's how they were to gain even more knowledge than what their parents knew concerning God's Word, as well as knowledge above and beyond that of their father's trade or business. Even Paul's own education was according to this tradition (Acts 22:3), which was very effective from an academic stand point (Gal. 1:14). Yet he still put the ultimate responsibility on the parents but then appropriated the due praise to the parents too (Eph. 6:4; cf. 2 Tim. 1:5, 3:14-15).
But that's what the Scripture has to say about education. It's the ultimate responsibility of the parents (especially the fathers), and the task is appropriately given to either the parents themselves (home schooling) or to willing and capable guardians entrusted by the parents in the free market of education (privately funded schooling).
Does this mean there is no Biblical justification for public schools?
If by "public schools" you mean "government-mandated, government-funded, government-run public schools," then yes. There is no Biblical justification whatsoever for government-mandated, government-funded, government-run public schools.
If by "public schools" you mean "non-compulsory, privately-funded, privately-run schools that are open to the public (i.e., the general population)," then no. In fact, in that regard there is very good Biblical justification for public schools. As part of the Christian mandate to "make disciples of all nations" (Mt. 28:18-20), there is a great need for Christian schools to be open to the public. Indeed, it's really a necessary part of the great commission; and something the early settlers of this nation knew for themselves.
But for the government to be involved in education at all (other than restraining civil evil or ensuring civil justice) is completely unbiblical and without Biblical or even rational justification. How is this so? Well let's look at it briefly on each point.
There is no place in Scripture where the government is given the authority or responsibility to ensure (especially by compulsion) that all (or any) of its citizens receive a certain level of education. And to require it from any or all of their citizens (even through private means) is still overstepping its bounds. As stated before, the government has the very limited task of restraining civil evil, promoting civil good, and ensuring civil justice. And since education is not a civil right or benefit but a personal and social operation, the government has no right to be involved at all - let alone require it for any length of time.
Should all parents want to educate their children? Yes! But if lousy parents don't care or don't want to educate their children, does the government have the right to enforce that they do? By no means! It is then up to the church to change the minds of the parents through the power of the gospel and to help the parents educate (either by home or private means) their children.
Again there is no place in Scripture where the government is to have anything to do with the education of its citizens. But add to that a government that not only requires education but provides for its end out of its own pocket? Where is the government getting this money to provide such a service? It either pays for this education by not spending in other areas that it is tasked with overseeing (restraining civil evil, promoting civil good, and ensuring civil justice), or it makes up the difference by overstepping its bounds in the economy via exacting more taxes from private citizens (whether an increase in federal or state income tax, a property tax, a school-district income tax, or a plethora of other unbiblical means).
To put it simply: when a government funds education it does so by either neglecting duties it is actually assigned or by taxing heavier than what it is authorized to do.
Surely if a government has no business in education, it certainly has no authority to run public schools or dictate how they should be run. Education is the responsibility of parents; and how schools are run (provided they are not breaking any civil laws) should be dictated only by the free market via the parents who are paying private schools to educate their children.
What qualifies the government to run public educational programs? Why should any publicly available school need the government's stamp of approval in order to educate others? In a free market, with private citizens funding the education of their children at the schools of their own choice, the government has no need to give its approval to one institution and withhold it from another. The government's approval should not even be an option, as the government has no rightful role in public education.
As it is, when the government does overstep its bounds and does try to run schools, how does it do this task? If the schools are being funded by everyone (through taxes), then how does the government ensure that everyone's kids are being educated in the way the parents want them educated (according to a Christian worldview, a Muslim worldview, a Hindu worldview, a secular humanist worldview, etc.)? The only way it could conceivably do this would be to separate the students according to their parents' stipulations on how they want their child educated. But even then it would still be wrong, because we have yet to see a Biblical or even rational reason that the government should be involved in education.
However, obviously that's not what the current situation is anyway. Anyone who knows anything about the current public (that is, government-public) school system knows that the only worldview that is taught or will be taught is the secular humanist worldview. Why? Because that's the only one that at the outset either outright denies God's existence or at best makes Him irrelevant. How wise indeed (Ps. 14:1; 1 Cor. 1:20)!
Therefore, I would maintain without hesitation that since government public schools have no Biblical justification and are even by nature against the Christian worldview, they should be abolished and closed down as soon as possible (obviously by legal means).
"How can you not want free education for all?"
Public government education is anything but free. It's only supported by taxes that are way above and beyond what is authorized for a government to collect. If the government was not taking any money for education purposes (which means that income is now at the disposal of its original recipients), the parents would then have the choice (and their own funds) to send their children to a private school that would be run better and more efficiently than any government-run school as well as a school that is in line with their own worldview.
"Doesn't government-public education help the poor?"
Not in the least. If you notice anything about government public schools, it's generally the case that the schools in the rich suburbs have the biggest budgets, the more advanced facilities, and the best teachers, while the schools in the inner cities have the smallest budgets, the more broken facilities, and the worst teachers (obviously there are some brave and noteworthy exceptions). But by and large, government-public education only helps keep the poor poor by providing to them the lowest quality of education available.
If education was offered only by the free market, there would be much more ability (especially given the excessive tax burden lifted from citizens) for people to make scholarships available to poorer communities and even for schools in poorer neighborhoods to compete, which would give them incentive to run more efficiently and hire better teachers. That would help the poor much more than the government just keeping them poor by providing them the lowest quality education in the worst facilities.
And so again, I have to maintain without hesitation that since government public schools have no Biblical justification and are even by nature against the Christian worldview, they should be abolished and closed down as soon as possible. Education is the responsibility of the parents and should be provided by them either themselves (home school) or through privately-funded means (private schools, which certainly could - and should - be open to the public). And for those who can't afford either of these (even with the excessive taxes being taken out of the way since the government has no right to tax people for public education), the church should obviously step up to help (Mt. 28:18-20; Col. 2:3).
(1) I am by no means saying that everyone involved in government public education is anti-Christian. Please read my note to the contrary here. |
0.999999 | Rearrange the following words and phrases to form meaningful sentences.
1. The habit of reading is one of the greatest resources of mankind.
2. We enjoy reading books that belong to us much more than if they are borrowed.
3. A borrowed book must be treated with a certain considerate formality.
4. You should own no book that you are afraid to mark up.
5. Everyone should begin collecting a private library in youth.
6. In a private library, you can at any moment converse with Socrates or Shakespeare.
7. Your library should be free and accessible to the hand as well as to the eye.
8. One of the greatest pleasures known to man is that of reading.
9. The world of books has a rich variety of adventure and wisdom.
10. You can enjoy a book you own at your convenience.
They reached the theatre after the show had begun. |
0.885532 | Tell us a story: Tim Raue wanted to be an architect but didn’t have any money to study. He chose to enter the kitchen because it was the most creative option available to him at the time, working for several high-profile hotels before opening his eponymous restaurant in 2010.
What’s on the menu? Interesting fusion cooking that’s careful not to dumb down flavours. Raue is fascinated with Asian cuisine and regularly jets off to the continent to further expand his knowledge. His approach sees Asian and Western ingredients and techniques collide, often in spectacular fashion.
Other ventures: Raue’s culinary range is a lot wider than most chefs cooking at his level. Alongside his flagship he runs two other buzzy Berlin restaurants. The brilliantly titled La Soupe Populaire serves homely German dishes and Sra Bua at the Hotel Adlon Kempinski offers pan-Asian cuisine in glamorous surroundings.
Bonus point: In 2013, Raue cooked a dinner for Barack Obama and Angela Merkel plus a number of other highly distinguished guests. The brief was traditional – the menu included white asparagus with cod as well as veal meatballs – but Raue also managed to sneak in a few Asian touches, including a little dashi. |
0.999461 | International Holocaust Remembrance Day is an international memorial day on 27 January commemorating the victims of the Holocaust. It commemorates the genocide that resulted in the death of an estimated 6 million Jewish people, 2 million Romani people, 250,000 mentally and physically disabled people, and 9,000 homosexual men by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. It was designated by the United Nations General Assembly resolution 60/7 on 1 November 2005 during the 42nd plenary session. The resolution came after a special session was held earlier that year on 24 January 2005 during which the United Nations General Assembly marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and the end of the Holocaust.
Resolution 60/7 establishing 27 January as International Holocaust Remembrance Day urges every member nation of the U.N. to honor the memory of Holocaust victims, and encourages the development of educational programs about Holocaust history to help prevent future acts of genocide. It rejects any denial of the Holocaust as an event and condemns all manifestations of religious intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief. It also calls for actively preserving the Holocaust sites that served as Nazi death camps, concentration camps, forced labor camps and prisons, as well as for establishing a U.N. programme of outreach and mobilization of society for Holocaust remembrance and education….
The essence of the text lies in its twofold approach: one that deals with the memory and remembrance of those who were massacred during the Holocaust, and the other with educating future generations of its horrors.
The International Day in memory of the victims of the Holocaust is thus a day on which we must reassert our commitment to human rights. [...] We must also go beyond remembrance, and make sure that new generations know this history. We must apply the lessons of the Holocaust to today’s world. And we must do our utmost so that all peoples may enjoy the protection and rights for which the United Nations stands.
While genocide is still an ugly part of the human heritage of fear against “the other,” in the coming era we will look back at this sort of barbaric mass murder as a symptom of the toxicity of the human past when our bodies, feelings, and minds refused to listen to our Souls even though we knew better. While there is still widespread destruction of various living creatures on our fragile Earth, and we seem to be on the edge of another mass extinction of countless species on our planet, there are millions of us who will never approve of, nor participate in, the vile stench of genocide.
My father was orphaned from it. Romani gypsy maybe..no records found. Put it to rest and made peace .. not sure. Appreciate the article anyways. Healing generational wounds can be emotionally messy. I really loved my dad.
Hi all - A troll dropped by to post a false narrative, so I'm not publishing it. However, I will say that Jews have no monopoly on being victims of a holocaust. There have been African holocausts, Asian holocausts, Central American holocausts, North American holocausts, European holocausts, and Australian holocausts. I don't accept the premise that Israel bombarding and blockading Palestine has anything to do with a European holocaust of 75 years ago. To be clear, I don't believe anyone should be killing each other in the Middle East, but an ancient blood feud is hard to stop. That feud began long before the German and Russian 20th century holocausts.
Thank you sue. That is comforting. I never met my father's parents or family..but ancestors live within us is my belief. I have been reconnecting with sacred ancestors more so last year. Impart great wisdoms. I have native Shawnee also. Nelson mandella I admire. Genocides also..and gendercides. |
0.990445 | (Continued from above) These are multiple choice questions. You will choose the correct option.
Question: ¿De qué nacionalidad es?
Question: Ahora, escoge la imagen del pronombre femenino en forma singular.
Question:Ahora, escoge la imagen del pronombre masculino en forma singular.
Now choose the image of the masculine pronoun in singular form.
1.) Image of a group of men.
2.) Image of a group of women.
3.) Image of a girl. |
0.999897 | What are immune deficiency disorders?
The immune system is a network of highly specialized blood cells and other mechanisms in the body that fight off disease, whether it be infections from bacteria or viruses or illnesses that originate from within the body, such as cancer.
Immune deficiency (or “immunodeficiency”) is the term for any of a number of conditions in immune system loses part or all of its ability to fight infectious disease. In some cases, immune deficiency can also affect the body’s ability to perform its natural function of attacking cells that may become cancerous.
A person who has an immunodeficiency of any kind is said to be immunocompromised.
An immunocompromised person may be particularly vulnerable to opportunistic infections, such as fungal and viral disorders as well as normal infections that could affect everyone.
Some people are born with defects in their immune system, which is called “primary” immunodeficiency. Most cases of immunodeficiency are acquired (“secondary”), meaning they are not conditions the patient was born with, but were caused by an illness or toxin later on.
Humoral immune deficiency is associated with a condition called “hypogammaglobulinemia,” in which the body does not make enough of certain important kinds of antibody. A common symptom of his disorder is repeated respiratory infections.
Cell-mediated immune deficiency, including T-cell immune deficiencyDefects in immune cell structures, such as T-cells can leave the patient vulnerable many infections that do not affect people with normal immune function1 Lack of T-cell can result from hereditary conditions such as severe immune combined deficiency (SCID). Partial T-cell function occurs in conditions such as acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and genetic conditions such as DiGeorge Syndrome, Ataxia Telangiectasia and Wiskott Aldrich syndrome.
Most immunodeficiency syndromes affect multiple systems and are not isolated to just one part of the immune system. Examples include SCID, which is primary, and AIDS, which is secondary.
Secondary immunodeficiencies, also known as acquired immunodeficiencies, can be the result of using various medications, such as chemotherapy or environmental toxins that suppress the action of the immune system (these substances are said to be “immunosuppressive”), malnutrition, aging and medications such as chemotherapy, immunosuppressive drugs after organ transplants, and glucocorticoids.
For medications, the term immunosuppression generally refers to both beneficial and potential adverse effects of decreasing the function of the immune system, while the term immunodeficiency generally refers only to the adverse effect of increased risk for infection.
Initial testing in patients with suspected immune deficiencies includes a complete blood count, a measurement of the different types of blood cells in the blood and how many there are; immunoglobulin measurements and antibody titers, both of which are measures for types of antibodies in the blood; and skin testing for delayed hypersensitivity, another type of immune reaction. Additional testing is indicated if these initial tests suggest a specific disorder of immune cell or complement function. These can include additional testing of blood, cells, and genetic testing for specific mutations.
Treatments usually involve managing any infections that are already present and preventing future infection, and replacing or boosting the parts of the immune system that are damaged or missing. Therapies may include stem cell transplantation and gene therapy.
The treatment of primary immunodeficiencies depends on the nature of the disorder, and may involve infusions of antibodies to boost the immune system, long-term antibiotics, and in some cases, stem cell transplantation.
Treatment of primary immunodeficiencies may also utilize some of the treatments for secondary immunodeficiencies discussed below.
Many specific diseases directly or indirectly cause immunodeficiency such as cancer, particularly leukemia, lymphoma and certain chronic infections.
Immunodeficiency is also the hallmark of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). HIV directly infects a small number of T helper cells, and also impairs other immune system responses indirectly.
There are a large number of immunodeficiency syndromes that can autoimmunity, in which the immune system is known to attack the cells and tissues of the patient’s own body. The decreased ability of the immune system to clear infections in these patients may be responsible for causing autoimmunity by causing the immune system to be active all the time, even if it isn’t working properly.
Examples of autoimmune conditions include inflammatory bowel disease, autoimmune thrombocytopenia (a bleeding disorder), autoimmune thyroid disease (which affects the body’s hormonal system) and familial hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (an inherited condition that causes certain immune cells to grow out of control).
Therapy for these conditions is directed at removing the cause of the disorder, managing symptoms, treating infections, and managing each condition with the appropriate therapies. |
0.99962 | I inherited a tall plant which I've had to provide a support. How do I know if I have a "tree" Peony? The plant is in a pot and I want to know if I need to prune it. |
0.952672 | What are the metals present in a coin ?
Coin is an alloy of different types of metal. What are the metals ?
The first metal coins, which appeared in the Middle East around 700 BC, were made of gold and silver. These two metals were accessible at a time when the chemistry and technology of metal extraction from binary metal compounds were unknown. The chemical inactivity of gold meant that ancient gold coins, even after centuries of exposure to the atmosphere, or of burial and exposure to the corrosive chemicals in soil, are to be found in as good a condition as they were when they were in use.
Platinum made only a brief appearance as a coinage metal. A few high-value coins in Russia were made in the mid-19th century, at a time when platinum had recently been found in the Ural mountains. For a while the value of platinum fell below that of gold, and this gave rise to the emergence of counterfeit sovereigns in the 1870s. These were made from platinum and had a thin layer of electrochemically deposited gold. Bronze (Cu-Sn alloy) farthings issued between 1897 and 1917 were darkened using Na2S2O3, resulting in a surface layer of copper sulphide. This was done to avoid confusion between a newly minted farthing and a gold half-sovereign, the latter being worth 480 times the former. Bronze pennies issued between 1944 and 1946 were similarly treated to deter hoarding of new pennies at the end of World War II.
As chemical and technological knowledge improved, so did demands on the durability of coins increase. Modern conditions require that the metals and alloys used in coin production are extremely pure. Very small traces of non-metals, such as carbon, sulfur or phosphorus can cause brittleness, which cannot be tolerated in modern coin-striking equipment which operates at high speeds and pressures.
In the past 60 years electroplated iron and steel coins have appeared in many countries. These were a response to the increased costs of providing huge quantities of low-value coins for the prosperous consumers of the post-war years. From 1992 British 'bronze' coins have been made of copper-plated steel. |
0.99986 | Design a mechanism for people to use best and fitting legal music for them, if it’a truly best, then customers will buy it.
Why people will illegally use music? One is they cannot find a better legal option, they bother to find, or even they could find it, they cannot afford it. |
0.814976 | Fatehpur Sikri (Hindi: फतेहपुर सीकरी, Urdu: فتحپور سیکری) located in Agra district of Uttar Pradesh, India is about 40 km from Taj Mahal, Agra City. This historical city was constructed by Mughal emperor Akbar from 1570 and served as the empire's capital until 1585 when it was abandoned due to lack of water supply to sustain the growing population. The palace and mosque are a major tourist attraction and it is listed as an UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Akbar inherited the Mughal Empire from his father Humayun and during the 1560s he rebuilt the Agra Fort and established it as his capital. He had a son and then twins, but the twins died due to which he consulted Salim Chishti - the sufi saint who lived as a recluse in the small town Sikri near Agra. Salim predicted that Akbar would have another son, and indeed one was born in 1569 in Sikri. He was named Salim to honor the saint and would later rule the empire as Emperor Jahangir. The following year, Akbar, then 28 years old, determined to build a palace and royal city in Sikri, to honor Salim Chishti. The name, Fateh is Arabic in origin and means "victory", also in Urdu and Persian language. It is at Fatehpur Sikri that the legends of Akbar and his famed courtiers, the nine jewels or Navaratnas, were born.
The buildings of Fatehpur Sikri show a synthesis of various regional schools of architectural craftsmanship such as Gujarat and Bengal because indigenous craftsmen from various regions were used for the construction of the buildings. Same reason why influences from Hindu and Jain architecture are seen hand in hand with Islamic elements.
Young child getting a first hair cut in the form of a head-shaving in the courtyard of Jama Masjid at Fatehpur Sikri.
Fatehpur Sikri (Hindi: फतेहपुर सीकरी, Urdu: فتحپور سیکری) is a city and a municipal board in Agra district in the state of Uttar Pradesh, in North India. The historical city was constructed by Mughal Emperor Akbar beginning in 1570 and served as the empire's capital from 1571 until 1585. Though it took 15 years to build, it was abandoned after only 14 years of use because of shortage of water supply which was unable to sustain the growing population. The palace and mosque in Fatehpur Sikri are a tourist attraction and it is an UNESCO World Heritage Site which is about 40 km from the Taj Mahal, Agra. Uttar Pradesh state (UP), North India. |
0.970468 | Why Is There Negative Voltage at the Anodes of Two Rectifier Diodes in this Circuit?
i've been trying to figure out how this PSU in my amplifier is working by studying the schematic, and would like to check that my assumptions are correct, but also, as per the title, i'd like to understand how this circuit is sourcing its negative rail from a diode bridge.
So far as i can see, the diode bridge is acting as a full-wave rectifier, but rather than the voltage passing back into the neutral side of the AC connection through the diodes D209 & D210 respectively (depending on the phase of the AC) as in a typical bridge rectifier, it's being sunk to ground through a center tap on the transformer. The anodes of these same two diodes are then being tapped to provide the -45V negative rail. It seems that in effect these two diodes are in fact not acting as rectifiers, but are instead reverse-biased and blocking positive voltage from going into the negative rail, and that in fact only D207 & D208 are doing the rectification. Is this correct?
I have probed the diodes and confirmed this assumption, the anodes are indeed sitting at -45V in reference to the common ground terminal.
How then can current pass into the negative rail from the AC side through the diodes D209 & D210 which appear to be reverse biased and thus effectively open circuit..?
It would appear to be quite a fundamental rule of electronics that i'm missing.
Here you can see how the current will flow in your circuit when the load resistance is symmetrical (\$R_1 = R_2 \$). For positive and negative half.
Because the charged capacitor behavior very similar to the "battery".
The four diodes do work as a full bridge rectifier. This is a quite common circuit and used in many circuits where a symmetrical supply (positive and negative supply rail) is needed.
Can you understand how this circuit works?
Now you might notice that there will only be a current flowing through the transformer during half of the sinewave. Either D1 conducts a current and no current flows through D2 or the other way round (no current through D1, current through D2). So half of the time no current is flowing though a diode and the transformer tap it is connected to.
Can we use those transformer taps more and also use it for the current in the other direction? Yes we can, see below.
This is exactly the circuit at the right side of your schematic.
Here the "previously unused" part of the sinewave is now used to make a negative voltage -V.
It's a center-tapped transformer. The orange wire is declared to be ground, or 0V. At any given time, red will be positive, and yellow negative, OR red will be negative and yellow positive. So either D207 and D209 will be conducting, OR D208 and D210 will be conducting.
How to find Voltage based on reference nodes?
Is full wave rectifier better than half wave one?
Why do Schottky diodes have two anodes?
Why Does LTSpice Always Show Negative Voltages in a Rectifier Circuit?
How to solve a simple diode gate question from Sedra and Smith (Exercise 4.4)?
Are Schottky diodes the best option for this application? |
0.999725 | How to recognize and avoid costly hiring mistakes.
By writing down in detail the tasks that this employee will be required to do the hiring manager will be able to see clearly the qualifications a person will need to do this job.
2. Hiring someone without the necessary skills.
3. Hiring someone without having the person take a behavioral assessment.
The assessment will help you see if this person will fit into the office and compliment the skills of the other people. It will also help you to communicate with the person in a way that that person will hear. Most managers tend to hire people like themselves when in fact they may need someone who can do some of the things that the manager doesn't enjoy.
4. Hiring someone whose temperament or personality is wrong for the job.
Some positions require people who are talkative and friendly and others require people who enjoy working by themselves. Certain tasks require a detail oriented person while others need some one who sees the big picture. Knowing the personality type and temperament that is best for the particular position will help the manager find the right person.
5. Hiring friends and/or relatives.
Often people hire friends or relatives to be kind or to do a favor for someone. If the decision turns out to be a bad one, the situation can get really uncomfortable. It is often difficult to give feedback to friends or relatives and they often resent being put in a position where they have to be grateful for the opportunity but are really angry with you for the criticism.
6. Not interviewing the candidate.
To really get to know if you can work with someone you need to speak with him/her directly either face to face or by phone.
7. Not preparing for the interview by creating a set of questions that you ask everyone.
Spending time preparing a set of probing questions for the candidates will help you to determine which candidate most closely fits your job description.
8. Not posting the job, advertising it in the paper and/or using a recruiter so that you get multiple candidates giving you a choice.
Some are tempted to hire the first applicant. If you advertise for candidates in multiple ways and use a recruiter too, you should have a variety of candidates to interview and select from.
9. Not screening the candidates so you interview everyone.
Once you have a group of candidates it is easiest to have screening interviews to weed out those who are definitely inappropriate. Often screening interviews are done by phone but also could be done in writing.
10. Not checking references and background.
It is tempting once you have settled on a candidate to hire him/her on the spot. It is worth taking the time to check references and background to be sure that this candidate has honestly presented him/herself. |
0.999733 | This phenomenon has multiple drivers. After a decade of rapid expansion in the 1990s, democratic progress has stalled in many parts of the world. Newly assertive illiberal regimes are reaffirming strong sovereignty norms and pushing back against cross-border political assistance. At the same time, entrenched political and economic elites increasingly fear the power of civic activism; popular uprisings throughout the Middle East and the post-communist world have sparked a new wave of preemptive measures aimed at deterring future civic mobilization.
What is the local impact of these restrictions? How do civil society organizations adapt to a context of shrinking civic space? To answer these questions, it is instructive to look at three cases that have been at the forefront of this global trend: Russia, Egypt, and Ethiopia. In all three countries, governments have imposed sweeping restrictions on associational life. Smear campaigns, state harassment, and funding regulations have weakened independent groups, forcing them to reorient or scale back activities and given rise to new organizational models.
Governments have become increasingly adept at using bureaucratic and legal tools to marginalize and obstruct civil society organizations. Complex registration, permitting, and auditing requirements create ample opportunities for authorities to disrupt activities that are considered threatening, or press charges based on alleged violations.
In Russia, Egypt, and Ethiopia, civil society organizations have had to wrestle with a widening net of regulatory and legal constraints that limit their access to funding, hinder their outreach and advocacy work, and increase their vulnerability to legal harassment. For example, as of November 2016, Russian authorities had launched 235 judicial proceedings against NGOs for alleged noncompliance with government regulations—in addition to 98 cases initiated by NGOs themselves to challenge government fines and interference. These types of cases require significant resources, time, and organizational capacity. In Egypt, 41 of the country’s most prominent human rights organizations are currently under investigation over alleged funding violations; police raids, interrogations, asset freezes, and detentions have made their work increasingly risky and difficult.
In addition to heightened administrative and legal harassment, activists fear prosecution under sweeping anti-terrorism measures. Ethiopian authorities have used the 2009 Anti-Terror Proclamation to selectively target journalists, lawyers, and civil society leaders. In Egypt, president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in September 2014 amended Article 78 of the penal code to ban the receipt of foreign funding for any activity that harms “national interests”—a clause that purportedly targets terrorist groups, but could easily be used to prosecute civic activists. These measures have led to a pervasive climate of fear, pushing prominent human rights defenders to go into exile and leading others to censor their work.
Funding restrictions have proven particularly stifling. In Russia and Egypt, many civil society groups have backed away from foreign funding in fear of stigmatization and judicial harassment. In Ethiopia, the 2009 Charities and Societies Proclamation effectively bars a wide range of advocacy and rights organizations from receiving external support—while preserving access to such funding for development and service delivery organizations.
In all three countries, independent NGOs face a difficult domestic funding landscape, particularly if they want to continue working on policy and rights issues. Activists have adopted different coping strategies. In Ethiopia, hundreds of organization decided to abandon rights-based programming and shift their focus toward politically neutral capacity-building and local service delivery in order to preserve their access to foreign support. A 2011 survey found that 70% of development NGOs and 44% of human rights organizations changed their mandates and activities in response to the government’s NGO regulations. For example, groups that previously worked on juvenile justice and child labor have moved toward providing direct support to vulnerable children.
Others have tried to raise money from domestic sources—often with limited success. Private sector donors in all three countries remain reluctant to fund civic activities that could attract the ire of state authorities. Accepting state funding, if available, risks compromising organizational independence. In Russia, the government has significantly expanded its support for domestic NGOs, yet the bidding process is opaque and generally favors apolitical or pro-government groups. A case in point: The Russian Orthodox Church has been one of the biggest beneficiaries in recent years, with church-affiliated groups receiving over $3 million between 2013 and 2015.
As a result, NGOs have had to increasingly rely on individual donations. Organizations that can draw on volunteers or complement their activities with income-generating work have generally proven most resilient; many nevertheless have had to scale back their work. Examples abound: In Egypt, prominent NGOs such as the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights has downsized its staff and doubled down on key priority areas, such as defending those detained and convicted under the country’s new repressive legal regime. Similarly, Ethiopia’s largest human rights monitoring organization, the Human Rights Council, was forced to close nine of its 12 branch offices and cut the number of field investigators from 17 to four, which has curtailed its ability to effectively collect and verify information about human rights abuses.
In this context of shrinking resources and heightened harassment, activists struggle to forge new domestic and international partnerships and reach a broad audience with their work. Government restrictions often aim at undermining collaboration between civil society actors. For example, in Ethiopia, NGO regulations have weakened the role of umbrella organizations, which are no longer allowed to engage in advocacy work. In Russia, service-oriented organizations have become more wary of cooperating with NGOs that have been stigmatized as foreign agents, fearful that doing so my taint their reputation and threaten their access to state support.
Budget cuts and government pressure also impede cooperation with international counterparts. In Egypt, travel bans have repeatedly barred activists from traveling abroad. Between June 2014 and November 2016, Egyptian security services imposed at least 80 travel bans against lawyers, academics, and activists, often without formal justification. In addition, foreign researchers and staff have been prevented from entering the country, straining cross-border collaboration. For local activists, participating in international forums can also be life-threatening: In both Egypt and Ethiopia, for example, human rights groups have withdrawn their participation in Universal Periodic Review processes in fear of reprisals.
Lastly, government restrictions and smear campaigns disrupt NGOs’ access to policymakers and state institutions. Russian government officials have been discouraged from collaborating with blacklisted groups, putting an end to longstanding training programs and data-sharing efforts. For example, Moscow city authorities refused to prolong their lease agreement with the migrant rights NGO Civic Assistance Committee after the latter was labeled a foreign agent, and the Federal Migration Service stopped taking part in the group’s seminars. Other groups have faced barriers accessing schools and other public institutions, which undercuts their effectiveness and reach.
Organizations that challenge entrenched political and economic interests have often borne the brunt of state harassment and repression. Yet in Russia, Egypt, and Ethiopia, the effects of shrinking civic space have been felt far beyond the narrow circle of human rights and pro-democracy groups.
In all three countries, governments have targeted organizations viewed as engaged in “political” work—yet state authorities’ definition of political activities is often extremely expansive. Russian officials have labeled HIV/Aids prevention and treatment organizations, peacebuilding groups, and independent research center as “foreign agents.” In Ethiopia, funding restrictions have targeted hundreds of groups that had pursued rights-based approaches and programming in areas as diverse as children’s rights, gender equality, and conflict resolution, forcing them to shift their areas of focus.
In an even starker example, the Egyptian government since 2013 has shut down more than 1,500 religiously affiliated charities and service delivery groups, accusing them of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood’s political agenda. The main consequence has been a growing gap in service provision, as many of these groups had provided essential support to poor and marginalized communities. One prominent medical charity, El Gameya El Shareya, had maintained more than 1,000 branches across the country—it now operates at a third of its capacity. Egyptian officials have also closed down community groups with no apparent policy agenda or religious affiliation—potentially as the latter provide a space in which civic participation and local leadership can flourish.
In addition, civil society organizations in all three countries have had to wrestle with new funding constraints—no matter their area of work. In Egypt and Russia, international donors have scaled back their grant-making in fear of legal entanglements. The Russian law on undesirable organizations enabled the blacklisting of several key United States civil society donors; other foundations chose to withdraw preemptively. Egyptian development organizations have struggled to obtain foreign funding approvals from the Ministry of Social Solidarity, even when their projects appear to be in line with official development objectives. In Ethiopia, regulations forcing NGOs to spend no more than 30% of their budgets on administrative overhead—defined to include training, transport, and evaluation costs and other key expenses—have pushed development groups to scale back their operations, particularly in rural areas.
Faced with escalating restrictions, some traditional NGOs have begun moving toward alternative organizational structures. In Russia, at least 31 organizations that had been designated foreign agents have shut down—but several continue operating in a more informal and fluid manner. For example, the Russian human rights NGO “Freedom of Information Foundation” decided to regroup as a coalition of lawyers who continue their work without formal status, while also maintaining a registered entity abroad. Groups are exploring new funding models that could generate greater community buy-in; some have transferred their advocacy activities to non-institutionalized initiatives while doubling down on legal defense and monitoring work. Others have relocated abroad or continue their activities virtually. For example, escalating government pressure in Egypt led the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies to move its international and regional programs to Tunisia; other organizations and activists have followed.
Examples from Ethiopia, Egypt, and Russia indicate that as civic space shrinks, traditional models of professionalized civil society work come under pressure. Operating without formal status creates new challenges: It becomes more difficult to raise funding from international partners, build specialized expertise, or access public institutions and state authorities. This does not mean the end of civic engagement and mobilization. In all three countries, sporadic protest movements and informal coalitions have emerged, often focused on local grievances. Citizens form new volunteer initiatives to address service delivery gaps and community concerns, and—to the extent possible—use cultural activities and virtual platforms to organize around shared interests. However, these efforts often remain divorced from larger policy discussions—until citizens pour to the streets to voice their discontent, as evidence by recent demonstrations in Russia and Ethiopia. The weakening of traditional civil society organizations leaves key gaps in the monitoring and reporting on government abuses, the representation of marginalized communities, the dissemination of alternative policy proposals, and the overall vibrancy of public debate.
Saskia Brechenmacher is an Associate Fellow of the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. |
0.999809 | Imagine you are one of the last two Jedi left in the galaxy. From a considerable force once numbering in the thousands, in one broad stroke your entire group was suddenly and almost completely annihilated, until only two of you were left.
Your sole hope rests in two infants, a boy and a girl. You hope that someday they will grow strong in the Force like their father, and continue the millennia-long tradition of the Jedi. For now however, they are simply too young, and they must be kept hidden if the light side is to endure.
So you decide to split them up: one is sent to a backwater planet that attracts little attention, the other goes to a staunchly independent world firmly opposed to tyranny.
And so you adapt. The old Jedi order is gone, and with it all traditions and long-held beliefs. Just as the Sith evolved to take over the Republic, so too must the Jedi change to avoid extinction.
In your desert world of exile, you encounter a woman strong in the Force. She is too old to be trained, and you have already failed with your last padawan.
So instead of taking on an apprentice, you do the unthinkable: you begin a relationship with the woman. As a man of the galaxy, you easily win her affection, since the gifted but naive girl has never even seen the stars.
In time she falls in love.
Unfortunately, you don’t feel the same. After all, you are a product of the old order, one that forbids attachment or affection. You’ve grown too old to be flexible, and it fills you with loathing to be using someone who loves you with all her being.
Eventually, you accomplish your goal: she sires your offspring. You look forward to settling down and molding your son in the light. However, the enemy is everywhere, and a flame that shines brightly cannot be hidden for long. Shortly after your son’s birth, you experience the first attack, one out of many to come. By the fifth incident, it has grown grave enough to involve the dreaded troopers in black.
There is no respite from the Empire. To ensure their survival, you abandon your family in the middle of the night. While your wife sleeps, you kiss her one last time and pull the old Jedi mind wipe. As far as your family is concerned, you were killed in a Tusken raid during the Great Drought.
Filled with a deep sense of shame, you continue to watch them from afar, making sure their needs are met. Each time you can’t help but feel the sense of sadness and heartbreak radiating from the mother. But there is little you can do, for you know that returning will put their lives at risk.
You spend your time watching between your two charges: one sired by your former apprentice, and the other from your own seed. It’s funny how the Empire combs the hyperlanes, ruthlessly hunting down sentients who show even modest Force potential. While on this backwater planet in the Outer Rim are the beings who could someday challenge the Emperor’s reign, the same planet where it all started.
You remember a briefing you gave to your clonetroopers a lifetime ago: “For every Plan Aurek, there must be a Plan Bacta. And it doesn’t hurt to have a Plan Crishna.” You have no idea how the female twin is doing, for to contact Alderaan is to put them at risk. So you operate on the assumption that the future rests on this barren desert world. You only know that now there is a real possibility of survival. And now that you are caring for two of them, you resolve never to get caught alive.
As the months become years, the sadness of your lonely exile grows into guarded hope. Both boys show strong potential, though you’ve had to secretly intervene several times in their wild adolescent years. One day, one or both of them will be old enough to carry on the Jedi tradition. Perhaps one day they will even have their own academy, and train a new generation of guardians. Or maybe it will be their offspring, still imbued with the Force, who will restore freedom to the galaxy. This is the dream that keeps you alive in your lonely hovel in the desert.
And yet, knowing all of these doesn’t assuage your feeling of guilt for abandoning her. You can only hope that someday, you can finally explain everything to Riella. And finally connect with your own son, Ren.
Liked this story? Then be sure to read this one about the showdown on Sunset boulevard!
He stood in the shadows, waiting.
So far today, he had already dispatched three: one human, one Tydian, and even a droid, an old 2-LOM model. And he had only been trailing the boy for six hours.
Overhead, the twin suns of the desert planet beat down relentlessly. Cloaked figures rushed down shaded avenues to escape the stifling heat. Grimly, he knew that on planets like this, beings tended to stay indoors during the day, and activity tended to pick up at dusk. Three were already down — several more to go at sundown.
One hundred meters away, the subject of his attention turned to look at some useless baubles on a dusty window. The blonde head swung to and fro, like the hyperactive arm of an oscillator set to overdrive. The boy’s wide-eyed innocence at all the things around him was refreshing, if not mildly amusing.
What the boy found fascinating, his watcher considered little more than a hellhole. In fact, just the latest in a series of hellholes he had to live in, after the fall of the old system and the rise of a new order. Mos Etnoh considered itself a cosmopolitan place, with its rundown tourist attractions and “historical” landmarks that were likely put up a fortnight ago. Whereas Mos Espa prided itself on being a gambling zone and home of the Boonta Eve, and Mos Eisley was unabashedly a smuggler’s hive of scum and villainy, Mos Etnoh still clung to its pretensions of being the planet’s cultural center, if ever the world even had one.
Further ahead, a female voice called, calling the boy back to his guardians. The watcher took the opportunity to cross the street, ending in the same dusty window formerly occupied by his charge.
Without meaning to, he caught a glimpse of his reflection: a hooded figure in brown, with a graying beard and the tanned leathery skin of an old desert hand. Had he really aged that much? Even the most brutal years of the Clone Wars did not take such a toll on him.
His musing were cut short by movement to his right. An old Xhillian rushed down the street, muttering about the infernal heat. Xhillians were a long-lived species, easily matching a Hutt. By the mottled gray skin of this one, he was obviously past the 500-year mark. And yet, he moved faster than a newly hatched spawn.
The bearded man pretended to study the same baubles that fascinated the boy, watching the Xhillian’s reflection on the unwashed pane. A moment later, his suspicions proved correct — there was a brief flash of silver on the old being’s sleeve. The split-second glint would have been unnoticeable to most, but not to the watcher. It was the unmistakable silhouette of a holdout blaster.
Slowly he turned. The Xhillian glanced once in his direction before hurrying on, intent on pursuing the same quarry. That was his fatal mistake.
After making sure there were no additional eyes on the street, the watcher lashed out, catching the alien midstride. The blaster, already primed for action, fell from his robe.
The Xhillian’s gray hide briefly flashed yellow in alarm. As the blaster clattered loudly on the ferrocrete, his skin took on a deep crimson red. Anger.
The two figures faced each other in the canyon of the alley: one snarling, the other quietly confident.
In the blink of an eye, the red alien raised his other sleeve, revealing a second holdout blaster. But the tanned human was faster — before the arm was even halfway up, its owner was already embedded with three prongs of a Kamino saberdart, coated with their trademark poison.
The Xhillian fell. The human remained standing over his quickly graying corpse.
The only witness to the duel was a hunched beggar, who quickly learned to look away and mind his own business.
The watcher hurried on to catch the boy. Four down so far, several more to go. Dusk was quickly approaching.
As he moved, he turned to look back at the being whose life he just took. Unlike before, the man no longer felt any pangs of regret, no sudden bouts of conscience in his new role. His head swung back to his fair-haired quarry. The Xhillian was already the past — he had to focus on the present.
As he did, a sudden tingle of alarm gripped him, the same sense that enabled him to survive all throughout the Clone Wars and the turbulent period that followed. There was something familiar about that beggar.
Just as he turned to look, a sudden flash of emerald brilliance bathed the street, before being quickly extinguished. The watcher looked at the cauterized hole on his chest, gasped, and staggered.
A hand steadied him. The old beggar.
The man looked up at a face much like his own. Graying beard, tanned skin, crisscrossing lines of worry permanently etched by years of hardship and countless battles. But the blazing blue eyes were unmistakable.
The shadows deepened and dusk settled. As his breathing shallowed and faded, the watcher mused on the irony of it all. After three long years, he had finally tracked his ticket to a Core promotion: the rumored son of Skywalker himself. Only to be caught by the boy’s real guardian, a figure who was long thought to be dead. A figure that he had served with during the Clone Wars, no less.
Before he slipped into oblivion, the watcher’s last thought was how bitterly unfair it was that the Emperor or anyone in the ISB would never know what he discovered.
Overhead, the twin suns set. The old beggar blended back in the shadows, as the boy and his adoptive guardians went on their way, across the undulating sands of the Dune Sea.
Lora Hex smiled. After six long years, the seeds of her revenge were ready to be planted.
It had taken six long years to turn abstract idea into actionable reality, an idea that began its first stirrings as soon as she was taken from the New Republic world of Poctoris.
It had taken half that long for the First Order to trust her with a task other than mere theory building and paperplast shuffling. On the third year of her forced servitude, the former Sr. Researcher of Profile Training and Psychoanalysis was finally promoted. From mere lab hand, Lora slowly climbed the ladder back to junior analyst in her new home, the Star Destroyer Ravager.
It helped that half of the FO scientists were moronic yes-men who wouldn’t have passed the first year admission exams in a Republic institution, much less wear a lab coat. It also helped that she began sleeping with the vessel’s Director of Science, a morbidly obese man whose academic credentials consisted of being related to the sector Moff.
On the fourth year, she gained clearance to the tightly guarded Recruit Training Program, the First Order’s conditioning process for the conscripted soldiers that formed its military backbone. Lora felt a special kinship with these recruits — like her, they were forcibly taken from their homeworlds, never to see their families again. Unlike her, the “blaster fodders” were taken at a very young age, the better to mold them for a lifetime of unquestioning service to the Order.
At first limited to observer status, within six months Lora became Program Assistant. Her meteoric rise came from improvements she made in the regimen’s Logical Reasoning, Cortex Development and Abstract Thinking classifications.
On the fifth year, the death of her elderly superior catapulted Lora into the position of Program Head, Level 1 Recruit Training and Conditioning. It was the break she was looking for.
She began with minuscule changes to the basic regimen. A slight tweak to the Creativity course here, a small dip in the Obedience programming there. All over her various postings, Lora sabotaged the conditioning process of FO foot soldiers more effectively than any Republic battle fleet or resistance spy. Approximately 120 new graduates of the FC batch on the fortress world of Thosis II received a boost in independent thinking. Onboard the Decimator, 70 recruits of the FL batch were given a sense of survival, while 30 new FN troopers destined for the Finalizer were given a moral conscience. The First Order wanted the perfect stormtrooper: smart, unquestioning, and uncaring. Lora was giving them the exact opposite.
Unfortunately, her sabotage was shortlived. After several incidents of insubordination among the FC batch, the entire wing was sent to a penal colony for reconditioning. Of the FL batch, an attempted mutiny by FL-1366 led to the summary execution of six squads and the whole legion’s quarantine. In her zeal to topple the enemy from within, Lora’s altered troopers stood out like flashing distress beacons and were ruthlessly suppressed.
But not anymore. On her sixth year, Lora Hex finally found the right mix for her revenge. The latest batch was independent enough to think without being hardheaded, creative enough to adapt while seeming obedient, and ethically aware without being obvious. Best of all, they were programmed with a delayed fuse. Instead of being fanatically opposed to tyranny like the first ones, the new ones will blend in and quietly disrupt the First Order from within.
The FU batch was her crowning gift to the powers that destroyed her life.
As Lora closed her datapad, the door to her cabin chimed, announcing the arrival of unexpected guests. On the monitor, two black-clad agents of the dreaded Internal Security Directorate stood waiting outside, alongside a handful of naval troops. After two years of causing havoc, the ISD had finally caught on to her.
Lora Hex looked out her window. She closed her eyes, imagining she could see the emerald seas of Poctoris one last time, rather than the featureless gray of a warship’s bulkhead. She reached for a button under the desk.
The soundless explosion briefly blossomed from the destroyer’s right flank, incinerating Lora, the two ISB agents, a whole detention squad, and all historical records of Recruit Training and Conditioning, Level 1. |
0.984428 | In this guide, we will discuss lists in Python. A list is a data type that allows you to store various types data in it. List is a compound data type which means you can have different-2 data types under a list, for example we can have integer, float and string items in a same list.
Lets see how to create a list in Python. To create a list all you have to do is to place the items inside a square bracket separated by comma ,.
As we have seen above, a list can have data items of same type or different types. This is the reason list comes under compound data type.
1. The index cannot be a float number.
2. The index must be in range to avoid IndexError. The range of the index of a list having 10 elements is 0 to 9, if we go beyond 9 then we will get IndexError. However if we go below 0 then it would not cause issue in certain cases, we will discuss that in our next section.
Unlike other programming languages where negative index may cause issue, Python allows you to use negative indexes. The idea behind this to allow you to access the list elements starting from the end. For example an index of -1 would access the last element of the list, -2 second last, -3 third last and so on.
There are various operations that we can perform on Lists.
There are several ways you can add elements to a list.
remove(item): Removes specified item from list.
pop(index): Removes the element from the given index.
pop(): Removes the last element.
clear(): Removes all the elements from the list. |
0.959464 | Does tourism contribute to the rise of nationalism or quite the opposite? Over the years I have spoken with many tourism practitioners, academics and decision-makers and in the vast majority of cases have detected a strain of unadulterated nationalism in their views, even when these tend to be otherwise progressive and green. It could be that the daily preoccupation of these people with local culture, tradition, monuments and history contributes to the development of notions of national identity and particularity in their mind. It can hardly be disputed that National Tourism Ministries and National Tourism Boards, which exist in nearly every country (with the notable exception of the United States) have similarities with the propaganda offices of authoritarian regimes as they are always painting a rosy picture of the country/destination, inviting travel journalists and bloggers for hire, paying lobbyists and so on.
On the other hand, community-based forms of tourism tend to highlight differences (in dress, language, customs) between each village and region within countries and encourage the discovery or rediscovery of ethnic or other minorities, something which is a red flag to nationalists, authoritarianism peddlers and assorted control-freaks. Of course, there is a cottage industry there, namely in the discovery of new minorities, possibly funded through the geopolitical games of big and small powers around the world, but also self-funded through otherwise well-meaning charitable organisations and the insatiable appetite of tourism for colourful new destinations. But what about travellers, does travel open their minds? I think it all depends on the minds in question, and in the type of travel, they engage in. The bigots seem to travel just to reinforce their racist stereotypes of other nations, and in most cases, they succeed as they only see and remember what reinforces their misanthropic views. At the other end of the spectrum, dedicated volunteers and voluntourists, just want to help save the world, the local communities, nature, so whatever they see, or experience is unlikely to change their, perhaps overoptimistic, worldview. The vast majority is somewhere in-between. Tourism involves mass, temporary, flows of people across borders, so it is an inherent component of globalisation, but globalisation, for the time being at least, gives rise to both nationalism and internationalism. National Monuments and Institutions are frequently among the most popular tourism sites in cities New Tourism trends such as Airbnb and more genuine forms of the sharing economy involve interpersonal and economic transactions at the grassroots, people to people level, but then again this is no guarantee that the guests and hosts from different cultures and nationalities acquire a more positive view of each other. (It would be timely for someone to do academic research on the topic!
For eager researchers, there are more complicated cases, as in the Greek islands which are at the same time both major tourist destinations and major hosts of refugees and migrants but the local community is generally hospitable and open-minded). So on average, it could be argued that tourism is rather neutral and as such does not differ significantly from other industries and sectors. |
0.999999 | Create a flyer for "Dawn of the Solar Age"
The author is one of India’s most renowned journalists and a former member of the Bruntland Commission. He has been at the heart of India’s national discussion of sustainable development for decades and brings to the subject a wide international experience, a fierce understanding of technology and science, and a gift for communicating complex subjects in accessible and engaging language.
This is an extremely timely book. Today, as the perception of the risks facing humanity from the worsening impact of climate change is beginning to sink into the public’s consciousness, this book comes as an antidote to despair. For it shows not only that the technologies needed for an immediate shift out of fossil fuels have already been found, but that some of them have been around for almost a century. Perversely, on account of inertia in the system and the power of vested interests, these have been neglected to the detriment of all species on planet earth, including human society.
The book is all the more significant coming from a distinguished Indian journalist deeply immersed in Indian economic and energy policy. The author has been an adviser to the Prime Minister, economics editor of the Times of India, and a member of the energy panel of the Brundtland Commission. Overall, however, this is an excellent read, giving a fresh perspective on a tough global problem. It is written in compelling style, is full of important insights, and contains much food for thought.
Three technologies can replace fossil fuels completely within half a century, argues distinguished Indian journalist Prem Shankar Jha in his new book. The book is even more significant coming from a distinguished Indian journalist deeply immersed in Indian economic and energy policy.
The book opens with a stark warning of the threat that climate change presents to humanity. Jha believes that the outlook is even more ominous and the need for action even more urgent than the official international expert group (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has yet recognised. Overall, however, this is an excellent read, giving a fresh perspective on a tough global problem. It is written in compelling style, is full of important insights, and contains much food for thought. |
0.960857 | A music genre is a conventional category that identifies some pieces of music as belonging to a shared tradition or set of conventions. It is to be distinguished from musical form and musical style, although in practice these terms are sometimes used interchangeably. Recently, academics have argued that categorizing music by genre is inaccurate and outdated.
Music can be divided into different genres in many different ways. The artistic nature of music means that these classifications are often subjective and controversial, and some genres may overlap. There are even varying academic definitions of the term genre itself. In his book Form in Tonal Music, Douglass M. Green distinguishes between genre and form. He lists madrigal, motet, canzona, ricercar, and dance as examples of genres from the Renaissance period. To further clarify the meaning of genre, Green writes, "Beethoven's Op. 61 and Mendelssohn's Op. 64 are identical in genre – both are violin concertos – but different in form. However, Mozart's Rondo for Piano, K. 511, and the Agnus Dei from his Mass, K. 317 are quite different in genre but happen to be similar in form." Some, like Peter van der Merwe, treat the terms genre and style as the same, saying that genre should be defined as pieces of music that share a certain style or "basic musical language." Others, such as Allan F. Moore, state that genre and style are two separate terms, and that secondary characteristics such as subject matter can also differentiate between genres. A music genre or subgenre may also be defined by the musical techniques, the style, the cultural context, and the content and spirit of the themes. Geographical origin is sometimes used to identify a music genre, though a single geographical category will often include a wide variety of subgenres. Timothy Laurie argues that since the early 1980s, "genre has graduated from being a subset of popular music studies to being an almost ubiquitous framework for constituting and evaluating musical research objects".
Alternatively, music can be divided on three variables: arousal, valence, and depth. Arousal reflects the energy level of the music; valence reflects the scale from sad to happy emotions, and depth reflects the level of emotional depth in the music. These three variables help explain why many people like similar songs from different traditionally segregated genres.
Musicologists have sometimes classified music according to a trichotomic distinction such as Philip Tagg's "axiomatic triangle consisting of 'folk', 'art' and 'popular' musics". He explains that each of these three is distinguishable from the others according to certain criteria.
The term art music refers primarily to classical traditions, including both contemporary and historical classical music forms. Art music exists in many parts of the world. It emphasizes formal styles that invite technical and detailed deconstruction and criticism, and demand focused attention from the listener. In Western practice, art music is considered primarily a written musical tradition, preserved in some form of music notation rather than being transmitted orally, by rote, or in recordings, as popular and traditional music usually are. Historically, most western art music has been written down using the standard forms of music notation that evolved in Europe, beginning well before the Renaissance and reaching its maturity in the Romantic period. The identity of a "work" or "piece" of art music is usually defined by the notated version rather than by a particular performance, and is primarily associated with the composer rather than the performer (though composers may leave performers with some opportunity for interpretation or improvisation). This is so particularly in the case of western classical music. Art music may include certain forms of jazz, though some feel that jazz is primarily a form of popular music. The 1960s saw a wave of avant-garde experimentation in free jazz, represented by artists such as Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp and Don Cherry. And avant-garde rock artists such as Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and The Residents released art music albums.
Popular music, unlike art music, is (1) conceived for mass distribution to large and often socioculturally heterogeneous groups of listeners, (2) stored and distributed in non-written form, (3) only possible in an industrial monetary economy where it becomes a commodity and (4) in capitalist societies, subject to the laws of 'free' enterprise ... it should ideally sell as much as possible.
The distinction between classical and popular music has sometimes been blurred in marginal areas such as minimalist music and light classics. Background music for films/movies often draws on both traditions. In this respect, music is like fiction, which likewise draws a distinction between literary fiction and popular fiction that is not always precise.
Soul music became a musical term, used to describe an increasingly wide variety of R&B-based music styles from the pop R&B acts at Motown Records in Detroit, such as The Temptations, Marvin Gaye and Four Tops, to "deep soul" singers such as Percy Sledge and James Carr.
In 1964 James Brown created original funk music.
Hip Hop Music, also referred to as hip hop or rap music, is a genre of music that was started in the United States, specifically the South Bronx in the New York City, New York, by African-American youth from the inner-cities during the 1970s. The term hip hop music can be defined as a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted. Hip hop music derives from the hip hop culture itself, including four key elements, those being emceeing(MCing)/rapping, Disc jockeying (DJing) with turntablism, break dancing and graffiti art.
Religious music (also sacred music) is music performed or composed for religious use or through religious influence. Gospel, spiritual, Christian music are religious music.
The Folk music genre is classified as the music that is orally passed from one generation to another. Usually the artist is unknown, and there are several different versions of the same song. The genre is transmitted by singing, listening and dancing to popular songs. This type of communication allows culture to transmit the styles (pitches and cadences) as well as the context it was developed.
Some of the main aspects about culturally transmitting folk songs, its about the period of history it was created and the social class in which was developed. Some examples of the Folk Genre can be seen in the Folk music of England and Turkish Folk music. English folk music was developed since the medieval period and it has transmitted from that time until today. Similarly, the Turkish Folk music relates to all the civilizations that once passed thorough Turkey, therefore being a world-reference since the tensions between East-West during the Early Modern Period.
Traditional Folk music usually refers to songs composed in the 20th century, which tends to be written as universal truths and big issues of the time it was composed. Great names such as Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary, James Taylor, and Leonard Cohen transformed the Folk music on what it is known today. Some newer composers, such as Ed Sheeran (Pop Folk), and The Lumineers (American Folk) are both newer examples of Contemporary Folk music, which has been recorded and adapted to the new way of listening to music (online) on the contrary of the traditional way of orally transmitting music.
Each country in the world, in some cases each region, district and community has its its own Folk Music style. The different sub-divisions of Folk genre is developed by each place cultural identity and history. Because the music is developed in different places, a lot of the instruments are characteristic to its location and population, but some of them are similar everywhere, some examples are: Button or Piano Accordion, different types of flutes or trumpets, Banjo, and Ukulele. Both French and Scottish folk music uses related instruments such as the Fiddle, the harp and variations of bagpipes.
Automatic methods of musical similarity detection, based on data mining and co-occurrence analysis, have been developed in order to classify music titles for electronic music distribution.
New genres can arise by the development of new forms and styles of music and also simply by creating a new categorization. Although it is conceivable to create a musical style with no relation to existing genres, new styles usually appear under the influence of preexisting genres. The genealogy of musical genres expresses, often in the form of a written chart, the way in which new genres have developed under the influence of older ones. If two or more existing genres influence the emergence of a new one, a fusion between them can be said to have taken place. The proliferation of popular music in the 20th century has led to over 1,200 definable sub-genres of music.
A campestral factor which refers to singer-songwriter genres and country.
Studies have shown that while women prefer more treble oriented music, men prefer to listen to bass heavy music. This is sometimes paired with borderline and antisocial personalities.
Age is another strong factor that contributes to musical preference. Evidence is available that shows that music preference can change as one gets older. A Canadien study showed that adolescents show greater interest in pop music artists while adults and the elderly population prefer classic genres such as Rock, Opera, and Jazz.
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^ Green, Douglass M. (1965). Form in Tonal Music. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-03-020286-5.
^ van der Merwe, Peter (1989). Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 3. ISBN 978-0-19-316121-4.
^ Moore, Allan F. "Categorical Conventions in Music Discourse: Style and Genre". Music & Letters, Vol. 82, No. 3 (Aug. 2001), pp. 432–442.
^ Laurie, Timothy (2014). "Music Genre As Method". Cultural Studies Review. 20 (2), pp. 283-292.
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^ Siron, Jacques. "Musique Savante (Serious Music)". Dictionnaire des mots de la musique (Paris: Outre Mesure): 242.
^ a b Arnold, Denis: "Art Music, Art Song", in The New Oxford Companion to Music, Volume 1: A-J (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983): 111.
^ Tagg, Philip. "Analysing Popular Music: Theory, Method and Practice". Popular Music 2 (1982): 37–67, here 41–42.
^ Arnold, Denis (1983): "Art Music, Art Song", in The New Oxford Companion to Music, Volume 1: A-J, Oxford University Press, p. 111, ISBN 0-19-311316-3.
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^ Schwartz, Kelly; Fouts; Gregory (2003). "Music preferences, personality style, and developmental issues of adolescents". Journal of Youth and Adolescence. 32 (3): 205–213. doi:10.1023/a:1022547520656. |
0.999999 | Going diamond in the USA: the best-selling albums ever - What music stands the test of time? There are many artists who have lasted through the years, but only a handful of albums that remain popular as ever in 2018. Here's a rundown of the best-selling albums in America, as cataloged by the RIAA.
30. Backstreet Boys: ‘Backstreet Boys’ - BSB did it big for their debut, selling 14 million certified copies to date.
29. Adele: ‘21’ - ‘21’ featured hit singles like ‘Someone Like You’ and ‘Rolling In the Deep.’ Adele sold 14 million certified copies of the album.
28. The Beatles: ‘The Beatles 1962-1966’ - This compilation of early Beatles music has pushed 15 million copies.
27. Santana: ‘Supernatural’ - Carlos Santana has many hit records, like ‘Abraxas’ from 1970. However, this late-career album is his biggest, with 15 million certified copies sold.
26. Pink Floyd: ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ - This progressive rock classic has apparently sold 15 million copies in the US.
25. Journey: ‘Greatest Hits’ - Everyone knows ‘Don’t Stop Believing,’ but Journey also had success with ‘Only the Young’ and ‘Open Arms.’ They all feature on this album, which has sold 15 million copies.
24. Bruce Springsteen: ‘Born In the U.S.A.’ - ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ has hits such as ‘I’m on Fire’ and ‘Dancing In the Dark.’ The album has reportedly sold 15 million copies.
23. Bob Marley and the Wailers: ‘Legend’ - ‘Legend’ has sold more than any other Bob Marley album at 15 million copies.
22. Metallica: ‘Metallica’ - This heavy metal album was a hit, with rip-roaring songs like ‘Enter Sandman.’ To date, the album has sold 16 million certified copies.
21. Led Zeppelin: ‘Physical Graffiti’ - ‘Physical Graffiti’ was born out of an era of excess: the mid ‘70s. The 83-minute rock album has sold 16 million certified copies.
20. Bee Gees: ‘Saturday Night Fever’ - Songs like ‘Stayin’ Alive’ may live forever. This soundtrack, partially performed by the Bee Gees, has sold 16 million copies in the US.
19. Alanis Morissette: ‘Jagged Little Pill’ - This beloved album was led by singles like ‘Ironic,’ and sold 16 million certified copies in the US.
18. The Beatles: ‘1967-1970’ - Also known as ‘The Blue Album,’ this compilation featured smash hits like ‘Hey Jude’ and ‘Let It Be.’ To date, it has sold around 17 million copies.
17. Garth Brooks: ‘No Fences’ - The second album from Garth Brooks stayed in the US album chart for 126 weeks. To date, it has sold 17 million certified copies.
16. Elton John: ‘Greatest Hits’ - Elton John’s first greatest hits album was released in 1974, featuring singles like ‘Your Song’ and ‘Rocket Man.’ It has sold at least 17 million copies.
14. Whitney Houston: ‘The Bodyguard’ - Of course, Houston didn’t just act in ‘The Bodyguard,’ she helped sing the film’s soundtrack. It has sold around 18 million copies in the US.
13. Guns N' Roses: ‘Appetite for Destruction’ - The ‘80s wouldn’t be the same without anthems like ‘Paradise City’ and ‘Sweet Child o’ Mine’. They appeared on ‘Appetite for Destruction,’ which has sold around 18 million copies in the US.
12. The Beatles: ‘The Beatles’ - Also known as ‘The White Album,’ this 93-minute monster has reportedly sold 19 million copies in the US.
11. Shania Twain: ‘Come On Over’ - Twain’s third album featured hit singles like ‘Man! I Feel Like a Woman,’ and has sold around 20 million copies.
10. Fleetwood Mac: ‘Rumours’ - No record collection is complete without ‘Rumours.’ The never-aging album has been bought around 20 million times.
9. Hootie and the Blowfish: ‘Cracked Rear View’ - The debut album from this roots rock band was a shocking success, and has sold around 21 million copies to date.
8. Garth Brooks: ‘Double Live’ - The most-successful live album was released by Garth Brooks in 1998. It features live renditions of hits like ‘Rodeo’ and ‘The River,’ and has sold around 21 million copies.
7. AC/DC: ‘Back In Black’ - ‘Back In Black’ features timeless hits like ‘Hells Bells’ and ‘Back In Black.’ It’s sold a reported 22 million copies.
6. Pink Floyd: ‘The Wall’ - Pink Floyd’s ambitious double-album paid off, with 22 million certified copies.
5. Led Zeppelin: ‘IV’ - There’s a lot more to ‘IV’ than ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ The record has sold at least 23 million copies.
4. Billy Joel: ‘Greatest Hits Volume 1 & Volume 2’ - Billy Joel has a career stacked with hits, take ‘Piano Man’ or ‘Uptown Girl’ for example. This 1985 album has sold a reported 23 million.
3. Eagles: ‘Hotel California’ - You can’t deny the success of this 1976 album, naturally recorded at Record Plant Studios in California. The album has been bought around 26 million times.
2. Michael Jackson: ‘Thriller’ - Does this really need an introduction? ‘Thriller’ hasn’t left the zeitgeist since its release in 1982. Thanks to endless influence, and some huge singles, ‘Thriller’ has sold around 33 million copies.
1. Eagles: ‘Their Greatest Hits’ - The Eagles and Michael Jackson are locked in a decades-long battle for this number one spot. Right now, Eagles take the cake, with total sales at 38 million copies.
What music stands the test of time? There are many artists who have lasted through the years, but only a handful of albums that remain popular as ever in 2018. Here's a rundown of the best-selling albums in America, as cataloged by the RIAA. |
0.953263 | Trump administration to ease restrictions on military drone exports–what does it mean?
For some time now, military advisors to President Trump have been floating the idea that the exportation of military drones should be stepped up in order to keep the United States “in the game”, so to speak. Obviously, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are part of a growth industry, with drones of all shapes and sizes being produced and sold to people all over the world.
Under Obama, lethal drone exports were strictly limited in accordance with what is perhaps best characterized as a policy of American Exceptionalism: Do as we say, not as we do. The technology has been spreading nonetheless all over the globe, with both China and Israel as major players ready and willing to furnish drones to countries not on Obama’s very short list of trustworthy customers. The Obama administration approach was to operate with a presumption against the exportation of lethal drones, but governments seeking this technology no longer need the United States to acquire it. To suppose that lethal drones would not eventually be hovering all over the globe, with or without the blessing of the executive branch of the US government, was shortsighted, to put it mildly. The dangerous precedent was set by the US government itself for the use of drones in wars on “battlefields” paradoxically “outside areas of active hostilities”, and now we can expect to see the true globalization of remote-control killing, across all borders, as lethal creep seeps into the protocol of governments large and small, democratic and monarchic alike.
One of the figures promoting the expansion of drone exports has been, predictably, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who, like so many other influential advisors to the president, has financial incentives for seeing to it that this facet of US military industry flourish. Initial indications suggest that the exports will be primarily of surveillance, not weaponized drones, but it is the very nature of a drone to be modular, so lethal delivery systems can be snapped on facilely by the customer. Needless to say, there will be no way to control how these machines are deployed by the end user, and at some point, the thin edge of the wedge will become the thickest, with untrammeled exports of fully weaponized drones as the norm–the argument being, again, that “if we don’t provide the lethal add-on, some other country will.” No one sells guns without ammunition and it seems predictable that drones will be regularly produced and shipped prêt-à-tuer in the not-too-distant future, given that the weaponized drone has already been successfully marketed as a tool of “smart war” in both the United States and the United Kingdom.
Former US president Barack Obama and former UK prime minister David Cameron intentionally and premeditatedly hunted down and killed their own compatriots in acts of summary execution without indictment, much less trial. What reason can there be for believing that other political leaders will not also follow suit? If two of the most stable democratic governments on the planet have opted to substitute assassination for judicial process, why would the leaders of nondemocratic nations not take this as a license to kill anyone whom they perceive to be threats?
People who see lethal drones as a growth industry are right: the market potential has only just begun. Who knew that Western democracies would revert to pre-Magna Carta times in their desperation to stem the tide of terrorism? That the use of this tactic, the summary execution without trial of suspects, along with whoever happens to be at their side, has failed spectacularly is evidenced by the very fact that the Global War on Terror (GWOT) continues to expand as terrorists proliferate and move to new places, sometimes seeking refuge in the West–which is of course the safest place for them to hide out at this point in history. Certainly jihadists concerned to retaliate to lethal drones hovering above their own neighborhoods in homelands in the Middle East have prudential reasons to pitch a tent somewhere else.
The move to increase drone exports undoubtedly appeals to Trump, not because he himself is in cahoots with the lethal drone industry (at least not to my knowledge), but because he proudly proclaims that his primary mission is to Make America Great Again. Being first and foremost a businessman, Trump naturally measures “greatness” in economic terms. This explains why he has been exporting military weapons and technologies in a dizzying flurry all over the world, especially to the Middle East, but also to Southeast Asia. President Obama had set new records for military exports to Saudi Arabia but Trump, never to be outshined by Obama, has taken weapons exports to a whole new level.
It is possible that Trump’s unabashed quest to out-do Obama on all fronts is a motivating factor in his increased use of lethal drones, the proliferation of hunt and kill missions, and also the decision to ramp up all military exports, including drones. I am inclined, however, to interpret all of this as following from Trump’s monolithic desire to make America economically great again. The more of these “tools” which are expended, whether in military missions abroad or in exports to other governments, the more there will be a perceived need to produce even more of them, using American capital and American labor. Greater production of weapons by Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and the many other American firms whose wealth derives from the sale of implements of mass homicide will mean more profits. It seems safe to say that Trump does care more about the nation’s economic well-being than the fact that the number one US export has become, sad to say: death. But Trump’s heartfelt desire to revive the US steel industry and, ultimately the US economy, is merely aided by his massive increases in weapons exports. The end justifies the means. Let the missiles fall where they may.
The way was paved for Trump’s increase in military drone exports by the resplendent success on the part of the previous administration in normalizing assassination and, remarkably, convincing people to believe that drone operators may in fact commit what would obviously be war crimes, if perpetrated by uniformed soldiers on the ground. For drones are used to kill suspects without providing them with the opportunity to surrender, even when they are unarmed and not threatening anyone with death, least of all the drone operator incinerating the target. As much as Trump detractors would like to blame the current president for the marked increase in drone-perpetrated carnage to come, the formidable feat of normalizing assassination was accomplished not by Donald Trump, but by Barack Obama. This was a landmark, paradigm-shifting, even revolutionary, rebranding of assassination as targeted killing, said to constitute perfectly legitimate warfare.
No one should be surprised that, like US politicians, foreign leaders find lethal drone technology to be highly seductive. Targeted killing has proven easy to sell. More and more leaders will likely follow the US example, by insisting that lethal drones save the lives of compatriots, and obviate the need to sacrifice soldiers. But unscrupulous politicians and the leaders of nations where democracy has yet to take hold can use the very same rationalizations for killing suspects as did their mentors: political dissidents will be denounced as intrinsically evil terrorists and therefore fair game for summary execution.
The myopia of the Obama administration in normalizing assassination without thinking through what were sure to be the ultimate consequences of insisting that the executive branch of a government has the right, in national self-defense, to execute suspects where and when it pleases, will emerge clearly in the years to come. For now, it seems safe to say that “strike first, suppress questions later” will characterize the approach to dissidents by more and more political leaders, all over the globe, thanks to the nearly boundless potential for profits in the death industry. The use of lethal drones to assassinate suspects will be limited only by the imaginations of politicians as they decide, behind closed doors, who does and who does not deserve to be extinguished by remote control.
Eye in the Sky (2015) is the first feature-length film about drone warfare to have received a decent amount of mainstream attention. This no doubt has something to do with the high-caliber cast, including lead roles by Helen Mirren as Colonel Katherine Powell, and Alan Rickman as Lieutenant General Frank Benson. Big names imply big budgets. But there’s another reason why this movie, directed by Gavin Hood, has been discussed more than National Bird (2016), Good Kill (2015), Drone (2014), Drones (2013), Unmanned: America’s Drone Wars (2013), or Dirty Wars (2013).
None of these films is entertaining. Eye in the Sky, like some of the others in this growing genre, presents itself as a work of historical fiction, grounded in what is supposed to be a realistic portrayal of the contemporary practice of drone warfare against persons suspected of association with radical jihadist groups. But rather than condemning the remote-control killers, as the other films unequivocally do, Eye in the Sky portrays the protagonists wrestling with the complexities of morality before launching missiles and then congratulating one another on their success.
The “evil enemy” here, in Nairobi, Kenya, is Al Shabaab, and the fate of one of their cells is the subject of lengthy and sophistic “just war” debate among the drone warriors. A contingent of US and British military and civilian officials communicate with one another from different parts of the world over Skype-like video feed, and after arguing over the course of the workday, they ultimately decide to execute the suspects, who appear to be preparing to carry out a suicide attack in the proximate future or, as the drone warriors would say, “imminently”.
One of the suspects is a US citizen, recently recruited from Minnesota, and two are British nationals. The white woman, Susan Danford—nom de guerre Ayesha Al Hady—has been tracked by Colonel Powell for a remarkable six years. Powell is keen to kill Danford, even after having summarized her life’s story as that of a person who came from a troubled household, married a terrorist, and was converted to the jihadist cause as a result of her vulnerability.
The mission is supposed to culminate in capture, not killing, but when the group of suspects convenes at a house where a suicide vest is being assembled and a video message filmed, the military officials immediately call for a missile strike, to the initial protests of the civilian political officials in attendance, who insist that they are there to witness a capture, not a targeted assassination.
The rest of the film is essentially an extended consideration of a version of what professional analytic philosophers call “The Trolley Problem,” a thought experiment wherein people are persuaded that they must kill some people in order to save others. Such hypothetical scenarios—like the proverbial ticking bomb, which is said by some to illustrate the necessity of torture under certain circumstances—involve an eerie desire on the part of some thinkers to persuade others to condone what, left to their own devices, they would never have agreed to do. As David Swanson has correctly observed, there is no known case in reality of drone warriors who kill a person and his entourage as they strap a suicide vest onto the martyr’s chest. That is why singling out this wildly implausible and entirely hypothetical scenario as representative of drone warfare in general is a consummate expression of pro-military propaganda.
Eye in the Sky attempts to portray the dilemmas involved in drone warfare but ultimately serves to promote the drone warriors’ all-too-sophistic modes of reasoning. Rather than ask deep and important questions such as how Al-Shabaab became such a powerful force in, first, Somalia and, later, places such as Kenya, the film allows the viewer steeped in New York Times headlines touting “Six Suspected Militants Slain” to float along blissfully in his or her state of ignorance regarding what precisely the US and British governments have been doing in the Middle East for the past sixteen years.
It is abundantly clear from the very fact that new recruits from the United States and Britain—indeed, the very targets of the mission in this story—have been primarily either troubled youths or persons outraged at the Western devastation of the Middle East, and now Africa. Yet the film blithely allows the viewer to persist in puzzlement over the perennial question: Why do they hate us?
Both Colonel Powell and General Benson consider Susan Danford’s allegiance with Al-Shabaab to be, essentially, a capital offense. They don’t bother with niceties such as the fact that capital punishment has been outlawed in the United Kingdom. Instead, the military personnel seek refuge in and parrot the simpleminded terms of just war theory which they learned in first-year ethics class at the military academy.
The missile strike is said to be a military necessity, proportional, and a last resort. It has furthermore been authorized by the legitimate authority, aka the US president, to whom the British continue to defer, even after the scathing Chilcot report in which Prime Minister Tony Blair was taken to task for embroiling Britain in the ill-fated 2003 invasion of Iraq. As though none of that ever happened, when President Barack Obama normalized the targeted assassination of anyone in any place on the planet where radical jihadist terrorists are said by some anonymous analyst to reside, Prime Minister David Cameron, too, followed suit. In August 2015, he authorized missile strikes from drones against British nationals in Syria, despite the Parliament’s having voted down his call for war in 2013.
Perhaps Cameron was impressed by Barack Obama and drone killing czar John Brennan’s oft-flaunted fluency in just war rhetoric. Unfortunately, in Eye in the Sky, the sophomoric facility of the assassins with the terms of just war theory may, too, be taken as evidence to ignorant viewers that these people in uniform know what they are talking about and should be trusted with the delicate decision of where, when, and why to summarily execute human beings who have not been charged with crimes, much less permitted to stand trial.
The question how a missile strike in a country not at war can be conceived of as a military necessity is altogether ignored in this film, as though it were already a settled matter. Someone in the US government (President Obama under the advisement of John Brennan, former president and CEO of The Analysis Corporation, the business of which is terrorist targeting analysis) decreed that the entire world was a battlefield, and this opened up every place and other governments to the delusive casuistry of just war theorists, including their most strident advocates for war, the self-styled “humanitarian hawks”.
No matter that in this case there are no military soldiers from either the United States or Britain on the ground to be harmed. No matter that their collaborators are local spies who do in fact commit acts of treachery against their compatriots and are indeed brutally executed when this is discovered. Despite the complete absence of any of the aspects of a war which might warrant a missile strike as a military necessity—above all, that soldiers on the ground will otherwise die—the itchy trigger drone warriors point to their version of the dreaded Trolley Problem and a false and misleading application of utilitarianism to convince the naysayers that they must approve the launch of a missile in order to avert an even worse tragedy.
The military personnel are more persuasive than the sole civilian dissenter, and no one seems to be bothered in the least by questions of strategy. The word ‘blowback’ is never even mentioned in this film. But judging by the growth of ISIS and Al-Shabaab over the past decade, and the testimony of suicide bombers such as Humam Al-Balawi (the Jordanian doctor who blew up a group of CIA personnel at Camp Chapman in 2009—in direct retaliation to US missile strikes on Pakistan), the tactic of drone assassination can reasonably be expected to cause the ranks of jihadists to continue to swell. No one denies that during the occupation of Iraq, an effective recruiting tactic of factional groups was to point to the civilians harmed by the Western infidels as confirmation that they were indeed the evil enemy. Knowing all of this, it does not seem unfair to ask: Is “military necessity” now conceived by the remote-control killers as whatever will ensure the continuation of a war?
In Eye in the Sky, the drone warriors are more than willing to risk the life of a little girl who has set up a table where she is selling loaves of bread because, they say, if they do not act immediately then perhaps eighty little children just like her will be killed instead. No mention is made of the psychological trauma suffered by the people who do not die in drone strikes, but witness what has transpired. (When was the last time one of your neighbors’ houses was cratered by a Hellfire missile?) Instead, the collateral damage estimate (CDE) so conscientiously calculated by a hapless soldier pressured by Colonel Powell to produce an estimated likelihood of the girl’s death at less than 50% altogether ignores the 100% probability that she and everyone in the neighborhood will be terrorized.
But even focusing solely on the likely lethality of the strike, the drone warriors in Eye in the Sky display what is in reality a lethal lack of imagination, an utter failure to conceive of counter measures such as warning the people in nearby markets and public places of the impending danger. That is because, in the minds of the drone warriors, if one terrorist attack is thwarted, then another will surely be carried out later on down the line. By this mode of reasoning, they have arrived at the depressing and nihilistic conclusion that they must kill all of the suspects. What would be the point of doing anything else?
Recruits from Western societies, young people such as Junaid Hussain, Reyaad Khan, and Ruhul Amin, are assumed to be beyond the reach of reason, despite the glaring fact that their recent conversion to the jihadist cause itself reveals that they have changed their view before and could, in principle, change it again. Nonetheless, the drone warriors persist in their worship of death as the be-all and end-all of foreign policy. They are literally trapped in the lethality box, because they cannot conceive of any other way of dealing with factional terrorism than by killing people. When obviously innocent persons are destroyed, maimed, terrorized and left bereft by Western missiles, these acts of so-called military necessity end by galvanizing support for the Anti-Western jihadist cause, both near the strike site and in lands far away.
Realistically, what self-respecting father would not wish to avenge the death of his young child at the hands of the murderous drone warriors who are so despicable as to kill without risking any danger to themselves? Instead of thinking through the likely implications of what they are doing, the drone warriors persist in invoking delusive just war rhetoric to promote what they want to do: kill the evil enemy. But the use of lethal drones in what has been successfully marketed to taxpayers as “smart war”, eliminates soldierly risk only by transferring it to civilians on the ground. No matter that new recruits continue to flock to the jihadist cause, seems to be the thinking of our great military minds, missiles are in ample supply.
It is a depressing view of humanity indeed which sees homicide as the solution to conflict when in fact it is its primary cause. But the delusion of the drone assassins is even worse than the corruption of criminal contract killers because they emetically congratulate each other, as in this film, for pushing buttons to eliminate their fellow human beings from the face of the earth, as though this were some kind of accomplishment, rather than the worst of all possible crimes.
New recruits such as Susan Danford will never stop arising from the ashes of drone strike sites until the drone strikes have come to a halt. Indulging in a false and Manichean division of people into black and white categories of good and evil, the killers corrupt more and more young people to collaborate with them, both informants and drone operators. Those who perform well in their jobs rise in the ranks to become the commanders of future killers, until at last the entire society is filled with people who upon watching a film such as Eye in the Sky end by sympathizing not with the victims but with those who destroyed them.
Focused as they will be upon this simpleminded “Trolley Problem” portrayal of drone warfare, Western viewers will likely miss altogether the obscene hegemonic presumptions of the killers who use beetle- and bird-sized drones to penetrate the private homes of people in order to stop them from wreaking havoc in countries where there are no US or British soldiers on the ground to harm. To pretend that all of this killing is for the benefit of the locals is delusional to the point of insanity.
If serial Western military interventions had not destroyed country after country across the Middle East, beginning with Iraq in 1991, then there would be no “evil enemy” to confront in the first place. To continue to ignore the words of jihadists themselves when they rail against the savage butchery of millions of Muslim people by the US military and its poodles is but the most flagrant expression of this smug hegemony. No, I am afraid, they do not hate us for our freedom.
In Eye in the Sky, anyone who opposes the use of military weapons against people living in their own civil society thousands of miles away is painted as a coward and a fool, as though there were some sort of moral obligation to launch missiles to save a hypothetical group of eighty people. The very same killers do not feel any obligation whatsoever to provide food, shelter, and potable water to the people living in such societies, even when the $70K cost of a single missile could be repurposed to save many more than eighty lives, in addition to winning over “hearts and minds”.
Here is the ugly truth shining through the willingness to kill but not to save lives in nonhomicidal ways: Peace does not pay. The drone killing machine is the latest and most lucrative instantiation of the military-industrial-congressional-media-academic-pharmaceutical-logistics complex. That Westerners continue to be taken in by this hoax is tragic for the people of Africa and the Middle East mercilessly terrorized (when they are not maimed or incinerated) while the killers gloat over what they take to be their moral courage.
Near the end of the film, Lieutenant Colonel Benson sanctimoniously admonishes the sole remaining dissenter among the witnesses to the mission, which she has denounced as “disgraceful”. He smugly retorts to her suggestion that he is a coward: “Never tell a soldier that he does not know the cost of war.” But the cost of the remote-control elimination of persons suspected of complicity in terrorism is not merely the tragic loss of human life. It is the destruction of such killers’ souls and the concomitant creation of even more killers who feel the need to retaliate in turn. It is the fact that they have rolled back all of the moral progress in procedural justice made by human societies since the 1215 Magna Carta. It is the fact that their dogged insistence on perpetuating and spreading this practice to the darkest and least democratic corners of the planet represents a categorical denial of human rights.
BBC Radio 4 Thinking Allowed. Drone Warfare: From Soldiering to Assassination?
In this 17-minute discussion, BBC Radio 4 host Laurie Taylor interviews Laurie Calhoun and David Galbreath about issues raised in We Kill Because We Can: From Soldiering to Assassination in the Drone Age. Topics covered include the dawning of the Drone Age on November 3, 2002; its relation to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; the international principles of justice being ignored and subverted as a result of this easy-to-use and seemingly low-risk technology; the effects on civilians; whether drone strikes are more about counterterrorism or foreign policy by other means; and the psychological effect of drone strikes on drone operators themselves.
The study ended up taking four years longer than the projected two years, and it cost more than £10 million to carry out. The conclusions have been widely affirmed as damning of Tony Blair, the prime minister who chose to ally the United Kingdom with the United States in its invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq.
–The war was not a last resort. The UK joined the war effort before peaceful options had been exhausted.
For the most part, the six year, £10 million+ study basically concluded what millions of antiwar protesters had no difficulty recognizing back in 2002.
One topic which has not been addressed by any of the many commentators on the Chilcot Report—at least not to my knowledge—is whether it does not also mandate a reconsideration of the treatment of Britain’s allegedly treasonous enemies, young men who have turned against the UK government as a direct result of its complicity in the destruction of the country of Iraq, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings, and the harm to millions more, many of whom were forced to flee their homeland as a result of the postwar violence and insecurity.
I am interested specifically in the cases of three young British nationals, Ruhul Amin, Reyaad Khan, and Junaid Hussein, all of whom were incinerated by lethal drone while living in Syria, to which they fled in order to join the ISIS effort. The reason why the stories of these young men, denounced by the UK government as “evil terrorists” and threats to national security, trouble me is because they were deliberately destroyed by their own government without ever having stood trial or even been indicted for their alleged crimes.
Two of the targets, Ruhul Amin and Reyaad Khan, were taken out on August 21, 2015, by missiles fired from drones by the RAF under the authorization of then-Prime Minister David Cameron. The third target, Junaid Hussein, was eliminated on August 25, 2015, by a US drone with the help of British intelligence. (Other persons were killed in a previous strike aiming for him.) All in all, August 2015 was a precedent-setting month for Britain, a nation in which capital punishment has been outlawed and which was not officially at war in Syria, where these British nationals were hunted down and killed.
Two of the three alleged enemies of the state were 21 years of age at the time of their death; the third was 26 years old. They all died in late 2015, which implies that two of the targets were 9 years old when the UK government joined the ill-advised war on Iraq; the third was 14 years old. This means that they were children or young adolescents at the time of the invasion of Iraq. Their entire worldview was obviously affected by the war on Iraq, for they later decided to team up with whoever was fighting those responsible.
In other words, if Britain had not joined forces with the United States, which would have made it very, very difficult for the war to proceed, as there would not have been a “coalition of the willing” but only a rogue aggressor state, then in all likelihood Iraq would not have been destroyed, and the group which came to be known as ISIS would not have grown and spread from Iraq to Syria.
These are all counterfactual conditionals, of course. My point is only that if ISIS never came to be in its present form, because the people of Iraq were not subjected to oppression and lawless aggression—night raids, summary executions, detentions and torture—then the British drone strike targets destroyed with the blessing of David Cameron could not and would not have joined forces with the group now known as ISIS.
I therefore find that, in addition to being responsible for all of the death and destruction in Iraq, Tony Blair bears responsibility not only for the deaths of Ruhul Amin, Reyaad Khan, and Junaid Hussain, but also for Prime Minister David Cameron’s summary execution without trial of these men. In saying this, I do not mean to absolve Cameron for his mistake, for he himself identified his victims as enemies of the state and arguably violated both British and international law by assassinating them. Cameron should never have followed US President Obama’s misguided precedent in summarily executing without trial his fellow citizens.
However, Tony Blair is equally culpable, in my view, for having contributed to this return to a medieval, pre-Magna Carta framework of justice being perpetrated by unjust warriors as necessary only because of their own prior crimes and the existence of a sophisticated modern technology, the unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV), without which none of these deaths would have occurred (see: We Kill Because We Can: From Soldiering to Assassination in the Drone Age).
It is tragic that so many young Muslim men are being annihilated for reacting violently to what they correctly identify to have been atrocious crimes committed in a misguided war (see: Chilcot Report). The state warriors and the factional terrorists sadly all embrace the same confused premise: that conflict can be resolved by obliterating anyone who disagrees. Ruhul Amin, Reyaad Khan and Junaid Hussain are graphic illustrations of how young people are being molded into jihadists by their witness of state-perpetrated war crimes, and their heartfelt desire to stop them.
On July 8, 2016, a robot was used for the very first time to blow up a criminal suspect in the United States. Five Dallas city policemen had been slain, and several others injured. The perpetrator, Micah Xavier Johnson, was involved in a conversation with the police for a while, but when he began shooting again, the decision was taken to blow him up. The opportunity was there, the bomb-disposal robot was already in the possession of the police, and who could complain, given what this particular suspect had already done?
The robot used to blow up Micah Johnson was not a lethal drone, but it may as well have been. One might wonder how the police devised the idea of using a bomb-disposal robot to blow up a human being, but certainly the US drone program offers plenty of examples of the use of remote-control technology to incinerate, rather than capture, terrorist suspects.
US citizens have grown accustomed to their government killing people abroad, but the decision to kill by remote control in the homeland was extraordinary in that no attempt was made to incapacitate the suspect instead. In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that policemen in dangerous scenarios often opt to shoot to kill, aiming for the heart or head, not the suspect’s foot or hand. However, it is not the role of the police to execute but to take into custody suspects so that their guilt can be determined by a jury of peers and, if convicted, an appropriate penalty applied.
Despite the grisly nature of what was done to Micah Johnson, many commentators have insisted that the police chief made the right call in deciding to blow the man up. But was this in fact his call to make? The precedent set by this action would seem to be yet another step down an ever-more lethal continuum rendered considerably more so by the current US president, Barack Obama, whose policy it is to kill rather than capture suspected terrorists located abroad.
The US administration continues to claim that in all of its thousands of targeted killings, capture has been infeasible and the premeditated, intentional acts of homicide have been necessary in national self-defense, all part of the Global War on Terror. Obama’s authority to kill suspects anywhere he chooses to do so—both inside and outside areas of active hostilities—is said to derive from the Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF) conferred by the US congress upon President George W. Bush about fifteen years ago.
As technology has become more and more sophisticated, it is highly ironic that the restraints on killing wrought over millennia, and the great advances in institutions of justice, beginning with the 1215 Magna Carta, have been forgotten or set aside. The suspects killed in the Global War on Terror by lethal drone are presumed guilty until proven innocent, but they are denied the right to demonstrate their innocence. They are denied even the right to surrender and usually have no idea that they are about to be killed. They are simply eliminated from the face of the earth at the behest of the US president’s henchmen at a time of their choosing, as the “opportunity” arises.
The blowing up of Micah Johnson by the police was triply ironic. Not only was he trained as a sniper by the US military, but the young African American was apparently protesting against police brutality against black men in the homeland. Johnson’s desire to “kill white people” arose out of anger at the police killings of a series of black men brought to the attention of the public by the Black Lives Matter movement over the past few years. But the response of the police to Johnson’s obviously misguided mission to target policemen was to ratchet up the brutality against black men yet another notch.
Rather than being riddled with bullets, the body of Micah Johnson, a black man, was blown up in a manner befitting a condemned building, not a human being. In saying this, I do not mean to suggest that shooting to kill unarmed persons is somehow less objectionable, but only that the degree of sheer violence is much greater and the denial of the victim’s personhood highlighted by the use of a bomb to eliminate him.
After the use of a robotic device to obliterate the suspect, several Dallas officials made public statements to the effect that there was no other way to neutralize the threat posed by Micah Johnson. I can think of several. How about bombing the place where he was located with tear gas? SWAT teams certainly have gas masks in their arsenal of equipment, so the place could have been literally fumigated with gas using the same robot to deliver not explosives but agents of lachrymation. Or how about bombing the place with a gaseous form of sedative to knock him out so that the place could be secured and accessed by a team who would then be able to take the man into custody?
In this regard, the case of Micah Johnson bears comparison to that of Osama bin Laden, who was also executed when in fact he might have been shot with tranquilizer plugs rather than bullets. His unconscious body could have been lifted out of Abbottabad just as his corpse was, but the decision was taken by Obama to kill him instead. Bin Laden was widely reviled as the mastermind behind the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and if not the architect, he was at the very least their inspiration, given his enthusiastic exhortations that Al Qaeda members wage jihad against the United States in retaliation to what he regarded as inexcusable war crimes, especially in the 1991 Gulf War and its aftermath in Iraq.
The execution of Bin Laden and Micah Johnson are similar in another, even more significant, way. Both acts of killing look like exceptions, which took place in extraordinary circumstances. However, as precedents, both can be seen to set in motion a series of future actions modeled on them, because the exception swiftly transforms into the rule once initial inhibitions against intentional, premeditated homicide have fallen by the wayside. Under Obama’s greatly expanded drone program, which began in January 2009, shortly after the new president assumed his office, assassination of suspects has been rebranded as “targeted killing” and carried out primarily through the use of Hellfire missiles delivered by Predator drones.
The drone program and the execution of Bin Laden were mutually reinforcing. If lower-level “foot soldiers” whose names are not even known may be eliminated by drone, then why wouldn’t Bin Laden be fair game for elimination as well? Both the drone program and the execution of Bin Laden served to inform a further escalation of lethality when US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki was executed in Yemen by his own government.
Was Al-Awlaki anything like Bin Laden? Of course not. But Al-Awlaki was mythologized as an execrable bogeyman in the mainstream media to the point where most Americans came to believe that he was morally equivalent to Bin Laden. To this day, most people have no idea that Al-Awlaki spoke out against the crimes of 9/11. He was a voice of moderation at the time, calmly counseling the government not to make the mistake of acting in ways which could easily be misconstrued as waging a war on Islam.
That was precisely what the US government proceeded to do. They invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, despite the fact that most of the perpetrators of 9/11 hailed from Saudi Arabia, the government of which was given a free pass. Rather than focusing on those ultimately responsible for 9/11, the US government set out to harass Muslims such as Anwar al-Awlaki to such an extent, using both the FBI and foreign governments (in his case, President Saleh of Yemen), that in some cases the targeted suspects transmogrified into self-avowed enemies.
Was Anwar Al-Awlaki an operational terrorist, or was he a propagandist and cheerleader of sorts for jihad? Whatever source of inspiration some of the apprehended perpetrators of terrorist plots may have drawn from Al-Awlaki’s sermons, the fact remains that they and they alone chose to carry out violent acts. The evidence supposedly convicting Al-Awlaki of the capital crimes allegedly justifying his summary execution without trial continues to be withheld on grounds of State Secrets Privilege under a pretext of national security.
Exceptions quickly transform into rules when more and more agents agree to follow suit. Case in point: only a few years after Obama’s 2011 decision to execute Al-Awlaki by lethal drone, then-UK Prime Minister David Cameron chose in 2015 to eliminate two British nationals located in Syria using lethal drones. Now, apparently, this is what the US government and its allies do. Find people, even fellow citizens, who appear to be up to no good, and if they are located in a Third World country or war zone, then it’s supposed to be perfectly fine to execute them without trial. Just make sure that you use a missile so that you can call it an “act of war”.
In the case of Micah Johnson, the Dallas cop killer who was blown up by a robotic device operated by remote control, people may say that he obviously deserved to die and the police had no intention of risking the lives of any more of their comrades. But there were other “suspects” identified at the time of the crime as well, who might also have been blown up using robots, were they available, and had those suspects been located.
One fellow’s face was spammed all over Twitter. It turned out that he was not involved. What if some vigilante had taken him out, under the assumption that he needed to be neutralized? What if the angry Dallas police force had located that suspect and blown him up for the very reason that he adamantly denied having done anything wrong? He would have become the homeland analogue to collateral damage, now that the weapons of war are being used by law enforcement.
The risk aversion of war makers steadily increased over the course of only a couple of decades to the point where sacrificing the lives of civilians on the ground “outside areas of active hostilities” has come to be considered perfectly acceptable among US leaders. These are places where deadly missiles are being directed toward suspected terrorists even though they are not threatening anyone with death at the time when they are killed, and least of all US citizens. Indeed, the targets are usually unarmed, located as they are “outside areas of active hostilities”.
Given how the drone program inclined administrators toward killing rather than capturing Bin Laden, and given how the killing of Bin Laden then inclined administrators to kill even US citizen suspects by lethal drone, I predict a similar lethal turn in law enforcement in the homeland in the aftermath of the obliteration of Micah Johnson by remote control. It does not matter that his case was exceptional. The case of Bin Laden was exceptional, too.
The same risk aversion seen among the “light footprint” war makers led by Obama will begin to infect police departments all over the United States as the commanders of men in blue become less and less willing to allow them to die, even when the risk of killing innocent bystanders will obviously increase. It is of course rational to attempt to protect soldiers and policemen. But is it not finally time to reconsider the infinite price in innocent life being paid in the quest to kill allegedly evil people, whose importance is given higher priority than anything else? Is this focus on death to the exclusion of all other considerations not the ultimate expression of nihilism?
What is most remarkable of all about the myopic, glaucomic, and amnesiac paradigm of lethal centrism is that given the never-ending series of mass killings being perpetrated all over the place—in Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino, Orlando, Nice, Dallas, Baton Route, Munich—we now have ample evidence that this single-minded focus on lethality is not keeping people in the West safe.
As a matter of fact, “Kill don’t capture” and “Strike first, suppress questions later”, the Obama administration’s signature policy, serves as an incredibly destructive example to lone wolf killers, would-be jihadists, and angry activists alike who emulate governments when they decide to take up arms and perpetrate mass homicide as a way of expressing their grievances.
What’s Conspicuously Missing from the Big Bad Brexit Debate Drama?
My informal survey yesterday of a random sample of the good people of the village of Burnham, Buckinghamshire, and my short random exit poll survey this morning both revealed a strong outpouring of support for Brexit. None of the people with whom I spoke struck me as racists, and most did not even mention the topic of immigration, though all signs point to immigration as one of the most important factors in voters’ decision-making on this historic day. Yes, for the first time in more than forty years, the British people are being permitted to weigh in on the wisdom of their country’s membership in the European Union.
One of the most interesting things I noticed in chatting with these people was that they often began revealing their preference for “Leave” in a hesitant, hushed voice. Once they realized that I was not a Remain Shamer, some of them began pouring out their many concerns. I spoke with a nurse whose retirement was postponed for four years by the EU. I spoke with a woman with small children who had noticed that the National Health Service (NHS) had become difficult to access. Of course, the Tories are certainly in part to blame for that, but it does not help, she lamented, that there is so much competition for the already scarce social resources.
A couple of people were angry about Prime Minister David Cameron’s doom-and-gloom “the sky will fall if we leave!” narrative. One person expressed offense at President Obama’s threat to the effect that Britain will go to “the end of the queue” for trade if they leave the EU. I got the distinct impression that Brits do not generally believe that Britain will suffer any long-term damage from leaving the EU, though they are aware that there will be bumps initially, whatever the outcome of the EU referendum ends up being.
It seems obvious to most people that lots of nations are not members of the EU, as Britain was not before, and they are doing quite well. Many people (not only the people with whom I spoke, but elsewhere on the internet) have expressed consternation about the topic of trade, not knowing whom to believe. The bankers? The EU technocrats and political elites? Why in the world should it be more difficult for Britain to trade freely than to navigate the volumes of regulations pumped out by the EU? How could it be more difficult for small businesses to not have to comply with the edicts of Eurocrats before selling their products and services abroad?
Of course, it is entirely possible that many people are really concerned above all about immigration but wish to avoid being associated with racists and far-right extremist groups. Some crazy person assassinated MP Jo Cox last week, and there was an immediate poll effect: Remain got a big boost, as did the markets. This happened because people were moved by emotions to conclude that Brexit advocates must be crazy people. Obviously, that’s a non sequitur of gargantuan proportion, but good luck explaining that to emotion-driven voters. Particularly in this debate, where scare tactics, fear-mongering, and appeals to emotion are everywhere on display.
One thing is clear: no one with whom I spoke understands how the admission of an ever-lengthening list of new member nations is supposed to strengthen the European Union—which everyone on both sides of the debate appears to agree is a sinking ship. If all of the new members are worse off economically than the United Kingdom, then how can the new members possibly contribute to plugging the hole in the hull?
This just seems like common sense to many people: How many Brits want to move to Croatia or Albania? I am guessing that the number is rather small. And so there is bound to be real concern among the British people about the projected increase in their population in the coming years. Some of these people may have racist fears, but the numbers alone are enough to cause one to pause.
Moreover, the more member nations there are in the European Union, the less important becomes any single country’s voice, including that of Britain. Each time the EU grows larger, each member state (aside from the new inductees) automatically has less, not more, power.
I am well aware that some advocates of Brexit are far-right racists, but others simply abhor bureaucratic, democratically unaccountable hegemons. One wouldn’t know it from scanning the acrimonious ugliness poured out by self-styled “liberals” on Twitter and Facebook, but there are some pretty solid progressive arguments for Brexit.
My own honest puzzlement about this entire dispute is over the issue of immigration, but not in the way in which anyone else appears to be worried. To be perfectly frank, I have never understood how granting preferential status to fellow Europeans (most of whom are, I believe, Caucasians) is somehow less racist than treating all outsiders equally. This is a serious puzzle for me. Please step forward in the comments section to disabuse me of my misconceptions here, but how is it supposed to be less racist to permit unskilled Europeans to move freely throughout the European Union but not, say, Africans or Muslims from the Middle East?
Everyone seems to grasp intuitively that this poster is abhorrent. But no one, as far as I have seen, is discussing how this picture was made possible. The truth is that the above picture of a mass of homeless human beings came about only because of fierce military intervention in the Middle East, with the United States as the primary perpetrator, but other Western nations, including the United Kingdom, also bombing Muslim nations on a regular basis, thereby catalyzing the exodus of large numbers of people, who quite naturally wish to preserve their own lives, as any rational person in their situation would.
President Obama dropped more than 23,000 bombs on Muslim-majority nations in 2015 alone. Some were delivered by drones; others by manned combat aircraft. Either way, that’s a lot of bombs, and that’s a lot of “death from the sky,” to quote his speech at Hiroshima. Under Obama’s leadership, the United States is fighting wars and providing homicidal weapons to rebels in at least seven different countries in the Middle East alone.
Small wonder that the populations of those lands have been leaving in a steady stream—or tsunami, as the case may be. What else can they do? Too bad they can’t come to the United States, because that is where all of those people belong, given the reason for their displacement. Only when the people of the United States begin to suffer the consequences of their government’s military intervention abroad will they finally be motivated to call a halt to the mass homicide committed in their name. |
0.947876 | # First prepare the XML body that is to be GZip compressed and then encrypted.
# Build the following XML..
# to generate the XML creation code that follows this XML.
CkXml_UpdateAttrAt $xml "prehled" 1 "verze" "2016.0"
CkXml_UpdateAttrAt $xml "prehled" 1 "typPrehledu" "N"
CkXml_UpdateChildContent $xml "prehled|okres|nazevOSSZ" "Praha 9"
CkXml_UpdateChildContent $xml "prehled|zamestnavatel|nazev" "SIT & KHASO v.o.s."
CkXml_UpdateChildContent $xml "prehled|zamestnavatel|adresa|ulice" "Na spleniti"
CkXml_UpdateChildContent $xml "prehled|zamestnavatel|adresa|obec" "Praha 9"
# Emit the XML into bd.
CkBinData_AppendString $bd [CkXml_getXml $xml] "utf-8"
# GZip compress the bd contents.
# The Filename is not an actual file on disk, but is just the filename string stored in the gzip compressed format.
# Encrypt the contents using the government provided cert.
# At this point, bd contains the gzip compressed / encrypted XML.
# to generate this code.
CkXml_UpdateAttrAt $xml "Header|MessageDetails|ResponseEndPoint" 1 "PollInterval" "0"
CkXml_UpdateAttrAt $xml "GovTalkDetails|Keys|Key" 1 "Type" "vars"
CkXml_UpdateAttrAt $xml "Body|Message" 1 "xmlns" "http://www.cssz.cz/XMLSchema/envelope"
CkXml_UpdateAttrAt $xml "Body|Message" 1 "version" "1.2"
CkXml_UpdateAttrAt $xml "Body|Message" 1 "eType" "PVPOJ16"
CkXml_UpdateAttrAt $xml "Body|Message|Header|Signature" 1 "xmlns:dt" "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:datatypes"
CkXml_UpdateAttrAt $xml "Body|Message|Header|Signature" 1 "dt:dt" "bin.base64"
CkXml_UpdateChildContent $xml "Body|Message|Header|Signature" "Signature goes here"
CkXml_UpdateAttrAt $xml "Body|Message|Header|Vendor" 1 "productName" "Abc xyz. s r.o. JKL .NET Client"
CkXml_UpdateAttrAt $xml "Body|Message|Header|Vendor" 1 "version" "6.0.2.0"
CkXml_UpdateAttrAt $xml "Body|Message|Body" 1 "xmlns:dt" "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:datatypes"
CkXml_UpdateAttrAt $xml "Body|Message|Body" 1 "encrypted" "yes"
CkXml_UpdateAttrAt $xml "Body|Message|Body" 1 "contentEncoding" "gzip"
CkXml_UpdateAttrAt $xml "Body|Message|Body" 1 "dt:dt" "bin.base64"
puts "Response status code = $statusCode"
# The response body should be XML.
# Load it into a Chilkat XML object to get it in indented format for viewing..
# to generate XML parsing code based on a sample response.. |
0.998334 | Imagine you’ve just stepped into an elevator and suddenly your heart races, your chest aches, you break out in a cold sweat and feel as if the elevator is about to crash to the ground. What’s happening?
Imagine you are driving home from the grocery store and suddenly things seem to be out of control. You feel hot flashes, things around you blur, you can’t tell where you are, and you feel as if you’re dying. What’s happening?
What’s happening is a panic attack, an uncontrollable panic response to ordinary, nonthreatening situations. Panic attacks are often an indication that a person has panic disorder.
A person who experiences recurrent panic attacks, at least one of which leads to at least a month of increased anxiety or avoidant behavior, is said to have panic disorder. Panic disorder may also be indicated if a person experiences fewer than four panic episodes but has recurrent or constant fears of having another panic attack.
Doctors often try to rule out every other possible alternative before diagnosing panic disorder. To be diagnosed as having panic disorder, a person must experience at least four of the following symptoms during a panic attack: sweating; hot or cold flashes; choking or smothering sensations; racing heart; labored breathing; trembling; chest pains; faintness; numbness; nausea; disorientation; or feelings of dying, losing control, or losing one’s mind. Panic attacks typically last about 10 minutes, but may be a few minutes shorter or longer. During the attack, the physical and emotional symptoms increase quickly in a crescendo-like way and then subside. A person may feel anxious and jittery for many hours after experiencing a panic attack.
Phobias are irrational, involuntary, and inappropriate fears of (or responses to) ordinary situations or things. People who have phobias can experience panic attacks when confronted with the situation or object about which they feel phobic. A category of symptoms called phobic disorder falls within the broader field of anxiety disorders.
Specific (simple) phobia: an unreasonable fear of specific circumstances or objects, such as traffic jams or snakes.
Social phobia: extreme fear of looking foolish or stupid or unacceptable in public that causes people to avoid public occasions or areas.
Phobias are usually chronic (long-term), distressing disorders that keep people from ordinary activities and places. They can lead to other serious problems, such as depression. In fact, at least half of those who suffer with phobias and panic disorders also have depression. Alcoholism, loss of productivity, secretiveness, and feelings of shame and low self-esteem also occur with this illness. Some people are unable to go anywhere or do anything outside their homes without the help of others they trust.
What does it mean to “fear the fear”?
Many people with phobias or panic disorder “fear the fear,” or worry about when the next attack is coming. The fear of more panic attacks can lead to a very limited life. People who have panic attacks often begin to avoid the things they think triggered the panic attack and then stop doing the things they used to do or the places they used to go.
It is estimated that 2 percent to 5 percent of Americans have panic disorder, so you are not alone if you, too have these symptoms. Usually panic disorder first strikes people in their early twenties. Severe stress, such as the death of a loved one, can bring on panic attacks.
A 1986 study by the National Institute of Mental Health showed that 5.1 percent to 12.5 percent of people surveyed had experienced phobias in the past six months. The study estimated that 24 million Americans will experience some phobias in their lifetimes.
Phobias are the leading psychiatric disorders among women of all ages. One survey showed that 4.9 percent of women and 1.8 percent of men have panic disorder, agoraphobia, or any other phobias.
No one really knows what causes panic disorder, but several ideas are being researched. Panic disorder seems to run in families, which suggests that it has at least some genetic basis. Some theories suggest that panic disorder is part of a more generalized anxiety in the people who have panic attacks or that severe separation anxiety can develop into panic disorder or phobias, most often agoraphobia.
Biological theories point to possible physical defects in a person’s autonomic (or automatic) nervous system. General hypersensitivity in the nervous system, increased arousal, or a sudden chemical imbalance can trigger panic attacks. Caffeine, alcohol, and several other agents can also trigger these symptoms.
Recovery from panic disorder can be achieved either by taking medication or by cognitive behavioral therapy that is specific for panic disorder. Studies suggest that medication and cognitive behavioral therapy are about equally effective and the decision about which to take depends largely on the preference of the person with the panic disorder. Medication probably works a bit faster, but has more adverse side effects than cognitive behavioral therapy. Also, when successful treatment is finished, people who have had cognitive behavioral therapy tend to remain well longer than people who have taken medication. There is some evidence that the combination of cognitive behavioral therapy and medication may offer some benefits over either one alone.
Medication is most effective when it is used as part of an overall treatment plan that includes supportive therapy. Antidepressants and antianxiety medications are the most successful medications for this disorder. Ask your doctor about these medications or others that may help you.
Healthy living habits may also help people overcome panic disorder. Exercise, a proper and balanced diet, moderate use of caffeine and alcohol, and learning how to reduce stress are all important.
Peer support is a vital part of overcoming panic disorder. Family and friends can play a significant role in the treatment process and should be informed of the treatment plan and of the ways they can be most helpful.
If you or a family member are struggling with Panic Disorder and you want to find support in your area, please contact the NAMI Michigan main office in Lansing at 517-485-4049 or send an email to info@namimi.org. You can also fill out a request to have someone from NAMI Michigan reach out to you on our Contact NAMI page. We have many resources and support groups that you may find very useful. The help you need could be just a phone call away. |
0.890211 | Christian Ernst Günther (1886–1966) was Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs in the National Unity Government that was formed as a consequence of the Soviet attack on Finland in November, 1939, and would remain in function until World War II had ended in 1945.
Günther, whose father had been Swedish diplomat, and whose grandfather briefly had been prime minister, had entered the Civil Service at the age of 30, and was eight years later transferred to the foreign ministry from the position as personal secretary of the prime ministers Hjalmar Branting and Rickard Sandler. In the foreign ministry, he advanced in the 1930s to the position immediately beneath the foreign minister Rickard Sandler, as under secretary of state for foreign affairs, and was then accredited as ambassador in Oslo, where he intended to stay until retirement.
Christian Günther was hardly a typical representative for the diplomatic corps. Although a perpetual student of law, his ambitions were rather that of a writer's — of drama, lyrics, and a few novels — not without some success. Unanimous testimony describes him as a man of unassuming ways, high intelligence, and a bohemian personality, with a significant lack of ambition, who made his visits in the office as brief as possible. He was passionate for harness racing and had the nerves of a habitual gambler.
Günther represents the last generation of cultural Scandinavists, sympathetic to the relative political liberalism in Denmark and Norway, that was influenced from French and English thinking, contrasted to les Ancient régimes of Austria, Prussia, and Russia; but beside that, he was virtually ignorant of the English speaking world. Like many Liberal Swedes, he was untouched and rather alienated by Finland's political and cultural development after 1809, signified by a high regard for the autocratic Gustavian Constitution of 1772, fervent anti-Germanic fennomania, and the bloody aftermath of the Civil War.
As a foreign minister, Günther favoured policies that were rather in the taste of pro-German Conservatives than of pro-Soviet Radicals. Both during the war, and after the Allies' victory, he was the target of criticism that, chiefly, argued that the nation's soul would have been better saved by a less indulgent position vis-à-vis Nazi Germany, and a more yielding attitude towards the Allies, also if this had resulted in a German invasion and occupation. Together with his aristocratic appearance and bourgeois upbringing, this has rendered him being sometimes characterized as a Conservative. Günther himself would hardly have approved, ardent anti-Nazist, religious skeptic, and, according to his wife Ingrid, a cautious supporter of the Social Democrats as he was.
Christian Günther, who had distanced himself from the state church already by a civil marriage, was buried in a civil funeral.
A serious cabinet crisis in Stockholm put an end to his mission in Norway: The failure of Foreign Minister Rickard Sandler's policy, that had been characterized by high-profile diplomatic support for Finland without sufficient agreement from other Social Democratic Ministers for concrete military actions outside of Sweden's borders, was starkly illuminated by the run up to, and outbreak of, the Winter War. The cabinet's refusal to authorize even limited military actions for the defence of the de-militarized Åland Islands before the war and, even more significant, the waters between Åland and Stockholm made Sandler's resignation unavoidable, although somewhat postponed due to the tense international situation.
The outbreak of the Winter War put Sweden in one of the worst political crises since the secession of Finland in 1809. A strong and vociferous public opinion demanded unlimited solidarity with Finland. However, a broad parliamentary majority opposed not only military support of Finland, but also other actions that might put Sweden in danger of an invasion by either Nazi Germany or her ally, the Soviet Union.
To overcome this crisis, a National Unity Government was deemed essential, which proved difficult since the Rightist Party, led by Gösta Bagge, supported at least moderately Activist policies for the defence of Finland. To solve these difficulties, it was agreed to appoint a "non-political" Foreign Minister from among Sweden's top diplomats, which was thought to put the foreign policies in the firm grip of the party leaders in the cabinet, where they planned to broke compromises.
Christian Günther left no memoirs, no diaries, very few personal letters of interest for historians, and actually remarkably few notes and writings from his time as foreign minister. Hence, an assessment of Günther has to rely on the account of colleagues in the cabinet and in the foreign ministry.
As a Foreign Minister, Günther represented a stark contrast to Sandler's idealist policies. Günther's preferred line was a cautious realpolitik, adapted to the very limited options of a small country during a war between Great Power neighbours. Like many, maybe most, of his contemporary peers, he expected German culture to be inherently stronger than the Nazi barbarism. Thus, he did not subscribe to the idea of the world war as primarily a clash of democracy against fascism, but rather as a traditional war on dominance of the European continent. In that light, a German victory over the Soviet Union, the latter being the latest appearance of Sweden's old arch-enemy, could not be perceived as particularly alarming. On this point, Günther stood close to the most conservative of the cabinet members. |
0.952871 | Where did Jesus Christ ascend - Bethany or Mount Olivet?
Luke 24:50 - And he led them out as far as to Bethany, and he lifted up his hands, and blessed them.
Acts 1:12 - Then returned they unto Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is from Jerusalem a sabbath day's journey.
In Luke, it says that Jesus went as far as Bethany and then ascended into heaven, but in the book of Acts it states that they returned from the "mount called Olivet" after Jesus ascended into heaven?
Luke 24:50 states that Jesus led them out as far as Bethany.
Acts 1:12 states that the disciples returned to Jerusalem from Mount Olivet.
Solution: Check out a map of the Jerusalem area and you will discover that Bethany is situated on the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives. Jesus apparently led the disciples over the summit and onto the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives. Interestingly, the journey was what is defined as a Sabbath's journey; or a little more than 1/2 mile.
But, what is far more interesting is that the New Jerusalem "lands" on this spot and makes a great plain. Rev. 21:2 and Zech. 14:4. Keep studying. |
0.999992 | Жена мужу. Милый у меня 2 новости ... 1 плохая другая хорошая ...С какой начинать ... Давай с плохой ... Я разбила твой BMW ... А хорошая ... Я больше так не буду.
Жена – мужу: – Дорогой, давай займемся сексом… – Иди начинай, я сейчас подойду.
Муж одевается, прихорашивается и собирается уходить из дома. – Куда это ты? – спрашивает жена. – На скачки. – Тогда поторопись. Твоя лошадь уже дважды звонила.
Статусы про жену и мужа - Чтобы муж не отворачивался к стене, находчивая жена кладет туда тещу!
Жена мужу в пятницу вечером: – Давай поменяемся телами. Ты будешь стоять у плиты, а я буду тебя хотеть.
Жена мужу: - Ты видел сколько время?! Где ты был? Пришел среди ночи, гремишь тут, будешь меня! – ДА БУДУ!
тоже это понравилось, даже скопировала!
ЖЕНА МУЖУ;ТЫ ВИДЕЛ СКОЛЬКО ВРЕМЯ?!ТЫ ГДЕ БЫЛ?ПРИШЁЛ СРЕДИ НОЧИ,ГРЕМИШЬ ТУТ,БУДЕШЬ МЕНЯ!-ДА БУДУ!!
БРАК - ЭТО ИНТЕРЕСНАЯ ФОРМА ПОЕДИНКА,ПО ПРАВИЛАМ КОТОРОГО ТЫ ДОЛЖЕН СПАТЬ С ВРАГОМ.
люди,падскажите , когда девушка говарит парню довай займемся сексом или иди дамой я спать хачу, как это панимать или назвать????????
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0.9974 | Marie Joseph was brought up in a family so filled with stoicism, that they would have made the Spartans seem like a bunch of raving hypochondriacs. My aunt had high blood-pressure, chronic bronchitis, and a heart that didn't beat as it should; but she would get up at 7 o'clock every morning and cook our breakfast, coughing herself purple over the gas-stove, and sending me, and her own daughter Muriel, off to school with sore throats, pains in our legs - which she always dismissed as 'growing-pains' - our necks bared to the cold Lancashire winds, because she said scarves over-heated the body.
This is the opening paragraph of Marie Joseph's autobiography, One Day at a Time. Marie was born on May 21st 1920 in Blackburn Infirmary. Her mother Maria Maize Downs, formerly McTrusty was from Maryport in Cumbria and of Irish origin. She married Walter Collis on June 27th 1914, a former policeman, he was called up as a reservist at the outbreak of war and was posted missing, presumed dead, in September 1914. In 1918 Marie married Harold H Downs from Hull. She lived at 169 Whalley Range. She died in the Infirmary giving birth to Marie at the age of 32.
Marie went first to live with her Grandmother Elizabeth, who had married the family's lodger Cornelius Macshane. At the age of seven, when her Grandmother died, Marie went to Ribble Street to live with her aunt Elizabeth Gertrude, who had married Fred Wilson. She went to school at St John's and won a scholarship to the High School. She became a class representative and excelled at English and Drama. She passed her school certificate in 1936, but was unable to contemplate higher education, joining the Civil Service instead and working as a clerical officer for Post Office Telephones at Griffin Lodge in Blackburn.
In 1942 Marie married Frank Joseph. Frank was a navigator in the RAF and away for many years during the war. Their first daughter was born in 1945. Shortly afterwards Marie developed rheumatoid arthritis and had to have many operations, including three knee replacements. After the war the family moved from Cherry Tree to Stanmore in Middlesex. They had two daughters Marilyn and Catherine. It was in 1960 at the age of 40 that Marie had her first story published in The Lady. Hundreds of stories followed ,and in 1975 her first novel, The Guilty Party was published.
Despite her illness Marie wrote three hours every day and did detailed research into the historical background of her novels. Her writing career ended after the death of her eldest grand-child Alison in 1988. In 1996 Marie suffered a stroke and died at her home later that year. |
0.999972 | Britain, 1846 - 1919is an exciting new approach to teaching and learning late nineteenth and early twentieth century British History at A Level, up to and including the First World War. It meets the needs of teachers and students studying for today's new AS level exams.
In a unique style, Britain, 1846-1919focuses on the key topics within the period. Each topic is comprehensively explored to provide background, essay-writing advice and examples, source work and historical skills exercises.
* the Liberal and Coalition Ministries in the early twentieth century.
Using essay styles and source exercises from each of the exam boards, AQA, Edexcel and OCR, this book is an essential text for students and teachers.
is book is an essential text for students and teachers. |
0.944928 | My Dell desktop does not recognize my DVD ROM, what could the problem be.
There can be a few reasons for this to happen. The first one is that the drive has failed. Then there can be a cable disconnected that connects the drive with the motherboard and with power supply. Then may be that the port where the drive is plugged in has failed. |
0.999997 | What are the root words in the Protestant Reformation?
How do they apply to the Church in the 1500's?
The root words in Protestant Reformation are Protest Reform. This applies to the Church in the 1500's because the people of that time were protesting and calling for a reform and a change in the church. |
0.99424 | On a scale from 0-10, how likely are you to recommend Emmett Branigan to a friend?
Dr. Branigan was very nice made myself and my husband feel safe. He made sure we knew everything that was going on. I was very comfortable in his care and with his treatments. He was very clear about everything and made sure we understood everything....Both the doctor and the nurse treated me very well. Talked to me about my opinions and medication....Dr. Branigan is very good and well take good care of you. |
0.999976 | Qu'est-ce qui a rendu l'écoute de The Hobbit agréable ?
La voix du narrateur et des personnage est très agréable , elle a l'air d’être raconté par la même personnes mais avec de légère différence suffisante pour connaitre les caractères.
L'histoire et assez différentes de celle du film, ce qui fait un bon intérêt pour lire le livre même après avoir vue le film.
L'histoire est très prenante, on s’attache au personnages et voyage avec eux avec plaisir.
Seul regret par rapport au film, est le manque de description des décord et univers qui sont beaucoup plus approfondi dans le film. D’où le fait que j'ai vraiment apprécié avoir vue le film avant pour voir resurgir chaque décors au fil des différentes actions.
embark on an amaeing journey with Bilbo alongside dwarves and a wizard.
great story and easy to understand reader (especially for foreigners) for all character.
It is hard to listen to this book because of the annoying voice. The story is, as everybody would know, very good.
Superb! One of the classic children's fantasy tales, set in a rich and enchanting world of dwarves, goblins, wizards, elves, and dragons, along with the most unlikely of heroes, Bilbo Baggins the hobbit.
The recording is beautifully done. Rob Inglis's voice is pleasant and relaxed, and he reads at a leisurely and comfortable pace. The character voices are generally appropriate and varied, although some of the dwarves were not what I expected. Most surprising of all, Inglis actually SINGS the songs, giving an extra touch of character and authenticity.
A word of caution: While the story is set in the same world as the Lord of the Rings and relates events a generation earlier, this is not merely a prequel in the same style. This is a fun children's tale, written for a younger readership.
To be read before you have lost your childlikeness, and reread many times to keep regaining it.
a great book that should have a 5 star rating. Rob Inglis gives a fantastic performance. however I give it 3 stars due to the dismaying choice of separating it in 2 parts for no other reason then making more money.
I would rather pay for a more expensive version with both parts then having to buy both parts separately, as a consumer the first option makes me feel like I'm paying more for a quality product. the second option makes me feel like Audible is cheating me.
Would you listen to The Hobbit, Part 1 again? Why?
This is one of those texts you can listen to over and over.
What was one of the most memorable moments of The Hobbit, Part 1?
Listening to Rob reading this text was like visiting an old friend. His reading of LOTR is brilliant as well, and I have been listening to that for years. Rob Ingliss has a wonderful vice and he reads with so much nuance that each character is readily recognisable.
I wish they hadn't added the music. It is really jarring. But it is only a minor element.
Would you consider the audio edition of The Hobbit, Part 1 to be better than the print version?
Nothing, of course is ever as good as the print versions and our own interpretations. This audible version is a great interpretation of this timeless classic.
What other book might you compare The Hobbit, Part 1 to and why?
Unfortunately this is one of my first audible listens - it is certainly a much pleasanter listen than the many freebies out there. Someone with reading talent makes a huge difference. This is a great book which gives a lot of background to the Lord of the Rings series.
Have you listened to any of Rob Inglis’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
The original - the one ring and where it rested.
Loved it - it made the commute a pleasure rather than a chore.
Something like falling water drops you can hear all the time. Very annoying. Story and performance is absolutely perfect.
The Hobbit is a really enetertaining story which I have been meening to read for several years but finally got around to listen to. Rob Inglis did a good job narrating this story (and a good job singing in it). I would have loved to listen to the full story in one go, but didn't have the time to do it. I absolutely recomend you to listen to this audiobook.
One relative short book, in 3 separate purchases?
What disappointed you about The Hobbit, Part 1?
This was a bummer to me. Next time I will search for de 1 purchase book.
That It ends in de middle of the story. This book is expensive!
The book is lovely and I like it a lot. I just feel trickt. It is not that there was no way of knowing. It says part 1 after all. Next time I will pay more attention.
Having previously read The Lord of the Rings I found this story lacking somewhat. Perhaps as I read them in the wrong order that was part of the problem. I just found The Hobbit a little boring in comparison. But still enjoyable to listen to, as a result of the excellent narration.
I loved the book, the narrator did an amazing job!
That story is so fantastic. |
0.98739 | Costa Rica's rugged terrain is laced with a network of backroads that are inaccessible to many large vehicles that commonly carry tourists, but travelers interested in experiencing the country's landscape in a unique way can tour these roads on a motorcycle.
The climate of Costa Rica makes the country ideal for riding motorcycles. Unlike nations with cooler weather, Central America's warm and humid climate means that bikers can wear light clothing and still remain comfortable, even when faced with the powerful winds encountered while driving at high speeds.
Additionally, because backroads are frequently not as well paved as major highways and city streets, riding a motorcycle gives travelers access to a variety of places that they could not visit in a larger car. Motorcycles' suspension and two inline wheels allow drivers to avoid many potholes or obstacles that could block bigger cars, while their smaller size helps them navigate narrow paths that weave through tight spaces.
Travelers should have no difficulty in finding and obtaining a motorcycle for a tour of the Costa Rican countryside. Many tour operators offer rentals that can be taken on self-guided interaries, while vendors in major cities like San Jose also offer rentals and short-term leases.
Motorcycle riders of all skill levels will find something to enjoy during a tour of Costa Rica. Those looking for an easy trip may want to bike down the country's Pacific coast, which features stunning ocean views and long, flat stretches of paved road. These routes allow riders to see some of Costa Rica's most beautiful sights without forcing them to deal with rougher terrain.
More experienced riders may wish to travel on the direct route between Arenal Volcano and Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Reserve. The trail takes travelers through lush jungles and allows them to see some of the country's most exotic creatures, while the path itself provides visitors with an adrenaline rush, as its rockier terrain can normally only be navigated on foot or horseback.
Travelers must take some special safety considerations when riding a motorcycle through the backcountry of Costa Rica. Riders should take special care to avoid animals they encounter on the road, as a crash involving an animal is much more dangerous on a motorcycle than in a car. Riders must also be careful when crossing a river, as the current may cause them to lose control of their vehicle. |
0.961919 | Question: Can you analyze my workout routine?
Is this a good workout and if so how hard should I be pushing these muscles if I am only doing them once per week? I usually train them really hard so that by the time I do them again I have had 6 days of rest and can go again or is there a more effective way?
I generally do 3 exercises per body part and 4 reps of 15. or ladder down fro 15, 12, 10, 8.
Answer: Your workout looks very good. 3 exercises is pretty good, but you could even add a couple more and be okay.
Try keeping your breaks in between sets short, like around 1 to 2 minutes, and shoot for 40 to 60 min weight lifting workouts. That should be plenty.
It looks like you'll burn a lot of calories with this. |
0.999469 | Please Read these Septic Tank Safety Tips. There are serious risks of injury, explosion, and death if safe procedures are not followed when working on septic systems.
Don't work alone: Falling into a septic tank or even leaning over a septic tank can be fatal. Do not work on or at septic tanks alone - workers can become suddenly overcome by methane gas.
Do not ever go into a septic tank to inspect or repair it unless you are specially trained and are wearing the special equipment and gear for that purpose, including self-contained breathing apparatus.
Don't enter the septic tank to rescue someone: Never go into a septic tank to retrieve someone who has fallen in and was overcome by toxic gases without a self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA). if a SCBA is not available, call for emergency services and put a fan at the top of the tank to blow in fresh air.
Don't even lean over the septic tank openings: Do not lean over or stick your head into the septic tank to examine its interior - you could fall in to the tank or become overcome by gases and fall into the tank, an event which is likely to be fatal.
Don't ignite flames near the septic tank: Do not light a flame at or near the tank - methane gas is explosive. At one tank pumpout my client described the explosion and burns received by the pumping contractor when he stood by the tank and lit a cigarette. Another exploded their septic tank by burning brush that was piled over the tank.
Work area around the septic tank must be ventilated: Decomposing wastes in the septic tank produce toxic gases (such as methane) which can kill a human in a matter of minutes. When working on a tank be sure the area is well ventilated.
Rope off Dangerous Septic Tanks, Cesspools, Drywells, Work Sites: If your inspection discover that there are dangerous conditions, such as an unsafe tank cover, tank collapse, or a home-made septic tank or cesspool (which are at increased risk of sudden collapse) such areas should be roped off and clearly marked as dangerous to prevent access until proper evaluation and repairs can be made.
There are serious risks of injury, explosion, and death if safe procedures are not followed when working on septic systems. |
0.999999 | Article: "wrinkle number two: they weren't all here for the same job. Several were business majors, others had only a high school diploma, while others were mathematicians and liberal arts majors."
Reminds me of when I was fresh out of college and had an "interview" with some department of the Navy. SPAWAR, I think. It was the same kind of thing: they brought in a bunch of people, put us up in a hotel overnight, gave us a tour of the facility in the morning and then sent everyone back to the hotel for a rotating panel of interviews in the afternoon. Except the schedule ran late and the interviews ran even longer, so after all that I think I wound up interviewing with one person, and it was for some position that didn't even remotely match my qualifications.
But, hey, I got a free weekend in Charleston courtesy of Uncle Sam, so it wasn't a total loss.
You mean a repost of a repost?
Reminds me a bit of one interview I had in college. There was an on-campus recruiting event where I gave my resume to a lot of companies. One, a major New York auditing firm, called me back for an interview. Upon arrival, I found that it was a mass-interview with a dozen other people. They talked a lot about how they want consultants who will be flown out to customer sites, to be available 24/7 for a 6 month assignment, then come home for a month vacation, and then start the process over with a new customer. For a starting salary of about $80K (this was when normal jobs for new grads were paying $35K).
The next day, when I got back from class, there was a message on my answering machine saying that they were offering the job to me and four other people, and the first one to call back gets it.
I didn't even consider returning that call.
Fresh out of Uni I had an Interview via Skype. Which was nice, because it saved me the trouble to travel all the way to their site. The only question I was asked was "How do SQL statements normally start" which I answered with "Uhhh, SELECT?" The rest of the interview was just them going on and on about how great their company was and what they are doing.
During the interview I said I cannot move to a different city to take the job. Which seemed to be okay with them, since they also had a branch office in my hometown.
I got a job offer, but only for their "head quarter" city, which is about 280 miles away from where I live.
TRWTF is that TDWTF is running out of material?
Just out of college was when I seemed to get this type of interview. Day-long interviews, group interviews, trivia contests, bait-and-switch "wrong" position, etc. Now they're much more boring because all I get to do is sit in a chair and listen to lies for an hour. We want a self-starter (no you don't), proficiency in C# (no you don't), problem-solving skills (no you don't), several years of experience (no you don't), etc.
Was that your riposte to a repost?
Sounds like one of the interviews I had at an industrial place. I had a job I was happy with, but the hour-long drive and increase in rent not so much. I wasted a whole day on a "tour" of the place after an hour-long safety training and several non-disclosure agreements. Half of the tour was huge sheets hung over areas of the warehouse-turned-production floor and proclamations of custom machines and methods that would "revolutionize" the industry in other areas of vast empty spaces. It was mainly, "This is going to go here. That machine will go there. Soon, we'll have several million units going out every week. So, we'll need someone to service all of the controllers." At the end of the tour, they said in a "by the way" manner that there was a misprint in the want ad and that instead of starting in 6 weeks, it would be 6 months. I politely turned it down as I needed something more immediate.
A few years later, the company I worked for was servicing one of that company's machines. One of the workers recognized me from the interview and showed the "special" equipment to me. It was an off-the-shelf machine with a very small modification--they changed one of the screws on the mounting block.
TRWTF is the candidate's gender. Normally "Dima" is shorthand for "Dmitri" and that should be a "he".
Check out http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=dima, Dima in the U.S. is a girl's name. But it is not unusual for names in the US to have changed gender as they crossed the Atlantic. Leslie was a male's name in England but is female here. Same with Shirley.
Now to prove, not my gender but my humanity to out robot overlords so this can post.
No, Lesley is female, Leslie male. But some unfortunate kids these days are named by parents who don't know that. It's a bit like being a boy called Denise and pronouncing it Dennis.
Shirley I get to say "LUDDITE Shirleys don't APP APPS!"
Yep, they had a program that would train any college graduate in assembler, COBOL and JCL. They had to sign a contract for 2 or 3 years (can't recall the exact amount) so they couldn't leave the company (with all that 'valuable' knowledge) until the contract period was over.
I noticed it too -- I'd just happened to read that article randomly yesterday, so I went straight from that version to this one. Ellis writes it better though.
Addendum 2017-03-21 16:18: Jane, not Ellis.
That must mean that there are no more bad coders/employers/developers out there any more?
Same with my real first name. It's male where I live, but in the US it would be considered a female first name.
Likely was waiting for her to chime in with some real discussion about power supplies, they probably hired someone who engaged intelligently without being prompted.
Not sure 'bout that. When we interview candidates, we typically ask questions. Droning ones ears off makes the company come across as one huge bucket of jerks.
Really depends what sort of employee you're looking for. They are designing complex defence systems, they probably want Genius's, who's talent is immediately apparent.
And both Dima and North Bus are very lucky, too, as this whole thing could just be a WTF that is a lot simpler and yet far more sinister: an Advance Fee scam.
Use a warehouse and empty locked floors and idle talk to weed out those people who are really interested/desperate for a job (flying them out using cheap airfare maintains an image of legitimacy while costing little), then call those people back, say they got the job, but "we need to process your Security Clearance and Passports in a hurry, so we need you to send us $400 via Western Union before you can start working here." Sounds familiar, doesn't it? All the while waiting for you to bite the hook, they're already cheaply flying another 20 'candidates' out and starting the whole scam all over again.
If they fly out 20 candidates using $75 discount airfare apiece and 10 people get baited and pay $400 for their 'Security Clearance', they're still making a $2500 profit per group of 20 off of the interest/desperation of fresh job seekers in this way.
My weirdest interview was when a recruiter booked me 3 interviews in a single day. They we all within a few miles of each other so it wasn't too bad - spend a couple of hours on each and it was manageable.
I pitched up at my 9:00 am slot nice and early and made myself comfortable. I was swiftly ushered into a broom cupboard with a desk and told to sit a test which (and I quote) shouldn't take longer than 8 to 10 hours. |
0.999874 | Can you really make money online? I decided to write this article because there is one question I get asked above any other question more commonly from my subscribers and that's "how can I make money online?" and none of them usually work so I decided to make a guide showing you how to do it correctly.
This group serves experts, consultants, coaches, online course creators, authors, and agencies. If you want to learn how to automate your sales & marketing process to create predictable & consistent high quality lead flow, build your audience & email list, create revenue producing sales funnels, profitably use paid (Facebook) advertising, tactics & strategies for optimizing conversion, create webinars & other high value lead magnets that work then you've found your home. We try to balance our discussion between tools, technology, techniques and defining your offer, audience, & sales strategy so you have all you need to live the dream.
This group aims to be a sharing and connection hub for freelancee models/talents, artists and photographers. The group hopes to grow and sustain the industry by providing connections, guidance & opportunities vital to a freelancer. Feel free to introduce yourself, share your photos and ask questions, add your friends that you feel could benefit from being in the group, engage in constructive sharing and discussions.
This site is for virtual professionals, data entry & other foreign business owners who'd like to hire VAs and data entry directly from this group. Memberships are open to all who are interested to network with fellow virtual professionals & business owners from anywhere in the world. Any jobs related to virtual professionals and data entry may be posted and are highly encouraged. Sharing of online tools, themes, and other resources that may be beneficial to VA and DE work is allowed and highly encouraged. |
0.973104 | Can you guess what SEO.Agency does? If you guessed search engine optimization, you're 100-percent right. The agency is all about getting businesses and brands noticed at the top of search results, with a special emphasis on Google. The company has operated for more than five years and currently serves more than 150 clients. Now, the firm is being awarded for their superior work in the online marketing industry. The firm relies on creativity and innovation to consistently outperform the rest of the SEO industry. They base all their work on close client relationships and thorough market research. Consequently, they can consistently uncover the technical and design factors that influence clients' SEO. Also, the agency has developed a proprietary process for identifying relevant and profitable keywords. To support their SEO work, SEO.Agency offers other digital marketing services. These include reputation management, content marketing, local SEO, PPC management and more. |
0.999727 | Massey Ferguson paired with explorer, Manon Ossvoort, (Tractor Girl), to bring her dream of exploring the south pole to life.
In 1958 explorer, Sir Edmund Hillary, embarked on a trip across the South Pole, accompanied by three Massey tractors to keep him safe along his journey. With the anniversary approaching, the idea of following in the footsteps of Sir Edmund Hillary on a modern day journey was created.
We decided a cinematic approach would be the best to highlight details of the journey. Key factors we wanted to highlight: - The serious danger they faced on a journey this size - Understand the safety measures each Massey Tractor comes equipped with - Bring the audience along experiencing each part of the journey.
Focusing on video diaries to each map out the mission of our heroine and her team as they made their way across the South Pole. We created a microsite that not only educated readers about the mission, but also about safety features packed into the Massey Ferguson tractor. Live content direct from the expedition crew was fed throughout the homepage via Soundcloud daily updates, YouTube videos, Twitter and Facebook posts. Using telemetry data from the actual tractor in Antarctica we created a live dashboard on the website, displaying infographics such as location, altitude, speed, distance, fuel level, engine hours, engine temperature and wheel slip.
The adventure of a lifetime. The campaign increased social media engagement drastically and engaged viewers throughout the journey to the South Pole. Inspiring others to try new things and explore their passions, the campaign resulted in higher sales numbers and expanded social reach. Massey Ferguson and explorer Manon Ossvoort explored the dangerous terrain of the South Pole mirroring the trip taken by explorer Sir Edmund Hillary. |
0.995782 | This might seem. like an odd question. When you read that billionaire Bill Gates has a lot you know what that means: He is so rich that he can buy almost anything he wants. In this sense, the term money is used to mean wealth. Economists, however, use the word in a more specific sense: Money is the set of assets in the economy that people regularly use to buy goods and services from other people. The cash in your wallet is money because you can use it to buy a meal at a restaurant or a shirt at a clothing store. By contrast, if you happened to own most of Microsoft Corporation, as Bill Gates does, you would be wealthy, but this asset is not considered a form of money. You could not buy a meal or a shirt with this wealth without first obtaining some cash. According to the economist’s definition, money includes only those few types of wealth that are regularly accepted by sellers in exchange for goods and services. |
0.938788 | Apparently Anyone Can Become An Internet Troll, Study Finds | Creativewi.re! - Science wired into your brain, creatively!
As the Internet continues to become affordable and thus accessible to more people around the globe, trolling has been on the rise for as long as the world wide web itself has existed, and with the advance of social media, it is reasonable to think that this phenomenon will maintain its upward trend. While the anonymity offered by the Internet might have contributed to the prevalence of trolling as portrayed by the online disinhibition effect, the truth is that its origins were hinted at as early as the fourth century B.C. In his Socratic dialogue "The Republic", Plato broached the relationship between morality and unaccountability or anonymity through the famous Ring of Gyges thought experiment. The Ring of Gyges is a mythical product that allows its bearer to become invisible whenever he so desires. Through this example, Plato discussed the idea of whether a person would behave morally if he had the option to avoid getting caught.
In a broader context, people usually associate trolling with narcissism and egocentrism. Unsurprisingly, this was further supported by Buckels, E. E., et al. research which revealed a correlation between trolling and the Dark Tetrad of personality: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. However, the study entitled "Anyone Can Become a Troll: Causes of Trolling Behavior in Online Discussions" from Stanford University and Cornell University, showed that mood and context can turn even normal people into trolls. The researchers used a variety of tools such as data analysis and machine learning to design an experiment whose goal is to determine whether trolling is an intrinsic characteristic, or if it is rather triggered by other circumstantial factors like context and emotions.
The experiment was split into two parts. In the first part, participants were either given an easy or a difficult test. They were then instructed to take part in a quiz based on the Profile of Mood States (POMS) questionnaire, which is designed to assess their mood using a set of criteria like anger and fatigue. As you might have guessed, participants who took the easy test were feeling much better than their counterparts who answered the hard one. Moreover, the second part of the test consisted in presenting the participants with an online article, and then inviting them to leave at least one comment in the discussion section of the website. To understand the role of context in trolling behavior, the first three posts in the comment section shown to some participants were troll posts. The other participants saw neutral comments only.
The researchers found that the likelihood of a normal user engaging in trolling behavior increased with the presence of a negative discussion context and the user being in a bad mood. To supplement their findings, they analysed over 16 million posts on CNN.com. The results showed that one out of four flagged posts came from users with no trolling history, supporting the idea that even ordinary users are susceptible to trolling. Additionally, those results further reinforced the experimental findings by emphasizing that trolling can mainly be influenced by the discussion context, as well as the the mood of the user, which varies throughout the day, and tends to go down in the night where the frequency of flagged posts and downvotes was high according to the analysis.
So what is the solution? The old-school advice "don't feed the troll" might be a start. However, developing long-term approaches to the trolling problem might require some time as studies dealing with this subject are very scarce. In the meantime, and as the study suggested, trolling behavior likely unfold as a chain reaction starting with the first troll comment. So by preventing that first spark from being exposed to other users, we might be able to reduce the amount of trolling in online communities. |
0.917006 | Will radicals or moderates triumph?
Latin America is struggling to re-define its soul. The region's once ubiquitous military dictators in dark glasses have been replaced by a new generation of democratically elected leaders. Under their tutelage Latin America is enjoying steady growth and trying to bridge the notoriously deep chasm between the rich and the poor. Wealth and global trade have brought a new sense of cohesion and an unprecedented regional identity, while newly empowered women and indigenous and mixed-race populations are transforming the political landscape. Amid these positive signs, experts ask whether the future belongs to the more moderate, market-oriented democracies — such as those in Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Argentina — or to the more radical, left-wing populism inspired by Venezuela's bombastic socialist leader Hugo Chávez. Meanwhile, with the United States preoccupied in Iraq and elsewhere, the European Union, the Gulf States and China are increasing their economic presence in the region as U.S. influence declines. |
0.955737 | Mountain bike racing (shortened MTB or ATB racing) is the competitive cycle sport discipline of mountain biking held on off-road terrain. The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) recognised the discipline relatively late in 1990, when it sanctioned the world championships in Durango, Colorado. The first UCI Mountain Bike World Cup series took place in 1988. Its nine-race circuit covered two continents—Europe and North America—and was sponsored by Grundig. Cross-country racing was the only World Cup sport at this time. In 1993, a six-event downhill World Cup was introduced. In 1996, cross-country mountain biking events were added to the Olympic Games. In 2006, cross-country mountain biking events became part of the World Deaf Cycling Championships for the first time in San Francisco, USA.
In the United States, there are three USA Cycling Mountain Bike National Calendars: Endurance, Gravity and Ultra-Endurance. USA Cycling runs the USA Cycling Mountain Bike National Championships. There are mountain bike racing types that are not recognized by the UCI, such as mountain bike orienteering that is governed by the IOF.
Mountain bike racing is as old as the first appearance of the mountain bike itself, when the originators, calling themselves klunkers, descended with their heavily modified beach cruiser bikes as predecessors of modern mountain bikes from numerous mountains in California against a rudimentary time measurement. The famous Repack racing down-hill against the time near Fairfax, Marin County, CA took place in 1976.
The oldest organised cross-country (XC) racing-like event, however, is believed to take place from Crested Butte to Aspen in Colorado in 1978. It took long 10 years before the UCI recognised racing on mountain bikes as a regular cycling discipline in 1990. In the meantime, the phenomenon of mountain bike racing spread across the U.S.A. under the umbrella of NORBA.
The most plausible, although still speculative reason, was an early resemblance of the racing courses for mountain bikes with the cyclo-cross discipline, with a major difference: the mountain bike racing track was significantly longer (a cyclo-cross course has 2.5–3.5 km versus 4+ km for a XC track) and free of artificial obstacles. With the rapid advancement of mountain bike gear, namely stronger brakes and suspension, the mountain bike racing could take place on even more technical tracks making it more dissimilar to the cyclo-cross discipline.
Mountain bike racing became an Olympic discipline in 1996 and a cross-country type mountain biking race has been held ever since its debut at the summer Olympic games in Atlanta. Given the enormous variation of terrain a mountain bike can navigate, a division took place as a cause of riders' specialisation.
Cross-country - Cross-country (XC) racing is held on a varied terrain circuit, it is normally around 6-8 kilometers (km) and is always a massed-start race. Under the 2006 UCI rules, elite, U23, and Junior Expert riders at UCI sanctioned races, are allowed technical assistance, but only in designated zones and only by an authorized team mechanic. However, riders in the same team can help each other at any point in the race. Under NORBA rules, no technical assistance is allowed. Professional level races are longer in distance, around 50 km.
Downhill - Downhill (DH) racing is a time trial event. Riders start at intervals that can vary from 30 seconds to three minutes-depending on the stage of the competition - and the rider with the lowest time wins. As the name of this discipline implies, DH races are held in steep, downhill terrain, resulting in higher speed than in cross-country racing. The terrain is also significantly rougher than in cross-country racing. The bike is designed with long travel suspension and hydraulic disc brakes.
Super D - Super D (SD) is a blend of cross-country and downhill. Most of the race is downhill, on trails similar to the downhill segment of a cross-country race. There are also short (100–500m) uphill sections which make the use of downhill bicycles difficult, as a result, most riders use cross-country or 'trail bikes'. Depending on the trail and race venue, the start may either be seeded (riders start in short intervals), or Le Mans mass start (riders run to their bikes, timing is started when the riders start running). Probably the most famous of this type is the Megavalanche.
Freeride - Freeride (FR) competitions are not so much a race as they are a competition of skill and style. Courses contain varying cliffs, drops, obstacles, and ramps. There are usually a large number of ways in which to complete the course, and scoring is dependent on the competitor's choice of routes, the fluidity of riding and tricks performed (style), and sometimes also the time in which the course is completed.
Dual Slalom/Dual - Dual Slalom (DS) is a ski-inspired event which pits two riders against each other on two identical man-made tracks side-by-side with the same jumps and berms, with a rider on each track, and the first across the line wins. The contest has a knock-out format. Dual (DL) events are similar, only two riders share the same course/track. So dual is a contact sport.
Four cross - (4X, also known as 'mountain cross' or 'bikercross') inspired by the dual format and by BMX racing, this event pits four riders on the same course from starting gates to finish. There can only be one winner per event, so the races can quickly eliminate riders making the progression faster for a day's events. This is the reason it was chosen as the race-format to replace Dual-Slalom by the UCI at World Cup events. 4X also replaced Dual in the UCI World Cup series in 2002. There is a difference between 4X and mountain cross. In 4X, riders are each given a run down the course which is timed and the top 50% of the field then progress to the elimination rounds. In mountain cross, riders are given three heats against three other riders, and points are allocated for your position in each heat. Again, the top 50% progress to the elimination rounds. 4X is the format raced in world cup however mountain cross is the preferred format for amateur races.
Marathon - Marathon (XCM) is perhaps the toughest form of mountain biking because riders often have to cover more than 80 km in one race on mountainous terrain. The distances usually vary from 60 km to 100 km. Races often exceed 100 km, but are then termed Ultra-Marathons. Recently UCI has inaugurated the Marathon World Cup. Basically it equals point-to-point (PP) discipline and that means that riders have a mass start from point "A" and they finish at point "B".
Enduro - Enduro in its most basic definition is a type of mountain bike racing where the downhills are timed, and the uphills are not. Riders are timed in stages that are primarily downhill, with neutral "transfer" stages in between. The transfer stages usually must be completed within a time-limit, but are not part of the accumulated time. The winner is the rider who accumulates the lowest combined time from the timed downhill sections. Enduros typically take place over one or two days, but week-long competitions also exist. A typical one-day enduro consists of 3 to 5 timed stages which take place on technically demanding, generally descending terrain, often with sections of singletrack.
Stage Races - Stage Races consist of several races - 'stages' - ridden consecutively, usually over a period of several days. A stage is usually similar in length and structure to a Marathon mountain bike race. The competitor with the lowest cumulative time to complete all the stages is declared the overall, or General Classification (GC), winner. Stage races may also have other classifications and awards, such as individual stage winners.
Bike trials - Slow negotiation of man-made and natural obstacles where setting a foot down constitutes a penalty.
Dirt jumping - Dirt jumping (DJ), similar to freeride, it is a competition of skill, differing that it involves the rider to jump off mounds of dirt to perform the best tricks with the best style. It differs to freeriding that the jumps are usually much larger and designed to lift the rider higher into the air and the bicycle is different from its counterpart.
Mountain bike orienteering (MTB-O or MTBO) is an orienteering sport on a mountain bike where navigation is done along trails and tracks. The major focus becomes route choice while navigating at bike speed. Special equipment used is a map holder attached to the handlebar of the bike. The sport is governed by International Orienteering Federation.
24 hour mountain bike races are a form of endurance mountain bike racing where solo competitors or teams race for a period of 24 hours and standings are based on who has ridden the furthest distance in that time (typically, the most number of laps around a loop).
The main events in mountain bike racing are the cross-country event at the Summer Olympics and the World Championships and World Cup organized every year by the UCI at various venues around the World.
There are also other notable events in some countries, like Crankworx, a week-long event in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada; MTB Himachal in India; Chupacabras, a race in Juárez, Mexico; Cape Epic in South Africa; Sea Otter Classic in the United States; Mountain Mayhem in the United Kingdom and La Ruta de los Conquistadores in Costa Rica.
↑ "2006 World Deaf Championships Schedule". Retrieved 19 March 2011.
↑ Bicycling magazine, "That Time I Went Full Enduro," Gloria Liu, June 2017.
↑ http://www.blueridgeadventures.net The 10th Annual Pisgah Stage Race (April 9-14, 2018), Brevard, North Carolina. |
0.995248 | $6,979.32 To see product price, add this item to your cart. You can always remove it later. What's this?
$6,979.32 To see product price, add this item to your cart. You can always remove it later. |
0.936949 | Add another name to the list of famous people with Indiana connections who will be at this year's Daytona 500.
Peyton Manning will drive the pace car.
JUST ANNOUNCED! Peyton Manning will be the Honorary Pace Car driver for the 2018 #DAYTONA500!
Maybe Robert Mathis can give him some tips. Mathis drove the pace car for last year's Indy Grand Prix. Or Reggie Wayne can give him some tips. The former Colts wide receiver arrived at training camp in an Indy car in 2014.
Manning will likely be the second-biggest celebrity there, as Danica Patrick will be making the penultimate run of her career. |
0.998986 | How many National Parks have you visited so far? If you’re still looking to #findyourpark, then Jackson Hole should be at the top of your travel wish list. Located adjacent to Grand Teton National Park and just 60 miles from the South Gate of Yellowstone National Park, Jackson Hole is a prime basecamp for visiting two of the United State’s most revered public lands. These protected public lands offer travelers outdoor adventure, a connection with the natural world, and awe-inspiring beauty.
The winter months are some of the most majestic and peaceful times to visit Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Park. Although the roads in Yellowstone close to regular vehicles in the late fall, you may still enjoy the beauty of the park’s wildlife, geysers, and geothermal features in the winter months on a guided snowcoach or snowmobile tour. A snowcoach tour in a heated vehicle with snow treads is a cozy way to travel through Yellowstone. For the more adventurous, a snowmobile tour is also an excellent option, and will fully immerse you in the winter landscape. Both types of tours will feature naturalist guides who can identify wildlife and provide a truly educational experience. Seeing Bison, Moose, and other wildlife roaming the winter range and viewing famous geysers like Old Faithful without any crowds is truly a once in a lifetime experience.
In Grand Teton National Park, two of our favorite winter activities include cross-country skiing and snowshoeing with a guide. You can learn about the wildlife and ecology of the park while gliding along the base of the soaring Tetons, which dramatically rise straight up out of the valley. There’s nothing like breathing the crisp, alpine air and you’ll even get in a little bit of a workout too!
Winter visitors will enjoy a variety of lodging options in Jackson Hole ranging from family-friendly hotels and motels, and bed and breakfasts, and cabins, to vacation rentals, and even luxurious five-star resorts. It all depends what style of vacation you’re looking for. Many Jackson Hole properties are located in the historic town of Jackson, where you’ll find walkable dining, shopping, and nightlife options nearby. There are also properties located in Teton Village, which is at the base of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. For skiers and snowboarders looking to visit the national parks and hit the slopes, Teton Village may be a convenient choice. This article provides more background on choosing to stay in Teton Village or the town of Jackson.
Getting to Jackson Hole in the winter is easy and affordable. There are convenient direct flights to Jackson Hole from 12 major U.S. cities. With a $200 dollar air credit savings available, you may save up to $300 dollars per person on your trip! Flying into the Jackson Hole Airport is an unbelievable experience, as the airport is located within Grand Teton National Park. Definitely grab a window seat, as you will see the magnificent Teton range, the winding snake river, and the entire valley during the approach and landing.
A winter visit to Jackson Hole offers access to two national parks, the award-winning terrain of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, and so many other unique outdoor activities and cultural experiences. To learn more about all of the exciting winter things to do and lodging options available, start building your custom Jackson Hole travel experience today! |
0.999662 | The lamp of this review will be the MicroSolar FL3. The Solar Floodlight has a 64 pcs super high brightness LED bulb, with an output of 240 Lumen and a long-life Lithium Battery making it very long lasting, at over 2 years of life expectancy. It can automatically work from 8 to 12 hours at good sunshine. The product comes with a wall mounted brackets and ground mounted stakes, which means it can be put anywhere you desire. It is also with an adjustable light fixture from left to right, up and down. The product also comes with an IP65, 5w solar panel with a 16.4 feet wire. There is an additional option for a 16.4 feet extension wire. The accessories of the product are very easy to install and maintain, and include stakes for light and solar panel. With its great design and eye pleasing color, it is a great product for every household to have.
Through the testing of this lamp, I have found out that it provides a fairly even light that backfills fixtures quite nicely and it also produces a very good looking consistent light color. As for the price, it is available to be purchased from Amazon at the low cost of $74.99.
The lamp has been manufactured by one of the leading American companies for lamp production. It has a very reasonable life expectancy of over 2 years. The product can recharge during the day thanks to its solar panels, making it a very environmentally friendly lamp.
The conducted tests were independent, meaning there were no representatives of the manufacturing company and were managed using digital timers, set distances, laser distance meters, two separate foot candle meters, and a laser thermal gauge. Every single one of the tests was conducted from the same test platform in order to ensure consistency. All of the measurements were taken by equipment that was mounted on a tripod, and if it was applicable, timers were utilized. The equipment was calibrated before the testing, and the distances were confirmed. In general, the tests proved the claims of the manufacturers.
The product has the following pros and cons that should be taken into account.
Closing Statements: As a whole, the MicroSolar FL3 is a very good product. The light output, as well as the color, is very consistent. The overall feel of the lamp is very nice; it is also very easy to install both on walls and on the ground. Once it has been fully charged with solar energy, the lamp can last between 8 and 12 hours, which is a great asset. As soon as it detects dark, the product starts shining on its own. The solar floodlight is also completely waterproof, so when it rains you won’t be worried that anything might happen to it. The product has a great productivity rate, and a fairly reasonable price. It is a great asset that can fit in any household.
As mentioned before, the price is very reasonable considering the high quality of the product and its life expectancy, which is very high for this sort of product, because of its lithium battery. The lamp comes in black color, and it has a very appealing to the eyes design. The item can be easily purchased online from Amazon for just $74.99 and it is also shipped for free. There is a One-Day Shipping option as well, which means that the product can be at your doorsteps this time tomorrow. You sure wouldn’t want to miss out on such a great opportunity, especially when it presents itself to you.
This entry was posted in 64 LED Lithium Battery Solar FloodLight, Overview, Reviews. Bookmark the permalink. |
0.928444 | Rosslyn Chapel, formally known as the Collegiate Chapel of St Matthew, is a 15th-century chapel located in the village of Roslin, Midlothian, Scotland.
Rosslyn Chapel was founded on a small hill above Roslin Glen as a Catholic collegiate church (with between four and six ordained canons and two boy choristers) in the mid-15th century. The chapel was founded by William Sinclair, 1st Earl of Caithness of the Scoto-Norman Sinclair family. Rosslyn Chapel is the third Sinclair place of worship at Roslin, the first being in Roslin Castle and the second (whose crumbling buttresses can still be seen today) in what is now Roslin Cemetery.
Sinclair founded the college to celebrate the Divine Office throughout the day and night, and also to celebrate Masses for all the faithful departed, including the deceased members of the Sinclair family. During this period, the rich heritage of plainsong (a single melodic line) or polyphony (vocal harmony) were used to enrich the singing of the liturgy. Sinclair provided an endowment to pay for the support of the priests and choristers in perpetuity. The priests also had parochial responsibilities.
After the Scottish Reformation (1560), Roman Catholic worship in the chapel was brought to an end. The Sinclair family continued to be Roman Catholics until the early 18th century. From that time, the chapel was closed to public worship until 1861. It was re-opened as a place of worship according to the rites of the Scottish Episcopal Church, a member church of the Anglican Communion.
It was reported in The Argus of Melbourne, Australia that Rosslyn Chapel was the site of an alleged bombing attempt by a suffragette.
Since the late 1980s, the chapel has been the subject of speculative theories concerning a connection with the Knights Templar and the Holy Grail, and Freemasonry. It was prominently featured in this role in Dan Brown's bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code (2003) and its 2006 film adaptation. Medieval historians say these accounts have no basis in fact.
Rosslyn Chapel remains privately owned. The current owner is Peter St Clair-Erskine, 7th Earl of Rosslyn.
The original plans for Rosslyn have never been found or recorded, so it is open to speculation whether or not the chapel was intended to be built in its current layout. Its architecture is considered to be among the finest in Scotland.
Construction of the chapel began on 20 September 1456, although it has often been recorded as 1446. The confusion over the building date comes from the chapel's receiving its founding charter to build a collegiate chapel in 1446 from Rome. Sinclair did not start to build the chapel until he had built houses for his craftsmen.
Although the original building was to be cruciform, it was never completed. Only the choir was constructed, with the retro-chapel, otherwise called the Lady chapel, built on the much earlier crypt (Lower Chapel) believed to form part of an earlier castle. The foundations of the unbuilt nave and transepts stretching to a distance of 90 feet were recorded in the 19th century. The decorative carving was executed over a forty-year period. After the founder's death, construction of the planned nave and transepts was abandoned - either from lack of funds, lack of interest or a change in liturgical fashion.
The Lower Chapel (also known as the crypt or sacristy) should not be confused with the burial vaults that lie underneath Rosslyn Chapel.
The chapel stands on fourteen pillars, which form an arcade of twelve pointed arches on three sides of the nave. At the east end, a fourteenth pillar between the penultimate pair form a three-pillared division between the nave and the Lady chapel. The three pillars at the east end of the chapel are named, from north to south: the Master Pillar, the Journeyman Pillar and, most famously, the Apprentice Pillar. These names for the pillars date from the late Georgian period — prior to this period they were called the Earl's Pillar, the Shekinah and the Prince's Pillar.
One of the more notable architectural features of the Chapel is the "Apprentice Pillar, or "Prentice Pillar". Originally called the "Prince's Pillar" (in the 1778 document An Account of the Chapel of Roslin) the name morphed over time due to a legend dating from the 18th century, involving the master mason in charge of the stonework in the chapel and his young apprentice mason. According to the legend, the master mason did not believe that the apprentice could perform the complicated task of carving the column without seeing the original which formed the inspiration for the design.
The master mason travelled to see the original himself, but upon his return was enraged to find that the upstart apprentice had completed the column by himself. In a fit of jealous anger, the master mason took his mallet and struck the apprentice on the head, killing him. The legend concludes that as punishment for his crime, the master mason's face was carved into the opposite corner to forever gaze upon his apprentice's pillar. There is however, no evidence that any such murder took place.
On the architrave joining the pillar there is an inscription, Forte est vinum fortior est rex fortiores sunt mulieres super omnia vincit veritas: "Wine is strong, a king is stronger, women are stronger still, but truth conquers all" (1 Esdras, chapters 3 & 4).
The author Henning Klovekorn has proposed that the pillar is representative of one of the roots of the Nordic Yggdrasil tree, prominent in Germanic and Norse mythology. He compares the dragons at the base of the pillar to the dragons found eating away at the base of the Yggdrasil root and, pointing out that at the top of the pillar is carved tree foliage, argues that the Nordic/Viking association is plausible considering the many auxiliary references in the chapel to Celtic and Norse mythology.[undue weight? – discuss] The general form of the pillar has been related to a type described by the French architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc as a "bunch of sausages."
A full-size plaster cast of the Apprentice Pillar and the adjacent bay of the chapel was made in 1871, and is in the Cast Courts of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Among Rosslyn's many intricate carvings are a sequence of 213 cubes or "boxes" protruding from pillars and arches with a selection of patterns on them. It is unknown if these patterns have any particular meaning attached to them. Many people have attempted to find information coded into them, but no interpretation has yet proven conclusive. Unfortunately, many of these 'boxes' are not original, having been replaced in the 19th century after erosion damage.
One recent attempt to make sense of the boxes has been to interpret them as a musical score. The motifs on the boxes somewhat resemble geometric patterns seen in the study of cymatics. The patterns are formed by placing powder upon a flat surface and vibrating the surface at different frequencies. By matching these Chladni patterns with musical notes corresponding to the same frequencies, the father-and-son team of Thomas and Stuart Mitchell produced a tune which Stuart calls the Rosslyn Motet.
There are more than 110 carvings of "Green Men" in and around the chapel. Green Men are carvings of human faces with greenery all around them, often growing out of their mouths. They are found in all areas of the chapel, with one example in the Lady chapel, between the two middle altars of the east wall.
Other carvings represent plants, including depictions of wheat, strawberries or lilies. The authors Robert Lomas and Christopher Knight have hypothesized that some carvings in the chapel represent ears of new world corn or maize, a plant which was unknown in Europe at the time of the chapel's construction. Knight and Lomas view these carvings as evidence supporting the idea that Henry I Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, travelled to the Americas well before Columbus.[undue weight? – discuss] In their book they discuss meeting with the wife of botanist Adrian. Dyer, and that Dyer's wife told him that Dyer agreed that the image thought to be maize was accurate. In fact Dyer found only one identifiable plant among the botanical carvings and suggested that the "maize" and "aloe" were stylized wooden patterns, only coincidentally looking like real plants.
The chapel has been a burial place for several generations of the Sinclairs; a crypt was once accessible from a descending stair at the rear of the chapel. This crypt has been sealed shut for many years, which may explain the recurrent legends that it is merely a front to a more extensive subterranean vault containing (variously) the mummified head of Jesus Christ, the Holy Grail, the treasure of the Templars, or the original crown jewels of Scotland.
In 1837, when the 2nd Earl of Rosslyn died, his wish was to be buried in the original vault. Exhaustive searches over the period of a week were made, but no entrance to the original vault was found and he was buried beside his wife in the Lady Chapel.
The pinnacles on the rooftop have been subject to interest during renovation work in 2010. Nesting jackdaws had made the pinnacles unstable and as such had to be dismantled brick by brick revealing the existence of a chamber specifically made by the stonemasons to harbour bees. The hive, now abandoned, has been sent to local bee keepers to identify.
Lady Angela St Clair-Erskine, daughter of the 4th Earl.
The chapel's altars were destroyed in 1592, and the chapel was abandoned, gradually falling into decay.
In 1842 the chapel, then in a ruined and overgrown state, was visited by Queen Victoria, who expressed a desire that it should be preserved. Restoration work was carried out in 1862 by David Bryce on behalf of James Alexander, 3rd Earl of Rosslyn. The chapel was re-dedicated on 22 April 1862, and from this time, Sunday services were once again held, now under the jurisdiction of the Scottish Episcopal Church, for the first time in 270 years.
The Rosslyn Chapel Trust was established in 1995, with the purpose of overseeing its conservation and its opening as a sightseeing destination. The chapel underwent an extensive programme of conservation between 1997 and 2013. This included work to the roof, the stone, the carvings, the stained glass and the organ. A steel canopy was erected over the chapel roof for fourteen years. This was to prevent further rain damage to the church and also to give it a chance to dry out properly. Three human skeletons were found during the restoration. Major stonework repairs were completed by the end of 2011. The last major scaffolding was removed in August 2010.
A new visitor centre opened in July 2011. The chapel's stained-glass windows and organ were fully restored. New lighting and heating were installed. The expected cost of the restoration work is around £13 million, with about £3.7 million being spent on the Visitor Centre. Funding has come from various sources including Heritage Lottery Fund, Historic Scotland and the environmental body, WREN. Actor Tom Hanks also made a donation.
Photography and video have been forbidden in the chapel since 2008. The chapel sells commercially produced photos in its shop. In 2006, historian Louise Yeoman criticised the Rosslyn Chapel trust for "cashing in" on the popularity of The Da Vinci Code, against better knowledge.
In the financial year of 2013-14, Rosslyn Chapel recorded 144,823 visitors, the highest number since 2007-08, when (at the height of popular interest induced by The Da Vinci Code), the number of visitors was close to 159,000.
The chapel became the subject of speculation regarding its supposed connection with the Knights Templar or Freemasonry beginning in the 1980s. This part of its history was referenced in the DC Comics storyline Batman: Scottish Connection, in which the hero Batman becomes caught up in an old vendetta between two Scottish clans during a visit to Scotland, this mystery including the discovery of an ancient treasure trove hidden in Rosslyn.
The topic entered mainstream pop culture with Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (2003), reinforced by the subsequent film of the same name (2006), Numerous books were published after 2003 to cater to the popular interest in supposed connections between Rosslyn Chapel, Freemasonry, the Templars and the Holy Grail generated by Brown's novel.
The chapel, built 150 years after the dissolution of the Knights Templar, supposedly has many Templar symbols, such as the "Two riders on a single horse" that appear on the Seal of the Knights Templar. William Sinclair 3rd Earl of Orkney, Baron of Roslin and 1st Earl of Caithness, claimed by novelists to be a hereditary Grand Master of the Scottish stonemasons, built Rosslyn Chapel. A later William Sinclair of Roslin became the first Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Scotland and, subsequently, several other members of the Sinclair family have held this position.
Robert L. D. Cooper, curator of the Grand Lodge of Scotland Museum and Library, in 2003 published a 12th edition of the 1892 Illustrated Guide to Rosslyn Chapel with the intention of countering the "nonsense published about Rosslyn Chapel over the last 15 years or so". Cooper in 2006 also published Rosslyn Hoax? in which he actively debunks this type of speculation at length and in great detail. An example is the comparison of the Rosslyn myth of the Apprentice Pillar with that of the allegorical references to Hiram Abiff in Masonic ritual, and in the process he debunks any similarities between the two. A minute comparison between the Rosslyn Myth and the Masonic allegory can be found in a detailed tabular form in The Rosslyn Hoax?
Cooper further debunks other claims of a connection between carvings within Rosslyn Chapel and Scottish Freemasonry. The suggestion that the Apprentice Pillar is a physical reference to the Entered Apprentice degree of Scottish Freemasonry logically led to the conclusion that the other two pillars (in line south to north with the so-called Apprentice Pillar) represented the Fellow of Craft degree (middle pillar) and the Master Mason's degree (north pillar). This association of three pillars in the east part of Rosslyn Chapel with the three degrees of Scottish Freemasonry is impossible, given the fact that (according to Cooper) the third degree of Freemasonry was invented c.1720 - almost 300 years after Rosslyn Chapel was founded.
An interior view showing the Apprentice Pillar and ornate carvings.
Rosslyn Chapel bears no more resemblance to Solomon's or Herod's Temple than a house brick does to a paperback book. If you superimpose the floor plans of Rosslyn Chapel and either Solomon's or Herod's Temple, you will actually find that they are not even remotely similar. Writers admit that the chapel is far smaller than either of the temples. They freely scale the plans up or down in an attempt to fit them together. What they actually find are no significant similarities at all. [...] If you superimpose the floor plans of Rosslyn Chapel and the East Quire of Glasgow Cathedral you will find a startling match: the four walls of both buildings fit precisely. The East Quire of Glasgow is larger than Rosslyn, but the designs of these two medieval Scottish buildings are virtually identical. They both have the same number of windows and the same number of pillars in the same configuration. [...] The similarity between Rosslyn Chapel and Glasgow's East Quire is well established. Andrew Kemp noted that 'the entire plan of this Chapel corresponds to a large extent with the choir of Glasgow Cathedral' as far back as 1877 in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries. Many alternative history writers are well aware of this but fail to mention it in their books.
As to a possible connection between the St. Clairs and the Knights Templar, the family testified against the Templars when that Order was put on trial in Edinburgh in 1309. Historian Dr. Louise Yeoman, along with other medieval scholars, says the Knights Templar connection is false, and points out that Rosslyn Chapel was built by William Sinclair so that Mass could be said for the souls of his family.
It is also claimed that other carvings in the chapel reflect Masonic imagery, such as the way that hands are placed in various figures. One carving may show a blindfolded man being led forward with a noose around his neck — similar to the way a candidate is prepared for initiation into Freemasonry. The carving has been eroded by time and pollution and is difficult to make out clearly. The chapel was built in the 15th century, and the earliest records of Freemasonic lodges date back only to the late 16th and early 17th centuries. A more likely explanation however is that the Masonic imagery was added at a later date. This may have taken place in the 1860s when James St Clair-Erskine, 3rd Earl of Rosslyn instructed Edinburgh architect David Bryce, a known Freemason, to undertake restoration work on areas of the church including many of the carvings.
Alternative histories involving Rosslyn Chapel and the Sinclairs have been published by Andrew Sinclair and Tim Wallace-Murphy arguing links with the Knights Templar and the supposed descendants of Jesus Christ. The books in particular by Tim Wallace-Murphy and Marilyn Hopkins Rex Deus: The True Mystery of Rennes-le-Château And The Dynasty of Jesus (2000) and Custodians Of Truth: The Continuance Of Rex Deus (2005) have focused on the hypothetical Jesus bloodline with the Sinclairs and Rosslyn Chapel.
On the ABC documentary Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci, aired on 3 November 2003, Niven Sinclair hinted that the descendants of Jesus Christ existed within the Sinclair families. These alternative histories are relatively modern - not dating back before the early 1990s. The precursor to these Rosslyn theories is the 1982 book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (retitled Holy Blood, Holy Grail in the United States) by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln that introduced the theory of the Jesus bloodline in relation to the Priory of Sion hoax - the main protagonist of which was Pierre Plantard, who for a time adopted the name Pierre Plantard de Saint-Clair.
^ "SUFFRAGETTE VANDAL - Bomb in Rosslyn Chapel. Beauty of Edifice Unmarred. LONDON, July 14. - The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957) - 15 Jul 1914". Trove. Retrieved 16 December 2016.
^ "About Rosslyn Chapel". RosslynChapel.org.uk. Retrieved 5 November 2014.
^ Dunton, Larkin (1896). The World and Its People. Silver, Burdett. p. 66.
^ Wallace-Murphy, Tim; Hopkins, Marilyn. Rosslyn: Guardians of the Secrets of the Holy Grail, Element Books, 1999, p. 8, ISBN 1-86204-493-7.
^ Dr Forbes, Bishop of Caithness, An Account of the Chapel of Rosslyn, 1774; cited in Rosslyn Chapel (1997) by the Earl of Rosslyn, p. 27.
^ Klovekorn, Henning. The 99 Degrees of Freemasonry. Cornerstone, 2007 ISBN 1-887560-82-3.
^ "Casts In Focus: Rosslyn Chapel". vam.ac.uk. Retrieved 3 March 2018.
^ a b c Oxbrow, Mark; Robertson, Ian (2005). Rosslyn and the Grail. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing. ISBN 1-84596-076-9.
^ a b Knight, Christopher; Lomas, Robert. The Hiram Key. Fair Winds Press, 2001 ISBN 1-931412-75-8.
^ Turnbull, Michael TRB (6 August 2009). "Rosslyn Chapel". BBC. Retrieved 14 December 2016.
^ Laidler, Keith, The Head of God – The Lost Treasure of the Templars (1998).
^ Wallace-Murphy, Tim; Hopkins, Marilyn, Rosslyn: Guardian of Secrets of the Holy Grail (1999).
^ Ralls-MacLeod, Karen; Robertson, Ian, The Quest for the Celtic Key (2002).
^ Donaldson's Guide to Rosslyn Chapel published 1862.
^ "Rosslyn Chapel was haven for bees". BBC News. 30 March 2010. Retrieved 5 November 2011.
^ In 1590, the Presbytery forbade George Ramsay, Minister of Lasswade, from burying the wife of Oliver St. Clair in the chapel. The same St. Clair had been repeatedly asked to destroy the chapel's altars because they were taken to represent "monuments of idolatry". St. Clair's tenants were forced to attend the Lasswade Parish Church. In 1592, St. Clair, who had until then refused to destroy the altars, was summoned to appear before the Church of Scotland General Assembly and threatened with excommunication if the altars remained standing after 17 August 1592. On 31 August 1592, George Ramsay reported that the altars of Roslene were haille demolishit. John Charles Carrick, The Abbey of S. Mary, Newbottle: a memorial of the royal visit, 1907, G. Lewis & Co., 1908, p. 153.
^ "The Chapel Today". rosslynchapel.org.uk. Retrieved 5 November 2011.
^ a b c "Rosslyn Chapel's resurrection revealed". The Scotsman. 12 August 2010. Retrieved 5 November 2011.
^ "Rosslyn Chapel - FAQs". Retrieved 18 October 2012.
^ "What really upsets me is that they know the Knights Templar connection is false, yet they still perpetuate the myth on their interpretation boards." "Historian attacks Rosslyn Chapel for 'cashing in on Da Vinci Code'". The Scotsman. 3 May 2006. Retrieved 8 May 2014.
^ The trust's financial year ends on 31 March. Scaffolding coming down helps visitor numbers go up, Rosslyn Chapel Trust website (April 2014).
^ The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1982), Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry Hardcover John J. Robinson, Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry Hardcover (1989), Michael Baigent The Temple and the Lodge (1991), Coppens, Philip. The Stone Puzzle of Rosslyn Chapel. Frontier Publishing/Adventures Unlimited Press (2002).
^ "Hollywood legend Tom Hanks makes donation to Rosslyn Chapel restoration". The Scotsman. 6 February 2010. Retrieved 5 November 2011.
^ e.g.: Mark Oxbrow and Ian Robertson, Rosslyn and The Grail. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing (2005), [[Ashley Cowie|]]. The Rosslyn Templar (2009), Alan Butler and John Ritchie, Rosslyn Revealed, A Library in Stone (2006), Alan Butler and John Ritchie, Rosslyn Chapel Decoded: New Interpretations of a Gothic Enigma (2013).
^ a b Burstein, Dan (2004). Secrets of the Code: The Unauthorized Guide to the Mysteries Behind the Da Vinci Code, p. 248. CDS Books. ISBN 1-59315-022-9.
^ National Geographic Channel. Knights Templar, 22 February 2006 video documentary. Written by Jesse Evans.
^ "Book Review" at the Grand Lodge of Scotland website: "There has been so much nonsense published about Rosslyn Chapel over the last 15 years or so that it is now extremely difficult to know what is nonsense and what is accurate."
^ "Historian attacks Rosslyn Chapel for 'cashing in on Da Vinci Code'". The Scotsman. 3 May 2006. Retrieved 8 May 2014.
^ "The St Clair Family". rosslynchapel.org.uk. Archived from the original on 14 October 2011. Retrieved 5 November 2011.
Cooper, Robert L. D. The Rosslyn Hoax?. Lewis Masonic. 2006. ISBN 0-85318-255-8.
Forbes, Robert An Account of the Chapel of Roslin. (reprint ed. Cooper, Robert L. D., Grand Lodge of Scotland, 2000. ISBN 0-902324-61-6).
Hay, Richard Augustin, Genealogie of the Sainteclaires of Rosslyn. 1835 (reprint ed. Robert L. D. Cooper, Grand Lodge of Scotland. 2002. ISBN 0-902324-63-2).
Thompson, John, The Illustrated Guide to Rosslyn Chapel and Castle, Hawthornden &c., 1st ed. 1892 (12th edition, Robert L. D. Cooper (ed.), Masonic Publishing Co. 2003. ISBN 0-9544268-1-9).
Peter St Clair-Erskine, 7th Earl of Rosslyn, Rosslyn Chapel, Rosslyn Chapel Trust, 1997.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Rosslyn Chapel. |
0.956317 | Also king of Hungary from 1916 to 1918 as Charles IV, Charles I was the last emperor of Austria. He became heir presumptive to the Hapsburg throne upon the assassination of his uncle, Franz Ferdinand. After succeeding Francis Joseph in 1916, he made several abortive attempts to take Austria-Hungary out of WWI. He renounced participation in affairs of state in 1918 and was deposed in 1919. After two failed attempts to regain his Hungarian throne in 1921, he was exiled. Why was Charles beatified?
Made of pleated wool and wrapped around the wearer's waist, the kilt is the knee-length, skirt-like garment worn by men as part of Scotland's traditional national garb, or Highland dress. Developed in the 17th century, the kilt is worn for ordinary purposes as well as special occasions. Highland dress is the uniform of Scottish regiments in the British army, and kilts were worn into battle as recently as World War II. What nickname did German troops give kilt-clad soldiers in World War I?
Patton, nicknamed "Old Blood-and-Guts," was probably the most admired and most controversial American World War II general. Though he had a brilliant war record—he led successful military operations in Morocco and Sicily and spearheaded the spectacular sweep of US forces across northern France into Germany—he was a rigid disciplinarian and nearly lost his career for slapping a hospitalized soldier he suspected of feigning illness. In what event of the 1912 Olympics did Patton place fifth? |
0.999966 | Being a firefighter all over the world is not only risky but also involves a lot of sacrifices. This means that as a firefighter, every day is a risk. Below are some of the pros and cons of being a firefighter.
1. Sense of Fulfilment in Your Career: Firefighting is a public service job. Firefighters not only protect community members from dangerous fires; they are also committed to educating the public about safety.
2. You Get Paid to Sleep on the Job Sometimes: Depending on how your local firehouse sets up shifts, you may sometimes get paid to sleep on the job. Firehouses need firefighters to be available at a moment’s notice, so it typically means working overnight shifts sometimes. You may get a call in the middle of the night, but you may also just sleep all night.
3. Public Approval of Your Job: Firefighting isn’t the kind of profession where other people have ethical concerns and questions about what you do. You can find comfort in knowing that nobody is going to disapprove of the work that you do.
4. Good Benefits and Job Security: Because it’s a government job, firefighters get good government benefits and job security. This ensures stability for you and your family members.
5. You Get to Save People’s Lives: One of the most rewarding aspects of a career as a firefighter is the fact that by putting out fires, you may be saving people’s lives. This is the kind of fulfilment from a job that you can only get by working with the public.
6. Builds your confidence sometimes: Being a firefighter means that you always have to expose yourself to serious risks everyday. This means you must always be confident about the next possible risk at all times.
7. Better at equipment handling: All firefighters are quick and smart in their operation. They are also fast because their jobs always involve saving lives and property. For this, they are always quick at handling equipment.
8. Good benefits after retirement: Firefighters are some of the best compensated jobs in the world. They work for the government and save many lives in the course of their jobs and this means they have to be adequately compensated.
9. Social satisfaction: Firefighters always get a sense of social satisfaction knowing that people hold them in high regard.
10. Greater responsibility: There is a great responsibility on the shoulders of firefighters. This means that their jobs are valuable and people always respect what they do.
1. Unusual Shifts: Depending on the locality you’re working for, you usually have to work in shifts of 24-48 hours with a few days break in-between each shift. If you’re looking for a nice 9-5 job, then firefighting definitely isn’t for you.
2. Constant Training and Chores: Part of a firefighter’s job requires maintaining physical fitness to be able to enter burning buildings and sometimes carry people out of them. This means working hard physically while you’re at work. Firefighters also have to do chores while they’re at the firehouse, so it’s not like you get to sit around and watch TV all day while you’re at work.
3. Dangerous Job Duties: A pretty obvious downside to firefighting is that you put yourself in potentially harmful situations by entering burning buildings and trying to evacuate other people before you evacuate yourself. This disadvantage can affect both you and your family members.
4. Pay Isn’t Great: The national average salary for firefighters is around $47,600 per year. If you’re looking for a high-paying job, firefighting probably isn’t for you.
5. Trauma and Death: Firefighters have to enter and remain calm in potentially traumatic situations, and they may sometimes see people die in fires or even after the victim has been rescued. Firefighters have to stay tough. If you don’t think you could handle people dying near you, you may not want to be a firefighter.
6. PTSD: There is always the risk of firefighters suffering fro PTSD because of what they face on a daily basis.
7. Personal safety: Firefighters’ personal safety is always on the line during the course of their jobs. They put their lives at risk to save those of others.
8. Long working hours: Firefighters have to be at work at a moment’s notice all the time. They basically have no leave or off days because they are always on call.
9. Low pay compared to the risk: While there are several benefits attached to being a firefighter, the pay is not that glamourous.
10. Downtime: Being a firefighter has its own downtime. There are times when the firefighter will be expected to stay behind and keep the lights on at the office. |
0.95757 | The Volsci (or Volscians) were a group of Italics who, during the Iron Age, were first located on the upper River Liris, but were driven into the fertile land to the south of Rome. They were neighboured to the north by the Latins and Marsi, to the east by the Carracini and Pentri tribes of the Samnites, and to the south by the Etruscan-dominated regions of the Opici. Once south of Rome, they found themselves alongside the Hernici, and beyond them the Aequi, with the Aurunci and Samnites to the south. The Oscan-Umbrian group of which the Volsci were part are largely accepted as being Indo-Europeans (perhaps proto-Celts) who migrated into the peninsula from the north.
Strabo and Pliny, along with other ancient writers, claimed the Aequi, Hernici, Sabini, and Volsci as divisions of the Opici or their Ausones stem. They also stated that the Picentes and Samnites were originally tribes of the Sabellians. This was a collective of central Italian tribes during the Iron Age, comprising the Marrucini, Marsi, Sabini, and Vestini. More specifically, the Picentes and Samnites may have been a division of the Sabini. Writers frequently link one to the other, sometimes referring to the Samnites as Sabellus, seemingly as an umbrella term for their origin. From the Samnites were descended the Lucani, and from the Lucani the Brutii, showing a good deal of interrelationship between the various Iron Age peoples. If the ancient writers were correct, the Opici would seem to be the ancestor of most of these peoples.
Their language came from the Oscan-Umbrian group of Indo-European languages (P-Italic), which were widely spoken in Iron Age central and southern Italy before the rise to dominance of Latin (Latin itself was a slightly more distantly related language, coming from the Indo-European Latino-Faliscan group, or Q-Italic). An early third century inscription from the Volsci town of Velitrae provides the proof for their language.
The Latin League forms as a way for the local states to share common interests such as religious worship and the defence of the region. Fertile and wealthy Latium is an inviting target to enemies such as the Aequi, Etruscans, and Volsci. The cities of the Latin League share commercial treaties and provide rights of commerce, intermarriage and settlement to its citizens. It is these rights that form the basics of later Roman politics and treaties.
By this stage, the Samnites are undoubted masters of the central southern Apennines, probably having evicted or absorbed any remaining Opici and pushing their remnants towards the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy. The Opici appear to quickly disintegrate as a recognisable group, although they survive for a few more centuries as a weak and unimportant people located between Rome and the Samnites. Their disintegration appears to have been speeded up by their fragmentation into various smaller groups which include the Aequi, Brutii, Hernici, Lucani, Marrucini, Marsi, Picentes, Sabini, Samnites, Vestini, and Volsci. This process occurs between the tenth and sixth centuries.
Shortly after Lucius Tarquinius Superbus has commenced two centuries of Roman warfare by attacking the Volsci city of Suessa Pometia, Etruscan rule over Rome, and the other states in Latium, is broken. However, rather than unify, the states of the League vie with each other for dominance. The balance of power shifts often between Rome and other influential cities such as Alba Longa and Lavinium.
By this stage it would appear that the Volsci have already resettled in the fertile territory to the south of Rome. The Aurunci field an army in support of the Volsci against Rome. While on the march, they send envoys ahead to demand that Rome withdraws from Volsci territory. The reply is a consular army under Publius Servilus Priscus Structus which meets them at Arricia and ends the war in a single, victorious battle. The Aurunci, or Opici, are thoroughly put down.
Thanks to his defeat of the Volsci town of Corioli, the Roman patrician Gneus Marcius is given the cognomen Coriolanus. Promoted to general, he attempts to abolish the office of plebeian tribune in Rome, which he believes is responsible for a grain shortage. The tribunes fight back with false charges of misappropriation of public funds, and he is forced into exile. Coriolanus seeks shelter with the Volsci and eventually leads an army against Rome. Town after town is captured along the way and Rome looks set to fall, until Coriolanus' mother and wife are sent to placate him. He relents and retires, but having now committed acts of disloyalty towards both Rome and the Volsci, he is soon tried and then conveniently assassinated.
Roman renegade and leader of the Volsci.
Coriolanus is the basis for Shakespeare's tragedy of the same name. However, many modern scholars doubt the existence of the original figure, citing him instead as a kind of allegory for the state of Roman-Volsci relations at a time when the latter is perhaps in a position to subjugate Rome entirely.
The Hernici, who live between the Aequi and Volsci, have become highly adapted to Latin culture and customs. Under pressure from their two neighbours, they join the mutual protection treaty between the Romans and Latins. The armies defending Latium now consist of Romans, Latins and Hernici. The Aequi and Volsci remain allied in opposition to Rome.
The Volsci control much of southern Latium, including the cities of Antium (modern Anzio), Cora (now Cori a Valle), Satricum (modern Le Ferriere), and Velitrae (modern Velletri), and they continue to pressure the Latins. In addition, the Aequi are said to reach Rome itself, and a decisive battle between the Latins and the Volsci appears to be fought in this year. The Romans, under the command of A Postumius Tubertus, again meet the Aequi at the Algidus Pass, but this time they are victorious. With this victory the Romans are able to open an aggressive offensive which the Volsci are unable to withstand forever.
By the 390s the Romans and Latins have regained control of the plains and have relegated the Aequi and Volsci to the western highlands. The sack of Rome by Celts reverses the situation for a while, but the Volsci are finally defeated with the capture of the port of Antium in 377 BC. The equally defeated Aequi are doomed to be destroyed within the century.
As the final act in the revolt of the Volsci, Rome sacks and levels their town of Satricum around 346 BC. The surviving fighting men, who number about 4,000, are sold into slavery. The Aurunci choose this moment to send a force against Rome itself, which causes panic, with the senate viewing the threat as a wider conspiracy of the Latin League. Lucius Furius Camillus is selected as dictator for the second time. He pulls together an emergency army from Rome's citizens and ends the threat at the very first battle against the Aurunci. The same army is then used to complete the conquest of the Volsci at Sora.
The Volsci join the Latin War, the last major attempt by the Latins to retain independence from Rome. They and the Sidicini ally themselves to a Latin League force which is advancing against the Samnites. Encouraged by Rome's indifference to the Latin-Samnite conflict, the Latin League plans to attack Rome next. Rome hears of this and, following failed bargaining in the Senate with ten Latin chiefs to agree a new treaty, declares war against the Latin League.
Allied to the Samnites, Rome fights for two years to defeat the Latins in a number of battles and subjugate them fully. The Latin League is dissolved, and some Latin states are annexed directly to Rome, while others retain autonomy. This is the last display of resistance by the Volsci. They are subsequently Romanised and integrated completely into Roman society and culture. |
0.995737 | Cairns: PM recognises role of Welsh ports Jump to media player Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns welcomes Theresa May's deal to take Brexit talks to the next stage, saying she recognises the importance of Welsh ports in trade with Ireland.
Jones hails 'open border with EU' Jump to media player Wales' First Minister Carwyn Jones welcomes Theresa May's Brexit deal which he claims amounts to an "open border with the EU" for the whole UK.
'Sufficient progress' to advance Brexit talks Jump to media player EU Commission says Brexit discussions can move on to the next phase, as "sufficient progress" has occurred.
EU president: 'Breaking up is hard' Jump to media player The president of the European Council has said more clarity is needed in how Britain sees its future relationship with the EU.
Ireland's leader welcomes Brexit progress Jump to media player Ireland's Taoiseach Leo Varadkar satisfied that conditions are in place for next phase of Brexit.
DUP: 'The entirety of the UK is leaving the EU' Jump to media player DUP leader Arlene Foster says substantive changes to proposed text for a deal with the EU were made.
Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns has welcomed Theresa May's deal to take Brexit talks to the next stage, saying she recognises the importance of Welsh ports in trade with Ireland.
The prime minister has guaranteed there will no be "hard" border on land or sea, whatever the final UK-EU trade deal looks like.
Mr Cairns said he had supported the interests of Welsh ports at every opportunity. |
0.966641 | Learn German in Berlin, the wonderfully charming and attractive capital of Germany. Berlin is a city where culture meets history and makes an ideal destination to learn German. Culturally diverse with an international reputation, Berlin has a fantastic art scene and is home to hundreds of art galleries. The influence of young German's who settle in the city has helped establish Berlin as a main centre of youth and popular culture in Europe. Mitte has more of an elegant, traditional feel and is more expensive to live in due to its cultural significance and is certainly worth a visit simply to witness the landmarks housed there. |
0.999957 | Which is NOT a reason in the article explaining why tigers are hunted?
Why do you believe this? Cite the text in your answer.
Which best describes the author's main purpose in writing this article?
Information in the third paragraph is MAINLY organized using which text structure?
Poachers hunt tigers for medicine to cure sick family members.
Poachers hunt tigers because they enjoy killing dangerous animals.
Poachers hunt tigers to earn large amounts money.
Poachers hunt tigers to protect their families from dangerous animals.
Tigers hunt in large packs and there are too few tigers left to make these packs.
Wild tigers must make their homes close to rivers and the world's rivers are evaporating.
Wild tigers require a lot of space.
Wild Tigers do not get along with most other animals.
Humans have endangered the world's wild tiger population.
South China tigers were brought to live in South Africa.
Tigers can grow up to eleven feet long.
Saving the wild tiger population is important.
Based on context, which best defines the term "rewilded" as used in the last paragraph?
What does the following idiom mean?
"other parts of the tiger can also fetch a pretty penny."
The tiger is a very beautiful animal.
The fur is the only valuable part of the tiger.
Other parts of the tiger are worth a lot of money.
Which conclusion could be best supported by information from the text?
Efforts to save tigers have failed before, but there are many economic reasons to keep trying.
Efforts to save tigers have failed completely.
Efforts to save tigers have been so successful that they saved tigers from endangerment.
Efforts to save tigers have had some success, but there are many obstacles to recovery.
Why do you believe this? Cite evidence from the text to support your response. |
0.907693 | 1480 years after the people of Israel left Egypt, during the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the second month, the month of Ziv, Solomon began work on the Temple. 2Inside it was 27 metres long, nine metres wide, and 13.5 metres high. 3The entrance room was 4.5 metres deep and nine metres wide, as wide as the sanctuary itself. 4The walls of the Temple had openings in them, narrower on the outside than on the inside. 5Against the outside walls, on the sides and the back of the Temple, a three-storied annexe was built, each storey 2.2 metres high. 6Each room in the lowest storey was 2.2 metres wide, in the middle storey 2.7 metres wide, and in the top storey 3.1 metres wide. The temple wall on each floor was thinner than on the floor below so that the rooms could rest on the wall without having their beams built into it.
7The stones with which the Temple was built had been prepared at the quarry, so that there was no noise made by hammers, axes, or any other iron tools as the Temple was being built.
8The entrance to the lowest6.8 Some ancient translations lowest; Hebrew middle. storey of the annexe was on the south side of the Temple, with stairs leading up to the second and third storeys. 9So King Solomon finished building the Temple. He put in a ceiling made of beams and boards of cedar. 10The three-storied annexe, each storey6.10 Probable text three-storied annexe, each storey; Hebrew three-storied annexe. 2.2 metres high, was built against the outside walls of the Temple, and was joined to them by cedar beams.
14So Solomon finished building the Temple.
15The inside walls were covered with cedar panels from the floor to the ceiling, and the floor was made of pine. 166.16: Ex 26.33–34An inner room, called the Most Holy Place, was built in the rear of the Temple. It was nine metres long and was partitioned off by cedar boards reaching from the floor to the ceiling.6.16 One ancient translation ceiling; Hebrew walls. 17The room in front of the Most Holy Place was eighteen metres long. 18The cedar panels were decorated with carvings of gourds and flowers; the whole interior was covered with cedar, so that the stones of the walls could not be seen.
19In the rear of the Temple an inner room was built, where the LORD's Covenant Box was to be placed. 20This inner room was nine metres long, nine metres wide, and nine metres high, all covered with pure gold. The altar was covered with cedar panels.6.20 Verse 20 in Hebrew is unclear. 21The inside of the Temple was covered with gold, and gold chains were placed across the entrance of the inner room, which was also covered with gold. 226.22: Ex 30.1–3The whole interior of the Temple was covered with gold, as well as the altar in the Most Holy Place.
236.23–28: Ex 25.18–20Two winged creatures were made of olive wood and placed in the Most Holy Place, each one 4.4 metres tall. 24-26Both were of the same size and shape. Each had two wings, each wing 2.2 metres long, so that the distance from one wing tip to the other was 4.4 metres. 27They were placed side by side in the Most Holy Place, so that two of their outstretched wings touched each other in the middle of the room, and the other two wings touched the walls. 28The two winged creatures were covered with gold.
29The walls of the main room and of the inner room were all decorated with carved figures of winged creatures, palm trees, and flowers. 30Even the floor was covered with gold.
31A double door made of olive wood was set in place at the entrance of the Most Holy Place; the top of the doorway was a pointed arch. 32The doors were decorated with carved figures of winged creatures, palm trees, and flowers. The doors, the winged creatures, and the palm trees were covered with gold. 33For the entrance to the main room a rectangular door-frame of olive wood was made. 34There were two folding doors made of pine 35and decorated with carved figures of winged creatures, palm trees, and flowers, which were evenly covered with gold.
36An inner court was built in front of the Temple, enclosed with walls which had one layer of cedar beams for every three layers of stone.
37The foundation of the Temple was laid in the second month, the month of Ziv, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign. 38In the eighth month, the month of Bul, in the eleventh year of Solomon's reign, the Temple was completely finished exactly as it had been planned. It had taken Solomon seven years to build it. |
0.882157 | How to identify transparent LED display lamp beads?
LED Lamp bead is the most important component of the Transparent LED Display, and also the key device that uses the most, directly affecting the use effect of the LED transparent screen. Thousands to tens of thousands of lamp beads are used per square meter of transparent screen, and lamp beads are the largest proportion of the total cost of LED transparent screens, ranging from 40% to 70%.
For customers, they all hope to purchase high-quality LED transparent screens and use inferior LED lamp beads, which will not only affect the display effect of transparent screens, but also greatly reduce the life expectancy, and even cause problems such as dead lights and large color differences. Therefore, the identification of lamp beads has become a very important part. So how to identify the advantages and disadvantages of transparent LED display lights?
First: stents. In general, the bracket is a silver-plated copper bracket. The advantage of the silver-plated copper bracket is that it can dissipate heat quickly, and it can provide better heat dissipation to the lamp. Some merchants on the market will use ceramic brackets instead of silver-plated copper brackets, ceramic brackets have excellent thermal conductivity.
Second: brightness. How many LM (Lumens) your lamp beads can reach, and LM (Lumens) is a measure of the brightness of the lamp beads.
Third: Whether the light emission is uniform or not. The quality of the good lamp light is uniform and the color is uniform. Poor quality lamp beads will have a bright light bulb, a lamp light dark phenomenon, the light color is not uniform, there will be obvious dark areas.
Fourth: chip and chip size. The chip is also a decisive factor in the quality of the lamp beads. In general, the larger the chip, the stronger the stability. The higher the brightness, the better the heat dissipation. This is the most important, because the chip directly determines the color rendering index, brightness, and the degree of attenuation.
Fifth: glue. Generally good products will use imported glue. The encapsulated LED lamp beads will not be deformed by hand. The low-quality glue will be deformed or even cracked.
Sixth: Encapsulation process. The LED bulbs with good quality have uniform color and good colloidal consistency. This is inseparable from good machinery and equipment. The production of machinery and equipment is a key factor. A good equipment can guarantee the stability and consistency of products in various procedures and guarantee the product's yield rate. |
0.812608 | Although first reported in the 1960s - until the early 21st century - Enterovirus D68 was a rarely seen (and sometimes misidentified), seemingly mild viral infection (causing cold-like illness), mostly in children.
In 2011 it gained some early notoriety when – in MMWR: Clusters Of HEV68 Respiratory Infections 2008-2010 – we looked at a half dozen HEV 68 associated clusters which occurred in Asia, Europe, and the United States during 2008--2010.
This report highlights HEV68 as an increasingly recognized cause of respiratory illness. Clinicians should be aware of HEV68 as one of many causes of viral respiratory disease and should report clusters of unexplained respiratory illness to the appropriate public health agency.
The spectrum of illness caused by HEV68 remains unclear. HEV68, like other enteroviruses, has been associated with central nervous system disease (9). Further investigation could help clarify the epidemiology and spectrum of disease caused by HEV68. Some diagnostic tests might not detect HEV68 or might misidentify it as an HRV.
Unlike influenza, classic enteroviruses tend to break out in late summer-to-fall, although EV-68 has been observed to occur well into the winter season. The largest outbreak characterized by this MMWR report involved 28 children and adolescents from Pennsylvania in the fall of 2009.
Early in 2014, in Acute Flaccid Paralysis Cases In California, we looked at a cluster of 5 AFP cases in which 2 tested positive for EV-D68. Since neurological symptoms often develop days or weeks following a viral infection, testing only rarely returns a positive result.
In the fall of 2014, we saw a nationwide outbreak of EV-D68 (49 states), producing a wide range of illness, including severe respiratory distress, resulting in the hospitalization of hundreds of children (see CDC HAN Advisory On EV-D68).
At the same time, doctors around the country reported a concurrent spike in polio-like paralysis in children (e.g. AFP or AFM (Acute Flaccid Myelitis)) often following a viral illness.
While most infections were either mild (or even asymptomatic), a small subset of cases experienced pneumonia or severe respiratory illness. Some, but far from all, of the AFM cases tested positive for EV-D68.
EV-68, while high on the suspect list, wasn't the only virus in the line up.
Other NPEVs (non-polio enteroviruses - particularly EV-71), West Nile Virus (and other mosquito-borne encephalopathies), echoviruses, adenoviruses, Campylobacter jejuni (leading cause of Guillain-Barre syndrome), along with a variety of toxins and poisons are also known to produce neurological symptoms, including AFM.
While the evidence is often compelling, it falls short of definitive proof. And one of the stumbling blocks has been that until the past few years, EV-D68 was viewed as a relatively innocuous viral infection.
Today, via the open-access journal mBio, we have a lengthy detailed research report that finds that (relatively) recently emerged strains of EV-D68 have become more neurotropic than were the classic strains circulating in the last half of the 20th century.
Using both mice and neuronal cell lines (SH-SY5Y cells), along with non-neuronal cell lines (HeLa & A549 cells), researchers demonstrate differences in viral entry and replication between older (clade A) EV-D68 strains, and newer (clade B1, B2, and D1) strains, which appear to have emerged early in the 21st century.
This is, admittedly, a long and complex report, and really requires reading it - probably more than once - in its entirety, to do it justice. When you return, I'll have a postscript.
Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) has historically been associated with respiratory illnesses. However, in the summers of 2014 and 2016, EV-D68 outbreaks coincided with a spike in polio-like acute flaccid myelitis/paralysis (AFM/AFP) cases. This raised concerns that EV-D68 could be the causative agent of AFM during these recent outbreaks.
To assess the potential neurotropism of EV-D68, we utilized the neuroblastoma-derived neuronal cell line SH-SY5Y as a cell culture model to determine if differential infection is observed for different EV-D68 strains. In contrast to HeLa and A549 cells, which support viral infection of all EV-D68 strains tested, SH-SY5Y cells only supported infection by a subset of contemporary EV-D68 strains, including isolates from the 2014 outbreak. Viral replication and infectivity in SH-SY5Y were assessed using multiple assays: virus production, cytopathic effects, cellular ATP release, and VP1 capsid protein production.
Similar differential neurotropism was also observed in differentiated SH-SY5Y cells, primary human neuron cultures, and a mouse paralysis model. Using the SH-SY5Y cell culture model, we determined that barriers to viral binding and entry were at least partly responsible for the differential infectivity phenotype. Transfection of genomic RNA into SH-SY5Y generated virions for all EV-D68 isolates, but only a single round of replication was observed from strains that could not directly infect SH-SY5Y. In addition to supporting virus replication and other functional studies, this cell culture model may help identify the signatures of virulence to confirm epidemiological associations between EV-D68 strains and AFM and allow for the rapid identification and characterization of emerging neurotropic strains.
IMPORTANCE Since the EV-D68 outbreak during the summer of 2014, evidence of a causal link to a type of limb paralysis (AFM) has been mounting. In this article, we describe a neuronal cell culture model (SH-SY5Y cells) in which a subset of contemporary 2014 outbreak strains of EV-D68 show infectivity in neuronal cells, or neurotropism.
We confirmed the difference in neurotropism in vitro using primary human neuron cell cultures and in vivo with a mouse paralysis model. Using the SH-SY5Y cell model, we determined that a barrier to viral entry is at least partly responsible for neurotropism. SH-SY5Y cells may be useful in determining if specific EV-D68 genetic determinants are associated with neuropathogenesis, and replication in this cell line could be used as rapid screening tool for identification of neurotropic EV-D68 strains. This may assist with better understanding of pathogenesis and epidemiology and with the development of potential therapies.
While offering more support to the theory of a causal link between EV-D68 infection and (rare) AFM in humans, we are still not quite there. This study, however, by showing a neurotropic changes, does appear to get us closer.
It remains to be seen whether EV-D68 turns out to be a viral flash in the pan, or if it becomes a more regular feature of our respiratory illness season, like some of the NPEVs that have already become pretty well established in Asia (see EID Journal: Emerging Enteroviruses In China 2010-2016).
Perhaps just as importantly, this is another reminder that previously mild, or innocuous pathogens can change over time, and can present a bigger threat to human health.
In 2016 we saw an obscure mosquito-borne disease (Zika) suddenly linked not only to sexual transmission, but to neurotropic and teratogenic sequelae, a trifecta never seen with an arbovirus before (see UCLA: Unraveling The Genetic Evolution Of Zika).
In 2013, we saw an LPAI H7N9 virus turn into a deadly epidemic in China, and that changed our view of the risk and pathogenicity of H7 avian viruses overnight.
In 2005, the Chikungunya virus acquired a mutation that allowed it to be carried by the Aedes Albopictus `Asian tiger’ mosquito (see A Single Mutation in Chikungunya Virus Affects Vector Specificity and Epidemic Potential).
And over the past 50 years, myriad bacterial pathogens have developed resistance to our dwindling antibiotic armamentarium, with each year bringing us that much closer to a dreaded `post-antibiotic era'.
As much as we'd like to believe that we have the scientific advantage over emerging infectious diseases, our ability to cope pales when compared to nature's ability to adapt.
Reasons why the next global health crisis is always just around the corner. |
0.974241 | Was soll ich aus dir machen, Ephraim (What shall I make of you, Ephraim), BWV 89, is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. He composed it in Leipzig for the 22nd Sunday after Trinity and first performed it on 24 October 1723.
The unknown poet of the cantata text stressed the opposites of the gospel, God's justice versus unjust men. The text begins with a related quotation from the prophet Hosea, Hosea 11:8. The next two movements, recitative and aria, reflect the sinful condition of man, another set of recitative and aria deals with God's mercy. The closing chorale is stanza 7 of "Wo soll ich fliehen hin" by Johann Heermann (1630), which Bach would treat completely one year later in his chorale cantata Wo soll ich fliehen hin, BWV 5.
The cantata is scored like chamber music. Only the chorale is set for four parts; the alto voice sings of man's sin, the soprano of God's grace, and the bass is God's voice in the opening movement. On some copies of the parts, the movement is marked aria but we don't know if that marking is authorized by Bach. Formally it has some characteristics of an aria, such as a ritornello to open the movement and frame the text sections, and some aspects of an arioso, for example the free setting of the sections. The last section, which speaks of God's "meine Barmherzigkeit ist zu brünstig" (too fervent mercy) is embedded in the ritornello, then the ritornello is repeated once more. One motif in the ritornello is similar to one in the chorus "Lasset uns den nicht zerteilen" from Bach's St John Passion and may illustrate undecidedness in both cases. The following three movements, two recitatives and an expressive aria, are only accompanied by the continuo, the last aria also by an obbligato oboe. The closing chorale is set for four parts; the melody in the soprano is doubled by the horn, the oboes, and violin I.
The cantata in six movements is scored for three vocal soloists (soprano, alto and bass), a four-part choir only in the chorale, horn, two oboes, two violins, viola, and basso continuo.
I created this arrangement of the third Aria: "Gerechter Gott, ach, rechnest du" (Righteous God, ah, do you judge?) for Flute, Oboe & Cello. |
0.97268 | Some sort of crayfish. It has blue joints though which is odd..
The water in the stream is extremely low. The crayfish was foraging in the middle of the stream at midday. |
0.976142 | To make dulce de leche in the oven, I emptied one can of sweetened condensed milk into an 8x8" glass baking dish and covered it with foil. I set it within a second, larger baking dish, which I filled with enough hot water to reach halfway up the dish. I slipped 'em in a 425° oven …... Instructions How to Make Homemade Dulce De Leche. Empty the sweetened condensed milk cans into an oven safe baking dish like a pie pan. Cover tightly with foil.
How to make homemade Dulce de Leche: OVEN in an oven safe glass dish: Preheat oven to 425° F. Pour one can of sweetened condensed milk into an 8 or 9 inch glass baking dish. Cover tightly with aluminum foil and set in a larger baking dish or roasting pan. Fill the larger dish with water so that the water comes about half way up the sides of the smaller dish. I have a roasting pan that has a how to say see the big picture If this same dulce de leche (made from goat’s milk) is prepared in the oven, allowing the sweetened milk to evaporate and scorch, people talk about cajeta quemada or dulce de leche horneada. If whole cow’s milk is used, then it is simply called dulce de leche.
Once the Dulce de Leche is nicely browned and caramelized, remove from the oven and let cool. Once cool, whisk until smooth. Once cool, whisk until smooth. Store in the refrigerator until ready to serve.
Method. To make the dulce de leche, preheat the oven to 220°C. Pour the condensed milk into a small baking dish and cover tightly with foil. Place the dish into a larger oven-proof dish/baking tray and fill the larger dish with boiling water until it comes ⅔ up the sides of the smaller dish.
Let's first make the brownie crust. Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Grease a 9 inch spring-foam pan. Melt chocolate and butter using a double boiler.
Mix together the condensed milk and salt in a glass or ceramic dish. Tightly cover the dish with foil. Set this dish inside a larger baking dish or tin, and fill it with hot water, until the water reaches just over halfway up the sides of the smaller dish. |
0.998917 | The Benefits of Camo Jackets and Suits One who knows about the sport of hunting might know that it has, for many years, been popular in many parts of the world. People who love to hunt might look forward to it because of the thrill and the excitement that they feel each time they go on a hunting trip. You will be happy to know that there are many ways through which you can improve your hunting experience, one of which is through purchasing and wearing a camouflage jacket or suit. Finding the best source of camo jackets and suits, then, is certainly something that you should do because when you do so, you can be sure that you will be able to enjoy a lot of very satisfying benefits. Using a camo jacket or suit is certainly something which will be beneficial to you in a lot of different and wonderful ways, one of which is the fact that when you do so, you can be sure that your hunting experience will be better. If you know about camo jackets and camo suits, you might know that their aim is to blur your edges and to make you blend easily with your background, making your form very difficult to pick out. People who go hunting, then, can be sure that they will get a much better chance to get closer to wildlife, whether it is to hunt them or to photograph them. Another thing that people will be able to gain when they are able to find the best source of camouflage suits and jackets is the benefit of being able to purchase items of great quality. If you have ever gone on a hunting trip in normal clothes, you might have felt dismayed at the end of the trip, finding your clothes damaged by the harshness of the wild and of your activities. The good news is that when you start using camo jackets and suits, you can be sure that they will be made especially for surviving the wild, and that they will not easily be damaged.
One who is able to find the best source of camo jackets and suits will also be able to benefit because these jackets and suits are sure to be very comfortable to those who wear them. You can be sure that when you wear a camouflage jacket or suit which has been designed for hunting, movement will not be something which is difficult to accomplish, nor will you feel heavy while you are out there, on the track of your prey.
Purchasing and using a camo jacket or a camo suit, then, is certainly something that you should do if you love to get out there in the wild, as when you do so, you can be assured of comfort, safety, and a greater experience altogether. |
0.952855 | Bio: Sophia was the youngest of Daniel and Susannah's children on the 1871 census. Here she is living with them in Burton End, only a month old.
The 1881 census sees Sophia still at home in Burton End, where she is a scholar.
Burial records show that Sophia had an illegitimate son, Henry, born on 16th July 1889 and baptised at St Mary's Church on 15th September 1889.(11) He died aged 2 months and was buried at Haverhill Cemetery on 7th October 1889.(10) Sophia was living at 45 Burton End at the time.
Sophia married William Basham in 1890, and although her marriage entry in the parish register(4) states that her father was David Whiting, I think this is a similar error with Daniel's name to that on the 1871 census. Sophia is the the correct age to be Daniel's daughter, and none of the David Whitings alive in Haverhill at this time that I am aware of had a daughter called Sophia. Also, it seems that William Basham was witness to Sophia's brother Daniel's wedding the previous year.
The 1891 census sees the newly weds living in Burton End, where William is a dyers assistant, and Sophia a factory weaver, most likely at Gurteens. They have no children at this stage.
Sometime around 1897 the Bashams moved to Edmonton, Middlesex. We know it was around this time as all of their children on the 1901 census were listed as being born in Haverhill. Three of them, Ellen, Lily and Alice were baptised between 1896 and 1897(5) and at this time the family are recorded as living at 49 Burton End.
George Basham was born in Edmonton in 1900, however.
On the 1901 census William's occupation has changed to navvy (worker on canals or railways). They are now living at 4 Lawrence Road, Edmonton. So what prompted this move and change of occupation?
Four doors down see we Sophia's sister Elizabeth living with her husband George Shipp. He and his sons are also navvies. Presumably the work was good, and William and Sophia were drawn by the prospect of a fresh start with some familiar faces near by. Nextdoor to Sophia and William we see the witness at their wedding, Mark Hitchen and his wife Harriet living with their family. Mark was a bricklayer, and originally from Steeple Bumpstead. Harriet was William's sister.
They were living at 4 Lawrence Road when their youngest child Florence was baptised in this 1903(6), the 1905 Electoral Register(9) shows William Basham at 35 Lawrence Road.
Sophia and William moved to Tottenham, and a glance at the census returns sees several of William's siblings living in this area too.
So on the 1911 census we see them at 132 Thackeray Avenue, Tottenham. William is a builder's labourer, daughters Emma and Lily work for a cartridge manufacturer (most likely at the same factory as their cousin Rose, Elizabeth's daughter who also lived in the Edmonton district), and Nellie and Alice work at a stationery firm.
On the 1927 Electoral Register(9), Sophia is living at 132 Thackeray Avenue with son George. She is listed as the House owner, so it looks like William was dead by this time.
The 1936 Electoral Register(9), shows Sophia still living at 132 Thackeray Avenue with her children George, Florence, Ellen and Alice.
There is some confusion as to Sophia's exact year of death, because in the Edmonton district there was a Sophia Basham born 1871 who died in 1945(7) and another also born in that year who died in 1958.(8) I have not been able to trace when William died.
(6) Ancestry.com. London, England, Births and Baptisms, 1813-1906 [database on-line]. |
0.987141 | Which of the following expressions has the largest value?
Between a and d - A: 3*3^51 D: 4*3^51, hence D>A.
I will go with D. Needs bit of rearrangement.
i know this seems like a dumb question but how do you get 3^30 +3^30+3^30 = 3^31? |
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