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Re: quattro+rain Andrew Duane (& sure-footed cat) writes: >I have a good set of all-seasons (Comp T/A), and I've done triple >digits in the rain with no problem at all. OK, not triple digits, >but 80-90+ for long periods. The beauty of our q-cars--until we do something sudden to upset their dynamics (as Glen described for us!). My experience is similar to Andrew's (haven't done the Glen thing, yet). At least I didn't _feel_ out of control; you definitely feel _something_ when you hit those big standing water stretches--probably hydroplaning, just didn't feel like it would in a 2wd (esp rwd) car. This experience holds for both P6 (suprise! maybe just lucky to have no violent maneuvers on boring I-5) and XGT-H4 and V4 tires on my q-cars over the years. or maybe it't that i really wasn't driving fast enough ;) >The Comp T/A's are also good in the snow. Are the aquatreds? I suspect there's a difference in purpose between these tires--all season Comp T/A's (M+S rated?) vs. rain tires (probably also M+S rated, but not its designed purpose). Tires+rain behave differently from tires+snow--I believe you want to get the water OUT from under tires, hence the large grooves in the Aquatred or Aquacontact (and even my XGT H4s), while you want the snow to STICK to the tire, as snow to snow tends to grip better than cold, slippery rubber to snow (look at a Blizzak). >But, I notice that Continental puts out the CZ99 (?), a Z-rated >all-season aquatred design. They are pretty much racing slicks >with a groove routed down the middle. Hmmmmmmm. Continental Aquacontacts--pricey pricey pricey. There's a short article about them in the most recent ec or r&t (don't recall which). fyi, Ned used them in Portland in '94. another biased 2 pennies. the condo complex won't let me have a cat :(
The 12 Scumm Games by Lucasarts Back in the 80’s, Lucasfilm wasn’t just a film production company, but also a had a video-game department. With success and time, the division became its own company, and so, Lucasarts was born. Amongst their biggest hits, we can count the several Star Wars games they released over the years, but what really grabbed everyone’s attention even before that was a unique type of games: their point-and-click adventures. Graphic Adventures, or Point and Click adventures was a more intuitive take on the text adventures of the old days, where players chose actions from a menu and performed them over objects on the screen. The engine that gave life to most of these classics was called “SCUMM”, short for “Script Utility for Maniac Mansion”, the first game that used this system. There were only about a dozen games which used this script, but they all became classics on their own, and now, thanks to our list of the 12 Scumm Games by Lucasarts, we get to remember them. Maniac Mansion & Day of the Tentacle Maniac Mansion from 1987 has the privilege of having been the first game to use the Scumm technology, and having the system/engine named after it. It was a radical change from previous adventure titles like Labyrinth, thanks to its easy use where users could just hover the cursor with their keyboard or mouse to see what was on a room. In Maniac Mansion, players controlled three characters out of seven playable ones, each with different skills and personalities, who had to infiltrate the Edison’s house to rescue Sandy, Dave’s girlfriend. The game could be credited by creating the genre of point-and-click adventures on its own, and even today has seen many remakes and ports, both official and fan-made. The game was so popular that it had a sequel in 1993, Day of the Tentacle, where Bernard, one of the original 7 characters returns with newcomers Hoagie (a typical heavy metal guy) and Laverne (a medical student) who go back to the mansion to stop the Purple Tentacle, who has grown arms and is trying to take on the world. The plan is to travel to the past and stop the Purple Tentacle from drinking the nuclear waste that caused his mutation and gave him arms, but by accident the characters end misplaced in time, with Bernard being back in the present, Hoagie being sent 200 years to the past, and Laverne 200 years to the future. The gameplay emphasized teamwork, with characters being able to send each other the items they find in different times, and actions in the past influencing the outcome of events in the future. Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders Another “Oldie but Goldie”, Zak McKracken is a game from 1988 where players control a tabloid writer named Zak (full name Francis Zachary McKracken), who tries to stop the Caponians (a group of aliens who have infiltrated the phone company) from reducing the intelligence of everybody on Earth using a 60 Hz “hum” (scary prediction there, Lucasarts!). Their only hope is a defense mechanism created by the Skolarians, another ancient alien race, which just needs to be reassembled. Too bad the parts are spread all over the Earth and Mars, right? The game has countless fan-made sequels, as an official one never came out. Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade & Indiana Jones And The Fate of Atlantis Indiana Jones And the Last Crusade was one of the first games licensed after a movie, and it only makes sense Lucasfilms gave division took care of it. On the screenshot above can be seen one of the remakes for 256 colors done as technology progressed and fans still claimed for the game. The plot follows closely the movie, but has an interesting system on which there are several ways to solve a puzzle (for example, players could wear a costume, sneak, fight or talk with Nazi sentinels in order to avoid them), and at the end of the game would get a score for how well they performed. Its successor, which came out way before people even started talking about the fourth movie had an entirely original story. Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis from 1992 was acclaimed as a fantastic sequel thanks to features like being able to choose which gameplay should be emphasized (having Indiy’s partner Sophia tagging along, going solo, or fighting your way to Atlantis) and the most charismatic Dr. Jones we’ve ever seen on videogames. As the title suggests, in this game Indy tries to find the whereabouts of Atlantis, the lost city, before the Nazis do. Loom screenshot Loom, the 1990 classic, was a different take on the graphic adventure genre, as instead of having the player choose from a list of verbs to perform actions, players instead had to pick notes to cast several different spells. As readers might have guessed, in Loom gamers got to control Wizard Bobbin Threadbare in a more serious, fantasy setting. This is the first time Lucasarts (Still Lucasfilm at the time) decided to make sure it was impossible to get to a dead-end, a sort of common occurrence in previous games that forced players to restart the game or a previous save, feature which carried over to all of the upcoming point-and-click adventures. Monkey Island (Original Trilogy) Monkey Island, probably LucasArts (yes! It was after this title that they changed their name) most well-known adventure, was released in 1990 and was sort of a back-to-basics for the studio, using most of the features that had worked well in previous games. The Secret of Monkey Island (such is the name of the first game) had it all: beautiful graphics, sword combat, pirate insults, and the most idiotic-but-lovable main character yet, Guybrush Threepwoord himself. His name came from the fact that after designing him, he didn’t yet have a name, so the sprite was saved with the filename guy.brush, and it stuck. In this game also debut his (at the time) girlfriend, Elaine Marley, and his nemesis, the Ghost Pirate LeChuck. The game was so well received that it got a sequel right away, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge in 1991. The game starts with Guybrush about to fall down a pit, and Elaine trying to save him, and most of the story is told via flashback to explain how they got there. Both of these games were remastered for PC and Xbox 360 in fantastic special editions that add recorded dialog, modern-day graphics, and a more intuitive interface for a story that was fantastic to begin with, but alienated younger players because of how raw and dated the game looked by today’s standards. The franchise saw a triumphant return with a third game in 1997, making this Lucasarts 12th and final game to use the Scumm engine, and the last of the classic era. This game (sort of) ignores the end of Monkey Island 2, and sends Guybrush back to the Caribbean, who will be trying to save his girlfriend and soon-to-be wife Elaine from the Ghost Pirate LeChuck once more. Fans were shocked to hear what their beloved characters looked and sounded like thanks to the enhanced graphics and CD-rom technology which enabled spoken dialog for the first time in the series. If well this was the last Scumm game officially released by LucasArts, the franchise has seen a couple more incarnations and remakes during the years, most recently Telltale’s fantastic episodic series “Tales of Monkey Island”. Sam & Max: Hit The Road Sam & Max Sam & Max, created by Steve Purcell, spawned a whole lot of games (at least 5, nowadays) but older Lucasarts fans might remember it as “the game that changed the interface in Scumm games”. Since this point on, the big list of verbs was reduced to 4 icons: actions with Sam’s hand (push, pull, grab), Actions with Sam’s eyes (look, stare), Actions with Sam’s mouth (lick, talk, chew), or actions with Max. This interface, which in the long run was more intuitive divided fans, but luckily, the charisma of the two main characters, Freelance Police Sam & Max won them over. In the game, they get sent to look for a Yeti, who got lost from a circus freak-show. Full Throttle We can’t mention Full Throttle from 1995 without mentioning Tim Schaffer, the genius behind Psychonauts, Grim Fandango, and many other Lucasarts classics. This “heavy metal adventure” puts the player in control of Ben, leader of the Polecats, who has been framed for killing Malcolm Corley, the last developer of regular motorcycles which are fading away to give place to hover-crafts. The ambiance of the game is that of a dystopian, almost cyberpunk future with dark colors, long roads and futuristic technology. A big portion of the game involves driving on a motorcycle figuring out how to cross certain obstacles, while the rest of the game has a system similar to Sam & Max’s. Although a cult classic by now, the game was criticized for its short duration. Still, its dedicated fanbase has been creating sequels and side games which deepen the world depicted in the game. The Dig The dig screenshot The Dig, Lucasarts’ last original franchise before ditching the Scumm system, is a game from 1995 based on a story by Steven Spielberg from Amazing Stories. The story involves a group of scientists traveling to an asteroid in a collision course to Earth, which the team eventually find it’s hollow, and actually a starship which takes them to an unknown planet. The title puts heavy emphasis on its sci-fi elements as opposed to the humor, and delivers a deep story with a fantastic atmosphere. It had moderate success, as it departed from the conventions of the genre, and many felt it was a step backwards in terms of the titles Lucasarts had become renowned for. Other point and click adventures came out throughout the years, without really using the Scumm system, but these 12 titles and others like Sierra’s King Quest series are regarded as the representatives of the golden age of point-and-click adventures. After this nostalgia trip, we’re looking forward to read your comments and comment on your favorite titles. 5 thoughts on “The 12 Scumm Games by Lucasarts 1. Pingback: \| Superlevel 2. Pingback: cartoons \| 3. Pingback: \| Superlevel Leave a Reply
1 800 222 6872 Barbez: Bella Ciao * Track List >Shema Koli >Echa Yasheva Vadad >Yoshev Beseter Elyon >Et Shaare Ratzon >Mizmor Leasaf >Yedid Nefesh >Keter Ittenu >Kamti Beashmoret >Bella Ciao >Umevi Goel >Channun Kerov Rachamav Album Notes Personnel: Dan Kaufman (guitar); Catherine McRae (violin); Peter Hess (alto clarinet, bass clarinet); Danny Tunick (piano, organ, vibraphone, marimba); John Bollinger (drums, timpani); Dan Coates (electronics); Pamelia Kurstin (Theremin). Audio Mixer: Martin Bisi. Liner Note Author: Dan Kaufman. Recording information: B.C. Studio, Brooklyn, NY. After eight years, Barbez guitarist and conceptualist Dan Kaufman revives the band name for Bella Ciao. Though the same players were on 2007's Force of Light, it was issued as his. And like it, this date revolves around themes of light, the Holocaust, resistance, and the senseless persecution and attempted extermination of the Jews, though this time its focus shifts to the Roman Jewish community and to the Italian partisan resistance during the Nazi occupation. As is always the case with Barbez, history plays an important musical role, here it is that of the Roman Jews, the city's longest continuing residents, dating back more than 2,000 years, and their culture is separate from that of other European Jewish traditions including the Ashkenazi and the Sephardim. Kaufman wrote all but two of the pieces here; they were based on Roman Jewish liturgical melodies, and shot through with rock, vanguard composition, improvisation, cinematic notions, and modern chamber jazz. More than on any other Barbez recording, these 11 pieces are "songs." They have recognizable structures, choruses, melodies, and conclusions. The band -- Kaufman on guitars; Pamelia Kurstin on Theremin; violinist Catherine McRae; Peter Hess on clarinets; Danny Tunick on piano, marimba, and vibes; bassist Peter Lettre, and drummer John Bollinger -- have gelled as a unit. So enigmatic and organic is their engagement in the process of weaving this music from history and mystery in collective imagination, it feels like an evolutionary sonic organism. "Et Sharre Ratzon," with its shimmering minor-key rock, liturgical tropes, and classical schemata, features vocals by actress Fiona Templeton, who recites a Pier Paolo Pasolini poem, "The Resistance and Its Light" within it. (For Kaufman, "light" is an obsession, a constant notion whose influence reaches beyond music). Templeton also recites Alfonso Gatto's elegy "Anniversary" about the resistance inside "Mizmor Leasaf," in which Barbez evokes the Spaghetti Western soundtrack tradition à la Ennio Morricone, Stelvio Cipriani, and Bruno Nicolai. A surf guitar meets lonesome clarinets and rumbling tom-toms, creating drama that underscores the lyric's conviction. The title track is a traditional work, but Kaufman rearranges it thoroughly, retaining the thread of its central melody and infuses it with dissonant modal rock; it features vocals by Faun Fables' Dawn McCarthy. Given the Jews' enduring Roman history, their influence on Italian music--especially before the Papal Bull of the 16th century which ghettoized them until the late 19th--is at least implied; some of these sacred ceremonial melodies are ancient, pre-classical, yet co-exist inside normative classical Roman harmony; it signifies and is signified by them. The later song forms on Bella Ciao are carefully composed to leave the question open, and are executed with such force as to create fissures between the various combinative musics. In the words of Leonard Cohen, another well-known Jewish composer who shares Kaufman's aforementioned obsession, between these cracks is, "where the light gets in." Bella Ciao's aesthetic and historic concerns -- not to mention poetic practice -- aside, make for compulsive listening. ~ Thom Jurek There are currently no reviews, be the first one! Login or Create an Account to write a review Also Purchased
Thrill Me Thrill Me Au Charing Cross Theatre Prix à partir de € 19.70 Stephen Dolginoff's multi-award winning musical Thrill Me - The Leopold and Loeb Story - is now playing in London. Buy your Tickets for Thrill Me the Musical here! The Lindbergh Kidnapping. The O.J. Simpson Case. The Great Train Robbery. so many crimes have been labelled the crime of the 20th Century. Not one however engaged the world as much as the case of Leopold and Loeb - self- confessed 'Thrill Killers'. Stephen Dolginoff's multi-award winning musical Thrill Me - The Leopold and Loeb Story - examines the relationship between Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb - both wealthy, normal and intelligent Chicago students, about to commence training to become lawyers. The show begins at Leopold's 1958 parole board hearing. Through a series of flashbacks we are taken on a journey of two young men, one who believed he was above the law, obsessed and fuelled by the philosophy of Nietzsche to the point he believed he was a 'Superman' beyond good and evil. The other - a loner - became a willing accomplice, empowering Loeb in his misdemeanours. His reward - Richard's time, attention and conditional love! Together, they both believed they had perpetrated the perfect crime, or was one more certain than the other? Age Recommendation: 12 years + Informations sur le lieu Charing Cross Theatre The Arches, Villiers Street Informations sur le spectacle Monday to Saturday 8pm Saturday 4pm Joue de Joue jusqu’à Durée du spectacle: 90 minutes no interval Regardez la carte Regardez la carte 01 82 88 27 81 01 82 88 27 81 Ajouter au panier
Gripe Water Gripe water is a traditional homeopathic remedy that originated from Europe and has been around for several centuries. Customarily used to symptomatically relieve the discomfort caused by colic, gas, teething pain, hiccups, stomach cramps, and other minor gastric ailments in babies, it can also be used by adults in larger doses to treat similar intestinal complaints. Although gripe water has been used on babies in different European countries and in various blends since several centuries back, the first so-called official gripe water did not come about until 1851 in England, in the form of Woodward’s Gripe Water. Containing 3.6% alcohol, dill oil, sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), sugar and water, Woodward’s Gripe Water immediately became all the rage among mothers and nannies, who learned to freely use this remedy on their babies for their minor stomach upsets. Gripe water banks on the homeopathic abilities of its ingredients to relieve symptoms and to promote health. Homeopathy, which is said to be the second leading form of medicine in the world, with Chinese medicine said to be at number 1 and Western medicine at number 4, works by exploiting the ability of even the smallest doses of natural ingredients to fire up the innate self-healing faculties of the body. And unlike conventional drugs which tend to be associated with side effects and toxicities if not properly used, homeopathic remedies such as gripe water will generally not lead to adverse reactions if the wrong medication is taken for the wrong indication. Presently, as has been the case for centuries, there are a myriad of concoctions of gripe water circulating in the market. In general, gripe water can consist of an amalgamation of any of the following: alcohol, sodium bicarbonate, chamomile, fennel, caraway, ginger, peppermint, aloe, blackthorn, lemon balm, glycerin, sugar, fructose, dill weed oil, cinnamon, clove bud oil, cardamom seed oil, vegetable charcoal, and so on and so forth. These herbs and substances have been shown to bring about relief from a number of symptoms, examples being the following: chamomile for irritability, tension, anxiety and insomnia; fennel for indigestion, pain relief and its antimicrobial properties; ginger for nausea; caraway for heartburn, gas and intestinal spasm; peppermint as an antispasmodic and for the stimulation of bile flow; aloe for the relief of bloating as well as pain over the hepatic area; cinnamon bark as a carminative, astringent, stimulant and antiseptic; clove bud oil as an antiseptic, antiviral, antihelminthic, and relaxant; blackthorn as an antispasmodic; dill weed seed oil for its antimicrobial properties and to increase appetite; cardamom seed oil as a smooth muscle relaxant; and the like. Some gripe water recipes also include vegetable carbon, which adsorbs rather than absorbs toxins and gases, and therefore works as a cleansing agent that facilitates the flushing of toxins and gases from the body. Sodium bicarbonate works to decrease the acidity of the stomach. Glycerin, sugar and fructose, on the other hand, act as sweeteners which give gripe water its characteristic sugary, saccharine taste. Typically, a dose of about 2.5 to 10 mL of gripe water should be enough to effect symptom relief, depending on the size of the baby, and its intake may be instituted several times in one day. A dropper is used to administer the remedy to babies, and relief usually occurs after about 5 to 20 minutes of intake. Despite being recommended by many alternative medicine practitioners and being widely used in the US, in Europe and in India, gripe water has not been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This is based on the grounds that a lot of the gripe water brought in from other countries still have considerable amounts of alcohol and sodium bicarbonate in them, in levels that are generally considered unsafe and dangerous for children. And although the FDA mandated the automatic detention of consignments of the product being shipped into the US, gripe water from the UK, India and the like can still be bought in several ethnic groceries and convenience stores all over the US. Also, gripe water continues to be promoted and sold on the internet as a home remedy for the abovementioned ailments, and as a dietary and nutritional supplement, as well. Moreover, an article published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine in 2000 pointed out that the usual components of gripe water, such as those above, have disputable merit in terms of their efficacy in the remedy of gastrointestinal complaints, particularly those of babies. The review also mentioned that the associated relief provided by gripe water is more likely more of a result of its sweet flavor than of anything else.
I've just been unfriended on facebook. Had a cousin's wife post this approvingly and I pointed out that cursing someone and wishing them dead are such christian things to do. Went a few more messages but it looks like she must have come out of one of the more abusive sects. Because after she said me being an atheist makes my opinion moot, my saying we likely grew up in the same general religious traditions really crossed a line for her and one of her friends. Now I'm curious about which religion she grew up in. Don't even know if it's christianity or one of the others. Do you think anyone bothers to read all of Psalms 109 before reposting it. I read it before commenting and came away pretty damn horrified. Views: 147 Reply to This Replies to This Discussion I agree with Butterfly Ocean, the fact that your "friend" unfriended you should tell you that they were not a real friend in the first place. She is obviously is not tolerant of other viewpoints. I find tolerance a very good quality in a person or a friend. There is evidence that 'contemporary Christians' (evangelicals and charismatics) tend to want to see President Obama as a 'one term president' and want to have an openly dogmatic Christian president take his place. They have no problem with the blurring of Church and State when it comes to policy making, either. This is a troubling development... but not a surprise. Conservative Christians blame the President for just about everything bad going on right now...he's their scapegoat. The psalm, as far as I can tell is a call to arms. If you read the rest of the psalm it is a call for vengeance. To me they are calling for an assassination. Now before you tell me that I have gone cuckoo, these are the people telling us that he is a terrorist, a muslim, that he "hates America" and that pretty much as mojo5501 said caused all the ills in this country. They are even saying (still) that he is not an American at all. This is why I vote. I vote not because I feel that I have some responsibility to do it because of our freedoms. I feel that I need to at least get my one vote out there to eliminate the vote of one of these fundamentalist terrorists that parade around behind their bible. The line between what the bombers on 9/11 did and what these "christians" are asking for is pretty thin. Hiding behind a book and pretending they are "doing god's will" is an eerily similar argument to the bombers on 9/11. I'm right behind you in the voting booth, Tom. It is a civil duty...a secular duty. My voice should be equal to the voice of everybody else in the room... our society is culturally pluralistic for a REASON. The sane people have to cancel out the deluded ones...ha. Can't we all just be rational and reasonable here? I just hope the GOP electorate votes for a moderate candidate...because even though I'm an Obama loyalist, I fear--because of the economy--the American public is in the mood to 'throw out the incumbents' from BOTH political parties. Our current national mood: Newer is an improvement. Don't trust 'Washington insiders'. Give the job to a 'Job Creator'. Update Your Membership : Nexus on Social Media: Badges \| Report an Issue \| Terms of Service
Jigsaw Feeling Send me forwards-say my feelings But all the signals-send me reeling Jigsaw Feeling One day I'm feeling total the next I'm split in two My eyes are doing somersaults staring at my shoe My brain is out of my hand there's nothing to prevent The impulse is quite meaningless in a cerebral non-event Five fingers do my walking ten toes unravel 'Knots' Amorphous jigsaw pieces falling into slots So I just sit in reverie getting on my nerves The intangible bonds that keep me sitting on the verge of a breakdown of a reaction of a result (defeat me)Complete memaybedefeat me (Jigsaw feeling) Lyric: Severin Music: Severin/McKay
1. Headline 1. Headline Video: Sudan's al-Bashir denies genocide By Ann Curry NBC News updated 3/20/2007 10:13:05 PM ET 2007-03-21T02:13:05 Amid intense international pressure to stop the atrocities in Darfur, the president of Sudan reacted forcefully Monday, denying his government is complicit in ethnic cleansing and accusing the United States of having ulterior motives against Sudan. We have reported before on the tragedy of Sudan's Darfur region, where it has been estimated that hundreds of thousands have been killed in what the United States calls genocide. On Monday, Sudan President Omar al-Bashir gave NBC's Ann Curry an unprecedented two-hour, no-holds-barred interview — his first television interview to a Western journalist in three years: Curry:You're saying this is not true? Curry:The International Criminal Court is moving, as you know, to summon one of your top ministers in your government for crimes against humanity in Darfur in 2003 and 2004. Al-Bashir: We have judicial system in Sudan. Anyone who committed a war crime, anti-human crime or any other crime will be locked up. Curry:Do you believe he is guilty of crimes against humanity? Al-Bashir: No, not at all. I'm sure that he did not participate in any war crimes. The same forces behind the attack on Iraq are trying to do the same in Sudan. 1. More from TODAY.com 2. Lauren Hill, inspirational college basketball player, dies Curry:I myself have spoken to the people in Darfur — people who have been shot and burned and women who have been raped. Al-Bashir: Yes, there have been villages burned, but not to the extent you are talking about. People have been killed because there is war. It is not in the Sudanese culture or people of Darfur to rape. It doesn't exist. We don't have it. Al-Bashir also accused the United States of trying to seize Darfur's oil and gas riches. "The goal is to put Darfur under their custody," he said. "Separating the region of Darfur from Sudan." President al-Bashir accused the United States of angling to get access to what he says are Darfur's rich oil reserves. He also addressed how Sudan shared information about Osama bin Laden with the United States before 9/11 and that this deep intelligence relationship continues. We will bring you that Tuesday night. © 2013 NBCNews.com Reprints Discussion comments Most active discussions 1. votes comments 2. votes comments 3. votes comments 4. votes comments More on TODAY.com 1. @HillaryClinton/twitter 1. Courtesy Bryan Morseman Marathon dad's victories help raise money for son with spina bifida 1. YouTube 8 great celebrity impressions of other celebrities
Seattle signs 1st-round choice, Hultzen The deal includes a $6.35 million signing bonus. Hultzen, a 6-foot-3 left-hander, was 12-3 with a 1.37 ERA in 18 starts for Virginia. In three seasons, he was 32-5 with a 2.08 ERA. Hultzen, a 10th-round selection by the Diamondbacks three years ago, was a bit of a surprise pick for Seattle. The Mariners have had one of the worst offenses in baseball the past couple seasons. It was expected that they would use their second pick for a highly regarded position player such as outfielder Bubba Starling, who went to Kansas City with the fifth pick, or 3B Anthony Rendon, the sixth pick by Washington. Hultzen had been compared to veteran Cliff Lee for his mid-90s fastball and pinpoint control. He held opposing hitters to a .189 batting average with 17 walks and 148 strikeouts in 103 1-3 innings last season. He also can swing the bat. He played first base and DH, hitting .330 with 25 RBIs and had 18 steals in 19 attempts during his career. The junior from Windermere, Fla., hit .339 with 173 runs scored, 36 doubles, 8 triples, 16 homers and 135 RBI in 191 games (189 starts) in three seasons at Clemson. He had a career .451 on-base percentage, while ranking 7th in school history with 143 walks.
Prior to the 2007 general election, it felt like it was going to be a line-in-the-sand election of the 1948 variety. But, instead of the ‘48 outcome, where the other parties (and the public at large) grew so weary of the long reign of the Fianna Fáil government that they all banded together to heave them out of office, something else happened. That thing was Bertie Ahern. Even though his personal finances wouldn’t have been out of place in 1920’s Chicago, and even though he and his government ran the country in a fashion so lackadaisical it was almost Zen-like, on the two central acid tests of the election (the North and the economy) Bertie was deemed to have passed with a push and prevented the opposition from winning what should have been a slam dunk of an election. It also helped that a sizeable portion of the population seemed to think he was a puppy, as criticism of Bertie back then was often met with a loud chorus of “Ah would ye leave him alone, sure he’s only lovely!” Boy, was that a mistake. Now, two years after the former captain of Ireland’s political Hindenburg fritzed out the controls and leapt off with the only parachute on board, Bertie Ahern announced on New Year’s Eve that he was officially giving up the old flying Zeppelins business. That Ahern won’t run in next year’s general election, thus bringing an end to his 34 year reign of inanity, is no doubt satisfying, but in so announcing he made some statements that brought my gorge rising levels back to 2007 standards. “If I had seen the banking crisis coming. Nobody advised me, no economist, all those people now writing books saying ‘I told you so’ – none of them”, was one of his gems, for instance. For a politician with such a reputation for astuteness, he makes it sound as if he became Taoiseach as part of a TV talent contest with no prior experience in the field. While everyday politics is behind him he still has a promising career as a fantasy fiction writer at least. Of course not only were there some economists, journalists and, amazing as it is to conceive, ordinary people waving red flags (or at least suggesting that which goes up might have to come down eventually) but they were steadily trashed by the economic gravity defying Ahern, who insisted “the boom times are getting even more boomer”. He actually said this. On one shameful occasion, he notoriously suggested that anybody unhappy with the state of the economy commit suicide. When he was taken to task on it, he grinned his stupidest grin and said he didn’t mean anything by it. In the spongy, brightly coloured ball pool Bertie calls reality, this makes it all OK. If only he’d left his retirement speech with a merely galling “Sure how was I to know?” statement to satisfy his ego, but no, he had to out-git himself. In an interview with The News Of The World (the paper he writes a sports column/climbs into cupboards for) he criticised Brian Cowen’s leadership, intimating he wasn’t doing a good job at getting the government message out there and that if corrective measures had been taken by Cowen earlier or had a plan in place to make sure Ireland didn’t go the same way as Greece, Ireland may have dodged the EU/IMF bailout. Even by Ahern’s amoral standards, that is pretty extraordinary. Say what you want about Brian Cowen, and you could say loads, but loyalty is something he’s put a high premium on all his political life, and with this interview Ahern has shown that loyalty isn’t in his mangled vocabulary. Brazen self-preservation however courses through his veins, and with his criticism of Cowen he’s trying to get people to think that he would’ve handled things differently (and better, naturally) while at the same time scrawling “Nothing to do with me, pal” on the walls of the Irish financial system. But hell, why privately relay your concerns to the man who replaced you when you can get your sainted, perceptive head in the papers instead, eh? While those statements are enough to get the most mild mannered of people riled up, the one that really gets me is his response to questions about whether he will run for the Presidency later this year. “I don’t know. I honestly haven’t decided that”. Ahern knows full well that there’s more chance of William Shatner being elected Irish President than him, yet he couldn’t even answer that question honestly. Presidential run or not, Ahern’s recent statements show that he is fiercely protective of his legacy, and will do or say pretty much anything to maintain it. While of course his part in the Northern Ireland peace process was distinct and valuable, he was part of a large ensemble cast, and as the other promises of his 2007 election campaign are now distant spectres, he’ll struggle to stop his name sliding inexorably into historical disrepute no matter what he does. Ahern’s late constituency rival Tony Gregory used to commonly rail against various governments’ “Thatcherite” policies, and whether you agreed with the policies that word represented, you have to respect the fact that Thatcherite means something, that it stands for a certain set of values and principles and way of thinking that were resolutely defined. To what set of principles or causes of devotion would Ahernism correspond? It’s Ireland’s tragedy that during its’ most prosperous years we had a man in charge whose position was to be pro-being in charge and anti-someone else being in charge, whose policy was to vacillate and kick the ball down the field anything remotely contentious, whose philosophy was “Don’t over-think it, lads”. In the eleven years he was in charge, with the money we had swimming around, we could have had a health or education or transport system the envy of the world. We could have led the charge on the big challenge of the 21st century: making renewable energy mainstream. We could have promoted better civic engagement, encouraged the valuable work being done by ordinary people in their communities, and made big strides in ending inequality and disadvantage. Instead we drifted along, purposeless, with only a catalogue of waste, pointless pet projects and blunders masked by the heady aroma of economic growth a mile wide and an inch deep to show for it. That is Ahern’s enduring legacy. It’s a well-quoted fact that after securing a coalition deal with the PD’s in 1989, Charles Haughey called Bertie “the most cunning, the most devious of them all”. Charlie being Charlie he meant that as a compliment, but I’d go one better than that. Bertie Ahern is the most feckless, the most craven, the most ruthless, the most contemptible, the most noxious weasel of them all. Good riddance you wastrel, don’t let the doors of the Dáil hit you on the way out.
How do you download maps on windows? Discussion in 'General Minecraft Discussion' started by FrankieC, Aug 19, 2012. 1. I need a legit tutorial step by step of how to download minecraft maps online and play them, if anyone can either type one, refer me to another thread of find a 'LEGIT' and useful webpage for one, please post below :). PS. windows only. 2. SoulPunisher posted a tut, but Ill post a link to a site where you can get maps. You can find maps, mods and such there. =P 3. I'll add a bit to it :). 1. First, go to Or planetminecraft and find a map. 2. Once downloaded, unzip the file and you should get one of those typical yellow ones. 3. Press Windows Key and R, in the box type %appdata% and press enter. 4. Open the .minecraft folder. 5. Look for the Saves folder. Open it. 6. Drag the unzipped world file into there and it should be good, you just open Minecraft, login and choose it from the list when you go to load a game. Munchie86 and IamSaj like this. 4. There was a tut posted, but nice to see friendly peeps :) PandasEatRamen likes this.
tagErotic CouplingsEarth Day Up Up and Away Earth Day Up Up and Away There are times when you just hate the phone. This was one of them! My friend Carol had come over to help me celebrate hump day. After demolishing a delivery Pizza, we had just settled down to watch a nice porn tape with the promise that whatever we saw in the movie, we'd do while watching it. It was Carol who insisted that we watch nude. I raised no objections. The opening scene featured a girl giving a lucky man a blow job. Just as Carol's lips approached my throbbing penis.... Ring-a-ding-ding. Damn Phone! I wanted to rip it out of the wall and throw it out the window. I might have done just that, but I was too distracted watching Carol's lips approaching the tip of my dick. Two ringie dingie. God Damn thing! Carol's lips stopped an inch short of my cock. "Well, aren't you going to get the phone?" I'm not quite sure what I said, but it wasn't printable! I got up and walked the several steps to the phone and scooped it out of the cradle as it rang for the fourth time. Damn it! If Carol had let me ignore the damn thing, the answering machine would have taken over on the next ring. Instead I was going to be having a discussion, instead of a blow job! "Gary, this is Helen Schwartz., someone gave me your name. They said, you fly balloons?" "Well, I'm only a private pilot. I take it you want a ride?." Carol rose from the sofa, naked, and walked over to me. She gave me a bright smile with twinkling eyes and then knelt on the floor before me and sucked my whole throbbing cock into her mouth in one gulp. I had to work to stifle a gasp. "Sort of, I'm with the city park department and we're working on our earth day plans. We thought that the sight of a balloon flying would really help with the interest in our events. I heard that you might be interested if we provided the fuel." I looked down and watched as Carol's lips slid back to the tip of my cock and then slid more than half way up the shaft. Her lips made it hard to think. "Are you still there, Gary?" "Oh, uhhh, yeah. I might be willing to do it. It would all depend on the weather. Balloons are kind of particular about what weather we can fly in. Do you have people I would have to fly?" Carol's lips slid back to the tip of my cock and down again. I couldn't take my eyes off the way her lips looked around my cock. It was getting increasingly difficult to think about what Helen was saying. "I was thinking that, I might get a ride. Maybe the mayor?" "Well, I'd be happy to take you. I can take two passengers. I just want to warn you about the weather again. Not only does it have to be a nice day, but the winds have to be low. And when I fly might not work out either." I couldn't help gasping as Carol slid her mouth up and down once more. "Because of the atmosphere we usually only fly first thing in the morning or just before dark. That's when... oooooo... Ummm... there aren't too many up and down drafts." Damn! Carol was providing her fair share of up and down drafts right then! "Am I calling at a bad time?" I could just picture Helen on the other end. She was picking up on the extraneous noises I was making and I think identifying them correctly. "No, it's just fine." I lied. "What would you charge us? The park doesn't have a very big budget." "Like I said, I'm only a private pilot. I can't really charge you. But if you bought the propane that would be fine." I worked hard to suppress the moan that was rising to my throat. "On a one hour flight, I usually burn about 25 gallons of propane. I wouldn't charge you at all but I'd fly for the cost of the propane. I'd rather you just had my tanks filled when I was done, and not give me any money at all." "Sounds like we might be able to work that out easily enough. We'd love to have you there. Can I put a balloon flight in the brochure?" As Carol sucked in my cock, I had to suck in my breath. I tried to do it silently. "I won't promise to fly, but I will promise to be there and if the weather works I'd be happy to fly." "Thank you, Gary. I'll put you down and get back to you." "Wait a minute. Where do I need to be and when?" I knew I'd made a big mistake at that point. I hadn't considered the possibility of conflicts and I didn't have my calendar and I wasn't hot to get it. I was much more hot to see an excellent blow job finished! "The whole earth day thing, is not going to be a big deal. We're planning to do it in the evening of Earth Day, Friday April 22. It won't start till after work, so even the timing works out." I was hoping I would remember that and write it down. At that moment, I was a bit distracted. Carol's lips slid up and down one more time and my mind was mush. "Thanks, Gary. I'll call you again, when you're not so busy." She giggled and I knew she knew what was going on. I'm glad she couldn't see my blush. I put the phone back in the cradle and sighed. Carol did the most unwelcome thing. She pulled her mouth off my stiff, needy cock, and burst out laughing. I fixed her though... before she could say a word, I stuffed her mouth full of horny cock. She could not answer. After all, it is impolite to talk with your mouth full! Carol and I have a strange relationship. At least most people would think so. I was introduced to her by a swinging friend of mine. We are both relatively freshly divorced and both gun shy of relationships. I think of her as my best friend and hope she thinks of me the same way. Carol is one who's first marriage was destroyed by swinging. Her husband dragged her into it and when Carol discovered that she really liked it. He couldn't take her enthusiasm. Now, she will never give it up. She is the friend I always wanted. Cute and extremely horny, I don't have to be afraid to pick up the phone and call her. Sometimes we talk for hours like star crossed teenagers. Sometimes I just ask her if she'd like a good fuck tonight. What I like the most is that she feels just as free to call me and ask for a good romp in the hay. O.K., what I really like is that she isn't jealous! She hasn't just called me and asked if I'd like to fuck, she's called me and asked me if I'd like to fuck one of her friends. She's taken me places I never even knew existed. I put the earth day balloon flight out of my mind. It is easy to let such information flitter away when a beautiful woman has a lip lock on your tender part. They do say that a man has all his brains in the head of his dick. If anyone ever needed proof of that, this was it. Carol's distraction was a causative factor in my forgetting to write the date in my calendar. In fact, I almost completely forgot the conversation! It was rather a good thing that Helen called me the next day. I didn't curse the phone so much the next time. Carol wasn't there to distract me. "Gary, It's Helen. This is a better time than the last time I called, isn't it?" For a second, my mind whirled. Who was Helen? Oh, Oh, I remembered and I knew I'd been busted before! "It's just fine now, Helen." Charade time. "It was just fine the last time you called." "I'm just making sure you have the earth day flight scheduled. There aren't any problems are there?" My mind whirled a mile a minute! Oops! I hadn't put the date in the book, but I hadn't any others added either. Only problems were crew and weather. "No problems, Helen. I've got the flight down. I haven't gone looking for crew yet, but that shouldn't be a problem. Only reason not to fly would be the weather." "I was thinking that perhaps you and I should get together and discuss your part in the earth day celebration. Perhaps we could have lunch?" The first time I talked to Helen, my mind had not been on the conversation. This time I listened to her voice. She had a soft sultry voice that got my attention. "Sounds like a good idea to me. When would you like to do it?" "We could do it anytime. In fact, it's a lousy TV night and I wouldn't mind doing drinks right now. If you're not busy that is." I had no plans, except maybe a hot chat room. It almost sounded like Helen was asking me for a date and that flattered me. I don't think I had ever had a woman ask me out before. "Sure. Right now would be just fine. Just tell me where and when." It sounded like Helen was single. My only commitment was to Carol, and her only objection would be if I didn't tell her all about it. Why not! "How about the Brass Lamp Post in about half an hour?" She suggested. "I'll be there with bells on. I'll be the ugly guy hanging around the front door." She giggled. "I've heard that you are far from ugly. I'll be the beautiful voluptuous brunet girl in the jeans and T shirt accosting every single male that comes in." "Sounds like we won't have much trouble meeting, then. I'll see you in half an hour." "See you then." Her soft voice faded and she hung up the phone. The Brass Lamp Post was an upscale restraint/bar and it was only a mile or less from my home. I decided to use the time to primp. A fresh shave and a quick change of clothes and I was out the door. I was ten minutes early as I hung out by the front door, only drawing a few strange looks. Helen was right on time. In fact, I think she drove around the block once to either check out the available parking places or me. I choose to think it was the parking situation. Either way, she was a knockout. She stood about 5 foot 4 and had long chestnut brown hair that hung straight to the middle of her back. Her button nose set off two shimmering brown eyes. She had a trim waist, and large breasts, both of which were set off by the tight T shirt that she wore, which also outlined the bra underneath. She was about 10 years younger than I. I have to admit to being smitten with her on first sight, especially with the smile that lit up her face and flashed in her eyes. An initial feeling that only got stronger as the night progressed. We did talk about Earth Day and my part in the park department's festivities, but more than that we talked about .... Things... all kind of things. We talked and talked and then talked some more. We talked till closing time and then agreed to do it again some other time. What we didn't talk about were the things that could be important between us. We didn't talk about me not being ready for another serious relationship. We didn't talk about how she felt about relationships. We didn't talk about where this could be going. I didn't tell her that I was smitten with her. We didn't talk about sex. I told her about Carol. I didn't quite tell her the whole story, but I did tell her that we were sexually involved friends. She laughed and told me that she knew that part, since she knew that something was going on the first time we talked. The idea didn't seem to bother her at all. I guess I should have pursued that conversation, but I let it drop. I wasn't real comfortable talking about Carol. The next morning Carol called and told me she couldn't meet me for our every Friday date. My immediate reaction was to call Helen. Helen surprised me by being available for dinner. Except for starting the evening with dinner, and ending it with dancing, it was a repeat of the night before with lots of talking till closing time. There was one other difference, we ended the evening with a kiss. If one knew of the wanton life I'd led lately with Carol and my new friends, one might think that I would be sexually aggressive. The truth, however, is quite different. I'm really quite reserved sexually. I should have asked Helen that time honored question, her place or mine.. but ... I was chicken. Carol came over very early the next morning. The weather was perfect and we were flying the balloon. She really fit in with the group that was my crew. We flew a couple from town and then I took everyone out for breakfast. Then Carol came over to my house. Before I let her rape me, I told her about Helen and the last two nights. Carol got a twinkle in her eye and came into my arms. "Is she as good in bed as I am?" She asked it with a laugh in her voice and her eyes. "I wouldn't know. I didn't take her to bed." She looked at me seriously. "You know I wouldn't care in the least don't you?" "I know" "Well, next time. Sleep with her." "You know me. I never sleep with a girl. I keep her busy till morning." Carol giggled. "Oh yes you do. You are going to sleep with me, this morning. I'm gonna wear you out and you will have no choice but to take a short nap!" My hands pulled her shirt over her head. "Is that a promise?" Carol didn't answer. She was too busy for the next couple hours demonstrating. She won. By noon I was exhausted from the late night, the early morning and two hours of sex. We both fell asleep. That night, we had another flight. A beautiful one. Another happy couple. Two flights in one day left the crew and me tired. Carol was fitting right into the crew. They accepted her happily and she did her share of the work. After dinner Carol was feeling playful. First, she reminded me I owed her a balloon ride. Then, She wanted to know if there was any possible way for a balloon pilot to have sex with his female passenger. We started talking seriously about having sex in a balloon. It got to be fun. Of course the pilot had to see at all times, so one was limited in the number of possible positions one could employ. Before we started trying those positions in the bedroom, I called the crew and asked if they would be willing to do a little more work tomorrow. We planned an evening flight. Carol then insisted that we practice the proper technique for screwing in a balloon basket. She then proved once again, that I can sleep with a woman. We were both exhausted. Sunday was a beautiful day, with one exception. The winds picked up. It was just too windy to fly. Damn!. Sex flight canceled. But not the sex. Carol decided to leave in the early afternoon, a visit to sneak up on her adult son and see if she could catch him with his girlfriend. She scooped me in her arms and kissed me. "Why don't you call Helen and see if you can get into her panties since I'm not going to be keeping you company tonight?" This girl never ceased to amaze me. "Not tonight, dear, I have a headache." Carol giggled. "I wore you out did I?" "Yes, Ma'am." "I hope you recover by Wednesday. Because I intend to wear you out again!" I just kissed Carol and let her go. I didn't feel like sex or any other physically demanding activity, but suddenly I did feel lonely. I called Helen, but there was no answer and I left a message. I was planning to ask her to dinner. An hour later I tried to call again, but her phone was busy. Fifteen minutes later, I tried again, but again it was busy. I put in a microwaveable TV dinner and had just begun to dine on the fine cuisine when the phone rang "Hello." I knew right away it was Helen. "Hello, stranger. You been keeping busy over the weekend?" I heard a giggle in her voice. "Yep. I sure have. Flew the balloon a couple times yesterday." "I saw a balloon last night and wondered if it was you." We didn't get around to going out that night. We did, however, spend two hours on the phone. I was starting to feel like a teenager. A few minutes after I hung up with Helen, Carol called and we talked for another hour. As the evening was ending, I was cursing the phone again but for different reasons. My hand was cramped and my neck kinked from holding the phone! The week was a busy one. The weather was good again on Tuesday and I flew the balloon. Carol came over Wednesday and we flew again, by now she was an accepted member of the crew She had no trouble inflating either the balloon or me! Thursday, I had dinner with Helen and again we parted with a passionate kiss, and no more. I was wondering what would happen if I asked her to come over, but I was still too chicken to ask her for any sexual favors. I thought I felt her interest, but I was unsure and wanted a friend. I was afraid that to proposition her would mess that up. Friday, earth day, dawned and I got up with some sense of foreboding. I knew that Carol would be over to help fly and Helen would be there. I wondered what sparks would fly, and if those sparks would be of anger or lust. I was really worried, about the meeting of the two women. It made it hard to work that Friday. I wound up leaving work two hours early and going home to start getting ready. I checked out the equipment and then took out the power washer and had a go at the van and the balloon trailer. I drove to the park right at the appointed hour and was greeted at the entrance by a dazzling looking Helen. It was a casual celebration and Helen was having a jeans and T shirt day. The white of that shirt set off the dazzling sparkling brown eyes and hair. I wish I could say I saw those features first, but the truth is, it was her dazzling chest that first caught my eye. Helen was busy directing the activities for the park department but she gave me a dazzling smile and good directions to where she wanted me to set up. She had either planned it perfectly or luck was on my side. The spot was perfect. The day wasn't quite perfect. There were some high gray clouds and the wind was marginal. I could easily fly. I would even be happy to take one of my more experienced crew members, but I was afraid of a passenger who didn't know about drag outs. The wind was "whipping" at about 8 or 9 knots (about 10 ½ mph). Not really hard but fast enough that the landing would be about a 10 MPH crash. The balloon would not land straight up but pull the basket over on it's side and then take us for a ride on the side of the basket. Not dangerous if you knew what was coming, but very much so if you did not realize what would happen. The bodies had to be properly positioned so that the pilot and passengers did not crash into each other. Not to mention that 77,000 cubic feet of hot air would be blowing in the breeze while the crew had to hold it in place while I inflated it and heated the air. It made for a lot of work and strained muscles. The good thing was that the spot was perfect with trees screening the breeze from the launch spot, hopefully making the crew's job easier. I decided to do the leg work and I had the basket pulled out of the trailer and the canvas bag with the envelope laid out. I let the trailer do the work and just drug the stuff out then moved the van. Jim, was the first crew member to get there and with his help I got the burner extensions on the basket and lifted the burner onto them. Chuck got there in time to help us put the cables from the basket to the burner bracket with the four carbiners. Will got there just in time to help lay the basket on it's side. Jim and Chuck opened the bag and tipped it on its side as I reached inside to find the scoop and the mass of apparently tangled support and control cables. They were less tangled than they appeared. As the first two cables attached to the burner bracket with their carbiners the other two fell into place. Will was just dragging the gasoline powered fan into position when Carol got there. Jim and Chuck picked up the bag and began the long walk, trailing the envelope behind them as they pulled the bag along. The bag, containing the 250 pounds of envelope, getting lighter with each step. Finally the whole 60 plus feet of envelope was laid out on the ground along with another 65 or 70 feet of crown line. When it was all laid out, I began to check all the connections, all the fittings. The balloon was ready to inflate. The question was, would we fly? It was time to start that favorite time of all balloonists. Waiting, deciding, debating. We just abandoned the balloon and gathered together to talk about it. I filled a toy balloon with helium and let it loose. The trees cut the wind as it began to rise straight up but as it hit the burble of air at the top of the trees, it tumbled and then took off quickly to the west as it rose gently but driven quickly to the west. 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meaning of Camay Camay Camay Camay meaning in Urban Dictionary A name for a woman, generally an Asian, Pacific Islander, or African United states. Camay's want to use Camay brand soap, so they really are apt to have silky-smooth epidermis. They've been deceptively neat and pretty on the outside, but they are freaky in today's world. Camay's usually are friendly, calm, and easy-going, it will take a great deal to piss one off. If an angry Camay is encountered, do whatever it takes to prevent the trend which boiling within. A delightful model of detergent. Comes in three different plans that are all incredibly enjoyable to smell. This soap cleans remarkably well and there's a lot jealousy directed toward the elite crowd who buy this detergent. It's seen by most our planet's populace as the utmost "shibby" soap ever.
A loan of $425 helped to pay for labor and to buy manure and fertilizers. Feliz's story Feliz, 75, is a native of the community El Coyolar, Yali, located on the outskirts of Estelí. As a farmer, he grows coffee beans. He is married and a father of five children who are all adults. Since a very young age, he has worked in the field. Because he was born into a situation of poverty, he could not continue studying; he only learned the basics of putting down his initials as a signature. He devotes himself specifically to the coffee industry since the area in which he lives is appropriate and fertile for growing organic coffee beans. His humble hands begin their labor from the early hours of the morning and he returns during the evenings after a long day in the field. A machete and rubber boots are part of his daily uniform for when he goes out to sow a better life for his family. He does some of his field activities together with his children who help him with the sowing and selling of the product. He is requesting this loan to pay for labor and to buy manure and fertilizers to provide better land maintenance for about 3.5 acres of coffee trees. He hopes to have a good harvest and to manage selling it at a good price that will allow him to cover production costs, and at the same time, to increase his cultivated land. Translated from Spanish by Kiva volunteer Jeremy Orloski Loan details Lenders and lending teams Loan details
Floridata Plant Encyclopedia A Floridata Plant Profile 562 Uniola paniculata Common Names: sea oats, Chasmanthium paniculatum (synonym) Family: Poaceae (grass Family) Image Gallery sea oats These sea oats beautify and protect this Gulf of Mexico beach at the mouth of the Ochlocknee River in Florida's panhandle. Sea oats usually is the most conspicuous plant growing on the sand dunes behind wave-washed beaches along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts. It grows from underground stems (called rhizomes) in elongate colonies where the winds shift and swirl the sand. The leaves are up to 2 ft (0.6 m) long and 1 in (2.5 cm) wide. In summertime the 6 ft (1.8 m) above-ground stems (called culms) terminate in gracefully drooping 18 in (45.7 cm) clusters (called panicles) of flat, yellowish, 1.5 in (3.8 cm) long seedheads called spikelets (those botanists have to have a technical name for everything!) Sea oats, Uniola paniculata, occurs on sand dunes along the Atlantic coast from Virginia to Florida and around the Gulf to eastern Mexico, and in the northern West Indies. Cut to the ground in winter. Fertilize lightly. Light: Sea oats does well in full or partial sunlight. Moisture: Sea oats prefers a moist, fertile, sandy soil. Hardiness: USDA Zones 6 - 10. Tolerates frost. Propagation: Usually by seed, but the rhizomes can be divided. sea oat panicle Sea oats ripening in the late summer sun. Sea oats is a handsome ornamental grass, at its best in cultivated beds placed where its nodding seedheads can draw attention. Sea oats is tolerant of salt spray and saline soils. However it tends to be invasive, spreading by rhizomes, but is easy to cut back and well worth the effort. To keep any rhizotomous plant from spreading, dig a trench around the plant, out a foot or so from the roots, and install a plastic barrier that the rhizomes can't grow through, then fill the trench back in. Extremely salt tolerant, sea oats is often used in dune stabilization programs because its extensive system of underground stems and roots helps reduce erosion. The dried and cooked seeds are said to make a flavorful cereal. The mature seedheads are very decorative and commonly used in dried floral arrangements. Wild sea oats is protected in Florida and Georgia (and probably other states as well), not because it is endangered or threatened, but because it performs a valuable ecological service by stabilizing sand dunes. It is unlawful to pick wild sea oats (even the seeds), but you can buy the plants or the seeds from native plant nurseries who have permits to propagate protected species. Steve Christman 09/07/99; updated 12/6/99, 07/20/02, 1/14/04 Master Plant List Plant Type Tags tree icon shrub icon perennial plant icon aquatic plant icon cactus and succulents icon grass icon vine icon Feature Tags Attracts Birds Attracts butterflies Attracts Hummingbirds Edible Plants Cutting and Arranging for pots and containers drought tolerant plants grows in wet soils ornamental fruits fall color foliage plants easy to grow plants fast growing Site Search Uniola species profiled on Floridata: Uniola paniculata ( sea oats, Chasmanthium paniculatum (synonym) ) Copyright 2015 Floridata.com LLC
Men's Tennis Tops Central Florida, 4-3 ORLANDO, Fla. - The No. 46-ranked Quaker men's tennis squad edged Central Florida, 4-3, Tuesday afternoon at the UCF Tennis Complex. The Quakers were led by Jason Pinsky in No. 1 singles, as he defeated Sinan Sudas, 7-5, 6-0, to claim the first point for Penn. Jonathan Boym and Joseph Lok were also victorious in singles play for the Quakers. Penn won the doubles point after the tandem of Boym and Mikhail Bekker won their match, 8-4, and Brandon O'Gara and Justin Fox won, 8-5. 1.NormanAlcantara/Sinan Sudas (UCF) def. JosephLok/Jason Pinsky (P) 9-8 (8-6) 2. Jonathan Boym/Mikhail Bekker (UP) def. Sebastian Delgado/Alamgir Wali (UCF) 8-4 3. Brandon O'Gara/Justin Fox (P) def. Brock Sakey/Ben Soltane (UCF) 8-5 1. Jason Pinsky (P) def. Sinan Sudas (UCF) 7-5, 6-0 2. Alamgir Wali (UCF) def. Mikhail Bekker (P) 1-6, 6-3, 6-4 3. Jonathan Boym (P) def. Sebastian Delgado (UCF) 6-1, 6-3 4. Joseph Lok (P) def. Norman Alcantara (UCF) 6-2, 6-2 5. Brock Sakey (UCF) def. Justin Fox (P) 6-1, 6-3 6. Tarek Ben Soltane (UCF) def. Tas Tobias (P) 6-1, 6-2
Samhain- festivals of blood in Summer Samhain (Scots Gaelic: Samhuinn) literally means “summer’s end.” In Scotland and Ireland, Halloween is known as Oíche Shamhna, while in Wales it is Nos Calan Gaeaf, the eve of the winter’s calend, or first. With the rise of Christianity, Samhain was changed to Hallowmas, or All Saints’ Day, to commemorate the souls of the blessed dead who had been canonized that year, so the night before became popularly known as Halloween, All Hallows Eve, or Hollantide. November 2nd became All Souls Day, when prayers were to be offered to the souls of all who the departed and those who were waiting in Purgatory for entry into Heaven. Throughout the centuries, pagan and Christian beliefs intertwine in a gallimaufry of celebrations from Oct 31st through November 5th, all of which appear both to challenge the ascendancy of the dark and to revel in its mystery. In the country year, Samhain marked the first day of winter, when the herders led the cattle and sheep down from their summer hillside pastures to the shelter of stable and byre. The hay that would feed them during the winter must be stored in sturdy thatched ricks, tied down securely against storms. Those destined for the table were slaughtered, after being ritually devoted to the gods in pagan times. All the harvest must be gathered in — barley, oats, wheat, turnips, and apples — for come November, the faeries would blast every growing plant with their breath, blighting any nuts and berries remaining on the hedgerows. Peat and wood for winter fires were stacked high by the hearth. It was a joyous time of family reunion, when all members of the household worked together baking, salting meat, and making preserves for the winter feasts to come. The endless horizons of summer gave way to a warm, dim and often smoky room; the symphony of summer sounds was replaced by a counterpoint of voices, young and old, human and animal. In early Ireland, people gathered at the ritual centers of the tribes, for Samhain was the principal calendar feast of the year. The greatest assembly was the ‘Feast of Tara,’ focusing on the royal seat of the High King as the heart of the sacred land, the point of conception for the new year. In every household throughout the country, hearth-fires were extinguished. All waited for the Druids to light the new fire of the year — not at Tara, but at Tlachtga, a hill twelve miles to the north-west. It marked the burial-place of Tlachtga, daughter of the great druid Mogh Ruith, who may once have been a goddess in her own right in a former age. At at all the turning points of the Celtic year, the gods drew near to Earth at Samhain, so many sacrifices and gifts were offered up in thanksgiving for the harvest. Personal prayers in the form of objects symbolizing the wishes of supplicants or ailments to be healed were cast into the fire, and at the end of the ceremonies, brands were lit from the great fire of Tara to re-kindle all the home fires of the tribe, as at Beltane. As they received the flame that marked this time of beginnings, people surely felt a sense of the kindling of new dreams, projects and hopes for the year to come. The Samhain fires continued to blaze down the centuries. In the 1860s the Halloween bonfires were still so popular in Scotland that one traveler reported seeing thirty fires lighting up the hillsides all on one night, each surrounded by rings of dancing figures, a practice which continued up to the first World War. Young people and servants lit brands from the fire and ran around the fields and hedges of house and farm, while community leaders surrounded parish boundaries with a magic circle of light. Afterwards, ashes from the fires were sprinkled over the fields to protect them during the winter months — and of course, they also improved the soil. The bonfire provided an island of light within the oncoming tide of winter darkness, keeping away cold, discomfort, and evil spirits long before electricity illumined our nights. When the last flame sank down, it was time to run as fast as you could for home, raising the cry, “The black sow without a tail take the hindmost!” Even today, bonfires light up the skies in many parts of the British Isles and Ireland at this season, although in many areas of Britain their significance has been co-opted by Guy Fawkes Day, which falls on November 5th, and commemorates an unsuccessful attempt to blow up the English Houses of Parliament in the 17th century. In one Devonshire village, the extraordinary sight of both men and women running through the streets with blazing tar barrels on their backs can still be seen! Whatever the reason, there will probably always be a human need to make fires against the winter’s dark. Divination at Halloween Samhain was a significant time for divination, perhaps even more so than May or Midsummer’s Eve, because this was the chief of the three Spirit Nights. Divination customs and games frequently featured apples and nuts from the recent harvest, and candles played an important part in adding atmosphere to the mysteries. In Scotland, a child born at Samhain was said to be gifted with an dà shealladh, “The Two Sights” commonly known as “second sight,” or clairvoyance. Apple Magic At the heart of the Celtic Otherworld grows an apple tree whose fruit has magical properties. Old sagas tell of heroes crossing the western sea to find this wondrous country, known in Ireland as Emhain Abhlach, (Evan Avlach) and in Britain, Avalon. At Samhain, the apple harvest is in, and old hearthside games, such as apple-bobbing, called apple-dookin’ in Scotland, reflect the journey across water to obtain the magic apple. Dookin’ for Apples Place a large tub, preferably wooden, on the floor, and half fill it with water. Tumble in plenty of apples, and have one person stir them around vigorously with a long wooden spoon or rod of hazel, ash or any other sacred tree. Each player takes their turn kneeling on the floor, trying to capture the apples with their teeth as they go bobbing around. Each gets three tries before the next person has a go. Best to wear old clothes for this one, and have a roaring fire nearby so you can dry off while eating your prize! If you do manage to capture an apple, you might want to keep it for a divination ritual, such as this one: The Apple and the Mirror (When you look in the mirror, let your focus go “soft,” and allow the patterns made by the moon or candlelight and shadows to suggest forms, symbols and other dreamlike images that speak to your intuition.) Dreaming Stones Go to a boundary stream and with closed eyes, take from the water three stones between middle finger and thumb, saying these words as each is gathered: I will lift the stone As Mary lifted it for her Son, For substance, virtue, and strength; May this stone be in my hand Till I reach my journey’s end. (Scots Gaelic) Togaidh mise chlach, Mar a thog Moire da Mac, Air bhrìgh, air bhuaidh, ‘s air neart; Gun robh a chlachsa am dhòrn, Gus an ruig mi mo Leave a Reply You are commenting using your account. Log Out / Change ) Twitter picture Facebook photo Google+ photo Connecting to %s
Top 7 reasons people quit Linux I've heard a lot of excuses why people quit Linux, and return to Windows. I'm happy to say that the excuses are getting far less common nowadays. But I still hear 'em. 3. I tried Linux but I had to type commands! OMG!!! Really? But seriously. So what? Are you scared of the keyboard? This is usually related to point #2 above, and it's usually a one-off manoeuvre designed to get something working. For example, to get DVD playback on Ubuntu, you have to type a certain command after downloading software. Once done, however, DVDs will play back automatically forever and ever. If you had to do this every time you wanted to play a DVD then you might have a point. But typing a few strange words won't kill you. There are also those who take a haughty position and project their fear onto others: "I had to type commands! Ergo Linux just isn't ready for the ordinary person!". Here, the individual concerned seems to be implying that the "ordinary user" (whoever that might be) suffers from an intelligence deficit and is incapable of typing commands. It that really true? Why do we always assume that other people can't possibly be as smart as we are? 4. I did this, and this happened. That doesn't happen with Windows! Again, so what? Nobody said Linux was a clone of Windows. Things are going to be different now you're using Linux. Not necessarily better, not necessarily worse. Just different. You're over the rainbow, Dorothy! Rather than griping about your troubles, why don't you get used to it? If you're unable to adapt, it says more about you than it does about Linux. It's true that some community members aren't paragons of virtue and honor. These kind of people are found in all walks of life, however, and are best avoided. You can't blame Linux for their existence. But in most examples of this complaint, the individual concerned brought wrath on themselves in one of several ways: a) By being aggressive and/or unfriendly in their posting, or in their replies to other people. Yeah, you might be frustrated that you can't get Linux to work how you want, but try and keep that temper in check; b) By not doing basic homework before asking for help, such as searching the forum for a particular issue that may be extremely common. There's only so many times community members can answer the same query before getting annoyed; c) By simply not respecting Linux and its culture. Switching operating systems is like switching support for a sports team. When chatting with fellow fans, you can't keep mentioning how good you think the other team is, or how you think their techniques are better. In fact, even making reference to the other team might stretch your fellow fans' patience to breaking point. 6. I just don't like it It would be marvellous if people were honest enough to state this as bluntly as I've listed it above. After all, Linux isn't for everybody. But what people with this complaint always do is make a spurious argument about usability -- that wonderfully nebulous term that means different things to different people. "Linux just isn't as usable as Windows or OS X," they'll say. When asked to backup their complaint with evidence, they don't bother to reply. What they're really saying, of course, is that Linux was unfamiliar and spooked them so much that they ran back to Windows. Again, this is reasonable. It's their choice. But they shouldn't pretend they're making an objective evaluation. It's just an opinion. Typically the person with this complaint will say something like, "I installed Linux and the installer program crashed half way through. I tried to boot but nothing happened and I found myself at a command prompt. I eventually got the desktop running but none of the programs worked correctly." This might also be known as the "shaggy-dog story", because it's usually a long and rather pointless tale of things going wrong. (Ironically, their attempts to fix things usually makes the situation worse. But I digress.) Most times I've no idea what the cause of the problems are, and the individual concerned has my sympathy. But I do know that what they describe is probably a one-off event, and definitely not indicative of what most people experience. As with point #6 above, it's not really fair to make an objective argument out of it, because--effectively--it's little more than one person's bad luck. If it happens to you, just pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and try again. Join the Good Gear Guide newsletter! Error: Please check your email address. Tags Linuxubuntu Keir Thomas PC World (US online) Show Comments Lexar® JumpDrive® S57 USB 3.0 flash drive Learn more > Microsoft L5V-00027 Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboard Desktop Learn more > Lexar® JumpDrive® S45 USB 3.0 flash drive Learn more > Audio-Technica ATH-ANC70 Noise Cancelling Headphones Learn more > Lexar® JumpDrive® C20c USB Type-C flash drive Learn more > Learn more > HD Pan/Tilt Wi-Fi Camera with Night Vision NC450 Learn more > Back To Business Guide Click for more › Most Popular Reviews Latest News Articles GGG Evaluation Team Michael Hargreaves Windows 10 for Business / Dell XPS Aysha Strobbe Windows 10 / HP Spectre Mark Escubio Windows 10 / Lenovo Yoga Kathy Cassidy Anthony Grifoni Featured Content Latest Jobs Don’t have an account? Sign up here Don't have an account? Sign up now Forgot password?
[Haskell-cafe] Trouble with numbers Stuart Cook scook0 at gmail.com Fri Feb 29 03:35:12 EST 2008 On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 7:09 PM, Lloyd Smith <lloyd.g.smith at gmail.com> wrote: > I mixed up my types when finding the allocated and unallocated, > but I am not sure why it produces an error when unallocated and > allocated are never used? Shouldn't the two functions be compiled > down to the same thing? > Suggestions on how to do this more elegantly as well as pointers for > understanding numeric > type classes would be appreciated. Let's have a look at the types involved: Prelude> :t allocate' allocate' :: (RealFrac a, Integral b) => a -> [a] -> [b] Prelude> :t allocate allocate :: (Integral b, RealFrac b) => b -> [b] -> [b] We can see that (allocate') takes RealFrac arguments and returns an Integral result. So far so good. However, the signature for (allocate) is slightly different: it requires that the argument and result types be the same. Unfortunately, this is impossible, because no type can have a sensible instance for both RealFrac and Integral. Why do the two functions have different signatures? The obvious culprit is the "unused" code in the definition of (allocate'). Notice that (allocated) will use the same underlying type as (vs), which is the "return" type of the function. However, unallocated tries to subtract (allocated) from (n), and (n) has the "argument" type of the function. The type-checker sees the two types must be the same in order for the subtraction to work, and so the overall function ends up with a nonsense type. The moral of the story is that even though that extra code might not execute at run-time, it can still influence type-inference and type-checking, which is your actual problem here. The solution for your woes is probably to insert a (fromIntegral) somewhere. I suspect that allocated = fromIntegral $ sum vs will do the trick. Hope this helps, More information about the Haskell-Cafe mailing list
Plainview police are searching for a white semi-truck/trailer that damaged a diesel fuel pump at the CEFCO at Interstate 27 and Olton Road. Police report that the truck was attempting to turn around about 7:15 a.m. Wednesday when it clipped a fuel pump in one of the truck bays on the south side of the store. The driver fled the scene and police were reviewing surveillance video to identify the driver and trucking company involved. The Plainview Fire Department was dispatched to the scene where firefighters used chemical absorbent to clean up a minor diesel spill.
You've got family at Ancestry. Find more Vikemyr relatives and grow your tree by exploring billions of historical records. Taken every decade since 1790, the U.S. Federal Census can tell you a lot about your family. For example, from 1930 to 1940 there were 2 more people named Vikemyr in the United States — and some of them are likely related to you. Start a tree and connect with your family. Create, build, and explore your family tree. What if you had a window into the history of your family? With historical records, you do. From home life to career, records help bring your relatives' experiences into focus. There were 8 people named Vikemyr in the 1930 U.S. Census. In 1940, there were 25% more people named Vikemyr in the United States. What was life like for them? Picture the past for your ancestors. In 1940, 10 people named Vikemyr were living in the United States. In a snapshot: • They typically took 41 weeks of vacation a year • 80% were children • 50% of adults were unmarried • On average men worked 15 hours a week Learn where they came from and where they went. As Vikemyr families continued to grow, they left more tracks on the map: • Most immigrants originated from Norway • They most commonly lived in Wisconsin • 1 migrated within the United States from 1935 to 1940 • 1 were born in foreign countries
Three Questions for Prashant Kadam Posted: July 19, 2011 - 14:48 , by Laura Comerford For a long time, bioscopes have been a part of India’s bustling landscape, an aspect of childhood that came and went as bioscopewallahs travelled through the country. Bioscopes are an early movie projector taking the form of a wooden box, the interior of which has pictures that can be viewed through four circular holes. Bioscopewallahs are the people who would make their living by them, setting up temporarily and offering them as entertainment to children. When Prashant Kadam found out about Rau, one of the few people who still make their living through the bioscope, he decided that this fading form of what he argues is performance art needs to be documented and remembered. In the lead up to the free screening of his film The Bioscopewallah alongside Painted Nation, Prashant answered our questions about making the documentary. The film screens this Thursday, July 21 at 7pm, followed by a Q&A with the director and producer of Painted Nation, and of course Prashant will be there available to answer questions as well. What role do you think bioscopewallahs have played in the history of film? Before television became popular in India there were very few sources of entertainment for children. There were hardly any films made for children. The bioscopewallahs perhaps filled that void and almost every adult now in India remembers them. It was perhaps the novelty of the photographs inside the Bioscope and the way the bioscopewallahs presented those pictures that enchanted the children the most. Interestingly, the majority of the pictures inside of the Bioscope are of popular cinema actors and actresses. Being exposed to the enchantment of ‘watching cinema’ at an early age and getting exposed to this ‘cinematic experience’—albeit a very short one—may have created a certain awareness and curiosity for cinema in general. The bioscopewallahs were very popular and performed all over the country. I believe that they may have been a catalyst in making the medium of cinema so popular in India, which is home to the largest movie watching phenomena in the world. What was Rau’s reaction when you told him you wanted to make a documentary about him? He is a very simple and humble human being. He was just glad that a documentary was being made. I shall forever be in debt to his enchanting performance. Why do you think it is important to tell the story of this bioscopewallah? I strongly believe that the bioscopewallahs performed a significant social and cultural role, just as any other performing artist does. It is very unfortunate that society in general has failed to recognize them as performing artists. There are numerous stories/books/documentaries/films depicting various ‘classical’ forms of performances, be it song or dance. However these ‘classical’ arts were generally performed to entertain the Rajas and Nawabs. It is not until recently that the folk-arts and culture has been given attention. The idea of making a documentary on the bioscopewallahs was also brushed aside by an ‘established’ media educator in India whom I attempted to consult during the research phase of my project. Even within folk culture there are numerous elements that need to be simply documented for archival and historic purpose. The story of the bioscopewallah therefore may stand to represent the way in which they generally performed their show. How and where they lived. However due to the implicit nature of most visual media, the short film also opens a number of questions that an inquisitive mind may want to research further. My reason for making the film was more nostalgic in nature with a hope to make a visual document before it vanished without any historiography.
Three Planetary Futures After the water wars: Las Vegas, the loser, is abandoned by its residents, and left to become a surreal eco-tourism destination. Photo illustration by John Blackford. I: Las Vegas, Nevada So the Hoover’s spillways were opened, and what remained of the Colorado trickled off to Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, and Mexico (which had sworn to cut off tributaries to the Rio Grande if it didn’t receive a share). The glittering southern Nevada town named for its vegas—meadows of sacaton grass that once grew around artesian springs burbling up from surrounding mountains, until they were pumped dry—had also tried piping in water from ranches as far as 250 miles to the north. But those wells, too, succumbed to deepening drought. Finally, by the mid-2030s, what had been America’s fastest-growing city at the turn of the 21st century just gave up. The verdant lawns surrounding the Garden of the Gods at Caesars Palace have now reverted to desert crust. After the drip irrigators ceased delivering, the once immaculately trimmed laurels and Italian cypresses withered. They have been supplanted by rough Mojave shrubs like creosote and bursage, which dot the grounds amidst tall tufts of red brome grass. An aggressive European interloper carelessly introduced by ranchers, brome grass sprouts early, snatching what little spring rain falls before native species have a chance. With ornamental hotel flower beds shriveled and gone, the most vivid color comes from another hardy invader, Sahara mustard, otherwise known as rapeseed, an escapee from cattle feed. Its pungent yellow blooms are pollinated by yet another spreading immigrant: Africanized bees. The plastered walls of empty casinos crack and exfoliate, shedding ever larger patches of stucco in desert heat that now regularly reaches 130 degrees Fahrenheit in July and August. (Although the city is abandoned, the pavement of Las Vegas still acts like a heat island, its concrete retaining enough warmth by night to keep daytime temperatures consistently several degrees hotter than the surrounding desert.) Without crowds of people, whiptail lizards, desert iguanas, and stout chuckwallas abound. Plodding desert tortoises, once tragically vulnerable to speeding motorists, are also enjoying a comeback. Hotel rooms have become habitats to thrifty kangaroo rats that live on seeds and minuscule amounts of moisture. As the number of seed-producing plants has declined, so has the kangaroo rat’s population, but the species survives. Except for that most adaptable quadruped, the ever tough coyote, large animals have suffered severely from the lack of water. Bighorn sheep are nearly gone from Mount Charleston, rising north of town, as are pronghorn antelope in the flats, and the number of mountain lions, which prey on both, has accordingly dropped. Horses and burros—equines that originated in the Americas and were re-introduced into the New World by Spanish conquistadors—had established substantial feral herds in Nevada and Utah’s Great Basin during the 19th and 20th centuries, but as drought persisted, increasingly they depended on artificial guzzlers set up by well-meaning people—animal lovers who are now gone. Some donkeys and mustangs have managed to survive, however, because with no more human beings around to pump groundwater, oddly enough Las Vegas’s original historic water source has modestly returned: sporadic rains in the mountains around the city have gradually replenished the old artesian springs. Nearly a century earlier, they had vanished beneath Fremont Street, site of downtown Las Vegas’s early grand casinos like the Golden Nugget. Now they are again welling to the surface, breaching cracked pavement and creating pressure fissures that cause parts of the nearby I-15 and U.S. 95 highway interchange to buckle and collapse. That’s where buses making the day trip from Los Angeles must stop to disgorge tourists, who, out of nostalgia or ghoulishness, still come to Vegas—no longer to gamble, but to gawk at this postmodern Western ghost town. Water bottles in hand, slathered in sunscreen, they trudge through gusts of sand down Las Vegas Boulevard to the city’s last functioning structure: a bare-bones visitors’ center at the base of the Eiffel Tower replica, which they can ascend to take photographs of the once lavish tourism mecca. Devoid of flashing marquees and imported tropical foliage, in the desiccated glare Las Vegas now resembles not so much its former neon-hued glory, but the biblical claimants to the name that it once dared to officially call itself: Sin City. The wrath that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah couldn’t have left a sorrier ruin than this one. Cairo, a century hence: driven by ecological disaster, refugees flood the city by the millions, some from sub-Saharan Africa. Photo illustration by John Blackford. II: Cairo, Egypt The ancient name of Egypt’s first Arab capital, Misr al-Fustat, means “City of Tents”—and in 2108, Cairo has come full circle. A century earlier, it was already a city of 17 million residents piled atop one another in high-rises crammed into the narrow floodplain of the Nile, at the point just before the river’s huge delta begins to spread northward to the Mediterranean. Now, the capacity of those high-rises has been overwhelmed by the greatest influx of refugees in human history. Most of the 40 million or so people pressing against the pyramids will never leave here. With Egypt’s housing authority effectively stymied, so-called temporary shelters of heat-reflective polymer sheeting provided by U.N.H.C.R.—the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, lately the world’s most thinly stretched bureaucracy—will be their permanent fate. Long before a century of rising temperatures begat streams that turned into torrents of humans pouring in from ruined farmlands, Cairo—U.N.H.C.R.’s major processing center in North Africa—was already a magnet for displaced people. Besides Palestinians, Eritreans, Ethiopians, Iraqis, and thousands of Sudanese and Somalis fleeing civil war or worse, beleaguered immigrants arrived here from as far away as West Africa’s Ivory Coast and Liberia, gambling that the U.N. would bless them with legal refugee status and make them eligible for resettlement programs. Each year, rising salinity leaves more formerly rich delta bottomland useless for the wheat, rice, bananas, cotton, corn, lentils, melons, tomatoes, and vegetables that once abounded here. In fields covered with a glaze of evaporated brine, agricultural agencies now plant salt-tolerant pickleweed. Although pickleweed is edible, neither humans nor goats have embraced the chewy succulent as a steady diet, and it has not become a cash crop. So annually, more delta families head upstream toward burgeoning Cairo; at the same time, more refugees stagger in from the opposite direction, as Africa’s parched Sahel succumbs to Sahara dunes advancing up to six miles in a single year. On top of these arrivals, Egypt’s population has doubled from 80 to 160 million since the beginning of the 21st century, a rate of reproduction that relentlessly climbs despite frequent waves of cholera and other lethal epidemics. With the delta dying, the only place left to grow food is the slender strip along the Nile south of Cairo: a green ribbon cutting between bleached plateaus so dry that tombs only a few hundred yards from the floodplain hold mummified remains that have spent the past 4,000 years virtually moisture-free. But even with the former pride of Egyptian agriculture—extra-long-staple cotton—now uprooted to make way for more grains to feed the masses, there is simply no more land left to cultivate. As U.N.H.C.R.’s struggle against starvation turns bleaker, an Egyptian conundrum nearly 150 years old is coming to a head. Back in the distant past—1960—an infusion of Soviet money changed Egyptian history and ecology and the character of the Nile River by building the Aswan High Dam, some 500 miles upstream from Cairo. Until then, the Nile had flooded every summer, depositing millions of tons of sediment that renewed the soil for the year’s plantings and literally built the delta. With the Nile’s flow tamed, fields and settlements were protected from floodwaters, but the trade-off was the loss of all the nutrients borne by river silt, which stayed trapped in Lake Nasser, the vast reservoir behind the dam. This proved a bonanza for hawkers of artificial fertilizer, upon which all Egyptian agriculture henceforth depended. But now, nearly a century and a half later, U.N. and Egyptian officials are increasingly unable to afford enough chemical soil additives to feed an increasingly uncontrollable, hungry rabble. They are at the brink of deciding to tear down Aswan Dam, before people rise up to do it themselves. Already, refugee leaders are declaring themselves sick of subsisting on flatbread and U.N.H.C.R. rations, warmed in aluminum solar ovens because firewood is long gone and there’s barely any other fuel, and are tired of fighting over pickleweed, hydroponic vegetables, and mini-mushroom-farms-in-a-box because there is no more available arable land. They are demanding that the river roar forth again, to restore the alluvium and deposit a new, fertile Nile Delta above the new, higher Mediterranean shoreline. Let the unleashed Nile scour away the sewage and foul pestilence accumulating around permanent refugee camps that all the U.N.H.C.R. personnel on earth couldn’t haul away fast enough. In doing so, of course, the homes of millions would be washed away. But, after all, isn’t that what tents are for? III: Nanisivik, Baffin Island But nobody back then had any idea how quickly the summer Arctic sea ice would disappear. From 2005 to 2007 alone, fully a quarter of North Polar ice—once so solid it may as well have been a landmass like Antarctica—simply vanished. What remained was barely five feet thick: half what was normal. Just six years later—in 2013—the so-called Arctic Grail that so many explorers famously froze to death trying to find had become a reality: an ice-free Northwest Passage between Europe and Asia, 4,500 miles shorter than crossing via the Panama Canal. The Inuit who lived on barren Baffin Island, at the eastern end of the Passage, wondered if they were about to get rich. To service the new shipping corridor, the Canadian government announced plans for a deep-water port on Baffin at Nanisivik, a former lead-zinc mine above the Arctic Circle. To the 12,000 residents of this, the fifth largest island on earth—more than twice the size of Great Britain—that news was urgently welcome, because their livelihoods were melting right along with the ice. The seals they traditionally hunted depended on a food chain adapted to frigid conditions: a chain beginning with plankton and algae that lived on the ice itself, linked to the small fish and crustaceans that ate them, which in turn were eaten by polar cod, food to the seals. The ice had been the chain’s anchor; without it, the seas seemed as unrecognizable to the Inuit as the Caribbean. Talk swirled of fueling facilities, a duty-free zone, international banking centers, hotels, restaurants, and a population surge to fill new jobs, which would mean a real-estate bonanza on a hitherto barely populated island best known for long polar nights. Canada’s first mistake, however, was to count on charging transit fees like those the Panama and Suez Canals collect, worth up to $4 billion per year. The rest of the world, however—Asia, Europe, Russia, and the neighboring United States—unanimously considered the Northwest Passage to be international waters, and proved unimpressed by a lone military base across the Passage from Baffin Island, intended to ensure Canadian sovereignty. After some costly years of negotiations, Canada had to settle for a quarter of the expected amount. Second mistake: officials in Ottawa failed to grasp how fast the Arctic was changing. True, the unprecedented spreading boreal forest of spruce, larch, and fir on a formerly treeless island enhanced Baffin’s scenery. But that was merely a harbinger of unpredictable climate chaos. Roads atop thawing permafrost crumpled in mid-construction. Despite expensive, insulated pavement liners to keep permafrost frozen, within a few years streets would sink anyway and need replacing. Sewer and water lines regularly snapped. Pilings beneath docks lurched and warehouse foundations sagged as ice-bound soil turned into a soggy sponge. By 2050, the chronic cost of maintenance was exacerbated by water shortages. Because of low evaporation, the cold Arctic is mostly a desert, its annual precipitation usually not much more than the Sahara’s. Countless northern lakes, formed thousands of years earlier as receding glaciers dropped icebergs that melted into permafrost kettle holes, now wicked away into thawed ground. Baffin Island’s caribou, dependent on that fossil water and on moss and lichens bred to longer, colder winters, had mostly starved, and the population of Arctic wolves that preyed on them plummeted accordingly. The caribou’s other major predators, mosquitoes and black flies, next focused on the most available mammal around, Homo sapiens. Besieged humans attacked back with pesticides, and the fragile Arctic environment declined further as already precarious ptarmigan and gyrfalcons also succumbed to the sprayed poisons. Hardier Canada geese prevailed in the skies, as did a tough new recruit from the south: American crows. Long before, though, eco-disaster had already become the rule. An ice-free Northwest Passage wasn’t necessarily risk-free: along with routine fouling of port waters as ships refueled, the first major oil spill occurred in late September 2025, when an empty container ship deadheading back to China from the U.S. east coast collided with a hunk of ice moving in for winter. Now, in 2050, there is no more winter ice, but plenty of other hydrocarbon messes abound, because for decades Canada’s warming northern continental shelf has been open for gas- and methane-hydrate exploration. The Arctic’s land rush turned out instead to be a sea rush, as offshore-drilling leases went for more than comparably sized real-estate parcels in downtown Toronto. Taking cues from lessons learned by engineers from Alaska to Canada’s Mackenzie River Delta, fighting to hold oil and gas pipelines together atop thawing tundra, Nanisivik has become a petro-port. This economic solution, fueled—literally—by the same carbon-based culprit that undid Arctic ecology, will soon be accompanied by another boom, government and industry officials assure Baffin Islanders. That will be carbon sequestration: technology in which methane’s dirty carbon atoms are separated from clean-burning hydrogen atoms and stored deep in the ground. With permafrost now just a memory, drilling down there won’t be a problem. Alan Weisman is the author of The World Without Us, published in July 2007 by Thomas Dunne Books.
-T / T / +T \| Comment(s) Tuesday, July 1, 2014 In the Grip of the Octopus By Marijan Jozic With the introduction of the Boeing 787 and the A350 come new business models for Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). In order to play a major role, or just any role at all in aircraft systems, OEMs must invest many resources and much effort in helping Boeing and Airbus design the aircraft systems through all the high costs of development. Under all the pressure, airframers argued that it would be much cheaper and easier if they only had to certify one system. The very moment that philosophy took root, airframers scored a deal; but, at the same time, they also killed the competition. We all remember the time of Terrain alert Collision Avoidance Systems (TCAS). At that time, there was more than one OEM developing aircraft components. The competition between Honeywell, Rockwell Collins and Allied Signal was intense, but the end users (airlines) were very happy because they could negotiate good price of their Line Replaceable Units (LRUs). Now, in the case of the modern 787, you can’t do that — there is a single source and that’s it. Is the aircraft cheaper? Not really, but by doing that and sharing development costs, airframers created a new business environment. The OEMs now have to capture the aftermarket, which was traditionally in the hands of airlines, which were able to make some money doing maintenance. Avionics Shops Most big airlines had excellent and huge avionics shops, a lot of new technology, and a lot of outstanding technicians. It is a difficult task to compete with that system, which had been running for decades, and OEM’s had to plan carefully in advance and be very patient. But now, MROs are complaining, because they see and feel that they are losing ground in the cutthroat competition that is the survival of the fittest. While they once wanted the challenge, MROs are now recognizing the cost and find themselves in the grip of the octopus. The tentacles are strong and each one of them can strangle the MRO shop. Let me introduce you to the tentacles! Tentacle number one is the diminishing content and accessibility of repair manuals. Although that reduction of content is not rampant, still OEMs have moved content to different chapters or even different books, which is very confusing. They also have the power to issue revisions almost every day. By the time the MRO incorporates the revision, the next revision is already on the shelf. But it is easy for the OEM to keep revising manuals, because the digital nature of distribution means they no longer have to print it and distribute physically. Just revise something, anything, and place it on the web. If you are the airline, you are allowed to use the manual only for your own fleet. Third party work is absolutely forbidden unless you arrange it legally via delegation letters. And it is not becoming easier. That means new costs, which are added to the costs of the MRO product, making that MRO less competitive. Now, meet tentacle number two: high annual price escalation for LRUs and parts. If it is about SFE, then there is a limitation imposed by a Product Support Agreement (PSA). For BFI, it depends on the quality of your own contract. Again, it means, among other things, additional costs for MROs. Tentacle number three is the poor delivery performance of the OEMs. It looks like a game and sometimes appears as a coincidence, but to me there appears to be a pattern. Lead times are long for everything. If you buy the new stuff, expect lead times of 240 to 360 days. It is the same with parts. And it is not getting better. Yes, tentacle three is the dramatic complication and additional costs for the MRO. Tentacle number four: upgrading parts or making parts obsolete; this is a difficult one. Although there is an obsolescence plan required for each OEM, many times they don’t comply. If OEMs need more revenue, they declare a part obsolete and try to sell a new redesigned LRU, which is better (of course), more reliable (of course) and more expensive (naturally). The game can be played indefinitely. OEMs will of course oppose PMA parts or DER repairs. PMA parts are nowadays better than ever, but they are getting bad publicity. People who are not an engineer can easy decide to ban PMA parts and the little bit of competition against OEM will be extinguished. Nevertheless, MRO costs will again get higher as they can only use marked-up original parts. Then there is the fifth tentacle: limited access to tooling, education and technical support. If you want to buy tooling, it is typically not put on the table. If you want a drawing, it is proprietary, and if you want to buy a drawing, they don’t have a price available. On the other hand, the training is not scheduled; instead, it is on request and there is always some problem, because you are the only one asking for training. Getting technical support is also a problem because you can’t get real people on the telephone line. You must send them an email, which will be responded to by a computer generated email or maybe even the email address will be unknown. If you fill out the form on their web portal, you will get a computer generated email saying that the job is in process. After several updates later, they will give you the wrong answer anyhow. Tentacle number six is ensuring limited availability of alternative parts and repairs. This tentacle is difficult to manage. You know that there is a repair possible but CMM (Component Maintenance Manual) is forcing you to replace the part. If you want to do a repair, which is not described in the CMM, you must spend a lot of effort and money to get the approval for it. And after all that effort, your customer might not accept the repair or alternative PMA part. So you are cornered in your misery. Tentacle number seven prevents increase of your own revenue by pushing for additional business or, in other words, OEMs increase the Turn Around Time (TAT) of repairs of LRUs and SRUs to force you to buy additional spares to fill the pipeline. The OEMs are also able to keep discussion about your quote or price of parts going just long enough that you find yourself regularly in an AOG situation. At a certain moment, you will decide to buy one more spare, just to manage the risk of AOG. But that is exactly what they want: to sell you additional spares. The eight tentacle is all about creating barriers for third party work on intellectual property agreements, end users agreements and non disclosure agreements. License fees are always imposed for such third party work in addition. In the old days, you could buy hardware parts for your needs and for your customers. I can imagine that the OEM asks a fee now for sending a copy of software. Suddenly you need to buy a screw to repair the unit of your customer (not software, but a screw, thus hardware). It is not enough that you are charged for the screw, but they are asking the fee because it is the unit of your customer. So, they s---w you twice! Isn’t that strange? This is brand new for airlines and MROs, which are not used to do so much legal stuff. Sometimes I regret that I am an engineer and not a lawyer. Lawyers are nowadays the kings and the queens of the company, and they don’t mind if they work for OEMs or MROs. They are making the policy, establishing the tactics and making the rules. Actually, they have all the fun. We engineers just suffer. Every individual tentacle is capable of strangling you, just not very quickly. The octopus is just playing the game and seeing just how long you can suffer. If you have survived the stranglehold of the octopus so far, then you are on a good path. Shortly you will conclude that there is a partnership required if you want to survive, and perhaps even relax the stranglehold. When you think that the solution is the partnership with another MRO to create the greater magnitude and better negotiation position or the partnership with OEM to create both win situation, you will realize that you have become somebody who just suffers and generate money for the octopus. To operate alone? It is not possible anymore, because the octopus is much stronger. Live chat by BoldChat
The Negative Influence of Television on Children Only available on StudyMode • Download(s) : 1503 • Published : August 10, 2006 Open Document Text Preview For decades there has been debate as to how television media affects our children. Many parents have been concerned since the beginning of television. Through extensive research over the last few decades, television has been thought to desensitize and have detrimental effects on our children, which inhibits them from developing feelings of security, compassion, diplomacy, and discernment. Television watching also promotes violence, unsafe sexual practices, and eating disorders in children. According to Muscari, the average American child spends approximately 28 hours per week watching television. By the time a child reaches the age of 18 they will have seen 16,000 murders and 200,000 other acts of violence. American media is the most violent in the world; 80 percent of American television programs contain violence (31). This does not include other forms of media such as: movies, video games, music, and in current day, the Internet. Berk notes that violence is rarely condemned, nor or ways of solving problems often depicted. It is because children do not see the seriousness of violence that they often do not get the full impact of the consequences, such as what happens when someone is shot with a gun. Children are learning that violence is the answer to problems. Boys and children from low socio-economic backgrounds tend to be the more frequent viewers of television (347). Therefore for these children, television should especially be monitored. Many children cannot distinguish between real and fantasy violence. Two and three year olds cannot tell the difference from what is on television and what is real. If a young child is asked if a bowl of popcorn pictured on television would spill if the television were knocked down, they will almost always answer yes. In addition, preschoolers have trouble combining different scenes into one whole story. They cannot view a character's motives or consequences. It isn't until age seven that a child begins to understand that this person is a character that is playing a role and his behavior is scripted (Berk 378). Television for children under the age of seven needs to be positive in nature as, to them, it is real. Research has found many negative effects from watching television. Children may become desensitized to the pain and suffering of others and are more likely to behave aggressively toward others. They also may become more fearful of the world around them (Wolfe 80). This fear comes from the child watching violence on television and thus perceiving the world to be a violent place. A range of negative actions can be induced by the media, including general anxiety and nightmares that can affect a child for a considerable length of time (Linn 108-117). Furthermore, according to Linn, "when people first think of the ill effects of television, they often think of violence, but childhood obesity, anorexia nervosa and bulimia, are escalating health problems" (95) associated with television as well. Television ads encourage children to eat unhealthy foods and the more they watch them, the more they believe that these foods are healthy for them (Berk 408). The opposite side is that, extremely thin females are often seen on television, causing average size Americans to perceive themselves as being overweight. Television portrays that with a thin body comes "power, popularity, friends and success (and those that are overweight) are often perceived as failures, lonely or rejected" (Marcus). When an average American views themselves as overweight it may lead to eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia. Anorexia affects approximately 1% of American teenage girls, and 2-3% are affected by bulimia (Berk 532 533). The visual part of television is not the only cause for eating disorders. As children get heavier they spend less time actively playing and then replace that time with sedentary pursuits and gain more weight (Berk 408). These sedentary pursuits can include more... tracking img
Eugene Robinson (Oxbow, Blackface) Eugene S. Robinson knows how to kick ass. In fact, he's such an expert in breaking chumps down that he's written several books on the subject, including 2007's Fight: Everything you ever wanted to know about ass kicking but were afraid you'd get your ass kicked for asking. But, Robinson is far more than just a bruiser that can string together a sentence or two. Rather, he's also the frontman for the explosive, avant-garde punk band Oxbbow, was the editor in chief for EQ magazine, and even appeared in Bill Cosby's Leonard Part Six. Just recently, Robinson formed Black Face with Chuck Dukowski of Black Flag, a project that sees the group recording unreleased Black Flag tunes, sent through a uniquely Robinson filter. In order to get the details on the new group, and some tips on cleaning shit off of one's shoe tips, John Gentile recently traveled to the secluded location where Robinson was honing his combat skills and went a few rounds with the artist-cum-writer-cum-fighter. The first time I meet Eugene S. Robinson in person, heâs on the ground with his hands clamped around another manâs neck. Eugeneâs opponent, who is on the underside, shifts his weight to his upper back and attempts to kick Eugene in the ribs while clutching at Eugeneâs face. Meanwhile, five other fighters and myself watch the contest while the Bad Brains play on a tiny boombox in the corner. Weâre in a tiny warehouse outside a rich suburb if San Francisco. The warehouse itself is snuggled between other like sized warehouses except in contrast to the manufacturing businesses on either side, each which bear a company logo on their doors, it has no identification on the door. In fact, the entrance door and attached garage gate are completely blank, and even the "G" on the unit number has been scratched off, completely stripping the building of any identity on its exterior. Inside, where Eugene and his opponent are grappling is "Team Serao," a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu club where members meet every day of the week, including Thanksgiving Day, to hone their skills, and if someone happens to get the crap kicked out of him during practice, so be it. Right now, Eugene and the rest of the club are practicing for an upcoming tournament. One of the athletes (half) jokingly comments on the music, "What is this, devil music?" and then goes to change it. As he approaches the boombox, one of the younger members mandates, in a (half) friendly fashion, "Donât change that. Thatâs Eugeneâs music. He gets seniority." I get the impression that the members of the club only have vague notions of Eugeneâs career outside fighting. It seems that at 49 years of age, in contrast to the average member age which is probably about 26, Eugene is seen as the old man of the gym- the old man that can still hand your own ass to you. Still, probably because they come from a different world, it doesnât seem like Eugeneâs peers realize that this is the Eugene S. Robinson: The Eugene S. Robinson who was one of the first African American front man in the notoriously violent hardcore hardcore scene of the early 80âs; The Eugene S. Robinson who fronts the avant-punk group Oxbow which made a name for itself as much by creating discordant, challenging music as physically beating the pulp out of those who deserved it. The Eugene S. Robinson who just earlier this year formed Black Face with Chuck Dukowski, a band which has taken unreleased Dukowski penned Black Flag tunes and reinterpreted them in a modern, and violent, context. "I never kicked anyoneâs ass who didnât deserve it," Robinson states. "Some guys, you just canât talk to. Some guys that have a problem will just start talking as a way to prepare themselves to fight. In that scenario, I just punch first to save the time." While it would probably be disingenuous to say that Robinsonâs musical career and fighting career are related to some root, itâs easy to see how trouble in both fields finds its way to the frontman. He stands at over six foot two, sinewy muscles run up and down his tattooed arms, a bolt of white strikes through his corkscrew hair, he has both a thick jaw and forehead which suggests that if you surprise him with a haymaker to the face, heâs probably not going to go down, and following that, heâll probably tear you down to your component parts. And of course, in the unfortunately homogenous culture that is punk rock, the first thing most audience members would likely notice about him is that heâs black. But, if that wasnât enough, the name of the band immediately draws attention to the concept of race in punk rock with its very name. "Chuck Dukowski actually came up with the name Black Face. We wanted something that would play off of Black Flagâs name, with multiple interpretations," Eugene explains. "When I first heard the name Black Flag, I was like. âOh, itâs a bug spray. Thatâs funny.â Later I had people explain to me the levels of the name- associations with pirates, anarchists, and other things. Black Face can have many different connotations." Minorities are still in the minority for punk frontman, but Robinson doesnât necessarily seem to want to portray himself as a "Black frontman," but he certainly doesnât shy away from that aspect either. "When I was in Whipping Boy, I played a song for my Great Aunt. The whole song went, âIâm black, Iâm black, Iâm black!â My great aunt said, âThatâs the dumbest song Iâve ever heard! When people hear that, thatâs all theyâll know you as.â" Eugene laughs, "But, that has its benefits. A black performer, or Asian performer, doesnât have to establish himself in that context. Itâs already out there." Already the name has sparked a minor debate. Ian MacKaye, of groundbreaking punk acts Minor Threat and Fugazi, suggested that Dukowski change the name of the band to something not quite so potent, such as "Black Soul." Eugeneâs eyes widen and his nostrils flare even at the suggestion, "I said to Chuck, âdid you tell Ian that I am in the band… a black man, a negro, is in the band Black Face?!â How can I be offended if Iâm in the band?!" However, even now, Dukowski is considering changing the groupâs name, much to the dismay of Hydra Head Records, the bandâs label for its first seven inch, which has already been printed. Of course, this belies another aspect of the new band- an aspect which harkens back to its progenitor. The rumors of Black Flag are rife with tales of rampant dysfunction from crediting former singers as "Chavo Pederast", bastardized-Spanish for "Child Molester," to hating each other so much that one side of an album was all instrumental while the other was all vocals without instruments. Still, in someways, it seemed that the "dysfunction" of Black Flag was overstated. A band couldnât possibly hate each other that much, and have such poor communication skills and still make some of the greatest music of all time. "I just have a glimpse of the inner workings of Black Flag," Eugene nods, "But the dysfunction was understated. Greg Ginn (Black Flagâs founder and sole constant member) and Raymond Pettibone (Black Flagâs cover artist) are brothers, and they havenât spoken to each other for years." It seems that this dysfunction has followed its way to the sides of Black Face, albeit in a different manifestation. "I thought that this was going to be an easy project to get together," Robinson shakes his head, "but it has just been a mess the whole way. From the meeting up, to the recording, to putting out the record." But, perhaps a band as volatile as Black Face needs gears to be grinding upon each other to merely exist, even if such conflict births itself in a different form. In contrast to vengeful atmosphere of Black Flag, the collaboration of Black Face seems to be as much one of mutual admiration as it is understanding. Eugene briefly explains his relationship with Dukowski, "I first met Chuck when SST records (Black Flagâs label, which at the time was co-owned by Ginn and Dukowski) put out Oxbowâs record. Some people, you know them just in a few minutes from meeting them. Chuck is a great person and a genius musician. But, still, it can be like fucking a super model. In idea, fucking a super model is great. But in reality, it can be really difficult to work out. Chuck will be singing all these musical ideas, with weird time signatures, and I just have no idea what he is talking about." As I talk with Robinson, it occurs to me that the media may have painted him in a false light. The calm, warm, articulate Robinson that I am speaking with is a far cry from the snarling beast that screams, "I will kill you! I want to kill you! I will kill you!" on the new Black Face single. Heâs certainly not simply the man known for kicking ass in and out of the ring, reveling in causing pain and chaos. Rather, it seems that more than almost any other musician Iâve encountered, Robinson is honest. If he likes you, heâll tell you how his ex-girlfriend, in an attempt to hurt his feelings screamed, "I know your secret Eugene Robinson! Everyone thinks youâre this crazed madman, but youâre really the most level headed person I know!" If he likes you, heâll explain his theory as the origin of Bay Area punk rockâs unique vocals. Of course, if he doesnât like you, and thinks you need to be punched in the face, heâll say he doesnât like you and punch you in the face. But, I wonder if Robinson fears that his two worlds might overlap, damaging each other, much like the way he damaged a European who spit on him at an Oxbow show. If you know any career heavy weight boxers, you might notice that with each meeting, the lights behind their eyes get a little dimmer, and they seem to have slightly more difficulty in finding the right word with each meeting. Robinson acknowledges the danger of mixing his cerebral pursuits with his physical. He points to his head, "Pretty much everything I have came from here. The book I wrote, Fight came from here. But, for me, fighting is an addiction. Plus, I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. I guess it is dangerous to keep fighting, but thatâs one of the reasons that I like it."
ICQ Error Discussion in 'Windows Desktop Systems' started by maz4ruth, Oct 24, 2002. 1. maz4ruth maz4ruth Guest Hiya :) Whenever I'm using ICQ this error happens (attached pic) after a minute or so... It's only been since today. I reinstalled it and it's the same, I figured it's because of crappy runtime files or something. Anyone know how to "clean" my system? 2. maz4ruth maz4ruth Guest Erm... guys? 3. stuppy stuppy Guest format c:/q :) seriously... erm... dunno i have had this problem before uninstalled, reinstalled? not jsut reinstal over the top? look for the VB Rutime Components download off the net somewhere, (think thats what they call em ;-)) 4. maz4ruth maz4ruth Guest
The Tesla Roadster recently topped our list of the 10 best electric cars, but Tesla isn't resting on its laurels. The company's just unveiled Roadster 2.5 -- not a firmware update, but a brand-new edition with several key improvements. The new car includes a new front grille and rear diffuser borrowed from the company's Model S electric saloon. It's a subtle change, but it gives the Roadster a more aggressive appearance. Inside, Tesla's introduced more comfortable seats with larger, more supportive bolsters and a new lumbar support system to keep the chiropractor at bay. As anyone who's watched our Tesla Roadster video review will know, the Roadster's not particularly quiet -- despite its electric engine. So Tesla's introduced new liner materials under the hood to make the cabin quieter than ever. The interior also has a better finish, with an optional 7-inch touchscreen display with a rear-view camera to make parking easier than ever. Individually, none of the changes are mind-boggling, but we think together they make the Roadster a far more compelling package. The 2.5 is available to order now from Tesla stores worldwide -- it'll set you back a mere £79,000. The front and rear get a tweaked grille and diffuser. It's subtle, but we think the Roadster's a prettier car for it. The seats are more comfortable, with better bolsters and lumbar support, and the interior finish is more refined. You also get a large rear-view camera display as an option. Latest Galleries Want to see the future of car technology? Latest From Roadshow
Brazil lobster fishery in collapse Artisanal fishers go on strike and ask government to close the fishery until 2014 For the last 70 years spiny rock lobsters were an important export product for Brazil mainly destined to the US Market. But, the fishing activity it is now close to collapse. Illegal fishers have taken over with 2.000 boats fishing either without licenses or using illegal fishing gear such as gillnets and compressor diving. 580 boats of which 500 sailboats called jangadas using lobster traps have stopped fishing and see no future for their activity. Exports will drop from 2.500 tons of tails in 2010 to less then 1.000 this year. If stocks don´t recover 10.000 fishers might be out of a job in 2013. The available data indicates that stocks are in danger due to years of overfishing and predatory fishing over the last 20 years which has gone largely uncontrolled due to poor management and enforcement. Scientific data doesn´t allow any prediction when the resource will face the point of no return, so everybody thinks about what happened to the cod fishery in Canada 20 years ago, and prays. In 1992 30.000 fishworkers lost their job and the stocks still have not recovered.
« "This used to be a really good blog" \| Main \| Weivretni » January 28, 2013 He injected ... something. I think it was magnesium but hey, that's probably just projection, right? It was the 1930s, that eclamptic cow. So maybe it was a super-new treatment? Herriott was all about the super-new treatments in his books (which I totally love). I have such a hard time with TV these days because the narratives are driven by externals (this actress wants to try something new, that show needs another season for syndication) and not by story-line concerns for themselves (he should have found the mother by now; it's OK for people to live happily ever after). I just feel jerked around by the writers. I may still be bitter that Buffy didn't stay dead. That was clearly the proper ending to that story. Those extra two seasons making money for UPN? A narrative crime. I woke up this morning in a funk because Sybil's dead and Cora's icing Robert. And I think I am more distressed about Cora and Robert than about Sybil. (That may be due to the fact that I inadvertently read a headline alluding to her impending death months ago while the show was airing in Britain. So for me it was sad, but no surprise.) I keep telling myself this is TV. This is TV. But I'm still sad. I looked it up right after the show, and they didn't start using magnesium until the 50's. I wondered the same thing about the delivery timing, if it would of made much difference. Very sad and totally caught me off guard. Also...didn't realize animals got eclampsia. Learn something everyday! HAHAHAHAHA! Best post title EVER! I mean, Downton Abbey post at least. I watched the whole season with this link that a friend posted on facebook (let me know if you're interested & I'll send it to you) and I'm dying, DYING to talk about DA with the world! (ok, with the internets at least). so... thank you thank you thank you for posting about it. I wish it were fresh in my mind so I could comment more effectively. I haven't done any research about eclampsia, but I know that my friend could TOTALLY have died when she gave birth to her (2.5 months premature) daughter. It was horribly scary, her doctor had missed the signs (she was super swollen) & she started having seizures in the shower. She was taken by ambulance to the hospital, they did a C-section, but she was still in great peril of dying for quite a while afterwards. I don't know if anything can be done. I also know a blogger & writer (she wrote this story in the anthology _It's a Boy_ edited by Andy Buchanan, her name is Susan Ito) who had to have a late term abortion because she was going to die from eclampsia. I know, really really horribly sad. Now, as for #3 -- HAHA, you're super bright and you're actually predicting what'll happen latter! Please write more comments, I really want to talk about it. And I hate I can't blog or do say anything not to upset people with spoilers. :( I feel EXACTLY the same way when I see a woman giving birth lying down on TV. I won't talk about Downton, though, because I've seen the whole season and it's too hard not to give anything away. Also, have you watched Call the Midwife? It's excellent, very different from Downton but I think better. I think you'd really like it and the books it's based on. The bigger question remains, then: did you watch Call the Midwife?! I watched the Christmas episode of Call the Midwife. I enjoyed the book very much (though Pippi, is there more than one?). Lilian, I am interested in that link! Ahhh!!! As a recurrent pre-eclamptic, this episode TERRIFIED me!!! As do your thoughts re: the prognosis of the marginal difference between immediate Cesarean and natural delivery. I initially agreed with Cora and was livid with Robert - if she were in the hospital, wouldn't she have had access to magnesium sulfate? - but if it wasn't actually given until the 50's, then my ire was misplaced and I'm glad I read your blog :) I was with Cora, because I frankly was puzzled by Lord Grantham's whole dismissive attitude during the labor. But that's part and parcel of the writers' approach to character this season -- everyone is forced into these dramatic contortions to fit whatever drama is concocted, regardless if that's consistent with character developments in the last season. Also didn't understand Mary's response to Edith asking if they'd get along in future. Why shouldn't they get along? What's to prevent them? My main response to Sybil's death was a detached, "Well, that's bold." Much more moving to me was when Ethel had to give up her little boy -- I actually shed a tear. There was an honest pathos in that (perhaps because it had been set up last season) that I felt was lacking from Sybil's death. It's not the suddenness to which I object -- life is like that -- as much as the feeling that the writers were just reaching for some big mid-season shocker. I think there are four books in total but I've only read the first. My library has the first, third, and fourth. I keep meaning to talk with the librarian and insist they get the second as well. I can't remember all the names. Shadows of the Workhouse? I'm sure googling her name will bring them up. This is what I keep saying! She's not being fair. There's no guarantee Sybil would have lived even with an immediate c-section. None! Women STILL die sometimes, even with the drugs we have available today. But then again, the poor woman just lost her daughter. She's wild with grief, and anyone who has survived grief knows that your thoughts aren't really rational at times. And then my family member/friend/store clerk nods and looks over my shoulder, saying awkwardly, "Um...yeah...so anyway..." So maybe I should stop obsessing about it? The comments to this entry are closed. Enter your email address: Delivered by FeedBurner
Debugging with node-inspector This was the fourth in a series of posts leading up to Node.js Knockout on how to use node.js. This post was recorded by node-inspector author and Node.js Knockout judge Danny Coates. Check out this sweet screencast where Danny explains how to use node-inspector: Hi this is Danny Coates. Since Node Knockout is coming up pretty soon I'd like to give you a quick introduction to Node Inspector, which is a graphical debugger for Node. It's hosted on GitHub, you can go check it out there. Let's get started with the demo. To start the inspector I'm going to run it from the node-chat directory (node-chat is a sample application), like this: $ node ../node-inspector/bin/inspector.js --start-brk=server.js \ --forward-io --profile When I pass it the --start-brk parameter we're going to end up with two processes; the one we're debugging will be a child process of the inspector process. If I quit the profile it'll also close down the node-chat app. Let's pull up the debugger. Since I did --start-brk intead of --start I'm going to get a breakpoint on the very first line; it's useful for debugging short lived apps. Let me walk you through the interface. We have three panels; Scripts, Profiles (which isn't active in the main branch yet) and Console. The console is a standard JavaScript console; it'll run whatever you type in there in Node's V8. There's also a pull down menu of your JavaScript files, and some controls to step over, step in, step out and pause the script. There are also expressions to watch, and the call stack. You can step to any level in the call stack. Beneath the stack you can see your locally and globally scoped variables, followed by your list of breakpoints. If you click on a breakpoint it'll jump to the relevant line in your code. Let's step through the node-chat app, to see what's going on. One of the nice things is that you can do a mouseover on some code, and it'll give you a popup of what that value is. It looks like we're setting some intervals, hooking up some routes... That join function looks interesting, let's stick a breakpoint there, and then continue. We can pull up a mini console view, and we'll see that we've got some output on stdout (which is the same thing as the output on the command line). Let's go ahead an open a couple of node-chat windows. Back in Node Inspector, we should have hit the breakpoint. If we want to see what simpleJSON does but we don't want to step in, we can mouse over it and get the source code in a popup. Let's step in to create session. Then let's step out, and add a watch on sessions. Watches will update every time you hit a breakpoint or step through the code. Let's play through, and see me join the chat. One of the other cool things you can do is live edit the code. If you just double click in the code you can then enter text that will be executed the next time the code is run. You can also use the console to execute stuff, and this'll run in Node. console.log output will appear on the forwarded stdout, and in the regular stdout in the terminal. One more thing; even though it doesn't work in the current main branch it's cool, so let's have a look. You can take a heap snapshot at any time, and you get to see the total number of objects, and the size of everything. You can then run the app some more, and take another snapshot; it'll give you a comparison between the two snapshots. If, for example, a count keeps going up, you might have a memory leak. That's really the quick tour. If you're interested, go check out Node Inspector on GitHub. If you have any problems add an issue, and I'll look at that when I get a chance. Check out the Wiki for things that might be helpful. Thanks for watching. View the discussion comments powered byDisqus
I Have iTunes Free Download iTunes for Mac + PC HD PG-13 Closed Captioning AD Joseph Kosinski Open iTunes to preview, buy, and download this movie. About the Movie Rotten Tomatoes Movie Reviews • Reviews Counted: 234 • Fresh: 123 • Rotten: 111 • Average Rating: 5.9/10 Top Critics' Reviews Rotten: The agony of being a longtime Tom Cruise fan has always been a burden, but now it's just, well, dispiriting. – Manohla Dargis, New York Times, Apr 18, 2013 Rotten: In space, Jack hopes, someone may hear you dream. But in a movie theater, no one will see you yawn. – Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine, Dec 31, 2013 Fresh: Director Joseph Kosinski focuses on cool visuals but stints on a compelling plot. It's a dazzler, but the story lacks the impact of the futuristic look. – Claudia Puig, USA Today, Apr 18, 2013 Fresh: More adventurous than your typical Hollywood tent pole, "Oblivion" makes you remember why science fiction movies pulled you in way back when and didn't let you go. – Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times, Apr 18, 2013 Read More About This Movie On Rotten Tomatoes Customer Reviews Awesome movie I don't understand people's gripes with this movie, but I personally thought Oblivion was a great movie. The ending was phenomenal. Definitely at least rent this movie, but for me it's a release day buy. Absolutely Amazing I saw the movie twice in theatres and in IMAX on both occasions. Each time I enjoyed myself thoroughly, unlike previous attempts to see the same movie twice (Dark Knight Rises in particular). It takes a certain grasp of vast plots and subtle details to truly appreciate this motion picture, a skill easily available if one reads quite often. Being a movie connoisseur, I did not find the plot reminiscent of other sci-fi movies of the previous decades. Regardless, this movie should be taken for what it is and not be used as a comparrsion tool to highlite certain plot, special effects, and/or character behaviors within a genre. Now, onto the movie itself. The special effects are nothing short of amazing and the acting of tom cruise and the rest of the cast is very good. The plot is complicated however, and has the potential to leave the average movie goer going, "what the hell just happened?" While some find this a week point, I consider it Oblivion's greatest strength. I for one am tired of movies explaining everything to me in black and white events that could have been discerned on my own. Furthermore, there are absolutely NO plot holes in this film, despite popular belief. Every detail is there and portrayed with enough substance to more than adequately tie together the entire plot of the film, from beginning to end. Overall, you either love it or you don't it seems. My sister hates it and my best friend shares my opinions on the film. It is a matter of what type of person you are going to see this movie. And as stated by previous reviewers, it is at the very least worth checking out. With elements lifted from virtually every big sci-fi classic in cinematic history, "Oblivion" is a post-apocalyptic adventure that often feels eerily similar to past films in the genre but features just enough plot twists and emotional resonance to make it nicely enjoyable. Director Joseph Kosinski ("Tron: Legacy") also makes sure that the imagery is incredible, providing a bunch of cool-looking sets and gadgets, as well as an entertaining use of New York and Washington D.C. landmarks. In addition, the film gives Tom Cruise a slightly more internalized and sympathetic character than he usually gets to play in big blockbusters. He's Jack Harper, a repairman 60 years after aliens blasted the moon to bits, causing earthquakes and tidal waves that damaged the planet forever. It's now 2077 and the rest of humanity is being evacuated to Saturn's moon, Titan, while mop-up teams are sent to help protect giant resource-gathering machines from alien scavengers. Jack works Sector 49 with his partner Victoria (Andrea Riseborough), but is unable to think straight due to all the constant, vivid dreams he has of a life on pre-war Earth with a mysterious woman (Olga Kurylenko). When she suddenly turns up in an ancient spacecraft, and Jack eventually discovers a hidden group of human survivors led by Beech (Morgan Freeman), his whole world is turned upside down, forcing him to question everything he thought he knew. And so do we, since we really begin to doubt this entire set-up from the moment Jack gives his opening narration. Mission commander Sally (Melissa Leo) looks very shifty, and there's something vaguely fishy about all of the sleek glass, steel, and plastic technology. As Jack's gleaming leather outfit becomes increasingly murky, so does his simplistic view of his own life. And Cruise holds this movie together solidly with an introspective turn as a man whose secret past is just mysterious enough to engage our interest. Jack may not be one of the actor's most memorable characters, but at least he's still a likable, sympathetic protagonist to watch from beginning to end. Riseborough and Kurlyenko, meanwhile, get much juicier roles, providing some strongly emotional layers to the story, while Freeman and Leo add a bit of class to their supporting performances. As things develop, Kosinski slowly trickles out big revelations that continually shift the plot into brand new directions. We can tell that this is the kind of film that'll have more than one reality-bending twist in it, but we can't easily predict what they might be, so watching the movie is almost like experiencing the events through Jack's foggy memories. This creates a particularly strong sense of déjà vu as we see numerous elements borrowed from films like "Solaris," "2001: A Space Odyssey," "Logan's Run," "Independence Day," and surprisingly a lot of "WALL-E." But as mentioned before, Kosinski always makes sure that everything looks fantastic with cinematography that visually enhances each scene, along with expert camerawork, set design, and special effects. So even if it's not as deep as it tries to be, it's still thoroughly entertaining all the way through. My biggest problems with the movie are the noticeable lack of character development and inconsistent pacing, which end up dragging it somewhat down in the long run, but at least those issues don't distract too much from the overall experience. Yes, there are better futuristic sci-fi adventures than "Oblivion," but that doesn't mean it isn't worth your time. Cruise gives a truly terrific lead performance that keeps us glued to the screen, and the rest of the cast manages to be just as strong, if not stronger at times. Additionally, the action scenes work on a striking visceral level, the electronic score by M83 is fun and unique, and the story, despite its shortcomings, always leaves us guessing. It has so many intriguing things going for it that it simply wouldn't be fair for me to give the whole thing a bad rating. Where "Oblivion" lacks in originality, it more than makes up for in solid big-budget entertainment, and that's why it's at least worth checking out. View in iTunes • $14.99 • Genre: Action & Adventure • Released: 2013 Customer Ratings
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'Trigger Warning' Expertly Defined "Trigger warnings are unnecessary 100% of the time…" TRIGGER WARNING: This article may offend those who deem trigger warnings necessary. A trigger warning, much like a disclaimer, is an invention used to warn a person before reading or seeing images, videos and other media of potentially traumatizing content. TruthRevolt has reported that a student of the University of California Santa Barbara submitted a proposal to force professors to issue trigger warnings before they teach any content that may offend. Another instance had MSNBC host Joy Reid issuing a trigger warning before saying the name "Redskins." Even TruthRevolt's own Andrew Klavan wants a trigger warning issued before anyone says anything so he can "prepare to pretend" to be traumatized. But one courageous contributor, pottskiller, to UrbanDictionary.com has taken on the ridiculousness of the trigger warning and provided a most excellent definition. Here it is in its entirety -- (TRIGGER WARNING: May cause a relapse into logic and reason): A phrase posted at the beginning of various posts, articles or blogs. Its purpose is to warn weak-minded people who are easily offended that they might find what is being posted offensive in some way due to its content, causing them to overreact or otherwise start acting like a dipsh*t. Popular on reddit SRS or other places that social justice warriors like to hang out. Trigger warnings are unnecessary 100% of the time due to the fact that people who are easily offended have no business randomly browsing the internet anyways. As a result of the phrase's irrelevance, most opinions that start out with this phrase tend to be simplistic and dull since they were made by people ridiculous enough to think that the Internet is supposed to cater to people who can't take a joke. Trigger warning: If you think this phrase needs to be posted before politically incorrect opinions, you don't belong on the Internets.
Skip to Content Vaccines aren’t just for kids. Is your teen protected? Mumps In Adults What is mumps? Mumps is a viral infection that causes inflammation of the parotid glands. Parotid glands help to make saliva. They are located in front of and below each ear. The mumps virus is spread when an infected person coughs or sneezes. It is also spread through direct contact with an infected person's saliva, such as sharing eating utensils. What are the signs and symptoms of mumps? • Weakness, tiredness, or muscle pain • Fever, a headache, or pain in your ear or jaw • Swollen, painful glands on one or both sides of your face • Loss of appetite, or pain when you chew or swallow • Pain or tenderness in your testicles (men) How is mumps diagnosed? Your healthcare provider may be able to diagnose mumps based on your symptoms and a physical exam. You may need a blood test to confirm the infection. What can I do to manage my symptoms? Mumps cannot be cured, but the following may help decrease your symptoms: • Acetaminophen or ibuprofen may help decrease pain and fever. These medicines are available without a doctor's order. Ask how much to take and how often to take it. Follow directions. Acetaminophen can cause liver damage if not taken correctly. Ibuprofen can cause stomach bleeding and kidney damage if not taken correctly. • Drink plenty of liquids. Liquids help prevent dehydration. Ask how much liquid to drink each day. Drink water, juice, or broth instead of sports drinks. You may also need an oral rehydration solution (ORS). An ORS has the right amounts of water, salts, and sugar you need to replace body fluids. Ask your healthcare provider where you can get an ORS. • Eat soft foods. These include cooked cereal, rice, mashed potatoes, applesauce, or soup. Do not eat foods that are sour or hard to chew. This can cause an increase in saliva and make your pain worse. • Get more rest. Rest as much as possible and get plenty of sleep. • Apply ice. Ice helps decrease swelling and pain. Ice may also help prevent tissue damage. Use an ice pack, or put crushed ice in a plastic bag. Cover it with a towel and place it on your swollen glands for 15 to 20 minutes every hour as directed. What can I do to prevent mumps? • Ask your healthcare provider about the MMR vaccine. This vaccine helps protect you and others around you from measles, mumps, and rubella. If you were born before 1957, you were probably exposed to the mumps virus. This makes you naturally immune, so you do not need the vaccine. Healthcare workers born before 1957 may still need to get 2 doses of the vaccine during a mumps outbreak. Pregnant women cannot get the MMR vaccine. • Prevent the spread of germs. You are contagious (able to spread the virus) for 6 days after you start to have symptoms. Stay away from others, especially anyone who is pregnant, or who has not had the MMR vaccine. Stay home from school or work until your healthcare provider says you can return. Clean surfaces with a disinfecting cleaner. Cough and sneeze into the bend of your elbow. Wash your hands often, and after you use the bathroom or change a child's diaper. Use soap and water. Use a gel-based hand sanitizer if soap and water are not available. What are the risks of mumps? You may lose some or all of your hearing. The infection may spread to your testicles (in men). One or both testicles may be red, swollen, and painful. In women, a mumps infection during the first trimester increases the risk for miscarriage. Mumps may cause swelling of your pancreas. This can cause abdominal pain, nausea, and vomiting. The infection can spread to your brain or spinal cord. This can cause brain damage and may be life-threatening. Call 911 if: • You have a seizure. When should I seek immediate care? • You have trouble breathing or are breathing faster than usual. • You suddenly cannot hear. • You have abdominal pain, nausea, or vomiting. • You are confused or less alert than usual. • You have a severe headache that is not relieved by pain medicine. • You have a stiff neck. When should I contact my healthcare provider? • Your swollen glands are red for more than 8 days. • You have trouble eating and drinking. • Your testicles are red, swollen, or painful (men). • You are pregnant and think you were exposed to the mumps virus (women). • You have questions or concerns about your condition or care. Care Agreement
Evopsychopathy 2: The phylogenetic bracket As noted, SB and EP have a very unfortunate tendency to reflect the status quo in their results and research questions. This is not unique to them. History, sociology, other fields of psychology (psychotherapy for gods’ sake!), and in my own profession, ethics, all have this “Pull of Privilege”. Somehow the results of this research generally seem to show how natural and right things are. I am always amazed that no matter how radical the ethical foundations in philosophy, ethics always seems to end up supporting the bourgeois status quo (Peter Singer, whose approach I disagree with, is an honourable exception – he’s not afraid to follow his ethical foundations wherever they lead). This Pull is very hard to shake off. Historians of science (and more recently historians in general) have a term for it: The Whig Interpretation of History, AKA whiggism (also triumphalism, or presentism, ). It is widely, and rightly, seen as a sin of interpretation. Why? It is because if you wish to understand the subject under investigation, rather than tell a story that makes you feel warm and comfortable about you and yours, you must to the best degree possible rid yourself of your relative attachments. You can’t see animist religions in terms of Christianity, alchemical practitioners in terms of modern chemistry, or sexuality in the Azande, say, in terms of Middle American marriage practices and categories (or worse, of penguins in terms of those practices). So defeating the Pull of Privilege is a serious concern in any discipline that studies human behaviours. How can we do it in SB4.0? As it happens, I have Thoughts. Behavior is quite labile, evolutionarily, and so there has been debate over whether it can be treated as a homology (Brigandt and Griffiths 2007; Hall 2012; Love 2007). However, classes of behaviors can easily been seen to be homologous. For example, most passerine birds have courtship displays which, while individually unique, fall into a shared class of behaviors, and moreover, these dances are very similar within groups such as riflebirds or lyrebirds (Andrew 1961). It is hard to reject the idea that these are homologies, with species-relative instantiations. The entire field of ethology is founded upon investigating both the commonalities and unique differences of behaviors in many groups of organisms. There is, in palaeontology, a technique known as phylogenetic bracketing (Witmer 1995). If you need to reconstruct something that doesn’t fossilise in a fossil taxon (say, T. rex), you can place it in a phylogenetic tree and see what its surrounding surviving relatives have in the tissues and structures that don’t fossilise. By projection you can presume this is true of the extinct organism. Likewise, if you find a behaviour in known taxa, you can inductively project (Goodman 1954) from the known to the unknown if they are within the same clade. Of course, this only works if the clade happens to be relatively unspecialised, and the greater the evolutionary distance, the less specific you can get (remember: specific and all other words based on the Latin spec- root, are modifications of species). So you may know that all falconiformes have a recurved claw, but you may not be able to confidently predict whether an unobserved species of falconiforme is a hunter or scavenger. You’ll know, though, that it eats meat. The application of phylogenetic bracketing here should be relatively obvious. If we wish to reduce the Pull, we need to set an objective behavioural baseline for all humans and not just the WEIRDos. We cannot do this from within the milieu of a culture by an act of will or imagination. But we can bracket humans among the Hominoidea, the African Great Ape clade. For instance, suppose that one knew nothing else about the human species than that it was squarely nested within the Hominoidea . What would we know about that species? The inferential return on that phylogenetic investment is extensive and indefinite. We would know the species had a particular skeletal structure, with, among other things, four limbs ending in five-digit manus, or hands, and that it had a certain visual system, aural system, and so forth, and interacted with the world at a certain macroscale, in what von Uexküll called its Umwelt (1957), or sensed environment. It would have the primate Umwelt, and so interact with commonsense objects (Griffiths and Wilkins 2012). For our purposes here, however, what we would mostly know is that it was a social species with social dominance hierarchies. Now it is very hard to find animal species that are not in some sense social. At the least they must interact during mating. But sociality comes in degrees ranging from a brief or even displaced social interaction at mating through to care of neonates and, as in chimp, gorilla, and even orang social behaviors, lifelong interaction with conspecifics of all ages. The one thing that marks all primate species, and thus all hominoids, is that they form dominance hierarchies based upon pairwise interactions, with sanctions of both a positive (reward collaborators) and negative (punish defectors) nature. As has been observed in many primate species (chimps, bonobos, various baboons and monkey species), alliances are formed and social deviants are punished (Cronin and Field 2007; de Waal 1982, 1989). We are socially normative apes. Moral strictures and social conformity is what apes do. Achieving high social dominance results in improved health and better mating opportunities (Burnham 2007; Creel 2001). Hence, such behaviors must be expected to play a crucial role in any social institution that may evolve generally in human, which is to say, one particular ape species’, social structures. But it will not do to take what is observed among bonobos or gorillas and simply apply them directly to our human species. We know that the human species must typically have some social dominance behaviours or dispositions (why I keep referring to dispositions will become clear in a later post on selectionist explanations); we know roughly how they will be formed (through pairwise dominance displays and competitions, mate choice, etc.) and we have some reason to think they will be primarily male biased as all but bonobo dominance hierarchies are (but note: one species defeated the generalisation based on phylogenetic bracketing. This is not an infallible inference methodology, it is, as we philosophers say, defeasible). Of course, there are differences between hominoid apes and humans in social dominance behavior, as there are between the non-human apes species. Common chimps tend to have a single alpha male, and the hierarchy is always determined by male status and females derive their status from their mates. Status is determined by aggressive competition and mating occurs in proportion to achieved male status. Bonobos, on the other hand have a hierarchy driven by female choice. This reflects their degree of sexual dimorphism: chimp males are on average around 125% the weight of females, while bonobo males are only slightly larger if at all than the females. Gorilla males are up to three times the weight of the females. As a result a single alpha male guards a harem of females against “bachelor” males. The hierarchy is both within the family, and between males in a territory. Humans, like bonobos, have very slight dimorphism: males weigh around 108% of female weight on average. The degree of polygyny (number of female mates per successfully mating male) roughly correlates with size dimorphism. Social hierarchies vary according to species-typical mating strategy. Which comes first, the strategy or the dimorphism? That is in many ways a silly question; strategies are constantly evolving, largely, I think, in response to ecological conditions, but also there is a large degree of contingency here – what one species might develop will depend on accidental factors that are largely unpredictable relative to another. Dimorphism is both a result of the evolution of mating strategies, and also a cause of it. These things evolve together. Nevertheless, when you find a fossil ape that has massive dimorphism like the gorilla, you can bet it was a harem-style (almost herd-style) social animal. So what would we predict about humans, if we had just arrived from Mars and been given only a copy of Walker’s Primates of the World without the section on humans? We would first of all predict that they would form dominance hierarchies, and that high status individuals would reward those that conformed to the group norms so formed, and punish those who defected from them. We would predict a slight male dominance over females. We would expect that the progeny of high status individuals will preferentially rise to higher status than those born of low status parents (primate societies are not meritocracies, Silk 2009). We would expect that male dominance relies upon height and musculature – the bigger males tend to gain higher status even if there is no violence in the dominance behaviours of the species. There are more things we might say, but you see how this applies. But what would we not be able to predict? Well we would not be able to predict when cultural influences modulate, moderate or even override these social dominance dispositions. We could not have predicted Elizabeth I or Benazir Bhutto (or maybe we could – both were acting as if they were sons of powerful males). We could not predict the rise of liberal democratic ideals, although once it is in play we might predict its eventual corruption and decline as plutocracy and nepotism reasserts itself. We could not predict American supermarkets, although once they are observed we can see some of the foraging dispositions (of males and females) of our predecessors being exploited. All this does is set up the baseline of expectations. It is not, I think, even remotely possible to give a complete account of societal structures in terms of our shared ape heritage, although that heritage can be ignored at our peril. I should note that the sort of explanations I am giving (sketching roughly) here are not the outcome of evolutionary psychology per se. Instead, it is the outcome of a number of disparate and only vaguely connected lines of research. Such research covers comparative cognitive psychology (e.g., Suddendorf 2008, a critique of Wynne and Bolhuis 2008), race psychology (Sidanius and Pratto 1999, Sidanius et al. 2000), the effect of status on primate testosterone levels (Anestis 2010, Eisenegger et al. 2011, Gray 2011), the neurology of social behaviour (Harmon-Jones and Winkielman 2007), and so on. Each of these either relies upon something like phylogenetic bracketing (as in comparative psychology) or is consonant with it (as in social dominance psychology). There are limitations to this method. An inference to homologous traits or behaviours is going to work just to the extent that the species does not have what cladists call an autapomorphy for that trait, which is to say a trait that is unique or in a unique state for that species not shared with other species. For example, the speech centres of the human brain have homologs in other primates, but not as speech centres. Complex grammatical speech is our autapomorphy (and perhaps was also shared by extinct species like H. heidelbergensis, H. neanderthalensis and H. erectus, but we are the sole possessors of it now). So we could not predict symbolic language from a knowledge of other primates. But the real problem with sociobiological projections is what I call the problem of analogy. Previous SBers would look at eland stamping in a place to attract mates and infer that humans would have “stamping grounds”; that chickens maintained social dominance by the use of violent pecking, and assert that humans had “pecking orders”, and so on. Even ants and bees were used to generate analogies of this kind. But we aren’t ants, bees, elands or chickens. To infer that we have trait X because all in our clade does is a licensable inference, but much of what we are looking at is not a homology at all (although every trait rests upon underlying homologous structures and systems). Instead they are themselves analogous traits (like shopping, or “rape”) that may in fact have no homologous dispositions underlying them. Since we want to know what humans should have without ascertainment bias, we must treat these inferences as highly questionable. First you catch your homology. Some real science has to be done. Moreover, any trait that has been the subject of a selective sweep is, by definition, no longer a homolog in terms of its function. So if something did occur in the X million years since we separated from taxon Y, it is not a homology with Y’s function, even if it is a structural or physiological homolog. So, for example, the role of testosterone among humans may not be (but it actually is according to the research) the same as the role it plays in other primates. You have to check. So the target of explanation is crucial. I’ll return to this in the next post. This series: Cheesy footnote Rape is a social and legal term that is often illicitly projected, whiggishly, from humans to other animals like ducks and beetles. Similar objections should be used for terms like “homosexual”, “thief” and so on. Sometimes these terms are harmless, but very often they are not, and mislead us into anthropomorphisms. Caveat lector! Anestis, Stephanie F. 2010. Hormones and social behavior in primates. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews 19 (2):66-78. Brigandt, Ingo, and Paul Griffiths. 2007. The importance of homology for biology and philosophy. Biology and Philosophy 22 (5):633-641. Burnham, Terence C. 2007. High-testosterone men reject low ultimatum game offers. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 274 (1623):2327-2330. Butterfield, Herbert. 1931. The Whig interpretation of history. London: G. Bell. Creel, S. 2001. Social dominance and stress hormones. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 16 (9):491-497. Cronin, Adam L., and Jeremy Field. 2007. Social aggression in an age-dependent dominance hierarchy. Behaviour 144 (7):753-765. de Waal, Frans. 1982. Chimpanzee politics: power and sex among apes. London: Cape. ———. 1989. Peacemaking among primates. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Eisenegger, Christoph, Johannes Haushofer, and Ernst Fehr. 2011. The role of testosterone in social interaction. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 15 (6):263-271. Gray, Peter B. 2011. The descent of a man’s testosterone. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 (39):16141-16142. Goodman, Nelson. 1954. Fact, fiction and forecast. London: University of London, The Athlone Press. Hall, A. Rupert. 1983. On whiggism. History of science; an annual review of literature, research and teaching 21 (51):45-59. Hall, Brian K. 2012. Homology, homoplasy, novelty, and behavior. Dev Psychobiol. Early online. DOI: 10.1002/dev.21039 Harmon-Jones, Eddie, and Piotr Winkielman, eds. 2007. Social neuroscience: Integrating biological and psychological explanations of social behavior. New York: The Guilford Press. Love, Alan. 2007. Functional homology and homology of function: biological concepts and philosophical consequences. Biology and Philosophy 22 (5):691-708. Nowak, Ronald M. 1999. Walker’s primates of the world. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Sidanius, Jim, and Felicia Pratto. 1999. Social dominance: an intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press. Sidanius, James, S. Levin, J. Liu, and Felicia Pratto. 2000. Social dominance orientation, anti-egalitarianism and the political psychology of gender: an extension and cross-cultural replication. European Journal of Social Psychology 30 (1):41-67. Silk, Joan B. 2009. Nepotistic cooperation in non-human primate groups. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 364:3243–3254. Suddendorf, Thomas. 2008. Explaining human cognitive autapomorphies. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (02):147-148. Uexküll, Jakob von. 1957. A Stroll through the Worlds of Animals and Men: A Picture Book of Invisible Worlds. In Instinctive Behavior: The Development of a Modern Concept, edited by C. H. Schiller. New York: International Universities Press:5-80. Wilkins, John S., and Paul E. Griffiths. 2012. Evolutionary debunking arguments in three domains: Fact, value, and religion. In A New Science of Religion, edited by J. Maclaurin and G. Dawes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Witmer, Lawrence M. 1995. The extant phylogenetic bracket and the importance of reconstructing soft tissues in fossils. In Functional morphology in vertebrate paleontology, edited by J. Thomason. Cambridge UK; New York: University of Cambridge Press:19-33. Wynne, Clive D. L., and Johan J. Bolhuis. 2008. Minding the gap: Why there is still no theory in comparative psychology. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (02):152-153. 19 thoughts on “Evopsychopathy 2: The phylogenetic bracket 1. Why, then, did you portray Herbert Spencer’s Synthetic Philosophy as Sociobiology 1.0 in your last post? I could hardly hold myself from shouting “Whiggish!” 1. I answered your comment in the other post but I would like to say that sociobiology is not necessarily adaptationist (as I argue above), and Spencer is clearly influential in the biologising of behaviour. So I take him as a SBist. Also I am not providing a history as such but a philosophical analysis here. The history of that is fascinating, and Darwin also is a kind of SBist. This is not whiggism but my reading of the way these issues evolved. In fact accusing me of whiggism here relies, ironically, on your having a modern view of SB and importing that classification to the sources (excluding Spencer because he is not an adaptationist), which is itself… whiggish. 🙂 1. I’m not projecting a modern view of sociobiology back onto Spencer, but simply see them as different things. I could equally claim that your view of SB is Whiggish, because you draw a straight line where I see breaks. We’d end in a childish “Always three times less Whiggish than thou.” 2. Here’s my question (and perhaps I’m jumping the gun) but if so many related fields tend to support the hypotheses of EP, why is it still held in what appears to be a relative sense of disrepute? Is it that the science behind EP is bad or is it more that EP challenges challenges the status quo of other cultural norms? 3. That is a very good question. I think it is complex. Some think EP is methodologically flawed. It is unclear if that has more to do with professional allegiances or some abstract notion of good method. Other objections rely on it being bad evolutionary theory. Here this has to do with adaptationist explanations. Again, this relies on a particular view of evolutionary theory. Since there is no consensus on some of this, the objection depends on prior commitments. But mostly it is motivated reasoning: objections to the implications drawn from the research that as you say conflicts with cultural norms. None of this is a rebuttal to these arguments. They may in fact be good objections. But what this results in is a kind of adaptophobia for human behaviours. The evidence is coming in thick and fast but not, I think, from the EP crowd so much. 1. EP may be regarded as flawed not by nature but by practice: That there is an over-reliance on the use of interence to generate “answers,” when in fact the process is to ask more questions. Inference is a form of perspective from which to draw experiments, and its so-called answer-divining powers have been over-utilized or over-emphasized, and thus derided. For the wrong reasons, as I see it. Keeping in mind that EP is a tool, one doesn’t look at it as a product but a funnel through which data is handled, but never a means to discard others. It is, after all, merely about inference. 2. John Wilkins says, Your main opponents in this debate are scientists like me. You seem to be implying that this accusation applies to us. Is that really what you meant? Do you think I oppose the stupidity of evolutionary psychology papers because I’m afraid they might be right? That’s not a very good way to have a serious discussion. 1. But what exactly are you saying is wrong with the ideas expressed by John, and which evolutionary psychology papers are you opposing specifically? (I had to use that word.) Are you saying that EP is flawed as a whole? If so, why? 2. Well it’s clearly what a number of reviews say. They are most concerned that the political implications are bad, which, in any case, is a fallacy of consequences. I’ll summarize them in the conclusion. But it’s not about you, Larry. I’m sure your motives are pure. Maybe not Gould and the Sociobiology Study Group’s, but certainly yours. Leave a Reply
‘Game of Thrones’ Parody Imagines Michael Cera as King Joffrey (Video) What if Zooey Deschanel was Daenerys Targaryen and Aubrey Plaza played Jon Snow's wild love, Ygritte? An animated "Game of Thrones" parody proves King Joffrey would be a lot more likeable if played by Michael Cera, but the show wouldn't be all that dramatic. The "adorkable edition" of Cinefix's YouTube series, "Wrong Director," places Cera in HBO's hit fantasy series, along with Zooey Deschanel as Daenerys Targaryen and Aubrey Plaza as wildling Ygritte. Cera's Joffrey resorts to bumbling banter (with himself) while his mother, Cersei Lannister, demands he deal "swift, merciless justice" to an enemy of the throne. Playing off of Deschanel's love for music and felines, Khaleesi is now the mother of cat dragons and rallies her army of slaves by strumming a folk song. Plaza, as anybody familiar with her character on "Parks and Rec" would expect, does a lot of complaining as she climbs The Wall with Jon Snow. Here's the alternate animated universe to "GoT" creator George R.R. Martin's vision:
Varicose Vein Eroor About Varicose Vein In Ayurveda Varicose veins known as ‘Siraja granthi’. Varicose veins are swollen, twisted bluish veins that run just beneath the skin surface. Any vein may become varicose, but the veins most commonly affected are those in your legs. Symptoms of varicose veins include dark purple or blue color veins, twisted and bulging veins, an achy or heavy feeling in legs, muscle cramping and swelling, worsened pain after sitting or standing for a long time. The causes include family history, obesity, standing or sitting for long periods of time, age. Ayurvedic herbal oils, kizhi and panchakarma therapies help to cure varicose veins easily. About Eroor Back To Top
works automatically with Surfer (v 6 or higher) to generate contour plots of drawdown, recovery and groundwater mounding. Extraction well array How It Works Contouring results in is as easy as 1-2-3! Just follow three simple steps in the Grid Wizard and displays a contour plot using Surfer. It's that easy! Create custom 2-D (areal or cross-sectional) and 3-D (surface) contour plots for more effective presentation of pumping test and groundwater mounding results to colleagues, clients and regulators. Surfer is a powerful, general-purpose software package from Golden Software that is popular among geoscientists and engineers for contouring any type of environmental data such as elevations of groundwater or surface water, thickness of geologic units or floating product, and concentrations in groundwater, soil or air. Thus, one software package can meet all of your contouring needs. Cross-Sectional Contour Plot Cross-sectional contour plot showing drawdown around a fully penetrating pumping well in an unconfined aquifer with delayed gravity response using Neuman (1974) solution. Note vertical flow owing to the water-table boundary at the top of the aquifer. Wellfield simulation 3-D contour plot showing predicted drawdown around three pumping wells in a wellfield simulation. Groundwater Mound Beneath Rectangular Recharge Area Using Hantush (1967) 3-D contour plot depicting water-table rise (mound) beneath a rectangular recharge basin using Hantush (1967) solution.
Application Of GPS To Disaster Management Information Technology Essay GPS is particularly useful during disasters because it operates in any weather, anywhere and at all times. While it functions simply to give the location of the receiver, the level of precision of GPS makes it quite useful in disaster management. GPS find its greatest utility during the response and recovery phases; however it can also be utilized during preparedness and mitigation phases. An important application of GPS in EDM is tracking of emergency vehicles or supplies. In this application the GPS receiver attached to the vehicle and the location is overlaid onto a map. Other applications include the monitoring the height of waves. GPS units are fixed to buoys and the height of the units are can be determined to within centimetres any significant change in wave height or velocity can trigger an alarm for a tsunami or sea surge. Volcanoes can also be monitored using GPS. By measuring the deformation of the ground, inferences about volcanic activity can be made. Remote Sensing and Flooding Lady using a tablet Lady using a tablet Essay Writers Lady Using Tablet Get your grade or your money back using our Essay Writing Service! Essay Writing Service Flooding is one of the most frequently occurring hazards. With flooding comes the risk of damage or disruption to normal living including communication, transportation, the environment and infrastructure. Given the magnitude of disruption that can take place, it may be difficult for disaster managers to gain access to remote areas or areas that have been cut off as a result of the disaster. Remote sensing as a technological tool would greatly assist this process as it would allow users of the technology the opportunity to view what is taking place in an affected area, without jeopardizing the safety of the user, since they will not actually be at the site. It is always going to be difficult, if not impossible, for planners to identify all the areas likely to experience flooding in any location. The use of technology however, in determining flood potential could highlight features of the geography that could make the community susceptible to the hazard. Types of flooding such as flash flooding, which usually take place in a relatively short time, with little or no warning could prove potentially dangerous for disaster managers if they attempt to physically go into an area that has been experiencing continuous rainfall. While the task of providing assistance to victims is critical and time dependent, a physical presence in the affected area could increase the persons at risk. Using remote technology however, would allow response workers to stay away from danger zones while at the same time gather pertinent information to facilitate timely response, rescue and relief efforts. Floodplain mapping is a useful indication of flood possibilities in an area and remote sensing can aid the process of identifying flood plains. The technology would generate satellite imagery of the area in question, which would allow for proper planning and timely rescue efforts should the need arise. The detailed photography produced from remote sensing provides accurate information and can restrict efforts to the affected area. Other characteristics that could be identified about a geographic region using remote sensing include land-use classification, historical data, soil coverage, and soil moisture. Remote sensing and Hurricanes Hurricane forecasting over the last century has improved dramatically, with experts being able to estimate the likely number of storms for a given year, intensity and possible levels of destruction. Today, this process is made even easier with the use of remote sensing technology. Trackers are able, even while the storm is in progress, to go to the core of the system in search of information. This tool, at any stage of the hurricane threat is useful in mitigating against the deadly effects that could take place. Remote sensing can allow planners to ascertain data about the features of watersheds to include drainage and density. Once obtained, this is useful information as it provides information on the capacity of the watershed to deal with the volume of water-flow that could result from rains associated with the storm. High resolution technology, a feature of remote sensing, is useful in providing spatial data on hurricanes. Because the scales of geographic areas in remote sensing can be manipulated, users will be in a position to zoom in on specific areas for study. Storm surges and coastal flooding, which often accompany hurricanes can be better mapped using remote sensing and provide information on the level of flooding that has been experienced. Remote sensing and Earthquakes Lady using a tablet Lady using a tablet Writing Services Lady Using Tablet Always on Time Marked to Standard Order Now Development in any area with high seismic risk is always going to be problematic. Given the high volume of fault lines that extend across the breadth of geographic areas, it is inevitable that there are going to be human settlements in these areas. Considering also that there is no early warning system in place for earthquakes, emphasis must be placed on hazard mitigation to reduce the likely impact from earthquakes on lives or properties. Extensive use of remote sensing (and especially the use of satellite imaging) is critical to the planning process for earthquake preparedness. This technology will help in identifying the structural and non-structural earthquake hazards that are present and employ the most appropriate tool for minimizing these risks. LandSat imagery is one tool that is effective for this purpose given availability and cost. After an earthquake has taken place, visibility with the naked eye, as well as access to worst affected areas may be restricted. When this happens, it becomes difficult for emergency personnel to gain access to survivors in a short period of time. Using remote sensing technology, however, would significantly improve the timeliness and quality of aid that can be provided. Activities, such as search and rescue, are best affected after major earthquakes using remote sensing. Since there will be considerable amount of debris from collapsed structures, it would be advantageous to employ the service of remote sensing for deep searching. Just as Dr. Thomas Jordan pointed out, "The data from the Southern California Integrated GPS Network will allow us to anticipate future earthquakes with more accuracy, as well as to study in much greater detail the fundamental processes of crustal deformation that are the root causes of earthquakes." (2006, Remote Sensing and Volcanic Eruptions On-the-spot seismic monitoring of volcanoes is the most effective way to monitor volcanic activity. However, it may not be practical or safe to be on-site at all times. In light of this, remote sensing is crucial to the monitoring process. Remote sensing technology can allow disaster managers to observe volcanic activities on a continuous basis without being physically on site especially at times when it would be dangerous. Remote sensing and Landslides Landslides usually occur with other hazards, such as flooding, hurricanes and earthquakes, but can also happen independently. Once major portions of land shift out of place, access to and general visibility of the affected area is usually severely restricted. Remotely sensed images under these conditions are useful tools in assisting planners. It presents a picture of what has taken place, and aids in the decision making process regarding the future of the affected area. Where assessment of an area is limited due to debris and mudflow from a landslide, remote sensing could penetrate dense areas to provide critical information. As new technologies emerge, and with the increased incidents of natural and man-made disasters, it is necessary to employ as many of these technological advancements as possible to mitigate against the effects of disasters. Introduction to Disaster Management, Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC), Lady using a tablet Lady using a tablet This Essay is a Student's Work Lady Using Tablet Examples of our work Public safety and disaster relief,, "The data from the Southern California Integrated GPS Network will allow us to anticipate future earthquakes with more accuracy, as well as to study in much greater detail the fundamental processes of crustal deformation that are the root causes of earthquakes." Dr. Thomas Jordan, Director Designate, Southern California Earthquake Center. A disaster can be caused by government humans or nature. Disasters are events that are sometimes unpredictable. It is important for any to manage disasters. Government provides legislation, allocates resources and does rational planning and sustainable development. Disaster management and planning is a key part of government work. Identifying potential disaster hazards in your area These can include all or some of the following: Mass-event situations (concerts, sport, other social gatherings - for example the 2001 Ellis park disaster during the Pirates-Chiefs game) Storms and storm damage; Fires: Domestic, mountain and veld; Oils spills, at sea, on land; Transport accidents; Hazardous material spills (spilling of chemicals, etc from factories, trucks); disaster management, South African Government programmes and policies One of the essential elements of disaster management involves defining the types of catastrophes that could possibly disrupt the day to day operation of a city, town, business, or country. Identifying those potential disasters makes it possible to create contingency plans, assemble supplies, and create procedures that can be initiated when and if a given disaster does come to pass. A truly comprehensive disaster management plan will encompass a wide range of possibilities that can easily be adapted in the event one disaster sets off a chain reaction of other types of disasters in its wake. Because of the need to continue functioning in emergency situations, disaster management plans are often multi-layered and can address such issues as floods, hurricanes, fires, bombings, and even mass failures of utilities or the rapid spread of disease. The disaster plan is likely to address such as important matters as evacuating people from an impacted region, arranging temporary housing, food, and medical care. It is not unusual for the plan to also work toward containing and possibly neutralizing the root causes of the disaster if at all possible. The process of disaster management will often address the issue of ongoing communication. Since many disasters can cause communication networks to fail, a competent disaster plan will include the quick setup of alternative communication capabilities that do not rely on the various switches, towers and hubs that are usually part of telephone and cellular communication networks. Often making use of short-wave transmissions that are supported with satellite technology, the communication flow can continue from the area impacted by the disaster to other points where aid can be extended when and as possible.
Go to the Globe and Mail homepage Jump to main navigationJump to main content Since 2008, when Quebec made winter tires mandatory, the province has seen a major fall in winter collisions and crashes causing serious injury or death. (Getty Images/iStockphoto) Winter versus All-season tires Cheney: Fourteen reasons to ditch your all-season tires for the winter Add to ... My winter tire education began on a cool fall day in the 1960s, when my father took me to the garage and handed me a jack and a lug wrench. Falling leaves drifted down past the open door as my dad slipped on his work gloves to help me raise the car. Until then, my knowledge of tires was limited to three obvious fundamentals: they were round, they were black and they kept the car off the ground. My father was about to teach me what kept a car stuck to the earth when the weather turned cold. I’d always noticed that my dad could make it up hills where others couldn’t, and that while others spun, crashed and slid into the ditch, we’d always kept going and made it home safe. How was that? My father pulled away a blue tarpaulin to reveal a set of freshly painted steel wheels, each mounted with a winter tire. As we torqued the new wheels onto our Mercury, my father began his lessons on tire technology and the art of winter driving. “It’s not going to snow for a few weeks,” he told me. “But you can’t wait for that – summer tires don’t work in the cold.” Then he explained why it was foolish to use only two winter tires [like most drivers did back then]: “Two wheels do the acceleration,” he said. “But that just gets you into trouble. Once you’re moving, all four wheels have to do the braking and cornering.” My father died 14 years ago, but his teachings were the beginning of a lifelong education. The key point: winter tires really work. Not using them is like driving a car without seatbelts – you’re passing on a critical safety feature. The value of winter tires has been driven home by my own testing, consultation with experts and by statistics: in Quebec, where they have been mandatory since 2008, winter collisions have fallen by 17 per cent, and crashes causing serious injury or death are down 36 per cent. Exploring winter tire technology can be a druidic quest (amazingly, not everyone gets excited as I do about siping, hysteresis and angular momentum). So we’re going to boil down a catalogue of knowledge into a primer that compresses the knowledge of countless people I’ve met over the years – engineers, mechanics, driving instructors, ice racers, tire designers, chemists who design rubber that can stick to ice and, of course, my long-departed dad – the guy who never crashed. The collected wisdom 1. All-season tires are a bad compromise. On snow, ice or cold pavement, the stopping distance of a car with winter tires can be up to 30 to 40 per cent shorter than one with all-seasons. Since the force of a crash increases as the square of impact speed, this could be the difference between life and death. 2. Although it’s the treads that you notice, the most important part of a winter tire is actually its rubber compound, which is designed to stay soft in freezing temperatures. Like a gecko climbing a sheet of glass, a tire sticks to the road by conforming to minute imperfections. The soft rubber treads of a winter tire are able to splay and wrap themselves around minute protrusions on cold pavement, or even on what may appear to be perfectly smooth ice. Summer tires, which are designed to operate in warm temperatures, harden as the temperature falls. All-seasons, which must be designed for year-round use, cannot match winter tires in low temperatures. 3. Premium winter tires perform better than basic models. What you’re paying for is the latest in rubber technology and tread design. What you get is traction that may be up to 15 per cent better than economy-model winter tires. (If you want to see the difference between different grades of winter tires, go to an ice race. “The drivers with the premium tires are all out front,” says Ontario racer and winter driving instructor Ian Law. “There’s no comparison.”) 4. It’s about temperature, not snow. Winter tires should be installed when you expect temperatures to fall to 7 C or below. As the temperature falls, the rubber in summer and all-season tires becomes inflexible, killing traction. Watch the thermometer and use common sense, because no one will tell you exactly when to put on snow tires (unless you live in Quebec, where the law dictates that your car be equipped with winter tires between Dec. 15 and March 15). Report Typo/Error Single page Follow on Twitter: @cheneydrive Next story In the know The Globe Recommends Most popular videos » More from The Globe and Mail Most popular
Science New Year resolution: must build nuke powerplants Greenpeace feels it has stronger mandate The broadsheet quotes a "senior source" in the new UK gov Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (DBERR) as saying that Gordon Brown's first cabinet meeting of 2008 will clear the way for new nuclear stations next week, with an announcement to Parliament on 7 January. "Given the circumstances we will be facing over the coming years," the source said, "it is inconceivable that we should prevent nuclear from being part of our energy mix." The circumstances in question are those of declining North Sea oil and gas supplies and the closure of ageing Brit nuclear stations, set against rising UK energy demands. In the absence of government intervention, the existing posture would render Britain more and more dependent on fuel imported from sources under unfriendly Russian control. Orthodox environmentalists such as Greenpeace (and the Independent editorial team) are dead set against any new nuclear generating capacity, however, saying that it is too dangerous and expensive. (In the UK, anyway; French electricity is already 80 per cent nuclear.) The Greenpeace strategy calls for heavy brakes on energy use, and the building of renewable power sources such as wind, tide and solar to reduce the amount of fuel used by a principally fossil-powered national grid. (It must be assumed that there will be windless, cloudy, slackwater conditions on occasion: thus any wind-tide-solar augmented system requires something else - fossil, nuclear, or perhaps one day geothermal - able to take up the full load. Existing renewable tech slows down fossil use rather than providing an alternative to it.) Many environmental activists have in recent times accepted that the human race actually needs a lot more power if any serious proportion of it is to live in decent circumstances, and thus that energy demand cannot be reduced or even seriously slowed down in growth. A few hundred million Westerners switching their TVs off standby etc isn't going to free up energy to heat bathwater, cook food, power industries and build infrastructure for billions of disadvantaged Third Worlders. Staying at existing or only slightly-increased levels of energy supply while distributing resources more fairly would up most people's living standards by a few per cent at best and plunge Westerners down almost to Third-World levels, so such a plan will be hard to sell to both groups. Given widespread concern about fossil carbon emissions - not to mention worries about fossil fuel supplies eventually running out - this has led some influential environmentalists to see nuclear power as the only way ahead. Such thinkers include James Lovelock of Gaia fame, Friends of the Earth director Hugh Montefiore, and Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore. However, Moore's erstwhile Greenpeace colleagues have already held up any UK decision on fresh nuclear powerplants by legal action claiming that government consultations had been loaded in favour of allowing some nuclear development to proceed. A judge agreed, and according to the Indy, Greenpeace is confident that it can employ the same tactics again. The broadsheet predicts that the imminent ministerial announcement will be quickly bogged down in fresh Greenpeace lawsuits and a Labour backbench revolt.® It seems to be taken as a given that regulatory reform is a permanent, never-ending task; not something that can ever be completed successfully. Or, alternatively, that UK government departments and ministries now have a lifespan of one or two reshuffles at most. Sponsored: HPC and HPDA for the Cognitive Journey with OpenPOWER
My Twitter Feed October 23, 2016 Norway’s Lessons Are Alaska’s To Learn Alaskans are a bunch of people who want to be around a bunch of people who don’t want to be around a bunch of people. By Shannyn Moore I once saw a bush pilot restart his plane with the gum wrapper off a piece of Big Red. I asked him if it would work. He smiled and said, “It’ll get me to where I can get what I need.” That seems to be a prevailing philosophy here. Tyvek is not siding, but it’ll keep the wind out. In May a delegation of Alaska lawmakers will head to Norway. The intellectually incurious are already pulling their heads out of the ground to complain. Not only do I want them to go, I hope they take notes. Norway is the world’s eighth-largest oil producer and third-largest oil exporter. Ninety-nine percent of Norway’s electricity is hydroelectric. Because of investment in renewable energy, the Norwegians have more oil to sell. They are the envy of Europe. In 1972 Norway formed a state-owned oil company to compete with Big Oil. The company, Statoil, now operates worldwide, including in Alaska. Kinda makes me wish we had bought ARCO when it was on the block. This week, Sen. Mark Begich announced a proposal to streamline the Arctic drilling approval process. There was no mention of the spill prevention technologies Norway has demanded of its producers since 1993. The Norwegian Oil Spill Control Association says on its website, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” and the group means it. The Norwegians develop new oil spill technologies before they find themselves in the middle of one. Active preparedness, rather than reaction to crisis, is their philosophy. With all the oil taxation drama during the legislative session, it’s interesting to note that the effective tax rate in Norway is 78 percent — significantly higher than the rate of Alaska and the federal government combined. Alaskans feel good about our $40 billion Permanent Fund, and we should. Norway feels pretty good about its Oil Fund, which is $570 billion. We had a 14-year head start, but Norway saved 14 times as much. Their projections show that by 2030 the worst-case scenario for the fund is $455 billion, while the best-case $19.5 trillion, savings greater than our national debt. I guess that’s the difference between an owner-state and an owner-country. Our legislative stalemate is about Gov. Sean Parnell threatening lawmakers who opposed his $2 billion annual oil bailout. Among the items threatened are renewable energy projects. In 2004 the Norwegians created an ethics panel for their fund. They employ stringent guidelines and standards for investment. They don’t invest in companies involved in tobacco, weapons, environmental damage, human rights violations or unethical labor practices. Last year they included, “Violation of the Geneva Convention in occupied Palestinian territory by being involved in developing settlements.” As a result, they dumped 45 companies deemed unethical. Alaska currently holds stock in 37 of the companies that couldn’t make the grade for Norwegian investment. We spend resources on tobacco prevention, but invest our Permanent Fund in Phillip Morris. We own $34 million in UnitedHealth Group, which is considerably less than the $102 million paid to the company’s CEO last year. We own Exxon stock but never had a governor show up at a shareholder meeting to demand the money owed to damaged Alaskans. War machines GE, Halliburton and KBR are fueled by our investment. We bought Walmart stock; the Norwegians dumped it for “breach of human and labor rights.” I know, I know, “just move there if you love it so much.” Why is that the answer? Norway’s wildly successful fund isn’t the result of lowering the bar, but raising it. The Norwegian investment in companies developing renewable energy, developing resources responsibly and respecting the dignity of working men and women have helped those companies grow. Maybe we need to be like the pilot who gum-wrappered his plane to get closer to what he really needed. Like Norway, our resource can be used to get us where we want to go. This week, a KGOP radio host was appalled. “What could we possibly learn from Norway?” He could have asked: “Why would I put siding on my house when I’ve got Tyvek?” Because it’s better, that’s why. ***Originally published in the Anchorage Daily News. 35 Responses to “Norway’s Lessons Are Alaska’s To Learn” 1. Moose Pucky says: Keep on keeping on Shannyn. Yes, I also hope they took notes. 2. A fan in CA says: Great article. Another interesting read about Norway is from Inc. Magazine. My take away from the article was from the small businessman who has a shop in Norway and one in Beverly Hills on Rodeo Drive. When he adds up all the taxes and payments to run each shop it turns out he makes a higher profit in Norway than Arnie’s California. Hmmm? 3. Pinwheel says: A transition from one to another could be so reactionary. A huge part of the process requires voter turnout and a voter document system without questions. (Alaska 2004-2010 elections.) Throw in ‘Citizens’ United’ and the challenge becomes almost insurmountable. I am not a defeatist but this is a Mt. Marathon race for each election in Alaska in the foreseeable future. nem 4. Krubozumo Nyankoye says: tried to close the italics tag but it didn’t work. 5. Krubozumo Nyankoye says: Ms Moore – Now this is a superbly presented post, I like the way you went about it, easily checkable claims that are all confirmed in their essentials. Let me digress for a moment. Several people have made good and salient comments which I would like to address and reinforce but there simply is not enough time, so apologies to those I have to ignore in replying to this. Returning to the OP it is a fine job of outlining the difference between a true democracy and the false democracy that poses as legitimate in the US today. One point alone is sufficient to cast in stark outline the difference. In Norway the entire population pays a significant amount of their incomes into collective, you might say socialized programs, such as health care and retirement. They have a bit left over for discretionary purposes. In the US we all spend more than we actually earn, we carry a burden of heavy debt at onerous interest rates to banks and credit card companies and should some grave illness or other misfortune befall us, we are faced with the prospect of poverty and homelessness. 6. Elizabeth says: Between Jeanne and Shannyn, Alaska is doubly blessed. 7. bubbles says: outstanding post Shannyn. thanks. i concur with Mona. 8. MonaLisa (inCT) says: Excellent piece, Shannyn. You impress me more and more as time goes by… (Please be flattered, I’m not easily impressed, not at ALL!) 9. mike from iowa says: Out of curiousity, does Brian have any Scandanavian cousins in good standing,that he might call on for votes in the next general election? If he could get them to Alaska in due time,I sure wouldn’t augur with them when they showed up to vote. Its time for some good old skull thumping in the 49th state. Time to erase apathy and replace it with some knots on some noggins. I’ll chip in for travel expenses if someone gives me the correct address to send check or money order. why do I care? ecause I’m moving to Alaska as soon as I win the lottery,that’s why I care. Go Bri-lets rouse some rabble. 10. mike from iowa says: Norway’s situation is much too sensible for this side of the big pond. Too many Socialists and Commies to suit rethuglicans and once they complained about Dems being Socialist-the experiment would be dead in its tracks. I would love to see just one state with the intestinal fortitude to adopt this type of governance. 11. Diane says: Excellent article. Republicans would ask what religion the head of the country was and what were their abortion policies. Why can’t we learn and do what other countries are doing? Because some how, if we learn from other countries, it may be we are weak and not as ‘exceptional’ as the republicans would like us to believe. 12. Bravo, bravo. Now that’s an exceptional country. 13. physicsmom says: Shannyn, this is a terrific article, one which I hope the lawmakers making the trip take to heart. We need to abandon the “not invented here” mindset and learn from our neighbors. However, I’m afraid that the greed and self-serving interests which KS Sunflower fears are coming are already here. It may, in fact, be too late for us. It saddens me in a way that grumpy old Newt Gingrich can actually get something right, ie. say that Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan is bad and that an insurance mandate is good, and get hammered by the RWNJs and force him to backtrack. He had also said last week that we needed to focus on good government rather than less government. If he was sincere about those things, then I’d welcome working with opposition like that. Unfortunately, the crazies have hold of the Republican party and there is no hope for a reasonable mind. Ack. Too depressing. Shannyn, please keep us informed as to the feedback from the Norway visit, assuming the participants write it up. Thanks. 14. Wallflower says: Fascinating stuff! I don’t think Norway could be a role model, exactly, for the whole US just because of the differences in scale–but for a state? Heck-yeah! 15. mike from iowa says: You’ve certainly laid out the groundwork and blueprint for the next “oil-envy” RWNJ Potus that decides a foreign nation’s oil belongs to U S oil korporations. Norway-he we come. 16. HappyinAK says: Glad to see this post today as it is Syttende Mai (17th of May – Norwegian Independence Day). My brother and his family live there and we could certainly do well to emulate the way they handle their energy. The taxes for cars are enormous, so few people have them – and few need them with their great transportation system. 17. M. Paul says: I am going to make an educated guess and suppose that Norway has an exceptional education system and that being so they do not suffer from our epidemic of ” low information voter ” syndrome and all the trauma associated with this sickness. I am sure there electorate do not vote against their own best interests… M. Paul • maelewis says: Norway offers free public education, along with public health care. Norway has the 4th highest GDP per capita in the world per-capita in the world. Today, Norway ranks as the second wealthiest country in the world in monetary value, with the largest capital reserve per capita of any nation. The economy mixes free market and state ownership. It is considered to have the highest standard of living. This is the basis for their successful energy program. I don’t even want to attempt a comparison with Alaska, or even the United States. European nations have been developing alternative sources of energy, while we lag behind. Years ago, Bill Maher suggested that the government order hybrid cars from Detroit, buying as many as 20,000-40,000 cars fo a fleet for the Post Office, for example. With a big order like that, Detroit would have geared up in a year. Maher made this suggestion years ago, when he wrote a book that warned if you drove a gas guzzler, you rode with Bin Laden. We are late to the party. 18. ks sunflower says: Shannyn, this post may prove to be one of the all-time great posts on this blog even though mudflats is known for its stellar analysis and first-rate statements of issues. I deeply agree with you. I hope I am not misinterpreting your view when I say it is time for this country to grow up and accept that lessons can be learned from countries older than us. Those countries, such as Norway. may not be perfect, but they may have learned from their mistakes and be able to transcend group differences to achieve a cohesive policy for the benefit of the country. They seem able to create profits while protecting the environment. They seem able to regulate and restrict while nurturing growth. Everyone everywhere probably moans about taxation, but in a country such as Norway their tax system supports tangible benefits for the citizens that the citizens themselves, as a whole, could not afford individually. They pay a lot, but they seem to get even more in return. They can live without fear of medical crises. They can rest assured their children will get an education (some high-taxation nations actually allow free university education for those students who qualify). They can live without fear of the water they drink, the air they breath, or the land upon which they grow their food because their governments have made the welfare of their citizens a top priority. Why can’t we have that kind of thinking here? We used to believe in “all for one, and one for all” as a sort of national ethic. Where has that gone? Some of our most prosperous moments in time have come during high taxation. However, it requires politicians who rise above partisan interests to envision a national good and use those taxes for things such as schools, infrastructure, policing, fire protection, environmental protection (where do people think our parks system came from) and the like. It used to be possible to disagree on things, but work together for the common good. Politicians who fought for their beliefs could, at the end of day, gather together over drinks or dinner and agree that being American was what mattered. Where has that gone? I suspect there is a stronger personal ethic regarding the need for taking education seriously in Norway; for learning how and why the government works, learning strong skills in many areas to create well-rounded citizens who want and expect a high quality of life for everyone and are willing to work hard to ensure decent living standards for everyone. I think we can look to other countries that do that to learn how you can be unique, independent and free to pursue your own dreams while supporting the rights and opportunities for everyone else to do so. Otherwise, a society becomes a dog-eat-dog, look-out-for-yourself tangle of greed and selfishness; a condition I fear is beginning to take root here. People who live in environments such as Alaska should be on the forefront of innovation because they understand the necessity of coexisting with nature and the necessity of being there for each other when things get tough. Truly tough people can afford to be gentle and caring. They live with confidence, not fear. Truly confident people can reach out to learn from others, admitting that while they are strong and competent, they can always learn more and be more. Norway has had to survive invasions, has had to meld-together various groups, and face tough challenges for centuries. It seems to have found a path that might be worth following because it works. It would be foolhardy to dismiss it or to ignore their hard-won wisdom. Let’s see if it can be adopted or adapted to work for us. Take the best, pass on the rest (or make it even better). I think Americans can overcome our current “tough time” and our fear of the unknown and our fears of each other. I think we can indeed become better than we are, protect our lands, water and air if we change our attitudes. The only way we can change our attitudes is through research, reflection and discussion. – Antoine de Saint-Exupery What I find tragically laughable about the fragmented political scene here is that those politicians who support tax breaks and subsidies for large corporations are not supporting American business or the average American’s job, welfare or future. Those corporations are mostly multi-nationals; their profits do not shore up our economy – they flow elsewhere. There is no real tax stream from these large corporations because their Articles of Incorporation most likely speak to their reason for being as running a business for the profit of their shareholders, and that’s why they’ve lobbied for tax exemptions and most wind up paying no taxes at all. They are bound by their legal documents to maximize profits anyway they can – for them, not for our benefit. We need to remember this. We need to learn and grow. Exploring other options in countries where they seem to understand how to work with businesses for the benefit of their citizens as a whole is really the only viable option we have if we want to survive as a viable economy. We have to learn when to reign in greed and when to take charge of our own future. It is a delicate balance with no simple answers – but we do need to ask questions and look to other societies to see if we can learn from their mistakes and successes. Thank you so much for your astute observations. I suspect you will have most of us applauding your stance and turning to politicos to get their reaction – asking those who don’t agree with you, why not? • Zyxomma says: Loved the quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupery. I’m his birthday mate (a later year, same date), and have always admired the writing pilot. Shannyn, thanks for the post. Well written, and well thought out. • Pinwheel says: May be late to comment, KS Sunflower. Between the two of you, we have a pretty thorough blueprint of how we could proceed. I wonder if, in this case, size may make a difference. Norway probably has more relevance to a place like Alaska than the entire US. But if the practicum succeeded in some smaller population states, than perhaps the concept of States’ Rights could be revisited. Discount that last. I just think the model is worth considering for smaller populations who maybe have a handle on their own natural resources. (Owner State!!). Each of you have provided excellent review and analysis of Alaska’s most critical consideration. Thanx again. nem 19. Mo says: wow, another incisive analysis – tnx, Shannon. I hope it gets read a lot. 20. maelewis says: I think that you want to read about the Norwegian owned state industry: Statkraft: In addition to the renewable energy systems that they develop for Norway, they have installations in a number of other countries: They are also pioneers in developing new forms of producing energy, for example, using the osmotic pressure that builds up between salt and fresh water. They figured a way to harness this energy and convert it to electricity: I don’t want to burst any Alaskan bubbles, but this is a major enterprise that probably is best developed on a national level, and in many places around the country. (Have you read about the towers of molten salt in the California and Arizona deserts which store solar energy from mirrors, and release it to create elecricity? luck, Alaska, if you can do this on your own. It’s a start. 21. Bob Benner says: My God Shannyn, you only have to look at the tax rates that Norway imposes on its citizens to realize any comparisons between us and them is absurd… Here’s a hint for you… IT’S a JUNKET!!! By the way, I’m still waiting to find out what we learned from their junket to the Olympics… Maybe you can ask Sarah Palin apologist Lesil McGuire about that next time she’s on your TV show… • Pinwheel says: At least local citizens are also contributing financially for their govenment. More than we can say. 22. GoI3ig says: They produce a darn good Sardine as well. Skoal! 23. carol says: Who is going? Damn right, they’d better take lots and lots of notes! Take the knowledge and USE it, if it worked there, will it work here? If it won’t work here, why not and/or what would? The more I hear about Norway (yes, socialist government, entrepreneur friendly Norway), maybe I do want to move there. Sounds like they have a more intelligent population, rather than the knee jerk reactors we have way too many of here. I had to block a long time acquaintance from my email the other day because I had asked multiple times to NOT send me crap that hadn’t been fact checked. The response I got was to slam one of the four sites I’d suggested as hyper-liberal and false. The slammed site had, in fact, been checked by another fact check site and had gotten a glowing write up – not hyper-liberal and not false. It seems that far too many, politicians included, think fact checking is worthless; I suppose the politicians know their audience, the ones who will swallow everything that sounds like what they believe. Sad, and it doesn’t do my blood pressure any good to point out more productive uses for their passions than passing around lies. Check out what others are saying... 1. […] May a delegation of Alaska lawmakers will head to Norway.” reads today’s The Mudflats article by Shannyn Moore. This week, Sen. Mark Begich announced a proposal to streamline the Arctic […] Leave A Comment
Shoujou Climbs Ranks at Shooting Disco By Jason Nowe and Stephen Martinez Oct 20, 2007 TOKYO, Oct. 20 -- Shooting Disco, the Gutsman dojo produced and International Shooto Commission sanctioned show, returned Saturday with a main event featuring a 123-pound battle between Yuki Shoujou (Pictures) and Junji Ikoma (Pictures). This year has been a good one for Shoujou, who trains at X-One Gym Shonan. He claimed the No. 10 spot in the bantamweight world Shooto rankings after his victory over Ayumu Shioda in March, then scored a huge upset over No. 1-ranked Masatoshi Abe (Pictures) in July, which rocketed him up to No. 3. After losing two in a row to Masatoshi Abe (Pictures) and Yasuhiro Urushitani (Pictures) in 2006, the Chokushin Kai-trained Ikoma came back with a victory against Toshimichi Akagi (Pictures) in Shooto's Battle Mix Tokyo 2 event in March. Shoujou-Ikoma played out pretty much entirely on the feet, with Shoujou backing off and signaling for his opponent to stand after takedowns. The long-limbed Ikoma used his reach well early on, tagging Shoujou with crisp left hook counters after the X-One fighter had come forward. But as the fight wore on, Shoujou managed to avoid the leather that Ikoma threw at him. By the end of the second round, Ikoma's left leg was badly welted by the well-timed low kicks that his opponent had landed. Shoujou kept up the pressure in the third, putting together some excellent hand combinations, usually punctuated by a stinging low kick. In the last minute, Shoujou kept Ikoma pressed in the corner, and the last 10 seconds was an absolute slugfest as both fighters gave everything they had left. Once the scorecards were in, Shoujou's hand was raised with a unanimous victory (29-28, 30-28 twice). With this win Shoujou inches ever closer to a showdown with current bantamweight champion Shinichi "BJ" Kojima, which could possibly take place early next year. Eiji Murayama (Pictures) moved well on the mat in his bout against Makoto "Chomolangma ½" Maeda, passing the guard and twice applying strong armbar attempts that Maeda only narrowly escaped. The end finally came when Murayama transitioned to an omoplata and pinned his foe face down to the mat. From there the Gutsman Shooto Dojo fighter pounded away at his hapless opponent with his right hand until the referee stopped the bout at the 3:57 mark of the first round. Cobra Kai MMA Dojo's Toshimichi Akagi (Pictures) and Gutsman Shooto Dojo's Ryuichi Miki definitely took fight of the night honors with their fast-paced, nonstop war. Miki threw combinations and landed the better shots on the feet, but Akagi scored some excellent takedowns. On the mat, both took good positions and scored well-timed reversals. Akagi also had a good kimura attempt in the first, and Miki narrowly missed an armbar in the second. The last 20 seconds of this very entertaining fight saw the two fighters engage in a slugfest, throwing caution to the wind and taunting each other to hit harder. In the end, Miki's striking impressed the judges more and earned him the unanimous decision (20-18 three times). Purebred Omiya's resident judo expert Koumei Okada (Pictures) made pretty quick work of Kunio Nakajima (Pictures) in their welterweight bout. Nakajima started out well, scoring the takedown and raining down punches on his opponent. However, Okada scored a textbook kimura-reversal, reefing on the technique after he reached top position and forcing Nakajima to tap 2:26 into the first. Hiroshi Nakamura (Pictures) (Hiroshi Nakamura (Pictures)' class='LinkSilver'>Pictures) displayed some nice wrestling in his bout against Gutsman Shooto Dojo's Yuji Inoue (Pictures), but on the mat the Tokyo Yellow Man's fighter had a devil of a time getting his hands free to throw punches. Nakamura spent the whole second round in top position. Yet he couldn't pass Inoue's strong guard or unleash much damage with ground punches. The fight went to the judges, and Nakamura, the more active of the two fighters, took the unanimous decision (20-18 three times). Paraestra Tokyo's Kenichi Sawada (Pictures) was trapped in Takehiro "Tiger" Ishii's guard until about the last two minutes of the fight, at which point he escaped and took his opponent's back. Sawada then figure-foured his legs around Ishii and worked on a rear-naked choke for the remainder of the fight. Several times it looked as if the end was near, but Ishii hung on to hear the final bell. Still, Sawada took the unanimous victory (20-18 three times). After a takedown in the second round, Paraestra Matsudo's Takahiro Hosoi (Pictures) took side control on Yuta Nedu (Pictures), only to see his advantage disappear as Nedu scored an excellent reversal. Hosoi scored another takedown before the last 10 seconds of the fight, which saw Nedu throwing leather while Hosoi covered. The judges were more impressed with Nedu's striking than Hosoi's takedowns, awarding him the split decision (20-19, 20-18, 19-20). K'z Factory's Hiroyuki Abe (Hiroyuki Abe' class='LinkSilver'>Pictures) was in the driver's seat for his entire bout against Tomohiko Yoshida (Tomohiko Yoshida' class='LinkSilver'>Pictures). He was getting takedowns, passing the guard and scoring mount. In the second round Abe took his opponent's back and eventually sunk in the rear-naked choke at 4:11. Shinobu Miura (Pictures) outclassed Guy Delameau (Pictures) on the feet. He connected with some hard punches as his American opponent came in for the clinch. Delameau finished out the second round strong, but it wasn't enough. The judges awarded Miura the majority decision victory (20-19, 20-18, 19-19). While Junji Ito (Pictures) displayed some solid standup, his adversary Noboru "Shinpei" Tahara showed some equally impressive takedowns. In the second, Tahara passed the guard and worked all the way to the mount, where he rained down punches. The last 10 seconds saw Ito throwing leather until the final bell. In the end, though, Tahara picked up the unanimous decision (20-19, 20-18 twice). Also, Hiroki Sato knocked out Atsushi Matsuki with a big right hand at 2:05 of the first round. <h2>Fight Finder</h2>
Structural Collapse Discussion in 'Trading' started by dima777, Sep 19, 2008. 1. dima777 Can it be that the ban on short-selling in USA and UK will bring about a massive rearrangement in market dynamics that can destroy the effectiveness of many technical trading systems which have been successful so far? What do you think? 2. How do you make this one out? 3. dima777 I paraphrased it into a question. My thoughts are that the usual technical patterns that the systems exploit are the product of the BALANCED interplay of the forces of supply and demand on the markets....this balance will be shifted towards the buying public if the ban stays - causing the disbalance which will ultimately mutate the way the technical patterns look and form...:( 4. yes i think so, i def believe price patterns are now messed up, i have fallen back on my core strategy which relies on trading stocks which are for the msot part insulated from broad market action 5. My systems have been adversely affected by the change in market behavior. I am waiting to see if the last two weeks' behavior shift will revert, or if this is a new pattern. If the latter, I will need to rewrite my systems again to exploit newfound weaknesses. I'd rather not, but I have done it before. 6. I think this is guaranteed to happen. Time to go back to fundamentals. 7. Would it be safe to say that if you can trade in this, that you can trade anything? 8. No. Systems that worked before may not work now. New systems are needed for these new behaviors. That new system will not work should the old behaviors return, any more than the old system works today. 9. You mean buying when the mas cross over aren't going to work anymore? I am screwed !!!! 10. I can't speak for stocks but aside from the opening 5 min bar on the ES, the rest of the day acted the same way the mkts always do (in terms of PA patterns I trade off of). Who knows if this will change over time but at least today I found the day to be business as usual (aside from the huge gap up). #10 Sep 19, 2008
Affordable Access Predicting consumer response to new housing : a stated choice experiment Publication Date • Design • Political Science PREDICTING CONSUMER RESPONSE TO NEW HOUSING: A STATED CHOICE EXPERIMENT Eric Molin, Harmen Oppewal and Harry Timmermans ABSTRACT This paper discusses problems typical of eliciting housing preference. It will be argued that stated preference and choice models are potentially powerful in eliciting consumer housing preferences. This approach is illustrated in an example of new housing construction in Meerhoven. The design of the stated choice experiment is outlined and the estimated part-worth utilities of the attributes are presented. Furthermore, choices for houses in low- and high-density environments are predicted and it is examined how much more households are willing to pay for low-density housing. 1 Introduction Over the past decades, the housing market in many industrialized countries has moved away from a heavily government-regulated industry to an increasingly market-orientated industry. This trend reflects a retreat of government in providing social facilities. Other non-profit or profit organizations in the market place have been given greater autonomy and have been empowered to make their own decisions. Consequently, housing associations, for example, have felt an increased need to build houses that reflect the needs and preferences of their target market. It has led to an upsurge of market research activities to predict consumer response to new housing products. Newly constructed houses should satisfy the needs and preferences of households for which these houses are intended. To the extent that housing associations are successful in attaining these goals, risks are reduced. From an academic point of view, this increased market orientation raises the question how housing preferences can be measured. Realizing that no method is necessarily error-free, it seems critical to identify the specific assumptions underlying any particular method and assess to what extent these assumptions apply to any specific problem. The purpose of the present
Teletraan I: The Transformers Wiki Wreck-Gar (G1) 8,310pages on this wiki Add New Page Add New Page Comments0 This article is about the Junkion from Generation One. For the garbage truck from Transformers Animated, see Wreck-Gar (Animated). Wreck-Gar is/are [an ]Autobot-allied Junkion(s) from the Generation One continuity family. Wreck-Gar is/are the (twin )leader(s) of the Junkions, a tribe (or possibly race) of junk-robot Transformers who call the planet Junkion "home sweet home". Like all Junkions, Wreck-Gar's speech(es) is/are a hodge-podge mish-mash of phrases taken from Earth broadcasting, especially television, which has become the focal point of Junkion culture. He/they is/are generally suspicious of strangers, but once t\|he\|y consider[s] them a friend, he's/they're a steadfast and selfless individual. He/they oversee[s] his/their people's daily activities of "sorting" through their planet's collection of scrap, though what basis they use to sort the material has yet to be identified. He/they seem[s] to have some sort of relationship with a Junkion lady named Nancy. In battle, Wreck-Gar is/are easy to knock down, but near-impossible to keep down, thanks to the very unique physiology of the Junkions. He/they tends to lose pieces easily when t\|he\|y take[s] damage, but t\|he\|y can repair that damage with lightning speed, and it's possible that even if he's/they're reduced to a pile of parts it's only a short time before he's/they're back on his feet again swinging his axe. This rapid-healing ability reaches almost instantaneous speed on his/their home planet of Junk, or anywhere he can get his/their hands on scrap metal. Many would-be conquerors have mistaken the Junkions for harmless idiots. Most of them are currently scattered across the rusted surface of Junk. Yes, friends, act now! Destroy Unicron! Kill the Grand Poobah! Eliminate even the toughest stains! —Wreck-Gar, The Transformers: The Movie Italian name: Chopper French name (Canada): Ferraille (Scrap) American cartoon continuity Voice actors: Eric Idle, Tony Pope (US); Toshirō Ishii (Japan) Wreck-Gar and his droogs get ready for a bit of the ol' ultraviolence At first, Wreck-Gar viewed the Autobots as thieves and enemies. Attacking without warning after Ultra Magnus's apparent death (rumors of which were greatly exaggerated), Wreck-Gar and his fellow Junkions soon learned that they were wrong. Wreck-Gar fought Springer for a while before Daniel took him down with a steel bar to the back of the head. Following their defeat and the arrival of Hot Rod, Kup, Wheelie and the Dinobots—and subsequent pacification with the Universal Greeting—Wreck-Gar had the Junkions rebuild Ultra Magnus, like new with 90 day warranty, and dance with the Autobots to "Weird Al" Yankovic until they decided maybe they should protect Cybertron from Unicron after all. After boogieing down for an unspecified amount of time, the Junkions revealed their rather cruddy-looking ship to the Autobots and prepared to "destroy Unicron, kill the Grand Poobah, and eliminate even the toughest stains." The Junkions, like pretty much everyone else, didn't fare well against Unicron. Their ship managed to last longer than most in the battle, proving to be highly resistant to Unicron's fire-breath (due in part certainly to the Junkions' rapid-repair skills), but was ultimately crushed by Unicron's hand... though its passengers apparently lived (or at least got their money back). Wreck-Gar survived, as did Perceptor, appearing with the rest of Rodimus Prime's Autobot team on Cybertron. Though he returned to Junkion after Unicron's defeat, he remained a reliable ally for the Autobots afterwards, trying to ensure that they were neither canceled nor lost their license. The Transformers: The Movie He is one of the few beings in the galaxy who likes clowns. During the outbreak of the Hate Plague, Rodimus Prime summoned Wreck-Gar to attempt to repair Optimus Prime, but unfortunately, he was dead, Jim. Wreck-Gar remained on Earth to assist in trying to stop the hate plague, showing up later to rescue Rodimus from the infected Ultra Magnus, but this quickly proved unsuccessful as Ultra Magnus escaped Wreck-Gar's lasso and infected him. In turn, Wreck-Gar infected Rodimus Prime The Return of Optimus Prime. His warehouses were overstocked with hate plague priced to move, for a limited time only. Japanese cartoon continuity In the Japanese continuity, Wreck-Gar speaks with a Manchurian (協和語) accent, probably inspired by his Fu Manchu moustache. Headmasters cartoon Wreck-Gar was hanging out at Autobot headquarters during the first attack by Galvatron and his new Headmaster warriors. He merely pointed out the Decepticons' attack being shown on the telly and (successfully) bossed Grimlock around before running off to try to help anyone who might've fallen and been unable to get up. While Kup and Spike were debating the weakness in Vector Sigma, he told them to make sure operators were standing by and darted back off into the hallway, never to be seen again. Four Warriors Come out of the Sky. Marvel Comics continuity Marvel UK future timelines After the destruction of Unicron, Wreck-Gar remained on Cybertron for a time and helped the Autobots regain control of the planet while attempting to fend off Decepticon attacks under the new command of Shockwave. Wanted - Galvatron Dead or Alive When Rodimus Prime planned a time-travel adventure to end the threat posed by former Decepticon commander, Galvatron, Wreck-Gar decided to come along and leapt into the time-jump effect at the last second, causing his landing vector to be significantly displaced away from his fellow traveler's. Burning Sky! Stumbling across the deactivated body of Bumblebee by chance, Wreck-Gar put his considerable mechanical talents to work and rebuilt the scrapped Autobot into a new form as Goldbug. The two then joined Wreck-Gar's allies and the present-day Ultra Magnus in an attempt to stop Galvatron's schemes. Hunters! Wreck-Gar managed to get a hold of Galvatron's time jump trigger device, and planned to jerry-rig the device to send all the time-travelers permanently back to 2007. His recalibrations failed, though, and the Autobots returned to the future while Galvatron remained in the past. Fire on High! Still, Wreck-Gar had proven himself a worthy ally, and Rodimus gave him an official escort back to the planet of Junk and his people. Upon arriving home, however, Wreck-Gar stumbled into a plot by the Dark God himself, Unicron, to co-opt the planet Junk as a new body. It seems Unicron's head had blown free when his original body was destroyed by the Matrix and had drifted into range of the planetoid. Unicron's vast mental powers had enabled him to enslave the entire Junkion people, and Wreck-Gar was forced to "cancel" one of his fellow Junkions while making his escape, an act for which he swore Unicron would pay dearly. After escaping another of Unicron's mind-pawns, named Death's Head, Wreck-Gar gathered a large quantity of explosives directly underneath Unicron's head and set them to blow. He managed to destroy what was left of Unicron's body just as Rodimus Prime contained the Chaos-Bringer's living essence within the confines of the Matrix, ending his threat for the moment. The Legacy of Unicron! Sometime later, by sheer cosmic chance, Wreck-Gar came into possession of a Quintesson journal, a message cannister containing details of their plans to leave the dying planet Quintessa and colonize other mechanical worlds, including Cybertron. When he attempted to bring this information to Rodimus Prime and the Autobots, Wreck-Gar was intercepted en route by the Quintessons and taken captive. They tried to torture the location of the cannister out of him, but all they got was total nonsense. Managing to escape, Wreck-Gar hooked up with an Autobot spy named Wheelie, and the two of them blasted off from Quintessa. After eluding his pursuers, Wreck-Gar met up with some of his fellow Junkions and rigged the message cannister so that its contents were broadcast across the universe. Instantly, all the potential colony worlds were alerted and forewarned of the possibility of a Quintesson invasion, and overnight the Quints became one of the most hated and hunted races in all the galaxies, throwing all their future plans into turmoil. Space Pirates! Battle on the Junk Planet When an Autobot shuttle was forced to land on The Junk Planet for repairs, Blurr caught the attention of Wreck-Gar. Wreck-Gar was impressed by Blurr's powerful engine...and decided he wanted it! He attacked the Autobots with a horde of Junkions, intent on hacking the still-sputtering engine from Blurr's body, and fought Springer in the process. Sticker Book The misunderstanding came to an end when Kup, an old hand at negotiating with natives, located their missing shuttle and instead engaged the Junkions in a barter session, trading weapons and energon. The Junkions waved as their new friends departed with all their parts intact. Blackthorn Comics continuity Dreamwave comics continuity Wreck-Gar found the chassis of the near-dead Megatron floating in space, where he had been abandoned by Starscream, while on a supply run. Revelation Wreck-Gar brought Megatron back on-line and even salvaged several Aerospace Extermination Squadron drone bodies from the surface of Junk for him so he could reclaim his position as leader of the Decepticons. For Wreck-Gar's efforts, Megatron stabbed him through the chest. Runnin' with the Devil Note: Dreamwave declared bankruptcy before many of its plot threads could be resolved. Due to the Junkions' rapid-repair, very-hard-to-kill physiology, it seems unlikely that Wreck-Gar was a fatality. Transformers Legends anthology When the Recyclons arrived on Junk, intending to convert the planet into energon for their overseers, the Harvest Lords of Sigrath, Wreck-Gar approached the leader, Salvage, and got two blaster bolts in the chest. After a near-instantaneous repair job, Wreck-Gar called out his fellows and swarmed the Recyclons, severely damaging them and forcing them to retreat to their ship, the Reclamation, and lift off. Salvage returned to the planet's surface, leaving the Reclamation in orbit, in order to make peace with Wreck-Gar. But it was all a ruse; Salvage slapped a device on Wreck-Gar, a more powerful version of the Junkion leader's own decelerator laser, preventing him from attacking or calling his people while the orbiting Recyclons fired a beam from the Prime Processing Unit to convert the planet to energon from space. However, Wreck-Gar proved even stronger than Salvage expected, and he called the Junkions to fire a tractor beam at the Reclamation, sending it crashing into Junk seconds before the Prime Processing Unit activated, causing the ship to explode. Salvage himself lived only a few seconds more than his fellows, as the Junkions closed in on him immediately afterwards. Collect and Save Generation One • Wreck-Gar( & Re-Cycle) (Autobot Hero, 1986) • Japanese ID number: C-81 • Accessories: "Decelerator Laser" gun, "Armor Axe" Wreck-Gar's only toy transforms into a Junkion motorcycle, and is noteworthy for being one of the earliest uses of ball-and-socket joints in the Transformers toy line. As his fists become the axle for his front wheel, his two weapons can be mounted there in motorcycle mode. Unfortunately, Wreck-Gar and his twin brother Re-Cycle are only completely incapable of riding one another, unlike the action depicted in the movie. Awesomest MyClone EVER • Wreck-Gar (MyClone, 2003) A "super deformed" mini-figure of Wreck-Gar was created as part of the second wave of MyClone Transformers in Japan. These toys could be disassembled and their parts mixed-and-matched thanks to a generic base body. In Wreck-Gar's case, this is especially appropriate. Transformers (2010) • Wreck-Gar (Deluxe, 2011) • Acessories: "Armor Axe" Wreck-Gar is part of the Reveal The Shield toyline based upon his original appearance. His hidden ensignia is located upon his motorcycle mode's shield and his Armor Axe converts to his real wheel's hubcap and exhaust pipe. He can now ride himself. • The original commercial for the Wreck-Gar toy portrayed him as a Decepticon, presumably to keep with the theme of the movie and not spoil a surprise... even though the toy was always labeled and packaged as an Autobot. He was also voiced by Frank Welker rather than Tony Pope. • For nearly 20 years, Wreck-Gar was the only Junkion toy, until the creation of the e-Hobby exclusive Detritus. External links Also on Fandom Random Wiki
Conflict-ridden Iraq will once again see American military presence with the United States announcing possible airstrikes to protect its personnel and Iraqi civilians from the Islamic State militants. Stating that America will keep a vigil on the militants who have run over several towns in the Middle Eastern country, US President Barack Obama said in a special announcement on Thursday that he has authorised targeted air strikes if Americans in the country are at risk. The video of Obama's announcement was released through White House Twitter handle. Obama said the US had the mandate for the intervention, which was on the request of the Iraqi government to address the crisis in the country and to prevent 'a potential act of genocide', citing the threat that hundreds of Yazidis face as they remain trapped on a mountain while fleeing ISIS forces. "Today, America is coming to help", Obama said, in a public response to an Iraqi man's complaint earlier that no one was coming to help them. "I had said in June, when ISIL began an advance across Iraq, that United States will be prepared to take any action in Iraq if and when we determine the situation requires it," he added. "The terrorists have neared the city of Irbil where American diplomats serve in our consulate and where American military personnel are situated. The military will take targeted strikes on ISIS convoys should they move towards the city. We will also provide urgent assistance to Iraqi government and Kurdish forces to combat the militants." However, the President reiterated that the US military intervention was not another war in Iraq on the lines of the decade of fighting in the Middle East nation before US troops withdrew in 2011. "I ran for this office in part to end the Iraq war. As commander in chief, I will not allow United States to fight another war in Iraq as there is no military solution to the larger crisis in Iraq," he said, acknowledging that the authorised airstrikes could raise concerns of a war. The US military has already begun carrying out humanitarian airdrops that have provided food and water supplies to thousands of trapped Yazidis. Minorities such as the Yazidis and Christians in Iraq are facing a devastating crisis as the Islamic State, previously known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has ordered everyone to convert to Islam or face tough sanctions, even death. A video of an Iraqi Yazidi MP's emotional appeal for humanity against the 'genocide' of her people had thrown light on the situation of the minorities in the country. Obama said the US was also consulting with other countries on the issue of protecting civilians from the militants.
The Role of a Fiduciary by Melanie J. Martin, studioD "Fiduciary" is a general term for someone who manages another person's financial or personal affairs. The fiduciary's specific role depends on the legal agreement he has entered into. After assuming the role of fiduciary, he is legally bound to uphold the role unless he legally transfers it to someone else, with serious financial or legal consequences if he fails to uphold his obligations. Managing Financial Assets Fiduciaries typically manage financial assets for other people. The trustee is a common type of fiduciary. She manages a trust fund, making investments, keeping records of the fund's performance and issuing money to the beneficiaries as the agreement stipulates. Often the trust fund aims to ensure that the beneficiary will always have secure finances, which means the trustee can only dispense specific amounts to him at specific times. The trustee may need to follow terms agreed upon with the grantor, who initiated the trust, or the trustee might have authorization to manage and dispense the funds as she sees fit. Financial planners whom others depend on to manage their retirement or insurance plans can also be considered fiduciaries. Managing Personal Affairs Some fiduciaries, called guardians, manage another person's personal affairs and spending as well as overall finances. The person the guardian assists is called his ward. The guardian must consider the ward's wishes when making decisions for her, as long as the ward's wishes represent her best interest. Frequently the ward and guardian are related. A son or daughter might become their parent's legal guardian if the parent becomes incompetent to manage her own affairs, for instance. Likewise, an aunt could become her underage niece's legal guardian if the parents are deemed incompetent. In this case, the guardian would typically assume the role of parent. The responsibilities of an adult's guardian may include helping the ward decide where to live, paying for utilities, managing her finances, giving her a spending allowance and coordinating care such as skilled nursing, if necessary. Carrying Out Wishes A fiduciary may also carry out another person's wishes after that person dies. A personal representative or executor carries out another person's will. This individual could be an attorney, trusted relative or friend. An attorney also assumes a fiduciary role when advocating for a client in court, as the client trusts the attorney to act in his best interest, safeguarding his freedom and property. Delegating Responsibilities A fiduciary may not have the expertise or the time to manage someone else's affairs. In this case, he must delegate the responsibilities to competent parties. For example, a named fiduciary is entrusted with another person's finances, but may select a trustee to manage the finances. Members of a board of directors are also fiduciaries who act in the best interest of an organization's stakeholders. They delegate responsibilities to staff in the organization. A fiduciary who delegates responsibilities must still monitor how well the other party manages them, and find someone new to manage them if necessary. • "ABA Compendium of Professional Responsibility"; Center for Professional Responsibility; 2004 About the Author Photo Credits • Pixland/Pixland/Getty Images
Byte the Humanities March 27, 2013 Last year Temple University Press published Toby Miller's Blow Up the Humanities, a book that starts straining for provocation with its title and never lets up. The author is a professor of media and cultural studies at the University of California at Riverside. His preferred rhetorical stance is that of the saucy lad -- pulling the nose of Matthew Arnold and not fooled for a minute by all that “culture as the best which has been thought and said” jazz, man. In the future we must somehow establish a third mode: “a blend of political economy, textual analysis, ethnography, and environmental studies such that students learn the materiality of how meaning is made, conveyed, and discarded.” Enough with the monuments of unaging intellect! Let the dead bury the dead; henceforth, culture must be biodegradable. What I chiefly remember about Blow Up the Humanities, a few months after reading it, is exclaiming “What a cheeky monkey you are!” every few pages -- or at least feeling like this was expected of me. Otherwise it mostly seemed like vintage cultural-studies boilerplate. But one passage in the book did strike me as genuinely provocative. It takes the form of a footnote responding to Google’s claim of a "commitment to the digital humanities." Here it is, in full: “In the United States, ‘the digital humanities’ can mean anything from cliometric analysis to ludic observation. It refers to a method of obtaining funds for conventional forms of Humanities One, dressed up in rather straightforward electronic empiricism. So counting convicts in law reports or references to Australia in Dickens becomes worthy of grant support because it is archival and computable.” A scrawl in the margin records my immediate response upon reading this: “Cute but misleading.” But now, on second thought… Well, actually “cute but misleading” pretty well covers it. The caricature of the digital humanities might have been recognizable a dozen years ago, though just barely even then. What makes Miller’s polemical blast interesting is the angle of the assault. For once, a complaint about the digital humanities isn’t coming from traditionalist, semi-luddite quarters -- “traditionalist” with regard to the objects of study (i.e., books, manuscripts, paintings) if not necessarily the theories and methods for analyzing them. On the contrary, Miller regards video games as a rich cultural medium, both profitable and profound. To shore up his claims for Humanities Two (or, fingers crossed, Three) he finds it useful to pretend that the digital humanities will, in effect, take us back to the era of professors tabulating Chaucer’s use of the letter “e.” The scholarship will be more efficient, if no less dull. Now, I have no interest in impeding the forward march of Angry Birds studies, but there is no way that Miller doesn’t know better. The days when humanities computing was used to count dead convicts are long gone. Much more likely now would be a project in which all of the surviving files of Victorian prisons are not simply rendered searchable but integrated with census data, regional maps, and available documentation of riots, strikes, and economic trends during any given year. My griping about Miller’s griping has as its catalyst the recent appearance of Literary Studies in the Digital Age: An Evolving Anthology, which is part of the Modern Language Association’s “commons” site. (Anyone can read material published there; only members can contribute.) MLA is a major component of the Humanities One infrastructure, of course, but has enough Humanities Two people in it to suggest that the distinction is anything but airtight. And while Miller pillories the digital humanities as nothing but “a method of obtaining funds for conventional forms of Humanities One,” even old-school philological practice takes on new valences in a digital environment. “In the humanities,” write Charles Cooney, Glenn Roe, and Mark Olsen in their contribution, “scholars are primarily concerned with the specifics of language and meaning in context, or what is in the works. [Textbases] tend to represent specific linguistic or national traditions, genres, or other characteristics reflecting disciplinary concerns and scholarly expertise.… [T]extbases in the digital humanities are generally retrospective collections built with an emphasis on canonical works in particular print traditions.” So far, so Humanities One-ish -- with only the neologism “textbase” to show that much has changed since Isaac Casaubon’s heroic proof that the Corpus Hermeticum wasn’t as ancient as everybody thought. Textbase just means “collection,” of course. For that matter, the options available in textbase design (the ways of annotating a text, of making it searchable, of cross-referencing it with other items in the textbase or even in other textbases) are basically high-tech versions of what scholars did four hundred years ago. Alas, what Casaubon could do alone in his study now requires an interdisciplinary team, plus technicians. But he did not have the distractions we do. If digital humanists were limited to converting cultural artifacts of the print era into textbases, that would still be useful enough, in its way. The classics aren’t going to annotate themselves. But the warehouse is much larger than that. Besides the inherited mass of documents from the past 5,000 years, more and more texts are now “born digital.” Besides warehousing and glossing such material, the digital humanities incorporate the changes in how people receive and engage with cultural material, as Alan Liu discusses in “From Reading to Social Computing,” his essay for the MLA anthology. What Liu calls “the core circuit of literary activity” – the set of institutions, routines, and people involved in transmitting a poem (or whatever) from the author’s notebook to the reader's eyeballs – has been reconfigured dramatically over the past two decades. Besides making it possible to publish or annotate a text in new ways, the developing communication system transforms the culture itself. The digital humanist has to map, and remap, the very ground beneath our feet. Nor is that a new development. Other papers in the anthology will give you a sense of how the digital humanities have developed over the long term -- beginning when Roberto Busa started using a computer to prepare an exhaustive concordance of Thomas Aquinas in the 1940s. At some point, an important change in the digital humanities will be necessary, which is to drop the word "digital." (Note: This essay has been updated from an earlier version to correct Toby Miller's name.) Back to Top
Get (or Give) Great Tech Support Every month I get loads of letters from readers seeking help with a computer problem. Time doesn't permit me to answer them all (and I'll admit I don't always have an answer), but I do my best. Subject: I tried your fix but the How Can I Help Family Members Fix Their PC Problems? Long before I donned the Hassle-Free PC cape and unitard, I was the tech fixer for a much smaller group of users: my family members. And if there's one thing I learned in my many years of troubleshooting from afar, it's that the telephone is the worst tool in your arsenal. The best tool? Screen-sharing software, which allows you to take control of another person's PC (with their permission, of course). That enables you to work your tech-support magic while sitting in front of your own computer; it doesn't matter if the other person is across town or across the country. There are lots of remote-control options out there, but I think one of the best is Though created as a collaboration tool for business users, offers super-easy screen sharing that's perfect for remote tech support. It works like this. Let's say you're helping out your mom, who lives in Florida. All she has to do is start her browser, go to, and then click Share. That will download a tiny client program that she'll need to run. (You might need to help out with this part over the phone.) Upon running the program (which doesn't install anything), she'll see a nine-digit code that she reads to you over the phone. The client also provides options to copy the code to the clipboard or send it via e-mail. At your end, you're at the site as well. Type the code into the Join field, click the arrow, and presto: you're connected to the other PC. You'll see your mom's desktop, just as though you were sitting at her keyboard. Now she just needs to enable remote control, which she can do by clicking the little mouse icon in the toolbar at the top of the screen. It really doesn't get much simpler than that. Amazingly, is free. It has built-in chat features and can even give you a conference-call number. (Like I said, it's really intended for business users.) The only thing it doesn't allow is remote file transfers, though that's rarely an important option when you're doing a support session. Subscribe to the Daily Downloads Newsletter
Atheist Centre 1940-1990 Golden Jubilee International Conference Souvenir Vijayawada, February 3, 4, and 5, 1990 Progress of Atheism in India A Historical Perspective Umesh Patri, Ph.D. Prativa Devi, M.A., M.Ed., PGDTE. The atheistic heritage of India is extremely rich and Lavanam's atheism grows from this rich tradition. Compared to the western atheism India is the oldest country in atheistic thought and ideas. To our surprise Atheist Centre at Vijayawada of which Lavanam is the director, is the first known Atheist Centre of the world, established by his father Gora. From the time of the Vedas till Lavanam there is an unbroken chain of atheistic tradition in the Indian soil. It is an astonishing fact that the Rigvedic sages at times were skeptic and agnostic. Max-Muller asserted Rigveda to be the oldest record in the library of the world and even in this oldest record of mankind atheistic idea was present in the form of skepticism and agnosticism. To establish the cause and effect relation in nature Vedic Rishis were asking a number of questions like: "Why does the sun not fall although it is not supported by anything or fixed to anything?" Where is the sun by night?" "Were go the stars by day?" "Whence comes the wind, and whither goes it?" "Why does it raise no dust on celestial roads?" A superimposition of God in nature like light, heat, fire, sound expressed through sun, thunder and air subsequently took the human form. The entire Rig Vedic hymn on creation can be quoted for its quest for Truth. Its beauty lies With skeptic attitude expressed by the ancient sages of India such as: Non-being then existed not being: There was no air, nor sky that is beyond it. What was concealed? Where in? In whose protection? And was there deep unfathomable water? Death then existed not nor life immortal; Of neither night nor day was any token. By its inherent force the one breathed windless: No other thing than that beyond existed Darkness there was at first by darkness hidden; Without distinctive marks, this all was water. That which, becoming, 'by the void was covered, That one by force of heat came into being Desire entered the one in the beginning: It was the earliest seed, of thought the product. The sages searching in their hearts with wisdom. Found out the bond of being in non-being Their way extended light across the darkness: But was the one above or was it under? Creative force was there, and fertile power: Below was energy, above was. impulse: Who knows for certain? Who shall here declare it? Whence was it born, and whence came this creation? The gods were born after this world's creation: Then who can know from whence it has arisen? None knoweth whence creation has arisen: And whether he has or has not produced it: He who surveys it in the highest heaven, He only knows, or haply he may know not (Rg Ved 10:129 :1-7) Radhakrishnan and Moore's Indian PP. 23-24) In another verse the priests doubt the existence of India: "Indra (God) does not exist, who has seen him (hence) whom shall we praise?" (8:100.3) The Satapatha Brahmana brings out Materialistic Pihlosophy by telling "the beginning of all beginnings was water". The waters bore a golden embryo and out of the egg came the ancestor of all living beings. In the Upanishadic period sages seem to have a dialectical process of solving many intellectual problems. Nachiketa's doubts and questions to Yama prove his agnostic attitude. The Prasna Upanishad which consists of six sections containing six fundamental questions relating to the nature of the original cause, sufficiently prove the existence of atheistic trend in it. The disciple quests from his teacher which one is primary, the body or the mind? The teacher Uddalaka explained to him through a practical example by making the disciple fast for a week. The fasting made the disciple lose his power of memory. Then the teacher offered a cup of buttermilk to regain his memory. The teacher wanted to tell the disciple that "Food is God." Out of six orthodox Philosophies of India four are atheistic in nature. The Sankhya Philosophy of Kapila explains the evolution of matter into 24 categories. For it, the number or Sankhya is very important to understand the process of evolution. In Sankhya two principles of the universe are explained as Prakrti or "nature" which includes matter to mind and Purusha or "man" means the pure consciousness, Without the help of nature, pure consciousness is helpless and vice-versa. God has nothing to do with the system. Prakrti is like a blind man and Purusha a lame. One can walk and the other can see. If a lame sits on the shoulders of the blind, the former can guide the latter and both can walk and live. Allegorically it illustrates the intellectual aspect of atheism, which has nothing to do with God. In Sankhya matter is eternal. So said in Gita too that "It postulates that nothing comes out of nothing and things are not totally destroyed, they only change forms.".... That which does not exist, cannot come into existence." The negation of qualitative and quantitive changes, the matter is always evolving in the process of development. So matter first lay in inactive and passive and inert form, with its 3 qualities of Sat, Raj and Tamas lying dormant. That these 3 properties were inherent in matter and were inseparably interconnected, that matter is finally totally indestructible, but its various forms are changing and perishable. The law of matter as described in Sankhya can be compared with the Law of conservation of matter. This is based on cause and effect theory. When a property is formed from another property, the equalities of the former are retained in the latter. This is called the law of negation of negation. It is applicable both in organic and inorganic field. The four dimensional space time continuum theory was not unknown to the Vedic rishies. In the vedas the concept is that time does not exist without the existence of matter, nor can space exist without motion. They exist in relation to each other. Sankhya's materialistic theory of knowledge in its latter form became highly rational and encourage for social duty. "Bhagavadgita is the highest form of Sankhya, the man must perform his social duty. One should not run away from it. Arjuna, the warrior is the personification of sthitha prajna, who does his duty not with any personal motive but as a matter of duty". (The Atheist, March 1981, 36) Like Sankhya, Nyaya speaks of "right" or "just" which is a science of right or just reasoning. If truth is not verifiable it is out right rejected. God can be rejected or proved through logic, not through faith is the Philosophy of Nyaya. Vaisesika another orthodox philosophy, a system propounded by Kanada is a Philosophical treat of physics and metaphysics. It speaks of matter, in the form of atom or Pilu the world that exists. Kanada was so deeply involved in atomic theory that on his death bed few of his friends insisted him to utter the word god at least once. He smiled and before his death he uttered "pilu, pilu, atom." Kanada explains matter with its five elements, i.e., earth, water, fire, air and ether. In the beginning the primordial matter was subtle, invisible, eternal and infinite which existed in the form of atoms. This atomic theory was not properly developed during the period of Democritus of Greece. It is Einstein who as late as 20th Century could properly explore while splitting the atom. In the philosophy of India God is simply one among the many categories. He holds no power and prestige. Though yoga is called the "Samkhya with God," God has practically nothing to do with the universe. To please the theists God idea might have been added to the system. In the Ramayana there is a reference to sage Jabali who was connected with the court of king Dasaratha. Jabali was a teacher to Rama and his brothers. Jabali informs his pupils about atheism also. This clearly shows atheism was very much prevalent in those days as something to be taken note of and Jabali as a teacher did not want his pupils to be ignorant of it. Vana Parva of Mahabhrata clearly indicates that Draupadi, her father and brother were once guided by a brahmin who was an atheist. Jayanta Bhatta enlisted some of the typical arguments of non-believers including the Buddhists and Jains: "Since God is not perceived, his existence cannot be inferred. The works of a God are not produced like pots which are made; if God were like a potter, he would have to have a body. But if he has no body, who created him? Every body has a beginning. Does he act in accordance with some law or does he act capriciously? If the former, he is not free; if the latter he is human. If he guides and controls merits and demerits, he becomes dependent on them." (The Encyclopedia of Unbelief, P.317) 'The philosophical skepticism, logical fatalism and religious indifferentism' rightly developed in the Bruhaspati Sutra are supposed to be burnt in the great fire of the Nalanda library. The doctrine of the Sutra is called Charvaka Lokayata. Lokayata means world. Only this world exists. Nothing beyond and nothing after. They preached evolution not creation. Life originates from matter as the red colour is produced from the combination of betel, arecanut, and lime. They draw their conclusion that the only source of knowledge is our sense perception, where internal perceptions speak of our rational attitude and external perceptions confine to the activity of the five sense organs. To them when a man dies, the earthly element returns and relapses in to the earth, the watery element returns into the water, the fiery element returns into the fire, the airy element returns into the air, the senses pass into space. Their atheism is known from one of their famous lines: While life is yours, live joyously: None can escape Death's searching eye; When once this frame of ours they burn How shall it e'er again return? It is said that most of the Charvaka thinkers were born slave. They were the slaves run away from their master's houses and became saints. So they criticised everything religious and rituals. They argued that world is beginningless so endless, it is neither created nor can it be destroyed. There is no ground to believe that Charvakas were escaped slaves in saint disguised. It was a school of thought like other schools of philosophy in India. They were remaining in four sects according to their mental gradations. They were Dhurta (Clever), Vitandavadin (Scoffers), Tottvaopaplva Vadin (debators of categories) and Sushkishita (Learned and wise). It is the orthodoxy, ritualism and the abuse of the caste system that attracted the attention of the Jain Tirthankers, about 2600 years ago. Jainism is heretic in nature. They believe matter or Pudgala is primary, which is never created by god. But every man can attain godhood or Arhathood through right action. It is well known that Buddhism is a religion without God. Buddhism is atheistic because it denies the creator (God). The word creator itself is meaningless because God cannot be considered the creator of a created world. Buddha was very much skeptical about God-centered religious beliefs. Atheism in India has nothing to do with God. It stands alone. According to the great grammarian Panini a nastika is he who does not believe in the other world. (Astadhy ie 4:4:60). Manu the first and the foremost law-giver of the world declared a person atheist who vilifies the Vedas or the knowledge. In India the god-idea is found only in folk tradition, but not in the system of truth-seeking and knowledge. It may be only to satisfy the gullible people god idea is superimposed later in truth-seeking and knowledge. Thus philosophy in India is not god related. "Neti, Neti" or "Not this, Not that" was the first principle in seeking the truth. The ancient truth-seekers proposed a hypothesis and did not accept it as Truth without questioning it. Through questions one may disprove anything and everything. So any Truth cannot be taken for granted. This way they proposed no idea is final or there is no last word for Truth seeking. From the time of Vedas until Buddha, Gandhi and Gora freethought took a long way in different routes. The tradition of freethought is as old as India itself. It is a part of Indian Culture. Without atheism Indian philosophy is incomplete. So it has been considered as one of the postulates to seek the truth and. the ultimate. As the ways of life depend upon the philosophy of life, atheistic approach to seek truth has prompted a positive way of life in India. In India the thread of atheism can be seen in Quest for truth and social reform. Contemporary religious institutions have always supported the traditionalism and there were revolutions in religions to oppose social evils of the contemporary society which was sanctioned by religion. These revolutions in religion were branded as heresy by the contemporary religious people because any change in society was opposed by religious vested interest and the priestly class. Likewise in the western society all sciences were opposed by the religious vested interest. Inspire of these harassments social reform and science progressed and they refined and reformed religion. Thus heresy made religion more human and humane. But because of the inherent weakness of religious approach the very revolution in religion which was considered to be heretic, in course of time got degenerated into tradition and again that was to be opposed. Thus revolutions in religion have been a continuity to promote liberalism and humane values within religion. To promote peace in the midst of hatred and violence between religions, an inter religious approach was needed. Thus came the World Parliament of Religions. Every leader of the revolution in religion exerted the people to defy the dictates of the contemporary religious authority. In the flowing stream of history came Raja Ram Moban Roy, Swamy Dayanand Saraswati, Vivekananda, Jori Rao Phule, Pandita Ramabai, Maharshi Karve, Paranjype and Mahatma Gandhi who questioned the orthodox beliefs. They opposed casteism, untouchability and animal sacrifice. Because of their insistence on reason and interest in truth-seeking they indirectly helped atheism to assert itself. Then came a powerful flow of self-respect movement of PERIYER, Radical Humanism of M.N. Roy, challenge to miracle mind and superstitious beliefs of Abraham Kovoor and Atheist movement of Gora. They were the four pillars of the modern secular movement. Gora has put atheism in the context of human free-will, that is freedom to think, freedom to act and freedom to correct oneself. These triple freedoms were another name for positive Atheism. Positive Atheism moves "god-centred" universe to "human-centred" universe. It moves "god-centred" knowledge and society to human-centred knowledge and society. It removes the institution of God and promotes "peace without god." God remains an institution of hypothesis and myth. religion a fraud and prayer simply a delusion. We believe in god for four reasons, such as: to understand phenomena, sustaining morality, obtaining solace, and for the promotion of fine arts. These four can be promoted without god-belief or religion and that is what the atheists are showing to the world. That's why Gora called his atheism Positive Atheism. One cannot enjoy the fruits of positive atheism as long as he is not free from the steel box of religion. Upon that very rock stands Lavanam. Lavanam left his formal education because he disagreed with the educational system that enslaved our society, politics and economic systems. Lavanam, like his father, Gora, declared himself an Atheist because he is not an agnostic, realist, deist, rationalist, secularist, humanist, heretic, iconoclast, infidel, objectivist, ethical culturist, unitarian. He does not want to hide himself in any other disguise. He is an open atheist. Through his deep study of different religions he asserted, in the present situation, Christianity as the religion of trade and imperialism. Islam as the religion of violence and intolerance, Hinduism as the religion of inaction and caste system, and Buddhism as the religion of non-entity. He found how man is outgrowing religion and leaving behind the religious society. That made him feel the emergence of a "Post-Religious Society." He finds some elements of atheism in every man whether he is a priest or pope. Gora presented Atheism through every activity whereas Lavanam presents every activity through atheism. If Gora's concept of Positive Atheism is pure science Lavanam's concept of Post-Religious Society can be called applied science. Lavanam explains atheism as a psychological evolution of the physical man. The positive expression about atheism and the universality of atheism as proposed by Lavanam compels everyone whether one agrees with him or not to give a serious thought to his views. On the threshold of 21st Century humankind is experiencing a terrible uneasiness about old institutions and old ideas. The situation demands a bold new thinking. Technology has stepped in to produce new gadgets for the emerging new man but we have not yet produced a new philosophy and a new social structure for the emerging new man. New gadgets of technological advancement in the hands of the old philosophy and the old structure may create havoc which may lead to intellectual and social suicide. Hence new ideas should be welcomed and new thinking promoted. The concepts of Positive Atheism and Post-Religious Society compel us to take note of them for this new challenging situation. Atheism challenges people progressively to be more human, more self-confident and more self-reliant. Thus Atheism develops better individuals, and in turn with their interaction, they build better institutions. If the individual is changed and the institutions are not changed, it is bad. If the institutions are changed and still the individual is not changed it is worse. Today we are facing both these situations at the same time. So, Atheism as a positive force aims at changing both individuals and the institutions simultaneously. -- Lavanam
订阅 Chinese 查找任意词语，比如 bae Baldie, the pointless homosexual, believes that eating steak once a week will transform him from a pathetic anorexic runt into a he-man with arms the size of Schwarzenegger's chest. Equally bizarrely the hairless twat believes the weekly steak will have a greater bodybuilding effect if consumed on a Friday. Thus, Friday night is Baldie's Steak Night. Don't go in the kitchen, that gay cunt's in there. I know. Its Friday. Baldie's Steak Night. 作者 Twaggy Smidgekin 2010年10月18日 8 0
IN THE 1992 film “Sneakers”, the ostensible research topic of one of the main characters was something called “setec astronomy”. This was an anagram of the words “too many secrets”. The research was supposed to be about developing a method for decoding all existing encryption codes. Well, if that were ever the case, it certainly isn't any more—thanks to a start-up in Somerville, Massachusetts, called MagiQ. MagiQ is in the final stages of testing a system for quantum cryptography, which it plans to release commercially within the next few months. Encryption engineers have long waxed lyrical about quantum cryptography, but this is among the very first commercial implementations. The advantage of quantum cryptography schemes is that the code they generate are simply not—even in theory—breakable. The scheme devised by MagiQ, called Navajo, does not use quantum effects to transmit the secret data. Instead, it is the keys used to encrypt the data that rely on quantum theory. If these keys are changed frequently (up to 1,000 times a second in Navajo's case), the risk that an eavesdropper without the key would be able to decrypt the data can be proved mathematically to be zero. Of course, given the key, the task would become a trivial one. Navajo transmits the changing key sequence over a secure fibre-optic link as a stream of polarised photons (indivisible particles of light). Because the polarisation reflects the amount of electro-magnetic radiation allowed to radiate at an angle to a light beam's direction, it can be considered to be a measure of the angular dependence of the light. Should an eavesdropper tap into the secure fibre-optic line, he would disrupt this stream of polarised photons by the very act of observing them—and the tampering could be instantly detected. By changing the key frequently, Navajo could turn an off-the-shelf encryption scheme such as AES (Advanced Encryption System) into something that was essentially uncrackable. As in all good encryption schemes, Navajo employs an element of redundancy. The sender has two random-number generators. The first is used to generate a random stream of zeros and ones—part of which will form the key. The second random-number generator chooses which “polarisation basis” the sender will use to transmit a given bit of the key. The sender uses two different polarisation bases, which are at right-angles to one another. Only by measuring in the correct polarisation basis can a receiver see which bit was sent—otherwise the result is meaningless. For each bit, the receiver arbitrarily chooses which polarisation basis to use. The sender and receiver then talk over an open channel and find out which bits they measured using the same basis. These bits (about half of the total) then constitute the key. If someone has been eavesdropping, some of these bits will have been disrupted. In that case the receiver will be unable to decode the message, and will thus conclude that someone is listening in. This much is standard quantum cryptography. What is harder is building the hardware that can do it quickly and cheaply enough to be commercially viable. MagiQ is in a race with a Swiss company called ID Quantique to be the first to do so, and currently appears to be in the lead. Of course, if the quantum signal could be transmitted wirelessly, it would liberate users from the cost and constraints of a fibre-optic line. Bob Gelfond, MagiQ's founder and chief executive, is coy about the possibility. He admits that his firm is working on the idea, but is not saying anything at the moment. For the time being, Navajo requires a dedicated fibre-optic link, which only large corporations or governments are likely to have. And it currently works only at distances of up to 50 kilometres. Any longer than that and random interference degrades the stream of photons and makes them unusable. But within these constraints, Navajo is fairly cheap. MagiQ plans to sell it for $50,000 a set. Given the glut of unused optical fibre buried beneath the streets of the world, MagiQ is optimistic about Navajo's prospects. Andrew Hammond, a vice-president at the company, reckons the market could potentially be worth more than $1 billion a year, with much of the business coming from firms with valuable intellectual property, such as drugmakers and aircraft companies.
About Us What Makes The MyoKinesthetic System Work? We know that the brain works of negative feedback. Each time we stand up to gravity, the brain receives information from the rest of the body. Cause and Compensation If we had a fall or lifted something heavy incorrectly, something strange happened to our body. A muscle on the left went short, so a muscle on the right side of our body lengthened to compensate. These two muscles tell the brain where they are relative to the one constant we all share: Gravity. The brain now tells other muscles where to go in relation to these muscles so we can stand as straight as possible ... with the most range of motion in each joint possible … with the least amount of pain. Muscle Memory With the MyoKinesthetic System, we are trying to find the cause and clear it so all the compensations will clear away, too. This is not Chiropractic. At no time do we manipulate or "pop" bones. Instead, we go to work on the muscles. We stimulate each muscle along one nerve pathway. Deep, light, with cross-friction, or something else, whatever way you want to generate the stimulation is fine. We can treat the origin, insertion, belly, or all three, all will work because we're looking for the nerve endings within the muscles to send a signal to the brain that say's "there's a change happening here." The brain receives this information and makes changes to it – we've cleared the cause and the many unfortunate compensatory adjustments by stimulating those muscles along the nerve. We've used "muscle memory" to our advantage: more balanced, greater range of motion, and a decrease in pain that lasts. Unique and Revolutionary There is simply nothing else like it. The MyoKinesthetic System is not a repackaged technique. It is the result of more than 15 years of hands-on research and development. The difference is in the treatment: Which muscles do we treat together to clear the entire peripheral nervous system pathway. By focusing on the nervous system while working on the muscular system, The MyoKinesthetic System … • Alleviates pain • Restores movement and function • Improves posture But the real beauty of the MyoKinesthetic System is that it's simple to learn … and it works quickly. You should see results almost immediately from just one 15-minute session.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008 The other day I was surprised to read someone with Type 1 saying, "diabetes will eventually kill me, anyway." Then a lot of other people agreed. Am I the only one who doesn't think diabetes will eventually kill me? Christine-Megan said... Yeah, diabetes will eventually kill you unless something like a car accident gets you first. How far from now that happens it adjustable though. Cody Turner said... Complications from diabetes is what is more likely to kill diabetics. Not diabetes itself. Lili said... Christine - I guess I disagree. Besides, I was denied life insurance based on my other conditions, not the diabetes. Cody - True, but I think that's what they meant. Kassie said... I've always believed that chances are "complications from diabetes" will be listed among my causes of death, barring accident. Of course, part of that has to do with the fact that most docs blame the diabetes for what ails ya, I'm sure they blame it for what kills ya. Awakening said... What is wrong with people? Diabetes will not kill me. Who thinks that way? ~Suzanne~ said... I used to think diabetes would eventually kill me, which was my basis for not doing what I needed to to take care of myself...heck, why bother, right?? Diabetes will be hard to manage and sure does take a lot of my time, and I may get complications, but I am going to believe with all I have, that diabetes is NOT a death sentence...it is a life sentence, and I intend to LIVE!! Khurt said... I will eventually die but .. by then I expect to be over 100. Lili said... Thanks, guys!
Shortcut Navigation: New Order Of Mammals Is Announced With Discovery Of Gliding Mesozoic Mammal Fossil Reconstruction of Volaticotherium antiquus Credit: Chuang Zhao and Lida Xing An American Museum of Natural History paleontologist and his colleagues have named a new order of mammals based on their description of a fossil of a bat- or squirrel-sized Mesozoic mammal, called Volaticotherium antiquus (meaning "ancient gliding beast"), which was capable of gliding flight. The rock beds that yielded the fossil date to at least 125 million years ago, so the new fossil extends the earliest record for gliding flight in mammals by 70 million years or more and indicates that mammals experimented with gliding flight and aerial life at about the same time that birds first took to the skies, possibly even earlier. The team also completed an analysis of the evolutionary relationships among major groups of known Mesozoic mammals, which included the new data on V. antiquus. The results, described in a new paper in the journal Nature, revealed that the gliding Mesozoic mammal represents a previously unknown and highly specialized group of mammals that the authors recognize as a new order of mammals. This is a previously unknown group and one of the most important discoveries or designations of a major mammalian group since Richard Owen's review of Mesozoic mammals in 1871. The authors of the new paper are Jin Meng, Associate Curator in the Museum's Division of Paleontology; and his colleagues Yaoming Hu, Yuanqing Wang, Xiaolin Wang, and Chuankui Li, researchers at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing. Illustration of Volaticotherium antiquus Credit: Lida Xing The fossil of the gliding mammal, discovered in eastern Mongolia, preserves the animal's skeleton, as well as an impression of most of a large fold of skin membrane that stretched between the animal's fore and hind limbs, the direct evidence that the animal was adapted for gliding flight. The membrane, known as a patagium, served as an airfoil to support the small animal's weight and generated lift for it to travel horizontally through the air. The fossil also preserves impressions of the fur that was found on the gliding membrane and on other parts of the body, one of the earliest records of the skin covering that is typical of mammals. The animal's limbs are elongated, which is typical for living gliding mammals. Longer bones allow for more skeletal and muscular support of a glider's airfoil. The fossil vertebrae suggest that the animal had a long, stiff tail that served as a stabilizing rudder during gliding flight. The lengths of the animal's skull and skeleton suggest that V. antiquus weighed less than a pound, so it had a relatively light load in flight. Being lightweight and possessing a relatively large airfoil, V. antiquus was likely an agile glider, but perhaps not agile enough to chase insects as prey through the air. Unlike living mammal gliders that are predominately herbivorous, the unique, highly specialized sharp teeth of V. antiquus provide evidence that this mammal was undoubtedly an insectivore, like most known Mesozoic mammals. Other features of the animal's limb and finger and toe bones indicate it was a climber, which allowed it to forage on trees and obtain height for gliding, as in the case of flying squirrels. V. antiquus is the first known Mesozoic mammal capable of gliding flight, indicating that early mammals were more diverse in their early evolution than scientists had previously thought and also that unknown groups of mammals still remain for paleontologists to discover, buried in geologic time. "This new evidence of gliding flight in early mammals is giving us a dramatically new picture of many of the animals that lived in the Age of Dinosaurs," Dr. Meng said. "Establishing a new order probably only happens once, if that, in the lifetime of a lucky paleomammalogist." Prior to the description of V. antiquus, the earliest known gliding mammal was a rodentknown from a 30-million-year old fossil preserving the gliding membrane. The earliest confirmed record of bats, also aerial mammals but capable of powered flight rather than gliding flight, dates to about 51 million years ago. The newly discovered fossil shows that mammals experimented with aerial life at least 70 million years earlier than previously thought. Although the new gliding mammal is comparable in size and shape to flying squirrels (which are members of Rodentia, an order of placental mammals), V. antiquus is not a direct ancestor of these or any other living mammals, including flying marsupials, flying lemurs, or bats. Instead, V. antiquus provides evidence for the independent origin of flight in this now-extinct lineage of mammals. Media Inquiries: Department of Communications, 212-769-5800 American Museum of Natural History Central Park West at 79th Street New York, NY 10024-5192 Phone: 212-769-5100 Open daily from 10 am - 5:45 pm except on Thanksgiving and Christmas Maps and Directions
Company News: TransCanada to buy Gas Transmission Northwest TransCanada Corp., Calgary, plans to buy Gas Transmission Northwest Corp. (GTN) for $1.2 billion, plus $500 million of assumed debt, subject to approval from the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Maryland.GTN is a subsidiary of National Energy & Gas Transmission Inc. (NEGT), Bethesda, Md., which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July 2003. Upon its emergence from bankruptcy, NEGT will separate from its parent, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., San Francisco.In other midstream news:Australian natural gas company Alinta Ltd. agreed to buy natural gas pipelines and gas-fired power plants in Australia and New Zealand from Duke Energy Corp., Charlotte, NC, for $1.24 billion.In upstream news:X... Why Register? Why Subscribe? Subscriber Help or Subscribe Stay Connected
username: password: register forgotton password Fan Art Albums of My Lion King AlbinoRaven666's Album the orphan cub « Newer - Older » the orphan cub © AlbinoRaven666 2011 Artist's Comments Taka, or Scar now, as he preferred to be called now as a brutal reminder to those around him of his fathers abuse, had been walking back from the Elephant Grave Yard; after one of his secret meetings with his secret friends. The walk was always a long one, but he liked it. It was quiet, peaceful... Gave him time to think up excuses as to why he had been gone for so long, and where. But this time... It wouldn't be so quiet. He heard ruffling in the brush, and noises that sounded like some poor pathetic wounded animal up ahead. He groaned, rolling his eyes... Perhaps the Hyenas had made another failed attempt at hunting some poor animal that had wandered to close to the grave yard... Oh well, he had to admit he was hungry anyway... He often missed lunch on his ventures to see his friends... He neared, expecting to find a wounded animal, an easy kill... But what he found was quite different... A young, female cub. He raised an eyebrow at the cub, and as the cub noticed him, she shrunk back in fear. "P-Please don't e-eat me." She whimpered, looking up at the teenage lion. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Eat a cub?... What do you take me for, a common rogue?" He asked in a dull tone, his head high in a sort of bored stood-up way. He eyed the cub, not recognizing her to belong to any of the lionesses in his fathers pride, or those prides that neighbored the Pride Lands. "Who...Are you anyway?" He asked, almost half interested. "Z-zira." The cub said sadly, wiping some tears from her cheeks. She stood up a bit, less afraid now that she knew this young lion wasn't going to kill her. "Who are you?" "Scar..." He said drably, looking around. "You shouldn't be wandering around here... My father doesn't take kindly to rogues... Even if they are cubs." What he said was true... Ahadi had been a rogue himself, but in being one, he knew how dangerous some rogues could be. He nearly lost his life several times as a cub, and he was always very weary of new comers to the Pride Lands... Especially those who were alone. Zira trembled. "Your...F-Father?" She asked, scared again... She had also had bad run in with rogues... Especially the male ones. "Yes..." He said with a bored tone. "So you might as well run back to where you have come from." And with that, he turned back towards his path to Pride Rock, and started walking. Zira's eyes widened, and she jumped after him. "No! Please!" She pleaded. "Don't leave me alone! I don't have anywhere to go!" "Oh come on, your parents have to be around here somewhere." He groaned, noticing the cub was following him. She shook her head sadly. "N-No.... I'm all alone. They are... D-dead." She said, tearing up again. Scar groaned at the sight of the tears, scowling a bit. "Well what do you expect me to do about it?!" He snapped with a bit of a growl. "I.. I don't know.." She whined, before latching herself onto one of his hind legs. "Just please don't leave me alone!" Scar groaned, again, looking towards Pride Rock. "Fine...." He muttered, turning to pick her up by the scruff. He then walked towards Pride Rock once again. Her eyes were wide, but she hung there limply, feeling some sort of odd comfort despite being terrified. It wasn't until Scar approached the large rock, and two lions in the distance approached that she began to panic again. "Oh no! no no no!" She whined. He plopped her down in front of him. "Sit still and shut up." He muttered, looking up at the approaching figures. They were that of his mother and father, heading out for their afternoon walk and patrol of the borders. Ahadi's face stiffened slightly at the sight of his son... He had, ever since loosing his temper with him, tried to mend the relationship between him and his son... But to no avail. Uru smiled at the sight of her Taka. "Taka dear." She said with a grin, before stopping, looking down at what was at his paws. "Darling.... Who is this?" Zira trembled, despite the fact that Uru wore a soft, confused smile. Scar rolled his eyes at his mother calling him Taka instead of Scar, but said nothing on the subject. "I found her in the Pride Lands... She says she's orphaned." He said in a quiet tone... Never making eye contact with his father. Ahadi looked at Taka, and then down at the female cub... Despite being hesitant about the rogue female, he couldn't help but smile at his son's actions. Scar had been very cold to everyone lately... And he was pleasantly surprised to see that Scar still had enough good heartedness in him to not leave a cub alone. Scar raised his eyebrows at his fathers smile... Slightly shocked... Had he done something right, for once? "So.. Um.. I brought her here... I figured, maybe... You'd let her stay." Scar said, breaking eye contact once again. Ahadi was silent, but Uru smiled. "Well we can't just let the little dear wander around by herself, can we Ahadi?" She asked her king. "After all, wasn't it my father who allowed you to stay in the Pride Lands when you were still small?" Ahadi smiled at the mention of Mohatu, and with a nod he let out a soft sigh. "Perhaps your right... I can't in good consciousness let this cub wander around by herself." He said with a defeated smile. Scar managed a smirk, and looked at his mother. "Who is going to take her?" he asked, half curious. Uru thought for a moment. "There are some good lionesses who would be more than happy in taking in a young cub..." She said with a nod. "What is your name, little cub?" Zira smiled at them at long last, only a little afraid now. "Zira." She said quietly. "Well Zira... Welcome to the Pride Lands." Ahadi said, before smiling at Scar... He had done this, mostly for him... Scar, no... Their Taka had done something selfless, and Ahadi didn't want to discourage such acts. So Zira would stay in the Pride Lands... A lioness would take her in. But Zira spent most of her time around Scar after that; ever thankful for the kind lion who had saved her. Scar found this mostly annoying... but he had to admit he secretly enjoyed her company. User Comments There are no comments yet! Be the first to comment! Post a Comment: You must be logged in to comment! Please login to or Create an account. Submitted: September 1st, 2011, 6:25 pm Image Size: 141.18 KB Full Resolution: 900x788 Comments: 0 Views: 853 1 vote: Fans of this Submission [0]: Featured Characters No characters yet.
Yum (still) On the Up and Up It seems that all reports of the demise of Yum! Brands (NYSE: YUM) have been greatly exaggerated. It was rumored that the Chinese would stop eating, and the Mayan doomsday would come as scheduled, and therefore impede Yum's growth plans forever. Joking aside, Yum did announce slowing growth in China. Not only did they announce that it has slowed slightly, they also felt the need to adjust their outlook for the coming year. One statistic I thought noteworthy was the announcement of 700 new restaurants in 2013, compared to 800 in 2012. Of course shares fell. As the stock price tumbled, it took about half of this year's gains with it. YUM data by YCharts And that's where we are right now. What do we do with this? The Chinese Wildcard So, is this the beginning of the end for the amazing growth story Yum has been? Yum's CEO David Novak would say no. In fact, he would sarcastically say no. If the sky is falling in China, I promise, I will know about it before you–and I will let you know." Yum has faced the bears on Chinese growth before. People wondered how they would keep growing through the SARS scare and then also with Avian Flu. But each time Yum is presented with a Chinese challenge, they make it through to the other side. Although it looks like their Chinese expansion is slowing, it's interesting to note a shift that is taking place in the way that they are expanding. Yum now wishes to shift their expansion focus away from the bigger cities, and into smaller cities. There are two reasons that this is significant. First of all, Yum has focused almost entirely in the big cities up to this point in time. Granted, they still have room to grow there, but that is where the bulk of their locations presently are. In the big cities, they have about 9 restaurants per million people. But when you look at the smaller cities, they have about 2 restaurants per million people. That's a lot more room to grow. But secondly, this is potentially a more profitable move for Yum. Why? Rent in places like Beijing and Shanghai is getting to be pretty pricey, but real estate is more affordable in smaller cities. So not only is there more room to grow in suburban areas, the growth is potentially more profitable. The recent sell-off was due to pessimism of just 700 new restaurants compared to 800. But if this issue of real estate prices holds true, you have to ask yourself if Yum will be able to achieve higher profits on fewer stores. But Even Still But even if Yum is starting to slow in its growth, does this justify the recent sell-off? YUM Revenue TTM data by YCharts It has been outpacing the majority of its competitors in revenue growth over the last five years. It's not fun to see slowing growth, but even if it slows a tad, it still is growing faster than its primary nemeses. Back several months ago, I was very bearish on Chipotle Mexican Grill over the short-term. In my opinion the P/E ratio was way to high. Chipotle was growing very fast, but I couldn't help but think that the first whiff of slowing growth would knock them off their 60 P/E ratio pedestal. And that's what happened. But Yum is a different situation. They don't sport the ridiculous P/E. • Yum! Brands 19.68 • McDonald's (NYSE: MCD) 16.59 • Domino's (NYSE: DPZ) 23.17 • AFC Enterprises (NASDAQ: AFCE) 22.90 As you can see, when compared to competitors, there is nothing outrageous with Yum's valuation. My Takeaway I wind up saying this a lot, but I think that the market has given us buy-and-holders a great entry point to this stock. I was really convinced that we weren't going to see this stock in the mid-60's ever again. As fate would have it, we can now jump in with both feet. This company is the real deal for the long haul. blog comments powered by Disqus Compare Brokers Fool Disclosure
Last modified on 14 July 2014, at 11:02 Computer Programming/Imperative programming In computer science, imperative programming, as opposed to declarative programming, is a programming paradigm that describes computation in terms of a program state and statements that change the program state. In much the same way as the imperative mood in natural languages expresses commands to take action, imperative programs are a sequence of commands for the computer to perform. The hardware implementation of almost all computers is imperative; nearly all computer hardware is designed to execute machine code, which is native to the computer, written in the imperative style. From this low-level perspective, the program state is defined by the contents of memory, and the statements are instructions in the native machine language of the computer. Higher-level imperative languages use variables and more complex statements, but still follow the same paradigm. Recipes and process checklists, while not computer programs, are also familiar concepts that are similar in style to imperative programming; each step is an instruction, and the physical world holds the state. Since the basic ideas of imperative programming are both conceptually familiar and directly embodied in the hardware, most computer languages are in the imperative style. Full description at Imperative programming
Take the 2-minute tour × What are the usual terms of a "rent with an option to buy" situation? Is the selling price negotiated ahead of time? What does the renter potentially sacrifice except losing the equity of the rent? share\|improve this question I have not dealt with these, but I think it would be neat if a portion of your rent went towards the eventual purchase price of the home. – chrisfs Feb 19 '11 at 4:44 3 Answers 3 Things I would specifically draw your attention to: --the contract typically allows for an "option" to purchase; it does not typically compel purchase, although this is seen --the purchase price is negotiated before anything gets signed --the option to buy is typically available to the renter for the period of the lease contract (ie., if it's a 12 month contract the renter can opt to buy at any time in that 12 months) --the amount of rent paid over time that will be applied to the purchase price is negotiated up-front before anything gets signed --rent is paid at a slight premium (as Joe notes, if the rent should be $1000 per month, expect to pay $1200 per month) --if the renter walks away they walk away empty handed; they do not get back the premium Having said all that - it's a contract negotiated between renter and seller and all of this is negotiable. See also, http://www.ehow.com/how-does_4563974_rent-own-work_.html for a good overview. share\|improve this answer Just add that the extra rent paid (in your example $200) goes towards the purchase of the house in the event that option is exercised. The extra money is kept by the owner if the option is not exercised. – MrChrister Feb 20 '11 at 1:24 @ McChrister - Thanks. That's the "premium" I'm referring to. "Extra rent" is probably the better term. – gef05 Feb 20 '11 at 13:41 Premium can go to purchase, but not always, that point is part of the negotiation. The option to buy means I (the tenant) have a potential windfall should the market heat up. The owner may consider that as part of the cost. i.e. as with a stock option, time premium is just that. – JoeTaxpayer Jan 19 '12 at 17:14 The typical deal would be a premium to the normal rent, say $1200 instead of $1000, in return he has the option to buy the house at a fixed price by the end of the agreement term. share\|improve this answer In most cases an rent with option to buy is structured as follows: 1. The renter/buyer will place a deposit/premium (not the same as a security deposit) that purchases the option( the right ) to buy the home at a future date at a specific price. 2. The renter / buyer will often pay extra rent in addition to market rent. Many times this additional rent is contracted to be applied to the purchase price of the home. The risks to the renter/buyer are as follows: 1. If you decide not to buy the home, you will lose your initial premium. 2. The home's value may not equal your agreed upon price. This will cause not just monetary problems, but also problems in financing the home. Also, something to note: Many people will recommend that you use the additional rents to be applied specifically towards the downpayment. Be wary of this. There are no institutional lenders available today that will allow the additional rent money to be applied towards your downpayment. That means you must come up with the downpayment in cash before closing. The additional rent payments can be used towards the price. Hope that helps. Good luck! share\|improve this answer Your Answer
Tulanian Logo February 16, 2005 Suzanne Johnson Michael DeMocker "I have insomnia," I told my doctor gravely, spilling details of sleepless nights dating back to roughly age 14. I envisioned magic pills that would render me asleep within 10 minutes of retiring for the evening. spr05_wired_1Instead, I was sent to a local hospital for a night in a sleep clinic. I couldn't imagine being able to sleep, even though the sleep center literature assured me that most sleep study participants, removed from the distractions of their home environments, sleep very well. I thought of the great fondness my dogs have for the sound of their own voices echoing through the house at night, and considered it a possibility. Two weeks later, I and my pillow arrived promptly at 8 p.m., wide awake. There were three others there for tests the same night and we fidgeted in the waiting room and made sleep jokes before being led to our rooms. Hospital rooms, of course, but with a higher "cozy" factory -- real beds, nightstands, lamps. I had scarcely turned on the TV before the sleep lab technician came in. The pictures I had seen on a previous Google search simply did not do justice to the tangle of wires and electrodes going to my arms, legs, chest, neck, head, nose -- even eyelids. I felt like Medusa on a bad hair day. "You can lie down and we'll hook you up, then you can watch TV till you get ready to sleep," the technician said as he plugged the myriad tentacles into a large electronic box somewhere in the vicinity of my head. "I don't sleep on my back," I said conversationally. He flipped a switch, illuminating lights on the electronic box. "I don't sleep on my -- is that a camera?" I had just spotted the video camera in the corner. It was 9 p.m. The technician left me in my prison of tentacles, a TV remote control in my right hand. I couldn't see the TV from my position so there seemed no point in keeping it on. I turned it off and lay there. "Are you going to sleep?" a voice boomed out from the ceiling. My first thought was of God, but figured if He were going to audibly speak to me from On High, He would have a more intelligent question to ask. "I'm going to try," I answered the disembodied voice, which now I had identified as coming from somewhere near the video camera. Its red eye, not really noticeable when the lights and TV were on, was now glowing like the red Eye of Sauron, the embodiment of evil, the robber of sleep, the invading Orc of dreams. God was feeling chatty. "Could you blink your eyes for me?" he thundered from above. I blinked. "Could you move your right foot?" I thought about moving my left out of sheer rebellion but, fearing I would be cast out of the sleep center, did as I was asked. "Enjoy your sleep." The silence was deafening -- bad novels always say that, but it's true. I went through a litany of all my teachers since first grade, their subjects, and what I thought of them. I recited all the teams in the NBA. "It has been two hours and you are not sleeping," commented the Voice from Above. Then I heard it, soft at first, then louder. Snoring. The man next door to me was snoring. I was incensed, livid. I did it; I turned over on my side, hardly breathing. I began a recitation of all the books I've read this year, of what I would give people for Christmas. I dozed off. A flashlight shone in my startled eyes as the Disembodied Voice morphed into the lab tech, who said I had disconnected some wires during my 20 minutes of sleep -- I couldn't believe he woke me up. He reestablished the connections and then I was left alone again in darkness, awake. At 5:30 a.m., the Voice said, "Would you just like to go ahead and leave?" Yes I would. I was surprised to learn that in the 8.5 hours I was hooked up, I had managed a full 40 minutes of light sleep. The lab tech was solicitous. "That was the worst sleep study I've ever seen but we got enough for a diagnosis," he said. I was surprised, and asked what he thought the doctor's diagnosis would be. "Oh, you have insomnia," he said. I went home, crawled into bed, listened with comfort to my barking dogs, and slept. Suzanne Johnson is executive editor of Tulanian and a reluctant consumer of TV reruns, bad novels and other late-night diversions. Citation information: Page accessed: Thursday, October 23, 2014 Page URL:
Take the 2-minute tour × Say you want to calculate degree of ionization for different gases in atmosphere of a star with abundances similar to those in Sun (let's assume you only have hydrogen, helium and sodium) over the temperature range (from 2000 K to 45000 K for example) using Saha equation: $$\frac{n_{i+1}}{n_i}=\frac{g_{i+1}}{g_i} \frac{2}{n_e} \frac{{(2\pi m_e)}^{3/2}}{h^3} {(k_B T)^{3/2}} e^{-\chi /k_B T}$$, which you write down for all three elements and of course next to abundances and temperature you also know ionization potentials $\chi$ for each element. How can one calculate electron density in that case and how does it change? I understand, that at lower temperatures number of electrons is equal to number of ionized sodium atoms since it is the easiest to ionize (and in general $n_e=n_H^1+n_{He}^1+n_{Mg}^1$, where 1 means first level of ionization) but that doesn't help much. And additional question: should higher levels of ionization be included, given the temperature? share\|improve this question 1 Answer 1 up vote 1 down vote accepted If you are dealing with elements heavier than helium ('metals' in astrophysical jargon), then for 45000 K you may need to consider higher ionization states. Indeed, this temperature corresponds to a thermal energy of $k_B T\approx4~$eV, and for magnesium, the 2nd ionization potential is 15$~$eV. If your accuracy requirement is of order $2\times\exp(-15/4)\approx ~$5%, then you need to include neutral, singly ionized and doubly ionized ions. For greater accuracy, include more ionization states. You can find ionization levels for all ions of all elements at the NIST web site. However many ionization levels you include, you can calculate electron density as $n_e=\displaystyle\sum_{Z}\sum_{i=1}^{Z}i\cdot n_i(Z)\qquad\qquad$(1) Here $Z$ denotes the chemical element ($Z=1$ for H, $Z=12$ for Mg, etc.) and $i$ denotes the ionization level. $n_i(Z)$ is the number density of $i$ times ionized element Z. E.g., $n_0(12)$ is the density of Mg atoms, $n_1(12)$ is the density of singly ionized Mg, $n_2(12)$ is the density of doubly ionized Mg, etc. These densities come from the Saha equations and the condition where $n(Z)$ is the number density of nuclei of element $Z$ (or the density of $Z$ atoms at low temperature). In case you are wondering why under the $\sum$ sign, densities $n_i$ are multiplied by $i$, here is an explanation. Every singly ionized ion contributes $i=1$ electron to the plasma, every doubly ionized ion contributes $i=2$ electrons, etc. share\|improve this answer Ok, but that would work for fixed temperature, right? What if I were to put this system into a loop or something that would run from initial to ending temperature? Would it be valid to say that in beginning $n_e$ is equal to $n_1(12)$ (if I had H, He, and Mg)? As the temperature rises I would have to be changing $n_e$, adding electrons from ionized H and He and double ionization? How do I determine that and how do I state a condition for that? – Ivana Sep 1 '11 at 20:18 At any fixed temperature, you can use the Saha equations and equation (2) to calculate n_i(Z). Using n_i(Z), you can calculate n_e(Z) for that temperature T. If you start changing the temperature, but the temperature is changing slowly enough, so that the gas has enough time to achieve thermal equilibrium, then for any new temperature T', you can use the same procedure and find new n'_i(Z) and n'_e. However, if the temperature is changing rapidly, you will have non-equilibrium ionization. It is a much more difficult problem to tackle. Does it answer your question? – drlemon Sep 2 '11 at 7:05 Yes, it does. Thanks a lot. – Ivana Sep 2 '11 at 10:15 Your Answer
How We Do Art Now 1973, 12:54 min, b&w, sound How We Do Art Now is a series of conceptual non sequiturs that illustrate Baldessari's strategy of indexing variations of simple actions or objects to the point of absurdity. In the performance How Various Persons Spit Out Beans, a series of people, seen in profile, spit beans from their mouths. The simple act grows in comic intensity as the participants use various inept and expert methods to perform the action. The droll Cigar Lexicon merges Baldessari's project of compiling a "dictionary of images" with his strategy of defining an object's quintessence through continued repetition of an action. Working at a methodical pace, he solemnly demonstrates and numbers fifteen stages of smoking a cigar. He bites the tip off (#1), lights it, blows smoke rings at various angles, rolls it in both hands, breaks it in half, retrieves a new cigar, and finally discards it. Alluding to Magritte's painting Ceci n'est pas un pipe and Freud's famous remark that "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar," Baldessari exploits the symbolic meaning of simple actions, rendering them slightly ridiculous.
Skip to main content How to Visualise and Strengthen the Energy when Casting Spells? The very first thing about manifesting what you want to achieve or attract in your life, is to put your intent into the manifestation method, affirmations, or spells. Secondly, you will need to feel and visualize what you want to bring into your life, as you already are enjoying it. However, no one ever tells you how to properly visualize your desires, and feel the emotions in order to manifest. Some people find it hard to bring an image in their third eye, and others' brains just don't work like that. Does this mean that you will fail in your manifestations, or that you are not meant to manifest? You don't lack anything, except proper guidance into your manifestations. Below you'll find tips and trick to visualize not only through pictures, but through all your 5 senses. Visualizing is an important step when casting spells, be it visualizing the experience you want to come true, or visualizing the energy transferring from you to the spell. Not everyone is good at visualizing though, especially when you need to hold that image for a couple of minutes and then let go. Visualizing means bringing an image before your eyes, which is linked to vision, the only receptor you activate is seeing. While Imagining on the other hand calls for you to not only see, but also hear, taste, feel, and smell the experience you create. Even when you Imagine, the first thing you do is Visualize and that's what we're going to talk about. For those who can visualize fast and vividly, the tip is to hold that image before your eyes and start feeling it, experiencing it, not only seeing everything around you by focusing on the details, but you start feeling the touch of another person, or the smell of money or hear the music, etc., whatever your background is. You have to hold this thought for a couple of minutes to deliver the message to the Spirit and raise your vibration to match the scenario in your mind. For those who find it difficult to visualize during affirmations or spells, here are some helpful steps to follow: - First, ask for what you want, focus on the sentence, and hold that thought for 5 seconds. Immediately, create the picture of what you want in your head, a general tableau, don't dive into details, and hold that for 5 seconds. Scroll to Continue - Second, speak your wish again and visualize at once the picture you created, hold it for 5 seconds. Once you brought the picture up again, now start to focus a little more on what's happening around you, who is around you, what's the place like, and where are you, hold it for 5 seconds. - Third, speak your wish, visualize your picture again just like the step above, and hold it for 5 seconds. Now, slowly turn the picture into a movie, people start moving and talking to you, you are at the ATM withdrawing money, you are cuddling with your partner and your dog is sitting next to you, moving his tail slowly. You notice all the details in the room or office or wherever you are, the cupboards, or the streets, the trees, and maybe a butterfly passes you by. The visualization at this point shall be strong and pretty vivid, so you start feeling and breathing all of it in. You smell the money in your hand and you think about what you're going to buy, you feel the love and compassion for your partner who is gently massaging your feet, you feel the gratitude and pride for a job well done and you've handled a bonus, you hear people talking about how genuine you are, you taste a special meal at the restaurant you always wanted to, you are driving your dream car and dancing to the music at a red light or traffic. You're happy, fulfilled, successful, and grateful. Remember: When casting spells, you shape the situation however you want, you shape the conversations, and you shape yourself into the person you want to be to get the job done. Tip: If you still find it difficult, or need a deeper understanding, one trick is to go through the above steps not creating something that never happened, but recalling a memory. First, you bring up the picture, then you notice your surroundings, then you dive into the details. Usually, the memories that hold the most details, when you can activate all your preceptors are those with a loved one, when you can smell his/her smell, or you at the grandma's house, etc. © 2022 Zoenchii Related Articles
Pakistan Flood Relief Give an Emergency Survival Kit to a Flood Affected Family in Sindh On the left is the table with the breakdown of items in the survival kit. Cost US$65 per family Screenshot 2022 09 07 010809 Pakistan Floods: Fast Facts Death toll in devastating Pakistan floods crosses 1,300 mark The southern Sindh province remains the worst affected where authorities report a total of 522 deaths so far, including 219 children. Source: Al Jazeera 1. This is the worst flooding in Pakistan’s recent history. Since June, the heaviest rainfall in living memory and melting glaciers in northern Pakistan led to catastrophic flooding that has killed more than 1,200 people and affected 33 million—more than the population of Texas or Australia. Source: CNN + Reuters 2. One-third of Pakistan is underwater. Pakistan’s climate change minister Sherry Rehman described the unprecedented monsoon rains and flooding as a “climate catastrophe.” In the hard-hit Sindh and Balochistan provinces, rainfall has been 500% above average. The resulting flooding has inundated communities and farmland and wiped out buildings and crops. Nearly half a million people are staying in temporary shelters. Source: CNN + NPR + Bloomberg 3. Flood survivors are now facing an outbreak of waterborne diseases. More than 90,000 diarrhea cases were reported in Sindh province in recent days, according to Pakistan’s health officials. Children are especially at risk of diseases due to the flooding, and UNICEF said more than 3 million children need humanitarian assistance. Source: NBC News 4. This flooding is a climate-induced disaster. The Global Climate Risk Index ranks Pakistan eighth in the world in terms of vulnerability to the climate crisis. But Pakistan is responsible for less than 1% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Source: CNN
Gift-Giving Is not Capitalistic Do Women and Men Think Differently about Ethics? Science cannot stop while ethics catches up. - Elvin Stackman Cover for Taking Sex Differences Seriously by Steven E Rhoads Traditional Assumption about Male/Female Difference bulletmen are rational bulletwomen are emotional bulletA cause or justification bulletwomen are inferior bulletAristotle - can obey reason - suited to be followers - but can't formulate original reasons: not suited to be leaders bulletKant - women "lack civil personality" - they're biologically mentally unsuited to take part in public life; a woman's place, rather, is in the home bulletRousseau - said men and women are different, but neither is superior, nevertheless the differences make men most suited to take part in public affairs and suit women more to to private and domestic concerns Initial feminist reaction is to deny such differences altogether. More recent tendency is to acknowledge there are differences but insist nevertheless that women are by no means inferior and men superior. Women perfectly well suited take part in public affairs and excercise command and authority; such would be a welcome corrective even to male bias of traditional ethics in politics and public affairs. Kohlberg's Six Stages of Development and Their Imperatives bulletPunishment and Obedience: obey authority to avoid punishment. bulletIndividual Instrumental Purpose and Exchange: make "fair deals" with other to further one's ends. bulletMutual Interpersonal Expectations and Conformity: keep loyalty and trust with partners. bulletSocial System and Conscience Maintenance: subordinate demands of personal relationships to follow social group rules. bulletPrior Rights and Social Contract or Utility: personal relationships subordinated to universal principles of justice. bulletUniversal Ethical Principles: be faithful to abstract principles that all humanity should follow Jake and Amy, both aged 11, were asked the following question: Should Heinz steal the drug he can't afford that is needed to save his wife's life? bulletJake: Heinz should steal the drug because bullet"A human life is worth more than money." bulletThe druggest can always get money "but Heinz can't get his wife back." bullet"People are all different." bulletAmy: (first evades and hesitates) bullet"There might be other ways beside stealing it." (The story made it clear, however, that there aren't.) bullet"If he stole the drug, he might save his wife, but if he did, he might have to go to jail, and then his wife might get sicker again, and he couldn't get more of the drug, and it might not be good. So [Heinz and the druggist] should really just talk it out and find some other way to make the money." Kohlbergian Analysis bulletJake has advanced to stage 4 or 5 bulletAmy is back at stage 3 Gilligan's Objection bulletInitial Point: "progression" doesn't necessarily mean improvement. bulletDescriptive progression: people do go through these stages but it doesn't follow that the later stages are better. bulletContrary to the opinion of older people, it could turn out that age does not bring wisdom after all. bulletMany folks pass to what might be called Stage 7: Cynicism and Apathy where they believe social group rules just serve the purposes of ruling elites and there are no "universal principles." bulletGilligan challenges Kohlberg's assumption that "an ethic of principle is superior to an ethic of caring." bulletAmy & Jake reconsidered: bulletAmy's "evasive" answer - "He might have to go to jail, and then his wife might get sicker again..." - faces reality. bulletJake's principled answer is unrealistically simplistic. What Amy evinces is a feminine style, not a lower stage of morality. bulletWomen's basic moral orientation is caring for others in a personal way, not just being concerned with humanity in general. bulletSensitivity to others leads women to "include in their judgment other points of view." bulletWomen's moral weakness, manifest in an apparent diffusion and confusion of judgment is thus inseperable from women's moral strength, an overriding concern with relationships and responsibilities. Virgina Held's Summation: Caring, empathy, feeling with others, being sensitive to each other's feelings, all may be better guides to what morality requires in actual contexts than may abtract rules of reason or rational calculation, or at least they may be necessary components of an adequate morality. Is it True that Men and Women Think Differently? What isn't true: bulletthat men are all uncaring bulletthat women are all unprincipled. So, even if there are different styles of moral thinking, there is no style that is exclusively male or female. Nevertheless, it is perhaps true that men on average are more inclined to the principled approach and women on average are more inclined to the caring approach. It's not true that every single man is larger than every single woman; nevertheless, women are typically smaller: men are typically larger. What Could Account for Such a Difference Between the Sexes? bulletDifference is socialisation of boys and girls bulletWomen are socialised for more for home and hearth bulletMen are socialised more for impersonal cooperation and competition in the public arena bulletEvolutionary psychological explanation bulletKey biological difference: men can father hundreds of children whereas women can bear only 1 per 9 months resulting in differences in optimum evolutionary strategies (optimum from the point of view of genetic "survival"). bulletOptimum male evolutionary strategy: sow as many wild oats as possible bulletOptimum female strategy: invest heavily in each child and choose males who are willing to stay around and make a similar investment bulletResulting psychological difference: "women are more attracted than men to the values of the nuclear family" Implications for Moral Judgment Family and Friends bulletLove is the paramount family and friendly value bulletLove versus duty bulletTraditional ethics focus on duty bulletRules are the ultimate sources of moral value bulletOnly dutiful behaviour - undertaken purely out of respect for the moral law - is morally creditable bulletIf I resist the neighbor babe's come-on from duty and allegiance to principle that's very moral of me bulletIf I resist just because I love my wife that's not moral - I'm just acting on my predominant inclination or desire out of personal affection, not on principle bulletThe love and duty paradox: loving acts performed because it's your duty aren't truly loving bulletLove versus Impartiality bulletImpartiality central to both Kantian and Utilitarian approaches bulletUtilitarianism - John Stuart Mill characterises the utilitarian stance to be "strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator" bulletThat is not the standpoint of a parent and friend bulletStrength of the Ethics of Care: it more adequately takes love into account Helping Disadvantaged Children bulletSince care is "a personal, one-to-one matter we have no obligation to help the needy in the far regions of the earth" bulletMaking personal relationships the whole of ethics seems as wrong-headed as ignoring them altogether bulletAkin to egoism bulletMy cousin and I against the world; my brother and I against my cousin bulletGhandi's remarks re: patriotism as egoism bulletCare would only warrant concern for suffering of one's pets bulletIf care were all that mattered the suffering of animals "in the far regions of the earth" or even the slaugherhouse across town would be of no consequence bulletSeems misguided bulletFeelings and intuitions are key elements in acting from care but can easily be misguided bulletif we don't care about the treatment of animals maybe we should bulletnot so long ago people in this country felt that slavery was ok but we now feel they shouldn't have bulletPersonal attachment to the animal is morally of questionable relevance bulletIt may have a lot to do with how much satisfaction you get from helping bulletIt has nothing to do with the animal's needs or the good you could accomplish bulletMuch the same, of course, may be said of the distant child's inability to thank you personally for, say, the vaccination your donation made possible Implications for Ethical Theory bulletMen and the Marketplace bulletMen dominate public life and in politics and business relations with others are typically impersonal, contractual, and often adversarial bulletMen's moral theories emphasize impersonal duty, contracts, the harmonization of competing interests & attendant calculation of costs and benefits bulletWomen and the Home bulletWomen traditionally dominate in the realm of private life in which relations are typically personal, informal, and cooperative bulletWomen's morality emphasizes personal affinity, bonds of affection, loving sacrifice and commitment bulletFrom Care to the Ethics of Virtue bulletTo be loving, loyal, and dependable as a friend or loved one is to be a certain kind of person bulletNeither a parent nor a friend are the kind of persons who impartially do their duty bulletVirtue Theory stresses "being a certain kind of person" over "doing one's duty" bulletVirtue Theory seems well-suited to accommodate the values of both public and private life bulletThere are private virtues, for example love and caring bulletThere are also public virtues, for example, justice and beneficence bulletVirtue Theory is a broader approach incorporating the ethics of care: bulletnot exclusively a feminist project bulletbut closely tied to feminist ideas bulletThe verdict on the ethics of care will depend, ultimately, on the viability of the ethics of virtue. Source: members.aol.com Compassionate For-Giving I'm afraid the feminism described below could only be considered as viable in a utopian world of unlimited energy freely available to all. I feel that if feministic philosophy had always held sway in the real world, the life- and labour-saving devices we tend to take for granted would not exist. I've included an excerpt from Vaughan's lengthy essay, however, because she does have some good points - like what an oxymoron it is to say "exchange gifts"... A Feminist Criticism of "Exchange" by Genevieve Vaughan Capitalism and communism are both patriarchal. The philosophy of social change which is wider and deeper than either of them is feminism. I believe that feminism is a collective philosophy, a body of thought and action based on the values of women world-wide, which is presently revealing itself to the consciousnesses of all. Patriarchy has infected women and men, for centuries, distorting our view of the world and warping our socio-economic practices. The agenda of feminism is to liberate everyone, women, children and men, from patriarchy without destroying the human beings who are its carriers and the planet where they live. Trying to think outside of patriarchy puts women in a situation similar to that of the ancient pre-Socratic philosophers who were thinking at the beginning of Western patriarchal culture. If we reject the patterns of thought that have riddled and plagued European culture, there is a great deal of untrodden ground before us. We need to reconnect with our innocence, with the hearts that have not made war, that have moved us to take care of children and old people in spite of great difficulties, rather than abusing them. We need to reject the patriarchal world view and start over naively looking through our own eyes. When we stop believing what we have been told we find that the truth is there but that our ability to recognise it has been numbed and buried deep within by the strata of the history of individuals, of cultures and of the species. It is the reawakened, collectively-formulated women's perspective that proves the human species was not Mother Nature's mistake. By adopting it, women and the men who follow them can pull back everyone permanently from the destruction of human beings and of the planet. In order to reject patriarchal thinking we must be able to distinguish between it and something else, an alternative. The disciplines of academia have a tendency to mushroom into worlds to which thousands of researchers and thinkers worldwide contribute. In spite of many "advances" they validate a view of the world and a reality in which the perpetration of abuse and domination is endemic at many levels. I believe that there is a relatively simple fatal flaw which undermines all so called "first world" thinking including the thinking of the academic worlds. We usually begin our investigations into different subjects downstream from this flaw, and therefore are already under its influence. The naive point of view allows us to begin at the beginning. Usually academics build upon the past and begin at a place so far down the course of the river that the flaw can no longer be identified. Indeed it seems to constitute reality. It is at the beginning that we can hope to find the alternative. Because of the circumstances of my life I have been able to turn my own naïve attention towards one area of academic concern which has been particularly important in the 20th century: the study of language and other sign systems. Whatever their other achievements, the disciplines of linguistics and semiotics and the philosophy of language have brought forward the fundamental importance of language for the human character and condition. If language is important, it follows that the study of language - and of linguistics and semiotics - is a good place to begin an investigation of patriarchal thinking. Communication by means of language is now considered by academics to be a separate and independent rule-governed activity. Some linguists believe that the fact that all human communities use language is evidence that language is transmitted for the most part not culturally but genetically. Syntactic rules and sometimes even elements of vocabulary appear to be part of the hardware handed down from generation to generation. It seems to me that such genetic endowments would predetermine our linguistic behavior in a "Biology is destiny" sort of way. In this language would appear similar to gender, the characteristics of which were for centuries culturally considered to be biologically transmitted and therefore unchangeable and unchallengeable especially by the "genetically inferior" gender. Making language a gift given by our DNA, not a cultural inheritance, locates it in an area which is beyond human intervention. If we believe instead that language is a social endowment which must be learned by flexible young mind-body complexes in the making, our idea of the human character varies accordingly. What is learned can be subjected to collective revision; its mechanisms can be investigated; alternatives are possible. Strange as they seem to my naive view, considerations such as the genetic transmission of language are taken seriously and have far-reaching ripple-effects for other disciplines. An environment is created in which some ideas fit together and thrive because they are validated as permissible and respectable while their alternatives are discredited. The so called "free market" of ideas, like the economic free market, often promotes the benefit of a (genetically superior?) few while appearing to be good for everyone. Whenever we are talking about the human condition we should subject our own discourse to at least two tests: bulletWhat's in it for me materially? bulletWhat's in it for me psychologically? Criticism of ideology has shown that whole systems of thought have served the dominance of some groups over others. Every academic discipline should be suspect. Systems of ideas which we have been taught as the truth back up the political and economic systems of which they are a part. Fortunately I have been outside the academic world and not dependent upon it for my material well being. Thus I have been able to remain naïve. I desire radical social change: as a mother I want my children and the children of all mothers to receive a healthy and sane future, free from the collective psychosis of patriarchy. Contributing effectively to this future is my psychological reward. I realise that my views of value and language constitute a drastic departure from traditional (patriarchal) philosophy, economics and linguistics. However I believe that an account of value and language in the light of giftgiving is necessary in order to reveal the hidden links beneath our divided disciplines so that we can see more clearly what we are doing and how to stop. I hope to show that there is a feminist explanation for language and that much of our thinking can be reframed as deriving from a woman-based practice. There is an entirely different paradigm which exists and is accessible beneath the abstractions of linguistics and semiotics. Feminists who have been rightly distressed by the male dominance of language have sometimes chosen to speak and write "poetically" as an alternative. They have even sometimes chosen to remain silent in order to subtract themselves from patriarchal discourse. I suggest that by finding and consciously embracing the hidden paradigm we can begin to liberate both language and social practice from patriarchal control. In spite of endless discussions philosophers have not been able to answer the question "How are words 'hooked' onto the world"? This question is the end of a thread which is bound up in the tangle of patriarchal philosophy - a good place to begin a naïve investigation. All the answers that have been given to this question have been influenced by the patriarchal stances of the mostly male philosophers who were doing the thinking. Their points of view grew up in denial of a women's model, and have served to support patriarchal hierarchies throughout the centuries. I do not want to try to refute current or past theories of language one by one, which would make this book an endless academic undertaking, conducted on the territory of those I want to challenge. I will simply propose an alternative theory. Let me identify some questions that need to be answered. We need to know how words, phrases, discourses "mean". How are they related to each other and to the world? What is the significance of language for the nature of human beings as individuals and as a species? Why is it important for us to know this? Since language has been considered to play an important role in making us human, answering these questions in terms of an abstract system causes us to attribute our humanity to our capacity for abstract thought, with the consequence that those of us who are best at abstract thinking appear to be somehow more human than the others. Women have been stereotypically assigned the province of "emotion" while men have appropriated the area of "reason". If we see language as an abstract system and as having the capacity to make us human, men's "superiority" would seem to be justified by their presumed capacity for abstraction. Theories of language back up theories or at least popular conceptions, of gender. At another level of complication, considering syntax as a collection of rules imputes the rule-governed character to the human being as well. Thus it validates our systems of laws, making them seem natural because they are also collections of rules and require rule-governed activity. What happens in academia regarding language can have far reaching effects on the rest of the world. Academic economic theories also have important effects on the way goods are produced and distributed everywhere. Even when the effects are not direct, the assumptions underlying these disciplines influence individual and group behaviour in many areas of life. Changing the assumptions would have a far-reaching ripple effect. They form the motivation and backup rationale for policies and behaviours in much the same way that the existence of the military industrial complex forms the motivation and backup for US foreign policy. Co-creation of Patriarchy It has become commonplace in the US "New Age" movement, to talk about the co-creation of "reality". It is said that by our thoughts we cause certain things to occur and others not to occur. I hope to be able to show how we are collectively creating a patriarchal reality which is actually biopathic (harmful to life) and I propose that we dismantle that reality. Our values, and the self-fulfilling interpretations of life that we make because of them, are creating a harmful illusion which leads us to act and to organise society in harmful ways. This is one sense in which our thoughts do make things happen. If we understand what we are doing however, patriarchal reality can be changed. First, we must have the courage to change basic assumptions which serve as failsafes to keep deep systemic changes from occurring. Although male domination exists in many or perhaps most cultures, it is towards the domination of the white male that I want to direct my attention. In fact I believe that many patterns of domination and submission have come together to create a pattern of domination for that group at all levels. By this I do not mean that every white male dominates or that only white males dominate, but that the patterns of sex, race, and class fit together effectively to allow white males to dominate in many different areas of life. The patterns of domination propagate themselves and the values upon which they are based. The history of Europe, the rise of capitalism and technology, the slaughter of the witches, the invasion of the Americas and the genocide of indigenous peoples, the slavery of Africans, the Nazi holocaust, are all extreme moments of a culture in which sex, race, and class work together like a giant mechanism to overprivilege some and underprivilege many others. Unfortunately this mechanism often sets the standard and validates similar behaviour in other cultures. Dictators throughout the world climb the stairs erected before them by their European brothers, perpetrating horrors. At present white males are still the most successful purveyors of patriarchy. Through mechanisms such as the "free market" they continue to dominate the global economy. It is therefore the responsibility of their caregivers, especially of white women together with their allies among women and men of colour and among white men, to turn against patriarchy and dismantle it from within. We must all cease rewarding biopathic behaviours and systems. Women - and men - must stop nurturing patriarchy. Capitalism has had advantages for many women, especially white women, in that it has allowed us to take on the structural position which had formerly been reserved for men. Becoming part of the work force and being educated for positions of authority has allowed many women to acquire the voice, the ability to speak out, and to define situations, which had been very difficult for women who only had access to traditional family roles where males had all the authority. Many women are using their freedom to speak against the system which "liberated" them, regarding its many defects which weigh upon them personally through low wages, lack of child care, and the continued privileging of males. They also condemn its exploitation of their sisters and their sisters' children in the so called "Third World" here and abroad, its enormous waste of resources through the arms business and war, and its endemic devastation of the environment. I think that all women in capitalism are in a particularly good position to see through its apparent advantages, because they are still being educated to bring up children at the same time that they are being encouraged to climb the economic ladder. The contradictions involved in the values which accompany these two mandates draw our attention to the deep contradictions in the system itself. Therapies and drugs of various kinds tend to try to make us "adjust" by concentrating on ourselves as the cause of our discomfort. However many feminists are turning outwards, against the biopathic system. We are not using the violent methods of the system but are looking for other ways to change it from within. I believe we have not yet succeeded because we do not realise that we have a common perspective and that the problems we are facing are systemic. By showing the links among different aspects of patriarchy, and by uncovering and asserting our common alternative values, women can begin to dismantle patriarchy, to recreate reality and to lead everyone back from the brink of disaster, to peace for all. The Gift Paradigm There is a fundamental paradigm with widespread and far reaching effects, which is not being noticed. It may seem strange in the time of space travel, computers and genetic engineering, that anything really important could be ignored. However, we may remember the idea of the "elephant in the living room" talked about by Alcoholics Anonymous. People who are in denial of someone's alcoholism do not mention it. In order to maintain the status quo, they turn their attention to other things. I believe there is a large part of life that is being denied and ignored. Unlike alcoholism, it is the healthy normal way of being, but we are indeed turning our attention away from it in order to maintain a false reality, the patriarchal status quo. I call this unseen part of life "the gift paradigm". It is a way of constructing and interpreting reality that derives from mothering and is therefore woman-based (at least as long as women are the ones who are doing most of the mothering). The gift paradigm emphasises the importance of giving to satisfy needs. It is need oriented rather than profit oriented. Free giftgiving to needs, what in mothering we would call nurturing or caring work, is often not counted and may remain invisible in our society or seem uninformative because it is qualitatively rather than quantitatively based. However, giving to needs creates bonds between givers and receivers. Recognising someone's need and acting to satisfy it, convinces the giver of the existence of the other, while receiving something from someone else that satisfies a need proves the existence of the other to the receiver. Needs change and are modified by the ways they are satisfied, tastes develop, new needs arise. As they grow children need to become independent and mothers can also satisfy that need by refraining from satisfying the children's other needs. Opposed to gift-giving is exchange - which is giving in order to receive. Here calculation and measurement are necessary and an equation must be established between the products. There is a logical movement which is ego-oriented rather than other-oriented. The giver uses the satisfaction of the other's need as a means to the satisfaction of her own need. Ironically what we call economics is based on exchange, while giftgiving is relegated to the home - though the word "economics" itself originally meant "care of the household". In capitalism the exchange paradigm reigns unquestioned and is the mainstay of patriarchal reality. Even many of those who wish to challenge capitalism envision only an economy without money - a barter economy - which is of course still based on exchange. I believe they misplace the dividing line between the paradigms, making money the responsible factor rather than exchange, so they cannot clearly see the alternative that giftgiving presents. Aiding the maintenance of the status quo and the exchange economy is a view of "human nature" as egotistical and competitive - qualities which are required and enhanced by capitalism. The qualities required and enhanced by mothering are other-orientation, kindness and creativity. Though they are necessary for bringing up young children these qualities are made difficult, even self-sacrificial, by the scarcity for the many which is often the consequence of the exchange economy. They are considered not "human nature", not part of "reality". I believe that the gift paradigm is present everywhere in our lives though we have become used to not seeing it. Exchange, with its requirement for measurement is much more visible. However, even our greeting "How are you?" is a way of asking "What are your needs?" "Co-muni cation" is giving gifts (from the Latin mun-us - gift) together. It is how we form the co-muni ty. By satisfying the needs of the infants who are dependent upon them, mothers actually form the bodies of the people who are, and live together in, the community. They also care for and maintain the implements, houses and locations where the community interactions take place. We communicate with each other through our gifts of goods. Each gift carries with it something of the thought process and values of the giver and affirms the value of the receiver. In fact goods and services that are given free to satisfy needs give value to the receiver by implication. Exchange on the other hand is self-reflecting. It requires attention to be concentrated on equivalence between the products, and the value that might have been given to the other person instead returns to the giver as the satisfaction of her own need. In exchange the satisfaction of the need of the other is only a means to the satisfaction of one's own need. When everyone is doing this, the co-munication that occurs is altered and only succeeds in creating a group of isolated, unbonded, independent egos, not a co-munity. In their isolation these egos tend to develop new artificial needs for nurturing and bonding and use domination to procure for themselves the sense of community and identity they lack, forcing others to nurture them. They use everything from personal violence to manipulation of abstract systems to achieve the satisfaction of their needs, satisfaction which they are no longer receiving from participating directly in the gift logic. In fact we might look at our society as starving for free gifts and the bonds that are created by them. Our compassion is blocked and it appears that only by denying giving-and-receiving can we survive. Yet not giving is killing those who could give just as surely as not receiving is killing those who have the material needs. In order to maintain this aberrant situation laws have been established, and armed forces are paid to back them up. Huge amounts of money are spent nurturing the justice system, the government, the police and the military, thereby creating the scarcity which makes giftgiving difficult, and exchange a necessary survival mechanism. Abstract systems of laws and hierarchical organisations like the government and the military are delivery systems for gifts, taking them away from the needs of the many in the community and directing them towards the needs of special groups of exchangers who have been socialised with an ego hungry to have "more". While we may be grateful to the exchangers (entrepreneurs) for creating jobs, we should realise that the jobs are ways of getting for the entrepreneur what Karl Marx called "surplus value" - a free gift of labour time given by the worker. In order to survive the worker also has to receive many free gifts from his or her nurturers. Gifts are distributed from the bottom up in the hierarchy, from the poor to the rich, from giftgivers to exchangers, while it looks as if the flow is going in the other direction. The interaction of exchange itself has seemed so natural as not to require investigation. However it is actually artificial, deriving from a misuse of co-munication. If we no longer consider exchange natural or one of the mainstays of reality, we can stop considering our participation in it as the criterion of our worth. In fact many women have believed that the purpose of our liberation was to allow us to participate more fully in society. In the US anyway this society is capitalist patriarchy. Women have felt discomfort in it because our values were different and at times this kept us from being successful. The answer to our problem is not to change ourselves to adapt to the bigger patriarchal picture but to change the bigger picture to adapt to women's values. This change requires asserting those values as more viable than the values of patriarchy. We must understand and deeply criticise patriarchy so that we can realise we already have the alternative in our hands. Rather than attempting to achieve the respect of those who have succeeded in the system we need to stand our ground outside the system. Even re-spect has to do with looking again, evaluating and being equal to, which are criteria deriving from exchange, and are important only when caring is not already considered the norm. As we shift our focus towards validating the gift paradigm and seeing the defects of the exchange paradigm, many things acquire a different appearance: patriarchal capitalism which seemed to be the source of our good, is revealed as a parasitic system, where those above are nurtured by the free gifts of their "hosts" below. Profit is a free gift given to the exchanger by the other participants in the market and those who nurture them. Scarcity is necessary for the functioning of the system of exchange not just an unfortunate result of human inadequacy and natural calamity. The reason why philosophers do not usually see these kinds of connections is that they have been blinded to the nurturing side of life by their participation in the exchange paradigm and their discounting of the gift paradigm. Even women philosophers have had to get jobs in academia, learning to think like male academics and often repeating their ideas. As a philosopher's wife who was interested in philosophy I was struck by the numbers of thinkers who sat at their breakfast tables asking about the nature of reality and the accuracy of their perceptions, when those breakfast tables would have looked very different if their wives had not been tidying up. This made me believe that women's nurturing and maintenance had gone into the nature of reality in a very big way but was not being seen by philosophers. How about the accuracy of THOSE sense perceptions? And did their thought processes depend upon what the thinkers had eaten for breakfast? Eggs cooked by the wife? Too much sugar in the coffee? Did the coffee come from El Salvador, or its equivalent in other centuries? Who paid the philosopher's salary, with what money? It seemed to me that the philosphers' discussion of immediate experience was just a pipe dream in the midst of denial. It was the patriarchal ego reflecting itself unable to recognise its own dependence on the nurturing of others and its inability to see the world in terms of needs and their satisfaction. In looking at the surface of language I question the psychological significance of terms used by philosophers and linguists, especially those having to do with giftgiving and need such as genetic "endowment", or popular economic terms like "haves" and "have nots". They are clues to patriarchal psycho-social hidden agendas. It would be interesting to look at anorexia as a refusal not only of food but of the value that would have been transmitted to the receiver through the reception of nurturing. Perhaps the anorexic takes on the exchange paradigm too profoundly or too soon. World-wide 18 billion dollars is spent on armaments every week, and this would be enough to feed all the hungry on earth for a year. Since this expenditure does not create any life sustaining products, it acts as a drain on the nurturing economy. Genevieve Vaughan PO Box 868, Kyle Texas 78640-0868 (512) 472-6575 Source: for-giving.com this is an excerpt Back Home Up Next
Beans - 72120 Beans - 72120 What is Freight Class? A freight code is required when shipping products as LTL (less-than-truckload) freight. This code, published by the National Motor Freight and Traffic Association, lets carriers quickly identify qualities of the shipment to help with transportation logistics. Ship beans accurately by using the information below: Enter your email to instantly view Freight Class Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form. Commodity note: Vanilla or Tahiti, in boxes Subclasses for Beans - 72120 Subclasses are divisions of an NMFC number that usually distinguish similar items that have different densities. In this instance, the commodity, beans, is further broken down in the following subclasses: Enter your email to instantly view freight subclasses Subclass Info Subclass NMFC Code Freight Class Subclass Notes Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form. What is a freight code? National Motor Freight Classification (NMFC) is a freight classification system created by the National Motor Freight Traffic Association (NMFTA) and used for interstate, intrastate, and foreign commerce shipping of LTL cargo. NMFC freight codes provide standardized freight classes to determine the ease of transport of many of the huge variety of different commodities being shipped together in LTL shipments every year. What is the least expensive freight class? How is freight class determined? NMFC freight classes are determined using four factors: density, handling, stowability, and liability. All of these factors affect the cost to the carrier of shipping goods.
@article {596, title = {Three-dimensional bonded-cell model for grain fragmentation}, journal = {Computational Particle Mechanics}, volume = {4}, year = {2017}, month = {Oct-2017}, pages = {441 - 450}, chapter = { Special Issue: SI }, abstract = { We present a three-dimensional numerical method for the simulation of particle crushing in 3D. This model is capable of producing irregular angular fragments upon particle fragmentation while conserving the total volume. The particle is modeled as a cluster of rigid polyhedral cells generated by a Voronoi tessellation. The cells are bonded along their faces by a cohesive Tresca law with independent tensile and shear strengths and simulated by the contact dynamics method. Using this model, we analyze the mechanical response of a single particle subjected to diametral compression for varying number of cells, their degree of disorder, and intercell tensile and shear strength. In particular, we identify the functional dependence of particle strength on the intercell strengths. We find that two different regimes can be distinguished depending on whether intercell shear strength is below or above its tensile strength. In both regimes, we observe a power-law dependence of particle strength on both intercell strengths but with different exponents. The strong effect of intercell shear strength on the particle strength reflects an interlocking effect between cells. In fact, even at low tensile strength, the particle global strength can still considerably increase with intercell shear strength. We finally show that the Weibull statistics describes well the particle strength variability. }, keywords = {Bonded-cell model; Fragmentation; Discrete element method; Contact dynamics method; Voronoi cell; Weibull statistics}, issn = {2196-4378}, doi = {10.1007/s40571-016-0129-0}, url = {http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40571-016-0129-0}, author = {Cantor, D and Emilien Az{\'e}ma and Philippe Sornay and Farhang Radja{\"\i}} }
Fish Snack • $9.99 USD Fish gum is mainly composed of high-grade collagen, vitamins, calcium, zinc, iron, selenium and other trace elements. Increase drinking water. Cats have good palatability. Cats feed for a long time, which can increase the demand of drinking water. Convenient and hygienic. There is adhesive tape on the back. It is easy to use with a tear and a sticker. It can be covered with a transparent lid. Ingredients: Catnip + Fish Gelatin Weight: 12g Specification: 383815mm/1.51.50.6in
• Loading images In stock. Add to cart Aroma farms • It is known, that savory is used since ancient times for both culinary and medicinal purposes, you can see it referenced by Theophrastus and Dioscoredes but also from the Romans Virgil and Pliny. Its Greek name “Throumbi” comes from the ancient city of Thymvra that was near Troy. According to Pliny satyrs were often found in fields of savory and that is the reason Romans believed it had aphrodisiac properties but is also what gave its name in Latin which is Satureja. Tipping: Savory has an intense flavour that brings to mind oregano and thyme. It is used to season dishes based on meat, poultry, fish, venison, sausages, salads, marinades, sauces, vegetables, legumes and eggs but is also ideal for all hard to digest foods due to its properties. It can also be used in vinegar, raisins and olives. It has a soft flavour that won’t cover up the taste of the food that we use it on and is especially good for mixes with other herbs pairing very nicely with thyme. Traditional Properties: Traditionally savory is used as a tea against digestive problems, diarrhea, colic pains, flatulence, intestinal cramps and anorexia. It also acts as a diaphoretic, against dizziness, can better the respiratory system and soften coughing thus helping with bronchitis. Also, if we gargle with the tea, we can heal the wounds of the larynx and the mouth thus relieving sore throat. Finally if we put it in a bath after boiling, it acts as a relaxant. The tea should be avoided during pregnancy.
Nature's Sunshine Cinnamon Balance (120 Vegcaps) $21.10 $29.95 Benefits: Provides a natural solution to blood sugar stabilization Supports a healthy glycemic balance by supporting healthy blood sugar metabolism Provides 1,000 mg cassia cinnamon bark per day How It Works: Cinnamon Balance is a natural supplement that uniquely optimizes the power of cinnamon along with a blend of carefully selected herbs to support normal-range blood sugar levels. It combines the world’s finest cinnamon with storied herbs that work in harmony to safely and naturally restore and maintain healthy blood sugar balance. This complementary approach sets Cinnamon Balance apart from the competition as the effective, gentle and complete supplement for normal-range blood sugar support. Ingredients: Cassia cinnamon bark, nopal leaf, fenugreek seed, astragalus root, burdock root, and dandelion root and leaf. Recommended Use: Take 2 veg caps with a meal twice daily
Ai No Kusabi -- Light Novels -- Volumes 1-3 Why can't we just be two consenting adults who happen to be into some really sick stuff? Publisher DMP Graphic: 18+ A futuristic dystopia with designer humans, ghettoized youths, institutionalized homosexuality, cold blooded, pure-bred richies, and tons of graphic sex and corruption. This sort of sums up Ai No Kusabi, a classic yaoi series penned by Rieko Yoshihara. I'm writing this review having read only half the light novels. I did see the OVA a number of years ago; it wasn't that great. I guess I was hoping the novels would somehow make up for it. They didn't do it for me. So, I've probably said this before on the site, and if I haven't, I'll just say it now: I don't like stories where characters are underage, unless its a teenage drama and they're working through relationship in a consensual way with a person their own age. Yep, I'm a prude that way. I don't understand why the author just can't make the character older? She has that power. She is the writer. She can tack a couple years on there, no problem. And, that's not to say she can't complicate it with allusions to a messed up past, lurid details that enrich the story and move it forward, etc. Make there be a reason he's so young or show him some sympathy. Sure, he had to grow up early, but he's still a kid. Ugg, I guess I should tell you who I'm talking about. Rikki, the fifteen year old leader of a gang of street toughs, Bison: Hi, I'm Rikki, as portrayed in the OVA (as an adult). Ai No Kusabi is focused around the "relationship" Rikki forms with Iason, a pure blooded upper crusty "Blondie" who basically kidnaps Rikki from the streets, breaks his spirit, humiliates him and forcibly does it with him a lot in graphic and painful ways. There's all sorts of explanation about castes and different groups and gambling and the underworld and human auctions and people who are pets, but these are all really just trappings for the sado-masochistic relationship at the center of the story. Rikki's age isn't mentioned in the OVA, but I did get the impression he was much older than the character in the book, so I didn't feel as uncomfortable watching it, even given the subject matter. I know that the world in which this story takes place is different and that the society is a lot more corrupt and blah, blah, blah but I just don't find the relationship between Rikki and Iason compelling. I feel bad for Rikki and I think Iason is slimy and gross. Iason as portrayed in the OVA Now let's talk about the writing. Hrm. I can't figure out if it is the original author's style to be so excessive or the translator's. Seriously, one writer to another: keep it simple. I know the writing was supposed to reflect the society's excess, but gee whiz: this is so florid. Also, this writer would benefit from one creative writing class in which the phrase "SHOW. DON'T TELL," was pounded into her brain. There is enough exposition here to make me cry and fall asleep at the same time. Maybe this is why I only got through three books. I will say: raise the age of Rikki. Make Iason not so gross and more sympathetic. Clean up the writing both stylistically and sex-wise. Cut the length of this by a half or a third, and it might be a good, interesting, even literary sci-fi-ish type story. I hear a thirteen episode anime is coming out in 2012. Will it redeem this tale? I do not know. I do not care to guess. Now I am off to write and ponder tomorrow's breakfast.
Grass Seed Guide Grass Seed Reviews Best Grass Seed For Sacramento Sacramento has a Mediterranean climate. It’s hot and dry in the summer and cold and wet in the winter. This makes it difficult to grow grass. However, there are some varieties of grass that will thrive in Sacramento’s climate. I will tell you about these grasses and how to plant them so that you can have a beautiful lawn. Best Grass Seed for Sacramento Recommended ProductsProductBuy on Amazon Scotts EZ Seed Patch and Repair Bermudagrass Check Latest Price Scotts Turf Builder Grass Kentucky Bluegrass Check Latest Price Pennington Smart Seed Perennial Ryegrass Check Latest Price Here are the 3 best grass seeds for Sacramento: 1. Bermuda Grass Seed Bermuda grass is an excellent choice for Sacramento’s climate. It is a warm-season perennial grass that can withstand the extreme heat of Sacramento. Bermuda grass also has a very dense root system, which helps it tolerate the hot, dry summers of Sacramento. The roots of bermuda grass also help prevent erosion. It is also drought-tolerant and requires very little water. It is also low-maintenance, with a dense growth habit that shades out most weeds. Note however, that despite its reputation for being durable, bermuda grass does not do well in Sacramento’s hot summers and freezes to the ground during cold winters. To help protect it from the heat, mow it every two weeks during the summer or if it gets more than 1 inch tall and fertilize it twice a month with a slow-release lawn fertilizer. Fertilizing your bermuda grass will promote new growth and keep it green all year long. 2. Kentucky Bluegrass Seed Kentucky bluegrass is another excellent choice for Sacramento’s climate because it is very drought tolerant. It can also be used as a lawn in areas where the winter temperature does not get below 15 degrees Fahrenheit. Kentucky bluegrass has a coarse texture and provides a nice dark green color, but it is not as dense as some of the other types of grasses. Kentucky bluegrass grows well in the shade and will tolerate partial shade. It also grows well in hot, dry areas that are exposed to full sun all day long. It does not grow well in heavy clay soils or sandy soils with poor drainage because it needs good drainage to thrive. If you live in an area with poor drainage, you might want to consider using sand instead of soil for your planting area . 3 . Perennial Rye Grass Seed Perennial rye grass seed is another excellent choice for Sacramento’s climate because it handles California’s high temperatures very well . Perennial rye grass seed does not have any major diseases or insect problems either . This type of rye will grow on almost any type of soil , including clay , sand , gravel , rocky soils , or even concrete . However , this type of rye prefers loamy soil that drains well . The best time to plant perennial rye seed is actually just after you’ve had some rain so that when you till up your new bed , there are some nutrients left over from natural rainfall . You should make sure to keep your new bed moist until your seeds have germinated because they need moisture to sprout properly . When growing this type of rye in full sun conditions , make sure you water at least once per week so your plants don’t dry out before their roots reach deep enough into the ground to find moisture on their own . In light shade conditions ( such as under trees ) watering once every two weeks should be sufficient . If you’re going to plant perennial rye seed in an area where there isn’t much natural rainfall present ( like on top of a roof ) then you’ll need to water at least once per week so your plants don’t dry out before their roots reach deep enough into the ground to find moisture on their own . Perennial ryegrass usually reaches heights between one foot and three feet tall depending upon how fertile your soil is and how much water they receive each day . Sacramento’s Climate & Soil Conditions for Growing Grass Here are 3 tips (explained in detail) you should know about Sacramento’s climate and soil conditions if you’re interested in growing a lawn: 1. Sacramento’s climate is hot and humid. This means that the soil is always moist enough to grow a lawn without watering it. In addition, you should also know that the soil in Sacramento has a high clay content and is very easy to dig up. This makes it easy to plant grass seeds because they will have no difficulty growing through the soft ground. 2. The best time of year to plant grass seeds in Sacramento is from October to February. This is when the weather conditions are ideal for grass seed growth and when there are not too many weeds already growing in your yard. You can also plant grass seeds during the summer months but they will have difficulty growing because of the heat and lack of water in the soil. 3. Grass Seed Characteristics That Are Suited for Sacramento A good grass seed for Sacramento should be able to handle a wide range of growing conditions. It should be able to handle shade, partial shade, full sun and drought as well as cold winters and hot summers (humidity). This means that it will grow in most of California’s natural habitats including wetland areas, dry hillsides, coastal areas, etc… It should also be able to handle pests such as chinch bugs, mole crickets, grubs and nematodes which are common throughout California’s natural habitats. The best grass seed for Sacramento will also have resistance to diseases such as brown patch fungus which causes patches on lawns throughout California during the summer months due to lack of moisture in the soil . 4 Tips for Growing Grass in Sacramento Here are 4 tips explained in detail for growing grass in Sacramento: 1. Watering Sacramento is a hot and dry place, and you’ll need to water your lawn often. Use an irrigation system that has a timer so you can set it to run when temperatures are cooler and there is less evaporation. You don’t want to waste all that water! It’s also important to water deeply and infrequently instead of watering frequently and lightly, as this will help prevent fungus from forming in your lawn. 2. Fertilizing Grasses in Sacramento flourish in 60°F to 70°F weather. Even if it’s sunny, the ground temperatures don’t start rising until mid-late April. In general, start fertilizing your lawn in late May until late August or early September. 3. Planting for the season Sacramento has two main seasons: summer, where the weather is usually in triple digits and your lawn will need plenty of water to survive, and winter, when temperatures cool down and many plants go dormant. Specific grass seeds thrive in each season. 4. Irrigation Sacramento is hot, dry, and sunny. To grow a lawn that can withstand the heat and still look green, you’ll need to water your lawn often. Use an irrigation system to water your lawn so you can be sure it gets enough water. The best times to water are early morning or late evening when temperatures are cooler. This will also help prevent the growth of fungus in your lawn.” When to Plant Grass Seed in Sacramento Before planting your grass, you should till the soil to a depth of 6 inches. You can do this using a spade or rototiller. If you are using a rototiller, you should run it at half speed so that the blades don’t dig too deep into the ground. This will prevent any damage to the roots of your new grass plants. After tilling, you should add some compost to the soil. This will help with nutrient and water retention in your soil when it rains or if you water it yourself. It will also help with drainage if there is an excess of water in your yard. You can buy compost at most garden stores or make your own by taking kitchen scraps and burying them in a hole in your backyard for several months before digging them up again and mixing them into your lawn soil. You can plant sod immediately after tilling and adding compost to the soil; however, it is best to wait 3 weeks before planting grass seed instead of sod because sod may be treated with fertilizers or pesticides that aren’t good for other plants growing nearby. Also, seed takes longer to grow than sod but produces stronger roots than sod does which makes it better for drought conditions as well as surviving wear from pets and kids playing on it all year round. If you want to plant seeds instead of sod, here are some tips: While waiting for 3 weeks before planting grass seed, start watering regularly so that the soil becomes moist but not soggy every day (about 1 inch per week). This will keep the area around where you plan on planting from drying out too much between now and then which could kill off any seedlings that sprout up beforehand. Also, if there is any standing water near where you plan on planting, get rid of it so that there isn’t any mud puddles left behind when rainwater comes down through the yard towards these areas during future storms after you have planted seeds there instead of sod. If there is standing water present already when you go to plant seeds in these areas later on, they might drown before they ever have a chance to grow strong enough roots for themselves! When should I plant grass seed in Sacramento? You can plant grass seed in Sacramento from April to July. The ideal time to sow grass seed is in mid-April. If you want to start planting grass seed in July, make sure that you choose a warm-season variety of grass seed. How much does it cost to plant grass seed? The cost of planting a new lawn may vary depending on your location, the type of grass seed you use and the size of your lawn. On average, the cost of planting a new lawn ranges between $80 and $100 per 1,000 square feet. For example, if you have a lawn that measures 5,000 square feet (500 square meters), the total cost will be between $400 and $500 ($80-$100 x 5,000 sq ft). You should also consider the impact of your local taxes when calculating the overall price of a new lawn. What are some factors that affect how much it costs to plant a new lawn? The main factor affecting how much it costs to install a new lawn is the type of turfgrass you choose for your yard. Some types of turfgrass are more expensive than others because they require more maintenance or they need special equipment for their installation. In addition, some types of turfgrass are more expensive than others because they grow faster than other varieties and require less time for their establishment. Therefore, if you want to save money on installing a new lawn, avoid installing high-maintenance varieties such as What is the best time of year to plant grass in California? The best time to plant grass in Southern California is fall through spring, when temperatures are cooler and there is less wind to stress the new plants. In Northern California it can be planted any time during the year, but fall through spring will give you better results than summer heat or winter cold. If you’re planting in hot weather, try planting after dark when temperatures are lower and you’ll have much more success with your lawn. How long does it take for grass seed to grow? How long until I can mow my new lawn? It will take about two months for your new lawn to become established enough to be mowed. After that you should allow about three weeks between mowings so the lawn can re-grow strong roots and healthy turfgrass blades before being cut again. What is the best grass for northern California? There are many types of grass that will survive in northern California. However, the best grass for this area is a warm-season perennial grass that is drought tolerant and has good shade tolerance. The most common warm-season grasses used in Northern California include bermuda, buffalograss, and zoysia. How do I know which type of grass is right for my lawn? This depends on your specific needs and the climate you live in. For example, if you live in an area with high temperatures all year round, then you might want to consider a carpetgrass like Bermuda or Zoysia as they can withstand higher temperatures than other varieties of turfgrass. If you live in a cooler climate with cold winters, then you might want to consider a cool-season perennial like fescue or bluegrass. What is the difference between Bermuda and Zoysia? Both Bermuda and Zoysia are warm season perennials that have similar physical characteristics such as color (green), texture (fine), growth habit (medium to fine) and tolerance (high). However, there are some differences between these two types of turfgrass including their origin (Bermuda originated from Africa while Zoysia originated from Japan), their growth rate (Bermuda grows faster than Zoysia), their mowing height (Bermuda can be cut at 1 ½ inches while Zoys What is the most effective grass seed? The most effective grass seed can be determined by the amount of growth and the time it takes to grow. The best seeds are those that germinate quickly and have a high survival rate once they start to grow. This is because you want your lawn to look good as soon as possible, so you don’t have to wait around for weeks or months for it to develop. The most effective grass seed will also be able to withstand all kinds of weather conditions. This is especially important if you live in an area that has a lot of rain or snowfall during the year. If your grass can survive through these elements, then it will last longer than other types of seeds and you won’t have to worry about replacing it every few years. If you want your lawn to always look its best, then you should choose a seed that grows into thick, dense patches of grass with minimal effort on your part. You don’t want something that requires a lot of maintenance once it starts growing, because this will only waste your time and energy. Instead, try using a natural seed blend that includes several different types of grasses for optimal results.
Half a chicken and a pan of garlicky, wine-simmered potatoes, all of it cooked in a stone fireplace so large two people could stand inside it. It was the honeymoon menu for Ana Patuleia Ortins some 50 years ago, and the appeal of those potatoes—and that massive fireplace— remains as strong today. “The opening was taller than me, probably 10 feet wide,” says Patuleia Ortins, author of “Authentic Portuguese Cooking.” “It had a grate with the pan on the fire, and there was a cat nearby waiting for something to drop.” Batatas cozidas em vinho e alhos varies by region and family, but the heart of the recipe is consistent: potatoes, onions, garlic and olive oil. First the onions and garlic are cooked until jammy-sweet, then the potatoes are added and simmered in white wine to add wonderful acidity to balance the starchiness. Patuleia Ortins says other typical elements include paprika for color and richness, plus another common pantry ingredient, a pepper paste made from cured, fiery bird’s eye chilies. Her father made his own with a meat grinder. In her recipe, Patuleia Ortins cooks the onions until softened, then mixes in garlic, bay, paprika and chili paste. Cubed potatoes are stirred in and coated with the seasonings, then simmered, covered, until tender. Later, the pot simmers uncovered to let the liquid evaporate and concentrate the flavors. A sprinkling of chopped fresh parsley or cilantro finishes the deeply satisfying dish. We loved the delicious simplicity of the flavors, which amount to much more than the sum of their parts. Except that cooking in wine can sometimes toughen the exterior of potatoes. That’s because the wine can draw out liquid from inside the potato cells near the surface, causing them to shrink and form a tough barrier. So we sought a way to ensure perfect results every time. And it turned out to be as simple as the recipe itself. Cutting the wine with chicken broth, which also added richness, helped block the dehydration effect of the alcohol. And without a meat grinder for freshly ground chili paste, we substitute jarred crushed peppers or red pepper flakes. “The thing that people don’t understand about Portuguese cooking is that it’s flexible,” she says. “The way they say it, it’s ‘com gusto.’ It’s how you like it.”
Miniscope Baseplate and Protective Cone for Rats From UCLA Miniscope Jump to: navigation, search We have developed an adjusted baseplate to hold a protective cone together with Joop Bos (NIN). Using this setup, it is possible to image in rats, while preventing damage due to grooming, bumping into objects, or other unforeseen movements. This system has successfully been tested and used in our experiments. It is possible to hold the animal while snapping on the protective cone with your other hand. Importantly, during baseplating, keep in mind that the set screw of the baseplate is oriented posterior to the animal (to its back). This way, one can easily loosen and tighten this screw and put on the protective cone from the anterior (front) side of the animal, thereby preventing the animal to take it of itself. The adjusted baseplate has to be milled, similar to the original baseplate. Keep in mind that the height of the baseplate has increased (to 3 mm). Therefore, this system is only useful in combination with a GRIN relay lens. In addition, we have put the set screw in the center to hold the LED PCB rather than the Miniscope housing, as the housing is more fragile. Finally, one has to glue three magnets into the holes, similar to the original baseplate. The protective cone consists of two parts, left and right, which have to be hold together by an iron rod or thick wire. We have successfully printed both parts using a standard Ultimaker 3D printer, but advice to use a printer with higher resolution as it increases precision (to snap together left and right) and strength (although no protective cone has been damaged during experiments). Finally, we noticed that rats can take off the protective cap quite easily (within a few days). Therefore, we slightly adjusted the protective cap so it fits better. Stages prot cone.jpg Download the .stl and .stp files to directly 3D print (protective cone) or mill the adjusted baseplate, respectively. Baseplate and Protective Cone Files
Hr Technology 4 Ways HR Teams Can Use Predictive Analytics to Drive Business Outcomes in 2019 Predictive analytics has emerged as a useful tool for HR teams, making them key players in determining the direction of an organization’s growth. Once perceived as an isolated function, HR is now a meaningful contributor to an organization’s business outcomes. We discuss which areas of HR predictive analytics can influence to drive business outcomes. From hiring the right candidate to ensuring high engagement and a positive employee experience until exit, HR is critical to shaping a business’ brand and contributing to its growth. By using predictive analytics, HR can meaningfully offer inputs that will streamline the way employees are assessed before recruitment and during their tenure in the organization. All these efforts translate into actionable points that contribute to the organization’s bottom line. What Is Predictive Analytics in HR? Predictive analytics uses historical data coupled with current trends to predict future events. In the context of HR, predictive analytics enables HR teams to make predictions about areas of the entire HR function – from the cultural fit of an employee, their likelihood to remain engaged on the job, their ability to upskill and stay relevant to the industry they are working in, and their likelihood to spend a certain duration in the job, to name a few. Predictive analytics helps quantify qualitative data by assigning a score to the different areas that need to be measured, demonstrating the likelihood of an event occurring. Also Read: Top Trends Driving the Demand for HR Analytics How Can HR Impact a Company’s Bottom Line with Predictive Analytics? In an interview with HR Technologist, Arjun Pratap, CEO of EdGE Networks, mentioned the edge that using predictive analytics can give the HR function of an organization: Using analytics in HR, parsing through the available data has become much easier and time-saving. This not only allows HR leaders to take decisions pertaining to the immediate issues at hand but foresee future concerns to be addressed. This serves as an extra edge that manual decision-making processes could never achieve. This is further proof of what an organization can achieve by investing in this tool to guide its HR functions. And if what Arjun said doesn’t seem convincing enough, here are some questions that using predictive analytics can easily help HR answer. Actions taken based on the predictive outcomes of these questions will meaningfully contribute to an organization’s bottom line. 1. Which candidate would be the best cultural fit for the organization? For recruitment, HR can use predictive analytics to predict the profile of an employee who would be the best fit for the organization. Additionally, a combination of data on engagement, growth, success, and attrition rates can help recruiters predict the performance of an employee in the future. This translates into improved business outcomes by allowing recruiters to find specific candidates faster for a role, saving them the trouble of going through hundreds of resumes to fill one role. Aditya Narayan Mishra, CEO, CIEL HR Services, shares how predictive analytics is transforming recruitment: “Organizations have a huge amount of data about their employees: their personal details, education, family background and so on. They also have data about employees’ performance and behaviors. Hence, they can correlate all these three dimensions to determine the typical profile of an employee who is likely to be successful with them. That’s the power of predictive analytics!” Also Read: 5 Steps to Get Started with HR Analytics 2. There is a skills gap: Should we upskill or should we hire? With the kind of data, a predictive analytics algorithm has access to, it can easily predict what kind of skills the organization lacks. Further, based on employee experience, skill sets, and education, predictive analytics engines can identify which employees are most suited to upskill in that area successfully. This means organizations can look inwards when trying to fill talent gaps instead of choosing to recruit new talent as their first option. This leads to lower recruitment costs and optimal utilization of the workforce and is one of the most effective ways in which predictive analytics transforms HR will drive improved positive business outcomes. 3. Which employees are at risk of leaving the organization? Employee attrition is one of the biggest challenges organizations face currently. The cost of the loss of an employee and replacing them with another one can turn the focus away from the organization’s bottom line. Instead, predictive analytics can be used to prevent this in the first place by identifying at-risk employees. By analyzing factors such as pay, promotions, company environment, and relationships with managers, predictive analytics can reveal who may be the most likely to leave the organization, serving as a game changer in the personalization of the engagement process for those employees and their retention. 4. Are employees productively contributing to business outcomes? Is employee performance translating into productive business outcomes? What are employees doing that is resulting in improved business performance? How can this model be replicated for future growth? Predictive analytics can easily assess relevant metrics and serve up insights to HR teams. The same tool can also be used to identify areas of improvement and indications of employees who are most likely to show this improvement. Also Read: How HR Analytics Can Help Improve Employee Performance Predictive analytics solutions come with customizable interfaces that are intuitive and easy to use. Each business has unique requirements, and choosing a tool that is specific to meet that business requirement is critical for a positive outcome. With predictive analytics, HR teams are likely to spend less time assuming what the general mood in the organization is and can instead rely on real data to take action that will drive productive business outcomes. How are you using predictive analytics to drive business outcomes? Let us know on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. We’re always listening! Most Popular To Top Show Buttons Hide Buttons
A Page from the Middle When the gibbons had stopped chasing them, Milo and Milton collapsed by the side of the road, their breasts heaving, spots dancing in front of their eyes. The road took a sharp turn here, and the ground fell away into a little valley. In the valley were two ancient Frenchmen, arguing with each other. It was some time before Milo could heard anything over the sound of his own breathing. “Love!” cried the one, perched on a crumbling glacial rock. A sign hanging from the guardrail gave the period of the rock’s dissolution as fifteen thousand years. “Love, true love, free love, love free from fear and danger and repression, ah, love will change the world!” The other sneered. He was monstrously fat, but his eyes, where they peeped through the bars of his cell, were lively. He had a beautiful forehead. “Man never changes. Your love thrives under the whips and chains that ring it around — remove those chains and what do you have left?” “The birds lifting from the rock…” “What do they hope to gain from it?” asked Milo. “They never convince each other.” “Of course not,” replied Milton, “but it has to be said.”
Ray William Johnson’s Net Worth The incredibly talented comedian, songwriter, and actor has an estimated net worth of $20 million. Riley Rewind was the star of his first scripted show, which was released on Facebook and YouTube in December 2013. It followed the adventures of a teen who has special time-shifting powers. It was released in five parts totaling 50 minutes, and by 2015, had over 10 million views. Ray also has a diverse body of work ranging from comedy sketches to full-length studio movies. He has also voiced characters such as Boba Fett and Goku in several studio films. In addition, he appeared in the popular sitcom Who’s Driving Doug. However, his comedic work has gotten a mixed reaction, as some viewers found some of his videos offensive and inappropriate. Johnson’s net worth has been boosted by a variety of sources, including internet commercials, YouTube series, and social media. His YouTube channel boasts a loyal following of over ten million subscribers and reaches a staggering two billion people a year. His videos have become popular enough to earn him millions, and he continues to make more. In addition to YouTube, he also has multiple blog videos that are widely watched on social media. Born on August 14, 1981, Ray William Johnson has a net worth of $10 million. He is an American native with dual heritage of Irish and Italian descent. He began working on Equals Three while studying at Columbia University. He had planned to attend law school after graduation, but decided to pursue YouTube full-time instead. Currently, he has more than three billion views on his YouTube channel. A brief bio is below. Ray William Johnson has several relationships. He once dated YouTube star Anna Akana but separated from her in 2012, and is currently dating fellow youtuber Kelly Farral. The couple has been together since 2011. Ray William Johnson was born in Oklahoma City. He attended Norman North High School, but later moved to Upper Manhattan, where he studied history at Columbia University. Johnson eventually produced several web series, and his net worth was estimated at $10 million by July 2022. It is not clear whether he is a successful actor, but his online presence has made him a hugely popular YouTube star. Aside from his YouTube channel, Ray also hosts celebrities on his channel. In addition to his acting career, Ray William Johnson has created several original projects for his channel, such as the documentary ‘Kaja Martin’. Despite being a relatively unknown figure in the world of YouTube, he has been recognized as an influential YouTuber and has become one of the most popular YouTubers. His channel currently has over 9.5 million subscribers. Riley is 39 years old, weighs 180 lbs. While most people are familiar with Ray William Johnson’s YouTube success, there are a few details that are not known about his net worth. For example, his net worth is not disclosed publicly, but his earnings are estimated by using his YouTube advertising revenue. His popularity in this field has helped him earn his net worth in the millions of dollars. Regardless of the source, Johnson’s net worth is incredibly impressive.
Add a Classification Field to an Item (Beta) Once you have classification fields enabled, you can add them to your task items. You must have classification fields enabled by support. For more information, see Enable Classification Fields (Beta). 1. Go to your container and select Upload New Item. 2. Select Add Classifications. Note: The classification field uses the Uniclass 2021 dataset. The Add Classifications dialog box displays. 3. (Optional) Filter by classification type or search for specific classifications. 4. Select the check-box for each classifier to tag onto your item. 5. When you're finished, select Upload Documents. Tip: You can remove classifications by selecting the X button next to each classification tag.
New Caledonia is situated in the Melanesian sub region towards the south western side of Pacific Ocean. It is about 1,200 kilometers away from Australia towards its eastern end and about 1,500 kilometers away from New Zealand towards its north western end. New Caledonia includes the main island of Grande Terre, the Loyalty Islands and other smaller islands namely the Isle of Pines, the Bellona Reefs and the Chesterfield Islands. Nouméa is the capital city of New Caledonia. The Grande Terre is basically the mountainous island containing five peaks of about 1,500 metres height. The highest mountain of the Grande Terre is Mont Panié that rises at an elevation of 1,628 meters. New Caledonia is actually a part of a submerged continent known as Zealandia that sank when rifted from Australian continent about 80 million years ago. Diahot River is the longest river of the New Caledonia. Today, New Caledonia is said to be the critically endangered territory of the world and rich plant diversity. New Caledonia is a detached part of ancient super-continent of Gondwana and preserves a picture of Gondwanan forests. Now the country is the home to bizarre endemic plants and animal diversity of Gondwanan origin and the world’s second prevalent coral reef after the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. The island is a significant nesting ground for the Green Sea Turtle and fur seals. The Nautilus, the living-fossil species which were found during the era of the dinosaurs till survives under the waters of New Caledonia. In the year 2002, the government of France listed the Barrier Reef of New Caledonia as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Aganetha Dyck: The Bees and I Hive Scan, Aganetha and Richard Dyck Aganetha Dyck‘s exhibition Collaborations on now at the Burnaby Art Gallery is the result of her ongoing dialogue with bees. Her recent Hive Scans were created with the help of her son and his laptop computer. The printed results are very painterly, with blurring stripes that remind me of smeared paint, but which are actually the traces of bees in motion while the scan takes place. These images are very tactile, capturing marks of pollen, honey, and wax left by the bees on the surface of the scanner. Dyck often takes objects she finds or constructs, and places them in the hive during the bees’ active summer months. Check out her wax-encrusted braille tablets and her striking back-lit manufactured metal plates of text, all of which are a poignant reference to communication between humans and bees.
Sunday, March 8, 2009 Pink, green, blue bridge. When giving directions to people driving to our place, the one landmark we can easily give is the pastel pink bridge across the Gonokawa connecting Tanijyugo with kawado. It was recently repainted, so the pastel shades are bright again. I guess the bridge is about 40 years old as there was a major flood back in the 60's, so the embankments have been raised since then. I have seen some old photos from the 1920's or 30's that showed a low wooden bridge crossing the river at this point. Before the Meiji period there would not have been a bridge here as either side of the river belonged to different Hans, or Domains. Our side of the river belonged to Iwami Ginzan, so was controlled directly by the Bafuku in Edo. The Kawado side of the river belonged to Hamada Han.
NYCC 2011 Fancy Photo Comic Part 3 Part 3 of 3. INSIDE JOKES THAT YOU DON’T GET! It is during the times when you’ve been awake for 68 of the last 72 hours that you must cling to things like “Glove Hats” to keep a tenuous grasp on your sanity… on your humanity. This is when all that stands between you and sleep deprivation induced madness is the constant reminder that you share a pointless joke with other people. That there even ARE other people. That you aren’t completely alone in the universe with nothing to keep you company but your dwindling cognitive state. “Glove Hats” was the only thing grounding me to reality despite 4 sleepless nights, 4 days of constantly being “on,” dehydration, exhaustion and at least 4 other -tions that you really don’t want piled all on top of each other at the same time. Thank you, “Glove Hats.” You saved me. This comic stars Jennie, KrisRob, Matt and Dave of Cyanide and Happiness as well as Becky and Frank of Tiny Kitten Teeth. On the last day of NYCC I went around to everyone’s table and said, “Guys! I have the best idea! We’re going to get some beers, order some pizzas, stay in and go absolutely NOWHERE and do absolutely NOTHING tonight!” Upon hearing this revelation, most smiled as if I have just given them irrefutable proof that there was indeed a God and he loved them very much. Like a soothing calm washed over them and took away their fears. Some openly wept, overwhelmed with the knowing that there was a world where people could sit and talk and have fun without crawling from bar to bar, subway to cab, and without trudging mile after mile of a city that seemed to oppose their very existence. It was a fantastic end to a wonderful weekend. Thanks to FB Kyle Corwin for the photo used in panel 1. COMMENTERS: Have you ever shared an inside joke that you repeated so much that the words themselves started to lose all meaning? Something where you can utter two words to the right person and they involuntarily snort or choke to death on their beverage? Really? You murdered someone with humor? You monster. Feel free to confess your crimes in the comments. Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , . • This is, in fact, a reference to "If I had a nickel…"–except you said "Nickel!" when something sounded naughty. It got WAY overdone. • For a very long time, I always read "tangential" in a dyslexic manner and thought "tangenital" was the correct word. Luckily, I did not find out my mistake in front of a crowd of people or anything. 1. For a few years, when someone said "what's up?" I would reply "anything away from the gravitational center of a mass larger than all other surrounding masses." Then I lost all my friends. All of them. 2. One Christmas, my family did a gift exchange called "Cutthroat" where you can choose to unwrap a present from the pile or you can steal someone else's present for yourself. After getting my present stolen, I said "This is worse than getting shanked in prison!" The family quickly took this up and referred to all present stealing as "shanking". It quickly devolved into 30 people in a circle chanting "Shank! Shank! Shank!" None of us can hear the word "shank" without thinking of that magical Christmas morn, which makes watching any movie set in prison an awkward endeavor. 3. What is 12" long and keeps the ladies screaming all night? Cribdeath! After a friend told this joke a few times, I just was trained to giggle at the word Cribdeath. Then one day I'm at the house of a new set of friends with a newborn. There were seven or so of us, those married started talking about kids and worrying about them, and then someone said Cribdeath. I chuckled, and everybody just glared at me! It was quite an uncomfortable situation where I had to explain myself and that I am not, in fact, a completely horrible person. Most of the time. Also, cancer. 4. "Reaction shot of the monkey!" On New Year's Eve, we were talking about deleted scenes in movies and how you can occasionally see remnants of them in the finished film. We mentioned the lost Jitterbug sequence from "The Wizard of Oz," which the Wicked Witch still makes a vague reference to. I wondered why they couldn't just cut the leftover line by cutting away to a reaction shot of the flying monkey or something. 5. My fiance and I have too many to count. We both hate pet names and don't use them, but in their stead we have our own vast, bizarre cadre of personal memes. For instance, several years ago I had a dream which I then relayed to my fiance: Me: "I had this dream that Winston Churchill was dead!!" Him: "But…Winstron Churchill IS dead…" Me: "No, I mean he had JUST died and I was in the room and no one else knew yet and this hamster told me I had to tell everyone and I didn't WANT to be the one to have to–" Him: "This HAMSTER told you?" Me: "Look, it was a dream, okay? I didn't question it at the time!" Him: "So this hamster in a little top hat and monocle just says to you," (posh British accent) "My God, Alex! The prime minister is DEAD! As a God-fearing daughter of England, it is your duty to–" Me: (laughing so hard I can barely speak) "No, he was just a hamster, he wasn't wearing anything…" (Several minutes pass) Him: (still with the accent) "My God, Alex…" Now, any time anyone says "My God" in a British accent, or mentions Winston Churchill or hamsters or a dead prime minister, both of us are doomed to uncontrollable laughter. 6. Seven or eight years ago, my friends & I went to a late night revival screening of "Ghostbusters." At one point, we started pointing out all of the products that dated the film, like, "Oh look! Tab! Tab was big in the '80s." This eventually spilled over into other things that weren't products or weren't actually '80s specific. The line from that night that still endures to this day is….. "Oh look! Black people! Black people were big in the '80s." 7. Apple juice. Me and a bunch of my nerdlinger friends all pitched in money together to get a hotel room for a big scifi con in Philly. After two days of staying up all night and going to the con events during the day we were all a little loopy. Russ (who was the worst affected) fell asleep mid-sentence about some new card game suddenly jerked awake and shouted "I swear it's apple juice!" We never found out what he meant, but for the rest of the weekend and for years afterward all we had to do was mention apple juice and we'd all chuckle. 8. God that brings back memories of The really sterotypical Asian cop on Dick Tracy. God I can't believe they aired them again durning the early 90's when the Warren Beatty movie came out. Yet they would not allow the racist Warner Bros. cartoons. #NotFair 9. I have a friend. She's a religious academic. She looks like a librarian and is cerebral and dignified. Until you say "Ditch cookie". I wasn't there when it was first said, so I have no idea how it developed, but if you say it, she'll end up literally ROFLing. 10. Way back when Yahtzee Croshaw reviewed Metal Gear Solid 4, my brother and I then responded to anthing confusing and nonsensical with "OH CHRIST! I can't go on. This shit is bananas!" These picture comics are always a hoot, Joel. Remind me, who among your twitter pals also have webcomics? I kinda forgot because, regretably, there just isn't enough time in the day to read EVERY WEBCOMIC ON THE INTERNET. 11. "Fred Rogers is a dead white man!" A few years ago, Levar Burton was a guest on "Tavis Smiley." Smiley called him the King of PBS. Burton, ever the humble one, demurred, "I don't know. Fred Rogers is still up there." Smiley immediately snapped back, "But Fred Rogers isn't a black man." All I could think was that Fred Rogers, godbless'im, is dead. I loudly proclaimed, "Fred Rogers is a dead white man!" That's now my synonym for dismissing anything as irrelevant. 12. An ex-boyfriend (whom I happen to still be platonic friends with), his roommates and I used to have this thing where we would see how many silly and inventive insults we could come up with to call each other. The absolutely funniest one, in our opinion, was "assbagel." Yes, assbagel. One day one of his roommates was at work and the rest of us were bored, so we repeatedly called his phone leaving messages on his voicemail using the word assbagel. Thereafter assbagel became his nickname. My friend even programmed his voice dialing to call the guy when he said "Call assbagel." Good times. Oh, by the way, you should see this: Leave a Reply to Uschi Cancel reply
Search This Blog Saturday, December 20, 2008 #339: Movies on Buses/Airplanes with sound over PA system I was annoyed by this in Argentina. They would play the movies on the buses and planes over the PA system, instead of what I am used which is having the sound muted and if you want to watch/listen to the film, you plug in your ear phones. I did not enjoy having to listen to bad movies on my 21 hour bus ride, especially this terrible Drillbit Taylor. Wednesday, December 17, 2008 #337: Exhaust smell in foreign countries Living in a country with good motor vehicle emission standards, you forget the much of the world doesn't have the standard of living to enforce these rules. Even in a fairly well-off country like Argentina, I became annoyed at smelling exhaust, even in the smallest of towns in Patagonia. It just took one idling pickup or bus to stink up the whole area in a wide radius. Also, to make matters worse, they leave vehicles idling a lot. I think it might be due to being scared that it won't start up again if they shut it down while waiting to drive off. Severity: 4 #336: cheap napkins in some Argentina restauants Some restaurants in Argentina had napkins that were basically like wax paper. Totally unsatisfying to wipe your mouth with. Severity: 3 #335: Places not opening for dinner till real late In Buenos Aires, almost all spots for dinner did not open till 8pm. I understand that most people might want to eat late, but there still has to be enough business during the week that you could open early. I was walking around all day and starving and couldn't go to the places I wanted to because the timing was not right. Severity: 1 #334: Airport taxes in foreign countries This isn't about hating these type of tourist taxes, which I do. This is about having the stupid process of paying it at the airport before you depart, rather than instituting and automated system where the tax is included in your ticket and remitted to the government by the airline. I guess people need jobs. Severity: 1 #333: No tap water in restaurants in Argentina You just can't get tap water brought to you in Argentina. Even when I was by glaciers and the tap water was the best you could possibly have and better than bottled water, I could not get them to understand the concept. That, or they just refused. One time, a guy just poured me a little bottled water in a glass at no charge, but that wasn't the point. I find bottled water the ultimate in wastefulness when you have fine tap water and I didn't want to contribute to the waste. Severity: 3 #332: Having to ask for the check in Argentina On my trip to Argentina, I found it a bit annoying to have to ask for the check every time. They just never would come by and see if you were done or not. Sometimes, you like not being rushed, but often it was quite obvious I was ready and having to say "La cuenta por favor" so much became irritating, though it was one of the few phrases I mastered. Severity: 2 Monday, September 29, 2008 #331: Blackberry Buzzing People at meetings that have their blackberries out and they buzz for every email vibrating on the table. Why do people need to get a buzz for every email? They are going to check it every 5 seconds anyway. It's distracting to me. Severity: 3 Sunday, September 07, 2008 #330: Single Serving Laundromat Supplies It annoys me to see people wasting money buying single-use supplies from the laundromat vending machine. To pay 75 cents for 2 sheets of Bounce is shameful. How hard is it to buy a 120 sheet pack like I do and take some to the laundromat when you do your clothes? Instead of paying 38 cents a sheet, I pay something like 3 cents and save on trash by not creating packaging waste like this fool did. Same goes for detergent purchases (which this guy also made). The laziness, lack of green, and extreme waste of money boils my blood a little. Severity: 3 Tuesday, July 29, 2008 #329: Fast Phone Number Giving I dislike when people leave a voicemail and they leave their phone number in such a fast way as to make it nearly impossible to get the number. It's both rude and self-aggrandizing in that it's saying that the person thinks their time is so valuable that they can't spend the extra second to leave the phone number in a slower, intelligeble manner. Severity: 2 Wednesday, July 23, 2008 #328: Premature Elevator Leavers I don't like when I'm in an elevator with someone else and they stop off at a floor before mine and before the door opens they make a move to leave and have to hold themselves back and are really close to the door. I'm a bit confused by why this annoys me, but I think it both makes me nervous for their agitation to leave before they are able to and insulting for them wanted to get out of the elevator (and away from me) so fast that they can't bear to wait another second. Severity: 1 Tuesday, July 01, 2008 #327: Ticket Number write down When I call in to the help desk at work, they always say, "Now write down this ticket number" and it's stupid because seconds later, you get an email with the number. So I just pretend I'm excitedly writing the number to make the guy feel important, but I think it's stupid. Severity: 1 Monday, June 30, 2008 #326: Office Phone Number Display You may recall annoyance #246 where I complained about my phone not displaying the number of the call coming in on the second line. Well, my new job's phone does this, but has a new annoyance. It doesn't display the code I've dialed in to access a conference call. So when I call the conf call 800 number and type in the code, when I get the hold music, I'm always unsure if I typed in the wrong digits by accident or if it's just the meeting host being late to start the call. Severity: 2 Tuesday, June 24, 2008 #325: Voice Mail Blather Before the Beep When you call a phone and the voicemail precedes the beep with this long-winded message about how to leave a message, pressing numbers for more options, leaving call back numbers, etc. and you're anxious to just skip to the beep and leave the damn message already. Sometimes, you can hit the # button, but sometimes, that doesn't work and causes more mishaps like it did to me today. Severity: 2 Saturday, June 21, 2008 #324: Debit Card Usage I don't understand why I see people using debit cards so much. It's obviously better than writing a check, which you hardly ever see. But my problem is that I know most of these people also have a credit card and so why aren't they using that instead? You get points, you have no chance for overdrafts, your rights for disputing charges are better, and you get interest free float for at least 20 days. Any points rewards programs associated with debit cards are FAR inferior to credit cards, which usually have a standard 1% cash back or gift card back amount, while debit cards are typically 1/3 or less of that reward, if they have any at all, which most don't. Only exception is people that need cash back, so I'm talking about people that use it with a signature, not PIN. Severity: 2 Tuesday, June 17, 2008 #323: No Print Preview in Outlook Just pisses me off and wastes paper. Severity: 3 #322: Misleading Price Signs I don't like the scams businesses do where they put a sign out that tries to trick people. The biggest violators of this are parking garages that advertise some low cost but in small print say it's per 20 minutes, which is not what most people are going to find useful in determining the cost of their parking. Also, I recently noticed a bar put up a sign that said some special beer was $1 off, but the off was small and such that I think they meant to trick people that the price was a $1, not that the savings was $1. Especially since $1 off isn't that great to trumpet. Severity: 2 Saturday, June 14, 2008 #321: Sad Microwave Clock Sunday, June 08, 2008 #320: Good Times No, not the show, which I love. This is about people that say "Good Tiiiimes" with that elongation of the "i" in a Socal surfer sort of tone. It used to be cool, but has been overused to the point of annoying me. People: try to be cool in some other way and come up with your own hip phrase that will last a few years before I deem it expired, like this one. Serverity: 1 #319: Wamu Credit Card Offers I don't mind credit card offers, as someone who signs up for one if there's any deal to be had. However, Wamu keeps sending me this scam deal where they trumpet "0% of purchases till [really long time from now]" but then there's an asterisk that says "when you transfer a balance." Of course, the interest rate on the balance transfer is like 8%. In addition, they count on the average Joe not understanding about the payment allocation rules which state that your payments go to pay off the lower interest rate balance before the higher rate balance, which means that keeping to take advantage of the 0% on purchases, you necessarily have to be paying interest on the 8% balance transfer balances. Anyway, it's a bad deal and the fact that I get one of these from them about every two weeks is annoying and makes me not ever want to deal with this bank. Severity: 2 #318: Refuses to Share This one guy at my pool who I see a lot will sometimes stand wating for a lane to open all for himself for great lengths and it annoys me that he won't share a lane like everyone else. Severity: 1 Thursday, May 22, 2008 #317: Efficiency Ignored When I find a shortcut to make my life more efficient, I like to share it. It annoys me when everyone I tell the idea to seems uninterested. The latest thing is when I investigated to figure out how to set the speed dial on my work phone (which was a lot of more complicated than one would think) and had the additional idea to put in the conference call number (which is the same throughout the company) in. Almost everyone calls this number at least once a day. And yet no one seemed as excited as I was that they could just push a button to initiate the call, rather than dialing 12 digits on the phone and having to remember the number or look it up in the meeting request. Severity: 2 Sunday, April 27, 2008 #316: 7-11 Hot Dog Purchases One of my great joys is having a salty 1/4 pound Big Bite hot dog at the Mill Valley 7-11 on the way home from mountain biking. However, the process is annoying to me because when you pay for it, the guy gets the hot dog from the rollers, puts in the bun and puts it in the box, but then leaves it over at the condiment area so I have to walk all the way over to there for nothing (since I don't put anything on it) and then back out the door. So, today, I said "I'll have a hot dog plain" and the guy responded "do you want a bun?" and I was like, "Yeah" and he still put it over at the condiment area. So, I'm both annoyed that the guy thought plain meant no bun and that he didn't understand that I was saying not to put it over at the condiment area since I wasn't going to put anything on it; just give it to me. Anyway, all the drama involved in getting the hot dog purchase to go as efficiently as I want it to go is just plain annoying. Severity: 2 Tuesday, March 18, 2008 #315: Handicap Button Pushers This is similar to another one from long ago, but different enough to warrant a new entry. There's a button to open the door to the bathroom on my floor at work from the outside and inside for handicap people. This guy that is not handicap and uses it annoys me because it is shamefully lazy, in my opinion. Severity: 2 #314: Scared of Protests People that are scared to come into the city for work the day there is supposed to be a protest because they think they'll be stranded. This isn't some third world country. The odds of something so violent and crazy happening that you are held hostage in your office are so low that not coming in is just a scam, similar to #313. Severity: 2 #313: Jury Duty Day Off Scammers People that take the day off from work for jury duty in advance of calling in to find out if they have to go in. They're just trying to get an extra day off. Severity: 2 Monday, March 17, 2008 #312: Airborne People that spend money on the scam product Airborne because they think it will keep them from getting sick, annoy me. I have no idea what the product is, but the fact that it says "created by a schoolteacher!" on the box, tells me that in no way can it possibly have anything else than a placebo effect. It's just another case of people wanting some magic drug to protect them. There's something about taking pills that makes people feel special, I've found, such that I feel many do so unnecessarily. This product has capitalized big-time on this phenomenon. Severity: 2 Monday, March 10, 2008 Public Input Needed: Vote For Most Baffling Annoyance I'm curious what visitors to this blog think is the oddest annoyance I have. By odd, I mean you can't see how something could annoy someone enough to waste the time to write it down. For reference, refresh your memory with the archives and don't forget to check out the old entries on my main website. I will allow you to pick up to 3. Based on the responses, I may or may not do some soul-searching and do my best to stop being annoyed by things that shouldn't bother me so much. Thanks, #311: Sooner Rather Then Later This phrase is used a lot at my work to describe when someone wants something done, and it bothers me as a stupid thing to say that people must think sounds clever to say. Severity: 1 Thursday, March 06, 2008 #310: Meeting Requests People at work that ask you if you're available for a meeting and never check your calendar. It's much simpler to just do that and if the person can't do it, they can decline. Severity: 1 #309: Self-Spoilers Anyone who actively reads a recap or blog of a show before they watch it annoys me greatly because I can't fathom how someone can't have the patience to wait till they watch the show to find out what happens. To me, watching the show not knowing what is going to happen is one of the great joys of TV watching and so the fact that some people don't share this belief makes me think the human race is doomed. Severity: 4 #308: Loud, low-threshold laughers Lately, I've been around some loud laughers and it gets annoying after a while because typically, loud laugher are also low-threshold laughers that will laugh frequently without just cause. I don't mind loud laughing if it's justified, but when it happens with great frequency and usually for things that aren't really that funny, then it becomes something that I feel the laugher just wants to hear themself laugh or thinks it's cool for others to hear them. After a while, it gets old and hurts my ears. Severity: 3 Wednesday, March 05, 2008 #307: Receipt Givers When you order something to go at a restaurant for lunch or dinner where they call a number and people go to claim their order and try to hand the person their number proving it's really their food. These people don't care. They know that it's your food or else the real owner would dispute the interloper. So why people feel a need to present the order receipt to the worker is a mystery to me. I also don't know why this bothers me so much, since I would think only people in the job of having to refuse or crumple the person's receipt would care. Severity: 3 Monday, January 07, 2008 #306: 3pm Virus Scan
Dean is on a crazy road trip from Detroit, one that has led him to Des Moines and Denver. What city beginning with “De” will be his next stop? You will find out! The show opens with a tale of bad behavior by one of the biggest stars currently living in the Hollywood Hills. The latest on the Rust on-set shooting tragedy, and ensuing legal chaos, gets covered. A holocaust survivor-turned-sitcom star, the composer of one of the most iconic themes in cinema history, and an Oscar-nominated filmmaker all get remembered in “Celebrity Deaths”. A whole mess of 2022 movies get reviewed, including leading “Best Picture” hopeful Women Talking, as well as The Woman King, Where the Crawdads Sing, and The Outfit. An overlooked noir-ish classic from Carol Reed gets reappraised, as does a Nazi gold caper film from the 1970s, and a truly bizarre satire about presidential assassination from the author of “The Manchurian Candidate” and “Prizzi’s Honor”.
Thursday, June 11, 2020 I have noted before that when people of the right protest or get violent, there is a defensive quality to it, while the people of the left go on the attack and get in people's faces. You might dispute whether the Bundys are actually right wing or just fringe and concerned with their own individual rights, but let's grant for the moment that they are sort of from the right. They took over the headquarters of a national wildlife refuge as the season was winding down after twenty years of dispute with the federal government. They holed up and dared the gummint to come in after them. This is very typical of the violence on the right that scares everyone in the national press so much. Because they were armed, y'know. You can think that is as wrong and stupid as you want, but it's wildly different from taking over a police station and some city blocks in Seattle. Generally, all groups tolerate the violent and threatening people on their own side because at heart, they believe they aren't going to be the ones in danger. The boyos, in Ireland or in Boston, might be violent terrorists but people make excuses for them because, well they're ours. I don't think the nice people* of the left get it, even as the violent extremists come for others on the left, as they have in other times and places. They may not come for you personally, not for a long time, and you may be able to train your wife and children to be clever enough to mostly stay clear of them, with a little luck. But they have been coming for a lot of job-holders in media and entertainment the last few years, and it ramps up. Increasingly, it is beating people up and threatening them, as if taking someone's livelihood isn't enough. The left goes after people. The right defends against people. Entirely separate from the question of whose cause is the better one, and whether someone deserves going after or being defended, this a a very different approach to politics. Time provides proofs and examples for me. *I mean that. I'm not being sarcastic here. They do not see what their actions mean if you press them just a bit farther. Karen might be annoying, but you'd trust your kids with her for the afternoon. Maybe not for a whole school year, but that's a different kind of danger. She is in one sense "nice." Aggressively nice, actually, and wants to make sure everyone else is nice, too. Grim said... “Jack ‘Wacko’ Curran, an existential street samurai”? Assistant Village Idiot said... Yeah, bizarre. But it does capture the Boston Irish affection for crazy violent people, so long as they are on their side. Not that different from Ireland, really. Korora said... I wonder how much of this difference between left and right has to do with the fact that the left's ideas are currently in fashion (and so they can sometimes get away with more) and those of the right are not.
Hurry! Cane you get away from the storm? Hurry! Cane you get away from the storm? Stormy weather warning sign 2017 was a record-breaking year for hurricanes, with about twenty named tropical storms, seven being hurricanes, and four being major hurricanes category 3-5. Last year having the most storms resulted in also being the costliest hurricane season in U.S. history. If last year’s hurricane season wasn’t bad enough, this year is predicted to be the same. These hurricanes destroy lives—killing people and stripping them of their homes and automobiles—making the billions of dollars seem like nothing. Why the increase in hurricanes? Hurricanes are the result of warm seawater and warm air combining and evaporating. So, if there are more hurricanes, which are a result of warmth, what could the increase be caused by? The answer is more warmth in our atmosphere and our seas, otherwise known as global warming. Our atmosphere is warming up, causing our seas to warm up at higher latitudes, which creates more tropical storms and more intense hurricanes. How will an increase in hurricanes affect us? Hurricanes can kill humans. We can also be impacted indirectly by climate changes, and the same goes for animals that inhabit the land surrounding us. Hurricanes can destroy our crops and vegetation to produce more crops, impacting what we eat and how we retrieve our food. Homes can be destroyed—the place where we feel safe and hold our belongings can be wiped away by these beastly storms. In 2017, homes that affected by Hurricane Irma were also impacted by Hurricane Maria not long after. These costly storms are impacting lives around the globe. Prepare for this year’s hurricane season by ensuring your own life is safe, that’s the most important thing. By: KayLynn Be Confidently Insured. Leave a Comment
Updated: Jan 23, 2021 It's true that it is nearly impossible to achieve a million dollar net worth by saving alone. A job that pays enough to accomplish that is rare to say the least. Here's some good news: You do not need a six or seven figure salary to achieve millionaire status. How can this be done you may ask? You can achieve this through the magic of investing. What is Investing? Investing is the expending of a resource, usually money, with the expectation of making a profit. Three common types of investments are stocks, bonds, and funds. When a company offers stock, they are offering ownership in the company. You can purchase shares of the company and if the company grows and is profitable, the share price goes up creating appreciation for the shareholder. Bonds are basically debt agreements made with governments, municipalities, and states. When you invest in a bond, your return on investment comes from the interest payments on the debt. Funds are a collection of investments. There are funds that contain several stocks, bonds, as well as other investments. When you invest in a fund, your investment is divided among several assets, rather than just one. This reduces risk. So How Can Investing Make You a Millionaire? Lets consider the S&P 500-the top 500 hundred companies in the United States. As a group, the 30 year average return on the S&P 500 is 12%. If you invested $100 dollars a month in an S&P 500 fund from age 25 to 65, you would end up with 1.1 million dollars! There you have the magic of investing! As you can see, this has to potential to change your life and your family tree. If you are looking for a money coach to show you more about investing, don't hesitate to contact us. 23 views0 comments Recent Posts See All
Virtual Beings on the Metaverse This is a tech. post so if you wanna skip it’s ok. What happens when you throw on a blender a blockchain, some web3 infrastructure, gaming, 3D art, 3D interoperable avatars & animation, and add AI? you get a next generation technology. Or what happens when AI create NFTs? Total explosion. There are lots ofContinue reading “Virtual Beings on the Metaverse” Anime Inspired Robots Robot Maids Project MaSiRo “project team – short for Maid Apprentice Substantiating Ideal RObot – became waitresses and were even able to interact with customers at a cafe in Triomphe, Japan , for a few days.” Using face recognition tech. and effort invested in this project.
Shopping Online How getting a pet can be the most rewarding experience for you How getting a pet can be the most rewarding experience for you One way of killing boredom at home is by keeping a pet. Pets are a good choice for improving moods and bring excitement to a home. If you are looking for a good retirement reward, then nothing beats the idea of owning and keeping a pet. If you have a pet, then you know how good it feels. If not, imagine coming home after a long day at work or with friends and when you open the door, you are welcomed home with a gentle touch by your puppies, cats, rabbits or any other domestic animals. Wouldn’t that be a great feeling? Pets will always make you smile even when you at a low point in life. Staring at our pets wiggling with happiness when they are around you is an irreplaceable feeling. Domestic animals are a bundle of joy and they also come with some importance health benefits. Here is how your well being and overall health can improve due to bringing a pet home. It is also important that you learn how to how to take care of a pet so (please) read on. You will have reduced stress levels Owing to the fact that pets are playful, it is guaranteed that your home will be an exciting place to be. People who keep pets are said to be happy for the most part of the day. Believe it or not, watching your dog running up and down the staircase or the hallway and waving its tail with the excitement of being around you is enough to put a smile on your face. The more you smile, the more your stress levels will go down. Pets decrease idleness Petting an animal is not as simple as it seems. It takes a lot of energy cleaning and feeding the animals. Therefore, if you do not have a meaningful way of spending your free time, you can use that time taking care of a pet. Remember the old saying; an idle mind is the devils workshop? To avoid being idle, you can keep yourself busy with pet care. Reduced risk of allergies in future developing Children who grow up around pets have lesser chances of developing some certain allergies, asthma and eczema in the future. During a child’s development, their immune system becomes desensitized to different allergens and the children tend to develop a strong immunity against such reactions during adulthood. How to keep your Pet healthy Pets need proper diet so; give your kittens the most nutritious kitten food, • Pets need exercise so; when you are taking your evening walk, bring your pet, • Pets need clinical examination so; regularly take your pets for a professionally done veterinarian examination, • Pets fall sick too so; ensure that you vaccinate your pets against deadly diseases, • Lastly, Pets need a bath too so; give your pet a warm bath at least once a week. However, before cleaning and grooming your pets, talk to a professional veterinarian for advice on what pet products would work for your pet. (Visited 509 times, 1 visits today) You may also like...
Everything You Need to Know About Deep Tissue Percussion Therapy How The MuscleGun Works? The MuscleGun is designed to speed up muscle recovery by increasing blood flow to the muscle and flushing out lactic acid build up. You can also use the MuscleGun to warm-up/activate muscles before exercise to prevent injury. How Percussion Therapy Works? Percussive massage is comparable to a deep tissue sports massage, but you can do it yourself at home, in the gym or even at the office. It's also quicker, every 5 minutes with the MuscleGun is equivalent to a 20 minute deep tissue massage. The MuscleGun applies firm pressure and fast strokes to reach deeper layers of muscle and fascia (the connective tissue surrounding muscles). It's used for quicker muscle recovery between workouts, chronic aches and pain and contracted areas such as a stiff neck and upper back, low back pain, leg muscle tightness, and sore shoulders. Is this designed to replace a massage therapist? Absolutely Knot! ( see what we did there?) If you already have massage therapist that you love, then the MuscleGun is the perfect compliment to your therapy session! Just imagine what the MuscleGun can do in the hands of a skilled massage therapist?! Deep tissue Percussion Therapy focuses on specific problem areas, such as fitness muscle recovery, chronic muscle pain, injury rehabilitation, and the following conditions. • Muscle pain from intense workouts. Known as "DOMS" (delayed-onset muscle soreness) • Limited mobility • Upper back or neck pain • Low back pain • Recovery from injuries (e.g. whiplash. Consult your Doctor first) • Repetitive strain injury, such as carpel tunnel syndrome • Postural problems • Sciatica • Tennis Elbow If you are interested in a way to prevent sports injury, address sport-specific concerns, or to help with muscle recovery time after sports, consider getting a MuscleGun. At the beginning of a percussion therapy session or before a workout, lighter pressure is generally applied to warm up and prepare the muscles. Lets Talk Tips...Just for a minute...Just to see how they feel The different massage tips are designed to target specific muscle groups. MuscleGun X tips are made from closed cell PU foam so they are a bit more flexible than the MuscleGun Carbon and MG Pro tips. Please watch our videos. Round Ball Tip: Great for all over use and warming up before workouts. Pointy Tip: Great for small muscle groups in the feet, hands or targeting knots. Fork Tip: Great for small muscles either side of the spine. The shape is deigned to not hit your spine. Flat Tip: Great for larger muscle groups and applying more pressure. You can also use with massage cream or oil and easily wipe clean. Flat Blade Tip: Only available on the MuscleGun X. Designed to strip muscles and get between large muscle groups or shoulder blades. Where to Use Drinking water after may help to flush the metabolic waste from the tissues. Does percussive massage Hurt? It shouldn't hurt, but remember this is a deep tissue treatment, so if you've just done an intense workout then your muscles may feel tender as they are trying to recover. MuscleGun is designed to speed up this process by increasing blood flow and flushing out lactic acid build up. At certain times during the treatment, you may feel some discomfort or even some pain as you work on areas where there are adhesions or scar tissue. Pain isn't necessarily good, and it's not a sign that the massage will be effective. In fact, your body may tense up in response to pain, making it harder for you to reach deeper muscles. You should always listen to your body if you feel pain during the massage. You can adjust the speed, change massage tip and how much pressure you apply to prep your muscle for deeper massage. Deep tissue percussive massage may not be safe for people with blood clots (e.g. thrombophlebitis or deep vein thrombosis), due to the risk that they may become dislodged. If you have a history of blood clots or are at risk of forming blood clots, it's essential that you consult your Doctor first! If you have blood clots or are at risk of forming blood clots, it's essential that you consult your doctor before using a deep tissue percussive massager. If you've had recent surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, or have another medical condition, it's wise to check with your doctor before starting percussion therapy. Some people with osteoporosis should avoid the deeper pressure of this type of massage.
Rabbi Yaakov Abenmoa is a native of Morocco. He studied in Yeshivas Tomchei Tmimim in Brunoy, France and then at the yeshiva in “770” in Crown Heights, NY. Rabbi Abenmoa was teacher at Ozar HaTorah while continuing his advanced Torah studies. He is currently a teacher at the Belz School Montreal. Rabbi Abenmoa has been an integral part of the French program at Montreal Jewish Conversion for 14 years.
Once you’re unemployed, it can be tempting to go for that easy job that has nothing to do with your field. But maybe you should not be looking for just any job because the right one could be just around the corner. If you are trained in a certain field, it may be hard to find a position in this economy, but that doesn’t mean there are not advantages to focusing on a specific industry. In fact, you can make a case that if you position yourself correctly, you can find the right job quickly. So what are the advantages of focusing on a specific type of position? 1. Serious job searches are time consuming. If you are unemployed, you should spend at least 30 to 40 hours a week looking for a position. Some people who are not focused put a lot of time and energy into their job search and end up feeling as though they are doing everything in their power. But, their energy is actually focused in other areas, so they are not putting forth the full effort. Focusing on a specific career will give you a leg up on the competition who are looking into different job options. 2. The more contacts you make in your search, the more likely you are to find a desirable position. The more you concentrate on these contacts, the better it will be for your job search. Putting a concerted effort will give you a better chance of something positive happening. The likelihood will be decreased if you focus on several different career paths. 3. Jobs often appear to those who use most of their energy in a specific direction. It will be difficult for people who are all over the map in their job search. HR managers look at the different careers job prospects have had and weigh that carefully when comparing candidates. Job seekers who are not focused rarely make any significant impact or impression on HR managers in order to attract the right position. 4. A productive job search requires that you present yourself convincingly to your prospective employer. Employers are not impressed by statements like, “I do not care what type of job I do” or “I’ll do anything as long as there’s a paycheck in it.” If you present yourself as professional and are focused in both written and verbal communications, you will give them more of a reason to believe in your skills. It’s important to find the right fit for both you and the company, and if you’re just doing a job for a job, you may be shortchanging yourself and the company. 5. Look at it this way–it may be hard to be enthusiastic and extremely well qualified for a 20 different jobs. So stick with what works for you and find the position that makes you happy and pays you well.
Monday, 26 January 2009 A Lovely Weekend I hope you had a good one too. Saturday we went to a friends house to celebrate two little girls turning one, we saw a lot of friends that we haven't seen for quite a while, the kids had fun playing together and it was good to let out hair down. Sunday I arranged to meet a friend in Nippori to do some fabric shopping, the only problem was, when we got there most of the shops were shut, including the place I buy my fabric from agghhhh. So, we had a wander around the neighbourhood, discovered a little Korean market the ended up back at the station. Since there was little going on in Nippori we decided to head to Shimokitazawa. I can't believe I haven't been there before, it is FAB. It is made up of lots of little streets with a great mix of shops, there were used and vintage clothes shop, antiques, nik-naks, ethnic and a good smattering of cute cafes too. The weather was lovely so we just wandered and chatted, I can't remember the last time I had a day out like that! My friend Kate is from my hometown back in the UK, although we met out here, we don't manage to get together that often but it is always fun when we do and I don't have to think about the English I use, she understands all the slang and daft phrases :o) We had lunch in a tiny cafe that seated about 16 people - including a tarot card reader in the corner. Then we mooched some more, popped into a couple of small art galleries and wandered some more. It was a very inspiring day, the funniest thing we saw was this... It is a cat cafe, so you go and have a cuppa and a piece of cake then you are given a cat to pet! Apparently they are the latest craze. I know there are doggy cafes with a similar concept or you can 'rent' a dog for an hour or two and not so far from where we live is an Italian dog restaurant, an Italian place BUT they have special chairs so that the dog can join you at the table and they have special doggy pasta and cakes. I am pretty sure that this wouldn't be allowed due to the health regulations in the UK but here, anything goes! *There is still time to sign up for the Give-Away** 1. I would be willing to share my pup for an hour or two if I got cake in return! Looks like you had a lovely day anyway :) 2. Never heard of a cat cafe before.. It sounds wonderful, though. I can just imagine taking my cat out for a bite of tea... 3. Hilarious. Never heard of that. Sounds like you have a great day. (: 4. LOL... that cat cafe cracks me up. It seems like the Japanese think of everything! How much is it to rent a dog or cat for an hour? I guess it is good until you get hair in your coffee. ;) Thank you! Pin It button on image hover
Five creative elites on TV's 2nd Golden Age Stephen Battaglio Los Angeles Times (TNS) View Comments Showrunners, from left, Robert King ("The Good Wife"), Peter Gould ("Better Call Saul"), Jill Soloway ("Transparent"), John Ridley ("American Crime") and Mark Duplass ("Togetherness"). (Kirk McKoy/Los Angeles Times/TNS) Have we grown tired of all the breathless references to the current state of television as a second Golden Age? Maybe so, but whatever you want to call it, there is no fatigue with the wealth of quality programming that has arisen over the last few years on so many platforms — from streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon, to basic cable, to premium cable and, yes, even the resurgence of network series. And while the multitude of platforms can provide an increased quantity of programming, that golden sheen of quality shining so brightly from our screens is largely because of the show runners — those executive producers who create the series and generally oversee the writing. The Los Angeles Times invited some of the most distinguished show runners in the business: Robert King (co-creator with his wife, Michelle, of CBS' "The Good Wife"), Mark Duplass (co-creator with his brother, Jay, of HBO's "Togetherness"), Jill Soloway (Amazon's "Transparent"), John Ridley (ABC's "American Crime") and Peter Gould (co-creator with Vince Gilligan of AMC's "Better Call Saul") for a conversation that included the influence of streaming, TV versus film and the importance of authenticity in the writing. Here are edited excerpts from that April conversation at The Times: Stephen Battaglio: Robert, as someone who is doing a show that was considered kind of a boutique show for CBS, where the bar for ratings was much higher, what's been the benefit of the new streaming and Netflix, Amazon models? Robert King: CBS has "NCIS," which has got, like, triple our audience, and also the demographic question is always very difficult for network shows. So the very fact that we're streaming, that they make so much money in syndication with streaming on Amazon, I think extends the life of the show. Also, creatively, it's given us more freedom. We don't get the talk that, "You've got to reach out to the younger audience. You've got to do this, you've got to do that, or you're going to be dead in a year." It really frees us up. We don't get notes from the network anymore. Battaglio: John, you've been around television for a long time — there was a slight sidetrack into film when you won an Academy Award for "12 Years a Slave" — but this is a very different situation than what you've seen in the past. John Ridley: It is, but as you were saying, the metrics have changed and the — I don't want to say the competition has changed, because when all of these spaces are making everybody elevate their game, it's not really competition. It's very supportive. So when folks at the network are looking at what's going on in streaming, what's going on in cable and, quite frankly, what's going on on other broadcast networks, and saying, "We need to get to a place where it's not solely about the numbers but it's about having some kind of a cultural density," it's an amazing benefit for us. Battaglio: Mark, you come to this from independent film, and your show, "Togetherness," really preserves that intimacy that you have in all of your movies. What was the process in adapting that sort of sensibility to episodic television? Mark Duplass: It was pretty seamless. They knew exactly who we were — we had already made about six movies, so we didn't have to explain it to them. We could just say, "The types of things we make are what we want to make here. Is that what you guys want to do?" And they said, "Yes." And then honestly they were helpful on the growth we had as storytellers and the sort of long narrative form of dealing with four hours of content as opposed to an hour and a half. They would ring our bell a couple of times and say, "You know what? You're thinking like a 90-minute filmmaker. You're trying to close this stuff out. Open your world. Put this in and throw more balls in the air." And they were right most of the time. It was really good. Battaglio: Jill, you won a Golden Globe for "Transparent." It's really a game changer in terms of the subject matter. What do you do to make sure that you're getting it right? Jill Soloway: When I first came up with the idea, I was really responding to what was happening in my life. My own parent came out as trans. I had that sort of feeling like, "I've got to tell this story." I was really very uneducated about the world of trans folk. If you read the pilot, it has the (main character's) name Mort all the way through, and we never really used Mort again. We started calling her Maura because by the time we got to Episode 2, we really understood that she was Maura and that she had always been Maura since she was born, that Mort had been a performance she had been doing, a costume she had been wearing. That was a learning curve for me in Year One. I mean, understanding the difference between cross-dressers and trans women, that was a learning curve. We brought in lots of trans people, consultants, did all the research that we could to really get it right, because we felt that this was going to be the first real portrayal of a trans person in a family, and we wanted it to be right. Battaglio: Peter, you were a writer on "Breaking Bad," and you created a breakout character in Saul Goodman. "Better Call Saul," though, is a prequel. What's the process of reverse-engineering the characters? Peter Gould: We felt we knew who the character was because we've done however many episodes with him as a supporting character. And then as we started digging into it, we found out we didn't know who he was. And part of that was just Saul Goodman per se is a static character. We wanted to feel something for him, we wanted to get under his skin, and that meant going back in time. And you bring up an interesting question, which is, if you have a sense of where this character is going already, does that mean that you've lost interest? And I have a theory, and I don't know whether it's true or not, but it's my working premise, which is how things happen is more interesting than what happens. Battaglio: John, you came to television with this new stature as an Academy Award winner. By the way, where do you keep that Oscar? Duplass: Oh, he walked in with it. Ridley: I have it on my other charm bracelet that I normally wear, but I just thought it might be inappropriate. I started in television, I was on sitcoms, I was on "Fresh Prince" and "Martin." And I worked as a novelist, I worked in film. I've always had a desire to tell stories, but telling stories in television really has evolved. So to be in a space now where you can focus on the story that I'm telling, actually see where it's going, but at the same time be different from film — I think about the things we'd have to rush through to tell "American Crime" in two hours. Battaglio: Mark, are people telling you they're recognizing their situations in your show? Duplass: Yeah, we definitely get a little bit of the, you know, "I feel how hard and how wonderful the marriage is." And a friend of mine describes it very well, when he talks about his marriage and his children, he says, "It's 51 percent worth it." And I think it's a very apt description, and we find a lot of people kind of feel similarly. But for myself and for Jay and our group of friends, it seems to be ... I don't know if it's the right word, but there's a sweetness in which we approach it. That was something I hadn't seen yet necessarily in in-depth relationship studies, was that sense of sweetness that can be there. So right around the time that we're doing this, the news has come out that Netflix is remaking "Full House." Now, to me, when I heard that news, I said, "Well, OK, the second Golden Age of television is officially dead." Soloway: It jumped the Stamos. Battaglio: To me, this says that the resources that have been given to very creative people are now going to compete with sort of an old-style, lowest-common-denominator television. Is that something that concerns anybody, or is there room for everything? King: It's room for everything. I mean, everybody thought the death of it would be "The Walking Dead" doing so well, because then cable would just go after genre-esque material. But the pool is so large, and everybody's jumping in. Everybody I know from features is diving in, and they're coming in with good ideas. The best ideas should rise to the top. Yes, there'll be junk because — or, I'm sorry, "Full House" might be the best "Full House" ever. Soloway: Robert King calls "Full House" junk. That's going to be the ... Ridley: ... the only take-away from this whole thing. Duplass: I'm thankful for it to a certain degree. I mean, this is a little bit of a different thing, but my brother and I are in business with Netflix. They commissioned us to make four original — Soloway: Clearly they'll buy anything. Duplass: They signed Adam Sandler to do four huge, like, $80 million movies, right? And then that makes them very, very popular and makes them lots of money essentially. To a certain degree it subsidizes their ability to make four weird independent films with us. So their arrival in that space, I'm very excited about that. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency View Comments
Internet – A Universal Resource Today, the Internet has become so incredibly popular that it’s everywhere. It can be found in libraries, homes, businesses, and even in schools. But how did it all start? And where does it all end? Back in the 1970s, much of the groundwork was done in the form of international cooperation on the ARPANET, specifically the Study Area Network (SAN). This network-enabled researchers from all over the world to exchange information using a network of networks. This was known as the ARPANET or “Athenel” project, and it was a vast improvement over the earlier dial-up and packet dialling methods that were in use at the time. In this paper, some of those involved in the evolution and development of the Internet reflects on its beginnings and early development. This early history revolves around four different aspects. First, there was the technological development that began with research on the ARPANET and related technologies, and which continues to this day with the development of the packet-switched network. ARPANET was essentially an upgrade to the previous dial-up communication system. This was an improvement over the slow speed of dial-up connections. The main benefit to this was that while using the Internet you could establish connections at much faster speeds and for longer periods. This aspect is essential if you want to use the Internet to communicate with other people, and it is exactly what the ARPANET did for communication. When it was time to create a national Internet, the ARPANET underwent a major evolution. Part of this was the creation of a global network, which spanned continents and spanned multiple time zones. The creation of this global network changed the way we used the Internet. Today, almost everyone is connected to the Internet via a worldwide network of computers, and there are many high-speed broadband connections available for use by anyone who wishes to use the Internet. Another aspect of this history is when packet switching became widely used. This became necessary when multiple networks needed to be accessible through the same Internet connection. At first, the Internet was controlled and maintained through different physical locations. This meant that different servers were needed to host different operating systems and to provide different services. With the creation of the packet-switched network and the ability to send data back and forth using this network, the Internet experienced growth and development. This growth and development have impacted every aspect of our lives. For instance, the invention of the computer caused a huge growth in software development. Because there was a real need for software developers, companies quickly started to hire people who can write new software. The Internet also played a role in world markets. Without the Internet, many different markets would not have developed as quickly or as effectively. In addition to the worldwide network, the Internet also provided support for international markets. During the cold war, the United States and the Soviet Union created an Information Highway, which connected the two largest cities on each side of the world. Without the Internet, it would have been much harder for U.S. troops to communicate with Russian soldiers stationed on the opposite side of the Cold War. While the Internet is a valuable tool for communication, it does have some drawbacks. Security issues are an ongoing concern. Unauthorized users can obtain sensitive information. Networking limitations can also prevent individuals from accessing the Internet fully. One good alternative to the Internet is the creation of a global network that links together all the computers of a world community. The Internet provides an enormous source of international communication and information. Through the ARPANET, anyone who is interested can browse a variety of information from any part of the world at any time. A global network allows people to share business information, knowledge, research and data. Arpanet is similar to an ordinary network in that it consists of several physical locations. However, unlike the Internet, a broader network allows for more than one user to log on at the same time. Multiple users can share the same information. It is very similar to how a community board meets in a traditional setting. The only difference is that instead of people meeting in person to exchange information, they meet online. The creation of the ARPANET was started in connection to the global network. The goal was to create a centralized location for worldwide information exchange. Today, the global community has become very large with many countries connected. This is why the Internet is called a global utility. Leave a Comment fourteen + thirteen =
Hospital Simón Bolívar, Bogota Hospital Simón Bolívar, Bogota Sandwiched between a busy main road and one of Bogotá’s largest favelas, Hospital Simón Bolívar is one of the city’s major public hospitals in need of modernisation. By densifying the site and adding a public plaza, the proposal for a new hospital becomes a critical piece of urban design – a healthy city addition. Taking an active role in community building This proposal for the new hospital takes into account the need to modernise and expand the existing building, but also the need to integrate the development into the neighbourhood. Through creating a public plaza that connects to the public transport system, Hospital Simón Bolívar becomes an openly accessible piece of urban design that contributes to a safer city. The plaza can accommodate an open air marketplace to replace the precarious road-side stands, uniting the favela communities with the more affluent populations on the other side of the main road. Clients: Nordic Investment Bank / Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs Location: Bogotá, Colombia Status: Feasibility study 2015 Area: 65,000 sqm Visuals: White View Shaping a sustainable future for Bogotá, brick by brick. Localising global design principles Different contexts require different solutions. Extensive primary research was conducted into Colombian cultures and attitudes. From gathering feedback from users in workshop groups, to taking notes during consenting patients’ medical consultations; this local insight shaped every design decision of the project. Green space permeates through the entire hospital and grounds; each responds to specific microclimate conditions and designed to provide the most suitable ecosystem services for that area. While it is easy to travel to the hospital, the main hospital building can only be reached by one inner thoroughfare that leads to the ground floor and basement level departments. By creating a new main entrance and public plaza at the first floor level for pedestrians and cyclists, ambulances and car arrivals can use the ground floor entrance. This allows for greater safety and efficiency in access, as well as the possibility of a vehicle-free public space outside the main entrance. At the heart of the scheme lies an abundantly planted courtyard, accessible to all patients, visitors and staff. Sky gardens and terraces can be found throughout the hospital, inviting social interaction. As building regulations prevents any extension outside of the site boundaries, the entire site is densified to accommodate the ambitious building programme. A new L-shaped tower volume will occupy the current arrival forecourt. When completed, hospital functions will decant into this new L-shaped tower. This ensures that there is no disruption to operational services while the existing hospital is demolished and remodelled to form the new teaching, outpatient and administrative building, as well as main entrance, public plaza, basement podium parking and gardens. Six bricks of long-term sustainability Reinvention: Materials from the demolished hospital will be reused in new ways. For example, the existing brick façade can be repurposed to build affordable homes. Mobility: Pedestrian and cycle mobility is encouraged through linking the public transport system to the new public plaza. Interaction: A diverse number of green spaces are woven into and around the building, creating multiple opportunities for social interaction. Wellbeing: Daylight, views out, greenery, low noise levels and privacy promote faster patient recovery and a calm environment for staff and visitors. Resources: A combination of passive, natural and active strategies enhance resource efficiency in accordance with the highest level BREEAM / LEED guidelines. Futureproofing: The hospital has been designed to adapt and reconfigure to future changes through intelligent spatial planning, giving rise to a resilient, futureproofed facility. Drawing on decades of evidence-based research into wellbeing and patient recovery, greenery and daylight plays a central role in the layout of the hospital. The wards have been specifically designed so that every patient can see flowerbeds and treetops from their beds. Contact & Team Cristiana Caira Cristiana Caira +46 703 15 86 77 Saga Karlsson Bruno Manrique Carrera Björn Bondesson Elin Rittmark Carl Molander Elin Rittmark Lisa Wistrand Agne Revellé Please share! Related projects All Projects
The Composer American Film Institutes 44th Life Achievement Award Gala Tribute to John Williams - Show Director Stephen Spielberg (L) and Honoree John Williams (R) onstage during American Film Institutes 44th Life Achievement Award Gala Tribute show to John Williams at Dolby Theatre on June 9, 2016 in Hollywood, California. Getty Images for Turner / Getty Images A composer is someone who writes a music piece for theater, TV, radio, film, computer games and other areas where music is needed. The music should be properly notated so as to guide the musician/s properly. What does a composer do? The main task of the composer is to write an original composition for a specific project. The piece will then be performed by a musician or an ensemble. The composer makes sure that the music suits the project; as in the case of film scores where the music should help move the story without overpowering the scene. The music he writes may be instrumental or have lyrics and may be in various styles such as classical, jazz, country or folk. What educational background should a composer have? Most composers have strong backgrounds in music theory, composition, orchestration, and harmony. However, there are many composers who don't have formal training. Composers like Edward Elgar, Karl Lawrence King, Amy Beach, Dizzy Gillespie and Heitor Villa-Lobos were mostly self-taught. What are the qualities of a good composer? A good composer has fresh ideas, is creative, versatile, not afraid to experiment, willing to collaborate and of course, passionate about writing music. Most composers know how to play several instruments, can carry a tune and have a good ear. Why become a composer? Although the road to becoming a composer may be hard and highly competitive, once you get your foot in the right door, composing can generate good income for you, not to mention the experience and exposure you will get along the way. Notable Film Composers Related Directory View listings of job opportunities and competitions for composers via Composition Today.

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