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The Metaphysics of Arthur Koestler
When this extraordinary book—part treatise and part biology and psychology copy book, part independent scientific speculation and part romantic Naturphilosophie—was published in England earlier this year, it caused something of a sensation. No one quite knew how to take it. Some reviewers (and it was reviewed profusely and often at great length) professed to think that, however improbably, The Act of Creation is itself a true act of scientific creation, conceivably the greatest and certainly the most ambitious work in the life sciences since Darwin’s epochal Origin of Species. On the other side, perhaps misled by Koestler’s reputation as a novelist (it is not without significance that Koestler has been mainly a political novelist for whom the work of imaginative literature may be at the same time a moral and political act), by his inappropriately lively and witty style, by displays of subjective reactions presumably irrelevant to questions of objective scientific understanding and truth, and by his bland refusal to be daunted by any intellectual problem, no matter how technical or complex, many were unable to take him seriously in the role of scientist In their view, Koestler does not fully realize what is involved in scientific inquiry, and his book, for all its learning, must be judged as the misplaced product of an incurably poetic imagination. Yet on both sides of the controversy, the critics seemed uncertain of their own reactions, and before they were through they had usually managed to hedge their bets by radical, if piecemeal, concessions to the opposing point of view.
I scarcely blame them. For one thing, The Act of Creation contains not one but two (no doubt related) books of very different ranges, perspectives, and styles. The first is beautifully readable and, for the most part, intelligible to any informed twentieth-century reader; the other is highly technical, occasionally unintelligible except to specialists and sometimes (I suspect) not even to them, but at the same time immensely ranging, not to say visionary, in its purview. For another thing, both books, for all their differences, have similar defects. Here I am not speaking of factual errors, most of which could no doubt be removed without affecting the main drift of Koestler’s arguments. The underlying difficulty concerns the intention of the book as a whole. What is Koestler really up to? Would it be an egregious mistake to take the book at its face value? But, then, what precisely is its face value? Practicing scientists will be, have been, disposed to dismiss Koestler as a possibly gifted but presumptuous and uncritical “writer” who has wandered unaccountably into a field for which, by training and aptitude, he is intrinsically unfitted. Literary men, especially those who have erected a wall between “imaginative literature” and other forms of writing, whether scientific, historical, criticial, or philosophical will “submit” that Koestler is at once making clear at the theoretical level what was always apparent from his practice, namely, that he is not an artist but an …
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/51856
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Health Guide
Insect Bites and Stings
News & Features
Personal Health
LAST July, the Food and Drug Administration approved for marketing the first drug ever proved to change the natural course of multiple sclerosis for the better. Though not a cure, the drug, Betaseron, decreases the frequency of attacks by 30 percent and diminishes the severity of those attacks in...
Personal Health
ATTITUDES about Lyme disease, a bacterial infection spread by ticks, range from a fatalistic "If I get it, I get it" to near hysteria whenever a suspicious speck is found on one's body. Some people fail to take the antibiotics their physicians prescribe for a suspected case of Lyme disease, while...
Mosquito Bite Cure Q. Why do mosquito bites itch? What is the best way to relieve the itching?
Bee Stings Q. How do you treat a bee sting?
Personal Health
IT'S time for walking in the woods, picnicking in the park, lying on the lawn and otherwise becoming a candidate for Lyme disease, a tick-borne bacterial infection that is spreading faster than any other ailment except AIDS. Lyme disease has been reported in 46 states, Canada, Europe and Asia...
Outwitted by Malaria, Desperate Doctors Seek New Remedies
MALARIA invulnerable to drugs is spreading across the world, leaving a widening trail of suffering and death. Chloroquine, the drug that has long served as a golden bullet against malaria, no longer reliably prevents or cures the disease; the malaria parasite has learned to outwit it. And newer...
Tiny Mite Causes Overwhelming Itch: Elusive Scabies
FOR a 90-year-old woman, the itching that began a week after she underwent major surgery in a hospital in New York City was maddening. The itching was most severe at night, and she could not sleep. She became depressed, lost her appetite, and her skin reddened and oozed from constant scratching of...
The Bad Bugs
LEAD: People keep writing to ask if I survived the bee sting reported here on Aug. 29. The answer is yes, but these letters are troubling. Do my published columns since Aug. 29 read like something written by a deceased person?
Mighty Fire Ants March Out of the South
LEAD: IN the annals of entomological villainy, few insects are as despised, as feared and as meticulously investigated as the tiny imported fire ant, which attacks humans, animals, plants, other insects and even electrical devices.
Medical Science Steps Up Its Assault on Lyme Disease
LEAD: AS the summer tick season reaches its peak, the small but growing epidemic of Lyme disease is spreading in several areas of the country. Reported cases are rising rapidly and the tick that transmits the disease is deploying from its initial strongholds into new areas, including suburban...
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/51876
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Dickless Farmers?
Buddy vs. Buddy on the Beat Farmers Reunion
There has been some controversy over the recent rash of Beat Farmers concerts in OC and San Diego. Among the most fondly remembered SoCal roots-rock bands of the '80s and early '90s, the Beat Farmers—minus the late Country Dick Montana—have played several reunion shows in recent months. However, some old-timers who recall Montana as the driving force behind the group have branded the current band the "The Dickless Farmers." We assigned our fearless music critic, Buddy Seigal, to interview Beat Farmers singer/guitarist Buddy Blue to get to the bottom of the whole mess, even though Seigal and Blue are, coincidentally, the same person.
Buddy Seigal:
How dare you call yourselves the Beat Farmers without Dick on board?Buddy Blue:
Why should anyone today give a crap about some forgotten "cowpunk" group of the '80s?This reunion wasn't planned; it happened spontaneously. A couple of years ago, my band and Powerthud—Jerry and Joey's current band—were booked together on a New Year's Eve show in San Diego. The club took it upon itself, without our knowledge or approval, to bill the night as a Beat Farmers Reunion Jam. So at the end of the night, we all got together and played some of the old Farmers tunes, and people just went fuckin' nuts. That made us decide to test the waters a little—actually rehearse together and try a show or two as the Beat Farmers. So we've done a few shows now, and they've gone over great. The Farmers are basically back together on a part-time basis. We'll keep doing a few Farmers shows now and then, along with the regular gigs our full-time bands play. It's up to you whether or not you give a crap.Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're a great salesman, Blue. I'm real impressed. You know, you interviewed Billy Zoom a couple of years ago. He, at least, had the integrity to admit he was doing those X reunion shows strictly for the money.Yeah, we all enjoy making a decent payday. How 'bout you, asswipe? The journalism thing working out? But the fact is we're having a great time playing together again, too. Frankly, everyone's getting along better than we did in the old days. I think we're all improved musicians now, too. We're older, wiser and better now than we used to be.I'll have to agree with you on the older part. Anyway, it must be wonderful, this whole conflict-of-interest business you have going on between being a music writer and a working musician.That has been a problem for other people, not me. When I was writing for the LA Times, [music critic] Robert Hilburn made it his personal mission in life to destroy my writing career. I always wanted to hunt him down and kick his ass, but he's so decrepit he'd probably break a hip if I even ripped a fart in his direction. But I digress: How many other writer/musicians are out there? Henry Rollins, Mike Stax, Billy Vera, Al Kooper, Jim Carroll, Wynton Marsalis, Leonard Feather, just to name a few. It happens that I know my subject—music has been the driving force in my life since I was a kid. I write it, perform it, produce it, collect it, study it. . . . So who better to write about music than someone who actually knows what they're talking about?You once wrote inOC Weekly that Tom Jones' nut sack smelled like chlorine and mushrooms. Did you have a lot of first-hand experience with that subject, as well?No, Country Dick actually told me about that.There you go, running down Country Dick. Why don't you let him rest in peace with some dignity?Dick would have kicked you in the gonads if you ever suggested to his face that he had any dignity.The Beat Farmers with Big Stick Friday and Field of Vision at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano, (949) 496-8930. Fri., 8 p.m. $15. All ages.
Dick is dead. We all miss him. He was obviously a big part of what the group did, and if we could bring him back somehow, we would. But Jerry Raney, Joey Harris and myself wrote and sang about 90 percent of the songs on the Beat Farmers' albums. This isn't to belittle Dick's contributions, but it's not like we're some bogus version of Creedence, either, going out with the original bassist and everyone else is a ringer. In fact, this is the first lineup of the Farmers that features both myself and Joey, so with this group, the fans get to hear songs from the early and later eras of the Farmers live for the first time. Jerry, bassist Rolle Love and myself were the founding members of the Farmers, along with Dick. Joey took my place in '86 and actually recorded many more albums with the Farmers than I did. The drummer, Joel Kmak, played with the Farmers when Dick was too sick to perform. This is legitimately the Beat Farmers, so fuck you.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/51914
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Online Marketing Degrees: Stay Ahead of the Curve
A Online Degree Navigator Book Review
Moon, Youngme. 2010. Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd. New York, New York: Crown Publishing.
There have been so many people asking about this book. There has been a stir of excitement naturally because as far as most advertising goes, it’s all about keeping up with the Jones’- which makes every brand, pretty much the same as all the others. Ms. Moon teaches at Harvard University and starts us out by telling us just that, that when you go to purchase something, everything is pretty much the same. She said it’s because businesses keep impressive score cards on every business that does exactly what they do, and if some other brand has a feature that they don’t, they set about a course to get that feature committing man power and a lot of money. As a result, brand after brand looks and feels exactly the same and no company stands out.
However, every once in awhile, there will be a brand that rejects the competitive treadmill and forges a new path, a trajectory that takes a completely different approach. For example, in 2002 the MINI Cooper was introduced to the automobile market. This car was introduced into a culture where the SUV was reigning and supreme king. What was fascinating about their campaign was they didn’t try and convince you why you should buy this tiny vehicle, but rather flaunted exactly how small this car is. One MINI billboard advertisements simply said: XXL, XL, L, M, S, MINI. Basically, the marketing told you that the car was even smaller than you thought. This campaign was completely rebellious, yet a perfect example of what advertisers calls a, “hostile brand”. Hostile brands are surprisingly blunt and challenge us with the directness of their message, Ms. Moon declares that hostile brands don’t sweep their uniqueness under the rug; they highlight it, and highlight it big. What happens with these brands is that people start coming out of the woodwork in order to define themselves by the brand. For example, you are a person that drives either a SUV or a MINI. This sort of identification is perfectly illustrated in today’s social networks. I’ll go out on a limb here and say, it’s really pretty disturbing that we are that consumption conscience. It doesn’t even bother me that some of us are clothes horses, or technology freaks, or own tons of books, what freaks me out goes something like this. This is Facebook excerpt Ms. Moon includes in her book:
Interests: I love tattoos, Range Rovers, the Red Sox, iPhone, UGGs, working out, drinkin’ girly drinks, Papyrus cards, JUICY COUTURE, Sephora, being tan, Hudson jeans and Britney Spears.
Youngme calls this an, “inversion” of the old advertising formula-brands used to describe actors instead of the other way around.
This new identification plays right into another example of a successful hostile brand. A company called, “Hollister” which is a sister brand to Abercrombie & Finch. They advertise using exclusion. They target young, attractive, cool and, “skinny” girls. Specifically, they only carry sizes from 0-9. For all of their efforts including discrimination lawsuits, in 2009 they have more than 500 stores and 1.5 billion in annual sales.
This book isn’t a “step-by-step how to” book, not at all, it’s just a book that lays out the current methods of advertising including those brands take a different approach like IKEA, Apple, Jet Blue and few others. She clearly illustrates a lot of the psychology behind the methods and gives interesting historical examples. Different is a well written, interesting read that will undoubtedly leave you with a lot of useful, applicable information.
Check out all of the online marketing degrees available by getting free information. Visit:
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/51919
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Open MPI logo
Open MPI User's Mailing List Archives
From: Glenn Johnson (gjohnson_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-09-28 15:03:58
I have an 8-way AMD64 system. I built a 64 bit open-mpi-1.1
implementation and then compiled software to use it. That all works
In addition, I have a 32 bit binary program (Schrodinger Jaguar) that I
would like to run on this machine with mpi. Schrodinger provides source
code to build an mpi compatibility layer. This compatibility layer
allows jaguar to use a different mpi implementation than that which the
software was compiled with. I do not want to give up the 64 bit open-mpi
that I already have and am using.
So my questions are:
1. Can I build/install a 32 bit version of open-mpi even though I
already have a 64 bit version installed?
2. What "tricks" might I need to do to make sure a program calls
the correct version of mpi (32 or 64 bit)?
3. Would I do better considering running jaguar in a 32 bit chroot
Glenn Johnson <gjohnson_at_[hidden]>
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/51922
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Re: structural object class modification from X to Y not allowed
On Thursday 23 February 2006 09:33, Jehan PROCACCIA wrote:
> Jon Roberts wrote:
> > Jehan PROCACCIA wrote:
> >> I'am surprise that I cannot add or replace to an existing object a
> >> new objectclass in the same hierarchie of class !?
> >> Can I do that without deleting the object and recreate it from
> >> scratch :-( ?.
> >
> > AFAIK, no... not since the tighter schema checking that came with 2.1.
> > Back in 2003 I initiated an overlong thread on this list about how
> > OpenLDAP prevented me from extending person entries to use
> > organizationalperson by modifying the objectclass attribute. Since
> > then it's been "delete and readd" as you say.
> Do you remember the subject of that thread, I would like to read it from
> the archive.
> The problem here is that the objeclass person and oranizationalPerson
> are in the same structural Chain, futhermore, it is exactly the sample
> proposed on that subject in the openldap FAQ and it is supossed to be
> possible to have both ; from
> http://www.openldap.org/faq/data/cache/883.html "Thus, it is OK for an
> objectClass attribute to contain /inetOrgPerson/, /organizationalPerson/,
> and /person/ because they inherit one from another to form a single
> superclass chain. That is, /inetOrgPerson/ SUPs /organizationPerson/ SUPs
> /person/."
> I must admit that I'am lost, did I forgot something ?
> I repost my "bad(?)" experience:
> Here's my sample object on which I want to add the objectclass
> organizationalPerson
> objectClass: person
> cn: Communication and Image
> sn: CITI
> $ ldapmodify -f /tmp/add-dept.ldif -h localhost -D
> cn=admin,dc=int-evry,dc=fr -W -x
> modifying entry "sn=CITI,ou=departements,ou=information,dc=int-evry,dc=fr"
> ldap_modify: Cannot modify object class (69)
> additional info: structural object class modification from
> 'person' to 'organizationalPerson' not allowed
We (well, I) can't comment without seeing the contents
of /tmp/add-dept.ldif ...
Buchan Milne
ISP Systems Specialist
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Home » Server Options » Text & interMedia » getCustomDatum deprecated
getCustomDatum deprecated [message #75967] Fri, 19 July 2002 05:15 Go to next message
Messages: 3
Registered: July 2002
Junior Member
Can anybody advise me on how to use getORAData() instead of getCustomDatum() in the OracleResultSet class.
I will like to replace OrdImage img = rs.getCustomDatum(1, OrdImage.getFactory()),with getOraData(). I tried OrdImage img = rs.getOraData(1,OrdImage.getFactory()).
the problem is the OrdImage.getFactory() returns CustomDatumFactory wich is not supported by OraDataFactory.
So I totally lost here. I don't know what to do because I was following the example.
Re: getCustomDatum deprecated [message #76034 is a reply to message #75967] Tue, 01 April 2003 06:31 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ragnhild Vinsvold
Messages: 1
Registered: April 2003
Junior Member
Did you find an answer? I would like know!
Ragnhild Vinsvold
Re: getCustomDatum deprecated [message #76035 is a reply to message #75967] Wed, 09 April 2003 13:30 Go to previous message
Vitor Simoes
Messages: 1
Registered: April 2003
Junior Member
Please ignore these errors for now.
These interfaces have benn deprecated by the objects group, but are atill supported by interMedia.
The new interfaces will be available for interMedia in 10i.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/51940
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Women in Technology
Hear us Roar
Programmatically Signing JAR Files
Subject: Programmatically Verifying JAR Files
Date: 2003-03-18 08:27:33
From: anonymous2
Does anybody have implemented this functionality ?
I am interested in any kind of help (algorithm, source code etc...) to achieve the verify function.
Full Threads Newest First
Showing messages 1 through 4 of 4.
• Programmatically Verifying JAR Files
2003-05-12 04:49:01 atar_arad [View]
You can use Class java.util.jar.JarFile. First instantiate it with file name and a boolean set to true shows that it must verify the signature. Now you must read every jarEntry contains in jar file. It throws a securityException when signature fails.
I have also written a code that in addition to above do a verification on the certificate contains in the jar file.
Behrooz Shahin
• Programmatically Verifying JAR Files
2003-07-21 22:24:41 David Dossot [View]
Would you mind please sharing this code?
• Programmatically Verifying JAR Files
2003-09-08 00:46:04 anonymous2 [View]
Did anyone get any replies on this? Any code on verifying jar files?
• Programmatically Verifying JAR Files
2004-04-02 01:34:59 bobba2001 [View]
This link should help you, it's about JCE Provider self-integrity checking.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/51948
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Permalink for comment 435528
RE: Comment by another_sam
by bebop on Thu 5th Aug 2010 18:50 UTC in reply to "Comment by another_sam"
Member since:
They are talking about the processor pipeline. On a very high level, in RISC machines lets say each operation takes five cycles to complete. However one part of the cycle needs something from memory, in this case the operation cannot continue because it does not have any data. This causes a delay in the execution of the instruction. This is a level below the operating systems thread scheduler, as its the actual cpu(s) making choices on what operations are to be done.
Reply Parent Score: 1
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/51950
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Thread beginning with comment 544688
Comment by Wafflez
by Wafflez on Tue 11th Dec 2012 12:03 UTC
Member since:
So, by buying PS3 console, you'll basically get PC games + PS3 exclusives (ie Killzone 3) + console exclusives (ie Red Dead Redemption).
By buying Steam console, you'll get what? Half of the PC games?
Amazing indeed.
Reply Score: 1
RE: Comment by Wafflez
by frood on Tue 11th Dec 2012 13:38 in reply to "Comment by Wafflez"
frood Member since:
I'm guessing the difference here will be the ability to buy an upgraded SteamBox-2 a year or two later and have all your games there. Plus you'll be able to play them in higher quality.
Reply Parent Score: 1
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/51959
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3 Ways To Wear Sandals
By Michael Cook
Sandals are back in style: Avoid a fashion faux-pas with our style guide
Mandals, as we call them affectiously, is the dreaded men’s sandal. For some reason, we've come to fear these perfect summer shoes that let our poor feet breathe out, but now that you know everything about the importance of a good pedicure, you have no excuse not to let those twinkle toes shine. And if all else fails, take a risk and dare the socks-with-sandals thing. Yes, it's happening!
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/51964
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Dollars & Sense
By Kevin Rutherford
Dollars and Sense: Clearing up fuel taxes
By Kevin Rutherford | October 01, 2009
Smart fuel shopping requires knowing the state's fuel tax rate.
In addition to the federal fuel tax on diesel, each state has its own tax rate. Because owners of Class 8 vehicles have to reconcile the amount of fuel burned in a state with the amount of fuel purchased in that state, the state tax owed could be more or less than the tax paid at the pump. All state accounts are settled once a quarter.
Here are questions I often hear regarding fuel taxes.
How did things change when IFTA came about?
Prior to creation of the International Fuel Tax Association, you had to file an individual fuel tax report in each state where you drove. If you had a shortage in the amount of tax due, you had to pay that state the balance. But if you paid a state too much tax, you may not have always gotten the refund because some states didn’t credit you amounts they owed you. So most owner-operators would try to match fuel burned and fuel purchased.
Now under IFTA rules, you file one fuel tax report with your base state. This report shows all gallons burned and purchased in every state you ran in that quarter. IFTA distributes money to the states you owe and collects from the states that owe you. Afterward, either you have money left in your account or, if you owe money, you have to pay. If you’re leased, that is what you see deducted from your settlement with your carrier.
How is fuel tax calculated?
Fuel tax is figured by dividing the number of miles you run in a state by your truck’s fuel mileage. This tells how many gallons you burned in that state. Now multiply the number of gallons burned in a state by that state’s fuel tax rate to calculate the total amount of fuel tax you owe.
Could you give me a simple example of that fuel tax calculation?
Let’s say you drove 100 miles in Missouri, and that your truck gets 5 miles to the gallon. That means you burned 2 gallons in Missouri. That state’s fuel tax rate is 17 cents a gallon, so you owe Missouri 20 x $.17, or $3.40.
Focus on fuel cost, not tax or pump price
You can’t change the amount of fuel tax you pay. It’s based on the miles you run in a state, even if you don’t buy fuel while crossing it.
But armed with the right information, you can buy fuel where it’s cheapest. The pump price can be misleading because it includes the state fuel tax. Only when you subtract that tax can you determine the true cost of fuel.
In this example based on recent fuel prices and fuel tax rates, the pump price makes fuel appear to be cheaper in Indiana than in Illinois. But because Illinois’ tax is so much higher than Indiana’s, it turns out that fuel in Illinois is actually cheaper.
Fuel pump price $2.59
Fuel tax/gallon -$0.16
Cost of fuel: =$2.43
Fuel pump price $2.72
Fuel tax/gallon -$0.43
Cost of fuel =$2.29
PRICES AND TAX RATES. Visit and click on “Fuel prices” to find state tax rates and daily average prices by state, provided by ProMiles. You can also subscribe to an e-mail version at
INTERNATIONAL FUEL TAX ASSOCIATION. The IFTA website, has tax rates and tax-related news from the states.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/51998
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New Contributor
Posts: 4
Registered: 08-13-2013
Re: Christmas shopping dilema
Sounds like you arnt buying the kids anything because you have more of a problem with the parents. If I were you, Id get the kids something if you are getting the others gifts too. Its not fair for them to be left out and it shows your the better person in my opinion.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52009
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Characterization of individual polymer molecules based on monomer-interface interactions
6015714 -
Application no:
09098142 -
Filed date:
1998-06-16 -
Issue date:
A method for sequencing a nucleic acid polymer by (1) providing two separate, adjacent pools of a medium and an interface between the two pools, the interface having a channel so dimensioned as to allow sequential monomer-by-monomer passage from one pool to the other pool of only one nucleic acid polymer at a time; (2) placing the nucleic acid polymer to be sequenced in one of the two pools; and (3) taking measurements as each of the nucleotide monomers of the nucleic acid polymer passes through the channel so as to sequence the nucleic acid polymer.
US Classes:
What is claimed is:
1. A method for sequencing a nucleic acid polymer, the method comprising: providing two separate, adjacent pools of a medium and an interface between the two pools, the interface having a channel so dimensioned as to allow sequential monomer-by-monomer passage from one pool to the other pool of only one nucleic acid polymer at a time; placing the nucleic acid polymer to be sequenced in one of the two pools; and taking measurements as each of the nucleotide monomers of the nucleic acid polymer passes through the channel so as to sequence the nucleic acid polymer.
2. The method of claim 1, wherein the medium is electrically conductive.
3. The method of claim 2, wherein the medium is an aqueous solution.
4. The method of claim 3, further comprising applying a voltage across the interface.
5. The method of claim 4, wherein ionic flow between the two pools is measured.
6. The method of claim 5, wherein the duration of ionic flow blockage is measured.
7. The method of claim 5, wherein the amplitude of ionic flow blockage is measured.
8. The method of claim 2, further comprising applying a voltage across the interface.
9. The method of claim 8, wherein ionic flow between the two pools is measured.
10. The method of claim 9, wherein the duration of ionic flow blockage is measured.
11. The method of claim 9, wherein the amplitude of ionic flow blockage is measured.
12. The method of claim 1, wherein the nucleic acid polymer interacts with an inner surface of the channel.
13. The method of claim 12, wherein the medium is electrically conductive.
14. The method of claim 13, wherein the medium is an aqueous solution.
15. The method of claim 14, further comprising applying a voltage across the interface.
16. The method of claim 15, wherein ionic flow between the two pools is measured.
17. The method of claim 16, further comprising applying a voltage across the interface.
18. The method of claim 17, wherein ionic flow between the two pools is measured.
19. The method of claim 18, wherein the duration of ionic flow blockage is measured.
20. The method of claim 18, wherein the amplitude of ionic flow blockage is measured.
21. The method of claim 1, further comprising providing a polymerase or exonuclease in one of the two pools, wherein the polymerase or exonuclease draws the nucleic acid polymer through the channel.
22. The method of claim 21, wherein the medium is an aqueous solution.
23. The method of claim 22, wherein ionic flow between the two pools is measured.
24. The method of claim 21, wherein ionic flow between the two pools is measured.
Rapid, reliable, and inexpensive characterization of polymers, particularly nucleic acids, has become increasingly important. One notable project, known as the Human Genome Project, has as its goal sequencing the entire human genome, which is over three billion nucleotides.
Typical current nucleic acid sequencing methods depend either on chemical reactions that yield multiple length DNA strands cleaved at specific bases, or on enzymatic reactions that yield multiple length DNA strands terminated at specific bases. In each of these methods, the resulting DNA strands of differing length are then separated from each other and identified in strand length order. The chemical or enzymatic reactions, as well as the technology for separating and identifying the different length strands, usually involve tedious, repetitive work. A method that reduces the time and effort required would represent a highly significant advance in biotechnology.
The invention relates to a method for rapid, easy characterization of individual polymer molecules, for example polymer size or sequence determination. Individual molecules in a population may be characterized in rapid succession.
Stated generally, the invention features a method for evaluating a polymer molecule which includes linearly connected (sequential) monomer residues. Two separate pools of a medium and an interface between the pools are provided. The interface between the pools is capable of interacting sequentially with the individual monomer residues of a single polymer present in one of the pools. Interface dependent measurements are continued over time, as individual monomer residues of a single polymer interact sequentially with the interface, yielding data suitable to infer a monomer-dependent characteristic of the polymer. Several individual polymers, e.g., in a heterogenous mixture, can be characterized or evaluated in rapid succession, one polymer at a time, leading to characterization of the polymers in the mixture.
The method is broadly useful for characterizing polymers that are strands of monomers which, in general (if not entirely), are arranged in linear strands. The method is particularly useful for characterizing biological polymers such as deoxyribonucleic acids, ribonucleic acids, polypeptides, and oligosaccharides, although other polymers may be evaluated. In some embodiments, a polymer which carries one or more charges (e.g., nucleic acids, polypeptides) will facilitate implementation of the invention.
The monomer-dependent characterization achieved by the invention may include identifying physical characteristics such as the number and composition of monomers that make up each individual molecule, preferably in sequential order from any starting point within the polymer or its beginning or end. A heterogenous population of polymers may be characterized, providing a distribution of characteristics (such as size) within the population. Where the monomers within a given polymer molecule are heterogenous, the method can be used to determine their sequence.
The interface between the pools is designed to allow passage of the monomers of one polymer molecule at a time. As described in greater detail below, the useful portion of the interface may be a passage in or through an otherwise impermeable barrier, or it may be an interface between immiscible liquids.
The medium used in the invention may be any fluid that permits adequate polymer mobility for interface interaction. Typically, the medium will be liquids, usually aqueous solutions or other liquids or solutions in which the polymers can be distributed. When an electrically conductive medium is used, it can be any medium which is able to carry electrical current. Such solutions generally contain ions as the current conducting agents, e.g., sodium, potassium, chloride, calcium, cesium, barium, sulfate, or phosphate. Conductance across the pore or channel is determined by measuring the flow of current across the pore or channel via the conducting medium. A voltage difference can be imposed across the barrier between the pools by conventional means. Alternatively, an electrochemical gradient may be established by a difference in the ionic composition of the two pools of medium, either with different ions in each pool, or different concentrations of at least one of the ions in the solutions or media of the pools. In this embodiment of the invention, conductance changes are measured and are indicative of monomer-dependent characteristics.
The term "ion permeable passages" used in this embodiment of the invention includes ion channels, ion-permeable pores, and other ion-permeable passages, and all are used herein to include any local site of transport through an otherwise impermeable barrier. For example, the term includes naturally occurring, recombinant, or mutant proteins which permit the passage of ions under conditions where ions are present in the medium contacting the channel or pore. Synthetic pores are also included in the definition. Examples of such pores can include, but are not limited to, chemical pores formed, e.g., by nystatin, ionophores, or mechanical perforations of a membranous material. Proteinaceous ion channels can be voltage-gated or voltage independent, including mechanically gated channels (e.g., stretch-activated K+ channels), or recombinantly engineered or mutated voltage dependent channels (e.g., Na+ or K+ channels constructed as is known in the art).
Another type of channel is a protein which includes a portion of a bacteriophage receptor which is capable of binding all or part of a bacteriophage ligand (either a natural or functional ligand) and transporting bacteriophage DNA from one side of the interface to the other. The polymer to be characterized includes a portion which acts as a specific ligand for the bacteriophage receptor, so that it may be injected across the barrier/interface from one pool to the other.
The protein channels or pores of the invention can include those translated from one or more natural and/or recombinant DNA molecule(s) which includes a first DNA which encodes a channel or pore forming protein and a second DNA which encodes a monomer-interacting portion of a monomer polymerizing agent (e.g., a nucleic acid polymerase or exonuclease). The expressed protein or proteins are capable of non-covalent association or covalent linkage (any linkage herein referred to as forming an "assemblage" of "heterologous units"), and when so associated or linked, the polymerizing portion of the protein structure is able to polymerize monomers from a template polymer, close enough to the channel forming portion of the protein structure to measurably affect ion conductance across the channel. Alternatively, assemblages can be formed from unlike molecules, e.g., a chemical pore linked to a protein polymerase; these assemblages fall under the definition of a "heterologous" assemblage.
The invention also includes the recombinant fusion protein(s) translated from the recombinant DNA molecule(s) described above, so that a fusion protein is formed which includes a channel forming protein linked as described above to a monomer-interacting portion of a nucleic acid polymerase. Preferably, the nucleic acid polymerase portion of the recombinant fusion protein is capable of catalyzing polymerization of nucleotides. Preferably, the nucleic acid polymerase is a DNA or RNA polymerase, more preferably T7 RNA polymerase.
The polymer being characterized may remain in its original pool, or it may cross the passage. Either way, as a given polymer molecule moves in relation to the passage, individual monomers interact sequentially with the elements of the interface to induce a change in the conductance of the passage. The passages can be traversed either by polymer transport through the central opening of the passage so that the polymer passes from one of the pools into the other, or by the polymer traversing across the opening of the passage without crossing into the other pool. In the latter situation, the polymer is close enough to the channel for its monomers to interact with the passage and bring about the conductance changes which are indicative of polymer characteristics. The polymer can be induced to interact with or traverse the pore, e.g., as described below, by a polymerase or other template-dependent polymer replicating catalyst linked to the pore which draws the polymer across the surface of the pore as it synthesizes a new polymer from the template polymer, or by a polymerase in the opposite pool which pulls the polymer through the passage as it synthesizes a new polymer from the template polymer. In such an embodiment, the polymer replicating catalyst is physically linked to the ion-permeable passage, and at least one of the conducting pools contains monomers suitable to be catalytically linked in the presence of the catalyst. A "polymer replicating catalyst," "polymerizing agent" or "polymerizing catalyst" is an agent that can catalytically assemble monomers into a polymer in a template dependent fashion--i.e., in a manner that uses the polymer molecule originally provided as a template for reproducing that molecule from a pool of suitable monomers. Such agents include, but are not limited to, nucleotide polymerases of any type, e.g., DNA polymerases, RNA polymerases, tRNA and ribosomes.
The characteristics of the polymer can be identified by the amplitude or duration of individual conductance changes across the passage. Such changes can identify the monomers in sequence, as each monomer will have a characteristic conductance change signature. For instance, the volume, shape, or charges on each monomer will affect conductance in a characteristic way. Likewise, the size of the entire polymer can be determined by observing the length of time (duration) that monomer-dependent conductance changes occur. Alternatively, the number of monomers in a polymer (also a measure of size) can be determined as a function of the number of monomer-dependent conductance changes for a given polymer traversing a passage. The number of monomers may not correspond exactly to the number of conductance changes, because there may be more than one conductance level change as each monomer of the polymer passes sequentially through the channel. However, there will be a proportional relationship between the two values which can be determined by preparing a standard with a polymer of known sequence.
The mixture of polymers used in the invention does not need to be homogenous. Even when the mixture is heterogenous, only one molecule interacts with a passage at a time, yielding a size distribution of molecules in the mixture, and/or sequence data for multiple polymer molecules in the mixture.
In other embodiments, the channel is a natural or recombinant bacterial porin molecule that is relatively insensitive to an applied voltage and does not gate. Preferred channels for use in the invention include the α-hemolysin toxin from S. aureus and maltoporin channels.
In other preferred embodiments, the channel is a natural or recombinant voltage-sensitive or voltage gated ion channel, preferably one which does not inactivate (whether naturally or through recombinant engineering as is known in the art). "Voltage sensitive" or "gated" indicates that the channel displays activation and/or inactivation properties when exposed to a particular range of voltages.
In an alternative embodiment of the invention, the pools of medium are not necessarily conductive, but are of different compositions so that the liquid of one pool is not miscible in the liquid of the other pool, and the interface is the immiscible surface between the pools. In order to measure the characteristics of the polymer, a polymer molecule is drawn through the interface of the liquids, resulting in an interaction between each sequential monomer of the polymer and the interface. The sequence of interactions as the monomers of the polymer are drawn through the interface is measured, yielding information about the sequence of monomers that characterize the polymer. The measurement of the interactions can be by a detector that measures the deflection of the interface (caused by each monomer passing through the interface) using reflected or refracted light, or a sensitive gauge capable of measuring intermolecular forces. Several methods are available for measurement of forces between macromolecules and interfacial assemblies, including the surface forces apparatus (Israelachvili, Intermolecular and Surface Forces, Academic Press, New York, 1992), optical tweezers (Ashkin et al., Oppt. Lett., 11: 288, 1986; Kuo and Sheetz, Science, 260: 232, 1993; Svoboda et al., Nature 365: 721, 1993), and atomic force microscopy (Quate, F. Surf. Sci. 299: 980, 1994; Mate et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 59: 1942, 1987; Frisbie et al., Science 265: 71, 1994; all hereby incorporated by reference)
The interactions between the interface and the monomers in the polymer are suitable to identify the size of the polymer, e.g., by measuring the length of time during which the polymer interacts with the interface as it is drawn across the interface at a known rate, or by measuring some feature of the interaction (such as deflection of the interface, as described above) as each monomer of the polymer is sequentially drawn across the interface. The interactions can also be sufficient to ascertain the identity of individual monomers in the polymer.
The invention further features a method for sequencing a nucleic acid polymer, which can be double stranded or single stranded, by (1) providing two separate, adjacent pools of a medium and an interface (e.g., a lipid bilayer) between the two pools, the interface having a channel (e.g., bacterial porin molecules) so dimensioned as to allow sequential monomer-by-monomer passage from one pool to another of only one nucleic acid polymer at a time; (2) placing the nucleic acid polymer to be sequenced in one of the two pools; and (3) taking measurements (e.g., ionic flow measurements, including measuring duration or amplitude of ionic flow blockage) as each of the nucleotide monomers of the nucleic acid polymer passes through the channel, so as to sequence the nucleic acid polymer. The interface can include more than one channel in this method. In some cases, the nucleic acid polymer can interact with an inner surface of the channel. The sequencing of a nucleic acid, as used herein, is not limited to identifying specific nucleotide monomers, but can include distinguishing one type of monomer from another type of monomer (e.g., purines from pyrimidines).
The two pools can contain an electrically conductive medium (e.g., an aqueous solution), in which case a voltage can be optionally applied across the interface to facilitate movement of the nucleic acid polymer through the channel and the taking of measurements. Such measurements are interface-dependent, i.e., the measurements are spatially or temporally related to the interface. For example, ionic measurements can be taken when the polymer traverses an internal limiting (in size or conductance) aperture of the channel. In this case, the flow of ions through the channel, and especially through the limiting aperture of the channel, is affected by the size or charge of the polymer and the inside surface of the channel. These measurements are spatially related to the interface because one measures the ionic flow through the interface as specific monomers pass a specific portion (the limiting aperture) of the interface channel.
To maximize the signal to noise ratio when ionic flow measurements are taken, the interface surface area facing a chamber is preferably less than 0.02 mm2. In general, the interface containing the channels should have a design which minimizes the total access resistance to less than 20% of the theoretical (calculated) minimal convergence resistance. The total access resistance is the sum of the resistance contributed by the electrode/electrolyte interface, salt bridges, and the medium in the channel. The resistance of the medium in the channel includes the bulk resistance, the convergence resistance at each end of the channel, and the intra-channel resistance.
In addition, measurements can be temporally related to the interface, such as when a measurement is taken at a pre-determined time or range of times before or after each monomer passes into or out of the channel.
As an alternative to voltage, a nucleic acid polymerase or exonuclease can be provided in one of the chambers to draw the nucleic acid polymer through the channel as discussed below.
This invention offers advantages in nucleotide sequencing, e.g., reduced number of sequencing steps, higher speed of sequencing, and increased length of the polymer to be sequenced. The speed of the method and the size of the polymers it can sequence are particular advantages of the invention. The linear polymer may be very large, and this advantage will be especially useful in reducing template preparation time, sequencing errors and analysis time currently needed to piece together small overlapping fragments of a large gene or stretch of polymer.
FIG. 1 is a schematic representation of an embodiment of DNA characterization by the method of the invention. The unobstructed ionic current (illustrated for the channel at the top of the diagram), is reduced as a polymeric molecule begins its traversal through the pore (illustrated for the channel at the bottom of the diagram).
FIG. 2 is a schematic representation of an implementation of DNA sequencing by the method of the invention. In this embodiment, the polymer is drawn across the opening of the channel, but is not drawn through the channel. The channel, e.g., a porin, is inserted in the phospholipid bilayer. A polymerase domain is fused by its N-terminus to the C-terminus of one of the porin monomers (the porin C-termini are on the periplasmic side of the membrane in both Rhodobacter capsulatus and LamB porins). Fusions on the other side of the membrane can also be made. Malto-oligosaccharides can bind and block current from either side. The polymerase is shown just prior to binding to the promoter. A non-glycosylated base is shown near a pore opening, while a penta-glycosylated cytosine is shown 10 bp away. The polymerase structure represented is that of DNA polymerase I (taken from Ollis et al., 1985, Nature, 313: 762-66), and the general porin model is from Jap (1989, J. Mol. Biol., 205: 407-19).
FIG. 3 is a schematic representation of DNA sequencing results by the method of the invention. The schematic depicts, at very high resolution, one of the longer transient blockages such as can be seen in FIG. 4. The monomeric units of DNA (bases G, A, T, and C) interfere differentially with the flow of ions through the pore, resulting in discrete conductance levels that are characteristic of each base. The order of appearance of the conductance levels sequentially identifies the monomers of the DNA.
FIG. 4 is a recording of the effect of polyadenylic acid (poly A) on the conductance of a single α-hemolysin channel in a lipid bilayer between two aqueous compartments containing 1 M NaCl, 10 Mm Tris, Ph 7.4. Before addition of RNA, the conductance of the channel was around 850 Ps. The cis compartment, to which poly A is added, is -120 mV with respect to the trans compartment. After adding poly A to the cis compartment, the conductance of the α-hemolysin channel begins to exhibit transient blockages (conductance decreases to about 100 Ps) as individual poly A molecules are drawn across the channel from the cis to the trans compartment. When viewed at higher resolution (expanded time scale, at top), the duration of each transient blockage is seen to vary between less than 1 msec up to 10 msec. Arrows point to two of the longer duration blockages. See FIGS. 5A and 5B for histograms of blockage duration.
FIGS. 5A and 5B are comparisons of blockage duration with purified RNA fragments of 320 nt (FIG. 5A) and 1100 nt (FIG. 5B) lengths. The absolute number of blockades plotted in the two histograms are not comparable because they have not been normalized to take into account the different lengths of time over which the data in the two graphs were collected.
FIGS. 6A, 6B, and 6C are plots of current measurements versus time according to a method of the invention. FIG. 6A illustrates the current blockages when polycytidylic oligonucleotides traverse a channel. FIG. 6B illustrates the current blockages when polyadenylic oligonucleotides traverse the channel. FIG. 6C illustrates the current blockages when polycytidylic and polyadenylic oligonucleotides traverse a channel.
FIG. 7 is a plot of current measurements versus time according to a method of the invention, illustrating the current blockages when polyA30 C70 oligonucleotides traverse a channel.
As summarized above, we have determined a new method for rapidly analyzing polymers such as DNA and RNA. We illustrate the invention with two primary embodiments. In one embodiment, the method involves measurements of ionic current modulation as the monomers (e.g., nucleotides) of a linear polymer (e.g., nucleic acid molecule) pass through or across a channel in an artificial membrane. During polymer passage through or across the channel, ionic currents are reduced in a manner that reflects the properties of the polymer (length, concentration of polymers in solution, etc.) and the identities of the monomers. In the second embodiment, an immiscible interface is created between two immiscible liquids, and, as above, polymer passage through the interface results in monomer interactions with the interface which are sufficient to identify characteristics of the polymer and/or the identity of the monomers.
The description of the invention will be primarily concerned with sequencing nucleic acids, but this is not intended to be limiting. It is feasible to size and sequence polymers other than nucleic acids by the method of the invention, including linear protein molecules which include monomers of amino amonomers, linear arrays of monomers, including chemicals (e.g., biochemicals such as polysaccharides), may also be sequenced and characterized by size.
I. Polymar Analysis Uing Conductance Changes Across An Interface
Sensitive single channel recording techniques (i.e., the patch clamp technique) can be used in the invention, as a rapid, high-resolution approach allowing differentiation of nucleotide bases of single DNA molecules, and thus a fast and efficient DNA sequencing technique or a method to determine polymer size or concentration (FIGS. 1 and 2). We will describe methods to orient DNA to a pore molecule in two general configurations (see FIGS. 1 and 2) and record conductance changes across the pore (FIG. 3). One method is to use a pore molecule such as the receptor for bacteriophage lambda (LamB) or α-hemolysin, and to record the process of DNA injection or traversal through the channel pore when that channel has been isolated on a membrane patch or inserted into a synthetic lipid bilayer (FIG. 1). Another method is to fuse a DNA polymerase molecule to a pore molecule and allow the polymerase to move DNA over the pore's opening while recording the conductance across the pore (FIG. 2). A third method is to use a polymerase on the trans side of the membrane/pore divider to pull a single stranded nucleic acid through the pore from the cis side (making it double stranded) while recording conductance changes. A fourth method is to establish a voltage gradient across a membrane containing a channel (e.g., α-hemolysin) through which a single stranded or double stranded DNA is electrophoresed.
The apparatus used for this embodiment includes 1) an ion-conducting pore or channel, perhaps modified to include a linked or fused polymerizing agent, 2) the reagents necessary to construct and produce a linear polymer to be characterized, or the polymerized molecule itself, and 3) an amplifier and recording mechanism to detect changes in conductance of ions across the pore as the polymer traverses its opening.
A variety of electronic devices are available which are sensitive enough to perform the measurements used in the invention, and computer acquisition rates and storage capabilities are adequate for the rapid pace of sequence data accumulation.
A. Characteristics Identified by the Methods
1) Size/Length of Molecules
The size or length of a polymer can be determined by measuring its residence time in the pore or channel, e.g., by measuring duration of transient blockade of current. The relationship between this time period and the length of the polymer can be described by a reproducible mathematical function which depends on the experimental condition used. The function is likely a linear function for a given type of polymer (e.g., DNA, RNA, polypeptide), but if it is described by another function (e.g., sigmoidal or exponential), accurate size estimates may be made by first preparing a standard curve using known sizes of like linear molecules.
2) Identity of Residues/Monomers
The chemical composition of individual monomers is sufficiently variant to cause characteristic changes in channel conductance as each monomer traverses the pore due to physical configuration, size/volume, charge, interactions with the medium, etc. For example, our experimental data suggest that polyc RNA reduces conductance more than does polyA RNA, indicating a measurable physical difference between pyrimidines and purines that is one basis of nucleotide identification in this invention.
The nucleotide bases of DNA will influence pore conductance during traversal, but if the single channel recording techniques are not sensitive enough to detect differences between normal bases in DNA, it is practical to supplement the system's specificity by using modified bases. The modifications should be asymmetrical (on only one strand of double stranded template), to distinguish otherwise symmetrical base pairs.
Modified bases are readily available. These include: 1) methylated bases (lambda can package and inject DNA with or without methylated A's and C's), 2) highly modified bases found in the DNA of several bacteriophage (e.g. T4, SP15), many of which involve glycosylations coupled with other changes (Warren, 1980, Ann. Rev. Microbiol., 34: 137-58), and 3) the modified nucleotide triphosphates that can be incorporated by DNA polymerase (e.g. biotinylated, digoxigenated, and fluorescently tagged triphosphates).
In order to identify the monomers, conditions should be appropriate to avoid secondary structure in the polymer to be sequenced (e.g., nucleic acids); if necessary, this can be achieved by using a recording solution which is denaturing. Using single stranded DNA, single channel recordings can be made in up to 40% formamide and at temperatures as high as 45° C. using e.g., the α-hemolysin toxin protein in a lipid bilayer. These conditions are not intended to exclude use of any other denaturing conditions. One skilled in the art of electrophysiology will readily be able to determine suitable conditions by 1) observing incorporation into the bilayer of functional channels or pores, and 2) observing transient blockades of conductance uninterrupted by long-lived blockades caused by polymers becoming stuck in the channel because of secondary structure. Denaturing conditions are not always necessary for the polymerase-based methods or for double stranded DNA methods of the invention. They may not be necessary for single stranded methods either, if the pore itself is able to cause denaturation, or if the secondary structure does not interfere.
3) Concentration of Polymers in Solutions
Concentration of polymers can be rapidly and accurately assessed by using relatively low resolution recording conditions and analyzing the number of conductance blockade events in a given unit of time. This relationship should be linear and proportional (the greater the concentration of polymers, the more frequent the current blockage events), and a standardized curve can be prepared using known concentrations of polymer.
B. Principles and Techniques
1) Recording Techniques
The conductance monitoring methods of the invention rely on an established technique, single-channel recording, which detects the activity of molecules that form channels in biological membranes. When a voltage potential difference is established across a bilayer containing an open pore molecule, a steady current of ions flows through the pore from one side of the bilayer to the other. The nucleotide bases of a DNA molecule, for example, passing through or over the opening of a channel protein, disrupt the flow of ions through the pore in a predictable way. Fluctuations in the pore's conductance caused by this interference can be detected and recorded by conventional single-channel recording techniques. Under appropriate conditions, with modified nucleotides if necessary, the conductance of a pore can change to unique states in response to the specific bases in DNA.
This flux of ions can be detected, and the magnitude of the current describes the conductance state of the pore. Multiple conductance states of a channel can be measured in a single recording as is well known in the art. By recording the fluctuations in conductance of the maltoporin (LamB) pore, for example, when DNA is passed through it by phage lambda injection or over its opening by the action of a polymerase fused to the surface of the LamB protein, we estimate that a sequencing rate of 100-1000 bases/sec/pore can be achieved.
The monitoring of single ion channel conductance is an inexpensive, viable method that has been successful for the last two decades and is in very wide spread current use. It directly connects movements of single ions or channel proteins to digital computers via amplifiers and analog to digital (A to D, A/D) converters. Single channel events taking place in the range of a few microseconds can be detected and recorded (Hamill et al., 1981, Pfluegers Arch. Eur. J. Physiol., 391: 85-100). This level of time resolution ranges from just sufficient to orders of magnitude greater than the level we need, since the time frame for movement of nucleotide bases relative to the pore for the sequencing method is in the range of microseconds to milliseconds. The level of time resolution required depends on the voltage gradient or the enzyme turnover number if the polymer is moved by an enzyme. Other factors controlling the level of time resolution include medium viscosity, temperature, etc.
The characteristics and conductance properties of any pore molecule that can be purified can be studied in detail using art-known methods (Sigworth et al., supra; Heinemann et al., 1988, Biophys. J., 54: 757-64; Wonderlin et al., 1990, Biophys. J., 58: 289-97). These optimized methods are ideal for our polymer sequencing application. For example, in the pipette bilayer technique, an artificial bilayer containing at least one pore protein is attached to the tip of a patch-clamp pipette by applying the pipette to a preformed bilayer reconstituted with the purified pore protein in advance. Due to the very narrow aperture diameter of the patch pipette tip (2 microns), the background noise for this technique is significantly reduced, and the limit for detectable current interruptions is about 10 microseconds (Sigworth et al., supra; Heinemann et al., 1990, Biophys. J., 57: 499-514). Purified channel protein can be inserted in a known orientation into preformed lipid bilayers by standard vesicle fusion techniques (Schindler, 1980, FEBS Letters, 122: 77-79), or any other means known in the art, and high resolution recordings are made. The membrane surface away from the pipette is easily accessible while recording. This is important for the subsequent recordings that involve added DNA. The pore can be introduced into the solution within the patch pipette rather than into the bath solution.
An optimized planar lipid bilayer method has recently been introduced for high resolution recordings in purified systems (Wonderlin et al., supra). In this method, bilayers are formed over very small diameter apertures (10-50 microns) in plastic. This technique has the advantage of allowing access to both sides of the bilayer, and involves a slightly larger bilayer target for reconstitution with the pore protein. This optimized bilayer technique is an alternative to the pipette bilayer technique.
Instrumentation is needed which can apply a variable range of voltages from about +400 Mv to -400 mV across the channel/membrane, assuming that the trans compartment is established to be 0 mV; a very low-noise amplifier and current injector, analog to digital (A/D) converter, data acquisition software, and electronic storage medium (e.g., computer disk, magnetic tape). Equipment meeting these criteria is readily available, such as from Axon Instruments, Foster City, Calif. (e.g., Axopatch 200 A system; pClamp 6.0.2 software).
Preferred methods of large scale DNA sequencing involve translating from base pairs to electronic signals as directly and as quickly as possible in a way that is compatible with high levels of parallelism, miniaturization and manufacture. The method should allow long stretches (even stretches over 40 kbp) to be read so that errors associated with assembly and repetitive sequence can be minimized. The method should also allow automatic loading of (possibly non-redundant) fresh sequences.
2) Channels and Pores Useful in the invention
Any channel protein which has the characteristics useful in the invention (e.g., pore sized up to about 9 nm) may be employed. Pore sizes across which polymers can be drawn may be quite small and do not necessarily differ for different polymers. Pore sizes through which a polymer is drawn will be e.g., approximately 0.5-2.0 nm for single stranded DNA; 1.0-3.0 nm for double stranded DNA; and 1.0-4.0 nm for polypeptides. These values are not absolute, however, and other pore sizes might be equally functional for the polymer types mentioned above.
Examples of bacterial pore-forming proteins which can be used in the invention include Gramicidin (e.g., Gramicidin A from Bacillus brevis; available from Fluka, Ronkonkoma, N.Y.); LamB (maltoporin), OmpF, OmpC, or PhoE from Escherichia coli, Shigella, and other Enterobacteriaceae, alpha-hemolysin (from S. aureus), Tsx, the F-pilus, lambda exonuclease, and mitochondrial porin (VDAC). This list is not intended to be limiting.
A modified voltage-gated channel can also be used in the invention, as long as it does not inactivate quickly, e.g., in less than about 500 msec (whether naturally or following modification to remove inactivation) and has physical parameters suitable for e.g., polymerase attachment (recombinant fusion proteins) or has a pore diameter suitable for polymer passage. Methods to alter inactivation characteristics of voltage gated channels are well known in the art (see e.g., Patton, et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 89: 10905-09 (1992); West, et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 89: 10910-14 (1992); Auld, et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 87: 323-27 (1990); Lopez, et al., Neuron, 7: 327-36 (1991); Hoshi, et al., Neuron, 7: 547-56 (1991); Hoshi, et al., Science, 250: 533-38 (1990), all hereby incorporated by reference).
Appropriately sized physical or chemical pores may be induced in a water-impermeable barrier (solid or membranous) up to a diameter of about 9 nm, which should be large enough to accommodate most polymers (either through the pore or across its opening). Any methods and materials known in the art may be used to form pores, including track etching and the use of porous membrane templates which can be used to produce pores of the desired material (e.g., scanning-tunneling microscope or atomic force microscope related methods).
Chemical channels or pores can be formed in a lipid bilayer using chemicals (or peptides) such as Nystatin, as is well known in the art of whole-cell patch clamping ("perforated patch" technique); and peptide channels such as Alamethicin.
Template-dependent nucleic acid polymerases and free nucleotides can be used as a motor to draw the nucleic acids through the channel. For example, the DNA to be sequenced is placed in one chamber; RNA polymerases, nucleotides, and optionally primers are placed in the other chamber. As the 3' end of the DNA passes through the channel (via a voltage pulse or diffusion, for example), the RNA polymerase captures and begins polymerization. If the polymerase is affixed to the chamber or is physically blocked from completely passing through the channel, the polymerase can act as a rachet to draw the DNA through the channel.
Similarly, lambda exonuclease, which is itself shaped as a pore with a dimension similar to α-hemolysin, can operate as a motor, controlling the movement of the nucleic acid polymer through the channel. The exonuclease has the added benefit of allowing access to one strand of a double stranded polymer. As the double stranded polymer passes through the pore, the exonuclease grabs onto the 5' single-stranded overhang of a first strand (via endonuclease digestion or breathing of the double stranded DNA ends) and sequentially cleaves the complementary second strand at its 3' end. During the sequential cleavage, the exonuclease progresses 5' to 3' down the first strand, pulling the double stranded DNA through the channel at a controlled rate. Thus, the exonuclease can operate as a pore as well as a motor for drawing the nucleic acid polymer through the channel.
To produce pores linked with polymerase or exonuclease, synthetic/recombinant DNA coding for a fusion protein can be transcribed and translated, then inserted into an artificial membrane in vitro. For example, the C-terminus of E. coli DNA polymerase I (and by homology, T7 DNA polymerase) is very close to the surface of the major groove of groove of the newly synthesized DNA. If the C-terminus of a polymerase is fused to the N-terminus of a pore forming protein such as colicin E1 and the colicin is inserted into an artificial membrane, one opening of the colicin pore should face the DNA's major groove and one should face the opposite side of the lipid bilayer. For example, the colicin molecule can be modified to achieve a pH optimum compatible with the polymerase as in Shiver et al. (J. Biol. Chem., 262: 14273-14281 1987, hereby incorporated by reference). Both pore and polymerase domains can be modified to contain cysteine replacements at points such that disulfide bridges form to stabilize a geometry that forces the pore opening closer to the major groove surface and steadies the polymer as it passes the pore opening. The loops of the pore domain at this surface can be systematically modified to maximize sensitivity to changes in the DNA sequence.
C. General Considerations for Conductance Based Measurements
1) Electrical/Channel Optimization
The conductance of a pore at any given time is determined by its resistance to ions passing through the pore (pore resistance) and by the resistance to ions entering or leaving the pore (access resistance). For a pore's conductance to be altered in discrete steps, changes in one or both of these resistance factors will occur by unit values. The base pairs of a DNA molecule represent discrete units that are distinct from each other along the phosphate backbone. As long as the orientation of DNA to the pore remains relatively constant, and the membrane potential does not change, as each base pair passes by (or through) the pore, it is likely to interfere with a reproducible number of ions. Modifications made to the individual bases would influence the magnitude of this effect.
To resolve stretches of repeating identical bases accurately, and to minimize reading errors in general, it may be useful for the pore to register a distinct (probably higher) level of conductance in between the bases. This can take place naturally in the pore-polymerase system with helix rotation during polymerization, or in the phage system between entry of base pairs into the pore, or when the regions in between base pairs pass by a rate limiting site for ion flux inside the pore. Modified bases used to distinguish nucleotide identities may also contribute significantly to this issue, because they should magnify the conductance effect of the bases relative to the effect of regions in between the bases. With single strand passage through a pore, charged phosphates may punctuate the passage of each base by brief, higher conductance states. Also, if the rate of movement is constant, then punctuation between bases may not be required to resolve stretches of repeating identical bases.
Altered conductance states have been described for many channels, including some LamB mutants (Dargent et al., 1988, supra). A mutant may be a valuable alternative to a wild type channel protein if its fluctuation to a given state is sensitive to nucleotide bases in DNA. Alternative systems can also be developed from other channel proteins that are known to have multiple single channel conductance states. Examples of these are the alamethicin channel, which under certain conditions fluctuates through at least 20 discrete states (Taylor et al., 1991, Biophys. J., 59: 873-79), and the OmpF porin, which shows gating of its individual monomers giving rise to four discrete states (Lakey et al., 1989, Eur. J. Biochem., 186: 303-308).
Since channel events can be resolved in the microsecond range with the high resolution recording techniques available, the limiting issue for sensitivity with the techniques of our invention is the amplitude of the current change between bases. Resolution limits for detectable current are in the 0.2 pA range (1 pA=6.24Ã106 ions/sec). Each base affecting pore current by at least this magnitude is detected as a separate base. It is the function of modified bases to affect current amplitude for specific bases if the bases by themselves are poorly distinguishable.
One skilled in the art will recognize that there are many possible configurations of the sequencing method described herein. For instance, lipid composition of the bilayer may include any combination of non-polar (and polar) components which is compatible with pore or channel protein incorporation. Any configuration of recording apparatus may be used (e.g., bilayer across aperture, micropipette patches, intra-vesicular recording) so long as its limit of signal detection is below about 0.5 pA, or in a range appropriate to detect monomeric signals of the polymer being evaluated. If polymeric size determination is all that is desired, the resolution of the recording apparatus may be much lower.
A Nernst potential difference, following the equation Eion =(RT/zF)loge ([ion]o /[ion]i)
where Eion is the solvent ion (e.g., potassium ion) equilibrium potential across the membrane, R is the gas constant, T is the absolute temperature, z is the valency of the ion, F is Faraday's constant, [ion]o is the outside and [ion]i is the inside ionic concentration (or trans and cis sides of the bilayer, respectively),
can be established across the bilayer to force polymers across the pore without supplying an external potential difference across the membrane. The membrane potential can be varied ionically to produce more or less of a differential or "push." The recording and amplifying apparatus is capable of reversing the gradient electrically to clear blockages of pores caused by secondary structure or cross-alignment of charged polymers.
2) Optimization of Methods
In an operating system of the invention, one can demonstrate that the number of transient blockades observed is quantitatively related to the number of polymer molecules that move through the channel from the cis to the trans compartment. By sampling the trans compartment solution after observing one to several hundred transient blockades and using quantitative, competitive PCR assays (e.g., as in Piatak et al., 1993, BioTechniques, 14: 70-79) it is possible to measure the number of molecules that have traversed the channel. Procedures similar to those used in competitive PCR can be used to include an internal control that will distinguish between DNA that has moved through the channel and contaminating or aerosol DNA.
Further steps to optimize the method may include:
1. Slowing the passage of polynucleotides so that individual nucleotides can be sensed. Since the blockade durations we observed are in the millisecond range, each nucleotide in a one or two thousand monomer-long polynucleotide occupies the channel for just a few microseconds. To measure effects of individual nucleotides on the conductance, substantially reducing the velocity may offer substantial improvement. Approaches to accomplish this include: (a) increasing the viscosity of the medium, (b) establishing the lower limit of applied potential that will move polynucleotides into the channel (c) use of high processivity polymerase in the trans compartment to "pull" DNA through the pore in place of voltage gradients. Using enzymes to pull the DNA through the pore may also solve another potential problem (see 3, below).
2. Making a channel in which an individual nucleotide modulates current amplitude. While α-toxin may give rise to distinguishable current amplitudes when different mono-polynucleotides pass through the channel, 4-5 nucleotides in the strand necessarily occupy the length of its approximately 50 ⫠long channel at any given time. Ionic current flow may therefore reflect the sum of the nucleotide effects, making it difficult to distinguish monomers. To determine current modulation attributable to individual monomers, one may use channels containing a limiting aperture that is much shorter than the full length of the overall channel (Weiss et aone can mod. For example, one can modify α-hemolysin by standard molecular biological techniques such that portions of the pore leading to and away from the constriction are widened.
3. Enhancing movement of DNA in one direction. If a DNA molecule is being pulled through a channel by a voltage gradient, the probability of its moving backward against the gradient will be given by e-(energy to move against the voltage gradient/kT)
where kT is energy associated with thermal fluctuations. For example, using reasonable assumptions for the effective charge density of the DNA polyelectrolyte in buffer (Manning, 1969, J. Chem. Phys., 51: 924-33), at room temperature the probability of thermal energy moving the DNA molecule backward 10 â« against a 100 mV voltage gradient âe-4, or about one in fifty. Should this problem exist, some kind of ratchet mechanism, possibly a polymerase or other DNA binding protein, may be useful in the trans chamber to prevent backward movements of the DNA.
3) Advantages of Single Channel Sequencing
The length of continuous DNA sequence obtainable from the methods described herein will only be limited in certain embodiments (e.g., by the packaging limit of phage lambda heads (.about.50 kb) or by the size of the template containing polymerase promoter sequences). Other embodiments (e.g., voltage gradients) have no such limitation and should even make it possible to sequence DNA directly from tissue samples, since the technique is not limited to cloned DNA. Having large contiguous sequence as primary input data will substantially reduce the complexity of sequence assembly, particularly in the case of repetitive DNA. There are other applications if consistent conductance behaviors can be correlated with particular properties of given molecules (i.e. shape).
D. Specific Methods and Examples of Current Based Characterization
The following specific examples of current based polymer characterization are presented to illustrate, not limit the invention.
1) The LamB pore
Maltoporin (LamB) is an outer membrane protein from E. coli that functions as a passive diffusion pore (porin) for small molecules and as a specific transport pore for passage of maltose and maltodextrins (Szmelcman et al., 1975, J. Bacteriol., 124: 112-18). It is also the receptor for bacteriophage lambda (Randall-Hazelbauer and Schwartz, 1973, J. Bacteriol. 116: 1436-1446). Three identical copies of the LamB gene product assemble to form the native pore. Each subunit (MW .about.48,000) is composed of predominantly beta-structure and is a pore in itself, though it is thought that the three pores fuse into one at the periplasmic side of the membrane (Lepault et al., 1988, EMBO, J., 7: 261-68).
A protein folding model for LamB is available that predicts which portions of the mature protein reside on the external and periplasmic surfaces of the membrane (Charbit et al., 1991, J. Bacteriol., 173: 262-75). Permissive sites in the protein have been mapped to several extramembranous loops that tolerate the insertion of foreign polypeptides without significantly disrupting pore properties (Boulain et al., 1986, Mol. Gen. Genet., 205: 339-48; Charbit et al., 1986, EMBO J., 5: 3029-37; Charbit et al., 1991, supra) . The LamB protein has been crystallized and a high resolution structure derived (3.1 â«) (Schirmer et al., 1995, Science, 267: 512-514).
The pore properties of wild type LamB and a few mutant proteins have been studied at low resolution in planar lipid bilayer single channel recordings (Benz et al., 1986, J. Bacteriol., 165: 978-86; Benz et al., 1987, J. Membrane Biol., 100: 21-29; Dargent et al., 1987, FEBS Letters, 220: 136-42; Dargent et al., 1988, J. Mol. Biol., 201: 497-506). The pore has a very stable conductance of 150 pS in 1M NaCl, and shows selectivity for maltose and maltodextrins. These molecules effectively block conductance of the pore. One LamB mutant (Tyr163 âAsp) exhibits distinct sublevels of conductance (30 pS each).
The LamB pore is extremely stable, and high time resolution recordings can be made for use in this invention. The time resolution of channel conductance measurements with the conventional planar lipid bilayer technique is limited because of the background noise associated with the high electrical capacitance of bilayers formed on large diameter apertures (100-200 microns), but smaller apertures or insulated glass microelectrodes can improve the resolution of LamB channel recordings. Preferably, improved LamB conductance recordings will use the pipette bilayer technique (Sigworth et al., supra).
Conductance Measurements of Lambda DNA Injection
Bacteriophage lambda injects its DNA through the LamB pore at a rate of about 1000 bp/sec (Novick et al., 1988, Biochemistry, 27: 7919-24). Lambda will inject its DNA into liposomes reconstituted with purified E. coli LamB protein. Alcohol or chloroform may be useful in this system (Randall-Hazelbauer and Schwartz, 1973, supra), but if the solvents disrupt current recordings, one can use either the LamB protein from a closely related species, e.g., Shigella sonnei 3070, which allows spontaneous lambda DNA injection into liposomes (Schwartz et al., 1975, J. Virol., 15: 679-85; Roessner et al., 1983, J. Biol. Chem.,258: 643-48), or a hybrid protein containing portions of LamB from both species, which behaves similarly (Roessner et al., 1987, J. Mol. Biol., 195: 963-66).
The conductance of single LamB pores is monitored during the addition of phage to the medium bathing the bilayer. An initial change in conductance upon phage binding will be followed by a drop in conductance as DNA enters the pore. Any sustained conductance fluctuations that follow are indicative of base pairs passing through the pore during injection. The fluctuations should be in the millisecond range, and the period of fluctuation will generally last for about 60 sec (the time required for injection). The conductance should then go up again to a level even higher than the original pre-phage state, since post-injection phage/porin complexes have been observed to allow molecules larger than the normal LamB exclusion limit to pass through (Roessner et al., 1986, J. Biol. Chem., 261: 386-90).
Asymmetrically modified DNA produced by annealing modified and unmodified complementary strands or by custom primed DNA synthesis, can be ligated to lambda vector DNA and packaged in vitro. Modified DNA that is packaged efficiently and can be injected into bacterial cells will be appropriate for the LamB sequencing system.
Conductance Measurements of Pore-Polymerase Complexes
Alternatively, the pore makes use of a polymerase molecule to pass DNA over the pore's opening one base pair at a time. Nucleotide bases of DNA will affect ion flux through the pore as they are passed over it by the polymerase, and the corresponding conductance fluctuations can be detected by high resolution single-channel recording techniques. The polymerase is held in position at the pore's surface as part of a fusion protein with the pore (see FIG. 2).
Fusion proteins are constructed (e.g., LamB and T7 RNA polymerase) such that both pore and polymerase are functional. The permissive sites in LamB (or any other desired pore protein) that can accommodate insertion of polypeptide sequences without significantly disrupting pore properties are targeted for these fusions. Accommodation of an entire active protein has been demonstrated for E. coli membrane proteins (Boyd et al., 1987, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 84: 8525-29; Ehrmann et al., 1990, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 87: 7574-78; both hereby incorporated by reference). At least some of the LamB permissive sites (12 have been described) will support insertion of the polymerase. T7 RNA polymerase is best fused to the C-terminal end of LamB, since the polymerase is known to function in protein fusions with this orientation (Ostrander et al., 1990, J. Bacteriol., 116: 1436-46; hereby incorporated by reference).
Fusion constructions can be screened for LamB function on MacConkey agar plates containing maltooligosaccharides. This screen is sensitive enough to detect a range of partial LamB functions. Fusion proteins with even partially functional pores should have high conductance states in bilayer experiments prior to DNA addition. Purified pore polymerase fusion proteins can be assayed for T7 RNA polymerase activity or used directly to reconstitute liposomes in preparation for channel recordings.
FIG. 2 shows a schematic representation of a possible pore-polymerase fusion complex with template DNA. The orientation of the base pairs to the pore opening is likely to alternate through several potential angles, due to the polymerase having some freedom of movement. For this reason, nucleotide base modifications that take into account the specific properties of the pore will be helpful to observe consistent conductance effects. For instance, the selectivity of LamB for maltose and maltooligosaccharides is a promising area of nucleotide modification for this system, particularly since these molecules have a dramatic effect on LamB conductance in vitro (Benz et al., 1986, supra; Benz et al., 1987, supra; Dargent et al., 1987, supra).
The affinity of maltooligosaccharides for LamB increases in proportion to the number of glucose residues attached (up to five) (Benz et al., 1987, supra), thus, nucleotides attached to maltose or maltooligosaccharides are likely to block the pore more effectively than unsubstituted nucleotides. Furthermore, the number of glucose molecules attached to a substituted nucleotide may significantly influence the effect it has on LamB conductance. By substituting specific bases with modified nucleotides linked to a given number of oligosaccharide units, it should be possible to relate those substituted bases with predictable conductance states of the pore.
Testing Pore Fusions
The above system can be tested with a short oligonucleotide containing the T7 RNA polymerase promoter attached to phage T4 DNA that is asymmetrically modified at C residues with oligoglucose chains. The oligonucleotide template is made with the modified bases on the displaced strand, because T7 RNA polymerase has been shown to function when nucleotide analogs are present on this strand (Nath et al., 1991, Carcinogenesis, 12: 973-76). The conductance of pore-polymerase complexes is monitored while adding this template and ribonucleotide triphosphates (NTPs) to the system. By adding the NTPs sequentially, one can sample the polymerase at four positions relative to the start site. This provides conductance information pertaining to the modified cytosine closest to the promoter at several distances from (and orientations to) the pore. By adding all four NTPs, the effects of each modified base as it passes the pore can be sampled during RNA synthesis.
The conductance profiles for this modified fragment are compared with control fragments containing no modifications to correlate given conductance shifts with the modified nucleotides. Uniform lengths for the oligoglucosyl moieties on given bases can be obtained by HPLC purifying the modified dNTPs. Additional pore-polymerase geometries and defined glucose chain lengths on modified bases are also within the scope of the invention.
Recording from Shigella LamB
We have made recordings from Shigella LamB channels. We modified the pipette bilayer technique of Sigworth et al. (supra) by adding purified Shigella LamB to the solution inside the patch pipette, rather than to the bath solution. This modification has provided more consistent pore activity. We estimate the single channel conductance of this pore to be 120 pS (recording in bilateral 0.83 M KCl, +25 mV). This is similar to the conductance of LamB from E. coli (Benz et al., 1986, supra; Dargent et al., 1987, supra; Benz et al., 1987, supra; Dargent et al., 1988, supra). Our equipment and technique have the potential for recording at very high resolution.
We tested the effect of a maltooligosaccharide mixture on the conductance of Shigella LamB, since maltooligosaccharides are known to inhibit the conductance of E. coli LamB in planar lipid bilayer experiments (Dargent et al., 1987, supra; Benz et al., 1987, supra) and can be used for nucleotide modifications. Our recordings show that the conductance of Shigella LamB molecules is inhibited by the addition of maltooligosaccharides to the bath. In the same recordings, we have shown that the conductance of these pores increases as the concentration of maltooligosaccharide in the bath is reduced. This reversible inhibition of conductance by maltooligosaccharides is similar to that observed for the E. coli protein (Dargent et al., 1987, supra).
In our experiments testing the effects of lambda DNA injection on the conductance of LamB pores, the Shigella protein was chosen because lambda will spontaneously inject its DNA in vitro when bound to this receptor, as opposed to the E. coli receptor, which requires the presence of organic compounds (ethanol or chloroform) for lambda injection. LamB conductance was altered when lambda injected its DNA through the pore, and the conductance changes were detectable during a patch-clamp recording. We have obtained several classes of response when lambda is added to the bath during patch-clamp recordings of Shigella LamB, ranging from no response at all to nearly complete inhibition of conductance, to rapidly fluctuating conductance levels. We observed that under the bath conditions used for patch-clamp recording, our preparation of Shigella LamB is routinely capable on inducing lambda DNA injection in vitro.
Multiple pores in the patch membrane at one time make it difficult to interpret the lambda response, and it is important to obtain single pores in the patch membrane.
Advantages of Using Phage Lambda to Orient DNA to Pore
1) The system is simple to set up.
2) Lambda injection is efficient and fast.
3) Lambda vectors are used extensively to construct genomic and cDNA libraries, thus there is a tremendous resource of potential sequence information readily available for direct application of this technique.
4) The average insert size for cosmid libraries is about 45 kb; this sets the average "read" size of contiguous DNA sequence. While this is less than the potential read size for a functional pore-polymerase complex (see below), it is still about 100 times the average read size for most conventional sequencing.
Ion flux can take place through phage receptor pores that contain phage DNA. T5 provides an alterative phage system (as do T3, T4 and P1, all of which have efficient in vitro packaging systems).
The membrane spanning length of LamB pores is estimated to be 30 â« (Benz et al., 1987, supra). Thus, at any given time during DNA injection, 8-9 base pairs of DNA are present in the pore. For the effects of single base pairs on pore current to be more easily measurable, it is preferable to have a region of the pore that is rate limiting for ion flux past one or two base pairs. Such a region may take the form of an "eyelet" structure as seen in the R. capsulatus porin (Weiss et al., supra), where steric interactions are limiting, or, depending on the exact amino acids involved, hydration, electrostatic, as well as steric interactions may produce a rate limiting site. Alternatively, since it is likely that the bacteriophage tail fiber widens the LamB pore upon phage attachment, and it is possible that the phage DNA passes through the fiber during injection, the bottle neck for ion flow may be at some position along the inside of the tail fiber.
Advantages of the Pore-Polymerase System for Orienting DNA to the Pore
1) This system offers some flexibility in orienting DNA to the pore's opening, and thus provides the mechanism to optimize this orientation.
2) The average size of contiguous sequence obtainable by this technique is very large; it is limited by the processivity of T7 RNA polymerase since there is no obvious template size restriction. T7 RNA polymerase is highly processive in vitro (Golomb et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 71: 760-64; Niles et al., supra; Oakley et al., 1975, Biochemistry, 14: 4684-91).
3) The rate of sequencing with this system is also very high, limited only by the rate of polymerase activity when fused to the pore. The rate of T7 RNA polymerase is .about.300 bases/sec (Martin et al., 1987, Biochemistry, 26: 2690-96). This provides an estimate of the sequencing rate for this system.
4) In principal, any source of DNA can be used as template for this system, provided it contains the T7 RNA polymerase promoter. This includes high molecular weight DNA from tissue samples which is ligated to a T7 promoter oligonucleotide.
The fusion proteins constructed must have at least partial pore function to ensure a high single-channel conductance, so that there will be "room" for lower conductance states when DNA is added.
The polymerase portion of the fusion can be considered an external protein domain of the pore. This polymerase domain must demonstrate activity when the complex is inserted into bilayers. T7 RNA polymerase is known to function when fused to the C-terminus of other proteins (Ostrander et al., supra). Thus, this orientation to LamB should be productive, provided the C-terminal amino acids of LamB remain intact (Boulain et al., supra) . The permissive sites of LamB are particularly attractive for polymerase insertion, since most of these sites map to regions predicted to form extramembranous loops (Charbit et al., 1991, supra), and several proteins have been shown to function when inserted at such sites in other membrane proteins (Boyd et al., supra; Ehrmann et al., 1990, supra). Our cloning scheme is designed to allow variation in the length of peptide linkers at either end of the polymerase insertion site.
The LamB protein forms a trimer, so expressing the pore-polymerase construct in cells that otherwise lack LamB protein will result in a pore with three polymerases. Such complexes may be unstable or nonfunctional. This problem can be avoided by producing heterotrimers between normal LamB monomers and pore-polymerase monomers. Functional LamB heterotrimers between normal and mutant forms have been observed (Ferenci et al., 1989, J. Bacteriol., 171: 855-61; hereby incorporated by reference).
The orientation of the polymerase to the pore's opening must be such that during polymerization, nucleotide bases are positioned close enough to affect ion flux through the pore. The mouth of the pore is small compared to the polymerase or DNA, thus, polymerase activity at the pore's surface will affect ion access. Some configurations, however, may be better suited for sequencing, in that they may provide more consistent conductance readings.
Several insertion target sites for LamB have been described, although random insertion is an option with our screening approach. It is also possible to express domains of the polymerase at different sites in LamB, such that they fold together on the pore's surface into an optimal configuration. Alternatively, by using two polymerase molecules per trimer, the template might be anchored over the pore in a more optimal position. Information provided by the progressing crystallographic investigations of these two proteins (Sousa et al., 1989, Proteins: Struct. Funct. Genet., 5: 266-70; Stauffer et al., 1990, J. Mol. Biol., 211: 297-99) may be useful to help design the geometry of the fusion to suit the needs of the project. We are not limited to these particular proteins, however, since in principle any channel molecule and any processive nucleic acid translocation molecule could potentially suffice. An example is the conjugation process in E. coli, where genome-sized (single-stranded) DNA is transported through the F-pilus at a rate of about 780 bp/sec (Rees et al., 1989, J. Bacteriol., 171: 3152-57; Harrington et al., 1990, J. Bacteriol., 172: 7263-64). This process can be monitored in situ with the patch-clamp technique.
The oligoglucosyl chains attached to modified bases are expected to have considerable rotational freedom. If each LamB monomer has a binding site for maltooligosaccharides, which is the present model (Ferenci et al., supra), then conductance readings from one base pair may be obscured by the side chains from adjacent base pairs interacting with other pores in the trimer. This problem can be overcome by using heterotrimers containing LamB mutant monomers that have low maltose binding affinity complexed with wild type monomers (or a hyperbinding mutant) in a ratio of 2:1. It has been shown that low maltose affinity monomers do not prevent maltodextrin transport when present in heterotrimers (Ferenci et al., supra).
2) The alpha-hemolysin pore forming protein
Discussion and examples of the invention using the bacterial pore-forming protein a-hemolysin toxin (α-toxin or α-hemolysin) are below. This system operates as shown in FIG. 1; nucleic acid polymers are threaded through the α-toxin pore as shown, and the monomeric charges and physical obstruction alter ionic conductance through the pore. Because the purine and pyrimidine bases in the polynucleotide have differing molecular sizes and chemical properties, a specific ionic current will flow as each nucleotide enters and passes through the channel, thus electro-sensing the monomer sequence in the linear polymer.
Bilayer Recordings from α-Hemolysin
For these experiments, the bacterial pore-forming protein from S. aureus, α-hemolysin, forms a heptamer that spontaneously embeds in lipid bilayers, producing a current conducting channel. α-hemolysin forms a robust channel which has the appropriate diameter to admit a single stranded DNA polymer. Furthermore, it can remain open for indefinite time periods when subjected to a continuous voltage gradient. Diphytanoyl phosphatidylcholine was used to form lipid bilayer membranes across 0.2 mm holes in a Teflon film separating two compartments containing buffer solution of the following composition: 1 M NaCl, 10 mM Tris, pH 7.4 (Montal et al., 1972, PNAS, 69: 3561). In initial, multi-channel experiments, α-hemolysin was added to the cis side of the bilayer and approximately 10 channels were allowed to incorporate into the bilayer before excess α-hemolysin was removed. Voltage applied across the bilayer was then varied from 0 mV to 140 mV. Under the buffer conditions used, the channels were continuously open before addition of polynucleotide. After addition of poly A to the cis chamber, the channels began to exhibit transient blockades at potentials greater than 100 mV. Similar effects were seen with poly C and poly U polymer additions. Significantly, the blockades only occurred when the voltage was applied in the direction expected to produce electrophoretic movements of a poly-anion like RNA from the cis to the trans side of the channel, i.e., only when the trans side was positive.
Further experiments with single channels demonstrated many well-resolved individual channel blockades in the presence of poly A, poly C, or poly U molecules (for example, see FIG. 4). Qualitatively, the number of transient blockades was proportional to the concentration of polynucleotide. Typical current blockades exhibited 85-95% reductions of current amplitude and lasted up to several milliseconds. Because the polynucleotide preparations used in these experiments contain a range of molecular weights, we could not quantitatively relate blockade duration to polynucleotide length. But qualitatively, average blockade duration was greater when using solutions containing longer RNA polymers (MW 140 kb-170 kb) than when using solutions containing shorter polymers (MW 77 kb-160 kb). Occasionally, long-lived blockades of several seconds or more were observed. These often cleared spontaneously, but could always be cleared by briefly reversing the voltage polarity. Again, there was virtually no effect on the magnitude of channel conductance when the trans side was negative. To verify that the polynucleotides were producing the long-lived blockades, RNAse was added to the RNA in the cis chamber to gradually hydrolyze it. When RNAse was added to polyuridylic oligonucleotides in the cis chamber while transient blockades were being observed, the duration of the transient blockades, but not their amplitude, gradually decreased over a period of several minutes, eventually becoming too short to be detectable.
From these experiments, it is apparent that polynucleotides are not simply binding to the channel and causing it to partially close, because if that were true, the current blockades would not depend on the polarity of the voltage gradient. Our interpretation is that ionic current through a channel can be modulated by passage of single polymer strands. This interpretation is supported by the fact that ribonuclease decreases the duration but not the amplitude of the current blockades. It is also consistent with our observation that circular singlestranded molecules appear to produce virtually no blockades and that double-stranded molecules with single stranded ends produce only indefinitely long-lived blockades.
Relationship between Polymer Length and Channel Blockade Duration
To determine the relation between chain length and duration of the current blockade, we used samples of synthetic short (.about.320 nt) and long (.about.1,100 nt) polyuridylic oligonucleotides that we size-selected by gel electrophoresis. These experiments have been repeated, with several independently purified polyuridylic acid samples which gave consistent results. Using polymers whose chain length centered around 320 nt, about 35% of the recorded current blockades had lifetimes of around 2.1 msec at 120 mV (FIG. 5A), and around 1.7 msec at 140 mV (data not shown), with the remaining signals having short lifetimes of <1 msec. We presume that the short duration blockades represent polymers that interact with the channel (e.g., loops of polymer that come to lie on the channel aperture, without fully entering and traversing the channel). We attribute the clear peak of blockades centered around 2.1 msec or 1.7 msec (depending on applied voltage) to polymers that have traversed the channel, because: 1) Based on the consistency of the peak position from run to run, the shift in peak position from 2.1 msec at 120 mV to 1.7 msec at 140 mV is statistically significant and hard to explain by any model other than a polymer being threaded through the channel; 2) When RNA that had not been size-selected (e.g., RNA containing the full range of polymer lengths from 250 nt to 1600 nt) was used, we detected the corresponding full range of blockade durations rather than durations that exhibited a "narrow" peak (as seen in FIGS. 5A and 5B); and 3) Experiments with the ca 1,100 nt polymers have shown a peak centered around 5.8-6 msec at 140 mV (FIG. 5B). If one assumes a linear relationship between polymer size and blockade duration, it can be seen that 1100 nt/320 nt=3.4 and that 3.4Ã1.7 msec=5.8 msec, lending credibility to the accuracy of the methods of the invention for measuring polymer length by measuring signal duration.
Sequencing Two Different Oligonucleotide Homopolymers
To determine if a mixture of two different oligonucleotide homopolymers in one chamber of the methods of the invention can be sequenced, α-hemolysin pores were generated in lipid bilayers as described in Example 5 above and in Kasianowicz et al., 1996, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 93: 13770-13773.
As a control, the current blockages caused by polycytidylic and polyadenylic oligonucleotides of 200 nucleotide average length were measured. FIG. 6A shows that the polycytidylic oligonucleotides decreased ionic current flow to a consistent 7 pA. In contrast, FIG. 6B shows that the polyadenylic oligonucleotides decreased ionic current to a consistent 15 pA. When the polycytidylic and polyadenylic oligonucleotides were introduced into the same chamber and ionic current flows measured (FIG. 6C), the two types of oligonucleotides were distinguishable. FIG. 6C shows that, while polycytidylic oligonucleotide traversal through the pore lead to current decreases to 7 pA as expected, the polyadenylic oligonucleotide traversal through the pore led to current decreases to 15 pA.
Sequencing an Oligonucleotide Heteropolymer
To determine if oligonucleotides containing different nucleotide monomers can be sequenced, α-hemolysin lipid bilayers were formed as described in Example 5 above and in Kasianowicz et al., 1996, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 93: 13770-13773. Oligonucleotides having 30 adenine bases followed by 70 cytosine (5' to 3', polyA30 /C70) bases were added to one side of the lipid bilayer. As indicated in the graph of FIG. 7, the different monomers in each oligonucleotide were distinguished by the consistent blockage of current down to 7 pA for cytosine immediately followed by a blockage of 15 pA for adenine. The oligonucleotides apparently traversed the channels 3' end first.
II. Polymer Analysis by Detection of Monomers at an Interface
A different embodiment of the invention includes a method of characterizing a linear polymer using 1) an interface, generally created by two immiscible liquids, and 2) a monitoring device such as a force transducer or deflection gauge (e.g., using light) to monitor each monomer of the polymer as it passes across the interface. This embodiment of the sequencing invention is encompassed by pulling a single molecule through the interface formed by two immiscible liquids by either mechanical or electrophoretic means. The force required to pull each successive monomer in the polymer through the interface can be measured, or it may be desirable to monitor physical deflections of the interface or other modifications/interactions of the interface by the monomers to register each successive monomer's move through the interface.
Multiple polymer strands have commonly been pulled through a liquid-air interface as a means of separating and purifying polymers from their surrounding liquor. We propose that polymer chains can be similarly pulled through the interface formed by two immiscible liquids. Both the atomic force microscope and optical tweezers are now routinely used in liquid environments to measure atomic and molecular scale forces and movements. A suitably fine probe attached to a force transducer such as those used in atomic force microscopy or in optical tweezers would advance in Angstrom size steps, and have been used to pull double stranded DNA through DNA solutions. If the force required to pull the different monomers of a polymer through the interface differs from one monomer to another, then measuring the force required to pull each successive monomer through the interface will provide a direct determination of the sequence of monomers in the polymer.
The force required to move a chemical group from one phase to a second, immiscible phase is related to its partition coefficient. For the pertinent polymers that could be sequenced by this technique, the partition coefficient for its monomers would differ from each other. For example, the logarithm of the partition coefficients of the DNA monomers adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine in a butanol:water system are, respectively, 2.44, 1.12, 0.45, and -0.68.
A chemical embodiment of this aspect of the invention could be a butanol:water interface, with the underlying aqueous phase containing the polymer to be sequenced. If a fine ceramic, plastic, or metallic probe bearing a suitable charge or chemical group at its tip (e.g., to attract DNA, a positively charged tip; to attract mRNA, oligo dT moieties) is driven through the overlying butanol into the undstick to the prophase, polymer will stick to the probe tip and be pulled through the interface as the tip is withdrawn from the aqueous phase into the butanol phase. Although the initial strand of material that is pulled through the interface may contain multiple individual polymers, inevitably one single polymer strand will be longer than the others or will have stuck to the probe tip in such a fashion that it will be pulled last, and singly, through the interface. Refinements to the probe tip to increase the likelihood of selecting only one polymer may include decreasing the charge or number of chemical moieties.
Because the energy to pull each of the different monomers of a single polymer chain through the interface will reflect the properties of the monomer, recording the force required to pull a single stranded DNA molecule, for instance, through an interface while maintaining a constant slow movement will in effect record the sequence of the polymer.
An alternative method of measuring the transit of monomers from one phase to the other may be the use of optical means as are known in the art to detect the deflection of the interface caused by each monomer. Due to varying physical properties of the monomer (e.g., size, mass, volume), light may be scattered off the interface in predictable ways for each monomer. For instance, directing a laser at the interface and observing the optical deflection using a bi-cell detector may identify individual monomers by their characteristic deflections of light. Alternatively, pulsed laser techniques may be used, with pulses on the order of 10-9 to 10-12 seconds directed at the interface and recorded using a time dependent detector.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52041
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Should You Upgrade or Replace Your Laptop?
When you've owned your laptop for two or three years you'll find yourself wondering whether or not you should buy a new one. Although it might be time to go browse our reviews to find a replacement, don't write off that old system just yet. With a little money and a bit of technical know-how, you can grant your laptop a new lease on life, or at least buy yourself a few more months. To determine if upgrading is the right choice for you, ask yourself the following questions:
Will upgrading solve my problem? If you're simply enduring sluggish performance or you've run out of storage space, then the problem can probably be solved by either increasing your computer's RAM or replacing its hard drive. Other issues have more complicated solutions that may extend further than a basic part swap can fix. For example, if your laptop is unable to play Batman: Arkham City, it may be that you lack the necessary graphics processor, have insufficient RAM, are running short on hard drive space, or are experiencing a combination of all three. Solving this problem with an upgrade may not be possible (adding a discrete graphics card isn't always an option in a laptop), or may be prohibitively expensive or more complicated than you want to take on.
Do I know how to perform this upgrade? Swapping out a part can be as simple as removing a battery and replacing it with a new one, or as complex as opening the laptop case or removing the keyboard. Always research a potential upgrade beforehand to determine if it's feasible given your equipment and comfort with the internals of a system. While broad tutorials are sometimes helpful, laptops vary widely in design and construction, so you'll want to find information for your specific make and model. Resources like iFixit's repair manuals and YouTube tutorials can be invaluable when deciding to undertake a repair or upgrade project.
Is it worth it financially to upgrade a part instead of replacing the laptop? While replacing a laptop outright can quickly ring up a tab of several hundred dollars, individual components are often much more affordable. A battery replacement may run from $20 to $50. It can cost as little as $50 to upgrade a laptop's RAM. A 500GB 2.5-inch internal hard drive costs about $60, but a 480GB solid-state drive (SSD) upgrade kit may sell for $400 or more. A laptop Blu-ray drive can fall anywhere between $40 and $300 depending upon the model and whether you want disc-writing capability. These expenses all grow rapidly if you take your system into a professional instead of upgrading it yourself.
If you've decided that upgrading is your best course of action, then the next thing to figure out is where you should start.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52070
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This Week on p5p 1999/10/31
I'm sorry that this report is late, but I had some serious hardware trouble at home and couldn't work on the report until I fixed my computer. Fortunately traffic was light this week.
It is hard to keep track of everything that happens. As before, please let me know if you have any corrections or additions. Send them to where YYYYMM is the current year and month.
glob case-sensitivity
This discussion continued from last week. Paul Moore said that he would try to resolve some of the issues with the new built-in globber under Windows. ( \ vs. /, what to do when the underlying filesystem is case-insensitive, etc.) Read about it.
The issues seemed to get thornier and thornier. For example, what do you do with glob("C:*")? On Unix systems, you would like it to look in the current directory for files beginning with C:. But on Win32 systems you would like it to look on the disk labeled C. Nevertheless Paul submitted a partial patch.
I looked for a remark from Sarathy, but I did not see one.
Perl under UNICOS
Jarkko has been making sure that Perl works on UNICOS, which I gather is a version of Unix that runs on Crays. But his Cray is going away, and he needs someone else to take over, or to give him access to a UNICOS machine. If you can do this, please contact him. If you don't know how to contact him, contact me.
New perlthread man page
Dan Sugalski updated his proposed perlthread man page.
Threading and explicit unlocking
Last week's discussion of the proposed perlthread man page split into two interesting digressions. This is the first one: At present, a lock is released when control leaves the dynamic scope in which it was first obtained.
Usually this is what you want and takes care of releasing locks at the right times. Tuomas Lukka suggested that there also be an explicit unlock function for releasing a lock prematurely.
Sarathy said he'd prefer an interface that lets you store a lock into a variable as if it were an object; then its release semantics would be the same as for any other value. It would be released when the variable was destroyed, whether that was at the end of the block or by an explicit undef. Read about it.
Threading and Regexes
Rob Cunningham reports that he and Brian Mancuso at MIT are working on fixing regexes, which do not always work properly in threaded Perl. This is obviously very important. One issue is the global variables like $1. If two threads try to write into $1 simultaneously, the result is backreference goulash. But there are a huge bunch of other global variables used internally by the regex engine for storing the current state and for getting the /egismosx flags from Perl and so on. All of these present thread hazards.
Rob: Brian reports that perl REGEXP code is nasty stuff, or we'd be done by now.
Ilya said that he was also planning on removing most of the internal global variables when he gets some time.
pack t Template
First a preamble: There is already new pack template syntax already in the development version of Perl. Normally, if you want to pack three characters of string data, you write something like pack "A3", $data. But what if you don't know in advance how much data there will be? The new feature is that you can write pack "N/A*", $data and pack will back an N-sized byte count of the data in $data, followed by the actual data. Then you use unpack with a similar template to tell it to unpack the byte count and then to extract the appropriate amount of data from the string.
Ilya had idea for extending this so that the unpack function can actually figure out what the template is. He says he is just throwing it out for discussion, and not trying to get his patch included in the core. Ilya's idea is to add a new unpack specifier t, which says to extract a certain number of characters from the input string, and then use those characters as a template for unpacking the rest of the string. If you write t12, then the next 12 characters of the string are the template for the rest. If you write N/t then unpack will unpack an N to yield a number n and then pretend that you wrote Tn as is usual with /. Ilya adds one last trick: / by itself is a synonym for t/t.
Now what is the point of all this? The string can carry instructions for unpacking itself. For example, suppose you want to deliver the four strings "a", "bc", "def", "ghij". You would like to send these along with the template A1 A2 A3 A4. If you sent the single string "A1 A2 A3 A4abcdefghij" then the receiver could unpack this with a template of t11. Unfortunately, they still need to know that the template itself will be 11 characters long, but you can fix that. Add A211 at the begginng of the string, and have the receiver use a template of t2/t. The t2 says to get a 2-byte template, that's the A2, and then to unpack the following data according to that template, so it gets the 11. Then it uses the 11 as a byte count for the following t. Unfortunately, the receiver still has to know that the initial template is t2/t. But after some further transformations it turns out that if you use the template t with the string "/A4t2/tA211A1 A2 A3 A4abcdefghij" then the receiver needs to know nothing about the data format, and can retrieve all the data. There are some other parts of the proposal for embedding references into teplates. The entire proposal is here if you want to see it.
Greg McCarroll: i look forward to the first CGI questions on comp.lang.pack.misc.
Several people said that the thought it was too complicated, or that they did not see the point, or that they would like to see a real-world example. (Ilya has not provided one.) Joshua Pritikin made what I thought was the most cogent comment: Why not just include Storable in the core distribution?
Happy Birthday CPAN!
CPAN first went online at 14:28:58 26 Oct 1995. Thanks you, Jarkko!
Elaine Ashton: Only 4 years! One wonders what the next 4 years will bring.
Local Address in LWP
People have been asking Gisle for a way to default the LocalAddr parameter for LWP. That is, they want to be able to specify a default for the local address to which an outgoing LWP socket is bound. Gisle could have added this as a new feature of LWP, but he thought it would be more generally useful to put it directly into IO::Socket::INET. He submitted a patch to that module that defaults the LocalAddr parameter from an environment variable if it is not explicitly set.
There was some discussion here, but it seemed to me that it missed the point of what Gisle was trying to do.
Return of ref prototype
Last week Jeff Pinyan posted a complaint about the behavior of a function prototyped with (;$). He wants print f arg1, arg2 to be parsed as if he had written print f(arg1), arg2. At present, Perl aborts, complaining that f got two arguments and expected at most one. Discussion of this got sidetracked last week.
Mike Guy pointed out that this problem also occurs when you are trying to write a function that behaves like rand: The prototype of rand is supposedly ($), but if you create a function myrand with that prototype, then print myrand, myrand; aborts with a syntax error although print rand, rand; works.
Prototypes were added to Perl so that user functions could get the syntax benefits that the built-in functions enjoyed. But some functions still can't be imitated with prototypes. In addition to ref and rand, neither of printf or tie can be so imitated.
Andy Dougherty is patching Configure to have it find out what sort of Linux it is running on, if it is is running on Linux. This might solve Tom's problem from last week.
sort improvements
Peter Haworth submitted an improved version of his patch for sort. He says he has benchmarked the new sort with several trivial comparator functions and performance is not bad at all. (If it were slower, you would expect to see the greatest difference with a trivial comparator.) You still cannot use an XSUB as a sort comparator function, but Peter is working on that. Reread what I said last week.
The patch. enhancements.
Jenda Krynicky wants to enhance
[] presently lets you write a function call echo("hello", "world!") and if there is no echo function already defined, it will invoke the shell's echo command. It also has a new constructor that returns a reference to a fnuction that invokes a shell command. Jenda wants to be able to give the constructor some extra parameters to tell it to throw away the STDERR and to be able to pre-supply arguments to the function.
Jenda wanted to get some comments about this proposal before getting started on it, but nobody seemed to have anything to say about it.
Time Zone Output
Todd Olson complained that there was no easy way to obtain the current time zone in numeric format. (For example, -0400 instead of EDT or -0700 instead of PST. He points out that it would be wasteful to write a function to compute this value: The value must be inside there somewhere already, because it is used to compute localtime(). Todd wants someone to add another %-escape to the POSIX module's strftime function that will format and display the time zone in numeric format. However, he did not provide a patch.
Python Consortium Forms
Randal Schwartz reposted an announcement about a new Python Consortium.
Sarathy did not say `yikes' this week.
A large collection of bug reports, bug fixes, non-bug reports, questions, answers, and a small amount of flamage and spam.
Until next week I remain, your humble and obedient servant,
Mark-Jason Dominus
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Hey mhorvat42, is easy to setup.
first get into the file manager and make a folder and chmod it using their utility at the bottom of the file manager to 777, then ftp in or write your script and put it in that folder and chmod it to 755, then just go in your web browser and type in the URL, it should execute easily.
In reply to Re: getting a cgi script working by lolindrath
in thread getting a cgi script working by mhorvat42
and: <code> code here </code>
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P is for Practical
by Voronich (Hermit)
on Oct 17, 2001 at 21:19 UTC ( #119480=user: print w/ replies, xml ) Need Help??
Well I DID have links to social media sites up here, probably for about a month. Seemed like a good idea. But I've now abandoned all of them (but for, which is hardly "social media") so away they go.
erm... I ain't got squat here, though I probably should. jdporter suggested putting other social networking site links here, which sure makes sense (after all, I actually LIKE you people.)
Ooh! Stats!
Troof and teh funny from teh ceebee:
erix: client is king, Voronich ;-)
erix: they sound like a headache all right...
Voronich: client can kiss my ass
thezip copies that acronym... CCKMA
Tanktalus: Voronich stats: Member for: 3585.918 days, Experience: 729 (0.203 per day, or 1 per 4 22:03:17 d) (Pilgrim {8}), Writeups: 48 (0.013 per day, or 1 per 74 16:57:32 d), Which makes it 15.188 XP per writeup!
I really need to put something else up here.
luis.roca: Speaking of whole in the wall. We have a new taco/burrito place. They don't even have printed (nicely) menus. Handed my wife a photo copy. ++ #gutsToStartABusiness
luis.roca: lamb, tilapia and cow's tongue among the options for taco/burrito
Voronich: Yeesh!
Voronich muses on the notion of tongue taco in abject disgust.
luis.roca: Oh you aint lived till you've tasted something that can taste you back! ;-))
Voronich looks over his glasses at luis.roca. Listen son, you want a conversation like that, I'll have one.
luis.roca: :-))
Voronich: as a general principle I agree with you.
Re: Serena PVCS:
Voronich: Yeah, it's... horrid. I'd almost prefer clearcase over this. Though I confess it's really the client software that drives me to violence.
Corion: I should prepare a statement like "V was always a helpful member of the community. Never would we have suspected that he was using his workshop to do these things. Our sympathy is with the victims and their families." :-)
MidLifeXis: we had two of those in only a couple of weeks by me. wonder if I need to start looking for a new place to live (mars, perhaps)
SuicideJunkie: We're trying to get away from MKS here. Its pretty slow, and the search will fail (timeout) if you have more than one term in it. And you've gotta pay lots for the user level that lets you checkpoint things...
Corion: Maybe I should even prepare this as madlib statement generator... "The Colonel was always a helpful member of the community. Never would we have suspected that He was using The Pipe in The Library to do these things. Our sympathy is with the victims ..."
MidLifeXis: :-)
Voronich thinks that would be a really good idea. Corion++
koolgirl Hmm, choroba doesn't seem that Regexp::Common has emails covered, it's promised in the future though
choroba koolgirl: Oh, I see. Maybe tye should submit a patch then?
tye you can file a bug and point to that node. I have no desire to try to figure out the (likely) bizarre machinations that are used to provide Regexp::Common's interface in order to extend it. :)
tye (I attended a talk where Abigail said that such a magical, unconventional interface was a really bad idea and made the module way too hard to maintain.)
choroba I was rather joking than really suggesting :)
Tanktalus It's nice that it interpolates into other regexes so easily. But, having said that, even as a user I boggle at its interface. So if someone came up with a less unicorn-like interface with the same feature set otherwise, I'd be happy to switch :)
tobyink It's not especiallu hard to force an arbitrary expression to interpolate though: @{...} or ${\(...)}
Tanktalus tobyink: er... um ... yeah, that's a bit ugly. But if it made RE easier to maintain, and thus updates/added features more often, then I could accept that (though I'd likely use a separate variable for it :D )
jellisii2 jellisii2 saves "Unicorn-like interface" for future use
ww 2013-04-01 19:41:11 UTC
++ jdporter. Thats just too great!
jellisii2 2013-04-01 19:39:11 UTC
Doooo iiiiiiit...
jellisii2 2013-04-01 19:39:04 UTC
Business cards.
Voronich 2013-04-01 19:38:29 UTC
Voronich facepalms. jdporter++
tye 2013-04-01 19:38:17 UTC
(that was the point)
jellisii2 2013-04-01 19:37:49 UTC
Its acronym is wholly accurate tho.
tye 2013-04-01 19:36:31 UTC
jdporter, clearly
SuicideJunkie 2013-04-01 19:35:57 UTC
Who came up with that title?
Voronich 2013-04-01 19:35:44 UTC
Voronich is suspicious of the phrases "outreach initiative" and "focus group"
jellisii2 2013-04-01 19:35:14 UTC
jdporter 2013-04-01 19:33:02 UTC
and my boss has given me permission to launch an outreach initiative called the Operations and Maintenance Focus Group
jdporter 2013-04-01 19:32:13 UTC
so, at work, I'm a member of the Operations and Maintenance Group
What is best in life: (4/17/2013)
jdporter: so as I was leaving for working this morning, giving my wife a hug, my little monkey comes running over -- "Sandwich hug! Sandwich hug!"
jdporter: And then: "Ugh! Too tight! Next time, can I be one of the breads?!"
Voronich gah. "all my documents are gone! Help me obi-wan" says the redhead with the pigtails.
MidLifeXis .oO( this is not the girl you are looking for... )
Voronich No. but it's certainly the one I'm looking at. All curvey and "this is how I imagined pippy longstocking growing up"y.
MidLifeXis MidLifeXis stifles a spittake.
QM QM looks around for surrogate readhead...
jellisii2 o.0
jellisii2 to quote comedic genius: "B: Pinky, AYPWIP? P: I think so, Brain, but me and Pippi Longstocking... I mean, what would the children look like?"
MidLifeXis Baah! <=== lost it
jellisii2 I hope I don't owe anyone a keyboard.
Voronich jellisii2++
Voronich Bah. yes you do.
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"be consistent"
Re: machine accuracy
by Maclir (Curate)
on Jun 18, 2003 at 12:43 UTC ( #266802=note: print w/ replies, xml ) Need Help??
in reply to machine accuracy
Are you concerned about accuracy or precision? In general, accuracy is "how close to the correct value is my answer", while precision is "how many significant digits does my answer contain."
What you are describing is precision - and as someone else mentioned, bignum could be your friend. However, once you start manipulating high precision values, you need to make sure your numerical methods do not reduce your accuracy. In the dim, dark past, I did an honours-level university applied math subject that dealt with how to structure calculations so that numerical rounding errors did not accumulate and destroy your accuracy. Sadly, I have forgotten much of it!
Comment on Re: machine accuracy
Re: Re: machine accuracy
by maksl (Pilgrim) on Jun 18, 2003 at 16:18 UTC
thx Maclir for clarifying the definitions.
i'm interested as the title and the little formula indicates in the accuracy, which as physician i would describe in analogy to a statistical random walk depending on the square root of how many times you walk(multiplicate) multiplicated with the inevitable machine inaccuracy.
"how close to the correct value is my answer" permits some level of trust to the data, doesn't it?
but please tell more if you can dig up :)
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Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister
Re: No conflict [Re: In praise of curiosity]
by Anonymous Monk
on Jul 28, 2003 at 12:49 UTC ( #278409=note: print w/ replies, xml ) Need Help??
in reply to No conflict [Re: In praise of curiosity]
in thread In praise of curiosity
It seems to me that you are just agreeing with gmax.
He is not saying that Catholics can't be curious, but rather that in Catholic influenced culture there is a strong social belief against curiosity.
So he says to go over the social convention and be curious nonetheless.
I don't see any reason for a religious dispute.
Read again his answer to chromatic.
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These nodes all have stuff by ingy (showing 1-2 out of ~2?):
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549193 Re: YAML module issue 2006-05-13 07:06
536804 Re: Module::Compile (or: what's this PMC thingy?) 2006-03-15 10:44
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52090
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Psoriasis: Chronic Discomfort
A skin disorder influenced by the immune system, psoriasis causes scaling and inflammation in up to 7 and a half million people in the United States. It occurs when skin renews itself too quickly, and immature skin cells pile up on the surface of the skin.
Psoriasis usually causes patches of thick, red skin covered with silvery scales. These patches, called plaques, itch, are sore, and frequently occur on the elbows, knees, scalp, lower back, face and palms.
Psoriasis treatment depends on the severity of the disease and its symptoms. Topical steroids and retinoids, light treatment and oral medications are all options.
Talking to Your Dermatologist About Psoriasis
Since it looks like many other dermatological diseases, psoriasis can sometimes be hard to diagnose. Your dermatologist may take a small biopsy to make a conclusive diagnosis.
When deciding on a treatment, you and your dermatologist may discuss the severity of the condition, your age and medical history, the disease's effect on your physical comfort and psychological well-being, and where the psoriasis plaques are located.
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Phone Scoop
printed July 29, 2014
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Wireless Data
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Cannot Push via Bluetooth on Kyocera Strobe (K612B)
by silverbluemoon Mar 14, 2009, 1:10 AM
My Kyocera's screen started going haywire so I called my MetroPCS insurance company and got a replacement: a Motorola SLVR L7. Now I need to get my old pics off the Kyocera and onto the SLVR. I went to the MetroPCS office and they told me to contact Asurion, the insurance company and see if they couldn't reactivate that phone temporarily so I can email myself my pics. When I called Asurion, they agreed to do this, but the reactivation never took place. So today I called back and they told me to take my phone into a MetroPCS office - I explained I already had and that they had sent me back to Asurion. She said that she would be unable to re-activate that phone, so if I had Bluetooth on both phones (which I do), I could link them and push my pics to the SLVR. They mated perfectly.
Here's where my woes are worse - there is NO OPTION anywhere that I can find that allows me to "send via bluetooth" or "copy via bluetooth" when I select a picture. Maybe i'm doing it wrong? I admit I'm a noob to transferring data with bluetooth - any advice or help would really be appreciated, as I am about to lose 50+ images if I can't get them off the phone. Once I send it back to Asurion, they will wipe the phone's data. Losing these pics would honestly be devastating to me.
One other thing i noticed? I don't have the "Send via bluetooth" option on the SLVR either (that I can find anyways). Both phones says "Object PUSH" is active in their list of services. Maybe I need to enable "send via bluetooth" somewhere?? Ugh, please help!
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« Jabber::mod_perl 0.15 released | Main | SAP::Rfc 0.15 for Ruby »
March 30, 2006
Builiding Perl SAP::Rfc for win32
If you have a need to build SAP::Rfc for Perl (and this can be probably made to work for Ruby, and Python too), then this is for you. Olivier Boudry, who has been faithfully maintaining win32 PPM build for me, has given comprehensive instructions on how-to build with the "free" Visual Studio version called VS Express 2005.
This can be found at: How-to build SAP::Rfc on Windows using Visual Studio Express 2005
Many thanks Olivier.
Posted by PiersHarding at March 30, 2006 3:51 PM
Whenever I run reg.pl (in your examples ), I always get error as follows, accept() can't loop:
**** Trace file opened at 20060412 083541 Eastern Daylig, SAP-REL 640,0,7 RFC-VER 3 643653 MT-SL
*> RfcAcceptExt: -a IDOCREP -g ma1uh208 -x sapgw00 -t
*> RfcRegisterProgram ...
Server Program ID = IDOCREP
Host name of Gateway = ma1uh208
Service of Gateway = 3300
RFC-Trace = ON
SNC Own Name =
SNC Library Name =
RFC Handle = 1
LOCATION CPIC (TCP/IP) on local host
ERROR internal error
(this retcode should be handled by caller of NI-layer)
TIME Wed Apr 12 08:35:41 2006
COMPONENT NI (network interface)
RC -8
I've tried different versions of SAP::Rfc, including the latest 1.41, the return is always the same. I googled the error and found no valuable search results, so that I have to beg you for help.
Any input is greatly appreciated.
Posted by: James at April 12, 2006 1:32 PM
Hi James,
Have you checked what port your gateway is listening on?
Also - have you checked the entry in SM59.
Posted by: Piers Harding at April 15, 2006 11:16 AM
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Enter your email address to receive our daily LGBT news roundup
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Canada: Census may have erroneously counted roommates as same-sex couples
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Comments on this article are now closed.
Reader comments
1. same conclusions could be drawn with a man and a woman sharing who are migrant workers married to a person in another house.
1. There’s an important difference. Same-sex marriages are relatively rare, and so a fairly small number of misidentified straight migrant workers could account for a significant proportion of the total same-sex couples reported in the census. Different-sex marriages are much more common, so the effect of a few misidentified migrants is proportionately much smaller.
1. yea but how many are classed as being in a different sex marriage when they are actually not?
1. A tiny proportion, for the reasons I just explained.
2. Who really cares…the fact remains that this is an error in statistical reporting rather than a discussion about same sex marriage. Canada is light years ahead of the UK and whatever the case, it must follow that since same-sex marriage was legalized in Canada there will be a significant increase. I am Canadian, I live in the UK right now for work, with my Canadian husband…we married in Toronto and love it !! Shame the Brits ate denied that equality that we take for granted…
3. I’m thinking college jocks!
4. just about compensates for all the gays still in the closet!
5. Cardinal Capone 21 Sep 2012, 6:39pm
I noticed not one single positive story in all the headliners at the moment.
Come on PN, show us some good news!
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A Tribute On My Arm
Written by: Ruth Courtney
A tap on the shoulder
The call of your name
Your next for a boarder
A tattoo in the game
I was so bored
My day was so lame
I had played all the fairs games
So I made myself a bracelet
With all my favorites names
We saw the singers preform
And now their here for ever
Right here on my arm
Here to permanently endeavor
In the heat of the sun
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52192
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Gavin Rossdale Admits to Gay Fling with Cross-Dressing SingerGavin Rossdale is digging up his past to get back into music by reuniting with Bush, but other regrettable parts of his past have snuck up on him. In a revealing interview with DETAILS, Rossdale confirmed a year-old report that he had a one-time gay fling in his teens with a cross-dressing pop star named "Marilyn." As if he didn't have enough drama in his life being married to Gwen Stefani, he also talks about struggling to be a father to his newly-discovered adult daughter.
When asked about the report that he had an affair with a cross-dresser and why he hadn't talked about it, Rossdale was modestly blunt.
"I think at the outset there was a sort of fear -- that that right at the beginning of Bush, and I didn't want to be apart of it," Rossdale says. "I've never wanted to appear closed about it. It's not something I've talked about really because it's always been in the glare of the tabloid world. It's just one of those things: Move on. When you're 17, Jesus Christ. I don't think there's anything strange about any form of -- you're learning about life. It's part of growing up. That's it. No more, no less."
Rossdale was then asked if it was more than one time, and he said it was only once.
"Yeah. That was it," Rossdale says. "You have to know what you like, and I know what I like."
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Ass Fucked Stories
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Wide Hips Perky Breasts
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PostgreSQL can be built using the Visual C++ compiler suite from Microsoft. These compilers can be either from Visual Studio, Visual Studio Express or some versions of the Microsoft Windows SDK. If you do not already have a Visual Studio environment set up, the easiest ways are to use the compilers in the Windows SDK 7.1 or those from Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop, which are both free downloads from Microsoft.
PostgreSQL is known to support compilation using the compilers shipped with Visual Studio 2005 to Visual Studio 2012 (including Express editions), as well as standalone Windows SDK releases 6.0 to 7.1. 64-bit PostgreSQL builds are only supported with Microsoft Windows SDK version 6.0a to 7.1 or Visual Studio 2008 and above.
The tools for building using Visual C++, are in the src/tools/msvc directory. When building, make sure there are no tools from MinGW or Cygwin present in your system PATH. Also, make sure you have all the required Visual C++ tools available in the PATH. In Visual Studio, start the Visual Studio Command Prompt. If you wish to build a 64-bit version, you must use the 64-bit version of the command, and vice versa. In the Microsoft Windows SDK, start the CMD shell listed under the SDK on the Start Menu. In recent SDK versions you can change the targeted CPU architecture by using the setenv command. All commands should be run from the src\tools\msvc directory.
16.1.1. Requirements
Microsoft Windows SDK
If your build environment doesn't ship with a supported version of the Microsoft Windows SDK it is recommended that you upgrade to the latest version (currently version 7.1), available for download from
You must always include the Windows Headers and Libraries part of the SDK. If you install a Windows SDK including the Visual C++ Compilers, you don't need Visual Studio to build. Note that as of Version 8.0a the Windows SDK no longer ships with a complete command-line build environment.
ActiveState Perl
ActiveState TCL
Bison and Flex
Bison and Flex are required to build from Git, but not required when building from a release file. Note that only Bison 1.875 or versions 2.2 and later will work. Also, Flex version 2.5.31 or later is required. Bison can be downloaded from Flex can be downloaded from If you are using msysGit for accessing the PostgreSQL Git repository you probably already have recent versions of bison and flex in your Git binary directory.
MIT Kerberos
Required for Kerberos authentication support. MIT Kerberos can be downloaded from
libxml2 and libxslt
Required for building PL/Python. Binaries can be downloaded from
16.1.2. Special Considerations for 64-bit Windows
16.1.3. Building
build DEBUG
build psql
build DEBUG psql
16.1.4. Cleaning and Installing
install c:\destination\directory
16.1.5. Running the Regression Tests
vcregress check
vcregress installcheck
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vcregress check serial
For more information about the regression tests, see Chapter 30.
16.1.6. Building the Documentation
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Privacy Policy | About PostgreSQL
Copyright © 1996-2014 The PostgreSQL Global Development Group
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52288
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If the academic career has its heroic obligations, as William James once said, these must include occasionally defending the truth, despite personal risks and without personal rancor.
It is in this spirit that I comment on the debates around DSM-5 involving Allen Frances, MD, whose views seem to elicit sympathy from many unhappy with the DSM system (the 4th edition of which Dr Frances led). In the course of some exchanges with him in writing and on blogs, it seems to me that this is his guiding idea: “Pragmatism” should be the central basis of DSM-5. Or, in his own words, “To my mind, by far the most important [diagnostic] validator is how will any decision help or harm patient care, given the foreseeable circumstances under which it will be used.”1
At one level, this is not unreasonable: there are important practical aspects to DSM. It is used not just by doctors to treat patients, but—unfortunately—by lawyers to sue doctors; by patients to diagnose themselves; by academics to teach students . . . in short, by the whole culture. Long ago, some argued that we should have 2 handbooks: one you might call the “real” DSM, which would have our best science and our most advanced knowledge and would be used for research and practice. The other you might call the “practical” DSM, which would be how we would define things so that lawyers would not bring frivolous lawsuits and students would not misunderstand, and so on. Unfortunately, our one DSM tries to be all things to everyone, and we are left with having to prioritize.
Which matters most: pragmatism or science?
Dr Frances’ answer: common sense. But one might ask, whose common sense? First and foremost, Dr Frances says, “Do no harm.” If expanding a diagnosis, for example, bipolar disorder type II, would lead to use of more harmful drugs, such as neuroleptics, then don’t expand it. If adding a new diagnosis, for example, sexual disorders, would lead to more lawsuits, then don’t add it. Now this makes some sense, especially when one thinks of curbing lawyers. This approach would be fine if there was no truth to the matter. The problem is simple and serious: this is psychiatric gerrymandering. We have one person, or a small committee of self-appointed berexperts in DSM, overseeing the rest of the world’s experts in the science of each diagnosis, nipping and tucking proposed criteria so that our diagnostic experts will be able to feel that good outweighs harm as of 1994 (for DSM-IV). Even if one accepts this approach, one problem is that the balance of good versus harm in 1994 is not the same as in 2004 or 2014.
Look how internal medicine handles it: they have plenty of lawsuits, profit-seeking pharmaceutical companies, and lots of dangerous drugs. But they don’t make their diagnostic definitions reliant primarily on “how will any decision help or harm patient care, given the foreseeable circumstances under which it will be used.” Here are 2 parallel timelines.
The first time line, lasting 56 years:
• 1892: DSM-I for internal medicine, The Principles and Practice of Medicine, by William Osler. The causes of pneumonia are unknown, the treatments ineffective, the outcome mortal; but Osler describes the many features of pneumonias in careful, honest detail.
• 1948: 56 years, and 16 editions, later, and 28 years after his death, the last version of Osler’s textbook comes out the same year as the first randomized clinical trial of any drug, streptomycin for tuberculosis pneumonia.
The second time line, lasting 58 years to date:
• 1952: DSM-I for psychiatry, an administrative document for classifying hospitalizations.
• 1968: DSM-II, a slim document of neuroses and psychoses, largely ignored by practitioners, and mostly used for insurance documentation.
• 1980: DSM-III, a doubling of diagnoses, the use of the word “disorder” to avoid saying what is disease and what is not, but the first attempt to base diagnoses on scientific research (as Osler had done).
• 1994: DSM-IV, another growth of diagnoses by about a third, with small changes based on science and many other changes based on “pragmatism.”
• 2013: DSM-5, planned.
Which timeline had the greatest practical results? Without Osler’s clinical detail and scientific rigor in diagnosis, the antibiotic revolution would not have been so easily applied to medical practice. Think about it: we have plenty of drugs in psychiatry, but we do not seem to know which patients should get them, and which should not. Some of us use them practically indiscriminately; others hardly at all—depending on our personal tastes, or the preferences of our patients. We boomerang between pharmaceutical libertinism and puritanism. Because of the “pragmatic” approach, we have been doomed, for an entire generation, to failure in biological and treatment studies. No wonder, when one realizes that DSM-IV was specifically and consciously designed to satisfy the personal views of its writers as to what is harmful, rather than to try to match up reasonably well to nature or to our knowledge of disease.
Here is a key example of this false pragmatism. An arbitrary criterion introduced into DSM-IV was not based on scientfic evidence but rather on the “pragmatic” concern that bipolar disorder (BD) should not be overdiagnosed. DSM-IV suggests that antidepressant-induced mania should not “count” as BD; instead, it should be labeled substance-induced mood disorder. Most clinicians have followed this approach as if this condition was part of the diagnosis for major depressive disorder (MDD). Reasonable scientific evidence disproves this assumption. A systematic review of the results of 109 stud-ies that included 114,521 patients found that antidepressant-induced mania was 2.6 times higher with BD than with MDD (15.3% vs 6.0%, respectively).2
Dr Frances writes: “The scientific literature is usually limited, never easy to generalize to the real world and always subject to differing interpretations.”3 If scores of studies with over 100,000 patients are still “always” subject to “differing interpretations,” then what kind of scientific data would ever be plausibly acceptable? The best-designed studies find even more of a difference: The STAR*D study has not yet even published manic switch rates in its over 3000 MDD patients treated with antidepressants because hardly anyone got manic, which means that much less than 1% of the total sample experienced antidepressant-induced mania. In contrast, studies of BD, including the Systematic Treatment Enhancement Program for Bipolar Disorder, have generally found antidepressant-related manic switch rates, at the lowest, in about 5% of patients, ranging to up to 50% of patients with some agents.4
Another example: Dr Frances apparently strongly opposes reducing the cutoff for hypomania from 4 days to 2 or 3 days. Yet there was never a single study that established 4 days as a scientifically valid criterion for hypomania; this was just the commonsense opinion of those who wrote DSM-IV. There are now 2 well-conducted studies that show that less than 4 days adequately picks out BD from MDD based on the standard diagnostic validators, both from private practice or community settings, not the ivory tower academic setting (which Dr Frances frequently presumes is the case). In one study by the late Franco Benazzi,5 246 persons with bipolar II disorder were compared with 178 persons with MDD, using the DSM-IV Structured Clinical Interview, and differences were assessed based on the 4-day definition of hypomania versus 2 to 3 days. There was no difference in diagnostic validators (such as early age at onset, depressive recurrence, atypical feature specifier, depressive mixed state and bipolar family history) for the shorter versus longer hypomania duration definitions. Four days does not pick out anything diagnostically different from 2 to 3 days.
These results have been replicated in other studies, including the longest prospective study in mood disorders, that of Dr Jules Angst, who has followed patients for over 40 years in the Zurich cohort study. Angst was the person whose research was key to the whole definition of MDD as separate from BD in DSM-III in 1980. Angst also finds that brief hypomania, defined as 1 to 3 days in duration, is no different from longer hypomania in any diagnos-tic validators (such as family history of mood disorders, age at onset of illness, suicide attempts, treatment history, legal problems, depressive phenomenology, and hypomanic symptom phenomenology).6,7
Why were Dr Angst’s data—from the exact same study by the exact same researcher—central to making the major changes for MDD in DSM-III, but unworthy of being considered at all for much smaller changes for DSM-5 now? The dichotomy between science and pragmatism is false, as long as science meets reasonable standards of quality, as in the above studies.
Let me add that if scientific studies refute these data, then I will accept them. In the absence of such studies, though, the “pragmatic” (ie, personal) opinions of self-appointed DSM berexperts should not be the final word. A critic may say these studies have problems X, Y, and Z. Fine. All studies have limitations, but this does not mean that all data are useless. Show me studies C and D to refute A and B. Otherwise, studies A and B will be the best evidence we have, and no one’s personal opinions should be seen as more correct than those data. Certainly, sometimes data are too limited and studies too flawed, in which case opinion rules; but Frances takes this approach even in cases where good studies and legitimate data exist. (A 40-year prospective cohort study is as good as any nosological study supporting practically any DSM-IV diagnosis.) This attitude, if perpetuated from DSM-IV to DSM-5, would only ensure that our diagnostic system will continue to reflect the opinions of its writers and be a consciously artificial system, dooming all biological and treatment research, and ensuring that we will never improve our diagnoses based on scientific research.
The idea of pragmatism has an honorable genealogy. Invented by the 19th century philosopher and mathematician Charles Sanders Peirce, pragmatism meant that we should judge the truth or falsity of our ideas not by some inherent quality but by their results in experience; a theory is tested in an experiment and the results of the experiment verify or falsify the theory. This is what Peirce—and later philosophers William James and John Dewey—meant by pragmatism. They did not set up pragmatism as an alternative to science. They did not say our “pragmatic” opinions should outweigh science. They all believed science has the highest priority, and they said so, knowing fully that science has its limits, that it can often be wrong—more: that it is always wrong to some extent. And that it can be misused, as in some of the pharmaceutically related research. And that researchers have their pet ideas and blind spots (but so do nonresearchers). The beauty of science is that error is built into the process: in science, truth is corrected error, in Peirce’s phrase. Scientific work has no fear of being wrong, as long as one seeks to tell the truth as clearly and honestly as possible.
The couch-pragmatic approach—one that does not deign to conduct research, much less value it—involves a disregard for what is true, even when the research evidence provides reasonable evidence for what is true, at the expense of what we happen to think is useful. This is pure utilitarianism, not pragmatism—a bland disregard for truth. Dr Frances makes an exaggerated general premise—that science is always dubious—and applies it where he wants: BD is a favored target, but he rarely writes about decreasing the diagnostic range of MDD, a diagnosis he greatly broadened in DSM-IV. Why? Apparently because he thinks antipsychotics do more harm than antidepressants, on a “pragmatic” level. But this gerrymandering based on which drugs we like or don’t like is no way to develop a diagnostic system that actually gets us closer to understanding and effectively treating diseases. (Unless one thinks there are no diseases in psychiatry, which is a larger topic worth separate analysis.)
I have my own criticisms of DSM-5 (such as the idea of “temper dysregulation disorder,” which ignores much relevant scientific data against it and which is being pushed, pragmatically, as a way to avoid diagnosing BD in children). But I will base my critiques on scientific merits first, pragmatic aspects second—not the other way around. Why Dr Frances criticizes DSM-5—his method—is the problem, not the act of criticism. His method is to summarize perception of harm from treatments; this approach will leave us stuck in a dead end, where each revision of DSM is mere opinion, and no evolution ever occurs, as in internal medicine, toward real knowledge of disease, and real cure.
Psychiatry sits in the same place scientifically as internal medicine did at the end of the 19th century. If we are to experience the advances that internal medicine achieved, we would do well to study and follow the example of historical success. We should work vigorously to describe our psychiatric syndromes to the best of our current scientific ability, much as Osler did for medicine in his textbook. If that work is done objectively and honestly, then such definitions will promote and link to future advances in neuroscience and treatment, unlike our past “pragmatic” diagnoses. This approach to medicine is exactly what Hippocrates supported against the “pragmatic” doctors who preceded him (in the school of Cnidus, against which Hippocrates set up his school of Cos).
First do no harm? Of course, but how do you get there? The humblest and most practical approach is the hard work of science, with an honest respect for its results. This is what Hippocrates taught,8 an emphasis on knowing disease, and treating those diseases one could treat, not an abstract caution about treatment, and certainly not the postmodernist view that all criteria are arbitrary, so let’s set them up based on our personal beliefs about what produces the best outcomes in 1994 or 2013. We need to follow what Hippocrates taught, not co-opt the outcome of his philosophy while ignoring his method about how to get to that outcome; otherwise, what emerges is merely an empty slogan.
In sum, contrary to the historical meaning of Hippocratic teachings and the philosophical meaning of pragmatism, we have here a couch-pragmatism, where, from a recumbent posture, one can ignore research studies because scientific data are always dubious, but one’s own “pragmatic” opinions are self-evident.
Dr Frances' Response: Dr Ghaemi's arguments have been made--and I think effectively refuted--in several previous postings in different venues. Rather than repeat myself, please see the Bulletin of the Association for Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry.
Note: Information on the Bulletin can be found at Dr Phillips' article online at Psychiatric Times.
1. Frances A. Should practical consequences influence DSM5 decisions? Psychology Today. Accessed August 18, 2010.
2. Tondo L, Vázquez G, Baldessarini RJ. Mania associated with antidepressant treatment: comprehensive meta-analytic review. Acta Psychiatr Scand. 2010;121:404-414.
3. Frances A. DSM 5 goes too far in creating new mental disorders. Psychology Today. Accessed August 18, 2010.
4. Goodwin FK, Jamison KR. Manic-Depressive Illness. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press; 2007.
5. Benazzi F, Akiskal H. The duration of hypomania in bipolar-II disorder in private practice: methodology and validation. J Affect Disord. 2006;96:189-196.
6. Wicki W, Angst J. The Zurich Study. X. Hypomania in a 28- to 30-year-old cohort. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 1991;240:339-348.
7. Angst J, Gamma A, Benazzi F, et al. Toward a re-definition of subthreshold bipolarity: epidemiology and proposed criteria for bipolar-II, minor bipolar disorders and hypomania. J Affect Disord. 2003;73:133-146.
8. Jouanna J. Hippocrates. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press; 1998.
Dr Frances responds: Dr Ghaemi’s arguments have been made—and I think effectively refuted—in several previous postings in different venues. Rather than repeat myself, please see the Bulletin of the Association for Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry at
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Pedophilia (Treatments)
Medications may be used in conjunction with psychotherapy. Such medications include antiandrogens (to lower sex drive), medroxyprogesterone acetate (Provera) and leuprolide acetate (Lupron). Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) may be prescribed to treat associated compulsive sexual disorders and/or to gain benefit from libido-lowering sexual side effects. Higher doses than are typically administered for depression are usually used. These include sertraline (Zoloft), fluoxetine (Prozac), fluvoxamine (Luvox), citalopram (Celexa), and paroxetine (Paxil).
Intensity of sex drive is not consistently related to the behavior of paraphiliacs and high levels of circulating testosterone do not predispose a male to paraphilias. Hormones such as medroxyprogesterone acetate and cyproterone acetate decrease the level of circulating testosterone thereby reducing sex drive and aggression. These hormones reduce the frequency of erections, sexual fantasies, and initiations of sexual behaviors including masturbation and intercourse. Hormones are typically used in tandem with behavioral and cognitive treatments. Antidepressants such as fluoxetine have also successfully decreased sex drive but have not effectively targeted sexual fantasies.
Find a Therapist
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Research suggests that cognitive-behavioral models are effective in treating paraphiliacs. Such models may include aversive conditioning, confrontation of cognitive distortions which is especially effective in groups, victim empathy (show videos of victims and consequences to victims), assertiveness training (social skills training, time management, structure), relapse prevention (identifying antecedents to the behavior [high-risk situations] and how to disrupt antecedents), surveillance systems (family associates who help monitor patient behavior) and lifelong maintenance.
Aversive conditioning involves using negative stimuli to reduce or eliminate a behavior. One such therapy is covert sensitization which involves the patient relaxing and visualizing scenes of deviant behavior followed by a negative event such as getting his penis stuck in the zipper of his pants. Assisted aversive conditioning is similar to covert sensitization except the negative event is real, such as in the form of a foul odor pumped in the air by the therapist. The goal is for the patient to associate the deviant behavior with the foul odor. Aversive behavioral reversal is commonly known as "shame therapy;" the goal is to humiliate the offender into ceasing the deviant behavior. For example, the offender might watch videotapes of their crime with the goal that the experience will be distasteful and offensive to the offender.
There are positive conditioning approaches that center on social skills training and alternate, more appropriate behaviors. Reconditioning, for example, is giving the patient immediate feedback, which may help him change his behavior. For instance, a person might be connected to a biofeedback machine connected to a light, he is taught to keep the light within a specific range of color while he is exposed to sexually stimulating material.
Cognitive therapies include restructuring cognitive distortions and empathy training. Restructuring cognitive distortions involves correcting a pedophile's thoughts that the child wishes to be involved in the activity. A pedophile observing a young girl wearing shorts may erroneously think, "she wants me." Empathy training involves helping the offender take on the perspective of the victim and to identify with the victim and understand the harm.
The prognosis for pedophilia is difficult to determine. For pedophiles, these longstanding sexual fantasies about children can be very difficult to change. The practitioner can attempt to reduce the intensity of pedophiliac fantasies and develop coping strategies for the abuser but they must be willing to recognize that a problem exists and be willing to participate in treatment which is not always the case. Dynamic psychotherapy, behavioral techniques, chemical approaches, and surgical interventions yield mixed results. Lifelong maintenance may be a pragmatic and realistic approach.
Pedophilia. Last reviewed 06/06/2010
• Abel G, Greenberg D & Bradford J. (1996) Understanding Assessment and Treatment of Paraphilias
• Journal of Sex Med.
• Levey, R. & Curfman, W.C. (2010). Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders
• Morrison, J. MD. (1995). DSM-IV(TM) Made Easy: The Clinician's Guide to Diagnosis.
• Nathan, P. E., Gorman, J. M., & Salkind, N. J. (eds.). (1999). Treating Mental Disorders: A Guide To What Works.
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Quotes Daddy
Charles Peterson
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Charles Emil Peterson is widely considered to be a seminal figure in professionalizing the practice of historic preservation in the United States. He is referred to as the “founding father” of the professional advocation of historic preservation, the “godfather of preservation," and an “extraordinary preservationist" who made important contributions to the knowledge of early American building practices, helped create the profession of the preservation architect, and passionately advocated for the retention and restoration of the American built heritage. According to Jacques Dalibard, a professor at McGill School of Architecture, “with James Marston Fitch, I cannot think of two people who had more influence on historic preservation in North America.”
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How Would You Write a "99 Bottles of Beer" Program?
A while back, I posted about 99 Bottles of Beer In PHP in an effort to see how others might programmatically write code that would take an initial variable and then iterate it down until it reached a specific value and then return a message.
Many programming languages offer multiple ways of accomplishing the same task and I decided that a great learning experience for me and for others would be to ask everyone and anyone to contribute their own variations using any language.
Clear Your Drupal 7 Cache with One Click
Sure, you can set a shortcut to admin/config or install the devel module, but what if you could clear your cache with one button?
This small module adds a flush cache button to your menu for easy, one-click cache flusing!
It could add years back to your life, and your wrist.
It has no configuration, just install and enable.
You may not want to use this on a production site - or at least disable it when you go live, since a permissions check might not be enough to prevent an unauthorized user from flushing your cache.
Apture is Available for Drupal 7
I used the Apture Service on my old Drupal 6 site with the Apture module, but since updating to Drupal 7, I found it was one of the modules that didn't have a Drupal 7 version.
I decided that I missed it enough, to rewrite it for Drupal 7. If you aren't familiar with the service or the module, here is what it can do for you:
PHP Fog, Your New Drupal Development Platform?
I just received my invite today from PHP Fog, and quickly set about trying out the service.
From their frontpage:
Reliable Cloud Platform.
Subscribe to RSS - PHP
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52348
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(U.S. News & World Report, Debate Club)
May 2, 2012
Obama Learned from Bush's Mistakes and Successes
by James Dobbins
This is a response to a U.S. News & World Report Debate Club forum, "Is America Safer Under Barack Obama?"
Neophyte presidents of either party often make grievous early mistakes in the national security realm. John F. Kennedy was humiliated by Nikita Khrushchev in their first encounter and then launched the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Bill Clinton stumbled badly in Somalia, failed to stop the genocide in Rwanda, and pulled U.S. troops out of Haiti long before any lasting effect could be achieved. George W. Bush can't be blamed for 9/11 but shoulders substantial responsibility for the failure to stabilize Afghanistan and Iraq once the regimes there had been overthrown.
Given time, presidential performance usually improves. Kennedy went on to skillfully defuse the Cuban Missile Crisis. Clinton achieved more enduring results in Bosnia and Kosovo. George W. Bush went a long way in his second term toward retrieving the missteps of his first, particularly in Iraq.
What is unusual with Obama is that he did not start at the bottom of the presidential learning curve. To the discomfort of many within his own constituency, he emphasized continuity over change in the national security realm. He chose to keep a Republican, Bob Gates, as his secretary of defense and Gen. David Petraeus as his principal military commander. He retained the staff of Defense, State, and CIA professionals on the White House staff, under Lt. Gen. Doug Lute, who had been managing both the Iraq and Afghan wars for George W. Bush. Obama executed Bush's announced withdrawal schedule in Iraq, tripled the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and sought to apply many of the lessons learned during Bush's second term in that former conflict to the latter. Obama similarly built on and significantly escalated the war against al Qaeda.
On-the-job training is a necessary element of the American presidency, but so should be learning from the accomplishments, as well as the mistakes, of one's predecessor.
This commentary appeared on U.S. News & World Report, Debate Club on May 2, 2012
Related Resources
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52351
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From Randomdata wiki
Revision as of 21:01, 4 October 2011 by Zkyp (Talk | contribs)
Jump to: navigation, search
Placeholder page for a new project.
Why? Want to stay with times, it's a very hot subject at the moment. Also I want this project to become a basis for upcoming research of our own.
Information Links: VID's: CCC talks/Hitb talks?
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52355
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Chilly Uptown - I Got Rules (LP)
2 users own this record.
0 users want this record.
1 user wants to sell this record.
Year: 1988
Artist: Chilly Uptown
Labels: Ever Rap Records
Ever Rat Records
Medusa Records
Restless Records
Catalog#: 72333-1
Country: United States
Style: Rap over drum machine beats
Cover type: Picture Cover
Credits: -
A1I Got Rules4:53
A2Seattle Rockers5:19
A3Big'z The Way I See It3:18
A4I Got A Love Jones5:04
B1Your Pregnit3:55
B2The Deftrooper Of Rap5:36
B4Dogging It Like This5:09
Notes: weird LP: was released in '88 but sounds like recorded in '86.The logo on the label is "Ever Rat Records" (marketed by Medusa Records/El Segundo/CA) .The logo on the picture cover is "Ever Rap Records" (marketed by Restless Records/Culver City/CA)
Worth: -
Rating: ** (1 Vote)
Submitted by: grandwizard
Date: 07/03/06
No comments yet.
Add comment
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52358
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Questions - Immigration - June 20-21, 2013
40% Want Border States to Determine When Border is Secure
Just 28% Now Think Feds Likely to Secure Border if Reform Plan Passes
See Toplines
Platinum Page
National Survey of 1,000 Likely Voters
Conducted June 20-21, 2013
By Rasmussen Reports
1* A comprehensive immigration reform plan has been proposed that would secure the border and prevent future illegal immigration. As part of the plan, those who entered the country illegally but have otherwise obeyed the law would be given legal status to stay in the United States. If you knew that the border would really be secured to prevent future illegal immigration, would you favor or oppose this plan?
2* Should those who are now in this country illegally be granted legal status right away or should that come only after the border is secured?
3* If a law was passed to secure the border, prevent future illegal immigration and allow those who entered the country illegally to stay, how likely is it that the federal government would actually secure the border and prevent illegal immigration?
4* Who should determine whether the border is secure—the federal Department of Homeland Security, Congress, political leaders in border states or voters in border states through a referendum?
5* Regardless of what you want to happen, how likely is it that comprehensive immigration reform legislation will pass the Senate and the House and be signed by the president this year?
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52367
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Welcome! You are browsing as a guest
When I was growing up, the woods surrounding our house were frequented by little screech owls. We could hear their haunting calls at night, but I never saw them. I’ve loved the sound ever since. A few years ago, my cat captured a nest of sparrow chicks. In a desperate attempt to save them, I took the entire family to a wildlife refuge and rehab center here in the mountains. While touring the center, one of the vets introduced me to a nest of screech owl hatchlings someone had saved. There they were, three incredibly fluffy little balls of gray feathers with enormous sleepy yellow eyes. I was immediately smitten.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52372
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Snapper 724994
Snapper Authorized Substitution
The part number 724994 has been changed to part number 672510MA. While the new part may look different, this is a Snapper approved substitution.
Please note that the price and availability shown is for the new part number 672510MA.
New Packaging...Same Part!
The part number 672510MA was previously sold under the Snapper brand. This part is now being branded and sold under Briggs & Stratton.
Brand Snapper
Old Part Number 724994
New Part Number 672510MA
Condition New
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52375
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Tri-Pact News Service
We Make The News
R/C Combat Vehicles
Speed Controls
This article was originally written by Marty The Legend Hayes for the R/C Warship Combat hobby. It has been edited and revised by Frank Pittelli for the R/C Tank Combat hobby, with the H-Bridge Speed Control section contributed by Joe Sommer.
Speed controls come in many sizes, shapes and prices. What is best for you is for you to decide. Items which should be included in your decision are such things as your skill, the size of your pocket book, availability of materials, the amount of current used by your motors and the size of the ship you are going to put it in. The choices run between the simplest toggle switch or brass contact type to the most expensive transistor electronic throttle.
In direct current (battery power), the motors turn in one direction when the polarity (+ and -) is applied to the contacts and the other direction when the polarity is reversed on the contacts. Motors are "tuned" to prefer one direction and will have a small power loss when running in the opposite direction (loss is small, and can be ignored.) The motor reacts to the voltage applied in a direct manner, as more voltage is applied the faster and more powerfully the motor turns. The two problems which will normally damage a motor are heat build up and too much current for the size of the wire which the motor is wound with. Both of these have to do with the application of too much voltage. The way to more power is a larger motor not more voltage past the limits of the motor windings. The amount of current drawn from your batteries and through your speed control is decided by the motors through their winding size and number. Cheap motors generally use more current (amperage) to produce the same power. Choose your speed control to carry the amount of current your motors require plus 50%.
How much control you need over your actual speed is again a matter of personal preference. The speeds which you use in combat is somewhat dependent on your style of combat. Many people use very little other than full speed, some use many different speeds, some run at medium speed most of the time to conserve energy and have full speed to use in emergencies or for the chase.
Simple Toggle Control
The one of the simplest speed controls is the toggle switch type. This is a simplistic design, requiring only a servo, the toggle switch (double pole, double throw, center position off) and a connecting rod. The wiring of the switch is such that the voltage is reversed as the switch is moved between it's extreme positions; the voltage is turned off in the center position. One of the problems with this design is, you only have full speed (forward/reverse) and off, no medium or slow speeds. Another problem which I have observed is the selection of the center position is sometimes difficult by radio control. All in all, this design is somewhat a bull in a china shop type of control.
Drawing of Toggle Switch Speed Control
A similar design to the toggle switch uses a small slide switch with four positions giving two forward speeds and one reverse. Problems with this were occasionally the servo would over-travel and hang the switch up at one end of it's travel which may or may not still be making contact and running the engines. The voltages for the slide switch throttle were pure (not using any resistors) but using different battery contacts to produce the different voltages required.
Another similar design used a multiple position rotary switch (Radio Shack) and operated either with resistors or different voltage pickups. The problems are similar to the previous designs in travel overruns and a limited choice of speeds. Advantages are cheap and easy construction. Some battlers use the overrun feature of the servo trim to activate other controls (pumps in his case). This is accomplished by the use of a Radio Shack on/off switch which turns on when it is pushed once and turns off when it is pushed again. The switch is located so that the control arm contacts it only when the servo control is brought to the end of it's travel and the trim is brought to maximum also.
Maryland Attack Group (MAG) Speed Control
Many of the mechanical short-comings of the toggle switch can be overcome by using two micro-switches in an arrangement known as the MAG Speed Control. (Technically speaking, the MAG speed control is the same as an H-bridge implemented using two switches. Nonetheless, it was first used in R/C combat by the Maryland Attack Group, so the name has stuck.) The two micro-switches are mounted on a servo with a "half moon" cam such that neither are activated at neutral position. The switches are wired with the plus voltage on the N.O. position (normally open) and the minus (or negative) on the N.C. position. The motors are hooked up to the common positions such that one common goes to one side of the motor and the common of the other micro switch goes to the other. In the neutral position, the negative (minus) voltage is applied to both sides of the motor and the motor will not run. Activating either switches removes the negative and applies the positive to the motor contact connected causing the motor to run in that direction.
Drawing of Maryland Attack Group Speed Control
This throttle provides full-forward and full-reverse with no mechanical linkages and is very compact. Unlike the simple toggle throttle, however, this approach creates a dead short across the motor leads in the neutral position. In many situations, this is a desirable feature, because it causes the motor to stop spinning immediately after the servo returns to neutral. That is, the throttle acts as an electronic brake for the motor. When used in warships, this causes the prop to immediately stop spinning, instead of slowing winding down, which causes the boat to stop faster. For land vehicles, the electronic brake locks up the motor, which facilitates skid steering.
Because of the dead short across the motor, it is essential that the micro switches used are not only rated for the continuous amp draw expected, but also for the current spike generated when shorting the spinning motor. Fortunately, micro-switches that can handle 15-20 amps are readily available and are very inexpensive. It is also possible to use multiple micro-switches to handle higher loads, provided the servo cam is designed accordingly.
Click Photo For Enlargement (102 Kb)
Here is an example of a typical implementation of the MAG speed control, with the micro-switches mounted on either side of a servo. The switches and servo are mounted independent to a brass bracket so that either can be replaced easily in the field. This particular speed control served many years inside of a remote controlled goose decoy that saw plenty of salt water action without a failure.
Another variation on the MAG speed control provides multiple speeds by mounting multiple micro-switches on each side of the servo, positioned at different points around the circumference of the servo cam. In that way, as the servo advances in one direction it trips each switch in succession. If the first switch operates as a normal MAG speed control, then the next switch can be used to boost the voltage, say from 6 to 12 volts. Such a two-setting speed control is quite useful for operating a vehicle at a slow speed for normal traveling, while providing a fast speed for emergency or critical operations.
A different layout for the MAG speed control clearly shows the simple wiring design. The positive (red) and negative (black) wires from the battery are connected to the normally-open (NO) and normally-closed (NC) poles of each switch, and the motor control wires (brown) are connected to the common pole of each switch. In this case, all connections are made with quick connectors so that a faulty switch can be replaced without soldering.
This layout also shows how a small servo cam can be used to actuate the push-button on each switch, without the need for any rocker arm or roller. This increases the reliability of the speed control (less moving parts) and makes for a compact arrangement. Furthermore, by mounting the switches above the servo, everything is easier to reach when testing or repairing.
Click Photo For Enlargement (105 Kb)
Click Photo For Enlargement (34 Kb)
The MAG speed control is a very flexible arrangement that can be configured in a number of different ways. One such variation is to use two high-amp relays as the main throttle, wired exactly like the micro-switches would be wired. Then, two low-amp micro-switches are operated by the servo to trip each of the relays. Such an arrangement allows all of the high-amp motor wires to kept separate from the radio equipment, which can help to reduce radio interference. It also allows the motor to be controlled without a radio from a test box, by using a simple toggle switch to activate each relay.
The picture shows a dual MAG speed control implemented with 20amp automotive relays that is used to control two independent tracks. The relays are installed in sockets that come with all of the wires attached (can't beat that for $1.29) The battery is connected using the red and black wires on the bottom. The common ground (black) is connected to the normally-closed (NC) pole on each relay and to one side of each relay coil. The positive wire (red) is connected to the normally-open (NO) pole on each relay and through 4 individual switches (not shown) to the other side of the relay coil via the white wires. Finally, the yellow wires are connected to the common pole on each relay and are used to drive the motors.
Click Photo For Enlargement (144 Kb)
Click Photo For Enlargement (64 Kb)
Tri-Pact Speed Control
The Tri-Pact Speed Control combines two relay-based MAG Speed Controls and a simple diode circuit to provide a speed control that drives two motors using a single transmitter joystick in a natural manner. Specifically, the Tri-Pact Speed Control provides the following motor controls based on the position of the joystick:
Joystick Position Left Motor Right Motor
Center Locked Locked
Up Forward Forward
Down Reverse Reverse
Right Forward Reverse
Left Reverse Forward
Upper Right Forward Locked
Upper Left Locked Forward
Lower Right Locked Reverse
Lower Left Reverse Locked
The Tri-Pact Speed Control requires a small number of relatively inexpensive parts that are easily obtained in any auto parts or electronics store, and can be built with nothing more than a set of wire strippers and a soldering iron. For example, the following parts list could be used to acquire all of the necessary components from All Electronics (last updated 8/11/2007):
Component Part Number Quantity Each Cost
12 VDC SPDT 30 AMP AUTO POWER RELAY RLY-351 4 $2.40 $9.60
SPST N.O. SNAP-ACTION SWITCH SMS-167 4 $0.50 $2.00
3AMP/1000 PIV DIODE 1N5408 12 $0.33 $4.00
TOTAL $23.60
H-Bridge Speed Control
One of the most common circuits used for controlling the direction of a motor is known as an H-bridge (named because the circuit diagram looks like the letter 'H'). H-bridge controllers can be built using a variety of components, including mechanical Single-Pole-Single-Throw (SPST) relays, electronic transitors, power MOSFETs or Solid State Relays (SSRs). If mechanical relays are used, an H-bridge circuit provides essentially the same full-forward/full-reverse (on-off) speed control as provided by the MAG speed control. On the other hand, if the H-bridge is implemented using any of the electronic component types (transitors, MOSFETs or SSRs), then it can also be used to provide variable-speed control in both directions (see Electronic Speed Controls below for more details). This is one of the key benefits of an H-bridge speed control, but it also makes it more complex to build.
Relay-Based H-Bridge
An H-bridge using four SPST relays is shown below to demonstrate the basic operation of the circuit. When relays A and D are closed at the same time, current passes through the motor causing CW rotation. When relays B and C are closed at the same time, current passes through the motor in the opposite direction causing CCW rotation. Closing relays A and B at the same time causes a dead short across the motor to provide electrical braking. If all four relays are left open, the motor can rotate freely.
Be careful when using H-bridges. Accidentally closing relays A and C at the same time, or closing relays B and D at the same time, causes a dead short across the battery which could ruin the batteries and/or start a fire. Additional logic circuits are often used to prevent these catastrophic conditions.
Transitor-Based H-Bridge
Equivalent H-bridges using electronic transistors and power MOSFETs are shown here:
A transitor is basically an electronic switch that allows current to flow from one pole to another when a small control current is applied to another pole. A power MOSFET is a special kind of transitor that is capable of dumping large amounts of current. Two MOSFETs and a couple electronic components can be made to act exactly like a single relay, so four power MOSFETs can be used to create a speed control.
Surge suppression diodes should be connected across the transistors or MOSFETs to prevent damage caused by sudden motor stall or reversal. Amplifier chips (not shown) are often required to bias base or gate control voltages high enough to activate the transistors or MOSFETs in the upper legs.
SSR-Based H-Bridge
Solid State Relays (SSRs), as the name implies, are the solid-state equivalent to mechanical SPST relays as shown here:
They contain MOSFETs controlled by internal LEDs to provide optical isolation between inputs and battery connections. Inputs can range from 3 to 24 VDC and draw about 1 mA/V. Consequently, SSRs are particularly easy to interface to TTL digital logic (5 VDC) and microprocessors. SSRs also usually contain internal protection circuits for current limiting and surge suppression.
Two H-bridges using eight Crydom 100V, 20A SSRs are shown here.
Electronic Speed Control (ESC)
If an electronic H-bridge is used to control the direction of a motor, then it can also be used as an Electronic Speed Control (ESC) to vary the speed of that motor using an approach called Pulse Width Modulation (PWM). PWM turns the motor on and off rapidly (thousands of times per second) so that it is only powered a certain percentage of the time, called the duty cycle, as depicted here:
Motor speed is roughly proportional to the duty cycle if the modulation frequency is significantly higher than the motor's frequency response. (That is, you need to turn the motor on and off fast enough so that the motor doesn't "see" the changes, just like your eyes don't see a television picture refreshing 30 times per second.) For CW rotation, H-bridge legs A and D may be modulated simultaneously. Alternately, leg D may be turned on at 100% duty cycle while leg A is modulated.
ESCs are usually implemented by a micro-processor (such as a Basic Stamp or PICAXE) that varies the duty cycle to the H-bridges based on the position of a mechanical dial (a potentiometer) or by plugging directly into a radio receiver. In fact, the micro-processor can be programmed to read two separate servo signals from the radio receiver and vary the speed and direction of two motors, providing variable speed and turning capabilities. More advanced programming can also be used to ramp-up and ramp-down the motors smoothly to reduce the dynamic loads on the system when they are suddenly started or reversed.
Low-amp ESCs are readily available from a variety of manufacturers for a variety of purposes, such as R/C race cars or ships. Unfortunately, such low-amp controllers will quickly fail when attempting to drive the high-amp motors typically required by large-scale R/C tanks. Furthermore, such controllers are typically intended for less than 12v. Thanks to the robot warriors, high-amp/high-voltage ESCs are also available from a range of commercial manufacturers, but they are also more expensive.
Of course, if you're proficient at micro-processor programming or know someone who is, then you can build your own ESC using any of the electronic H-bridge designs shown above. Be prepared, however, to spend an appropriate amount of time first bench-testing and then field-testing your design before you consider the task completed. Often times, the cost of a commercial speed control starts looking much better after you're home-grown design has failed a couple of times. (Now you know why the simple, relay-based speed controls described above are widely used in the hobby.)
The advantages of an ESC are:
1. they provide variable speeds,
2. they connect directly to your radio receiver, and
3. they are easy to install.
But, when it comes to battling, there are some key disadvantages that must be considered as well, including:
1. high-amp ESCs are relatively expensive,
2. high-amp ESCs are complex to build,
3. they require heat-sinks or fans, and
4. they cannot be easily repaired.
Although many of the disadvantages can be overlooked, the last one is particularly disturbing in the R/C Tank Combat world. If your ESC fails during one battle, there is little chance that you'll be able to participate in any more battles until you plop down more money and wait for another to arrive in the mail.
Other Issues
Here are a couple of suggestions that may save you some time and effort when using speed controls:
Power Surges
One thing to consider is the use of fuses in your control system. Fuses are devices which burn out at a specified current (amperage) and open the circuit to whatever device is on the other side of the connection. Many people use a fuse for each of the motors in their vehicle. If the motor jams up or is shorted out for any reason, the fuse is the item which fails first (hopefully) saving a possible fire or enormous drain on your batteries. A single fuse on your battery pack will also work but if it burns out, then your vehicle will be left sitting on the field without any power (this is not an advantageous position from which to do combat).
In general, it is best to use a fuse that is double your expected total amp draw. That way, it won't trip during even heavy usage, but it will trip if a dead short develops that would otherwise destroy your wiring, batteries and possibly your vehicle if a fire occurs.
Radio Interference
Another thing to consider on your drive system is the use of capacitors on each motor to reduce the radio interference that is generated by them. Twisted wires also cut down on the EMI (electrical magnetic interference) as does shielded wiring (ground shield to the negative lead of the supply batteries). Also, do not run your power leads for your motors close to your antenna lead in and be cautious in running high current flow wiring anywhere near your radio receiver and servo wiring, because the current flowing through one wire can cause electrical interference on the other wire. In extreme cases of radio interference, power the motors from relays located near the motors operated by switches in your radio box thus keeping the spikes far from your receiver.
To reduce radio interference when using relays, you should solder a diode in a backwards orientation across each relay coil. This helps to dissipate the electric pulse that is generated when the coil field collapses. To see just how strong such a pulse can be, simply turn a relay on and off near a television set and you'll see a burst of static across the screen whenever the relay is turned off. With a properly installed diode, no such burst will be seen.
The Right Stuff
Speed controls should offer reliability above everything else, a sitting duck on the battle field is soon a dead turkey. The second consideration is power drain since there is only a limited amount of power available. If you can move on the battlefield longer than the next guy, who will win?
Finally, practical experience has shown that a small number of speed ranges are sufficient during a battle. So, before you buy that fancy, expensive, proportional electronic speed control consider what your state of mind will be when (a) you are chasing someone or (b) someone is chasing you; Will the ability to travel at 56.3% of your maximum speed really matter much?
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Reform Act 1885
Reform Act
In the United Kingdom, Reform Act is a generic term used for legislation concerning electoral matters. It is most commonly used for laws passed to enfranchise new groups of voters and to redistribute seats in the British House of Commons. The periodic redrawing of constituency boundaries is now dealt with by a permanent Boundary Commission in each part of the United Kingdom, rather than by a Reform Act.
Some people in Britain, mostly associated with the Liberal Democrats, have called for a new "Great Reform Act" to introduce electoral changes they favour. These would include lowering the minimum voting age to 16 and introducing proportional representation.
Reform Act may refer to:
• Reform Act 1832, which gave representation to previously underrepresented urban areas and extended the qualifications for voting
• Reform Act 1867, which widened the franchise and adjusted representation to be more equitable
• Ballot Act 1872 (sometimes called the "Reform Act of 1872"), which introduced the secret ballot
• Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act 1883 (sometimes called the "Reform Act of 1883"), which introduced campaign spending limits
• Reform Act 1884, which allowed people in counties to vote on the same basis as those in towns. Home ownership was the only qualification
• Reform Act 1885, which split most multi-member constituencies into multiple single-member ones
• Reform Act 1918, which abolished property qualifications for men and introduced limited female suffrage
• Reform Act 1928, which widened suffrage by giving women electoral equality with men
Search another word or see Reform Act 1885on Dictionary | Thesaurus |Spanish
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52420
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General anaesthesia
General anaesthesia
In modern medical practice, general anaesthesia (AmE: anesthesia) is a state of total unconsciousness resulting from general anaesthetic drugs. A variety of drugs are given to the patient that have different effects with the overall aim of ensuring unconsciousness, amnesia and analgesia. The anaesthetist (AmE: anesthesiologist) selects the optimal technique for any given patient and procedure.
General anaesthesia is a complex procedure involving:
Preanaesthetic evaluation
Prior to surgery, the anaesthetist interviews the patient to determine the best combination and drugs and dosages and the degree of how much monitoring is required to ensure a safe and effective procedure.
Pertinent information is the patient's age, weight, medical history, current medications, previous anaesthetics, and fasting time. Usually, the patients are required to fill out this information on a separate form during the pre-operative evaluation. Depending on the existing medical conditions reported, the anaesthetist will review this information with the patient either during the pre-operative evaluation or on the day of the surgery.
Truthful and accurate answering of the questions is important so the anaesthetist can select the proper anaesthetics. For instance, a heavy drinker or drug user who does not disclose their chemical uses could be undermedicated, which could then lead to anaesthesia awareness or dangerously high blood pressure. Commonly used medications such as Viagra can interact with anaesthesia drugs; failure to disclose such usage can endanger the patient.
An important aspect of this assessment is that of the patient's airway, involving inspection of the mouth opening and visualisation of the soft tissues of the pharynx. The condition of teeth and location of dental crowns and caps are checked, neck flexibility and head extension observed. If an endotracheal tube is indicated and airway management is deemed difficult, then alternative placement methods such as fiberoptic intubation may be used.
General anaesthesia
Anaesthetists may give a pre-medication by injection or by mouth anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of minutes before the onset of surgery to induce drowsiness and relaxation.
The most common drugs used for pre-medication are narcotics (opioids such as fentanyl) and sedatives (most commonly benzodiazepines such as midazolam).
The general anaesthetic is administered in either the operating theatre itself or a special ante-room.
General anaesthesia can be induced by intravenous (IV) injection, or breathing a volatile anaesthetic through a facemask (inhalational induction). Onset of anaesthesia is faster with IV injection than with inhalation, taking about 10-20 seconds to induce total unconsciousness. This has the advantage of avoiding the excitatory phase of anaesthesia (see below), and thus reduces complications related to induction of anaesthesia. An inhalational induction may be chosen by the anaesthetist where IV access is difficult to obtain, where difficulty maintaining the airway is anticipated, or due to patient preference (e.g. children). Commonly used IV induction agents include propofol, sodium thiopental, etomidate, and ketamine. The most commonly-used agent for inhalational induction is sevoflurane because it causes less irritation than other inhaled gases.
The duration of action of IV induction agents is generally 5 to 10 minutes, after which time spontaneous recovery of consciousness will occur. In order to prolong anaesthesia for the required duration (usually the duration of surgery), anaesthesia must be maintained. Usually this is achieved by allowing the patient to breathe a carefully controlled mixture of oxygen, nitrous oxide, and a volatile anaesthetic agent. This is transferred to the patient's brain via the lungs and the bloodstream, and the patient remains unconscious. Inhaled agents are frequently supplemented by intravenous anaesthetics, such as opioids (usually fentanyl or a fentanyl derivative) and sedative-hypnotics (usually propofol or midazolam). At the end of surgery the volatile anaesthetic is discontinued. Recovery of consciousness occurs when the concentration of anaesthetic in the brain drops below a certain level (usually within 1 to 30 minutes depending upon the duration of surgery).
In the 1990s a novel method of maintaining anaesthesia was developed in Glasgow, UK. Called Total IntraVenous Anaesthesia (TIVA), this involves using a computer controlled syringe driver (pump) to infuse propofol throughout the duration of surgery, removing the need for a volatile anaesthetic. Purported advantages include faster recovery from anaesthesia, reduced incidence of post-operative nausea and vomiting, and absence of a trigger for malignant hyperthermia.
Other medications will occasionally be given to anesthetized patients to treat side effects or prevent complications. These medications include antihypertensives to treat high blood pressure, drugs like ephedrine and phenylephrine to treat low blood pressure, drugs like albuterol to treat asthma or laryngospasm/bronchospasm, and drugs like epinephrine or diphenhydramine to treat allergic reactions. Sometimes glucocorticoids or antibiotics are given to prevent inflammation and infection, respectively.
The induction of paralysis with a neuromuscular blocker is an integral part of modern anaesthesia. The first drug used for this purpose was curare, introduced in the 1940s, which has now been superseded by drugs with fewer side effects and generally shorter duration of action.
Paralysis allows surgery within major body cavities, eg. abdomen and thorax without the need for very deep anesthesia, and is also used to facilitate endotracheal intubation.
Acetylcholine, the natural neurotransmitter substance at the neuromuscular junction, causes muscles to contract when it is released from nerve endings. Muscle relaxants work by preventing acetylcholine from attaching to its receptor.
Paralysis of the muscles of respiration, ie. the diaphragm and intercostal muscles of the chest requires that some form of artificial respiration be implemented. As the muscles of the larynx are also paralysed, the airway usually needs to be protected by means of an endotracheal tube.
Monitoring of paralysis is most easily provided by means of a peripheral nerve stimulator. This device intermittently sends short electrical pulses through the skin over a peripheral nerve while the contraction of a muscle supplied by that nerve is observed.
The effects of muscle relaxants are commonly reversed at the termination of surgery by anticholinesterase drugs.
Examples of skeletal muscle relaxants in use today are pancuronium, rocuronium, vecuronium, atracurium, mivacurium, and succinylcholine.
Airway management
With the loss of consciousness caused by general anaesthesia, there is loss of protective airway reflexes (such as coughing), loss of airway patency and sometimes loss of a regular breathing pattern due to the effect of anesthetics, opioids, or muscle relaxants. To maintain an open airway and regulate breathing within acceptable parameters, some form of "breathing tube" is inserted in the airway after the patient is unconscious. To enable mechanical ventilation, an endotracheal tube is often used (intubation), although there are alternative devices such as face masks or laryngeal mask airways.
Monitoring involves the use of several technologies to allow for a controlled induction of, maintenance of and emergence from general anaesthesia.
1. Continuous Electrocardiography (ECG): The placement of electrodes which monitor heart rate and rhythm. This may also help the anaesthetist to identify early signs of heart ischemia.
2. Continuous pulse oximetry (SpO2): The placement of this device (usually on one of the fingers) allows for early detection of a fall in a patient's hemoglobin saturation with oxygen (hypoxemia).
3. Blood Pressure Monitoring (NIBP or IBP): There are two methods of measuring the patient's blood pressure. The first, and most common, is called non-invasive blood pressure (NIBP) monitoring. This involves placing a blood pressure cuff around the patient's arm, forearm or leg. A blood pressure machine takes blood pressure readings at regular, preset intervals throughout the surgery. The second method is called invasive blood pressure (IBP) monitoring. This method is reserved for patients with significant heart or lung disease, the critically ill, major surgery such as cardiac or transplant surgery, or when large blood losses are expected. The invasive blood pressure monitoring technique involves placing a special type of plastic cannula in the patient's artery - usually at the wrist or in the groin.
4. Agent concentration measurement - Common anaesthetic machines have meters to measure the percent of inhalational anaesthetic agent used (e.g. sevoflurane, isoflurane, desflurane, halothane etc).
5. Low oxygen alarm - Almost all circuits have a backup alarm in case the oxygen delivery to the patient becomes compromised. This warns if the fraction of inspired oxygen drops lower than room air (21%) and allows the anaesthetist to take immediate remedial action.
6. Circuit disconnect alarm - indicates failure of circuit to achieve a given pressure during mechanical ventilation.
7. Carbon dioxide measurement (capnography)- measures the amount of carbon dioxide expired by the patient's lungs. It allows the anaesthetist to assess the adequacy of ventilation
8. Temperature measurement to discern hypothermia or fever, and to aid early detection of malignant hyperthermia.
9. EEG or other system to verify depth of anaesthesia may also be used. This reduces the likelihood that a patient will be mentally awake, although unable to move because of the paralytic agents. It also reduces the likelihood of a patient receiving significantly more amnesic drugs than actually necessary to do the job.
Stages of anaesthesia
Stage 1
Stage 1 anaesthesia, also known as the "induction," is the period between the initial administration of the induction medications and loss of consciousness. During this stage the patient progresses from analgesia without amnesia to analgesia with amnesia. Patients can carry on a conversation at the time.
Stage 2
Stage 2 anesthesia, also known as the "excitement stage," is the period following loss of consciousness and marked by excited and delirious activity. During this stage, respirations and heart rate may become irregular. In addition, there may be uncontrolled movements, vomiting, breath holding, and pupillary dilation. Since the combination of spastic movements, vomiting, and irregular respirations may lead to airway compromise, rapidly acting drugs are used to minimize time in this stage and reach stage 3 as fast as possible.
Stage 3
Stage Three: Surgical Anaesthesia. During this stage, the skeletal muscles relax, and the patient's breathing becomes regular. Eye movements slow, then stop, and surgery can begin.
Stage 4
Stage 4 anaesthesia, also known as "overdose," is the stage where too much medication has been given and the patient has severe brain stem or medullary depression. This results in a cessation of respiration and potential cardiovascular collapse. This stage is lethal without cardiovascular and respiratory support.
Postoperative Analgesia
The anaesthesia concludes with a management plan for postoperative pain relief. This may be in the form of regional analgesia, oral, transdermal or parenteral medication. Minor surgical procedures are amenable to oral pain relief medications such as paracetamol and NSAIDS such as ibuprofen. Moderate levels of pain require the addition of mild opiates such as codeine.
Major surgical procedures may require a combination of modalities to confer adequate pain relief. Parenteral methods include Patient Controlled Analgesia System (PCAS) involving morphine, a strong opiate. Here, the patient presses a button to activate a pump containing morphine. This administers a preset dose of the drug. As the pump is programmed not to exceed a safe amount of the drug, the patient cannot self administer a toxic dose.
Mortality rates
Overall, the mortality rate for general anaesthesia is about five deaths per million anaesthetic administrations. Death during anaesthesia is most commonly related to surgical factors or pre-existing medical conditions. These include major haemorrhage, sepsis, and organ failure (eg. heart, lungs, kidneys, liver). Common causes of death directly related to anaesthesia include:
• aspiration of stomach contents
• suffocation (due to inadequate airway management)
• allergic reactions to anaesthesia (specifically and not limited to anti-nausea agents) and other deadly genetic predispositions
• human error
• equipment failure
In the US, up until about 1980 anesthesia was a significant risk, with at least one death per 10,000 times administered. After becoming something of a public scandal, a careful effort was made to understand the causes and improve the results. It is generally believed that anesthesia is now at least ten times safer than it was then. However, there is some controversy about this. In the US, the data is not made public (in fact, the data is not even collected), so the truth is uncertain. The rate for dental anesthesia is reported to be one out of 350,000.
See also
External links
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52422
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lamented for
Laments for Josiah
Laments for Josiah is the term used in reference to . The passage reads: "And Jeremiah lamented for Josiah: and all the singing men and the singing women spake of Josiah in their lamentations to this day, and made them an ordinance in Israel: and, behold, they are written in the lamentations."
This source, as described by the Chronicler, should not be confused with the canonical Book of Lamentations. The same event is retold in 1 Esdras 1:32, although it lacks any reference to writing, or the recording of the lamentation. Nevertheless, the dirges referred to in 2 Chronicles and 1 Esdras, as well as Lamentations may refer to a larger corpus of laments that once existed in the temple or palace archives of ancient Jerusalem.
See also
External links
• Myers, Jacob II Chronicles: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. Anchor Bible 13. Doubleday; Garden City, 1965
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52426
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woman of few words
Dolphin (comics)
Dolphin is a fictional character, a superheroine in the DC Comics universe.
Fictional character history
Dolphin was a very young girl when she fell overboard from a cruise ship (Secret Origins #50) only to be saved from drowning when a mysterious alien race abducted her to use as an experimental prototype for a subaquatic humanoid race. In the course of these experiments, she acquired gills, webbed fingers and toes, shining white hair, superhuman strength, resilence to deep water pressures, and a slowed aging process. When the alien scientists suddenly abandoned the experiment, Dolphin escaped their underwater lab. Oblivious to her former humanity, the feral young Dolphin scavenged naked underwater for her livelihood, eventually finding her trademark short blue-jeans and white shirt inside a sunken ship. She has always been alone her entire life, constantly swimming and enjoying her personal freedom. But she grew into young womanhood and she tired of living an isolated, lonely life. Then one day, the crew of an oceanology vessel saved her from a near lethal encounter with a dolphin-killing shark and then took her aboard their ship to help her.
Over time, the crew of the ship tried to educate and care for the girl they'd dubbed "Dolphin", but her utter lack of contact with either humans or Atlanteans had left her mute. Though she grew to understand spoken language fairly quickly, the act of speech itself remained beyond her. Then, a young female doctor on the crew had the bright idea to instruct her in sign language. Finally able to communicate, Dolphin explained what she could of herself and her story, and expressed her desire to resume her undersea life. At some point, Dolphin finally mastered spoken language, (especially when she started having contact with the superheroic community) but never lost her shyness and reluctance to speak. She has since been a woman of few words.
Crisis years
Dolphin has stayed mostly on the fringes of the superheroic community, although she was a member of the Forgotten Heroes until their dissolution, and fought alongside them during the Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Meeting Aquaman
During the Zero Hour events, she met Aquaman, and took part in the battle against Charybdis, a villain interested in the aquatic powers of the two heroes. When Charybdis, after robbing Aquaman of his telepathic powers, stuck Aquaman's hand in a pool of water teeming with piranhas, the normally passive Dolphin was forced to shoot the madman. She then carried both the wounded Aquaman and Aqualad back to Atlantis for medical attention, thus saving their lives and earning their trust and love.
Afterwards, she became a supporting character in the Aquaman comic book, and soon won the affections of an Aquaman embittered by the loss of his hand. Over time, she came out of her shell, and displayed a more energetic and bubbly, though naive, personality. In issue #25 of Aquaman volume 5 it was revealed that Kordax, an evil merman ancestor of Aquaman's, had secretly set Dolphin free from the lab, and used mind control to prompt her to infiltrate the royal court and kill Aquaman as the agent of his revenge on the royal house of Atlantis. The strong-willed Dolphin broke free of his control, and her romantic involvement with the king of Atlantis grew into love.
Dolphin remained Aquaman's lover until Mera, Aquaman's wife, returned from her exile in another dimension called the Netherworld. In the same period, Aqualad, now calling himself Tempest, returned from several years of extradimensional magic studies with increased powers and confidence, winning Dolphin's heart with a kiss. Though initially taken aback, Aquaman blessed the relationship. Eventually, Dolphin became pregnant by Tempest, and the two were married in an Atlantean ceremony attended by Tempest's second family, the Titans.
Starting a family life
Dolphin gave birth to a son, whom Aquaman named Cerdian (after Cerdia, a surface nation annexed by Atlantis). The weight of new familial responsibilities initially strained the relationship between Dolphin and Tempest. These tensions came to a head when Dolphin demanded Tempest choose between his duties as a hero and his duties as a father and husband. Tempest complied, and quit the Titans. When Aquaman was exiled for his role in the sinking of Atlantis, the family fell under suspicion as friends of the deposed king. The new sorcerous rulers deemed Dolphin and her family "collaborationists" and put them under house arrest. As of recent issues, this government had been overthrown, and Dolphin and her family had a brief moment of happiness in a free Atlantis.
Alone Again
Recently, when Tempest channeled the magic of all Atlantis' sorcerers to undo a spell that had turned Mera into an air-breather, he was noticed by the Spectre, who unleashed his full power on Atlantis. The resulting cataclysmic destruction obliterated Atlantis entirely. Tempest was missing and presumed dead, but Dolphin, sent away during Atlantis' destruction, may have survived, along with the young Cerdian.
One Year Later
Another proof of her survival is given by the ghost of Vulko. Able to sense the passing by of the dead Atlantean, he clamed to have never felt the passing of Garth, Dolphin and Cerdian, so the three are currently alive.
Tempest appears in Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis #50, where he is alive but not well as he cannot breathe in water and has no idea where his family is, but he does plan to find them.
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1. Begin Slideshow
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Photo: Courtesy of Droog
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Skin care
Your Cheat Sheet To Drugstore Skin Care
We’ve all been there: standing in the middle of the skin-care aisle at the drugstore, staring at row after row of bottles, jars, and tubes, all beckoning us. Which brand is best? SPF 15 or 30? Soy or retinol? What’s the point of toners anyway? With so many questions, you find your head exploding with information, and read
Newport Folk Festival
The Best Dressed Folk Folks From Newport Music Festival
If flower crowns are to Coachella as cowboy boots are to SXSW, and tutus are to Electric Daisy Carnival as goggles are to Burning Man, then we're pretty sure that the hallmark of Rhode Island's Newport Folk Festival is a can't-quit smile framed under a wide-brimmed hat. We've never seen so many pure, wholesome, read
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Tips, Trivia, And Loot For Greenifying Your Life
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At Refinery29, we're all about making sure the life you live is as thoughtful as the wardrobe you curate. In celebration of Earth Day, we've come up with a guide to green living that we hope you'll take to heart and use beyond this one day out of the year. We've got links to incredible articles about the very real effects of your waste, facts about which alcohol is the "greenest" to drink, smart product pics to help you decrease your footprint, and apps to download to facilitate your sustainable lifestyle. Check out our green guide, ahead!
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Rhapsody App for
Rhapsody International, Inc.
Get app Have the app
Lions by The Black Crowes
Released: May 2001
Label: IndieBlu Music
Lions came out seven years after the hit-single-less Amorica was misunderstood and the band became mired in legal troubles. Nobody paid attention (besides the faithful). Too bad because it sounds great: "Midnight From The Inside Out" is pure sprawling, crash worship, and the Crowes prove they had another very good record in them.
Mike McGuirk
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Juan Williams is in the news for two reasons today, one admirable and one less so. He authored an important piece in the Wall Street Journal advocating that we judge Obama on performance like any other president, which comes one day after crying on national television. The tears came while discussing the controversial benediction after the swearing in ceremony.
Juan Williams
Juan Williams
Juan Williams, himself black, appeared sometimes emotional, defensive, and even angry during his frequent Fox News appearances as he championed Obama’s candidacy on air. This is not the first time we have seen the spectacle of the news commentator crying. About yesterday Williams explains the momentary lapse in journalistic standards this way:
“I just felt so emotional. There are other people who might say they were there with Dr. King and suffered the indignities. But Joe Lowery really did. And for Joe Lowery today to see that son, that black boy, become president of the United States, I can’t tell you. There are some times in your life when you just think, ‘What a country! How could it be?’ I never thought that would happen. But there it was. Just thank God that Joe Lowery was there in that moment to talk about the power of silent tears.”
See the video and WSJ article link below.
Juan Williams Cries (Video)
As a biography, Juan Williams is 54 year old journalist originally from Panama. He is best known for his musings as a Fox News contributor. Williams is also a Senior Correspondent for NPR, author of several books, Emmy Award winner and frequent contributor to the Washington Post.
Williams authored a piece in the paper titled “Judge Obama on Performance Alone” to welcome criticism of the president. He sees a dangerous trap as Obama’s defenders set the bar too high while attempting to dismiss criticism as racially motivated.
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Rockbox.org home
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Rockbox mail archive
Subject: Re: Sansa e250 doesn't recognise 4G SDHC card
Re: Sansa e250 doesn't recognise 4G SDHC card
From: Donald Perley <perley_at_comcast.net>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:12:44 -0500
On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 2:39 PM, <djrara_at_web.de> wrote:
> 4GB):
> "MSD: not present".
The official line is that an e200v1 (the version that runs rockbox) will
only recognize microSDHC while running rockbox. While running the Sansa
firmware (which you have to for USB connectivity) it won't. Therefore you
have to load the card with a separate card reader.
Etiquette: http://www.rockbox.org/mail/etiquette.html
Received on 2009-02-10
Page was last modified "Jan 10 2012" The Rockbox Crew
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The future-history of
The Pentagon War
Jump to:
The Human-Centauri sun
Found in constellation: Hydra
Catalog names: [formerly] Haberd's Brown Dwarf 629
Right Ascention, Declination, and Distance: 8h47m, -6°45', 6.80 light-years
Galactic (X,Y,Z) coordinates in ly: -4.50, -3.90, 3.30 (almost directly between CN Leonis and Sirius)
Velocity vector in A.U.s/yr: 2.3, 0.6, -0.8
Light-Years to neighbors: Wolf 359 4.4, Sirius 4.5, Procyon 5.6, Lalande 21185 5.7, Bonner Durchmusterung +5°1668 6.7, Sol 6.8, Alpha Centauri 7.6, Ross 128 7.7, Ross 614 8.8, Kapteyn's Star 11.0, AD Leonis 11.1, Epsilon Eridani 11.4, Barnard's Star 11.8, FL Virginis 11.9, UV Ceti 12.2, CC 658 13.6, Groombridge 1618 13.8, Omicron-2 Eridani 14.5, WX Ursa Majoris 15.0, Ross 154 15.85
Arity: singular
Spectral class: M6
Luminosity class: V
Visual luminosity: 0.00002 x Sol
Bolometric luminosity: 0.0002 x Sol
Mass: 0.07 x Sol
Diameter: 0.12 x Sol
Age: At the start of the War, 139 years.
Heavy element abundance: 130% of Sol
Comfort Zone (visual): 0.0045 AU (670 000 km)
Orbital period in Visual CZ: 0.42 days (10 hours)
Comfort Zone (bolometric): 0.014 AU (2 120 000 km)
Orbital period in bolometric CZ: 2.3 days
Angular size of star in sky in bolometric CZ: 4.5° (about 9x Sol)
Future history of the Pentagon War universe:
(A number at the beginning of a paragraph indicates mean Solar [Earth] year, with year 1 being arbitrarily set as the year of first contact between humans and Centaurians. Humans still use the Gregorian calendar year; Centaurians use their own calendar except when communicating with humans. For reference, the year "x" is sometimes called "x AC", with AC being variously interpreted as "Alpha Centauri", "After Centaurians", or "Anno Contacti".)
-43 – Manned (or should I say Centaurianned) survey of Alpha Centauri B performed by the Centaurians. The second planet from the star is found to harbor life; however, nothing more advanced than a trilobite-like species has evolved.
-38 – First colonists sent to Alpha Centauri B II. The oxygen atmosphere means there is no need for terraforming — er, A-III-forming. However, all native life is completely inedible, so imported grains have to be planted. These eventually get out into the wild and begin displacing the native autotrophs. A mass extinction of native life begins; the colonists must study the ecosystem rapidly before it is so disrupted as to be nothing like what it once was.
-35 – Centaurians lay plans for a spacecraft using what humans would call the Bussard interstellar-hydrogen-collection principle. They have not yet overcome the ramscoop drag problem, so this spacecraft's top speed is limited to its own exhaust velocity. It is to be sent to Alpha Centauri Proxima.
-30 – First Centaurian ramscoop completed and sent on its mission to Proxima. In the years that follow, new designs emerge that could make the trip considerably faster, but the Centaurians figure, hey, we can wait, it's only Proxima Centauri. Their attitude turns out to be completely correct.
-15 – Details of the bleak, lifeless rendezvous with Proxima Centauri reach Alpha Centauri A III. These results aren't too surprising, seeing how ol' Alpha Centauri C is a flare star. Centaurians realize they're going to have to literally reach for the stars if they want any hope of contacting another intelligent species. Several decades ago, the Sol system nearly doubled its total radio energy output; some Centaurian astronomers have interpreted this as a sign of emerging technological life in that system.
-9 – Centaurians complete their first true starship, a proton-fusion-powered Bussard-like Scramjet, which can fuse collected hydrogen in a lengthy QC&C reactor that doesn't slow the incoming materal down. A vast interstellar plasma deflection field makes up the majority of the craft's "scoop", and is tuned to create drag during the deceleration phase (as well as collect some hydrogen to replenish the fuel tanks). This spacecraft does have to carry some fuel for the "boost" phase (it can't gather a lot of interstellar medium below about 10% of c or so), giving it a modest 3-to-1 fuel-to-empty-mass ratio. They put a crew aboard it and accelerate it at a steady 0.8 g toward their nearest Truly Interstellar neighbor, Sol.
1 – Arbitrary [Earth] year some time in the 21st century. First contact with Alpha Centauri is made. We detect their starship on its way to the inner Solar system, it enters a direct circular orbit about the Earth at an altitude between the two Van Allen belts, everybody gets jumpy, and then some paranoid general orders two ground-lanched tactical nuclear missiles (which were originally ICBMs for use against strategic thermonuclear launchers) to attack the starship as their target. The Centaurian spacecraft is blown to pieces in a fission fireball. (The Centaurians had never encountered nuclear weapons before, and weren't expecting to get shot at anyway. The only other place they'd found life had been Alpha Centauri B II.) The U.S. government, which had been working toward being the World Federal Government anyway, kind of takes over and launches a massive defense program, and redesignates its Air Force as its Space Force, to prepare for the inevitable Alpha-Centaurian counterattack.
2 – Analysis of the fragments from the destroyed Centaurian spacecraft show that it was almost certainly a Bussard-Ramscoop-like design. It also seemed to be able to force ordinary light-hydrogen (protium) to undergo controlled, sustained fusion. Although the engine assembly is in nowhere near one piece, the QC&C core is more-or-less intact. The painstaking process of reverse-engineering QC&C technology begins. This helps to further prepare for the inevitable Alpha-Centaurian counterattack.
3 – World Federal Government formed. In some ways it's less oppresive than the previous national governments it supplants; in other ways, it's more oppressive. In less than two decades, though, this won't really matter.
15 – The inevitable Alpha-Centaurian counterattack. Some of the paranoids heading up the Alpha Centauri government perceived Sol as a potential threat to their own home soil, reasoning that any species that could vaporize one of their spacecraft in one stroke must also be at least that much farther ahead of them in interstellar travel capabilities. (We're not, they're just afraid we are.) Ten combat-oriented interstellar spacecraft (all proton-fusion scramjets) enter low Earth orbit, looking for missile launch sites to shoot down. Nuclear missiles converge on them both from ground launch sites and newly-installed orbital launchers, but this time the Centaurians manage to shoot them down before they hit their spacecraft. Well, most of them, anyway — a few get through and destroy seven of the ten Centaurian craft while crippling another. The crippled starship has to be abandoned in orbit. Big fighting ensues. Ground sites where missiles and suspected missiles are stored are attacked by the Centaurians from orbit. Troops at these sites, of course, die. After a few [Earth] days, the fighting reaches an uneasy cessation, and the Centaurians send down an illustrated dictionary and analog LP-like recordings of their language. The World Federal (formerly U.S.) Government responds by sending them an illustrated English dictionary and some digital optical discs (mostly to boast about the level of our technology). Although their language is unpronounceable to a human vocal mechanism (while our discs are, at the time, beyond their ability to read), communications are established, diplomats meet behind hermetically-sealed windows, and the Centaurians and Humans agree to an uneasy ceasefire — which, of course, leads to a cold war by both sides. Having seen the real state of our space capabilities, the Alpha-Centaurians no longer consider humankind to be as much of a threat as previously supposed. Captured human satellites provide the Alpha-Centaurians with a computer technology the likes of which they have never seen before. Conversely, the one abandoned Centaurian craft was in good enough shape that humans were able to figure out the final secrets of its QC&C proton-fusion scramjet engine; this marks the beginning of the end of the Ballistic Age of Space Exploration.
16 – First QC&C proton-fusion electric power plant begins operation. It's a single-stage proton-proton reactor, originally designed to address the burgeoning market for deuterium and sell its electric output as a by-product. As the supply of deuterium skyrockets, however, the reactor quickly shifts its business focus to the power generation market. The process is so cheap and efficient that within two decades, no other kind of large scale power plant (other than the hydroelectric dam) is in use anywhere on Earth. The Age of Cheap Energy begins. With deuterium now available in such great abundance, both protium-deuterium hot fusion and QC&C deuterium fusion allow humans to really pick up the pace of space exploration and exploitation. Humanity had already gotten its act together with every aspect of spaceflight except launch costs; now, boosting people and cargo into or past Earth orbit is no longer a big deal, and orbiting spacecraft construction facilities spring up practically overnight. Human colonies on Earth's moon follow almost immediately.
19 – Alpha Centauri learns of the shaky armistice reached on Sol's third planet and decide they need to develop an antimatter arsenal. Positron collectors and starlight-powered antiproton factories are set up on Proxima Centauri's first solid planet. (Proxima's flare activity means its planetary system must remain uninhabited, which makes it ideal for dangerous operations such as antimatter manufacture.) [Note: at this point in history, antiprotons are considered the most useful form of antimatter, since they are 2000 times heavier than positrons and, thus, more grams can be herded into magnetic bottles more easily. Positron collecting is only of fringe interest to any star system's military.]
20 – Martian colony follows soon after the lunar one, and terraforming begins (in the form of planting lots of dark-colored plants wherever there might be water). Humans begin colonization of the larger asteroids and the Galilean moons. The World Federal Government that started these colonies makes many overtures about freedom and self-sufficiency, but still considers them subject to World Federal Government control; however, this policy has yet to be tested.
21 – North Mars colonized.
22 – Colonel Ira Henderson makes his address to the Earth Committee for Space Travel. Of the nearby star systems, Sirius, Lalande 21185, and V1216 Sagittarii (alias Ross 154) are at the top of the list of candidates for colonization.
23 – Mars and North Mars colonies grow to each others' borders.
24 – The Mars/North Mars conflict. After months of bloody fighting, Earth intercedes by taking strict control of both of them. (At an average opposition, a 1g brachistochrone flight from Earth to Mars would take about 2 days. At an average conjunction, it would take four-and-a-half days.) This marks the solid beginning of the transition from the World Federal Government to the Solar Federal Government.
27 – Alpha-Centaurian "check up" starship arrives in Sol space and reports current state of events to Alpha Centauri. The starship's personnel consist of one very large Centaurian clan. Some of the visiting Centaurians decide to stay in North Mars, forming their own split-off clan (and coining their new clan's name on the spot.) The World/Solar Federal Government's constabulary in North Mars allows it. They're greeted with open arms; but as soon as the starship leaves, their human hosts order them into confinement under armed threat. One of the Centaurians, when told the implement being pointed at them is a deadly weapon, shrieks and charges at the gunman, who shoots and kills the Centaurian. The rest are rounded up, quarantined, and studied intently (two of them with microscopes and scalpels) — but not before some of each species' xenobacteria are exchanged. The way in which the Federal Government lured these Centaurians into their clutches is to blame for the lack of epidemiological precautions. While on its way out of the Solar system, the check-up spacecraft surreptitiously leaves some hard-to-detect reconnaisance satellites between the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. Our progress disturbs them. When the humans find one of these satellites, they too are disturbed by this interstellar spy and figure the best course of action is to branch out outside of our own star system. The SBI is formed, and the first plans for the colonization of Sirius are begun.
28 – One of the many strains of airborne Alpha-Centaurian bacteria to be brought to North Mars causes a lethal epidemic there. Over a quarter of the human population in North Mars dies before the disease is contained and an anti-xeno-biotic is developed. Conversely, plain old harmless-to-humans E. coli kill each and every one of the quarantined Centaurians, since the visiting Centaurians had no natural resistance and weren't equipped to handle a plague. Before all the captive Centaurians die, though, the clan's medical expert provides crucial assistance to their human captors, helping them to ultimately find a cure.
30 – Bussard scramjet starships, though much smaller than the designs the Alpha-Centaurians visited us in, leave Sol for Sirius en masse. And not all Federally backed, either. Several rag-tag groups of people that can't stand the Federal government take off to Brave the Wilds themselves. As do some criminals, much like the indentured servants that came to America in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Federally-backed starships carry a small army of assembly robots that can mine and smelt the native ores, build QC&C generators, construct housing, raise food crops, etc.. However, as it turns out, these robots can also be programmed to assemble military hardware as well. Since each scramjet can only carry a couple dozen people tops, they also carry along an ample supply of frozen embryos, and each of the women must agree before departure to implant pairs of these frozen embryos in her uterus, and thus bear twins, over-and-over again for the rest of her healthy adult life once they reach their destination. This is the only way the colony can reach a stable population size in a short time, and raise these children in families large enough to rival a full school classroom. Nearly all the colonists are women; due to their constant pregnancy and the demands of child rearing, assembly 'bots are expected to be the primary labor force. [Note that at this time, hibernation technology has not yet been discovered by humans. These colonists have a long ride ahead of them.]
32 – A second wave of small starships, all Federally backed, depart Sol for Sirius.
34 – Via their outer-Sol-system-orbiting satellites, the Alpha-Centaurians learn of our colonization fleet and send a small fleet of their own to Sirius. They also like our idea of colonizing a new star system and, fearing Sirius might be used as a second staging area for human military assaults, send out a slightly larger colonization fleet to CN Leonis (alias Wolf 359), consisting mostly of malcontents. (V1216 Sagittarii, while closer, larger, and with less frequent flare activity, has bigger flares when they do occur; plus, it has a lower abundance of heavy elements, making its resources both scarcer and harder to exploit. UV Ceti has so much flare activity as to be uninhabitable.)
36 – By this time, all the cheap energy created by QC&C fusion on Earth has ushered in a worldwide post-scarcity economy. Government oppression is no longer an issue, since starvation (or even the threat of starvation), which drives the kind of strife that prompts most government intervention, has become a thing of the past. Poverty, in the sense of some being wealthier than others, still exists, but a "poor" person in this world never has to worry about life's necessities.
39 – The fledgling SBI reports the outbound Centaurian starships to the Solar Federal government on Earth. Two spacecraft were positively identified as being aimed for CN Leonis; the rest could not be pinned down as to their destinations. Sol assumes the entire Centaurian fleet is headed there.
40 – Sol: Several armed starships are sent to CN Leonis.
42 – Sirius: First human interstellar scramjets arrive at Sirius A. The fourth planet from the star lies closer than the traditional Comfort Zone, yet, because of the extremely low CO2 content of its atmosphere, has pre-aerobic life on it at the middle-to-high latitudes. Colonies are established and terraforming slowly begins, with an eye on keeping CO2 levels down. The population of this new colony is frighteningly low — you can only make an interstellar scramjet so heavy before you reach the upper limit of how wide your scoop field can be — but thankfully they brought along robotic assemblers to help build their infrastructure. Eight-and-a-half light-years worth of distance from their original home makes the three months of travelling time between England and colonial America look like a trip around the block.
44 – Second wave of starships arrive at Sirius. These more gung-ho Solar Federalists quickly learn just how much On Their Own they really are. It doesn't take long for Sirius to declare its independence.
47 – First Alpha-Centaurian scramjets arrive at CN Leonis. Colonization of CN Leonis II begins. Since CN Leonis is a mild flare star, CN Leonis II can never be terraformed (at least on its surface), but this means its surface is ideal for setting up the antimatter production facilities that nobody wants in their back yard. A period of "salutory" neglect follows, during which the colonists engage in a massive military buildup.
50 – First Alpha-Centaurians arrive at Sirius. First thought to be another wave of human colonists, the Sirians transmit the news of their independence to them. When they discover that they aren't human at all but Alpha-Centaurian, panic ensues, and the entire Sirian military is mobilized against the starships. (A few of the scramjets the humans had made their journeys in have been converted to weapons platforms, in anticipation of attempts by Sol to re-take the system.) Being primarily colony spacecraft and not expecting this kind of resistance, the visiting Centaurians soon surrender. The secrets of the Alpha-Centaurian interstellar plasma deflection fields, used in these colony craft, are unlocked by humans for the first time; they are more efficient than the methods humans used for surviving relativistic speeds. Since the starships' occupants are still alive and can be questioned, the Sirians discover that certain cooling rooms on board — which had been glossed over by analysts back on Sol when examining the damaged Centaurian starship after Second Contact — are actually hibernation chambers. Being cold-blooded, Centaurians will hibernate whenever the temperature falls below 5° Celsius, during which time they consume practically no food or water and little oxygen, and age at about 1/5 the normal rate. When Sirius broadcasts this discovery back to Sol, human hibernation technology — once considered "too risky" — is unshelved and given center stage, lest Sol suffers a "hibernation gap."
51 – CN Leonis: News of Sirius's declaration of independence arrives. And so does Sol's military force, with gun ports open. The Solar folks weren't expecting the massive military buildup that had happened in the past five years, and the Leonians blast hell out of some Solar spacecraft while capturing the rest. The prisoners (all of whom are human) are paraded around on CN Leonis-II like captured slaves. News of this little replay of the Bay of Pigs invasion has been sent back to Sol before Sol's forces are completely vanquished, though.
52 – Sol: News of Sirius's declaration of independence arrives at Sol. Sentiment among interplanetary colonists there, and even on Earth, is mixed, so the Federal government can only send a small military force to Sirius to restore order there without losing face. That military force consists of one interstellar craft carrying four automated "fighter" spacecraft which had originally been engineered to fight the Alpha-Centaurians.
59 – Sol hears about the victory at CN Leonis and decides to leave the damn place alone — in part due to a small, grass-roots group of "learned" citizens calling themselves Humans for Better Interspecies Relations.
60 – Alpha Centauri hears about the victory at CN Leonis, but only by indirectly inferring it from the least official of their communications. They're not sure who to be infuriated at more: Sol for attacking their colony, or CN Leonis for not acting like they were an Alpha-Centaurian colony any more. Not knowing how strong CN Leonis is, Alpha Centauri sends its own military force there to prevent them from "breaking off" the way Sirius did from Sol. Some concerned citizens become worried by all this warmongering and begin stepping up personal correspondences with Solar citizens in an attempt to bridge the species gap.
62 – "Peace Keeping" force from Sol arrives at Sirius. The Sirians, who had been expecting such a turn of events, had converted some of the scramscoops they made their journeys in into weapons-carrying spacecraft. Although outmatched in terms of maneuverability by the fighters, the extra armor plating and Alpha-Centaurian interstellar plasma deflection fields (now beefed up to "battle screens") are all the edge the Sirians need. They win the Sirian War for Independence in a matter of days.
65 – New slew of messages from the more concerned citizens of Alpha Centauri reaches Sol. The Humans for Better Interspecies Relations grows as a result.
66 – The Humans for Better Interspecies Relations cause a minor backlash movement among some old-timers, resulting in the most hawkish election turnout in twenty years.
70 – News of the outcome of Sirius's War of Secession reaches Sol. The Solar Federal government grudgingly accedes to Sirian independence; it works to the advantage of the hawks, who can now point to Sirius as a "new outside threat" to further Sol's cold-war footing. The Humans for Better Interspecies Relations are now the best place to go if you want to correspond with a Centaurian in another star system.
71 – The Humans for Better Interspecies Relations reaches a critical mass. Citing emotional-plague behavior and so-called "intolerance" as the main cause of xenophobia, they announce the intention of building a new, independent colony in a new star system, and send an open invitation to any other humans or Centaurians who wish to join them. The only restriction on citizenship in this new "Human-Centauri", they insist, is that emotional plague behavior will not be tolerated, and that they will be free to deport any emotional plague characters.
72 – Alpha Centauri's military force arrives at CN Leonis. The fleet is devastated within minutes of announcing their role as enforcers. Leonian independance has been waiting to happen, and this provides all the impetus it needs.
75 – News of the Human-Centauri project reaches Alpha Centauri. There is a large degree of interest — and some suspicion from the Alpha-Centaurian government. The interested Alpha-Centaurian citizens realize that the best solution to avoid interference from any of the three existing governments is for Human-Centauri to be in a star system that nobody else is interested in.
78 – News of the Human-Centauri project reaches CN Leonis. No Leonian with interstellar travel capability is interested.
79 – Sirius: News of the Human-Centauri project arrives. Few Sirians are interested. Sol: Agreeing with the interested Alpha-Centaurian citizens, the Humans for Better Interspecies Relations have already chosen one of the least interesting Human-Centauri locales imaginable: a substellar ball of heavy-element-rich hydrogen named Haberd's Brown Dwarf 629. It didn't even manage to ignite into a star under its own weight, but is large enough to be ignited artificially. (It's also situated closer to Sirius and CN Leonis than to either Sol or Alpha Centauri.) The brown dwarf also never underwent a planetary formation period, and is instead surrounded by a densely-packed ring of orbiting debris. The first wave of emigrants leaves for this newly-christened Human-Centauri system, carrying with them an antiproton bomb which they figure will start a fusion reaction within the substar.
79 – News of CN Leonis's sovereignty arrives at Sol.
80 – Sirius: News of CN Leonis's sovereignty arrives. (The Leonians have enough of a resource base to feel comfortable in broadcasting this fact, unlike Sirius.) Alpha Centauri: News of CN Leonis's independence arrives. This causes Alpha-Centaurian government to fear it's losing control and clamp down on its own populace somewhat. The Human-Centauri enthusiasts get even more antsy to leave.
83 – Alpha-Centauri: News of the location of Human-Centauri arrives. A few Centaurians back away out of skepticism over the ability to "create" a star — not to mention the insane logistics of living in an asteroid field that puts Sol's asteroid belt to shame — but in light of the more militaristic political situation in their home system, most of the previously interested citizens embark for this new frontier. With enough supplies to get back home if stellar ignition fails, of course.
88 – First Solar immigrants arrive at Haberd's Brown Dwarf 629 and prepare to convert it into a star system. The debris ring orbiting the brown dwarf turns out to be thickest right at the distance from the future star that they wanted to build their civilization, meaning any "worlds" they might have planned on building would be right in the middle of an asteroid freeway. While stellar ignition preparation continues, the homesteaders decide to turn the disadvantage of this debris ring into an advantage. They build their new homes right into one of the biggest asteroids itself. They have to live in pressurized dugouts with almost no gravity, but lacking gravity has its advantages too.
89 – First emotional plague behavior incident at the future site of Human-Centauri. The perpetrator is given a choice of one year's private confinement, or deportation back to Sol. She leaves. Many feel the situation was not handled well and that new standards for dealing with plague-characters should be adopted.
90 – Human-Centauri stellar ignition. A star is born. Asteroid scaffolding construction crews can now work by the light of this new candle, instead of their portable fusion furnaces.
93 – First Centaurian immigrants arrive on (Gregorian) June 5th to a warm welcome at the still-under-construction Human-Centauri habitat ring. The human inhabitants of Human-Centauri officially name June 5th "Grand Opening Day". Sadly, a few Centaurian's are found to have character structures tainted with their own species' version of the emotional plague, and have to be sent back.
94 – Sirius: Light from the newly-ignited star arrives. Sirians are flabberghasted that these independent malcontents could actually pull it off. CN Leonis: First light from Human-Centauri arrives. The Leonians are frankly amazed, but have had political and economic problems of their own so can't pay it much attention at this point.
95 – Construction on the first Human-Centauri major asteroid has progressed to the point where the Citizens start eyeing the second. The asteroid is officially christened Human-Centauri I, but among the inhabitants it's simply known as "The Capital.". 1.0 g centrifuges start springing up in the more densely-human-populated areas, as places to keep the human occupants from suffering muscle and bone mass degeneration.
97 – First light from Human-Centauri reaches Sol.
98 – First light from Human-Centauri reaches Alpha Centauri.
100 – First disgruntled Human-Centauri reject arrives back at Sol. Her story blurts "Human-Centauri unfair!" in tabloid-like news media across the system. Those who've actually met her tend to agree with the Human-Centaurians' decision, however.
101 – Second major Human-Centauri asteroid now inhabited with its own underground centrifuges; due to the influx of new waves of immigrants, Human-Centauri II is now christened "New Mars". Another large asteroid is commendiered as a "greeting area" where prospective Human-Centauri citizens, emotional plague bearing or not, may arrive and live before being accepted or rejected.
107 – Human-Centauri III asteroid now home to underground centrifuges too.
113 – Human-Centaurian projections indicate that their population may exceed the capacity of all three major asteroids within the century. Plans are laid for a "higher class" neighborhood, consisting of the future Human-Centauri IV and V, the two largest asteroids in the star system. (Human-Centauri I was chosen not for its size, but for the usefulness of the ice and carbonaceous materials near its surface.)
124 – Human-Centauri IV added to the artificial star system's usable real estate. Its inhabitants name it "New France." It is considerably larger than any of the first three asteroids.
143 – Human-Centauri V inhabited. Human-Centauri VI is not planned for the near future.
150 – Mad Scientist's phased antimatter bomb experiment approved by the Solar Federal government's Board of Research. He is granted Luyten 726-8 B IV for his personal testbed; the extreme flare nature of UV Ceti makes the system too hostile for habitation. Mad Scientist departs Sol system for good old UV Ceti. Pre-assembled materials for the Phased Antimatter device follow soon thereafter.
151 – SBI issues Arnold Hassleberg NK438CH5, a top-of-the-line Bussard fusion scramjet, which has external inflatable fuel tanks that allow it to reach a much higher ramscoop speed before burnout, and which is built to sustain a continuous 2g of acceleration or deceleration.
152 – SBI agents Arnold Hasselberg and Jerry Redlands depart Sol for UV Ceti.
161 – Mad Scientist arrives at UV Ceti IV and begins setting up shop.
162 – Start of the story. Mad Scientist test-detonates first Phased Antimatter device on UV Ceti IV, destroying the planet (and himself). SBI observers Arnold Hasselberg and Jerry Redlands discover double-sided hole in space (filled with utter darkness) at the flashpoint. Arnold accidentally falls into hyper hole and is believed gone forever. Jerry violates orders and sends the secrets of the terrible, planet-rending destructive power of the Phased Antimatter Bomb to all five star systems.
177 – Jerry's data-transmission signal reaches all five systems simultaneously. The problem of What Happened At The Flashpoint becomes the hot topic in the various scientific communities. Sirius's physicists quickly stumble upon the answer to the riddle of the Phased Antimatter Bomb by codifying the Energy Density Limit. The news is sent to the other four star systems. Since the realization involves the fact that the Phased Antimatter Bomb essentially produced a four-dimensional stairstep into a parallel 3-D space, the bomb is re-christened the "Hyper Bomb".
186 – News of Sirius's discovery reaches Sol and Alpha-Centauri. Sol had gotten pretty close to this answer themselves, but Sirius still beat them to the punch. Alpha Centauri has a large enough positron stockpile to attempt building a hyper hole tunnel between themselves and another star system. Since trade with Sol would be the most profitable to them, and since Sol also has the largest positron stockpile of all five systems, Alpha Centauri sends a message to Sol detailing how the two of them could build a hyperlink.
190 – Alpha Centauri's hyperlink idea reaches Sol. The Solar Federal government had a similar idea a couple of years ago, and they're ecstatic to try it. They send the go-ahead signal to Alpha Centauri. They even send precise aiming and timing information to Alpha Centauri as to when (5 years hence) and where (between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn) they're going to blow their hyper bomb. They figure that even if Alpha Centauri doesn't agree, or misses their target, or the theory doesn't work, they'll get to put the hyper bomb through a real domestic test.
194 – Sol's acceptance and plans reach Alpha Centauri. The A-III government finishes its own hyper bomb and starts lining it up to within a thousandth of an arc-second of the precise location Sol said they'd be detonating theirs.
195 – Both Sol's and Alpha Centauri's hyper bombs go off. The aiming and timing were superb on both ends. Despite the monumental odds against them, the hyper link was successfully created. (One photographer poised behind the Sol bomb was killed, though, since no one had anticipated the foreflash from the other guy's hyper bomb would come though the hole to their own side.) The English-language radio transmission of "Can you hear us?" was greeted with an English "yes!" from the other end almost immediately. Less than a week later, the first manned (Centaurianned?) Alpha-Centaurian spacecraft crosses the hole to Sol space, and the next day, Sol's first passenger craft voyages to Alpha Centauri in a like manner. Sol and Alpha Centauri immediately relay plans for similar hyper holes to Sirius and CN Leonis, respectively.
196 – Analysis of the blast and hyper holes indicates that there was more of a margin for error on angular alignment than had been anticipated (which was why the first dual detonation had been successful). Sol and Alpha Centauri each place a communications relay station in matching orbit with its end of the Sol/Alpha-Centauri hyper link.
197 – Border patrol functions are added to the communications relay stations, first by Sol and then by Alpha-Centauri within the same year.
198 – To ensure the border patrol stations stay put, Sol and Alpha Centauri each move an asteroid a few miles in diameter into hyper hole orbit, and anchor their station to it.
201 – Sol's good news arrives at Sirius. They suspect a trick, but have been looking for an excuse to test their own hyper bomb. Like Sol before them, they transmit intended coordinates and timing back to the system that suggested it to them.
203 – News of the Sol/Alpha Centauri hyper hole arrives at CN Leonis. Although it would deplete them of almost every positron they've cultivated (they'd been stockpiling primarily antiprotons prior to the success of the Phased Antimater Bomb), CN Leonis agrees to detonate their own hyper bomb and transmits the intended time and position to Alpha Centauri.
208 – The Sol/Sirius hyper hole detonations work. Communications relays are set up on either side of the hole immediately. Sirius begins its second hyper bomb and asks its other neighbor, Human-Centauri, if they'd like to link with them.
212 – The Alpha Centauri/CN Leonis hyper hole detonations are a success. Now Human-Centauri is the only one of the five major star systems to be lightspeed-isolated. CN Leonis tells of this success to Human-Centauri, and accelerates its positron collecting operations in an effort to build another hyper bomb as soon as possible. (Not just for linking with Human-Centauri, either; the Leonians, who are primarily Centaurian, are wary of their species' homeworld. A planet-killer bomb would make quite a deterrent.)
213 – Sirius's request to establish a hyper bomb link with Human-Centauri reaches Human-Centauri. Positron collecting has been slow at best, but they figure they'll have enough in three or four years to make an attempt. The details of where and when they intend to detonate are transmitted to Sirius; since four years is only enough time for a one-way message between these two worlds, Sirius will not have the option to ask them not to make the attempt if they so choose.
215 – A Leonian "Would you like to establish a hyper hole link with us?" request arrives at Human-Centauri. They agree, but tell them it'll take some time to accumulate the necessary positrons since they're already planning to link with Sirius.
217 – Human-Centauri's "We're going to detonate" message arrives at Sirius, who obliges them. The two systems successfully establish a hyperlink and use the new trade route to request some extra positrons for their proposed link with CN Leonis. Sirius refuses. Human-Centauri begins the ten-year process of positron accumulation to produce the necessary 250 kg of positronic antimatter for a hyper bomb.
218 – By using the four existing hyperlinks, the Leonians actually deliver 20 kg of their own positrons to Human-Centauri. They are really intent on having a direct Human-Centauri link. The Human-Centauri Defense Force gets a bit suspicious about this, but the go-ahead for the next link detonation is given to the Leonian courier, who takes it back to CN Leonis.
219 – Human-Centauri completes its second hyper bomb. The communications relays on all the existing hyper holes greatly facilitate the process of synchronizing their detonation with CN Leonis's. Creation of the fifth hyper hole link is a success.
220 – The formerly small inhabited region on Human-Centauri's "greeting area" asteroid expands into a tourist spot, as it is the only place in the Human-Centauri system that noncitizens can go. An embassy is established there.
223 – Sirius completes another hyper bomb. They do not use it to create a hyper link with Sol or CN Leonis, and have no intention of doing so. For the first time in the history of post-first-contact space, a star system holds the threat of planetary annihilation over its neighbors.
224 – Alpha-Centaurian intelligence discovers that CN Leonis has had their own spare hyper bomb for at least as long as Sirius has. An emergency summit of representatives from all five governments is held on Human-Centauri II. The first SALTY treaty is signed, banning positron stockpiling for any purpose other than creating hyper hole links. All star systems begin a build-up of conventional antiproton warheads and military spacecraft.
225 – Sirius and CN Leonis refuse to comply. Sol is discovered to have made two hyper bombs since it coestablished the Sol/Sirius link. SALTY II, requiring all hyper bombs to be phased out over six years, is proposed and signed by four of the five systems (CN Leonis refuses), and, since unanimous participation was needed, is rejected. SALTY III, a more palatable solution allowing each star system to stockpile at most one hyper bomb at a time, is signed unanimously. The border-patrol installations on both sides of each hyper hole link are beefed up into massive "gate guards" capable of holding their own against an entire carrier's complement of fighters.
226 – Sol refuses to dismantle or use its second hyper bomb, giving excuses like "Well, what if a new alien species showed up and decided to attack us?". SALTY III breaks down. Sol proposes SALTY IV, which, after cutting through pages of legalese, basically says that everybody else gets to keep one hyper bomb in reserve, but Sol gets to keep two. No other star system signs this treaty. Tensions mount. To avoid threats of blockade, Sol reluctantly signs SALTY V, forcing them to dismantle their second hyper bomb but (in a loophole their diplomats discovered) allowing them to stockpile as many raw positrons as they liked.
227 – Discovering the SALTY V loophole, the other star systems demand another summit with Sol. This one is held on Alpha Centauri A-III. After heated discussion and the threat of war, SALTY VI is ratified, which does not limit the size of a positron or hyper bomb arsenal but requires that each star system keep all of its positrons (and hyper bombs) in plain sight for the other systems to inventory.
228 – SALTY VI seems to be working. With the exception of Human-Centauri, which has only one hyper bomb in reserve, all 5 star systems have two hyper bombs and some extra positrons on the way to building a third bomb.
229 – Alpha Centauri discovers a third Solar hyper bomb that they've been keeping hidden. Sol's transit privileges through Alpha-Centaurian space are revoked. Yet another conference is held, this time on Human-Centauri II. While James Carter (Sol's representative) is en route to the conference through Sirian space, he receives an encrypted message from the SBI telling him that that a secret extra Alpha-Centaurian hyper bomb has just been discovered. At the conference, Sirius, CN Leonis, and even Human-Centauri are strongly suspected of having an extra hyper bomb (or in the Leonians' case, two) in reserve that they weren't telling the others about. Blockade decisions fly around the room. Tempers flare, tolerance limits break. Finally, Alpha Centauri's representative (Holsteader) declares war on CN Leonis. And James Carter declares war on Alpha Centauri. And Holsteader declares war on Sirius. And CN Leonis's representative (Krammer) declares war on Human-Centauri. And Sirius's representative (Håkan Brezhnev; at one point I thought of naming him Ivan Harlbjorg) declares war on Sol. And on it goes, until every star system is formally at war with every other star system.
Realizing the strategic threat of two hostile neigbors, Sol decides to make a quick strike against their weaker neighbor so that they can focus on their more powerful foe. They don't have the fighter carriers to commit to a full-scale military win against Sirius, so they opt instead to smash the bulk of the Sirian transmute-tanker fleet. This hugely limits Sirian fuel supplies for over a year.
230 – A year into the war, Torra Zorra, Ken Tractor, and Jennifer Doe receive The Message. They request a starship — something for which little or no use has existed for over a decade — to make the voyage to UV Ceti IV's remains. Yukariah Heap agrees. The Message indicates that they had better get there inside of 10 years; unfortunately, UV Ceti is over 13 years away from Human-Centauri. Only the Sol system is close enough to UV Ceti to cut a non-hyper-hole interstellar voyage down to less than 10 years of travel time. Taking a prototype interstellar warship built for hypothetical colonizing missions (yet small enough to fit through a hyper hole), they run a deadly gauntlet across Sirian space and past three hostile gate guards into Sol space, and take off for UV Ceti. Thankfully, Sol does not pursue, since the three are not maneuvering toward any potential targets and the Solar military has its hands full with Sirius at that moment anyway.
A quick relativistic calculation shows that a continuous 1g acceleration will not be enough to cross the 8.554 light-years from Sol to UV Ceti in 10 years' time, but a continuous 2g acceleration will. At 2g, it will take 4.734 years of rest-time [1.442 years "proper time"] to reach the half-way point, at which point they will be travelling at 0.99479 of c (at which speed γ = 9.812). If you can sustain 2g, though, you don't have to accelerate all the way to the half way point. You'll reach 0.95c in 1.446 years rest time, at which point you can coast for 6.798 years, then decelerate at 2g for another 1.446 years — total travel time: 9.69 years. If you accelerate to only 0.92c (γ = 2.72), it'll take you 1.116 years of rest time to get going that fast, duing which you'll cover 0.738 light-years; you'll coast for 7.08 ly at 0.92c, which'll take 7.69 years of rest time, for a total trip time of 9.925 years.
236 – Sirius drops antimatter bombs on several major Human-Centaurian metropolitan areas, including New France and New Mars.
237 – The war is going badly for Human-Centauri. Although CN Leonis has been leaving them alone, Sirius has been dealing them heavy blows. They need help. They give CN Leonis permission to transit their space to put pressure on Sirius, since CN Leonis is at war with Sirius too. The Leonians say they'll need to operate from the Human-Centauri habitat ring if Human-Centauri is going to get their help. In one of its most self-destructive long-term moves ever, Human-Centauri grudgingly allows the Leonian military — including its Fanatic Brigade — to inhabit Human-Centauri citizen territory. The emotional plague poisoning begins.
238 – Throwing off the gloves, CN Leonis authorizes its Fanatic Brigade to use a Leonian hyper bomb on Alpha Centauri A III. They succeed, and Alpha Centauri A III is half-shattered. The homeworld of all Centaurians is reduced to a floating hulk. So much for the history, art, archaeology, biology, paleontology, geology, etc., etc., of the planet. Thoroughly appalled, Human-Centauri revokes its permission for CN Leonis personnel to inhabit citizen areas and begins to round them up and herd them out, but the social damage has already been done.
240 – The Chosen Three arrive at UV Ceti. No news has been beamed to them, since the signals would've had to have originated from Sol. The Messages are found to be from the "ghost" of Arnold Hasselberg, who points out the Zero Drive that the Mad Scientist had developed before he shattered the fourth planet. Ken recovers it, Jennifer tries to kill him, Torra Zorra (in attempting to subdue her) accidentally kills her. They install and test the Zero Drive, then use it to enter a Limbo (neither wholly in Real nor in Parallel space) while moving through the hyper hole. (This is done by calculating the movement of the hype hole through absolute space as it orbits UV Ceti, and letting it envelop them while their zero-drive makes them stand rock-still.) On the trip back, they learn the news of the Sirian bombings of Human-Centauri's habitat ring, Human-Centauri's allowance of the CN Leonis military into its citizen areas, and A-III's annihilation. They emerge from the Human-Centauri end of the Human-Centauri/Sirius hole and, using the decisive maneuverability the Zero Drive gives them, vanquish a Sirian assault force just moments before they would've hyper-bombed Human-Centauri I. They tell Human-Centauri about the impending End of the Galaxy, who tells of this catastrophe to the other four star systems, who stop mucking about with fighting each other because, darn it, the galaxy could end at any moment. Ken Tractor and Torra Zorra then take the Sirian hyper bomb originally intended to blow up their homeworld, go back into Limbo through the CN Leonis hyper hole, race to the center of the galaxy, and (using the hyper bomb) squelch the impending explosion of Sagittarius X in the nick of time. And everybody lives happily ever after. (Until I write the sequel, that is.)
The Planets
Alpha Centauri A III:
The Centaurian homeworld, abbreviated A-three in human speech, orbits Alpha Centauri A at a distance of 200 million kilometers, making its "year" last 1½ Earth years. (If the orbit is exactly 200,000,000 km, assuming Alpha Centauri A's mass is exactly 1.1 solar masses, its orbital period will be 1.46795 Earth years.) It has only one moon, which is about the size of Phobos, and a sidereal rotation period of 17 hours, 43 minutes (thus one A-III year is around 740 A-III days long). Its axis of rotation is tilted 20° with respect to its orbit, whose eccentricity is nearly zero. Its size and density are about the same as Venus, making its surface gravity about 80% that of Earth. The lower concentrations of heavy metals in the planet means naturally occurring radioactives are rarer, which was one of the reasons the Centaurians didn't develop nuclear fission weapons before they met us.
The revelation after Second Contact, that our alien neighbors hail from a planet orbiting in the habitable zone of Alpha Centauri A, put to rest once and for all the debate over whether a planet that close to Alpha Centauri B's gravitational interference could remain in a stable orbit for more than 250 million years.
Its atmosphere, like Earth's, consists almost entirely of biologically-created oxygen and nitrogen gas, the nitrogen comprising about three-quarters (rather than four-fifths) of the atmospheric partial pressure. Mean sea level atmospheric pressure is about 0.85 Earth atmospheres. Geological activity on this planet is far more subdued than it is on Earth, resulting in shallow oceans and great, flat expanses of land. (The lower heavy-element abundance of the planet in relation to the Earth means that these oceans aren't quite as salty as ours.) Rocky areas on the land masses can be as flat, hard, and vast as the salt flats found in the North American deserts. It was for swift crossing of these giant natural parking lots that Centaurian foot-wheels evolved.
Its oceans cover the majority of its surface, but are shallower that Earth's and not as saline. (The lower salinity is due to the lower abundances of chlorine and sodium thoughout the planet.) The weather tends to be drier than on Earth, meaning fewer freshwater lakes and rivers and not as much groundwater. The lower level of radioactive materials, relative to Earth, means that the planet doesn't produce as much interior heat as the Earth does, which means less geological activity. This, coupled with its lack of a large moon, means less of a difference between the highest points and the lowest points on its surface. The oceans are shallower, and the mountains aren't as high. There are more continents than on Earth but each continent is smaller, and the coastlines are a lot more convoluted with long inlets and peninsulae than their terrestrial equivalents, providing local access to salt water from much of the land surface. In the relatively small amount of inland area that's away from these spiny coasts, the topography is mostly vast flat plains, dotted with a few high upthrusting cliffs here and there.
It should be noted that A-III is the most distant whole planet in orbit around Alpha Centauri A. Farther out is just a thin asteroid belt, and there are no planets or debris of any kind orbiting A any farther out than that. This is due to the fact that anything orbiting A or B at a distance of more than 2.9 AUs would be thrown out of the star system due to the perturbations of the other star. There are, however, a few gas giants orbiting the A-B pair out at distances of a hundred AUs or more, the way Proxima does.
The closest English-pronounceable approximation to the name the Centaurians give their homeworld is "Go'orla." (The o'o sound is actually two o's pronounced in rapid succession with each of two adjacent mouths.)
Ecosystem: A-III has an ecosystem nearly as rich and varied as that on Earth. Cellular salinity levels for A-III lifeforms are lower than in cells from Earth, since they evolved in less-salty seas. No A-III cells are Eukaryotic in the sense of having a self-contained nucleus; however, the double-chromosomes necessary for gamete production are present in all multicellular life forms. As far as organelles go, there are plastids but no mitochondria (the bacteria that evolved double chromosomes were themselves capable of aerobic respiration, so no "guest" respirators were needed). Endoplasmic reticula are also present in double-chromosomed cells.
There are some flying insect-like invertebrates but no flying chordates (like birds or bats or pteradactyls). Historically, there was no age of giant land creatures, so Earth's ancient dinosaurs are of particular fascination to Centaurian paleontologists.
Alpha Centauri B II:
The only other world besides Earth and A-III to harbor multicellular life, B-II orbits Alpha Centauri B at a distance of 150 million kilometers, making its "year" last 1.1 Earth years. It has no moons, and a sidereal rotation period of only 8 hours. Its atmosphere is thick with CO2, allowing it to trap more heat from Alpha Centauri B, and distribute it more evenly over the planet's surface, than either Earth or A-III. This is how the planet is warm enough for liquid oceans of water to exist despite its extreme distance from its sun. The high carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere makes it unfit for human or Centaurian consumption directly, but its biologically-created ozone layer combined with cheap and plentiful CO2 filtration technology allow one to walk (or wheel) around outside comfortably wearing little more than a mouthpiece. The sky above is awfully dreary, though, what with the continual, hazy, Venus-like cloudcover.
The planet's size is akin to that of Mars, but its density is closer to Venus's or Earth's, giving it a surface gravity of about 50% that of Earth. Only its greater-than-the-normal-comfort-zone distance from Alpha Centauri B allows the planet to retain such a thick atmosphere despite its low surface gravity.
The surface of the planet is a water world, covered everywhere by one vast planet-wide ocean. Its lack of a large moon means there is far less variation in terrain altitude than there is on Earth, even with the planet's lower surface gravity. The planet does exhibit some tectonic activity, however, leading to at least a little bit of terrain variation on the sea floor. The depth of the planet-wide ocean varies from 2 to 4 kilometers, depending on latitude and longitude. Due to the lack of land for the ocean waves to break against, hideously tall waves are possible.
Ecosystem: Life on this planet has progressed to about the stage of life in the early Paleozoic era on Earth, since multicellular organisms only got around to making their appearance a couple hundred million years ago. The more successful species do sexually reproduce. Most critters are fuelled by sea floor volcanic vents so deep under water that no light can penetrate. Thus, photosynthesis is a recent development, relative to the timescale of evolution on Earth or Alpha Centauri A III, having emerged only in the last few hundred million years in the form of "riser" organisms that ascended from the volcanic vent ecospheres to the ocean's surface as part of their life cycle. All photosynthesis is accomplished by a chemical mechanism similar to terrestrial Bacteriorhodopsin, so all photosynthestic organsims have a purplish hue. Since there is no such thing on this planet as "dry land" — there aren't even polar ice caps, since the CO2 and cloud cover eliminate most latitude-based temperature variation — it goes without saying that no life forms, not even the plantlike ones, have migrated out of the oceans. However, some plantlike organisms have managed to "colonize" the surface of the oceans, forming floating vegetation mats. These purple mats float just barely below the ocean surface, and form complete ecosystems unto themselves, with small herbivores that feed on the plants and small carnivores that feed on the herbivores. Some of these floating vegetation mats are several kilometers across, and would qualify as features big enough to show on a map — except that they're not anchored to the ocean floor and thus tend to meander around in the surface currents and winds.
CN Leonis II:
A lifeless world before the Centaurians arrived, CN Leonis II orbits its star at a distance of two million kilometers, giving it an orbital period (a "year") that lasts only 42 hours. It is locked in synchronous rotation with the star it orbits; the only thing keeping its day side from frying and its night side from freezing is the steady, howling wind. The atmosphere resembles that of Jupiter, but with a higher CO2 and a lower water concentration. Surface gravity is 0.65g.
Although CN Leonis II technically lies within the bolometric Comfort Zone for its star, CN Leonis is a flare star. Its flares aren't as intense as those on UV Ceti or Proxima Centauri, but they occur with greater frequency. So, the surface of CN Leonis II can never be terraformed. However, surface-based energy collectors and subterranean tunnelling have allowed for a thriving underground community, populated by Centaurians and some humans.
Sirius A IV:
The only known planet other than Earth, Alpha Centauri A III, and Alpha Centauri B II to harbor life, Sirius A IV orbits its host star at a distance of 300 million kilometers, giving it an orbital period of about 1.85 Earth years. It rotates once every 13 hours, and has two decently-sized natural satellites. It's slightly smaller than the Earth, but is more dense due to the star system's high metallicity, giving it a surface gravity of about 1.1g Since the star system it's in has only existed for some 300 million years, and since it is so close to its host star, the planet's interior is still quite warm, and its surface is highly tectonically active. The lower latitudes are too hot to prance around in without reflective shade or air conditioning, but the middle latitudes are habitable and the upper latitudes are actually a bit on the cool side. (The planet's 27-degree axial tilt helps in this regard.)
("Habitable" here refers to the temperature range, not to its habitability by humans or Centaurians. The atmosphere resembles that of pre-oxygen-holocaust Earth, consisting primarily of nitrogen with substantial amounts of methane, mmonia, and water vapor mixed in, along with trace amounts of carbon dioxide.)
The tropics are not only too hot for human comfort, they're too hot for liquid water, period. Two great oceans gird the planet, one in the far north and one in the far south. These oceans visibly shrink during their hemisphere's summer and grow during their hemisphere's winter. As each ocean shrinks, its salinity increases; as each grows, it gets more and more dilute. Spring and summer are marked by a complete and utter lack of rainfall; autumn and winter consist of almost continuous, torrential rains. Islands and small continents dot both oceans; as the oceans grow and shrink with the seasons, so the land masses' coastlines retreat and advance. Even at the height of summer, though, none of these continents is much larger than Madagascar. Polar ice occasionally forms during the winter darkness, but melts away quickly every spring.
The human population has nicknamed this planet "America".
Ecosystem: Life does exist in the middle-to-upper latitudes of Sirius A IV. Amazingly, life seems to have gotten started in the northern ocean completely independently of life in the southern ocean, as organisms from each region have strikingly different biochemistry from one another. Fossil evidence suggests that neither ecosystem has existed for more than a hundred million years, so it's no surprise that neither ocean has yet produced aerobic life forms. There just hasn't been enough time for them to evolve. The most advanced native organism on the planet is similar in size and structure to a terrestrial mycoplasma, complete with actual DNA in little free-floating plasmid-like loops. The rest of the planet's single-celled inhabitants still use RNA. (Of course, their genetic code(s) are as different from humans' genetic code as the Centaurians' is.) Judging by Earth's evolutionary timetables, cyanobacteria are still about a billion years off — and Sirius A isn't going to stay on the main sequence that long. More likely, the transplanted humans and Centaurians now inhabiting Sirius A IV, and the plants, animals, and microorganisms they have brought with them, will displace most indigenous life forms.
The Human-Centauri Habitat Ring:
Human-Centauri has no planets. Instead, it has a plane of orbiting debris similar to the debris disk around Vega or the asteroid belt around Sol. Most of the material in this debris disk is concentrated in a ring that averages 0.02 AU away from the star. Some of the asteroids in this debris ring are a little bit closer, some a little bit further; an object orbiting exactly at this distance would have an orbital period of 3 days 21 hours 43 minutes and an orbital circumference of 18 850 000 kilometers. This is somewhat farther away from the star than the conventional comfort zone (which would be at 0.014 AU).
In the earliest history of the star system, long before modern humans or Centaurians existed, Haberd's Brown Dwarf 629 went through a protostar epoch just like any main-sequence star, where it shone very brightly due to its own gravitational contraction (with some help from deuterium fusion in its core) for many thousands of years. In this protostar phase, it shone more brightly than at any other point in its history (even its current post-artificial-ignition phase). This protostar phase sublimated all the methane, water, and ammonia ice on every asteroid in the main debris ring, but was too short to sublimate the cometary material in highly elongated, very long-period orbits. Some of these comets later got deflected by the gravity of the larger asteroids and settled in to much shorter-period orbits. This means that with the coming of artificial stellar ignition, many many icy objects in the system have been boiling their surfaces into space, surrounded by great clouds of vapor.
Even post-ignition, to gather enough stellar energy for a comfortable surface temperature (or for growing plants on an exposed asteroid surface), an asteroid would have to be locked in synchronous rotation with the star so that one side would heat up to be at or near the substellar temperature. Despite the debris ring's small orbital radius compared with Sol's asteroid belt, the total combined mass of all the material in the ring turns out to be substantially higher than that of the asteroid belt. There are dozens of large asteroids, ranging in size from 200 to 700 kilometers across, with surface gravities ranging from 0.5% to 1.5% of 1g With the ability to position smaller asteroids in close orbits around one another, locked in synchronous rotation with each other, the early colonists also had the option of constructing pairs of "bridged asteroids" for additional living space.
The five largest asteroids are named Human-Centauri I through Human-Centauri V in order of their colonization. Human-Centauri IV and V are the two largest asteroids in the system. Another large asteroid became home to the Greeting Area; this only covered a small region of the asteroid's surface at first, but eventually expanded to cover the bulk of the asteroid. The habitats are all underground or in transparently enclosed areas on the surface. A few of the exposed surface regions have strong artificial magnetic fields generated by means of supercondicting magnets to keep out cosmic rays and the occasional stellar flare. The five major asteroids all have space stations in synchronous orbits above their equators, with space elevators leading to (and below) their surfaces. The experimental scaffolding-connected asteroid pairs have transport tubes between them. Due to the lack of planetary gravity, many neighborhoods are built entirely out of an underground centrifuge, adjustable to 1g for those coming from Earth, 0.8g for those coming from Alpha Centauri A III, 0.5g for those coming from Alpha Centauri B II, 0.4g for those coming from Mars, etc..
In addition to their official designations as Human-Centauri I through Human-Centauri V, each major asteroid has a name. Human-Centauri II is "New Mars," while Human-Centauri IV is "New France." The satellites, natural and artificial, are usually arranged in synchronous orbit and connected to the asteroid by space elevators (even the largest asteroid has a shallow enough gravity well that a space elevator cable won't snap under its own weight). Shuttles ferry passengers and cargo between asteroids, docking with the smaller asteroids or with the synchorous satellites of the larger asteroids. The "Greeting Area" asteroid is 200 km across its widest part, with a density of 3 grams per cubic centimeter (along with its requisite synchronous satellites). This works out to a mass of 1.2 x 1019 kg, giving it a surface gravity of 0.084 m/s2, or 0.0086 g. It rotates once every 4 hours 20 minutes, giving it a synchronous-orbital altitude of 70 km (at a lateral velocity of 68.7 m/s). The regular spacecraft docking that occurs at such a synchronous satellite means that good, reliable station-keeping hardware is necessary, because just a fraction of one meter-per-second of delta-V would cause the satellite to get ahead of, or behind, the rotating equator below it, which would pull on and eventually break the space-elevator cable.
Ecosystem: The entire ecosystem in all 5 metropolitan areas has been artificially introduced. It consists primarily of humans, Centaurians, their pets, oxygen-producing plants (in the star-exposed regions), and food plants and animals for both species. Agriculture is seen as a somewhat dangerous business by the underground inhabitants, as it requires venturing out into exposed areas to tend the crops.
UV Ceti IV
A granite ball about the size and mass of Mars, cloaked in a thin atmosphere of short-chain hydrocarbons (created by starlight having long ago broken down the original atmosphere of methane). It orbits its parent star at a distance of 3 million kilometers, three times as far away as what would be the Visual Comfort Zone distance if UV Ceti weren't a flare star. At this distance, the star appears 3.5 degrees in diameter as seen in the planet's sky, and the orbital period is 3.56 Earth days. The planet is locked in synchronous rotation with the star, so its sidereal "day" is the same as its orbital period (85 hours 26 minutes), but UV Ceti never appears to move in its sky. In order for a satellite to be in stationary orbit above UV Ceti IV's equator, it would need to orbit at an altitude of 43,400 km above its surface.
Fusing 1 kg of silicon and oxygen into titanium-44 would release 2.5 x 1013 Joules of energy. As a quick approximation of what it would take to blow the planet apart, lifting the entire mass of the planet 100 km in the air would take on the order of 1029 Joules, or the fusion of 4 x 1015 kg of silicon and oxygen (about 0.00000063% of the planet's mass). Accelerating the entire mass of the planet to its own escape velocity (5 km/s) would take 8 x 1030 Joules.
UV Ceti IV has one small (but not tiny) airless moon. It's 120 km in diameter (sound familiar?), with an average density of 3.35 g/cm3 (sound familiar?). This works out to a mass of 3 x 1018 kg, a surface gravity of 0.0057g, and an escape velocity from the surface of 82.12 m/s. The moon is locked in synchronous rotation with the planet, which has circularized the moon's orbit (the moon was originally a captured asteroid). The moon orbits a scant 10,000 kilometers above the surface of the planet, giving it an orbital period (and, due to the tide-locking, a sidereal "day") of 13 hours 4 minutes. At that separation distance, UV Ceti IV would have an angular size of a whopping 26.4 degrees as seen from the surface of its moon. By contrast, the moon as seen from the skies of UV Ceti IV would have a respectable angular diameter of 0.69°, slightly larger than the Earth's moon as seen from Earth.
Centaurian Biology
Centaurians are sexually reproducing, multicellular oxygen breathers with RNA/DNA. That's about their only similarity to humans.
Seen from the outside, Centaurians look like small versions of the Xorns in AD&D, with four stubby little legs, four long triple-jointed arms each ending in four finger-like tentacles, four mouths with cartilage-ridge teeth situated between and below each pair of arm-pits, and a three-pointed eye-and-ear stalk at the very top of their artoo-detoo-shaped torso.
A three-pronged retractable eye turret sticks up 6-10 centimeters from the top of a Centaurian's torso. The three eyes on the turret stick out 3-6 centimeters and are 120 degrees apart (facing sideways from a vertical base) with a 118-degree field of view (each); they look like miniature elephant trunks, but unlike elephant's trunks are rigid in terms of their side-to-side motion. Unlike a Centaurian's foot wheels (see below), the eye turret is not free to rotate. It's on a "neck" of sorts that can twist up to 90 degrees in either direction. This allows any one eye to point directly at an object of interest without having to rotate the torso. Annular muscles on the front of each eye stalk keep the lens clean and control the aperature size. Focus is achieved by moving the (immaleable) lenses closer to or farther from the photosensitive surfaces at the back of each eye stalk near the center of the turret, like a camera. Each eye also has vertical "wiggle" muscles that can move the eye up or silghtly down; the photosensitive surface rotates up or down along with the eye-wiggle. Vision can resolve details down to two arc-minutes, can see wavelengths anywhere from 10 000 Ångstroms to 2 000 Ångstroms (peaking at around 5 500 Å as human sight does), and can see colors in light levels low enough for a human to only be able to distinguish grayscales; however, even in bright light, Centaurians don't have nearly as great an ability to distingush colors as humans do. They can tell strong shades of blue from everything else, but that's it. Focal deficiencies are rare but do exist; traditionally, these were corrected with glasses that looked and fit like the one-eye eyeglass Gypsy sometimes wears on Mystery Science Theater 3000, but at the time of the story can also be fixed by contact lenses, laser lens sculpting surgery, or sometimes vision therapy.
The center of the eye turret contains the Centaurian's one and only ear, sticking straight up and ending in a closable duct; Centaurians have no sense of smell. Their sense of hearing has a broader frequency range than a human's does; however, its sensitivity to quiet sounds is not quite as acute.
Body parts requiring rigidity (such as the arms, legs, braincase, and eye turret) have an endoskeleton of a tough cartilage-like substance like a shark does, which ranges in rigidity from the soft, pliable inner pelvic plate to the bone-hard foot wheels. This cartilagenous substance can heal or "knit" much faster than human bone can, and does not require setting if broken. Running through the near-centers of their bodies are four backbone-like jointed columns composed of alternating rigid rods and thick-walled pliable sacs made of the same cartilagenous substance, called simply the support columns. The sacs in the columns can be inflated with air to increase the Centaurian's vertical reach, or deflated to allow the Centaurian to fit through smaller openings without crawling; the sacs in one column can be inflated while deflating the column on the other side, allowing the Centaurian to bend its torso. They have no hair, feathers, leaves, moss, or the like, but are instead encased in a soft but leathery skin in varying mottled shades of light brown. They are ectothermic (cold-blooded), and so were traditionally restricted to operating during the warmer A-III daylight hours. If the temperature falls below 5°C, a Centaurian will automatically hibernate. The muscles in its extremities will lock into place when this happens, so as to avoid falling off a cliff face should it get caught in a sudden cold front. The lack of endothermy also means they don't have to eat as much as humans do; one meal every A-III day or two is sufficient.
The four radially-arranged mouths evolved with their ancient ancestors, who garnered most of their nutrition from lichen-like plant matter growing on the sides of cliff faces. Clinging to the sides of the cliffs was a tricky affair, involving rolling from one set of hands to another, and a proto-Centaurian could never be sure which side of its body would be facing the cliff when it rolled over such vegetation. Even before the invention of agriculture, anatomically-modern Centaurians gained the bulk of their sustenance from grains that grew on flat ground instead, but still supplemented their diets with cliffside vegetation. Rock climbing is still a popular sport with Centaurians at the time of the Pentagon War.
Their bodily wastes vaguely resemble the fecal matter of some terrestrial species, but they do not urinate. Unlike terrestrial vertebrates, Centaurians never went through an evolutionary period where they lived in fresh water and had to excrete excess water via kidneys. In fact, they have no kidneys; toxic substances in their blood have to be cleared by the equivalent of their liver, and then dumped into their droppings. They prefer to drink water as salty as that found in Alpha Centauri A-III's oceans, and find fresh water intolerably bland. Excessive fresh water intake is toxic to them.
Mounted in the bottom of each of their four feet is a single, hard-shelled, five-centimeter-diameter retractable wheel. These wheels evolved in response to the wide, flat plains that cover so much of A-III's land mass, and are present in other Alpha-Centaurian species. They are spun by means of two central Rotational Muscles (one for clockwise and one for counterclockwise), similar to the rotational muscle group beneath the eye turret but more powerful. These kinds of muscles are unique to Alpha-Centaurian physiology as they can spin for several thousand or million revolutions in the same direction without getting wound up like a rubber band or anything.
Their reproductive system is a bit odd by human standards in that there is only one Centaurian sex (much like with terrestrial slugs). Any two Centaurians may mate, and either or both of them may produce offspring. Centaurians ovulate once every 35 A-III days (26 Earth days), and remain fertile for three A-III days following. During this time of fertility, they indicate their sexual readiness to each other with honk-like mating calls. Humans call this their mating "season", being "in heat", "that time of the month", or a number of other terracentric labels.
All Centaurians have a vagina, and a retractible cartilage-reinforced (i.e. constantly erect) penis right next to it on a line oriented 23° from one leg. Their cloaca sphincter is to one side of this line. Both the penile tip and a point one centimeter inside the vagina (on the penile side) must be stimulated simultaneously for orgasm to occur. This sexual anatomy requires that two Centaurians mate bottom-to-bottom; their climaxes are usually simultaneous and involve contracting straight down the lengths of their bodies until they are only about 2/3 of their normal height. The Centaurian "uterus" fills most of the way with oxygenated saltwater and the rest of the way with a slightly heavier (and insoluble) nutrient-rich fluid during the fertility period; the ocean-water and nutrient fluid are internally recycled if pregnancy doesn't occur but are constantly resupplied by the parent's "bubbler" and "albumen" glands if it does. Almost all litters are of one child; twins are exceedingly rare and triplets are unheard of. The total gestation period is a little over one-quarter of an A-III year (5 Earth months), and pregnancy shows as a bulging below the central hard-cartilage ring after the 2nd or 3rd Earth month. Young are born alive and breathing as from a terrestrial mammalian uterus and placenta, although there is no umbilical cord (the Centaurian "uterus" is effectively an egg). Newborn Centaurians look like miniature versions of adult Centaurians except that their eye turret is disproportionately wide (almost the width of the torso, i.e. as wide as it will be when the Centaurian is an adult).
The parent doesn't produce anything like "milk" and has to feed its baby mashed grains and water. (Alpha-Centaurian grains are absolutely nutrient-free to a human, consisting of starchlike chains of L-glucose instead of the D-glucose humans normally metabolize; terrestrial grains are downright poisonous to a Centaurian.) The modern Centaurian parent can buy packaged pre-mashed grains the way humans can buy baby food and formula, but some Centaurian parents insist that it's more rewarding to mash the grains themselves. Centaurians can extract the water they need by drinking water as salty as their home planet's oceans; however, these oceans aren't as salty as Earth's, which would present a problem to them if they drank from them. ("Fresh" water is considered bland by Centaurian standards, and most will add a pinch of salt to such water before drinking it.)
The closest living relatives to Centaurians — about as closely related to modern Centaurians as gorillas are to modern humans — are another herbivorous species that looks very similar but is shorter. This close relative also has four feet with wheels embedded in them, and four triple-jointed arms ending in four tentacle-fingers each, but they are built much lower to the ground than Centaurians, being roughly the size and shape of a giant tortoise. Their hands lack a Centaurian's grip strength, because they use them solely to grab handfuls of grasslike plants on the plains — they are not adapted for climbing sheer cliff faces the way Centaurians are. Likewise, the fronts of the mouth ridges that serve as their teeth lack the sharp, incisor-like projections that Centaurians use to scrape baaai(t)i off the rocks.
Genetically, the only similarity between Centaurian chromosomes and human ones is that they are both made of DNA. The Centaurian genetic code — which nucleotide sequences code for which amino acids — is completely different from terrestrial eukaryotic DNA and RNA, although both are organized into codons of 3 nucleotides each and the same 20 amino acids are coded for. Centaurian chromosomes are much smaller than human chromosomes, with each Centaurian cell containing about 5000 chromosome pairs. This is due to the inability of Centaurian chromosomes to exchange genes during meiosis. Normally, the chromosomes huddle together near the center of the cell, but there is no nuclear membrane confining them. Their cells also contain organelles and thus probably evolved via the same kinds of symbiotic relationships that created terrestrial eukaryotes; however, don't confuse the organelles that fulfill the same function as terrestrial plastids with actual plastids. In fact, no analogue to terrestrial mitochondria exists in Alpha-Centaurian cells; cristae-like respiratory structures were apparently present in the earliest double-chromosomed cells and no respirational symbiosis was necessary.
Alpha-Centaurian nerve cells use electrical impulses to convey data, just like terrestrial nerve cells do; however, unlike terrestrial neurons, which send messages from one cell to the next by means of chemical signals, Alpha-Centaurian nerve cells send messages between linked nerves solely by means of electrical conduction. There are no Centaurian chemical synapses. You could replace an entire Alpha-Centaurian nerve path (except for the nerve endings which signal muscles and provide feedback) with a wire. This means that signals not only propagate more quickly up or down Centaurian nerves than they do along terrestrial nerves, they also consume less energy since there's no need to translate them from electrical impulses to chemical messengers and back into electrical impulses every time they cross a cell boundary. The longest nerves in Centaurian bodies run up-and-down along the four support columns, kind of like a spinal cord, and can easily collapse and extend. About half way between the tops of the legs and the bottom of the mouths, hugging the geometric center of the body, is a gigantic bundle of nerves that functions as the Centaurian's brain. This is the only part of the torso intenally plated in a wide, continuous, hard cartilage ring; the rest of the torso is protected by much narrower cartilage ribs, none of which are anchored to other cartilage pieces (they float free so that the torso may expand and contract vertically).
The main "pulsation" movement of a Centaurian body is vertical expansion when inhaling and vertical contraction when exhaling (as opposed to the horizontal expansion and contraction in human breathing). They express yearning by stretching their arms upwards, not forwards. The three eyes on the eye stalk have swing-up and swing-down muscles as well as stick-out and shrink-in muscles. A Centaurian intent on leering at something will bend the top of its torso in the direction he wishes to look and arch all three of its eyes toward it; this results in a triple image, however the visual centers of a Centaurian brain cannot "fuse" the images into a 3-D picture the way a human's can.
For the most part, the internal organ arrangement is as symmetrical as the outside of a Centaurian's body. They have four lungs and four cowlike stomachs, arranged in a circle between the four support columns. These lungs are capable of extracting a little oxygen from water as salty as A-III's oceans, but not enough for any kind of sustained physical activity unless the Centaurian is very young. Thus, you can't drown an adult Centaurian by holding him under water, but you may be able to knock him out that way.
Centaurian skin is quite delicate at birth. It takes several years to develop the firm, tough, leathery hide of an adult Centaurian. (It also takes at least one A-III year for the foot wheels to be usable.) The skin is toughest on the soles of their feet and the bottoms of their hands (which hardens during pregnancy so they can use it for grain-mashing when parents). It lacks both sebaceous and sweat glands (Centaurians' ectothermy means they don't have excess heat to radiate away; plus, not sweating conserves water). Despite its similarity to reptilian skin, Centaurians shed continuously as mammals do. As they age, their skin gradually becomes harder, until after the age of 40 or so Earth years, it is rigid enough to impair their bodies' natural bending. A healthy Centaurian can be expected to live to the age of fifty Earth years or more, and will be fertile in both directions from the onset of "puberty" at the age of 5 A-III years (7½ Earth years) until death.
The Centaurian immune system does not possess anti-parasite antibodies. This means they don't experience allergic reactions.
The vocal mechanism of a Centaurian can produce a much wider range of frequencies than a human's can. Furthermore, the common Centaurian language takes advantage of using more than one mouth to produce some of its syllables. Certain sounds in the language even require chord combinations of up to four separate pitches. The most dedicated human attempts to reproduce Centaurian speech with the human vocal mechanism sound like a bad speech impediment at best, and are incomprehensible at worst. However, since Centaurians lack any kind of nose, they also lack sinuses, so any attempt at reproducing human speech with a single Centaurian mouth sounds like the speaker has a head cold with a stuffed-up nose. A savvy Centaurian gets around this problem by producing nasal sounds (e.g. the letter "N") with a second mouth on the same vocal pitch.
When they do sleep, Centaurians prefer to sleep standing up, as it allows them to breathe without grating against the floor. While sleeping, their eyes droop down at an angle from their turret's center, and all three eyes plus the ear orifice are closed. However, most Centaurians require only 3 hours sleep every Centaurian day (17¾ hours), and can go 2 or 3 days without sleep with no problems.
Centaurian psychology and social structure
Although Centaurians do group-bond and parent-child-bond, they do not pair-bond with their mates, so the "father" of a given baby is not socially important. Therefore, one's paternal ancestry isn't socially important either, but one's maternal ancestry is. Centaurians tend to group together in extended families which, for want of a better term, are called "clans" by humans. Siblings and "mother" parents may be part of this clan, but so may friends born into other clans. One clan may contain up to 50 Centaurians of all ages; however, 50 Centaurians is kind of pushing it, and when a clan gets that big it will often splinter off into smaller clans. Adult clan members will usually assist in caring and providing for all of that clan's children, although "mothers" will of course give their own offspring special attention.
Centaurians on their own often have a strong urge to find a clan. In fact, a Centaurian group-bond is almost as strong as a human pair-bond. There are even rituals, much like most human cultures' marriage ceremonies, by which a Centaurian formally becomes a new member of a clan. And in similar fashion, dissociation from ones former clan can be as painful as going through a human divorce, with property disputes and even occasional arguments over child custody if the child is no longer an infant. (However, it should be noted that the dominant Centaurian cultures do in fact treat adolescents as full adults, much like the ancient Israelites do on Earth; child custody is generally not an issue with Centaurians who are at least 5 A-III years old.) If a Centaurian's clan has a specific name, the Centaurian will often attach it to its own.
Within a clan, the division of labor is almost egalitarian. Every clan member has their own specialty, and is deferred to — almost as a "leader" — whenever their area of expertise is called on. Centaurians don't cook, but if for whatever reason cooking were called for, for example, the other Centaurians in the clan will follow orders from the "cooking expert"; if a bridge needs to be built, they'll follow orders from the clan's "civil engineering expert." Centaurians within a clan will instinctively divide up the labor, moving almost automatically to whatever tasks are not already taken up by a clanmate. There are no "menial" jobs, unless a Centaurian's area of expertise applies in a particular situation and its clanmates are overlooking it. In order for Centaurians to adapt to a human military structure, where there's a commander giving all the orders, they have to train this instinct so that they defer to their commander as the "combat expert," and treat their unit as though it were their clan.
Between clans, however, there is a definite hierarchy. Clans have dominated other clans throughout most of the Centaurians' recorded history. Civilization basically began when clans began to make friendship pacts with other clans, either to ensure their mutual survival against a harsh environment or to gang up on another clan that would otherwise dominate both of them. These larger clan-groups eventually evolved into what, for want of a better word, humans would call "nations."
Taking personal risks for the good of your clan is considered a noble trait. Hunting parties in the ancient past that deliberately stalked a predator, if the predator was threatening their clan, were lauded as heroes. (It is telling that, by the time Centaurian civilization reached the point of agrarian settlements on Go'orla, no large preditors existed on any landmass anywhere on the planet. Centaurians had already wiped them out.) Taking suicidal actions for the sake of your clan, however, is another matter; this is usually frowned upon (although Centaurian emotional expression doesn't physically "frown" by turning down the corners of one of their mouths or anything).
A Centaurian in heat doesn't exhibit any odd behavior except for the mating call, unless it hears another mating call, in which case it will likely pursue the other call; it can even become aroused by hearing mating calls while not in heat, though this is less common and milder. However, a Centaurian will in general not be aroused by a mating call that sounds like its own; this tendency away from identical mating calls helps the species prevent inbreeding. A Centaurian will completely ignore its own mating call and any other mating calls that sound exactly the same; these won't even be a distraction. (Thus, actively trying to block out the sounds of someone's mating call is viewed as a sign of sexual rejection.) "Foreign" mating calls are one of the few motivations for Centaurians to venture into the space of other clans, and possibly even join that clan if the Centaurian hangs around long enough after mating and perhaps engages in some food-sharing.
In some areas, particularly where Centaurians need to concentrate, there is social repression of the Centaurian mating call. Human-Centauri blames much of the Centaurian version of the emotional plague on this social repression.
Unlike humans, Centaurians evolved as herbivorous gatherers, hunting only to kill potential threats (not for food). Centaurians feel the same way about eating animal meat of any kind (or at least the Go'orla bio-equivalent of animal meat) the way humans do about scavenging off of roadkill; in other words, "Eewww!". Like humans, though, Centaurians evolved as nomads, and as such have a natural curiosity and a desire to explore. This is how they found us to begin with.
The user-interfaces of their technology are, obviously, designed for users with 360-degree nonstereoscopic vision, monaural hearing, 4 arms with 4 finger-like tentacles on each "hand", and 4 legs ending in feet with wheels in them. Any apparatus with "dumb pedals" that don't take wheel input was designed for handicapped Centaurians. (In fact, inoperability of one or more wheels is probably the most common of the Centaurian birth defects considered crippling; it's usually remedied with something resembling a roller skate.) Conversely, human tri-vid displays and stereophonic sound systems are useless to them. Having 4 digits on each hand, their numeric system is in hexadecimal, which made the transition to digital technology somewhat easier for them to handle when they picked it up from humans.
Since Centaurians are only one gender, our concepts of male and female are alien to them (although there are a few gender-specialized species on their own planet they can use as study models). Next to learning to use Base Ten, the proper use of "he" and "she" and "him" and "her" is probably the hardest challenge facing a Centaurian when it tries to learn English.
The main Centaurian language is verbal; however, it utilizes all four of a Centaurian's vocal mechanisms at once. Thus, although a human may learn to comprehend spoken Centaurian (with difficulty), he or she cannot learn to speak it. The written language is phonetic, where each symbol stands for an atomic or nearly-atomic sound in the spoken Centaurian language. Written Centaurian is much easier for a human to get a handle on than the spoken language is.
Because Centaurians are cold-blooded, they don't express affection by hugging or nuzzling. Centaurians also have no circadian rhythms tied to Go'orla's year; thus, they don't don't feel the strong urge that humans do to hold annual festivals or holidays. Furthermore, they are simply not as superstitious as we are. In the words of one Centaurian psychologist, "If humans had evolved on Go'orla rather than Earth, they would hold a big festival every 53 [A-III] years to celebrate [Alpha Centauri] B's peak brightness and closest approach, and dance for their gods in the intervening years to pray for the fading light's return. They would attach spiritual, even omen-like, significance to the brightness-phases of our tiny moon, and fear for the end of the world when the moon partly eclipses B. But their celestial superstitions mean that they would also have been able to predict the precise motions of these bodies millenia before we could."
Body language equivalents
agreeing nod tentacle-finger pointing upward
shaking head "no" pushing-away gesture with hand
pointing at X bending torso and craning all 3 eye stalks at X
sigh sigh
chuckle gutteral snort with 2 mouths
shrug tilting slightly away from listener
furrowed brow closing other 2 eyes
Centaurians feel perfectly comfortable wheeling around in public with no clothes on. (It should be noted that some tribes of humans are at home with their own public nudity, too, so this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise.) The placement of the Centaurian genitalia means they aren't normally visible while standing up, so even those few Centaurians with a "Victorian" sense of shame can hide their anatomy without cloth. Protective clothing is usually designed to protect from the wind rather than the cold; the species' lack of endothermy means that wearing clothes to "hold in ones own body heat" is ridiculous. When clothing is worn, its colors are either terribly drab or the most striking, gaudy clashes of solid toddler-toys-bright pastels imaginable to the human mind — and in either case slight blemishes or stains will go completely unnoticed. (This is all because of Centaurians' reduced color sensitivity.) Shoes are sometimes put on infants' tender feet, and are often worn by adults whose feet are more sensitive; but they always have a hole in the bottom for the wheel. Body wraps that fit snugly below the mouths are another staple of those Centaurians who wear clothes. Rarely will a Centaurian submit to clothing that hangs down from the shoulders over any of the mouths, and all clothing for the top of the body must have a hole big enough for the eyes-and-ear stalk to fit through. Since the rank structure of human-inspired militaries (such as the HCDF) requires the display of rank insignia, Centaurians in the HCDF will wear a rank insignia on one or two arm bands while on duty.
Since Centaurians can rest standing up, they don't use chairs. This makes titles such as "chairperson" sound a little odd.
Politics at the time of the Pentagon War
The Solar Federal government, headquartered in New York City, is similar to the representative-democracy of the Constitutional United States, considering it grew out of the U.S.. Its Territories do not have representatives in the House or the Senate; its States do. Early in its off-Earth-colonization period, even moderately populated territories were granted Statehood almost as soon as they requested it. After the break-off of Sirius, the Solar Federal government throttled way back on State admissions; there hasn't been a new State admitted since Ganymede.
States: North America, South America, Eurasia, Asia Minor, China, India, North Africa, South Africa, Australia, Antarctica, The Moon, Mars, North Mars, Ganymede. Territories: all other Solar system bodies that aren't States, Lalande 21185, UV Ceti (and Luyten 726-8 A). Mercury is a major antimatter production facility.
The intelligence and security functions of the 20th-century FBI, CIA, NSA, and Secret Service are rolled together into the Solar Bureau of Investigation, or SBI. Like the NSA, it's a scary organization. Like the FBI, it's also rather clumsy.
The Sol/Alpha-Centauri hyper hole orbits the sun with an aphelion distance of about one billion km, putting it is aphelion about two-fifths of the way between Jupiter's aphelion and Saturn's perihelion. Being the first hyper hole, the fact that it would orbit the sun like any other planet wasn't known for certain and definitely wasn't worried about much; accordingly, its orbit is highly eccentric as planets go, with a perihelion distance of only 480 million km, grazing the outermost reaches of the main asteroid belt. (This gives it an aphelion velocity of 3500 m/s.) A few kilograms of asteroid belt dust have already fallen through it; but, fortunately, its orbital plane is tilted from the ecliptic enough that it will never physically intersect Jupiter or its moons. (At least, not within the next few millenia.) Given its semi-major axis of 740 million km, its orbital period around the sun is a hair shy of 11 years. The Sol/Sirius hyper hole, on the other hand, has a nearly circular orbit not too much farther out than that of Jupiter, with an orbital period of about 12 years. This gives the Jovian system a high degree of economic and military significance, since every few years one of the two holes comes close enough to Jupiter to make the gas-giant a convenient first stop for travellers or attackers. Thus, by the time the War breaks out, most of the military might of the Solar Federal government has been concentrated in the Jupiter-orbiting spacecraft hangar known as Station Jove.
The principal language spoken by all humans, Solar or otherwise, is English.
Alpha Centauri:
Alpha Centauri A III is still the central power hub of the Alpha-Centaurian government. The lesser colonies on the planets in the three-star Alpha Centauri system that used to be lifeless — and even the large, self-sustaining "floating city" colonies on Alpha Centauri B II — are all subsidiary to Alpha Centauri A III. In that sense, A-III holds much the same role that Rome did to its subject nations, as the center of an empire.
At any one time there will be one clan leading A-III. The various duties involved in running the nation — military, diplomatic, economic, etc. — are divided up among clan members; there is no one individual within the ruling clan that has "absolute authority".
The Centaurians were more cautious about the placement of the Alpha-Centauri/Sol hyper hole than their Solar counterparts were. It orbits Alpha Centauri A on the same ecliptic plane as the star's 3 planets, in a nearly-perfect circle 2 A.U.s distant from the star. The Alpha-Centauri/CN-Leonis hyper hole follows the same orbit on precisely the opposite side of Alpha Centauri A. The two holes were intentionally placed so that they'd always be on opposite sides of the star system; this allowed the Alpha Centauri system to place itself as a "toll road" for all traffic between Sol and CN Leonis. (There's no system transit fee or anything; the long transit distance simply makes it convenient for spacecraft to reload and/or refuel in-system).
CN Leonis:
CN Leonis is a monarchy, always ruled by a single Centaurian clan. The second planet from the primary, since it was the most hospitable, has the highest population and is the system capital. The ruling clan can only be deposed by force. Like Alpha Centauri's government, the ruling clan governs as a whole; there is no one individual with higher authority, although there are experts within the ruling clan who have specific areas of authority. Warlike tendencies abound; one would call the government "patrist" save for the fact that there is no biological distinction between a Centaurian father and mother. The humans which are not officially slaves of the Alpha-Centaurian majority are treated little better than slaves. The inability for humans to speak the Centaurian language (although some have learned to understand it without their masters' knowledge) is just one of the many differences held by the local Centaurians as a sign of their species' superiority.
The scariest Leonians, though, are those subservient humans who have sworn their loyalty to the CN Leonis nation above their own lives. These hyperpatriotic fascists form the backbone of the Fanatic Brigade, that sect of the Leonian military willing to go on self-orchestrated suicide missions or other military tasks with low odds of success. Many of them were tortured and isolated early in life by local Centaurians to ensure this kind of behavior.
Authoritarian empire, with the capital on Sirius A IV. There is a figurehead electorate, but, like the U.S. Federal government of the 18th-20th centuries (and the modern Solar Federal government, for that matter), voters cannot vote on issues, only candidates. The real ruling faction makes it to power the same way the ancient Roman emperors did, i.e. by defeating the previous faction. The electorate gives the emperor a good look at public opinion, but the word of the imperium is always final. A figurehead Ayatollah serves as the state's diplomatic arm.
Every half-century, Sirius A and Sirius B pass within 8 A.U. of each other, meaning the maximum stable distance at which any object can orbit Sirius A or Sirius B is 2 A.U.. Sirius A IV orbits Sirius A in a 2 A.U. circular orbit, putting it right on the cusp of that maximum stable orbital distance. This means that both the Sirius/Sol hyper hole, and the Sirius/Human-Centauri hyper hole, had to be created inside Sirius A IV's orbit. The Sirius/Sol hyper hole, for example, orbits Sirius in a circle only 280 million km in radius. Sirius is the only nation whose hyper holes orbit their star more closely than the capital world does.
A participatory democracy. Those that wish to participate, participate; those that don't, don't. (Politics just plain does not interest some people, and there's no social pressure to vote if you don't want to.) Major nonemergency issues with far-reaching fiscal or policy implications must be decided by anonymous popular vote. The leader — officially refered to as the "Chairholder" even if of Centaurian physiology — as well as other political officers are elected on a more or less regular basis, using an instant-runoff voting system to avoid spoilers. It should be noted that any persons running for an elected office are scrutinized thoroughly for any signs of neurotic behavior that could interfere with their work if elected (this scrutiny is much more severe than the usual Emotional Plague weeding-out that the rest of the populace is subjected to).
The lack of Emotional Plague behavior among the general population means that the Human-Centaurian Defense Force is going to have hardly any of the usual mindless, fascist soldiers in it. This presents a lot of manpower problems from the standpoint of system defense. HCDF members are very serious about their work, but are usually sickened by the prospect of making a career out of fighting. Sometimes the knowledge of the terrible power of the Emotional Plague so prevalent in the militaries of the other star systems is the only thing keeping the HCDFers vigilant. History is a deadly-important subject in the Defense Force academy, since most recruits have grown up entirely within Human-Centauri culture and have never had direct Plague contact. Note that prior to the war, participation in the HCDF was entirely voluntary, and volunteers could quit at any time. With the war, tours of duty and even small-scale non-combat drafting were instigated.
Land areas are not divided into arbitrary "countries" or "provinces" or "congressional districts"; instead, each of the five metropolitan areas is partitioned according to the solid asteroids it's made up from. "Scaffolding cities" consisting of very small asteroids networked together into a single larger living space are treated as a whole asteroid-like partition. For locale efficiency, the postal and transportation services have divided each asteroid into a 3-D grid of 20 kilometer cubes, but the inhabitants still navigate locally using the older asteroid partition naming system.
The Human-Centauri/Sirius and Human-Centauri/CN-Leonis hyper holes both orbit the star in the same ecliptic circle, some three million kilometers farther out than the habitat ring. This gives them an orbital period of about 11 days, and an orbital velocity of some 39-and-a-half kilometers per second. Unlike Alpha Centauri, these two hyper holes are only a few tens of thousands of kilometers apart, with orbital periods lined up to within a hair's breadth of one another. Human-Centauri had no desire to become a "tourist spot" for transients not interested in the system itself.
Hyper Bombs and Hyper Space
A "hyper bomb" is a phased antimatter bomb, as developed by the Mad Scientist around 150 AC. Physically, it is an immense device, requiring the containment of 250 kilograms of positrons. This requires literally millions of smaller positron-containment units to be interleaved with the units that store the 250 kilograms of free electrons, so that the electrostatic forces don't tear the bomb apart. Thus, it is too big to deploy on a normal spacecraft-launched missile. It is not too big, however, to be deployed by a full-sized fighter programmed for a suicide mission.
Successful detonation requires the 250 kilograms of positrons and 250 kilograms of electrons to be brought together on a wide, flat plane of annihilatory contact. If aligned just right, and fed into one another at the proper rate, the first layer of positrons and electrons will emit all of their annihilation gamma rays in phase with one another, and thus stimulate the next layer of e+ and e- to annihilate and emit their gamma rays in phase with the first layer. The result is a unidirectional, phased, coherent wavefront, much like what one would expect from a gamma ray laser. This phasing of the bomb's output packs so much power into the beam in such a short space that it actually exceeds the Energy Density Limit for the universe, sending half the energy into a super-powerful gigaton-of-TNT-equivalent beam of destruction called the "foreflash", in Real Space, and the other half of the energy through a hyper-spatial hole, or "hyper hole", into Parallel Space.
(Some have theorized that the twin beams of intense gamma rays emitted by a Gamma Ray Burster as it collapses into a black hole may also exceed the Energy Density Limit for the universe, and would thus also create hyper holes. If this is so, then the amount of gamma ray energy we're measuring when we detect a Gamma Ray Burst is only half the amount of energy the gamma-ray beam actually emitted, since the other half will have vanished into Parallel Space.)
The hyper hole stays around after the blast subsides. In fact, it behaves like an ordinary gravitational object, obediently orbiting any nearby star or planet. Gravity is the only known force that will affect a hyper hole, however. You cannot grab onto it and "pull" with a physical object or a static-electric or magnetic field, nor can you "push" it with a blast of vapor. Even attempts to move a hyper hole with a gravitational tug a la Edward Lu et al. have failed. Furthermore, all attempts to detect its actual gravitational mass (by putting known masses really close to it and seeing how those masses move) have come up with zero or as close to zero as can be tested. And, finally, since the wavefront from a phased antimatter bomb is directed, the hole is, too — it is two-dimensional and two-sided. And it has a definite circular outer boundary some 200 meters in diameter.
Three other models for hyper holes that I've rejected:
1. Making the hole single-sided, with the "rear" side acting like an infinitely hard, infinitely inertial mirror to any matter or energy coming into contact with it. There are conservation-of-momentum issues that come about when dealing with hyper holes that supposedly have zero gravitational mass, but infinite inertial mass. Worse, though, is the issue of how a spacecraft under the influence of a Zero Drive can transit a hyper hole while the hole's relative velocity, at this particular point in its orbit, has it moving hard-side-forward.
2. Making hyper holes spherical rather than circular. This would avoid all the problems that could come up with a spacecraft at Absolute Zero Velocity trying to intercept a hyper hole that's moving at an angle, or trying to emerge from another hyper hole after shutting the Zero Drive off. Boundary shear would still occur, too. However, a spherical hole in space causes some of its own issues, such as the fact that there is now no preferred direction to enter a Hyper Hole from, meaning that one Gate Guard won't be sufficient protection and that staring into it from any angle results in seeing the other system from that direction. Worse, since the surface is curved, a large object stuck part way through a spherical hyper hole would have a concave border on both sides! Either that, or the hole would have to have an "interior", which causes no end of problems.
3. Keeping the holes double-sided, but having the "rear" side unlinked, i.e. behaving like the rogue hyper hole at UV Ceti. My original model didn't involve any kind of permanent link-tunnel between two hyper holes; it required the two holes to be precisely lined up with each other because anything that entered a hyper hole travelled through parallel space at infinite speed. An object came out the other side because the other hyper hole happened to lie along the object's flight path through parallel space. At the time I came up with this model, I hadn't yet taken high school physics — I didn't know anything about orbital mechanics, the lack of a preferred inertial reference frame to the universe, etc..
Anything entering a hyper hole (from either side) will move through an infinitely-thin fourth-dimensional layer of hyperspace into Parallel Space, a three-dimensional universe fourth-dimensionally adjacent to our own. Little is known of the nature of this Parallel Space, except that everything that has gone into it has disappeared for good, and that nothing ever comes out (not even light). Theoretically, matter, energy, and even time as we know them should have no meaning whatsoever in Parallel Space.
When two hyper bombs are detonated facing into one another and within a few seconds of each other, the two hyper holes that are created become "linked". They will forever after face each other, no matter how far or in what direction either of them moves in Real Space. (A side effect of the link-creation process is that the Parallel-Space portion of each bomb's foreflash will race out of the other bomb's newly-created hyper hole as a "backflash", with all the punch of the bomb's Real Space foreflash.) This link means that anything entering one hyper hole will go into Parallel Space, travel in a straight line however it is that things travel in Parallel Space, and emerge out of the other, linked hyper hole the very next instant. The actual transit time is undetectably small and is probably mathematically zero.
Note that the two holes must always face in the same direction to ensure that the momentum of transiting objects is conserved:
Two linked hyper holes that face different directions would spit out a transiting object in a different direction than the one it entered from, violating the conservation of momentum.
(Such a requirement also ensures that the angular momentum of transiting objects is conserved, although this can also be accomplished by having the two holes rotate at the same rate regardless of facing.)
The weird thing is, since both hyper holes are two-sided, anything entering from the "rear" of one hyper hole ALSO makes this transit, and comes out on the "rear" side of the other one. So a spacecraft in Sol, entering the side of the Sol/Alpha-Centauri hyper hole that faces Alpha Centauri, will emerge from the Alpha-Centauri/Sol hyper hole also facing Alpha Centauri; but if the same spacecraft instead enters the side of the Sol/Alpha-Centauri hyper hole that faces away from Alpha Centauri, it will emerge from the Alpha-Centauri/Sol hyper hole facing away from Alpha Centauri.
There's a second problem with the conservation of momentum that I have yet to solve. Two linked hyper holes in two different star systems are orbiting their parent stars at different velocities. The Sol/Sirius hyper hole is orbiting Sol at around 5300 m/s, while the Sirius/Sol hyper hole is orbiting Sirius A at around 13200 m/s. We know from measurements of Sirius's proper motion and radial velocity that Sirius itself is moving at ~19000 m/s relative to Sol. The orbit of Sirius B around Sirius A is inclined at 136° from our vantage point here in the Sol system, and any planets it has will orbit in the same plane; the engineers who detonated the Sirius/Sol hyper hole would have put it in the same orbital plane as well.
Let's say that, relative to sol, at one moment the Sol/Sirius hyper hole is moving at 5300 m/s toward galactic east, and the Sirius/Sol hyper hole (8.6 light-years away) is moving at 7000 m/s toward galactic north. A slow-moving freighter that edges into the Sol/Sirius hyper hole at only 1 or 2 meters per second, relative to the Sol/Sirius hyper hole, would come out of the Sirius/Sol hyper hole at the same 1 or 2 meters per second but relative to the Sirius/Sol hyper hole. Its velocity relative to Sol has just been changed from 5300 m/s eastward to 7000 m/s northward!
We know how this conundrum is solved in the case of wormholes. The ends of a wormhole have their own mass and electric charge, like any other object in the universe. Anything that enters one end adds its momentum to that end of the wormhole, just like in an inelastic collision. Anything that exits one end subtracts its momentum from that end of the wormhole, just as though a physical object had split in two. So, you end up with either extremely massive wormhole ends getting nudged ever-so-slightly every time something transits through them, or you end up with low-mass wormholes getting bopped around all over the place. Unfortunately, hyper holes have zero mass, and never gain mass.
The only solution I can think of to this conundrum, other than having the departure side of the link spit out the spacecraft with a huge velocity relative to the hole, is to have the holes themselves always move in lock-step with the same velocity. This would mean they couldn't actually orbit the stars they were created around; instead, their velocities through space would always be tied together. This would wreak havoc on the scenarios for creating them, and also mean that as Sol and Sirius drift through space at 19 km/s relative to each other, at least one of the two hyper holes would have to get progressively farther and farther away from "its" star until the hole was way out in interstellar space.
Another alternative is to just say that in this case, the conservation of momentum is violated. But on average, as spacecraft enter one hole and leave the other, the momentum changes will eventually more-or-less cancel out. They will never cancel out perfectly, however, and can intentionally be made more and more unbalanced. And, frankly, if I'm going to allow hyper hole transit to violate the conservation of momentum, there's no need to have both linked hyper holes face the same direction any more.
The diameter of a hyper hole varies with all the little, subtle, uncontrollable nuances of the hyper bomb that created it, anywhere from 200 to 210 meters. It is also not perfectly circular, although it's quite close. If two hyper holes are created simultaneously, such that they become linked, the linking process will ensure that the two holes are exactly the same shape and size, even if that shape isn't a perfect circle. However, a hyper hole's outer circular boundary is infinitely sharp and will shear off any part of a transitioning object sticking out past it — this is called, originally enough, "boundary shear". Spacecraft wishing to transition through a hyper hole therefore must be built so that their maximum cross-section never exceeds 200 meters, and have to aim for the hole's dead center and fold down any communications antennas before proceeding — slowly — to the other side. Entering the hole on a perpendicular course is not necessary, though, since any particle of the spacecraft entering from one side will instantly appear at the other side at the same distance from the remote hyper hole's center and moving with the same velocity as when it entered. In fact, the matter and intermolecular bonds going "through" the hole exist at both ends as though the hole wasn't there. From the standpoint of the transitioning observer, looking through the hyper hole is like looking at the destination star system, since light travels through it just as infinitely-fast as matter does.
Besides the potential benefit for shortening interstellar travel distances by a factor of several million, the extremely costly hyper bomb is also useful as a doomsday weapon of last resort. The intensely powerful foreflash travels over ten thousand kilometers before the phased nature of its gamma ray photons dissipates. If detonated right next to a planet, and pointed straight into the planet's core, the foreflash will drill a path of destruction straight through the center of the planet, turning all the rock and metal it passes through into supernova-hot plasma. The resulting nuclear fusion that this heat creates will in turn will vaporize a shaft of material several kilometers in diameter surrounding the foreflash shaft itself. And when that much solid and liquid material suddenly turns into a gas, the resulting pressure is more than enough to break the whole planet apart. In less than an hour, there will be a red-hot expanding cloud of small asteroids where the planet used to be, or at the very least the planet will be turned inside-out in a jumbled heap.
Near the end of the story, our heroes discover that by creating a Zero Velocity effect around themselves and their craft (by using the late Mad Scientist's Zero Drive) before they enter a hyper hole, they can enter a state of "Limbo" neither totally in Real Space nor totally in Parallel Space. They exist in Real Space as tachyons, and in Parallel Space as whatever unknown stuff Parallel Space things are made of. They can see the light given off by stars and radio beacons, and even be affected by gravity (which seems to operate at infinite velocity, at least in Limbo). Since they are tachyonic, and therefore on the other side of the energy curve, they have to maneuver "backwards"; i.e. firing a thruster (or throwing any material from inside the Zero Velocity effect to the outside, for that matter) will accelerate the craft toward its own exhaust rather than away from it. The accelerations given to their craft while in limbo are "remembered" by the craft, in the directions they would be applied if they were in Real Space as a normal inertial object, when the craft exits limbo and shuts off its Zero Drive.
The Quantum Confinement & Constriction Field
The Centaurians developed this technology over a century prior to human contact. A QC&C field is neither an electrostatic nor a magnetic field; I'd call it a "strong nuclear force field" if I wasn't afraid of the unforeseen consequences a field made out of that force might have. A Quantum Confinement & Constriction field takes a considerable amount of energy to create, but once created is practically self-sustaining. It can be shaped to form a "cell" confining some subatomic particles, which can then be constricted to force the particles into quantum states they would normally avoid. A QC&C cell can only confine a handful of subatomic particles at a time, however, and performing quantum constriction on more than two nuclei at once is hellishly tricky. The field can also convert a limited amount of incident electromagnetic radiation into useful electric energy with almost 100% efficiency, so when a charged particle strikes a QC&C field and rebounds off of it, the resulting bremsstrahlung can be recaptured and fed back into the system to sustain it.
At maximum constriction, the inside of a QC&C cell is extremely tiny. It's smaller, in fact, than the Compton wavelength of the particles contained within it. Since a confinement to a very tiny region means you know the location of each particle with great precision, this means (via Heisenberg) a correspondingly large uncertainty in the particles' momentum and therefore their energy. A number of extremely short-lived particles are thus created when a QC&C cell constricts, but they all go away when the cell re-expands. This property makes a QC&C cell an ideal environment for particle physics experiments (much cheaper than a particle accelerator), but thus far has no practical applications.
One consequence of the existence of QC&C fusion is that there is no longer any such thing as a rare element. Any two nuclei can be fused together in a QC&C cell. Therefore, any isotope of any element can be synthesized by fusing together 2 lighter elements. The process always consumes more energy than it produces when synthesizing elements heavier than iron, of course, but when you have QC&C proton fusion at your disposal, energy is cheap. Gold is no longer a rare and valuable commodity. The metals needed to build spacecraft are never in short supply. Most importantly, no one place can ever have a monopoly on any one element, so a rich deposit of (say) praseodymium no longer makes for a super-valuable piece of real estate worth warring over.
QC&C proton-proton/deuteron-deuteron fusion:
QC&C field technology allows a "cold fusion" technique involving super-tight quasi-magnetic confinement at the quantum level. The protons are constricted so close together that they have no choice but to tunnel through the Coulomb barrier. This eliminates the traditional problem of proton fusion taking a very very long time to progress (the catalized CNO reaction inside the core of large stars has a typical reaction time of about a thousand years). However, a separate QC&C cell is required for each and every pair of particles that need to undergo fusion, so even in a "massively parallel" system of many such cells the amount of material undergoing fusion at any one time is going to be very small compared with the mass of the apparatus. Furthermore, a separate "stage" of such cells is required for each step in the fusion chain. A typical QC&C proton fusion reactor has 2 stages: A proton-proton stage, which feeds the resulting deuteron into a subsequent deuteron-deuteron stage. (Actually, it's a proton and a neutral hydrogen-1 atom (protium) that get fed into the first stage. This is so the positron created by the proton-proton constriction can annihilate with the electron; the resulting gamma ray photons are intercepted by the QC&C field and turned into useful electric energy.) The deuteron-deuteron stage produces 89.2% of the system's total energy.
The need to have a separate QC&C cell for every pair of particles limits the maximum thrust a proton fusion engine can produce to a few g. In fact, to produce enough thrust to accelerate a 1000-tonne spacecraft at a mere 2.5g, assuming a single QC&C cell can force a whopping 100 billion reactions to occur per second one-after-another, you would need an array of 2.2 x 1015 QC&C cells for the first proton-proton stage, and another 1.1 x 1015 QC&C cells in the second deuteron-deuteron stage — and that's assuming all of the energy released by the full proton-to-4He fusion process is funnelled entirely into the kinetic energy of the exhaust. Fitting that many cells into a 10-meter-square array would mean each cell could be no larger than 200 nanometers across. For this reason, many QC&C fusion powered spacecraft are built with only a deuteron-deuteron stage, and must carry deuterium in their fuel tanks.
Even so, a fully-fuelled fighter deployer with its fighter complement docked masses about 4 million tonnes. To get a 2g acceleration out of such a beast with deuteron-deuteron QC&C fusion, you'd need to burn 2360 kg of deuterium per second, which works out to 3.5 x 1029 reactions per second, which (assuming one QC&C cell can perform 1011 reactions per second) requires 3.5 x 1018 QC&C cells. If a QC&C cell is 200 nm across, you'd need a square grid a ridiculous 374 meters on a side. Thus, fighter deployers cannot use a square grid. They must use a cubic grid, a stack of square grids that's (say) 30 meters on a side and 155 layers thick. The layers must be aligned such that 155 pairs of deuterons can enter each column of QC&C cells simultaneously, then each cell will constrict around an individual pair in that column.
Proton fusion, combined with electric arc-jetting, is the main thrust energy source of the Bussard-ramscoop "scramjet" spacecraft that were the staple of interstellar travel before the advent of linked hyper holes.
Assuming 100% perfect efficiency, and not adjusting for relativistic effects:
Exhaust velocity from an engine using both stages (proton+deuteron) of QC&C fusion: 0.120c.
Exhaust velocity from an engine using both stages of QC&C fusion, but not using the energy released from the positron annihilation to accelerate the exhaust: 0.115c.
Exhaust velocity from an engine using just the second stage (deuteron) of QC&C fusion: 0.113c.
Exhaust velocity from an engine using just the first stage (proton) of QC&C fusion: 0.039c.
Exhaust velocity from an engine using the first stage of QC&C fusion and not using the energy released from the positron annihilation to accelerate the exhaust: 0.021c.
Active Radar Absorption:
Also known as Radar Invisibility. A QC&C field is spread over the entire hull of the spacecraft, tuned to absorb incident radiofrequency radiation. This requires a bulky array of emitters, costs a tremendous amount of energy to switch on, and can only absorb a few Watts of incident radiation. It also won't prevent the spacecraft's prodigious thermal emissions from being detected. Its main military purpose is to prevent enemy weapon systems from attaining a radar lock, so as to make the spacecraft harder to hit.
Other technology available to all systems at the time of the Pentagon War
Positron factories:
Making positrons is easy. Make some fast electrons — by electrostatic linear acceleration, magnetic (synchro)cyclotron acceleration, high-energy laser, or what have you — shoot them at a dense target of the proper thickness to create gamma rays, and when those gamma rays pass close to another nucleus in the target, voilá, an electron-positron pair is born. The tough part is separating these newly-minted positrons from all those noisome electrons traipsing about in the target before they annihilate, and packaging them up in useful, transportable, failsafe bundles afterward. Antimatter containment is usually achieved through good old-fashioned magnetic circulation, surrounded by a QC&C field to trap accidental strays and recapture the energy that would otherwise be lost to cyclotron radiation. A single containment unit, about the size of a hockey puck, is limited to a million coulombs of stored particles, which is about 5 milligrams of positrons or 10 grams of antiprotons.
Human-Centauri got around the macro-electrostatic charge problem by storing antimatter in the form of neutral antihydrogen. They lowered the temperature to a few millionths of a degree above absolute zero, which causes the antihydrogen to condense into white snowflakes. Charles Pellegrino, in Flying to Valhalla (1993), claimed that "wave functions do not overlap enough to produce an appreciable reaction" if the temperature is less than 20 microKelvins. Such whiteflake antihydrogen can be suspended inside a normal-matter fuel tank and kept away from the tank walls by electrostatic forces and/or magnetism. Note that the density of frozen antihydrogen would be the same as the density of frozen hydrogen, 0.088 grams per cubic centimeter; so a hundred tonnes of solid antihydrogen would occupy 1136 cubic meters of space.
Aside from such a dangerous balancing act, Uncharged particles can only be contained by means of QC&C fields, and one QC&C field can only act on a handful of particles at a time. Even a massively-parallel array of QC&C fields, as is used in proton fusion, can't contain any more antimatter per cubic centimeter than a conventional magnetic containment unit operating on charged particles. Storing the antiprotons inside fullerenes won't help either, since you're still not balancing the negative charge of the antiprotons with positive charges (doing so would compromise the electron-cloud-containment strength of the fullerenes), and you'd incur a huge mass penalty (60 or so worthless carbon atoms for every antiproton).
What this all means is, although it's much harder to manufacture a single antiproton than it is to manufacture a single positron, it's far easier to manufacture and store a given mass of antiprotons than of positrons. Depending on its size, a positron factory can manufacture anywhere from ten grams to one kilogram of usable positrons per year.
Due to the radiation and containment-failure hazards, all antimatter factories tend to be located in uninhabited areas, on uninhabited planetary bodies, or on artificial satellites. At the time of the Pentagon war, Human-Centauri has fewer positron factories than any of the other 4 nations.
Proton-deuteron hot fusion:
Before Second Contact with the Centaurians, which resulted in humanity getting QC&C technology, Earth had been working on making hot-fusion technology a practical reality for over a century — tokamaks, polywells, etc.. The result, from these totally independent lines of research, was the hot-fusion of deuterium with protium (normal light-hydrogen), self-sustaining without the need for tritium. (Due to the higher temperature required for proton-deuteron fusion, tritons are usually introduced to start the reaction but are not required to sustain it.) Proton-deuteron fusion results in a helium-3 nucleus and a gamma ray photon, so protium-deuterium hot-fusion reactors are designed with very high density plasma to maximize the chance for the gamma ray photon to get absorbed and converted into thermal energy. The process isn't perfect, though, and a few stray gamma ray photons escape, which means spacecraft sporting such engines need a little bit of ionizing-radiation shielding between the reactor and the occupants/electronics. The process also occasionally results in deuteron-deuteron fusion, which makes a free neutron half the time it happens; the reactors are engineered to minimize the chances of these unwanted deuteron-deuteron reactions, but very small amounts of radioactive contamination are inevitable.
Hot fusion was perfected before Second Contact, but after First Contact. It helped tremendously in getting enough missiles ready for the inevitable Centaurian counterattack. If it had pre-dated First Contact, we could even have started colonizing the moon before we knew we weren't alone in the universe; but as it was, all we cared about was the inevitable Centaurian counterattack. ("I got into fusion research because I wanted to save civilization in the long run. Now, it might be the only thing that gets humanity through the next decade.") A few hot-fusion power plants were built on Earth before QC&C fusion took over.
The technology relies on tightly focused beams of protons and deuterons aimed precisely dead-center at each other. When these beams are moving at one very specific speed — i.e. the particles collide with a very precise energy — their capture cross-section becomes enormous. This is similar to the principle of resonance particles, whose existence is inferred by a high collision cross-section at specific energies.
The energy produced by the fusion of a proton and a deuteron into a helium-3 nucleus is 5.4935 MeV, including the energy of the gamma ray photon. Ounce-for-ounce, this is 41% as much energy as is released by the fusion of protons into alpha particles. (For comparison, the fusion of deuterons into alpha particles produces 89.2% as much energy as the fusion of protons into alpha particles.) However, hot-fusion is far from perfect, and allows much of the unburned propellant through into the exhaust.
Deuterium is more expensive than ordinary protium, but the reaction doesn't require QC&C cells and can happen in bulk; a protium-deuterium hot fusion engine of a given mass can generally produce much more thrust than a QC&C engine of the same mass. However, it is not nearly as efficient, with an exhaust velocity of only 0.044c. This is less than two-fifths of the exhaust velocity a proton fusion engine creates (less, even, than 2/5 of what a QC&C deuterium engine creates), which means it's only 15% as energy-efficient as a QC&C deuterium engine. Nearly all of this inefficiency is due to unburned protium and deuterium making its way into the exhaust, although a little of the inefficiency is due to its high thermal component (unlike QC&C exhaust, hot-fusion exhaust has a strong blackbody glow, with an effective temperature above the point at which all objects appear blue-white to human eyes). In this regard, it's like a solid rocket booster: high thrust-to-weight ratio, but low Isp. It is the preferred means for propelling spacecraft too small to sport a QC&C engine, or which need to produce very high thrust levels.
Types of spacecraft:
Newman Energy Machines:
At one point, I really believed that these things worked. Now that I know they're pretty much a load of wishful thinking, though, I have no intent of including them in my story. Their technological, economic, and social implications would be enormous. Hot fusion wouldn't play such a crucial role in energy production any more. Fusion may in fact be secondary to spacecraft thrust; synchrotron beams can have specific impulses in the millions of seconds, and Newman devices would mean practically limitless electric energy.
Even while I still believed in Newman's electromagnetomic motor, though, I realized that including them in this future history would risk alienating a lot of my potential readership. One possibility was to declare that Newman devices merely make a vast increase in the amount of electrical power available from a given system, but still can't recharge a bigger battery from a smaller battery or anything.
Semi-Intelligent computers:
While not bestowing "sentience" in any sense, the ability to pack a vast knowledge base into a small space that allows super-high-speed access, combined with various adaptive-learning algorithms, have resulted in machines which, in their own narrow areas of expertise, can think as well as (or better than) any human specialist.
These semi-intelligent, or "SI", controllers are crucial to fighters (see below under "Standard military issue"). Not only must these combat vessels react to changing conditions in high delta-vee environments in a matter of milliseconds (if not microseconds), they also routinely accelerate at over a hundred g's, requiring "brain" hardware that can withstand such extreme force. (No human or Centaurian can remain conscious beyond 9 or 10 g's.)
Interestingly, computer technology seems to be more readily graspable by humans than by Centaurians. Only a tiny fraction of the human population had what it took to bring computing machinery into reality in the 20th century; among Centaurians, the traits necessary for this particular mental skill are practically nonexistent. Prior to their capture of human satellites after first contact, semiconductor transistors had been produced in Alpha-Centaurian laboratories only, and the idea of using switching elements for manipulating information digitally had never been seriously pursued. Alpha Centauri is continually playing catch-up with Sol in the computer department.
Hibernation chambers:
Euphemistically called "coffins" by humans due to their resemblance to burial caskets, these low-temperature pods reduce human biological activity to almost nil while still allowing the passenger to be revived later. Human hibernation using this technology is officially called "submetabolic sleep." Various inhaled and insinuative gasses are used to preserve the living tissues; the mixture must be varied slightly for first-time hibernators.
Magnetic focusers:
The second major technology, besides QC&C, that humans stole from the Centaurians after Second Contact. A magnetic focuser allows a magnetic field to be focused so that all its field lines loop out in one direction. Focusing is laserlike; spreading with distance isn't an issue, although diffraction still occurs so the range isn't infinite. Until the onset of the Pentagon War, a magnetic focuser could only operate for a quick jolt; Sol and Alpha Centauri independently discovered how to make it operate continuously, and developed it in two different directions (the Directional Screen in Sol's case; the Liquid Metal Gun's guidance and course-correction system in Alpha Centauri's case). Forms the basis for magnetic snares, Zelta Dee's Directional Screen, the guidance system on Alpha Centauri's liquid metal gun, and the ability for a slug launcher to keep accelerating its cargo past the end of its barrel.
Mass drivers:
Also know as electromagnetic launchers, slug launchers, or "railguns", these super-cannons can fire unguided projectiles at the relativistic speeds needed for spacecraft-to-spacecraft combat. A typical muzzle velocity is 10 permil (1% of c), or 3000 km/sec. A 1 kg slug fired at this velocity would have a kinetic energy of 4.5 trillion joules, which is slightly more than 1 kiloton of TNT, or the energy released from running 7 grams of protium through two-stage QC&C fusion. If early 21st century EDLCs ("supercapacitors") were used to deliver this amount of energy to the launcher, they would have to mass at least 15 thousand tonnes; clearly, the capacitor technology that exists at the time of the Pentagon War far exceeds this meager energy density.
Most spacecraft only have enough room for a launch tube that's 10 meters long or so. If the entire 10 permil muzzle velocity were imparted to the slug along such a short length, the slug would have to undergo an acceleration of 45 billion g for a little under 7 microseconds. Instead, the impetus is provided by a magnetic focuser, whose pusher beam extends several kilometers past the end of the barrel. A 10 kilometer magnetic-beam launch to 10 permil would involve a much more moderate average acceleration of 45 million g, and last a hair over 20 milliseconds.
Launching guided projectiles at these accelerations is impossible. There's nothing you could build a guidance mechanism out of that would survive a multimegagee force like this. This means the "message missiles" launched toward one's home hyper hole in an enemy system, which guide themselves toward the hole and transmit their message as soon as they're through it, cannot be launched at such high speeds. They must carry their own drive mechanism with them so that they can accelerate — smoothly — to the relativistic speeds necessary to reach their transmit point quickly. They'd be limited to the same load factors as unmanned Fighter craft, i.e. about 100g. This, of course, makes them vulnerable targets during their initial slow-moving phase.
Magnetic snares:
Using a magnetic focuser as a simple "magnetic beam" which can pull on a ferromagnetic object from quite a distance away. It can only apply a radial force, either pulling or pushing, never a lateral force. Since continuous magnetic focusing technology was not available until the start of the Pentagon War, a magnetic snare could only impart a quick yank or shove to its target, making it impractical for docking maneuvers.
Gate Guards:
These are military space stations built into an asteroid, stationed next to the linked Hyper Holes in each system. In peacetime, they double as customs inspection stations, emergency outposts, etc. The guts of each gate guard are built underground, relying on the rocky mass of the asteroid for protection from attack. Each Gate Guard is unique, depending on what asteroid was available to construct it out of; they can be over a hundred kilometers in diameter.
Needless to say, such a massive chunk of rock could not have been towed into place on a brachistochrone trajectory. Instead, a suitable candidate was nudged into an orbit that would eventually bring it to the Hyper Hole it was needed at, then nudged again to match the Hyper Hole's own orbit. Construction took place while the asteroid was en route. Each Gate Guard has station-keeping thrusters on it to keep it in position near the Hyper Hole it's guarding; these thrusters are QC&C reactors that would qualify as the main engine on any normal-sized spacecraft.
Once the War began, it was quickly discovered that a fast-moving intruder stood a chance of zipping past a Gate Guard untouched. To combat this, each nation began building "Second Guards" — Gate Guard installations positioned a couple thousand kilometers away from either side of the Hole. Since Hyper Holes are basically flat, an intruder has to have a velocity vector almost perpendicular to the hole's face, so there is a very limited arc of possible positions that a fast intruder can move to once it's through the Hole. Second Guards are stationed in the dead-center of that path. Note that Sol had the problem of having its Hyper Holes on long trans-Jupiter orbits, so it took years to orbit its Second Guard asteroids into position; in the meanwhile, all they could plug the gap with were fighters.
Antiproton bombs:
The terror of the phased antimatter bomb has not eclipsed the need for good old-fashioned "conventional" antimatter weapons. Antiprotons are over 2000 times as massive as positrons, and can be stored in a magnetic bottle with just as much ease, making them ideal for use in both warheads of large-scale destruction and supercompact one-megaton bombs. Their use against planetary targets en masse is only slightly less distasteful to international politics as is the antiplanetary use of hyper bombs.
Meteorite bombs:
Also called "asteroid bombs" or "surface renders", these are magnetic bottles filled with antiprotons encased in big rocks. Haul them over to the planet you want to attack and then de-orbit them so that they land on the military base (or city) of your choosing. Like real meteor strikes, these rocks will plow deeply into the ground before lithobraking to a stop. Unlike ordinary meteor strikes, the force of the impact will destroy the magnetic bottle inside the rock, releasing all the antiprotons to react after the rock has plowed some distance down into the ground. Depending on the size of the encased warhead, the surface destruction of said rock can be multiplied by a factor of ten, a hundred, or even a thousand. The surface waves will tend to do much more structural damage than an ordinary nuclear or antimatter aerial burst would. One meteorite bomb can utterly annihilate even the sturdiest and most deeply buried of ground installations. However, the radius of destruction is much smaller than that of an aerially detonated antiproton bomb, so they tend to be used more selectively against single, hardened targets than against large areas.
Meteorite bombs are not to be confused with "bunker buster" bombs designed to take out underground installations. Meteorite bombs are designed to detonate only after penetrating through many, many, many meters of rock and dirt, thereby going off under what it is their users intend to destroy.
Antiproton beams:
The ultimate charged particle beam weapons. They have a devastating effect on anything they hit. Their only drawback is cost: the craft firing such a weapon must either carry all the antiprotons with it that it will fire, or be able to manufacture antiprotons as it needs them. In either case, the total long-term energy consumption will be enormous. They are used on special missions and are not standard military issue.
Standard military issue:
Proton beams, electron beams, guided missiles (with or without mass driver assistance), gamma ray lasers, ball bearing shotguns and sand blasters, the Solar system's Radiation Gun. Sirius' Acid Gum Gun to corrode reflective armor into nonreflectiveness. Magnetic plasma deflection fields for defense against charged particle beams and explosives, which may be augmented with short-range ultraviolet lasers to ionize monatomic hydrogen on interstellar voyages (if the spacecraft is capable of interstellar travel). Alpha Centauri's Liquid Metal Gun. Long-range radar. Various antiradar countermeasures not unknown in this century. Many low-powered weapons may be linked together in a point-defense system for use against incoming missiles or other nearby, small targets.
Fighters and Deployers: The usual military spacecraft is alternately called a fighter deployer, a carrier, and/or a mobile base. It is a QC&C powered, manned vessel that tows 3-6 smaller unmanned vessels, called fighters. (Do not be deceived by the name. These "fighters" have nothing in common with fighter aircraft of the 20th century. They are quite large, heavily armored/screened, and are not restricted to weaponry pointing in one direction only.) One fighter is typically a cylinder 60 meters across by 200 or so meters long, with a mass of about 100,000 tonnes including all ordnance but not including its fuel. Fully fuelled with protium and deuterium, a fighter weighs in at 270,000 tonnes (i.e. it has a mass ratio of e, giving it a delta-v budget equal to its exhaust velocity). This means that a 4-fighter Deployer, carrying all 4 of its fighters fully fuelled and a full load of its own deuterium fuel, will have a total mass of about four million tonnes. This means that to sustain 1g of thrust, a fully loaded fighter carrier will have to put one-and-a-fifth tonnes of deuterium through QC&C fusion per second.
A deployer's fighter complement is called, as you might expect, its squadron. Fighters are semi-intelligent in their own right, capable of extremely complex tactics, strategic decision making, coordinating its actions with other fighters in the same squadron, and following orders the way a military pilot would.
The primary function of the fighter deployer is as a repair and resupply station for its fighters. A fighter may burn a substantial fuel load and discharge an enormous amount of destructive force in a single engagement; it cannot afford to carry large stockpiles of protium and deuterium, or ammunition, due to the added weight. Since fighters use protium-deuterium hot fusion engines that can be throttled up in excess of 100g, but deployers cannot exceed the physiological g limits of their crews, a deployer is considerably less maneuverable than a fighter. It makes up for this deficiency by deploying its fighters a good distance away from the action, and by being armed and armored to the teeth.
Personal weaponry includes all the good old-fashioned (but messy) weaponry available at the end of the 20th century, plus: stundart pistols tailored for human or Centaurian physiology, a kevlar-like high-temperature plastic for body armor, ...
Whipple armor: A multi-layered steel-vacuum sandwich, similar to a modern Whipple shield but with more (and progressively thicker) layers. It's designed to turn an impacting hypervelocity projectile into a progressively thinner and thinner cloud of plasma, until it's too weak to penetrate the inner layer(s). The outermost layer is often made reflective to repel attacks by lasers.
Missiles: Missiles are small, unintelligent spacecraft designed to ram their target. The bulk of their mass consists of protium and deuterium fuel for their tiny 100g hot-fusion engine. They're usually shaped like long, narrow cylinders so that they can fit in missile launch tubes. The missile launch tubes themselves are very weak mass drivers, which throw their cargoes away from the launching spacecraft at only a few kilometers per second. This isn't done to give a missile a hefty initial velocity — a few km/s is peanuts compared with the missile's total dalta-v budget — it's done to put some distance between the missile and the launcher before the missile lights off its (rather destructive) engine. Missiles can also be deployed without a launch tube, e.g. connected to hard points on the outermost layer of the spacecraft's whipple armor as external ordnance, but care must be taken before starting such a missile's engine to ensure that it neither blasts the launching spacecraft with its exhaust nor rams into it.
Too small for an S.I., missiles rely on radar emitters and passive thermal sensors to home in on a single designated target, and they can be fooled by thermal decoys (flares/"chaff") dropped at the last moment. The hot-fusion engine has a highly gimballed nozzle for thrust vectoring; in many shorter missiles, this is the only means of steering, while in most others, a thruster quad on the nose allows the missile to rotate more rapidly. Extremely rapid rotation is absolutely essential; a missile needs to point its thrust vector exactly where it's needed at an instant's notice, because its target will probably be undergoing unpredictable evasive maneuvers, particularly right before impact. A missile designed to hit a hardenened target (a target with whipple armor like a fighter's) generally stays in one piece to minimize the area its impact will be spread over; a missile designed to shoot down an unarmored target in deep space often contains a small fragmentation warhead that blows the missile into many tiny pieces just before impact, to maximize the chance that at least one piece will score a hit. Cruise missiles are larger, so that they can carry more fuel, and will accept encrypted orders from the launching spacecraft in mid-flight to change targets or abort (assuming the order arrives in time with the light-speed delay).
Drones: Both fighters and their deployers may also carry extremely small remotely-controlled unintelligent spacecraft called drones. A drone resembles an EVA pod in 2001: A Space Odyssey or the escape pod seen at the beginning of Star Wars; it's a small unmanned spacecraft similar to a missile that carries a single secondary-caliber spacecraft-to-spacecraft direct fire weapon — a high-energy laser, a proton beam, even an electromagnetically launched missile or two of its own. Like a missile, a drone has a small proton-deuterium hot-fusion engine. Not only is a drone too cheap for its own SI Controller, it's too small for a useful radar emitter; a nearby fighter or manned spacecraft must provide it with weapon locks, and must pass along any maneuvering instructions more complicated than "home in on target." Kinetic-kill drones aren't even reusable; they're basically a one-use electromagnetic gun with an engine. The gun destroys itself on firing, and the recoil does so much damage to the engine that it's cheaper just to scrap it and buy a new one than it is to repair; in fact, the remains of the spent drone will be sent flying backwards nearly as fast as the slug is sent flying forwards!
Ascenders and Atmospheric Descent Pods: If an offensive campaign gets to the ground assault phase, victory is all but assured. Any orbital defenses will have been taken out first (including the gate-guard sized space stations protecting any important planet), then any ground-based orbital strike installations and air/spaceports capable of launching orbital strike vehicles; then, any military targets exposed to the sky can be picked off at leisure from orbit. Only after the enemy's military installations have been whittled down to next-to-nothing and their means of communications severed or interfered with as much as possible (a deaf enemy is a confused enemy, and a confused enemy is a vulnerable, low-morale enemy), will troops be landed on the surface. The least expensive means of landing troops is an atmospheric descent pod (essentially a large Mercury spacecraft) — this requires a substantial atmosphere and cannot re-ascend once it has landed. For hit-and-run raids, or for temporary troops, an ascender can be used. These fusion powered aerospace craft are hardly taller than an Apollo spacecraft and have enough fuel to land, ascend to orbit at 9 g's, and even attain an interplanetary trajectory if necessary. An ascender's nosecone is plated in nonablative Heat Bolide™ (similar to Space Shuttle tile material but not nearly as expensive), allowing it to be used for re-entry aerobraking as well as hypersonic ascent.
Typical starship mission profile
The typical starship is a Bussard fusion scramjet. It scoops up hydrogen ions (mostly protium with a teeny weeny little bit of deuterium mixed in) from the interstellar medium, and fuses them into helium using a two-stage "at speed" QC&C engine. The empty mass of such a spacecraft is typically 1000 tonnes, and the scoop field extends out to about a 4500 kilometer radius (about 63 trillion square meters in area). We assume the interstellar medium in the local fluff has a density of roughly 50 hydrogen ions (plus another 50 atoms of non-ionized hydrogen) per liter. Due to the abyssmal performance of a Bussard collector at low speeds, they carry enough fuel to accelerate them at a full g until they reach 10 percent of the speed of light, by which time the collection field is scooping up ionized hydrogen rapidly enough to sustain 0.5g of acceleration. (This is roughly 1000 tonnes of protium.)
For the first phase of the trip, the starship is accelerating at a steady 1.0g from a dead stop to 0.1c. It will be using its own fuel exclusively at first, and slowly ramp up the contribution from the scramjet until the scooped-up material accounts for half the total thrust. The time it takes the spacecraft to accelerate at a constant acceleration a from a dead stop to a final velocity v is:
t = (v/a) / sqrt (1 - v2/c2)
This takes 0.097 years, and covers 0.00489 light-years.
For the second phase of the trip, the starship switches over entirely to its scramscoop for thrust. The acceleration drops to 0.5g, then ramps up from 0.5g to 1.0g as its speed increases from 0.1c to 0.2c. Determining the spacecraft's velocity at an arbitrary time t during this phase, even before relativity is taken into account, requires solving a differential equation; the pre-relativity solution works out to:
v = v0et/r
... where r is the ratio of current speed to acceleration. In the local fluff with a 4472 km radius scoop, perfect proton fusion will produce 166.7 Newtons of thrust for every km/s the scramjet is travelling at. Thus, for a 1000 tonne fusion scramjet, r works out to 6,000,000 seconds. It takes 0.131787 years (before taking relativity into account) of burning all incoming material to double the spacecraft's speed. This phase covers 0.038 light-years.
For the third phase of the trip, the starship accelerates at a steady 1.0g from 0.2c until it reaches the half-way point to its destination. Relativity will be significant during this phase. The rest-time it takes to cross a distance d from the end of the second phase to the midpoint of the trip, at a steady acceleration a from the starship's frame of reference, assuming an initial velocity at the end of the second phase that gives you a gamma of γ0, is:
t = c/a * (sqrt ((a*d/c2 + γ0)2-1) - sqrt(γ02-1))
(If the third phase of the trip begins at a speed of 0.2c, γ0 = 1.0206.)
For the fourth phase of the trip, the starship de-tunes its scoop field so as to cause drag, and scoops the interstellar medium into its fuel tanks to replenish them. In the spacecraft's reference frame, it isn't merely deflecting the oncoming material backward, it's actually braking it to a halt inside its fuel tanks; this means that using the onrushing interstellar hydrogen to refuel in flight is going to generate a lot of heat. There will have to be some kind of heat radiating system on board. In the case of a conventional Bussard scramjet, the fuel tanks are external mylar balloons, and so the outer walls of the tanks themselves can serve as heat radiators (assuming enough convolutions are added to their design). Assuming a 4472 km radius scoop, the maximum amount of drag braking force available at any velocity v, before adjusting for relativity, is 450,000,000 Newtons * (v/c)2. Using drag braking alone, the starship will be able to sustain a 1.0g deceleration all the way down to 0.21c or so, by which point the starship's fuel tanks will have been completely filled with 1000 tonnes of fuel. Since you're sustaining 1.0g of deceleration, the rate at which you'll refill your fuel tanks is inversely proportional to your velocity; at very high speeds, to keep the braking force down to 1.0g, you'll have to either let some of the incoming material pass right on through, or shrink the radius of the collection field.
For the fifth phase of the trip, the starship must burn some of the scooped-up hydrogen and jet it forward as exhaust, in order to sustain 1.0g of deceleration. The amount grows until it's burning all incoming hydrogen at 0.16c. This phase lasts 0.0475 years and covers 0.0088 light-years.
For the sixth and final phase of the trip, the starship burns fuel from its onboard tanks — in addition to the interstellar material being scooped, braked, and burned — to keep the braking force at a steady 1.0g. This would pretty much use up all the remaining fuel. This phase lasts 0.152 years and covers the final 0.0122 light-years.
During the very last days of that final phase, depending on your destination, you might get a very big boost in the amount of braking you'll get from your environment — in the form of your target star system's stellar wind. If it's strong enough, the last 1 or 2 percent of the speed of light can be bled off without expending an ounce of your own fuel, and even allow you to replenish a little of the fuel in your once-again-empty tanks. The amount of fuel you have to expend during the first and last few days of the journey depends severely on the extent of the asterosphere within that star system. Outbound from the sun, you don't reach the heliopause for an impressive 110 A.U., or about 0.0017 light-years; but outbound from a dim red dwarf, you'll run into the asteropause far earlier.
For Arnold and Jerry's scramjet, they accelerate at 2.0g and carry enough fuel (roughly 5x their empty weight) that they can sustain this until 0.2c before switching over entirely to ram-generated thrust. They go through the same phases as above, but the cutoff speeds and durations/distances covered by each phase change. Phase 1 covers 0-0.2c, lasts 0.099 years, and crosses 0.01 light-years. Phase 2 covers 0.2-0.4c, lasts 0.131787 years as before, and crosses 0.076 light-years. Phase 3 starts at 0.4c0 = 1.091), and covers d = half-way trip distance minus 0.0855 light-years — for an 8.554 light-year trip from Sol to UV Ceti, phase 3 will last 4.4811 years. Phase 5 starts at 0.52c, continues down to 0.46c, lasts 0.0285 years, and covers 0.014 light-years. Phase 6 lasts 0.219 years and covers the remaining 0.0503 light-years.
Now, you may be asking yourself: Self, how does the "collection field" of a scramjet's scoop work? How does it reach out to a forty-five hundred kilometer radius, grab non-ionized hydrogen, and draw it in to its voracious maw? Well, the usual way proposed by most folk is to make sure that the hydrogen isn't non-ionized, and then just use a plain old magnetic field or electrostatic field to draw it in. In order to do that, you'd need to hit every hydrogen atom with enough energy to ionize it. The ionization energy of a hydrogen atom is 13.6 eV; this corresponds to an ultraviolet photon of wavelength 91.16 nm (frequency 3.289 Petahertz). So, if you were to sweep the region with a 911.6 Ångstrom ultraviolet laser at sufficient beam wattage, you could ionize all incoming hydrogen. The big question is, how much beam wattage would you need? At 10% of the speed of light, you'd need to ionize 150 grams (i.e. 150 moles) of hydrogen per second. That works out to 196.7 megawatts. But that assumes that every photon your laser emits strikes a hydrogen atom within 4472 km. That is only possible if you know the location of each hydrogen atom before you reach it, which you won't. You're going to have to waste a lot more power than that, simply sweeping the forward space in the hope of catching all the hydrogen atoms.
How much more power? Well, let's assume that a photon has a "capture radius" equal to its wavelength — that is, if one of our UV photons passes within 91.16 nm of a hydrogen atom, that atom will absorb the photon and ionize. (This may be an incorrect assumption; according to the hydrogen link on this page, the photoionization cross-section of a hydrogen atom at 13.6 eV is only on the order of 1 Megabarn, or 10-4 square nm.) A corridor of interstellar space 1 square cm in cross-section and 30,000 km in length will contain 3 x 108 hydrogen atoms, giving it a total capture cross-section of 7.8 x 1012 square nm. At 1014 square nm per square cm, nearly a tenth of the whole area has a hydrogen atom somewhere in it that will absorb a photon that passes through that point. So, we might be able to get by with an ultraviolet laser beam output of only 2 gigawatts.
Of course, lasers aren't 100% efficient, so the laser's power-draw requirements will be several times higher than its beam-power output. (And the power that doesn't go into the beam, due to the laser's inefficiency? That's gonna be heat. You'll need radiators, or a way to dump that heat into the exhaust stream.)
Since the power released from the fusion of 150 grams of protium into helium per second is 94.5 terawatts, we might be able to afford the energy drain caused by this sweeping UV laser. It all depends on how efficient our laser is.
The good news is, all this may be unnecessary. About half of the hydrogen in the Local Fluff — and nearly all the hydrogen in the broader and thinner Local Bubble — is already ionized. Phototonization would only be necessary directly ahead of the physical structure of the starship, to ensure that it doesn't smack into any material that doesn't get scooped up.
Electrostatic scoops: the proton vs. protium replenishment problem
The interstellar medium in the Local Fluff consists of about 50% ionized hydrogen (protons) and 50% non-ionized hydrogen (protium). Protons are positively charged, and so can be drawn in magnetically or electrostatically; protium is not, and cannot so be drawn in. A starship will have a forward-facing UV laser that constantly sweeps the area immediately in front of the spacecraft, to turn all protium directly in front of the 'craft into protons, thus allowing them to be scooped in instead of slamming against the forward hull.
This means the stuff a starship scoops up will be positively-charged hydrogen ions, instead of neutral hydrogen. Theoretically, a magnetic scoop could suck up the free electrons just as easily as it could suck up the hydrogen ions, and could in fact inhale both at the same time; but with an electrostatic scoop, you can only suck up one or the other. There are two problems with this, a minor one and a major one:
(1) In a scramjet, the scooped material is run through QC&C nuclear fusion. The result of the nuclear fusion of two protons is a deuteron and a positron. If none of the incoming material is electrons, you won't have any electrons to annihilate your positron with. This means you must dump your positrons directly out of the exhaust. This could theoretically make the trip much more perilous for the next starship that follows your path through space, except that by that time the positrons will have had time to mix with the electrons that are naturally present in all that ionized hydrogen out there. You might get a few gamma ray flashes in your wake, but this is a minor problem.
(2) A more serious problem comes when it's time to undergo braking. You'd like to be able to use the braking phase to replenish the hydrogen (protium) in your starship's fuel tanks, which you had to expend to get it up to speed in the first place. But you're not scooping up protium, you're scooping up protons. If you tried to store those, you would very quickly pick up an electric charge imbalance, which is a very bad thing. You would need to alternate the electric charge on the scoop from time to time, to attract electrons instead of protons; or you would need to be able to scoop up neutral hydrogen instead of ionized hydrogen, which only Poul Anderson can get away with; or you would need to forego the whole process of replenishing your fuel tanks while braking and instead carry enough fuel for both the outbound acceleration phase and the final braking phase, which doubles your rocket-based delta-v requirements. Another possible solution to this dilemma is to ground your fuel tank, so that the charge imbalance ends up spread out over the outer hull. Then as the starship accumulated a net positive charge, electrons from nearby space (the ones that were bound to the ionized hydrogen before it became ionized) would naturally be attracted to the hull, and would neutralize the ions in its fuel tank on their own. This might work with a starship with a magnetic scoop, but a starship with an electrostatic scoop (like Mercurand) would have trouble overcoming the net negative charge of its drogue-wire.
An analysis of the feasibility of Alan Bond's RAIR
The Ram-Augmented Interstellar Rocket, or RAIR, was once considered as a promising compromise between the true Bussard ramscoop and a pure rocket. In theory, you could scoop up the interstellar medium and use it as extra reaction mass for your fuel combustion to push against.
However, there are two problems.
First, the interstellar medium is exceptionally thin. In the "local fluff" in which the sun and a few neighboring stars are embedded, the density of the interstellar medium is only about 1 atom of hydrogen for every 10 cubic centimeters. (Outside the local fluff it's about half that.) This means that if your starship had a ridiculously huge 1000 km radius scooping field, at 10% of the speed of light you'd only be scooping up 15 grams of hydrogen per second. Even a modest spacecraft would have to weigh in at at least 100 tonnes empty to carry anything even remotely interesting, and that's the empty mass, before the mass of its unexpended fuel is added in. Accelerating a 100 tonne fusion rocket at 1 g requires burning 28 grams of protons. The extra 15 grams you're scooping in at 0.1 c aren't going to provide much to push against.
Secondly, the reaction mass isn't standing still when you scoop it in. If you're moving at 0.1 c, those 15 grams of interstellar medium are zipping down your gullet at 30,000 kilometers per second.
This second point is actually the most significant. Remember, dumping the energy you get from burning your fuel into the exhaust increases its kinetic energy — but it's the change in the exhaust's momentum that drives your starship forward. Adding a given amount of energy to 15 grams of matter that are already going at 0.1 c is going to give you a much smaller momentum change than adding that same amount of energy to 15 grams of matter that are standing still (relative to you).
How much smaller? Well, when increasing any object's velocity, the increase in kinetic energy is:
ΔKE = ½m (v0 + Δv)2 – ½mv02
... where m is the mass of the object, v0 is its initial velocity, and Δv is the increase in its velocity. The spent fuel has a v0 of zero; the incoming ram-scooped material has a v0 equal to the speed of your spacecraft.
So, for comparison, to give 15 grams of spent fuel a nudge of 1000 km/sec would take:
ΔKE = ½(0.015 kg) (0 + 1,000,000 m/s)2 – ½(0.015 kg)(0)2
= ½(0.015 kg) (1,000,000 m/s)2
= 7,500,000,000 Joules
... and to give 15 grams of ram-scooped material travelling at 0.1 c (30,000 km/s) the same 1000 km/sec nudge would take:
ΔKE = ½(0.015 kg) (30,000,000 m/s + 1,000,000 m/s)2 – ½(0.015 kg)(30,000,000 m/s)2
= 7,207,500,000,000 Joules – 6,750,000,000,000 Joules
= 457,500,000,000 Joules
... or 61 times more energy.
However, it's possible to use some of the kinetic energy of the oncoming interstellar medium to your advantage. You can "mix" it with your fusion reactor's own exhaust stream, so that some of its momentum is transferred to your fusion fuel products.
Then, you're not talking about "dumping" the energy from your fusion burn into the ram-scooped matter stream anymore. You're talking about "pooling" the kinetic energy of the oncoming material with the energy released from fusion, and applying that combined energy total to the entire combined mass of your exhaust.
Say you're going 0.2 c. At that rate, you're taking in 30 grams of interstellar medium per second. Normally, if your 100 tonne spacecraft were a pure rocket, burning 28 grams of onboard protons over the course of one second would produce an impulse of 980,000 kg m/s, giving you an acceleration of 1.0g. But if we combine this with the 30 grams of inert mass we've just scopped up, we get:
Initial momentum of collected material = 60,000,000 m/s * 0.03 kg = 1,800,000 kg m/s
Kinetic energy of collected material = ½ * 0.03 kg * (60,000,000 m/s)2 = 5.4 x 1013 Joules
Energy released from fusion of 0.028 kg of fuel = 1.764 x 1013 Joules
Total energy E available to put into exhaust = 5.4 x 1013 J + 1.764 x 1013 J = 7.164 x 1013 Joules
Exhaust velocity = SQRT (2E / (0.03 kg + 0.028 kg)) = 49,702,564 m/s
Momentum of exhaust = 49,702,564 m/s * 0.058 kg = 2,883,000 kg m/s
NET momentum transferred to starship = 2,883,000 kg m/s – 1,800,000 kg m/s = 1,083,000 kg m/s
... which would impart an acceleration of 1.105 g to the spacecraft.
This advantage dwindles, however, the more we increase the spacecraft's mass. If we assume that 100 tonnes is the empty weight of our starship, and at 0.2 c we're still carrying enough fuel for another ~0.1 c worth of acceleration (again assuming near-perfect nuclear fusion with a 0.1c exhaust velocity), that means our spacecraft currently has a mass of e times its empty weight, or 272 tonnes. It takes about 75 grams of proton fusion to accelerate this much mass at 1.0 g in a pure rocket design. If you add 30 grams of RAIR material to this, your new optimally-mixed acceleration works out to only 1.07 g.
But now suppose that instead of using a "normal" magnetic scoop, we use a much more efficient scoop, such as the Matloff and Fennelly electrostatic scoop-line or the similar design that I'm calling "the Drogue" on Mercurand. Let's say that at 0.2 c, this scoop can gather up a whopping 100 kg of interstellar medium per second. Then, for a 100 tonne spacecraft, we get:
Initial momentum of collected material = 60,000,000 m/s * 100 kg = 6,000,000,000 kg m/s
Kinetic energy of collected material = ½ * 100 kg * (60,000,000 m/s)2 = 1.8 x 1017 Joules
Total energy E available to put into exhaust = 1.8 x 1017 J + 1.764 x 1013 J = 1.8001764 x 1017 Joules
Exhaust velocity = SQRT (2E / (100 kg + 0.028 kg)) = 59,994,541 m/s
Momentum of exhaust = 59,994,541 m/s * 100.028 kg = 6,001,133,975 kg m/s
NET momentum transferred to starship = 6,001,133,975 kg m/s – 6,000,000,000 kg m/s = 1,133,975 kg m/s
... which would impart an acceleration of 1.157 g to the spacecraft. Bleah. That's hardly what I'd call an improvement.
Mercurand's antimatter engine:
As originally designed, Mercurand carried 100 tonnes of antiprotium, and the rest of the spacecraft massed an additional 100 tonnes, including 1 tonne of normal protium it carried for its boost phase.
When burning its internal hydrogen supply, 1 antiprotium atom is annihilated with 1 protium atom, and the resulting thermal energy is used to accelerate an additional quantity of protium as exhaust. Each kg of protium and antiprotium annihilated yields 1.8 x 1017 J of kinetic energy. Let's see how much momentum this will impart to Mercurand when applied to different masses of propellant. Since Mercurand only carries 1 tonne of koinohydrogen, we can assume its mass will stay constant at nearly 200,000 kg for the duration of this non-scooping boost phase. This 1.8 x 1017 J of kinetic energy will have to be split between the exhaust and Mercurand in such a way that the net change in the momentum of both bodies is 0:
Velocities for ΔKE = 1.8 x 1017 J, 200 tonne spacecraft
Propellant massExhaust velocity Spacecraft Δv
1 kg γ = 3 (0.9428c) 4240 m/s
10 kg 189,732,000 m/s 9486.6 m/s
100 kg 59,985,000 m/s 29,992 m/s
1,000 kg 18,920,000 m/s 94,632 m/s
1,000,000 kg 245,000 m/s 1,225,000 m/s
1,000,000,000 kg 268 m/s 1,341,510 m/s
1,000,000,000,000 kg 0.268 m/s 1,341,640 m/s
Note: Other than the first entry, none of these velocities are adjusted for special relativity
So if we can only afford to expend 1 kg of our internal protium supply as propellant per kg each of protium and antiprotium annihilated, we only get 4240 m/s of delta-v. That's not very much, is it? Expend all 1000 kg of protium, and you've only got 2120 km/s of delta-v, barely enough to accelerate you to 7 permil. You'll need at least 10 permil, preferably 100 permil, to sweep up the interstellar medium at a decent rate, and that doesn't even count the 4000 km/s they'll need to expend to accelerate and decelerate across the 200 million km gap between the Sirius/HC and Sirius/Sol hyper holes.
If we allow Mercurand to carry 100 tonnes of protium instead of just 1 tonne, that changes the picture dramatically. Now we can afford to dump 100 kg of propellant into the exhaust for every 1 kg of protium and 1 kg of antiprotium annihilated. With a fully loaded mass of 300 tonnes, an "empty weight" after expending all propellant (but not all antiprotium) of 199 tonnes, an an exhaust velocity of 60,000 km/s, that gives us a total delta-v budget of 24,630 km/s, or 82 permil. Even if we assume that the above table is bogus, and that all the kinetic energy from the annihilation can be funneled completely into the exhaust, that still gives us an exhaust velocity of 60,000 km/s, because the spacecraft is so much more massive than the exhaust fraction that the difference is too tiny to matter.
This is reasonable. Mercurand, therefore, has an empty mass of 100 tonnes, and carries 100 tonnes of whiteflake antiprotium in one tank and 100 tonnes of cryogenic protium in another tank, giving it a total "takeoff weight" of 300 tonnes.
But let's see what the optimum would be. We agree to limit the amount of antiprotium we annihilate to 1 tonne during all non-scoop operations. Annihilating this with exactly 1 tonne of protium yields 1.79751 x 1020 J of total kinetic energy. Because the amount of kinetic energy is so high, and the amount of "dead weight" propellant it's applied to is so small, we can't just use ½mv2 to calculate the exhaust velocity; it will be necessary to adjust for relativity. The relativistic kinetic energy of rest-mass m is of course (γ−1)mc2, which means that γ = (1.79751 x 1020 J / mc2) + 1 = (2000 kg / m) + 1 = 1 / sqrt(1 − v2/c2).
If we have the relativistic exhaust velocity, we can use the regular Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. Although 2 tonnes of the material that is expended is annihilated and is not propellant, the mass-energy from that annihilation is used to accelerate the propellant to relativistic speeds. Thus the propellant's increased relativistic momentum would make it behave as though it were actually 2 tonnes heavier. So, if we vary how much "dead weight" propellant we allow Mercurand to carry, in the form of protium that doesn't get annihilated, what does Mercurand's total non-scoop delta-v budget work out to?
Delta-v budgets for 199 tonne "empty" spacecraft
Starting massPropellant mass Unadjusted exhaust velocityRelativistic exhaust velocity Total Δv
202 tonnes 1 tonne 599,585 km/s 282,647 km/s 4,229 km/s
211 tonnes 10 tonnes 189,605 km/s 165,717 km/s 9,703 km/s
301 tonnes 100 tonnes 59,958 km/s 59,076 km/s 24,446 km/s
401 tonnes 200 tonnes 42,397 km/s 42,082 km/s 29,485 km/s
501 tonnes 300 tonnes 34,617 km/s 34,445 km/s 31,803 km/s
601 tonnes 400 tonnes 29,979 km/s 29,867 km/s 33,012 km/s
701 tonnes 500 tonnes 26,814 km/s 26,734 km/s 33,664 km/s
801 tonnes 600 tonnes 24,478 km/s 24,417 km/s 34,002 km/s
901 tonnes 700 tonnes 22,662 km/s 22,614 km/s 34,152 km/s
951 tonnes 750 tonnes 21,894 km/s 21,850 km/s 34,178 km/s
961 tonnes 760 tonnes 21,749 km/s 21,706 km/s 34,180 km/s
971 tonnes 770 tonnes 21,608 km/s 21,566 km/s 34,183 km/s
981 tonnes 780 tonnes 21,469 km/s 21,427 km/s 34,182 km/s
1,001 tonnes 800 tonnes 21,199 km/s 21,159 km/s 34,181 km/s
1,051 tonnes 850 tonnes 20,566 km/s 20,529 km/s 34,164 km/s
1,101 tonnes 900 tonnes 19,986 km/s 19,953 km/s 34,133 km/s
1,201 tonnes 1,000 tonnes 18,961 km/s 18,932 km/s 34,032 km/s
2,201 tonnes 2,000 tonnes 13,407 km/s 13,397 km/s 32,198 km/s
Note that there appears to be a "sweet spot" between the 971 and 981 tonne entries. Adding more propellant past about that point actually reduces your total delta-v budget. At the time of the Pentagon War, this optimal mass ratio — around 4.9 for a craft carrying about half a percent of its empty weight in antimatter — is known as the Heisenblatt-Sturnbridge ratio. (Confusingly, the ~780-to-1 ratio of protium to antiprotium, which the engine will consume while producing its thrust at this optimal delta-v level, is also called the Heisenblatt-Sturnbridge ratio.)
Now . . . what about after Mercurand has expended all of its onboard propellant, and has to rely on Drogue-gathered interstellar ionized hydrogen both for annihilation material and reaction mass?
In chapter 9, they accelerate to 6-and-two-thirds permil in the Sirius system, then decelerate back down to 1 permil, then do a powered turn to hit the hyper hole bound for Sol space. The powered turn consumes 1.57 permil of delta-v, so their total delta-v expended up through the end of the turn comes to 13.9 permil. This leaves them with 68.1 permil of delta-v that they can use to accelerate to interstellar speeds before running out of propellant. This ignores the potential additional propellant they could pick up by deploying the Drogue during this "runway" phase, but let's assume a worst-case scenario and assume that they manage to accelerate to 69 permil at the point their koinohydrogen runs out.
So, at 69 permil, how much interstellar ionized hydrogen will they be sweeping up per second, within the local fluff?
We can assume that the Drogue performs as optimally as Matloff and Fennelly suggest it might, with an effective gathering radius of 100 000 kilometers. At 0.069c, such a scoop would sweep out a volume of 6.5 x 1023 cubic meters, or 6.5 x 1026 liters. At 50 hydrogen ions (protons) per liter, and 1.67 x 10-27 kg per proton, that works out to 54 kg of hydrogen ions per second that could theoretically be scooped up at this speed.
Let's assume we're not willing to annihilate more than 1/1000 of the incoming material, so that the rest is just deadweight reaction mass. 0.1% of 54 kg is 54 grams. Annihilating 54 grams of matter with 54 grams of antimatter produces 9.7 x 1015 Joules of energy. If we funnel all of that energy into the kinetic energy of the exhaust, operating from the (incorrect) assumption that we're accelerating it from a dead stop relative to the spacecraft (which we're not), the exhaust velocity will be about 18,900 km/s. Throwing 54 kg aft at 18,900,000 m/s will increase Mercurand's forward velocity by 5100 km/s, or roughly half a million g. Clearly, this is far more thrust than we need.
Now . . . what's their total delta-vee budget for chapters 14 and onward? I.e. for maneuvering in Limbo, and fighting the invading Sirians in HC space?
For the return trip, their hydrogen tank is full (100 tonnes), but their antihydrogen tank is half empty (only 50 tonnes). Worse, their drogue gets hopelessly tangled and has to be ejected. They will not be able to gather any interstellar hydrogen or stellar wind. They have to run entirely on what they have stored.
Let's assume they're willing to use all of their stored antihydrogen this time. They are in pretty desperate straits, after all. This brings us back to the first case we considered above: 1 kg propellant per kg each of protium and antiprotium annihilated. Their exhaust velocity will be γ = 3 (0.9429c). We need to convert that to its nonrelativistic equivalent for purposes of the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. Since we're imparting 2 kg * c2 Joules of energy to each kg of propellant, assuming all of this energy gets turned into kinetic energy of the exhaust, we get an "effective exhaust velocity" (for purposes of the Tsiolkovsky equation) of exactly 2c (600,000 km/s). Initial mass of Mercurand is 250 tonnes, final (empty) mass of Mercurand on fuel exhaustion is 100 tonnes. Applying the Tsiolkovsky equation, we get:
Total Δv = 600,000 km/s * ln (250/100) = 549,774 km/s
... or about 1830 permil. Let's see how this synchs up with the relativistic Δv equation from Nyrath's "Slower than Light" webpage, which says that Δv = c * Tanh[(ve/c) * ln(R)]. Plugging the numbers in, we get:
Total Δv = 300,000 km/s * Tanh[0.9429 * ln (250/100)] = 209,489 km/s
... which is considerably lower than what we get from my equation. Note that the Δv that results from this equation is corrected for Relativity, and assumes a spacecraft starting with velocity 0 and spending all its propellant accelerating away (or toward) a fixed observer. If half of this Δv is used to speed up and the other half is used to slow down, the peak velocity in the middle will be higher than 0.5*Δv.
Still, even if it weren't, that's nearly 700 permil of delta-vee, more than enough for any maneuvering Mercurand might have to perform.
The battle in chapter 6
Let's try an initial separation, between Gellimand 3 and the Zelta fighters when the cruise missiles are launched, of 15,000,000 km.
Initial relative velocity: 4500 km/s closing.
Gellimand 3 accelerates at 1 km/s2 until its relative velocity is 6000 km/s closing.
This would cover 7,875,000 km, and last 1500 seconds = 25 minutes.
Covering the remaining 7,125,000 at 6000 km/s would take 1187.5 sec = 19.8 min. Let's say 20 minutes, for a nice round number. So that's a total of 45 minutes from the time the cruise missiles are launched to the time they reach Gellimand 3.
Zelta Cee will be decelerating for the same 25 minutes that Gellimand 3 was accelerating. Their closing speed will be a steady 4500 km/s during that time. When they switch off their engines, they will be 8,250,000 km apart, and closing at 4500 km/s.
Will Zelta Dee be able to match speeds in this short 8,250,000 km stretch? It's going from 4500 km/s to 0 at -1 km/s2. This will cover 10,125,000 km. So, NO, it will not be enough run-up room. They'll need another 2 million klicks or so.
We need to start the approach at 17 million km, not 15 million. Actually, to discourage Gellimand 3 from applying "just a touch" more acceleration and causing Zelta Dee to miss the rendezvous, let's start at 20 million km.
Initial separation: 20,000,000 km.
As before, initial relative velocity is 4500 km/s closing, and Gellimand 3 accelerates to 6000 km/s at 1 km/s2.
Again, this would cover 7,875,000 km, and last 1500 seconds = 25 minutes.
Covering the remaining 12,125,000 at 6000 km/s would take 2020.8s = 33.68 min. Let's say 34 minutes, for a nice round number. So that's a total of 59 minutes from the time the cruise missiles are launched to the time they reach Gellimand 3.
Zelta Cee will be decelerating for the same 25 minutes that Gellimand 3 was accelerating. Their closing speed will be a steady 4500 km/s during that time. When they switch off their engines, they will be 13,250,000 km apart, and closing at 4500 km/s. It will be 2944.4s = 49 minutes from this point that they will meet.
For story reasons, the time between the Zelta-Cee/Gellimand 3 closest pass and the point at which Zelta-Dee and Gellimand 3 encounter each other must be 40 minutes. So, the amount of time that elapses between the launch of the cruise missiles and the launch of Zelta-Aay and Zelta-Bee must be 7227 seconds = two hours and 27 seconds. At the end of this time, Gellimand 3's distance from Zelta must be 108 million klicks, give or take 45 thousand.
Now then ... what about the next encounter, between Gellimand 3 and the other two Zelta fighters? Zelta Aay and Zelta Bee both start out at station-keeping right next to Zelta.
Intruder's initial distance from Zelta: 108,000,000 km
Intruder's initial velocity: -4500 km/s
Defender's initial velocity: 0
Gellimand 3 burns its engine at full thrust, -1 km/s2, for 1500 seconds. Let's see what happens if the defender does the same, i.e. if the defender accelerates at 1 km/s2 to a speed of 5 permil:
Defender's position at engine shutdown:
½ * 1 * 15002 = 1,125,000 km.
Intruder's position at engine shutdown:
½ * (-1) * 15002 + (-4500) * 1500 + 108,000,000 = 100,125,000 km.
At some point in space d, the defender decelerates to match the intruder's velocity. Since relative velocity = 7500 km/s, the defender will have to decelerate at 1 km/s2 for 7500 s.
Defender's position after matching intruder's velocity:
½ * (-1) * 75002 + 1500 * 7500 + d = -16,875,000 km + d
So the point d will have to be at least 16,875,000 km, if the rendezvous is to occur at a non-negative distance from the starting line.
This means the defender will have to coast for 15,750,000 km at a mere 1500 km/s. This will take 10,500 seconds.
Intruder's FARTHEST POSSIBLE position at the start of the defender's velocity-matching burn:
(-6000) * 10,500 + 100,125,000 = 37,125,000 km
BUT, in the 7500 seconds it'll take for the defender to match velocity, the intruder will have moved 45,000,000 km!
So, a rendezvous-intercept will not be possible if the defender only accelerates to 5 permil. But what if the defender accelerates to 10 permil?
Defender's position at new initial engine shutdown:
½ * 1 * 30002 = 4,500,000 km.
Intruder's position at defender's new initial engine shutdown:
(-6000) * 1500 + 100,125,000 = 91,125,000 km
At some point in space d, the defender decelerates to match the intruder's velocity. SInce relative velocity = 9000 km/s, the defender will have to decelerate at 1 km/s2 for 9000 s.
Defender's position after matching intruder's velocity:
½ * (-1) * 90002 + 3000 * 9000 + d = -13,500,000 km + d
So the point d will have to be at least 13,500,000 km, if the rendezvous is to occur at a non-negative distance from the starting line.
This means the defender will have to coast for 9,000,000 km at 3000 km/s. This will only take 3000 seconds.
(-6000) * 3000 + 91,125,000 = 73,125,000 km
In the 9000 seconds it'll take for the defender to match velocity, the intruder will have moved 54,000,000 km. This means the intercept could occur as much as 19,875,000 km away from the defender's starting line.
So a rendezvous-intercept IS possible, if the defender is willing to accelerate to 10 permil and then back-accelerate by a whopping 30 permil. This will run its fuel tanks completely dry, assuming a 40 permil delta-v budget, and leave it hurtling out of the Solar system at 20 permil.
Putting it all together:
Time vs. separation from Zelta, in the battle against Gellimand 3
Time (s) G3 (km) G3 (km/s) cm (km) cm (km/s) Z-C (km) Z-C (km/s) Z-D (km) Z-D (km/s) Z-A/B (km) Z-A/B (km/s)
0 378,876,000 -1500 0 0 0 0
1500 375,501,000 -3000 1,125,000 1500 1,125,000 1500
80250 139,251,000 -3000 119,249,500 1500 119,249,500 1500 119,249,500 1500
80317 139,050,000 -3000 119,350,000 1500 119,347,755 1433 119,347,755 1433
81750 133,724,255 -4443 121,499,500 1500 120,374,500 0 120,374,500 0
81817 133,425,000 -4500 121,600,000 1500 120,374,500 0 120,372,255 -67
83787 124,560,000 -4500 124,555,000 1500 120,374,500 0 118,299,815 -2037
84717 120,375,000 -4500 120,374,500 0 115,972,955 -2967
85950 114,826,500 -4500 111,554,500 -4200
87117 109,575,000 -4500 109,375,000 -4200
87477 107,955,000 -4500 0 0
87837 106,335,000 -4500 64,800 360
88197 104,650,200 -4860 259,200 720
89337 98,460,000 -6000 1,080,000 720
103828 11,514,000 -6000 11,513,520 720
Landmark times:
The battle in chapters 9 and 10
Mercurand doesn't want to end up reaching the Sirius/Sol hyper hole at velocity 0, but instead wants to reach it going one permil (300 km/s). Since the Sirius/Sol hyper hole is pointed at almost a right-angle from the line between it and the Sirius/HC hyper hole, Mercurand can't just fly straight toward the hole, slow down to 300 km/s, and then dive through. It would have to plot a course that put it far enough to one side of the Sirius/Sol hyper hole that it could follow a circular path into it.
Going 300 km/s with an acceleration of 0.02 km/s2, the circle it would follow would have a radius of 4,500,000 km. It would take 23,562 seconds to sweep out a 90 degree arc of this circle. Mercurand's speed would have to be down to 1 permil (300 km/s) at the start of this circular turn, which would occur after having travelled a grand total of 195,500,000 km in-system. (The angle at which Mercurand would have to fly, relative to the Sirius/HC-Sirius/Sol hyper hole line, is the arctangent of 4,500,000 over 195,500,000, or 1.32 degrees.) This puts Mercurand's turnaround/skew-flip point at 97,750,000 km, which would take exactly 85,000 seconds.
Of course, this assumes that they have to keep following this circular arc RIGHT up to the hyper hole's front doorstep, which doesn't give them a very wide margin of safety. It would be more sensible to pick a trajectory that lets them finish out the circle, and be on a direct course for the center of the hyper hole, when they're still a light-second (300 000 klicks) away from it, thereby giving them ample opportunity for last minute course refinement. (And also giving them the option of putting themselves on a ballistic collision course with the Gate Guard or near-side Second Guard, if they want to be spoilsports.) This means the angle at which Mercurand would have to fly would actually be the arctangent of 4,800,000 over 195,500,000, which is 1.41 degrees.
Now, what about the message missile's trajectory? It can't fly straight toward the hyper hole either. If it's not going to slow down, it needs enough TIME to be able to send its message through the hole with line-of-sight on Sol's Second Guard. That means it needs to come in nearly perpendicular to its surface. It will have to fly a curved path like Mercurand, only at a higher speed and with a 100g engine. This also means it has to hold enough delta-v in reserve to make this "terminal maneuver" against the hyper hole. When turning 90 degrees without changing speed, the delta-v requirement is always (π/2) times your speed. So, a message missile that has to hit a hyper hole facing 90 degrees off from its primary course has to hold not JUST its cruising speed, but π/2 TIMES its cruising speed, of delta-v in reserve. This limits their cruising speed to their delta-v budget / (π/2 + 1).
Message missiles have a total delta-v budget of 18,000 km/s, so the max. cruising speed for hitting a perpendicular hyper hole would be 7000 km/s. BUT, that's the max cruising speed RELATIVE TO ITS LAUNCH PLATFORM. In the case of Mercurand, it's already going 300 km/s when the missile is launched. If it accelerates 7000 km/s on top of this, it'll be going 7300 km/s when it starts its turn, which puts it 467 km/s over budget on its delta-v requirement. If it accelerates only 6700 km/s on top of this, it'll be going 7000 km/s when it starts its turn, but that will leave 300 km/s of unused delta-v left over and wasted. The missile could also decelerate BEFORE making the turn, so that it's not barreling toward the face of the hyper hole at its cruising speed. This also gives it more time to transmit its message to the Sol Gate Guard or Second Guard on the other side of the hole. If we elect to have it close with the hyper hole at a paltry 300 km/s, it'll take 472 km/s of delta-v to make the turn, and with a 100g engine the turning radius will be only 90,000 km. 18,000 minus 472 is 17,528, which is all the accelerating or braking we can do before the turn. Since v0 = 300 km/s, and final v must also be 300 km/s, we can accelerate by a maximum of half that (8764) to a cruising speed of 9064. This will of course take 8764 seconds. Braking from 9064 km/s to 300 km/s will likewise take 8764 seconds and cover 41,033,048 km, so it must begin 41,123,048 km before the hyper hole to allow for the 90,000 km radius turn at the end.
So, assuming our Sirian fighter accelerates for 600 seconds to a course that intercepts Mercurand's, and that the message missile is launched 2 hours before the fighter begins its acceleration, and that the message missile just happens to be travelling on a course that will intercept the fighter (cough cough), here's what we get (calculations assume the missile is on course straight for the hyper hole, not for a point 90,000 km to one side of it, but it's so close as to not make much difference):
Time vs. separation until fighter-Mercurand intercept
Time (s) Merc to ftr (km) Merc to ftr (km/s) mm to ftr (km) mm to ftr (km/s) mm to Merc (km) mm from Merc (km/s) mm to S/S hh (km) mm to S/S hh (km/s)
0 197,321,600 444 171,920,000 7,500 25,401,600 7,056 171,920,000 7,500
300 197,142,500 750 169,580,000 8,100 27,562,500 7,350 169,625,000 7,800
600 196,871,600 1,056 167,060,000 8,700 29,811,600 7,644 167,240,000 8,100
1,564 195,844,323.04 1,075.28 157,743,904 9,664 37,635,771.04 8,588.72 158,966,952 9,064
3,000 194,279,600 1,104 143,866,400 9,664 49,948,552 8,560 145,951,048 9,064
10,000 186,061,600 1,244 76,218,400 9,664 109,378,552 8,420 82,503,048 9,064
10,800 185,060,000 1,260 68,487,200 9,664 116,108,152 8,404 75,251,848 9,064
12,000 183,533,600 1,284 56,890,400 9,664 126,178,552 8,380 64,375,048 9,064
12,191 183,287,991 1,287.8 55,044,576 9,664 127,778,767.19 8,376.18 62,643,824 9,064
14,565 180,174,347.75 1,335.3 32,102,240 9,664 147,607,459.75 8,328.7 41,125,888 9,064
16,000 178,237,600 1,364 19,264,012.5 8,229 158,508,939.5 6,865 29,148,660.5 7,629
18,000 175,469,600 1,404 4,806,012.5 6,229 170,198,939.5 4,825 15,890,660.5 5,629
18,826 174,303,073.24 1,420.52 1,996.5 5,403 173,836,428.74 3,982.48 11,582,244.5 4,803
20,000 172,621,600 1,444 (177,808,939.5) (2,785) (6,632,660.5) (3,629)
23,329 167,703,701.59 1510.58 (185,065,750.83) (-610.58) (92,840) (300)
30,000 157,181,600 1,644
40,000 139,741,600 1,844
50,000 120,301,600 2,044
60,000 98,861,600 2,244
70,000 75,421,600 2,444
77,800 55,750,000 2,600
80,000 50,078,400 2,556
90,000 25,518,400 2,356
100,000 2,958,400 2,156
101,000 802,400 2,136
101,300 162,500 2,130
(9,064 km/s = 30.21 permil. 9,664 km/s = 32.21 permil. 5,403 km/s = 18.01 permil.)
Landmark times:
Note that, due to the bulk of the Sirius/Sol Second Guard, Mercurand does not want to come DIRECTLY into the hyper hole. Assuming the Second Guard is 100 km in diameter (50 km in radius), and that it's 3000 km from the hole, Mercurand would have to come in at an angle of at least 1 degree to avoid colliding with the Second Guard.
Note also that, despite Ken's insistence that they can't afford to waste any deceleration while they're crossing the fighter's engagement envelope, there's an option Ken didn't consider. Let's say they REALLY miss the mark, and reach the turn-start point going a whopping 420 km/s instead of the 300 km/s they need. Mercurand could still brake to a dead stop in only 4,410,000 km, which would leave them on a line nearly perpendicular to the Sirius/Sol hyper hole's face 4,500,900 km away. They could then accelerate directly toward the hyper hole and be going up to 424 km/s (over 1.4 permil) by the time they reach it.
Strategies and tactics
Attacking a star system is like laying siege to a castle. The defenders always have the edge. No spacecraft larger than 200 meters across can fit through a hyper hole, but spacecraft and gate guards several kilometers wide will be waiting on the other side to tear apart any intruders. And even if your fighters or deployers do fit through the hyper hole, any large scale assault force will have to come through one spacecraft at a time. The first dozen or so fighters sent through will usually be blown to bits before they can inflict enough damage on the gate guards (and neutralize enough gate guard weapons) for the rest of the assault force to squeeze past what's left of the first line of defense.
Missiles that can acquire a target outside the firing craft's line of sight can make the initial assault less costly. The problem is, such missiles have to be going slowly enough to make sharp, unforeseen course changes, and this makes them easy targets for gate guard point defense systems. The solution: drones. Drones are much more fragile and far less intelligent than fighters, but if a missile can be fitted with automatic target selection, hey, so can a drone.
In gate guard assaults, and in the rare fighter-to-fighter clash, drones are also useful for drawing some enemy weapons fire, since drones can usually fire their onboard weapon more than once and can stay outside the range of a point-defense system.
Active radar absorption has limited utility, because it's impossible to hide a spacecraft's heat emissions. About the only way you can "sneak up" on an enemy spacecraft is if you come at it out of the sun, so as to be in its heat sensors' blind spot.
Evasive maneuvering:
To keep from being hit, military spacecraft engage in evasive maneuvering — either a "full evasive", which maximizes the spacecraft's random movements relative to a specific attacker but throws course-following or on-course-acceleration out the window; or a "partial evasive", which seeks to keep the spacecraft more-or-less on course and accelerating in the correct direction while simultaneously offering a limited degree of random movement. Both these maneuvers require the spacecraft to rotate extremely rapidly, so as to change the direction the engine is pointing quickly. A quick calculation shows that, for a 30-meter-long rod-shaped spacecraft with attitude thrusters at either end, achieving an angular acceleration of 1 radian/sec2 requires each of the two attitude thrusters to produce enough force to accelerate the entire spacecraft at a quarter of a gee. For a 200 meter long fighter, this same angular acceleration requires each thruster to produce enough force to accelerate the entire spacecraft at one-and-two-thirds of a gee. For a 500 meter long Deployer, four-and-one-sixth gee. This means military attitude thrusters need to be exceptionally powerful, perhaps being miniature hot-fusion engines in their own right (or using thrust vectoring from the main engine). It also means that a Deployer, with its 2g main engine, will need thrusters at least twice as powerful as its main engine. It can do better evasive maneuvering by letting these massive thrusters push it sideways than it can by twisting around to point its main engine in a different direction.
On those rare occasions when actual personnel go into combat, Sol and Sirius use the same traditional army organization structure that's been in use on Earth for hundreds of years:
Ideas for other short stories or novels set in the Pentagon War universe
Click here to go back to my main old stories page
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Song Stories
“Dyers Eve”
Metallica | 1988
One of Metallica's speediest and most ferocious songs is "Dyers Eve," the closing track of 1988's …And Justice for All. And there's a reason why the song is completely over-the-top: James Hetfield vents throughout about childhood trauma he had experienced. As the singer-guitarist explained to Rolling Stone, "'Dyers Eve' portrays a child who's been sheltered from most of the outside world, as I was with this religion that my parents were involved in, Christian Science. That alienated me from a lot of the kids at school." Perhaps due to its challenging tempo, it was not until 2004 that Metallica played "Dyers Eve" in its entirety in concert.
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Song Stories
The Pack | 2006
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RPGFan Social Links
John McCarroll
Dragon Age: Inquisition Launching October 7
Or October 10, if you're in Europe.
04.22.14 - 1:08 PM
BioWare announced today that Dragon Age: Inquisition, the third game in their fantasy RPG series, will be launching on October 7 in North American and October 10 in Europe.
"Our goal with Dragon Age: Inquisition is to usher in the next-generation of role playing games." said Aaryn Flynn, General Manager of BioWare Edmonton and Montreal. "Players will experience the rich storylines and characters that they've come to expect from BioWare, in an expansive world with large open environments just begging to be explored."
Also announced are a Digital Deluxe edition and an as-of-yet undetailed Inquisitor's Edition. The Digital Deluxe version will include some additional in-game content, like the Skyhold Throne, made with skulls, a digital soundtrack, and some bonus equipment. Pre-order bonuses will also be available at various retailers.
You can check out BioWare's announcement here. We're excited to see what BioWare does with the third release in this series, especially after the mixed reaction Dragon Age II garnered with fans.
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Understanding the numbers!
Average pace
9 messages
13/04/2013 at 09:56
Hi there
As newby runner and dyslexic with it am trying to understand the lingo! Ive got a basic nike+ which gives me average pace starts but unsure how to "get" this. Am I right in thinking that if the pace is higher that is the better stat? Ie last week I did 20.17, 23.41 and 21.27...the middle run being the most productive? or not?!! Would be grateful for some advice on this to help my addled brain!
13/04/2013 at 16:46
That doesn't look like a pace. Pace is the number of minutes and seconds it takes you to run a mile (or kilometer).
The lower the number, the faster you are running.
Edited: 13/04/2013 at 16:48
15/04/2013 at 15:43
If you run 4 miles in an hour (60 minutes) your pace is 15 minutes per mile. (60/4 = 15 giving you the 15 minutes per mile in this example).
The total time your running divided by the amount of miles you have covered willl give you your pace.
So you need to know the distance and the time to calculate your pace. If the three times above were the total time for the three runs, then you need to see how far your ran each time. If the three runs were all the same distance and the times you listed above were the total times for each run then the 20.17 would be the "best" of the three.
Edited: 15/04/2013 at 15:45
15/04/2013 at 15:47
For Pace you also want to be lower so a pace of 10 minutes per mile is better than a pace off 20 minutes per mile.
As a 10 minute mile means your going 6 miles per hour, but 20 minute pace per mile means you are going 3 miles per hour.
15/04/2013 at 19:44
Thanks all. Have gone simple and will just log mileage and time for now and work pace out later; especially after realising that I would take 12 hours + to do a marathon lol!!
16/04/2013 at 11:33
19/04/2013 at 08:40
I saw this on another thread... Screamapillar linked to it.
Fourth section down is a pace section just put in distance and time and hey presto
19/04/2013 at 19:51
aww thanks booktrunk...will have a looky when brain mildly functioning (ie not Fri eve lol!!).
19/04/2013 at 23:14
Have fun
9 messages
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Sacred Texts Christianity Early Church Fathers Index Previous Next
Rightly, therefore, the divine apostle says, “By revelation the mystery was made known to me (as I wrote before in brief, in accordance with which, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ), which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it is now revealed to His holy apostles and prophets.” 3052 For there is an instruction of the perfect, of which, writing to the Colossians, he says, “We cease not to pray for you, and beseech that ye may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that ye may walk worthy of the Lord to all pleasing; being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might according to the glory of His power.” 3053 And again he says, “According to the disposition of the grace of God which is given me, that ye may fulfil the word of God; the mystery which has been hid from ages and generations, which now is manifested to His saints: to whom God wished to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the nations.” 3054 So that, on the one hand, then, are p. 459 the mysteries which were hid till the time of the apostles, and were delivered by them as they received from the Lord, and, concealed in the Old Testament, were manifested to the saints. And, on the other hand, there is “the riches of the glory of the mystery in the Gentiles,” which is faith and hope in Christ; which in another place he has called the “foundation.” 3055 And again, as if in eagerness to divulge this knowledge, he thus writes: “Warning every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man (the whole man) perfect in Christ;” not every man simply, since no one would be unbelieving. Nor does he call every man who believes in Christ perfect; but he 3056 says all the man, as if he said the whole man, as if purified in body and soul. For that the knowledge does not appertain to all, he expressly adds: “Being knit together in love, and unto all the riches of the full assurance of knowledge, to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God in Christ, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge.” 3057 “Continue in prayer, watching therein with thanksgiving.” 3058 And thanksgiving has place not for the soul and spiritual blessings alone, but also for the body, and for the good things of the body. And he still more clearly reveals that knowledge belongs not to all, by adding: “Praying at the same time for you, that God would open to us a door to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am bound; that I may make it known as I ought to speak.” 3059 For there were certainly, among the Hebrews, some things delivered unwritten. “For when ye ought to be teachers for the time,” it is said, as if they had grown old in the Old Testament, “ye have again need that one teach you which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of solid food. For every one that partaketh of milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness; for he is a babe, being instructed with the first lessons. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, who by reason of use have their senses exercised so as to distinguish between good and evil. Wherefore, leaving the first principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on to perfection.” 3060
Barnabas, too, who in person preached the word along with the apostle in the ministry of the Gentiles, says, “I write to you most simply, that ye may understand.” Then below, exhibiting already a clearer trace of gnostic tradition, he says, “What says the other prophet Moses to them? Lo, thus saith the Lord God, Enter ye into the good land which the Lord God sware, the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob; and ye received for an inheritance that land, flowing with milk and honey.” 3061 What says knowledge? Learn, hope, it says, in Jesus, who is to be manifested to you in the flesh. For man is the suffering land; for from the face of the ground was the formation of Adam. What, then, does it say in reference to the good land, flowing with milk and honey? Blessed be our Lord, brethren, who has put into our hearts wisdom, and the understanding of His secrets. For the prophet says, “Who shall understand the Lord’s parable but the wise and understanding, and he that loves his Lord?” It is but for few to comprehend these things. For it is not in the way of envy that the Lord announced in a Gospel, “My mystery is to me, and to the sons of my house;” placing the election in safety, and beyond anxiety; so that the things pertaining to what it has chosen and taken may be above the reach of envy. For he who has not the knowledge of good is wicked: for there is one good, the Father; and to be ignorant of the Father is death, as to know Him is eternal life, through participation in the power of the incorrupt One. And to be incorruptible is to participate in divinity; but revolt from the knowledge of God brings corruption. Again the prophet says: “And I will give thee treasures, concealed, dark, unseen; that they may know that I am the Lord.” 3062 Similarly David sings: “For, lo, Thou hast loved truth; the obscure and hidden things of wisdom hast Thou showed me.” 3063 “Day utters speech to day” 3064 (what is clearly written), “and night to night proclaims knowledge” (which is hidden in a mystic veil); “and there are no words or utterances whose voices shall not be heard” by God, who said, “Shall one do what is secret, and I shall not see him?”
Wherefore instruction, which reveals hidden things, is called illumination, as it is the teacher only who uncovers the lid of the ark, contrary to what the poets say, that “Zeus stops up the jar of good things, but opens that of evil.” “For I know,” says the apostle, “that when I come to you, I shall come in the fulness of the blessing of Christ;” 3065 designating the spiritual gift, and the gnostic communication, which being present he desires to impart to them present as “the fulness of Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery sealed in the ages of eternity, but now manifested by the prophetic Scriptures, according to the command of the eternal God, made known to all the nations, in order to the obedience of faith,” that is, those p. 460 of the nations who believe that it is. But only to a few of them is shown what those things are which are contained in the mystery.
Rightly then, Plato, in the Epistles, treating of God, says: “We must speak in enigmas; that should the tablet come by any mischance on its leaves either by sea or land, he who reads may remain ignorant.” For the God of the universe, who is above all speech, all conception, all thought, can never be committed to writing, being inexpressible even by His own power. And this too Plato showed, by saying: “Considering, then, these things, take care lest some time or other you repent on account of the present things, departing in a manner unworthy. The greatest safeguard is not to write, but learn; for it is utterly impossible that what is written will not vanish.”
Akin to this is what the holy Apostle Paul says, preserving the prophetic and truly ancient secret from which the teachings that were good were derived by the Greeks: “Howbeit we speak wisdom among them who are perfect; but not the wisdom of this world, or of the princes of this world, that come to nought; but we speak the wisdom of God hidden in a mystery.” 3066 Then proceeding, he thus inculcates the caution against the divulging of his words to the multitude in the following terms: “And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual, but as to carnal, even to babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, not with meat: for ye were not yet able; neither are ye now able. For ye are yet carnal.” 3067
If, then, “the milk” is said by the apostle to belong to the babes, and “meat” to be the food of the full-grown, milk will be understood to be catechetical instruction—the first food, as it were, of the soul. And meat is the mystic contemplation; for this is the flesh and the blood of the Word, that is, the comprehension of the divine power and essence. “Taste and see that the Lord is Christ,” 3068 it is said. For so He imparts of Himself to those who partake of such food in a more spiritual manner; when now the soul nourishes itself, according to the truth-loving Plato. For the knowledge of the divine essence is the meat and drink of the divine Word. Wherefore also Plato says, in the second book of the Republic, “It is those that sacrifice not a sow, but some great and difficult sacrifice,” who ought to inquire respecting God. And the apostle writes, “Christ our passover was sacrificed for us;” 3069 —a sacrifice hard to procure, in truth, the Son of God consecrated for us.
Eph. iii. 3-5.
Col. i. 9-11.
Col. i. 25-27.
Col. i. 27.
[Elucidation VI.]
Col. 2:2, 3.
Col. iv. 2.
Col. 4:3, 4.
Heb. 5:12, 13, 14; vi. 1.
[Ex. xxxiii. 1; Lev. xx. 24. S.]
Isa. xlv. 3.
Ps. li. 6, Sept.
Ps. 19:2, 3.
Rom. xv. 29.
1 Cor. 2:6, 7.
1 Cor. iii. 1-3.
Ps. xxxiv. 8; according to the reading Χριστός for χρηστός.
1 Cor. v. 7.
Next: Chapter XI.—Abstraction from Material Things Necessary in Order to Attain to the True Knowledge of God.
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Sacred Texts Christianity Early Church Fathers Index Previous Next
Chapter XIII.—Of Bodily Patience.
Thus far, finally, of patience simple and uniform, and as it exists merely in the mind: though in many forms likewise I labour after it in body, for the purpose of “winning the Lord;” 9150 inasmuch as it is a quality which has been exhibited by the Lord Himself in bodily virtue as well; if it is true that the ruling mind easily communicates the gifts 9151 of the Spirit with its bodily habitation. What, therefore, is the business of Patience in the body? In the first place, it is the affliction 9152 of the flesh—a victim 9153 able to appease the Lord by means of the sacrifice of humiliation—in making a libation to the Lord of sordid 9154 raiment, together with scantiness of food, content with simple diet and the pure drink of water 9155 in conjoining fasts to all this; in inuring herself to sackcloth and ashes. This bodily patience adds a grace to our prayers for good, a strength to our prayers against evil; this opens the ears of Christ our God, 9156 dissipates severity, elicits clemency. Thus that Babylonish king, 9157 after being exiled from human form in his seven years’ squalor and neglect, because he had offended the Lord; by the bodily immolation of patience not only recovered his kingdom, but—what is more to be desired by a man—made satisfaction to God. Further, if we set down in order the higher and happier grades of bodily patience, (we find that) it is she who is entrusted by holiness with the care of continence of the flesh: she keeps the widow, 9158 and sets on the virgin the seal 9159 and raises the self-made eunuch to the realms of heaven. 9160 That which springs from a virtue of the mind is perfected in the flesh; and, finally, by the patience of the flesh, does battle under persecution. If flight press hard, the flesh wars with 9161 the inconvenience of flight; if imprisonment overp. 716 take 9162 us, the flesh (still was) in bonds, the flesh in the gyve, the flesh in solitude, 9163 and in that want of light, and in that patience of the world’s misusage. 9164 When, however, it is led forth unto the final proof of happiness, 9165 unto the occasion of the second baptism, 9166 unto the act of ascending the divine seat, no patience is more needed there than bodily patience. If the “spirit is willing, but the flesh,” without patience, “weak,” 9167 where, save in patience, is the safety of the spirit, and of the flesh itself? But when the Lord says this about the flesh, pronouncing it “weak,” He shows what need there is of strengthening, it—that is by patience—to meet 9168 every preparation for subverting or punishing faith; that it may bear with all constancy stripes, fire, cross, beasts, sword; all which prophets and apostles, by enduring, conquered!
Phil. iii. 8.
“Invecta,” generally = "movables", household furniture.
Or, mortification, “adflictatio.”
i.e. fleshly mortification is a “victim,” etc.
Or, “mourning.” Comp. de Pæn. c. 9.
[The “water vs. wine” movement is not a discovery of our own times. “Drink a little wine,” said St. Paul medicinally; but (as a great and good divine once remarked) “we must not lay stress on the noun, but the adjective; let it be very little.”]
Christi dei.
Dan. iv. 33-37. Comp. de Pæn. c. 12. [I have removed an ambiguity by slightly touching the text here.]
1 Tim. 5:3, 9, 10, 1 Cor. 7:39, 40.
1 Cor. 7:34, 35.
Matt. xix. 12.
Ad. It seems to mean flesh has strength given it, by patience, to meet the hardships of the flight. Compare the πρὸς πλησμονὴν τῆς σαρκὸς, of St. Paul in Col. ii. 23. [Kaye compares this with the De Fuga, as proof of the author’s freedom from Montanism, when this was written.]
Præveniat: “prevent” us, before we have time to flee.
[Elucidation III.]
i.e. martyrdom.
Comp. Luke xii. 50.
Matt. xxvi. 41.
“Adversus,” like the “ad” above, note 21, p. 713.
Next: The Power of This Twofold Patience, the Spiritual and the Bodily. Exemplified in the Saints of Old.
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A Person Set Apart
"Speak to the congregation of the children of Israel, and say to them, 'You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy"
Leviticus 19:2 Many years ago there was a famous correspondence in The Times under the subject "What is wrong with the world today?" The best letter of all was also the shortest, and read-- "Dear Sir, I am. Yours faithfully, G.K. Chesterton." That devastating declaration showed a profound insight into man's universal malaise, and I believe it can teach us a deeply challenging lesson. I am convinced that throughout the Christian church there are problems, difficulties and frustrations that would begin to dissolve immediately if only some Christians would be honest enough to answer the question-- "What's wrong?" with the words "I am!"
In the Apostle Peter's first letter to the churches he states in Chapter 4 and verse 17, "For the time has come for judgement to begin at the house of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God?" Knowing this, what manner of people ought we to be? The Word of God answers with a resounding "Holy." Over and over again the holy God calls us to a higher level, a greater accountability, a life and a person set apart. 2 Peter 3:11 says, "Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness." There is a day coming when we will all be brought before the Great Judge of Heaven and Earth. What will we say when He asks us what we have done with our life? What will we say when He asks us what we have done with the Savior, His holy Son, our Redeemer? Oh beloved, I pray that you are "in Christ" today, and ready for His soon and sudden return.
"To God be the glory, great things He hath done! So loved He the world that He gave us His Son; Who yielded His life an atonement for sin, And opened the life gate that all may go in." Praise the Lord!
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USD in the NewsRSS
TitleWhy Do Cellphone Users Sound So Annoying?
News OrganizationMSN
MSN -- "There is a period of silence in the cellphone conversation … and the brain wants to understand, 'Why is that person saying that and what context is there for this conversation?'" Veronica Galvan, assistant professor of psychology at the University of San Diego, told CBC Radio's Quirks and Quarks in an interview that airs Saturday. (Full Story
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• Feast! alerts
Hoo, boy. You know how, in the Hangover movies, they eventually find a bunch of stuff on a smart phone that documents their horrific group bender? Well, apparently, I made sangria a while back. If things look a little sideways, there's probably a reason for that.
Good times. Here's the recipe.
In a food-grade bucket, mix 6 bottles of red wine, 1 bottle of Triple Sec, 1 bottle of brandy, 2 liters of ginger ale, 1 can's worth of orange juice, and a whole mess of chopped-up fruit. I prefer apples, oranges, and limes - especially apples. People like to eat the sangria soaked apples. Let it sit in the fridge at least overnight; a whole day is better. Cheers!
• Feast! alerts
More like this:
Joaquin_de_la_Mesa June 2, 2011 @ 10:52 a.m.
These days, they make fancy long spoons out of materials such as wood, plastic, and stainless steel so that you don't need to use your whole arm to stir the sangria.
You might look into that.
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Friday, March 11, 2011
Senator Wise Evolution Bill
Senator Wise singles out evolution for critical analysis, but the real question is what is he really aiming for? The Sunshine State Standards ALREADY MANDATE that all science is critically evaluated and that includes evolution. Consider the standards as written:
Standard 1: The Practice of Science ...C: Scientific argumentation is a necessary part of scientific inquiry and plays an important role in the generation and validation of scientific knowledge.
Benchmark: SC.912.N.1.3 Recognize that the strength or usefulness of a scientific claim is evaluated through scientific argumentation, which depends on critical and logical thinking, and the active consideration of alternative scientific explanations to explain the data presented.
So it's right there in the Sunshine State Standards. Why do we need to single out evolution in a bill that includes a whole lot of hokey nonsense to make the true goal (teaching creationism) somehow more palatable. Consider too that the standards state very clearly:
Standard 15: Diversity and Evolution of Living Organisms A. The scientific theory of evolution is the fundamental concept underlying all of biology. B. The scientific theory of evolution is supported by multiple forms of scientific evidence.
Benchmark: SC.912.L.15.1Explain how the scientific theory of evolution is supported by the fossil record, comparative anatomy, comparative embryology, biogeography, molecular biology, and observed evolutionary change.
Again examination of the evidence is mandated in the Science standards so Senator Wise is merely spending taxpayer money on a nonsensical bill that is really a stealth bill for getting religious ideas (HIS OWN RELIGIOUS IDEAS) into our classrooms! Don't we have more important things to worry about here in Florida, Senator Wise?
Joe Meert
At 9:41 PM, Blogger Jorgon Gorgon said...
Apparently, a similar bill is in the works in TN:http://www.memphisflyer.com/TheBruceVBlog/archives/2011/03/11/proposed-tn-bill-will-gut-teaching-of-evolution
Those wacky creotards never learn...
At 4:13 PM, Anonymous High school Student said...
Hello, I am a 17 yr old high school student very much interested in science. As a Floridian I am aware of this bill, and these are my thoughts on the matter. This senator is accused of being a religious nut-job, but why? If evolution is only a theory, why should it be the only theory taught in school about the creation of life? Isn't that kind of like indoctrination?
Have a good day.
At 4:31 PM, Blogger Joe Meert said...
First thing (high school student) is that your science teacher should be fired. If by 17 you have not yet learned what the word 'theory' means, then your education has failed you. Secondly, have you read the bill? Wise doesn't ask that we examine 'alternate theories of gravity'. No request to teach 'alternates to germ theory of disease'. No request to teach 'alternatives to plate tectonic theory'. Why not? Is Wise advocating indoctrination into plate tectonics, germ theory and gravitational theory? Why is it ok to indoctrinate you in those theories, but not evolution? Wise is only about getting his religious viewpoint introduced in science classes. That's all and it's very clear from his 'bill' that this is about religious indoctrination and the first steps in the establishment of a theocracy in America.
At 8:31 PM, Blogger Clif said...
When we define science as the search for truth, following the evidence wherever it leads, why should creationism necessarily be ruled out? If it is no threat to the scientific search, why should be it be banned or censored from the public curriculum? Indoctrination indeed should be avoided in the school environment. But one of the quintessential themes of indoctrination is excluding other avenues of evidence. Excluding creationism in favor of evolution is no less indoctrination than teaching both in the classroom. Besides, evolution has its scientific flaws, including the failure to explain the Cambrian explosion, the existence of irreducibly complex mechanisms in the cell, and evolution's failure to produce a complete fossil record showing the link from non-humanity to humanity. And to the claim that these fossils have not yet been found, the point must be brought up that such an argument is surely a "god of the gaps" theory, expecting that something that does not yet exist will exist to prove a theory. Teaching something that has not been disproven at the same time as teaching something that has not been definitely proven is in no way indoctrination; rather it is a balanced and well-reasoned education.
At 8:38 PM, Blogger Joseph Meert said...
Cliff, good point. Creationism should not be necessarily ruled out 'a priori' and it might surprise you to know that it was not ruled out as an explanation in the 1800's. What happened is that creationists of the 1800's and later realized that creationism could not be reconciled with the rock record. Once scientists and clergy realized that creationism was useless as a scientific explanation, it was dropped. The fact that a few people cling to the explanation in the fear that real science will somehow threaten their faith is of no consequence. Once you welcome yourself to the 20th century, you won't feel so threatened.
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I've wrapped a hundred presents and tied many bows. I've visited different Santa's and heard the ho-ho-ho's.
I've sat through many reruns but I've always shed the tears, when Charlie Brown buys the Christmas tree or when Frosty disappears.
I've untangled a mile of lights and decorated a forrest of trees. I've ornaments and Christmas cards, a supply of reds and greens.
I've spent lots of money on gifts and waited hours in shopping mall lines. What I've learned is the power of Christmas is simply found in a child's eyes!!!
Author: Gina Marie Lauchner
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52671
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Suborbital Space Endeavor Finds a Solution at Sea
At The Seasteading Institute, we look at the ocean and see an opportunity to experiment with new forms of government. However, we recognize that the first seasteaders are likely to have more narrow purposes which enable them to profit from specific advantages that international waters possess over land. Sea Launch, a floating platform built to launch rockets, has been benefitting from the geographical characteristics of the equatorial ocean since 1995. Wikipedia reports that at the equator, "[t]he need for a "plane change" to the zero degree inclination of geostationary orbit is eliminated, providing a major extra launch "boost". The same rocket launched from Cape Canaveral at 28.5 degrees north latitude would lift 15%–20% less mass to geostationary orbit." The rotational speed of the earth is also greatest at the equator, providing rockets with additional boost.
More recently, a group of Danes working towards suborbital manned spaceflight has replicated the Sea Launch concept on a smaller scale in the Baltic Sea. Kristian von Bengtson, co-founder and lead spacecraft designer at the open source nonprofit organization Copenhagen Suborbitals, recently documented his group’s successful ocean-based launch for The launch platform, a 12 by 12 meter catamaran, was positioned 12 nautical miles east of the Danish island Bornholm, placing it in the Exclusive Economic Zone, where Denmark has command over natural resources but not the legal code.
The Baltic Sea is less ideal for a launch than the equator from an orbital point of view, but the distance from land still reduces both the risk to densely populated areas like Denmark, and the associated regulatory obstacles. Although nearby countries have plenty of open space from which rockets can safely be launched, von Bengtson calls the regulations governing their cross-border transportation a "wall of pain." Restrictions on rocket transport are understandable from a safety and security standpoint, but they act as a barrier to much-needed innovation in manned space flight. Keep in mind that the average speed of commercial flights has actually decreased since the decommissioning of the Concorde in 2003.
Copenhagen Suborbitals’ ocean-based launch may not have been an intentional attempt at seasteading, but their project provides an excellent example of jurisdictional arbitrage, a concept we actively promote at the Institute. We tip our hats to von Bengtson and his team for proving that neither the land nor the sky are the limits to human ingenuity.
One comment
1. Spaceport.Terra 1:06 am
This makes me smile:-)
The comments are closed.
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Hey there,
I have a div in my page (outside any Ext.container, so far I render ExtJS components only in certain other divs...)
<div id="myImgLane">
<img src="img/foo/bar/012511.jpg" width="328" height="140" alt="">
<div class="centeredCaptions">a nice picture</div>
• I would like that Image to have shadows just like ExtJS Dialog boxes have... may be a bit more exaggerated/wider.
• I don't mind inserting a panel/cimponent/box here, as long as it has no visual impact other than casting a shadow... if that's not an option, should/can I re/abuse ext-ish CSS-styles ?
• Width and height of the image is known, but wildy differs all the time. (all figured out at rendertime, php-side)
• A not on the side. My background is not unicolor. In fact, the outermost div has it's own jpg as background.. it's an outermost div, not an underlying div, z-buffer-wise speaking. Is that a problem? Not sure if alpha-png-backgrounds of higher div layers behave (read: fade) properly against outer divs, or only against literally underlying divs...
Somebody has a simple solution for this?
Thank you!
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52687
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Non Piercing Clitoral Jewelry
Non Piercing Clitoral Jewelry sensitizes the Labia Majora by holding the blood in them. After slipping the bobby shaped tool down around the lips, the pressure builds and the lips get fuller and more sensitive.
Because of the increased blood being trapped in them, the sensitivity and pressure within them increases so every stroke, no matter how gentle, is all the more intense.
The Labia Majora are the larger, fuller lips that surround the vagina. The more sensitive of the two sets are the hairless lips closer to the vaginal opening, the Labia Minora.
During arousal, blood flow increases inside both sets of lips, building sexual excitement. With the non-piercing clitoral jewelry you're able to keep the blood from flowing out, so any strokes or kisses will feel more pleasurably intense.
When excitement builds to a critical point, additional strokes, licks and kisses that are integral to cunnilingus make that area even more excited.
To make it even more of a pleasure, keep the area highly sensitized with non-piercing clitoral jewelry.
Make sure the Clitoral Jewelry have been expanded before sliding them onto the delicate lips. After stimulating the area in the lips and increasing the blood flow, gently slide the bobby pin shaped jewelry down the excited, lubricated labia, starting at the clitoris and around the outer lips.
After a moment or two, the jewelry starts to resume its closed shape, trapping the rushing blood and increasing their sensitivity tremendously.
This is an exquisite sensation for a secondary erogenous zone, the Labia Majora. Non-piercing Clitoral Jewelry adds a completely new level of intense sensation that includes sensuality with sexual pleasure.
Not for the sexually timid, but for the sexually adventurous, they are intense sensitivity like never before and orgasmic pleasure to enjoy again and again.
Go From Non Piercing Clitoral Jewelry to Sensuality Sexuality Pleasure Advice Home
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Girls In Sexy Short Skirts
Total of 40 relevant archive, showing 1 through 39
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I suggest reading One Day After Practice before this sequel.
"Come on girls, there's plenty of Andy for everyone" I said
Megana lied down on the desk and I walked up to her and put my 7 inch dick between her indian tits. She squeezed them together as I thrusted between them. She moaned as I watched her nipples get hard. Nirali wasn't wasting anytime as she started to finger her pussy while watching me tittiefuck Megana. "Oh wow that looks so hot! Andy you have to do it to me" I had something more in mind for her. Megana starting taking the head of my dick in her mouth during each thrust. Nirali was rubbing faster now and pinching her nipple while moaning.
When I got up to go tittiefuck Nirali, Megana fell to her knees and immediately took my hard dick in her mouth. She was bobbing her head at a perfect pace. She was even moving her tongue around my head while she sucked! I thought this was great until Nirali stepped in and started to suck and lick my balls. Now I was in heaven! It was now I realized what Nirali meant when she said Megana was good with her tongue.
Nirali moved on top of me and put her shaven indian pussy a few inches from my face. She now took over the sucking while Megana licked my balls. I moved my tongue up and down Nirali's slit until she began to moan. I sucked on her clit when her moaning got louder. "Ooooooh Megana I think he may be better at this than you are! Just wait til you feel it." I began tonguefucking Nirali and she was moaning on my dick while sucking it. If I didn't cum 3 minutes ago I would have been done.
I moved Nirali off and Megana sat down in a chair. I knelt down and started to go to work on Megana's bald pussy. I licked her clit in every way possible. She began to moan but it was cut short by a kiss form Nirali. I decided to finger her while I licked her clit. Nirali took one of Megana's big firm C-cup titties in her mouth and began to suck. Nirali sucked on those nipples like she was trying to dry them out. Before long Megana couldn't take anymore and she squirting from all the sucking and licking. "Oh gosh guys that was amazing! He is good at that!"
I was just about to slide into Megana's pussy but Nirali pushed me backwards. She got on top of me and slid my dick into her pussy. She began to bounce up and down while her D-cup boobs jiggled. Megana obviously hadn't had enough because she came over and sat right on my face. My tongue went to work one more time licking her slit. I squeezed Megana's tits while I ate her. They were so firm and nice. I reached out and found Nirali's. He boobs were so juicy and big. She was bouncing faster and faster until she came all over my cock.
Next was Megana's turn. Megana bent over a table and I came up from behind. I gave her juicy butt a smack and slowly put my dick in her pussy. I fucked her doggy style while she rubbed her clit. Nirali came up and began sucking on my balls while I was fucking Megana. I love squeezing Megana's ass and tits while I pumped my dick in and out of her tight indian pussy. "oooooooh goodness Andy it feels sooooo good! Your dick is so big and hard in my tight shaven indian pussy!" Megana could take no more and squirted on my cock.
I pulled out and Nirali started sucking on my dick. She licked from my balls allll the way to the tip of the head. She placed the head on her tongue and moved her tongue from left to right. She hit the sweet spot right under the head. Megana came to give me a thank you makeout session while my cock was being sucked.
"Oh girls I'm coming to an end! I don't know how much more I can handle."
"How about we do something really hot and you can jack off and spray us with all that cum?" Megana said
"What do you girls have in mind?"
"Ohh I think I know something you would like." Nirali said. "Megana and I tried this a few times before and boy did it give me an amazing orgasm."
I couldn't wait to see what the girls had in store for me. Each one got onto the table and lied down. They both spread their legs open real wide. I got a good look at their tight hairless indian slits and clits. Soon they began to move closer to one another until their pussies were touching. They slowly began to move around rubbing their pussies against each other.
"What are you waiting for?" Megana said "Jack that cock off. I want my cum!"
"Yeah" Nirali said with a laugh "I want MORE of that cum"
I began to jack off while I watched the two girls rubbing their pussies together. Both had a look of extreme pleasure on their face. They both started to moan so loudly that if school was in session the entire building would have heard!
"OOOOH YES Nirali! I love your tight wet pussy rubbing against mine" Megana said while she was pinching her nipples.
"OOOH Megana! I love doing this. Especially when we talk dirty while we do it!" Nirali answered
I took turns sucking on each of their tits while I was jacking off. Eventually I had reached my limit.
"Girls I'm going to cum!" I shouted.
Both girls sprung up from lying down and took over. Nirali massaged my balls while Megana jerked my cock. I began to blow my load in both of their mouths and all over their face and tits.
When I was done cumming, they started to lick each others boobs and then kissed sharing and cleaning up.
"Wow girls! That was amazing! Next time I stay after school I'll be sure to let you both know!"
"Thanks Andy" Megana said" I love having a dick to play with now. Especially one as big and hard as yours"
"Yeah" said Nirali "We are going to have some fun here at school allllll alone at night"
Anonymous readerReport
2009-09-04 23:59:06
damn,wish i went 2 a skool like dat,lol
Anonymous readerReport
2009-08-19 18:01:39
great story
Anonymous readerReport
2009-08-19 18:01:22
wens the next one
Anonymous readerReport
2009-08-19 18:00:23
great story
Anonymous readerReport
2009-08-19 15:38:49
That was good. It made me jerk off at work
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52706
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White lines
By Steven T. Jones
Sup. Chris Daly may have crossed a line by suggesting during a budget hearing that Mayor Gavin Newsom uses cocaine, but the mayor isn't entitled to his overblown righteous indignation. Why? Because he's the one who left open this question earlier this year when he responded to revelations of his sexual improprieties and alcohol abuse with the blanket dismissal "that everything you’ve heard and read is true and I’m deeply sorry about that." Then he refused to answer any questions on either issue, with only a couple exceptions weeks later involving friendly journalists (including CBS's Hank Plante, who asked about cocaine and Newsom didn't directly answer, something Daly rightly called an "artful dodge"). Newsom is now simply reaping what he has sown. He has proven himself to be untrustworthy and willing to say or do anything to get out of a jam -- or to simply avoid answering questions not to his liking -- so it's hard to put too much stock in statements like, "I am associated with something that I don't do, never have, not even in the realm of reason should someone even accuse me of this."
Let's be clear about this drug and this mayor: they do operate in the same realm. I'm not saying that I have direct knowledge of him doing lines, but I know of some people who have made that claim and it wouldn't surprise me if we hear more about this accusation before November. And I know there are people in the mayor's office who are no strangers to blow. Is that scandalous? Not really, not in this town, particularly among the Marina and restaurant owner crowds that Newsom has long associated with. Newsom's Boy Scout schtick wore thin a long time ago.
But why is this a news story? Generally, I think drug use by a politician is only an issue for politicians who promote the war of drugs, which doesn't really apply to Newsom. Hypocrisy is more important than recreational drug use. But there are two reasons why Newsom and drugs might continue to be a news story. One is the very point that Daly made, which is that Newsom's budget cuts the kinds of substance abuse programs that he is availing himself of, but it cuts them for the poor people who can't tap the same services and connections that Newsom used. That's a problem, particularly for a mayor that rode to power on the promise of getting homeless people the support services they need to lift themselves out of poverty, specifically citing drug addiction as a major factor time and again. And the other problem for Newsom now could be his categorical denial of ever using cocaine. If that turns out to be a lie, it'll be one more reason for us not to believe what our mayor says. And that's the real story.
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More articles about college
by Megan Greene Have you been single so long, you're beginning to question if men even look at you anymore? Or perhaps your inquiring mind has your eye wandering in a different direction. As women, whether we're single and straight or madly in love with our guy, we have those thoughts or have even joked about switching teams. And we have... CONTINUE READING 18
Dating in College & Beyond
Dating continues to be one of the most mystifying experiences of our lives. How can we know if he's interested for the long-haul, or just for the fling? How can we know why a guy who seems to like us suddenly stops calling? Who the hell knows what's on his mind? A new Shecky's writer, Maliha Talib, decided to go... CONTINUE READING 23
Not Just a Pretty Face: Ivy League Celebs
Happy Embrace Your Geekness Day! Today is all about not shying away from your smarts or what you're into, whether you're a math whiz or a total bookworm or comic crazed, and frankly, why the hell should you? Look at the company you're in! These celebs prove that us ladies can be more than just a pretty face—they back up... CONTINUE READING 11
“The Best Thing My Best Friend Ever Did for Me”
Today marks the start of the 2011 National Girlfriend Awards presented by Shecky's AND National Girlfriends Day. In celebration of the two, we thought we'd share a few "best things my best friend ever did for me" moments. Read below and don't forget to tell us who SHE when you nominate for the National Girlfriend Awards. "When I was a... CONTINUE READING 5
Great Gifts for Graduates of Every Age
Graduation season has commenced! What are you going to buy for all the peeps you've got to watch walk down an aisle ever so slowly to "Pomp and Circumstance"? While I don't have an alternative for using a program as a fan in an un-airconditioned auditorium, I do have a few good gift ideas. Take these smart suggestions for graduatin'... CONTINUE READING 17
Top Graduation Songs
Now through June marks graduation season! Yep, it's that wonderful time of the year when proud grads, be they Bachelors, Masters or Doctorate, are cause for celebration. Luckily, graduation songs have gotten a lot better since you sang R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly" at your elementary school's commencement in 1997. Mix this list from for yourself or... CONTINUE READING 6
Interior Designers (and Best Friends!)
How fun does working with your best girlfriend sound? Amazing. How about working with your BFF on your own interior design company? Unreal! This is the true story behind the two girlfriends who run Tilton Fenwick. See their success secrets and more below! Suysel dePedro Cunningham & Anne Maxwell Foster "Curators of Chic" Tilton Fenwick New York, NY How did the two of you meet? After meeting... CONTINUE READING 9
Celebrating National Volunteer Week with Top Atlanta Foundation
This National Volunteer Week, it’s important to remember that community service and instilling its values should start at a young age. While in Atlanta for Girls Night Out at The Biltmore Ballrooms, Shecky’s caught up with Dr. Sue Sehgal, president and founder of the Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Partnership Foundation/Campus Community Partnership Foundation or, in short, C2P. Sue shared with us... CONTINUE READING 5
National Volunteer Week: Claudia Chan
Happy National Volunteer Week! We've already introduced you to Catchafire, and we were so happy to see their Powerful Women series profiling women who give pro bono, that we had to share a few favorites with you! Today, we're spotlighting our very own president, Claudia Chan! Claudia has spent a decade creating Girls Night Out gatherings for almost 1 million women across... CONTINUE READING 2
How Far Would You Go in a Long-Distance Relationship?
My college boyfriend broke up with me because our hometowns were 20 minutes apart. Apparently, the only way we could date was across our dorm building, and breaks and vacations meant the relationship was "too long distance for him." Then another guy dumped me right after college because he also couldn’t handle our “long-distance relationship” (LDR) (to be fair, this was a... CONTINUE READING 73
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Nigel Lythgoe knows he can dance
Lythgoe dishes SYTYCD to SK
Nigel Lythgoe has led a fascinating journey from award-winning dancer and choreographer to producer behind the biggest television hits in the world: American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance. The Englishman tells SheKnows about bringing Dance and singing (Idol) to billions.
Nigel Lythgoe talks shopHow Nigel did it
SheKnows: Nigel, you began in the world of dance as a top-notch hoofer, how did you segway into television producing such giant hits such as So You Think You Can Dance and American Idol?
Nigel Lythgoe: You're right. It was the early part of my career that was centered around dance. I then left dance, or thought I'd left dance and went into television production in the executive side of it. So, I've kind of come full circle.
SheKnows: It must be extraordinarily rewarding then to see the success of So You Think You Can Dance?
Nigel Lythgoe: To be with dance again in a country that inspired me, that had the dancers I worshiped that have now been forgotten -- a whole legacy has been forgotten -- is incredible. When you turn around to kids and do you remember Shirley MacLaine…no? Liza Minnelli …who? It seems crazy to me, so to be instrumental in trying to bring that back is absolutely fantastic. And it's not just in this country. It's the number one show in Australia and Canada. It's a global phenomenon as is Idol. All sorts of different kinds of dance are coming through around the world. It had just been out of the spotlight for so long, to be a part of that movement and instrumental in it to be frank, is absolutely wonderful. I'm so passionate about it.
Tap fancy
SheKnows: How about tappers coming to the forefront this year, isn't that a nice re-emerging dance trend that has faded?
Nigel Lythgoe: Yeah (laughs), it's fantastic! We've had them before, but for some reason this season, they're really come out of the woodwork. It's the same as the ballerinas. That's because of Melissa from season five. Not just tappers this season, but really good tappers. I look at them and think "oh, my God." And I thought I could tap really well, well I can't (laughs). We just go along and see what comes in front of us.
Adam Shankman, Mary Murphy and Nigel Lythgoe anchor the SYTYCD judges table
SheKnows: And to be able to start a charity bringing dance to those whose access may have been previously limited, that has to take the SYTYCD success to an entirely new level.
Training Dance's next generation
Nigel Lythgoe: I'm so pleased that we can ever start charitable foundations now to bring dance to people who can't afford it and we're starting in inner cities like here in Los Angeles with LA's Best, for kids after school, it's hey, I would love it to be a legacy that's followed up on long after this show has gone.
SheKnows: As a child of that world, we thank you.
Nigel Lythgoe: Thank you so much, Joel.
Read on for more So You Think You Can Dance
Host Cat Deeley dishes Dance
So You Think You Can Dance readies its top 20
Reality TV Magazine's complete coverage of all things SYTYCD
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Die Heuning Pot Literature Guide
© 2014 Shmoop University, Inc. All rights reserved.
Character Analysis
Varys is the spymaster (coolest title ever) for King Robert, so he gets reports from all over the world. Varys has no family that we know of (usually the family tree of a eunuch is pretty easy to draw) and no real friends, it seems.
Servant of the Realm
Here's the difference between Littlefinger and Varys (at least, according to Varys): they may both be scheming little manipulators, but Littlefinger serves only himself, whereas Varys serves the realm (59 Eddard 15.67). Unfortunately, Varys doesn't give us a lot of proof of that. For instance, he tells Eddard about an assassination plot against King Robert, but only after the plot has already been avoided thanks to Eddard himself (31 Eddard 7.130).
And we might want to ask what Varys means by "the realm" anyway, since Varys has served one Targaryen king and now one Baratheon king. Is he claiming to be neutral? Hmm, we're not sure we buy it. In fact, when Arya overhears two men plotting underneath the castle, one of them reminds us of Varys: he's "oddly familiar" to Arya (33 Arya 3.39) and wearing something similar to his disguise when he visits Eddard in the dungeon (59 Eddard 15). And what Arya overhears sounds like a plan to bring the Targaryens back to the throne. So is Varys a Targaryen loyal? Or, oh no, is he double-crossing the Targaryens? Oh boy.
Now, Varys has his reasons for acting the way he does: he has a role to play (see "Society and Class" for more on that) and he only has his limited power. As he notes, he doesn't command any warriors, only whisperers. That seems like a pretty good argument to us and yet we can't quite trust him. Do you?
The Most Devious Man in the Seven Kingdoms
Petyr may be a liar and a betrayer, but Varys has seemingly supernatural spying abilities. He is a master of disguise: when he sneaks into Eddard's cell dressed like a jailer (excuse us, we mean "gaoler"), Eddard asks him, "what sort of magician are you?" because his disguise is so good that it seems like magic (59 Eddard 15.26). Varys gives a clue about this ability with disguises when he mentions that he used to work for a group of actors (excuse us again, "mummers") (59 Eddard 15.39). (Yay for old-timey vocabulary.)
Varys definitely has more than just a make-up kit. As Catelyn notes, "Varys has ways of learning things that no man could know. He has some dark art, Ned, I swear it" (21 Eddard 4.98). Now, if this were a historical novel we'd just say, "secret passages, network of spies, yadda yadda." But since this is fantasy, we might wonder: does Varys really have some supernatural powers?
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Die Heuning Pot Literature Guide
Cite This Page
To Go
Algebra Introduction
Algebra Introduction
group rates for schools and districts
Key Skills
To excel at algebra problems, you’ll need to hone some of your special algebra powers. That’s right: you’re basically a mathematical superhero. The world of crime is your Number Line, and Captain Irrational is your arch-enemy.
Save us, Algebraman, you're our only hope. (What? That didn't sound distressed enough to you?)
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Results 1 to 5 of 5
1. #1
That 70's Show & ANH
DId anybody see (or hear) the analogy Eric (Topher Grace) made in yesterday's show? He was going to a motel to stop Donna from making out with her new boyfriend. He knocked on the door to the wrong room and Tommy Chong(a regular cast member) answered. Tommy asks eric what he's doing. Eric responds with something like "I'm here to rescue Donna, You know kind of like Luke Skywalker" He then does his best detention block AA-23 stance and says "I'm Luke Skywalker, I'm here to rescue you."
I fell off the couch laughing. That is a really funny show.
Just wondering if anyone else saw it.
Me fail english??? That's un-possible
Episode 3 - Return of the Princess Bride
Still Hatin' the Evil Empire
2. #2
Yeah it was good. I love Tommy Chong and the remark he made about not bothering to ask if Donna was in the room with him.
" See you around kid "
3. #3
did you guys see the episode where ANH is just out and Kelso wnats to wtch it all the time? that episode was hilarious
and at the end the parents go to watch it and Red says what the kids like about this movie, suddenly there is a big flash and laser sounds and Red just says: "Wow..."
some funny stuff
4. #4
Yeah, theres even an episode where they all dress up like the characters too for a dream like sequence.
5. #5
Yeah those episodes were cool it seems Star Wars is in alot of shows and movies like seven where Brad Pitt makes reference to
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META: Replies
From: Gordon Worley (
Date: Sat May 12 2001 - 17:12:23 MDT
Okay, I think that Eliezer is getting too nice, so I'm going to step
in and write something. When you are writing out your replies,
please don't quote the whole message. After reading a month of
posts, I'd say that 40% of the text was unneeded quoted text. It's
okay if you quote a little extra to give context, especially when
it's been a long time since the last post in a thread, but is it so
much to ask that you snip stuff out when you reply? I mean, either
reply to the relavent text or give some indication of to whom you are
replying and cut the text out that you are not responding to directly
(e.g. if you are writng a whole message response, don't copy their
whole message).
Thanks. :-)
Gordon Worley
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They Don't Pay kausfiles Enough To Read This Series!
Political commentary and more.
April 16 2001 6:39 AM
They Don't Pay kausfiles Enough To Read This Series!
Series-SkipperTM is a new service from kausfiles that lets readers avoid award-winning newspaper series without fear of missing anything good. (For more on the rationale for Series-SkipperTM, click here.)
Series: "Two-Tier Justice," Jane Fritsch and David Rohde, New York Times, April 8, 9, and 10, 2001.
Oh-what-a-big-deal-this-is "nut graph": "From the felony courts to the misdemeanor mills and the parole-violation trailers on Rikers Island, defendants frequently get assembly-line representation from lawyers who may spend only a few minutes on each case."
A few minutes? Well, for non-capital homicide cases the median time spent is 72 hours. An expert tells the Times it should be "well beyond 100 hours."
Main thesis: New York, unlike many big cities, relies on private lawyers to defend the indigent. These lawyers are underpaid, at $40 an hour for court time and $25 an hour out of court. Some of them are bad; some don't do much leg work (visiting crime scenes, interviewing witnesses). A few lawyers (13) have more than 400 cases a year, the limit recommended for New York's Legal Aid Society, the nonprofit group that handles another chunk of the indigent caseload.
How'd they milk three parts out of that? Part I says poor defendants sometimes get bad representation in homicide cases; Part II says they sometimes get bad representation in other criminal cases; Part III says they sometimes get bad representation on appeal. Part IV says those with names beginning with the letters A-K sometimes get bad representation. Part V deals with the letters L-Z. Just kidding about IV and V.
Main problem with thesis: It's not that controversial. Everyone seems to agree at least that the lawyers are underpaid. An aide to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is quoted supporting an increase in the fees (which the city will have to pay). There's a committee of the state legislature that's trying to figure out what to do--the debate seems to be whether to just raise pay or "revamp the system." The Times series could have discussed the various possible revampings, but it doesn't. (They only had three parts!) Also, a committee of local lawyers recently weeded out bad attorneys who had handled felonies in Manhattan and the Bronx--though not in Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island.
Any good horror stories? Fewer than you'd expect. 1) In the most vivid story, a private lawyer doesn't investigate witnesses in a homicide--and, presenting his case, turns to his client in open court and asks, "You want to testify?" The catch is the conviction was overturned and the defendant acquitted on retrial. 2) One lawyer represents a record 1,600 clients in a single year. He has to have "a colleague ... fill in to represent a client whose court appearance" he couldn't make. He also has a sloppy filing system. The Times gives no evidence that either practice has caused any client any harm. 3) A Legal Aid Society lawyer (not one of the underpaid private lawyers) fails to contact the alibi witnesses of a construction worker charged with robbery. He spends three years in prison. His conviction is overturned when the witnesses are contacted, but he cops a plea in exchange for a sentence of "time served." 4) A Mr. Humberto Fernandez seemingly misses a promising grounds for appealing his murder conviction--his lawyer never introduced the testimony of an alibi witness after promising the jury he would--because it should have been raised in a motion before the trial judge, which his court-appointed trial lawyer didn't do and which his new appellate lawyer says isn't her job.
Any indication these horror stories stem from low pay? The Times wants you to infer that better-paid lawyers would do a better job. That may be a reasonable assumption, though there will always be lawyers who screw up. In general, the series makes its argument on the basis of inputs (hours worked on trials and appeals) rather than outputs (whether representation actually was inadequate and whether that changed anything).
Any actual innocent people behind bars? The construction worker in Horror Story No. 3, above, may have been innocent, as Mr. Fernandez (No. 4) may be. But Fritsch and Rohde do not give the prosecution's side of the story or even get a formal comment in either case.
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Form-Field Validation: The Errors-Only Approach
Form Field Validation Error Page at BlueNile.com1
1. The Traditional Way: Same Page Reload
Here’s a typical validation error page from Staples’ checkout process:
Staples validation error3
2. Same Page Reload: Optimized
The three changes are:
3. Live Inline Validation
4. Error Fields Only Approach
Mock-up of Error Fields Only approach10
When To Use Each Validation Technique
Rethinking Validation Error Pages
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Christian Holst is co-founder of Baymard Institute where he writes bi-weekly articles on web usability and e-commerce optimization. He's also the author of the E-Commerce Checkout Usability and M-Commerce Usability research reports.
1. 1
But I REALLY like this article…
• 2
Christian, Baymard Institute
June 27, 2012 11:47 pm
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Wonderfully written article, Christian.
Point of fact, I just finished installing the latest version of jValidate on a client’s website. Visit for a live demo. [ The staff at RMDLG really enjoy when people just say: "hello." So feel free to fill out and submit the form, even if you don't have a question relevant to their offerings. ]
Once again, terrific article.
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Christian, Baymard Institute
June 27, 2012 11:43 pm
Hi Andrei,
6. 9
Ricardo Machado
June 27, 2012 8:04 am
Hi, great post on UX.
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please see HTML fieldset tag
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Regarding Self Promotion: It’s the Internet. Nuff said.
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Christian, Baymard Institute
June 28, 2012 1:02 am
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Christoffer Vittrup Nielsen
June 28, 2012 12:55 am
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Caroline Jarrett
June 28, 2012 2:44 pm
Great article.
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Christian, Baymard Institute
July 1, 2012 11:41 pm
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18. 28
19. 29
This is a brilliant idea!
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22. 32
Errors-only is a provocative idea and definitely one worth getting some hard data on, especially across different contexts.
Rather than posing the question as: “Should we show all fields or only the ones with errors?” I think the better question is: “What’s the best way to show the form-filler what they need to do to proceed while keeping abandonment to a minimum?”. The answer to the latter question can obviously change depending on the form (short/long, simple/complex, single-page/multi-page etc), the target user population, and other aspects of context. And whatever we believe the answer to be, it also must be confirmed through user testing.
For example, for a 5-field registration form, I might go into user testing with an error-only approach, tailored for each type of error that can occur. For the Staples form above, I’d go into user testing with the error-only approach but also a version of the “Optimized” mock-up with some further design optimisation*. For a complex form, I may not test an error-only approach at all, because the fields are too dependent on context.
Jessica Enders
Principal, Formulate Information Design
* If anyone’s curious, further design optimisation options I’d look at applying to the Staples form, to make errors easier to find and correct, include:
- Shading the whole of the error summary box at top of form.
- Applying the same shading to the error fields (e.g. the text boxes themselves).
- Using the exclamation icon on both the error summary box at the top of the page and against each error field.
- Presenting both the email address and retype email address labels in red, to indicate the problem is related to both fields.
- Moving the error message to underneath the email address field, so it is more closely associated with it and within glancing range.
- Changing the error message to “Email address and retyped email address do not match”.
I appreciate that some of these things may have not been incorporated into the design shown here just because it was an example. I present the further optimisation options as an illustration of just how many tools there are in our kits, as designers, to maximise usability.
• 33
Christian, Baymard Institute
July 1, 2012 11:35 pm
Hi Jessica,
As always, great additions to keep in mind. I agree on your reflections about the error validation technique might being context specific, if you go ahead and do some testing before we get the chance/time, do let me know.
Thank you.
23. 34
Nice idea, however… If I were filling out a form, especially one that was somewhat important, like with my mailing address, credit card info, etc. and I happened to generate an error, I’d prefer to see the form in its entirety so I could double check everything else. Otherwise I’d be second-guessing the rest of the info I entered. Email addresses, for example, aren’t checked to make sure they work – only that they’re in the proper format. If i accidentally type it would validate, but it wouldn’t be correct and I wouldn’t receive any information.
I think with the more important forms, it’s reassuring to see all that I’ve already entered again to eliminate any kind of second-guessing.
I do like this idea though, and I think it’ll work great on smaller, less complicated forms. Good read, thanks.
24. 35
Efren (@mimojito)
July 2, 2012 2:30 am
I guess I know what project I’ll be working on next at Staples! It’s like moving a mountain one pebble at a time. Thank you, Christian for giving me some ammunition.
25. 36
Very well written and informative!
Inline Validations are the best as they tell user about the incorrect data as soon as the user moves to the next field. This is the most usable technique plus saves the time of the user too.
26. 37
Good discussion here! That idea could work for some things. Still, everybody doing this should be careful: with complex forms, some things are linked.
Let’s say you’re doing taxes. You have one field that wasn’t filled correctly. The label says “costs”. But costs for what? You have a lot of fields with similar type of information and the automatic error field only shows the field error, separated from the context. Many times labels are designed to make sense when they come after certain other fields. If the context was taken out, the single label might not offer enough information for the user.
To iterate on this promising idea of showing only error fields: What if the user was shown the group of fields where the error field was in. Something like this:
“This is your account information. Something went wrong here, could you check this again, please?”
Then maybe you have 5 fields with one field waiting to be fixed. More fields, yes but in some cases easier to fix because of the right context.
In my opinion, everybody should do live validation. It’s just not up to the level of UX expectations to make a user wait for a page reload. Everything can be done dynamically by ajax requests. If a bunch of fields need to be validated together (like with credit cards), the whole group can be dynamically checked. Just remember to add a spinner because sometimes it may take a while.
Another idea: What if we utilized inline validation for form sections and cleared a section at a time. Example: you have a travel insurance form that’s divided into sections travel, information and contact. All could be in one page. After you finish a section, the whole section is minified and get’s a check mark. Then you know you can move on to the next section. The form would be instantly saved instead of waiting for the whole page to be completed (which normally happens only after the user clicks “continue”). I know that requires some coding skills to pull off but if you make millions with one form, it’s worth investing.
Also one problem with long forms is that the user doesn’t always know if there’s a better fitting input field on the next page. This is true especially to surveys. Of course the problem is bad form design in the first place.
Sorry, got a little carried away. Good post, good ideas – keep it coming!
27. 38
I Disagree. Better to show the entire context of the error state rather than isolating the invalid fields, especially if they are interrelated.
28. 39
On a side-note: the “errors-only approach” is not just suitable for form validation, but for the whole programming spectrum as well. In my regular source code (eg. PHP 5), I’m always testing whether something is NOT the case (= false), instead if something is true. This also helped me overcome a truckload of race conditions that could have happened to my programs, and some which actually did happen in the past.
cu, w0lf.
29. 40
Like the approach which I think I’ve encountered once before. One major issue I have is that it may neglect a psychological factor. I’m quite sure some (perhaps many) people would end up on the EFO page and start doubting themselves:
“Ooh my, I made an error. I’ve made 1 , so I might have made another one the website didn’t notice (wrong phone number which perhaps?)”. Let’s go back to check if all is correct.
When you let the user stay on the same page you give him the chance to quickly scan all fields and submit the page again. The website might notice when I miss one number, but it won’t tell me that it is not mine.
30. 41
Tnx for the article Christian.
Site consistency is also something to investigate. How do surfers respond when different forms on the same website handle errors differently? Can this be an issue?
31. 42
The main problem I see with errors-only validation is what if the user needs to change other parts of the form due to failed validation on another? For example, if their credit card details failed validation (could be incorrect details, or a declined transaction), they may need to change their billing address… Or if their email address failed on a registration form (maybe they’re already registered), they may want to put a different company name or password which is usually associated with that email address.
To me this method also seems counter-intuitive as you’re telling the user something is wrong, but giving them back an unfamiliar page. We would be changing the whole context in which we’re asking them to correct their mistake(s). If I’d make a mistake I’d prefer the opportunity to rectify it under the exact same situation, one with which I’ve already become somewhat familiar.
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Good job on this. But – in my opinion – you have forgotten about one of the most visually error indicating technique. I am talking about highlighting (I have always chosen red) the form labels in various ‘visible’ colors in case of errors. That won’t ‘create’ error labels so your site will be still neat and tidy.
Regards and keep it up!
34. 45
Cool idea on progressing with specific errors page but its only useful if you want users to submit the whole form first. You are mistaken about several things. First off, inline-validation stops you from submitting if anything is wrong. It also uses AJAX to do these “remote” validations so even credit cards can be checked inline. If Javascript is turned off, however, I agree that specific error page is a good idea.
35. 46
This is brilliant.
36. 47
The Live Inline Validation does not take into account fields that are left empty. If I skip 12 fields, I’m still going to have to fix them after submit.
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Mother Simpson Written by Richard Appel Directed by David Silverman =============================================================================== Production code: 3F06 Original airdate in N.A.: 19-Nov-95 Capsule revision F, 22-Feb-97 =============================================================================== > Title sequence =============================================================================== Blackboard :- None due to shortened intro. Lisa's Solo:- None due to shortened intro. Couch :- Snowball II is cleared off the couch with a bowling-lane clearer, and the family are placed there with a large pin setter. =============================================================================== > Did you notice... =============================================================================== ... the Lite Brite and lava lamp in young Homer's room? ... we never find out exactly what Grandma Simpson's first name is? (see below) Don Del Grande: ... when Ned and Reverend Lovejoy come to console Marge, their wives bring food in plastic tubs? ... Lisa skips by in the backyard? ... the family's "full" first names are Homer, Marjorie, Bartholomew, Lisa (not Elizabeth), and Margaret (so technically Maggie is not named after Marge)? ... Homer slept with a Pillsbury Dough-Boy doll? ... Grandma Simpson pushes the front door open without using the knob when running from the police car? ... Maggie falls three times (two times chasing the butterfly, one of which was off-screen, and one when they confront Grandma Simpson)? ... Maggie is sticking her arms out when she chases the butterfly, as if she's trying to fly behind it? ... Maggie didn't laugh along with the others when Grampa Simpson suggests his wife live with him? ... Penelope Olsen (the name on Grandma Simpson's Ohio license) is the name given to Homer's mother in the Simpson Family Tree on the inside front cover of the Uncensored Family Album? ... Each of the driver's licenses lists a different weight and date of birth? ... the episode is "dedicated to the memory of Jackie Banks"? (see below) Dave Kathman: ... Homer knows who Walt Whitman is? Doug Yovanovich: ... the clerk's computer runs Windows 95? ... Grandma's hair was brown in the past, but light blue in the present? ... Mr. Burns is the "chairman" of the Germ Warfare Lab? ... there's a picture of a sad clown in Abe and Grandma's living room? ... Kent Brockman's real name is Kenny Brockelstein? Barry Weller: ... the Missouri driver's license looks a lot like a real one? Dominik Halas: ... Lenny puts a bird's nest into his garbage bag? ... Maggie is shocked to see her grandmother? ... the radio in the kitchen china cabinet? ... the police car is driving on the left side of the road? ... the drum of radioactive material in the basement? ... Grampa Simpson's armchair is a recliner? ... "Do I know what rhetorical means?" is a rhetorical question? Vince Pugliese: ... the Spiro Agnew clock? (see below) Aaron Varhola: ... in the opening, Marge's hair wobbles like a newly set pin? ... the hippie driving the van is wearing a Grateful Dead t-shirt? Bob Roberds: ... the helpful bureaucrat at the hall of records starts pulling up Homer's record the instant Homer says his name? ... the writers penchant for needling people (in this case, Johnny Unitas) who've done voices for the show? ... by the time the autogyro was invented, there was no such country as Prussia? Tony Hill: ... Mr. Burns's monopoly has a name: BurnsoDyne? ... BurnsoDyne violated civil rights laws by cutting off Marge's power? ... OFF now has a charcoal grill again? ... the DOBs on the driver licenses are consistent with Homer being 36? ... the hat in the Tennessee driver license has a price tag? ... Homer wore Dr. Denton's at age 8 or 9? ... Marge calls Grandma "Mom"? ... Bart doesn't quite understand the 60s protest movement? Ricardo Lafaurie: ... Abe had three flings despite the fact that he knew Grandma was alive? (See 7F17, 9F06, 1F21) ... Marge and Lisa frown at the end of the couch scene, and Homer starts to frown? ... a mental patient seems to have escaped? ... Grandma wears army boots? ... with the exception of Penelope Olsen, all of Grandma's aliases have the same initials (MS)? ... if Homer's mother is called Mona, then her name is the same as Ned's mother, who also abandoned him? ... the "Hang In There" poster in young Homer's room? ... Chief Wiggum used to have asthma? ... Grandma loses her hat when running away from Burns? ... Skinner and Maude in the post office? ... Smithers seems to like ABBA? Dave Hall: ... Burns holds the bag with pinkie extended? ... Burns is a litter bug? ... the highway crew doesn't wear protective gloves? ... how twisted the legs of Homer's dummy looks? ... Homer's dummy wears underwear? ... the beaver pulling on the hair strands of Homer's dummy? ... the Lovejoys have a juvenile counsellor? ... Rev. Lovejoy carries his "juvenile counsellor" card around with him? ... Patty and Selma buy a burial plot for Homer? ... the clerk punches up Homer's record before Homer finishes talking? ... Hans Moleman is alive? ... no one shows up for Hans' funeral? ... the cab waiting behind Homer and his mom? ... Homer's rear cleavage? ... the radioactive drum in the Simpson basement? ... Homer hasn't seen his mother in 25/27 years? ... Mother Simpson uses a broom to de-shock young Homer? ... young Homer has a rocket hovering over his bed just like Bart? ... Mother Simpson has four eyelashes per eye? ... Springfield has a state college? ... 60's Burns keeps pens in his pocket? ... Burns doesn't have Smithers around him in the 60's? ... Burns was the first person on the scene when the alarm goes off? ... Mother Simpson's "wanted" poster is older than the other posters? ... the photo of Grandma Bouvier at Patty and Selma's apartment? ... Chief Wiggum wears his badge on the correct side of this chest? ... Chief Wiggum serves coffee at Patty and Selma's apartment? ... Patty and Selma don't smoke in this episode? Jussi Pakkanen: ... the sound the fish makes? ... the post office guy has a pen behind his ear? =============================================================================== > Voice credits =============================================================================== - Starring - Dan Castellaneta (Homer, Hans, Abe, hippy) - Julie Kavner (Marge, Patty, Selma) - Nancy Cartwright (Bart) - Yeardley Smith (Lisa) - Hank Azaria (Carl, workman, Howard Cosell, kid in post office, cabbie) - Harry Shearer (Burns, Smithers, Lenny, Lovejoy, Ned, bureaucrat, protestor, Hans Moleman, post office employee, Joe Friday) - Special Guest Voice - Glenn Close (Grandma Simpson) - Harry Morgan (Bill Gannon) - Also Starring - Pamela Hayden (protestor) - Maggie Roswell (Maude, protestor) =============================================================================== > Movie (and other) references =============================================================================== "A Christmas Carol" {dh} - Homer reads his name on his tombstone, like Ebenezer Scrooge in the story + "Ghostbusters" - Homer mentions Dan Aykroyd, one of the stars of the movie - Homer's Pillsbury Doughboy doll is similar to the giant Marshmallow Man in the movie - Aykroyd's character in the movie says the Marshmallow Man was one of his favorite childhood toys + 1988's "Running on Empty" {dga} - plot of parents on the run after illegal acts in the 60s + "Get Smart" running gag {rl} - Bart is unable to hear Lisa over the dryer + "Hee Haw" {hl} - in her Tennessee driving license photo, Homer' mother looks like Minnie Pearl with her trademark hat and price tag + the 60s TV show "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" - Maggie's dance very similar to how Goldie Hawn danced: - music taken from the show - camera zooming in and out - slogans painted on the body ("Ban the bottle" a pun on "Ban the bomb") + "Apocalypse Now" - "Ride of the Valkyries" is played while attacking + "Dragnet" - Joe Friday and Bill Gannon appear - music when the two look at each other outside Burns' office =============================================================================== > Previous episode references =============================================================================== - [MG04] Maggie chases a butterfly and falls while doing so {ddg} - [7F04], [7F16], [2F07] Homer's mother is referred to or appears {rl} - [7F16] A long-lost Simpson relative is found {rl} - [7F24], [1F04] New Bedlam Asylum {rl} - [8F02] Homer finding himself at the bottom of an open grave {rl} - [8F11] Bart: "Best eight bucks I ever spent.", cf Homer saying "Best $600 I ever spent" {rl} - [9F08], [9F16] Howard Cosell appears or is referred to {rl} - [1F08] Burns worrying about germs {av} - [1F19] "Good cop/Bad cop" is played/mentioned - [2F02] "Springfield Hall of Records" appears {ddg} - [2F12] Johnny Unitas appears {rl} - [2F19] "Steal This Book" appears {rl} - [2F32] Wiggum inhales a cloud of gas {dy} - [3F01] Homer doesn't know who "Margaret Simpson" is {ddg} =============================================================================== > Freeze frame fun =============================================================================== - Freeway cleanup sign: {rl} ___________________ / \ | THIS HIGHWAY | | MAINTAINED BY | | _________________ | |/ BurnsoDyne \| ||THE PROFIT PEOPLE|| |\_________________/| \___________________/ |:| - Some garbage on the highway: {dh2} - Dead frog - Toilet seat lid - Oil drum - New Bedlam Asylum straight jacket - Newspaper: {rl} LOCAL MAN LOSES PANTS, LIFE Beaver Rescue Falls Short - Homer's tombstone: {rl} ____________________ /-- --\ //\ Homer J. Simpson /\\ [that's "Uosdwis R. Dewoh" to you! - ed] |----------------------| | We are richer | | for having lost him | | | |\___/O\___--__/O\____/| - Springfield Hall of Records: {dh2} - Not the Good Kind of Records, Historical Ones - Walt Whitman's tombstone: {rl} Here Lies WALT WHITMAN 1819 - 1892 - The driver's licenses: {ddg}, {dh2} 44 Bow St. Beaver Dam, WI Mona Simpson 120 3/15/29 1123 Sission St. Sedalia, Missouri Mona Stevens 130 5/ 5/31 Gen Del Nome, Alaska Martha Stewart 123 11/26/34, 10/18/33 610 Shawnee Dr. Lovelace, Ohio Penelope Olsen 133 7/18/33 3713 Woodley Rd. Dyersburg, Tennessee Muddie Mae Suggins - 2/27/29 - The Alaska license has two dates on it - Each license had her height as 5'6" and with brown eyes - Germ Warfare Laboratory, "When the H-Bomb Isn't Enough" {dh2} - Some protest signs: {dh2} - Make Love / Not Germs - Pax Not Pox - Anthrax Isn't Groovy - Take The U.S. Out of Pus - Germs Off Campus - Some Germs: {dh2} - Smallpox - Diptheria - Typhoid - Rocking Pneumonia - Boggie-Woogie Influenza =============================================================================== > Animation, continuity, and other goofs =============================================================================== New Bedlam Asylum was called " New Bedlam Rest Home for the Emotionally Interesting" in 7F24. {dh2} The turbine intake would not be located below the falls. {th} Smithers doesn't have his clipboard in a couple scenes. {dh2} The trees to which the hammock is attached change color. {dh} The trees and hammock disappears from the back yard when Marge yells at the power cable guy. {dh2} There don't seem to be any power or signal cables connected to the bureaucrat's computer monitor. {br} Homer reveals parts of the letters in "WALT WHITMAN" twice. {dh} The pile of dirt next to Homer's grave magically appears after he falls in it. {rl} That flamingo-shaped thing next to Grampa appears out of nowhere. {dh} When Homer is discovered in the grave by his mother, it's much shallower than at any other time. {ddg} Hans' coffin should not have been able to be lowered all the way if the lid was open. {ddg} In the last scene of Act One, the tools and the dirt next to Homer's grave disappear. {rl} Grandma's attitude was way different in 7G04 -- she told Homer that he was a big disappointment! {rl} Homer usually wears his t-shirt hanging out, so the pelican's fish shouldn't have been able to get stuck in Homer's pants. {dh2} Marge is standing beside the kitchen sink, yet vanishes during Bart's chat with Grandma. {dh2} Bart pulls the adding machine out of thin air. {dh2} The tabble the adding machine rests on comes out of thin air. {jp} Marge refers to her "girlfriends", but in 1F03, she explicitly says she has trouble making friends. In fact, her only friend seems to be Ruth Powers. {rl} Lisa and Grandma's beverages vanish just before Mona runs into the house. {dh2} Bart pulls a telephone out of thin air. {dh2} The scene where Homer shows Grandma the dresser is weird -- he walks through his doorway from the hall and turns to his left, where there is no window, then in the next scene the window is to his left. {rl} There are two sets of light switches on both sides of young Homer's bedroom door. {dh2} 1969 Homer has that classic "Hang In There" cat poster hanging on his bedroom door. But it disappears in the next scene, when Mother Simpson tucks him in. {br} The fig newton song didn't exist until the early 70s, so Mother couldn't have sung it to Homer in 1969. {mp} If Homer was born in mid-1956, he would have been 12 during Super Bowl III, the only one with Joe Namath. (Then again, if Homer is 35 in late 1995, he would be 8 in early 1969 - but then he wouldn't have been old enough to see a live Kennedy on TV and then imitate him, since he would have been 2 when Kennedy was shot.) {ddg} Though Howard Cosell made Monday Night Football famous, he never did a telecast for any Super Bowl. {rl} The "probably cute" Homer of January, 1969 looks a whole lot younger than the Homer of July, 1969 (listening to "Yummy Yummy Yummy I Got Love In My Tummy" while Neil Armstrong took one giant leap for mankind) in "Itchy and Scratchy: The Movie". {br} Mr. Burns appears to have more hair in the '60s than he did in the '20s. (cf. 7F02) {dh} According to 1F16, Burns' hair had a different style in the '60s. {rl} The "Antibiotics" text isn't written on the canister before the Spiro Agnew clock rings. {jp} Antibiotics don't kill viruses; they wouldn't have killed the smallpox, typhoid, or diphtheria viruses. {av} Antibiotics wouldn't have cured Wiggum's asthma; however, they _might_ have controlled his acne (tetracycline is prescribed for acne). {av} "Diphtheria" was spelled without the first H. {al} The neck strap on Lisa's saxophone disappears in one scene. {jp} Grandma's "wanted" poster appears to be older than the other wanted posters, yet it covers some of the new ones. Also, she only has three eyelashes. {dh2} Bart's old t-shirt seems to have disappeared. {dh2} When Maggie is seen only in her diaper, she has three toes on each foot. (This is the second time she has been drawn this way, the first being in 8F17 when her baggie rips off.) {ddg} Grandma's guitar vanishes just shortly after Grampa enters the front room. {dh2} How did Homer and his mother escape in his car? The driveway was blocked by the FBI car, and the car was not in the street. {ddg} The gas station and phone booth disappear after Grandma drives off. {dh2} Homer's clothes-hanger antenna disappears from his car. {dh2} =============================================================================== > Reviews =============================================================================== Mark Richey: An absolutely wonderful episode. Easily the best one of the season, so far. It's also certain to rank as one of the all time classics. It's nice to see Mr. Burns back to his old evil self after his temproary bout of niceness two weeks ago. Grade: A+. Dale Abersold: Full of pathos without becoming overly sentimental, some good jokes, an explanation of Lisa's genetic heritage, a Hans Moleman appearance, 2 excellent guest voices. In sum: an excellent episode, in a season that is improving week by week (knock on wood). We're in a golden age, my friends! Adam Lipkin: Wow! What a fantastic episode. One of the most touching episodes I've ever seen. Funny, charming, witty, serious when it had to be, everything you could have asked for. Beautiful ending. A+ the whole way. Don Del Grande: C-plus - I just stared at the screen for 22 minutes in sort of the same way that Homer stared at the sky at the end. On top of that, the "Lisa is just like Grandma" bit was stressed a little too much. Dave Kathman: I liked it. I liked it even better the second time I watched it, which is always a good sign. They're obviously continuing to keep their promise to return to the characters' emotional lives, and keeping it pretty damn funny to boot. My personal biggest laugh came from Maggie's "Laugh-In" dance, but that's just me. Doug Yovanovich: A funny, touching, and well-written episode. Destined to be a classic. Grade: [****-] (4 stars out of 5) Scott Fujimoto: Grade: B-. While this would rank lower in terms of laughs or sharp writing, the story and good Homer characterization made up for it. Michael Handelman: My grade: A. An excellent episode, heartwarming, funny, and everyone was in character. Best of the season. John Comas: I personally liked this episode. I look for episodes which make me think I'm watching the show longer than I really am. This episode was able to do that due to the effective use of flashback and references. So I say, it was a great episode, and I rate it an A. Dominik Halas: An episode that attempts to mix humor and sentiment but doesn't completely succeed. While certain parts had me howling with laughter (Homer's rant against Walt Whitman) and others had me empathizing with the characters (Lisa bonding with her grandmother; Homer wistfully sitting on his car at the end), the two elements weren't blended as well as they were in, say, 7F17. B+/A-. Aaron Varhola: Up there with 3F01 for best show of the new season, and best one of the past three, save for "Lisa's Wedding". The episode clicked in drawing out the emotion between the characters and the continuity of how Homer and his children turned out the way they are. A+. Tony Hill: This was a fabulous ep! The plot, gags, and humor were all very well crafted. "Mother Simpson" will go down as one of the definitive episodes of this series. Who among us could fail to appreciate the pathos in that the only reason Mrs. Simpson became a fugitive is because she tried to help Mr. Burns? I give it an A! Ricardo Lafaurie: I have to say I liked it. Call me sappy, or warm, or sissy boy or whatever, but it made up for the coldness of "'Round Springfield." The jokes were great, and they even characterized the characters properly, even Marge. The writer proves his ability to have biting humor that doesn't cancel out sentiment. (A+) Jose Lafaurie: It was a good episode. NOT! This episode was the best I ever SAW! I especially liked the way they showed Mr. Burns' personality through the Nazi-like music, Grampa's sexual urges, and Maggie's "Laugh-In" dance. I really liked it that Homer's mom was a lot like Homer. The similarities are great. A+ Yours truly: Another fine episode focusing on a new family member. I was touched that although Homer's generally a doofus, his mother loves him anyway. The Lisa connection was great, and Glenn Close gives a fine performance. An A episode. =============================================================================== > Comments and other observations =============================================================================== >> "Where is Springfield" Dave Kathman says, "Walt Whitman is buried in Harleigh Cemetery in Camden, New Jersey, in a tomb he designed himself." Dominik Halas notes, "The bird that lands on Homer's head is an American White Pelican; they are generally not found east and north of the Mississippi River valley and Florida." >> Grandma Simpson's name Several people noticed that "The Uncensored Family Album" and a "Simpsons Illustrated" issue list her name as Penelope Olsen -- which was one of the names on the driver's licenses. Her name might be "Mona", because this name appears on two of the licenses, but we never find out for certain. One of the fake names was Martha Stewart, who Ricardo Lafaurie identifies as the "renowed TV cookery artist who now has her own show on Lifetime, `Martha Stewart Living'. Coincidentally, she aired after the `Tracey Ullman Show' reruns once on Lifetime, where the Simpsons made their debut." >> Abe and the Super Bowl Aaron Varhola says: "The Super Bowl wasn't called that until Super Bowl IV, in 1970. The apocryphal story is that Lamar Hunt, owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, who were to play in Super Bowl, saw his granddaughter playing with a `Super Ball', and got the idea from that." "The Jets DID play the Colts in 1969, in what would be called Super Bowl III; and the Jets DID wear white uniforms. Abe's comment was accurate; Joe Namath's brash personality (`guaranteeing' a win, even though the Jets were huge underdogs) brought interest in the NFL-AFL championship game that wasn't there after the Green Bay Packers blew out the AFL champions in the previous two games. The Jets beat the Colts, 16-7." >> The Lindbergh baby Dave Kathman explains, "The infant son of Charles Lindbergh (then the most famous man in the U.S.) was kidnapped in 1932 and later found dead. A man named Bruno Richard Hauptmann was eventually arrested, convicted of the crime in a trial that became a media circus, and executed in 1935. Hauptmann's family has always insisted that he was innocent, and was railroaded due to strong anti-German (and generally anti-immigrant) sentiment in the country. I think they may have a point; the case against him wasn't very good." >> Jackie Banks This episode was dedicated to her memory. Don Del Grande found out she was one of the show's animation staff: - Season 2 (7Fxx) - Animation Checking Supervisor - Season 4 (9Fxx) - Animation Checker - Season 5 (1Fxx) - Animation Checker - Season 6 (2Fxx) - 2F33: Animation Checker - Other 2Fxx Episodes: Scene Planner >> Music in this episode Various people noted the following songs were played in this episode: - the "Fig Newton Song" by Nabisco (Homer's lullaby). Tony Hill explains, "This song was a real commercial for Nabisco Fig Newtons used well into the 1970s. It was sung by a man dressed as a fig newton." - "Sunshine of Your Love" by Cream (as Homer's mother sees a new world opening up) - "Along the Watchtower" by Jimi Hendrix (as the hippies set up the bomb) - the theme song from "Laugh-In" (as Maggie dances) - "Blowing in the Wind" by Bob Dylan (Grandma and Lisa do a duet) - the theme song from "Dragnet" (as the FBI guys nod to each other) - "Ride of the Valkyries" by Richard Wagner (as Burns sits inside his tank) - "Waterloo" by ABBA (which Smithers accidentally recorded). Tony Hill says this "was the first US hit for the Swedish group ABBA. The first person who uses this as evidence that Smithers is gay will be hog-tied and forced to watch `Bart's Inner Child' repeatedly." In the closed captioning, "Don't You Want Me Baby?" by Human League was listed as the song playing here; presumably it was overdubbed at the last minute. While "Don't You Want Me" would have been funny with regards to the Smithers/Burns affair, "Waterloo" is surely more appropriate -- as in, "Burns will meet his waterloo in this conflict." >> Closed captioning notes Ricardo Lafaurie notes the following captioning ideosyncrasies: - The captioning after Homer "spoils the moment" indicates a car door honking, possibly signifying there's a cut joke about the taxi driver in that scene. - The "Waterloo" tune in the capture scene was a last-minute replacement because the captioning played "Don't You Want Me, Baby?" (see above) >> Miscellaneous notes Tony Hill contributes the following: - "Steal This Book" [the book Grandma is reading on the couch] was written by the late 60s fugitive Abbie Hoffman. - The Pillsbury doughboy, whose name is Poppin' Fresh, is said to be the USA's best known and admired corporate icon. In Minneapolis, where I live and Pillsbury is headquartered, it's always fun to see the doughboy in a parade or other event. - Jerry Rubin, Bobby Steele, and Tom Hayden were 60s radicals, the latter being a California politician who probably has gone mainstream far enough to proffer recipes. - Joe Friday of TV's "Dragnet" was a bachelor with no children; possibly the Bill and Joe portrayed were not Friday and Gannon. - Spiro Agnew was Vice-President of the US under Nixon from 1969 to 1973. He resigned after pleading no contest to criminal charges of corruption when he was county executive in Baltimore County, Maryland (which everyone knows has nothing to do with the city of Baltimore). Had he not resigned, he would have become President when Nixon resigned the following year. During his tenure, Spiro Agnew watches were a mini-fad. The joke was, "what kind of watch does Mickey Mouse wear?" Ricardo Lafaurie adds Agnew "was known for his speeches attacking radical dissidents and the news media, and later went on to greatly insult all his opponents, coining the term `nattering nabobs of negativism'. On October 10, 1973, he resigned because of charges of tax evasion, and paid a $10,000 fine." - The Rocking Pneumonia and Boogie Woogie Flu [two of the viruses in Burns' lab] was a novelty song, but I can't remember when or by whom. =============================================================================== > Quotes and Scene Summary =============================================================================== % [Syndication cuts are marked in curly braces "{}" and are courtesy of % Frederic Briere.] % % Mr. Burns, wearing a hardhat and vest, stands next to a sign % announcing "This highway maintained by BurnsoDyne". Burns: Here's your caption, boys: "Local hero shuns spotlight and pitches in!" Smithers: What an angle! [reporters take photos of Burns] [he throws the hardhat down with a grunt and walks away] Lenny: I can't believe I'm spending half my Saturday picking up garbage. I mean, half these bottles aren't even mine! Burns: Ahem. Let's have less _con_versation and more _san_itation. -- Shuns spotlight in photos only, "Mother Simpson" % The workers pick up various pieces of garbage: run over frogs, % straitjackets, and a bird's nest. Carl: Hey, where's Homer? How'd he get out of this? Homer: [from the top of a cliff] Hey, everybody! Up here! Smithers: Simpson, stop frolicking and get to work! Homer: Right away, Mr. Smithers. I'll just walk across these slippery rocks -- aah! [falls] -- When frolicking goes awry, "Mother Simpson" % Lenny and Carl narrate the action. Carl: Oh no! He's going over the falls! Lenny: Oh good. He snagged that tree branch. Carl: Oh no! The branch broke off! Lenny: Oh good. He can grab onto them pointy rocks. Carl: Oh no! Them rocks broke his arms and legs. Lenny: Oh good. Those helpful beavers are swimming out to save him. Carl: Oh no! They're biting him, and stealing his pants. [Homer rushes toward a dam with a giant turbine] Smithers: Good Lord...he'll be sucked into the turbine! [Homer swirls around then gets sucked in] [the workers gasp, then bow their heads] Burns: [rolling down window] Smithers, who was that corpse? Smithers: Homer Simpson, Sir. [sniffs] One of the finest, bravest men ever to grace sector 7G. [sobs] [in a normal voice] I'll cross him off the list. [at the top of the falls, Bart and Homer chuckle] Bart: That dummy worked like a charm, Dad. Homer: Best 600 bucks I ever spent. Come on, boy: we've earned this Saturday, now let's make the most of it! -- Pure genius, "Mother Simpson" % The camera shows a pair of kites in the sky, then follows the strings % down to Marge and Lisa flying them in the back yard. Homer, on the % other hand, lies in the hammock counting the number of times Bart % hammers one of the concrete slabs that make up their back deck. % % The Springfield Shopper announces Homer's death and loss of pants, and % shows photos of the four beavers who tried to rescue him. The % doorbell at the Simpson house rings, and Marge answers it. Lovejoy: Marge, we can't tell you how sorry we are. Ned: You have our deepest condol-diddely-olences. [stammering] I'm sorry, I'm just nervous: I didn't mean any disrespect. Marge: What are you talking about? Ned: You know...Homer's passing. [Marge looks blankly] Away. [Marge looks blankly] Into death. Marge: What?! [looks at paper] That's ridiculous! Homer's not dead. He's right out back in the hammock. [they all go out back; the hammock is now empty] Ned: Oh, Marge, of course Homer's alive: he's alive in all our hearts. Maude: Yes, Marge -- I can see him. Lisa: [skipping by] Hi everybody! Lovejoy: Marge, I'm going to give you the card of our juvenile counselor. -- Tim, always helpful, "Mother Simpson" % The front door is now surrounded with flowers and wreaths. Once again % the doorbell rings, and Marge answers it. Marge: A tombstone?! Patty: It came with the burial plot, but that's not important: the important thing is, Homer's dead. Selma: We've been saving for this since your wedding day. Marge: Get out of here, you ghouls! [shuts door] Ay-yi-yi-yi-yi. [the power goes off] Huh? [Marge goes to window, sees a man cutting the lines] Uh, excuse me! Sir? I think there's been a mistake. Workman: Oh, no, no mistake. Your electricity's in the name of Homer J. Simpson, deceased. The juice stays off until you get a job or a generator. Oh, and, uh, my deepest sympathies. [Marge shuts the window and grunts] Marge: Homer? Homer: [walking in] That's my name. Marge: When I asked you if that dummy was to fake your own death, you told me no. You go downtown first thing in the morning and straighten this out. Lisa: {Mom! Dad! Bart ran into a doorframe and bit his tongue.} Bart: {[lisping] What the hell's going on heah?} -- It's just Homer faking his own death again, "Mother Simpson" % Homer goes off to the Springfield Hall of Records to talk to the % bureaucrats. Homer: Listen here: my name is Homer J. Simpson. You guys think I'm dead, but I'm not. Now I want you to straighten this out without a lot of your bureaucratic red tape and mumbo- jumbo! Bureaucrat: [typing] OK, Mr. Simpson, I'll just make the change here... and you're all set. Homer: I don't like your attitude, you water-cooler dictator. What do you have in that secret government file anyway? I have a right to read it. Bureaucrat: [spinning monitor around] You sure do. Homer: [reading] "Wife: Marjorie. Children: Bartholomew, Lisa" -- aha! See? This thing is all screwed up! Who the heck is Margaret Simpson? Bureaucrat: Uh, your youngest daughter. Homer: [mocking] "Uh, your youngest daughter". Well how about this? This thing says my mother's still alive; she died when I was a kid! [goes to window] See that stone angel up there? That's my mother's grave. My dad points it out every time we drive by. Bureaucrat: Mr. Simpson, uh...maybe you should actually go up there. -- A new idea, "Mother Simpson" % Homer goes up and brushes the foliage out of the way of the % inscription on the tombstone. Homer: Mom, I'm sorry I never come to see you. I'm just not a cemetery person. "Here lies" -- Walt Whitman?! Aargh! Damn you, Walt Whitman! [kicking grave] I! Hate! You! Walt! Freaking! Whitman! "Leaves of Grass", my ass! Wait a minute...maybe it's that other grave: the one that says "Simpson"! [goes over to it, sees his own name] Aaah! Oh, why does my death keep coming back to haunt me? [falls in grave] Grandma: You awful, awful man! Get out of my son's grave. Homer: I hate to rain on your parade, Lady, but this is _my_ grave -- hey, wait a minute. Mom? Grandma: Homer? [they look at each other] Homer: I thought you were dead! Grandma: I thought _you_ were dead! Gravedigger: {Well, dang blast it, isn't anybody in this dag gummed cemetery dead?} Hans: {[in a coffin] I didn't want to cause a fuss, but now that you mention it --} -- The almost-passing of Moleman in the Morning, "Mother Simpson" % [End of Act One. Time: 5:17] % % Homer and his mother look at each other while his mother rubs his arm. Grandma: Homer, you grew up so handsome. Homer: Some people say I look like Dan Aykroyd. I can't believe you're here! Dad always told me you died while I was at the movies. Grandma: Oh, my poor baby. You must have been so upset. But I suppose Abe has his reasons. Homer: {Yeah.} Well, where have you been all this time? Grandma: It's...a very complicated story. Let's just enjoy this moment. Homer: Ma, there's something you should know about me: I almost always spoil the moment. [a pelican lands on his head and spits a fish into his pants] I'm sorry. Grandma: That's OK, darling: it wasn't your fault. -- The first meeting in 27 years, "Mother Simpson" % Homer brings his mother home to the family. Homer: Hey, everybody! I've got a big surprise for you! mother! [everyone drops their food and talks incredulously] Grandma: [awkward] Hello. Lisa: This is so weird. It's like something out of Dickens...or "Melrose Place". Bart: Where have you been, Granny? Did they freeze you or something? Grandma: Oh, my, such clever grandchildren. So full of questions and bright, shiny eyes. Marge: I don't know what to say: I finally have a mother-in-law. [laughs nervously] No more living vicariously through my girlfriends. [laughs more, then coughs] Bart: Hey, since you were a no-show at all the big moments of my life, you owe me years of back presents: Christmases, birthdays, Easters, Kwanzas, good report cards -- [grabbing a calculator] Hmm, 75 bucks a pop plus interest and owe me $22,000 Homer: I'll Kwanza you! [strangles Bart] Grandma: Homer, don't be so hard on little -- [whispering] what is his name? -- "Mother Simpson" % Homer takes his mother upstairs. Homer: This is my room, and this is my dresser. It's where I keep my shirts when I'm not wearing them. Grandma: Oh, yes, right in the drawers. [they both laugh] Homer: [sighing] You remembered. Oh, I've missed moments like this... Mom. -- Homer says an unfamiliar word, "Mother Simpson" % Mother Simpson sits with Lisa on the front step of the house. Grandma: I saw all your awards, Lisa. They're mighty impressive. Lisa: Aw, I just keep them out to bug Bart, heh. Grandma: [reproachful] Don't be bashful. When I was your age, kids made fun of me because I read at the ninth-grade level. Lisa: Me too! Homer: [walking on his hands] Hey, Mom! Look at me! Look at what I can do! Grandma: I see you, Homer. That's _very_ nice. [to Lisa] Although I hardly consider "A Separate Peace" the ninth-grade level. Lisa: Shyeah, more like preschool. Grandma: I hate John Knowles. Lisa: Me too. [they both laugh, then sigh] Homer: Mom! You're not looking! Grandma: You know, Lisa, I feel like I have an instant rapport with you. Lisa: [gasps] You didn't dumb it down! You said "rapport". -- Lisa shares a touching moment, "Mother Simpson" % Suddenly, Mother looks worried, then says "Gotta run: Grandma stuff," % and tears inside the house. Lisa sees a police car drive slowly by, % and her suspicions are raised. % % She takes Bart downstairs to the laundry room. Lisa: [turning on dryer] There, now no one should be able to hear us. Bart: What? Lisa: [turning off dryer] All right, we don't need the dryer. Bart: What? Lisa: Just shut up and listen! There's something fishy about Grandma: whenever we ask her where she's been all this time, she changes the subject. And just now, when a police car drove by, she ran into the house. Bart: Yeah, I don't trust her either. When I was going through her purse, look what I found! [hands Lisa some driver's licenses] Lisa: [reading] Mona Simpson...Mona Stevens...Martha Stewart...Penelope Olsen...Muddy Mae Suggins? These are the calling cards of a con artist. -- The truth comes out, "Mother Simpson" % Homer dances around in the bedroom Homer: Woo hoo! I'm so glad to have my mom back. I never realized how much I missed her! Marge: [pause] She's nice. Homer: But...? Marge: I just don't think you should get too excited about the woman who abandoned you for 25 years. You could get hurt again. Homer: First, it wasn't 25 years -- it was 27 years. And second, she had a very good reason. Marge: Which was...? Homer: [pause] I dunno. I guess I was just a horrible son and no mother would want me. Marge: Oh, Homey, come on. You're a sweet, kind, loving man. I'm sure you were a wonderful son! Homer: [unhappy] Then why did she leave me? Marge: Let's find out. -- Yes, let's, "Mother Simpson" % Grandma Simpson reads "Steal This Book" on the couch as the family % approach her. Marge: Mother Simpson, we'd like to ask you a few questions about your past. Grandma: Can't reminisce, sleeping. [snores] Bart: Spill it, Muddy Mae, or we're calling the cops! Grandma: Please don't. Lisa: All right, then we'll call your husband Grampa! Grandma: No! I'll talk. I'll tell you everything -- I've wanted to tell you. -- Good old-fashioned interrogations, "Mother Simpson" Grandma: It all started in the 60s... [flash to young Homer playing "Operation"] Homer: "Take out wrenched ankle." [getting electrocuted] Mom! Mom! Mooom! Grandma: [running in] Oh, my little Homey bear. [kisses him] Time for bed. Homer: [getting in] Sing me my bedtime song, Mom. Grandma: [singing] Ooey, gooey, rich and chewy inside, Golden flaky, tender caky outside, Wrap the inside in the outside, is it good? Homer: Darn tootin'. Grandma: Doing the [with Homer] big fig newton! Here's the tricky part. [Homer falls asleep] -- A novel idea for a lullaby, "Mother Simpson" % She walks out to where Abe is watching TV. Grandma: Abe, isn't Homer cute? Abe: Probably. I'm trying to watch the Super Bowl. If people don't support this thing, it might not make it. Cosell: [on TV] Joe Willy Namath, swaggering off the field, his sideburns an apogee of sculpted sartorium -- the foppish follicles pioneered by Ambrose Burnside, Appomattox 1865. ["Sunshine of Your Love" starts playing] Grandma: [voice over] His wild, untamed facial hair revealed a new world of rebellion -- of change. A world where doors were open for women like me. [music stops] But Abe was stuck in his button-down plastic-fantastic Madison Avenue scene. Abe: Look at them sideburns! He looks like a girl. Now, Johnny Unitas -- there's a haircut you could set your watch to. -- Madison Avenue indeed, "Mother Simpson" Marge: So Mother Simpson, where did your newfound sense of irresponsibility take you? Grandma: I soon found people who shared my views at the state college. [shot of hippies demonstrating] Crowd: [chanting] Anthrax, gangrene, swimmer's ear! Get your germ lab out of here! [Grandma joins the crowd in their chant] Grandma: [voice over] How could I _not_ become a radical when we were fighting a force of pure evil? Crowd: Hey, hey, Mr. Burns! Enough already with the germs! Burns: [in a window above] Ho, their flower power is no match for my glower power! [glowers] [the crowd disperses] Wiggum: [below, guarding the doors] Well that's some nice glowering, Mr. B. -- Some things never change, "Mother Simpson" Grandma: [voice over] We'd met the enemy and it was Montgomery Burns. Drastic action _had_ to be taken to stop his war machine! [in flashback] I put Homer to bed, Abe, and now I'm going out. It could be a late night -- I'm meeting my destiny. Abe: [not turning around] So long. ["Along the Watchtower" plays while the hippies set up a bomb inside Burns' lab] Hippie: When this baby goes off, Burns' lab is going to be history, man -- germ history! [laughs] Oh man, I got the munchies. -- It hasn't been years since _he's_ seen a bong, "Mother Simpson" % When the Spiro Agnew clock's alarm starts ringing, the bomb releases % antibiotics into the air, killing all of Burns' nasty germs. Wiggum % runs from the cloud of gas. Wiggum: [gasping, panting]! Wait a minute -- [tries breathing] Bronchial tubes clearing...asthma disappearing! Acne remains, but...asthma disappearing. [an alarm bell goes off] Burns: [running toward the building] My germs, my precious germs! They never harmed a soul. They never even had a chance! Whoever did this will never get past me -- [the crowd of hippies runs out the door and tramples him] Grandma: [going back] You poor man...let me help you up. [she does so; Burns sees her and smiles] Burns: _You_ just made a very big mistake. You'll spend the rest of your life in pri -- [Wiggum slams the door open and crushes Burns behind it] Wiggum: My asthma's gone! Listen to me breathe -- [snorts] Waaah! [snorts] Waaah! -- We'd rather not, thanks, "Mother Simpson" [Grandma runs from Mr. Burns and Wiggum] Grandma: [voice over] From that moment on, my life as I knew it was over. Kent: [on TV] Only one member of the Springfield Seven was identified. She's been described as a woman in her early 30s, yellow complexion, and may be extremely helpful. For Channel Six News, I'm Kenny Brockelstein. [she walks into young Homer's room and looks at him sleeping] Grandma: Homer...[kisses him, weeps] I'm sorry. [walks out] Homer: [in the present] I thought I dreamed that kiss. Marge: I'm so sorry I misjudged you, Mom. You had to leave to protect your family! Lisa: {How did you survive?} Grandma: {Oh, I had help from my friends in the underground. Jerry Reuben gave me a job marketing his line of health shakes, I proofread Bobby Seale's cookbook, and I ran credit checks at Tom Hayden's Porsche dealership.} -- Lucrative underground business dealings, "Mother Simpson" Homer: {Wait a minute...} there's one thing I don't understand. In all those years, why didn't you ever try to contact me? Grandma: But I did! I sent you a care package every week. Homer: Aw, come on, Mom, we use that same line on the kids when they're at camp. Grandma: But I did, I really did! I'll prove it to you. [they go to the post office] Homer: Any undelivered mail for Homer J. Simpson? Man: No. Oh wait, this. [lifts huge sack of parcels] That's what happens when you don't tip your letter carrier at Christmas. -- A valuable life lesson, "Mother Simpson" % Mr. Burns mails a letter at another wicket. Burns: Yes, I'd like to send this letter to the Prussian consulate in Siam by aeromail. Am I too late for the 4:30 autogyro? Kid: Uh, I better look in the manual. Burns: [groans] Oh, the ignorance. [sees Homer and Grandma walking out] Wait a minute, I know that woman. But from when? And in what capacity? [spies "Wanted" posted with Grandma's young picture on it] [gasps] It's her. At last! Kid: This book must be out of date: I don't see "Prussia", "Siam", or "autogyro". Burns: Well, keep looking! [he turns back, and she's gone] -- So close, "Mother Simpson" % [End of Act Two. Time: 15:13] % % In Burns' office, Joe Friday and Bill Gannon interview Burns about the % incident. Friday: Are you sure this is the woman you saw in the post office? Burns: Absolutely! Who could forget such a monstrous visage? She has the sloping brow and cranial bumpage of the career criminal. Smithers: Uh, Sir? Phrenology was dismissed as quackery 160 years ago. Burns: Of course you'd say have the brainpan of a stagecoach tilter! Gannon: At any rate, the FBI will track down this mystery woman and put her behind bars. [he and Friday walk out] {How does it happen, Joe?} Friday: {How does what happen?} Gannon: {How does a sweet young lady mortgage her future for a bunch of scraggly ideals and greasy-haired promises?} Friday: {Maybe she thought the war in southeast Asia was so immoral, her end justified the means.} Gannon: {Gee, Joe, you haven't been the same since your son went crazy in Vietnam.} Friday: {It's a pain that never ends.} -- The "Dragnet" theme plays, "Mother Simpson" % At home, Lisa jams on her sax with Granny on the guitar. Grandma: [singing] How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man? Homer: Seven! Lisa: No, Dad, it's a rhetorical question. Homer: Rhetorical, eh? Eight! Lisa: Dad, do you even know what "rhetorical" means? Homer: [incredulous] Do I know what "rhetorical" means?! -- Apparently, "Mother Simpson" [the doorbell rings] Bart: [gasps] Quick, Grandma, hide! [Marge closes the curtains] [someone pounds on the door, then manages to open it] Abe: No door is going to keep me from my meddling! Stand up straight, Bart. Grandma: [tentative] Abe? Abe: [in shock] What the -- [stammers] Now here's a piece of bad news. Grandma: Oh, Abe, you've aged _terribly_. Abe: What do you expect? You left me to raise the boy on my own! Grandma: I _had_ to leave! But you didn't have to tell Homer I was dead! Abe: It was either that, or tell him his mother was a wanted criminal! You were a rotten wife, and I never, _ever_ forgive you! [pause] Can we have sex? Please? Grandma: [disgusted] Oh, Abe. Abe: Well, I tried! What's for supper? -- Cutting his losses, "Mother Simpson" % Friday and Gannon interview a cab driver. Cabbie: Yeah, I might have seen her. Gannon: [typing] Well, according to our computer aging program, she should look about... [turns screen around; it has a giant "25" on it] 25 years older. Cabbie: Yeah, I seen her! That is to say, I saw her. -- Correcting his grammar, "Mother Simpson" % Grandma Simpson shows the kids how to tie die shirts. Bart puts one % on. Bart: Look at me, Grandma: I'm a hippy! Peace man, groovy! Bomb Vietnam! Four more years! Up with people! [runs off] Lisa: You know, Grandma, I used to think that I was adopted. I couldn't understand how I fit into this family. Now that I met you, I suddenly make a lot of sense. [hugs her] Grandma: I'm so glad to see the spirit of the 60s is still alive in you kids. [camera shows Maggie dancing to the "Laugh-In" theme with a "Ban the bottle" slogan painted on her stomach] -- "Mother Simpson" % The FBI guys interview the gravedigger. Gravedigger: Yep, I saw her. That is to say, I seen her. She seemed like a nice lady. Burns: Well, that nice lady set the cause of biological warfare back thirty years! Smithers: We're only now finally caught up. -- Boo hoo, "Mother Simpson" Gravedigger: Two more ladies come by earlier that day. One was real pretty, t'other, sort of plain. [the FBI guys, Burns, and Smithers go to the Bouvier sisters' house] Friday: Ma'am, we're going to need your assistance in locating this individual. Selma: [giggling] Oh, I'm fresh. Don't you want to play "Good cop, bad cop"? Friday: Ma'am, we're all good cops. Selma: I had no intention of playing the good cops. Burns: Ew. Look, we know you bought the tombstone, we know the fugitive visited that tombstone. Whose tombstone was it? Patty: Just lift up your coffee cups and see. [they see Homer's tombstone] Smithers: Good Lord! Wiggum: Put out an APB on a Uosdwis R. Dewoh. Uh, better start with Greektown. Friday: That's "Homer J. Simpson", Chief. You're reading it upside down. Wiggum: Uh, cancel that APB. But, uh, bring back some of them, uh, giros. Friday: Uh, Chief? You're talking into your wallet. -- Joe Friday's sharp eye, "Mother Simpson" % The newly reassembled Simpson family eats dinner. Lisa: Grandma, have you ever thought about moving back to Springfield? Homer: You could live with Grampa again. [everyone, including Abe, laughs] Abe: Oh, I'm a living joke. Grandma: You know, Lisa, [phone rings] it might be nice to rest for a while. [Homer answers it, then leans into the doorway] Homer: Mom? There's nothing to be alarmed about, but...could you take one last look at the family and join me in the kitchen? [outside, a tank and a police car pull up] Burns: [in the tank] I've been waiting 25 years for this moment. [puts on a tape of "Ride of the Valkyries"] [it turns into "Waterloo" by ABBA] Smithers: I'm sorry, Sir, I must have taped over that. -- A minor oversight, "Mother Simpson" % The family look alarmed at the sound of the music. The tank breaks % open the front door. Friday: Freeze. FBI: the jig is up. Abe: All right, I admit it: I am the Lindbergh baby. Waah! Waah! Goo goo. I miss my fly-fly dada. Friday: Are you trying to stall us, or are you just senile? Abe: A little from column A, a little from column B. Smithers: [panting] Sir! She's gone. [Burns groans] [in a remote location in the Springfield badlands] Grandma: We made it, Homer! Homer: It's all thanks to our anonymous tipster. [into the phone] But who are you? And why did you tip us off? Wiggum: [on phone] Well, it's 'cause of your old lady that I got rid of my asthma that was keeping me out of the academy. Homer: Thanks. Wiggum: Sure. Just think of me as an anonymous friend who rose through the ranks of the Springfield police to become Chief Clancy Wig -- Homer: [hanging up] Yak, yak, yak, yak, yak! -- Impatience is a virtue, "Mother Simpson" % Homer bids his final goodbyes to his mother. Grandma: Well, there's my ride. The underground awaits. Homer: [sniffles] At least this time, I'm awake for your goodbye. Grandma: [sniffles] Oh. Remember, whatever happens, you have a mother, and she's truly proud of you. [they hug] Hippie: Oh! Hurry up, man. This electric van only has twenty minutes of juice left! [Grandma walks into the van] Homer: Don't forget me! Grandma: Don't worry, Homer: you'll always be a part of me. [hits her head on doorframe] D'oh! -- And how!, "Mother Simpson" % She closes the door and drives off. Homer watches the van leave, then % sits on the hood of his car until nightfall, staring contemplatively % at the stars. % % [End of Act Three. Time: 21:22] % % The closing theme is more somber and placid than usual, with the % melody played by a flute. =============================================================================== > Contributors =============================================================================== {dga} Dale Abersold {ddg} Don Del Grande {dh} Dominik Halas {dh2} Dave Hall {th} Tony Hill {rl} Ricardo Lafaurie {hl} Haynes Lee {al} Adam Lipkin {jp} Jussi Pakkanen {mp} Michael Petri {br} Bob Roberds {av} Aaron Varhola {dy} Doug Yovanovich =============================================================================== This episode summary is Copyright 1997 by James A. Cherry. Not to be redistributed in a public forum without permission. (The quotes themselves, of course, remain the property of The Simpsons, and the reproduced articles remain the property of the original authors. I'm just taking credit for the compilation.)
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CD Review: Feist
The Reminder Cherrytree/Interscope
Music ••• Sound •••½
Given Leslie Feist's history as a punk-turned-chanteuse indie princess, it may seem odd to say that the musician she reminds me of most is Sheryl Crow. But listening to The Reminder, Feist's eagerly anticipated follow-up to 2004's surprise hit Let It Die, I can't help but hear the same moving-target qualities that have always kept me from liking Crow more than I probably should.
As with Crow, whose admirably far-ranging music never gives me a clear sense of an artistic self, Feist seems to be an almost pomo case study of form over content. Not that there's anything wrong with being eclectic, of course. But after a while, all the pleasing-to-the-ears sounds of folk, rock, and jazz flitting about her songs from track to track on The Reminder simply add up to a frustratingly incomplete picture of just who she is and what she's up to.
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Logical Editor
Steinberg Cubase Tips & Techniques
Published in SOS January 2006
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Technique : Cubase Notes
Mark Wherry
cubase logical editor
The Logical Editor is made up of three basic parts: the Function Menu, the Filter Condition List, and the Action List. The black status lines underneath the two List boxes show an overview of the expression you're describing with the commands in the respective List, indicating an error if you make a mistake.
The Logical Editor has been a part of Steinberg's sequencing software products since the days of Pro 24 on the Atari, and its latest incarnation in Cubase SX/SL/SE remains a powerful way to process MIDI data. We've covered an introduction to the Logical Editor in previous editions of SOS, so for a complete refresher, you might want to check out May 2003's Cubase Notes at www.soundonsound.com/sos/may03/articles/cubasenotes0503.asp. However, I'm going to start this month's Cubase workshop with a brief overview of the Logical Editor and cover a few points not described in the previous article, in addition to covering some of the same ground for new users. The first example will also be the same, so beginners can read a more in-depth explanation, making this article backwardly compatible if you will(!); after that we'll look at some more complex examples.
Not Quite Aristotle
The basic principle of using the Logical Editor window is fairly straightforward. As with most off-line MIDI processing operations in Cubase, you can use the Logical Editor to process MIDI Parts in the Project window, and in this case you need to specify the MIDI Parts you want to process by selecting them and choosing MIDI / Logical Editor to open the Logical Editor window. Bear in mind that the Logical Editor option will be disabled in the menu if the MIDI Parts you've selected don't contain any MIDI Events to be processed.
You can also use the Logical Editor to process MIDI data in a MIDI editor window. If you have an open MIDI editor displaying MIDI Events with nothing selected, the Logical Editor will process all MIDI Events in the MIDI Part (or Parts if you're displaying multiple Parts in the editor window and have Edit Active Part Only disabled on the editor's toolbar). If you have Events selected in the MIDI editor, only these Events will be considered by the Logical Editor.
The Logical Editor window contains three main elements: the Function Menu, the Filter Condition List, and the Action List. The Filter Condition List specifies which events should be processed, the Action List specifies how the events should be processed, and the command selected in the Function Menu defines the mode of operation for the Logical Editor and precisely how the Filter Condition and Action Lists should be used. There are seven different commands available from the Function list:
Delete erases all events specified by the Filter Condition List.
Transform is the default (and most commonly used function) and modifies the events in the Filter Condition List by the actions defined in the Action List.
Insert is similar to Transform, but instead of the filtered notes being modified to produce a different Event, the original Events are kept and the transformed Events are created as new, separate Events.
Insert Exclusive is, again, based on Transform, except that notes that do not meet the conditions specified in the Filter Condition List are deleted. Unlike the standard Insert function, this one creates no new Events.
Copy is like Insert, but instead of the newly transformed Events being created in same Part on the same track, the new Events are added to a new MIDI Part on a new MIDI track.
Extract is similar to Copy, except that any Events matching the Condition List are deleted and the transformed versions are created in a new MIDI Part on a new track.
Select selects any Events that match the Filter Condition List (and if any Events were already selected, deselects any that don't match the condition); the Action List is ignored.
cubase 2 logical velocity
Here is the Logical Editor window showing the preset for transforming the second velocity layer, as described in the main text.
The Filter Condition List is made up of a series of Lines, where each Line represents one expression that is part of the overall condition (if you have multiple Lines). A Line basically consists of a Filter Target, a Condition, and some data that is in one or more of three columns: Parameter 1, Parameter 2 and Bar Range, although these data columns are never used simultaneously. The Filter Target is a general category, such as a type of Event, the first data property, the length, and so on; the Condition is what evaluates the Filter Target against the data, such as Equal, Unequal, All Types, and Greater Than; and, finally, the data column specifies what the Filter Target should identify. For example, if you were looking for all notes, set Filter Target to Type, Condition to Equal, and Parameter 1 to Note.
Each Line in the Filter Condition List can only evaluate one Filter Target against one element of data, so if you wanted to find all notes equal to C3, you couldn't simply add a note pitch in the Parameter 2 column of the Line I just described. To do this would require two expressions — type is equal to note, and pitch is equal to C3 — so you'll need two Lines in the Filter Condition List. Add another line by clicking the Add Line button next to the upper List and then, on the second Line, set the Filter Target to Value 1 (which should automatically change to Pitch in the Line), make sure Condition is set to Equal, and set Parameter 1 to C3.
The Action List is very similar to the Filter Condition List in that it comprises a series of Lines that tell the Logical Editor what to do with the Events identified by the Filter Condition List. Each Line is again split up into several columns: an Action Target, an Operation, and some data (Parameter 1 and Parameter 2). Action Target specifies which part of an Event should be processed, whether it's the type, a property or value (such as pitch); Operation sets what you want to do to the Action Target, such as add, set it equal to something, and so on; and the data specifies what the Operation applies to the Action Target. For example, to transpose found notes up an octave, the Action Target would be Value 1, Operation would be Add, and Parameter 1 would be 12 (semitones).
Additional Lines can be added to (or deleted from) the Action List, but bear in mind that while each Line in the Filter Condition List is an expression of one overall condition, each Line in the Action List operates independently, one after the other, like a recipe. So if you had two Lines that were both 'Value 1 Add 12', this would be the equivalent of one Line that states 'Value 1 Add 24'.
Once you've set the Function of the Logical Editor, specified the Events to operate on with the Filter Condition List, and set up what happens to the identified Events with the Action List (unless you've chosen Select as your Function), you press the Do It button for the Logical Editor to work its magic.
Cubase News
cubase News hypersonic
Hypersonic 2 features an updated user interface that allows full access to all the parameters of the underlying sound engine.
Of interest to Cubase users this month will be Steinberg's announcement of Hypersonic 2, an update to the popular virtual workstation released by Steinberg and Wizoo at the end of 2003 (www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb04/articles/steinberghypersonic.htm). Although the original point of Hypersonic was to be an economical all-purpose sound source that you could get good results with even if you were using an older computer system, many people wanted the gigabyte sound library to compete with products like IK Multimedia's Sampletank. So Hypersonic 2 comes with a 1.7GB sample library (up from the original 250MB content) with 800 new patches and revised versions of the original 1000 presets supplied with Hypersonic 1.
Hypersonic 2 also includes Hyperphase, a rather good polyphonic arpeggiator that includes 200 phrases, and the ability to import your own as a Standard MIDI File. What's more, the updated user interface makes it possible to edit every parameter in Hypersonic's different sound engines, which you couldn't do in the previous version. One user interface change I didn't like so much was that the semi-circle value displays in the Mix page of version 1 have been replaced with more traditional horizontal rectangular bars, which personally I didn't find so effective — but if that's the only gripe I have, it's probably not a serious criticism of the product!
I recently encountered a curious problem when a composer I was working with needed to use newer versions of some multisampled orchestral instruments, featuring many velocity layers, which were being played back via MIDI from various Cubase Projects. The composer in question is a meticulous programmer and had balanced the velocity layers very precisely so the appropriate samples within the instrument were triggered; but in the newer versions of the instruments the velocity ranges had changed, even though the samples were the same. So the problem was how to rebalance the velocities used for notes that had been programmed with one version of the instrument so they would play back using the same samples in the new versions. And since the Cubase Projects that needed altering were large and numerous, this was definitely a job for the Logical Editor.
One of the instruments in question had six velocity layers and the old version had these velocity layers programmed with the following splits: 0-30, 31-52, 53-74, 75-98, 99-113 and 114-127. And as I explained, the new version had the velocity layers programmed slightly differently, so the new splits were as follows: 0-80, 81-90, 91-100, 101-110, 111-120, and 121-127.
Cubase's Logical Editor is a great way of processing MIDI data, but its Transform feature is only capable of transforming one condition into one result. An example of one condition would be 'find all the velocities between 0 and 30' and an example of one result would be 'scale these velocities to 0 and 80'. If I had multiple conditions for different velocity layers, they'd all have to be processed by the same Action List, so all velocities would end up between 0 and 80, which would be useless. Therefore, each velocity layer transformation has to be dealt with using a separate Logical Editor operation; so what we'll end up learning here is how to combine multiple Logical Editor operations into one command to create more powerful (and convenient) Logical Editor commands.
cubase 3 macro
Once you've created Logical Presets, you can combine them together into one command by creating a Macro in the Key Commands window.
The first step is to open the Logical Editor window by selecting MIDI / Logical Editor. Start by selecting the Init Preset (click on the Presets pop-up menu and choose 'init') to make sure any previous operations in the Logical Editor are reset, and make sure that the Transform Function is selected. The first Line in the Filter Condition List should read '(Type Is Equal Note)', and next we need to set the range for the incoming velocities by adding two further Lines to the List, clicking the Add Line button twice.
Set the Filter Target for the lower two Lines to 'Value 2' by clicking underneath the column in the appropriate row and choosing 'Value 2' from the pop-up menu. Once you make the selection, you should notice how Cubase will display this entry as Velocity in the Line. Next, set the Condition on the second row to 'Bigger or Equal' and the third row to 'Less or Equal', and enter the velocity boundaries for the first velocity layer (0 and 30) as Parameter 1 on the second and third rows.
Now the Filter Condition List has been set, we need to set up the operation to scale velocities between 0 and 30 to 0 and 80 instead. To do this, on the first Line of the Action List, Action Target should be set to Value 2, Operation to Multiply by and Parameter 1 to 2.67. To get this scaler value (2.67) you divide the range of velocities in the destination (80) by the number of velocities in the source (30), and I rounded the result to two decimal places, which is easily accurate enough for the seven-bit integer values used to describe velocity in the MIDI protocol. And that's it. Store the Preset by clicking Store, entering a name, and clicking OK, and we have a Logical Editor operation that can scale velocities between 0 and 30 to 0 and 80.
Creating an operation to scale the next velocity layer is almost the same: the process of setting up the condition is identical, except Parameter 1 in the lower two rows should now be 31 and 52 to represent the range of the second velocity layer. The most significant change this time is that the Action List is a little more complicated, because we need to first subtract the lowest velocity (31) from the velocity of the note we're processing, so we can scale the velocity correctly, and then add the value of the lowest velocity for the new instrument to this number so that it's put back into the correct range again. Therefore, the Filter Condition List should now consist of three Lines: 'Value 2 Subtract 31', 'Value 2 Multiply by 0.43', and 'Value 2 Add 81'. 0.43 is the scaler because it's the division between the range of velocities in the old second later and the range in the new second layer ((90-81=9)/(52-31=21)=0.43).
So now we have two Logical Editor Presets to deal with the first two velocity layers, and by substituting the numbers from the remaining velocity layers you should be able to build presets for the other transformations, as they're all based on the second layer Filter Condition and Action lists described in the previous paragraph.
Once you've finished, you'll have ended up with six different velocity layers with which to process each MIDI note where you want to rescale the velocities. To execute all these operations simultaneously you can build a Macro (which we covered in January 2003's Cubase Notes: see www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan03/articles/cubasenotes0103.asp), as Logical Editor Presets appear in the Process Logical Preset Key Commands category. The important thing is that the Presets are run in reverse order, so you process the highest velocity layer first — otherwise, each Preset would operate on the results of the previous operation, so a small velocity could end up scaling to 127 if you weren't careful. By running the Presets in reverse order, there's less chance of this happening.
So to build the Macro, open the Key Commands window (File / Key Commands), click Show Macros, click New Macro, type in a name for the Macro and press Enter. Find the Logical Presets you created in the Process Logical Preset category in the Commands list and select the first Command to add to the Macro (the last Preset you created, the one to process the highest velocity layer). Now, click the Add Command button to add that Logical Preset to the Macro, and then repeat this process for the rest of the Logical Presets. When you've finished, you can assign a Key Command to the Macro itself if you want, or just click OK to close the Key Commands window.
If you haven't assigned a Key Command, you can run the Macro by selecting it from the Edit / Macros submenu — just remember to have some MIDI Event selected before you run the Macro, and also to make sure the Logical Editor window itself is closed. Triggering Logical Editor Presets via Key Commands or Macros with the Logical Editor window open will select those Presets for editing in the Logical Editor rather than actually running the process on available MIDI data.
Hopefully this will have helped you to get a better handle on the Logical Editor, and will have made you think about the possibilities of combining Logical Editor Presets with Macros. Join me next month for some action in the exciting world of Boolean operators...
DAW Tips from SOS
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All posts by Gnosi Chaotica
Prometheus Hail (also known as the Rite of Prometheus’s Flame)
By Gnosi Chaotica | January 6, 2003 | Leave a comment
The basis of this ritual is to unleash hidden, arcane, esoteric and occult knowledge. Its aim is to uncover the truth in all things and shed light on the darkness of ignorance. Its aim also is to question all things and to broaden the participant’s horizons into the world of greater knowledge. It involves the destruction of symbols of religious ignorance in an attempt to clear all perceptions to let the true light and divine glory of Lucifer to permeate your soul.
Materials to be used
1. Seven candles (three white, 3 black and one yellow.)
2. altar
3. yellow altar covering
4. mirror
5. The Christian Bible and/or any religious texts. (If you were converted from Christianity, or any other religion for that matter, it would be considered especially fitting to use the holy book for that particular religion.)
6. a copy of the sigil involved
7. wand
8. an Athame
9. large cauldron of water
You will sit in front of your altar. The altar will be covered by the yellow cover. On the right side of the altar will situate the three white candles. On the left will be the black candles. In the middle will be the yellow candle to represent the knowledge and light of Prometheus, follower of Lucifer. In front of the yellow candle will be the wand, athame and cauldron. Behind the altar will be the mirror and drawn on the mirror will be the sigil, which will be provided. This is ideally performed in a large and airy room with plenty of light.
(Important safety note. The will be the burning of an object in this ritual and this could be dangerous. Caution is to be practiced.)
Light the candles and bless the performance area. Meditate in front of altar for five minutes. As you grow more and more into a trance, imagine an arc of light streaming through a shining gate and directly into your forehead. Now, imagine this permeating your entire body and your body becoming more and more invigorated. Now, imagine that gate opening and the body of Prometheus emerges. He is white as ivory and his hair and face are made entirely of yellow light. His feet are as black as marble and his hands are the color of the ocean. His right hand has a broken chain that use to bind him and his left hand is parallel to his breast and about a foot away and has red flame emerging from his palm. You come closer and closer to him and as you are about to touch the flame, you awaken.
First, take the athame and carve the pentagram into the air above the candle. Now, take the bible and touch it to the flame of the yellow candle and allow it to burn while intoning “burn, burn you infernal piece of ignorance. The dark gods will imprison my mind and soul no more. I burn this slave making nonsense by the flame of eternal knowledge and wisdom. Freedom sets the slaves free. Hail Prometheus”. When it starts to become a hazard, extinguish it by placing it in the cauldron.
Now take the wand and wave it around the cauldron while chanting “diawatha baradoniait dorianviouyo terazherila berhgoudh erhnoundeo. The sun god Ra and Lucifer dance the eternal dance. The Scarlet Whore cries in eternal incline as light is infused into the vortex. Hail Prometheus, eternal unleasher of knowledge and wisdom. Eternalities and stars collide in the eyes of the scarlet as she clutches onto her hedonism. The sage knows that her hedonism is in forbidden knowledge and the baseness only”. Now change your chant to the exclamation “Hail Prometheus, Prometheus Hail. Greatness is your divine grace as the laws prescribe. Knowledge will set you as free as the breaking of your invisible chains will. Freedom is yours for the taking.
Now chant the sigil, which will be written on the mirror.
Now stand and touch your breast and intone, “zha noh kho phon set”. Now touch your groin and intone “chon noh kahn pha set”. Now touch your abdomen and intone, “khen gor jahn tho set” and finally touch your forehead and intone, “khana shoran vorhan khav set”.
Now close your eyes and remember when you were about to touch the flame of Prometheus’s flame, except now you will touch the flame and absorb all the knowledge of Prometheus and set yourself free in all ways possible. You are now free as your soul is now yours in all true ways. Sing the song of Gorath-al-Korethia, Alchemionso-Tiradeiona.
Hail Prometheus
Hail Lucifer
Hail Thyself
Lucifer’s Vortex (also known as the Western Sun Rite)
By Gnosi Chaotica | January 6, 2003 | Leave a comment
The basis of this ritual is to create a vortex in which direct communication between Lucifer is possible. There are several other Lucifer’s Vortex rites that are being transcribed and this is the darkest one in terms of setting.
Materials to be used
1. chalice filled with wine
2. wand
3. sound system (can be of any kind)
4. candle (black, if possible)
5. mirror
6. altar
The setting shall be a dark room (preferably small). Arrange yourself in front of the altar in which you have set a candle in the middle. On the left side is to be the chalice and on the right side is to be the wand. Behind the altar is to be set a mirror in which the candles light can be reflected. Start the music, which should be “Night on bald mountain” followed by white noise. Play it as loud as your circumstances allow you. As a rule, the louder that the music is played, the more your mind can become part of the ritual.
Meditate in front of the candle, close your eyes, and reflect on inner peace and balance. Then, gradually think of your energy growing larger and larger. Visualize it constantly expanding and growing larger. Then think of yourself sucking psychic energy from a black vortex. This is to be from any source possible and whom you suck the energy from does not matter. Now imagine you depositing all of your bad energy into that vortex to be destroyed.
Now open your eyes, reach for the chalice, and repeat the words “I drink from this chalice all the good in the world. I proclaim the destruction of all lie and hypocrisy and I shall rise to the ultimate fate. I proclaim upon this day that I am born anew in the light of the Angel Lucifer in the dawn of all his marvelous stars”. Drink from the chalice and set it down. Take the wand, point it as if touching stars, and proclaim, “The stars of electric reach through my spine and signal a New Aeon of Horus and Lucifer. Long may the Western Sun rise as I proclaim it so. Hail Lucifer in all glory as all power be bequeathed to his followers. Brimstone and onyx is his crown. Light shall be his wand and wine shall be his urine. Worship the sun god, Lucifer, Ra.”
Now place the wand down and stare back into the flame. Visualize all greatness coming into you and forming a vortex. Now repeat this sigil and imagine it in front of you as you visualize it.
Now recite your wishes and demands as well as grievances. Say all that needs to be said. Then, when you are done, scream, “Done is my wish. Grant my desires as the west sun rises in the vortex and Lucifer wishes me so. Stand not in my way, O’ slave of ignorance. Stay here and grant for I say what I need. So be it done as so be it. Hail Lucifer.”
Awaken in time and feel anew. Liberty is yours for the taking so sayeth the sacred books of Algorath and Aweis. Talerabonio Stratakeath Nopuot Doriou.
After note
This ritual was transcribed from semi-conscious thoughts of the Temple of the North Star. Lucidity is not in question here as lucidity be proclaimeth. The observance of this ritual is to be completed as the Angel Lucifer does rise and fall and rise again.
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Poke Rap Lyrics
Random Music or Lyrics Quiz
Can you name the lyrics to the Poké Rap (Gen 1)?
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Created Nov 21, 2009SourceReportNominate
Tags:Lyrics, rap, gen, Gen 1, poke
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52881
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Countries Ending in 'Y'
Random Geography or letter Quiz
Can you name the countries that end with the letter 'Y'?
Featured Apr 19, 2013
How to Play
Also try: 'I'-Less Countries
Score 0/8 Timer 02:00
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Created Nov 24, 2009Report
Tags:country, letter, end, ending
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52882
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Paintball Clothing Brands
Random Sports Quiz
Can you name the Paintball Clothing Brands?
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Score 0/17 Timer 05:00
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Created Mar 4, 2010ReportNominate
Tags:brand, clothing, paintball
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52883
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People on American Currency
Random Miscellaneous Quiz
Can you name the people on American currency?
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Name of Coin/worthPerson on Coin/Bill
Penny. $0.01
Nickel. $0.05
Dime. $0.10
Quarter. $0.25
Dollar bill. $1.00
Two dollar bill. $2.00
Five dollar bill. $5.00
Ten dollar bill. $10.00
Twenty dollar bill. $20.00
Fifty dollar bill. $50.00
One hundred dollar bill.
Friend Scores
Player Best Score Plays Last Played
You You haven't played this game yet.
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Created Oct 11, 2009ReportNominate
Tags:America, bill, coin, currency, person, worth
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52897
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1. Mediaite
2. The Mary Sue
3. Styleite
4. The Braiser
5. SportsGrid
6. Gossip Cop
Players-Only Meetings Might Work In The NBA, After All
Players hold players-only meetings sometimes to kickstart a franchise back into relevance. It’s supposed to be inflective, coach-less, a time for honest self-reflection and an airing of grievances. Accountability, first and foremost, growth through shared responsibility. It’s a nice ploy, at least from the outside, the appearance of leadership and dedication to the craft. But rarely does anything seem to come off it, other than a few puff pieces on shedding failure and looking ahead to bigger and better things.
Because only under-performing and/or unmotivated teams hold players-only meetings, or at least publicly declare that intention. And it’s hard to track the results of such meetings because establishing causality between cookie cutter words and victories is an inherently flawed experiment. Still, the folks at HoopsHype decided to wade through the annals of players-only-meeting history since 2010 and see if they could, at the very least, determine some sort of correlation between the fabled players-only meeting and improved on-court performance. And they did, and it’s positive – a 14% to bump in wins in the following 10 games.
See the below chart, a part of which is pasted below. For the entire thing, head over to HoopsHype.
Photo via
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52905
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Sprogglers need you!
Your sprogs start life in the Stone Age,
It's up to you to get them to the Space Age.
How? Well you can:
• play lots of exciting games,
• design their home,
• fill it with pets and toys,
• make baby sprogs,
• dress them up,
• tickle and feed them,
• and level up!
Take a Tour Play NOW!
sprogglers pics
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52925
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Earth Wind and Fire Videos
Listen to Earth Wind and Fire
and similar artists
Play Now
Now Playing: Songwriters Hall of Fame Awards Earth, Wind & Fire Discuss Maurice's Legacy, Their Trailblazing Fashion & More
Browse More Music:
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52938
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Re: st: non-normal ordinal indicators in factor analysis
From Joseph Coveney <>
To Statalist <>
Subject Re: st: non-normal ordinal indicators in factor analysis
Date Sat, 29 Sep 2007 14:39:49 -0700 wrote:
Does Stata perform alternative estimation methods for a CFA with
severely non-normal ordinal indicators (e.g. Satorra-Bentler, etc.)?
Take a look at Chapter 10, especially, Section 10.3, in A. Skrondal and
S. Rabe-Hesketh, _Generalized Latent Variable Modeling. Multilevel,
Longitudinal and Structural Equation Models_ (Boca Raton, Fla.: Chapman &
Hall/CRC, 2004), to see whether it's along the lines of what you're looking
The confirmatory factor modeling described there can be done with -gllamm-,
a user-written Stata command ( ).
The book can be ordered through StataCorp's online bookstore
( ), which also shows the book's table of
contents with chapter and section titles.
Joseph Coveney
* For searches and help try:
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Future dates are for information only
No future release dates have yet been scheduled for 'Referrals, assessments and children and young people who are the subject of a child protection plan, England'
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AudioQuest & Marantz at Listen-Up
I mentioned in my coverage of Steve Silberman's Computer Audio Seminar that I had been frustrated by the inability of the otherwise superb Marantz Reference NA-11S1 network player that I reviewed in October to handle every file format I sent to it. Following the seminar, I bumped into Steve in one of Colorado retailer Listen-Up's rooms where he just happened to have the Marantz players, hooked up, of course, with AudioQuest cables and with a Marantz integrated amplifier driving Sonus Faber speakers.
"You have it backwards," Steve explained. "The intelligence doesn't need to be in the player's hardware but in the file-playing program used to send it data." But, I argued, surely all it takes is continuous firmware upgrades provided that the hardware is sufficiently flexible. Steve agreed but pointed out that each firmware upgrade represents a significant expense for the player's manufacturer and it wouldn't take too many upgrades to eliminate any profit the manufacturer might have made from the sale. (Unlike the PC world, the cost of the upgrade isn't spread over millions of units.) By contrast, the computer host is almost infinitely upgradable and as long as it sends the audio data to the player in a single format it recognizes, all will be well.
I am not sure I agree with Steve, but he gave me food for thought about how the tasks are shared between hardware and software in the brave new computer-audio world.
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swingdog's picture
Last seen: Never ago
Joined: Oct 1 2007 - 8:21pm
Can a Super-T Amp Drive Athena AS-F1.2s?
I've ordered a Sonic Impact Super-T Amp to power a truly budget home system. Can this amp adequately power a set of Athena AS-F1.2 floorstanding loudspeakers?
If not, I think I'll buy a pair of the bookshelf Athena AS-B1.2s and stands. The prices aren't that different, and the larger speakers would be nice for the low-end potential.
This system will be for music only--mostly classical and jazz.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
Buddha's picture
Last seen: 2 years 9 months ago
Joined: Sep 8 2005 - 10:24am
Re: Can a Super-T Amp Drive Athena AS-F1.2s?
Hi, Swingdog, welcome!
The AS-F1.2 is spec'd for a sensitivity of 92 dB for 1 watt input.
If we are generous and call the T-amp a 10 watt amp, then you should be able to drive the Athena to about 101 (8 watts) to 104 dB (16 watts). (Someone else may want to verify my numbers.)
Depending on your listening habits, would peaks of 101-104 dB may be acceptable? I forget the distortion/clipping data for the t-amp.
I'd vote that it may be a little underpowered for your application, but at the price, who cares? Buy it and see!
jackfish's picture
Last seen: 9 months 3 weeks ago
Joined: Dec 19 2005 - 2:42pm
If your room is small I'd say go for it. I'm in a 12' x 15' room and 88 dB is plenty loud for listening to music for me. The typical gas-powered lawnmower emits about 88 dB at the ear when you are standing behind it during operation.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/52954
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What'll I Do Lyrics
Johnny Tillotson Lyrics What'll I Do
Browse by artist name Search Browse by soundtrack
What'll I Do
by Johnny Tillotson. Buy album CD: All His Early Hits & More
Writer Irving Berlin
Gone is the romance That once was devine It's broken and cannot be mended You must go your way And I must go mine But now that our love dreams have ended.... What'll I do when you are far away And I am blue, What'll I do? What'll I do when I am wond'ring who Is kissing you, What'll I do? What'll I do With just a photograph to tell my troubles to? When I'm alone with only dreams of you That won't come true, What'll I do?
sheet music Buy Johnny Tillotson sheet music
cd Buy Johnny Tillotson CDs
guitar tabs Johnny Tillotson guitar tabs
Album: All His Early Hits & More (1990) Lyrics
cd Buy "All His Early Hits & More" CD
1. Poetry In Motion
2. It Keeps Right On A-Hurtin'
3. Send Me The Pillow That You Dream On
4. Without You
5. You Can Never Stop Me Loving You
6. Well I'm Your Man
7. Dreamy Eyes
8. True True Happiness
9. Love Is Blind
10. Why do i love you so?
11. Never Let Me Go
12. Earth Angel
13. Princess Princess
14. Jimmy's Girl
15. (Little Sparrow) His True Love Said Goodbye
16. Cutie Pie
17. She Gave Sweet Love To Me
18. What'll I Do
19. I Can't Help It (If I'm Still In Love With You)
20. I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry
21. Out Of My Mind
22. Empty Feeling
23. Judy, judy, judy
24. Funny How Time Slips Away
25. A Very Good Year For Girls
26. Lonely Street
27. I Got A Feeling
28. Lonesome Town
29. I Fall To Pieces
30. Poetry In Motion-Take 2
Song words / lyrics from All His Early Hits & More album CD are property & copyright of their owners and provided for educational purposes.
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EII — Enterprise Information Integration
EII Defined
Whereas ETL has to do with transferring batches of information from one system to another, EII strives to provide real-time views across multiple sources of data within one or across multiple organizations.
An EII Example
To show how the Stylus Studio® XML Pipeline designer can be used to build EII applications, let consider the following use-case. A company wants to create an internal phone directory combining information from its employees and the summer interns.
• The employee database is part of a third-party closed application. It contains the list of employees, but since it has no place to store the pager numbers, someone maintains this list in a simple comma-separated-value file.
• The interns are kept in an html file.
EII XML Pipeline Sample (Click to enlarge)
(click to enlarge)
EII Components
To combine this information, we're going to use:
Most of the items on this list were created just by dragging and dropping. The final report was creating using the XML Report tool. And all of these pieces are combined together by dragging from the File Explorer pane onto the XML Pipeline pane, and connecting the dots.
EII Tools Yield EII Modules
The advantage to the XML Pipeline is that each step may be developed and tested in isolation. This gives you access to the full power of the development tool suite for each technology. You can use either the tool that is best for each job, or the tool you are more comfortable with. And the modular approach means that changes will impact only a small portion of the overall flow.
EII Debugger
Stylus Studio® introduces a new concept: the XML Pipeline Debugger.
Just as you can step from XSLT or XQuery right into embedded Java extension functions, you can set breakpoints at nodes in the pipeline and examine the values coming in, and then step right in to the underlying code. Engine-agnostic, multi-lingual, cross-technology debugging is now at your fingertips.
EII Service Generator
Once you've built your EII XML pipeline, you need to deploy it. You have the option of generating code that can then be deployed as a REST service, as the examples included with the evaluation copy demonstrate.
Executing our EII XML Pipeline
Enough talk, time to see it in action.
The report itself was very simple; although it's discussed elsewhere, here's a quick sneak-peek at the definition (and notice the little tweak that gets even/odd row coloring).
Sample XML Report showing alternating colors for rows (Click to enlarge)
(click to enlarge)
And this is the resulting log information when run in the pipeline simulator:
XML Pipeline execution started
Executing block 'eii-interns.xquery'...done.
Executing block 'eii-employees.xquery'...done.
Executing block 'eii-pager.xsl'...done.
Executing block 'eii-merge.xsl'...done.
Executing block 'eii-phone-listing.xslt'...done.
Executing block 'Pipeline Output'...done.
XML Pipeline execution ended
Resulting in this for our final EII phone listing application:
Buchanan, Steven
Callahan, Laura
Davolio, Nancy
Dodsworth, Anne
Fuller, Andrew
Hermann, Hayley
King, Robert
Leverling, Janet
Peacock, Margaret
Shah, Paige
Sutter, Henry
Suyama, Michael
XML Pipelines Rule in the EII World
Just with a few short pieces of code, we've been able to assemble very different data sources into a coherent picture. We can filter, sort, perform conditional processing, validate, import, export, and of course transform, using a variety of adapters and languages. And we simulate and debug and then deploy.
Buy Stylus Studio Now
Try Stylus EII Integration Tools
Simplify working with Electronic Integration Integration (EII) technologies with Stylus Studio®'s award-winning EII software for developing EII solutions — Download a free trial of our today!
Learn Stylus Studio in 6 Minutes
Why Pay More for XML Tools?
The XML Schema Reference
Working with industry standard XML data models? Visit the Stylus Studio XML Schema library, the world's biggest free XML schema reference and schema repository.
The Stylus Studio EII Blog
Interested in learning more about EII and XML? Bookmark the Stylus Studio EII Blog — a free source of EII and XML development news.
Free Stylus Studio XML Training:
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/53000
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Poor judgment
April 5, 2013
dsp Williamsport Sun-Gazette
Why in the world would you publish a article on the front page on Easter Sunday entitled "Chavez's legacy gains religious glow in Venezuela"
I am looking for:
News, Blogs & Events Web
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/53021
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"The Lazy Song" by Bruno Mars
by Megumi
Storyline Let the Music Move You
Characters Mary Jane Watson Polaris
Previous Chapter Mary Jane hears "So What."
Community Raiting:
Your Raiting: You must login to rate the chapter
MJ knew the perfect way to drive Peter absolutely crazy.
Back when they had lived in Avengers mansion, Wolverine had made several inappropriate passes at her. Apparently the ol’ knucklehead just has a thing for redheads. Whenever Peter saw this he’d act more like a wild dog then Wolverine usually did.
MJ had always seen the the near feral mutant as a little too rough (and gamey) for her taste. Now with her new attitude, that wasn’t a problem.
Lorna was already awake. She was in the process of making her bed, but hadn’t bothered to shut off her radio alarm. The alarm went off:
Today I don't feel like doing anything
I just wanna lay in my bed
Don't feel like picking up my phone
So leave a message at the tone
'Cause today I swear I'm not doing anything
Lorna flipped aside some covers and dropped like a stone back into her bed.
Nothing at all!
Ooh, hoo, ooh, hoo, ooh, ooh-ooh
Nothing at all
Tomorrow I'll wake up, do some P90X
Meet a really nice girl, have some really nice sex
And she's gonna scream out: 'This is Great' (Oh my God, this is great!)
Hmnn, Lorna thought. Tomorrows gonna be interesting, but today I’m not doing anything.
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Definitions for
Overview of noun asteridae
The noun asteridae has 1 senses? (no senses from tagged texts)
1. Asteridae, subclass Asteridae
(a group of mostly sympetalous herbs and some trees and shrubs mostly with 2 fused carpels; contains 43 families including Campanulales; Solanaceae; Scrophulariaceae; Labiatae; Verbenaceae; Rubiaceae; Compositae; sometimes classified as a superorder) © 2001-2013, Demand Media, all rights reserved. The database is based on Word Net a lexical database for the English language. see disclaimer
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/53042
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Definitions for
Overview of adj cuddlesome
The adj cuddlesome has 1 senses? (no senses from tagged texts)
1. cuddlesome, cuddly
(inviting cuddling or hugging; "a cuddlesome baby"; "a cuddly teddybear") © 2001-2013, Demand Media, all rights reserved. The database is based on Word Net a lexical database for the English language. see disclaimer
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by J. Kent Edwards
A practical text to help students and pastors understand why and how first-person sermons can be preached with biblical integrity. While following Haddon Robinson's "big idea" preaching methodology, the author walks the readers through the steps they can take to prepare an effective first-person message.
Purchase this book.
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Parallelisms in the Bible
Parallelism, it seems this is a concept all people who study the Bible aren't familiar with.
This just means two things are similar but not exactly the same.
For example two cars might parallel parked. In the same direction on the same street, but they aren't the same car, perhaps not even the same make of car.
Two lines on a page can be parallel to each other, go the same direction, perhaps be the same length or color, but obviously they can't occupy the same space on the page.
Some churches teach this, some churches say it is blasphemy.
Perhaps the most common example of this is the book of Ruth.
To some, it's just a random story of a widow who married a relative. Now why would this story be in the Bible?
Well for one thing it's part of David and Jesus' lineage, so that might be part of it. Ruth was Jesus' great, great... (add a few more greats here) grandmother.
We also know that Ruth was a Gentile (Moabite) who believed in God, so maybe that is another purpose for the story, to show some Gentiles believed in God.
Also this means that Jesus was part Gentile way back in his earthly ancestry.
But perhaps this story is a lot more than that, some believe it is a story about a "kinsman-redeemer".
They believe Boaz to be a type of Christ.
In that he was a blood relative of Ruth. Rom 1:3; Heb 2:14
He paid the price for a forfeited inheritance. 1 Pet 1:18-19
He was willing to redeem her. Heb 10:7
This is an example God caring for his people. Ruth 2:12
Perhaps this story reveals part of the very nature of God and his love for us.
Another example of this is the book of Hosea.
Perhaps it's just a book about a Prophet with an unfaithful wife during a time when Israel was repeatedly unfaithful to God.
..or, perhaps it's a story about God's faithfulness to Israel even when Israel was unfaithful to him.
Again, revealing part of the very nature of who God is.
There are at least a dozen or so other examples in the Bible,
Another common one is Ezekiel 28, some believe this to be a story only about the King of Tyre.
Others believe him to be a type of Satan,
A description of this person is likened to a description of Satan himself.
Some say these things "are the mysteries of the kingdom of Heaven" (Matt 13:11; Luke 8:10; 1 Cor 4:1 ) that only only be known if the Holy Spirit reveals them to you.
Others say it's adding meaning to the Bible that isn't really there.
All I can say is, pray about it and see what God reveals to you.
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A few more examples.
Some believe this verse to be talking about Jesus, others do not.
Compare these verses with Matt 27, Matt 15 and John 18 & 19.
Another example.
Isa 35:7 The scorched land will become a pool And the thirsty ground springs of water; In the haunt of jackals, its resting place, Grass becomes reeds and rushes.
Isa 35:9 No lion will be there, Nor will any vicious beast go up on it; These will not be found there. But the redeemed will walk there,
Compare these verses with Rev 21 & 22.
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