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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/91936
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The Thing #7
A comic review article by: Jason Sacks
What an absolutely charming comic book.
So the Thing's longtime girlfriend Alicia has a new boyfriend. Ben, naturally, is jealous, so when he gets a chance to take Alicia out on a date for her birthday, he imagines all kinds of grandiose ideas. After each idea is shot down as unexciting, Ben hits upon an idea that only he could deliver for Alicia: a trip to ancient Greece. Naturally, things don't turn out quite as planned and wacky hijinks ensue. Eventually, though, everything works out in the end. Or does it?
This comic has the feel of a good sitcom in the middle of its run. The characters are fun, lively, and three-dimensional, while the plot grows organically out of the characters themselves. Like all great sitcoms, the cast of Fantastic Four is like a family, and the charm of the story grows out of the reader's familiarity and comfort with the family. The readers share Ben's apprehension and frustration with Alicia dating a newcomer. Who is this Arlo and what right does he have to come between the classic couple of Ben and Alicia? Sure, Arlo seems nice, but he's different. He's an outsider. He has no right to steal Ben's girl, even if he is honest and good and forthright and frankly probably a better match for Alicia than Ben is. No matter. The classic structure must be maintained, and Ben has to win Alicia back in the end.
Slott delivers the perfect sort of plot for this story, full of humor and charm and good cheer. Hercules and Lockjaw both appear - they're as much a part of the extended family as Jerry's Uncle Leo is in Seinfeld - and each has very funny bits of business to perform.
It really is a shame that this comic has hovered under the radar and is about to be cancelled. In the hands of Slott (and very professional cartoonist Kieron Dwyer, who does a very solid job on the art), this is the sort of light-hearted but intelligent fun that is increasingly hard to find from the Big Two. There's no Civil War here.
Community Discussion
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/91958
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finding any excuse
Ask awaySubmitNext pageArchive
"Here you leave today and enter the world of
yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy…"
all original photos x
(Source: practicallydisney, via sleepingdisaster-away)
"All the hardest, coldest people you meet,
were once as soft as water.
And that’s the tragedy of living."
- Iain S. Thomas (via safeguards)
(Source: theonlymagicleftisart, via blue-eyes-rainy-skies)
Brock Little,Bruce Irons,Clyde Aikau
♡ i follow everyone back ♡
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/91963
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Biotechnology is technology based on biology, agriculture, food science and medicine that genetically modifies the seed, and ultimately the plant. It’s become a necessary piece of agriculture, as farmers have to produce more crops with the same amount (or sometimes less) land and inputs. It’s also referred to as genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Recent Items for Biotechnology
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/91972
|
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
"City of God" XVI.12-14
Chapter 12:
So we begin the history of the City of God from Abraham, who got his own start in the land of the Chaldeans.
Chapter 13-14:
It may be (based on some of the Apocrypha) that Abraham's family had been persecuted for being faithful to God in Chaldea/Assyria, including Terah who lived to be in his 200s.
Monday, July 28, 2014
"City of God" XVI.10-11
Chapter 10:
We don't know much of the history of the City of God between Shem and Abraham--we know much more about the city of man and its wicked efforts to reach God through the Tower of Babel. Augustine gives us some very wise advice that I think can be applied to all of human history: "We ought to believe that at no time was the world without both kinds of men" (that is, believers and the reprobate). This is good guidance whether we're talking about the Genesis narrative, or the Middle Ages, or, well, any time in world history we wish to study.
Chapter 11:
Hebrew may have been the original language of mankind, given its association with the City of God in Abraham's time...
Saturday, July 26, 2014
"City of God" XV.7-9
Chapter 7:
How on earth did animals get to the distant islands of the earth after the flood, especially the ones which people have not yet been to?
Augustine gives many different possible reasonings, but concludes that at the end of the day that's not really the point of the story. The point is that the ark full of animals points to a church saved in Christ composed of a wide variety of peoples.
Chapter 8:
What about genetic anomalies, or even monsters (the "Cynocephalae", for one)? Did they come from Adam, or from Noah? Are they signs that God didn't know what he was doing, or made a mistake, or isn't really in control at all?
Augustine says that we miss the point here. We see one person born with "freakish" traits and cry "monster!", when in reality we lack the wide-ranging perspective that God has which might very well mean that that person, in his proper place, adds to the overall beauty of creation. "The trouble with a person who does not see the whole is that he is offended by the ugliness of a part because he does not know its context or relation to the whole." One might think here of Cindy Crawford's mole. Moles are generally considered ugly aberrations and mars on one's beauty, but I don't know that I've ever heard anyone make that claim of Ms. Crawford...
Chapter 9:
We don't need to worry about men on the other side of the world--if there are even men there at all! Let's stick to what we know, and look for the City of God where we are. (And yes, Augustine does make some geographical and scientific errors here that get compounded in the Later Middle Ages, but we can hardly blame him for accepting the science of his time or for what later writers did with his work.)
Friday, July 25, 2014
"City of God" XVI.4-6
Chapter 4:
The Tower of Babel is a clear misunderstanding of how to reach God on the part of the city of man. They assumed that we could God physically, when in reality the means God has provided for reconciliation with Him is through humility. Not by raising ourselves up but by lowering ourselves to we come to see God.
Chapter 5:
When God "came down" to confound speech at Babel, this did not mean that He moved geographically, but rather that He stooped in dignity to move among men. This was part of the reason He was so angry at the idea of the tower, for He is everywhere and does not need to be built "up" to.
Chapter 6:
God speaks to His attending angels in a way different from that in which He speaks to us: namely, He doesn't have to dumb it down or filter in any way--He speaks and they obey.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
"City of God" XVI.3
Chapter 3:
Augustine describes the children of Noah and lays out what little we know of them from Scripture.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
"City of God" XVI.1-2
Chapter 1:
Does the City of God, in history, "continue unbroken, or [was it] so interrupted by periods of unholiness that not a single worshiper of the true God remained?"
Scripture is simply unclear between Noah and Abraham.
Chapter 2:
In the children of Noah, we see prefigured the City of God and the city of man, as well as a lesson on how to read Scripture in general [a lesson which I do not completely buy, but which is at least worthy of discussion]:
The point of Scripture is to teach us what matters about God and His City--if there is anything there that seems superfluous, it is there to highlight what does matter. I would rather say that if there is anything there that seems superfluous, it is because we lack the wisdom/holiness to understand what it is trying to teach us.
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
"City of God" XV.25-27
Chapter 25:
In this excellent little section on God's anger (reprinted below from CCEL), Augustine notes that God's anger is not the Lord losing control, but rather is His response to and punishment of sin. This is never disconnected from reason (even when focused on irrational animals), but rather is designed both to teach us about God and about what sin deserves and, presumably, give us a chance to repent when we hear that it's coming.
Chapter 26:
So when the anger of God was poured out on the world in a flood, God likewise provided us with a picture of His mercy in Noah and the ark, which is a picture of Christ and the church.
Chapter 27:
We must understand the story of the flood both as literally true and as being a picture of something higher than itself--namely of the destruction of the city of man and the salvation of the City of God.
Monday, July 21, 2014
"City of God' XV.23-24
Chapter 23:
In the giants and nephilim and other such creatures and beings and people as described in Scripture, we see on display all the characteristics valued by the city of man: power, size, sexual lust, and so on:
Chapter 24:
God even sets the lifespan of those in the city of man, as we see when He gave the antediluvians a hundred and twenty years to live before He destroyed all but Noah and his family.
Friday, July 18, 2014
"City of God" XV.21-22
Chapter 21:
Even the structure of Genesis puts the emphasis on the heavenly city, rather than the earthly one-- the latter "begins and ends with a murderer," the former "begins with the man who hoped to call upon the name of the Lord God, for the invocation of God is the whole and highest preoccupation of the City of God during its pilgrimage in this world."
Again, both of these cities are under the sovereign rule of the Lord:
God fashions two kinds of pottery: the vessels fashioned by His wrath and fit only for contempt and the vessels made by His mercy and meant to be honored. To the former He pays in punishment the doom they earn; to the latter He bestows, as a gift of grace, a destiny they never could have deserved.
What's more, this division between the two cities is intentional on God's part:
God's purpose in this [division] is that the heavenly City, during its exile on earth, by contrasting itself with the vessels of wrath, should learn not to expect too much from the freedom of the power of choice, but should trust in the 'hope to call upon the name of the Lord God.
Chapter 22:
The two cities, however, are mingled together in this world. We can discriminate between them by examining their different responses to beauty. The earthly city desires physical beauty. And while physical beauty is no bad thing--indeed, it is a gift from God-- it is not to be considered the most important kind of beauty. The most important kind of beauty, the love of which sets the heavenly city apart from the earthly one, is the love of virtue.
Thursday, July 17, 2014
"City of God" XV.20
Chapter 20:
Why does the Bible even bother to tell us about Cain's line, if they're to be destroyed in the Flood? Basically, because of the type it provides of the relationship between the city of man and the City of God. Augustine presents several possible interpretations (some which he's already noted) of the reasons specific things are noted in the Scriptures. The big point, however, is that Cain's line represents sin and rebellion, while Seth's represents restoration and faith in God.
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
"City of God" XV.17-19
Chapter 17:
Adam, then, was the source of both cities--the one headed by Cain and his descendants (who have only a very limited family tree in Scripture, symbolizing their dedication to earthly peace and ownership of the passing world. The other headed by Abel and Seth, focused on the heavenly things, persecuted by the earthly city, and founded by "resurrection" of the soul by the hand of God. ("Seth," Augustine says, means "resurrection.")
Chapter 18:
In Abel, Seth, Enos, and Enoch, we see types of those who are brought into the Heavenly City by "the election of grace".
That is, we must not look to ourselves for the reason we are in the City of God--that is the nature of Cain's city. Instead, we must look to God Himself as the source of our salvation. This salvation will one day be fulfilled by our translation from this earthly city into the heavenly one, just as Enoch typified.
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
"City of God" XV.16
Chapter 16:
Obviously, the first men had to take their siblings and children as spouses, though this is denied to us now. "Just as this is the best thing to do when natural necessity compels it, it becomes all the more wicked when moral obligation condemns it."
Augustine gives us evidence of this:
This can be proved as follows. The supreme human law is love and this law is best respected when men, who both desire and ought to live in harmony, so bind themselves by the bonds of social relationships that no one man monopolizes more than one relationship, and many different relationships are distributed as widely as possible, so that a common social life of the greatest number may best be fostered.
That is, when there are only a few people in the world, we have to just love who we can as best we can. When the number grows, we are bound to go outside of our families to love others well. "Thus, once there was no necessity for the old arrangement, it ceased to have any moral validity." Even custom and tradition get on board with this new state of affairs:
In general, custom has great power both in provoking and preventing the play of human passion. In this matter, custom keeps concupiscence in bounds and, therefore, any detraction from or destruction of custom is branded as criminal. Thus, unjust as it is to encroach, out of greed, on another's property, it is still more wicked to transgress, out of lust, the limits of established morals.
Thus, the foundation of the earthly city is certainly this act of marriage and child-rearing. Yet, the foundation of the heavenly City is regeneration:
The union of male and female is, then, so far as mortal living goes, the seed-bed, so to speak, from which a city must grow; but, while the city of earth needs only human generation, the City of heaven demands a spiritual regeneration to escape from the taint of the generative act.
While Augustine perhaps puts too much of the weight of original sin on the sexual act, his point is still a good one. The physical and natural continuation of the human species is necessary to the flourishing of the city of man--just try having an underpopulated nation and see where it gets you! However, no one enters that way into the Kingdom of God. That comes by faith, which is the result of grace converting the soul away from self worship and to belief in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Monday, July 14, 2014
"City of God" XV.14-15
Chapter 14:
We should, however, trust most of the Biblical Genesis chronology. They knew what a "day" and a "year" were, and had the same sort as we do. We need not assume that a "900 year" life span really means a "90 year" one or anything of that nature.
Chapter 15:
Along with these longer life-spans, we should assume an appropriate adjustment of all the aspects of human life. That is, instead of puberty starting at 13, it starts at 130, instead of menopause starting in the, well, whenever it starts (I'm a dude, I don't have to know that stuff) it starts in the 500s, 600s, or 700s, or whatever. This maintains the same humanity that we've got while drastically increasing the available child-bearing years (I assume that gestation is still 9 months...)
Saturday, July 12, 2014
"City of God" XV.13
Chapter 13:
When we find discrepancies in our texts and translations, we may apply a critical approach in a spirit of charity. That is, we should assume honest mistakes rather than malice or intent on the part of authors and copyists. (Though of course if we do find evidence of such malice, we should be honest about that too!)
Friday, July 11, 2014
"City of God" XV.10-12
Chapter 10-12:
Again the problem of the age of the antediluvian peoples is a sticky one. Discrepancies between the Septuagint and the Hebrew texts raise questions about the proper age of these individuals, especially Methuselah, who by one count may have actually survived the flood! The main point is that there were enough people around who lived long enough to actually do the things that Scripture attributed to them. We don't need to get tricky with our math to make up for otherwise improbable events and occurrences.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/91973
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Reviews by Roland Moriz
PHP-Perlinfo (0.03) *
Imho a useless Module: This is Perl, not PHP.
Perl already has enough working ways to provide information about the Perl binary and installed modules. Just do "perl -V" and play (read the POD) a bit with CPAN shell and/or CPANPLUS.
And hey, why does phpinfo() on php-cli return html crap?
Oops, no seperation between data-retrieving and output?!
Do we really need to "port" this "level" to Perl? I doubt.
Object-PerlDesignPatterns (0.03) *****
This documentation module is by far the best resource describing the implementation of common OOP designpatterns with perl.
The author released this module as a collection of his great wiki at which I can also recommend to every OOP interested perl programmer.
Thank you very much Scott and keep up the good work!
PAR (0.73) *****
it's just incredible useful :-)
Config-Simple (4.55) *****
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/91974
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package MKDoc::ECommerce; use strict; use warnings; our $VERSION = '0.01'; =head1 NAME MKDoc::ECommerce - Online Shop functionality for MKDoc =head1 SYNOPSIS =head1 SUMMARY =head1 EXPORTS None. =head1 KNOWN BUGS None, which probably means plenty of unknown bugs :) =head1 ABOUT MKDoc is a web content management system written in Perl which focuses on standards compliance, accessiblity and usability issues, and multi-lingual websites. At MKDoc Ltd we have decided to gradually break up our existing commercial software into a collection of completely independent, well-documented, well-tested open-source CPAN modules. Ultimately we want MKDoc code to be a coherent collection of module distributions, yet each distribution should be usable and useful in itself. L is part of this effort. You could help us and turn some of MKDoc's code into a CPAN module. You can take a look at the existing code at If you are interested in some functionality which you would like to see as a standalone CPAN module, send an email to . =head1 AUTHOR Copyright 2003 - MKDoc Holdings Ltd. Author: Jean-Michel Hiver This module is free software and is distributed under the same license as Perl itself. Use it at your own risk. =head1 SEE ALSO Help us open-source MKDoc. Join the mkdoc-modules mailing list: =cut
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/91975
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Vibrate On Call Connect 10 goes free for BlackBerry 10 users
Vibrate on Call Connect
By James Richardson on 1 May 2014 05:19 am EDT
• Custom LED setting option
• Vibrate on each call
• Set Vibrate with custom LED
• Set LED for time/throughout the call
More information/Download Vibrate On Call Connect 10 for BlackBerry 10
Thx I got it now.
Posted via CB10
Prince Onos
Posted via Z30
Use it n love it
Posted via CB10
Really like this idea!
Posted via CB10
You don't have to put your phone to your ears really, just look at the screen. If it has been answered, for sure you will see the counter. Anyway, thanks for made it free forever now.
Sorry for my English.
Posted via CB10
Not necessarily. My counter starts while it's ringing.
Posted via CB10
Lol I always use speaker mode so I never hold it up to my ear anyways
Just listen for someone to say "hello"....
Kylo Stilo
Posted via QNX
omega supreme
Orrr, you could just use the speakerphone if you don't want to hold it to your head and save on your battery life.
Posted via CB10
What's with CrackBerry and the barrage of blogs for apps lately? Although I do appreciate it and find it informative, it seems like other news has been far and few between.
Posted via CB10
Shitty apps at that!
Posted via CB10
I think it is the exact opposite.
When there is no news, fill the void with non-news articles. Like the TV news.
That being said I appreciate to have many apps reviews.
Posted via CB10
I'll give this a try!
Posted using the best phone ever, the Z30!
Useless app and I have to leave it open to run the background. I wonder why it's free
I'm glad people see a benefit to this app but I'm not one of them so I'll politely decline the invitation to download it.
Cheers. :)
If you're listening to calls through the handset (Vs various other methods that allow you to keep the phone away from your head), those few seconds before the call do little to protect your brain from proximity/exposure of the phone during the conversation that follows. Hard to believe there is a need for this app, if the above is truly the intended use. It's also hard to believe the permissions (although selectable) are necessary. Seems like more of a platform to market the dev's other apps - an excellent reason to offer this app free of charge. I think the author's original write-up summed it up nicely: "...there isn't a reason to give this one a go."
Downloaded, Reviewed, deleted.
I disagree with tour first sentence. Those seconds during which the phone is initiated are the ones where your device emits the most energy to connect.
More energy in a very short time, so yes it is valuable.
Posted via CB10
"Available for all BlackBerry 10 devices there isn't a reason to give this one a go." Freudian slip, typo, crap editing... whatever you want to call it, at least it's correct.
Finally something I was looking for, I had this on bbos7, where my mom never answers her calls so I just leave on the table to call like 10times and wait till it vibrates to know when she finally picks up
I find the vibration very useful as well. I use the Power Tools to achieve it.
Posted from my Incredible Z10 using CB10.
They should make a flash notification app....
Posted via CB10
wow, watcher has this plus more goodies and its free
Dermot Pearson
This warrants an article in Crackberry? New native apps must be pretty thin on the ground for this to make the grade.
Posted via CB10
I can see battery info on a locked screen only. Is it supposed to be this way?
Posted via CB10
Halifax Guy
If one uses a Bluetooth headset, this app is not needed in the least.
Posted via CB10
I swear my z10 did this before ( not used for calls for a few months) was it not an option in main settings??
Posted via CB10
Definitely not even worth free. Crashed my phone multiple times.
Posted via CB10
Astro Boyzone
This is nice... hope to have a perfect call recorder app soon...
Posted via CB10
Gladys Mauroza
Got download! Let's see how good it is. I turned off the vibrate juice up battery.
Posted via CB10
Vijaychandra pai
This app doesn't work on my Z10. Is there any setting I may be missing ?
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/91982
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vyhledat jakékoliv slovo, například plopping:
1. Another word for Vagina.
2. A word to describe someone you don't really like.
1. You're patoonchi needs to be cleaned.
2. Brah, it smells like patoonchi up in here
1. Bro, this chick is a patoonchi.
2. Look at all these patoonchis!
od uživatele RataTattatty 18. Leden 2013
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/91987
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My Heart Will Blorp On
Of all the dangers faced by ancient mariners, none was more deadly or feared than the Giant Blorpular Sealberg. These free-floating islands of blubber concealed as much as nine-tenths of their mass below the surface, just waiting to bounce any ship foolish enough to pass too close.
1. But Mariners could avoid such a disaster by feeding a sealburg a fishy treat. And maybe giving it a kiss on da forehead.
2. *squee!!!* he’s absolutely adorable!
3. “No, no, not even that aberrant leaf, shall spoil my inner calm”
4. TwilightGuru says:
ITS…………….SO………..FAT!!-(and cute)
5. CoconutCheez says:
just watched Glee again… and then i see THIS. Music to my heart. (and he looks really comfy so maybe it’s telling me to go to sleep)
6. wish I could swim like this
7. and why is he/she swimming in gatorade? lol
8. He looks so serene! But still in need of a hug, of course! *hugs da blorpie!*
9. I seriously ‘ahahahahah’ed at “my blorp will go on.”
10. Hey! Where you find that picture of me?!?!
…Oh, wait. I don’t have whiskers…..
11. By thy wild whiskers and beepable nose,
Wherefore bounceth thou me?
12. T.resa – I bounce thee, and holpen thee up on thy palfrey
13. i’d be bouncing around,too, if i were floating in green stuff of unknown origin with a random banana peel next to me. blory says ‘i’d clean up but i don’t got no hands. ‘scuse the inexplicable mess. can i spend the night on board YER house?’
14. Blorpberg right ahead!
15. Is that a … feather?
Not so innocent a picture now, is it?
16. instituteofanimalhaberdashery says:
He looks just like my yoga instructor… no joke
17. I b’lieve that is a eucalyptus leaf, if my eyes do not deceive me…
This reminds me of warm piggy, but without the neck-life-jacket. Ahhnnn.
18. (?…Donde esta Leonrdo de Caprio?)
19. (oops:;) LeonArdo de C… )
20. Look! It’s Rule of Cuteness #40: Aquatic Edition
I’m guessing this is a zoo blorp because, for some reason, zoos always have eucalyptus trees everywhere. I guess they look exotic?
earlybird1 Don’t mention the piggy- you’ll just rile them up again. (I thought it looked like hims too)
21. Looks like me in a wetsuit!
Ahh, I am one with the water…
23. Acshully, if you look closely, you can see that he’s floating in rainbow stew.
24. @Leilani: I see it! Now he and Mr Froggy can make the Rainbow Connection… :-)
25. I don’t think I’ve ever been that happy in all my life.
26. Blorpy McBlorpitude encased in lime jello. Ahhh, the bliss. :)
27. GoodMorningCall says:
Serious blorpitude.
In other news — can someone explain exactly why *blorp* is NOT in the glossary? It’s certainly made it into the lexicon at our house.
28. The bliss on his lisstle face is enchanting. Love!
29. It’s good to see that Wilford Brimley’s still active and getting some exercise. It’s good for the diabeetus, you know.
30. Noelegy–you made me snort my coffee…..
31. …… I am so, like, jealous………
32. Awwwww….. he’s taking a face sunbath — in perfect calm and equilibrium. Niiiiiice!
33. *Blorpular* AHHHH finally an accurate descriptor for my body! I can floats good too.
34. That’s an odd looking buoy.
35. It looks dreamy, you can see her wittle belly button, they wouldn’t let Barabra Eden show hers in I dream of Jinny good thing they dont have sensorship at the zoo.
36. this blorp has an “insie”!!
37. Awwww, he (?) must’ve been a cat in his previous life. He’s all “Sunbeam!!”
38. He looks like I could just hug him and he couldn’t do nufink about it!
39. Hon Glad, I thank thee, I need all the holpen I can get. And all the palfreys, too.
40. Reminds me of that old Cyndi Blorper song:
Well I see them every night in pools of green
In the pages of a blue buoy magazine
Hey I’ve been thinking of a new sensation
I’m picking up good vibrations
Do I wanna go out with a sea lion’s roar
I wanna go to the South pole and get me some more
I say (and it’s with all behooval)
I say this guy gets my seal of approval
She blorp, he blorp, a-we blorp
I blorp, you blorp, a-they blorp
Be-blorp, be-blorp-a-lu-blorp
I hope he will understand
She blorp, he blorp, a-we blorp
I blorp, you blorp, a-they blorp
Be-blorp, be-blorp-a-lu, she blorp
Oo, she do, she blorp, she blorp.
41. Oh the blorp-attude..
42. Am I the only one who thought of the Floob-boober-bab-boober-bubs from Dr. Seuss’ On Beyond Zebra?–OK.jpg
43. My Heart Will Blorp On?? BWHAHAHA!
How about “My Blorp Will Go On”? Really, put the word “blorp” in just about any random sentence and it’s golden.
I love/hate how this site makes me laugh. Why hate? Because no one else I know seems to get why I find it so funny. Phooey.
44. Thank you for that, TUM. :lol: I’m going to be singing that the rest of the day!!!!
45. Theresa – I wit ye yeade.
T.U.M. – As I Only know ‘Girls just want to have fun’ I am perfectly willing to accept that Cyndi Lauper, er Blorper sings it .
Just for fun, why don’t you send it to her, or blorp it onto her website.
46. Arrr, tis yer giant seal-slug, that un is. Arrrr.
47. the heading on this post is REDONK!!!! :D
48. Blorp!!!!! Bouncing baby blubber Blorps!
Um….. ok, wait, I can think of something better…. maybe…..
49. Von Zeppelin says:
@Vicki–I remember the floob-boober-bab-boober-bubs! They float around like blubbery tubs. I have always been pretty fond of high gargalorums, thnadners, and quandaries also. Best Seuss book in the entire canon of the Doctor’s work.
(Don’t have my copy in front of me–what was the name of the shy little creature with one rabbitty ear? Definitely a CO candidate!)
50. VonZeppelin, I believe you refer to the Flunnel. (And yes, I had to look through the book.)
51. KatieZientek says:
teh belly button!!! *dead*
52. @Vicki – No, you’re not. First thing I thought when I saw the photo, though I’d have had to look in the book (which is on a shelf eight feet from where I sit) to remember their name. I would have posted a reference to them myself, if I hadn’t perused the comments first to see if someone beat me to it. Good job. (Likewise to skippymom for remembering the Flunnel, lookup or no. Too bad he’s been out of his tunnel just one-th, eh?)
53. Does anyone else suspect that he just ate a seagull?
54. @Andy: I didn’t even need to look up the name in my copy of the book (which happens to be in the other room). On Beyond Zebra is, I think, my favorite Seuss book. I read it so many times when I was little.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/91995
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Police assault case sent to higher court
January 19, 2013
ESCANABA — An Escanaba man accused of assaulting an officer and resisting arrest by another officer was bound over this week to Delta County Circuit Court on the two felonies....
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Jan-21-13 3:37 PM
Worse than that, iwilldefeatyou, is the fact that the community won't act on the unacceptable level of justice kids get here. One year in jail for scarring a little girl for life. When/if she acts out because she is so scarred she can't handle it, she'll be punished worse than the one who knocked her off track - because it's easier to deal with the weak than the abusers and con-artists.
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Jan-19-13 1:41 PM
How much you wanna bet he gets locked up longer than the guy who sexually molested a 5 year old girl over a 3 year span? (Hint: That guy only got sentenced to 1 year in jail)
2 Agrees | 1 Disagrees | Report Abuse »
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92030
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Historian : definition of Historian and synonyms of Historian (English)
definitions - Historian
historian (n.)
1.a person who is an authority on history and who studies it and writes about it
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Merriam Webster
HistorianHis*to"ri*an (?), n. [F. historien.]
1. A writer of history; a chronicler; an annalist.
Even the historian takes great liberties with facts. Sir J. Reynolds.
2. One versed or well informed in history.
Great captains should be good historians. South.
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definition (more)
definition of Wikipedia
synonyms - Historian
historian (n.)
see also - Historian
historian (n.)
history, story
-Alan Knight (historian) • Albert Goodwin (historian) • Allan Bromley (historian) • Allan Chapman (historian) • Allen Johnson (historian) • Alternative historian • Anarchist historian • Andrew Phillips (historian) • Andrew Wilson (historian) • Angus Mackay (historian) • Antony Preston (naval historian) • Augustin Cochin (historian) • Basil Williams (historian) • Bill Holm (art historian) • Bob Clarke (historian) • Brian Harrison (historian) • Bruce Nelson (historian) • Bruce Taylor (historian) • Charles Hadfield (historian) • Charles Mills (historian) • Charles Ross (historian) • Charles Townshend (historian) • Christopher Andrew (historian) • Christopher Bell (military historian) • Christopher Collier (historian) • Christopher Hill (historian) • Christopher Lloyd (art historian) • Colin White (historian) • David Bates (historian) • David Black (historian) • David Carpenter (historian) • David Christian (Russian/World Historian) • David Christian (historian) • David Day (historian) • David Ditchburn (historian) • David Donald (historian) • David Lister (origami historian) • David Littman (historian) • David Montgomery (historian) • David Smith (baseball historian) • David Starkey (maritime historian) • David Stevenson (WWI historian) • David Watkin (historian) • David Williams (historian) • Deepak Kumar (historian) • Desmond Morton (historian) • Donald Davidson (historian) • Dorothy Thompson (historian) • Douglas Cole (historian) • Duncan Campbell (ancient historian) • Edmund Calamy (historian) • Edward James (historian) • Edward Winter (chess historian) • Environmental historian • Eugen Fischer (historian) • Family Historian • Festus (historian) • Francis Jones (Welsh historian) • Fred Alexander (historian) • Fred Anderson (historian) • Fred Wright (historian) • Frederic Seebohm (historian) • Frederick Taylor (historian) • Gary Sheffield (historian) • Geoffrey Parker (historian) • George Dyson (science historian) • George Forrest (historian) • George Hilton (historian) • Gordon Johnson (historian) • Gordon Wright (historian) • Harold James (historian) • Henri Grégoire (historian) • Henri Michel (historian) • Historian fallacy • Historian of the United States House of Representatives • Historian of the United States Senate • James Adair (historian) • James Burke (science historian) • James Chapman (historian) • James E. Fraser (historian) • James Williamson (historian) • Jeremy Black (historian) • Jerry Bryant (historian) • Jim Bennett (historian) • Joan Evans (art historian) • John Baker (legal historian) • John Boardman (art historian) • John Davies (historian) • John Elliott (historian) • John Erickson (historian) • John Fortescue (military historian) • John Gillis (historian) • John Haywood (historian) • John Henry (historian) • John Higham (historian) • John Mooney (historian) • John Morrill (historian) • John Morris (historian) • John Richardson (art historian) • John Roberts (historian) • John Rutherford (historian) • John Sadler (historian) • John Saltmarsh (historian) • John Thornton (historian) • John Vincent (historian) • John White (art historian) • John Wilson (historian) • John the Deacon (Neapolitan historian) • Jonathan Elliot (historian) • Joseph Fletcher (historian) • Juan Álvarez (historian) • Julius Lippert (historian) • Justin (historian) • Justin McCarthy (American historian) • Leon Fink (historian) • Malchus (historian) • Martin Goodman (historian) • Martin Kemp (art historian) • Medical historian • Michael Barrier (historian) • Michael Brooks (historian and journalist) • Michael Brown (historian) • Michael Burns (historian) • Michael Cook (historian) • Michael Crawford (historian) • Michael Hunter (historian) • Michael Jones (historian) • Michael Phillips (historian) • Michael Roe (historian) • Michael Wood (historian) • Michel Brunet (historian) • Mike Gonzalez (historian) • Mike Wallace (historian) • Muslim historian • Naval historian • Nicholas Hammond (historian) • Office of the Historian • Official Historian of Puerto Rico • Operational historian • Peter Barton (historian) • Peter Brown (historian) • Peter Fisher (historian) • Peter Green (historian) • Peter Hart (historian) • Peter James (historian) • Peter Lamont (historian) • Peter Mansfield (historian) • Peter Watson (intellectual historian) • Public historian • Qin Hui (historian) • R. F. Foster (historian) • Records of the Grand Historian • Richard A. Baker (Senate Historian) • Richard Holmes (military historian) • Richard Muther (art historian) • Richard Powers (dance historian) • Richard White (historian) • Robert Bartlett (historian) • Robert Graham (historian) • Robert W. Smith (historian) • Robert Witt (art historian) • Robert Wright (historian) • Royall Tyler (historian) • Samuel Johnson (Nigerian historian) • Sheldon Hall (film historian) • Susan Hogan (historian) • T. J. Clark (historian) • Tad Jones (historian) • Terry Smith (art historian) • Thallus (historian) • The Historian • The Public Historian • Thomas C. Mendenhall (historian) • Thomas Jones (historian) • Thomas Stephens (historian) • Thomas Taylor (historian) • Tibor Szamuely (historian) • Timaeus (historian) • Titus Labienus (historian) • Trevor Thomas (historian) • Victor Ehrenberg (historian) • Viktor Ehrenberg (historian) • Walter Wright (oral historian) • Werner Buchholz (German historian) • Wheelock Whitney (historian) • William Ashley (economic historian) • William Barr (Arctic historian) • William Bright (historian) • William Erskine (historian) • William Fraser (historian) • William Gibson (historian) • William Glen (geologist and historian) • William Henry (historian) • William Hutton (historian) • William J. Morgan (historian) • William James (naval historian) • Winston Churchill as historian • Xanthus (historian) • Æthelweard (historian)
analogical dictionary
Record keeping redirects here.
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it.[1] Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is concerned with events preceding written history, the individual is a historian of prehistory. Although "historian" can be used to describe amateur and professional historians alike, it is reserved more recently for those who have acquired graduate degrees in the discipline.[2] Some historians, though, are recognized by equivalent training and experience in the field.[2] "Historian" became a professional occupation in the late nineteenth century at roughly the same time that physicians also set standards for whom could enter the field.
Objective historian
During the Irving v Penguin Books and Lipstadt trial it became evident that the court need to identify what was an "objective historian" in the same vein as the reasonable person, and reminiscent of the standard traditionally used in English law of "the man on the Clapham omnibus".[3]
In summarising Gray's judgement, Wendie E. Schneider distils these seven points for what he meant by an objective historian:[5]
1. She must treat sources with appropriate reservations;
2. she must not dismiss counterevidence without scholarly consideration;
4. she must clearly indicate any speculation;
History analysis
India has a long record of historiography with chronicles being maintained by dynasties, monks and communities. The texts of ancient and medieval India are in verse, unlike Europe where serious work in history was in prose. The Vedas, Puranas and the two epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata narrate many events in ancient India although not always in a linear fashion. The Mahabharata is in fact an epic centered mainly around the House of the Kurus, who ruled a large part of northern India. It was progressively called Jai, Vijaya, Bharata and finally Mahabharata. The Puranas are also chronicles of past events and owe their name to the Sanskrit word Purah ( Before ). Jain and Buddhist monks also chronicled many events in ancient India in their scriptures.[8]
19th century Germany
Modern historiographical techniques were dramatically advanced in the German universities of the 19th century. Leopold von Ranke (1795 – 1886) was a founder of modern source-based historiography. His research seminar for graduate students set professional standards for historical training at the University of Berlin (1824 - 1871). His many books demonstrated how to rely upon primary sources in writing narrative history on international politics (Aussenpolitik). He dug through the archives of Europe, especially those of the Vatican and Venice, whose ambassadors followed events very closely and reported on them at length. Ranke thus sent the researcher to the archives for primary sources; there he should transcend his personal predispositions and parochial loyalties, and write objective history "wie es eigentlich gewesen" ("as it actually happened").[14] Highly influential German classicist historians were Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776-1831) and Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903)[15] Historians of Germany included Johann Gustav Droysen (1808-84), Heinrich von Sybel (1817-95), and Heinrich von Treitschke (1834-96). They deliberately avoided social, economic, and cultural topics because they might undermine the national political development which their writing celebrated. Von Sybel in 1859 founded the Historische Zeitschrift[16], which set the world standard for a scholarly history journal.
Twentieth-century developments
Education and profession
Professional historians typically work in colleges and universities, archival centers, government agencies, museums, and as freelance writers and consultants.[24] The job market for new PhDs in history is poor and getting worse, with many relegated to part-time "adjunct" teaching jobs with low pay and no benefits.[25]
See also
1. ^ "Historian". Wordnetweb.princeton.edu. http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=Historian. Retrieved June 28, 2008.
2. ^ a b Herman, A. M. (1998). Occupational outlook handbook: 1998-99 edition. Indianapolis: JIST Works. Page 525.
3. ^ Schneider, Wendie Ellen (June 2001). "Past Imperfect: Irving v. Penguin Books Ltd., No. 1996-I-1113, 2000 WL 362478 (Q. B. Apr. 11), appeal denied (Dec. 18, 2000)". The Yale Law Journal 110 (8): 1531–1545. http://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/110-8/schneider.pdf.
4. ^ Schneider 2001, p. 1534.
5. ^ Schneider 2001, pp. 1534, 1535.
8. ^ Michael S. Dodson, "Contesting Translations: Orientalism and the Interpretation of the 'Vedas,'" Modern Intellectual History, (Apr 2007) 4#1 pp 43-59
15. ^ Anthony Grafton, "Roman Monument" History Today September 2006 online.
16. ^ Helen P. Liebel, "Philosophical Idealism in the Historische Zeitschrift, 1859-1914," History and Theory (1964) 3#3 pp. 316-330 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/2504235 in JSTOR
18. ^ Eric Foner, ed. The New American History (1997)
21. ^ bls.gov : Social Scientists, Other[dead link]
Further reading
• Barnes, Harry Elmer. A history of historical writing (1962)
External links
All translations of Historian
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92040
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Take the 2-minute tour ×
I got a drill tool when I press the handle and face the drill bit up, it does not functioning at all but if I face it down, it works.
What is the possible problem?
share|improve this question
The tool is broken? – Michael Karas Jan 25 at 12:01
Maybe, is it able to repair? – user19477 Jan 25 at 14:29
Hold old is the drill and has it been worked really hard? – Jack Jan 25 at 19:44
If you face the drill up, but pull forward on the chuck, does the drill run? – Freiheit Jan 25 at 20:06
@Freiheit, worn brushes with worn thrust washer. Yep, that would do it. – Fiasco Labs Jan 26 at 1:38
2 Answers 2
Oddball way for something to fail, is this a corded or battery powered drill motor?
If the drill motor is powered from house current through a cord, I have seen the cord break where it enters the handle because the strain/flex relief boot that is supposed to be there was less than adequate or the rubber had rotted and it broke off the cord allowing the cord to bend sharply and eventually break the conductors. Gravity causes it to flex and it is conceivable that the flexing closes the break when you try to drill in one direction and opens up when you reverse it. The cord will have to be replaced, make sure the replacement cord includes the strain relief.
If the drill motor has a detachable cord, you have a worse problem as one or both of the contacts in the cord has gone bad and you will need to replace both the cord and the contacts in the drill handle socket it plugs into as one or both of them will be burned due to arcing caused by the poor contact and will quickly destroy the new cord as well. Quality manufactured tools will have the handle socket part that contains the contacts available as well as a replacement cord, otherwise when this happens, the drill motor is a throwaway.
share|improve this answer
The cord is probably the culprit, but I had a set of brushes do that to me too. – Jack Jan 25 at 19:44
Wow, that must have been a much used tool, kind of like my DeWalt cordless that I'm having to retire here. Brushes weren't meant to use gravity pressure or armature float for contact. – Fiasco Labs Jan 26 at 1:36
It happens when the spring cooks enough from over heating to be brittle and the copper braided lead is barely hanging on. In my case it was circular saws, two to be exact, over the years, not a drill. The brushes were worn short enough to start to loose contact along with the weakened springs. – Jack Jan 26 at 2:17
@Fiasco: it is a corded powered drill motor. I think the cord was lossen or wad. I tried to push and tighten the cord inward and hold the handle. It actually works. Hmm..any possible way to self repair? P/S：I am not an expert on this kind of matter so I do not understand the brushes or spring. Mind to explain more. Thank you! – user19477 Jan 26 at 7:59
You don't need to be concerned about the brushes or spring because based on what you said it has to be a bad cord. You have to figure out how to open the tool. Once you do you'll see what's wrong. Then, if you need help fixing it, take it with you to Lowes or Home Depot and ask the person in the electric department how to fix it. They'll be glad to help. – getterdun Jan 27 at 5:56
Yes it is a self repair, the brushes may be of no concern. Depending on the make, most drills split down the middle at the handle, some split all the way down. If it splits only at the handle the fix MAY be easy, it is worth a shot, the drill is toast anyway, it will be a good learning experience. Remove the pone half, most drills but not all have the cord and trigger secured in one half of the handle. Note the wires, where they go, what type of ends are on them, most have eyelets crimped on the ends. I have on many occasions, removed the wire completely cut it off at the point that it goes into the heavy rubber boot at the handle, this is where the break usually occurs. hen you cut it, you may even see a black area inside the wire that looks out of place. That is the break. Cut off that too. Taking note before disassembly how the wires go (make a diagram) and how long each lead is cut each to their respective new, unbroken length. Be VERY careful when cutting the jacket, do not cut so deep it cuts the other insulation of the wires you are trying to restore. Go to you local hardware store that carries small gauge electrical eyelets. Then again, it may be a blade style connector. The illustration below has the eyelets on the left side of the blue and red group, a butt connector in the middle and blade or some call it spade connectors on the right side of the blue and red group.
enter image description here
Once purchased they can be crimped on the newly bared wire ends with the tool can come along with the eyelets in a kit, or a regular pair of pliers will crimp, in this case mash the connector to the wire. The latter is a little more barbaric, but it will do the job with out another expense. Always tug the wire after crimping to insure the bond is tight.
share|improve this answer
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92044
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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
Title: Sou'wester, November 1, 1957, Volume 39, Issue 7
Keywords: Newspapers;Student publications
Issue Date: 1-Nov-1957
Appears in Collections:Sou'wester 1950 to 1959
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92053
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Treetops, like you’ve (probably) never seen them before [Wallpaper]
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Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Selection, selection, selection
Events matter. The right event can really focus your story.
Wes said...
I have one of each. Daughters that is. One is adopted and one is home grown, except I can't remember which is which.
Neither of these situations apply to me, since I have a child from each source, but here goes.
Objection to conceiving: The husband is a cynic, despondent, and bitter about the world. He doesn't want to conceive because he doesn't want to bring a child into the world where he/she will have an unhappy life.
Objection to adoption: The husband is egotistical and proud of his superior genes which contributed to his looks, athletic skill, and intelligence. He is worried about being saddled with a child who does not have his exceptional physical and intellectual characteristics. Furthermore, he is apprehensive of possibly adopting an infant damaged by the birth-mother's use of drugs and alcohol.
Edittorrent said...
I can see that the "I don't want to bring a child into this stupid world" won't work in adoption, because the child is already brought!
In a weird way, because adoption is pro-active, maybe it's more of a commitment? You can definitely conceive a baby by accident, but you have to decide to adopt. So maybe the conflict might be fear of commitment of some sort, maybe because he almost doesn't trust himself to stick around and fulfill the commitment?
Wes said...
Fear of commitment works too. But it works in each situation, assuming a conscious decision is being made about trying to conceive or not.
Murphy said...
I hope you aren’t ready to kill me on this one (sorry it's so long) - but here goes:
Hero’s conflict is that he has grown up with a single mother who resents him, as he represents her unsuccessful attempt of ‘ parental blackmail’- when the guy she had hoped to keep, by getting pregnant - leaves her high and dry. Subconsciously the hero has come to believe that a child signifies the end of hopes and dreams - hadn’t all his Mother’s dreams ended the day he was born? This is why he has decided not to have children and concentrate on his career and by doing so, he thinks he will keep his hopes and his dreams alive.
He meets a woman who is willing to sacrifice her desire for children (because he is up-front with her about not wanting kids) - her motivation could be...I don’t know, maybe that she feels that his work ethic and ability to provide for her - after she has spent most of her life in abject poverty is worth the price? Only after several years of marriage she begins to see that all the money in the world can’t replace her ultimate dream of having children.
And when she tells the hero this? Well, the fact that she actually uses the term - her dream - is enough for the hero to NOT just say, no – BUT HELL NO!
(This is where your are going to kill me)...
Because I would have the heroine leave the hero - on good terms cause they do love one another and although she is devastated she does realize that she knew this coming in. She makes a choice just as he had made a choice which gets him to thinking about women and the choices that they must make in life. They are the vessel of life, so to speak, and here was the woman he loved willing to give up the man she cherishes above others, to realize her dream of having children. This causes him to reevaluate his mother’s motives. She had the same opportunity of ‘choice’ and when she chose the less noble path and it burned her, she blamed it on the only one in the equation who didn’t have a choice - him. Which gets him thinking about all the children who didn’t have a say in how they got here – so he begs his wife to come back to him, telling her that he wants them to adopt a child who needs them. One who, by the sheer act of choosing them as parents - will have been given the choice, that he wasn’t.
On the matter of conceiving, I would probably spin it that the hero has fallen in love with a deeply religious woman - and he has a fear of his child being born with um, cystic fibrosis or some other kind of hereditary disease from his side of the family. He knows the care and commitment it takes to shoulder that kind of a responsibility but, he never had to deal with the issue of worrying about it because he always assumed that a test could be done early on in a pregnancy to find out the status of the fetus –I mean, how was he supposed to know that the woman he chose to eventually marry wouldn’t care what any test had to say? Perfect or not it Wouldn’t matter to her...but what about him? Interesting...
c.e.lawson said...
I'm not entirely sure I get exactly what you mean here, but I'll give it a go anyway.
In the first instance - conceiving a child, I can see his conflict arising from something more physical/medical that has to do with, perhaps, his wife's health/the risk of bearing a child. Maybe his wife went through cancer treatment or something, and he's so glad she's once again healthy that he doesn't want to risk her health with a pregnancy. Or perhaps the pregnancy (with its hormones and such) puts his wife at a higher risk of return of her cancer. Alternative scenarios here - Maybe his mother died in childbirth, or his sister, or his first wife. Or perhaps they already tried to have a child who was stillborn, and he can't bear to risk the possibility of going through that pain again.
I'm finding the adoption scenario very difficult, for some reason. Perhaps show him to be a man who cannot put faith in 'contracts', who has had promises broken in his life, and who cannot trust that the birth mother won't someday come to "take the baby back" or who cannot trust the legal process that makes the adoption happen. Perhaps he's paralyzed by the 'choice' involved. Perhaps he made a choice in his past that had devastating consequences in his life or someone else's life?
Which would be the 'best' or 'right' child to adopt? What if he makes a mistake and chooses the 'wrong' baby?
Fascinating question. I simply love your blog.
JewelTones said...
I could come up with a couple of different options.
He might refuse conceiving a baby if he fears having a quality that he saw in his father and believes has been passed on to him via blood that he views as destructive in a major way. It doesn't mean he actually HAS this issue, just a firmly rooted belief that he *could* which leads to him operating at an extreme to counter via his characterization.
This fear could be anything from alcoholism, to his inability to stay in one place for too long, multiple marriages, anger issues, so-called "selfishness", a violent temper/control issues, heck, maybe his father used to beat his mother and ended up dead in a bar room brawl and people have always told him (because he was a teen constantly in trouble) "You're going to wind up just like your father!"
You never know how children will take things said to them and that kind of thing would/could give them serious pause about having children of their own and passing it on, especially if something that happened to the hero in recent times (of the story, that is) somehow touches on that fear.
For example, if the hero is afraid one day he'll lose control of his temper, snap and hurt someone like his father used to do when he beat his mother, siblings, him, whatever, then I'd have something in the "present" have tapped that fear where he feels he's lost that control or been accused of losing that control.
When the wife approaches him for baby-time, I can totally see him balking and refusing to do it. Who wants to pass on something so potentially harmful and make that child suffer the same self-doubt and loathing the father has been battling all his life? Nobody wants to hurt the ones they love.
Of course he'd have to learn that he's not his father, that the abusive behavior is not in him and that just because he loses control of a situation (because of course he'd have honed himself some iron clad control in every aspect of his life as a result of these fears) he CAN control his temper and not lash out in physical ways, that the wife isn't afraid of him, etc, etc, etc.
Hopefully that made sense.
The second scenario about adoption... Have the husand be an adopted child himself, have him experience that "never knew where he came from" symptomology (is that a word?), always feeling like he was on the outside looking in on his adoptive family before he ever even knew he was adopted.
Heck, that lack of blood tie could be felt in a non-existent relationship with his adoptive mother or father who could either never get over the fact that they couldn't have "real kids" or preferred the blood-related children they were able to have.
This could leave the husband unwilling to adopt in the fear that he (and even his wife) couldn't provide the adopted child with the loving home they really want and deserve and would force the hero to face the truths about his own childhood that have gone unspoken within his own family until this point.
Another option for the adoption scenario is that the hero is from a family where blood is EVERYTHING. Heritage. Lineage. Blue Blood lines running thick and rich... and he's the illegitimate son from an affair. Never quite good enough, basically written off, paid off, and told to get lost. Something to be ashamed of and of course he's thinking better to never have family ties like that because it's always a disappointment and its easier to grow up knowing you can't depend on anybody but yourself.
Someone like that would have a really hard time, I think, raising an adopted child, being nuturing and loving because they'd want to instill independence in the child eventually and teach them that they're basically on their own, which could be construed as "You're not good enough for me, you can't count on me, so don't expect me to be there for you." A tough line to walk.
Edittorrent said...
So maybe the refusal to conceive is a good way to show a deep sense of inadequacy?
Most men I know who don't want to be fathers (which are most, until they are :) would say it's about freedom-- but maybe that's just to cover up inadequacy fears?
JewelTones said...
I think it has a lot to do with fear. Fear that it means they're losing something (maybe it is freedom) is definitely plausible. That whole bachelor thing. But if you're married and already committed... I don't know. They're already in it presumably for the long haul. I think having a baby changes what the current marriage relationship is and (not to get too personal or anything) but when it came to the marriage of my parents, my father seemed to view children as rivals for my mother's attention and affection. I've heard the same type of story from a lot of my friends who have children now. The husband wants the focus and seems to resent that the woman's attention is now more on the baby than him. Sounds weird, but seems to be kind of common.
But yeah, I think the resistence to conceive is a HUGE way to show inadequacy or fear of some kind on the man's part. It represents so much and so much can often be tracked back to their relationships with their fathers and traits that are passed down or they fear will be passed down.
c.e.lawson said...
The problem with fear of losing freedom,for the specific original question, is that it doesn't (to me) differentiate between resistance to conceive and resistance to adoption, because the end result is the same - the commitment of fatherhood. The same with fear of losing the wife's attention.
Now the adoption scenario that JewelTones described above is excellent, IMO - the one about blood/heritage/lineage having such an importance in his family. I loved that one, especially because of the added layer of his own inadequacies in that area.
Murphy said...
I disagree Alicia, any guy I know, who doesn’t want kids - has a pretty good set-up because he is the kid. More likely, he is less afraid of being inadequate and more afraid of being stuck in second place. I don’t want to go ‘all basic human nature here’ but historically, women have coddled their male children more than the females and well, that creates a monster...I’m thinking the Peter Pan syndrome. A condition that is quickly cured by the arrival of the fruit of one's loins!:)
Edittorrent said...
WEll, we hope it's cured!
Murphy said...
There is always hope. Hey, is that another theme? But at the end of the day, if the 'fruit of his loins' doesn't cause him to grow up and accept adult responsibilities than he will wind up leaving his 'Wendy' and heading back to play in Neverland, right?
I'd like to think that the birth of a child is a powerful enough ‘event’ to cure leftover childhood selfishness - but, I’ve seen firsthand where some guys, just like Peter Pan, remain in the sandbox forever.
(Note: If this blog can be picked up in Neverland - I would remind my brother in-law to brush the sand off his hands before he touches his computer)!!!:D
em said...
LOL Murphy!
So, is it fear of commitment? Fear of adequacy? Fear of growing up? I'm reading a lot of 'fear'. There were only a few examples that gave men the benefit of the doubt and let them make a conscious choice through growth.
Edittorrent said...
Okay, so those are all good "conflict causes"! I'm wondering what would inspire you-- were you writing about this guy-- to choose one version over the other for his wife to demand (conception vs. adoption).
Boy, I sure am inarticulate today. Blame it on three hours of trying to un-jargonize a piece of academic writing.
c.e.lawson said...
If one of the goals of the story is to make this conflict a significant part of it, then I would choose the adoption version. This is because it seems like a much more detailed and active choice on the part of the man, with a lot of steps involved, where aspects of the conflict can be elucidated, dramatized, illustrated, etc.
In the conception issue, what acts can you use that actually show him going through the process of acceptance? Allowing her to flush "The Pill" down the toilet? Not using his condom? And even then, conception is not guaranteed. It's not immediate. And if he has doubts after she becomes pregnant, then your options are limited to abortion or 'deal with it'. Right?
But in adoption, he has to actively go to the agency, meet with the people there, sign documents, and all of the other many things that must be required in the process (having not done this myself). It just seems like a better opportunity to delve into his conflict/transformation in more detail. It is active, rather than reactive.
My two cents, anyway. This has been a nice diversion, since I'm having a hard time writing this week because my six year old has been home with a nasty virus. Thanks.
JewelTones said...
Now see, for me, I'd have said the opposite. For the conflict for the man, I'd have gone with conception over adoption because (and maybe this is sexist or something) to me the adoption angle seems more emotionally affective toward the heroine, who would have more to deal with on the conception side (see, there's that sexism thing, assume the conception issue is hers and not his, which it often is, but then there's invitro options) than the conception angle.
I think the issue of the character's conflict has a lot to do with which option you'd wind up with, so while I could see potential in the adoption conflict and really liked the whole blue blood/family lineage idea mentioned above, my gut keeps leaning toward conception. I think it's because I see the man's final agreement to either option as the end of the journey (and the book) rather than the actual story.
So maybe that's my reasonsing. Adoption seems more like it touches on a female's connection to a character while conception seems more male relevant?
Wow. Not exactly a well-thought out reason but it's what I'd probably wind up with. I'll have to ponder the "why" of it a bit more and hope the intuition become writer's reason. :)
Edittorrent said...
Yes, CE, truth is, uh, a man's active choice isn't necessarily needed for conception... I mean, he doesn't have to think, "Okay, let's have sex and make a baby." Sometimes it's not even an actual choice but... just happens. :)
But adoption really would require his active consent and participation.
Jewel, I also had the idea that going with adoption might come because you have made the woman into another important character-- someone who has her own journey to make and maybe her own decision. (If he refuses to adopt, she has to decide if she will leave him or not.) Anyway, I did think as you did, not sure why, that adoption would be the right choice if you wanted to make the woman have a journey too.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92078
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You are here
Danny Dig
Assistant Professor
Computer Science
• Ph.D. in Computer Science, Nov 2007
• M.S. in Computer Science, June 2002
Politechnics University of Timisoara, Timisoara, Romania
• B.S. in Computer Science, June 2001
Politechnics University of Timisoara, Timisoara, Romania
Danny Dig is an assistant professor of Computer Science in the School of EECS at Oregon State University. He enjoys doing research in Software Engineering in general and interactive program transformations in particular. His research goal is to enable programmers to interactively and safely change large programs. He earned his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where his research won the best PhD dissertation award, and the First Prize at the ACM Student Research Competition Grand Finals. He did a postdoc at MIT where he opened the area of interactive transformations for parallelism, then he returned to Illinois as a research professor. He (co-)authored 35+ journal and conference papers that appeared in top places in SE/PL. According to Google Scholar his publications have been cited 1,200+ times. He released 9 software systems, among them the world's first open-source refactoring tool, downloaded over 17,000 times. Some of the techniques he developed are shipping with the official release of the popular Eclipse and NetBeans development environments, and are used by millions of Java programmers everyday. He has started two popular workshops: Workshop on Refactoring Tools, and Hot Topics On Software Upgrades. Both are now in their fifth year. He chaired or co-organized 11 workshops, and served as a member of 28 program or review committees for all top conferences in his area. His research is funded by NSF, Boeing, IBM, Intel, and Microsoft.
Research Interests:
Research Areas:
Software Engineering, in particular interactive program transformation, automated refactoring, concurrency and parallelism, object-oriented frameworks, software testing, and software evolution
Research Description:
Software constantly changes. It is widely known that at least two-thirds of software costs are due to evolution, with some industrial surveys claiming 90%. However, programmers perform most software changes manually, which makes software development more expensive, time-consuming, and error-prone than it should be. Just as machinery fostered the industrial revolution, I hope that my research on automating software changes will foster a revolution in software technology.
My research is driven by two important questions: (i) what software changes occur most often in practice and (ii) how can we automate them to improve programmer productivity and software quality? Answering these questions is relevant for practice, as well as intellectually challenging and rewarding.
I enjoy connecting seemingly unrelated areas of computer science and making novel contributions. For example, connecting parallel computing with interactive techniques from software design, adapting proven software engineering principles into the world of spreadsheet developers, designing scalable program analyses using data mining techniques, etc. I devise techniques and theories that generalize to solve larger classes of problems, as well as build and deploy tools for automating program changes.
Automating changes is challenging as it requires complex code transformations that span multiple, non-adjacent program statements and requires deep inter-procedural analyses that globally reason about objects shared through the heap. A key problem is designing program analyses that are accurate yet fast enough to be used in an interactive tool.
I validate rigorously my research by employing empirical methods (e.g., case studies, controlled experiments, inter- views) in the evaluation stage (did we built the tool right?) and also in the formative stage (are we building the right tool?). I place high value into starting a new research direction with empirical explorative studies.
I happily go the extra mile necessary to move my research into practice. I maintain strong ties with the industry groups building the major integrated development environments (IDEs), and I contribute to open-source software.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92084
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SFLPhone-KDE 1.3.0 released!
Hello planet!
After almost a year of work, a new version of SFLPhone-KDE and SFLphone daemon are available. This version is a major rewrite intended to support Qt5 and QML technologies. This release also introduce some new features and improved usability and KDE integration. It doesn’t use KF5 yet, SFLPhone-KDE 1.3.0 is still a KDE4 application.
• SIP Presence subscription and publishing support
• Video multiparty conferencing [EXPERIMENTAL]
• Multichannel ringtone support
• Additional Flac and OGG ringtone support
• Improved NAT support
• Improved audio quality, noise suppression and automatic gain control
• Bug fixes
• New volume controls for PulseAudio
• New mute DTMF option
• API version 2.0
• Qt5 support
• Full Model/View support (19 new models)
• New phone number statistics API
• Full QML / QtScript compatibility
• Improved performance
• Now supports up to 15000 contacts and 10000 history entries
• Faster load time
• Now provides a complete DBus API abstraction
• Bug fixes
KDE client
• Smart autocompletion [EXPERIMENTAL]
• Call using the right account
• Fast lookup
• Call using contact information
• Gather information from 11 sources to provide accurate results
• Improved Akonadi integration
• Support live contact list update
• Usability improvements
• Highlight missed calls in history
• New “flat design” Contact/History/Bookmark widgets
• More reliable canvas notifications
• Improved account settings dialog
• DTMF feedback
• Network issue detection
• Presence integration in contact, bookmarks and history views
• Status publishing support in the statusbar
• Dial tone support
• Translation updates
• Bug fixes
network account
autocompletion presence
Issues closed: 996
Bug fixed: 311
KDE related issues fixed: 148
KDE related bug fixed: 49
Daemon diff size: 19523 lines
Gnome client diff size: 3792 lines
KDE client diff size: 47582 lines
Total diff size: 70897 lines
Total commits: 1584
Total KDE related commits: 331
The next release should improve security configuration, further KF5 support. Windows / OSX support are also a possibility. Hopefully we will release on a more regular basis. Thanks to all beta testers for their feedback. Special thanks to Ákos, Martin, Tristan, Alex, Laurent, Emmanuel, Andrew and all translators. Without your contributions, this project would be a lot less stable. Please test, there is a lot of new code / features, feedback are needed.
SFLphone is available at http://sflphone.org/download/stable-release or at http://download.kde.org/stable/sflphone/ . Do not forget to first install the sflphone daemon before SFLPhone-KDE (it is a runtime dependency). Packages for (K)Ubuntu are available at https://launchpad.net/~savoirfairelinux/+archive/ppa and will get into your favorite distribution soon. Enjoy!
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4 thoughts on “SFLPhone-KDE 1.3.0 released!
1. Yes, but the current version is using QWidgets, the QML version is both incomplete and badly fragmented (Jolla/Ubuntu Phone/KDE Active have all different widgets APIs)
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92087
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Theme by maraudersmaps.
Soooo I just reblogged this gifset of the Avengers, and it’s made me wonder HOW THE HECK people get gifsets to arrange themselves so that they are three images stacked vertically…
How the heck do you make gifsets that look like they are three images stacked vertically??? I need to know this for reasons.
37 notes
1. resourcejunkbox reblogged this from emilianadarling
2. rika108 reblogged this from emilianadarling and added:
So helpful! Thank you
3. merry-miss-magpie reblogged this from emilianadarling
4. emilianadarling reblogged this from shogunofyellow and added:
Yes! I can!! I now know how to do this, yay! :D Learning is fun. Quick and Dirty Tutorial: First step: make your gifs!...
5. kixtine reblogged this from shogunofyellow
6. shogunofyellow reblogged this from emilianadarling and added:
Seriously, can someone explain how
7. dontactuallyfuckit answered: The first 2 parts of that gifset are actually one gif
8. pipechapman said: Make 2 gifs and paste 1 below the other with a clear 10 px bar so that both are in the 1st pic slot. Confusing wording, but if you click on the pictures in the set you’re referring to, you’ll see what I mean.
9. momentsofweakness answered: I think people insert very thin ‘clear’ image placeholders into the extra spots. So you don’t see them, but they take up the space. I think.
10. crashingnotlikehipsorcars said: maybe you specifically need gifs that are longer than they are tall?
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92094
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Memory Alpha
Betty Jimenez
37,238pages on
this wiki
Revision as of 23:08, February 20, 2010 by ThomasHL (Talk | contribs)
Real World article
(written from a Production point of view)
Linguistic students 1 a linguistic student
Betty Jimenez is an actress who appeared as a linguistic student in the Star Trek: Enterprise pilot episode "Broken Bow". She received no credit for this appearance and was identified by the call sheet for this day. Jimenez filmed her scene on location in Malibu on 19 June 2001.
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1913 in poetry
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
List of years in poetry (table)
... 1903 . 1904 . 1905 . 1906 . 1907 . 1908 . 1909 ...
1910 1911 1912 -1913- 1914 1915 1916
... 1917 . 1918 . 1919 . 1920 . 1921 . 1922 . 1923 ...
In literature: 1910 1911 1912 -1913- 1914 1915 1916
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Joyce Kilmer (1886–1918), "Trees", first published this year
1936 Winged Liberty Head (Mercury) dime
Works published in English[edit]
Title page of the 1913 Macmillan edition of Tagore's Gitanjali
United Kingdom[edit]
United States[edit]
Other in English[edit]
Works published in other languages[edit]
Indian subcontinent[edit]
Including all of the British colonies that later became India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Listed alphabetically by first name, regardless of surname:
Assamese language[edit]
Bengali language[edit]
Indian poetry in other languages[edit]
Other languages[edit]
Awards and honors[edit]
See also[edit]
• Young Poland (Polish: Młoda Polska) modernist period in Polish arts and literature
• Poetry
1. ^ Jones, Neal T., ed., A Book of Days for the Literary Year, New York and London: Thames and Hudson (1984), unpaginated, ISBN 0-500-01332-2.
2. ^ Bochner, Jay, 'The Glebe' in American Literary Magazines: The Twentieth Century, edited by Edward E. Chielens (Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood Press, 1992) p. 137.
3. ^ Kenner, Hugh, The Pound Era, 1971. Faber and Faber, 1972. ISBN 0-571-10668-4 paperback. p. 158.
4. ^ Churchill, Suzanne, 'Making Space for Others: A History of a Modernist Little Magazine' in Journal of Modern Literature, Volume: 22. Issue: 1. 1998 p. 52.
5. ^ Collected in Responsibilities, and Other Poems (1916).
6. ^ a b c d Garvin, John William, ed., Canadian Poets (anthology), published by McClelland, Goodchild & Stewart, 1916, retrieved via Google Books, June 5, 2009
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Cox, Michael, ed. (2004). The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-860634-6.
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Das, Sisir Kumar and various, History of Indian Literature: 1911-1956: struggle for freedom: triumph and tragedy, 1995, published by Sahitya Akademi, ISBN 978-81-7201-798-9, retrieved via Google Books on December 23, 2008
10. ^ "Dennis, Clarence Michael James (1876 - 1938)", article in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Online edition, retrieved May 11, 2009
14. ^ a b Hartley, Anthony, ed., The Penguin Book of French Verse: 4: The Twentieth Century, Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1967.
15. ^ a b c Paniker, Ayyappa, "Modern Malayalam Literature" chapter in George, K. M., ed., Modern Indian Literature, an Anthology, pp 231–255, published by Sahitya Akademi, 1992, retrieved January 10, 2009
16. ^ Web page titled "Delmira Agustini" at the Universitat Jaume's "Modernismo en España e Hispanoamérica" website, retrieved September 1, 2011
17. ^ "Stefan George", article, Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2004, retrieved February 23, 2010
18. ^ a b Story, Noah, The Oxford Companion to Canadian History and Literature, "Poetry in French" article, pp 651-654, Oxford University Press, 1967
19. ^ "Carmelo Arden Quin, fundador do movimento artístico Madi, morreu aos 97 anos" (in Portuguese), Agence France Presse, as published by Yahoo Noticias, September 27, 2010, retrieved October 20, 2010.
20. ^ "Hudson, Flexmore". AustLit Database. Retrieved 2007-05-21.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92096
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For other uses, see Bulbul (disambiguation).
Brown-eared Bulbul 1.jpg
Brown-eared Bulbul, Hypsipetes amaurotis
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Passeriformes
Suborder: Passeri
Family: Pycnonotidae
G. R. Gray, 1840
See text.
Brachypodidae Swainson, 1831
Trichophoridae Swainson, 1831
Ixosidae Bonaparte, 1838
Hypsipetidae Bonaparte, 1854
Crinigeridae Bonaparte, 1854 (1831)
Phyllastrephidae Milne-Edwards & Grandidier, 1879
Tyladidae Oberholser, 1917
Spizixidae Oberholser, 1919
The word bulbul derives from Persian: بلبل, meaning nightingale.[1] In Arabic and Persian, 'bulbul' means nightingale, but in English, 'bulbul' refers to birds of a different family of passerine birds.
Bulbul from Attappadi Plateau
The bulbuls are generally monogamous. One unusual exception is the Yellow-whiskered Greenbul which at least over part of its range appears to be polygamous and engage in a lekking system. Some species also have alloparenting arrangements, where non-breeders, usually the young from earlier clutches, help raise the young of a dominant breeding pair. Up to five purple-pink eggs are laid in an open tree nests and incubated by the female. Incubation usually lasts between 11–14 days, and chicks fledge after 12–16 days.
The traditional layout was to divide the bulbuls into 4 groups, named Pycnonotus, Phyllastrephus, Criniger, and Chlorocichla groups after characteristic genera (Delacour, 1943). However, more recent analyses demonstrated that this arrangement was probably based on erroneous interpretation of characters:
Comparison of mtDNA cytochrome b sequences found that five species of Phyllastrephus did not belong to the bulbuls, but to an enigmatic group of songbirds from Madagascar instead (Cibois et al., 2001; see below for the species in question), and are now usually referred to as Malagasy warblers. Similarly, sequence analysis of the nDNA RAG1 and RAG2 genes suggests that the genus Nicator is not a bulbul either (Beresford et al., 2005). That the previous arrangement had failed to take into account biogeography was indicated by the study of Pasquet et al. (2001) who demonstrated the genus Criniger must be divided into an African and an Asian (Alophoixus) lineage. Using analysis of one nDNA and 2 mtDNA sequences, Moyle & Marks (2006) found one largely Asian lineage and one African group of greenbuls and bristlebills; the Golden Greenbul seemes to be very distinct and form a group of its own. Some taxa are not monophyletic, and more research is necessary to determine relationships within the larger genera.
Systematic list[edit]
Typical bulbuls
The Red-whiskered Bulbul belongs to the Asian Pycnonotus.
Collared Finchbill, Spizixos semitorques
• Genus Iole (5 species, sometimes in Hypsipetes/Ixos)
• Genus Hemixos (2 species, sometimes in Hypsipetes/Ixos)
• Genus Hypsipetes (16 species, might belong in Ixos)
Typical greenbuls and allies
Incertae sedis
This might be allied to Calyptocichla or not be a bulbul at all.
Relationship to humans[edit]
The Red-whiskered Bulbuls and Red-vented Bulbuls have been captured for the pet trade in great numbers and, has been widely introduced to tropical and subtropical areas, for example southern Florida, Fiji, Australia and Hawaii. Some species are regarded as crop pests, particularly in orchards.
In general bulbuls and greenbuls are resistant to human pressures on the environment and are tolerant of disturbed habitat. Around 13 species are considered threatened by human activities, mostly specialised forest species threatened by habitat loss.
• Delacour, J. (1943): A revision of the genera and species of the family Pycnonotidae (bulbuls). Zoologica 28(1): 17–28.
• Moyle, Robert G. & Marks, Ben D. (2006): Phylogenetic relationships of the bulbuls (Aves: Pycnonotidae) based on mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequence data. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40(3): Pages 687–695. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2006.04.015 (HTML abstract)
1. ^ a b Fishpool et al. (2005)
External links[edit]
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Eau de Cologne
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Eau de Cologne or simply cologne (German: Kölnisch Wasser, “Water of Cologne”) is a perfume originating from Cologne, Germany. Originally mixed by Italian-born Johann Maria Farina in 1709, it has since come to be a generic term for scented formulations in typical concentration of 2%–5% essential oils or a blend of extracts, alcohol, and water. In a base of dilute ethanol (70%–90%), eau de cologne contains a mixture of citrus oils including oils of lemon, orange, tangerine, bergamot, lime, grapefruit and neroli. It can also contain oils of lavender, rosemary, thyme, petitgrain (orange leaf), jasmine, and tobacco.
An eau de cologne by Farina (1709)
4711 cologne - the most famous Eau de Cologne
The original Eau de Cologne is a spirit-citrus perfume launched in Cologne in 1709 by Giovanni Maria Farina (1685–1766), an Italian perfume maker from Santa Maria Maggiore Valle Vigezzo. In 1708, Farina wrote to his brother Jean Baptiste: "I have found a fragrance that reminds me of an Italian spring morning, of mountain daffodils and orange blossoms after the rain".[1] He named his fragrance Eau de Cologne, in honour of his new hometown.[2]
The most famous Original Eau de Cologne is 4711, named after its location at Glockengasse No. 4711. It was also developed in the 18th century by Wilhelm Mülhens in Cologne and is therefore one of the oldest still produced fragrances in the world. On 12 December 2006, the perfumes and cosmetics company Mäurer & Wirtz has taken over 4711 from Procter & Gamble and have expanded it to a whole brand since then.
The Eau de Cologne composed by Farina was used only as a perfume and delivered to "nearly all royal houses in Europe".[3] His ability to produce a constantly homogeneous fragrance consisting of dozens of monoessences was seen as a sensation at the time. At the time, a single vial of this aqua mirabilis (Latin for miracle water) cost half the annual salary of a civil servant.[2] When free trade was established in Cologne by the French in 1797, the success of Eau de Cologne prompted countless other businessmen to sell their own fragrances under the name of Eau de Cologne. Giovanni Maria Farina's formula has been produced in Cologne since 1709 by Farina opposite the Jülichplatz[2] and to this day remains a secret. His shop at Obenmarspforten opened in 1709 and is today the world's oldest fragrance factory.
In 1806, Jean Marie Joseph Farina, a grand-grand-nephew of Giovanni Maria Farina (1685–1766), opened a perfumery business in Paris that was later sold to Roger & Gallet. That company now owns the rights to Eau de Cologne extra vieille in contrast to the Original Eau de Cologne from Cologne. Originally the water of Cologne was believed to have the power to ward off bubonic plague.[4]
Eau de Cologne, or just "cologne", has now become a generic term. The term "cologne" can be applied to perfume for men or women, but modern convention dictates, in the English language, that it should be assumed the term is most likely when talking about men's fragrance, though this convention does not exist in German.[5]
"Eau de Cologne" is a popular household remedy in Sri Lanka.
See also[edit]
• Fenaroli, Giovanni; Maggesi, L. (1960). "Acqua di Colonia". Rivista italiana essenze, profumi, piante offizinali, olii vegetali, saponi (in Italian) 42.
• La Face, Francesco (1960). "Le materie prime per l'acqua di colonia". Relazione al Congresso di Sta. Maria Maggiore (in Italian).
• Physical Chemistry: Understanding Our Chemical World. 2004.
• Sabetay, Sébastien (1960). "Les Eaux de Cologne Parfumée". Sta. Maria Maggiore Symposium (in French).
• Wells, Frederick V. (1960). "Variations on the Eau de Cologne Theme". Sta. Maria Maggiore Symposium.
• Wells, Frederick V.; Billot, Marcel (1981). Perfumery Technology. Art, science, industry. Chichester: Horwood Books. pp. 25, 278. ISBN 0-85312-301-2.
• Wilhelm, Jürgen, ed. (2005). Das große Köln-Lexikon (in German). Cologne: Greven Verlag. ISBN 3-7743-0355-X.
1. ^ Eckstein and Sykes, p 8
2. ^ a b c Fischer
3. ^ Farina Fragrance Museum information leaflet
4. ^ Monk, Paul M. S. Physical Chemistry: Understanding Our Chemical World. 2004. Wiley.
5. ^ "The history behind eau de cologne". Germany Wanderer. Retrieved May 24, 2014.
Works cited
• Eckstein, Markus; Sykes, John (2009). Eau de Cologne: Farina's 300th Anniversary. Cologne: J. P. Bachem. ISBN 978-3-7616-2313-8.
• Fischer, Carmen (2011). "'Französisch Kram' aus Köln". Damals (in German) 43 (6): 70–71.
• Information leaflet of the Farina Fragrance Museum at Cologne
External links[edit]
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Eclipso Gordon.jpg
Eclipso possessing Gordon as seen in Countdown to Mystery #4 (February 2008)
Art by Stephen Jorge Segovia
Publication information
Publisher DC Comics
First appearance House of Secrets #61 (August 1963)
Created by Bob Haney (writer)
Lee Elias (artist)
In-story information
Alter ego Galid
Partnerships Mordru
Notable aliases Prince of Darkness, Vengeance Demon, The Lord of the No-Man's Land Between Light and Darkness
Abilities Spirit possession, Immortality, Energy-vision, Energy blasts, Superhuman strength, Superhuman speed, Superhuman stamina, Invulnerability, Flight, Weather modification
Eclipso is a fictional supervillain in the DC Comics Universe. The character is the incarnation of the Wrath of God and the Angel of Vengeance that turned evil and was replaced by the Spectre. Eclipso first appeared in House of Secrets #61 (August 1963) and was created by Bob Haney and Lee Elias.[1][2]
Publication history[edit]
Originally, Eclipso was written as a generic villain with average superpowers, who would routinely enact an elaborate plot to fulfill his hedonistic motivations. However, the Darkness Within miniseries modified the character to be an evil and megalomaniacal entity. Eclipso's character laments the power he once had as a spirit of divine vengeance. Eclipso would frequently seek to possess beings of incredible power like Superman, Lar Gand, and Captain Marvel to achieve his ends.
Bruce Gordon[edit]
Eclipso's early comics debut is tied to his first modern host, Bruce Gordon (named after Bruce Wayne and Commissioner Gordon as an in-joke),[3] a scientist specializing in solar energy. While in the jungle to view a solar eclipse, Bruce was attacked by a tribal sorcerer named Mophir. Before plunging to his death off a cliff, Mophir wounded Bruce with a black diamond. Afterwards, Bruce would be transformed into the villainous Eclipso whenever an eclipse occurred. A blue-gray or purple circle would cover the rightmost two-thirds of his face, resembling a partial eclipse. Bruce would experience many Jekyll-and-Hyde transformations and misadventures in House of Secrets. During this period, Eclipso was portrayed as a conventional villain, possessing super strength, partial invulnerability, and eye blasts (aided by his black diamond). It was later retconned that any type of eclipse could summon Eclipso: lunar, solar, or even an object blocking out a light source. This was countered with a simple means of banishing him again: any bright flash of light would turn him back into Bruce Gordon.
The Darkness Within[edit]
Wonder Woman possessed by Eclipso. Art by Joe Quesada.
In the early 1990s, DC revamped Eclipso in a company-wide crossover built around the miniseries Eclipso: The Darkness Within. Retconned again, Eclipso was not simply Bruce Gordon's dark half, but a vengeance demon who had possessed Gordon. Eclipso's soul had originally been bound inside a giant black diamond called the "Heart of Darkness" in Africa. A treasure hunter found it in the late nineteenth century and brought it to London in 1891, where he had a jeweler cut it into one thousand shards. This weakened the binding spell, allowing Eclipso to possess anyone who became angry while in contact with one of the shards. He was no longer limited to possessing Gordon during an eclipse, but pretended otherwise so that Gordon would not know the truth about the black diamonds.[1]
Over the next century, the Eclipso entity gathered the diamond shards with the intention of destroying them all, freeing his true power. When Lar Gand discovered Eclipso's palace on the moon and wandered inside, it inspired Eclipso to possess all of Earth's heroes and use them towards his ultimate goal, the conquest of Earth and revenge against God for imprisoning him inside the Heart of Darkness. Eclipso claimed he had spent the last several years "posing as a B-level villain" in order to remain undetected by Earth's heroes and had limited himself to targeting Gordon for the purpose of quashing Gordon's research into solar science. If Gordon had achieved his goal of making solar energy the planet's primary energy source, any solar-powered device could be used as a weapon against Eclipso.
In the climax of the story, several of Earth's heroes were possessed by Eclipso and transported to the moon during an eclipse. He then absorbed these heroes into his own body, gaining their mass and also their inherent powers. Gordon led a group of heroes armed with solar weapons to the moon in an attempt to defeat Eclipso once and for all. The absorbed heroes were freed in the end, but only after Will Payton destroyed Eclipso's moon base by detonating his own solar-powered body. Eclipso's diamond shards remained on Earth.
Eclipso series[edit]
Following the crossover event, Eclipso appeared in a solo series. He conquered the South American country of Parador by possessing one person at a time. The United States sent an investigation team consisting of Cave Carson, Bruce Gordon, and Bruce's fiancé, Mona Bennet. Cave's legs were broken and he was left at the border.
Bruce and Mona were taken on a tour and shown various atrocities, such as piles of children's corpses. They escaped with the assistance of the Creeper and formed a group of heroes dubbed the Shadow Fighters. This group was led by Amanda Waller, formerly of the Suicide Squad. In issue #13 of the series, Eclipso defeated them, killing Wildcat II, the second Dr. Midnight, the Creeper, Commander Steel, Manhunter IV (a Mark Shaw ringer), and Major Victory. Creeper has returned to action in his own series.[1]
The Peacemaker was also involved in this action. He died in a helicopter crash while trying to destroy Eclipso's tanks. These tanks were attacking the sole surviving member of the Shadow Fighter attack force, Nemesis.
The other survivors of the Shadow Force, those who had not attacked Eclipso directly, regrouped. Eclipso attacked them with a Parador missile which they evaded using Nightshade's teleportation ability. During the escape, Mona's father was snatched from their vehicle, but he later returned alive. The survivors arrived in the United Nations building, just in time to foil another plot of Eclipso by landing their vehicle on his intended victim.
Bruce Gordon and Mona Bennet led the Earth's superheroes in an attack on Parador, in an attempt to destroy Eclipso once and for all. Eclipso revealed that he dare not kill Bruce and Mona, because their unborn child will time travel to the past as an adult and free Eclipso from the diamond.
Eclipso was finally defeated when the Phantom Stranger gathered all one thousand black diamond shards and fused them back together into the Heart of Darkness, imprisoning Eclipso again. His physical body, the adult child of Mona and Bruce, evaporated in front of his parents.
Later in the 1990s, the series The Spectre gave key revelations about Eclipso. The Spectre was not the first embodiment of the wrath of God, but was Eclipso's replacement. Series writer John Ostrander chose to portray this as a distinction between the Spectre's pursuit of "vengeance" and Eclipso's pursuit of "revenge". In a Biblical context, Eclipso was responsible for Noah's Flood, while the Spectre was the Angel of Death who slew the first-born Egyptian children.
The Spectre destroys the Heart of Darkness along with the remains of Eclipso's palace on the moon, burning them to ash with the Holy Power of God and casting the ashes into space.
Countdown to Mystery[edit]
In the Countdown to Mystery series, Eclipso puts a new plan into motion, corrupting the heroes Plastic Man, Creeper, and Dove, at the same time tasking a group of magi to recover and recombine the pieces of the heart of darkness.
In Countdown to Mystery #3, Crispus Allen, the Spectre's current host, tracks down Bruce Gordon. In #4, Eclipso once again takes Gordon as a host. Then, in #5, Bruce is shown to have some control over Eclipso's powers, but can be overwhelmed by his persona if he uses too much at once. In #7, Bruce manages to free the heroes from their corruption, but is overwhelmed by Eclipso when his ex-wife is threatened. Eclipso then joins with the completed heart of darkness, exponentially increasing his powers and faces off against the Spectre. In #8, Bruce, spurred on by Crispus, finally manages to take control of Eclipso, although the two cannot be separated.
Rise of Eclipso[edit]
During the Brightest Day event, a mysterious being known as The Entity tells Jade to help her brother, Obsidian "balance the darkness", as he will ultimately save her friends from an unidentified threat. As the Entity says this, a grinning vision of Eclipso appears behind Jade.[4]
Following this, Eclipso reawakens within Bruce, destroying Diablo Island and apparently killing Mona in the process. Eclipso subsequently kidnaps the Shade, Acrata, Nightshade, Shadow Thief, a French supervillainess named Bette Noir and a Canadian superhero named Dark Crow, all of whom possess shadow-based abilities. After brainwashing his captives and bringing them under his mental control, Eclipso travels to an extradimensional plane, where he frees a demonic entity known as Sythunu, who agrees to serve Eclipso. With his small team ready, Eclipso travels to the Emerald City that Alan Scott established on the moon, stating that he now wishes to capture Jade.[5] After taking over Jade, Eclipso defeats and possesses the Justice League's reserve roster (consisting of Cyborg, Doctor Light, Red Tornado, Animal Man, Tasmanian Devil, and Bulleteer), and then badly injures the angel Zauriel. With the Justice League outnumbered, Eclipso then reveals his ultimate goal is to somehow kill God.[6] Eclipso then tortures Zauriel, causing his screams to attract the attention of the new Spectre, Crispus Allen. The Spectre arrives on the moon, where Eclipso ambushes and kills him, absorbing the Spectre's powers upon his demise. With his newfound abilities, Eclipso reveals that God relies on the collective love of humanity in order to stay alive, and that by destroying the Earth, Eclipso will ultimately kill God once and for all. Just as the members of the JLA prepare to wage a counterattack, Eclipso destroys the moon, apparently dooming all life on Earth.[7] With the moon destroyed, Eclipso then seemingly kills Donna Troy, the physically strongest remaining member of the Justice League.[8] However, it is ultimately revealed that Donna's death was an illusion conjured by Saint Walker, who used his blue power ring to temporarily trap Eclipso in a state of euphoria. After the Atom and Starman break Eclipso's link to his brainwashed slaves, the combined heroes attack Eclipso together, defeating him.[9]
Alex Montez[edit]
Alex Montez as Eclipso. Art by John Watson.
Eclipso returns after several years' absence in the "Princes of Darkness" storyline in JSA as an ally of the other villains Mordru and Obsidian. Alexander Montez, cousin of Yolanda, vows revenge on Eclipso for Yolanda's death. To this end, he gathers the 1,000 black diamonds, liquifies them and injects them into himself; all save one, which he keeps to evoke Eclipso. Exactly how Eclipso's diamonds had returned was unknown. Montez covers his body in tribal tattoos he claims he had learned about on Diablo Island. With these tattoos, Montez can summon all the powers of Eclipso by triggering the diamond with his anger, while remaining in control of himself and keeping Eclipso trapped within. As the new Eclipso, he joins the short-lived team of loose-cannon heroes assembled by Black Adam, which was the subject of the subsequent storyline "Black Reign".
During Adam's reign in Kahndaq, Alex becomes romantically involved with his teammate Soseh Mykros, the female Nemesis. However, during a battle, one of Alex's binding glyphs (which keeps Eclipso in control) is broken via a shoulder wound. Eclipso soon kills Nemesis. Alex commits suicide in order to prevent Eclipso from controlling him further. This story was significant as it meant that Eclipso no longer had a limitless number of black diamonds waiting out in the world for him to utilize.
Interestingly, this incarnation of Eclipso was never shown using any power but his eye blasts.
In Countdown to Mystery #4, Alex's body is acquired by Eclipso's followers for an as-yet-unknown magic ritual. In #6, all of the black diamond fragments in his body are recombined into their original form.
Alex Montez makes his New 52 debut in Team 7 issue #2. Five years in the past, Alex is depicted as a doctor from Arkham Asylum who was working a new formula set to rehabilitate prisoners on a prison called "The Float". After the prisoners rebel, he helps Team 7 take back control. However this is revealed to be a ruse as Montez was controlled by Eclipso in order to crash the Float into Sentinel Island, where the Black Diamond is kept, and retrieve it is.[10] In the present, Alex recovers the Black Diamond, becoming Eclipso's new host.[11]
"Lightning Strikes Twice"[edit]
Despite the loss of the other black diamonds, the disembodied Eclipso then tries to possess Superman by antagonizing him through many deaths.[12] He eventually possesses Superman by upsetting him via his possession of Lois Lane.[13] At this point, the wizard Shazam steps in by sending Captain Marvel to fight the possessed Eclipso-Superman. Thanks to Superman's weakness to magic, Captain Marvel is able to do a significant amount of damage to Eclipso. A prominent method of attack he uses is to continuously trigger his transformations in close proximity to Superman, resulting in the lightning striking Eclipso.[14]
Eventually, Shazam himself removes Eclipso from Superman by calling upon the hostless Spectre himself to do it. The Spectre forces Eclipso back into a lone black diamond. The Spectre then warns Shazam that he has made an enemy of Eclipso and that the currently-hostless Spectre will no longer be able to defend him as he lacks the coherence necessary to effectively recall anything beyond his 'mission'. At the end of this series, the black diamond is seen appearing in Jean Loring's cell in Arkham Asylum.[14]
Jean Loring[edit]
Jean Loring as Eclipso. Art by Justiniano.
Main article: Jean Loring
In the Day of Vengeance miniseries, which tied into the Infinite Crisis event, Jean Loring, ex-wife of Atom (Ray Palmer) and murderer of Sue Dibny as seen in the Identity Crisis miniseries, discovered the last black diamond in her prison cell, became the new Eclipso and tricks Spectre into attacking magic-based heroes as her revenge against Shazam, who was eventually slain while fighting the Spectre. After fending off multiple attacks upon herself, Eclipso-Loring was eventually teleported to a non-decaying orbit around the sun by Nightshade.
In the pages of Infinite Crisis, it was revealed by Alexander Luthor, Jr. that he had sent Superboy-Prime to recover the black diamond and that the Psycho-Pirate delivered it to Loring on Alex's orders and manipulated Eclipso into manipulating the Spectre. This was all done in the interests of breaking magic down into raw magical energy, which Alexander could use for his own ends. The death of Shazam was particularly useful, as his various champions then became a tether of power. All Alex had to do was capture one of them, make them say 'Shazam' and they would summon their lightning bolt to power his machine.
In Week Twenty-Seven of 52, Ralph Dibny, on a quest to restore his wife Sue to life and guided by the helmet of Doctor Fate, approaches the Spectre and promises to fulfill any bargain that the Spectre demands in order to restore his wife to life.
The Spectre, desiring revenge on Eclipso for his manipulations of him during the Infinite Crisis but rendered incapable of taking it owing to his present lack of a host, orders Dibny to punish Eclipso in return for his wife's life. Dibny, realizing that this meant punishing Jean Loring, his wife's murderer and temporarily granted the power of the Spectre, takes Eclipso back to the point at which she (as Jean Loring) murdered his wife and, restoring Jean's sanity, ruthlessly intends to trap her in a permanent time loop and force her to watch herself murder Sue Dibny over and over for all eternity.
Her sanity restored and Eclipso purged out of her, a terrified Loring tearfully begs for forgiveness, screaming that she was crazy when she murdered Sue and that it 'wasn't me!'. Dibny, affected by her pleas, his sense of compassion and his own feelings on watching his wife's death, finds himself incapable of such ruthlessness and refuses to complete his pact with the Spectre, returning Eclipso to her orbit around the sun.
She has most recently been seen in Blue Beetle #16, searching for a new host. Having come to the conclusion that her hosts' corrupted souls are a cause of her failures, she tries to possess a baby with great magical potential and a pure, uncorrupted soul. She is foiled in this attempt by Blue Beetle and Traci Thirteen. She even manages to take control of Blue Beetle and grants him his "supreme desire of power", intending to use the corrupted Beetle to kill the defenders of the baby. To her utter mortification, this means Beetle's supreme wish, to become a dentist, is fulfilled, and is easily swatted aside.[15]
It was revealed in Countdown To Mystery that all of Eclipso's black diamonds were mined on Apokolips millennia ago and that Eclipso was created by Darkseid.
In "The Seduction of the Innocent" ad campaign for DC's Countdown, Eclipso's arm can be clearly seen, with Mary Marvel looking off-page and her face half-shadowed. Indeed, Eclipso is seen in Countdown #38 watching Mary Marvel and plotting to make Mary into her minion. Increasing her anger and suspicions around the other magical being around her, she manages to warp the sunny and cheery disposition of Mary into sheer anger and distrust and then offer herself as friend and confidante. After attempting to make her Darkseid's concubine, however, Mary rebels and attempts to kill her.[1]
In Countdown To Mystery, Eclipso corrupts more heroes, first Plastic Man and then setting her sights on the Creeper. Mary discovers Eclipso's manipulation of her and in Countdown #17 she sacrifices her abilities and attacks Eclipso with all her power, leaving Mary and Jean freefalling to the oceans surrounding Themyscira. Loring is last seen sinking into the ocean with a shark approaching and Eclipso returns to inhabit Bruce Gordon, declaring her lost.
The New 52[edit]
In The New 52, Eclipso is depicted as god of vengeance and once again trapped in the Heart of Darkness.[16] However a criminal organization working for Kaizen Gamorra tries to steal the item with Team 7 trying to stop them. During the fight Slade Wilson is briefly possessed by Eclipso.[17] With the help of Essence the other heroes manage to trap him again in the black diamond, which is then sent to somewhere safe.[18] Five years later, Catwoman is hired to steal the diamond, now kept in one of A.R.G.U.S secret rooms, she succeeds although she is affected by the item's magic.[19]
Eclipso is subsequently revealed to be an inhabitant of Gemworld with the powers of House Onyx and House Diamond. He was trapped in the diamond by the then Princess of House Amethyst centuries ago.[20] Now possessing Alex Montez, he is sent back to Gemworld by John Constantine, where he seizes control of the two Houses he's connected to.[21] Seeking revenge on House Amethyst, he is defeated by Princess Amaya and again trapped in the diamond.[22]
Powers and abilities[edit]
Eclipso is the primordial manifestation of God's wrath and was responsible for the Great Flood of Biblical fame. A magical being of incalculable strength, Eclipso has demonstrated the powers of flight, immortality, invulnerability, superhuman speed and stamina, advanced intellect, and the ability to emit deadly rays of dark light from his/her left eye by looking through a shard of the Heart of Darkness gem. He carries with him a seemingly unbreakable mystical sword and is a considerable swordsman.[23]
Eclipso possesses vast magical powers that allow him/her to perform such godlike feats as manipulation of the weather and seas to cause natural disasters (floods, thunderstorms, etc.), increase his/her size to that of a giant, absorb the powers of The Spectre, and project powerful energy from his/her hands that can stun or kill his/her opponents. As a former servant of God, Eclipso is able to "speak" the angelic language; a combination of harmony, discordance, vibration and telepathy.[23]
Eclipso is able to possess anyone who touches or comes into contact with the cursed Heart of Darkness gem, controlling the host's powers, behaviors and memories to Eclipso's own ends.
Other versions[edit]
JLA: The Nail[edit]
In the Elseworlds story JLA: The Nail, a restrained Bruce Gordon/Eclipso makes an appearance in Professor Hamilton's Cadmus Labs.[24]
In other media[edit]
• Eclipso appears in a Justice League episode called 'Eclipsed'. Although never referred to by name, Eclipso is characterized as the collective souls of an evil race of serpent-like humanoids called "Ophidians" who imprisoned themselves in a black diamond called the "Heart of Darkness" to eventually destroy the human race. One of Eclipso's possessed human hosts, General McCormick (voiced by Bruce McGill), appears wearing the original Eclipso costume worn by Bruce Gordon, having been told by one of the general's colleagues that the best way to lure out the Justice League is to "put on a gaudy costume and threaten to hurt a lot of people". This Eclipso attempts to permanently darken the sun and possess all of the Justice League except the Flash and Batman (Batman did not appear in this episode). At first, Eclipso possesses one member of the team at a time as the black diamond is passed from hand to hand, but when Hawkgirl hastily smashes the stone, all but Flash become dusted with the fragments and are possessed as a group. However, the Flash was able to drive the spirits out of his teammates and subsequently helped them create a wormhole to drain away the black energy 'Eclipso' was using to darken the sun. Mophir (voiced by Tracey Walter) still exists in this version, but instead of helping to create Eclipso, he is a member of a tribe that guards the Heart of Darkness diamond and fights the Ophidians whenever they manage to possess a human host.
Video games[edit]
• Eclipso appears in DC Universe Online voiced by Jason Liebrecht. He removed the Spectre's humanity on Circe's orders, driving the Spectre insane. The player joins Green Arrow and Green Lantern to fight Eclipso, and the Spectre possesses the player and easily defeats Eclipso. The Spectre then makes Eclipso disappear. Eclipso is also an ally for villain characters, assisting them in a fight against the Demon Etrigan and Zatanna.
1. ^ a b c d Wallace, Dan (2008). "Eclipso". In Dougall, Alastair. The DC Comics Encyclopedia. New York: Dorling Kindersley. p. 112. ISBN 0-7566-4119-5. OCLC 213309017
3. ^ "Bob Haney Interviewed by Michael Catron Part Four (of Five) « The Comics Journal". 2011-01-10. Retrieved 2011-01-16. [dead link]
4. ^ Brightest Day #7 (August 2010)
5. ^ Justice League of America (vol. 2) #54 (February 2011)
6. ^ Justice League of America (vol. 2) #56 (April 2011)
7. ^ Justice League of America (vol. 2) #57 (May 2011)
8. ^ Justice League of America (vol. 2) #58 (June 2011)
9. ^ Justice League of America (vol. 2) #59 (July 2011)
10. ^ Team 7 (vol. 2) #2 (January 2013)
11. ^ Catwoman (vol. 4) #16 (March 2013)
12. ^ Action Comics (vol. 1) #826 (June 2005)
13. ^ Adventures of Superman #639 (June 2005)
14. ^ a b Superman (vol. 1) #216 (June 2005)
15. ^ Blue Beetle (vol. 7) #16 (August 2007)
16. ^ Team 7 (vol. 2) #2 (January 2013)
17. ^ Team 7 (vol. 2) #3 (February 2013)
18. ^ Team 7 (vol. 2) #4 (March 2013)
19. ^ Catwoman (vol. 4) #15 (February 2013)
20. ^ Sword of Sorcery (vol 2) #6 (May 2013)
21. ^ Sword of Sorcery (vol 2) #7 (June 2013)
22. ^ Sword of Sorcery (vol 2) #8 (July 2013)
23. ^ a b Justice League: Rise of Eclipso
24. ^ Justice League: The Nail #3 (October 1998)
External links[edit]
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Fly with the Wind
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Fly with the Wind
Studio album by McCoy Tyner
Released 1976
Recorded January 19–21, 1976
Genre Jazz
Length 38:44
Label Milestone
Producer Orrin Keepnews
McCoy Tyner chronology
Fly with the Wind
Focal Point
Professional ratings
Review scores
Source Rating
Allmusic 4/5 stars[1]
Fly with the Wind is a 1976 album by jazz pianist McCoy Tyner, his ninth to be released on the Milestone label. It was recorded in January 1976 and features performances by Tyner with band and string section. The Allmusic review by Scott Yanow states the album "...has plenty of memorable moments and is a surprising but logical success; Tyner's orchestral piano blended with the strings very well.".[2] The 2008 CD reissue added two alternate takes as bonus tracks.
Track listing[edit]
1. "Fly with the Wind" - 8:30
2. "Salvadore de Samba" - 12:13
3. "Beyond the Sun" - 5:33
4. "You Stepped out of a Dream" (Brown, Kahn) - 6:55
5. "Rolem" - 5:43
6. "Beyond the Sun" [alternate take] - 5:08 Bonus track on 2008 reissue
7. "Rolem" [alternate take] - 5:15 Bonus track on 2008 reissue
All compositions by McCoy Tyner except as indicated
• Recorded at Fantasy Studios, Berkeley, CA, January 19, 20 & 21, 1976
1. ^ Allmusic Review
2. ^ Yanow, S. Allmusic Review accessed February 24, 2009.
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Gnosticism and the New Testament
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Gnosticism and the New Testament is the connection between the Christian sects described by Irenaeus (c.180), and other writers, as gnostikos, and the New Testament, and also the use of the New Testament in the Nag Hammadi texts (c.300-400).
The term "Gnosticism" does not appear in ancient sources,[1] and was first coined by Henry More in a commentary on the seven letters of the Book of Revelation, where More used the term "Gnosticisme" to describe the heresy in Thyatira.[2] The term derives from the use of the Greek adjective gnostikos ("learned", "intellectual", Greek γνωστικός) by Irenaeus (c. 185 AD) to describe the school of Valentinus as he legomene gnostike haeresis "the heresy called Learned (gnostic)".[3]
Main article: Gnosticism
Irenaeus wrote a five-volume book (On the Detection and Overthrow of the So-Called Gnosis commonly referred to as Against Heresies).
The Valentians' use of the New Testament[edit]
It is not clear how many of the sects treated by Irenaeus in On the Detection and Overthrow of Knowledge Falsely So Called he actually considers to be gnostikos, but Valentinus is specifically named as gnostikos. Irenaeus describes how the Valentinians read in Ephesians evidence for their characteristic belief in the existence of the Æons as supernatural beings:
Gnostic interpretations of Paul's teachings[edit]
St. Paul, Valentin de Boulogne
Irenaeus argued that the use of scripture by Gnostic groups, such as the Valentinians, was flawed, and demonstrated his argument by taking arbitrary passages from various writings of Homer to compose a new story about Hercules. While the individual passages were authentic, the connected story was not of Homer's composition, and in fact the passages featured a number of different characters instead of just Hercules. Irenaeus compared this abuse of Homer to what he considered as abuse of the New and Old Testaments by the gnostics.[4]
Marcion and Gnosticism[edit]
Marcion is sometimes described as a Gnostic philosopher. In some essential respects, Marcion proposed ideas which would have aligned well with Gnostic thought. Like the Gnostics, he argued that Jesus was essentially a divine spirit appearing to men in the shape of a human form, and not someone in a true physical body.[5] For Gnostics, every human being is born with a small piece of God's soul lodged within his/her spirit (akin to the notion of a 'Divine Spark').[5] God is thus intimately connected to and part of his creation.[5] Salvation lies in turning away from the physical world (which Gnostics regard as an illusion) and embracing the god-like qualities within.[5] Marcion, by contrast, held that the heavenly Father (the father of Jesus Christ) was an utterly alien god; he had no part in making the world, nor any connection with it.[5]
Q sayings in Matthew and Luke[edit]
The lost "Q" gospel (German for Quelle or source) is assumed to be a simple listing of sayings of Jesus, perhaps akin to the Gospel of Thomas found at Nag Hammadi in upper Egypt in 1946. It is from these that the Synoptic Gospels are thought to derive their similar provenances.
The Gospel of John[edit]
Since the first quotations from the Gospel of John appear in the anti-heresy works of Irenaeus, many scholars like K.G. Bretschneider (1776–1848), Hegel and F.C. Baur (born 1792 - died 1860) cast doubt on the Authorship of the Gospel of John, and often consider it to have been a 2nd-century polemic by an author holding what later became the position of the orthodoxy. This is called into question by Rylands Library Papyrus P52, which contains a fragment from John chapter 18 dated with a fair measure of confidence to the first half of the 2nd century, as well as the recent work of Charles Hill, who gives evidence that the Gospel of John was used between CE 90 and 130, and the possible use of uniquely Johannine gospel material in several works which date from this period.[6]
The Pauline Epistles[edit]
Paul and Hellenic influence[edit]
Paul was a Jew (of the tribe of Benjamin), and a member of the conservative Pharisee party prior to conversion. Paul's ability to write in Greek is questionable, (other people assisted him in writing his epistles,) and there is no evidence that he used a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. Although born in Tarsus, he was brought up in Jerusalem at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the most highly regarded Hebrew teachers. Paul referred to himself as an Hebrew of the Hebrews.[7]
The resurrection of the dead by Michelangelo Buonarroti
In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul refers to baptism for the dead (15:29), a concept according to Elaine Pagels that was easily explained by gnostics. Since the gnostics argued that the text was allegory, their stance was that baptism for the dead refers to pneumatics (i.e. gnostics) taking the place of psychics (i.e. literalists), who were dead to gnosis.[citation needed] Tertullian wrote about Marcion gnostics in his work against Marcionism (Adversus Marcionem libri V) indicating that they believed in baptism of the dead. The doctrines of Marcion were so similar to the Gnostics that Irenaeus, a disciple of Polycarp in the 180s regarded him as one of them.
Jameison-Faussett-Brown Commentary of 1 Corinthians 15:29 mentioned, "...Paul, without giving the least sanction to the practice, uses an ad hominem argument from it against its practitioners, some of whom, though using it, denied the resurrection: 'What account can they give of their practice; why are they at the trouble of it, if the dead rise not?' [So Jesus used an ad hominem argument, Matthew 12:27]." (Author's brackets)[9]
In 1 Corinthians, Paul recommends celibacy, but also recommends marriage for those who are not suited for celibacy. Later (1 Cor. 9:5), he defends the right of Peter and the other apostles to be married and to travel accompanied by their wives, although most scholars determine Paul himself to be unmarried. In contrast, he condemned sexual immorality of all kinds, in various epistles (Romans 13:13, 1 Cor. 6:18, 1 Thess. 4:3), along with several other categories of sins, and making no exceptions for these.
See also[edit]
2. ^ Birger Albert Pearson Gnosticism and Christianity in Roman and Coptic Egypt 2004 p210 "As Bentley Layton points out, the term Gnosticism was first coined by Henry More (1614-1687) in an expository work on the seven letters of the Book of Revelation.29 More used the term Gnosticisme to describe the heresy in Thyatira."
3. ^ Stephen Charles Haar Simon Magus: the first gnostic? p231
4. ^ Irenaeus Against Heresies Book 1 Chapter 9 Paragraph 4
5. ^ a b c d e Adolf Von Harnack (2007) Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God, translated by John E. Steely, Lyle D. Bierma, Wipf & Stock Publishers ISBN 9781556357039
6. ^ Hill, Charles E., The Johannine Corpus in the Early Church Oxford University Press, ISBN 9780199291441
7. ^
8. ^ Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible 1Cor.15:29
9. ^ Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary (1871) 1Cor.15:29
Further reading[edit]
External links[edit]
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Index case
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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For the band, see Index Case (band).
The index case or primary case is the initial patient in the population of an epidemiological investigation,[1][2] or more generally, the first case of a condition or syndrome (not necessarily contagious) to be described in the medical literature, whether or not the patient is thought to be the first person affected.[citation needed] An index case will sometimes achieve the status of a "classic" case in the literature, as did Phineas Gage.
The index case may indicate the source of the disease, the possible spread, and which reservoir holds the disease in between outbreaks. The index case is the first patient that indicates the existence of an outbreak. Earlier cases may be found and are labeled primary, secondary, tertiary, etc.[3] "Patient Zero" was used to refer to the index case in the spread of HIV in North America.[4]
In genetics, the index case is the case of the original patient (propositus or proband) that stimulates investigation of other members of the family to discover a possible genetic factor.[5]
Gaëtan Dugas case ("Patient Zero")[edit]
Main article: Gaëtan Dugas
A 1984 paper[6] linked 40 AIDS patients by sexual contact. Of those patients, Dugas was the first to experience an onset of symptoms of AIDS. In the above graph, Dugas is represented by the circle highlighted in red.
In the early years of the AIDS epidemic, a “patient zero” transmission scenario was compiled by Dr. William Darrow and colleagues at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).[7] This epidemiological study showed how “patient zero” had infected multiple partners with HIV, and they, in turn, transmitted it to others and rapidly spread the virus to locations all over the world (Auerbach et al., 1984). The CDC identified Gaëtan Dugas as a carrier of the virus from Africa to the United States and spreading it to other men he encountered at gay bathhouses.[8]
Journalist Randy Shilts subsequently wrote about Patient Zero, based on Darrow's findings,[7] in his 1987 book And the Band Played On, which identified Patient Zero as Gaëtan Dugas.[9] Dugas was a flight attendant who was sexually promiscuous in several North American cities, according to Shilts' book. He was vilified for several years as a "mass spreader" of HIV, and seen as the original source of the HIV epidemic among homosexual men.[7] Four years later, Darrow repudiated the study's methodology and how Shilts had represented its conclusions.[7]
A 2007 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA by Michael Worobey and Dr. Arthur Pitchenik claimed that, based on the results of genetic analysis, current North American strains of HIV probably moved from Africa to Haiti and then entered the United States around 1969,[10] probably through a single immigrant. However, a Robert Rayford died in St. Louis, Missouri, of complications from AIDS in 1969, and most likely became infected in 1966, so there were prior carriers of HIV strains in North America.
The phrase "patient zero" is now used in the media to refer to the index case for infectious disease outbreaks, as well as for computer virus outbreaks, and, more broadly, as the source of ideas or actions that have far-reaching consequences.[11][12][13][14][15]
Other index patients[edit]
• Mary Mallon (a.k.a. “Typhoid Mary”) was an index case of a typhoid outbreak. An apparently healthy carrier, she infected 47 people while working as a cook. She eventually was quarantined to prevent her from spreading the disease to others.[16]
• The first recorded victim of the Ebola virus was a 44-year-old schoolteacher named Mabalo Lokela, who died 8 September 1976, 14 days after symptom onset.[17]
• 64-year-old Liu Jianlun, a Guangdong doctor, transmitted SARS during a stay in the Hong Kong Metropole Hotel in 2003.[18][19]
• A baby in the Lewis House at 40 Broad Street is considered the index patient in the 1854 cholera outbreak in the Soho neighborhood of London. (The Ghost Map, Steven Johnson, 2005.)[20]
• Édgar Enrique Hernández may be patient zero of the 2009 swine flu outbreak.[21] He recovered, and a bronze statue has been erected in his honor.[22] Maria Adela Gutierrez, who contracted the virus about the same time as Hernández, became the first officially confirmed fatality.
In the media, in fiction[edit]
In reports and documentaries[edit]
In season 10, Radiolab did an hour-long segment on “patients zero”.
In fiction[edit]
• The film Outbreak focuses around the search for a “patient zero” of an epidemic.
• The novel Rant stars the character Rant Casey, patient zero of the book's rabies epidemic.
• The Phone game Plague Inc. can have the CDC look for Patient Zero for more info on the player's virus.
• In the video game Dead Rising 3 the protagonist, Nick Ramos, is "Patient Zero" of zombification.
• The film Contagion character Elizabeth Emhoff is patient zero of the fatal MEV-1 virus.
See also[edit]
1. ^ "Diseases - Activity 1 - Glossary, page 3 of 5". Retrieved 2010-11-03.
2. ^ "WordNet Search - 3.0". Princeton University, Retrieved 3 November 2010.
3. ^ "Sporadic STEC O157 Infection: Secondary Household Transmission in Wales". Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA, 1 January 1994. Retrieved 3 November 2010.
4. ^ "Patient Zero - definition of Patient Zero in the Medical dictionary - by the Free Online Medical Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia". Retrieved 3 November 2010.
5. ^ "Definition of index case". The free medical dictionary by farlex.
6. ^ Auerbach, D.M.; W.W. Darrow, H.W. Jaffe, and J.W. Curran (1984). "Cluster of cases of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Patients linked by sexual contact". The American Journal of Medicine 76 (3): 487–92. doi:10.1016/0002-9343(84)90668-5. PMID 6608269.
7. ^ a b c d "The Origin of HIV and the First Cases of AIDS". AVERT, Retrieved 2010-11-03.
8. ^ Pence, G. E. (2008). Preventing the Global Spread of AIDS. In Medical Ethics Accounts of the Cases That Shaped and Define Medical Ethics (p. 331). New York, USA, McGraw-Hill.
9. ^ Matt & Andrej Koymasky - Famous GLTB - Gaëtan Dugas[dead link]
10. ^ Bowdler, Neil (2007-10-30). "Key HIV strain 'came from Haiti'". BBC News. Retrieved 2010-05-05.
11. ^ "Have Doctors Found Swine "Patient Zero?"". CBS News. 2009-04-29.
12. ^ "Researchers trawl for Conficker's 'Patient Zero' -". Retrieved 2010-11-03.
13. ^ "Patient Zero". 2006-03-20. Retrieved 2010-11-03.
14. ^ Lemos, Robert. "Witty worm traced to 'Patient Zero'". The Register.
15. ^ "That Man in the White House". The Weekly Standard. 28 November 2003. Retrieved 3 November 2010.
16. ^ "NOVA | The Most Dangerous Woman in America | In Her Own Words". PBS. 1938-11-11. Retrieved 2010-11-03.
17. ^ [1][dead link]
18. ^ "How SARS changed the world in less than six months". Bulletin of the World Health Organization 81 (8). 2003.
19. ^ Laurance, Jeremy (2003-04-24). "One family went on holiday – and made Toronto a global pariah". The Independent (London). Retrieved 2010-05-05.
20. ^
21. ^ "Have Doctors Found Swine "Patient Zero?"". CBS News. 2009-04-29. Retrieved 2010-11-03.
22. ^ "Statue erected of first boy in world who caught swine flu". Mirror, Retrieved 2009-04-25.
• Auerbach DM, Darrow WW, Jaffe HW, Curran JW, 1984. Cluster of cases of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Patients linked by sexual contact. Am J Med. 76, 487–492. doi:10.1016/0002-9343(84)90668-5. PMID 6608269.
External links[edit]
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Oxygenated chemical compounds contain oxygen as a part of their chemical structure. The term usually refers to oxygenated fuels. Oxygenates are usually employed as gasoline additives to reduce carbon monoxide and soot that is created during the burning of the fuel. Compounds related to soot, like polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and nitrated PAHs, are reduced also.[1]
The oxygenates commonly used are either alcohols or ethers:
In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency had authority to mandate that minimum proportions of oxygenates be added to automotive gasoline on regional and seasonal basis from 1992 until 2006 in an attempt to reduce air pollution, in particular ground-level ozone and smog. In addition to this North American automakers have in 2006 and 2007 promoted a blend of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline, marketed as E85, and their flex-fuel vehicles, e.g. GM's "Live Green, Go Yellow" campaign. U.S. Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards give an artificial 54% fuel efficiency bonus to vehicles capable of running on 85% alcohol blends over vehicles not adapted to run on 85% alcohol blends.[2] There is also alcohols' intrinsically cleaner combustion, however due to its lower energy density it is not capable of producing as much energy per gallon as gasoline. Much gasoline sold in the United States is blended with up to 10% of an oxygenating agent. This is known as oxygenated fuel and often (but not entirely correctly, as there are reformulated gasolines without oxygenate) as reformulated gasoline. Methyl tert(iary)-butyl ether (MTBE) was the most popular fuel additive in the US, prior to government mandated use of ethanol.
Alcohols' (particularly methanol's) solvent properties cause swelling damage to fuel system materials not designed for alcohols, corrosion of metal, increase water contamination, loosening of deposits causing clogging and destruction of fuel system components. This property was demonstrated with methanol in the 1970s and has reappeared to a slightly lesser degree with ethanol. Most forms of automobile racing that require the use of gasoline as fuel (as opposed to higher-energy blended fuels or straight alcohols) prohibit the use of oxygenate compounds in fuels, as they can allow higher fuel burn than the engine intake restrictions are designed to permit. Prior to the 2007 Daytona 500, for example, NASCAR driver Michael Waltrip and his team were heavily penalized when evidence of an unspecified oxygenate compound was found in the car's intake manifold during inspections.
See also[edit]
External links[edit]
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Proximate cause
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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For the notion of proximate cause in other disciplines, see Proximate and ultimate causation. For causation in English law, see Causation in English law.
But for test[edit]
A few circumstances exist where the "but for" test is complicated, or the test is ineffective. The primary examples are:
• Sufficient combined causes. Where an injury results from two separate acts of negligence, either of which would have been sufficient to cause the injury, both actors are liable. For example, two campers in different parts of the woods negligently leave their campfires unattended. A forest fire results, but the same amount of property damage would have resulted from either fire. Both campers are equally liable for all damage. A famous case establishing this principle in the United States is Corey v. Havener.[1]
• In the United States, the rule of Summers v. Tice holds that where two parties have acted unreasonably, but only one causes an injury to a third party, the burden shifts to the negligent parties to prove that they were not the cause of the injury. In that case, two hunters negligently fired their shotguns in the direction of their guide, and a pellet lodged in his eye. Because it was impossible to tell which hunter fired the shot that caused the injury, the court held both hunters liable.[2]
Since but-for causation is very easy to show and does not assign culpability (but for the rain, you would not have crashed your car – the rain is not morally or legally culpable but still constitutes a cause), there is a second test used to determine if an action is close enough to a harm in a "chain of events" to be a legally culpable cause of the harm. This test is called proximate cause.
There are several competing theories of proximate cause.
The most common test of proximate cause under the American legal system is foreseeability. It determines if the harm resulting from an action could reasonably have been predicted. The test is used in most cases only in respect to the type of harm. It is foreseeable, for example, that throwing a baseball at someone could cause them a blunt-force injury. But proximate cause is still met if a thrown baseball misses the target and knocks a heavy object off a shelf behind them, which causes a blunt-force injury. Evident in Corrigan v HSE (2011 IEHC 305).
This is also known as the "extraordinary in hindsight" rule.[4]
Direct causation[edit]
Direct causation is a minority test, which addresses only the metaphysical concept of causation.[5] It does not matter how foreseeable the result as long as what the negligent party's physical action can be tied to what actually happened. The main thrust of direct causation is that there are no intervening causes between an act and the resulting harm. An intervening cause has several requirements: it must 1) be independent of the original act, 2) be a voluntary human act or an abnormal natural event, and 3) occur in time between the original act and the harm.
Direct causation is the only theory that addresses only causation, and does not take into account the culpability of the original actor.
Risk enhancement/causal link[edit]
The plaintiff must demonstrate that the defendant's action increased the risk that the particular harm suffered by the plaintiff would occur. If the action were repeated, the likelihood of the harm would correspondingly increase. This is also called foreseeable risk.
Harm within the risk[edit]
The harm within the risk (HWR) test determines whether the victim was among the class of persons who could foreseeably be harmed, and whether the harm was foreseeable within the class of risks. It is the strictest test of causation, made famous by Benjamin Cardozo in Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co. case under New York state law.[6]
The first element of the test is met if the injured person was a member of a class of people who could be expected to be put at risk of injury by the action. For example, a pedestrian, as an expected user of sidewalks, is among the class of people put at risk by driving on a sidewalk, whereas a driver who is distracted by another driver driving on the sidewalk, and consequently crashes into a utility pole, is not.
The HWR test is no longer much used, outside of New York law. When it is used, it is used to consider the class of people injured, not the type of harm. The main criticism of this test is that it is preeminently concerned with culpability, rather than actual causation.
The "Risk Rule"[edit]
Referred to by the Reporters of the Second and Third Restatements of the Law of Torts as the "scope-of-the-risk" test,[7] the term "Risk Rule" was coined by the University of Texas School of Law's Dean Robert Keeton.[8] The rule is that “[a]n actor’s liability is limited to those physical harms that result from the risks that made the actor’s conduct tortious.”[9] Thus, the operative question is "what were the particular risks that made an actor's conduct negligent?" If the injury suffered is not the result of one of those risks, there can be no recovery. Two examples will illustrate this principle:
• The classic example is that of a father who gives his child a loaded gun, which she carelessly drops upon the plaintiff’s foot, causing injury. The plaintiff argues that it is negligent to give a child a loaded gun and that such negligence caused the injury, but this argument fails, for the injury did not result from the risk that made the conduct negligent. The risk that made the conduct negligent was the risk of the child accidentally firing the gun; the harm suffered could just as easily have resulted from handing the child an unloaded gun.[10]
• Another example familiar to law students is that of the restaurant owner who stores rat poison above the grill in his luncheonette. The story is that during the lunch rush, the can explodes, severely injuring the chef who is preparing food in the kitchen. The chef sues the owner for negligence. The chef may not recover. Storing rat poison above the grill was negligent because it involved the risk that the chef might inadvertently mistake it for a spice and use it as an ingredient in a recipe. The explosion of the container and subsequent injury to the chef was not what made the chosen storage space risky.[11]
The most obvious objection to this approach is that it requires courts to consider an arguably endless possibility of hypothetical situations.[12] Not only can such an undertaking be an exercise in futility, but this approach lacks even a minimal amount of precision such that parties might be able to predict outcomes and results during litigation. Notwithstanding the already-complex nature of this and other questions relating to proximate or legal cause, this fluid standard could be misused by plaintiff-friendly or defense-favoring judges in attempts to vindicate their own personal philosophies regarding the appropriate reach of tort law.
The doctrine of proximate cause is notoriously confusing. The doctrine is phrased in the language of causation, but in most of the cases in which proximate cause is actively litigated, there is not much real dispute that the defendant but-for caused the plaintiff's injury. The doctrine is actually used by judges in a somewhat arbitrary fashion to limit the scope of the defendant's liability to a subset of the total class of potential plaintiffs who may have suffered some harm from the defendant's actions.[13] For an understanding of the broader view of causation which proximate cause circumscribes, see butterfly effect.
For example, in the two famous Kinsman Transit cases from the 2nd Circuit (exercising admiralty jurisdiction over a New York incident), it was clear that mooring a boat improperly could lead to the risk of a boat drifting away and crashing into another boat, and that both boats could crash into a bridge, which collapsed and blocked the river, and in turn, the wreckage could flood the land adjacent to the river, as well as prevent any traffic from traversing the river until it had been cleared. But under proximate cause, the property owners adjacent to the river could sue (Kinsman I), but not the owners of the boats or the cargoes which could not move until the river was reopened (Kinsman II).[14]
Therefore, in 2001, the American Law Institute proposed in a draft of the Restatement (Third), Torts: Liability for Physical Harm (Basic Principles) that proximate cause should be replaced with scope of liability.[citation needed] The final version published in 2009 included a chapter titled "Scope of Liability (Proximate Cause)." It began with a special note explaining the Institute's decision to reframe the concept in terms of "scope of liability" because it really doesn't involve true causation, and to also include "proximate cause" in the chapter title in parentheses to help judges and lawyers understand the connection between the old and new terminology. The Institute added that it "fervently hopes" that the parenthetical will not be needed in a future fourth Restatement of Torts.
Efficient proximate cause[edit]
A related doctrine is the insurance law doctrine of efficient proximate cause. Under this rule, in order to determine whether a loss resulted from a cause covered under an insurance policy, a court looks for the predominant cause which sets into motion the chain of events producing the loss, which may not necessarily be the last event that immediately preceded the loss. Many insurers have attempted to contract around efficient proximate cause through the use of "anti-concurrent causation" (ACC) clauses, under which if a covered cause and a noncovered cause join together to cause a loss, the loss is not covered.
ACC clauses frequently come into play in jurisdictions where property insurance does not normally include flood insurance and expressly excludes coverage for floods. The classic example of how ACC clauses work is where a hurricane hits a building with wind and flood hazards at the same time. If the evidence later shows that the wind blew off a building's roof and then water damage resulted only because there was no roof to prevent rain from entering, there would be coverage, but if the building was simultaneously flooded (i.e., because the rain caused a nearby body of water to rise or simply overwhelmed local sewers), an ACC clause would completely block coverage for the entire loss (even if the building owner could otherwise attribute damage to wind v. flood).
A minority of jurisdictions have ruled ACC clauses to be unenforceable as against public policy, but they are generally enforceable in the majority of jurisdictions.[15]
1. ^ Corey v. Havener, 182 Mass. 250.
2. ^ Summers v. Tice, 199 P.2d 1 (Cal. 1948).
3. ^ See Sindell v. Abbott Labs.
4. ^ See Restatement (Second) of Torts.
5. ^ In re Arbitration Between Polemis and Furness, Withy & Co. Ltd., 3 K.B. 560 (1921)
6. ^ Palsgraf v. Long Island Rail Road Co., 162 N.E. 99 (N.Y. 1928).
7. ^ See RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF TORTS: LIAB. FOR PHYSICAL HARM § 29 cmt. d (Proposed Final Draft No. 1, 2005); RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS § 281 cmt. g (1965).
9. ^ RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF TORTS: LIAB. FOR PHYSICAL HARM § 29 (Proposed Final Draft No. 1, 2005).
10. ^ Benjamin C. Zipursky, Foreseeability in Breach, Duty and Proximate Cause, 44 Wake F. L. Rev. 1247, 1253 (2009). The full text of this article is available online at Accord Lubitz v. Wells, 113 A. 2d 147 (Conn. 1955).
11. ^ The exact etymology of this hypothetical is difficult to trace. Adaptations are set forth and discussed in Joseph W. Glannon, The Law of Torts: Examples and Explanations (3d ed. 2005) and John C. P. Goldberg, Anthony J. Sebok, and Benjamin C. Zipursky, Tort Law: Responsibilities and Redress (2004) among others.
12. ^ "When defendants move for a determination that plaintiff’s harm is beyond the scope of liability as a matter of law, courts must initially consider all of the range of harms risked by the defendant’s conduct that the jury could find as the basis for determining that conduct tortious. Then the court can compare the plaintiff’s harm with the range of harms risked by the defendant to determine whether a reasonable jury might find the former among the latter." RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF TORTS: LIAB. FOR PHYSICAL HARM § 29 cmt. d (Proposed Final Draft No. 1, 2005).
13. ^ PPG Indus., Inc. v. Transamerica Ins. Co., 20 Cal. 4th 310, 316 (1999).
14. ^ See In re Kinsman Transit Co., 338 F.2d 708 (2nd Cir. 1964) and Kinsman Transit Co. v. City of Buffalo, 388 F.2d 821 (2nd Cir. 1968).
15. ^ Leonard v. Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co., 499 F.3d 419 (5th Cir. 2007) (surveying cases).
Further reading[edit]
• Michael S. Moore, The Metaphysics of Causal Intervention, 88 calif l. rev. 827 (2000).
• Leon A. Green, The Rationale of Proximate Cause (1927).
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Queenslander (architecture)
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A high-set Victorian era Queenslander with large veranda in New Farm, Brisbane.
A large Federation style suburban Queenslander in New Farm, Brisbane.
An interwar Queenslander in New Farm, Brisbane.
A single-storey Queenslander ca. 1935
The type developed in the 1840s and is still constructed today, displaying an evolution of local style. The term is primarily applied to residential construction, although some commercial and other types of construction are identified as Queenslander.
Queenslander buildings are primarily of timber construction and can be low or high-set, one to two stories. They are typically "tripartite" in sectional composition; underfloor (stumps), primary rooms (can be two levels), and roof. All have one or more veranda spaces, a sheltered edge of the building that is typically only part-enclosed and used as another living zone. This consideration for climate is the defining characteristic of the Queenslander type.
The raising of the main living spaces off the ground can be seen as both a stylistic and practical device. The vertical "stumps", initially of timber, allow the building to "float" above the terrain. Queenslanders all have this underfloor area that is used to cool the building through ventilation and also for protection of the main structure from termite attack and other pests. The stumps also help to overcome any variations in the terrain that would normally require earthworks to flatten for construction and allow for the natural flow of water across the terrain in the event of excessive rain and downpours.[1] The underfloor space is often high enough for additional uses such as storage, carport or even as extra living area in the cool, dark spaces beneath the building. The underfloor area was sometimes decoratively screened at the perimeter with timber battens. Another advantage of being constructed on stumps is that the buildings are highly adaptive. It is relatively easy to raise, lower, reorient or completely relocate Queenslanders.[2]
The main living areas of the house, being raised from the terrain, are a series of rooms on a platform floor. Traditionally, planning and fenestration encouraged cross-ventilation for passive cooling in a variety of innovative methods including fanlights, ceiling roses, and alignment of doors and windows to allow uninterrupted air flow. The verandah is the most typical inclusion in the plan and can be used day and night as a semi-external living space. Revolving tin cylinders placed on roofs allow for hot air to be drawn out of ceiling spaces.[3]
The roof is a large and visible presence externally and was traditionally steeply pitched. They are of varied materials including slate and tiles but are most characteristically sheeted with corrugated iron. The iron roofs could withstand torrential rains and be re-used if damaged by cyclonic winds.[3]
Typically, the Queenslander is suited to the sub-tropical climate of Queensland of high rainfall and mild to hot, humid climate with average summer temperatures in the range of 23-36 degrees Celsius (73-97 degrees Fahrenheit). However, the type is found across the state in colder and hotter locations usually with adaptations to suit.
Owing to their simplicity of construction, standardised designs were produced through the 1920s and 1930s. Despite these advantages, tastes changed and the style fell out of favour after the Second World War. The need for cheaper homes first saw large verandahs reduced to small landings. Subsequently internal walls were no longer made of timber and were made of fibreboards, such as asbestos sheeting or fibre/gypsum panels. Additionally, after the war, surplus military earthmoving equipment became common and it was then possible to cheaply prepare sites for construction and the relative cheapness of construction on stumps diminished.[4] Land availability decreased and preferences moved towards lower maintenance types of housing.[4] These factors led to the adoption in Queensland, as elsewhere, of the ubiquitous "modern" American style, usually single level and usually sold as a combined land and home package. These newer homes are usually made with a timber or metal frame but with a brick veneer.
The Queenslander, a "type" not a "style", is defined primarily by architectural characteristics of climate-consideration. They have been constructed in the popular styles of the time including, but not limited to colonial, Victorian, Federation, Arts and Crafts/Art Nouveau, Interwar styles, and Post-WWII styles. The Queenslander is popularly thought of as an "old" house although Queenslanders are constructed today using modern styles as well as "reproductions" of previous styles.
Ashgrovian Architecture 71 Royal Pde St Johns Wood, Ashgrove 1937
Ashgrovian is the term coined for a variation of the Queenslander built between the late 1920s and World War II in the suburb of Ashgrove in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The term Ashgrovian was coined from the prolific number of these dwellings constructed in the Interwar period and was an adaptation of the Bungalow style which was popular in the early parts of the 20th century. Extremely popular with middle-income earners, these dwellings were almost always fronted with a grand gable roof, often surrounded by secondary smaller gables behind. The smaller gables usually sheltered verandahs and sleep-outs. A staircase almost always dominated the front yard leading to the verandah which in later years was commonly filled in to form extra rooms. Other late additions included projecting bay or box seat windows usually centrally located in the front of the house.[5]
Many old Queenslander buildings, both residential and commercial, have been demolished to make way for more modern buildings, particularly in the inner urban area of Brisbane contributing to Brisbane's gentrification. However, community awareness of urban heritage has seen local governments implement conservation measures to protect the unique 'tin and timber' character of neighbourhoods and towns dominated by Queenslander architecture. While master-planned housing estates are indistinguishable from those in other states, many custom-built homes are designed in a more modern version of the Queenslander style, particularly holiday houses in coastal areas.
Some elements of Queenslander house architecture can be found in some highrise buildings. Early highrise buildings had narrow balconies that were mostly used for cleaning the outside of windows. In Queensland, highrise balconies gradually evolved to become wide outdoor living spaces of the quality of verandahs and the back decks of Queenslander houses.
See also[edit]
1. ^ History of The Queenslander. Retrieved on 1 October 2012.
2. ^ "Conservation of Queenslander houses". Queensland Museum. Retrieved 1 October 2012.
3. ^ a b Gregory, Helen; Dianne Mclay (2010). Building Brisbane's History: Structure, Sculptures, Stories and Secrets. Warriewood, New South Wales: Woodslane Press. pp. 94—95. ISBN 9781921606199.
4. ^ a b "Achieving a Fusion of Past and Present – Bringing the best of Queensland Architecture into the 21st Century". dion seminara architecture. Retrieved 1 October 2012.
5. ^ Housing style - interwar years (Royal Australian Institute of Architects)
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Ramram Basu
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Ramram Basu (c. 1751 – 7 August 1813) was a notable early scholar and translator of the Bengali language (Bangla), and credited with writing the first original work of Bangla prose written by a Bengali.
Ramram Basu initially joined as the munshi (scribe) for William Chambers, Persian interpreter at the Supreme Court in Kolkata. Then he worked as the munshi and Bangla teacher for Dr. John Thomas, a Christian missionary from England at Debhata in Khulna. Subsequently, he worked from 1793 to 1796 for noted scholar William Carey (1761–1834) at Madnabati in Dinajpur.[1] In 1800 he joined Carey's Serampore Mission with its celebrated printing press, and in May 1801 was appointed Munshi, assistant teacher of Sanskrit, at Fort William College for a salary of 40 rupees per month. As college pundits were charged not only with teaching, but also with developing Bangla prose, there he began to produce a respected series of translations and new works, and continued to hold that post until his death.
Basu created a number of original prose and poetical works, including Christastava, 1788; Harkara, 1800, a hundred-stanza poem; Jnanodaya (Dawn of Knowledge), 1800, arguing that the Vedas were fundamentally monotheist, and that the departure of Hindu society from monotheism to idolatry was the fault of the Brahmins;[2] Lippi Mātā (The Bracelet of Writing), 1802, a miscellany; and Christabibaranamrta, 1803, on the subject of Jesus Christ.
In 1802, his Bangla text book Rājā Pratāpāditya-Charit (Life of Maharaja Pratapaditya), written for the college's use, received a cash prize of 300 rupees. It was printed at the Serampore Mission Press, and is now credited as the first Bengali to create a work in prose and also as the first historiography in Bangla.[3] Basu also created Bangla versions of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, and aided in Carey's Bangla translation of the Bible.
Despite his active engagement with western missionaries and Christian texts, Basu remained a Hindu, and died in Kolkata on 7 August 1813.
1. ^ Ramram Basu, Banglapedia
2. ^ New religious movements, religious plurality, and the Bengal Renaissance
3. ^ Ranajit Guha (2013). History at the limit of World-History. University Press[[{{subst:DATE}}|{{subst:DATE}}]] [disambiguation needed]. quote (dedication): To the memory of Ramram Basu who introduced modern historiography in Bangla, his native language, by a work published two hundred years ago
• Sachindra Kumar Maity, Professor A.L. Basham, My Guruji and Problems and Perspectives of Ancient Indian History and Culture, Abhinav Publications, 1997, page 218. ISBN 81-7017-326-4.
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Thomas J McInerney
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Thomas J McInerney was the Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer IAC/InterActiveCorp. He is an angel investor and a board member of Yahoo!, HSN Inc., and Interval Leisure Group Inc. [1] [2] [3] He is serving on the special committee set up at Yahoo! to investigate the CEO misstated college degree. [4]
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Monday, November 05, 2007
Electricity Deregulation Explained (1 of 3)
This is the first in a series of three blog entries that attempts to explain electricity markets: why regulation was necessary at one time, why it may not be now, and what it means to be an electricity consumer in the wake of deregulation. Part 1 provides the background. Part 2 explains how deregulation works from a consumer’s perspective. Part 3 describes the choices available to deregulated market participants and the near-term outlook for deregulation at the time of this writing (November 2007).
Most people have heard about electricity deregulation, but very few understand what it means. In brief, deregulation began as an attempt to restore fairness to electricity markets that have, over the last couple of decades, outgrown the 1930s business model upon which they are based. In practice, deregulation has been a fitful process for consumers, utilities, and lawmakers that are caught in the middle. Consumers have come to expect the market for electricity (or “power”) to be simple, fair, and offer low prices. Unfortunately, consumers can only obtain any two of those virtues, usually at the expense of the third. The good news is that consumers in deregulated power markets can choose which two virtues they wish to optimize. In other words, access to electricity can be:
• simple & cheap, while compromising fairness;
• simple and fair, which generally precludes cheap prices; or
• cheap & fair, which is not a simple market for its participants.
Regulation is the legacy of utility business models from years past, which in turn reflected the technology of the times. Prior to 1935, electric companies could and did clutter cities and streets with competing sets of distribution wires and ancillary equipment. Federal legislation passed that year would enable the utility business model as a regionalized monopoly, so that only one utility company’s infrastructure served a defined geographic area. In this format, a utility offered the simplicity of one supplier with one price schedule. In return for a monopoly franchise, utility businesses were closely regulated by state-chartered public utility commissions. Commissioners were tasked with representing the consumers’ interest by ensuring that the rate for electricity covered the utility’s operating costs while providing a fair return to the utility’s investors—and no more. From the 1930s through deregulation’s take-off in the 1990s, electric utility companies provided steady if unspectacular financial returns. Large institutions have come to rely on utility-issued equity as a key part of their investment strategies.
By the 1990s, a number of forces began to challenge the classic electric utility business model. Perhaps the most important forces were (1) the escalating cost of fuels needed to generate power; (2) the growing variety of power generation technologies; (3) and the increased willingness of large-quantity consumers to relocate their facilities in search of better electric rates, or to simply generate their own power onsite. The economic tension created by these forces demanded resolution.
Immediately, questions of fairness come to mind. Why should the large consumer be forced to accept the local utility’s electric rate when it can buy cheaper power in another location? Why should smaller customers subsidize the cost of serving larger ones? Why should the steady investment returns to utility investors be interrupted? If these returns are interrupted, utilities will find it a lot harder to attract investors. The only cure for that is to raise the rate of return on utility investments. In other words, the cost of capital for utilities would escalate, which in turn raises the cost to produce (and the price to buy) electricity. As electricity prices go up, common citizens begin to petition lawmakers for protection. Average citizens (and lawmakers) do not understand the cost-price relationship for producing electricity; many people assume that electricity prices can be determined by the stroke of a pen, regardless of its actual cost of production. Does it not seem unfair to have elected officials decide the price of electricity? Exactly how are they supposed to do that?
The solution to this dilemma is to open electricity markets to competition. Power generation can be accomplished by competing suppliers. Meanwhile, the local distribution and service portions of electricity provision remain the same—it’s still not practical to have competing sets of wires lining the street. By allowing competition among generators, big consumers can get access to lower electricity prices without relocating. But if you open the market to the big consumers, you must open it for all the small businesses and homes, too.
Proceed to Part 2
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92133
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The second most common type of chord in music. It consists of a root tone, the note a minor third above it, and the note a major third above the second note. It also makes up the first, third, and fifth degrees of the minor scale. Notated by appending a lowercase "m" to the root tone; e.g., the C minor chord would be represented as Cm. There are other, less common ways to represent minor chords (Cminor, Cmin, c (the lowercase of the root tone)).
The notes included in the minor chord for each note:
Cbm |Cb Ebb Gb
Cm |C Eb G
C#m |C# E G#
Dbm |Db Fb Ab
Dm |D F A
D#m |D# F# A#
Ebm |Eb Gb Bb
Em |E G B
E#m |E# G# B#
Fbm |Fb Abb Cb
Fm |F Ab C
F#m |F# A C#
Gbm |Gb Bbb Db
Gm |G Bb D
G#m |G# B D#
Abm |Ab Cb Eb
Am |A C E
A#m |A# C# E#
Bbm |Bb Db F
Bm |B D F#
B#m |B# D# Fx
(where bb = double flat, b = flat, and # = sharp.)
Any of these chords can be inverted, or spelled out in a different order. The root position of a minor chord uses the first tone first, the first inversion uses the second tone first, and the second inversion uses the third tone first. For example, the root position of the A minor chord can be spelled A-C-E, the first inversion can be spelled C-E-A, and the second inversion can be spelled E-A-C.
Some chords created by adding tones to the minor chord are the minor seventh chord, minor major seventh chord, minor ninth chord, minor major ninth chord, minor sixth chord, or minor added ninth chord.
cf. major chord, diminished chord, augmented chord
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92149
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Multiple-Choice Tests
What causes night and day?
A. The earth spins on its axis.
B. The earth moves around the sun.
C. Clouds block out the sun's light.
E. The sun goes around the earth.
Are multiple-choice tests "objective"?
What can multiple-choice items be used for?
Multiple-choice and critical thinking
It is possible to get multiple-choice items correct without knowing much or doing any real thinking. Because the answers are in front of the student, some people call these tests "multiple- guess." Multiple-choice items can be easier than open-ended questions asking the same thing. This is because it is harder to recall an answer than to recognize it. Test-wise students know that it is sometimes easier to work backwards from the answer options, looking for the one that best fits. It also is possible to choose the "right" answer for the wrong reason or to simply make a lucky guess.
Some people claim that multiple-choice tests can be useful for measuring whether students can analyze material. This item was released by test publishers as an example of how multiple-choice items supposedly measure "thinking" skills:
Was the infantry invasion of Japan a viable alternative to the use of the atomic bomb to end World War II? Is so, why? If not, why not?
A. Yes; transport ships were available in sufficient numbers.
B. Yes; island defenses in Japan were minimal.
C. No; estimated casualties would have been much greater.*
* Wanted answer.
(From Measuring Thinking in the Classroom, Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, 1988, Oak Park, IL.)
Claiming there is one right answer to this complex historical issue actually demonstrates how this sort of question short-circuits the thinking process it claims to measure. Since "C" is the explanation given in most high-school texts for using the bomb, choosing the wanted answer would be a matter of recall for many students. For students who did not recall the textbook response, no information is provided to actually analyze the question and come up with the wanted answer. Beyond that, there remains an intense debate among historians about the justification for the use of the atomic bomb. Thus, what is treated as "true" may not be. A question really asking for critical thinking would have students weigh evidence and defend a position.
Most researchers agree that multiple-choice items are poor tools for measuring the ability to synthesize and evaluate information or apply knowledge to complex problems. In math, for example, they can measure knowledge of basic facts and the ability to apply standard procedures and rules. Carefully written multiple-choice questions also can measure somewhat more complex mathematical knowledge such as integrating information or deciding which mathematical procedures to use to solve problems. However, as students move toward solving non-routine problems, analyzing, interpreting, and making mathematical arguments, multiple-choice questions are not useful.
In sum, multiple-choice items are an inexpensive and efficient way to check on factual ("declarative") knowledge and routine procedures. However, they are not useful for assessing critical or higher order thinking in a subject, the ability to write, or the ability to apply knowledge or solve problems.
Informing instruction
Even with carefully written distractors, as in the "night and day" example, it is often hard to know why a student got a question wrong or right. But unless a teacher has that information, the test result is not useful for improving instruction for the individual.
A standardized multiple-choice test may point to some broad areas that need improvement. For example, a test may show that students in a school or district need to improve on double-digit multiplication. However, the tests do not provide information that will help teachers do a better job of teaching double-digit multiplication because they do not show why the class generally did not do well.
If students were asked to explain how they got their answers, then their teachers would have a lot more information. This information is vital for teachers to make instruction more effective. For example, students who did not know why "the earth spins on its axis" is the correct answer to "night and day" but happened to guess the correct answer would be unable to explain why. Their mistaken views would be visible to the teacher, who could then address the misunderstanding and clarify the concept.
Dangers of relying on multiple-choice tests.
Relying on multiple-choice tests as a primary method of assessment is educationally dangerous for many reasons:
1) Because of cultural assumptions and biases, the tests may be inaccurate. (Of course, other kinds of assessments also can be biased.) Assuming the test is accurate because of its supposedly "objective" format may lead to making bad decisions about how best to teach a student.
2) Students may recognize or know facts or procedures well enough to score high on the test, but not be able to think about the subject or apply knowledge, even though being able to think and apply is essential to "knowing" any subject. Therefore, the conclusion or inference that a student "knows" history or science because she got a high score on a multiple-choice test may be false.
3) What is easily measurable may not be as important as what is not measurable or is more difficult to measure. A major danger with high stakes multiple-choice and short-answer tests -- tests that have a major impact on curriculum and instruction -- is that only things that are easily measured are taught.
4) Since the questions usually must be answered quickly and have only one correct answer, students learn that problems for which a single answer cannot be chosen quickly are not important.
5) When schools view multiple-choice tests as important, they often narrow their curriculum to cover only what is on the exams. For example, to prepare for multiple-choice tests, curriculum may focus on memorizing definitions and recognizing (naming) concepts. This will not lead students to understand important scientific principles, grasp how science is done, and think about how science affects their lives.
6) When narrow tests define important learning, instruction often gets reduced to "drill and kill" - - lots of practice on questions that look just like the test. In this case, students often get no chance to read real books, to ask their own questions, to have discussions, to challenge texts, to conduct experiments, to write extended papers, to explore new ideas -- that is, to think about and really learn a subject.
Should multiple-choice tests be used at all?
The decision to use multiple-choice tests or include multiple-choice items in a test should be based on what the purpose of the test is and the uses that will be made of its results. If the purpose is only to check on factual and procedural knowledge, if the test will not have a major effect on overall curriculum and instruction, and if conclusions about what students know in a subject will not be reduced to what the test measures, then a multiple-choice test might be somewhat helpful -- provided it is unbiased, well written, and related to the curriculum. If they substantially control curriculum or instruction, or are the basis of major conclusions that are reported to the public (e.g., how well students read or know math), or are used to make important decisions about students, then multiple-choice tests are quite dangerous.
Students should learn to think and apply knowledge. Facts and procedures are necessary for thinking, but schools should not be driven by multiple-choice testing into minimizing or eliminating thinking and problem-solving. Therefore, classroom assessments and standardized tests should not rely more than a small amount on multiple-choice or short-answer items. Instead, other well-designed forms of assessment should be implemented and their used properly. Most importantly, all teachers need to be capable of high quality assessment to help their students learn (see Implementing Performance Assessment from FairTest).
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92172
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Startup Research
Winter 2010 Seattle Semester
Identify your target market.
2010-12-06, 06:30 PM
T.A. Mccann
CEO, Gist
David Bluhm
Founder & CEO, Z2Live
David has spent the past twenty-five years starting and growing technology companies. In a variety of founder, director and senior operational roles, David has help guide companies through 2 IPOs and 7 company acquisitions. In addition to being the Founder & CEO of Z2Live...
Marcelo Calbucci
Co-founder & CTO, EveryMove
Marcelo Calbucci is the co-founder & CTO EveryMove (, a company revolutionizing the way you perceive, interact with, and benefit from your physical activity and healthy lifestyle. Marcelo is also the founder of Seattle 2.0, the premier resource for entre...
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92176
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Categories > Celebrities > My Chemical Romance > Lipgloss Through My Veins
Chapter Six
by missbatcountry 3 Reviews
The night after the Three Man game with Asha, Scarlet, Mikey, Ray and Bob
Chapter Six
After an hour and a half of Three Man, most of the group had been taken down. Bob lay in one of the arm chairs asleep with Misfit sleeping in his lap, while Ray and Asha were passed out on the couch together laying top to tail underneath a blanket Scarlet had gotten for them. Now all that was left was Mikey and Scarlet who sat out on Scarlet's balcony smoking cigarettes talking loudly about nothing in particular. The two of them had really hit it off that night, and Scarlet was glad that it was just the two of them still up. The other guys were great, but there was something that intrigued Scarlet about Mikey, something she just couldn't put her finger on. He was weird and quiet and shy sometimes but then leapt out of his shell and could act like a total lunatic at other moments. It just didn't make sense to Scarlet.
"God, I'm so sleepy but I don't wanna go to bed yet! I'm finding it harder and harder to fight off that dude who makes you fall asleep Scar." Mikey whined sounding completely exhausted.
"You mean the Sand Man?" Scarlet giggled inhaling smoke deep into her lungs.
"Yeah, that's the dude!" A very drunk Mikey replied.
"You want a line bro?" Scarlet asked picking up her cigarette packet from the table and searching through the tiny box.
"Line?" Mikey asked, sitting up a little straighter.
"Coke. You want? We can stay up and watch super cheesy horror flicks if you want. That's what I usually do anyway." Scarlet said pulling out a small plastic bag from her cigarette packet which was filled with fine white powder.
" Wait a second. You do Coke and like cheesy horror movies?" Mikey asked totally confused.
"Yeah. So does Asha, but she hates my horror movies. She thinks they're lame. She'd rather dance around in the backyard to her iPod when she's high on coke." Scarlet said examining the powder closely.
"Dude. I'm totally in love. I love old horror movies, the cheesier the better! But wait, Asha does drugs? Is that something she really wants her new employee to know?" Mikey laughed.
"I dunno. You want a line or not?" Scarlet asked looking up at him.
"Line me up woman!" Mikey exclaimed pumping his fist in the air like a super hero.
Scarlet just laughed at Mikey and then took his hand and lead him back into her room, away from the wind that could possibly foil their whole operation.
Late the next morning Asha was woken by the feeling of something soft and wet against her face. She really wasn't ready to open her eyes and greet the day yet so she decided to ignore it. But it didn't stop, and was getting more and more persistent. Slowly Asha opened her eyes letting the beams of sunlight pour into them. It made her head hurt.
"Stupid Three Man." She mumbled to herself, as she turned to see exactly what was bothering her.
She turned to face a dopey looking Misfit who obviously needed to be let out outside. Misfit was good like that. He never went to the toilet inside, but rather waited by the back door or woke someone up if they were sleeping so he could go outside. Asha then felt a body next to hers. She wasn't quite sure who it was so she attempted to sit up quietly and carefully until Misfit suddenly thought it would be a great idea to jump up on the couch.
"What the fuck?" The body yelled sitting upright in a matter of seconds. It was Ray.
"Morning." Asha said groggily as she got up.
"Hey." Ray said rubbing his eyes.
"Sorry bout Misfit waking you up." Asha said sheepishly as she grabbed him by the collar and let him outside.
"No problems. I needed to get up anyway." Ray said stretching a little before getting up off the couch.
Bob was still asleep in the armchair. His mouth was open a little and he was drooling slightly on his own shoulder.
Ray and Asha turned to each other and giggled quietly at the sight, making sure they didn't wake up the sleeping giant.
Asha waved Ray into the kitchen. Once inside Asha put on a pot of coffee.
"You want some?" Asha asked holding her head a little. It was pounding and there was no mistaking the fact that she had a full-blown hang over.
"Yeah. Thanks. I'm feeling a little worse for wear today, that's for sure. All because of that stupid game." Ray said as she slouched over the kitchen bench.
"Yeah, Three Man is killer." Asha said.
"Hey where's Mikey and Scarlet?" Ray asked. He hadn't seen them in the living room, so where were they?
"I dunno. Let's go check it out." Asha said as she left the kitchen and made her way up the stairs with Ray in close pursuit.
"Scarlet's probably in her own bed, but Mikey... I really have no clue." Asha said as they approached Scarlet's bedroom door.
Asha pushed open the already partly open door so she could see the whole room. Sure enough Scarlet was tucked away in her own bed.
"Is that Mikey in there with her?" Ray asked in a whisper.
"Yeah, that's Mikey snuggled up with Scarlet. What the fuck is going on?" Asha yelled loud enough to abruptly wake the two from their slumber.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92195
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The The Angel, Islington reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004
(provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from
The Angel, Islington
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The Angel was originally an inn near a tollgate on the Great North Road (at what is now the corner of Islington High Street and Pentonville Road), but now refers to this part of Islington in London. The corner itself is actually in Finsbury which was a separate borough until 1965 when Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury merged with the Metropolitan Borough of Islington to form the London Borough of Islington.
Thomas Paine stayed at the inn after he returned from France in 1790 and it is believed that he wrote passages of the Rights of Man whilst staying there. The original building was rebuilt in 1819 and became a coaching inn; the first staging post outside of City of London. It became a local landmark and was mentioned in Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens "The coach rattled away and, turning when it reached the Angel at Islington, stopped at length before a neat house in Pentonville". A new building in pale terracotta stone with a corner cupola replaced the old building in 1899. From 1921 to 1959 the building was used as a Lyons Corner House and is now a Co-operative Bank.
The Angel Islington is familar to many people as a location on the standard British version of the game Monopoly.
See also: Angel tube station
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92215
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Announcement Announcement Module
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Extreme High Throughput/ Low Latency Aggregation Page Title Module
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• Extreme High Throughput/ Low Latency Aggregation
Hi Team,
We have a fire hydrant of streaming quotes at 100k/sec with 17k symbols that need real-time conversion to 1 second quote bars. Oleg demonstrated an excellent usage to build quote bars using an aggregator and reaper in The throughput on Oleg's example is about 10k-20k for 100 symbols on my laptop, which is good but not enough. The latency inherent in the aggregator/ reaper is probably due to having to pass over once again all of the messages that compose the aggregation to create the quote bar instead of building it as you go. If we avoid passing over all the messages a second time we would get a boost. But let me ask an open question.
My question is: how would one scale given this use case with Spring Integration? What have you found with putting a router in front of the aggregators and then allowing different horizontal nodes handle the aggregation? And then if a channel fails?
Thank you
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92220
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The Channel logo
back to article Smartphones to outsell PCs by 2012
Morgan Stanley reckons online advertising is worth $50bn a year in America alone, and that smartphones will rapidly become the platform of choice. According to the analyst's Internet Trends report smartphones will outsell feature phones next year, but the crystal ball-gazing comes with a plethora of facts and figures about both …
This topic is closed for new posts.
Online advertising is never going to be as big as they think in the UK
It's okay for these consultants to predict that online advertising is set to soar but in the UK, any advertising directed at an individual is subject to the Data Protection Act 1998. And in Oct 2008, the Information Commissioner's Office were of the opinion that online advertising - advertising that takes place in an individual's logged in area of a website, is direct marketing. This was confirmed in 2009. So in the UK, we can simply opt-out to any marketing that appears in our online account areas. As such, the revenue from UK online advertising is never going to be the big money earner that some predict.
What proportion of these 'logged in areas' are covered by terms such as the ones below? Good luck with opting out of that.
Bronze badge
So can we see the equivalent survey showing just how much revenue these companies make on the back on this advertising?
I would assert that most of this cash gets spunked to the ad brokering/web platforms by "marketing executives" because "everyone else is doing it" rather than on the back of any serious ROI calculations.
Me... I just ignore it.
This topic is closed for new posts.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92223
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Hi All:
Searching Deja didn't turn up anything, so I thought I'd try here.
I'm being passed a Variant which contains an array of bytes. I need to
break it into 3 pieces, looping is slow, and CopyMemory seems ideal. I
can't seem to get a pointer to the data in the variant.
The following code illustrates my problem...
Option Explicit
Private Declare Sub CopyMemory Lib "kernel32" Alias "RtlMoveMemory"
Sub Test()
Dim bytSource(0 To 3) As Byte
Dim bytDest(0 To 3) As Byte
Dim varTest As Variant
'load up some test data
bytSource(0) = 0
bytSource(1) = 1
bytSource(2) = 2
bytSource(3) = 3
'this creates a variant of subtype byte array (8209 according to vartype)
varTest = bytSource
'this works just fine, you can look at the bytes in the locals window
CopyMemory bytDest(0), bytSource(0), 4
'none of the following work
CopyMemory bytDest(0), varTest(0), 4
CopyMemory bytDest(0), VarPtr(varTest(0)), 4
CopyMemory bytDest(0), ByVal (VarPtr(varTest(0))), 4
End Sub
Any help would be appreciated.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92243
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1. (10316.1)
"Did someone mention public transport?"
CommentAuthorPurple Wyrm
• CommentTimeNov 1st 2011 edited
Oh the tales I can tell of public transport!
I use public transport a lot. I've never got a drivers licence and I've always lived within five minutes walk of a train station, so riding the buses, rails and occasional ferry is the way I get around. Over the years I've seen some seriously odd things, such as the following...
* Two elderly gentlemen laying out newspaper on the carriage floor, pulling out wine glasses and cheerfully pouring themselves serve after serve of sherry, accompanying each round with elaborate toasts.
* A bug eyed, silent man, walking grimly down the carriage handing out a minutely printed screed about how Rupert Murdoch has replaced everyone he knows with actors, and asking him to stop.
* A man boarding the bus, weighed down with ferns, yelling that he wanted to go to "THE PUB!!" and then trying to hand out his greenery to all and sundry.
* A passenger loudly telling a fellow passenger about his lengthy experiences with angels, who he could tell were angels because they had no knees (there was just empty space in the middle of their legs...).
* A pale, cadaverous man clad completely in clothes knitted from purple wool trying to interest a bunch of schoolkids in the "truth" about MI5 and the secret of hanger 18.
* A sour faced old man in a red tracksuit who I swear had to be Ambrose Bierce.
* And my favourite? The man who gets on the train carrying a small sports bag. After looking around for rail guards he sets it on the ground, unzips it - and the head of a Jack Russell terrier pokes out and starts looking happily around.
I've got a couple of more narrative stories, but I'll save them for later.
• CommentAuthorRenThing
• CommentTimeNov 1st 2011 edited
@Purple Wyrm
My idea of hell right there.
Ok, here goes...
Few years ago I was coming back from SF on BART. Most of the time when I'm on BART I have a book and my iPod to dissuade people from talking to me and this time was no different and so I was a bit perturbed when someone in the seat ahead of mine tapped me on the shoulder. Who was it? My personal Writing Fairy Godfather.
Allow me to explain.
He was a young black man, heavily tattooed, and he began having the weirdest conversation at me (my input didn't really matter). He asked me my name and then proceeded to launch into a story about how he was a record producer/rap/electronic artist who liked making songs about money and sex (because those things make people happy and happy people buy more stuff according to his logic).
He then asked if I was a writer, which creeped me out because I am. He said he knew because I had some heavy bags under my eyes but that I wasn't really pro because professional writers have three bags under their eyes and I only had two. The creeping out continued when he said, "But stories, man? Stories are sometimes like a cake that's baking. Now, some people want to look in the oven, right? Look in the oven, let the hot air out, and fuck up the cake. Sometimes you have to let a story cook until it's done, and if you don't then you don't get it."
Looked me square in the eye and said, "You got to let that cake bake, man. You got to let that fucking cake bake."
Which was very poignant, and creepy, because I was stuck in a pretty significant case of writer's block at the time.
Strange who you meet on public transit.
2. (10316.4)
As often as I rode the L in Chicago, most of my interesting public transportation stories are here in Houston.
While riding the bus, a homeless-looking gentleman sat in the seat in front of me and smelled exactly like freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, and he smelled so delicious that I began to feel hungry.
Then I realized I was on a bus sniffing a homeless person.
Another time, I was coming home from work in my prison guard uniform, and some old black guy was getting on the bus, and some young white kid, looking like a meth head ran up and grabbed him. The bus driver lady froze, and the meth head was yelling about how the old man owed him two dollars. I asked the bus driver if she wanted me to intervene, and she said to kick them both off the bus; there is zero tolerance for fighting. I cocked an eyebrow and asked her if she really wanted me to kick the old man of the bus and she said yes. I shrugged, but it's not my bus so I started to get the old man off the bus. The meth head kid went to grab him, and the driver changed her mind, saying get him on here. So I grabbed his luggage, pulled him on the bus, and as the meth head went to step forward, I hit him once, really good, and as he fell back, I told the driver to gun it, and we left him in the dust.
(Hey! I made it in under 300 words!)
• CommentTimeNov 1st 2011
For a few years in my late teens I became almost irresistable to weirdos wanting to shake my hand for five minutes while talking to me. One such occasion I was leaving the train station and a middle-aged man who probably had about three teeth with what looked like dried blood splattered pretty liberally on his dark blue jacket. He shook my hand and started talking, thought I should probably say more "mumbling very fast". By the end of it I had surmised that he had killed someone, the blood and him saying what I THINK sounded like "I killed" among the mumbles. And then he left and I never saw him again.
3. (10316.6)
@oldhat - and thus a career photographing grizzly scenes was born. All in an effort to recapture the magic of that one special moment.
• CommentTimeNov 1st 2011
Oh god, no. I've been in to gruesome murders since I was four. Mother insisted.
• CommentAuthorStefanJ
• CommentTimeNov 1st 2011 edited
Yeah. Public transit. Rich grounds there.
In the very early eighties, I used to take the 23 bus from Glen Cove to Roosevelt Field mall, and the 16 bus from there to Nassau Community College.
One stop before the campus was the Tri-Workshop, a vocational training outfit. So, the bus there, and the busses feeding that line each morning, were full of folks on the left slope of the cognitive bell curve and/or the fringes of emotional health.
It was instructive, in a totally non-ironic way. My fellow passengers included folks who were barely able to function in the world, but dutifully got on the bus each day for work and were damn cheerful. A frail young woman who exhibited stereotyped behavior, performing the same bus-riding rituals each day. A creepy, unshaven guy who was utterly fascinated with me, and did everything he could to sit next to me. When he could manage it, he always had the same question:
"N-n-nice day isn't it?"
I'd answer yes and that satisfied him. He had no follow-up.
One fellow student was a beaten-down, perpetually bereft-looking, shaggy-headed guy who poured over a tiny bible each morning. One of the Tri-Workshop workers, a perpetually sour, sneering little prick. One day the latter decided to pick on the former, launching an inept tirade involving Hitler and not wanting to be preached at. It was horrifying to watch. The poor sad sack just sat there and took it, at the end meekly saying something to the effect of: What Happens, Will Happen.
I'm grateful for my sanity every day. One fumbled chromosome duplication during my gestation and I'd still be on that bus, heading for the Tri-Workshop.
CommentAuthorAlan Tyson
• CommentTimeNov 1st 2011 edited
@Purple Wyrm: That Rupert Murdoch guy might have been on to something. It's a good thing you didn't really get to know him, or they might have replaced you, too.
@RenThing: I think I know exactly what you mean - I have a There-and-Gone-Again-Muse story myself, though I'll tell it some other time. Still, things like that just seem to happen to writers, don't they? It's like a requirement.
@governmentspy: It wouldn't be a govspy story if you didn't punch someone. I mean that in the kindest, most admiring way.
@oldhat: Yeah... why DO they always want to shake your hand? The guys asking for money in Savannah did that too - I always assumed it was so they'd have one hand occupied so they could pick my pocket.
@StefanJ: Jesus... you shouldn't be allowed to work at a place like that if you're so much of a dipshit.
I'm on an Amtrak train, headed from Nowhere in Particular, Iowa, to Shit Damn It's Cold, Colorado, in the cracked-plastic seat, staring out the window at a whole lot of moonlit nothing, sharing the car with a fellow about my age. All of a sudden, these two guys storm into the car and head right for this kid. For no reason I can think of, I duck down in my seat, and go full fetal.
One guy is big, muscled, shaved bald, not a nice-looking dude. The other looks like an old homeless guy. Over time, I learn that they're bitching out this poor bastard for quitting the Army. Now, great big scary dude, he sounds like he knows the kid, and I can see him being Army, but I still have no idea who the "bum" was. If he was Army, the last time he wore green would have been Vietnam. But he's going on about it, too, talking about the kid losing his honor and disappointing his folks and all this other bullshit. The kid is taking it alright, just nodding and letting them heap it on. The only part that I remember clearly is the "bum" saying "you got to wake up and be a man." Sergeant Payne follows that with "That's RIGHT. Be a man." Then, bum repeats that same thing, but with a different emphasis. "That's right. BE a man."
This goes on for about twenty minutes, then finally they leave, thankfully the same way they came in, so they don't see me. About a minute after the door is closed, and I'm pretty sure they aren't coming back, I poke my head up. The kid sees me, smiles and says "Sorry about that." Then he leans on the window, and goes to sleep.
I found another car to ride in, after that.
• CommentAuthorStefanJ
• CommentTimeNov 1st 2011
Something to ponder, when you encounter a miserable asshole:
I suppose some people are Born Assholes, just genetically or obstinately selfish, clueless, but I really think most irritating wince-inducing people one encounters, if you could watch a film of the highlights of their life, and their day, you’d be overwhelmed with sympathy, perhaps in tears with sorrow over what they’ve gone through, what they’ve lost, what they never found out, what was done to them...
--John Shirley, blog post
• CommentTimeNov 1st 2011 edited
A few years back, I got to be pretty good mates with one of my workplace's delivery drivers, who turned out to be a pot grower with a fair-sized hydro operation in his garage. He used to complain about having to get rid of all the foliage after harvest; he couldn't compost it because the neighbours could smell it, same deal with trying to throw it in the green waste or garbage bins. I told him I'd be happy to take some off his hands, because after drying and pulverising in a coffee grinder, pot leaves make excellent green flour for psychedelic baked goods.
About a week later, my buddy shows up on his delivery run, tells me to meet him out the back after work. Five minutes later, he hands me a whole bin-liner bag full of pot clippings.
So there I am, riding home on the afternoon train with a backpack full of reeking contraband, and a fucking UNIFORMED COP walks into the carriage and sits down. I'm pissing my pants, imagining being up in front of the magistrate and trying to explain that five kilos of pot is in fact a personal amount (under Australian law, possession charges don't distinguish between pot leaf - which is almost valueless for street sale because it's harsh to smoke and has a fairly low THC content - and smokeable buds, so the reported street value of pot seizures is often pure inflated bullshit), and wondering how much time I'm going to be serving as a drug dealer. The cop starts sniffing and looking around, I'm trying to disappear down the crack between my seat and backrest, when he says to the bloke behind him, "Hey, you can't drink that in here!". Turns out he's been sitting in front of a smelly homeless guy who's been working his way through a bottle of spirits in a brown paper bag.
The train stopped at a station and I made my escape. It was a six mile hike home from work, but from then on I always walked home when transporting questionable substances.
CommentAuthorPurple Wyrm
• CommentTimeNov 1st 2011 edited
For all I know they might have done so anyway. It would explain a lot.
I actually typed out most of his complaint on my blog (I lost the tiny strip of paper it was printed on before I could finish it). I'd link it here but I don't know if that would violate the no links to longer versions rule. Lord and Master Si?
4. (10316.13)
But if it's a fascinating Thing and you want to open it up for discussion, why not start a new thread about it?
5. (10316.14)
@Alan only a very small fraction of my stories involve me punching someone... Right?
6. (10316.15)
Yes, Mr. Spy. Anything you say.
please don't hit me.
CommentAuthorAlan Tyson
• CommentTimeNov 2nd 2011
@govspy: Between you and oldhat, there is not a single human being currently alive who has gone unpunched.
7. (10316.17)
@Horrible Warning Si - But if it's a fascinating Thing and you want to open it up for discussion, why not start a new thread about it?
A good point sir
8. (10316.18)
Let's turn the tables shall we... A story in which I'm the awful person on public transport:
A friend’s band was launching their EP at a place that was only licensed for BYO. My girlfriend and I bought two 4-packs of pre-mixed tequila drinks and whilst I found the tequila delicious, my girlfriend wasn’t convinced. I couldn’t let them go to waste, so I proceeded to drink seven of the eight drinks in a period of about two hours.
I was fine and having a great time right up until we hit the street. My first tequila-infused vomit was in the alleyway next to the venue, but I managed to keep it down for the couple of kilometre walk to the train station.
We had about 20 minutes to kill before the train arrived (the last one for the night that would actually get us home), so I spent that time in the disabled toilet vomiting ceaselessly (I’m never one to use a disabled toilet in usual circumstances, but my girlfriend chucked me in there because it was closest to the platform).
When the train arrives my long-suffering girlfriend manages to coax me out of the toilet and on to the train, after dragging me deliberately to the carriage with the bathroom.
Just my luck – there were two train security guards standing right there. I had the plastic bag that the bottle-o had given us the drinks in, so I proceeded to vomit into it while the security guards kept watch – apparently they only care about violence and/or genuinely illegal acts because they left me to it.
It was only then with a bag half-full of spew that I actually noticed the toilet in the carriage, locked myself inside, stuff the bag into the diaper disposal bin and spent the rest of the hour long trip hugging porcelain (well, more likely plastic).
9. (10316.19)
Back in the very early '90s, I went with a couple of friends to see New Model Army. Being a prick, I drink two bottles of Thunderbird on the way. The car we're in, a horrible, ancient Vauxhall Chevette known as 'The Booga', breaks down on the way, and we're going to have to get the train home. I'm starting to panic about this, because I think we'll inevitably fuck this up, so I slip out during the support act to check the train times.
Being somewhat impaired, I ask 'where's the train to Winchester' rather than 'what time's the last train to Winchester'. The station chap says 'it's that one mate...' So I get on it, totally forgetting about the gig. The train gets as far as Eastleigh and I have to change. This is when I realise I'm meant to be in Portsmouth. At that point I gave up on the gig and tried to concentrate on getting home. I don't know the town, and am bloody hungry, so I approach a woman with a small child and say 'Excuse me, is there anywhere to get food round here?' I think it probably comes out sounding like 'I'm going to kill and eat you', and with hindsight, a lurching goth monstrosity, all backcombed and in leather is probably a bit intimidating, but I'm incredibly hurt when she pulls the child behind her and says 'don't worry, the horrible man will go away soon'...
I get on the next train and try to find a buffet by walking through. Until I come to a locked door, which is obviously (to a sober person) the front of the train. I'm shoving at the damn thing, and hear laughter - turning round, there's a whole bunch of rail staff in the carriage going 'stupid prick thinks he's the driver'. I get home eventually and tip a kettle of boiling water over my arm and spend the rest of the night on the sofa with a bag of frozen peas taped round it. Joy.
• CommentTimeNov 3rd 2011 edited
I really must learn how to remember details, because I *know* I have a fuckton of awesome stories about public transportation, but they do all inevitably involve being completely wasted and go something like, "I went to this party, then it all got to be a blur, but I got on the train somehow and got home again." :P
If I could have someone *else* follow me around transcribing my activity, it would be a lot more entertaining.
Looking forward to when those Microsoft LIfeCams really *are* recording everyone's activity 24/7, so there's nothing to do but just post the video.
Good job to the rest of you, anyhow.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92258
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Reinforced Rail
Reinforced Rails are made using Obsidian Dust. They are used in the crafting of Reinforced Track and Reinforced Booster Track. They were added in Tekkit update 3.1.3.
Reinforced Track
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92260
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Bush DAC90
Domestic Radio Index
Other Bush Products.
Manufacturer Bush
Model DAC90
Age Released 1946
Service Data Yes
Condition Good, top of cabinet a little dull, the usual fire damage to the back. See the Bush DAC90 repairs page for details.
Dimensions 12" x 9" x 7" (300 x 225 x 175mm)
Comments The Bush DAC90 is a standard post-war 4 valve plus rectifier design, using octal series valves in a Bakelite cabinet. The set has a couple of inherent design faults, the first being the proximity of the mains dropper resistor (the set has an AC/DC or universal power supply), to the (cardboard) back panel - the backs of these sets are almost always burnt, revealing the connections to the dropper, which carry live mains! The second fault concerns the tuning control and aerial - the set has a frame aerial mounted on the inside side of the cabinet, and the tuning control protrudes through this, unfortunatly, placing your hand on the control alters the characteristics of the aerial, and detunes the set, or more to the point, when you tune the set in, removing your hand alters the tuning......... this was cured in the later DAC90A sets.
The set pictured is not in my collection, but is one that I have recently repaired.
A-Z index.
Copyright J.Beacon & M.Wroe-Parker 2003
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92262
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Take the 2-minute tour ×
After the recent updates to the ICCup Launcher I no longer see the option to join the abys server option only the regular servers are displayed: west east asia and Europe.
Im doing everything the way I always did but the option does not show up.
I also tried searching for the solution elsewhere I've seen that other people are having similar problem in this post. I tried following the suggested solution of downloading the iCCup_WarCraft_3_Reg.zip file but it didnt help me at all.
share|improve this question
I already reinstalled the launcher, restarted computer and closed down all other programs including the launcher before trying to get the option back. This did not yield any results so please dont post it in the answer. – Xitcod13 Nov 23 '12 at 9:35
2 Answers 2
up vote 2 down vote accepted
Some research showed that other people had this problem as well.
Apparently, this is a bug that is caused by the current iteration of the ICCup launcher.
Unlike previous versions, the launcher no longer re-adds the registry entry for ICCup every time you start it. As a result, anytime you access a regular battle.net gateway (such as USEast) Blizzard removes the ICCup entry and you have to go back to ICCup.com and get the registry entry.
If you are interested in doing this manually, the following steps should suffice just know that anytime you manually edit your registry, there can be dire consequences if you do it wrong.
Manual Registry Edit:
1. type 'regedit' into the start menu's 'Run' dialog or directly into the search for windows Vista and beyond.
1. navigate to "HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> Battle.net -> Configuration"
2. open the Battle.net Gateways key
3. add the following lines to the bottom of the file then save and close it. (Note: the format is always gateway address, time difference and then server name.)
Upon restart, you should have iCCup at the bottom again. However this change will revert anytime you connect to a Blizzard gateway.
credit to: sGs.DNH
The original, source of this, including another option in case this fix doesn't work can be found at:
share|improve this answer
Thanks for expanding your answer. I'd recommend removing the bit after the link, as going, "If this doesn't help, check there instead of here" runs counter to how Arqade works; we'd like authoritative answers provided here. – Frank Nov 30 '12 at 16:59
Psst....we're not a forum! :P – Frank Nov 30 '12 at 23:35
By the time I'm done, the list of edits will be longer than the post :P I promise I'll get the hang of this soon. – superdemongob Nov 30 '12 at 23:42
No worries. :) But you also don't need the edit lines. If you want to expand your post, feel free to add in the steps found at that link. That'll help your answer. – Frank Nov 30 '12 at 23:45
Finally something that works. Im wondering if you know how to make this solution more permanent every time i enter a gateway I need to go to regedit and redo the whole thing. I was trying to make the reg file read only but i cant even find it on my computer. – Xitcod13 Nov 30 '12 at 23:50
I'd like to add that there are two ways to stop other servers from overwriting your server list in the registry.
1. Modify your existing registry key
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Battle.net\Configuration\Battle.net gateways - Modify the first line and set it to a high number like 99999
2. Create a new registry key to override the other one. Right click -> New -> Multi-String Value
• name it "Override Battle.net gateways" and paste the server information from Battle.net gateways
share|improve this answer
Your Answer
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92266
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The City of Portland Is Divesting From Walmart
Yesterday, Walmart announced weak earnings in the past quarter. The company blamed the weather. It might do better to blame itself. Walmart's reputation is now so toxic that a major American city is purging itself of investments in the company.
Divestment campaigns most often come from colleges and universities, driven by a liberal student body, and they most often target plainly problematic areas of investment, like devilish foreign countries or tobacco or fossil fuel stocks. So it's fairly notable that the city of Portland, Oregon—yes, Portlandia etc, but it's a city big enough to have its own NBA team—is now publicly divesting itself from Walmart, America's largest retailer. From the city's press release:
The last of the City's Wal-Mart bonds will mature in April 2016, at which point the City will have eliminated a total of $36 million invested in the company as of October 2013...The City of Portland's entire investment portfolio ranges from $940 million to $1.29 billion and averages about $1.08 billion during the year. In Fiscal Year 2013, the City's investment portfolio generated about $4.3 million in earnings, which were distributed to all City funds. Until today, Wal-Mart holdings were about 2.9% of the City's investment portfolio.
Is this "just symbolic?" Yes, all divestment campaigns are symbolic. But for a company that prides itself on being the corporate symbol of America, losing an entire American city is a definitive step in the wrong direction. (For just one example of why a city might find investing in Walmart to be an odious use of public money, see here.)
If Walmart's business keeps going the way it's been going, every city will divest in it—because its stock is a bad investment! [Stock joke].
[Photo: AP]
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92267
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For boys who like boys who like joysticks!
« Video: Rhythm Thief & The Emperor's Treasure | Main | The 3DS "Ambassador" Program Is... *Edit* Actually Quite Simple »
Google Readying Chrome Gaming?
Google, like Apple, has a habit of just sort of unleashing enormous products - that is, not hyping for years, or dropping unsubtle hints like they were bad habits, but announcing a product that's not far off the horizon...a product that may have been quietly in the works for some time. Sometimes that works for them (just about every iPhone iteration), and sometimes it doesn't (Buzz). So it's not going to go unnoticed that Google is sponsoring an HTML 5 conference coming up later this year:
It features two days of technical sessions and case studies from developers and publishers who brought their games to the web platform. Sessions will focus on the technologies that have elevated the browser-based gaming experience...
What's up with HTML 5? Well, there are those who believe that HTML 5 will be the next big thing for developing portable games. Why should Google care? Well, because sooner than later Chrome will most likely be the browser-of-choice for the Android platform. It would make sense, after all, for Google to leverage its browser through its wildly popular OS.
But what's up with the games thing? An article at Conceivably Tech neatly sums it up: Your Chrome browser could be running your favourite cloud-based gaming experiences (and Google has been big on pushing cloud tech for some time now). Indeed, while it's not going to be this year's big innovation, cloud gaming is coming soon. In fact, it's already here, and it looks like Google might be trying to get in early on the bandwagon with HTML 5.
Shin Gallon said:
Chrome will never be my default browser, at least not until they put in a bookmarks sidebar like Firefox (and even IE!) have.
And girls who like girls who like rumble packs!
Twitter Feed
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92270
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Last name origin & meaning:
Korean: there are two Chinese characters for the surname Ki, but one is extremely rare. Only the common one is discussed here. Only one Ki clan uses this other character, the Haengju Ki clan. The founder of the Haengju Ki clan, U-Sŏng, is said to have been one of three sons of the 40th generation descendant of Kija, the founder of the ancient Chosŏn kingdom in about 194 bc. The other two sons, U-P’yŏng and U-kyŏng, founded the Han clan and the Sŏn’gan clan respectively.
Comments for Ki
7 Fun Driveway and Sidewalk Games for Kids
Kindergarten Readiness App Wins Gold
Best Sun Safety Practices for Babies
Find out what is happening in each day of your pregnancy!
My due date:
Pregnancy Day By Day
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92279
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Take the 2-minute tour ×
I have a problem modifying the map I created in QGIS. I need to add some text on the map and axis labels. Apparently, labels cannot be rotated in qgis, so this I need to do in inkscape or in a related programme.
• If I export the map as pdf, I cannot adjust the font size for the "tick marks" (lat and long values) according to the guidelines of the journal I want to submit my article to.
• I discovered the simplesvg tool, which gives a very nice resolution map, but then I don't have the coordinates along the borders of the map (or is there a way with this tool?)
Is there someone that can help me? I'm getting pretty desperate.. :s
Thanks! Ellen
share|improve this question
Are you using Print Composer to create your map? – Willy Oct 20 '12 at 0:06
Ellen, I've made maps using QGIS and loaded the SVG into Inkscape so I could add the labels. It's a bit manual but produces the best results, in my experience. Patty – Patty Jula Oct 22 '12 at 21:12
Hi, if I export the map as an SVG file, it appears really messed up in inkscape (for instance, grid lines are really thick and not in place...) – Ellen Oct 23 '12 at 7:35
In my experience PDF from the Print Composer is the best output format – SVG gives variable results. – Simbamangu Oct 24 '12 at 17:29
2 Answers 2
QGIS now supports label rotation in the print composer. Simply install a qgis master build (osgeo4w on windows, or using the appropriate repository on ubuntu / debian). The option to rotate a label is located in the label's property sheet:
et voila
share|improve this answer
ok, so this option to rotate labels is not available in the standalone version of QGIS? – Ellen Oct 22 '12 at 9:53
hm, I installed the osgeo4w and ran qgis again, but I still don't see the rotation option... – Ellen Oct 22 '12 at 12:07
@user15930 - see here for instructions on installing master builds; you'll need to have a later version than 1.8. Use osgeo4w in advanced mode. – Simbamangu Oct 22 '12 at 18:08
Pardon my question but where can I find a later version than 1.8? I've looked around, but can't seem to find it. hub.qgis.org/projects/quantum-gis/wiki/Download does not contain a later version than 1.8... – Ellen Oct 23 '12 at 7:50
To edit QGIS output in Inkscape (or a similar vector drawing programme), set up the map in a print composer and export it as PDF from there:
• After you add a map frame to the composer, a grid may be added with appropriate labels in the 'item properties' tab: enter image description here
• The Composer is probably the best place for you to add your text boxes and the like before export.
• Export the map as pdf using the Adobe button on the toolbar (fourth from the left).
In Inkscape, you can then open your PDF and add text, rotate individual text labels, and so on. Be aware that you'll need to perform several 'ungroup' operations on each set of drawing objects, starting with the entire document, before you can modify individual text or vector blocks.
Going through the Inkscape tutorials, particularly relating to selecting objects under and near other objects, is invaluable!
share|improve this answer
Thanks for the help! – Ellen Oct 22 '12 at 9:50
@Ellen - no worries, and if one of the answers you got here is what you need, select the check box next to it to accept the answer. – Simbamangu Oct 22 '12 at 11:25
I'm sorry, I've taken a look at several inkscape tutorials, but I can't seem to find how to modify the objects in the pdf generated in QGIS. It remains a un-selectable image...:s – Ellen Oct 22 '12 at 18:26
@Ellen - try the built-in tutorials - Help|Tutorials|Inkscape:Basic is a good starting point. Basically, open your PDF, use the pointer tool to select the object, and right-click and select 'ungroup'. – Simbamangu Oct 24 '12 at 17:25
I know how to ungroup. Strangely, before it didn't work, but now it does! So, hooray!! Thanks for all of your suggestions... – Ellen Oct 27 '12 at 7:18
Your Answer
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92281
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At a gas station in Hampshire, England, CCTV cameras captured the explosion of an ATM. Amazingly—given the size of the explosion and the proximity to a FREAKING gas station—there were no reported injuries from the blast. I have a few questions for these bomb loving thieves though. Specifically: If you blow up the ATM in a gigantic explosion like this, doesn't that mean you blow up the cash inside it as well? And when you get to this point, why not just blow up an entire bank or something, guys? [WSJ]
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92284
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The Stone Throwers vs. the Caring Spirit
• June Hunt
By June Hunt, Special to CP
July 31, 2012|9:40 am
A press release on the website of Westboro Baptist Church reads: "Thank God for 14 more dead troops. We are praying for 14,000 more."¹ Strident members of this small Midwestern church (not affiliated with any Baptist denomination, despite its name) believe God is angry with America for tolerating homosexuality … therefore, God is killing off the military and causing natural disasters. Church members refer to these tragedies as GodSmacks, delivered by a vengeful sovereign who hates sinners.
Meanwhile, Westboro's hypercritical words and ways are deeply disturbing to most people. For example, church members picket the funerals of dead servicemen and women while holding signs that read "Pray for More Dead Soldiers." According to their website, members have participated in more than 47,000 pickets in over 850 cities in the past two decades.²
So what's going on here? This highly offensive behavior all begins with a "critical spirit" – an excessively negative attitude characterized by harsh judgments. Sadly, the belittling attacks of the WBC members have become the very standard by which they are being judged in the public arena.
Realize, criticism breeds criticism, whereas compassion breeds compassion. Jesus Himself said, "For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you" (Matthew 7:2 NIV).
Faultfinders Focus on Failures
Follow us
God, on the other hand, never focuses on our faults in ways that wound our spirit. Instead, His goal is to bring positive – though sometimes painful – conviction to motivate us to change. His plan is that we be conformed to the character of Christ. The critical spirit displayed by members of this caustic church in no way reflects the love of Jesus or the compassionate Spirit of Christ.
How do we discern between a critical spirit and a caring one? Here are nine key distinctions:
CRITICAL SPIRIT CARING SPIRIT
• Condemns the person as well as the action • Condemns the action, but not the person
The Bible makes the following contrast – "The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing" (Proverbs 12:18 NIV).
• Focuses on others' faults • Focuses on our own faults
Jesus uses an exaggerated word picture – "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" (Luke 6:41 NIV).
Ridicules others • Encourages others
Proverbs 11:12 (NIV) says – "Whoever derides their neighbor has no sense, but the one who has understanding holds their tongue."
• Makes judgments based on appearances • Makes judgments based on facts
In John 7:24 (NIV), Jesus presents this imperative – "Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly."
• Assumes the worst about others • Assumes the best about others
Jesus uses many questions to convey … the obvious – "Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?" (John 7:51 NIV).
Tears others down without seeing their • Builds others up according to their
unmet needs inner needs
The apostle Paul makes this point plain when he says – "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen" (Ephesians 4:29 NIV).
Publicly criticizes others • Privately confronts others
Matthew 18:15 (NIV) is clear about confronting in private: "If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over."
• Reacts pridefully when given advice • Responds positively when given advice
The wisdom of Solomon is seen in Proverbs 13:10 (NIV) – "Where there is strife, there is pride, but wisdom is found in those who take advice."
Lacks mercy toward others • Extends mercy toward others
James, the brother of Jesus, brings us this challenge – "Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment" (James 2:12-13 NIV).
Notice how Jesus instructs His followers to examine their own faults before attempting to find fault in anyone else. For example, when the religious leaders want Him to approve the stoning of a woman caught in adultery, Jesus invites anyone without sin to throw the first stone. Not a stone is thrown. Then, rather than condemning the remorseful adulteress, He sends her on her way to "sin no more."
Yet today, members of this negative, unorthodox church espouse that "God hates sinners" … but the truth is God loves sinners! However, He does hate sin because it deviates from His perfect plan for our lives.
Christ's Mercy – To Save Sinners
Nowhere in the Bible is one sin designated as the worst of all sins. In fact, God has a laundry list of sins that He wants to rid us of: "The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like."³ (Notice the words hatred, discord and dissensions, which ironically these church members are known to contentiously promote.)
We don't have to be members of a stone-throwing church to be resented and reviled by others. All that's needed to be a stone thrower is to spew out criticism with a hardened heart.
Ultimately, people with a critical spirit judge others with condemnation, while people with a caring spirit speak the truth with love. What a warning from Jesus to us all: "You … have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself …"(Romans 2:1) Ouch!
Adapted from the forthcoming book, How to Deal with Difficult Relationships.
1. Westboro Baptist Church, "Press Releases: Week 1075 of the Great Gage Park Decency Drive," January 27, 2012,
2. Westboro Baptist Church, "God Hates Fags,"
3. Galatians 5:19-21 (NIV)
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The Mountain Ecosystems of Nepal: Scientific investigations
The Mountains of Nepal: Scientific investigations
This lesson will facilitate the collaborative effort to research and anayze the mountain ecosystems of Nepal. Activities include a brainstorming activity, where students think about ecosystems and biodiversity; a research activity, where students use a variety of resources to gather information about the mountain ecosystems of Nepal; There is also a journal activity, where students create journal entries based on the information gathered in their research.
A lesson plan for grades 6-12 Information Skills, Science, and Social Studies
Mountains are a dominant feature of Nepal’s physical landscape. Nepal’s elevation ranges from about 197 feet above the sea level to the highest point on earth — Mount Everest, at 29,028 feet. In terms of biodiversity, Nepal is one of the richest countries in the world due to the unique variety of species found there. In this lesson, students will learn about the mountain ecosystem of Nepal and begin to understand the terrain, climate, and biodiversity of the mountain regions.
Learning outcomes
Students will:
• define ecosystem and biodiversity
• apply scientific tools, personal research observation, and research logs
• gather information about the ecosystems found in the Nepalese mountains
• locate Nepal and specific mountains or mountain ranges on a map
• view photographs and research on the web, in reference materials, and from other sources and take notes on Nepalese mountain ecosystems
• create a five-entry journal of a short mountain “ecosystem” hike using research logs, images, and maps gathered
BRAINSTORM — one per student
GlobalEcosystems Research Log — one per pair of students
Ecosystem Hike Journal — five per student
• Images of Nepal:
Sunset view of Nilgiri mountain peaks, Nepal
Donkey on a mountain trail in Nepal
Dhaulagiri mountain, Nepal
Nepal mountain landscape
Familiarize yourself with Nepal, the Nepalese mountains, ecosystems, and biodiversity. Information can be found at the following sites:
mountains of Nepal:
Activity one: Ecosystems and biodiversity
1. Distribute brainstorm handout.
2. Key Questions:
• Do you know what the word ecosystem means.
• Can you think of the word ecosystem; What words do you think of?
• List as many words as they can.
• Write your ideas down on your graphic organizers as you think.
1. Read the introduction to mountain ecosystems and biodiversity:
An ecosystem is an environment of living organisms interacting with each other. Ecosystems occur in all sizes. A pond, a river, and a forest are all examples of ecosystems. A community of living things (plants, animals, insects, fungi, and bacteria) along with non-living things (sunlight, soil, water, rocks) makes up an ecosystem.
Even a small area of land can offer wide biodiversity in plant life; that is, an ecosystem is composed of many different organisms. Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variation of life forms within a given ecosystem or biome — or for the entire Earth.
Mountains are one of the world’s greatest sources of biodiversity. That means that in mountains there are many different kinds of plants and animals that live in the wild or are grown by farmers. Because of the rapid changes in altitude and temperature along a mountain slope, multiple ecological zones exist, sometimes ranging from dense tropical jungles to glacial ice within a few kilometers.
The extraordinary number of ecological niches possible in mountains is typified by the Makalu region of east Nepal, which is estimated to harbor more than 3,000 plant species. This includes 25 species of rhododendron, 50 species of primroses, 45 species of orchids, 80 species of fodder trees and shrubs, and 60 species of medicinal plants.
1. Participate in discussion about local and mountain biodiversity by answering questions:
• What is biodiversity?
• Why are mountains home to so many different living things?
• Does the area around your community have many different ecosystems where different kinds of plants and animals live, or does it have just a few?
• What factors or activities threaten mountain biodiversity?
Activity two: What is a mountain?
1. Read the following background information about mountains:
Mountains are the most conspicuous landforms on earth. They are found on every continent from the equator to the polar regions. Mountains are three-dimensional in nature (i.e., they extend north-south, east-west, and vertically), and contain the most extensive and varied climatic conditions, vegetation, wildlife, and human cultural diversity of any landform on earth. Nepal is filled with mountains and mountain ranges.
1. Locate Nepal and New Mexico on a large map of the world, with the National Geographic Map Machine or using the USGS Ecosystem Mapper. Then see the more detailed map of Nepal. Point out Nepal’s size relative to its surrounding countries, it is sometimes described as “a yam between two rocks” because of its location between India and China.
2. Tell students that Nepal is a landlocked country 563 miles east to west, and 160 miles north to south. Find your own town, city, or state on the National Geographic Map Machine or Google maps, and compare its size to the size of Nepal. Switch between map views (road map, satellite, etc.) for both locations.
3. Have students study the maps, readings, and other reference materials for this lesson to answer the following questions:
• What are the borders of Nepal?
• What is the terrain and elevation?
• What are the variations of climate in Nepal?
• How many mountain ranges are in Nepal and where are they located?
Nepal mountain ecosystem and biodiversity
1. Refer back to your previous brainstorming on ecosystems and biodiversity. Now do partner research on the particular ecosystems found in the Nepalese mountains and the biodiversity there.
2. Get into pairs and give each team a copy of the research log. Go over the instructions on the research logs and share any needed computer use information. Have students use the library catalog, databases, and internet resources to find the requested information. Instruct students to take notes, which will be used later in the lesson as a basis for an ecosystem hike journal in activity three. Tell students to select a mountain range in Nepal and gather descriptions, facts and images, and references of:
• Mountain range or mountain name and location
• Climate
• Plants
• Animals
• Insects
• Terrain
• Maps
Conduct your research on any site you find appropriate. For suggestions, see “Resources for student research” below.
Activity three: Nepal ecosystem hike
1. In this activity, students will use their imaginations to describe the natural world as they investigate the Nepal mountain ecosystem. Begin with a discussion of students’ prior experiences with mountains. Ask students if they have ever been to the mountains. Did they hike? When did they go? What was the weather like? What plants and animals did they encounter?
2. Have students view the images of Nepal listed above under “Materials needed,” and instruct them to read the captions. You may view the images online, or print copies of the images.
3. Plan a Nepal mountain hike using the images of Nepal and their brainstorming sheets and research logs from the previous activities. Students will create a five-entry journal of a short mountain ecosystem hike using the gathered materials.
4. Write your answers on scrap paper, drawing on what you have learned about Nepal. Write your answers about your imagined Nepal hike.
• Site name/location
• Date
• Time of day
• Temperature
• Weather conditions (For example: is it cloudy, sunny, windy, raining?)
• Wind conditions
• Soil conditions (For example, is it moist or dry?)
• Imagine that you are standing on a mountain trail in Nepal. Close your eyes and imagine what you can see around you. Visualize a pathway that you will travel over five days. For each day of your hike, take note of the following:
• What do you see from where you are?
• What sounds do you hear?
• If you were to eat a meal of wild plants or animals there, what kind of food would it be?
• What distinctive smells might you notice in this place?
• Are there are fruits or flowers on individual trees or plants?
• Are there interactions among insects or animals, like mating or fighting, or between insects and plants, like feeding and pollinating?
5. Get out the journal page templates (five), and use your answers to the questions above to develop their five journal entries. While this is a creative exercise, all of your entries should be grounded in facts about Nepal and its mountain ecosystems. Emphasize the importance of using concrete detail taken from research, and record references from their research logs on the journal page in the space provided. For each of the five days, write a draft of a six-to-eight-sentence paragraph describing your hike destinations, with the goal of making your hike sound very appealing to a reader. Be creative in any of the following ways: record data; scribble questions; make sketches, drawings, diagrams, graphs, or flowcharts; and use the images gathered in research. Transfer all the notes, drafts, and images to the journal page template.
• Write a two-paragraph essay about preserving biodiversity in the mountains. You can answer the following questions as guidelines for writing the paragraphs:
Paragraph 1: Why do you think biodiversity in the mountains of Nepal should be preserved? Give two reasons.
Paragraph 2: Of the reasons you listed for preserving biodiversity, which do you think would be the most likely to convince people that biodiversity should be preserved? Why?
• Research organizations that are dedicated to preserving biodiversity. Many of these organizations have websites. Find an organization, give its web address, a brief overview of what the organization, its activities and history.
Record information about local ecosystems. Ask students to copy the example of the recording chart below. Find an area around your neighborhood to observe as an ecosystem.
• Record the name of each different type of living thing you see in the first column. For example, if they see red ants, you should record “red ants” in the first column.
• Record the quantity of this life form in the second column. For example, if they saw ten red ants, they should record the number ten.
• Describe what they saw, what it looked like, sounded like, smelled like, and felt like in the third column.
Type of living thing
Tell about your findings:
• Why is biodiversity important?
• Why are mountains important for biodiversity?
• Ask your students to estimate the number of different kinds of living things they observed.
You can bind your journals into books using Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord’s Making Books with Children website.
• Nepal:
CIA World Factbook overview of Nepal
Nepal Country Profile from the BBC.
National Geographic Map Machine
• Mountains of Nepal:
Geography of Nepal article from Wikipedia
“Mountain Ecosystem” article from Encyclopedia Britannica
• Ecosystems:
Resources for Science Learning website from the Franklin Institute
• Biodiversity:
Biodiversity and Conservation website from the Field Museum
• Other websites:
Google maps
Resources for student research
• General:
KidsClick! Web Search
Internet Public Library Kidspace
American Library Association’s Great Web Sites for Kids
Ask Kids
• Specific:
Natural History Notebooks: Asia
“Mountain Ecosystem,” from the Britannica Online Encyclopedia
Wikipedia: Geography of Nepal
“Plants, Animals, and Birds of Nepal” from Nepal Vista
Critical vocabulary
According the U.S. Agency for International Development, biodiversity is the variety and variability of life. Biodiversity can be conceived as a system consisting of many elements or aspects: genes, species, ecosystems, and ecological processes that both support and result from this diversity. All of these elements of living systems interact with each other to produce the web of life on earth, a whole much greater than the sum of its parts.
A community of organisms and the physical environment in which they interact
Mountain range extending 1500 miles on the border between India and Tibet; this range contains the world’s highest mountain, Mt. Everest.
An elevated landform of high local relief (the difference in elevation between the lowest and highest points in an area), with the majority of its surface in steep slopes, and displaying distinct variations in climate and vegetation zones from its base to its summit.
A form of walking, undertaken with the specific purpose of exploring and enjoying the scenery.
9 thoughts on “The Mountain Ecosystems of Nepal: Scientific investigations
The words in your article seem to be running off the
let you know. The design and style look great though!
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blog. An excellent read. I’ll definitely be back.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92292
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Does altitude affect calorie-burning?
Originally Published: October 14, 2005
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Dear Alice,
Does altitude affect calorie-burning? That is, if I do the exact same workout twice — once in New York City and once in Colorado — will I burn more calories at the high altitude? What things DO affect how many calories you burn in a workout?
—Training at 6500
Dear Training at 6500,
During the first few days at a higher altitude with thinner air that contains less atmospheric oxygen, one's body will respond as follows:
• breathing rate (ventilation) increases
• blood pH decreases, becoming more acidic
• muscle pH also decreases and becomes more acidic
• use of carbohydrates as an energy source increases
• use of fat as an energy source decreases
These changes lead to a slight increase in basal metabolic rate (BMR), the amount of energy needed to keep your body working correctly at rest for 24 hours. Research studying this phenomena have found between a 6 - 28 percent increase in overall BMR in women and men at high altitudes. With time, the increase in BMR lowers, but does not return completely to baseline, so metabolism is slightly elevated at higher altitudes.
With this said, it seems that someone can expend many more calories while exercising at high altitudes; however, this is not necessarily the case. There is not a huge difference in the amount of calories utilized at a higher altitude during exercise even though it may feel as though a person is working much harder. The few extra calories someone will use will be a result of increased breathing to get more oxygen into the body, which means increased work by the rib cage and other muscles involved in ventilation. So even though ventilation increases and oxygen delivery is enhanced, it doesn't necessarily mean a person is expending more energy while exercising.
Here are some factors that do influence the number of calories a person expends in general:
Some people are born with high metabolisms (the rate at which one's body uses calories) and others are born with low metabolisms. The main culprit of these phenomena is the thyroid gland. Some individuals produce more thyroxin (the hormone that is secreted from the thyroid) than others. Thyroxin is responsible for metabolism, so if a person's body produces a high-normal amount of thyroxin, s/he will utilize calories more quickly. If a person's body produces a low-normal amount of thyroxin, s/he will utilize calories more slowly. NOTE: if thyroxin is out of normal range in either direction, it is dangerous and needs medical attention.
Typically, men have greater muscle mass than women. Since muscle requires more calories to maintain, men tend to have 10 - 15 percent faster metabolisms than women. Similarly, men have a lower body fat percentage than women.
Metabolic rate is higher in childhood than in adulthood. Children are growing and need more calories to fulfill their bodies' requirements. After the age of 20 years, metabolism drops 2 percent per decade.
Brain Power
The brain is only 2 percent of the body's weight, but accounts for more than 20 percent of total calories used. Also, the length of time per day spent awake affects the amount of calories utilized. We expend more calories when we are awake than when we are asleep.
For every increase of 0.5°C (32.9°F) in body temperature, BMR increases by approximately 7 percent. For example, if someone has a fever of 42°C (107.6°F), s/he would have an increase in metabolic rate of 50 percent. The reason for this is that chemical reactions in the body occur more quickly at higher temperatures.
Some medications, such as anti-depressants, can slow down metabolic processes and lead to weight gain.
During exercise, the following factors influence calorie expenditure:
Cardiovascular Exercise Intensity
The intensity of aerobic exercise has the greatest impact on calorie usage during exercise. As exercise intensity increases, the greater the caloric expenditure during and after exercise. Intensity refers to the rate of exertion during exercise, which can be measured by VO2 max (oxygen consumption), heart rate, or perceived exertion. Here's an example of cardiovascular exercise intensity: running on a treadmill at 6.5 mph is more intense than running at 5.5 mph, so increasing speed can impact intensity. However, two people can be running at 5.5 mph, but if one runs on an incline, that activity would be more intense.
Cardiovascular Exercise Duration
The length of time per exercise session not only impacts the number of calories utilized during exercise, but also the number of calories to be utilized after exercise. The longer the bout of physical activity, the more calories will be expended right after it is over, a.k.a. the 'after-burn.'
Intermittent vs. Single Bouts of Exercise
Several studies have concluded that intermittent aerobic exercise expends more calories overall than continuous exercise. People used more calories during two, 25-minute sessions when compared to a continuous 50-minute bout of the same exercise. This occurs for two reasons: first, the body has to work harder at rest to move from an anaerobic state, using glucose and other simple and complex carbohydrates during the first few minutes of exercise, to an aerobic state, which relies on fat as its main energy source during more sustained activity. This will happen twice in intermittent exercise bouts versus once in a continuous bout. Also, there is more 'after-burn' of calories in intermittent exercise sessions versus one continuous session.
Resistance Training
The intensity of weight training also influences calories utilized. Heavier lifting (3 sets, 8 exercises, 3 - 8 reps at 80 - 90 percent of 1RM) will use more calories during and right after than lighter weight lifting (4 sets, 8 exercises, 15 reps at 50 percent of 1RM). 1RM refers to the weight of one repetition at maximal strength. For example, if a person's 1RM of a squat is 100 pounds, then heavy lifting would be doing 3 sets of 3 - 8 reps of squats at 80 - 90 lbs. Lighter weight lifting would be squatting 50 lbs for 4 sets of 15 reps.
Fitness Level
People who are more fit expend fewer calories during and right after exercise than people who are less fit. This occurs because people who have been exercising more consistently have faster recovery time in breathing and heart rate, and repair muscle more quickly.
Overall, metabolism increases slightly at higher altitudes with some greater caloric expenditure, but this difference is insignificant, since metabolism is influenced to a larger degree by the above eleven factors.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92309
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Despite all evidence to the contrary, it turns out that Americans do like nature. At least, Take Part reports, they like spending money on getting away from whatever nature they’re normally near and hanging out for a while in some other part of nature. An outdoors industry association says [PDF] that we spend about $646 billion every year on apparel, equipment, accessories, food, transportation, lodging, and so forth in order to get out there and breathe some relatively fresh air. That’s more than individuals spend on gas every year.
Given the source, you can take that comparison with a grain of salt. But it does seem that people like nature, at least the kind they can pay to do activities in. Sure, these outdoor recreators might be doing some not-so-green activities, like driving their gas-powered ATVs around. But we’re assuming that looking at the trees or desert or whatever is part of the pleasure. So maybe we should think about keeping the great outdoors great and, uh, outdoors, instead of puny, shriveled up, and probably necessarily kept under a glass dome.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92322
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Read or download Signs From The Qur'an
< <
4 / total: 7
Blessings on Earth
Oxygen, water, food, sunlight, day and night: your body needs these elements. And along with these, there are beauties which your soul finds pleasure in such as a beautiful view, a pleasant face to look at, or a welcoming home.
The world is full of such blessings, but some people are just not aware of them. They are so caught up in their own troubles that they don't see the wonders of the world. The reason for this negative spiritual state is their life remote from God's religion, and their state of disbelief. A troubled life is the inescapable result of a life not lived according to religious morals.
The approach which may be hoped to please God is that we see all the blessings of the Earth as His gifts to us, and that we live our lives in a state of thanks to Him. A person who lives according to this morality will take pleasure from the wonders and blessings from God, and will feel them every moment of his or her life.
... from the spathes of the date palm [We bring forth] date clusters hanging down, and gardens of grapes and olives and pomegranates, both similar and dissimilar. Look at their fruits as they bear fruit and ripen. There are signs in that for people who believe. (Qur'an, 6:99)
The metaphor of those who spend their wealth in the way of God is that of a grain which produces seven ears; in every ear there are a hundred grains. God gives such multiplied increase to whoever He wills. God is All-Encompassing, All-Knowing. (Qur'an, 2:261)
... they will have Gardens with rivers flowing under them. When they are given fruit there as provision, they will say: "This is what we were given before." But they were only given a simulation of it... (Qur'an, 2:25)
Good land yields up its plants by its Lord's permission, but that which is bad only yields up scantily. In this way We vary the signs for people who are thankful. (Qur'an, 7:58)
And by it He makes crops grow for you and olives and dates and grapes and fruit of every kind. There is certainly a sign in that for people who reflect. (Qur'an, 16:11)
The herbs and the trees all bow down in prostration. (Qur'an, 55:6)
We pour down plentiful water, then split the earth into furrows. Then We make grain grow in it, and grapes and herbs and olives and dates. (Qur'an, 80:25-29)
Don't you see that God has subjected to you everything in the heavens and Earth and has showered His blessings upon you, both outwardly and inwardly?... (Qur'an, 31:20)
In them are fruits and date-palms and pomegranates. (Qur'an, 55:68)
We place in it gardens of dates and grapes... (Qur'an, 36:34)
There is nothing that does not have its stores with Us and We only send it down in a known measure. (Qur'an, 15:21)
By means of it We produce gardens of dates and grapes for you, in which there are many fruits for you and from which you eat. (Qur'an, 23:19)
... Eat of their fruits when they bear fruit and pay their due on the day of their harvest, and do not be profligate. He does not love the profligate. (Qur'an, 6:141)
Say: "My Lord expands the provision of anyone He wills or restricts it. But the majority of humanity do not know it." (Qur'an, 34:36)
4 / total 7
© 1994 Harun Yahya. www.harunyahya.com - [email protected]
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92329
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Gluten turns up in the most unlikely places. In 2006, McDonald's was sued because it hadn't informed the public that gluten and casein were used to make its french fries.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
Gluten-free, Casein-free Diet
A 2008 survey conducted by the Autism Research Institute showed that out of the 2,500 cases in which a gluten-free, casein-free (GFCF) diet was used in the treatment of autism, 66 percent of children showed improvement. Fifty-two percent of the more than 6,300 cases in which parents just eliminated casein also got better. However, not all children with autism experience benefits from special diets.
It's pretty challenging to avoid all gluten and casein, and it's important to discuss any dietary changes with a doctor. Most parents begin with removing casein, which is easier to do. Going on the full GFCF diet is generally a slow process that involves eliminating one food at a time, and most believe that the child should be casein-free for about a month to see if there are improvements. Once gluten is removed, the trial period should last at least four months.
Removing all casein and gluten from a child's diet means paying a lot of attention to ingredient lists. The obvious foods containing casein include milk, all forms of cheese, yogurt, ice cream and butter. However, it can also be found in cookies, hot dogs, vitamins, cream soups and salad dressing. If the ingredient list includes casein, caseinate, sodium caseinate, lactose or whey, then it's not allowed on a casein-free diet.
Gluten is even more prevalent. In addition to being in anything made with wheat (bread, crackers, baked goods, pasta), it can also be found in other grains, such as rye, barley and oats. Soy sauce contains gluten, and so do hot dogs, lunch meats, seasonings and spices, licorice, tea (if the tea bags are sealed with wheat paste) and a host of other prepackaged foods. Gluten is even used in nonfood items like toothpaste, lip balm and lotion, so parents must read those labels, too. Those who have gotten positive results from the diet stress the importance of eliminating all casein and gluten and claim that accidental slip-ups have resulted in a return of autism behaviors.
So what do children on GFCF diets eat? There are lots of gluten-free foods available in grocery stores and health-food stores due to the numbers of people with celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder affecting the small intestine that results from a reaction to a specific type of gluten. Most children on these diets eat a lot of lean protein, fruits and vegetables.
Although the GFCF diet is the most common autism diet, some parents take it a step further and remove other foods as well. Those who believe that yeast overgrowth can cause autistic behavior restrict sugar intake because sugar is food for yeast and encourages its growth. The yeast-free diet prohibits any fermented foods (such as vinegar) as well as any foods that may contain molds, like mushrooms.
Other diets may remove artificial colorings, flavorings and preservatives because they can contain salicylates, a plant compound also found in some fruits. The connection between artificial colorings, flavorings and preservatives and behavior disorders isn't new; a similar diet has been used to treat children with ADHD since 1979 (and has also been controversial).
For a more in-depth look at autism, related disorders and the issues surrounding it, try the links on the next page.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92333
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Heavenly Honey Farm
Pure & Natural from the Bees to You
Our beehives are located in the Willamette and Puyallup Valleys the Pacific Northwestern part of the United States. Find our honey products locally at the Proctor Farmer's Market in Tacoma, WA.
Want to buy my products online? You can go straight to my Etsy store by clicking on the Etsy button or check out my Products page on the website.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92340
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HASA Resources
Character Bios
Lalia Took
Other Names:
Lalia Clayhanger
the Great
the Fat
Great Smials
Race/Species: Hobbit
the Took, head of the Took family (III 2980-3002)
III 2883-3002 (SR 1283-1402)
Fortinbras Took II, 17th Thain of the Shire
Ferumbras III, 18th Thain of the Shire
Lalia Took, born Lalia Clayhanger, is the wife of Fortinbras Took II, 17th Thain of the Shire, and the mother of Ferumbras Took II, 18th Thain of the Shire:
In the case of large powerful families (such as the Tooks),... the head was properly the eldest male of what was considered the most direct line of descent.... If the master died first, his place was taken by his wife, and this included (if he had held that position) the titular headship of a large family or clan. This title thus did not descend to the son, or other heir, while she lived.... It could, therefore, happen in various circumstances that a long-lived woman of forceful character remained 'head of the family', until she had full-grown grandchildren....
A well-known case..., was that of Lalia the Great (or less courteously the Fat). Fortinbras II, one time head of the Tooks and Thain, married Lalia of the Clayhangers in 1314, when he was 36 and she was 31. He died in 1380 at the age of 102, but she long outlived him, coming to an unfortunate end in 1402 at the age of 119. So she ruled the Tooks and the Great Smials for 22 years, a great and memorable, if not universally beloved, 'matriarch'. She was not at the famous Party (SY 1401), but was prevented from attending rather by her great size and immobility than by her age. Her son, Ferumbras, had no wife, being unable (it was alleged) to find anyone willing to occupy apartments 1 in the Great Smials, under the rule of Lalia. Lalia, in her last and fattest years, had the custom of being wheeled to the Great Door, to take the air on a fine morning. In the spring of SY 1402 her clumsy attendant let the heavy chair run over the threshold and tipped Lalia down the flight of steps into the garden. So ended a reign and life that might well have rivalled that of the Great Took.
Elena Tiriel 8May10
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92352
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View Full Version : Fonts & Mangling
06-22-2005, 03:52 PM
Hi all
My post is about the fonts I have on my system and their IDs. Its seems that whenever certain fonts on my computer are activated (eg. Helvetica Compressed amongst others), it replaces some of my default display fonts in Apple apps - Safari, Help Viewer, Mail. Often to unreadable results. The only solution is to head on to my font manager and disable the font and everything is back to normal.
I seem to remember form way back that fonts have IDs that sometimes conflict with each other. IIRC the pre-OS X font managers used to have the ability to change the ID to prevent these kinds of errors. Are there any current solutions? Removing the Apple installed fonts is a no-no because then widgets start looking odd.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92359
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William Polk: Iran .. Danger & Opportunity
[William R. Polk was the member of the Policy Planning Council responsible for North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia from 1961 to 1965 and then professor of history at the University of Chicago where he founded the Middle Eastern Studies Center. He was also president of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs. His most recent book is Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism Guerrilla Warfare from the American Revolution to Iraq (New York: HarperCollins, 2007).]
In fact, moves are being made, decisions are being taken and rationale has been set out that point in the opposite direction. Consider just a few of these in addition to what U.S. News and World Report highlighted:
* The strategic rational for preëmptive military action was set forth in the 2005 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America. It proclaimed that “America is a nation at war…[and] will defeat adversaries at the time, place, and in the manner of our choosing…[rather than employing] A reactive or defensive approach…Therefore, we must confront challenges earlier and more comprehensively, before they are allowed to mature…In all cases, we will seek to seize the initiative and dictate the tempo, timing, and direction of military operations.” In short, as Henry Kissinger pointed out in The International Herald Tribune, April 14, 2006, it is an assertion of the intention to engage in preëmptive or “first strike” warfare. So, the process that began in Afghanistan and was then carried to Iraq and (on a smaller scale) to Somalia points toward action against Iran.
* Why Iran? Iran is not the only target. American “Special Ops” forces are engaged in a number of countries, at last count about twenty. A “training” force (an echo of Vietnam) is being deployed in Pakistan to help fight the Pathan hosts of the Taliban and Usama bin Ladin along the frontier with Afghanistan and another is in India to help the action against the Naxalite insurgents, but Iran is the major target.
* Additionally, there is a psychological or political motivation. President Bush proclaimed on January 29, 2002 that Iran was part of the “Axis of Evil.” He and others have conjured the memory of the seizure of the American embassy and taking of our officers hostage and have condemned the lamentable Iranian government record on civil liberties and particularly on the treatment of women. With Iraq under occupation and presumably incapable of mounting a credible threat outside its own territory and with North Korea immune to attack (as it already has nuclear weapons), Iran is the major perceived adversary capable of doing what National Defense Strategy of the United States of America termed “adopting threatening capabilities, methods, and ambitions…[to] 1) limit our global freedom to act, 2) dominate key regions, or 3) attempt to make prohibitive the costs of meeting various U.S. international commitments.”
Decoded and applied to Iran, the Strategy paper defines Iranian actions as disrupting American objectives in the Middle East and has the potential to dominate what is believed to be the largest still-only-partially-developed pool of oil and gas in the world.
Thus, as defined by the National Defense Strategy of the United States of America, Iran is an obvious target.
Apparently, President Bush’s firing of Admiral Fallon was meant to signal to the Iranians that “all options remain on the table.” This is the publically proclaimed policy of the Bush administration and has also been adopted by the Democratic Party aspirants to the White House, notably even by Barack Obama who recently said, “all options, and I mean all options, are on the table.”
Leaving aside the issue of international law – which defines the conditions under which military action is defense (and so is legal) rather than aggression (and so is illegal) and which, having been adopted by the United States government, is American law also -- is a preëmptive military strike against Iran feasible? Allegedly, Admiral Fallon did not think so. I certainly do not either. The reasons are both evident and unambiguous. They include the following:
* However they may feel about their government, Iranians are a proud and nationalistic people who have suffered for generations from meddling, espionage and invasions by the Russians, the British and the Americans. They are even less likely than the Cubans (as the organizer of the CIA Bay of Pigs task force, Richard Bissell, predicted) or the Iraqis (as the Neoconservatives fantasized in 2003) to welcome foreign intrusion. If attacked, they undoubtedly would fight.
* While the United States could almost certainly quickly destroy the Iranian regular army, as it did the Iraqi regular army, the Iranians are better prepared for a guerrilla war than were the Iraqis. They have in being a force of at least 150 thousand dedicated and appropriately armed members of the Pasdaran-i Inqilab (Revolutionary National Guard) on land and at sea a numerous assortment of small, maneuverable and lethal speedboats stationed all along the Persian Gulf coast. Use of the boats would probably be suicidal but it would be a miracle if they failed to inflict heavy casualties among the American fleet. They almost certainly could interdict oil tankers.
* War is always unpredictable – except that it is always worse than expected. No one thought that the First World War would last more than a few months. The cost is also always unestimated. Before the American invasion of Iraq, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld thought it would cost only about $50 billion; his deputy (and later president of the world bank) Paul Wolfowitz thought it would cost nothing because the Iraqis would pay for it; and when Larry Lindsay, the White House economic adviser, predicted it might cost $200 billion, President Bush fired him. Estimates now run between $2 and $6 trillion. To shield this reality from the public, the Bush administration resorted to massive borrowing abroad – U.S. Treasury obligations amounted to $2.7 trillion as of early this year and are now higher – and to a massive increase -- up 70% during this Administration -- in national debt.
Almost no casualties were expected in Iraq; now American dead number about 4,000 and a realistic figure for various categories of “wounded” – officially put at about 20,000 – actually runs in the hundreds of thousands. Just coping with the American wounded is expected to cost half a trillion dollars.
But, Iraq is a small country while Iran is large, diverse and populated by about three times as many people as Iraq. The costs, human, material and monetary would certainly be a multiple of those suffered in Iraq. It is not unlikely that war with Iran would effectively “break” the American volunteer army and bankrupt America.
* Given this unattractive scenario, military planners have reportedly emphasized their intent to use mainly or even solely “surgical” air strikes. But the fact that CENTCOM has positioned ships to “insert” troops may be taken as a tacit admission by military planners that air strikes alone would be unable to destroy either Iran’s nuclear facilities (which are believed to be widely scattered, often located in heavily populated urban areas and/or in protected underground locations) or to crush the nation’s will to resist. Almost certainly, military commanders would demand permission to follow up air strikes with some form of “boots on the ground.” Presumably and at least initially these would likely be Special Forces, but, inevitably (I would assert from my observation and study of past military adventures) some of these forces, even if intended only for limited action and quick withdrawal, will get caught and have to be rescued. Thus, what is planned and begun as restricted action is extremely unlikely to be containable.
· Military action is also likely to result in various military, paramilitary and economic and other responses by Iranians and others outside of the immediate theater of combat. Consider the following:
1. The Iraqi government, although installed by the United States, is predominantly culturally and religiously allied to Iran; in the shock of an American invasion of Iran, it would almost certainly collapse or intensify the struggle against American personnel in Iraq. Guerrilla forces of Muqtada as-Sadr’s “Mahdi Army,” now observing a ceasefire, would turn on the Americans;
2. What the Hizbullah forces in Lebanon could do other than firing rockets is, to me at least, unclear, but a renewed round of savage fighting with Israel would appear likely;
3. Those Middle Eastern governments allied with or thought to be subservient to the United States (Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt) might either be overthrown by their own military, have to fight civil wars or, at least would become even more unpopular;
4. Elsewhere, Muslims of all sects would probably almost universally turn against the United States so that much of Asia and Africa would be convulsed and Americans and American interests would suffer; but
5. It is the economic consequences of an invasion that are, perhaps, the most predictable and the most damaging to America. Iran produces about 8% of the world’s flow of energy and roughly 40% of the world’s energy is conveyed by tanker down the Persian Gulf. Iran’s own production – and possibly much of the Saudi production which is worked by Saudis of Shia persuasion – would be drastically curtailed or even halted, and as a result of naval action tankers are likely to be laid up or sunk in the Gulf. With oil already at over $105/bbl, the price is likely to soar with the predictable result of a major world economic catastrophe. Just for the United States, every $1 rise in the price of oil diminishes the national income by some $3 billion.
Such might be the results of a decision to attack Iran. But, what if the current actions and pronouncements are just threats, intended only to frighten the Iranians into doing what the United States wants?
* First, to be effective, threats must be credible. I imagine that the Iranians must view our threats in something like the scale I have just set out. If they have, I imagine that they will have concluded that the United States government would have to be mad to attack Iran when the costs of doing so are so evident and so large. In short, they probably would have reached the same conclusion Admiral Fallon is said to have reached.
* Second, it does not seem clear to me what the Iranians could do, even if they wished to do so, to satisfy the United States’ demands unless Iran were occupied. Absent a large and intrusive American presence, how could an Iranian government prove that it does not have or at least seek nuclear weapons? Proving a negative has always been logically impossible and any attempt to do so would certainly be politically unsatisfactory to America and probably politically impossible for Iran. This, we should remember, is roughly the situation we (and the IAEA) reached in Iraq.
* Third, having received a credible threat to destroy their country, the Iranians almost certainly would seek as rapidly as secretly possible to acquire the only sure means to deter such an attack, possession of a nuclear weapon. This also was the conclusion that Mohamed ElBaradei of the IAEA reached. (Interview in the Argentinian newspaper Clarin on November 29, 2007) Thus, a policy of threat that falls short of actual attack must result in a long-term defeat even if seemly producing a short-term victory for the United States.
Since we must assume that both the Iranian and American governments will realize the logic of these points, I think we must conclude that a policy of threat would slide almost inevitbly into conflict.
Moreover, war does not occur only by design. During the long years of the Cold War, many of us worried over the danger of accidental war. Dozens of incidents illustrated the danger – and at least some were avoided more by luck than by cleverness. One in which I was involved was averted during the Cuban Missile Crisis. As careful as we on the Crisis Management Committee then were, we could see that an unpredictable and even a rather trivial event could happen and could have disastrous consequences. One I luckily caught was this: one of our destroyers was positioned above a Soviet submarine, intent on embarrassing it when the submarine surfaced. When I received notice of the situation, my mind went back to the June 28, 1914 assassination of Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand at Sarajevo. I could imagine a sailor throwing a bottle and his counterpart firing a pistol. Accidents happen despite all attempts at control: most are immediately contained as was the submarine incident in the Missile Crisis, but luck cannot be guaranteed. War is a weapon with many triggers.
Of course, we must factor into our estimates the fact that some Americans, notably the Neoconservatives who have set much of the policy of the Bush administration, have actively espoused a war policy. (See, for example, Norman Podhoretz’s article “Stopping Iran: Why the Case for Mililtary Action Still Stands,” February Commentary.) Their position has been encouraged and echoed by the current Israeli government. Less known is the fact that the American and Israeli “hawks” have their counterparts in the Iranian government, as the former Iranian ambassador to the United Nations admitted to me privately. Consider their positions:
* The Neoconservatives began almost twenty years ago to advocate what has come to be called “the long war,” in the vortex of which the world would be recast. One of them, the former CIA Director James Woolsey, tried to be optimistic, saying he hoped this world-wide and cataclysmic conflict would not last more than 40 years.
* Religious fundamentalists – Christians, Jews, Muslims and Hindus – share an eschatological vision. Indeed, I think it is fair to say that each faith includes groups who actually yearn for apocalypse during which time the world is destroyed to be reborn as a messiah or mahdi appears. To the “true believers,” hurrying toward the end of the world is a race not toward horror but a fulfilling spiritual experience in which it is only the enemies of the true faith who will suffer (as St. John so graphically portrays in The Revelation). In their version of messianism, the Shiis believe that the righteous will be delivered from the tyranny of the corrupt, the Shiis believe, and the earth will be filled with justice and happiness.
Thus, one need not fear but actually should embrace actions that lead toward “the end.” We know this eschatology is the mind-set of Christian fundamentalists; less well known is that it is also the mind-set of Shia fundamentalists. What we think of as fatalism, is not just acceptance of destiny but often is proactive. This may shape at least some Iranian attitudes toward the terrible destruction that would come from an American attack. My impression is that the Iranian Shia fundamentalists, presumably including their mujtahid leadership, believe that the ensuing war would hasten the way toward the Last Day when the Twelth Imam, The Mahdi, would reappear to cleanse the world of evil.
* If the mujtahid leadership, which is obviously deeply religious and obviously incorporates the central dogma of Shiism, holds these views then a policy of threat or even of brutal military action will produce effects different from those we thought shaped the attitude of the Russian leadership during the Cold War. Then, we shared with the Russians a salutary vision of horror -- as set out, for example, in Cormac McCarthy’s recent novel, The Road. The absolute need to avoid war was the ultimate brake on us because we knew that if we really went to war millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, of people would be made refugees, wounded or incinerated. But, if one really believes in the Last Day, then this brake is loosened. Thus, I think we should factor into our calculations on American policy toward Iran, a reaction very different from that we expected from the Russians.
* Moreover, even among secular Iranians (and others), I detect a belief that while America would win battles it would lose the war, that over time, Western society, seen as corrupt, materialistic and selfish, would give way, exhaust itself or retreat to its home ground while those who have no place to which to retreat are kept “pure” by their very poverty and are inspired by their faith or nationalism cannot and will not surrender.
If this is even a remote and unlikely danger, and I believe it is far more than that, we would be foolish indeed not to try to find means to avoid taking any steps – of which war with Iran would be not a step but a leap -- toward it. So what might those means be? I begin with the nuclear issue:
Since obviously means should be tailored to the issue to be solved, we must begin by asking why Iran would want nuclear weapons.
* If I were an Iranian, I would point to President Bush’s formulation of the “Axis of Evil.” I would note that Iraq did not have nuclear weapons and was virtually destroyed while North Korea which had them and was left in peace. Having a nuclear weapon is the surest form of defense in our dangerous world. There are, of course, other reasons for becoming a nuclear power – access to advanced technology, national prestige, cheap power, etc. – but the bottom line is national defense.
* It follows that threats must encourage the Iranian leadership to acquire a nuclear capacity. If I were an Iranian, that is what I would certainly advocate. And, if America attacks Iran, even if it manages to completely destroy all the production facilities and kill all the technicians, as an Iranian I would do all in my power to beg, borrow or steal a bomb. We can be sure that that would be the aim of any future Iranian government. It was, after all, also the aim of the government of the Shah, and had he lived a few more years the current Iranian government would have inherited nuclear weapons. So, threats and certainly any military action can only be ultimately self-defeating even if temporarily successful.
The second question we should address is what is the consequence of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon and what we should do about it. There are, I suggest, four interlocking answers:
* first, from personal experience during the Cuban Missile Crisis and from my study, I firmly believe that the existence of nuclear weapons anywhere constitutes a danger to people everywhere. Thus, we should do all we can to get all nations to phase them out with all deliberate speed. For the first half century of the nuclear age, as McGeorge Bundy describes it in Danger and Survival, we have been both prudent and lucky, but we have little reason to think we can count on either as former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara argues in “Apocalypse Soon” (Foreign Affairs, May/June 2005).
* Second, if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, it will not be able to use it or threaten to use it aggressively for fear of an almost certain attack. This has been true of all the nuclear powers -- the US, the Soviet Union, China, India, Pakistan, Britain, France, North Korea and Israel. While dangerous and costly, Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) has worked. Ironically, this ultimate weapon is employable only as a deterrent. Therefore, I think that the near hysteria evoked by the nuclear issue as applied to Iran is overblown or as put forward by some even meretricious. But,
* Third, if Iran does acquire a weapon, it is likely that other countries in the area would follow its (and Israel’s) lead and move toward acquisition. These might include Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the richer of the Gulf states and conceivably even Syria. Today, acquisition is largely a matter of allocation of resources and in changed circumstances might be achieved without having to actually make them.
* Fourth, it seems to me that this, I judge predictable, course of events offers us a rare opportunity to move toward nuclear sanity. We must not forget that crises are also times of opportunity. This could be so crucial to our life on this planet that I will dilate on it:
1. The reason why states acquire nuclear weapons (as distinct from why they seek to acquire nuclear technology) is fear of attack. The Soviet Union did because of fear of us, China did largely out of fear of the USSR, India and Pakistan did out of fear of one another, Israel did in fear of the Arabs. However, as more and more states acquire weapons, parity or balance is replaced by growing unpredictability. Arguably, Israel, for example, gained security when it alone in the Middle East had the bomb. But if, as I believe is inevitable, other states acquire them, its security will be diminished and its danger increased. Therefore, arguably, since it already has the strongest army and air force in the area, it would be to Israel’s interest to create a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. It is probably not possible to force the Israelis into such a policy, if it is directly solely at them, but overall considerations I have mentioned argue that the United States should revert to the policy we espoused in the 1960s which foresaw the elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide. The Iranian crisis could thus be a catalyst in a move toward a safer world.
2. Since threat or attack would lead to disaster, and since it is to the fundamental interest of the United States to move toward peace, a part of the solution to the Iranian “crisis” should involve the revocation of the 2005 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America which causes other nations to fear us and which is more likely to embroil us in wars than to enhance our national security. Highlighting this issue, the Iranian crisis thus gives us an opportunity to readjust our goals and our means of action.
3. Included in our means of action is an awesome military force, which we have painfully learned does not always and necessarily enhance our security and well-being but can, itself, be a cause of danger and impoverishment. This is the lesson of history: great powers seldom fail on the battlefield but often lose sway by exhaustion or hubris. Our military machine is grossly out of proportion both to our needs and to what the world will peacefully tolerate. And some pieces of it, particularly the legacy of Secretary Rumsfeld, the “Special Operations Command,” are a clear and present danger to us. As we recognize the dangers inherent in the Iranian crisis, we can use the opportunity for a clear-headed reëvaluation of our real security needs and best means to achieve them.
4. Involved also in the Iranian crisis is our conception of the world order. As a piece of the settlement of the Iranian crisis, both we and the Iranians have a chance to come to grips with reality: we cannot remake other cultures and should not try to do so. The harder we press, the more ugly the process becomes both for us and for them. Specifically in Iran, our threats bring out the worst in the ruling group. Once the pressure is removed, Iranians will have the breathing room to reffirm their obvious desires for “the good life.” Then a more humane order will have a chance. That is the course of events we have seen, for example, in Vietnam.
5. Also coming out of this crisis we have seen that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has made a major contribution to our security and well-being. It has served our purposes not by being our rubber stamp but by being professional and independent. We should learn from this experience. But, American administration after administration has purposefully made the United Nations weak and has deliberately picked weak men to lead it. We would be well advised to use the process of solving the Iran crisis to reconsider how it and other international institutions, such as the world court, could enhance our national interest.
In conclusion, I believe that we are at one of those rare points in history when great nations find themselves, as Shakespeare put it so memorably at the changing of the tide:
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries,
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
I hope and trust we will use the tide of the Iranian “crisis” to lead on to fortune rather than getting bound in shallows and miseries.
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More Comments:
Stephen Kislock - 3/27/2008
Is Religion, God's Joke?
Randll Reese Besch - 3/24/2008
The way of the Gehenna fire of nuclear conflagulation as a holy cleansing in their continuing struggle to alter the earth in preperation of the secound coming of Christ on earth. They,the Dominionists, give themselves 1,000 years to do it. They difine good and evil the the Inquesition did. Human life is nothing next to the immortal soul as they see it. Mass murder to them is cleansing the earth of evil things. These kind of people should be in asylems not weilding mass kill weapons.
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Non-threatening ways to get your company started with social media
Posted on July 2, 2008 9:18 am by | Edge Content | External | Internal | Intranets | Social Media
As organizations seek to expand their communication efforts to include social media, they often find themselves facing the same hurdles that were faced and ultimately overcome by earlier adopters. Efforts to introduce social media have been hamstrung by questions of time commitment, IT issues, and legal concerns.
Usually, blogs are the tactic that face these obstacles (although I have also heard of other challenges, such as a legal objection to the construction of a special-purpose Facebook page). The assumption that blogs must be the company’s point of entry into social media is most likely based on the fact that blogs were the first social media tool. By the time other tools, like Twitter, came along, tens of millions of blogs already populated the Web and companies from Sun Microsystems to McDonald’s were already showing results from their blogging efforts.
While there are plenty of good reasons for a company to blog, there’s no rule that says blogs must kick off a company’s foray into social media. In fact, if you start with something that isn’t threatening to the lawyers or likely to raise much concern among IT staff, the successful implementation of smaller, less flashy tools can pave the way for more involved engagement.
If your company hasn’t touched social media yet, consider starting with these approaches:
• For your external communications, add a “share this” link to every article or page
Share this
People increasingly use aggregation tools to find interestithe websites of media outlets like The New York Times or CNN. (Max Kalehoff says he visits the Times site only to read particular blogs.) Democratized content sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and NewsVine —where the users determine what’s important rather than a gatekeeper—are also growing in popularity. Even in the world of search, it’s not unusual to hear someone suggest that they get more targeted results by searching Delicious or Furl than Google.
imageIt’s altogether possible that a reader will submit a news item or press release from your website to one of these services. It’s far more likely, though, if you make it easy by giving them the utility to submit with just two clicks (one to open the “share this” box, the other to submit). Consider the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). A search of Digg produces several pages of results, most of which are less than flattering with headlines like “FDA’s handling of proposed cancer drug defies compassion” and “Shame on the FDA.” There is, however, a link to an FDA press release about the formation of a nanotechnology task force. The press release itself features no links at all. A “share this” link would certainly lead far more people to do so—people to whom it might never occur to share at all without the nudge.
In fact, if all of the FDA’s press releases contained “Share This” links, it’s likely that more positive material would find its way to Digg, Delicious, and other sites where they would be visible to people who would otherwise never see it, providing some balance to content submitted by the agency’s critics.
It’s important for organizations to get their messages out to where people are spending their time and consuming their information (which is not your dot-com website).
Most intranets are hard to navigate and contain content of questionable value. The simple act of letting employees comment on and rate a page can make good content easier to find and increase the usefulness of a lot of that material.
Shel HoltzA simple YouTube-like five-star rating system serves a number of purposes. It gets employees accustomed to interacting. It provides an at-a-glance indication of how valuable other employees have found a page (assuming it has amassed enough votes). And a “highest-rated pages” listing can help direct employees to useful content (as opposed to most-viewed).
Enabling comments on pages lets employees enhance the content with their own experiences and observations. Consider the page containing the travel policy. An employee might add a comment noting that his expense report was kicked back multiple times because currency conversions were wrong, then directing employees to the right resource for calcuating conversions.
In both the external and internal cases, the value of social media should become evident in relatively short order and serve as a basis for introducing those blogs, Facebook pages, and other tools that help organizations engage in dialogues with their publics.
• 1.A company called JS Kit ( allows users to add comments and ratings to sites that don't have that sort of native functionality. These tools make it very simple to add social features without having to perform a complicated re-engineering of a website.
Rob Safuto | July 2008 | Woodstock, NY
• 2.Thanks for the tip, Rob. One issue, of course, is IT departments that will delay the implementation of such tools until they can be vetted to ensure compatibility with enterprise systems. This laborious internal process needs to be sped up as valuable tools like this are introduced.
Shel Holtz | July 2008
• 3.Great ideas. Have you seen any companies approach social media in this way? Did they end up getting more involved based on what they experienced?
Patrick Evans | July 2008 | Dallas, TX
• 4.Are there similar tools to JS Kit that allow you to create "Share This "links on your site?
Mark DiJulio | July 2008
• 5.Patrick, I haven't yet come across a company that has enabled rate-and-comment on all intranet material. But there are plenty of companies implementing "enterprise web 2.0" technologies. Forrester estimates it'll soon be a multi-billion market. As for "share-this," a lot of companies are starting to add it, but I haven't heard about any specific results yet; it's too recent a development.
Mark, if you're running WordPress, there's a plugin that adds the "share this" function to your blog or WP-enabled website. There's one for Expression Engine, too. I suspect it's available for other recently-upgraded content management systems.
Shel Holtz | July 2008
• 6.Hi Shel,
Nice piece. So true....there are lots of small, training-wheel steps companies can take to get started. However, I would propose that there are strategies that would even precede the sorts of tactics you mentioned, for companies to get started in social media.
1. The first is listening.
2. The second is experimenting on your personal time -- not affiliated with your company.
3. The next is to start participating in other venues where relevant conversation is happening about your company or category (i.e., commenting on blogs, or representing your brand in forums).
4. Practice internally behind your firewall. There are a number of companies that have developed very active and sizable social-media efforts within their walls.
5. Perhaps most importantly, companies should survey their employees to understand how -- professionally or personally -- they're already active and engaged in social media. In all likelihood, there's significant activity that is just going on under the radar.
Max Kalehoff | July 2008 | New York City
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This Week in NBA History With Robb Harskamp: #7
Welcome a special 7th edition of This Week in NBA History! This is another week for All-Star memories and there’s plenty of historic events to go around. Speaking of All-Star weekend (hey we said this last week!), Robb has put together a pretty epic app for Dunk Contest Historians. The app combines Robb’s art work, a complete history of the dunk contest and links to video of each contestant. You can check it out here Let us know what you think.
Check out Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5 and Week 6.
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Application of high-throughput tissue microarray technology in cancer research
The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong)
Xie, Dan; 謝丹20041,364
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The Dutch Make Great Insurance Commercials
commerical header 560x305
Because they aren’t controlled by pansy ass special interest groups that are easily offended by anything remotely crude or sexual in nature, Europe produces much funnier commercials than the good ol’ US of A. Like this winner from Dutch insurance company Centraal Beheer. Just wait for the payoff.
[Via BuzzFeed]
STK466792 1235178_618293934857799_240145102_n thumb thumb emsh16 Ice-Cream Fun
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More Stuff White Midwesterners Like: Mules.
You don't see them so much anymore, but back in the day every farm had a mule or three. However, our love of mule has endured here in the midwest. It's the official state animal in Missouri, the mascot for Central Missouri State University (or whatever in the hell they're callin' it these days) and the high school mascot in towns from Fairfield, Illinois to Bedford, Michigan to Poplar Bluff. Nowadays the Amtrak line from St. Louis to Kansas City is called the "Mule." And if you've never swallowed a Moscow Mule you're missing something. (Get your mind outta the gutter.) Just add vodka, lime juice and ginger Beer and serve it cold in a pewter mug. It's gooder'n hell, I'm telling ya.
White Midwesterner of the Week: That hot guy on Mad Men.
See photos of Jon
Oh sure, you thought that Don Draper guy on the teevee was a native of New York? Heck no that boy is from St. Louis, Missouri. He went to some fancy-pants high school in Ladue (where the money is) and even got an acting scholarship to go to Mizzou. (Brad Pitt went there too without an acting scholarship, but he seems to do OK.) But you know he's a White Midwesterner on account of the way he wears pleated khakis on the show, and I bet you a donut he's got a few pieces of Budweiser memorabilia at his house. You can take the boy outta St. Louis, but you can't take the St. Louis outta the boy.
If you'd like to nominate someone for WM of the WK, email us.
November 13, 2008
Newly Discovered Things White Midwesterners Like: Barn Stars
star barn
Originally uploaded by Ardent Eye
I've had so much fun doing press for I Love Ranch Dressing but the most fun is when people ask me "Why didn't you include...?" So here are a few new Things White Midwesterners Like, brought to my attention by radio hosts and listeners around the country:
Stars on Houses: I hadn't noticed this until it was pointed out to me by a Michigan morning show, but damned if it isn't true. These were apparently a big deal in Amish communities and German immigrant farming communities (from whence my ancestors came) and are make a big comeback now. There isn't much significance to them (other than, "Hey, I like stars!") but they do scream, "White Midwesterners Live Here."
janelle said...
those stars just aren't on houses! they now decorate many houses in my town, its so frightening. i cant stand those stars!
Elisa (Jackie R) said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...
they aren't barn stars, they are barn quilts. And my aunt and cousins from Wisconsin think that the stars on houses is an iowa thing. They jokingly call it a cult.
Anonymous said...
Yes, there is a big difference between a barn quilt, a barn star and a barn star on a house. Don't do the latter unless you are asked by the right people. Bad things happen to those who just go out and buy a star to put on their house. They will come to your house after dark and talk to you. It is an Iowa thing.
Glenda Cartwright said...
He how come you put a quiz up to answer the questions and you can't answer them? And the star on the barn
we got something even better in Huron Township, An UGLY blue color house with a Whale on it. I will try and get a picture of it and put it up here.
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From Philosophy to Math to Engineering
| | Analysis
For centuries, philosophers wondered how we could learn what causes what. Some argued it was impossible, or possible only via experiment. Others kept hacking away at the problem, clarifying ideas like counterfactual and probability and correlation by making them more precise and coherent.
Then, in the 1990s, a breakthrough: Judea Pearl and others showed that, in principle, we can sometimes infer causal relations from data even without experiment, via the mathematical machinery of probabilistic graphical models.
Next, engineers used this mathematical insight to write software that can, in seconds, infer causal relations from a data set of observations.
Across the centuries, researchers had toiled away, pushing our understanding of causality from philosophy to math to engineering.
From Philosophy to Math to Engineering (small)
And so it is with Friendly AI research. Current progress on each sub-problem of Friendly AI lies somewhere on a spectrum from philosophy to math to engineering.
We began with some fuzzy philosophical ideas of what we want from a Friendly AI (FAI). We want it to be benevolent and powerful enough to eliminate suffering, protect us from natural catastrophes, help us explore the universe, and otherwise make life awesome. We want FAI to allow for moral progress, rather than immediately reshape the galaxy according to whatever our current values happen to be. We want FAI to remain beneficent even as it rewrites its core algorithms to become smarter and smarter. And so on.
Small pieces of this philosophical puzzle have been broken off and turned into math, e.g. Pearlian causal analysis and Solomonoff induction. Pearl’s math has since been used to produce causal inference software that can be run on today’s computers, whereas engineers have thus far succeeded in implementing (tractable approximations of) Solomonoff induction only for very limited applications.
Toy versions of two pieces of the “stable self-modification” problem were transformed into math problems in de Blanc (2011) and Yudkowsky & Herreshoff (2013), though this was done to enable further insight via formal analysis, not to assert that these small pieces of the philosophical problem had been solved to the level of math.
Thanks to Patrick LaVictoire and other MIRI workshop participants,1 Douglas Hofstadter’s FAI-relevant philosophical idea of “superrationality” seems to have been, for the most part, successfully transformed into math, and a bit of the engineering work has also been done.
I say “seems” because, while humans are fairly skilled at turning math into feats of practical engineering, we seem to be much less skilled at turning philosophy into math, without leaving anything out. For example, some very sophisticated thinkers have claimed that “Solomonoff induction solves the problem of inductive inference,” or that “Solomonoff has successfully invented a perfect theory of induction.” And indeed, it certainly seems like a truly universal induction procedure. However, it turns out that Solomonoff induction doesn’t fully solve the problem of inductive inference, for relatively subtle reasons.2
Unfortunately, philosophical mistakes like this could be fatal when humanity builds the first self-improving AGI (Yudkowsky 2008).3 FAI-relevant philosophical work is, as Nick Bostrom says, “philosophy with a deadline.”
1. And before them, Moshe Tennenholtz
2. Yudkowsky plans to write more about how to improve on Solomonoff induction, later.
3. This is a specific instance of a problem Peter Ludlow described like this: “the technological curve is pulling away from the philosophy curve very rapidly and is about to leave it completely behind.”
As featured in: CNN Money Forbes Gizmodo The Guardian NPR
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92430
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Why Alternative Energy Is a Sucker’s Bet
by Lawrence Meyers | December 18, 2012 10:25 am
Why Alternative Energy Is a Sucker’s Bet
I visited with an old friend recently. He happens to be an electrical and materials engineer who served on a nuclear submarine in the Navy. So he knew a thing or two about why alternative energy is a joke that previously I couldn’t really put into words. He did, and here’s why you should be short alternative energy.
It’s the technology, stupid.
Let’s look at everyone’s favorite sector: solar power. Did you know that the sun jets out all sorts of photons, but only one — one — specific kind can be absorbed by a solar cell and be converted into energy? There’s a reason it’s called a semi-conductor and not just a conductor.
That’s why, even if you have photovoltaic cells sitting in direct sunlight for 20 or 30 years, they might — might — end up generating enough energy to have recouped what you paid for them.
Furthermore, photovoltaic cells degrade when hit with UV rays. You may know from your dermatologist that you don’t have to be in direct sunlight to be exposed to UV rays. So, the photovoltaic cells begin degrading the moment they come out of the package. They’ll never be as efficient as in that first moment and will degrade continually until they poop out 20 or 30 years later.
So, in fact, the money you’re saving actually declines over time (assuming energy costs remained flat).
Now, is it any wonder why governments must subsidize solar power?
And for everyone who believes that at least they’re saving the environment — if not money — by using solar power, you first must mine for silicon. That means using gigantic mining equipment, which runs on diesel fuel. Then you have to literally melt rock to create the actual panels. How much energy does that use? A lot.
Take a look at First Solar (NASDAQ:FSLR[1]), which lost money in 2011. It lost $450 million in Q1, before making $200 million in Q2 and Q3. Revenue growth is stalling. It generated negative free cash flow of $764 million last year because it’s obviously a capital-intensive business. Trailing 12-month free cash flow is negative $14 million.
Other sucker plays include Jinko Solar (NYSE:JKS[2]), which has had negative free cash flow every year since 2009, including negative $450 million last year. Oh, and because it’s based in China, you get only an annual report.
MEMC Electronic Materials (NYSE:WFR[3]) lost $1.5 billion last year and has lost $140 million so far this year, with negative trailing 12-month free cash flow of $940 million. Short ‘em all.
Electric vehicles? The batteries that go into cars electric cars and hybrids also use raw material that must be mined (again) and is toxic. And batteries are also notoriously inefficient.
What does this mean for stocks in this arena? Electro Energy no longer trades. Energy Conversion Devices (PINK:ENERQ[4]), Enova Systems (PINK:ENVS[5]) and Green Star Products (PINK:GSPI[6]) are penny stocks[7]. Inco Limited is gone. Here’s a list of other battery stocks[8].
My suggestion is to tread very carefully and make sure any alternative energy company you consider is diversified into traditional product lines.
Now, it’s possible that enough people who want to feel good about themselves — without realizing that creating these alternative energy sources requires an enormous expense of fossil fuel — will surprise me and buy lots of electric vehicles and homes with solar panels. But I doubt it.
The greater fool theory only goes so far, and when the economy is puttering along like this, people will balk at the additional expense.
On the flip side, there’s nuclear power. Terrified of it? You shouldn’t be. Uranium is a natural mineral that’s dangerous mainly if inhaled or ingested[9].
Did you know the nuclear reactor cell on a nuclear submarine is the size of a single 55-gallon drum? Did you know that even operating at only 1% efficiency, that sub can run for 15 years, which includes doing cool things like taking in seawater and extracting oxygen out of it for our sailors to breathe? And to filter it to create drinking water? And to run the whole darn thing?
And you know how much waste is made from it? One 55-gallon drum. And if you placed all the waste drums in the world onto a football field, they’d go from the goal line to the 15-yard line. And it’s all stored underground in a perfectly safe facility. So stop worrying.
Nuclear power is the answer to our energy problems. If you think people and the government are too stupid to rely on it, then you should short the PowerShares Global Nuclear Energy ETF (NYSE:PKN[10]). Personally, I’d buy and hold for the long term because once the alternative energy jig is up, nuclear will be where the money ends up.
As of this writing, Lawrence Meyers has no position in any company mentioned.
2. JKS: http://studio-5.financialcontent.com/investplace/quote?Symbol=JKS
4. ENERQ: http://studio-5.financialcontent.com/investplace/quote?Symbol=ENERQ
5. ENVS: http://studio-5.financialcontent.com/investplace/quote?Symbol=ENVS
6. GSPI: http://studio-5.financialcontent.com/investplace/quote?Symbol=GSPI
8. list of other battery stocks: http://www.altenergystocks.com/comm/content/battery-stocks/
9. dangerous mainly if inhaled or ingested: http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/radionuclides/uranium.html#properties
10. PKN: http://studio-5.financialcontent.com/investplace/quote?Symbol=PKN
Source URL: http://investorplace.com/2012/12/why-alternative-energy-is-a-suckers-bet/
Short URL: http://invstplc.com/1foonPo
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92432
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Calvin & Hobbes was great, is still great, and will always be great. And while it not as good as new strips, at least we now have Dear Mr. Watterson (and its new trailer), a documentary to remind us just how amazing, genius and wonderful this comic strip was. And why, 18 years later, we still miss it.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92439
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Sunday, July 24, 2005
Day #8
No scheduled signings today, only drive-bys:
Borders on Winston signed 4 hardcovers, 6 paperbacks.
Waldenbooks on Portal, signed 2 hardcovers, 5 paperbacks.
Stacey's on Market, signed 2 hardcovers, 2 paperbacks.
Books Inc on Market, signed 1 paperback.
Cody's on Telegraph, signed 2 hardcoversd, 4 paperbacks.
Moe's in Berkley, signed 4 paperbacks.
Time will tell...
Jim Winter said...
Joe, I've been following the kamikaze book tour with great interest.
An alternative you might want to consider on the next book is to hire an additional publicist who can set up media interviews in the cities SMP sends you to. I have one (Small press. I have to.) and she's been great.
What you can do is give the publicist your intinerary and ask her to find out where she can get media contacts (or even additional signings) in the areas you're visiting.
The beauty of it is you don't really have to be bound by your book itinerary. If someone in the Midwest wants to interview you while you're in Colorado, you make the call, do your spiel, and set off to the signing.
I recommend this approach as getting your voice out there on the radio or in print will draw people to the events SMP schedules.
I use the same firm Victor Gischler and Charlie Stella use. They work on commission, so if you're on a budget, they can work around that.
Had I understood the vagueries of small press and the shaft distributors usually give them, I'd have hired her sooner.
As it is, I've seen a definite impact on sales.
Something to add to the arsenal.
Steven said...
I like Jim's idea. Would love the publicist's contact info;).
I would also love to know how you can tell whether this tour will have any impact. I mean, do you have any possible gauge for this? Of course, I can't imagine that it could hurt (unless people just don't like you). Now that you're winding down the tour, are there any ideas about how you'd measure success next time?
Also, when you say you're handselling books, how does that work? Are you going up to shoppers or are they coming to you?
David J. Montgomery said...
I'm a little dubious about the use of outside publicists. They certainly aren't going to hurt (well, assuming they're not incompetent), but I think in most cases they're not going to be able to do much that you and your publisher couldn't do yourselves.
Granted, if you don't want to do it, and your publisher won't do it, hiring an outside publicist might be your only choice.
FYI, a lot of folks in the mystery world use Breakthrough Promotions:
Shalanna Collins said...
I envy you getting to tour the San Francisco/Bay Area. Ooh! I haven't been there for almost ten years. Don't miss the Monterey Bay Aquarium and other sights to see along the peninsula, if you can carve out the time. I would live in Pacific Grove if I possibly could. All I can do now is watch the footage of Big Sur and Carmel on my DVDs of "Play Misty for Me" and "The Sandpiper." *sigh* I'll bet there are some webcams, too.
Now, though, you have done research for setting future novels in the cities you've schmoozed in. Really cool.
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Saturday, May 7, 2011
Pencil Mileage Club Film Festival 2011
Who: CSUF Animation students
What: Showcase of shorts/animations from the year
When: Saturday, May 14 Potluck 5:30PM /7:00PM Film Festival
Where: California State University Fullerton, Fullerton Ca Visual Arts building room 184 Potluck + TSU Film Festival
More info here
This was a poster I designed for the Pencil Mileage Club Film Festival. Here's a hint, the post-it on the lower right is part of this year's opening from the PMC officers. I've also seen some of the submitted films and they look really cool! So there's an incentive to come check it out! It'll be worth the time, promise.
1. You know, I'm not one to use hyperbole, but this may very well be the greatest film festival in American history.
2. lauren: Don't wish and come!!
Chris: Thanks man!
Tung: Yeah.
3. have u made this poster???is very nice
4. Thanks Tim!
Marina: Yes I made it, and thank you!
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92451
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Women Speak Drastically Less When They're Surrounded by Dudes. And That's Bad.
Womanhood is full of frustrating hunches, and society is full of people who want to pooh-pooh those hunches. "I'm pretty sure I'm being treated like shit right now because of my vagina," we women say. "Shut UP, women! Because men get injured in industrial accidents! Therefore, equality reigns!" the pooh-poohers reply. There's almost nothing as satisfying as having one's hunches backed up by science. So color me delighted by this new study published in American Political Science Review, which found that, in collaborative group settings, "the time that women spoke was significantly less than their proportional representation—amounting to less than 75 percent of the time that men spoke."
So it's satisfying to have one's hunches backed up by a study like this: It's not just me failing at feminism, and it's not just men being paternalistic dicks, it's some sort of sinister societal force that shepherds us into those roles. This isn't just teh evil menz (blah blah blah) doing this to us—we are active participants. We are turtlers. Nothing is solved here—no one is to blame and everyone is to blame—but it's comforting, at least, to confirm that it is happening.
And it's not good. According to the study's authors, women contributed to the conversation much more when it was framed as consensus-building rather than a majority-rules vote. And when women's voices were included, the group's conclusions were profoundly different:
...Notably, the groups arrived at different decisions depending on women's participation – swinging the group's stance on the level of generosity given to the lowest member of the group.
"When women participated more, they brought unique and helpful perspectives to the issue under discussion," Karpowitz said. "We're not just losing the voice of someone who would say the same things as everybody else in the conversation."
This problem—of women allowing themselves to be talked over and dominated in group settings—is particularly compelling because it dovetails with soooooo many other issues that we, as feminists, grapple with ad nauseam. It is BFFs with internalized male condescension. It went halfsies on a timeshare with mansplaining. It is more than friends with the way that women default to self-deprecation instead of assertiveness.
Perhaps most significantly, it just goes back to that hoary old double standard—when men speak up to be heard they are confident and assertive; when women do it we're shrill and bitchy. It's a cliche, but it's true. And it leaves us in this chicken/egg situation—we have to somehow change our behavior (i.e. stop conceding and start talking) while simultaneously changing the perception of us (i.e. asserting that assertiveness does not equal bitchiness). But how do you assert that your assertiveness isn't bitchiness to a culture that perceives assertiveness as bitchiness? And how do you start talking to change the perception of how you talk when that perception is actively keeping you from talking? Answer: UGH, I HAVE NO IDEA.
But I guess I will start with this pledge I just made up: I, Lindy West, a shrill bitch, do hereby pledge to talk really really loud in meetings if I have something to say, even if dudes are talking louder and they don't like me. I refuse to be a turtle—unless it is some really loud species of brave turtle with big ideas. I will not hold back just because I'm afraid of being called a loudmouth bitch (or a "trenchmouth loud ass," which I was called the other day and as far as I can tell is some sort of pirate insult). Also, I will use the fuck out of the internet, because they can't drown you out on the internet. The end. Amen or whatever.
Women speak less when they're outnumbered [Eurekalert]
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92453
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Release Notes - Continuum - Version 1.3.3 (Beta) - HTML format
• [CONTINUUM-1130] - can't delete default project group
• [CONTINUUM-1767] - Better handling of error when deleting a Build Environment that is in use
• [CONTINUUM-1806] - Unable to delete M1 projects
• [CONTINUUM-1940] - NPE in IRC notifier
• [CONTINUUM-1979] - regression from 1.1 to 1.2.2: projects keep building even without changes
• [CONTINUUM-1982] - The cow in the log says "Continuum unknown started!"
• [CONTINUUM-2019] - 500 Error after editing project group info
• [CONTINUUM-2039] - NPE in data management when a profile is active but not defined
• [CONTINUUM-2075] - Error deleting project group build definition
• [CONTINUUM-2078] - Errors in export/import examples
• [CONTINUUM-2083] - "Project name already exist" when creating a new ant or shell project in a recently created project group
• [CONTINUUM-2100] - Unable to import data that includes installations
• [CONTINUUM-2106] - Update Backup / Restore Database tool for BuildQueue table
• [CONTINUUM-2138] - Fix error message when attempting to delete a Build Environment that is in use
• [CONTINUUM-2143] - Message schedule.buildqueues.add.error when a schedule already exist
• [CONTINUUM-2144] - NullPointerException when edit a project group with empty or only whitespaces values in Project Group Name
• [CONTINUUM-2145] - Title and Text 'Schedule Removal' when you delete a schedule
• [CONTINUUM-2147] - Schema generated is incorrect when jpox.null-value="default" is set in sendOnScmFailure field
• [CONTINUUM-2150] - Message keys are showing in the jsp pages
• [CONTINUUM-2156] - Sorting not working in Project Groups Members Tab Screen
• [CONTINUUM-2157] - Build number is missing on build results
• [CONTINUUM-2159] - Error upgrading from 1.3.2 to 1.3.3 using Data Management Tool
• [CONTINUUM-2161] - Release results state is always ERROR
• [CONTINUUM-2165] - Adding Maven 1 project don't show errors in POM format
• [CONTINUUM-2167] - Edit Wagon Notifier don't show serverId of notifier loaded
• [CONTINUUM-2171] - Build Definition missing from template after import
• [CONTINUUM-2174] - Queues page is empty when distributed builds is enabled
• [CONTINUUM-2175] - Error when add a Maven 2 Project with file url
• [CONTINUUM-2176] - Build Queue is still specified as under Administration in Managing Parallel Builds while it is actually under Parallel Builds in the navigation menu
• [CONTINUUM-2178] - Unable to add secured projects
• [CONTINUUM-2179] - Error when updating project from working copy when project developer's email address is null
• [CONTINUUM-2180] - Deleting a Maven 1 project causes a JDODataStoreException
• [CONTINUUM-2183] - project cycle can cause Continuum to fail to start
• [CONTINUUM-2184] - temp directory should not be created within the web application
• [CONTINUUM-2186] - No error displayed (in webapp and in logs) when an error has occurred during release:prepare parameter input
• [CONTINUUM-2197] - select all was removed from the queue page
• [CONTINUUM-2200] - Logs should not display scm credentials when adding projects
• [CONTINUUM-2206] - NPE when building all projects in a group or a single project
• [CONTINUUM-2209] - Can delete projects, project group, build result while project is currently building or being checked out
• [CONTINUUM-2211] - s:head tag is duplicated in some pages
• [CONTINUUM-2212] - RuntimeException when the project shouldn't build and no buildresult exist
• [CONTINUUM-2213] - NullPointerException in build queues page
• [CONTINUUM-2217] - Scheduled builds stopped after upgrade
• [CONTINUUM-2218] - Unrelated but inter-dependent projects in the same group are not built in the correct order
• [CONTINUUM-2219] - Project SCM Root is not created when migrating from 1.2.x to 1.3.x without using a data management tool
• [CONTINUUM-2232] - Continuum ignores duplicate projects in forced and scheduled builds
• [CONTINUUM-2233] - Unable to remove prepare build queues and build queues when distributed build is enabled
• [CONTINUUM-2235] - Continuum ignores 'enable' property in PurgeConfiguration for schedules
• [CONTINUUM-2339] - unable to import exported build db
• [CONTINUUM-1712] - improve the performance of the group summary page
• [CONTINUUM-1848] - Forcing a build from the project group level build definitions tab returns you to the list of project groups with no feedback
• [CONTINUUM-2016] - Cannot edit Enabled field in Purge Configuration
• [CONTINUUM-2111] - Create a separate role for adding and deleting a (parallel) build queue
• [CONTINUUM-2123] - Use the same version of slf4j in continuum-scm
• [CONTINUUM-2154] - Data management client only take into account default configuration
• [CONTINUUM-2185] - set default memory upper limit to 256m
• [CONTINUUM-2231] - Queues page should include the prepare build queue
• [CONTINUUM-2258] - Some errors should have meaningful message instead of showing the stack trace
New Feature
Edit/Copy Release Notes
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Ed van der Elsken
Classic photographers
When I saw this photo for the first time, I stopped what I was doing (I think I was actually walking somewhere in Amsterdam) and I stared at it for what must have been a long time. It’s a photo by Ed van der Elsken, a Dutch photojournalist. Most of his work is in b/w, but look at the colour work! I wanted to link to his work earlier, and since I’ll be focusing on early unknown colour photography this week, now is the time.
(updated entry - thanks, Pim!)
PS: I got an email saying that the link to Ed van der Elsken’s doesn’t work right. I can’t reproduce the problem here, it works fine for me; but another way to get to the images is to use the museum’s main site and then to use the “Search” function.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92488
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You probably remember Michael Westbrook as the guy who caught* Kordell Stewart's most famous pass, as the guy who beat the shit out of Stephen Davis for questioning his sexuality, or for being yet another first round flame-out for the Washington Redskins, but after this I'll always remember him as the guy who competes in martial arts against pint-sized opposition.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92492
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A Crux port for Musca, and a correction
I have (yet another) correction to report. A few days ago I offered a port for e3 but refused to share my port for Musca, because I regularly recompile Musca to adjust the commands and settings.
Fact is though, after a brief skim through a few wiki pages (not least of which the Arch wiki — still the best resource around for information on anything), I realize that I was wrong — there is a configuration file, at .musca_startup, and it’s much easier to use that than to recompile the thing over and over again.
Of course. :roll:
So in the way of an apology, here is the exceedingly brief configuration file I use, which adjusts the keystroke to spawn the terminal and the dmenu command to use the Terminus font.
bind on Mod4+t exec urxvtc
bind on Mod4+Control+Shift+Return exec sudo /sbin/halt
set dmenu dmenu -i -b -fa 'terminus-10'
The middle binding is a little something I add for my own amusement: a keystroke to bring everything to a halt. It’s just quicker than closing out whatever programs I’m running, closing Musca, waiting for X to halt, then typing in the command to shutdown. Call me lazy.
And since I failed to provide at the last opportunity …
# Description: A simple dynamic window manager for X.
# URL: http://aerosuidae.net/musca
# Maintainer:
# Depends on: xorg
build() {
cd $name-$version
install -Dm755 musca $PKG/usr/bin/$name
install -Dm644 musca.1 $PKG/usr/share/man/man1/musca.1
Of course, the important parts were stolen from the AUR version. Call me lazy. Again. :|
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92493
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Why should we be surprised to see men knitting?
Why should we be surprised to see men knitting?
Contrary to popular prejudice, men knitting used to be commonplace and was not exclusively a female preoccupation.
In fact, many historians back the view that it was men who created knitting and contributed significantly to its development.
One view is based on the theory that Arabic fisherman, skilled in knotting fishing nets, probably spread the knowledge via the Mediterranean.
It is surprising that boys are not taught how to knit. As many internet blogs and sites show, there is probably a vast population of men knitting now and re-learning the pleasures of the craft.
men knitting
Here’s a snippet from an interesting editorial written by Amy Singer, editor of online Knitty magazine which is encouraging about the increase of men learning how to knit.
"Cool knit shops like The Point in New York have boy-only knitting nights where a knitting-newbie-man will feel no embarrassment in asking for help casting on or cabling. Not that they should be embarrassed, but every new knitter I've ever met is highly self conscious until they get the hang of things."
Knitting for the troops
Of great relevance to our knitting project was a piece written by Clinton W Trowbridge for the Christian Science Monitor in 1997. It tells a wonderful story of American schoolboys knitting squares to sew into blankets for British troops during World War Two.
It highlights the normality of men knitting "...at boarding school during World War II, however, everyone knitted - including the headmaster, the teachers, and the whole football team. We knitted 9-inch squares, which somebody else sewed together to make blankets and scarves for British soldiers..."
And once the boys had learned how to knit "...good many of us took up knitting seriously and made socks, sweaters, and woolen hats. We would knit in bed after lights out and, some of us, even more surreptitiously, in chapel."
Knitting for Britain as a knitting project was seen by the boys as something of an escape from more serious work, but "... no one ever thought it odd that a school of 200 boys should be busily whiling away the hours in such an activity".
man knitting
Knit-a-Square.com knitting project
We want to get thousands of men knitting again, along with boys, girls and all the men and women knitters of the world.
Like Tom (UK) knitting squares for knit-a-square, March 2009
AIDS in Africa has decimated the adult population.
There are now 1.5 million orphans in South Africa alone with over 500 a day being added to that number.
These children are destitute and cold. Many of them are infected with HIV AIDS themselves. It often falls below freezing in sub tropical Africa.
By learning how to knit, you can knit an 8 x 8"(20 x 20cm) square to send to Africa to be made into blankets for these children. This is a simple task for a great knitting project, which takes little time and costs even less.
Please take up the challenge, like the American school children during the war, and help make these children warm. Let's get thousands of men knitting again. Follow these simple instructions to knit and post your square. And also, please subscribe to the Square Circle ezine. We look forward to bring you stories of the children with their blankets, knitting patterns and tips and techniques.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92498
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Last weekend, Kotaku East scoured the Amusement Operators Union (AOU) trade show for the craziest game coming to Japanese arcades in 2012. And what we found is a game as fun and simple as it is crazy.
Speed of Light is an arcade consisting of nothing but a wall of buttons and a digital counter. When a button lights up, you push it to get a point, with bonus points rewarded if you're able to keep a constant rhythm as you put out all the lights.
Check out the video above to see which of us became the Kotaku Speed of Light champion, me or Toshi Nakamura. For more on AOU, check out our photo gallery here.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92500
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Monday, September 22, 2008
Why Did You Land?
Have you ever seen Cruising?'s the movie that nearly ended william friedkin's career because he turned al pacino into a gay pirate with a parrot... well there is a scene where pacino, a straight cop under cover in the gay underworld, looks himself in the mirror and realizes he's gay... i imagined this cat doing that.
stephneary said...
awesome drawings
someone told me about you after they saw my drawings
keep up the good work!
steph neary
l b said...
that cat is danny mcbride
yesh801 said...
Hey Penry,
Toy still taking on new pet portraits?
I interested if you still are. Hit me up with prices. Your shit rules!!
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92515
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Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Thoughts on the mining supertax
I originally wrote this blog rough draft 9 months ago. It got shelved because the prime minister to which it refers got sacked, and since then the new PM canceled the policty, had an election, came up with an amended policy, and then as far as I know shelved it. So the personalities involved have changed, but the overall situation has not.
The government unveiled its new overhaul of the Tax system, which include a resource profits tax of 40%. This has obvious implications for geology, since that is the science used to characterize and find all of these resources that provide the profits.
A few caveats:
Firstly, I despise the Prime Minister. I think he’s a smug, micromanaging, precious, condescending, myopic ratbag. I am similarly unimpressed with just about everything his government has done, with the exception of their financial crisis handling, which was OK.
Secondly, I’m gonna ignore the federalism issues here. Currently, mining royalties are paid to the States, as they own onshore resources and only offshore resources are federal. Obviously this federal resource tax would change all that, which is why the phrase “resources owned by all Australians” is repeated a zillion times.
The problem with resource booms in Australia is this: When the resource sector booms, Australia’s trade balance improves, and the Australian dollar gets stronger. This makes non-resource exports less competitive, and thus hurts the non resource-related part of the economy.
Mineral resources are non-renewable. So ideally, the wealth created by mining them should be used to strengthen and diversify the economy. In a boom, the opposite happens, because of currency strengthening and inflation related to industry demand.
So, some sort of boom-retarding economic adjustment does make sense. However, it needs to be done well. There is no shortage of current or historical countries which have squandered their mineral wealth and ended up dirt poor. And, unsurprisingly, it is not clear how this new tax will work.
The Government is notorious for not explaining how its policies are supposed to work. Most announcements are a curious mix of inside baseball terms and pandering platitudes, and all the tax reform announcements which I could find fit this pattern. However, a lot of the funds are earmarked for ‘infrastructure’. This could be useful, or it could be code for Pork. We really have no idea. However, the Government’s inability to communicate how programs work seems to be related to its tendency to pass reforms that don’t actually work, or that get rorted and ripped off. So I see no evidence that this is not such a debacle.
The thing is, it is really easy to actually summarize the problems of a 2 speed economy (export minerals vs. everything else) quite easily. There is no need to resort to condescending half-truths. Instead of repeating dubious talking points over and over robotically, they could actually tie the various current problems together into a compelling narrative. For example:
-Skilled export industries (be it IT, manufacturing, or education) are suffering because the dollar is being inflated by the export boom.
-Home loan rates are going up because higher interest rates are the only tool the bank has to cool off the overheating resource sector.
-Retailers are losing out to overseas online merchants because of the strong dollar
-International tourism (and education) is suffering for the same reason, coupled with the weak buying power of US and European currency.
These are all reported in the media as unrelated problems, and there has been no attempt by anyone to link them to overall macroeconomic management. No wonder they aren’t making any headway.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Why fuel rods are radioactive
As everyone knows by now, there is a nuclear crisis in Japan. One of the reactors, despite shutting down correctly, has had a number of explosions and has leaked a frightening amount of radioactive material into the surrounding environment. We all know that nuclear reactors produce lots of highly radioactive waste, so hopefully I can clearly explain why.
Every atom has a nucleus, which contains protons and neutrons. The number of protons determines what chemical properties the atom will have, and thus which chemical element it is. Thus, every nucleus with 20 protons is calcium.
In order for the nucleus to be bound together, it must contain roughly equal numbers of protons and neutrons. However, large nuclei need more neutrons than protons.
color coded decay schemes for nuclei
This can be shown in figure 1. This is a chart of the nuclides. The X axis is the number of neutrons, and the Y axis is the number of protons. The little black squares are stable elements. All of the colored squares indicate radioactive nuclei; the color determines the type of radioactive decay.
Radioactive decay is a process in which an unstable nucleus changes into a more stable nucleus, releasing energy in the process. The type of energy released depends on the type of decay.
In figure 1, the yellow and green colors, which are most common in the very large nuclei, indicate alpha decay and spontaneous fission. In both of these cases, the nucleus is too big, and breaks into smaller parts. In alpha decay, the nucleus loses two neutrons and two protons. In spontaneous fission, the nucleus splits into two large pieces.
In figure 1, the blue and pink colors are types of radioactive decay where the nucleus has a ratio of neutrons to protons which is either too high or too low. In the blue scheme, one proton turns into a neutron in one of two processes, called “electron capture” and “beta plus” decay. In the pink area, the nucleus has too many neutrons, and one of the neutrons transforms into a proton by a mechanism known as beta decay.
When a neutron (which has no electric charge) turns into a proton (which has a positive electric charge), it also emits a high energy electron (which has a negative charge), so that the total charge does not change. A particle known as an antineutrino is also produced, but this is harmless. However, many beta decays also release additional energy in the form of a gamma ray, which is a photon, or type of light, that is basically the same as a high energy X-ray.
Large stable nuclei have a higher ratio of neutrons to protons than small stable nuclei. Nuclear fission, the process that powers nuclear reactors and bombs, involves splitting a large uranium (or occasionally plutonium) atom in two by hitting it with a neutron. This releases lots of energy, more neutrons, and creates two much smaller nuclei. If one or more of the neutrons created by fission then causes another atom to fission, then the reaction is self-sustaining, or “critical”.
235U fission products, color coded by abundance
Fission is a messy process, so the new nuclei produced are not always the same. Figure 2 shows the probability of various possible fission decay products. purple-red is the most likely, while yellow is less likely. As you can see from figure 2, Most of the nuclei most likely to be produced by fission lie to the right of the stable elements, and this have too many neutrons. This means that they must decay via the beta decay process, turning protons into neutrons (and emitting beta particles and gamma rays) without changing the total mass number, until the resulting nucleus become stable. Note that the distribution field is somewhat dumbbell shaped- there is a heavy purple blob and a light purple blob, with a red connector in between.
Figure 3. Fission decay products in the main heavy area of fission yield. Decay shifts atoms up and to the left.
Figure 3 shows the closeup of the area near the centre of the heavy purple blob. As seen here, the elements that are far from stability generally decay rapidly, but in some cases the last decay to stable can take many years. The result is that even if the fission process is stopped, the radioactive decay in the recently created fission products will continue to heat the fuel in the reactor, leading to all the problems we’ve seen on the news.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Old-school optical petrology question
Dear Readers,
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
How genocide becomes the logical thing to do
While the world stands transfixed by the unfolding disaster in Japan, Qadaffi has been systematically mowing down the opposition in Libya. They Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions earlier this year suggested that a freedom revolution might be in the works. But if Qadaffi mass-murders his way back into power, that could all come to a screeching halt. His approach to mass demonstrations- killing everyone- gives modern dictators two choices:
Firstly, they can refuse to shoot, and end up deposed and exiled, like the ex-presidents of Tunisia and Egypt.
Alternatively, they can gun down the protesters, and remain in power.
The emergence of mass murder as a successful regime-preservation measure is not an encouraging sign. However, this technique appears to be catching on rapidly.
The key to this approach is to find soldiers willing to mow down civilians, and to then deploy them with vastly superior military equipment.
Two days ago, the King of Bahrain, which has seen heavy protests over the past month, ‘invited’ several thousand foreign Sunni Arab troops into his country to deal with his Shi-ite protesters. Last night, they decided to take the Qadaffi approach, and cleared the protesters out of Pearl square, setting fire to the protest encampment.
Like Qadaffi, they have also refused to allow medical professionals to access the wounded, barring ambulances, and locking down the hospital. If the approach works, why change it?
Western governments have suggested, to various extents, that it might be nice to prevent this carnage, but their attempts to do so through multinational agencies like the UN have been stymied by governments who have used the kill-everyone technique in the past. And unlike 1986, we seem to be either unwilling or incapable of bombing him again, despite all the trillions of dollars of defense spending and technological advances since that time.
The take home message, of course, is that simply gunning down huge crowds of unarmed civilians will not incur a penalty from the western world that is anywhere near as severe as the penalty of acceding to the people’s demands. So unless there is a sudden and dramatic turnaround in the western response to the Lybian bloodbath, the technique of shooting anyone who gets in the government’s way will become the most logical course of action for a wide variety of regimes. Thus, we will probably see a lot more of this sort of response in the future. Indeed, if tonight’s reports from Bahrain are correct, the Qadaffi approach is already being emulated in other parts of the Arab world.
Is this “change we can believe in”?
Monday, March 14, 2011
Japan disaster
I've been away for a long weekend, and haven't been keeping up with the news. Other people have, though.
Highly Allochthonous has a roundup on the Earthquake.
See links therein for details.
Jeff, the Arms Control Wonk, was in japan visiting the reprocessing facility at the time of the quake, and has decent information on the state of the reactors.
Geoblogger Evy's dad is a nuclear engineer, so she has posted two explanatory interviews.
An commentary on various things I heard on the radio while driving:
1. The hydrogen explosions at the nuclear plants are not the same as little hydrogen bombs.
Hydrogen bombs release nuclear energy bu fusing hydrogen into helium; basically the same reaction that makes the sun shine.
The hydrogen explosions at the Japanese nuclear plants are a chemical explosion caused by hydrogen gas igniting in air.
The hydrogen is released by the reaction of water (or possibly an acid) with a metal (M):
xH2O + M -> xH2 + MOx
Where x is one half the valence state of the oxidized metal.
The reaction can take place at low temperature in the presence of an acid or catalyst, or at high temperature in the presence of pure water. The most likely scenario is that the zirconium metal in the fuel rods are reacting. One kilogram of Zr metal will release about 44 grams, of ~500 liters, of H2 gas, so you don't need much metal to get a decent bang.
It may be possible that the seawater they have been using as an emergency coolant is boiling to produce a hot, highly saline brine that might be able to catalyze oxidation of other metal components. But you'd have to talk to an aqueous chemist and a nuclear engineer to see what metals are present and whether they could be corroded in this manner. The boric acid that they have been adding to absorb neutrons is a weak acid, and should not be able to react with anything in the reactor to produce hydrogen. There was a confirmation of exposed fuel rods this morning.
2. The earthquake in New Zealand did not cause the Japan Earthquake. They are related only in that they involve the western edge of the Pacific tectonic plate, which is sliding past the Australian plate in New Zealand, and under the Eurasian plate in Japan.
3. The uranium in the reactor may well have been mined in Australia. Japan imports uranium from Australia. It also imports natural gas and coal from Australia. It also imports uranium from Canada. I don't know how much of the non-nuclear generating capacity has been damaged, but there have been images of burning natural gas facilities in the papers.
4. I don't buy the suggestions that this quake is a foreshock for a bigger quake. This is about as big as they get, and none of the other 8.5+ quakes that I know of have been followed by similar sized quakes on the same system. On the other hand, aftershocks are likely, and some may be as big or bigger than the NZ quake.
I don't know if this makes a large quake on Japan's southern subduction zone more or less likely. That would not be a significantly bigger quake (it might even be smaller), but it would effect a more densely populated part of the island, so that could be what people mean by 'the big one'.
Sunday, March 06, 2011
Bye-bye butterfly
What sort of spider is this?
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Mineralogical Society of America proposes a position statement on Asbestos
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Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…
…For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL
Good Slideshow of “What’s Wrong With These Headlines?”
David Deubelbeiss has created a fun slideshow of headlines that have something wrong with them.
As he suggests, they are probably only accessible to advanced English Language Learners. I’m actually just going to use them in my IB Theory of Knowledge class when we study language and with my regular ninth-grade English class when we need a little fun activity. I’d ask both to identify what’s wrong with them.
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Author: Larry Ferlazzo
I'm a high school teacher in Sacramento, CA.
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Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Oh, and Wonkette - thanks very much for the mention!
1. Compression shorts, or something similar, do the trick. I don't like the feeling of my first mate bounding back and forth as I run. To each their own, I suppose.
2. This post made me giggle!
This is EXACTLY why old men have balls which hang down to their knees.
Did I just say that? So not like me. I've been watching too much "Rescue Me" on FX.
3. Lisa,
I say this with great authority, as I'm a runner and (notably) a dude.
He wasn't not wearing underwear. Surely he was wearing athletic shorts that have (what I like to call) "automatic underwear."
To wit: I'm a boxer guy, so the idea of strapping-on a pair of Tidy Whities under running shorts shorts... well, that's just too much clothes to be moving and sweating in. So, I (and I imagine also your muse for this post) buy only shorts that come with the thin-mesh "undercarriage" built right in.
Of course, the hazard being that one must tighten the drawstring 'round the waste, lest there be unexpected butt-cleavage.
My .02; hope it helps!
4. Oh my... I would've giggled right along! BTW, "wing-wang flopping in the breeze" has GOT to be the funniest phrase I've read all week!!
5. I-66 - If I were a guy, that's what I'd wear then - compression shorts. I am wondering if Justin is right on what he had on, actually.
HKW - Yikes! My mind didn't travel that far! Hilarious!
Giordano - I say it all the time. Ha.
Justin - I think you must be right. That makes the most sense. Especially because it sounds like you know what you're talking about.
G&D - It was a very giggle-able situation. And thanks!
6. "Wing wang"? You're not 12 sugar booger, you're six. So there. Nah, nah, nah.
There is an old man of about 65 or 70 who walks at the park we go to during the week. I swear he does not wear underwear. The other day he walked past me and my gf and he had his shirt off and his skimpy shorts pulled up and the sight of him took our breath away. It was absurdity on two very old legs. I looked at my gf and said, "If he is ever forced to put on underwear, then the terrorists have won."
7. Ha ha! It's not that I can't say penis - it's just that I like how wing-wang sounds! But it still might be true that I'm six. Thanks for the story. Don't let the terrorists win!
8. I loved this! I would've been giggling as well.
9. Cute guy butt cleavage is kinda hot...
10. I have little doubt that this "dude" is one of Bush's court eunuchs.
He has no wing-wang-woodle to speak of, thus, he is free to roam as the spirit moves him. Had you spoken to him, you might well have discovered his secret by the timbre of his voice.
11. Maybe he likes the feeling of his junk bouncing around like that. Now that the DC Madam's can't be trusted to keep her client lists confidential, a guy's gotta' do something to relieve the stresses of working for the Bush admistration, right?
12. As a guy with a healthy, Germanic-born and American-football enhanced arse can tell you, we know when our butt is showing.
Methinks Mr. Cleav was doing this on purpose. Kind of a reverse trolling?
13. All very intersting, but what I want to know is where Mr. Telecomedian jogs!
14. Jo - I am sure you would have. If you'd been there we'd definitely have been elbowing each other.
MM - Hmm. I think I'm opposed to butt cleavage in general, but better on a cute, fit guy, I suppose.
Otis - Interesting theory. Could be.
HiN - I dunno. To me, that would add stress. I mean, if I were a guy.
Telecomedian - He could well have been doing it on purpose. It was a look that worked well for him.
Anneke - Ha ha!
15. I was jogging last weekend when a completely nude man ran past me. I wasn't sure when he went by (he was off the trail), but he came back the same way, and I verified-- yep, no clothes whatsoever. His-- er-- wing-wang was certainly not supported, or indeed hidden, in any way.
I should mention that I live in Boulder, Colorado, I suppose, but honestly, I was shocked to see that on a nice open space trail with lots of families all around. I think it might have been a violation of some type of law.
16. Actually, having one's wing-wang flapping can often be pleasureable. What's downright uncomfortable, though, is one's yarbles bounging around, especially on hot days when they hang low.
17. Honore de Balzac6/21/2007 8:23 PM
Your commenters are all wing-wangers or downright liars!! I can attest from personal experience that each night before getting on the eliptical at my Y, I definitely suit up commando. Who wants fabric getting tangled all up in your bits. They take care of themselves just fine. And perhaps I'll even develop that old man low hanger thing, which your commenter mentioned like they were a bad thing.
18. N-D - Ha ha - this is exactly the kind of thing I hear about Boulder! Clearly I'm wrong in my assumption that naked outdoorsy people go out hiking in droves there.
B - That comment made me laugh out loud.
HdB - Um, I'm not sure what to say, as obviously I can only speculate on what I'd want if I were a guy.
Tell me about it.
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Line6 Ld15 Bass Amplifier Question
bass amp bass amp speaker blown out speaker
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#1 Pink_freud257
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Posted 08 July 2013 - 10:14 AM
Hello all,
Several days ago, I received an LD15 bass amp from eBay and was able to actually start using it. Yes, I got burned on this purchase. When trying it out on two different basses and cords (just to make sure it wasn't any of my equipment), the amplifier continues to make a rattling noise primarily on the "E" string (though the "A" string is also affected at times). Never did I try to "crank" the volume of the amp; I didn't take it past the twelve o'clock position. Even turning down all knobs fully left except for the master (which was only turned to about 4 on the clean setting), the amp still makes an annoying rattling noise. The rattling is about as loud as the note being played.
I realize that it is only a 15 Watt amplifier, but it still should allow me to play louder than essentially a whisper without the distinct rattling noise. I have turned all of the dials to various levels to see if that was the problem, and much to my dismay, I was not able to produce a healthy tone from this amp.
Today, I took it to a reputable instrument and audio shop to have it looked at, and they told me that the speaker is essentially completely broken and will not function at louder volumes. They were able to tell me that there is nothing electronically wrong with it; the problem has been isolated to being a "busted" or "blown out" speaker. I had not even put any of the volume knobs past the recommended "12 o' clock" setting at any given point. Needless to say, this is very upsetting.
Now I am looking at buying a new speaker for this device because I am sure I would really like the device if it were to work.
My question is, first, how many ohms is this amp?
Secondly, would fitting it with a new speaker rated higher in terms of wattage adversely affect the amp? (such as replacing it with a 20 or 25 W speaker)
Thank you for reading this and assisting me.
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LINGUIST List 15.653
Sat Feb 21 2004
Review: Syntax: Quer et al., ed. (2003)
Editor for this issue: Naomi Ogasawara <>
1. Kleanthes Grohmann, Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2001
Message 1: Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2001
Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2004 23:03:47 -0500 (EST)
From: Kleanthes Grohmann <>
Subject: Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2001
Quer, Josep, Jan Schroten, Mauro Scorretti, Petra Sleeman, and Els
Verheugd, ed. (2003) Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2001:
Selected Papers from 'Going Romance', Amsterdam, 6-8 December 2001,
John Benjamins.
Announced at
Kleanthes K. Grohmann, University of Cyprus
This volume offers what the title promises: a selection of papers from
the international workshop on Romance linguistics, 'Going Romance'
(henceforth, GR), held at the University of Amsterdam from December
6-8, 2001. The selection includes nineteen contributions (two by
invited speakers), of which two are co-authored (one by invited
speakers). From the introduction to this volume one can infer
further that four invited speakers did not contribute.
In the first sentence of their ''Introduction'' (pp. v-vi), which is
really a short preface preceding the tables of contents, the editors
(Josep Quer, Jan Schroten, Mauro Scorretti, Petra Sleeman, and Els
Verheugd) note that GR is ''a major European annual discussion forum
for theoretically relevant research on Romance languages'' -- quite
true, and usually of very high quality. As is common at GR, the
conference itself is followed by a workshop on a more specific
topic. In the case of GR XV (not an exceptionally-valved car, but the
fifteenth installment), this was on determiners. Although not
specifically mentioned, my guess is that some of the papers in this
volume were presented at that workshop.
Apart from 19 alphabetically ordered articles on issues in Romance
linguistics (and the realm of determiners), the volume also contains
an excellent index of languages *and dialects* (347-348) as well as
the more conventional subject index (349-353). References appear at
the end of each contribution.
The following section ''CONTENT'' presents a short description of each
paper in order of arrangement and summarizes its main contributions to
Romance linguistics and/or current (primarily, syntactic) theory. The
section ''EVALUATION'' below puts the value of the volume in a wider
perspective with the help of some minor criticisms, where I only
consider the actual contents of this book.
Independent of the quality of the contributions to this volume,
namely, it is this reviewer's belief that no proceedings volume with
such a general title and similarly general contents could ever be
justified the steep price tag -- it is obvious that only libraries and
independently wealthy bibliophiles will purchase this book. Why don't
John Benjamins simply publish such volumes as cheaper paperbacks for
the general public? (The same goes for any other publisher, especially
the upper tier of generally high-quality and accessible publishers, a
group to which I count JB, that do have entire series devoted to such
For the reader who can't be bothered to read the rest: if you're
interested in current issues in Romance linguistics, especially
pertaining to syntactic and semantic theories, read this volume (and
buy it if you're rich).
Luis Alonso-Ovalle argues that ''Spanish 'de'-Clauses Are Not Always
in the Right Mood'' (1-16). The author compares 'de'-conditionals
(which follow an infinitival antecedent and which he simply calls
'de'- clauses) with 'si'-conditionals (which follow an inflected
antecedent) with the background assumption that conditionals are modal
statements. He is concerned with finding an answer to the question
whether tense/mood marking of both the antecedent and the consequent
are interpreted, where a positive answer would challenge the
traditional view that the semantic import of tense and mood
inflections in the antecedent of the conditional is neglected. Simply
put, Alonso-Ovalle shows conclusively that the two types of
conditionals are not interpreted the same way and offers a positive
reply to the question asked at least for 'de'-clauses, where moodless
antecedents can feed both indicative and subjunctive modals.
Staying roughly with the topic, specific considerations of ''Mood and
Focus'' (17-30) keep Claudia Borgonovo busy. She analyses modal choice
in Spanish in terms of negation and its focus (hence the title).
Borgonovo presents and defends her thesis that mood in Spanish signals
how negation is to be interpreted: indicative mood signals that the
matrix predicate is the focus of negation, subjunctive does this for
the embedded clause. Her approach differs from previous attempts to
capture this intuition mainly in (i) focusing on the correlation
between mood and interpretation of negation and (ii) assuming that
mood marks two possible foci. This novel approach ties in very well
with existing approaches to the issue.
Jo�o Costa explores ''Null vs. Overt Spec,TP in European
Portuguese'' (31-47) with the main goal to find an answer to the
question of what type of conditions make it possible for an A-position
to be used as a landing site for the subject. Posing this question
first requires a negative answer on recent work that wonders whether
the specifier of VP (or vP) is the only possible subject position in
null subject languages (Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 1996 [1995]) and
second involves a discussion of the SpecTP-parameter, where a positive
value makes available two subject positions above v/VP, often
identified as Spec,TP and Spec,AgrSP (Bobaljik & Jonas 1996). For
European Portuguese, Costa argues that (i) there are indeed preverbal
A-positions for the subject, (ii) the availability of Spec,TP is
dependent on the existence of I-to- C movement, and (iii) this
dependency may be understood as a consequence of the syntax-morphology
In her contribution to the investigation of the syntax of nominal
projections from a micro-parametric perspective, Vivianne D�prez
discusses ''Determiner Architecture and Phrasal Movement in French
Lexifier Creoles'' (49-74) in the antisymmetric framework (Kayne
1994). With morphological evidence from French Lexifier Creoles, the
author identifies a finer architecture of DP, namely:
Def(inite)/D(eterminer)P > Dem(onstrative)/Agr(eement)P > Num(ber)P >
Aside from arguing for this particular structure, D�prez proposes,
motivates, and justifies the principle that specifiers of French
Lexifier Creole nominal functional heads (i.e. all but the lowest NP
in the hierarchy just mentioned) must always be filled. Assuming a
traditional checking theory (Chomsky 1995), this requirement is
implemented through strong features which must be checked in
specifier-head configurations.
Edward G�bbel reflects ''On the Relation between Focus, Prosody and
Word Order in Romanian'' (75-92). This contribution to the study of
information structure argues that Romanian offers evidence that
prosody acts with word order -- in other words, that the focus-prosody
relation does affect syntactic operations like movement (rather than
banning these into the PF-component, for example). The framework
G�bbel phrases his analysis of Romanian in is the Argument Structure
approach to focus structure (see e.g. Selkirk 1995 for a recent
exposition), despite recent rejections for Romance (such as
Zubizarreta 1998 for Romance in general). Having mentioned these
references, it is interesting to note that G�bbel turns around the
argumentation and in fact implements Zubizarreta's Nuclear Stress Rule
account to a modified version of Selkirk's Argument Structure.
Cecilia Goria's topic is ''Economy of Structure: The Case of Subject
Clitics in Piedmontese'' (93-112). Zooming in on this Northern Italian
dialect, Goria's study casts doubts on recent attempts that argue for
an articulate ''Agreement Field'' (Poletto 2000), a cascade of
agreement projections within both ''split Infl'' and ''split Comp''
(see also Rizzi 1997), which host among other things multiple
positions for subject clitics. Adopting the more recent Agr-less
structure of the clause (Chomsky 1995: sec. 4.10, 2000), Goria ties in
apparent structural variation without resorting to structural
complexity. Crucial ingredient of her analysis is the assumption of a
component relevant for the computation beyond ''narrow syntax''
(Chomsky 2000) which deals with the morphological realization of
agreement features, essentially aiming at a quasi-marriage between
optimality and minimalism.
''Identificational Focus vs. Contrastive Focus: A Syntactic
Distinction'' (113-130) is the title of Daniela Isac's
contribution. Implementing a suggestion by Rizzi (1997) that clitics
are focus operators of an anaphoric nature, she accounts for the
properties of clitic doubled direct object constructions in
Romanian. Specifically, Isac proposes that the clitic anaphorically
connects the doubled object to a set of alternatives and explores two
major consequences of this approach. First, it explains why bare
quantifiers cannot be clitic-doubled (where the empty object position
would have to be interpreted simultaneously as a null constant and as
a variable at LF); second, it accounts for the constraints on the
interpretation of a clitic-doubled object (such as the absence of
variable and kind-level readings for the clitic- doubled object).
Mary Aizawa Kato is concerned with ''Null Objects and VP Ellipsis in
European and Brazilian Portuguese'' (131-153). The basic proposal is
that all types of null objects can be analyzed as a unitary variable
category in European Portuguese, while they involve two distinct
categories in Brazilian Portuguese: a weak demonstrative and an empty
category that results from remnant movement of a higher VP. So, first
this paper contrasts the at first sight identical-looking properties
of VP-ellipsis in European vs. Brazilian Portuguese (where the latter
fails to show island effects in topicalized structures), suggesting
that in the latter, more is at stake than a simple variable bound by a
null operator. Second, Kato offers an analysis for the differences,
one that understands vP (the highest projection of a ''split VP'') to
move out of islands rather freely as either vP-topicalization or as a
Brenda Laca and Liliane Tasmowski's paper is titled ''From
Non-Identity to Plurality: French 'diff�rent' as an Adjective and as
a Determiner'' (155-176). As a contribution to the study of the syntax
and semantics of expressions that introduce indefinite or existential
noun phrases, this paper explores the thesis that French
'diff�rents' (the plural form of 'diff�rent') may act as an
adjective (in a symmetrical relational function) or as a determiner
(for indefinite plural NPs). In essence, the authors propose that (i)
what they call the ''NP-internal reading'' of adjectival 'diff�rent'
provides a link between adjectival and determiner-like uses of
diff�rents ' and (ii) some semantic properties of the determiner '
diff�rents ' stem directly from the semantics of the adjective
'diff�rent', whereas others stem from the fact that the determiner '
diff�rents ' cannot be an adjective.
''On the Non-Unitariness of NP Subject Inversion: A Comparison of
French NP Subject Inversion in Interrogatives and Temporal
Subordinates'' (177- 192) is the title and topic of Karen Lahousse's
contribution. Temporal subordinates offer a rarely studied environment
for inversion structures. The main goal of the study is to show that
NP subject inversion is not a unitary phenomenon, but comes in
different forms and shapes, where can distinguish, for example,
inversion in temporal clauses from inversion in interrogative
contexts. The main differences between these two types are (i)
flexibility, complexity, and pragmatic function of inversion; (ii)
position of the verb with respect to aspectual adverbs; and (iii)
extraction out of quantitative 'en' out of the post-verbal subject.
Paul Law explores ''Past Participle Agreement with Pronominal Clitics
and the Auxiliary Verbs in Italian and French'' (193-212). (Standard)
Italian and French compound tenses differ from those in their Romance
cousins (Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian) in two interesting properties,
past participle agreement with pronominal clitics and auxiliary
alternation. Law argues that past participle agreement is part of a
larger phenomenon, a more general pattern of agreement (including
adnominal adjective agreement), and subject to a condition on the
positioning of the argument with respect to the syntactic projection
of the agreeing predicate (namely, that it be outside). This paper is
an impressive study of some interesting properties which also offers
the beginnings of an account (as Law himself admits) with possibly
larger implications for the complex patterns of agreement and
auxiliary selection (cf. Kayne 1993).
Ana Maria Martins investigates ''Deficient Pronouns and Linguistic
Change in Portuguese and Spanish'' (213-230). Comparing the syntax of
accusative, dative, and 'se' pronouns with that of oblique pronouns,
Martins challenges widespread assumptions that Old Portuguese and Old
Spanish clitic pronouns were phrasal (developing from a phrase into a
head) and as such would allow a verb-second classification of these
(older stages in the two) languages. Rather, she argues, the
accusative, dative, and 'se' pronouns have been heads throughout the
history of Portuguese and Spanish, and are as such ''true clitics''
(in contrast to the oblique pronouns 'i' and 'en(de)', which display
properties of weak, and thus phrasal, pronouns).
''Nominalizations of French Psychological Verbs: Syntactic Complements
and Semantic Participants'' (231-246) by Judith Meinschaefer
investigates how derived nominalizations realize their arguments,
whether it is subject to the same rules governing argument realization
of verbs or differently. Meinschaefer opts for the former, accounting
for apparent differences by addressing in detail the semantics of the
underlying verb giving rise to nominalization (concentrating on three
realization rules for semantic participants). This study is restricted
to derived nominalizations of psych(ological)-verbs, a semantic class
in which verbs showing the same surface syntax and similar meaning
give rise to nouns which contrast in their realization of semantic
Andrea Moro offers ''Notes on Vocative Case: A Case Study in Clause
Structure'' (247-261). Vocative, an unusually understudied case, is
addressed seriously in two respects: the internal structure of a
phrase assigned vocative case (for which Moro offers a number of
diagnostics) and the structural environment requiring vocative case
assignment (for which Moro focuses on the left periphery of the
clause) -- two trivial- looking aspects of Case against the background
that these are instrumental properties that have been studied ad
nauseam for virtually all other cases, but one that is imminently
important given that vocative is indeed rarely looked at in the
(generative) literature on Case (Case-marking and properties). Moro's
language of investigation is Italian.
Sandra Paoli is concerned with ''Mapping out the Left Periphery of the
Clause: Evidence from North Western Italian Varieties'' (263-277). The
two dialects she looks at are Turinese (spoken in and around Turin,
one would assume) and Ligurian (presumably spoken in parts of
Liguria). While Paoli doesn't really provide identification of the
positions involved (taking a more ''relative'' approach in terms of
ordering), she certainly assumes a potential multitude of projections,
thus differing from Goria's approach. In the end, she finds arguments
supporting a lower C-head with modal content (cf. Rizzi 1997) and
contributing to the articulation of a ''split Comp'' with data from
left dislocation structures (bearing at least on topic and focus
Dorian Roehrs and Marie Labelle consider ''The Left Periphery in Child
French: Evidence for a Simply-Split CP'' (279-294), the third paper in
a row (and one of probably six in total) looking at the infamous
''left periphery'' of the clause. The authors claim their data to
further support Rizzi-inspired approaches to split Comp into finer
articulated projections, even in child language, which is here taken
as a grammatical system on the same level as adult grammar. In
particular, Roehrs and Labelle investigate the use of the French
complementizer ''QUE'' (as the form for 'that' which either surfaces
as 'que' or 'qui', I assume) by children in non-adult uses, namely
those where it is expected, but not produced (''Misplaced QUE'') and
those where it is unnecessarily repeated after a left-dislocated DP
(''Intrusive QUE''). Such performance errors are linked the
hypothesis that children may not have fully matured control over basic
operations (such as Merge or Delete/Copy Reduction) and more generally
to the claim that children have difficulties in acquiring the
structure of the CP-system.
Trying to account for the interpretation of French DPs introduced by
the ''particle article'' 'des' (in particular issues around wide vs.
narrow scope), Benjamin Spector identifies ''Plural Indefinite DPs as
Plural-Polarity Items'' (295-313). In particular, he argues that
'des'- DPs are forced to be interpreted as dependent plurals whenever
they can (if there is a licenser on which they can depend, where
licensers are plural DPs, intensional verbs, and some abstract
aspectual operators). In the absence of such a licenser, 'des'-DPs
receive a genuine plural reading and are free to take wide scope. The
discussion also addresses bare plurals in Spanish.
''On the Status of the Partitive Determiner in Italian'' (315-330) by
Gianluca Storto deals with the question whether the apparent
morphological similarity between ''bare partitives'' and ''full
partitives'' shed light on the nature of the partitive
determiner. Bare partitives are those in which a partitive nominal
structure involves the partitive preposition 'de'/'di'
(French/Italian), definite article, and noun, such as Italian 'degli
studenti' ''of two students''); full partitives are those which
involve a quantified expression beforehand, like 'due degli studenti'
''two of two students'' -- the partitive determiner is the structure
partitive preposition + definite article (e.g. 'de+gli' in
Italian). The upshot of his presentation of data (including
interpretation of bare partitives in Italian) and argumentation
against the assumption that bare partitives are unambiguously true
partitives (Chierchia 1998a) is that the partitive determiner is a
lexical indefinite determiner.
Tying in with the previous paper in addressing aspects of Chierchia's
work on the semantics of noun phrases and the like (this time,
Chierchia 1998b), Lucia Tovena discusses ''Determiners and Weakly
Discretised Domains'' (331-346). Building on previous work of hers,
she reiterates her position that the claim that plural count nouns and
mass are essentially the same and that no language has determiners for
the mass and singular count combination, made by Chierchia and others,
is not correct. Tovena argues that Italian does have a singular
determiner that may also apply to mass noun, such as 'nessuno'
''no/not any'' -- which may combine with count singular ('nessun
libro' ''not any book'') and mass ('nessuna pazienza' ''no
patience''), but not plural nouns (*'nessun(i) libri' ''not any
books''). Against this background, she develops her hypothesis of
different possible levels of discretization in the domain of
denotation of a noun, namely the relation between singular determiners
and weakly discretized domains, i.e. weakly discrete units, and the
consequence of the latter to define visibility conditions on the
To quote from a recent review (by Isabelle Lem�e in LINGUIST
15.298): ''This volume is not for those without background knowledge
in the fields addressed.'' As the discussion above has shown, these
papers are all specialized contributions to ongoing theoretical
research in syntax, semantics, and acquisition of a number of issues
(such as mood, left periphery, determiners) in a number of Romance
languages (virtually all of them addressed in one way or another). The
quality of the discussions is generally extremely good, on a high
level with insightful analyses and/or problems sketched out, and quite
a few of the authors suggest enough leeway for further research in
their area of interest. As such, this volume appeals to many
linguists, be it (advanced) students who want to know more about a
particular topic addressed or researchers who want to get an idea of
what's out there, and what's new.
Regarding the structure of the volume, an alphabetical ordering
requires little work on the editors' side and is straightforward
enough. However, it is also conservative. A more dynamic approach
could have ordered the papers according to field, topic, or language,
perhaps. Note that I followed the boring, conservative approach above
(so take this comment with a grain of salt): as nice as my objection
might sound, it becomes difficult as soon as one deals with a
collection of such divergent topics, where sometimes a similar issue
is investigated with different languages (say, the left periphery and
Italian, French, or Spanish) and other times different fields are
combined (such as syntax and semantics). How would one order these?
Well, let this be food for thought addressed to future editors -- it
certainly would make a change from alphabetical ordering.
And once again I have to close with a call to editors to take their
work more seriously -- or, as Phoevos Panagiotidis recently turned it
around with an interesting twist (LINGUIST 15.298), to the publishers:
''I would like to raise issues pertaining to the editing of the
volume. Researchers and scholars are not editors and should not be
expected to substitute for them: it is not only a matter of time or
workload but also, simply, of training. Nevertheless, even
international publishers such as [John Benjamins], who publish this
volume, assume that, at least in our field, we can also act as
unassisted editors -- and save them money.'' The editing quality of
this volume (in terms of consistency in style and format, for example)
is poor for the trained eye, acceptable for all others. I just mention
my personal favourite: only two and a half pages into Borgonovo's
article do we learn which Romance language she investigates, and like
many others, her (Spanish) data don't even contain glosses (and
sometimes mistakes or obvious typos, such as a second occurrence of
'ido', the past participle of 'ir' meaning 'gone', in example (1b) on
p. 17). Other authors that don't provide glosses, and this concerns
the ''consistency issue'' again, are Laca and Tasmowski, Meinschaefer
(or ''Meinschaeffer'' as the running header lists her), Spector, and
Toveno. (Incidentally, these authors might form a homogenous group,
but I refrain from classifying it.) As can be expected at this point,
the references section each author provides are often a mess and
neither consistent with one another nor within itself (see below for
some minor examples).
Alexiadou, A. & E. Anagnostopoulou. 1996. 'SVO and EPP in Null Subject
Languages and Germanic'. FAS Papers in Linguistics 4: 1-21. [NB: As
opposed to Costa's entry, this is dated as 1995 by one of the
co-authors, which can be viewed at
- also, Costa does not provide any details regarding volume or page
Bobaljik, J. D. & D. Jonas. 1996. 'Subject Positions and the Role of
TP'. Linguistic Inquiry 27, 195-236.
Chierchia, G. 1998a. 'Partitives, Reference to Kinds and Semantic
Variation'. In A. Lawson, ed. Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic
Theory VII. Ithaca, NY: CLC Publications, Cornell University, 73-98.
Chierchia, G. 1998b. 'Plurality of Mass Nouns and the Notion of
''Semantic Parameter'''. In S. Rothstein, ed. Events and Grammar.
Dordrecht: Kluwer, 53-103.
Chomsky, N. 2000. 'Minimalist Inquiries: The Framework'. In R. Martin,
D. Michaels & J. Uriagereka, eds. Step by Step: Essays on Minimalist
Kayne, R. 1993. 'Toward a Modular Theory of Auxiliary Selection'.
Studia Linguistica 47, 3-31.
Poletto, C. 2000. The Higher Functional Fields: Evidence from the
Northern Italian Dialects. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rizzi, L. 1997. 'The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery'. In L.
Haegeman, ed. Elements of Grammar: Handbook of Generative Syntax.
Dordrecht: Kluwer, 281-337. [NB: NOT 112-158, as listed by Goria, but
with a subtitle barely cited by any author.]
Selkirk, L. 1995. 'Sentence Prosody: Intonation, Stress, and
Phrasing'. In J. A. Goldsmith, ed. The Handbook of Phonological
Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 550-569.
Zubizarreta, M.-L. 1998. Prosody, Focus, and Word Order. Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press.
Teaching and researching in the Department of English Studies at the
University of Cyprus in Nicosia, I'm generally interested in syntactic
theory (esp. within Principles-and-Parameters approaches) and
comparative syntax (esp. Germanic, Romance, Slavic, Greek) and have
worked on a range of different topics (see my homepage at for more). If you're
interested in PUNKS IN SCIENCE, a project in which I'm involved with
Jeffrey Parrott from Georgetown University, please go to
I'm also a member of the expert panel
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1. Technology
Discuss in my forum
Packaging Tools
There are many tools written specifically for packaging on Debian-based systems. Many of them are not essential to creating packages but are very helpful and often automate repetitive tasks. Their man and info pages are good sources of information. However, the following is a list of packages that are deemed necessary to begin packaging:
• build-essential
is a metapackage that depends on libc6-dev, gcc, g++, make, and dpkg-dev. One package that you might not be familiar with is dpkg-dev. It contains tools such as dpkg-buildpackage and dpkg-source that are used to create, unpack, and build source and binary packages.
• devscripts
contains many scripts that make the packager's maintenance work much easier. Some of the more commonly used are debdiff, dch, debuild, and debsign.
• debhelper and dh-make
are scripts that automate common packaging tasks. dh-make can be used to do the initial "debianization" and provides many example files.
• diff and patch
are used to create and apply patches, respectively. They are used extensively in packaging because it is easier, cleaner, and more efficient to represent small changes as patches rather than to have multiple copies of a file.
• gnupg
is a complete and free replacement for PGP used to digitally sign files (including packages).
• fakeroot
simulates running a command with root privileges. This is useful for creating binary packages as a regular user.
• lintian and linda
dissect Debian packages and report bugs and Policy violations. They contain automated checks for many aspects of Debian Policy as well as for common errors.
• pbuilder
constructs a chroot system and builds a package inside the chroot. It is an ideal system to use to check that a package has correct build dependencies and to build clean packages to be tested and distributed.
* License
* Ubuntu Packaging Guide Index
1. About.com
2. Technology
3. Linux
4. Linux Distributions
5. Popular Linux Distros
6. Ubuntu
7. Ubuntu Packaging Guide
8. Ubuntu Packaging Guide - Packaging Tools
©2014 About.com. All rights reserved.
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Fedora Linux
Friday, April 17, 2009
Another interesting Linux Disctibution is Fedora. According the Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Fedora is:
One of Fedora's main objectives is not only to contain free and open source software, but also to be on the leading edge of such technologies Fedora developers prefer to make upstream changes instead of applying fixes specifically for Fedora—this ensures that updates are available to all Linux distributions.
Linus Torvalds, author of the Linux kernel, says he uses Fedora because it had fairly good support for PowerPC when he used that processor architecture. He became accustomed to the operating system and continues to use it.
Fedora (operating system). (2009, April 18). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 03:58, April 18, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fedora_(operating_system)&oldid=284528504
Kartu Flazz BCA said...
I have tried Fedora and Ubuntu but I think Ubuntu is much more user friendly than Fedora.
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Home >> Nicaragua Radio >>
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92576
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[plt-scheme] Creating new syntax for decision tables
From: Andrew Gacek (andrew.gacek at gmail.com)
Date: Thu Feb 8 17:56:43 EST 2007
I would like to introduce new syntax into scheme which would allow for
more concise descriptions of large boolean formulas of a certain type.
Specifically, I would like to be able to say something like
(a : T T F)
(b : F * F)
(c : * F T))
Where each column going down represents a possible way this table
might be true. For instance the first row is true if a is true and b
is false (the * means we don't care about the value of c). Thus I
would like the above expression to expand to,
(and a (not b) #t)
(and a #t (not c))
(and (not a) (not b) c))
I ran into two problems doing this. The first was that I didn't know
how to convert the T, F, and * into appropriate transformations. The
second is that the macro needs to expand one column at a time, but the
"..." notation in scheme seems to favor expanding things one row at a
Andrew Gacek
Posted on the users mailing list.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92578
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Re: Module Element for Secondary Blocks of Content
From: Ondřej Kučera <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:14:25 +0200
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Seth Honeycutt wrote:
> Would it be possible to create a module element (perhaps <module> or
> <mod>) to distinguish secondary content that often appears in small
> blocks to the sides of the main content. You already have the new
> elements <header>, <footer>, <nav>, and <article> which describe the
> type of content in the structure of the document more than just using
> generic <div> containers. I am mostly concerned with this in mobile web
> applications where, such as on a cell phone or PDA, you could improve
> readability and navigation of a web page by being able to jump directly
> to just the navigation for a page with the <nav> element or go directly
> to the main content within a page with <article> elements.
> Many modern web pages have several blocks of secondary content on the
> top, bottom, and sides of the main content of the page. If you would use
> <article> elements for these blocks of content there would be no way for
> a mobile browser to distinguish these from the main content of the page..
> For example, you could use <mod> to define content modules for site
> search, user login, local weather, upcoming events, polls, shout box,
> etc. The main content of the page would then be defined in <article>
> elements for things like blog entries, a news article, or whatever main
> content was requested by the URI. The side blocks of content often do
> not relate directly to the main content requested, but more to the
> website as a whole– many times appearing on every page of a site.
> Defining these blocks of content differently would allow a mobile
> browser to differentiate these from the main content of the page. A
> mobile browser could then have a feature to list all of the modules on a
> page so you could select and view each one separately.. For example:
I'm not sure, but isn't "aside" element more or less what you're looking
Ondřej Kučera
Ondřej Kučera
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.
Received on Wednesday, 15 July 2009 09:21:43 GMT
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92582
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CFP - Workshop on Semantic Web Enabled Software Engineering
From: <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 31 May 2005 11:11:31 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
To: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
* *
* Workshop on Semantic Web Enabled Software Engineering - SWESE05 *
* (http://www.mel.nist.gov/msid/conferences/SWESE/) *
* *
* located at the 4th International Semantic Web Conference ISWC2005 *
* 6th November 2005 *
* Galway, Ireland *
* *
* (Note - extended versions of the best papers to be published in *
* a special section of a future issue of the Journal of Web Sementics) *
* *
Workshop Description
Over the past five years there have been attempts to bring together
languages and tools developed for Software Engineering (SE) with Semantic
Web (SW) languages. One of the most recent of these attempts is the
development of the Object Management Group's Ontology Definition
Metamodel (ODM). Until recently, this work has been motivated
largely by an interest to exploit the popularity and features of
Unified Modeling Language (UML) tools for the creation of
vocabularies and ontologies for the Semantic Web. But what are the
potential benefits related to the reversal of this approach and the
use of Semantic Web concepts in the field of Software Engineering?
Could the Web-based, semantically rich formality of the Web Ontology
Language OWL be combined with emerging model driven development
tools to provide badly needed improvements in both the process and
product of software development activities? Certainly there appear
to be a number of strong arguments in favour of this approach, but
consensus on the best way forward has not yet formed. This workshop
seeks to explore and evaluate this area.
Intended Audience
While the intended audience for this workshop includes those with
experience or interest in Semantic Web languages and tools, it is
also crucial to have participation by those with expertise in other
areas such as Software Engineering, Automatic Software Engineering
(ASE), Knowledge Based Software Engineering (KBSE), UML/MDA, and
Software/legacy Modernization.
Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
* Visions for Semantic Web driven software engineering.
* Tools developed or being developed for software engineering using SW
* Integration or application development projects combining software
Engineering techniques and Semantic Web tools or languages,
* Lessons learned in ASE or KBSE applicable to SW based SE,
* Shortcomings with the Semantic Web with respect to Software Engineering,
* Deficiencies in the ODM
* Visions for SW driven software modernization
* Integration of UML and Semantic Web languages
* Integration of formal methods and Semantic Web languages
* Software specification and Semantic Web languages
* Component discovery and ontologies
* Feature modelling and ontologies
* Ontology reasoning for software engineering
* Semantic annotations in software engineering
Workshop Format and Attendance
This will be an all day workshop with invited speakers, a
poster session, technical talks, and panels discussing competing
visions for Semantic Web enabled software engineering (final format
will be dependent on submissions). A working session will follow, to
form and document a sense of the workshop on the following question:
Are the conditions right for a major advancement in software
engineering tools and practice through the incorporation of
Semantic Web languages and tools?
Invited speakers so far include:
Dr. Rudi Studer from AIFB University of Karlruhe for a SW
perspective, and
Grady Booch from IBM (by remote webcast) for a modeling perspective.
This workshop is open to all members of the ISWC community, as well
as other communities identified in the Intended Audience discsussion above.
However, in the event that the workshop cannot accommodate all who
would like to participate, those who have submitted a paper will be
given priority for registration. All workshop attendees must pay the
ISWC2005 workshop registration fee, as well as the conference
registration fee. We encourage those who plan to attend this
workshop, to register early in order to help conference organizers
with their planning as well as insure that the workshop is not
cancelled do to projected poor attendance.
Organizing Committee
Evan Wallace, ewallace(at)nist.gov, (primary contact person), NIST
Jeff Z. Pan, pan(at)cs.man.ac.uk, University of Manchester
Phil Tetlow, philip.tetlow(at)uk.ibm.com, IBM
Elisa F. Kendall, ekendall(at)sandsoft.com, Sandpiper Software
Program Committee
Colin Atkinson (DE), University of Mannheim
Ken Baclawski (US), Northeastern University
Dragan Gasevic, School of Business Administration
Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro
Michael Goedicke (DE), University of Essen
Ian Horrocks (UK), Manchester University
Mitch Kokar (US), Northeastern University
Bob Lojek (UK), IBM
Jishnu Mukerji (US), Hewlett-Packard Company
Daniel Oberle (DE), University of Karlsruhe
Marwan Sabbouh (US), MITRE Corporation
Michael K. Smith (US), Electronic Data System
Michael Uschold (US), Boeing
Andrea Zisman, (UK) City University, London
Submissions and Publication
We invite three forms of submission to this workshop:
Full papers
Short position papers
Format required for submissions:
Full technical papers should not exceed fifteen pages in length,
while the body of short position papers should not exceed two pages.
Submissions should be sent in PDF to the primary contact or the
conference submission address. Please use the Springer's LNCS
format for accepted papers. Complete details on this format are
available at Springeronline[
Technical papers will be peer reviewed by a group of experts
representing a cross-section of fields relevant to Semantic Web
enabled software engineering.
All accepted papers will be published online as part of the workshop
In order to increase the quality of the submitted papers and to
provide a stronger background for discussions, we will publish
extended versions of the best technical papers of the workshop in a
special Semantic Web Enabled Software Engineering section of a
future issue of the Journal of Web Semantics.
Important Dates
25 July 2005 - Paper submission deadline
31 August 2005 (tentative) - Notification of acceptance to authors
30 September 2005 (tentative)- Camera-ready version of accepted papers
Sunday, 6 November 2005 - Workshop
Received on Tuesday, 31 May 2005 15:11:38 GMT
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How far would you go to keep your kids drug-free?
Some parents are hiring drug-sniffing dogs to make house calls, reports
Parents using drug-sniffing dogs(Photo: Roman Sulovsky Getty Images)
In Texas, trained narcotic detecting dog Roxy and her handler, Kristin Mauer, make house calls as part of a service called Confido Searches for parents who suspect their kids are using drugs.
When Peggy Dwyer noticed behavioral differences in her 15-year-old son, she hired Confido Searches to examine her home. After abusing alcohol, her son moved onto pot. So when he completed a stint in residential treatment, Dwyer wanted to make sure nothing was stashed that could cause her son to lapse back into old habits, she told
When Mauer's drug-sniffing sidekick discovers drugs, she directs parents to search the entire area. "I kind of give them an idea of what they need to do next," she was quoted. For legal reasons, she never comes in direct contact with any drugs.
Roxy has found drugs in the strangest of places - stashed behind air conditioning vents and taped to walls in the attic.
But using a drug-sniffing dog can make matters worse, child psychologist and TODAY contributor Jeffrey Gardere told TODAY.
"Looking for the drugs with a dog, I think, is an overkill," Gardere told TODAY. "What it comes down to is having a relationship, and I don't know if you can do that if you're bringing in drug-sniffing dogs."
Drug-sniffing dogs may help detect drugs on the home front, but what about the prevalence of drugs in schools?
Illicit drug use among teenagers has continued at high rates, largely due to the popularity of marijuana reports National Institute on Drug Abuse. Eighty-six percent of American high school students report that some of their classmates use alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs during the school day, cites a 2012 survey by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASAColumbia) in New York.
Drug-sniffing dogs may not be the perfect solution, but for some parents, it may help confirm or deny suspicions without accusing the child of something.
"It's a tool that the parents can use to help get their child the help that they need," Mauer was quoted.
Photo: Roman Sulovsky/Getty Images
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login about faq
I own a 2007 macbook pro and i noticed while during watching videos or gaming it gets incredibly hot when just on a flat surface even with plenty of ventilation. I downloaded a program called smc fan control and turns out my laptop was running at around 180 degrees F or higher when doing video streaming. I turned the fans up but i don't understand why a laptop especially being apple run so high to the point of possibly damaging the hardware.
asked Feb 18 '11 at 23:37
NC_Idiot's gravatar image
Apple laptops are notorious for getting ridiculously hot, sometimes to the point where you can barely touch it. All computers get hot, I wouldn't worry about it unless it get near the 80 Celsius mark. Yours seems to be around there, and I'm assuming because Macbook Pros have low end video cards, that your CPU is working harder than usual to assist in video streaming, which leads to hotter temperatures. Aren't the fans supposed to go into overdrive automatically when the system becomes that hot though? I'd say take it to an Apple store just to get their opinion on it, because prolonged exposure to that kind of heat could end up damaging your components in the long run.
My custom desktop systems temp never goes above 40 celsius, though it may be because I've got a heat sink bigger than your head :)
answered Feb 18 '11 at 23:47
Zlpha's gravatar image
Run Activity Monitor (Do a spotlight search for it) and see if any particularly resource intensive processes are running in the background, which may be causing your fans to spin up unnecessarily. If it is not this, then try creating a guest account, log into it, and see if the problem persists. If it does, you may want to get it checked out. It also may simply be showing its age, although that is unlikely, as it's not all that old.
answered Feb 18 '11 at 23:43
Midnightblues's gravatar image
Yes I had the same issue but my laptop was a little bit older it would be hot to the touch as if I could cook an egg on it. I thought about looking into the fan but I could never get into it.
answered Feb 18 '11 at 23:40
applegeek's gravatar image
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Asked: Feb 18 '11 at 23:37
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92603
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Looper's Delight Archive Top (Search)
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bass tunings
About all the things regarding odd bass tunings:
I have two bass guitars which I keep in an odd tuning - which I like
to call "inverted lute tuning".
One is a Tune Gap 6 six-string, and it's tuned 'A-E-B-f#-d'-a'.
The other one is a Hohner B2AF (the Steinberger clone) fretless, tuned
The trick here is that you have an inverted lute tuning on the (upper)
four strings, which works well with chords.
As for strings: for the four-string, it was rather simple: use a set
for a five-string and leave out one string.
For the six-string, I worked around the issue of the upper two strings
by using strings for a baritone guitar, which are long enough and your
run-of-the-mill set contains the right gauges.
As others mentioned, there is a good chance that the setup of your
bass needs to be adjusted, possibly rather dramatically. However, it
worked fine for me to do it myself, so no need to go to the luthier of
your choice or local guitar god (unless you want to).
For those of you familiar with my catalogue, both instruments are used
on my "SAUBER!" and "Neinnein auf dem kleinen Weg" albums, and the
six-string is on some tracks of "kybermusik: Quelques Papiers D'Abord"
(on the "The Milkey Way" suite) - http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/7494
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92612
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Harper Stanhope
7,315pages on
this wiki
Harper Stanhope
Portrayed by
First seen
Last seen
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Shared centric episode(s)
Non-centric episode(s) featuring flashes
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Harper Stanhope
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Date of death
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In Australia...
On the plane...
On the island...
Family members
Harper Stanhope was a therapist and member of the Others. She was married to Goodwin, but their relationship deteriorated, prompting Goodwin to have an affair with Juliet Burke.
Harper received her bachelors degree from Columbia University and her masters degree in psychology from Yale University. ("The Other Woman-Enhanced") She was also granted a "Certificate of Recognition" from the Hanso Foundation and another certificate from the "Experimental Social Psychology Society". ("The Other Woman")
On the Island
Harper was antagonistic towards Juliet from their first meeting and became more so after she discovered Juliet was sleeping with her husband, which she discovered by following and watching them.
She warned Juliet that Ben's obsession with her could prove lethal for Goodwin should Ben discover the affair. Harper's omen came to pass when Ben sent Goodwin undercover with the tail section survivors and left him there for three weeks, at which time he was killed by Ana Lucia Cortez. ("The Other Woman")
Day 94 (Season 4)
Harper rain
After Juliet left the Others, Harper found her in the jungle to deliver a message, allegedly from Ben, that Juliet should thwart Charlotte Lewis and Daniel Faraday's mission to the Tempest at all costs. According to Harper, the freighter team members were being sent to unleash a type of nerve gas that would kill every living person on the Island. Harper claimed to be acting under Ben's orders even though Ben was being imprisoned by Locke at the time. She then disappeared after Jack and Juliet were distracted by whispers in the jungle. ("The Other Woman") It was not revealed when and how Harper died, or if she even died at all. Other living persons such as Walt have manifested themselves on the island, even being accompanied by the whispers. It is also possible that it was the Man in Black since Harper was imploring Juliet to stop Charlotte and Daniel which would have resulted in the gas being released, killing off the candidates.
Later seasons
Harper has never been seen again, neither with Richard's group of Others in 2007, nor at the Temple. The Temple Others were massacred by the Man in Black. It is not known if Harper was killed in the massacre, joined the Man in Black, or is with another group of safe Others in the jungle.
• During casting she was described as Chandley Price. Mid 30s to early 40s. Female. Tough, no-nonsense and beautiful in an unadorned way. A therapist by profession and yet could benefit from some therapy herself. The qualities that make her a leader and effective at seeing into other people also cause her problems in her own life -- she can be overly controlling and obsessive. Her strength of personality is undeniable. Guest star / recurring [1]
• In Greek mythology, a harpy was a monstrous, winged minister of divine vengeance with the face of a woman and body, wings, and claws of a bird. Personifications of guilty consciences, harpies harassed the guilty. The word is often used hyperbolically to refer to an strident, demanding woman, especially a wife.
• Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope was a British statesman and scientist. He wrote a scathing reply to philosopher Edmund Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution. Edmund Burke is also the name of Juliet's husband.
• Her name is an anagram for "present pharaoh" and "perhaps an Other"
Unanswered questions
Unanswered questions
1. Do not answer the questions here.
For fan theories about these unanswered questions, see: Harper Stanhope/Theories
• Was Harper conveying Ben's orders?
• How was Harper able to appear and disappear suddenly?
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92619
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Thread: Kristmas Kwake
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Old 12-18-2005, 10:52 AM #5
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[ previous ] [ next ] [ threads ]
Subject: Problematic Features
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 09:24:24 -0500
Question for developers working on the port of m0n0wall to FBSD, which
features are you seeing as the most Problematic in the port?
I don't want to see m0n0wall fizzle out due to lack of talk between
developers. The goal is to get a working port of m0n0wall, so we need to
keep some chatter going in order to work out the problems that individual
developers are having.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92641
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Subject: Re: swapfs filesystem design (and mount/umount question)
To: Assar Westerlund <>
From: Jaromir Dolecek <>
List: tech-kern
Date: 03/20/2000 08:57:27
Assar Westerlund wrote:
> You might need to implement lookup(). In the dummy file-system I just
> inspected, the following vnode operations are filled in. I do think
> that vop_lock is not actually needed on NetBSD.
It is, though you may just use genfs_lock(). genfs_lock() does the generic
locking on the vnode layer - the filesystem is free to implement
it's own locking if needed.
Jaromir Dolecek <>
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92643
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[Numpy-discussion] ANN: first previews of WinPython for Python 3 32/64bit
Till Stensitzki mail.till@gmx...
Thu Jan 10 05:01:01 CST 2013
Pierre Raybaut <pierre.raybaut <at> gmail.com> writes:
> Hi all,
> I'm pleased to announce that the first previews of WinPython for
> Python 3 32bit and 64bit are available (WinPython v3.3.0.0alpha1):
> http://code.google.com/p/winpython/
> This first release based on Python 3 required to migrate the following
> libraries which were only available for Python 2:
> * formlayout 1.0.12
> * guidata 1.6.0dev1
> * guiqwt 2.3.0dev1
> * Spyder 2.1.14dev
> Please note that these libraries are still development release.
> [Special thanks to Christoph Gohlke for patching and building a
> version of PyQwt compatible with Python 3.3]
Hey Pierre,
i just want to say thanks for your work. I use spyder, winpython (no more hassle
with administration) and guiqwt (fastest plotting library under pyqt) daily and
love them.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92669
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Baseline Ventures
Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom: The $400 Million Man?
Just how wealthy are Instagram's nine employees after Facebook acquired the two-year-old startup for $1 billion? Ridiculously wealthy, according to one report. A source "close to the company" -- likely an investor -- shared some of Instagram's 2011 financial data with Wired. According to the data, Instagram cofounder and CEO Kevin Systrom owns 40% of the company, meaning he stands to take home $400 million from the sale pre-tax.
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global_05_local_4_shard_00000656_processed.jsonl/92671
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1. Education
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Numbers Before and After Worksheets - 1 to 100
2 of 10
Numbers Before and After to 100 Worksheet # 2 of 10
Number Worksheet # 2
Number Worksheet # 2
D. Russell
Determine and list the number that comes before and the number that goes after each number listed.
Print PDF worksheet below.
These worksheets are suitable for children who are able to print and identify numbers to 100. Worksheets like these help children understand quantity in numbers to 100. Before, after and in between number worksheets help to develop the concept of magnitude of number.
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